Murder Song (42 page)

Clements was no more bucolic: “I know some shed their leaves and some don't. But I wouldn't know a river-gum from a Wrigley's, so don't ask me.”

Malone
felt better: ignorance is an acceptable bond if nothing better offers.

As he had on previous sorties into the bush, he remarked the seeming absence of any livestock. The broad paddocks, dotted with (though he didn't know their names) clumps of white cypress pine or kurrajong for shade, seemed to be raising more timber than sheep or cattle. The grazing paddocks were on one side of the main road, brown-tinted and dusty from summer; thin stands of yellowbox lined the road and behind them was the broad stock route, not used as much today as in the old heyday of droving when sheep flowed in slow motion along these tracks to the rail-head stockyards or, in time of drought, looking for better pasture. On the other side of the road were the wheatfields stretching away to a low line of hills that was no more than a wavering of the flat line of the horizon. It was now mid-April, the long drawn-out tail of a long hot summer, and the harvest out here would have been finished by late January, early February; the harrows were at work now, raising dust that drifted away as a grey-pink haze in the westering sun. A flock of galahs rose up from the fields, looking for a moment like a thickening of the haze. In the distance two kangaroos loped along, a jumping nervous tic in the tired eye.

A little later Clements said, “That's where it must've happened.”

For some time they had been noticing the sprinkling of wisps of cotton on either side of the road, like a scattering of last year's snow; except that no one had ever known snow to fall out here. Now they were passing the cottonfields, which stretched away into the distance on both sides of the road. Amidst the white glare the mechanical cotton-pickers moved like top-heavy houseboats on a broad white lake; the operators sat up front in their air-conditioned, glass-sided cubicles, remote and bored-looking. Trailers stood in access tracks beside the rows of cotton, waiting to be loaded by the pickers. Two trailers were being hauled by small tractors to a long low truck that would take the cotton, now compressed into modules, to the big steep-roofed shed at which Clements had nodded.

“That's the gin, I guess. You wanna call in there now?”

“No, let's go into town. I'm buggered. We'll start tomorrow.” He also wanted to stick by protocol: you did not land unannounced in another cop's territory and start your investigations at once. No bird, animal or Cabinet minister enforces the territorial imperative more than does a policeman with
rank.

They drove on, came to the edge of town, drove in past the wheat silos and the railway siding with its empty stockyards, past the BP and Shell service stations, the used car lots and the farm equipment sales yards, and then they were in the main section of town. They had passed a sign that said: “Collamundra, Pop. 9400;” and it seemed that the 9400 Collamundrans, give or take a few, were a civic-minded lot of voters. It was not a pretty town, it was too flat and sunbaked for that, but it was attractive; or had been made so. They passed a pleasant tree-shaded park; beside it, amidst sun-browned lawns, was a large community swimming-pool. They went round the war memorial standing in the middle of an intersection. The memorial was a bronze Anzac on a marble plinth, staring up the street into the distance, his bayonet-topped rifle held up threateningly against any invader. It struck Malone that the Anzac was gazing eastwards, towards Sydney, home of the State government and city Homicide cops, as if the enemy was expected to come from there.

“This is Rural Party country,” said Clements, as if reading his mind. “That guy with the bayonet was probably a local party secretary. Our friend Mr. Dircks comes from here.”

“Oh crumbs,” said Malone, to whose tongue stuck some of the phrases of a childhood more innocent than today's; his mother had been a great believer in mouth-washing with soap and he could still taste the bar of Sunlight she had shoved down his throat when, in a moment of anger and forgetfulness, he had told the kid next door to
fuck off
! Dircks was the Police Minister, a bigger handicap to the Department than a cartload of corrupt cops. “I'd forgotten that.”

Clements spotted a marked police car parked on the corner of a side street and he swung the Commodore over alongside it. Malone wound down his window. “Where's the station, constable?”

The young officer, slumped behind the wheel, looked at him without much interest; then his eyes narrowed. “You the guys from Sydney?”—

“Yes,” said Malone and thought he had better establish rank at once. “Detective-Inspector Malone and Detective-Sergeant Clements, from Regional Crime Squad, South Region. You're in that Region—just, but you're in it. Your name is—?”

