Читать книгу Dilemma - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 6

Chapter One

1

Malone pulled up his car in the Erskineville street where he had been born, got out and waited for the memories to flood back. He had been doing this for the past six months, but now the memories were only a trickle; drought, the bane of farmers and sentimentalists, had set in. One side of the street had lost its row of workmen’s cottages; they had been replaced by a row of town houses or, as the estate agents now called them, villas. On the side where Malone stood, his side, the terrace houses had been gentrified. All had been painted: pale cream but with different-coloured doors: red, yellow, blue, green; all with ornate knockers, like suddenly proclaimed coats of arms. Some of the narrow verandahs that opened right on to the pavement had planter boxes behind their painted iron railings. All of them had security grilles on the windows; some had security doors. Only on the very end of the terrace was the rebel, the memory anchor.

Painted cream like the others, yes; but the door was brown, the plain knocker was black, there was no security grille. A youth had broken into the house a couple of years ago and Con Malone had met him with one of Malone’s old cricket bats and beaten him senseless. The kid had wanted to charge Con with assault and the two young cops who had been called by Brigid Malone had had to hold Con back from assaulting him further.

Con Malone was sitting on a kitchen chair on the verandah, soaking up the hour’s sun that the front of the house managed. He was reading the morning’s newspaper, a ritual that took him from the front pages, through the obituaries to the sports pages, read in sequence like a book. Malone paused a few steps from the front gate and looked at his father. The old man, like the memories, was fading. The tree-trunk body was thinner and smaller, there was now a hunch to the once-straight back. He suddenly felt an immense affection for his father.

Con looked up as Malone stepped in the front gate. ‘G’day.’

‘G’day. You’re still reading the Herald.’

‘Nothing but bloody opinionated columnists.’

‘The Daily Worker was all opinion.’

‘It was an honest paper, knew what was going on.’ He folded the paper carefully. If he had believed in butlers and could have afforded one, he would have had the butler iron the paper before bringing it to him. He had read that British aristocrats did that, the only thing he admired them for. ‘Bloody country’s going to the dogs.’

The bloody world, which didn’t really interest Con, was going to the dogs. The IRA had just attacked Heathrow airport in London; Bosnia was trying to go back to pre-1914; in the US the Whitewater scandal was overflowing its banks. At home things were slightly better: the economy was breaking into a gallop, condoms were being urged in schools to protect sexually rabid teenagers against HIV. The Chippendales were on tour, always promising but never actually doing the full monty, whatever that was. And down in Canberra, the Prime Minister, as all PMs before him and to come after him, was attacking those who criticized him and his politics. The world spun in monotonous circles.

‘Look at ’em!’ said Con in disgust. Two women had passed by on the other side of the road: Arab women in chadors, though their faces were uncovered. ‘Wogs, slant-eyes … When you were a kid growing up, this street was ours.’

‘Grow up, Dad. That was the nineteenth century. Mum inside?’

‘She’s down at the church. Putting the holy water in the fridge, case it goes off. You know what she’s like. Bloody churches, they’ve gone to the dogs, too. You been away?’

‘Up to Noosa, just Lisa and me.’ He had told his mother and father about the planned trip; but their memories, like themselves, were fading. ‘A second honeymoon, I think they call it.’

‘You’ve been lucky. Both of us, you and me. Mum’n I’ve been happy. Just like you and Lisa. That ain’t common, not these days. I read in this—’ holding up the paper ‘– two blokes married. Blokes! You think they’ll be happy like we been?’

Malone shrugged. ‘They could be.’

‘Bloody poofters. Wogs, slant-eyes – I’m in a foreign country. You back at work?’ Con Malone, then working on the wharves, hadn’t been able to hold his head up when his only child had become a cop. The union had doubled his dues for three months. ‘That last job must of wore you out. Two women poofters killing one of them’s husband.’

‘They’re called lesbians, Dad. Or dykes.’

It was Con’s turn to shrug. ‘Who cares? The cases get you down sometimes?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘What d’you do then? Hand ’em on to someone else?’

‘It doesn’t work like that. Not like on the wharves.’ He grinned when he said it; he’d better or his father would be on his feet, two fists up. The wharves had been Con’s parish, the union his religion.

‘So you’ve never walked away from a case?’

‘Not so far. But …’

‘Here comes Mum. Pious as hell. She’s just been talking to God or the Pope.’

Brigid Malone smiled as she approached, but she didn’t put out her hand or turn her cheek to be kissed. She kept that sort of affection for her grandchildren; she too belonged to the nineteenth century. A long while ago she had been a handsome woman, maybe even close to a beauty; but that, too, somehow seemed as distant as the nineteenth century. Like Con, she had shrunk over the past six months. Lately she had begun to talk of Ireland, of her girlhood: but only to her grandchildren. To talk like that to Scobie, her son, would be too difficult. With him she was still trapped in the tight corset of her earlier feelings. She loved him, he knew that, but if she shed tears for him he had never seen them.

‘How are Lisa and the children?’

‘Fine. How’s the Pope?’

‘I’ll ask him next time he writes. You coming in for a cuppa tea? I’ve made some scones.’

‘Date scones?’

‘What else?’

He followed them into the house. The safe house, where they had protected him as securely as he tried to do with his own children. Where crime, when it entered, could be handled with the simple logic of a cricket bat.

