Yesterday's Shadow (2 page)

She nodded down at the body on the bed: “Strangled. No rape, but there'd been intercourse. Dead eight to ten hours, I'd say.”

The room was crowded and even after all these years Malone wished the crime scenes provided more breathing space. He looked at Des Shirer, the senior man from Regent Street, the local station. He never neglected protocol, it was part of the axle-grease of cooperation.

“What've you got, Des?”

Shirer was in his late thirties, but he had none of the comfortable look that Romy had. He was thin, fidgetty, had awkward movements as if on wires: crime, you knew, would eventually wear him out. “I've talked to Deric, here—”

Deric was not what Malone had expected from Phil Truach's description. He was in his early
thirties,
thick blond hair, regular features and what looked like muscular shoulders under the dark jacket. Definitely not a man who would have the vapours.

Till he spoke: it was a high girlish voice and at the moment was quavery: “She—” He looked down at the still exposed body of the woman, then quickly looked back at Malone. “She's registered as Mrs. Belinda Paterson—that's what her credit card said. Some address in Oregon, in the United States. She booked in yesterday about 6 p.m., said she was staying just the one night. I wasn't on duty, but our reception clerk said she sounded a very nice lady. Not a—well, you know.”

“A hooker looking for business?” said Clements.

Romy looked at Norma Nickles, the other woman in the room besides the dead one. “That's how they divide us up—nice ladies or hookers. I'll see you at home,
Liebchen
,” she said and gave Clements the sort of smile that has cut a thousand throats, mostly lovers' and husbands'.

“No, we don't think she was anything like that,” said the manager and for a moment the quaver was gone from his voice.

“If she was a hooker, she'd done all right at it.” Norma Nickles was a slim graceful woman who had once been a ballet dancer. She had descended from
entrechat
and
sur les pointes
to down-to-earth, flatfooted examination of crime. And was a star at it. “Her suit is top quality, Donna Karan, bought at Bergdorf Goodman's in New York. Cashmere sweater, Ferragamo shoes. Her topcoat is vicuna, it doesn't come any more expensive in cloth, right, Doctor?”

“The best.” The two women looked at the coat thrown over a nearby chair. Romy put out a hand to touch it, then realized she was wearing the plastic gloves. “I don't think even hookers can afford them. Not in this town.”

“This lady had money,” said Norma Nickles.

“What's the rate here?” Malone turned back to the manager.

He had been looking down at the body; he jerked his head up as Malone spoke to him. “How much? A hundred dollars a night for a double with bath, like this front room. Less than that for group bookings.”

Malone
gazed down at the body now being zipped into a bag. The throat had a dark collar of bruising, the face was puffy and distorted, her mouth enlarged by the smeared lipstick. But it was evident that she had once been, only yesterday, a good-looking woman.

“I'd say she was thirty-five, maybe forty, no more,” said Romy, peeling off her plastic gloves. “She's looked after herself—or been well looked after. She was what you men call well preserved.”

“Was she American, do you think?”

The question was addressed to the manager, who had shut his eyes for the moment as the bag was zipped up. Now he shrugged, spread his hands; the gesture was slightly effeminate. Pull your head in, Malone told himself, and your prejudices. He was not homophobic, but he came of a past generation that carried notions as dated as flares and sideburns. But then he had other prejudices: cricketers who patted each other on the bum (bonding, he was told they called it); the same cricketers who threw the ball high into the air when they took a catch (show-boating, he called it); footballers who hugged and kissed each other when a try or a goal was scored; mates who thought half a dozen beers was a blood bond (which made him un-Australian). He would get used to fluttery hands eventually.

“Our reception clerk thought so,” said the manager. “But so many these days try to sound American, don't they? De-BREE for debris, stuff like that.” His own accent was English and sounded genuine. Not gen-u-ine.

“Anything in her handbag?” Clements asked Norma Nickles.

“Just the American Express card, her compact, a packet of condoms—”

“Any used in the intercourse?” asked Malone.

