Читать книгу Babylon South - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 7

1

‘Explain to me what’s happening,’ said Malone. ‘You’re the stock market expert.’

Next morning they were driving across the Harbour Bridge towards Kirribilli. Malone had called ASIO and they, reluctantly, it seemed to him, had invited him over. Intelligence organizations are always suspicious of police forces, who never seem to give mind to the bigger issues. Malone had read Gorky Park and knew how Inspector Arkady Renko had felt. But ASIO was no KGB: it could not afford to be on its shoe-string budget. Pinchpenny defence against any enemy, criminal or foreign, was a tenet of faith with all Australian governments.

‘Well,’ said Clements, who up till recently had been an expert only on horses, jockeys, trainers and crims, ‘our Lady Springfellow owns her own company, Cobar Corporation – it’s a small family company, hers and her daughter’s. But now she’s trying to buy out the Springfellow family interests in the holding corporation which owns the main holdings in the merchant bank and the stockbroking firm. The stockbrokers, they’re the oldest brokers in Australia, own 49 per cent of the bank – the rest is owned by the public. She herself, or anyway Cobar, owns 18 percent of the stockbrokers-she bought that when they went public a coupla years ago. The rest is owned 15 per cent by the Springfellow family. Sir Walter’s brother and sister, and the rest by institutions and the public.’

Malone shook his head in wonder. ‘Does Corporate Affairs know about you? They might offer you a job.’

‘When you’ve tried to keep track of the form of horses and jockeys, the stock exchange is kids’ stuff. You wanna know more about Lady Springfellow? Well, she applied to inherit her husband’s estate three years after he disappeared. Her sister-in-law Emma tried to fight it but got nowhere. The irony of it was that she got her husband’s old law firm to prepare the affidavits.’

‘You’ve done your homework,’ Malone said appreciatively. He was no longer surprised at the acumen and thoroughness of his partner, whom so many, at first acquaintance, took for an amiable oaf.

‘This one interests me. I like to see what happens when money’s involved. It’s the punter in me … When she inherited the estate, she just took off. She used that as a springboard – no pun—’he gave his slow grin’ – to start buying everything else she now owns. The radio stations, the country and suburban newspapers, part of a diamond mine, all of a gold mine. And now she owns the Channel 15 network.’

‘What about the bank?’

‘Springfellow and Co. started that six years ago – they were one of the few who didn’t go overseas for a partner. It’s done okay, but not as well as it might. A London bank and a New York one have been eyeing it. The daughter claims she’s moving in to make sure it remains an Australian bank. A 21-year-old banker and a girl at that.’ A true punter, he was a misogynist: he rarely backed mares.

‘What do you reckon?’

‘I reckon it’s just greed, but I’m old-fashioned. Greed is now an acceptable thing. I’m falling for it myself.’

‘So Venetia gained a whole lot when her old man disappeared?’

‘I guess so. All I’m telling you is gossip and what I’ve read in the Financial Review.’

‘The what? Have you given up on Best Bets? Have you sold all your shares?’

‘I’ve put ’em on the market today. I’m ashamed of how much I’m gunna make. When I put the cheque in the bank, the tellers are gunna start ringing Evan Whitton at the Herald.’ Whitton was a journalist who could turn over a spadeful of corruption with a VDU key.

They turned off the Bridge approach and circled round on to the end of the tiny Kirribilli peninsula. This was an area of tall apartment buildings bum-to-cheek with squat old houses, some middle-class grand, some just workmen’s stone cottages. The population was a mix of incomes and ages, with no sleaze and mostly respectability. It also harboured the Sydney residences of the Prime Minister and the Governor-General, side by side, though the G-G’s was the larger and more imposing, as if to remind the politician next door that its occupant was not dependent on the whim of the voters.

ASIO lived in a converted mansion on the waterfront: one had to look through barred windows, but the KGB would have given away half its secrets for such a vista. Malone and Clements were shown into the office of the chief executive, a room with a view that must have driven the Director-General, now headquartered in Canberra, subversive with envy.

Guy Fortague, the Sydney Regional-Director, was big, rugged and all smiles as if making an all-out effort to prove that spy chiefs were not really spooky. There’s nothing to be frightened of, his smile assured them; a thought that had not occurred to either Malone or Clements. But he was certainly making their reception easier than they had expected.

‘We were surprised when you mentioned murder to us.’ But Malone suspected he was not the sort of man to be surprised by anything; if he were, he would not be in this job. ‘We did think of it originally, of course.’

‘Why did you change your minds?’ said Malone.

‘Well, we didn’t exactly change our minds.’ Fortague retreated a little; he was no longer smiling. ‘But we had no evidence, just suspicions.’

Malone thought that one of the bases for counter-espionage would have been suspicion; but he didn’t say so. ‘How was security in those days? I mean national security.’

Fortague shrugged. ‘We were busy – I’d just joined the organization. The anti-Vietnam business was just beginning to warm up. But we never expected murder or terrorism or anything like that, not from those here in Australia. Their violence never seemed to extend beyond demonstrations on campus and in the streets.’

‘What about outsiders? Foreign agents?’

Fortague smiled. ‘Foreign agents don’t kill the opposition’s boss – it’s one of the unwritten rules in our game. Just like in yours. How many police commissioners have been murdered by a criminal, a professional one?’

Malone nodded, agreeing with the etiquette. ‘Our file on him is missing. Has been for twenty-odd years.’

‘Really?’ Fortague’s tone implied that he wasn’t surprised; anything might go missing in the NSW Police Force.

Malone nodded at the thin file on the desk in front of Fortague. ‘Is that your file on him? It’s pretty slim, isn’t it?’

All that Fortague said was, ‘I’ afraid I can’t show it to you.’

Behind that smile, Malone thought, there’s only just so much co-operation. They don’t want any coppers on their turf. ‘Well, maybe you can tell me one or two things that might be in it?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Fortague and smiled again.

Malone hesitated, wondering where to go next. He decided to lay his cards on the table, a hand that was almost blank. ‘Righto, I’ll tell you what we’ve found. A skeleton. No weapon. No shoes, which might have been the one item of clothing that would have survived the weather. All that was left, the only things to identify the body, were the signet ring and the briefcase. But it was empty.’

Fortague tapped his file without opening it. ‘I’ add those details later.’

‘Righto, now the 64,000-dollar question – what was in the briefcase?’

Fortague took his time, the smile now gone from his big rugged face. He looked faintly familiar and Malone suddenly remembered who he was, the odd name striking a bell. He had been one of the young university recruits who had sat in on this case at its beginning. He was now an old hand at intelligence, infected by the profession’s endemic suspicion of outsiders, especially other investigators.