2

Ron Glaze had gone to the house, their house, but she had not been there. It was a Housing Commission home, built in the 1960s, improved by the garden he had built around it. Brick veneer, tiled roof, three bedrooms, one bathroom, living and dining rooms combined; three years ago, when things had been going well for them and between them, they had taken out a mortgage and bought it. They had grown up in this area, they were both Westies, and they had felt comfortable with it as a starting point. They occasionally dreamed of a house in one of the seaside suburbs, on a northern beach, say Collaroy or Narrabeen; but that was for the future, when they would have more money, even have kids. The future that had never come within coo-ee of them.

The light had been on in the hallway and he had pressed the doorbell. There had been no answer and after the second ringing of the bell he had taken out his key and let himself in. He had kept the key in his pocket, prepared to let her ask him in, not just barge in as if he owned the place. Which he still did – or anyway, half of it.

She had not been there. He had gone slowly through the house, as if looking for reminders of her and himself. He had been gone three months, but now it seemed like only yesterday. He was not a reader, but somewhere he had read a proverb or something: What was hard to bear was sweet to remember. Wrong: like so many proverbs. The last fight with her, when she had thrown him out of the house, had been hard to bear; there was no sweetness in remembering it. That fight had been right here, in the kitchen. He had been standing there, in his hand a Coke that he had taken from the fridge. He had looked around, then put down the Coke and walked out of the kitchen quickly, as if she were chasing him again, throwing things at him. He had walked into the bedroom, their passion pit, and lain down on the bed, his side, put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling, wondering if the effort to reconcile with her was going to be worthwhile.

He was of medium height, with thinning blond hair (a major worry) and a round cheerful face that hovered, like an image in water, between good-looking and plain, depending on the light. What appealed to women was his smile, wide and white. But he was not smiling now. He tried to remember the passion here in this bed, but it was just cold ashes. The gap between them had been growing over the past year; he had seen it widening and been unable to stop it. Maybe it had been his fault (the women) or maybe it had been hers (the ambition). He was not a chauvinist (so he thought), but women undoubtedly didn’t understand men. But he would not tell her that, not tonight.

He had lain there for almost an hour, waiting for her to come home. But she hadn’t, and then he had got up and gone looking for her, knowing for certain where he would find her.

They had been members for ten years of the Golden West Club; it was there they had met. It had been one of the first of the clubs that had sprouted in the western suburbs and it had grown and grown. It now had 60,000 members, all of whom, fortunately, did not attend on the same night; it had 1000 poker machines, all of which were genuflected to by the congregation each night. It had four restaurants and put on floor shows almost every night. It could afford overseas performers: Tom Jones had done his best to dislocate his hips here and John Denver had sung songs of places far away from the flat plain of the western suburbs. The Chippendales had performed here on Ladies Night Only; orgasms had erupted like an epidemic of wind. The women went home and sexually attacked their husbands. Those lucky men, more K-Mart than Chippendale, hadn’t been able to believe their luck.

Now they were sitting at a table in the club, as stiff with each other as on a first date.

‘Ron, it’s no use. It’s all over. Finished. What was it you used to say about the politicians and the union officials, you used to laugh about? At this point in time. That’s it, Ron. At this point in time it’s all over.’

Norma Glaze was thirty-one, a year younger than her husband. She had been a hairdresser ever since she had left school; even doctors did not need the ear and tongue that successful hairdressers had to have. Buzz words and phrases came and went like hairstyles; mode was the latest, but she had heard them all. Her clients picked them up from their husbands and boyfriends, though she could see none of them on a level playing field. Ron, a car salesman, had the tongue but not the ear; the latter was not necessary in the motor trade, he had often told her. At any point in time, on a level playing field or wherever. Talk was action …

‘Don’t you miss the fucking we had?’

‘Don’t start talking dirty, Ron. It’s not gunna get you anywhere.’

‘Okay, okay.’ He had three feet tonight, kept putting the wrong one forward. Selling himself to her had never been easy; maybe that was why he had sold himself so easily to other women. A Holden Caprice with low mileage: that was how he had sold himself and the women had laughed and bought him, if only for a demonstration run. ‘Miss you, hon. Really. Not just the sex bit …’

She looked around, glad they were at an isolated table; she had chosen it and led him to it as soon as he had walked in the door. They were a fair distance from the long bar, but close to the nearest bank of poker machines. Players were at the machines, but their backs were to the Glazes; their eyes, minds, every sense concentrated on the bright faces of the machines. This was Monday night, always a slow night. Two hundred people maximum, she thought, every one of the bastards looking at us out of the corners of their eyes or through the back of their heads. A hairdresser, she knew that gossip hung in the air like legionnaire’s disease.

She was attractive, too heavy in the jaw to be beautiful; she had large dark blue eyes and a mouth enlarged by careful makeup. Her black hair was cut in a bob with a fringe; a ninety-year-old customer had told her she looked like Louise Brooks, whoever the hell she was. She was as tall as Ron, with a good figure that needed careful dieting and two sessions a week at aerobics. All that was exterior: the interior, not even Ron had come close to knowing. Though, to tell the truth, she was not even sure she knew herself.

‘Ron, try and get it through your head—’ She shook her own head; the black hair moved, throwing off lights like a black mirror. The way he had always loved it … ‘We’re incompatible—’

‘Oh, for Crissakes! Jesus, hon, how can you say that?’ He sat back, looked round the huge room as if about to appeal to the gamblers at the poker machines, to the two barmen and the barmaid, to the drinkers at the other tables. But they were all ignoring him; or so it seemed. He looked back at her: ‘Norma, don’t start sounding like a fucking psychiatrist – You’re not going to one, are you?’

‘Don’t be silly.’ She toyed with her drink, a vodka and tonic, her staple. She had been drinking more and eating less lately: she would have to watch herself. ‘I hear you lost your job. What happened?’

