by Jon Cleary
“What’s the matter with you two? What do you want?”
“Police, Mrs. Blizzard. Inspector Malone and Sergeant Clements.” He produced his badge.
“Police? What’s this all about? You expected me, an old woman, to be timid, didn’t you?” They followed her into the cottage. “Shut the door, keep the wind out. I believe in saying what I think, that’s my right, right? Tea or coffee? It’s only instant, that’s all I can afford on my pension. The cost of living’s going up all the time, but do they care in Canberra, right?”
“Whichever you have the most of,” said Malone. “Tea, coffee, it doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t be polite. Make up your mind!”
“Coffee,” said Clements hastily and looked at Malone. If Blizzard was in this house, he would be properly cowed.
The house appeared to have three bedrooms, a bathroom and an open-plan kitchen and living-room that looked out to the slow-flowing river, where a pelican was just gliding in, like an old-time flying-boat. The rooms were stuffed with furniture: solid old-style chairs, tables and sideboards of polished cedar; the antique dealers of Paddington and Woollahra would pick the house clean if they were invited in. The walls were covered in old paintings, all of them cheap and amateurish, and old faded photographs; the house was a museum. Mrs. Blizzard hopped around in it like a long-legged bower-bird.
The two detectives sank down into deep leather chairs; some of the horsehair stuffing showed through one or two cracks. Mrs. Blizzard, chattering all the time, brought them coffee and a biscuit tin, at least a hundred years old, full of biscuits.
“Made them myself. Now what’s this all about?”
“It’s about your nephew Frank. We think he could help us in some enquiries we’re making.”
“What’s he been up to now?” Mrs. Blizzard bit into one of her biscuits, working her mouth with her lips closed as her dentures slipped. She was a tall woman, all bony angles; she might once have been good-looking, but now her face was wrinkled and gaunt. She had a head of thick white hair, bright blue eyes and, so far, no smile. She sat on a high-backed chair, taller than the two men sunk in their deep chairs. If she could only have remained still for a moment she would have suggested a dignified arrogance.
“What did he get up to when he was young? Or lately?”
“I haven’t heard from him in, oh I dunno, ten years, maybe more. No, he was a good boy when he was young. A bit moody, but only children often are, so they tell me. Sometimes he was a bit, too, well, quiet, we thought. But him and Jeff, my husband, got on well together.”
“How did he get on with you?” Malone put the question gently.
She glanced away for a moment, then back at the two detectives. “Not the best. I was a bit strict with him, he didn’t like being told when he was wrong. Jeff would take his side, so in the end I used to keep my mouth shut. I don’t think he ever got over the death of his parents, losing them when he was so young.”
“Did he ever talk about wanting to join the police?”
“He used to talk about it with Jeff. He wanted to be a detective—like you two, I suppose. He was always reading detective stories when he was young, Jeff would get them for him from the library in Kiama. American stories, Raymond Chandler, a writer named Macdonald or O’Donnell, something like that. I used to read them myself before he’d take the books back to get a new one.”
“They were about private eyes,” said Malone. “Sergeant Clements and I never have those sort of adventures.”
“Did you know him when he went to train at the police college or whatever it was?”
“Slightly. He never told us how much he wanted to be a detective.”
“He got into some sort of trouble there. He told Jeff about it, but I never got the gist of it, even. Jeff wouldn’t tell me. He was dead, anyway, two days later.”
“Who?” said Clements, as if he and Malone had missed something.
“Jeff. My husband. He had a heart attack and he went—just like that. It was a terrible shock.” She stopped, bit her lip: twenty-odd years ago was only yesterday, grief was there in the blood like an ineradicable cancer. Then she recovered, she was a woman who would never weep in public: “It hit Frank very hard. I thought at one time he was going to go out of his mind. He went—what’s the word?”
“Berserk?” said Malone.
She nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s it. He blamed Jeff’s death on what had happened to him up at the police college. He just said it once, but it was frightening, the way he said it.”
