Читать книгу: «Yesterday’s Shadow»

Dedication

For Cate

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One
1

The past is part of the present, if only in memory. But memory, as Malone knew, is always uncertain testimony.

The first body was discovered by a fellow worker of the deceased at 5.08 a.m. The second body was found by a housemaid at 9.38 a.m. Two murders in one night did nothing to raise the hotel’s rating from two and a half stars to three, a pursuit of the management over the past three months. An earthquake would have been more welcome, since insurance was preferable to bad publicity.

The Hotel Southern Savoy was one of several on the square across from Central Station, Sydney’s terminal for country and interstate trains. The station itself had been built on an old burial ground, an apt location, it was thought in certain quarters, for some of the deadheads in State Rail. The Southern Savoy’s clientele was mixed, but one would not have looked amongst it for celebrities or the wealthy. It catered mainly for country visitors and economy tour parties from Scotland, Calabria and the thriftier parts of Vermont. It had little or no interest in its guests, so long as they paid their accounts, and was discreet only because it was too much bother to be otherwise. It had had its visits from the police (two deaths from drug overdoses, several robberies, a prostitute denting the skull of a customer with the heel of her shoe), but it had always managed to keep these distractions out of the news. But murder? Two murders?

‘The manager is having a fit of the vapours,’ Sergeant Phil Truach told Malone, ringing on his mobile and out of earshot of the manager. ‘He seems a nice guy, but he’s a bit frail, if you know what I mean.’

‘Phil, put your prejudices back in your pocket. Have a smoke or two. Before I get there,’ he added.

Truach smoked two packs a day and had been told by his doctor that he had never seen such clear arteries, that Philip Morris could drive a truck through them. ‘I’ll have them empty the ashtrays. The media are already here. I think that’s worrying the manager more than the corpses.’

‘The bodies still there?’

‘The guy, the hotel worker, he’s been taken to the morgue. The woman’s in her room, the ME’s examining her. Crime Scene are still here.’

Normally Malone, head of Homicide, would not have been called in on a single murder till the circumstances of it had been fully determined. But two murders in the one hotel on the same night, one a male worker, the other a female guest, called for his presence. The homicide rate in the city was rising and everyone who was literate, from Opposition MPs to letter-writers to the morning newspapers and callers to radio talk shows, was demanding to know what the government and police were doing about it. Zero tolerance had become a mantra, even with voters who had never come within a hundred kilometres of a violent crime.

He went out to the main room of Homicide where Russ Clements sat at his desk, which, startlingly, was bare of paper. Usually it looked like the dump-bin outside a paper mill.

‘What’s the matter? You not accepting any more paperwork?’

‘This is what they call – is it a hiatus? I dunno if the system’s run outa paper, but I’m not, as they say, gunna make any enquiries. It’ll start up again, soon’s my back is turned. In the meantime …’

Malone and Clements had worked together for more years than they cared to count. Over the last year or two, as Homicide and Serial Offenders, part of Crime Agency, had expanded, they had worked together less and less out of the office. Clements, as Supervisor, the equivalent of general manager, had become trapped at his desk. Computers had proved to be just another form of land-mines, hemming him in. The diet of reports, reports, reports had put weight on him, turned muscle to fat. He was a big man, a couple of inches taller than Malone, and though he had never been light-footed, his tread now was heavy. He was a prisoner looking for parole.

‘In the meantime, on your feet,’ said Malone. He, too, had begun to thicken as middle age wrapped itself round him, but he still looked reasonably athletic. But he knew he was long past chasing crims on foot. ‘We’re going over to the Southern Savoy. You can help me count the bodies.’

Clements stood up, reached for his jacket as if it were a lifebelt. ‘I thought you’d never ask. Gail, keep an eye on this thing for me.’ He nodded at his computer, at its screen as blank as a crim’s eye. ‘Ignore everything but love and kisses from the Commissioner.’

Gail Lee, one of the four women detectives on the staff of twenty, looked at Malone. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘He’s light-headed, he’s going to be a detective again.’

The two men went out of the room, Malone as usual putting on his pork-pie hat. It made him look like a cop from the 1950s, but it was his trademark, though only in the eyes of his staff. They let themselves out through the security door and disappeared, unaware of the swamp they were to step into in Room 342 at the Hotel Southern Savoy.

Gail Lee looked at Sheryl Dallen, another of the distaff side of Homicide. ‘I think they’re both into the menopause.’

Sheryl leaned back in her chair, swept an arm around her. ‘Won’t it be lovely when all this is ours? A woman Commissioner, seven women Assistant Commissioners –’

The three men still in the large room looked up, like pointers that had scented danger. Gail and Sheryl exchanged foxy grins.

Malone and Clements drove through a day as sharp as a knife against the cheek; a westerly wind had whetted it. Building outlines were as clean as etchings; a lone cloud was like an ice-floe, queues stood at bus stops looking as miserable as if they were queuing for the dole. The car’s radio told them the temperature was only 14 degrees Celsius.

‘A summer’s day in Finland,’ said Clements.

‘Or in England,’ said Malone, and they smiled at each other with Down Under smugness.

