# Babylon South

Jon Cleary

Two murders in the same family take place, 20 years apart, in a Sydney community. Scobie Malone remembers the long-unsolved murder when he is called upon to investigate the new one, but there are complications. This is the sixth book in the Scobie Malone series, by award-winning author Jon Cleary.In 1966 Sir Walter Springfellow, head of Australian intelligence, vanished mysteriously and without a trace.As a young constable, Scobie Malone investigated the disappearance. Years later, some bones are found up hills which are presumed to be Sir Walter’s, and Detective Inspector Malone finds himself back on the case.His first task is to break the news to Venetia Springfellow, Sir Walter’s glamorous widow, whose ruthless ambition has made the Springfellow Corporation a hugely successful company. Then comes news that there has been another death in the family, and one of the Springfellows is to be charged with murder.

JON CLEARY

### Babylon South


## Dedication

FOR CATE

## Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About The Publisher

## Prologue

On Monday March 28, 1966, Sir Walter Springfellow, Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, left his home in Mosman in the city of Sydney to return to Melbourne and the then headquarters of ASIO. An ex-Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, he had been Director-General of Security for only a year. It was his habit to fly up from Melbourne each Friday evening, spend the weekend with his wife and return to Melbourne on the 8 a.m. Monday flight of TAA. A Commonwealth car picked him up at his home this Monday morning, as it usually did, and delivered him to Kingsford Smith Airport at Mascot at 7.45. He got out of the car, said his usual courteous thank you to the driver, walked into the terminal and was never heard of again.

It had been a stormy weekend, though not, according to his wife, in the Springfellow home. A huge storm had blown up along the New South Wales coast and there had been considerable damage north of Sydney; the sea had been such that big swells had rolled into Sydney Harbour and for the first time surfies had ridden their boards down Middle Harbour. The storm, however, had not got beyond the Blue Mountains fifty miles west of the city and out on the plains there were cloudless skies and one of the worst droughts in twenty years. Down in Melbourne there had been an ugly demonstration against the sending of draftees to Vietnam and the Prime Minister, Harold Holt, had suffered a barrage of eggs and tomatoes, something a little softer than the draftees would have to face. The report on the demonstration and photographs of the egg and tomato bombardiers were waiting on the Director-General’s desk for him. He would have smiled at such criminal acts, but only to himself.

He was fifty years old, handsome, came of a wealthy established family and had made a considerable reputation as a Queen’s Counsel before being appointed a judge five years before. His appointment as Director-General had been welcomed by both major political parties, but the public were not invited to comment: national security was thought, in those days, too esoteric for public intelligence to comprehend. Sir Walter, who had been knighted just before his appointment, was considered by his own organization to have no enemies except, of course, the hundreds of criminals he had prosecuted or sentenced and the countless foreigners, traitors and activists his organization was seeking.

He had been married for two years to a beautiful wife, twenty-five years his junior, and it seemed that he lived in the best of all possible worlds. Though, naturally, he did not boast of that during his five days a week in Melbourne, a city which thought it was the best of all possible worlds.

‘We were perfectly happy,’ said Lady Springfellow. ‘He must have been kidnapped or something. I just can’t believe what’s happened. When he took this job he warned me there might sometimes be trouble. But this … !’

The Commonwealth Police, who were in charge of airport security, had called in the New South Wales Police after consultation with ASIO. Scobie Malone was then a 21-year-old constable on temporary duty with the Missing Persons Bureau. Sergeant Harry Danforth, who couldn’t trace a missing bull in a cattle chute, was in charge of the Bureau, but his men found that no handicap; a lazy man, he left them to their instinctive guesses and hunches. Missing persons usually leave fewer clues than murderers and the police assigned to trace them more often than not have to rely on guesswork. There were dozens of hunches as to the reason for the disappearance of Sir Walter Springfellow, but none of them led anywhere.

‘It is some activist group,’ said one of the two men ASIO had sent up from Melbourne. They were ex-Army Intelligence, middle-aged and military, and it was obvious they didn’t have much time for the two younger men, recent university graduates, who represented ASIO’s Sydney office. From where they sat the earth was flat, easily interpreted. ‘We’ll get some outlandish demand pretty soon.’

The Commonwealth Police inspector shrugged. He, too, was middle-aged, with a countryman’s face, gullied and sun-blotched. He had transferred from a bush division of one of the State forces and sometimes he longed for those other, placid days. ‘Could be. But three days have gone by and there’s been nothing. They usually try to grab their publicity while everything’s still on the front page. They’re like politicians.’ All the older men nodded: they had a common disrespect for politicians. Only Malone, who had never met one, kept his head still. ‘What’s your opinion on this, Bill?’

Senior Detective-Sergeant Zanuch, of the NSW Police Special Branch, had been seconded to this case by one of the Assistant Commissioners. Ordinary voters who disappeared could be left to a lazy sergeant and a few junior constables in Missing Persons; a senior public servant, a knight and an ex-judge at that, had to be given better treatment. Zanuch, the best-dressed man in the room by far, shot his cuffs, a sartorial trick none of the others, especially Malone, would ever master. ‘Will our intelligence system suffer if we, h’m, don’t get him back?’

The four ASIO men looked at each other, none of them wanting to be responsible for that sort of intelligence. At last the senior man from Melbourne said, ‘We haven’t even entertained that possibility.’

Malone sensed that Zanuch was less than impressed by that answer; he got the feeling that the ASIO men, especially the two from Melbourne, resented having to call in outsiders. It was their job to find spies and now they couldn’t find even their own boss.

Zanuch’s voice was suddenly a little sour: ‘I take it you’ve seen Lady Springfellow? Good. But I think Constable Malone and I will go over and have a word with her. We can’t rule out the possibility of personal problems.’

‘The Director-General?’ said one of the ex-military men, a happily married man whose wife knew when to stand to attention. ‘Ridiculous!’

