Dark Summer (36 page)

She lay back, leaving the light on. “How does Russ feel?”

“
Like you.”

She reached up and switched off the light. He turned his head on the pillow and, as his eyes became accustomed again to the darkness, he saw her profile against the pale light of the window. He put his hand on her breast, but she didn't stir, just continued to lie on her back gazing at the ceiling.

“I'm lucky,” he said.

“Yes, you are. So am I.” She turned her face towards him. “Can't you give them some luck, too?”

IV

When Peter Keller had finished telling Romy what he had done and why, he waited for her to say something. But she said nothing; her judgement was plain in her face. He got up from where he had sat down opposite her, picked up the Alloferin box and went out of the living room and along to his bedroom. A minute or so later she heard him go into the bathroom; then she heard him showering. He was in the bathroom his usual amount of time, ten minutes; nothing, it seemed, could break him from habit. Then she heard him come out of the bathroom and go back to his bedroom. Ten minutes later, fully dressed, wet hair slicked back, he appeared again in the living-room doorway.

“I'm going out,” he announced and waited for her to comment.

But she had nothing to say. She was numb, not angry, not afraid, not even shocked: in her heart she had known it would happen again, that he had the capacity to kill without compunction. In the dim light of the unlit room she could not distinguish his expression; his face was just a pale oval above his dark suit. He remained motionless for almost half a minute, then he sighed, turned and a moment later she heard him going out the front door.

When he had gone she got up and went out to the kitchen and made herself some coffee. Then she went into the bathroom, stripped off and showered and washed her hair, cleansing herself of the day's work. But when she got out of the shower she still felt unclean.

She went to bed and for the first time in her life she locked her bedroom door. The phone rang
once,
but she did not get up to answer it. At midnight she heard her father come in, but there was no knock on her door, no whispered calling of her name.

In the morning he was gone. So were two suitcases and most of his clothes. Only then did she allow the tears to break.

10

I

WHEN MALONE
walked into his office Clements was already there, a fax sheet in his hand. Without comment he handed it to Malone, who took it and glanced at it, then handed it back. “So?”

“It's up to you,” said Clements, laying the Interpol report on Malone's desk, “I'd appreciate it if you didn't ask me to be part of it. You want some coffee?”

He went out to get the coffee and Malone sat down and reached for the fax sheet. He wished he could tear it up, drop it in the waste-basket, there to be collected by Peter Keller, the innocent. Except that, unfortunately, Keller was not innocent.

Working without official authority from his superiors in Starnheim, often in his own time, he had pursued a woman and a doctor who were suspected of murdering the woman's husband. The two suspects had finally been brought to trial, mainly due to Keller's efforts. That fact had been admitted in the court, but he had not been commended for his efforts; Malone guessed that it was because he had flouted authority, a German sin. The woman had been convicted, but the doctor had been acquitted. A month later the doctor had apparently committed suicide. But it was known, though the evidence was only circumstantial, that Peter Keller had murdered him. There had been no official enquiry, but Keller had been quietly discharged from the police force. Two weeks later the Kellers had sold up their home and left Germany.

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Malone looked up as Clements came back with the coffee. “He was sounding off about that the night before last. You think that's why he did it?”

“What other reason?” Clements slumped down. He was utterly exhausted, he felt boneless; he knew that if his skull was opened up (by Romy?), the post-mortem would reveal that his brain was severely
bruised,
“I rang Romy last night. I dunno what I was gunna say to her. She didn't answer. Which was just as well, maybe. If I'd known last night what's in that report and I'd rung her and she didn't answer, it'd have scared the shit outa me.”

“He's not going to touch her, put that out of your mind.” Malone tasted his coffee; as usual, it couldn't be better. It was as good as Lisa's, which was the highest praise he could offer. “We've got to bring him in, Russ, at least for questioning. I'll see you're not around when it happens. Is Phil Truach still on surveillance with the Customs and the Feds?”

