Dark Summer (7 page)

“Funny bugger. I'll get you deported.”

The cab drove off and Malone stood on the pavement and looked at his home, his castle gift-wrapped by Physical Evidence blue-and-white-checked tapes. Somehow, the tapes were an obscenity, like insulting graffiti; countless times he had stepped over them going into other people's homes and he had not been unaware of how they changed the aspect of a house or an apartment. This, however, was different: it was, as Greg Random had said, too close to home.

A young policeman, in shirt sleeves, put on his cap and came along to Malone from the marked police car standing at the kerb, “I've been told to stand by, Inspector. Everyone's gone.”

“You know if they had any luck with the neighbours? Anyone see anything?”

“Not as far as I know. The lady next door, Mrs.—” he took his notebook from his pocket “—Mrs. Cayburn said she heard a car draw up during the night. She doesn't know what time it was, but it was still dark.”

Malone looked up and down the street. This was one of the few streets still left in Randwick that had no apartment blocks; two rows of older, solid houses on their sixty-foot lots faced each other across the roadway. The houses had a respectability about them; they had been built in a time when respectability had a value. Some, like Malone's, had been built at the time of Federation, at the turn of the century; the rest had been built during or just after World War I. Up till now, as far as Malone knew, none of the houses had known murder or wife-beating or scandal; at least none of them had called for blue and white taping to be stretched around them.

“
You've got a visitor, sir.” The young officer was obviously a surfie when off-duty; he was all mahogany, in colour and in muscle. On such a day, he should be down amongst the big ones, riding them on his board. Instead, here he was riding herd on a house where all the excitement was finished. “An old guy, said he was your father.”

“You checked him?” Why did he think that the old guy might be Jack Aldwych? He was becoming edgy again, the Crime Scene tapes were binding too tightly.

“He wasn't much help, sir. Said he'd never had to identify himself before to get into his son's place. I asked him for his driving licence, but he said he didn't drive, why'd he want a licence? Finally, I got him to show me his pension card. He's an obstreperous old coot, isn't he?” He looked cautiously at Malone as he offered the opinion.

Malone grinned and relaxed. “That's my old man. He hates cops.”

He left the young cop with raised eyebrows and the unspoken question and went into the house. Con Malone was sitting at the kitchen table, a glass of beer in front of him. The old man lived in the past, pottering around in his bigotry and old habits. He had never learned to appreciate beer from a can, he had always drunk it from the bottle or a glass and he wasn't going to risk cutting his lip on a flaming piece of tin and spoiling the taste of the beer with blood.

“Why didn't you ring us?” he demanded as soon as Malone came into the kitchen. “I had to hear it on the wireless, one of my granddaughters finds a dead man in the swimming pool.”

“I was going to ring you, Dad—” He had no excuse, really. He had been too concerned with the assault on his own feelings and those of Lisa and the kids. “How's Mum?”

“Out of her flaming mind with worry about the kids. About you and Lisa, too,” he added. But Malone knew his mother: she had never learned to show her love for him, her only child, but she shouted her love for her grandchildren like a Catholic Holy Roller. “Lisa rang her and she's gone out to Vaucluse, to the Pretorius place.”

Malone once again recognized Lisa's talent for diplomacy. She would have known that Brigid Malone would have resented being left out of the comforting of the children. Brigid was not a mean-
spirited
woman, but her time was diminishing and any time lost from her grandchildren was time lost forever.

He went to the screen door, looked out at the pool; the tapes were still in place there. He could be thankful that there was no taped outline of Grime's body: the water was crystal-clear of death.

He turned back into the kitchen, got himself a beer from the fridge, poured it into a glass as a gesture to his father and sat down opposite Con. He looked at the old man, once again seeing the tired wildness in the walnut face and the once-muscular frame; Malone knew that only his mother had kept his father out of jail. Con would never have been a criminal, but the Irish in him had always had a contempt for law and order, especially law and order based on any British model. He had hated authority, police, Masons, any conservative politician, Dagos, reffos; now he hated wogs, Asians and any man with long hair and an earring. He couldn't bring himself to believe that lesbians did what he'd heard they did and he had no doubts that poofters deserved what AIDS did to them. He was, in his own opinion, an average Aussie, one of the real natives, not the bloody Abos. Malone loved him, but could never tell him.