Malone wanted to ask why it should be ridiculous, but he was too junior and, anyhow, what did he know about life and marriage? At that time he was on a merry-go-round with three different girls, jumping on and off to run for his life before one of them could tempt him into a commitment. The two men from Melbourne, as if reading the question in his mind, glowered at him. The two university men from Sydney knew enough about life not to argue with the men from headquarters, especially ex-military types.

‘Do you vet each other’s personal relationships?’ said Zanuch.

Again all four ASIO men looked at each other, then the senior man answered, ‘That’s classified.’

‘Of course,’ said Zanuch, but frowned when Malone made the mistake of smiling. ‘Well, we’ll go over and see what Lady Springfellow has to say.’

‘We’ll come with you,’ said the senior man from headquarters.

‘No,’ said Zanuch. ‘Our investigations are always classified.’

He and Malone drove over to Mosman, with Malone at the wheel. ‘Do you know this part of the world, Constable?’

Malone had never met Zanuch before today; but he had been warned of the senior man’s regard for rank. He was known to be ambitious and had used the heads of junior men as stepping stones on his way up. His one handicap, in the police force of those days, was that he was totally honest, a character fault that didn’t endear him to certain of his seniors.

‘No, Sarge, I come from the south side of the harbour. I’ve played cricket at Mosman Oval, but that’s all. I was born in Erskineville and so far I’ve only worked at Newtown and in the Bureau.’ Even in his own ears it all at once sounded as if he came from Central Africa or some other remote region.

‘You’ll notice the difference here in Mosman. They invented respectability — they think they have the copyright on it. The Springfellows more than any of them.’ Then he looked sideways at Malone. ‘If you’re going to work with me, Constable, could you smarten yourself up a little? Where did you get that bloody awful tie?’

‘My mother. She’s Irish, she thinks green goes with anything.’

‘That’s not just green, it’s bilious. I’m sure your mother is a wonderful old biddy, but she’s colour blind.’

So was Malone, or almost; but he was not blind to snobbery. Zanuch was out to impress whoever lay ahead of them. As the unmarked police car turned into the short dead-end street, Zanuch looked out at the sign. ‘Spring-fellow Avenue. That’s something, to have your own street.’

‘My mum tells me there’s a Malone Street in Dublin.’

Zanuch wasn’t impressed. He was scanning the imposing houses on either side of them. It was not a policeman’s look; it was that of a social climber. Anyone who lived hereabouts would be in his good books.

‘Do you come from this side, Sarge?’ Malone said innocently as they got out of the car.

Zanuch gave him a look that should have reduced him to a cadet. ‘No,’ he said shortly and Malone wondered if he, too, came from Central Africa or its equivalent.

The Springfellow house and grounds were the most imposing in the street. The housekeeper who opened the big front door was just as impressive. Starched and polished, she carried herself with all the confidence of someone who knew that, below her, all the voters, including policemen, ran down to the bottom of the heap.

‘I shall see if Lady Springfellow will see you.’ She went away as if to consult with the Queen of Australia.

But Zanuch was still impressed. ‘You can now see how the other half lives, Constable. It may give you some ambition.’

‘On my pay?’ But he had the sense to grin as he said it and Zanuch, after a moment, found a smile that didn’t hurt him too much.

The housekeeper came back and ushered them into the house. Malone, in those days, had little sense of surroundings. Erskineville, where he had grown up, with its tenement terraces and small factories, had never been a major subscription area for House and Garden. Now, as the starched Grenadier Guard took them towards the back of the house, he was aware only that this was a large place with large rooms where shadows and dark panelling seemed to dominate. But the young woman who came into the big drawing-room suggested all lightness and brightness, even though she was not smiling.

‘I’m Lady Springfellow,’ she said, then gestured at the slightly older woman of darker mood who had followed her into the room. ‘This is my husband’s sister, Miss Emma Springfellow.’

Zanuch introduced himself and then, as an afterthought, Malone. He shot his cuffs and was all police department charm, something Malone had never experienced before. ‘… If you could just dig into your memory, Lady Springfellow, give us some hint that your husband may have let drop in the past week or two, something that was worrying him …’

Venetia Springfellow shook her golden head. She was Venetia Magee to a million television viewers; but that was another territory, there she was another person. Malone had seen her occasionally on television, but he was not enthusiastic about daytime TV, unless it was a cricket telecast, and hers was a midday chat show. She was undeniably good-looking, but it seemed to him that she had looked better on TV. Still, with the simple candid curiosity of the young, he wondered what a good sort like her had seen in a man twenty-five years her senior.

‘Nothing, he told me nothing about ASIO business.’ She had a throaty voice that was not quite natural; the vowels had been worked on, were plummy ripe. ‘His only regret was that we were separated for five days each week, he with his job in Melbourne and I with mine in Sydney. But we were going to change that – we were going to live in Melbourne when I had my baby.’ For the first time Malone noticed the swelling under the well-cut silk suit with its long jacket.

‘You didn’t tell me – ’ said Emma Springfellow; then stopped. She could have been a beautiful woman if she had had more vanity; beside the beautifully groomed Venetia she looked like someone who never glanced in a mirror. ‘But then …’

‘But what?’ said Zanuch.

‘Nothing.’ She seemed to hesitate for a moment, then was steelily at ease.

‘Do you live here. Miss Springfellow?’

‘No. I used to, untilmy brother married.’ She had half-turned away, as if she were trying to distance herself from her sister-in-law. ‘I live across the street with my brother Edwin and his wife. This house used to be the family home.’

It still was, to her; but she had been exiled.

There was an awkward moment of frozen silence. Then Zanuch turned back to Venetia Springfellow. ‘I apologize for asking this – but was there any disagreement between you and your husband? Could he have just gone away for a few days to think over something that had happened between you?’

Her gaze was steady, she looked unoffended by the question. ‘No. We have never had a cross word in all the time we’ve been married.’

Zanuch looked at Emma Springfellow. She had been gazing out the window, as if she no longer had any interest in what was being said. She seemed to start when she became aware that Zanuch was waiting for her to comment. ‘Am I supposed to say something? to contradict my sister-in-law?’

