Dedication

For Cate

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One
1

The past is part of the present, if only in memory. But memory, as Malone knew, is always uncertain testimony.

The first body was discovered by a fellow worker of the deceased at 5.08 a.m. The second body was found by a housemaid at 9.38 a.m. Two murders in one night did nothing to raise the hotel’s rating from two and a half stars to three, a pursuit of the management over the past three months. An earthquake would have been more welcome, since insurance was preferable to bad publicity.

The Hotel Southern Savoy was one of several on the square across from Central Station, Sydney’s terminal for country and interstate trains. The station itself had been built on an old burial ground, an apt location, it was thought in certain quarters, for some of the deadheads in State Rail. The Southern Savoy’s clientele was mixed, but one would not have looked amongst it for celebrities or the wealthy. It catered mainly for country visitors and economy tour parties from Scotland, Calabria and the thriftier parts of Vermont. It had little or no interest in its guests, so long as they paid their accounts, and was discreet only because it was too much bother to be otherwise. It had had its visits from the police (two deaths from drug overdoses, several robberies, a prostitute denting the skull of a customer with the heel of her shoe), but it had always managed to keep these distractions out of the news. But murder? Two murders?

‘The manager is having a fit of the vapours,’ Sergeant Phil Truach told Malone, ringing on his mobile and out of earshot of the manager. ‘He seems a nice guy, but he’s a bit frail, if you know what I mean.’

‘Phil, put your prejudices back in your pocket. Have a smoke or two. Before I get there,’ he added.

Truach smoked two packs a day and had been told by his doctor that he had never seen such clear arteries, that Philip Morris could drive a truck through them. ‘I’ll have them empty the ashtrays. The media are already here. I think that’s worrying the manager more than the corpses.’

‘The bodies still there?’

‘The guy, the hotel worker, he’s been taken to the morgue. The woman’s in her room, the ME’s examining her. Crime Scene are still here.’

Normally Malone, head of Homicide, would not have been called in on a single murder till the circumstances of it had been fully determined. But two murders in the one hotel on the same night, one a male worker, the other a female guest, called for his presence. The homicide rate in the city was rising and everyone who was literate, from Opposition MPs to letter-writers to the morning newspapers and callers to radio talk shows, was demanding to know what the government and police were doing about it. Zero tolerance had become a mantra, even with voters who had never come within a hundred kilometres of a violent crime.

He went out to the main room of Homicide where Russ Clements sat at his desk, which, startlingly, was bare of paper. Usually it looked like the dump-bin outside a paper mill.

‘What’s the matter? You not accepting any more paperwork?’

‘This is what they call – is it a hiatus? I dunno if the system’s run outa paper, but I’m not, as they say, gunna make any enquiries. It’ll start up again, soon’s my back is turned. In the meantime …’

Malone and Clements had worked together for more years than they cared to count. Over the last year or two, as Homicide and Serial Offenders, part of Crime Agency, had expanded, they had worked together less and less out of the office. Clements, as Supervisor, the equivalent of general manager, had become trapped at his desk. Computers had proved to be just another form of land-mines, hemming him in. The diet of reports, reports, reports had put weight on him, turned muscle to fat. He was a big man, a couple of inches taller than Malone, and though he had never been light-footed, his tread now was heavy. He was a prisoner looking for parole.

‘In the meantime, on your feet,’ said Malone. He, too, had begun to thicken as middle age wrapped itself round him, but he still looked reasonably athletic. But he knew he was long past chasing crims on foot. ‘We’re going over to the Southern Savoy. You can help me count the bodies.’

Clements stood up, reached for his jacket as if it were a lifebelt. ‘I thought you’d never ask. Gail, keep an eye on this thing for me.’ He nodded at his computer, at its screen as blank as a crim’s eye. ‘Ignore everything but love and kisses from the Commissioner.’

Gail Lee, one of the four women detectives on the staff of twenty, looked at Malone. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘He’s light-headed, he’s going to be a detective again.’

The two men went out of the room, Malone as usual putting on his pork-pie hat. It made him look like a cop from the 1950s, but it was his trademark, though only in the eyes of his staff. They let themselves out through the security door and disappeared, unaware of the swamp they were to step into in Room 342 at the Hotel Southern Savoy.

Gail Lee looked at Sheryl Dallen, another of the distaff side of Homicide. ‘I think they’re both into the menopause.’

Sheryl leaned back in her chair, swept an arm around her. ‘Won’t it be lovely when all this is ours? A woman Commissioner, seven women Assistant Commissioners –’

The three men still in the large room looked up, like pointers that had scented danger. Gail and Sheryl exchanged foxy grins.

Malone and Clements drove through a day as sharp as a knife against the cheek; a westerly wind had whetted it. Building outlines were as clean as etchings; a lone cloud was like an ice-floe, queues stood at bus stops looking as miserable as if they were queuing for the dole. The car’s radio told them the temperature was only 14 degrees Celsius.

‘A summer’s day in Finland,’ said Clements.

‘Or in England,’ said Malone, and they smiled at each other with Down Under smugness.

Phil Truach, cigarette-satisfied, was waiting for them in the lobby of the hotel. It was not a large lobby; expense had been spared by the developer who had built the hotel. It was crowded now with departing guests, some of whom looked to be in a hurry, as if afraid they might be the next murder victims. There were unwelcome guests: two pressmen and three radio reporters. Malone was grateful there were no television cameramen. Television shots of crime scenes never seemed to show anything but police officers going in and out of doorways as if looking for work.

Truach pulled Malone and Clements to one side; they stood behind a limp palm, the one piece of greenery in the lobby. ‘The media want a statement.’

‘Stuff ’em for the moment,’ said Malone. ‘Where’s the manager?’

‘He’s up with Crime Scene. He seems to have recovered. Your wife’s up there, too, Russ.’

Clements frowned. ‘As ME? What’s she doing there?’

‘I dunno.’ Truach held up a hand as they stepped out from behind the palm and the five reporters pushed forward. ‘Later, guys.’

‘Is there any connection between the two murders? Is it a serial killer?’ She was from a radio station, she chewed on serial killer as if it were a liqueur-filled chocolate. Malone remembered the days when all police reporters had been male, eager cubs or hard-bitten hacks. These girls were just as tenacious: ‘Or is it just coincidence?’

‘Coincidence,’ said Malone, stepping into the lift and pressing the button for the doors to close. ‘It makes the world go round.’

‘She won’t learn that till she’s middle-aged,’ said Clements. ‘Who’s upstairs, Phil, besides my wife?’

‘Coupla uniformed guys, two plainclothes from Regent Street, Norma Nickles and a young guy from Crime Scene.’ Truach, like most of the older cops, still used the old term instead of Forensic. Police teams, like football teams, were constantly being re-named. ‘Your wife and a guy from the morgue. And Deric, the manager. D-E-R-I-C, he spelt it out for me.’

‘Phil, I think you’re homophobic,’ said Malone.

‘They rub me up the wrong way,’ said Truach and all three of them laughed.

They were on their way to a homicide, a double homicide, another job of work. The mood changed only when the dirty work began: the wonder at why a particular life had been taken, the informing the relatives of the victim’s death and how it had occurred.

Romy Clements, Deputy Director of Forensic Medicine at the morgue, looked in surprise at her husband. He returned the look. They hadn’t met over a corpse in several years.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

‘I have four of my staff off with ’flu virus.’

She was in a white coat, was wearing plastic gloves, but the clinical look didn’t detract from her own looks. She, like Russ, had put on a little weight, but middle-aged spread was still a few years ahead of her. She had that comfortable, comforting appearance that some women achieve in their late thirties when life is going well for them. But Malone always found it remarkable that she had reached that assurance. Her mother had died only a short time after coming to Australia from Germany. Her father, never wanting to leave Germany, was serving a life sentence for serial killing. Yet somehow, with the help of Russ, she had come through all that to self-confidence. The Clements’ marriage was a harbour for both of them, their five-year-old daughter their beacon in the centre of it.

She nodded down at the body on the bed: ‘Strangled. No rape, but there’d been intercourse. Dead eight to ten hours, I’d say.’

The room was crowded and even after all these years Malone wished the crime scenes provided more breathing space. He looked at Des Shirer, the senior man from Regent Street, the local station. He never neglected protocol, it was part of the axle-grease of co-operation.

‘What’ve you got, Des?’

Shirer was in his late thirties, but he had none of the comfortable look that Romy had. He was thin, fidgetty, had awkward movements as if on wires: crime, you knew, would eventually wear him out. ‘I’ve talked to Deric, here –’

Deric was not what Malone had expected from Phil Truach’s description. He was in his early thirties, thick blond hair, regular features and what looked like muscular shoulders under the dark jacket. Definitely not a man who would have the vapours.

Till he spoke: it was a high girlish voice and at the moment was quavery: ‘She –’ He looked down at the still exposed body of the woman, then quickly looked back at Malone. ‘She’s registered as Mrs Belinda Paterson – that’s what her credit card said. Some address in Oregon, in the United States. She booked in yesterday about 6 p.m., said she was staying just the one night. I wasn’t on duty, but our reception clerk said she sounded a very nice lady. Not a – well, you know.’

‘A hooker looking for business?’ said Clements.

Romy looked at Norma Nickles, the other woman in the room besides the dead one. ‘That’s how they divide us up – nice ladies or hookers. I’ll see you at home, Liebchen,’ she said and gave Clements the sort of smile that has cut a thousand throats, mostly lovers’ and husbands’.

‘No, we don’t think she was anything like that,’ said the manager and for a moment the quaver was gone from his voice.

‘If she was a hooker, she’d done all right at it.’ Norma Nickles was a slim graceful woman who had once been a ballet dancer. She had descended from entrechat and sur les pointes to down-to-earth, flat-footed examination of crime. And was a star at it. ‘Her suit is top quality, Donna Karan, bought at Bergdorf Goodman’s in New York. Cashmere sweater, Ferragamo shoes. Her topcoat is vicuna, it doesn’t come any more expensive in cloth, right, Doctor?’

‘The best.’ The two women looked at the coat thrown over a nearby chair. Romy put out a hand to touch it, then realized she was wearing the plastic gloves. ‘I don’t think even hookers can afford them. Not in this town.’

‘This lady had money,’ said Norma Nickles.

‘What’s the rate here?’ Malone turned back to the manager.

He had been looking down at the body; he jerked his head up as Malone spoke to him. ‘How much? A hundred dollars a night for a double with bath, like this front room. Less than that for group bookings.’

Malone gazed down at the body now being zipped into a bag. The throat had a dark collar of bruising, the face was puffy and distorted, her mouth enlarged by the smeared lipstick. But it was evident that she had once been, only yesterday, a good-looking woman.

‘I’d say she was thirty-five, maybe forty, no more,’ said Romy, peeling off her plastic gloves. ‘She’s looked after herself – or been well looked after. She was what you men call well preserved.’

‘Was she American, do you think?’

The question was addressed to the manager, who had shut his eyes for the moment as the bag was zipped up. Now he shrugged, spread his hands; the gesture was slightly effeminate. Pull your head in, Malone told himself, and your prejudices. He was not homophobic, but he came of a past generation that carried notions as dated as flares and sideburns. But then he had other prejudices: cricketers who patted each other on the bum (bonding, he was told they called it); the same cricketers who threw the ball high into the air when they took a catch (show-boating, he called it); footballers who hugged and kissed each other when a try or a goal was scored; mates who thought half a dozen beers was a blood bond (which made him un-Australian). He would get used to fluttery hands eventually.

‘Our reception clerk thought so,’ said the manager. ‘But so many these days try to sound American, don’t they? De-BREE for debris, stuff like that.’ His own accent was English and sounded genuine. Not gen-u-ine.

‘Anything in her handbag?’ Clements asked Norma Nickles.

‘Just the American Express card, her compact, a packet of condoms –’

‘Any used in the intercourse?’ asked Malone.

Norma shook her head. ‘No.’

‘There’s semen in the vagina,’ said Romy.

‘Good. If we pick anyone up we can lecture him on the dangers of unsafe sex. He may not know what DNA can do to him. What else?’

‘Her watch, a Bulgari – like I said, this lady had money. A string of pearls – expensive, too.’

‘May I interrupt?’ said Romy. ‘We’re ready to take the body away.’

‘When will you do the p-m?’ asked Malone.

‘Not till tomorrow. I have four others lined up ahead of her, including the man they took out earlier. We’ll do them in turn.’ She looked at her husband: ‘No remarks about Teutonic thoroughness.’

‘Never entered my head,’ said Clements innocently.

‘You’re coming to dinner tomorrow night?’ she asked Malone.

‘We’ll be there,’ said Malone; then looked at the manager who had raised his eyebrows. ‘Life goes on, Deric. We’re not cold-blooded bastards.’

‘No. No, I guess not.’ But he didn’t look convinced.

