Murder Song (28 page)

Waldorf was taking off his make-up; Rosalie Vigil, still wearing hers, sat admiring him. She looked up, startled, when Malone knocked and stepped in the open door. Waldorf, discarding feathers like a moulting eagle, smiled at her. “I forgot to tell you, darling—” It was not a term of endearment, it was the currency of the theatre; even Malone recognized that. “Inspector Malone is taking me back to the hotel. I'm not allowed out on my own.”

“I thought we could have supper somewhere.” Her look implied she had hoped for something more than supper.

Waldorf looked at Malone. “Must we disappoint each other, Scobie?”

Malone grinned. “Don't make me sound like a Mother Superior. You're free to take your own risks.” But his voice wasn't smiling; he was growing tired of trying to protect elements who wanted to go their own way, regardless. “But if Frank Blizzard wants to join you . . .”

Miss Vigil peeled off her eyelashes, giving up seduction for common sense. “When you put it like that . . .”

Waldorf,
featherless now, wrapped in a silk dressing-gown, leaned down and kissed her. “It'll all be over soon,
cara
.”

Then the Queen of the Night, bizarre in her stage make-up and a mink coat, stood in the doorway, one hand above her head in a negligent pose as she leaned against the door-jamb. Does she sing “Lili Marlene?” Malone wondered. She looked first at Miss Vigil, then at Waldorf, decided he was taken for the evening, and finally looked at Malone. He glanced at himself in Waldorf's mirror and decided that, without make-up, he looked as dowdy as a street cleaner amongst these exotics.

“Whose admirer are you?”

“Just my own,” said Malone, wondering what, if anything, was under the fur coat.

“I'm the Queen of the Night.” She held out a hand to be kissed; he took it and shook it. She gave him a smile that was intended to floor him, where she would instantly jump on him. She was telling him, as if he hadn't already guessed, that she was a piece of no resistance. “You're not a romantic, are you, a gallant?”

“My wife and six kids think I'm both of those.”

“Would your wife and six kids let you come to a party I'm giving? You, too, Sebastian darling. Oh, and you, Rosalie,” she added, not looking at Miss Vigil.

“I'd love to, darling,” said Waldorf, “but I can't. This is Inspector Malone. He's just arrested me for buggering the three boys who play the Genii.”

“Is that an offence? Dear me, I am behind the times.”

It was all as artificial as the stage setting out front and Malone, ankle-deep in the mire of the everyday world, knew he would never be able to stomach this atmosphere, glamorous or not. He reached again for the Queen of the Night's hand, lifted it and kissed it, just to show he was not an entire clod, that the NSWPD could occasionally breed a gallant. She smiled and turned her hand over to stroke his cheek.

“You're a good sort, Mr. Malone,” said the Queen of the Night from Coonabarabran, a down-to-earth country girl still under all her artificiality. “Come back when you're not on duty, any night. My room's just down the hall.”

She
swept out and Miss Vigil made a retching noise. “I think I'm going to throw up.”

Waldorf lifted her to her feet and kissed her on the cheek; he looks like her father, Malone thought, or anyway her uncle. “Good-night, darling. I promise—when this is all over, we'll go away for a weekend somewhere.”

She kissed him in return, said good-night to Malone and went quickly out of the room. She looked on the point of tears, or perhaps peeling off her lashes had made her eyes water. Waldorf turned back to the big light-rimmed mirror, looked at Malone in it.

“I'll be glad to get home to Germany.”

“That's home?”

“It's where my wife and family are. I'm missing them, Scobie. Is that what being scared, really scared for the first time in your life, does to you?”

“Yes,” said Malone, knowing exactly how he felt.

Waldorf changed into street clothes, wrapped himself in a camelhair coat, put on a tweed cap—“It protects me against the wind, I'm susceptible to head-colds”—and they went out into the chill night air. The wind had dropped since early evening, there were no clouds and the three-quarter moon was a broken silver button against the navy blue of the sky. Over to their right Circular Quay and the buildings fronting it were a dazzling pattern of lights, the lights reflected in the waters of the harbour,
pointillisme
gone crazy; behind them, the great off-white shells of the Opera House reared against the harbour proper like sharks playing at porpoises. It struck Malone that it all looked like a stage set, grander than the one he had seen in the Opera House itself.

