Helga's Web

by Jon Cleary

  “He hasn’t been cooking the books, has he?” Malone said.

  She found the energy to shake her head vigorously. “I do the books. We’re in the red—my word, are we in the red!— but there’s nothing crooked in them. He’s not in trouble, is he?” she repeated plaintively.

  “No,” said Malone. “In fact, he’s helping us. What’s his home address?”

  The girl gave it to them, but not till she had looked at them suspiciously again. For all her impatience with her boss for taking the day off, it was obvious that she had a deep loyalty to him. Outside in the steaming heat again Clements said, “That girl would never give evidence against Savanna.”

  “I wonder if his wife will? I wonder if he’s told her yet about Helga?”

  Savanna was in his garden when Malone and Clements drove out to Rose Bay. He wore a pair of shorts and no shirt and though he was tanned there was the beginning of sunburn on his bony shoulders, as if he might have spent all day out here in the garden.

  “It’s not a good day for planting,” he said, gesturing at the border plants lying on the piece of wet sacking, “but they’d be dead if I left them much longer. My wife usually does all this. I’m not much of a gardener—” He stopped, brushed the dirt from his hands and looked at the two detectives. “What am I talking so much for? You’re not interested in me as a gardener, are you?”

  “Maybe some other time.” Malone looked around the garden. If Mrs. Savanna took care of all this on her own, then she did not have much else to occupy her time. The house, a Spanish villa with Australian overtones, the stone koalas at the foot of the steps and the iron lacework along the verandah, was set back from the street about forty feet; the whole of the front area, with the exception of the driveway, was taken up by a thickly planted garden of hibiscus, camellias, magnolias and multi-coloured semi-tropical shrubs. There did not seem to be another square inch of soil in which any-

  thing else could be planted; it was as if Mrs. Savanna had gone on planting and planting because there was nothing else she could find to do; she would not be the first wife he had met who had empty hours to fill. He looked back at Savanna. “Does your wife know about Helga Brand?”

  Savanna bit his lip, then nodded. “I told her this morning. That was why I took the day off. She—she didn’t take it too well.”

  “Do women ever take that sort of thing well?”

  Savanna shrugged. In his ragged shorts and thonged sandals, his long hair unkempt and hanging about his ears, he looked no lady-killer. “I debated whether I’d tell her. I didn’t want to hurt her. You see—” His mouth twitched as if he were in pain; but he was only trying to smile. “I don’t like hurting people, especially women. That’s why I couldn’t have killed Helga.”

  “Why did you tell your wife, then?”

  Savanna shrugged again, a nervous gesture as much as an answer. “I don’t know. I wanted to be honest with her, I suppose that was part of it. And to be honest with you—” he managed the smile this time “—I knew you’d be back sometime to see her or me. And I didn’t want her to find out about Helga from you.”

  Malone looked at Clements, read the expression in the younger man’s face, knew Clements felt the same way as he did: they were both beginning to like Savanna. “Could we go inside, Mr. Savanna? I can see a couple of curtains moving in your neighbours’ windows. I don’t know why, Constable Clements and I don’t think we look any different from anyone else, but people always seem to recognize policemen from a mile away. We don’t want to spoil your reputation.”

  “It will be spoiled sooner or later,” said Savanna with only mildly bitter resignation. “Unless you can keep me out of the murder trial.”

  “You sound pretty sure we’re going to bring someone to trial.”

  “Don’t you always?”

  “Most of the time, but not always. Some cases we never wrap up. Others we solve, but don’t have enough evidence to bring them to court. There are two men walking around Sydney now, we know they committed murder and they know we know, but we’ll never get them up before a judge.”

  “Well, I hope you get this fellow,” said Savanna; and Ma-lone was puzzled why the grey-haired man suddenly looked afraid. But he said nothing as he and Clements followed Savanna up the steps into the house. Clements almost fell over one of the stone koalas and Savanna’s mouth twitched again in another unsuccessful attempt at a smile. “They were here when we bought the house. Somehow I’ve never had the heart to get rid of them. It seemed un-Australian.”

