Murder Song (5 page)

Malone felt the game was getting away from him; he chipped in before Clements could answer. “It's Persistence. Can we see you alone, Brian?”

“You want to talk about old times?” O'Brien gave him a full smile.

“Not exactly. If you'd excuse us, Mr. Bousakis? We may be back to you.”

Bousakis
flushed; he was not accustomed to being dismissed. He went out without a word, the bulk of his back seeming to tremble with indignation. O'Brien moved to the door, closed it and came back and waved Malone and Clements to green leather chairs set round a low glass coffee table.

“George doesn't like being shut out of things. He thinks this place can't run without him.”

“Can it?” said Clements.

O'Brien seemed to freeze in mid-air for a split second as he sat down; then he dropped into a chair. “You mean the rumours? Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers, Sergeant. Were you at the academy when I was there?”

“You wouldn't remember me. I was in another group. I moved across to Scobie's group the week before we graduated.”

“I never did graduate. I often wonder what would have happened to me if I'd hung on there. But you're not here to talk about old times, you said. You're not from the Fraud Squad or anything like that, are you?”

“No,” said Malone. “Homicide.”

For the first time O'Brien lost his composure. “Jesus!
Homicide?”

Malone gave him a brief summary of why they were here. “Did you ever meet a woman named Mardi Jack?”

There was a moment's hesitation; the frown of puzzlement came a little too late. “Mardi Jack? No. Has she murdered someone?”

“No. She was the one who was murdered. Shot by a high-powered rifle in a flat owned by one of your companies in Clarence Street.” Malone bowled a bumper of his own.

O'Brien didn't duck. “I didn't know her. I don't even know anything about the flat.”

Malone had had no conviction that the B. in Mardi Jack's journal stood for Brian; it could have been the initial for half a dozen other names, surnames as well as given names. It could even stand for Bousakis. He stumbled mentally in his run-up to his next question: it was difficult to imagine that a mistress could be so desperately in love with a man as huge as Bousakis. Which only showed the prejudice
of
a lean and fit man.

He started again: “This murder isn't going to be good for your corporate image. I mean, in view of the rumours . . .”

“You believe the rumours, too?” Hardly any of the big white teeth showed in O'Brien's dry smile.

I don't even know what they are:
Malone, a non-investor, rarely read the financial pages. “It's what other people believe that counts, isn't it? You want to hear what Sergeant Clements thinks? He's the Department's biggest investor, outside the police pension fund.”

O'Brien looked like a man who knew his leg was being pulled. “What sort of investor are you, Sergeant?”

“A cautious one. I've also punted on a few of your horses.”

“Cautiously?”

Clements nodded, but didn't elaborate; the inference was that he did not take O'Brien's horses at face value. “These rumours, Mr. O'Brien. They involve a lot of people—I've heard a State cabinet minister mentioned and a Federal Opposition front-bencher. Insider trading.”

“It'll all come out in the wash,” said O'Brien, his leg safe but the rest of him now looking vulnerable. “And the wash will be cleaner than you've all expected. It's the old tall poppy syndrome—chop down anyone who does better than the mediocre. That's the sacred koala in this country—mediocrity.”

Malone had heard it all before; there was a certain truth to it. He wondered, however, if a nation dedicated to worship of the brilliant would have been any better. The jails weren't full of just failures; there were a lot of over-achievers amongst them. Tall poppies who had lopped off their own heads.

“Is the NCSC gunna hold an enquiry?” said Clements.

“They've already started.” O'Brien appeared relaxed; but he was gently bouncing one big hand in the other. “I thought you'd know that.”

Clements took another tack, a wide outswinger: “Didn't you have something to do with music
at
one time?”

The hands paused. “Yes. Quite some years ago. That was how I first got started.”

“You managed and promoted pop stars in Britain and America?”

That explained O'Brien's accent. Malone had been trying to place it: it had an Australian base, the vowels occasionally flattened, but there was something else laid over it, a transatlantic sound.

“Yes,” said O'Brien. “What's this got to do with what happened today? The murder, I mean.”

Malone took up the attack again, seeing where Clements was leading. “Miss Jack was a singer. One of your firms, Kensay, owns a recording studio where she was working on Saturday before she was killed. How long ago were you in London—what do I call you, Horrie or Brian?”

“Brian,” said O'Brien coldly. “Horrie was someone I knew in another life. Someone I've just about forgotten.”

His voice had changed as he spoke, became almost English; it was a formal statement. There seemed a note of venom in what he said, but Malone couldn't be sure. The hands now were locked together.

Malone repeated his question: “How long ago were you in London?”

“I went there over twenty years ago, a couple of years after I dropped out of the police academy. I came home eight years ago.”

“And you've built all this up in eight years?” Malone waved a hand, as if the O'Brien empire was spread out below them.

“I read all the stuff put out by Australia House in London. The Land of Opportunity. I figured if the Poms like Alan Bond and the Hungarians and the Baits could come out here and make fortunes, so could I.”

“And you did.” Flatly.

“Yes.” Just as flatly.

Malone eased his tone a little. “You still in pop music? I don't keep up with the pop scene.”

“I gave it up in the mid-seventies. I got out before it sent me deaf. I went into property—that's
silent
and you don't have to deal with little jerks who think they own the world because they've made a hit single. What's all this leading up to?”

“Mardi Jack was in love with a man she met in London ten years ago, maybe a bit more. A feller whose initial was B. It could've been Brian.”

“It could have been Bill or Boris or Buster, any bloody name at all. You're not making me too happy, chum.”

“Maybe you've forgotten—they didn't invent the police force to make people happy. They told us that at the academy. I'm just doing my job, Mr. O'Brien, trying to find out who murdered a woman who'd be a bloody sight happier if she were still alive.”

