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Chapter Three

1

They were putting the body into an ambulance as Malone arrived. He parked his car and walked out on to the broad expanse of promenade which fronted Cockle Bay, the headwater of Darling Harbour, which itself was no more than a small arm of the main harbour. Cruiser ferries were anchored at the landing stages and across the water a sour screech of music came from the pleasure grounds as someone tested the sound system. It was raining again, but the radio this morning had said there was still no rain west of the Blue Mountains, eighty kilometres from Sydney. Out there on the plains drought was breaking the hearts of farmers; there were some areas that had had no rain for two and a half years. This was a tough country, where people on the land died by degrees, though the rate of murder and suicide had risen sharply in the past twelve months. Someone had once called Australia the Lucky Country: the irony of it was a bitter taste.

The rain, like bitterly cold glass darts, came from the south on squalls of wind; facing the wind one could see the squalls coming, like dark waves of swifts ahead of their usual seasonal migration. The wind made it pointless trying to put up an umbrella and Malone pulled his hat down hard, turned up his raincoat collar and showed his back to the squalls.

‘What happened?’

‘A bullet in the head, then he was dragged across there and dumped off the end of the jetty.’ Clements nodded to the crime scene tapes writhing and crackling in the wind like blue-and-white streaks of lightning. ‘It looks like close range, almost an execution job. There’s been a break-in over at the Convention Centre there. They’re still checking what’s been taken, they’re not sure if a computer’s gone.’

‘They’d kill him for that? A bullet in the head for a computer?’

‘The shit that’s around these days, they’d kill you for loose change.’ Clements turned his face into a squall of rain, as if to wash away his look of anger and disgust. He could be a charitable man but he had no illusions left.

‘A bit coincidental, isn’t it, two murders here in twenty-four hours?’

‘I think you’re stretching it a bit to connect this one with the Brame murder.’

Malone nodded. ‘I guess so. I’m not thinking too straight this morning.’

Clements looked at him through another gust of rain. ‘Something wrong at home? The kids?’ He loved them as if they were his own.

‘I’ll tell you later.’ Malone turned as Korda, the technical manager of the monorail, wrapped against the elements in a hooded wind-jacket with the monorail logo on the pocket, came towards them. ‘Morning, Mr Korda. We didn’t expect to be back so soon.’

‘Christ Almighty, what’s going on? Someone trying to fuck up the tourist business, drive all these lawyers outa town?’ He turned his face away as the rain hit it. ‘No, I take that back, that’s bloody tasteless. But shit …’ He looked after the departing ambulance. ‘The ABS security guys are over there in the Convention Centre, you wanna talk to ‘em?’

‘Anything to get out of this rain and wind,’ said Malone: that, too, was a tasteless remark. But his mind really wasn’t here. ‘Let’s talk to ‘em.’

Inside the foyer of the huge convention hall three men in suits and raincoats were in a tight group, sober faces close together in discussion. They opened up as Korda introduced Malone and Clements. Two of the men nodded and the third held out his hand.

‘I’m Jack Favell, managing director of ABS. Dreadful business, this. We’ve lost two of our men in the past twelve months, but this one seems senseless. A bullet in a man’s head for nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘There’s been a break-in, but it was either for show, to put us off, or Murray, the guy that was shot, disturbed them. Looks like they just held the gun against his head and shot him.’ He was a short plump man, almost egg-bald and with dark shrewd eyes behind gold-framed glasses. Malone doubted that he had ever patrolled a security beat. ‘Murray Rockman was a good man, one of our best.’

‘How long had he been with you?’

‘Three years.’

‘Any family? A wife?’

Favell looked at one of his colleagues, a lean man with a battered face; Malone recognized him as an ex-boxer who had once been in the Police Service. ‘Was he married, Ted?’

‘He had a de facto, I think.’ Ted Gilligan nodded at Malone and Clements. ‘G’day, Scobie. Russ. Looks like you’re busy, this and Sunday night’s job.’

‘We’re hoping there’s no connection,’ said Clements. ‘Where did Rockman live?’

‘We’d have to look it up. Somewhere out in Arncliffe. You wanna go out there?’

Clements looked at Malone, who said, ‘Send Peta. Do you run the security details, Ted?’ Gilligan nodded. ‘Rockman would’ve been armed. Did the killer or killers take his gun?’

‘No, it was still in his holster. Your guys have taken it, but said they’d give it back to us.’

‘It was still in his holster? If he was investigating a break-in, he didn’t strike me as the sort who’d be as careless as that.’

‘That’s the way we’re thinking. The flap of the holster was still buttoned. Looks like he never had a chance to draw it. They just come up behind him and shot him in the back of the head.’

‘An execution job?’

