by Jon Cleary
“Because he’s a Hardstaff?”
“Yes.” The pride was still there, despite the battering it would have taken over the past two days. “Your husband didn’t come out to see you off?”
“Don’t be so casual, Inspector. Ask the direct question. Where is Max? I don’t know. He moved out of our house on Sunday night. We are separating. There will be a divorce when all—when all this is over.” For just a moment her voice faltered.
“Are you staying on in Collamundra?”
“Of course!”
“Sorry. I should’ve known.” He had to admire her. “Like you said about your son—you’ll survive.”
“Yes, Inspector. Yes, I shall.”
She was challenging him; but the case was over for him, there was no extra time to be played. But he had to have the last word: “Thanks to your father.”
He got into the Commodore, smiled at her through the open window, then drove out of the parking lot. In the driving mirror he saw her still standing by the Mercedes, staring after him, stiff and unyielding as an iron post, pride, arrogance and confidence in her invulnerability still intact. But time, as it had with her father, might eventually catch up with her. By then, however, Malone would be retired and there would be no satisfaction in it for him.
That evening he and Clements had a beer in the bar of the Mail Coach with Hugh Narvo and Curly Baldock. The others in the bar were quiet, looking sideways at the four policemen, not hostile but puzzled, as if not sure what the next step would be. They hoped none of them would be called for jury duty at Chess Hardstaff’s trial and some of them were already dreaming up reasons to be excused, the Rural Party members of them looking on it as reverse cronyism. I’ll bet I’m not the only Pilate in town, thought Malone.
“What will you do with Ruby Mungle’s statement?” Clements asked.
“One thing at a time,” said Narvo. “Curly and I have already had a word with Wally. He’ll explain to her—not everything, but just enough. I don’t think she’ll mind. If she had testified against Chess for that old murder and he’d got off, she might’ve finished up back in the blacks’ camp. Or I would’ve had to recommend that Wally be transferred. You know how things can go.”
“What about Amanda?”
“We’ll keep an eye on her, that’s all we can do.”
“Will you put in a report about her to District?”
Narvo took his time tasting his beer; he looked at Baldock over the top of his glass. Then he looked back at Malone. “I think we’ve made enough waves, don’t you?”
“My name’s Pontius,” said Malone, smiling. “What’s yours?”
Curly Baldock, bald pate glistening under the lights, raised his glass. “Here’s to you two. We’ll know where to come next time around.”
“No, thanks,” said Malone and Clements together.
Later the two of them had dinner with Sean Carmody in the hotel dining-room. “I sent a truck in for Fred Strayhorn and had him out to lunch, after the carnival had gone. He’s moving into one of the spare rooms till he finds something to buy. I think I may enjoy his company. He sent his regards.”
“Was he surprised the way things turned out?”
“Scobie, he’s like me, we’re of an age, maybe I’m a few years older. As far down the track as we are, there’s a line from a Latin orator and poet that fits us both. I am beyond surprise, but not beyond feeling. The trouble is, with Chess being as old as us, I don’t know whether to feel sad or angry. There are a couple of more lines from the same poet. I shall go quietly, merely shutting my eyes. The poet, incidentally, cut his wrists when he found everything stacked against him. Has Chess done the same?”
“Not as far as we know,” said Malone innocently and Clements, mouth full of sherry trifle, merely nodded.
Then this Tuesday morning, when the two detectives had come downstairs to check out, Narelle Potter, face pale and strained under her make-up, no bounce to her at all, all the hip-swagger gone, had been behind the tiny reception desk. Malone had signed the bill, promising she would be paid by the end of the week.
“Will you be back?” she said.
“I don’t think so, Narelle. You won’t want us back, will you?”
“No.” She had that frankness that the virgin and the whore share; at least with men. “Not on official business, anyway. Maybe you’ll come out next year for the Cup meeting and the ball.”
“Maybe.”
She shook hands with them; she held Clements’s hand for a moment. “Russ, you have a lot to learn about women.”
