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CHAPTER TWO

1

Malone caught a cab back to Homicide in Surry Hills. Till three months ago Homicide had been headquartered in the big new complex, the Police Centre, across the road. Lavish in its space, antiseptic in its cleanliness, its attraction had proved too magnetic for the desk generals of Administration and another of the now-too-frequent reorganizations had taken place. Homicide had been moved across the road to the Hat Factory, a one-time commercial building which had indeed been a hat factory. Jokes were made about size 7¼ homicides, but the general feeling was that the working police, as usual, got the backwaters while the Minister and the brass got the harbour views. The sourest joke was that the old Hat Factory could never have made a hat that would have fitted the head of the Police Minister, Gus Dircks.

Clements was waiting for him, followed him into his room. It was no more than an office built into one corner of the main room, the upper half of it glass-walled. The squad room had been given a new coat of yellow-cream paint, the blue-grey carpet was not yet worn, the beige filing cabinets not yet chipped and dented; yet Malone had a feeling that everything was makeshift, that as soon as a further backwater could be found, they would be moved again. All that could be said for it was that it did not have the sleazy look that distinguished most squad rooms he saw in American films or on TV. No Hill Street blues were sung here, not yet.

‘How’d you get on?’ Clements asked.

‘See what you can find out about a social worker, she’s in drug rehabilitation, her name’s Janis Eden. She’s a girlfriend of Jack Aldwych’s son. Any word yet from your girlfriend?’

‘Lay off. Romy and I are – just friends. No, she hasn’t called with anything more. Wayne Murrow phoned in – they got a print or two off the pool gate. They’re checking records now. G’day, Peter.’

A man in white overalls, carrying a large plastic waste-bag, had come into the big outer room and moved down towards them, emptying waste-baskets as he passed each desk. Now he stood in the doorway of Malone’s office.

‘Sergeant.’ The man gave a nod, a slight formal bow of recognition. He was in late middle age, thick dark hair streaked with grey, fleshily handsome, sad-eyed yet at the same time arrogant-looking; Malone had seen the type countless times, the immigrant who hadn’t managed to achieve his old status, whatever it had been. He had not seen this particular cleaner before. ‘May I clean out the basket?’

‘Sure. This is Inspector Malone. Peter Keller. He’s Dr Keller’s father.’

Malone, sitting on the end of his desk, stood up and shook hands with the older man, who hesitated a moment before putting out his own hand. But the grip was strong: having made the decision, he was declaring himself an equal.

‘Peter was a cop in Germany,’ said Clements.

Malone had picked up his waste-basket, was ferreting through it; once or twice he had carelessly disposed of notes that he had later needed. ‘No, nothing in there.’ He handed the basket to Keller. ‘So you were a cop?’

‘Yes, Inspector. I was a sergeant.’ He spoke as if rank were everything.

‘Did you ever try to join our force?’

‘I was too old by the time I came here. There was also the language – my English was not very good then. A pity. I had the experience with criminals.’ He emptied Malone’s basket into the big bag he carried. ‘This is the closest I get now to what I used to be. Excuse me.’

He moved on out of the office, straight-backed and a little flamboyant, making a ritual out of a menial task. Clements waited till he was out of earshot. ‘I met Romy through him – she came to pick him up here just after he’d started, about a month ago.’

‘He got any politics?’

‘You mean is he an ex-Nazi or something? I wouldn’t have a clue. Who cares now, anyway? What about this Janis Eden? Do I put her name on the Grime sheet?’

‘Not yet. I didn’t get anywhere with Jack Aldwych – he tells me he’s retired and maybe he is, I’ve heard the rumour before. But this girl . . . I’d just like to know how a social worker gets to go out with the son of one of the richest men in the country, especially if Dad’s a crim like old Jack.’

‘Maybe they met in a disco or somewhere? You ever been to one? Some of the top ones, where you can’t get in unless you’re rich or good-looking, you meet all sorts. She good-looking?’

‘Yes. You telling me you’ve been allowed into these joints? You’re not rich and you’re not good-looking.’

‘I flash my badge at the guy on the door. Also, last time I went I was with Romy, she’s good-looking enough to get in anywhere. Mate, this is a democratic town, at least for the young ’uns. You pick the right place and your luck’s in, you can meet practically anyone. Is Jack Junior – I’ve never met him, but I hear that’s what he’s called – is he the disco type?’

‘How would I know? I didn’t know you were the type.’

Then his phone rang: it was Romy Keller: ‘We haven’t opened Mr Grime up yet, Inspector. We’re waiting on the AIDS or hepatitis tests – we have to send a blood sample out to Westmead. Things aren’t as quick as they used to be, not now we’re all so AIDS-conscious . . . I’ve gone right over the body and all we’ve found is a needle-mark in the fold under the right buttock. I don’t know if it means anything. I suspect he may have died of some sort of poison, but whether it was given orally or by injection, I don’t want to commit myself just yet. I don’t think we’ll have anything definite for you before this evening.’

‘Thanks, Doc. There are no signs that Scungy was a drug-user?’

‘None. No needle-marks, no sign of any wear on the nasal membranes from cocaine use. We’ve only made a cursory examination till we get the all-clear on the AIDS and hepatitis tests, but I’d say Mr Grime was clean as far as drug-taking. Is Russ there?’

Malone handed the phone to Clements, got up and moved out of his office. As he went out into the main room Andy Graham and Phil Truach came in. Graham was tall and heavily built and restlessly energetic; one sometimes had to wear dark glasses against the glare of his enthusiasm. Truach, on the other hand, was slim and bony and his enthusiasm, if he had ever had any, had soured into cynicism. They made a good, well-balanced partnership.

‘Where’ve you two been?’ Murder doesn’t take a holiday, but on public holidays Homicide usually operated with a skeleton staff, with certain members on call.

‘We’ve been down Palmer Street.’ Graham took off his jacket, bounced around his desk as if debating whether to do handstands on it. ‘You know Sally Kissen, she runs – ran a brothel down there. Half the girls in William Street used her place.’

‘We got a call from one of the girls an hour ago,’ said Truach, who was already seated rock-like in a chair, as if he knew he and Graham were an act and he had to play up the contrast to his partner’s restlessness. ‘They found Sally dead in bed. Some of the Crime Scene boys are down there still. I gather they’d just come from your place.’

Malone told them about Scungy Grime; then he said, ’For Pete’s sake, Andy, sit down!’ Graham dropped into a chair, but then couldn’t make up his mind whether to cross his legs or shove them straight out in front of him. Malone sat on the edge of the desk, turning his back on Graham. ‘How did the Kissen woman die? Shot, stabbed, what?’