At last he said, ‘I can’t tell you the specifics of what was in the briefcase – that’s classified. We know what he took home with him the previous Friday. It was all labelled top Secret.’

‘He took stuff like that home with him?’

‘He was an independent-minded man.’ Meaning: I would never do such a thing myself. ‘But 1 don’t mean to imply he was careless – nothing like that at all. He had his own way of working.’

‘What sort of man was he?’

‘Brilliant. A bit hard to get to know, but brilliant. He spoke French and German fluently and when he came to us started learning Chinese and Indonesian.’

‘What were his relations with the people he worked with in Melbourne?’

Fortague hesitated a moment. ‘I’ tell you something off the record. He was often impatient with the ex-military types who were then running our organization.’

Malone smiled, trying to make himself an ally. ‘Oh, I remember them. You probably don’t remember, but you and I met here in this office twenty-one years ago. We were both rookies.’

Fortague suddenly smiled again. ‘Of course! Christ – and we’ve both survived!’ He looked at Clements. ‘Are you one of the old hands, too. Sergeant?’

Clements nodded. ‘I thought the scars showed.’

All at once the atmosphere had changed. Fortague looked at his watch, then out of the window at a submarine, sinister as a black shark, gliding by from the base round the point. ‘The sun’s well over the yard-arm on that sub. What’s your choice?’

‘I think you’d better make it a beer,’ said Malone. ‘We don’t want to be picked up by the booze bus.’

‘I’ve had that happen to me twice,’ said Clements. ‘It’s been bloody embarrassing for us both, them and me.’

Fortague went to a cupboard and opened it, exposing a small fridge and two shelves of bottles and glasses. He poured a Scotch and two beers and came back with the drinks on a tray. They toasted each other’s health, then he sat down behind his desk again. He was all at once relaxed, but he had once more stopped smiling. ‘If Springfellow was murdered and the murderer took the papers that were in the briefcase … Why did he leave the briefcase?’

‘I’ve seen it,’ said Clements. ‘It’s his own, not government issue. His initials are on it. It’s an expensive one.’

‘That may have been the reason,’ said Malone. ‘My initials are S.M. If I’d stolen a briefcase with the initials W.S. on it, I wouldn’t carry it around with me.’

Fortague nodded. ‘Feasible. But what about his wallet?’

‘We’re assuming the murderer took that. But what if the body was found by someone who didn’t want to get in touch with us? there are a lot of elements out there who have no time for the police.’ Including the cast and crew of Sydney Beat. ‘I gather Springfellow was a pretty dandy dresser. His suits would have been pretty damn expensive – or they would have been by my standards.’ He dressed off the rack at Fletcher Jones; he was lucky that his clothes fitted him, because it was the price that had to fit him first. He would never make a tailor rich. ‘Someone could have stolen the clothes and the shoes.’

‘I can’t imagine anyone stripping a dead man and then leaving him to rot in the bush.’

Malone sipped his beer. ‘There are more animals out there than there are in the zoo. We come across at least one a week. Let’s forget about murder for a moment. Let’s say he committed suicide. So whoever took the papers and the wallet and maybe his clothes, he also took the gun.’

‘So that brings us back to taws,’ said Clements. ‘Why would he commit suicide?’

He and Malone looked at Fortague, but the ASIO man shook his head. ‘We asked ourselves that years ago. The answer was, he wouldn’t have done it. He wasn’t the type.’

Malone said, ‘What was the domestic situation?’

Fortague hesitated, took a sip of his own drink. He hated scandal, though sometimes his profession had to use it as a weapon. ‘We had no evidence that anything was wrong between him and his wife. But …’

Malone and Clements waited with that patience learned from experience.

‘But Lady Springfellow didn’t keep the home fires burning while he was away on business. I don’t know whether you know, but she has the reputation of being something of a man-eater. That’s not a late development. She was always like that.’

The two policemen were neither shocked nor impressed. They knew, with male certainty, that women were no more moral than men, just smarter in that fewer of them were caught. ‘Why did a sober, pillar-of-the-Establishment man like him marry someone like her?’ said Clements.

Malone knew the answer. Adam hadn’t followed Eve out of the Garden of Eden because God had told him to go. Forget the apple: there’s no temptation like a sinful woman.

‘Search me,’ said Fortague and looked like a man who had gathered no intelligence at all about love or lust or whatever one called it.

‘1 think we’ll go and see Lady Springfellow,’ said Malone.

‘I suppose you have to follow it through?’

‘You don’t want to know what happened to your Director-General?’

‘Of course. But you know what it’s like in our game – the less publicity …’

‘That’s why you won’t show us what’s in that file?’

‘It’s not my decision. That came from Canberra.’

‘From Cabinet or ASIO headquarters?’

‘Ah,’ said Fortague and this time the smile was forced. ‘That’s classified, I’m afraid.’

2

Chilla Dural sat alone in his room in the rooming-house in the side-street off William Street. He had come back to King’s Cross because that had been his departure point when he had begun the journey to the twenty-three years in Parramatta Gaol. It had not been a matter of coming home but of coming back to something recognizable, a landmark from which he could plan the direction of the rest of his life. In the old days he had been able to afford a two-bedroomed flat up in Macleay Street; now, at what he could afford to pay, the estate agent had told him, he was lucky to get this room in this seedy side-street. Inflation, amongst other things, was going to blur what had once been so familiar.

He sat on the single bed, his opened suitcase beside him. It was not a large case and in it was everything he owned in the world except his bank balance and he had no idea what that was. He took out the framed photograph of his wife and two children, the woman and the two small girls as faded in his memory as they were in the frame. It had been taken his first year in prison, when Patti had still been writing to him; the girls, Arlene and Ava, had been – what? Five and six? Patti, Arlene and Ava: it had been like going home (when he had gone home at all) to a movie (though he had called them fillums in those days), a cheap movie in which he had never been the hero.

He put the photo on the varnished whitewood chest of drawers and stared at it. He had been a real bastard in those days, an absolute shit. Patti had told him so, though she had never used four-letter words. No wonder she had finally left him to rot in prison and had gone to Western Australia. ‘I’m going to WA, Charlie, to try and start a new life for myself and the girls. I hope that in time the girls will forget you and I hope I do, too …’

He had gone berserk when he had got the letter and had bashed up a screw. He had tried telling the prison superintendent that he had gone out of his mind at the thought of losing his children; but the plea hadn’t washed. The superintendent had known him as well as he knew himself. He cared for no one but himself and his anger had come from nothing more than the fact that, at long last, Patti had put something over on him.

