Dark Summer

by Jon Cleary

  “Then he wouldn’t have known Scungy Grime?” Malone addressed the question to Jack Senior, but he had one eye on Jack Junior.

  “Who’s he?” said Jack Junior.

  “A small-timer,” said his father. “He worked for me once upon a time. Who’ve you got with you today?”

  Jack Junior glanced back through the wide window into the inner lounge. “Her name’s Janis Eden, she’s a social worker.”

  “That’s a change. They’re usually models or society layabouts,” Aldwych told Malone. He had his class distinctions, it came of being a self-made man.

  Then the girl, a glass of champagne in her hand, came out on to the balcony. She was no startling beauty, but she had made the most of what looks she had; and somehow she looked less artificially handsome than Jack Junior. She was well dressed, in a casual way, and Malone wondered if she looked as elegant as this, Monday to Friday, when handing out comfort and advice to the battlers. But perhaps her welfare clients were bankrupt robber barons.

  She pushed her thick auburn hair back with her free hand and gave Malone a cool nod when they were introduced. Malone knew that a lot of social workers were antagonistic to the police, but he had hoped for a little more sociability on a national holiday and here at the cricket.

  “Inspector Malone had a murdered man dumped in his swimming pool this morning,” Aldwych offered. “It’s no way to start the day.”

  “It was this Scungy what’s-his-name?” Jack Junior shook his head; not a hair in the thick dark mane moved. The girl’s hand moved towards the head, then she seemed to think that might not be appreciated and it landed on his shoulder. “I’m glad Dad’s put all that behind him.”

  Malone looked at the girl, wondering if she knew who Jack Junior’s dad really was. She read the question in his face: “Oh, I know all about Mr. Aldwych.” She gave the old man a sweet smile. “Jack didn’t tell me about you. I read up on you.”

  Aldwych didn’t appear to be put out; his reputation had never been a hair-shirt. “You mean there’s a file on me? In Social Services? You got one on me, too, Scobie?”

  “Not yet,” said Malone, trying to sound good-humoured and sociable.

  Janis Eden looked at him from above the rim of her champagne glass. She had certain studied mannerisms, as if somewhere there was a hidden camera photographing her for a television commercial. They would not go down well at Social Services, but maybe she used them only at weekends.

  “How do you police feel when crime lands, more or less, on your doorstep?”

  “We don’t like it. I hear you’re a social worker. What field?”

  “Drug rehabilitation. We’re kept busy.”

  “I’m sure you are.” Malone stood up. The new batsman, Mark Waugh, had just begun his innings by belting three fours off the first three balls he had received. It was time for an old bowler to depart, before the insults started. “Well, I better be looking busy, too. Sitting here isn’t going to tell me who dumped Scungy Grime in my pool.”

  Aldwych had been looking at the action out on the field, but he turned his head as Malone stood up. “Don’t you really wish you were out there now?”

  “No, Jack. I’m like you, I retired at the right time.”

  He left them on that before they saw the lie in his face. He would dearly have liked to be out there on the field, even wearing coloured pyjamas and being belted all over the field by those hated bastards, batsmen. Life then, though it paid peanuts in those days, had been simple, uncomplicated and uncorrupted. But as he went down in the lift he had the itchy feeling that Jack Aldwych, retired or not, knew more about the last months of Scungy Grime’s life than he had told.

  IV

  When Malone had gone Jack Junior saw some acquaintances in one of the private boxes farther along the balcony and said he would go and say hello to them.

  “You want to come, Janis? It’s a chance for you to meet some of the guys who make the wheels go round in this town.”

  “No, thanks,” she said, moving into the seat next to Aldwych Senior and settling herself. “I’ll stay and talk to your father. I think he made more wheels go round than those men along there, no matter who they are. Am I right, Mr. Aldwych?” She gave him a full smile.

  He nodded to his son. “You go along there, Jack. Janis and I are gunna get to know each other a little better.”

  Jack Junior hesitated, like a man who did not trust either one or the other or both of them; then he smiled. “Don’t let her rehabilitate you, Dad.”

