Dark Summer (34 page)

“Bugger the profile.” He was still in many ways an old-fashioned cop; instinct still counted as much as science. He knew it was often the wrong approach, but then science itself had just as often been turned and spun on instinct.

Clements shrugged. “Okay. But I hope we come up with nothing. Then Romy won't have to
know
we suspected her dad. For the first time in my life, I think I'm serious.”

“About her? Good on you. Let's hope my hunch doesn't bugger it up for you.”

Clements went out of the room and Malone, no longer hungry, began to gather up the scraps of their lunch. He felt no excitement about his suspicion of Peter Keller; his feeling was more of concern for Clements. He dumped the lunch scraps in his waste-basket (who would collect them this evening? Keller?), was on his way out to the toilets for his postprandial leak when his phone rang.

It was Radelli, the senior Customs investigation officer. “Inspector Malone? G'day.” He sounded slightly more amiable than he had two nights ago. “You got any further with that murder over at Glebe Island?”

“Not much.”

“Well, you might like to know we think we're on to another bust. I don't know, but it might lead to something on your case, it could be the same crowd involved. We got a tip from the DEA in Washington, they have a man in La Paz in Bolivia. We know the ship—it's just docked. We're putting some undercover men on the wharf to keep tabs on it. The ship's at Number 8, Darling Harbour.”

“What's your plan?”

“We've gone through all the manifests, come up with the consignments that look suspicious. We'll get the sniffer dogs on to them.”

“There's just one problem. Our two chief suspects in that murder both work on the wharves—”

“I know that—you told me. They'll probably cotton on to us, but we have to take that risk. If the stuff was packed in a car, we could take the car away on the pretext of steam-cleaning it for plant health reasons. But the ship's come out of Antofagasta in Chile and the cargo is a pretty mixed bag. But no cars.”

“Righto, I'll check where my two suspects are working. I'll let you know. Where can I get you?” Radelli gave him a number. “I'll be back to you.”

He hung up, then called the Wharf Labourers Union. Roley Bremner came on the line, sounding short-tempered and aggressive, as if he was expecting the call to be from some media reporter, the bane of union secretaries: “Yeah, what is it? Oh, it's you, Scobie!” His tone softened, something he
seemed
to recognize: “Geez, mates with a copper! That'll lose me votes if ever it gets out. What's on your mind, mate?”

“First, have you seen Jimmy Maddux's wife again? How's she getting on?”

“Yeah, I seen her this morning. So-so. She had a good word to say for you, but. Evidently you treated her pretty kind. Thanks, mate. She told me about Jimmy. What a bastard! And I never knew. Just goes to show . . .” Then his voice dropped almost to a whisper: “Still, he didn't need to be done in like that. I hope you gunna tell me you're about to pinch the bugger who did it, are you?”

“Afraid not, Roley, not yet. But we're close. Can you tell me where Snow White and The Dwarf are working right now?”

“Sure, just a minute.” He was gone for half a minute; then: “They're both rostered on Number 8, Darling Harbour. Snow White bundied on there this morning. The Dwarf comes on this arvo for the three-till-ten shift. They're working on a ship called the
Golden Horn,
in from somewhere in South America, I dunno where, but I can find out. You on to something?”

“No, Roley. Just keeping tabs on them. How's the election campaign coming along?”

“They tell me I'm holding me own. I dunno. Maybe, maybe not. You could do me a favour and lock up the competition. Like this bloke Saddam. He's got the right idea. Maybe if I get elected, I'll be a dictator.”

“It's fashionable. Good luck, Roley.”

He hung up, called back Radelli, told him where White and Schultz were working. “It's their mob, all right, that's expecting the shipment. They'll spot your undercover men, if they're strangers.”

“Bugger! Okay, we won't put them in. That makes it bloody difficult.”

Malone suddenly had an idea: “Luke—” Radelli had thawed enough to be called by his first name. “I think my mate at the WLU might be able to help. Let me try my luck.”

