Jon Cleary - Endpeace

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.’