Five years later she had written to him, giving no address, that she had met another man (“a good man, Charlie, he loves the girls like they were his own”) and she was filing for divorce (for the girls’ sake, Charlie, don’t fight the divorce. For once in your life, think of them’). He hadn’t fought it; by then, Patti was no more than a sexual memory. The girls were even dimmer in his mind, small fearful shades who had never rushed into his arms as kids did in fillums. The girls would be grown up now, probably married with kids of their own, kids who would never be told that their missing grandpa had once been the notorious Chilla Dural, stand-over man, bash artist and general thug for the biggest crim in Sydney.

He had gone to prison because of Heinie Odets. A smalltime operator had been trying to muscle in on Odets’s drug territory; he had been warned but had ignored the warning. Dural had been given the job of eliminating the stupid bastard and had done it with his usual finesse: a blow to the head with an iron bar and then the body dumped in the harbour. Unfortunately, the murder had been witnessed by an honest off-duty cop, a species Chilla Dural hadn’t believed then existed in Sydney.

Odets had hired the best criminal barrister in the State, but it had all been to no avail. Nothing had gone right; they had even copped the most bloody-minded judge on the Bench. Mr Justice Springfellow had poured shit all over him, though in educated words, and then sentenced him to life. Odets had promised to look after him when he finally got out, but Heinie had never been a sentimental man. It had not taken Chilla Dural long to wake up to the fact that, once inside, he was forgotten.

He had been inside seven years when he had killed another prisoner. Dural, by then, had been king of his section of the yard; the newcomer had had ambitions to be the same. He had made the mistake of challenging Dural and war had been declared. It had been a fair fight: each had had a knife and each waited till he thought the other’s back was turned. Dural had got another seven years, having the charge reduced to manslaughter, and his parole had been put back indefinitely. Heinie Odets had sent him a card that Christmas, hoping he was well, and that was all.

Odets was dead now. He had been buried last year in holy ground and several politicians and retired police officers from the old days had turned up at the funeral. Half of Sydney’s criminal elements had been there, showing only the backs of their heads to the media cameramen. An elderly priest, who knew how to play to his congregation, had found qualities that nobody, least of all Heinie, had ever suspected in Heinie Odets. The congregation had sat stunned at the revelation that someone, especially a priest, could do a better con job than themselves. All this had been told to Chilla Dural by someone there that day who, a month after the funeral, had arrived at Parramatta to do a seven-year stretch for being, in his honest opinion, no more dishonest than the priest. Sin, he told Chilla, was a fucking class thing.

Dural put away the rest of his belongings, looked around the room again and decided he had to spend as little time as possible in it. It was clean, but you couldn’t say much more for it; he had changed one cell for another. Even the single window had bars on it, something he had never had on the windows of the Macleay Street flat. The view from this room was terrific: four feet away was the blank wall of the house next door. Even at Parramatta he had always been able to catch a glimpse of the sky beyond the bars.

He put on his jacket and went out of the room, locking the door behind him. He was halfway down the narrow hall to the front door, aware now of the smell of the house, when the little old man came out of another room and looked at him like a suspicious terrier.

‘G’day. You the new bloke? Waddia think of the place?’

Dural could be affable when he wanted to be. ‘Bit early to tell. Plenty of smell, though, ain’t there?’

‘That’s the bloody Viet Cong upstairs. They’re always bloody frying rice. Me name’s Killeen, Jerry Killeen.’

Dural hesitated. But he couldn’t let go of the past; all he had left was his name. ‘Dural. Chilla Dural.’

The old man raised an eyebrow. He was thin and bony, all lined skin and a shock of white hair; but he would take on the world, he was afraid of no one. He looked at this hawk-faced, balding man with the muscles bulging under the cheap suit and nodded his appreciation. ‘Oh, I read about you. I read the papers, every page from go to whoa. There was a little piece about you this morning, about you getting out. Something to do with that feller’s skeleton they found up in the mountains.’

‘What feller was that?’

He hadn’t looked at a newspaper since he had left Parramatta yesterday morning. He had never been a reader and he hadn’t wanted to find his way back into the world through a newspaper’s cockeyed view of it. He would do that through a TV set, where the view was just as cockeyed as the commercials, but you got the comic liars like politicians and union bosses.

‘Springfeller, Sir Walter Springfeller.’ Jerry Killeen had a photographic memory for names; he could even remember the names of strangers in the births and deaths columns. His circle of friends was those he met in his newspapers. ‘You going out now? I’ll leave the Herald and the Tele under your door. I’ll shove ‘em under so the bloody Viet Cong don’t pinch ‘em.’ He jerked his thumb towards the stair at the back of the hall. ‘They’d steal the bridle off of a bloody nightmare. You wanna come in for a cuppa?’

Dural thanked him, but said maybe some other time. He left the little old man and went out of the house, glad to leave behind the smell of frying rice and other odours he hadn’t identified. There had been smells in prison that he had never become accustomed to: the b.o. of dirty bastards who didn’t wash, the overnight bucket in the corner of the cell … He stepped out into the narrow street and filled his lungs with what passed for fresh air in the traffic-clogged city.

He walked up the street, passed a narrow-fronted shop that looked faintly familiar. Suddenly he remembered: this had been El Rocco, another cell but where you had been free to come and go, where he had come to listen to the best jazz in Sydney. Jazz had been his sole musical interest and he still had a good ear for it. He would have to find another club where it was still played. He had no time for what passed as music these days.

He went to his old bank. As soon as he stepped inside its glass walls that looked straight out on to the street, he saw there had been changes. Everything inside here was exposed to the street; any stick-up artist would be playing to the passers-by. Not that sticking up banks had been his caper; Heinie Odets had always told him that was for desperate mugs. Rob banks, yes; but at night or on weekends, taking everything that was in the vaults. Heinie had masterminded one job like that, with Dural acting as driver and look-out, and they had got away with £200,000, big money in those days. His share had been £20,000 and he had blown the lot in a year on horses, cards and women.

He took his place in the queue and worked his way along the guide ropes; he felt like a ram in a sheep-fold. At last he reached the counter and presented his passbook. The girl teller looked at the greasy, ragged-edged book as if it were a cowpat.

‘Sir, when did you last use this book?’

‘The date’s inside.’ He opened the book. ‘May 23, 1964.’

The girl, plump, pretty, not really a career banker, the engagement diamond already glinting on her hand, blinked at him. ‘That was before I was born. Don’t lean on the counter, please.’

‘Eh?’

‘The security shield.’ She pointed to the strip of steel that was sunk into the woodwork of the counter, ‘If there’s a hold-up that shoots up and you get your arms chopped off.’

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Banks used to be safe.’

‘Not any more. Will you excuse me a moment, sir?’

She went away and Dural stood at the counter looking at the steel strip. He’d heard about bank protection methods; there was one guy in Parramatta who was said to have had his head almost taken off by something like this. It was nice to know his money was safe.

