by Jon Cleary
He shook hands with the two detectives, voters both.
“I’m sorry we have to be here, sir,” said Malone. “Our sympathy on your son’s death.”
“Thank you. From Homicide? What is this, Bill?” He looked at Zanuch. “I thought we’d decided it was an accident. What’s going on?”
“When Detective Kagal said that, I think he was trying not to make waves in front of the womenfolk.” Zanuch might well have been a diplomat as well as a banker or a dozen other professionals. Sometimes he wondered why he had chosen to be a policeman. “Tell the Minister and me what you know, Inspector.”
“Not that much, sir—” Then Malone went on to explain what Romy had told him and Clements, though he did not mention the stolen corpse and the suspected similarity of its death to that of Robert Sweden. “Your son could’ve been dead before he was tossed off the balcony.”
“Tossed off?” Sweden looked at Zanuch as if to say, What have we got here?
“Sorry. Thrown off.” Malone could have chewed on his tongue; it had a habit of getting away from him, like a snapping dog, every time he came up against authority. He saw the look of irritation on Zanuch’s face and knew another black mark had been posted against him.
“So what are you proposing?” said Sweden.
“We’d like to look around, with your permission. The PE team will have done its job, but I just like to look over things myself. Then we’d like to ask a few questions?” He glanced at Zanuch.
The Assistant Commissioner did not interfere in public; but he was visibly annoyed. “If you must.”
“Dammit,” said Sweden, even more annoyed, “I don’t want anyone questioned! Not now, not today. Christ, we’re still getting over what’s happened—”
Zanuch looked at Malone. “Can’t it wait?”
“I suppose so, sir. But the more time we waste, our chances of catching the killer get slimmer.” You know that, even if you’ve never worked in Homicide.
For a moment the Minister might just as well have been at the other end of the room with the still-watching group: the AC and his junior officer were locked in their own small tussle. Clements stood silent and aside, his face blank.
Sweden interrupted: “Killer?”
“Yes, sir,” said Malone.
Sweden, it seemed, was having difficulty coming to terms with the mere fact that his son was dead; that he had been murdered was piling too great a weight on his emotion. He looked blankly at Zanuch.
The Assistant Commissioner, contrary to the national habit, took the long view: the way this present government shuffled its cabinet, this current Minister might not be in power when the Commissioner’s post became vacant. “I think Inspector Malone should do it his way.”
Sweden shook his head, seemed about to make an angry retort, then changed his mind. “Go ahead, Inspector. Ask your questions.”
“Where is Sergeant Greenup?” Malone asked Zanuch.
“In the kitchen, I think. He’s not a detective.”
“No, sir. But he’s had thirty years’ experience. I’ll talk to him first. I’ll talk to Detective Kagal, too.”
“You’re going to keep us waiting?” Sweden was incredulous; he might just have been told that he had been dumped for pre-selection for the seat he had held so long.
“I’m afraid so, sir. Until the two men out in the kitchen put me in the picture, I won’t know what questions to ask.”
Sweden looked at Zanuch, then back at Malone. “Do you vote Labor?”
Malone grinned. “Mr. Zanuch thinks I’m a communist.”
The AC’s smile was like that of a baby with wind. “Better get cracking, Inspector.”
Malone and Clements left them and went through an archway into the other half of the apartment. As they did so, Clements muttered, “Are you trying to get us sent to Tibooburra? You go there on your own, mate.”
Tibooburra, in the far north-west of the State, was the city policeman’s equivalent of Elba or St Helena. “If this case gets any muddier, I think I’d rather be out there. Hello, Jack. John. What d’you know?”
The uniformed sergeant and the young detective were in the kitchen. It was a good-sized room and looked as if nothing more than a slice of toast had ever been cooked in it, as if it were waiting for the photographer from Good Living to arrive. It was all stainless steel and white Formica, the only colour in the copper bottoms of the pots and pans hung like native artefacts above the central work-island.