“Dad, what's life like on the wharves now? The bloke we found out there in the pool, he could've worked as a tally clerk.”

“Tally clerks don't work, they're all bludgers.” His net of prejudices was wide. “Why'd he finish up in your pool?”

“He was working for me. Someone must have resented that.”

“Working—? You mean he was an informer, a stoolie? Jesus, ain't you got any shame? Using a man to dob in someone else.”

Malone said patiently, “Dad, we do it all the time. You think the crims go in for a code of ethics?”

“They don't dob in their mates. Not the decent ones.”

“How many decent crims do you know? Don't give me any crap, Dad. I've had a bad morning.”

Con Malone gave his form of apology, which was to change the subject: “About the wharves? They're nothing like they used to be. They're—” he searched for the right word “—they're antiseptic. Yeah,
antiseptic.
Compared to what they used to be.”

“How much skulduggery went on?”

“Oh, it was dirty, real dirty. There was no guaranteed work when I first started on the wharves, there was just the call-up each morning. The stevedore boss played favourites. Or you were in sweet with the union boss and he saw you got work or there'd be trouble. There were stand-over blokes who ran things, some for the stevedore firms, some for particular union bosses who didn't want any competition at the elections. There were some decent union men at the top, but they had just as hard a battle as the blokes at the bottom.”

“What about smuggling, pillaging, things like that?”

“Oh, that was on for young and old. I did it meself, pillaging, I mean, not smuggling—I never went in for that, that was big-time and too dangerous. Some of the foremen were tied up in the smuggling racket, they were the blokes on site for the big men, the ones who never came near the waterfront, who had nothing to do with the shipping game. Gangsters, big businessmen, there was even one politician in the racket. Drugs, gold, they had it all wrapped up. You must of known all about that?”

“I'd heard about it—Russ Clements was once on the Pillage Squad. But you never mentioned it.”

“Your mum was protecting you. She knew about it, vaguely, and she laid down the law to me that I was never to talk to you about it. By the time you was old enough to talk to, you'd become a copper. How could I talk to you then?” Con Malone asked what he thought was a reasonable question.

Malone agreed with a grin. “Sure, how could you? How did you fellers work under a foreman who was in on the smuggling?”

“We turned a blind eye. We had to, or else. Foremen were different in them days, few of 'em were popular, we looked on 'em as the bosses' men. We never drank with them after we'd knocked off work, nothing like that.”

“I want to go down to the wharves tomorrow. You know anyone I can see?”

“Roley Bremner.” Con Malone said without hesitation. “He's been secretary of the New South
Wales
branch of the WLU for the last ten years and he's as straight as a die. Him and me worked together when he first started. Tell him I sent you. It's a pity you'll have to mention you're a cop.” But he had the grace to grin.

“I'll try and keep it out of the conversation as long as I can.”

Then the phone rang. Malone picked it up. “Inspector Malone?”

“Who's this?” He had an experienced cop's built-in defence: never identify yourself till you have to or there is some advantage to it.

“Malone,” said the voice, flat but distinct, “stay in your own paddock. Don't mess around with something that's none of your business. You've had one warning. This is your second and last.”

II

At 7.30 Tuesday morning, while Malone was preparing breakfast for himself, Lisa returned home with the children.

“I see they've taken down all the decorations.” The blue and white tapes had been removed last night.

“I was going to bring all the girls down from my class.” Maureen, it seemed, had made a full recovery. “I phoned 'em yesterday from Grandma's. They were going to bring their cameras.”

“Get ready for school before I get my whip out,” said her mother.

When the children, grumbling, had gone into their bedrooms, Malone looked at Lisa. “You still cranky?”

