Murder Song

by Jon Cleary

  Malone, O’Brien and the others had been observed on expeditions on his own; scrutinized from a distance as under a microscope. Like bugs that were to be squashed.

  On the Saturday afternoon he had picked up the telescope in its leather case; they had eaten their picnic lunch and he had repacked the cooler. Up in the timber above them a magpie carolled and a sparrowhawk hung in the sky like a floating cross. “I’m going to see if there are any birds around here.”

  “Just so long as they’re feathered ones,” she said automatically; it was a joke that was wearing thin, as jokes do, even between people in love. She lay back on the rug they had spread out on the thick grass. “That sun’s so lovely. I’ll doze off for a while. I wish we could make love.”

  “What?”

  “I want to take my clothes off and make love here on a hilltop with the sun on your bum.”

  He smiled down at her lying flat on her back, lovely and inviting. “What if there are other bird-watchers out here somewhere? With their glasses or telescopes on us hard at it?”

  “It’d fog up their telescopes.” She smiled like a cat. “Go on, go and watch your birds. I’ll lie here and dream of what you’re doing to me.”

  He was tempted; sometimes she showed an abandon that was contrary to her public behaviour. Instead, he bent down and kissed her, dodged her lassoing arms, said, “I’ll see you tonight,” and went off up through the trees to the top of the hill. Above him the magpie carolled a musical warning, but he knew how to take care of himself. After all this time and all this success, he was not going to give himself away.

  He lay down on the brittle leaves that carpeted the stand of trees, adjusted the telescope and at once saw the familiar figure come out on to the verandah of the main house of the stud. It was Malone; he was joined a minute or two later by the other familiar figure, O’Brien. It was the first time Malloy had come up here to observe the stud; he had not expected his last two targets to be here. He had wanted to study the landscape because he had an unformulated idea that this was where he would like to dispose of O’Brien, who would be the last to die. Here amongst the tangible evidence of his wealth and success.

  Malloy put down the telescope because his hands were shaking. Christ, why didn’t he have the rifle with him! He would never have another opportunity like this. The distance was extreme, but he would have been able to get closer. He trembled with frustration; then sanity steadied him. If he had been alone, had had the rifle with him, he would have gone down there and taken a suicidal risk that, up till now, he had avoided. Julie, being with him, preventing him from bringing the Tikka, had unwittingly saved him from himself.

  He took up the telescope again, watched the two men for a while. Then he slowly scanned the rest of the stud. He soon picked up the security man, Shad, whom he recognized; then he saw the other men, two of them carrying automatic weapons tucked under their arms, all of them wearing pistols at their belt. He realized with a jolt of excitement that they were expecting him!

  He stood up, leaned against a tree till the excitement drained out of him. He had a feeling of power, an executioner who could name his own time. Then the cold reason that had protected him so far, that had kept him so many jumps ahead of those trying to trap him, settled firmly on him. He lay down again, trained the telescope on the main house and saw Malone and O’Brien now sitting at a small table eating a late lunch. They were too obvious: they were staking themselves out as lures. They were out in the open and they expected him to come out in the open, too; like some dumb wild animal, he was to fall for the bait of them. He would kill them in his own time and in a place of his own choosing, though he might have to change the murder roster. If Malone and O’Brien wanted to stay together as a single target, they would have to die together.

  He went back down through the timber to Julie. He heard the magpie carol again and looked up. Nesting early, it resented his intrusion into its territory. It came down out of a tall tree, dive-bombing him; its dagger beak scraped the top of his head. When it flew up in a steep curve, weaving amongst the trees like a black-and-white shuttle, and came back at him in a second dive he stood and waited for it; he had stood like this as a boy in the fields near Minnamook, testing the quickness of his eye against that of the bird. The magpie came down swiftly, straight at his head; he raised the telescope in its case, ducked at the last moment and hit the bird full across its throat. It wings fluttered wildly, but the magpie was already dead. It thudded to the ground, beating its wings feebly, then was still. He looked down at it without pity or any feeling at all. He was a country boy but, unlike most country boys, he had never had any love for birds or animals; they were part of the scenery, no more.

  The telescope was undamaged except for a dent in the leather cylinder. He slung the case over his shoulder and went on down to Julie. She was still lying on her back, eyes closed, seemingly asleep. He knelt down, put a hand up under her sweater and stroked her bra-less breasts.

  Her eyes remained closed. “Fred? Do it some more.”

  He squeezed a breast, hard. “Who’s Fred?”

  She didn’t open her eyes, just let the cat’s smile play round her full lips. “He’s someone I’ve made a date with tonight . . .”

  That night he made love to her so fiercely she cried out half a dozen times in painful ecstasy. Afterwards, when she had fallen asleep, he lay and stared at the darkness, wondering if it was the last time he would ever make love to her. Normally he did not suffer from post-coital blues. Those, he had always thought cynically, were the symptoms, not of nascent melancholia but of lack of stamina.

