by Jon Cleary
At the bottom of the outside steps Mrs. Dircks turned to him. “You’re trying to find who murdered Ken Sagawa, aren’t you? What connection has that with the murder of Mrs. Hardstaff all those years ago?”
“None, as far as I know. But it was hushed up and I’ve got the feeling some people in town would like the Sagawa murder hushed up, too. That may be the only connection. That’s off the record, of course.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, your husband’s a newspaperman, isn’t he? I wouldn’t want him publishing a remark like that.” But he hoped she would at least tell her husband what he had said: anything to throw a little grit in the works.
He saw her small mouth purse, and he knew he had put a taste on her tongue that she could not wait to spit out to someone: perhaps even Gus Dircks himself. He had taken another risk, a small one, and it gave him a certain pleasure.
“Will you be okay, going home on your own?”
Her eyes widened. “Why not? This is a safe town, Inspector.”
“I’m sure it is. Except that, as you said, there are a lot of strangers around this weekend. You never know . . . If that old man comes back to the library, will you call me at the station? Sergeant Baldock will pass on any message to me. Goodnight. Oh, and don’t forget—ask your staff who took out the Chronicle file in the past week.”
When he got back to the Mail Coach Hotel the two bars were bursting at the seams. The noise boomed out at him as he got out of the Commodore; brewers have never over-estimated the stamina of Australian drinkers. Groups of men, foam-fisted, loud-voiced, blocked the footpath outside the hotel; they made no effort to get out of Malone’s way, but he manoeuvred himself through them without causing any ruction. He remarked that there were no Aborigines in sight.
Except Wally Mungle, who stood inside the narrow entrance hall with Koga, the Koori looking as alien as the Japanese. With them was Mrs. Potter.
“I’m doing this under protest, Inspector,” she flung at Malone as soon as she saw him; it seemed to him that she was speaking for the benefit of the crowd of drinkers just behind him. “I’ve had to cancel—”
“Can we go upstairs?” said Malone and without looking back led the way up to his room.
Koga stood aside to let Mrs. Potter go first; so did Mungle. The Japanese gave a slight bow of his head to her; but the Koori showed no expression at all. The three of them followed Malone up the stairs and at once the hallway below was crowded with drinkers spilling in from the street and from out of the bars.
“Give us a yell if you want us, Narelle!”
“We’re right behind you, love!”
Clements was in the bedroom in his shirt-sleeves, putting down the phone as Malone walked in. “I’ve been on to Andy Graham. Nothing from Tokyo yet . . . Hello, Narelle. You look fussed.”
“That’s a polite word for it! I’ve got to turn over a double room to—to—” Malone waited for her to say this Jap; but she stopped herself: “to Mr. Koga here. Everyone’s crying out for a hotel bed and there’ll be one going to waste in his room—”
“No, there won’t,” Malone interrupted. “Detective Mungle will be staying with Mr. Koga. Is that right, Wally?”
“Yes, sir.” There was still no expression on his face.
“Who’s going to pay?” demanded Mrs. Potter, getting her priorities right: profit before prejudice.
“The Police Department,” said Malone.
“Cash.”
Malone shook his head, trying to retain his good humour; or at least make a pretence of it. “Have you ever heard of the government paying cash for anything? I’ll sign for it and I’ll guarantee you are paid.”
“Why can’t you pay for it and then claim it?”
“You know the rumour—a policeman never pays for anything.”
“The room’s a hundred dollars a night, same as yours.” She was profiteering, taking advantage of the demand, but she was brazen about it. Malone grudgingly conceded that Narelle would never be two-faced about anything.
The New South Wales Police Department paid a daily allowance of ninety-eight dollars to cover food and lodgings when away from home, and threw in an extra thirty-five cents in case some over-extravagant officer, usually not a native-born one, wanted to leave a tip. “You’ll get your money, Mrs. Potter.”
“Will they be eating in the dining-room?” She hadn’t looked at Koga or Mungle since they had all come into the bedroom.