As the body was put on a stretcher to be taken away, Malone moved to the window and looked out. On the other side of the square the tall Italianate clock tower of the station reared like an unintended memorial above the dead in the old burying ground. Malone remembered reading somewhere that water from a creek that had run through the burial grounds had been used to make the best-tasting beer in the early days of the colony. Drinkers of it often finished up in the graves beside the creek, adding no advertisement for the beer. In the middle of the square, complementing none of the surrounding buildings, was a steel-and-glass construction that, for want of a better name, was called a bus shelter; those who stood under it said that the only thing it protected them from was the pigeon-shit of the birds that squatted on it. It looked as out of place as a glass condom on an altar, but that was the way the city was going. The dead in the burial grounds would, metaphorically, piss on it from a great height.

Central Square was not Sydney’s most glittering scene and he wondered why a seemingly wealthy American woman would have come here to this hundred-dollar-a-night hotel when more expensive and luxurious hotels, with much better views, were available only ten-minute cab rides from here. Then he saw a man get off a bus lugging a heavy suitcase and he turned back to the manager.

He waited while the body was taken away and Romy went out of the room, brushing her hand against Clements’ as she went. Then he said, ‘Where’s the lady’s luggage?’

‘There wasn’t any,’ said the manager.

‘You let people check in here without luggage?’

Deric looked embarrassed; he moved his hands again. ‘Reception uses its discretion. My girl thought Mrs Paterson looked – well, okay. Not a hooker. But …’

Malone waited, aware that everyone else in the room had paused.

Deric said, ‘People check in here sometimes for meetings – they don’t want to meet in more conspicuous places –’

‘Inspector,’ said Shirer, ‘Norma mentioned what was in Mrs Paterson’s handbag. Expensive stuff, she said – the watch and the pearls. Yet she signed for a safe deposit box downstairs –’

‘Did you know that?’ Malone asked the manager.

‘No. They didn’t mention it down at the desk –’

‘We haven’t looked at it yet,’ said Shirer, ‘but why didn’t she put the watch and pearls in it? Or anyway, the pearls?’

‘What time did you come on duty, Deric?’

‘I got here at, I dunno, five-thirty, quarter to six. They called me as soon as they found Boris’ body –’

‘Boris?’

‘The cleaner,’ said Shirer. ‘Boris Jones.’

‘Boris Jones?’ Malone managed to remain expressionless. ‘Righto, Deric, let’s go down and have a look at what’s in the box. The key in her handbag, Norma?’

Norma Nickles ferreted in the crocodile-skin handbag, held out a key. ‘That it?’

‘That’s it,’ said the manager and looked almost nervous as he took the key.

Before he left the room Malone asked, ‘Any prints?’

‘We’re still dusting,’ said Norma. ‘The report will be on your desk this afternoon.’

‘Not mine,’ said Malone. ‘Russ’.’

‘Thanks,’ said Clements and looked at Shirer. ‘The chain of command, Des. Does it ever get you down?’

Shirer looked at his junior man, smiled for the first time. ‘Not really, does it, Matt?’

Matt just rolled his eyes and looked at the two uniformed men, who, bottom of the heap, kept their opinion to themselves.

Malone went down in the lift with the manager. Deric was quiet, looked worried. ‘What about Boris? Our cleaner? God, two of them the same night! Management has already been on to me – you’d think it was my fault! Do you think there’s any connection? I mean between the two murders?’

‘Do you?’

‘Me? Why would I connect them? The woman’s a total stranger –’

‘Let’s hope she’s not,’ said Malone. ‘That always makes our job so much harder. We solved a case last year, took us seven years to identify the victim –’

‘Oh God,’ said Deric.

In the lobby Malone paused to give a non-committal comment to the media hawks, throwing them a bone that they knew was bare. ‘Is that all?’ asked the girl from 2UE. ‘Who is Belinda Paterson?’

Someone at the reception desk had opened his or her mouth. ‘That’s all we have at the moment, her name.’

‘No address?’ This girl knew that bones had a marrow.

Malone looked at the manager, who said, ‘No local address. Just an address in the United States.’

‘So she’s another tourist who’s been –’

But Malone had pushed the manager ahead of him into the latter’s office and closed the door before he heard the word murdered.

‘Oh Jesus, Inspector, I can see and hear ’em on tonight’s news –’

‘Deric, if they hang around after we’ve gone, you tell them nothing, okay? Nothing. Just refer ’em to us. Now where’s the safe deposit box?’

Deric went into an inner room, not much larger than a closet, and came back with the flat metal box. He opened it, then looked at Malone and frowned. ‘That’s all? A passport?’

Malone picked up the black passport, opened it. He had seen one or two like it before: a diplomatic passport. He saw the photo: the dead woman alive, looking directly into the camera as if challenging it. He read the name and the particulars, then he closed it, took a plastic bag from his pocket and dropped the passport in it.

The hotel manager could read expressions on strangers’ faces; it was part of his training. ‘Trouble?’

‘Could be. Keep it to yourself till I check. It’ll be better for the hotel, I think –’

‘If you say so. But –’

‘No buts, Deric. Have you been in this business long? You’re English, aren’t you?’

Deric had sat down, as if all his strength had suddenly gone. ‘No, I’m Australian. From Perth. I used to be an actor. I went to London, worked there off and on for –’ He shrugged. ‘For too long. I was out of work more than I was working. When I was out, I used to work as a waiter or nights on the reception desk in hotels. Five years ago I gave it up, the acting, and took a hotel management course –’ He appeared to be talking to himself. Abruptly he shut up, then after a silence, he said, ‘I thought everything was going sweetly for me.’

‘It still can, Deric. None of this is your fault. In the meantime –’

He went back upstairs, besieged again by the reporters. He knew they had a job to do, but they pressed their case too hard, as if history itself would stop unless they got the news to the voters immediately.

‘Tell us something, Inspector – anything! Are the murders connected?’

The lift doors closed and he looked at the two couples riding with him and they looked at him. Both couples were elderly, all four of them seemingly past excitability.

‘We’ve heard about the murders –’ He was tall and thin and grey-haired with a face like a wrinkled riding boot: from the bush, thought Malone.

‘Don’t let it spoil your holiday.’

‘We’re not down here on holiday,’ said the male of the other couple, a stout and weatherbeaten man with faded blue eyes; it was obvious now that the four of them were together. ‘We’re here for a funeral.’

Malone cursed his loose tongue, was relieved when the lift stopped. ‘Sorry. My condolences.’

‘You, too,’ said the tall thin man, as if police grieved for all murder victims, and the lift doors closed on them.

Malone shook his head at the crossed lines of the world and went into Room 342. Phil Truach and the two Regent Street officers had gone, but Clements was still there with the two Crime Scene officers and the two uniformed men. With the bodies gone from the hotel, everything was looking routine. Out in the hallway there was the sound of a vacuum cleaner at work, taking the marks of the police team out of the carpet.

‘Anything?’ Malone asked.

‘We’ve got enough prints here to fill a library,’ said Norma Nickles with the fastidiousness of an old-fashioned housekeeper. ‘The maids seem to be a bit light-handed with the feather-dusters.’

‘Tell Deric on your way out. Did you get a print off the flush-button in the toilet?’

‘Yeah, there’s one clear one.’

‘Then maybe that’s the one we want. We nailed a feller years ago that way. A bloke usually has a leak before or after sex.’

‘Really?’ said Norma, who had known the true worth of the advertisements in the tights of male ballet dancers. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘They also have a leak after murder,’ said Clements. ‘It’s the excitement.’

‘You men,’ said Norma and all five of them grinned at her.

‘Righto, Russ,’ said Malone. ‘Let’s get back.’

‘Anything in the deposit box?’

‘Nothing. Where’s Phil?’

‘He’s downstairs with the guys from Regent Street, they’re interviewing the staff. You wanna question ’em?’

‘No, you and I had better get back to the office.’ His expression didn’t change, but Clements, the old hand, read his eyes. ‘Let’s have the report soon’s you can, Norma. Take care.’

He and Clements went down in the lift, squeezing in with half a dozen guests who recognized them as police and fell silent as if afraid of being questioned. The two detectives strode through the lobby before the reporters could waylay them again. Malone saw the manager standing behind the reception desk, staring at them as if they were guests who had trashed their room and refused to pay their account. Police are rarely welcome guests, certainly never in hotels.

Their unmarked car was parked in the hotel’s loading zone. A van had just pulled up and its driver leaned out of his door and yelled, pointing at the sign, ‘Can’t you buggers read?’

The two detectives ignored him, got into the car and Malone drew it out from the kerb, resisting the urge to give the middle finger to the van driver who was still yelling at them. Only then did Clements speak: ‘What have you come up with?’

Malone took the plastic envelope from his pocket, but didn’t remove the passport. ‘This. We’ve got trouble, mate. We take this to Greg Random and then to Charlie Hassett before we let anyone else see it.’

‘So she’s not –’ Clements looked at his notebook; he still carried it like an old family heirloom. ‘Not Mrs Belinda Paterson?’

‘No. She’s Mrs Billie Pavane. She’s the wife of the American Ambassador.’

2

‘Shit!’ said Charlie Hassett, Assistant Commissioner, Crime Agency. He looked at the passport as if it were his dismissal pink slip. ‘It’s our turf, but we’re gunna be overrun by our Federal blokes, the CIA, the FBI, Foreign Affairs … You’re absolutely sure this is the dead woman’s, Scobie?’

‘Yes, sir. It’s hers. I saw her before they zipped up the bag and took her away. It’s hers, all right.’

Clements had gone back to Homicide to prepare for the blizzard that would soon be coming out of Canberra. Cold weather had been coming up from the south all week, but there would be no snow sports for the New South Wales Police Service. Malone was wishing that he had taken his vacation, which was due; or even his long service leave, which would give him time to disappear to the other side of the world. Lisa, his wife, had been talking of a trip home to Holland and that now seemed an appealing faraway place. Instead he was now sitting in Assistant Commissioner Hassett’s office with Chief Superintendent Greg Random, head of the Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit.

‘Charlie, I’m not going to have my men pushed around by outsiders.’ Random was the guardian angel of his men and women, though if he had any wings they had been folded and stored in a cupboard. Tall and bony, with a stiff brush of grey hair, he was as dry as the dust on the Western Plains where he had grown up and he would have greeted Lucifer with the same laconic regard as he offered to other, lesser crims. He would not be bending the knee to any Hierarchy from Canberra. For him, anyone down there, whether politician, diplomat or bureaucrat, was a foreigner. ‘I want you to let them know that from the start –’

‘Greg, relax –’ Hassett made a downward motion with two large hands. He had started on the beat thirty-five years ago, when doubt had never entered his still developing mind; his powers of persuasion had consisted of a sledge-hammer for closed doors and a bunched fist for closed faces. He occasionally dreamed of the simplicity of those days, but these days there was no sharper mind in the Police Service. He wore his reputation as a hard case as some men, and women, wore their power suits. The sledgehammer had been put away and in its place was a perception as sharp as a professional woodchopper’s axe. ‘I’ll talk to the Commissioner and we’ll get the barricades up. We’re not gunna be overrun by outsiders. But we’ve got to get this news down to Canberra – how’re you gunna do it?’

‘We’ll start out with the proper channels, just to show we’re not obstructive,’ said Random. ‘I’ve talked it over with Scobie. When we leave here we’re going down to the US Consul-General. We’ll give him the news, tell him we’ve already got the investigation under way and he can let Canberra know. We’ll let them know – in a nice way, of course – that the case is ours.’

Hassett looked at Malone. ‘You’re not jumping for joy, Scobie.’

‘Would you be, sir?’

The Assistant Commissioner grinned. ‘You want a loan of my sledgehammer? It’s over there in the closet. I’ve had it gold-plated.’ He stood up. He was of what had once been the medium height for police officers, five feet ten inches, and he had thickened; he still suggested the battering-ram he had once been. ‘Now I’m gunna give the Commissioner the bad news. Good luck. My regards to the Consul-General. He’s a nice bloke and he’s gunna hate this as much as you.’

Random and Malone drove down to Martin Place, in the business heart of the city, parked the car in the basement of the MLC building and rode up to the fifty-ninth floor. Money rustled like a breeze in all the floors beneath, but here on the fifty-ninth diplomacy, at citizen level, was the order of business. Passports, trade and general enquiries: nothing that made waves. The two detectives, when they produced their badges, were checked through security as if they were close relatives of the US President and were shown into the Consul-General’s office before they could comment on their welcome.

‘You’ve got news of her?’

Consul-General Bradley Avery had been an All-American quarterback before he had given up throwing passes and taken to receiving blasts from Washington. He was as tall as Random and Malone and had shoulders that looked as if he still wore the pads that Malone always found ridiculous on gridiron players. He had dark curly hair and a broad black face just the pleasant side of plain.

‘Our embassy called me this morning – got me at home before I was out of bed –’

‘We’re talking about Mrs Pavane, the Ambassador’s wife?’ said Random.

