Endpeace
Endpeace
Jon Cleary
ENDPEACE is a 1996 novel from award-winning Australian author Jon Cleary. It is the thirteenth book to feature Sydney detective, Scobie Malone. When Scobie attends a dinner party held by a publishing tycoon, he is called upon to find a killer when the tycoon is shot dead during the night.When wealthy newspaper magnate Sir Harry Huxwood is shot dead in his own bed, it is Inspector Scobie Malone’s job to pick up the pieces and name the killer. This means infiltrating the opulent Huxwood residence, Malmaison House, where Lady Phillipa presides over the sprawling Huxwood family and staff – and a veritable vipers’ nest.As Malone investigates he uncovers the stuff of headlines: a forgotten love affair; Fleet Street incomers versus an ex-crim on the make; a family dogfight over potential handouts of fifty million dollars apiece; a silence that has lasted twenty five years. And, making it smell sweeter on the surface, a rose garden to rival Empress Josephine’s.Amidst unwanted interference from his superiors and all the attention attracted by such a high profile case, the pressure is on Malone to come up with the true story, once and for all.
Dedication (#ulink_e772f628-95c7-5d0d-b5ee-801ac7644edc)
For
Natascia and Vanessa
Benjamin and Isabel
* family *
Contents
Cover (#u7c8d13ed-a2ae-586f-9c89-7aa6e3778cf1)
Title Page (#u0ccb016c-65e9-53c9-b052-890ec609adb6)
Dedication (#ulink_94ecca05-6937-5700-9bfb-e313d0f11c0a)
Chapter One (#ulink_fbb3d8d7-27c2-58f8-bedf-bc925f7a1cb3)
Chapter Two (#ulink_7543f5be-065c-56c7-8fe9-a6f44439337e)
Chapter Three (#ulink_21bb5382-a282-5345-8749-4e65f5e1553f)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_9ae9ab6d-39f1-57ce-bef8-ccdd5b452c67)
1
Malone felt distinctly uncomfortable at this big table in this big house, but no one would have known it; he had the relaxed air of a veteran police officer on the take. Of the eighteen people at dinner ten were family; the Huxwood family in itself was enough to intimidate any outsider. Added to them were the State Premier and his wife; a business tycoon and his wife; and the guests of honour, the British cabinet minister and his wife. Plus Malone himself and, the light at the far end of the table, his wife Lisa.
The cabinet minister’s wife, a large, good-looking woman who had once played goalkeeper or front row for Roedean, whatever that was and she hadn’t bothered to explain, was seated next to Malone. ‘My husband has never forgiven you for what you did to him all those years ago.’ She had a large voice which turned heads all the way down the table in her direction; it was said that she was the only woman in Britain who had been able to stop Baroness Thatcher when the latter was in full flow. ‘Isn’t that so, Ivor?’
Before Ivor could reply, Lady Huxwood looked at Malone; up till now she had virtually ignored him. ‘You arrested Mr Supple?’
‘No,’ said Supple hastily, before another scandal could be added to the long list of British cabinet indiscretions. ‘My wife exaggerates, Scobie. I only felt like that till I retired from cricket.’
‘Twelve years,’ said his wife. ‘A long time to be unforgiving.’
‘Not in this country,’ said the Premier, who had the scars in his back to prove it.
At the far end of the table, seated next to Lisa, Derek Huxwood was grinning evilly. ‘Twenty-two years ago,’ he explained to the other guests, ‘Ivor was one of the stars of the English Test team when they came out here on tour. In the match against New South Wales Scobie clean-bowled him for a duck first ball in each innings. The one and only time in his life that Ivor ever got a pair.’
Phillipa Huxwood favoured Malone with another look. ‘Now I understand why Derek invited you, Mr Malone. I had no idea who you were.’
Derek’s mother was in her seventies and from infancy had been treading on other people’s feelings. Bone-thin, her once-patrician looks had deteriorated into gauntness, but there were hints, like the odd leaves on a dying tree, of the beauty she had once been. Short-sighted but too vain to wear glasses and unable to tolerate contact lenses, she leaned close to everyone she spoke to, so that her unwitting insults had an extra impact. She was now examining Malone closely and he returned her gaze. He had been examined and insulted by the best of lawyers and criminals.
‘Are you still cricketing? You look much too old for that.’
‘I retired years ago. I’m a police officer, a detective-inspector in Homicide.’
Nigel Huxwood, seated halfway down the table, put his head forward, said in his English voice, ‘Homicide, really? In the UK I played detectives in several films, half a dozen times on television. Producers thought I had that unflappable look. I’m just as flappable in real life as the rest of us. Except Derek, of course,’ he said and looked sideways across the table at his brother, a theatrical look that convinced Malone that Nigel must have been a bad actor. Or a bad detective.
At the head of the table Sir Harry, all famous distinction and charm, smiled at Lisa. ‘What’s it like being married to a policeman, Mrs Malone?’
Lisa had been asked that question so many times, but she paused now as if hearing it for the first time. ‘Boring. And worrying. But it’s what my husband wants to do ...’ She smiled down the table at Malone, telling him, Let’s go home before I commit homicide on this crowd. They could read each other’s eyes where others saw only blank stares. ‘Does Lady Huxwood enjoy your being a newspaper publisher?’
‘I’ve never asked her,’ he said, still smiling; he was a constantly good-humoured man, or gave the impression of being one. He raised his voice, repeating the question to his distant wife.
‘Of course!’ She sounded indignant at being asked. ‘All wives should enjoy what their husbands do. I’m no damned feminist!’ She glared around the table, daring any feminist to speak up; but there were no takers. ‘What about you, Enid? Do you enjoy being the Premier’s wife?’
Mrs Bigelow jumped, surprised that her opinion might count; she was a tiny blonde with a lovely smile that she seemed afraid to display. She smiled now, weakly: ‘I’m just background. It’s where I like to be.’ Then her smile brightened as she turned it on her husband, but he just scowled.
‘What about you, Beatrice? You enjoy politics, don’t you?’
Beatrice Supple, whether she enjoyed politics or not, knew how to handle dragons like Lady Huxwood; Britain, or anyway England, had its share of them. ‘Ivor and I agree to disagree. He belongs to the MCC, I campaign against it because it treats women as third-class citizens. He’s RC, I’m Anglican –’
‘Is there any difference these days?’ said Derek.
The talk went on through the remaining courses. Malone, no stranger to a good meal under Lisa’s care, was still impressed by what was put in front of him by the butler and the single waiter. There had been six courses and four wines before Lady Huxwood rose and announced, ‘We ladies will have coffee in the drawing-room.’
Malone’s look of astonishment must have been conspicuous, or perhaps Lisa was the only one who saw it. She smiled at him from faraway and disappeared with the ladies.
Then he was aware of Derek Huxwood standing above him. ‘Don’t mind my dear old mum, Scobie. She hasn’t turned a page on a calendar since 1900. She’s hoping the death of Queen Victoria is just a rumour.’
Malone, a man not given to team reunions, had caught only glimpses of Huxwood over the last twenty years. Huxwood was six years older than Malone, had been the State captain and Malone’s mentor; he had been handsome and lissom and elegant to watch at bat. Now he had put on weight and the once-sharp and jovial eyes had dulled. The black mane of hair was now iron-grey and was cut short in what used to be called a crew-cut but was now, at least by the homophobes in the police service, called a queer-cut. The years had given Derek Huxwood no credit, he looked already on the far cusp of middle age. Only the mouth had not changed: there was still the whimsical smile that was only just short of a sneer.
‘You want one of these?’ He offered a box of cigars. ‘I seem to remember you never smoked?’
‘Still don’t. Why did you invite me tonight, Derek?’
‘Mischief.’ He smiled, then shook his head. He lit his cigar, then went on, ‘No, that’s not true. I think I was looking for a memory of the good old days. Don’t you feel like that occasionally? Lost youth, all that?’
Before Malone could answer, they were joined by the Premier. Bevan Bigelow was a short square man with a blond cowlick always falling down over one eye; it gave him a boyish look, which fooled some voters into thinking he might have more than the usual politician’s quota of principles. Unfortunately his principles were as pliable as a licorice-stick in hot weather; he was all ears to all men and was known in the press gallery as Bev the Obvious. Three years before he had been chosen by the conservative Coalition government as its stop-gap leader and was still leader only because better men were still cutting each other’s throats in their efforts to replace him. There was an election in six days’ time and if the Coalition lost he was gone.
‘I hear you’ve got trouble, Derek. Anything I can do to help?’
Huxwood half-shut one eye, but Malone was sure it was not due to the smoke from his cigar. ‘No broadcasting, Bevan old chap. Okay?’
Bigelow appeared to recognize he had been perhaps too obvious. He looked at Malone as if the latter might be enemy: a newspaperman, for instance. But he knew that Malone was police: they could be just as bad. ‘What do you know, Inspector?’
‘Nothing,’ said Malone and looked at Huxwood for enlightenment, but got none.
Then Ivor Supple came down to Malone’s end of the table and drew him aside, pulling out a chair and sitting down so that they faced each other. ‘I couldn’t have been more pleased when I saw you here tonight, Scobie. I mean that.’
‘Lost youth, all that?’ Then he grinned. ‘Derek has just been telling me that’s why I was invited. It’s all behind us, Ivor. My thirteen-year-old son tries to get me to talk about it, but, I dunno, it’s like trying to catch smoke. What you’re doing now must be more interesting?’
Supple shrugged. ‘Maybe more interesting but not as pleasurable. Sometimes I doze off in the Commons and wonder why I ever got into politics. You’re right about the lost youth and all that. In retrospect all those seasons seem to have been one long golden summer. They like that for you?’
Malone nodded. ‘They weren’t, of course. Why are you out here now? Talking to them down in Canberra?’
‘Only informally. My wife is here on business and I’m just tagging along. The baggage man.’
‘I didn’t know she was a businesswoman. Sorry, I shouldn’t sound surprised –’
‘Don’t worry, old chap. Our generation didn’t know what a businesswoman was. I didn’t know what a woman politician was till I stood up against Boadicea Thatcher. She skittled me first ball, just like you did.’
Supple was tall and thin with an almost ingenuous smile. Malone was not sure what post he had in the new British cabinet, but he was certain that Supple would be popular with both voters and party members. He was equally certain that Supple would never be Prime Minister: nice guys who dozed off in the Commons dreaming of long-ago summers never made it to the top. Supple had been like that as a batsman: one minute thrashing the bowlers to all corners of the field, the next dreamily losing concentration and getting out to a ball that really hadn’t challenged him.
‘What does your wife do?’
Supple looked up as Derek Huxwood put his hand on his shoulder. ‘I see you for a moment, Ivor? Excuse us, Scobie.’
It was polite, yet Malone abruptly felt shut out. His temper rose and for a moment he was tempted to go looking for Lisa and walk out. Then Supple’s vacated chair was taken by a florid-faced man who had arrived at the dinner table just as the party sat down.
‘I’m Ned Custer, one of the sons-in-law. Sheila’s husband. You’re the outsider, right?’
Where did this family learn all its insults? ‘You could say that. I feel like a Jew at a Muslim picnic.’
Custer’s laugh was full-bodied, genuine. He was not quite as tall as Malone and much thicker; what had once been muscle had softened into fat. Malone recognized him now: a corporation lawyer who had once been a prominent rugby forward. Twenty years ago he had led death-or-glory charges that had earned him the nickname Rhino. He had thinning hair that, perhaps influenced by his cheeks and scalp, looked pink; small, very bright blue eyes; and a wide hard mouth that didn’t look as if it should emit such a jolly laugh. He appeared friendly, however, and Malone relaxed back in his chair, took a sip of the port that he had poured for himself.
‘The Huxwoods have always been like that. I was an outsider right up till the day I married Sheila.’ He seemed remarkably confidential for a lawyer, thought Malone; but maybe that was a policeman’s suspicion. ‘In a country as young as ours, they rank as Old Society. They didn’t get here with the First Fleet, but the way they tell it, they were standing on the quay when the ships sailed.’
‘You don’t like them, do you?’ Malone said it carelessly, as if it were a joke.
‘I’ve never understood them, that’s the truth. Not even after three years in the bosom ... I’m Sheila’s second husband ... Ah, here’s my friend Enrico. The other – what do you register as, Enrico? The de facto in-law? The partner-in-law?’
Only then did Malone recognize that Custer was more than half-drunk.
Enrico Quental was a short, handsome man who, Malone immediately decided, was another outsider. When introduced to him earlier, he had assumed that Quental was the husband of Linden, the younger of the Huxwood daughters; whatever he was, he was quiet, withdrawn yet dignified. Malone could not remember hearing him utter a word during dinner. He had applied himself to what was placed before him with all the concentration of a food critic and Malone wondered if that was what he was. Sydney, Lisa had told him, now had more food critics than restaurants.
‘Partner is the word, Ned. It covers a multitude of sins.’ He had a slight accent, but his English sounded excellent. He smiled at Malone. ‘Are you here in an official capacity, Inspector?’
‘I hope not. I’m in Homicide.’
‘Oh, there’s murder all the time around here,’ said Custer, downing his port in one gulp and reaching for the decanter. ‘Verbal homicide. Am I right, Enrico?’
Malone wondered why a police officer, from any squad, should be expected here at the Huxwoods’. But there were currents in this big house swirling beneath the surface; he was suddenly aware of them as if his feet were being swept from beneath him.
Then Derek Huxwood reappeared and Malone had an abrupt image: he’s riding herd on me. ‘Time we went in to join the ladies, chaps.’
‘A little soon, isn’t it?’ Custer held up his newly-filled glass. ‘I’m still to starboard of the port.’
‘Save it for next time, Ned. Tell the Old Man, Enrico, that we’re going in. He’s likely to sit there all night talking to Bev. He thinks politicians are interesting.’
‘Can I be trusted to deliver the message?’ But Quental smiled as he moved away towards Sir Harry.
Derek took Malone’s arm as they moved towards the door of the dining-room. ‘In-laws,’ he said. ‘They can be a problem.’
Malone’s tongue, always straining at its leash, loosened now by four glasses of wine and the glass of port, was blunt: ‘Am I a problem, Derek? I’ve got the feeling you made a mistake inviting us tonight.’
Derek squeezed the elbow. ‘Yes, I did. That’s not meant to be personal. I seem to have made a lot of mistakes lately.’
He glanced sideways at Malone and the latter wondered at the pain in the once-bright eyes.
2
‘We had a dinner party last week at Parliament House,’ said Enid Bigelow. ‘Only when we sat down did I realize all the ladies were members of Alliance Française. So we spoke French all evening. It was fun.’
‘Oh merde,’ said Lady Huxwood, who thought obscenities excusable if in a foreign language. ‘Not for the husbands, I’ll bet. Australian men must be the worst linguists in the world, after the Eskimos. Do police officers these days have to have a second language, Mrs Malone? All this multiculturism.’
‘Only foul language,’ said Lisa. ‘Especially when dealing with the young. I’ve tried to teach my husband Dutch, I’m Dutch-born, but he doesn’t have the ear for it.’
‘Do you speak any other languages?’ Linden seemed the friendliest of the women present; or at least the most relaxed.
‘French and German. And a little Indonesian.’ Lisa was surprised at herself; it was as if she was trying to establish her identity amongst these women. Yet she could not have cared less what they thought of her. ‘I worked on the diplomatic circuit for four years before I met my husband. And I had two years at finishing school in Switzerland.’ She was tempted to say something in French, but it would be a cheap score on the poor Premier’s wife. ‘But the languages I learned there are really not of much value to my children. They’re learning Japanese and Indonesian.’
All the women in the big drawing-room looked at the woman who had been to finishing school in Switzerland, then on the diplomatic circuit and had finished up marrying a policeman.
‘You appear to have had an interesting life,’ said the Premier’s wife, and looked as if she wished desperately to know what an interesting life was like.
‘We all have our own lives to live,’ said the Huxwood younger daughter, then had the grace to smile. ‘God, how smug that sounds!’
‘Indeed it does,’ said her mother.
The two Huxwood daughters were almost totally unlike, except that both had their mother’s large myopic eyes. Sheila, the elder, had her mother’s boniness without the beauty; she wore glasses with large fashion frames that actually made her look attractive. Linden, on the other hand, was comfortably fleshy and, Lisa guessed, wore contact lenses. Both were dark-haired, Sheila’s in a Double Bay modified beehive, Linden’s in a French bob with bangs. Both were expensively dressed in simple dinner dresses and both wore simple diamond pendants and rings that winked lasciviously at anyone who found value in jewellery. Lisa, feeling ashamed that she should even care, was glad she had worn the gold necklace she had inherited from her grandmother. She had always preferred gold to diamonds, though Scobie, bless his stingy heart, had never bought her either.
She had noticed that the other women guests had been as quiet as herself; Lady Huxwood did nothing to put anyone at her ease. The Premier’s wife sat next to Lisa; we’re the two wallflowers, thought Lisa.
Beatrice Supple sat beside Lady Huxwood, and the tycoon’s wife had not sat down at all, hovering on the fringes like a lady-in-waiting.
‘Sit down, Gloria, for heaven’s sake!’ said Lady Huxwood.
Gloria surprised Lisa by saying, ‘My bloody girdle’s killing me. Have I got time to take it off before the men come in?’
‘Go for your life,’ said Linden, giggling. ‘Get a wriggle on.’
Gloria stepped behind Lisa’s chair, grunted and gasped, heaved a sigh of relief and her girdle dropped to the floor. As if they had all been constrained by the same girdle, all the women suddenly seemed to relax. Then the men came into the room, bringing with them their air of self-importance. Or am I, Lisa wondered, becoming paranoid about this house?
Gloria Bentsen, who had now sat down, moved aside on her couch for Sir Harry to sit beside her. He did so, taking her hand, stroking it and smiling, not at her nor her husband but at his wife. Lady Huxwood smiled back, but Lisa couldn’t tell whether she was indulging his mild flirtation or not.
Malone came and stood behind Lisa, leaned down and said softly, ‘I hope you’ve got a bad headache.’
She reached up, took his hand and said just as softly, ‘Splitting. But we can’t leave just yet.’
Nigel Huxwood drew up a chair alongside Lisa. He was the handsomest of the family, with finely chiselled features; the only blemish was a weak mouth but that was disguised by the dark moustache above it and the beautifully capped teeth that were exposed when he smiled. He looked up at Malone. ‘Go and chat to my sister, Scobie, while I try to charm your lovely wife.’
Not wanting to throw up on the big Persian carpet, Malone crossed the room and squeezed into the French two-seater beside Sheila. ‘I’ve been sent to charm you,’ he said and, hearing himself, wanted to throw up even more.
‘Nigel is always doing that. It’s never let me charm you. Brothers can be bastards.’
Gallantry did not come easily to Malone; from what he had read, Irish knights had been a bit slow on the chivalry bit. But he tried: ‘Righto, let’s reverse it. I’m not really good at the charm show.’
‘Is that because you’re a policeman?’
‘That may be part of it.’
‘Is the other part because you’re out of your depth in this house?’
Malone had met snobbery before, but never arrogance like this. ‘Not out of my depth. Just a different sort of breeding.’
She leaned away from him, to get him into better focus it seemed. Then she smiled, a very toothy smile but suddenly surprisingly friendly. ‘Touché, Mr Malone. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, y’know. La Malmaison has sunk more people than you could guess at, over the years. I don’t know whether it’s the house or we Huxwoods.’
‘I think it might be the Huxwoods.’ He would never be asked again, so what the hell?
‘Is that a police opinion or a personal one?’ She didn’t sound offended.
‘Cops are not supposed to have opinions. We just gather evidence and leave the opinions to the jury.’
‘Have you gathered much evidence this evening?’
‘Conflicting.’ He retreated, because all at once she sounded as if she might be likeable: ‘Conflicting evidence never gets you anywhere in a court of law.’
‘I must remember that,’ she said, as if to herself; then she looked up as the tycoon came and stood beside them. ‘Charlie darling, pull up a chair. You’ve met Inspector Malone?’
Malone was not sure exactly what a tycoon was: how rich, how powerful one had to be. There had been a barrage of tycoons in the past decade, most of whom had been shot down like so many balloons. But the newspapers, including the Huxwoods’ own Chronicle and their Financial Weekly, called Charles Bentsen a tycoon. He had emigrated from Sweden at eighteen, one of the few Swedes heading Down Under; his name then had been Bengtssen. He had started as a labourer on a building site and within twenty years owned a corporation. He had built office buildings, shopping malls, roads and bridges: he also built a personal fortune that every year got him into the Financial Weekly’s Rich List. Like all the nation’s New Rich, he had been subjected to the suspicion that no one had made his money honestly in the Eighties, but nothing had ever been proved against him. He possessed only one home, his art collection had been bought out of his own funds and not those of his shareholders, and his charitable works were not legendary only because he did not broadcast them. His wife Gloria had been his secretary and no one had a bad word to say about her. Malone knew very little of this, since he read neither the gossip columns nor the Financial Weekly, but he was prepared to take Bentsen at face value.
He was a big man, still with a labourer’s shoulders; now forty years out of Gӧteborg, he still looked typically Scandinavian, except for the Australian sun cancers. He had a wide-boned face, thick blond hair in which the grey was camouflaged, bright blue eyes; but the mouth looked cruel, or anyway uncompromising. Malone was sure that Bentsen had not made his fortune by patting people on the back.
‘I’ve never met Mr Malone, but I’ve heard a great deal about him.’ Then he looked at Malone. ‘Assistant Commissioner Zanuch is a friend of mine.’
He would be, thought Malone: AC Zanuch spent his free time climbing amongst the social alps. ‘It’s nice of him to mention me.’
‘I gather you get mentioned a lot, Inspector. You seem to specialize in cases that get a lot of attention.’
Malone tried to keep the sharpness out of his voice. ‘I don’t specialize, Mr Bentsen. Murder happens, we in Homicide have to investigate it.’
‘Just like those bumper stickers, Shit Happens?’
‘Usually a little more tragic than that. And sometimes messier.’
‘Don’t fence with him, Charlie,’ said Sheila Custer. ‘He has already put me in my place.’ She put her hand on Malone’s. ‘Only joking, Mr Malone.’
Malone gave her a smile, but he continued to look at Bentsen. Crumbs, he thought, why is everyone in this house so bloody aggressive? What’s scratching at them?
Bentsen said, ‘I read murder mysteries, they’re my relaxation. The old-fashioned sort, not the ones written by muscle-flexing authors.’
‘I get enough of it during the course of a week. I can’t remember when I last read a murder mystery – reading our running sheets is about as close as I get. Do you read books about business leaders?’
‘Only those that fail,’ said Bentsen and looked around him as if one or two fallen heroes might be here in the room.
On the other side of the room Lisa was resisting, without effort, the charm of Nigel Huxwood. In another location she might have good-humouredly responded to him; but not in this house. While pretending to listen to him, she had been taking in her surroundings. There were treasures in this room with which she would have liked to have surrounded herself: the two Renoirs on opposite walls, the Rupert Bunny portrait of two women who might have been earlier Huxwoods. The chairs and couches and small tables were antiques, though the upholstery had been renewed; the drapes were French silk. The room reeked of wealth well spent and, against the grain of her nature, she suddenly felt envious. This house was working on her in a way that made her angry.
She looked up almost with relief, any distraction was welcome, as the two female in-laws, who had been missing since dinner, came back into the drawing-room. They bore down on Lisa and Nigel, drawing up chairs to sit side by side like twins who always did everything together. Yet in looks they could not have been more dissimilar.
Brenda Huxwood was an almost archetypal Irish beauty; the only thing that stopped her face from being perfect was that her upper lip was too Irish, just a little too long. She had been an actress, but her talent had never matched her looks and British producers had always shied away from promoting an actress on beauty alone. She was Nigel’s third wife and, if Lisa had asked her, would have said she was determined to be his last. She had started life with no money but always with an eye to attaining some; now she had grasped it she had no intention of losing it; her credit was that she loved Nigel, despite his faults. The brogue in her voice was only faint, like a touch of make-up to enhance the general appeal, though it could thicken into a soup of anger as others in the room knew.
Cordelia Huxwood, on the other hand, had had to borrow her looks: from hairdressers, beauty salons, aerobics classes. Her mouse-brown hair was tinted, her pale blue eyes somehow made to seem larger than they actually were, her figure, inclined to plumpness, slimmed down by only-God-and-gym-instructors-knew how many hours on exercise machines. The package was artificial, yet sincerity shone out of her so that one instantly liked her. She was inclined to blame herself for too much that might go wrong, to wear hairshirts, but since they were usually by Valentino or Hermès she got little sympathy, especially from her mother-in-law.
‘Where have you two been?’ said Nigel.
‘Talking business,’ said Brenda and made it sound as if she and Cordelia had been composing a poem. Everything with her, Lisa decided, was for effect.
‘We in-laws needed to get a few things straightened out,’ said Cordelia.
Lisa was never sure whether she had been born with a sharp eye, had acquired it as a diplomat’s secretary or had learned it from Scobie: whichever, she did not miss Nigel’s warning glance. ‘You must tell me about it. Later.’
‘Oh, we’ll do that,’ said his wife. ‘Voices will be heard.’
‘They may even be strident,’ said Cordelia. ‘But we mustn’t puzzle Mrs Malone with family problems. Do you have children?’
‘Three. Eighteen, fifteen and thirteen. Two girls and a boy. So far, thank God, giving us no problems.’
‘Lucky you,’ said Cordelia. ‘I hope it stays that way. How’s Mother Dragon?’ she said to Nigel.
‘Starting to yawn openly.’
‘She always does. She has a patent on the open yawn.’
Lisa couldn’t help herself: she giggled. Both Cordelia and Brenda looked at her and smiled widely, as if pleased that an outsider had seen a family joke. But neither said anything and Nigel, covering hastily, turned the conversation off at right angles.
Malone, abruptly left out of a sudden conversation between Sheila and Bentsen, excused himself and headed for the door. Sir Harry, after a final pat of Gloria Bentsen, this time on her attractive knee, rose and followed him. ‘Going, Mr Malone?’
‘Soon, Sir Harry. But first I’d like to use the bathroom.’
‘There’s a lavatory off the library.’ The old-fashioned word brought a grin to Malone’s lips. His mother was the only other person he knew who talked of the lavatory instead of the toilet or the loo. ‘This way.’
The library was a big room with the high ceiling that the rest of the ground floor of the house seemed to possess. It was the sort of room Malone saw in films and, secretly, yearned for; for some reason he had never confessed the yearning to anyone, even Lisa. In a room like this he would gather together all the books he had let slip by him, would wrap himself in the education that Lisa had and he had missed, would listen to the music that his heart would understand but that his ear had yet to interpret. He wondered if Sir Harry, with all his advantages, would understand his yearning.
A leather-covered door was let into a wall of books; Sir Harry gestured at it and Malone went in, under a complete set of Winston Churchill, for a piss. When he came out Sir Harry was standing at the tall bow-window that looked out on to the tiny bay and beyond that to the harbour. The only lighting in the dark brown room came from a brass lamp on the wide leather-topped desk. When Sir Harry turned back to face Malone, he looked suddenly much older in the yellow glow. The lines in his face had become gullies, the eyes had no gleam in them.
‘A good piss is one of life’s little pleasures.’ Even his smile looked ghastly. Then he sat down at the desk, there was more light on his face and he suddenly appeared less frail. ‘Were you and my son Derek ever close, Mr Malone?’
‘Scobie ... No, not really. We got on well, but there was the age difference. In sport six years is quite a gap. He’d been playing for five or six years before I got into the State team. We weren’t real professionals back then, none of us earned the money they do these days.’
‘I don’t think Derek ever gave a thought to what he earned as a cricketer.’
‘He could afford not to.’
The old man accepted the rebuke. ‘Sorry. So you and he were not close?’
‘Not as bosom friends, no. He was my – well, I guess my mentor.’
Sir Harry nodded. ‘He was always good at that. Mentoring, or whatever the verb is. Except with his siblings.’
That was another old-fashioned word that, unlike lavatory, had come back into fashion. Malone, having no siblings, could think of nothing to say and, as he often did in interrogations, stood and waited. The old man seemed not to notice his silence; he went on, ‘What’s your heritage, Scobie?’
The question made Malone pause; he could not remember ever having been asked it before. ‘Not much, I’m afraid. I’ve never bothered to trace the family further back than my grandparents. And even that far back I’m in the dark on a lot of things.’ Including my own mother’s early life; or anyway her early love. ‘I’m of Irish descent, the name tells you that. I guess all I’ve really inherited, if I knew about it, is a lot of pain and trouble. That’s Ireland, isn’t it?’
