Yesterday's Shadow (24 page)

“You're not on this case, are you, Inspector?”

They had met a couple of times on other murder cases, but they were on formal terms.

“No, Mr. Wexall. We're on the Pavane case, the American Ambassador's wife. You've read about it.”
As who hasn't
?

Wexall raised an eyebrow above the gold-rimmed glasses. Malone had been in enough court audiences to know that barristers were all actors manqué; they used gestures, expressions with measured abandon. “Why me?”

“We understand your wife's maiden name was Sarah Brown. Did she have a brother, Jack Brown?”

Wexall had taken off his wig and gown, looked reduced without them; or was he reduced by some sudden unease? “Yes.”

He's going to make this difficult
. “We want to talk to him. Is he in Sydney?”

“I'm not his lawyer—”

“
We know that. That's why we know we won't be breaking any lawyer-client confidentiality.”

Wexall saw his mistake. “Why do you want to question him? Is it something to do with the Pavane case?”

“Yes.”

Wexall frowned at the shortness of the answer, waited as if expecting more; then he chewed his lip. “Is he in serious trouble?”

“We don't know. But he knew Mrs. Pavane—”

The eyebrow went up again. “When? Where?”

“I'm afraid we can't tell you that, not yet—”
Not till I've told the Ambassador
. “All I can say, Mr. Wexall, is that we think he can help us in our enquiries.”

Wexall smiled at the old cliché. “In what way?”

“You
are
defending him, aren't you? Maybe not for a fee, but because he's your brother-in-law.”

Wexall looked at him, then at Graham, who had remained silent, then back at Malone. “I could refuse to answer—”

“You won't, Mr. Wexall. You know the law better than I—”

“So he's in trouble?”

“Not yet, no. Do you know where we can find him?”

Wexall chewed his lip again, then nodded, more to himself than to the two detectives. “He's staying at the Regent. Under the name of Julian Baker.”

“Thanks, Mr. Wexall. Nothing may come of this—we're not out to spread it to the media—”

“You have to do what you have to do—who said that? Gary Cooper or John Wayne?” He was looking for humour to prop him up.

“You have to do the same, I'm sure. How's it going out there?” He nodded in the direction of the courtroom.

“Hopeless, I fear. But one keeps trying.”

At five thousand bucks a day, why wouldn't one? “Good luck. We'll let you know how we get
on
with—” He looked at Andy Graham.

Who had jotted down the name in his notebook: “Julian Baker.”

“Do you know why he has changed his name?”

“Ask him,” said Walter Wexall and barely refrained from washing his hands.

When Malone and Graham came out of Court 4 the bikies were still there, munching on hamburgers and sandwiches, looking like horseless knights without their Harleys. The two detectives walked across to their car and Andy Graham said, “They stick together, don't they?”

“Who?”

“Bikies.” Then as he got in behind the wheel: “I don't think Mr. Wexall is gunna stick by Jack Brown.”

They drove down to the Regent and Malone waited in the car while Graham went in to enquire after Mr. Baker. He was back within two minutes. “He's gone. Checked out the morning of July 17.” He got in behind the wheel again. “That was the morning after the murder.”

The hotel commissionaire tapped on Malone's window and he wound it down. “Yes,” he said absently, mind stuck in the mud of frustration.

“Would you mind moving your car, sir? There are three taxis waiting to come in behind you.”

“Would you remember a Mr. Julian Baker, a guest here? He checked out just on two weeks ago.”

“No, sir, I can't place him, not the name. Would you mind moving on, please?”

Graham eased the car down the ramp. “Where to now? Back to Darlinghurst?”

“No, back to the office. Check with Immigration, see if Julian Baker has left the country. Check with all the airlines, see if Julian Baker booked on an interstate flight. Then if you were taking your girlfriend out to dinner this evening, tell her you'll be late. We're going up to see Mr. and Mrs. Wexall. We'll give Mr. Wexall time to get home.”

“Where do they live?”

“I'm depending on you to find out.”