‘Not at all,’ said Zanuch. ‘Did he have any disagreement with you? Or any other member of the family? You have only the one other brother, haven’t you?’

‘Yes. No, we had no disagreement. We were always a very close family.’ But her tone said that no longer held true. Malone saw Venetia flinch and he sensed that the gap between the two women was much wider than the four or five feet of carpet that separated them. Emma said, ‘You’re wasting your time, Sergeant, with that line.’

‘We have to try every line,’ said Zanuch. Malone had the feeling that he was now less impressed with Mosman. ‘I’m sure your brother, running ASIO, would appreciate that.’

‘I’m sure he would,’ said Venetia Springfellow, not looking at her sister-in-law.

‘Did your husband draw any money out of his bank account?’ Malone was learning from Zanuch: the senior man knew how to change his line abruptly.

‘Not that I know of. We’re not the sort who have joint accounts.’ There was just a note of snobbery in the answer: Venetia Springfellow, or Magee, wherever she had come from, had also learned.

‘Where did Sir Walter bank?’

‘The Bank of New South Wales. Their head office.’

‘Were you the last to speak to him, other than the driver who took him to the airport?’

‘I think so. No—’ She hesitated.

‘Go on,’ said Zanuch carefully.

Venetia glanced at Emma. ‘I was at the front door – my sister-in-law ran across the street to say something to my husband.’

Zanuch waited for Emma Springfellow to volunteer something. Malone, callow in the ways of woman against woman, yet knew that he and Zanuch were on the outskirts of a female war. On the beat, as a probationary constable in Newtown, he had seen women fight like men, with fists, or anyway claws, and language that had had a nice medieval ring to it. This, however, was different, somehow more deadly. Knives would be used here, with good manners and kid gloves and decorous malice.

‘It was private,’ Emma said at last. ‘Nothing important.’

‘Nothing that would have upset him?’

‘I told you – it was unimportant.’

The two policemen stayed only another few minutes, getting nowhere. Venetia Springfellow took them to the front door, thanking them for coming; she could have been ushering out two guests from her chat show. ‘Do call me, Sergeant, if you have any more questions. We want my husband back home as soon as possible …’ Then she glanced over her shoulder at Emma standing in the shadows of the big hallway like a bit-part player whom the cameraman had missed. ‘All the family does.’

In the car as they drove away Zanuch said, ‘Well, what do you think?’

‘If I was the Director-General, I’d have run away from the sister, not the wife.’

‘Don’t put that opinion in the running sheet. No, I don’t think this is a domestic’ Domestic situations were the bane of a cop’s life. You might fight with your own wife, but that was no training for interfering in a battle between another warring couple; nine times out of ten both husband and wife told you to go to hell and mind your own business. Except, of course, in Mosman, where the domestic battles would always be fought in whispers and the police would never be called. ‘ASIO are probably right, it’s some activist group. If it is, that’ll be a Commonwealth job, we’ll let them worry about it. Keep an eye on it and let me know what you’re up to. Check Sir Walter’s account at his bank. I’ll tell Sergeant Danforth you’re to be kept on it for a month.’

‘I’m taking a week’s leave this Friday, Sarge. I’m going to Hong Kong to play cricket.’ That past summer he had played his first season in the State team. ‘Australia’s most promising fast bowler’, a cricket writer had called him after Malone had bought him three beers. ‘The Department thinks it’s good PR, a cop who’s a State fast bowler.’

‘What would they think if he was a slow bowler?’ Zanuch’s Latvian parents had brought him to Australia when he was one year old; thirty-four years later there were still certain Australian customs he didn’t understand or want to. Sometimes the original white Australians were as puzzling and annoying as the more original Aborigines. ‘Have you got your priorities right? We’re supposed to be looking for the country’s top spy, for Chrissakes!’

Malone said meekly, ‘I’ check the bank account.’

Which he did, that afternoon. No money had been drawn from Sir Walter Springfellow’s account. ‘But I believe he had – has – an account with our Melbourne main branch,’ said the bank’s manager.

Malone called Melbourne. There was some hesitation at the other end, then the manager there said, ‘I’m sorry, officer, we can’t give out that information. I suggest you contact ASIO.’

Malone hung up, sat frowning till Sergeant Danforth came lumbering across the room towards him. ‘What’s the matter, son?’

Malone explained the unexpected blank wall he had run into. ‘Do I call ASIO or pass it on to Sergeant Zanuch to handle?’

Danforth dropped heavily into a chair; he had never been known to remain standing for longer than ten seconds. He was a tall, heavily built man, old-fashioned in dress, haircut and manner; he looked like someone who had been left over from the 1940s and wished he were still back in those days. He was only fifteen or so years older than Malone, but two generations could have separated them. ‘Ring ASIO. If you don’t get anywhere with them, let it slide. We won’t wanna get ourselves caught up in any politics.’ that was laziness, not wisdom, speaking. ‘You know what politics is like, son.’

At that stage of his career Malone knew nothing about politics; but he was prepared to take Danforth’s advice. He rang Melbourne and after some interruptions and hesitations was put through to the Deputy Director-General. ‘Ah yes, Constable – Malone, is it? Yes, we have asked the bank to put a stop on any enquiries about Sir Walter’s personal affairs. We have looked into it and there is nothing there.’

‘Then why stop any enquiries, sir?’ Malone was on his way to making his later fame, the asking of undiplomatic questions of higher authority.

‘I’m afraid that’s classified, constable. Good day.’

The phone went dead in Malone’s ear. He hung up and looked at Danforth, still lolling in the chair opposite him. They told us to get lost, Sarge.’

‘You see, son? Politics.’

