by Jon Cleary
“Are you uncomfortable, sitting here with a murderess?”
Lisa was caught off-balance: “Murderess?”
“I'm old-fashioned.” Delia had misunderstood her reaction. “I prefer the old terms. Actress, heroine. Though I've never used murderess before. Are you a feminist?”
“No, I don't think so. Well, yes—yes, I guess I am. Up to a point.”
“Are you wondering why I'm here?”
“Yes.” Bluntly.
“Curiosity. He was a nice man. Has he changed?”
“No.” Just as bluntly.
“He was all cop the other day, when I saw him. I couldn't blame him. I was a terrible shock to him. I could see it. Did he tell you about me?”
“Yes.”
Delia said nothing, looked around her. The restaurant was full, every table occupied, everyone concerned with their own troubles, joys, whatever. Chatter filled the room like a smokescreen; one could hide an intimate conversation in it. Then Delia looked out the big window that was the wall dividing the restaurant from the gallery outside. Two young girls came out of a boutique, each with three shopping bags. They looked at the sign that obscured the store's window—50% OFF!—laughed like footballers who had scored a goal and went swinging their way along the gallery. Delia looked back at Lisa.
“Were you young once?”
“Yes,” said Lisa and was surprised she wasn't surprised by the question.
Then the waitress arrived with their orders, put the plates and glasses of wine down, said, “Enjoy your lunch,” and went away, leaving her smile behind like a blessing.
“Have you noticed?” said Delia. “Some waitresses are natural-born? Maybe that's because women are natural-born servers. Are we? But all waiters, they have to be—made.”
Lisa wondered if Delia's impression of waitresses and waiters was a memory from the past—from Scobie's day? She didn't look as if she had lately eaten in places where waitresses and waiters held sway.
Delia bit into the sandwich, chewed on it, said, “This is delicious. I've hardly eaten the last coupla days.”
“How did you know where to find me?”
Delia took her time, enjoying the sandwich. “I knew where you worked—”
“How?” Lisa hadn't yet started to eat.
“You've been mentioned in the papers—when Scobie was on those two other cases the last coupla years. There was a photo of you—I cut it out—”
Women can read faces as men read maps; they may sometimes mis-read the co-ordinates but they are rarely lost when reading other women. Lisa read Delia's face and suddenly thought, This woman is dangerous.
“I came into town today, just got the idea I'd like to see you. I was going up the steps into Town Hall when I saw you come out. I followed you across here.” She took a sip of her wine. “I envy you. You know that, I suppose?”
“Mrs. Jones—”
“Delia—please?”
Lisa ignored the invitation. “Why did you want to see me?”
Delia, Mrs. Jones, looked at her across the rim of her wine glass, took her time. “I really don't know.” There had been a slight slovenliness to her speech when she had sat down, but now, as if bringing herself up to Lisa's level, or to the level of Delia Bates, she was careful of her delivery. “Maybe I just wanted to compare notes. On husbands and lovers. He was going to marry me, you know. Scobie.”
“He told me you were never engaged.”
“No-o. But it was understood.”
“By whom?”
“By whom?” She put the glass down. “By me. We're the ones who make the decisions, aren't we?”
She stared at Lisa, who retreated, said, “How are your children coping?”
Delia smiled, as if a small victory had been won. “Okay. My mother is looking after them for a while. They hated their father as much as I did—he belted them, too. There was never any aggression in Scobie.”
Lisa ignored that. Women, with no strength for heavy weapons, fence with more patience than men. “You have a daughter—”
Delia cut in: “Scobie's told you a lot about me, hasn't he? Did you enjoy that?”
“Let's cut out the nastiness, Mrs. Jones. I didn't invite you to lunch.” Her mobile phone rang, but she reached down into her business satchel and switched it off.
“Always on call, always wanted? That must be nice.” Then she bit into the sandwich again, chewed awhile, then said, “Okay, no nastiness. Yes, I have a daughter—by my first husband. If I go to jail, she's coming home to help my mother with the other two.”
