Murder Song (40 page)

At last he went back to the motor-cycle, stripped the camouflage away from it and rode it down the slippery hillside to a narrow dirt track that ran through the paddocks and parallel to the road. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were still full and low, moving slowly over the crest of distant hills like great flocks of sheep. He came to a gate, opened it and went through on to a gravel road that ran at right angles to the tarred Sydney road. A hundred yards along he came to another clump of trees; beyond it a narrow wooden bridge spanned a culvert through which the tarred road dipped and climbed. As he got off the motor-cycle, a pick-up truck came across the bridge, the timbers rattling like gunfire under it, the driver saluted and the truck went on up the gravel road.

Blizzard parked the motor-cycle under the trees, got out the gun-case and assembled the Tikka and the telescopic sight. Then he went back to the bridge, climbed over its low wooden railing and found a natural seat on a ledge of rock above the cutting. He sat down to wait, for as long as was necessary. The last of the six green bottles would come down the road . . . He began to hum the old song, sitting there in the steadily falling rain, which had started again, like a busker waiting for someone to come by and reward him. Then abruptly he began to weep and a terrible pain spread across the back of his head, where the rottenness had lain all those years. But it was an old pain and he could bear it. Maybe today would ease it for ever.

It was just after midday, with the rain still falling, when he saw the three cars coming along the road from the direction of Sydney. They were still half a mile away, approaching at a steady rate. He put the Tasco telescope to his eye, focused on the leading car and saw Malone in the front seat beside the driver, who looked like the big man Clements. He could not see who was in the rear seat, but if O'Brien was not there he was sure he was in one of the following cars.

He
put down the Tasco, picked up the rifle, adjusted the „scope sight and aimed at Malone as the leading car reached the top of the dip that led down under the bridge.

VI

Clements didn't see the pot-hole till the last moment. He had had to swerve to miss several of them in the last mile or two; he had hit one of them and there had been a horrible thumping noise under the car. Now he swung the car to the left and that swerve saved Malone's life. The bullet went through the middle of the windscreen, right between Malone and Clements, and hit the rear door beside O'Brien as he lolled in the back seat. The windscreen was starred round the bullet-hole, but Clements' vision was not obscured. The car skidded back to the right of the narrow road, slipped on the greasy shoulder and hit the steep bank, scraping along its rock-ribs as it careered down the cutting. Had it not been for the steep wall of the bank, the car would have rolled over; as it was, it tilted over far enough for the side windows to be smashed as the car hit protruding rocks in the bank. The Commodore, still upright on all four wheels, was fifty yards down into the cutting before Clements managed to bring it to a halt.

Malone opened his door and fell out on to the roadway, drawing his gun and yelling at O'Brien to stay where he was in the back seat. He heard a second shot hit the car fender a foot from his head and he crawled round the back of the Commodore as the other two cars skidded to a stop behind him. On his feet now but crouched over, he chanced a look up between the wrecked car and the steep bank and saw the beardless man in the anorak aiming at him again. The bullet hit a projecting rock, sending a chip flying into Malone's cheek, stinging him so that he gasped, and went ricocheting away. Malone fired back, but his shot was hasty and went astray. Then he was up and running down the cutting, slipping once on the greasy road, and in under the bridge.

He heard the gunfire from behind him; the police had scrambled out of their car and were firing at Blizzard. Danforth's car was nose-to-tail against the police car, but Malone couldn't see the Chief Superintendent. Malone pulled up for a moment to get his breath; he put his hand to his cheek and felt the blood there. Then he went on under the bridge and up the other side of the cutting, keeping close to
the
overhang of the bank, slipping and stumbling in the mud of the shoulder but somehow managing to keep his feet. The rain had seemed to increase; or maybe it was only his imagination; he had no clear grasp of anything. The showdown with Blizzard had come at last and somehow he was not as prepared for it as he had expected to be. Maybe the waiting had gone on too long.