‘Call it what you like. But if you catch the bastards—’

‘Leave ’em to us, Ted,’ Malone said quietly. ‘Don’t have your fellers go looking for them, okay?’

Gilligan nodded and Favell said, ‘We shan’t step on your turf, Inspector. But you’ll understand our men are going to be a bit toey for a week or two.’

‘Sure, we understand that. In the meantime … We’ll send a detective round to your office, Detective Smith. Give her everything you have on Mr Rockman.’

‘Her?’ Gilligan raised his eyebrows.

‘Things have changed since your day, Ted. We have tea and cakes now, instead of a beer.’

Driving back to Homicide Malone gave Clements the news about Lisa. The big man seemed to crumple. ‘Oh Jesus! You better take leave.’

‘That’s what I want to do, but Lisa won’t have a bar of it. You know what she’s like, you can’t argue with her.’

‘I’ll have Romy have a word with her.’

‘No, you won’t. Let Romy talk to her, by all means, but tell her not to mention me and work. Lisa’s point is that if I take leave and stay at home with her, it’ll only upset the kids more, make them worry more than they are now. She wants things to stay as normal as possible, at least till she goes into hospital.’

‘When’s she going in?’

‘At the weekend. When she does, then I’ll take leave.’

Clements shook his head, stared through the rain-spattered windscreen. The world outside was fragmented; here in the car it was little better. ‘Christ, who’d believe in God? A woman like Lisa … And the shit He lets survive!’

‘She’ll survive.’ He would never forgive God if she didn’t.

Having unburdened himself to Clements didn’t help, but somehow he got through the rest of the day. One of the five murders on the calendar was suddenly cleared up with a confession, releasing Andy Graham and John Kagal; he sent Graham to follow up with Phil Truach on the Brame case. Peta Smith was sent out to ABS Security and John Kagal went with her. Just before four o’clock all four detectives reported back to him. There was no room for all of them, plus Clements, in Malone’s office, so they repaired to the big main room.

‘We could do with some coffee,’ he said. Nobody moved, then he remarked that the four men were looking at Peta Smith.

She remarked it, too. ‘The tea-lady’s gone home. You want me to run after her?’

For a moment Malone was irritated; after all, he hadn’t nominated her. Then he nodded to Kagal. ‘You’re nearest the kettle, John, okay?’

Kagal had the grace to smile as he stood up. ‘Are you ever going to make a cuppa, Peta?’

‘Not while it’s taken for granted that I will,’ she said, unsmiling. ‘No milk in mine, thanks.’

‘Sugar?’

‘Call me sweetheart, not sugar. One lump.’ Then she looked around the other men, Malone included. ‘You’ll learn. It may take a year or two, but you’ll learn. Sir,’ she said, addressing Malone.

He grinned, the only way out other than being bloody-minded. ‘If I start a roster for coffee-making, you mind if I put your name on it? … Righto, what’ve you got for me?’

She gave him a grin in return; she was not a shrew. ‘John and I went out to ABS, got Murray Rockman’s file.’ She handed it to Malone. ‘Then we went out to the block of units where he lived in Arncliffe. One of the neighbours, a stickybeak – I’d hate to live next door to her – she said Rockman had had a girl living with him, but she’d left him about three months ago. He’s lived alone since then, except for the odd weekend girl. The old biddy next door didn’t miss a trick. His keys were in his locker at ABS, we’d taken those, so we let ourselves in. We found nothing, nothing but his clothes.’

She stopped and Malone said, ‘You’re going to tell us something, right?’

Kagal came back with the office tin of biscuits. Peta Smith looked at him. ‘You want to tell them?’

‘I’m making the coffee,’ he said, but grinned at her.

‘Bastard … Like I said, there was nothing in the flat but his clothes. No papers, no address book, no passport, nothing that might identify him – zilch. Either he’d cleaned everything out himself or someone had got there before we did.’

‘The stickybeak neighbour saw nothing?’

‘She said she’d been out shopping this morning, wanted to give us a rundown on where she’d been.’

‘Any sign of forced entry?’

‘None,’ said Kagal, coming back with the tray of coffee cups. ‘All we have of Mr Rockman is what’s in his file.’

Malone opened the file. Two pages: but then he wondered how many of the world’s voters and non-voters merited any more than two pages. Some lives, he knew, could be written on the back of an envelope and a small one at that. He had no conceit that his own life would warrant any more than a few pages and half of those would concern the deaths of other people. ‘Born Caswell, Ohio, August 22, 1960. High school education … Blah, blah, blah … US Marine Corps, 1980–1983 … He told me yesterday he’d been out here twelve years. He must’ve come here straight after leaving the Marines. The file doesn’t tell us much. The second page is just a resumé of his references. They all look okay.’ He closed the file. ‘But what sort of life did he live when he wasn’t working for ABS? You checked if he has any record?’