‘It doesn’t seem to have affected you. On the surface.’
‘Maybe it’s because I don’t think too much about it. Maybe I should.’
Sir Harry shook his head. ‘If you don’t have to, don’t. Heritage, I’m beginning to think, is like history – it’s bunk. Henry Ford, one of history’s worst philosophers, said that. But perhaps, who knows, he had a point.’ He had an occasional stiff way of putting his thoughts into words, as if he were writing an editorial. Then he smiled and stood up. ‘I’d like you to come again, Scobie. I don’t get to talk enough to ’ Then he smiled again, without embarrassment. ‘I was going to say the common folk. Does that offend you?’
‘I’m a republican, Sir Harry. We’re all common folk.’
‘You must debate some time with my wife. She’s a monarchist through and through. At Runnymede she would have been on side with King John. You’ve heard of Magna Carta?’
There it was again, the arrogance: unwitting, perhaps in Sir Harry’s case, but endemic. ‘They were still teaching English history when I was at school. I had to study it in a plain brown wrapper, so my father wouldn’t throw a fit. He hates the Brits.’
‘Perhaps you should bring him here to debate with my wife.’
‘Are you a monarchist, Sir Harry?’ All at once Malone was interested in the older man, wanted to put him in front of the video recorder in one of the interrogation rooms at Homicide. Take him apart, perhaps take a hundred and fifty years of Huxwoods apart. This family, this man, had wielded influence that had toppled governments, that had sent young men to a war they didn’t believe in, that had, in various ways, influenced the running of the force in which Malone himself served.
‘Mr Malone, I fear that all my beliefs, whatever they were, have somehow turned to water.’ Then abruptly it seemed that he had revealed enough of himself: ‘Shall we rejoin the others?’
They went out into the wide tessellated hallway. A curving staircase went up to the first floor, its polished walnut banister following it like a python heading for the upper galleries of a rain-forest. Four of the family stood in the hallway: Derek, Nigel, Sheila and Linden. Halfway up the staircase Lady Huxwood had paused, stood with one hand on the banister and stared down at her children. Malone, the outsider, unconnected to whatever demons were stirring in the family, was struck with a sudden image: he had seen it all before on some late night movie, The Magnificent Ambersons or The Little Foxes, Bette Davis or some other over-the-top actress pouring venom from a great height.
‘You deserve nothing, none of you! I should have aborted the lot of you!’
Then she went on up the stairs, paused on the gallery that ran round the upper level of the hallway and looked back down into the pit. Malone waited for another spit of spite, was surprised when she looked directly at him and snapped, ‘Goodnight, Mr Malone. I’m sure you won’t come again.’
Then she was gone. There was absolute silence and stillness for a long moment, then the four siblings let out a collective sigh. Sir Harry touched Malone’s arm, said, ‘Forgive us, Mr Malone,’ and went on up the stairs, moving stiffly and not looking back at his sons and daughters.
Malone had known embarrassment, but nothing like this. He looked for an exit, some way he could skirt the four Huxwoods and be ignored by them. Then Lisa appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, coat over her dinner dress. If she had heard what had just been said in the hallway, she gave no sign of it.
She held out her hand to Derek. ‘Thank you, Derek, A most entertaining evening.’
Nigel and his sisters slipped away, not even looking at the Malones, just disappearing into the shadows of the house. Derek shook hands with Lisa, did the same with Malone, then escorted them towards the heavy front door.
‘I’m glad you thought it was entertaining.’ He was smiling, that whimsical grin just short of a sneer. ‘Like Macbeth or King Lear. You should see us when we’re in top form. Our paper’s cartoonists could get a month’s run out of us.’
3
Driving home Lisa said, ‘Don’t ever accept an invitation to that house again, understand? Never!’
‘There’s no chance of that. What happened while I was out with Sir Harry?’
‘I don’t know. All of a sudden the four of them were down one end of the room with Lady Huxwood, arguing in whispers. The rest of us were at the other end, trying to look as if we hadn’t been left there like – what’s that expression you use?’
‘Like shags on a rock?’
‘That’s it. We never go there again, understand?’
He knew how adamant she could be, but never about anything as unimportant as a dinner invitation. He had, however, noticed a gradual change in her over the past few months. Last year she had been operated on for cervical cancer; the operation had been successful and there had been no metastasis since. She had undergone chemotherapy and it had had a temporary effect: there had been the recurring bouts of vomiting and she had lost some of her lustrous blonde hair. The hair had grown back, as thick as ever, and she was once again healthily vibrant; but her patience had thinned, she had less time for inconsequentialities. It was as if she had looked at the clock and decided it was closer to midnight than she had thought. She had not become self-centred, but she had begun to ration her time, her attention and her charity. He couldn’t blame her: she had been fortunate to come out on the lucky side of a fifty-fifty chance.
‘What drives them to be like that, for God’s sake?’ She was stirred, more than she should be. ‘They have everything, there’s nothing missing in their lives. Not the way ordinary people count things. And yet ... Have you ever met such a bunch?’
‘There’s lots more around like them, I’m sure. We just never meet them. When we do, it’s usually after a homicide and by then they’ve called a truce.’
‘Lady Huxwood invites homicide. Anyhow, we never go there again. Watch the red light.’
‘You’re the one who’s driving. You watch it.’
Chapter Two (#ulink_f6928205-e4cb-5dc2-9e37-36ba93af0d5b)
1
For several years the Homicide Unit of the Major Crime Squad, South Region, had been housed in the Hat Factory, a one-time commercial building where the ambience had suggested that the Police Service was down on its luck, that the hat had had to be passed around before the rent could be raised. Recently Homicide, along with other units in the Major Crime Squad, had been moved to quarters that, for the first few weeks, had brought on delusions that money had been thrown at the Service which the State government had actually meant for more deserving causes such as casino construction or pork-barrelling in marginal electorates.
Strawberry Hills was the enticing name of the new location, though no strawberry had ever been grown there nor had it ever been really enticing. It had begun as clay-topped sandhills held together by blackbutts, blood-woods, angophoras and banksias, but those trees had soon disappeared as the men with axes arrived and development raised its ugly shacks. ‘Environment’, in its modern meaning, had just been adopted in England, but so far word, or the word, had not reached the colony. For years there was a slow battle between the sandhills and the houses built on them, but that did not stop a developer from naming his estate after the sylvan Strawberry Hill in England where Horace Walpole, in between writing letters to addressees still to be chosen, had built a villa that would never have got above foundation level if it had been built on the colony’s sandhills. Time passed and gradually Strawberry Hills, like the sandhills, virtually disappeared off maps. The city reached out and swamped it. A vast mail exchange was built where once tenement houses had stood, but though Australia Post could sort a million letters an hour it couldn’t sort out the industrial troubles in the exchange. Eventually the huge ugly structure was closed as a mail exchange, an impressive glass facade was added, as if to mask what a problem place it had been. Six huge Canary Islands date palms stood sentinel in the forecourt, looking as out of place as Nubian palace guards would have been. The winos across the street in Prince Alfred Park suffered the DTs for a week or two, but became accustomed to the new vista and soon settled back into the comfort of the bottle.
Australia Post moved its administrative staff back in and then looked around for tenants who would be less of a problem than its unions had been. Whether it was conscious of the irony or not, it chose the Major Crime Squad. Level Four in the refurbished building was almost too rich in its space and comfort for the Squad’s members, but it is difficult to be stoical against luxury. One of the pleasures for those in Homicide on night duty was to put their feet up on their brand-new desks, lean back and, on the Unit’s television set, watch re-runs of Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue and pity the poor bastards who had to work in such conditions.
The morning after the Huxwood dinner Malone overslept, but, a creature of certain habits, he still went for his five-kilometre walk before breakfast. It was nine-thirty before he reached Homicide and let himself in through the security door. Russ Clements was waiting for him, looking worried.
‘You sick or something? I rang Lisa ten minutes ago -’
‘I’m okay. I knew there was nothing in the synopsis -’
‘There is now. Four murders in our Region alone, two in North Region’s. You and I are on our way out to Vaucluse –’
‘I’m not going out on any job. That’s for you –’
The big man shook his head. ‘I think you’d better come on this one, Scobie.’
Malone frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Lisa told me where you were last night. Malmaison House. That’s where we’re going. Kate Arletti’s out there waiting for us – I sent her out as soon as Rose Bay called in. It’s their turf, theirs and Waverley’s.’
‘A homicide at Malmaison?’ Lady Huxwood invites homicide. ‘Who? Lady Huxwood?’
Clements looked at him curiously. ‘What made you say that?’
‘Lisa and I were talking about her on our way home ... It was a bugger of a night, you’ve got no idea. She’s the – she was the Dragon Lady of all time.’
‘She probably still is. It was the old man, Sir Harry, who was done in.’
Malone managed not to look surprised. No one knew better than he that murder always held surprises, not least to the victim. But Sir Harry? ‘How?’
‘I’m not sure yet. Rose Bay called in, said there was a homicide, but gave no details other than that it was Sir Harry who copped it. The place is probably already overrun with the media clowns.’
‘What about the other murders?’
‘I’ve organized those. I’ll tell you about them on the way out to Vaucluse.’
Homicide had been re-organized late last year in another of the Service’s constant changes. Modern life, Malone thought, had been taken over by planners; they were everywhere, termites in the woodwork of progress. Change for change’s sake had become a battle cry: if it ain’t broke, let’s fix it before it does break. Malone was still the Inspector in charge of Homicide, but he was now called Co-ordinator and his job, supposedly, was now more desk-bound. Clements had been promoted to senior-sergeant and was now the Field Supervisor. Murder was still committed, evidence was still collected, the pattern never changed; only the paperwork. Malone knew that conservatism was creeping over him like a slow rash, but he didn’t mind. The itch, actually, was a pleasure.
The two detectives drove in an unmarked car out to the farthest of the affluent eastern suburbs. Vaucluse lies within the shoulder of the ridge that runs out to end in South Head at the gateway to the harbour; it is a small area facing down the harbour like a dowager gladly distant from the hoi polloi. The suburb is named after a property once owned by a titled convict who was as thick in the head as the timber that grew down the slope from the ridge. He built a small stone house and surrounded it with a moat filled with soil shipped out from the Irish bogs – ‘to keep out the snakes’. The area has had several notable eccentrics since then, but Sir Henry Brown Hayes had established the standard. The Wentworths, a family with its own quota of eccentrics, were the first to give the suburb its social tone, which it has never lost.
The first Huxwood arrived in 1838, bought five acres along the shore and built the first stage of what was to become La Malmaison. Huxwoods still owned the five acres, paying local taxes that exceeded the annual entertainment allowance of the entire local council. There were three houses on the estate, which had not been subdivided: the Big House, Little House One and Little House Two. Tradesmen, coming to the estate for the first time, had been known to expect fairies at the bottom of the extensive gardens and were surprised to find the family appeared to be both sensible and heterosexual.
Huxwood Road had been named by the founder of the family, determined to have his name on the map; in the 1840s, when he had suffered his first delusion of grandeur, it had been no more than a dirt track. Some years ago, Sir Harry, at the urging of his wife, had attempted to have the council change the name, insisting the family was not interested in advertising or being on any map. But Huxwood Road was now the street in Vaucluse, if not in Sydney, and the residents, having paid fortunes for the address, were not going to find themselves at a location that nobody would recognize. One didn’t pay thousands of dollars a year in taxes to live in Wattle Avenue or, God forbid, Coronation Street.
When Malone and Clements arrived, the street had gone down several hundred thousand dollars in rateable value, at least temporarily. It was chockablock with police cars, press and radio cars, TV vans and an assorted crowd of two or three hundred spectators, most of whom looked as if they had rushed here from nearby Neilsen Park beach. The street had not looked so low grade since the titled convict’s day. The snakes had taken over the Garden of Eden, Irish bog soil notwithstanding.
‘Christ Almighty,’ said Clements. ‘It looks like the finish to the City to Surf gallop.’
He nudged the car through the crowd, in through the wide gates of the estate and down the driveway to the front of the house. Several vehicles were parked there, including three police cars and a private ambulance. As Clements pulled up, another car came down the driveway behind them. Romy Clements got out.
‘What’re you doing here?’ It had the directness of a husband-to-wife remark.
Romy gave Clements a brush-off smile, looked instead at Malone. ‘I thought I’d have a look at how the other two per cent lives. I used rank and told Len Paul I’d do the job.’ She was the Deputy-Director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine and ran the day-to-day routine of the city morgue; normally she would not respond to a call for a government medical officer in a homicide. ‘Shall we go in?’
‘I’ll bet she fingers the curtains first,’ Clements told Malone. ‘Then she’ll look at the kitchen. Then she’ll look at the corpse.’
Malone was glad there was nobody close enough to hear the banter. Outsiders might not appreciate that no disrespect was intended, just that murder was part of the day’s work. They went in through the open door, beneath a carved stone replica, like a coat-of-arms, of the Huxwood Press logo: an open book marked with a bookmark, inscribed Only the Truth. The wide hallway inside seemed crowded with people standing around looking lost. It reminded Malone of a theatre lobby and latecomers wondering if seats were still available.
Kate Arletti pushed her way into Malone’s path. ‘Morning, sir. The Rose Bay officers are here and between us we’ve got a few facts. Can we go into that room there?’
It was the library, where Sir Harry last night had said his beliefs had turned to water. The room now had none of last night’s shadows; the summer sun streamed in through the big bay window. Out in the tiny bay a small yacht rocked daintily in the wake from a passing ferry. Then a launch hove into view, crowded with photographers trying to capture the house from the water. Two uniformed policemen appeared down on the shoreline and waved them away. With the policemen was an elderly gardener holding a spade like an axe. Malone nodded, condoning the gardener’s threat of assault and battery.
‘The body was discovered at seven o’clock this morning,’ said Kate Arletti. ‘The butler went up with his morning tea. What’s the matter?’
‘I shouldn’t be grinning. But all this sounds like something out of Agatha Christie. Butler, morning tea ... We don’t get many crime scenes like this, Kate. How did he die?’
‘A gunshot wound to the side of the head, left temple. It looks like death would have been instantaneous. Dr Clements will confirm that, I suppose.’
‘How are the family?’
‘Shattered, those I’ve met. All except the eldest son, Derek. He’s got some men from the Chronicle out in the garden room, he’s organizing how the homicide is to be reported. He strikes me as cold-blooded. Sorry, I shouldn’t be making comments like that so early in the piece.’
She was small and blonde, a little untidy in her dress but crisp in everything she did. She was dressed in a tan skirt and a brown cotton shirt; somewhere there would be a jacket and Malone would bet she had already forgotten where she had left it. She was pretty in an unremarkable way, her face not disfigured but lent character by the scar down her left jawline. When she had been a uniformed cop a junkie had tried to carve her up with a razor and she had retaliated by breaking his nose with the butt of her gun. Six months ago, when Malone had first met her, she had been in uniform, neat and tidy as a poster figure. Since coming into Homicide, into plainclothes, her natural untidiness had emerged. All that was still neat about her was her work. With a sartorial wreck like Russ Clements setting an example, Malone had never had the heart to ask her to do up a button or roll up a loose sleeve.
‘What about Lady Huxwood?’
She hesitated. ‘Composed, I guess would be the word. She’s pretty – formidable?’
‘That’s another good word. I was here for dinner last night, I’ll tell you why some other time. They’re a weird mob, Kate. Don’t entertain any preconceived notions about them. Take ’em bit by bit, inch by inch.’
‘It sounds as if you didn’t enjoy last night?’
‘I’m not going to enjoy this morning, either.’
They went out into the hallway, which was less crowded now. Clements came towards them, biting his lip, an old habit when his thoughts did not fit as they should. Whether it was because Romy had dressed him or he had known, subconsciously, that he would be coming to this elegant house, this morning he was not his usual rumpled self. He wore an olive-grey lightweight suit, a blue button-down shirt and a blue silk tie with club or regimental stripes; though he had not belonged to a club in fifteen years and never to a regiment. His broad face, just shy of being good-looking, had a harried look, an expression unusual for him.
‘I’ve had only a glance at the family so far – that’s enough. Listening to ’em ...’ He shook his head. ‘Keep an eye on ’em, Kate. We’re going upstairs.’
He and Malone climbed the curve of the stairs. Halfway up Malone paused and looked down: this was the spot where Lady Huxwood had told her children she should have aborted the lot of them. It was an elevation for delivering pronouncements; he wondered how many other insults and dismissals had been hurled from here. Then he went on after Clements, following him into a bedroom off the gallery.
It was a big room with old-fashioned furniture: a four-poster bed, a heavy wardrobe and a dressing-table that could have accommodated at least two people. A large television set, in an equally large cabinet, stood in one corner. On a table by the two tall windows was the only modern note, a computer.
Romy, in a white coat now, was drawing off a pair of rubber gloves. She gestured at the body on the bed and nodded to the two men from the funeral contractors. ‘You can take him to the morgue now. Tell them I’ll do the autopsy.’ Then she crossed to join Malone and Clements by the windows. ‘Time of death is always guess-work, but I’d say he’d been dead ten to twelve hours. I’ll take some fluid from his eyes when I get back to the morgue, check the amount of potassium in it. That gives a bit more precision in the timing, but don’t expect me to pinpoint it.’
‘Any sign of a struggle?’
‘None. He could have been asleep when he was shot, I don’t know. There are powder-marks on a pillow, looks as if whoever killed him used it to muffle the shot.’
Malone walked over to the bed to take a last look at Sir Harry before the contractors zipped him up in the body bag. The democracy of death had done nothing for Sir Harry’s arrogance; a last spasm of pain looked more like an expression of distaste at the world he had just left. Malone nodded to one of the men and the zip closed over Sir Harry Huxwood, like a blue pencil through one of the many editorials he had written.
‘There’s this –’ Romy pulled on one of the rubber gloves, took a small scrap of paper from the pocket of her white coat. ‘Looks like he had a cadaveric spasm. It happens – the muscles tighten like a vice. It’s usually the hand that spasms, but sometimes the whole body does, though that’s pretty rare.’
Malone held the piece of paper with the pair of hair-tweezers he always carried. Clements said, ‘It’s a torn scrap, looks like it’s been torn off the corner of a letter or a memo. Good quality paper. Evidently whoever did him in tried to take the whole paper, but he wouldn’t let go. If they shot him in the dark, maybe they didn’t know it was torn till they got outside.’
‘Why would he be holding a letter or a memo in the dark?’ Malone held up the fragment. ‘There’s one word on it in red pencil. No – N – O, exclamation mark. Got your French letter?’
Clements produced one of the small plastic envelopes he always had in his pockets, grinning at Romy as he did so. He slipped the scrap of paper into the envelope. ‘I’ve never used these as condoms, in case you’re wondering.’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised at anything he did before we met,’ she told Malone, taking off her white coat and folding it neatly. ‘I’ll see Ballistics gets the bullet when I’ve done the autopsy.’
‘How’s business? Can you do him this morning?’
‘They told me before I came out here there’d been six homicides last night, plus four dead in accidents. He may have to take his turn.’
‘He hasn’t been used to that. Put him at the head of the list.’
‘Inspector –’ All at once she was not Mrs Clements but the Deputy-Director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Her squarely beautiful face became squarer as she set her jaw; her dark eyes lost their gleam, seemed to become even darker. It was what Clements called her Teutonic look. ‘Nobody jumps the queue in our morgue. I’ll get to him when I get to him.’
Malone was glad the funeral contractors had already gone with the body; he did not like being ticked off in public. Clements looked embarrassed for him, but said nothing.
‘Romy, I’m not pandering to Sir Harry because of who he is. Or was. But with all due respect to the other five murder victims, the media aren’t going to be interested in them. They’re going to be on my back about this one. And so will my boss and the AC Crime and the Commissioner and the Premier and, for all I know, maybe God Himself.’
‘Tough titty, as you vulgarians say. I’ll do him when I do him. That all?’ She had packed her small bag, stood like a wife walking out on two husbands.
Malone recognized he was not going to get anywhere with her. He nodded at the door to an adjoining room. ‘Whose room is that?’
‘Lady Huxwood’s. I was told she wasn’t to be disturbed.’ Romy was still cool. ‘I’ll see you at home, Russ. Pick up the meat.’
Then she was gone and Clements said, ‘Don’t you know you don’t push a German around? You went about that in the wrong way, mate.’
‘Righto, you work on her, if you’re so bloody subtle.’
‘It’s not that I’m subtle. I’m married to her. You learn a few things. I thought you would have known that. The Dutch are as stubborn as the Germans, aren’t they?’
‘One thing I’ve learned, never bring up ethnic differences in a marriage. That’s a good way of starting World War Three ... All right, see what you can do with her. I don’t want to be carrying the can for the next week. Let’s go down and talk to the family.’
Down in the hallway one of the Rose Bay detectives, a middle-aged man named Akers, was waiting for them. He was a senior-constable and had the resigned look of a man who realized he might, just might, make sergeant before he retired. His hair was already grey and his plump face was pink with blood vessels close to the surface.
‘Some of the family are here, Scobie, some have gone home. You’ll want to talk to them?’
‘I’ll talk to those that are here.’ Malone looked up and around the high hallway. ‘What’s the set-up here? How many rooms?’
‘Fourteen in this house, not including the bathrooms but including three rooms for the staff. There’s a wing out the back for them, beside the garages. The butler and cook are husband and wife, name’s Krilich, they’re Yugoslavs. Outside there’s what they call Little House One and Little House Two –’ He made a face. ‘I think Enid Blyton or Beatrix Potter must of stayed here once.’
‘You’re well read, Jim.’
Akers grinned, relaxing; up till now he had been a bit stiff. Local Ds never did like Major Crime Squad men appearing on their turf. ‘My wife’s a schoolteacher ... Derek, the eldest son, and his family live in Little House One – it has eight rooms, I believe. Little House Two has six rooms and Sheila, the elder daughter, and her husband live there – they have a child, but she lives out.’
‘What about Nigel and his wife? And Linden and her husband?’
Akers looked surprised that Malone was so well acquainted, but he made no comment. ‘Nigel, the actor –’ He uttered ‘the actor’ as he might have said ‘the poofter’; the theatrical profession obviously got no rating with him. ‘He and his wife, she’s an actor too, I hear. Or was. They have a flat at Point Piper. He has two kids, a boy and a girl – he’s been married twice before. The kids are from different mothers. The younger sister – Linden, did you say? – she and her husband – actually, he’s her de facto – they live out in the country, somewhere south of Bowral. They have no kids, though she’s been married before. They stayed here last night. In the Big House,’ he said and just managed not to simper.
‘Nice rundown, Jim. You been here before?’
‘About two years ago. There was an attempted break and enter, but they were disturbed and got away.’
‘Righto, let’s go and talk to someone. Derek, the eldest, first.’
‘He’s in the garden room. Got three guys from the Chronicle with him. I’ll leave him to you and Russ. I’ve gotta report to my boss at Waverley.’
‘Tell him I’ll check with him later.’ It was the old territorial imperative, everybody protected his own little authority. ‘He didn’t put in an appearance?’
‘Superintendent Lozelle leaves the silvertails to us. I think he finds the riff-raff easier to deal with. Don’t quote me.’
Jim Akers, having had no rank for so long, had no respect for it. But he was not disrespectful of Malone and the latter let him get away with it. ‘Maybe he’s wiser than either of us. Give him my regards.’
Then he and Clements turned into the garden room, next door to the library. The entire wall that faced the harbour was one big bay window; the room was half-conservatory. Sections of the huge window were open, letting in some of the mild nor’easter, but the room was still warm. Derek and the three men with him were in their shirtsleeves. They stood as if lined up for a team photo, backed by a bank of palms in big brass-bound wooden tubs. There were no pictures decorating the walls, but flowers cried out for attention in a profusion of vases of all shapes and sizes. It was a room, Malone guessed, where the watering-can would be used more than tea- or coffee-pot.
Derek stepped forward, raised his hand as if to shake Malone’s, then thought better of it. He didn’t smile when he said, ‘So you’re here officially after all, Scobie.’
Malone kept it official: none of the old cricket mates’ act. ‘That’s how it is, Mr Huxwood. This is Detective-Sergeant Clements. Who are these gentlemen?’
Huxwood looked surprised, as if he had expected Malone to be less formal. Then: ‘Oh yes. This is Mr Gates, our managing editor –’ He seemed to emphasize the Mr. ‘Mr Shoemaker, the Chronicle’s editor. And Mr Van Dieman, of –’ He named one of the three top law firms in Sydney. ‘We’ve been deciding how to handle the story of – of what’s happened.’
‘How are you going to handle it?’
‘It’s difficult. My own impulse – a member of the family, all that – my own impulse would be to bury – no, that’s the wrong word –’ Despite what Kate Arletti had said, Derek did sound flappable, something Malone had not expected. ‘Put the story on one of the inside pages. But it’s Page One stuff, let’s face it. What the Herald and the Australian and the Telegraph-Mirror, especially them, will make of it, God only knows. And every other paper in the country.’
‘Not to mention radio and TV.’ Gates was a plump little man with soft brown, almost womanly eyes, a neat moustache above a neat mouth and an harassed air that did not appear to be habitual. Malone had no idea what a managing editor did, but Mr Gates was not managing too well at the moment. ‘Christ knows what rumours they’ll spout. I can hear them now ...’
Shoemaker couldn’t hear them; or if he could, he gave no sign. He was a tall, wide man with black kinked hair; he had fierce black eyebrows and a bulldozer jaw. Malone could imagine his scaring the pants off cadet reporters, boy and girl alike; but whatever his approach, it must have pleased the Huxwoods. He had been editor for ten years, a long time in modern Australian newspapers. ‘We’ll run the story straight, as if it was some other proprietor, not our own, who’d been murdered. Will you be in charge of the investigation, Inspector? Can I come to you for progress reports?’
‘I’ll let you know,’ said Malone. ‘For now it looks as if I’m in charge. But I could be out-ranked by lunchtime.’
Shoemaker grinned; or gave a grimace that might have been a grin. ‘I follow. It could be like our Olympic challenge, everyone jumping into the act. Well, I’d better be getting back to the Haymarket.’ Huxwood Press, its offices and printing press, was in an uptown area of the city, had been there for a hundred and fifty years. ‘Give my sympathy to the family, Derek. I’ll come back this afternoon, be more formal.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Gates and was gone out the door ahead of Shoemaker.
‘What does Mr Gates do?’ said Clements, who liked everyone labelled. ‘Managing editor?’
Derek looked at Van Dieman before he replied. ‘It’s a title we borrowed from the Americans and changed it a little. He sort of manages the editorial side.’
This, Malone realized, was office politics and he didn’t want to get into that, not now.
‘Do you mind if Alan stays?’ Derek gestured at Van Dieman. ‘Or will that look as if I’m preparing some sort of defence?’
‘Do you expect to be on the defensive?’ said Malone.
‘No.’ Derek sat down on a cushioned cane lounge, waved to the other three men to take seats. ‘But it is murder. Christ!’ He abruptly put a hand over his eyes, was silent a long moment. The others waited; then he withdrew his hand and blinked. But Malone could see no tears. ‘No one deserves to go out like that.’
‘We want no sensationalism,’ said Van Dieman.
Resentment shot up in Malone like a missile; but it was Clements who said, ‘The Police Service doesn’t go in for sensationalism, Mr Van Dieman. It’s the media does that.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ said the lawyer, but he sounded a little too hasty to convey that.
Though he was no more than forty, he was a grey man: grey-faced, grey-haired, grey-suited. The only spot of colour was his tie, but even that was plain purple rather than the strips of regurgitation that had been the fashion for the past couple of years. He had a soft voice, a grey voice, and a composure about him that hid his reputation. Malone had never met him, but knew that Van Dieman was considered the toughest corporation lawyer in town, if not the country.
Malone decided it was time to get down to cases. ‘It’s only a guess at the moment, but we think the murder occurred last night somewhere around midnight. Had the dinner party broken up by then?’
Derek nodded. ‘I think so. My wife and I were over in our house by eleven-thirty. The others who weren’t staying here had gone.’
‘Leaving who here?’
‘My sister Linden and her – her partner. They usually stay here when they come down from Sutton Forest. And Ivor and Beatrice Supple are staying here – or they were. We moved them out an hour ago, sent them into the Sheraton-on-the-Park. Sheila and her husband live over in the other house.’
‘Little House Two?’
‘You find that quaint? Or twee? Don’t look like that when you mention the houses in front of my mother. She thought she was being sarcastic when she named them, but everyone took the names seriously. If you can take names like that seriously ...’ Derek seemed to be talking too much.