So Malone went to Hong Kong to play cricket in front of the English expatriates who murmured ‘Good shot!’ and ‘Well caught, sir!’ while the other 99 per cent of the colony shuffled by and inscrutably scrutinized the white flannelled fools who played this foolish game while the end of the world, 1997, was only thirty-one years away. Malone, who took fourteen wickets in the two matches played and, every decent fast bowler’s dream, retired two batsmen hurt, was as short-sighted and oblivious as any of the other fools. They all had their priorities right.

When he came back Sir Walter Springfellow was still missing and ASIO and the Commonwealth Police had taken the case unto themselves. Detective-Sergeant Zanuch had gone from Special Branch to the Fraud Squad and Malone himself was transferred from Missing Persons to the Pillage Squad on the wharves.

On Sunday July 17, four months after her father had disappeared, Justine Springfellow was born. By then the file on Sir Walter Springfellow had been put away in the back of a Missing Persons cabinet drawer and Sergeant Danforth, soon to be told to get to his feet and join the Vice Squad, conveniently forgot about it.

Sir Walter’s disappearance would remain a mystery for another twenty-one years.

## Chapter One

1

By sheer coincidence, without which no successful policeman could function, Detective-Inspector Scobie Malone was, indirectly, working for Venetia Springfellow when the skeleton of a middle-aged man was found in some scrub in the mountains west of Sydney.

‘Up near Blackheath. I thought you might like to talk to the lady,’ said Sergeant Russ Clements, calling from Homicide. ‘It looks as if it might be her late hubby, Sir Walter. They tell me she’s out there at the studio.’

‘Are they sure it’s him?’

‘Pretty sure. The upper and lower jaws are missing, so they can’t check on the teeth. It looks as if the whole lower part of the face was blasted away.’

‘How did we get into it?’ Meaning Homicide.

‘There’s no weapon, no gun, nothing. The detectives up at Blackheath have ruled out suicide – for the moment, anyway. Unless someone found the body, didn’t report it but pinched the gun.’

‘What’s the identification then?’

‘There’s a signet ring on one of the fingers – it has his initials on it. There’s also a briefcase with his initials on it.’

‘Anything in the briefcase?’

‘Empty. That’s why the Blackheath boys think it’s murder – if someone had stolen the gun, supposing he’d suicided, they’d have taken the ring and the briefcase, too. It’s him, all right. You want to prepare her for the bad news? They’ll come out later to tell her officially, get her to identify the ring and the briefcase.’

‘Are we on the job – officially?’

‘Yep. I just came back from my broker’s and there was the docket on your desk.’

‘From your who?’

‘My stockbroker.’

‘What happened to your bookie?’

‘I’ tell you later. You gunna tell her?’

Malone hesitated. He hated that part of police work, the bringing of bad news to a family. Certainly the Springfellow family had had twenty-one years to prepare itself; it must by now have given up hope that Walter Springfellow was still alive. Nonetheless, someone had to tell the widow and, for better or worse, he was the man on the spot.

‘Righto, I’ll tell her. Can you come out and pick me up?’

‘What about Woolloomooloo Vice?’ It was their private joke.

‘You wouldn’t believe what they’re shooting today. The actor playing you wears a gold bracelet and suede shoes.’

‘I’ sue ‘em.’

Malone hung up and smiled at the assistant floor manager who had brought him to the phone. She was a jeans-clad wind-up doll, one year out of film school, bursting with self-importance and programmed to talk only in jargon. She was always explaining to Malone how the dynamics of a scene worked. She was intrigued at the dynamics of Malone’s call. ‘A homicide, Scobie? A real one?’

He nodded. ‘A real one, Debby. Where will I find Lady Springfellow?’

‘Holy shit, Lady Springfellow! Is she involved?’

‘Imagine the dynamics of that, eh?’

He grinned at her and went back on the set to tell the director he would not be available for the rest of the day. He welcomed the escape, even if he could have done with better circumstances; he could not remember disliking an assignment more than this one. Sydney Beat, an Australian-American co-production, was a thirteen-part series and he was supposed to spend one day each week with the production as technical adviser. This was the third week and so far it had all been purgatory.

Simon Twitchell, the director, was another film-school graduate; he had majored in temperament. ‘Oh God, what is it this time? You’re always pissing off when we need you – ’

Malone wanted to king-hit him, but Twitchell was small and dainty and Malone didn’t want to break him in half like a cheesestick. He also had in mind that, though Sydney Beat was supposed to be a police series, the crew and the cast, all at least ten to twenty years younger than Malone, had no time for real cops, the fuzz and the pigs. Sovfilm, making a John Wayne movie, would have been more respectful.

‘I was pissed off the day I walked in here,’ said Malone keeping his temper.

Then Gus Leroy, the producer, came out of the shadows and into the lights. He was a short, round man who always dressed in black and whose moods and humour could be the same colour. ‘What the fuck’s the matter this time?’ All his aggression, like Twitchell’s, was in his language; they would leave bigger men to do their fighting for them. ‘You’re always fucking nit-picking. What’s wrong this time?’

‘You mean with the production?’ All at once Malone saw the opportunity to escape from this farce for good. ‘It’ll never get the ratings. Every crim in the country will laugh their heads off – they’ll think it’s the Benny Hill Show. I have to go and see Lady Springfellow. Hooroo, in case I don’t come back.’

He walked across the set, watched by the crew and cast. The set was a permanent one, the apartment of the series’ hero, a detective-sergeant. Malone had criticized it, saying its luxury would embarrass even the Commissioner, but Leroy had told him they hadn’t engaged him as a design consultant. He, an American, knew what American audiences liked and this series was aimed at the American market. Malone walked past a backdrop of Sydney Harbour, a panorama only a millionaire could afford, and out of the sound stage. As the heavy sound-proof door wheezed to behind him, it sounded like an amplification of his own sigh of relief. He would be hauled over the coals tomorrow at Police Headquarters, but that was something he could weather. He had gone in one step from being an adviser to being a critic and he felt the smug satisfaction that is endemic to all critics, even amateurs.

