by Jon Cleary
“Perhaps it has to do with working with actors.” Romy also smiled, all at once looking like her father’s daughter, a resemblance Clements had not noticed up till now.
“We had a poison murder once in Starnheim,” said Keller.
Clements looked enquiringly at Romy, who said, “That was where I was born, where we lived. It’s not far from München. Munich,” she translated for his benefit. “It had about twenty thousand people in it when we left. It was famous for its brewery and that was about all. Oh, we had our share of zealous Nazis. My grandfather was one.” She appeared to have to concentrate all her attention on drawing the sweet meat out of a lobster claw.
“This is not the time to discuss such things.” Keller’s voice was abrupt, harsh, quashing what was obviously a taboo subject; Clements wondered why Romy had raised it. Keller, after a moment’s awkward silence, went on, the harshness only slowly dying out of his voice: “Our poison murder baffled us for months. The man died of what the local doctor said was cerebral haemorrhage. In Starnheim we did not have coroner’s doctors as smart as Romy.” He smiled at her, forgiving her for mentioning Nazis. “Months afterwards, we dug up the body and found the man had died of strychnine poisoning. We suspected the wife all along, but the doctor did not support our case, he insisted the husband had died from cerebral haemorrhage. The wife left Starnheim and went to live in München. Then we found out that the doctor, the coroner’s doctor, was visiting her every weekend. After that . . .” He raised his wine glass. “I was just a uniformed policeman, but I solved that one. I became a detective for a while, an unofficial one.”
“What happened to the wife and the doctor?”
“The wife went to jail and the doctor, unfortunately, committed suicide. He was charged, but acquitted. But, of course, he confessed by committing suicide. It is very satisfying, to solve a crime. You must be pleased when that happens?”
“If the solution is the right one, yes,” said Clements, thinking of cases where he and Malone had settled for second best. “Are you pleased, Romy, when you help us solve a case?”
She surprised him: “I really don’t care one way or the other. Are you ready for dessert?”
When dinner was finished Keller rose from the table, excused himself almost formally and went off to work, changing into his spotless white overalls before he left, “I am on late shift tonight. Don’t wait up for me, Romy.”
She went to the front door with him, kissed him, then came back into the living room. “He’s not happy here, he’s homesick. Bavarians, more than most Germans, get that way.”
“Are you homesick?”
“No,” She began to clear the table, Clements helping her carry the dishes out to the kitchen. “I’m like Mother, I love the sunshine.”
“But—?” Clements could be clumsy in his relationships, but sometimes he read women better than the women themselves suspected. Twenty-three years of listening to lies, excuses and threats, the lot of a cop, does not necessarily turn an eardrum to rubber.
Romy looked at him curiously, as if with new interest; she was still getting to know him, attracted to him though still undecided why. “You think there is something else? Yes, there is,” she added after a moment, “I wouldn’t go back to Germany because I’m not sure how Father would fit into the new Germany, now it’s been reunified. He hates Communism, he thought Reagan was the real Pope. He was never a Nazi, because by the time he’d grown up there was no Nazi party. When he talks about my grandfather, which is rarely, he never condemns him. He says that both Hitler and my grandfather were right in what they believed.”
“But that’s all over. Only the Jews remember it.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“You mean that makes me sound anti-Semitic? I’m not. But for Aussies my age and younger that war is, I dunno, about as remote as the Crimean War or the American Civil War. We’ve got splinter groups out here, like the National Front, but it’s hard to take ’em seriously, I mean as Nazis.”
“They are still there in Germany. And I’m afraid my father might join them if we went back there. He’s rigid in his thinking, always has been.” She moved to him, put her arms round his neck. “Leave the dishes. I washed my hair tonight. Twice.”
He held her to him, feeling the body conditioned by aerobics and swimming, a long way yet from dying. “How old are you?”
“Thirty. In my prime, as they say. In my prime and with lots of stamina.”
“The girl I’ve been looking for.”
