Pride's Harvest (34 page)

Clements nodded. Twenty-three years' experience in the field gave you a feeling for reading the wind; without it, you might just as well sit at a desk reading papers. “Okay, we'll put him on hold . . . Chess Hardstaff. We checked him ourselves, Curly and the others didn't go near him, and he has a coupla hours where he could of committed the murder . . . Waring, the same . . . Billy Koowarra's been eliminated—” Then he realized what he had said. “Sorry, I didn't mean it like that . . . Your mate Fred Strayhorn.”

“He's not my mate. But you can scratch him off the list. He'd have no motive for killing Sagawa. He might've come back to Collamundra to kill Chess Hardstaff, but that's another matter.”

“Sure,” said Clements drily. “Don't let's confuse things. So who else have we got, except those whose names aren't on the sheets, about nine and a half thousand other Collamundrans? There are the people who've got an interest in South Cloud. Doc Nothling and his missus, Amanda—but what motive would they have? Gus Dircks and his missus—no, we can forget Gus. He and his missus were still down in Sydney last Monday night—Mrs. Dircks is still there, she didn't come home for the ball.”

“Why? The local MP's wife not coming home for the biggest event of the year?”

“I gather she can't stand a bar of Amanda Nothling. Any committee chaired by Mrs. Nothling doesn't have Mrs. Dircks on it.”

“Who told you that?”

“Ida.”

“She tell you anything else?”
About her husband, for instance?

“No.” Clements looked back at his sheets, as if a clue had just peeped out from between the lines.

Malone let Ida slide out of the conversation, back to her unhappiness. “What have we got on
Narelle?”
He told Clements of his walk back from church with Narelle Potter. “She said Curly had questioned her, but I can't remember her getting a mention in the sheets.”

“She's not here. This guy she said she was with Monday night—” He paused, not wanting to say it; but he had to: “I wonder if it's Curly?”

“We'll have to ask him, won't we?” It was a task neither of them wanted. They did not suspect Baldock of being implicated in the murder of Sagawa, they just did not want to question him about his personal affairs. If he was unhappily married and had been sleeping with Narelle Potter, then it was not police business. Except, Malone told himself, they were checking on Narelle, not on Baldock. Though Curly would hardly see it that way. “Righto, what does that give us? Chess Hardstaff, Trevor Waring, young Phil Chakiros . . . I asked Narelle about her escort last night, the flash playboy Bert Truman.
He
drives a Merc.”

“Curly checked on him after you mentioned who owned Mercs. Truman's in the clear. He was down in Sydney buying a plane—he takes delivery of it next week.”

“Well, someone's making money, then . . . Righto, we've got three possible suspects who could've killed Sagawa—though Waring and Phil Chakiros are in the clear as far as last night's crack at me is concerned. So that leaves only Hardstaff who might've killed Sagawa and then taken a shot at me.”

“Scobie—” Clements chewed his lip. “I think you've got an obsession about Chess Hardstaff. Maybe he killed his wife—what?—seventeen, eighteen years ago.”

“I
know
he did. I've got the feeling.”

“Okay. But that's not our case. What would be his motive for killing the Jap?”

“He could've been trying to tell the Japs they weren't wanted.”

“Why?”

“So's he could take over South Cloud. Maybe he's changed his mind about not wanting to be in it, now he wants it all for himself. From what I hear, cotton's not like wool or wheat, its price doesn't go up and down like a yo-yo.”

“Does he have that sort of money to buy „em out? Scobie, you're inventing motives. Sure, I
know
you wouldn't be the first cop who's done it. But you and I have never done it before and if you wanna start now, count me out.”

It wasn't the first time each had rebuked the other; but this morning Clements's tone had a bluntness to it. Malone, put in his place, backed down. “You're right. But if Ballistics rings at midday and says the bullets you sent down this morning match the one taken out of Sagawa's body, what sort of headache does that give you?”

“That any one of nine-thousand-odd people in this town could hate both the Japs and Sydney cops. Or—” Then he shook his head. “No.”