‘We don’t know. The GMO, old Joe Gaynor, couldn’t find any wounds or bruises. She took drugs, there were needle-marks on her arms, but it didn’t look as if she’d OD’d. It could of been a heart attack, but I don’t think so. Doc Gaynor didn’t think so, either. He thought she might’ve been poisoned.’

‘Where’s the body?’

‘It’s gone out to Glebe, to the morgue.’

‘Righto, give me copies of your sheets. And Andy –’ Graham was a speed typist, bashing at his typewriter with his usual energy. ‘Keep your typos to a minimum. The last sheet I saw of yours looked like a wallpaper pattern. The same on the computer.’

He went back to his office. Clements was about to hang up, but Malone held up his hand. ‘You still talking to the doc? I want to speak to her.’

Clements handed him the phone, but first said goodbye to Romy Keller in a voice full of kisses, a tone that raised Malone’s eyebrows. With his hand over the mouthpiece Clements said, ‘You don’t know my romantic side.’

‘Spare me . . . Doc? There’s another body on its way out to Glebe. Ask Doc Gaynor if you can have a look at it. The name is Kissen, Sally Kissen, she was a hooker. I think she may have gone the same way as Grime. Oh, take care. She was a drug-user.’

‘Then we’ll have to do the AIDS and hepatitis tests before I can touch her. I don’t think I can give you anything conclusive on either corpse till tomorrow. Can you wait?’

‘They’re dead, Doc, and I haven’t a clue what happened to them. How long have you been a GMO?’

‘Three months.’

‘You’ll learn that here in Homicide we’re patient. Even Russ.’

‘You don’t know him,’ she said, but he thought she laughed before she hung up.

Malone sat down again at his desk, picked up Grime’s diary. The entries were cryptic; Grime had not been making notes for posterity. Yet, when a man was murdered, posterity had to take over. Most of the entries were the trivia of a person’s life: bills to be paid, a doctor’s appointment, a change in work shift. Initials sprinkled the small pages: Drink with B.H.; Call J.A. (those same initials again); Ran into K.L. Then, on a date three weeks past, there was a query, the only query amongst all the entries, and it was in capital letters: WHAT IS S.W. DOING UP HERE?

Malone handed the small book to Clements. ‘What do you make of that?’

Clements looked at the entry. ‘Do we know any S.W.? And what does up here mean?’

Malone shrugged. ‘If Scungy worked at Darling Harbour or Walsh Bay, maybe they think of Port Botany as down there.’ Port Botany was about twelve kilometres south of Port Jackson, the official name for Sydney Harbour; in Malone’s youth it had been known, as it had been for almost two hundred years, as Botany Bay. Now it had been renamed and was a major container port. ‘What upset him so much, the entry’s in caps?’

‘Let’s check with the WLU, see where Scungy worked.’

But the WLU office did not work on national holidays. Clements hung up the phone. ‘I’m getting naïve in my old age, expecting seven days a week from a union office.’

Malone grinned; Clements spread his prejudices wide. He stood up, picked up his jacket. ‘I’m going home. Detectives shouldn’t have to work on holidays, either.’

‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘Try and trace Scungy’s wife, give her the bad news. Ask Wayne Morrow to send one of his fellers down to Scungy’s flat, go through it with a vacuum cleaner. The point is, we can’t do much till Crime Scene comes up with something and your friend Doc Keller tells us what killed Scungy.’

‘You’re spoiling my Australia Day. I was gunna go out and sell flags.’

‘Mine was spoiled at seven o’clock this morning when Maureen found Scungy in our pool.’

‘Sorry.’ For all his rough exterior, his obviousness, Clements was not insensitive. ‘You want me to drive you home?’

‘I’ll get a cab, charge it to petty cash.’ He was a tight man with his own money. One of the heroes in his pantheon was J. Paul Getty, the oil billionaire who charged his house-guests for their phone calls. ‘If Doc Keller has anything interesting to tell you this evening, ring me at home.’

As soon as he stepped out into the street, his jacket over his arm, the heat hit him, threatening to fry him on the pavement. He squinted in the glare, thinking perhaps he should start wearing sunglasses, as Lisa was always insisting he do; then out of the bright yellow furnace appeared a cab, a miracle at this time of day on a holiday. A true-blue Aussie egalitarian, he got into the front seat beside the driver, a young Chinese student.

‘You’re a cop?’ the driver asked warily, eyes slanting sideways at his passenger.

‘Do I look like one?’

He was only six months in from Singapore, but already he had the Australian nose. ‘It’s not so much what you look like . . .’

‘You mean we have a smell to us? Relax –’ as the cab wavered ‘ – I’m not going to pinch you for insulting an officer. Where do you come from? Singapore? What are the cops like there? Can you smell them, those in plainclothes?’

The driver was frank, a most un-Chinese habit. ‘I was a student, you had to learn to recognize them. Otherwise you finished up as a guest of Mr Lee. At least you police here aren’t political.’

‘Thank you,’ said Malone, but wondered how many of the native students would agree.

Before he got out of the cab he paid the exact fare, sorting out the change in his pocket; tipping was un-Australian, despite the propaganda of immigrant waiters, and in Malone’s case it was unheard-of. The Chinese driver, studying for an economics degree, was philosophical. ‘You want a discount for cash?’

‘Funny bugger. I’ll get you deported.’

The cab drove off and Malone stood on the pavement and looked at his home, his castle gift-wrapped by Physical Evidence blue-and-white-checked tapes. Somehow, the tapes were an obscenity, like insulting graffiti; countless times he had stepped over them going into other people’s homes and he had not been unaware of how they changed the aspect of a house or an apartment. This, however, was different: it was, as Greg Random had said, too close to home.

A young policeman, in shirt sleeves, put on his cap and came along to Malone from the marked police car standing at the kerb. ‘I’ve been told to stand by, Inspector. Everyone’s gone.’

‘You know if they had any luck with the neighbours? Anyone see anything?’

‘Not as far as I know. The lady next door, Mrs –’ he took his notebook from his pocket ‘ – Mrs Cayburn said she heard a car draw up during the night. She doesn’t know what time it was, but it was still dark.’

Malone looked up and down the street. This was one of the few streets still left in Randwick that had no apartment blocks; two rows of older, solid houses on their sixty-foot lots faced each other across the roadway. The houses had a respectability about them; they had been built in a time when respectability had a value. Some, like Malone’s, had been built at the time of Federation, at the turn of the century; the rest had been built during or just after World War I. Up till now, as far as Malone knew, none of the houses had known murder or wife-beating or scandal; at least none of them had called for blue and white taping to be stretched around them.

