by Jon Cleary
The three men sat down in Malone’s office, but first Malone pointed out to O’Brien the three red pins on the map behind his chair. “Parramatta, Chatswood, City—three random murders. That’s what we thought at first. There’s going to be another one, I can feel it in my bones—” He had Celtic bones, in which superstition was ingrained in the marrow.
“We have a hundred and fifty-one names to choose from,” said Clements. “Less Terry Sugar and Harry Gardner. We also have the same number of suspects, less, of course, those two and you two.”
“Thanks,” said Malone. “You always know how to keep the spirits up.”
“I was in the class,” said Clements soberly. “But not the same group. I think we can narrow it down to your group, if you can remember them all.”
“The names aren’t classified in groups?”
“No. We’re all lumped together.”
“What about the photos?”
“There’s only one, a class photo. There’s a caption on the back with all the names. Except there are only a hundred and fifty guys in the photo. They must have taken the names from the class roll without identifying them with individuals in the photo.”
O’Brien said sarcastically, “The police academy must’ve been pretty smart in those days. I can’t remember—did they teach us how to identify mug shots?”
Malone could feel Clements’ resentment even across the desk: no policeman likes the force being criticized, no matter how valid the criticism. He cut in before Clements could make a comment: “Have you worked out who’s missing?”
“Not yet,” said Clements. “I thought we’d start by you two trying to remember the names of all the guys in your group.”
Malone’s was the mind trained by experience in the use of memory, but it was O’Brien, the half-trained accountant turned entrepreneur, the man who lived by his wits and the dropped name, who remembered most of their group-mates. Clements wrote the names down and then Malone and O’Brien tried to match a face in the photo with a name. The whole procedure took them half an hour. Without remarking on it, both Malone and O’Brien spent as much time looking at themselves when young as they did identifying the other members of their group. Malone felt a sense of loss looking at the distant youth who was himself: he was a stranger whom he wished he knew better. What had he felt in those days, what had he thought about, what mistakes had he made? But it was all so long ago, it was like trying to draw pictures on water.
At last O’Brien said, “The guy who’s missing is Frank Blizzard.”
Malone frowned. “I remember the name. But I can’t remember what he looked like.”
“That was him. As soon as he left you, you couldn’t remember what he looked like. There was something else—”
Malone waited.
“We caught him cheating on an exam paper, remember? We hazed him, gave him a helluva hosing with a fire hose, then we kicked him out into—what was it, Bourke Street?—just in his underpants.”
“I remember that,” said Clements. “It was all around the academy the next morning.”
“It was a stupid bloody thing to do,” said Malone. “I mean, what we did.”
“We were young,” said O’Brien. “We thought cheating was against the rules.”
“Wasn’t it? Isn’t it still?”
“Not in the big wide world, chum. Frank Blizzard was just ahead of the rest of us.”
Out of the corner of his eye Malone saw Clements’ lip lift just a fraction; he did his best to show no expression himself. “Would what we did to him be enough for him to start killing for revenge?”
“After all these years?”
“You should’ve stayed in the force,” said Clements; his dislike of O’Brien was blatant. “You’d have learned some people will wait for ever for revenge. Women are the worst.”
“Not necessarily,” said Malone. “War veterans are as bad, some of them.”
“We weren’t at war with Blizzard,” said O’Brien.
He was aware of Clements’ feeling towards him; for a moment he had looked unexpectedly uncomfortable. His hands gripped the seat of the chair beneath him like anchors; then they slowly relaxed, like an arthritic’s whose pain had been conquered. He moved stiffly, showing his shoulder to Clements, and looked at Malone.
“None of us reported his cheating, not until they called us in and put it to us about what they’d heard. I can’t remember who it was who grassed, but then all the rest of us could do was nod and say yes, we’d done it. There were six of us, as I remember.”
