Dark Summer (22 page)

I
wish I knew, love.
“Soon. By the end of the week at the latest, I hope.”

“Oh God, that's forever!” She threw herself against the back of the lounge, put her arm round her mother's shoulders. “Why don't you divorce him, Mum?”

“I'd miss out on his pension. Have your shower and go to bed.” Lisa stood up and went out to the kitchen.

Malone kissed the top of Claire's head, said, “It'll all be back to normal soon,” trying to sound convincing, and followed Lisa out to the kitchen.

She was standing at the sink, looking out at the back yard and the pool, the water a ghostly green from the lights in the side walls. “I've looked out there a dozen times since Sunday. I still can't believe there was a dead man floating there. How close are you to solving it all?”

“It's getting worse.” He owed it to her to be candid. “Tonight's murder, I think it might be connected to a couple of the others.”

“Who's doing it?” He had told her of the murders by the poisoned syringe.

“We haven't a clue.”

“Whoever's doing it, is he likely to try it on the kids?”

The thought horrified him. “He'd never get to trial if we caught him. I'd kill him first.”

She didn't show any surprise at what he said; she said calmly, “It would be a bit late, wouldn't it? I can never see what satisfaction people get out of an eye for an eye.”

He agreed with her. Cold-blooded revenge would never be in his nature; but hot-blooded anger might be something he could not control. “It's not going to happen,” he said determinedly. “Just don't think about it. No one's going to get near you or the kids.”

She turned from the window. “Just don't let him get near you.”

He put his arms round her, held her tightly. Then Claire came to the kitchen doorway, pulled up sharply. “Sorry—”

Lisa kissed Malone on the lips, lightly, released herself from his arms and smiled wanly at their daughter. “You don't have to be embarrassed when you catch your parents in a clinch. It's a natural
thing.”

“I guess so.” Claire went to the fridge, poured herself some flavoured mineral water. “But what if Dick or the other guy saw you?”

“I'd explain it was police procedure,” said Malone. “For married cops.”

“Oh God, Dad. You and your jokes, you're as bad as Uncle Russ.”

Fifteen minutes later Uncle Russ knocked on the front door. By then Claire was in bed, but he kissed Lisa when she opened the door to him. “It'll be just a token appearance by us. I'll see he's home by midnight.”

“Come to dinner tomorrow night. Bring your new girlfriend, this doctor.”

“That'd be nice. There's just one problem. We were gunna take her father out to dinner. She does it every year, on the anniversary of their arrival here. I dunno whether they think of it as Australia Day or Germany Day.”

“Bring him, too. I'll bake an anniversary cake, with candles. How many?”

“Ten, I think. You'll like Romy. I dunno about her old man—he's a bit stiff.”

“So's mine." She kissed Malone as he passed her.

“Meaning me?”

“Who else? If Dick's out there, ask him if he'd like to come in and keep an old lady company.”

Once in the car, Clements' own, Malone said, “If it's only going to be a token appearance, why me? Why couldn't you have gone on your own?”

“Because this time the media mob are there. Whoever gave it to Lee-roy phoned the TV newsrooms—the TV crews were there before the cops. Someone is trying to make mugs of us!” The big man's venom slurred his voice.

The narrow side street in Newtown was thronged with people, police cars, an ambulance and television vans. Clements was carrying no warning light, so he had to force the car through the crowd. He parked it beside one of the police cars and he and Malone got out and ducked under the Crime Scene tapes and crossed to the Porsche, its red paintwork garish under the glare of the lights trained on it. The
boot
lid was raised and the Physical Evidence team was already at work on the car. Beside it Leroy Lugos' body, in green plastic, lay on a stretcher. Joe Gaynor, a senior GMO, close to sixty and ready for retirement, stepped over the stretcher as he saw Malone and Clements approach.

