Читать книгу Bleak Spring - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 5

Chapter One

1

‘An auction is a dangerous place to be,’ said Malone. ‘There’s a terrible risk you’ll end up buying something.’

‘It’s for charity, for heaven’s sake,’ said Lisa. ‘Otherwise, why are we here?’

‘Alan Bond started going broke at an auction. He paid millions he couldn’t afford for that Van Gogh painting, Dahlias?

‘Irises,’ said Lisa and turned to the Rocknes. ‘The last time Scobie put his hand up, he was at school. He wanted to leave the room. Is Will mean with money, Olive?’

Olive Rockne looked at her husband. ‘Are you, darling?’

Will Rockne spread his hands, as if he thought that was a philanthropic gesture in itself. ‘You’d know that better than I would, love.’

Malone listened with only half an ear to the Rocknes. They were not friends of the Malones nor did he want them to be. He and Lisa had had dinner once at the Rockne home, the result of an unguarded moment of sociability at a meeting of the parents’ association of Holy Spirit Convent; he had been bored stiff with Will Rockne and he had asked Lisa not to reciprocate with a return invitation. Tonight, at this arts and crafts festival to raise money for the school, the Rocknes had attached themselves to the Malones like long-time friends.

Malone hated these school affairs; at the same time he wondered if he were growing into a social misfit. He had never been one for parties or a night out with the boys, but at least he had been sociable. Now he found himself more and more reluctant to sound agreeable when Lisa told him there were certain functions they were expected to attend. He knew he was being selfish and did his best to hide the fact, but the other fact was that he had lost almost all his patience with bores. And Will Rockne was a bore.

Holy Spirit was a Catholic school, with the usual school’s catholic collection of parents. There was the author who lived on literary grants and was known in the trade as Cary the Grant; there was his wife, who wore fringed shawls summer and winter and made macramé maps of some country she called Terra Australis. There were the tiny jockey and his towering blonde wife who, it was said, had taken out a trainer’s licence the day they were married and had been exercising the licence ever since. There were the stockbroker who was being charged with insider trading and his wife who was terrified of becoming a social outsider. And there were the low-income parents, blue-collar and white-collar, whose children were at the school on scholarships and who, to the nuns’ and lay staff’s credit, were treated as no different. The Malone children’s fees were paid by Lisa’s parents, a generosity that Malone both resented and was glad of. He was becoming a bad-tempered old bastard in his early middle age.

‘Will counts the pennies,’ Olive Rockne told Lisa. ‘But he does throw the dollars around. Especially with the kids.’

‘But not with her, she means.’ Rockne gave Malone a man-to-man smile.

Malone had been idly aware all through the evening of something in the air between the Rocknes. He was no expert on marital atmosphere; as a Homicide detective he usually arrived at the scene of a domestic dispute after either the husband or the wife, or both, were dead; whatever had gone before between the couple was only hearsay. There was no visible argument between the Rocknes, but there was a tension that twanged against Malone’s ear.

The Rocknes lived half a mile down the road from Holy Spirit and half a mile up from the beach at Coogee. Will Rockne practised as a solicitor, with an office down on the beachfront. Malone had had no dealings with him and had no idea how successful he was; all he knew about the Rocknes was that they had a solid, comfortable home, owned a Volvo and a Honda Civic and were able to send their two children, a boy and a girl, to private schools. He knew that most suburban solicitors did not make the money that partners in the big city law firms did; he also knew that they made more than detective inspectors did, though that didn’t disturb him in the least. He was rare in that he was almost incapable of envy.

Will Rockne was capable of it; he was expressing it now: ‘Look at that Joe Gulley, will you! The horses he rides have got more brains than he has, yet he makes two or three hundred thousand a year – and that’s counting only what he declares! He’d make as much again betting on the nags he rides.’

‘Aren’t jockeys forbidden to bet?’ Malone sounded pious, even in his own ears.

‘Are you kidding?’

Rockne had a wet sort of voice, as if the roof of his mouth leaked; whatever he said sounded as if it came out through a mouthful of bubbles. He was as tall as Malone, but much bonier, with a long face that somehow stopped short of being good-looking, even though none of his features was misplaced or unshapely. His casual clothes were always the sort with the designer logo prominently displayed; Malone was sometimes tempted to ask him if he was sponsored, but Rockne had little sense of humour. He was the sort of man who physically made no lasting impression, the face in the crowd that was always just a blur. As if to compensate he waved opinions like flags, was as dogmatic as St Paul, though, being a lawyer, he always left room for hedging. Right now he was being dogmatic:

‘If you knew what I know about the racing game . . .’

‘Tell them, darling.’ His wife was sweetly, too sweetly, encouraging.

Olive Rockne was small and blonde, a girlish woman who, as Lisa had said, looked as if she were trying to catch up with her birthdays. She was in her late thirties, but in a poor light might have passed for eighteen. She always wore frilly clothes, giving the impression that she was on her way to or from a party. On the one occasion the Malones had gone to her home for dinner she had played old LPs of the Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd; which, though it dated her, made her more contemporary than Malone, who still listened to Benny Goodman. She was intelligent and even shrewd, Malone guessed, but she hid her light under the bushel of her husband’s opinions. Though not this evening: tonight she was showing some signs of independence, though Rockne himself seemed unaware of it.

‘It just bugs me,’ Rockne said, ‘that people with no education can make so much money. Some of us sweat our guts out studying . . . I’ve got a rock band as clients, they can’t say “G’day” without saying “y’know” before and after it, and they make five times the money I do – each of them. When you arrest crims, Scobie, don’t you resent those of them who make more money than you do?’

‘I don’t know why,’ said Malone, ‘but in Homicide we rarely get to bring in rich murderers, really rich. If money is involved, it’s usually the victims who have it.’

The four of them were sitting at a table, apart from the makeshift stalls in the school assembly hall. They were sipping cask wine from plastic cups and munching on potato crisps; Malone mused that if the Last Supper had been staged at Holy Spirit it would have been a pretty frugal affair. He was thirsty, but the cask wine was doing nothing for him. He had played tennis this afternoon, four hard sets of doubles, and he was tired and stiff, as he usually was on a Saturday night, and all he wanted to do was go home to bed. He looked up as Claire, his eldest, approached with the Rockne boy.

‘Dad,’ said Claire, ‘are you going to bid in the auction?’

Malone shut his eyes in pain and Lisa said, ‘Don’t spoil his night. Do you want us to bid for something?’

‘There’s a macramé portrait of Madonna – ’

Malone opened his eyes. ‘Are you into holy pictures now?’

‘Don’t be dumb, Dad. Madonna.’

‘Oh, the underwear salesgirl.’ He looked at Olive Rockne. ‘That’s the sort of taste they teach here at Holy Spirit. I’ll tell you what, Claire, if they put your English teacher, what’s-her-name, the one with red hair and the legs, if they put her up for auction, I’ll bid for her.’

Lisa hit him without looking at him, a wifely trick. ‘I’ll bid for the portrait, Claire.’

‘Are you going to bid for anything?’ Jason Rockne looked at his parents. He was taller than his father, at least six foot four, even though he was still only seventeen, bonily handsome and with flesh and muscle still to grow on his broad-shouldered frame. He had a sober air, as if he had already seen the years ahead and he was not impressed.

‘We’re looking at a painting,’ said his father. ‘Your mother doesn’t like it, but I think we’ll bid for it.’

‘That makes up my mind for me,’ said Olive and gave everyone a smile to show she was sweet-tempered about being put down by her husband.

Claire and Jason went back across the room; Malone leaned close to Lisa and said, ‘Why’s she holding his hand?’

‘She’s escorting him across the traffic. What’s the matter with you? She’s fifteen years old and she’s discovered boys. I was having my hand held when I was eight. She’s backward.’

Malone had no hard feelings towards any boy who wanted to hold hands with his daughter, though he was having difficulty in accepting that Claire was now old enough to want to do more than just hold hands. He did not, however, want relations with the Rocknes cemented because their son was going out with his daughter.

The macramé portrait of Madonna was bought by the jockey’s wife. ‘What is she going to do with it?’ said Olive. ‘Use it as a horse rug?’

‘Maybe she’s going to wrap her husband in it,’ said Malone and was annoyed when Rockne let out a hee-haw of a laugh.

The evening wound down quickly after the auction and Malone, eager to escape, grabbed Lisa’s hand and told the Rocknes they had to be going – ‘I’m on call, in case something turns up.’

‘You get many murders Saturday night?’ said Rockne.

‘More than other nights. Party night, grogging-on night – murders happen. Most of them unpremeditated.’

‘Let’s hope you have a quiet night,’ said Olive. ‘We’ll be in touch when we get back.’

‘Where are you going?’ said Lisa.