“Did the doctor think it was that that killed your husband?”
She shook her head. “Not really. We didn’t know it, Jeff and me, I mean, but his heart attack was just waiting to happen. Any shock could have killed him, any sort of sudden stress, they said. But maybe Frank was right. I’ll never know.”
“What happened after your husband’s death?”
“The day after the funeral Frank left home. I never saw him again. I never forgave him for going off and leaving me like that. We’d looked after him ever since he was two years old. You expect a bit more gratitude than that, right? What’s he done?”
Malone ignored that for the moment. “You never heard from him again?”
“Oh, I’d get the occasional Christmas card, sometimes a short letter. From up in Queensland most of the time, but I remember I got a couple from Darwin. The last Christmas cards were from places in Europe, I can’t remember where. I never kept them. I hadn’t forgiven him for going off the way he did. I said, what’s he done?”
“What sort of jobs did he have? I mean before he went into the police force and then up to Queensland?”
“He was a timber-worker. Jeff, my husband, worked as a timber-cutter all his life. So did Frank’s father. The Blizzards have been in the district for over a hundred years. They worked in the cedar forests up there in the hills. They’re all gone now, the cedar and the Blizzards.” She put her cup and saucer down on a cedar table, said demandingly, “Now stop beating about the bush. What’s he done?”
Malone wanted to cushion the blow, but he could think of no way of doing it. It had happened before: no matter how much you hated it, you hit the woman harder than you intended. “We suspect him of murder. Four murders, in fact.”
“Four? Who?”
“Three men and a girl. None of them related.” He didn’t elaborate. “You might’ve read about „em in the papers.”
“I never read about violence.”
The wrinkles in her face seemed to increase; the bright blue eyes dimmed with sudden pain. She’s tried to cut him out of her life, Malone thought, but it hasn’t worked. She turned her head and looked at a wooden-framed photo on the wall; one amongst many, but there was no doubt which one she was looking at. Malone had missed it amongst the gallery hung on the walls. A tall teenage boy, hair cut short, dressed in baggy overalls, stood in an awkward pose, a rifle held with both hands in front of him, four rabbits lying at his feet in a heap like a rumpled mat.
“That’s him?” said Clements. “Was he a good shot?”
“My husband said he was the best shot he’d ever seen. They used to go hunting together, up the river. Sometimes Jeff would come home empty-handed, but Frank would always have something, a rabbit or a duck.” She looked back at the two policemen. “Murder? Four murders? No, not Frank!”
“Yes,” said Malone. “Don’t you believe he’s capable of committing them?”
“No,” she said, but it seemed that her voice held no conviction.
“We don’t have any proof yet, but he’s the chief suspect. We still have to trace him. We don’t even know what he looks like now.” He glanced at the photo on the wall, then looked back at Mrs. Blizzard. “We’d like to borrow that photo to make a copy. Would you recognize him now if you saw him?”
She was still getting over the shock of what she had been told. She had never had any children of her own, but she had known what it was like to be a mother. “I dunno. We all change, don�
��t we? I’ve changed.” She nodded at another photo on a wall: a proud girl, dark-haired, very tanned, stared at the three of them. She reminded Malone of pictures he had seen of early Egyptian princesses, but he didn’t know whether Mrs. Blizzard would consider that a compliment. “When you look in the mirror, do you remember what you looked like when you were young?”
No: you remembered other faces better than your own. Except that he could not remember Frank Blizzard’s. “What would Frank be now?”
“Forty-five, I think. Maybe forty-four. Is that still middle-aged? It was in my day. But everyone wants to be younger now, don’t they?”
Then the phone rang. For some reason Clements started in his chair, as if he had expected there would be no phone amongst all the old heavy furniture. Mrs. Blizzard got up, went to the sideboard and lifted a needlepoint cover that Malone had thought was a tea-cosy. Under it was the telephone.
