Dragons at the Party (41 page)

She tensed in her seat and for a moment he thought she was going to jump at him; he would have welcomed the chance to manhandle her. Then she relaxed and sat back, had the control to be able to smile.

“Anywhere will be better than here.”

Without
your billions? he wanted to ask; but didn’t. All their Australian holdings had been frozen and it looked as if the fortune was going to be returned to Palucca; the Swiss were talking of offering access to what the Timoris held in the Zurich banks. There would still be a million or two left in other havens around the world, but life at the top level was finished for Delvina. Soon she would be no more than a footnote on the gossip pages. Unless, of course, Timori died or, somehow, was disconnected from his life support system. In which case she might find another dictator looking for someone to manage his life.

Malone turned his back on her and left the aircraft. That evening on the news he saw the 747 take off and disappear, a gradually diminishing dot ahead of its fading plume, into the bright blue sky.

“Who goes there?” challenged Tom, not interested in TV, playing his own game. “Fred or foe?”

“Foes,” said Malone. “For ever.”

THE
END

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PREVIEW OF THE NEXT SCOBIE MALONE MYSTERY:

NOW AND THEN, AMEN

1

I

THE MURDERED
nun was found slumped, like an overcome voyeur, on the front veranda of Sydney’s classiest brothel.

Scobie Malone was at home in Randwick, trying to catch up on the weekend’s newspapers, when the phone rang. It was answered by Claire, his twelve-year-old, who, naturally at that age, thought all phone calls were for her.

“Daddy,” she said resentfully, throwing back her long hair just like an androgynous pop star when things didn’t go as she expected. “It’s Sergeant Clements. Don’t be long. I’m expecting Darlene to ring me.”

“Find a drain and fall down it,” said Malone, who hoped she wouldn’t.

“You talking to me, Inspector?” said Russ Clements, then laughed. Clements was a big untidy man who professed to have a lugubrious view of the world but who couldn’t stop laughing at himself. “Sorry to spoil your day, Scobie. They’ve just found a dead nun outside the Quality Couch.”

“I’m not in the mood for bad jokes, Russ. It’s a wet Sunday.”

“This’ll be better than going to church.” Clements was an agnostic, though, like a good many others, he had arrived at that frame of mind more through laziness than determination. Then he apologized: “Sorry. You’ve probably already been?”

“Not yet.” Malone was a lip-service Catholic who if he missed Sunday Mass didn’t feel he was
being
singed by the fires of hell. Though he worked in a profession with a high danger factor, he did not expect to die without at least a moment or two for a last-minute deal with The Lord. “Okay, I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

Lisa came into the hallway as he hung up the phone. “You’ll meet whom where?” Lisa was Dutch-born and could sometimes be pedantic about her English. She was meticulous about saying
whom
when it was called for; she also, unlike most Australians, including her husband, knew the difference between
disinterested
and
uninterested
and sometimes sounded like a recorded English lesson. Malone, nonetheless, loved her dearly, grammar and all.

“Russ Clements. There’s been a homicide.”

She made a face; she hated the thought of anyone’s dying, even the deserving. “Where?”

“Outside the Quality Couch in Surry Hills. A nun.”

“The brothel? What was she doing there? Demonstrating? Trying to convert the randy? No, I shouldn’t joke. How long will you be? We’re going to Mother’s and Dad’s for lunch.”

“Aaaagh!” That was from Maureen, the nine-year-old, and Tom, the five-year-old.

“That’s no way to talk about Grandma and Grandpa.”

“But lunch is so
boring.
And Grandpa always wants us to listen to that boring
classical
music.” Maureen was a devotee of rock video clips. “Let’s all go with Daddy to the brothel.”

“What’s a brothel?” said Tom, more innocent than his sister.

“No place for a five-year-old,” said his mother. “Now all of you go in and tidy up your rooms. They look like brothels.”

“Gee, I better have a look!” Tom scampered into his room to broaden his education.

