Winter Chill. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ Cameramen and reporters swept in a wave towards Malone and the others, but he moved quickly towards them before they could get too close to Joanna Brame.

      ‘Not now. There’ll be a full statement later, but at the moment we have nothing definite.’

      ‘How’s Mrs Brame taking the murder?’ That was from a fresh-faced television reporter, not one of Malone’s favourite breeds.

      ‘C’mon, how would you take it if your girlfriend was murdered?’ It was not the sort of reply that the police manual recommended, but it stopped the questions long enough for Malone to make his escape.

      Down on the lower level the doors opened and a gale blew in. Joanna Brame produced a brown beret from her coat pocket and jammed it on her head. A grey Cadillac with DC plates and a chauffeur was waiting for Novack. ‘Will you ride with us, Inspector?’

      ‘That’s my car over there, sir. You know where the morgue is?’ Novack shook his head. ‘Sorry, why should you? You’d better follow us.’

      It was a ten-minute drive out to the morgue near Sydney University. When the attendant on the front desk phoned through to Romy’s office, she came out to greet them. ‘This is Dr Keller,’ said Clements and added with the pride that Malone had noticed since their marriage, ‘my wife.’

      Joanna Brame and Novack hid any surprise they may have felt and made no comment. Which surprised Malone, whose experience of Americans was that they commented on everything.

      ‘I’ll have your husband brought out. If you would go into that room there?’

      Malone ushered Joanna Brame into the side room where the body could be viewed through a window. As he touched her elbow he could feel the trembling in her arm and, involuntarily, he pressed the elbow sympathetically. She looked sideways at him. ‘I have done this before, Inspector. My first husband—’

      Romy came into the small room as, on the other side of the window, a white-coated attendant wheeled in a trolley on which lay a green-shrouded body. A zip was pulled and Orville Brame’s face was exposed, the mouth open, the eyes shut. It would be Malone’s only glimpse of the murdered man and, as always, he wondered what events would pile on the death of this man about whom he knew nothing and would certainly never learn everything.

      Joanna Brame drew a deep shuddering breath, took off her beret. ‘Yes, that’s my husband.’

      ‘Orville William Brame?’ said Romy.

      ‘Yes.’ She watched while the shroud was zipped up again and the trolley wheeled away; then she turned her back on the window and looked at Romy. ‘Will there be an autopsy or anything?’

      ‘It’s a homicide, so yes, there has to be. We have to take out the bullet that killed him.’ Romy’s voice was soft, sympathetic; there was no hint of officialdom about her, though she was the deputy-director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. In her white coat and with her dark hair pulled back she looked severe, but for the compassion in her dark blue eyes. ‘We have to wait on HIV tests—’

      ‘HIV? AIDS tests? For my husband?’

      ‘It’s standard practice these days, Mrs Brame, for every autopsy. It’s no reflection on your husband.’

      ‘He would be amused. He always tried to be beyond reproach.’ But she said it with affection.

      Malone thanked Romy and left Clements with her while he escorted Joanna Brame out into the street, where Novack joined them. They stood in the weak winter sunlight and the wind, coming up the street, tore at their hair so that they looked, to a passer-by, like mourners who had gone wild in their grief. Joanna Brame pulled on her beret again and Malone settled his pork-pie hat on his head. Novack evidently used a strong hair-spray, for his hair was set like concrete.

      ‘You said you wanted to ask me questions, Inspector. Could it wait till this afternoon, say five o’clock? I’m really not in any fit condition—’

      Malone hated any sort of delay in an investigation, but there would be others he would have to question. ‘Five o’clock then, Mrs Brame.’

      ‘Thank you, Inspector.’ Novack took her arm and led her across to the Cadillac. He opened the rear door for her, but she paused and looked back at Malone. The wind whipped away her words, but he thought she said, ‘I may be able to help you.’

      3

      Driving back to the Hat Factory, which had indeed once been a hat factory turning out trilbies, fedoras, even bowlers once upon a time, and now housed Homicide, Clements said, ‘Have you got the feeling there’s a thousand lawyers sitting on your back?’

      ‘I hope they’re not all like that cove Zoehrer. I’ve just placed him. He’s one of those big damages lawyers from California – Melvin Belli’s another one. They invented that palimony thing. The way you used to play around, it’s a wonder you didn’t cop a palimony suit.’

      ‘You know none of the girls ever stayed long enough. But let’s drop that, I’m a married man now. So how do we handle this Brame case?’

      ‘We’re spread thin. Keep Phil and Peta on it and maybe we can spare John Kagal. I’ll load the rest of the calendar on to the other fellers. At least three of the cases should be wound up this week or Greg Random will want to know why.’ Random was the Chief Superintendent, Regional Crime Squad, South Region. ‘I suppose we’ll have to officially let the New York PD and maybe the FBI, I dunno, we’ll have to let them know what’s happened. I’ll check it out with the Consul-General. In the meantime …’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘Put Peta on to questioning Zoehrer and any other of the lawyers who might give us some light on why Brame was done in.’

      ‘She’s a bit young – inexperienced, I mean—’

      ‘She’s all right, Russ. And she’s better-looking than you or me. All these lawyers haven’t come all this way just to discuss the law. Junkets like this one, for lawyers or doctors or politicians, they’re an excuse for a tax-deductible holiday. A young lawyer on holiday, who’s he going to let his hair down for – a good-looking sort like Peta or you and me?’

      ‘You’re sexist.’

      ‘Only in a good cause.’

      Back at his office, in the glass-walled cubicle that passed for the Homicide commander’s domain, he ran through the computer sheets that had been neatly laid on his desk. There had been last-minute hitches in two of the murder cases; the other three on the list would be wrapped up and sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions by the end of the week. The Brame homicide looked as if it would get the full-scale investigation that the Americans would expect. It was going to be a round-the-clock job.

      He reached for the phone to tell Lisa he would not be home for dinner. The phone at Randwick had rung four times before he remembered she would be at the dentist’s. He waited for the answering machine to take over, but when it came on all he got was Maureen’s voice saying, ‘This is—’ Then her voice cut out and he knew the machine had gone on the blink again, as it had twice in the past month. It was supposed to have been fixed and he wondered why Lisa, usually so meticulous in running the household, had neglected to call a technician.

      He flipped through his small personal notebook, found the number of their dentist. ‘May СКАЧАТЬ