O'Brien said nothing for a moment; then he nodded. “Sure, I understand. You've just caught me on the wrong foot. I've got so many other things on my mind—” It was an admission that he seemed instantly to regret; he was the sort of man who would always claim to be in control of a situation. He waved one of his big awkward hands, taking in his office and everything that could be seen from its big picture windows. He stood up, walked to one of the windows; he had an aggressive walk, the way, Malone remembered, the police academy had taught them to approach a riotous assembly. But there was no riotous assembly here, just a crowd of suspicions. “I'm sorry about what happened to Miss Jack, but I've got enough bastards out there hounding me without you two trying to lay something else on me.”

“Righto, one last question. Where did you spend the weekend?”

For a moment it seemed that O'Brien hadn't heard the question; then he turned back from the window. It had started to rain once more; the glass looked as if it was dissolving, the city behind him was about to collapse. He had a sudden stricken look on his face. “I can't tell you that, Scobie.”

“Why not?” Malone saw that Clements was scribbling in his notebook: negative answers were sometimes as helpful as positive ones.

“I was with a lady. I'm not going to tell you her name.”

“Are you married?”

“I was. Twice. I've been divorced for, I don't know, twelve years, I think.”

“
Your ex-wives—where are they?”

“In London. They were both in the pop scene—one was a singer, the other was in PR. There were no kids, thank Christ. They're married again, both of them, and, as far as I know, never give me a thought. Is this going to keep on? If it is, I think I'll send for my lawyer.”

Malone rose and Clements followed him. “There'll be no need for that, not yet. But we may have to come back, Mr. O'Brien.”

“Mr. O'Brien? I suppose I'd better get used to calling you Inspector? We were mates once, remember? Well, almost.”

Bits of memory were coming back, like the jetsam of youth drifting in on a long-delayed tide. “I don't think we were ever mates, Horrie. You were too much of a loner, you always had your eye on the main chance.”

II

“Brian Boru—” Except in passion, when she called him names even his mother would never have called him (or perhaps least of all his mother), he was always Brian Boru to her, as if the two words were hyphenated. It had a certain Gaelic-Gallic ring to it, if one could imagine the combination. “I can't get there for at least an hour.”

“Can't you make it before then?”

“It's impossible. What's so serious?”

But he said he didn't want to talk about it over the phone, he would expect to see her in an hour. She hung up, stood for a moment looking out at the rain-drenched gardens without seeing them. He had sounded worried; more importantly, he had sounded as if he
needed
her. Almost every night, in the last moments before falling asleep, she asked herself why she had fallen so desperately in love with him. She had met many more physically attractive men, as many who were more attractive in their personality and their approach to women. But if love could be defined in definite terms, it would have died years ago: the psychoanalysts would have turned it into a clinical science. She had been in love
before,
with three men before her husband, and she knew in her heart, if not in her head, that part of the joy of love was that one could never truly fathom it. She no longer loved her husband: that was something she was definite about, had been for months before she had met Brian Boru. But there could be no thought of divorce from the Prime Minister, not while he was in office.

She could hear the chatter behind her in the main rooms of the house. Kirribilli House, the Prime Minister's Sydney residence, had never been as much a favourite with her and Philip as it had been with previous Prime Ministers and their wives; she always compared it unfavourably with Admiralty House next door, the Governor-General's residence. Both were harbourside mansions built by nineteenth-century men with delusions of grandeur; Gibbes, the Collector of Customs who had built Admiralty House, had had grander delusions than Feez, the merchant of Kirribilli House. Both the Norvals had aspirations to grandeur, though Anita kept hers more secret. It was difficult to compete with her husband's conceit, but up till now she had not discouraged him in his ambition to some day be Governor-General. It would be even more difficult, as the wife of the G-G, to get a divorce.

She went out of the small study where she had taken the call and back to the main reception room. She paused in the doorway, caught the last of the gossip before this charity morning tea broke up. It was for one of her favourite charities, homes for deaf children, and she was glad the children couldn't hear the gossip.

“Have you met her husband? His idea of repartee is to pass wind.”

“Why do we need men? I'm beginning to understand lesbians.”

“That writer over there, what's-her-name, she's one, you know.”

“Really? I thought they all looked like punk rockers.”

“I tried to congratulate her on her new book, but she got in first. She writes her own reviews, so they say.”

“They sleep in separate rooms,” Anita heard from another corner. “She tells me they make love on their anniversary each year. I'm surprised they know where the essentials still are.”

The women began to file past Anita Norval, chattering, murmuring, gushing. She found groups
of
women no worse than groups of men; the men were a little more deferential to her, paying awkward court to her beauty and the position of her husband, if they were conservatives. Gossip was endemic to both sexes; the men varied it by trying to buy or sell influence with it. There were no men here this morning and she was glad of that; she did not want to compare any of them with Brian Boru. It was a weakness she recognized in herself that she was always comparing people. It had started when she had first gone into radio over twenty years ago.

Penelope Debbs, the last to leave, stood before her. “I always enjoy coming to Kirribilli House, Anita. You're so fortunate.”

“It comes with the territory, as they say.” In her days in radio, when she had hosted her own chat show, she had perhaps used too many American expressions; she had cured herself of that since Philip had gone into politics, but some still clung. They put her very much on side with Philip's minders, all of whom had done a quick course in Americana. “You should put forward a bill to have a permanent residence for the State Premier. There are several going around Point Piper for ten or twelve million.”

“I'm Labour, remember? If ever I suggested anything like that, I'd be thrown out on my rear.”

She had been born a Whymper; with such a name she had been destined for some sort of climbing, though Alps were in short supply locally. Unfitted for mountaineering, she had taken up political climbing. She had driven her pitons into at least a dozen rivals on her way up, buried others in small avalanches started by her scrabbling boots.