Bleak Spring. Jon Cleary

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      Malone’s smile was also almost a smirk. ‘Mr Bezrow, do you tell the other bookies how much you have in your bag?’

      Bezrow’s smile widened. ‘Of course not. Sorry. I’m just surprised Mr Rockne would have bothered with such an obscure bank.’

      ‘I’m surprised you’re surprised,’ said Malone and bowled another bumper, two in an over, the allowable limit in cricket these days; but this wasn’t cricket: ‘You didn’t show any surprise when we told you Mr Rockne had been murdered.’

      Bezrow said nothing. He shifted slightly in the wide chair, a small couch, on which he sat; the springs beneath the green velvet upholstery sighed metallically. The hands were very still on his thighs; the fat of his face seemed to have turned to stone, or anyway hard putty. Then he said very quietly, ‘Nobody’s death surprises me, Inspector. I’m a fatalist.’

      ‘Is that the Russian in you?’

      ‘It could be, except that no Georgian would ever call himself a Russian. Not these days, nor in my greatgrandfather’s day.’

      ‘Stalin was a Georgian, wasn’t he?’ said Clements, not highly educated but a barrel of inconsequential data.

      Bezrow ignored that and Malone said, ‘Did Will Rockne ever mention to you that he’d received a death threat?’

      ‘Never. Why should he? We were not confidential friends, Inspector.’

      ‘Did you ever have any falling-out with him?’

      Bezrow’s gaze was steady. ‘No. If you are implying did I threaten him . . .’

      ‘No, Mr Bezrow. Have you yourself ever received any threats?’

      ‘Death threats? Yes, three or four times.’

      ‘Did you report them to the police?’

      ‘What would be the point? They were phone threats, I had no idea who they were.’

      ‘Dissatisfied punters?’ suggested Clements.

      ‘You would understand their frame of mind better than I would, Sergeant. I’ve never been a punter, not on horses, just in politics.’

      ‘Did you arrange for any protection?’ said Malone. ‘A bodyguard?’

      Bezrow shook his head. ‘I told you, Inspector, I’m a fatalist. You really are trying to connect me in some way with Mr Rockne’s death.’

      Malone stood up. ‘No, Mr Bezrow. But nothing any of us ever does is unconnected to anyone else. I read that somewhere. I’m working on the meaning of it.’

      Clements rose, too, but Bezrow remained seated, as if the mere act of getting to his feet was something he avoided as much as possible. ‘Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee . . . I don’t think Mr Rockne’s bell is going to toll for me, Inspector.’

      Malone could think of no literary answer, settled instead for, ‘We’ll be in touch, Mr Bezrow.’

      ‘Just a moment till I call off the dogs.’ He picked up a small microphone from the table beside him, put two fingers in his mouth and uttered an earsplitting whistle. A few moments, then Malone heard the two dogs, barking excitedly, go round the side of the house. ‘You have about two minutes before they’ll be out front again.’

      ‘Have they ever attacked anyone?’

      ‘Only punters,’ said Bezrow and smiled at Clements.

      As soon as the Filipino maid had closed the front door behind them, Malone and Clements went briskly down the steps, ears cocked for the rush of the bull terriers behind them. Once outside the front gate the two detectives stood beside the Commodore. Clements’s green Toyota standing behind it shone as it hadn’t shone since it had first come out of the showroom; Romy was either polishing the car for him or she was holding a gun at his head. ‘What do you reckon?’ said Malone.

      ‘Despite all his fat, he’s got a bigger sidestep than David Campese,’ said Clements.

      ‘I thought so, too. He missed his step once, though. He said that Will Rockne wasn’t the slightest bit interested in racing. Last night Will said, I quote, “If you knew what I know about the racing game . . . ” Will was a bullshit artist, but I don’t think he was playing that game last night.’

      ‘I just wonder . . .’ Clements was staring back up at Tiflis Hall. ‘I wonder if that five-and-a-bit million in Shahriver belongs to Bernie? He doesn’t just field on the courses – legitimately, that is. He has a big SP business – the Gaming Squad have tried to close it down a coupla times, but have never been able to nail him. That’d all be cash he wouldn’t want to declare for tax.’

      ‘Get what you can out of the Gaming Squad on him. In the meantime we’ll stay off his back for a while.’

      Inside the house Bezrow was making a phone call: ‘You better get over here quick smart. We’re in deep-shit trouble.’

      Which is not a literary term.

      2

      ‘You’re joking!’ said Olive Rockne. ‘How could you, Jason? This is no time for joking!’

      ‘I tell you it’s true, Mum. There was ten thousand dollars in the safe and a bank statement saying Dad was holding five-and-something million dollars in an account at some bank. In his own name.’

      ‘Did you see the statement?’

      ‘No, I was outside in Jill’s office by then, but I heard them through the door, it was open and I could hear everything.’

      Olive looked at Angela Bodalle. ‘Is it true?’

      ‘I’m afraid it is.’

      ‘Afraid? Why are you afraid?’

      The three of them were in the living room at the front of the house; Mrs Carss, Rose and Shelley were out in the kitchen getting lunch. As Mrs Carss, light-headed but with her feet on the ground, had said, the dead might die but the living had to go on eating. She had said it with the best of intentions, trying to make everyone feel better.

      Jason lay slouched in a deep chair, his long limbs piled about him like sticks stacked on a sack of shit; which was the way he felt, he told himself. He looked at his mother and Mrs Bodalle and wondered what his mother saw in the other woman. He was no expert on what made a friendship, Christ knows; he had no close friends of his own, unless you counted Claire Malone and she wasn’t really that close. He got on okay with the guys in the basketball team, but that was only on the court; they threw him the ball but nothing else, nothing like friendship. Angela, he had decided after meeting her only twice, was the most self-contained bag he’d ever met. Not that she was exactly a bag: she was sexy-looking, if you went for older women, though he could never imagine himself having a wet dream about her. He’d been reading in one of his mother’s women’s magazines about older women and their toy-boys, but Angela, it seemed to him, didn’t seem to like even men. She hadn’t liked his father and Dad certainly hadn’t liked her. Maybe it had something to do with her being in the legal profession, СКАЧАТЬ