Читать книгу A Different Turf - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 5

The first phone call came at nine-thirty on Monday morning.

‘Inspector Malone? I understand you are investigating the shooting in Oxford Street on Saturday night.’

‘Who’s this?’

‘Let’s say I’m the Twelfth Man. You played cricket, didn’t you, once upon a time? There is always a twelfth man, isn’t there, just in case?’

‘Are you offering some information?’

‘In a way, I suppose I am. But we’re also offering help—’

‘Mr – what’s your name?’

‘Don’t hang up, Inspector.’ The man’s voice was soft and educated, almost precise yet not prissy; a man with respect for the weight and value of words. ‘Why waste your time? The police have enough to do. We are contributing a public service—’

‘We?’

‘Oh, I thought you knew. We’re a, shall we say, a consortium. Pest exterminators …’

Malone was signalling frantically to Clements in the outer office, but the big man was busy at a computer. Then Andy Graham, the unit’s St Bernard, Airedale or any lolloping dog, came lolloping in: ‘You want something, boss?’

‘Get me—’ Then the phone went dead in his ear. ‘Hello? You there? Bugger!’ He replaced the receiver. ‘Get Russ for me, Andy. What are you on?’

‘The Chiano job out at Maroubra. I’ll get Russ.’ He galloped away, hitting a swivel chair and sending it swivelling; his small world was chipped and scarred by his progress through it. But he was a good detective, his enthusiasm was not bumbling; he would never let go of a case, his mind was a file of clues in unsolved cases. Malone, looking after him as he bumped into a desk, wondered how he would go if transferred to the Oxford Street murder.

Clements, looking happier than he had for the past few months, relaxed almost to the point of carelessness, came in and flopped down on the small couch beneath the window in Malone’s office.

‘Romy and the baby are great. I was in there before I came to work—’

Malone humoured him with a few remarks about mother and child. Then he said, ‘I just had a call from some feller about Saturday night’s murder.’

‘We had three murders Saturday night—’

‘So we did.’ He had looked at the synopsis on his desk, checked it against the computer. ‘Sorry. The one up in Oxford Street, the kid from the gang that bashed up – Did you know it was Bob Anders they bashed? John’s mate.’

‘I’ve read the running sheet.’ Relaxed though he was, the big man’s voice had an edge to it, as if to say, You think I’m not keeping up with the job?

‘Sure.’ What was the matter with him? It was as if he, the boss, had come on the job only half an hour ago. ‘Okay, well, tins feller rang, said he belonged to a consortium – yes, that was the word he used.’ Clements had a big expressive face and when his eyebrows went up they showed large surprise. ‘A consortium. He claimed they were the Twelfth Man – he knew I’d played cricket—’

‘He must of looked you up. Who else remembers? No offence, mate. Nobody remembers yesterday’s sportsmen … This – consortium – they offered to help?’

‘He said they were contributing a public service.’

‘Vigilantes? Christ, that’s just what we need! Why don’t these public-spirited bastards piss off? We get enough criticism without vigilantes claiming we can’t do the job without them—’

‘He hasn’t claimed that yet … Have they done the autopsy on the kid?’

‘Not yet, I checked. Forensic said Ballistics would have the bullet by lunchtime. You want to know if it’s from the same gun as the three other poofter murders?’

He tried not to sound pious: ‘Russ, no poofters were murdered. And since we’re now on the cases, maybe we’d better start calling the homosexuals something else.’

‘Okay, gays. But what’s on your mind?’ They had worked together so long they read each other like husband-and-wife.

‘I think I should stay at my desk.’ As Co-ordinator, in theory that was what he was supposed to do. The nineteen detectives on staff, including Clements, were the field workers. But theory was always one of the first casualties of government service; it had the same fragility as charity and other high-minded ideas. ‘Who have you got to spare?’

‘Nobody, except Kate. I can spare John Kagal, but he’s on call for three court appearances this week. Tomorrow, Wednesday and Friday. You mean you don’t want to handle the Oxford Street murder and the other three? Why?’

Malone sat back, sighed; he could confide in Clements. ‘I’m not comfortable with them—’

‘Gays? You’d be a bloody sight more comfortable with them than I would. I try to be objective, but—’ Malone shook his head. ‘You can handle it How d’you think you’d be if you were on a paedophile murder? You’d feel like committing murder yourself, wouldn’t you?’

‘I guess so—’

‘You know so!’ Clements was no longer lolling on the couch; he was sitting up. ‘Take Kate with you, she’s used to them.’

