Winter Chill. Jon Cleary

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      ‘She hasn’t been in at all. She had no appointment—’

      He thanked the receptionist and hung up. He sat back in his chair, puzzled and a little angry: why had Lisa lied to him? Was she planning some surprise? Then a memory came back, like a spasm of pain, and he felt a hollow sense of dread. Years ago, before any of the children were born, he and she had been in New York on a round-the-world honeymoon financed by a lottery win; an extravagance, one of his last, that he had insisted upon. Lisa, suffering a lost filling, had left their hotel and gone looking for a dentist. She had been kidnapped along with the wife of the then Mayor of New York and held to ransom by terrorists. It was ridiculous that history could repeat itself, but the agony of that search for her came back like new pain.

      Then reason, the hook on which hope hangs, sometimes weakly, took over. Lisa had not gone to the dentist. So where had she gone and why had she lied to him, something she had never done before? He trusted her so absolutely that the thought did not enter his mind that she might have gone to meet another man. But where was she?

Chapter Two

      1

      He got her at home at four o’clock in the afternoon. ‘Where have you been? I’ve called half a dozen times – you said you were going to the dentist’s, I tried there—’ There was silence at the other end of the line. ‘Darl, for Chrissake, what’s going on?’

      Something that sounded like a long sigh came down the line. ‘I’ll tell you when you come home—’

      ‘Tell me now. I’ll probably be late – not before seven or eight, anyway—’

      ‘No, I’ll tell you when you come home.’ There was a pause, then she said, ‘I love you,’ and hung up.

      He put the phone back in the cradle and looked up to see Clements standing in the doorway. ‘You look as if you’ve been talking to one of the Yank lawyers. Mr Zoehrer?’

      ‘No, Lisa.’

      ‘Oh?’ Clements waited for further comment, but when none came he went on, ‘Ballistics just called. They haven’t got the bullet that killed Brame yet. The morgue’s snowed under, dead ’uns everywhere.’

      ‘The natural place for them.’ His mind was still on Lisa.

      ‘You want me to come with you to see Mrs Brame?’

      ‘Who else?’

      ‘I thought you might prefer Peta. The good-looking one.’

      They left half an hour later to go to the Novotel. As they were leaving the big main room Peta Smith, taking off her trenchcoat and her hat, came in. ‘Nothing, Scobie, nothing worthwhile. Brame was at a reception at the Darling Harbour convention centre last night, but no one noticed anything out of the ordinary about him, I mean how he behaved. Nobody remembers seeing him after eleven o’clock, when someone saw him in the hotel coffee lounge with a guy.’

      ‘Who?’

      She shrugged. ‘Who knows? Like I told you, there are a thousand lawyers in town – most of ’em are strangers to each other. Except the guys at the top.’

      ‘Are they being co-operative?’

      She smiled. ‘I’ve had four invitations to dinner, six to drinks and two to mind your own business.’

      Malone looked at Clements. ‘Could you have done as well? Thanks, Peta. Get Andy Graham to help you set up the flow charts. Don’t work late.’

      ‘I wasn’t going to. I accepted one of the dinner dates. That okay?’

      ‘Just so long as you feed it into the running sheets.’ But he grinned. ‘Not with Karl Zoehrer, I hope? I don’t want him suing Homicide for palimony.’

      When he and Clements drove into the Novotel at a few minutes to five, the lawyers were filtering back from their afternoon session at the convention. Malone saw Zoehrer holding court in the lobby, but the big man did not see the two detectives and they escaped into the lift and rode up to Mrs Brame’s floor.

      She was waiting for them in her suite, in a rose silk dress and looking much fresher than she had this morning. With her was a handsome young man with thinning blond hair and the awkward look of a courtier new to serving the queen. And Malone knew now that Joanna Brame was the queen of whichever circle she ruled back home in the States.

      ‘Adam, would you get the gentlemen a drink? This is Adam Tallis, an associate in our firm.’

      Malone and Clements shook hands with Tallis and gave him their drink preferences. Then Malone sat down opposite Joanna Brame. ‘Our firm? You’re a lawyer, too, Mrs Brame?’

      She smiled at that, a pleasant smile, then sipped the cocktail she had been holding when the two detectives had entered the room. ‘Only by osmosis. I said our firm out of habit. My great-grandfather founded it back in – when was it, Adam?’

      ‘1888.’ Malone was certain that Joanna Brame had known the date, but she had neatly drawn Tallis into the conversation. ‘Mrs Brame is a Schuyler.’

      ‘Of Schuyler, Dr Vries and Barrymore,’ said Malone and smiled at the surprise of the two Americans. ‘I looked it up, Mr Brame’s firm, I mean. I just didn’t know you were related to it, Mrs Brame.’

      ‘My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father. And my husband.’ She looked at her drink as if she saw reflections in it. Malone wondered if her first husband had belonged to the firm, but now was not the time to ask her. ‘Somehow, I’ve never been able to escape it, the law. Even my first husband was a lawyer …’ Then she looked up, threw off the introspection that had veiled her for a moment. ‘Well, how can I help? Sit down here beside me, Adam. You may be able to help, too.’

      ‘First, we have to establish what Mr Brame was doing out so late last night.’

      ‘He may have gone for a walk. He did that every night, to unwind, he said. Whether we were at our apartment in Manhattan or at our place in Connecticut. I used to worry, especially in New York, but he told me he always kept to the well-lit streets.’

      ‘Darling Harbour is reasonably well-lit,’ said Clements. ‘There just aren’t too many people around at two or three o’clock in the morning.’

      Malone said gently, ‘Did your husband have any enemies?’

      ‘Here?’ She put down her empty glass. ‘He hadn’t been home for thirty years.’

      ‘Not necessarily here. In the United States.’

      ‘None that I know of. He was highly respected.’

      ‘Popular?’ He knew that popularity could breed enmity. That skater Nancy Kerrigan had been popular and she had had enemies.

      ‘Well, perhaps not popular. My husband never courted that sort of thing. He used to quote somebody, I forget who. The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.’

      ‘Stendhal,’ said Tallis.

      Malone СКАЧАТЬ