Bleak Spring (5 page)

“How did you get on with him? Did you confide in each other?”

“Is that what fathers and sons are supposed to do?”

“Tom and I do.”

“He's, what, nine years old, Mr. Malone. He confides in you, but you don't tell him everything, right?”

This boy, unlike his mother, was years ahead of his birthdays. “So you and your father didn't talk much, is that it?”

“
Not as much as I'd have liked. This is it, next to the milk bar.”

There was council work going on at the northern end of the beach promenade; at long last it seemed that someone had decided to give Coogee a face-lift. Malone had come down here as a boy and youth to surf, but it had never been a popular beach with real off-the-wall surfers. For the big, toe-curling waves you went south, to Maroubra.

He pulled the Commodore into a No Parking zone. Last night's wind had dropped and today promised to be an early, if very early, spring day. Out of the car he paused a moment and looked away from the beach. Over there, in its shallow hollow, was Coogee Oval, where he had begun his cricketing career; but if he closed his eyes, all he would see would be the darkness of his lids, nothing of the small glories of his youth. He doubted that he would ever confide any of those memories to Tom. He had never been a headline hero, even though he had gone on to play for the State. That would make life easier for Tom; he had never regretted that Tom was not the son of a famous father. He wondered what Will Rockne had thought of this gangling boy beside him, what he had tried to protect him from.

A row of shops, their paint worn by the salt air, stood at this northern end, some with offices above them. There had once been an indoor swimming baths on this site; one winter it had been closed to swimmers and used to exhibit a grey nurse shark caught by the local fishermen. The shark had spewed up a tattooed human arm and the resultant murder case had become famous; police had caught the murderers but had also dredged up connections that stank as high as a dead shark. Malone was grateful that the Rockne case promised no such connections.

The Ferrari, exhaust gurgling like an expensive drain, pulled in behind the Commodore and Angela Bodalle got out, exposing a nice length of leg as she did so. Malone, a connoisseur of limbs if not of flash women, remarked that she had very good legs. Some surf kids were standing in a group outside a milk bar and one of them whistled, but he was whistling at the car, not its owner.

Angela looked up at the No Parking sign. “Do we worry about tickets?”

“You can defend me if we cop any. Who has a key to the office?”

“I do. Olive gave it to me.” She handed it to Jason, as if it were a peace offering.

The
boy just nodded, unlocked the door to the flight of stairs that led up to the offices of William A. Rockne, Solicitor. There was a reception room with a secretary's desk and chair; some flowers drooped in a vase on the desk. Four leather-seated chairs lined one wall, fronted by a coffee table neatly stacked with old copies of the
National Geographic
and
Vogue;
there was also a single copy of
Bikies' Bulletin,
but that could have been left by a client who had departed in a hurry, presumably on a Harley-Davidson or a Kawasaki. The inner office was larger than Malone had expected, with a bank of steel filing cabinets along one wall, an old-fashioned Chubb safe in a corner and a studded leather couch, that looked too expensive for its surroundings, against another wall. Facing the door was a wide leather-topped desk and a green leather chair to match the couch; in front of the desk were two clients' chairs, also in green leather. Will Rockne's degree was framed and hung behind his chair; below it was a wall-length shelf of legal books. The windows on either side of the framed degree looked out on to the beach and the sea, where gulls hung in the air like chips of ice.

“Dad always liked his office,” said Jason. “He did it up, all new, about six months ago. He never wanted to move from here.”

“Did anyone ever suggest he should?”

“My mother did. I think she wanted him to be in the city. You know, a little more class.” He looked sideways at Angela, who just smiled.

“Did he rent this office or did he own it?”

“He rented it,” said Jason. “I dunno who from. Jill will be able to tell you that.”

Jill Weigall and Russ Clements arrived together. Malone introduced Clements, then looked at the secretary. She was young, perhaps twenty or twenty-one, her attractive face smeared this morning with shock. She came in ahead of Clements, stood for a moment looking lost, like a girl on her first morning in a new office; or her last. Clements had paused behind her, waiting for her to find herself.