Malone nodded, remembering the scene in the Inspector’s office, hazy though the memory was, like a soft focus flashback in a television mini-series. At that time he thought they might all be dismissed from the academy; but Blizzard’s sin or crime or whatever you called it had been greater. Hazing, in those days, was tolerated in institutions as civilized barbarism, no worse than poofter-bashing. Blizzard had been doomed from the moment that—had it been Jim Knoble?—had opened his mouth and told about the cheating. Frank Blizzard had gone from the academy by lunchtime next day.
“I was there when he went out the gates,” said O’Brien. “He got out into Bourke Street and all of a sudden he went berserk, right off his bloody rocker. I couldn’t hear half of what he was saying, he was standing out in the middle of the road, in the traffic, but I did hear him yell he’d blow the place up. Then he caught sight of me and he put his arms up, like he was holding a rifle, and made out he was shooting me.”
“What happened?”
“They went out, brought him back and dumped him in a paddy-wagon and drove him somewhere. That was the last I saw of him. They didn’t charge him, I think the idea was to get rid of him as quietly as they could. You know what it was like in those days, the less scandal about the police, the better.”
“Was he a bit of a psycho while he was at the academy?” Clements asked.
O’Brien looked at Malone; the latter shrugged. “How would we know now? That was over twenty years ago. Incidentally, I’ve just remembered. It was Jim Knoble who dobbed him in.”
“Where’s he now? Is he still in the force?”
“He’s out at Randwick,” said Clements. “He’s a senior sergeant. I bumped into him a coupla months ago at the races.”
“That’s five of us accounted for,” said Malone and looked at the short list Clements had written down. “That leaves Culp, Sam Culp. I haven’t heard about him since we left the academy.”
“Has anyone heard anything of Blizzard?” said O’Brien.
“No.”
“So what do we do?”
“First, I’ll get permission to start a sweep for him, as wide as possible. I’ll get the other states and the Federal boys to co-operate.” He looked at Clements. “We’ll need some of your punter’s luck.”
“Don’t ask for any of mine,” said O’Brien and grinned wryly.
Malone said, “It might be an idea if you took a sudden trip overseas, get you out of harm’s way. Go and tie up another million-dollar deal.”
“You’re kidding. I wouldn’t cross the Harbour for chicken-feed like that.” For a moment there was a show of arrogance.
“Righto, do a ten-million-dollar deal.” Malone out of the corner of his eye could see Clements biting his lip, trying to stop himself from saying something cheap and nasty.
The arrogance suddenly subsided. “I can’t. The NCSC and the Tax Department got together and got me to surrender my passport. That’s between you and me. They were going to get a court order, but I gave it up without going that far. That’s how we’ve kept it out of the papers. All but the rumours,” he added bitterly.
“Crumbs,” said Malone, “you do have trouble, don’t you?”
“You must be in shit up to your navel,” said Clements, pleasure beaming out of him.
One of the big hands gripped the seat of the chair again, but O’Brien said nothing. Then Malone said, “Righto, Brian, then you’re going to have to take care of yourself—we can’t
give you police protection. In the meantime I’m going to warn Jim Knoble to look out for himself.”
“Will he get police protection? And you?”
“I’ll be disappointed if we don’t,” said Malone and wondered why he felt no pleasure, no small sense of triumph, at O’Brien’s stricken look. Then he knew it was because each was as vulnerable as the other, that neither knew who would get the next bullet.
III
Sergeant Jim Knoble was killed that night by a .243 bullet fired from a high-powered rifle at close range. The bullet went right through Knoble’s chest, killing him instantly, and lodged in the back seat of his car, being deflected as it went through out of the side windows. Knoble had parked his car in the side driveway of the block of flats in Coogee where he lived with his wife and teenage daughter. Malone had rung Randwick police station twice, leaving a message for Knoble to ring him back, but Knoble had been out since midday following a drug suspect and had not reported back to the station till 10.10 at night. He had been given Malone’s message, but had said he would contact Malone first thing in the morning. He had signed off, remarked that he was dead tired and gone home.
