Yesterday's Shadow (15 page)

“Good old Andy,” said Sheryl. “Sometimes I could love him, only he'd knock me over on the way to the bed.”

“What goes on in the main room when I'm away?”

“Gay abandon,” said Gail and the two of them went out to the main room.

Malone worked at his desk till daylight started to fade, then he went downstairs, got his car out of the car park, drove into the city, picked up Joe Himes and headed out of town for the airport. Rain was pelting down, he drove through silver sheets that obscured everything more than thirty yards ahead, and he wondered if any planes would get off the ground this evening. He was always a cautious driver and this
evening
he drove as if in a funeral cortège. Other drivers, in cars and heavy trucks, sped by, parting the waters as if they were late arrivals at the Red Sea and Moses was waiting for them up ahead.

“Stupid bastards!”

Then he saw the lights flashing ahead and he slowed down. There had been a multiple-car pileup; two police officers, slickers glistening in the headlights of approaching cars, were shepherding traffic through. Malone began to wonder how the night could get worse.

He wasn't going to put the car in the airport car park and get wet through making it into the terminal. He parked under cover in the luggage put-down line, showed his badge to a porter, said, “If anyone moves it, tell 'em I'll pinch 'em. I mean it,” and led Himes into the terminal.

Ambassador Pavane was in a private room off the departure lounge. Malone and Himes were greeted at the door by Gina Caporetto. Malone looked beyond her at the dozen or more people in the room and said, “Gina, could you see that the Ambassador is left alone with me and Joe? We'll only be ten minutes or so.”

“Serious?” she asked.

“Yes. But private, too. We want to protect him.”

“We all do,” she said and politely, diplomatically, began asking the visitors to step outside for a few minutes. They went out, looking curiously at Malone and Himes but saying nothing.

The two officers were left alone with Pavane and his RSO, Roger Bodine.

“I want Roger to stay,” said Pavane. “He's going to be my contact while I'm away. I want him to be your contact, too.”

Righto, thought Malone, it's your choice. “We think we've come up with something on Mrs. Pavane before you met her, sir.”

Pavane looked at Bodine, as if he had changed his mind and was going to ask the security man to step outside. Then he turned back to Malone and Himes. “Go on.”

Himes then told him of the FBI investigation of the supposed Corvallis background. “There's no record of her, sir, nothing before 1991 when she went to work in San Francisco.”

Pavane
looked around, found a chair and sat down. He was silent for a long moment; the rain beat against the windows, enlarging his silence. Then he looked up at both law officers. “What other bad news have you? Christ, you deliver nothing
but
bad news!”

They could see his anger, but knew it was not directed at them. His life was falling apart, crumbling off him.

“Get off your feet, gentlemen,” Bodine rumbled solicitously. “We obviously have some things to discuss.”

Malone and Himes sat down and Bodine lowered himself into a chair like a hippo squatting. Malone wondered how such a grossly overweight man could hold the job he did; Himes told him later of Bodine's record, which was exemplary. Beyond the windows the rain suddenly stopped and a plane took off into the darkness, its lighted windows sliding by like a broken comet's tail.

“We think,” said Malone carefully, “but we're not sure yet—we think we may have identified Mrs. Pavane as Australian. Her name then was Patricia Norval and she worked here in a stockbroker's firm back in the late eighties.” He held off mentioning the office scam; they had no evidence she had been involved in it. Then he said even more carefully, “She had dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Hunter's Hill the night she was murdered with a man we still have to identify.”

“Jesus!” Pavane leaned back, put a hand over his face, almost as if hiding from the other three men.

Lisa, wider read than Malone, had once remarked to him in other circumstances that Chekhov had said it was important that a human being should never be humiliated. Malone remembered that now and saw the truth of it.

And then he suddenly knew he could not ask the question on the tip of his tongue:
Did you know your wife had had a bungled abortion?
Not in front of Himes and Bodine. Not with his wife's corpse being loaded on to the plane outside there, being taken—home? But where was home for Billie Pavane and Belinda Paterson and Patricia Norval?