‘I’ll do that now,’ said Peta Smith and rose and moved across to one of the computers.

Malone sipped his coffee. ‘Nice coffee, John. Your first attempt?’

Kagal raised his cup. ‘Okay, make out a roster. Equality above all.’

‘Don’t let Peta hear you say that.’

Kagal smiled, drank his coffee. He was a good-looking young man, the best dressed of all the detectives, some of whom, in Malone’s old-fashioned opinion, were real dudes. Kagal would never have any difficulty getting women’s attention and perhaps even their devotion. His only fault, again in Malone’s opinion, was that he thought he deserved everything that was offered him.

Peta Smith came back, picked up her cup and tasted it. ‘Nice cuppa, John … Mr Rockman has no record. He’s spotless.’

‘He’s bloody near invisible,’ said Malone. ‘Andy, you’re the man with the contacts in the FBI. Get on to ’em, ask if they’ll trace him for us. See what they have on him, if anything. At least there’ll be his Marines record.’

Andy Graham sprang to his feet, spilling his coffee but managing not to splash any of it on his clothes. He went through life at a gallop, never in front, always trying to catch up. He grabbed Rockman’s file from the table and was gone. All the others smiled at each other but said nothing. Andy Graham was lovable in his absence.

Malone turned to Clements. ‘Anything yet from Ballistics on Brame?’

‘Just come in.’ Clements dropped a plastic envelope on the table. ‘Clarrie Binyan says it’s an uncommon one, not the usual calibre. It’s a nine-millimetre ultra. Clarrie’s trying to trace the sort of gun that would take it.’

‘Righto, your turn, Phil. How’d you go?’

Truach sighed, coughed. ‘You ever tried to interview a thousand lawyers? You get a thousand opinions. The gist of it all, however, was that nobody saw nothing. One or two, the vice-president for one, Zoehrer, they do remember seeing Brame talking to someone in the coffee lounge Sunday night. A waitress remembered they walked out together, Brame and the other guy. She says she didn’t look at the other man, she was looking at Brame, she’d been told he was the boss cocky and she was observing what a top man looks like. Seems she wants to be a writer, she’s taking some writing course.’

‘So she doesn’t look at the supporting character?’ said Peta Smith. ‘She must write poetry.’

All the men, poetry lovers if ever one saw a bunch of them, nodded. Malone wondered if, between the lot of them, they could recite the first half a dozen lines from The Man from Snowy River. ‘Did you get to see Mrs Brame, Phil?’

Truach was bouncing an unlit cigarette up and down on his palm, a hint that he was dying for a smoke; Malone ignored it. ‘She was out, they told me. Making arrangements to fly her husband’s body back to the States as soon’s it’s released. Seems it’s harder to book a ticket for a coffin than for a livin’, breathin’ person.’

Clements ferreted in his trivia bag: ‘D’you know that if someone kicks the bucket on an aircraft, they just throw a sheet over him and leave him in his seat? There’s nowhere to put a stiff. How’d you like that, sitting beside a corpse when they serve you lunch?’

Malone glanced at Peta Smith to see how she was taking the deadpan macho humour, but she seemed unperturbed by it. He turned back to Truach. ‘There’s a brother here. Did anyone mention him to you?’

‘No.’

‘Russ, you and I’d better have a talk with the brother, what’s-his-name?’

‘Channing. Their offices are down in Martin Place. I looked it up.’

‘I thought you might have.’ He rose, looked at his watch. He wanted to go home, to be with Lisa, but she had said, Do your job. He would do it, as conscientiously as ever, but only because she had insisted. He was beginning to realize that she had run his life far better than he could have alone. ‘We’re always hearing about how late lawyers have to work. Let’s go and see. Thanks for the coffee, John.’

‘Any time,’ said Kagal, ‘the roster says so.’

‘You’re learning,’ said Peta Smith and winked at Malone. He felt almost affectionate towards her as he walked out of the office.

2

‘Let’s walk,’ he said when he and Clements were outside the Hat Factory. The rain clouds had gone and the late-afternoon sky looked like blue ice. The wind still blew, ambushing them at corners, snatching like a mad joker at hats and umbrellas. Malone, looking for something to lighten his mood, was reminded of the old joke of the bald man whose hair was blowing in the wind and he was too embarrassed to run after it. Clements had said nothing when walking was suggested, but now he looked at Malone as the latter smiled.

‘Something funny?’ Malone told him the joke and Clements went on, ‘Keep laughing, that’ll be the trick. Well, not laughing, but keep your spirits up.’

‘Don’t play counsellor with me, Russ.’ Then he heard the abruptness in his voice. ‘Sorry. I’m touchy, I’m still getting used to what’s happened to her.’

‘I understand, mate. But like I say, be optimistic. Don’t be so bloody Irish.’