The
young constable decided he had better sit up straight. “Constable Reynolds, sir. If you'd like to follow me . . .”

They followed his car down the main street. It was a wide street, cars and trucks angle-parked at the kerbs on both sides. The stores were the usual one- or two-storeys, the fronts of almost all of them shaded by corrugated-iron awnings; they were characterless, stamped out of the mould of country-town stores all over the State, as if no architect had ever found it worth his while to come this far west. There were four banks, two of them solid as forts, built in the days when men took time to build with care and pride; the old names were cut into the stone just below their cornices, still there as defiant mockeries of the new names, dreamed up by corporation image makers, on the brass plates by the doors. The other two banks were new structures, as unimposing as a depositor's shaky credit rating.

Clements had not been impressed by the young constable's attitude. “Do you think we're gunna be welcome?”

“They sent for us. But we're outsiders, don't forget that. Be diplomatic.”

“Look who's talking.”

They turned into a wide side street after the car in front. The police station was a cream-painted stone building that had been erected in 1884; the date was chipped out of the stone above the entrance; this, too, had been built by men who took time and pride. It was a good example of the solid public buildings of the period: nothing aesthetic about it, squatting as firmly on its foundations as Queen Victoria had on hers. Behind it had been added a two-storeyed brick building, painted cream so that it would not clash too much with its parent. There was a side driveway leading to a big yard and a row of garages and a workshop at the rear. A peppercorn tree stood on the width of thin lawn that separated the police station from the courthouse, another Victorian building on the other side from the driveway. It was a typical country town set-up, the law and justice keeping each other company. It wasn't always that way in the city, thought Malone.

Clements waved his thanks to the young constable, who drove on; the Commodore swung into the side driveway and went through to the rear yard. Clements parked the car by a side fence and he and
Malone
got out and walked back down the driveway, aware of the sudden appearance of half a dozen heads from the doorways of the garages, like rabbits that had smelled ferret on the wind. Not frightened bunnies, but hostile ones.

“You feel something sticking in your back?” said Clements. “Like, say, half a dozen ice picks?”

They went in through the front door, asked the constable at the desk for Inspector Narvo and were taken along a short hallway to a large corner office that looked out on to both the street and the courthouse next door. There was a fireplace, topped by a marble mantelpiece, above which was a framed colour photograph of the Queen; its glass, unlike that on most portraits in public offices where the Queen was still hung, was not fly-specked but looked as if it were washed every day. The grate and ornamental metal surrounds of the fireplace had been newly blackened. On the wall opposite the fireplace was a manning chart, as neatly ruled and lettered as an eye chart; there were no erasures, as if a new manning list was put up each day. Between the two windows that looked out on to the street was a desk and a man seated behind it, both as neat as everything else in the room. Malone, sweaty and rumpled from the long drive, felt as if he were about to be called up for inspection.

“I'm Hugh Narvo.” The man behind the desk stood up, his immaculate uniform seeming to creak with the movement. Malone had only ever met one cop as neat as this man and that was Police Commissioner Leeds. Narvo was as tall as Malone, rawboned in build and face, with dark brown eyes under thick brows, dark hair slicked down like a 1920s movie star and a mouth that looked as if it might have trouble sustaining a smile. Malone judged he could be the sort of officer-in-charge who would never be popular with his men nor attempt to be. “What plane did you get in on? I'd have had someone out there to meet you.”

Narvo was studying the men as carefully as they were studying him. Cops in the New South Wales Police Department, like crims, do not take each other at face value; it is a legacy of the old days, still there in pockets, when corruption started at the top and filtered down like sewage. Narvo looked at these two strangers, whom he had sent for only on the insistence of his detective-sergeant. He saw two tall men, Clements much bulkier than Malone. The latter, whom he knew by repute, was the one who engaged
him.
He was not given to thinking of men as handsome or plain or ugly: he looked for the character in their faces. Malone, he decided, had plenty of that: tough, shrewd but sympathetic. He wished, in a way, that they had sent him a bastard, someone he could turn his back on. Malone had a reputation for integrity, for not caring about repercussions, and that, Narvo decided, was going to make things difficult.

