Murder Song

by Jon Cleary

  Don’t shoot now, Blizzard, and maybe kill another innocent.

  “Hallo, Gina. It’s a sad day.”

  “I heard you call that guy over there Brian. Is he the B. who was in Mardi’s journal?”

  “No,” he said without hesitation, protecting her and O’Brien from any further stirring of her feelings. “He just owns the recording company, he thought he’d like to come up here and pay his respects. But he’s really here with me to attend the other funeral, the policeman’s. We were all old friends once.”

  She looked at him doubtfully. Under the drooping brim of her hat, her eyes puffed, her face devoid of make-up, she was even plainer than he had remembered her. He wondered if she had come alone to the funeral and if she would leave alone. The show business people were starting to leave the graveside and none of them was looking back for her.

  “Did Mardi’s father come down for the funeral?”

  “No. There are some bastards in the world, fathers included.”

  “Yes,” he said, who knew even better than she about the bastards of the world. Our Father, Who art in Heaven, never let my kids say that about me . . .

  “Do you think you’ll ever find the guy who killed her?”

  He looked around the rain-drenched cemetery, then back at her. “I hope so, Gina. For everybody’s sake.”

  Then she told him to take care of himself and moved off, stumbling up the slippery path as she tried to catch up with the departing mourners. That would be her life, he thought, always trying to catch up with those she hoped would be her friends.

  He, Clements and O’Brien walked back down the hill without any word between them. The Knoble funeral had arrived; this time senior officers had come to the cemetery. Malone saw the Commissioner and several Assistant Commissioners, including A/C Falkender, who looked across and shook his head as if in disapproval of Malone’s attendance. As soon as the coffin was lowered into the grave, Malone nodded to Clements and O’Brien.

  “Let’s get out of here. Otherwise I’m going to get my arse kicked for being here.”

  They walked quickly out of the cemetery to where they had parked their car. As they got into it, Harry Danforth, puffing with the unaccustomed exertion, came hurrying out of the gates after them.

  “You’re in the shit, Scobie. The Commissioner’s livid that you’re here, especially after what happened last night. I’m supposed to tell you.”

  “Righto, Harry, you just have. We’re going back to Cossack Lodge now.”

  “I’ll follow you, we’ve gotta do some talking about what happens from here on. How’s the new car going, Russ?”

  “Fine, Chief,” said Clements. “How’s your old one?”

  Danforth grunted and left them. Clements put the car into Drive and they went up past the TV vans and the press cars; some cameras swung round to follow them, but Malone did not care. He wondered if Malloy-Blizzard would have been here, camera at the ready, if they had not discovered who he was.

  V

  When the three men, Malone, O’Brien and the big detective Clements, had come out of the main house of the stud, Frank Blizzard had seen them from the cover of a thick stand of trees a mile and a half away. Sitting there on the hill, the powerful telescope trained on the main house, he had seen them come out and get into the unmarked police car. The car had gone down the driveway to the road, followed by another unmarked car with three armed men in it whom he took to be police. The cars turned in the direction of Sydney and a couple of minutes later passed below him within a couple of hundred yards.

  He had remarked that no luggage had been brought out to the cars and that the other armed men, police or security guards, had remained at the stud. That meant Malone and O’Brien would be returning some time during the day. He was prepared to wait.

  He had arrived here at six o’clock this morning, having spent last night at a motel at Bowral, seventy kilometres south of here. Yesterday afternoon he had driven the Nissan Patrol up Parramatta Road, passing several dealers till he saw a small used-car lot that had the look he was searching for, slightly rundown, its string of pennants as tattered as the flags of a defeated ship. The salesman who came out to greet him had much the same look, a matelot trying to stay afloat.

  “How much for this?” said Blizzard. “1986, 35,000 k’s genuine mileage.”

  The salesman, thin and long-jawed, ran a crocodile eye over the vehicle. “I dunno we’re in the market for a Patrol, y’know, the downturn in the economy and all that. Leisure stuff, that’s pretty hard to move these days, the yuppies are staying at home. The most I could offer would be, I dunno, I’d have to have a think about it—” He had to think, one of the quickest thoughts Blizzard had ever witnessed pass through a human head. “I couldn’t offer you any more than, say, twelve thousand tops.”