He had been hoping she would not bring that up. He looked at his own drink, a beer. ‘Business was down. They say the economy is growing, but that’s bullshit. Are you getting more customers?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m thinking of opening up another salon.’

‘I’ve been looking at going into the nursery business,’ he said tentatively.

She didn’t laugh, as he had been afraid she might. But she did say, ‘What are you gunna use for money?’

‘I’ve got a bit saved. And I think the bank’ll listen to me.’

‘You owe me three months on the mortgage, your share.’

Jesus, why did she always have to harp on about money? ‘I’ll cover that.’

‘How?’

‘Don’t worry – I told you I’d cover it!’ He was trying to hold on to his temper. Over at the bar Charlene was looking at him, talking all the while to the three or four men at the bar. She waved to him and he nodded back. ‘Let’s talk about us, hon – not money—’

Norma had looked back over her shoulder. ‘You still got a thing for her?’

‘Who?’

‘Charlene, the freewheeling bike.’

‘For Crissake, Norma – cut it out! I never had a thing for her – Jesus, it was just one night! You were away, I dunno where—’

‘I was up at Gosford, taking care of my mother who was sick with pneumonia—’ She stopped abruptly, as if suddenly exhausted by the argument. She stared at her glass, twirled it round again with those fingers that had been so clever at finding their way round his body. Then she said, her voice so low that he had to lean forward to hear her, ‘Go, Ron. It’s over. I don’t want to see you again. Ever.’

‘Hon—’

‘Please go. Don’t make a scene – just go.’

All at once in the huge room there was one of those silences that are magnified by the number of those present. Two hundred people had abruptly stopped talking; even Charlene, at the bar, who never stopped. The poker machines were motionless: no symbols fell, no bell rang. The garish lights, an electrician’s nightmare, seemed brighter, more eye-burning. Heads turned to see what had caused the silence; but there was nothing to be seen. It had just happened, like the closing of a book.

Ron stood up. There was an aridness in Norma’s voice that all of a sudden opened up a desert before him.

‘Goodbye,’ he said and walked the long walk to the wide front doors. Norma didn’t turn her head to watch him, which was a pity. He had never known the meaning of dignity, but tonight he accomplished it, even if he was unaware of it. His back was straight, his pace steady.

Come to think of it, Charlene would say later, he looked cold-blooded. Which would be damning, but was wrong.

3

He was a tall lean man with a bony face that stopped just short of being handsome. He had thick dark hair with already a touch of grey at the temples; he would be grey-haired by the time he was forty-five, thirteen years away. He moved with an unhurried easy grace, as if he knew he was destined for a long life and minutes and seconds saved did not matter. He wore a blue button-down shirt, a purple-and-green striped tie, a brown tweed jacket and grey slacks. He had a habit of standing with his right hand in his jacket pocket, rather like 1930s British actors in late-night movies. He was noticeable, though not by intent.

He was on his way back from Katoomba, where, due to the bungling of the locals, he had had to work longer than he had planned. He had come down from the Blue Mountains and was on the freeway heading for the city when his bladder began to assert itself. He was coming into the outskirts of the suburbs and began to look for a place to pull off the freeway. A curving exit opened up ahead and he took the Mitsubishi Magna up it and brought the car to a halt. He got out, relieved himself, felt the relief of a long piss, one of the unlisted small joys of life. He was about to get back into the car when he saw the big neon-lit building about a couple of hundred metres along the crossroad. All at once he felt thirsty and hungry. Later he would remember, with sour humour, that the whole tragic night had begun with an urge to piss.

He drove into the car park of the club; it looked large enough to take at least a thousand cars, but tonight there were less than two hundred. He knew of it, it was famous, the first of the clubs that had started back in the fifties. It had drawn the local residents together, given them a haven and distraction from the sterile suburbs in which they lived; it had provided what the urban planners had not thought of, a focus. It was wealthy, had voting power with the other clubs, and it spread money where it was needed in the district. A sign by the wide front doors told him: All Visitors Welcome.

He walked in, was overwhelmed by the size of the huge room. He was accustomed to smaller places, had grown up in a three-bedroom semi-detached in Collaroy and size, especially interiors, still impressed him. There were a fair number of people in the room, most of them lined up before the banks of poker machines that sat, with smug faces, like creatures from outer space waiting for the suckers to pay homage. One woman wore a long black glove on the hand that pumped her machine; he wondered if she drew it on like a surgeon about to operate. He was not a gambler, never had been, and he wondered what other strangers like himself, coming in, thought of the machines and their brazen look.

He walked up to the bar. ‘Can I get something to eat without going to the restaurant?’ He could see a restaurant up on a mezzanine floor. ‘A sandwich or something?’

The barmaid had the sort of smile that she gave to everyone, whether she was favouring them or disappointing them. ‘I can get you some sandwiches from the kitchen.’

‘Thanks. And a beer. You have a Heineken, by any chance?’ He had a pleasant voice, every word distinct.

‘We have everything. You name it, we’ve got it, definitely. You moved in around here or just visiting?’

‘Just visiting.’

‘I’m Charlene, the oldest inhabitant. I was a teenager when I started here.’

He hoped she wasn’t going to tell him her life’s history. She was in her mid-forties, he guessed, bright, bouncy and unembarrassed by her openness: you got what you saw. Her hair was a blonde dome, some hairdresser’s self-monument. One would not have been surprised to find an autograph on the wearer’s forehead. But she was efficient and he could see why she had lasted so long. Members, he was sure, would say she was a pillar of the club.