He led the way across the wide forecourt to the space reserved for the staff; Waldorf had left a pass for him at the gatekeeper's shack for him to bring the Commodore in. He had gone out to Randwick this afternoon and collected the car and brought it back to the Congress. He no longer wanted to trust to taxis or to walking up the city streets. The Commodore was no tank, but he felt safe in it, it was his own turtle shell.

He went to the driver's side and put his key in the car door. Waldorf, standing on the other
side,
looked across the roof at him. “Tomorrow night let's—”

The bullet hit him in the back of the head; he died instantly, the tweed cap no protection at all against the .243. Malone, some sixth sense telling him where the bullet had come from, looked up, saw the gunman at the top of the steps that led up across the face of a steep bluff that was the northern end of the Botanical Gardens. He couldn't make out the rifle; all he saw was the man's hunched shoulders against the moon. He dropped flat, rolled as far under the car as he could get, heard the two shots, in rapid succession, hit the roof of the car. He lay there, waiting for another shot, but there was none. He rolled out from under the car, looked up: Blizzard had disappeared. He dragged out his Smith & Wesson and, keeping close to the foot of the bluff, ran across and up the stairs, going up them two at a time, still keeping against the bluff.

He reached the top of the steps, dropped flat; but there was no sign of Blizzard. He had gone into the shadows, it would be suicidal to try to find him.

Malone went backwards down the steps, just in case Blizzard reappeared. He crossed to the car, aware of cars still pulling away from the entrance to the Opera House. He dropped down, making himself as small a target as possible, and looked at Sebastian Waldorf, once Sam Culp. The singer lay in a curled heap, as if the bullet had thumped him into the ground. His mouth was open as if on a high note, but only blood and silence was coming out.
Tomorrow night let's
. . .

Malone, his mind off-balance, past sanity for the moment, wondered what they would have done together tomorrow night.

9

I

ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER
, Crime, Fred Falkender was a jovial man; he should have been in community relations instead of chasing criminals. He was only five feet nine, the minimum height for a cop when he had joined, rotund, bald and merry-faced; he looked like an old-time Labour politician, one of the Party's Irish stalwarts before the modern image-makers got to them and taught them about silhouette and colour co-ordination and jargon phrases like “an election mode” and “conceptualization of ideas.” He laughed and joked and slapped everyone on the back, even crims, when they were leaving him. He was full of bonhomie, a quality not endemic in the Police Department.

“We've got to get you out of sight, Scobie, no two ways about it. Oh, and Mr. O'Brien too, mustn't forget him, eh?” He laughed, showing all his teeth; the round cheeks showed pink lights. “But you're the important one. Won't do much for the Department's image if we lose another man.” He laughed again, looked at the two glum faces in front of him. “I'm only trying to cheer you up.”

He's not as dumb as this, thought Malone; why does he try so bloody hard? “I know that, sir. It's just that—well, I don't fancy being cooped up in a safe house somewhere.”

“I'd feel the same way m'self, Scobie. But the Commissioner insists on it. It seems you're one of his favourite sons.” For a moment the merry blue eyes had a different sort of gleam. Senior officers in any administration, public or private, no matter how good-humoured they are, do not take kindly to favouritism being sprayed on someone half a dozen rungs below them. Thunder was once said to be the rumbling of angels against favouritism in Heaven. “He wants you looked after.”

Malone wished that Commissioner John Leeds had stayed out of this. He had done Leeds a favour a year ago in the way he had handled a particular case, a messy one; the Commissioner, through
past
association with one of the principals, might have had his name brought into the courts. Malone, however, had managed to avoid that and the Commissioner had expressed his thanks and his debt. Malone now wished the Commissioner owed him nothing.

“That's considerate of you, but I'd still like some alternative.”

