Jon Cleary - Winter Chill

‘Not that I know of. He may have phoned his brother, but I wouldn’t know about that. You’d have to check the office switch records.’

‘Or he could have called from home?’ said Clements, who had been taking notes.

‘He could have,’ said Joanna Brame. ‘He often made business calls from home.’

‘Has Mr Channing been in touch with you since you arrived?’

‘No.’

‘That’s odd, don’t you think? He’d know of the murder. Common courtesy should have made him call you.’

‘He wouldn’t know I’m here. He may have called Mr Zoehrer or someone else from the Bar Association.’ She seemed unconcerned at her brother-in-law’s lack of interest. ‘When may I take my husband’s body home?’

‘That will be up to the coroner, Mrs Brame. The police can ask for a delay, but I don’t think there’ll be any need for that. Not if we get co-operation and we find the murderer soon.’

2

‘You have only a faint resemblance to Orville.’

‘I’ve got my mother’s looks,’ said Rodney Channing. ‘Orville always looked like our father.’

He was as tall as Orville had been, but thicker-set. He was better-looking than Orville, but his looks were fleshy; he had thick wavy hair with streaks of grey along the temples; he wore a medium-thick moustache that was already grey. He had smooth, almost unlined skin, and she wondered if he used lotions on it, something Orville had never done. He had Orville’s eyes: dark, giving nothing away, waiting for the other man (or woman) to tell secrets first.

He had phoned just after six, a few minutes after the two detectives had left. ‘I’ve only just learned you are here. I’d have called earlier if I’d known.’

He had said Mrs Brame ? when she had answered the phone, but he had given her no name at all after that, not even now, ten minutes after he had entered the suite. They were strangers, not even linked by a common surname.

‘Did Orville mention we’d been in touch?’ There was no hint of Orville’s voice in his, but that could be because of the accent. She was looking for similarities, though she was not sure why.

‘No.’

‘It was just business.’ Did he sound relieved ? ‘Very formal.’

‘Did he plan to see you while he was in Sydney?’

He hesitated, sipped the whisky-and-water she had given him. ‘We saw each other yesterday. He came to my office.’

‘Yesterday?’ She frowned, getting the day right in her mind; the international date line threw the calendar out of kilter. ‘Sunday?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t mention it to anyone – may I call you Joanna?’ She nodded, coolly, and he went on, ‘My wife and I have an understanding, I never bring my work home—’

‘Mr Channing?’

‘Rod.’

She nodded, but didn’t say his name. She had married beneath her when she had married Orville, which is not to say she could have done better; diamonds and gold are always found beneath one, and Orville had been pure gold. But, with the quick antennae of the born snob, she was beginning to suspect that Rodney Channing was pure dross. ‘I’m not expecting you to bring your work here . If you and Orville were engaged in something – secret , I don’t want to know. Though I’m curious—’ it hurt her to confess it ‘– what brought you together after all these years of – what do I call it? Did you hate each other?’

‘What did Orville tell you?’ He had a habit of stroking one side of his moustache, like an old silent film villain.

‘He never told me anything, just that he wanted this part of his life – the Australian part – put behind him.’

‘He’d become thoroughly American, hadn’t he?’

‘What does that mean?’

He back-tracked: ‘I don’t mean it in a pejorative sense. But he’d become American Establishment, hadn’t he? Ivy League, all that?’

He had indeed become Establishment, but only because she had led him by the hand into it. Even after ten years with Schuyler, De Vries and Barrymore there had been the rough edges of his father on him; at least, from what Orville had told her of his father, she had assumed the rough edges had been those of Lester Brame. Her first husband, Porter Greenway, had been dead two years when she had married Orville, taken him out of the small apartment on Central Park West and into the ten-room apartment on Park Avenue and the house on ten acres in Connecticut. And, more important than addresses, into that part of American East Coast society that, come Republicans, come Democrats, come Roosevelt, come Reagan, or even Clinton, would be as rock-solid as Grant’s Tomb. Even though Grant himself would never have been admitted as a member to the circle.

‘Orville proved himself, Mr Channing. There was no lawyer in the Bar Association held in higher regard. I’m sure they’ll tell you that, if you care to ask anyone in this hotel. The place is full of lawyers,’ she said testily, forgetting he was one.

He showed an unexpected solicitude. ‘Why don’t you move out, go to another hotel?’

‘Mr Tallis, one of my husband’s—’ She could not accustom herself to the thought that this man opposite her was family .‘One of Orville’s associates, he tried to get me into another hotel, but no luck. Every hotel in town is booked out. Orville was booked in here to be close to the convention centre. I have to stay here amongst what I suppose the police would call the principal suspects.’

‘I’m not sure what the police would call them. I’m not a criminal lawyer, I’ve never had anything to do with murder.’ He spoke as if it were an unspeakable subject.

‘Have you no suspicions, Mr Channing?’

He didn’t correct her on the use of his name; he seemed to accept the fact that their relationship was going to be distant. She wondered why Orville had not told him yesterday that she was coming to Sydney and could only guess that Orville had wanted to distance her from his brother.

‘Suspicions? Why should I have any?’

For the first time she seemed at a loss. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know why I asked that. I still can’t accept that Orville was – murdered. ’ The word hung in the air like an obscenity. She looked away from him, out the window at the windswept night. ‘I can’t accept that he’s dead .’

There was an awkward silence. Channing half-rose from his chair, then sank back. She turned back to him, frowning, as if he had been on the verge of committing some familiarity that would have offended her. She was fending off grief as if it were physically attacking her; she felt physically exhausted, her muscles stiff under the strain. She said, ‘You haven’t commented at all on his murder.’

He stroked the side of his moustache; she recognized now that it was a nervous habit. ‘I’m the sort of lawyer, Joanna, who doesn’t venture an opinion till he knows all the facts. I know virtually nothing of what happened to Orville, other than that he was shot while riding on the monorail.’ He stood up. ‘I must be going. How long will you be staying?’

‘Only until they release Orville’s body for me to take home.’

‘He was born here. Why not bury him here?’

She had stood up, very straight, ‘it would seem that you are a rather insensitive man, Mr Channing. Not at all like your brother.’

3

‘I have cancer,’ said Lisa. ‘Of the cervix.’

He had got home just before eight o’clock, after she and the children had had dinner. He had eaten alone, while she busied herself at the sink and the children had gone to their rooms to do their homework. Afterwards he and she had sat listlessly watching television, a sitcom where the situation was banal and the comedy even worse. The mood had been constrained, his by suspicion, hers with her secret. Now they were in bed, with the light out, lying side by side with a stiffness uncommon to them. Then she gave him her secret and, with a low moan, he reached for her.