  When his son had gone, Aldwych said, “You’re not afraid of my reputation, Janis?”

  “That’s past, Mr. Aldwych. You’ve reformed.”

  He shook his big silver head. He had always been too beefy to be strictly handsome, but age had found some bone in his face and now he had the craggy look of a chipped and cracked Roman bust. But he never went to museums, so he never saw the resemblance. “No, I’m not reformed. Retired. There’s a difference.”

  He turned his head for a moment as there was a roar from the crowd; one of the Australian batsmen had cracked another boundary. Then he looked back at her, his gaze as impenetrable as smoked glass. It was the look his enemies had seen when their fate hung in the balance.

  But she did not seem disturbed by it. “Well, whatever. The law is no longer chasing you, is it?”

  Only his wife Shirl had spoken to him like this; but she had not had the education and poise of this girl. He was not used to dealing with today’s generation, especially the female side of it. He had known some tough women in his younger days, Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine had been two of them, but they had been rough and ready, their sense of gender equality based on the razor- and knuckle-men they employed. They had had none of the smooth arrogance of this young woman.

  “Would you be going out with Jack Junior if the law was still chasing me?”

  “For one thing, I don’t think of him as Jack Junior. That implies he’s not his own person. Have you ever thought of that?” She turned and looked back through the plate-glass at Larry Quick and held up her champagne flute.

  Aldwych was annoyed at her self-confidence. Women, he thought, had too much independence these days; he was glad he was in the home stretch of his life. Though he was not given to metaphors of the turf: horses and jockeys were as unreliable as women. Women in general, that is: he had never lumped Shirl with the rest of them. “No, I haven’t. His mother christened him, not me. He’s done all right.”

  Her glass refilled, she turned back to him. She had no interest at all in what was going on out in the middle of the ground; that, too, annoyed him. In his youth she was the sort of girl he would have belted; but Jack Junior would never do that, he was sure. His son, he sometimes thought, was a wimp, too influenced by his mother, who had believed in Christian morals and respect for girls and other hopeless ideas.

  “To answer your question, yes, I’d still go out with Jack, whether the law was after you or not. I’m very single-minded, Mr. Aldwych. Much like you used to be, I’d guess.”

  They were now sitting in the middle seats of the back row on the balcony, several seats distant from the boxes on either side. The inquisitive woman had not reappeared and the men on both sides were more interested in the cricket than in trying to listen to the conversation between the attractive young girl and the old criminal. Old men rarely have interesting conversations with young girls, not unless they’re dirty old men, and the young girl looked too composed to be listening to that sort of approach.

  “Are you after his money? He’s gunna be a rich man some day.”

  “Yes, I suppose I am, in a way. I’m in danger of losing my job, the State’s cutting back on welfare, and the thought of being poor and out of work doesn’t appeal to me.”

  “Well, one thing, you’re honest.”

  “No, I used to be. I’ve reformed.” She sipped her champagne, her eyes smiling at him above the flute. There was no coquetry to it; it puzzled him at first what it was. Then he recognized it: it was
the look of another criminal, or anyway a potential one. He began to worry for Jack Junior, if only for Shirl’s sake.

  “You’ve never been poor?” he said.

  “No. I come from a family that could afford to send me to a good school and then to university. But my father committed suicide after the stock market crash in eighty-seven and we found he’d left us no money at all. My mother now draws the pension and I have a brother who works as a barman in a pub, the only job he could get with a PhD in archaeology.”

  Aldwych wondered why anyone in Australia would want to take a degree in archaeology; but he had never been one for digging up anything, unless it could be used for blackmail. “So you’ve set your sights on my son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he know it?”

  “He’d be dumb if he didn’t. And I don’t think he is. Why did you become what you are?”

  “You mean a crim or a success?”