“G’day, Scobie. Russ.” Jack Greenup was in his fifties, grey-haired and overweight, a cop from the old school. He had played rugby league when he was young and still believed in the direct approach; he had never tried to sidestep, to run around a man in his life, not even when his own life depended on it. “We haven’t talked to the silvertails inside. John and I had a few words with the maid.”
“Where’s she?”
“In her room, right at the back.” John Kagal was the youngest and second newest member of Homicide, its only university graduate. He was good-looking, dark-haired and aerobics-trim, always impeccably turned out. Malone knew, with resigned amusement, that the young man would some day be Commissioner, possibly succeeding Zanuch. By then Malone hoped he would be in retirement. Or Tibooburra. “There are four bedrooms and three bathrooms on this side of the apartment. Oh, and this kitchen and a pantry in there.” He nodded to a side door. “There’s a rear door in through the pantry from the service lift.”
“It’s bloody big.” Jack Greenup had been born in and still lived in a two-bedroomed cottage out in Tempe where big was anything that had a second storey.
“What did the maid have to say?”
“I talked to her. She’s a Filipina. She said young Sweden came here last night, his parents were out at the opera, and he told Luisa, that’s her name, Luisa—you’re not gunna believe this—Luisa Marcos, he told her she could have the night off. He gave her fifty bucks to go to the movies.”
“Fifty bucks,” said Greenup. “He was telling her to get lost, looks like.”
“So he was expecting someone here?”
“I’d say so,” said Kagal.
“Did you ask the parents about that?”
Kagal shook his head, “I got the feeling that the AC didn’t want any questions asked. That’s between you and me.”
“Of course.” Don’t tell me how to run the squad, son. You’ll get your turn after I’ve gone. “The night doorman, Kinley, did he say anything about letting anyone in?”
“No. We’ve got a list of last night’s visitors to the building. Not all their names, but who they were visiting. Here it is.” He tore a page out of his notebook and handed it to Clements. “I’d like it back, Russ.”
“Sure,” said Clements, who didn’t like being told the obvious by a junior officer. “Any signs of a struggle?”
“None out in the living room. He was tossed off—”
“Thrown, said Malone and grinned as Kagal looked blank. “I’ve just been ticked off for saying he was tossed off. You’ve been warned.”
Kagal nodded. “Okay, he was thrown off, there’s a small balcony at the back, off the main bedroom. It overlooks the side street where he was found.”
“The main bedroom? Mr. and Mrs. Sweden’s? Any signs of a struggle in there?”
“No. But there are signs in the second bedroom, where young Sweden occasionally spent the night. He has—had a flat out at Edgecliff, but occasionally he’d bunk down here, keeping his stepmother company while his father was away interstate or wherever. Maybe they knocked him on the head, then tossed—threw him off the balcony.”
“No,” said Clements, who had been taking his own notes, even though Kagal would feed his notes into the running sheet on the computer back at the office. He told Kagal and Greenup what Romy had found in her autopsy. “He was surgically done in, looks like.”
“Righto, let’s go in and talk to the silvertails.” Malone grinned at Jack Greenup, the old proletarian. “You remind me of my dad, Jack.”
“Must be salt of the earth. You wanna talk to Luisa?”
“You’ll have got everything out of her?” He looked at Kagal, knowing the younger man would have done exactly that. “No, leave her be. If we have to, we’ll get back to her. We can’t keep the mob inside waiting too long. Stay here, you two, make yourselves some coffee.” He looked around the kitchen again; he would have to tell Lisa about it. “Don’t mess up the place.”
He led Clements back into the other half of the apartment. The silvertails, some seated, some still standing, all turned at once, all, it seemed to Malone, on the defensive. Zanuch’s face was the only one that showed neutral.
The two detectives were introduced by the AC; there was a formality about it, almost as if this were some sort of social gathering. “I don’t think you two ladies need to be interviewed. This is Mrs. Casement and Mrs. Aldwych, they are Mrs. Sweden’s sisters.”
