Murder Song (32 page)

He had brought Julie home, worried that she should have such a sick headache; she had never
been
prone to headaches. But worry about her had not stopped him from going back to the Opera House; it was like the sickness of the compulsive gambler. Seeing Malone at the theatre, watching Waldorf up on the stage, had been too much of a magnet: the cold madness had taken hold of him again. He had put Julie to bed, gone down to the lock-up garage on the ground floor; each flat in the block had its own individual garage. He had taken the flat wooden case out of the locked steel box that was bolted to the concrete floor; he had told Julie it was for his camera equipment and there were indeed some lenses in there. Then he had gone out into the street and got into their car, a beige Mazda 626; their four-wheel-drive Nissan was always kept in the garage and taken out only at the weekend. It had taken him only ten minutes to drive from Wollstonecraft back over the Harbour Bridge and up to Macquarie Street, where he had parked in a No Parking zone after putting a Press sign inside the windscreen. Carrying the gun-case he had gone down to the Opera House, circled the forecourt by staying close to the fall of the steep bluff and climbed the wide steps to the entrance to the Botanical Gardens. This was an entrance that he knew was rarely used, even during the day; but he had come here several times with a Channel 15 reporter to record an interview with some overseas visitors. The iron railing gate was locked, but he was prepared for it. He had brought with him a locksmith's small tool-kit; an abiding interest in crime detection breeds some useful, if criminal, knowledge. He had used his skill on several news assignments, much to the admiration of the reporters he had worked with.

He unlocked the gate, but left it closed, just in case a guard came round on patrol. A couple of hundred yards away up to his left was Government House, the residence of the State Governor; a similar distance away to his right and below him was a construction site for the new harbour tunnel. A security patrol might come down this far, but he had to take that risk.

He went back and sat down on top of the steps, close to the base of the railing fence that ran along the top of the bluff, He took out the Tikka and assembled it, handling it almost affectionately; he had loved guns all his life. Then he affixed the „scope, an 8 x 56 Schmidt-Bender; it was not an infra-red night „scope, but it was good enough at night so long as the target was illuminated or standing against a light. Though he had made a mistake in shooting Mardi Jack when she had been outlined against the
light.
He had been as annoyed at himself at his incompetence as he had been upset at her unnecessary death.

At one point a young couple started to come up the steps, but he had coughed, they had looked up and seen him and at once turned round and gone back down the few steps they had climbed. When Malone and Waldorf had at last come across the forecourt he had followed them through the telescopic sight, tempted to pick them both off while they were out in the open. But there were cars still coming out from the main entrance to the Opera House, their headlights sweeping across the open space like giant yellow scythes. He waited till his two victims had reached the car parked with a dozen or more others along the low harbour wall. Then he lifted the rifle and peered through the „scope; both men were clearly visible less than a hundred yards from him. He aimed at the back of Waldorf's head as the singer came round to the near side of the car and looked across the roof of the car at Malone. He felt the tremor run through him that had shaken him on the other occasions; then the usual cold calm had abruptly replaced it. He squeezed the trigger, saw Waldorf stumble, slammed back the bolt again and again, getting off two more shots, knew he had missed Malone and decided it was time to run. For the first time he forgot to pick up the empty cartridge cases.

He picked up the gun-case and raced up the path and into the Gardens. Over on his left he could see lights in the staff quarters of Government House; he hoped no security guard came out of there and tried to stop him; he did not want to kill another innocent victim. He kept running, not looking back to see if Malone was following him. He came to a gate that led out and down to Macquarie Street. He fumbled for his locksmith's kit, took out a pick and unlocked the gate. He was breathing heavily, sweating despite the cold night, trembling again. He looked back now, could see no sign of Malone in the deep shadows of the trees. He paused, took three deep breaths and tried to steady himself. Then he removed the „scope, hastily took the Tikka apart, put both into the gun-case and stepped out into Macquarie Street, drawing the gate to behind him.

Driving home he felt none of the elation he had felt after the other murders; instead, he felt almost as drained as he had when he had learned he had killed an innocent woman instead of Horrie
O'
Brien. That had been a dreadful shock; he was a killer, but he could suffer for the innocent who died. He had almost decided then that enough was enough. Then the next day O'Brien's photo had appeared in the newspapers on his way into a NCSC hearing and Malloy had known that he could never rest until he had completed the task he had set himself.

It was O'Brien who, unwittingly, had been responsible for the hit list. Those shadowy betrayers of years ago, the cadets who had thrown Malloy out of the police academy, had taken shape again; he had even heard the echo of their laughter as they had turned the fire hose on him and forced him out into the street where he had almost been run down by a car. He had remembered, so clearly that the memory was like being scratched with jagged glass, being called before the Superintendent at lunchtime the next day, of being interrogated and then, an hour later, being told he was dismissed as a cadet. All that had been almost buried till six months ago when he had suddenly recognized who Brian Boru O'Brien was.

He had read about the high-flying entrepreneur, but he had never had to film him; O'Brien, it seemed, never gave interviews. Then one day at the races at Randwick, when he and a reporter had been sent out to film an interview with a leading jockey coming back after his umpteenth suspension, the reporter had pointed out O'Brien in the saddling paddock. It had taken him a moment or two to recognize him; then the bony, laughing face of years ago had burst out of the shadows of almost-dead memory. He saw O'Brien throw back his head and laugh and, as if in a nightmare, heard the sound down the years as O'Brien turned the fire hose on him. The effect on Malloy had been such that the reporter had looked at him with concern.

“What's the matter, mate? You going to faint or something?”

“No. No, I'm okay. I should wear a hat. The sun's getting to my bald spot.”