  Out on the field another Australian wicket had fallen; things were going from bad to worse, the bloody Poms were on top. He hated the English, despite his English name and lineage. His convict great-great-grandfather had spat on England the day they had transported him for assaulting and robbing a gentleman, and the family ever since had carried on the tradition. Three years ago, during the height of the Bicentennial celebrations, Aldwych had applied for membership of the First Fleet Pioneers, a society of the descendants of the first settlers; but he had been rejected. It was permitted to have had a convict as an ancestor, but the stain was supposed to have been washed out in succeeding generations. Criminality was not supposed to be part of the national heritage, though other nationalities were loud in their doubts of that belief.

  Janis said, “I know why you became a success—you were ruthless. Why did you become a criminal? Was it because you had a deprived childhood? That’s what I hear a lot from the junkies I counsel.”

  He laughed, a sound that still had some volume despite his age; some men in the box on their right turned their heads, wondering if the old crim was laughing at what was happening to Australia out there on the field. You never knew where a crim’s loyalties lay.

  “I was born what I grew up to be. My mother reckoned I was bad from the day I was weaned. I belted other kids and pinched whatever they had. I went to a State School and hated it and the teachers. I left soon’s I turned fourteen and I joined the old Railway Gang with Chow Hayes and Kicker Kelly and other blokes, all of ’em older than me. Then I become a stand-over man for Tilly Devine and her sly-grog racket . . . You want me to go on?”

  She was smiling; it was difficult to tell whether she was impressed or disgusted. “You’re really proud of what you were, aren’t you?”

  “No. I’m not ashamed of it, either. It’s a fact and you never get anywhere in life denying facts. That’s why this country is in the mess it is right now, the politicians keep denying facts. One thing I never had was conceit. That was what killed more than half the crims I come up against. They thought they were better than me and they weren’t. That was a fact they denied.”

  “Did conceit kill them or did you?”

  He looked at her steadily. “I thought you said you’d read up on me?”

  “I did. It said you were charged with two murders, but were acquitted.”

  “Don’t you believe in the jury system? Twelve of your peers who judge you innocent or guilty?”

  “No,” she said, her own gaze as steady as his. “I’ve gone into court with junkies and seen the jury condemn them before they’ve heard the evidence. We’re all full of prejudices, Mr. Aldwych.”

  He continued to stare at her, then he said, “You and me are gunna get on all right, Janis. Now let’s watch the cricket.”

  As he turned away to watch the play out on the field, he wondered if he had retired too soon. This girl had enough conceit, if that was the word, to smother Jack Junior.

  2

  I

  MALONE CAUGHT a cab back to Homicide in Surry Hills. Till three months ago Homicide had been headquartered in the big new complex, the Police Centre, across the road. Lavish in its space, antiseptic in its cleanliness, its attraction had proved too magnetic for the desk generals of Administration and another of the now-too-frequent reorganizations had taken place. Homicide had been moved across the road to the Hat Factory, a one-time commercial building which had indeed been a hat factory. Jokes were made about size 7¼ homicides, but the general feeling was that the working police, as usual, got the backwaters while the Minister and the brass got the harbour views. The sourest joke was that the old Hat Factory could never have made a hat that would have fitted the head of the Police Minister, Gus Dircks.

  Clements was waiting for him, followed him into his room. It was no more than an office built into one corner of the main room, the upper half of it glass-walled. The squad room had been given a new coat of yellow-cream paint, the blue-grey carpet was not yet worn, the beige filing cabinets not yet chipped and dented; yet Malone had a feeling that everything was makeshift, that as soon as a further backwater could be found, they would be moved again. All that could be said for it was that it did not have the sleazy look that distinguished most squad rooms he saw in American films or on TV. No Hill Street blues were sung here, not yet.

  “How’d you get on?” Clements asked.

  “See what you can find out about a social worker, she’s in drug rehabilitation, her name’s Janis Eden. She’s a girlfriend of Jack Aldwych’s son. Any word yet from your girlfriend?”

  “Lay off. Romy and I are—just friends. No, she hasn’t called with anything more. Wayne Murrow phoned in—they got a print or two off the pool gate. They’re checking records now. G’day, Peter.”

