Bleak Spring. Jon Cleary

‘Irises,’ said Lisa and turned to the Rocknes. ‘The last time Scobie put his hand up, he was at school. He wanted to leave the room. Is Will mean with money, Olive?’

Olive Rockne looked at her husband. ‘Are you, darling?’

Will Rockne spread his hands, as if he thought that was a philanthropic gesture in itself. ‘You’d know that better than I would, love.’

Malone listened with only half an ear to the Rocknes. They were not friends of the Malones nor did he want them to be. He and Lisa had had dinner once at the Rockne home, the result of an unguarded moment of sociability at a meeting of the parents’ association of Holy Spirit Convent; he had been bored stiff with Will Rockne and he had asked Lisa not to reciprocate with a return invitation. Tonight, at this arts and crafts festival to raise money for the school, the Rocknes had attached themselves to the Malones like long-time friends.

Malone hated these school affairs; at the same time he wondered if he were growing into a social misfit. He had never been one for parties or a night out with the boys, but at least he had been sociable. Now he found himself more and more reluctant to sound agreeable when Lisa told him there were certain functions they were expected to attend. He knew he was being selfish and did his best to hide the fact, but the other fact was that he had lost almost all his patience with bores. And Will Rockne was a bore.

Holy Spirit was a Catholic school, with the usual school’s catholic collection of parents. There was the author who lived on literary grants and was known in the trade as Cary the Grant; there was his wife, who wore fringed shawls summer and winter and made macramé maps of some country she called Terra Australis. There were the tiny jockey and his towering blonde wife who, it was said, had taken out a trainer’s licence the day they were married and had been exercising the licence ever since. There were the stockbroker who was being charged with insider trading and his wife who was terrified of becoming a social outsider. And there were the low-income parents, blue-collar and white-collar, whose children were at the school on scholarships and who, to the nuns’ and lay staff’s credit, were treated as no different. The Malone children’s fees were paid by Lisa’s parents, a generosity that Malone both resented and was glad of. He was becoming a bad-tempered old bastard in his early middle age.

‘Will counts the pennies,’ Olive Rockne told Lisa. ‘But he does throw the dollars around. Especially with the kids.’

‘But not with her, she means.’ Rockne gave Malone a man-to-man smile.

Malone had been idly aware all through the evening of something in the air between the Rocknes. He was no expert on marital atmosphere; as a Homicide detective he usually arrived at the scene of a domestic dispute after either the husband or the wife, or both, were dead; whatever had gone before between the couple was only hearsay. There was no visible argument between the Rocknes, but there was a tension that twanged against Malone’s ear.

The Rocknes lived half a mile down the road from Holy Spirit and half a mile up from the beach at Coogee. Will Rockne practised as a solicitor, with an office down on the beachfront. Malone had had no dealings with him and had no idea how successful he was; all he knew about the Rocknes was that they had a solid, comfortable home, owned a Volvo and a Honda Civic and were able to send their two children, a boy and a girl, to private schools. He knew that most suburban solicitors did not make the money that partners in the big city law firms did; he also knew that they made more than detective inspectors did, though that didn’t disturb him in the least. He was rare in that he was almost incapable of envy.

Will Rockne was capable of it; he was expressing it now: ‘Look at that Joe Gulley, will you! The horses he rides have got more brains than he has, yet he makes two or three hundred thousand a year – and that’s counting only what he declares! He’d make as much again betting on the nags he rides.’

‘Aren’t jockeys forbidden to bet?’ Malone sounded pious, even in his own ears.

‘Are you kidding?’

Rockne had a wet sort of voice, as if the roof of his mouth leaked; whatever he said sounded as if it came out through a mouthful of bubbles. He was as tall as Malone, but much bonier, with a long face that somehow stopped short of being good-looking, even though none of his features was misplaced or unshapely. His casual clothes were always the sort with the designer logo prominently displayed; Malone was sometimes tempted to ask him if he was sponsored, but Rockne had little sense of humour. He was the sort of man who physically made no lasting impression, the face in the crowd that was always just a blur. As if to compensate he waved opinions like flags, was as dogmatic as St Paul, though, being

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