Autumn Maze. Jon Cleary
for a day? They won’t miss you, Derek.’
‘Yes, they will,’ said Sweden firmly and with some asperity. Since the unexpected election defeat a couple of weeks ago the Conservative coalition had, it seemed, been meeting every second day for post-mortems. To be absent was to miss the chance of being influential.
‘You go, darling.’ Rosalind turned her head to look up at her husband; with the movement she turned her back on her sisters. ‘I was going to lunch at the Rockpool with Juliet and ‘Phelia, but I’ll stay in now.’
‘We’ll cancel,’ said Juliet. ‘We’ll all stay in and have lunch here.’
‘No, we’ll have it upstairs,’ said Ophelia. ‘Something light. I have no appetite, anyway.’
Crumbs, thought Malone, she’ll give us the menu in a moment -
‘An omelette. Asparagus.’
Malone looked at them critically, but decided none of the three sisters was feather brained. Like Sweden they would never fall apart, they would face the world with teeth bared and it was up to you to tell whether it was a smile or a threat. He put them on the list of suspects, out of prejudice more than evidence, and said, ‘Well, that’s all for the moment. There’ll be more questions – there always are. Where do you live, Mrs Aldwych? Here in The Wharf?’
‘No.’ Juliet looked amused. ‘Are we all on a list of suspects or what?’
‘Not at all,’ said Zanuch, literally stepping into the conversation; he moved a pace forward. He had been unexpectedly quiet during Malone’s questioning and it struck Malone only now that the Assistant Commissioner was only on approval here in this circle. ‘I’m sure Inspector Malone has no thoughts along those lines, right?’ He looked at Malone: it was an order.
‘Of course not, sir. It’s just for the record, just in case.’ He was looking east past the AC, down the harbour. Out at sea, beyond the Heads, he could see a giant waterspout, a dark frightening funnel. It was unusual and he wondered if it was some sort of omen.
I live at Point Piper,’ said Juliet. ‘Wolseley Road.’
One of the toniest addresses in Sydney: where else? ‘Of course. I’ve met your husband.’ Then the tongue slipped its leash again: ‘And your father-in-law.’
The AC looked as if he were about to take another step, or two or three, into the conversation; but Juliet said sweetly, ‘Old Jack? The best of my fathers-in-law. He’s the third.’
‘Minister,’ said Tucker, gold watch held aloft as if about to clock Sweden in a sprint to Parliament House. ‘It’s getting on, we should be moving—’
Sweden looked at Zanuch, ignoring Malone. ‘Is that all then, Bill?’
Zanuch, too, ignored Malone. ‘For now. But there’s bound to be other questions, if it is a homicide—’
This time the tongue was trapped firmly inside Malone’s teeth. It was Clements who said, ‘It’s homicide all right, sir. The deputy director of Forensic was sure of that.’
‘They make mistakes—’
‘Not this one, sir. She’s my girlfriend.’
Chapter Three
1
All the men had gone and the three Bruna sisters were alone. Said Rosalind, ‘You two didn’t show much concern over Rob’s death.’
‘’Lind,’ said Ophelia, ‘your stepson was a shit.’
‘Why did Cormac give him a job then?’
‘Because he wanted a favour from your Derek, something political. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Or your son’s.’
Rosalind did not question that. She and Juliet nodded understandingly; they were, after all, Roumanian, though long removed. They had arrived in Australia when Juliet was six months old, Rosalind five years old and Ophelia ten, but there were centuries of intrigue in their blood. Their mother, Ileana, had come of a family noted for its political chicanery; she had died of sunstroke six months after her arrival in Sydney, sad to depart but happy in the thought that her daughters would grow up in a community where the politicians of the time were as buyable as those back home. She had been ten years older than her sculptor husband, Adam, and, though not expecting to go so soon, had told him she would die before he turned to chasing younger women. He, distraught at the thought of losing her, had asked for advice on how to bring up their daughters. She, with her last breath but still aware of the world’s opportunities, especially amongst the native barbarians, had murmured, ‘See that they marry rich.’ The sisters had done their best to honour their mother’s wish. The blood of their mother’s family ran like liquid gold through them, their vote was always buyable if the price was right.
‘Did Derek arrange it? The political favour?’
‘I suppose he must have. Cormac doesn’t tell me everything that goes on, though I’m often tempted to ask.’
Ophelia was the impulsive one of the three sisters. On the spur of the moment she had asked Cormac Casement to marry her; a spur of a different sort had been that he had as much money as her dreams were made on. They had gone to bed on their second meeting, she experimenting with an older lover, wondering if his technique would be so simple as to be puritanical; he wondering if his heart would stand up to the demands of what the feminists called a ‘woman in her post-menopausal prime’. Each had surprised the other and a month after they had met she proposed. He, not given to impulsiveness, further surprised himself by accepting.
‘But Cormac did say something last week that I didn’t take much notice of. He said Rob was up to something and he’d have to speak to him.’
‘Rob was always up to something,’ said Juliet. ‘Or up something.’
‘Don’t be vulgar,’ said Rosalind, who could be as vulgar as any gypsy when her temper got away from her. Aware of this, she had cultivated a cautiousness that sometimes made her seem much more callous than her sisters. ‘He liked girls, but that’s healthy. Or it used to be.’
Juliet, who even as a child in a bath had liked to make waves, said, ‘’Lind, he liked women, not just girls. Any age. His fly was permanently unzipped.’
Ophelia, who could catch a nuance as if it were floodlit, said, ‘You too?’
The two sisters, the youngest and the eldest, exchanged glances, then both looked at Rosalind. ‘He got me into bed four or five times,’ said Juliet. ‘He was a marvellous lover, so long as he kept his mouth shut. He always sounded like that loud-mouthed football commentator. He would give a description they could hear down in Melbourne. As if I didn’t know what was going on. What about you, ’Phelia?’
‘The same. I always felt I was in the middle of an All Blacks-Wallabies scrum.’ She knew that rugby was played in Roumania and, though she had no interest in the game, she went to rugby internationals with Cormac because he had in his youth been a representative player and still followed the sport. She never went to rugby league matches, that was the peasants’ game. Her mother would have approved of her discrimination. ‘Twice was enough. I blew the whistle after that, told him the game was over. Well?’
The eldest and the youngest waited for Rosalind to comment. She sighed, then nodded. ‘Me, too. His stepmother.’ She was less Roumanian than her sisters, almost as if a Methodist had somehow got into the bloodstream. At times she even displayed a conscience, something her husband found disconcerting. ‘Just the once. Too noisy. It’s the first time I’ve been cheered for what I was doing to someone.’
‘Did he ever suggest he might tell Derek?’
‘Never. Derek would have killed him—’ Rosalind broke off sharply and she frowned. ‘God, why did I say that?’
‘Do you think Derek found out?’