Bleak Spring (14 page)

Malone, as a fast bowler, had never believed in a few warm-up balls; he had always bowled the first ball as fast as he could, hoping to surprise the batsman by bowling him or at least hitting him somewhere vulnerable. “Olive, when we mentioned the five thousand dollars that was withdrawn from your joint account last week, you let us believe Will had drawn it.”

“Did I?” She had ducked under the bean-ball, “It wasn't intentional. I can't remember anything I told you—when was it?—Sunday morning?”

“No, it was yesterday morning.”

She shook her head; but she was totally composed. “I've lost track of all time, Scobie.” She ran her hands up her lycra-clad thighs, not sensually but as if testing that her muscles had benefited from her work-out, “I went to aerobics this morning—I thought if I had a really good work-out, I could put my mind back into gear . . . Yes, I withdrew the money. It was to pay for our holiday on the Reef.”

Clements looked at his notebook; Olive turned her head to watch him. “Mrs. Rockne, that's definitely not what you said yesterday morning. You said then that your husband must've withdrawn the money. You were going to Lizard Island, which you said is pretty expensive—
exclusive
is the word you used—and you had to get new outfits. I don't know what Inspector Malone thinks, Mrs. Rockne, but I think you're lying. Are you?”

Olive stared at him, then slowly turned her gaze on Malone. “Do you let him talk to everyone like that?”

“I never try to stop him, Olive. More often than not he gets us the answer we want.”

“And what sort of answer do you want? You're grilling me again, Scobie. Or should I call you Inspector?”

“Please yourself. What's your answer to what Sergeant Clements just asked you?”

Then Jason came back with four coffees and a plate of biscuits. “These are Mum's home-made,
you'
ll like 'em, Mr. Malone. Claire told me you had a sweet tooth.”

Malone smiled at the boy as he sank down, all arms and legs again, into a low chair beside his mother. “Do you two swap gossip about your respective parents?”

“Jesus—sorry. No, geez, no. I dunno what made me say that—about your sweet tooth, I mean.”

“Jason, I think it'd be an idea if you went in and did some study. He's missing school and he's got the HSC trials coming up. He wants to go to university and do law, like his father.”

He didn't; he wanted his share of the five-and-a-bit million and to take off for the other side of the world. “No, I'll stay, Mum . . . I keep trying to tell her, Mr. Malone, she has to accept I'm man of the house now, right?”

“Yes, I think you could say that, Jay. Let him stay, Olive. Unless you have something to say that you don't want to say in front of him.”

“No, no. It's just that—I suppose I'm trying to protect him and Shelley. I can't get used to the idea that Jason's suddenly grown up, over a weekend.”

The boy wiggled his big hands at the two detectives; the gesture was too awkward for supplication, it suggested helplessness. Clements nodded sympathetically, but said nothing. The boy was under siege, but didn't know whom to strike out at.

Malone, not pausing to indulge his sweet tooth, passed up the plate of biscuits, bowled another fast ball at Olive. “Did you know Will had a brain tumour?”

She did not play that one at all well; she had prepared herself for a certain line of attack and he had flung one at her out of the dark. “Where did you get
that?”

“The GMO, the government medical officer who did the autopsy. It'll be in the official report for the coroner. She, the GMO, says it looks to her as if it would have been inoperable. You didn't know? He'd never complained of headaches or anything?”

“Once or twice he complained of a headache in the morning, but when I'd ask him at night he'd say it had gone during the day.”

“That's one of the symptoms,” said Clements, who had talked to Romy. “Unlike a migraine,
which
gets worse as the day goes on. Did he vomit at all?”

“Once, I think. But he said it was probably something he'd ate.” She looked genuinely shocked, her face pale and stiff; the gym outfit now seemed a mockery, fancy wrapping on a lifeless mannequin. Jason put out a tentative hand, but she seemed unaware of it, and he dropped it back on his own knee. Then she said, “I wonder if he knew?”

