Yesterday’s Shadow. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ the morgue,’ said Random. ‘If you could meet him at the airport and take him there – it’s out at Glebe. We’ll let them know to expect him. He’ll need to identify the body. Then we’d like to see him.’

      ‘Meet him here, will you? We’d like to keep him away from the media for as long as possible, at least till he’s got over the shock. Once it’s on the wire services or the reps here of our bigger papers …’ His brows came down, his mouth twisted and for a moment he looked ugly. Then his face cleared and he looked at his watch. ‘Say one-thirty?’

      ‘We’ll be here,’ said Random, then turned to Gina Caporetto. ‘We won’t identify Mrs Pavane till we’ve talked to the Ambassador. We’ll keep her out of the news till then. But then –’

      ‘Then,’ said Avery with the voice of experience, ‘the fan starts whirring.’

      ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Random. ‘Inspector Malone will be handling it. He’s a good man on fans and what sometimes flies out of them.’

      ‘Shit,’ said Malone, but under his breath.

      Going down in the lift, in the long drop from the 59th floor, Malone felt his spirits descending, too. There were only the two of them in the lift and he said, ‘Given my choice I think I’ll take the hotel’s cleaner and the knife job on him. You can have Mrs Pavane.’

      ‘You have no choice, chum. My Welsh mother used to say –’

      ‘Forget it. You Welsh are a melancholy lot.’

      ‘So are you Irish at times. Like now.’

      3

      With Celtic pessimism Malone believed in the invasion of the irrational into the orderly. But he did not always accept the toss of the coin by God or the gods, whichever one believed in. He would not accept the second toss of the coin.

      He dropped Random off at Police Centre and drove on back to Homicide in Strawberry Hills. There were no hills and there had never been any strawberries, but the voters of Sydney lived and worked in other areas with names just as illusory: Ultimo, Sans Souci, Como. God set a bad example for developers when He named the Garden of Eden.

      Malone rode up to the fourth floor, let himself in the security door and found Phil Truach sitting with Clements, waiting for him.

      ‘How’d you go?’ asked Clements sympathetically.

      Malone told them of the visit to the Consul-General’s office. ‘I think it’s going to be a really bad headache. Let’s talk of something simpler. How’d you go, Phil?’

      ‘I haven’t come up with much. Nobody saw the cleaner knifed – he was well and truly dead when another guy found him. He wasn’t popular, but I didn’t get the idea that anyone there would want to top him. He was found in the room where they keep all the cleaning equipment. There didn’t appear to have been any struggle – all the buckets and mops and things were neatly stacked. Unless the killer put everything back … Crime Scene have dusted the room for prints. They’ll let us know.’

      ‘Who was he?’

      Truach looked at his notebook. ‘Boris Jones, aged forty, his card said. He was a Russian, they said, but he’d changed his name. Mrs Jones is in there –’ He nodded towards one of the interview rooms. ‘I went out to see her, she lives out at Rozelle. She asked who was in charge and I said you and she said you were the one she wanted to talk to.’

      ‘Why me?’

      ‘I dunno. Ask her.’

      ‘How’s she taking it? His murder?’

      ‘She’s pretty calm, considering.’ Truach looked towards the closed door of the interview room. ‘She’s been bashed. A black eye and some bruises.’

      ‘The husband did it?’

      ‘She didn’t say. Just said she wanted to talk to you. She hardly said a word all the way back here. She’s got a friend with her, a Mrs Quantock. She does all the talking.’

      Malone stood up. ‘Righto, I’ll talk to her. But she’s your girl. I’ve got enough on my plate with the Ambassador’s missus. Russ, make sure that Regent Street has got the names and addresses of everyone who was booked in last night at the Southern Savoy. They can start doing the donkey-work, checking everyone on the hotel’s register.’ Then he looked at Clements’ still-clean desk. ‘Get ready, mate. That desk is going to see more paper than a ticker-tape parade.’

      ‘I can’t wait,’ said Clements and slumped further back in his chair.

      Malone went into the interview room, motioning Gail Lee to follow him. It was standard procedure that two officers had to be present during an interview; he chose Gail because of the two other women in the room. In the climate of women he, with a wife and two daughters, was showerproof; but heavy weather was another matter. Not that he expected heavy weather in this room: that was to come when he met Ambassador Pavane.

      The two women were sitting side by side at the single table in the room. One was in her mid-forties: age and measurement: there was a lot of Mrs Quantock and she looked ready to use her weight and experience. The other woman was slight, dark-haired and would have been attractive but for the damage to her face.

      ‘Well!’ said Mrs Quantock; she had a voice for shouting over backyard fences, several of them. ‘We’ve had to wait long enough!’

      ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Quantock. There was another murder at the same hotel –’

      ‘Another?’ She looked at Mrs Jones. ‘Delia –?’

      Delia Jones looked across the table as Malone sat down. ‘Hullo, Scobie.’

      Malone was accustomed to shock; it came with a policeman’s lot. But not for the shock of meeting Delia Bates, the long-forgotten love of twenty-five years ago, now the widow of a murdered man. Recognition had not been instant: twenty-year-old Delia was partially hidden in this woman with the battered face sitting opposite him.

      ‘Delia –’ Involuntarily he put his hand across the table to press hers. ‘Jesus, I didn’t know –’

      ‘You know each other?’ Mrs Quantock was the sort of friend who would never be left out of any relationship. She would intrude with the best of intentions, swamping the friend with rescue efforts, throwing lifebelts like hoopla rings. She glared at Malone: ‘You didn’t know what sorta bastard he was? He’s been belting her all their married life, in front of the kids –’

      Delia, still with her eyes on Malone, put her hand on her friend’s arm. ‘It’s okay, Rosie. We haven’t seen each other in twenty-five years.’ As if she had counted every one of them. ‘He knows nothing about Boris. He’s married and has got kids of his own.’

      Malone was aware of Gail Lee observing all this with what he called her Oriental lack of expression (though never to her face). She was half-Chinese and she had never succumbed to the temptation to favour her Australian half; serenity is not an Australian expression, at least not amongst the city voters, and she always looked serene. At the moment her face was blank.

      Malone СКАЧАТЬ