Another bullet ricocheted off a rock behind him, but the angle was too acute for Blizzard to get a clean shot at him. He kept running till he came up out of the culvert, swung off the shoulder and flopped into a shallow ditch beside a fallen tree, sending up a splash of muddy water as he did so. The rain now was pelting down, it was not his imagination; his hat was back in the car and the water swished across his face like a wet veil. He wiped his eyes, lay flat in the liquid mud of the ditch and looked back at the bridge.

Blizzard, seemingly careless of his own death, stood in the middle of the bridge, the rifle aimed straight at Malone. The latter fired an instant before Blizzard could squeeze the trigger of the Tikka. The rifle did go off, but it was pointed at the sodden sky as Blizzard fell backwards with Malone's bullet taking off the top of his skull. Malone would never fire a luckier shot; at the distance and in the rain, the bullet could have missed Blizzard by feet. Justice, often blind in one eye, occasionally has 20/20 vision in the other.

Malone lifted himself out of the ditch, wiped his face with a muddy hand. The whole front of him was black with mud; he looked primeval. But better primeval than dead. He walked back down the road, under the bridge and up to the wrecked Commodore. Clements, nursing an injured arm, and O'Brien were standing in the rain; Harry Danforth was standing with them, his gun in his hand. The three police officers had scrambled up the bank and were now on the bridge.

Danforth put his gun back in his holster. “You okay, Scobie? Your cheek's bleeding.”

“Just a nick. I'm okay.”

Danforth then shouted to the officers up on the bridge. “How is he?”

“Dead, Chief.”

“Good. Thank Christ it's all over.”

“
How are you, Russ?” Malone looked with concern at Clements, who was tenderly holding his left arm.

“I think I've broken it. It's hurting like buggery. But we're alive, so why complain? It was Blizzard, wasn't it?”

Malone nodded. “Pretty sure. I'll go up and have a look. You okay, Brian?”

“I dunno,” said O'Brien and leaned against the car. “I thought I was. Now all of a sudden I've got no legs. I can't believe it's all over.”

Danforth looked at him carefully, then he said, “I'll take you up to the stud, you can get a good stiff drink or a cuppa tea or something into you . . . You take charge here, Scobie—it's been your case all along. Better get an ambulance out here for Russ.”

Malone walked the few yards back along the road to Danforth's car with him and O'Brien. “I'll be about half an hour, Brian. Have a whisky ready for me.”

“Sure. Well, we survived . . .” He wiped the rain from his face, the gesture of a weary man who had at last been able to stop running; or at least to drop to a slow trot. The downpour had eased and there was just a thin mist of moisture.

We've survived, Malone thought, up till now. But there was still tomorrow and he knew that O'Brien would be more aware of that than he was. O'Brien got into Danforth's car and Malone slammed the door shut after him. “Have that whisky ready.”

“I'll join you,” said Danforth, who never said no to a drink, whether he was invited or not. He was already in behind the wheel. He reached to turn on the ignition, then sat back, lifting his big belly. He took his Smith & Wesson out of his waistband holster, leaned across and put it in the glove-box. “I'm getting too fat to carry a gun. Well, see you in a while, Scobie. I'll come back as soon's I've delivered Mr. O'Brien.”

He took the car down under the bridge and up towards the road that led to the stud. Malone looked at Clements. “Get on the radio, Russ, call in all the necessary. Then sit there and don't move your arm.”

“
What are you going to do?”

“I'm going up to have a look at Frank Blizzard. I still can't remember what he looked like twenty-three years ago.”

He went up and along the top of the bank and on to the bridge. The three officers, looking like oiled birds in their wet slickers, stood aside as he approached them. “It's him, all right, Inspector. The rifle's a Tikka. There's ammo in his pockets, .243s. You can bet the bullets in your car will match the others ones you told us about.”

Malone looked down at the stranger. All that was familiar was the anorak; Malone had seen Malloy wearing it on at least two occasions. One of the policemen had pulled up the blood-stained hood to hide the horrible wound. All that was exposed was the beardless face, almost white below the cheeks, eyes shut tight against the rain or the pain, it was impossible to tell. The face was a mask, but with nobody that Malone knew behind it.

Then one of the officers said, “Hallo, what's up? The Chief's coming back.”