She brought him his beer and sandwiches. ‘It’s ham-and-avocado salad. Nice – I had one m’self for supper. You’ll have to take it to a table. We don’t allow ’em lining up here at the bar to eat. You know what men are like. Let ’em near a bar and they think it’s their mother’s tit, if you’ll forgive the expression.’

‘Of course.’ He couldn’t remember his mother’s tit, but was sure he hadn’t hung round it after he’d left babyhood. He had been one of five children and his mother, deserted by their father, had never had the time to coddle any of them.

He took his right hand out of his pocket to pick up the beer and the sandwiches and only then was it apparent why he kept the hand hidden. It was crippled, a twist of claws. He grasped the sandwich plate, took the beer in his left hand and went across to a table some distance from the bar. He sat down and only then noticed the woman three tables away from him. She looked at him without interest, then got up, went to the bar and brought back a drink. She was an attractive woman, everywhere but in her face: pain was there and anger and those emotions were never attractive. He had seen them before, in his work.

He watched her while he ate and drank, taking his time. It had been a long, hard, full day and now he was enjoying the relaxation, no matter how short it might be. The woman interested him: what had brought the pain and anger to her face? In profile they were less obvious; he shifted his chair so that she remained in profile to him. The more he looked at her, the more he became interested in her. There was a sensuality to her that he had missed at first: something in the line of her body, the way she moved when she raised her glass to her lips. But she paid him no attention and at last he decided it was time to go. He had at least another three-quarter of an hour’s drive to home.

He stood up, went across and paid the barmaid. ‘Thanks. I’m refreshed.’

‘Half your luck. I’m done in. I’m not as young as I used to be. But don’t tell anyone.’ She gave him the smile. He liked her friendliness, but wondered why she played the part she had created for herself. When she got home, did she take off the front and throw it aside like a dirty brassiere?

‘I never tell on a lady,’ he said, smiled at her and left.

Out in the car park he was about to get into the Magna when he saw the woman moving unsteadily towards a grey Volvo. He paused, watching her. She stopped by the car, opened her handbag, took out her keys and dropped them. He heard her swear, then she leaned on the side of the car and slowly slid down, her free hand groping for the keys on the ground. He shut the door of the Magna and moved across to her.

‘Can I help?’

She looked up at him. ‘I’ve dropped my keys.’ She stood up, slowly, still leaning on the car. They were close and he could smell the liquor on her breath. ‘I think the night air’s got to me.’

He found the keys, but didn’t hand them to her. ‘Do you live far from here?’

She waved vaguely. ‘About five minutes. I dunno – I’m not much good at distances. I’m not much good at closeness, either.’ She giggled.

‘I think I’d better drive you home. Or get you a cab.’

‘No cab. You go back in there, ring for cab and someone’s gunna ask you if it’s for me again. No thanks.’ She was still leaning against her car, but with her back to it now. She looked carefully at him, as if making a decision on him; then she nodded back at the club. ‘I saw you looking at me in there. Why?’

‘I often look at attractive women.’

If she had giggled he would have walked away. But she just nodded, as if she knew that was the most natural thing in the world for men to do. He wondered how much experience of men she had had, but guessed she would be able to handle them.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Fred.’

‘Fred what?’

‘Just Fred. What’s yours?’

‘Norma. Just Norma.’ Then she straightened up, stepped away from the car. ‘Drive me home, Fred.’

She gave him directions and it was indeed only five minutes’ drive. She said nothing during the five minutes, just sat side on looking at him. He could smell her perfume; and something else? Did desire have a perfume? When he slowed, looking for her street, she spoke at last. ‘The next street on the right. They all look alike around here. It’s the egali – something or other look.’

‘Egalitarian.’

‘That’s it. One of my clients said it – she’s a teacher, a real bolshie. I’m a hairdresser. What do you do, Fred?’

He could see something was building here. He would go along with it, she attracted him, but he was still cautious. If this was going to be a one-night stand, that was all it was going to be. ‘I’m an adviser.’

‘I could do with some advice.’ She continued to look at him, then she smiled to herself, shrugged and said, ‘How are you gunna get back to your own car?’

‘I’ll walk.’

‘It’s a long walk. You want me to ring for a cab?’ She opened the car door, got out. ‘Come in.’

He was not a floater, someone who picked up women like fish; he had always been steady, almost careful in his courting. This, though, wasn’t courting; nothing in this, if anything happened, would remain in the memory of either of them as anything of consequence. He was not inexperienced in women; he recognized he was being invited inside for more than a phone call for a cab. He got out of the car, already big in his trousers, and followed her in through the front gate and up the narrow path.

‘Don’t step on the garden. It used to be my husband’s pride and joy. It’s gone to pot now.’

He paused in his step. ‘Where is he?’

She stopped and looked back at him. ‘Don’t worry. He’s looking after someone else’s garden somewhere. We’re finished,’ she said, fumbling with the front door key. He wasn’t sure whether there was pain or anger in her voice, as there had been in her face at the club. ‘Finished. Bugger!’

She had dropped her keys again. He found them, put a key in the door and opened it. They were close together; he could smell the perfume and the heat of her. But he was not going to kiss her on the doorstep. ‘After you, Norma.’

He followed her into the house, closed the door behind him. She turned back, gave him the direct look again. ‘Do you wanna call a cab?’

‘Not yet.’

She came into his arms as easily as if they were old lovers. There was no frantic tearing at each other; she led him towards the main bedroom, again as if they were old lovers. Only when they were undressing, on opposite sides of the bed, did she notice his claw.

‘Is that your loving hand?’

She said it with a smile and he wasn’t offended; but all at once he was embarrassed by it. As he had been with other women. ‘No.’

‘How’d it happen?’