‘Oh, we’re having seven days up on the Reef. A second honeymoon, right, darling?’

‘Twenty years married next week,’ said Rockne. ‘That’s record-breaking, these days. She’s paying – I paid the first time.’ He winked at Malone, who did his best to look amused.

‘Have a good time,’ said Lisa, and Malone dragged her away before she committed them to a future meeting.

Mother Brendan, the principal, stood at the front door of the assembly hall, small but formidable, her place already booked in Heaven, where she expected to be treated with proper respect by those who ran admissions. ‘Enjoy yourselves, Mr and Mrs Malone?’

Straight-faced, Lisa said, ‘My husband in particular, Mother.’

‘I didn’t see you raising your hand for anything in the auction, Mr Malone.’

‘I have a sore shoulder.’

‘Both of them,’ said Lisa. ‘Have you seen Claire?’

‘She’s out there on the front steps with the Rockne boy. I’ve been keeping an eye on them.’

‘Thanks, Mother,’ said Malone. ‘If ever you’d like to work undercover for the Police Department, let me know.’

Mother Brendan looked at Lisa. ‘Is he a joker?’

‘All the time. Goodnight, Mother. I hope the school made lots of money this evening.’

‘No thanks to men with sore shoulders. I’ll pray for your recovery, Mr Malone.’

The Malones went out, collecting Claire from the front steps, where she stood holding hands (both hands, Malone noted) with Jason Rockne. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Jay. Call me about ten, okay?’

Jason, sober-faced, said goodnight to the Malones and turned back into the assembly hall.

‘He’s a bucket of fun, isn’t he?’ said Malone.

‘He’s nice,’ said Claire.

Malone took the car down the slope of the school’s driveway, came out opposite Randwick police station, where he had begun his first tour of duty twenty-four years ago, apprehensive and unsure of himself, still to learn that the scales of justice rarely tilted according to the laws of physics. He turned left and headed for home.

‘What’s happening tomorrow?’ Lisa said over her shoulder to Claire.

‘Jason wants me to meet him down on the beach.’

‘The water’s going to be too cold,’ said Malone. ‘I once went swimming the first week in September – ’

He stopped and Lisa said, ‘Yes?’

‘Nothing.’ You didn’t tell your fifteen-year-old daughter about having your balls frozen to the size of peas.

‘I’m not even thinking of going in the water. You don’t go to the beach just to swim.’

‘Do you like Jason?’ said Lisa.

‘Come on, Mum, don’t get that tone of voice. I’m not serious about him. He’s nice . . .’

‘You said that. But?’

‘I dunno. He’s nice, but . . . He’s always holding something back, you don’t know what. Like Dad.’

‘I’m an open book.’

‘You are to me.’ Lisa patted his shoulder. ‘But you’re not to everyone. I know what Claire means. Jason’s not weird, is he?’

‘Oh Mum, no! Nothing like that. He’s just – well, I think it would take ages to know him.’

‘Does he like his parents?’ Malone kept his eyes on the road, threw the question casually over his shoulder.

‘Funny – ’ Claire had been leaning forward against her seat-belt, but now she sat back. She was twisting her blonde hair into a curl, a habit of hers when she was studying or thinking hard. ‘He won’t talk about them, either of them.’

‘Well, take your time with him,’ said Lisa.

‘Would you rather I didn’t see him? You don’t like his parents, do you?’

‘Not particularly,’ said Malone, getting in first. ‘But how did you guess?’

‘You had your policeman’s look.’ He glanced in the driving mirror and in the lights of a passing car saw her turn her young, beautiful face into a stiff mask. Crumbs, he thought, is that how my kids sometimes see me? A policeman’s face, whatever that was? But he wasn’t game to ask her.

They reached home, the Federation house in north Randwick with its gables and turn-of-the-century solidness. By the time he had put the Commodore away, Claire was in the bathroom on her way to bed and Lisa was in the kitchen preparing tea and toast. Tom and Maureen, the other children, were staying the night with Lisa’s parents at Vaucluse.

Malone sipped his tea. ‘Where did they get that wine we had tonight? Was it left over from the marriage at Cana?’

‘You didn’t have to drink it.’ Lisa spread some of her home-made marmalade on toast.

‘There was nothing else except watered-down orange juice. No wonder the Vatican is so rich. Who picks up Tom and Maureen tomorrow? You or me?’

‘You. I’m baking cakes all day, for the freezer. It’s Tom’s birthday next Saturday or had you forgotten?’

‘No.’ But he had. He stood up, stretched his arms high. ‘Look, I can raise my hand!’

‘A miracle. What a pity an auctioneer isn’t here to see it.’ She raised her face and he leaned down and kissed her. ‘Why can’t all wives love their husbands like I love mine?’

‘Meaning who?’

‘Meaning Olive. But who could love Will anyway?’

An hour later they were sound asleep in the queen-sized bed, their limbs entwined like those of loving octopi, when the phone rang. Malone switched on the bedside lamp. His first thought was that it was Jan or Elisabeth Pretorious calling to say that something had happened to Maureen or Tom. He could forget birthdays but he could never forget how protective he was of his children.

‘Inspector Malone? Scobie, it’s Phil Truach – I’m the duty bunny tonight. There’s a homicide out at Maroubra, in the parking lot of the surf club. We’ve just had a phone call from the locals at Maroubra.’

‘Who else is on call?’

‘You and Russ. There’ve been three other homicides today and tonight, everyone else is out on those. I can round up Andy Graham, but he’s not on call this weekend – ’

‘Never mind, I’ll take it. Leave Russ alone.’

He rolled reluctantly out of bed, looked over his shoulder at Lisa, now wide awake. She said, ‘Why can’t people keep their murders between Monday and Friday?’

He leaned across and kissed her. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can. Keep this space vacant.’

2

As soon as he saw the silver Volvo Malone knew it was the Rocknes’, even though he could not remember seeing it more than two or three times before. The Celt in him never let him deny intuition; it was never admissible in court, but he knew from experience that it had started, many a trail to justice. He got out of his Commodore and walked across the well-lit car park. A wind was blowing from the south-west, but it had been a long dry winter and the wind held no promise of rain. Even the salt air smelt dry.

‘It’s a couple named Rockne.’ The detective in charge from Maroubra was Carl Ellsworth, a good-looking redhead who smiled without showing his teeth, as if he found no humour in what people did to each other.

‘Both of them, or just the wife?’

Ellsworth looked at him curiously. ‘Why the wife? It’s the husband who’s dead, shot in the face. A real mess.’

Why had he expected Olive Rockne to be the victim? And why did he feel no shock that something terrible had happened to the Rocknes out here on this windswept car park four or five miles from their home? ‘Where’s Mrs Rockne? I’d better explain. I know them, we saw them tonight at our kids’ school.’

‘She’s over in the caretaker’s office at the surf club. She’s pretty shocked.’

‘You questioned her yet?’

‘Not yet, other than the basics. What happened, that sorta thing. I thought we’d give her time to get her nerves together.’

The Physical Evidence team had arrived and the crime scene had been cordoned off by blue and white tapes. There were still forty or fifty cars parked in the big lot despite the late hour, the overflow from the car park of the big social club across the road, where the usual Saturday night dance and entertainment had finished half an hour ago. People stood about in groups, the night’s revelry oozing out of them like air out of a pinpricked balloon. From the darkness beyond the surf club there came the dull boom of the waves, a barrage that threw up no frightening glare.

As Malone and Ellsworth walked across towards the surf club, the younger man said, ‘We haven’t dug up a witness yet. If anyone saw what happened, they haven’t come forward.’

Malone paused and looked around. ‘I used to come here when I was younger, to surf. At night, too. They used to hold dances at the surf club in those days. You’d take a girl outside, along the beach or out here in one of the cars . . . Don’t the kids today go in for nooky in the back seat or out in the sandhills?’

Ellsworth’s grin showed no teeth. ‘Not tonight, evidently. I think the girls object to getting sand in it.’

The surf club’s pavilion stretched across the eastern end of the car park, separating it from the beach. It was built in the newly popular Australian style, with curved corrugated-iron roofs over its two wings and a similar roof, like an arch, over the breezeway that separated the two wings. Atop one of the wings was a look-out tower, glass-enclosed, a major improvement on the wooden ladder stuck in the sands of Malone’s youth.

The caretaker’s small office smelt of salt air and wet sand, even though its door faced away from the sea. Its corners were cluttered with cleaning equipment; a wet-suit hung like a black suicide from a hook on one wall; the other walls were papered with posters on how to save lives in every situation from drowning to snakebite. There was none on what to do in the case of a gunshot wound.

Olive Rockne sat stiffly on a stiff-backed chair, spine straight, knees together, hands tightly clasped; if she was in shock, she was decorously so, not like some Malone had seen. ‘You all right, Olive?’