It took him several minutes to get to see Lady Spring-fellow; it seemed that she had more minders than the Prime Minister. Perhaps the richest woman in the land was entitled to them; there was no reason why rich women should be more accessible than rich men. All at once he longed for a call to go and interview someone out amongst the battlers in the western suburbs, someone alone and without minders. But not to give him or her bad news.

‘Lady Springfellow says what is it about?’ The last line of defence was an Asian secretary, a beautiful Singapore-Chinese with her blue-black hair cut in a Twenties bob and her demeanour just as severe. Malone could see her guarding the Forbidden City in old Peking with a two-edged sword and no compunction about chopping off a head or two.

‘I’ll tell her when I see her,’ he said evenly.

The secretary stared at him, looking him up and down in sections. She saw a tall, well-built man in his early forties, who was not handsome but might be distinguished-looking in his old age, long-jawed and blue-eyed and with a wide good-humoured mouth that, she guessed correctly, could be mean and determined when obstacles were put in his way.

‘I’ see what she says to that.’ In her Oriental way she could be just as stubborn. But when she came back from the inner office she produced an unexpected smile, though it might have been malicious. ‘Watch your step, Inspector.’

‘Oh, I always do that,’ he said, but there were some in the Department, including the Commissioner, who would have disputed that.

Malone had been told that the Channel 15 network was being done over in its new owner’s image. The previous colour scheme of the network, from ashtrays to screen logo, had been bright blue and orange, a combination that had brought on a generational bout of conjunctivitis known to ophthalmologists from Perth to Cairns as ‘Channel 15 eye’. The new owner had insisted on muted pink and grey, a choice that had viewers, on tuning into the new network logo, fiddling with their controls. The natives liked colour, otherwise what was the point of owning a colour set? Even Bill Cosby had a purple tinge on Australian screens.

The chief executive’s office was pink and grey; so was the chief executive, Roger Dircks, who sat in a chair at one side. The owner herself sat behind the big modern desk; reigning queens do not squat on their own footstools. She was dressed in pink slacks and shirt, grey calf-length boots and had a pink and grey silk scarf tied round her shoulders. A pink cashmere cardigan was draped over the chair behind her.

‘So you’re the estimable Inspector Malone?’ He had never been called estimable before, not even by the better educated, unembittered crims. ‘What do you think of our series?’

He thought he had better get that out of the way at once. ‘I have an eight-year-old daughter – she’ll love it.’

‘It’s not being made for eight-year-olds.’ The throaty voice suddenly turned chilly, an icy wind over the rocks. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Lady Springfellow, that’s not why I’m here. It’s something more important – and I think it will upset you.’

Venetia went stiff without moving. He had not seen her in person since that visit to her home in Mosman long ago and he was surprised how little she seemed to have changed. True, there were signs of age, but she had lasted remarkably well. Her skin and jawline had kept their own suspension, there had been no need for lifting, and her blonde hair was still thick and lustrous. Even her mouth had somehow missed that thinning of the lips that comes to ageing women, as if pursing them at the misdeeds of men has worn away their youthful fullness. But then rumour said that Venetia Spring – fellow had never tired of men and was careless of their misdeeds, except in business. She was regal amongst her commoner lovers. Money and power turn a beautiful woman into a fantasy.

‘Upset me, Inspector? Then it must be something dreadful.’

Malone told her, as gently as he could. ‘They’re certain it’s your husband.’

Venetia blinked; but there was no sign of tears. She looked at Roger Dircks, who moved his small mouth as if he were trying to find words to fit it. He was a tall, plump man in his early fifties, with a smooth pink face under a pelt of grey hair that lay on his small head like a bathing-cap. He was dressed in a grey wool suit with a pink shirt and a grey silk tie. Malone, in his polyester blue, felt like an ink-blot on a pale watercolour.

Dircks stood up, moved towards Venetia, then stopped. One did not lay a hand on the Queen Bee, even in sympathy; she was to be touched only by invitation. At last he said, ‘This is God-awful, Venetia! It’s the last thing you want—’

‘Of course it’s the last thing I want,’ she said coldly. ‘You have a talent for the bon mot, Roger.’

Malone had an abrupt feeling of déjà vu; the last time he had met Venetia Springfellow there had been animosity between her and someone else – had it been her sister-in-law? He wasn’t sure; he had forgotten the case till he had come here to the studio and learned that Lady Springfellow was the new boss.

‘Do I have to – to identify him, Inspector?’

‘No, I think you can be spared that. There’s only a skeleton.’ She winced a little, as if she found it hard to believe that that was all that was left of a loved one. ‘But they’ll ask you to identify the ring and the briefcase.’

She said nothing for a while, looking at him and through him. Then she frowned, her gaze focusing. ‘I have a memory for faces and names. Haven’t I seen you before somewhere?’

‘Years ago. I came with Sergeant Zanuch to interview you when your husband first disappeared. He’s an Assistant Commissioner now.’

She nodded, looked abstracted again. Malone studied her while he waited for her to make the next move. She had come a long way from Venetia Magee, the midday TV hostess of the Sixties; he had never known where she had stood in the ratings, but it had been reasonably high. Her biggest cachet was that she had married into the Springfellow family; old money had meant more then than it did now. Now, of course, she had new money, her own, trainloads of it. He could only guess at what she owned, maybe even a major part of the country. She was the only woman amongst the nation’s twenty richest voters, a rose amongst some very prickly males who, it seemed, were always photographed looking sideways, as if they expected her to sneak up in ambush on them. It was said that if she wore her success lightly, others wore it heavily. She was a boss to be feared.

She said, ‘Did he die – naturally? Or suicide or what?’

‘They think it was murder.’ He didn’t want to describe the state of the dead man’s skull. The bereaved should be left with proper memories.

‘Murdered?’ She frowned again and suddenly, just for a moment, seemed to age.

Then the door opened and a young girl stood there. ‘Mother – oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you—’

‘Come in, darling.’ Venetia had recovered, the lines disappearing from her face. ‘This is Inspector Malone – he’s just brought me some bad news. This is my daughter Justine.’

