Yesterday's Shadow (35 page)

“Not of his,” said Malone, not looking at Clements. “I'm a little puzzled, Mr. Farro, I have to say—he was here half an hour and you did nothing but argue?”

“Well, no, not all the time. We—well, we reminisced for a while, I think we were both sizing each other up. And then things got—well, abrasive, I guess you'd call it.”

“You argued over blue-chip shares?” said Clements, mouth clear now. “I thought no one ever argued over those. Except BHP when it got on the skids.”

“No,” said Farro and drank some coffee, his hand steady now as he lifted the cup. “We argued over what went wrong fourteen years ago. We agreed to dislike each other and he left.”

Malone looked out to the wide verandah, where a frieze of five gulls stared in at the three men. “Do you feed the gulls?”

“My cleaning woman does. The buggers can starve as far as I'm concerned. They crap all over the verandah.”

“You should be in our game, Mr. Farro. There's crap all over, everywhere.” He stood up.
“
Finished, Russ?”

Clements wiped his fingers on the paper napkin Farro handed him. “I think we misjudged you, Mr. Farro.”

“People are always doing that,” said Farro.

“If Mr. Brown comes back for another argument,” said Malone, “let us know.”

“He won't be back,” said Farro, rising, wishing them to be gone as soon as possible.

“He said that?”

“Well, not in so many words—”

“Did he say anything about leaving the country, going back to Canada?”

“Canada?” Farro hid his surprise. “No, he said nothing about going anywhere.”

“You're not going abroad?” said Clements. “On business?”

“No. There's too much going on here.”

“Indeed there is,” said Malone. “We may be in touch again. Take care.”

When the two detectives had gone, Farro finished his breakfast, drinking another cup of coffee, going over what had been said at this table. He had not stumbled, given anything away; but they had left him with the deep impression that he was still in their notebooks or computers or whatever they used. He got up, went to the living-room door, opened it and shouted at the gulls. They spread their wings and whirled away, but he knew they would be back.

He went back into the room, took the gun and the ammunition out of his briefcase, went into his bedroom and locked them away in the bottom drawer of the desk by the window. Then he showered and dressed, left the breakfast dishes for the cleaning woman and was on the way to the front door when the phone rang:

“Bruce?”

“Jack! I've just had two detectives here asking after you—an Inspector Malone, I've met him before, and a Sergeant Clements—”

“Oh?” A moment's silence. The gulls were back on the verandah railing. “Why'd they come to
you?”

“They've got a tail on you, Jack. They knew you were here last night.”

“What'd you tell them?”

“Oh, come on, Jack! Nothing, for Crissakes! But they told me something—they said you were going back to Canada. Canada? You told me you were living in Wisconsin—”

“Bruce, that's where I do live. You think I want the cops to know? Trust me, Bruce. How are you going on our plan?”

“It's not proving easy, Jack. I think I may have to call it off—”

“No!” The voice was sharp. “You've got to do it, Bruce. You can't pass up the million, I know how much you need it. The money is yours, Bruce . . . Do it, Bruce. Do it!”

“What'll it matter if they pick you up? They sounded pretty sure they could stick it into you.”
How did I get into this? I'm sounding like an accomplice.
But he knew how. The million dollars floated before him like—what did they call it? Virtual reality. To become really real, when . . .

“They're not gonna pick me up, Bruce. Do it. The money will be yours in a month. Trust me.”

The phone went dead. Farro looked at it as if expecting a delayed message, then he set it back in its cradle. He would find Mrs. Jones this evening and kill her.

He reminded himself he had always been prepared to take risks. Which was how he had got into his present financial mess with Finger Software. Another risk would get him out of it. He would begin thinking about Plan A . . .

II

“What d'you reckon?” asked Malone as they walked down to their car.

“I wouldn't trust him with a dollar,” said Clements. “But I don't think he's gunna be any help on our case. He's no mate of our guy Brown.”

“I'm wondering why Brown would have looked him up.” He took off his hat and slapped it at a gull that was using the roof of the car as a toilet.

