by Jon Cleary
“G’day, Inspector. You heard about Frank Minto? Geez, it makes you wonder. You’d think you’d be safe in a place like this, wouldn’t you?”
Russ Clements was in Romy Keller’s office, neither of them acting like the lovers they were. Romy was German-born, dark-haired and, in both Clements’ and Malone’s eyes, beautiful. Clements was big and untidy, like a bag of clothing on its way to the dry cleaners, unhandsome but with a big pleasant face that appealed to a lot of women old enough to need a little tenderness. Which was what Romy saw in him, and more.
Romy kissed Malone on the cheek, then went round behind her desk and sat down. Two years ago her father had proved to be a murderer; with Clements’ help she had weathered the blow. She had been on the verge of leaving the morgue’s staff, but had been persuaded to stay on in the State Health Department and was now deputy director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Her eyes, when gay, were resplendent; but here at work she toned down the light in them. She was a woman used to men, alive and dead: they had few secrets for her.
“Seems we have something of a mess here, Scobie. Poor Frank Minto—why would anyone want to kill him? If they wanted to steal a body, for God knows what reason, they could have just tied him up.”
“Maybe he tried to stop them?”
She shook her head. “After those thugs came in some months ago and showed Frank a gun and demanded to see a body, we had a meeting and decided that if anything like that happened again, nobody was to stand in the way. Frank was a sensible man, he wouldn’t have put any value on a corpse, not to the extent of trying to hang on to it. No, whoever it was shot him in cold blood. They didn’t put any value on a living body.”
“They must’ve put some value on the corpse they stole?” Up till now Clements had sat silent; sometimes Malone had the feeling that the big man saw Romy as his superior. Which was wrong: in his own way Russ Clements was as competent, or more than that, as Romy.
“We won’t know till we find out who they stole.”
Malone raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”
“It was a male, unknown,” said Romy. “Middle-aged, Mediterranean look, no identification at all on him. He’d worn two rings, one on his left wedding finger, the other on his right little finger. They’d been pulled off, the skin was scraped on the little finger. His clothes are in a bag outside, but I gather they’ll tell you nothing.”
“All good stuff,” said Clements, “but off the rack. It could of been bought anywhere.”
“Where was the body found?”
“In a park by Cook’s River, out at Canterbury. Some kid and his girlfriend found him last night, about eight p.m. They called the locals, the Campsie D’s are in charge of it.”
“So why are we in on it? Have they asked for us?” Local police protected their turf jealously.
“Not so far. But whoever took the body, took all the records of it.”
“They even wiped out all our data on the computer,” said Romy. “Whoever it was knew their way around a morgue. But they forgot one thing. The cops who picked up the body still have their notes. I called them earlier.”
“Could it have been an inside job?”
Romy shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t think anyone here would have killed Frank Minto.”
Malone looked at Clements. The big man was still uncharacteristically quiet, his attention more on Romy than on Malone. Had they had a row, were together now only because of their work? “Russ? Russ?”
Clements gathered himself together. “I’ll start questioning the staff, but like Romy says, I don’t think it’s an inside job. Too obvious. You asked me why we’re in on this. Tell him, hon.”
Romy smiled at him, as if she enjoyed being called hon, even on duty. But there was something wrong with the smile, a wryness that took the affection out of it. Then she looked back at Malone.
“There was a note in Frank’s pocket, a scribble addressed to me. Frank took his job more seriously than it looked—he was thinking of studying pathology, though I don’t think he really had the education for it. Anyhow, he would often do a more thorough examination of a body than just checking it in.”
“What did his note say?”
“He found a puncture at the base of the skull of the body that’s missing. This morning I did an autopsy, a preliminary one, on a body that came in last night about two hours before the other was brought in. He was supposed to have jumped or been pushed off a balcony twenty storeys up—the body was a mess. But I think he was dead before they tossed him off the balcony. There was a puncture at the base of his skull, too. It’s a subtle way of killing, but it would have to be done by someone who had some medical knowledge. You flex the head forward as far as it will go, then you push a broad needle or a thin scalpel into what we call the atlas, the first cervical vertebra. That’s what they did to Mr. Sweden and, from Frank’s note, I’d say the same was done to our unknown male from Canterbury.”