  Blizzard knew it was worth at least fifteen. “I’ll take it.”

  The crocodile eyes blinked: Why wasn’t the world full of mugs like this every day?

  “Just one thing. I want it in cash. I won’t argue about the price, you don’t argue about paying cash.”

  “Ah gee, sport, waddia take me for? You could of pinched this from anyone—I don’t handle hot vehicles—” He would handle a burning one if it meant a quick profit. “You got your papers?”

  “Everything. Registration, licence, my credit cards—”

  “They could of been in the vehicle, sport—”

  Blizzard produced his Channel 15 security card with his photo on it. It didn’t matter showing his identity now; it would be at least four hours before his picture would go out on the news with the information that the police wanted him for questioning. By then he would be a long way from this salesman who was doing his best to hide his eagerness to make a cheap buy.

  “Okay, you got a deal. You’re lucky I got just that amount of cash in the safe—I just sold a Toyota, dirt cheap, beautiful bargain, to a guy who said he didn’t trust banks—”

  Sunday afternoon on Parramatta Road: Blizzard wondered how much cash was floating up and down the car lots, passing from hand to hand of men who didn’t trust banks.

  Ten minutes later he walked off the lot with $12,000 in his overnight bag, which was slung by its strap over his back. The telescope case hung by its strap from round his neck, in one hand he carried his camera box, in the other the gun-case. “Geez, you’re loaded, sport. You sure you don’t wanna buy a smaller car? I got a beautiful bargain out there, a 1987 Honda Civic, one owner-driver, my aunt, as a matter of fact . . .”

  Blizzard walked a hundred yards up the street and bought a motor-cycle, a Honda GL1000, for $4000. He also bought a helmet and gloves, strapped all his gear on the pillion rack and rode out of the lot and headed south.

  He stopped at a McDonald’s, bought two hamburgers and an apple slice, ate them and then rode on south again. Just before he got to Bowral he turned off the Hume Highway on to a side-road and pulled up beside a small creek. He scrambled down the bank, taking a mirror and shaving gear and scissors with him. There, over the next twenty minutes, he set about eliminating Colin Malloy from whatever remained of the rest of his life. When he had finished he looked at himself in the mirror and had no instant recognition of the man he saw there. The clean-shaven, balding man was a stranger; and for a moment he was terribly frightened. This was the madman who had killed five people and who had just wiped out Colin Malloy who, unlike Frank Blizzard, had experienced happiness. He had run his hand over his tender face like a blind man seeking to identify a stranger.

  Now, standing in the timber, watching the two police cars go down the road towards Sydney, hearing the rain beginning to fall on the upper foliage of the trees, he was sane enough to know that he was suffering from some sort of madness. He had once read a poem, he couldn’t remember who it was by, and a line had stood out: There is a pleasure sure in being mad that none but madmen know. Ah, but you would have to be really round the twist to get pleasure out of it. And he was far from that: he was sane enough to know that, too. A
ll he hoped was that no one would call him a psychopath. He could not take an insult like that to the grave with him.

  He stayed in the timber for another two hours, huddled in his anorak and helmet against the rain dripping steadily down through the filter of the branches high above him. The motorcycle was hidden under bushes at the edge of the timber, though he was not expecting anyone to come searching for him, least of all a police helicopter on a day like this.

  At last he went back to the motor-cycle, stripped the camouflage away from it and rode it down the slippery hillside to a narrow dirt track that ran through the paddocks and parallel to the road. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were still full and low, moving slowly over the crest of distant hills like great flocks of sheep. He came to a gate, opened it and went through on to a gravel road that ran at right angles to the tarred Sydney road. A hundred yards along he came to another clump of trees; beyond it a narrow wooden bridge spanned a culvert through which the tarred road dipped and climbed. As he got off the motor-cycle, a pick-up truck came across the bridge, the timbers rattling like gunfire under it, the driver saluted and the truck went on up the gravel road.