‘How do you know?’ Sharply.

‘I mean, women are more comfortable with them, aren’t they? Romy is always lecturing me on my prejudices—’ He got to his feet, looking unhappier than when he had come into the room. He was not fat, though there was fat on him, but his bulk always made any room seem smaller. Malone had a sudden image of him with his daughter, the baby lost in the massive arms. ‘You always say you’re not gunna be chained to that desk. You’re on the Oxford Street job, mate, this is your Unit Supervisor speaking. Wear an earring, you’ll be comfortable.’

‘Up yours.’

‘I wouldn’t use that expression in the company you’re gunna be keeping.’ He grinned, then spread a huge hand. ‘There I go again with my prejudices.’

He went out to the big main room, but was back in five minutes. ‘I’ve just run through the computers. There have been twenty-six gay murders in the last five years.’

‘Murdered by bashing?’

‘No, some by their partners. It looks now as if they’re striking back. This consortium, I’ll leave you to work on it.’

‘Thanks. Send Kate in.’

She came into his office, smart and neat; but it was early in the day. ‘You’re on the Oxford Street murder with me, Kate. We’re going out to Erskineville to talk to me boy’s mother, then we’ll see if we can talk to the kids who were with him when it happened.’

Kate drove, in an unmarked police car this time, not the Goggomobile, and, because she drove fast, Malone, always a bad passenger, sat with his toes clenched inside his shoes and his belly tense against his seat-belt. He gave her directions and it was just as well, for Erskineville was a maze of narrow streets and lanes that seemed to be looking for each other. But he had known this area in his boyhood and youth, it was as plain in his memory as a birthmark.

‘You know your way,’ said Kate as she pulled up the car.

‘I was born in the next street. My parents still live there.’

Billyard was almost a dead ringer for the street where he had grown up. Narrow terrace houses stood shoulder to shoulder, as if for security. Narrow front verandahs, protected by spiked railings, were only one step up from the footpath. Some houses had been painted, their doors varnished or painted a bright colour, fancy brass knockers added; two or three had barred windows and security doors. On an opposite corner and running down a side street some new townhouses, the terraces of the future, were going up; somehow they looked like a new sore. Gentrification had crept in, like a hesitant make-up artist; but not all the way, not yet. Number twelve was rundown, the paint on the front door was peeling, exposing the timber; half the front window was boarded up like a half-shut eye. There was no knocker, though a patch of lighter paint showed where one had once been. Kate rapped firmly on the panels of the door.

It was opened by a teenage girl. ‘Yeah?’

Malone introduced himself and Kate. ‘We’d like to talk to your parents about – was it your brother?’

‘Yeah, I’m his sister Jillian. Come on in. Mum!’

They followed her down a narrow hallway that, carpeted with a length of runner as threadbare as a beggar’s shirt, led past closed doors to a small kitchen at the back of the house. Through an open door Malone could see a backyard, as familiar to him as his office at Homicide and not much larger. An equally familiar smell hung about the house, the odour of over a hundred years of cooking, of bodies, of living.

Though times had been tough in the Malone household, he had never seen his mother as worn and desperate as Mrs Langtry. She was small and thin and prematurely grey; her sorrows were etched in her face. She had a soft voice with a whine in it, for which he couldn’t blame her; her life, if not this house, had collapsed in on her.

‘I dunno what I can tell you. Justin just went out Sat’day night and—’ She stopped.

And never came back. He had heard it before: some lives just ended like that. ‘Have they taken you to identify his body?’

She nodded dumbly.

‘Do you have a husband, Mrs Langtry?’

Again the dumb shake of the head. The kitchen was small, everything in it looked chipped and worn, but it was clean, it was not like some garbage dumps Malone had been in. A brightly coloured calendar hung on one wall, the only decoration; a flamenco dancer stamped her foot on the pages below; Malone wondered if Saturday’s date was marked, but he wasn’t close enough to check. A small boy, about five or six, stood in the back doorway, still as a statue. In one corner of the kitchen was a small wheelchair, with a large doll in it; then Malone realized with a shock that the doll was another child, a girl with a tiny head and a wizened face. He felt something tremble in his chest and he drew a deep breath.

‘We’d like to talk to some of Justin’s mates, maybe they can tell us something about what happened?’

‘What happened was someone shot and killed my brother!’ The girl Jillian was suddenly angry, as if she couldn’t understand the stupidity of the police. ‘Jesus Christ, what else d’you wanna know?’

