Dilemma. Jon Cleary
and take all the credit.’
‘Thanks all the same, but we just don’t have the staff. You found him, you take the gold medal. It’s all in the Olympic spirit.’ He was another cop who, like Malone, was not looking forward to the events of 2000. ‘Many thanks.’
‘Up you,’ said Malone and hung up.
Next morning, back in Sydney, Glaze was taken before a magistrate in the Liverpool Street court. Malone went down to the court with Andy Graham, just to tie his own ribbon bow on the case. By the time Glaze came to committal and trial, Andy Graham and someone from under-staffed Mount Druitt could present the evidence. This morning everything was over in a matter of minutes. Glaze’s lawyer, briefed by Trevor Waring by phone, had not had time to prepare much argument.
After the hearing Malone made a mistake in taking a short cut through to the yard where the unmarked Homicide car was parked. Glaze was waiting in the hallway, accompanied by a court official, before being taken out to the van that would take him out to Long Bay gaol. Roma Gibson was there, her presence apparently tolerated by the court official, a young woman.
‘Why did you oppose giving me bail?’ Glaze was as nervous as an NYPD Blue cameraman; his eyes were everywhere, looking for something to focus on. All of a sudden he was falling apart. ‘Jesus, why?’
‘Ron, you pissed off once. Give you bail and you’d do it again.’
‘Where will he be sent?’ asked Roma Gibson. She was not as distraught as her partner, but one could see the effort she was making to hold herself together. ‘For how long?’
‘Long Bay, or maybe Silverwater. I dunno how long. We’ll have the case prepared for the DPP—’
‘The who?’
‘Director of Public Prosecutions. They’ll fit it into the court schedules. It could take three, four months, probably longer, before the committal, then there’ll be the trial. It’s out of our hands now.’
‘Jesus!’ Glaze threw up his manacled hands, looked around for escape.
‘You don’t care any more, do you?’ said Roma Gibson.
‘Mrs Gibson—’ He drew a long sigh of patience; he had been down this road so many times. ‘Have Trevor Waring get Ron—’
‘Roger.’
‘Whoever. Have Trevor get him a good barrister. That’s more important than worrying about whether I care or not.’
‘What do you do in the meantime?’
Doesn’t this woman ever let go? But he had seen all this before, too: the thrown net, the drawing in of a cop as a hated relative. ‘I go on to other cases. There are four or five homicides a day in this city – not much compared to other cities overseas. But we’re kept busy.’
He walked past them out into the yard. The heat hit him at once, the glare blinded him; he took out his dark glasses, which he rarely wore, and put them on. He stood for a moment, getting himself together. He must be getting old; the net was growing tighter. Yet this was an uncomplicated case, at least for the police. He would put it out of his mind till he had to present the papers for the case to the DPP.
Andy Graham was waiting for him. ‘Get in quick, boss. There’s a girl from Channel 15 wanting to interview you. She says their show put us on to Glaze.’
‘Let her talk to him, then. Maybe he’ll sell them his story – they’ll buy anyone with an open mouth.’ He got into the car, slammed the door as he saw the girl, a cameraman and a sound man approaching. ‘Get us outa here! Run over ‘em, if you have to!’
Graham grinned. ‘Nothing would gimme greater pleasure. But I don’t think we have justifiable homicide, do we?’
Malone smiled wryly. ‘You’re developing a sour sense of humour, Andy.’
‘It helps, doesn’t it?’ He would be a cop all his working life; another twenty-five years stretched ahead of him down the track. ‘I’ve watched you and Russ. No offence.’
1
Ronald Glaze’s arraignment got only five lines, narrow single column, in the News Briefs in the next day’s papers. Even Channel 15 did not run an item on him in its evening news on the day. Apart from political and economic stories and more scandal out of Washington, the big news was the kidnapping and demand for ransom of Lucybelle Vanheusen.
‘Who is Lucybelle Vanheusen?’ asked Malone at breakfast.
‘She’s that brat in the McDonald’s commercials,’ said Tom.
‘And in the Toyota ads,’ said Maureen.
‘And in the Coca-Cola ads,’ said Claire.
Malone groaned, remembering the moppet with enough red hair to have played a grown-up role in Days of Our Lives. ‘I know her now.’
‘Don’t say it,’ said Lisa.
‘What?’
‘That you hope the kidnappers don’t give her back.’
Malone nodded; but he had been on the verge of being callously unfunny. ‘I remember Dad used to say when he was growing up he couldn’t stand Shirley Temple. She used to do dances up and down a staircase with some black dancer and Dad always wished she’d fall and break a leg. But I’m sorry about this kid. How much are they asking as the ransom?’
‘A dollar ninety-five,’ said Tom and jerked his head back as his mother swung the back of her hand at him. He grinned, but said, ‘Sorry.’
Breakfast was the one meal that Malone insisted they all had together. All three were at university. Claire was doing Law and, already a lawyer, was advising her father on points that didn’t interest him; her only good point, he would say, was that so far she wasn’t charging him. Maureen was doing Communications and forever telling him he didn’t know how to use the media. Tom had just started Commerce and after a month’s study already knew more than Dr Greenspan, George Soros and the economic rationalists down in Canberra. They left the house each morning and were free souls; Tom, who liked home cooking, was home for dinner more frequently than his sisters. Lisa, still the boss in the house, insisted that there was a family dinner at least one night a week. The glue that held them together was stretched more than it used to be, but it was still holding.
‘What’s the percentage of kidnap victims who are returned unharmed?’ asked Maureen.
Malone shrugged. ‘I don’t think anyone’s ever done a survey on it. Kidnapping isn’t a primary industry in this country.’ But it would develop as more and more wealth was accumulated and the gap between rich and poor grew and violence became a way of life. ‘Who are her parents?’
‘How much don’t you know?’ Maureen was appalled at her father’s ignorance. ‘Her mum and dad are in the social pages every Sunday – they’re on all the freeloader lists. He’s the designer—’
‘Of what?’
Maureen rolled her eyes, at which she was very good. ‘Clothes. He’s Sydney’s Versace, only he’s straight. Mum Vanheusen does nothing but promote little Lucybelle.’
‘If he’s so successful as a designer, why do they need to exploit the kid?’ He was remembering Lucybelle more clearly now. She was in TV commercials as frequently as a certain popular blue cattle dog and Elle MacPherson.
‘The mum was a model who never got as far as she hoped,’ said Claire. ‘Maybe she’s hoping little Lucybelle will be the next – who’d you say Grandpa didn’t like?’
It was Malone’s turn to roll his eyes, at which he was not at all good. ‘You lot know nothing about history, do you? You think everything started with the Beatles.’