Instead he said, “We're trying to be as discreet as possible, sir. But the mystery of your wife's
past
life, we can't just leave it—”

“Why not?” Pavane took his hand away from his face.

Malone looked at Himes and Bodine, but they were no help. “Mr. Pavane, that's where your wife's murderer is hidden.”

“You're sure of that?”

Malone could see that the Ambassador was not being obtuse. He was clinging to an image of happiness that had been shattered; and Malone, who had his own happiness intact, could not blame him.

“Pretty sure, sir. It's the only direction we have.”

“This question is academic—” Bodine eased himself forward in his chair. “Just to take it out of our calculations. You're absolutely sure Mrs. Pavane was not murdered by some outfit that was anti-American?”

Malone looked at Himes for that one; who said, “We've ruled that out, Roger. Whoever killed her, it was personal. Sorry, sir,” he said as Pavane flinched.

Malone put forward a gentle foot: “Ambassador, did your wife ever mention any trouble in her past life? I mean in San Francisco?”

Pavane thought a while, then shook his head. “I can't remember anything. Are you suggesting it might have been someone from those days?”

“I don't know, sir. It might be an idea if we got the FBI in San Francisco to look into it.” There was no immediate answer from Pavane and Bodine said, “Do we need to do that?” Uh-uh, thought Malone, I'm in American territory.

Bodine went on, “If the
National Enquirer
got on to that—and there'd be that sleazy jerk on the internet—I don't think so, sir—”

“I'll think about it,” said Pavane and stood up, heavily, as Gina Caporetto came to the door.

“They're waiting for you to board, sir.”

Pavane thanked her; he had politeness ingrained in him, not the diplomatic sort. Then he shook hands with Malone, Himes and Bodine. “Keep in touch with me through Roger. Don't do anything
about
San Francisco till I come back.”

He went out of the room accompanied by Bodine and Gina Caporetto. Malone looked at Himes. “He doesn't want to know. He'd rather we dropped the whole thing.”

“It's his position, Scobie—he's trying to avoid scandal—”

Malone shook his head. “It's personal. He's still in love with the woman he married. He doesn't want to know who she was before that.”

IV

Some emotions, like steel rails in summer sun and winter wind, run hot and cold. Anger is one of them. Ever since lunchtime Lisa had been running hot and cold. Lovers from the other side of a loved one's life are never welcome; jealousy is another emotion that runs hot and cold. She had come home from the office, decided to wait dinner for Scobie, and had sat for the past hour nursing a gin-and-tonic, looking into it occasionally as if it were a crystal ball that might tell her something. Like all grog, it told her nothing but what she wanted to tell herself.

She looked at the ABC news on television, but there was nothing there to raise her spirits. Calamity provides better images than celebration; Heaven, she mused, would be media-free because there would be nothing worthwhile reporting. She was sinking into a mood where she was glad that Claire, Maureen and Tom were not here to see her.

When Malone came in he looked aged, as if the years had accelerated and wrapped themselves round him. He kissed her and put his arm round her shoulders, holding her tight. She recognized the sign and all the emotion drained out of her.
He was hers.

“What did you have to tell him?”

“We're killing his wife for the second time. Digging her up and burying her again.”

She kissed him, thinking again but not telling him, He's mine. “I'll get dinner.”

It was steak-and-kidney pie, his favourite, carrots and peas and a glass of red. He poured himself a second glass and said, “What's for dessert?”

He
never neglects his stomach, she thought lovingly.

“I was too tired—”

“You look it,” he said solicitously.

She put down a plate of crackers and three wedges of cheese in front of him. “Treat your arteries. Brie, cheddar, blue vein.”

The room, or she, felt cold and she turned up the gas heater in the kitchen. Then she sat down opposite him, poured herself a glass of wine and felt the emotion rise within her as the heat did.

“I had lunch today with Delia Jones.”

“Ah.”

“That's all you're going to say?”

“Till I hear what else you're going to say.”

There were echoes in the room but neither of them commented on them.

