Dark Summer (35 page)

“Oh Father!” She had leaned her head against the wall beside the phone, oblivious for the moment of the sudden stares of those seated at the tables near her.

A young woman, an assistant pathologist, got up and came to her. “Are you all right, Romy?”

Romy straightened up. “Yes, I'm all right, Ginny.” She hated too much attention; she had experienced enough of that ten years ago in Starnheim. “I felt a little dizzy—I've been on my feet too long—”

“Take it easy,” said Ginny, a pretty girl who always looked half-asleep even when wide awake. “Where are the corpses going to go, anyway? They're in no hurry.”

Romy dug up a smile, “I sometimes forget that. Thanks, Ginny. No, I'll be okay. I'll do as you say, take it easy.”

But she had not been able to take it easy. All the disgrace, the whispers behind the hand, the effect on her mother, all of it had come flooding back. All afternoon she had worked with the knife on the cadavers, wishing she could work with it on herself to cut out those memories.

She looked up now as Bob Gimbel, the Director, appeared in the doorway of her office. “You okay, Romy? They tell me you looked a bit off. Something upset you?”

She wished she could tell him; but she couldn't, “I think I'm just overtired, Bob.”

“
Overworked, you mean? Who isn't here?” But he still sounded sympathetic. He was in his mid- forties, always neat and starched, one of those of the last generation to clean their shoes every day, a stickler for protocol, method and routine. Yet, as Romy knew from her first days here at the morgue, he was capable of sympathy and understanding. He knew that all pain didn't end in death.

“You think you'd better go home? We don't want you slicing off more than is necessary. Can young Wayne handle what's left in the Murder Room?”

“There's that child, the homicide case. I'd better go back and finish off—”

“No, I'll do it. Go home, Romy. You look like death warmed up, if you'll forgive the expression.”

So she went home, glad of the release but afraid of what she had to face. She let herself into the flat, stood just inside the front door and called out, as if she had stepped into someone else's place, “Are you home?” He wasn't, nor had she expected him to be. She had spoken out of fear.

She stood irresolute for almost a minute, not moving. She was about to step over a cliff; she knew nothing of the abyss beyond. She had dealt in the results of murder for three years now; a dozen times at least she had faced a murderer across a courtroom when she had been called to give evidence. Now she was afraid, was certain, that, once again, she would have to face the murderer she lived with.

At last she forced herself to move. She went to her father's bedroom, did something she had not done since her mother's death, entered it without his permission. She went through the drawers of the big dressing-table that he had brought, along with all their other furniture, from Germany. In the bottom drawer, underneath three neatly folded sweaters, she found what she had hoped she would not find.

She took out the small cardboard box with the St. Sebastian's label on it. Inside it were the syringe and two ampoules; the label on the box said there should have been five. She knew, with sickening certainty, that the missing three had been used on Grime, Kissen and Lugos.

She was sitting in the living room in the dying light of the evening when her father at last came home. He was much later than usual, but she would not ask him why. She heard him come in the front
door
of the flat, call out a greeting in German as he always did, then come along the hallway. He passed the door to the living room, going towards his bedroom; then she heard him stop. He came back, stood in the doorway.

“Romy? Is there something wrong?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

She held up the small box, then threw it across the room. It landed at his feet, but he didn't bend to pick it up. He looked down at it, then at her.

“You have been in my room, going through my things?”

“Yes.”

They were speaking in German, as they usually did when alone. But this evening she wished they were speaking English, or indeed any language but her own. German was the language of her memories, those that had come back like a metastastis, overwhelming her.

He had been standing stiffly, almost as if he were on some sort of parade. But now he seemed to lose control of his legs; he leaned against the door jamb. For a moment she was tempted to rise and hurry to him; as she would have done only this morning. But she kept herself rigidly in her seat; it was he who had taught her control, or anyway bequeathed it to her. He drew a deep breath, then moved to his favourite chair and sat down, put both hands on the arms of it.

“You killed those people?” She was surprised at the steadiness of her voice.

He said nothing, but after a long moment he nodded.

“Why? Was it the same as that other time? An eye for an eye?”

Again he took his time about replying; then: “No, it was not that. Would you understand better if that were the reason?”

“I don't understand anything at all at the moment. Why?”

And then slowly, deliberately, as if he were swearing out a police statement, he told her why.

III

That evening Malone and Lisa had gone to dinner at the home of new acquaintances, Will and Olive Rockne. They lived in Coogee, the small seaside suburb down the hill from Randwick, in a large blue-brick house built during World War I. Will Rockne was a local solicitor and he and Olive had a girl who went to Holy Spirit convent, which was where the Malones had met them last Parents' Day.

Malone had welcomed the going-out; anything to get his mind off the day. He had managed an hour's nap between coming home and going out; he had the sort of constitution that could be restored by the shortest of sleeps. His mother and father came out from Erskineville to baby-sit (“Baby-sit?” said Maureen. That's insulting!”). Malone also rang the Randwick station and asked if a patrol car could cruise by every so often during the evening. “Just in case,” he said.

Wal Dukes had said, “No worries, Scobie. I don't think too much more can happen. Our luck's gotta change.”

“Sure,” said Malone and wondered if Clements thought that way.

The evening was a pleasant diversion; Olive Rockne was a good experimental cook and she served Thai food. There was another couple at the dinner, the Sackvilles, the husband an accountant. Police work was mentioned only once. Malone wondered if Lisa had rung Olive and asked that the subject of Scungy Grime in the Malones' pool not be raised; but he didn't query her on it. He had had enough of interrogation for the week; he didn't want to add to it by interrogating his wife on her good intentions. He was content to listen to Will Rockne, an armchair statesman, talk about the Gulf war.