  “You don’t seem to have the heart for a lot of things, Mr. Savanna.” Malone’s voice was gentle, not unkind, and Savanna was sensitive enough to catch the exact tone of it.

  “Too true, Sergeant.” He held open a screen door, ushered them ahead of him. “But nobody chooses his own heart, does he? Not even the transplant patient. This is my wife.”

  Malone recognized the look on Josephine Savanna’s face. He had seen it before on the faces of women who had built a life on the sand of delusion, who had substituted self-deception for happiness; when everything collapsed they had nothing else to fall back on, no foundations on which they could build again. Her eyes and mouth looked bruised, as if she had been physically hit by her husband; if she had had any dignity to begin with, it had been stripped from her like a tattered gown. She nodded dumbly at Malone and Clements, her eyes wincing a little more when she understood that they were police.

  Savanna led them into a living room where good and bad taste fought a battle in which neither was the winner: a delicate Swedish vase looked ready to crack under the half a dozen plastic flowers it held, a boy in a small Arthur Boyd painting raised the gun that he couldn’t fire at the ceramic ducks flying up the opposite wall. Malone, giving Savanna the credit for the good taste, wondered how much time he spent here, if he had at some time given up and Josephine Savanna had surrounded herself with her own comforts.

  Savanna went out to the kitchen to get some beers out of the refrigerator and Malone and Clements were left uncomfortably alone with Mrs. Savanna. The three of them sat in silence for almost a minute; then Josephine Savanna said, “You haven’t come to—to make trouble for my husband, have your

  Malone wanted to tell her that it was not the police’s job to make trouble, that ordinary citizens did well enough at that on their own. “No, Mrs. Savanna, your husband is in the clear as far as we’re concerned.”

  “He’s been a good husband—” She gestured around her, as if providing a home was evidence enough that a man was a good husband. “And a good father, too.”

  For the first time Malone saw the photographs on the bookshelves. One could have been of Josephine Savanna some years ago, but it was hard to tell: she looked too effortlessly happy: expressions, Malone realized, could date as much as hair styles. In the other photo a pretty girl in a mortarboard and gown smiled with all the confidence of someone whose worst fears were over: she had graduated and everything from now on would be easy. “She’s very attractive.”

  “She’s in England, she’s doing a postgraduate course at Cambridge.” She looked up at Savanna as he returned with three beers and a lemonade on a fancy wickerwork tray. She took the lemonade as he handed it to her, but didn’t look at it. “I was telling them about Margaret. You’ve given her everything she ever wanted.”

  “Not just me. You, too.” He gave Malone and Clements

  their beers, sat down and sipped his own. “We’re trying to decide what to do. Whether to write and tell her everything or—Jesus Christ!”

  He suddenly broke off, put his hand over his eyes. His other hand shook and some beer splashed out of his glass and dropped on his bare knee. The breakdown was so sudden that Malone’s hand jerked in surprise; the beer splashed in his own glass. In the heavy silence that followed sounds spilled in from outside the house like a gritty wind: next door a child whined that Larry had hit it, a transistor radio in a garden had Aretha Franklin telling that she took what she wanted. Malone and Clements sat in st
iff embarrassment; they were accustomed to scenes like this, but they were never comfortable in them. Josephine Savanna stared at her husband for a moment, but she didn’t rise and cross to him as Malone had expected. Instead, she looked back at the two detectives, took a sip from her lemonade, put the glass down on a small table beside her, then folded her hands in her lap. The change in her was remarkable. It was as if having witnessed the total collapse of her husband it was now time to start re-building, herself and him. There was no malice or even satisfaction in her attitude. It was the decision of someone who still had faith in self-deception: all you had to do was close your eyes against the bad, believe only in the good. There would be no more other women in her husband’s life, he had learned his lesson, he would love only her from now on, would be the good husband and father in the image she had created.

