Jon Cleary - Winter Chill

‘America?’

‘No, Europe. Excuse us. Will you be coming again?’

Malone shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

‘Telephone first.’ Then she was gone, her hand in Mrs Channing’s back.

Out in Martin Place the wind was still blowing; the evening was turning bitterly cold. Banners on the flagpoles lining the plaza crackled in the wind; they writhed so much it was impossible to tell what occasion was being celebrated. Malone looked up and down the slight slope of the plaza. It had the potential to rival some of the plazas of Europe, but it was cluttered. Give an Aussie planner an open space, he thought, and it would soon be filled up. He was waiting for the planners to be let loose on the vast Nullabor Plain in the interior. He and Clements walked up the slope under the winter-shredded trees.

‘What d’you reckon?’

‘Something smells,’ said Clements. ‘There’s a connection.’

‘Between the murders?’

‘I dunno about them. No, between Channing and Brame, the two brothers. Maybe we should’ve tried to get more out of Mrs Channing.’

‘She was up to her eyeballs on something. What sort of drugs do nice housewives take, women who don’t want to be anything but housewives?’

Above their heads a banner crackled like a burst of machine-gun fire. The wind threw a handful of grit against their faces and they had to shut their eyes; a few leaves scurried after them like blind mice. ‘She’s probably on one of the designer drugs. You look at her? Everything about her is “designer”. So’s he. Between ’em they’d be wearing more logos than Nigel Mansell. Whatever she’s snorting, it’s still shit.’ Clements had a hatred of drugs and contempt for those who advocated their legalization. He would press his argument over any number of beers. ‘Half an hour with her and if she knows anything, we’d have it out of her.’

Malone shook his head, grabbed at his hat as the wind tried to rob him of it. ‘Mrs Johns would never let us near her, not for that long.’

Clements looked sideways at him, eyes slitted against another burst of grit. ‘I’d like half an hour with that woman.’

‘You’d have to put a gun at her head. That woman wouldn’t be able to remember the last secret she gave away.’

3

Romy was just leaving the Malone house when Scobie arrived home. He took her out to her car, opened the door for her when she had unlocked it. ‘How was Lisa with you?’

‘Sensible. She’s worried, but more for you and the children than for herself. Wives and mothers usually are, good ones.’

He nodded; he had seen it too many times, in other homes. ‘What are the chances?’

‘Of recovery? Good. They won’t really know till surgery, but if they have caught it early, if it’s localized …’ She put her hand on his. The wind had dropped while he had been driving home and the cold now had the night to itself; the roof of the car was almost freezing his palm. ‘There’ll be chemotherapy …’

‘That knocks you around, doesn’t it?’

‘Scobie, don’t think about the worst. Be optimistic.’

‘That’s what Russ told me.’ He kissed her cheek. The two men loved each other’s wives: it was another bond between himself and Clements. ‘Was it you who did the autopsy on the American, Brame?’

‘Yes. A gunshot wound, right through the heart. A close shot, there were powder marks on the chest. Most people are not quite sure where the heart is, but this killer knew exactly. One bullet – Ballistics have it.’

‘Are you doing the autopsy on the other bloke who came in this morning?’

‘Scobie love—’ She smiled. ‘We had six other blokes this morning and five women. Not all homicides—’

‘Not all of them with a bullet in the head.’ Homicide made you parochial about death. Then he looked around him at the night.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’ He couldn’t tell her he had been looking for a sign of death here in the silent street. Don’t be so bloody Irish … But were Celts the only people afraid of shadows? He must ask Clarrie Binyan some time if the Aborigines, the Koories, kept looking over their shoulders. Probably: more so than the Irish. ‘The security guard, Rockman – did you do him?’

‘He hasn’t been done yet. Tomorrow morning, first thing. If the bullet’s still in him, I’ll hand it to Ballistics right away.’ She got into her car, holding the door open while she looked up at him. In the door-light he could see the strain in her lovely, square-jawed face; her dark hair had been blown into a tangle and evidently she hadn’t bothered to comb it. She and Lisa must have been too concerned with other things … Again he was angry at his pessimism. ‘I gave up going to church years ago, we were Lutheran. But I’ll be praying for you. You Catholics like Hail Marys, don’t you?’

‘We’ll take anything you care to say.’

He closed the car door, the light went out. He watched her drive away. Her mother had died of sunstroke two years after coming from Germany to start a new life in the sunshine of Australia; her father, a triple murderer, had suicided. She knew all about the shadows of death, and not just because she worked in a morgue.

He went into the house, sat down beside Lisa to watch the seven o’clock news. ‘Not getting dinner?’

‘The kids are getting it,’ she said. ‘They insisted.’

He held her hand. On the screen in front of them the world, as usual, was falling apart; only calamity was news. ‘Any word when you go into hospital?’

‘Sunday. They’ll operate Monday morning.’ She felt the tension in him and she looked at him, leaning forward. ‘Don’t worry. ’

‘Aren’t you worried?’

‘Of course I am. But I’m not going to sit around asking Why me ? Self-pity is no medication. I’ll be all right.’

He kissed her, his arm round her shoulders, holding her tight. Then past the curtain of her loose-hanging hair he saw Maureen standing in the doorway, smiling at them. ‘They’re at it again,’ she said over her shoulder to her siblings in the kitchen. Then, still smiling at them, ‘Dinner’s ready.’

His heart ached, which did nothing for his appetite, even though Claire and Maureen had cooked his favourite, steak-and-kidney pie, and Tom had opened a bottle of Riddoch ’86 shiraz for him and Lisa. Still, for all their sakes, he did his best.

Later, in bed, Lisa said, ‘You’d better grab what you can between now and Monday. After that there’s not going to be much sex for a while.’

‘I’ll join the Vice Squad, pick up a bit down in William Street.’ He held her to him, treasuring every familiar curve and hollow of her. ‘Romy says there may be some chemotherapy after it.’

‘That’s the bit that upsets me. It can make some people very sick.’ Then she lay away from him in the darkness. ‘You haven’t said a word how work is going.’

‘I don’t think it’s important, is it? To us?’

‘It is!’ With one arm still under her, he felt her stiffen. ‘People dying, being murdered , is important! God, darling, don’t lose your perspective!’

He recognized that her anger was really fear; it would be cruel to argue with her. ‘Righto, it’s important. But I’ve never brought the cases home, not unless you’ve asked me—’

‘I’m asking you now.’ It was an order. Fear took many forms: hers would never be a quaking surrender.

Flatly, listlessly, he told her of the Brame and Rockman cases, of the lack of leads. ‘I’ve met two wives so far, the brothers’ wives. One of ’em could whip the UN into shape, the other one couldn’t run a school bazaar without a snort of some kind.’

‘She’s a drunk?’