Murder Song (11 page)

One of the big hands gripped the seat of the chair again, but O'Brien said nothing. Then Malone said, “Righto, Brian, then you're going to have to take care of yourself—we can't give you police protection. In the meantime I'm going to warn Jim Knoble to look out for himself.”

“Will he get police protection? And you?”

“I'll be disappointed if we don't,” said Malone and wondered why he felt no pleasure, no small sense of triumph, at O'Brien's stricken look. Then he knew it was because each was as vulnerable as the other, that neither knew who would get the next bullet.

III

Sergeant Jim Knoble was killed that night by a .243 bullet fired from a high-powered rifle at close range. The bullet went right through Knoble's chest, killing him instantly, and lodged in the back seat of his car, being deflected as it went through out of the side windows. Knoble had parked his car in the side driveway of the block of flats in Coogee where he lived with his wife and teenage daughter. Malone had rung Randwick police station twice, leaving a message for Knoble to ring him back, but Knoble had been out since midday following a drug suspect and had not reported back to the station till 10.10 at night. He had been given Malone's message, but had said he would contact Malone first thing in the morning. He had signed off, remarked that he was dead tired and gone home.

Malone and Clements arrived in the side-street above the cliffs at Coogee at fifteen minutes before midnight. The street had been closed, blocked by a motor-cycle cop. Down the street, almost at the cliffs edge, were four police cars, their blue lights revolving, and an ambulance, its red light offering a contrasting colour note. There were also four television vans, looking underprivileged with no lights to flash. Malone noticed they were from the four commercial channels. Clements, a man of natural prejudice, had a theory that the ABC only attended the murders of politicians, Aborigines and
conservationists.
It was also his belief that SBS, the multicultural network with the shoestring budget, rang up first to see if the victim was an ethnic, otherwise they couldn't spare the petrol getting there. He hated all the media.

Detective-Sergeant Wal Dukes, from Randwick, was the local man in charge of the investigation. He was as tall as Malone but heavier, looking massive in the long, glistening black raincoat he was wearing. He was ten years younger than Malone, but had a broad battered face that made him look older. He had once been an Olympic heavyweight, but had never got past his first bout and it had rankled ever since.

“It looks like someone from the drug ring got him,” he said in a voice that was surprisingly light for his size. “Jim's been on their tail for a coupla months. It's one of the Triads, they've got pushers all up and down the beaches, from Bondi down to Cronulla.”

“No,” said Malone. “I don't think so.”

He felt sick, as if he were more than halfway responsible for Jim Knoble's death. He and Clements had called in at the Randwick station on their way down here and had been told that Knoble had been given Malone's message. His head told him he was not to blame, but his heart, that muscle that can bend reason into a pretzel, insisted he should have gone looking for Jim Knoble. He told Dukes about the suspected hit list.

“Jesus! Did Jim know?”

“I was trying to get in touch with him to tell him. Have they found the bullet yet?”

“The Crime Scene guys haven't arrived yet.”

“What was Jim Knoble doing chasing a drug suspect? He wasn't on the detective squad.”

“He volunteered. Sometimes he'd go out on his own, but not tonight—we had a tip, but I couldn't take it up myself. It was a stake-out at Maroubra—Jim was in plainclothes for it.” He hesitated, shutting his eyes as a gust of rain splashed across his face; then he said, “His son was a junkie—the kid OD'd a year ago. Jim's been after the shit ever since.”

Malone, as a senior detective, had to say it: “You should've kept him away. If he'd grabbed
anyone,
he was never going to put up any objective evidence.”

“I know, Inspector. But how could I stop him? He thought the world of his boy. Anyhow . . .” Dukes' voice trailed off, he looked as if he had just lost another bout, one that he would regret for the rest of his life.

