Autumn Maze. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ a slice of toast had ever been cooked in it, as if it were waiting for the photographer from Good Living to arrive. It was all stainless steel and white Formica, the only colour in the copper bottoms of the pots and pans hung like native artefacts above the central work-island.

      ‘G’day, Scobie. Russ.’ Jack Greenup was in his fifties, grey-haired and overweight, a cop from the old school. He had played rugby league when he was young and still believed in the direct approach; he had never tried to sidestep, to run around a man in his life, not even when his own life depended on it. ‘We haven’t talked to the silvertails inside. John and I had a few words with the maid.’

      ‘Where’s she?’

      ‘In her room, right at the back.’ John Kagal was the youngest and second newest member of Homicide, its only university graduate. He was good-looking, dark-haired and aerobics-trim, always impeccably turned out. Malone knew, with resigned amusement, that the young man would some day be Commissioner, possibly succeeding Zanuch. By then Malone hoped he would be in retirement. Or Tibooburra. ‘There are four bedrooms and three bathrooms on this side of the apartment. Oh, and this kitchen and a pantry in there.’ He nodded to a side door. ‘There’s a rear door in through the pantry from the service lift.’

      ‘It’s bloody big.’ Jack Greenup had been born in and still lived in a two-bedroomed cottage out in Tempe where big was anything that had a second storey.

      ‘What did the maid have to say?’

      ‘I talked to her. She’s a Filipina. She said young Sweden came here last night, his parents were out at the opera, and he told Luisa, that’s her name, Luisa – you’re not gunna believe this – Luisa Marcos, he told her she could have the night off. He gave her fifty bucks to go to the movies.’

      ‘Fifty bucks,’ said Greenup. ‘He was telling her to get lost, looks like.’

      ‘So he was expecting someone here?’

      ‘I’d say so,’ said Kagal.

      ‘Did you ask the parents about that?’

      Kagal shook his head. ‘I got the feeling that the AC didn’t want any questions asked. That’s between you and me.’

      ‘Of course.’ Don’t tell me how to run the squad, son. You’ll get your turn after I’ve gone. The night doorman, Kinley, did he say anything about letting anyone in?’

      ‘No. We’ve got a list of last night’s visitors to the building. Not all their names, but who they were visiting. Here it is.’ He tore a page out of his notebook and handed it to Clements. ‘I’d like it back, Russ.’

      ‘Sure,’ said Clements, who didn’t like being told the obvious by a junior officer. ‘Any signs of a struggle?’

      ‘None out in the living room. He was tossed off—’

      ‘Thrown,’ said Malone and grinned as Kagal looked blank. ‘I’ve just been ticked off for saying he was tossed off. You’ve been warned.’

      Kagal nodded. ‘Okay, he was thrown off, there’s a small balcony at the back, off the main bedroom. It overlooks the side street where he was found.’

      ‘The main bedroom? Mr and Mrs Sweden’s? Any signs of a struggle in there?’

      ‘No. But there are signs in the second bedroom, where young Sweden occasionally spent the night. He has – had a flat out at Edgecliff, but occasionally he’d bunk down here, keeping his stepmother company while his father was away interstate or wherever. Maybe they knocked him on the head, then tossed – threw him off the balcony.’

      ‘No,’ said Clements, who had been taking his own notes, even though Kagal would feed his notes into the running sheet on the computer back at the office. He told Kagal and Greenup what Romy had found in her autopsy. ‘He was surgically done in, looks like.’

      ‘Righto, let’s go in and talk to the silvertails.’ Malone grinned at Jack Greenup, the old proletarian. ‘You remind me of my dad, Jack.’

      ‘Must be salt of the earth. You wanna talk to Luisa?’

      ‘You’ll have got everything out of her?’ He looked at Kagal, knowing the younger man would have done exactly that. ‘No, leave her be. If we have to, we’ll get back to her. We can’t keep the mob inside waiting too long. Stay here, you two, make yourselves some coffee.’ He looked around the kitchen again; he would have to tell Lisa about it. ‘Don’t mess up the place.’

      He led Clements back into the other half of the apartment. The silvertails, some seated, some still standing, all turned at once, all, it seemed to Malone, on the defensive. Zanuch’s face was the only one that showed neutral.

      The two detectives were introduced by the AC; there was a formality about it, almost as if this were some sort of social gathering. ‘I don’t think you two ladies need to be interviewed. This is Mrs Casement and Mrs Aldwych, they are Mrs Sweden’s sisters.’

      ‘We’ll stay.’ Ophelia Casement was familiar to Malone now that he saw her close-up. His two daughters, Claire and Maureen, made a mockery each week of the social pages of the Sunday newspapers; they would measure the amount of dental display at functions, supposedly sane people grinning like idiots at the camera, and occasionally would show him the results. Mrs Casement, it seemed, was a standard feature in the makeup of every social page. But even at a glance Malone knew she was no idiot. ‘Rosalind needs us here.’

      ‘Of course,’ said Rosalind Sweden from where she sat on a long couch.

      ‘We’ve always supported each other,’ said Juliet Aldwych.

      Ophelia, Rosalind, Juliet: Malone hadn’t read Shakespeare since he had left school, but he remembered the names. Once, aged thirteen and going to an all-boys’ school, he had been forced to play Ophelia in a school production; his voice had been breaking then and he had alternated between an alto and baritone rendering of her speeches. As he dimly remembered it, at least two of the Shakespeare girls had been hard done by; none of these three looked the worse for wear. Ophelia, he guessed, was the eldest, in her mid-forties, still beautiful and aware of it. Rosalind would be the middle one, four or five years younger, bearing a remarkable resemblance to her elder sister. Juliet was the youngest, in her mid-thirties perhaps, dark-haired where her sisters were blonde. They were a very handsome trio, as sure of themselves as money and beauty could make them. He wondered what lay behind the facades, behind the years past.

      ‘How are we going to do this, Inspector?’ That was Rufus Tucker, the Minister’s press secretary. Malone had known him when he had been a scruffy young crime reporter; now he was twenty kilos heavier, he had groomed himself just as minders groomed their rough-edged masters, he was a smooth-whistling whale in a three-piece suit. He had the reputation of slapping down smaller fish who tried to bait his master. ‘I think it would be best if you just spoke to the Minister alone.’

      From the moment he had entered the apartment Malone had been manipulated. Ordinarily he would have spoken to each person alone, but the old perversity took hold: ‘No, we’ll take everybody together.’ He had to shut his mouth before the runaway tongue added, The more the merrier. Thinking like the fast bowler he had once been, he bowled a bean ball, no fooling around looking for a length: ‘Did your son mention to you that he was having trouble with anyone, Mr Sweden?’

      Sweden had composed himself, almost as if he were СКАЧАТЬ