Babylon South

by Jon Cleary

  Jennifer Ventnor opened the door to their knock. She looked at the two tall men and Malone at once saw the apprehension in her hazel eyes.

  “Police? Is it Clicker? Is he hurt? In trouble?”

  “Clicker?”

  “My hubby. Clive.” She spoke in gasps, as if the heat was too much for her. “You are coppers, aren’t you?”

  Malone produced his badge and introduced himself and Clements. “No, it’s nothing to do with your husband, Mrs. Ventnor. Could we come inside?”

  Despite the heat women had come out on to the front steps of the houses on either side. One of them, tall and thin, with a thin, high voice, called out, “You all right, Jenny? Everything all right?”

  Jenny Ventnor just nodded, turned and led Malone and Clements into the house. “Shut the door, I’m trying to keep the heat out. I’m having a cuppa coffee. You want one?”

  The small house was a mess: Jenny Ventnor was no housekeeper. Children’s clothes and toys cluttered the front room; Clements trod on a doll and it protested with a thin squeal. The kitchen was a far cry from the kitchens one saw on TV commercials: there was no Persil sparkle, no Sunbeam blender whipping up a soufflé, no mum who oughta be congratulated. Malone, remembering Mrs. Leyden’s kitchen in the Springfellow house, thought it looked like a garbage tip.

  A radio was playing, some housewives’ friend making a comment on the day’s news; Malone wondered why all these battling women made heroes of these richly-paid, right-wing gurus. Spread out on the table, from which the breakfast dishes hadn’t yet been cleared, was the Good Living supplement from the Herald. Malone wondered what escapism Jenny Ventnor found in a supplement written by well-paid journalists for supposedly well-heeled readers. A food critic recommended a $60-a-head restaurant for a reasonable night out.

  Jenny Ventnor made three cups of instant coffee and they all sat down at the cluttered table.

  “Well, what’s it all about?”

  She had been pretty once, but it had all faded behind the dusty windows of the years. Once she might have had a good figure, but now she was fat and unhealthy-looking. She had the voice of a crow: from shouting above the crying of her kids, from yelling at her husband who came home from work and turned deaf as soon as he entered the house. It takes a sensitive ear to recognize that a whine is sometimes a cry for help. At the moment Malone was not attuned to Jenny Ventnor.

  “Some time ago, twenty-one years ago, you knew a Russian man named Alexis Uritzsky.”

  She suddenly frowned and shook her head, looking at him with a hurt stare as if he had struck her. “Aw, Jesus, why—? Is he back here in Australia?”

  “We don’t know,” said Malone. “Nobody’s had any trace of his movements since March 1966.”

  She nodded, the hurt look slowly disappearing from her plump sad face. “Yeah, that was the last time I saw him. I dunno the exact date, it wasn’t the sorta weekend I wanted to remember. He was all sorts of a bastard in a way. But I—we were in love.” She looked at them as if pleading with them to believe her. She then looked down at herself, at her fat body sloping down like a steep hill under the faded blue sun-dress she wore. Her work-worn hands rested on an illustration of a $700 dress: the slim beautiful model smiled out at her with smug superiority. On the opposite page an article began: As you talk with your husband or live-in lover over your Sunday morning coffee and croissants . . . “I was good-looking then, believe it or not. I was a size twelve. Now . . .” She closed her eyes, put her hand over her quivering mouth.

  Malone and Clements looked away; neither of them, despite the years of experience, had ever learned to feel comfortable with a woman’s tears. Malone looked out of the kitchen window: a breeze had sprung up from somewhere and a Hills clothes hoist turned slowly, creaking like a windmill, the children’s dresses and the man’s shirts fluttering like defeated banners. This is battlers’ territory, he thought, a sunburnt Siberia.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jenny Ventnor wipe her eyes with her hand; then she croaked, “Sorry. I haven’t thought about him or any of that in years. My hubby would kill me if he knew.” Without thinking she caressed a dark bruise on her fat upper arm. “I’m just glad he’s not home now, while you’re here.”