“Forget the peaceniks—” Will Rockne was an
almost
man: almost handsome, almost charming, almost sincere. Malone could not put his finger on what Rockne lacked. In the end, because he wanted to enjoy the evening, he decided to settle for the admission that we all lacked something. “What's amazing is the way the country's got behind the government in this war. What do you think, Scobie?”

What Malone lacked was a full barrel of tact; once again the deficiency let him down: “Well, what amazes me is the latent belligerence in the ordinary voter. Just before the Falklands war, Mrs. Thatcher would have been lucky if Denis had voted for her. Then she declares war on Argentina and
suddenly
she's the greatest Englishwoman since Boadicea. The middle of last year George Bush was a wimp, then he goes into the Gulf and all of a sudden he's the greatest President since George Washington.”

“So you think we are all, at heart, warlike?” Stephen Sackville had said virtually nothing all evening, but his wife Emily was a lady of opinion. She was Lisa's age, but looked older: big, blonde and robust, she reminded Malone of the figureheads he had seen on old sailing ships. She would have reduced the Roaring Forties to a whimper as she forced her way into them.

“Maybe.” Malone had seen Lisa's warning glance; he scraped the bottom of the barrel for some tact. “I wouldn't want to generalize.”

“If that is the case,” said Sackville, perhaps deciding that
his
spouse wasn't tactful, “would that account for the criminal class?”

The criminal class. Malone had heard that phrase only once, at a seminar of criminologists he had attended as an observer; he had come away from it with the usual practitioner's amusement at the theorists. “There's a sub-class of criminals, the regulars. Yes, I guess they've declared war on the rest of us, but I don't know they've ever said it out loud, like some sort of battle-cry. Some of 'em may have, but they're mostly kids. I don't think the really hardened crims think they're at war with us.” He wondered how Jack Aldwych would handle the conversation if he were at this table. “But ninety-five per cent of crimes are committed by people who are not habituals.”

“But they're aggressive. Their latent belligerence, I think you called it, it's coming out?”

Malone realized all at once that Sackville was all latent belligerence; perhaps as a result of dominance by his belligerent wife. He backed off, smiling at Olive Rockne, his hostess, “If I get started, I'm going to let this good food get cold . . .”

Olive Rockne recognized the tactful retreat. She was small and attractive, but Malone, a late developer as a judge of women, had decided she was just a little too
feminine;
she was frilly, even her hair; if she held any opinions, they were ones her husband, overloaded with them, had given her to hold. But she was not unintelligent and she saw that Malone did not want to get into any long discussion about
crime
and the law.

“Does he bring his work home, Lisa?” she asked.

“Never,” lied Lisa and that turned the conversation.

Going home she said, “You were really tactful tonight. You're learning.”

He wondered how he could tactfully tell her of his suspicions of Peter Keller and what they might do to Clements' romance with Romy. He dropped her off at the house, then took his parents home to Erskineville, his father riding beside him, sitting tensed as if riding shotgun, and his mother sitting squarely in the middle of the back seat like the late Queen Mary. Brigid was Irish, but, to the disgust of Con, admired the English, especially their ladies. Malone had never had the heart to tell his mother that Queen Mary was actually German.

“You've got three wonderful kids,” said his mother from her throne. Long ago she had been a pretty girl, but she had never had the money or the vanity to save her looks. But Malone had noticed that a trace of youthfulness had crept back into her face as she had found a new life for herself in her grandchildren. “You shouldn't go dumping dead men in your swimming pool.”

“He didn't,” said Con. “Someone else done that. You get to see Roley Bremner?”

“Who's Roley Bremner?” said Brigid.

“I'm talking to him,” said Con, nodding at his son. “Did you?”

“Yes. He was helpful.”

“I read about them other murders.”

“Do we have to talk about them?” said Brigid. She had a stern respect for the proprieties; talk of murder was outside them.

“It's his job, for Crissakes—”

“Watch your language. You don't wanna talk about them, do you, Scobie?”

“The kids wanted to talk about 'em,” said Con appreciatively. “That Maureen. She'll make a great detective.”

“A detective for a granddaughter,” said Brigid, frigid at the prospect.

“
Almost as bad as one for a son,” said Malone.

“I'm getting used to the idea,” said Con.

Malone dropped them outside the narrow terrace house in the narrow street. He patted them both on the shoulder; kisses between them would have been an embarrassment. Love was there, but it was silent.

“Thanks for looking after the kids.”

“You keep them away from any murders,” said his mother.

When Malone reached home Lisa was in bed but still awake. With her usual prescience, which is a female trait that only the best career ambassadors and successful con men achieve, she said, “You've got something on your mind. It's been there all evening, you've looked guilty.”

He put on his pyjama trousers, slid under the sheet beside her and told her of his suspicions of Peter Keller. She was shocked, but her first remark was, “And what's that going to do to Russ and Romy?”

“I thought you'd say that. I don't know what it's going to do to them. All I can hope is that they're both professional about it.”

“Professional?
God, what a word! They're in love with each other, you're going to jail her father for three horrible murders, and all you can say is you hope they'll be
professional
about it.” She sat up, switched on her bedside lamp. She was nude, the way she slept during the hot summer months, but she might as well have been wearing armour. If he so much as raised a hand to touch her breast she would break his wrist. She was a born match-maker, a breed that never gives up, even when, sometimes, the intended matched pair have fled in different directions. She had been trying to match Clements with a woman for the past ten years, so far without success. She had had nothing to do with the matching of Romy with him, but she had recognized its possibilities. “You can't do it. If her father is the—the killer, let Romy discover it for herself. But keep Russ out of it. Let him comfort her—she'll need it.”

“How do I let Romy discover it for herself? Ring her up, anonymously, tell her to have her father checked through Interpol? I'm going to have to go through with it my way. I've got no option.”