The walk along Elizabeth Street took them just over ten minutes. Over on their right Hyde Park was dark and dank, wrecked by winter. They passed the huge Park Grand hotel, repossessed within a year of its opening but now, fortunately, chockablock with lawyers; they glanced in, saw the packed lobby and hurried past as if afraid of being bombed with torts. As they passed David Jones, a door of the big department store opened and they heard the music: the pianist threw a few bars at them, memories were made of this and that, then the door closed again. As they reached Martin Place the street-lights came on and the clock on the GPO tower struck a quarter to five. The Channing and Lazarus offices were in one of the older buildings on the north side of the long narrow plaza.

The offices had been newly furnished, suggesting Channing and Lazarus might have been celebrating a good financial year. There were new beige carpet and tub chairs and a couch in a muted deep purple tweed; on the cream walls there were large brass-framed prints of several of the more restrained modern Australian paintings, no invitatory genitals or phallic flagpoles. The girl behind the modern teak desk, getting herself ready to leave, was as smart as the paintings, though perhaps a little more invitatory. At least she was spraying a musky perfume behind her ears as the two detectives walked in.

‘Mr Channing?’ She looked at them in surprise. ‘Did you have an appointment?’ Clements showed his badge and she looked even more surprised. ‘Oh. I’ll see if he’s free.’

Rodney Channing was free, though he did not appear too glad to see them. He stood up as Malone and Clements were shown into his office. This, too, had been newly refurbished, but it was all leather, though not club-like. There were two paintings on the cream walls, one a landscape by Lloyd Rees, all airy light, the other a portrait of Channing in a style that Malone thought had died years ago. Rodney Channing, at least in the portrait, looked mid-Victorian, stern and forbidding, and Malone wondered why he had chosen to be painted that way.

‘My brother?’ Channing said when Malone explained the reason for their visit. ‘We’ve been strangers to each other for thirty years.’

‘We understand he was seen talking to a stranger Sunday night in the coffee lounge of the Novotel hotel. Was it you?’

‘Sunday night? No, no it wasn’t.’ There was a pause, then he seemed to relax; or at least accept that the detectives were here to stay. He sat down behind his desk, gestured to them. ‘Sit down. I saw my brother Sunday morning. He came here to my office.’

‘Here? Sunday morning?’

There was a pause again: Channing seemed to be laying his words out like playing cards. ‘I told you, we were strangers. I – I suggested here because I wanted to be sure we’d get on together, after so long. I didn’t want to invite him to my home and have an awkward situation in front of my wife and family. I have three children, all youngish.’

‘And did you? Get on together?’

Another pause. ‘Not exactly. The separation, I suppose, had been too long.’ Then there was a knock at the door and a woman put her head inside the room. ‘Oh June! Come on in. This is Mrs Johns, our office manager.’

June Johns had been born to manage; one look at her told you that. She was in her late thirties, attractive, a little plump, wearing a blonde helmet of hair; but it was her manner, her wouldn’t-miss-a-detail eyes, that caught the attention. Her smile would have cowed a stampede of bulls.

She shook hands with the two detectives, a firm handshake that let them know she wasn’t cowed by them. ‘Are we being investigated or something?’ Her smile suggested that they had better not be. ‘Law firms seem to have been in a lot of trouble over the past year. Other firms.’

‘These gentlemen are from Homicide,’ said Channing. ‘They are investigating my – my brother’s murder.’

‘Oh? Any luck?’

Clements, the punter, thought she might have been asking if he had backed a winner at Randwick. ‘Not so far. But it’s early days—’

She turned away from him, looked at Channing. Malone had no idea of the ranking in a law firm, but he guessed that an office manager would have much less status than a partner, particularly one of the two senior partners. Yet Mrs Johns gave the impression that her status did not matter, at least not to her. Though she did call him – ‘Mr Channing. Is there anything we can do to help?’

‘We?’ Channing fumbled one of the cards; or anyway, a word. ‘How?’

‘I don’t know.’ She looked back at Malone and Clements; she appeared to have taken command. ‘Perhaps you gentlemen can tell us?’

Malone didn’t answer her, just turned back to Channing. ‘You never represented your brother’s firm out here?’

Channing shook his head. ‘We do represent three or four American firms, but never Schuyler, De Vries and Barrymore. I’m afraid we’re too small to have interested them.’

‘How big are you?’ asked Clements.

‘Forty all told,’ said Mrs Johns. ‘Two senior partners, four junior partners, six legal staff. And then the usual office staff, including myself. Nothing compared to Schuyler and partners. They’re a small army.’

Malone wondered why and how the manager of a medium-sized Sydney law firm would know how big a major New York firm was. But maybe law-firm office managers, like defence chiefs, kept tabs on other armies. ‘Would you know if Schuyler et cetera had links with other law firms in Sydney?’