The girl came back, signalled for him to go to the end of the counter. ‘The manager would like to see you, sir. We’ll have to issue a new book.’

He was taken in to see the manager, a square-faced, square-minded man who was out of place in a King’s Cross bank. He longed for a transfer to head office, where the chances of being held up or getting AIDS or having a passbook presented that looked like something off the sole of a shoe were practically nil.

‘You are Charles Dural?’

Dural produced his old driving-licence, just as greasy and tattered as the passbook.

The manager looked at the licence. ‘That’s years out of date, Mr Dural. I guess you were driving an FJ Holden then?’

Dural wondered if he had already sent for the cops; but he humoured the smug bastard, It was a 3.8 Jaguar, actually. Look, Mr—’ He glanced at the name-plate on the manager’s desk. ‘Mr Rosman, just between you and me I’ve been in prison for the last twenty-three years and a bit. I had a cheque account here at this branch – I suppose you’d of still been in high school then – and when 1 knew they were gunna send me up for a long time, I changed over to an interest-bearing account. I dunno what interest I been getting – if you ever sent me any statements, I didn’t get ‘em. This book says I left £3,202 in it when I went in. You oughta owe me quite a bit of interest, right?’

‘I suppose we do—’ the bank manager looked uncomfortable. ‘The truth is, Mr Dural, in this area we have to be, well, extra careful. You have no idea some of the types come in here. I’ve got three bag-ladies as depositors—’ He stopped, as if afraid that one of the bag-ladies might be Dural’s mother. ‘Well, you know what I mean. We just have to be careful.’

‘I’ glad to hear it.’ Dural was surprised at his own patience; in prison he’d have blown up if he’d been interviewed by a screw like this uppity bastard. ‘Now could you let me know how much you’re holding for me?’

It took ten minutes to reveal that he was now worth 23,332 dollars and 22 cents. It seemed to him that he was suddenly wealthy, but the bank manager didn’t appear impressed with his rich client. ‘It doesn’t go far these days, Mr Dural. Perhaps you’d like us to invest it for you? Interest rates are still high. Unit trusts are the thing.’

‘I’ think about it.’ He had heard the talk in gaol amongst the white-collar crims that this was a boom time. He had wondered why, if everything was booming, so many of them were doing time. ‘I don’t wanna rush into nothing.’

He drew a hundred dollars, got his new passbook and went out into the street again. He hadn’t walked more than a hundred yards (he still thought in yards, feet and inches; he’d never get used to the metric system) before he was aware that this wasn’t his Cross, not as he remembered it. It had always been an area where there were more sinners than saints; now it looked sleazy, a corner into which had been swept the dregs and grime of the city. Sex had always been sold in the Cross, but, as he remembered it, there had been a time and a place for it; now, even in early afternoon, there were girls in doorways and on street corners. He was shocked at how they were dressed; in the old days the cops would have run them in for indecent exposure. A police car drifted by, the young cops in it looking out at the girls with plain boredom.

One of the girls accosted him. She was about sixteen, her ravaged face ten years older than her body; she wore a gold body stocking and black fishnet panty-hose and smelled as if she had fallen into a vat of Woolworth’s perfume of the week. ‘You want a bit, luv?’

‘How much?’ He wasn’t really interested, except in the price of nooky these days.

‘Fifty bucks.’ She saw the look of surprise on his face. ‘You from the bush or something? What you expect, something as cheap as doing it with a sheep?’

‘It’s twice what I used to pay. And the sheep didn’t answer back.’

‘You want a cheapie, try the Orient Express down there on the corner, the Filipino. She’ll give you a quicky, a knee-trembler for ten bucks.’

He shook his head and walked on, more and more disillusioned with every pace. The traffic was thicker and quicker. He stepped off on to a pedestrian crossing and was almost run down by two young men in a Toyota with two surfboards strapped to its roof. One of the young men, earring flashing, his snarl just as bright, leaned out of the passenger window.

‘Why don’t you look where you’re fucking going, dickhead!’

Dural took two paces to his right, grabbed the young man by his long bleached hair, pulled his head halfway out of the window and punched him on the jaw. Then he shoved the unconscious youth back into the car, leaned in and said to the startled driver, ‘Okay, smart-arse, move on!’

He stepped back and heard the clapping behind him. He turned round and there was a bag-lady, standing beside her loaded pram, clapping him. ‘Good on ya, mate! We need more men like you! Good on ya!’

Dural grinned, then went on across the street, feeling a little better: he had done something for the old Cross where decent crims like himself, not today’s shit, used to hang out. He passed a group of kids who looked as if they had spent last night in the gutter; they glanced at him and sneered, but said nothing. The sharper-eyed amongst them had suddenly recognized the brutal toughness in his face, the muscles under the too-tight suit. All at once he hated everyone he passed, the sleazy strangers on what had once been his turf.

A taxi cruised by and he hailed it. He got in beside the driver, a kanaka, for Chrissakes. ‘The Cobb and Co.’

‘What’s that, mate?’

‘A pub. Where you from?’

‘Tonga.’

They had told him in Parramatta that the place was now overrun with wogs, slopeheads and coons. He was beginning to feel like that mug in the story. Ripper van Winkie. ‘One time you used to have to pass a test before you got a taxi licence, be able to know every street in the city. Especially the pubs.’

‘Mate,’ said the Tongan, ‘you wanna sit here and discuss Australia’s history, it’s gunna cost you money. The meter’s running.’

‘You’re pretty bloody uppity, ain’t you? Who let you in here?’

‘Your government. I’m studying economics and you taxpayers are paying for it. We’re the white man’s burden. Now where’s this pub?’

‘The corner of Castlereagh and Goulburn.’

The driver thought a moment, then shook his head. ‘Not any more, mate. That’s where the Masonic temple is now. You don’t look like a Mason to me.’

‘Jesus!’ Dural slumped back in the seat. ‘Okay, take me into town and drop me anywhere.’

‘Put your seat-belt on.’

‘Jesus!’ He clipped the seat-belt across himself, felt he was locking himself into some sort of straitjacket; there’d been no seat-belts when he’d last driven a car. He began to get the funny feeling that he had been freer in prison.

An hour of the inner city was enough for him. He was amazed at how much Sydney had changed; the much taller buildings than the ones he remembered seemed to arch over his head, blocking out the sun. The face of the crowd had changed, too; where had all the Aussie faces, with their long jaws and narrow eyes, gone? As Heinie Odets’s bodyguard (they called them minders now, so he’d been told) he had been a student of faces; it was one way of staying ahead of trouble, Heinie had advised him. He couldn’t get over the number of Chinks of some sort he saw; it was like being in some part of bloody Asia. And the black-haired wogs; there had been a fair number of them in Parramatta, but here on the outside (how long would he go on calling it that?) they seemed to make up half of those in the city streets. He was the stranger come home to a strange land.

