Murder Song (39 page)

“We were told you were coming, Scobie.” The inspector was Neil Gittings, a twenty-four-year veteran like Malone and Clements, a graduate of the same year from the police academy but one who had escaped Blizzard's hatred and urge for revenge. He was tall and had a beefily handsome face and a ginger moustache that was now sequinned with raindrops. “You're not too popular.”

“You think I'm playing hero, Neil?”

Gittings shrugged and a small waterfall tumbled off his slicker. “No, I'm not saying that. But what if . . .” He waved a hand at the bleak surroundings. “What if Blizzard is somewhere out there in the
sandhills,
ready to have a go?”

“That's what I'm hoping for, Neil. How does that grab you?” Then Malone grinned. “I'm sorry, mate. But Mr. O'Brien and I feel we've waited long enough . . . Has Jim Knoble's funeral arrived yet?”

“No, it's due in about twenty minutes. They've just arrived with that other body, that girl Mardi Jack. They're over there on that hill.” He nodded towards a low hill in the middle of the cemetery. “A lot of pop stars and show business people. Celebrities, is that what they call „em? I wouldn't know. We had to bar the TV people and the press photographers—they'd have done a steeplechase over the graves to get up there.”

“I think I'd like to go up there,” said O'Brien and, without waiting for approval, moved off.

Malone glanced at Clements. “I think we'd better go with him, Russ.”

“You're going to be right out in the open up there,” said Gittings. “Like a shag on a rock.”

Malone looked after the quick-walking O'Brien. “We'll be at least twenty yards apart. If he gets one of us, the other will have time to get behind a gravestone before Blizzard can take another bead on him.”

“You're out of your bloody head,” said Gittings. “Don't get too close to him, Russ.”

“I'm only a sergeant,” said Clements. “We're always several paces behind you inspectors.”

The humour was black, which was appropriate in the location. The cemetery had been laid out over rolling sandhills; where there were no graves there were scrubby shrubs, barricades of prickly lantana and several platoons of banksia trees, arthritic and bent by the wind. The long rows of graves looked like flat marble or stone beds; but the sleepers lay beneath them. Three pale green water-towers stood on the highest hill; through the rain Malone could make out the hazy shape of a SWOS marksman crouched on the top of one of them. To the south, in a hollow between the cemetery and the bay, were market gardens, green and neat as some military cemeteries Malone had seen, the crops laid out with the same precision as the rows of graves. A Chinese gardener stood motionless amongst the bright green, like an oilskin-clad scarecrow. Beyond the boundaries of the cemetery were the wharves of Port Botany: huge gantry cranes like the yellow skeletons of ancient giant birds, containers piled upon containers like massive red cedar
coffins,
corpses mass-delivered. The rain fell steadily on the whole scene, doing its best to wash the colour out of everything but not quite succeeding.

They were walking up a hill path past a row of mausoleums, like miniature Palladian villas. Malone remarked the names, all Italian; then suddenly he missed his step, putting his foot into a puddle without noticing it. There amidst all the Italian names, the Salvatores, the Buccionis, the Giuffres, was an Irish name:
Malone.
He stood, still with his foot in the puddle, the water leaking into his shoe, and Clements, coming up behind him, head bent under the umbrella, bumped into him.

“What's the matter?” Clements looked up wildly. “You see him?”

“No.” Malone nodded at the name set in a marble plate on the iron door of the mausoleum. “You think that's an omen?”

Clements frowned; then angrily pushed Malone on up the path. “For Crissake, stop thinking like that! Jesus, you bloody Irish—always ready for a wake . . .”

Malone walked on, one shoe squelching, till he reached the top of the hill and stopped. Ahead of him, down the slope the other side of the hill, Mardi Jack was being lowered into her grave. A sombre crowd of mourners, twenty or thirty of them, stood in a semicircle; their heads were bent and Malone recognized none of them. O'Brien had moved to one side, to a narrower path, and Malone turned his head and watched him from under the dripping brim of his hat. O'Brien had taken off his own hat: it was difficult to tell whether he had done it as a last gesture of respect for Mardi Jack or whether he was asking Frank Blizzard, somewhere out there in the rain, to recognize him and try to shoot him. Malone turned slowly, in a circle, looked around and felt the tightening in his gut and then the sweat breaking on him. If Blizzard was going to attempt to kill him or O'Brien or both, now was the moment. They were completely exposed on the top of the hill, so close to death that it seemed that Mardi Jack must be waiting for them to join her.

