by Jon Cleary
Savanna seemed to be searching his memory. “I—I was here at the office. I worked late.”
“Till what time?”
“I’m not sure. Six, six-thirty.”
Malone nodded to Clements. “Get the secretary in here, Russ.”
Savanna sat silent as Clements ushered in the secretary. She was a small, neat brunette in a mini-skirt and a sleeveless blouse that exposed the start of the swell of her bosom. Clements blew his nose, peering at her over the mask of his handkerchief. Malone thought, I don’t know how I could concentrate if they had birds like this working as secretaries at Y Division. She was in her twenties, but gave the paradoxical impression of being a very experienced sixteen-year-old. But her experience did not include being questioned by detectives; her worried puzzlement only seemed to accentuate her young look. “Mr. Savanna can’t remember what time he left the office last Monday week. Would you have any idea?”
The girl looked at Savanna, was even more worried and puzzled by the look of anguish on his face. “I—I’m not sure. Is this something serious, Mr. Savanna?”
Savanna nodded. “I’m afraid it is, Betty. It doesn’t matter. I’ve remembered what time I left here. You may go, Betty.”
“Just a moment,” said Malone. “What time did Mr. Savanna leave here, Betty?”
The girl glanced at Savanna again, then looked back at Malone. “It was about three o’clock, I think. He—he was going around some of the advertising agencies.”
Malone thanked her and after another look at Savanna, a pleading one as if she were asking him to forgive her if she had said the wrong thing, the girl went out of the office. Malone waited till the door closed behind her, then said, “You
didn’t go to any advertising agencies, did you?” Savanna shook his head. “Where did you go?”
“I’m afraid that’s something I’m not going to tell you.” There was no antagonism in Savanna’s voice, nor even emphasis; Malone recognized the dispiritedness, the almost melancholy weariness creeping over the man. When they reached that stage it was hardest of all to get any information out of them; the threat of arrest meant nothing, as if it were almost some sort of escape. “All 111 say is, I didn’t see Helga. I went to her place, 111 admit that. I don’t know what the time was, maybe half-past four or five. But she didn’t answer the door and I left.”
“Did you have a key?”
Savanna half-shook his head, then changed his mind. “Yes.” He took a key-ring out of his pocket, unhooked a key and dropped it on the desk. “You may as well have it. I shan’t need it again.”
“Why didn’t you use it to enter the flat when you got no answer? Did you always wait for her to open the door?”
“No. But that was a Monday.” He ran his hand across his cheek; despite his grey hair and his air of sophistication he looked young and embarrassed; principles did not sit well on him. “It may sound stupid to you, but I just decided I’d be a gentleman, that I wouldn’t butt in on her if there was someone else there.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid. A couple of policemen have been known to be gentlemen. Constable Clements is one.”
Clements looked pleased and surprised by the compliment; he sniffed again and took out his handkerchief. Savanna bowed his head. “Touche, Sergeant.”
“What sort of girl was Helga? I mean apart from her—profession?”
Savanna didn’t reply at once: it was as if he had never really thought of Helga having a profession. “Well, she was beautiful. But then you must have seen that? Or was she—”
Spare him the details, Malone thought. “No, we could see she had looks.”
Savanna looked relieved. “I’m glad she wasn’t too—too knocked about. I don’t think she was vain, not like some women, but she was careful of her appearance. She never looked—well, like a tramp. She was always neat and—tidy, I suppose. She was pretty house-proud, which sometimes didn’t seem to go with—well, with what else she offered, if you know what I mean.” Suddenly he shook his head, like a man shaking water from his eyes. “Christ, I hate talking about her like this! It’s like dissecting a corpse.”
“That’s what she is now,” said Malone, not unkindly. “And we’re trying to find out who made her one. You still won’t tell us where you were from three o’clock, when you left here, till you went to Helga’s flat?” Savanna shook his head. “Would your wife be able to help us?”
Savanna sat up. “Don’t bring her into this, Sergeant-please.”
“Does your wife know about Helga?”
“No.”
“Those missing two hours—I don’t like asking this, Mr. Savanna, but is there another woman besides Helga?”
“What sort of character do you think I am?” His indignation was genuine; he was too weary for play-acting.
“I asked a question, Mr. Savanna. I didn’t put an opinion.”
“It amounted to the same thing.”
I’ve lost this little sparring match, Malone thought: I’ve let him work out his answer. “Did you spend the time with another girl?”
“No,” said Savanna, but his emphasis was just a little too forced.
Malone switched to another tack. “Do you know Walter Helidon?”
Savanna’s brow creased. “Helidon? You mean the Cabinet Minister? No, never met him. Why?”
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“Helga was going into business with him. Some sort of boutique.”
“She never mentioned it to me.”
“Maybe she was keeping it as a surprise for you. Do you know Leslie Gibson?” That’s another surprise for you. He saw Savanna’s eyes widen for just a moment, the hand quiver as it came up to smooth down the already smooth grey hair.
“He’s my brother-in-law. Don’t tell me he knew her, too?”
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“I never even heard of her,” said Gibson, harshly but un-worriedly. “And I don’t appreciate you coming here to question me about her.”