‘Oh, they’re sure to have had.’ Channing had risen to his feet when Mrs Johns had come in, but Malone and Clements had resumed their seats after greeting her. Channing looked as if he didn’t want the meeting prolonged, but Malone was going to take his own time. ‘But it’d be one of the big firms—’

‘One of the small armies.’ Mrs Johns made what sounded like a soft hissing noise, but Malone thought he could have been mistaken. There was no doubt, however, that she did not have much time for battalions of lawyers. ‘We can check for you—’

‘We’ll do that,’ said Malone, who did not like being managed and felt that Mrs Johns was cracking her office whip. ‘We’re investigating another murder down at Darling Harbour. It may or may not be connected with your brother’s murder, Mr Channing.’

‘Another lawyer? Someone from his firm?’ Channing, with both hands on his desk, leaned forward: like a prosecutor quizzing a witness was the image that struck Malone.

‘You knew someone from Schuylers was with your brother?’

‘Well, no. I don’t know why I – I asked that.’

He was standing in front of the painting of himself; Malone, a modest man, wondered at the vanity of someone who would seat himself in front of his own portrait. But there was the stiff, formal Rodney Channing gazing over the shoulder of the suddenly ill-at-ease real Channing. Then Malone knew that the portrait was Channing’s own impression, not the artist’s, of himself. It was intended to impress clients that the real Rodney Channing was the calm, solid man in the painting.

‘No, it wasn’t anyone from Schuylers. He’s still alive, a young man named Adam Tallis. No, it was a security guard who was murdered. The same one who found your brother’s body.’

‘Coincidence?’ asked Mrs Johns.

Malone had been looking at Channing, who had leaned forward on the desk again, frowning this time but saying nothing. Then Clements said, ‘We’re looking into that, Mrs Johns. We’re not great believers in coincidence in the Police Service.’

Speak for yourself, thought Malone. He believed that coincidence greased the wheels of the world, otherwise fate would go off the track. The Celt in him wasn’t entirely negative.

‘A security guard?’ Channing had straightened up again. ‘What would he have to do with my brother?’

‘We’re not even trying to guess at this stage,’ said Malone. ‘Except that the security guard, too, was an American.’

Then the door, which was half-open, was pushed wide and another woman stood there, dressed for an evening out and holding a man’s white shirt on a hanger. ‘Oh, I thought … I’ll wait outside.’

‘No, come on in, come on in!’ Channing moved swiftly round the desk, advanced on the woman and hugged her as if she were a client on whom the future of Channing and Lazarus depended; she could not have been more welcome if she had been Alan Bond or Christopher Skase back in their heyday. He took the shirt from her, introduced her to Malone and Clements. ‘My wife Ruth. These gentlemen are from the police, they’re investigating my brother’s murder, they’re just leaving … My wife and I have to go to a reception for the Americans, the Bar Association. The Law Society is putting it on …’ Words were tumbling out of him, he was like a card trickster whose fingers had turned into fists. ‘I have to change …’ He held up the shirt. ‘If you’ll excuse me?’

‘You go and change, sweetheart.’ Mrs Channing stepped aside and pushed her husband out the door. ‘We’re running late. June and I will show the gentlemen out. I’m one of the official hostesses,’ she explained to the two gentlemen. ‘I can’t afford to be late.’

Ruth Channing had escaped plainness with the aid of a hairdresser, an aerobics instructor and a couturier, the latterday fairy princes who, for a price, would kiss any plain jane or joe for that matter. There was also a vivacity that lit up her small pale eyes, that gave mobility to her thin lips. Malone guessed she would be a willing volunteer hostess, anything to advance her husband’s career, one hand in the middle of his back guiding him. It struck Malone that, between his wife and Mrs Johns, Channing’s kidneys might be black and blue from being steered in the right direction.

‘I don’t know why, I’m expecting all these Americans to look like Perry Mason. I have this crazy sense of humour—’ She was one of those people who, afraid that the rest of the world was too dumb to be perceptive, would always help them with a description of her imagined better qualities. It was Malone’s experience that those who claimed a crazy sense of humour often had no such thing if the joke was against them. ‘It’ll be the social death of me one day—’

And a sickness for your friends: Malone wondered why he felt so unkindly towards Mrs Channing. Then realized he had let Channing and Mrs Johns start the irritation. ‘We must be going,’ he said.

‘Murder won’t wait, will it?’ she said.

He stopped dead. ‘Pardon?’

‘Didn’t Perry Mason say that? Or was it Shakespeare?’