“You ought to put some of your beard on your head, you've got enough to spare. Okay, there's our hoop, let's go and talk to him. He's been outed so many times they have to introduce him to the horses again each time he comes back.” And they had gone across to the jockey, but not before Malloy had taken another hard look at O'Brien again. It was the same man, all right, who had led the laughter against him all those years ago.

And
then, on the way home, the other five men, whose names at least he had never forgotten, came slipping back into his mind, like guerrillas who expected no ambush. He had brooded about them all weekend, managing to hide his preoccupation from Julie; and on the Monday he had begun tracking down his enemies, as they had once again become. It had been easy to find Harry Gardner; he had simply phoned all the H. Gardners in the Sydney phone directory; the eleventh he had called had been
his
Harry Gardner. As soon as Gardner had said yes, he had once been in the police force, starting as a cadet at the academy in 1965, Malloy had hung up. If Harry Gardner had moved to another State and stayed there, or had not come back to his home town, he might still be alive. Malloy doubted that his urge for revenge would have made him travel to the ends of the earth, or even of Australia, to kill a man he hated.

He had killed the men in no special order. O'Brien's success had added something more scalding than salt to that wound of long ago; in a different field, O'Brien had achieved what he, Malloy, had dreamed of being, one of those at the top. True, O'Brien now looked like being toppled by the NCSC, but that did not matter: he had achieved what he had set out to do and it would be no satisfaction for Malloy if some government quango destroyed O'Brien. Malone was a different case; he was still on his way up. But Malloy had learned that the Detective-Inspector was certain of steady promotion, that he was so highly regarded in the Department that some day he might even be Police Commissioner. The job that Malloy, all those years ago, in the visions of youth, had dreamed of.

When he had reached home last night Julie was asleep. Or pretending to be: this morning he was not so sure. He had undressed in the dark and got into bed beside her. He had kissed her tenderly on her dark hair, and she had just stirred, then turned over away from him. He had lain on his back for a while, running the murder through his mind as he might run a tape through an editing machine. He still felt drained and he wondered why. Was he running out of anger and hatred? He had drifted off into sleep before he could find an answer, but when he had woken this morning he had known the task had to be completed.

Now, he got up and stood beside Julie, drying up the dishes while she washed. They had a dishwasher, but Julie used it only during the week, when they were both working; at weekends, she washed up
after
every meal.

“When you've finished the book, would you like me to type it up for you?” She worked as a secretary for a furniture designer and manufacturer; their flat was full of comfortable, traditional furniture, but her employer was an avant-garde designer and she spent her working day amongst chrome and glass and abstract sculpture. “I can put it through the word-processor.”

“We'll see.” All he had to do was find three hundred pages of manuscript.

He looked out the kitchen window at the grass tennis court next door; the neighbour, a prominent lawyer, was playing tennis with two daughters and a son. He and his wife had six children, all living at home in the big two-storeyed house, and Malloy knew that Julie sometimes longed for that sort of home life. She had been brought up in a large house in Adelaide, had had six brothers and sisters, and she had never really become accustomed to living in a two-bedroom flat with only him to care for. He did not dislike Wollstonecraft, a tree-clothed inner suburb, but he often yearned for life in a country town again, to go out with a gun hunting rabbits or duck. But then, he told himself, what Police Commissioner would live in a small country village like Minnamook?

“Are you on stand-by today?” Julie asked.

“I don't know till I call in. If I'm not, how'd you like a day in the country? We'll take a picnic lunch.”

“Sure, it's just the day for it. Where'll we go?”

“Not too far. How about somewhere out the back of Camden? I can do some bird-watching.”

10

I

“A LOT
of owners look on their horses as toys,” said O'Brien. “Though they'd never admit it. But they're like kids with their dolls—they get them out and play with them.”

Malone, seated on the verandah beside O'Brien, looked out on the visitors, thirty or forty of them, who had come up to Cossack Lodge for Sunday brunch and the weekly opportunity to look at their profligacy on the hoof. A non-racing man, he had never understood the gambling urge or the desire to splurge money on anything so unreliable as a thoroughbred horse. Once, during the boring hours of a stake-out, Clements had tried to explain to him that the odds were not as bad as he supposed, but he had remained unconvinced. There were a hundred horses here on the stud, plus those on short-term agistment, and O'Brien had admitted that only one in ten might prove a worthwhile investment. Malone, a cautious man with a penny, liked better odds than that.

But he was not really concerned with the fortunes of the horses' owners. “I wish you could have put off this brunch.”

“It's a regular thing, Scobie. They expect it. They like to come up here and talk to the stud-master and show how knowledgeable they are and how shrewd they've been in their buying. Besides, after what was in this morning's papers about the hit list, they'd have come anyway. Look at them—they're giving you and me as much attention as their horses and mares.”

“Well, I guess that's something, an Aussie cop getting as much attention as a racehorse. You think they'll ask for my autograph?” He looked down again at the well-dressed crowd moving between the stables and the white railings of the paddocks. “Have you considered the possibility that one of them could be Frank Blizzard?”

O'
Brien turned his head. “Yes, I considered that. They've all been checked at the gate, they're all regulars plus a few of their own friends who they had to name. But yes, one of „em
could
be Blizzard. But I don't think he's going to try his luck in front of so many witnesses. I've known all these people ever since I got into the racing game three or four years ago. Before I started the stud. If one of them was Blizzard, he'd have killed me before this.” He was surprised at his own coolness as he said it.

Malone said nothing for a while, then: “If you go down the drain, will you lose the stud?”

For a moment or two it looked as if O'Brien would not answer that. He stared out at the landscape, where patches of spring green were beginning to appear on the brown hills in the distance. A black horse stood alone on the far side of a distant paddock, as still as if carved from rock; it drew the eye away from the chatter and movement down by the paddock railings. He would regret losing this property; not because it was another possession but because here he had begun to find a certain peace. Something he had come to realize only this weekend.