‘You’ve got a visitor, sir.’ The young officer was obviously a surfie when off-duty; he was all mahogany, in colour and in muscle. On such a day, he should be down amongst the big ones, riding them on his board. Instead, here he was riding herd on a house where all the excitement was finished. ‘An old guy, said he was your father.’

‘You checked him?’ Why did he think that the old guy might be Jack Aldwych? He was becoming edgy again, the Crime Scene tapes were binding too tightly.

‘He wasn’t much help, sir. Said he’d never had to identify himself before to get into his son’s place. I asked him for his driving licence, but he said he didn’t drive, why’d he want a licence? Finally, I got him to show me his pension card. He’s an obstreperous old coot, isn’t he?’ He looked cautiously at Malone as he offered the opinion.

Malone grinned and relaxed. ‘That’s my old man. He hates cops.’

He left the young cop with raised eyebrows and the unspoken question and went into the house. Con Malone was sitting at the kitchen table, a glass of beer in front of him. The old man lived in the past, pottering around in his bigotry and old habits. He had never learned to appreciate beer from a can, he had always drunk it from the bottle or a glass and he wasn’t going to risk cutting his lip on a flaming piece of tin and spoiling the taste of the beer with blood.

‘Why didn’t you ring us?’ he demanded as soon as Malone came into the kitchen. ‘I had to hear it on the wireless, one of my granddaughters finds a dead man in the swimming pool.’

‘I was going to ring you, Dad –’ He had no excuse, really. He had been too concerned with the assault on his own feelings and those of Lisa and the kids. ‘How’s Mum?’

‘Out of her flaming mind with worry about the kids. About you and Lisa, too,’ he added. But Malone knew his mother: she had never learned to show her love for him, her only child, but she shouted her love for her grandchildren like a Catholic Holy Roller. ‘Lisa rang her and she’s gone out to Vaucluse, to the Pretorius place.’

Malone once again recognized Lisa’s talent for diplomacy. She would have known that Brigid Malone would have resented being left out of the comforting of the children. Brigid was not a mean-spirited woman, but her time was diminishing and any time lost from her grandchildren was time lost forever.

He went to the screen door, looked out at the pool; the tapes were still in place there. He could be thankful that there was no taped outline of Grime’s body: the water was crystal-clear of death.

He turned back into the kitchen, got himself a beer from the fridge, poured it into a glass as a gesture to his father and sat down opposite Con. He looked at the old man, once again seeing the tired wildness in the walnut face and the once-muscular frame; Malone knew that only his mother had kept his father out of jail. Con would never have been a criminal, but the Irish in him had always had a contempt for law and order, especially law and order based on any British model. He had hated authority, police, Masons, any conservative politician, Dagos, reffos; now he hated wogs, Asians and any man with long hair and an earring. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that lesbians did what he’d heard they did and he had no doubts that poofters deserved what AIDS did to them. He was, in his own opinion, an average Aussie, one of the real natives, not the bloody Abos. Malone loved him, but could never tell him.

‘Dad, what’s life like on the wharves now? The bloke we found out there in the pool, he could’ve worked as a tally clerk.’

‘Tally clerks don’t work, they’re all bludgers.’ His net of prejudices was wide. ‘Why’d he finish up in your pool?”

‘He was working for me. Someone must have resented that.’

‘Working –? You mean he was an informer, a stoolie? Jesus, aint you got any shame? Using a man to dob in someone else.’

Malone said patiently, ‘Dad, we do it all the time. You think the crims go in for a code of ethics?’

‘They don’t dob in their mates. Not the decent ones.’

‘How many decent crims do you know? Don’t give me any crap, Dad. I’ve had a bad morning.’

Con Malone gave his form of apology, which was to change the subject: ‘About the wharves? They’re nothing like they used to be. They’re –’ he searched for the right word ‘-they’re antiseptic. Yeah, antiseptic. Compared to what they used to be.’

‘How much skulduggery went on?’

Oh, it was dirty, real dirty. There was no guaranteed work when I first started on the wharves, there was just the call-up each morning. The stevedore boss played favourites. Or you were in sweet with the union boss and he saw you got work or there’d be trouble. There were stand-over blokes who ran things, some for the stevedore firms, some for particular union bosses who didn’t want any competition at the elections. There were some decent union men at the top, but they had just as hard a battle as the blokes at the bottom.’

‘What about smuggling, pillaging, things like that?’

‘Oh, that was on for young and old. I did it meself, pillaging, I mean, not smuggling – I never went in for that, that was big-time and too dangerous. Some of the foremen were tied up in the smuggling racket, they were the blokes on site for the big men, the ones who never came near the waterfront, who had nothing to do with the shipping game. Gangsters, big businessmen, there was even one politician in the racket. Drugs, gold, they had it all wrapped up. You must of known all about that?’

‘I’d heard about it – Russ Clements was once on the Pillage Squad. But you never mentioned it.’

‘Your mum was protecting you. She knew about it, vaguely, and she laid down the law to me that I was never to talk to you about it. By the time you was old enough to talk to, you’d become a copper. How could I talk to you then?’ Con Malone asked what he thought was a reasonable question.

Malone agreed with a grin. ‘Sure, how could you? How did you fellers work under a foreman who was in on the smuggling?’

‘We turned a blind eye. We had to, or else. Foremen were different in them days, few of ’em were popular, we looked on ’em as the bosses’ men. We never drank with them after we’d knocked off work, nothing like that.’

‘I want to go down to the wharves tomorrow. You know anyone I can see?’

‘Roley Bremner,’ Con Malone said without hesitation. ‘He’s been secretary of the New South Wales branch of the WLU for the last ten years and he’s as straight as a die. Him and me worked together when he first started. Tell him I sent you. It’s a pity you’ll have to mention you’re a cop.’ But he had the grace to grin.

‘I’ll try and keep it out of the conversation as long as I can.’

Then the phone rang. Malone picked it up. ‘Inspector Malone?’

‘Who’s this?’ He had an experienced cop’s built-in defence: never identify yourself till you have to or there is some advantage to it.

‘Malone,’ said the voice, flat but distinct, ‘stay in your own paddock. Don’t mess around with something that’s none of your business. You’ve had one warning. This is your second and last.’

2

At 7.30 Tuesday morning, while Malone was preparing breakfast for himself, Lisa returned home with the children.

‘I see they’ve taken down all the decorations.’ The blue and white tapes had been removed last night.

