Babylon South (43 page)

“I'm afraid so, sir. The Crown start producing Emma's diaries tomorrow. Things will get worse. There are entries about Justine threatening her, all that . . .” He could offer John Leeds no hope for the acquittal of his (possible) daughter. “What did Mr. Zanuch have to say?”

“When it's all over, he wants to announce a commendation for you and Sergeant Clements.”

“Oh Christ,” said Malone softly.

There was silence for a moment, then Leeds said, “How is Lady Springfellow taking it?”

“It's hard to tell. Bravely, I think would be the word.”

“Yes, I think that would describe her.”

“How are you taking it?”

There was a sound at the other end of the line: it might have been a clearing of the throat or a sour chuckle. “I can't think of a word. Good-night, Scobie. I'm sorry I called.”

The phone went dead, but Malone continued to hold it in his hand, trying to picture the stricken man at the other end of the line. Then he hung up. There was nothing he could do for the Commissioner or, for that matter, for Justine.

He went back into the living-room. Lisa had turned off the television and was waiting for him. “He's never done that before.”

“
No.”

“Why?”

He sat down beside her on the couch, put his arm round her. “I shouldn't be telling you this.”

She waited, knowing he wanted to tell it.

“The Commissioner isn't sure he's not Justine Springfellow's father.” He went on to tell her everything about John Leeds and Venetia. It would help no one but himself, but telling her seemed to lighten the load. Some of us feed on secrets, hiding them like candy bars in a cupboard, but they only made him sick. He told the nurse everything.

She, with an attempt at Dutch practicality, said, “There's nothing you can do, so try and forget it.”

“That's the bugger of it—I can't. You couldn't, either.”

“No,” she admitted. “But I'd be seeing the woman's side. The Commissioner isn't going to suffer as much as Venetia.”

Late next morning Sergeant Cheshire came to the courthouse and sent in word that he wanted to see Inspector Malone. The latter came out. “Come up with anything, Don?”

“G'day, Scobie. We went okay yesterday, don't you reckon? That bastard Albemarle gave me a pain, though. All lawyers do. Yeah, I come up with something.” He held out the silencer in the plastic envelope. “The plastic protected it. There's a partial print on it, not much, as if he held it by his fingertips.”

“He
?”

“I couldn't swear to it, but it looks like it could be a male's print. It ain't Justine's, definitely.”

Clements had followed Malone out of the courtroom. He took the silencer, holding it carefully, as if a loaded pistol were attached to it. “If her prints aren't on it, then I don't think we need to mention this, do we?”

Malone could read what was in Clements's mind: he wanted nothing that would weaken the case against Justine, no contradictory evidence. He would not be the first cop who didn't want his
convictions
discouraged.

“If that's the way you want it,” said Cheshire. “I'm not gunna say anything. I've never seen the silencer.”

Malone said quietly, “I don't think that's the way we want it at all. When your fellers went through Emma's flat, how many prints did you come up with?”

“There were six different ones. I give all that information to Russ.” Cheshire was rough and bluff, but he had worked for years in a Department where men rubbed up against each other every day; he was sensitive to friction, if to very little else. He sensed now that Malone and Clements were at odds, and he was surprised: he knew their reputation in the Department as a team.

“What were they? Male or female?”

“Three of them I put down as male. One of them was the doorkeeper's, the one on the bedroom door, so you can cross him off the list. The other two belonged to two different men. One set was on the drinking glass and the other, a single print, was on the bedside table, if I remember right.”

Too late Malone saw his mistake: he had forgotten John Leeds's print on the drinking glass. But he couldn't turn back now. “Try the one on the bedside table, see if it matches this one on the silencer.”

“I'll call you tomorrow. I gotta give evidence at two other courts today.”

When Cheshire had gone, Malone said to Clements, “I'm not out to ruin the case against Justine. But . . .”

“I guess you're right,” said Clements reluctantly. “I'm still sure she did the job. But I've never yet had the wrong person convicted. I don't wanna spoil my record. But unless we get something conclusive from that other print . . .”