‘Yes. Yes, of course –’ Then Avery waved the two detectives to chairs, came round his desk and sat his haunches on it. ‘She’s been missing since yesterday morning. She caught a nine o’clock plane out of Canberra for Sydney and she hasn’t been seen since she got off it –’

‘You didn’t have a consulate car out at the airport to meet her?’

‘Yes, there was one. The embassy called after she had left and ordered the car. But she didn’t meet it –’ Then he stopped, reading the atmosphere for the first time. ‘You’ve got bad news?’

Random nodded, looked at Malone. ‘Tell him, Scobie. It’s your case.’ Planting the territorial imperative early.

Malone recited the bad news. ‘That’s the bald fact, Mr Avery. What puzzles us is what was the Ambassador’s wife doing in a hundred-dollar-a-night hotel under an assumed name?’

Avery had listened in silence, without expression; but now he let out a long hiss of breath, as if he had been holding it in. ‘Holy shit! Does the media know?’

‘Yes. There was another murder last night at the same hotel, one of their cleaners. If it hadn’t been for the double homicide, I don’t think the press would have been down there. It would have got a three-line mention in the news brief in tomorrow morning’s papers, that’s all. But now –’

‘Do the media know who she is?’

‘Not yet. So far the hotel management doesn’t know. I didn’t let the manager see this when I took it out of the safe deposit box –’ He took the plastic bag containing the passport from his pocket. ‘All they know so far is that she was American.’

Avery held out his hand. ‘I’ll give that back to the Ambassador.’

Malone looked at Random, who said, ‘It’s our turf, Mr Avery. It’s a New South Wales Police Service job, I’m afraid. I wish it weren’t, but that’s the fact of the matter.’

‘Does it have to be?’ Avery was not belligerent. He just had the look of a quarterback seeing tackles coming at him from either side.

‘I’m afraid so. We’ll co-operate with anyone you bring in, but it’s our case. We’ll be as discreet as possible, but it won’t be too long before the media has a field day.’

‘Did your security people check yesterday when she didn’t turn up?’ asked Malone.

‘We-ll, no-o.’ Avery looked abruptly tentative. ‘We didn’t send anyone out there after the driver came back and reported he hadn’t found her. We phoned Canberra and they said to leave it to them. They’re very secure about security down there,’ he added and sounded undiplomatic.

‘What do they have down there? CIA, FBI, what?’ asked Random.

Avery closed up: ‘I think you better ask them.’

‘How long has the Ambassador been out here?’ asked Malone.

‘Two months. He’s still finding his feet. Don’t quote me,’ he added and almost managed a smile.

‘Is he a career diplomat?’

Foreign ambassadors made little or no impact on the country outside the limited circle of Canberra. They were wraiths that occasionally materialized. Like now.

‘No. I should imagine half the State Department had never heard of him till the President submitted his name. I’d never heard of him …’

‘You’re being very frank, Mr Avery,’ said Random.

‘I’m getting on side,’ said Avery, and this time his smile widened. ‘Look, you want the facts. I’m the one who’s gonna be closest to you in this, so I’ll fill you in all I can. Mr Pavane was a big supporter of the President in the last campaign, raising enough money to wrap up Missouri and Kansas for the President. He comes from Kansas City, his family has been there for years. He was president of one of our biggest agrobusinesses and he was picked to come out here because we always seem to be at odds with you on meat and agricultural tariffs and subsidies. Again, don’t quote me.’ He went round behind his desk, sat down, looked glad to have a chair beneath him. ‘I’ll call our embassy now. They’ll have someone down here this afternoon. I’ll tell them it’s your turf, as you call it, but you may have to explain it to them yourselves.’

‘We’ll do that,’ said Random. ‘You might tell them while you’re on the phone that Inspector Malone and I have the backing of our own Assistant Commissioner and our Commissioner himself. Inspector Malone will be doing the leg-work, I’ll be running the investigation. But behind me –’

‘I get your point, Mr Random,’ said Avery. ‘Does your Premier and your state government know yet?’

‘They will by now. The Commissioner will have told the Premier and the Police Minister.’

Avery looked at Malone. ‘You look worried, Inspector. Clouds are gathering?’

‘I think so. Where were you before your posting to Sydney?’

‘Belgrade.’ Another smile, but this time a wry one. ‘I see your point. Okay, I’ll do all I can to help you. But I hope you understand – consular men are down the totem pole compared to embassy staff.’

‘I feel the same way about Police Headquarters.’

‘You survive,’ said Random, then looked at Avery. ‘We’ll wait till you’ve talked to the embassy. Just so’s we know, right from the start, where we’ll be going.’

‘I think I better get my two senior staff in here first.’ Avery spoke into the intercom on his desk: ‘Jane, will you ask Mr Goodbody and Miz Caporetto to come in? Now.’ He switched off and sat back. But he was not relaxed. ‘You’re right. What was Mrs Pavane doing in a cheap hotel under an assumed name? She didn’t strike me as like that – I mean the cheap hotel.’

‘What do you know about her?’ asked Malone.

‘Nothing. Except that she was a charming, good-looking woman who always looked a million dollars, as they say. I gather she had made quite an impression down there in Canberra on the cocktail circuit. I met her twice and she looked to me as if she was going to be a great help to the Ambassador.’

‘And what’s he like?’

But then the door opened and Mr Goodbody and Miz Caporetto came in. Avery waved a finger at the door and Goodbody turned and closed it. Avery stood up and introduced the newcomers; there was obvious rapport between the three of them. Then he said, ‘This is Chief Superintendent Random and Inspector Malone from the New South Wales Police Service. They have bad news. Really bad news. They have just found the Ambassador’s wife in a hotel up on Central Square. Murdered.’

Gina Caporetto sat down suddenly in a chair which, fortunately, was right behind her. Mitchell Goodbody stood stockstill, one foot in front of the other, as if caught in mid-stride. Then he said, ‘Murdered?’

Malone had heard the echo countless times. Violent death was beyond the immediate comprehension of most people: at least the violent death of those they knew. Consular officials, like police, must have experience of tragedy, but, he guessed, it was the tragedies of strangers. And they would not have expected personal – well, semi-personal – violence here on their doorstep in a friendly city.

‘How? Was she – murdered by some stranger?’ Goodbody had a soft Southern accent. He was short and thin and looked as if he might be perpetually worried. He had thick fair hair, cut very short as if he had just come out of boot camp, and a long thin face that would reach middle age before the rest of him. The sort of worker who would always see that the office wheels never stopped turning. ‘Which hotel was it? Central Square?’ He frowned, as if it was remote territory.

‘The Southern Savoy,’ said Random.

‘The what?’ Gina Caporetto was a blonde Italian-American, her birth roots north of Milan; it was an unfortunate name, a reminder of an Italian defeat in World War I; but the two Australians in the room had never heard of it. In any case men, and women, would hardly remark her name; instead they took note of her body and, eyes rising, her quite attractive face. She wore a beige knitted dress that looked as if she had put it on wet and it had shrunk. ‘I’ve never heard of it – no, wait a minute. Last year, during the Olympics, there was a big group from, I’ve forgotten where, New England somewhere, they were booked in there. I went up there once –’ She, too, frowned. ‘She was – there?’

‘It’s a hundred-dollar-a-night place,’ said Avery. ‘Superintendent Random tells me the circumstances aren’t – well, not the best. She was found naked in her room. She’d been strangled.’

‘You are sure it’s Mrs Pavane?’ Goodbody’s accent seemed to have thickened with shock.

‘Certain,’ said Malone and held up the plastic bag and the passport.

‘Do the media know?’ Gina Caporetto had recovered her poise, which was considerable.

‘Miss Caporetto is our press officer,’ said Avery.

‘They know there’s been a double murder –’

‘A double murder?’ Goodbody seemed to be making a habit of the echo.

‘We don’t think the other homicide – a hotel cleaner – is connected to that of Mrs Pavane. But we’ve only just started our investigation –’

Gina Caporetto looked at Avery. ‘Shouldn’t our people be handling this?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Random, getting in first. ‘This is our turf, Miz Caporetto. We’ll welcome co-operation, but that’s all. I don’t know the set-up at your embassy –’

‘I’ll explain the situation to Canberra,’ said Avery. ‘I’ll call them now. Maybe you could offer Mr Random and Mr Malone some coffee, Gina? Take them into your office while I call Canberra. You stay with me, Mitch. This is just between ourselves till I’ve talked to the embassy.’

Goodbody still looked shaken: the wheels had come off and he had found himself with no jack. ‘They’ll be all over us –’

‘No, they won’t, Mitch,’ said Avery warningly. ‘Go ahead, Gina, give the gentlemen some coffee.’

Gina Caporetto led the two detectives out of the big office into a smaller one on the other side of a lobby. The secretary at the desk outside Avery’s room looked up enquiringly, but Ms Caporetto just shook her head.

She closed the door to her office and went to an old-fashioned percolator on a hot-plate. ‘I make my own coffee. We Americans think we make the best coffee in the world. But –’

She smiled and Malone said, ‘Don’t quote you. Did you ever meet Mrs Pavane?’

‘Cream or black? Sugar?’ She brought them their cups, then took her own behind her desk and sat down. It was a neat, comfortable office; but Malone wondered how comfortable it would be for her in the coming days. Even the ubiquitous Stars and Stripes on a small standard in a corner looked limp.

‘Yes, I met her, once down in Canberra just after they had arrived and twice up here. I took her shopping one day and another day I took her to lunch. She was trying to get the feel of – well, Australians, I guess.’

‘But?’ said Malone.

‘But?’ She paused, with her cup held in front of her face like a mask.

Greg Random said, ‘Miz Caporetto, we cops read what is unsaid. It comes with experience – in other circumstances we might have made good diplomats.’ He looked sideways at Malone. ‘Except Inspector Malone, who is notoriously undiplomatic.’

‘Nice coffee,’ said Malone diplomatically, holding up his cup.

Her first smile had been forced, a muscular effort, but now she appeared a little more relaxed; she shook her head and smiled at both of them. She looked like a sex bomb, but she had a cool mind that could always control it.

‘Yes – but. I just, I don’t know, I felt she wasn’t entirely a stranger here.’

‘Did you query her on it?’

‘Yes. Diplomatically.’ Just a faint smile.

‘And what did she say?’

She took a memory pause; then she said, ‘I’m being mean, but it was like she was making up an answer. Then she said she had been out here eight or nine years ago on a quick business trip. She had stayed at the Regent.’

‘Five-star,’ said Malone. ‘So why did she choose the Southern Savoy this time? It’d be struggling to pick up three stars.’

‘Did she let her hair down when you took her to lunch?’ Random had finished his coffee.

She got up, took his cup and poured more coffee for him. ‘Not really. We weren’t exactly girls on an equal footing – she was the Ambassador’s wife.’ She came back, sat down, paused again as if she realized she had spoken in the past tense: was the Ambassador’s wife. ‘She seemed to have tightened up after that first shopping visit. She wasn’t rude, but she was – well, distant. As if suddenly she had taken a dislike to, I dunno, Sydney or Australia. It happened after this guy spoke to her.’

‘Which guy?’ Random had almost finished his second cup. Slow in almost everything else, he was a quick coffee drinker, not a sipper.

‘We hadn’t started lunch when this guy came up, said, “Aren’t you –” I didn’t catch the name, he sorta mumbled it the way –’

‘The way Australians do,’ said Malone. ‘My wife is always telling me to open my mouth. She’s Dutch.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Ms Caporetto, trying to sound polite. ‘Well, anyway, she just froze him. She just said a blunt “No” and he apologized and sorta limped away.’

‘Did you get a good look at the man?’ asked Malone.

‘Not really. I was looking at her. He was short and, I’m not sure, bald. He stopped by for just a few seconds. The place was crowded and he just sort of disappeared.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Even at the time I thought it a bit strange – she just made no comment. She didn’t look at me, picked up her menu and, I think I’ve got it right, said, “I’ll have the oysters and the barramundi.”’

‘So she knew about our oysters and our fish?’ said Malone.

‘Well, yes, it seemed so. But she’d been in Canberra a coupla months – no, at that time a month or maybe five weeks – and maybe they’d told her what was best.’

‘What else do they have to talk about down in Canberra?’ said Random. ‘Where did you have lunch?’

‘At Catalina. It was a Friday, all the eastern suburbs ladies were there.’

‘What do you know about her back in the States?’

‘Nothing. I knew nothing about the Ambassador till we heard he was coming. He’s from Kansas City. I come from Philly – Philadelphia. Anything west of the Mississippi is still Indian territory to us.’

Just like us, thought Malone, though on a smaller scale. Sydney’s eastern suburbs thought of the western suburbs as Indian territory. ‘What’s he like?’

‘Charming. He’s no hayseed or cowboy –’ She stopped, shook her head again, looked squarely at the two men. ‘Why am I talking to you like this? Because you’re cops?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Malone. ‘Because, like us, you want to know who killed the Ambassador’s wife.’