‘How is your mother?’
‘Pretty shattered. She and Dad –’ He stopped, looked at Van Dieman as if for advice, then went on, ‘It’s hard to describe how close they were. People outside the family might have mistakenly thought they were always at odds with each other. They weren’t –’ He shook his head. ‘All our lives it was them against us. The children.’
‘Derek –’ said Van Dieman warningly.
‘Ah Christ, what’s it matter now, Alan? It’s all going to come out soon enough.’
There was silence in the big room but for the rustle of a sudden breeze amongst the potted palms. Out on the water someone in the photographers’ launch shouted something at one of the policemen on the shore; the policeman, risking being photographed in the act, gave the someone the finger. Then Malone said, ‘What’s going to come out? You mind telling us?’
A palm frond was brushing Derek’s shoulder; he raised a hand and absent-mindedly stroked it, as he might have a woman’s comforting fingers. He didn’t look at either of the detectives as he said, ‘There are certain members of the family want to sell the Press. Lock, stock and barrel, as they say.’
Malone looked at Clements, the business expert; the latter was frowning, not quite believing what he had heard. ‘Sell Huxwood Press? Everything?’
‘Everything. The papers, the magazines, the radio and TV stations in the other States ... Sounds crazy?’
‘But why? Huxwood is, I dunno, an empire. Its share price is higher than anyone else in its field, higher than News Corp. or Fairfax, your debt is nothing –’
Derek looked at Malone. ‘He’s a ring-in, isn’t he? He’s not with Homicide?’
Malone grinned. ‘Russ just does homicide as part-time ... Sorry, that’s tasteless, considering. No, he’s a punter. Used to be on the horses, now it’s on the stock exchange. He’s probably got shares in Huxwood.’
‘I have,’ said Clements. ‘But I won’t get a say, will I? Or any of the other public shareholders?’
‘Afraid not,’ said Derek Huxwood and made no attempt to sound less than privileged. He was part of the dynasty, for a moment he had the arrogance of his parents. ‘The family owns sixty per cent, we have the controlling interest.’
‘And who has the controlling interest in the family?’
Van Dieman said, ‘Is any of this really relevant at this stage?’
‘Yes,’ said Malone flatly. ‘Everything is relevant that will give us a lead on why Sir Harry was shot.’
‘Jesus!’ Derek snapped off a piece of the palm frond. ‘You’re saying one of us killed him?’
‘We’re not saying anything like that. Everyone working on a homicide has got his own way of doing it. Russ and I work from the outside inwards. It’s called elimination. You tell us everything about this house, the three houses, about the family, and we’ll do our own picking and choosing what to eliminate. So who has the controlling interest in Huxwood Press?’
Derek said nothing, looked at Van Dieman. It seemed that they had arrived rather late at the idea that this was a matter that was out of their hands, that could not be contained by a Chronicle editorial or a legal restraining order. The lawyer tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, then he nodded:
‘Okay, the family shares are parked in a holding company which has no other assets. The shares will always be voted in one line to maintain control.’
‘So who decides how the holding company votes?’ Clements seemed to have taken on a whole new image, sounded smoother. He is turning into a lawyer or a banker before my very eyes, thought Malone, amused at the thought but backing Clements all the way.
‘Sir Harry has – had the shares which carried the whole of the voting power.’
‘What about Lady Huxwood?’
‘No, not in Sir Harry’s lifetime.’
‘But she does now?’
‘We-ell –’
‘Why are you hesitating?’ Clements persisted.
Van Dieman took his time, as if he expected to fob off the question with a brusque answer or two. He said almost haughtily, ‘I wasn’t hesitating –’
‘Okay, you were stalling, then. Keep going.’
Both Van Dieman and Derek Huxwood glanced at Malone: who’s the senior man here, you or him? But Malone just returned their gaze: ‘You’d better give us an answer, Mr Van Dieman. We cops always have more time than lawyers. That’s why we charge less for it.’
Van Dieman flushed and Derek Huxwood turned his head away in disgust: ‘Jesus!’
Malone relaxed his official (officious? he wondered) air for a moment. ‘Take it easy, Derek. We’re not here to kick the shit out of you, we’re trying to find out who killed your father. If you and Mr Van Dieman will stop fartarsing about and get down to cases, we can be out of here and get on to talking to other members of the family. Sooner or later someone is going to tell us the truth, give us the dirt, if you like, and I think it might be better if we got it from you. Okay?’
Derek stared at him; then abruptly there was the old whimsical smile: ‘If you’d been as shitty as this as a fast bowler, you’d have played for Australia. You never had the killer instinct.’
‘I’m older and wiser, Derek. And shiftier – sometimes ... Let’s hear what you were almost going to tell us, Mr Dieman.’
‘Van Dieman,’ said the lawyer, as if it were a legal point. ‘No, now Sir Harry is dead, the voting power drops off and passes to all the shareholders. Lady Huxwood has no more voting power than any of the others.’
‘How did that arrangement come about?’ said Clements.
‘My father insisted,’ said Derek. ‘He’d be regretting it now.’
‘Why?’ said Malone.
Derek and Van Dieman looked at each other; then the lawyer said, ‘There is – shall we say – dissension – in the family. For some time now some of the younger ones have been threatening to ask for a winding-up of the company and a distribution of the group shares.’
‘So the younger ones could then combine their shares and have some real clout?’ Clements sat back, was his old self: a rough-edged cynical detective with class prejudices. Just like my Old Man, thought Malone: Us and Them. ‘That right? All the yuppies suddenly turning greedy?’
‘I don’t know that they’d appreciate being called yuppies. These young people are not upwardly mobile, they don’t need to be. But yes, I suppose you could call them greedy?’ He looked at Derek.
‘Greedy as hell,’ said Derek. ‘Some of them.’
‘Who are the grandchildren?’ asked Malone.
Derek said, ‘There are my three – Alexandra, Colin and Ross. There are Sarah and Michael, Nigel’s two. And there’s Camilla, she’s Sheila’s.’
‘All of voting age?’
Derek nodded. ‘I don’t know that all of them would want to sell.’
Van Dieman contradicted him: ‘I’m not so sure, Derek. If they all combine their shares, it could be a stand-off. And that, I’m afraid –’ he looked at Malone, ‘is what’s happening. Or was happening up till – till last night.’
Malone said, ‘Exactly what is your position in all this, Derek?’
‘You mean, how do I feel about selling? I’m against it, dead against it.’
‘How much – clout do you have?’
Derek shrugged. ‘No more than my brother and sisters. I’m executive editor and publisher of the newspaper and I’m deputy-chairman of the whole group. But that means zilch when it comes to voting.’
‘Your father was chairman?’ Derek nodded. ‘And the rest of the family?’
‘Nigel and my sisters are directors on the group board.’
‘The in-laws, too? And the grandchildren?’
‘They just run – what do they call it in American football? – they run interference. You’d go a long way to meet a more interfering lot of buggers, including the kids.’
Malone was surprised at the amount of venom Derek showed; but he made no remark on it. ‘Is there a buyer for the business?’
Derek looked at Van Dieman again, left it to him: ‘Let’s say there is strong interest.’
‘Who?’ Van Dieman said nothing and Malone snapped, ‘Come on, you’re fartarsing again! We’re here because of a murder, not some bloody business deal! Who?’
‘Metropolitan Newspapers,’ said Derek. ‘From London. That is why Ivor and Beatrice Supple are here. She’s deputy-chairman – chairwoman, chairperson, whichever you like – she’s here for Metropolitan. There are two lawyers and two bankers with her, they’re at the Sheraton-on-the-Park. But that’s not for publication,’ he said, apparently in his status as executive editor and publisher.
‘Pull your head in, Mr Huxwood,’ said Malone officially and officiously; he was getting stiff-necked about these two sitting opposite him. ‘I’m not in the habit of shooting off my mouth to the media.’
Derek backed down. ‘Sorry.’
Then there was a knock at the garden-room door and the butler, Krilich, looked in. He was a tall middle-aged man, dark-haired, heavy-browed and thick-shouldered; even last night Malone had thought he looked more like a builder’s labourer than what he had imagined a butler should look like. This morning he was in shirtsleeves and a blue-and-black striped vest, but wore a tie, a black one.
‘Assistant Commissioner Zanuch is here, Mr Huxwood.’
2
Assistant Commissioner Bill Zanuch did not look uncomfortable in this big house. The air of arrogance was there as always, the familiarity with top company as apparent. Malone had once described him, though not in his presence, as being so far up himself he had turned ego into a pretzel. In the latest of the Service’s shuffling of senior ranks, he had been moved from AC Administration to AC Crime, a criminal act in itself in Malone’s opinion. Zanuch was very much hands-on, to the point of throttling those under him. He and Malone in particular were not mates.
‘Hello, Bill,’ said Derek Huxwood, rising from the couch. ‘You here to take charge?’ He avoided looking at Malone as he said it.
‘No, Derek. I’m here to offer condolences – from the Commissioner, too. I’m not here to take charge.’
No, thought Malone, he’s not here to take charge: in the same way that General Schwarzkopf didn’t take charge of the Gulf War, as Napoleon went to Moscow for the snow sports.
‘Any leads, Inspector?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘Well, go ahead with whatever you were doing. I’ll just sit in.’ He sat down, arranged the crease in his trousers, undid the button of his double-breasted suit so there would be no strain on it, laid his police tie, silk of course, flat on his white shirt. He never wore anything that showed a label, he aspired to be too wellbred for that, yet somehow he gave the distinct impression that everywhere on him was a label, only the best, waiting to be displayed. ‘I’m here to help.’
But Malone wasn’t going to fall for that. ‘Sergeant Clements and I are finished here for the moment, sir. We have to see others in the family.’
‘Who?’ said Huxwood, irritation plain. ‘I can tell you everything you want to know –’
‘It’s just routine, Mr Huxwood,’ said Malone, waiting to be interrupted by Zanuch. But the Assistant Commissioner said nothing and Malone went on, ‘We like to interview everyone at the scene of the crime.’
‘Scene of the crime! Christ –’ Derek Huxwood looked at Zanuch as if expecting him to correct his junior officer. Then abruptly his broad shoulders slumped and he gestured futilely. ‘Why the hell am I protesting? It’s what we’ll call it in the paper tomorrow – the scene of the crime ... Go ahead, Scobie. Talk to the others. They’re all somewhere, here or in the other houses.’
‘Your mother?’
‘She’s upstairs in her room. Leave her – please?’
Malone hesitated, then nodded. He and Clements said goodbye to Van Dieman and Zanuch and left the garden room. Outside in the hallway they met Kate Arletti, looking even more untidy than ever. ‘Having a hard time of it, Kate? You’ve lost another button off your shirt.’
She looked down in surprise. ‘So I have! Sorry, sir ... This family is worse than any Italian family I’ve ever met. They can’t make up their minds whether to grieve or to argue.’
‘Where’s the elder sister, Sheila? And her husband?’
‘They’ve gone back to their own house.’
‘Righto, you and Russ continue with the others. I’m going over to Little House Two. Russ, give me the envelope with that scrap of paper.’
He went out through large French doors on to a wide stone terrace that ran the entire breadth of the main house, crossed half an acre of lawn, went through an opening in a head-high privet hedge and came to Little House Two.
The main house had been built in the 1860s, a hodgepodge of English country house, Roman villa and Colonial homestead, as if the architect, uncertain of his surroundings, had gone on a drunken spree yet had somehow produced something that was not an eye-sore. The two smaller houses had been built a hundred years later and the style, with just minor modifications, copied. The three stood in line facing north across the tiny bay, resembling nothing more than a slapdash Nash project that, like the convicts, had been transported and survived the change.
Ned Custer met Malone at the heavy oak front door. ‘I saw you coming, I’ve been expecting you. Finished with that lot over there? Van Dieman there, putting his oar in? Best lawyer in town. Pity he knows it better than anyone else.’
‘How’s Mrs Custer?’
Custer was leading the way into a large comfortable room that looked out past a lawn and a jetty, where a yacht was moored, to the bay. He was dressed in lightweight blue trousers, a blue-and-white cotton jumper and espadrilles; but at least his face showed appropriate gloom. ‘Not the best. We don’t get on, the family, but Jesus wept – murder?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘What?’
‘You implied someone in the family committed the murder.’
Custer waved his hands in front of him, as if beating off smoke. ‘No, no! Christ, I didn’t mean anything like that – oh darling. Here’s Scobie, come to interrogate us.’
Spoken like a true lawyer.
Sheila was more appropriately dressed; she was not in funeral black, but at least she didn’t look as if she were ready for a yachting picnic. She was in dark blue linen, skirt and shirt, with dark blue casual shoes. Her glasses did not hide the fact that she had been weeping. Without make-up she looked older than she had last night.
‘Sit down, sit down.’ Custer bustled about, like a front-row forward looking for the ball that had come out on the wrong side of the scrum. ‘Drink? Coffee?’
‘Nothing, thanks.’ Malone sat down in a comfortable chair, one of four in the room meant to relax their occupants; this was a room obviously meant for relaxation, the afternoon read, the pre-dinner drink. It was, Malone guessed, what the Custers called their family room, though the furnishings were much richer than he had seen in other family rooms. One narrow wall was taken up with an entertainment ensemble: television set with the largest screen Malone had ever seen, video recorder, tape-deck and shelves full of videos, tapes, CDs and even a stack of old LPs. Yet the room showed no wear and tear, it was a room for a phantom family. Sheila was already seated and Custer now dropped into a chair beside her, but neither of them looked comfortable. ‘All we’re after at this stage is what you may know of last night.’
‘You mean the murder? Bugger-all. Harry had gone to bed when we left.’
‘What time was that?’
‘I never wear a watch,’ Custer said and looked at his wife.
‘Midnight,’ she said. ‘What time is my father supposed to have been – ?’ Her voice was unsteady, she didn’t finish the sentence.
‘Around midnight, give or take an hour.’
‘So whoever killed him could have been in the house while we were there?’
Custer got up, poured himself a whisky, straight, no ice, no water or soda.
‘If it was an intruder –’
‘Of course it was a bloody intruder!’ The drink splashed in Custer’s hand as he sat down heavily.
‘What’s the security like over at the main house?’
‘Adequate.’ Custer sipped his whisky. ‘That’s about all you can say for any security in domestic circumstances – you’d know that as well as I do.’ Malone nodded. ‘We employ two security firms to watch the estate – and each other. But there was a break-in a coupla years ago – they caught no one – so it could easily have happened again. Burglars not so long ago didn’t carry guns or knives. But now ...’
There had been several incidents in the past year of murder by intruders, householders shot or knifed, people worth not one-hundredth of the Huxwood wealth.
‘Is there any way up to the first floor over there besides up the main staircase in the hallway?’
‘Of course.’ Sheila was beginning to regain some composure. ‘There’s a rear stairwell for the staff. And there’s all that latticework on the east wall. We’ve wanted to pull it down, but Mother wouldn’t allow it.’
‘What’s that there for?’
‘The roses, of course. The climbing roses, the Chinese hybrids – don’t you know what Malmaison is famous for?’
‘I thought it was – famous, if you like, for the Huxwoods.’
‘Nicely put, Scobie,’ said Custer. ‘I’d have said notorious.’
‘La Malmaison was where Napoleon’s Josephine lived. She was the one who really popularized rose-growing in Europe, she had roses brought in by the boat-load from all over, China, Turkey, everywhere. My great-great-grandfather, who built the original house, was a great admirer of Napoleon and Josephine. And he loved roses. I take it you’re not a gardener?’
‘I grow camellias and azaleas, they’re easy. But no, I’m not a gardener. Burke’s Backyard leaves me cold,’ he said, naming one of television’s top rating shows.
‘And,’ said Custer, looking halfway to being half-drunk again, on one glass of whisky, ‘you’re not a student of Sydney’s history?’
‘Not this side of town, no. Ask me about the arse-end of Sydney and I’ll give you chapter and verse. Sorry,’ he said to Sheila.
‘Take it easy, Ned,’ Sheila told her husband, then looked back at Malone. ‘We were saying ... Yes, it would be easy to get up to the first floor, where the bedrooms are. Someone going up the east wall might get scratched or pricked, but not if he wore gloves.’
Malone took the plastic envelope from his pocket, extracted the scrap of notepaper with his tweezers. He held it out: ‘I can’t let you touch this, not till it’s been fingerprinted. It was found in your father’s hand, as if it had been torn off a full sheet. Do you recognize the notepaper?’
Both the Custers leaned forward; then they glanced at each other before Sheila said, ‘It’s the family’s – well, Malmaison’s. My mother orders it every year through the company – it’s special paper. She likes us all to use it, so we do. Boxes of it are delivered to us, Derek, Nigel, my sister and I, every Christmas.’
‘Did you use it to write your father a note?’
‘No.’ She was taking off her glasses while she answered, so he didn’t see her eyes at that instant. Then she was polishing the glasses, carefully, giving them her attention. ‘I was not in the habit of writing my parents notes. After all, they’re just over there –’ She waved vaguely.
‘We think this may have been more than just a note. There’s a very strong No scrawled on it in red pencil.’
‘That wouldn’t be Harry,’ said Custer, getting up to pour himself another drink. ‘He wasn’t the type for expressing himself strongly. He was always the mediator, he liked to take options. He was a bugger for that,’ he said as if to himself.
‘So it could’ve been anyone in the family who wrote it?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Sheila, reluctantly, it sounded.
‘Don’t forget the kids.’ Custer came back to his chair. ‘The grandkids. They’re all literate, very literate. And numerate, too. All interested in –’
‘That’s not fair, Ned,’ said Sheila, as if this had been a continuous argument. Then Malone remembered that her child was Custer’s step-child. Maybe this sort of argument went on in many families. ‘They’re not all interested in money, not all of them.’ Her tone said: not mine.
Malone had had this feeling once or twice before, the urge to get up and walk away from a case. Detectives are driven to solve a murder, as doctors are towards a cure. But sometimes a murder becomes obscured by the atmosphere that surrounds it; the detective becomes at risk to other dangers. One’s own values had to be protected, there was a limit to objectivity.
‘How many children do you have, Mrs Custer?’
‘Just one, a girl.’
‘She lives here?’
‘No, Camilla has her own flat. She’s at work today – she works at 2HP, she’s learning the ropes. We – that is, Huxwood – own the station,’ she explained.
‘How can you do that? With the rules against cross-media ownership in the same State?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Sheila, but she did know.
Beside her Custer grinned. ‘Don’t ask. You know the old one, about friends in high places. The media barons in this country have got that sort of friendship down to a fine art.’
‘Careful, Ned,’ said his wife.
‘You mentioned money,’ said Malone, ‘Would you sell Huxwood Press?’
Sheila squinted, put her glasses back on; Custer held up his glass, as if looking for an answer in the half-inch of whisky still in it. Then he said, ‘We’d probably sell. Anything for fucking peace and quiet.’
‘Who told you the Press is for sale?’ said Sheila.
Malone stood up. ‘We’re not answering questions at this stage. Just asking them. I’ll be in touch.’
He made his own way out of the house, crossed the lawn again and went round to the east wall of the main house. The roses were there, as Sheila had said; and the latticework up the wall. The gardener was also there, the long-handled shovel he had brandished down on the shore now driven into the earth, a pair of secateurs in his hand. He looked at Malone: ‘Lady Huxwood wants fresh flowers in the house every day. You think I ought to, today?’
‘I wouldn’t. You’re –?’
‘Eh? Oh yeah.’ He appeared to look closely at Malone for the first time. ‘You’re one of the Ds?’
Malone introduced himself.
‘Oh sure, I’ve read about you a coupla times. You work for someone publishes a newspaper, you read it all the way through. Just in case you get a mention, even in the obituaries. It’ll be interesting to see what the Old Man’s obit says ... I’m Dan Darling. Or Darling Dan, as the Old Lady calls me. A poor bloody joke, but most of her jokes are. She doesn’t have much chop for the intelligence of the working class.’
He said it without emphasis, neither bitterly nor with affection. He was in his sixties, a grizzled bear of a man with the face and arms of someone who had spent the best part of his life in the sun and, by some miracle, escaped the rat-like nibbling of sun cancers. He had eyes and mouth of strong opinions and Malone wondered how he got on with Lady Huxwood.
‘The feller from Rose Bay has already been around here, looking for footprints, he said. There’s nothing.’
‘Nothing on the latticework?’ The gardener shook his head. ‘If it was an outsider, how d’you reckon he got upstairs?’
‘Up the back stairs. That door’s never locked. All the bloody security, costs a bloody fortune, and the back door’s always left unlocked.’
‘Why’s that?’
Darling shrugged. ‘Beats me. Ask the Yugoslavs, the butler and his missus.’ There was a sudden bedlam of birds in a nearby tree; it went on for almost half a minute, then the birds were gone as suddenly as they had come. The gardener spat into the dry soil at his feet. ‘Bloody foreigners.’
‘Who?’ Dan Darling sounded like Con Malone, the xenophobe from way back. Malone had grown up listening to his father complaining about ‘bloody foreigners’.
‘The birds. They’re Indian mynahs. Taking over everything.’
Malone said off-handedly, ‘Do the family fight like those birds?’
Darling squinted at him sideways, but still challengingly. ‘You don’t expect me to gossip about the family, do you? Christ, I’m family, too. So the Old Lady is always telling me.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Forty-two years. I was a printer’s apprentice at the Chronicle, in my last year. I got my hand caught in the rollers –’ He held up his left hand and for the first time Malone saw how maimed it was, an ugly stump-fingered fist. ‘I never went back, I was scared shitless of the rollers. Sir John, Harry’s father, he was the boss then. He gave me a job here as under-gardener and I fell into it like a pig into muck – I didn’t know it, but that was what I wanted to be, a gardener in a garden like this.’ He waved his good hand, the one holding the secateurs, around him. ‘The paper’s gardening expert, she comes out to see me whenever she’s got a problem.’
‘You do it all on your own?’ Malone looked around: the gardens were more extensive than he had thought.
‘No, I’ve got a young bloke works for me. Two of us are enough. I been here all them years, I’ve got everything under control.’
‘Where’s he?’
‘Well, I dunno. He ain’t come in this morning, ain’t rung. I can’t say it’s not like him, he’s only been here a coupla weeks. I dunno him that well.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Dwayne Harod. His dad’s a Turk, he says, his mum’s a Lebanese. He lives out in Marrickville with an uncle and aunt. Dwayne’s an old Turkish name, I gather.’ A crack of a grin, dry as an eroded creek bank.
‘So I wonder why he didn’t come in today, of all days?’
‘He’d of heard about it on the radio. He’s pretty quiet, maybe he just wanted to miss all the commotion. Maybe he ain’t a stickybeak, like them out there.’ He gestured towards the launchful of photographers, now retreating like other, earlier invaders who had been repelled by the natives. ‘I wouldn’t worry about Dwayne, you got enough on your plate. You think flowers would be outa place in the house today?’ He snapped the secateurs, as if they were used every day and he hated the thought of interrupting the routine.
‘Not today, Dan. I’ll be in touch. They smell beautiful, though.’
As he walked round the corner of the east wall he heard a sound coming from an open window on the first floor. He wasn’t sure whose room it was, but it was in the main bedroom wing. The sound was a low moaning, faintly ululating, a primitive murmur of grief, almost animal-like.
3
Assistant Commissioner Bill Zanuch moved around the Big House without hurrying, with the proprietorial air of an old friend or a bailiff. He had his hands clasped behind his back, a habit he had adopted since he had, several years ago, been assigned to accompany Prince Charles on another Royal visit to Australia. It had been a characteristic of the Duke of Edinburgh, the prince’s father, and the prince himself had adopted it. Lately, however, Zanuch had noted from newsreels that the prince had moved his hands in front of him, where they nervously wove patterns in the air as if practising argument with his estranged wife. The Assistant Commissioner had none of the Royal problems; he had not made a nervous gesture since kindergarten and even there the other infants had known who was Number One.
Socially he had never aimed higher than God; he always felt that he fitted in. Wherever he went in the city’s social circles he was treated as an equal amongst equals, proving that flattery is no burden if one leaves others to carry it. He knew, just as the prince did, who would be king one day. Soon, maybe just a year or so down the track, he would be Commissioner. The thought did not make him giddy, since he had been tasting it ever since he had been promoted to sergeant, but he savoured it every day.
He stood outside the bedroom door listening to the low moaning coming from inside. He was not insensitive, but he knew Phillipa Huxwood would have to be interviewed and it was better that he do it rather than one of the five or six detectives still on the estate. After all, he could talk to her as an equal.
But first he moved along the hall to the next door, which was open. He had never been upstairs here, but this, he guessed, was Harry Huxwood’s room. He went in, ducking under the Crime Scene tape across the doorway. Another tape was strung round the four-poster bed, like a decoration from some old wedding-night bed.
Then the door to the adjoining room opened and Phillipa Huxwood stood there. Her face was even gaunter than usual, her eyes were red from weeping; but her carriage was still stiff and straight, her voice as firm as ever: ‘Do they have to put that ridiculous piece of ribbon on the bed?’
‘I’m afraid so, Phillipa. How are you?’
She waved a hand, almost a dismissive why-do-you-ask? ‘It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? I’ve been laying there –’
She used the Americanism. Up till her late teens she had lived a nomadic life with her archaeologist father and travel-writer mother; she still threw in local usage like postcards, as if to show she had been around. When she used a foreign phrase the accent was always immaculate, no matter what the language. Yet she wrote to reporters and anchor-people on the corporation’s radio and television stations who said ‘d-bree’ for ‘debris’ and used other Americanisms. She was rigid in her inconsistency, as despots are.
‘How are the others taking it?’ She led him back into her own room, seated herself in what he took to be her favourite chair by a window that looked down on the rose gardens.
‘I’ve only seen Derek,’ he said. He remained standing, aware of the disorder of her room, which surprised him; he had always thought of her as a meticulously neat person. But her bed was rumpled, the sheets twisted as if she had writhed in them in a frenzy. Her clothing, her dress and underwear, were thrown on the second chair in the room; the underwear, he thought, looked skimpy for a woman of her age. There was also a couch, an antique chaise-longue, but it was against a far wall; he could not seat himself there and talk to her across the width of the room.
‘How is Derek? Shocked?’
‘Of course.’
‘When I saw Harry –’ She closed her eyes, was silent for a moment, then she opened them. ‘I’m alone now, Bill. What do I do?’
He knew she didn’t want an answer. They were acquaintances, not friends, which is how it is in half of any large city’s social circles. He had known nothing of the intended selling of the publishing empire till Derek had filled him in this morning. What he knew of this family, even though he had been coming here for years as a dinner or luncheon guest, had been gleaned from observation and not from confidences.
‘How long have we known you?’ Her mind, it seemed, was shooting off at tangents this morning.
‘Twenty-five years.’
She looked at him in astonishment. ‘You’re joking!’
‘No. I first came here twenty-five years ago on a police matter –’
‘Ah.’ She nodded, was silent a while. He thought she was going to say no more, then she went on. ‘There was mystery then, too, wasn’t there? This is a mystery, Bill. Or is it?’ She glanced sideways at him, almost slyly.
He didn’t take the bait, if there was any. ‘Yes, I think it is, Phillipa. But we’ll find whoever killed Harry. I promise you that.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she said, as if he had promised her no more than a small gift. ‘I’ll miss him, Bill. We fought, oh, often we fought ... But we loved each other. Those downstairs don’t know what love is. Do you?’
But she didn’t wait for his answer. He wondered if she talked to her children, those downstairs, as she was now to him. He knew how people could sometimes confide in strangers thoughts they would never expose to those close to them. But why had she chosen him?
‘I’ll have to go down soon and face them all, I suppose. I’m the matriarch, they’ll expect it. When we first built the other two houses, Derek and Cordelia and Ned and Sheila used to come here every evening, we’d dine en famille. It was Harry’s idea. I’ve never liked the idea of matriarch -’
You could have fooled me.
‘– but Harry saw himself as the patriarch. He always wanted to fill his father’s shoes and there never was a patriarch like Old John. You met him?’
‘Once.’ Twenty-five years ago.
‘He was Biblical, he and I never got on. The en famille idea lasted a year, no more. The nuclear family is a pain in the uterus.’
He loved social gossip; but this was not gossip. ‘Phillipa, don’t tire yourself –’
She gave him the sly look again. ‘I’m talking too much, you mean? Why did you come up here if you didn’t want to talk to me?’
He was wearing out his welcome, she would turn nasty in a moment; he had seen it once or twice over the years. ‘Phillipa, did you hear the shot next door?’