But he just shook his head, fell on the bed and pulled her down on him. Later, he would not remember the next half-hour. Drunkenness seemed to overtake her: the drunkenness of sex, the delayed effect of the drinks she had had at the club: he would never know. She tore at him as if she hated him; but wouldn’t let go. At last he struggled free, fell back from her.

She grabbed at him again. ‘Yes!’

‘No – I can’t—’

‘What’s the matter? Your dick crippled like your hand?’

That shocked him, he hadn’t expected that sort of cruelty; he was equally shocked when he hit her. Anger is the most primitive emotion, the least civilized attribute of man. It comes from the oldest and deepest part of the brain, is always there; the last emotion left in a paralysed brain is anger. Later, he would remember that psychiatrists had put that opinion in court.

She rose up in the bed, hit him in the face with her fist; the fist turned into a claw, tore at him. He put up his left hand, tried to push her chin up and away. The hand slipped to her throat as she clawed at him again. She was babbling incoherently; she hit him in the eye and he swore with pain. Then his grip tightened on her throat.

He was shocked when she fell on him, pushing his left arm back into him. His fist opened and he slid his hand away from her throat. He pushed her off him, slipped to one side and lifted himself to look at her.

Then tentatively, like a lover’s hand, he put his left hand on her throat again. There was no pulse.

4

Ron Glaze couldn’t take no for an answer: it was the salesman in him.

After he had left the club he had gone to McDonald’s and stuffed himself with two Big Macs; unhappiness made him hungry. You’ll never grow up, his mother had told him; but hadn’t spoiled him by turning him into a mummy’s boy. When McDonald’s told him they wanted to close down for the night he had gone out and sat on a bench in the mall. People passed him, some that he knew; they said Hi, and he nodded back at them. Some of them looked back at him curiously, but none of them came back to speak to him. He sat there for almost an hour, then he got up and wandered up the main street, stood on the pavement and looked across at Wisden’s Car Sales, at the cars standing there in long rows, the floodlights reflected in the wind-screens like malevolent smiles. Oh shit, he said aloud and began to cry.

That was when he decided to go back home and try again. When he saw the Volvo parked out front by the kerb, he wondered if she had had too much to drink. Whenever she did, she would never pull the car into the side driveway and up under the carport. Once she had done that and had driven off the path and ruined a whole row of azaleas in bloom. He had nearly killed her, he was so bloody angry.

He paused halfway up the front path and looked around him. Even in the moonlight the garden looked a mess; it was as if she had let it go, to spite him. He would start repairing it tomorrow. Rebuild the garden and their marriage.

He had parked his car behind the Volvo. The two of them together, one behind the other, were a reminder of happier times. She was a careless driver, even when sober, but tonight she had parked the Volvo neatly. Right in the gutter, not like a woman’s usual parking, a short walk from the kerb. He grinned at the thought, a car salesman’s joke. His mood was lighter as he let himself quietly into the house.

The light was off in the hallway; she had gone to bed. But why wouldn’t she have? It was two o’bloodyclock in the morning. He headed in the darkness, with the sureness of long practice, for the bedroom. If she had had too much to drink, she would be dead to the world; he knew what the vodka and tonics could do to her. They could make her sexually wild, but afterwards she would be as dead as a log. He would get into bed beside her, go to sleep and in the morning she would turn to him and sleepily feel for him, as she always did. Or always had.

He was approaching the bed when he tripped on her clothes on the floor. He fell on the bed, across her. She didn’t stir nor gasp: nothing. He felt the nakedness of her, ran his hand up over her thigh and hip: no movement, nothing. He sat up, kneeling on the bed.

‘Norma – hon—’

Then, suddenly afraid, he stood up, crossed to the doorway and switched on the ceiling light. Norma lay on the bed naked, legs wide apart, her head twisted to one side as if she were trying to avoid looking at him. The bed was a mess, the sheet and single blanket halfway to the floor.

‘Hon – for Chrissakes—’

Then, back beside the bed, he saw the marks on her throat and the big eyes, luminous no more, staring at the end of her world.

That was when he started to run, though it was almost five minutes before he actually moved other than to sit beside her, stroking her head and weeping.

5

‘Why’d you call us?’ asked Malone.

‘We’re stretched. We’re short three detectives, two sick and one suspended – he’s under investigation.’ The local detective-sergeant, Jeff Backer, didn’t elaborate on why one of his men was under investigation; you protected your own, particularly against other cops. ‘We’re handling four homicides. This one came up, the obvious suspect’s shot through. We could be weeks finding him.’

‘So you expect us to go looking for him?’

‘You’re the experts, aren’t you?’ There was no real friction; this was trade talk. Malone had not previously met Backer, but he had immediately liked him. ‘It looks to me like open-and-shut. All we have to do is wait till Ron Glaze gives himself up. Unless he’s gone somewhere and done himself in.’

‘Has he any form? Belting her, stuff like that?’

‘Nothing we’ve heard of. Out here it’s not uncommon, but the women don’t report it.’

‘Even less so in the eastern suburbs.’

‘They have more money there to hide the bruises.’ Backer was a local through and through.

Malone, easing himself back into work after the Noosa holiday, had come out here to get away from the paperwork that had accumulated on his desk in his absence. Normally a case as straightforward as this one would not have attracted the Homicide chief; two junior detectives would have been sent. Malone had brought one of them with him, Andy Graham; Andy, in whom enthusiasm ran like a fever, would do all the legwork without complaint. Malone felt relaxed, glad he had picked an open-and-shut case to begin with.