  Sunday morning he opened the newspapers to different treatments of the same story. The Sun-Herald and the Sunday Telegraph each ran a lead story on the hit list. When he had finished reading both of them he knew they were like most Sunday stories, no more than beat-ups, a few facts and a lot of guesswork. The police had fed the press just so much and no more; there was no mention that the murder suspect was an ex-policeman. The Police Department had had some bad publicity from a couple of incidents this year and it was obvious to him that the Department was trying to cover up that an ex-cop was going around killing off other cops. Pride and public relations occasionally conjoin, though the first is a stirring of the spirit and the latter is a stirring of the public’s gullibility.

  Julie, still in her dressing-gown, mouth bruised from last night’s love-making, looking as dissolute as a harlot and liking it, smiled at him above the Telegraph, which he had already read. “Wanna go back to bed, Fred?”

  “This afternoon,” he promised. “When I’ve got my strength back.”

  She smiled lazily, satisfied to wait, and went back to her paper. Then she looked at him again over the top of it. “You see this? Those killings you covered, they say they’re a hit list.”

  “It’s a beat-up.” He wondered what she would say if he told her the truth, gave her the other two names to complete the list. But he couldn’t do that to her. “You know what the print boys are like, they’ve got to fill their pages, especially on Sundays. We’ve heard nothing at the channel.”

  She wriggled her shoulders in a mock shiver. “I hate it whenever I read about real murder. It’s all right in detective novels, it’s, I dunno, somehow removed from you—”

  “Turn to the social pages. See if the usual free-loaders have got their photos in the news again.”

  After lunch he rang Nick Katzka at Channel 15; the news editor worked every second weekend. “Am I on stand-by today?”

  “No, you’re free, Col. There are the usual weekend press releases by the pollies, nothing of any interest to anybody—I dunno why they bother. There’s some good overseas items—a train wreck in Holland, a tornado in the States—some nice disaster stuff. See you tomorrow morning.”

  “What’s on the list for tomorrow?”

  “There’s the funeral of that singer, what’s-her-name, Mardi Jack—there should be some show business faces there. Then there is the funeral of that last cop
who was shot, Knoble. They’re both being buried out at Botany cemetery. You can cover them both and we’ll run „em in the same item.”

  He felt that touch of excitement again, the matador’s thrill as the bull’s horns graze past his belly. “Okay, I’ll do those. Anything else?”

  “Not at the moment. Oh, wait a minute. There was a cop up here this morning asking about you, a Sergeant Clements from Homicide. What’ve you been up to? He wanted to know your history, whether you volunteered for certain shifts—”

  He looked at his hand holding the phone; the knuckles were white. “Did he ask you not to tell me he was making enquiries?”

  “Well, yeah, he did. But you work for us, not them. He wasn’t prepared to be specific about anything, so I brushed him off—he got me just as I was getting down to work—”

  “Thanks, Nick. It’s personal. I lost my temper on a job a week or two ago and said something I shouldn’t have.” The lie came smoothly, as if he had rehearsed it. Perhaps he had, subconsciously. He had known that some day, inevitably, there would be questions: from the police or Julie or from that God who, Aunt Elsie had told him, would always be waiting with the final query. “He’s probably decided to do something official about it. You know cops, they can be pretty touchy about us in the media.”

  He hung up, stood motionless while his mind settled. He had sounded cool enough on the phone; but now he felt shaken and unsteady. For some time he had known there was the possibility of his being discovered; he also knew the thin line that divided possibility from probability. Fate was supposed to laugh at probability, but Fate always had the last laugh anyway. He had just not expected the net to be thrown so soon. Clements might already be on his way here. Nick Katzka might have to feature his chief cameraman as the lead item on tonight’s six o’clock news.

  He looked about the living-room where he stood. Julie had made a good home for him here. It was more than just a comfortable stop-over to somewhere better, though they dreamed of a house and a garden and a pool that they would not have to share with others. He earned $45,000 a year with shift work and overtime and Julie earned $23,000; their mortgage was manageable, they had no other major debt, they owned two cars and every year they could afford a holiday on the Barrier Reef or to Fiji or New Zealand. It was a lot to give up and, for the first time, he wondered if his urge for vengeance had been worth it. But then, of course, when he had first drawn up the hit list there had been no thought that he would ever be caught. That had only come later when the momentum of his excitement had taken hold of him.

  He went into the bedroom where Julie was taking a shower. He looked at her vague shape through the frosted glass; he hoped she would never become as shadowy as that in his memory. Suddenly he was angry with himself: he had sacrificed too much for stupid revenge! But it was too late.

  He slid back the door of the shower as she turned off the water. “I have to go on a job, up the bush. I’ll be away for a couple of days.”