“No what?”

“I was gunna say Sagawa's killing could of been an accident. You told me at breakfast that young Phil said he and the other yahoos go out shooting up road signs at night. But if someone—not necessarily him and his mates—did shoot Sagawa by accident—the shot could of come from the main road, the bullet had lost most of its velocity by the time it entered his body—if his killing
was
an accident, then who took the shot at you last night?”

A light flickered at the back of Malone's mind. “I think we ought to go back and see Doc Nothling.”

“Why him? Dr. Bedi is the one who did the autopsy.”

“You said Nothling had been born in Rangoon. What if something happened there during the war that made
him
a Jap-hater?”

“He was just a kid then, he was born in—” Clements flipped through the pages of his notebook. “In nineteen forty.”

“What if he'd lost a parent? Or both of them? Let's call him up. Do you have his home phone number?”

Amanda Nothling answered the phone out at the Nothling property. “Oh, it's you, Inspector. I believe you're coming to our little party this evening. I'm looking forward to meeting your wife. You
are
coming, aren't you?”

“
Yes, we're coming. Right now, though, I'd like to talk to your husband.”

“Police business?” Her voice hadn't changed, she could have been asking what he was going to wear to her party; but almost as if he were on the end of a video-phone, Malone could see her hand tighten on the receiver at her end.

“Not really. He's the GMO. We just want to check a few things. Where can I get in touch with him?”

She hesitated, as if debating whether she should tell him. Then: “He's at the cotton gin with the Japanese. Do you still have your sergeant with you?” She said
sergeant
as if she had trouble recognizing such a lowly rank. He wondered how she had managed to stoop to talking to an inspector. “Would you care to bring him with you this evening? Will he know what to wear? Just casual, but not thongs and shorts.”

“I'm sure Sergeant Clements knows. He'll like that.”

He hung up and Clements said, “What will I like?”

Malone told him. “Practise your manners and wear shoes. You'll be meeting the squattocracy.” He looked at his watch. “Righto, let's go out to the gin. Nothling's out there. We'll be back in time in case anything comes in from Ballistics.”

They had reached the door of the empty room when Baldock, in thongs, shorts and a sweater, came in. “It's my day off, like I told you yesterday, but I've got some papers I wanna take home—” Then he became aware of the awkward silence of the two Sydney men. “Something wrong?”

Clements, glad for once that he was the junior man, left it to Malone.

“Curly—” He always hated these sort of personal questions. “Curly, is there anything between you and Narelle Potter?”

Even Baldock's bald head seemed to frown. “With Narelle? Christ, where did you get that?”

Malone explained, something he knew he would not have done if he had been questioning someone not in the force. “I had to ask, Curly. You know her, you obviously like her more than a lot of people in this town do—”

“That doesn't bloody well put me in bed with her! Jesus, you're becoming paranoid!”

That
was twice he had been accused of that. “Righto, I apologize. But can you nominate someone who might be having an affair with her, a
married
man—”

Baldock brushed by them and went on into the room. “I'll think about it!”

Malone looked at Clements, shrugged, and the two of them went down the stairs. “Well, we buggered that one.”

“I think by the time this is finished,” said Clements, “we won't have a friend in town.”

They drove out through another brilliant day, the sky absolutely cloudless, the horizon of low hills to the east as sharp as an etched line. Malone felt a certain comfort heading east: that way lay the known. Or at least partly known.

As they got closer to the cotton farm they saw the faint haze of dust; though it was Sunday, the harvesters were at work again. The Japanese bosses had to be impressed that they hadn't invested their money in a nation of bludgers. Of course they were paying double time for their confidence in the workers, but what the hell? Ray Chakiros would probably look on it as part of the war reparations, though Malone doubted that he would ever pay double time to
his
workers.

