Читать книгу Yesterday’s Shadow - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 9

The Consul-General’s office was a bustle of departure. Random left at the same time as the Ambassador, DCM Kortright and RSO Bodine. Malone and Himes borrowed Ms Caporetto’s office again. Malone stood at the window gazing down on Martin Place at the ants coming back from lunch. There had been the usual lunchtime concert in the small amphitheatre in the middle of the tree-lined plaza and the musicians were packing their gear and moving on to – what? And what were all the human ants scurrying to? From here on the 59th level destiny was a distant prospect. He turned back to Himes: ‘Joe, what are your feelings on destiny?’

Himes was seated in the chair behind the desk, the presiding chair. Pull your head in, Malone, he’s not taking over. ‘I never worry about destiny. That’s for judges and juries.’

Malone grinned: he was going to like this man. ‘Righto –’

‘Righto? I thought only upper-class Englishmen said that. You know – “Righto, old chap.”’

‘If I’d been born an upper-class Englishman, my dad would’ve strangled me at birth. He’s never been near Ireland, but he’s an Irish patriot – more so than my mother, who was born there. No, righto has just stuck to my tongue since I was a kid.’

‘What do you say when things are okay?’

‘Okay.’

Himes gazed at Malone and after a long pause said, ‘I think you and I are gonna get along, Scobie.’

‘I hope so, Joe. We’re going to need help – a lot of it.’ He sat down, then told Himes of the intimate personal side of the Pavane murder. ‘We’re not putting out anything about that – our media would make a meal of it.’

‘Not just yours. Ours, too.’

‘There’s something else besides the sex bit. Mrs Pavane has some mystery about her, something that seems to puzzle even the Ambassador. Does the FBI have a bureau in Oregon?’

Himes smiled; he had big white teeth that seemed to alter the whole set of his face. Almost impish, like a boy of long ago suddenly appearing in the man he had become. ‘We’ve got ’em all over. The local cops think we’re a pain in the ass.’

Malone returned the smile. ‘We think the same about our Feds here. Anyhow, can you have them trace –’ He looked at his notebook again. ‘Mrs Pavane’s maiden name was Wilhelmina Page, but she was known as Billie. She also used an American Express card under the name of Mrs Belinda Paterson. Home address, Corvallis. Her parents, who were killed in a car accident, lived there – roughly, I guess, in the late seventies. Her father had some sort of job at the State College, a groundsman or something.’

‘I’ll get on to that pronto.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Unless they’re having an early night.’

‘The FBI sleeps?’

Again the smile. ‘Not as much as the CIA.’

In heaven the seraphim criticize the cherubim, who look down on the thrones: the original bureaucracy.

‘Anything else?’

‘Mrs Pavane told Miss Caporetto, one day at lunch, that she’d made a quick business trip to Sydney some years ago. The Ambassador says that can’t be right. But at the lunch some feller came up, tried to speak to Mrs Pavane, but she just wiped him. Is there any way you can trace if a Miss Page or a Mrs Paterson came to Sydney eight or nine years ago? We’ll check with our Immigration.’

Himes made a note. ‘I’m told there was another homicide at the same hotel. Any connection?’

‘We don’t think so. It’s a domestic. I’m on my way now to question the wife.’

‘I don’t envy you. In my job I never got caught up in domestics, not like local cops. This one –’ He shook his head as if in disbelief. ‘This one’s the closest I’ve ever been to a domestic.’

‘Joe, a domestic for us is when the husband kills the wife or vice versa.’

‘I know. But from what you’ve told me, this isn’t the usual security thing. Terrorists, someone with a grudge against the US – it looks like nothing more than plain murder. To which Mrs Pavane might’ve contributed by being where she was in that flea-bag.’

‘It’s not a flea-bag, Joe. It’s just a hotel where the rate is about three or four hundred dollars a night less than she’d be used to paying. What do you know about her?’

‘You couldn’t meet a nicer woman. She had – what do they call it? – the common touch. I know no more about her than what I saw down in Canberra – the embassy staff love her. She’d have been checked by the FBI back home before she and the Ambassador got the appointment – it’s standard procedure –’

‘They missed somewhere along the line. They didn’t link her with Mrs Belinda Paterson.’

‘The FBI is thorough –’

‘Joe, I’m not criticizing. I’m stating a fact, that’s all. Mrs Pavane apparently has had three names – I’d like to find out which was her real one. Then, maybe, we can start tracing her killer.’

‘You think it was someone from her past who killed her?’

‘I haven’t a clue, Joe. But it would be better if it were, wouldn’t it?’

Himes stood up, looking weary. ‘I dunno, Scobie. There are no good aspects to murder, are there?’

‘I’m not sure of that, either. I’ve seen some bastards who were better dead than alive.’ He, too, stood up. They both looked weary enough to be at the end of a case rather than the beginning of it. ‘What if the bloke who killed her didn’t know who she really was? She had all her valuables up in the room with her. Only her passport was in the safe deposit box. Didn’t she want him to know who she was?’

‘I hate the thought she might just have been there as a pick-up. Are you gonna ask the Ambassador what their sex life was like?’

Malone grinned without humour. ‘I think I’ll leave that to Foreign Affairs.’