by Jon Cleary
“And you didn't think you should have reported that to us?”
“I would have eventually, I guess. But like I said—I was trying to protect Trish. Stupid, I know. But I've been reading all the reports on the murder and looking at the TV coverage, and you people aren't saying much, are you? Who are you protecting?”
Too many, too much, to tell you, mate.
Niven caught the momentary silence, said, “The American Embassy? The Ambassador?”
Malone ignored the questions. “Did your sister give you any hint who she was meeting?”
“None at all.” He shook his head, looked relaxed again; he had scored a point with the question on the embassy and the ambassador. “But I guessed it must have been someone she knew here in Sydney. I don't even know what she did when she worked here.”
“She was with a stockbrokers' office, she was the office manager. We think—we're not sure yet, but we think she might've been involved with one or two fellers in that office who worked a scam and got away with it.”
Malone watched Niven carefully as he said this; but the latter took it without any surprise: “That'd be Trish. She wanted to be rich—well, have money. That's the way of the world, isn't it?”
“Not with me and Detective Lee.”
“Nor me.” Somehow he smiled and the three pure-at-heart, financially, were bound together.
Malone pushed back his chair. “Where do you live?”
“Paddington.”
“You got his address, Gail?” She nodded. “Righto, Deric, you can go. You've been a bloody fool and a bloody hindrance, but if we locked people up for those stupidities the court lists would be chockablock till the next millennium.”
Niven stood up, pulled on his overcoat, picked up his hat. “Can someone give me a lift home?”
“Don't push your luck. Knock someone over for a cab.”
Gail Lee took Niven out and Malone sat on in the interview room for a while. Then he got up, feeling stiff and bony, and went out into the Incident Room. He stood in front of the flow-chart, scanned the photos, the diagrams and the names. Then he added Dolores Cortes to the list of names, but he knew in his heart she was no more than a footnote who would offer very little information.
“I look at them boards and I wonder why Christ would ever bother about a Second Coming.”
Malone turned. It was Paddy Finnegan, the duty night sergeant in the Surry Hills station. Balding, overweight, a rock turning to sand, his legs gone, one year short of retirement: but he had the wisdom and disillusion of experience. He would no longer chase a fleeing crim, but he would never shoot anyone in the back. Not even a murderer.
“G'day, Paddy. What do you think I should do? Wipe it all out?”
“Would that solve the problem?”
“No.”
“Don't you wish you were me? Only a year to go and it's all behind me.”
“I'm thinking of applying for a transfer to Tibooburra.”
“I was out there, once—I done a camping trip, on holidays. I was sitting there with one of the blokes from the local and I said, 'Is this the end of the world?' And he said, 'No, but if you stand up, you can see it.'”
It was an old joke, but it was what Malone needed; he laughed. “Take care, Paddy.”
He drove home to Randwick, put the Fairlane in the garage. Lisa's Laser was parked out in the street, where every wife's car should be when there is only one garage. He had the Australian male's attitude when it came to cars, chauvinistic.
The wind had dropped and the sky had cleared; the moon was unscarred by clouds. He walked through a trench of moonlight between the camellia trees, came up on to the verandah and Tom was just inserting his key in the front door.
“How'd you go tonight with your tutor?”
“You saw her down at the footy?”
“Yes. Not bad, as older women go.”
“Three other guys phoned her tonight while I was there.” He grinned. “I woke up, I was just part of her library.”
“You don't sound too upset.”
“Remember once you told me, always look for some mystery in your women?” He grinned again. “She has no mystery.”
Malone could have hugged him; but he was not modern enough for that. He pushed Tom ahead of him into the house, closed the door. Was home. Life had its compensations.
III
Billie Pavane's (or Trish Norval's) killer had moved from his hotel. He had learned many things as a stockbroker, one being that a shifting target was hard to invest in. He was the target of the police investigation, if so far unknown, and he had an analytical mind that appreciated police analysis. If they had discovered Billie Pavane's real identity, then it would not be long before they learned the identity of those with whom she had been associated. And she had been closer to him than to any of the others.
So he moved out of the Regent and into a serviced apartment in Wharf West, where short-term guests were welcome and no questions asked other than the status of their credit cards. He was within sight of the harbour and at the opposite end of the central business district from the Southern Savoy, but he knew the linear line of a police investigation could stretch interminably. He did not feel safe.
He had come to Sydney, pulled by the one decent gesture he had made towards his father since he had been a teenager. The irony of it was bitter now.
Julian Baker, the name he had had for the last fourteen years, had kept in touch with his sister, but only tenuously, like a fifth cousin. Once a year they exchanged Christmas cards, as cool as diplomats' visiting cards; she didn't know he had changed his name and they always arrived addressed to his real name at a post office box he had rented in Toronto. Then the letter had come telling him his father was dying of cancer and wanted to see him before he died.
He had waited two days, pondering the letter, then he had phoned Sarah, the first time he had spoken to her in all those years. Her voice hadn't changed, it was still fruity, like that of an old-time actress. “Ohmigod, how good it is to hear your voice! But you sound so—so different. So—so American.”