The house was still roped off by Crime Scene tapes when Malone and Graham arrived, but the Physical Evidence team had gone and now there were only Backer and two uniformed men on the scene. Malone had noted that the house was neat and well kept: no peeling paint, no dump of cartons and newspapers on the front verandah. The garden was a gardener’s plot, crammed with shrubs, but it had been allowed to grow wild. The lawn was a thick carpet that needed a mowing. Inside the house the nearness fell apart.

‘The wife was okay as a housekeeper, so the neighbours say, but since her and her husband broke up three months ago, she sorta slipped. She’s got her own hairdressing business and she was negotiating to lease another one over in Penrith. Seems she got sorta sloppy about the house. The husband was a dead-keen gardener, when he wasn’t selling cars, but once he’d gone she let the weeds take over.’

‘Who found her body?’

‘That’s it. A guy phoned our duty desk six o’clock this morning, said there was a dead woman at this address. Then he hung up.’

‘Glaze?’

‘Who else?’

‘Whose is that Volvo out the front?’

‘Hers.’

‘Any prints?’

‘They’ve got some out in the kitchen, on the fridge door and on a Coke bottle and a glass. But the guy from Fingerprints said he was puzzled – there’s not a dab anywhere in the car, the front seat, the wheel, the dash. All wiped clean. Same in here—’ He led Malone into the main bedroom. ‘The bedhead, the side table, the door – all wiped clean.’

‘Mrs Glaze might’ve been sloppy, but hubby wasn’t. That what you’re saying?’

‘I’m not saying anything. I’m just telling you what we’ve come up with.’ Backer was in his forties, overweight, bald; he had a thick black moustache and tired dark eyes. Malone recognized the type: the good cop worn, like an old tyre, by too much roadwork. Who could still be shocked by the occasional brutal crime or the murder of a child, but not by this straightforward domestic. ‘Unless it was someone else killed her.’

‘Any suspect? She have any boyfriends?’

‘Not as far as we know. For the moment my money’s on Ron Glaze.

They had come back to the living room. It was comfortably furnished, looked lived-in; but it was the sort of furniture bought by a couple who had other things to think of. The prints on the walls were of castles, cathedrals, mosques: someone’s escape? There was a photo of Norma Glaze on the television set in one corner, the only photo in the room. None of Ron Glaze. There were two rows of Condensed Books volumes on a small bookshelf and beneath them two heaps of magazines: beauty magazines and gardening ones. Somehow, perhaps because of the break-up of the marriage, it was all as sterile as a hospital waiting-room.

‘What’s your guy doing?’ said Backer.

‘Andy?’ Malone looked over his shoulder at Graham, who had gone into the bedroom. ‘Just looking. If there’s anything that the PE people missed, he’ll find it. Did you see the body?’

‘Yeah, I was here when the pathologist arrived. He told me nothing, they never do. Strangled, that was all he’d say – I could see that for m’self.’

‘I’ll call in at the morgue on the way back. Anything, Andy?’

Graham had come back into the living room. He was a big young man and his restlessness seemed to make him bigger, his bulk changing shape as you looked at him. ‘Nothing, boss. The usual stuff in the bedroom drawers – the PE guys left ’em, not worth taking. Women’s stuff, a box of condoms that was open—’

‘She wasn’t using the Pill?’

Backer said, ‘I’ve talked to a coupla the neighbours. Ron evidently played around – that was why she kicked him out. A guy plays around these days, HIV and all that, maybe his wife doesn’t trust his dick any more.’

‘When I was young, condoms were for stopping pregnancies. Then they tell me, sales fell right away when the Pill came in. Now the condom is back as armour-plating. What goes around comes around. When do you reckon they’ll bring back the chastity belt?’ Malone shook his head at the constancy of sex and the others nodded. Then he said, ‘You said the Glazes were at the Golden West Club last night – together. You talked to anyone there?’

‘Just the manager. Only him and the cleaners were there this morning. He said he saw her last night, but not him.’

‘We’ll call in there. You want to come?’

Backer shook his head. ‘Later. I’ve got stuff back at the station I gotta attend to. I told you, four homicides. Things are getting worse.’

‘You think they’ll get better?’ It was Malone’s turn to shake the head. Cops rarely, if ever, felt optimistic about the future. ‘Pigs will fly.’

‘You talk to whoever’s there, call in and tell me on your way back to town. And thanks for coming.’ It was laconic, but sincere. ‘This is another country for you.’

‘It’s educational,’ said Malone, but he would be glad to get back to town. He was neither a snob nor a silver tail, but out here he would have to learn a whole new approach. It was not Bosnia nor Belfast, but over the past thirty years a new culture, a new mindset, had developed out here.

Summer was fading, but there was still heat in the morning. In the bright sunshine a tall tibouchina tree was a frozen purple explosion at the end of the street. A few other trees had been planted, but none of them had colour: the tibouchina stood out like a landmark. Malone wondered what Ron Glaze, the gardener, had thought of it.

In the unmarked Homicide car, with Andy Graham at the wheel, Malone said, ‘You think Sergeant Backer has made up his mind about this one?’

‘I think so.’ Graham nodded emphatically; all his movements were emphatic, as if he were afraid that he would not make his indelible mark on the world. ‘It’s natural, isn’t it?’

‘How?’

‘The easy suspect. I did a bit of door-knocking while you were talking to him. A woman over the road said she’d seen the husband drive up around two o’clock – she recognized his car, said she hadn’t seen it around, not since they’d broken up. She saw him get outa the car, stand for a while in the garden, then he went into the house. She’d got up to go to the bathroom—’

‘What would we do without neighbours getting up and going to the bathroom?’