She pondered a moment, then she nodded. ‘Okay. As I said, he’s no hayseed. He graduated from the University of Missouri, then he went on to Oxford, England – he was there two or three years behind President Clinton. He’s very much okay and the word from Canberra is that he’s very popular and respected on the diplomatic circuit. Being a US ambassador is not the easiest job in the world, no matter where you are.’

‘What is the security set-up? Is there an FBI agent at the embassy?’

‘No, he’s here at the consulate – that’s the posting. But he went down to Canberra last night when Mrs Pavane didn’t return there.’

Malone glanced at Random. ‘Did you know there was an FBI man stationed here?’

‘Yes. It’s not top secret, but it’s not broadcast. So far we’ve had no dealings with him.’

Malone felt uneasy, but said nothing. Then Consul-General Avery came in. His face was stiff, but he seemed to have recovered from the shock that Random and Malone had brought him. He looked ready for business, unsettling though it might be.

‘I spoke to our Chief of Mission first, then the Ambassador came on the line. It’s floored him – he sounded as if I’d hit him with a ten-pound hammer. He’s coming up right away – they’ve got a plane standing by. He’ll be here in an hour, an hour and a half at the most. Where is Mrs Pavane’s body?’

‘At the morgue,’ said Random. ‘If you could meet him at the airport and take him there – it’s out at Glebe. We’ll let them know to expect him. He’ll need to identify the body. Then we’d like to see him.’

‘Meet him here, will you? We’d like to keep him away from the media for as long as possible, at least till he’s got over the shock. Once it’s on the wire services or the reps here of our bigger papers …’ His brows came down, his mouth twisted and for a moment he looked ugly. Then his face cleared and he looked at his watch. ‘Say one-thirty?’

‘We’ll be here,’ said Random, then turned to Gina Caporetto. ‘We won’t identify Mrs Pavane till we’ve talked to the Ambassador. We’ll keep her out of the news till then. But then –’

‘Then,’ said Avery with the voice of experience, ‘the fan starts whirring.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Random. ‘Inspector Malone will be handling it. He’s a good man on fans and what sometimes flies out of them.’

‘Shit,’ said Malone, but under his breath.

Going down in the lift, in the long drop from the 59th floor, Malone felt his spirits descending, too. There were only the two of them in the lift and he said, ‘Given my choice I think I’ll take the hotel’s cleaner and the knife job on him. You can have Mrs Pavane.’

‘You have no choice, chum. My Welsh mother used to say –’

‘Forget it. You Welsh are a melancholy lot.’

‘So are you Irish at times. Like now.’

3

With Celtic pessimism Malone believed in the invasion of the irrational into the orderly. But he did not always accept the toss of the coin by God or the gods, whichever one believed in. He would not accept the second toss of the coin.

He dropped Random off at Police Centre and drove on back to Homicide in Strawberry Hills. There were no hills and there had never been any strawberries, but the voters of Sydney lived and worked in other areas with names just as illusory: Ultimo, Sans Souci, Como. God set a bad example for developers when He named the Garden of Eden.

Malone rode up to the fourth floor, let himself in the security door and found Phil Truach sitting with Clements, waiting for him.

‘How’d you go?’ asked Clements sympathetically.

Malone told them of the visit to the Consul-General’s office. ‘I think it’s going to be a really bad headache. Let’s talk of something simpler. How’d you go, Phil?’

‘I haven’t come up with much. Nobody saw the cleaner knifed – he was well and truly dead when another guy found him. He wasn’t popular, but I didn’t get the idea that anyone there would want to top him. He was found in the room where they keep all the cleaning equipment. There didn’t appear to have been any struggle – all the buckets and mops and things were neatly stacked. Unless the killer put everything back … Crime Scene have dusted the room for prints. They’ll let us know.’

‘Who was he?’

Truach looked at his notebook. ‘Boris Jones, aged forty, his card said. He was a Russian, they said, but he’d changed his name. Mrs Jones is in there –’ He nodded towards one of the interview rooms. ‘I went out to see her, she lives out at Rozelle. She asked who was in charge and I said you and she said you were the one she wanted to talk to.’

‘Why me?’

‘I dunno. Ask her.’

‘How’s she taking it? His murder?’

‘She’s pretty calm, considering.’ Truach looked towards the closed door of the interview room. ‘She’s been bashed. A black eye and some bruises.’

‘The husband did it?’

‘She didn’t say. Just said she wanted to talk to you. She hardly said a word all the way back here. She’s got a friend with her, a Mrs Quantock. She does all the talking.’

Malone stood up. ‘Righto, I’ll talk to her. But she’s your girl. I’ve got enough on my plate with the Ambassador’s missus. Russ, make sure that Regent Street has got the names and addresses of everyone who was booked in last night at the Southern Savoy. They can start doing the donkey-work, checking everyone on the hotel’s register.’ Then he looked at Clements’ still-clean desk. ‘Get ready, mate. That desk is going to see more paper than a ticker-tape parade.’

‘I can’t wait,’ said Clements and slumped further back in his chair.

Malone went into the interview room, motioning Gail Lee to follow him. It was standard procedure that two officers had to be present during an interview; he chose Gail because of the two other women in the room. In the climate of women he, with a wife and two daughters, was showerproof; but heavy weather was another matter. Not that he expected heavy weather in this room: that was to come when he met Ambassador Pavane.

The two women were sitting side by side at the single table in the room. One was in her mid-forties: age and measurement: there was a lot of Mrs Quantock and she looked ready to use her weight and experience. The other woman was slight, dark-haired and would have been attractive but for the damage to her face.

‘Well!’ said Mrs Quantock; she had a voice for shouting over backyard fences, several of them. ‘We’ve had to wait long enough!’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Quantock. There was another murder at the same hotel –’

‘Another?’ She looked at Mrs Jones. ‘Delia –?’

Delia Jones looked across the table as Malone sat down. ‘Hullo, Scobie.’

Malone was accustomed to shock; it came with a policeman’s lot. But not for the shock of meeting Delia Bates, the long-forgotten love of twenty-five years ago, now the widow of a murdered man. Recognition had not been instant: twenty-year-old Delia was partially hidden in this woman with the battered face sitting opposite him.

‘Delia –’ Involuntarily he put his hand across the table to press hers. ‘Jesus, I didn’t know –’

‘You know each other?’ Mrs Quantock was the sort of friend who would never be left out of any relationship. She would intrude with the best of intentions, swamping the friend with rescue efforts, throwing lifebelts like hoopla rings. She glared at Malone: ‘You didn’t know what sorta bastard he was? He’s been belting her all their married life, in front of the kids –’

Delia, still with her eyes on Malone, put her hand on her friend’s arm. ‘It’s okay, Rosie. We haven’t seen each other in twenty-five years.’ As if she had counted every one of them. ‘He knows nothing about Boris. He’s married and has got kids of his own.’

Malone was aware of Gail Lee observing all this with what he called her Oriental lack of expression (though never to her face). She was half-Chinese and she had never succumbed to the temptation to favour her Australian half; serenity is not an Australian expression, at least not amongst the city voters, and she always looked serene. At the moment her face was blank.

Malone was a private man and he did not like his private life exposed; not even that of twenty-five years ago. He had been in love then; or thought so. Till he had gone to London and met Lisa, and then Delia and all the other girls he had known had dropped out of his mind. He had come back to Sydney (he had that year been on another case that had taken him into diplomatic territory; he had gone to London to arrest the Australian High Commissioner, another ambassador, for murder), had spent two days finding the courage to be decent, then met Delia and told her it was all over, that he had fallen in love, deeply, with another girl. Delia had looked at him, saying nothing, then she had got up from the table where they had been at an outdoor café and walked away without a word and out of his life. He had sat there, feeling an utter bastard; then there had been the deep feeling of relief (an honest emotion that bastards can feel) and he got up and went down to the old GPO and booked a call to Lisa, still in London. He would never be able to explain that to Gail Lee. Nor had he ever fully explained it to Lisa. Girls one has slept with should be left undisturbed.

‘I dunno,’ said Mrs Quantock, ‘I dunno how you can sit there so bloody calm, like nothing’s happened –’

‘I was always calm, wasn’t I, Scobie?’

‘Not always.’ Remembering how she had been in bed.

‘No, not always.’ For a moment there was the hint of a smile at the corner of her bruised mouth; then it was gone: ‘I didn’t show it, but I wasn’t calm when you told me you were going to marry another girl.’

‘Delia, please –’ He had taken his hand away from hers.

There was silence in the small room; even Mrs Quantock seemed engulfed by it. Then Gail Lee said quietly, ‘Mrs Jones, do you know anyone who would want to kill your husband?’

Delia looked at her as if seeing her for the first time; she glanced back at Malone, as if waiting for him to say something, then looked at Gail again. ‘Yes.’

‘Who?’

‘Me.’

‘Oh, for Crissake, Delia!’ Mrs Quantock moved even closer to her, grabbed her friend’s hand. ‘Don’t be so – so bloody cool! Your life’s been hell –’

Delia pressed Rosie Quantock’s hand again, stared straight at Malone. ‘I killed him, Scobie. I stabbed him, I dunno how many times.’

There was silence again but for a gasp from Mrs Quantock. Malone sat back, gathering himself together, trying to find the cop who had been lost in himself for a minute or two. ‘Delia, if you’re going to make a confession to killing your husband, I’ll have to turn that on.’ He pointed to the video recorder. ‘Then we’ll have to warn you –’

‘I know. I watch The Bill, Law and Order, all those shows –’

‘We have to warn you anyway,’ he said and did so. ‘Righto – What’s the matter?’

‘You still say that.’ Again the small smile. ‘Righto.’

‘Yes, I guess I do. Now I’ll put the question – did you kill your husband Boris Jones?’

‘Yes, this morning at the hotel where he worked, the Southern Savoy. In the room where he kept all the cleaning stuff.’

‘Was it self-defence? Did he bash you?’ He should not have put leading questions like that; he was still coming back out of that dim distant past. The coin had been spun again, the irrational had invaded the orderly again.

‘He bashed me before he went to work last night.’ She put her hand up to her face almost automatically: as if she had been doing it for years.

‘You went to the hotel, followed him to work, to kill him?’ said Gail.

‘Hold on!’ Rosie Quantock was there again, throwing lifebelts. ‘If you’re gunna question her like that, she needs a solicitor. Keep quiet, Delia, don’t tell ’em any more.’

‘It’s all right, Rosie–’

‘It’s not all right! For Crissake, love, think of yourself and the kids!’ She looked at Malone: as Delia’s old lover, not a cop: ‘Tell her for her own good –’

Malone switched off the recorder. ‘We’ll have to hold you till you get someone here to brief you, Delia. We’ll send you over to Police Centre, to Surry Hills, and they’ll hold you there. Do you have a solicitor? Better if you can get one who has some experience in this sort of thing. A conveyancing solicitor isn’t going to be much good for you.’

‘We’ll get one,’ said Rosie Quantock. She’s a pain in the arse, thought Malone, but she’s the sort of friend everyone should have. ‘I’ll take care of it, Delia. I’ll take care of the kids, too. And get on to your mother –’

‘How old are the children?’ asked Gail.

‘Eleven and twelve, a boy and a girl.’ Delia looked at Malone, read the question in his face: ‘No, I didn’t start late. Boris was my second husband, they’re his kids. I have a daughter who’s twenty.’

‘Where’s she?’ asked Malone.

‘In England – London. With her father. He’s English, a teacher.’

English, Russian: because she had been jilted by an Australian? ‘Do you want us to get in touch with her?’

She shrugged, the calmness still there. There was just a faint shake of the head, not of negation but of wonder, as if she were only just coming to realize the seriousness of her situation. She gazed at Malone for a long moment, then she said, ‘We never thought it would come to this, did we, Scobie?’

He was all cop now, the only protection. ‘No, Delia, we didn’t … Detective Lee and another officer will take you over to Surry Hills.’ He turned to Rosie Quantock. ‘How soon can you get a lawyer for her?’

‘Give me an hour.’ She could raise an army in an hour, you knew it would not be beyond her.

‘Don’t rush, get a good one. Detective Lee and the other officer will then question Delia –’

‘No,’ said Delia.

He looked at her. ‘No what?’

‘You’re the only one I’ll talk to.’

‘Delia, I have another homicide to look into –’

‘No.’ It was more than calmness now, it was cold adamancy.

He took a deep breath, trying to remain calm himself. ‘Righto, but it may not be till late afternoon before I can get back to you.’

‘That will do,’ said Rosie Quantock and stood up, putting an arm under Delia’s. ‘Buck up, love. It’s not over till the Fat Lady sings.’

‘She used to be in the chorus at the Opera House.’ Again there was just the hint of a smile at the corner of the bruised mouth. She looked almost relaxed again, as if the only point that had worried her was that Malone might not question her. And now he had promised that he would.

