Babylon South (18 page)

He drew Malone aside. “What case are you on? The Springfellow one?”

“Both of them, sir. The sister, Emma, was murdered last night.”

“Yes, I heard that. What's the Commissioner's interest in it?”

“I don't know if he has any, sir. I just got the call that he wanted to see me.”

Zanuch was itching with curiosity, but he didn't scratch himself. Instead he just smiled, nodded and went on his way out of the lobby with, “Good luck with the cases, Inspector. I'll look forward to hearing of an arrest or two.”

Malone got into the lift, wondering at what rivalries went on here where the brass polished itself every day. He rode up to the twentieth floor and was shown into the Commissioner's office by a secretary who had already refreshed her make-up, ready to leave. She said good-night and Malone and the Commissioner were left alone.

“You're wondering why I sent for you?”

Malone took it carefully. “I hope it's not politics again, sir.”

Leeds smiled wryly. “If only it were as simple as that . . . You're on the Springfellow cases, both of them, right? Any progress?”

“Not much. I—”

“Yes?”

“I'm here because you're somehow connected with them, sir. Am I right?”

Leeds said nothing for a moment, tapping with a brass ruler on his tidy desktop. He was renowned for his insistence on neatness and the slobs in the Department were always running for cover. Everything had to be in its place; but now, suddenly, things were starting to unravel. He hated the thought that he was now having to confide in a junior officer, even though one for whom he had the greatest respect.

“
I understand you have a photo you took from Miss Springfellow's flat—one of me and Sir Walter. Where is it?”

“Locked away in Sergeant Clements's desk. I haven't shown it to Chief Inspector Random yet.”

“You'll have to, of course.” He waited for Malone to agree and after a moment the latter nodded. “There's something else. You may find out eventually or you may not, but I think I'd better tell you. I visited Emma Springfellow last night. Someone else had been there before me, as I gather you already know.”

“Yes, Justine Springfellow.”

“Emma was still alive when she left. I saw her leaving, when I was coming down the street.” Malone remained silent and Leeds said testily, “I'm telling you she didn't murder Emma.”

“She could have gone back after you left, sir.”

“For God's sake, Scobie!” Malone had never seen him so agitated. They had had awkward moments between them on three or four other cases, but they had involved politics; this was different and the awkwardness now had spikes on it. “The girl didn't do it! Don't start building a case against her on nothing—” Then he stopped abruptly, put down the brass ruler and steadied himself. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have flown off the handle like that. You do what you have to.”

“What sort of state was Emma in when you got up to see her?”

“Quite a state. Angry, a little hysterical—”

“Did she quieten down?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you go to see her, sir?”

Leeds hesitated, then shook his head. “I'm not prepared to say at this stage. It was a—a family matter.”

Malone drew a deep breath, slumped back in his chair. “I think I'd better ask Greg Random to take me off this one. I have too much respect for you. I don't want to have to start nailing you to the wall with questions.”

Leeds
gazed steadily at the younger man. There was reciprocated respect; there was no more decent, hardworking man working under him. Malone was an example of what he had tried to make the Department. He was handicapped by his own decency, by his own ambitions for the Department: “Thanks, Scobie, but no. You have to stay on it.”

Malone said nothing for almost half a minute. Beyond the Commissioner's head he could see the lights now bright in the valley of Woolloomooloo; the towers of St. Mary's Cathedral stood on the slopes like medieval watch-towers. The windows were closed and the sounds of the city were shut out. The silence between the two men seemed to expand to fill the room. At last he said, “Righto, I'll stay with it. But I may have to come back and ask awkward questions.”

“I know that.” Leeds sighed, seemed to shrink down in his chair. “The past has a habit of catching up, hasn't it?”

“If it didn't, we wouldn't solve half our crimes. Did you leave any prints in the flat, sir?”

Leeds sat up again, frowned. “What? I suppose so. Yes, I did. I was holding a glass—I had a whisky and water.”