“Hallo? . . . Yes. Who’s this?” Then her hand shook and she almost dropped the phone. “No, Frank, no. Where are you?” She looked at Malone, mouthed, It’s him. “No, Frank, I didn’t send for them—”
Malone jumped up, grabbed the phone, jerking it from her hand more roughly than he had intended. “Blizzard? This is Inspector Malone—”
“I know who you are, Malone. You’ve been in my sights for a couple of weeks. You’re dead, Malone, whether you know it or not.”
There was silence for a moment; then the dial tone burrowed against his ear. He put down the phone, replaced the needlepoint cover. Then he put his hand on Mrs. Blizzard’s bony arm, felt the trembling flooding through her. She was on the point of tears and he thought for a moment he had hurt her when he had snatched the phone from her. Then he saw that the pain was much deeper, was all through her. He gently eased her back on to her chair.
“Did he threaten you?”
She shook her head, was dumb for a long moment. Then: “No. He asked me if I’d sent for you . . . As if I would—” She had forgotten that she had tried to cut him out of her life.
“Was it a local call? Or were there pips from an STD call?”
She shook her head again, not even looking at him. “No pips. No one ever calls me on a trunk call.”
Malone said to Clements, “That means he tailed us down here. Did you see anyone on our tail all the way down?”
“I wasn’t even looking for anyone,” Clements confessed. “If that highway guy hadn’t flashed his lights at me, I wouldn’t have noticed him.”
Malone turned back to Mrs. Blizzard. She had poured herself another cup of coffee and seemed to be gathering some strength from it. He remembered an old aspirin powder slogan: a cuppa tea, a Bex and a nice lie-down; but he didn’t think Mrs. Blizzard would ever lie down, not even for a murdering foster-son. There was something of the durability of cedar in her.
“I think we’d better have a policewoman move in here with you—”
“No,” she said firmly and put down her cup and saucer, her hand stiff and firm as a wrench. “Nobody’s moving in here with me, not a stranger. I can look after myself, I’ve done it ever since my husband died. I’m just glad now that he’s dead,” she added and there was just a slight tremor in her voice. “Don’t worry about me, Inspector. Frank won’t hurt me.”
Malone wasn’t so sure, but he knew he would never win an argument with her, not if he stayed here all day. “Well, we’d better tell the local police to drop by every now and then.”
“I don’t want them here—” But her objection now was only half-hearted.
“If Frank calls again, you’ll let us know.” He put his card on the table beside her cup and saucer.
She took her time about replying; then: “Depends what he talks to me about. If I think he’s going to commit another—another murder, all right, I’ll ring you. But not if he just wants to talk to me. I’m still his foster-mother, right?”
Malone had seen it before, the apron strings pulling the mother down into the drowning pool; but he knew Lisa would be the same if any of the children ever got into trouble. “Fair enough. Is there anyone else here in Minnamook that he’s likely to contact? Old mates? An old girl-friend?”
“He had only one mate, but he was killed in Vietnam. He never had a regular girl-friend. He could be a little queer at times.”
“Was he homosexual?”
She was shocked, it was something beyond her ken. “Frank? Here in Minnamook? We’d never stand for anything like that, not when Frank lived here. Not even now. We’re churchgoers around here,” she said, as if hell and its sins were miles away across the river and up in Sydney.
Minnamook had still managed to breed a multiple murderer: but Malone didn’t mention that. He didn’t know why he had asked the question about the possibility of homosexuality; it smacked of Clements’ prejudices. “Did he play the field with the girls?”
“Play the field?” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like that expression. He didn’t have loose morals, if that’s what you mean. He was a decent, religious boy all the time he lived with us.”
Well, he’s a sinner now. “Righto, Mrs. Blizzard. We’ll probably be in touch again. Can Sergeant Clements take that photo? We’ll send it back.”
She took the photo from the wall, handed it to Clements. “You’ll ring me if you catch him? I don’t want to read it in the papers or hear it on the wireless. I have the right to be the first to know, right?”
