Bleak Spring. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ darkness beyond the surf club there came the dull boom of the waves, a barrage that threw up no frightening glare.

      As Malone and Ellsworth walked across towards the surf club, the younger man said, ‘We haven’t dug up a witness yet. If anyone saw what happened, they haven’t come forward.’

      Malone paused and looked around. ‘I used to come here when I was younger, to surf. At night, too. They used to hold dances at the surf club in those days. You’d take a girl outside, along the beach or out here in one of the cars . . . Don’t the kids today go in for nooky in the back seat or out in the sandhills?’

      Ellsworth’s grin showed no teeth. ‘Not tonight, evidently. I think the girls object to getting sand in it.’

      The surf club’s pavilion stretched across the eastern end of the car park, separating it from the beach. It was built in the newly popular Australian style, with curved corrugated-iron roofs over its two wings and a similar roof, like an arch, over the breezeway that separated the two wings. Atop one of the wings was a look-out tower, glass-enclosed, a major improvement on the wooden ladder stuck in the sands of Malone’s youth.

      The caretaker’s small office smelt of salt air and wet sand, even though its door faced away from the sea. Its corners were cluttered with cleaning equipment; a wet-suit hung like a black suicide from a hook on one wall; the other walls were papered with posters on how to save lives in every situation from drowning to snakebite. There was none on what to do in the case of a gunshot wound.

      Olive Rockne sat stiffly on a stiff-backed chair, spine straight, knees together, hands tightly clasped; if she was in shock, she was decorously so, not like some Malone had seen. ‘You all right, Olive?’

      She looked at him as if she did not recognize him; then she blinked, wet her lips and nodded. “I can’t believe it’s happened . . . Are you here as a friend or a detective?’

      ‘Both, I guess.’ It was a question he had never been asked before. ‘You feel up to telling me what happened?’

      ‘I’ve already told him.’ She nodded at Ellsworth, who stood against a wall, the wet-suit hanging in a macabre fashion behind him.

      ‘I know, Olive. But I’m in charge now and I like to do things my way.’

      He sat down opposite her, behind the caretaker’s desk. There was a scrawl pad on the desk; scrawled on it in rough script was: Monday – Sack Jack. He didn’t know where the caretaker was nor was he interested; the fewer bystanders at an interview like this the better. There were just himself, Ellsworth and the uniformed constable standing outside the open door. Olive Rockne was entitled to as much privacy as he could give her.

      ‘What happened?’

      Olive was regaining her composure, reefing it in inch by inch; only the raised knuckles of her tightly clenched hands showed the effort. ‘I got out of the car – ’

      ‘First, Olive – why were you out here?’

      She frowned, as if she didn’t quite understand the reason herself: ‘Sentiment. Does that sound silly or stupid?’

      ‘No, not if you explain it.’

      ‘It was out here on the beach that Will – ’ her voice choked for a moment ‘ – that he proposed to me. When we came out of the school, he suggested we drive out here before going home. We were going to go for a walk along the beach.’

      ‘Where were you when Will was shot?’

      She took her time, trying to get everything straight in her mind: ‘I don’t know – maybe twenty or thirty yards from the car, I’m not sure. I got Out and so did Will. But then he went back – he’d forgotten to turn the lights off. Then I heard the shot – ’

      ‘Were the lights still on when you heard the shot?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Did you see anyone running away from the car? That car park out there is pretty well lit.’

      ‘I don’t know, I’m not sure . . .’ She was reliving the first moments of her husband’s death; Malone knew they were always the hardest to erase, whether the death was gentle or violent. ‘I think I saw a shadow, but I can’t be sure. There were other cars between me and ours . . . Then I got to the car and saw Will . . . I screamed – ’

      She shuddered, opened her mouth as if she were about to vomit, and Malone said, ‘Take it easy for a while. Would you like a cup of tea or something?’ An electric kettle and some cups and saucers stood on a narrow table against a wall. ‘It might help.’

      ‘No.’ She shook her head determinedly. ‘All I want to do is go home, Scobie. There are Jason and Shelley – ’

      ‘Where was Jason? Did you drop him off at home?’

      ‘No, he’d already gone by the time we left the school – he said he’d walk. I should go home, tell ’em what’s happened – Oh, my God!’ She put a hand to her eyes, hit by the enormity of what she had to do.

      ‘We’d better get in touch with someone to look after them. What about your parents?’

      ‘There’s just my mother. And I have a married sister – she lives at Cronulla. Her name’s Rose Cadogan – ’ She gave a phone number without having to search her memory for it. Malone noticed that she was having alternate moments of calm control and nervous tension; but that was not unusual. It had struck him on their first meeting some months ago that there was a certain preciseness to her; and habit, whether acquired or natural, was hard to lose.

      ‘What about Will’s family?’

      ‘Just his father, he lives out at Carlingford with Will’s stepmother. I suppose we’d better call him.’

      She sounded callous, but Malone kept his reaction to himself. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ellsworth purse his lips, making him suddenly look prim. ‘Didn’t Will and his father get on?’

      ‘They haven’t spoken for, I dunno, three or four years. His father is George Rockne. You know – ’

      ‘The ex-communist union boss?’

      ‘Ex-union boss. He’s still a communist.’

      ‘Will was so – right-wing. Was that why they didn’t get on?’

      She nodded. ‘I’ll ring him. May I go?’ She stood up, wavered a moment, then was steady.

      Malone looked at Ellsworth. ‘Do you have a woman PC?’

      ‘Constable Rojeski is outside somewhere. She can take Mrs Rockne home.’

      Malone took Olive’s arm as they went out of the caretaker’s office. ‘I’ll have to come and see you tomorrow morning.’

      She looked sideways at him; she looked her age now, she had caught up with her birthdays, gone past them. ‘This is just the start, isn’t it?’

      ‘The start of the investigation? Yes.’

      ‘No, I didn’t mean that.’ But she didn’t explain what she had meant.

      She СКАЧАТЬ