“Who is Mr. Sweden?” Malone asked Clements, all at once wondering if the big man and Romy were playing some sick joke on him. “Not our—”
“That’s why I called you in. No, he’s not our new Police Minister. He’s Derek’s son.”
Malone swore under his breath; he belonged to a dying school that didn’t swear in front of women. Even some of the hookers he knew respected him for it, since they met few gentlemen in bed or the back seat of a car, even a Mercedes.
“I think I’ll go on sick leave.”
2
I
AS THEY walked out into the still-warm day some dark clouds were boiling in from the south-east; a few fat drops of rain caught the sun as they fell, turning the air into a thin gold mesh. A van came down the street and turned into the morgue’s loading dock: another delivery, another death. Two women stood talking at the gate of a house on the opposite side of the road, but neither of them gave the van a glance.
Malone said, “It’s none of my business, but have you and Romy had a row?”
“Not exactly,” said Clements. “It was just—well, she told me this morning she’s ready for marriage.”
“She proposed to you? Amongst the stiffs?”
“Well, no, not exactly. We weren’t in where they keep the bodies. We were in the murder room, but it was empty.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing so far. I was still digesting it when you walked in.”
“That’s why you looked like a stunned mullet. It’s about time you made up your mind, son. You’ve been going with her, what, two years now? You’re never going to get anyone as good as her.”
“It was just a bit sudden.”
“Sudden? Two bloody years, you’re up to your eyeballs in love with her and it’s sudden when she tells you she’d like to get married? How long are you going to wait? Till the two of you are laid out side by side on trolleys back in there?” He nodded over his shoulder.
“You’re starting to sound like a real bloody matchmaker.”
“Wait till I tell Lisa, then you’ll find out what a real bloody matchmaker is. Righto, where do we go from here? You dragged me away from a day with Tom, I hope you’ve got something organized?”
“All right, don’t get snarly just because I don’t wanna be hasty about getting married. You got your car? I caught a cab up here, a Wog who wanted to take me via Parramatta till I showed him my badge. Then he said the ride was on him.” He grinned; sometimes he relished his prejudices. “I think we should go down and have a look at the scene of the crime.”
“Which scene?”
“The one down at The Wharf. You’d rather go there than out to Canterbury, wouldn’t you?”
“The Wharf? You mean this bloke Sweden, the son, had an apartment there?”
“No, it’s his father’s and his stepmother’s. She’s one of the Bruna sisters.”
“You’re ahead of me.” Malone led the way towards the family car, the nine-year-old Holden Commodore. Lisa and the children were pressing him to buy a new one, bu
t as usual when it came to spending money, especially large sums, he said he couldn’t find his cheque-book. “Who’re the Bruna sisters?”
Clements was a grab-bag of trivial information. “Don’t you ever read Women’s Weekly? The Bruna sisters are our equivalent of the Gabor sisters, Zsa Zsa, Eva and the other one—”
“You mean you don’t know the other one’s name? It’s Charlene.” Malone was heading the Commodore downtown.
“These three sisters came originally from Roumania, I think it was, when they were kids. They all married money. Several times, with each sister. They’re good-lookers, they’re rich and if any of them are there at the apartments, I don’t think they’ll give you and me the time of day.”
“How are you so well informed on them? Do you have a gig on the Women’s Weekly?” Malone had his own gigs, informers, but none on a women’s magazine.
“I started taking an interest in them when I found out who they were married to. There’s this one whose place we’re going to, she’s married to our Minister—he’s her second or third husband, I forget which. Then there’s one married to Cormac Casement—his money’s so old it’s mouldy. She’s his second wife and he’s her third husband. And then there’s the youngest, she’s married, her third husband, to Jack Aldwych Junior. Yeah, I thought that’d make you sit up.”