“There might be something in his papers—we'll have to get permission to go through all of those. What about insurance?”

“He was insured—I don't know how much for.”

“We can check that. At the same time we can check if he increased the insurance recently.”

“Why would he do that?” said Jason, trying to be adult.

“People do that sometimes when they know they have something incurable. They try to dupe the insurance company, but they rarely get away with it. Of course, with all that money in the secret account, why would he worry about trying to dupe the insurance company?”

Olive had her eye on the ball again; she was once more composed, the stiffness gone from her face. “You're starting to hint that you suspect Will of something. I don't think I want you to talk about him like that in front of Jason.”

“I'm not suspecting Will of anything—yet. So far all we're trying to do is establish a motive for his murder. We've had the five and a quarter million dollars frozen, by the way.”

“Can you do that?” Her composure cracked a little. “Isn't it ours? Mine and the children's?”

“Not till we've been through all of Will's papers. Then there'll be probate. I wouldn't start spending it yet, Olive.”

Exactly what Pa Rockne had said, thought Jason; and suddenly wondered if the money would ever be theirs. And, strangely, all at once didn't care.

Malone stood up and Clements followed suit. “Olive, could I see you alone a moment?”

Without a word she got up and followed him out of the house, to stand behind the gate that led into the pool enclosure. Jason got to his feet and looked at Clements. “Is my mother in trouble,
Sarge?”

“I don't know, Jay.” Clements played a dead bat. “The inspector doesn't always let me know what he's thinking.”

Out by the pool Malone was saying, “You're not telling the truth, Olive. Or your memory is falling apart. Either way, I think you'd better start talking to your friend Mrs. Bodalle or some other lawyer.”

“You do suspect me of having something to do with Will's murder, don't you?” There was no note of anger or shock in her voice; he could have been an inspector from the Randwick council, telling her she was behind in her rates. “That's really shitty, Scobie.”

“Unfortunately, that's how my job is most of the time. I think you'd better talk to Mrs. Bodalle. In the meantime, Olive, don't do anything foolish, like trying to disappear.”

In the house Jason was staring out at his mother. “Sarge, why do people commit murder?”

Clements almost said,
Ask your mother,
instead he said, “Jay, I've worked on a hundred homicides. For every one there was a different reason.”

He knew that countless juries had asked the same question as Jason had. But now was not the time to talk of juries while Malone was outside there pointing the finger at the boy's mother.

III

Malone had always liked elegant women; her elegance had been what had first attracted him to Lisa. The attraction lay, perhaps, in the fact that as a boy, his contact with such women had been nil; Erskineville, where he had grown up, and later the Police Department, had never been metaphors for refined taste. Angela Bodalle, he had to admit, was good to look at, even if her manner could rub him raw.

“I've been half expecting you, Inspector, after what you said on Sunday morning.”

“What did I say?”

“That you never phoned, you just knocked on the door What did my clerk say when you
announced
yourself?”

“He knows me, I've been here before to these chambers.”

Clements had dropped him off outside Temple Chambers in Phillip Street and had then driven back to Homicide. Phillip Street, named after the colony's first governor, is flanked for the most part by unprepossessing buildings. It is, however, the main breeding ground for the city's lawyers; the air is thick with smug professional superiority, most of it male. Round the southern corner is the State Supreme Court, twenty-two layers of even greater smug superiority, again most of it male. Barristers, in wigs and gowns, stalk the street between their chambers and the courts like black peacocks; the occasional peahen can be seen, but she knows her place and walks some steps behind. Tradition rules here, though it runs close to snobbery. The grey horsehair wigs come from the same makers in London who supply English Queen's Counsels. QCs once wore robes that dazzled the eye, but in 1714, on the death of Queen Anne, they donned black and had worn it ever since, though half the local silks would have had trouble placing Anne in the British royal succession. Tradition rules, at up to seven thousand dollars a day. Angela Bodalle, Malone had heard, commanded about half that price but was working her way up the scale.