Phil Truach, cigarette-satisfied, was waiting for them in the lobby of the hotel. It was not a large lobby; expense had been spared by the developer who had built the hotel. It was crowded now with departing guests, some of whom looked to be in a hurry, as if afraid they might be the next murder victims. There were unwelcome guests: two pressmen and three radio reporters. Malone was grateful there were no television cameramen. Television shots of crime scenes never seemed to show anything but police officers going in and out of doorways as if looking for work.

Truach pulled Malone and Clements to one side; they stood behind a limp palm, the one piece of greenery in the lobby. ‘The media want a statement.’

‘Stuff ’em for the moment,’ said Malone. ‘Where’s the manager?’

‘He’s up with Crime Scene. He seems to have recovered. Your wife’s up there, too, Russ.’

Clements frowned. ‘As ME? What’s she doing there?’

‘I dunno.’ Truach held up a hand as they stepped out from behind the palm and the five reporters pushed forward. ‘Later, guys.’

‘Is there any connection between the two murders? Is it a serial killer?’ She was from a radio station, she chewed on serial killer as if it were a liqueur-filled chocolate. Malone remembered the days when all police reporters had been male, eager cubs or hard-bitten hacks. These girls were just as tenacious: ‘Or is it just coincidence?’

‘Coincidence,’ said Malone, stepping into the lift and pressing the button for the doors to close. ‘It makes the world go round.’

‘She won’t learn that till she’s middle-aged,’ said Clements. ‘Who’s upstairs, Phil, besides my wife?’

‘Coupla uniformed guys, two plainclothes from Regent Street, Norma Nickles and a young guy from Crime Scene.’ Truach, like most of the older cops, still used the old term instead of Forensic. Police teams, like football teams, were constantly being re-named. ‘Your wife and a guy from the morgue. And Deric, the manager. D-E-R-I-C, he spelt it out for me.’

‘Phil, I think you’re homophobic,’ said Malone.

‘They rub me up the wrong way,’ said Truach and all three of them laughed.

They were on their way to a homicide, a double homicide, another job of work. The mood changed only when the dirty work began: the wonder at why a particular life had been taken, the informing the relatives of the victim’s death and how it had occurred.

Romy Clements, Deputy Director of Forensic Medicine at the morgue, looked in surprise at her husband. He returned the look. They hadn’t met over a corpse in several years.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

‘I have four of my staff off with ’flu virus.’

She was in a white coat, was wearing plastic gloves, but the clinical look didn’t detract from her own looks. She, like Russ, had put on a little weight, but middle-aged spread was still a few years ahead of her. She had that comfortable, comforting appearance that some women achieve in their late thirties when life is going well for them. But Malone always found it remarkable that she had reached that assurance. Her mother had died only a short time after coming to Australia from Germany. Her father, never wanting to leave Germany, was serving a life sentence for serial killing. Yet somehow, with the help of Russ, she had come through all that to self-confidence. The Clements’ marriage was a harbour for both of them, their five-year-old daughter their beacon in the centre of it.

She nodded down at the body on the bed: ‘Strangled. No rape, but there’d been intercourse. Dead eight to ten hours, I’d say.’

The room was crowded and even after all these years Malone wished the crime scenes provided more breathing space. He looked at Des Shirer, the senior man from Regent Street, the local station. He never neglected protocol, it was part of the axle-grease of co-operation.

‘What’ve you got, Des?’

Shirer was in his late thirties, but he had none of the comfortable look that Romy had. He was thin, fidgetty, had awkward movements as if on wires: crime, you knew, would eventually wear him out. ‘I’ve talked to Deric, here –’

Deric was not what Malone had expected from Phil Truach’s description. He was in his early thirties, thick blond hair, regular features and what looked like muscular shoulders under the dark jacket. Definitely not a man who would have the vapours.

Till he spoke: it was a high girlish voice and at the moment was quavery: ‘She –’ He looked down at the still exposed body of the woman, then quickly looked back at Malone. ‘She’s registered as Mrs Belinda Paterson – that’s what her credit card said. Some address in Oregon, in the United States. She booked in yesterday about 6 p.m., said she was staying just the one night. I wasn’t on duty, but our reception clerk said she sounded a very nice lady. Not a – well, you know.’

‘A hooker looking for business?’ said Clements.

Romy looked at Norma Nickles, the other woman in the room besides the dead one. ‘That’s how they divide us up – nice ladies or hookers. I’ll see you at home, Liebchen,’ she said and gave Clements the sort of smile that has cut a thousand throats, mostly lovers’ and husbands’.

‘No, we don’t think she was anything like that,’ said the manager and for a moment the quaver was gone from his voice.

‘If she was a hooker, she’d done all right at it.’ Norma Nickles was a slim graceful woman who had once been a ballet dancer. She had descended from entrechat and sur les pointes to down-to-earth, flat-footed examination of crime. And was a star at it. ‘Her suit is top quality, Donna Karan, bought at Bergdorf Goodman’s in New York. Cashmere sweater, Ferragamo shoes. Her topcoat is vicuna, it doesn’t come any more expensive in cloth, right, Doctor?’

‘The best.’ The two women looked at the coat thrown over a nearby chair. Romy put out a hand to touch it, then realized she was wearing the plastic gloves. ‘I don’t think even hookers can afford them. Not in this town.’

‘This lady had money,’ said Norma Nickles.

‘What’s the rate here?’ Malone turned back to the manager.