“We drove,” said Malone. “Russ likes driving.”

“Do I?” Clements grinned.

But Narvo didn't seem to see any humour in the small joke. “You must be expecting to stay here a while. It's a long way to drive just for a day or two.”

“You expect it to be cleared up as soon as that?”

“We hope so. You probably know how it can be in a town like this—we don't like a homicide hanging over our heads. Especially with so many visitors in town.”

“What's on?”

Narvo looked mildly surprised. “I thought you'd have known—but then, why should you? It's the Collamundra Cup weekend, the big event of the year.”

“Russ is the racing expert. Did you know about it?”

Clements shook his big head. He looked even more sweaty and rumpled than Malone; but that was almost his natural state. “I'd forgotten about it. I never bet on bush races.”

“Don't let the locals hear you call it a bush race.” Narvo for an instant looked as if he might smile. “They think the Collamundra Cup is a cousin to the Melbourne Cup and the Kentucky Derby.” Then he said abruptly, “I'll get Sergeant Baldock in here, he's in charge of my detectives.”

He spoke into his phone and almost immediately, as if he had been waiting outside for the call, Sergeant Baldock appeared. He was a burly man in his mid-thirties, already bald, hard-faced, ready to meet the world square-on. Yet he seemed friendly enough and put out a hand that looked as, if closed into a fist, it could have felled a bullock.

“Jeff will look after you,” said Narvo; and Malone, his ear, as always, sensitive to a new environment, thought that Narvo spoke with relief. “I have to go over to Cawndilla first thing in the
morning
to see the District Super. I'll tell him you're here. Will you want to see him?”

No cop in his right mind ever wanted to see a District Superintendent, especially one who might resent strangers on his turf. “I don't think so.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Baldock grin and nod appreciatively. “Just give him my respects and tell him we won't kick up too much dust.”

“He'll be glad to hear that. We all will, won't we, Jeff?” Baldock seemed to hesitate before he nodded; but Narvo was already looking back at Malone. “We've booked you into the Mail Coach Hotel. We were lucky to get you a room. You don't mind sharing?”

“So long as we don't have to share the bed. Does it have a bathroom or do we have to queue up down the end of the hall?”

He knew there were still some country hotel owners who thought they were spoiling their guests if they gave them too many amenities. If the explorers Burke and Wills, starving to death on their last ill-fated expedition, had chanced to stop at one of those hotels they would not have been fed, not if they had collapsed into the dining-room after eight p.m.

The Collamundra cops looked as if local pride had been hurt. Baldock said, “It has a bathroom. Narelle Potter, the owner, likes to stay on side with us. It can get a bit rowdy down there sometimes. You know what country pubs can be like, especially when everyone comes in from out of town.”

“I'd like a shower before I go out to see my family.” Malone enjoyed the look of surprise on both men's faces, especially Narvo's. “My wife and kids are staying out at Sundown, the Carmody property—or rather, they're staying with Mrs. Waring, Carmody's daughter. My wife and her are old friends, they worked together down in Sydney.”

He wondered why he was telling them so much about a relationship that was no concern of theirs. But he had noticed how both Narvo's and Baldock's faces had closed up, as if they were abruptly suspicious of him.

“Well,” said Baldock, “you'll get all the dirt on the district out there. Old Sean Carmody's not one of your back-fence gossips, but he can never forget he was a journo, a big-time foreign correspondent.”

“He's probably got the Sagawa murder already solved,” said Narvo. “Enjoy your stay, Scobie.
Russ.”
But he said it without conviction, as if he knew there would be no enjoyment for any of them.

Malone and Clements went out with Baldock and up to the detectives' room on the first floor of the rear building. It was an office in which there had been an attempt at neatness, probably under Narvo's orders, but it had failed; this was a room which would have more visitors than Narvo's, many of them obstreperous or even still murderous, and neatness had bent under the onslaughts. There was one other detective in the room, a short, slight dark man in a suit that looked a size too large for him.