She stared into space, the myopic eyes blank; then she blinked and looked back at him. ‘I’d taken two sleeping pills, I was upset last night. I heard nothing, the roof could have fallen in ...’
He began to move towards the door. ‘Fair enough. We’ll leave you alone now, you and the family.’
‘But you’ll be back?’
‘Not me, but Inspector Malone and one or two of the other detectives.’
‘I wish you would take charge. You can be circumspect.’
Now he knew why she was taking him into her confidence. She had said exactly that, you can be circumspect, twenty-five years ago.
Chapter Three (#ulink_2cbc3411-500a-5a99-b072-c81efb04bcd3)
1
The air waves shivered with indignation and horror at the news of Sir Harry’s murder. Nobody was safe if as important a figure as Sir Harry could be murdered in his own home, said another important figure, Premier Bevan Bigelow, unsafe in his own House. Editorials sang the praises of the dead man but had nothing to say in praise of law and order. Only the columnists, as plentiful on the ground in modern journalism as Indian mynahs and just as raucous, mentioned rumours of a possible sale of the Huxwood empire. The coming election was pushed to the edges of the front pages, to the relief of the voters.
‘Law and order doesn’t apply,’ said Clements, ‘when the throat-cutting is in the family. Don’t they know that?’
‘We don’t know anyone in the family killed him,’ said Malone.
‘No, but I’d make book on it.’
They were at a morning conference the day after the discovery of the murder. All nineteen detectives from Homicide were there, plus Greg Random, Chief Superintendent in charge of the Major Crime Squad. Some of the detectives had been assigned to the three other murders that had occurred in South Region, but the main topic was the Huxwood homicide. Notabilities were not frequent visitors on the Sydney murder scene. True, it was only a press baron who had been done in: had it been a star jockey or footballer of the status of O. J. Simpson there would have been a special session of parliament, the Minister and Commissioner would have brought camp beds into their offices and the media contingent outside Homicide would have looked like a grand final crowd. Still, the pressure was bad enough as it was.
‘I think,’ said Random, sucking on his pipe which no one had ever seen him light, ‘we’d better not start pointing the finger just yet. Let the newspapers do that, they have more experts than we do.’
‘Righto,’ said Malone. ‘What’ve we got? Kate?’
‘I’ve been right through the family, grandkids and all. God, what a bunch!’ Her antipathy towards the Huxwood clan seemed to have increased since yesterday. ‘There are six grandkids, three of them with minor records. Car-stealing –’
‘Car-stealing?’ said Andy Graham. ‘With their money? They’d all own Porsches at least.’
Kate Arletti shrugged. ‘Rebellion, I guess. They’re a rebellious lot, most of them. Two of them have drug charges against them, possession of. None of them says he or she knows anything of what happened the night before last.’
‘What about the rest of the family, the kids’ parents?’ asked Clements.
‘They were mine.’ Phil Truach coughed, a hint that the meeting had gone on long enough without his having had a smoke. He and Random were the only two grey-heads in the group: Random the senior by five years and a chief superintendent, Truach only recently promoted to sergeant. But rank had seemingly never worried Phil Truach and if he never hurried himself, there was no one in Homicide more thorough than he. ‘Nobody heard nothing, nobody has a clue why the old man should’ve been shot. They’ve all got their backs to the wall, a blank wall.’
‘Not entirely blank,’ said Malone. ‘Derek let his hair down a bit to me and so did the Number One son-in-law Ned Custer. The rumours of a sell-off of Huxwood Press are true and it’s turning into a dog-fight in the family.’
‘Who’s for it and who’s against it?’ John Kagal was the handsomest and smartest dressed in the group. He was also the only detective with a university degree, a distinction he had once quietly flaunted but which he had now learned to hide. Elitism is tolerated and admired in the criminal classes, but in the rest of the native working class, including the police, it is looked upon as a criminal offence. Some day, as inevitably as crime would continue to be committed, Kagal would have Greg Random’s rank, but he had learned, too, to hide his ambition. He had been given a lesson in police service culture: that seniority was as sanctified as motherhood. Wedded motherhood, that is.
‘I don’t know who’s for or against it,’ said Malone. ‘Who checked the butler and his wife?’
‘I did,’ said Kagal. ‘They’re clean. They’ve been in Australia eighteen years, they’re Australian citizens. They’ve worked for the Huxwoods for five years, got good reports.’
‘I checked the gardener,’ said Malone. ‘That leaves only the under-gardener as a regular on the place. Plus the security guards who patrol each night.’
‘I’ve checked them,’ said Andy Graham, restless as ever on his chair. He was always ready to be up and away, usually like a bull at a gate. ‘The first lot check on the hour through the night, the other lot on the half-hour. There’d be a gap of, say, twenty minutes between each check. Time for an outsider, if it was an outsider and knew the routine, to nip in and do the deed.’
‘That leaves the under-gardener. He didn’t come in yesterday. Why?’
‘He’s in today,’ said Kate Arletti. ‘I was out there early this morning, double-checking.’ Her diligence equalled that of Andy Graham, though she managed to be more restrained than he. ‘He had a virus or something yesterday, he said. He’s okay today.’
I’ll talk to him, Malone told himself. He didn’t, however, tell that to Kate; he didn’t believe in implying that a job was only well done when he did it himself. ‘What’s the report from Ballistics?’
‘One bullet, a Thirty-two. If a pillow was used to muffle the shot, Clarrie Binyan thinks the gun could be a Browning, or something like it.’
‘Any shell?’
‘No sign of one. He collected it, looks like.’ Clements closed his notebook. ‘It doesn’t look like a professional job, not if he didn’t use a silencer.’
‘Would an amateur collect the shell? Why would he go in for housekeeping like that?’
Clements shrugged. ‘I dunno. I still think the answer’s in the family.’
‘Don’t harp on that,’ said Random. ‘The family has a friend upstairs.’
Malone kept quiet, but Truach said, ‘The Minister?’
‘No, AC Zanuch.’
‘Oh shit!’
‘Exactly. And that’s what’ll hit the fan if we start talking about the family. I’ll see you outside, Scobie.’ He rose, unhurried as usual, nodded at the group in general and left.
Malone got up from behind the table where he had presided over the meeting, made an I-don’t-know gesture at Clements and followed Random out of the room. The chief superintendent led the way down towards the lifts. He had put his pipe in a side pocket, as if he no longer needed a prop in a man-to-man conversation.
‘Nobody wants this one, Scobie. Steve Lozelle, out at Waverley, it’s in his command. They’ll set up the incident room and do the donkey work. But he wants us to run it, subject to him being in nominal charge. Okay?’
Malone nodded, wondering why the usual jealousy of turf was being sacrificed in this case. Perhaps the Waverley commander already knew that AC Zanuch might interfere.
‘There’s another thing.’ Random took his pipe out of his pocket, had it halfway to his mouth when he had second thoughts and put it away again. ‘Have you seen the Tele-Mirror this morning? They say you were a dinner guest at the Huxwoods’ night before last. They’re playing it up as if you’re that guy in Burke’s Law, the cop with the stiff neck and the corset. My wife tells me Alan Jones had something about it on 2.UE this morning, that you’re a friend of the family –’
‘Balls! I’d never met the family till two nights ago. I hadn’t seen Derek Huxwood in years –’ He explained the circumstances of the dinner invitation.
‘Well –’ Random took the pipe out of his pocket, tapped it in the palm of his hand. He looked almost nervous, something Malone had never seen before. ‘It’s too late now – that would only confirm what they’re hinting, if we took you off it. Just watch it, that’s all. Any hint of the family being suspected is out, okay? Bill Zanuch is leaning on me –’
‘How close is he to them?’
‘I don’t know. But you know him – if he’d been alive at the time he’d have been at the Last Supper. Then he’d have gone to lunch with Pontius Pilate the next day.’ He looked around him to make sure he wasn’t overheard; then he let go his slow smile. ‘Christ help us if ever he becomes Commissioner. We won’t be able to arrest anyone without first checking with the social editors.’
Both men were silent a while, contemplating an awful future. Then the lift doors opened; the lift was empty. ‘Ride down with me.’ The doors closed, locking them in a small chamber where secrets could be exchanged. ‘I don’t know whether he knows anything, but he’s protecting the Huxwoods. I don’t like it any more than you and Russ do, but I’ve got to wear it. Zanuch’s been specific. He wants none of what we had last year with the Cabramatta murder.’ A prominent politician, campaigning against gang crimes in his electorate, had been shot in a western suburb where there was a large Asian community. ‘From the first the media started pointing the finger at the Vietnamese, there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support it –’
‘We still haven’t nabbed who did it.’
‘Nonetheless, we had to keep denying it. Just watch it, Scobie.’ They had reached the ground floor, the doors opened. ‘Let me know everything, everything, that turns up. Luck.’
‘Thanks,’ said Malone drily and pressed the button to go back upstairs again.
Clements was waiting for him. ‘What’d he have to say?’
‘The usual. We tread carefully about the family.’
Clements bit his lip. ‘What d’you think? One of them did it?’
Malone took his time. ‘I dunno. An amateur wouldn’t take the time to collect the cartridge shell. But you never know – TV shows you how to do everything, including commit murder ... I’d like to see the family lined up all together. I still haven’t met the grandkids. I gather they’re all old enough to have pulled a trigger. I’m going out there, see if I can round up one or two of them. You want to come?’
Clements shook his big head. Since he had become the Unit Supervisor, had had to assume more paperwork, he appeared to have lost his once-habitual unhurried approach. The re-organization in Homicide had not worked quite the way the planners had planned it, but that has been the way of the world since ivory towers were first built and graphs took the place of commonsense.
‘I’ve got too much to do here. You should be here, too,’ he said almost critically. ‘You’re supposed to be the Co-ordinator.’
‘I’m the most unco-ordinated bastard you ever met,’ said Malone, remembering his loose tongue.
He picked up his hat and left. Downstairs Kate Arletti was crossing the lobby towards the front doors. ‘Where are you heading, Kate?’
‘Out to Vaucluse, sir. I’m going to talk to that under-gardener, Harod or whatever his name is.’
‘Cancel your transport. You can come with me.’ He had a police car of his own, unmarked, but he did not like driving if he could persuade someone else to drive him. One of the advantages was that he never had a parking problem. ‘You can drive.’
They left Strawberry Hills and drove towards the far eastern suburbs, the city changing gradually as they drove, housescapes merging into housescapes, fresco secco into buon fresco, till at last they reached Huxwood Road, still cordoned off by a police barrier with a uniformed officer there to allow only residents and tradesmen past the barrier. Yesterday morning’s crowd had gone but Malone noticed that in several houses owners and their guests were having morning coffee on the front verandahs, some even out on their front lawns under large umbrellas. Curiosity was endemic, not just a disease amongst the lower classes.
Malone paused as he and Kate Arletti got out of the car. ‘Kate, you heard what Chief Superintendent Random said – don’t lean too heavily on the family. You’re developing a thing about them.’
‘Sorry, sir.’ She looked neat this morning, but it was still early in the day. She was in a linen dress with a matching jacket; there didn’t appear to be any buttons that could come undone or a sleeve unrolled. ‘It’s just –’
He didn’t move. ‘Go on, Kate. What’s on your mind?’
She looked away from him, at no place in particular. She reminded him of all the young actors in movies and television these days who, every time they were asked a question by another actor, looked off-screen as if their next line was written on some blackboard there. But Kate Arletti had obviously been chewing over her lines for the past two days; she looked back at him, her jaw set:
‘The Chronicle ruined my father, killed him. He was Italian, you know that, he was much older than my mother. As a young man he was a Fascist, Mussolini was his hero, but once he came to Australia he put all that behind him. He started his own business, he was a job printer. Then he decided, after he’d become a citizen, to run for local government, the local council, he never stopped being political-minded. The Chronicle was doing a series on local government, the sort of people who ran for council aldermen. Alderpersons. Somehow they dug up Dad’s past, they really dug the dirt on him. All of it was true, I’ll admit, but it was past, dead and buried. They buried Dad with it, literally. He lost his business and then he committed suicide. I was ten years old, I was the one who found him -’ She stopped and looked away again, put up a hand to wipe away tears.
‘Kate –’ He waited till she looked back at him. ‘You’re off this case. I’m sorry.’
She shook her head angrily, almost like a child being denied. ‘No, sir! Please.’
‘Kate, you’re biassed –’
‘All police are biassed, we can’t help it-’ Then she broke off, drew a heavy breath. ‘Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean you-’
Less than an hour ago, Greg Random had suggested he might be less than disinterested. But it was true: it was a rare cop who could deny bias once he was into a case. Sometimes it was no more than a counter to bafflement, the effort to find an answer, any answer.
She was more in control of herself now: ‘This is my first big case, sir. I’ve made a mistake, but I think I can overcome it. Give me today. If you still think I’m biassed against the Huxwoods –’
‘It wasn’t the family who would have written that series.’
‘It was. I looked them up when I was older, when I understood what had gone on. The series was written by Derek Huxwood. The editorial that summed them up was written by Sir Harry, that was the most unfair of the lot. It wasn’t signed, but I found out who’d written it.’
There was silence between them. At the wide gates into the Huxwood estate Crime Scene tapes fluttered in the slight breeze, like the long tail of a child’s kite lost amongst the shrubbery. A kookaburra in a nearby jacaranda laughed hollowly; mynahs, the foreigners, instantly swooped on it and chased it away. On the opposite side of the road a woman paused in the act of pouring coffee for two guests and looked across at the man and the girl beside the unmarked car, looked at them, Malone thought, as if they were trespassers.
He nodded at Kate Arletti. ‘Righto, today’s your test. But if I see any –’
‘You won’t, sir. I promise. Thanks.’ She moved towards him and for a moment he thought she was going to kiss him. But she went by him and ducked under the tapes. ‘The under-gardener or the family – who’s first?’
‘The under-gardener. Dwayne the Turk.’
Malone had never heard the term under-gardener before; he would have called the man the assistant gardener, if he called him anything. He could only surmise that it was an English term.
Dwayne Harod was short and slim and outgoing; hawk-faced but handsome, dark-skinned and dark-haired and in his early twenties. He was working amongst the roses when the two detectives approached him, having skirted the house and, so far, avoided any of the family.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard it on the radio yesterday morning. It sorta floored me.’ His accent was broad Australian; Anatolia was somewhere back in the memory mist of childhood. ‘I was pretty sick, anyway, I got this virus that’s been going around. Or maybe it’s an allergy, I dunno. That’d be a joke, eh? If I was allergic to flowers.’ He waved an arm; he was waist-deep in the last roses of summer. Long-stemmed blooms, already cut, lay on a sheet of plastic. ‘These are for inside the house. Lady Huxwood wants them, same as usual.’
‘We understand you’ve been here only two weeks, Dwayne. Is that your real name?’
He had a charming smile. ‘I give it to m’self when I was fifteen, sixteen. My old man named me Kemal. He was a great admirer of Kemal Atatürk. You heard of him?’
‘Vaguely.’ This seemed to be Old Dictators Week. Malone glanced at Kate Arletti, whose father had admired a dictator, but she was apparently ignorant of Kemal Atatürk. Malone only knew of the Father of modern Turkey because he had once spent a month unsuccessfully chasing two Turks who had killed a man in a botched bank robbery and who had somehow escaped the nets at airports and vanished back to Turkey. ‘Does Kemal mean anything?’
There was an embarrassed smile. ‘It means “perfect”.’
‘I don’t blame you for changing it. Are you legally Dwayne then?’
‘Well, no. Legally, I’m still – perfect.’ The smile this time was not so embarrassed.
‘Bully for you. How did you get this job? Have you been a gardener before?’
‘I answered the ad in the paper. There were eight of us come for it and they picked me. No, I never been a gardener before. I used to work in the canefields up in Queensland till I come down here.’
‘How long have you been in Sydney?’
‘A month. I live with my uncle and aunty out in Marrickville.’ He was laying himself out like an open book, almost a little too eagerly. Malone had seen this before, when kids had been afraid of the cops, but Dwayne Harod gave the impression that he was afraid of no one. ‘I was lucky to get this job so soon, considering.’
‘Considering what?’
Harod looked puzzled, as if he didn’t understand why Malone didn’t know the state of the nation. ‘The unemployed. The recession’s supposed to be over, but it ain’t by a long chalk, not for guys with no education or training. That’s why I’m grateful for Mr Derek giving me the job –’
‘Mr Derek took you on?’
‘Well, he was the one told me I had the job. But the Old Lady – I mean Lady Huxwood, I think she had a say in it –’ He gave another smile, an old lady’s favourite.
‘Righto, Dwayne. Can we have your home address, just in case?’
‘I have that,’ said Kate Arletti.
Harod looked at her in surprise, then said, ‘I might be moving from there soon, now I’ve got a job. Is that all you want?’
Malone told him that was all they wanted for the time being and he and Kate walked away, going round the northern corner and coming out on the wide lawn that ran down to the water’s edge. There were no cruising cameramen today, the invasion had been put on hold.
‘What d’you think, Kate?’
‘He’s pretty cheerful, isn’t he?’
‘That’s what I thought. He said the news of the murder when he heard it on the radio floored him, but he seems to have picked up pretty quick. He’s got over his virus, too.’
‘He didn’t mention the murder again. He also didn’t mention Sir Harry once by name.’
Malone nodded. The girl was learning to develop a police ear, to hear what was unsaid as much as what was said. ‘Don’t cross him off our list, we’ll get back to him. Now who’s next?’
‘If you want to see the grandkids, there’s probably only one of them home – he’s a uni student. All the others have jobs.’
‘In the company?’
‘Only three of them. The youngest, Ross, Derek’s son, is doing economics at Sydney. He’s one of the rebels, a real tearaway, I’m told.’
Malone sighed. ‘I love tearaways. They’re a real pain in the butt. Righto, let’s see if he’s home.’
Ross Huxwood was home, sunning himself on the terrace of Little House One with his mother Cordelia. He was a big lad, taller than Malone and bulkier, most of it muscle though there was a hint of beer fat round his middle; Malone had seen scores like him around the rugby clubs and the better watering holes, the elite of ockerism. He was blond and good-looking in a beefy way, his cheeks and jaw too heavy, his wide mouth sullen. But he had been taught to be polite: he stood up as Malone and Kate Arletti came up on to the terrace.
‘Ah, the lady detective! Mum –’
Cordelia must have been dozing behind her dark glasses. Her head jerked and she sat up on the lounge where she had been stretched out. She was in a sleeveless yellow sun-dress and her son was in a tight pair of blue shorts. So far, it seemed, the mourning weeds were still in the wardrobe.
‘Oh Scobie! Or do I have to call you Inspector? Do sit down. You too, Miss – ?’
‘Detective-Constable Arletti.’ Kate’s voice was chill.
Cordelia lowered her dark glasses to look at Kate over the top of them; but she said nothing. The two detectives sat down at a wrought-iron table under a blue umbrella. Ross, at his mother’s command, went away to get coffee and Malone said, ‘I think we’d better keep it on an official basis, Mrs Huxwood.’
Cordelia looked disappointed; Malone wondered now if that was her normal expression. ‘Well, I suppose it’s to be expected ... Have you come up with anything? I don’t know how the police work – how would I? – but have you made any progress?’
‘Very little.’ He paused before he went on, ‘Except that we’ve heard there is a lot of tension in the family about the sell-off.’
‘Where did you hear that?’ she said sharply. ‘Over there?’ She nodded across the lawn towards the hedges that half-hid Little House Two.
He didn’t answer that directly: don’t point the finger. ‘We’ve had detectives here for the past twenty-four hours. Including Detective Arletti. How many people have you interviewed, Kate?’
‘At least a dozen, sir.’
‘So you see, Mrs Huxwood, the word is around about the sell-off.’
She said nothing, waited while her son came back, followed by the housekeeper with a tray. The housekeeper put the tray on the table between Malone and Kate, ignored them and spoke over their heads to Cordelia.
‘Will that be all, señora?’
She had a strong voice, thick with accent. She was middle-aged, big and square in build and face, dark-haired and with unflinching eyes. And self-contained: very self-contained, thought Malone. He and Kate Arletti might have been down at the water’s edge for all the notice she took of them.
‘That will be all, Luisa. Thank you.’
Still without a glance at the two detectives, the housekeeper returned to the house, her broad back dismissing them as of no account.
Malone looked at Kate. ‘Did you interview her?’
‘Yes. She doesn’t like police.’
‘Is she from the Big House?’ Malone asked the Huxwoods.
‘No.’ Ross was seated again in the sun, dark glasses on. Both he and his mother shone with sun-cream; streaks of light moved on him like silver worms. ‘She’s ours. She’s Spanish, she’s been with us since I was a kid.’
‘You didn’t get anything out of her?’ Cordelia looked at Kate, a hint of malice in her sweet voice.
‘I got enough,’ said Kate, tapping her notebook. ‘She’s in here. Even if she doesn’t like the police.’
‘Who does?’ said Ross, expressionless behind the shades.
‘That’s enough,’ said Cordelia, but her voice was as expressionless as his had been.
‘You have something against cops?’ said Malone.
The boy shrugged, the silver worms slid along his broad shoulders.
‘Did you like your grandfather?’
A bean-ball, but the boy didn’t flinch. ‘No.’
‘Did you dislike him enough to want him dead?’
‘Stop this!’ Cordelia snatched off her glasses, leaned forward as if she might strike Malone. Beside him Malone felt Kate Arletti tense and he wondered what she would do if Cordelia actually attacked him.
Malone ignored the mother, kept his eyes on the son. ‘Where were you the night before last, Ross?’
‘He was here, at home,’ said Cordelia.
But the boy proved to be the rebel Kate had said he was: ‘No, I wasn’t. Let’s stick to the truth, Mum. I spent the night at my girl friend’s.’
Cordelia turned her head away, looked for a moment as if she might get up and stalk away into the house. Malone said, ‘Her name?’
‘She’s Rosie Gilligan.’
Malone looked blank, but Kate, it seemed, was au fait with a wider world. ‘The fashion editor of the Chronicle?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ross and his mother turned back to give him a glare that was apparent even through the dark glasses.
‘How do you get on with your cousins, Ross?’
The boy shrugged again. Malone wondered what he himself had been like at twenty, though he didn’t think he could have been as ungracious and surly as this kid. But behaviour, like tastes, always looked different from another generation.
‘And with your brother and sister?’ Malone glanced at his notebook. ‘Colin and Alexandra?’
‘We’re a happy family,’ said Cordelia.
‘I was talking to your son, Mrs Huxwood ... Do you ever get together, Ross, you and your brother and sister and your cousins, and discuss the family fortune?’
Cordelia abruptly stood up; her greased arms shivered with light. ‘No, shut up, Ross!’ as her son went to make some reply; then she turned on Malone. ‘That’s enough, Mr Malone. You’ve gone too far –’
He interrupted her: ‘Mrs Huxwood, I don’t think you appreciate just how far we often have to go to solve a murder. Now you can get a lawyer, if you wish –’ He took his time about getting to his feet; it was one small way of showing her that he, and not she, was in command here. ‘I overheard you and your sister-in-law the other night saying that voices will be heard. They will be, Mrs Huxwood. Police voices asking questions that you may not like but that you’ll be expected to answer. Thanks for the coffee.’
As the two detectives turned away, Ross Huxwood said, ‘Shit.’
Malone turned back. ‘You talking to me?’
The boy, still lolling back in his chair, stared up at him, the shades hiding his eyes. Then he shook his head. ‘No. Sorry you heard that.’
‘You could teach him some manners, Cordelia,’ said Malone and led Kate across the lawn towards the Big House.
‘Good on you, boss,’ said Kate. ‘I was just itching to clout him across the ears. When I was in uniform I broke the arm of a lout like him.’
‘You’re a real killer, aren’t you?’ he said, remembering the junkie’s nose that had been broken by the butt of her gun. ‘But I think young Ross would’ve been a bit big for you. Who’s his girl friend? Rose whatever-her-name is?’
‘Rosie Gilligan. She’s the fashion editor of the Chronicle. They reckon she’ll be another Ita Buttrose or a Nene King before too long,’ she said, naming two of the country’s most successful women editors. ‘I’d have thought she was a bit long in the tooth for young Ross.’
‘How old?’
‘I’m only guessing, but she must be thirty.’
‘How old are you, Kate?’
She grinned: she was very attractive, he decided, when she smiled. ‘Twenty-four. But Rosie’s not only old, she’s pretty soiled, too, so I hear. She’s a real man-eater, she’s called the Nutcracker Suite.’ He raised his eyebrows and she made a mock duck of her head. ‘Sorry.’
‘You get around, Kate. So you think Ross is her toy-boy and his mum doesn’t like it?’
‘Something like that. Mums never want their boys to get involved with older women. Do you think Ross wants more money so’s he can keep up with Rosie? She’s pretty extravagant, so I’m told. Likes to lunch at all the best restaurants, Rockpool and Level 41, places like that, takes her holidays overseas – she wouldn’t come cheap.’
‘Kate, where do you get all your dirt?’
‘I have a younger sister who’s a model. She goes to all the fashion parties and all they do is gossip, she says. When she’s with me, that’s what we do.’
‘Well, you and I have had a nice little gossip –’ Then his pager beeped. ‘Let’s get back to the car.’
On the car phone he dialled Homicide and asked for Clements. ‘What is it, Russ?’
‘Another report in from Rose Bay. Two shots were fired last night in Point Piper, at The Briarcliff. They hit a Mercedes, just missing the driver and his wife – they were unhurt, fortunately.’
‘So?’
‘Scobie, the Merc got in the line of fire – the shots were meant for the two people getting out of a Daimler, another guy and his wife.’
‘Russ, right now I’m not interested in attempted murder –’
‘You haven’t caught on, have you? The Briarcliff, that’s where Jack Aldwych Junior and his wife live. They were the couple getting out of the Daimler.’
2
‘We didn’t want any fuss,’ said Jack Aldwych Senior. ‘If that couple downstairs hadn’t complained you wouldn’t have heard anything about it.’
‘Jack,’ said Malone, ‘that couple downstairs almost copped those shots in the head. They had a right to complain.’
The old criminal boss (retired, he insisted, not reformed) nodded reluctantly. ‘I suppose so. But in the old days –’
‘These aren’t the old days, Jack. You agree with me?’ He looked at Jack Junior.
The son sighed with exasperation. ‘I don’t think Dad realizes how much it shook me and Julie. Neither of us has ever been shot at before.’
‘You haven’t lived,’ said his father.
‘Mrs Chang, downstairs, passed out,’ said Juliet Aldwych. ‘So did her husband, almost.’ She said it with the superiority of someone who had never fainted in her life, as if she were as accustomed to passing bullets as much as her father-in-law. ‘One doesn’t expect that sort of thing, not in Point Piper.’
The Briarcliff was a block of eight apartments, none of which could be bought for less than several million dollars. Six of the apartments were owned by Hong Kong Chinese, all unable to believe their luck in getting a waterfront home for less than half they would have paid for a place halfway up The Peak in Hong Kong. Point Piper, a manicured finger of land pointing out into the harbour, was one of the best addresses in Sydney. True, it had been named after a naval officer who was both a rake and a conman, and he had been followed by others of the same inclination, none of them reducing the locality’s value with their reputations. Sydney’s eastern suburbs residents, so long as they have a water view, are prone to forgive their neighbours anything. Except, perhaps, seduction of their own wives and a looting of their assets.
Kate had dropped Malone off at the entrance to the apartments. Crime Scene tapes roped off a silver Mercedes, giving the impression that the car had somehow strayed in from the used car lots out along Parramatta Road. One of the Physical Evidence team, a redheaded slim young man, came across to Malone.
‘Morning, sir. We’ve found the bullets – Thirty-twos, they look like. And a cartridge shell out there –’ He nodded towards the quiet street. ‘Looks like they were parked at the kerb there, waiting. We haven’t found anything else.’
Then Clements had arrived from Strawberry Hills and the PE man went back to examining the Mercedes. ‘What d’you reckon? Were they after Old Jack?’