Clements glanced at Malone, then back at her. “What guy doesn’t, Narelle?”
And now, driving out past the bronze Anzac with his bayonet at the ready to be shoved up their rear, out past the silos and the railway siding and the last of the used-car lots, Clements said, “How do you think Amanda Nothling feels about her father?”
“Do you mean is she grateful or conscience-stricken or what?”
“I dunno. That’s the question.”
“If I think of an answer, I’ll let you know.”
But he knew, in his heart, that in all probability neither of them would ever raise the question again. Not unless Chess Hardstaff, in a last-minute change of mind, pleaded not guilty and left the Sagawa case wide open again. But that was an improbability.
They passed the cotton gin and the farm, the harvesters still there in the vast fields, the foam of cotton almost gathered up now. Clements put his foot down and they drove east, towards the mountains and the city and the lesser sky, away from Collamundra and the never-ending plains and the crumbling edge of a changing world.
THE END
FREE PREVIEW OF THE NEXT SCOBIE MALONE MYSTERY: DARK SUMMER
1
I
“DADDY, THERE’S a dead man floating in our pool.”
Malone came awake, dimly conscious of his relief that what he had heard had been only a part of a dream. He had stayed up late, looking, almost against his will, at the latest newsreels on the Gulf war; the images had gone to bed with him, the camera eye in the dream becoming his own eye. Now he felt the hand still on his shoulder, the grip tight, and he opened his eyes to see Maureen standing by the bed in her swimsuit.
“What?” He sat up, feeling Lisa stir beside him.
“There’s a dead man in our pool.”
His first thought was for the effect on his middle child: he looked at her for the marks of shock or fear. She was ten years old, a tomboy usually bursting with energy and curiosity; the one of his three children who, he had thought, would never be vulnerable to what life threw at her. But he had been looking at the future: not at now, a hot January Monday morning when she was only ten years old and had got up for nothing more threatening than an early morning swim.
“You all right?” She nodded; and he turned to Lisa, now wide awake. “Keep her here, darl. Stay with Mum.”
Lisa said, voice still thick with sleep, “I hope this isn’t some stupid joke—”
He shook his head warningly, pushed Maureen into the bed as he got out of it. He could feel the trembling in the thin body and he felt a sudden spasm of anger. Any intrusion that cracked the peace of the life he had built for Lisa and the kids always angered him.
In his pyjama trousers and bare feet he went out to the back of the house, opened the screen door and stepped out into the back garden. It was not a large area, maybe eighty feet by fifty, and a good part of it was taken up by the swimming pool and its fence-enclosed surrounds. He went through the spring-loaded gate, feeling the bricks beneath his feet still warm from yesterday’s scorcher, and stood on the side of the pool and looked down at the small, fully clothed man floating face-up in the blue-tinted water. It was Scungy Grime.
Malone picked up the long pole with its skim-net, hooked the net over Grime’s head and pulled the body in to the side of the pool. There was no doubt that the little man was dead, but, routinely, he knelt down and felt for a pulse in Grime’s neck.
“Hi, Sco
bie. Going to be another scorcher, looks like—What’s that?”
Keith Cayburn was the Malones’ next-door neighbour. His house was two-storeyed and from the rear balcony, where he now stood in his pyjamas, he could look down on the Malones’ garden.
“A dead man. Keep Gloria inside the house till I get him out of sight.”
“Sure. Holy shit! Can I do anything to help?”
“Maybe later, Keith.” Though how he could help, Malone had no idea. Dead small-time criminals in swimming pools were not common in Randwick, not objects for community action by Neighbourhood Watch.
He left the body in the water for the Physical Evidence team and hoped that Gloria Cayburn, an hysterical type, would not come out on the balcony, despite her husband’s pleas, and throw a fit. As he went back into the house to call the police (call the police? Dammit, I am the police! But that was the way the system worked), Scungy Grime, in death as in life an incorrigible, drifted away towards the middle of the pool again, the skim-net still over his head like a fly-net, the long pole now caught in the crook of his limp arm.