“Scientific will have found it. Emma hadn't washed any of the glasses—I noticed them on a tray on a sideboard in the living-room. Justine's prints are probably on a glass, too. We'll have to check hers.”

“What about mine?”

“If nobody saw you going up to the flat—did they?”

“No, I don't think so. There was nobody in the lobby—Emma herself let me in through the security intercom. I'm not asking for favours, Scobie—” But he was, and they both knew it. “There should be a third set of prints. The person who did the killing.”

“Yes,” said Malone non-committally; he could see the riptide and he was doing his best to avoid it. “Anyhow, yours may never be traced. What time did you leave the flat?”

“Just after nine-thirty. Nobody saw me leave.”

“You saw nobody waiting to go in?”

“No.”

“
Sir, do you carry a gun?”

Leeds stared at him. “You're really grilling me, aren't you? No, I don't. I have an issue Smith & Wesson at home, but I don't carry it around with me.”

“We don't know what she was shot with, not yet. The bullets are still in the body.” A spark glowed in his memory. “You were a friend of Sir Walter's. You used to go shooting with him—”

“Just the once. On that trip in the photo, up to the Roper River.”

“Did you ever see his collection of guns?”

“Yes. He lent me a couple of guns for that trip—I can't remember what they were.”

“Can you remember the hand-guns?”

“No. Why?”

“The collection is still there in Lady Springfellow's home. Two hand-pieces are missing. One's been missing for years—we think it might've been a Colt .45. The other's been gone only a couple of weeks. It's a smaller piece, maybe a Walther.”

Leeds didn't flinch. “It was a valuable collection—Walter would have had it insured. Lady Springfellow may not have kept up the insurance, but there'd be an inventory in the files somewhere. I hope you're not suggesting
she
killed Emma?”

“I'm not suggesting anyone at the moment, sir. Were you a friend of hers as well as Sir Walter's?”
How did I get into this situation? Did Corporal Kafoops ask Napoleon why he'd lost the battle of Waterloo?

Again Leeds's voice and gaze were steady. “Yes.”

“A close friend?”

“Yes.”

“That's what you meant, wasn't it? The past catching up with us.”

Leeds picked up the brass ruler again; for a moment he looked as if he was trying to snap it in half. “It was something I'd rather not talk about. I'm not proud of it.”

“Will it come out if I continue with the investigation on him?”

“
It may. I hope not.”

Malone was silent once more; then he stood up. It was dark outside and dark in here, too: the Commissioner had turned on no lights. “May I go, sir? I think I'm getting a headache.”

Leeds put down the ruler, managed to rake up a smile. “I'm sorry I've got you into this bind, Scobie. Yet I'm glad. I'd rather you investigated me than some of the others in the Department.”

“I don't mean to be rude, sir—but thanks for nothing. You wouldn't care to transfer me to Tibooburra?”

“I may be there before you.”

III

Chilla Dural was getting ready to hold up a bank.

Life on the outside, he had decided, was too complicated. He had once been as self-reliant as any man in Sydney: “I can always trust you to look after yourself,” Heinie Odets had told him. But it hadn't turned out that way, not these past few weeks.

In gaol he had been able to look after himself. There had been problems when he had first gone in; the screws had been at pains to let him know who were the bosses. Those were the days when a pick-handle had been an accepted form of persuasion. He had made the mistake of trying to fight them; it had taken him quite a while to realize that that wouldn't work. The system would always beat you unless you joined it. After a year he had joined it, had acknowledged who were the bosses and taken his own place in the pecking order. He had never acknowledged any other con as a boss in the yards and that had resulted in a couple of running wars; in the end he had been recognized as his own boss, except for the screws, and he had been left alone. There had been a certain code in those days, but it wasn't like that any longer. Drugs ran the gaols these days: he who had the supply ran the system and a code was only something that gave you a runny nose in winter. He had never taken any drugs and he had knocked down several dealers who had tried to sell them to him.

