Babylon South (23 page)

Malone came straight to the point. “You've probably read about the murder of Emma Springfellow, Mr. Dural. She was the sister of the judge who sent you up twenty-odd years ago.”

Dural went cold: for Chrissakes, they weren't going to pin a murder rap on him, were they? He wanted to go home to Parramatta, but not with another murder marked against him.

“
I read about it.”

“Where were you last Monday night?”

Dural relaxed, though only inwardly; he showed the bulls nothing. “That's easy. I was up at a jazz club up the street. I went up about, I dunno, nine o'clock, something like that, and I come home just after midnight.”

“You have someone who'll vouch for that?”

“The little bloke next door, Jerry Killeen. He come with me. He'll remember it, „cause he hated it. He's no jazz fan, he kept asking the band to play some Nelson Eddy songs. Nelson Eddy, for Chrissakes! I remember it, all right, the night, I mean. I never been so bloody embarrassed in me life.”

Clements grinned and Malone, who knew a little about jazz, nodded sympathetically.

“Okay,” said Clements, “we'll take your word for it. But while we're here—do you know anyone around the Cross who'll do a knock job if the price is right?”

“Mr. Clements, I been outa the game for years. I dunno none of the rough „uns that are around today. Was she done by a hit man? I dunno I'd wanna know anyone who'd hurt a woman, I mean a
decent
woman. I done a few knock jobs in my time—I wouldn't of been in Parramatta if I hadn't—but I'd never do domestics. You know, hurting a woman „cause some bugger paid for it. How was she done? Shot, wasn't she?”

“Yes,” said Malone. “Two .380s, probably from a Walther.”

Dural was suddenly aware of his own Walther in the drawer against which his right buttock was resting. Possession of a weapon, if the bulls wanted to search his room, could have his licence revoked. For a moment he was tempted to produce it: Parramatta beckoned. But in the same drawer were what remained of the five hundred dollar coins from the bank robbery at Leichhardt. He didn't want to be connected to that. Those goons had shot at the police and that was a no-no in his book. He wanted to be on good terms with the screws when he went back home.

“I don't think it'd be a hit man with a piece like that. Maybe, but I don't think so. He'd use a sawn-off .22, something like that, something he'd screw a silencer on to. I mean, if he was a professional.
Fitting
a silencer to a Walther ain't easy.”

“We don't know that a silencer was used.”

“You mean you ain't found the gun yet? Then how d'you know it was a Walther?”

Malone stood up. It had been a stupid forlorn hope that Dural might be the killer; anything that would lead them away from Justine and get John Leeds off his back. “Right, Mr. Dural, we just had to check. You're staying out of trouble, I suppose?”

“Doing me best, Mr. Malone.”

He opened the door for them and they stepped out into the hallway. Killeen was there, broom in hand, making a mountain out of a molehill of dust. “Just cleaning up. Everything all right, Chilla?”

Dural nodded, grinning inwardly at the old stickybeak. “Just a coupla old friends, Jerry. Inspector Malone and Sergeant Clements. Just checking where I was Monday night.”

“What happened then?”

“Nothing,” said Malone, but didn't believe Killeen's innocent look. The old man would know all the news that was printed or broadcast, and a great deal that wasn't. “You and Mr. Dural were together that night, he says. Where'd you go?”

“You think I could forget it? No offence, Chilla, but that was the night we went up to the jazz club. Jeez, what a night! You wouldn't believe it, Inspector, they never heard of Nelson Eddy!”

“Hard to believe.” Malone shook his head in sympathy.

“Who's Nelson Eddy?” Clements was straight-faced.

“Come on,” said Malone and led the way out to the police car. Inside it, he said, “Why pick on the little feller? You know who Nelson Eddy was.”

“I should be picking on you, bringing us out in this heat. That was a waste of time, Scobie. I tell you, we don't have to look outside the Springfellow family for Emma's murderer. Least of all, look at Chilla Dural. If ever I've seen an old lag who doesn't want any more trouble, it's him.”

“Do a further check on him. Have Andy Graham check the jazz club.”

All at once he wished that Chilla Dural was the murderer, but he knew in his policeman's
heart,
a suspect organ amongst crims, that life was never that simple.

IV

“That film only proves that happy innocence isn't possible, even for fools,” said Gil Holman.

“Yves Montand's character was typically French,” said his wife Jean. “If the story had been set today, he'd have been letting off bombs in Gerard Dépardieu's back yard.”

