by Jon Cleary
“I’m with you all the way, Jack,” said Clements, still grinning. “It’s these lefties like Scobie who bugger up the system.”
Malone, whom no party would have bothered canvassing, said, “Jack, about Derek Sweden?”
“I dunno for sure. Maybe his scams now are only political ones, but he made his money originally with some shonky development deals. There, that’s all I’m gunna tell you. I’m gunna have trouble getting to sleep tonight, giving information to coppers. But it’s been nice seeing you both. Look after yourselves.”
The two detectives escorted him to his hire car. “How do you fill in your time, now Jack Junior’s married?”
“Read. I’m catching up on my education. Political history, crime biographies, stuff like that— they’re often much the same thing. And watch TV and videos. I’m gunna watch Pretty Woman tonight for the second or third time. It’s a great fairy story, that. A virtuous hooker can find true love if the john is rich enough. Some of the girls who used to work for me must of laughed themselves sick at it. Home, James.”
“Yes, Mr. Aldwych.”
He wound down the dark window and winked at them as he was driven away. He had reached a serenity that some old men achieve. Since it was neither senility nor spirituality, it had to be amorality.
II
When Malone and Clements got back to Homicide Andy Graham was waiting for them with some encouraging news.
“A missing person. A lady has been in touch, says her husband’s been missing for three days. His description fits that guy who went missing from the morgue. Her name’s—” He checked his notebook: “Mrs. Kornsey, Leanne Kornsey. She lives out at Lugarno. I’ll go out there now—”
Malone was about to say yes, then thought of Mrs. Kornsey being told that all that remained of her husband, if it was he, was a foot and half a leg. Andy Graham, a well-meaning young man but as subtle as a bullock, was not the one to send on such an errand. “Never mind, Andy, I’ll go. It could be a bit awkward—”
Graham might be unsubtle but he was not unintelligent. “Thanks, Scobie, I wasn’t looking forward to it.”
“You want me to come with you?” said Clements.
“I don’t think so. If this is her husband, one-on-one is better.” He never relished these sort of visits, but they came with the job. He remembered how grateful he used to be when Greg Random was in charge of Homicide and had to do this sort of dirty work. “You’re coming to dinner tonight, you and Romy?”
“Yeah.” Clements sounded unenthusiastic.
“What’s the matter? You afraid Lisa is going to lean on you, get you to propose to Romy over our dinner table? Forget it. I’ve told her it’s none of her business and I’ll put her on a charge if she interferes.”
“What charge?” Clements managed to smile.
“Corruption, extortion, I’ll think of something. But you can’t go on putting the girl off. Make up your mind and soon.”
He drove out to Lugarno, south of the city, in his own Commodore, the photo of the dead man in a folder on the seat beside him. He found the Kornsey address, in a quiet street overlooking the George’s River. The district had first been developed by an immigrant who, with the cataracts of nostalgia, had seen a faint resemblance in the landscape to Lake Lugano in his homeland. The Kornseys’ street was a mixture of houses, some modest, some with pretensions to being mansions, none of them on very large lots, all of them fronted with well-kept gardens. The Kornsey house was on the river side of the street, backing on to rough bush that ran down to the water. A large tibouchina tree stood in the front garden, its deep purple bells looming like a lenten cloud; its colour, Malone thought, was appropriate for the occasion but he would have preferred a more nondescript ornament. The house was one of the less pretentious ones, but it was solid brick, two-storeyed with a double garage on the ground floor and a waterless fountain on the opposite side of the path from the tibouchina. The house was painted white and had a blue-tiled roof. The mat on the fancy-tiled porch actually said WELCOME in worn blue letters, but the heavy grille of the security door suggested the welcome was subject to qualification.
A small blonde woman opened the front door, peered out through the grille at Malone. “Yes?”
“Mrs. Kornsey?” Malone introduced himself, showed his badge. “May I come in?”
“It’s bad news, right?” She hadn’t touched the lock on the security door, as if she wanted protection against even bad news.
“I’m not sure till you’ve seen the photo I have here.” He held up the folder, but didn’t show the photo. He did not want her collapsing on him and he unable to get to her because of the door.