‘Were you a Valkyrie?’ Gail asked Rosie Quantock and Malone could see that she was trying to keep the mood light.

‘What else? Come on, love. We’re still ahead.’

She would not give in, she would be raising spirits, like flags.

Chapter Two
1

After the women had gone, Sheryl Dallen going with Gail Lee, Malone called Clements and Phil Truach into his office. Clements examined him frankly and Malone stared back at him.

‘You’ve got a problem,’ said the big man and lowered himself into his usual seat on the couch beneath the window. Out on the ledge a pigeon looked in at them with an impersonal eye.

‘You’re right, a big one.’

‘She did her husband?’ said Truach.

‘Yes. But this is personal – for me. Delia Jones is an old girlfriend of mine. We went steady for almost a year. She expected me to marry her.’

Clements frowned. ‘Delia – Bates? Bateman? You brought her once to a party. Her?’

‘Her. Delia Bates.’

‘No problem,’ said Truach. ‘I’ll handle it, you don’t need to come within a mile of her.’

‘That won’t work, Phil. She won’t talk to anyone but me. I tried her with Gail, but no go. I’m just starting to remember how stubborn she could be.’

Clements, the personal friend, said, ‘Does Lisa know about her? I mean before you married her?’

‘I mentioned her once or twice – just joking, I think. Do you talk about your old girlfriends to Romy? Do you tell your wife about them, Phil?’

‘What old girlfriends?’ said Truach. ‘I was an altar boy till I met her. Of course, there was Father Mulcahy –’

‘Righto, lay off. This is no time for joking –’

‘Sorry. So she was the one who did the damage? Because he belted her?’

‘Evidently he’s been doing it for years. He had a go at her last night.’

‘So it was self-defence?’ Clements, like most cops, was sympathetic to battered women.

‘They must of had a fight at the hotel,’ said Truach. ‘Maybe he tried to belt her again, her following him to work. The room where he was done, everything was in its place when we looked at it. But Norma Nickles rang in with a preliminary report. There were prints, blood on them, on a lot of the stuff, the buckets and mops and things. As if someone had picked it all up and put it back in place.’

‘That could be her.’ Memory was coming back. She had been wild and uninhibited in bed, but once out of it she had been as neat as a drill sergeant, a place for everything and everything in its place. She had dressed with almost convent-like neatness, then made the bed that they had wrecked. They had joked about her passion for order. Neither of them had known then that her life would be totally disordered. Or so it looked. ‘She was like that. She could make a rugby scrum look neat.’

‘Then that could save her,’ said Clements. ‘She gets a good lawyer, they plead the bashing and the self-defence –’

‘We can make it look –’ said Truach.

‘Phil, don’t make it look like anything but the facts. I don’t want some prosecutor tearing you apart … She was my girlfriend, but that was twenty-five years ago. We’ve both had our own lives since then. I’ve been the lucky one …’

Clements stepped out of his cop’s role: ‘Are you gunna tell Lisa?’

‘Whom –’ He had been coached by Lisa who, like most educated foreigners, had more respect for English grammar than the natives. ‘Whom do you think she is going to be interested in, an ex-girlfriend who’s murdered her husband or the murdered wife of the American Ambassador?’

‘The Ambassador’s wife,’ said Truach. ‘That will be the one all over the news tonight –’

‘You’re kidding. You’re still influenced by Father Whatshisname. She will ask me about Delia and so will my daughters. And even Tom will look at me with new interest. They know I’ve never looked at another woman since I met Lisa and they think my life before her was just a blank. Or at worst I spent all my time with blokes.’

Clements stood up. ‘Let’s put Delia on the back burner for a while. It’s time you went down to the Yanks again, to meet the Ambassador.’

‘I think I might ask for a transfer to Fingerprints.’ Malone got to his feet, feeling stiff and aged. ‘Nothing there turns round and bites you. Call Greg and tell him I’ll pick him up.’

The pigeon on the window ledge had been joined by four others. They sat there sheltering against the south wind, looking over their shoulders at the humans inside, their heads bobbing as if in gossip. Malone leaned across and banged on the window and the pigeons took off, caught at once by the wind.

‘Bloody birds, crapping all the time on that ledge –’

‘Simmer down,’ said Clements. ‘Don’t take Delia down with you to the Yanks. Leave her here with me and Phil.’

Malone nodded appreciatively. ‘Yeah, you’re right … Phil, get someone to check the restaurant, Catalina, where Miss Caporetto took Mrs Pavane for lunch. Get the names of all male guests that day. Restaurants always ask for a contact number, case you don’t turn up. We just have to hope they kept their booking list for – how long was it?’

‘Two weeks,’ said Clements, who had put it all on the computer.

‘Righto, get on with it. We’ll try and find that bloke.’

‘I don’t want to keep harping on her,’ said Truach, ‘but what about Mrs Jones?’

For a moment the name meant nothing: it was as if he were trying to shut Delia out of his mind. ‘Let’s hope she comes to her senses and talks to Gail and Sheryl.’

‘Yeah,’ said Clements but didn’t sound encouraging. ‘It would be nice if someone would come in and talk to us about the Ambassador’s wife.’

‘Fat chance,’ said Malone and left to pick up Greg Random. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the pigeons come back to the window ledge. They knew better than to be blown about by the wind.

Random came out of Police Centre, got into the car beside Malone and said without preamble, ‘I’ve set up the Incident Room here at the Centre – that way I can keep an eye on things. I’ve asked your two girls, Gail and Sheryl, to run it with the senior sergeant from Surry Hills. We’ll treat both murders as the one investigation till we’ve got things sorted out. Gail told me the woman who knifed her husband won’t talk to anyone but you.’

Malone told him why, as he drove through a snaking river of drivers who raged at everyone else for their own frustrations. ‘I’ve got to get out of it somehow, Greg.’

‘Do the media know about the relationship?’

‘Not yet, not unless she wants to tell them. Gail tells me she was photographed, by the press and by the TV cameras, when she was brought in from Rozelle. At that time she hadn’t been charged, she was just the widow of the murdered man. You know, the usual hearts-and-flowers thing. They wanted to photograph her two kids, but they’d been taken away by their grandmother. It’s a mess, Greg.’

Random said nothing more till they had parked the car in the basement of the MLC building and they were walking towards the lifts. Then: ‘Keep her at arm’s length. Get any closer and you’re off that case.’

‘You couldn’t make me a better offer.’

There were only four people in the Consul-General’s office besides Avery and Ms Caporetto. Malone had expected the Ambassador to bring an entourage. Newsreel clips of delegations to conferences, football teams running into a stadium, preparations for war: all had shown that Americans never arrived under-manned. More was better: it was a second national motto. Like sweat, resentment was building up against the possibility of his turf being invaded. Even if, given his druthers, he’d druther be in Tibooburra, the State foreign legion outpost.

‘Ambassador Pavane,’ said Avery, and the tall, handsome blond man stepped forward and shook hands with Random and Malone.

‘I’ve identified – my – my wife.’ The break in his voice was barely perceptible. ‘This is Walter Kortright, our DCM. Roger Bodine, our RSO. And Joe Himes, FBI.’

Initials, initials, thought Malone, and his puzzlement showed. As it did with Random.

‘Sorry,’ said Pavane, reading their faces. ‘Walter is our Deputy Charge of Mission. Roger is the Regional Security Officer. He works with your Federal Police, when called upon.’

‘And Mr Himes?’ asked Random.

Pavane didn’t answer, just looked at Himes. The Ambassador looked suddenly tired, as if he wanted to be shed of his role. He was well-built, looked very fit and had a presence; but at the moment, Malone felt, it was all facade. The man had been punched hollow by the death of his wife and the manner of it. He was above politics, investigation politics, at the moment. Himes could answer for himself.

‘It’s your turf, Superintendent.’ Himes understood the term; he also obviously understood the territorial imperative. Malone abruptly remembered movies where American local officers resented the intrusion of the FBI. Himes might, just might, be easy to work with.

He was a thickset, black-haired man with a husky voice and eyes that once might have been fearless but had learned caution. ‘I’ll help all I can – when asked.’

‘Same here,’ said Bodine, the RSO. He looked as if, like Avery, he had been a football player; but not a quarterback, not by at least two halves. He was b-i-i-i-g; and fat. The diplomatic party circuit had got to him, his security was ungirdled. He had a voice that went with his build, like an internal landslide.

‘What’s the media situation?’ Kortright was a soft-featured man with thinning blond hair and an almost incongruously dark moustache, like a military character struggling to get out of an appeaser. His question had little bite to it.

‘So far,’ said Malone, ‘they only know Mrs Pavane under the name she registered at the hotel. Mrs Belinda Paterson.’

‘Who?’ Pavane was puzzled.

Malone looked at Random, who nodded; then he said to the Ambassador, ‘Mr Pavane, could I see you alone?’

Now there was puzzlement on the faces of Kortright and Bodine. Himes was blank-faced and Malone recognized a law officer who had been in a similar situation, telling secrets best left unrevealed.

Pavane looked at the Consul-General, who said, ‘Use Miz Caporetto’s office.’

Malone and the Ambassador went out and crossed to the press secretary’s office. Malone closed the door, turned to find the Ambassador had sat down heavily in one of the chairs in front of the desk. The coffee-pot was on the hot-plate, but this was no time for offering coffee. Something stronger might be better, but there was nothing in sight in the room. Malone sat down in the other chair and waited till the older man at last looked across at him.

‘Sorry, Inspector. I’m still coming to terms –’

Malone decided to ease his way into the situation: ‘Did your wife tell you where she was going in Sydney? Why she was up here?’

‘She was going shopping. And to the Art Gallery. She phoned me, but I was out and my secretary spoke to her –’

‘When was this?’

‘I think she said two-thirty. My wife said to tell me she’d be back on a later plane than the five o’clock one. That was all.’ He was looking at Malone, but his gaze was almost blank. ‘I just don’t understand –’ Then he made a helpless gesture with a big hand. ‘It’s just not like her –’

Malone said gently, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to tell you something that will further upset you. That’s why I asked could I see you alone –’

Pavane waited, a hand tightening on the arm of his chair.

Malone always hated this intrusion into another man or woman’s personal life: ‘There had been intercourse before your wife was murdered –’

The hand tightened even more: ‘She’d been raped?’

‘No, sir. The Medical Examiner said there was no evidence of that – rape always shows. Bruises, marks, things like that.’

The hand fell loose. ‘Jesus Christ, you know what you’re saying?’

Husband to husband, not cop to diplomat: ‘Yes, sir. And I hate telling you this. But it may be our only clue to who killed her. They are taking semen samples, there’ll be DNA tests when we have a suspect –’

Pavane waved a hand, not wanting to hear any more. He looked older, but age is a ghost that comes and goes till finally it settles. At last he said, ‘You know what you’re saying? You are accusing my wife –’

‘Sir, please –’ Malone held up his own hand. ‘I’m not accusing your wife of anything. I hate scandal and I’m not interested in it. All I want is to find out who killed her.’ He was about to add: and why. But now was not the moment.

Pavane sat silent and at last Malone said, ‘You were surprised when I said she was registered as Mrs Belinda Paterson. Was that her name before you were married?’

‘No.’

Again a long silence, then Malone said, ‘What was her name?’

A deep sigh; then Pavane’s gaze focused again. He frowned, drew in a deep breath: ‘Page, Wilhelmina Page. But she was always called Billie.’

‘You never heard her mention the name Paterson?’

‘Never.’

‘She had a credit card in that name.’

‘I never saw it. She had an American Express card as my wife, Mrs Billie Pavane, but I never checked her account. She was a good businesswoman, she was experienced.’

‘Tell me something about her.’ Still gently.

Pavane took his time, as if he had been asked to open a very personal diary. ‘We’ve been married two years – very happily married. My first wife died six years ago and I thought I’d never marry again. Then …’ He turned a direct gaze on Malone. ‘Are you married?’

‘Yes. Very happily. I have two daughters and a son, all grown.’

‘I have a son by my first marriage. He disappeared after his mother died. We never got on –’ He stopped. ‘Do you want to hear all this?’

‘I want to hear about your second wife. Had you known her long?’

‘No, not that long. She came to Kansas City – that’s my home town – about four years ago. She was a business consultant with our largest bank – handled public relations, things like that. I met her through politics – we were both raising funds for a local senator.’

‘You said she came to Kansas City – where did she come from? Her credit card gave an address in Oregon.’ He took out his notebook, checked. ‘Corvallis. Is it a big town? Was she a business consultant there?’

‘It’s not large. The State College is there. She was born there, her father worked for the college – not an academic, he was just some worker around the grounds.’

‘She went to college? Graduated there?’

‘No. Her parents were killed in an auto accident when she was – I’m a bit hazy here – seventeen or eighteen. She was an only child. She left Corvallis and went out to San Francisco. Look, why all the background?’