“Canadian, actually.” Down in the southern hemisphere, no one ever knew the difference. “How's Dad?”
“Bad. It won't be long. He does want to see you—he keeps asking have I found you—”
“Does he say why?”
“No—just says he has something to tell you. Like a confession, I gather.”
He had no idea what his father, the Presbyterian churchgoer, would want to confess to him. “What's the cancer?”
“Melanomas. All that golf and gardening—”
He remembered his father, the tall lean man who, as if to escape all the bottled health in his pharmacy, spent as much time as he could in the open air and sun. Which was now killing him.
“Please, do come,” said Sarah. “If you want the fare, Walter and I—”
He smiled at that, unoffended; he could probably buy out Walter and Sarah a couple of times over. “No, that's no problem. It'll take a day or two—I have some things to attend to—”
“So I can tell him you're coming? It will keep him alive—”
“Yes. Tell him to hang in there—”
“You sound so American—”
“Canadian, actually.” He took his time and she must have thought he had rung off.
“Are you there?” Pronounced the-ah? with the rising inflection.
“Yes.” Another long pause; intuition told him she was suddenly remembering the past: his past. “Sarah, don't broadcast that I'm coming. I'd rather come home quietly—”
There was her own long pause; then she said quietly, “I understand. Walter will, too.”
Meaning Walter, her husband, would understand for his own reasons. In Toronto the killer had often gone to the public library and looked at the Sydney newspapers, subconsciously looking to see how much of the 1980s was being exhumed. There he had occasionally seen mention of Walter, a successful barrister who, the legal columnists said, had hopes of being a ju
dge. Walter wouldn't want his brother-in-law's past peccadillos, whatever they were, brought out for an airing by the tabloids. Secrecy is an infectious disease, a health hazard Julian Baker appreciated.
He had leave due to him from the bank and he took it; since the country was in the summer doldrums, his absence would hardly be noticed. Then he told his three sub-teen children he was going to Asia on business and they, ready to leave for summer camp in New Hampshire, couldn't have cared if he was going off to Moscow to see if more Russian crooks were looking for a money laundry. It is often forgotten that children can be as incurious as they are curious. It was not so with Lucille, his wife. She was as curious as a tabloid reporter.
He had always believed that truth was a negotiable commodity. So he told her only half of it. Yes, he was Australian as he had told her; but no, both his parents were not dead. He had told her he had run away from home when he was sixteen and he let that lie lie; he did tell her that, no, he was not an only child, he had a sister and it was she who had told him his father, still alive, was dying. He was going back to Sydney to patch up the estrangement from his father.
She was touched. “I want to go with you—”
“No—” He had to bite back the word so that it didn't sound like an expletive. He loved her, still occasionally looked at her with a stranger's eye and saw what a beautiful woman she was. She had a poise to her and sense of commercial duty that made her a good corporation wife, but she was still her own woman; and his. He put his hand on hers: “Let me see him alone—first. If everything works out okay, I'll call you and you can come. If it doesn't—”He knew that it wouldn't. If there was a reconciliation with his father, it did not mean he was going to take up life again on the Sydney scene. “I'll let you know—”
She had then looked suspicious; she was French-Canadian, but more French than Canadian. French wives have been suspicious of their husbands since Clovis' time. “You're telling me the truth? You don't have an old girlfriend out there?”
“One I knew when I was sixteen? I'm not chasing another woman—forget anything like that.”
There had been one or two short-term affairs, but Lucille had known nothing of them. They had been during the last two months of her last two pregnancies and he had viewed them as nothing more than therapeutic, a flushing of dirty water off his chest. But now he thought of Trish Norval . . .
Lucille kissed him, then gave him a love-bite that raised a welt on his neck. “If ever I found you with another woman, I'd bite right through your carotid artery.”
He told himself he was lucky to have such a loving, if ferocious, wife and left her and came to Sydney. Sarah and Walter Wexall were at the airport to meet him. Sarah was—what was the word? he wondered. Matronly? Walter was—what was the masculine word for matronly? Sarah hesitated, then put her arms round him and kissed him on the cheek. Walter shook his hand and patted him on the shoulder as he might a horse.
“My God, how you've changed! Is it really you?” Sarah's voice carried; elderly arriving passengers turned back to see if Sybil Thorndike, risen from the grave, had been on the plane.
“It's me—”
Then suddenly Sarah had sobered, her voice lowered: “But you're too late! Dad—”
She stopped, put her hand to her mouth and tears ran down her cheeks. Walter said, “He died at the weekend. We told him you were coming, but he couldn't hold out. He seemed pleased, though. He's being cremated tomorrow—”
Walter Wexall might once have been good-looking, but middle age and flesh had taken over. He now had the bland sort of face that is given character by glasses; he wore designer gold-rims. He had a good deep voice, ideal for sentencing when he became a judge, and an assured dignity that was genuine. He was a Senior Counsel and regretted he had been too late to be a Queen's Counsel. QC after one's name sounded so much better than SC.
Driving out of the airport in the Mercedes, Walter said, “As Sarah says, we wouldn't have recognized you.”