  “He need never know we’ve been here. If your friends next door—” He knew the dangers of next-door neighbours; they could kill with curiosity as well as kindness. “If they ask who we were, just say we were from Social Welfare, but everything was okay, there’d been a computer mistake. You can always blame anything on computers.”

  “They wouldn’t believe me.” She suddenly smiled, the ghost of the girl from the past came out of the plump plainness. Her teeth were still good, white and even, and her eyes for the moment were no longer full of pain. “If you stay longer than ten minutes, they’ll think I’ve been having a bit on the side with both of you.”

  “Well, at least they won’t tell your husband that,” Malone returned her smile. “Tell us about Mr. Uritzsky.”

  She looked out of the window as if looking for 1966 on the hot blue screen of the sky. “He didn’t wanna go back to Russia. He was gunna defect, he told me, take me with him and we’d start a new life somewhere here in Australia, Queensland maybe. He liked the heat. I only half-believed him. I wasn’t as dumb as he thought I was, like a lot of people thought I was. I only got to be dumb later on, when I . . .” She looked back at them, then at the messy kitchen. Malone began to wonder what Clive, Clicker, Ventnor was like. “I think Alex was gunna disappear on his own.”

  “Did he have any money?”

  She laughed, a harsh giggle. “You kidding? The Russians don’t pay their people anything, leastways they didn’t in those days. That was why he picked me up in the first place, I used to tell him. I used to fiddle the bill at the restaurant where I worked. He got a cheap meal and a free lay. I sound cheap, don’t I?”

  “No,” said Malone gently. “If you fell for him . . . I believe he was very attractive to women.”

  “Oh, he was that, all right. He was a real ladies’ man. I was flattered he paid me more attention than he did the others. You don’t believe I was a good-looker then, do you?”

  “Why not? Sergeant Clements once was handsome and slim.”

  She looked at Clements, then laughed softly: the Jenny Acton of twenty-one years ago peeped through the fat screen. “I’ll believe you if you believe me.”

  Clements smiled. “I’ve never doubted a lady’s word.”

  Reassured, Jenny Ventnor looked back at Malone. “You were talking about money. No, Alex never had any. But he told me that week before he disappeared that he knew where to get some. He said he had two—sources? Is that the word?—who were gunna come good. I remember him saying it was gunna be easier than winning the lottery.”

  “Did he say how much?”

  She shook her head. A lock of hair fell down and for the first time Malone noticed how much grey there was in the light-brown hair. “No, he could shut up, just like that, sometimes when we were talking. As if he was scared he was gunna tell me some secret or something.”

  “He was rumoured to be one of their KGB men at the embassy.”

  “Alex? A spy?” Again she shook her head; more hair fell down. “Well, I dunno, I suppose he could of been. Nobody ever told me what happened to him. I went to the embassy to find out, after I hadn’t seen him for a coupla weeks, but they just told me to get lost.”

  “Did ASIO interview you?”

  “ASIO? Oh you mean our crowd? Yeah, they come to see me. You’d of thought I was a spy, the way they treated me. They aren’t like James Bond, are they? You guys are much politer.”

  “We have more experience with women. ASIO doesn’t meet many women spies—they think it’s a man’s club, like Rotary. So you never heard from Alex again after he disappeared?”

  “Nothing, not a word. I suppose he’s in Siberia or wherever they send „em. Poor devil.” She’d forgive him, no matter what he had done to her. Then she looked out of the
window again, saw her own Siberia and a note of self-pity crept back into her voice: “I often used to wonder where I’d be if he’d taken me with him.”

  “One last question, Jenny. Did he ever mention the name Springfellow to you?”

  “Springfellow? That’s them that’s been on the news lately, right? I remember now, the ASIO guys asked me that. No, I don’t think he ever mentioned them. On the last night I saw him, the Wednesday I think it was, I’m not sure but I think it was the Wednesday or it might of been the Thursday, he said he was going up to Sydney to see if one of his—sources?—was gunna help him. But he didn’t mention no names. He just said it was a woman who had more money than sense. No, not sense. What’s another word?”