Later, after they had made love twice in her bed, each showing off the benefit of experience (for love-making is a matter of pride as well as affection, women now as cocksure as men), she sat naked on the side of the bed and looked over her shoulder at him. “Are you serious, Russ?”
He didn’t answer at once, looking at her as carefully as he might at a suspect. This room was hers, as the rest of the flat wasn’t; even he, not a connoisseur of furnishings, had recognized that the flat belonged, in every way, to her father. This bedroom was light and airy, facing north, suggestive of sunshine even at night; the furniture was modern and expensive, a careerwoman’s environment, on the walls framed prints of birds of paradise, of brilliant tropical flowers. There were books on two shelves: novels by women authors, Jolley, Attwood, Allende; non-fiction whose titles suggested social history, though there was none that hinted she had any interest in Germany; there were half a dozen medical reference books. On a desk by the window stood a small computer. He was suddenly aware that she was very much more at home in this room than she ever would be in his untidy pad in King’s Cross, where the books, mostly paperbacks, were a mess that showed his undisciplined search for knowledge.
“About us?” Again a pause, then he said, “Yes. Are you?”
“I don’t know, I’ve been in love twice before, really in love, but both men let me down. Have you ever been really in love?”
Dozens of times; but you could never tell that to a woman, not one sitting naked on the side of her own bed, still feeling you inside her. “Once or twice. Do I have to make some sort of committal right now?”
She smiled. “Commitment. You’re not in court.”
But he was in court: her scrutiny of him told him that. She saw a big man running a little to fat but with muscle still visible; he was not handsome but he had a frank open face that would never be a mask. He had thick wavy brown hair on a well-shaped head and, beneath the sheet, his sexual equipment was a delight to behold and to hold. But all of that was surface, she knew little or nothing of the depths of him. She had read Galen, knew that that Greek medico and philosopher had claimed that the faculties of the soul varied according to the temperaments of the body; Russ seemed disgustingly healthy, but that didn’t say that his soul, if he had one, was in the same condition. And she wanted a man with soul, she had lived too long with a man who didn’t have one.
He reached across and took her hand. “Romy, I’m a slow decider—at least, in things like this. I jump to a conclusion sometimes on a case, but that’s different. Let’s take a little more time, okay? I’ve been a bachelor a bloody long time.”
She ruffled his hair, then stood up. “Take your time.” Then she stopped at the door, half- turned; it was unintentional, but the pose was one of the best a woman can make: half-profile, head turned over the shoulder, breast showing, curve of hip into thigh, reverse curve of calf. Clements, a connoisseur of naked women, though he would never have confessed it to anyone, shook on the verge of commitment. “Are you desperate to solve these two murders?”
The question was so unexpected, so out of train, he wasn’t sure at first that he had heard her correctly. “Desperate? Why?”
“I shouldn’t want to be married to a man who was married to his job. My mother was.”
Then she went out to the bathroom, leaving him desperate to find the solution to her. Which meant that he was still some way from commitment, his natural state.
II
Malone and Lisa sat by the pool
in the last of the evening light, which was stained ochre by the smoke from the bushfires to the west and the south of the city. The children splashed in the pool with none of that noise that usually erupts when children and water meet; it was almost as if Scungy Grime was in the pool with them. Outside in the street a young constable from Rand-wick sat in an unmarked car, the sentry at the castle gate half-asleep from the day’s heat. The neighbours seemed to have accepted the police presence as necessary. Lisa had told Malone that Mrs. Bass, next door, had taken tea and scones out to the officer on morning shift. Law and order had to be sustained.
“When are they going to bury Mr. Grime?” Lisa said.
Malone shrugged. “They’re trying to find his next of kin. He had a wife who left him ten years ago. Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”
“I’ve often wondered about criminals’ wives, the ones who stand by them. Do they have criminal minds, too, or is it just a woman’s foolishness?”
“Like yours, you mean?”
“Do you want to joke? Is that the answer to the way we feel?”
