Pride's Harvest (14 page)

“No.” Narvo was still stiff and cold behind the glaze.

“Where could I find it? Over at District at Cawndilla?”

There was a slight hesitation; then: “No, I don't think so. Look, why do you want to go into this? Have you got something on Chess Hardstaff?”

“I've got nothing on nobody so far,” he said and smiled at his double negative; but Narvo was in no mood for humour, weak or hilarious. Malone paused, looking steadily at the uniformed man
opposite
him. “Hugh, let me tell you something about the way I work. I don't believe any crime starts the moment it happens, not even a so-called crime of passion. The start of it is buried somewhere inside the person who commits it. My wife, who is the educated one in our family, once told me that some Greek philosopher said that a man's character is his own fate. So I start looking into the past when I come into a case, because that's where the present began.” He had enough modesty to hope that he didn't sound pompous; pomposity has sunk more wisdom than ridicule ever has. “I'm not saying, or even thinking, that Chess Hardstaff had anything to do with his wife's murder or Sagawa's. I just want to know what makes the man tick, why everyone in this district seems to genuflect whenever his name's mentioned. I don't know, but he may have influenced the one who killed Sagawa. If I have to go back to interview him again, I want to know everything I can about him. And if his wife was murdered, I want to know about that, too.”

There was silence in the room. In the outer offices there was the murmur of voices; at the front desk someone shouted, as if wanting to start an argument. At last Narvo said, “Are you going to go into the background of everyone around here? Go back and dig up their past?”

“If I have to. You'd better face it, Hugh—I'm going to make waves.”

“Jesus!” The glaze broke. Narvo sat silent for a while; Malone did not hurry him. Then the uniformed man sighed resignedly. “Okay, I guess it can't be avoided—making waves, I mean. Maybe we should never have called you in on the Sagawa business.” He said it without resentment and Malone didn't take offence. “I was a very junior constable back then. I was the cop who first saw Dorothy Hardstaff's body.”

“Was she a local woman?”

“No, she was from Sydney.”

“Prominent family? These silvertails usually marry their own kind. The same school, that sort of thing.”

“No, she wasn't, not as far as I remember. She was never a favourite of old Chester Hardstaff's, she was a nobody as far as he was concerned.”

“
What happened?”

“She was strangled with her own nightgown.”

“Raped?”

“No, there was no sign of that. There were one or two things that didn't add up . . .” He got up, came round from behind his desk and closed the door of his office. Then he went back and sat down, again lapsing into silence for a while. Somehow or other he looked less neat now, though there was no sign of disarray in his uniform or his precisely combed hair; the neatness had gone from his control. “There was no sign of a struggle, she looked as if she had been strangled in her sleep—she was lying on the bed, the nightgown around her neck. There were bruise marks on her throat, they looked like fingermarks, but they weren't mentioned in the GMO's report.”

“Who was the GMO then? Doc Nothling?”

“No, it was an old chap named Postle, he's dead now. Max Nothling didn't come here to Collamundra till after the murder. His wife Amanda wanted to come home after her mother's death. They'd been living in Perth, where Nothling comes from.”

“Any other Hardstaff kids?”

“Another daughter, I've forgotten her name. She lives in London, never comes home. They say she's a lesbian, but no one knows. That's about the worst they can say about anyone in a district like ours, that someone's gay. It upset all the locals when the Department of Agriculture put out a piece that said cows could be lesbians.” For the first time Narvo cracked a smile, though it was only a tiny crack and looked more like an easing of tension than an expression of humour. “The Country Women's Association, the local branch, said it was disgusting things like that should be said about animals.”

Malone returned the smile, hoping for some level of accord with this stiff, tightly-controlled man. “Did you query the omission in the GMO's report about those fingermarks on Mrs. Hardstaff's throat? And no sign of a struggle?”

Narvo nodded. “I also mentioned in the running sheet that there was no sign of forced entry into the house, though it wasn't unusual back then for doors to be left unlocked. It's different now,” he
added.

“Where was Chess Hardstaff?”