  Malone thought a moment. “Discretion?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” She smiled again. “You could say that about me, I guess. No money, but no discretion, either. A lot of women are like it. We’re a dumb lot when it comes to you men.”

  Malone couldn’t argue with that; he had seen too many willing victims. He and Clements stood up. “Thanks, Jenny, you’ve been a great help.”

  “Are you trying to find him after all this time? If you do, don’t tell him you saw me, okay? I wouldn’t want him to see me . . . Jesus, how does life get away from you?”

  Malone put his hand on her fat, bare arm; even there he could feel the sobs quivering to get out of her gross body. “I’m sorry we had to come, Jenny. It would’ve been better if we hadn’t had to drag up the past. But it has a habit of coming back . . .” As my Commissioner would tell you if you asked him for sympathy. “Don’t forget—if your neighbours get nosey, we were from Social Welfare and it was all a mistake, a computer mistake.”

  She managed a smile, the sobs subsiding before they could surface. “I might keep „em guessing. Two good-looking guys . . . Will you have to come back?”

  “No,” said Malone, having caused her enough pain. “Good luck, Jenny. Don’t say anything to Clicker about our visit.”

  “Are you kidding?” Her hand went again to the bruise on her arm.

  They left her on that. At least she was smiling and the whine had gone from her voice. For a few minutes, though unhappy, she had been Jenny Acton of long ago and far away from Paradise Valley.

  9

  I

  “IT WAS unavoidable,” said Justine. “It was all arranged months ago.”

  “It just seems—inappropriate,” said Ruth Springfellow. “Going to a coroner’s inquest, then going home to get dressed for this.”

  “You didn’t have to go to the inquest, Aunt Ruth.”

  “I thought I should.” Ruth had a sense of what was proper about death and sickness: one had to attend. Emma, of course, had not died from sickness (unless one thought of murder as a sickness): murder had made her death a public affair and Ruth had had to attend to ensure there was proper respect and decorum. As if an inquest stood the chance of turning into a circus. “Fortunately, the media stayed away. But they’re here tonight. Or anyway the gossip columnists are. They are hounding Venetia.”

  “I doubt very much if the Vandals and the Goths could hound her,” said Edwin, and smiled at Justine. “Your mother has a certain impregnability about her.” Edwin at times could sound like a third-rate academic. He hated occasions such as these, but he was an Art Gallery trustee and had had to attend. He had no cocktail talk and so settled for draught beer.

  Venetia came towards them, brushing off a gossip columnist as if he were a union picket. She had once walked through a line of pickets when Springfellow House was being built and the rough, tough building labourers had folded like a jelly of gigolos. She was dressed as usual in pink this evening, the only grey being her pale grey wallet and shoes and stockings; she always wore stockings because, as she had told one of her lovers, pantyhose locked in her juices. She wore no jewellery other than two small diamond earrings—“I am not here to distract attention from the paintings,” she had told the columnist.

  But, of course, she was incapable of not attracting attention. The cream, a lot of the skim milk and a few curds of Sydney were here in force tonight. Captains of industry and commerce (no one seems to rise above the rank of captain in the financial ranks) and their Other Ranks ladies mingled with free-loading artists and writers. Politicians trusted voters enough to shake hands with them; ambassadors, up in town from Canberra, and consuls-general, down in rank for the evening, exchanged smiles and hypocrisies. The artists looked at the paintings and told each other they could do better: the Americans, they said, always, like their foreign policies, just missed out. The American ambassador, a patient, tolerant man, though from Texas, listened and smiled. Envy is a form of flattery, he knew; he was a Roman scholar, though from Dallas, and took a broad view. Envy was what turned most of the women to look after Venetia; the men looked out of lust, though two artists held hands and looked at each other. Venetia swept on through the rooms, past the canvas of America.

  People turned from a portrait of George Washington or a Winslow Homer seascape to stare after her; what was a Sargent painting of Mrs. Jack Gardner against a living, breathing Lady Springfellow? This evening was the gala night of the year for the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Venetia had, through the Springfellow Corporation, sponsored this huge collection of American art. It was a motley collection, from Copley through Remington to Stella, but the gallery had solved the problem by dividing it and hanging the paintings of different periods in separate rooms. John Singer Sargent would have chased Venetia; but so would de Kooning. Between them they might have captured her on canvas.