He had been looking down at the body; he jerked his head up as Malone spoke to him. ‘How much? A hundred dollars a night for a double with bath, like this front room. Less than that for group bookings.’

Malone gazed down at the body now being zipped into a bag. The throat had a dark collar of bruising, the face was puffy and distorted, her mouth enlarged by the smeared lipstick. But it was evident that she had once been, only yesterday, a good-looking woman.

‘I’d say she was thirty-five, maybe forty, no more,’ said Romy, peeling off her plastic gloves. ‘She’s looked after herself – or been well looked after. She was what you men call well preserved.’

‘Was she American, do you think?’

The question was addressed to the manager, who had shut his eyes for the moment as the bag was zipped up. Now he shrugged, spread his hands; the gesture was slightly effeminate. Pull your head in, Malone told himself, and your prejudices. He was not homophobic, but he came of a past generation that carried notions as dated as flares and sideburns. But then he had other prejudices: cricketers who patted each other on the bum (bonding, he was told they called it); the same cricketers who threw the ball high into the air when they took a catch (show-boating, he called it); footballers who hugged and kissed each other when a try or a goal was scored; mates who thought half a dozen beers was a blood bond (which made him un-Australian). He would get used to fluttery hands eventually.

‘Our reception clerk thought so,’ said the manager. ‘But so many these days try to sound American, don’t they? De-BREE for debris, stuff like that.’ His own accent was English and sounded genuine. Not gen-u-ine.

‘Anything in her handbag?’ Clements asked Norma Nickles.

‘Just the American Express card, her compact, a packet of condoms –’

‘Any used in the intercourse?’ asked Malone.

Norma shook her head. ‘No.’

‘There’s semen in the vagina,’ said Romy.

‘Good. If we pick anyone up we can lecture him on the dangers of unsafe sex. He may not know what DNA can do to him. What else?’

‘Her watch, a Bulgari – like I said, this lady had money. A string of pearls – expensive, too.’

‘May I interrupt?’ said Romy. ‘We’re ready to take the body away.’

‘When will you do the p-m?’ asked Malone.

‘Not till tomorrow. I have four others lined up ahead of her, including the man they took out earlier. We’ll do them in turn.’ She looked at her husband: ‘No remarks about Teutonic thoroughness.’

‘Never entered my head,’ said Clements innocently.

‘You’re coming to dinner tomorrow night?’ she asked Malone.

‘We’ll be there,’ said Malone; then looked at the manager who had raised his eyebrows. ‘Life goes on, Deric. We’re not cold-blooded bastards.’

‘No. No, I guess not.’ But he didn’t look convinced.

As the body was put on a stretcher to be taken away, Malone moved to the window and looked out. On the other side of the square the tall Italianate clock tower of the station reared like an unintended memorial above the dead in the old burying ground. Malone remembered reading somewhere that water from a creek that had run through the burial grounds had been used to make the best-tasting beer in the early days of the colony. Drinkers of it often finished up in the graves beside the creek, adding no advertisement for the beer. In the middle of the square, complementing none of the surrounding buildings, was a steel-and-glass construction that, for want of a better name, was called a bus shelter; those who stood under it said that the only thing it protected them from was the pigeon-shit of the birds that squatted on it. It looked as out of place as a glass condom on an altar, but that was the way the city was going. The dead in the burial grounds would, metaphorically, piss on it from a great height.

Central Square was not Sydney’s most glittering scene and he wondered why a seemingly wealthy American woman would have come here to this hundred-dollar-a-night hotel when more expensive and luxurious hotels, with much better views, were available only ten-minute cab rides from here. Then he saw a man get off a bus lugging a heavy suitcase and he turned back to the manager.

He waited while the body was taken away and Romy went out of the room, brushing her hand against Clements’ as she went. Then he said, ‘Where’s the lady’s luggage?’

‘There wasn’t any,’ said the manager.

‘You let people check in here without luggage?’

Deric looked embarrassed; he moved his hands again. ‘Reception uses its discretion. My girl thought Mrs Paterson looked – well, okay. Not a hooker. But …’

Malone waited, aware that everyone else in the room had paused.

Deric said, ‘People check in here sometimes for meetings – they don’t want to meet in more conspicuous places –’

‘Inspector,’ said Shirer, ‘Norma mentioned what was in Mrs Paterson’s handbag. Expensive stuff, she said – the watch and the pearls. Yet she signed for a safe deposit box downstairs –’

‘Did you know that?’ Malone asked the manager.

‘No. They didn’t mention it down at the desk –’

‘We haven’t looked at it yet,’ said Shirer, ‘but why didn’t she put the watch and pearls in it? Or anyway, the pearls?’

‘What time did you come on duty, Deric?’

‘I got here at, I dunno, five-thirty, quarter to six. They called me as soon as they found Boris’ body –’

‘Boris?’

‘The cleaner,’ said Shirer. ‘Boris Jones.’

‘Boris Jones?’ Malone managed to remain expressionless. ‘Righto, Deric, let’s go down and have a look at what’s in the box. The key in her handbag, Norma?’

Norma Nickles ferreted in the crocodile-skin handbag, held out a key. ‘That it?’

‘That’s it,’ said the manager and looked almost nervous as he took the key.

Before he left the room Malone asked, ‘Any prints?’