“He was out on the run, he'd left at daybreak. They were putting in a new dam out on the far boundary and he'd gone out to do the preliminary marking-out of where he wanted it. He got back at breakfast time and by then the body had been discovered by the housekeeper. Old Chester was still alive then, he lived in another wing of the main house, and he'd already called the police. I was the first one out there, I was coming in from Cawndilla and I took the call on the radio.”

“So what happened after you queried those omissions?”

“I was transferred, right out of the blue.” His hand strayed to his desk, re-arranged the already neatly arranged papers, the leather cup that held half a dozen pens, the diary. Malone wondered if he had always been so ordered, if he had been just as corseted as this when he had been a junior constable and naive enough to ask unwanted questions. “I was sent to Murwillumbah.”

That was six hundred kilometres from Collamundra, just inside the border with Queensland, the edge of the world. “Is that why your memory is so good on the details?”

“You're sharp, aren't you? You mean because I still hold a grudge? I don't know why I'm telling
you
this—but yes, I still think I got the dirty end of the stick.”

“Who was in charge of the investigation?”

“Peter Dammie. He's now the Superintendent over at Cawndilla. The coroner's verdict was that it was done by person or persons unknown.”

“I think that's what a lot of people would like to think about the Sagawa murder—person or persons unknown. No cop likes that on a file, not if he's honest.”

“I was young then, I thought if you helped solve a murder case, you'd be marked for promotion . . . There'd been a few blokes in the district at that time looking for work. We used to get families who'd pull up here for a couple of months, camp out by the river and do some casual work, then head south for the Riverina, down by the Murrumbidgee and around there, for the fruit harvest. It could've been one of them, though nothing was reported stolen, no money or jewelry. Anyhow, that was the verdict.”

“
But you were never called as a witness?”

“They weren't going to bring me all the way down from Murwillumbah. Peter Dammie gave all the police evidence.” He leaned back in his chair, pushing himself back with his hands on his desk and leaving them resting on its edge. The starch had gone out of him, but he hadn't wilted. “Scobie, forget it. There's no evidence at all that anyone locally did it. You make waves and Chess Hardstaff will have your arse kicked in and you'll finish up at Murwillumbah like I did.”

Malone grinned. “Tibooburra is the new threat.” Tibooburra was in the far north-west of the State, as remote as one could get from a city posting, out where the kangaroos considered themselves the rightful voters and the only politician ever to visit the place had fainted from lack of attention. “Righto, I'll paddle quietly. But if I wanted to look up the Hardstaff file, where would I find it?”

“You wouldn't. Just out of curiosity, I asked Peter Dammie about it a year or so ago. He told me it had been lost. It was a bald-faced lie, but Peter's good at those. After that, I decided to mind my own business. Some day I may be District Superintendent, if I tread carefully. Maybe I'll look for it then. But officially, I'll let it stay lost.”

The two men were silent for a while, a sudden bond established between them that had been undetected in the making. Narvo got up and went and opened the door again; the sounds of the station once more could be heard. Based at Police Centre in the city, Malone had almost forgotten the atmosphere of a local police station. Now there were snatches of noise, like daubs on an abstract painting: a drunk being hauled in, a woman shouting abuse, the chiacking amongst some cops as they came in from the beat. Out at the front desk he knew there would always be some citizen asking questions, demanding rights, paying fines: the duty officer would be doing his best to be polite, though bored almost to unconsciousness by the same-every-day routine of it. Normally a country police station would be relatively quiet, but today's activity seemed to reflect the atmosphere outside in the rest of the town: the beginning of what might prove to be a wild weekend. The annual Cup meeting, a murder, a suicide: all the ingredients were there.

“Are all your men going to be on duty this weekend?”

“
They'll need to be. You're not going to ask for one or two, are you?”

“No, Curly and Wally Mungle will do. Who do you get in town on a weekend like this? Pickpockets, hookers, stuff like that?”

“No pickpockets, not that I know of. Some hookers, but they are mostly casuals, not full-time. They come in from some of the bigger towns, they're no real problem. We never pick them up, unless we get complaints about them. When we do, we just run them out of town.”