He caught a taxi back to the rooming-house. As he stepped in the front door, two young Vietnamese came down the hallway and passed him with shy smiles. When they had gone out into the street he saw Jerry Killeen peering at him from a half-opened door.

‘You see ’em? the bloody Viet Cong. You wanna come in for a cuppa?’ His desire for company was pathetic, it hung on his wrinkled face like a beggar’s sign.

‘I gotta take a lay-down,’ said Dural. ‘Maybe later.’

The old man looked disappointed, but nodded and went back into his room, closing the door without another word. He reminded Dural of some of the pitiful old lags in prison, the ones who would always be lonely even in the close company of a thousand men.

Dural opened the door of his own room, picked up the newspapers lying just inside it and sat down on his bed. Then he glanced at the still-open door, frowned, got up and closed it. For so many years he had been accustomed to someone else closing the door on him: the sound of good-night was the clanging of iron on iron.

He leafed through the newspapers, but none of the news meant anything to him. He knew the names of the major politicians, but they were irrelevant to him; he was like an African heathen arriving in Rome, wondering at the importance of bishops and cardinals. The sports pages had a few names he recognized (sport had never been censored on the gaol’s TV and radio; football brawls and thuggery were enjoyed as much by the prison officers as by the prisoners), but the cricket season was starting and he had never been interested in cricket. The financial pages were a foreign language to him; once, in the prison library, a white-collar criminal had tried to explain to him how the financial world worked, but Dural had just shaken his head and said he would rather remain dumb. The newspapers, he decided, would lead him nowhere, at least nowhere that he wanted to go.

He was about to drop the papers on the floor when he remembered why the little old bloke next door had shoved them under his door. He leafed through the pages again, came to the six-inch item at the bottom of one of the inner pages of the Telegraph. There it was: his name and that of Sir Walter Springfellow, the released prisoner and the skeleton in the Blue Mountains bush. A strange coincidence, they called it: fucking reporters, they were always looking for an angle. He re-read the story, but there was no guts to it; even he could see that. He threw the paper on the floor and lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and the single electric globe with its yellow paper shade. He had cursed Springfellow in court on the day the judge had sentenced him. The cold, stuck-up bastard had chopped him down, slice by slice, with words that had rung in his ears for months afterwards. He had raved for a couple of years against Springfellow, but in the end he had realized he was just shouting into a wind that blew back his abuse like piss in a gale. The rage and the wind had died down a long time ago and now, here, in this bare, lonely room there was only stillness. Only the skeleton in the bush could have been lonelier.

It suddenly came to him that he was lost.

3

Mosman was a suburb that, to an outsider, never seemed to change. It was a good address from end to end; unlike other parts of Sydney, it had no poor end. The houses, even the smaller ones, were solid and had their own gardens; the few semi-detached cottages had a shy look about them, as if their owners knew they were being tolerated only so long as they behaved themselves and kept themselves neat and tidy. Blocks of flats, known in the estate agents’ argot as home units, as if they were just cards in a game of Monopoly, were lumped about the district, but high-rise development was forbidden. Mosman prided itself on its conservatism; it was a suburb not given to spontaneity, at least not in the streets. Swingers from the eastern suburbs might have called it dull, but under the dull facade there was old, real money; and real money is never dull, least of all to the swingers from the eastern suburbs. Mosman was sure of its place in the sun; it was the suburb, its residents knew, where God would have resided if ever he had emigrated to Sydney from England. A thought that God had probably never had.

Clements parked the car in Springfellow Avenue and looked around at the houses at this end of the dead-end street. ‘Respectable, aren’t they? You can smell it from here – respectability. You think they make love with their clothes on?’

‘You look as if you do. Why don’t you come over some night and let Lisa run the iron over you?’

‘I’ always reading about the heights of fashion. Why doesn’t someone write about the depths? I see you’re wearing your best suit today. Is that for Lady Springfellow?’

‘Wait ’till you meet her. You’ll wish you’d been to the dry cleaner’s.’

Clements grinned, uninsulted, and got out of the car. He was not dirty in his habits; he was a regular at the dry cleaner’s. He just had the knack of being able to turn a suit into a mess of wrinkles within ten minutes of donning it. He had put polish on his shoes only once since buying them ten months ago, though he occasionally rubbed the toes of them on the bottoms of his trouser-legs. He straightened his tie and patted down the ends of his collar. ‘How about that? Bewdy Brummell.’

‘Bewdy,’ said Malone, and couldn’t have wished for a better sidekick.

Malone had only a faint memory of his first visit to the Springfellow house, but he couldn’t remember any security guards in those days. But there was one now: he came down the driveway to the big iron gates when Malone tried to open them and found them locked electronically. Malone introduced himself and Clements and the security guard switched on his walkie-talkie and spoke to someone in the house. Then he unlocked the gates.

‘Is this usual in Mosman?’ said Clements.

‘I dunno,’ said the guard, an overweight, middle-aged man who looked as if he had borrowed a smaller man’s uniform. ‘I come, I do me job and I go. That’s all I’m paid for.’

‘Just like us,’ said Clements. He had a cop’s dislike of security guards; they were growing into another police force.

‘I thought you’d be in pink and grey,’ said Malone, and the security guard just refrained from jerking his thumb at the mug copper.

The two detectives walked up the driveway, past the rhododendrons, the banks of azaleas, the camellias, the liquidambars and the lawns that looked like green carpets that had been vacuumed rather than mowed. The house was a monument to Federation; one would not have been surprised to see a group of turn-of-the-century politicians, all beards and walrus moustaches, standing on the front steps. It had been built by Sir Archibald Springfellow, the grandfather of Walter, Edwin and Emma, and, true to then current ideas, had wide verandahs and narrow windows. The fierce Australian sun was to be avoided: sun worship, a later religion, was only for Aborigines and the odd health crank, neither of whom dared show his face in Mosman. At the back there was a magnificent view of the harbour, but one had to step outside the house to look at it in those days. Lady Myrtle Springfellow had never been known to take a long view; very little beyond the end of her patrician nose, usually held at a socially acute angle, had interested her. The house, like the family, suggested secrets to the occasional picnickers who came to the neighbouring bush reserve that ran down to the harbour cliffs.

The housekeeper who opened the front door to Malone and Clements was of a social mind with Lady Myrtle, whom she had never met. She looked down her blunt, unpatrician nose at the two detectives as if they were door-to-door salesmen.

‘We’d like to see Lady Springfellow. We understand she is at home.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘Police intuition.’ He had rung the Springfellow head office and he guessed that Venetia knew they were coming.