‘I was going to bring all the girls down from my class.’ Maureen, it seemed, had made a full recovery. ‘I phoned ’em yesterday from Grandma’s. They were going to bring their cameras.’

‘Get ready for school before I get my whip out,’ said her mother.

When the children, grumbling, had gone into their bedrooms, Malone looked at Lisa. ‘You still cranky?’

‘Do you blame me? Well, not cranky. But yes, I’m – I’m on edge. Are you any closer to finding out who dumped that man in our pool?’

‘No.’ He had had a restless night, hearing there in the darkness the flat threatening voice. He had called Lisa last night with the intention of telling her not to bring the children home, but as soon as she had spoken, before he had had time to ask how she was, she had told him she was coming home and there was to be no argument. Her voice had had the same flat adamancy as the stranger’s: it had had the added adamancy of a wife’s voice.

‘There’s still a police car parked outside. Do we have to have that?’

He spread some marmalade on a slice of cold toast; he could have been eating chopped grass spread on cardboard, for all the taste he had in his mouth. Then, forcing the words out of his mouth, he told her about the phone call and the threat. ‘It’s either police protection or you go back to your parents.’

She took her time about replying. ‘I’m not going to be driven out of my own home.’

‘What about the kids?’

‘Darling –’ She sat down opposite him, leaned forward. Normally she was one of the coolest, calmest women he had ever met, but when she became intense, there was a passion in her that, he had learned from experience, had to be handled carefully. He was no ladies’ man, but he was a sensible husband, which is more difficult. ‘Darling, the kids are my home. You and them – not the house. That’s just the shell. When I married you I wasn’t marrying a pig in a poke –’

‘Just a pig in plainclothes.’ He could have bitten his tongue. Jokes, especially feeble ones, should never be fired on a battlefield as dangerous as a domestic.

‘Don’t joke!’ She slammed the table with her fist.

He reached across and put his hand on her wrist; he could feel the tension quivering in her. ‘I’m sorry, darl. That slipped out – I’m as on edge as you are –’

She turned her arm, unclenched her fist and took his hand in hers. ‘I know. What I was trying to say was, I knew what I was getting into when I married you. I’ve worried myself sick a dozen times since then, wondering if you were all right. All I’ve had to hang on to, my rock, if you like, has been this –’ She waved her free hand about her, but without taking her gaze from his face. ‘This house, the children. I can’t explain it, maybe only a woman would understand –’

‘No, I understand.’ And he did; this was his rock, too. ‘But if you won’t leave here, let the kids go. Your parents won’t mind having them –’ But he could already imagine what his own mother would feel at not being able to take them into the small, narrow house in Erskineville. It was the house in which he had been born and brought up, but it was dark, permeated with the smells of a hundred or more years of bad cooking, sibilant with the sounds of a cistern that never worked properly. It could not be compared with the large house in Vaucluse with the pool and the lush garden and the three guest bedrooms that were always ready for the children’s visits. And there would be the Pretoriuses’ two cars, ready to bring the children across to school at Randwick each morning. But even as he posed the sensible alternative, he felt he was losing his independence, that somehow he was failing his kids. ‘It’ll only be for a few days at the most –’

‘Then if it’s only going to be for a few days, we’ll stay together.’ She took away her hand. ‘We’ll have the police protection.’

He knew there was no use in further argument. ‘Righto. But I don’t want the kids walking to school. Borrow your mother’s car and drive them there. One of the uniformed men can go with you.’

‘I’ve already borrowed it, it’s outside.’

He might have known. If she were still at home in Holland, she would inspect the dykes daily, never relying on anyone else’s word.

3

As he was backing his Commodore out into the street, Keith Cayburn came out of his front gate and approached him. ‘We had a meeting of Neighbourhood Watch last night, Scobie. If there’s anything we can do . . .’

Form a circle of wagons around my house . . . ‘I think everything’s under control, Keith. I’m asking for police surveillance for a few days, it’s standard procedure.’

Cayburn looked dubiously at the police car at the kerb. He was a lean, tall man with thinning yellow hair and bright blue eyes, that, though not furtive, had a tendency never to be still; perhaps, Malone sometimes thought, it came from his occupation. He was a high-school principal, who looked upon all teenagers as potential evil-doers and so ran a good, tight school. Decency ran through him like a water-mark, but he had no illusions that it ran unbroken through society at large. He warned his students of the worst, yet he had been shocked by what had happened next door in the Malones’.

‘It’s a bit unsettling, Scobie. Cops camped on your doorstep.’

‘I’m not jumping up and down over it, Keith.’

Cayburn was not tone-deaf: he noted the asperity in Malone’s voice. ‘Scobie, nobody’s blaming you. It’s just – well, it’s not something you expect, is it?’

‘No,’ said Malone. ‘No, I didn’t expect it.’

‘Well, we’ll keep an eye out. That’s what Neighbourhood Watch is for, isn’t it?’

‘That’s true.’ But he wondered if the neighbours would watch or would turn away when the enemy, whoever they were, made their next move. Keeping an eye out for car thieves or house-breakers was one thing; watching for murderers was something else again. ‘Things will be back to normal in a day or two, Keith. How’s the new year at school facing up?’

‘I’ll be under-staffed and over-enrolled. The system’s going to the dogs. You think you’ve got problems in the Police Department?’ He went off grumbling.

Malone drove into Homicide, left the Commodore and joined Clements in an unmarked car; they headed for Glebe and the City Morgue. ‘You hear anything from Doc Keller?’

‘I had dinner with her last night, then she went straight back to the morgue. Doc Gaynor gave her permission to work on his stiff, besides working on Grime.’

‘Neither of them have AIDS or hepatitis?’

‘No.’

‘What’s it like, taking out a girl who works amongst stiffs all day?’

Clements grimaced. ‘She says one or two of the married ones, if they’ve been working on a decomposed body, say, their husbands make them take two showers and wash their hair twice before they let ’em get into bed with them. The first night I took Romy out, I took her flowers. She said she’d rather have perfume. That answer your question, Inspector?’

‘I wish all witnesses were like you.’

‘Up yours.’

The City Morgue was on Parramatta Road, running right through to a rear street. Across the main road from it was the entrance to the playing fields of Sydney University; in his youth Malone had played cricket there against the university team, the closest he had ever come to tertiary education. There were no regrets that he had never made it there, but he was determined that none of his three kids would be denied the opportunity. These days education, not love, made the world go round, even if sometimes in the wrong direction.