Malone nodded, trying to picture Jack Aldwych, once Sydney’s top crime boss, on the verge of the local social scene. Then he dropped the image from his mind, turned to getting the next few hours, maybe weeks, into step in his mind. They passed the University of Technology, a tall grey building that could not have generated much optimism in the hearts of those who entered it. Malone had to slow as a group of students, ignoring the traffic, crossed the wide main street at their leisure, jerking their fingers at those motorists who had the hide to honk at them. A larger group was gathered in front of the university’s entrance, massing for another demonstration. Demos were becoming frequent again: against further cuts in student grants, against undeclared wars, against the recession. Rent-a-Crowd, Malone guessed, was doing business as good as it had done back in the Sixties and Seventies. He slowed the Commodore down to walking pace as a student, flat-topped, wearing jeans and a sweater three times too large for him, crossed in front of the car, daring the driver to run him down.
“If he knew we were cops,” said Clements, “he’d of laid down in front of us.”
Malone ignored the student, waited till he had passed and then drove on. The student had his troubles; there was probably no one of his age who didn’t. But Malone had his own: “The Police Minister’s son, the son of our best-known crim, a missing stranger who died the same way as Sweden’s son—you got any more you want to throw in the pot with that stew?”
“Not at the moment,” said Clements.
“These—Bruna?—sisters. Is there anything dirty against them?”
“Only that they marry for money. I don’t think that’s a crime, not out in the eastern suburbs.” Clements came originally from Rockdale, an area that those in the east would have trouble finding on a map. Australian cities are no different from those overseas: they condense the national prejudices, their suburbs tribal grounds of contempt and dislike for each other. “I don’t think we have to worry too much about Aldwych Junior, either. As far as I know, he’s got a clean nose.”
“He was mixed up in that case with Romy’s father. We never pinned anything on him, but I’m sure he wasn’t clean.”
“Well, he is as far as the record goes. Don’t start complicating things. We’ve got enough to worry about.”
The Wharf had been built during the Eighties, in the boom times when people thought the money-tree would fruit forever. It was a circular glass- and granite-faced tower, twenty-four storeys high that, though towered over by the office buildings along Circular Quay, gave the impression it was the only one where you would find quality inside its walls. The marble foyer inside the brass-and-glass front doors suggested you were entering a bank, a small exclusive one where no deposits under a million were accepted and then only as a favour.
The doorman, releasing the security lock to let them in, recognized Malone and Clements; they had been here before to interview a suspect in another case. “Remember me? Col Crittle. We been over-run with police this morning. You’d be the umpteenth.” He was a burly man with a head of thick grey hair combed flat and an easy smile, the sort of doorman elderly widows could feel secure with. At least a quarter of the owners were elderly widows, the sort who never had to cut dead branches off the money-tree. “You want the twentieth floor. It’s all one apartment, Mr. and Mrs. Sweden’s.”
“Were you on duty last night when the accident happened?”
“They tell me it wasn’t an accident. No, thank God I wasn’t here. It was the night feller, Stan Kinley.”
“He still works here?” Names stuck in Clements’ memory as much as events; Malone had told him that on Judgement Day he would be asked to call the roll. He caught Malone’s eye and said, “He was the guy we saw when we came here to see Justine Springfellow. She still here?”
The doorman shook his head. “She moved out a coupla years ago.”
“Where did Mr. Sweden, the young one, fall?”
“Around in the side street. Your fellers’ve got it cordoned off with tapes. I’m waiting for them to tell me when the council blokes can scrub out the stain. He made a real mess.”
As soon as they stepped into the glass-and-brass lift Malone had a feeling of déjà vu. Last time, they had come to interview Justine Springfellow who had turned out to be not guilty of the murder they had been certain she had committed. Let’s have better luck this time. The lift stopped at the twentieth floor and they stepped out into a small lobby. In front of them were double doors of thick dark walnut, each with a lion’s head in brass in the middle of it. A young uniformed policeman stood beside the doors, his authority somehow diminished by their solidity.
