Babylon South (17 page)

“That's Greg Random's problem,” said Malone; but little did he know.

5

I

“I HAD
to come and see you,” said John Leeds. “I thought it better that I see you here at home.”

Venetia had been surprised when he had called her; even more surprised when he said he had to see her at once, preferably where they would not be disturbed. She had left her office immediately and had been at home in Mosman only ten minutes when he had arrived. She had noticed that when he had driven up the driveway he had been in what she assumed was his own car. He was not in uniform and she wondered if he had changed before leaving the office. She never missed a detail, especially about men.

“Did you tell the security guard who you were?” She held his hand as she led him through to the back of the house, but she did not attempt to kiss him.

“That I was the Police Commissioner? No, I just said my name was Leeds and you were expecting me. He may have recognized me, but that's a risk . . .”

“Why all the secrecy, John?”

“Because I
am
the Commissioner and as such I shouldn't be here.”

Her memories of him weren't as sharp as she had imagined. Had he always been as ill at ease as he appeared now?

“I got the news about Emma's death a couple of hours ago. It was pure accident—I usually don't get reports, summaries, till the next day. I was trying to make up my mind whether to call you—”

“Why? To offer sympathy? Tea?” She poured two cups. A tray with a fine china tea-set was waiting for them in the sun-room. “I'm sorry Emma is dead, but you'd be wasting sympathy on me, John. She'd have felt the same way about me if I'd died.”

“
Venetia—it was
murder
!” He was still an innocent man in some ways; he couldn't bring himself to believe the depths of enmity some women have towards each other.

“I know. Biscuit? I'm sorry she died that way—it's horrible. I'm not callous, John, just honest. Now why did you come? Why all the secrecy?”

He stirred his tea without looking at it; he might have been stirring his reasons into some sort of coherence. He was here for reasons that went against the whole grain of his training and character. Like her, he had claims to honesty; perhaps more, he thought, than she did.

“I went to see Emma last night.”

She frowned, her cup stopped halfway to her mouth. “To see Emma? But you haven't seen her in God knows how long . . . Have you?” She hadn't meant to, but she abruptly sounded suspicious.

“I haven't seen her since a week or two after Walter disappeared. We saw each other at his funeral, but we just nodded, that was all. She called me yesterday morning and asked me to go and see her. She said she had something important to discuss with me. I got there about nine, a few minutes afterwards. Venetia—” He paused, put down his cup and saucer. “I was just coming down Macquarie Street when I saw Justine come out of The Vanderbilt. She was running and she had her hand over her face, as if she were upset. She ran down Macquarie Street, going home, I guess. She lives in The Wharf, doesn't she?”

Venetia nodded. She put down her own cup and saucer. “Yes, I know she'd been to see Emma. The police know, too—your Inspector Malone and Sergeant Clements. They've already been to see us.”

Leeds nodded morosely. “I might have known it. Malone doesn't miss much.”

“Did you go up to see Emma?”

“Yes.”

“Was she still alive?”

“Of course! Good Christ, Venetia, I'm not saying—”

“That Justine might have killed her? I know you're not. She's not as tough as I am and I'm not a murderer. Neither are you, John.”

“
Of course I'm not!” He picked up his cup, took a long swallow of tea, as if his throat had suddenly become dry. Then he sat back, re-arranging himself in his usual mode, neat and calm. It was a mask, but it was a familiar one and he felt more comfortable in it.

“What did Emma want to see you about?”

“She accused you of having Walter murdered.”

“She
what
?” Venetia lost her own control. She almost sprang out of her chair, began walking up and down, stiff-legged but with her body trembling. “Good God—what a bitch! I knew she hated me—she was ready to start spreading dirt about you and me after all these years—but to say something like
that
! What did you say?”

“I said it was ridiculous.”

“That's all? That it was ridiculous?”

“No, if you must know, I lost my temper. We had quite a row.”

“She seems to have spent last night having rows—she had one with Justine.”

“Did she make the same accusation to Justine?”

“No, not as far as I know. If she did, Justine hasn't told me. What did Emma actually say?”

“That she was going to tell Inspector Malone to start looking into your past, that you had reason to have Walter killed because he had found out about your—your lovers.”

“Did she include you amongst them?”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

Venetia paused, leaned on the back of her chair. “She'd gone crazy, I think. Even Edwin said she was far worse over the past few months than she'd ever been before.”

“It could have been a late menopause.”

She gave him a dry laugh. “Oh, come on, John! God, you men blame everything on that. Emma went through the menopause ten or fifteen years ago. She was a natural-born bitch even before she got into puberty. No, she just went round the bend naturally.
If
you go crazy naturally,” she added; she had a pedantic grasp of her own sanity, she would know exactly the reasons if ever she went mad.

Then
she said, “Do you think I hired someone to kill Walter?”

“No.”

She sensed he was holding something back. “What do you know that I don't? About Walter?”

He hesitated again, looked uncomfortable. “I don't know everything, but I can't tell you the little I do know.”

“John, he was my husband! Your friend! God Almighty, how can you keep secrets from me on something like that? I didn't have Walter killed. I have a right to know who did, if you know!”

“I don't know. All I know is there was a cover-up.”

“Why? Who by? ASIO?”

He nodded, reluctantly. “I was never on the case—I deliberately dodged it. You know why,” he said, the old conscience-stricken lover. “Everything was just suddenly pulled out of the files. It wasn't just ASIO—I understand the word came from higher up than that. From the Prime Minister's office.”

There would be a blank wall there, she knew. The Prime Minister of the time was himself dead; he, too, had disappeared, while surfing. There had been suggestions of mystery about that, bizarre theories that, in retrospect, were laughable. She wondered why Harold Holt, an uncomplicated man if what history told her was true, would have ordered all enquiries on Walter's disappearance to be stopped.