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Jon Cleary
ENDPEACE is a 1996 novel from award-winning Australian author Jon Cleary. It is the thirteenth book to feature Sydney detective, Scobie Malone. When Scobie attends a dinner party held by a publishing tycoon, he is called upon to find a killer when the tycoon is shot dead during the night.When wealthy newspaper magnate Sir Harry Huxwood is shot dead in his own bed, it is Inspector Scobie Malone’s job to pick up the pieces and name the killer. This means infiltrating the opulent Huxwood residence, Malmaison House, where Lady Phillipa presides over the sprawling Huxwood family and staff – and a veritable vipers’ nest.As Malone investigates he uncovers the stuff of headlines: a forgotten love affair; Fleet Street incomers versus an ex-crim on the make; a family dogfight over potential handouts of fifty million dollars apiece; a silence that has lasted twenty five years. And, making it smell sweeter on the surface, a rose garden to rival Empress Josephine’s.Amidst unwanted interference from his superiors and all the attention attracted by such a high profile case, the pressure is on Malone to come up with the true story, once and for all.
Dedication (#ulink_e772f628-95c7-5d0d-b5ee-801ac7644edc)
For
Natascia and Vanessa
Benjamin and Isabel
* family *
Contents
Cover (#u7c8d13ed-a2ae-586f-9c89-7aa6e3778cf1)
Title Page (#u0ccb016c-65e9-53c9-b052-890ec609adb6)
Dedication (#ulink_94ecca05-6937-5700-9bfb-e313d0f11c0a)
Chapter One (#ulink_fbb3d8d7-27c2-58f8-bedf-bc925f7a1cb3)
Chapter Two (#ulink_7543f5be-065c-56c7-8fe9-a6f44439337e)
Chapter Three (#ulink_21bb5382-a282-5345-8749-4e65f5e1553f)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_9ae9ab6d-39f1-57ce-bef8-ccdd5b452c67)
1
Malone felt distinctly uncomfortable at this big table in this big house, but no one would have known it; he had the relaxed air of a veteran police officer on the take. Of the eighteen people at dinner ten were family; the Huxwood family in itself was enough to intimidate any outsider. Added to them were the State Premier and his wife; a business tycoon and his wife; and the guests of honour, the British cabinet minister and his wife. Plus Malone himself and, the light at the far end of the table, his wife Lisa.
The cabinet minister’s wife, a large, good-looking woman who had once played goalkeeper or front row for Roedean, whatever that was and she hadn’t bothered to explain, was seated next to Malone. ‘My husband has never forgiven you for what you did to him all those years ago.’ She had a large voice which turned heads all the way down the table in her direction; it was said that she was the only woman in Britain who had been able to stop Baroness Thatcher when the latter was in full flow. ‘Isn’t that so, Ivor?’
Before Ivor could reply, Lady Huxwood looked at Malone; up till now she had virtually ignored him. ‘You arrested Mr Supple?’
‘No,’ said Supple hastily, before another scandal could be added to the long list of British cabinet indiscretions. ‘My wife exaggerates, Scobie. I only felt like that till I retired from cricket.’
‘Twelve years,’ said his wife. ‘A long time to be unforgiving.’
‘Not in this country,’ said the Premier, who had the scars in his back to prove it.
At the far end of the table, seated next to Lisa, Derek Huxwood was grinning evilly. ‘Twenty-two years ago,’ he explained to the other guests, ‘Ivor was one of the stars of the English Test team when they came out here on tour. In the match against New South Wales Scobie clean-bowled him for a duck first ball in each innings. The one and only time in his life that Ivor ever got a pair.’
Phillipa Huxwood favoured Malone with another look. ‘Now I understand why Derek invited you, Mr Malone. I had no idea who you were.’
Derek’s mother was in her seventies and from infancy had been treading on other people’s feelings. Bone-thin, her once-patrician looks had deteriorated into gauntness, but there were hints, like the odd leaves on a dying tree, of the beauty she had once been. Short-sighted but too vain to wear glasses and unable to tolerate contact lenses, she leaned close to everyone she spoke to, so that her unwitting insults had an extra impact. She was now examining Malone closely and he returned her gaze. He had been examined and insulted by the best of lawyers and criminals.
‘Are you still cricketing? You look much too old for that.’
‘I retired years ago. I’m a police officer, a detective-inspector in Homicide.’
Nigel Huxwood, seated halfway down the table, put his head forward, said in his English voice, ‘Homicide, really? In the UK I played detectives in several films, half a dozen times on television. Producers thought I had that unflappable look. I’m just as flappable in real life as the rest of us. Except Derek, of course,’ he said and looked sideways across the table at his brother, a theatrical look that convinced Malone that Nigel must have been a bad actor. Or a bad detective.
At the head of the table Sir Harry, all famous distinction and charm, smiled at Lisa. ‘What’s it like being married to a policeman, Mrs Malone?’
Lisa had been asked that question so many times, but she paused now as if hearing it for the first time. ‘Boring. And worrying. But it’s what my husband wants to do ...’ She smiled down the table at Malone, telling him, Let’s go home before I commit homicide on this crowd. They could read each other’s eyes where others saw only blank stares. ‘Does Lady Huxwood enjoy your being a newspaper publisher?’
‘I’ve never asked her,’ he said, still smiling; he was a constantly good-humoured man, or gave the impression of being one. He raised his voice, repeating the question to his distant wife.
‘Of course!’ She sounded indignant at being asked. ‘All wives should enjoy what their husbands do. I’m no damned feminist!’ She glared around the table, daring any feminist to speak up; but there were no takers. ‘What about you, Enid? Do you enjoy being the Premier’s wife?’
Mrs Bigelow jumped, surprised that her opinion might count; she was a tiny blonde with a lovely smile that she seemed afraid to display. She smiled now, weakly: ‘I’m just background. It’s where I like to be.’ Then her smile brightened as she turned it on her husband, but he just scowled.
‘What about you, Beatrice? You enjoy politics, don’t you?’
Beatrice Supple, whether she enjoyed politics or not, knew how to handle dragons like Lady Huxwood; Britain, or anyway England, had its share of them. ‘Ivor and I agree to disagree. He belongs to the MCC, I campaign against it because it treats women as third-class citizens. He’s RC, I’m Anglican –’
‘Is there any difference these days?’ said Derek.
The talk went on through the remaining courses. Malone, no stranger to a good meal under Lisa’s care, was still impressed by what was put in front of him by the butler and the single waiter. There had been six courses and four wines before Lady Huxwood rose and announced, ‘We ladies will have coffee in the drawing-room.’
Malone’s look of astonishment must have been conspicuous, or perhaps Lisa was the only one who saw it. She smiled at him from faraway and disappeared with the ladies.
Then he was aware of Derek Huxwood standing above him. ‘Don’t mind my dear old mum, Scobie. She hasn’t turned a page on a calendar since 1900. She’s hoping the death of Queen Victoria is just a rumour.’
Malone, a man not given to team reunions, had caught only glimpses of Huxwood over the last twenty years. Huxwood was six years older than Malone, had been the State captain and Malone’s mentor; he had been handsome and lissom and elegant to watch at bat. Now he had put on weight and the once-sharp and jovial eyes had dulled. The black mane of hair was now iron-grey and was cut short in what used to be called a crew-cut but was now, at least by the homophobes in the police service, called a queer-cut. The years had given Derek Huxwood no credit, he looked already on the far cusp of middle age. Only the mouth had not changed: there was still the whimsical smile that was only just short of a sneer.
‘You want one of these?’ He offered a box of cigars. ‘I seem to remember you never smoked?’
‘Still don’t. Why did you invite me tonight, Derek?’
‘Mischief.’ He smiled, then shook his head. He lit his cigar, then went on, ‘No, that’s not true. I think I was looking for a memory of the good old days. Don’t you feel like that occasionally? Lost youth, all that?’
Before Malone could answer, they were joined by the Premier. Bevan Bigelow was a short square man with a blond cowlick always falling down over one eye; it gave him a boyish look, which fooled some voters into thinking he might have more than the usual politician’s quota of principles. Unfortunately his principles were as pliable as a licorice-stick in hot weather; he was all ears to all men and was known in the press gallery as Bev the Obvious. Three years before he had been chosen by the conservative Coalition government as its stop-gap leader and was still leader only because better men were still cutting each other’s throats in their efforts to replace him. There was an election in six days’ time and if the Coalition lost he was gone.
‘I hear you’ve got trouble, Derek. Anything I can do to help?’
Huxwood half-shut one eye, but Malone was sure it was not due to the smoke from his cigar. ‘No broadcasting, Bevan old chap. Okay?’
Bigelow appeared to recognize he had been perhaps too obvious. He looked at Malone as if the latter might be enemy: a newspaperman, for instance. But he knew that Malone was police: they could be just as bad. ‘What do you know, Inspector?’
‘Nothing,’ said Malone and looked at Huxwood for enlightenment, but got none.
Then Ivor Supple came down to Malone’s end of the table and drew him aside, pulling out a chair and sitting down so that they faced each other. ‘I couldn’t have been more pleased when I saw you here tonight, Scobie. I mean that.’
‘Lost youth, all that?’ Then he grinned. ‘Derek has just been telling me that’s why I was invited. It’s all behind us, Ivor. My thirteen-year-old son tries to get me to talk about it, but, I dunno, it’s like trying to catch smoke. What you’re doing now must be more interesting?’
Supple shrugged. ‘Maybe more interesting but not as pleasurable. Sometimes I doze off in the Commons and wonder why I ever got into politics. You’re right about the lost youth and all that. In retrospect all those seasons seem to have been one long golden summer. They like that for you?’
Malone nodded. ‘They weren’t, of course. Why are you out here now? Talking to them down in Canberra?’
‘Only informally. My wife is here on business and I’m just tagging along. The baggage man.’
‘I didn’t know she was a businesswoman. Sorry, I shouldn’t sound surprised –’
‘Don’t worry, old chap. Our generation didn’t know what a businesswoman was. I didn’t know what a woman politician was till I stood up against Boadicea Thatcher. She skittled me first ball, just like you did.’
Supple was tall and thin with an almost ingenuous smile. Malone was not sure what post he had in the new British cabinet, but he was certain that Supple would be popular with both voters and party members. He was equally certain that Supple would never be Prime Minister: nice guys who dozed off in the Commons dreaming of long-ago summers never made it to the top. Supple had been like that as a batsman: one minute thrashing the bowlers to all corners of the field, the next dreamily losing concentration and getting out to a ball that really hadn’t challenged him.
‘What does your wife do?’
Supple looked up as Derek Huxwood put his hand on his shoulder. ‘I see you for a moment, Ivor? Excuse us, Scobie.’
It was polite, yet Malone abruptly felt shut out. His temper rose and for a moment he was tempted to go looking for Lisa and walk out. Then Supple’s vacated chair was taken by a florid-faced man who had arrived at the dinner table just as the party sat down.
‘I’m Ned Custer, one of the sons-in-law. Sheila’s husband. You’re the outsider, right?’
Where did this family learn all its insults? ‘You could say that. I feel like a Jew at a Muslim picnic.’
Custer’s laugh was full-bodied, genuine. He was not quite as tall as Malone and much thicker; what had once been muscle had softened into fat. Malone recognized him now: a corporation lawyer who had once been a prominent rugby forward. Twenty years ago he had led death-or-glory charges that had earned him the nickname Rhino. He had thinning hair that, perhaps influenced by his cheeks and scalp, looked pink; small, very bright blue eyes; and a wide hard mouth that didn’t look as if it should emit such a jolly laugh. He appeared friendly, however, and Malone relaxed back in his chair, took a sip of the port that he had poured for himself.
‘The Huxwoods have always been like that. I was an outsider right up till the day I married Sheila.’ He seemed remarkably confidential for a lawyer, thought Malone; but maybe that was a policeman’s suspicion. ‘In a country as young as ours, they rank as Old Society. They didn’t get here with the First Fleet, but the way they tell it, they were standing on the quay when the ships sailed.’
‘You don’t like them, do you?’ Malone said it carelessly, as if it were a joke.
‘I’ve never understood them, that’s the truth. Not even after three years in the bosom ... I’m Sheila’s second husband ... Ah, here’s my friend Enrico. The other – what do you register as, Enrico? The de facto in-law? The partner-in-law?’
Only then did Malone recognize that Custer was more than half-drunk.
Enrico Quental was a short, handsome man who, Malone immediately decided, was another outsider. When introduced to him earlier, he had assumed that Quental was the husband of Linden, the younger of the Huxwood daughters; whatever he was, he was quiet, withdrawn yet dignified. Malone could not remember hearing him utter a word during dinner. He had applied himself to what was placed before him with all the concentration of a food critic and Malone wondered if that was what he was. Sydney, Lisa had told him, now had more food critics than restaurants.
‘Partner is the word, Ned. It covers a multitude of sins.’ He had a slight accent, but his English sounded excellent. He smiled at Malone. ‘Are you here in an official capacity, Inspector?’
‘I hope not. I’m in Homicide.’
‘Oh, there’s murder all the time around here,’ said Custer, downing his port in one gulp and reaching for the decanter. ‘Verbal homicide. Am I right, Enrico?’
Malone wondered why a police officer, from any squad, should be expected here at the Huxwoods’. But there were currents in this big house swirling beneath the surface; he was suddenly aware of them as if his feet were being swept from beneath him.
Then Derek Huxwood reappeared and Malone had an abrupt image: he’s riding herd on me. ‘Time we went in to join the ladies, chaps.’
‘A little soon, isn’t it?’ Custer held up his newly-filled glass. ‘I’m still to starboard of the port.’
‘Save it for next time, Ned. Tell the Old Man, Enrico, that we’re going in. He’s likely to sit there all night talking to Bev. He thinks politicians are interesting.’
‘Can I be trusted to deliver the message?’ But Quental smiled as he moved away towards Sir Harry.
Derek took Malone’s arm as they moved towards the door of the dining-room. ‘In-laws,’ he said. ‘They can be a problem.’
Malone’s tongue, always straining at its leash, loosened now by four glasses of wine and the glass of port, was blunt: ‘Am I a problem, Derek? I’ve got the feeling you made a mistake inviting us tonight.’
Derek squeezed the elbow. ‘Yes, I did. That’s not meant to be personal. I seem to have made a lot of mistakes lately.’
He glanced sideways at Malone and the latter wondered at the pain in the once-bright eyes.
2
‘We had a dinner party last week at Parliament House,’ said Enid Bigelow. ‘Only when we sat down did I realize all the ladies were members of Alliance Française. So we spoke French all evening. It was fun.’
‘Oh merde,’ said Lady Huxwood, who thought obscenities excusable if in a foreign language. ‘Not for the husbands, I’ll bet. Australian men must be the worst linguists in the world, after the Eskimos. Do police officers these days have to have a second language, Mrs Malone? All this multiculturism.’
‘Only foul language,’ said Lisa. ‘Especially when dealing with the young. I’ve tried to teach my husband Dutch, I’m Dutch-born, but he doesn’t have the ear for it.’
‘Do you speak any other languages?’ Linden seemed the friendliest of the women present; or at least the most relaxed.
‘French and German. And a little Indonesian.’ Lisa was surprised at herself; it was as if she was trying to establish her identity amongst these women. Yet she could not have cared less what they thought of her. ‘I worked on the diplomatic circuit for four years before I met my husband. And I had two years at finishing school in Switzerland.’ She was tempted to say something in French, but it would be a cheap score on the poor Premier’s wife. ‘But the languages I learned there are really not of much value to my children. They’re learning Japanese and Indonesian.’
All the women in the big drawing-room looked at the woman who had been to finishing school in Switzerland, then on the diplomatic circuit and had finished up marrying a policeman.
‘You appear to have had an interesting life,’ said the Premier’s wife, and looked as if she wished desperately to know what an interesting life was like.
‘We all have our own lives to live,’ said the Huxwood younger daughter, then had the grace to smile. ‘God, how smug that sounds!’
‘Indeed it does,’ said her mother.
The two Huxwood daughters were almost totally unlike, except that both had their mother’s large myopic eyes. Sheila, the elder, had her mother’s boniness without the beauty; she wore glasses with large fashion frames that actually made her look attractive. Linden, on the other hand, was comfortably fleshy and, Lisa guessed, wore contact lenses. Both were dark-haired, Sheila’s in a Double Bay modified beehive, Linden’s in a French bob with bangs. Both were expensively dressed in simple dinner dresses and both wore simple diamond pendants and rings that winked lasciviously at anyone who found value in jewellery. Lisa, feeling ashamed that she should even care, was glad she had worn the gold necklace she had inherited from her grandmother. She had always preferred gold to diamonds, though Scobie, bless his stingy heart, had never bought her either.
She had noticed that the other women guests had been as quiet as herself; Lady Huxwood did nothing to put anyone at her ease. The Premier’s wife sat next to Lisa; we’re the two wallflowers, thought Lisa.
Beatrice Supple sat beside Lady Huxwood, and the tycoon’s wife had not sat down at all, hovering on the fringes like a lady-in-waiting.
‘Sit down, Gloria, for heaven’s sake!’ said Lady Huxwood.
Gloria surprised Lisa by saying, ‘My bloody girdle’s killing me. Have I got time to take it off before the men come in?’
‘Go for your life,’ said Linden, giggling. ‘Get a wriggle on.’
Gloria stepped behind Lisa’s chair, grunted and gasped, heaved a sigh of relief and her girdle dropped to the floor. As if they had all been constrained by the same girdle, all the women suddenly seemed to relax. Then the men came into the room, bringing with them their air of self-importance. Or am I, Lisa wondered, becoming paranoid about this house?
Gloria Bentsen, who had now sat down, moved aside on her couch for Sir Harry to sit beside her. He did so, taking her hand, stroking it and smiling, not at her nor her husband but at his wife. Lady Huxwood smiled back, but Lisa couldn’t tell whether she was indulging his mild flirtation or not.
Malone came and stood behind Lisa, leaned down and said softly, ‘I hope you’ve got a bad headache.’
She reached up, took his hand and said just as softly, ‘Splitting. But we can’t leave just yet.’
Nigel Huxwood drew up a chair alongside Lisa. He was the handsomest of the family, with finely chiselled features; the only blemish was a weak mouth but that was disguised by the dark moustache above it and the beautifully capped teeth that were exposed when he smiled. He looked up at Malone. ‘Go and chat to my sister, Scobie, while I try to charm your lovely wife.’
Not wanting to throw up on the big Persian carpet, Malone crossed the room and squeezed into the French two-seater beside Sheila. ‘I’ve been sent to charm you,’ he said and, hearing himself, wanted to throw up even more.
‘Nigel is always doing that. It’s never let me charm you. Brothers can be bastards.’
Gallantry did not come easily to Malone; from what he had read, Irish knights had been a bit slow on the chivalry bit. But he tried: ‘Righto, let’s reverse it. I’m not really good at the charm show.’
‘Is that because you’re a policeman?’
‘That may be part of it.’
‘Is the other part because you’re out of your depth in this house?’
Malone had met snobbery before, but never arrogance like this. ‘Not out of my depth. Just a different sort of breeding.’
She leaned away from him, to get him into better focus it seemed. Then she smiled, a very toothy smile but suddenly surprisingly friendly. ‘Touché, Mr Malone. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, y’know. La Malmaison has sunk more people than you could guess at, over the years. I don’t know whether it’s the house or we Huxwoods.’
‘I think it might be the Huxwoods.’ He would never be asked again, so what the hell?
‘Is that a police opinion or a personal one?’ She didn’t sound offended.
‘Cops are not supposed to have opinions. We just gather evidence and leave the opinions to the jury.’
‘Have you gathered much evidence this evening?’
‘Conflicting.’ He retreated, because all at once she sounded as if she might be likeable: ‘Conflicting evidence never gets you anywhere in a court of law.’
‘I must remember that,’ she said, as if to herself; then she looked up as the tycoon came and stood beside them. ‘Charlie darling, pull up a chair. You’ve met Inspector Malone?’
Malone was not sure exactly what a tycoon was: how rich, how powerful one had to be. There had been a barrage of tycoons in the past decade, most of whom had been shot down like so many balloons. But the newspapers, including the Huxwoods’ own Chronicle and their Financial Weekly, called Charles Bentsen a tycoon. He had emigrated from Sweden at eighteen, one of the few Swedes heading Down Under; his name then had been Bengtssen. He had started as a labourer on a building site and within twenty years owned a corporation. He had built office buildings, shopping malls, roads and bridges: he also built a personal fortune that every year got him into the Financial Weekly’s Rich List. Like all the nation’s New Rich, he had been subjected to the suspicion that no one had made his money honestly in the Eighties, but nothing had ever been proved against him. He possessed only one home, his art collection had been bought out of his own funds and not those of his shareholders, and his charitable works were not legendary only because he did not broadcast them. His wife Gloria had been his secretary and no one had a bad word to say about her. Malone knew very little of this, since he read neither the gossip columns nor the Financial Weekly, but he was prepared to take Bentsen at face value.
He was a big man, still with a labourer’s shoulders; now forty years out of Gӧteborg, he still looked typically Scandinavian, except for the Australian sun cancers. He had a wide-boned face, thick blond hair in which the grey was camouflaged, bright blue eyes; but the mouth looked cruel, or anyway uncompromising. Malone was sure that Bentsen had not made his fortune by patting people on the back.
‘I’ve never met Mr Malone, but I’ve heard a great deal about him.’ Then he looked at Malone. ‘Assistant Commissioner Zanuch is a friend of mine.’
He would be, thought Malone: AC Zanuch spent his free time climbing amongst the social alps. ‘It’s nice of him to mention me.’
‘I gather you get mentioned a lot, Inspector. You seem to specialize in cases that get a lot of attention.’
Malone tried to keep the sharpness out of his voice. ‘I don’t specialize, Mr Bentsen. Murder happens, we in Homicide have to investigate it.’
‘Just like those bumper stickers, Shit Happens?’
‘Usually a little more tragic than that. And sometimes messier.’
‘Don’t fence with him, Charlie,’ said Sheila Custer. ‘He has already put me in my place.’ She put her hand on Malone’s. ‘Only joking, Mr Malone.’
Malone gave her a smile, but he continued to look at Bentsen. Crumbs, he thought, why is everyone in this house so bloody aggressive? What’s scratching at them?
Bentsen said, ‘I read murder mysteries, they’re my relaxation. The old-fashioned sort, not the ones written by muscle-flexing authors.’
‘I get enough of it during the course of a week. I can’t remember when I last read a murder mystery – reading our running sheets is about as close as I get. Do you read books about business leaders?’
‘Only those that fail,’ said Bentsen and looked around him as if one or two fallen heroes might be here in the room.
On the other side of the room Lisa was resisting, without effort, the charm of Nigel Huxwood. In another location she might have good-humouredly responded to him; but not in this house. While pretending to listen to him, she had been taking in her surroundings. There were treasures in this room with which she would have liked to have surrounded herself: the two Renoirs on opposite walls, the Rupert Bunny portrait of two women who might have been earlier Huxwoods. The chairs and couches and small tables were antiques, though the upholstery had been renewed; the drapes were French silk. The room reeked of wealth well spent and, against the grain of her nature, she suddenly felt envious. This house was working on her in a way that made her angry.
She looked up almost with relief, any distraction was welcome, as the two female in-laws, who had been missing since dinner, came back into the drawing-room. They bore down on Lisa and Nigel, drawing up chairs to sit side by side like twins who always did everything together. Yet in looks they could not have been more dissimilar.
Brenda Huxwood was an almost archetypal Irish beauty; the only thing that stopped her face from being perfect was that her upper lip was too Irish, just a little too long. She had been an actress, but her talent had never matched her looks and British producers had always shied away from promoting an actress on beauty alone. She was Nigel’s third wife and, if Lisa had asked her, would have said she was determined to be his last. She had started life with no money but always with an eye to attaining some; now she had grasped it she had no intention of losing it; her credit was that she loved Nigel, despite his faults. The brogue in her voice was only faint, like a touch of make-up to enhance the general appeal, though it could thicken into a soup of anger as others in the room knew.
Cordelia Huxwood, on the other hand, had had to borrow her looks: from hairdressers, beauty salons, aerobics classes. Her mouse-brown hair was tinted, her pale blue eyes somehow made to seem larger than they actually were, her figure, inclined to plumpness, slimmed down by only-God-and-gym-instructors-knew how many hours on exercise machines. The package was artificial, yet sincerity shone out of her so that one instantly liked her. She was inclined to blame herself for too much that might go wrong, to wear hairshirts, but since they were usually by Valentino or Hermès she got little sympathy, especially from her mother-in-law.
‘Where have you two been?’ said Nigel.
‘Talking business,’ said Brenda and made it sound as if she and Cordelia had been composing a poem. Everything with her, Lisa decided, was for effect.
‘We in-laws needed to get a few things straightened out,’ said Cordelia.
Lisa was never sure whether she had been born with a sharp eye, had acquired it as a diplomat’s secretary or had learned it from Scobie: whichever, she did not miss Nigel’s warning glance. ‘You must tell me about it. Later.’
‘Oh, we’ll do that,’ said his wife. ‘Voices will be heard.’
‘They may even be strident,’ said Cordelia. ‘But we mustn’t puzzle Mrs Malone with family problems. Do you have children?’
‘Three. Eighteen, fifteen and thirteen. Two girls and a boy. So far, thank God, giving us no problems.’
‘Lucky you,’ said Cordelia. ‘I hope it stays that way. How’s Mother Dragon?’ she said to Nigel.
‘Starting to yawn openly.’
‘She always does. She has a patent on the open yawn.’
Lisa couldn’t help herself: she giggled. Both Cordelia and Brenda looked at her and smiled widely, as if pleased that an outsider had seen a family joke. But neither said anything and Nigel, covering hastily, turned the conversation off at right angles.
Malone, abruptly left out of a sudden conversation between Sheila and Bentsen, excused himself and headed for the door. Sir Harry, after a final pat of Gloria Bentsen, this time on her attractive knee, rose and followed him. ‘Going, Mr Malone?’
‘Soon, Sir Harry. But first I’d like to use the bathroom.’
‘There’s a lavatory off the library.’ The old-fashioned word brought a grin to Malone’s lips. His mother was the only other person he knew who talked of the lavatory instead of the toilet or the loo. ‘This way.’
The library was a big room with the high ceiling that the rest of the ground floor of the house seemed to possess. It was the sort of room Malone saw in films and, secretly, yearned for; for some reason he had never confessed the yearning to anyone, even Lisa. In a room like this he would gather together all the books he had let slip by him, would wrap himself in the education that Lisa had and he had missed, would listen to the music that his heart would understand but that his ear had yet to interpret. He wondered if Sir Harry, with all his advantages, would understand his yearning.
A leather-covered door was let into a wall of books; Sir Harry gestured at it and Malone went in, under a complete set of Winston Churchill, for a piss. When he came out Sir Harry was standing at the tall bow-window that looked out on to the tiny bay and beyond that to the harbour. The only lighting in the dark brown room came from a brass lamp on the wide leather-topped desk. When Sir Harry turned back to face Malone, he looked suddenly much older in the yellow glow. The lines in his face had become gullies, the eyes had no gleam in them.
‘A good piss is one of life’s little pleasures.’ Even his smile looked ghastly. Then he sat down at the desk, there was more light on his face and he suddenly appeared less frail. ‘Were you and my son Derek ever close, Mr Malone?’
‘Scobie ... No, not really. We got on well, but there was the age difference. In sport six years is quite a gap. He’d been playing for five or six years before I got into the State team. We weren’t real professionals back then, none of us earned the money they do these days.’
‘I don’t think Derek ever gave a thought to what he earned as a cricketer.’
‘He could afford not to.’
The old man accepted the rebuke. ‘Sorry. So you and he were not close?’
‘Not as bosom friends, no. He was my – well, I guess my mentor.’
Sir Harry nodded. ‘He was always good at that. Mentoring, or whatever the verb is. Except with his siblings.’
That was another old-fashioned word that, unlike lavatory, had come back into fashion. Malone, having no siblings, could think of nothing to say and, as he often did in interrogations, stood and waited. The old man seemed not to notice his silence; he went on, ‘What’s your heritage, Scobie?’
The question made Malone pause; he could not remember ever having been asked it before. ‘Not much, I’m afraid. I’ve never bothered to trace the family further back than my grandparents. And even that far back I’m in the dark on a lot of things.’ Including my own mother’s early life; or anyway her early love. ‘I’m of Irish descent, the name tells you that. I guess all I’ve really inherited, if I knew about it, is a lot of pain and trouble. That’s Ireland, isn’t it?’
‘It doesn’t seem to have affected you. On the surface.’
‘Maybe it’s because I don’t think too much about it. Maybe I should.’
Sir Harry shook his head. ‘If you don’t have to, don’t. Heritage, I’m beginning to think, is like history – it’s bunk. Henry Ford, one of history’s worst philosophers, said that. But perhaps, who knows, he had a point.’ He had an occasional stiff way of putting his thoughts into words, as if he were writing an editorial. Then he smiled and stood up. ‘I’d like you to come again, Scobie. I don’t get to talk enough to ’ Then he smiled again, without embarrassment. ‘I was going to say the common folk. Does that offend you?’