“We tried to get you at your office, but your secretary said you wouldn’t be in again today.” Malone’s own voice was just as harsh; he did not like this sour old man who looked like an aged and vicious parrot, one with a bit of eaglehawk in him. He knew of Gibson’s reputation for ruthlessness and this first meeting with the man only confirmed what Malone had expected. As with the Helidons there was going to be no sympathy for the dead Helga here. “We have to do our work where and when we can, Mr. Gibson.”
Clements had been delighted when they had failed to contact Gibson at his office and had had to come out here to the penthouse flat on top of the tall block at the end of Point Piper. As they had ridden up in the smooth, silent, walnut-panelled lift he had said, “I remember when he bought this unit. A hundred and eighty thousand dollars he’s supposed to have paid for it. If I had that sorta money I don’t think I’d care what people thought about me.”
“You mean as a cop? I think even the Commissioner might come over for a beer with you. You’d be the only cop living in this neck of the woods.”
Point Piper was an arm pushing out into the harbour east
of the city proper. A recent survey, one of those so popular with that new breed of sociologists, the market research men, newspaper circulation managers and professional burglars, had placed the small peninsula at the very top of the residential status areas; the same survey had shown Malone’s home suburb, Erskineville, down at the bottom. The area had accepted its rating with equanimity though with some ruffled surprise, as if it could not understand why it should have been included in any rating at all: it was rather like a London survey rating Buckingham Palace as a desirable residence. Expensive houses, some of them old and garnished with Victorian bad taste, and expensive home units, all of them new and not all of them in good taste, clung to the ridge that formed the spine of the point. To the west was a splendid view of the city and the Harbour Bridge; to the east was a view across Rose Bay to Vaucluse, number two in the status areas; the residents need never be offended by a sight worse than a view of each
other. At one time it had been as exclusive as one of the city’s more selective clubs, but over the past ten years many of its residents had decided that money had an exclusivity all its own and had sold their old homes to developers, who had knocked down the houses and replaced them with towering blocks of co-operatively-owned flats. In Malone’s childhood and youth Australians had been reared to the idea that flats were only for renting; when the developers came to sell the flats they had built a new name had to be coined for them: home units. People who had been regular visitors to the Fair Rents Court when they had been renting flats now rushed out to pay ransom prices for home units. The developers, dedicated to desecration, continuing the spoiling of the harbour foreshores that had been started by their ancestors a hundred years before, moved on and Point Piper became architecturally indistinguishable from any other better-class residential area of Sydney. Yet the point still had its own aura, a suggestion in the air that still
smelled of money, old money that still had value, pounds as distinct from the new dollars. It was Grafter Gibson s money that had allowed him to find his slot in the tall filing cabinet that was called Eureka Towers.
Eureka Towers was at the very end of the point and the Gibson flat was at the very top of the block. Clements kept sneaking a look out through the wide windows at the city skyline and the Bridge silhouetted against a salmon sky. Then he would glance covertly around at the luxurious room in which they sat.
“You re gunna give your eyeballs a hernia,” said Gibson. “Get up and have a good look.”
Clements grinned, sniffled, stood up and began to move about the room. Gibson gazed at him as if to make sure that Clements was not going to put some of the ornaments in his pocket, then looked back at Malone. “You upset the wife when you came to the door and said you were police. We’ve never had a demon come to our door, not in all our married life.”
“You’ve been lucky then,” said Malone, and saw the old man stiffen. “I mean, we often have to knock on doors to bring bad news. The uniformed police, I mean. News of an accident, a death, something like that. They never pick us to bring the good news. A lottery win, for instance.”
“Are you looking for sympathy?”
“Would we get it?” I’m not going to let this old bastard push me around.
Gibson grunted, recognizing this detective had an independence of his own. “All right, what about this girl? Why come to me about her?”
Malone told him about finding the photos of him and Mrs. Gibson in the manila folder in Helga Brand’s flat. “We understand your brother-in-law, Mr. Savanna, knew her.”
Gibson’s face showed a momentary flicker of distaste. “He might have. He gets around a bit. But I’ve never met any of
his-interests. Certainly not this girl. I dunno her from a bar of soap.”
“Possibly you didn’t meet her. But did she ever phone or write you?”
Gibson studied Malone, aware now that this man knew how to detect the split hairs in an answer. He did not lose his air of antagonism, but a gleam came into his eyes, as if he welcomed this opportunity of fencing with an opponent. “Why would she do that?”
“We think she might have been in the blackmail game.”
Gibson blew out as if spitting something off his thin lips. “You’re an insulting bastard, Sergeant. Do you blokes ever pick each other up for insulting behaviour?”
“We don’t have to,” said Malone. “We get our monthly quota just picking up civilians.”
The gleam brightened in Gibson’s eyes; with a little effort he might allow himself to enjoy this encounter. “What makes you think this girl would have something on me so’s she could put the bite on me?”
“I’m not suggesting she had anything. I’m just trying to find out why she had several photos of you and your wife in a file.”
“Were ours the only photos?”
“No.”