‘We’re still dusting,’ said Norma. ‘The report will be on your desk this afternoon.’

‘Not mine,’ said Malone. ‘Russ’.’

‘Thanks,’ said Clements and looked at Shirer. ‘The chain of command, Des. Does it ever get you down?’

Shirer looked at his junior man, smiled for the first time. ‘Not really, does it, Matt?’

Matt just rolled his eyes and looked at the two uniformed men, who, bottom of the heap, kept their opinion to themselves.

Malone went down in the lift with the manager. Deric was quiet, looked worried. ‘What about Boris? Our cleaner? God, two of them the same night! Management has already been on to me – you’d think it was my fault! Do you think there’s any connection? I mean between the two murders?’

‘Do you?’

‘Me? Why would I connect them? The woman’s a total stranger –’

‘Let’s hope she’s not,’ said Malone. ‘That always makes our job so much harder. We solved a case last year, took us seven years to identify the victim –’

‘Oh God,’ said Deric.

In the lobby Malone paused to give a non-committal comment to the media hawks, throwing them a bone that they knew was bare. ‘Is that all?’ asked the girl from 2UE. ‘Who is Belinda Paterson?’

Someone at the reception desk had opened his or her mouth. ‘That’s all we have at the moment, her name.’

‘No address?’ This girl knew that bones had a marrow.

Malone looked at the manager, who said, ‘No local address. Just an address in the United States.’

‘So she’s another tourist who’s been –’

But Malone had pushed the manager ahead of him into the latter’s office and closed the door before he heard the word murdered.

‘Oh Jesus, Inspector, I can see and hear ’em on tonight’s news –’

‘Deric, if they hang around after we’ve gone, you tell them nothing, okay? Nothing. Just refer ’em to us. Now where’s the safe deposit box?’

Deric went into an inner room, not much larger than a closet, and came back with the flat metal box. He opened it, then looked at Malone and frowned. ‘That’s all? A passport?’

Malone picked up the black passport, opened it. He had seen one or two like it before: a diplomatic passport. He saw the photo: the dead woman alive, looking directly into the camera as if challenging it. He read the name and the particulars, then he closed it, took a plastic bag from his pocket and dropped the passport in it.

The hotel manager could read expressions on strangers’ faces; it was part of his training. ‘Trouble?’

‘Could be. Keep it to yourself till I check. It’ll be better for the hotel, I think –’

‘If you say so. But –’

‘No buts, Deric. Have you been in this business long? You’re English, aren’t you?’

Deric had sat down, as if all his strength had suddenly gone. ‘No, I’m Australian. From Perth. I used to be an actor. I went to London, worked there off and on for –’ He shrugged. ‘For too long. I was out of work more than I was working. When I was out, I used to work as a waiter or nights on the reception desk in hotels. Five years ago I gave it up, the acting, and took a hotel management course –’ He appeared to be talking to himself. Abruptly he shut up, then after a silence, he said, ‘I thought everything was going sweetly for me.’

‘It still can, Deric. None of this is your fault. In the meantime –’

He went back upstairs, besieged again by the reporters. He knew they had a job to do, but they pressed their case too hard, as if history itself would stop unless they got the news to the voters immediately.

‘Tell us something, Inspector – anything! Are the murders connected?’

The lift doors closed and he looked at the two couples riding with him and they looked at him. Both couples were elderly, all four of them seemingly past excitability.

‘We’ve heard about the murders –’ He was tall and thin and grey-haired with a face like a wrinkled riding boot: from the bush, thought Malone.

‘Don’t let it spoil your holiday.’

‘We’re not down here on holiday,’ said the male of the other couple, a stout and weatherbeaten man with faded blue eyes; it was obvious now that the four of them were together. ‘We’re here for a funeral.’

Malone cursed his loose tongue, was relieved when the lift stopped. ‘Sorry. My condolences.’

‘You, too,’ said the tall thin man, as if police grieved for all murder victims, and the lift doors closed on them.

Malone shook his head at the crossed lines of the world and went into Room 342. Phil Truach and the two Regent Street officers had gone, but Clements was still there with the two Crime Scene officers and the two uniformed men. With the bodies gone from the hotel, everything was looking routine. Out in the hallway there was the sound of a vacuum cleaner at work, taking the marks of the police team out of the carpet.

‘Anything?’ Malone asked.

‘We’ve got enough prints here to fill a library,’ said Norma Nickles with the fastidiousness of an old-fashioned housekeeper. ‘The maids seem to be a bit light-handed with the feather-dusters.’

‘Tell Deric on your way out. Did you get a print off the flush-button in the toilet?’

‘Yeah, there’s one clear one.’

‘Then maybe that’s the one we want. We nailed a feller years ago that way. A bloke usually has a leak before or after sex.’

‘Really?’ said Norma, who had known the true worth of the advertisements in the tights of male ballet dancers. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘They also have a leak after murder,’ said Clements. ‘It’s the excitement.’

‘You men,’ said Norma and all five of them grinned at her.

‘Righto, Russ,’ said Malone. ‘Let’s get back.’

‘Anything in the deposit box?’

‘Nothing. Where’s Phil?’

‘He’s downstairs with the guys from Regent Street, they’re interviewing the staff. You wanna question ’em?’

