Murder Song. Jon Cleary
wouldn’t have come in contact with them unless they were brought in and charged. The gangs have only started to operate in the last two or three years. He’d been on the desk all that time.’
‘They were my first suspects,’ said Danforth, putting in his two cents worth; it was worth no more. He had no time for anyone who wasn’t white, preferably of British stock and Protestant. He would never understand how Jack Chew, a Chink, had risen to be a sergeant. Chinese should only run restaurants or market gardens.
Chew passed over his sheets to Malone. ‘My guy is just as unexciting. He’d led a pretty nomadic life –’
‘What’s that?’ said Danforth, who had never learned to hide his ignorance.
‘Wandering. A drifter,’ said Chew with Oriental patience. ‘But once he married, he settled down, was a good husband and provider. As far as his wife knows and as far as we can find out, he never fooled around with other women. He was a good-looking guy and he was popular with the women at the leagues club near where he lived. But it never went beyond some mild flirting. No jealous husbands or boy-friends. The main point is, he had no connection with Terry Sugar, at least not for twenty years or more.’
‘What was the connection then?’
Chew nodded at the sheets in Malone’s hand. ‘It’s all in there. Compare the two of them.’
Malone saw it at once: Enlisted as a police cadet, February 1965. ‘He was at the academy? Harry Gardner?’
‘He dropped out as soon as he’d finished the course and then went walkabout for five years all over Australia.’
‘Where are your sheets?’ said Danforth to Malone.
‘You didn’t tell me to bring them –’ Malone was trying to picture the academy classes of twenty-four years ago. ‘I remember him now – dimly. He was in my group … Jesus!’
‘You remembered something?’ said Ludke.
‘There is a connection with my case. Mardi Jack, my girl, wasn’t the target.’ Russ Clements had been right after all. He told them about his visit to Brian Boru O’Brien. ‘One of his companies owns the flat where the murder happened. The killer was expecting O’Brien to be there.’
‘So?’ said Chew.
‘Terry Sugar, Gardner and O’Brien were all at the academy at the same time. They were all in my group.’
Danforth and the two junior officers sat back, saying nothing. Then Hans Ludke broke the silence: ‘Does that put you on the hitman’s list, too?’
1
Malone got out of the car, waited till Lisa and the children had got out, then set the alarm and locked it. He debated whether to remove the hub-caps and lock them in the boot, but decided it would be too much trouble. Everyone in the street knew he was a cop and he had to take the chance that they either feared him or respected him. Erskineville had never been an area, even when he was growing up here, that had loved cops. Even his father had hated them.
Con Malone, the cop-hater mortally ashamed of having a cop for a son, was waiting in the doorway of the narrow terrace house for them. This was a house much like Mardi Jack’s and Gina Cazelli’s in Paddington; but Erskineville had never become gentrified like that other inner city district. All that had changed since Malone had lived here was that European immigrants had replaced the old British and Irish stock and that brighter colours had been painted over the old standard brown. Con, an immigrant-hater as well, had only just become accustomed to the Italians and Greeks and Lebanese newcomers, when, you wouldn’t believe it, the bloody Asians had started to move in. What with one bias and another, he was in a state of constant warfare never quite declared.
‘G’day, kids.’ He was not a kissing grandfather; that was for the Wogs. He shook hands with Lisa, but just nodded to Malone. He was as afraid of sentiment as he was of foreign invasions. ‘Gran’s ready to put dinner on the table. You know what she’s like, no waiting around.’
‘No pre-dinner drinks?’ said Malone. ‘No canapés?’
‘None of your fancy stuff with Mum,’ said Con, but had enough sense of humour to grin. ‘You been busy?’
‘Same as usual,’ said Malone and followed his family and his father down the narrow hall, stepping back, as he did every time he came here, into another life. Even though he was an only child and had loved his parents in the same undemonstrative way they loved him, he had wanted to escape from this house ever since he could remember. The dark small rooms, the ever-present smell of cooking, the constant shouts and screams from the ever-warring couple next door which would keep him awake at night; he had known there was a better place to live somewhere out there. His mother and father, he had known even then, would never leave; not even now when the Wogs and the Yellow Horde were pressing in on them. They felt safe in the small, narrow house. And, he hated to admit it, he too had felt safe: the whole world, it seemed, had then been a safer place. At least there had been no hit lists with his name on them.
His mother had dinner on the table; they were expected to arrive on time. She clasped the children to her, as she had never clasped Scobie to her; then pushed them into their chairs around the dining table. She gave her cheek to Lisa’s kiss, but didn’t return the kiss; she loved Lisa as much as she did the children and Scobie, but, like Con, she could not handle public sentiment.
‘Get started! Don’t let it get cold.’
It was a roast lamb dinner, the usual: none of your foreign muck here. Con had bought a bottle of red, his compliment to Lisa, the sophisticate in the family. Malone noticed it was a good label and he wondered who had advised the Old Man. Gradually Con Malone was changing for the better, but his son knew it was too late.
When dinner was over Lisa went into the kitchen to help Brigid with the washing-up, the children went into the front room to watch television and Malone and his father sat on at the dinner table to finish the bottle of wine.
‘I notice someone shot a copper out at Parramatta last week. You working on that one?’
‘No, that’s for the Parramatta boys. I’ve got my own case.’
‘That singer they found in Clarence Street?’ Though he would never admit it, Con Malone followed all the police news. He knew the dangers of his son’s job and he was afraid for him, though he would never admit that, either. ‘They’re shooting a lotta coppers these days,’ he said, giving his wine a careful look, as if he were a wine-taster.
Malone remarked his father’s concern and was touched by it; but he could never let Con know. All at once he was struck with the sad, odd wonder at what he would say to the Old Man on his death-bed. Would there be a last moment when both of them would let the barrier down and they would admit the truth of the love that strangled them both?
‘It’s a different world, Dad.’
‘You ever get any threats?’ He had never asked that question before.
‘Once or twice.’ There had been more than that; but why worry his father with them? ‘You just have to pick the serious ones from the loud-mouths.’
‘You ever tell Lisa about ’em?’
‘No. When you were having those union fights on the wharves, did you tell Mum?’
‘No.’ Con drained his glass, took his time before he said, ‘If someone ever tries to get you, let me know.’
‘Why? What’ll you do?’
‘I dunno. Bugger-all, I suppose. But I’d just like to know.’
Malone looked at his own glass; the wine had the colour of drying blood. ‘No, Dad. I don’t bring my worries home to Lisa –’ Which wasn’t strictly true; she anticipated