Authors: Jon Cleary
Bleak Spring
BLEAK SPRING
The Scobie Malone Series
Jon Cleary
FOR VIVIENNE SCHUSTER AND JANE GELFMAN
Copyright
© 1993 by Sundowner Productions Pty Ltd.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher.
First ebook edition 2013 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.
Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-801-8
Library ISBN 978-1-62460-121-7
Cover photo ©
TK
/
iStock.com
.
CONTENTS
BLEAK SPRING
1
I
“AN AUCTION
is a dangerous place to be,” said Malone. “There's a terrible risk you'll end up buying something.”
“It's for charity, for heaven's sake,” said Lisa. “Otherwise, why are we here?”
“Alan Bond started going broke at an auction. He paid millions he couldn't afford for that Van Gogh painting,
Dahlias
.”
“
Irises
,” said Lisa and turned to the Rocknes. “The last time Scobie put his hand up, he was at school. He wanted to leave the room. Is Will mean with money, Olive?”
Olive Rockne looked at her husband. “Are you, darling?”
Will Rockne spread his hands, as if he thought that was a philanthropic gesture in itself. “You'd know that better than I would, love.”
Malone listened with only half an ear to the Rocknes. They were not friends of the Malones' nor did he want them to be. He and Lisa had had dinner once at the Rockne home, the result of an unguarded moment of sociability at a meeting of the parents' association of Holy Spirit Convent; he had been bored stiff with Will Rockne and he had asked Lisa not to reciprocate with a return invitation. Tonight, at this arts and crafts festival to raise money for the school, the Rocknes had attached themselves to the Malones like long-time friends.
Malone hated these school affairs; at the same time he wondered if he were growing into a social misfit. He had never been one for parties or a night out with the boys, but at least he had been sociable. Now he found himself more and more reluctant to sound agreeable when Lisa told him there were certain functions they were expected to attend. He knew he was being selfish and did his best to hide
the
fact, but the other fact was that he had lost almost all his patience with bores. And Will Rockne was a bore.
Holy Spirit was a Catholic school, with the usual school's catholic collection of parents. There was the author who lived on literary grants and was known in the trade as Cary the Grant; there was his wife, who wore fringed shawls summer and winter and made macramé maps of some country she called Terra Australis. There were the tiny jockey and his towering blonde wife who, it was said, had taken out a trainer's licence the day they were married and had been exercising the licence ever since. There were the stockbroker who was being charged with insider trading and his wife who was terrified of becoming a social outsider. And there were the low-income parents, blue-collar and white-collar, whose children were at the school on scholarships and who, to the nuns' and lay staff's credit, were treated as no different. The Malone children's fees were paid by Lisa's parents, a generosity that Malone both resented and was glad of. He was becoming a bad-tempered old bastard in his early middle age.
“Will counts the pennies,” Olive Rockne told Lisa. “But he does throw the dollars around. Especially with the kids.”
“But not with her, she means.” Rockne gave Malone a man-to-man smile.
Malone had been idly aware all through the evening of something in the air between the Rocknes. He was no expert on marital atmosphere; as a Homicide detective he usually arrived at the scene of a domestic dispute after either the husband or the wife, or both, were dead; whatever had gone before between the couple was only hearsay. There was no visible argument between the Rocknes, but there was a tension that twanged against Malone's ear.
The Rocknes lived half a mile down the road from Holy Spirit and half a mile up from the beach at Coogee. Will Rockne practised as a solicitor, with an office down on the beachfront. Malone had had no dealings with him and had no idea how successful he was: all he knew about the Rocknes was that they had a solid, comfortable home, owned a Volvo and a Honda Civic and were able to send their two children, a boy and a girl, to private schools. He knew that most suburban solicitors did not make the money that partners in the big city law firms did; he also knew that they made more than detective-
inspectors
did, though that didn't disturb him in the least. He was rare in that he was almost incapable of envy.