Kate Arletti said gently, ‘We want to know who killed him, that’s all.’

‘Does it fucking matter now? It ain’t gunna bring him back!’

‘Jilly—’ Her mother went to her and put her arm round her; she was shorter by two or three inches and twenty pounds lighter, but for the moment she looked the stronger. She faced the two detectives. ‘Do I have to go and – collect his body from the morgue? I don’t have any money for that—’

‘I think we can arrange that, Mrs Langtry. Do you have any friends or relatives who can help you?’

‘One or two, friends I mean. Our relatives don’t wanna know us.’ Then she looked embarrassed at such a confession. ‘We’ll manage, if you can just arrange for him to be – to be collected.’

‘I’ll see to it at once,’ said Kate. It was obvious that she was finding the situation difficult; her held-back emotion was plain in her face. Malone knew that it had taken him years before he could hold his own face in a mask.

There was a sudden whimper from the child in the wheelchair; a withered hand was lifted to the tiny face. Mrs Langtry let go of Jillian and turned to the child to comfort it. ‘There, Jasmine—’

Justin, Jillian, Jasmine: the names were like a mocking song in this falling-down house. Malone glanced at the small boy in the doorway, still unmoving, carved in pale wood; he wondered what the boy’s name was, but dared not ask, afraid that he would laugh. But not with mirth.

‘Jasmine has micro-ce-phaly—’ The mother pronounced the disease with care. ‘She’s got scoliosis, too.’

Malone abruptly wanted to weep. Christ, what sort of bastard was God that He spilled such shit on this woman? With difficulty he said, ‘I think we’d like to find Justin’s mates.’

‘I’ll take you.’ Jillian had swallowed her anger, looked calm and dependable. ‘I won’t be long, Mum.’

The two detectives said goodbye to Mrs Langtry, Malone ashamed that he was glad to escape. Outside the house Jillian turned left. ‘It’s not far from here. We can walk, if you like. They’ll probably be playing basketball or skate-boarding in the park, over by the oval.’

‘Do you go to school, Jillian? Or work?’

‘I left school last year, we needed the money. I work at a computer place. The parts come in from Korea and we put ’em together and they go out as made in Australia. You cops oughta look into it.’

‘We’ve got enough problems looking into Australian-made murders … Did Justin work?’ They were walking through familiar streets, but ones he had not trodden in twenty years or more; gentrification had rouged and painted them. Even the one street he did visit once a week had been tarted up, but Con and Brigid Malone had resisted: their house was light brown, their front door dark brown, the knocker black.

‘Sometimes, off and on – he was a bit of a layabout.’ She walked in silence for a few paces, as if she had said something treacherous about her brother. ‘He’d help Mum occasionally. She does piece-work for a dress manufacturer. You know, out-work.’

Malone had heard the term. Women, sometimes whole families, who in the main were exploited, often earning no more man a dollar-fifty or two dollars a garment ‘I thought only migrants did that? Vietnamese, people like that.’

She grinned cynically. She was a plain girl, plain and overweight; but her eyes were bright blue and intelligent, her best feature. ‘Mum’s a natural to be exploited. She wasn’t, once, but she is now.’

‘Where’s your dad?’

‘Dead. He was a fettler on the railways, he was run over by a train three months before Jasmine was born. He was a dreamer, but they never last long, do they? He was probably dreaming the day the train ran over him.’ She said it casually, without a smile or a tear, standing on the kerb, waiting for the traffic to pass before they crossed the main road. ‘He wanted to call me Lillian. Lillian Langtry.’

The name had a faint echo in Malone’s ear.

They crossed the road. ‘There was a famous actress once, Lily Langtry. The Jersey Rose. Mum objected, said she didn’t like the idea. So they compromised, called me Jillian. Just as well, I never grew into any sorta rose.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘There’s still time.’

‘Don’t kid me. I’m gunna finish up like my mum, only fatter. But with no kids. Definitely no kids. There they are.’

They had come to a small park that had been spruced up since Malone’s memory of it. In one corner was a children’s playground; in another an asphalt court where a dozen or so youths were skate-boarding or throwing a basketball at each other. When the youths saw the two strangers approach with Jillian, they stopped throwing the ball and garnered together in a tribal huddle. The three who had been skate-boarding jerked to a stop with a screech and clatter, picked up their boards and joined the group.

‘Les—’ Jillian spoke to the tallest boy, evidently the leader. ‘This is Inspector Malone and Constable Arletti.’ Malone was surprised she had remembered their names. ‘They’d like to talk to you about Justin.’

