Autumn Maze (6 page)

A uniformed security guard asked the two detectives if he might help them. “We'd like to see Mr. Casement?”

“You have an appointment?” The guard looked at a book on his counter. “Nobody is allowed on the fiftieth floor without an appointment.”

Malone produced his badge. “Is that a good enough reference?”

“It's good enough for me. I'll see if it's good enough for Mr. Casement's secretary. She's the Wicked Witch. Don't quote me.”

There was a short conversation with the Wicked Witch, a wait, then the guard put down the phone. “It's okay. Ask for Mrs. Pallister. It's about the ugly business over the road, right?”

Malone just nodded, then led Clements along to the private lift pointed out to them by the
guard.
They rode to the fiftieth floor in ten feet square of luxury: no marble, but top quality leather for which any craftsman would have given his awl. The carpet on the floor looked as if it were newly laid each morning, fresh from the merino's back. Clements looked around admiringly.

“I think I've got a split personality. I get into something like this and I hate the bastards it's made for, yet I
like
it.”

When they stepped out of the lift they were in a reception area that suggested luxury was the norm on the fiftieth floor. A dark-haired receptionist turned from her word processor and gave them a pleasant smile. “Mrs. Pallister is expecting you
.” Not Mr. Casement is expecting you
: everybody these days had minders. The receptionist stood up, opened a door in the oak-lined wall behind her. “The police.”

The police went through into an inner office, three walls oak-lined and the fourth a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out on to the harbour. A blonde woman sat with her back to the view, a paper-strewn desk in front of her. The mess on her desk contrasted sharply with her too-neat appearance. She rose as the two men came into her office, but that was her only hint of politeness.

“Gentlemen.” Her vowels came from eastern-suburbs' private schools, but there was an edge to her voice that suggested it could cut throats if needs be. “I think it would have been better if you had telephoned so that I could have fitted you into Mr. Casement's schedule. He can give you only ten minutes.”

“We'll keep that in mind,” said Malone, instantly forgetting it.

Mrs. Pallister was middle-aged and would have been attractive if she had not frozen her face ten years before. Divorce had turned her 180 degrees; her career had become her life. She made forty-five thousand dollars a year, ten thousand a year less than Malone made as an inspector, but she had the air of an assistant commissioner. “Mr. Casement is a busy man.”

“Aren't we all?” said Malone.

She looked at him down her nose, which, snub as it was, rather destroyed the effect intended. She led them through into an office that surprised Malone with its lack of size; he had expected to be led into a luxurious auditorium. But this room was not much bigger than the Wicked Witch's, though there
was
no denying the luxury of it. Even to Malone's inexpert eye, the paintings on two of the walls were worth a fortune: a Streeton, a Bunny, a Renoir and a Monet. The mix showed that the man who worked in this office did not want to be disturbed by any
angst
-spattered artwork. The furniture was equally comforting, rich in leather and timber. This was a man's room, but Malone, who was learning to be more observant about surroundings, guessed it had been furnished by a woman.

“Inspector Malone?” Cormac Casement stood up from behind the large desk that was almost a barricade. “This is about poor Rob Sweden's death? A dreadful accident.”

He was twenty-five years older than his second wife, but, as the old shoe-polish advertisement said, though he was well-worn he had worn well. He was shorter than Malone had expected from the photos he had seen of the older man, just medium height and barrel-shaped. He had thin iron-grey hair, a square face that sagged under the chin, and he wore designer glasses that looked out of place on him, much too young for him, as if he were wearing Reeboks on his small dainty feet. The eyes behind the glasses, however, suggested they could open a steel safe without any twirling of a combination lock. His wife was wrong when she claimed she could read him like a book. There were some pages of him still uncut and only he knew what, if anything, was written there.

“Not an accident, Mr. Casement. It was murder. We've just come from giving Mr. and Mrs. Sweden the bad news.”

“Murder?” Casement did not look surprised; which surprised Malone. “Really? Oh well . . .” He sat down again, waved to the two detectives to take the chairs opposite him. “You never can tell what's going to happen with today's youth, can you?”

“Do you know much about today's youth, Mr. Casement?”

“Only what I read in the newspapers.” The old eyes were steady behind the young man's glasses. “If you're asking me what I knew about young Rob, the answer's not much. You should be asking someone who worked with him. The general manager of our stockbroking firm, for instance. He would be the one who saw Rob from day to day.”

“He transferred to your banking side a few weeks ago.”

The
glasses flashed as he lifted his head. “Did he? I didn't know that. I don't have any executive position in the bank any more, I'm just chairman of the board. I only saw him on social occasions, he never mentioned it.”

“How did he strike you? On social occasions?”

Casement pondered; he appeared as if he had never really been interested in young Sweden. “Gregarious, I suppose one would say. He was very popular with the ladies.”

“Any particular one?”

Casement shook his head. “Not that I noticed.”

“Was he ambitious? I mean, he worked for you, would he have gone far in your corporation, the stockbrokers or the bank?”

“I really don't know, Inspector. I told you, I'm only involved at board level, the day-to-day stuff is behind me. To tell you the truth, I was never interested in the boy's future.”

Cormac Casement came of a rare species in the country's pioneer society, the rich Irish. He was not one of the bog Irish, not one of those driven out of Ireland by the potato famine of the 1840's. An ancestor had landed in the colony of New South Wales in 1842 and been given a large land grant on the southern slopes a couple of hundred miles south of Sydney. Wool had been the first interest, but gradually the family had widened its grasp, into cattle, mining, sugar and banking. There was no major corporation in the nation that had not had a Casement as an original investor. Society, which is a corporation in itself, had taken them up; or rather, the Casements allowed themselves to be taken up, for, though Irish, they had been gentlemen and ladies long before the colonials had learned how to handle a full teacup or an empty compliment. Theirs had been
old
money when the later fortunes of other colonists were still just dreams based on mortgages.