  “Oh damn!” She stood glistening and dripping, her body still faintly tanned from last summer; her dark hair, cut short, lay flat and wet on her well-shaped head like a boy’s. She had never looked more desirable, he thought with great sadness. “I thought we could’ve gone to a movie and then come home and . . .”

  He put his arms round her and lifted her out of the shower and kissed her fiercely. Then he let her go. “No, don’t let’s get started again . . . I’ve got to be at the channel in half an hour.”

  “Where are you going?”

  It was harder to lie to her now, but he managed to grab a town out of the air: “Boggabilla. There’s been another Aboriginal riot.” Blame the Abos for anything: they were always good for a story, even to one’s wife. “I’ll be back tomorrow night, Tuesday at the latest.”

  She wrapped a terry-towelling gown round her. “I’ll pack for you. What do you want?”

  A flak jacket, a getaway jet, 50,000 dollars . . . “A couple of shirts, underwear, my blue sweater and my corduroys. I’ll wear my jeans and my anorak. Do you have any money?”

  “About seventy or eighty dollars, I think.”

  “Lend it to me. I’ll draw some more on my bank card.”

  “Why do you need so much? You’ll be on expenses, won’t you?”

  He had slipped up; he was finding it harder and harder to lie to her. He wanted to spill out the truth to her; but there was still the faint hope deep within him that she might never need to know. She was the one thing in the world he wanted to protect, “Sure, you’re right. Hurry up and pack, will you?”

  When she had gone out of the bathroom he looked at himself in the mirror. The beard would have to go. He had worn it now for ten years; he would be another man without it. It had not been grown as a disguise; now, he realized, he would be disguised without it. He took out his razor, shaving brush, trimming scissors and put them in his toilet kit. Then he looked in the mirror again and said goodbye to Colin Malloy.

  Ten minutes later he said goodbye to Julie at the front door. He tried to make it as casual as possible, as just a repeat of dozens of other farewells he had made when he had left for trips out of town. She was still wearing only the terry-towelling robe, but he did not attempt to feel beneath it. He was saying goodbye to more than her sex.

  “Be careful,” she said and it seemed to him that she had never before said that to him. Or was his ear too imaginative?

  He kissed her, tasting her, storing up another memory. “Don’t let any strange men in while I’m away.”

  Carrying his camera equipment and the telescope, he went down to the garage. He put the camera gear and the telescope in the back of the Nissan Patrol, then he unlocked the steel box bolted to the garage floor. He took out the gun-case and three packets of ammunition; he looked at the three remaining boxes and decided to leave them where they were. He was not planning any siege, with himself either inside or outside the circle.

  He backed the Nissan out of the garage, paused at the end of the short driveway and looked up at the flat on the sixth floor. Julie was on the verandah; she waved to him and blew him a kiss. He drove away up the quiet suburban street, feeling sick and sad, something he had never been prepared for. Except, of course, for that day twenty-three years ago when he had walked out of the police academy. But then he had been as angry as he had been sick and sad.

  IV

  Malone and Clements stood on either side of the flat’s front door. In answer to the ringing of the bell, the door was opened. Julie Malloy, in sweater and slacks, stood behind the security grille door.

  Malone turned side on, held his Smith & Wesson .38 out of sight. “I’m Inspector Malone, this is Sergeant Clements.” He held up his badge. “Is your husband home, Mrs. Malloy?”

  Julie shook her head. “No, he’s not home. What do you want?”

  “Just to talk to your husband. Where is he?”

  “He left this afternoon for Boggabilla. He’s gone up there on a job.”

  “May we come in and use your phone, Mrs. Malloy?”

  She hesitated, then she opened the security door. “I don’t like being on my own, but it happens a lot, my husband working the hours he does—”

  “My wife feels the same way,” said Malone sympathetically.

  In the living room Julie had crossed to switch off the television set in one corner. “I always look at the SBS world news. Channel 15 would fire Colin if they knew it’s one of his favourite programmes, too.” She looked more closely at Malone. “We met the other night, but I recognize you now. My husband has filmed you a couple of times. I always remember his clips in the news. Family pride, I suppose,” she said with a pleasant smile. “There’s the phone.”

  Malone glanced at Clements. “Go out and tell the fellers to go back to their vehicles, Russ. Tell „em to wait.”

  Clements paused at the door. “Mrs. Malloy, what sort of car would your husband be driving?”

  “He’d have driven our Nissan Patrol up to the channel. But from there they’d have gon
e in one of the news trucks.” She frowned, all at once looked worried and irritated. “What’s going on? What other men outside? What are they doing there?”

  Clements ignored the question. “Where does he keep the Nissan?”

  “Down in our garage, Number 11. What is this, for God’s sake?”

  Malone said, “We’ll explain in a minute, Mrs. Malloy. Would you give Sergeant Clements the key to your garage, please?”

  For a moment it looked as if she would refuse; then she went to a side-table, opened a drawer and took out a key. She tossed it almost angrily at Clements. “There’d better be a good explanation for all this!”