‘Yeah?’

They were sullen, suspicious of cops. Malone looked them over and, mentally, shook his head. All of them wore Keppers or baggy basketball shorts; T-shirts with emblems that he didn’t recognize; and all of them wore baseball caps, most of them turned back-to-front. They were the New American Colonials, marching backwards into the future. His old Aussie blood galloped through him. Then: come on, he told himself, you’re carrying enough baggage in this case.

‘You were with Justin when he was shot?’

‘Yeah.’ Les was about eighteen, a goodlooking boy spoiled by a perpetual sneer at the world in which he found himself. His cap was worn with the peak to the front, a New York Yankees cap. He wore a Mambo T-shirt, Keppers that came well below his knees and heavy black Air-Max shoes. Malone had the feeling he was in a foreign land. ‘I was right beside him when he went down.’

‘How far was the woman who shot him, how far away?’

‘I dunno.’ He looked about him. ‘You guys?’

‘She was right on top of him.’ He was thin and sharp-chinned, the sort of kid who was probably called Foxy; he would run with the pack, but always on the edges, always trailing behind. He was dressed much the same as Les, as were most of the group. These kids might be unemployed or skipping school, but they didn’t look poverty-stricken. Malone wondered how Justin had been dressed when he had died. ‘I seen the gun first, it was long, like it had a silencer on it.’

‘That was what it was,’ said another youth, a fat boy who would never jump high enough to slam-dunk a basket ‘We hardly heard it when it went off. Just sorta phut!’

‘What did the woman look like?’

‘Shit, who knows?’ said Les, the leader. ‘She had long hair, dark.’

‘Was she in a dress or slacks?’ said Kate.

They all looked at her as if wondering how she had got into the act, a second-class citizen asking questions. Obviously they had less time for women cops than they had for men. Then Foxy said, ‘Slacks, I think. She was there one minute, then she was gone. She could really run. I suppose dykes can run – fast, I mean. Lots of girls play sport, athletes, tennis players, they’re dykes, ain’t they?’

Malone and Kate didn’t answer that. ‘Was she wearing trainers, shoes like yours?’

‘Jesus,’ said Les, ‘how would we know? She shoots down our mate right in front of us – have you ever had that happen to you?’

‘Yes,’ said Malone and for just a moment the group was silent in sullen respect.

‘Have you been charged with bashing the man who’s in hospital?’

There was no word for a moment, then Les said, ‘Yeah, two of us. We’re out on bail.’

‘You haven’t asked how he is.’

This time there was no answer at all; their indifference showed in their faces.

‘Right, here’s my card. If you remember anything else, anything at all, ring me. By the way, do any of you play cricket?’

The group looked at each other as if he had asked them if they played hopscotch. Then Les said, ‘That’s history, old man.’

Malone had meant to leave on a friendly note, but he couldn’t resist it, his tongue slipping its leash once again: ‘So is Justin. If you hadn’t gone in for poofter-bashing, he’d still be here throwing baskets.’

He walked away, abruptly, and Kate and Jillian had to hurry to catch up with him. As soon as they did he said, ‘I apologize, Jillian. I shouldn’t have made that last crack.’

‘No, you’re right’ She walked in silence for a while. Then: ‘You haven’t asked why Justin would of been with them, poofter-bashing.’

All three paused. They were out of the park now, but still close to the small children’s playground. Half a dozen very young children were clambering on bars, sliding down a slippery dip, rising and falling on a swing like discordant notes of music. Their mothers stood near mem, tossing gossip as idly as the youths in the far corner were tossing the basketball. Some of the mothers had turned their heads to watch Jillian and the two strangers. Erskineville hadn’t changed in all the years: strangers were recognized at once.

‘Tell us, Jill.’

Jillian looked around her, at nothing in particular; then she faced the two detectives. ‘I told you my dad died. About six, seven years ago Mum brought home Bev. I dunno where she met him, he just was with her and moved in. Justin and I were too young to kick up much of a fuss, and Jasmine …’ She paused, worked her wide mouth; then she went on, ‘He was a truckie, he’d be gone every week, sometimes for a whole week. Kelly is his kid, my half-brother.’

Kelly: who had escaped the Justin, Jillian, Jasmine sequence.

They moved on, crossed the road, on their way back to the house that God had shat on. Malone could feel his faith beginning to tear like tissue paper. Jillian continued: ‘Bev used to, you know, fuck around with Justin.’

