Dark Summer. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ I done to them? Then he was aware of Lisa behind him in the hallway. He stopped at their bedroom door.

      ‘It’s not my fault, y’know.’

      ‘I know that. But whom do I bitch to?’ Whom: Dutch-born, she had a respect for English grammar that the natives had recently tossed into the waste-basket.

      ‘Did you hear what Claire said? This is a domestic. Are you going to beat the hell out of me?’

      ‘I always thought it was the other way round, husbands beating up their wives.’ She put her arms round his neck. ‘This doesn’t mean they’ll be looking for you next, does it?’

      He went stiff in her embrace. ‘Start thinking like that, I will beat the hell out of you! Jesus, darl –’ Then he relaxed, feeling the stiffness in her; he was only increasing her fear, his denial sounded too forced. ‘Putting Scungy in the pool is just some sort of sick joke, that’s all. Even his name is a sick joke.’

      She was not convinced. She knew that he loved her as deeply as any man could love; but she knew too that a man’s passion is rarely as deep, never as consuming as a woman’s can be. Scobie would die for her, she knew; she would do the same for him, but gladly. She wasn’t sure that men ever died gladly, least of all for love.

      She kissed him. ‘I want everyone out of the place by tomorrow morning, the Crime Scene tapes taken down, everything gone. I’m coming back to my home first thing tomorrow morning and I want Scungy whatever-his-name-is scrubbed right out, not a trace of him. I love you.’

      ‘I was beginning to wonder.’ He grinned, though it was an effort, and returned her kiss.

      2

      The heat was already building up as Clements drove them into the city, to Woolloomooloo. The morning sun, reflected from the sheer glass walls of one building to the glass walls of another (Malone had begun to suspect that lately architects were turning Sydney into a City of Glass. Some day in the future they would find a singer who could hit an absolute top note, they would amplify it all over the city, all the buildings would shatter and the architects could start in all over again), till it seemed there were dozens of small suns, all striking at the eye. There was no breeze, the flags would hang limp on this Australia Day.

      ‘How did you get Scungy on side?’ Clements asked.

      ‘When he came out of Long Bay, Fraud were waiting to send him up on two more charges. I talked ’em out of it and told him he owed me.’

      ‘Did he come up with anything?’

      ‘Nothing I could use. He said he knew Joey Trang, the Vietnamese, but he didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. I saw him last week and he said he was on to something, but he’d let me know when he was sure. He didn’t seem to believe what he’d heard.’

      ‘You didn’t try to squeeze it out of him?’ Then Clements shook his head. ‘No, you’re too soft, mate. A belt under the ear works wonders, you should try it some time.’

      Malone looked at him seriously. ‘You really think I’m too soft?’

      ‘I dunno, to tell you the truth.’ Clements took the car down the curve at the bottom of Macleay Street and along the waterfront where the navy ships were moored. A large crowd already lined the tall wire fence, most of them there to celebrate the national holiday, a few protesters holding up banners demanding Peace in the Gulf! Beyond the ships the waters of the small bay glinted like broken blue glass. ‘When did you last clock a villain, give him a real going-over?’

      Malone thought a while. ‘About ten years ago. But I tell you what – if I find the bastard who tossed Scungy into our pool, I’ll beat the shit out of him before I book him.’

      ‘Good. I’ll hold your coat. If he’s too big and young for you, I’ll hold him.’

      Woolloomooloo is a pocket between two shoulders just east of the city centre. For over a hundred years before Malone was born ships, sealers, traders and passenger liners had docked in the small ’Loo Bay; pubs and brothels had for years put a ceiling on real-estate values. Sailors and prostitutes met in a common market and it was said that even a decent girl, if she slipped and fell on the broken pavements, would earn a quid before she was back on her feet. Gangs used to whet their razors on the local rocks before going up the eastern hill to Darlinghurst and Kings Cross to carve up the competition. For years poverty had hung over the ’Loo like a harbour mist. Across on the western ridge, on the edge of the Domain, one of the city’s parks, stands a statue of Henry Lawson, the proletarians’ poet. He had once written, ‘Sorrow and poverty taught me to sing’; but only drunken bawdy songs had come out of the ’Loo. Lawson, an alcoholic, might have understood and wept for those who sang them.

      In recent years there had been efforts to coat the ’Loo with respectability. Old terrace houses had been gentrified, crones taken to a beauty parlour; blocks of Housing Commission flats had been built under the lee of the eastern hill. The merchant sailors no longer came to this part of the port of Sydney and the girls, or their daughters or granddaughters, had moved up the road to William Street or the Cross. Still, there were reminders of poverty: a men’s hostel stood in the shadow of the railway viaduct and every night the derelict and homeless stood in line waiting for a bed. They would be the skulls, the memento mori, at today’s anniversary party.

      Scungy Grime had lived in one of the Commission flats. Up the road some winos sat in the gutter in the morning sun, sweating out last night’s plonk. When Malone and Clements got out of their car the bleary eyes sharpened for a moment and the red noses lifted like those of pointer dogs waiting to be put down. They hadn’t lost their sense of smell of a mug copper.

      The two detectives went into the block of flats, found the superintendent and had him let them into Grime’s flat. ‘He was murdered, you say?’

      ‘No, we didn’t say that,’ said Malone. ‘What made you say it?’

      ‘I dunno. I guess I just jumped to conclusions.’ He was a fat man whose stained panama hat looked as if it would be a permanent fixture on his head; it had a screwed-on look, Malone thought, like a jar-lid. He was not surprised by his tenant’s death; he was a ’Loo resident, born and bred, he was familiar with a dozen ways of dying. ‘Someone come looking for him last night, but he’d already gone out –’

      ‘You see who it was?’

      ‘Nah. He was out there on the landing, the light was out – bastards around here are always pinching the globes. I was down the stairs, I just saw him knocking on Normie’s door. I sang out there was nobody home, I’d seen Normie go out –’

      ‘Describe the man.’

      ‘I can’t.’ The fat shoulders shook in a shrug. ‘I told you, the light was out, there was only the light from the landing below. He didn’t even look down at me, he just went along that hallway outside and disappeared – there’s another flight of stairs further along . . . Normie always looked a bit jumpy, you know what I mean? He come home Sat’day night and I spoke to him, he didn’t see me, and he jumped like I’d jabbed him with a needle or something. I got the idea, talking to him occasionally, he’d made some enemies when he was out at the Bay.’

      ‘You knew he’d been in jail?’

      ‘Oh, sure. You work here long as I have, you get to know everyone’s history.’ He would make a point of it, it was one of the perks of the СКАЧАТЬ