“I promise you. Nothing conclusive, we don't mention it.”

“Are you going to ask for the Walther so's we can check the fit of the silencer?”

“Not right away.” Malone knew he had to make some concession to Clements. “As soon as we start asking for a second look at one of the exhibits, especially the gun, Albemarle is going to be suspicious. He'll start asking awkward questions.”

The
third day of the trial was more presentation of evidence; Wellbeck pouring water on the stone. There were minutes of board meetings in which the bitter antagonism between Emma and Justine stood out; there were statements of share sales and purchases by both sides in the takeover battle. The papers were passed round the jury; one woman, a copious note-taker, took fifteen minutes to read her copy, as if she were being paid by the word. The forewoman, as if aware that her ship was slow in the water, whispered to the woman to hurry up, but the latter took no notice of her. Madame Forewoman began to look like Captain Bligh's sister: she was not accustomed to mutiny, she would deal with it once they got back to the jury room.

Boredom settled on the court. The judge began to nod; the spectators shifted restlessly; even Justine looked uninterested. But Billy Wellbeck was leaving nothing to chance: that was not his method.

Just before the lunch adjournment a court officer came in to whisper to Malone that he was wanted on the phone. Malone went out to the sheriffs office to take the call. It was Sergeant Cheshire.

“The print on the bedside table matches the one on the silencer. We got a problem, Scobie.”

“Yeah,” Malone said nothing for a moment; then: “You'd go into the box and swear they match?”

“If I have to.” Cheshire knew how detectives, having worked to present a watertight case, hated to see cracks in the dam. “They match, all right, and they ain't Justine's. What are you gunna do? Ask for an adjournment while you follow this up?”

“I can't, Don, not right away. Not till I've got something else to give the Crown Prosecutor besides the prints. If I go in now and say I'm a bit doubtful, Billy Wellbeck's not going to be too bloody happy.”

He thanked Cheshire for his work, hung up and then sent word in for Clements to come out and see him. The big man, as soon as he saw Malone's face, made the correct guess. He bit his lower lip and said, “The prints match, right?”

Malone nodded. They were alone in the sheriff's office, but he knew the court officer would be back soon. “Do you have to stay here for the rest of the day?”

“
Wellbeck says he may call me again today. I dunno why, but he's not sticking to his usual continuity—he's all over the place in the way he's calling his witnesses. I think he's trying to keep Albemarle off balance.”

“Wellbeck told me this morning he thinks the trial will run another five or six days—he's going to pile on the evidence, the diaries, company papers, Christ knows what. We've got to move fast, if we're to check out those prints. I'll use Andy and get Greg Random to give me a couple of other blokes.”

“Do we tell Billy Wellbeck what's turned up?”

“No,” said Malone firmly. “Where's the silencer? In your murder box?”

“No, it's in the bottom drawer of my desk. I was keeping it separate.”

“It's not separate any longer, Russ.”

“No, I know that.” Clements was morose; he had worked hard on this case and now it looked as if they might be back at square one. “I wonder if Justine had a boyfriend who helped her?”

“I'm going to start looking for him now.”

As they went out of the office the sheriff, a middle-aged man, cheerful and hidebound, the only way to survive in a job where the everyday environment was the wreckage of lives, came in. “G'day, Scobie, how's it going in Number Five? You look as if you've got it cut and dried.”

“Could be,” said Malone.

II

He went back to Homicide, got the silencer from Clements's desk and walked up to Police Centre. Ballistics was on the fifth level of the big new fortress-like complex, which looked as if the architect had been told to design something that would withstand a siege. All it did, Malone thought, was frighten the honest voters.

He checked in, then went up to the fifth level. Constable James met him and grinned as Malone, who had never been up here before, looked around him. “Spacious, eh, Inspector?”