“We’ll let you know at once, as soon as we catch him. Goodbye, Mrs. Blizzard. And don’t be too rough on the local police. They only have your interest at heart.”
“Just so long’s they don’t want to come into my home. I did you a favour letting you in.”
“And we appreciate it,” said Malone as she shut the front door in his face.
He knew with certainty, as if he were staring at her through clear glass, that behind the door she had already begun to weep. She would, however, never let anyone see the tears. She reminded him, in a way, of his own mother and he wished, somehow, that he could help her. But that was beyond him. Whatever he might do from now on would only hurt her even more.
IV
They thanked the two young policemen for their support and sent them back to Wollongong and local issues. Then they drove back north, Clements now alert to anyone who might be following them. But there was too much traffic on the freeway and it was impossible to tell if any particular car was tailing them. Once they pulled into the side of the road and stopped, but the following cars and trucks just hurtled by without slowing.
Clements shook his head. “He’s too smart. We’re never gunna catch him this way.”
Malone looked at his watch. “We’re not going to make it to the airport in time. Let’s see if Mr. Waldorf has already arrived home.”
They drove on and at the southern outskirts of Sydney, at Sutherland, they turned east and drove down to Yowie Bay. In the twenties and thirties it had been an area of very modest weekenders, interspersed with the occasional fibro or weatherboard cottage of a retired blue-collar worker. Fishermen frequented it to catch trevalli and leatherjackets; the odd shark or two had been sighted in the narrow bay, but they had been scared off in the years after World War Two by the real estate developers, as had the fishermen. The waterfront now was occupied by expensive houses, some of them with pretensions to mansions; behind them were more modest houses, solid in their own pretensions. This was an area of postwar money and the locals were proud to show it.
Sebastian Waldorf’s home had a waterfrontage, but it was not a mansion. It had pretensions to being an Italian villa, a suitable abode for an opera singer; the builder, an immigrant from Lombardy, had tried to imagine Yowie Bay as Lake Garda. There was a pool at the water’s edge and a five-metre boat moored at a small jetty. A red Lancia stood in the driveway.
Malone said, “I always thought opera singers made less than plumbers in this country?”
“No, it’s cops who make less than plumbers,” said Clements, parking the car at the kerb. “Sebasti
an—I guess we’d better get used to calling him that—made his money overseas. He does all right back here, but he doesn’t make the loot that Joan Sutherland and some of the others do.”
“Are you an opera lover?”
“I always thought Il Trovatore was some sort of pasta. I once ordered it in a restaurant.”
Sebastian Waldorf, né Samuel Culp, himself opened the rather ornate front door. “Yes? Are you reporters?”
“No,” said Malone. “Were you expecting someone from the press?”
Waldorf’s face had been wide open in a welcoming smile; now all at once it closed up and he frowned. “Who are you?”
Malone introduced himself and Clements. “You might remember me? We were in the same group at the police academy back in 1965.”
“When you were plain Sam Culp,” said Clements with a policeman’s ever-present suspicion of aliases.
Waldorf’s face remained closed up. He was tall and well-built, a man who obviously took care of himself; he had Italian good looks that went well with the villa and the car. He was wearing a red cashmere sweater, tight designer jeans, expensive loafers and a gold watch on one wrist and a heavy gold bracelet on the other. He would never be lonely while he had a mirror to look into. Here was someone who would remember how he had looked every day of his life.
“What’s this all about?” He had lost his Australian accent, he had an international voice that, Malone guessed, would take on the accent of wherever he happened to be.
“I think it would be better if we came inside, Mr. Waldorf,” said Malone.
The singer nodded and led them through a wide entrance lobby into a large living-room that looked out on to the bay through a screen of white-limbed gums. It was well furnished, but it did not look lived in, as if it saw its owner infrequently. There were paintings on the walls, all of them modern and none of them suggesting any Australian landscape. One wall was given up to shelves of books, records and cassettes and at least a dozen photographs of Waldorf in opera costume, sometimes with another singer, always a woman.