by Jon Cleary
“Bloody terrible. Don’t let’s talk about it.”
“Whatever you say. Hold me.”
They stopped and he took her in his arms. She was wearing his favourite perfume, Arpège; it cost an arm and a leg, by his tight standards, but he bought it for her every Christmas, no matter what other gift he gave her. He kissed her, their hunger for each other in every nerve-end.
“Have you ever made love in someone else’s front garden?” she said.
“No, and I’m not going to start now. I’d be impotent for the rest of my life if the kids came out and caught me on top of you.”
They resumed their walk, she within the circle of his arm. He said as casually as he could, “Are Ida and Trevor happy?”
Again she looked at him without turning her head. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. I just get a feeling . . .”
“You’re a better cop than I thought. No, they’re not too happy, Ida told me. They try to keep it from her father and the children, but I think Sean’s on to it. They’re sleeping in the same room while we’re here, but in separate beds.”
“Whose fault is it? His or hers?”
“Both. Or neither. Ida doesn’t know, she’s candid about that. Trevor has had a couple of affairs, I gather. Not here in Collamundra, but down in Sydney or somewhere.”
“Who with? Local women?”
“Ida thinks that Mrs. Potter could be one of them. I gather she’s a good time girl. She’s what Ida called a girl who’s perpetually moist.”
“She got her hooks into Russ last night.”
“Not Russ!”
He was sorry he had told her; he backtracked: “I think he held her off. Russ is no fool.”
“You’re all fools when it comes to an easy piece of it.”
“I hope you don’t talk like that in front of the kids. You think I’d be a fool and take on Narelle if she offered me a piece of it?”
“You’d certainly be impotent for the rest of your life if you did. I was down at the stockyard today, watching how they turn bulls into bullocks.”
He winced, pressed her shoulder and kissed her. Then he said, “Has Ida ever mentioned that Trevor owns part of the cotton farm and gin?”
“No. Do you want me to ask her?”
“No! You stay out of it!”
She stopped walking. “All right, don’t get excited. But if he owns something of the cotton farm, does that mean he has something to do with the murder?”
“I hope not—” The net was widening, even if it was full of holes. “I don’t know at this stage. All I’ve got so far are bits and pieces that don’t add up to anything.”
“Oh God! I hope for Ida’s sake and the children’s that he didn’t have anything to do with it. Why would he?” She sounded demanding, like another lawyer for the defence; but Malone knew she was really only defending the Warings. “Don’t press it, darling—”
“You don’t mean it—asking me to do something like that.”
She stared at him in the moonlight, saw the pain in his face; then she leaned her head against his chest. “I know. But you know how I feel about families, about children . . .”
“Don’t you think I feel the same?” He wrapped his arms round her and held her to him. Somewhere in the night the boobook owl repeated its mournful cry.
They went back inside. At the door he turned and looked back over his shoulder. The moon had climbed higher, was less golden, was turning hard and bright. It seemed to him that the night had suddenly got colder.
When he left he kissed Claire, Maureen and Tom a little more tenderly than usual. Then he looked at the Waring children, a girl Claire’s age and twin boys a year younger; and hoped that, somehow, he could protect them. But he knew in his heart that their protection was not up to him.
He kissed Ida on the cheek, then shook hands with Waring.
“Will you be in town tomorrow morning, Trev? I’d like to see you.” He avoided looking at Lisa. “Just a few questions about Sagawa.”
There was a deep frown between Waring’s eyes; his face was taking on character the more he appeared concerned. “How about eleven o’clock? We’re going to the races tomorrow, but I can meet you at my office.”
“Sure, eleven will be fine.” Malone tried to make the date sound as casual as possible.
“They’ve asked us to the races with them,” said Clements. “Are we gunna take the afternoon off?”
“Yeah!” yelled Maureen and Tom. “We want Uncle Russ to come with us! He’s gunna teach us to bet!”
“Just what you need to know,” said their father. “Righto, if nothing crops up we’ll be there.”
