Bleak Spring

by Jon Cleary

  “Is that the Russian in you?”

  “It could be, except that no Georgian would ever call himself a Russian. Not these days, nor in my great-grandfather’s day.”

  “Stalin was a Georgian, wasn’t he?” said Clements, not highly educated but a barrel of inconsequential data.

  Bezrow ignored that and Malone said, “Did Will Rockne ever mention to you that he’d received a death threat?”

  “Never. Why should he? We were not confidential friends, Inspector.”

  “Did you ever have any falling-out with him?”

  Bezrow’s gaze was steady. “No. If you are implying did I threaten him . . .”

  “No, Mr. Bezrow. Have you yourself ever received any threats?”

  “Death threats? Yes, three or four times.”

  “Did you report them to the police?”

  “What would be the point? They were phone threats, I had no idea who they were.”

  “Dissatisfied punters?” suggested Clements.

  “You would understand their frame of mind better than I would, Sergeant. I’ve never been a punter, not on horses, just in politics.”

  “Did you arrange for any protection?” said Malone. “A bodyguard?”

  Bezrow shook his head, “I told you, Inspector, I’m a fatalist. You really are trying to connect me in some way with Mr. Rockne’s death.”

  Malone stood up. “No, Mr. Bezrow. But nothing any of us ever does is unconnected to anyone else. I read that somewhere. I’m working on the meaning of it.”

  Clements rose, too, but Bezrow remained seated, as if the mere act of getting to his feet was something he avoided as much as possible. “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee . . . I don’t think Mr. Rockne’s bell is going to toll for me, Inspector.”

  Malone could think of no literary answer, settled instead for, “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Bezrow.”

  “Just a moment till I call off the dogs.” He picked up a small microphone from the table beside him, put two fingers in his mouth and uttered an earsplitting whistle. A few moments, then Malone heard the two dogs, barking excitedly, go round the side of the house. “You have about two minutes before they’ll be out front again.”

  “Have they ever attacked anyone?”

  “Only punters,” said Bezrow and smiled at Clements.

  As soon as the Filipino maid had closed the front door behind them, Malone and Clements went briskly down the steps, ears cocked for the rush of the bull terriers behind them. Once outside the front gate the two detectives stood beside the Commodore. Clements’s green Toyota standing behind it shone as it hadn’t shone since it had first come out of the showroom; Romy was either polishing the car for him or she was holding a gun at his head. “What do you reckon?” said Malone.

  “Despite all his fat, he’s got a bigger sidestep than David Campese,” said Clements.

  “I thought so, too. He missed his step once, though. He said that Will Rockne wasn’t the slightest bit interested in racing. Last night Will said, I quote, ’If you knew what I know about the racing game . . .’ Will was a bullshit artist, but I don’t think he was playing that game last night.”

  “I just wonder . . .” Clements was staring back up at Tiflis Hall. “I wonder if that five-and-a-bit million in Shahriver belongs to Bernie? He doesn’t just field on the courses—legitimately, that is. He has a big SP business—the Gaming Squad have tried to close it down a coupla times, but have never been able to nail him. That’d all be cash he wouldn’t want to declare for tax.”

  “Get what you can out of the Gaming Squad on him. In the meantime we’ll stay off his back for a while.”

  Inside the house Bezrow was making a phone call: “You better get over here quick smart. We’re in deep-shit trouble.”

  Which is not a literary term.

  II

  “You’re joking!” said Olive Rockne. “How could you, Jason? This is no time for joking!”

  “I tell you it’s true, Mum. There was ten thousand dollars in the safe and a bank statement saying Dad was holding five-and-something million dollars in an account at some bank. In his own name.”

  “Did you see the statement?”

  “No, I was outside in Jill’s office by then, but I heard them through the door, it was open and I could hear everything.”

  Olive looked at Angela Bodalle. “Is it true?”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  “Afraid? Why are you afraid?”

  The three of them were in the living room at the front of the house; Mrs. Carss, Rose and Shelley were out in the kitchen getting lunch. As Mrs. Carss, light-headed but with her feet on the ground, had said, the dead might die but the living had to go on eating. She had said it with the best of intentions, trying to make everyone feel better.

  Jason lay slouched in a deep chair, his long limbs piled about him like sticks stacked on a sack of shit; which was the way he felt, he told himself. He looked at his mother and Mrs. Bodalle and wondered what his mother saw in the other woman. He was no expert on what made a friendship, Christ knows; he had no close friends of his own, unless you counted Claire Malone and she wasn’t really that close. He got on okay with the guys in the basketball team, but that was only on the court; they threw him the ball but nothing else, nothing like friendship. Angela, he had decided after meeting her only twice, was the most self-contained bag he’d ever met. Not that she was exactly a bag: she was sexy-looking, if you went for older women, though he could never imagine himself having a wet dream about her. He’d been reading in one of his mother’s women’s magazines about older women and their toy-boys, but Angela, it seemed to him, didn’t seem to like even men. She hadn’t liked his father and Dad certainly hadn’t liked her. Maybe it had something to do with her being in the legal profession, which was chock-a-block with men.

  Angela said, “Inspector Malone seems very interested in it. He’s probably going to ask you questions.”

  “I know nothing about—how much did you say it was? Five million!”

  “Five and abbit.” Jason was doing his best to look laid-back, but inside he could feel himself beginning to bubble. Five-and-a-bit million dollars, for Chrissake! He knew now how Charlie Sheen had felt in Wall Street. He had seen the video of that movie only six months ago, for the first time, and he had been disgusted at the greed in it; he had also been disgusted at the way his father had nodded approvingly all through the goddamn film. But now . . . Five-and-a-bit million, all in his father’s name! “Plus the ten thousand. Chicken feed.”

  “Don’t be so laid-back, Jay,” said Angela; he could have hit her. “It’s a lot, a lot of money.”

  “You still haven’t told me what’s to be afraid of?” said Olive.

  “Darling, it complicates things. It adds more mystery to why Will was killed.”

  “Of course it does,” said Olive peevishly. “But if it’s in Will’s name, who does it belong to now?”

  “Us,” said Jason and frowned, trying to imagine what all that money was actually worth.

  “I don’t think you should lay claim to it,” said Angela. “Not yet.”

  “Why not?” Olive, unlike her son, was not laid-back, never had been. She had always been nervy, her emotions always on springs. Now she was holding tightly on to herself, but the effort was plain, bones and muscles showing through her thinness. “Why not?”

  “Let’s wait till we see if someone else, a client or somebody, claims it. At this stage I don’t think you should run the risk of looking greedy.”

  “Oh, for Chrissake!” Jason stood up, all of him falling into place.

  Olive looked at him as if she meant to reprove him; then she changed her mind and looked back at Angela. “Yes, for Chrissake! What are you getting at, Angie? God, greedy? Is that how you think it’s going to look?”

  Jason sat watching the two women. He had never understood their relationship; it was different from those his mother had with other women. He could not tell you what the difference
was, except that Angela always seemed to be the one in charge. Of course, Mum was weak: Dad had had her under his thumb ever since he could remember. Lately, though, since Angela had come along, she had started to stand up to Dad. Not in any up-you-Jack sort of way; just a sort of taking the mickey out of him. He had begun to admire Mum, even if the influence had come from the wrong direction.

  Angela said, “Jay, would you leave your mother and me alone for a moment?”

  “Do I have to?” He looked at his mother.

  “Just for a few minutes, Jason.” He knew she would give in to Angela.

  He climbed out of the chair, trying to be adult. “Okay. But if any big decisions are gunna be made, Mum, I wanna be in on them, okay?”

  “Yes, Jason.”

  He wasn’t sure, but his mother seemed to look at him with a new eye, as if she had just realized he was the new man of the house. But then she turned away to look at Angela and he felt his grasp on her slipping. Maturity was being thrust on him, though he did not recognize it; it felt uncomfortable, whatever it was, like a school guernsey that belonged to an older, more talented guy. He had been impatient to grow up, which is natural, since the real world is made up of bloody adults. But now he was not so sure.