“I had a car accident. They re-modelled my face a little.” Lies slid off his tongue as smoothly as truth; sometimes their sincerity fooled even him. “And I've gone grey.”
“Worried?” said Walter, as if cross-examining.
“Not at all. I've forgotten my past, if that's what you mean.” He said it with a smile and was met by smiles; insincerity bloomed in the car like paper flowers. “I just hope everyone else will forget it.”
“Oh, of course,” said Walter and looked relieved.
They dropped him at the Regent, Walter pulling the car into the concourse with the familiarity of a man who came often to this hotel. Julian wondered if he should not have chosen another hotel.
“Get a good night's sleep,” said Sarah, sounding just like their mother. “We'll pick you up at ten tomorrow morning. The funeral is at eleven. Oh, it's so good to see you again!”
“Likewise,” he said.
“So American!”
“Canadian, actually.” Then he leaned on the roof of the car, lowered his head and his voice: “I shan't be coming to the funeral.”
“Oh my! Why not?”
He looked past her at Walter. “I think it would be better if I remained invisible, don't you, Walter?”
Walter was not surprised by the question; he nodded. “I see your point.”
Julian looked at Sarah. “I mean no disrespect to Dad.”
She stared at him, then nodded. “I understand. Come to dinner tomorrow night, just we three. There's so much to catch up on.”
“I'll look forward to it.” He looked past her again at Walter: “Thanks, old chap.”
Walter understood, as if a password had been exchanged. “Good to see you back. We'll keep it low-key.”
“The best way,” he said and watched them drive away. The rear of the Mercedes, he thought, looked like Walter: solid and bland.
Next night he caught a cab and went out to Killara, a breeding wetlands for lawyers; children there, it was said, learned the alphabet from the Law Society Journal. The houses were as authoritative as courthouses, the gardens as neat as the women residents' hair. There had been one or two drug scandals amongst the local teenagers, but the North Shore is more experienced and adept at putting the lid on the scandal pot than the other, less conservative areas of Sydney. Julian Baker had grown up here under his real name and he knew the environment as well as anyone. He had groped girls from Pymble Ladies College and passed out dead drunk on a green at Killara Golf Club. He was coming back to familiar territory.
Sarah opened the door to him, greeted him with warmth. “Come in, come in! The boys are here, but they're going out—”
The two boys, in their late teens, looked at him with suspicion: born lawyers, he thought. Or cops. “Hi,” they said, articulate as two pillar-boxes and left.
“They're going to miss Pa,” said Sarah.
“How did the funeral go?”
Sarah put her hand over her mouth and turned and went out to the kitchen. “Without fuss,” said Walter. “The way your father would have wanted. Drink?”
“Sarah very upset?”
“Yes. But she's strong, she's not going to crumble. The living always feel it more than the dead, don't you think?”
“I don't know. I've never asked the dead.”
Walter smiled; he was not going to crumble. “How do you feel?”
“I wish I'd got here before he died.” It was an honest thought.
Later, when they moved into the dining room, he saw that dinner was prologue. Sarah must have come straight home from the funeral to prepare it, though Julian wondered if there had been coffee-and-cakes for the mourners. His father had had many friends and Julian guessed that Sarah and Walter, always conscientious about doing the right thing, would have held some sort of reception. Nonetheless, Sarah had not allowed herself to be put off from preparing a proper dinner for her long-lost brother. Which, he knew, was how she would be thinking of him. She had always had a touch of the theatrical, though only in her thoughts, never
in her behaviour.
There were oysters—“I remembered how much you liked them”—and beef burgundy and diplomat pudding—”Remember how Mother used to make it?” The wine was excellent—“I have a half- interest in a vineyard up in the Hunter,” said Walter—and there was port with the coffee. Only over the coffee did Sarah mention that she had had a caterer prepare and bring in the meal. For some reason he felt disappointed. When they were young she had been so solicitous of him, always his defender. The wine had made him sentimental.
Then they repaired to the living room and the real talk began.
The room was expensively, if conservatively, furnished. It was an upholstered complement to Walter and Sarah. The only odd note in the room was a Jeffrey Smart painting of a desolate Italian autostrada; Julian could only guess that it had been bought as an investment. The other two paintings suited the room: solid spring landscapes, no sign of drought or ring-barked trees. Walter and Sarah had surrounded themselves with security. But then, he reminded himself, so had he back in Toronto. He was feeling mellow, prepared to feel at home with them.
“There is a problem,” said Walter.
“Oh?” Julian was now drinking mineral water, keeping his mind clear.
“Your father left no will. He knew he was dying, but for some reason he kept putting it off. I tried to get him to make one, but he was adamant. He was waiting for you to come home.”
Julian had no illusions: “To see if I was still the bastard he always thought I was?”
“He never said anything like that. You know what your father was like—he could be very closemouthed. I'd known him for years before I found out he always voted Labor.” As if he had voted for the Ku Klux Klan or belonged to some satanic cult.
“Perversity, that was all it was. He knew a Labor vote in this electorate would probably be dropped in the dustbin by the scrutineers.” Though he had not known how his father had voted; they had never discussed politics. “But he can't have left much. The house and maybe the business—can you sell a pharmacy as a going business?”