Venetia and Justine: whatever happened to good old names like Dot and Shirl? The daughter had a resemblance to her mother, though she was more beautiful, her features more perfect; she had dark hair, instead of her mother’s blonde, but it was cut in the same full style. She was dressed as stylishly as Venetia, though not in pink and grey. She was in a blue silk suit and Malone didn’t feel quite so much of a blot. She had all the looks, but there was something missing: her mother’s shadow dimmed the edges of her.

‘Bad news? What bad news?’

‘They have found your father’s – skeleton.’ The image was still troubling her. A collection of old bones: could one have once loved that? ‘Somewhere up in the Blue Mountains.’

‘Blackheath,’ said Malone.

Justine sat down in one of the grey chairs. Dircks moved to her and put his hand on her shoulder; she was touchable, her mother’s daughter but not yet the boss. ‘It’s dreadful, love. You don’t need such a shock—’ Then he looked at Venetia, knowing he had said the wrong thing again. His shallowness had less depth than one would have thought. He had risen to this position as chief executive only because he was a survivor; he had no talent, managerial or creative, but that often wasn’t necessary in the entertainment business. Selling oneself was as important as selling air-time and up till now he had sold himself well. ‘I’ get your driver to take you both home—’

‘No,’ said Venetia. ‘We’ll finish our business first. After – what? – twenty-one years, another half-hour … When will you bring the ring and the briefcase, Inspector, for me to identify?’

‘The Scientific men will bring that, I guess.’

‘Was there nothing else? His clothes?’

‘They didn’t mention any. Can you remember what he was wearing when he disappeared?’

She shook her head. ‘Of course not. All those years ago? There would have been a label in them – he had everything made at Cutlers – he prided himself on the way he dressed.’

‘I’ see they bring everything to you that they’ve found. I have to go up to Blackheath now.’

‘To the scene of the crime?’ said Dircks, once more saying the wrong thing.

‘Crime?’ Justine spoke for the first time since she had sat down. She had just been presented with the discovery of the skeleton of the father she had never known. All her life she had felt a sense of loss at never knowing him and often, even these days, she sat in front of the photograph of him in the Springfellow drawing-room and wondered how much she would have loved the rather stern-looking, handsome man who had sired her. She had dreamed as a child, as a schoolgirl, even now as a young woman, that he was still alive, that some day he would come out of the past, like a figure in a mirage, and into their lives again. It gave her a shock and a terrible sense of final loss to learn that only his bones were left. ‘What crime?’

Venetia looked at Malone: there were certain things a mother should not have to tell her daughter. He caught her unspoken plea and said, ‘We think your father was murdered. I’m going up to Blackheath to start the investigation.’

‘Murdered?’ All her conversation so far had been questions. Malone had seen it before; shock could leave some people only with questions.

‘It’s only a guess at the moment,’ he said gently, ‘It’s not going to be easy to find out exactly what happened, not after so long.’

He was at the door when Dircks, foot in mouth again, said, ‘You didn’t tell us what’s wrong with our series.’

Malone noticed that, though Venetia was annoyed, she was waiting on his reply. ‘The cops solve everything too easily. It never happens that way, not in real life.’

2

A studio car had picked up Malone each week and brought him out here to Carlingford on the inner edge of the western suburbs. The studio, surrounded by landscaped grounds, backed on to a Housing Commission development; the Commission residents, battlers all, looked over their back fences at the factory where their dreams were made. They waved to the stars of the soaps who drove in every day; stars dim and tiny, but any galaxy is a relief from the kitchen sink and the ironing-board and a husband who thinks foreplay is a rugby league warm-up. One morning a woman had waved to Malone and he had waved back, hoping she had not recognized her mistake. He hated to disappoint people.

The driver got out of his car when he saw Malone come out of the front door of the administration building; but the detective waved him back. He stood on the front steps, savouring the mild sunny day. October was a good month; it brought the jacaranda blooms, one of his favourite sights. The landscape designer had planted jacarandas, interspersed with the occasional flame tree, all along the front fence of the big gardens; Malone wondered if, with the new owner, he would be told to replace them with pink blossom trees and grey gums. But Venetia Springfellow, he guessed, was an indoors person and probably never noticed the outdoors through which she passed. The seasons would mean nothing to her, except the financial ones. He wondered if he was going to finish up disliking her.

Russ Clements arrived fifteen minutes later in the unmarked police Falcon. It was a new car, so far with not a scratch or a dent in it. The State government, with an election due within months, had embarked on a new law and order policy; the police had benefited, with new cars, new computers, even a couple of new helicopters. There were fewer muggings in the streets but more in the gaols, which the government was claiming was an improvement. The voters, cynical of politics, gave no hint of how they would vote in the elections. They knew when they were being mugged.

Malone got into the car and Clements headed west towards the Blue Mountains. The new car had not improved his appearance; he was as unkempt as ever, a big lumbering man who looked as if he had slept in his clothes. He was the same age as Malone, still a bachelor, and Lisa Malone was forever promising to find him a wife, an offer he always received with a grin but no enthusiasm.

‘So how’d the Queen Bee take it?’ A gossip columnist in the financial pages of the Herald, a man of infinite imagination, had given her that name and now it was common usage, even amongst those who were not her drones.

‘She’s a cool bitch.’ Why had he called her a bitch? He would have to watch out, to kill his prejudices before they grew too far. ‘But I think she was shocked.’

‘I was in the Springfellow offices this morning. They’re my stockbrokers.’ He grinned at Malone’s querying eyebrow. ‘It’s not coincidence. I’ve been with them since the beginning of the year. They can’t get over having me as a client. I have to keep telling ’em I’m not with the Fraud Squad.’

‘She has nothing to do with the broking firm, has she?’

‘Only as the biggest shareholder in the holding corporation. She has nothing to do with the day-to-day running of it.’

‘So what are you doing with a broker?’