‘I’m a republican, Sir Harry. We’re all common folk.’
‘You must debate some time with my wife. She’s a monarchist through and through. At Runnymede she would have been on side with King John. You’ve heard of Magna Carta?’
There it was again, the arrogance: unwitting, perhaps in Sir Harry’s case, but endemic. ‘They were still teaching English history when I was at school. I had to study it in a plain brown wrapper, so my father wouldn’t throw a fit. He hates the Brits.’
‘Perhaps you should bring him here to debate with my wife.’
‘Are you a monarchist, Sir Harry?’ All at once Malone was interested in the older man, wanted to put him in front of the video recorder in one of the interrogation rooms at Homicide. Take him apart, perhaps take a hundred and fifty years of Huxwoods apart. This family, this man, had wielded influence that had toppled governments, that had sent young men to a war they didn’t believe in, that had, in various ways, influenced the running of the force in which Malone himself served.
‘Mr Malone, I fear that all my beliefs, whatever they were, have somehow turned to water.’ Then abruptly it seemed that he had revealed enough of himself: ‘Shall we rejoin the others?’
They went out into the wide tessellated hallway. A curving staircase went up to the first floor, its polished walnut banister following it like a python heading for the upper galleries of a rain-forest. Four of the family stood in the hallway: Derek, Nigel, Sheila and Linden. Halfway up the staircase Lady Huxwood had paused, stood with one hand on the banister and stared down at her children. Malone, the outsider, unconnected to whatever demons were stirring in the family, was struck with a sudden image: he had seen it all before on some late night movie, The Magnificent Ambersons or The Little Foxes, Bette Davis or some other over-the-top actress pouring venom from a great height.
‘You deserve nothing, none of you! I should have aborted the lot of you!’
Then she went on up the stairs, paused on the gallery that ran round the upper level of the hallway and looked back down into the pit. Malone waited for another spit of spite, was surprised when she looked directly at him and snapped, ‘Goodnight, Mr Malone. I’m sure you won’t come again.’
Then she was gone. There was absolute silence and stillness for a long moment, then the four siblings let out a collective sigh. Sir Harry touched Malone’s arm, said, ‘Forgive us, Mr Malone,’ and went on up the stairs, moving stiffly and not looking back at his sons and daughters.
Malone had known embarrassment, but nothing like this. He looked for an exit, some way he could skirt the four Huxwoods and be ignored by them. Then Lisa appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, coat over her dinner dress. If she had heard what had just been said in the hallway, she gave no sign of it.
She held out her hand to Derek. ‘Thank you, Derek, A most entertaining evening.’
Nigel and his sisters slipped away, not even looking at the Malones, just disappearing into the shadows of the house. Derek shook hands with Lisa, did the same with Malone, then escorted them towards the heavy front door.
‘I’m glad you thought it was entertaining.’ He was smiling, that whimsical grin just short of a sneer. ‘Like Macbeth or King Lear. You should see us when we’re in top form. Our paper’s cartoonists could get a month’s run out of us.’
3
Driving home Lisa said, ‘Don’t ever accept an invitation to that house again, understand? Never!’
‘There’s no chance of that. What happened while I was out with Sir Harry?’
‘I don’t know. All of a sudden the four of them were down one end of the room with Lady Huxwood, arguing in whispers. The rest of us were at the other end, trying to look as if we hadn’t been left there like – what’s that expression you use?’
‘Like shags on a rock?’
‘That’s it. We never go there again, understand?’
He knew how adamant she could be, but never about anything as unimportant as a dinner invitation. He had, however, noticed a gradual change in her over the past few months. Last year she had been operated on for cervical cancer; the operation had been successful and there had been no metastasis since. She had undergone chemotherapy and it had had a temporary effect: there had been the recurring bouts of vomiting and she had lost some of her lustrous blonde hair. The hair had grown back, as thick as ever, and she was once again healthily vibrant; but her patience had thinned, she had less time for inconsequentialities. It was as if she had looked at the clock and decided it was closer to midnight than she had thought. She had not become self-centred, but she had begun to ration her time, her attention and her charity. He couldn’t blame her: she had been fortunate to come out on the lucky side of a fifty-fifty chance.
‘What drives them to be like that, for God’s sake?’ She was stirred, more than she should be. ‘They have everything, there’s nothing missing in their lives. Not the way ordinary people count things. And yet ... Have you ever met such a bunch?’
‘There’s lots more around like them, I’m sure. We just never meet them. When we do, it’s usually after a homicide and by then they’ve called a truce.’
‘Lady Huxwood invites homicide. Anyhow, we never go there again. Watch the red light.’
‘You’re the one who’s driving. You watch it.’
Chapter Two (#ulink_f6928205-e4cb-5dc2-9e37-36ba93af0d5b)
1
For several years the Homicide Unit of the Major Crime Squad, South Region, had been housed in the Hat Factory, a one-time commercial building where the ambience had suggested that the Police Service was down on its luck, that the hat had had to be passed around before the rent could be raised. Recently Homicide, along with other units in the Major Crime Squad, had been moved to quarters that, for the first few weeks, had brought on delusions that money had been thrown at the Service which the State government had actually meant for more deserving causes such as casino construction or pork-barrelling in marginal electorates.
Strawberry Hills was the enticing name of the new location, though no strawberry had ever been grown there nor had it ever been really enticing. It had begun as clay-topped sandhills held together by blackbutts, blood-woods, angophoras and banksias, but those trees had soon disappeared as the men with axes arrived and development raised its ugly shacks. ‘Environment’, in its modern meaning, had just been adopted in England, but so far word, or the word, had not reached the colony. For years there was a slow battle between the sandhills and the houses built on them, but that did not stop a developer from naming his estate after the sylvan Strawberry Hill in England where Horace Walpole, in between writing letters to addressees still to be chosen, had built a villa that would never have got above foundation level if it had been built on the colony’s sandhills. Time passed and gradually Strawberry Hills, like the sandhills, virtually disappeared off maps. The city reached out and swamped it. A vast mail exchange was built where once tenement houses had stood, but though Australia Post could sort a million letters an hour it couldn’t sort out the industrial troubles in the exchange. Eventually the huge ugly structure was closed as a mail exchange, an impressive glass facade was added, as if to mask what a problem place it had been. Six huge Canary Islands date palms stood sentinel in the forecourt, looking as out of place as Nubian palace guards would have been. The winos across the street in Prince Alfred Park suffered the DTs for a week or two, but became accustomed to the new vista and soon settled back into the comfort of the bottle.
Australia Post moved its administrative staff back in and then looked around for tenants who would be less of a problem than its unions had been. Whether it was conscious of the irony or not, it chose the Major Crime Squad. Level Four in the refurbished building was almost too rich in its space and comfort for the Squad’s members, but it is difficult to be stoical against luxury. One of the pleasures for those in Homicide on night duty was to put their feet up on their brand-new desks, lean back and, on the Unit’s television set, watch re-runs of Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue and pity the poor bastards who had to work in such conditions.
The morning after the Huxwood dinner Malone overslept, but, a creature of certain habits, he still went for his five-kilometre walk before breakfast. It was nine-thirty before he reached Homicide and let himself in through the security door. Russ Clements was waiting for him, looking worried.
‘You sick or something? I rang Lisa ten minutes ago -’
‘I’m okay. I knew there was nothing in the synopsis -’
‘There is now. Four murders in our Region alone, two in North Region’s. You and I are on our way out to Vaucluse –’
‘I’m not going out on any job. That’s for you –’
The big man shook his head. ‘I think you’d better come on this one, Scobie.’
Malone frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Lisa told me where you were last night. Malmaison House. That’s where we’re going. Kate Arletti’s out there waiting for us – I sent her out as soon as Rose Bay called in. It’s their turf, theirs and Waverley’s.’
‘A homicide at Malmaison?’ Lady Huxwood invites homicide. ‘Who? Lady Huxwood?’
Clements looked at him curiously. ‘What made you say that?’
‘Lisa and I were talking about her on our way home ... It was a bugger of a night, you’ve got no idea. She’s the – she was the Dragon Lady of all time.’
‘She probably still is. It was the old man, Sir Harry, who was done in.’
Malone managed not to look surprised. No one knew better than he that murder always held surprises, not least to the victim. But Sir Harry? ‘How?’
‘I’m not sure yet. Rose Bay called in, said there was a homicide, but gave no details other than that it was Sir Harry who copped it. The place is probably already overrun with the media clowns.’
‘What about the other murders?’
‘I’ve organized those. I’ll tell you about them on the way out to Vaucluse.’
Homicide had been re-organized late last year in another of the Service’s constant changes. Modern life, Malone thought, had been taken over by planners; they were everywhere, termites in the woodwork of progress. Change for change’s sake had become a battle cry: if it ain’t broke, let’s fix it before it does break. Malone was still the Inspector in charge of Homicide, but he was now called Co-ordinator and his job, supposedly, was now more desk-bound. Clements had been promoted to senior-sergeant and was now the Field Supervisor. Murder was still committed, evidence was still collected, the pattern never changed; only the paperwork. Malone knew that conservatism was creeping over him like a slow rash, but he didn’t mind. The itch, actually, was a pleasure.
The two detectives drove in an unmarked car out to the farthest of the affluent eastern suburbs. Vaucluse lies within the shoulder of the ridge that runs out to end in South Head at the gateway to the harbour; it is a small area facing down the harbour like a dowager gladly distant from the hoi polloi. The suburb is named after a property once owned by a titled convict who was as thick in the head as the timber that grew down the slope from the ridge. He built a small stone house and surrounded it with a moat filled with soil shipped out from the Irish bogs – ‘to keep out the snakes’. The area has had several notable eccentrics since then, but Sir Henry Brown Hayes had established the standard. The Wentworths, a family with its own quota of eccentrics, were the first to give the suburb its social tone, which it has never lost.
The first Huxwood arrived in 1838, bought five acres along the shore and built the first stage of what was to become La Malmaison. Huxwoods still owned the five acres, paying local taxes that exceeded the annual entertainment allowance of the entire local council. There were three houses on the estate, which had not been subdivided: the Big House, Little House One and Little House Two. Tradesmen, coming to the estate for the first time, had been known to expect fairies at the bottom of the extensive gardens and were surprised to find the family appeared to be both sensible and heterosexual.
Huxwood Road had been named by the founder of the family, determined to have his name on the map; in the 1840s, when he had suffered his first delusion of grandeur, it had been no more than a dirt track. Some years ago, Sir Harry, at the urging of his wife, had attempted to have the council change the name, insisting the family was not interested in advertising or being on any map. But Huxwood Road was now the street in Vaucluse, if not in Sydney, and the residents, having paid fortunes for the address, were not going to find themselves at a location that nobody would recognize. One didn’t pay thousands of dollars a year in taxes to live in Wattle Avenue or, God forbid, Coronation Street.
When Malone and Clements arrived, the street had gone down several hundred thousand dollars in rateable value, at least temporarily. It was chockablock with police cars, press and radio cars, TV vans and an assorted crowd of two or three hundred spectators, most of whom looked as if they had rushed here from nearby Neilsen Park beach. The street had not looked so low grade since the titled convict’s day. The snakes had taken over the Garden of Eden, Irish bog soil notwithstanding.
‘Christ Almighty,’ said Clements. ‘It looks like the finish to the City to Surf gallop.’
He nudged the car through the crowd, in through the wide gates of the estate and down the driveway to the front of the house. Several vehicles were parked there, including three police cars and a private ambulance. As Clements pulled up, another car came down the driveway behind them. Romy Clements got out.
‘What’re you doing here?’ It had the directness of a husband-to-wife remark.
Romy gave Clements a brush-off smile, looked instead at Malone. ‘I thought I’d have a look at how the other two per cent lives. I used rank and told Len Paul I’d do the job.’ She was the Deputy-Director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine and ran the day-to-day routine of the city morgue; normally she would not respond to a call for a government medical officer in a homicide. ‘Shall we go in?’
‘I’ll bet she fingers the curtains first,’ Clements told Malone. ‘Then she’ll look at the kitchen. Then she’ll look at the corpse.’
Malone was glad there was nobody close enough to hear the banter. Outsiders might not appreciate that no disrespect was intended, just that murder was part of the day’s work. They went in through the open door, beneath a carved stone replica, like a coat-of-arms, of the Huxwood Press logo: an open book marked with a bookmark, inscribed Only the Truth. The wide hallway inside seemed crowded with people standing around looking lost. It reminded Malone of a theatre lobby and latecomers wondering if seats were still available.
Kate Arletti pushed her way into Malone’s path. ‘Morning, sir. The Rose Bay officers are here and between us we’ve got a few facts. Can we go into that room there?’
It was the library, where Sir Harry last night had said his beliefs had turned to water. The room now had none of last night’s shadows; the summer sun streamed in through the big bay window. Out in the tiny bay a small yacht rocked daintily in the wake from a passing ferry. Then a launch hove into view, crowded with photographers trying to capture the house from the water. Two uniformed policemen appeared down on the shoreline and waved them away. With the policemen was an elderly gardener holding a spade like an axe. Malone nodded, condoning the gardener’s threat of assault and battery.
‘The body was discovered at seven o’clock this morning,’ said Kate Arletti. ‘The butler went up with his morning tea. What’s the matter?’
‘I shouldn’t be grinning. But all this sounds like something out of Agatha Christie. Butler, morning tea ... We don’t get many crime scenes like this, Kate. How did he die?’
‘A gunshot wound to the side of the head, left temple. It looks like death would have been instantaneous. Dr Clements will confirm that, I suppose.’
‘How are the family?’
‘Shattered, those I’ve met. All except the eldest son, Derek. He’s got some men from the Chronicle out in the garden room, he’s organizing how the homicide is to be reported. He strikes me as cold-blooded. Sorry, I shouldn’t be making comments like that so early in the piece.’
She was small and blonde, a little untidy in her dress but crisp in everything she did. She was dressed in a tan skirt and a brown cotton shirt; somewhere there would be a jacket and Malone would bet she had already forgotten where she had left it. She was pretty in an unremarkable way, her face not disfigured but lent character by the scar down her left jawline. When she had been a uniformed cop a junkie had tried to carve her up with a razor and she had retaliated by breaking his nose with the butt of her gun. Six months ago, when Malone had first met her, she had been in uniform, neat and tidy as a poster figure. Since coming into Homicide, into plainclothes, her natural untidiness had emerged. All that was still neat about her was her work. With a sartorial wreck like Russ Clements setting an example, Malone had never had the heart to ask her to do up a button or roll up a loose sleeve.
‘What about Lady Huxwood?’
She hesitated. ‘Composed, I guess would be the word. She’s pretty – formidable?’
‘That’s another good word. I was here for dinner last night, I’ll tell you why some other time. They’re a weird mob, Kate. Don’t entertain any preconceived notions about them. Take ’em bit by bit, inch by inch.’
‘It sounds as if you didn’t enjoy last night?’
‘I’m not going to enjoy this morning, either.’
They went out into the hallway, which was less crowded now. Clements came towards them, biting his lip, an old habit when his thoughts did not fit as they should. Whether it was because Romy had dressed him or he had known, subconsciously, that he would be coming to this elegant house, this morning he was not his usual rumpled self. He wore an olive-grey lightweight suit, a blue button-down shirt and a blue silk tie with club or regimental stripes; though he had not belonged to a club in fifteen years and never to a regiment. His broad face, just shy of being good-looking, had a harried look, an expression unusual for him.
‘I’ve had only a glance at the family so far – that’s enough. Listening to ’em ...’ He shook his head. ‘Keep an eye on ’em, Kate. We’re going upstairs.’
He and Malone climbed the curve of the stairs. Halfway up Malone paused and looked down: this was the spot where Lady Huxwood had told her children she should have aborted the lot of them. It was an elevation for delivering pronouncements; he wondered how many other insults and dismissals had been hurled from here. Then he went on after Clements, following him into a bedroom off the gallery.
It was a big room with old-fashioned furniture: a four-poster bed, a heavy wardrobe and a dressing-table that could have accommodated at least two people. A large television set, in an equally large cabinet, stood in one corner. On a table by the two tall windows was the only modern note, a computer.
Romy, in a white coat now, was drawing off a pair of rubber gloves. She gestured at the body on the bed and nodded to the two men from the funeral contractors. ‘You can take him to the morgue now. Tell them I’ll do the autopsy.’ Then she crossed to join Malone and Clements by the windows. ‘Time of death is always guess-work, but I’d say he’d been dead ten to twelve hours. I’ll take some fluid from his eyes when I get back to the morgue, check the amount of potassium in it. That gives a bit more precision in the timing, but don’t expect me to pinpoint it.’
‘Any sign of a struggle?’
‘None. He could have been asleep when he was shot, I don’t know. There are powder-marks on a pillow, looks as if whoever killed him used it to muffle the shot.’
Malone walked over to the bed to take a last look at Sir Harry before the contractors zipped him up in the body bag. The democracy of death had done nothing for Sir Harry’s arrogance; a last spasm of pain looked more like an expression of distaste at the world he had just left. Malone nodded to one of the men and the zip closed over Sir Harry Huxwood, like a blue pencil through one of the many editorials he had written.
‘There’s this –’ Romy pulled on one of the rubber gloves, took a small scrap of paper from the pocket of her white coat. ‘Looks like he had a cadaveric spasm. It happens – the muscles tighten like a vice. It’s usually the hand that spasms, but sometimes the whole body does, though that’s pretty rare.’
Malone held the piece of paper with the pair of hair-tweezers he always carried. Clements said, ‘It’s a torn scrap, looks like it’s been torn off the corner of a letter or a memo. Good quality paper. Evidently whoever did him in tried to take the whole paper, but he wouldn’t let go. If they shot him in the dark, maybe they didn’t know it was torn till they got outside.’
‘Why would he be holding a letter or a memo in the dark?’ Malone held up the fragment. ‘There’s one word on it in red pencil. No – N – O, exclamation mark. Got your French letter?’
Clements produced one of the small plastic envelopes he always had in his pockets, grinning at Romy as he did so. He slipped the scrap of paper into the envelope. ‘I’ve never used these as condoms, in case you’re wondering.’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised at anything he did before we met,’ she told Malone, taking off her white coat and folding it neatly. ‘I’ll see Ballistics gets the bullet when I’ve done the autopsy.’
‘How’s business? Can you do him this morning?’
‘They told me before I came out here there’d been six homicides last night, plus four dead in accidents. He may have to take his turn.’
‘He hasn’t been used to that. Put him at the head of the list.’
‘Inspector –’ All at once she was not Mrs Clements but the Deputy-Director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Her squarely beautiful face became squarer as she set her jaw; her dark eyes lost their gleam, seemed to become even darker. It was what Clements called her Teutonic look. ‘Nobody jumps the queue in our morgue. I’ll get to him when I get to him.’
Malone was glad the funeral contractors had already gone with the body; he did not like being ticked off in public. Clements looked embarrassed for him, but said nothing.
‘Romy, I’m not pandering to Sir Harry because of who he is. Or was. But with all due respect to the other five murder victims, the media aren’t going to be interested in them. They’re going to be on my back about this one. And so will my boss and the AC Crime and the Commissioner and the Premier and, for all I know, maybe God Himself.’
‘Tough titty, as you vulgarians say. I’ll do him when I do him. That all?’ She had packed her small bag, stood like a wife walking out on two husbands.
Malone recognized he was not going to get anywhere with her. He nodded at the door to an adjoining room. ‘Whose room is that?’
‘Lady Huxwood’s. I was told she wasn’t to be disturbed.’ Romy was still cool. ‘I’ll see you at home, Russ. Pick up the meat.’
Then she was gone and Clements said, ‘Don’t you know you don’t push a German around? You went about that in the wrong way, mate.’
‘Righto, you work on her, if you’re so bloody subtle.’
‘It’s not that I’m subtle. I’m married to her. You learn a few things. I thought you would have known that. The Dutch are as stubborn as the Germans, aren’t they?’
‘One thing I’ve learned, never bring up ethnic differences in a marriage. That’s a good way of starting World War Three ... All right, see what you can do with her. I don’t want to be carrying the can for the next week. Let’s go down and talk to the family.’
Down in the hallway one of the Rose Bay detectives, a middle-aged man named Akers, was waiting for them. He was a senior-constable and had the resigned look of a man who realized he might, just might, make sergeant before he retired. His hair was already grey and his plump face was pink with blood vessels close to the surface.
‘Some of the family are here, Scobie, some have gone home. You’ll want to talk to them?’
‘I’ll talk to those that are here.’ Malone looked up and around the high hallway. ‘What’s the set-up here? How many rooms?’
‘Fourteen in this house, not including the bathrooms but including three rooms for the staff. There’s a wing out the back for them, beside the garages. The butler and cook are husband and wife, name’s Krilich, they’re Yugoslavs. Outside there’s what they call Little House One and Little House Two –’ He made a face. ‘I think Enid Blyton or Beatrix Potter must of stayed here once.’
‘You’re well read, Jim.’
Akers grinned, relaxing; up till now he had been a bit stiff. Local Ds never did like Major Crime Squad men appearing on their turf. ‘My wife’s a schoolteacher ... Derek, the eldest son, and his family live in Little House One – it has eight rooms, I believe. Little House Two has six rooms and Sheila, the elder daughter, and her husband live there – they have a child, but she lives out.’
‘What about Nigel and his wife? And Linden and her husband?’
Akers looked surprised that Malone was so well acquainted, but he made no comment. ‘Nigel, the actor –’ He uttered ‘the actor’ as he might have said ‘the poofter’; the theatrical profession obviously got no rating with him. ‘He and his wife, she’s an actor too, I hear. Or was. They have a flat at Point Piper. He has two kids, a boy and a girl – he’s been married twice before. The kids are from different mothers. The younger sister – Linden, did you say? – she and her husband – actually, he’s her de facto – they live out in the country, somewhere south of Bowral. They have no kids, though she’s been married before. They stayed here last night. In the Big House,’ he said and just managed not to simper.
‘Nice rundown, Jim. You been here before?’
‘About two years ago. There was an attempted break and enter, but they were disturbed and got away.’
‘Righto, let’s go and talk to someone. Derek, the eldest, first.’
‘He’s in the garden room. Got three guys from the Chronicle with him. I’ll leave him to you and Russ. I’ve gotta report to my boss at Waverley.’
‘Tell him I’ll check with him later.’ It was the old territorial imperative, everybody protected his own little authority. ‘He didn’t put in an appearance?’
‘Superintendent Lozelle leaves the silvertails to us. I think he finds the riff-raff easier to deal with. Don’t quote me.’
Jim Akers, having had no rank for so long, had no respect for it. But he was not disrespectful of Malone and the latter let him get away with it. ‘Maybe he’s wiser than either of us. Give him my regards.’
Then he and Clements turned into the garden room, next door to the library. The entire wall that faced the harbour was one big bay window; the room was half-conservatory. Sections of the huge window were open, letting in some of the mild nor’easter, but the room was still warm. Derek and the three men with him were in their shirtsleeves. They stood as if lined up for a team photo, backed by a bank of palms in big brass-bound wooden tubs. There were no pictures decorating the walls, but flowers cried out for attention in a profusion of vases of all shapes and sizes. It was a room, Malone guessed, where the watering-can would be used more than tea- or coffee-pot.
Derek stepped forward, raised his hand as if to shake Malone’s, then thought better of it. He didn’t smile when he said, ‘So you’re here officially after all, Scobie.’
Malone kept it official: none of the old cricket mates’ act. ‘That’s how it is, Mr Huxwood. This is Detective-Sergeant Clements. Who are these gentlemen?’
Huxwood looked surprised, as if he had expected Malone to be less formal. Then: ‘Oh yes. This is Mr Gates, our managing editor –’ He seemed to emphasize the Mr. ‘Mr Shoemaker, the Chronicle’s editor. And Mr Van Dieman, of –’ He named one of the three top law firms in Sydney. ‘We’ve been deciding how to handle the story of – of what’s happened.’
‘How are you going to handle it?’
‘It’s difficult. My own impulse – a member of the family, all that – my own impulse would be to bury – no, that’s the wrong word –’ Despite what Kate Arletti had said, Derek did sound flappable, something Malone had not expected. ‘Put the story on one of the inside pages. But it’s Page One stuff, let’s face it. What the Herald and the Australian and the Telegraph-Mirror, especially them, will make of it, God only knows. And every other paper in the country.’
‘Not to mention radio and TV.’ Gates was a plump little man with soft brown, almost womanly eyes, a neat moustache above a neat mouth and an harassed air that did not appear to be habitual. Malone had no idea what a managing editor did, but Mr Gates was not managing too well at the moment. ‘Christ knows what rumours they’ll spout. I can hear them now ...’
Shoemaker couldn’t hear them; or if he could, he gave no sign. He was a tall, wide man with black kinked hair; he had fierce black eyebrows and a bulldozer jaw. Malone could imagine his scaring the pants off cadet reporters, boy and girl alike; but whatever his approach, it must have pleased the Huxwoods. He had been editor for ten years, a long time in modern Australian newspapers. ‘We’ll run the story straight, as if it was some other proprietor, not our own, who’d been murdered. Will you be in charge of the investigation, Inspector? Can I come to you for progress reports?’
‘I’ll let you know,’ said Malone. ‘For now it looks as if I’m in charge. But I could be out-ranked by lunchtime.’
Shoemaker grinned; or gave a grimace that might have been a grin. ‘I follow. It could be like our Olympic challenge, everyone jumping into the act. Well, I’d better be getting back to the Haymarket.’ Huxwood Press, its offices and printing press, was in an uptown area of the city, had been there for a hundred and fifty years. ‘Give my sympathy to the family, Derek. I’ll come back this afternoon, be more formal.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Gates and was gone out the door ahead of Shoemaker.
‘What does Mr Gates do?’ said Clements, who liked everyone labelled. ‘Managing editor?’
Derek looked at Van Dieman before he replied. ‘It’s a title we borrowed from the Americans and changed it a little. He sort of manages the editorial side.’
This, Malone realized, was office politics and he didn’t want to get into that, not now.
‘Do you mind if Alan stays?’ Derek gestured at Van Dieman. ‘Or will that look as if I’m preparing some sort of defence?’
‘Do you expect to be on the defensive?’ said Malone.
‘No.’ Derek sat down on a cushioned cane lounge, waved to the other three men to take seats. ‘But it is murder. Christ!’ He abruptly put a hand over his eyes, was silent a long moment. The others waited; then he withdrew his hand and blinked. But Malone could see no tears. ‘No one deserves to go out like that.’
‘We want no sensationalism,’ said Van Dieman.
Resentment shot up in Malone like a missile; but it was Clements who said, ‘The Police Service doesn’t go in for sensationalism, Mr Van Dieman. It’s the media does that.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ said the lawyer, but he sounded a little too hasty to convey that.
Though he was no more than forty, he was a grey man: grey-faced, grey-haired, grey-suited. The only spot of colour was his tie, but even that was plain purple rather than the strips of regurgitation that had been the fashion for the past couple of years. He had a soft voice, a grey voice, and a composure about him that hid his reputation. Malone had never met him, but knew that Van Dieman was considered the toughest corporation lawyer in town, if not the country.
Malone decided it was time to get down to cases. ‘It’s only a guess at the moment, but we think the murder occurred last night somewhere around midnight. Had the dinner party broken up by then?’
Derek nodded. ‘I think so. My wife and I were over in our house by eleven-thirty. The others who weren’t staying here had gone.’
‘Leaving who here?’
‘My sister Linden and her – her partner. They usually stay here when they come down from Sutton Forest. And Ivor and Beatrice Supple are staying here – or they were. We moved them out an hour ago, sent them into the Sheraton-on-the-Park. Sheila and her husband live over in the other house.’
‘Little House Two?’
‘You find that quaint? Or twee? Don’t look like that when you mention the houses in front of my mother. She thought she was being sarcastic when she named them, but everyone took the names seriously. If you can take names like that seriously ...’ Derek seemed to be talking too much.
‘How is your mother?’
‘Pretty shattered. She and Dad –’ He stopped, looked at Van Dieman as if for advice, then went on, ‘It’s hard to describe how close they were. People outside the family might have mistakenly thought they were always at odds with each other. They weren’t –’ He shook his head. ‘All our lives it was them against us. The children.’
‘Derek –’ said Van Dieman warningly.
‘Ah Christ, what’s it matter now, Alan? It’s all going to come out soon enough.’