Sean Carmody walked over to the Commodore with them. “Is it just curiosity that’s got you interested in the Hardstaff murder or do you really want to know what went on?”
“Do you know what went on, Sean?”
Carmody’s gaze was direct. “No, I don’t. But I’m like you, I’m curious. I’m an old journo, remember? I guess old cops feel the same. You are always curious. Even when I’m dead, I’ll be wondering what they’ve said in my obituary.”
“Can you remember what the Chronicle said about the Hardstaff murder?”
“No.”
“We can have someone look it up down in Sydney,” said Clements from the other side of the car. “There should be a copy on file at the State Library.”
“What did Mrs. Dircks say about the chap you saw in her library this evening?” said Carmody.
“Nothing, except that he was a stranger to her. He looked to me like an old-time swaggie, except that he was a bit better dressed. He could be a worker with the carnival that’s out at the showground. I’ll check on him tomorrow morning.”
IV
As they turned out of the Waring gates on to the main road, pausing a moment to let a semi-trailer go thundering by, Clements said, “What’s worrying you about Trevor Waring?”
“Was it that obvious?”
“I think old Sean caught it, too. Have you dug up something about him?”
“Nothing, except that he has a share in South Cloud and he didn’t bother to mention it.”
Clements nodded, saying nothing further. A car passed them, travelling at high speed towards town, and he cursed it. They had gone about three or four kilometres when, with a glance in the driving mirror, he said, “We’re being tailed.”
Malone looked back. “I wonder if it’s the same cove who tailed me last night? Slow down, see if he passes us.”
Clements dropped the speed; but the other car did the same. Clements speeded up again; so did the other car. Then all at once it came right up on the Commodore, tail-gating it; its lights were on high-beam and Clements had to flip up the driving mirror to block the blinding glare. He touched the brakes and as the brake lights came on, the other car also had to brake, skidding on the road-shoulder as it swung to the side on the gravel. At once Clements put his foot down hard on the Commodore’s accelerator and almost immediately they were fifty yards ahead of the car that was chasing them.
Up ahead Malone saw another brightly-lit semi-trailer approaching, coming round a bend a kilometre or so away, moving against the darkness like an illuminated advertising sign. They passed a notice: “Single Lane Bridge;” and he said, “Make the bridge before that semi-trailer!”
“Jesus, you wanna get us killed?” But Clements pushed his foot hard on to the floor.
“Swing in behind the semi as soon as you pass and pull up!”
They hit the slight ramp of the bridge and the car was airborne; it landed halfway across the bridge and they went over the wooden planks with a rattling sound like machine-gun-fire. Then they were swamped by lights and the scream of the big truck’s siren-like horn. Malone felt everything inside him curl into a tight knot; he opened his mouth to yell in protest as he died. Then they were off the bridge, the truck went past them like a huge blazing wind and for a moment he thought it was going to jack-knife on to them. Then it was past and Clements
had skidded the Commodore to a head-jerking stop.
Malone tumbled out, trying to get his stomach unravelled, drew his gun and went running back across the bridge. The semi-trailer was disappearing into the night, its horn still bellowing the driver’s anger, and the car that had been following the Commodore was pulled over to the side of the road, its engine still running. Malone reached the car, put his gun in against the driver’s cheek and said, “Turn off the engine!”
The driver did as he was told as Clements, gun drawn, came up on the other side of the car. “Out! All of you—out!”
There were four of them, all youths, none of them looking much more than twenty, if that. They were all overweight, the driver already with a beer belly, dressed in jeans and either sweaters or leather jackets; they looked to be town boys, not farm boys, too close every night to the pubs. They got out of the car and stood silent and sullen while Malone frisked them. Malone could smell the fear on the driver, who had almost fainted when the gun had been pressed against his fat red cheek. All four had been drinking and the smell of beer was strong, but Malone recognized the other smell.
“Righto, what’s this all about?”
