Jon Cleary - Murder Song

O’Brien looked like a man who knew his leg was being pulled. ‘What sort of investor are you, Sergeant?’

‘A cautious one. I’ve also punted on a few of your horses.’

‘Cautiously?’

Clements nodded, but didn’t elaborate; the inference was that he did not take O’Brien’s horses at face value. ‘These rumours, Mr O’Brien. They involve a lot of people – I’ve heard a State cabinet minister mentioned and a Federal Opposition front-bencher. Insider trading.’

‘It’ll all come out in the wash,’ said O’Brien, his leg safe but the rest of him now looking vulnerable. ‘And the wash will be cleaner than you’ve all expected. It’s the old tall poppy syndrome – chop down anyone who does better than the mediocre. That’s the sacred koala in this country – mediocrity.’

Malone had heard it all before; there was a certain truth to it. He wondered, however, if a nation dedicated to worship of the brilliant would have been any better. The jails weren’t full of just failures; there were a lot of over-achievers amongst them. Tall poppies who had lopped off their own heads.

‘Is the NCSC gunna hold an enquiry?’ said Clements.

‘They’ve already started.’ O’Brien appeared relaxed; but he was gently bouncing one big hand in the other. ‘I thought you’d know that.’

Clements took another tack, a wide outswinger: ‘Didn’t you have something to do with music at one time?’

The hands paused. ‘Yes. Quite some years ago. That was how I first got started.’

‘You managed and promoted pop stars in Britain and America?’

That explained O’Brien’s accent. Malone had been trying to place it: it had an Australian base, the vowels occasionally flattened, but there was something else laid over it, a transatlantic sound.

‘Yes,’ said O’Brien. ‘What’s this got to do with what happened today? The murder, I mean.’

Malone took up the attack again, seeing where Clements was leading. ‘Miss Jack was a singer. One of your firms, Kensay, owns a recording studio where she was working on Saturday before she was killed. How long ago were you in London – what do I call you, Horrie or Brian?’

‘Brian,’ said O’Brien coldly. ‘Horrie was someone I knew in another life. Someone I’ve just about forgotten.’

His voice had changed as he spoke, became almost English; it was a formal statement. There seemed a note of venom in what he said, but Malone couldn’t be sure. The hands now were locked together.

Malone repeated his question: ‘How long ago were you in London?’

‘I went there over twenty years ago, a couple of years after I dropped out of the police academy. I came home eight years ago.’

‘And you’ve built all this up in eight years?’ Malone waved a hand, as if the O’Brien empire was spread out below them.

‘I read all the stuff put out by Australia House in London. The Land of Opportunity. I figured if the Poms like Alan Bond and the Hungarians and the Balts could come out here and make fortunes, so could I.’

‘And you did.’ Flatly.

‘Yes.’ Just as flatly.

Malone eased his tone a little. ‘You still in pop music? I don’t keep up with the pop scene.’

‘I gave it up in the mid-seventies. I got out before it sent me deaf. I went into property – that’s silent and you don’t have to deal with little jerks who think they own the world because they’ve made a hit single. What’s all this leading up to?’

‘Mardi Jack was in love with a man she met in London ten years ago, maybe a bit more. A feller whose initial was B. It could’ve been Brian.’

‘It could have been Bill or Boris or Buster, any bloody name at all. You’re not making me too happy, chum.’

‘Maybe you’ve forgotten – they didn’t invent the police force to make people happy. They told us that at the academy. I’m just doing my job, Mr O’Brien, trying to find out who murdered a woman who’d be a bloody sight happier if she were still alive.’

O’Brien said nothing for a moment; then he nodded. ‘Sure, I understand. You’ve just caught me on the wrong foot. I’ve got so many other things on my mind –’ It was an admission that he seemed instantly to regret; he was the sort of man who would always claim to be in control of a situation. He waved one of his big awkward hands, taking in his office and everything that could be seen from its big picture windows. He stood up, walked to one of the windows; he had an aggressive walk, the way, Malone remembered, the police academy had taught them to approach a riotous assembly. But there was no riotous assembly here, just a crowd of suspicions. ‘I’m sorry about what happened to Miss Jack, but I’ve got enough bastards out there hounding me without you two trying to lay something else on me.’

‘Righto, one last question. Where did you spend the weekend?’

For a moment it seemed that O’Brien hadn’t heard the question; then he turned back from the window. It had started to rain once more; the glass looked as if it was dissolving, the city behind him was about to collapse. He had a sudden stricken look on his face. ‘I can’t tell you that, Scobie.’

‘Why not?’ Malone saw that Clements was scribbling in his notebook: negative answers were sometimes as helpful as positive ones.

‘I was with a lady. I’m not going to tell you her name.’

‘Are you married?’

‘I was. Twice. I’ve been divorced for, I don’t know, twelve years, I think.’

‘Your ex-wives – where are they?’

‘In London. They were both in the pop scene – one was a singer, the other was in PR. There were no kids, thank Christ. They’re married again, both of them, and, as far as I know, never give me a thought. Is this going to keep on? If it is, I think I’ll send for my lawyer.’

Malone rose and Clements followed him. ‘There’ll be no need for that, not yet. But we may have to come back, Mr O’Brien.’

‘Mr O’Brien? I suppose I’d better get used to calling you Inspector? We were mates once, remember? Well, almost.’

Bits of memory were coming back, like the jetsam of youth drifting in on a long-delayed tide. ‘I don’t think we were ever mates, Horrie. You were too much of a loner, you always had your eye on the main chance.’

2

‘Brian Boru –’ Except in passion, when she called him names even his mother would never have called him (or perhaps least of all his mother), he was always Brian Boru to her, as if the two words were hyphenated. It had a certain Gaelic-Gallic ring to it, if one could imagine the combination. ‘I can’t get there for at least an hour.’

‘Can’t you make it before then?’

‘It’s impossible. What’s so serious?’

But he said he didn’t want to talk about it over the phone, he would expect to see her in an hour. She hung up, stood for a moment looking out at the rain-drenched gardens without seeing them. He had sounded worried; more importantly, he had sounded as if he needed her. Almost every night, in the last moments before falling asleep, she asked herself why she had fallen so desperately in love with him. She had met many more physically attractive men, as many who were more attractive in their personality and their approach to women. But if love could be defined in definite terms, it would have died years ago: the psychoanalysts would have turned it into a clinical science. She had been in love before, with three men before her husband, and she knew in her heart, if not in her head, that part of the joy of love was that one could never truly fathom it. She no longer loved her husband: that was something she was definite about, had been for months before she had met Brian Boru. But there could be no thought of divorce from the Prime Minister, not while he was in office.