The housekeeper continued to look at them with suspicion, but before she could say anything further she was gently pushed aside by a good-looking grey-haired woman who might have problems with her weight but wouldn’t let them worry her.

‘Police? I’m Alice Magee, Venetia’s mother.’ She was the sort of friendly woman who would always use Christian names, even if dealing with the Pope or non-Christians such as Khomeini. ‘Come in, come in.’

Malone could only dimly recall the dimness of the Springfellow house on his last visit. All the shadows had now gone. Venetia had widened the windows, letting in the light. All the dark panelling had been removed and replaced by grey French wallpaper that had cost as much as the original brick walls. The heavy Victorian furniture had been sold or given away; in its place were elegant Regency pieces, some genuine, some reproductions. Only the paintings on the walls, the Boyds and the tuckers with their fear-stricken creatures and their threatening shadows, seemed out of place. But then, as Emma Springfellow often said, Venetia had never believed in making anyone completely comfortable. Emma herself was uncomfortable for a different reason. She secretly thought the house had been improved by Venetia’s changes, but she would never say so. It made her uncomfortable to keep an opinion to herself. But she was not here in the house right now and Malone and Clements still had to come to know her.

‘My daughter’s on the phone,’ said Alice Magee, leading them into a big bright sun-room that looked out on to the gardens and the harbour. There was only one picture on the wall here, a Streeton that was a painting of the scene immediately below them. ‘She’s always on the phone. Overseas. London or New York or Los Angeles, somewhere. I can’t get used to calling the rest of the world, just like that—’ She snapped her fingers; several diamond rings were a miniature flash of lightning. ‘I still time myself when I’m calling Cobar – that’s where we come from originally … Would you like a drink? Beer, whisky, tea, coffee?’

She would have made a great air hostess, Malone thought; he liked her at once. ‘No thanks, Mrs Magee. How is your daughter taking the – news?’

‘The – ? Oh, Walter’s remains. Dreadful, isn’t it? Lying up there in the Blue Mountains all those years … I’d like to be buried as soon as I’m gone, wouldn’t you?’

‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ said Malone and didn’t dare look at Clements who, trying to stifle a smile, looked as agonized as one of the men in a Tucker painting.

‘When are they going to let us bury him?’

‘It’ll probably be a couple of weeks before the coroner releases the – remains.’ A skeleton wasn’t a body or a corpse; or was it? ‘Did you know Sir Walter well?’

‘Not really. I don’t think anyone knew him well. He was a bit stand-offish, you know what I mean? Not with my daughter, of course.’ Her answers would always be prompt; there was no guile about Alice Magee. ‘He was a nice man, but.’

Malone had sized her up now. Despite the diamond rings, the expensive dress and the immaculate hair-do, she was still one of life’s battlers. She still had the dried skin from the heat of the western plains, still had the Cobar dust in her voice; her daughter might be the richest woman in Australia, but Alice Magee would never forget the need to scratch for a penny. Under her painted fingernails was invisible dirt that could never be cleaned out. Her spirit was stouter than her figure, though the latter was catching up.

Then Venetia, looking disarmingly soft in pink and grey, came out to the sun-room in good humour; she had just made another million or two. ‘Inspector Malone! Has my mother told you all you want to know?’

‘Give me another ten minutes,’ said her mother. ‘I was just about to start with the year you were born.’

The relationship between them was good, evident at once to the two outsiders. Rough-and-ready mother, smooth-as-cream (though it might turn sour occasionally) daughter: they were an odd team, Malone thought, and he wondered what the conservative, but nice, Walter Springfellow had thought of the combination.

Malone decided to waste no time; Venetia looked as if she had already put a stop-watch on him. ‘We have to go right back to the beginning, Lady Springfellow. For the time being we are assuming your husband was murdered. But there are other possibilities—’

‘Suicide, you mean?’

He nodded.

She shook her head. ‘You didn’t know my husband. He would never do that.’

‘Righto, we’ll scratch that off the list.’ But he wouldn’t: nothing was ever dismissed till something else was proved. ‘Blackmail – would someone have tried that on him?’

‘I don’t see what you’re getting at.’

‘Someone might have been trying to blackmail him, he refused and they killed him.’

‘You’re making this sound as if it was all a personal matter. Aren’t you overlooking his ASIO job? Spies disappear all the time.’

‘Not spy chiefs. So ASIO tells us.’

‘Not unless they defect,’ said Clements.

Venetia gave him a look that should have increased his creases. ‘You just have no idea what my husband was like, do you? He was a patriot, the sort that’s out of fashion nowadays.’

‘Have ASIO ever been to question you?’

Venetia shook her head again; Malone found himself liking the way her thick golden hair moved. ‘Never. Not since he first disappeared. They’ve just – ignored me.’ She sounded as if the fact didn’t disturb her too much. But, Malone thought, that could partly explain why the file on Walter Springfellow was so thin.

‘What about his relationship with you, Lady Spring-fellow?’ He had looked directly at Venetia, but when he glanced at Alice Magee he saw the reaction he had hoped for. The plump face was frowning, the unsubtle mind remembering. ‘Do you recall something that might help us, Mrs Magee?’

But Alice Magee knew where her loyalties lay; the frown cleared, her face was as bland as the swimming-pool out in the garden. ‘No, I don’t remember anything. They were real love-birds.’

On a table behind Venetia was a photo of her and Walter: she young and smiling, he cool and aloof: he was a love-eagle, if at all avian. ‘I’ sorry I have to continue this line, Lady Springfellow. But he had no romantic interest before you?’

‘You mean a jilted lover?’ She laughed. ‘That’s mid-Victorian, Inspector.’

‘It isn’t,’ said Clements. ‘It happens at least once a month, sometimes once a week.’

‘But those are the people we let in from overseas,’ said Alice Magee. ‘Aussies don’t go in for that sort of thing.’

She had her xenophobia, though she wouldn’t have recognized it by that name. She was a cousin by prejudice to Malone’s own mother and father; the country was now made up of us and them, and there were too many of them.

‘Yes,’ said Venetia. ‘My husband did go out with other women. After all, he was a very masculine man and his first wife had died ten years before he met me.’

‘What did she die of ?’

‘She was killed in a shooting accident. She and my husband were on a safari in Kenya.’

‘An inquest was held, I suppose?’

She gave him a sudden hard look. ‘I presume so. What are you getting at?’

Malone held back a sigh. ‘Lady Springfellow, if we’re going to find out what happened to your husband, we’re going to have to get at a lot of things. Some of them may offend or even hurt you, but it’s nothing personal on our part. Sergeant Clements and I are just trying to do our job. Part of that is finding out as much as we can about the victim – that’s the way we police work. Just give us a little credit for knowing the best way to go about it.’