“Well, wherever we put you, we've got to keep you out of the limelight for a while. You agree, Harry?”

“Oh, my oath, yes.” Danforth had been sitting quietly, content to let the A/C do all the talking. Falkender had invited them up here for, as he had put it with a laugh, an exchange of ideas. Danforth hadn't brought any ideas with him; Fred Falkender might laugh a lot, but he also talked a lot and anyone else's ideas rarely got a hearing. “The bloody media are running some pretty wild stories. All bloody guesswork, like they usually do.”

The media had made an opera of Waldorf's murder. Every headline had been an aria, every TV newsreel had done its best to be a Wagnerian spectacle, radio reporters had hit notes that had threatened to shatter glass. Malone had stayed by the body till the ambulance had arrived to take it away. Waldorf's last exit at the Opera House: the thought had crossed Malone's mind, till he had realized the banality of it and angrily brushed it away. By the time the ambulance had gone the crowd in the forecourt had grown till it looked like a fanfare of devotees waiting to say good-night to Sutherland or Pavarotti, both of whom, when they learned of Waldorf's murder, would probably be glad they had not been here tonight.

Clements, who had arrived five minutes before the ambulance, took Malone's arm and led him across to the line of police cars. The revolving blue lights added their own dramatic note to the scene; Malone wondered if, in their light, his own face had the same pale look as Clements'. “You want me to have someone drive you back to the hotel?”

“No, I'll be okay. I chased the bastard, Russ, but he got away. Up there.” He nodded up the wide flight of steps to the Gardens.

“You get close enough to recognize him, give us a description?”

Malone shook his head. “He was just a shape, that was all.”

“
Inspector—?” Malone turned his head. The young reporter from Channel 15, backed by an equally young cameraman and an untidy-looking sound-girl, was leaning forward expectantly. “You were here, weren't you, when Sebastian was shot?”

Malone, still suffering from shock, looked at the reporter in puzzlement. First name basis, he thought irrelevantly; he probably never met Waldorf, but he's a public figure so he calls him Sebastian. They're all the same, these kids: they'd call God by his first name, if He had one. “What?”

“No, he wasn't here,” interrupted Clements. “Now piss off. Mr. Waldorf was a personal friend of the Inspector's. He doesn't want to talk about it.”

“I was told Inspector Malone was the one who made the first call—”

“You want me to run you in?” Clements was belligerent, unsettled. It had shocked him to his soft centre to know that Malone had come so close to being murdered.

“What for?”

“Using obscene language in a public place.”

“What fucking obscene language?” The sound-girl joined the dialogue.

Clements grinned at Malone, some of the tension seeping out of him. “Jack Chew was right—it never fails.” He turned back to the Channel 15 crew. “Get lost!”

The crew went off, muttering obscenely, and Clements said, “They're just the first. The media are going to beat this up like the beginning of World War Three. They're gunna find out about the hit list pretty soon. What do we do then?”

Malone shrugged; the media were no longer of any concern to him. He had reached a point of despair. He knew it would pass, he was still an optimist, even if battered and bruised; but for the moment he was locked in his own small world. His main concern was that Lisa would be listening to any late-night news-flash, though he doubted that the news of Waldorf's murder would be on Queensland radio stations tonight.

“There are two bullets that should be in the roof of my car—”

“There's only one—they're getting it out now. The other one must've ricocheted off into the
harbour.
I've told „em we want that bullet and the one out of Waldorf's head—Sorry.” He had seen Malone flinch. “I didn't mean to be as blunt as that. I'll have both bullets up at Ballistics first thing in the morning. But there's no doubt where they came from. How're you feeling?”

“Shaky. I'll give you a statement and you can go back and write the report for me, put it in the running sheet.”

“Not here.” Clements had seen other reporters and cameramen converging on them. “Let's go back to the hotel.”

“What about Waldorf's family? Who's going to tell them?”

“I've already fixed that. The assistant manager of the company has been across—he's known the Waldorfs for some years, he's a friend of the family. He said he'd phone Mrs. Waldorf with the news.”