“I remember when we used to work out of cubby-holes.” But he didn't have time for social
conve
rsation; half a mile from here Billy Wellbeck was piling up the case against Justine. “That's the silencer. Would it fit the Walther?”

“You don't have the piece?”

“No, I can't ask the court to release it, not yet.”

James looked innocent, but Malone remarked the unspoken question in the young constable's eyes. You're learning, son, he thought. Nothing is as straight and simple as it seems, certainly not police work.

James examined the silencer. “It'd fit, all right, but I don't know whether it's the one that was used on the murder piece. I'd need that Walther to be absolutely sure.”

“I'm not asking you to go into the box—not yet, anyway. I'm sure the Springfellow Walther and this go together. Could it have been bought here in Sydney?”

“Sure, if you knew where to go. You can buy anything in this town if you know where to go.” James gestured at the stacks of shoulder-high metal cabinets all around them, all of them with deep drawers in them. He pulled out a drawer about five feet wide; it was full of hand-guns, all labelled. “Everything we have in these cabinets, or the rifles in those racks over there—they're all confiscated weapons, over seven thousand of them. As I say, you can buy anything you want in this town. But you'd have to know where to go. And I don't think Miss Springfellow would know where to go, she didn't look the type. Can you see her in a gun-shop asking where she can buy a silencer, or bailing up someone in a coffee shop up the Cross and trying to buy one?”

“What about South Australia—Adelaide?”

“No problem there.”

“Would they keep a record of the sales?”

“I guess so. I can check—we have a good contact in Ballistics in Adelaide.”

“Check for me. And get a list of all gun-shops in Adelaide. Do you know any of the villains in Sydney who sell guns or silencers under the counter?”

“I don't, but Sergeant Binyan does. He knows
everyone”
James grinned. “Let's try him.”

Clarrie
Binyan was in his office; he was the sergeant in charge of Ballistics. He was part-Aborigine, a product of the Police Boys' Club, a street fighter who had become a twenty-five-year veteran, who had started on the beat and sometimes hankered for the good old days; he was safe from his hankering and so could afford it. He was overweight and had become lazy, but there was nothing he didn't know about guns and the crims of Sydney.

“How soon do you want the info, Scobie?”

“Yesterday,” said Malone. “It's urgent, Clarrie. Give me the names of the six most likely villains who'd sell a stranger a silencer, and I'll have my blokes visit them.”

Binyan ran his hand through his thick greying curls; his black-brown eyes had a gleam of humour in them. “Tell your blokes to treat „em gentle. Some of these crims are mates of mine from the old days. I don't wanna ruin my contact with „em—they come in handy when we're trying to trace things.”

“I'll have my blokes take them a box of chocolates and some flowers. Now can I have their names?”

“This must be bloody urgent. I thought you had everything wrapped up in the Springfellow case?”

“Just making sure, Clarrie, that's all. Now the names?”

Binyan scratched some names and addresses on a slip of paper and Malone grabbed it. As he left Binyan's office James was waiting for him. “I've just remembered, Inspector. There was a faint scratch on the barrel of that Walther, a burring on the thread as if whoever used it had tried to force the silencer on it. Leave me the silencer. I'll try an endoscope on it and see if there's any corresponding mark inside.”

Malone handed him the silencer. “Jason, when this is all over, I'll buy you lunch. Are you expensive?”

“I usually eat at McDonald's.”

“We'll go there,” said Malone, careful not to raise the youngster above his station.

He went back to Homicide. He called Andy Graham and two other detectives down to his desk. “Work singly, take two names each—I want you back here no later than three o'clock. Treat „em gently, but
hint
you'll get heavy if you have to. Tell „em we're not looking for a professional hit man—at least I don't think we are. Just ask them if anyone bought a Gold Spot silencer from them in the month of October or the first week in November last year and if he asked them to do some thread-work on the barrel of a Walther PPK .380.”

“Do we tell „em Clarrie Binyan sent us?” said Andy Graham.

Malone grinned. “Why not? That'll probably make it legitimate.”