Babylon South (30 page)

There was a pause at the other end of the line. “I think it would be better if we didn't meet here. Did you bring your own car in today?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, pick me up. I'm not in uniform today. I'll see you in ten minutes up in Oxford Street, opposite the Koala Hotel. You can take me for a ride.”

More likely you're taking me for a ride.
“I'll be there, sir. I have a grey Commodore.”

He left a note on Clements's desk saying he had gone to do some shopping for Lisa, and escaped before Clements came back. He would be glad when he could start telling Clements the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me, Commissioner.

Leeds, neatly dressed as always, looking like a successful lawyer or doctor, was waiting as Malone brought the Commodore into the kerb. “Don't look at the mess in the back, sir. I have three kids—”

“So have I, all at high school. Old enough to—” Then he said no more, his lean, strong-jawed face clouding over.

Malone drove up Oxford Street. It was the homosexual community's Main Street, but in today's hot sunlight it looked only shabby and dully suburban. A couple of punk girls crossed at the Taylor
Square
traffic lights, hair bright green and red, their black stockings polka-dotted with holes, but they were the only exotic wildlife to be seen. Malone turned south and drove on out to Centennial Park, the huge green oasis only four miles from the heart of the city.

He parked by a line of palm trees that bordered one end of the park's longer lakes. Brown ducks, mallards and a couple of black swans glided in on the lake's still waters towards two elderly women who had just got out of a car with two large plastic bags full of bread scraps. The bread flew through the air and the wildfowl started a riotous assembly.

“I hope there're no undercover photographers out here,” said Leeds.

Malone grinned, remembering photos taken of a prominent lawyer meeting an even more prominent underworld figure under some of the park's trees. “I think we're safe, sir.”

“I don't think so, Scobie,” said Leeds, and Malone caught his other meaning.

“Well, no, maybe not. We've built a case against Justine.” He outlined it as it would be presented to a magistrate. “It doesn't look good.”

“She didn't do it, you know.”

“How do you know?”

Leeds looked away for a moment, out at the two elderly women still throwing manna to the ducks and the swans. Some gulls had arrived from somewhere and, more aggressive than the ducks, were throwing their weight around. Leeds noticed that they stayed away from the two majestic swans. There were always king-pins who had to be left alone: it had been the story of his official life once he had got to a certain rank. But now things were different. He was fighting to protect the girl who might be his daughter, but, let's face it, he was fighting to protect himself, too. He was a king-pin who might be exposed.

Up till a few weeks ago his personal life had been as smooth as the lake on which the waterfowl floated. There had been the family life, as solid as the house in which they lived in Waverton. on the lower North Shore: his wife Rosemary, his daughter, his two sons. The sins of the past—he was a churchgoing High Anglican who thought in terms of sin, which, as a policeman, he knew was different from crime—the sins of the past were in the past, almost forgotten, certainly never thought about. He had
been
startled when, coming home from Walter's funeral, he had been asked by Rosemary if there had ever been anything between him and Venetia Springfellow. He had laughed at the suggestion, but he had wondered how good a liar he was. He was not by nature a liar: he remembered the pain of his deceit all those years ago.

“I don't know,” he confessed, “I don't even know the girl. I've met her only once, just for a few moments.”

“I have to ask this, sir. What's your interest in this? If you and Lady Springfellow were—
friends
all those years ago, what do you owe her?”

A third swan was crossing the road, its black neck curved in a question mark. Leeds watched it as if its destination was important to him. It came up behind one of the elderly women and nipped at her behind. She jumped and swung round, showering the swan with bread; some of it lay on its black back like a tiny snowfall. Malone, also watching the scene, smiled, but Leeds's face remained stiff.

Then he said, “I was hoping I wouldn't have to explain this. Scobie, Justine could be my daughter.”

Malone was silent, moving his lips up and down over his teeth, as if words were stuck between them. At last he said, “Do you know that for sure?”