Norma shook her head. “No.”

“There's semen in the vagina,” said Romy.

“Good. If we pick anyone up we can lecture him on the dangers of unsafe sex. He may not know what DNA can do to him. What else?”

“Her watch, a Bulgari—like I said, this lady had money. A string of pearls—expensive, too.”

“May I interrupt?” said Romy. “We're ready to take the body away.”

“
When will you do the p-m?” asked Malone.

“Not till tomorrow. I have four others lined up ahead of her, including the man they took out earlier. We'll do them in turn.” She looked at her husband: “No remarks about Teutonic thoroughness.”

“Never entered my head,” said Clements innocently.

“You're coming to dinner tomorrow night?” she asked Malone.

“We'll be there,” said Malone; then looked at the manager who had raised his eyebrows. “Life goes on, Deric. We're not cold-blooded bastards.”

“No. No, I guess not.” But he didn't look convinced.

As the body was put on a stretcher to be taken away, Malone moved to the window and looked out. On the other side of the square the tall Italianate clock tower of the station reared like an unintended memorial above the dead in the old burying ground. Malone remembered reading somewhere that water from a creek that had run through the burial grounds had been used to make the best-tasting beer in the early days of the colony. Drinkers of it often finished up in the graves beside the creek, adding no advertisement for the beer. In the middle of the square, complementing none of the surrounding buildings, was a steel-and-glass construction that, for want of a better name, was called a bus shelter; those who stood under it said that the only thing it protected them from was the pigeon-shit of the birds that squatted on it. It looked as out of place as a glass condom on an altar, but that was the way the city was going. The dead in the burial grounds would, metaphorically, piss on it from a great height.

Central Square was not Sydney's most glittering scene and he wondered why a seemingly wealthy American woman would have come here to this hundred-dollar-a-night hotel when more expensive and luxurious hotels, with much better views, were available only ten-minute cab rides from here. Then he saw a man get off a bus lugging a heavy suitcase and he turned back to the manager.

He waited while the body was taken away and Romy went out of the room, brushing her hand against Clements' as she went. Then he said, “Where's the lady's luggage?”

“There wasn't any,” said the manager.

“You let people check in here without luggage?”

Deric
looked embarrassed; he moved his hands again. “Reception uses its discretion. My girl thought Mrs. Paterson looked—well, okay. Not a hooker. But . . .”

Malone waited, aware that everyone else in the room had paused.

Deric said, “People check in here sometimes for meetings—they don't want to meet in more conspicuous places—”

“Inspector,” said Shirer, “Norma mentioned what was in Mrs. Paterson's handbag. Expensive stuff, she said—the watch and the pearls. Yet she signed for a safe deposit box downstairs—”

“Did you know that?” Malone asked the manager.

“No. They didn't mention it down at the desk—”

“We haven't looked at it yet,” said Shirer, “but why didn't she put the watch and pearls in it? Or anyway, the pearls?”

“What time did you come on duty, Deric?”

“I got here at, I dunno, five-thirty, quarter to six. They called me as soon as they found Boris' body—”

“Boris?”

“The cleaner,” said Shirer. “Boris Jones.”

“Boris
Jones
?” Malone managed to remain expressionless. “Righto, Deric, let's go down and have a look at what's in the box. The key in her handbag, Norma?”

Norma Nickles ferreted in the crocodile-skin handbag, held out a key. “That it?”

“That's it,” said the manager and looked almost nervous as he took the key.

Before he left the room Malone asked, “Any prints?”

“We're still dusting,” said Norma. “The report will be on your desk this afternoon.”

“Not mine,” said Malone. “Russ'.”

“Thanks,” said Clements and looked at Shirer. “The chain of command, Des. Does it ever get you down?”

Shirer looked at his junior man, smiled for the first time. “Not really, does it, Matt?”

Matt
just rolled his eyes and looked at the two uniformed men, who, bottom of the heap, kept their opinion to themselves.