“
Birds of a feather. Maybe Brown just wanted to see how well Farro had done out of that scam years ago. Money binds.”

“Where'd you learn that? Your stockbroker tell you that?”

“No, a crooked jockey when I used to punt on the horses. Back to the office?”

“Unless you'd like to try Tibooburra?”

They were inside the car now, the windows up against the cold. Clements looked at him. “You still thinking about Delia?”

“No.”

“Like I said, forget her. She's mine now, but I don't think she's gunna be any more trouble. She crapped in her nest when she gave us the finger in the line-up. I'll get the girls to call on her occasionally, but so long as she reports each week to Balmain, we won't hear from her again till she goes to trial. In the meantime—”

“In the meantime, I've got my own troubles. Next time I have to talk to the Ambassador . . .”

Back at the office Malone spent the next hour wrist-deep in paperwork. Despite the proliferation of computers, somehow paper had not decreased. He looked up with relief when Sheryl Dallen came into his office and put an envelope on his desk.

“The court order for the DNA,” she said. “We've got him!”

He felt his own lift of excitement. “Any trouble getting it?”

“The judge raised his eyebrows when I told him why we wanted it.”

“Righto, go down to Wharf West with Andy Graham and pick him up. Take him to Police Centre, then charge him. He'll argue against that, but it'll hold him till we've done the DNA test. I'll get a doctor in from Forensic Biology, we'll get the lab started on it right away.”

When Sheryl had gone, Malone rang Forensic Biology at Lidcome; a doctor would be on his way at once. Then he rang Joe Himes at the US Consul-General's office.

“Joe? We've got the DNA order and they're on their way now to pick him up. You'd better ring the Ambassador and warn him. The shit's not flying yet, but the fan is starting to spin.”

It
took Himes some time to say, “I'm not looking forward to this.”

“Tell him we'll tone down the personal bits as much as possible. It may be a year or eighteen months before Brown comes to trial and maybe by then the Ambassador will be back home. Your ambassadors change with the presidents, don't they?”

“Only some. I think if this hadn't happened, he could have been ambassador, here or anywhere, for as long as he liked. Let me know when you've got Brown in custody. I'd like to sit in while you question him. Just for our records.”

“No problem, Joe.”

“You kidding?” said Himes and sounded morose.

Malone put down the phone as Clements came into the office. “Sheryl told me the good news.”

“I hope so.” He sat back in his chair. “When we've wrapped this up, I think I may take long service leave. Lisa is getting fed up at Town Hall. We'll go off on a trip. I've always wanted to see the Andes.”

“Why not the Himalayas?”

“Too crowded. I hear they've got a McDonald's at the Everest base camp.”

“No, you just want to get as far away as possible from all the crap we've had the past coupla weeks.”

“You're worse than Lisa for seeing through me.”

“We've been together longer.”

Malone looked after him as he went out of the office. Affection for the big man welled in him. Friendship (he disliked the word mateship, which had become devalued) bound them like a chain.

Half an hour later the phone rang: “Boss? Andy here. Bad news. Our man's disappeared.”

Malone blued the air for almost half a minute; everyone out in the main room looked up. Then he simmered down: “What happened?”

“The two guys tailing him were outside in their car, watching both the front entrance and the exit from the garage. They're pretty sure he didn't know they were tailing him—”

“
You wanna bet? He knew they were there, Andy. I dunno how, but he must have. He probably—” Then he stopped.

“He probably what?”

“Andy, Russ and I saw Bruce Farro this morning, we told him we knew Brown had been to see him last night—” He stopped again. He had said too much, he did not have to confide in his junior officer.

There was a judgemental silence at the other end of the line.
The two bosses had cocked up things
. It would be all over Homicide within the hour. At last Graham said, “Well, maybe. Anyhow, he's gone. He checked out just after nine and we can only guess he exited through the service bay—that's around the corner.”