Will Rockne was capable of it; he was expressing it now: “Look at that Joe Gulley, will you! The horses he rides have got more brains than he has, yet he makes two or three hundred thousand a yearâand that's counting only what he declares! He'd make as much again betting on the nags he rides.”
“Aren't jockeys forbidden to bet?” Malone sounded pious, even in his own ears.
“Are you kidding?”
Rockne had a wet sort of voice, as if the roof of his mouth leaked; whatever he said sounded as if it came out through a mouthful of bubbles. He was as tall as Malone, but much bonier, with a long face that somehow stopped short of being good-looking, even though none of his features was misplaced or unshapely. His casual clothes were always the sort with the designer logo prominently displayed; Malone was sometimes tempted to ask him if he was sponsored, but Rockne had little sense of humour. He was the sort of man who physically made no lasting impression, the face in the crowd that was always just a blur. As if to compensate he waved opinions like flags, was as dogmatic as St. Paul, though, being a lawyer, he always left room for hedging. Right now he was being dogmatic:
“If you knew what I know about the racing game . . .”
“Tell them, darling.” His wife was sweetly, too sweetly, encouraging.
Olive Rockne was small and blonde, a girlish woman who, as Lisa had said, looked as if she were trying to catch up with her birthdays. She was in her late thirties, but in a poor light might have passed for eighteen. She always wore frilly clothes, giving the impression that she was on her way to or from a party. On the one occasion the Malones had gone to her home for dinner she had played old LPs of the Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd; which, though it dated her, made her more contemporary than Malone, who still listened to Benny Goodman. She was intelligent and even shrewd, Malone guessed, but she hid her light under the bushel of her husband's opinions. Though not this evening: tonight she was showing some signs of independence, though Rockne himself seemed unaware of it.
“It just bugs me,” Rockne said, “that people with no education can make so much money.
Some
of us sweat our guts out studying . . . I've got a rock band as clients, they can't say 'G'day' without saying 'y'know' before and after it, and they make five times the money I doâ
each
of them. When you arrest crims, Scobie, don't you resent those of them who make more money than you do?”
“I don't know why,” said Malone, “but in Homicide we rarely get to bring in rich murderers, really rich. If money is involved, it's usually the victims who have it.”
The four of them were sitting at a table, apart from the makeshift stalls in the school assembly hall. They were sipping cask wine from plastic cups and munching on potato crisps; Malone mused that if the Last Supper had been staged at Holy Spirit it would have been a pretty frugal affair. He was thirsty, but the cask wine was doing nothing for him. He had played tennis this afternoon, four hard sets of doubles, and he was tired and stiff, as he usually was on a Saturday night, and all he wanted to do was go home to bed. He looked up as Claire, his eldest, approached with the Rockne boy.
“Dad,” said Claire, “are you going to bid in the auction?”
Malone shut his eyes in pain and Lisa said, “Don't spoil his night. Do you want us to bid for something?”
“There's a macramé portrait of Madonnaâ”
Malone opened his eyes. “Are you into holy pictures now?”
“Don't be dumb. Dad.
Madonna.”
“Oh, the underwear salesgirl.” He looked at Olive Rockne. “That's the sort of taste they teach here at Holy Spirit. I'll tell you what, Claire, if they put your English teacher, what's-her-name, the one with red hair and the legs, if they put her up for auction, I'll bid for her.”
Lisa hit him without looking at him, a wifely trick. “I'll bid for the portrait, Claire.”
“Are you going to bid for anything?” Jason Rockne looked at his parents. He was taller than his father, at least six foot four, even though he was still only seventeen, bonily handsome and with flesh and muscle still to grow on his broad-shouldered frame. He had a sober air, as if he had already seen the years ahead and he was not impressed.
“We're looking at a painting,” said his father. “Your mother doesn't like it, but I think we'll bid
for
it.”
“That makes up my mind for me,” said Olive and gave everyone a smile to show she was sweet-tempered about being put down by her husband.
Claire and Jason went back across the room; Malone leaned close to Lisa and said, “Why's she holding his hand?”
