Autumn Maze. Jon Cleary
the staff, but like Romy says, I don’t think it’s an inside job. Too obvious. You asked me why we’re in on this. Tell him, hon.’
Romy smiled at him, as if she enjoyed being called hon, even on duty. But there was something wrong with the smile, a wryness that took the affection out of it. Then she looked back at Malone.
‘There was a note in Frank’s pocket, a scribble addressed to me. Frank took his job more seriously than it looked – he was thinking of studying pathology, though I don’t think he really had the education for it. Anyhow, he would often do a more thorough examination of a body than just checking it in.’
‘What did his note say?’
‘He found a puncture at the base of the skull of the body that’s missing. This morning I did an autopsy, a preliminary one, on a body that came in last night about two hours before the other was brought in. He was supposed to have jumped or been pushed off a balcony twenty storeys up – the body was a mess. But I think he was dead before they tossed him off the balcony. There was a puncture at the base of his skull, too. It’s a subtle way of killing, but it would have to be done by someone who had some medical knowledge. You flex the head forward as far as it will go, then you push a broad needle or a thin scalpel into what we call the atlas, the first cervical vertebra. That’s what they did to Mr Sweden and, from Frank’s note, I’d say the same was done to our unknown male from Canterbury.’
‘Who is Mr Sweden?’ Malone asked Clements, all at once wondering if the big man and Romy were playing some sick joke on him. ‘Not our —’
‘That’s why I called you in. No, he’s not our new Police Minister. He’s Derek’s son.’
Malone swore under his breath; he belonged to a dying school that didn’t swear in front of women. Even some of the hookers he knew respected him for it, since they met few gentlemen in bed or the back seat of a car, even a Mercedes.
‘I think I’ll go on sick leave.’
Chapter Two
1
As they walked out into the still-warm day some dark clouds were boiling in from the south-east; a few fat drops of rain caught the sun as they fell, turning the air into a thin gold mesh. A van came down the street and turned into the morgue’s loading dock: another delivery, another death. Two women stood talking at the gate of a house on the opposite side of the road, but neither of them gave the van a glance.
Malone said, ‘It’s none of my business, but have you and Romy had a row?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Clements. ‘It was just – well, she told me this morning she’s ready for marriage.’
‘She proposed to you? Amongst the stiffs?’
‘Well, no, not exactly. We weren’t in where they keep the bodies. We were in the murder room, but it was empty.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘Nothing so far. I was still digesting it when you walked in.’
‘That’s why you looked like a stunned mullet. It’s about time you made up your mind, son. You’ve been going with her, what, two years now? You’re never going to get anyone as good as her.’
‘It was just a bit sudden.’
‘Sudden? Two bloody years, you’re up to your eyeballs in love with her and it’s sudden when she tells you she’d like to get married? How long are you going to wait? Till the two of you are laid out side by side on trolleys back in there?’ He nodded over his shoulder.
‘You’re starting to sound like a real bloody matchmaker.’
‘Wait till I tell Lisa, then you’ll find out what a real bloody matchmaker is. Righto, where do we go from here? You dragged me away from a day with Tom, I hope you’ve got something organized?’
‘All right, don’t get snarly just because I don’t wanna be hasty about getting married. You got your car? I caught a cab up here, a Wog who wanted to take me via Parramatta till I showed him my badge. Then he said the ride was on him.’ He grinned; sometimes he relished his prejudices. ‘I think we should go down and have a look at the scene of the crime.’
‘Which scene?’
‘The one down at The Wharf. You’d rather go there than out to Canterbury, wouldn’t you?’
‘The Wharf? You mean this bloke Sweden, the son, had an apartment there?’
‘No, it’s his father’s and his stepmother’s. She’s one of the Bruna sisters.’
‘You’re ahead of me.’ Malone led the way towards the family car, the nine-year-old Holden Commodore. Lisa and the children were pressing him to buy a new one, but as usual when it came to spending money, especially large sums, he said he couldn’t find his cheque-book. ‘Who’re the Bruna sisters?’
Clements was a grab-bag of trivial information. ‘Don’t you ever read Women’s Weekly? The Bruna sisters are our equivalent of the Gabor sisters, Zsa Zsa, Eva and the other one—’
‘You mean you don’t know the other one’s name? It’s Charlene.’ Malone was heading the Commodore downtown.
‘These three sisters came originally from Roumania, I think it was, when they were kids. They all married money. Several times, with each sister. They’re good-lookers, they’re rich and if any of them are there at the apartments, I don’t think they’ll give you and me the time of day.’
‘How are you so well informed on them? Do you have a gig on the Women’s Weekly’? Malone had his own gigs, informers, but none on a women’s magazine.
‘I started taking an interest in them when I found out who they were married to. There’s this one whose place we’re going to, she’s married to our Minister – he’s her second or third husband, I forget which. Then there’s one married to Cormac Casement – his money’s so old it’s mouldy. She’s his second wife and he’s her third husband. And then there’s the youngest, she’s married, her third husband, to Jack Aldwych Junior. Yeah, I thought that’d make you sit up.’
Malone nodded, trying to picture Jack Aldwych, once Sydney’s top crime boss, on the verge of the local social scene. Then he dropped the image from his mind, turned to getting the next few hours, maybe weeks, into step in his mind. They passed the University of Technology, a tall grey building that could not have generated much optimism in the hearts of those who entered it. Malone had to slow as a group of students, ignoring the traffic, crossed the wide main street at their leisure, jerking their fingers at those motorists who had the hide to honk at them. A larger group was gathered in front of the university’s entrance, massing for another demonstration. Demos were becoming frequent again: against further cuts in student grants, against undeclared wars, against the recession. Rent-a-Crowd, Malone guessed, was doing business as good as it had done back in the Sixties and Seventies. He slowed the Commodore down to walking pace as a student, flat-topped, wearing jeans and a sweater three times too large for him, crossed in front of the car, daring the driver to run him down.
‘If he knew we were cops,’ said Clements, ‘he’d of laid down in front of us.’
Malone ignored the student, waited till he had passed and then drove on. The student had his troubles; there was probably no one of his age who didn’t. But Malone had his own: ‘The Police Minister’s son, the son of our best-known crim, a missing stranger who died the same way as Sweden’s son – you got any more you want to throw in the pot with that stew?’
‘Not at the moment,’ said Clements.
‘These – Bruna? – sisters. Is there anything dirty against them?’
‘Only that they marry for money. I don’t think that’s a crime, not out in the eastern suburbs.’ Clements came originally from Rockdale, an area that