She looked at him as if she did not recognize him; then she blinked, wet her lips and nodded. “I can’t believe it’s happened . . . Are you here as a friend or a detective?’

‘Both, I guess.’ It was a question he had never been asked before. ‘You feel up to telling me what happened?’

‘I’ve already told him.’ She nodded at Ellsworth, who stood against a wall, the wet-suit hanging in a macabre fashion behind him.

‘I know, Olive. But I’m in charge now and I like to do things my way.’

He sat down opposite her, behind the caretaker’s desk. There was a scrawl pad on the desk; scrawled on it in rough script was: Monday – Sack Jack. He didn’t know where the caretaker was nor was he interested; the fewer bystanders at an interview like this the better. There were just himself, Ellsworth and the uniformed constable standing outside the open door. Olive Rockne was entitled to as much privacy as he could give her.

‘What happened?’

Olive was regaining her composure, reefing it in inch by inch; only the raised knuckles of her tightly clenched hands showed the effort. ‘I got out of the car – ’

‘First, Olive – why were you out here?’

She frowned, as if she didn’t quite understand the reason herself: ‘Sentiment. Does that sound silly or stupid?’

‘No, not if you explain it.’

‘It was out here on the beach that Will – ’ her voice choked for a moment ‘ – that he proposed to me. When we came out of the school, he suggested we drive out here before going home. We were going to go for a walk along the beach.’

‘Where were you when Will was shot?’

She took her time, trying to get everything straight in her mind: ‘I don’t know – maybe twenty or thirty yards from the car, I’m not sure. I got Out and so did Will. But then he went back – he’d forgotten to turn the lights off. Then I heard the shot – ’

‘Were the lights still on when you heard the shot?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see anyone running away from the car? That car park out there is pretty well lit.’

‘I don’t know, I’m not sure . . .’ She was reliving the first moments of her husband’s death; Malone knew they were always the hardest to erase, whether the death was gentle or violent. ‘I think I saw a shadow, but I can’t be sure. There were other cars between me and ours . . . Then I got to the car and saw Will . . . I screamed – ’

She shuddered, opened her mouth as if she were about to vomit, and Malone said, ‘Take it easy for a while. Would you like a cup of tea or something?’ An electric kettle and some cups and saucers stood on a narrow table against a wall. ‘It might help.’

‘No.’ She shook her head determinedly. ‘All I want to do is go home, Scobie. There are Jason and Shelley – ’

‘Where was Jason? Did you drop him off at home?’

‘No, he’d already gone by the time we left the school – he said he’d walk. I should go home, tell ’em what’s happened – Oh, my God!’ She put a hand to her eyes, hit by the enormity of what she had to do.

‘We’d better get in touch with someone to look after them. What about your parents?’

‘There’s just my mother. And I have a married sister – she lives at Cronulla. Her name’s Rose Cadogan – ’ She gave a phone number without having to search her memory for it. Malone noticed that she was having alternate moments of calm control and nervous tension; but that was not unusual. It had struck him on their first meeting some months ago that there was a certain preciseness to her; and habit, whether acquired or natural, was hard to lose.

‘What about Will’s family?’

‘Just his father, he lives out at Carlingford with Will’s stepmother. I suppose we’d better call him.’

She sounded callous, but Malone kept his reaction to himself. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ellsworth purse his lips, making him suddenly look prim. ‘Didn’t Will and his father get on?’

‘They haven’t spoken for, I dunno, three or four years. His father is George Rockne. You know – ’

‘The ex-communist union boss?’

‘Ex-union boss. He’s still a communist.’

‘Will was so – right-wing. Was that why they didn’t get on?’

She nodded. ‘I’ll ring him. May I go?’ She stood up, wavered a moment, then was steady.

Malone looked at Ellsworth. ‘Do you have a woman PC?’

‘Constable Rojeski is outside somewhere. She can take Mrs Rockne home.’

Malone took Olive’s arm as they went out of the caretaker’s office. ‘I’ll have to come and see you tomorrow morning.’

She looked sideways at him; she looked her age now, she had caught up with her birthdays, gone past them. ‘This is just the start, isn’t it?’

‘The start of the investigation? Yes.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that.’ But she didn’t explain what she had meant.

She left him, let herself be led away by the young policewoman. ‘What’s Rojeski like?’ he asked Ellsworth. ‘Can she handle something like this?’

‘She’s okay, sir. I’ve used her a coupla times before in a situation like this. Females come in handy.’

‘Yes, don’t they?’ But Ellsworth missed the dry note. ‘Let’s see if Physical Evidence have come up with anything.’

The car park now was as busy as a shopping mall on Thursday night. It was bathed in light, police cars stood about, blue and red lights spinning on their roofs; revellers from the social club across the road were collecting their cars, and knots of spectators, those ubiquitous watchers-on-the-fringe that appear at the scene of every urban crime, as if called up by computer, were in place. The silver Volvo stood roped off by blue and white tape like the latest model at a motor show.

Romy Keller, the government medical officer, was examining the body, still in the car, when Malone approached. She straightened up and turned round, her dark coat swinging open to reveal a low-cut green dinner dress underneath.

‘All dressed up?’

She drew the coat around her. ‘Russ and I were at a medical dinner. I’m on call.’

‘Like me. Where’s Russ?’

‘Over there in his car. He didn’t get out, he’s in black tie. He thought one of us in fancy dress was enough . . . It looks like just the one shot, through the right eye and out the top of the cranium. Death would have been instantaneous, I’d say.’

He looked past her at the dead Will Rockne. The body was slumped backwards and sideways, one hand in its lap, the other resting on the dislodged car phone, as if he had made a last desperate call for help, from God knew whom. The car keys were in the ignition and the steering wheel was twisted to the left, as if Rockne might have tried to drive away before he died. The dead man’s face and the front of his shirt and jacket were a bloody mess.

‘We’ve got the bullet, Inspector.’ That was Chris Gooch, of the Physical Evidence team, a bulky young man with more muscles than he knew what to do with; he was forever strenuously denying he was on steroids, but no one believed him. ‘Looks like a Twenty-two. It was in the roof. Looks like the killer shoved the gun upwards at the victim, maybe at his throat, but missed and shot him in the eye.’

‘You done with the body?’ Malone asked Romy.

She nodded towards the government contractors who had now arrived. ‘They can take it away.’

She drew the high collar of her coat up round her throat against the wind; her dark hair ruffled about her face. She looked glamorous, ice-cool, she whose own father had been a four-times murderer and a suicide. Malone did not understand why she had stayed on as a GMO at the city morgue, but he had never asked Russ Clements if he knew the reason. She still worked with cool efficiency and a detachment that Malone, when he saw it, found troubling. But she was Clements’s problem, not his. It was Russ who was in love with her.

He walked across to the green Toyota where Clements, in dinner jacket, black tie unloosened, sat behind the wheel like a moulting king penguin. ‘They tell me it’s a guy named Rockne. You know someone with that name, don’t you?’

‘It’s the same one. We were with them at Holy Spirit tonight. They’ve just taken the wife home. Are you on call tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’ Clements looked at Romy, who had got into the car beside him. it looks like he’s gunna spoil our Sunday.’

She smiled at him, then at Malone. They were the men who had caught her father, who had been there when he had committed suicide; yet she loved one and almost loved the other. They, and Lisa, were the ones who had reconstructed the floor of her life when everything had fallen apart around her. ‘Why don’t the three of us open a post office or something? Five days a week and no overtime.’

Clements smiled at her. He had had countless women friends, but Malone had never seen him so openly in love as with Romy. ‘With our luck, there’d be a body in the parcel post.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning,’ Malone told him. ‘You’re on this one with me. Don’t bother to come dressed up.’

The Toyota pulled out of the car park and Malone turned as Ellsworth stepped up beside him. ‘Do I work with you on this, sir?’

‘I guess so – Carl, isn’t it? I’ll see Mrs Rockne in the morning, but I’d rather do it on my own. I know her, slightly anyway, and I think she’ll talk more freely to me if no one else is there. You do the legwork on what the Crime Scene fellers give you.’ He still sometimes slipped into the old name for the Physical Evidence team. In recent years the New South Wales Police Service had undergone so many reorganizations and name changes that some joker had fed it into the police computer system as the AKA Force. ‘Mrs Rockne may give us a lead. In the meantime set up a van here, see if anyone comes forward with any information.’

‘She’s a bit odd, don’t you think? Mrs Rockne.’

‘Most wives are a bit odd when their husbands get blasted. You married?’

‘Divorced.’

‘How long were you married?’

‘Eighteen months.’

‘Not long enough. You’ll learn, Carl. About wives, I mean.’