“He was relieved by Terry Stratton—he should be reporting in here at noon. Nothing has happened so far down on the wharf, the container hasn't been collected. Customs have put a bug in it, so's they can follow it when it's picked up.”

“What's happening with Janis Eden?”

“The Drug Unit's got a team tailing her. Andy Graham is with them.” Clements finished his coffee and stood up. “I think I better show some guts. I'm going over to see Romy—”

“There's no need,” said Malone.

Clements turned round, said, “Oh Christ,” and went out to meet Romy as she came into the big room. He took her hand, but didn't kiss her; there was no one else in the room, but it was not embarrassment that stopped him. One look had told him he was greeting a stranger. He led her back to Malone's office.

Malone rose. “Hello. Romy. I was going to call you. Get her some coffee, Russ.”

“Sure.” But Clements remained stationary for a moment, staring at Romy as if waiting for some sign of recognition from her. But there was none, so he went out of the office, stopped, as if he was unsure what he was supposed to be doing, then moved towards the percolator.

Malone looked after him, then at Romy. “It's a guess, but you know why I was going to call you?”

She nodded. Her hair, usually worn loose, was drawn back, accentuating the strained, almost haggard set of her face. Malone had seen it countless times, as if women found their hair, their supposed
crowning
glory, a nuisance in times of stress. “Russ knows, of course?”

“Yes. But I'm the one who found out about your father. Where is he?”

“I don't know.” She saw him raise an eyebrow. “That's the truth, Scobie.”

“How long have you known he might be a suspect?”

Her nervous hands opened, then shut her handbag. “I suppose, at the back of my mind, I've known since the other night, when he started to talk again about an eye for an eye. But I didn't want to think about it. Then last night—”

Clements came back with another cup of coffee. She took it from him, for the first time showed some of the old intimacy with him. “Thanks, Russ. This isn't easy for either of us, is it?”

Then the phone rang. Malone excused himself, took the call; it was from Terry Stratton, one of his junior officers. “Boss, the container's just been picked up—the truck's on its way. Guess who's just started following it in a green Jaguar?”

“Dumb,” said Malone to himself; there were lairs who could never resist showing off their cars or their women. Then he said to Stratton, “Has Snow White got Schultz with him?”

“The two of them are in the car. The Federals think there should be an arrest within the hour.” Stratton was a precise young man whose reports, with their formal phrases and qualifying clauses, sometimes made the computer, programmed for jargon and bad grammar, break into hiccups. “I'll keep you posted on the hour. Stand by.”

“Is it okay if I sit?” But Stratton had already rung off. Malone hung up, leaned back in his chair. He felt a lightening of the load that had been weighing him down, even though arrests were still to be made. He said gently to Romy, “So you don't know where your father is?”

“No.” Romy sipped her coffee; it seemed to give her strength. Or perhaps it was that the two men's sympathy and understanding was more than she had expected. “He had left the flat before I got up this morning. He took all is clothes with him, two suitcases full.”

Malone looked at Clements. “Get on to Mascot, have Immigration stop him if he tries to leave the country.” Clements, for the first time that morning, moved quickly. Malone looked back at Romy. He
held
up the Interpol report. “We know what happened in Germany before you left to come out here. Did he ever confess to you or your mother that he killed that doctor in Starnheim?”

“Never to me. I don't know whether he did to Mother. The subject was taboo.” She was speaking freely now, almost with relief at being able to tell someone her long-held secret. “Once I tried to raise it with her, after we'd been out here two or three years, but she just cut me off. But there were small things that gave him away. He would talk about the case, the woman poisoning her husband, he would tell other people about it in front of Mother and me. And he was always talking about the leniency of the law. He had contempt for it.”

“An eye for an eye—he really believed in that?”

“Absolutely.”

“But why kill Grime and Sally Kissen and Leroy Lugos? Lugos, yes, if your father had a thing about people dealing drugs. But Grime and Sally Kissen? She was just a prostitute—” Then he stopped.