He nodded at the two detectives, went to open the doors. “Hold it a moment,” said Malone. “Who’s in there?”
“The Physical Evidence team have gone, sir. There’s one of your men from Homicide—Kagal?— and Sergeant Greenup.”
“No media?”
“They came last night, after it happened. A couple came back this morning, trying for an interview with the Minister, but Sergeant Greenup told „em to get lost.”
“Good old Jack. He got his sledgehammer with him?”
The young officer grinned; he knew the reputation of his sergeant. Clements said, “Who else is in there?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Sweden. Mrs. Sweden’s sisters—I dunno their names.” Like Malone, the young officer evidently did not read the Women’s Weekly. “And one of the Minister’s minders, his press secretary, I think.”
“Quite a crowd.”
“It’s a big apartment, sir. Oh, there’s someone else. Assistant Commissioner Zanuch.”
Malone wondered why a junior officer should almost forget the Assistant Commissioner, Administration, but he made no comment. He himself did his best to forget Zanuch and usually succeeded. One’s mind worked better when the AC was not occupying even the remotest corner of it.
Malone and Clements went in through the big doors, pulling up instinctively as soon as they were inside the apartment. They were on a landing, fronted by a dark walnut railing that matched the front doors; four steps led down each side to the main level. One half of the apartment was a living and dining area, a huge expanse that looked out through a glass wall, across a wide terrace, to the harbour and the north-east. Behind the dividing wall that ran right across the apartment lay, Malone guessed, the bedrooms and service rooms. The furniture was a mixture of modern and antique, a cocktail of decor that didn’t turn the stomach. The pictures on the long wall were also a mix, but none of them clashed. Malone, a man any interior decorator would have hung on a wall in a dungeon, was nonetheless impressed. He was in rich territory.
All the people in the room were
grouped at the far end. Assistant Commissioner Zanuch detached himself from them and came quickly towards the new arrivals. He was ten years older than Malone but didn’t look it. Tall, handsome and arrogant, he gave the impression of being a banker in uniform rather than a police officer. His uniforms were custom made by the city’s most expensive tailor and the Police Service’s guess was that the insignia on his shoulders were all solid silver, he would not have been comfortable with less.
“What are you doing here?” He had a beautifully modulated voice but there was an edge to it now. “We haven’t yet decided whether it was an accident or homicide.”
Malone smelled politics at once.
“Oh, it was homicide, sir.” Both men had kept their voices low; the faces at the far end of the room were turned towards them like small satellite dishes, blank of expression. “We’ve just come from the morgue. The opinion there is that young Mr. Sweden was dead before he was tossed off the balcony. I’m taking charge of the case.”
It was a challenge, and both of them knew it. The two men, because of the difference in rank, had had little to do with each other, but there was an antagonism that came to the surface on the rare occasions when they met on business. Malone could not stand Zanuch’s open ambition, his mountaineering amongst the political and social heights around town; the Assistant Commissioner had no time for Malone’s casual attitude, his apparent clumsiness in the minefields of respect for authority. All they had in common was that they were both good policemen.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
They were stopped from further discussion as Derek Sweden came down the room towards them. Malone and Clements had never previously met the Police Minister; their political bosses came and went like seasonal viruses. Sweden was in his mid-fifties, bony-faced, bald and as elegantly dressed as Zanuch, but not in uniform. He had been in politics for twenty years without ever achieving his party’s leadership; he had at the same time managed to make money in property. The son of a political father and a mother who voted as she was told, it was said that he had shaken every hand in the State, including that of the head chimpanzee at Taronga Park. He had always been a State politician, but with the stunning defeat of his party in the Federal election two weeks ago, which had left party members on a merry-go-round, with each man stabbing the back of the man in front of him, it was rumoured that Sweden had set his sights on Canberra and the national playing field.