“We’ll stay.” Ophelia Casement was familiar to Malone now that he saw her close-up. His two daughters, Claire and Maureen, made a mockery each week of the social pages of the Sunday newspapers; they would measure the amount of dental display at functions, supposedly sane people grinning like idiots at the camera, and occasionally would show him the results. Mrs. Casement, it seemed, was a standard feature in the makeup of every social page. But even at a glance Malone knew she was no idiot. “Rosalind needs us here.”
“Of course,” said Rosalind Sweden from where she sat on a long couch.
“We’ve always supported each other,” said Juliet Aldwych.
Ophelia, Rosalind, Juliet: Malone hadn’t read Shakespeare since he had left school, but he remembered the names. Once, aged thirteen and going to an all-boys’ school, he had been forced to play Ophelia in a school production; his voice had been breaking then and he had alternated between an alto and baritone rendering of her speeches. As he dimly remembered it, at least two of the Shakespeare girls had been hard done by; none of these three looked the worse for wear. Ophelia, he guessed, was the eldest, in her mid-forties, still beautiful and aware of it. Rosalind would be the middle one, four or five years younger, bearing a remarkable resemblance to her elder sister. Juliet was the youngest, in her mid-thirties perhaps, dark-haired where her sisters were blonde. They were a very handsome trio, as sure of themselves as money and beauty could make them. He wondered what lay behind the facades, behind the years past.
“How are we going to do this, Inspector?” That was Rufus Tucker, the Minister’s press secretary. Malone had known him when he had been a scruffy young crime reporter; now he was twenty kilos heavier, he had groomed himself just as minders groomed their rough-edged masters, he was a smooth-whistling whale in a three-piece suit. He had the reputation of slapping down smaller fish who tried to bait his master. “I think it would be best if you just spoke to the Minister alone.”
From the moment he had entered the apartment Malone had been manipulated. Ordinarily he would have spoken to each person alone, but the old perversity took hold: “No, we’ll take everybody together.” He had to shut his mouth before the runaway tongue added, The more the merrier. Thinking like the fast bowler he had once been, he bowled a bean ball, no fooling around looking for a length: “Did your son mention to you that he was having trouble with anyone, Mr. Sweden?”
Sweden had composed himself, almost as if he were facing a television camera; he was a regular guest on 7.30 Report, where politicians came and went like store dummies, on exhibition but never saying anything. He had been in politics long enough to appreciate that, when faced with the inevitable, you took the shortest course home, even if it was crooked. “No, not at all. He was, I think anyone will tell you, a very popular, hard-working young man.” He appealed to his wife and sisters and the three women nodded like a wordless Greek chorus. Though, of course, these were three girls who had risen out of the chorus. “If my son was murdered, as you seem to suspect, I have no idea who would have done it. None at all.”
“Unless it was someone who broke in?” said Rosalind. “It’s happening all the time these days.”
Malone glanced at Clements. It was an old ploy: keep changing the bowling, keep the batsman off balance. He still thought in cricket terms, though he no longer played the game. Clements said, “There’s no sign of forced entry, Mrs. Sweden.”
“Rob could have opened the door, expecting someone else.”
“They still would’ve had to get in through the security door downstairs. The night doorman doesn’t mention any visitor for your stepson.” Clements looked at the list Kagal had given him. “There was a visitor for you, Mrs. Casement. You live here?”
“We have the penthouse,” said Ophelia Casement, making it sound as if she and her husband lived above the clouds, up where the hoi polloi never reached; Malone saw a slight smile on the face of Juliet, the youngest sister. “We may have had a visitor, I’m not sure. I was out, but my husband was home. People from his office often drop by at odd hours. It’s just across the road there.”
She nodded west, towards the end of the long curved glass wall; the vertical edge of the tall Casement building showed there like a sun-reflecting border. A jigsaw was falling into place in Malone’s mind. He was not ignorant of the men and money that ran this city, but homicide detectives rarely, if ever, had to sort out the skeins of power.
“Rob liked girls.” Juliet had a throaty voice. To Clements, a late-night movie fan, she sounded like the crop of actresses out of old British movies, when they all tried to sound like Joan Greenwood. To Malone, a man with a biased ear, she sounded phoney. “Perhaps one of them came here and brought someone? A boyfriend followed her?”