She hesitated, then unlocked the door and stood aside for him to enter. Then she led him through the house and out to a sun-room overlooking the river. She didn’t offer him coffee or a drink, just sat down heavily on an upholstered cane chair and looked across at him as he sat down opposite her.
“Not there, please. That is Terry’s.”
Malone moved from the chair to a lounge, part of the brightly coloured suite. Mrs. Kornsey was about forty, he guessed, though she wouldn’t admit to all those years. She might have been good-looking in her youth, but she had gone the wrong way about preserving her looks. She had spent too much time on the beach, the sun had leathered her. The blonde hair was too brassy and there was too much of it, the make-up was too thick; she wore Ken Done separates that should have been separated by at least a mile, the colours clashed so jarringly. Her voice had been roughened by drink and cigarettes and her bright eyes thinned a little as if she were short-sighted. Even as he looked at her eyes she put on a pair of bright-blue-framed glasses that seemed to cover half her face.
Malone took out the photo and passed it to her without a word. She looked at it, at the dark-haired man lying on the grass, his eyes shut as if against the glare of the flash. She frowned, took off the glasses, frowned even more, then gasped, “He’s dead?”
“That’s your husband? Terry Kornsey, that’s his name?”
She nodded; then abruptly began to weep. She lowered her head; he saw the dark roots in her hair and felt cheap at noticing such a blemish. She wept noisily, in great gulping sobs: they were echoes of similar situations but they still hurt his ears. He sat quietly, not moving to comfort her; he had learned that, sometimes, that was the wrong thing to do. Some women were fiercely protective of their space, where they loved or grieved or just shut out the rest of the world. From even the brief time he had been in the house, he judged that Mrs. Kornsey would never shut out the world, she needed it; but he acted cautiously anyway. Once, early in his experience of these situations, he had comforted a widow and she had refused to let him go, phoning day after day till he had had to ask for a counsellor to go see her and take her off his back.
At last Mrs. Kornsey wiped her eyes, blew her nose and put her glasses back on. She was a small round-figured woman, though not plump; she seemed suddenly to have got smaller. “Where is he now? Terry?”
He said as gently as he could, “Mrs. Kornsey, there is not much—I mean, all we have—” He stopped, then recovered, tried to keep his voice as steady and sympathetic as he could. “All we have of your husband is his foot and part of his leg.”
She frowned again; the blue-framed glasses slipped down her nose and she looked almost comically schoolmarmish. “You’ve only got—” She couldn’t bring herself to dismember her husband. “Oh God, how?” You’ve got that photo there, then you try to tell me there’s only—” She shook her head. “Is this some bloody great sick joke?”
He said nothing, looked out at the river below them. The George’s River was notorious for the sharks that came upstream; there had been swimmers taken in the past, but people were less foolhardy now. He wondered if Terry Kornsey had known about the sharks and pondered what it would be like to be eaten by one. At least he had been devoured dead, not alive as the unlucky swimmers had been.
He looked back at the widow, who had pushed her glasses b
ack up her nose and was glaring at him. “Mrs. Kornsey, it’s a strange story—” He told her all they knew about her husband. “Someone murdered him, then his body was stolen from the morgue—”
“Holy Jesus!” She was stupefied; she sat very still, as if he had knocked her out and she had not fallen over. Then abruptly she stood up. “You want some coffee? Come into the kitchen.”
The kitchen was not large, but it appeared to have every appliance that any cook, or team of chefs, might have called for. Unlike the kitchen in the Sweden apartment, this one looked lived in. Mrs. Kornsey saw Malone looking around: “You looking at all the gadgets? Terry was American, he loved gadgets. The garage, his workshop, is full of „em.”
“He was American? What did he do? I mean, his job?”
“He didn’t do anything. Except gamble, though he didn’t do that full-time, I mean he wasn’t a professional gambler. You know, he did SP and that. He’d go down to Wrest Point occasionally, I never went with him. Tasmania didn’t appeal to me, there’s nothing to see but old jails and churches, they’re not my cuppa tea.” She was talking too fast, hardly drawing breath. “Cappuccino? We got anything you want. Cappuccino, perc-u-lator, plunger, you name it, we got it. Cake? It’s homemade. Terry made it, some sorta Italian cake.”
