Читать книгу Autumn Maze - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 6

1

As they walked out into the still-warm day some dark clouds were boiling in from the south-east; a few fat drops of rain caught the sun as they fell, turning the air into a thin gold mesh. A van came down the street and turned into the morgue’s loading dock: another delivery, another death. Two women stood talking at the gate of a house on the opposite side of the road, but neither of them gave the van a glance.

Malone said, ‘It’s none of my business, but have you and Romy had a row?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Clements. ‘It was just – well, she told me this morning she’s ready for marriage.’

‘She proposed to you? Amongst the stiffs?’

‘Well, no, not exactly. We weren’t in where they keep the bodies. We were in the murder room, but it was empty.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘Nothing so far. I was still digesting it when you walked in.’

‘That’s why you looked like a stunned mullet. It’s about time you made up your mind, son. You’ve been going with her, what, two years now? You’re never going to get anyone as good as her.’

‘It was just a bit sudden.’

‘Sudden? Two bloody years, you’re up to your eyeballs in love with her and it’s sudden when she tells you she’d like to get married? How long are you going to wait? Till the two of you are laid out side by side on trolleys back in there?’ He nodded over his shoulder.

‘You’re starting to sound like a real bloody matchmaker.’

‘Wait till I tell Lisa, then you’ll find out what a real bloody matchmaker is. Righto, where do we go from here? You dragged me away from a day with Tom, I hope you’ve got something organized?’

‘All right, don’t get snarly just because I don’t wanna be hasty about getting married. You got your car? I caught a cab up here, a Wog who wanted to take me via Parramatta till I showed him my badge. Then he said the ride was on him.’ He grinned; sometimes he relished his prejudices. ‘I think we should go down and have a look at the scene of the crime.’

‘Which scene?’

‘The one down at The Wharf. You’d rather go there than out to Canterbury, wouldn’t you?’

‘The Wharf? You mean this bloke Sweden, the son, had an apartment there?’

‘No, it’s his father’s and his stepmother’s. She’s one of the Bruna sisters.’

‘You’re ahead of me.’ Malone led the way towards the family car, the nine-year-old Holden Commodore. Lisa and the children were pressing him to buy a new one, but as usual when it came to spending money, especially large sums, he said he couldn’t find his cheque-book. ‘Who’re the Bruna sisters?’

Clements was a grab-bag of trivial information. ‘Don’t you ever read Women’s Weekly? The Bruna sisters are our equivalent of the Gabor sisters, Zsa Zsa, Eva and the other one—’

‘You mean you don’t know the other one’s name? It’s Charlene.’ Malone was heading the Commodore downtown.

‘These three sisters came originally from Roumania, I think it was, when they were kids. They all married money. Several times, with each sister. They’re good-lookers, they’re rich and if any of them are there at the apartments, I don’t think they’ll give you and me the time of day.’

‘How are you so well informed on them? Do you have a gig on the Women’s Weekly’? Malone had his own gigs, informers, but none on a women’s magazine.

‘I started taking an interest in them when I found out who they were married to. There’s this one whose place we’re going to, she’s married to our Minister – he’s her second or third husband, I forget which. Then there’s one married to Cormac Casement – his money’s so old it’s mouldy. She’s his second wife and he’s her third husband. And then there’s the youngest, she’s married, her third husband, to Jack Aldwych Junior. Yeah, I thought that’d make you sit up.’

Malone nodded, trying to picture Jack Aldwych, once Sydney’s top crime boss, on the verge of the local social scene. Then he dropped the image from his mind, turned to getting the next few hours, maybe weeks, into step in his mind. They passed the University of Technology, a tall grey building that could not have generated much optimism in the hearts of those who entered it. Malone had to slow as a group of students, ignoring the traffic, crossed the wide main street at their leisure, jerking their fingers at those motorists who had the hide to honk at them. A larger group was gathered in front of the university’s entrance, massing for another demonstration. Demos were becoming frequent again: against further cuts in student grants, against undeclared wars, against the recession. Rent-a-Crowd, Malone guessed, was doing business as good as it had done back in the Sixties and Seventies. He slowed the Commodore down to walking pace as a student, flat-topped, wearing jeans and a sweater three times too large for him, crossed in front of the car, daring the driver to run him down.

‘If he knew we were cops,’ said Clements, ‘he’d of laid down in front of us.’

Malone ignored the student, waited till he had passed and then drove on. The student had his troubles; there was probably no one of his age who didn’t. But Malone had his own: ‘The Police Minister’s son, the son of our best-known crim, a missing stranger who died the same way as Sweden’s son – you got any more you want to throw in the pot with that stew?’