She looked at him as carefully as if she were dissecting him; she had read his mind. “Yes, I've thought of that. If the DNA profile from the semen we found in her . . . Will I have to give evidence?”

“That'll depend on the Crown Prosecutor. We'll try and keep you out of it. Get them to call the pathologist.” Then Clements came back. “Well?”

“Immigration will check for him on all international flights. The airport police are gunna watch for him on the interstate flights, but we may be too late there. He could already be in Melbourne or Perth or wherever.”

“He will go home to Germany,” said Romy. “I
know.”

“Well, we'll get him,” said Malone. “I'm afraid this time he won't be able to complain about the leniency of the law.”

“That wasn't why he killed those people,” said Romy.

II

Janis Eden was at home when Dallas White called her. Her mother had asked her to go
shopping
with her—“We never do anything together these days”—but Janis had pleaded that she had to stay home in expectation of a call from the clinic. As she watched her mother go down the path to the front gate, trailing her small shopping trolley behind her, she had experienced a rare moment of pity for the woman she had never learned to love. But the moment was short-lived, did not have time to weaken her: it was interrupted by White's phone call.

“I'm calling from a pub opposite the wharf. The stuff's just been picked up, it's on its way. Gary and me'll take care of it at the warehouse. We'll see you tonight—”

“I don't think you'd better,” she said. “I had a visit from Inspector Malone yesterday. They know you and I met the day before yesterday out at La Perouse.”

“Shit! Are they keeping tabs on us?” White was silent for a while. She could hear the hum of voices and the clinking of glasses in the background. There was a radio near the pub's phone and she could hear a flat nasal voice, common to race callers, giving tips for tomorrow's races. Then White said, “I dunno, maybe we better let the shipment lay still for a while, leave it there in the warehouse. It'll be safe.”

“We can't afford to do that, not if they call and demand the money. It's cash on delivery, they said. We can't afford to make a payment like that and then wait around for weeks, maybe months, before we can sell the stuff. My banker isn't that generous.”

“Maybe you should go to one of the big banks, they used to be generous. They lent millions to some of the shonkiest jerks you wouldn't wanna know.” She could imagine his grinning at his remark. Real criminals were, in a way, snobs. He was silent again for a moment, then he growled, “Okay, we'll take the risk. I've got an idea . . .”

“What?”

“I'll find one of Denny Pelong's stooges, I know one. He's dumb, wouldn't know his arse from his elbow. But he's greedy. Give him a chance to earn something on the side that Pelong don't know about and he'll fall arse-over-tip to get to it. I'll give him the word where the stuff is, tell him I don't have the cash to pay for it now it's landed here. He'll fall for it.”

“Where will he get the money? Not from Pelong. He's still in intensive care in St. Sebastian's.”

“
The stooge is never gunna get his hands on the stuff, so he won't have to cough up any cash. All we want is for someone to go into the warehouse, so's we can see if he's gunna be nabbed. If the cops don't swoop, then Gary and me'll go in and take care of the stooge and we'll grab the stuff.”

“It sounds too simple.”

“That's what life is, love. Simple. That's something the too-fucking-smart never learn.”

“Meaning me?” she said and hung up on his ear.

Ten minutes later she got the second call she had been waiting on. She had had two previous calls, both from overseas: this was a local call. She thought she recognized the voice and she wondered when he had landed in Sydney.

“Ramon?”

“No names, please. You have the money?”

“I can have it as soon as you want it.”

“Then get it. I shall meet you at noon at the Larissa Café at Bondi. Do you know it?”

“No, but I'll find it.”

“Bring the money in one-hundred-dollar notes. I shall see you at noon. Sit in the very last booth at the back.”

He hung up. She was not sure that he was the man she had dealt with in Las Vegas, but she hoped he was; if there was a hitch, she did not want to be dealing with some go-between. She was already beginning to exalt herself.