Graham grinned; even his grin was emphatic. ‘Yeah. Well, she didn’t exactly see him go into the house – she said she had to hurry to the bathroom—’

‘She told you that? She had to hurry? You’ve got a way with women, Andy.’

They drew into the car park of the social club, almost deserted at this hour. Out of the glare and the heat, the inside of the club was cool and almost dark, except for the banks of poker machines, which were either never turned off or had just been switched on. The cavernous room seemed twice as large with no one in it. They asked for the manager, but he had gone to the bank.

‘He’ll be gone about half an hour,’ said the woman behind the bar. ‘You’re police from Sydney, are you? It’s another country, I tell my husband. Twenty-five miles and it’s another country. I can’t remember when I last went to town – that was what we used to call it. Town. Now we’ve got everything we want out here. Almost.’

‘Were you working here last night?’ asked Malone. ‘I’ll have a light beer. We both will.’

‘Nothing strong while on duty, eh? Some of the local guys … Well, no tales outa school. I’m Charlene, incidentally. My husband says there’s a St Charlene, though the Catholics don’t recognize her. As a saint, I mean. He says she’s the patron saint of deaf mutes, but I think he’s having a go at me.’

She laughed. It was probably the way she made her way through life, Malone thought: laughing at herself before others did. She was garrulous; she probably talked to her husband while giving him oral sex, which wouldn’t add to his joy. But she was also observant, a detective’s joy: ‘Yeah, they were in here last night. Things weren’t too good between ’em.’

‘You could hear them arguing?’

She put the beers down in front of Malone and Graham. ‘No, no. But I could see ’em. I been working here – well, never mind. A long time. I don’t have to hear things. Not when a husband and wife are arguing. I’ve seen more barneys than you’ve seen murders – no, that’s a horrible thing to say. But I see ’em – you can’t hear much, not on busy nights, but you read ’em. You just look at them and you see it, you know? You married?’

Malone nodded. ‘But I never argue with my wife in public.’

She laughed again. ‘If you did, I’d be able to tell. You could be on the other side of this room—’ she waved, to Ultima Thule. Or Town – ‘I’d be able to tell. Things were very cool, definitely, between the Glazes.’

‘No bust-up? Ron didn’t get up and storm out, nothing like that?’

She shook her head; the dome of hair didn’t move. ‘Nothing like it. He looked, I dunno, sorta cold-blooded. Ron could be like that at times.’

‘Was he popular here at the club?’ asked Graham.

‘Oh yes. He was a car salesman – they’re born popular, aren’t they? Everybody’s friend. Especially the women’s. Ron was a Wandering Dick, if you’ll forgive the expression.’

‘Of course,’ said Malone politely. ‘Did he have any special lady friends here at the club?’

‘None of ’em special.’ She was busy polishing the beer taps.

‘What about Mrs Glaze?’

‘Nah, never.’ She looked at the beer taps, as if they might spout some memory. She shook her head. ‘No, not Norma. Not here at the club, anyway. She put all her energy into her salon – she was a hairdresser, you know that?’

Malone, trying to avoid looking at the dome of hair, couldn’t stop himself from asking, ‘Did you go to her?’

‘Me? Nah. But she used to do a lotta the women here. She was very popular, very good, always up with the latest styles. She said she was the Lillian Frank of the West.’

Malone looked at Graham. ‘You know who Lillian Frank is?’

Graham sipped his beer. ‘Never heard of her. What band is she with?’

Charlene laughed; she had been laughing at men’s jokes for – well, never mind. Too long. ‘Big Melbourne hairdresser. Always in the news, all dolled up to the nines on Melbourne Cup Day – you must of seen her? Norma wasn’t like that – I mean, all dolled up. She just wanted to be the biggest hairdresser out this way.’

‘Would she have been?’

‘I dunno. I don’t think so. Money seemed to be their trouble, never enough of it.’

‘She told you that?’

She was polishing the beer taps again. ‘No, Ron. He was a great one for confiding, you know? A salesman all the time.’

‘But he could be cold-blooded, you said.’ Malone finished his beer, stood up. ‘Ron sounds as if he could be quite a mixture.’

‘Yes.’ She stopped polishing the beer taps, looked steadily at the two detectives. ‘I’m just surprised he turned out to be a murderer.’

‘People often are,’ said Malone.

‘Are you?’

‘Never … Did Mrs Glaze stay on after her husband walked out? When she left, did she go with someone, someone from the club?’

‘No. She went out on her own, a bit unsteady on the legs.’ Barmaids and barmen had eagle eyes; armies, Malone thought, should recruit them. ‘I called after her if she wanted a taxi, but she didn’t hear me.’

‘Anyone follow her?’

She shook her head. ‘I dunno. I went downstairs to the cellar. You think someone might of been eyeing her? Nah, I don’t think so. The men around here left Norma alone, most of ’em were Ron’s mates. He was everybody’s mate.’

‘No strangers in that night? I see you have a sign: Visitors Welcome.’

‘Oh, there were half a dozen or so. But none of ’em went near Norma.’

Malone paid for the beers. ‘Thanks, Charlene. What’s your surname?’ And Graham had taken out his notebook. ‘Colnby? C-O-L-N-B-Y?’

‘You gunna be coming back?’

‘Probably, when we catch up with Ron. If you think of anything else, call me.’ He gave her his card.

‘Scobie Malone – you Irish?’

‘Just enough to make me interesting.’

She laughed. ‘Come again. All visitors welcome.’