‘Not at the moment,’ said Clements.

‘These – Bruna? – sisters. Is there anything dirty against them?’

‘Only that they marry for money. I don’t think that’s a crime, not out in the eastern suburbs.’ Clements came originally from Rockdale, an area that those in the east would have trouble finding on a map. Australian cities are no different from those overseas: they condense the national prejudices, their suburbs tribal grounds of contempt and dislike for each other. ‘I don’t think we have to worry too much about Aldwych Junior, either. As far as I know, he’s got a clean nose.’

‘He was mixed up in that case with Romy’s father. We never pinned anything on him, but I’m sure he wasn’t clean.’

‘Well, he is as far as the record goes. Don’t start complicating things. We’ve got enough to worry about.’

The Wharf had been built during the Eighties, in the boom times when people thought the money-tree would fruit forever. It was a circular glass- and granite-faced tower, twenty-four storeys high that, though towered over by the office buildings along Circular Quay, gave the impression it was the only one where you would find quality inside its walls. The marble foyer inside the brass-and-glass front doors suggested you were entering a bank, a small exclusive one where no deposits under a million were accepted and then only as a favour.

The doorman, releasing the security lock to let them in, recognized Malone and Clements; they had been here before to interview a suspect in another case. ‘Remember me? Col Crittle. We been over-run with police this morning. You’d be the umpteenth.’ He was a burly man with a head of thick grey hair combed flat and an easy smile, the sort of doorman elderly widows could feel secure with. At least a quarter of the owners were elderly widows, the sort who never had to cut dead branches off the money-tree. ‘You want the twentieth floor. It’s all one apartment, Mr and Mrs Sweden’s.’

‘Were you on duty last night when the accident happened?’

‘They tell me it wasn’t an accident. No, thank God I wasn’t here. It was the night feller, Stan Kinley.’

‘He still works here?’ Names stuck in Clements’ memory as much as events; Malone had told him that on Judgement Day he would be asked to call the roll. He caught Malone’s eye and said, ‘He was the guy we saw when we came here to see Justine Springfellow. She still here?’

The doorman shook his head. ‘She moved out a coupla years ago.’

‘Where did Mr Sweden, the young one, fall?’

‘Around in the side street. Your fellers’ve got it cordoned off with tapes. I’m waiting for them to tell me when the council blokes can scrub out the stain. He made a real mess.’

As soon as they stepped into the glass-and-brass lift Malone had a feeling of déjà vu. Last time, they had come to interview Justine Springfellow who had turned out to be not guilty of the murder they had been certain she had committed. Let’s have better luck this time. The lift stopped at the twentieth floor and they stepped out into a small lobby. In front of them were double doors of thick dark walnut, each with a lion’s head in brass in the middle of it. A young uniformed policeman stood beside the doors, his authority somehow diminished by their solidity.

He nodded at the two detectives, went to open the doors. ‘Hold it a moment,’ said Malone. ‘Who’s in there?’

‘The Physical Evidence team have gone, sir. There’s one of your men from Homicide – Kagal? – and Sergeant Greenup.’

‘No media?’

‘They came last night, after it happened. A couple came back this morning, trying for an interview with the Minister, but Sergeant Greenup told ’em to get lost.’

‘Good old Jack. He got his sledgehammer with him?’

The young officer grinned; he knew the reputation of his sergeant. Clements said, ‘Who else is in there?’

‘Mr and Mrs Sweden. Mrs Sweden’s sisters – I dunno their names.’ Like Malone, the young officer evidently did not read the Women’s Weekly. ‘And one of the Minister’s minders, his press secretary, I think.’

‘Quite a crowd.’

‘It’s a big apartment, sir. Oh, there’s someone else. Assistant Commissioner Zanuch.’

Malone wondered why a junior officer should almost forget the Assistant Commissioner, Administration, but he made no comment. He himself did his best to forget Zanuch and usually succeeded. One’s mind worked better when the AC was not occupying even the remotest corner of it.

Malone and Clements went in through the big doors, pulling up instinctively as soon as they were inside the apartment. They were on a landing, fronted by a dark walnut railing that matched the front doors; four steps led down each side to the main level. One half of the apartment was a living and dining area, a huge expanse that looked out through a glass wall, across a wide terrace, to the harbour and the north-east. Behind the dividing wall that ran right across the apartment lay, Malone guessed, the bedrooms and service rooms. The furniture was a mixture of modern and antique, a cocktail of decor that didn’t turn the stomach. The pictures on the long wall were also a mix, but none of them clashed. Malone, a man any interior decorator would have hung on a wall in a dungeon, was nonetheless impressed. He was in rich territory.

