Yesterday's Shadow (19 page)

Malone and Gail, both patient people, let him stay in that darkness that he had closed in on himself. He would come out of it, they knew, he was
glad
to have someone to tell his secrets to.

He opened his eyes. “It's a bit late, but I loved Trish. She could be a pain in the arse—” Suddenly he smiled, looked at Malone, who smiled in return. “Wrong phrase. She could be a pain—but she always stuck up for me. Against Mum or Dad or anyone who picked on me. It's no fun being gay in the bush.”

“So when did you finally make contact with her?” asked Malone.

“I wrote to her when she first came back to Australia, to Canberra. I saw a photo of her when she and her husband arrived—even though it was nearly twenty years, I recognized her.”

“Would someone else have recognized her?”

“
You mean someone here in Sydney? Someone who knew her—what? Ten, fifteen years ago? I don't know. Maybe. But I knew her at once, soon as I saw the photo. I wrote her—I didn't know whether she would reply. But she did—though she asked me not to say anything to anyone till she had seen me.”

“And you didn't tell any of your friends your sister was the wife of the American Ambassador?” said Gail.

“No, I didn't. Is that so strange?”

“Frankly, yes. People gossip, even when they don't mean to.”

“Well, you're wrong.” He was annoyed. “This was my sister asking a favour of me—the first time in twenty years.”

“I apologize,” said Gail and sounded sincere.

He nodded, like a teacher saying, Let that be a lesson to you. Then he went on, “She came up to Sydney and I met her and we had drinks. It was a bit—well,
stiff
, at first. Then it was like it was back home. We even talked about the farm, though neither of us was nostalgic for it. Then she told me she'd said goodbye to Trish Niven—she was very frank, like she used to be years ago. She said she'd created a new life and she didn't want it spoiled.”

“She was asking you to keep your mouth shut?” said Malone.

“Yes. Yes, if you want to put it like that. She said we'd keep in touch, but she didn't want it to be known that we were brother and sister.”

“So she was never going to tell her husband about you?”

“I guess not. I was going to ask her about it, but never got round to it.”

“So you agreed to what she suggested?”

“I agreed. Why not? I'm not a vindictive person, Mr. Malone. Maybe I didn't admire what she'd done—”

“Did she tell you what she'd done?” asked Gail.

“No-o. But I guessed there was something there that she didn't want to talk about, something that had happened in Sydney before she went to the States. I didn't ask her about it. I said I'd play it any
way
she wanted.”

“Which meant you weren't going to be introduced into her circle? The diplomatic circle?” He sat back, more relaxed now. “Why are you so pissed off about her, Mr. Malone?” Malone didn't answer that, just said, “Go on. How did she finish up here in the Southern Savoy?”

“We're trying to be better than we are, Mr. Malone. Don't put us down.”

“I'm not putting you down, Deric. When I go anywhere, this is the sort of hotel I stay in. I'm not five-star material. Why did she come here, book a room?”

Niven took his time again; he was sizing them up as much as they had been measuring him. “She rang me Monday, asked could I book her in for one night.”

“Did you ask her why? Why here and not the Regent or the Intercontinental?”

“She said she had some business to attend to. She said she would explain later, but she wasn't going to do it over the phone.”

“Was she phoning from the embassy?”

“I don't think so. There was a lot of noise in the background, like a restaurant, I thought.”

“So you booked the room? In what name?”

“She told me it had to be Mrs. Belinda Paterson.”

“Deric, you did a lot of lying last Wednesday morning when we were called in. You played dumb to everything we asked you.”

“Well—” There were no theatrical gestures now. “Well, I was in shock. Really. But . . .” He looked at both of them, leaned forward again. “With all that media mob out there in the lobby—the
American Ambassador's wife
—Christ, what would you have done? You'd have kept your mouths shut till you'd sorted things out in your mind—”

“That was four days ago,” said Malone. “You wouldn't have opened your mouth at all if Mrs. Jones hadn't pointed the finger at you.”