He left Ellsworth and walked across to his car. He leant on the roof, cold as ice under the wind, and looked at the scene, at the silver Volvo at the centre of it. For the next few days, maybe weeks, this was where his attention and effort would be focused. As the officer in charge of Homicide, Regional Crime Squad, South Region, he would be supervising other murders, but this one would be his major concern. On the other side of the world an empire was falling apart; putty-faced old men had attempted to turn the clock back in a last-minute coup, only to find the clock had no works; hundreds of thousands of people were filling the squares of Moscow and Leningrad and Kiev, filling the world’s television screens: the century was going out as it had begun, in turmoil. The murder of Will Rockne would not be marked as history, but it had to be witnessed, recorded, and, maybe, solved.

He got into the Commodore and drove towards home, where the effects of history were peripheral.

3

He went to early Mass, dragged there by Claire, who didn’t want her day delayed by late church-going. On the way home he told her of Will Rockne’s murder – ‘Oh no, Dad! Jason’s father?’

On the way to Mass he had debated with himself when he should tell her; he had put it off because, he had told himself, she was not yet wide awake enough to take in the dreadful news. She took it in now, slumping sideways in the seat. ‘Oh God, poor Jay and Shelley!’

‘Poor Mrs Rockne.’

‘Yes, her too. Are you on the case?’ He nodded. ‘Can’t you let someone else do it? Uncle Russ, for instance?’

‘Why?’

‘I dunno, it’s just – well, you’re going to bring it home every night.’

‘I’ve never done that before. You know I never discuss a case in front of you kids.’

‘I know that. But . . . will you tell me how it’s going if I ask you?’

‘No.’

She looked at him with Lisa’s eyes. ‘Does being a Homicide detective wear you down?’

They had pulled up at an intersection; he looked at the red traffic light, a warning sign. But he had to tell her the truth: ‘Yes.’

‘Then why do you keep on with it?’

‘I ask myself that at least a dozen times a year.’ The light turned green. ‘I think it’s because I feel I’d be deserting the victim if I walked away from it. Do you understand that?’

‘Of course,’ she said, and he realized his elder daughter had grown up, almost.

When he reached home Lisa was up, getting ready to go over and collect Tom and Maureen. Claire went out to make breakfast for herself and her father, while Malone leaned in the bedroom door and watched his wife dress. After seventeen years of marriage he still got delight watching her first thing in the morning, it was the proper start to a day. She still had her figure, a little fuller now than when they had first married, and, as with some women, the beauty of her face had increased as she had got older. She was forty now and he hoped her beauty would last till the grave, an end that didn’t bear thinking about. For her, not for himself: he was not afraid of death, though he would not welcome it, not if it meant leaving her and the children alone.

‘I wonder if Will Rockne looked at Olive every morning like I look at you?’

‘I doubt it.’ She pulled on her skirt, a tan twill. ‘He wasn’t the sort to appreciate what he had.’

She had been shocked when he came home last night and told her who had been murdered. But this morning she seemed to have accepted the fact. A certain callousness was necessary for a Homicide detective, but he hoped none of his was beginning to rub off on her.

She slipped a yellow sweater over her head, then fluffed out her blonde hair. ‘Do you think I should call Olive?’

‘No, I’ll do the sympathy bit for both of us. Tell Claire not to call Jason, not till I’ve got the police bit sorted out down at their place. I’ll be home for lunch, I hope.’

She came round the bed and kissed him. ‘Don’t be too hard on Olive.’

‘Why should I be?’

It was 9.30 when he knocked on the door of the Rockne home in Coogee Bay Road. It was a solid bluebrick and sandstone house, built with the wide verandahs of the nineteen-twenties, when sunlight in a house was as Welcome as white ants. It stood on a wide block, thirty metres at least, behind a garden where early spring petunias, marigolds and azaleas mocked the gloom he knew must be in the house itself.

The door was opened by a middle-aged woman instantly recognizable as Olive’s sister, though she was plumper and had kept pace with her birthdays. ‘I’m Rose Cadogan. We’ve been expecting you.’ She looked past him, seemed surprised. ‘You’re on your own?’

‘I thought Olive would prefer it that way.’

‘Oh, sure. Come in. But what one sees on TV, police are always swarming over everything . . . This is our mother, Mrs Carss. And this is Angela Bodalle, a friend of Olive’s. I’ll get Olive, she’s with the kids. They’re taking it pretty bad.’

‘We all are,’ said the mother, the mould from which her daughters had been struck. Ruby Carss was in her sixties, had henna hair worn thin by too much dye and too many perms, was thin and full of nervous energy and looked as if she had suddenly been faced with the prospect of her own death.

Malone sat down, looked at Angela Bodalle. ‘I didn’t expect to see you, Mrs Bodalle.’

‘I’m here as a friend of the family, Inspector, that’s all.’

She was, Malone thought, the most decorative, if not the best-looking, of the barristers who fronted the Bar in the State’s courts. There were only five female silks in New South Wales and she was the most successful of them. She was in her late thirties or early forties, he guessed, a widow whose husband had already made his name as a Queen’s Counsel when he had been killed in a car accident some years ago. She had then gone to the Bar herself and last year had been named a QC. She specialized in criminal cases and had already gained a reputation for a certain flamboyance. The joke was that she wore designer wigs and gowns in court, her arguments were as florid as the roses that decorated her chambers, she castrated hostile witnesses with sarcasm sharper than a scalpel. Even the more misogynistic judges tolerated her as she stirred blood in desiccated loins.

‘Do you want to sit in while I talk to Mrs Rockne?’

‘We all do,’ said Mrs Carss, settling herself for a long stay.

Malone looked at her. ‘I think it’d be better if you didn’t. I’m going to have to ask her to run through everything that happened last night.’

‘Then she’ll want us to be there, to support her – ’

‘I think what Inspector Malone is suggesting is best,’ said Angela Bodalle.

‘Everyone’s taking over – ’ Mrs Carss was resentful, outsiders were taking away her role as mother.

Olive Rockne came into the room with her sister. She was dressed in a light blue sweater and dark blue slacks; the frilly look had gone, she was fined down, this morning the girlish woman had vanished. Her hair was pulled back by a black velvet band and her face was devoid of makeup. Malone wondered if, for the first time, he was about to see the real Olive Rockne.

‘Let’s go outside,’ she said in a calm firm voice and led him and Angela Bodalle out to a glassed-in back verandah that had been converted into a pleasant garden room. It looked out on a pool in a garden bright with camellias and azaleas. The room was carpeted and furnished with cushioned cane furniture; the whole house, Malone had noted with his quick eye for furnishings, was comfortable. But there was little, if any, comfort in this house this morning.

Rose Cadogan brought coffee and biscuits. ‘I’ll leave you alone,’ she said with more diplomacy than her mother had shown and went back to the front of the house.

‘Olive, I won’t go over what you told me last night,’ said Malone, taking the coffee Angela Bodalle had poured for him. ‘But I’d like you to tell me – did Will have time to argue with whoever shot him?’

Olive, refusing coffee, said, ‘I don’t think so. It was all so quick.’

‘I’m trying to establish if it was someone attempting a robbery, shoving the gun at Will and demanding money and then panicking when Will tried to push him away. Was there time for that?’

Olive looked at Angela, who sat down on the cane couch beside her, then she looked back at Malone. ‘No, I’m sure there wasn’t. I – ’

‘Yes?’

‘I – I’ve been wondering – could he have been waiting for someone else, he made a mistake and shot Will instead?’

‘He could have been. But yours was the only silver Volvo in the car park. There might’ve been other Volvos, but yours was the only silver one.’

‘Then who could it have been?’ said Angela. ‘Some psychopath, out to kill anyone, the first person who presented himself? There seems to be a plague of them at the moment.’

Malone nodded, but made no comment. Yesterday afternoon, out at Haberfield, an armed robber, holding up a liquor store, had paused, unprovoked, to put his gun at the head of a customer lying as commanded on the floor and had blown his brains out. The previous Saturday a man had run amok in Strathfield, a middle-class suburb, with a semi-automatic rifle and killed seven people in a shopping mall before shooting himself. All the past week the air had been thick with the clamour for stricter gun laws, a demand Malone totally supported, but the politicians, more afraid of losing votes in the rural electorates than of being hit by a bullet in the cities (who would waste bullets on a politician?) were shilly-shallying about what should be done. The incidence of killing by guns in Australia was infinitesimal compared with that in the United States, but that was like saying a house siege was not a war. Someone still died, one life was no less valuable than a hundred.

‘Olive, had Will received any threats from anyone? A client or someone?’

‘I don’t think so. He would have told me – well, maybe not. He didn’t tell me much about his practice, what he did, who he acted for.’

‘Did he ever refer any clients to you?’ Malone looked at Angela Bodalle.

‘A couple. One civil suit, I took that as a favour to him, and a criminal charge.’