‘Mr Pavane, we’re puzzled why she booked into a hundred-dollar-a-night hotel, under an assumed name. I take it that isn’t the usual sort of hotel she’d stay at?’

‘No-o. I’m just as puzzled as you are. We’ve never been short of money. I’m comfortable –’ Meaning he was wealthy; or, in Australian terms, rich. ‘Billie liked the best – she was frank about that and I didn’t mind. My first wife was the same. Women are like that.’

He wasn’t entirely a diplomat: the three Malone women would have had reservations about him after that remark. But Malone was diplomatic: ‘Yes, I guess they are. Had your wife been married before? She was what – in her late thirties?’

‘Thirty-eight. No, she hadn’t been married. She’d had boyfriends, but she had never settled for a husband. She was too busy making her career, she said. I – well, I accepted that. I didn’t talk about my first wife and she didn’t talk about her ex-boyfriends. You’re a married man, you know how it is.’

Not yet: I haven’t been home so far. ‘You said you met in politics. Did she have political ambitions?’

‘No, not at all. Not as far as running for office. We were working together on last year’s presidential campaign – there were hints of an ambassadorship for me and that excited her. We thought of one of the smaller countries in Europe. Denmark, maybe – I’d been to Copenhagen when I was at university in England and I’d liked it. Then the President named Australia – he thought I had certain talents, connections, that would work out here.’

‘And your wife liked that? I understand she’d been out here.’

Pavane looked puzzled again. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Miss Caporetto. She went to lunch with your wife and your wife told her she’d been here on a quick business trip some years ago.’

Pavane shook his head emphatically. ‘Miss Caporetto must’ve got it wrong. My wife didn’t want to come here.’

‘Why not?’

Pavane almost smiled, took his time. ‘Do you want me to be frank or diplomatic, Inspector?’

‘Frank, sir. I’m not so nationalistic that I think this is Utopia. One of our Prime Ministers once said not to forget we were at the arse-end of the world. Or words to that effect.’

The Ambassador did smile this time, though it was an effort. ‘Those were the words my wife used. Though she pronounced it ass-end.’

‘In the end she changed her mind?’

‘It took a lot of persuasion on my part.’ He was silent a long moment and Malone let him take his time. Then: ‘How much do we have to tell the media?’

‘Just the facts, sir. How she was murdered, who she is. Nothing more than that. We don’t have to tell them what happened beforehand.’

Pavane was grateful: ‘You’re an understanding man, Inspector.’

Malone nodded in acknowledgement. ‘Why did she come to Sydney on this particular trip?’

‘She wanted to go to the New South Wales Art Gallery. There’s an exhibition on there – the best of Australian art. Back home in Kansas City she’s on the board of the Nelson Gallery – that’s our main gallery. My father bought and donated paintings to it. She’s on leave of absence, but she’d told the board she would look at this collection – we don’t see much Australian art in our Mid-West.’

‘Righto, sir. We’ll see if she ever got to the gallery. As for what I’ve told you about last night, we’ll keep a lid on it as much as possible.’

‘Is there likely to be a leak from – well, the morgue staff?’

‘The DDFM –’ He grinned, trying to lighten the mood. “The Deputy Director of Forensic Medicine, she did the post-mortem –’

‘I met her at the morgue.’

‘She’s a close personal friend of me and my wife and she’s the wife of my second-in-command at Homicide. She would sack anyone who talked out of turn to the media.’

‘Good enough. I apologize for questioning them. Will you tell Joe Himes?’

‘I’m afraid I’ll have to, sir, if he’s to work with us. But no one else.’ He stood up, put out his hand as the other man rose. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ll do everything I can to keep the dirt out of this. It’s not going to be a tabloid carnival.’

‘I’m going back to Canberra this afternoon. I want the body of my wife shipped back to Kansas City – I’ll go with her. Dr Clements, your friend, said they would release her within the next day or two, soon as the post-mortem is finished. There’ll be a press release put out from the embassy when I get back this afternoon. It will say as little as possible.’

‘We’ll try to do the same at this end, sir. You’ll be coming back from Kansas City?’

Pavane hesitated. ‘I’ll think about it. I really loved my wife, Mr Malone – we were very happy together. I have to get used to the idea that she is gone.’ Just before he opened the door to go out he turned. ‘Thanks, Mr Malone.’

Malone could only nod.

2

The Consul-General’s office was a bustle of departure. Random left at the same time as the Ambassador, DCM Kortright and RSO Bodine. Malone and Himes borrowed Ms Caporetto’s office again. Malone stood at the window gazing down on Martin Place at the ants coming back from lunch. There had been the usual lunchtime concert in the small amphitheatre in the middle of the tree-lined plaza and the musicians were packing their gear and moving on to – what? And what were all the human ants scurrying to? From here on the 59th level destiny was a distant prospect. He turned back to Himes: ‘Joe, what are your feelings on destiny?’

Himes was seated in the chair behind the desk, the presiding chair. Pull your head in, Malone, he’s not taking over. ‘I never worry about destiny. That’s for judges and juries.’

Malone grinned: he was going to like this man. ‘Righto –’

‘Righto? I thought only upper-class Englishmen said that. You know – “Righto, old chap.”’

‘If I’d been born an upper-class Englishman, my dad would’ve strangled me at birth. He’s never been near Ireland, but he’s an Irish patriot – more so than my mother, who was born there. No, righto has just stuck to my tongue since I was a kid.’

‘What do you say when things are okay?’

‘Okay.’

Himes gazed at Malone and after a long pause said, ‘I think you and I are gonna get along, Scobie.’

‘I hope so, Joe. We’re going to need help – a lot of it.’ He sat down, then told Himes of the intimate personal side of the Pavane murder. ‘We’re not putting out anything about that – our media would make a meal of it.’

‘Not just yours. Ours, too.’

‘There’s something else besides the sex bit. Mrs Pavane has some mystery about her, something that seems to puzzle even the Ambassador. Does the FBI have a bureau in Oregon?’

Himes smiled; he had big white teeth that seemed to alter the whole set of his face. Almost impish, like a boy of long ago suddenly appearing in the man he had become. ‘We’ve got ’em all over. The local cops think we’re a pain in the ass.’

Malone returned the smile. ‘We think the same about our Feds here. Anyhow, can you have them trace –’ He looked at his notebook again. ‘Mrs Pavane’s maiden name was Wilhelmina Page, but she was known as Billie. She also used an American Express card under the name of Mrs Belinda Paterson. Home address, Corvallis. Her parents, who were killed in a car accident, lived there – roughly, I guess, in the late seventies. Her father had some sort of job at the State College, a groundsman or something.’

‘I’ll get on to that pronto.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Unless they’re having an early night.’

‘The FBI sleeps?’

Again the smile. ‘Not as much as the CIA.’

In heaven the seraphim criticize the cherubim, who look down on the thrones: the original bureaucracy.

‘Anything else?’

‘Mrs Pavane told Miss Caporetto, one day at lunch, that she’d made a quick business trip to Sydney some years ago. The Ambassador says that can’t be right. But at the lunch some feller came up, tried to speak to Mrs Pavane, but she just wiped him. Is there any way you can trace if a Miss Page or a Mrs Paterson came to Sydney eight or nine years ago? We’ll check with our Immigration.’

Himes made a note. ‘I’m told there was another homicide at the same hotel. Any connection?’

‘We don’t think so. It’s a domestic. I’m on my way now to question the wife.’

‘I don’t envy you. In my job I never got caught up in domestics, not like local cops. This one –’ He shook his head as if in disbelief. ‘This one’s the closest I’ve ever been to a domestic.’

‘Joe, a domestic for us is when the husband kills the wife or vice versa.’

‘I know. But from what you’ve told me, this isn’t the usual security thing. Terrorists, someone with a grudge against the US – it looks like nothing more than plain murder. To which Mrs Pavane might’ve contributed by being where she was in that flea-bag.’

‘It’s not a flea-bag, Joe. It’s just a hotel where the rate is about three or four hundred dollars a night less than she’d be used to paying. What do you know about her?’

‘You couldn’t meet a nicer woman. She had – what do they call it? – the common touch. I know no more about her than what I saw down in Canberra – the embassy staff love her. She’d have been checked by the FBI back home before she and the Ambassador got the appointment – it’s standard procedure –’

‘They missed somewhere along the line. They didn’t link her with Mrs Belinda Paterson.’

‘The FBI is thorough –’

‘Joe, I’m not criticizing. I’m stating a fact, that’s all. Mrs Pavane apparently has had three names – I’d like to find out which was her real one. Then, maybe, we can start tracing her killer.’

‘You think it was someone from her past who killed her?’

‘I haven’t a clue, Joe. But it would be better if it were, wouldn’t it?’

Himes stood up, looking weary. ‘I dunno, Scobie. There are no good aspects to murder, are there?’

‘I’m not sure of that, either. I’ve seen some bastards who were better dead than alive.’ He, too, stood up. They both looked weary enough to be at the end of a case rather than the beginning of it. ‘What if the bloke who killed her didn’t know who she really was? She had all her valuables up in the room with her. Only her passport was in the safe deposit box. Didn’t she want him to know who she was?’

‘I hate the thought she might just have been there as a pick-up. Are you gonna ask the Ambassador what their sex life was like?’

Malone grinned without humour. ‘I think I’ll leave that to Foreign Affairs.’

3

On his way out Malone looked in on Consul-General Avery. ‘We’ve started, sir. But there’s a long way to go.’

‘I once played in a Rose Bowl game. We were behind thirty-eight to nil at the end of the second quarter.’

‘Did you win?’

‘No, but we gave UCLA a helluva fright.’

Malone shook his head. ‘I’ve spent all my police career trying to give crims a fright. It never works, not with the pros. This feller who killed Mrs Pavane, he’s way ahead at the moment.’

‘You sound pessimistic.’

‘No, just realistic. It’s a cop’s philosophy.’

Ms Caporetto rode down in the lift with him. She was wearing a thick brown coat and the sort of tea-cosy hat that he thought was worn only by seven-year-olds with fashion-conscious mothers. She did not look demure, nor as innocent as a seven-year-old, but the body was not visible to be whistled at.

‘I’m on my way to see your Premier.’

‘Is he getting into the act?’

‘I don’t think so. It’s a courtesy call on our part. We want to ask if everything can be played down, if and when the questions come up in Parliament.’

‘Not if. When. Another twenty-four hours and the Opposition will be asking why we police haven’t wrapped it up. It’s par for the course. Never be constructive when in Opposition.’

‘I love working here. You’re such a primitive lot.’ But as she stepped out of the lift she gave him a smile that said it was a compliment.

He drove back to Police Centre and Delia Jones. The day had turned grey, but the clouds were still high, scarred by wind. Down at street level another wind chased paper down the gutters, straightened people into mannikins as they turned corners into it. A day for a grey mood.

He first went into the Incident Room, where Gail Lee and Sheryl Dallen had finished the display board. There was not much: a few photos, names, diagrams. There would have been less if the coverage had been of only a single murder.

‘Not much, is there?’

‘Did you get anything new from the Ambassador?’ asked Gail Lee.

‘Just that Mrs Pavane has a murky past. No,’ he said as both women raised their eyebrows. ‘Nothing dirty. It’s just that even Mr Pavane can’t tell us much about his wife before he married her.’

Then he looked at the photo of the dead Boris Jones. Even in death there was a look of cruelty in the broad Slav face; or was that his own imagination, a desire, too late, to protect Delia? ‘What would you say of a bloke like that?’

‘A bastard,’ said Sheryl. ‘But some women would find him attractive.’

‘Mrs Jones must have. How is she?’

‘A bit edgy,’ said Sheryl, ‘but nothing much. She’s more worried about her kids than about what she’s done.’

‘Her lawyer turned up yet?’

‘Mrs Quantock’s brought in a solicitor from out their way, Balmain. She and Mrs Jones have been arguing about who’ll pay – evidently Mrs Jones has got nothing. It looks like it might be a Legal Aid job.’

Legal Aid did its best but it could never afford the talent that could turn a no-win case into an acquittal. ‘Righto, I’d better see her. You come with me, Gail.’

‘Do we keep both murders on the one board?’ asked Sheryl.

‘I hope not.’ He would like the Jones murder dropped off the board altogether. ‘We’ll see what she has to tell us.’

‘Not us,’ said Gail. ‘You.’

‘Don’t remind me.’ He looked at both of them. ‘You know I’d rather walk right away from this?’

‘Of course,’ said Sheryl and he saw at once that their support was genuine. And it was more acceptable because they were women. This was not blokey mateship.

He took Gail into the interview room with him. He was annoyed but not surprised when he saw Mrs Quantock sitting to one side of Delia and the woman solicitor. Rosie Quantock sensed his annoyance for she said at once, ‘I’m here for Delia to lean on.’

‘That’s okay, Mrs Quantock, but don’t interrupt when I’m questioning Delia.’ He sat down, looked at the solicitor across the table. ‘G’day, Pam. Are you taking Delia’s case or are you here just for now? I understand she has asked for Legal Aid.’