  Malone coughed. “I think we’d better get on with it, Mr. Savanna. Maybe I’m being a bit more candid than I should be, but we don’t think you had anything to do with Helga Brand’s murder. But we still haven’t accounted for that two hours of yours on the afternoon of her death. Where were you?”

  Josephine Savanna had been gazing at Malone, relief blos-

  soming in her face like a pale blush as she heard him say that Savanna had had nothing to do with the murder; but now abruptly her head swung back towards her husband on Ma-lone’s last words. The hands tightened in her lap, the fingers became entwined bones. The expression on her face was as eloquent as if she had cried out: Oh God, there’s not another one!

  Savanna took his hand away from his eyes; there was a shine in the corners of them, but he had not succumbed to weeping. Malone was glad of that: he did not like to see all the iron taken out of a man. Savanna stared at the detectives, but didn’t cast even a side glance at his wife. At last he said, “I can’t prove I was anywhere. I just drove—drove out to Bondi. I sat on the promenade there for, I don’t know, an hour, an hour and a half, I couldn’t say. I—I was going to tell Helga it was finished between us.”

  Josephine Savanna’s hands relaxed; the relief came back into her face. But Malone knew Savanna was lying, even if now was not the time to accuse him of it: there were certain things, whatever they might be, that Savanna was not going to admit in front of his wife. “Why were you calling it off? Was she trying to blackmail you?”

  Savanna laughed, a dry hacking sound. “How can you blackmail a bankrupt? She knew how broke I am—”

  “You never told me.” His wife’s voice was flat, devoid of surprise or accusation.

  Savanna looked at her now, as if some sort of danger had passed. “I didn’t want you to worry—” The concern for her in his face was genuine: he’s not lying this time, Malone thought. “One of us was enough.”

  “Do we have any money at all?” Then she bit her lip, looked at Malone and Clements. “I’m sorry. That’s something my husband and I can discuss later.”

  Malone asked a few more questions, but only as a matter of form. The interview was over, but for the one important

  question; and he did not want to ask that in front of Josephine Savanna. He nodded to Clements, who gulped down the last of his beer, and the two of them stood up.

  Malone looked at the photo of their daughter. “I wouldn’t tell her just yet. Just in case we never need to call you to court—”

  Husband and wife looked at each other; then Savanna nodded. “Thanks, Sergeant.”

  The two detectives said goodbye to Josephine Savanna, who acknowledged their farewell almost off-handedly; she had something more important on her mind, she was going to build a new life with her husband, starting from rock-bottom scratch. Savanna followed Malone and Clements down to the front gate.

  “You’re still not going to tell us where you were that afternoon?” Malone said.

  Savanna made a pretense of exasperation. “I’ve told you—!”

  Malone shrugged. “You’re not trying to protect someone else—another woman?”

  “You asked me that question once before,” Savanna said evenly. “No.”

  There is another woman, Malone thought; but she really didn’t matter any more. He didn’t press the point, but put his hand into his pocket, took out the chewed matchstick he had shown to Helidon.

  “Do you know anyone who does that—chews matches?”

  There was only a momentary hesitation on Savanna’s part; but, Malone had to admit, it could have been the hesitation of puzzlement. “I don’t know. I suppose I do. But I couldn’t name them off-hand. A lot of men do it, don’t they?”

  “Not that many,” said Malone. “Goodbye, Mr. Savanna. When you decide to tell us where you spent that couple of hours that Monday, give us a ring. In the meantime we can always get you here?”

  Savanna looked back at the house; his wife stood behind the screen-door like a ghostly image. “Where else would I go?”

  4

  “Where do we go from here?” Clements asked as they got back into the Falcon. “Gibson s office or his home?”

  Malone looked at his watch. “If you were an elderly millionaire, where would you be at four-thirty on a Friday afternoon—in your office or at home?”

  “If I was a millionaire, elderly or otherwise, I’d never be in my office.”

  “Righto, just follow your natural parasitical inclinations.”

  “That’s a good one,” said Clements, blowing his nose for the tenth time in the past half-hour. “You’ve started to sound educated since you became engaged to your Dutch bird.” He headed the car towards Point Piper. “What d’you reckon about Savanna?”

