Dilemma. Jon Cleary

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ out of Washington, the big news was the kidnapping and demand for ransom of Lucybelle Vanheusen.

      ‘Who is Lucybelle Vanheusen?’ asked Malone at breakfast.

      ‘She’s that brat in the McDonald’s commercials,’ said Tom.

      ‘And in the Toyota ads,’ said Maureen.

      ‘And in the Coca-Cola ads,’ said Claire.

      Malone groaned, remembering the moppet with enough red hair to have played a grown-up role in Days of Our Lives. ‘I know her now.’

      ‘Don’t say it,’ said Lisa.

      ‘What?’

      ‘That you hope the kidnappers don’t give her back.’

      Malone nodded; but he had been on the verge of being callously unfunny. ‘I remember Dad used to say when he was growing up he couldn’t stand Shirley Temple. She used to do dances up and down a staircase with some black dancer and Dad always wished she’d fall and break a leg. But I’m sorry about this kid. How much are they asking as the ransom?’

      ‘A dollar ninety-five,’ said Tom and jerked his head back as his mother swung the back of her hand at him. He grinned, but said, ‘Sorry.’

      Breakfast was the one meal that Malone insisted they all had together. All three were at university. Claire was doing Law and, already a lawyer, was advising her father on points that didn’t interest him; her only good point, he would say, was that so far she wasn’t charging him. Maureen was doing Communications and forever telling him he didn’t know how to use the media. Tom had just started Commerce and after a month’s study already knew more than Dr Greenspan, George Soros and the economic rationalists down in Canberra. They left the house each morning and were free souls; Tom, who liked home cooking, was home for dinner more frequently than his sisters. Lisa, still the boss in the house, insisted that there was a family dinner at least one night a week. The glue that held them together was stretched more than it used to be, but it was still holding.

      ‘What’s the percentage of kidnap victims who are returned unharmed?’ asked Maureen.

      Malone shrugged. ‘I don’t think anyone’s ever done a survey on it. Kidnapping isn’t a primary industry in this country.’ But it would develop as more and more wealth was accumulated and the gap between rich and poor grew and violence became a way of life. ‘Who are her parents?’

      ‘How much don’t you know?’ Maureen was appalled at her father’s ignorance. ‘Her mum and dad are in the social pages every Sunday – they’re on all the freeloader lists. He’s the designer—’

      ‘Of what?’

      Maureen rolled her eyes, at which she was very good. ‘Clothes. He’s Sydney’s Versace, only he’s straight. Mum Vanheusen does nothing but promote little Lucybelle.’

      ‘If he’s so successful as a designer, why do they need to exploit the kid?’ He was remembering Lucybelle more clearly now. She was in TV commercials as frequently as a certain popular blue cattle dog and Elle MacPherson.

      ‘The mum was a model who never got as far as she hoped,’ said Claire. ‘Maybe she’s hoping little Lucybelle will be the next – who’d you say Grandpa didn’t like?’

      It was Malone’s turn to roll his eyes, at which he was not at all good. ‘You lot know nothing about history, do you? You think everything started with the Beatles.’

      ‘The who?’ said Tom.

      Later, Lisa walked out with Malone to the garage. She paused and looked around the garden; this was her green anchor, burned now by the long summer. She loved their house, though it was no more than a turn-of-the-century Federation model; the houses had become fashionable again over the last five or six years, a reaching back to a history that property-owners never bothered to read. But it was the garden that held her; it was a calendar marked with azalea, camellia, lobelia, gardenia. The camellia had been a bush when they had first moved into the house; now it was a tree. Each evening, as she held the hose, she liked to think that she was spraying the garden with love. A thought she kept to herself: Malone and the children were not garden lovers.

      ‘What are you looking at?’

      ‘Nothing. It’ll soon be time for pruning – you can buy me a new set of secateurs for my birthday.’

      ‘I’ll buy you a lawn-mower, too. How’re you fixed for shovels and rakes?’

      She hit him, loving him more than the garden. She got into the Ford Fairlane beside him. She worked as the Olympics public relations officer for the City Council and each morning he drove her into work before heading back to Strawberry Hills and his own office. He didn’t enjoy the drive, but it was an opportunity for the two of them to discuss their own, and not the children’s, affairs.

      ‘That man you brought down from Collamundra—’ Usually she waited for him to broach discussion on a case, but he had said nothing since his return home late the night before last. ‘Did he kill his wife?’

      ‘He did it, all right.’ He took the car out of their quiet North Randwick street into the morning traffic. ‘He’ll lie his head off, but he’ll go down.’

      ‘What about this little girl?’

      ‘What about her?’

      ‘If she’s been murdered—’

      ‘Don’t think about it—’

      ‘Of course I think about it! Right now most of the mothers in Sydney will be thinking about it. Look at the number of girls, youngsters and teenagers, who have disappeared – there’s a list in the Herald this morning—’

      ‘I never anticipate – it’s not Homicide’s job to prevent murder—’

      ‘That’s pretty cold-blooded, isn’t it?’

      He looked sideways at her; in this hour’s traffic it was the only safe way to look. Road rage was becoming endemic; every car had a potential terrorist in it. ‘No, it’s – pragmatic. It’s the only way I sleep at night.’

      ‘I’ll remember that next time your loving hand gets out of hand.’ She squeezed his thigh. ‘Keep your eye on the road, sailor.’

      He shuddered with love for her. Terrorists closed in on either side of him, shouting abuse: ‘Learn to fucking drive, you arsehole!’

      Lisa smiled at the terrorist on her side, a woman, then looked at her husband. ‘Be pragmatic. Don’t answer back.’

      He dropped her at Town Hall, drove back to Homicide and was greeted by Russ Clements: ‘We’ve got another one. That kidnapped kiddy, they dropped her off a cliff at Clovelly.’

      Malone was abruptly ashamed of his approach to the kidnapping this morning; the jokes came back like bile. ‘Who’s handling it?’

      ‘Waverley. They want us in on it. You wanna take it with one of the girls?’

      Malone went out of his small office into the big room. Most of his staff of eighteen detectives were at their desks, waiting for СКАЧАТЬ