She looked at the pool, where the children frolicked like dolphins where yesterday morning death had floated. She had been in the water and her one-piece white costume shone as it caught the last of the evening light; her blonde hair was wet and lay along her head like a dark gold cap. She was sitting very still, her knees drawn up and her arms outstretched so that her hands rested on her insteps. Even though she was in profile to him he could see the anguish in her face.
“Do you want me to ask for a transfer out of Homicide?”
She looked back at him, face expectant; then the expectancy died. “You’d never do it. Do you really enjoy it, looking into murder?”
He thought about it; or pretended to. He had thought about it constantly for years, but had never talked with her about it. About individual murders, yes; but never the abstract subject. “Enjoy isn’t the word. I don’t enjoy taking in a murderer, because that means someone has had to die for there to be a murder. But yes. the work is interesting, more interesting than any other police work. But if you insist, I’ll try for a transfer to Fraud or Traffic or, God help me, even Community Relations.”
“Don’t put the onus on me. I’m not insisting on anything.”
It was going to be one of those husband-and-wife arguments that would go round in circles, the disagreements of people in love who fear, subconsciously, that their argument could lead to disaster; so they hold back, bickering rather than making points, getting nowhere but neither retreating, which is some sort of victory for both. It is called a happy marriage, which both knew it was.
Then Claire climbed out of the pool, wiped water from herself with her hands and came and sat on the end of the banana-chair where Malone lay. She, too, was in a one-piece costume, the woman in her beginning to bud; her blonde hair was slicked back like Lisa’s and once again he marvelled at how, sometimes, she looked so much like her mother. He looked at both of them and his heart ached.
“How was the first day back at school?” he said.
“Oh, all anyone wanted to talk about was our murder.”
“What did that come under? Biology, social studies?” Then he saw that he had hurt her with his flippancy and he reached out and ran his hand over her wet head. “Sorry.”
She stood up. “It’s not funny. Dad.”
“I know that. No more jokes. I promise.”
She picked up her towel and went into the house, slamming the screen door behind her. Lisa said, “You asked for that. Did you notice she said our murder? She mentioned it when she came home this afternoon and I chipped her about it. She said the girls at school kept referring to it as your murder. Meaning the Malones’ murder. We should have it registered as a proprietary venture.”
“Now you’re joking.”
Her shoulders slumped; all at once, in the last of the yellow light, she looked older; and he was suddenly, irrationally, frightened. “I never thought it would happen, but it’s getting me down at last. Being a policeman’s wife. A Homicide wife.”
III
“My wife never liked my profession,” said Jack Aldwych wryly. “But so long’s I never brought my work home, she said nothing about it.”
“Did you ever feel any guilt about what you were doing?” said Janis Eden.
“What’s guilt?” Aldwych smiled at her while he lifted his glass. He knew nothing about the grape, but Jack Junior was a wine snob and he let the boy have his head. There was Christ knew how many thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in the cellar and Jack Junior was buying all the time, taking advantage of the present wine glut. Aldwych had noted that Janis, too, was something of a wine snob. Shirl, his wife, had loved sherry: she had not been a snob about it, just drank too much of it. She had had her reasons, but he would never tell those to anyone, least of all to this smartly dressed smart-arse at his table.
“I remember my wife once said, she went to church a lot, that the Bible says, The wicked flee when nobody chases ’em, but the righteous are as bold as a lion. You ever notice the lion is an endangered species?”
“He’s incorrigible,” Jack Junior told Janis, smiling affectionately at his father. “Mum spent years trying to reform him, but she got nowhere.”
“She knew what I was when she married me.” He had felt guilt at times, but only for the pain his actions had caused Shirl. She had suspected he had ordered certain killings; she had said nothing about them, but he had recognized the signs. Those would be the days when she would suddenly have “woman trouble” and retire to one of the spare bedrooms, to stay there till the murders had dropped out of the news. Shirl had been an intelligent woman who had used her intelligence to play dumb: ignorance, if not bliss, had at least been wearable.