“No. I think it’d be better if they ate in their room.”
“I don’t have the staff for room service.”
“Then Detective Mungle will come down and get their meal. Thanks, Mrs. Potter, for all your help. I’ll write you a Police Department commendation.”
His voice was flat; but the sarcasm coated the room’s sudden moment of silence. Narelle Potter glared at him, then turned and went out of the room like a dark fury. Malone went to the door, called after her, “Which is their room?”
“Number Twelve!” she shouted, without looking back at him, and was gone down the stairs to a roar of welcome from her battalion below.
Malone turned back to Koga and Mungle. “That’s next door. I think it’d be advisable, Mr. Koga, if you stayed in your room at night over this weekend.”
Koga nodded reluctantly. He took off his glasses and polished them; again there was the impression that he was no more than a bewildered schoolboy. “Sergeant Baldock explained. How long is it going to be like this, Inspector?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Perhaps the antagonism towards any Japanese who came into the district would never cease. Not while there were people like Ray Chakiros and Narelle Potter to stir the pot.
Koga said nothing, standing immobile for a long moment. Then he looked at his glasses, as if wondering whether to put them on again: perhaps the world would, miraculously, look better without them. Then he sighed, put them on carefully, bowed his head to Malone and Clements and went out of the room towards Number 12. Malone looked at Mungle.
“Well, Wally? You’ve got something on your mind.”
Mungle glanced from one to the other of the two Sydney men before he said, “Why me, Inspector? Jesus, a Koori looking after a Jap in this town!”
“I don’t know, Wally. I guess Sergeant Baldock must’ve detailed you for the job.” But he wondered why. “I’ll talk to him. Is he still at the station?”
“I think so. He was finishing up the week’s paper work.”
“Righto. Wear it for tonight, Wally. I’ll see what I can do about the rest of the weekend.”
Koga came back to the door. “I do not like to complain, Inspector, but there is no television in our room.”
“Narelle must have had them take it out,” said Clements, who up till now had been silent. “She really is a bitch, isn’t she?”
“You can come in here and look at ours,” said Malone. “Sergeant Clements and I are going out to dinner. We’ll be out at Trevor Waring’s place, Wally. Call us there if there’s any trouble. We’ll be back about eleven.”
Wally Mungle shrugged resignedly; it seemed that he was used to resignation, as some people are to a minor chronic illness. Then he glanced at Koga. “We’ll look at The Golden Girls.”
“I do not know the programme.”
“It’s about three middle-aged American biddies looking for men to go to bed with. Maybe you and me can call „em up.”
Then he and Koga went along to their room.
Malone looked at Clements. “Wally will survive.”
“What about Koga?”
Malone shrugged, but not with resignation; it wasn’t in his nature. He had been quicker than most Australians of his and older generations to understand how most foreigners thought, particularly Europeans; Lisa, sometimes deliberately, more often by example, had coached him there. Asians, however, for the most part baffled him. Which put him in the exalted company of certain presidents and prime ministers. “Who knows what a Japanese thinks? Do you?”
“S
ometimes I wonder if I know what anyone thinks.”
“It always takes you a while to wake up to what women think.”
“You mean Narelle? Don’t rub it in. I’ve been listening to gossip about her down at the station—the uniformed guys, well, some of „em, are talking to me now. Up till her husband died, Narelle evidently was a mousey little wife—in public, anyway. Then after he was gone, about two or three years ago, she started to play around. Anyone and everyone, so long as he wasn’t married and was from out of town. I gather she wouldn’t know Tom’s dick from Harry’s. Jesus, for all I know I could of got AIDS!” The thought startled him and he looked down at his zipped-up fly.
Malone gave him no sympathy. “Then you won’t mind if I use the shower first?”
Fifteen minutes later the two of them were ready to leave. Malone went along to Number 12, tapped on the door and opened it. Mungle and Koga were sitting on twin beds facing each other, like prisoners from separate wars who had finished up in a neutral cell.
