Babylon South. Jon Cleary
was, indirectly, working for Venetia Springfellow when the skeleton of a middle-aged man was found in some scrub in the mountains west of Sydney.
‘Up near Blackheath. I thought you might like to talk to the lady,’ said Sergeant Russ Clements, calling from Homicide. ‘It looks as if it might be her late hubby, Sir Walter. They tell me she’s out there at the studio.’
‘Are they sure it’s him?’
‘Pretty sure. The upper and lower jaws are missing, so they can’t check on the teeth. It looks as if the whole lower part of the face was blasted away.’
‘How did we get into it?’ Meaning Homicide.
‘There’s no weapon, no gun, nothing. The detectives up at Blackheath have ruled out suicide – for the moment, anyway. Unless someone found the body, didn’t report it but pinched the gun.’
‘What’s the identification then?’
‘There’s a signet ring on one of the fingers – it has his initials on it. There’s also a briefcase with his initials on it.’
‘Anything in the briefcase?’
‘Empty. That’s why the Blackheath boys think it’s murder – if someone had stolen the gun, supposing he’d suicided, they’d have taken the ring and the briefcase, too. It’s him, all right. You want to prepare her for the bad news? They’ll come out later to tell her officially, get her to identify the ring and the briefcase.’
‘Are we on the job – officially?’
‘Yep. I just came back from my broker’s and there was the docket on your desk.’
‘From your who?’
‘My stockbroker.’
‘What happened to your bookie?’
‘I’ tell you later. You gunna tell her?’
Malone hesitated. He hated that part of police work, the bringing of bad news to a family. Certainly the Springfellow family had had twenty-one years to prepare itself; it must by now have given up hope that Walter Springfellow was still alive. Nonetheless, someone had to tell the widow and, for better or worse, he was the man on the spot.
‘Righto, I’ll tell her. Can you come out and pick me up?’
‘What about Woolloomooloo Vice?’ It was their private joke.
‘You wouldn’t believe what they’re shooting today. The actor playing you wears a gold bracelet and suede shoes.’
‘I’ sue ‘em.’
Malone hung up and smiled at the assistant floor manager who had brought him to the phone. She was a jeans-clad wind-up doll, one year out of film school, bursting with self-importance and programmed to talk only in jargon. She was always explaining to Malone how the dynamics of a scene worked. She was intrigued at the dynamics of Malone’s call. ‘A homicide, Scobie? A real one?’
He nodded. ‘A real one, Debby. Where will I find Lady Springfellow?’
‘Holy shit, Lady Springfellow! Is she involved?’
‘Imagine the dynamics of that, eh?’
He grinned at her and went back on the set to tell the director he would not be available for the rest of the day. He welcomed the escape, even if he could have done with better circumstances; he could not remember disliking an assignment more than this one. Sydney Beat, an Australian-American co-production, was a thirteen-part series and he was supposed to spend one day each week with the production as technical adviser. This was the third week and so far it had all been purgatory.
Simon Twitchell, the director, was another film-school graduate; he had majored in temperament. ‘Oh God, what is it this time? You’re always pissing off when we need you – ’
Malone wanted to king-hit him, but Twitchell was small and dainty and Malone didn’t want to break him in half like a cheesestick. He also had in mind that, though Sydney Beat was supposed to be a police series, the crew and the cast, all at least ten to twenty years younger than Malone, had no time for real cops, the fuzz and the pigs. Sovfilm, making a John Wayne movie, would have been more respectful.
‘I was pissed off the day I walked in here,’ said Malone keeping his temper.
Then Gus Leroy, the producer, came out of the shadows and into the lights. He was a short, round man who always dressed in black and whose moods and humour could be the same colour. ‘What the fuck’s the matter this time?’ All his aggression, like Twitchell’s, was in his language; they would leave bigger men to do their fighting for them. ‘You’re always fucking nit-picking. What’s wrong this time?’
‘You mean with the production?’ All at once Malone saw the opportunity to escape from this farce for good. ‘It’ll never get the ratings. Every crim in the country will laugh their heads off – they’ll think it’s the Benny Hill Show. I have to go and see Lady Springfellow. Hooroo, in case I don’t come back.’
He walked across the set, watched by the crew and cast. The set was a permanent one, the apartment of the series’ hero, a detective-sergeant. Malone had criticized it, saying its luxury would embarrass even the Commissioner, but Leroy had told him they hadn’t engaged him as a design consultant. He, an American, knew what American audiences liked and this series was aimed at the American market. Malone walked past a backdrop of Sydney Harbour, a panorama only a millionaire could afford, and out of the sound stage. As the heavy sound-proof door wheezed to behind him, it sounded like an amplification of his own sigh of relief. He would be hauled over the coals tomorrow at Police Headquarters, but that was something he could weather. He had gone in one step from being an adviser to being a critic and he felt the smug satisfaction that is endemic to all critics, even amateurs.
It took him several minutes to get to see Lady Spring-fellow; it seemed that she had more minders than the Prime Minister. Perhaps the richest woman in the land was entitled to them; there was no reason why rich women should be more accessible than rich men. All at once he longed for a call to go and interview someone out amongst the battlers in the western suburbs, someone alone and without minders. But not to give him or her bad news.
‘Lady Springfellow says what is it about?’ The last line of defence was an Asian secretary, a beautiful Singapore-Chinese with her blue-black hair cut in a Twenties bob and her demeanour just as severe. Malone could see her guarding the Forbidden City in old Peking with a two-edged sword and no compunction about chopping off a head or two.
‘I’ll tell her when I see her,’ he said evenly.
The secretary stared at him, looking him up and down in sections. She saw a tall, well-built man in his early forties, who was not handsome but might be distinguished-looking in his old age, long-jawed and blue-eyed and with a wide good-humoured mouth that, she guessed correctly, could be mean and determined when obstacles were put in his way.
‘I’ see what she says to that.’ In her Oriental way she could be just as stubborn. But when she came back from the inner office she produced an unexpected smile, though it might have been malicious. ‘Watch your step, Inspector.’
‘Oh, I always do that,’ he said, but there were some in the Department, including the Commissioner, who would have disputed that.
Malone had been told that the Channel 15 network was being done over in its new owner’s image. The previous colour scheme of the network, from ashtrays to screen logo, had been bright blue and orange, a combination that had brought on a generational bout of conjunctivitis known to ophthalmologists from Perth to Cairns as ‘Channel 15 eye’. The new owner had insisted on muted pink and grey, a choice that had viewers, on tuning into the new network logo, fiddling with their controls. The natives liked colour, otherwise what was the point of owning a colour set? Even Bill Cosby had a purple tinge on Australian screens.
The chief executive’s office was pink and grey; so was the chief executive, Roger Dircks, who sat in a chair at one