Dark Summer. Jon Cleary
by members of the PE team. ‘I’m moving my wife and kids over to the in-laws, but I’ll stay here.’
‘Have it your way then,’ said Dukes. ‘I think I’d probably do the same. We can’t let the shit get away with it. Sorry, Doc.’ He was the old-fashioned sort who didn’t swear in front of women, at least women he didn’t know.
Romy smiled. ‘I think I’d better be going. I’ll call you, Inspector, at Homicide as soon as I have something.’
She left them, stopping at the corner of the house to speak to Clements as he came round from evicting the cameraman. Then she was gone, but not before she had put her hand on the big man’s arm and left it there a moment, a gesture of intimacy beyond her sympathetic touch towards Malone.
Clements looked at Murrow as he joined the three men. ‘Any prints or anything, Wayne?’
‘They’re trying to get some prints off the pool gate. Did you touch the gate, Inspector?’
Malone nodded. ‘I wasn’t thinking . . . Whoever dumped him in the pool made sure of the security lock when he was leaving.’
‘Nice of him,’ said Clements. ‘Didn’t want some toddler from up the street wandering in and falling in with Scungy.’
‘Anything on Scungy?’ Malone asked. ‘Wallet or anything?’
‘Nothing,’ said Murrow. ‘He’s skint. Anyone know where he lived?’
‘I do,’ said Malone and looked at Clements. ‘I’ll get changed. You and I can go and have a look at his flat.’
‘You haven’t had breakfast.’
‘I don’t feel like it.’
‘Tell that to Lisa.’ Clements was not only an adopted uncle, he was sometimes an adoptive brother. ‘Get something into you. You know she won’t let you leave the house till you’ve eaten.’
‘Women!’ Dukes and Murrow, both married men, looked at Malone with sour understanding. Then Dukes said, ‘I’ve got men interviewing everyone in your street, in case they saw something, a car or something.’
Malone was grateful that he had not had to go out and confront the neighbours. He valued his privacy and respected theirs. Last week, in the northern suburbs, a small tornado had struck; neighbours had rallied together, help had been generous and welcome. But murder was another storm altogether.
‘I’ll get things tidied up here, Scobie, then I’ll hand the running sheets over to you and Russ. Call on me if there’s anything further. Or do you want me to set up a Crime Scene room down at the station?’
‘Let’s keep it small for the moment. Handle it without too much fuss, Wal. I don’t want our street turned into the Mardi Gras.’
Lisa had Malone’s breakfast on the table when he went back into the kitchen: apple juice, muesli with sliced mango, toast, honey and coffee. ‘I heard those remarks out there. You’re right, I wouldn’t let you leave the house with an empty belly.’
‘Any clues, Daddy?’ Maureen had recovered. Given her head, she would have been out in the street giving interviews to the media. Her father had the most interesting job in the world: solving murders was heaps better than making a fortune buying and selling crummy old buildings or being a general fighting a crummy war. ‘I heard you say his name. Scungy something. Scungy – what a name!’
‘What’s it mean?’ said Tom, adding another word to his catholic vocabulary.
‘Creepy,’ said Claire, his teacher. ‘Sleazy. God, tomorrow it’s going to be absolutely stoking at school! First day of term and all everyone will want to talk about is our murder!’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ said Maureen, story already rehearsed.
‘Our murder?’ said Lisa, looking at Malone from the other end of the table. ‘If I hear anyone say that again, there’ll be another murder. Okay?’
The children suddenly sensed their mother’s displeasure; what disturbed them was that it seemed to be directed against their father and not them. Malone himself felt the impact. He chewed on a mouthful of muesli, chewing on the right words too: ‘There’ll be no more cops here, I promise. They’ll get everything cleared up today and that’ll be it.’
‘I wanted to take pictures.’ Tom had been given a camera at Christmas, a present from Lisa’s parents who, in Malone’s view, always lavished too much on the children. The pool outside had been a present from Jan and Elisabeth Pretorius and when Malone had first dived into it the water had stung him like a bathful of vinegar.
‘If he’s going to take pictures, I’d like copies of the running sheets,’ said Maureen. ‘I’ll write an essay for Social Studies –’
Malone abruptly got up from the table and as he went out of the kitchen he heard Claire say, ‘Shut up, motor-mouth. This is a domestic.’
God, he thought, they’ve even learned the jargon. What have I done to them? Then he was aware of Lisa behind him in the hallway. He stopped at their bedroom door.
‘It’s not my fault, y’know.’
‘I know that. But whom do I bitch to?’ Whom: Dutch-born, she had a respect for English grammar that the natives had recently tossed into the waste-basket.
‘Did you hear what Claire said? This is a domestic. Are you going to beat the hell out of me?’
‘I always thought it was the other way round, husbands beating up their wives.’ She put her arms round his neck. ‘This doesn’t mean they’ll be looking for you next, does it?’
He went stiff in her embrace. ‘Start thinking like that, I will beat the hell out of you! Jesus, darl –’ Then he relaxed, feeling the stiffness in her; he was only increasing her fear, his denial sounded too forced. ‘Putting Scungy in the pool is just some sort of sick joke, that’s all. Even his name is a sick joke.’
She was not convinced. She knew that he loved her as deeply as any man could love; but she knew too that a man’s passion is rarely as deep, never as consuming as a woman’s can be. Scobie would die for her, she knew; she would do the same for him, but gladly. She wasn’t sure that men ever died gladly, least of all for love.
She kissed him. ‘I want everyone out of the place by tomorrow morning, the Crime Scene tapes taken down, everything gone. I’m coming back to my home first thing tomorrow morning and I want Scungy whatever-his-name-is scrubbed right out, not a trace of him. I love you.’
‘I was beginning to wonder.’ He grinned, though it was an effort, and returned her kiss.
2
The heat was already building up as Clements drove them into the city, to Woolloomooloo. The morning sun, reflected from the sheer glass walls of one building to the glass walls of another (Malone had begun to suspect that lately architects were turning Sydney into a City of Glass. Some day in the future they would find a singer who could hit an absolute top note, they would amplify it all over the city, all the buildings would shatter and the architects could start in all over again), till it seemed there were dozens of small suns, all striking at the eye. There was no breeze, the flags would hang limp on this Australia Day.
‘How did you get Scungy on side?’ Clements asked.
‘When he came out of Long Bay, Fraud were waiting to send him up on two more charges. I talked ’em out of it and told him he owed me.’
‘Did he come up with anything?’
‘Nothing I could use. He said he knew Joey Trang, the Vietnamese, but he didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. I saw him last week and he said he was on to something, but he’d let me know when he was sure. He didn’t seem to believe what he’d heard.’
‘You didn’t try to squeeze it out of him?’ Then Clements