‘No, you and I had better get back to the office.’ His expression didn’t change, but Clements, the old hand, read his eyes. ‘Let’s have the report soon’s you can, Norma. Take care.’

He and Clements went down in the lift, squeezing in with half a dozen guests who recognized them as police and fell silent as if afraid of being questioned. The two detectives strode through the lobby before the reporters could waylay them again. Malone saw the manager standing behind the reception desk, staring at them as if they were guests who had trashed their room and refused to pay their account. Police are rarely welcome guests, certainly never in hotels.

Their unmarked car was parked in the hotel’s loading zone. A van had just pulled up and its driver leaned out of his door and yelled, pointing at the sign, ‘Can’t you buggers read?’

The two detectives ignored him, got into the car and Malone drew it out from the kerb, resisting the urge to give the middle finger to the van driver who was still yelling at them. Only then did Clements speak: ‘What have you come up with?’

Malone took the plastic envelope from his pocket, but didn’t remove the passport. ‘This. We’ve got trouble, mate. We take this to Greg Random and then to Charlie Hassett before we let anyone else see it.’

‘So she’s not –’ Clements looked at his notebook; he still carried it like an old family heirloom. ‘Not Mrs Belinda Paterson?’

‘No. She’s Mrs Billie Pavane. She’s the wife of the American Ambassador.’

2

‘Shit!’ said Charlie Hassett, Assistant Commissioner, Crime Agency. He looked at the passport as if it were his dismissal pink slip. ‘It’s our turf, but we’re gunna be overrun by our Federal blokes, the CIA, the FBI, Foreign Affairs … You’re absolutely sure this is the dead woman’s, Scobie?’

‘Yes, sir. It’s hers. I saw her before they zipped up the bag and took her away. It’s hers, all right.’

Clements had gone back to Homicide to prepare for the blizzard that would soon be coming out of Canberra. Cold weather had been coming up from the south all week, but there would be no snow sports for the New South Wales Police Service. Malone was wishing that he had taken his vacation, which was due; or even his long service leave, which would give him time to disappear to the other side of the world. Lisa, his wife, had been talking of a trip home to Holland and that now seemed an appealing faraway place. Instead he was now sitting in Assistant Commissioner Hassett’s office with Chief Superintendent Greg Random, head of the Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit.

‘Charlie, I’m not going to have my men pushed around by outsiders.’ Random was the guardian angel of his men and women, though if he had any wings they had been folded and stored in a cupboard. Tall and bony, with a stiff brush of grey hair, he was as dry as the dust on the Western Plains where he had grown up and he would have greeted Lucifer with the same laconic regard as he offered to other, lesser crims. He would not be bending the knee to any Hierarchy from Canberra. For him, anyone down there, whether politician, diplomat or bureaucrat, was a foreigner. ‘I want you to let them know that from the start –’

‘Greg, relax –’ Hassett made a downward motion with two large hands. He had started on the beat thirty-five years ago, when doubt had never entered his still developing mind; his powers of persuasion had consisted of a sledge-hammer for closed doors and a bunched fist for closed faces. He occasionally dreamed of the simplicity of those days, but these days there was no sharper mind in the Police Service. He wore his reputation as a hard case as some men, and women, wore their power suits. The sledgehammer had been put away and in its place was a perception as sharp as a professional woodchopper’s axe. ‘I’ll talk to the Commissioner and we’ll get the barricades up. We’re not gunna be overrun by outsiders. But we’ve got to get this news down to Canberra – how’re you gunna do it?’

‘We’ll start out with the proper channels, just to show we’re not obstructive,’ said Random. ‘I’ve talked it over with Scobie. When we leave here we’re going down to the US Consul-General. We’ll give him the news, tell him we’ve already got the investigation under way and he can let Canberra know. We’ll let them know – in a nice way, of course – that the case is ours.’

Hassett looked at Malone. ‘You’re not jumping for joy, Scobie.’

‘Would you be, sir?’

The Assistant Commissioner grinned. ‘You want a loan of my sledgehammer? It’s over there in the closet. I’ve had it gold-plated.’ He stood up. He was of what had once been the medium height for police officers, five feet ten inches, and he had thickened; he still suggested the battering-ram he had once been. ‘Now I’m gunna give the Commissioner the bad news. Good luck. My regards to the Consul-General. He’s a nice bloke and he’s gunna hate this as much as you.’

Random and Malone drove down to Martin Place, in the business heart of the city, parked the car in the basement of the MLC building and rode up to the fifty-ninth floor. Money rustled like a breeze in all the floors beneath, but here on the fifty-ninth diplomacy, at citizen level, was the order of business. Passports, trade and general enquiries: nothing that made waves. The two detectives, when they produced their badges, were checked through security as if they were close relatives of the US President and were shown into the Consul-General’s office before they could comment on their welcome.

‘You’ve got news of her?’

Consul-General Bradley Avery had been an All-American quarterback before he had given up throwing passes and taken to receiving blasts from Washington. He was as tall as Random and Malone and had shoulders that looked as if he still wore the pads that Malone always found ridiculous on gridiron players. He had dark curly hair and a broad black face just the pleasant side of plain.

‘Our embassy called me this morning – got me at home before I was out of bed –’

‘We’re talking about Mrs Pavane, the Ambassador’s wife?’ said Random.