Out in the car park Malone looked up. The day had changed abruptly. A nor’-easter had struggled in from the coast, from Town, and the sky was racing towards the Blue Mountains, no longer blue up close but grey and green and scarred with development. Malone lived in Randwick, a seaside suburb, and he hated the thought of having to live out here. The Westies in the western suburbs always got the rough end of the pineapple: weatherwise, economically, socially. They always got the wrong winds, the worst cold, the worst heat. There were areas here as arid as the drawing boards from which they had been lifted; the original planners had never understood the meaning of community. The suburbs were not slums or ghettos. Houses stood on their own small plots and they all had gardens of a sort, some luxuriant, some just weeds. There were shopping malls, cinemas, clubs, a rugby league team whose players would have been gods if the voters had believed in gods. Those that believed in gods or God, the post-World War II immigrants, had long ago learned that gods and God had no influence with politicians or bureaucrats. The population was mixed, an ethnic stew, and their voices, multilingual, were as loud in protest as those from elsewhere. But when the crunch came, when the pineapple was up-ended, who got the rough end? Malone looked back at the club. For all its indoor garishness, its temptation to gamble, it drew the locals together.

‘Would you like to live out here, Andy?’

‘I grew up here. I went to Mount Druitt High.’

‘How’d you find it?’

‘I felt like murder sometimes.’ Graham was very still, very sober. ‘I’d go down to the beaches, Bondi, Coogee, and I’d look at all of them who lived there and I’d want to murder the bastards.’

‘You changed your mind since you joined the Service and got to know one of the bastards from the beaches? Me.’

Graham relaxed, his silhouette shivering again. ‘It takes all sorts to make a world, doesn’t it?’

‘I wonder what sort of world Ron Glaze wanted?’

6

On their way back to Homicide, having paid their call on Jeff Backer and given him what little they had learned from Mrs Colnby, Malone and Graham diverted to the morgue in Glebe. Here in this inner suburb the breeze was cooler, as if it might have blown through the morgue before getting to the street. The two detectives entered the nondescript building from the rear; it had the look of a warehouse, which in a way it was. They were told that Dr Clements was in the Murder Room.

They went down through the long main room where blue-gowned attendants, like bored priests, were administering pathology last rites to half a dozen corpses. Malone, though a man with a strong stomach, kept his eyes on the far end of the room. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something red-and-yellow and slimy, like something from a fisherman’s net, dropped on one of the scales between the stainless steel tables at which the technicians worked. Behind him he heard Graham strangle something between a cough and a burp, but he didn’t look back. Blue honeycombs of insect killers hung from the ceiling and a dozen air-conditioners did their best to strain the clogged air.

Romy Clements, in gown, apron and gloves, was working on the body of Norma Glaze. ‘Not feeling well today, Andy?’

‘I’d rather of stayed outside.’

Romy smiled at Malone. ‘You notice how all the really big men are weak-stomached? Russ is the same … Well, here she is. Mrs Norma Dorothy Glaze – maiden name Compton. Born 22 May 1963. Death by strangulation.’ She pointed to the purple fingermarks on the dead woman’s throat. ‘He was a strong man, whoever he was. He throttled her with one hand, his left.’

Malone looked at the corpse; there was an obsceneness to the naked dead. No matter how beautiful a woman might have been, or how handsome a man, in death the beauty, in Malone’s eyes, was gone. Nothing showed but flesh, waiting to rot, and hair waiting to fall off the skull. He dreaded the day he would have to look on the corpse of someone he loved.

‘She bruised at all?’

‘Quite a lot. Breasts, ribs, on her jaw. Scratches, too. There’s bruises, too, on the inside of the thighs, around the vagina.’

‘There’d been intercourse?’

‘I’d say so. I don’t think it was rape, though.’

‘Probably not. At the moment the main suspect is the husband. They were separated.’

‘There’s no semen, so you can’t do a DNA.’

‘We found a box of condoms,’ said Graham, eye-level about three feet above the corpse. ‘A box of a dozen – a couple had been used. We didn’t find them, they’d probably been washed down the toilet.’

‘If he used a condom, twice, then it doesn’t suggest rape.’

‘Looks like they had a fight,’ said Malone, ‘and it got out of hand.’

Romy pulled a sheet up over Norma Glaze, wrenched off her rubber gloves. ‘She’s booked for a more detailed autopsy this afternoon. If the husband is left-handed, I’d say he is your man. But I’m not a detective.’

‘I’ll bet Russ is glad,’ said Malone.

She took off her gown. She was a good-looking woman, dark-haired and broad-cheeked. There was a composure to her that Malone always admired. Her father had been a serial killer; her career and her relationship with Russ Clements had been almost ruined by the scandal. But she, and Russ, had weathered it and Malone had a protective affection for them both.

‘You should get him,’ she said. ‘Husbands who kill their wives never seem to escape the wedding ring. Old German saying.’

7

That was Tuesday, 29 March 1994.

Enquiries confirmed that Ron Glaze was indeed left-handed in everything but his handshake.

‘He had a strong handshake,’ said the manager of the car salesyard where he had worked. ‘The sort that made a customer believe in him. I was sorry to let him go, but that’s the way things have been. I can’t believe he killed Norma, no way.’

An ASM was put out for Ronald Glaze. His car was found two days later in a car park in Newcastle, 160 kilometres north of Sydney. Across the Hunter River from the car park the pipes of the BHP steelworks belched smoke, visual music to the Novocastrians. The Big Australian was still making money; downsizing was something that happened only to Americans, a word from another language. On 1 April a man’s body was fished out of the river. At first it was thought to be Ron Glaze, which would have left everything simple and uncomplicated. Unfortunately it was another man, another murder, this time by the wife and her lover.

Ron Glaze disappeared and the Glaze murder case was moved to the back-burner of the computer files.