  A man in white overalls, carrying a large plastic waste-bag, had come into the big outer room and moved down towards them, emptying waste-baskets as he passed each desk. Now he stood in the doorway of Malone’s office.

  “Sergeant.” The man gave a nod, a slight formal bow of recognition. He was in late middle age, thick dark hair streaked with grey, fleshily handsome, sad-eyed yet at the same time arrogant-looking; Malone had seen the type countless times, the immigrant who hadn’t managed to achieve his old status, whatever it had been. He had not seen this particular cleaner before. “May I clean out the basket?”

  “Sure. This is Inspector Malone. Peter Keller. He’s Dr. Keller’s father.”

  Malone, sitting on the end of his desk, stood up and shook hands with the older man, who hesitated a moment before putting out his own hand. But the grip was strong: having made the decision, he was declaring himself an equal.

  “Peter was a cop in Germany,” said Clements.

  Malone had picked up his waste-basket, was ferreting through it; once or twice he had carelessly disposed of notes that he had later needed. “No, nothing in there.” He handed the basket to Keller. “So you were a cop?”

  “Yes, Inspector. I was a sergeant.” He spoke as if rank were everything.

  “Did you ever try to join our force?”

  “I was too old by the time I came here. There was also the language—my English was not very good then. A pity. I had the experience with criminals.” He emptied Malone’s basket into the big bag he carried. “This is the closest I get now to what I used to be. Excuse me.”

  He moved on out of the office, straight-backed and a little flamboyant, making a ritual out of a menial task. Clements waited till he was out of earshot, “I met Romy through him—she came to pick him up here just after he’d started, about a month ago.”

  “He got any politics?”

  “You mean is he an ex-Nazi or something? I wouldn’t have a clue. Who cares now, anyway? What about this Janis Eden? Do I put her name on the Grime sheet?”

  “Not yet. I didn’t get anywhere with Jack Aldwych—he tells me he’s retired and maybe he is, I’ve heard the rumour before. But this girl . . . I’d just like to know how a social worker gets to go out with the son of one of the richest men in the country, especially i
f Dad’s a crim like old Jack.”

  “Maybe they met in a disco or somewhere? You ever been to one? Some of the top ones, where you can’t get in unless you’re rich or good-looking, you meet all sorts. She good-looking?”

  “Yes. You telling me you’ve been allowed into these joints? You’re not rich and you’re not good- looking.”

  “I flash my badge at the guy on the door. Also, last time I went I was with Romy, she’s good- looking enough to get in anywhere. Mate, this is a democratic town, at least for the young ’uns. You pick the right place and your luck’s in, you can meet practically anyone. Is Jack Junior—I’ve never met him, but I hear that’s what he’s called—is he the disco type?”

  “How would I know? I didn’t know you were the type.”

  Then his phone rang: it was Romy Keller: “We haven’t opened Mr. Grime up yet, Inspector. We’re waiting on the AIDS or hepatitis tests—we have to send a blood sample out to Westmead. Things aren’t as quick as they used to be, not now we’re all so AIDS-conscious . . . I’ve gone right over the body and all we’ve found is a needle-mark in the fold under the right buttock. I don’t know if it means anything. I suspect he may have died of some sort of poison, but whether it was given orally or by injection, I don’t want to commit myself just yet. I don’t think we’ll have anything definite for you before this evening.”

  “Thanks, Doc. There are no signs that Scungy was a drug-user?”

  “None. No needle-marks, no sign of any wear on the nasal membranes from cocaine use. We’ve only made a cursory examination till we get the all-clear on the AIDS and hepatitis tests, but I’d say Mr. Grime was clean as far as drug-taking. Is Russ there?”

  Malone handed the phone to Clements, got up and moved out of his office. As he went out into the main room Andy Graham and Phil Truach came in. Graham was tall and heavily built and restlessly energetic; one sometimes had to wear dark glasses against the glare of his enthusiasm. Truach, on the other hand, was slim and bony and his enthusiasm, if he had ever had any, had soured into cynicism. They made a good, well-balanced partnership.