Malone picked up the phone in the kitchen and rang Randwick police station. He spoke to a young constable, who said “Holy shit!” and that he would get the local detectives round there right away. Malone hung up, rang Police Centre and got the duty officer in Physical Evidence, who said “Holy shit!” evidently the religious thought for the day, and told him the team was on its way. Then Malone rang Russ Clements, who, half-asleep but still awake enough to be concerned for the Malone family, said only, “Lisa and the kids all right? Okay, I’ll be there soon’s I can.”
Malone hung up the phone and turned round. Claire, in her shortie nightgown, stood in the kitchen doorway, frightened and puzzled. “Is it true, Dad? Is there a dead man in our pool?”
“It’s true. Where’s Tom?”
“In with Mum.”
“How’s Maureen?”
“Quiet. It’s not like her, she’s not saying a word.”
“Get dressed, the police will be here soon.” He hoped they would not arrive with sirens blaring, lights flaring; sometimes the theatricals of police work, though necessary, embarrassed him. This section of Randwick, mostly white-collared and comfortable, was a quiet neighbourhood and so far he and Lisa had fitted in. “And don’t go outside, understand?”
“I’ve never seen a dead person.”
She was fourteen, on the verge of becoming a beautiful woman; sometimes, forgetting the contribution of Lisa, he was amazed he could have sired such a beauty. There was also a matter-of-fact serenity to her that she had inherited from Lisa; or there normally was. But not now. The death of strangers, he knew, though not as shattering as that of loved ones, never left any but the most callous untouched.
“You’re not going to start now,” he said, trying to keep his tone gentle. “Go and get dressed.”
He went into the main bedroom, where Lisa was sitting on the side of the queen-sized bed with her arms round Maureen and Tom. She looked up at him and said accusingly, or so it seemed, “What’s happening?”
“They’re all on their way, the local fellers, the Crime Scene team. They’ll all be here in minutes. Russ is coming, too.”
“Can I watch, Dad?” Tom was almost eight: the world, and everything in it, even the horrible, was for watching.
“Not this time, Tom. Get dressed.”
Lisa rose to take the two younger children out of the room. As they passed him, Malone pressed Maureen’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, love.”
Both children looked at him, puzzled; but he saw that Lisa understood. “What for Daddy? Sorry for what, the dead man?”
“Yes, I guess so.” It would be useless trying to explain his regret at what, through his police work, he had brought into their lives.
There was no time for a shower. Normally, at this time of morning, he would be in the pool; that, too, was out for the time being. He had a quick wash, throwing the cold water into his face as if to convince himself that he should be fully awake; which he was. He put on a short-sleeved shirt, cotton trousers and a pair of canvas shoes and went out to get the newspapers. He had no intention of reading them; it was force of habit. Today was Australia Day, a national holiday, when the natives, a notoriously phlegmatic lot, searched in themselves for a sediment of patriotism. This weekend, with the Gulf war promising to be more than a nine-day horror, with the country’s economy up to its crotch in recession and sinking further, the flag-waving would be even more desultory than usual. He glanced at the headlines. Saddam, the medieval thug, was playing dirty: he was flooding the Gulf with oil. President Bush, always with an eye to the vote, was calling him an environment terrorist. Malone, taking a narrow view, wondered which was worse, oil in the Gulf or a dead man in your kids’ swimming pool.
He was about to go back into the house when the two police cars, silent and with no blue and red lights flashing, pulled up at the kerb. Detective Sergeant Wal Dukes got out of the first car.
“I was just knocking off, Scobie, when they told me you had a problem.” He was a big man, a one-time Olympic heavyweight boxer now run a little to fat; he was reliable, but sometimes a bit heavy-handed, as if he thought he still had a few rounds to go in his last bout. “Crime Scene on their way?”
“Yeah.” Physical Evidence was still called Crime Scene by the older men in the Department: change for change’s sake was something they didn’t favour. Malone closed the front door. “Let’s go round the side. I want to keep the kids out of this. The bloody place is going to be over-run in a while. Stick to the path, in case there are some shoe prints in that grass strip there.”