“The TV’s all yours. I’ll see you at breakfast.”
When Malone and Clements went downstairs the hallway was crowded and the two big men had to push their way through the crush. Again no one made way for them and Malone, once more, felt his temper rising. Across the heads of the drinkers he saw Narelle Potter in her small office. She stared at him as if he were—a foreigner?
Driving out of town he said, “Did you find out anything more about Nothling from the hospital computer?”
“He was born in Rangoon in nineteen forty. He got his medical degree at Guy’s Hospital in London. He’s an FRCS, London. He practised in Perth for five years before coming here.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing personal about him, just the bare facts. Hospital computers never say as much about doctors as they do about patients. That’s against medical ethics.”
Malone grinned at that. They crossed the river and passed the showground where the carnival and circus were in full swing; coloured electric globes swung against the darkness like a conflagration of fireflies and, through Clements’s half-opened window, there came the sawing of raucous music. Malone had to slow to pass the traffic turning into the showground.
Once clear again he said, “What about Dr. Bedi?”
“Born in Simla, India. She got her degree at St. Mary’s in London. Five years in hospitals in India, Bombay, Simla. She came out here a year ago.”
“None of that tells us much.”
“No. I think we’re gunna do better listening to gossip.”
Which wouldn’t be the first time they had gone down that track looking for clues.
They turned in at the Waring gates and drove up towards the house. The car’s headlights heralded their approach; the Malone family was on the front steps waiting for them. Neither Malone nor Lisa had siblings and the Malone children had adopted Clements as Uncle Russ: he was as welcome as their father. More so, since he always brought them something. Malone kissed Lisa and waited for the kids to greet him; but they had greeted him last night, hadn’t they, and they were too busy with Uncle Russ. He had brought small gifts for them and the Waring children: he was the ideal uncle.
Lisa kissed him. “You’re wasted, Russ. You should be a father.” She had been trying to marry him off ever since she had first met him. “While you’re out here we’ll try and find you a nice country girl.”
“Don’t!” screamed Maureen. “He’s better as an uncle! He doesn’t want kids of his own!”
Clements agreed: marriage was for braver men than he. They all went into the Waring house, which was built in the colonial style but couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen years old. It looked as if it might originally have been furnished from the pages of House and Garden; but the rooms in that magazine have never had a child pass through them, let alone live in them. Children and dogs had worn the edges off the Waring furniture; a lively family had autographed every room. Ida, who had invited Clements to come to dinner with Malone, greeted him with the same warmth as she had shown towards him this afternoon. Malone, senses sharpened now by every nuance, wondered again at the state of the Warings’ relationship.
But Trevor Waring’s welcome was just as warm as that of his wife. “Glad to meet you, Russ. A beer or a whisky?”
“Better take one or the other,” said Sean Carmody, seemingly as much at home here as in his own house. “Trevor has no respect for men who drink wine before a meal.”
“Humphrey Bogart once said he wouldn’t trust a man who didn’t drink.” Waring did not look like the sort of man who collected the wise sayings of film stars.
“I’d never trust the intelligence of a man who said that.” For a moment father-in-law and son-in-law looked as if they might cross swords; then Carmody smiled and looked at Malone. “How are things going, Scobie?”
Waring, in the process of pouring beers for the two detectives, paused and glanced over his shoulder. Malone said, “We’re learning a lot. I don’t know how useful it’s going to be.”
“Learning what?” said Waring, bringing them their beers.
“Just who and what makes things tick around here. Cheers.” He raised his glass. The two women had gone out to put the last touches to the dinner and the children had retreated to another room. “Tas not here tonight?”
“He’s in town with some of his mates,” Waring said offhandedly. He was still standing, his whisky glass in his hand.
“Does he have a girl?” Malone made sure that Claire was not at the door listening to him.
“Half a dozen, maybe a dozen,” said Carmody. “I shouldn’t say this in front of his father, but I think Tas is busier at the weekends than any of the rams we’ve got here on the properties.”