Malone was pulling hard on the reins of himself. “Righto, you and Sheryl get over to Police Centre—tell the blokes at Wharf West to report there, too. I'll meet you there with Greg Random.”

He put down the phone, looked up to see Clements standing in the doorway.

“We stuffed it, mate,” he said. “Our bloke's shot through.”

III

Julian Baker (though he knew in his heart he was still Jack Brown) was not panic-stricken; but he was worried. He was not a criminal (well, not a professional one), so why would he have suspected he might be followed? But, of course, he should have thought of that. He had been too confident, he had thought about Delia Jones and not the police.

He decided that he could not leave Sydney by plane; the police would have all the airports watched. After leaving Wharf West by the service delivery bay, he had walked a couple of blocks, carrying his bag and his briefcase, then hailed a cab. For a moment he had thought of going to Walter and Sarah's at Killara; but that would be stupid, the instinct of a rabbit looking for a home burrow. Then he said, “Central Railway Station.”

There, he bought a first-class ticket on the express for Melbourne tonight, put the briefcase and
bag
in a locker, and went out to lose himself for the rest of the day. Where to go?

He went to the movies in a complex in George Street, the main city artery, to a morning and then again to an afternoon session. On both occasions he chose the wrong movies, for he was not a regular moviegoer. The movies featured young actors he didn't know in situations that didn't interest him: coming-of-age kids didn't know what the real world held for them. Older actors, whom he dimly recognized, appeared spasmodically in both movies, either as villains or dickheads, troglodytes from another age. In the afternoon movie the young non-hero (no one could think of him as a hero, surely?) shot one of the dickheads and all the dickheads in the packed audience cheered and stamped their feet. Baker left the cinema feeling terribly old.

As he walked out he looked up and saw the video cameras on mountings above the pavements; he was not to know, but the cameras were meant as surveillance on gangs that had been creating a nuisance in this part of town. He instinctively turned his face away.

He walked back to Central, crossed the square and stood at the top of the sloping roadway that led up to the station. He looked across at the Southern Savoy. What a dickhead
he
had been! He cursed himself and found something unusual blurring his vision: tears. He turned quickly and went into the station.

He retrieved his bag and his briefcase. In the latter, stuffing it till it bulged, were the five thousand dollars he had been going to lodge in Bruce Farro's bank. Well, Bruce wouldn't be needing it now; jellyback that he was, he would call off killing Mrs. Jones now the police had been to visit him. He needed the money himself; he dared not cash any travellers' cheques, not till he was out of Sydney. He had his first-class plane ticket for the States, but he would not present it at Melbourne. Too close to Sydney. He might have to go all the way across the continent by train, catch a plane out of Perth for London, go home the long way. Home: sentiment was creeping up on him like a debilitating illness.

The big central ticket hall of the station was not as cavernous as some he had seen overseas; nor as gothic, renaissant or art deco as some. It had a certain dignity and style, but, like all big railway stations, it had an air of loneliness, the hollow breath of departure and goodbye. Tears might be shed in airports,
but
they were always too crowded, too noisy, for loneliness to stand out.

He passed two railway police officers, who gave him just a cursory glance, more intent on looking for loiterers or the homeless seeking a warm place for the night. He showed his ticket at the gate, then walked down the long platform to his carriage. And now he was seated comfortably, feeling safe for the time being, in a first-class compartment. He had tried for a sleeper, but they were all booked. No matter: he had always been able to sleep anywhere.

An elderly couple came into the compartment, nodded to him, put their luggage in the racks, sat down and each took out a mobile phone. They smiled at each other, tapped in numbers, then looked out the window and said goodbye to their grandchildren. Out on the platform three teenagers, mobiles to ears, waved in farewell. The elderly couple put their phones away, smiled at Baker and said, “Presents from the grandkids. They think the world can't go round without a mobile.”

“My kids are the same,” said Baker; then looked up at the two big men crowding the narrow doorway.

“Evening, Mr. Brown,” said Phil Truach. “Would you mind stepping out here? Detective Graham will bring your bags.”