Then he recognized the brightness in the pale eyes, the width of the smile: she was high on some drug. He had read her wrongly. She was not a volunteer hostess; the pushing hand was in her back. There were wives like her everywhere, driven or pulled by their husbands into situations where they would always be off-balance, where they would have to fall back on some support they could not find in themselves. The portrait on the wall must forever mock the Channings. Malone wondered what the other partner, Lazarus, was like.

‘Oh, murder will wait, Mrs Channing. We’re very patient in Homicide.’

Her eyes widened, as if she had realized that, for him, murder was no joke. Then Mrs Johns stepped forward, took her arm. ‘I don’t think we need any more of this sort of talk. Show yourselves out, will you, Inspector?’

‘Of course. We’re used to doing that.’ She gave him a look as sour as the note in his voice. ‘Channing and Lazarus. Is there a Mr Lazarus?’

Mrs Johns paused in the doorway. ‘Yes, Mr Will Lazarus. He’s overseas at the moment.’

‘America?’

‘No, Europe. Excuse us. Will you be coming again?’

Malone shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

‘Telephone first.’ Then she was gone, her hand in Mrs Channing’s back.

Out in Martin Place the wind was still blowing; the evening was turning bitterly cold. Banners on the flagpoles lining the plaza crackled in the wind; they writhed so much it was impossible to tell what occasion was being celebrated. Malone looked up and down the slight slope of the plaza. It had the potential to rival some of the plazas of Europe, but it was cluttered. Give an Aussie planner an open space, he thought, and it would soon be filled up. He was waiting for the planners to be let loose on the vast Nullabor Plain in the interior. He and Clements walked up the slope under the winter-shredded trees.

‘What d’you reckon?’

‘Something smells,’ said Clements. ‘There’s a connection.’

‘Between the murders?’

‘I dunno about them. No, between Channing and Brame, the two brothers. Maybe we should’ve tried to get more out of Mrs Channing.’

‘She was up to her eyeballs on something. What sort of drugs do nice housewives take, women who don’t want to be anything but housewives?’

Above their heads a banner crackled like a burst of machine-gun fire. The wind threw a handful of grit against their faces and they had to shut their eyes; a few leaves scurried after them like blind mice. ‘She’s probably on one of the designer drugs. You look at her? Everything about her is “designer”. So’s he. Between ’em they’d be wearing more logos than Nigel Mansell. Whatever she’s snorting, it’s still shit.’ Clements had a hatred of drugs and contempt for those who advocated their legalization. He would press his argument over any number of beers. ‘Half an hour with her and if she knows anything, we’d have it out of her.’

Malone shook his head, grabbed at his hat as the wind tried to rob him of it. ‘Mrs Johns would never let us near her, not for that long.’

Clements looked sideways at him, eyes slitted against another burst of grit. ‘I’d like half an hour with that woman.’

‘You’d have to put a gun at her head. That woman wouldn’t be able to remember the last secret she gave away.’

3

Romy was just leaving the Malone house when Scobie arrived home. He took her out to her car, opened the door for her when she had unlocked it. ‘How was Lisa with you?’

‘Sensible. She’s worried, but more for you and the children than for herself. Wives and mothers usually are, good ones.’

He nodded; he had seen it too many times, in other homes. ‘What are the chances?’

‘Of recovery? Good. They won’t really know till surgery, but if they have caught it early, if it’s localized …’ She put her hand on his. The wind had dropped while he had been driving home and the cold now had the night to itself; the roof of the car was almost freezing his palm. ‘There’ll be chemotherapy …’

‘That knocks you around, doesn’t it?’

‘Scobie, don’t think about the worst. Be optimistic.’

‘That’s what Russ told me.’ He kissed her cheek. The two men loved each other’s wives: it was another bond between himself and Clements. ‘Was it you who did the autopsy on the American, Brame?’

‘Yes. A gunshot wound, right through the heart. A close shot, there were powder marks on the chest. Most people are not quite sure where the heart is, but this killer knew exactly. One bullet – Ballistics have it.’

‘Are you doing the autopsy on the other bloke who came in this morning?’

‘Scobie love—’ She smiled. ‘We had six other blokes this morning and five women. Not all homicides—’

‘Not all of them with a bullet in the head.’ Homicide made you parochial about death. Then he looked around him at the night.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’ He couldn’t tell her he had been looking for a sign of death here in the silent street. Don’t be so bloody Irish … But were Celts the only people afraid of shadows? He must ask Clarrie Binyan some time if the Aborigines, the Koories, kept looking over their shoulders. Probably: more so than the Irish. ‘The security guard, Rockman – did you do him?’

‘He hasn’t been done yet. Tomorrow morning, first thing. If the bullet’s still in him, I’ll hand it to Ballistics right away.’ She got into her car, holding the door open while she looked up at him. In the door-light he could see the strain in her lovely, square-jawed face; her dark hair had been blown into a tangle and evidently she hadn’t bothered to comb it. She and Lisa must have been too concerned with other things … Again he was angry at his pessimism. ‘I gave up going to church years ago, we were Lutheran. But I’ll be praying for you. You Catholics like Hail Marys, don’t you?’