  Malone stared ahead of him at the tidal wave of traffic sweeping out of the city towards them. The day was still hot and the traffic had a molten look to it: if you touched any of the passing cars you would be charred at once. “I don’t think he had anything to do with Helga’s murder.”

  “What about those two hours?”

  “I don’t know about them,” Malone confessed. “Maybe he did go out to Bondi, sat out there for all that time.”

  “I don’t believe that.” Clements waited for a break in the traffic so that he could turn right. He waited a minute or two, then edged his way across the stream; there was a multiplying screech of tires that stretched back a hundred yards towards the city and the drivers of the leading cars in the three lanes blared their horns at him. Clements took the car up the road that led to the block where Gibson lived. “He was somewhere else but Bondi for those two hours. You think he might have been with another dame?”

  “I’ve been thinking that.”

  “Why didn’t you ask him, then?”

  “I don’t know. I think I just felt sorry for his wife. She’ll get over his affair with Helga—some women have that much resilience. And she’d be one of them. But I don’t know that she could take it if he was running a second one on the side. 111 bet it wasn’t a woman who first suggested polygamy.”

  As they drew up before Eureka Towers Clements said, “You’ve been at this game longer than I have. Do you always reckon it’s worthwhile becoming concerned about the women?”

  Malone didn’t reply at once. How could you not become concerned with pain? Then he said, “I could be wrong. But yes—I can’t help being concerned about them.”

  “The ones like Helga, too?”

  “You heard what Smiler said the other day—I waste my time on sixteen-year-old whores.” He got out of the car, waited for Clements to come round and join him. There was the beginning of a breeze from the south; it banked up against the tall block above them, then spilled round the edges as a small wind. “I just don’t know, Russ. One of the older blokes once told me—never become involved. He’s right, I know that. What I haven’t learned yet is how you turn yourself off from involvement.”

  Clements shook his head in the same morose way as when he had won at the races for the third time running. “I hope we don’t have to pick on Grafter Gibson’s missus. She’s too old to take a beating.”

  “I looked up Grafter i
n Who’s Who. They’ve been married for thirty-five years. No kids. Anyone who could stand him for that long on her own could stand up to anything. Still—” He pressed the button for the lift. “Let’s take her gently if she’s there.”

  A part-aboriginal maid, night-dark eyes staring at them suspiciously, let them into the Gibson penthouse. Glenda

  Gibson, in a black velvet pants-suit, just falling short of elegance by twenty years and twenty pounds, greeted them with equal suspicion.

  “My husband’s not home, Sergeant.” She had just come from the hairdresser’s and her hair had a stiff, unnatural look, as if it could be taken off and set aside on a shelf. It did not sit well on the warm, sincere face beneath it. “But if you’d like to wait—?”

  She offered them a drink and after some hesitation Malone asked for a bitter lemon for himself and Clements. He had a feeling that Gibson would not like it if he came in and found two policemen sitting back in his living room quaffing beers; the offense would be only venial if the drinks were bitter lemons. The two detectives sat there in the huge air-conditioned living room watching the late sun turn the harbour into a verdigris-streaked shield on which black ships stood like heraldic charges. The maid flitted around the edges of the room, a dark wraith whose eyes never left the two policemen: she was concerned for her mistress. A tall grandfather clock struck five and Glenda Gibson looked at it with approval, as if time were a household pet to be rewarded for good behaviour.

  “My husband will be home in a quarter of an hour. He’s never late. Yet he never carries a watch.” There was no mistaking the pride in her voice; her husband was her king, president and prime minister. But she was troubled by the intruders at the gates: “I just don’t understand why you have to see him. We live a very simple life,” she said, unconscious of the luxury amidst which they sat. Her whole life was Les and whatever he wanted; all the rest was just background. She put down her glass, the sherry in it barely touched. She stared at them, her face crumbling a little under the blue-grey siege-cap of her hair. “He’s an old man, you know.”