Two or three queers had tried to mate up with him, seeing him as a protector, but he had had,
and
still had, an almost religious priggishness towards homosexuality. When he had gone into Parramatta there had been some, but not much, of it; now, it seemed, it was as common as masturbation had once been. Once, as an act of revenge, a yard boss had organized four homos to gang-bang him; they had made the mistake of trying to take him while he was dressed and not stripped in the shower-block. He had had a knife and he had used it effectively; nothing deflates an erection so quickly as its being chopped off at the base by a sharp knife. From then on he had been left alone.

In time he had become friendly with some of the screws, though he had never let them turn him into an informer. He got to know of their families, though he never met any of them; in the carpentry shop, where he had become head of the shop, he made toys for their kids. One of the screws had, like himself, a fondness for jazz; he brought in records for Dural, old classics by Beiderbecke and Bechet and Art Tatum. Life had settled into a pattern and, though he had dreamed of freedom and what he would do when his time was served, he had never fretted about it. He had nowhere to go, but he had felt he was getting somewhere, even if standing still.

Now he was getting nowhere and still had nowhere to go. He had bought himself some new clothes and gone looking for a job; but no one wanted a 58-year-old ex-con, not even the new nightclub owners, his last resort. He had hoped at first for a decent, honest job; he had worked for one day as a carpenter on a building site. Then the union rep had come round, asked for his ticket, refused to let him join the union when he said he had no ticket and had told him to get lost. He had king-hit the union rep and walked off the job. So much for rehabilitation. He had, unenthusiastically, gone to a half-way house run by ex-cons, but half an hour there had been enough: he had listened to more politics in twenty minutes than in twenty years in Parramatta.

He had talked it over with his parole officer, Les Glizzard. Because he had been serving a life sentence, he had not been released on parole but on licence. Once a fortnight he had to report to Glizzard and he was not allowed out of the State. He was not to apply for a passport, to consort with known criminals or to break the law in even the slightest way.

“I could throw a brick through a window,” he had said. “You'd have to pull me in for that.”

Glizzard
had shaken his young curly head. He had a broken nose but he still looked like a cherub, one who had been vandalized but not knocked off his feet. “You're wasting your time, Chilla, thinking like that. The coppers bring you in here for that, I'd just tell „em to forget it. We don't want you back, Chilla. The gaols are chock-a-block, we want your space. You've done your time, we can't go on providing you with a home.”

“Mr. Glizzard—”

“Call me Les.” That was his trouble: he was everybody's friend, a mate of all and sundry, especially the sundry. He should have been a nun, he saw too much good in too many of the world's worst.

“Les, I don't like it out here. There's real shit in gaol, I know that—they had a better class of con when I first went in.” He was not given to many jokes, but he grinned now. “But I can handle that shit. Out here—” He shook his head.

“You've got to be patient, Chilla. You're still in an institutional mode. Once we've got you into a work mode—”

“A what?”

“What?” There was a language barrier, even though they were both speaking in their native tongue. “Oh. Well, once we've got you
working.
Once we've got you in that mode, out there at the cutting edge of getting you on your feet, you'll be okay, it'll be a different scene.”

“I don't think so. I think I'll be back here in a coupla months at the outside, with the cops telling you I've knocked down some young punk or I been consorting with some of the old crims I used to know—”

Glizzard was not to be denied his role as guardian angel. “Not a chance, Chilla. I'm going to give you every opportunity. This is the cutting edge of our new policy, the rehabilitation mode. We've got to take risks and I'm betting you're a good risk.”

“I'm gunna disappoint you, Les.”

He had been out of gaol, had left home, only a month; but already he knew where he belonged.
Or
anyway didn't belong. He had given up looking for a job, trying to get into a work mode, and gone looking for means of getting back to prison. It would have to be something so serious that Glizzard, for all his bleeding heart and good intentions, could not brush it aside.