‘I’m here for the whole term.’ Pamela Morrow was an old foe, but a friendly one. She and Malone had met years ago when she had been a law student leading demonstrations against this, that and everything and he had been a new police recruit trying to handle gently a woman trying to kick him in the balls. She was a short dumpling of a woman with red hair cut in a bob with bangs and with bright blue eyes that, he knew, could be as challenging as Rosie Quantock’s. ‘I’m on the board of the Women’s Protection League. We’re taking Mrs Jones’ case. Right through from now to acquittal.’

He grinned. ‘You haven’t changed, Pam.’ Only then did he look at Delia. ‘Pam and I are old mates.’

‘Old Home Week,’ said Delia and smiled as if she were here on no more than a traffic charge. He caught a glimpse of the girl he had once been in love with. She had been a pretty girl rather than beautiful; chocolate-boxy, his mother had called her. Prettiness, he knew, faded quicker than beauty; but the years had been too cruel to her. ‘We’re not going to be any trouble, Scobie.’

‘Tell us what happened.’ Not me: us. He had to keep Gail in the frame to protect himself.

‘Tell him everything,’ said Rosie Quantock. ‘How he’s been belting you for years –’

Malone looked at Pam Morrow, who looked at Rosie Quantock. ‘Please –’

‘Sorry,’ said Rosie, but you knew it was just an empty word. ‘But she’s gotta tell him everything –’

‘I will,’ said Delia, hands folded together on the table, steady as two interlocked rocks. She nodded at the recorder: ‘Is that on?’

‘Yes,’ said Gail. ‘Everything you say –’

‘I know.’ The composure was so complete; Malone had to admire her. ‘Well – where do I begin?’

‘At the beginning,’ said Malone, knowing he was making a concession.

‘Well, Boris and I have been married fourteen years. He’s from Leningrad – or what do they call it now?’

‘St Petersburg,’ said Gail.

Delia didn’t look at her; her gaze was solely on Malone. ‘Yes, there. He was a merchant seaman – he came to Australia twice on a ship. I met him, I liked him, he liked me –’ She stopped for just a moment, her gaze still focused on Malone; then she went on, ‘The third trip he jumped ship and stayed on.’

‘He was an illegal immigrant?’ asked Malone.

‘I guess so. They never came looking for him – he got papers, I dunno how. We were happy –’ She stopped again. She’s making points, Malone thought; but ignored them, just looked back at her. She went on again, ‘I had the children and then things started to go wrong –’

‘I’ll say they did,’ said Rosie Quantock. ‘Ten bloody years –’

‘Mrs Quantock,’ said Pam Morrow warningly.

‘Sorry.’

Delia continued: ‘He wouldn’t let Melissa near the house – she was my daughter from my first husband.’ Again the look; again he made no comment. ‘Then the – the belting started. I ran away, twice, with the children. But he came after me each time –’

‘Why did you go back to him?’ asked Gail.

Delia shrugged. ‘Ask any battered wife why –’ For a moment she looked at Gail; then she turned her gaze back to Malone. For the first time there was a plea in her voice: ‘That’s what I’ve been, Scobie. A battered wife.’

He wanted to reach across and press her hand, but refrained. ‘Go on. Tell us about last night. Did you go in to the hotel with the intention of killing him?’

‘That’s a leading question,’ snapped Pam Morrow. ‘Try another one, Inspector –’

‘No, it’s all right,’ said Delia. ‘Yes. I took the children to my mother’s, told her I was going in to tell Boris I was leaving him for good. I wanted him dead, but I don’t think I intended killing him.’

‘Where did you get the knife?’ Malone was wishing he were out of here.

‘I dunno. It was there in the room – I just picked it up –’

Malone said nothing further; it was Gail who asked, ‘Why? Why did you pick it up?’

‘Careful, Delia,’ warned Pam Morrow. ‘You have to be exact about this. It was after Boris hit you, wasn’t it?’

‘You’re advising your client,’ said Gail.

Lay off, Gail! Malone almost shouted.

‘That’s why I’m here,’ said Pam Morrow. ‘To make sure she gives you the exact facts, the exact truth.’

Delia took her time, still looking at Malone as if there were just the two of them in the room. Then she said, ‘It was after he hit me – here and here –’ She pointed to the bruises on her face; still calm, as if they were no more than skin blemishes. ‘He gave me the black eye before he left home.’

‘Bastard!’ said Rosie Quantock.

‘There was a struggle?’ Malone was leaving the questioning to Gail.

But Delia was still speaking directly to him: ‘Oh yes, we fought. We knocked things over – I picked them up and put them back after I’d stabbed him –’ She smiled at him, like the old Delia of long ago; he was beginning to wonder if the composure was a pose. ‘Neat as usual, remember? But I was just trying to get myself together – I mean, I knew I’d killed him, he wasn’t moving –’

‘What did you do then?’

‘Just a minute –’ Malone said. ‘What time was this, Delia?’

‘Some time after midnight – he’ d broken my watch when we fought last night.’ She looked at it now on her wrist. ‘You gave it to me, remember?’

He didn’t remember and he wondered why she mentioned it.

‘That was eight-twenty last night. It’s stopped.’

Malone nodded to Gail, who went on, ‘So you tidied up the store room – what did you do with the knife?’

‘I dunno. I forget.’

‘How did you leave the hotel?’

‘I went out a side door into that alley, that lane, that’s there – I didn’t want to meet any of Boris’ mates. I waited for a taxi outside the hotel.’

Romy had said that Billie Pavane had died eight to ten hours before she was examined: that put that murder around 1 a.m.

Malone said, ‘While you were waiting for the taxi, did you see anyone come out of the hotel?’

If Delia was remembering anything it wasn’t what she saw outside the hotel last night; she had a faraway look, remembering the distant past. Remembering the bruising Malone had given her when he had jilted her? Then her gaze focused and she looked at Gail and said, ‘What?’

‘Inspector Malone asked you a question,’ said Gail.

‘Oh.’ Then she looked at him again, this time almost impersonally. He repeated his question and she said, ‘Yes, a man.’

‘Can you describe him?’

She shook her head. ‘Only vaguely. A taxi pulled up and he tried to grab it. But I got the door open first –’ Now she gave him a very personal look, leaning forward. ‘I wasn’t thinking too clearly, Scobie – you can understand that, can’t you? You must know how in shock I was?’

He didn’t ask how he was expected to know: he knew.

He said nothing, and she went on, ‘Why do you want to know about the man?’

‘The other murder?’ said Rosie Quantock, who had been silent too long.

‘Would you recognize him again if you saw him?’ Malone said.

‘Would it help you if I did?’

‘Hold on a minute,’ said Pam Morrow. ‘You’re not using Delia as a witness to that case while we’re still talking about her own case.’

‘No, I’d like to help,’ said Delia, looking directly at Malone as if they were alone in the room.

She’s too eager, he thought. But he said, ‘Go on.’

‘He was, I dunno, medium-sized. Not as tall as you, not as beefy –’

‘Thank you.’ He didn’t grin, but the four women did.

‘Well, you’re not beefy, I suppose. You haven’t changed much, really. Anyhow, he was slimmer than you. Or I think he was – he was wearing an overcoat, a dark one. And a hat.’

‘What sort of hat?’

‘I dunno. Just a hat. Not one of those broad-brimmed ones, the Akubras. I wasn’t looking at him to remember him –’ For the first time she sounded testy; he remembered she could get short-tempered about small things. But never the larger things, like being jilted … ‘I’ll remember him if I see him again.’

‘It could’ve been one of the hotel workers,’ said Gail. ‘Going off duty. Do you know any of them?’

Delia shook her head. ‘No. I’ve never been near the hotel till last night. Boris never wanted me anywhere near where he worked.’

‘Didn’t want his mates to see he was a wife-basher,’ said Rosie Quantock. ‘A real bastard. Bottom of the heap.’

‘How long had he been working at the hotel?’

‘Two – no, three months. He lost his last job – he worked for a bricklayer. They didn’t get on.’

‘He bashed him, too.’ Mrs Quantock couldn’t help being helpful.

‘I think this has gone on long enough,’ said Pam Morrow and snapped shut her briefcase as if to close all argument. ‘Are you going to charge my client?’

‘Yes,’ said Malone, not looking at Delia. ‘She’ll be held here overnight and arraigned tomorrow morning, probably down at Liverpool Street.’

‘What about bail?’

‘That’ll be up to the Crown Prosecutor. We won’t oppose it.’

‘Thanks, Scobie.’ Delia reached across and pressed his hand. He felt an inward flinch, but didn’t draw his hand away.

‘How’s she gunna raise bail?’ demanded Rosie Quantock. ‘She hasn’t got a cracker, nothing.’

‘Do you own your own house?’ asked Gail.

It was Mrs Quantock who answered, with a loud dry cackle. ‘She’s renting, for Crissake! She’d have trouble raising a hundred dollars –’

‘Rosie, please –’

‘No, love. This is no time for bloody embarrassment. That arsehole’s given you nothing –’

Malone turned to Pam Morrow. ‘Can the Women’s Protection League help?’

‘We’ll see. We’ll plead self-defence, so maybe the beak will be lenient. If he is, we can cover it.’

Malone stood up, switched off the recorder. ‘I’m sorry, Delia.’

She looked up at him. ‘For what?’

He left that unanswered.

4

He went home in gathering darkness that suited his mood. He always looked forward to coming home to the house in Randwick; he valued home, like a comforting mental condition. It wasn’t just the love he found there under the Federation gables but the normality; when he stepped in the front door and closed it behind him he was shutting out Crime, with a capital C. Not that Crime in today’s world was abnormal. It was just that, most days, he didn’t have to bring it home with him.

‘Another bad day?’ said Lisa as he kissed her cheek.

Women, he was convinced, were born with antennae hidden somewhere in their secret skulls. ‘What about you?’

She had worked for the past three years as a public relations officer at Town Hall. Her original assignment had been with the Olympics, but that long headache was now past; the Olympics had been a success, two weeks of excitement and euphoria, and now the city was slowly and reluctantly adjusting to the downturn in the boom. Like the post-coital blues, she had described it to him, though she had never put that in one of her press releases.

She was at the fridge, taking out the beef burgundy she had prepared last night. ‘Half an hour to dinner. I just have to heat everything. Open the wine.’

They were alone in the kitchen. This was family night. Claire and her husband Jason, Maureen and Tom would all be here for dinner. Claire had been married a year; Maureen had moved out to live with two girlfriends earlier this year; Tom, who loved a new girl every week but loved his mother’s cooking more, was still living at home. Malone knew how fortunate he was to have a family that was not dysfunctional.

‘Nobody’s here yet?’

‘No. You want to shower before they arrive? Tom rang to say he’s on his way.’ Tom was in his last year of Economics at university. ‘He had a date with his tutor.’

‘A date with his tutor?’

‘She’s twenty-eight and a dish, he says. I don’t think he’s doing market research with her. Or maybe he is. Move over.’

He shifted along the kitchen bench to make room as she put vegetables into a pot. He picked up one of the two bottles of red wine, then put it down, folded his arms and leaned back against the bench. At ease – like hell: ‘I met an old girlfriend today.’

‘Which one?’ Sounding as if he had told her he had met an old pet dog. Or bitch.

‘Delia Bates.’

Then she looked at him, her hands about to open a bag of rice. ‘Ah.’

‘That all you have to say?’

‘Till I hear what else you’re going to say.’

Women: they could weave barbed wire out of words. ‘We’re holding her for homicide. She stabbed her husband this morning.’

She cut the bag of rice, with a knife. ‘Will she get off?’

‘I dunno. They’re pleading self-defence.’

‘How did she feel? I mean, you arresting her?’

‘I didn’t take her in. Phil Truach did that. I interviewed her. She won’t talk to anyone but me.’

‘That must have been nice.’ She poured the rice into a dry saucepan, white B-B bullets that hit the metal with a clatter. She put down the knife, a long-bladed kitchen knife with blood on it. ‘Or was it uncomfortable? I would have been if I’d been there.’

‘You weren’t there! I’m more uncomfortable right now. Christ, darl, imagine how I felt –’

‘I am.’ She put the saucepan down on the bench, gave him her full attention. ‘She was in love with you, once.’

‘Christ, what a memory!’ Foolishly, he was getting angry. ‘Twenty-five years ago.’

Delia had been the only girl he had ever talked about. Not at length and reluctantly, as if (he thought now) there had been guilt at leaving Delia. It seemed, now, that Lisa remembered what he had forgotten. Women and elephants … but now was not the time to voice that comparison. He was already offside in the argument.

‘That’s what I’m thinking about,’ said Lisa. ‘You come home and tell me about a domestic, your girlfriend of twenty-five years ago killing her husband, and you don’t mention the other homicide that’s been on the news all day. The murder of the wife of the American Ambassador. Or aren’t you on that one?’