‘Yes. Yes, of course –’ Then Avery waved the two detectives to chairs, came round his desk and sat his haunches on it. ‘She’s been missing since yesterday morning. She caught a nine o’clock plane out of Canberra for Sydney and she hasn’t been seen since she got off it –’

‘You didn’t have a consulate car out at the airport to meet her?’

‘Yes, there was one. The embassy called after she had left and ordered the car. But she didn’t meet it –’ Then he stopped, reading the atmosphere for the first time. ‘You’ve got bad news?’

Random nodded, looked at Malone. ‘Tell him, Scobie. It’s your case.’ Planting the territorial imperative early.

Malone recited the bad news. ‘That’s the bald fact, Mr Avery. What puzzles us is what was the Ambassador’s wife doing in a hundred-dollar-a-night hotel under an assumed name?’

Avery had listened in silence, without expression; but now he let out a long hiss of breath, as if he had been holding it in. ‘Holy shit! Does the media know?’

‘Yes. There was another murder last night at the same hotel, one of their cleaners. If it hadn’t been for the double homicide, I don’t think the press would have been down there. It would have got a three-line mention in the news brief in tomorrow morning’s papers, that’s all. But now –’

‘Do the media know who she is?’

‘Not yet. So far the hotel management doesn’t know. I didn’t let the manager see this when I took it out of the safe deposit box –’ He took the plastic bag containing the passport from his pocket. ‘All they know so far is that she was American.’

Avery held out his hand. ‘I’ll give that back to the Ambassador.’

Malone looked at Random, who said, ‘It’s our turf, Mr Avery. It’s a New South Wales Police Service job, I’m afraid. I wish it weren’t, but that’s the fact of the matter.’

‘Does it have to be?’ Avery was not belligerent. He just had the look of a quarterback seeing tackles coming at him from either side.

‘I’m afraid so. We’ll co-operate with anyone you bring in, but it’s our case. We’ll be as discreet as possible, but it won’t be too long before the media has a field day.’

‘Did your security people check yesterday when she didn’t turn up?’ asked Malone.

‘We-ll, no-o.’ Avery looked abruptly tentative. ‘We didn’t send anyone out there after the driver came back and reported he hadn’t found her. We phoned Canberra and they said to leave it to them. They’re very secure about security down there,’ he added and sounded undiplomatic.

‘What do they have down there? CIA, FBI, what?’ asked Random.

Avery closed up: ‘I think you better ask them.’

‘How long has the Ambassador been out here?’ asked Malone.

‘Two months. He’s still finding his feet. Don’t quote me,’ he added and almost managed a smile.

‘Is he a career diplomat?’

Foreign ambassadors made little or no impact on the country outside the limited circle of Canberra. They were wraiths that occasionally materialized. Like now.

‘No. I should imagine half the State Department had never heard of him till the President submitted his name. I’d never heard of him …’

‘You’re being very frank, Mr Avery,’ said Random.

‘I’m getting on side,’ said Avery, and this time his smile widened. ‘Look, you want the facts. I’m the one who’s gonna be closest to you in this, so I’ll fill you in all I can. Mr Pavane was a big supporter of the President in the last campaign, raising enough money to wrap up Missouri and Kansas for the President. He comes from Kansas City, his family has been there for years. He was president of one of our biggest agrobusinesses and he was picked to come out here because we always seem to be at odds with you on meat and agricultural tariffs and subsidies. Again, don’t quote me.’ He went round behind his desk, sat down, looked glad to have a chair beneath him. ‘I’ll call our embassy now. They’ll have someone down here this afternoon. I’ll tell them it’s your turf, as you call it, but you may have to explain it to them yourselves.’

‘We’ll do that,’ said Random. ‘You might tell them while you’re on the phone that Inspector Malone and I have the backing of our own Assistant Commissioner and our Commissioner himself. Inspector Malone will be doing the leg-work, I’ll be running the investigation. But behind me –’

‘I get your point, Mr Random,’ said Avery. ‘Does your Premier and your state government know yet?’

‘They will by now. The Commissioner will have told the Premier and the Police Minister.’

Avery looked at Malone. ‘You look worried, Inspector. Clouds are gathering?’

‘I think so. Where were you before your posting to Sydney?’

‘Belgrade.’ Another smile, but this time a wry one. ‘I see your point. Okay, I’ll do all I can to help you. But I hope you understand – consular men are down the totem pole compared to embassy staff.’

‘I feel the same way about Police Headquarters.’

‘You survive,’ said Random, then looked at Avery. ‘We’ll wait till you’ve talked to the embassy. Just so’s we know, right from the start, where we’ll be going.’

‘I think I better get my two senior staff in here first.’ Avery spoke into the intercom on his desk: ‘Jane, will you ask Mr Goodbody and Miz Caporetto to come in? Now.’ He switched off and sat back. But he was not relaxed. ‘You’re right. What was Mrs Pavane doing in a cheap hotel under an assumed name? She didn’t strike me as like that – I mean the cheap hotel.’

‘What do you know about her?’ asked Malone.

‘Nothing. Except that she was a charming, good-looking woman who always looked a million dollars, as they say. I gather she had made quite an impression down there in Canberra on the cocktail circuit. I met her twice and she looked to me as if she was going to be a great help to the Ambassador.’