  Blizzard parked the motor-cycle under the trees, got out the gun-case and assembled the Tikka and the telescopic sight. Then he went back to the bridge, climbed over its low wooden railing and found a natural seat on a ledge of rock above the cutting. He sat down to wait, for as long as was necessary. The last of the six green bottles would come down the road . . . He began to hum the old song, sitting there in the steadily falling rain, which had started again, like a busker waiting for someone to come by and reward him. Then abruptly he began to weep and a terrible pain spread across the back of his head, where the rottenness had lain all those years. But it was an old pain and he could bear it. Maybe today would ease it for ever.

  It was just after midday, with the rain still falling, when he saw the three cars coming along the road from the direction of Sydney. They were still half a mile away, approaching at a steady rate. He put the Tasco telescope to his eye, focused on the leading car and saw Malone in the front seat beside the driver, who looked like the big man Clements. He could not see who was in the rear seat, but if O’Brien was not there he was sure he was in one of the following cars.

  He put down the Tasco, picked up the rifle, adjusted the „scope sight and aimed at Malone as the leading car reached the top of the dip that led down under the bridge.

  VI

  Clements didn’t see the pot-hole till the last moment. He had had to swerve to miss several of them in the last mile or two; he had hit one of them and there had been a horrible thumping noise under the car. Now he swung the car to the left and that swerve saved Malone’s life. The bullet went through the middle of the windscreen, right between Malone and Clements, and hit the rear door beside O’Brien as he lolled in the back seat. The windscreen was starred round the bullet-hole, but Clements’ vision was not obscured. The car skidded back to the right of the narrow road, slipped on the greasy shoulder and hit the steep bank, scraping along its rock-ribs as it careered down the cutting. Had it not been for the steep wall of the bank, the car would have rolled over; as it was, it tilted over far enough for the side windows to be smashed as the car hit protruding rocks in the bank. The Commodore, still upright on all four wheels, was fifty yards down into the cutting before Clements managed to bring it to a halt.

  Malone opened his door and fell out on to the roadway, drawing his gun and yelling at O’Brien to stay where he was in the back seat. He heard a second shot hit the car fender a foot from his head and he crawled round the back of the Commodore as the other two cars skidded to a stop behind him. On his feet now but crouched over, he chanced a look up between the wrecked car and the steep bank and saw the beardless man in the anorak aiming at him again. The bullet hit a projecting rock, sending a chip flying into Malone’s cheek, stinging him so that he gasped, and went ricocheting away. Malone fired back, but his shot was hasty and went astray. Then he was up and running down the cutting, slipping once on the greasy road, and in under the bridge.

  He heard the gunfire from behind him; the police had scrambled out of their car and were firing at Blizzard. Danforth’s car was nose-to-tail against the police car, but Malone couldn’t see the Chief Superintendent. Malone pulled up for a moment to get his breath; he put his hand to his cheek and felt the blood there. Then he went on under the bridge and up the other side of the cutting, keeping close to the overhang of the bank, slipping and stumbling in the mud of the shoulder but somehow managing to keep his feet. The rain had seemed to increase; or maybe it was only his imagination; he had no clear grasp of anything. The showdown with Blizzard had come at last and somehow he was not as prepared for it as he had expected to be. Maybe the waiting had gone on too long.

  Another bullet ricocheted off a rock behind him, but the angle was too acute for Blizzard to get a clean shot at him. He kept running till he came up out of the culvert, swung off the shoulder and flopped into a shallow ditch beside a fallen tree, sending up a splash of muddy water as he did so. The rain now was pelting down, it was not his imagination; his hat was back in the car and the water swished across his face like a wet veil. He wiped his eyes, lay flat in the liquid mud of the ditch and looked back at the bridge.

  Blizzard, seemingly careless of his own death, stood in the middle of the bridge, the rifle aimed straight at Malone. The latter fired an instant before Blizzard could squeeze the trigger of the Tikka. The rifle did go off, but it was pointed at the sodden sky as Blizzard fell backwards with Malone’s bullet taking off the top of his skull. Malone would never fire a luckier shot; at the distance and in the rain, the bullet could have missed Blizzard by feet. Justice, often blind in one eye, occasionally has 20/20 vision in the other.