Then the cavalry’s bugle blew; or the doorbell rang. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said and almost galloped down the hallway to open the door to Maureen, Claire and Jason.

The girls kissed him; Jason shook hands. His son-in-law was three or four inches taller than he, had bulked out since his marriage; Claire was as good a cook as her mother. His mother was in jail, doing life for, with her lesbian lover, having murdered Jason’s father. Malone suddenly determined there would be no further talk this evening of domestics. He had warm affection for Jason and suddenly was protective of him.

Maureen, the TV researcher for Four Corners, was not interested in domestics or small talk. If and when she married, her husband had better not bring his secrets with him. ‘How about that homicide, the Ambassador’s wife? Are you on it, Dad?’

‘Unfortunately. Excuse me, I’ll have a quick wash under the armpits. I’ve just got in.’

He peeled off into the bathroom, pondered for a moment taking a three-hour soak in the bath. Instead, he stripped off his shirt, had a quick swab under the armpits, washed his face, dried himself, then looked in the mirror. Transfer tomorrow, he told himself. Fingerprints, Traffic. Anywhere to get out of Homicide.

He put on a clean shirt and a jumper. When he went out to join the family, Tom was just coming in. He wore jeans, a black leather jacket and carried his motorcyclist’s helmet under his arm like a big black skull. He, too, was taller than Malone. Little Me, thought Malone, and felt self-sympathy itching like a rash.

He helped Maureen get the drinks. She was an attractive girl, dark-haired and good-figured and, Malone guessed, she wore her boyfriends out with her restless energy. He sometimes wondered where she got it from. ‘Who dunnit? The Ambassador?’

‘Don’t joke, Mo. None of your ABC anti-US bias.’

‘We’re impartial. We’re anti-everyone but ourselves.’

‘Relax, Mo,’ Claire told her sister. She had her mother’s blonde looks and composure; their Zuyder Zee look, as Tom called it, never making more than small waves. ‘You’re not on camera now. Is it going to be tough, Dad?’

He nodded, sipped his beer. The three men were drinking beer; the two girls were on white wine. Out in the kitchen the cook was probably swigging sweet sherry. All at once Malone began to laugh.

‘What are you laughing at?’

‘Nothing, Just a thought.’ He took another sip of his beer, then said, ‘It’s going to be tough. You media are going to make a meal of it, Mo.’

‘I know. News are already running around hooting their heads off.’ Four Corners, the show she worked on, never ran around hooting; it took its time doing demolition jobs on corruption, maladministration and unsocial justice. He hoped it would never come within coo-ee of the Pavane murder. ‘You’re in for it, Dad. Sorry.’

‘Are the Americans co-operating?’ asked Tom. ‘You got the CIA, the FBI on your back?’

‘No, they know it’s our turf.’

‘Dad,’ said Maureen, ‘if we decide to look into Australian–American co-operation or lack thereof –’

‘Raise that question again and I’ll find something to pin on you, okay?’

‘Lay off, Mo,’ said Claire. ‘You’re so bloody morally correct since you joined the ABC –’

‘Let’s all lay off,’ said Malone. ‘How are you making out with your tutor, Tom?’

‘Who told you about her? Mum, I’ll bet –’

‘You’re dating your tutor?’ both his sisters asked. ‘You’re going for an older woman? What’s she teaching you?’

‘How to be economical in bed?’ suggested Jason.

This is what I like to hear, thought Malone, family chi-acking. No violence, no bashing … Then Lisa came to the doorway. ‘Dinner is ready if you layabouts are?’

The girls were instantly on their feet, rushing to help her. The three of them went out to the kitchen, Tom went in to have a quick shower (where’s he been? thought Malone. In the tutor’s bed?) and Jason picked up the glasses and put them on a tray.

‘How’s work?’ Malone asked.

‘Quiet, there’s not much around.’ Jason was an engineer with a large construction company. Since the Olympics there had been a general turn-down, a bubble deflated if not entirely pricked. ‘I take it yours is not going to be? Quiet, I mean.’

‘Quiet? Oh, we’ll keep it that way as long as we can, our end. But the bloody media …’ He stood up, suddenly feeling weary again, put his empty glass on the tray. ‘How’s your mum?’

‘I dunno. Philosophical, I guess you’d call it. She never mentions Dad, though. Nor Angela Bodalle, for that matter.’ Olive Rockne’s lesbian lover and fellow murderer was doing her time in another jail. ‘Mum hopes to be out in eighteen months. She’s been a model prisoner, they say.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘Do you ever think about her?’

‘Often – when I see you. I never got any pleasure from putting her away, Jay.’

‘I know that, Scobie. I’m just happy to have you as a father-in-law.’ Then he turned quickly and went out to the kitchen, the glasses rattling on the tray.

Malone gathered his feelings, which were suddenly like warm coals. Affection from the young is not a cheap gift.

Dinner was not as awkward as he had expected. The Pavane murder was discussed and everyone was sympathetic towards him for the headaches it promised. Lisa smiled at him from her end of the table, but (why was he so suspicious?) it could have been a public relations smile. The four young ones dominated the conversation, banter flying across the table like party crackers. It was only when relaxation had set in over coffee that Maureen said, ‘What about the other murder at the hotel, Dad?’

‘What about it?’

‘Are you on it?’

He looked along the table at Lisa and she gave him the same smile: it was a public relations smile, as empty as a clown’s laugh. ‘Yes, I’m on it. For the time being.’

‘It’s just an ordinary domestic,’ said Lisa, reaching for an after-dinner mint, biting into it as if it were part of him.

‘Then why are you on it?’ Claire looked at her father. ‘With this other big one?’

He looked along the table again at (Mona) Lisa: the smile was smaller this time. He didn’t know what made him say it: ‘I knew the wife, the one who did the killing. She was an old girlfriend.’

At which they all looked at Lisa, not him. Maureen said Wowie!, Tom smiled broadly, Jason looked as if he would rather be out on a construction site and Claire pursed her lips. Lisa finished the mint, repeated the Mona Lisa smile and said, ‘Small world, ain’t it?’

Claire looked at each of her parents in turn. ‘Which of you wants me to represent you? I think we’re heading for another domestic’

He cranked up a smile, gave it to Lisa along the table. ‘She’s been married twice since I knew her.’

‘She do them both in?’ said Tom.

Maureen hit him with her fist. ‘Pull your head in. This is serious. Why are you on the case, Dad? Just because she’s an old girlfriend?’

‘Golly,’ said Lisa, ‘I forgot to ask him that.’

‘No, I’m not.’ Then he began to wonder if he was. ‘She won’t talk to anyone else but me. Nobody else in Homicide.’

‘You can’t blame her for that, Mum,’ said Claire.

‘Who’s blaming her? Or anyone?’ She took another mint, bit into it.

‘Has she changed?’ asked Maureen the researcher. Get all the facts, we’ll sort ’em out later … ‘Would you have recognized her?’

‘In the street? No.’

‘Why did she kill her husband?’ asked Jason and it was obvious it was a difficult question.

‘He never reads reports of murder cases,’ said Claire, pressing his hand.

‘For obvious reasons,’ said Jason and for a moment the ceiling fell in.

‘Sorry,’ said Claire, squeezing his hand hard; then she looked around the table. ‘What else can we talk about? Who’s Randwick playing on Saturday?’

‘Eastwood.’ Tom played fullback for the local rugby club. ‘You coming?’

‘We’ll be there,’ said Jason who, like a good engineer, was sensitive to atmospheric pressure. ‘Let’s do the washing-up.’

He stood up, gathered some of the coffee cups and went out to the kitchen. The girls followed him, taking plates. Tom sat a moment, then he, too, rose and went out to the kitchen. Malone and Lisa looked at each other along the length of the table.

‘She hasn’t raised a spark in me,’ he said. ‘It was all over twenty-five years ago.’

‘I know that.’ The smile this time was her own; and his. ‘But if I told you I’d met an old boyfriend, what would you do?’

‘Pinch him. For loitering with intent.’ He got up, went along the table and kissed her. ‘I love you.’

‘Nice,’ said Claire from the doorway. ‘Now may I finish clearing the table?’

5

Billie Pavane’s murderer sat in his $400-a-night hotel room and looked out at the city that he had once hoped to conquer. Conquest of a city had been everyone’s (well, everyone he knew) ambition back in the eighties and it still lingered, like a pungent dope smell, even now in this first year of the new century. It was not only Sydney that had the infection: it was there in London, New York, Paris; it was there in Toronto where he now worked. He had read that the richest man in the world was now worth more than all but the six biggest economies and everyone (well, everyone he knew) thought Bill Gates was God, only richer. The old ambition was still there in Billie’s killer, like a dormant cancer: greed had once been good and, he heard it all the time, it was coining back into fashion. But not for him. He had a wife and three children (him: who had never wanted to be even a godfather) and they hamstrung him, if unwittingly, with their principles and decency. At least Billie (he had never called her that back in the old days) had had none of those handicaps, principles and decency, back when things had been going so right. Moralists of the world don’t realize the handicaps that pragmatists have to face.

He had left Sydney fourteen years ago with almost $500,000 as his share of the – well, call it scam, if you want to be moralistic. He had not been burdened with conscience; in the run-up to the 1987 crash no one could spell the word. He had said no when Billie (he would have to start thinking of her under that name) had told him she wanted to have his child; the last mantle he would have placed on her was that of motherhood. Parenthood, for Christ’s sake? He didn’t want to be a father, even if he didn’t have to live with her and the kids. He had paid for the abortion and been surprised when the doctor insisted on actual cash rather than Diners Club Card; he had lived to the extreme in those days on his credit card, flashing it like a fairy wand. Billie (would he ever get used to that name?) had been violently bitter when the abortion had gone wrong, as if he were to blame. He had never before seen that side of her. She had always been gay, conscienceless, in the Bollinger-bubble of all the money they had been making. The chill between them turned to freezing point and he wondered how he was going to get away from her. It was just then that he learned that a wise man from the East, from Bellevue Hill actually, had begun selling his holdings. If the richest man in the country was getting out of the market then it was clear, to everyone but the fools, that the boom would not last, as the fools predicted, till Christmas.

Without telling anyone, he had already transferred the bulk of his money to a bank in Liechtenstein. He sold up the rest of his holdings and without saying goodbye to anyone, least of all Billie, he had walked out of the office one Friday afternoon and caught a plane to Bangkok and from there to Paris. He had been good at French at school and he had kept up his study and practice of it because he liked the sound and nuances. Within a month of landing in Paris he had a job with a French bank as an investment adviser. He changed his name and his appearance. He had had the anonymous good looks of male models found in mail-order catalogues, spoiled only by a broken nose. He had worn the nose, broken in a university rugby match, as a badge of honour; it lifted the macho image of wheeling-dealing brokers. The nose was rebuilt, he had his hair cut short in the French style; he was still anonymously good-looking, but any visitor from Sydney would have to look twice at him to recognize him. He spoke French with barely an accent, not easy for an Australian – not the best linguists in the world. He dressed Parisian, even took on French manners. Sydney and everyone there, even his pharmacist father, with whom he never got on, and his sister, snug and smug in a happy North Shore marriage, began to fade from memory. He was as self-contained as he wished to be.

There were affairs, of course. Then one proved difficult and dirty. There was another abortion and the girl, from Brittany, a hard-headed region, threatened to go to the bank and denounce him if he did not marry her. Whether the bank would have listened to her was debatable; but, in a moment of Dom Perignon-induced weakness, beside her in bed, the worst place for secrets, he had told her things about his past that he thought she would never remember. He had forgotten, or didn’t know, that many Frenchwomen, inspired by Ninon de Lenclos, wrote diaries. He had resigned from the bank and left for Canada. He felt an utter bastard, but self-recognition does not necessarily mean being conscience-stricken. Guilt is only a comfort blanket for those who want to wear it.

In Toronto he went to work for another bank. It was not the most exciting city, especially after Paris, but he had had enough excitement for the time being. Then disaster, in the form of romance, struck: he fell, really, truly, in love. She was French-Canadian, Catholic, beautiful and she was helplessly in love with him. They were married when she was two months pregnant (the Quebec nuns had not taught her to keep her knees together) and he had settled into the sort of life he had laughed at back home. Upper middle class, country club, even church-going: sometimes he stepped outside himself and wondered what had happened to him. His hair began to turn grey, he had to watch his weight, he had two daughters and a son. The past slipped off the map of his life.

Then on a business trip to Chicago, sitting in a hotel room just like this one, he had switched on the television and seen an interview, relayed from Kansas City, with Billie (the first time he heard that name) and her husband, the ambassador-elect to Australia.

Just as today in this room he had switched on the television and on the midday news had seen the woman who had caught sight of him as he was about to step out of Billie’s room in that flea-bag hotel. There was no mistaking her. They had stared at each other long enough to identify each other.

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