Virtually every house and flat in the short street had its lights on; stiff with cold and shock, neighbours in dressing-gowns and blankets stood on their verandahs. Coogee was one of the small beach suburbs south of the harbour; it ran down as a shallow valley from the ridge of Randwick, only a few miles from where Malone lived. In the nineteenth century some of the city's professional men, trying to avoid the already rising prices of harbour properties, had moved out here and built substantial mansions. One man had actually run sheep on the slopes of the valley and as recently as the 1930s there had been a dairy farm only half a mile up from the beach, which lay between two steep headlands. Gradually the valley had filled up, then the headlands; now Coogee was a community of square boxes of flats and small houses of no distinction. Its population, like that of most beach suburbs, was mixed, but, by and large, it was considered a safe and neighbourly place in which to live.

Jim Knoble's body had been put into the ambulance and the ambulance men were having their papers counter-signed by the police. The GMO, a younger, slimmer man than Doc Gilbey, came up to Dukes, then recognized Malone. He looked from one to the other.

“Who's taking charge on this one?” He wore a ski jacket and a beanie and had a snow tan. He looked indecently healthy, a little impatient, as if he expected to be heading back to the southern slopes first thing in the morning. “Is it a local job?”

“I'll be taking over,” said Malone. He looked at Dukes. “When Crime Scene find the bullet, tell „em I want Ballistics to do a rush job. But I think I know already what it is, a .243. Did he die instantly, Doc?”

“I'd say so. The killer knew what he was about.”

“Did anyone hear the shot, Wal?”

“Nobody, leastways nobody who's owned up.” Dukes nodded down towards the heavy white
traffic
barrier at the end of the street. “Listen to those waves. There's a real swell on tonight—the fishing boats aren't out. Now and again you get a real boomer—” Even as he spoke there was a thunderous crash as a huge wave, invisible in the darkness, hit the bottom of the cliffs. “Nobody's gunna take any notice of a shot in that noise. Anyway, most of „em say they were either looking at TV or asleep in bed. There's so much shooting on TV, who'd take any notice of a shot outside?”

“How are Jim's family? Did they hear anything?”

“There's just his wife and their fifteen-year-old daughter. She was the one who found her dad's body when she came home from a friend's place up the street. The poor kid's almost out of her mind with shock.”

“How's Mrs. Knoble?”

“She's just sitting inside there, not saying anything, not even crying. Just sitting. You know how it hits some of „em. Cops' wives, I guess, are always waiting for something like this. You wanna see her?”

“I'd better. Get all these cleared out, let the neighbours go back to bed. Can you give me a ring tomorrow morning, say about ten? Send me all your stuff so's Russ Clements can put it in the running sheet.”

“Sure. A hit list? Christ, why?” Dukes shook his big head.

“Maybe I'll be able to tell you tomorrow. Here come the Crime Scene boys—and a girl, too. How'd they get her out this time of night?”

“Equal opportunity,” said Dukes with a grin, another man of natural prejudice.

“Don't forget, I want that bullet on my desk by tomorrow noon at the latest. Ballistics will understand.”

He moved towards the front door of the flats, leaving Clements to make a note of all the details that would go into the running sheets. With the connection between these murders, the sheets would eventually make a book; all he could hope was that he would be alive to read the last page. He stopped for a moment and looked up and down the rain-swept street: the killer could still be there anywhere in the darkness.

As
he reached the glass doors into the small entrance hall of the flats, two of the television reporters came at him, their cameramen behind them like back-up bazooka troops.

“Any chance of some shots of the family, Inspector?” He was a young reporter, dressed in a Dryazabone ankle-length slicker and an Akubra drover's hat; he looked as if he should be covering a rodeo out in the flood country. Malone had seen him several times on television, one of the new breed with American pronunciations, knee-deep in de
-bree
or on the outskirts of a me-
lee
or tasting the new season's cha-
blee
, already with his eye on world fame by satellite. “We won't intrude.”

“Not bloody much you won't,” said Malone. “Get lost.”

“Is that the new police community relations policy?”

Malone looked past the whipper-snapper at the black-bearded cameraman behind him. “Why don't you crown him with your camera?”

The cameraman grinned. “I've often felt like it, Inspector. But Channel 15 would charge me for the breakage.”

