Jon Cleary - Winter Chill

‘This guy was found in the monorail at three-thirty this morning, a single bullet wound in his heart.’

‘In the monorail ? At three-thirty?’ Lisa, up and dressed, passed him in the hallway, raised her eyebrows and he nodded, equally puzzled.

‘Peta said she’ll explain it all when we see her. The point is, she thinks you and I should handle it. The dead man is – was the president of the American Bar Association. They’re in town for an international law convention, you’ve read about it. I’ve put the morning conference off till ten-thirty. The monorail car, the scene of the crime, has been moved on to a siding.’ He gave Malone instructions how to get there. ‘I’ll see you at eight-thirty.’

Malone put down the phone, turned to find Lisa standing immediately behind him. He looked at her. ‘Why all dressed up?’

‘I’m going to the dentist.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘You weren’t listening, as usual. Well, anyway—’ She headed back towards the kitchen. ‘Have your shower.’

She seemed quiet, not inclined to talk, and he wondered how much trouble her teeth were giving her; she had excellent teeth and her visits to the dentist were usually no more than routine. He went in to shower and to get dressed, his mind slipping off in another direction. Murder was always a distraction, even though it was, for him, routine.

When he came out into the kitchen fifteen minutes later the three children, dressed for school, were at the breakfast table. ‘You’ve got another murder,’ said Maureen. ‘It was on the radio.’

‘I thought you only listened to Rod Stewart and other screamers?’

‘Sometimes they interrupt with some news, if it’s juicy enough.’ He suspected that she would grow up to be that bane of all cops, a reporter. Till then he would love her.

‘Who’s dead? A politician?’ Tom had just begun social studies and looked like following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, politician-haters both.

‘No, they said he was a lawyer,’ Maureen told him. ‘An American lawyer. Do many lawyers get murdered, Dad?’

‘That’s enough,’ said Lisa. ‘I won’t have murder as a topic at breakfast.’

She had spoken in her formal voice, her Dutch voice as Malone and the children called it. He looked along the table at her. ‘Your teeth hurting?’

‘What? Yes, a little. Let’s skip talk about murder and trips to the dentist, shall we?’

‘My, we are touchy this morning,’ said Maureen.

‘Easy,’ Malone warned her. He glanced again at Lisa, but she had bent her blond head and seemed engrossed in ensuring that she put the right amount of butter on her toast. He caught Claire’s eye and she shook her head as if giving him a warning. He wondered if Claire, now on the verge of womanhood, was privy to confidences that Lisa was not giving him.

When he was leaving the house Lisa came to the front door to give him her usual farewell kiss. ‘What’s the matter, darl?’ he said.

‘Nothing. I’m going to the dentist at the wrong time of the month.’ She kissed him. ‘Drive carefully. Will you be home this evening at the usual time?’

‘I’ll call you.’ He patted her behind. ‘I love you.’

‘Not just for that , I hope.’

He noticed she didn’t smile when she said it.

He drove into the city under a polished sky. He always liked the light of Sydney; it seemed to add another dimension to whatever one looked at, but, of course, that was an illusion. He passed a Social Security office where a line of people had already gathered; no amount of bright light altered their plight, they stood there becalmed in the doldrums. The economy had begun its climb out of the past few years’ recession, but it was accepted now that there would always be some who would never again get a foothold on the slope. It didn’t make him comfortable to know that too many of them were men and women of his own age.

He found his way to Darling Harbour through the maze of one-way streets that always seemed to lead in the wrong direction. He parked the car in a No Parking zone and got out, shivering a little in the wind that sprang at him. Clements was waiting at the foot of a flight of steps. The big man, married for a year now, was a well-dressed shadow of the untidy bachelor he had been for so many years; well, almost well-dressed. To have made him sartorially smooth would have been like landscaping a landslide.

‘Do your collar up,’ said Malone. ‘You’re not one of those Pommy detectives in The Bill. ’

Clements did up his collar, arranged his silk tie. ‘There, how’s that? Are we supposed to be impressing the Americans this morning?’

‘I dunno. They haven’t impressed us , killing their top lawyer.’

‘We dunno they did it.’ They climbed the steps and came out on to a narrow pavement that ran round a siding where a single monorail car was parked. Blue-and-white crime scene tapes had been strung round it, cracking in the wind like carnival stockwhips. Members of the Physical Evidence team were working inside and outside the car. They had once been known as Crime Scene members; but it was Malone’s convinced belief that the New South Wales Police Service, once known as the Police Force and before that as the Police Department, had a secret body called the Police Name-Changing Team whose sole purpose was to confuse everyone, including the police.

Peta Smith stepped out of the car and came towards them. ‘Morning, sir.’ She was always meticulously correct when it came to protocol in front of strangers; besides the PE team there were four men in overalls standing close by. ‘The body’s been taken to the morgue. I’ve got all the particulars.’

‘Anyone else here?’

‘Phil Truach is inside with the PE team. And there are some uniformed guys.’

‘What have you come up with?’

‘Nothing so far.’

She had blond hair, cut short, and a pale complexion that freckled in the summer; outdoors she almost always wore a broad-brimmed hat; it upset some crims to be interrogated by a woman who looked to be on her way to one of the more conservative churches. Today she wore a navy-blue trenchcoat against the south wind and a matching rain-hat. She was better computer-educated than any of her male colleagues and had taken over most of the research duties, but she was as efficient and painstaking as any of the men when out on an actual job. She had a good figure, the result of diet and exercise, but she would always have to watch her weight. She was attractive and coolly friendly in a dominantly male environment and, as far as Malone could judge, not overly ambitious. He had remarked all these points about her, but it had taken time. He was not averse to working with women, but he was reluctant to be responsible for them. In them he saw his own daughters and the weight of responsibility there.

‘Anything on the body?’

‘Just some loose change and his convention name-tag. No wallet, no keys, nothing.’

One of the men in overalls approached them and Peta Smith introduced him. ‘This is Mr Korda, the technical manager. He took the phone call from the security guard who found the dead man. Then he called Police Central.’

Korda was young, ginger-haired, with a frank open face that suggested he took the world at its own valuation. At the moment he looked bemused and resentful, as if murders shouldn’t happen on anything with which he was connected. ‘I just couldn’t believe it when Murray, our security guy, that’s him back there on his own—’ He jerked his head over his thin shoulder at a thickset man in uniform who stood about ten metres from them. ‘When he rang me. Who expects to get a call like that, three a.m. in the morning?’