She was dressed this morning in a cream silk blouse and a discreetly patterned blue and black skirt; the jacket of the suit was hanging on a coat-tree in one corner. The room was large and airy, unlike some of the nooks Malone had been in in older chambers. A royal-blue carpet gave the room an added lift. There were two large prints by American artists on facing walls and a third wall held an original by Frank Hodgkinson; Malone knew none of the artists, but remarked the difference between them and some of the prints and paintings he had seen in other barristers' rooms. The furniture was light oak, the upholstery a paler blue than the carpet. The law might have a gloomy rather than a bright side, but Angela was obviously determined to lighten her own mood, if not her clients'. Four large bowls of early roses stood on small tables against the walls. Even the shelves of legal books looked as if their bindings had been retouched.

She gestured at the papers on her desk. “You're fortunate to catch me in. I have a case tomorrow, it'll probably be a long one. The Filbert murder—not your turf, was it? No, of course not, it was
in
North Region.”

“I read a bit about it. You're defending the husband?”

“No, I'm prosecuting this time.”

“That's a turn-up, isn't it? I mean, for you.”

“My first time. I thought I should show a little public spirit, so I put my name to the DPP. He agreed. I think it amused him to have a woman prosecuting a man for killing his wife. We lawyers like to be amused, we pride ourselves on our wit. Or the males among us do. How's Olive?”

“You mean she hasn't rung you? I thought she'd have been on to you by now.”

She smiled, but showed very little of her teeth. “She has, Inspector. You have been leaning on her pretty heavily. You shouldn't do that, not without her lawyer present.”

“Meaning you?”

She nodded. “I think I'll have to insist that if you want to talk to her in future, I be there.”

“That may not be easy, Mrs. Bodalle. Not if you're going to be in court for the next six or seven weeks. I try not to work at night, if I can avoid it.”

She smiled again, showing more teeth this time; she looked almost friendly. “I'd like meeting you in court, you and I could have quite a time jousting, as my more pompous male colleagues call it.” Then she shuffled the papers in front of her. “But I'm busy now, Inspector. Why have you come?”

He liked direct women; there were more of them around than many men, including Clements, were prepared to admit. He was equally direct: “Why did you recommend that Will Rockne take his car to Hamill's to be serviced?”

“They told you I recommended him?”

“No. I met your client Kelpie Dunne there and I put two and two together. It's an old police habit.”

The almost-friendly look had abruptly gone from her eyes; she was prepared to joust, seriously. “I recommended Hamill's because they are so damned good.”

“Not because Kelpie works there?”

“
It was Mr. Dunne who told me how good they were.”

“He got in touch with you especially to tell you that?”

“No, I bumped into him one day in the street—he saw me getting out of my car.”

“Does Olive know Kelpie?”

Her gaze was direct. “I wouldn't know.”

“Where do you live, Mrs. Bodalle?”

“I don't know that's any of your business, but you'll find out anyway, I'm sure. I live at McMahon's Point. Why?”

McMahon's Point lay in the western shadow of the Harbour Bridge, a narrow finger shoved into the waters of the harbour. “I just wonder why you go all the way out to Newtown to have your car serviced. There must be good workshops on your side of the water.”

“I told you, I go to Hamill's because they are so good. I'm very careful of my car. I'm what I suppose they call a car woman. If I were a man you'd be claiming there was some sexual symbolism in what I drive.”

“Not me. If you saw what I drive, you'd class me as impotent. So you would never drive a Volvo?”

“No. They are just for safety-minded drivers. Not that I'm reckless. But when you've driven a Morgan or an Alfa or a Ferrari . . . What do you drive?”

“A Commodore, nearly eight years old. You'd leave me standing at any traffic light. If Hamill's are so good at servicing high-priced sports cars, why did you recommend that Will take his Volvo there? Wouldn't the mechanics have turned up their noses at it?”

“They might have, but not when I asked them.”

“Are they sweet on you or your Ferrari?”

She smiled again. “Both, maybe.”