by Jon Cleary
“Our reception clerk thought so,” said the manager. “But so many these days try to sound American, don’t they? De-BREE for debris, stuff like that.” His own accent was English and sounded genuine. Not gen-u-ine.
“Anything in her handbag?” Clements asked Norma Nickles.
“Just the American Express card, her compact, a packet of condoms—”
“Any used in the intercourse?” asked Malone.
Norma shook her head. “No.”
“There’s semen in the vagina,” said Romy.
“Good. If we pick anyone up we can lecture him on the dangers of unsafe sex. He may not know what DNA can do to him. What else?”
“Her watch, a Bulgari—like I said, this lady had money. A string of pearls—expensive, too.”
“May I interrupt?” said Romy. “We’re ready to take the body away.”
“When will you do the p-m?” asked Malone.
“Not till tomorrow. I have four others lined up ahead of her, including the man they took out earlier. We’ll do them in turn.” She looked at her husband: “No remarks about Teutonic thoroughness.”
“Never entered my head,” said Clements innocently.
“You’re coming to dinner tomorrow night?” she asked Malone.
“We’ll be there,” said Malone; then looked at the manager who had raised his eyebrows. “Life goes on, Deric. We’re not cold-blooded bastards.”
“No. No, I guess not.” But he didn’t look convinced.
As the body was put on a stretcher to be taken away, Malone moved to the window and looked out. On the other side of the square the tall Italianate clock tower of the station reared like an unintended memorial above the dead in the old burying ground. Malone remembered reading somewhere that water from a creek that had run through the burial grounds had been used to make the best-tasting beer in the early days of the colony. Drinkers of it often finished up in the graves beside the creek, adding no advertisement for the beer. In the middle of the square, complementing none of the surrounding buildings, was a steel-and-glass construction that, for want of a better name, was called a bus shelter; those who stood under it said that the only thing it protected them from was the pigeon-shit of the birds that squatted on it. It looked as out of place as a glass condom on an altar, but that was the way the city was going. The dead in the burial grounds would, metaphorically, piss on it from a great height.
Central Square was not Sydney’s most glittering scene and he wondered why a seemingly wealthy American woman would have come here to this hundred-dollar-a-night hotel when more expensive and luxurious hotels, with much better views, were available only ten-minute cab rides from here. Then he saw a man get off a bus lugging a heavy suitcase and he turned back to the manager.
He waited while the body was taken away and Romy went out of the room, brushing her hand against Clements’ as she went. Then he said, “Where’s the lady’s luggage?”
“There wasn’t any,” said the manager.
“You let people check in here without luggage?”
Deric looked embarrassed; he moved his hands again. “Reception uses its discretion. My girl thought Mrs. Paterson looked—well, okay. Not a hooker. But . . .”
Malone waited, aware that everyone else in the room had paused.
Deric said, “People check in here sometimes for meetings—they don’t want to meet in more conspicuous places—”
“Inspector,” said Shirer, “Norma mentioned what was in Mrs. Paterson’s handbag. Expensive stuff, she said—the watch and the pearls. Yet she signed for a safe deposit box downstairs—”
“Did you know that?” Malone asked the manager.
“No. They didn’t mention it down at the desk—”
“We haven’t looked at it yet,” said Shirer, “but why didn’t she put the watch and pearls in it? Or anyway, the pearls?”
“What time did you come on duty, Deric?”
“I got here at, I dunno, five-thirty, quarter to six. They called me as soon as they found Boris’ body—”
“Boris?”
“The cleaner,” said Shirer. “Boris Jones.”
“Boris Jones?” Malone managed to remain expressionless. “Righto, Deric, let’s go down and have a look at what’s in the box. The key in her handbag, Norma?”
Norma Nickles ferreted in the crocodile-skin handbag, held out a key. “That it?”
“That’s it,” said the manager and looked almost nervous as he took the key.
Before he left the room Malone asked, “Any prints?”
“We’re still dusting,” said Norma. “The report will be on your desk this afternoon.”
“Not mine,” said Malone. “Russ’.”
“Thanks,” said Clements and looked at Shirer. “The chain of command, Des. Does it ever get you down?”
Shirer looked at his junior man, smiled for the first time. “Not really, does it, Matt?”
Matt just rolled his eyes and looked at the two uniformed men, who, bottom of the heap, kept their opinion to themselves.
Malone went down in the lift with the manager. Deric was quiet, looked worried. “What about Boris? Our cleaner? God, two of them the same night! Management has already been on to me—you’d think it was my fault! Do you think there’s any connection? I mean between the two murders?”
“Do you?”
“Me? Why would I connect them? The woman’s a total stranger—”
“Let’s hope she’s not,” said Malone. “That always makes our job so much harder. We solved a case last year, took us seven years to identify the victim—”
“Oh God,” said Deric.
In the lobby Malone paused to give a non-committal comment to the media hawks, throwing them a bone that they knew was bare. “Is that all?” asked the girl from 2UE. “Who is Belinda Paterson?”
Someone at the reception desk had opened his or her mouth. “That’s all we have at the moment, her name.”
“No address?” This girl knew that bones had a marrow.