‘Sexually abuse him?’

She nodded; she found it difficult to discuss the subject.

‘Did your mother know?’

‘I dunno. Justin never said anything, he was about ten or eleven then. Maybe Mum did know and was afraid to say anything. Bev used to get drunk, he’d scare the shit outa all of us.’

‘Where is he now?’

She shrugged. ‘Who cares? He took off three months after Kelly was born. He said he couldn’t handle four kids, especially one like Jasmine.’

‘How long has she had -?’ said Kate.

‘Microcephaly?’ She also said the word carefully, recited like a curse. ‘She was born with it, she can’t talk. Then she got the scoliosis—’ Again recited carefully. ‘That fucks up your spine and your joints, you get osteoarthritis.’ She knew the diseases like the alphabet ‘I love her—’

Suddenly she stopped and began to weep. Malone put his arms round her and held her to him; sobs thudded through her like drumbeats. He looked at Kate over Jillian’s head and saw that she had turned away, had her hand to her mouth. They were on the far side of the main road now, but the mothers in the playground were still watching them. Be grateful, he told them silently, your luck is better than this. It could not be worse.

Jillian recovered, withdrew from his arms and wiped her eyes. ‘Thanks. Sometimes it gets to be too much, you know?’

Malone just nodded; he could not get out any words. Then Kate, turning back, said, ‘Let’s walk you home, Jill.’

They walked the rest of the way in silence. At the front door of Number twelve, Malone said, ‘Do you own this house?’

‘Are you kidding?’ Again the cynical smile; maybe it was her best, her only, defence. ‘We pay rent. A hundred and seventy bucks a week and the landlord says he’s doing us a favour, he feels sorry for us. A fucking Greek.’

‘Do you get any welfare help?’

She nodded. ‘A bit. Mum gets a single parent’s pension and something for Jasmine. But it doesn’t go far, with all the drugs and special foods she needs, things like that.’ She looked up and down the street, then back at them. ‘Sometimes I wanna turn the gas on—’

‘Don’t, Jill—’ But what hope could he offer? She might escape, but what of her mother and Jasmine and young Kelly?

She smiled again, less cynically this time. ‘I won’t. But it’s a thought …’

They left her and walked along to the car. They got in and immediately Kate broke down. Malone reached across and patted her shoulder. ‘I shouldn’t have brought you—’

She shook her head, dried her eyes. ‘I have to get used to it—’

‘Not like that, Kate. You never get used to tragedy like that. Let’s go back to the office.’

His mother and father would be at home in the house just round the corner, but he didn’t want to see them now. They would ask what had brought him to Erskineville and the story would not bear repeating. Not the way he felt at the moment

2

That afternoon Malone was at Surry Hills with Garry Peeples in the incident room that the task force had set up. Photos were pinned to the walls: of corpses, scenes of crime: a macabre gallery. Intelligence had supplied rough portraits of the suspects in the murders of the gay-bashers in the past seven months. ‘Intelligence is still working on a description of Saturday night’s suspect, a woman. So far she looks like a cross between Zsa Zsa Gabor and Whoopi Goldberg. I’m beginning to think all witnesses to a homicide are cross-eyed, astigmatic, or both.’

‘Could she have been a transvestite?’ Malone asked. ‘Drag seems to be pretty popular these days.’

Peeples shrugged. ‘Could’ve been.’ He gestured at the portraits. ‘There are three sketches for each suspect. The only common feature is the eyes, you notice? All dark, good-sized eyes, not squinty. Could be a woman’s eyes.’

‘You suggesting all four suspects could be the one person? That would do away with the vigilantes then. But the feller who rang me this morning said he belonged to a consortium. Unless they’re a family. They could be the family of a gay who was beaten up, maybe killed, by a gang of bashers.’ Then a thought struck him: ‘How did he know so soon that I was on the case?’

‘Search me. We haven’t put out anything.’

‘I got his call before I went out to Erskineville.’ He looked carefully at Peeples. ‘How many have you got on establishment here?’

‘Ninety-odd. Ninety-four, I think. Come on, Scobie, you don’t think it’s someone from—?’ He shook his head. He had thick wavy hair that he seemed to have difficulty in controlling; a curl fell down, an incongruous decoration to his broad aggressive-looking face. ‘No, I won’t pay that. We have a gay liaison guy here, a constable – he’s on leave at the moment. But he’s not the sorta guy goes around avenging gay-bashings. Besides, he wouldn’t know you are on the case.’