He hung up, once more called Roley Bremner: “Roley, how could you get Snow White off the wharves for, say, an hour, maybe an hour and a half?”

“What's going on, mate?”

“
I can't tell you right now, Roley, but I want him out of the way for at least an hour.
Now.
Can you manage it?”

“Geez, I dunno. Let me have a think. I'll be back to you.”

Malone hung up, sat back in his chair and gazed at the phone.

How did the world work before the telephone was invented? Sometimes it was to be cursed for its interruptions, for the bad news it brought; its drawback was that it couldn't be shot, as messengers were in simpler, more pragmatic days. Still, on balance, the telephone and its offspring, the fax, had probably contributed to progress. It had, at least, speeded up conspiracy.

His bladder was bursting by the time Roley Bremner rang back. “I just been on to one of me mates out at Port Botany. He's the delegate there and he's working for me in the election. He's gunna do me a favour. He's calling a stop-work meeting for an hour—it goes from one-thirty to knock-off time for the shift, at two-thirty. I'm going out there to address the meeting. I'll see Snow White gets the message it's on. He'll be over at Port Botany soon's he hears about it. He's not gunna let me address a meeting without him being there, not so close to the election.”

“That's a lucky coincidence, isn't it, the stop-work meeting being on right when we need it?”

Bremner made a noise somewhere between a scoff and a cough. “Mate, you asked for it, you got it. I haven't a clue what the stop-work is about, but me mate said no worries, he'll pull the blokes off at one-thirty. You better hurry.”

“That's rough on the stevedoring company, isn't it?”

“Tough titty. You work on the wharves, mate, you never worry about the bosses. You ask your dad.”

“I wouldn't be game. Thanks, Roley.”

He hung up, glad that he had managed to escape the us-and-them mentality, the workers and the bosses, that his father had tried to drum into him from the moment he had left school. He called Radelli: “If you move quickly, my suspect, a bloke named Dallas White, will be off the wharf between one- thirty and two-thirty. He'll be out at Port Botany at a stop-work meeting.”

“
Jesus, what's this one about?” Radelli, despite the fact that he was a Customs man, or perhaps because of it, had the usual prejudices about the WLU. “They're always bloody going out.”

“Micro-economic reform.” That was the government's present catch-cry, though the voters at large, dead to jargon, hadn't a clue what it meant. “I'm kidding, Luke. Just grab the opportunity and get your men and your dogs down to Darling Harbour. How will you explain yourselves to the other wharfies?”

“We'll tell 'em it's a routine search. They take those in their stride, so long as we don't bother
them.
Most of them are dead set against drug smuggling, anyway. They've got kids just like the rest of us.”

“I guess so,” said the wharfie's kid.

He hung up the phone, made it to the toilet just in time, gave himself up to the shivering ecstasy of relieving a full bladder. Then he went back to his office and spent the next hour on paperwork, unwillingly becoming a bureaucrat. Clements came in, said the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence had already contacted Interpol regarding Peter Keller, and went out again without offering any comment. Malone looked up from his papers and gazed after him. He had never seen the big man so stiff and withdrawn. Crumbs, he thought, what have I started? Lisa, if he told her, would nail him to the wall of their bedroom, would argue the merits of love and happiness against crime and punishment. She would always choose her friends' good against the public good.

At four o'clock Radelli rang. “We've found it. It's cocaine, all right, packed in between the plastic sheets in a consignment of solar panels. The plastic sheets, they're opaque, so you can't see the coke, they're like giant sachets. Very ingenious, except who would import solar panels from Bolivia? It's amazing how stupid some clever people can be. You want to be there when we make the bust?”

“What's the drill?”

“We're going to let 'em collect the cases—the panels are packed in wooden cases. We'll keep 'em under surveillance, watch where they take the stuff and then we'll nab them when they open it up.”

“I'll send one of my sergeants from here, he knows White and Schultz. The Feds will make the arrest, I take it? . . . Righto, my bloke will just be an observer. His name's Russ Clements.” It would keep
Clements
occupied, instead of his sitting around worrying about Romy Keller and her father.