“Rob was told he was never to bring girls unless we were here.” Rosalind sounded like a headmistress.
“I’m sorry, Inspector—” Juliet made a poor attempt at looking innocent. “I’m playing detective. Forgive me?”
“The doorman says he didn’t let in any visitors for Mr. Sweden. But we think Mr. Sweden must’ve been expecting someone.”
“What makes you think that?” The Minister’s voice was sharp.
“Detective Kagal has interviewed your maid. She says your son gave her fifty dollars to go to the movies. We think he wanted her out of the way.”
“Fifty dollars to go to the movies?” Ophelia made it sound as if, up in the penthouse, she added up the housekeeping money every night.
“Rob was generous, you know that,” said Rob’s father, his voice still sharp. “Money didn’t mean anything to him, easy come, easy go.”
“He was generous to a fault,” said Rob’s stepmother, the sound of violins in her voice, and Malone waited for honey to run down the walls. It struck him that though Derek Sweden was upset by his son’s death, the three women and Rufus Tucker appeared to be labouring to show any real grief.
“What did your son do, Mr. Sweden?”
“He was a broker on the Futures Exchange—or he was up till a few weeks ago. He worked for a brokerage office owned by my brother-in-law, Mr. Casement. A few weeks ago he transferred to Casement Trust, the merchant bank side of the corporation.”
Malone nodded as if he understood; but he would have to ask Russ Clements, the human data bank, to explain what futures brokers did. Russ, he knew, would also almost certainly know what Cormac Casement did. “Mrs. Aldwych mentioned that he liked girls. Did he have a regular girlfriend?”
“No,” said the stepmother. Rosalind was as composed as her two sisters, but whereas the other two were relaxed in their chairs, she sat stiffly, even primly, on the long couch. She wore a simple black woollen dress, as if already prepared for the funeral, but the double strand of pearls lying on her full bosom suggested she might also be prepared for lunching out. “He preferred to play the field. He had no difficulty in getting girls to go out with him. He was a very handsome boy.” She looked at her husband, then suddenly smiled; it was so unexpected, Malone wondered if what had gone before was no more than an act. “Your looks, darling.”
Her
two sisters nodded in agreement; Sweden looked unembarrassed. Then Tucker glanced at his watch, a large old-fashioned gold hunter that he had taken from his waistcoat pocket. “Minister, I think we’d better be going—”
Sweden looked distracted; there was no doubt his shock and grief were genuine. But he would never let himself fall apart; he was not called The Armadillo as a joke, his crust could withstand mortar bombs. He had been bending over the couch, his hand on his wife’s shoulder, but now he straightened up, even squared his shoulders like a bad actor. “There is a Cabinet meeting—”
“Oh God,” said Ophelia, “can’t politics be forgotten for a day? They won’t miss you, Derek.”
“Yes, they will,” said Sweden firmly and with some asperity. Since the unexpected election defeat a couple of weeks ago the Conservative coalition had, it seemed, been meeting every second day for post-mortems. To be absent was to miss the chance of being influential.
“You go, darling.” Rosalind turned her head to look up at her husband; with the movement she turned her back on her sisters. “I was going to lunch at the Rockpool with Juliet and „Phelia, but I’ll stay in now.”
“We’ll cancel,” said Juliet. “We’ll all stay in and have lunch here.”
“No, we’ll have it upstairs,” said Ophelia. “Something light. I have no appetite, anyway.”
Crumbs, thought Malone, she’ll give us the menu in a moment—
“An omelette. Asparagus.”
Malone looked at them critically, but decided none of the three sisters was feather brained. Like Sweden they would never fall apart, they would face the world with teeth bared and it was up to you to tell whether it was a smile or a threat. He put them on the list of suspects, out of prejudice more than evidence, and said, “Well, that’s all for the moment. There’ll be more questions—there always are. Where do you live, Mrs. Aldwych? Here in The Wharf?”