Clements’s grin widened. ‘I’ve been winning so much on the ponies, it was getting embarrassing. I was going into the bank every Monday morning putting in three or four hundred bucks every time. The tellers were starting to look suspicious. How could I tell ’em I was just an honest cop having luck at the races? So I started investing some of it on the stock market – this boom looks too good to be true.’

‘The boom can’t last.’

Clements nodded. ‘That’s why I was in their office this morning. I’m thinking of selling everything. All good stuff, Amcor, Boral, Brambles – but even they can’t keep going up and up. You should’ve got into the market.’

‘That’s what Lisa’s dad told me. But they won’t take mortgages as a payment.’

‘From what I hear, some of the yuppies have paid with nothing else. They’re buying futures.’

‘It’s not for me.’ He had never dreamed of wealth and so he would always be an honest cop.

They drove on out of the city up into the mountains where lay the bones of a man whose future had ended twenty-one years ago. Two local police were waiting for them, a detective-sergeant and a uniformed constable. They led the way in their marked car out through the small town, past the comfortable homes of retirees and the holiday guest-houses, to bushland that showed the occasional black scars of the past summer’s fires. The two cars turned down a narrow side-road that led down to thick bush. Beyond and below was the Grose Valley, its perpendicular rock walls glinting in the sun like stacked metal, its grey-green forest floor thick and daunting as quicksand. Hikers were being lost in it every weekend, the police always being called in to help find them.

They started down the track that had been hacked out of the bush when they had carried out the bones yesterday. The young constable went ahead, occasionally slowing up to look back sympathetically at the three older men. He was all lean muscle and Malone wondered if he spent his spare time rock-climbing. This was the ideal beat for it.

The detective, Sam Pilbrow, pulled up to get his breath. ‘There used to be a track right down here years ago. You could drive a vehicle down it for another half a mile.’ He was in his middle forties, years and circumference, and walking obviously was not a hobby with him. He would never volunteer to find a lost hiker. ‘Well, I guess we gotta keep going.’

At last they came to a tiny clearing where the bushes had been chopped off and thrown aside. White taping fenced the clearing, but no attempt had been made to outline where the skeleton had been.

‘We didn’t reckon it was worth it.’ Pilbrow was a cop who would always weigh up the worth of doing anything. He had started in this town and would finish here. ‘We’ve combed the area—’ He swung a big thick arm. ‘All we come up with were the ring and the briefcase and one shell. My guess is it was probably from a Colt .45. That would account for the way the jaw was smashed, with the gun held close. It could have been an execution.’

‘Judges aren’t executed, except by terrorists,’ said Clements. ‘And we didn’t have any of them back in the Sixties.’

‘Well, he was ASIO, wasn’t he? You never know what happens in that game.’ Pilbrow read spy stories.

‘Who found him?’

‘Some hikers. By accident – they got off the track that leads down into the valley. He could have laid here for another twenty years or whatever it was.’ He really wasn’t interested in such an old case.

‘Any sign of clothes?’

‘Nothing. If everything he wore was natural fibre, if it was all cotton and wool, the weather would have destroyed it. Or birds might’ve taken it for their nests. Even his shoes were gone. The briefcase is pretty worn.’

‘Any bushfires through this part?’

‘Not down here on the lip. If there had been, we’d probably have found the bones years ago.’

Malone looked out at the valley, wondering what peculiar fate had brought Sir Walter Springfellow to this lonely spot. Down below him two currawongs planed along, their ululating cries somehow matching in sound their oddly swooping flight. Out above the valley a hawk hung in the blue air like a brown cross looking for an altar; far down amongst the trees the sun caught a pool of water and for a moment a bright silver shard lay amidst the grey-green quicksand. He could see no sign for miles of any human activity.

‘You questioned any of the locals?’

‘Who’d remember back that far?’ said Pilbrow. ‘Yeah, we questioned them. This used to be a lovers’ lane in those days, but there were no lovers down here the night he was killed. Or if there was, they’re married to someone else now and got kids and moved elsewhere. I don’t think you’re gunna get far with this one, Inspector. There’s bugger-all to start with.’

Malone nodded; then said, ‘Maybe this isn’t the place to start.’

He thanked Pilbrow and the constable for their help, said he’d be in touch if he wanted any more information, nodded to Clements and led the way back up the track, not bothering to wait for the toiling Pilbrow. He knew the local detective would think him rude and arrogant, a typical bastard from the city, but he felt he owed the lazy, overweight man nothing. Pilbrow would just as soon see the file on Sir Walter Springfellow remain closed.

Malone and Clements drove back to Sydney. It started to rain as they got to the outskirts and Malone looked back at the mountains, gone now in the grey drizzle. It somehow seemed an omen, a mist that would perhaps hide for ever the mystery of Sir Walter Springfellow.

‘What’s happening to the, er, remains?’

‘They’re at the City Morgue,’ said Clements. ‘I guess the family will reclaim them. They’ll bury ‘em, I suppose. You can’t cremate bones, can you?’

‘They do. Whatever they do, it all seems a bit late now. If there’s a funeral, we’ll go to it. See who turns up to pay their respects.’

‘Where to now? I’ve never worked on a homicide that’s twenty-one years old. I feel like a bloody archaeologist.’

‘That’s where we start, then. Twenty-one years ago. When we get back to town, go to Missing Persons and dig out the file on Walter Springfellow.’

They reached the city, threaded their way through the traffic and turned into the Remington Rand building where Homicide, incongruously, rented its headquarters space amongst other government branches. Sydney had started as a convict settlement two hundred years ago and it seemed to Malone that it was only back then that the police had been together as a cohesive unit.

Clements went across to Missing Persons in Police Headquarters in Liverpool Street. The NSW Police Department was spread around the city as if its various divisions and bureaux could not abide each other, a decentralization of jealousies.

He was back within half an hour. ‘The file on Springfellow is missing. It just ain’t there.’

‘When did it go missing?’