7

I

JULIAN BAKER
had not told Sarah and Walter why he had moved; and he had not told them where he had moved to. All he had said in a phone call to Sarah was, “I've moved. The Regent was a bit too public—I almost bumped into two guys I used to work with.”

“Where are you?” she had said.

“I'll let you know when I've settled.”

“Jack—”

“Julian.”

“No. It's a nice name, but I'll never get used to it. Jack, why all the hide-and-seek? I spent years writing to a box number. Now—”

“If ever you and Walter come to Toronto—” He hoped to God they wouldn't, though he didn't believe in God. “If ever you come, you'll understand what I'm trying to protect, Rah.”

He hadn't called her that since they were children and she noticed it. “Rah. That was a long time ago, wasn't it? Where did it all go?”

He had no answer to that and hung up. Then he had stared at the phone, cursing it. If he hadn't picked it up that morning at the Regent and called Canberra . . .

She had hesitated, then said yes, she would meet him; as he had guessed she would. She had been surprised at his call, but not cool. They had been a drug for each other, an addiction that was still there. It had been sex and nothing else. She had tried to tell him, when she fell pregnant, that it was love; but he hadn't believed her because he knew she was as selfish as himself. Love, he had read at university, was a mutual selfishness and he had told her he had no argument with that. She was still bitterly hating
him
when he had walked away from her and later he would wonder if the pregnancy had been planned.

Hate survives; he knew that, too. But when she called for him in a cab at the Regent and he got in beside her, she pressed his hand and kissed him on the cheek and he knew the evening was going to be fine. He didn't query why she had insisted on calling for him, instead of the other way round.

“We're going to a Japanese restaurant in Hunter's Hill.”

He noticed she now had an American accent. He had once read that Australian actors were considered the best at imitating American accents; and she had always been something of an actor. For himself, he had cultivated a mid-Atlantic accent. Both of them, he thought, were still intent on disguise.

“Nobody will know us there.” She had dropped her voice, as if she suspected the cab driver had his ears pinned back.

He was studying her in the dim light of the cab. “I'd have still known you.”

“I'm not sure I'd have known you. But you still look good.” She squeezed his hand.

“Likewise.”

The restaurant, it seemed, had been designed for those who wanted to be discreet. Nobody made entrances here;
paparazzi
would have been as welcome as terrorists. Julian didn't know where Trish (he called her that and she did not mind, smiling as if at the memory of a long-lost relative) had learned about Japanese food; she did the ordering with confidence, but allowed him to order the wine. The dinner went smoothly and halfway through it, after the second glass of wine, he knew the evening was going to end in bed.

He was surprised when she told him where she was staying. He did not know the Southern Savoy, but then the hotel scene had changed a lot in the years he had been away. As, indeed, had Sydney itself.

“Where is it?”

“On Railway Square. It's a two-bit hotel, but clean and nobody asks questions.”

“How did you get on to it?”

“My brother manages it.”

“
Your brother? I didn't know you had one. Won't he broadcast who you are and where you're staying? Hotel managers are always looking to advertise.”

“He doesn't know who I'm meeting. He's not the sort who wants to let everyone know who his sister is married to. Are you married?”

He nodded. “Three kids. Have you any children?”

That was a mistake. She put down her wine glass and her eyes were suddenly cold. “The abortion buggered up my uterus. You knew that.”

“No, I never—”

Her accent was abruptly Australian, the past catching up with them for the moment. “I can never have children, thanks to you.”

He had to look elsewhere to avoid her stare. He looked towards a waiter without seeing him; unfortunately, the waiter saw him and came towards them. “Something wrong, sir?”

“Eh? No. No, everything's fine, thank you. Beautiful meal.”

“Thank you, sir. It is our pleasure to please.”

The formality sounded almost like a joke. But Julian was at ease with other races, always had been; right now he was very much not at ease with one of his own. The waiter bowed and went away and he looked back at her. “I'm sorry. A bit late—”

“Yes. Very.” She stared at him a moment longer, took a sip of her wine. Moved it around in her mouth, as if tasting him as well as it. Then her gaze softened, just a little. “It's over. My husband—”

“What's he like?” he said hurriedly before she could tell him that her husband had always wanted children.