“You don't know that I wouldn't have—” For a moment belligerence welled up in him, like bile;
then
it subsided. “Mrs. Jones, anyway, was mistaken—”

“We'll get around to that. But first—did you see her when she arrived at the hotel? Your sister?”

“No, I was off duty and I thought it better to stay away. Okay,” he said as they both looked sceptical, “I didn't want to know. I was going to see her Wednesday morning.”

“And ask her then why all the secrecy?”

“Maybe. I don't know. There was twenty years I wanted to ask her about—” He looked suddenly saddened, regretting all the lost years. Whatever sort of woman Trish was, thought Malone, he loved her.

“Did you see who her visitor was? Did anyone?”

Niven hesitated: “Ye-es. The housemaid, Dolores. I told her to keep her mouth shut, too.”

Malone sucked in air through his teeth. Gail Lee leaned forward as if she might hit Niven; he leaned back. There was silence in the room; outside in the square there was the wail of a siren, the sound of disaster. Then Malone squashed down his temper.

“Jesus, Deric—” He waited a moment till he was fully in control of himself. “I oughta pinch you now . . . What the bloody hell prompted you to tell her that?”

“I don't know. I—I guess I was trying to protect Trish.”

Malone sighed. “I hope you keep the hotel's books in better order than you do your thoughts. We might've been four days better ahead if you had—Ah!” He waved a hand in disgust, looked at Gail. “What are we going to do with him?”

“We'll talk to Dolores,” she said. “But first—Mr. Niven?”

He appeared to be not paying attention; then he looked up: “What?”

“Why were you here in the hotel at the time of the murder? You were supposed to be off duty.”

He was gathering his thoughts, fumble-fingered as he had claimed to be on the night of the murder. His arm jerked and he knocked his hat to the floor; he bent and picked it up, then carefully placed it on his overcoat. He's acting, thought Malone and wanted to yell at him.

“That—that's what I told you. I was off duty. Mrs. Jones is mistaken. I wasn't here in the hotel. I'd been to a club down in Bay Street, around the corner from here. You can check, they know me there,
it'
s a gay club. I came up here to the hotel because I knew cabs were always pulling up outside there—”

“Mrs. Jones says you were in a hurry, you tried to muscle in on her for the cab—”

“She's mistaken. Come on, look at her! She's just murdered her husband—you talk about my state of mind—” Then he took control of his agitation: “Yes, I tried to beat her to the cab. But that's the way it is—when did you last step back to let someone else take a cab? It's a free-for-all.”

“I rarely take cabs,” said Malone.

“You take hire cars? On a cop's salary?”

“No,” said Gail. “Our boss is a notorious tightwad. Taxi drivers would starve if they depended on him.”

“Thank you for the reference,” said Malone.

But the small exchange had softened Niven; he laughed, sat back in his chair. Malone took advantage of the moment: “Righto, you weren't at the hotel that night. We'll check with the club. When did you talk to Dolores?”

“When she came on duty Wednesday night. I knew she had been working on that floor—I didn't know she had been having it off with Boris. If I'd known that was going on, they'd both been out on their ear . . . I just asked her if she'd seen anything, not expecting her to say anything. But yes, she said, she'd seen the lady in 342 go in there with a man. A guy with grey hair was how she described him, nothing more than that.”

“And you didn't think you should have reported that to us?”

“I would have eventually, I guess. But like I said—I was trying to protect Trish. Stupid, I know. But I've been reading all the reports on the murder and looking at the TV coverage, and you people aren't saying much, are you? Who are you protecting?”

Too many, too much, to tell you, mate.

Niven caught the momentary silence, said, “The American Embassy? The Ambassador?”

Malone ignored the questions. “Did your sister give you any hint who she was meeting?”

“None at all.” He shook his head, looked relaxed again; he had scored a point with the question
on
the embassy and the ambassador. “But I guessed it must have been someone she knew here in Sydney. I don't even know what she did when she worked here.”

“She was with a stockbrokers' office, she was the office manager. We think—we're not sure yet, but we think she might've been involved with one or two fellers in that office who worked a scam and got away with it.”

