Winter Chill. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ he had chosen a spot where whatever he had to say he would not be overheard.

      ‘Russ told me about your wife. I’m sorry to hear it. Cancer’s a real bugger. My wife had a breast removed six years ago.’

      ‘I didn’t know—’

      ‘Well, you don’t broadcast your worries … When’s she being operated on?’

      ‘Next Monday.’

      ‘Okay, take leave from Saturday night. Russ can take over from you.’ Then he took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it as if wondering why he was holding it. ‘Unless you want to take leave now?’

      ‘No. Lisa insists I keep working. But I’ll go off Saturday night. Thanks, Greg.’ He sighed, feeling drained of energy. ‘I don’t like leaving this Brame case. Or the other one, the security guard. Are you getting pressure?’

      ‘Am I? Have you ever had the chain of command wrapped around your neck? You’d think the Pope’d been done in, not just a bloody lawyer. But never mind, do what you can up till the weekend. Then stay home with your wife. Give her my best. A nice woman.’

      He abruptly left Malone, not rudely but because that was his way. Malone stood a moment, then jumped as a car, wanting to turn into the car park, tooted its horn. He walked back to the Hat Factory, apprehensive that one day he might be sitting in Random’s chair. The chain of command, when applied by political pressure, could be a garrotte.

      Clements and Andy Graham were waiting for him in his office. ‘Andy’s heard from the FBI.’

      ‘They’re thorough,’ said Graham. ‘They’ve come up with nothing on our friend Murray Rockman.’

      Malone dropped into his chair. ‘Sort that one out for me, Andy. They’re thorough and they’ve come up with nothing?’

      Graham looked flustered, one of his usual expressions. ‘Yeah, I see what you mean. No, they’ve done their homework. They’ve been through all the records in Caswell, Ohio. Birth registration, high school, everything. They’ve checked the Marines, their enlistments, their service records. No Murray Rockman, ever. In either place, Caswell, Ohio, or the Marines. Nothing.’ He handed Malone the fax he held. ‘Our guy never existed before he came to Australia.’

Chapter Four

      1

      The De Vries family had been lawyers for over three hundred years, ever since their arrival in New Amsterdam from Utrecht. Dutch Catholics, they had little to do with the predominant Dutch Calvinists and looked elsewhere for clients amongst the growing polyglot citizens of that growing city. Hendrik De Vries, the original immigrant, built up a clientele amongst the Jews from Spain and Portugal, and he passed on the practice to his two sons. Over the succeeding years, as New Amsterdam became New York, the fortunes of the family firm both flourished and flopped; as in all families that manage to survive the generations, it suffered occasionally from drunks, fools and incompetents. Eventually the firm, to survive, had to merge with Schuyler and Barrymore, to become Schuyler, De Vries and Barrymore. There was no Schuyler now on the board of partners and the last Barrymore had disappeared at the end of World War Two. There was, however, still a De Vries: Richard De Vries the Third. He was no drunk, fool nor incompetent; but the margin for error, on all counts, was narrow. Still, he owned 30 per cent of the stock and stock ownership has its own competence, as the other partners, when pressed, heartily agreed. Dick De Vries was kept afloat by money, which is more buoyant than balloons on Wall Street.

      ‘I came as soon as I could—’ He was a small man with a round face, flushed from too much claret and Scotch, and reproachful brown eyes, as if he blamed others for his failings. He had silver hair, parted in the middle like that of a dandy from the Twenties, and tiny ears laid flat along his skull. Though he had just got off a fourteen-hour flight, he was dressed as if on his way to the offices in Broad Street, Manhattan. He wore a dark grey suit from Fioravanti, a custom-made shirt from Kabbaz, a Racquet-club tie and black wing-tips by Vogel. Not for him French shirts and English suits and shoes: he was Ail-American. Except for his clipped accent: as a young man he had always tried to imitate Ronald Colman and Robert Donat and now the voice came naturally to him.

      He even dresses and speaks like a lie, thought Joanna Brame: inside there is an untidy, useless little man trying to get out. Orville had told her that several times.

      ‘Have they released the – er – body yet?’

      ‘Not yet. Australians, it seems, have a fetish for red tape. Did you have a good flight?’ Why am I asking him that? she wondered. But she had always had difficulty trying to keep a conversation going with Dick De Vries.

      ‘Not really. These days, with a lot of people, the only thing first class about them is their ticket.’ She agreed with him, but she wouldn’t tell him so. ‘To cap it all, everything here in Sydney is booked out. I’m having to share a room, something I haven’t done since I was in college.’

      ‘Whom with?’ She still had the precision in grammar that her mother, who had sat at the feet of Henry James, had taught her.

      ‘Young Tallis. It could be worse, I suppose, though there is hardly room to swing a cat. I could be sharing with one of those palimony shysters. Or an ambulance chaser from Chicago.’ He had his own snobbery.

      She was not embarrassed that she was staying alone in a suite in which she could have swung a Bengal tiger. She changed the subject: ‘I am still coming to terms with Orville’s death. The way he – he died.’ For just a moment her voice faltered. Last night, lying awake in the strange bed, a huge bed that could have accommodated four people and so had an increased emptiness, reaching out on one occasion for the Orville who wasn’t there, who would never be there again, there had been a long moment when she had wondered at the worth of going on alone; it was uncharacteristic of her to think that way, and she had been both frightened by the thought and embarrassed by it. She went on: ‘The police don’t think it was a mugging, anything like that. Why should anyone want to kill him?’

      ‘You can’t expect me to answer that? I’ve only just arrived.’ He sounded irritated; but then he often sounded like that. ‘Are the local police any good?’

      ‘I suppose so. How would I know?’ It was her turn to sound irritated; she despised herself for the pettiness. ‘All police departments are different, I suppose. Just as people are different.’

      ‘May I?’ He helped himself to his second Scotch from the mobile drinks tray. ‘The first thing, Jo—’ She hated the name Jo, but she didn’t correct him this time. ‘ – The first thing is to get you and Orville on a plane for back home. I’ll stay here and handle things with the police.’

      ‘His brother came to see me.’

      He looked at her (cautiously?) over the rim of his glass. ‘What’s he like?’

      She shrugged. ‘I didn’t take to him. He didn’t seem very – upset by Orville’s death. Murder.’

      ‘From what Orville told me, they were never close.’

      She was surprised. ‘He discussed his brother with you?’

      Again there was what seemed to her some caution. ‘Once. Maybe twice. I don’t remember how his name came up – oh yes. It was when Sydney was nominated as the venue for this convention. Orville mentioned his brother СКАЧАТЬ