Endpeace. Jon Cleary

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Sir Harry touched Malone’s arm, said, ‘Forgive us, Mr Malone,’ and went on up the stairs, moving stiffly and not looking back at his sons and daughters.

      Malone had known embarrassment, but nothing like this. He looked for an exit, some way he could skirt the four Huxwoods and be ignored by them. Then Lisa appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, coat over her dinner dress. If she had heard what had just been said in the hallway, she gave no sign of it.

      She held out her hand to Derek. ‘Thank you, Derek, A most entertaining evening.’

      Nigel and his sisters slipped away, not even looking at the Malones, just disappearing into the shadows of the house. Derek shook hands with Lisa, did the same with Malone, then escorted them towards the heavy front door.

      ‘I’m glad you thought it was entertaining.’ He was smiling, that whimsical grin just short of a sneer. ‘Like Macbeth or King Lear. You should see us when we’re in top form. Our paper’s cartoonists could get a month’s run out of us.’

      3

      Driving home Lisa said, ‘Don’t ever accept an invitation to that house again, understand? Never!’

      ‘There’s no chance of that. What happened while I was out with Sir Harry?’

      ‘I don’t know. All of a sudden the four of them were down one end of the room with Lady Huxwood, arguing in whispers. The rest of us were at the other end, trying to look as if we hadn’t been left there like – what’s that expression you use?’

      ‘Like shags on a rock?’

      ‘That’s it. We never go there again, understand?’

      He knew how adamant she could be, but never about anything as unimportant as a dinner invitation. He had, however, noticed a gradual change in her over the past few months. Last year she had been operated on for cervical cancer; the operation had been successful and there had been no metastasis since. She had undergone chemotherapy and it had had a temporary effect: there had been the recurring bouts of vomiting and she had lost some of her lustrous blonde hair. The hair had grown back, as thick as ever, and she was once again healthily vibrant; but her patience had thinned, she had less time for inconsequentialities. It was as if she had looked at the clock and decided it was closer to midnight than she had thought. She had not become self-centred, but she had begun to ration her time, her attention and her charity. He couldn’t blame her: she had been fortunate to come out on the lucky side of a fifty-fifty chance.

      ‘What drives them to be like that, for God’s sake?’ She was stirred, more than she should be. ‘They have everything, there’s nothing missing in their lives. Not the way ordinary people count things. And yet ... Have you ever met such a bunch?’

      ‘There’s lots more around like them, I’m sure. We just never meet them. When we do, it’s usually after a homicide and by then they’ve called a truce.’

      ‘Lady Huxwood invites homicide. Anyhow, we never go there again. Watch the red light.’

      ‘You’re the one who’s driving. You watch it.’

Chapter Two

      1

      For several years the Homicide Unit of the Major Crime Squad, South Region, had been housed in the Hat Factory, a one-time commercial building where the ambience had suggested that the Police Service was down on its luck, that the hat had had to be passed around before the rent could be raised. Recently Homicide, along with other units in the Major Crime Squad, had been moved to quarters that, for the first few weeks, had brought on delusions that money had been thrown at the Service which the State government had actually meant for more deserving causes such as casino construction or pork-barrelling in marginal electorates.

      Strawberry Hills was the enticing name of the new location, though no strawberry had ever been grown there nor had it ever been really enticing. It had begun as clay-topped sandhills held together by blackbutts, blood-woods, angophoras and banksias, but those trees had soon disappeared as the men with axes arrived and development raised its ugly shacks. ‘Environment’, in its modern meaning, had just been adopted in England, but so far word, or the word, had not reached the colony. For years there was a slow battle between the sandhills and the houses built on them, but that did not stop a developer from naming his estate after the sylvan Strawberry Hill in England where Horace Walpole, in between writing letters to addressees still to be chosen, had built a villa that would never have got above foundation level if it had been built on the colony’s sandhills. Time passed and gradually Strawberry Hills, like the sandhills, virtually disappeared off maps. The city reached out and swamped it. A vast mail exchange was built where once tenement houses had stood, but though Australia Post could sort a million letters an hour it couldn’t sort out the industrial troubles in the exchange. Eventually the huge ugly structure was closed as a mail exchange, an impressive glass facade was added, as if to mask what a problem place it had been. Six huge Canary Islands date palms stood sentinel in the forecourt, looking as out of place as Nubian palace guards would have been. The winos across the street in Prince Alfred Park suffered the DTs for a week or two, but became accustomed to the new vista and soon settled back into the comfort of the bottle.

      Australia Post moved its administrative staff back in and then looked around for tenants who would be less of a problem than its unions had been. Whether it was conscious of the irony or not, it chose the Major Crime Squad. Level Four in the refurbished building was almost too rich in its space and comfort for the Squad’s members, but it is difficult to be stoical against luxury. One of the pleasures for those in Homicide on night duty was to put their feet up on their brand-new desks, lean back and, on the Unit’s television set, watch re-runs of Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue and pity the poor bastards who had to work in such conditions.

      The morning after the Huxwood dinner Malone overslept, but, a creature of certain habits, he still went for his five-kilometre walk before breakfast. It was nine-thirty before he reached Homicide and let himself in through the security door. Russ Clements was waiting for him, looking worried.

      ‘You sick or something? I rang Lisa ten minutes ago -’

      ‘I’m okay. I knew there was nothing in the synopsis -’

      ‘There is now. Four murders in our Region alone, two in North Region’s. You and I are on our way out to Vaucluse –’

      ‘I’m not going out on any job. That’s for you –’

      The big man shook his head. ‘I think you’d better come on this one, Scobie.’

      Malone frowned. ‘Why?’

      ‘Lisa told me where you were last night. Malmaison House. That’s where we’re going. Kate Arletti’s out there waiting for us – I sent her out as soon as Rose Bay called in. It’s their turf, theirs and Waverley’s.’

      ‘A homicide at Malmaison?’ Lady Huxwood invites homicide. ‘Who? Lady Huxwood?’

      Clements looked at him curiously. ‘What made you say that?’

      ‘Lisa and I were talking about her on our way home ... It was a bugger of a night, you’ve got no idea. She’s the – she was the Dragon Lady of all time.’

      ‘She probably still is. It was the old man, Sir Harry, СКАЧАТЬ