“Do you blame me? Well, not
cranky.
But yes, I'm—I'm on edge. Are you any closer to finding out who dumped that man in our pool?”

“No.” He had had a restless night, hearing there in the darkness the flat threatening voice. He had called Lisa last night with the intention of telling her not to bring the children home, but as soon as she had spoken, before he had had time to ask how she was, she had told him she was coming home and there was to be no argument. Her voice had had the same flat adamancy as the stranger's: it had had the
added
adamancy of a wife's voice.

“There's still a police car parked outside. Do we have to have that?”

He spread some marmalade on a slice of cold toast; he could have been eating chopped grass spread on cardboard, for all the taste he had in his mouth. Then, forcing the words out of his mouth, he told her about the phone call and the threat. “It's either police protection or you go back to your parents.”

She took her time about replying. “I'm not going to be driven out of my own home.”

“What about the kids?”

“Darling—” She sat down opposite him, leaned forward. Normally she was one of the coolest, calmest women he had ever met, but when she became intense, there was a passion in her that, he had learned from experience, had to be handled carefully. He was no ladies' man, but he was a sensible husband, which is more difficult. “Darling, the kids
are
my home. You and them—not the house. That's just the shell. When I married you I wasn't marrying a pig in a poke—”

“Just a pig in plainclothes.” He could have bitten his tongue. Jokes, especially feeble ones, should never be fired on a battlefield as dangerous as a domestic.

“Don't joke!” She slammed the table with her fist.

He reached across and put his hand on her wrist; he could feel the tension quivering in her. “I'm sorry, darl. That slipped out—I'm as on edge as you are—”

She turned her arm, unclenched her fist and took his hand in hers, “I know. What I was trying to say was, I knew what I was getting into when I married you. I've worried myself sick a dozen times since then, wondering if you were all right. All I've had to hang on to, my rock, if you like, has been
this—
She waved her free hand about her, but without taking her gaze from his face. “This house, the children. I can't explain it, maybe only a woman would understand—”

“No, I understand.” And he did;
this
was his rock, too. “But if you won't leave here, let the kids go. Your parents won't mind having them—” But he could already imagine what his own mother would feel at not being able to take them into the small, narrow house in Erskineville. It was the house in which he had been born and brought up, but it was dark, permeated with the smells of a hundred or more years
of
bad cooking, sibilant with the sounds of a cistern that never worked properly. It could not be compared with the large house in Vaucluse with the pool and the lush garden and the three guest bedrooms that were always ready for the children's visits. And there would be the Pretoriuses' two cars, ready to bring the children across to school at Randwick each morning. But even as he posed the sensible alternative, he felt he was losing his independence, that somehow he was failing his kids. “It'll only be for a few days at the most—”

“Then if it's only going to be for a few days, we'll stay together.” She took away her hand. “We'll have the police protection.”

He knew there was no use in further argument. “Righto. But I don't want the kids walking to school. Borrow your mother's car and drive them there. One of the uniformed men can go with you.”

“I've already borrowed it, it's outside.”

He might have known. If she were still at home in Holland, she would inspect the dykes daily, never relying on anyone else's word.

III

As he was backing his Commodore out into the street, Keith Cayburn came out of his front gate and approached him. “We had a meeting of Neighbourhood Watch last night, Scobie. If there's anything we can do . . .”

Form a circle of wagons around my house
. . . “I think everything's under control, Keith. I'm asking for police surveillance for a few days, it's standard procedure.”

Cayburn looked dubiously at the police car at the kerb. He was a lean, tall man with thinning yellow hair and bright blue eyes, that, though not furtive, had a tendency never to be still; perhaps, Malone sometimes thought, it came from his occupation. He was a high-school principal, who looked upon all teenagers as potential evil-doers and so ran a good, tight school. Decency ran through him like a water-mark, but he had no illusions that it ran unbroken through society at large. He warned his students of the worst, yet he had been shocked by what had happened next door in the Malones'.