There was silence in the big room but for the rustle of a sudden breeze amongst the potted palms. Out on the water someone in the photographers’ launch shouted something at one of the policemen on the shore; the policeman, risking being photographed in the act, gave the someone the finger. Then Malone said, ‘What’s going to come out? You mind telling us?’
A palm frond was brushing Derek’s shoulder; he raised a hand and absent-mindedly stroked it, as he might have a woman’s comforting fingers. He didn’t look at either of the detectives as he said, ‘There are certain members of the family want to sell the Press. Lock, stock and barrel, as they say.’
Malone looked at Clements, the business expert; the latter was frowning, not quite believing what he had heard. ‘Sell Huxwood Press? Everything?’
‘Everything. The papers, the magazines, the radio and TV stations in the other States ... Sounds crazy?’
‘But why? Huxwood is, I dunno, an empire. Its share price is higher than anyone else in its field, higher than News Corp. or Fairfax, your debt is nothing –’
Derek looked at Malone. ‘He’s a ring-in, isn’t he? He’s not with Homicide?’
Malone grinned. ‘Russ just does homicide as part-time ... Sorry, that’s tasteless, considering. No, he’s a punter. Used to be on the horses, now it’s on the stock exchange. He’s probably got shares in Huxwood.’
‘I have,’ said Clements. ‘But I won’t get a say, will I? Or any of the other public shareholders?’
‘Afraid not,’ said Derek Huxwood and made no attempt to sound less than privileged. He was part of the dynasty, for a moment he had the arrogance of his parents. ‘The family owns sixty per cent, we have the controlling interest.’
‘And who has the controlling interest in the family?’
Van Dieman said, ‘Is any of this really relevant at this stage?’
‘Yes,’ said Malone flatly. ‘Everything is relevant that will give us a lead on why Sir Harry was shot.’
‘Jesus!’ Derek snapped off a piece of the palm frond. ‘You’re saying one of us killed him?’
‘We’re not saying anything like that. Everyone working on a homicide has got his own way of doing it. Russ and I work from the outside inwards. It’s called elimination. You tell us everything about this house, the three houses, about the family, and we’ll do our own picking and choosing what to eliminate. So who has the controlling interest in Huxwood Press?’
Derek said nothing, looked at Van Dieman. It seemed that they had arrived rather late at the idea that this was a matter that was out of their hands, that could not be contained by a Chronicle editorial or a legal restraining order. The lawyer tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, then he nodded:
‘Okay, the family shares are parked in a holding company which has no other assets. The shares will always be voted in one line to maintain control.’
‘So who decides how the holding company votes?’ Clements seemed to have taken on a whole new image, sounded smoother. He is turning into a lawyer or a banker before my very eyes, thought Malone, amused at the thought but backing Clements all the way.
‘Sir Harry has – had the shares which carried the whole of the voting power.’
‘What about Lady Huxwood?’
‘No, not in Sir Harry’s lifetime.’
‘But she does now?’
‘We-ell –’
‘Why are you hesitating?’ Clements persisted.
Van Dieman took his time, as if he expected to fob off the question with a brusque answer or two. He said almost haughtily, ‘I wasn’t hesitating –’
‘Okay, you were stalling, then. Keep going.’
Both Van Dieman and Derek Huxwood glanced at Malone: who’s the senior man here, you or him? But Malone just returned their gaze: ‘You’d better give us an answer, Mr Van Dieman. We cops always have more time than lawyers. That’s why we charge less for it.’
Van Dieman flushed and Derek Huxwood turned his head away in disgust: ‘Jesus!’
Malone relaxed his official (officious? he wondered) air for a moment. ‘Take it easy, Derek. We’re not here to kick the shit out of you, we’re trying to find out who killed your father. If you and Mr Van Dieman will stop fartarsing about and get down to cases, we can be out of here and get on to talking to other members of the family. Sooner or later someone is going to tell us the truth, give us the dirt, if you like, and I think it might be better if we got it from you. Okay?’
Derek stared at him; then abruptly there was the old whimsical smile: ‘If you’d been as shitty as this as a fast bowler, you’d have played for Australia. You never had the killer instinct.’
‘I’m older and wiser, Derek. And shiftier – sometimes ... Let’s hear what you were almost going to tell us, Mr Dieman.’
‘Van Dieman,’ said the lawyer, as if it were a legal point. ‘No, now Sir Harry is dead, the voting power drops off and passes to all the shareholders. Lady Huxwood has no more voting power than any of the others.’
‘How did that arrangement come about?’ said Clements.
‘My father insisted,’ said Derek. ‘He’d be regretting it now.’
‘Why?’ said Malone.
Derek and Van Dieman looked at each other; then the lawyer said, ‘There is – shall we say – dissension – in the family. For some time now some of the younger ones have been threatening to ask for a winding-up of the company and a distribution of the group shares.’
‘So the younger ones could then combine their shares and have some real clout?’ Clements sat back, was his old self: a rough-edged cynical detective with class prejudices. Just like my Old Man, thought Malone: Us and Them. ‘That right? All the yuppies suddenly turning greedy?’
‘I don’t know that they’d appreciate being called yuppies. These young people are not upwardly mobile, they don’t need to be. But yes, I suppose you could call them greedy?’ He looked at Derek.
‘Greedy as hell,’ said Derek. ‘Some of them.’
‘Who are the grandchildren?’ asked Malone.
Derek said, ‘There are my three – Alexandra, Colin and Ross. There are Sarah and Michael, Nigel’s two. And there’s Camilla, she’s Sheila’s.’
‘All of voting age?’
Derek nodded. ‘I don’t know that all of them would want to sell.’
Van Dieman contradicted him: ‘I’m not so sure, Derek. If they all combine their shares, it could be a stand-off. And that, I’m afraid –’ he looked at Malone, ‘is what’s happening. Or was happening up till – till last night.’
Malone said, ‘Exactly what is your position in all this, Derek?’
‘You mean, how do I feel about selling? I’m against it, dead against it.’
‘How much – clout do you have?’
Derek shrugged. ‘No more than my brother and sisters. I’m executive editor and publisher of the newspaper and I’m deputy-chairman of the whole group. But that means zilch when it comes to voting.’
‘Your father was chairman?’ Derek nodded. ‘And the rest of the family?’
‘Nigel and my sisters are directors on the group board.’
‘The in-laws, too? And the grandchildren?’
‘They just run – what do they call it in American football? – they run interference. You’d go a long way to meet a more interfering lot of buggers, including the kids.’
Malone was surprised at the amount of venom Derek showed; but he made no remark on it. ‘Is there a buyer for the business?’
Derek looked at Van Dieman again, left it to him: ‘Let’s say there is strong interest.’
‘Who?’ Van Dieman said nothing and Malone snapped, ‘Come on, you’re fartarsing again! We’re here because of a murder, not some bloody business deal! Who?’
‘Metropolitan Newspapers,’ said Derek. ‘From London. That is why Ivor and Beatrice Supple are here. She’s deputy-chairman – chairwoman, chairperson, whichever you like – she’s here for Metropolitan. There are two lawyers and two bankers with her, they’re at the Sheraton-on-the-Park. But that’s not for publication,’ he said, apparently in his status as executive editor and publisher.
‘Pull your head in, Mr Huxwood,’ said Malone officially and officiously; he was getting stiff-necked about these two sitting opposite him. ‘I’m not in the habit of shooting off my mouth to the media.’
Derek backed down. ‘Sorry.’
Then there was a knock at the garden-room door and the butler, Krilich, looked in. He was a tall middle-aged man, dark-haired, heavy-browed and thick-shouldered; even last night Malone had thought he looked more like a builder’s labourer than what he had imagined a butler should look like. This morning he was in shirtsleeves and a blue-and-black striped vest, but wore a tie, a black one.
‘Assistant Commissioner Zanuch is here, Mr Huxwood.’
2
Assistant Commissioner Bill Zanuch did not look uncomfortable in this big house. The air of arrogance was there as always, the familiarity with top company as apparent. Malone had once described him, though not in his presence, as being so far up himself he had turned ego into a pretzel. In the latest of the Service’s shuffling of senior ranks, he had been moved from AC Administration to AC Crime, a criminal act in itself in Malone’s opinion. Zanuch was very much hands-on, to the point of throttling those under him. He and Malone in particular were not mates.
‘Hello, Bill,’ said Derek Huxwood, rising from the couch. ‘You here to take charge?’ He avoided looking at Malone as he said it.
‘No, Derek. I’m here to offer condolences – from the Commissioner, too. I’m not here to take charge.’
No, thought Malone, he’s not here to take charge: in the same way that General Schwarzkopf didn’t take charge of the Gulf War, as Napoleon went to Moscow for the snow sports.
‘Any leads, Inspector?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘Well, go ahead with whatever you were doing. I’ll just sit in.’ He sat down, arranged the crease in his trousers, undid the button of his double-breasted suit so there would be no strain on it, laid his police tie, silk of course, flat on his white shirt. He never wore anything that showed a label, he aspired to be too wellbred for that, yet somehow he gave the distinct impression that everywhere on him was a label, only the best, waiting to be displayed. ‘I’m here to help.’
But Malone wasn’t going to fall for that. ‘Sergeant Clements and I are finished here for the moment, sir. We have to see others in the family.’
‘Who?’ said Huxwood, irritation plain. ‘I can tell you everything you want to know –’
‘It’s just routine, Mr Huxwood,’ said Malone, waiting to be interrupted by Zanuch. But the Assistant Commissioner said nothing and Malone went on, ‘We like to interview everyone at the scene of the crime.’
‘Scene of the crime! Christ –’ Derek Huxwood looked at Zanuch as if expecting him to correct his junior officer. Then abruptly his broad shoulders slumped and he gestured futilely. ‘Why the hell am I protesting? It’s what we’ll call it in the paper tomorrow – the scene of the crime ... Go ahead, Scobie. Talk to the others. They’re all somewhere, here or in the other houses.’
‘Your mother?’
‘She’s upstairs in her room. Leave her – please?’
Malone hesitated, then nodded. He and Clements said goodbye to Van Dieman and Zanuch and left the garden room. Outside in the hallway they met Kate Arletti, looking even more untidy than ever. ‘Having a hard time of it, Kate? You’ve lost another button off your shirt.’
She looked down in surprise. ‘So I have! Sorry, sir ... This family is worse than any Italian family I’ve ever met. They can’t make up their minds whether to grieve or to argue.’
‘Where’s the elder sister, Sheila? And her husband?’
‘They’ve gone back to their own house.’
‘Righto, you and Russ continue with the others. I’m going over to Little House Two. Russ, give me the envelope with that scrap of paper.’
He went out through large French doors on to a wide stone terrace that ran the entire breadth of the main house, crossed half an acre of lawn, went through an opening in a head-high privet hedge and came to Little House Two.
The main house had been built in the 1860s, a hodgepodge of English country house, Roman villa and Colonial homestead, as if the architect, uncertain of his surroundings, had gone on a drunken spree yet had somehow produced something that was not an eye-sore. The two smaller houses had been built a hundred years later and the style, with just minor modifications, copied. The three stood in line facing north across the tiny bay, resembling nothing more than a slapdash Nash project that, like the convicts, had been transported and survived the change.
Ned Custer met Malone at the heavy oak front door. ‘I saw you coming, I’ve been expecting you. Finished with that lot over there? Van Dieman there, putting his oar in? Best lawyer in town. Pity he knows it better than anyone else.’
‘How’s Mrs Custer?’
Custer was leading the way into a large comfortable room that looked out past a lawn and a jetty, where a yacht was moored, to the bay. He was dressed in lightweight blue trousers, a blue-and-white cotton jumper and espadrilles; but at least his face showed appropriate gloom. ‘Not the best. We don’t get on, the family, but Jesus wept – murder?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘What?’
‘You implied someone in the family committed the murder.’
Custer waved his hands in front of him, as if beating off smoke. ‘No, no! Christ, I didn’t mean anything like that – oh darling. Here’s Scobie, come to interrogate us.’
Spoken like a true lawyer.
Sheila was more appropriately dressed; she was not in funeral black, but at least she didn’t look as if she were ready for a yachting picnic. She was in dark blue linen, skirt and shirt, with dark blue casual shoes. Her glasses did not hide the fact that she had been weeping. Without make-up she looked older than she had last night.
‘Sit down, sit down.’ Custer bustled about, like a front-row forward looking for the ball that had come out on the wrong side of the scrum. ‘Drink? Coffee?’
‘Nothing, thanks.’ Malone sat down in a comfortable chair, one of four in the room meant to relax their occupants; this was a room obviously meant for relaxation, the afternoon read, the pre-dinner drink. It was, Malone guessed, what the Custers called their family room, though the furnishings were much richer than he had seen in other family rooms. One narrow wall was taken up with an entertainment ensemble: television set with the largest screen Malone had ever seen, video recorder, tape-deck and shelves full of videos, tapes, CDs and even a stack of old LPs. Yet the room showed no wear and tear, it was a room for a phantom family. Sheila was already seated and Custer now dropped into a chair beside her, but neither of them looked comfortable. ‘All we’re after at this stage is what you may know of last night.’
‘You mean the murder? Bugger-all. Harry had gone to bed when we left.’
‘What time was that?’
‘I never wear a watch,’ Custer said and looked at his wife.
‘Midnight,’ she said. ‘What time is my father supposed to have been – ?’ Her voice was unsteady, she didn’t finish the sentence.
‘Around midnight, give or take an hour.’
‘So whoever killed him could have been in the house while we were there?’
Custer got up, poured himself a whisky, straight, no ice, no water or soda.
‘If it was an intruder –’
‘Of course it was a bloody intruder!’ The drink splashed in Custer’s hand as he sat down heavily.
‘What’s the security like over at the main house?’
‘Adequate.’ Custer sipped his whisky. ‘That’s about all you can say for any security in domestic circumstances – you’d know that as well as I do.’ Malone nodded. ‘We employ two security firms to watch the estate – and each other. But there was a break-in a coupla years ago – they caught no one – so it could easily have happened again. Burglars not so long ago didn’t carry guns or knives. But now ...’
There had been several incidents in the past year of murder by intruders, householders shot or knifed, people worth not one-hundredth of the Huxwood wealth.
‘Is there any way up to the first floor over there besides up the main staircase in the hallway?’
‘Of course.’ Sheila was beginning to regain some composure. ‘There’s a rear stairwell for the staff. And there’s all that latticework on the east wall. We’ve wanted to pull it down, but Mother wouldn’t allow it.’
‘What’s that there for?’
‘The roses, of course. The climbing roses, the Chinese hybrids – don’t you know what Malmaison is famous for?’
‘I thought it was – famous, if you like, for the Huxwoods.’
‘Nicely put, Scobie,’ said Custer. ‘I’d have said notorious.’
‘La Malmaison was where Napoleon’s Josephine lived. She was the one who really popularized rose-growing in Europe, she had roses brought in by the boat-load from all over, China, Turkey, everywhere. My great-great-grandfather, who built the original house, was a great admirer of Napoleon and Josephine. And he loved roses. I take it you’re not a gardener?’
‘I grow camellias and azaleas, they’re easy. But no, I’m not a gardener. Burke’s Backyard leaves me cold,’ he said, naming one of television’s top rating shows.
‘And,’ said Custer, looking halfway to being half-drunk again, on one glass of whisky, ‘you’re not a student of Sydney’s history?’
‘Not this side of town, no. Ask me about the arse-end of Sydney and I’ll give you chapter and verse. Sorry,’ he said to Sheila.
‘Take it easy, Ned,’ Sheila told her husband, then looked back at Malone. ‘We were saying ... Yes, it would be easy to get up to the first floor, where the bedrooms are. Someone going up the east wall might get scratched or pricked, but not if he wore gloves.’
Malone took the plastic envelope from his pocket, extracted the scrap of notepaper with his tweezers. He held it out: ‘I can’t let you touch this, not till it’s been fingerprinted. It was found in your father’s hand, as if it had been torn off a full sheet. Do you recognize the notepaper?’
Both the Custers leaned forward; then they glanced at each other before Sheila said, ‘It’s the family’s – well, Malmaison’s. My mother orders it every year through the company – it’s special paper. She likes us all to use it, so we do. Boxes of it are delivered to us, Derek, Nigel, my sister and I, every Christmas.’
‘Did you use it to write your father a note?’
‘No.’ She was taking off her glasses while she answered, so he didn’t see her eyes at that instant. Then she was polishing the glasses, carefully, giving them her attention. ‘I was not in the habit of writing my parents notes. After all, they’re just over there –’ She waved vaguely.
‘We think this may have been more than just a note. There’s a very strong No scrawled on it in red pencil.’
‘That wouldn’t be Harry,’ said Custer, getting up to pour himself another drink. ‘He wasn’t the type for expressing himself strongly. He was always the mediator, he liked to take options. He was a bugger for that,’ he said as if to himself.
‘So it could’ve been anyone in the family who wrote it?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Sheila, reluctantly, it sounded.
‘Don’t forget the kids.’ Custer came back to his chair. ‘The grandkids. They’re all literate, very literate. And numerate, too. All interested in –’
‘That’s not fair, Ned,’ said Sheila, as if this had been a continuous argument. Then Malone remembered that her child was Custer’s step-child. Maybe this sort of argument went on in many families. ‘They’re not all interested in money, not all of them.’ Her tone said: not mine.
Malone had had this feeling once or twice before, the urge to get up and walk away from a case. Detectives are driven to solve a murder, as doctors are towards a cure. But sometimes a murder becomes obscured by the atmosphere that surrounds it; the detective becomes at risk to other dangers. One’s own values had to be protected, there was a limit to objectivity.
‘How many children do you have, Mrs Custer?’
‘Just one, a girl.’
‘She lives here?’
‘No, Camilla has her own flat. She’s at work today – she works at 2HP, she’s learning the ropes. We – that is, Huxwood – own the station,’ she explained.
‘How can you do that? With the rules against cross-media ownership in the same State?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Sheila, but she did know.
Beside her Custer grinned. ‘Don’t ask. You know the old one, about friends in high places. The media barons in this country have got that sort of friendship down to a fine art.’
‘Careful, Ned,’ said his wife.
‘You mentioned money,’ said Malone, ‘Would you sell Huxwood Press?’
Sheila squinted, put her glasses back on; Custer held up his glass, as if looking for an answer in the half-inch of whisky still in it. Then he said, ‘We’d probably sell. Anything for fucking peace and quiet.’
‘Who told you the Press is for sale?’ said Sheila.
Malone stood up. ‘We’re not answering questions at this stage. Just asking them. I’ll be in touch.’
He made his own way out of the house, crossed the lawn again and went round to the east wall of the main house. The roses were there, as Sheila had said; and the latticework up the wall. The gardener was also there, the long-handled shovel he had brandished down on the shore now driven into the earth, a pair of secateurs in his hand. He looked at Malone: ‘Lady Huxwood wants fresh flowers in the house every day. You think I ought to, today?’
‘I wouldn’t. You’re –?’
‘Eh? Oh yeah.’ He appeared to look closely at Malone for the first time. ‘You’re one of the Ds?’
Malone introduced himself.
‘Oh sure, I’ve read about you a coupla times. You work for someone publishes a newspaper, you read it all the way through. Just in case you get a mention, even in the obituaries. It’ll be interesting to see what the Old Man’s obit says ... I’m Dan Darling. Or Darling Dan, as the Old Lady calls me. A poor bloody joke, but most of her jokes are. She doesn’t have much chop for the intelligence of the working class.’
He said it without emphasis, neither bitterly nor with affection. He was in his sixties, a grizzled bear of a man with the face and arms of someone who had spent the best part of his life in the sun and, by some miracle, escaped the rat-like nibbling of sun cancers. He had eyes and mouth of strong opinions and Malone wondered how he got on with Lady Huxwood.
‘The feller from Rose Bay has already been around here, looking for footprints, he said. There’s nothing.’
‘Nothing on the latticework?’ The gardener shook his head. ‘If it was an outsider, how d’you reckon he got upstairs?’
‘Up the back stairs. That door’s never locked. All the bloody security, costs a bloody fortune, and the back door’s always left unlocked.’
‘Why’s that?’
Darling shrugged. ‘Beats me. Ask the Yugoslavs, the butler and his missus.’ There was a sudden bedlam of birds in a nearby tree; it went on for almost half a minute, then the birds were gone as suddenly as they had come. The gardener spat into the dry soil at his feet. ‘Bloody foreigners.’
‘Who?’ Dan Darling sounded like Con Malone, the xenophobe from way back. Malone had grown up listening to his father complaining about ‘bloody foreigners’.
‘The birds. They’re Indian mynahs. Taking over everything.’
Malone said off-handedly, ‘Do the family fight like those birds?’
Darling squinted at him sideways, but still challengingly. ‘You don’t expect me to gossip about the family, do you? Christ, I’m family, too. So the Old Lady is always telling me.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Forty-two years. I was a printer’s apprentice at the Chronicle, in my last year. I got my hand caught in the rollers –’ He held up his left hand and for the first time Malone saw how maimed it was, an ugly stump-fingered fist. ‘I never went back, I was scared shitless of the rollers. Sir John, Harry’s father, he was the boss then. He gave me a job here as under-gardener and I fell into it like a pig into muck – I didn’t know it, but that was what I wanted to be, a gardener in a garden like this.’ He waved his good hand, the one holding the secateurs, around him. ‘The paper’s gardening expert, she comes out to see me whenever she’s got a problem.’
‘You do it all on your own?’ Malone looked around: the gardens were more extensive than he had thought.
‘No, I’ve got a young bloke works for me. Two of us are enough. I been here all them years, I’ve got everything under control.’
‘Where’s he?’
‘Well, I dunno. He ain’t come in this morning, ain’t rung. I can’t say it’s not like him, he’s only been here a coupla weeks. I dunno him that well.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Dwayne Harod. His dad’s a Turk, he says, his mum’s a Lebanese. He lives out in Marrickville with an uncle and aunt. Dwayne’s an old Turkish name, I gather.’ A crack of a grin, dry as an eroded creek bank.
‘So I wonder why he didn’t come in today, of all days?’
‘He’d of heard about it on the radio. He’s pretty quiet, maybe he just wanted to miss all the commotion. Maybe he ain’t a stickybeak, like them out there.’ He gestured towards the launchful of photographers, now retreating like other, earlier invaders who had been repelled by the natives. ‘I wouldn’t worry about Dwayne, you got enough on your plate. You think flowers would be outa place in the house today?’ He snapped the secateurs, as if they were used every day and he hated the thought of interrupting the routine.
‘Not today, Dan. I’ll be in touch. They smell beautiful, though.’
As he walked round the corner of the east wall he heard a sound coming from an open window on the first floor. He wasn’t sure whose room it was, but it was in the main bedroom wing. The sound was a low moaning, faintly ululating, a primitive murmur of grief, almost animal-like.
3
Assistant Commissioner Bill Zanuch moved around the Big House without hurrying, with the proprietorial air of an old friend or a bailiff. He had his hands clasped behind his back, a habit he had adopted since he had, several years ago, been assigned to accompany Prince Charles on another Royal visit to Australia. It had been a characteristic of the Duke of Edinburgh, the prince’s father, and the prince himself had adopted it. Lately, however, Zanuch had noted from newsreels that the prince had moved his hands in front of him, where they nervously wove patterns in the air as if practising argument with his estranged wife. The Assistant Commissioner had none of the Royal problems; he had not made a nervous gesture since kindergarten and even there the other infants had known who was Number One.
Socially he had never aimed higher than God; he always felt that he fitted in. Wherever he went in the city’s social circles he was treated as an equal amongst equals, proving that flattery is no burden if one leaves others to carry it. He knew, just as the prince did, who would be king one day. Soon, maybe just a year or so down the track, he would be Commissioner. The thought did not make him giddy, since he had been tasting it ever since he had been promoted to sergeant, but he savoured it every day.
He stood outside the bedroom door listening to the low moaning coming from inside. He was not insensitive, but he knew Phillipa Huxwood would have to be interviewed and it was better that he do it rather than one of the five or six detectives still on the estate. After all, he could talk to her as an equal.
But first he moved along the hall to the next door, which was open. He had never been upstairs here, but this, he guessed, was Harry Huxwood’s room. He went in, ducking under the Crime Scene tape across the doorway. Another tape was strung round the four-poster bed, like a decoration from some old wedding-night bed.
Then the door to the adjoining room opened and Phillipa Huxwood stood there. Her face was even gaunter than usual, her eyes were red from weeping; but her carriage was still stiff and straight, her voice as firm as ever: ‘Do they have to put that ridiculous piece of ribbon on the bed?’
‘I’m afraid so, Phillipa. How are you?’
She waved a hand, almost a dismissive why-do-you-ask? ‘It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? I’ve been laying there –’
She used the Americanism. Up till her late teens she had lived a nomadic life with her archaeologist father and travel-writer mother; she still threw in local usage like postcards, as if to show she had been around. When she used a foreign phrase the accent was always immaculate, no matter what the language. Yet she wrote to reporters and anchor-people on the corporation’s radio and television stations who said ‘d-bree’ for ‘debris’ and used other Americanisms. She was rigid in her inconsistency, as despots are.
‘How are the others taking it?’ She led him back into her own room, seated herself in what he took to be her favourite chair by a window that looked down on the rose gardens.
‘I’ve only seen Derek,’ he said. He remained standing, aware of the disorder of her room, which surprised him; he had always thought of her as a meticulously neat person. But her bed was rumpled, the sheets twisted as if she had writhed in them in a frenzy. Her clothing, her dress and underwear, were thrown on the second chair in the room; the underwear, he thought, looked skimpy for a woman of her age. There was also a couch, an antique chaise-longue, but it was against a far wall; he could not seat himself there and talk to her across the width of the room.
‘How is Derek? Shocked?’
‘Of course.’
‘When I saw Harry –’ She closed her eyes, was silent for a moment, then she opened them. ‘I’m alone now, Bill. What do I do?’
He knew she didn’t want an answer. They were acquaintances, not friends, which is how it is in half of any large city’s social circles. He had known nothing of the intended selling of the publishing empire till Derek had filled him in this morning. What he knew of this family, even though he had been coming here for years as a dinner or luncheon guest, had been gleaned from observation and not from confidences.
‘How long have we known you?’ Her mind, it seemed, was shooting off at tangents this morning.
‘Twenty-five years.’
She looked at him in astonishment. ‘You’re joking!’
‘No. I first came here twenty-five years ago on a police matter –’
‘Ah.’ She nodded, was silent a while. He thought she was going to say no more, then she went on. ‘There was mystery then, too, wasn’t there? This is a mystery, Bill. Or is it?’ She glanced sideways at him, almost slyly.
He didn’t take the bait, if there was any. ‘Yes, I think it is, Phillipa. But we’ll find whoever killed Harry. I promise you that.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she said, as if he had promised her no more than a small gift. ‘I’ll miss him, Bill. We fought, oh, often we fought ... But we loved each other. Those downstairs don’t know what love is. Do you?’
But she didn’t wait for his answer. He wondered if she talked to her children, those downstairs, as she was now to him. He knew how people could sometimes confide in strangers thoughts they would never expose to those close to them. But why had she chosen him?
‘I’ll have to go down soon and face them all, I suppose. I’m the matriarch, they’ll expect it. When we first built the other two houses, Derek and Cordelia and Ned and Sheila used to come here every evening, we’d dine en famille. It was Harry’s idea. I’ve never liked the idea of matriarch -’
You could have fooled me.
‘– but Harry saw himself as the patriarch. He always wanted to fill his father’s shoes and there never was a patriarch like Old John. You met him?’
‘Once.’ Twenty-five years ago.
‘He was Biblical, he and I never got on. The en famille idea lasted a year, no more. The nuclear family is a pain in the uterus.’
He loved social gossip; but this was not gossip. ‘Phillipa, don’t tire yourself –’
She gave him the sly look again. ‘I’m talking too much, you mean? Why did you come up here if you didn’t want to talk to me?’
He was wearing out his welcome, she would turn nasty in a moment; he had seen it once or twice over the years. ‘Phillipa, did you hear the shot next door?’
She stared into space, the myopic eyes blank; then she blinked and looked back at him. ‘I’d taken two sleeping pills, I was upset last night. I heard nothing, the roof could have fallen in ...’
He began to move towards the door. ‘Fair enough. We’ll leave you alone now, you and the family.’
‘But you’ll be back?’
‘Not me, but Inspector Malone and one or two of the other detectives.’
‘I wish you would take charge. You can be circumspect.’
Now he knew why she was taking him into her confidence. She had said exactly that, you can be circumspect, twenty-five years ago.