‘And what’s he like?’

But then the door opened and Mr Goodbody and Miz Caporetto came in. Avery waved a finger at the door and Goodbody turned and closed it. Avery stood up and introduced the newcomers; there was obvious rapport between the three of them. Then he said, ‘This is Chief Superintendent Random and Inspector Malone from the New South Wales Police Service. They have bad news. Really bad news. They have just found the Ambassador’s wife in a hotel up on Central Square. Murdered.’

Gina Caporetto sat down suddenly in a chair which, fortunately, was right behind her. Mitchell Goodbody stood stockstill, one foot in front of the other, as if caught in mid-stride. Then he said, ‘Murdered?’

Malone had heard the echo countless times. Violent death was beyond the immediate comprehension of most people: at least the violent death of those they knew. Consular officials, like police, must have experience of tragedy, but, he guessed, it was the tragedies of strangers. And they would not have expected personal – well, semi-personal – violence here on their doorstep in a friendly city.

‘How? Was she – murdered by some stranger?’ Goodbody had a soft Southern accent. He was short and thin and looked as if he might be perpetually worried. He had thick fair hair, cut very short as if he had just come out of boot camp, and a long thin face that would reach middle age before the rest of him. The sort of worker who would always see that the office wheels never stopped turning. ‘Which hotel was it? Central Square?’ He frowned, as if it was remote territory.

‘The Southern Savoy,’ said Random.

‘The what?’ Gina Caporetto was a blonde Italian-American, her birth roots north of Milan; it was an unfortunate name, a reminder of an Italian defeat in World War I; but the two Australians in the room had never heard of it. In any case men, and women, would hardly remark her name; instead they took note of her body and, eyes rising, her quite attractive face. She wore a beige knitted dress that looked as if she had put it on wet and it had shrunk. ‘I’ve never heard of it – no, wait a minute. Last year, during the Olympics, there was a big group from, I’ve forgotten where, New England somewhere, they were booked in there. I went up there once –’ She, too, frowned. ‘She was – there?’

‘It’s a hundred-dollar-a-night place,’ said Avery. ‘Superintendent Random tells me the circumstances aren’t – well, not the best. She was found naked in her room. She’d been strangled.’

‘You are sure it’s Mrs Pavane?’ Goodbody’s accent seemed to have thickened with shock.

‘Certain,’ said Malone and held up the plastic bag and the passport.

‘Do the media know?’ Gina Caporetto had recovered her poise, which was considerable.

‘Miss Caporetto is our press officer,’ said Avery.

‘They know there’s been a double murder –’

‘A double murder?’ Goodbody seemed to be making a habit of the echo.

‘We don’t think the other homicide – a hotel cleaner – is connected to that of Mrs Pavane. But we’ve only just started our investigation –’

Gina Caporetto looked at Avery. ‘Shouldn’t our people be handling this?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Random, getting in first. ‘This is our turf, Miz Caporetto. We’ll welcome co-operation, but that’s all. I don’t know the set-up at your embassy –’

‘I’ll explain the situation to Canberra,’ said Avery. ‘I’ll call them now. Maybe you could offer Mr Random and Mr Malone some coffee, Gina? Take them into your office while I call Canberra. You stay with me, Mitch. This is just between ourselves till I’ve talked to the embassy.’

Goodbody still looked shaken: the wheels had come off and he had found himself with no jack. ‘They’ll be all over us –’

‘No, they won’t, Mitch,’ said Avery warningly. ‘Go ahead, Gina, give the gentlemen some coffee.’

Gina Caporetto led the two detectives out of the big office into a smaller one on the other side of a lobby. The secretary at the desk outside Avery’s room looked up enquiringly, but Ms Caporetto just shook her head.

She closed the door to her office and went to an old-fashioned percolator on a hot-plate. ‘I make my own coffee. We Americans think we make the best coffee in the world. But –’

She smiled and Malone said, ‘Don’t quote you. Did you ever meet Mrs Pavane?’

‘Cream or black? Sugar?’ She brought them their cups, then took her own behind her desk and sat down. It was a neat, comfortable office; but Malone wondered how comfortable it would be for her in the coming days. Even the ubiquitous Stars and Stripes on a small standard in a corner looked limp.

‘Yes, I met her, once down in Canberra just after they had arrived and twice up here. I took her shopping one day and another day I took her to lunch. She was trying to get the feel of – well, Australians, I guess.’

‘But?’ said Malone.

‘But?’ She paused, with her cup held in front of her face like a mask.

Greg Random said, ‘Miz Caporetto, we cops read what is unsaid. It comes with experience – in other circumstances we might have made good diplomats.’ He looked sideways at Malone. ‘Except Inspector Malone, who is notoriously undiplomatic.’

‘Nice coffee,’ said Malone diplomatically, holding up his cup.

Her first smile had been forced, a muscular effort, but now she appeared a little more relaxed; she shook her head and smiled at both of them. She looked like a sex bomb, but she had a cool mind that could always control it.

‘Yes – but. I just, I don’t know, I felt she wasn’t entirely a stranger here.’

‘Did you query her on it?’

‘Yes. Diplomatically.’ Just a faint smile.

‘And what did she say?’