‘When he heard about the bashings and the murder, he’d have called up and checked what was happening. If he was a good cop.’

‘He is a good cop.’ Peeples still looked dubious. ‘I’ll check, but I think you’re on the wrong track.’

‘Garry, I’m not on any track at the moment.’ He moved to a map taped to a wall, a map that covered the area within a radius of two kilometres from Surry Hills station. ‘These pins, they’re the locations? I mean, of our four homicides. I’m not interested in any others.’

‘Yeah. The dates are there. Two in Oxford Street, one in Darlinghurst Road towards the Cross, one at The Wall. Whoever they are, this – this consortium keeps close to home.’

‘Assuming they all live around here.’

‘What about Anders, the guy who was bashed?’ Peeples said suddenly. ‘He’d have told his mates you were on the case. Maybe he has a partner—’

‘His partner’s dying of AIDS, I don’t think he’d have been in to see Anders. But yes, maybe he told someone else -G’day, Clarrie. Got something for us?’

Clarrie Binyan was a light-skinned Aborigine; he had been on the planet forty-five years but Malone was certain he was a million years old. Nothing ever fazed him; he took racial insults and service problems with equanimity. He was the sergeant in charge of Ballistics and it was his smiling boast that he could identify a tribal boomerang or nullah-nullah as easily as he could the bullet from a suspect gun. He had a child’s smile and an old man’s eyes. He and Malone were the best of friends, though only at work. It had only recently occurred to Malone that he had never invited Binyan home to Randwick nor had he ever been to the Binyan home in Dulwich Hill. He had tried to assuage his social conscience by telling himself he had never invited anyone home but Russ Clements. Nonetheless there was a feeling of guilt.

Binyan placed a plastic envelope on Peeples’ desk. ‘It’s from the same gun. A Thirty-two, either a Browning or a Beretta, I’d say. There are other guns, ones you can fit with a silencer, that take Thirty-twos, but they’re expensive and unusual – esoteric is the word I’m after, I think. But maybe this lot go in for them? What they do is esoteric by my standards.’

‘Homosexuality or killing?’ said Malone. ‘We don’t know that this lot, the vigilantes, are gays. A bloke called me this morning, told me what they were doing was a public service. If we find the gun, you could identify it enough for us to go to court?’

Binyan nodded. ‘We found some nice individual characteristics – the distinguishing marks on the lands and grooves. You know it, every gun has its own fingerprint. This gun has it, in spades – “The child’s grin”. An old tribal saying.’

‘Is he like this with you all the time?’ Malone asked Peeples. ‘Always mentioning the tribe? How his great-great-great-grandpa gave the finger to Captain Cook? Get on with it, Clarrie.’

Binyan was unoffended; he had made his way in this white man’s world and felt secure. There was no one who knew more about ballistics than he. ‘I think these people, whoever they are, may be in for a nasty shock one day. The gun’s gunna backfire.’

‘Let’s hope it does it next time they try to shoot someone … Well, if it’s got such a distinctive fingerprint, at least we’ve got something to go on. Now all we have to do is find the bastards who are using it.’

‘Console yourself that they’re not using a Smith and Wesson. They’re so bland they leave practically no individual characteristics.’

Peeples patted his hip holster. ‘I must remember that next time I feel like shooting the Minister.’

All three grinned. The Police Minister was also the Premier, Hans Vanderberg, a Dutch immigrant who had come to Australia fifty years ago and seen the opportunities in State politics for a man with drive and a total lack of conscience. Good, honest men had come and gone and some were still around, but The Dutchman had been a permanent fixture, in and out of government, for so long that it had been suggested, in the current quest for a new flag, his image should replace the Union Jack on the upper left-hand corner. The prospect of Hans Vanderberg’s evil grin fluttering from a flagpole had raised the possibility of a rush for emigration by monarchists and other conservatives.

When Binyan left the station Malone walked out with him. Ballistics was on the fifth floor of Police Centre; for all his easy-going affability, Binyan ran his unit like a tribal elder. The two men stood in the afternoon sun outside the main entrance. For some reason there was never much foot traffic into and out of the big building; it was almost as if the fortress was too forbidding.

‘Clarrie, are there many Koori homos?’

‘Some, I guess.’ Binyan himself rarely used the politically correct terms for the indigenous; his people were either blacks or Aborigines or, occasionally but always with a dig at the whites he might be talking to, Abos. ‘There are Chinese homos, probably Eskimos, too.’