All the people in the room were grouped at the far end. Assistant Commissioner Zanuch detached himself from them and came quickly towards the new arrivals. He was ten years older than Malone but didn’t look it. Tall, handsome and arrogant, he gave the impression of being a banker in uniform rather than a police officer. His uniforms were custom made by the city’s most expensive tailor and the Police Service’s guess was that the insignia on his shoulders were all solid silver, he would not have been comfortable with less.

‘What are you doing here?’ He had a beautifully modulated voice but there was an edge to it now. ‘We haven’t yet decided whether it was an accident or homicide.’

Malone smelled politics at once.

‘Oh, it was homicide, sir.’ Both men had kept their voices low; the faces at the far end of the room were turned towards them like small satellite dishes, blank of expression. ‘We’ve just come from the morgue. The opinion there is that young Mr Sweden was dead before he was tossed off the balcony. I’m taking charge of the case.’

It was a challenge, and both of them knew it. The two men, because of the difference in rank, had had little to do with each other, but there was an antagonism that came to the surface on the rare occasions when they met on business. Malone could not stand Zanuch’s open ambition, his mountaineering amongst the political and social heights around town; the Assistant Commissioner had no time for Malone’s casual attitude, his apparent clumsiness in the minefields of respect for authority. All they had in common was that they were both good policemen.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes, sir.’

They were stopped from further discussion as Derek Sweden came down the room towards them. Malone and Clements had never previously met the Police Minister; their political bosses came and went like seasonal viruses. Sweden was in his mid-fifties, bony-faced, bald and as elegantly dressed as Zanuch, but not in uniform. He had been in politics for twenty years without ever achieving his party’s leadership; he had at the same time managed to make money in property. The son of a political father and a mother who voted as she was told, it was said that he had shaken every hand in the State, including that of the head chimpanzee at Taronga Park. He had always been a State politician, but with the stunning defeat of his party in the Federal election two weeks ago, which had left party members on a merry-go-round, with each man stabbing the back of the man in front of him, it was rumoured that Sweden had set his sights on Canberra and the national playing field.

He shook hands with the two detectives, voters both.

‘I’m sorry we have to be here, sir,’ said Malone. ‘Our sympathy on your son’s death.’

‘Thank you. From Homicide? What is this, Bill?’ He looked at Zanuch. ‘I thought we’d decided it was an accident. What’s going on?’

‘When Detective Kagal said that, I think he was trying not to make waves in front of the womenfolk.’ Zanuch might well have been a diplomat as well as a banker or a dozen other professionals. Sometimes he wondered why he had chosen to be a policeman. ‘Tell the Minister and me what you know, Inspector.’

‘Not that much, sir—’ Then Malone went on to explain what Romy had told him and Clements, though he did not mention the stolen corpse and the suspected similarity of its death to that of Robert Sweden. ‘Your son could’ve been dead before he was tossed off the balcony.’

‘Tossed off?’ Sweden looked at Zanuch as if to say, What have we got here?

‘Sorry. Thrown off.’ Malone could have chewed on his tongue; it had a habit of getting away from him, like a snapping dog, every time he came up against authority. He saw the look of irritation on Zanuch’s face and knew another black mark had been posted against him.

‘So what are you proposing?’ said Sweden.

‘We’d like to look around, with your permission. The PE team will have done its job, but I just like to look over things myself. Then we’d like to ask a few questions?’ He glanced at Zanuch.

The Assistant Commissioner did not interfere in public; but he was visibly annoyed. ‘If you must.’

‘Dammit,’ said Sweden, even more annoyed, ‘I don’t want anyone questioned! Not now, not today. Christ, we’re still getting over what’s happened—’

Zanuch looked at Malone. ‘Can’t it wait?’

‘I suppose so, sir. But the more time we waste, our chances of catching the killer get slimmer.’ You know that, even if you’ve never worked in Homicide.

For a moment the Minister might just as well have been at the other end of the room with the still-watching group: the AC and his junior officer were locked in their own small tussle. Clements stood silent and aside, his face blank.

Sweden interrupted: ‘Killer?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Malone.

Sweden, it seemed, was having difficulty coming to terms with the mere fact that his son was dead; that he had been murdered was piling too great a weight on his emotion. He looked blankly at Zanuch.

The Assistant Commissioner, contrary to the national habit, took the long view: the way this present government shuffled its cabinet, this current Minister might not be in power when the Commissioner’s post became vacant. ‘I think Inspector Malone should do it his way.’