“You'd like him.”

“Ambitious?”

“Not so's you'd notice. He doesn't need to be. He has everything he wants. Including me,” she said, but smiled widely.

“He's lucky, then.”

“
Thank you,” she said, as if he had handed her a bus ticket.

But as they waited outside the restaurant for the cab that had been called, she said, “Do you want me to drop you off at the Regent?”

“Or?”

“Or you can see me home to the Southern Savoy.”

“Will your brother be there?”

“No.”

“I'll see you home to the Southern Savoy.”

They sat close together in the cab, saying little, their hands saying everything for them. They walked through the deserted lobby of the hotel, nobody in sight at the reception desk, and waited for the lift. Going up in the lift to Room 342 he said, “You didn't get your key.”

“I didn't hand it in,” she said and held it up.

“You planned this. You were never a planner.”

“I am now. Have been for a long time.”

They had not forgotten each other's bodies; nor had the bodies changed that much. Sex is an exploration as well as an exploitation; they mapped each other like besotted cartographers. When they finally fell apart they were as exhausted as Burke and Wills. They lay, not under a coolibah tree, but under the light of a cheap bedside lamp, and looked at each other, not with love but a coldness that each managed to hide.

“Still good?” she said at last.

“Still good.”

“Better than your wife?”

Then he knew the hate was still there and he should never have picked up the phone to call her. “Let's leave spouses out of it. I'm not going to ask you about—what's his name? Stephen?”

“Oh, you can ask me about him.” She rolled over on her back, pulled the sheet up on her; as if to say one didn't talk about one's husband with everything exposed. “I love him.”

“
Good,” he said, not yet hating her. “And I love my wife.”

Neither of them smoked, so there was none of the stagecraft with cigarettes after intercourse. And there was no smoke to the dialogue: “Do you give her a good life? I don't mean this—” She gestured at the bed.

“I think so. I've done well—” He hadn't meant to say that: he was not normally boastful.

“So have I.” She sounded boastful; he waited for her to throw out her chest, but she kept it under the sheet. “I married a rich man, Jack.”

“I always knew you would.” He managed a smile.

“No, you didn't. You didn't give a damn who I married. So long as it wasn't you.”

It was time to get dressed; he began to draw on his shorts. He had his back to her when she said, “Whoever you are now, whatever you've done, I could ruin you, Jack.”

He said nothing for a moment, stood up and turned round. Then: “I could do the same to you.”

She shook her head; her dark hair fell down and she pushed it back. “What could you tell them? That I'm not who I said I was? You have no idea where I've been or what I've done in the last—what is it? Fourteen years? When we were with the firm, I was never under suspicion like you and the others, Bruce and Wayne and Grant—I wonder if they're still around? Who cares? You don't, do you?”

“No.” His voice was flat as he pulled on his trousers.

“They interviewed me and I came out virgin pure—”

“Does your husband know all about you?” He was pulling on his shirt.

“Yes.” She's lying, he thought; but wasn't sure. “But not about you and me.”

“You're lying—”

“How would you know? I'll tell your wife about you and me—”

It was then that he hit her; when suddenly he really hated her. If she had not hit back, coming out of the sheets like an animal out of a burrow, had not fought him with her own hatred, he might have stopped. Rage vomited out of him and, later, he would be confused as to what actually happened. When
he
drew back from her she was dead.

He sat down on the side of the bed, trembling. He looked at her, then looked away. He sat there for almost ten minutes, not moving. Then the discipline that had run most of his life seeped back into him, like water hardening into ice; he was not shattered, he was not going to go to pieces. He stood up, finished dressing unhurriedly. He thought criminally: had he left any fingerprints anywhere? He wiped the bedhead, avoided looking at her; the dressing-table; the chair over which he had hung his clothes. He went into the bathroom, relieved himself, put a piece of toilet paper over his finger before he pushed the flush-button: