by Jon Cleary
She smiled again. She was a good-looking woman in her late forties; when one looked closely one saw that the years and poundage had started to catch up with her. She had big, innocent-looking eyes, but Malone suspected that if she had a heart of gold she would give none of it away but would wait for the metal prices to rise. She had buried two husbands with no regrets and it would have been surprising, in her calling, if she had had a high opinion of men. She had an equally low opinion of feminists. She was, Malone guessed, a classic madame, a businesswoman with no illusions.
A junior officer came to Malone’s elbow. “They’re taking the body to the morgue, Inspector. You want to see it before it goes?”
“It?” said Tilly Mosman and shuddered.
“I’d better.” Even after all his years on the force he was still upset when he had to view a corpse. It was not so much the sight of the still, grey body, or even the ghastliness of the wounds of some of them, that affected him; he looked at the stillness of the dead, at the utter irrevocable finality of death, and grieved for the life that had once been there. Even in the most hardened, brutal criminals there had once been some spark of innocence, some hope on someone’s part for a better fate. He looked at Clements.
“Have you identified her?”
“Sister Mary Magdalene. Yeah, I know. It sounds like a bad joke, putting her on Tilly’s doorstep, and maybe that’s what it’s meant to be. But that’s her name, all right.”
Malone went out and got into the ambulance. The young nun looked as if she were no more than asleep, though the pallor of death had already settled on her; she also looked remarkably young, though he knew that death, perversely, could sometimes do that. If she had suffered any pain when she had been knifed, it had left no mark on her face. She had a handsome rather than a pretty face; she looked as if she might have been strong-willed, though he knew that death-masks could be deceptive. She was dressed in a grey woollen skirt, a grey blouse and a grey raincoat; a narrow-brimmed grey felt hat with a cross on the band lay on the pillow beside her. Malone made a sign of the cross with his thumb on her forehead, then on his own. The Celt in him never left him alone.
He got out of the ambulance into the rain dripping from the plane trees and Clements crowded in beside him under his umbrella. “You ought to look at her shoes, Inspector.”
Malone frowned, then looked at the smart black walking shoes and the brand stamped inside them. “Ferragamo? They’re—”
“Yeah,” said Clements. “I dunno much about women’s wear, but I know that brand. They’re Italian, pretty bloody expensive.”
“What would a nun be doing wearing shoes like that?”
They went back into the house and Malone held out the shoes to Tilly Mosman. “How much would a pair of shoes like that cost?”
She looked at them, raised an eyebrow. “Ferragamo? Two hundred and fifty, three hundred dollars. Was she wearing them? Jesus, aren’t they supposed to take vows of poverty?”
When he was satisfied that Tilly Mosman could offer them no more information, Malone went on into Homicide headquarters, taking Clements with him.
“There goes my Sunday. Lisa and the kids are going to walk out on me one of these days.”
Clements, damp and rumpled, like a big Airedale that had just fallen in a creek, sat slumped in the car seat. “Why would they have dumped her body outside a brothel?”
“Had she been raped or anything? Molested?”
“Nothing like that. It’s almost as if whoever killed her was looking for publicity.”
Despite the new multi-million-dollar Police Centre which had been opened recently, the New South Wales Police Force still had sections and bureaux spread all round the city. Homicide was on the sixth floor of a leased commercial building, sharing the accommodation with other, more mundane sections. Murderers in custody often rode up in the lifts with clerks and typists from Accounts.
The squad room took up half a floor and had a temporary look about it; Malone sometimes thought it was intended to give heart to the accused. He took off his raincoat and jacket, hung them on a coat-tree that had been “requisitioned” from a murdered swindler’s office, and slumped down in his chair at the battered table that was his desk.
“Righto, what have we got?”
Clements had produced his “murder box,” the crumpled old cardboard shoe carton which, over the years, had been the repository of all the physical clues on dozens of murder cases. It was like a lottery barrel: some won, some lost. Clements sat down opposite Malone and laid out what he had on the table.
“Rosary beads—pretty expensive ones, by the look of them. The crucifix is solid gold—feel it.” Malone did, weighing it in his hand; it was something worthy of a Renaissance cardinal at least. He thought of his mother’s rosary, no heavier than a string of rice grains. “A handbag with some money in it, forty dollars and a few cents, a comb, a mirror, a key-ring with two keys on it, some tissues—the usual things from a woman’s handbag.”
“Nothing else? How did you identify her?”
Clements dropped the items he had named into the “murder box;” then, with clumsy sleight of hand, he laid a small black notebook on the desk. “She had this hidden up in her armpit, under her jacket. As if she had been hiding it from whoever did her in.”
Malone picked up the notebook. “Leather, not vinyl. This nun went in for nothing but the best.”
Inside the cover was her identification: Sister Mary Magdalene, Convent of the Holy Spirit, Randwick. Malone sat up: “My kids go there! I’ve never heard Claire or Maureen mention her. I was there at the school concert at Christmas—Lisa and I met all the nuns.”
“Maybe she started in the new school year. When the kids went back in February.”
“Maybe. But Maureen would’ve mentioned her—she brings home all the school gossip, never misses a thing. She wants to come into Homicide when she grows up. She thinks we work like those fashion dummies in Miami Vice.”
“I’d drown any kid of mine who wanted to follow me.” A confirmed bachelor, he was safe from committing infanticide.
Malone went back to the notebook. It was new, perhaps a Christmas present three months before; it had very few entries.
There were three phone numbers and, on a separate page, a note: Check Ballyduff.
The top phone number was marked Convent and the other two were marked only with initials B.H. and K.H. Malone dialled the convent number. “May I speak to Sister Mary Magdalene?”
“I’m sorry,” said a woman’s voice. “Sister won’t be back till this evening. Who is this, please?”
Malone hung up. He did not believe in giving bad news over the phone.
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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