Malone looked at the manager, who said, “No local address. Just an address in the United States.”
“So she’s another tourist who’s been—”
But Malone had pushed the manager ahead of him into the latter’s office and closed the door before he heard the word murdered.
“Oh Jesus, Inspector, I can see and hear ‘em on tonight’s news—”
“Deric, if they hang around after we’ve gone, you tell them nothing, okay? Nothing. Just refer ‘em to us. Now where’s the safe deposit box?”
Deric went into an inner room, not much larger than a closet, and came back with the flat metal box. He opened it, then looked at Malone and frowned. “That’s all? A passport?”
Malone picked up the black passport, opened it. He had seen one or two like it before: a diplomatic passport. He saw the photo: the dead woman alive, looking directly into the camera as if challenging it. He read the name and the particulars, then he closed it, took a plastic bag from his pocket and dropped the passport in it.
The hotel manager could read expressions on strangers’ faces; it was part of his training. “Trouble?”
“Could be. Keep it to yourself till I check. It’ll be better for the hotel, I think—”
“If you say so. But—”
“No buts, Deric. Have you been in this business long? You’re English, aren’t you?”
Deric had sat down, as if all his strength had suddenly gone. “No, I’m Australian. From Perth. I used to be an actor. I went to London, worked there off and on for—” He shrugged. “For too long. I was out of work more than I was working. When I was out, I used to work as a waiter or nights on the reception desk in hotels. Five years ago I gave it up, the acting, and took a hotel management course—” He appeared to be talking to himself. Abruptly he shut up, then after a silence, he said, “I thought everything was going sweetly for me.”
“It still can, Deric. None of this is your fault. In the meantime—”
He went
back upstairs, besieged again by the reporters. He knew they had a job to do, but they pressed their case too hard, as if history itself would stop unless they got the news to the voters immediately.
“Tell us something, Inspector—anything! Are the murders connected?”
The lift doors closed and he looked at the two couples riding with him and they looked at him. Both couples were elderly, all four of them seemingly past excitability.
“We’ve heard about the murders—” He was tall and thin and grey-haired with a face like a wrinkled riding boot: from the bush, thought Malone.
“Don’t let it spoil your holiday.”
“We’re not down here on holiday,” said the male of the other couple, a stout and weatherbeaten man with faded blue eyes; it was obvious now that the four of them were together. “We’re here for a funeral.”
Malone cursed his loose tongue, was relieved when the lift stopped. “Sorry. My condolences.”
“You, too,” said the tall thin man, as if police grieved for all murder victims, and the lift doors closed on them.
Malone shook his head at the crossed lines of the world and went into Room 342. Phil Truach and the two Regent Street officers had gone, but Clements was still there with the two Crime Scene officers and the two uniformed men. With the bodies gone from the hotel, everything was looking routine. Out in the hallway there was the sound of a vacuum cleaner at work, taking the marks of the police team out of the carpet.
“Anything?” Malone asked.
“We’ve got enough prints here to fill a library,” said Norma Nickles with the fastidiousness of an old-fashioned housekeeper. “The maids seem to be a bit light-handed with the feather-dusters.”
“Tell Deric on your way out. Did you get a print off the flush-button in the toilet?”
“Yeah, there’s one clear one.”
“Then maybe that’s the one we want. We nailed a feller years ago that way. A bloke usually has a leak before or after sex.”
“Really?” said Norma, who had known the true worth of the advertisements in the tights of male ballet dancers. “I didn’t know that.”
“They also have a leak after murder,” said Clements. “It’s the excitement.”
“You men,” said Norma and all five of them grinned at her.
“Righto, Russ,” said Malone. “Let’s get back.”
“Anything in the deposit box?”
“Nothing. Where’s Phil?”
“He’s downstairs with the guys from Regent Street, they’re interviewing the staff. You wanna question ‘em?”
“No, you and I had better get back to the office.” His expression didn’t change, but Clements, the old hand, read his eyes. “Let’s have the report soon’s you can, Norma. Take care.”
He and Clements went down in the lift, squeezing in with half a dozen guests who recognized them as police and fell silent as if afraid of being questioned. The two detectives strode through the lobby before the reporters could waylay them again. Malone saw the manager standing behind the reception desk, staring at them as if they were guests who had trashed their room and refused to pay their account. Police are rarely welcome guests, certainly never in hotels.
Their unmarked car was parked in the hotel’s loading zone. A van had just pulled up and its driver leaned out of his door and yelled, pointing at the sign, “Can’t you buggers read?”
The two detectives ignored him, got into the car and Malone drew it out from the kerb, resisting the urge to give the middle finger to the van driver who was still yelling at them. Only then did Clements speak: “What have you come up with?”
Malone took the plastic envelope from his pocket, but didn’t remove the passport. “This. We’ve got trouble, mate. We take this to Greg Random and then to Charlie Hassett before we let anyone else see it.”
“So she’s not—” Clements looked at his notebook; he still carried it like an old family heirloom. “Not Mrs. Belinda Paterson?”
“No. She’s Mrs. Billie Pavane. She’s the wife of the American Ambassador.”
******
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