They were told Dr Keller was working down in the Murder Room. Both detectives knew its location and they went through the long main room where several assistants, in their long white rubber aprons, were at work on corpses. There were sixteen stainless-steel tables, plus sinks, on either side of the main aisle; between each pair of tables was a hanging scale, such as Malone had seen in the local greengrocer’s. Blue-barred insect-killers hung from the ceiling like neon honeycomb and half a dozen air-conditioners whirred softly. A mixture of smells clogged the air: chemicals, blood, decomposing flesh. The staff looked up as Malone and Clements walked down the aisle, one or two of them tossing jokes as they leaned on the cadavers on their tables. Malone, a man with a reasonably strong stomach, kept his gaze above table level.

The Murder Room was at the far end of the main room and set off to one side. It was about twenty foot square, its doors lead-lined, a blue-barred insect-zapper on one wall, an X-ray machine above one of the two tables. On the other table, under a large green-domed lamp, lay Scungy Grime, naked, face down.

Romy Keller, in white gown and rubber apron, looked up as they came in. ‘I have nothing definite for you yet. Kissen, the other corpse, is outside in the filing cabinet.’ She didn’t smile, so Malone guessed that what had once been a joke was no longer so. ‘She has a puncture under her right buttock, just as our friend here has.’ She lifted the fold of Grime’s waxen buttock; the puncture was barely visible. ‘I’m still guessing, but I’d say they both died from the same means. Injection by an instantaneous poison, or as near as dammit to instantaneous.’

‘Kissen was a drug-user. She couldn’t have OD’d?’

‘No. When they OD, you usually find the needle somewhere near the body. More often than not, you find it still stuck in their flesh.’ Then she smiled. ‘What am I doing? Teaching my grandmother to suck eggs? You know all that. No, Kissen didn’t kill herself. In fact, I think she might have been off the heroin for quite a while. But she was on coke, pretty heavily, I’d say. There’s damage to the nasal membrane.’

Clements said, ‘What’s your guess on the poison, then?’

‘The toxic lab is working on that now. I’m only hazarding a guess, but I think they might come up with alcuronium chloride. It’s a synthetic derivative of curare. It’s a muscle relaxant they use in surgery. Given an overdose, there is neuromuscular blockage, respiratory paralysis and cardiovascular collapse, all pretty instantaneously. Mr Grime and Mrs Kissen would have felt the stab of the needle and that would have been just about it if the dose was large enough.’

‘Where could anyone get this whatever-it-is?’

‘The commercial name is Alloferin. It could be got from any hospital dispensary or from the hospital’s emergency clinic. It would have to be stolen, it would never be handed out without authorization.’

‘So a doctor or a medical student or a nurse could have used it to kill Grime and Kissen? Assuming Alfo – Alloferin? – is what was used?’

‘In the case of Mrs Kissen, you can eliminate a nurse, unless it was a male nurse. Just prior to death there’d been intercourse. We found semen in the vagina. I understand Mrs Kissen was on the game?’

Malone nodded. ‘Have you kept the semen trace?’

‘Yes, in case you pick up a suspect. We can apply a DNA test. The lab is doing a DNA profile on Kissen now.’

‘Are you doing one on Grime?’

‘There’s no point at this stage, he wasn’t sexually assaulted. But if we prove both died from alcuronium chloride poisoning, the odds will shorten that they were both murdered by the same person. Unless there’s a corps of curare killers roaming around Sydney.’

‘Why wouldn’t the killer use a condom? Most of the girls insist on it. Unless he was a regular, someone she trusted.’

‘Maybe he was a Catholic,’ said Clements.

The two Catholics gave him a look that should have laid him out beside Scungy Grime. Malone said to Romy Keller, ‘I’d better get him out of here. The atmosphere is getting to him. How do you stand it, day in, day out?’

‘I’m hoping for better things.’ She took off her rubber apron and followed them out of the Murder Room. ‘I’m studying to become a specialist in obstetrics. Bringing people into the world will be a little more rewarding than taking them out of it. Do you want to look at Mrs Kissen?’

‘No, thanks.’ Malone had had enough of death this morning; it hung in the air, clogging the mind as well as the nose. ‘Let me know as soon as you have something definite on the Alloferin, Doc.’

She nodded, then looked at Clements. ‘I’m not working this evening, Russ. Come home for dinner.’

‘You cooking?’

She smiled. ‘No. And I promise to have two showers and wash my hair before you arrive.’

Malone looked at the crumpled Clements. ‘And I promise to run a steam iron over him before he leaves Homicide.’

Outside, the two detectives got into the hot oven of the police car. Heat lay on the city like a yellow blanket; on the outskirts bushfires raged, the horizon in three directions lost in a yellow-grey haze; the roadway shimmered like hard blue water. In the trees in the university grounds the cicadas sang their brittle chorus; in Malone’s ear it, and not the splash of surf or the crack of bat on ball, was always the sound of summer. Clements turned on the air-conditioning, another summer sound but artificial and unimpressive.

‘Where do we go? Palmer Street or do we stick to Grime?’

‘I want to get him cleared up first, if only for Lisa’s sake. She’s very cranky about her routine being upset.’

‘So would I be, and I don’t have any kids.’

He made it sound as if Malone were to blame, though the latter said nothing. Guilt made him dumb.

They drove back into the city and down to the head office of the Wharf Labourers Union near the waterfront. It was housed in one of the few narrow-fronted colonial warehouses, converted to offices, that had managed to survive the development of this part of town. Huge glass monoliths towered on either side of it, reflections of huge debts: For Lease signs were plastered on all façades, like great Band-Aids trying to hold the building together till better times returned. The WLU building sat amongst them looking smug and old-fashioned. Once it had stood right across the road from the wharves; now it peered under an elevated bypass at a car park and, beyond it, a sliver of water that looked narrow enough to hold only a canoe. A union flag hung limp as a dishcloth from a pole on the roof, a banner of other, more militant days.

Roley Bremner recognized them for cops as soon as they appeared in his office doorway, but he forgave them as soon as Malone mentioned he was Con Malone’s son. ‘Salt of the bloody earth! He was a cantankerous old bastard, even when he was young, but a real good union man. Never let anyone stand over him. I remember him telling me when you become a cop. Never felt so ashamed in his life, he said.’

He was short, only a little more than five foot high and almost as wide; one got the impression that he had been rolled into a ball of muscle and bowled out into life. He had a round head, bald but for fringes of ginger-grey hair along his temples, and his face seemed to be a collection of smaller balls fitted in as cheeks, brows, nose and chin. He had a hoarse gravelly voice and bright blue eyes that looked as if they could see right through any fog that blew up from the harbour.