They went round to the back of the house, followed by Dukes’ junior, a young detective named Lazarus, and the two uniformed men who had come in the second car. Grime was still out in the middle of the pool, the skim-net still over his face, looking for all the world like a drunk who had decided to have a floating sleep.
“He’s Normie Grime, Scungy they called him. I’ve been using him as an informant for the past three months, since he got out of the Bay.”
“What was he in for?”
“Passing dud notes. He was into everything, but he was always just a hanger-on, never big time.”
“What were you using him for?”
“I’ve been on a homicide, a young Vietnamese was murdered in a back lane in Surry Hills. He was into drugs, the Asian, and I hoped Scungy could give me a lead or two. Scungy himself, as far as I know, never sold the hard stuff, but he knew everyone who did.”
“Was he coming here to see you?”
Malone looked at him as if he had been accused of corruption. “Here? Wal, I don’t even let cops come here! Except Russ Clements.”
“Well, we’re here now.” But Dukes said it as gently as he could, though gentleness was not one of his talents. He looked out at the drifting Grime, who had floated close to the far side of the pool and was now staring up through the skim-net at one of the uniformed men as he reached out for the long pole. “Watch out, Kenny, you’re gunna fall in!”
Kenny fell in, with a loud splash and a muffled curse. Dukes turned back to Malone. “How do we divide this one up? It’s in my territory, but he’s your property, as it were.”
“I’ll hang on to him, Wal, if it’s okay with you. If I need any help—?”
“Sure, all you need.” The uniformed cop, Kenny, had pushed the body to the side of the pool. It was now floating at the feet of the two senior detectives. Dukes looked down at it. “Fuck „em!”
“Who?”
“Crims. Why don’t they go out into the middle of the Nullabor Plain when they wanna bump each other off?”
Ten minutes later Russ Clements and the Physical Evidence team arrived simultaneously. All at once the back garden was seething with activity, a police production; for the first and last time in this life Scungy Grime was a star. The Cayburn family stood on their balcony, the parents and their two teenage sons, Gloria Cayburn with her hand over her mouth as
if stifling a scream; beyond the opposite side fence the Malones’ other neighbours, an elderly couple named Bass who normally minded their own business, stood on a ladder, one above the other, like a geriatric trapeze pair about to climb to the high wire. Malone, catching a glimpse of them, waved to them, then looked sourly at Clements.
“You reckon we should charge admission?”
“Take it easy, mate. They’re neighbours, for Crissake. You’d rather they turned their backs on you?” But the big, rumpled man knew what was causing the tension in Malone; he had gone into the house as soon as he had arrived and spoken to Lisa and the children. He was the surrogate uncle and he was as anxious as Malone to see that this murder did not throw too long a shadow over this house. “Let’s go inside.”
Then he looked past Malone and suddenly smiled, an expression of abrupt pleasure out of keeping with his sombre mood of a moment ago. “G’day, Romy. You didn’t say you were on call today.”
“They’ve given all the Old Australians the day off. We’ve been told we can wave the flag next year.” She was smiling as she said it, there was no sourness. She was the GMO, one of the government medical officers from the Division of Forensic Medicine in the State Department of Health. She was Romy Keller, slim and attractive, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with just a trace of accent, ten years out of Germany and still trying to be an Australian, “I didn’t know this was your place, Inspector. When they called me, they just gave me an address . . . When did it happen?”
“The murder? I don’t know. My daughter found him in the pool.”
“Poor child.” She glanced towards the body, which was now lying on the bricks beside the pool, a green plastic sheet thrown over it. “Anyone looked at the body?”
“Sergeant Dukes gave him a once-over,” said Clements. “There’s no sign of any wound. It could be a heart attack.”
“Then it wouldn’t be murder, would it?” She looked at Malone.
He nodded. “Righto, you’re right. I jumped to conclusions. Maybe it’s some sick joke. Some mate of his found him dead and decided to dump him in my pool. I just don’t think that’s the way it is.”