Chapter Three (#ulink_2cbc3411-500a-5a99-b072-c81efb04bcd3)
1
The air waves shivered with indignation and horror at the news of Sir Harry’s murder. Nobody was safe if as important a figure as Sir Harry could be murdered in his own home, said another important figure, Premier Bevan Bigelow, unsafe in his own House. Editorials sang the praises of the dead man but had nothing to say in praise of law and order. Only the columnists, as plentiful on the ground in modern journalism as Indian mynahs and just as raucous, mentioned rumours of a possible sale of the Huxwood empire. The coming election was pushed to the edges of the front pages, to the relief of the voters.
‘Law and order doesn’t apply,’ said Clements, ‘when the throat-cutting is in the family. Don’t they know that?’
‘We don’t know anyone in the family killed him,’ said Malone.
‘No, but I’d make book on it.’
They were at a morning conference the day after the discovery of the murder. All nineteen detectives from Homicide were there, plus Greg Random, Chief Superintendent in charge of the Major Crime Squad. Some of the detectives had been assigned to the three other murders that had occurred in South Region, but the main topic was the Huxwood homicide. Notabilities were not frequent visitors on the Sydney murder scene. True, it was only a press baron who had been done in: had it been a star jockey or footballer of the status of O. J. Simpson there would have been a special session of parliament, the Minister and Commissioner would have brought camp beds into their offices and the media contingent outside Homicide would have looked like a grand final crowd. Still, the pressure was bad enough as it was.
‘I think,’ said Random, sucking on his pipe which no one had ever seen him light, ‘we’d better not start pointing the finger just yet. Let the newspapers do that, they have more experts than we do.’
‘Righto,’ said Malone. ‘What’ve we got? Kate?’
‘I’ve been right through the family, grandkids and all. God, what a bunch!’ Her antipathy towards the Huxwood clan seemed to have increased since yesterday. ‘There are six grandkids, three of them with minor records. Car-stealing –’
‘Car-stealing?’ said Andy Graham. ‘With their money? They’d all own Porsches at least.’
Kate Arletti shrugged. ‘Rebellion, I guess. They’re a rebellious lot, most of them. Two of them have drug charges against them, possession of. None of them says he or she knows anything of what happened the night before last.’
‘What about the rest of the family, the kids’ parents?’ asked Clements.
‘They were mine.’ Phil Truach coughed, a hint that the meeting had gone on long enough without his having had a smoke. He and Random were the only two grey-heads in the group: Random the senior by five years and a chief superintendent, Truach only recently promoted to sergeant. But rank had seemingly never worried Phil Truach and if he never hurried himself, there was no one in Homicide more thorough than he. ‘Nobody heard nothing, nobody has a clue why the old man should’ve been shot. They’ve all got their backs to the wall, a blank wall.’
‘Not entirely blank,’ said Malone. ‘Derek let his hair down a bit to me and so did the Number One son-in-law Ned Custer. The rumours of a sell-off of Huxwood Press are true and it’s turning into a dog-fight in the family.’
‘Who’s for it and who’s against it?’ John Kagal was the handsomest and smartest dressed in the group. He was also the only detective with a university degree, a distinction he had once quietly flaunted but which he had now learned to hide. Elitism is tolerated and admired in the criminal classes, but in the rest of the native working class, including the police, it is looked upon as a criminal offence. Some day, as inevitably as crime would continue to be committed, Kagal would have Greg Random’s rank, but he had learned, too, to hide his ambition. He had been given a lesson in police service culture: that seniority was as sanctified as motherhood. Wedded motherhood, that is.
‘I don’t know who’s for or against it,’ said Malone. ‘Who checked the butler and his wife?’
‘I did,’ said Kagal. ‘They’re clean. They’ve been in Australia eighteen years, they’re Australian citizens. They’ve worked for the Huxwoods for five years, got good reports.’
‘I checked the gardener,’ said Malone. ‘That leaves only the under-gardener as a regular on the place. Plus the security guards who patrol each night.’
‘I’ve checked them,’ said Andy Graham, restless as ever on his chair. He was always ready to be up and away, usually like a bull at a gate. ‘The first lot check on the hour through the night, the other lot on the half-hour. There’d be a gap of, say, twenty minutes between each check. Time for an outsider, if it was an outsider and knew the routine, to nip in and do the deed.’
‘That leaves the under-gardener. He didn’t come in yesterday. Why?’
‘He’s in today,’ said Kate Arletti. ‘I was out there early this morning, double-checking.’ Her diligence equalled that of Andy Graham, though she managed to be more restrained than he. ‘He had a virus or something yesterday, he said. He’s okay today.’
I’ll talk to him, Malone told himself. He didn’t, however, tell that to Kate; he didn’t believe in implying that a job was only well done when he did it himself. ‘What’s the report from Ballistics?’
‘One bullet, a Thirty-two. If a pillow was used to muffle the shot, Clarrie Binyan thinks the gun could be a Browning, or something like it.’
‘Any shell?’
‘No sign of one. He collected it, looks like.’ Clements closed his notebook. ‘It doesn’t look like a professional job, not if he didn’t use a silencer.’
‘Would an amateur collect the shell? Why would he go in for housekeeping like that?’
Clements shrugged. ‘I dunno. I still think the answer’s in the family.’
‘Don’t harp on that,’ said Random. ‘The family has a friend upstairs.’
Malone kept quiet, but Truach said, ‘The Minister?’
‘No, AC Zanuch.’
‘Oh shit!’
‘Exactly. And that’s what’ll hit the fan if we start talking about the family. I’ll see you outside, Scobie.’ He rose, unhurried as usual, nodded at the group in general and left.
Malone got up from behind the table where he had presided over the meeting, made an I-don’t-know gesture at Clements and followed Random out of the room. The chief superintendent led the way down towards the lifts. He had put his pipe in a side pocket, as if he no longer needed a prop in a man-to-man conversation.
‘Nobody wants this one, Scobie. Steve Lozelle, out at Waverley, it’s in his command. They’ll set up the incident room and do the donkey work. But he wants us to run it, subject to him being in nominal charge. Okay?’
Malone nodded, wondering why the usual jealousy of turf was being sacrificed in this case. Perhaps the Waverley commander already knew that AC Zanuch might interfere.
‘There’s another thing.’ Random took his pipe out of his pocket, had it halfway to his mouth when he had second thoughts and put it away again. ‘Have you seen the Tele-Mirror this morning? They say you were a dinner guest at the Huxwoods’ night before last. They’re playing it up as if you’re that guy in Burke’s Law, the cop with the stiff neck and the corset. My wife tells me Alan Jones had something about it on 2.UE this morning, that you’re a friend of the family –’
‘Balls! I’d never met the family till two nights ago. I hadn’t seen Derek Huxwood in years –’ He explained the circumstances of the dinner invitation.
‘Well –’ Random took the pipe out of his pocket, tapped it in the palm of his hand. He looked almost nervous, something Malone had never seen before. ‘It’s too late now – that would only confirm what they’re hinting, if we took you off it. Just watch it, that’s all. Any hint of the family being suspected is out, okay? Bill Zanuch is leaning on me –’
‘How close is he to them?’
‘I don’t know. But you know him – if he’d been alive at the time he’d have been at the Last Supper. Then he’d have gone to lunch with Pontius Pilate the next day.’ He looked around him to make sure he wasn’t overheard; then he let go his slow smile. ‘Christ help us if ever he becomes Commissioner. We won’t be able to arrest anyone without first checking with the social editors.’
Both men were silent a while, contemplating an awful future. Then the lift doors opened; the lift was empty. ‘Ride down with me.’ The doors closed, locking them in a small chamber where secrets could be exchanged. ‘I don’t know whether he knows anything, but he’s protecting the Huxwoods. I don’t like it any more than you and Russ do, but I’ve got to wear it. Zanuch’s been specific. He wants none of what we had last year with the Cabramatta murder.’ A prominent politician, campaigning against gang crimes in his electorate, had been shot in a western suburb where there was a large Asian community. ‘From the first the media started pointing the finger at the Vietnamese, there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support it –’
‘We still haven’t nabbed who did it.’
‘Nonetheless, we had to keep denying it. Just watch it, Scobie.’ They had reached the ground floor, the doors opened. ‘Let me know everything, everything, that turns up. Luck.’
‘Thanks,’ said Malone drily and pressed the button to go back upstairs again.
Clements was waiting for him. ‘What’d he have to say?’
‘The usual. We tread carefully about the family.’
Clements bit his lip. ‘What d’you think? One of them did it?’
Malone took his time. ‘I dunno. An amateur wouldn’t take the time to collect the cartridge shell. But you never know – TV shows you how to do everything, including commit murder ... I’d like to see the family lined up all together. I still haven’t met the grandkids. I gather they’re all old enough to have pulled a trigger. I’m going out there, see if I can round up one or two of them. You want to come?’
Clements shook his big head. Since he had become the Unit Supervisor, had had to assume more paperwork, he appeared to have lost his once-habitual unhurried approach. The re-organization in Homicide had not worked quite the way the planners had planned it, but that has been the way of the world since ivory towers were first built and graphs took the place of commonsense.
‘I’ve got too much to do here. You should be here, too,’ he said almost critically. ‘You’re supposed to be the Co-ordinator.’
‘I’m the most unco-ordinated bastard you ever met,’ said Malone, remembering his loose tongue.
He picked up his hat and left. Downstairs Kate Arletti was crossing the lobby towards the front doors. ‘Where are you heading, Kate?’
‘Out to Vaucluse, sir. I’m going to talk to that under-gardener, Harod or whatever his name is.’
‘Cancel your transport. You can come with me.’ He had a police car of his own, unmarked, but he did not like driving if he could persuade someone else to drive him. One of the advantages was that he never had a parking problem. ‘You can drive.’
They left Strawberry Hills and drove towards the far eastern suburbs, the city changing gradually as they drove, housescapes merging into housescapes, fresco secco into buon fresco, till at last they reached Huxwood Road, still cordoned off by a police barrier with a uniformed officer there to allow only residents and tradesmen past the barrier. Yesterday morning’s crowd had gone but Malone noticed that in several houses owners and their guests were having morning coffee on the front verandahs, some even out on their front lawns under large umbrellas. Curiosity was endemic, not just a disease amongst the lower classes.
Malone paused as he and Kate Arletti got out of the car. ‘Kate, you heard what Chief Superintendent Random said – don’t lean too heavily on the family. You’re developing a thing about them.’
‘Sorry, sir.’ She looked neat this morning, but it was still early in the day. She was in a linen dress with a matching jacket; there didn’t appear to be any buttons that could come undone or a sleeve unrolled. ‘It’s just –’
He didn’t move. ‘Go on, Kate. What’s on your mind?’
She looked away from him, at no place in particular. She reminded him of all the young actors in movies and television these days who, every time they were asked a question by another actor, looked off-screen as if their next line was written on some blackboard there. But Kate Arletti had obviously been chewing over her lines for the past two days; she looked back at him, her jaw set:
‘The Chronicle ruined my father, killed him. He was Italian, you know that, he was much older than my mother. As a young man he was a Fascist, Mussolini was his hero, but once he came to Australia he put all that behind him. He started his own business, he was a job printer. Then he decided, after he’d become a citizen, to run for local government, the local council, he never stopped being political-minded. The Chronicle was doing a series on local government, the sort of people who ran for council aldermen. Alderpersons. Somehow they dug up Dad’s past, they really dug the dirt on him. All of it was true, I’ll admit, but it was past, dead and buried. They buried Dad with it, literally. He lost his business and then he committed suicide. I was ten years old, I was the one who found him -’ She stopped and looked away again, put up a hand to wipe away tears.
‘Kate –’ He waited till she looked back at him. ‘You’re off this case. I’m sorry.’
She shook her head angrily, almost like a child being denied. ‘No, sir! Please.’
‘Kate, you’re biassed –’
‘All police are biassed, we can’t help it-’ Then she broke off, drew a heavy breath. ‘Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean you-’
Less than an hour ago, Greg Random had suggested he might be less than disinterested. But it was true: it was a rare cop who could deny bias once he was into a case. Sometimes it was no more than a counter to bafflement, the effort to find an answer, any answer.
She was more in control of herself now: ‘This is my first big case, sir. I’ve made a mistake, but I think I can overcome it. Give me today. If you still think I’m biassed against the Huxwoods –’
‘It wasn’t the family who would have written that series.’
‘It was. I looked them up when I was older, when I understood what had gone on. The series was written by Derek Huxwood. The editorial that summed them up was written by Sir Harry, that was the most unfair of the lot. It wasn’t signed, but I found out who’d written it.’
There was silence between them. At the wide gates into the Huxwood estate Crime Scene tapes fluttered in the slight breeze, like the long tail of a child’s kite lost amongst the shrubbery. A kookaburra in a nearby jacaranda laughed hollowly; mynahs, the foreigners, instantly swooped on it and chased it away. On the opposite side of the road a woman paused in the act of pouring coffee for two guests and looked across at the man and the girl beside the unmarked car, looked at them, Malone thought, as if they were trespassers.
He nodded at Kate Arletti. ‘Righto, today’s your test. But if I see any –’
‘You won’t, sir. I promise. Thanks.’ She moved towards him and for a moment he thought she was going to kiss him. But she went by him and ducked under the tapes. ‘The under-gardener or the family – who’s first?’
‘The under-gardener. Dwayne the Turk.’
Malone had never heard the term under-gardener before; he would have called the man the assistant gardener, if he called him anything. He could only surmise that it was an English term.
Dwayne Harod was short and slim and outgoing; hawk-faced but handsome, dark-skinned and dark-haired and in his early twenties. He was working amongst the roses when the two detectives approached him, having skirted the house and, so far, avoided any of the family.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard it on the radio yesterday morning. It sorta floored me.’ His accent was broad Australian; Anatolia was somewhere back in the memory mist of childhood. ‘I was pretty sick, anyway, I got this virus that’s been going around. Or maybe it’s an allergy, I dunno. That’d be a joke, eh? If I was allergic to flowers.’ He waved an arm; he was waist-deep in the last roses of summer. Long-stemmed blooms, already cut, lay on a sheet of plastic. ‘These are for inside the house. Lady Huxwood wants them, same as usual.’
‘We understand you’ve been here only two weeks, Dwayne. Is that your real name?’
He had a charming smile. ‘I give it to m’self when I was fifteen, sixteen. My old man named me Kemal. He was a great admirer of Kemal Atatürk. You heard of him?’
‘Vaguely.’ This seemed to be Old Dictators Week. Malone glanced at Kate Arletti, whose father had admired a dictator, but she was apparently ignorant of Kemal Atatürk. Malone only knew of the Father of modern Turkey because he had once spent a month unsuccessfully chasing two Turks who had killed a man in a botched bank robbery and who had somehow escaped the nets at airports and vanished back to Turkey. ‘Does Kemal mean anything?’
There was an embarrassed smile. ‘It means “perfect”.’
‘I don’t blame you for changing it. Are you legally Dwayne then?’
‘Well, no. Legally, I’m still – perfect.’ The smile this time was not so embarrassed.
‘Bully for you. How did you get this job? Have you been a gardener before?’
‘I answered the ad in the paper. There were eight of us come for it and they picked me. No, I never been a gardener before. I used to work in the canefields up in Queensland till I come down here.’
‘How long have you been in Sydney?’
‘A month. I live with my uncle and aunty out in Marrickville.’ He was laying himself out like an open book, almost a little too eagerly. Malone had seen this before, when kids had been afraid of the cops, but Dwayne Harod gave the impression that he was afraid of no one. ‘I was lucky to get this job so soon, considering.’
‘Considering what?’
Harod looked puzzled, as if he didn’t understand why Malone didn’t know the state of the nation. ‘The unemployed. The recession’s supposed to be over, but it ain’t by a long chalk, not for guys with no education or training. That’s why I’m grateful for Mr Derek giving me the job –’
‘Mr Derek took you on?’
‘Well, he was the one told me I had the job. But the Old Lady – I mean Lady Huxwood, I think she had a say in it –’ He gave another smile, an old lady’s favourite.
‘Righto, Dwayne. Can we have your home address, just in case?’
‘I have that,’ said Kate Arletti.
Harod looked at her in surprise, then said, ‘I might be moving from there soon, now I’ve got a job. Is that all you want?’
Malone told him that was all they wanted for the time being and he and Kate walked away, going round the northern corner and coming out on the wide lawn that ran down to the water’s edge. There were no cruising cameramen today, the invasion had been put on hold.
‘What d’you think, Kate?’
‘He’s pretty cheerful, isn’t he?’
‘That’s what I thought. He said the news of the murder when he heard it on the radio floored him, but he seems to have picked up pretty quick. He’s got over his virus, too.’
‘He didn’t mention the murder again. He also didn’t mention Sir Harry once by name.’
Malone nodded. The girl was learning to develop a police ear, to hear what was unsaid as much as what was said. ‘Don’t cross him off our list, we’ll get back to him. Now who’s next?’
‘If you want to see the grandkids, there’s probably only one of them home – he’s a uni student. All the others have jobs.’
‘In the company?’
‘Only three of them. The youngest, Ross, Derek’s son, is doing economics at Sydney. He’s one of the rebels, a real tearaway, I’m told.’
Malone sighed. ‘I love tearaways. They’re a real pain in the butt. Righto, let’s see if he’s home.’
Ross Huxwood was home, sunning himself on the terrace of Little House One with his mother Cordelia. He was a big lad, taller than Malone and bulkier, most of it muscle though there was a hint of beer fat round his middle; Malone had seen scores like him around the rugby clubs and the better watering holes, the elite of ockerism. He was blond and good-looking in a beefy way, his cheeks and jaw too heavy, his wide mouth sullen. But he had been taught to be polite: he stood up as Malone and Kate Arletti came up on to the terrace.
‘Ah, the lady detective! Mum –’
Cordelia must have been dozing behind her dark glasses. Her head jerked and she sat up on the lounge where she had been stretched out. She was in a sleeveless yellow sun-dress and her son was in a tight pair of blue shorts. So far, it seemed, the mourning weeds were still in the wardrobe.
‘Oh Scobie! Or do I have to call you Inspector? Do sit down. You too, Miss – ?’
‘Detective-Constable Arletti.’ Kate’s voice was chill.
Cordelia lowered her dark glasses to look at Kate over the top of them; but she said nothing. The two detectives sat down at a wrought-iron table under a blue umbrella. Ross, at his mother’s command, went away to get coffee and Malone said, ‘I think we’d better keep it on an official basis, Mrs Huxwood.’
Cordelia looked disappointed; Malone wondered now if that was her normal expression. ‘Well, I suppose it’s to be expected ... Have you come up with anything? I don’t know how the police work – how would I? – but have you made any progress?’
‘Very little.’ He paused before he went on, ‘Except that we’ve heard there is a lot of tension in the family about the sell-off.’
‘Where did you hear that?’ she said sharply. ‘Over there?’ She nodded across the lawn towards the hedges that half-hid Little House Two.
He didn’t answer that directly: don’t point the finger. ‘We’ve had detectives here for the past twenty-four hours. Including Detective Arletti. How many people have you interviewed, Kate?’
‘At least a dozen, sir.’
‘So you see, Mrs Huxwood, the word is around about the sell-off.’
She said nothing, waited while her son came back, followed by the housekeeper with a tray. The housekeeper put the tray on the table between Malone and Kate, ignored them and spoke over their heads to Cordelia.
‘Will that be all, señora?’
She had a strong voice, thick with accent. She was middle-aged, big and square in build and face, dark-haired and with unflinching eyes. And self-contained: very self-contained, thought Malone. He and Kate Arletti might have been down at the water’s edge for all the notice she took of them.
‘That will be all, Luisa. Thank you.’
Still without a glance at the two detectives, the housekeeper returned to the house, her broad back dismissing them as of no account.
Malone looked at Kate. ‘Did you interview her?’
‘Yes. She doesn’t like police.’
‘Is she from the Big House?’ Malone asked the Huxwoods.
‘No.’ Ross was seated again in the sun, dark glasses on. Both he and his mother shone with sun-cream; streaks of light moved on him like silver worms. ‘She’s ours. She’s Spanish, she’s been with us since I was a kid.’
‘You didn’t get anything out of her?’ Cordelia looked at Kate, a hint of malice in her sweet voice.
‘I got enough,’ said Kate, tapping her notebook. ‘She’s in here. Even if she doesn’t like the police.’
‘Who does?’ said Ross, expressionless behind the shades.
‘That’s enough,’ said Cordelia, but her voice was as expressionless as his had been.
‘You have something against cops?’ said Malone.
The boy shrugged, the silver worms slid along his broad shoulders.
‘Did you like your grandfather?’
A bean-ball, but the boy didn’t flinch. ‘No.’
‘Did you dislike him enough to want him dead?’
‘Stop this!’ Cordelia snatched off her glasses, leaned forward as if she might strike Malone. Beside him Malone felt Kate Arletti tense and he wondered what she would do if Cordelia actually attacked him.
Malone ignored the mother, kept his eyes on the son. ‘Where were you the night before last, Ross?’
‘He was here, at home,’ said Cordelia.
But the boy proved to be the rebel Kate had said he was: ‘No, I wasn’t. Let’s stick to the truth, Mum. I spent the night at my girl friend’s.’
Cordelia turned her head away, looked for a moment as if she might get up and stalk away into the house. Malone said, ‘Her name?’
‘She’s Rosie Gilligan.’
Malone looked blank, but Kate, it seemed, was au fait with a wider world. ‘The fashion editor of the Chronicle?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ross and his mother turned back to give him a glare that was apparent even through the dark glasses.
‘How do you get on with your cousins, Ross?’
The boy shrugged again. Malone wondered what he himself had been like at twenty, though he didn’t think he could have been as ungracious and surly as this kid. But behaviour, like tastes, always looked different from another generation.
‘And with your brother and sister?’ Malone glanced at his notebook. ‘Colin and Alexandra?’
‘We’re a happy family,’ said Cordelia.
‘I was talking to your son, Mrs Huxwood ... Do you ever get together, Ross, you and your brother and sister and your cousins, and discuss the family fortune?’
Cordelia abruptly stood up; her greased arms shivered with light. ‘No, shut up, Ross!’ as her son went to make some reply; then she turned on Malone. ‘That’s enough, Mr Malone. You’ve gone too far –’
He interrupted her: ‘Mrs Huxwood, I don’t think you appreciate just how far we often have to go to solve a murder. Now you can get a lawyer, if you wish –’ He took his time about getting to his feet; it was one small way of showing her that he, and not she, was in command here. ‘I overheard you and your sister-in-law the other night saying that voices will be heard. They will be, Mrs Huxwood. Police voices asking questions that you may not like but that you’ll be expected to answer. Thanks for the coffee.’
As the two detectives turned away, Ross Huxwood said, ‘Shit.’
Malone turned back. ‘You talking to me?’
The boy, still lolling back in his chair, stared up at him, the shades hiding his eyes. Then he shook his head. ‘No. Sorry you heard that.’
‘You could teach him some manners, Cordelia,’ said Malone and led Kate across the lawn towards the Big House.
‘Good on you, boss,’ said Kate. ‘I was just itching to clout him across the ears. When I was in uniform I broke the arm of a lout like him.’
‘You’re a real killer, aren’t you?’ he said, remembering the junkie’s nose that had been broken by the butt of her gun. ‘But I think young Ross would’ve been a bit big for you. Who’s his girl friend? Rose whatever-her-name is?’
‘Rosie Gilligan. She’s the fashion editor of the Chronicle. They reckon she’ll be another Ita Buttrose or a Nene King before too long,’ she said, naming two of the country’s most successful women editors. ‘I’d have thought she was a bit long in the tooth for young Ross.’
‘How old?’
‘I’m only guessing, but she must be thirty.’
‘How old are you, Kate?’
She grinned: she was very attractive, he decided, when she smiled. ‘Twenty-four. But Rosie’s not only old, she’s pretty soiled, too, so I hear. She’s a real man-eater, she’s called the Nutcracker Suite.’ He raised his eyebrows and she made a mock duck of her head. ‘Sorry.’
‘You get around, Kate. So you think Ross is her toy-boy and his mum doesn’t like it?’
‘Something like that. Mums never want their boys to get involved with older women. Do you think Ross wants more money so’s he can keep up with Rosie? She’s pretty extravagant, so I’m told. Likes to lunch at all the best restaurants, Rockpool and Level 41, places like that, takes her holidays overseas – she wouldn’t come cheap.’
‘Kate, where do you get all your dirt?’
‘I have a younger sister who’s a model. She goes to all the fashion parties and all they do is gossip, she says. When she’s with me, that’s what we do.’
‘Well, you and I have had a nice little gossip –’ Then his pager beeped. ‘Let’s get back to the car.’
On the car phone he dialled Homicide and asked for Clements. ‘What is it, Russ?’
‘Another report in from Rose Bay. Two shots were fired last night in Point Piper, at The Briarcliff. They hit a Mercedes, just missing the driver and his wife – they were unhurt, fortunately.’
‘So?’
‘Scobie, the Merc got in the line of fire – the shots were meant for the two people getting out of a Daimler, another guy and his wife.’
‘Russ, right now I’m not interested in attempted murder –’
‘You haven’t caught on, have you? The Briarcliff, that’s where Jack Aldwych Junior and his wife live. They were the couple getting out of the Daimler.’
2
‘We didn’t want any fuss,’ said Jack Aldwych Senior. ‘If that couple downstairs hadn’t complained you wouldn’t have heard anything about it.’
‘Jack,’ said Malone, ‘that couple downstairs almost copped those shots in the head. They had a right to complain.’
The old criminal boss (retired, he insisted, not reformed) nodded reluctantly. ‘I suppose so. But in the old days –’
‘These aren’t the old days, Jack. You agree with me?’ He looked at Jack Junior.
The son sighed with exasperation. ‘I don’t think Dad realizes how much it shook me and Julie. Neither of us has ever been shot at before.’
‘You haven’t lived,’ said his father.
‘Mrs Chang, downstairs, passed out,’ said Juliet Aldwych. ‘So did her husband, almost.’ She said it with the superiority of someone who had never fainted in her life, as if she were as accustomed to passing bullets as much as her father-in-law. ‘One doesn’t expect that sort of thing, not in Point Piper.’
The Briarcliff was a block of eight apartments, none of which could be bought for less than several million dollars. Six of the apartments were owned by Hong Kong Chinese, all unable to believe their luck in getting a waterfront home for less than half they would have paid for a place halfway up The Peak in Hong Kong. Point Piper, a manicured finger of land pointing out into the harbour, was one of the best addresses in Sydney. True, it had been named after a naval officer who was both a rake and a conman, and he had been followed by others of the same inclination, none of them reducing the locality’s value with their reputations. Sydney’s eastern suburbs residents, so long as they have a water view, are prone to forgive their neighbours anything. Except, perhaps, seduction of their own wives and a looting of their assets.
Kate had dropped Malone off at the entrance to the apartments. Crime Scene tapes roped off a silver Mercedes, giving the impression that the car had somehow strayed in from the used car lots out along Parramatta Road. One of the Physical Evidence team, a redheaded slim young man, came across to Malone.
‘Morning, sir. We’ve found the bullets – Thirty-twos, they look like. And a cartridge shell out there –’ He nodded towards the quiet street. ‘Looks like they were parked at the kerb there, waiting. We haven’t found anything else.’
Then Clements had arrived from Strawberry Hills and the PE man went back to examining the Mercedes. ‘What d’you reckon? Were they after Old Jack?’
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Jon Cleary
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Триллеры
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: ENDPEACE is a 1996 novel from award-winning Australian author Jon Cleary. It is the thirteenth book to feature Sydney detective, Scobie Malone. When Scobie attends a dinner party held by a publishing tycoon, he is called upon to find a killer when the tycoon is shot dead during the night.When wealthy newspaper magnate Sir Harry Huxwood is shot dead in his own bed, it is Inspector Scobie Malone’s job to pick up the pieces and name the killer. This means infiltrating the opulent Huxwood residence, Malmaison House, where Lady Phillipa presides over the sprawling Huxwood family and staff – and a veritable vipers’ nest.As Malone investigates he uncovers the stuff of headlines: a forgotten love affair; Fleet Street incomers versus an ex-crim on the make; a family dogfight over potential handouts of fifty million dollars apiece; a silence that has lasted twenty five years. And, making it smell sweeter on the surface, a rose garden to rival Empress Josephine’s.Amidst unwanted interference from his superiors and all the attention attracted by such a high profile case, the pressure is on Malone to come up with the true story, once and for all.