Calmly told, as if planning a family holiday.
“What does she do?”
“I dunno.” The careful speech slipped away; as if she were tired of the impersonation of a woman gone forever. “Every time she writes—which isn't often—she has a different job. She's one of the casuals of the world, she tells me. Big deal. You're lucky with your three—they have Scobie as their father. I had no luck—my first husband was a no-hoper and my second—” She grimaced, as if she had bitten on a crab claw. “The absolute worst.”
“Mrs. Jones, are you blaming me for taking Scobie away from you?”
She stared across the table, the almost-finished sandwich still in her hand. “You did, didn't you?”
Lisa pushed her plate away from her, picked up her satchel and stood up. “I'll pay for lunch at the desk. Good day and good luck.”
She paid for lunch, went out of the restaurant. Out on the gallery she had to pass by the window where Delia Jones sat. They looked at each other through the glass, imperfect strangers, and Lisa went on back to Town Hall and the small wars there that, she now realized, never touched her.
III
“I tried to get you on your mobile at lunchtime,” said Malone.
“I was busy,” said Lisa.
“I saw a mass meeting of mobiles today—never mind. I just rang to say I'll be late for dinner tonight. I have to go out to the airport, have a few words with Ambassador Pavane.”
“Difficult ones?”
Her antenna is perfect, he thought. “Yes . . . What did you do for lunch?”
“Just ate. I'll keep your dinner warm. I love you,” she said, her voice lowered, as if there was someone else in her office.
“Same here,” he said, put down his phone and looked across his desk at Gail Lee and Sheryl Dallen. “My wife.”
“I should hope so,” said Sheryl.
“So what did you find out at this Japanese place at Hunter's Hill?”
“The waiter and the manager recognized her from the photo we showed them,” said Gail. “They didn't know who she was when she was at the restaurant. It's a quiet place, mostly locals go there. They made no booking, just walked in.”
Hunter's Hill is a small community on a finger of land that juts into Sydney Harbour. It is home to one of the major private schools and a congregation of residents, not all religious, who would not have stared if the Virgin Mary had come to dine amongst them.
“We had to tell 'em who she was,” said Sheryl. “They were incredibly polite, showed hardly any expression.”
“Very Oriental,” said Gail.
“I'm being polite,” said Sheryl. “Anyway, we asked them to describe the guy she was with—”
“What did you get?” prompted Malone.
“Have you ever asked one man to describe another?” said Gail. “Even a Japanese. You're all vaguer than a woman would be—”
Malone showed exaggerated patience. “What did he look like—vaguely?”
“Tall, middle-aged, they think his hair was grey, but they're not sure. Very well dressed—that's something Japanese men, or anyway these ones, do recognize.”
Malone felt they were looking at him. “So they'd never recognize me?”
“Probably not,” said Sheryl.
“How did they pay their bill?”
“Cash,” said Gail. “As if they were covering their tracks.”
“Were they intimate?” asked Malone, then shoo
k his head at their mock look of shock. “Come on, I don't mean were they having it off on the table. Were they holding hands?”
“We asked that question,” said Gail. “The waiter said no. But they did look like old friends. When they went out of the restaurant, the guy had his arm round her.”
“Righto, it looks as if they might've been old lovers as well as lovers on the night of the murder. We think we've traced her to a previous identity—” He looked at the notebook open on his desk. “Patricia Norval. She worked for a small firm of stockbrokers, now out of business. Andy is down at the stock exchange, going through their back register. He'll come up with some names and we'll start sorting them out.”
“Good old Andy,” said Sheryl. “Sometimes I could love him, only he'd knock me over on the way to the bed.”
“What goes on in the main room when I'm away?”
“Gay abandon,” said Gail and the two of them went out to the main room.