Malone and Clements arrived in the side-street above the cliffs at Coogee at fifteen minutes before midnight. The street had been closed, blocked by a motor-cycle cop. Down the street, almost at the cliffs edge, were four police cars, their blue lights revolving, and an ambulance, its red light offering a contrasting colour note. There were also four television vans, looking underprivileged with no lights to flash. Malone noticed they were from the four commercial channels. Clements, a man of natural prejudice, had a theory that the ABC only attended the murders of politicians, Aborigines and conservationists. It was also his belief that SBS, the multicultural network with the shoestring budget, rang up first to see if the victim was an ethnic, otherwise they couldn’t spare the petrol getting there. He hated all the media.
Detective-Sergeant Wal Dukes, from Randwick, was the local man in charge of the investigation. He was as tall as Malone but heavier, looking massive in the long, glistening black raincoat he was wearing. He was ten years younger than Malone, but had a broad battered face that made him look older. He had once been an Olympic heavyweight, but had never got past his first bout and it had rankled ever since.
“It looks like someone from the drug ring got him,” he said in a voice that was surprisingly light for his size. “Jim’s been on their tail for a coupla months. It’s one of the Triads, they’ve got pushers all up and down the beaches, from Bondi down to Cronulla.”
“No,” said Malone. “I don’t think so.”
He felt sick, as if he were more than halfway responsible for Jim Knoble’s death. He and Clements had called in at the Randwick station on their way down here and had been told that Knoble had been given Malone’s message. His head told him he was not to blame, but his heart, that muscle that can bend reason into a pretzel, insisted he should have gone looking for Jim Knoble. He told Dukes about the suspected hit list.
“Jesus! Did Jim know?”
“I was trying to get in touch with him to tell him. Have they found the bullet yet?”
“The Crime Scene guys haven’t arrived yet.”
“What was Jim Knoble doing chasing a drug suspect? He wasn’t on the detective squad.”
“He volunteered. Sometimes he’d go out on his own, but not tonight—we had a tip, but I couldn’t take it up myself. It was a stake-out at Maroubra—Jim was in plainclothes for it.” He hesitated, shutting his eyes as a gust of rain splashed across his face; then he said, “His son was a junkie—the kid OD’d a year ago. Jim’s been after the shit ever since.”
Malone, as a senior detective, had to say it: “You should’ve kept him away. If he’d grabbed anyone, he was never going to put up any objective evidence.”
“I know, Inspector. But how could I stop him? He thought the world of his boy. Anyhow . . .” Dukes’ voice trailed off, he looked as if he had just lost another bout, one that he would regret for the rest of his life.
Virtually every house and flat in the short street had its lights on; stiff with cold and shock, neighbours in dressing-gowns and blankets stood on their verandahs. Coogee was one of the small beach suburbs south of the harbour; it ran down as a shallow valley from the ridge of Randwick, only a few miles from where Malone lived. In the nineteenth century some of the city’s professional men, trying to avoid the already rising prices of harbour properties, had moved out here and built substantial mansions. One man had actually run sheep on the slopes of the valley and as recently as the 1930s there had been a dairy farm only half a mile up from the beach, which lay between two steep headlands. Gradually the valley had filled up, then the headlands; now Coogee was a community of square boxes of flats and small houses of no distinction. Its population, like that of most beach suburbs, was mixed, but, by and large, it was considered a safe and neighbourly place in which to live.
Jim Knoble’s body had been put into the ambulance and the ambulance men were having their papers counter-signed by the police. The GMO, a younger, slimmer man than Doc Gilbey, came up to Dukes, then recognized Malone. He looked from one to the other.
“Who’s taking charge on this one?” He wore a ski jacket and a beanie and had a snow tan. He looked indecently healthy, a little impatient, as if he expected to be heading back to the southern slopes first thing in the morning. “Is it a local job?”
“I’ll be taking over,” said Malone. He looked at Dukes. “When Crime Scene find the bullet, tell „em I want Ballistics to do a rush job. But I think I know already what it is, a .243. Did he die instantly, Doc?”
“I’d say so. The killer knew what he was about.”
“Did anyone hear the shot, Wal?”