‘Normie Grime? Yeah, I knew him. Not well, but he come up here once or twice to pay his dues while I was here. He’s dead? Murdered? How? In your swimming pool? You mean, at your home? Jesus, that don’t bear thinking about!’ He sat back in a battered old swivel-chair. The office was small, its walls plastered with posters of old battles, like regimental battle-flags. The whole building creaked with the arthritis of militancy that had outlived its time. A fan, standing on a filing cab, whirred slowly and metallically, like a pacemaker trying to keep the spirit, if not the place, alive. Bremner said, ‘In a way I’m not surprised. I mean, Grime being done in.’

Malone and Clements had sat down on chairs as rickety as Bremner’s own. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I just didn’t expect it to get so drastic so soon.’ Bremner seemed to be talking to himself, collecting his thoughts like lottery marbles in the ball of his head. ‘I didn’t think Grime was connected to it. He never struck me as the political type, not even a good union man. Or was he a crim?’

‘Yes.’ Malone showed his usual patience. ‘Connected to what?’

‘Oh, you wouldn’t know about it, would you?’ Bremner focused his gaze on the two detectives, coming back from his reverie. ‘There’s a union election coming up next month.’

‘You think Grime might’ve been mixed up in that?’

‘If he was, he never give me any hint.’

‘How’d he get a ticket to work on the wharves?’ Malone knew, from what his father had told him, that a union ticket to work on the wharves was almost an inheritance, handed down from father to son in many cases.

Bremner hesitated a moment; then: ‘Word come down from United Unions Hall, we had to find a job for him.’

United Unions Hall was the secular Vatican; its alumnae were spread throughout union and political offices in the State. Con Malone, when he was still working down here, used to bless himself when its name was mentioned. It had led the fight for labour in the past, but its power had waned in recent years. There were, however, still powerful men in State and Federal Labor politics who had learned their skills in the corridors and offices of United Unions Hall.

Malone looked at Clements. ‘The little bugger had more clout than I thought.’ He looked back at Bremner. ‘Had he worked on the wharves before?’

Bremner got up, went out of the room and in a couple of minutes was back with a manila file. ‘We got computers, but I don’t trust ’em, they’re always breaking down. Besides that, outsiders can hack into ’em, you’re not careful.’ He opened the file, looked at the one page it contained. ‘Yeah, here it is. Grime worked on the wharves in Melbourne nineteen seventy-two to nineteen seventy-four.’

So up here was Sydney and down there was Melbourne, not Port Botany. ‘Do the initials S.W. mean anything to you?’

The balls of Bremner’s face rolled together, then the eyes lit up; but with alarm, it seemed, not excitement. He sat up, the chair cracking under him like a gunshot. ‘That’d be Snow White! His name’s Dallas White, but he’s known as Snow. He’s one of the ex-Melbourne push, he’s running against me for secretary. He’s spending money like water, Christ knows where he gets it from.’

‘The Melbourne push? Who are they?’

‘They started drifting up this way six or eight months ago. They worked on the Melbourne wharves, they’re crims every bloody one of ’em. They’ve all got records. I done me best to keep ‘em outa Sydney, but like with Grime, the word come down from Unions Hall, our Federal headquarters stepped in and I was told to pull my head in.’

He abruptly got up, came round past the two detectives, shut the door and returned to his seat. The small room was suddenly thick with secrets, like long-dormant dust that had been disturbed.

‘It’s building up to be a re-run of the old days, like it was when your old man worked down here, Scobie. I thought them days were gone forever . . .’He stared into space again for a moment, as if forgetting he was not alone. Then he looked at Malone and Clements again. ‘It used to get pretty ugly in them days sometimes, but you knew what you were up against. It was either the Commos or the Groupers, the Catholics, or you were up against the bosses. Now I dunno who I’m up against. This bunch of crims from down south want to take over the waterfront up here, but someone’s organizing ’em and we dunno who.’

‘Where could we find White?’

The balls rolled into a smile full of cheerful malice. ‘I keep tabs on him. He’s working on Number 9 wharf. He’s there with The Dwarf.’

‘A dwarf?’

‘Wait till you see him.’ Bremner stood up, the chair cracking once more like a gunshot, and held out his hand. ‘Don’t tell Snow White I sent you. But if you arrest the bastard, lemme know. It’ll make my day. Give my regards to your old man. He was a real terror in his day, y’know. Drop a crane hook on a boss or foreman, soon as look at him. Great union man.’

Malone and Clements drove round to Nickson Road. The wharves lined the western side of the roadway; on the eastern side were the hill and cliff-faces that led up to the central business district. There were few major cities in the world where the country’s imports were dumped on the doorstep of those expected to pay for them; in the glass castles along the top of the hill executives stared morosely down at their growing debt. Champagne had been drunk in those castles two or three years ago; now they were drinking mineral water. Domestic, of course.

Malone flashed his badge at the gatekeeper on Number 9 wharf and they drove on to the big expanse, like a concrete field, where containers were stacked three storeys high like townhouses in which the builders had forgotten to insert doors and windows. Three large container ships were moored dockside, stretching through to the neighbouring wharves. A giant yellow mobile crane, looking large enough to lift the national debt, loomed over the police car as it came round the corner of a stack of containers. Clements braked sharply, throwing Malone against his seat-belt. Two men abruptly appeared from between the containers: Malone’s quick impression was that they had been lurking there like muggers.

‘Where the fuck you think you’re going?’

Malone got out of the car, waited till the crane inched its way past them, then he showed his badge and introduced himself. ‘Where can I find Snow White?’

‘You’ve found him.’ He looked middle-aged, but it was a look that might have been with him since he had left school. The brown eyes were old and cunning, the lines in the cheeks like chisel-marks in leather, the mouth a brutal line above the pugnacious jaw. He had dark hair cut short back-and-sides and ears that lay along his head like a faun’s, the only soft note about his whole appearance. He was of medium height and bulged with muscle, the result, Malone guessed, of many work-outs in prison yards. ‘What’s on your mind?’

Malone looked at the huge man beside White. He was about two metres tall and seemed all body and limbs; his tiny head sat on his wide shoulders like an afterthought at birth, something stuck on when the doctor had discovered the newborn infant was incomplete. The small face still had a baby look to it, blank but for a permanent frown of puzzlement between the small blue eyes. Malone guessed that The Dwarf would have a one-track mind: two thoughts at the same time in that small head would only cause a traffic jam. Snow White would do the thinking for them. ‘Your name is –?’

The Dwarf hesitated, as if the question had baffled him, then he said in a surprisingly soft voice, like a girl’s, ‘I’m Gary Schultz.’