Malone went down in the lift with the manager. Deric was quiet, looked worried. “What about Boris? Our cleaner? God, two of them the same night! Management has already been on to me—you'd think it was
my
fault! Do you think there's any connection? I mean between the two murders?”

“Do you?”

“Me? Why would I connect them? The woman's a total stranger—”

“Let's hope she's not,” said Malone. “That always makes our job so much harder. We solved a case last year, took us seven years to identify the victim—”

“Oh God,” said Deric.

In the lobby Malone paused to give a non-committal comment to the media hawks, throwing them a bone that they knew was bare. “Is that all?” asked the girl from 2UE. “Who is Belinda Paterson?”

Someone at the reception desk had opened his or her mouth. “That's all we have at the moment, her name.”

“No address?” This girl knew that bones had a marrow.

Malone looked at the manager, who said, “No local address. Just an address in the United States.”

“So she's another tourist who's been—”

But Malone had pushed the manager ahead of him into the latter's office and closed the door before he heard the word
murdered
.

“Oh Jesus, Inspector, I can see and hear 'em on tonight's news—”

“Deric, if they hang around after we've gone, you tell them nothing, okay? Nothing. Just refer 'em to us. Now where's the safe deposit box?”

Deric went into an inner room, not much larger than a closet, and came back with the flat metal box. He opened it, then looked at Malone and frowned. “That's all? A passport?”

Malone picked up the black passport, opened it. He had seen one or two like it before: a
diplomatic
passport. He saw the photo: the dead woman alive, looking directly into the camera as if challenging it. He read the name and the particulars, then he closed it, took a plastic bag from his pocket and dropped the passport in it.

The hotel manager could read expressions on strangers' faces; it was part of his training. “Trouble?”

“Could be. Keep it to yourself till I check. It'll be better for the hotel, I think—”

“If you say so. But—”

“No
buts
, Deric. Have you been in this business long? You're English, aren't you?”

Deric had sat down, as if all his strength had suddenly gone. “No, I'm Australian. From Perth. I used to be an actor. I went to London, worked there off and on for—” He shrugged. “For too long. I was out of work more than I was working. When I was out, I used to work as a waiter or nights on the reception desk in hotels. Five years ago I gave it up, the acting, and took a hotel management course—” He appeared to be talking to himself. Abruptly he shut up, then after a silence, he said, “I thought everything was going sweetly for me.”

“It still can, Deric. None of this is your fault. In the meantime—”

He went back upstairs, besieged again by the reporters. He knew they had a job to do, but they pressed their case too hard, as if history itself would stop unless they got the news to the voters immediately.

“Tell us something, Inspector—
anything
! Are the murders connected?”

The lift doors closed and he looked at the two couples riding with him and they looked at him. Both couples were elderly, all four of them seemingly past excitability.

“We've heard about the murders—” He was tall and thin and grey-haired with a face like a wrinkled riding boot: from the bush, thought Malone.

“Don't let it spoil your holiday.”

“We're not down here on holiday,” said the male of the other couple, a stout and weatherbeaten man with faded blue eyes; it was obvious now that the four of them were together. “We're
here
for a funeral.”

Malone cursed his loose tongue, was relieved when the lift stopped. “Sorry. My condolences.”

“You, too,” said the tall thin man, as if police grieved for all murder victims, and the lift doors closed on them.

Malone shook his head at the crossed lines of the world and went into Room 342. Phil Truach and the two Regent Street officers had gone, but Clements was still there with the two Crime Scene officers and the two uniformed men. With the bodies gone from the hotel, everything was looking routine. Out in the hallway there was the sound of a vacuum cleaner at work, taking the marks of the police team out of the carpet.

“Anything?” Malone asked.

“We've got enough prints here to fill a library,” said Norma Nickles with the fastidiousness of an old-fashioned housekeeper. “The maids seem to be a bit light-handed with the feather-dusters.”

“Tell Deric on your way out. Did you get a print off the flush-button in the toilet?”

“Yeah, there's one clear one.”