Jon Cleary - Murder Song

They began to walk up towards the house. Two girl strappers passed them, smiled at O’Brien and went on to the stables. A man came out of a small office at the end of the stables and raised his hand to O’Brien.

‘Later, Bruce. He’s my foreman,’ O’Brien explained to Malone. ‘Why are you here, Scobie? Is it about Mardi Jack?’

‘Partly. You remembered her name?’

‘Yes. You want to sit out here in the sun? We’re out of the wind.’ It was a clear sunlit day, with the wind on the other side of the house. Yesterday’s rain had gone and the countryside looked as if it had been swept with a new broom. The rows of poplars that lined the driveway were just beginning to be tinged with green; they bowed before the wind like armless dancers. ‘I’ll get us some coffee.’

He went into the house and Malone sat down. O’Brien came back, they exchanged some chat about the stud until the foreman’s wife brought them coffee and cake, then O’Brien leaned forward, his cup and saucer held in front of him almost like a weapon.

‘I’d better tell you about Mardi Jack. Yes, I did know her. I used to meet her at that flat.’

‘I’d half-guessed that. Why did you try that stupid lie? We’d have found out eventually.’

‘I’m trying to protect someone.’

‘That the woman you mentioned, the one you spent the weekend with? Did she know Mardi Jack?’

‘She knew nothing about her.’

‘ Knew ? You mean you’ve told her about Mardi since we came to see you? How did she take it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Was she jealous? Was she shocked when you told her Mardi had been murdered?’

‘No, I don’t think she was jealous. Or maybe she was – I guess we’re all jealous of someone at one time or another. Shocked? Yes. She’s not the sort of lady who’s accustomed to murder.’

‘She’s married?’

‘Yes.’

Malone finished his coffee, held out his cup for a refill. He bit into a slice of the housekeeper’s carrot cake; the semi-country air was making him hungry. Or maybe he was just nervous: he had hardly slept last night.

‘I don’t think we’re interested in her for the moment. There’s something else that’s worrying us. I think you and I are on a hit list, Brian.’

O’Brien’s big hand tightened on his cup; for a moment Malone thought he was going to crush it. ‘Hit list? You and me?’

‘Are you surprised or were you expecting something like that?’

O’Brien put down his cup on the small table between them, stared at it a moment, then lifted his head. He took off his cap and kneaded it between his hands. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if I were on someone’s list. I can’t understand why you and me together.’

Malone told him about the random murders. ‘We think you were the target in the latest one, not Mardi. Whoever he is, he’s going for fellers who were in our class at the police academy back in 1965.’

O’Brien frowned, was silent for a moment. Then: ‘Has he tried for you yet?’

‘Not yet. But –’ Malone told him about the car tailing him last night.

‘That must’ve scared the hell out of your wife and kids.’

‘Out of my wife, yes. I’m keeping it from the kids. What did you mean when you said you wouldn’t be surprised if you were on someone’s list?’

Again there was a silence, but for the occasional moan of the wind round the corners of the house. At last O’Brien said, ‘This thing I’m in with my bank and my companies. Some people think I doublecrossed them.’

‘Have you?’

‘What’s it to you, Scobie? You’re not on the Fraud Squad.’

‘If someone bumps you off, I don’t want to be following two trails all over Sydney. I’d rather just have one suspect, even if I don’t know who he is.’

O’Brien smiled without any humour. ‘You’re pretty bloody brutal, aren’t you?’

‘Brian, I’m not going to fart-arse about on this. It looks like an innocent bystander, Mardi Jack, was killed instead of you. He’s sure to come back and try for you again. He’s already killed two others, he may go for me and Christ knows how many others. That’s enough on my plate. I don’t want to be chasing some greedy bastards who think you’ve cheated them out of a million or two. Or some husband who’s found out you’re sleeping with his lady wife.’ That last was a dart tossed casually.

It landed on the board if not on the bull’s-eye. ‘Keep her out of this! She’s the only decent thing that’s happened to me in twenty fucking years!’

Malone pushed away the half-eaten slice of carrot cake; he was not as hungry as he had thought. ‘I’m going back to town, to Homicide. I think it might be an idea if you came with me.’

O’Brien continued to sit. ‘Not if I have to make any statement.’

Malone looked at him carefully. He hadn’t yet warmed to O’Brien: he was the free-wheeling entrepreneur that was a new breed, one for which Malone had little time. Unambitious himself, uninterested in being rich, he had tried to but had never understood greed, for either money or power: in today’s world he knew that made him a simpleton. O’Brien was the very epitome of the new breed, yet Malone fancied there was a slight crack in him through which decency, a long-dead seed, was trying to sprout. He remembered that, though Horrie O’Brien had been the rebel in the academy class, he had never been unpopular, neither with the cadets nor the instructors, though he had been a loner.

‘You’ll have to make a statement about knowing Mardi Jack and going to the flat with her – there’s no way you can dodge that. But we’ll keep quiet about your lady friend – I don’t want to bring her into it unless we have to.’

‘Not even then,’ said O’Brien quietly and vehemently. ‘No way.’

Malone was non-committal on that. ‘I want you to look at some names and photos with me. They’re being sent up from Goulburn this morning.’

‘Goulburn?’

‘The main academy is down there now, they only do secondary courses at Redfern. They keep the police library at Goulburn. You and I can look at the class of ’65.’

O’Brien hesitated, then stood up. ‘Okay. Can you give me a lift back to town? I don’t own a car. I usually have a hire car pick me up.’

‘I thought all you fellers had a Rolls or a Merc or both.’

O’Brien smiled, again without mirth. ‘I once bought my old man a Merc. He sent it back with a note telling me to drive it up the track where the sun never shines.’

He went into the house without saying any more about his relationship with his father. He came out two or three minutes later with a briefcase and walked across to where Malone was waiting for him by the police car.

‘You call your lawyer?’

‘No. If you must know, I rang my lady friend.’

Malone looked around the stud, admiring it and, yes, suddenly envying O’Brien his possession of it. He thought what it would be like to live here with Lisa and the kids, to breathe this clear air every morning, to live in this easy rhythm, never to have to think about homicides and the sleaze of human nature that irritated him every day like an incurable rash. He said, ‘I wouldn’t come up here again, not till we’ve nailed this killer.’

‘Why not? We have a security patrol here.’

‘All day, twenty-four hours a day?’

‘No, just at night.’

Malone pointed to a clump of trees bordering a side road beyond the main paddock. ‘He could park his car amongst those trees and you’d never notice him. He could pick you off right where you’re standing and he’d be gone before anyone knew where the shot came from.’

‘That’s a fair distance, three hundred yards at least.’

‘This bloke is an expert, Brian. With a ’scope, you’d be like a dummy in a shooting gallery. Take my advice. Don’t come up here unless you have to and then have your security guards here to meet you. Just warn them, this bloke might take them out, too.’