‘We’ll take anything you care to say.’

He closed the car door, the light went out. He watched her drive away. Her mother had died of sunstroke two years after coming from Germany to start a new life in the sunshine of Australia; her father, a triple murderer, had suicided. She knew all about the shadows of death, and not just because she worked in a morgue.

He went into the house, sat down beside Lisa to watch the seven o’clock news. ‘Not getting dinner?’

‘The kids are getting it,’ she said. ‘They insisted.’

He held her hand. On the screen in front of them the world, as usual, was falling apart; only calamity was news. ‘Any word when you go into hospital?’

‘Sunday. They’ll operate Monday morning.’ She felt the tension in him and she looked at him, leaning forward. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Aren’t you worried?’

‘Of course I am. But I’m not going to sit around asking Why me? Self-pity is no medication. I’ll be all right.’

He kissed her, his arm round her shoulders, holding her tight. Then past the curtain of her loose-hanging hair he saw Maureen standing in the doorway, smiling at them. ‘They’re at it again,’ she said over her shoulder to her siblings in the kitchen. Then, still smiling at them, ‘Dinner’s ready.’

His heart ached, which did nothing for his appetite, even though Claire and Maureen had cooked his favourite, steak-and-kidney pie, and Tom had opened a bottle of Riddoch ’86 shiraz for him and Lisa. Still, for all their sakes, he did his best.

Later, in bed, Lisa said, ‘You’d better grab what you can between now and Monday. After that there’s not going to be much sex for a while.’

‘I’ll join the Vice Squad, pick up a bit down in William Street.’ He held her to him, treasuring every familiar curve and hollow of her. ‘Romy says there may be some chemotherapy after it.’

‘That’s the bit that upsets me. It can make some people very sick.’ Then she lay away from him in the darkness. ‘You haven’t said a word how work is going.’

‘I don’t think it’s important, is it? To us?’

‘It is!’ With one arm still under her, he felt her stiffen. ‘People dying, being murdered, is important! God, darling, don’t lose your perspective!’

He recognized that her anger was really fear; it would be cruel to argue with her. ‘Righto, it’s important. But I’ve never brought the cases home, not unless you’ve asked me—’

‘I’m asking you now.’ It was an order. Fear took many forms: hers would never be a quaking surrender.

Flatly, listlessly, he told her of the Brame and Rockman cases, of the lack of leads. ‘I’ve met two wives so far, the brothers’ wives. One of ’em could whip the UN into shape, the other one couldn’t run a school bazaar without a snort of some kind.’

‘She’s a drunk?’

‘Drugs. I don’t mean she’s a junkie, she’s just one of those women scared out of her pants by how far her husband’s gone.’

‘That’s the American wife?’

‘No, the Aussie one, Mrs Channing. Not that I think Channing himself has got as far as he’d hoped. In his own way he’s as unsure of himself as she is.’

‘They’re often the ones who drive their wives the hardest.’

‘When you’re out of hospital and cured, you want to join Homicide as a counsellor?’ He kissed her, patted her mount but went no further. ‘I’m just glad you never drove me.’

‘You never needed it. You just had to be steered, that was all.’

She knew his every weakness, including his overwhelming love for her.

4

Chief Superintendent Greg Random had come across to the morning conference from Police Centre. ‘President Clinton, him and everyone down as far as me, we’re all looking for a quick solution to the Brame case. I just thought you’d like to know.’

He never pressured any of the men under him; he had his own quiet way of ensuring efficiency. He had total confidence in Malone; he had been Malone’s boss in Homicide until he had been promoted to the desk job he hated. At the moment he was resisting a new directive that wanted all police to be shifted every three years from one division to another. The directive was aimed at stalling corruption, at breaking up any too-cosy relationship between police and their contacts, ignoring the fact that cops and crims were two sides of the same coin. Headquarters was evidently under the impression that informers stood on street corners, like hookers, waiting for cops with ready money. Ivory towers, Random had confided to Malone, were not confined just to academe.

‘The Commissioner tells me the FBI has offered to help and he’s expecting to hear from the CIA, the National Security Council, NASA and the Daughters of the American Revolution any minute now. Seven hundred and forty district attorneys have offered to prosecute and the US Supreme Court will take over if our judges find it’s too much for them. In other words, the bullshit has hit the fan. Excuse me, Detective Smith,’ he said, for the moment carried away by his sarcasm.

‘Can I get you some coffee, sir?’ Peta Smith half-rose from her chair.

‘Are you getting it for everyone?’ Random looked around the all-male-but-one conference.