But the bullets did not come out of the grey curtain of rain and after a moment Malone called softly, “Brian! Time we went back.”

As he spoke a girl looked up from amongst the mourners and stared at him, then at O'Brien.
Then
Gina Cazelli detached herself from the crowd around the grave, came up past O'Brien and stood in front of Malone. She was wearing a floppy-brimmed black hat made even floppier because it was soaked, a shiny black plastic raincoat that came almost to her ankles, and black patent leather boots. Her face was wet with tears and rain.

Don't shoot now, Blizzard, and maybe kill another innocent.

“Hallo, Gina. It's a sad day.”

“I heard you call that guy over there Brian. Is he the B. who was in Mardi's journal?”

“No,” he said without hesitation, protecting her and O'Brien from any further stirring of her feelings. “He just owns the recording company, he thought he'd like to come up here and pay his respects. But he's really here with me to attend the other funeral, the policeman's. We were all old friends once.”

She looked at him doubtfully. Under the drooping brim of her hat, her eyes puffed, her face devoid of make-up, she was even plainer than he had remembered her. He wondered if she had come alone to the funeral and if she would leave alone. The show business people were starting to leave the graveside and none of them was looking back for her.

“Did Mardi's father come down for the funeral?”

“No. There are some bastards in the world, fathers included.”

“Yes,” he said, who knew even better than she about the bastards of the world.
Our Father, Who art in Heaven, never let my kids say that about me
. . .

“Do you think you'll ever find the guy who killed her?”

He looked around the rain-drenched cemetery, then back at her. “I hope so, Gina. For everybody's sake.”

Then she told him to take care of himself and moved off, stumbling up the slippery path as she tried to catch up with the departing mourners. That would be her life, he thought, always trying to catch up with those she hoped would be her friends.

He, Clements and O'Brien walked back down the hill without any word between them. The Knoble funeral had arrived; this time senior officers had come to the cemetery. Malone saw the
Commissioner
and several Assistant Commissioners, including A/C Falkender, who looked across and shook his head as if in disapproval of Malone's attendance. As soon as the coffin was lowered into the grave, Malone nodded to Clements and O'Brien.

“Let's get out of here. Otherwise I'm going to get my arse kicked for being here.”

They walked quickly out of the cemetery to where they had parked their car. As they got into it, Harry Danforth, puffing with the unaccustomed exertion, came hurrying out of the gates after them.

“You're in the shit, Scobie. The Commissioner's livid that you're here, especially after what happened last night. I'm supposed to tell you.”

“Righto, Harry, you just have. We're going back to Cossack Lodge now.”

“I'll follow you, we've gotta do some talking about what happens from here on. How's the new car going, Russ?”

“Fine, Chief,” said Clements. “How's your old one?”

Danforth grunted and left them. Clements put the car into
Drive
and they went up past the TV vans and the press cars; some cameras swung round to follow them, but Malone did not care. He wondered if Malloy-Blizzard would have been here, camera at the ready, if they had not discovered who he was.

V

When the three men, Malone, O'Brien and the big detective Clements, had come out of the main house of the stud, Frank Blizzard had seen them from the cover of a thick stand of trees a mile and a half away. Sitting there on the hill, the powerful telescope trained on the main house, he had seen them come out and get into the unmarked police car. The car had gone down the driveway to the road, followed by another unmarked car with three armed men in it whom he took to be police. The cars turned in the direction of Sydney and a couple of minutes later passed below him within a couple of hundred yards.

He had remarked that no luggage had been brought out to the cars and that the other armed
men,
police or security guards, had remained at the stud. That meant Malone and O'Brien would be returning some time during the day. He was prepared to wait.