She took a memory pause; then she said, ‘I’m being mean, but it was like she was making up an answer. Then she said she had been out here eight or nine years ago on a quick business trip. She had stayed at the Regent.’

‘Five-star,’ said Malone. ‘So why did she choose the Southern Savoy this time? It’d be struggling to pick up three stars.’

‘Did she let her hair down when you took her to lunch?’ Random had finished his coffee.

She got up, took his cup and poured more coffee for him. ‘Not really. We weren’t exactly girls on an equal footing – she was the Ambassador’s wife.’ She came back, sat down, paused again as if she realized she had spoken in the past tense: was the Ambassador’s wife. ‘She seemed to have tightened up after that first shopping visit. She wasn’t rude, but she was – well, distant. As if suddenly she had taken a dislike to, I dunno, Sydney or Australia. It happened after this guy spoke to her.’

‘Which guy?’ Random had almost finished his second cup. Slow in almost everything else, he was a quick coffee drinker, not a sipper.

‘We hadn’t started lunch when this guy came up, said, “Aren’t you –” I didn’t catch the name, he sorta mumbled it the way –’

‘The way Australians do,’ said Malone. ‘My wife is always telling me to open my mouth. She’s Dutch.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Ms Caporetto, trying to sound polite. ‘Well, anyway, she just froze him. She just said a blunt “No” and he apologized and sorta limped away.’

‘Did you get a good look at the man?’ asked Malone.

‘Not really. I was looking at her. He was short and, I’m not sure, bald. He stopped by for just a few seconds. The place was crowded and he just sort of disappeared.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Even at the time I thought it a bit strange – she just made no comment. She didn’t look at me, picked up her menu and, I think I’ve got it right, said, “I’ll have the oysters and the barramundi.”’

‘So she knew about our oysters and our fish?’ said Malone.

‘Well, yes, it seemed so. But she’d been in Canberra a coupla months – no, at that time a month or maybe five weeks – and maybe they’d told her what was best.’

‘What else do they have to talk about down in Canberra?’ said Random. ‘Where did you have lunch?’

‘At Catalina. It was a Friday, all the eastern suburbs ladies were there.’

‘What do you know about her back in the States?’

‘Nothing. I knew nothing about the Ambassador till we heard he was coming. He’s from Kansas City. I come from Philly – Philadelphia. Anything west of the Mississippi is still Indian territory to us.’

Just like us, thought Malone, though on a smaller scale. Sydney’s eastern suburbs thought of the western suburbs as Indian territory. ‘What’s he like?’

‘Charming. He’s no hayseed or cowboy –’ She stopped, shook her head again, looked squarely at the two men. ‘Why am I talking to you like this? Because you’re cops?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Malone. ‘Because, like us, you want to know who killed the Ambassador’s wife.’

She pondered a moment, then she nodded. ‘Okay. As I said, he’s no hayseed. He graduated from the University of Missouri, then he went on to Oxford, England – he was there two or three years behind President Clinton. He’s very much okay and the word from Canberra is that he’s very popular and respected on the diplomatic circuit. Being a US ambassador is not the easiest job in the world, no matter where you are.’

‘What is the security set-up? Is there an FBI agent at the embassy?’

‘No, he’s here at the consulate – that’s the posting. But he went down to Canberra last night when Mrs Pavane didn’t return there.’

Malone glanced at Random. ‘Did you know there was an FBI man stationed here?’

‘Yes. It’s not top secret, but it’s not broadcast. So far we’ve had no dealings with him.’

Malone felt uneasy, but said nothing. Then Consul-General Avery came in. His face was stiff, but he seemed to have recovered from the shock that Random and Malone had brought him. He looked ready for business, unsettling though it might be.

‘I spoke to our Chief of Mission first, then the Ambassador came on the line. It’s floored him – he sounded as if I’d hit him with a ten-pound hammer. He’s coming up right away – they’ve got a plane standing by. He’ll be here in an hour, an hour and a half at the most. Where is Mrs Pavane’s body?’

‘At the morgue,’ said Random. ‘If you could meet him at the airport and take him there – it’s out at Glebe. We’ll let them know to expect him. He’ll need to identify the body. Then we’d like to see him.’

‘Meet him here, will you? We’d like to keep him away from the media for as long as possible, at least till he’s got over the shock. Once it’s on the wire services or the reps here of our bigger papers …’ His brows came down, his mouth twisted and for a moment he looked ugly. Then his face cleared and he looked at his watch. ‘Say one-thirty?’

‘We’ll be here,’ said Random, then turned to Gina Caporetto. ‘We won’t identify Mrs Pavane till we’ve talked to the Ambassador. We’ll keep her out of the news till then. But then –’

‘Then,’ said Avery with the voice of experience, ‘the fan starts whirring.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Random. ‘Inspector Malone will be handling it. He’s a good man on fans and what sometimes flies out of them.’

‘Shit,’ said Malone, but under his breath.

Going down in the lift, in the long drop from the 59th floor, Malone felt his spirits descending, too. There were only the two of them in the lift and he said, ‘Given my choice I think I’ll take the hotel’s cleaner and the knife job on him. You can have Mrs Pavane.’

‘You have no choice, chum. My Welsh mother used to say –’

‘Forget it. You Welsh are a melancholy lot.’

‘So are you Irish at times. Like now.’