  Malone lifted himself out of the ditch, wiped his face with a muddy hand. The whole front of him was black with mud; he looked primeval. But better primeval than dead. He walked back down the road, under the bridge and up to the wrecked Commodore. Clements, nursing an injured arm, and O’Brien were standing in the rain; Harry Danforth was standing with them, his gun in his hand. The three police officers had scrambled up the bank and were now on the bridge.

  Danforth put his gun back in his holster. “You okay, Scobie? Your cheek’s bleeding.”

  “Just a nick. I’m okay.”

  Danforth then shouted to the officers up on the bridge. “How is he?”

  “Dead, Chief.”

  “Good. Thank Christ it’s all over.”

  “How are you, Russ?” Malone looked with concern at Clements, who was tenderly holding his left arm.

  “I think I’ve broken it. It’s hurting like buggery. But we’re alive, so why complain? It was Blizzard, wasn’t it?”

  Malone nodded. “Pretty sure. I’ll go up and have a look. You okay, Brian?”

  “I dunno,” said O’Brien and leaned against the car. “I thought I was. Now all of a sudden I’ve got no legs. I can’t believe it’s all over.”

  Danforth looked at him carefully, then he said, “I’ll take you up to the stud, you can get a good stiff drink or a cuppa tea or something into you . . . You take charge here, Scobie—it’s been your case all along. Better get an ambulance out here for Russ.”

  Malone walked the few yards back along the road to Danforth’s car with him and O’Brien. “I’ll be about half an hour, Brian. Have a whisky ready for me.”

  “Sure. Well, we survived . . .” He wiped the rain from his face, the gesture of a weary man who had at last been able to stop running; or at least to drop to a slow trot. The downpour had eased and there was just a thin mist of moisture.

  We’ve survived, Malone thought, up till now. But there was still tomorrow and he knew that O’Brien would be more aware of that than he was. O’Brien got into Danforth’s car and Malone slammed the door shut after him. “Have that whisky ready.”

  “I’ll join you,” said Danforth, who never said no to a drink, whether he was invited or not. H
e was already in behind the wheel. He reached to turn on the ignition, then sat back, lifting his big belly. He took his Smith & Wesson out of his waistband holster, leaned across and put it in the glove-box. “I’m getting too fat to carry a gun. Well, see you in a while, Scobie. I’ll come back as soon’s I’ve delivered Mr. O’Brien.”

  He took the car down under the bridge and up towards the road that led to the stud. Malone looked at Clements. “Get on the radio, Russ, call in all the necessary. Then sit there and don’t move your arm.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going up to have a look at Frank Blizzard. I still can’t remember what he looked like twenty-three years ago.”

  He went up and along the top of the bank and on to the bridge. The three officers, looking like oiled birds in their wet slickers, stood aside as he approached them. “It’s him, all right, Inspector. The rifle’s a Tikka. There’s ammo in his pockets, .243s. You can bet the bullets in your car will match the others ones you told us about.”

  Malone looked down at the stranger. All that was familiar was the anorak; Malone had seen Malloy wearing it on at least two occasions. One of the policemen had pulled up the blood-stained hood to hide the horrible wound. All that was exposed was the beardless face, almost white below the cheeks, eyes shut tight against the rain or the pain, it was impossible to tell. The face was a mask, but with nobody that Malone knew behind it.

  Then one of the officers said, “Hallo, what’s up? The Chief’s coming back.”

  Malone turned and looked up the road. Danforth’s car was coming back, moving slowly, as if in bottom gear. It went down under the bridge, then up to the other two cars. Malone told one of the officers to stay with Blizzard’s body, then he and the other two officers went running along the top of the bank and slid down to the roadway. Danforth still sat in his car, motionless and impassive. Beside him O’Brien lay against the car door, a red gaping hole in the side of his head, Danforth’s Smith & Wesson held loosely in his hand.