When Clements pulled the car up alongside the three vehicles, one of them a beige Mercedes, outside the farm office, they could hear the dull roar inside the giant thunder-box that was the gin. They saw Barry Liss come out of the huge shed, slip off his ear-muffs, recognize them and wave. Almost immediately he was followed by Koga, the three Japanese executives and Nothling. Liss moved into the annexe where Sagawa's body had been discovered, and the other five men came across towards the office. Nothling looked outsized beside the thinner and shorter Japanese.

“Morning, chaps!” The bonhomie washed over the two detectives like a wave. “Even the coppers working on a Sunday? What's the country coming to?”

The four Japanese looked at each other, then at him. They looked like men who fervently hoped they would not fall ill, not if they had to have Nothling attend to them. He was their partner in the cotton venture and they looked as if they regretted that, too.

“May we see you a moment, Doc?” said Malone and made his excuses to the Japanese.

Nothling,
the bonhomie suddenly falling away like a surgery gown he had discarded because the operation was off, hesitated, then nodded. Malone and Clements led him across to the Mercedes.

“Your car?”

Nothling was stone-cold sober this morning; there was no sign of hangover, he had not been at the ball last night. “I told you, I drive an LTD. This is my wife's.”

“Oh yes, I forgot.” He hadn't. It had been a ploy to drain a little more of the confidence out of Nothling. “How are the jockeys making out at the hospital?”

“They'll all recover. No thanks to the Abos. I understand you're not going to charge them?”

“None of the locals, no. That's Inspector Narvo's turf, not ours.”

“The territorial imperative, eh? We have the same thing in the medical profession. Very convenient at times. It's a pity it didn't prevail in the Sagawa case.”

Malone ignored that, decided to bowl at the wicket. “Doctor, we understand you were born in Rangoon in Burma.”

Nothling's face went stiff; even the double chins seemed to firm. He had soft brown eyes that, in a thinner face, might have appeared large; now they narrowed. The more Malone saw of him, the more he wondered what Amanda Nothling saw in him. But he had long ago given up trying to look at a man through a woman's eyes. It was the worst sort of astigmatism.

“Yes. How did you get that information?”

“Is it something you didn't want known?”

“No-o. I just don't understand why it should interest you.”

“Did you spend the war in Rangoon?”

“No. My mother brought me out—I was only eighteen months old. We were on the last ship to leave. My mother took me home to England.”

“And your father?”

“He was manager of a rice mill up-country . . . Ah, now I'm beginning to understand.” Nothling looked across at the four Japanese who stood talking in a group outside the office door.
“They
don't know
any
of this.”

“Any of what?”

“Come on, old chap! Don't let us beat about the bush. My father was imprisoned in Mergui camp, he died there from ill-treatment by the camp commandant, Major Nibote. Who was tried and executed as a war criminal and who, into the bargain, was Mr. Sagawa's father. But you know all that, am I not right, old chap?”

Malone glanced at Clements, then back at Nothling. “No, we didn't know all of it, Doc. All we knew was that you were born in Rangoon and that Sagawa's father was a war criminal.”

“But you'd made an educated guess there might be more?”

“That's one of the things that keeps us going, educated guesses. That and luck.”

“A further educated guess is that I might have killed Ken Sagawa out of revenge for what his father had done to mine?”

“It's a possibility.”

“It's a flight of fancy.”

“They keep us going, too.”

“You're wrong, old chap. I'm not the vengeful sort. I don't fight other generations' wars.”

“Where were you last Monday night, Doc, between eight o'clock and midnight?”

Malone waited for Nothling to smile with wry amusement, which had been his tone up till now; but he didn't. “Do I incriminate myself if I say I'd rather not answer any more questions till I've talked to my lawyer?”

“Not necessarily. Who is your lawyer—Trevor Waring?”

Nothling did smile then. “Another educated guess? Or did he tell you he was my lawyer?”

“No. It's just that I wonder what all the other legal eagles in town do for clients. Trevor seems to have all the business that counts.”

“Yes, Trevor acts for me. He's the Hardstaff family lawyer. To answer your first question—I was at home last Monday night. All night.”