‘No, sir. Just for you.’ With not a glance at any of the other men.

His lean, lined face eased itself into a slow paternal smile. ‘Better leave it, Peta. Otherwise this mob will think it’s favouritism … So what have you got, Scobie?’

‘Clarrie Binyan, over at Ballistics, called me. The bullet taken out of the security guard, Murray Rockman – it’s the same calibre as the one taken out of Orville Brame, a rare ’un, a nine-millimetre ultra. Clarrie says he’s making a guess, but he thinks there wouldn’t be too many guns in this country that take that sort of bullet. One of them is a Sig-Sauer, made for a Swiss company but manufactured in Germany. It will take a silencer, which Clarrie thinks would have been used, and it’s a pretty expensive piece, not the sort your ordinary hoodlum would use.’

‘He’s guessing?’

‘Of course. But that’s all any of us are doing at the moment. The point is, they’ve made their first mistake – they’ve made a connection for us.’

‘And what’s the connection?’

Malone grinned: to an outsider it might have looked like embarrassment. ‘That’s it. The bullet. We start from there.’

‘That’s not much to tell President Clinton.’

Malone suddenly realized that, for all his relaxed air, Greg Random was under pressure. Perhaps not from President Clinton, but the local political pressure would be just as heavy. In his mind’s eye he saw the weight, like heavy die-stamps, falling on Random’s neck: the Premier, the Minister, the Commissioner.

‘No, it’s not much. But why would the one gun be used, on separate nights, to kill a top American lawyer, here in Australia for the first time in thirty years, and a local security guard who’s got nothing but a clean record and, as far as we know, never met the lawyer? All we have to do is start at either end and work towards the middle.’

‘I’ll tell Bill Clinton that.’ Random rose to his feet. ‘Maybe it’s the solution to his national debt. Let me know when you’ve come up with your solution. Yesterday will be soon enough.’

He went his unhurried way out of the big room, leaving Homicide looking at their boss. Malone spread his hands. ‘Any suggestions?’

Two-thirds of those at the table rose from their chairs. ‘It’s all yours, Scobie. We’ve got the one out at Penshurst.’ And at Cronulla and Bondi and elsewhere: simple homicides, of plain people with no political pull.

Then Andy Graham, who had not been present at the conference, came in. ‘The Chief would like to see you outside, Scobie. He’s waiting on the front steps.’

Puzzled, Malone went out to the entrance. Random was there, his familiar pipe, always unlit, stuck between his teeth. ‘Walk up to the corner with me, Scobie.’

The sky was clear today, there was no wind and the sun, though not warm, was bright, throwing pale shadows. Up ahead, on the other side of the road, was the concrete fortress of Police Centre; Malone sometimes wondered if it had been built as the last bunker of a Police Service that appeared always to be defending itself. Random paused outside a deserted restaurant car park. It struck Malone that he had chosen a spot where whatever he had to say he would not be overheard.

‘Russ told me about your wife. I’m sorry to hear it. Cancer’s a real bugger. My wife had a breast removed six years ago.’

‘I didn’t know—’

‘Well, you don’t broadcast your worries … When’s she being operated on?’

‘Next Monday.’

‘Okay, take leave from Saturday night. Russ can take over from you.’ Then he took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it as if wondering why he was holding it. ‘Unless you want to take leave now?’

‘No. Lisa insists I keep working. But I’ll go off Saturday night. Thanks, Greg.’ He sighed, feeling drained of energy. ‘I don’t like leaving this Brame case. Or the other one, the security guard. Are you getting pressure?’

‘Am I? Have you ever had the chain of command wrapped around your neck? You’d think the Pope’d been done in, not just a bloody lawyer. But never mind, do what you can up till the weekend. Then stay home with your wife. Give her my best. A nice woman.’

He abruptly left Malone, not rudely but because that was his way. Malone stood a moment, then jumped as a car, wanting to turn into the car park, tooted its horn. He walked back to the Hat Factory, apprehensive that one day he might be sitting in Random’s chair. The chain of command, when applied by political pressure, could be a garrotte.

Clements and Andy Graham were waiting for him in his office. ‘Andy’s heard from the FBI.’

‘They’re thorough,’ said Graham. ‘They’ve come up with nothing on our friend Murray Rockman.’

Malone dropped into his chair. ‘Sort that one out for me, Andy. They’re thorough and they’ve come up with nothing?’

Graham looked flustered, one of his usual expressions. ‘Yeah, I see what you mean. No, they’ve done their homework. They’ve been through all the records in Caswell, Ohio. Birth registration, high school, everything. They’ve checked the Marines, their enlistments, their service records. No Murray Rockman, ever. In either place, Caswell, Ohio, or the Marines. Nothing.’ He handed Malone the fax he held. ‘Our guy never existed before he came to Australia.’