Lisa got Malone’s raincoat and umbrella out of the hall closet and handed them to him as he came out of their bedroom pulling on his jacket. She looked at him with love and concern, wondering what their life together would be like if he were not a detective. He was a tall man, an inch over six feet, and he still had the build of the athlete he had once been; he had played cricket for the State as a fast bowler, though she had never seen him play and would not have understood the game if she had. He was
not
handsome, but he had the sort of face that would not deteriorate with age but might even become better-looking as the bones became more prominent. He had shrewd blue eyes, but she knew that they could just as often be kind and gentle. She worried that his police work would eventually coarsen or embitter him, but so far it hadn’t happened.

She kissed him. “Don’t get too wet. And I hope she isn’t a real nun. Maybe she’s one of those queers who dress up as nuns.”

“Maybe,” said Malone, but he had learned long ago never to have preconceptions about a murder case. There are recipes for killing people, but most murders are pot luck.

When he got into the car, a four-year-old Holden Commodore, in the driveway he looked back at her through the rain as she stood in the front doorway. One year off forty, she was still beautiful and looked younger. She still had some of her pale summer tan that showed off her blonde hair and even in the grey light of the dismal late March day her smile suggested sunshine. There was a composure about her, a serenity that was like a haven to him; he always looked forward to coming home to her. Even their home, a Federation house over seventy years old, was the right background for her; both she and it suggested a permanency in his life. He backed out of the narrow driveway, cursing that murders should happen on a Sunday, supposedly a policeman’s as well as everyone else’s day of rest.

Randwick was a sprawling suburb five miles from the heart of the city, spread out along the top of a ridge that looked down on the smaller seaside suburb of Coogee. The western side of the ridge sloped down to the famous Randwick racecourse and to the University of New South Wales, built on the site of a former racecourse. It was an area whose few wealthy residents had made their money from racing; some grand old homes survived, though most of them now had been converted into flats. Indeed, most of the area now seemed to be flats, many of them occupied by overseas students; Asian faces were as common as the wizened faces of jockeys and strappers had once been. It was somehow illustrative of the country that the State’s largest university and the biggest racecourse should be separated only by a narrow road. Life was a gamble and no one knew it better than the elements in Randwick.

Malone drove in through the steady rain towards the city. Surry Hills had never had any of the
wealth
that had once been in Randwick. It was an inner-city area, once a circle of low sand-hills that had been built upon and that had been mostly a working-class domain for over a hundred and fifty years. It had also, over the years, been home to countless brothels, some of the locals joining them as workers. None of them had ever been as up-market as the Quality Couch.

It was situated in one of the wider streets on top of a ridge where a few plane trees had survived the city’s atmosphere. It occupied two three-storeyed terrace houses that had been converted into one and refurbished at great expense. The houses had been built by middle-class burghers in the 1880s, tight-fisted men who had wanted to stay close to their factories at the bottom of the hill, and were now lying restlessly in their graves and regretting they had invested in softgoods instead of sex. The Quality Couch catered for well-heeled businessmen, many of them visitors from overseas; one girl was said to be able to sing fourteen national anthems in their original tongues. All its girls were expected to be at least bilingual, even if only in shrieks of ecstasy. Many of its clients were professionals, accountants and advertising men and one well-known judge who liked to perform wearing his wig and nothing else. It was also visited by assorted shady characters whose incomes were larger than their reputations for honesty and decorum. Malone had been in a raiding party when he was on the Vice Squad and the brothel had first opened for business; an arrangement had been arrived at with the Superintendent in charge of the Vice Squad and as far as Malone knew there had been no raids since. Tilly Mosman, the madame, could never be accused of running a disorderly house. Her discreetly worded brochures, claiming the precautions taken to ensure that her girls were free of AIDS, might have been written by the Australian Medical Association, especially since at least half a dozen doctors were amongst her clients.

An ambulance was parked outside the house and with it were three marked police cars, several unmarked ones and the inevitable TV newsreel vans. A dozen or so local residents stood on the opposite pavement, some of them in dressing-gowns, all of them huddled under umbrellas. They looked more melancholy than curious, like mourners who had been called earlier than they had expected.