Malone waited and, when she did not go on, said, ‘A murder charge?’

‘It was an assault with intent, a guy named Kelpie Dunne.’ She seemed to give the name with some reluctance. ‘I got him off.’

‘I remember him. He tried to kill a security guard down at Randwick racecourse. He’s a bad bugger. Some day he’s going to kill a cop. I hope you won’t try to get him off then.’

Her gaze was steady. She was not strictly beautiful, her face was too broad to have classical lines, the jaw too square, but the eyes, large and almost black, would always hold a man, would turn him inside out if he were not careful. She raised a hand, large for a woman’s but elegant, and pushed back a loose strand of her thick dark brown hair. Malone felt that, with that look, she would make an imposing, if biased, judge. If ever she made it to the Bench, he was sure her sentences on the convicted would be more than just slaps on the wrist.

‘If I believe a client is innocent, I’ll always try to get him off.’

‘Did Will have any other clients like Kelpie? Innocent but violent?’

Angela smiled: she didn’t think much of men’s wit; or anyway, policemen’s. ‘I wouldn’t know, Inspector. Will hadn’t passed a client on to me for, oh, twelve months or more.’

Malone turned back to Olive. She had been watching this exchange with wary, almost resentful eyes, as if she felt excluded from what was her own tragedy. ‘Olive, Will made a mention last night of what he knew about the racing game. Did he have any clients from the game, jockeys, trainers, bookmakers – people like that?’

‘I told you he never mentioned his clients to me.’ Her voice had a certain sharpness.

‘No, but you did say last night – as I remember it, Will said, if I knew, meaning me, what he knew about the racing game, and you said, Tell them, darling, or something like that . . .’

‘You have a good memory.’

He hadn’t expected to be complimented, not at a time like this. ‘You learn to have one, as a cop. You sounded last night as if you knew something about racing that Will had told you.’

She shook her head; last night the frilly curls would have bounced, but this morning not a hair moved. ‘It was nothing, I was just taking the mickey out of him. You know what Will was like, he knew everything about everything.’ She said it without malice, but it wasn’t something he expected from a grieving widow.

‘Dad had one client, a bookmaker.’ Jason stood in the doorway, all arms and legs and lugubrious expression. But his voice was steady, if the rest of him wasn’t.

Malone, seated in a low chair, had to turn and look up at him. From that angle the boy looked even taller than he was: Malone had the incongruous image of a basketballer who didn’t know where the basket was. ‘Did your dad talk about the client with you?’

‘No. But I was with Dad one day, about, I dunno, about a month ago, he was taking me to basketball practice – ’ So the image wasn’t so far off, after all. ‘We called in at this bookie’s house and when he came out, he was there only about ten minutes, he was ropeable, really angry. He didn’t tell me what it was all about, all he said was never trust a bookie.’

‘You know who the man was?’

‘Sure. It was Bernie Bezrow, he lives up in that weirdo house in Georgia Street. Syphilis Hall.’

‘What?’

‘That’s what we call it, the guys, I mean. Tiflis Hall.’

Angela Bodalle said, ‘I don’t think you should get involved in this, Jason.’

‘Is that legal advice or friendly advice?’ said the boy.

‘That’s enough!’ For a moment Malone thought Olive was going to jump up and slap her son’s face; but she would have had to jump a fair height. ‘Don’t talk to Angela like that! She’s only trying to help.’

The boy didn’t apologize, only looked sullenly at Angela; then abruptly he was gone from the doorway, folding himself out of sight. Olive put out a hand and took Angela’s. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right, darling.’ Angela squeezed the hand in hers, then gave it back to Olive as if it were something that embarrassed her, like a gift of money. ‘Inspector, let’s cut this short for this morning. Give Olive time to get over what happened last night, then perhaps she’ll be able to give you more help.’

Malone stood up. ‘Righto, we’ll give it a rest for today. But there will have to be more questions, Olive. In the meantime I’d like to go down and have a look through Will’s office. Did he have any staff?’

‘Just a secretary. She called me this morning, she’s terribly upset. Her name’s Jill Weigall.’

‘Could you get her for me? I’d like to speak to her.’

He followed Olive in to a phone in the front hallway. She dialled a number, introduced him, then handed him the phone. ‘Treat her gently.’ Then she left him, a little coldly, he thought, as if he had suddenly turned into some sort of enemy.

As soon as he spoke to Jill Weigall he knew that she was a girl on the edge of hysteria. ‘I was going to ask you to meet me at Mr Rockne’s office – ’

‘No, no, I’ll be all right. I’ll meet you there – it’s something to do – ’

He wondered if she lived alone, but it was none of his business. When he hung up Angela Bodalle was standing beside him. He could smell her perfume, a subtle bouquet, and he wondered why anyone, coming to console a friend on the loss of her husband by murder, would bother to apply perfume. ‘If you are thinking of going through Will’s files, forget it. You can’t get an open warrant. You’ll have to name something specific you want.’

‘Is that free legal advice?’

She looked at him appraisingly. ‘inspector, are you looking to fight with me? I’d have thought we were both friends of Olive, that we’d be on the same side.’

He backed down; he didn’t know why she irritated him. Perhaps it was no more than that she was a lawyer. ‘Righto. In the meantime I have to get some helpers . . .’ He called the Maroubra station, spoke to Carl Ellsworth. ‘Have you come up with anything since last night?’

‘We set up a van near the surf club. We’ve been trying to trace everyone who had their cars in the car park. There were four hundred people in the social club last night. Not counting the staff and the entertainers.’ Ellsworth sounded peeved, as if everyone should have spent Saturday night at home watching television. Preferably The Bill, the British series that showed how tough life was for cops. ‘Oh, Sergeant Clements is here, he wants to speak to you.’

Good old Russ: on the job, starting at the starting point. ‘I think the boys here have got everything under control, Scobie. It’s gonna be the usual slog, unless they come up with a witness who saw everything. Where d’you want me to meet you?’

‘I’m going down to Rockne’s office – ’ He turned to Angela Bodalle, who was still shadowing him. ‘What’s the address?’

She gave it to him. ‘I’ll come with you.’

Malone gave the address to Clements. ‘If Carl Ellsworth has anything for me, bring it with you.’

He hung up, gestured for Angela to go ahead of him and followed her into the living room, where the family was now congregated. It was a large room, but had the narrow windows of the period when the house had been built; Olive had attempted to lighten it with a pale green carpet, green and yellow upholstery on the chairs and couch, and yellow drapes. The only dark note in it this morning was the family. They all looked at him, the intruder, and not for the first time he wondered why the voters bothered to call the police, why they didn’t clear up their own messes.

‘Will you let me know if you find anything?’ Olive sat between Shelley, her thirteen-year-old daughter, and Mrs Carss. The tableau suggested the three ages of a Carss woman: the resemblance between them all was remarkable. They had another common feature: shock.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Jason, unwinding himself like a jeans-clad insect from a chair.

‘There’s no need,’ said his mother. ‘Angela has said she’ll go down with Mr Malone – ’

‘Mother – ’ The boy was treating his mother almost formally, as if to mask his defiance. ‘Now Dad is dead, I’m the man of the house. I better get used to whatever I’ve gotta do.’

His sister frowned and screwed up her pretty face. ‘Oh God, Jay, don’t start that Big Brother crap – ’

Her grandmother reached across a generation to slap her arm. ‘Watch your language, young lady!’

‘Let’s go, Mr Malone.’ The boy spun round and went out of the room.

Malone looked at the assembled women. Rose Cadogan was gathering up the coffee cups to take them out to the kitchen. Malone noticed for the first time how remarkably neat the whole house was; it might be full of emotional debris, but the carpet would be swept, the corners dusted, the cushions plumped up and arranged. He wondered who the housekeeper was, then guessed it could have been any one of Olive, Rose or Mrs Carss. There was a neatness about them that would always be with them, they would die neatly if they had anything to do with it.

‘For what it’s worth, I think Jason is right. He’s got to start learning to be the man of the house. Don’t worry, Olive, I’ll teach him gently.’

He went out of the house, followed by Angela Bodalle and Jason. ‘Can I ride with you, Mr Malone?’ said the boy, not looking at the lawyer.

She seemed to take no offence; she had built up a defence against all males, from schoolboys to senior judges. She walked away to her car: a red Ferrari, Malone noted.

‘I thought you’d have preferred to ride in a car like that,’ he said to Jason as they got into the seven-year-old Commodore. ‘She wouldn’t need to get out of second gear to outrun this bomb.’

‘It’s not the car. I just don’t like flash women.’

‘I wish I was as much a connoisseur as you. What do I call you, Jay or Jason?’

