Dilemma. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ I think he’s having a go at me.’

      She laughed. It was probably the way she made her way through life, Malone thought: laughing at herself before others did. She was garrulous; she probably talked to her husband while giving him oral sex, which wouldn’t add to his joy. But she was also observant, a detective’s joy: ‘Yeah, they were in here last night. Things weren’t too good between ’em.’

      ‘You could hear them arguing?’

      She put the beers down in front of Malone and Graham. ‘No, no. But I could see ’em. I been working here – well, never mind. A long time. I don’t have to hear things. Not when a husband and wife are arguing. I’ve seen more barneys than you’ve seen murders – no, that’s a horrible thing to say. But I see ’em – you can’t hear much, not on busy nights, but you read ’em. You just look at them and you see it, you know? You married?’

      Malone nodded. ‘But I never argue with my wife in public.’

      She laughed again. ‘If you did, I’d be able to tell. You could be on the other side of this room—’ she waved, to Ultima Thule. Or Town – ‘I’d be able to tell. Things were very cool, definitely, between the Glazes.’

      ‘No bust-up? Ron didn’t get up and storm out, nothing like that?’

      She shook her head; the dome of hair didn’t move. ‘Nothing like it. He looked, I dunno, sorta cold-blooded. Ron could be like that at times.’

      ‘Was he popular here at the club?’ asked Graham.

      ‘Oh yes. He was a car salesman – they’re born popular, aren’t they? Everybody’s friend. Especially the women’s. Ron was a Wandering Dick, if you’ll forgive the expression.’

      ‘Of course,’ said Malone politely. ‘Did he have any special lady friends here at the club?’

      ‘None of ’em special.’ She was busy polishing the beer taps.

      ‘What about Mrs Glaze?’

      ‘Nah, never.’ She looked at the beer taps, as if they might spout some memory. She shook her head. ‘No, not Norma. Not here at the club, anyway. She put all her energy into her salon – she was a hairdresser, you know that?’

      Malone, trying to avoid looking at the dome of hair, couldn’t stop himself from asking, ‘Did you go to her?’

      ‘Me? Nah. But she used to do a lotta the women here. She was very popular, very good, always up with the latest styles. She said she was the Lillian Frank of the West.’

      Malone looked at Graham. ‘You know who Lillian Frank is?’

      Graham sipped his beer. ‘Never heard of her. What band is she with?’

      Charlene laughed; she had been laughing at men’s jokes for – well, never mind. Too long. ‘Big Melbourne hairdresser. Always in the news, all dolled up to the nines on Melbourne Cup Day – you must of seen her? Norma wasn’t like that – I mean, all dolled up. She just wanted to be the biggest hairdresser out this way.’

      ‘Would she have been?’

      ‘I dunno. I don’t think so. Money seemed to be their trouble, never enough of it.’

      ‘She told you that?’

      She was polishing the beer taps again. ‘No, Ron. He was a great one for confiding, you know? A salesman all the time.’

      ‘But he could be cold-blooded, you said.’ Malone finished his beer, stood up. ‘Ron sounds as if he could be quite a mixture.’

      ‘Yes.’ She stopped polishing the beer taps, looked steadily at the two detectives. ‘I’m just surprised he turned out to be a murderer.’

      ‘People often are,’ said Malone.

      ‘Are you?’

      ‘Never … Did Mrs Glaze stay on after her husband walked out? When she left, did she go with someone, someone from the club?’

      ‘No. She went out on her own, a bit unsteady on the legs.’ Barmaids and barmen had eagle eyes; armies, Malone thought, should recruit them. ‘I called after her if she wanted a taxi, but she didn’t hear me.’

      ‘Anyone follow her?’

      She shook her head. ‘I dunno. I went downstairs to the cellar. You think someone might of been eyeing her? Nah, I don’t think so. The men around here left Norma alone, most of ’em were Ron’s mates. He was everybody’s mate.’

      ‘No strangers in that night? I see you have a sign: Visitors Welcome.’

      ‘Oh, there were half a dozen or so. But none of ’em went near Norma.’

      Malone paid for the beers. ‘Thanks, Charlene. What’s your surname?’ And Graham had taken out his notebook. ‘Colnby? C-O-L-N-B-Y?’

      ‘You gunna be coming back?’

      ‘Probably, when we catch up with Ron. If you think of anything else, call me.’ He gave her his card.

      ‘Scobie Malone – you Irish?’

      ‘Just enough to make me interesting.’

      She laughed. ‘Come again. All visitors welcome.’

      Out in the car park Malone looked up. The day had changed abruptly. A nor’-easter had struggled in from the coast, from Town, and the sky was racing towards the Blue Mountains, no longer blue up close but grey and green and scarred with development. Malone lived in Randwick, a seaside suburb, and he hated the thought of having to live out here. The Westies in the western suburbs always got the rough end of the pineapple: weatherwise, economically, socially. They always got the wrong winds, the worst cold, the worst heat. There were areas here as arid as the drawing boards from which they had been lifted; the original planners had never understood the meaning of community. The suburbs were not slums or ghettos. Houses stood on their own small plots and they all had gardens of a sort, some luxuriant, some just weeds. There were shopping malls, cinemas, clubs, a rugby league team whose players would have been gods if the voters had believed in gods. Those that believed in gods or God, the post-World War II immigrants, had long ago learned that gods and God had no influence with politicians or bureaucrats. The population was mixed, an ethnic stew, and their voices, multilingual, were as loud in protest as those from elsewhere. But when the crunch came, when the pineapple was up-ended, who got the rough end? Malone looked back at the club. For all its indoor garishness, its temptation to gamble, it drew the locals together.

      ‘Would you like to live out here, Andy?’

      ‘I grew up here. I went to Mount Druitt High.’

      ‘How’d you find it?’

      ‘I felt like murder sometimes.’ Graham was very still, very sober. ‘I’d go down to the beaches, Bondi, Coogee, and I’d look at all of them who lived there and I’d want to murder the bastards.’

      ‘You changed your mind since you joined the Service and got to know one of the bastards from the beaches? Me.’

      Graham СКАЧАТЬ