“What’s what about?” That was the youth, slightly older-looking than the others, who had been sitting beside the driver. He was shorter than the other three, black-haired and swarthy, intelligence, or shrewdness, marked in his olive-skinned face. “We were just out for a drive.”
“Do you all drive?” said Clements. “Let’s see your licences.”
The four of them produced wallets, took out their licences. Clements took them and went round to study them in the car’s headlights. Then he jerked his head at Malone. “Come and have a look at this, Scobie.”
Malone said, “Don’t any of you think of running off into the scrub. You’ll get a bullet in your leg if you do.”
“Shit!” said the black-haired youth. “Is that what you Sydney cops do, shoot guys who just go joy-riding?”
“All the time,” said Malone.
He went to the front of the car, took the licence Clements showed him. He looked at the photo, then stepped aside from the beam of the lights. “You’re Philip Chakiros?”
“Yes,” said the black-haired youth; his manner changed: “What have we done wrong, Scobie? Come on—”
“Inspector Malone.” Then for the first time he saw the three-pointed star on the front of the car. “Does your old man let you take his Merc, out on joy-rides? Does he know you let your half-drunk mates drive it?”
Philip Chakiros was suddenly sullen again; then he shook his head. “He doesn’t know I’ve borrowed it.”
You’re a liar, thought Malone. “Did you borrow it last night, come out here and follow me back to town?”
“No.” This time Malone could not be sure whether the boy was lying or not. Even if he had been standing in the bright dazzle of midday, the youth’s face wouldn’t have given anything away. This kid, Malone now knew, was experienced at being interrogated; he had fallen into character, an invented one, maybe, but one that he knew how to play. “I was in town all last night.”
Clements had reached in behind one of the other youths and taken a rifle from the floor of the car behind the front seat. “See this, Inspector? A Twenty-two.” He held it up, went to the front of the car and looked at it in the headlights’ glare. “A Brno Twenty-two, magazine fully loaded.”
Malone decided to ignore young Chakiros, turned instead to the driver. He was a beefy boy, with long red hair, a weak imitation of a moustache and pale, unintelligent eyes. He would never get anywhere on his own, he would always need others to show him the way; yet one knew that, fifty years down the track, he would still be lost, still not getting anywhere. “What were you doing with the gun?”
“We’ve been out shooting kangaroos,” said Philip Chakiros quickly.
“I didn’t ask you,” said Malone, not looking at him. “What’s your name, son?”
The red-headed one swallowed. “Stan Gruber.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing, Stan—shooting kangaroos?”
“Yeah. Yeah. We didn’t have no luck, but.”
Clements lifted the barrel of the rifle to his nose. “It hasn’t been fired tonight. Not unless you sat out there in the bush cleaning it, deodorizing it. I’d say it hasn’t been fired since—well, how about last Monday night?”
The four youths looked at each other, like contestants in a TV quiz game for not-very-bright students. Then they caught the point of the question and three of them looked startled. Only Philip Chakiros remained unmoved. “That’s stupid,” he said. “We weren’t even in town last Monday night, we were all over in Bathurst.” That was a couple of hundred kilometres east. “You can ask anyone. We went over to a country-and-western concert. James Blundell and Deniese Morrison were singing. You can check.”
It was almost too pat: Malone waited for him to name the songs that had been sung. But again there was the doubt as to whether Chakiros was lying. Already Malone could see that this boy had a mind twice as sharp as his father’s. Behind Chakiros the other three heads bobbed up and down in almost ridiculous corroboration.
“Yeah,” said Gruber, “James Blundell we saw, and—”
“I just told him, Stan,” said Chakiros. “Leave it to me.”
“We’ll check,” said Malone. “In the meantime we’re confiscating the gun. You can get it back from Sergeant Baldock at the station, if he doesn’t want it for evidence.”
“Curly knows me.” Phil Chakiros, it seemed, was on first-name terms with everyone.