Malone nodded to some of the uniformed policemen standing around in their glistening slickers and went into the big house through the rather grand front door. The Quality Couch did not
encourage
its clients to
sneak
in; it prided itself on its open-armed welcome. There was, however, no welcome this morning for the police.

Tilly Mosman was in an expensive negligé and some distress. “A nun! Jesus Christ, what sick bastard would dump her body on my doorstep?”

“This is Inspector Malone.” Russ Clements looked unhappy, but as he turned his head towards Malone he winked. He was not given to sick jokes, but there was some humour in this. “Miss Mosman, the owner of the establishment.”

“As if he didn’t know!” She looked him up and down, something she had been doing to men since she was fifteen years old. “Hello, Inspector. You used to be on the Vice Squad, right? I never forget a face.”

“That’s all I’ve ever shown around here,” said Malone and was pleased when he saw a small grin crease her face. Women, and men, were always easier to talk to when their humour improved. “How was she killed, Russ?”

“A knife or something like it through the heart. The medics say she would have died instantly.”

“Anyone hear anything? A scream?”

“Nothing. Myself, I think she was knifed somewhere else and dumped here. The body’s completely stiff, she’s been dead a fair while.”

“When was she found? Who found her?”

“I did.” Tilly Mosman sounded more composed now, though she kept casting anxious glances at the police officers who were tramping in and out the front door. She was houseproud to a fault: “Wipe your feet! This isn’t a crummy police station!”

Malone grinned and looked around the entrance hall in which they stood. What looked to be elegantly furnished rooms opened off on either side and a staircase with a highly polished balustrade led to the upper floors. Peach-pink carpet covered the entire ground floor and the stairs and Malone saw the footmarks already beginning to appear on it. “Careful, fellers. Treat it as you would your own home.”

The police officers stopped in mid-stride, looked at him, raised their eyebrows, then went back
outside
and wiped their boots again. Malone looked back at Tilly Mosman. “They’re not used to such elegance. On our pay all we can afford is linoleum. How did you find the deceased?”

“The—? Oh,
her.
You really do call ‘em the deceased?”

“Sometimes we call them a stiff. But never in polite company. How did you find her?”

“When I went out to get the milk.” She pointed to a small wire basket that held four cartons of milk.

There seemed something incongruous and amusing about milk being delivered to the doorstep of a brothel, especially one like this. He wondered what the milkman would get as a Christmas box . . . He was aware of the atmosphere of the house, despite all its discreet elegance. The most expensive sex in the country, except for that practised by women who married for money, took place under this roof. Milk was too mundane for it: champagne should be poured on the Wheaties, if breakfast was served.

“What time was that?” he said.

“I don’t know for sure. About a quarter to eight, I guess. She was just lying in the corner of the front veranda, behind one of my big pots, one of the shrubs. I thought it was some drunk at first. Or a junkie.”

“Had you seen her before? I mean, had she been picketing your place?”

“Why would she do that? Nuns never picket places like mine. They know what men are like.”

“Some men,” said Malone and grinned. She smiled in return; her mood was improving. “What about any of your girls? Would they know her? Are any of them here?”

She shook her head. “None of them sleeps on the premises, except those who have all-night clients. But they have to be out by seven.”

“You don’t serve them breakfast?”
No champagne on the Wheaties?

“No. Some of the men don’t like it, but I insist. I don’t like the place looking like a brothel all day.” Even as she spoke there was a sound of a vacuum cleaner somewhere upstairs.

“My wife feels the same way,” said Malone.

She smiled again. She was a good-looking woman in her late forties; when one looked closely
one
saw that the years and poundage had started to catch up with her. She had big, innocent-looking eyes, but Malone suspected that if she had a heart of gold she would give none of it away but would wait for the metal prices to rise. She had buried two husbands with no regrets and it would have been surprising, in her calling, if she had had a high opinion of men. She had an equally low opinion of feminists. She was, Malone guessed, a classic madame, a businesswoman with no illusions.