“Boys will be boys,” said Waring, trying to look like a father-of-the-world. “The girls know how to look after themselves these days.”
Not my Claire, thought Malone, shotgun on shoulder.
“So you’re not getting very far?” Waring was still standing, feet planted firmly in the middle of the room. A lawyer for the defence? Malone wondered. But who would he be defending?
“Do the police get very much co-operation around here?” he said.
“Depends what the police are investigating.” Waring sounded cautious and Malone, once again with ears too sharp, wondered if he were letting his imagination get the better of him.
“Who’s not co-operating?” said Carmody.
“Practically everyone.” Malone looked directly at Waring, but his host had turned back to the sideboard to refill his own glass.
Waring, still with his back to them, said, “Most people think Sagawa was murdered by someone who doesn’t belong around here.”
“I keep hearing that, I’m waiting for someone to put it to music.” He couldn’t help the acid in his voice; Carmody gave him a sharp look. “There are a lot of strangers in town for this weekend, I keep hearing that, too. I saw one in the library tonight. An old cove, tall and thin, with a beard.”
“What were you doing in the library?” Waring turned round, at last sat down in a green leather wing-backed chair, obviously Father’s Chair.
“Looking up background. I met the librarian, Gus Dircks’s daughter-in-law.”
“Was she co-operative?”
Malone was aware that Sean Carmody was watching him and Waring, sitting very still in his chair. Even Clements seemed to sense that Waring’s question was not an idle one.
“Up to a point. More than her father-in-law has been. But that’s off the record. Police are not supposed to make political comments, especially about their own Minister. Is he a friend of yours, Trev?”
“No.” Waring took a long sip of his drink.
Carmody relaxed, slowly swallowed a mouthful of his own whisky. “Any comment would be water off a duck’s back with Gus. He’s got a hide like ironbark. Did Mrs. Dircks know the old feller in the library?”
“No. But I think she’d like to find him. So would I. He tore some pages out
of the Chronicle that I wanted to check.”
“Who would want to tear anything out of the Chronicle? It’s duller than Pravda.” Carmody smiled. “Sorry. I’m airing my experience. It’s a tiresome habit in old men.”
Waring was holding his glass steady with both hands. “Pages on what? What did he tear out?”
“The old Hardstaff murder.”
Waring’s bland face took on character with his puzzlement. “Why on earth were you looking up that?”
“Curiosity,” said Malone, finished his beer and stood up as Lisa, displaying that impeccable timing that wives sometimes achieve to their husbands’ satisfaction, came to the door. “You want us for dinner?”
The day’s tension eased out of Malone during dinner. His family around him gave him not only pleasure but a sense of security; the innocence of his children, and of the Waring brood, was a reminder that the world had not yet surrendered entirely to intrigue and skulduggery and murder. But he himself was not so innocent (or rather, naive) as to believe that their innocence was not vulnerable to those assaults. Still, he took comfort in it, no matter how impermanent it might prove to be.
Lisa, of course, was the bedrock of his security. After dinner he took her outside for a walk in the garden. The nights were cooling now and the day’s breeze, which had dropped at sunset, had cleared the air of the last of the dust. A full moon, low and golden, threw shadows from the trees and bushes; but out beyond the garden, the paddocks were greenish-gold, like a wash of verdigris on a vast copper table; the tree shadows there were a tiny distraction, like black pigmentation marks. Somewhere down towards the distant front gates a boobook owl called, its mournful morepork cry emphasizing the immense silence.
“It’s so restful,” said Lisa, arm in his.
“That’s what you said on the phone, the day before Sagawa was murdered.”
She did not miss a step, but looked at him sideways. She could read his moods, controlled though they were, as if she saw them under a Police Ballistics macroscope; she had learned to handle them without getting too excited or depressed by them. Except, of course, when he was in danger; then she was ready to declare war. “It’s not going well?”