Malone watched Niven carefully as he said this; but the latter took it without any surprise: “That'd be Trish. She wanted to be rich—well, have money. That's the way of the world, isn't it?”

“Not with me and Detective Lee.”

“Nor me.” Somehow he smiled and the three pure-at-heart, financially, were bound together.

Malone pushed back his chair. “Where do you live?”

“Paddington.”

“You got his address, Gail?” She nodded. “Righto, Deric, you can go. You've been a bloody fool and a bloody hindrance, but if we locked people up for those stupidities the court lists would be chockablock till the
next
millennium.”

Niven stood up, pulled on his overcoat, picked up his hat. “Can someone give me a lift home?”

“Don't push your luck. Knock someone over for a cab.”

Gail Lee took Niven out and Malone sat on in the interview room for a while. Then he got up, feeling stiff and bony, and went out into the Incident Room. He stood in front of the flow-chart, scanned the photos, the diagrams and the names. Then he added
Dolores Cortes
to the list of names, but he knew in his heart she was no more than a footnote who would offer very little information.

“I look at them boards and I wonder why Christ would ever bother about a Second Coming.”

Malone turned. It was Paddy Finnegan, the duty night sergeant in the Surry Hills station. Balding, overweight, a rock turning to sand, his legs gone, one year short of retirement: but he had the wisdom and disillusion of experience. He would no longer chase a fleeing crim, but he would never shoot anyone in the back. Not even a murderer.

“G'day, Paddy. What do you think I should do? Wipe it all out?”

“
Would that solve the problem?”

“No.”

“Don't you wish you were me? Only a year to go and it's all behind me.”

“I'm thinking of applying for a transfer to Tibooburra.”

“I was out there, once—I done a camping trip, on holidays. I was sitting there with one of the blokes from the local and I said, 'Is this the end of the world?' And he said, 'No, but if you stand up, you can see it.'”

It was an old joke, but it was what Malone needed; he laughed. “Take care, Paddy.”

He drove home to Randwick, put the Fairlane in the garage. Lisa's Laser was parked out in the street, where every wife's car should be when there is only one garage. He had the Australian male's attitude when it came to cars, chauvinistic.

The wind had dropped and the sky had cleared; the moon was unscarred by clouds. He walked through a trench of moonlight between the camellia trees, came up on to the verandah and Tom was just inserting his key in the front door.

“How'd you go tonight with your tutor?”

“You saw her down at the footy?”

“Yes. Not bad, as older women go.”

“Three other guys phoned her tonight while I was there.” He grinned. “I woke up, I was just part of her library.”

“You don't sound too upset.”

“Remember once you told me, always look for some mystery in your women?” He grinned again. “She has no mystery.”

Malone could have hugged him; but he was not modern enough for that. He pushed Tom ahead of him into the house, closed the door. Was home. Life had its compensations.

III

Billie
Pavane's (or Trish Norval's) killer had moved from his hotel. He had learned many things as a stockbroker, one being that a shifting target was hard to invest in. He was the target of the police investigation, if so far unknown, and he had an analytical mind that appreciated police analysis. If they had discovered Billie Pavane's real identity, then it would not be long before they learned the identity of those with whom she had been associated. And she had been closer to him than to any of the others.

So he moved out of the Regent and into a serviced apartment in Wharf West, where short-term guests were welcome and no questions asked other than the status of their credit cards. He was within sight of the harbour and at the opposite end of the central business district from the Southern Savoy, but he knew the linear line of a police investigation could stretch interminably. He did not feel safe.

He had come to Sydney, pulled by the one decent gesture he had made towards his father since he had been a teenager. The irony of it was bitter now.

Julian Baker, the name he had had for the last fourteen years, had kept in touch with his sister, but only tenuously, like a fifth cousin. Once a year they exchanged Christmas cards, as cool as diplomats' visiting cards; she didn't know he had changed his name and they always arrived addressed to his real name at a post office box he had rented in Toronto. Then the letter had come telling him his father was dying of cancer and wanted to see him before he died.