“I'm still trying to make myself believe this—” She spoke to Jason rather than to the two detectives and Angela Bodalle. She had a light, flutey voice that threatened to crack at any moment, a schoolgirl's voice. Then she made a visible effort to settle herself; she sat down behind her desk as if ready
for
business. She looked up at Malone: “Yes?”

Malone had to restrain himself from smiling; instead he admired the girl's attempt to fit herself back into what he guessed was her usual efficient self. “First, we're checking if Mr. Rockne ever received any threats here at the office. Did he?”

She shook her head. Her dark hair was cut short in what Malone, always a decade or more behind in fashion, somehow thought of as the French style; the front of it fell down over her forehead and she pushed it back. More settled now, the shock absorbed, her looks had improved; it struck Malone that she was a very attractive girl. “Mr. Rockne didn't have the sort of clients that would
threaten
him.”

“Did he handle Family Court cases?” He knew of solicitors and judges who had been threatened by men, most of them immigrants from male-dominated societies, who had blamed the law and its practitioners for taking away their wives from them. In Homicide's computer there was still the unsolved murder of a judge's wife who had been killed by a bomb.

“Of course. But we never had any trouble with any of them.”

“It's not as bad as it used to be,” said Angela Bodalle. “The men seem to be learning.” She made it sound as if all men, not just the immigrants, had been taking lessons.

“I'm glad to hear it,” said Malone. “Righto, Miss Weigall. Mrs. Bodalle tells me, quite rightly, that we can't touch the files. But maybe we can open the safe?” He looked enquiringly at Angela, who shrugged, then nodded.

“I can't do that, Inspector. Mr. Rockne always kept the key himself.”

Malone raised an eyebrow. “How long have you worked for him, Jill?”

“Two years.”

“And he never trusted you to open the safe?” Out of the side of his eye he saw Jason frown resentfully. Whatever the boy's relationship with his father, he obviously didn't want him criticized.

Jill Weigall, too, didn't like the implied criticism. “It wasn't that he didn't trust me. It was just, well . . .” But her voice trailed off.

“Scobie—” Clements had been silent up till now, his bulk against the closed front door of the
office.
He took a plastic envelope out of his pocket. He was in sports jacket, slacks and a rollneck cotton sweater this morning and looked his usual rumpled self, nothing like the dude he must have looked at last night's medical dinner. Malone wondered what he would have talked about with the diner on the opposite side of him from Romy: the relative effects of a bullet or a blunt instrument on one's health? “They cleaned out Mr. Rockne's pockets last night, Maroubra asked me to bring them back to Mrs. Rockne. There's a key-ring—”

He held up a key-ring with five keys on it and Jill Weigall said, “It's that big one. He always carried it with him.”

Malone took the key, held it out in front of Jason. “You're the family rep, Jay. I'm going to open the safe, OK?”

“Go ahead, Mr. Malone.” The boy was building blocks of maturity by the minute.

“OK, Mrs. Bodalle?”

“Let's see what's in the safe first. If there are any clients' confidential files in there, I'll have to advise you against looking at them.”

Malone went into the inner office, unlocked the safe and swung back its heavy door. It was stuffed with papers: files, wills in envelopes, legal documents tied with ribbons, a cash box and a flat metal box, the sort that Malone had seen in bank and hotel safety-deposit vaults. The keys to both boxes were lying on the shelf beside them.

Again he looked at Jason. “Okay to open the boxes?”

For a moment the boy looked uncertain; he glanced at Angela. “Is it okay, Mrs. Bodalle?”

“You're on thin ice, Mr. Malone, but so far I think you might be able to convince a judge that you haven't invaded any client's privacy.”

Malone opened both boxes. The cash box was stuffed with money, all one-hundred-dollar notes. He handed the box to Clements. “Count it, Russ.” He saw the expression on Jill Weigall's face. “You're surprised to see so much?”

“I had no idea—” She shook her head in wonder, the hair fell down, she pushed it back again.
“
During office hours that cash box was out in my desk. We never carried more than a hundred dollars, maybe a bit more, in it. And stamps, things like that.”

