Jon Cleary - Winter Chill

‘It happens all the time,’ said Malone. ‘To us.’

Korda ducked his head apologetically. ‘Oh sure, I guess so. Sorry. Only … Well, when Murray called me, I got down here right away, I been here ever since. The cars were still going around with him, the dead guy I mean, sitting up there like a tourist. It passed me just’s I got here, we hadda stand and wait till it come around again. It’s not something I’m used to, standing there three o’clock in the morning freezing my butt off, waiting for a dead guy to arrive. I cut off the main power, got aboard and ran it in here to the siding after Murray had switched the power back on again.’

‘There was nobody else on board?’

Korda shook his head. ‘Murray was back there on the Convention station, that one in fronta the Novotel. We were on our mobiles to each other. While he was waiting for me, it went around five or six times. He said there was no one in it but the dead guy.’

Malone looked at Peta Smith. ‘You talked to the security man?’

She nodded. ‘His name’s Murray Rockman. He bears out what Mr Korda has just told us.’

Malone beckoned to the security guard, who came towards them, nodding affably to both Malone and Clements. He was almost as tall as Malone at six feet but looked shorter because of the thickness of his body; the thickness was muscle, not fat. He had a broad-cheeked face, very fair hair and almost white eyelashes; he carried his peaked cap under his arm, like a serviceman or a police officer. Malone guessed that he was the sort of security guard who took his job seriously, with a lot of his spare time spent keeping fit.

‘What time did you come on duty, Mr Rockman?’

‘Eleven last night, sir. I was on the shift that knocks off at six.’ He had a deep voice, every word almost perfectly articulated. He had no accent, but Malone was certain he had not been born in Australia. He was one of those immigrants who had learned to speak English with more respect than the local voters showed. ‘My beat is this side of the water.’

‘Who employs you?’

‘I’m with ABS Security, we do contract work for TNT.’

The alphabet was taking over the commercial world, Malone thought: TNT was the transport corporation that ran the monorail. ‘When did you first notice the monorail was still running?’

‘Three-oh-eight, sir.’ Security men were usually not this polite; many were ex-cops glad to be free of what they looked upon as serfdom. Rockman, on the other hand, sounded like a man who would be in service all his life and would never resent it. ‘I noted it in my book. I was down below–’ he nodded at the pavement beneath their feet ‘– when I heard it go over the first time. Then I came up here and waited for it to come round again. That was when I saw the dead man in it.’ He blinked, the white eyelashes catching the sunlight. ‘I didn’t know he was dead, of course. I thought maybe he was a drunk who’d been put in there by some of his friends. There was a lot of merriment last night over at the hotel, the lawyers settling in.’

‘You saw nothing suspicious?’

‘You mean did I see anyone else? No, sir.’

‘Do you know how to drive the monorail?’ asked Clements.

‘Mr Korda has given us some brief instruction, just in case of emergency.’

‘You didn’t think this was an emergency?’

‘Blame me for that,’ Korda interjected. ‘The instructions are they aren’t to touch the cars without permission. When Murray called I told him to leave it alone till I got here. I live over in Birchgrove, that time of the morning it took me less than ten minutes to get here.’

‘Righto, thank you, Mr Rockman. We have your work and home address?’ He looked at Peta Smith, who nodded. Then as the security guard turned away, he said, ‘What service were you in, Mr Rockman?’

The white eyelashes blinked again. ‘You’re observant, sir. The United States Marine Corps.’

‘You’re American?’

‘Yes, sir, but I’ve been out here twelve years. I’ve become Australianized – I hope.’ He smiled for the first time, showing strong white teeth. American teeth, Malone thought.

‘You’re still too polite.’ Malone smiled in return. ‘But there’s time.’

Rockman smiled again, nodded and went off, not marching but walking briskly. Malone in his mind heard the cadence song of the Marines and it matched Rockman’s step. He looked at the others. ‘He didn’t sound American.’

‘He’s a good man,’ said Korda. ‘One of the best.’

‘You said you cut off the power. How come the train – is that what you call it? – how come it kept moving if there was no one at the controls?’

‘Doesn’t it have a dead man’s handle?’ Clements was a grab-bag of trivia that often produced an essential key. ‘They used to have it on electric trains. Probably still do.’

‘We have something that works on the same principle, a power button that cuts out after a certain number of seconds if the driver hasn’t activated it. In this case someone – the murderer?’ He said the word as if it were alien to his tongue, with a note of disbelief that he could actually be talking about a murderer . ‘Well, someone had taped the button down and then must of jumped off. These trains only do about fifteen ks an hour. The door to the driver’s section was still open when I pulled it up.’

‘So you would suggest that whoever committed the murder, he knew how to run one of these trains?’

‘Well, I’m no detective—’ Then he ducked his ginger head again, gave an apologetic grin while the three detectives gave him smiles that told him he was right, he was no detective. ‘Sorry. Yeah, I’d say that. You don’t have to be a mechanical genius to drive one of these, but it’d help if you knew about the dead man’s handle principle. Dead man’s handle – that’s pretty funny … Well, not funny , exactly. You know what I mean, the dead guy …’ His voice trailed off.

‘Let’s have a look at the scene of the crime,’ suggested Malone. ‘Thanks, Mr Korda. Detective Smith will be in touch with you again.’ Then, as he and Clements walked along to the parked carriage: ‘First time I think we’ve had a mobile scene of the crime, isn’t it?’

‘It narrows the field a bit. We start looking for someone who knows how to operate a train like this. Would you know how?’

‘It takes me all my time to start our lawnmower.’

‘Who is your lawnmower – Lisa?’

They grinned at each other, two old married men; then they grinned at Phil Truach, another old married man, who stood in the carriage doorway. He was their age, but he would not make sergeant or higher until he transferred to another section of the Police Service; he had been in Homicide twelve years and had twice refused promotion or transfer. Murder, he said, was a crossword puzzle, and he was addicted to puzzles, he also said, though neither Malone nor Clements had ever seen him indulging his addiction. He was tall and bony with a lean, gullied face; he smoked forty cigarettes a day and he had a smoker’s cough like the bark of a gun. Somehow he had so far avoided lung cancer or emphysema and the Homicide joke was that the Tobacco Institute paid him a monthly stipend for staying alive and on his feet. He was one of the best detectives on Malone’s roster.

‘Not a skerrick, Scobie.’ He never worried about protocol, no matter who was around. ‘No prints, nothing – everything’s been wiped clean.’

‘No shoeprints? It rained last night.’

‘There’s a welter of muddy prints on the floor, you could never sort ’em out. The monorail was packed all day yesterday, I gather – all the Yank lawyers and their wives. The cleaners don’t start work on the car till five a.m. By then we’d taken over this one.’