‘Fred.’ A slight grin slipped sideways across the thin, good-looking face. He had thick blond hair which, Malone guessed, would be even fairer in the summer, and the sort of complexion that would always need a thick coating of sunblock to protect it from sun cancers. ‘Bloody Jason, I hate it. Call me Jay, I guess. Everybody else does, except my mother and my grandmother. And Dad.’

‘How did you get on with him? Did you confide in each other?’

‘Is that what fathers and sons are supposed to do?’

‘Tom and I do.’

‘He’s, what, nine years old, Mr Malone. He confides in you, but you don’t tell him everything, right?’

This boy, unlike his mother, was years ahead of his birthdays. ‘So you and your father didn’t talk much, is that it?’

‘Not as much as I’d have liked. This is it, next to the milk bar.’

There was council work going on at the northern end of the beach promenade; at long last it seemed that someone had decided to give Coogee a face-lift. Malone had come down here as a boy and youth to surf, but it had never been a popular beach with real off-the-wall surfers. For the big, toe-curling waves you went south, to Maroubra.

He pulled the Commodore into a No Parking zone. Last night’s wind had dropped and today promised to be an early, if very early, spring day. Out of the car he paused a moment and looked away from the beach. Over there, in its shallow hollow, was Coogee Oval, where he had begun his cricketing career; but if he closed his eyes, all he would see would be the darkness of his lids, nothing of the small glories of his youth. He doubted that he would ever confide any of those memories to Tom. He had never been a headline hero, even though he had gone on to play for the State. That would make life easier for Tom; he had never regretted that Tom was not the son of a famous father. He wondered what Will Rockne had thought of this gangling boy beside him, what he had tried to protect him from.

A row of shops, their paint worn by the salt air, stood at this northern end, some with offices above them. There had once been an indoor swimming baths on this site; one winter it had been closed to swimmers and used to exhibit a grey nurse shark caught by the local fishermen. The shark had spewed up a tattooed human arm and the resultant murder case had become famous; police had caught the murderers but had also dredged up connections that stank as high as a dead shark. Malone was grateful that the Rockne case promised no such connections.

The Ferrari, exhaust gurgling like an expensive drain, pulled in behind the Commodore and Angela Bodalle got out, exposing a nice length of leg as she did so. Malone, a connoisseur of limbs if not of flash women, remarked that she had very good legs. Some surf kids were standing in a group outside a milk bar and one of them whistled, but he was whistling at the car, not its owner.

Angela looked up at the No Parking sign. ‘Do we worry about tickets?’

‘You can defend me if we cop any. Who has a key to the office?’

‘I do. Olive gave it to me.’ She handed it to Jason, as if it were a peace offering.

The boy just nodded, unlocked the door to the flight of stairs that led up to the offices of William A. Rockne, Solicitor. There was a reception room with a secretary’s desk and chair; some flowers drooped in a vase on the desk. Four leather-seated chairs lined one wall, fronted by a coffee table neatly stacked with old copies of the National Geographic and Vogue; there was also a single copy of Bikies’ Bulletin, but that could have been left by a client who had departed in a hurry, presumably on a Harley-Davidson or a Kawasaki. The inner office was larger than Malone had expected, with a bank of steel filing cabinets along one wall, an old-fashioned Chubb safe in a corner and a studded leather couch, that looked too expensive for its surroundings, against another wall. Facing the door was a wide leather-topped desk and a green leather chair to match the couch; in front of the desk were two clients’ chairs, also in green leather. Will Rockne’s degree was framed and hung behind his chair; below it was a wall-length shelf of legal books. The windows on either side of the framed degree looked out on to the beach and the sea, where gulls hung in the air like chips of ice.

‘Dad always liked his office,’ said Jason. ‘He did it up, all new, about six months ago. He never wanted to move from here.’

‘Did anyone ever suggest he should?’

‘My mother did. I think she wanted him to be in the city. You know, a little more class.’ He looked sideways at Angela, who just smiled.

‘Did he rent this office or did he own it?’

‘He rented it,’ said Jason. ‘I dunno who from. Jill will be able to tell you that.’

Jill Weigall and Russ Clements arrived together. Malone introduced Clements, then looked at the secretary. She was young, perhaps twenty or twenty-one, her attractive face smeared this morning with shock. She came in ahead of Clements, stood for a moment looking lost, like a girl on her first morning in a new office; or her last. Clements had paused behind her, waiting for her to find herself.

‘I’m still trying to make myself believe this – ’ She spoke to Jason rather than to the two detectives and Angela Bodalle. She had a light, flutey voice that threatened to crack at any moment, a schoolgirl’s voice. Then she made a visible effort to settle herself; she sat down behind her desk as if ready for business. She looked up at Malone: ‘Yes?’

Malone had to restrain himself from smiling; instead he admired the girl’s attempt to fit herself back into what he guessed was her usual efficient self. ‘First, we’re checking if Mr Rockne ever received any threats here at the office. Did he?’

She shook her head. Her dark hair was cut short in what Malone, always a decade or more behind in fashion, somehow thought of as the French style; the front of it fell down over her forehead and she pushed it back. More settled now, the shock absorbed, her looks had improved; it struck Malone that she was a very attractive girl. ‘Mr Rockne didn’t have the sort of clients that would threaten him.’

‘Did he handle Family Court cases?’ He knew of solicitors and judges who had been threatened by men, most of them immigrants from male-dominated societies, who had blamed the law and its practitioners for taking away their wives from them. In Homicide’s computer there was still the unsolved murder of a judge’s wife who had been killed by a bomb.

‘Of course. But we never had any trouble with any of them.’

‘It’s not as bad as it used to be,’ said Angela Bodalle. ‘The men seem to be learning.’ She made it sound as if all men, not just the immigrants, had been taking lessons.

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Malone. ‘Righto, Miss Weigall. Mrs Bodalle tells me, quite rightly, that we can’t touch the files. But maybe we can open the safe?’ He looked enquiringly at Angela, who shrugged, then nodded.

‘I can’t do that, Inspector. Mr Rockne always kept the key himself.’

Malone raised an eyebrow. ‘How long have you worked for him, Jill?’

‘Two years.’

‘And he never trusted you to open the safe?’ Out of the side of his eye he saw Jason frown resentfully. Whatever the boy’s relationship with his father, he obviously didn’t want him criticized.

Jill Weigall, too, didn’t like the implied criticism. ‘It wasn’t that he didn’t trust me. It was just, well . . .’ But her voice trailed off.

‘Scobie – ’ Clements had been silent up till now, his bulk against the closed front door of the office. He took a plastic envelope out of his pocket. He was in sports jacket, slacks and a rollneck cotton sweater this morning and looked his usual rumpled self, nothing like the dude he must have looked at last night’s medical dinner. Malone wondered what he would have talked about with the diner on the opposite side of him from Romy: the relative effects of a bullet or a blunt instrument on one’s health? ‘They cleaned out Mr Rockne’s pockets last night, Maroubra asked me to bring them back to Mrs Rockne. There’s a key-ring – ’

He held up a key-ring with five keys on it and Jill Weigall said, ‘It’s that big one. He always carried it with him.’

Malone took the key, held it out in front of Jason. ‘You’re the family rep, Jay. I’m going to open the safe, okay?’

‘Go ahead, Mr Malone.’ The boy was building blocks of maturity by the minute.

‘Okay, Mrs Bodalle?’

‘Let’s see what’s in the safe first. If there are any clients’ confidential files in there, I’ll have to advise you against looking at them.’

Malone went into the inner office, unlocked the safe and swung back its heavy door. It was stuffed with papers: files, wills in envelopes, legal documents tied with ribbons, a cash box and a flat metal box, the sort that Malone had seen in bank and hotel safety-deposit vaults. The keys to both boxes were lying on the shelf beside them.

Again he looked at Jason. ‘Okay to open the boxes?’

For a moment the boy looked uncertain; he glanced at Angela. ‘Is it okay, Mrs Bodalle?’

‘You’re on thin ice, Mr Malone, but so far I think you might be able to convince a judge that you haven’t invaded any client’s privacy.’

Malone opened both boxes. The cash box was stuffed with money, all one-hundred-dollar notes. He handed the box to Clements. ‘Count it, Russ.’ He saw the expression on Jill Weigall’s face. ‘You’re surprised to see so much?’

‘I had no idea – ’ She shook her head in wonder, the hair fell down, she pushed it back again. ‘During office hours that cash box was out in my desk. We never carried more than a hundred dollars, maybe a bit more, in it. And stamps, things like that.’

‘There’s ten thousand here.’ Clements’s big fingers had handled the notes like those of a flash bank teller; but then he had served time on the Fraud Squad. ‘All of them brand-new and genuine.’

‘Shit,’ said Jason bitterly, ‘did you expect my dad to be into forgery or something?’

