Yesterday’s Shadow. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ know. News are already running around hooting their heads off.’ Four Corners, the show she worked on, never ran around hooting; it took its time doing demolition jobs on corruption, maladministration and unsocial justice. He hoped it would never come within coo-ee of the Pavane murder. ‘You’re in for it, Dad. Sorry.’

      ‘Are the Americans co-operating?’ asked Tom. ‘You got the CIA, the FBI on your back?’

      ‘No, they know it’s our turf.’

      ‘Dad,’ said Maureen, ‘if we decide to look into Australian–American co-operation or lack thereof –’

      ‘Raise that question again and I’ll find something to pin on you, okay?’

      ‘Lay off, Mo,’ said Claire. ‘You’re so bloody morally correct since you joined the ABC –’

      ‘Let’s all lay off,’ said Malone. ‘How are you making out with your tutor, Tom?’

      ‘Who told you about her? Mum, I’ll bet –’

      ‘You’re dating your tutor?’ both his sisters asked. ‘You’re going for an older woman? What’s she teaching you?’

      ‘How to be economical in bed?’ suggested Jason.

      This is what I like to hear, thought Malone, family chi-acking. No violence, no bashing … Then Lisa came to the doorway. ‘Dinner is ready if you layabouts are?’

      The girls were instantly on their feet, rushing to help her. The three of them went out to the kitchen, Tom went in to have a quick shower (where’s he been? thought Malone. In the tutor’s bed?) and Jason picked up the glasses and put them on a tray.

      ‘How’s work?’ Malone asked.

      ‘Quiet, there’s not much around.’ Jason was an engineer with a large construction company. Since the Olympics there had been a general turn-down, a bubble deflated if not entirely pricked. ‘I take it yours is not going to be? Quiet, I mean.’

      ‘Quiet? Oh, we’ll keep it that way as long as we can, our end. But the bloody media …’ He stood up, suddenly feeling weary again, put his empty glass on the tray. ‘How’s your mum?’

      ‘I dunno. Philosophical, I guess you’d call it. She never mentions Dad, though. Nor Angela Bodalle, for that matter.’ Olive Rockne’s lesbian lover and fellow murderer was doing her time in another jail. ‘Mum hopes to be out in eighteen months. She’s been a model prisoner, they say.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘Do you ever think about her?’

      ‘Often – when I see you. I never got any pleasure from putting her away, Jay.’

      ‘I know that, Scobie. I’m just happy to have you as a father-in-law.’ Then he turned quickly and went out to the kitchen, the glasses rattling on the tray.

      Malone gathered his feelings, which were suddenly like warm coals. Affection from the young is not a cheap gift.

      Dinner was not as awkward as he had expected. The Pavane murder was discussed and everyone was sympathetic towards him for the headaches it promised. Lisa smiled at him from her end of the table, but (why was he so suspicious?) it could have been a public relations smile. The four young ones dominated the conversation, banter flying across the table like party crackers. It was only when relaxation had set in over coffee that Maureen said, ‘What about the other murder at the hotel, Dad?’

      ‘What about it?’

      ‘Are you on it?’

      He looked along the table at Lisa and she gave him the same smile: it was a public relations smile, as empty as a clown’s laugh. ‘Yes, I’m on it. For the time being.’

      ‘It’s just an ordinary domestic,’ said Lisa, reaching for an after-dinner mint, biting into it as if it were part of him.

      ‘Then why are you on it?’ Claire looked at her father. ‘With this other big one?’

      He looked along the table again at (Mona) Lisa: the smile was smaller this time. He didn’t know what made him say it: ‘I knew the wife, the one who did the killing. She was an old girlfriend.’

      At which they all looked at Lisa, not him. Maureen said Wowie!, Tom smiled broadly, Jason looked as if he would rather be out on a construction site and Claire pursed her lips. Lisa finished the mint, repeated the Mona Lisa smile and said, ‘Small world, ain’t it?’

      Claire looked at each of her parents in turn. ‘Which of you wants me to represent you? I think we’re heading for another domestic’

      He cranked up a smile, gave it to Lisa along the table. ‘She’s been married twice since I knew her.’

      ‘She do them both in?’ said Tom.

      Maureen hit him with her fist. ‘Pull your head in. This is serious. Why are you on the case, Dad? Just because she’s an old girlfriend?’

      ‘Golly,’ said Lisa, ‘I forgot to ask him that.’

      ‘No, I’m not.’ Then he began to wonder if he was. ‘She won’t talk to anyone else but me. Nobody else in Homicide.’

      ‘You can’t blame her for that, Mum,’ said Claire.

      ‘Who’s blaming her? Or anyone?’ She took another mint, bit into it.

      ‘Has she changed?’ asked Maureen the researcher. Get all the facts, we’ll sort ’em out later … ‘Would you have recognized her?’

      ‘In the street? No.’

      ‘Why did she kill her husband?’ asked Jason and it was obvious it was a difficult question.

      ‘He never reads reports of murder cases,’ said Claire, pressing his hand.

      ‘For obvious reasons,’ said Jason and for a moment the ceiling fell in.

      ‘Sorry,’ said Claire, squeezing his hand hard; then she looked around the table. ‘What else can we talk about? Who’s Randwick playing on Saturday?’

      ‘Eastwood.’ Tom played fullback for the local rugby club. ‘You coming?’

      ‘We’ll be there,’ said Jason who, like a good engineer, was sensitive to atmospheric pressure. ‘Let’s do the washing-up.’

      He stood up, gathered some of the coffee cups and went out to the kitchen. The girls followed him, taking plates. Tom sat a moment, then he, too, rose and went out to the kitchen. Malone and Lisa looked at each other along the length of the table.

      ‘She hasn’t raised a spark in me,’ he said. ‘It was all over twenty-five years ago.’

      ‘I know that.’ The smile this time was her own; and his. ‘But if I told you I’d met an old boyfriend, what would you do?’

      ‘Pinch him. For loitering with intent.’ He got up, went along the table and kissed her. ‘I love you.’

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