“There's ten thousand here.” Clements's big fingers had handled the notes like those of a flash bank teller; but then he had served time on the Fraud Squad. “All of them brand-new and genuine.”

“Shit,” said Jason bitterly, “did you expect my dad to be into forgery or something?”

Clements gave the boy a look like a back-hander, but Malone got in before the big man could say anything: “No, we're not thinking that, Jay. Relax. At the moment all we're intent on is finding out who shot him.”

“Sorry.” The boy stood awkwardly in the inner doorway, shifting from one foot to the other. He looked suddenly afraid, as if he had just realized that doors were going to be opened that might best be left shut.

Jill Weigall stood up, took his arm. “Come on, Jay, let's make some coffee. We need it, I think.”

The two of them went into the outer office and Malone sat down in Rockne's leather chair and looked at Clements and Angela Bodalle. “The money could mean nothing, he could've been holding it for a client. What's your opinion on that, Mrs. Bodalle?”

“Could be. Before I went to the Bar, when I was a solicitor, I'd hold money for clients. But never as much as that, not in actual cash. Solicitors hold money for clients all the time, but usually in trust accounts.” She was sitting in one of the chairs across the desk from Malone, her legs crossed, showing a lovely curve of instep. She was wearing a pink wool dress that moulded her figure; a navy-blue cardigan with brass buttons was thrown over her shoulders. It was early in the day, but she looked as if she was already dressed for lunch. “Are you going to open the other box?”

“You're the witness. If it's clients' stuff, I won't touch it.”

There were no clients' papers: just Will Rockne's passport, a bank statement, a chequebook and a small flat gun. “A Beretta Twenty-two. A lady's special.”

“I must remember that,” said the lady opposite.

“Very effective at close range,” said Clements. “We had a woman do her husband in with one
of
those about six months ago.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?” She looked up at Clements, her gaze as sharp as a knife.

“No,” said Clements blandly. “Nothing at all.”

Malone sniffed the barrel of the gun. “I doubt if it's ever been fired. We'll ask Jill about it.”

Then he looked at the chequebook. It was for a joint account in the names of William A. Rockne and Olive B. Rockne, held in the Commonwealth Bank, Coogee. The last stub showed a balance of $9478.33, the last amount drawn $5000 in cash. Then he looked at the bank statement, which was in Rockne's name only.

“What would you think of a suburban solicitor, a one-man band, who has a bank account with five million, two hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars in it?”

“I'd nominate him for Solicitor of the Year,” said Clements and looked around the office. “This is okay, but it ain't a rich practice, would you say?”

Malone was studying Angela Bodalle's reaction; there had been none. “You aren't surprised?”

“Yes.” But if she was, she was disguising it well.

“What's the bank?” asked Clements.

“A merchant bank, I'd say—I've never heard of it. The Shahriver Credit International.” He hadn't looked at Clements, but at Angela.

“Are you asking me if I've heard of it? No.”

“Where is it?” said Clements. “Here in Sydney?”

“Sydney, Hong Kong, Manila, Kuwait—
Kuwait?
They wouldn't be doing much business there right now. Oh, and Beirut. Some nice-smelling places on that letterhead.”

“Remember the days when all banks smelled like roses—or like the Mint?” Clements moved around and sat down next to Angela in the other client's chair. “Mrs. Bodalle, why aren't you surprised to learn that Will Rockne had that much money in a bank?”

It was an old ploy between Malone and Clements: switch the bowling without telling the umpire or the batsman. She looked first at Malone, as if expecting him to put Clements in his place, then
she
looked at the big man. “I told you I was surprised.”

Clements shook his head. “Mrs. Bodalle, I think I've spent as much time in court as you have. You've learned how to read reactions. So have I. You weren't surprised.”

“Does it matter whether I was or not?” She was not going to let a mere cop get the better of her in cross-examination. “Mrs. Rockne will be the one who'll be surprised.”

Jill Weigall came in with three cups of coffee on a tray. “It's only instant. Mr. Rockne never drank coffee—he'd become a bit of a fitness freak lately—”