“Who else’s?”
Malone shook his head. “You really don’t expect me to tell you that.”
Gibson sat still in his chair, his small body rigid, only his eyes moving as he looked at the two detectives. Clements was standing by the big window, his back to the view c the city now nailed against the sky by the copper rivets of its lights. Malone sat on a couch, a long silk-and-tweed upholstered affair that might have cost as much as half his year’s salary. Even while he had been questioning Gibson he had been taking in the luxury of their surroundings. The Helidon
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home had had its suggestion of wealth, but this was unmistakably richer, though he was too unsophisticated in such matters to be able to explain the difference. Perhaps it was the panelling of the walls, or the thick Persian carpet, or the three paintings on the wall, any one of which could have been by an Old Master. Gibson Jfred in a penthouse, the symbol of ultra-modern living, yet he had surrounded himself with an interior that suggested a much older, more gracious time. Yet, and Malone could not explain the feeling to himself, there was the impression that, though this was Gibson’s home, he was not at home here. His r jal home was somewhere else, back in the almost forgotten geography of his early life. Was there an Erskineville in his beginning, too?
At last Gibson said, “And that’s all you have? The photos? No mention of my name, nothing like that?”
“No.”
Gibson stood up. “That’s it, then. Come back when you’ve got something more. But not before.”
Malone rose, keeping his temper in check. “We’ll come back if we have to, Mr. Gibson. Our apologies to Mrs. Gibson if we upset her. But we don’t solve murder cases if we worry about upsetting people. Helga Brand was probably upset when whoever killed her wrapped his mitts round her t? t.”
Gibson grunted, then looked at Clements, who was taking a farewell look around the room. “See anything you like?”
“The lot,” said Clements candidly.
Malone had paused in front of one of the paintings. “Who’s thri by?”
‘Janaletto,” said Gibson, and for the first time showed some interest in Malone as a person instead of as a policeman. “You know anything about painting?”
“Nothing. But I saw one like it in the National Gallery in London. One of the Grand Canal in Venice.”
“London, eh? That was a bit off your beat, wasn’t it?”
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named one of the beach villages not far from Sydney where Al Capp would have found more inspiration than Canaletto.
Gibson let them out of the flat, closing the front door on them before they were in the lift. He walked back into the big living room as his wife came out from the television den where she had retreated when the two policemen had arrived. She was dressed in a silk shirt and silk slacks that did nothing for her but hide her nakedness. Glenda Gibson was one of those unfortunate women who had begun too late in life to spend money on hpr clothes; any figure and any flair she might have had were lost in the years when finances and not fashion had dictated what she should wear; it had been only in the last ten years that she had begun to appreciate just how much her husband was worth. She went now to the most expensive French shop in Sydney, but the effect only suggested Racine recited in a broad Australian accent.
“What did they want, hon?”
“Nothing,” said Gibson offhandedly, moving towards his study.
“It wasn’t nothing,” said Glenda. “I was listening. They mentioned a girl who’d been murdered. And some photos of us. Les—?”
He stopped, came back and took her hand. “Love, there’s nothing to worry about. The girl must’ve been a crank or something. There wasn’t just us, there were other people’s pictures, too. But it doesn’t concern us, take my word for it.”
She looked at him with the anxiety that only real love can generate. “Les, don’t get into any trouble. Not now. It’s too late.”
He didn’t ask her what she meant: he knew. At sixty-eight years of age, everything was too late. He leant forward and kissed her; her cheek felt like rice paper b
eneath his lips. “All our trouble is behind us. Believe me, love. This is nothing.”
She said nothing, but she had noticed the trembling in the
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hand that held hers. She looked after him as he went on into the study. He’s getting so small, she thought, so small and old. She prayed for him every night, but tonight she would pray longer and harder. She knew there was no one else in the world who would pray for him and that hurt her more than she would ever let him know. There was a bitter loneliness about loving a man whom no one else loved.
Twenty-two stories below Malone and Clements came out of the building and walked across to their car. Some people were arriving for a cocktail party in one of the flats. The women swept by the two policemen on a current of perfume and gay expectation; the men followed in their wake with lemming-like resignation. Clements glanced back at them.
“I think I might come back and see old Grafter, see if he could build my bank balance into a decent holding. Say half a million. Then I think I’d move in here. At heart I guess I must be a plutocrat. That’s why I can’t lose on the ponies or the dogs. Money just naturally gravitates to me.”
“Start thinking like that and it’ll start going the other way. But you can have your little chat with Gibson when we come to see him the next time.”
“We’re coming back?” There was no surprise in Clements’ voice; he had been looking at the luxury that had surrounded them, but he had missed nothing of the reason for their being there. “When?”
“I’m not sure yet. He may never have met Helga, but he knows something about her. Otherwise he wouldn’t have asked if we had anything else on him other than the photos. Innocent men don’t ask those sort of questions. They take their innocence for granted.”
“Well, if he was mixed up in her murder, then you were right. About the two men being in it. Old Grafter couldn’t have got her from her flat down to the Opera House on his own. So who else do we look for?”
“The bloke who chewed those matches,”