‘That’s what I’ve been looking up. A file is usually kept for twenty to twenty-five years, there’s no set time. Every five years they go through them, cull them. There’s an index. Springfellow’s name disappeared from the index a year after he went missing, which means someone lifted his file before then.’

‘Do we go back to the family, then?’ Malone asked the question of himself as much as Clements. ‘No, we’ll let them bury him first. They’ve been waiting a long time to do that.’

Clements looked at him, but he had meant no more than he had said.

3

‘Oh Daddy! You’ve resigned from TV? And I’ve told everyone at school you were the director!’ Maureen, the eight-year-old TV addict, was devastated.

‘Well, it was crap anyway,’ said Claire, the thirteen-year-old who was reading modern playwrights at school this year.

‘Everything’s crap,’ said Tom, the six-year-old who read nothing but majored in listening.

Lisa cuffed both of them across the ear, a smack that hurt. She was totally unlike the mothers one saw on television, especially American moms who had never been seen to raise a hand against even child monsters. She had left Holland as an infant and there was none of the new Dutch permissiveness about her. Had she lived in Amsterdam she would have cleaned up the city in a week. Instead, she lived in this eighty-year-old house in Randwick, one of Sydney’s less affluent eastern suburbs, and she kept it as unpolluted as she could. Malone sometimes referred to her as his Old Dutch Cleanser.

‘Watch your language,’ he said, ‘or I’ll run the lot of you in.’

‘Isn’t there any bad language in Sydney Beat?’ asked Maureen. ‘Oh God, Daddy, I’m so angry with you! I was going to bring all the girls home for your autograph. I wanted Mum to have Justin Muldoon home for dinner one night—’ Justin Muldoon was the star of the show, an actor who, Malone had told Clements, changed expressions by numbers.

‘That’s enough of that,’ said Lisa. ‘Dad’s on a case. That’s a detective’s job, not sitting around a TV studio.’

‘Talking to actresses, you mean?’ said Claire, a junior cadet getting ready for the battle of the sexes.

‘Is that what you do?’ said Lisa.

‘Sometimes they sit in my lap, but it’s all official duty.’ they smiled at each other, knowing how much they trusted one another.

‘Are you on another homicide?’ said Tom, who had just learned what the word meant.

‘No,’ said Malone, who tried to keep any mention of murder out of the house. This was his haven, something that Lisa did her best to maintain.

Later, while the two girls were doing the washing-up and Tom was having his shower, Lisa came into the living-room and sat beside Malone in front of the television set. ‘Anything on the news?’

‘Nothing that interests us. Which is the way I like it.’

He held her hand, lifting it and kissing it. In public he was held back by the stiffness with affection he had inherited from his mother and father, but in private he was full of affectionate gestures towards Lisa and the children. In his heart he knew he was making up for the lack of affection shown by his parents towards him, their one and only. They loved him, he knew that, but they were both too awkward to express it. He never wanted Lisa or the children to say that about him.

Lisa stroked his cheek, not needing to say anything. She was close to forty, but had kept her looks: regular features, faintly tanned skin, blonde hair worn long this year and pulled back in a chignon, blue eyes that could be both shrewd and sexy, and a full figure that still excited him. She could hold the world at bay; but, he hoped, never him.

‘The stock market’s still going up,’ he said, but, having no money invested, it meant nothing to either of them. ‘Your father must … Ah, I wondered if they were going to mention it.’

Richard Morecroft, the ABC news announcer, was saying, ‘The skeleton of a man was found today in the bush near Blackheath. Police say it could be that of Sir Walter Springfellow, Director-General of ASIO, who disappeared in March 1966 …’

‘Nothing about his being murdered,’ said Lisa.

‘We’re holding back on that as far as the press goes – we’re not sure of anything. We – hold it!’ He held up a hand.

Morecroft picked up a sheet of paper that had been thrust into his hand from off-camera. ‘A late piece of news has just come to hand. Charles (Chilla) Dural was today released from Parramatta Gaol, where he had been serving a life sentence for murder. A one-time notorious criminal, Dural was the last man sentenced by Sir Walter Springfellow before he left the Bench to become head of ASIO. Police would make no comment on the ironic coincidence of the two events occurring on the same day …’

‘Bugger!’ said Malone and switched off the set.

‘What’s the matter? It’s just as they said, a coincidence—’

‘It’ll give the media another handle to hang on to. They’ve got enough as it is – Springfellow turning up as a skeleton, his missus now a tycoon and up to her neck in a family takeover—’

‘It’s supposed to be the daughter who’s trying to take over the family firm.’ Lisa read everything in the daily newspaper but the sports pages; she knew when BHP or News Ltd went up or down, what knives were being sharpened in politics, but she knew nothing of Pat Cash’s form or what horse was fancied for the Melbourne Cup. Though not mercenary, she had a Dutch respect for money and the making of it. ‘Justine Springfellow is only trying to emulate her mother. Two tycoons in the family are better than one.’

He looked at her. ‘Who said that?’

‘Someone in Perth.’ Where tycoons bred like credit-rated rabbits.

‘Don’t believe what you read about the daughter. I met her today. She’d do everything her mother told her.’

Lisa had picked up the financial pages of the Herald, knew exactly where to turn to. ‘Springfellow Corporation was at its highest price ever yesterday. What’s this prisoner Dural like?’ Lately she had developed a talent for non-sequiturs, and Malone, being a man, had wondered if she was at the beginning of her menopause. Which thought was a male non-sequitur.

‘I haven’t a clue. He was before my time. I’ve heard of him – I think he killed a cove in prison about ten years ago. But he’s a stranger to me.’ And I hope he stays that way.

Maureen came into the living-room. ‘In this house a kid’s work is never done. None of my friends have to do the washing-up.’

‘Lucky them,’ said Lisa. ‘Sunday you can do the washing and ironing. That will give me Monday free.’

Malone grinned, loving the dry banter that went on in his family. He wondered what sort of banter went on among the silvertail Springfellows. Though perhaps tonight there would be nothing like that, not with the bones of a long-dead husband and father lying between them.