“Was he Italian-American?”
“I dunno. He didn’t have any family. He told me his mother and father were killed in a terrible fire, their home just blew up, gas or something, and he come out here seven or eight years ago to put it all behind him. We been married four years. Sometimes he’d have nightmares, dreaming about what happened to his parents. Murdered?” The cappuccino machine hissed, then stopped; she twisted her head and looked over her shoulder at him. “Why would anyone wanna murder him? He was quiet, but everyone liked him. Really liked him. Some of the girls at the club told me how lucky I was.”
“What club is that?”
“The St George Leagues Club. We’d go there once a month, maybe twice. Terry was quiet, like I said, but he’d take me wherever I wanted to go. Except to Surfers. There.” She handed him his coffee, slid a plate across to him with a large slice of cake on it.
“Surfers Paradise?” They were seated on stools on opposite sides of a breakfast bench. “Why wouldn’t he take you up there?”
“I thought he’d love to go, gamble at Jupiters, but he always said no. He said the gamblers there, them that come in from overseas, were outa his league and he didn’t wanna be tempted and play for stakes that were too high. He wasn’t mean, but he was careful with his money. I always had the impression that he’d been used to a lotta money before he come out here. It was like he was doing his best to live on something less than he’d been used to. I’m talking too much,” she said and shut up, compressing her rather full lips.
“It’s a way of relieving the shock.” He sipped his coffee, nibbled at the cake. “What did you live on?”
She looked at him sharply. “That’s a pretty personal question, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. We often have to ask questions like that. I’m trying to find who murdered your husband, Mrs. Kornsey. But it seems to me I first have to find out who your husband was.” He held up a hand. “No, don’t jump on me. Do you know who he was, where he came from, his family history, all that?”
She had stiffened; but now she slumped on her stool again. She shook her head; the spray-stiffened mass of hair didn’t shiver. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I didn’t know him, not really. We were happy, you gotta believe that. We really loved each other. You married? Happily married?”
“Very. With three kids.”
“We had no kids, I’ve always been sorry about that. We decided we were both too old to start a family. Terry was fifty-three, that’s what he said he was. I’m—well, it’s none of your business, is it?” A small smile creased her mouth. “No, I guess I didn’t really know him.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“In a coffee lounge up in Hurstville. I was the manageress. He’d come in once a week for morning coffee, we used to kid each other, one thing led to another . . . You know how it is . . . How did we live?” She had decided to trust him. “I dunno, to tell you the truth. He used to get money from the States every month. I never saw it. He said it was from a trust fund, something his parents had set up for him, he said his father had been in the printing business. It used to come into the Treasury Bank in Hurstville, he had an account there. He’d give me money to run the house and for things for myself, I had my own account. We’re not rolling in money, but we’re comfortable. There are two cars out in the garage, a Honda Accord, that’s mine, and a Mercedes.” She waved a hand around her, not just at the kitchen but at the whole house. “This is not bad, right? It’s all good stuff, none of your Joyce Mayne bargains or your K-Mart specials. Terry took care of me.” Then the eyes behind the glasses dimmed again, she bit her lip and shook her head. “Jesus, why?”
“We’ll do our best to find out. Do you have any photos of him?”
“No, I don’t. God, is that the only one’s gunna be of him?” She nodded at the folder into which Malone had put the police photo. “Were you gunna give me a copy?”
“No, that’s not the drill. So you don’t have a photo of him at all? That’s strange, isn’t it? Not even a wedding photo?”
“Yeah, we had a wedding photo, but, I dunno, it disappeared. Terry was odd about having his picture taken, he said it was bad luck. He used to make a joke about it, that he was like them African natives, they believe you take a photo of a man and you steal his soul. But he never would stand in front of a camera.”
“You said Terry was fond of gadgets. Could I have a look at what’s out in his workshop? Did he have a computer, for instance?”
“There’s one out there, he used to lock it away in the safe.”