Clements gave the boy a look like a back-hander, but Malone got in before the big man could say anything: ‘No, we’re not thinking that, Jay. Relax. At the moment all we’re intent on is finding out who shot him.’

‘Sorry.’ The boy stood awkwardly in the inner doorway, shifting from one foot to the other. He looked suddenly afraid, as if he had just realized that doors were going to be opened that might best be left shut.

Jill Weigall stood up, took his arm. ‘Come on, Jay, let’s make some coffee. We need it, I think.’

The two of them went into the outer office and Malone sat down in Rockne’s leather chair and looked at Clements and Angela Bodalle. ‘The money could mean nothing, he could’ve been holding it for a client. What’s your opinion on that, Mrs Bodalle?’

‘Could be. Before I went to the Bar, when I was a solicitor, I’d hold money for clients. But never as much as that, not in actual cash. Solicitors hold money for clients all the time, but usually in trust accounts.’ She was sitting in one of the chairs across the desk from Malone, her legs crossed, showing a lovely curve of instep. She was wearing a pink wool dress that moulded her figure; a navy-blue cardigan with brass buttons was thrown over her shoulders. It was early in the day, but she looked as if she was already dressed for lunch. ‘Are you going to open the other box?’

‘You’re the witness. If it’s clients’ stuff, I won’t touch it.’

There were no clients’ papers: just Will Rockne’s passport, a bank statement, a chequebook and a small flat gun. ‘A Beretta Twenty-two. A lady’s special.’

‘I must remember that,’ said the lady opposite.

‘Very effective at close range,’ said Clements. ‘We had a woman do her husband in with one of those about six months ago.’

‘Is that supposed to mean something?’ She looked up at Clements, her gaze as sharp as a knife.

‘No,’ said Clements blandly. ‘Nothing at all.’

Malone sniffed the barrel of the gun. ‘I doubt if it’s ever been fired. We’ll ask Jill about it.’

Then he looked at the chequebook. It was for a joint account in the names of William A. Rockne and Olive B. Rockne, held in the Commonwealth Bank, Coogee. The last stub showed a balance of $9478.33, the last amount drawn $5000 in cash. Then he looked at the bank statement, which was in Rockne’s name only.

‘What would you think of a suburban solicitor, a oneman band, who has a bank account with five million, two hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars in it?’

‘I’d nominate him for Solicitor of the Year,’ said Clements and looked around the office. ‘This is okay, but it ain’t a rich practice, would you say?’

Malone was studying Angela Bodalle’s reaction; there had been none. ‘You aren’t surprised?’

‘Yes.’ But if she was, she was disguising it well.

‘What’s the bank?’ asked Clements.

‘A merchant bank, I’d say – I’ve never heard of it. The Shahriver Credit International.’ He hadn’t looked at Clements, but at Angela.

‘Are you asking me if I’ve heard of it? No.’

‘Where is it?’ said Clements. ‘Here in Sydney?’

‘Sydney, Hong Kong, Manila, Kuwait – Kuwait? They wouldn’t be doing much business there right now. Oh, and Beirut. Some nice-smelling places on that letterhead.’

‘Remember the days when all banks smelled like roses – or like the Mint?’ Clements moved around and sat down next to Angela in the other client’s chair. ‘Mrs Bodalle, why aren’t you surprised to learn that Will Rockne had that much money in a bank?’

‘It was an old ploy between Malone and Clements: switch the bowling without telling the umpire or the batsman. She looked first at Malone, as if expecting him to put Clements in his place, then she looked at the big man. ‘I told you I was surprised.’

Clements shook his head. ‘Mrs Bodalle, I think I’ve spent as much time in court as you have. You’ve learned how to read reactions. So have I. You weren’t surprised.’

‘Does it matter whether I was or not?’ She was not going to let a mere cop get the better of her in cross-examination. ‘Mrs Rockne will be the one who’ll be surprised.’

Jill Weigall came in with three cups of coffee on a tray. ‘It’s only instant. Mr Rockne never drank coffee – he’d become a bit of a fitness freak lately – ’

Mr Rockne appeared to have changed quite a bit lately. ‘How’s Jason?’

‘He’s okay. He’s a very intelligent boy, but I guess that doesn’t help much when a situation like this happens, right?’

Malone had seen the stupid and the wise equally devastated by grief; it didn’t require much intelligence to remark that. He looked at Angela Bodalle. ‘Would you leave us alone with Miss Weigall for a few moments?’

‘I think I should remain here – ’

‘Only if Miss Weigall insists?’ He looked at the girl.

She hesitated, then said, ‘I’ll be okay, Mrs Bodalle. If I need you, I’ll – ’

Angela stood up abruptly and went out of the room; she did it in such a way that Malone had a mental image of her swirling her barrister’s gown as she exited; she left behind a strong smell of her perfume, as if she had generated some sudden heat. Both Clements and Jill Weigall were impressed. The girl said, ‘Now I’ve upset her – ’

‘Don’t worry, Jill. Sit down. Did Mr Rockne hold trust accounts for clients, money held in escrow, stuff like that?’

‘Of course. All solicitors do.’

‘With what bank?’

‘The Commonwealth, the one here in Coogee.’

Not a bank with branches in Kuwait or Beirut. ‘What about Shahriver Credit International?’

She shook her head, the hair fell down, was pushed back up again; Malone began to wonder if the gesture was part of the fashion. ‘We never did any business with them – wait a minute!’ She had thick, unplucked eyebrows; they came down in a frown. ‘They called a coupla times. I put them through to Mr Rockne, but then he’d hang up and call them back on his private line. He had that put in about four or five months ago, the private line.’

‘Did you think that was strange?’

‘Well, yes, a bit. He used to be always so open with me. And then about six months ago, maybe a bit more, he just sort of, well, played things close to his chest. Just with one or two clients.’

‘You remember who they are?’

‘Inspector, I dunno I should be telling you all this . . .’ She glanced towards the still open door. ‘I mean, there’s client confidentiality – ’

‘That’s true. Do you have a law degree?’

‘No, why?’

He kept one eye on the doorway, wondering how much Angela Bodalle could hear in the outer office. ‘Well then, there’s no client confidentiality, is there? You were Mr Rockne’s secretary, not his law partner.’ He knew he was drawing a fine line, but the law, after all, was a mass, or mess, of fine lines. He had suffered more than once from judges who had had their own reading of the law. ‘We’re not here to probe clients’ secrets, pry into their affairs. We’re just trying to find out if there is something in this office that might lead us to whoever killed Mr Rockne.’

All at once she broke down, leaned forward as if she were about to fall off her chair. Clements leaned across from his own chair and eased her back; the two men waited while she wept silently. Then Jason said from the doorway, ‘Leave her alone, Mr Malone. She was in love with my dad. They were having an affair.’

The words had been blurted out. Then suddenly he looked embarrassed and angry at himself; he had opened a door and was hurt by what he had exposed to the police. But it was obvious that he had sympathy for Jill Weigall, that he did not feel she was to blame for the affair. He appeared more puzzled by her than angry at her.

Angela Bodalle appeared in the doorway behind the boy. ‘I wouldn’t say any more, Jay, not right now.’

Malone ignored her, looked at the girl. ‘Jill?’

‘It wasn’t an affair – it was just one weekend – ’ She dried her eyes, pushed back the hair that had fallen down over her brow again; it was beginning to annoy Malone and he felt like offering her one of the paperclips on the desk in front of him. ‘I knew it was never going to get anywhere – ’

He had long ago given up wondering what attraction women felt for certain men. What had this very good-looking girl seen in the opinionated, chauvinistic, bonyfaced man twenty years her senior? But no detective, from Homicide or even the Fraud Squad, will ever solve a woman’s emotions. He looked up at Jason, still hanging like a bag of bones in the doorway. ‘Did your mother know?’

‘I don’t think you should be asking the boy those sort of questions,’ said Angela Bodalle.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s a question you should ask her, not her son.’

‘How did you know, Jay?’ That was Jill, turned questioner.

‘Just luck. Bad luck.’ A sardonic air coated him at odd moments, like something borrowed from an older generation. ‘You went to that place at Terrigal, Peppers, and one of my mates from school, he was there with his parents, he saw you and Dad.’

‘Did he tell all the school?’

‘No. I’d of belted him if he had, he knew that.’

‘Thank you, Jay.’ For a moment she looked as young as he.

Malone nodded to Clements. ‘Russ, take Jay and Mrs Bodalle back outside. I want a moment alone with Miss Weigall.’

The girl suddenly looked apprehensive, but it was Angela who caught Malone’s attention. ‘Are you going to question her, Inspector?’

‘Yes.’ His voice was sharp; he was growing tired of her interference.

‘Would you like me to stay with you, Jill?’