Malone worked at his desk till daylight started to fade, then he went downstairs, got his car out of the car park, drove into the city, picked up Joe Himes and headed out of town for the airport. Rain was pelting down, he drove through silver sheets that obscured everything more than thirty yards ahead, and he wondered if any planes would get off the ground this evening. He was always a cautious driver and this evening he drove as if in a funeral cortège. Other drivers, in cars and heavy trucks, sped by, parting the waters as if they were late arrivals at the Red Sea and Moses was waiting for them up ahead.
“Stupid bastards!”
Then he saw the lights flashing ahead and he slowed down. There had been a multiple-car pileup; two police officers, slickers glistening in the headlights of approaching cars, were shepherding traffic through. Malone began to wonder how the night could get worse.
He wasn't going to put the car in the airport car park and get wet through making it into the terminal. He parked under cover in the luggage put-down line, showed his badge to a porter, said, “If anyone moves it, tell 'em I'll pinch 'em. I mean it,” and led Himes into the terminal.
Ambassador Pavane was in a private room off the departure lounge. Malone and Himes were greeted at the door by Gina Caporetto. Malone looked beyond her at the dozen or more people in the room and said, “Gina, could you see that the Ambassador is left alone with me and Joe? We'll only be ten minutes or so.”
“Serious?” she asked.
“Yes. But private, too. We want to protect him.”
“We all do,” she said and politely, diplomatically, began asking the visitors to step outside for a few minutes. They went out, looking curiously at Malone and Himes but saying nothing.
The two officers were left alone with Pavane and his RSO, Roger Bodine.
“I want Roger to stay,” said Pavane. “He's going to be my contact while I'm away. I want him to be your contact, too.”
Righto, thought Malone, it's your choice. “We think we've come up with something on Mrs. Pavane before you met her, sir.”
Pavane looked at Bodine, as if he had changed his mind and was going to ask the security man to step outside. Then he turned back to Malone and Himes. “Go on.”
Himes then told him of the FBI investigation of the supposed Corvallis background. “There's no record of her, sir, nothing before 1991 when she went to work in San Francisco.”
Pavane looked around, found a chair and sat down. He was silent for a long moment; the rain beat against the windows, enlarging his silence. Then he looked up at both law officers. “What other bad news have you? Christ, you deliver nothing but bad news!”
They could see his anger, but knew it was not directed at them. His life was falling apart, crumbling off him.
“Get off your feet, gentlemen,” Bodine rumbled solicitously. “We obviously have some things to discuss.”
Malone and Himes sat down and Bodine lowered himself into a chair like a hippo squatting. Malone wondered how such a grossly overweight man could hold the job he did; Himes told him later of Bodine's record, which was exemplary. Beyond the windows the rain suddenly stopped and a plane took off into the darkness, its lighted windows sliding by like a broken comet's tail.
“We think,” said Malone carefully, “but we're not sure yet—we think we may have identified Mrs. Pavane as Australian. Her name then was Patricia Norval and she worked here in a stockbroker's firm back in the late eighties.” He held off mentioning the office scam; they had no evidence she had been involved in it. Then he said even more carefully, “She had dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Hunter's Hill the night she was murdered with a man we still have to identify.”
“Jesus!” Pavane leaned back, put a hand over his face, almost as if hiding from the other three men.
Lisa, wider read than Malone, had once remarked to him in other circumstances that Chekhov had said it was important that a human being should never be humiliated. Malone remembered that now and saw the truth of it.
And then he suddenly knew he could not ask the question on the tip of his tongue: Did you know your wife had had a bungled abortion? Not in front of Himes and Bodine. Not with his wife's corpse being loaded on to the plane outside there, being taken—home? But where was home for Billie Pavane and Belinda Paterson and Patricia Norval?
Instead he said, “We're trying to be as discreet as possible, sir. But the mystery of your wife's past life, we can't just leave it—”
“Why not?” Pavane took his hand away from his face.
Malone looked at Himes and Bodine, but they were no help. “Mr. Pavane, that's where your wife's murderer is hidden.”