He had arrived here at six o'clock this morning, having spent last night at a motel at Bowral, seventy kilometres south of here. Yesterday afternoon he had driven the Nissan Patrol up Parramatta Road, passing several dealers till he saw a small used-car lot that had the look he was searching for, slightly rundown, its string of pennants as tattered as the flags of a defeated ship. The salesman who came out to greet him had much the same look, a matelot trying to stay afloat.

“How much for this?” said Blizzard. “1986, 35,000 k's genuine mileage.”

The salesman, thin and long-jawed, ran a crocodile eye over the vehicle. “I dunno we're in the market for a Patrol, y'know, the downturn in the economy and all that. Leisure stuff, that's pretty hard to move these days, the yuppies are staying at home. The most I could offer would be, I dunno, I'd have to have a think about it—” He had to think, one of the quickest thoughts Blizzard had ever witnessed pass through a human head. “I couldn't offer you any more than, say, twelve thousand tops.”

Blizzard knew it was worth at least fifteen. “I'll take it.”

The crocodile eyes blinked:
Why wasn't the world full of mugs like this every day?

“Just one thing. I want it in cash. I won't argue about the price, you don't argue about paying cash.”

“Ah gee, sport, waddia take me for? You could of pinched this from anyone—I don't handle hot vehicles—” He would handle a burning one if it meant a quick profit. “You got your papers?”

“Everything. Registration, licence, my credit cards—”

“They could of been in the vehicle, sport—”

Blizzard produced his Channel 15 security card with his photo on it. It didn't matter showing his identity now; it would be at least four hours before his picture would go out on the news with the information that the police wanted him for questioning. By then he would be a long way from this salesman who was doing his best to hide his eagerness to make a cheap buy.

“Okay, you got a deal. You're lucky I got just that amount of cash in the safe—I just sold a
Toyota,
dirt cheap, beautiful bargain, to a guy who said he didn't trust banks—”

Sunday afternoon on Parramatta Road: Blizzard wondered how much cash was floating up and down the car lots, passing from hand to hand of men who didn't trust banks.

Ten minutes later he walked off the lot with $12,000 in his overnight bag, which was slung by its strap over his back. The telescope case hung by its strap from round his neck, in one hand he carried his camera box, in the other the gun-case. “Geez, you're loaded, sport. You sure you don't wanna buy a smaller car? I got a beautiful bargain out there, a 1987 Honda Civic, one owner-driver, my aunt, as a matter of fact . . .”

Blizzard walked a hundred yards up the street and bought a motor-cycle, a Honda GL1000, for $4000. He also bought a helmet and gloves, strapped all his gear on the pillion rack and rode out of the lot and headed south.

He stopped at a McDonald's, bought two hamburgers and an apple slice, ate them and then rode on south again. Just before he got to Bowral he turned off the Hume Highway on to a side-road and pulled up beside a small creek. He scrambled down the bank, taking a mirror and shaving gear and scissors with him. There, over the next twenty minutes, he set about eliminating Colin Malloy from whatever remained of the rest of his life. When he had finished he looked at himself in the mirror and had no instant recognition of the man he saw there. The clean-shaven, balding man was a stranger; and for a moment he was terribly frightened. This was the madman who had killed five people and who had just wiped out Colin Malloy who, unlike Frank Blizzard, had experienced happiness. He had run his hand over his tender face like a blind man seeking to identify a stranger.

Now, standing in the timber, watching the two police cars go down the road towards Sydney, hearing the rain beginning to fall on the upper foliage of the trees, he was sane enough to know that he was suffering from some sort of madness. He had once read a poem, he couldn't remember who it was by, and a line had stood out:
There is a pleasure sure in being mad that none but madmen know.
Ah, but you would have to be really round the twist to get pleasure out of it. And he was far from that: he was sane enough to know that, too. All he hoped was that no one would call him a psychopath. He could not take an insult
like
that to the grave with him.

He stayed in the timber for another two hours, huddled in his anorak and helmet against the rain dripping steadily down through the filter of the branches high above him. The motorcycle was hidden under bushes at the edge of the timber, though he was not expecting anyone to come searching for him, least of all a police helicopter on a day like this.