“I suspect this may be another curare job, Scobie. All the symptoms. I can't find any evidence of any wounds, not even a bruise. I'm not going to strip him for the benefit of these bastards.” He waved a bony hand at the cameramen, who were just out of earshot but gave him sour grins, anyway, from behind their eye-pieces. Gaynor was a tall thin man, taller than Malone by several inches, with a narrow face in which all the lines, indeed all the features, seemed to run down to the long spade of his chin. He was one of the old school who believed there should be no publicity for the dead, especially the murdered dead. “I'll let you know in the morning. If it is another curare job, I'll turn it over to Dr. Keller, if her plate isn't too full.”

Malone thanked him, left Clements to talk to the PE team and went across to the local sergeant of detectives. “What've you got, Irv?”

Irving Rubens was one of the few Jews in the Department, a solidly built, handsome man who, as a detective constable, had worked with Malone some years before. “We got the call at the station about an hour ago, maybe less. When we got here, the TV mob was already here. It'll make great TV, a dead man hanging out the boot of a bright red Porsche. It'll be a change from the war pictures.”

“Don't be sour, Irv. Leave that to me, that's what I'm paid for. You get anything on who called the TV people?”

“It was a call to the stations' switchboards. None of the switch-girls could remember whether it was a man or woman's voice—the girl at Channel Fifteen said the voice sounded as if it was disguised. Maybe she watches too many detective series, who knows?”

“What about Lugos, the dead bloke?”

“A real dude—you knew him?” Malone nodded. “He's never been seen around here before, not by us, anyway. We found a cardboard cake-box under the body. Would you believe, a passionfruit pavlova on top of a nice little bundle of heroin packets. Whoever did him in evidently didn't know what he was
carrying.”

“
How much heroin?”

“At a rough guess I'd say at least a hundred thousand bucks' worth, maybe more.”

“What have you done with it?”

“It's in my car, waiting for the Drug Unit fellers to come and claim it. In the meantime, we've been around the corner and pinched the owner of the cake shop. I haven't talked to him, he's down at the station with one of my men. You wanna see him? If you don't mind me asking, Scobie, what brought you out here tonight? You'd have had it all on your desk at Homicide tomorrow morning. You looking for work?”

“Instinct, Irv.” He then told Rubens about the murders of Grime and Sally Kissen. “I'd already talked to this bloke—” He nodded at the shrouded body of Leroy Lugos being loaded into the ambulance; the cameras swooped like metal birds. “Can you get rid of this mob? Close off the whole street, at least till we have the car taken away.”

There must have been a hundred or more in the crowd, mostly young people. None of them appeared shocked, just curious; some of them feigned boredom, the laid-back look that had replaced the smart-arse cracks of Malone's generation. Today there was an acceptance of death amongst the street gangs that was almost callous. He wondered if the same stoical attitude prevailed amongst the young about to die in the Gulf war. He doubted it.

“Who are these? Locals?”

“We've got the lot around here, Scobie. A lot of good, honest workers—”

“It was like that when I was born here. My mum and dad still live down the road, in Erskineville.”

Rubens looked surprised, as if, somehow, he had expected Malone to have come from some silvertail area. “Yeah? How about that! Yeah, well, there's lots more than them around now. We've got gays, lesbians, junkies—we put out two thousand needles a month in our needle exchange programme—neo-Nazis, kinky perverts—you name it, we've got it. Including more crims to the square mile than anywhere else in the country. For some reason they all come back here as soon as they get out of jail, like
this
is some retraining centre for them to get back into whatever game they were in before they were sent away. I can put up with the crims. It's that lot there—”

He nodded to about a dozen youths standing in a tight group beside the ambulance. They wore a uniform of heavy boots, torn black jeans and black sleeveless T-shirts; their heads were shaved along the sides, with a flat spiky crop on top. One of the youths turned round as a television camera focused on him. On his black T-shirt was a white-lettered threat: Fuck a Wog With a Boot. He grinned fiendishly at the camera, then spun round. On his back was another threat: Fuck a Jew, Too.

“Some of 'em live around here, some of 'em come in from Christ knows where. They've caused the uniformed boys a lotta trouble, busting in the windows of some of the wog shops—the main street's full of 'em, Lebanese, Turkish, Greek, Thai—King Street's full of cheap eats. There's a Jewish jeweller, they've done him a coupla times, but so far we haven't been able to catch 'em.”