He hung up, went out into the main room and sat down in the empty chair opposite Clements. The latter had just made fresh coffee, but he did not offer any to Malone.

“You still cranky on me for what I'm doing about Keller?”

Clements bit his lip, an old habit when he was disturbed. “I'm not shitty on
you.
It's just the bloody—well, I dunno, the way things just suddenly go arse-over-tip. Everything's been sweet between me and Romy. It's been a bugger of a summer for most people—the recession, the war, the farmers going broke. But for me it's been great. And now . . . What if we turn up something on her dad that means we've
got
to bring him in? You think she's gunna hold my hand and kiss me and tell me she understands? No way is it gunna be like that.”

“Look, I'm not saying any Hail Marys for me to be right about this. If Interpol reports nothing on him, then—”

“Then what?”

Reluctantly he said, “Then we'll keep an eye on him but not make a big thing of it. We'll keep it just between you and me and not put it on the computer, just the way we did with some things in the old murder box. In the meantime, to take your mind off him, I want you to go down to the Customs office on Number 8, Darling Harbour—” He outlined what Radelli had told him and what the arrangements were, “It may be a twenty-four-hour job, so get Phil Truach to stand by to take over from you.”

Clements wasn't looking at him, was staring at his big feet stuck out in front of him. “Do you think Romy suspects anything about her father?”

“Russ, how would I know? You don't want to sound her out, do you?”

“Christ, no!”

“Righto, then. We play it between you and me till we have something definite on him.”

“What if Interpol clears him? Are we gunna let it go at that?”

Again there was the reluctance: “Not necessarily.”

II

Romy Keller stood back from the cadaver of the six-year-old girl who had been murdered this afternoon by the child's father. This was the sort of post-mortem that increased her urge to break away from forensic medicine; she could remain relatively objective about the adult victims of murder, but child homicide turned her to anger that sometimes blinded her. She felt that way now, dizzy with emotion that made her stop working, made her unable to touch the bruised and battered body of the child.

“Take over,” she said abruptly to her assistant, taking off her rubber apron.

He was young, this was his first year at the morgue; working on cadavers day after day had proved more traumatic than he had expected. His bony olive-complexioned face had begun to take on the sallow look of the corpses he worked on. “Romy, I don't know that I can—”

“Do it!” she said and left him, feeling disgust at her unprofessional conduct but unable to deny the urge to get out of the Murder Room before she cracked.

She went down through the long main room, avoiding the eyes of those working there, afraid that one of them might make the comment that would spring the tension in her, and went upstairs to her office. She sat down in the chair behind her desk, closed her eyes and wished all at once for sleep.

It had been a long hard day. She had been called in here at seven this morning and it seemed that bodies had been coming into the morgue in a continuous stream from that hour onwards. It had been one of those days when death, it seemed, had decided to catch up with life. There had been murder victims, including the six-year-old girl; accident victims; men and women who had died of heart or asthma attacks in public places: the waiting line had at one time suggested that there could have been a major disaster in the city. She had worked mechanically but with her usual competence till the body of the little girl had been brought in. Then she had collapsed, inwardly if not outwardly.

She opened her eyes, made herself face the truth. The core of her collapse had nothing to do with the overload of work; it had to do with the phone call she had made at lunch time. She had called Clean Sweep, the contractors her father worked for, to ask where she might find him to tell him she
would
be late home for supper.

“Is he at the Police Centre?”

“No, Dr. Keller. He's at St. Sebastian's Hospital today. He's been working there three days a week for the past month.”

“Oh. Thank you. I'll call him there.”

But she hadn't called him. She had hung up, standing by the phone in the canteen, deaf to the hum of conversation of the other staff as they tucked into their lunch with relish undiminished by their morning's work. She was beginning to feel tired even then in the middle of the day, but she was not so tired that she did not at once catch the import of what the woman at Clean Sweep had told her. Her father had had access for a month to a supply of alcuronium chloride, Alloferin.