‘What’s this about?’ said White, whose voice was anything but girlish; it had the threat of fists or even worse behind it.

‘Did you know a man, a tally clerk, named Normie Grime?’

‘No,’ said The Dwarf, quick off the mark for once.

White glanced at him, the mouth tightening still further till the thin lips disappeared; then he looked back at Malone. ‘Gary’s forgotten. Yeah, we knew him. We worked with him once on a job over at Walsh Bay.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘I dunno. Before Christmas, maybe, I dunno. What’s up with him?’

‘He’s dead,’ said Malone, ‘that’s what’s up with him. Murdered.’

The four men were silent for a moment. Beyond their circle there was the rattle of a chain, a man’s shouting, the hum of a fork-lift as it sped past. Heat came up from the concrete in an eye-searing blaze, was reflected off the red metal containers, pressed down from the glaring sky; Malone could feel himself being boiled and shrunken by it, his skin closing up, suffocating him. Between the bow of one ship and the stern of another he caught a glimpse of water, but it looked like burning glass. This summer Lisa had insisted he start wearing a hat, he was developing sun cancers on his cheeks, but he had left the hat in the car. A gull flew overhead, mewing harshly like an Outback crow.

Then White said, ‘What’s it got to do with us?’

‘We thought you might be interested,’ said Clements, taking over the bowling. ‘We understand he came from Melbourne, the same as you.’

‘There’s about three million people come from Melbourne. We dunno most of ’em. What sorta shit are youse trying to lay on us?’

‘How come you can run for union office with a criminal record? You’ve done time, right?’

‘I been rehabilitated,’ said White, and beside him a slow grin spread across The Dwarf’s baby face. ‘My probation officer got me a second chance.’

‘Who’s your probation officer?’

‘He’s dead,’ said White, and the smile on The Dwarf’s face was now fixed like a scar. ‘The poor bugger just give up and died. I got word only a week ago. He come from Melbourne, too, one of the three million.’

The heat and White’s insolence were getting to Malone; but he kept the lid on himself. ‘We want you, we can always get you through the WLU, right?’

‘Next month I’ll be the secretary, sitting right there in the offices. Drop in. You won’t be welcome, but drop in anyway.’

Malone got back into the car and Clements went round to get in on the other side. He paused and looked across the pale grey glare of the roof at The Dwarf. ‘You running for office, too?’

The giant widened his grin. ‘Nah, I’m just Snow’s campaign manager. I’ll help count the votes when they come in.’

‘Is there gunna be any need for that? I thought bastards like you would have the votes already counted.’

As they drove away Clements looked as if he might snap the steering wheel with his furious hands. ‘Jesus, how are they let run loose?’

‘You heard the man. Rehabilitation. It’s bullshit, of course, but they’re getting away with it. But I don’t want us getting mixed up in union politics, we’ve got enough on our hands. What d’you think? You think they had anything to do with Scungy’s murder?’

‘I dunno. The Dwarf looks big enough to have carted Scungy into your place under one arm. But you notice his feet? Tiny, at least for his size. Wayne Murrow said the heel-print in the lawn in your side passage was that of a big shoe, he guessed it might’ve been a size eleven or twelve. It was hard to tell whether Snow White has big feet. He was wearing the sorta boots builders’ labourers wear, they always look big.’

As so often in the past, Malone was grateful for his offsider’s eye for detail. ‘What else did you notice?’

‘Those containers where they came out from. They were all marked with red triangles – that means it’s dangerous cargo. I remember from the days when I was with Pillage. There are three classes, marked by numbers. Class One would be explosives, ammo, whisky –’

‘Whisky?’

‘Sure. It’s been known to blow up. Maybe I’m over-suspicious, just because they’re crims. But why would they be marking containers with yellow chalk, which was what they were doing, when the containers have already been unloaded?’

‘Maybe they were marking them for the delivery trucks?’

‘Unless they’ve changed the system, the tally clerks do that. Neither of those guys is a tally clerk. In the old days when I worked on Pillage, before containers were used, stuff used to disappear off the wharves like a magical act. Whisky was always a target because it was easy to get rid of once it was outside. A shonky pub owner would buy a case half-price and both him and the bloke who’d swiped it would be happy. Think of the profit, you pinch a container full of it. If the containers are full of explosives or ammo cargo, that’s a heist I’d rather not think about.’

‘If Scungy knew they were pinching that sort of stuff, he’d never have told me. He hated giving me any information, even about the drug racket – I had to lean on him. He wasn’t a natural-born nark.’

‘So what d’you think? They found out he was working for you and got rid of him?’

‘Maybe. Probably. I’m just puzzled why they chose to do it with a needle in his bum. That doesn’t look their style. They’d do him with a gun or an iron bar, they’re the sort who like the look of blood.’

‘If either of them did it, why use the same MO on the Kissen woman? You think he, Snow White or The Dwarf, got kinky and thinks he’s discovered a new way of bumping off people? I seem to remember they kill each other off with curare in the Amazon jungle, but it’d be new to Sydney.’

They drove up through the city and over to Palmer Street. Only when they got there did Malone realize that Sally Kissen had lived within half a dozen blocks of Scungy Grime. Clement parked in a lane off the busy street, which carried a steady stream of fast-moving traffic towards the Cahill Expressway and the Harbour Bridge. Palmer Street had been named after the shipping merchant who had built up the surrounding area. Long after his death the street had become famous for its brothels and sly-grog shops, two sources of income the merchant had overlooked. The pace of the city and progress had now put paid to those businesses: the prostitutes now worked William Street, just up the road, but they saluted the flag of history by renting rooms in houses like Sally Kissen’s.

The Crime Scene tapes had been removed from the front of the house, but a uniformed policeman stood in the meagre shade of the front verandah. ‘Anyone inside?’ Malone asked.

‘Two girls,’ said the policeman. ‘They claim they’re just boarders, but I’ve seen ’em up the road, on the game.’

Malone and Clements went through the narrow hallway and into the living room. Sally Kissen would have won no prizes from House and Garden as a decorator; the room seemed to have been furnished from stalls at the Annual Kitsch Fair. There was a purple-and-red-striped lounge suite; a brass-topped coffee table and two brass sidetables; a 1920s drinks cabinet that opened out to show a mirrored back and, Malone guessed, probably played a musical fanfare; and a Persian rug that looked as if it might have come from a Teheran rubbish dump. There were two paintings on the walls of female nudes, painted, it seemed, by a misogynistic artist. The final touch, which Malone couldn’t bring himself to believe, was three bright orange plaster ducks flying up one wall to the high blue yonder of the peeling ceiling. Sally Kissen had had either wacky taste or a wacky sense of humour.