Sweden shook his head, seemed about to make an angry retort, then changed his mind. ‘Go ahead, Inspector. Ask your questions.’

‘Where is Sergeant Greenup?’ Malone asked Zanuch.

‘In the kitchen, I think. He’s not a detective.’

‘No, sir. But he’s had thirty years’ experience. I’ll talk to him first. I’ll talk to Detective Kagal, too.’

‘You’re going to keep us waiting?’ Sweden was incredulous; he might just have been told that he had been dumped for pre-selection for the seat he had held so long.

‘I’m afraid so, sir. Until the two men out in the kitchen put me in the picture, I won’t know what questions to ask.’

Sweden looked at Zanuch, then back at Malone. ‘Do you vote Labor?’

Malone grinned. ‘Mr Zanuch thinks I’m a communist.’

The AC’s smile was like that of a baby with wind. ‘Better get cracking, Inspector.’

Malone and Clements left them and went through an archway into the other half of the apartment. As they did so, Clements muttered, ‘Are you trying to get us sent to Tibooburra? You go there on your own, mate.’

Tibooburra, in the far north-west of the State, was the city policeman’s equivalent of Elba or St Helena. ‘If this case gets any muddier, I think I’d rather be out there. Hello, Jack. John. What d’you know?’

The uniformed sergeant and the young detective were in the kitchen. It was a good-sized room and looked as if nothing more than 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 facing a television camera; he was a regular guest on 7.30 Report, where politicians came and went like store dummies, on exhibition but never saying anything. He had been in politics long enough to appreciate that, when faced with the inevitable, you took the shortest course home, even if it was crooked. ‘No, not at all. He was, I think anyone will tell you, a very popular, hard-working young man.’ He appealed to his wife and sisters and the three women nodded like a wordless Greek chorus. Though, of course, these were three girls who had risen out of the chorus. ‘If my son was murdered, as you seem to suspect, I have no idea who would have done it. None at all.’

‘Unless it was someone who broke in?’ said Rosalind. ‘It’s happening all the time these days.’

Malone glanced at Clements. It was an old ploy: keep changing the bowling, keep the batsman off balance. He still thought in cricket terms, though he no longer played the game. Clements said, ‘There’s no sign of forced entry, Mrs Sweden.’

‘Rob could have opened the door, expecting someone else.’

‘They still would’ve had to get in through the security door downstairs. The night doorman doesn’t mention any visitor for your stepson.’ Clements looked at the list Kagal had given him. ‘There was a visitor for you, Mrs Casement. You live here?’

‘We have the penthouse,’ said Ophelia Casement, making it sound as if she and her husband lived above the clouds, up where the hoi polloi never reached; Malone saw a slight smile on the face of Juliet, the youngest sister. ‘We may have had a visitor, I’m not sure. I was out, but my husband was home. People from his office often drop by at odd hours. It’s just across the road there.’

She nodded west, towards the end of the long curved glass wall; the vertical edge of the tall Casement building showed there like a sun-reflecting border. A jigsaw was falling into place in Malone’s mind. He was not ignorant of the men and money that ran this city, but homicide detectives rarely, if ever, had to sort out the skeins of power.

‘Rob liked girls.’ Juliet had a throaty voice. To Clements, a late-night movie fan, she sounded like the crop of actresses out of old British movies, when they all tried to sound like Joan Greenwood. To Malone, a man with a biased ear, she sounded phoney. ‘Perhaps one of them came here and brought someone? A boyfriend followed her?’

Rob was told he was never to bring girls unless we were here.’ Rosalind sounded like a headmistress.

‘I’m sorry, Inspector—’ Juliet made a poor attempt at looking innocent. ‘I’m playing detective. Forgive me?’

‘The doorman says he didn’t let in any visitors for Mr Sweden. But we think Mr Sweden must’ve been expecting someone.’

‘What makes you think that?’ The Minister’s voice was sharp.

‘Detective Kagal has interviewed your maid. She says your son gave her fifty dollars to go to the movies. We think he wanted her out of the way.’

‘Fifty dollars to go to the movies?’ Ophelia made it sound as if, up in the penthouse, she added up the housekeeping money every night.

‘Rob was generous, you know that,’ said Rob’s father, his voice still sharp. ‘Money didn’t mean anything to him, easy come, easy go.’

‘He was generous to a fault,’ said Rob’s stepmother, the sound of violins in her voice, and Malone waited for honey to run down the walls. It struck him that though Derek Sweden was upset by his son’s death, the three women and Rufus Tucker appeared to be labouring to show any real grief.