Malone turned and looked up the road. Danforth's car was coming back, moving slowly, as if in bottom gear. It went down under the bridge, then up to the other two cars. Malone told one of the officers to stay with Blizzard's body, then he and the other two officers went running along the top of the bank and slid down to the roadway. Danforth still sat in his car, motionless and impassive. Beside him O'Brien lay against the car door, a red gaping hole in the side of his head, Danforth's Smith & Wesson held loosely in his hand.

Danforth blinked as Malone wrenched open the car door and O'Brien fell into his arms. “For Crissake, what happened?”

“I dunno—it happened so quick . . . He took my gun outa the glove-box and blew his brains out before I could stop him . . .” His beefy hands were resting on the steering wheel, but they looked relaxed, not tight with tension. “Why would he wanna do that?”

Malone looked down at the dead man in his arms. He tried not to look at the face; there was too much agony there. He gently eased O'Brien back into the seat, took off his own jacket and laid it over
the
head and face of the dead man. Then he looked at Danforth, making no attempt to disguise the accusation in his voice. “Yeah,” he said. “Why would he want to do that?”

VII

Malone and Clements came out of Camden hospital, Clements with his arm in plaster and a sling, Malone with a dressing on his cheek. One of the police cars had gone on to the stud and then come back with Malone's bags; he had had a shower at the hospital and changed into clean clothes while the doctor had worked on Clements' broken arm. An understanding nurse had given each of them a heavy slug of medicinal brandy—“courtesy of Medicare”—and the after-shock of the day's event was seeping out of them.

A local police car was waiting to drive them back to Sydney, but the two detectives didn't walk across to it immediately. They paused and looked at each other, reading the question in each other's mind. They had not mentioned Danforth in the past hour; the Chief Superintendent, pleading shock, had already gone back to the city. Now the question could not be avoided.

“Do you think he did it?” said Clements.

“Harry? Of course he bloody did it!” Malone said angrily; then controlled himself as a young nurse walked by and looked at him reproachfully. He waited till she had gone, then went on, “Brian was never going to kill himself. He'd get depressed, I saw that a couple of times, but he wasn't suicidal, not as far as putting a gun to his own head. Harry did it, all right.”

“Someone paid him.”

“Of course. I can guess who. But we'll never be able to prove it. We'll never be able to prove anything. There'll be an enquiry and it'll be Harry's word against that of a dead man. With everything piling it on Brian, who's going to believe he didn't suicide? Harry will be ticked off for being careless with his gun, but that's all he'll get, a ticking off. He'll probably retire now, go out with his full pension and whatever he was paid for killing Brian Boru O'Brien.”

“Jesus wept . . .” Clements looked west to where the rain had cleared and streaks of sunlit cloud
lay
like a silver reef in the pale blue-green sky. “If I didn't have a cast-iron gut, I think I could spew.”

Malone's anger and disgust could not be relieved by vomiting. It was not just in his stomach but in every organ, bone, vein and muscle of his body. He was an honest man and honest men, too, are vulnerable to corruption. It doesn't reward them, just does its best to destroy them.

12

I

“WHAT ARE
you going to do?” said Joanna.

“What can I do? I'll stay with Philip.”

“Oh, for God's sake!” Joanna threw herself backwards, as if trying to hurl herself through the back of the couch; Anita had never seen her sister so physically angry. Joanna's usual temper emerged only through her tongue, which could be as sharp-edged and deadly as a scimitar; but now it seemed that her whole body was bursting with anger. “Why do you have to subject yourself to
that?
Walk out—come back to Sydney—you'd have no trouble getting a job in radio or TV—”

“Darling, it would not be as easy as you think. You've never been in public life—you get out there and, whether you like it or not, you're trapped—” She played with the loose gold bracelet on her wrist; it seemed to her that in the two weeks since Brian's death, her wrist had got thinner. She
felt
thinner; or perhaps bonier was the word. As if all her flesh had become numb and all she could feel were her bones, which hurt terribly. “How would I explain it? That I'd just become tired of living with the most popular man in Australia—”