“He'd have done it on ASIO's advice,” she said.

“Of course. But you don't think you're going to get anything out of them, do you?”

“Do you think Emma's death has anything to do with Walter's disappearance? Could she have sent for someone else to see her after you?”

“Who else would it have been? Another—lover?” It was difficult for him to be cruel, but he was a policeman as well as an ex-lover.

She shook her head, saddened that he had to put such a question. There was still some of the old feeling left for him; old love that is not chopped off by bitterness lingers in the heart, if not in the mind. She had not really looked into her heart in a long time. Our deepest feelings are a hundred fathoms deep: most of us are not capable of diving so far.

“
You didn't have to ask that, John. I was never an angel, you knew that. But I never went to bed with devils.”

“That sounds like something out of a Channel 15 soap opera.” But he smiled, suddenly relieved.

She smiled, too. “I know. I get that way sometimes. I don't read any more, not like I used to. Except company reports and business magazines. I look at TV now for relaxation. Sometimes I think I'm a character in
Dynasty.”

“So do a lot of other people,” he said not unkindly.

“We're beating about the bush, John. We still don't know if there's any connection between Emma's death and Walter's. If there is—if it comes out . . . Too much may come out about you and me. Inspector Malone has an old photo of you and Walter. I said I didn't know who you were.”

“That was foolish. Malone is no fool.”

“I'm beginning to appreciate that. I was just hoping to protect you.”

He nodded, put his hand up to fix his already perfectly knotted tie. He said carefully, “Venetia—is Justine my daughter?”

“Did Emma mention that last night?”

“Yes.”

She sat down again, pulled her chair close to his and put her hand on his. She could see him last night with Emma as the latter raked up old coals and hauled him across them. “John, I honestly don't know. There would have to be a blood test and I'm never going to put that to Justine—or to you. She wants to be Walter's child, that's the way it's always been with her and that's the way it's going to stay. You're happily married—you told me that at the cemetery that day. Why complicate things for yourself?”

“If she were, I'd feel responsible for her—”

“Don't you think I can look after her? What about your wife and children? You have—what? three, haven't you? Oh, I looked you up in
Who's Who,
when I came back that day from the funeral. What about your responsibility towards them? Don't be chivalrous, John—it's too late for anything like that. And
I
never expected it—not of any of my men.”

“Ah, if only things had been different—” Then he smiled.
“That
sounds like something out of a soap opera.”

“I'm surprised you look at them. John—stay for dinner.” She wanted his company, not sex.

He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. “It's too late, Venetia. Even for us to be just friends.”

She wiped the pink lipstick from his mouth: she could not leave her trademark on an old lover. “You're right. I shouldn't have suggested it.”

When he had gone she went and sat in the window-seat of the sun-room, looking out across the lawns and shrubs to the harbour. The sky to the west was bright red: it was wonderful, she thought idly, how Nature could sometimes get away with such bad taste. Bright colours were not her taste, though there were few more colourful figures in Australian business.

Her colours had been dimmed in the past couple of weeks. Engrossed in the takeover bid, she had kept only half an eye on the stock market: that had been Michael Broad's domain. When the dust had settled after Black Tuesday, she had been shocked at the extent of their losses, the corporation's and her own. She was candid enough to admit, to herself if to no one else, that greed had blinkered her; if she had brought off the takeover, she would have had only one or two peers in the whole country in power and wealth. She was philosophical about the loss of her wealth; to be worth 500 million instead of 700 million takes only a minor adjustment, a shrug of the shoulders and no less respect from one's bank. The loss of the prospective power, however, was a body blow. She had been on the road to being an empress, but had finished up still a commoner. Which, being philosophical again, she supposed was better than being common.

Emma, and perhaps a lot of other women, had thought of her as common. That was because of her men; history has always had less respect for whores than for rakes. She had never stolen another woman's man, at least not for more than a night and she had never considered that theft; sex was not love and so long as the man took love home to his wife, no harm was done. She had cheated on Walter, but
love
there had died six months after they had married; she had become pregnant, on his insistence, trying to save the marriage, but she had known, even before his disappearance, that it would not work. She had been on the verge of falling in love with John Leeds, but she had known in her heart that marriage to him would be a failure, too.

There had been a dozen proposals over the past twenty years, but she had always said no. She was capable of love, but not of sacrifice; and marriage demanded both. She loathed partnerships; in marriage she would always be making takeover bids. Only lately had she begun to recognize that amongst her dividends was loneliness.

II

Russ Clements had gone home and Malone was putting on his jacket, ready to follow him, when the phone rang. “Inspector Malone? Scobie, this is the Commissioner. Can you come over and see me?”

“Now, sir?”

“Yes, now. And Scobie—for the moment, don't mention this to anyone. You understand?
Anyone.”

Malone hung up, smelling politics again; but this might be the worst of all, personal politics.
Do I take the photo and the diary?
But they were locked away in Clements's desk, safe from even hands like his own.

He walked across to Police Headquarters in College Street. The evening was still warm; the sky was turning from red to pink. He was checked in at the desk and was about to get into the lift when Assistant Commissioner Zanuch stepped out.

“Malone, how are you? Coming up to see me?”

Why would I be coming to see you?
“No, sir. I'm on my way up to the Commissioner.”

Zanuch was the best-dressed man in the Department, every bit as spruce as Leeds but more relaxed, less of a band-box dummy. He was as well known at society functions as any of the charity queens
or
free-loading celebrities; he was a social mountaineer, though the heights he scaled didn't take one's breath away. He was also a good policeman, honest and incorruptible. Blatant ambition was his only sin, but in Sydney that was considered only venial.