The two girls sitting in the living room, drinking coffee and munching cookies, went with the room. One had hair so red her head looked as if it were on fire; the other had bleached hers bone-white. They were in black tights and green shirts, open down to the waist and with the sleeves rolled down. They wore no make-up and they looked plain and pale. One had to look twice to see that both of them actually had good features, but the game and their habit had blurred the edges. The rolled-down sleeves told Malone they were probably junkies.

‘Those bickies Iced Vo-Vos?’ he said.

‘Yeah.’ The redhead nodded, her spiky hair shivering; it was like watching a flame quivering in a breeze. ‘They was Sally’s favourites. Waddia wanna know? We know nothing – we told the other guys that. You just come back to do the heavy on us.’

‘Where were you the night before last?’ Malone sat down in one of the purple and red chairs. He noticed that at least the room was clean; Sally Kissen had been a good housekeeper.

‘Out,’ said the blonde. Her hair was long, brushed back and hanging down her back. She had a better voice than the other girl, not as harsh and with the vowels more rounded. ‘We were at a party, we didn’t get home till six yesterday morning.’

‘You’ve got witnesses who’ll back you up?’

The girls looked at each other; then the blonde said, ‘No, I don’t suppose so. They were boys down from the country.’

‘Clients?’ said Clements. The blonde nodded and he went on, ‘Was the party at some hotel?’

‘Yes.’ The blonde was the intelligent one and the redhead seemed content to let her do the talking. ‘Look, we had nothing to do with this. It’s upsetting enough to know Sally is dead. We don’t even know why she died.’

Malone told her.

‘You mean she was murdered?’ The redhead sat with her mouth open, a biscuit crumb on her bottom lip.

‘We’re not saying you had anything to do with it – we’re just trying to clear it up. What are your names?’

The redhead blinked, licked the crumb from her lip. ‘I’m Tuesday Streep.’

‘Ava Redgrave,’ said the blonde.

‘You ever been in movies? You look familiar.’

‘Just art films.’ The blonde smiled, a mistake, since she had a lower front tooth missing. But she had a sense of humour and Malone wondered what she thought of Sally Kissen’s taste. ‘I don’t think they’d be your cup of tea.’

‘No. I like Bugs Bunny.’

Clements went upstairs to look at the actual scene of the crime and Malone stayed with the girls, accepting an Iced Vo-Vo when Tuesday passed him the plate, but declining a cup of coffee. ‘Did Mrs Kissen have any regular male visitors?’

‘We dunno, honest.’ Tuesday, satisfied that Malone was not going to book them, was prepared to be more forthcoming. ‘She never really liked to admit to us she was on the game. She was funny, in a way.’

‘She was a snob, believe it or not,’ said Ava. ‘She said she’d never worked the streets, like we do.’

‘Where do you come from?’

‘From the country.’ He should have picked up the slight bush drawl in her voice. She hesitated, then added, ‘Wagga.’

‘What about you, Tuesday?’

The redhead looked at Ava, then she said, ‘Melbourne. But that’s all I’m telling.’

‘Both of you, do your parents know you’re on the game?’

The two girls shook their heads, then Ava said, ‘We’re both over twenty-one.’

You look it, he thought. ‘Where do you buy your junk?’

‘What junk?’

‘Come on,’ said Malone wearily, nodding at the rolled-down sleeves. ‘I’ve got enough on my plate without doing the Drug Unit’s job. I’m trying to find a murderer. You don’t want him coming back here, do you?’

‘You put it like that –’ Ava rubbed her arm; Malone wondered how many needle-marks were hidden there under the sleeves and on other parts of her body. ‘We buy it from a guy up the Cross. But Sally didn’t use it. She used to, but she gave it up, she said, a coupla years ago. She was on coke, though, but I don’t know where she got it. Maybe the guy who killed her.’ All at once she shivered, as if for the first time she realized the murderer might come back to this house. She looked at Tuesday. ‘I think we better move out.’

‘If you do,’ said Malone, ‘I’ll want to know where I can find you. And I don’t mean up on your beat in William Street. That’s no address.’

‘Why d’you have to bother us?’ said Tuesday, a whine in her voice.

Malone shrugged. ‘We didn’t start this, love. The cove who stuck the needle in her did that.’

Then Clements came back downstairs. ‘If there was anything up there, the Crime Scene guys would have picked it up. Unless the murderer cleaned the place out first. You girls dunno if Mrs Kissen kept a diary or anything, do you? An appointment book?’

‘An appointment book?’ Ava looked at him. ‘What d’you think this is – the Quality Couch?’ That was the city’s top brothel, where clients could run an account and regulars were given bonus sex as a Christmas gift. ‘I dunno if she kept a diary. She was kind of funny, like Tuesday said. Sometimes she’d talk with us, sort of reminisce. Other times she was like a brick wall. I don’t think she was the sort to keep a diary.’

Then abruptly she stood up, an ungainly movement; she was taller than Malone had expected and she moved with that awkwardness he had seen in some tall women. She went out of the room and when she came back she was carrying a wall calendar.

‘Sally used to make notes on this. I dunno if it’ll help.’

It was a calendar about eighteen inches square with a separate fold-up page for each month. Each page was an illustration, the male equivalent of a Penthouse centrefold. Malone wondered that Sally Kissen, in her trade, had any time for men; or were these the sort of clients she dreamed about? Mr January, one hand placed strategically, smiled coyly at Malone. Below the oil-glistening beefcake, on the calendar itself, several dates were ringed and initialled. Sunday, the day before yesterday, was initialled A.H. and so was the previous Sunday. A.H., it seemed, liked to get the week’s dirty water off his chest before starting a new week. Malone wondered if Mrs Kissen charged double-time for weekend work. There had been an attempt to form a prostitutes’ union and he remembered now that Sally Kissen had been one of the spokeswomen for it. He couldn’t remember whether she had advocated penalty rates.

‘You any idea who A.H. might be?’

Both girls looked at the calendar, seemingly oblivious of the male flesh exposed to them. ‘Mostly, we were never here when she let her visitors in – she tried to keep ’em out of our way. It was her snobbery bit again. She didn’t have much time for the way we have to work. She was one of the old-time pros, but they didn’t have to work the streets the way we do – she always worked out of a house, she said. There’s too much competition now. We’ve practically got to strip naked up there in William Street to attract customers. It’s okay in this weather, but it’s no fun in winter, standing around freezing your arse off.’