“Up yours,” said the reporter and swished out into the street.

The cameraman smiled apologetically. “Sorry, Inspector. He does a lot for our own public relations.”

The other reporter, an older man, and the second cameraman nodded, said good-night to Malone and went out to the street with the Channel 15 man. Malone, soured by the small encounter, pushed open the glass doors and went in to see the widowed Mrs. Knoble. He noted that this was not a block of flats with a security door to its entrance, though each of the flats had its own individual security grille covering its front door. But they were protection against housebreakers, not murderers.

Mrs. Knoble was a small, pretty woman in a pink dressing-gown, pink mules on her feet; her hair neatly done. She had evidently been waiting up for her husband to come home and, after whatever number of years they had been married, she still thought she should look her best for him, no matter the time of day or night. She was an old-fashioned wife, still in love with the only man in her life. Like Lisa, Malone thought: and suddenly prayed to Christ that Lisa would never be sitting like this some night with
some
uniformed cop sitting beside her holding her hand with awkward sympathy.

The cop was Sergeant Keith Elgar, in uniform even though he had been roused from sleep to come here: he, too, was old-fashioned. He had known Malone for years, they had played cricket against each other in district competition, but he stood up, letting go of Mrs. Knoble's hand. “Hallo, Inspector. I haven't asked Mrs. Knoble any questions. I don't think she's up to it.”

“Yes, I am.” Ethel Knoble had a soft voice, a little precise, as if she had taken elocution lessons at some time from a bad teacher. “So long as it doesn't take too long—”

“It won't.” Malone could hear hushed voices out in the kitchen, those of neighbours who had come in to support her. “How's your daughter?”

“Sylvie? She's in bed.” She nodded towards an inner room. “The doctor gave her a sedative. Please don't question her, not tonight.”

“Not now. We'll do that some other time.”

Malone sat down in a floral upholstered armchair, taking in the rest of the room without moving his head. The room was like Ethel Knoble herself, neat and pretty, a place for everything and everything in its place. There was, perhaps, too much emphasis on the floral; even the four prints on the walls were of flowers. There was a single photo on a bureau against one wall: Jim and Ethel Knoble and their son and daughter, arms linked, standing in front of a huge bank of azaleas. Their faces were bright as flowers with happiness, not a shadow on them of what was to come.

“I'll make it as brief as possible, Mrs. Knoble.” How many times had he said that in the past? If he asked only one question, it was always one too many. For a moment it was Lisa sitting in the chair opposite him; then the hallucination passed, leaving him trembling inside. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose while he waited to get his voice under control again. Then: “Had Jim received any threats?”

For a moment it looked as if she didn't understand the question; then she shook her head. “No, nothing like that. If he did, he didn't tell me. He never brought work, you know, home with him. Except after Colin, that was our son, when he died, Jim used to talk about the drug pushers. He went
looking
for them sometimes—” She looked at Sergeant Elgar. “That was right, wasn't it, Keith?”

Elgar nodded. “They could have been the ones who did this, Scobie—”

“Maybe.” Malone nodded non-committally. “Did anyone ever ring here asking for him?”

“Oh, people were always ringing here, asking him to do something for them. Drug welfare centres, you know, places like that. The cricket club, too—he used to coach the youngsters with Keith here. He was always busy, like he didn't, you know, want time to think too much about Colin.”

“No funny messages? I mean, a crank. Police sometimes get those—I've had a couple myself.”

“Me, too,” said Elgar.

Mrs. Knoble was silent for a long moment and Malone thought he had lost her for the night. Then she said, “There was a call last week. A man phoned. Jim wasn't home and I answered it. He asked me to give Jim a message. Then he sang it.”

“Sang
it?”

“Yes. It was the old nursery rhyme, about ten green bottles. Only it was six.” She hummed the old tune, then sang the words almost like a robot:
“There were six green bottles standing on the wall
/
And if one green bottle should accidentally fall
. . . Then he stopped, just like that. He said to sing it to my husband. Then he rang off.”