Yesterday's Shadow
Read Yesterday's Shadow Online
Authors: Jon Cleary
YESTERDAY'S
SHADOW
The Scobie Malone Series
Jon Cleary
FOR
CATE
Copyright
© 2001 by Jon Cleary
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without permission in writing from the publisher.
First ebook edition 2013 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.
Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-813-1
Library ISBN 978-1-62460-139-2
Cover photo ©
TK
/
iStock.com
.
CONTENTS
YESTERDAY'S
SHADOW
1
I
THE PAST
is part of the present, if only in memory. But memory, as Malone knew, is always uncertain testimony.
The first body was discovered by a fellow worker of the deceased at 5.08 a.m. The second body was found by a housemaid at 9.38 a.m. Two murders in one night did nothing to raise the hotel's rating from two and a half stars to three, a pursuit of the management over the past three months. An earthquake would have been more welcome, since insurance was preferable to bad publicity.
The Hotel Southern Savoy was one of several on the square across from Central Station, Sydney's terminal for country and interstate trains. The station itself had been built on an old burial ground, an apt location, it was thought in certain quarters, for some of the deadheads in State Rail. The Southern Savoy's clientele was mixed, but one would not have looked amongst it for celebrities or the wealthy. It catered mainly for country visitors and economy tour parties from Scotland, Calabria and the thriftier parts of Vermont. It had little or no interest in its guests, so long as they paid their accounts, and was discreet only because it was too much bother to be otherwise. It had had its visits from the police (two deaths from drug overdoses, several robberies, a prostitute denting the skull of a customer with the heel of her shoe), but it had always managed to keep these distractions out of the news. But murder?
Two
murders?
“The manager is having a fit of the vapours,” Sergeant Phil Truach told Malone, ringing on his mobile and out of earshot of the manager. “He seems a nice guy, but he's a bit frail, if you know what I mean.”
“Phil, put your prejudices back in your pocket. Have a smoke or two. Before I get there,” he
added.
Truach smoked two packs a day and had been told by his doctor that he had never seen such clear arteries, that Philip Morris could drive a truck through them. “I'll have them empty the ashtrays. The media are already here. I think that's worrying the manager more than the corpses.”
“The bodies still there?”
“The guy, the hotel worker, he's been taken to the morgue. The woman's in her room, the ME's examining her. Crime Scene are still here.”
Normally Malone, head of Homicide, would not have been called in on a single murder till the circumstances of it had been fully determined. But two murders in the one hotel on the same night, one a male worker, the other a female guest, called for his presence. The homicide rate in the city was rising and everyone who was literate, from Opposition MPs to letter-writers to the morning newspapers and callers to radio talk shows, was demanding to know what the government and police were doing about it. Zero tolerance had become a mantra, even with voters who had never come within a hundred kilometres of a violent crime.
He went out to the main room of Homicide where Russ Clements sat at his desk, which, startlingly, was bare of paper. Usually it looked like the dump-bin outside a paper mill.
“What's the matter? You not accepting any more paperwork?”
“This is what they callâis it a hiatus? I dunno if the system's run outa paper, but I'm not, as they say, gunna make any enquiries. It'll start up again, soon's my back is turned. In the meantime . . .”
Malone and Clements had worked together for more years than they cared to count. Over the last year or two, as Homicide and Serial Offenders, part of Crime Agency, had expanded, they had worked together less and less out of the office. Clements, as Supervisor, the equivalent of general manager, had become trapped at his desk. Computers had proved to be just another form of land-mines, hemming him in. The diet of reports, reports, reports had put weight on him, turned muscle to fat. He was a big man, a couple of inches taller than Malone, and though he had never been light-footed, his tread now was heavy. He was a prisoner looking for parole.
“
In the meantime, on your feet,” said Malone. He, too, had begun to thicken as middle age wrapped itself round him, but he still looked reasonably athletic. But he knew he was long past chasing crims on foot. “We're going over to the Southern Savoy. You can help me count the bodies.”
Clements stood up, reached for his jacket as if it were a lifebelt. “I thought you'd never ask. Gail, keep an eye on this thing for me.” He nodded at his computer, at its screen as blank as a crim's eye. “Ignore everything but love and kisses from the Commissioner.”
