Yesterday's Shadow (5 page)

Malone was accustomed to shock; it came with a policeman's lot. But not for the shock of meeting Delia Bates, the long-forgotten love of twenty-five years ago, now the widow of a murdered man. Recognition had not been instant: twenty-year-old Delia was partially hidden in this woman with the battered face sitting opposite him.

“Delia—” Involuntarily he put his hand across the table to press hers. “Jesus, I didn't know—”

“You know each other?” Mrs. Quantock was the sort of friend who would never be left out of any relationship. She would intrude with the best of intentions, swamping the friend with rescue efforts, throwing lifebelts like hoopla rings. She glared at Malone: “You didn't know what sorta bastard he was? He's been belting her all their married life, in front of the kids—”

Delia, still with her eyes on Malone, put her hand on her friend's arm. “It's okay, Rosie. We haven't seen each other in twenty-five years.” As if she had counted every one of them. “He knows nothing about Boris. He's married and has got kids of his own.”

Malone was aware of Gail Lee observing all this with what he called her Oriental lack of expression (though never to her face). She was half-Chinese and she had never succumbed to the temptation to favour her Australian half; serenity is not an Australian expression, at least not amongst the city voters, and she always looked serene. At the moment her face was blank.

Malone was a private man and he did not like his private life exposed; not even that of twenty-five years ago. He had been in love then; or thought so. Till he had gone to London and met Lisa, and then Delia and all the other girls he had known had dropped out of his mind. He had come back to Sydney (he had that year been on another case that had taken him into diplomatic territory; he had gone to London to arrest the Australian High Commissioner, another ambassador, for murder), had spent two days finding the courage to be decent, then met Delia and told her it was all over, that he had fallen in
love,
deeply, with another girl. Delia had looked at him, saying nothing, then she had got up from the table where they had been at an outdoor cafe and walked away without a word and out of his life. He had sat there, feeling an utter bastard; then there had been the deep feeling of relief (an honest emotion that bastards can feel) and he got up and went down to the old GPO and booked a call to Lisa, still in London. He would never be able to explain that to Gail Lee. Nor had he ever fully explained it to Lisa. Girls one has slept with should be left undisturbed.

“I dunno,” said Mrs. Quantock, “I dunno how you can sit there so bloody calm, like nothing's happened—”

“I was always calm, wasn't I, Scobie?”

“Not always.” Remembering how she had been in bed.

“No, not always.” For a moment there was the hint of a smile at the corner of her bruised mouth; then it was gone: “I didn't show it, but I wasn't calm when you told me you were going to marry another girl.”

“Delia, please—” He had taken his hand away from hers.

There was silence in the small room; even Mrs. Quantock seemed engulfed by it. Then Gail Lee said quietly, “Mrs. Jones, do you know anyone who would want to kill your husband?”

Delia looked at her as if seeing her for the first time; she glanced back at Malone, as if waiting for him to say something, then looked at Gail again. “Yes.”

“Who?”

“Me.”

“Oh, for Crissake, Delia!” Mrs. Quantock moved even closer to her, grabbed her friend's hand. “Don't be so—so bloody cool! Your life's been hell—”

Delia pressed Rosie Quantock's hand again, stared straight at Malone. “I killed him, Scobie. I stabbed him, I dunno how many times.”

There was silence again but for a gasp from Mrs. Quantock. Malone sat back, gathering himself together, trying to find the cop who had been lost in himself for a minute or two. “Delia, if you're going to
make
a confession to killing your husband, I'll have to turn that on.” He pointed to the video recorder. “Then we'll have to warn you—”

“I know. I watch
The Bill
,
Law and Order
, all those shows—”

“We have to warn you anyway,” he said and did so. “Righto—What's the matter?”

“You still say that.” Again the small smile. “Righto.”

“Yes, I guess I do. Now I'll put the question—did you kill your husband Boris Jones?”

“Yes, this morning at the hotel where he worked, the Southern Savoy. In the room where he kept all the cleaning stuff.”