“Nobody, leastways nobody who’s owned up.” Dukes nodded down towards the heavy white traffic barrier at the end of the street. “Listen to those waves. There’s a real swell on tonight—the fishing boats aren’t out. Now and again you get a real boomer—” Even as he spoke there was a thunderous crash as a huge wave, invisible in the darkness, hit the bottom of the cliffs. “Nobody’s gunna take any notice of a shot in that noise. Anyway, most of „em say they were either looking at TV or asleep in bed. There’s so much shooting on TV, who’d take any notice of a shot outside?”
“How are Jim’s family? Did they hear anything?”
“There’s just his wife and their fifteen-year-old daughter. She was the one who found her dad’s body when she came home from a friend’s place up the street. The poor kid’s almost out of her mind with shock.”
“How’s Mrs. Knoble?”
“She’s just sitting inside there, not saying anything, not even crying. Just sitting. You know how it hits some of „em. Cops’ wives, I guess, are always waiting for something like this. You wanna see her?”
“I’d better. Get all these cleared out, let the neighbours go back to bed. Can you give me a ring tomorrow morning, say about ten? Send me all your stuff so’s Russ Clements can put it in the running sheet.”
“Sure. A hit list? Christ, why?” Dukes shook his big head.
“Maybe I’ll be able to tell you tomorrow. Here come the Crime Scene boys—and a girl, too. How’d they get her out this time of night?”
“Equal opportunity,” said Dukes with a grin, another man of natural prejudice.
“Don’t forget, I want that bullet on my desk by tomorrow noon at the latest. Ballistics will understand.”
He moved towards the front door of the flats, leaving Clements to make a note of all the details that would go into the running sheets. With the connection between these murders, the sheets would eventually make a book; all he could hope was that he would be alive to read the last page. He stopped for a moment and looked up and down the rain-swept street: the killer could still be there anywhere in the darkness.
As he reached the glass doors into the small entrance hall of the flats, two of the television reporters came at him, their cameramen behind them like
back-up bazooka troops.
“Any chance of some shots of the family, Inspector?” He was a young reporter, dressed in a Dryazabone ankle-length slicker and an Akubra drover’s hat; he looked as if he should be covering a rodeo out in the flood country. Malone had seen him several times on television, one of the new breed with American pronunciations, knee-deep in de-bree or on the outskirts of a me-lee or tasting the new season’s cha-blee, already with his eye on world fame by satellite. “We won’t intrude.”
“Not bloody much you won’t,” said Malone. “Get lost.”
“Is that the new police community relations policy?”
Malone looked past the whipper-snapper at the black-bearded cameraman behind him. “Why don’t you crown him with your camera?”
The cameraman grinned. “I’ve often felt like it, Inspector. But Channel 15 would charge me for the breakage.”
“Up yours,” said the reporter and swished out into the street.
The cameraman smiled apologetically. “Sorry, Inspector. He does a lot for our own public relations.”
The other reporter, an older man, and the second cameraman nodded, said good-night to Malone and went out to the street with the Channel 15 man. Malone, soured by the small encounter, pushed open the glass doors and went in to see the widowed Mrs. Knoble. He noted that this was not a block of flats with a security door to its entrance, though each of the flats had its own individual security grille covering its front door. But they were protection against housebreakers, not murderers.
Mrs. Knoble was a small, pretty woman in a pink dressing-gown, pink mules on her feet; her hair neatly done. She had evidently been waiting up for her husband to come home and, after whatever number of years they had been married, she still thought she should look her best for him, no matter the time of day or night. She was an old-fashioned wife, still in love with the only man in her life. Like Lisa, Malone thought: and suddenly prayed to Christ that Lisa would never be sitting like this some night with some uniformed cop sitting beside her holding her hand with awkward sympathy.
The cop was Sergeant Keith Elgar, in uniform even though he had been roused from sleep to come here: he, too, was old-fashioned. He had known Malone for years, they had played cricket against each other in district competition, but he stood up, letting go of Mrs. Knoble’s hand. “Hallo, Inspector. I haven’t asked Mrs. Knoble any questions. I don’t think she’s up to it.”