The Aldwyches, father and son, lived in this big two-storeyed house in two acres of garden in Harbord, a small seaside suburb neither fashionable nor notorious. The house was made of timber, no protection at all against bullets, but no rival gang had ever attempted to shoot through the walls. It had twelve rooms, all of them expensively furnished by Shirl, who had felt no guilt at all about spending her husband’s money, no matter how he had obtained it; Jack Junior, ever since his mother’s death, had been trying to persuade his father to sell the house and move closer to the heart of the city. So far he had got nowhere with that suggestion.
They were eating in the large dining room, the three of them seated at one end of the long table, with Aldwych at the head between his son and Janis. The table could have seated twenty-four with no crowding, no elbows in the ribs; but Shirl had never realized her ambition to have the sort of glittering dinner parties she saw in the old movies they ran on daytime television. She had kept none of her friends from her girlhood, they had all faded away as soon as they had realized who and what she had married; and she had never accepted any of Aldwych’s friends into the house as her guests. It only occurred to Aldwych, after his wife’s death, that one half of the table had never been used.
“Do you like the house?” he said.
“I love it!” Janis had already demanded that Jack Junior take her over every square foot of it. “It’s priceless, it’s heritage stuff.”
“Jack wants me to sell it.”
“Oh don’t!” The girl’s ambition, Aldwych decided, was also priceless; she wanted not only Jack Junior but everything he might inherit. “Some developer will knock it down and build flats.”
Jack Junior, smiling just as affectionately at Janis as he had at his father, said, “Janis belongs to every heritage and environment group going. You name it, she belongs to it.”
“Yeah?” said Aldwych, unimpressed. He had never been plagued by do-gooders and he wasn’t about to become vulnerable now. “Why?”
She gave him a direct look, “It’s the best way of coming across bargains. I’ve seen four houses I want Jack to buy. He holds on to them till the market improves and then sells them at a nice profit.”
“The Greenies must love you,”
said Aldwych, one eye on his son.
“They don’t know the real Janis,” said Jack Junior.
Do you? Aldwych wondered; then decided that his son was perhaps smarter about women than he had thought. “Why wouldn’t you sell this house then, Janis?”
“Because I think you love it too much. You want to spend your declining years here, don’t you?”
His declining years? He wondered how her direct approach affected the junkies she was supposed to rehabilitate.
Mrs. Jessup, the cook-housekeeper, thin as a bread-stick and as salty, brought in the dessert. “It’s pineapple upside-down cake,” she explained to Janis. “Six nights a week Mr. Aldwych wants it. I make it in me sleep. You want whipped cream or runny?”
When she had gone back to the kitchen Jack Junior said, “She is heritage stuff, too. She frowns on me because I like girls.”
“Not because you like girls,” said his father, throwing a little sand into the works: this girl at his table had to be shown she was not the only runner in the field, “but you like too many of them.”
“Better girls than boys,” said Janis, looking at Aldwych out of the corner of her eye. “Did you meet many gays in your profession, Mr. Aldwych?”
“Only one. He used to kill people for me.”
“Okay, Dad, that’s enough!” Jack Junior’s voice was sharp.
Aldwych’s smile was as evil as a snake’s, one that had destroyed a thousand Edens. He winked at the one beside him. “You notice how holier-than-thou all the businessmen are getting to be since the high-flyers have been sent to jail? Relax, Jack. Janis knows I’m only kidding.”
Jack Junior’s face remained stiff for a moment; then it relaxed into his pleasant smile. “I know, Dad. But maybe Janis doesn’t.”
“I’m smarter than you think, Jack,” she said, and Aldwych, who knew at any waking moment exactly how his own face looked, saw a reflection of his own smile in hers.
Later, when Jack Junior was taking her home, she kissed Aldwych goodnight; though it was on his cheek, it was not a social kiss. She’s a whore, he thought, one who’d ask for a blank cheque. He would have to have a strong word with Jack Junior.