“Was it self-defence? Did he bash you?” He should not have put leading questions like that; he was still coming back out of that dim distant past. The coin had been spun again, the irrational had invaded the orderly again.

“He bashed me before he went to work last night.” She put her hand up to her face almost automatically: as if she had been doing it for years.

“You went to the hotel, followed him to work, to kill him?” said Gail.

“Hold on!” Rosie Quantock was there again, throwing lifebelts. “If you're gunna question her like that, she needs a solicitor. Keep quiet, Delia, don't tell 'em any more.”

“It's all right, Rosie—”

“It's not all right! For Crissake, love, think of yourself and the kids!” She looked at Malone: as Delia's old lover, not a cop: “Tell her for her own good—”

Malone switched off the recorder. “We'll have to hold you till you get someone here to brief you, Delia. We'll send you over to Police Centre, to Surry Hills, and they'll hold you there. Do you have a solicitor? Better if you can get one who has some experience in this sort of thing. A conveyancing solicitor isn't going to be much good for you.”

“We'll get one,” said Rosie Quantock. She's a pain in the arse, thought Malone, but she's the sort of friend everyone should have. “I'll take care of it, Delia. I'll take care of the kids, too. And get on to your mother—”

“
How old are the children?” asked Gail.

“Eleven and twelve, a boy and a girl.” Delia looked at Malone, read the question in his face: “No, I didn't start late. Boris was my second husband, they're his kids. I have a daughter who's twenty.”

“Where's she?” asked Malone.

“In England—London. With her father. He's English, a teacher.”

English
,
Russian
: because she had been jilted by an Australian? “Do you want us to get in touch with her?”

She shrugged, the calmness still there. There was just a faint shake of the head, not of negation but of wonder, as if she were only just coming to realize the seriousness of her situation. She gazed at Malone for a long moment, then she said, “We never thought it would come to this, did we, Scobie?”

He was all cop now, the only protection. “No, Delia, we didn't . . . Detective Lee and another officer will take you over to Surry Hills.” He turned to Rosie Quantock. “How soon can you get a lawyer for her?”

“Give me an hour.” She could raise an army in an hour, you knew it would not be beyond her.

“Don't rush, get a good one. Detective Lee and the other officer will then question Delia—”

“No,” said Delia.

He looked at her. “No what?”

“You're the only one I'll talk to.”

“Delia, I have another homicide to look into—”

“No.” It was more than calmness now, it was cold adamancy.

He took a deep breath, trying to remain calm himself. “Righto, but it may not be till late afternoon before I can get back to you.”

“That will do,” said Rosie Quantock and stood up, putting an arm under Delia's. “Buck up, love. It's not over till the Fat Lady sings.”

“She used to be in the chorus at the Opera House.” Again there was just the hint of a smile at the corner of the bruised mouth. She looked almost relaxed again, as if the only point that had worried
her
was that Malone might not question her. And now he had promised that he would.

“Were you a Valkyrie?” Gail asked Rosie Quantock and Malone could see that she was trying to keep the mood light.

“What else? Come on, love. We're still ahead.”

She would not give in, she would be raising spirits, like flags.

2

I

AFTER THE
women had gone, Sheryl Dallen going with Gail Lee, Malone called Clements and Phil Truach into his office. Clements examined him frankly and Malone stared back at him.

“You've got a problem,” said the big man and lowered himself into his usual seat on the couch beneath the window. Out on the ledge a pigeon looked in at them with an impersonal eye.

“You're right, a big one.”

“She did her husband?” said Truach.

“Yes. But this is personal—for me. Delia Jones is an old girlfriend of mine. We went steady for almost a year. She expected me to marry her.”

Clements frowned. “Delia—Bates? Bateman? You brought her once to a party.
Her
?”

“Her. Delia Bates.”

“No problem,” said Truach. “I'll handle it, you don't need to come within a mile of her.”

“That won't work, Phil. She won't talk to anyone but me. I tried her with Gail, but no go. I'm just starting to remember how stubborn she could be.”