‘How are they treated?’

‘From what I hear, not too well. There’s a lot of homophobia amongst blacks – they think being gay or lesbian is a white man’s disease.’

‘Do they bash them up?’

‘I haven’t heard of much of that, but maybe they do. The community would keep it to itself, in any case. The other side to it is that I’m told being an Abo in the gay community isn’t all beer and skittles, either. The homos have got their prejudices, just like the rest of us. Are you uncomfortable in this scene?’

‘How’d you guess? But I feel sorry for the poor bastards, the ones who get bashed.’

‘How d’you feel about the kids who are being shot?’

Malone wobbled his hand up and down. ‘Ambivalent. I met a kid this morning, the one who led the gang that beat up the feller on Saturday night, Bob Anders. I don’t think I’d shed any tears if he got the next bullet. But the kid who was shot Saturday night … I met his family this morning, saw where he lived, heard about his mother’s boyfriend sexually abusing him. I never knew the kid, but somehow I don’t think he deserved a bullet.’

‘You’re gunna have some problems before this is over, mate. I’m just glad I’m upstairs, in Ballistics. All I deal with are instruments, all you ever have to be with them is objective. Guns, bullets, knives, you never have a moral problem with them.’

‘What if some day we bring in a boomerang mat’s killed someone?’

Binyan grinned. ‘My granddaddy killed a man once with a boomerang. Said it just slipped out of his hand. Look after yourself, mate. If you come out of the closet, let me know.’

Malone was afraid there would be a spate of jokes like that over the next few weeks. Homophobic humour had never been subtle nor did it have the sardonic dryness of normal Australian wit. He would have to take his own preventive care, put a condom on the jokes.

He had been back at Homicide half an hour when the second call came in. ‘Inspector? Well, what do you think now you’ve met the poofter-bashers?’

‘How do you know who I’ve seen? Have you been spying on me?’

‘Let’s not use the word spying, Inspector – that has a sneaky note to it. Surveillance, isn’t that what the police call it? That leader, Les Coulson, he’s real shit, isn’t he?’

‘You’ve talked to him?’

Malone was flicking through his memory. Who had been in the park besides the youths, the children and the mothers? At the far edge of his memory there was an indistinct figure – a man or a woman? – hovering there like a blurred passer-by in a photo focussed on the youths.

‘I’ve listened. They make no secret of their feelings towards gays. You must have realized that, Inspector. We are doing a public service, you know. Why don’t you recognize that?’

‘I might, if I could meet you and talk it over—’

There was a soft laugh; then the line went dead. Malone put the phone back in its cradle, then signalled through the glass wall to Clements. The big man came into Malone’s office, went to flop down on the couch, paused when Malone waved a hand.

‘Stay on your feet. I’ve just had another call from the vigilante, the same feller. Get a warrant, I want a tap put on my phone. I’ve got a feeling he’s going to call again. Tell the Phone Interception Unit you’re getting the warrant. Try Judge Bristow, he’s always on our side. Tell them I want them here this afternoon.’ Then as Clements went to go out the door, he said, ‘The bugger’s been spying on us. He knows I went out to Erskineville this morning.’

Clements had stopped in the doorway. ‘You think someone is tipping him off from inside?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe there’s a network of homos in the Service, I just don’t know. I’ve been looking up some figures – and I had a talk on the phone with the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit at Headquarters. There are eighty-one gay liaison officers throughout the Service – twenty-seven in the bush, fifty-four in the city. Not all of them are gay themselves – twenty-five percent of them, they reckon. But whether there’s a network …’ He shrugged. ‘If there is, maybe it’ll be a help. Right now all we have to go on are a dozen garbled descriptions and a voice.’

‘I’ll get the warrant. I’m taking tomorrow morning off, okay? Romy and the baby are coming home.’

‘So soon?’

‘They don’t waste any time these days. Next week she’ll be back at work in the morgue.’

‘You’re macabre. The kid’ll be helping her, I suppose?’

3

‘Where are you going?’

‘Out.’

‘I guessed that. You wouldn’t be dressed like that to have a shower. Where’s Out?’

‘Dad, I’m seventeen – don’t you trust me?’