“No, and I'll never know. But there's a fifty-fifty chance that she is. If you put her to trial and you get a conviction, how do you think I'm going to feel for the rest of my life?”

Malone slumped in his seat, bounced his hands up and down on the steering wheel. “Jesus, I think I'd rather be in Tibooburra . . . I can't ditch the evidence we have. Russ Clements would start asking questions . . . There's something else I'd better tell you. We're picking up evidence against Lady Springfellow—I mean about her husband's murder.”

Leeds, who had been half-watching the swan harassing the two women, suddenly jerked his head round. “You're crazy! God Almighty, Scobie, what started you on that track?” He was even more agitated than he had been in his office three days ago. He put a hand on the dashboard; it was shaking, like that of an old man with ague. “You're getting carried away with this—you're letting suspicion get the
better
of you! You're—”

Malone interrupted: there was no rank between them now. “You're letting your
feelings
get the better of you. Why the hell do you think I'd have any axe to grind on this, on either of these cases? I'm not some bloody left-wing crank out to chop down the silvertails. Christ, I thought you had more respect for me than that!”

It was no way to speak to one's Commissioner; but Leeds was in mufti, plainclothes as it was called, they both were, and Malone's anger was anger plain, man to man. Leeds, an honest, sincere man, recognized Malone's right to say what he sincerely thought. He backed down.

“I'm sorry—I apologize . . . But how? How can you come up with that sort of charge against her?”

“I'm a long way from charging her.” Malone cooled down. He valued Leeds's friendship, though it would always be constrained by the difference in their rank. Perhaps, when they were both retired, they could become real friends; but by then, Malone knew, it would be too late. This confidence Leeds had given him would always stand in the way of other, more relaxed confidences. “All I have against her at the moment is that she gave money, quite a bundle of it, to some feller, a bloke with a foreign accent who'd never been to the house before. About then the Colt .45 went missing from Sir Walter's gun collection. The following Monday he disappeared. Twenty-one years later we find his bones, with the lower half of the skull blown away by what could have been a large-calibre gun, a Colt .45.”

Leeds shook his head. “Are you trying to say she hired a hit man?”

“I don't know at this stage what she did. There's another angle.” He told of Uritzsky's disappearance. “He could have been the cove who came to see her, the one she gave the money to.”

“Why would she give money to a Russian? I told you, you're—no, I'm sorry. You're not prejudiced against her. Are you?” he asked doubtfully.

“No, I'm not. She rubs me up the wrong way occasionally, but that's been happening to me ever since I became a cop.”

“She's—
harder
than when I first knew her. She was never exactly, well,
vulnerable,
but she was
much
softer than she is now. Maybe that's what happens to you when you make your first hundred million.” He sounded suddenly cynical, an endemic condition with policemen; but this was personal. “I wonder what Walter would think of her now? He wanted her to give up her career when they married. In those days she wasn't a tycoon.”

The elderly ladies had distributed all their bread upon the waters; the ducks and swans and gulls had picked the waters clean. The women smiled at each other, folded their plastic bags neatly and walked back to their car, an old square-nosed Rover as sedate as themselves. The ducks and swans glided away without a backward glance, unbothered by having to look grateful for the charity. The gulls squabbled amongst themselves for the crumbs left on the grass and two currawongs flew down to watch the proceedings, like lawyers looking for clients.

“Well,” said Leeds after a long silence, “what are you going to do? Arrest Justine and charge her? And then her mother?”

“Forget the mother for the time being. I'll bring Justine in and question her again. But I can't see any way out of it—I'll have to charge her on the evidence. The motive was there. Emma left a diary and there are some pretty incriminating entries in it about Justine. Incidentally, she refers to Justine as „Venetia's bastard child.'”

“Bastard child? That's an old-fashioned phrase.”

“Biblical, Russ Clements called it. Russ is our problem. He knows as much about this case as I do. He's flat out to bring in Justine.”