Clements, the personal friend, said, “Does Lisa know about her? I mean before you married her?”

“I mentioned her once or twice—just joking, I think. Do you talk about your old girlfriends to Romy? Do you tell your wife about them, Phil?”

“What old girlfriends?” said Truach. “I was an altar boy till I met her. Of course, there was Father Mulcahy—”

“Righto, lay off. This is no time for joking—”

“
Sorry. So she was the one who did the damage? Because he belted her?”

“Evidently he's been doing it for years. He had a go at her last night.”

“So it was self-defence?” Clements, like most cops, was sympathetic to battered women.

“They must of had a fight at the hotel,” said Truach. “Maybe he tried to belt her again, her following him to work. The room where he was done, everything was in its place when we looked at it. But Norma Nickles rang in with a preliminary report. There were prints, blood on them, on a lot of the stuff, the buckets and mops and things. As if someone had picked it all up and put it back in place.”

“That could be her.” Memory was coming back. She had been wild and uninhibited in bed, but once out of it she had been as neat as a drill sergeant, a place for everything and everything in its place. She had dressed with almost convent-like neatness, then made the bed that they had wrecked. They had joked about her passion for order. Neither of them had known then that her life would be totally disordered. Or so it looked. “She was like that. She could make a rugby scrum look neat.”

“Then that could save her,” said Clements. “She gets a good lawyer, they plead the bashing and the self-defence—”

“We can make it look—” said Truach.

“Phil, don't make it look like anything but the facts. I don't want some prosecutor tearing you apart . . . She was my girlfriend, but that was twenty-five years ago. We've both had our own lives since then. I've been the lucky one . . .”

Clements stepped out of his cop's role: “Are you gunna tell Lisa?”

“Whom—” He had been coached by Lisa who, like most educated foreigners, had more respect for English grammar than the natives. “Whom do you think she is going to be interested in, an ex- girlfriend who's murdered her husband or the murdered wife of the American Ambassador?”

“The Ambassador's wife,” said Truach. “That will be the one all over the news tonight—”

“You're kidding. You're still influenced by Father Whatshisname. She will ask me about Delia and so will my daughters. And even Tom will look at me with new interest. They know I've never looked at another woman since I met Lisa and they think my life before her was just a blank. Or at worst I spent
all
my time with blokes.”

Clements stood up. “Let's put Delia on the back burner for a while. It's time you went down to the Yanks again, to meet the Ambassador.”

“I think I might ask for a transfer to Fingerprints.” Malone got to his feet, feeling stiff and aged. “Nothing there turns round and bites you. Call Greg and tell him I'll pick him up.”

The pigeon on the window ledge had been joined by four others. They sat there sheltering against the south wind, looking over their shoulders at the humans inside, their heads bobbing as if in gossip. Malone leaned across and banged on the window and the pigeons took off, caught at once by the wind.

“Bloody birds, crapping all the time on that ledge—”

“Simmer down,” said Clements. “Don't take Delia down with you to the Yanks. Leave her here with me and Phil.”

Malone nodded appreciatively. “Yeah, you're right . . . Phil, get someone to check the restaurant, Catalina, where Miss Caporetto took Mrs. Pavane for lunch. Get the names of all male guests that day. Restaurants always ask for a contact number, case you don't turn up. We just have to hope they kept their booking list for—how long was it?”

“Two weeks,” said Clements, who had put it all on the computer.

“Righto, get on with it. We'll try and find that bloke.”

“I don't want to keep harping on her,” said Truach, “but what about Mrs. Jones?”

For a moment the name meant nothing: it was as if he were trying to shut Delia out of his mind. “Let's hope she comes to her senses and talks to Gail and Sheryl.”

“Yeah,” said Clements but didn't sound encouraging. “It would be nice if someone would come in and talk to us about the Ambassador's wife.”

“Fat chance,” said Malone and left to pick up Greg Random. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the pigeons come back to the window ledge. They knew better than to be blown about by the wind.