‘What did your son do, Mr Sweden?’

‘He was a broker on the Futures Exchange – or he was up till a few weeks ago. He worked for a brokerage office owned by my brother-in-law, Mr Casement. A few weeks ago he transferred to Casement Trust, the merchant bank side of the corporation.’

Malone nodded as if he understood; but he would have to ask Russ Clements, the human data bank, to explain what futures brokers did. Russ, he knew, would also almost certainly know what Cormac Casement did. ‘Mrs Aldwych mentioned that he liked girls. Did he have a regular girlfriend?’

‘No,’ said the stepmother. Rosalind was as composed as her two sisters, but whereas the other two were relaxed in their chairs, she sat stiffly, even primly, on the long couch. She wore a simple black woollen dress, as if already prepared for the funeral, but the double strand of pearls lying on her full bosom suggested she might also be prepared for lunching out. ‘He preferred to play the field. He had no difficulty in getting girls to go out with him. He was a very handsome boy.’ She looked at her husband, then suddenly smiled; it was so unexpected, Malone wondered if what had gone before was no more than an act. ‘Your looks, darling.’

Her two sisters nodded in agreement; Sweden looked unembarrassed. Then Tucker glanced at his watch, a large old-fashioned gold hunter that he had taken from his waistcoat pocket. ‘Minister, I think we’d better be going—’

Sweden looked distracted; there was no doubt his shock and grief were genuine. But he would never let himself fall apart; he was not called The Armadillo as a joke, his crust could withstand mortar bombs. He had been bending over the couch, his hand on his wife’s shoulder, but now he straightened up, even squared his shoulders like a bad actor. ‘There is a Cabinet meeting—’

‘Oh God,’ said Ophelia, ‘can’t politics be forgotten for a day? They won’t miss you, Derek.’

‘Yes, they will,’ said Sweden firmly and with some asperity. Since the unexpected election defeat a couple of weeks ago the Conservative coalition had, it seemed, been meeting every second day for post-mortems. To be absent was to miss the chance of being influential.

‘You go, darling.’ Rosalind turned her head to look up at her husband; with the movement she turned her back on her sisters. ‘I was going to lunch at the Rockpool with Juliet and ‘Phelia, but I’ll stay in now.’

‘We’ll cancel,’ said Juliet. ‘We’ll all stay in and have lunch here.’

‘No, we’ll have it upstairs,’ said Ophelia. ‘Something light. I have no appetite, anyway.’

Crumbs, thought Malone, she’ll give us the menu in a moment -

‘An omelette. Asparagus.’

Malone looked at them critically, but decided none of the three sisters was feather brained. Like Sweden they would never fall apart, they would face the world with teeth bared and it was up to you to tell whether it was a smile or a threat. He put them on the list of suspects, out of prejudice more than evidence, and said, ‘Well, that’s all for the moment. There’ll be more questions – there always are. Where do you live, Mrs Aldwych? Here in The Wharf?’

‘No.’ Juliet looked amused. ‘Are we all on a list of suspects or what?’

‘Not at all,’ said Zanuch, literally stepping into the conversation; he moved a pace forward. He had been unexpectedly quiet during Malone’s questioning and it struck Malone only now that the Assistant Commissioner was only on approval here in this circle. ‘I’m sure Inspector Malone has no thoughts along those lines, right?’ He looked at Malone: it was an order.

‘Of course not, sir. It’s just for the record, just in case.’ He was looking east past the AC, down the harbour. Out at sea, beyond the Heads, he could see a giant waterspout, a dark frightening funnel. It was unusual and he wondered if it was some sort of omen.

I live at Point Piper,’ said Juliet. ‘Wolseley Road.’

One of the toniest addresses in Sydney: where else? ‘Of course. I’ve met your husband.’ Then the tongue slipped its leash again: ‘And your father-in-law.’

The AC looked as if he were about to take another step, or two or three, into the conversation; but Juliet said sweetly, ‘Old Jack? The best of my fathers-in-law. He’s the third.’

‘Minister,’ said Tucker, gold watch held aloft as if about to clock Sweden in a sprint to Parliament House. ‘It’s getting on, we should be moving—’

Sweden looked at Zanuch, ignoring Malone. ‘Is that all then, Bill?’

Zanuch, too, ignored Malone. ‘For now. But there’s bound to be other questions, if it is a homicide—’

This time the tongue was trapped firmly inside Malone’s teeth. It was Clements who said, ‘It’s homicide all right, sir. The deputy director of Forensic was sure of that.’

‘They make mistakes—’

‘Not this one, sir. She’s my girlfriend.’