  “Don’t let the money go,” he said, which is what Charlie Sheen would have said.

  III

  Sunday evening Sergeant Ellsworth rang from Maroubra. “Scobie? We’ve come up with someone who was in the car park last night. He says there was no shot, none that could be heard.”

  “Where was he last night when we were looking for him?”

  “He did a bunk as soon as he heard Mrs. Rockne scream. He was out there in the car park with some piece who wasn’t his wife.”

  “And he didn’t bother to find out why Mrs. Rockne screamed?”

  “No.”

  “Nice feller. So what’s he told you?”

  “He says he was about thirty or forty yards from the Rockne Volvo. He saw it come into the car park, but didn’t take any notice of who was in it. He saw Mrs. Rockne walk towards the surf pavilion, stand waiting for, he doesn’t know, maybe a minute, maybe less, then she walked back to the Volvo and the next thing he heard her scream.”

  “He didn’t see Will Rockne get out of the car?”

  “He swears not.”

  “Did he hear the shot?”

  “He swears blind there was no shot. He says he’d wound down his car window to throw out his cigarette.”

  “If there was no shot, then it looks as if there was a silencer on the gun. That makes it a professional job. Were the Volvo’s lights on? She says her husband had left them on and went back to turn them off.”

  “This guy says no, that Rockne didn’t get out of the car.”

  “He sounds pretty sharp-eyed.”

  “He’s a tax agent,” said Ellsworth, adding another scout to the lynx-eyed of the world.

  “Righto, put his statement on the running sheet, I’ll read it tomorrow when it comes through on the computer. Have Physical Evidence come up with anything?”

  “Nothing exciting so far. There’s a lot of fine sand on the car park, but there are dozens, more, shoe-prints. There are some fingerprints on the car, but those could be anybody’s. They’re checking. I think we should question Mrs. Rockne again, Scobie.”

  “I’m going to do that, Carl.” Any inspector loves being told by a sergeant what he should do. “She’s not going to run away, not with two kids to anchor her.”

  “I dunno, you never know with women. Have you got something to follow up?”

  Malone told him about the money Rockne had mysteriously accumulated. “I’ll have someone check that first thing tomorrow morning. Then there’s Bernie Bezrow, Russ Clements and I are keeping an eye on him. He was closer to Rockne than he’s prepared to admit.”

  “I know Bezrow, he doesn’t have a record, though in the racing game he knows some characters you wouldn’t take home to meet your mother. I don’t think he’s the sort of guy who sends out stand-over men to break punters’ kneecaps. Or shoot ’em in the face.”

  Malone hung up and went back into the living room where Lisa and Claire were watching the latest in a series on SBS devoted to women in the world: it was a programme that would have had Ellsworth hit the Off button at once. Maureen was in her room, earphones on, listening to a rock programme, and Tom was in bed reading, halfway between sleep and the world of Roald Dahl. Malone sat down in his favourite chair across from his wife and daughter; they were leaning against each other, feet up, on the couch. Two women on the screen, no external bruises showing but with bruises behind their eyes and in their very being, were telling in quiet voices what life was like for a battered wife.

  “Do you get much of that, Dad?” Claire said, taking her eyes away from the screen for a moment. She had a lot to learn about married life and, the protective father, he wondered if she was learning too much too early.

  “By the time we get there, the wife is dead. Or the husband,” he added.

  Lisa switched off the set. “Anything on Will Rockne’s death?”

  “I don’t think we want to spend Sunday night talking about murder, do we?”

  “You mean, not in front of the child, right?” said Claire. “Come on, Dad. If you want to be a cop, what d’you want us to do? Think of you as a bus driver or a schoolteacher like Mr. Cayburn next door? For God’s sake, I knew Mr. Rockne! Why can’t I be interested?”

  Malone sighed, nodded. “Have you spoken to Jason?”

  “I called him this afternoon, he sounded really low. God, just imagine when he goes back to school tomorrow!”

  “He probably won’t be going to school tomorrow,” said Lisa. “When’s the funeral?”

  “I dunno. That’ll depend on when the coroner releases the body. Romy’s handling it.” He looked at Claire, who had suddenly stiffened. “That’s what murder is all about, love, at least after the event. Mr. Rockne is now just a body, a name and a number on a computer print-out—you still want to discuss it?”

  “That’s enough!” said Lisa.

  Tiredness had brought cruelty. “I’m sorry, Claire. Maybe I’ll talk to you about it when it’s all over, when we’ve caught whoever killed him—if we ever do. But right now . . .”

  Claire stood up, crossed to him and kissed the top of his head. “Why couldn’t you have been a lawyer or a doctor?”

  “Tom once asked me why I couldn’t have been the Pope. I think he saw us there on that balcony at St. Peter’s every Sunday morning, waving to the mob. The Holy Family, Part Two.”

  She kissed him again, this time on the forehead. “Mother Brendan thinks you’re a heretic.”

  “I’ve had the Commissioner call me that, too. I must look it up. Goodnight, love. Tell your sister to get her ears out of that rock concert and go to sleep. And put Tom’s light out.”

  Claire went in to prepare for bed and Malone went out to the kitchen to make himself some tea and toast; he had not eaten much during the day and now suddenly he felt hungry. Lisa followed him. “So how is it going?”

  “The Rockne case? We’re stumbling. Olive told me a few things last night that don’t jell with some of the evidence we’ve dug up today.”

  “Are you saying she might have killed Will?” She showed no surprise, but that was because over the years she had learned not to.

  “I don’t know.” He dropped two slices of multigrain into the toaster. “Do you know Angela Bodalle?”

  It took her a moment to identify the name. “The QC? Is she representing Olive? Already?”

  “No, not officially, not yet. She’s a friend of the family. Didn’t Olive ever mention her to you?”

  “Darling, I’ve never been close to Olive. You warned me against getting too involved with them, remember?”

  “Just as well I did. Where’s the leatherwood honey?”

  Lisa reached into a cupboard for a jar, put it on the table. This morning the honey had been in the plastic container in which he h
ad bought it yesterday; now it was in the decorated jar with the silver spoon beside it. Lisa’s table was always properly set, none of your slapdash cartons and plastic containers cluttering it. Her Dutch neatness was legendary with him and the children, though sometimes he wondered if neatness was a myth back home in Holland. It struck him that Olive Rockne probably ran her own house with the same style, though he suspected there would be a fussiness to her neatness.

  “I can’t believe you might suspect Olive of—you know. She always struck me as being a bit wimpy. I mean Will trod all over her.”

  “That sort get tired of being trodden on, though usually they kill their husbands on the spur of the moment, not coldbloodedly. What would you do as a wife if you found out your husband had five and a quarter million dollars tucked away in a bank account?”

  “You’ve probably got that much salted away somewhere, you never spend anything.”

  “Be serious.” He told her what he had found in the Rockne safe. “Would you claim it or would you turn your back on it because it might have blood on it?”

  She thought about it while she made the tea: tea leaves, not tea bags, in a crockery pot. “I honestly don’t know. What are you expecting Olive to do?”

  “I’m expecting Olive to claim it. I don’t think she is as much of a wimp as we thought.”

  IV

  Monday morning Clarrie Binyan, the sergeant in charge of Ballistics, came into Malone’s small office in Homicide. Binyan was part-Aborigine, the recognized expert on white men’s weapons; he often joked he couldn’t tell the difference between a boomerang and a didgeridoo, but he could tell you whether a bullet had been fired from a Webley or a Walther. “There you are, Scobie, the Maroubra bullet. Fired from a Ruger, I’d say.”

  “Through a silencer?”

  “Could be. Silencers usually have no effect on a bullet. But if it was a Ruger fitted with a silencer, then I’d say it was a professional hit job.”

  “How many hitmen do we know who use a Ruger?” But it was a useless question and he knew it. Crime in Australia had become organized over the past few years, coinciding with the national greed of the Eighties. But professional killings were still just casual work, often done crudely. “We don’t have much in the way of clues on this one, Clarrie.”