  The Springfellows, the rest of them, were in the Early 19th Century Room, where Edwin, at least, felt at home. Venetia approached them gladly; she was in no mood for strangers tonight. “God, why did I choose tonight for the opening?”

  “Exactly what I said,” Ruth also had a proper sense of occasion, though she could never bring herself to miss one.

  “How was the inquest?”

  “So—so cold-blooded.”

  “That’s what inquests are about. Blood that has run cold.” Venetia saw the slight crease of pain on Edwin’s face and she put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Edwin. I’m uptight tonight. What did the coroner say, Ruth?”

  “Murder by person or persons unknown. The same as he said for Walter. It was the same coroner.”

  “The police offered no evidence? I mean, they didn’t name anyone as a suspect?”

  “Should they have?”

  Venetia looked at Justine, then back at her in-laws. “They suspect Justine murdered Emma.”

  Ruth felt for her niece’s hand, but didn’t take her eyes off Venetia. Edwin said, “Where on earth did you hear that?”

  “John Leeds told me. That Inspector Malone is building up a case against her.”

  II

  Outside the Gallery, Malone and Clements sat in their car on the opposite side of the road. A marked police car had already been along and told them to move on; but police never move along for other police, unless they are outranked. The two constables in the marked car apologized and themselves moved on. Malone and Clements continued to munch on their Mars bars, while thirty metres away diners in the Pavilion on the Park toyed with their Tasmanian salmon and drank their 1982 Chardonnay.

  The dark park of the Domain, by day a green playground in the heart of the city, by night a green-black lake, stretched away on their left. At its far edge was the rear of Parliament House and the parliamentary offices; the politicians had gone home or were at the Art Gallery reception, while the cleaners were at work, vacuuming the visible, if not the political, dirt. Farther over, the city office blocks, gold-riveted by their lighted windows, appeared to have no more substance than a stage back-cloth. To the detectives’ right, the pillared front of the Gallery was floodlit, the gleaming cars of the guests drawn up in front of it like chariots before a temple. There were no gods in the temple, however, just a few impersonators.

  One of them had just arrived, not in a chario
t but in a Commonwealth car. “There’s the PM,” said Clements. “He’s opening the show.”

  Malone watched the famous blond head run up the steps to the entrance. He paused at the top and looked back. “He thinks he’s going into Parliament House. He’s waiting for the media to interview him.”

  “When we arrest Justine, you think we should ask him to say a few words?”

  “He’s never said a few words in his life. We haven’t got all night.”

  “There’s a rumour he’s one of Venetia’s boyfriends.”

  “Could be. She’s had more boyfriends than Catherine the Great.” He wondered how John Leeds felt about being part of a stable, even if he had long left it.

  “You’re a great one for all these Greats. Alexander the Great, Catherine the Great. Where’d you learn about „em?”

  “On SBS.”

  SBS was the multicultural television channel, founded and funded by a benevolent government that thought all the immigrant ethnics would be clamouring to see all the Greek, Italian, Turkish, Egyptian and Brazilian classic films that they had missed at the local cinema in Larissa, Salerno, Eskisehir, El Faiyum and Santa Maria. Instead, it was said, the culturally deprived immigrants were devoted fans of Australian soaps, while SBS’s minuscule audience was made up of academics and would-be intellectuals who were fortunate enough to live in areas where their aerials could pick up SBS’s weak signal. Malone watched it because Lisa, neither an academic nor a would-be intellectual, watched it. He had always been weak on history; living with Lisa, he had gleaned some knowledge of world history but still remained not uncommonly ignorant about Australian history. The nation’s bicentenary was only a couple of months away and he sometimes felt he should educate himself in Australia’s history. Try as he might to avoid it, he was intellectually hamstrung by his job. History is full of homicide; the trouble with Australian history was that it was all at a mundane level. No kings here to order murder, no presidents to be assassinated: the truth was, he guessed, he liked history to be spectacular.