Dark Summer. Jon Cleary

Malone came awake, dimly conscious of his relief that what he had heard had been only a part of a dream. He had stayed up late, looking, almost against his will, at the latest newsreels on the Gulf war; the images had gone to bed with him, the camera eye in the dream becoming his own eye. Now he felt the hand still on his shoulder, the grip tight, and he opened his eyes to see Maureen standing by the bed in her swimsuit.

‘What?’ He sat up, feeling Lisa stir beside him.

‘There’s a dead man in our pool.’

His first thought was for the effect on his middle child: he looked at her for the marks of shock or fear. She was ten years old, a tomboy usually bursting with energy and curiosity; the one of his three children who, he had thought, would never be vulnerable to what life threw at her. But he had been looking at the future: not at now, a hot January Monday morning when she was only ten years old and had got up for nothing more threatening than an early morning swim.

‘You all right?’ She nodded; and he turned to Lisa, now wide awake. ‘Keep her here, darl. Stay with Mum.’

Lisa said, voice still thick with sleep, ‘I hope this isn’t some stupid joke –’

He shook his head warningly, pushed Maureen into the bed as he got out of it. He could feel the trembling in the thin body and he felt a sudden spasm of anger. Any intrusion that cracked the peace of the life he had built for Lisa and the kids always angered him.

In his pyjama trousers and bare feet he went out to the back of the house, opened the screen door and stepped out into the back garden. It was not a large area, maybe eighty feet by fifty, and a good part of it was taken up by the swimming pool and its fence-enclosed surrounds. He went through the spring-loaded gate, feeling the bricks beneath his feet still warm from yesterday’s scorcher, and stood on the side of the pool and looked down at the small, fully clothed man floating face-up in the blue-tinted water. It was Scungy Grime.

Malone picked up the long pole with its skim-net, hooked the net over Grime’s head and pulled the body in to the side of the pool. There was no doubt that the little man was dead, but, routinely, he knelt down and felt for a pulse in Grime’s neck.

‘Hi, Scobie. Going to be another scorcher, looks like – What’s that?’

Keith Cayburn was the Malones’ next-door neighbour. His house was two-storeyed and from the rear balcony, where he now stood in his pyjamas, he could look down on the Malones’ garden.

‘A dead man. Keep Gloria inside the house till I get him out of sight.’

‘Sure. Holy shit! Can I do anything to help?’

‘Maybe later, Keith.’ Though how he could help, Malone had no idea. Dead small-time criminals in swimming pools were not common in Randwick, not objects for community action by Neighbourhood Watch.

He left the body in the water for the Physical Evidence team and hoped that Gloria Cayburn, an hysterical type, would not come out on the balcony, despite her husband’s pleas, and throw a fit. As he went back into the house to call the police (call the police? Dammit, I am the police! But that was the way the system worked), Scungy Grime, in death as in life an incorrigible, drifted away towards the middle of the pool again, the skim-net still over his head like a fly-net, the long pole now caught in the crook of his limp arm.

Malone picked up the phone in the kitchen and rang Randwick police station. He spoke to a young constable, who said ‘Holy shit!’ and that he would get the local detectives round there right away. Malone hung up, rang Police Centre and got the duty officer in Physical Evidence, who said ‘Holy shit!’ evidently the religious thought for the day, and told him the team was on its way. Then Malone rang Russ Clements, who, half-asleep but still awake enough to be concerned for the Malone family, said only, ‘Lisa and the kids all right? Okay, I’ll be there soon’s I can.’

Malone hung up the phone and turned round. Claire, in her shortie nightgown, stood in the kitchen doorway, frightened and puzzled. ‘Is it true, Dad? Is there a dead man in our pool?’

‘It’s true. Where’s Tom?’

‘In with Mum.’

‘How’s Maureen?’

‘Quiet. It’s not like her, she’s not saying a word.’

‘Get dressed, the police will be here soon.’ He hoped they would not arrive with sirens blaring, lights flaring; sometimes the theatricals of police work, though necessary, embarrassed him. This section of Randwick, mostly white-collared and comfortable, was a quiet neighbourhood and so far he and Lisa had fitted in. ‘And don’t go outside, understand?’

‘I’ve never seen a dead person.’

She was fourteen, on the verge of becoming a beautiful woman; sometimes, forgetting the contribution of Lisa, he was amazed he could have sired such a beauty. There was also a matter-of-fact serenity to her that she had inherited from Lisa; or there normally was. But not now. The death of strangers,

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