“Does Chess?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” said Malone, feeling a small malicious satisfaction at the sudden puzzlement on the boy’s face. “Who has the licence for the gun?”
There was no reply from any of them. A car came over the bridge and slowed; but Clements stepped out into the middle of the road, still holding the rifle and his own gun; in the glare of the headlights he looked threatening. The car came to a halt and a frightened elderly couple stared out at him.
“Police. Just keep going, please. Drive carefully.”
The car picked up speed again and disappeared into the night. Clements came back and stood beside Malone. “Isn’t anyone gunna talk?”
There was silence: bush silence, stretching out from the small group beside the car to the immense darkness. Malone then stepped close to the driver, put his gun up against the fat cheek again. “Come on, Stan. Who owns the gun?”
Gruber’s eyes looked like marbles about to be fired from his pink face. “It’s Phil’s father’s—”
“Shit!” said Philip Chakiros.
Malone turned to him. “Did your father know you’d borrowed the gun?”
“You got no right to do that to Stan! Holding a fucking gun at his head, for Chrissake!”
A bush lawyer: Malone loved them, though this was the first time he had met one actually in the bush. “You have a point there. You want to argue it in front of the magistrate when he puts in an appearance? Because if you prefer it, we can book you and hold you till we have the gun checked down in Sydney whether it’s the one that fired the shot that killed Mr. Sagawa.”
Chakiros stared at him: he showed no sign of fear, just sullen anger. “I’m not gunna say any more, not till I’ve got my lawyer.”
“Who’s your lawyer?”
“Trevor Waring.”
5
I
AS THEY sat down to breakfast next morning at the table by the window Malone said, “We’ll see Curly Baldock first thing, have him send the Twenty-two down to Ballistics. There’s a plane at midday. Tell Ballistics I want a report by tomorrow morning.”
“Do you think it’s the gun that killed Sagawa?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. But if it is, young Chakiros would be bloody stupid to be carrying it around with him. He’s not that dumb. Besides, there must be at least a hundred Twenty-twos in this district.”
Wally Mungle and Kog
a came into the dining-room and everyone stopped eating; even the out-of-town strangers. Malone had recognized the latter: the ones who didn’t know the waitresses. The Mail Coach dining-room was a place where the regulars were like family, where the waitresses practically told the diners what to eat and not to spend too much time over it. The service fitted the dining-room decor: heritage Australian, lucky that even a semblance of it had been preserved.
Narelle Potter came out from behind her small counter, said something to them, gestured at the room and shook her head. Malone stood up and waved to Mungle and Koga. Both men hesitated, then came towards the window table, threading their way through barbed-wire territory. Narelle Potter followed them.
“I didn’t think you’d want to be disturbed—” Her smile was as false-looking as the fake antique of the brand-new stone-washed jeans she was wearing this morning. Her top was encased (that was the word, Malone decided) in a tight blue sweater and he wondered why she was displaying herself like this, especially this morning of all mornings. Unless she was looking for some interest from one of the several unattached male out-of-towners.
“Why not? We’re used to it. Would you mind bringing a coupla extra chairs?” He might have been speaking to a trainee constable only a day on the job.
“I’m not one of the waitresses,” she said, giving as good as she’d got, and walked away, her tightly-encased behind challenging him but not in a provocative way.
Two men stood up at the next table, having finished their breakfast, and Clements reached across and dragged their chairs to his and Malone’s table. “Okay, Wally, Mr. Koga, sit down. If we’re not served within two minutes, I’ll create a disturbance.”
“He’s good at that,” said Malone.
“It’ll make an impression on the visitors to town. Oh Marge—”
The stout middle-aged waitress stopped in mid-stride beside him. “I’m busy, Sergeant. I’ll get one of the other girls—”
Clements held her by her apron-strings. “Marge, don’t be like that. If you don’t take our orders, we’ll go out to the kitchen and lay a complaint to the local health inspector about the cockroaches and the ratshit we found there—”