Gail Lee, one of the four women detectives on the staff of twenty, looked at Malone. “What's the matter with him?”
“He's light-headed, he's going to be a detective again.”
The two men went out of the room, Malone as usual putting on his pork-pie hat. It made him look like a cop from the 1950s, but it was his trademark, though only in the eyes of his staff. They let themselves out through the security door and disappeared, unaware of the swamp they were to step into in Room 342 at the Hotel Southern Savoy.
Gail Lee looked at Sheryl Dallen, another of the distaff side of Homicide. “I think they're both into the menopause.”
Sheryl leaned back in her chair, swept an arm around her. “Won't it be lovely when all this is ours? A woman Commissioner, seven women Assistant Commissionersâ”
The three men still in the large room looked up, like pointers that had scented danger. Gail and Sheryl exchanged foxy grins.
Malone and Clements drove through a day as sharp as a knife against the cheek; a westerly wind had whetted it. Building outlines were as clean as etchings; a lone cloud was like an ice-floe, queues stood at bus stops looking as miserable as if they were queuing for the dole. The car's radio told them the temperature was only 14 degrees Celsius.
“A summer's day in Finland,” said Clements.
“Or in England,” said Malone, and they smiled at each other with Down Under smugness.
Phil Truach, cigarette-satisfied, was waiting for them in the lobby of the hotel. It was not a large
lobby;
expense had been spared by the developer who had built the hotel. It was crowded now with departing guests, some of whom looked to be in a hurry, as if afraid they might be the next murder victims. There were unwelcome guests: two pressmen and three radio reporters. Malone was grateful there were no television cameramen. Television shots of crime scenes never seemed to show anything but police officers going in and out of doorways as if looking for work.
Truach pulled Malone and Clements to one side; they stood behind a limp palm, the one piece of greenery in the lobby. “The media want a statement.”
“Stuff 'em for the moment,” said Malone. “Where's the manager?”
“He's up with Crime Scene. He seems to have recovered. Your wife's up there, too, Russ.”
Clements frowned. “As ME? What's she doing there?”
“I dunno.” Truach held up a hand as they stepped out from behind the palm and the five reporters pushed forward. “Later, guys.”
“Is there any connection between the two murders? Is it a serial killer?” She was from a radio station, she chewed on
serial killer
as if it were a liqueur-filled chocolate. Malone remembered the days when all police reporters had been male, eager cubs or hard-bitten hacks. These girls were just as tenacious: “Or is it just coincidence?”
“Coincidence,” said Malone, stepping into the lift and pressing the button for the doors to close. “It makes the world go round.”
“She won't learn that till she's middle-aged,” said Clements. “Who's upstairs, Phil, besides my wife?”
“Coupla uniformed guys, two plainclothes from Regent Street, Norma Nickles and a young guy from Crime Scene.” Truach, like most of the older cops, still used the old term instead of Forensic. Police teams, like football teams, were constantly being re-named. “Your wife and a guy from the morgue. And Deric, the manager. D-E-R-I-C, he spelt it out for me.”
“Phil, I think you're homophobic,” said Malone.
“They rub me up the wrong way,” said Truach and all three of them laughed.
They
were on their way to a homicide, a double homicide, another job of work. The mood changed only when the dirty work began: the wonder at why a particular life had been taken, the informing the relatives of the victim's death and how it had occurred.
Romy Clements, Deputy Director of Forensic Medicine at the morgue, looked in surprise at her husband. He returned the look. They hadn't met over a corpse in several years.
“What are you doing here?”
“What are
you
doing here?” he said.
“I have four of my staff off with “flu virus.”
She was in a white coat, was wearing plastic gloves, but the clinical look didn't detract from her own looks. She, like Russ, had put on a little weight, but middle-aged spread was still a few years ahead of her. She had that comfortable, comforting appearance that some women achieve in their late thirties when life is going well for them. But Malone always found it remarkable that she had reached that assurance. Her mother had died only a short time after coming to Australia from Germany. Her father, never wanting to leave Germany, was serving a life sentence for serial killing. Yet somehow, with the help of Russ, she had come through all that to self-confidence. The Clements' marriage was a harbour for both of them, their five-year-old daughter their beacon in the centre of it.