‘It’s not the best way for the victim’s widow, is it?’ That was from the widow’s mother.

‘Go on,’ said Venetia coldly.

Tread carefully here, Malone. ‘Did your husband know much about firearms?’

‘Yes. He had a collection of guns, they’re still in his study. He used to go up to the Northern territory every year, shooting crocodiles and buffalo. Until he married me, that is.’

‘Is the collection still intact? there was nothing missing after he disappeared?’

Venetia hesitated only a split-second, but Malone picked it up. ‘There are one or two blank spaces. I don’t know when they went missing. I – I’m frightened of guns. I’ve often thought of selling the collection, but they were my husband’s …’

‘May we look?’

Venetia looked at her watch. ‘This has gone on longer than I expected, Inspector. I’m due in the city in half an hour.’

‘This’ll only take a few minutes. If needs be, we’ll give you an escort into town. Sergeant Clements likes to use the siren.’

‘Any time.’ Clements grinned at Alice Magee, who smiled back; but the smile seemed forced, she no longer looked cheerful and unafraid.

Venetia led the way out of the sun-room, back across a wide hallway and into the study; Alice, worried-looking, brought up the rear. Clements was watching her now, no expression on his big beefy face except for an occasional chew at his lower lip, an old habit.

The study had been stripped of its panelling; it was now a woman’s room, except for the incongruous collection of guns in the large glass-fronted cabinet standing against one wall. Incongruous only if the woman was not Annie Oakley or one of the more ruthless prime ministers of other lands.

Malone looked at Clements, the gun expert. ‘A good lot?’

Clements was examining the collection. ‘As good as I’ve seen. A Mannlicher, a Springfield, a Sako. Even a Purdy. And these hand-guns … Yeah, quite a collection.’

There were two blank spaces in the array of guns, both of them amongst the hand-pieces. ‘Two missing,’ said Malone. ‘How long have they been gone. Lady Springfellow?’

‘I couldn’t tell you. One of them – one of them has been missing for years.’

‘I can see that.’ the felt lining behind the guns showed the faint outlines. ‘What d’you reckon they were, Russ?’

‘The smaller one could have been a Walther or something like it.’

‘Was that the one that’s been missing for years?’ Malone looked at Venetia.

‘No. It was the other one.’

‘I’d guess,’ said Clements, looking directly at Malone, ‘it was a Colt .45 or something as big.’

‘What does that mean?’ said Venetia.

‘We think a Colt .45 or something like it was used to kill your husband.’

4

‘It would be an odd sort of justice if an ex-judge was killed with his own gun. Some crim would laugh his head off at that.’

‘That collection—’ Clements shook his head. ‘Somehow you don’t expect a judge to keep an armoury. The only thing he didn’t have in that case was a machine-gun and a howitzer.’

‘I’ beginning to wonder if we’ll ever know who the real Sir Walter was.’

They watched as Venetia went down the gravel driveway in the grey Bentley. She had declined Malone’s offer of an escort, though she had not been sure that he wasn’t joking. Her chauffeur would get her to the city on time; a whole forest had been chopped down to provide the paper for the tickets for speeding and illegal parking that he had accumulated. Venetia had her own traffic laws.

‘Hey!’ Malone and Clements, about to go down the driveway, turned. Alice Magee stood at the top of the steps. ‘The other Springfellows are at home across the road, if you want to see them.’

‘Why do you suggest that, Mrs Magee?’

She waved an airy hand: diamond lightning flashed again. ‘Just trying to help my daughter. And you too, of course.’

‘Thanks, Mrs Magee,’ said Malone, trying to sound truly grateful. ‘Tell me – did you know those guns were missing?’

She hesitated, suddenly not so keen to be helpful. ‘Well … Yes. I dunno I ever thought much about the one that’s been missing for years. But yes, I knew about the other one.’

‘When did you notice it was gone?’

‘A week ago.’

‘Did you report it to the local police?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Stolen property?’

She laughed, but nervously. ‘I didn’t think it was stolen. I just thought someone had borrowed it or it’d been sent away to be cleaned or something.’

‘Did you ask the housekeeper about it?’

‘Ye-es. She didn’t know anything about it. Then I told Venetia – she didn’t know anything about it, either.’

‘And none of you were worried about a gun being stolen from your house?’

‘Of course we were!’ She sounded suddenly snappish; Malone imagined he heard her false teeth click. ‘But then we got the news about Walter …’

‘You said it went missing a week ago.’

‘Well, a week, three or four days ago – I dunno.’ All at once she was flustered, the guileless mind caught up in an attempt at deceit. ‘We’re all knocked off our feet by the news …’

Malone decided not to press it for the moment; let Alice Magee get her story straight and then knock it down in one blow, preferably in front of another witness, such as Venetia Springfellow. He had his own guile, born of experience.

‘Can we always find you here if we want you?’

‘Most of the time. I’m a bush girl at heart. I like to go down to my daughter’s property at Exeter. Keeps me outa mischief.’ She had regained her bounce, or some of it. Malone waited for her to wink, but she didn’t. ‘Good luck. I suppose you coppers need it.’

‘All the time,’ said Clements.

They went down the driveway, nodded to the surly security guard, waited for him to let them out of the big gates, then crossed the street to a slightly smaller house, also approached by a driveway. Sir Archibald’s son, the father of Walter, Edwin and Emma, had built this one in 1915, the year he had returned from Gallipoli minus half his right arm, and married the daughter of another prominent Mosman family. This house, too, had wide verandahs and narrow windows; its windows were still narrow, like the viewpoint of its present chatelaine, Ruth Springfellow, Edwin’s wife. Its garden was not as elaborate as the one the two detectives had just left, but it was just as ordered. Nothing grew wild in Mosman, not even weeds.

The door was opened by Emma Springfellow. Malone introduced himself and Clements and she looked at him as if puzzled they should be on the doorstep. ‘Yes?’

‘We’d like to talk to you and Mr and Mrs Springfellow, if they’re at home. It’s about your brother Walter.’

He had forgotten that he had ever met her. All he saw now was a dark-haired woman, with a single broad streak of grey along one temple, who might once have been on the way to being beautiful but had decided, of her own free will, against it. He did not see the inner woman. She was secretive, without even the phlebotomy of gossip. She had chosen loneliness and now couldn’t find her way out of it.

‘Who is it, Emma?’ Edwin Springfellow came into the hall behind his sister; behind him was his wife. The three of them stood stockstill, like statues waiting to be moved around in the museum that was their home. ‘Police? Do come in, please.’