“Did he appear to you to take drugs?”

“Why do you ask me that?”

“You're an observant man.”

Casement shook his head, turned away and looked out through the big window behind him.
The
glass here did not extend from floor to ceiling; Casement wanted some privacy, did not want to be spied upon by someone with binoculars. Still, the view was breathtaking. A container ship was passing under the Harbour Bridge, its decks half-empty; exports this year were still down, the foreign debt steady on the graph like a dead man's heart signature. He was too old to be distressed by election results, though he had been disappointed when the Coalition had, as every cliché-ridden columnist put it, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The country would continue to go downhill under Labor; he could not bring himself to believe that men from the wrong side of the street could run a country. He turned back to the two detectives, glad of his age, glad that, though born rich, he was not starting life over again.

“You shouldn't be asking me about Rob. I took as little notice of him as I could. I tolerated him because of his father and because of my wife. I didn't like him at all.”

“That's an honest opinion, Mr. Casement.”

“You make it sound as if you haven't heard too many honest opinions this morning.”

“You could say that. But we're used to them, aren't we, Russ?”

Clements had been taking notes in his peculiar shorthand; he looked up and smiled. “It's the other opinions that help us more than the honest ones.”

The shrewd eyes abruptly showed amusement as Casement remembered the Eighties. “I wish there had been more honest opinions a few years ago.”

“Did you have a visitor at home last night?” said Clements.

“Why do you ask?”

“We're trying to find out how the murderer got into the building. The security is said to be pretty tight.”

“It is. Or it has been up till now. Except—” He stopped, “I haven't thought about it before. It could be better down in the basement, in the garage. The service lift comes up from there. Yes, Alice?”

Mrs. Pallister had silently opened the door from her office without knocking, stood there like a headmistress. “Time to leave for your luncheon. Your ten minutes are up, Inspector.”

Malone had an elaborate look at his watch. “Doesn't time fly! Well, thank you, Mr. Casement.
Maybe
we can come back when you have more time.”

“Telephone first,” said the Wicked Witch.

“No, no, Alice. Let them come whenever they wish. I'm interested in how Inspector Malone and Sergeant Clements will proceed from here. Anything for a change,” said Casement and sounded wistful.

At the door Malone paused. “Are you related at all to Roger Casement?”

“The traitor? Or the patriot, depending on your point of view? You know something of Irish history?” Casement seemed surprised that a cop should know anything of history outside of police files.

“A little. My mother was Irish-born and my father likes to think he was. At least he says he was conceived in Ireland.”

Casement smiled. “No, I'm not related to Sir Roger, although I've always admired him. Honour is always to be admired, don't you think?”

“Honour and justice don't always mix. Any cop will tell you that. The British hanged Sir Roger, they said that was justice.”

“Well, let's hope justice is done when you find young Rob's murderer.”

When the two detectives had gone, Casement said, “Cancel that lunch, Alice. I have no appetite, for food or those dreary people I was going to lunch with.”

“You're upset by those two policemen coming in here, aren't you?”

“Don't start guessing my feelings, Alice. You sound like my wife.”

“I've been guessing your feelings for ten years. That's what private secretaries are for, isn't it?”

“Alice, Alice—” He shook his head, spun his chair slowly and looked out the window, at nothing. “Make me some tea and a sandwich. And cancel the rest of the day. I think I'll go home and hold my wife's hand.” He swung his chair back again. “What are you smiling at?”

“You haven't needed to have your hand held since you were two years old.”

He smiled, humouring her. “That wasn't what I said. I'm going home to hold my wife's hand, not she hold mine.”

Going
down in the lift Malone said, “How much would he be worth?”

Clements shrugged. “It'd be anybody's guess. Even the so-called experts, when they put him on that Rich List in that financial magazine, they're only guessing. Could be half-a-billion, a billion, maybe more. People like the Casements hide what they're worth. Not to dodge taxes, but just because they think it's vulgar to let anyone know. I'd be the same,” he said with a grin.

“So one of the Bruna sisters did all right for herself?”

“All three of them have. She's just done better than the others.”

They came out into the sunlight; the earlier clouds had disappeared. Three or four smokers, the new lepers, stood near the entrance, snatching a few puffs of cancer before they went back to their non-smoking offices; butts lay about them like scraps of fossilized lung. That, of course, was the impression of Malone, a non-smoker.

He paused, looking across at the lunchtime crowd moving towards the cafes along the Quay. Along the waterfront itself parents with children, tourist groups and loafers drifted with slow movements, as if responding to the harbour's gentle tide. Buskers sang or played instruments; with the recession, busking had become a new form of self-employment. Malone remembered stories his father had told him of the Depression: Con Malone had sung in the streets, “Mother Mchree” torn limb from limb by a tuneless baritone. The Good Old Days: they were coming back, dark as ever. But at least here the sun shone, nobody starved, there was music instead of machine-gun fire. Europe was crumbling, Russia was falling apart, the Serbs and the Croats and the Muslims of Bosnia were making their own hell.

Malone crossed the road, Clements hurrying to catch up with him, and dropped a dollar in the violin-case of a young girl playing some country-and-western number. He looked at Clements, who reluctantly took out a fifty-cent piece and dropped it in the violin-case. “I hate that sorta music,” he said as they walked away. “Where do we go from here?”

“I'm having lunch first. Or luncheon. Over a meat pie, you can tell me whether you think someone in the family killed young Sweden. Or had him killed.”

“And what about Frank Minto and the stiff stolen from the morgue?”

“
You've just spoiled lunch.”

III

At Casement & Co., Stockbrokers, the general manager was not available. “He's up at the Futures Exchange, that's in Grosvenor Street.”