Again the girl hesitated; then again she came down on Malone’s side, if reluctantly. ‘I’ll be okay. I’ll call you if Inspector Malone gets too tough with me.’

‘You’re not going to do that, are you, Inspector?’

Malone’s smile was more like a grimace. ‘I’m a gentleman, Mrs Bodalle.’

Her smile was wide, one of disbelief; but she went out, closing the door behind her. Then Jill looked at Malone, all at once seeming to gain some confidence. ‘What are you expecting me to tell you you didn’t want them to hear?’

‘It’s not that I don’t want them to hear, it’s that I think you’ll talk to me easier if they’re not in the room with us. Did you kill Will Rockne?’

He hadn’t altered his tone, but the question was like a rock thrown at her head; she seemed to duck, then looked up at him from under the fallen hair. ‘How can you say something like that? Jesus!’ She pushed the hair back, sat up. She looked towards the door, as if she meant to call for Angela Bodalle, then she turned back to Malone. ‘No, I didn’t! What makes you think I’d want to kill him?’

‘Righto, forget I asked. Have you seen that before?’ He had put the Beretta in a side drawer of the desk; now he took it out and laid it in front of her.

‘No.’ She stared at it, her fear genuine. ‘Where was it – in the desk?’

‘No, in the safe. Did Mr Rockne ever talk about wanting to defend himself?’

‘Never.’

‘How long ago did you have the af – did you have that weekend with him?’

‘Two months ago, the last weekend in June.’

‘And what happened? I mean afterwards, when you came back here on the Monday?’

She picked up a paperweight from the desk. It was a brass lion on a marble base; there was a Lions Club emblem on the base. Malone hoped she was not going to throw it at him. ‘Nothing happened. That was it – the one weekend, and just nothing. I thought I was in love with him, but it only took that weekend to find out I wasn’t.’

‘What about him?’

She put the paperweight back on the desk. ‘He couldn’t have cared less. I was just someone who’d given him a good weekend, a bit of young stuff. I don’t mean Mrs Rockne is old, but you know what I mean. Do we really have to go on with all this?’ She said it almost with boredom; she was a mixture of gaucheness and sophistication. But it was disco sophistication, a veneer as skimpy as the clothes they wore to the clubs. ‘To tell you the truth, I would’ve gone looking for another job. Only they’re so scarce, the recession and that.’

Malone put the gun in a manila envelope. ‘I’m taking the gun with me, okay? Now let’s get back to what I asked you before. You said there were one or two clients he kept to himself, played things close to his chest. Who were they?’

She gazed at him a moment, but she appeared to trust him now. ‘Mr Bezrow was one, Bernie Bezrow the bookmaker. He was our landlord, too.’

Even Malone, who hadn’t the slightest interest in horse-racing, who hadn’t known Phar Lap was dead till he’d seen the movie, knew Bernie Bezrow. ‘Who was the other one?’

‘He just called himself Mr Jones, but I never believed that was his real name. I asked Will about him once and he just smiled and said not to worry my pretty head about it. He actually said that, my pretty head. He could be bloody annoying at times.’ She was beginning to sound as if she was not regretting Rockne’s death after all. ‘Mr Jones came here twice, I think. He was tall and well-dressed and, I suppose, not bad-looking. He had an accent, but I couldn’t tell you what it was.’

‘Was he dark? Fair? Bald?’

‘He had dark hair, but I think it was thin on top. I remember thinking, I dunno why, he was like an expensive car salesman, you know, Rolls-Royces, cars like that.’

‘I’ve never been in a Rolls-Royce saleroom.’

Somehow she managed a weak smile. ‘Neither have I. But you know what I mean.’

‘What about Mr Bezrow?’

‘Oh, he never came up here to the office, he couldn’t get up the stairs. He’s so fat – he’s huge. He came here once in his car, he has a Rolls-Royce, he had someone driving it, and I had to go downstairs and give him an envelope. Will wasn’t here.’

‘Are there any letters to him in the files?’

‘None. That’s what I meant by Will playing things close to his chest.’

‘You didn’t suspect there was something fishy going on with Mr Bezrow and Mr Jones?’

She looked down at her lap; her hair fell down again. She was dressed in grey slacks and a black sweater, the casual style for a death; the slacks were tucked into black suede boots. She was very still for a while, then she sat back in the chair, seeming to go limp. She tossed her head back, the hair flopping away from her brow. She was giving up, but Malone was not sure what: her job, her love or infatuation for Rockne.

She said quietly, ‘Of course I did. But everything’s fishy now, isn’t it? Men get away with murder – well, no, that’s the wrong word this morning, isn’t it? They get away with shonky schemes, or they did, and everyone thought they were heroes, the government gave them decorations. My mother and father are old-fashioned, they believe in morality and honesty and all that, and I was brought up that way. But out in the real world . . .’ She looked past him out at the sky above the sea; but there was no evidence written there of the real world. Then she looked back at him, pausing as if wondering whether she was wasting her words on him. ‘1 knew Will was up to something fishy, as you call it. But I didn’t know what and I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to hold on to my job.’

He stood up. ‘That’ll be enough for today, Jill. I’m taking the cash box, the safety-deposit box and the gun with me – I don’t think they should be left here, not even in the safe. I’ll get you to sign a release. Either I or Sergeant Clements will be back tomorrow or the next day. You’ll be opening the office?’ She nodded, the hair falling down again over her brow. He was standing beside her now and he reached down and pushed back the hair. ‘That’s been annoying me.’

She looked up at him, suddenly smiled, a full-toothed effort. ‘It annoys my father, too.’

‘Thanks,’ he said with a grin. ‘That puts me in my place.’

They went out to the outer office where Clements sat with two people who didn’t want to speak to him or to each other. Jason stood up at once. ‘You okay, Jill?’

‘Sure. How about you?’

‘I’m fine. Can you give me a lift back home?’

‘You can come with me, Jay,’ said Angela Bodalle. ‘I’m going back there – ’

‘Thanks, Mrs Bodalle, but I want to go with Jill.’ It was rude, a slap across the face, but Angela showed no expression.

The boy waited while Jill signed the release form she had typed out for Malone; the silence in the office was so heavy it made even the tapping of the word-processor keys sound like that of an old iron-frame portable. Angela Bodalle said nothing till the two young people had departed. Then:

‘Will you be coming back to talk to Olive?’

‘Not this morning. I’m sure you’ll tell her everything we’ve found here.’

‘Of course. If you should want me again, call me at my chambers. My home number is unlisted.’

‘Oh, we never phone,’ said Malone amiably. ‘We just knock on the door.’

She appeared to be looking for the last word, but couldn’t find it; she gave up and went clack-clacking down the stairs in her high heels. Clements let out a deep breath. ‘I been sitting here doing my damnedest to be polite – ’

‘I wouldn’t worry, Russ. Not with her. Get on to Randwick, ask them to send someone down here and put a seal on the downstairs door and that front door there. We don’t want someone busting in here tonight looking for that cash and that bank statement. Ask them to keep the place under surveillance, at least till I talk to them tomorrow. Tell them the secretary will be coming in here tomorrow. When you’ve done that, you can tell me what you know about Bernie Bezrow.’

Clements was, or had been, Homicide’s expert on the racing game. His luck at punting had been legendary; it was said that the horses ran with one eye on him on those days he was at the races. Then, some years ago, he had switched to punting on the stock market, a switch that Malone, an idiot when it came to punting on anything at all, had failed to understand. Clements had patiently explained to him that it had to be either shares or property; property meant possessions and he was not a man for such things. At least that had been his philosophy till he had met Romy Keller last summer and since then Malone had had no idea what was Clements’s attitude towards punting or possessions. He, Malone, was an old-fashioned man who did not believe you asked another man what lay in his secret heart.

When they stood beside their cars in the street outside, Clements said, ‘To begin with, Bezrow is Sydney’s biggest bookie, weight-wise and betting-wise. But on-course punting isn’t as big as it used to be – the TAB has taken a lot away from them, the crowds don’t go to the races like they used to, so Bernie wouldn’t rake in what he used to. But that doesn’t mean he’s on the breadline.’

‘If he’s so loaded, why would he use a small-time solicitor? Why wouldn’t he use a big firm, the sort of lawyers who know all the tax lurks? Let’s go and talk to him.’

Clements got into his Toyota and Malone walked along to his own car. He paused for a moment and looked across towards the Oval. Some cricketers were at one end of it, wearing baseball mitts and playing catch, testing their arms in preparation for the coming season. He had had a good arm in his day, able to put the ball right over the stumps from anywhere on the boundary; he felt the urge that all old players feel, to go over there and show the youngsters how good he had once been. But, of course, the arm wasn’t there any more, not the way it used to be.

He got into the Commodore and drove up to see Bernie Bezrow, someone else for whom, it seemed, the good old days had gone.