“They cause you any bother?”

“Because I'm a Jew? They know me, they know I'd circumcise 'em with a chain-saw if they tried anything.”

“Leroy was a wog. Maybe he was lucky they didn't get to him before he was stuck with the needle.”

“You sure that's the way he was killed?”

“No, but I'm willing to bet on it. Let's go and see the cake-shop owner. I'll get Russ.”

Newtown police station was only five minutes from the scene of the crime. It was a nondescript three-storeyed building next to the fire station; if ever terrorism comes to Australia, the authorities have, too often, conveniently located possible targets close together. Or perhaps, Malone thought, they had worked on the assumption that, if the police station was bombed, the fire brigade would not have far to come to put out the blaze. Though he doubted if the authorities would have been as far-sighted as that: the long view was not a national habit.

Malone and Clements followed Rubens up to the first floor, to the detectives' room. The cake- shop owner was in the interrogation room, a windowless cubicle designed to give first-time offenders an
idea
of what confinement meant.

The two Homicide men sat down in chairs against the wall while Rubens went outside with the young detective constable who had been minding the suspect. Malone introduced himself and Clements. “You mind telling us a few things about yourself?”

“The name is Mitre, Sydney Mitre. I own the Matilda cake shop. I think that's all you need to know.” He was wearing lightly tinted glasses, taking any shine or glint from his eyes. He had thick loose lips, but Malone guessed he would not be loose-lipped when it came to questioning. But he had an air of resignation about him, something an experienced cop can smell, and that was promising. “Yours is the next move, Inspector.”

Rubens came back, sat down on the chair on the opposite side of the small table from Mitre. The four men crowded the room and Mitre, as if suddenly feeling oppressed, shifted his chair back till it was against the wall behind him.

“Mr. Mitre, did my constable tell you what they found in the back of your shop?”

“No, Sergeant.” Mitre, it seemed, was naturally polite.

“Four cake-boxes containing packets of heroin, with a street turnover, we reckon, of between four and five hundred thousand dollars. Plus the heroin we found in one of your cake-boxes in the boot of a Porsche around the corner from your shop. The car boot, incidentally, also contained the body of a young man named Leroy Lugos. I don't think things look too good for you, Mr. Mitre.”

Mitre looked at Malone. “I love Jewish humour. Do you think I should get my lawyer to join us?”

“I think it might be an idea,” said Malone. “Suspicion of murder, dealing in heroin—I think you'll need your solicitor and a couple of QCs at least.”

Mitre held up a plump hand pale with flour. The flour that streaked his T-shirt and apron and arms somehow made him look less heavy than he was, as if parts of him were ectoplasmic. He ran his hand through his hair, turning it greyer. “Hold it, gentlemen. No murder talk, I know nothing about that. I want to call my lawyer.”

“
Sergeant Clements will call him for you.”

“I think I'm entitled to make my own call—”

“Normally, yes.” Malone avoided Rubens' eye. “But the public lines are out tonight and we can't let you use the police private lines.”

“You're harassing me—”

“Yes, I think I might be. But what witnesses have you got?” He didn't look at Clements or Rubens, but he knew their faces would be blank. “Give him your lawyer's name, Mr. Mitre, and then you and I will have a little chat while we're waiting for him to come. Okay?”

Mitre hesitated, then he gave Clements a name and a number. Clements went out, closing the door, and Mitre leaned his chair back against the wall. “How did the deceased—is that what we call him?—die?”

“We're not sure yet. We think he died from curare poisoning. A curare synthetic called Alloferin. You've heard of it?”

The tinted glasses had tilted slightly, catching the light. “Yes. I was a chemist before I became a pastrycook.”

“That's quite an admission—in the circumstances.”

“Do you think I'd have admitted it if I'd given the deceased the syringe?”

“How do you know a syringe was used?”

“How else would you administer it?” He shook his head and a thin film of flour rose from it. “Don't let's waste our time on the murder, Inspector. I had nothing to do with it.”