Maureen had always been the one who might be a rebel; now, it seemed, her time had arrived. She had grown from a tomboy into a pretty girl; no beauty, but attractive. Her dark hair was cut short and had a fringe; what Jan Pretorius, the old movie buff, called the Louise Brooks cut Her figure was hoydenish, she did not have the curves of her sister or her mother; but clothes hung on it well and she wore them with a certain style. She was sitting for her Higher School Certificate and, if all went well, next year she would be going to university to do Communications. She wanted to be a public relations consultant, as Lisa had been after her stint on the diplomatic circuit in London where she had been the High Commissioner’s private secretary; Malone could see Maureen being successful in the PR field, though, and he had never told his daughter this, he thought most public relations was bullshit. Maureen got on well with everyone; with everyone except himself, it seemed. The friction, which he didn’t understand and which hurt, had been gradual over the past three or four months.

‘Yes, I trust you.’ They were alone in the living room. Lisa and Claire were out in the kitchen and Tom was in his room doing his homework. ‘Have you done your homework?’

‘Dad, I’m not like Tom, I’m not a fourteen-year-old. I know what I have to do and I’ve done it. Now I’m just going out for a coupla hours’ fun, the disco down the Bay. Mum’s okayed it. You really do treat me like a child. And that’s one thing I’m not, not any more.’

‘Righto, you win.’

She stared at him; he had the feeling their ages were reversed. ‘Dad, it’s not about winning. You’ve just forgotten what it was like to be young. You’re humping as much baggage as Gran and Grandpa Malone, you’re thinking old. It’s a different world, Dad. I can take care of myself.’

Then she was gone, leaving him feeling old. She had spoken without heat, without cheek: almost with regret that he could not understand her. He looked across the room at the photo of his three children on the bookshelves. It had been taken only nine months ago, in February; but the girl who had just gone out was a stranger to the laughing teenager in the photo. Baggage: she had used the word he had used to describe himself to John Kagal yesterday morning.

‘What’s up?’ Lisa came into the room, settled on to the couch beside him. ‘You and Maureen having words again?’

‘Am I old?’

‘Sometimes. Don’t worry about her. She talks to me, I know what’s going through her mind. She’s not going to go wrong.’

‘What if some bloke does her wrong?’

‘She’d tell me. I don’t think you have to worry. Neither of our girls is going to be done wrong, as you call it.’

‘Are they on the Pill?’

She had a trick of looking at him out of the corner of her eyes. ‘What will you do if I say yes? Their bodies are their own. We discussed it, both of them came to me – give them credit for that. I didn’t ask them if they were sleeping with anyone, but I know they’re not sleeping around.’

‘I should bloody hope not! What about safe sex? Did you talk about that with them?’

‘Don’t get crotchety with me.’ She was as equable as if she were discussing homework with Tom. ‘Relax, darling. At least both our girls are straight.’

It was his turn to look sideways. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning I’ve noticed how edgy you’ve been since you moved on to this latest case. I don’t think you could handle it if one of the girls came and told us she was a lesbian.’

‘I might handle it better than you think.’ But he knew he didn’t sound convincing.

She kissed him, that condescending kiss that turns a wife into a mother; then she switched on the TV remote control. ‘Time for Sydney Beat.’

Claire came in, flopped down in an easy chair. ‘Oh God, not another cop show!’

‘Your father likes to look at it to see how many technical errors they make. It’s his version of Wheel of Fortune.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Claire, picking up a book. ‘You just want to get your menopausal flutters over—’ She named the star of the show, a muscular actor who seemed to spend all his time off-duty with his shirt off. ‘You’d better keep an eye on her, Dad.’

It was a one-hour series that had been running for three months, to critical acclaim and public indifference. It was shot with an in-your-face, up-your-nose camera technique that a lone dissenting critic had described as film school wankery. Malone had watched the previous week’s episode, found no glaring technical errors, liked the script but grown tired of the close-ups of acne-riddled villains, of the flaring nostrils of the hero and the backs of the heads of minor actors whose only purpose seemed to be to block out half the screen while the camera focussed on a player in the near-background.

Tonight’s episode was about a serial killer, someone who was killing off cops. The hero, shirt on or off, was the principal cop in danger. The actor was a big blond man in his mid-thirties; his sidekick was a younger, slim dark man. The script avoided the wise-cracking buddy-buddy set-up; there was a genuine relationship between the partners, much as there was between Malone and Clements. That, at least, was real.

He saw the last half-hour with only half an eye and heard it with only half an ear; he dozed through the climax, and was wakened by Lisa digging him in the ribs.

Ten minutes later he was in bed. Just before he dropped off, a voice whispered on the edge of his consciousness, a soft echo, but before he could identify it he had fallen asleep.