“Safe? He had a safe out in the garage?”
“It’s cemented to the floor. He kept the computer in it and some other things, expensive tools. There’s a bit of burglary around here sometimes, „specially since the recession.”
She led him out the back door of the kitchen and towards a door into the garage. Malone noticed that the garden was carefully tended; a row of rose bushes, the last rose of summer gone, had been freshly pruned. A neat strip of lawn separated the house from a swimming pool; the pool furniture looked as if it was already stacked for the coming winter, a big umbrella furled till next summer. Three Chinese rain-trees stood in a row, their bright-green leaves turning yellow. It seemed that Terry Kornsey had not been expecting to die, had been preparing for the seasons of another year.
The blue Honda and the silver Mercedes, one of the large models, were as well-kept as the garden, shining with new wax. The floor of the big garage was spotless; there were drip-trays under each of the cars. In one corner, in an alcove that appeared to have been built on, was the workshop. There were two benches and Malone, though no handyman with tools, guessed they carried every appliance a do-it-yourself handyman would need. He opened a big steel tool-box; in it were enough spanners, screwdrivers, drills and what-have-you for Kornsey to have dismantled the QE2 on his own. Malone wondered what trade Kornsey had followed in the United States, in that other mysterious life he had kept from his wife.
“Where’s the safe?”
Mrs. Kornsey slid back a panel under the higher of the two benches: there was a large safe, its base anchored in the concrete floor. “Don’t ask me to open it. It’s a combination job and I dunno the combination.”
“I’m no safe-cracker, I’ll have to send someone out here to open it.”
“What do you expect to find?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Kornsey. Maybe we’ll find out who your husband was. Really was.”
The glasses slipped down her nose again; she pushed them back with scarlet-tipped fingers. “I oughta be angry with you, but I got the feeling you’re actually trying to help me, right? But I dunno I wanna know who Terry really was. He was my husband, that was the man I kne
w, and he loved me, like I loved him. What does the past matter, now he’s dead?”
He put a hand on her arm; she didn’t draw away. “I’ll try to make it as soft as possible, try to see you don’t get hurt any more than you are right now. But if we don’t find out who killed him, there may be more murders. There’s another murder already we think is connected to Terry’s.”
“Another?” She looked at him as if he were deliberately trying to increase the torture. “Who?”
He told her. “Did Terry ever mention the name Sweden to you?”
“Never. You mean the politician’s son, there was a piece in the paper about him? Terry hadn’t the slightest interest in politics. I once asked him what he thought of President Bush and all he said was, President Who? No, he wouldn’t of known anyone named Sweden, definitely.”
“Well, I can’t do anything more till we get that safe open. Terry didn’t have any papers in the house, did he?”
“No, all his papers and things are in there.” She slid the panel back to hide the safe.
Malone wondered why her husband had been so secretive; but there was a limit to the number of darts you could throw at a widow still suffering the shock of his murder. “I’ll ring you when someone is on the way out to open the safe. It’ll probably be this evening. You’ll be home?” She nodded. “You got someone to come and stay with you?”
“My sister’ll come over, she lives at Cronulla. I’ll be all right,” she said, recognizing his concern. “I’m no jellyback.”
“I’m sure you’re not.”
She worked her mouth, as if it had suddenly gone dry. “What about Terry’s, er, foot and leg? Do I have to, er, reclaim it to bury him?”
“I honestly don’t know. Do you want, er, it?”
She shook her head, undecided. “I’ll think about it.”
He left her standing like a shadow behind the security door, walked through the purple shade of the tibouchina and out to his car. He drove across to Hurstville, found a parking spot in the busy shopping centre, went into the Treasury Bank and asked to see the manager. Treasury was one of the smaller chain of banks that had emerged in the Eighties during deregulation of the industry; it was also one of the survivors, catering to small depositors. Malone had to produce his badge; evidently he looked like someone seeking a loan and he would have had to take his place in the queue. On his way into the manager’s office he passed five people sitting in a line of chairs, their faces dull and pinched with their troubles; mortgages, debts, bankruptcies stamped on them like club tattoos.