“I didn't invite her. Well, no—yes, I did. She just came up, introduced herself and, I don't know why, I asked her if she wanted to have lunch with me. At our place in the QVB, our table.”

A dry biscuit crackled in his mouth like static. “Was it interesting?”

“Yes. Yes, it was. She's still in love with you.”

“No.” He shook his head adamantly. “No, she's not. She thinks I'm a bastard.”

“Women can still love bastards. I can quote you a long list, from history right up to today. But all right, she's not in love with you. But she hates me because you love me.”

“Darl—” The brie was turning sour in his mouth; he gulped down a mouthful of wine. “Why didn't you tell her to go to hell?”

“I don't know. I did, eventually. But at first I was curious—”

“At what I saw in her?”

“I suppose so. What did you see in her?” She felt the need for a little masochism. Who was it said, Jealousy is inborn in women's hearts? She would have to look it up. Was it Euripides or St. Paul? Some misogynist, for sure.

Scobie
reacted like a man: “Oh, come on! That was twenty-five years ago. I was another—
person
. Simpler, if you like. She was a good-looker, she was good company, she—” He paused a moment; then: “Are you going to ask me was she good in bed?”

“No. And don't tell me. There were plenty of others—”

He looked at her in surprise. “Cut it out!”

“Sorry. I didn't mean that—” She reached for his hand. The jealousy drained out of her like a blood-letting. “Darling, she's dangerous—”

“For you and me? No—”

“No. I don't know what it is, but I saw it in her today. Her life's been a shambles . . . I had to get up and leave her. I paid the bill and walked out. Outside the restaurant, I had to pass her—she looked at me through that window you and I stare out of—it was as if she had already forgotten me. But she hasn't forgotten you—”

“She will.” But he didn't sound convinced or convincing. “I'll be off the case—”

“Stay away from her. And I'm not saying that because I'm jealous—”

“Are you?”

She considered; then: “Yes. But I can live with it—”

He turned her hand over in his. “It's over, darl. It was twenty-five years ago. I don't feel the least spark of interest in her—no, that's not true. I do. I feel sorry for her. But that's all.”

“Watch her. She could make trouble.”

Then the phone rang out in the hallway. He got up, wondering why he felt relieved at the interruption. It was Andy Graham: “Sorry to call you at home, boss, but Gail said not to call you at the airport—”

“No, Andy. I had enough on my plate out there. What are you going to pile on it now?” He felt utterly depressed. What sort of night was the man in charge out at Tibooburra having? Was he sorting out a fight between two kangaroos? Locking up a drunken emu? I'm getting light-headed, he thought.

“A bit of good news, I hope.” But then Andy Graham was always hopeful of good news; he
would
look to the UN hurrying to peace-keep Armageddon. “I've traced another of those guys who worked at that firm of stockbrokers. A guy named Bruce Farro. F-A-R-R-O. He's into software or something now.”

Malone's mood lightened;
someone who can help with our enquiries
was one of the better type of aspirin. “Why do I think that name is familiar?”

“I dunno. I don't think he'd run around in your—what's the word?—milieu.”

“What milieu does he run around in?”

“The social pages. My girlfriend has pointed him out to me a coupla times. As if I'm interested.”

Malone remembered the name now. “My daughter Maureen's mentioned him. When she was at uni she did a thesis on social celebrities for her Communications course. She counts the mileage of teeth in the Sunday papers.”

He remembered Farro now, though not well enough to have picked him out in a crowd picture. Maureen had said he was double-gaited, fluid, in his sexual choices. One week he would be seen arm-in-arm with a shaven-headed male whose skull looked like a transplant of five o'clock-shadow. Next week he would have his arm round a woman with more hair than a burst chesterfield.

Malone hoped there was more to Mr. Farro than social celebrity.

But Malone was still bone-weary. “Andy, does he know you're on to him? Is he likely to shoot through tonight?”

“He knows nothing about our enquiries. He's safe, boss.”

“Righto, I'll see you in the morning, then. Where does he live? We'll drop in and have Weet-Bix and toast with him. Maybe some Vegemite.” He was getting lightheaded again.