“Am I mentioned in the diary?”

“No. She mentions „Venetia's old friend,' but that could be anyone. Unless they question Lady Springfellow and she dobs you in. There's an entry that says,
J. threatened me.
J. could be John, but I don't think any Crown Prosecutor is going to read it that way. He'll read it as Justine.”

“I had a row with Emma the night she was murdered, but I didn't threaten her.”

“No, this was an earlier entry. She was killed before she wrote down anything for the last day and night.”

“
Are there any other diaries? For other years?”

“We haven't found any so far, but I'm sure there were. They could be in a safe deposit box somewhere. There is a safe deposit we've turned up, but it only had her jewellery in it and some papers.”

Leeds was silent again; then he sighed. “Okay, Scobie, do what you have to do. All I can do is pray my name is kept out of it. I'm happily married and I have three kids I love very much. I don't want something I did years ago, before I was married, to ruin their lives. It was reprehensible, betraying a friend the way I did Walter. But . . .” His voice trailed off; decent men sometimes cannot understand their sins. It's the bastards of the world, thought Malone, who can afford peace of mind. “Let's go back.”

Malone started up the car, but had to wait while a black swan crossed the road in front of them with pompous flat-footed dignity, its neck arched in another question mark.

III

“It's strong enough.” Chief Inspector Random blew his nose for the third time since Malone had sat down opposite him. He should not have come to the office this morning; Malone wished he had not. “You could put a case against her and any magistrate would listen to it. It's going to have the media howling like a pack of wolves. If you put it up, you'll have to make it stick. They'll be looking for a conviction, especially since she's Venetia Springfellow's daughter. You know what they're like—if they can't chop down a tall poppy, get the tall poppy's son or daughter. You see it all the time, but especially since the stock market crash. There is an air of sort of malicious revenge.”

“There's another thing,” said Malone, getting everything off his chest; why did he feel he was confessing some sort of sin? It was like being back at the Marist Brothers school, going to Confession every first Friday in the hope of the salvation that the brothers thought you so desperately needed. “I'm building up half a case against Lady S. herself on the disappearance of her husband.”

Random blew his nose again; it sounded like a snort of derision. “Are you developing some sort of vendetta against the Springfellow women? Are you anti-feminist?”

“You've met Lisa, Greg. She'd cut my balls off if I showed anything like that.”

“
You're not anti-the-rich?”

Malone's grin was lopsided, like his feelings, “I accused someone else of that. No, I'm not. I don't love „em, but I'm not going to go out of my way to shoot „em down.”

“Okay, what have you got against the mother?”

Malone told him. “I'm waiting to see how much further I can get with ASIO.”

“As you said, you've only got half a case. Not even that. Watch your step, Scobie. This lady has friends in Canberra, like all those tycoons.”

She has a friend right here in the Department.
“I'm not going to shove my neck out, Greg. I'll only bring something against her when I'm absolutely certain.

“Are you absolutely certain about the daughter?”

Malone hesitated before replying: “Ninety-nine per cent. Do I bring her in now?
¹

Random blew his nose again, sighed loudly with irritation. “Bloody virus—I feel lousy. I think “I'll go home again. You take over. Do whatever you want.”

“I think I'll wait till we get the coroner's report.”

“Okay. Just keep an eye on her, in case she tries to piss off out of the country. We don't want another bloody extradition foul-up.” The Department had not had much luck with its last few extraditions of wanted criminals. “I think we should take some lessons from the Israelis. Just go in and grab who you want.”

“Go home, Greg. You're starting to sound like Rambo.”

Random, still blowing his nose, went home and Malone was left in charge of the bureau. He did not want, however, to sit at his desk making decisions on other detectives' cases. When Fortague rang and invited him to come over to Kirribilli, he went, taking Clements with him. He was not afraid of assuming responsibility; like Random's virus, it was something he did not want, at least for the moment. When in doubt, go out.