“You're sure of that?”
Malone could see that the Ambassador was not being obtuse. He was clinging to an image of happiness that had been shattered; and Malone, who had his own happiness intact, could not blame him.
“Pretty sure, sir. It's the only direction we have.”
“This question is academic—” Bodine eased himself forward in his chair. “Just to take it out of our calculations. You're absolutely sure Mrs. Pavane was not murdered by some outfit that was anti-American?”
Malone looked at Himes for that one; who said, “We've ruled that out, Roger. Whoever killed her, it was personal. Sorry, sir,” he said as Pavane flinched.
Malone put forward a gentle foot: “Ambassador, did your wife ever mention any trouble in her past life? I mean in San Francisco?”
Pavane thought a while, then shook his head. “I can't remember anything. Are you suggesting it might have been someone from those days?”
“I don't know, sir. It might be an idea if we got the FBI in San Francisco to look into it.” There was no immediate answer from Pavane and Bodine said, “Do we need to do that?” Uh-uh, thought Malone, I'm in American territory.
Bodine went on, “If the National Enquirer got on to that—and there'd be that sleazy jerk on the internet—I don't think so, sir—”
“I'll think about it,” said Pavane and stood up, heavily, as Gina Caporetto came to the door.
“They're waiting for you to board, sir.”
Pavane thanked her; he had politeness ingrained in him, not the diplomatic sort. Then he shook hands with Malone, Himes and Bodine. “Keep in touch with me through Roger. Don't do anything about San Francisco till I come back.”
He went out of the room accompanied by Bodine and Gina Caporetto. Malone looked at Himes. “He doesn't want to know. He'd rather we dropped the whole thing.”
“It's his position, Scobie—he's trying to avoid scandal—”
Malone shook his head. “It's personal. He's still in love with the woman he married. He doesn't want to know who she was before that.”
IV
Some emotions, like steel rails in summer sun and winter wind, run hot and cold. Anger is one of them. Ever since lunchtime Lisa had been running hot and cold. Lovers from the other side of a loved one's life are never welcome; jealousy is another emotion that runs hot and cold. She had come home from the office, decided to wait dinner for Scobie, and ha
d sat for the past hour nursing a gin-and-tonic, looking into it occasionally as if it were a crystal ball that might tell her something. Like all grog, it told her nothing but what she wanted to tell herself.
She looked at the ABC news on television, but there was nothing there to raise her spirits. Calamity provides better images than celebration; Heaven, she mused, would be media-free because there would be nothing worthwhile reporting. She was sinking into a mood where she was glad that Claire, Maureen and Tom were not here to see her.
When Malone came in he looked aged, as if the years had accelerated and wrapped themselves round him. He kissed her and put his arm round her shoulders, holding her tight. She recognized the sign and all the emotion drained out of her. He was hers.
“What did you have to tell him?”
“We're killing his wife for the second time. Digging her up and burying her again.”
She kissed him, thinking again but not telling him, He's mine. “I'll get dinner.”
It was steak-and-kidney pie, his favourite, carrots and peas and a glass of red. He poured himself a second glass and said, “What's for dessert?”
He never neglects his stomach, she thought lovingly.
“I was too tired—”
“You look it,” he said solicitously.
She put down a plate of crackers and three wedges of cheese in front of him. “Treat your arteries. Brie, cheddar, blue vein.”
The room, or she, felt cold and she turned up the gas heater in the kitchen. Then she sat down opposite him, poured herself a glass of wine and felt the emotion rise within her as the heat did.
“I had lunch today with Delia Jones.”
“Ah.”
“That's all you're going to say?”
“Till I hear what else you're going to say.”
There were echoes in the room but neither of them commented on them.
“I didn't invite her. Well, no—yes, I did. She just came up, introduced herself and, I don't know why, I asked her if she wanted to have lunch with me. At our place in the QVB, our table.”