The house was indeed a museum; everything in it seemed older than its occupants. It was all quality and in its day had probably been expensive; it had not been neglected and the timber of the tables and chairs shone with years of polishing. If there was a television set, that icon of today, in the house it was not in evidence. People, like pets, sometimes are owned by their homes and take on their appearance. The Spring-fellows were all quality and polish but suggested the past.

Malone and Clements were asked to sit down; the Springfellows arranged themselves on chairs facing them. It could have been a seance, though a medium or even a spirit would not have been admitted to this house without the best of credentials.

Edwin and Ruth looked more brother and sister than husband and wife; Ruth seemed more out of the same mould than did Emma. Both were grey-haired, had thin patrician features, looked at the world with the same superior eye. They brushed each other’s hair every night and, when the occasion demanded, did the same with each other’s ego. Yet Emma, self-contained, feline, was not out of place with them.

‘Mr Springfellow,’ said Malone, plunging straight in, ‘would your brother have been the sort of man likely to have committed suicide?’

There were gasps from both women, as if Malone had accused Sir Walter of bestiality. Edwin’s expression did not change.

‘No,’ he said in a clipped voice that sounded more English than Australian. ‘He certainly would not have done anything like that.’

‘What was his attitude towards guns?’

‘They were for sport, not suicide.’ Edwin’s tone was polite but cold. ‘If that’s what you are getting at.’

He’s too well prepared, Malone thought. He could be a lawyer instead of a stockbroker. ‘Everyone seems to think we’re getting at something. Your sister-in-law had the same idea. Don’t you want to know how your brother died?’

‘Of course we do!’ Emma leaned forward; Malone waited for her to spring out of her chair. ‘But we’re not going to have his name besmirched!’

Besmirched: he had heard that word only from learned judges in libel cases. But perhaps it was part of the vocabulary one would hear in a museum like this. ‘We don’t want it – besmirched, either. But let’s face it – this case is one of Australia’s biggest mysteries. I worked on it originally for a few days – it was front-page stuff in every newspaper in the country when he disappeared.’

‘1 remember it.’ Emma looked as if she might spit. ‘Reporters! Trying to turn our life into a goldfish bowl!’

‘It’s started again,’ said Ruth Springfellow. ‘We have an ex-directory number, but somehow or other they’ve discovered it and are ringing all the time, day and night. Whatever happened to respect for privacy?’

‘We’re living in the past, sweetheart,’ said her husband and, without irony, looked around the museum.

Malone tried another tack, walking on hollow eggs. ‘This is a delicate question—’ Both women looked at him with apprehensive anticipation; but Edwin looked offended in advance. ‘What were relations like between your brother and his wife?’

Edwin and Ruth were shocked; but Emma leaned forward again. ‘There were arguments. I always said they were an ill-matched pair.’

‘Emma!’ Edwin raised an open hand as if he intended to clamp it over his sister’s mouth.

‘It’s true. We all want to know what happened to Walter—’ She faltered for a moment and her face softened; she looked a different woman, one capable of love. Then she hardened again. ‘What’s wrong with the truth?’

‘Nothing,’ said Malone, getting in first. ‘It’s the only way we’ll solve anything.’

‘By dragging up the past?’ said Edwin.

Malone gave him a steady look. ‘Yes, Mr Springfellow. That’s the only way we’re going to do it.’

‘Why not just let Walter rest in peace?’ said Ruth. ‘It’s what he would have wanted himself.’

‘No,’ said Emma. ‘He wouldn’t have wanted it that way at all. You know as well as I do, he wasn’t a man to let things rest, not even as a boy. He was like me, we always were. Let’s have the truth. It’s what he would have said.’

‘Can any of you remember anything of the day he disappeared?’

‘Nothing,’ said Edwin at once and Ruth, after a glance at him, shook her head.

‘I can,’ said Emma, looking at neither of them. ‘I was living here then with Edwin and Ruth—’

‘Where do you live now?’ said Clements. Malone always left it to him to take notes.

‘At the Vanderbilt in Macquarie Street. I’ve lived there for twenty years.’ She said it bitterly, as if south of the harbour were another country where she was a remittance woman not wanted at home.

Malone said, ‘What do you remember of that day?’

‘How can one remember exactly what happened all that time ago?’ said Edwin.

Emma ignored him. ‘Walter was very upset. I saw him for a moment before he left for the airport that morning—’

‘What did he say?’

‘It wasn’t what he said – I just knew. Walter and I were so close – we didn’t need to say things to each other. He just kissed me on the cheek and told me not to worry. Then he told me not to go near his wife.’ the last word had a dagger through it.

‘And did you? Go near his wife?’

‘Not till the news came through that he was missing. The ASIO men came to see us, and some policemen—’

‘I was one of them,’ said Malone.

‘Really?’ She looked at him with sudden sharp interest. ‘And you never found anything?’

‘Nothing. We’re having to start all over again.’

Edwin stood up. He had a certain dignity that was natural to him; old families sometimes bequeath other things besides money and a name. ‘I think that’s enough for today, Inspector. We are still upset by yesterday’s discovery. I should have been at my office if it weren’t for this …’

‘We haven’t finished—’

‘Yes, we have, Emma. The inspector will understand. Perhaps we’ll be in better shape to talk to you, Inspector, after the funeral. For the moment we’d rather be left alone.’

Emma glared at him, then abruptly stood up and without a word stalked out of the room. Ruth, as dignified as her husband, said, ‘Please forgive her, Inspector. She and Walter were very close. Even after all these years she has never really reconciled herself to his disappearance. She has always believed he was still alive. And now …’

Edwin took her hand and once again they were as still as statues. You will get no more out of us today, their stillness said. Malone, who knew when to wait for another day, said goodbye. Edwin, moving stiffly, showed the two detectives to the front door. When he closed the door behind them, Malone waited for the sound of bolts being shot; but there was none. The door, however, was as stout as a castle gate. Neither it nor the family behind it would be easy to break down.

Going down the driveway Clements said, ‘Emma was in love with her brother.’

Malone looked sideways at him: Clements was not usually given to such wild guessing. ‘You reckon? I didn’t think they went in for that sort of thing in Mosman.’

‘I don’t mean incest. But I saw it once before, when you were overseas on that High Commissioner case. Only it was the other way around, the brother was in love with the sister. He killed her because she married someone else.’

Malone stopped at the front gates. ‘Are you saying Emma could have killed Walter?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Clements, chewing his lip. ‘I’ll give you half a dozen who could have killed him. Including ASIO.’

‘Keep your mouth shut on that one or you’re headed for Tibooburra.’ That was a one-pub town in the far north-west of the State, the NSW Police Force’s farthest outpost. ‘Just think it, don’t say it.’

Clements grinned. ‘Let’s get at the truth, as Emma said.’