by Jon Cleary
He sat in the compartment immediately behind the driver’s cabin, held upright with his thin arm pushed into the handrail beside him. His dark eyes were open and had any other passengers boarded the carriage at that out-of-schedule hour they might have mistaken him for a man who had drunk himself into a glassy-eyed stupor at some professionals’ dinner. Except for the dark red stain on the front of his white shirt and the twist of agony that had turned down one corner of his thin-lipped mouth.
The monorail slipped along its track, over the street-lights, past the black mirrors of the windows, down and across the oily finger of harbour, along the front of the exhibition centre. The sightless eyes of Orville Brame stared out at the city he had left thirty years ago and to which he had never returned until now. And now he was past memories and regret, past the anger and trepidation he had brought home with him.
II
It had stopped raining when Scobie Malone got up at six o’clock for his regular morning walk. He went into the bathroom for the ritual start-to-the-day leak, splashed some water in his face, ran his hand through his dark hair, which always curled during the night. He went back to the bedroom, pulled on his track-suit and trainers, went out to the front door and opened it. Despite the rain the weather had got colder; a cold wind sprang up out of nowhere and blew through his bones. He went back into the bedroom and pulled on a sweater.
“Come back to bed,” Lisa murmured sleepily.
“Go back to sleep,” he said, resisting temptation.
Leaving the house he turned, like a trained dog, to the usual route, which took him down through several side streets to Randwick racecourse. The wind had blown the clouds away and the stars looked like frozen fireworks in the still-dark sky. He shivered as the cold bit at him. Of course cold was comparative; the Norwegians at February’s Winter Olympics would consider this morning the brisk beginning of a summer’s day. But he was not a Norwegian nor a Siberian nor an Inuit; he was an Aussie who knew when it was bloody cold and no argument. Comparing climate was like comparing one woman with another. An opinion he would not have quoted to Lisa.
Once out of bed and on his way Malone was always glad to be walking. His mind, like the cold engine of the nine-year-old Holden Commodore back in the garage, always took a little time to get started; the five-kilometre walk each morning eased him into the day. The racecourse provided a convenient circuit.
He walked briskly round the outer rail of the outside track, while the horses began appearing out of the lightening darkness, waiting for enough light for them to begin their training gallops. There was an occasional shout or obscenity from the jockeys and strappers as a horse played up, but the morning was too cold for any sustained burst of temper. On the far side of the course, away from the grandstands, Malone was alone. He began to run over in his mind the day that lay ahead of him at Homicide, the five murders that he hoped would be wiped from the computer by the end of the week. There had been a spate of murders in Sydney in the past month, some of them without obvious motive but all of them with suspects reasonably certain of committal. The eighteen detectives under Malone, as their inspector in charge, were usually not so fortunate in the cases that occupied them. With a bit of luck Malone might have a clean computer, nothing on the running sheets, when he went on leave in two weeks’ time. At the thought of the holiday coming up, two weeks in the Queensland sunshine, he almost broke into a jog, but reason slowed his legs before they got out of hand. Jogging, he believed, was the invention of orthopaedic surgeons and urologists looking for future trade.
An hour after leaving the front door he was back at the Federation-style house that was home. As he opened the door again he heard the phone ringing on the small table in the hall. Claire, his seventeen-year-old, came out of her bedroom, picked up the phone and handed it to him as he came down the hallway.
“How do you know it’s not for you?”
“Dad, civilized people don’t ring at seven o’clock in the morning. It has to be someone from Homicide.”
She went on into the bathroom she shared with Maureen, the fifteen-year-old, and Tom, going on twelve. He looked after her, marvelling again at how much she resembled her mother in looks and temperament. There was no Irish in her, only Dutch.
“Scobie?” Russ Clements, sergeant and second in command, was on the other end of the line.
“Where are you, this hour of the morning?”
“Still at home. Peta Smith called me, she’s just come back from Darling Harbour. She’s got one she thinks you and I should handle.”
In his mind’s eye the computer screen all at once began to mock him: the running sheets were off and running again. “Why me? I have eighteen of you supposed to be working for me—”
“This guy was found in the monorail at three-thirty this morning, a single bullet wound in his heart.”
“In the monorail? At three-thirty?” Lisa, up and dressed, passed him in the hallway, raised her eyebrows and he nodded, equally puzzled.
“Peta said she’ll explain it all when we see her. The point is, she thinks you and I should handle it. The dead man is—was the president of the American Bar Association. They’re in town for an international law convention, you’ve read about it. I’ve put the morning conference off till ten-thirty. The monorail car, the scene of the crime, has been moved on to a siding.” He gave Malone instructions how to get there. “I’ll see you at eight-thirty.”
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Enjoy these Jon Cleary’s novels, as both Ebooks and Audiobooks!
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Scobie Malone Series
Dragons at the Party
Now and Then, Amen
Babylon South
Murder Song
Pride’s Harvest
Dark Summer
Bleak Spring
Autumn Maze
Winter Chill
Five-Ring Circus
Dilemma
The Bear Pit
Yesterday’s Shadow
The Easy Sin
Standalone Novels
The City of Fading Light
Spearfield’s Daughter
The Faraway Drums