Life, it seemed, was normally so simple here in Collamundra; except for the occasional murder. Malone stood up, at ease now with Narvo. “If I want to use the computer, is it okay?”

“Sure, just tell Janine. She'll fix it.”

“What's it connected to?”

“District Headquarters, Police Central in Sydney, shire registry, the motor registry.”

“The hospital?”

Narvo frowned, sensing waves again. “Yes. It's not usual, but the hospital board okayed it. It happened three years ago when we had the bad floods through here, and we haven't been disconnected.”

“Where will I find Ray Chakiros?”

Narvo looked at his watch. “He'd be down at the Legion club, he's always there this time of day. Is he on your list?”

“Of suspects?” Malone shook his head. “I haven't even talked to him yet. But he owns a Mercedes, doesn't he?”

“What's that got to do with it?”

“Billy Koowarra told me he was out at the gin the night Sagawa was murdered. He saw a Mercedes parked alongside Sagawa's car. There was no mention of that in the running sheet. There's been some pretty sloppy work on this one, Hugh. I'm not going to report anyone, but you can't expect me to continue the sloppy work. I think I can guess what happened on Billy's evidence about the Merc. Wally Mungle probably interviewed Billy and decided the less Billy knew about the case, or
showed
what he knew, the better. Billy was his cousin and a Koori, he was going to look after him. I don't condone it, but
it'
s understandable—I've known cops who look after each other.” He waited for some reaction from Narvo; but there was none. He went on, “You spoiled things, Hugh, when you invited Russ and me in.”

For a moment it looked as if the glaze might set in again; but then once more there was the slight crack of a smile and Narvo nodded. “Go ahead and talk to Ray Chakiros. Or go ahead and listen. He'll do all the talking.”

Malone went back upstairs to the detectives' room. The drunk, still shouting, was being led along to the cells in the lock-up; Malone felt some relief that he was a white youth and not a Koori.

Clements was adding to the running sheets as Malone came into the room. “How'd it go?”

“Narvo's on our side, up to a point. He won't like us making waves, but he's not going to stop us. Go down and see Janine in the office—she's a blonde who should stir up a red-blooded feller like you. Ask her to plug in the computer to the hospital, tap into their records and get all you can about Doc Nothling and Dr. Bedi. Where's Curly?”

“Wally Mungle rang in. A coupla Abo stirrers have come up from Canberra. They didn't know about Billy Koowarra's suicide till they got here, but Wally thinks they're gunna make something of it.”

“Where are they?”

“Out at the blacks' settlement. Curly's gone down to hear their pitch before the uniformed guys move in. I gather some of the young uniformed blokes wouldn't mind a bit of a stoush with the young Abos. It's been building up.”

“Well, that's none of our business. Go down and see what you can get out of the hospital computer on Nothling and Bedi. I'm going to ring Greg Random.”

Random, newly promoted, was the Commander, Regional Crime Squad, South Region. He and Malone had worked together in the old Homicide Squad before regionalization and they knew the limits and strains of each other's field. He greeted Malone's call with, “What are you doing out there—having a holiday?”

“Never had it so good. Greg, this job has got—what used the kids say?—vibes.”

“I never listened to my kids when they talked like that.” Malone knew that in lots of ways he
himself
was old-fashioned, but Random could be turn-of-the-century; yet he was a good cop, one of the best. “What sort of—
vibes
?”

“I dunno, I can't put my finger on them. But trying to get information out of some of the locals here is like trying to get it down in Chinatown or out in Cabramatta amongst the Vietnamese. Did you know this is Chess Hardstaff's territory? I mean
his territory
?
”

“I knew he lived out there, I never knew how much clout he had.” In the days of the Labour government, country politicians, elected or otherwise, had had little effect on the Police Department. Then the Premier, Hans Vanderberg, The Dutchman, had also been the Police Minister and he had brooked no interference from the hayseeds. Now one of the hayseeds was the Minister and the Department was having to change focus.