Her accent on the names was perfect: she taught French in one of the better private schools. She and Gil were both teachers, he at a State high school. Jean and Lisa had gone to university together, had lost contact and then, a year ago, had met again. Malone suspected that the friendship, on either woman's part, was not a deep one; he also suspected that Lisa had taken up with the Holmans because they offered her some intellectual stimulus, even in their limited outlook, that he couldn't give her. Though he would never have told her so.

“I'm always half a street behind what's going on when I see a foreign film,” he said. “By the time I've read the sub-titles, the actors have changed their expressions.” It wasn't much of a contribution to the discussion, but he didn't want to embarrass Lisa by sitting there like a log.

They had been to see
Jean de Florette
at the Village cinema here in Double Bay and then come across to the International Café for supper. The Holmans had no children and so didn't have to worry about baby-sitters; the Malone children were staying the night with Lisa's parents at Rose Bay, probably still up way past their bed-time and making the most of their grandparents' indulgence. Some day, when Jan and Elisabeth Pretorius died, the children would be indulged even further: a trust had been set up for them that would give each of them a very comfortable start in his or her adult life. Malone was unsure how he felt about the intended inheritance; he would have liked to have been responsible for the assurance of his children's future himself. That, too, was something he would never mention to Lisa.

The International was Double Bay's principal meeting place. The tiny inner suburb, five minutes by car from the city centre, was also known as Double Pay;
bargain
was a rude word, except between wholesalers and retailers; customers who came looking for bargains were as optimistic as the
hunters
who came to the International looking for virgins. Here amongst the expensive boutiques, the European delicatessens and the coffee lounges, the post-war European immigrants, those with money or memories of it, had begun to meet in the 1950s at the International Café. They would sit, as they had in cafés in Vienna and Berlin and Budapest, sipping their coffees and watching the passing parade and each other. At one time it was said that anyone with an Australian accent would not be served, but those reverse xenophobic days had gone. Now there were far fewer older immigrants, one heard much less foreign language, and the younger set had moved in, those with money of their own or with parents who had it. They still did what was expected of them: they sipped their coffee and watched the passing parade and each other. To Malone's jaundiced eye, that of the boy with the mark of Erskineville still on him, they looked to be all from the same family, their smugness a distinguishable feature like a hereditary birthmark.

Three young men came in, peacocks in white John Lane outfits, gold gleaming round their necks and their wrists. They sat down, turned their chairs to face in the same direction, and, as it happened, looked directly at Malone in his Fletcher Jones checked shirt and his 49-dollar Hagger fawn trousers. He might have been wearing a bikie's leathers; they looked at each other as if to ask how he had got in here. They were black-haired, darkly tanned and handsome: they could have been Italian, Greek or Lebanese. Above a certain level of affluence, Malone thought, all Wogs look the same. And at once heard his father's voice in his ears and felt ashamed. What was the matter with him? Where, all of a sudden, had his prejudices come from? Had he, like Clements, suddenly caught the virus of them?

“What's the matter?” said Lisa. “You look as if you've swallowed a cup of cold coffee.”

He wondered what she would say if he told her what he had been thinking. He couldn't, however, tell her in front of the Holmans. They were the sort who claimed they had no prejudices, except against the French, the Reagan Administration, the Nationalist Party, the Returned Servicemen's League and all loggers and saw-millers and any anti-conservationist. He looked over Lisa's shoulder and was saved.

“There's Justine Springfellow.”

The other three turned; as had most of the big café's customers. “My God, she's beautiful!” said Jean Holman.

“
She's just made the most of herself, that's all,” said Gil, the expert on women.

“We all do that,” said Jean and smiled at Lisa. “Or we try to.”

“Have you met her?” Lisa said to Malone.

“A couple of times. I had a session with her today.”

“Who's the guy with her?” said Gil.

“His name's Michael Broad. He's her old lady's financial director.”

“Her old lady,” said Lisa. “That's how you describe Venetia Springfellow? How would you describe me to your mates in Homicide?”

“You're my old lady,” said Malone and grinned. If they had been alone he would have taken her hand; but not in front of the Holmans, not in front of the International crowd. “Or my kids' old lady, if you like.”

Lisa smiled at him. “I don't know why people say Aussie men have no charm.”

“Ah, break it down,” said Gil, who, Lisa had once confided to Malone, had as much charm as an empty beer bottle. “We're just different, that's all.”

“Different,” said Jean, and for the first time Malone wondered if things were quite as congenial between the Holmans as they made out. “Yes, I think that's the word.
La différence.
That Michael Broad is different.”

“He's as smooth as the top of his head,” said Malone.

Lisa ran her hand over his thick unruly thatch. “So are you.”

Without thinking, Malone had turned his chair round, like the three peacocks at the nearby table; he was an animal observing its prey. Or Clements's prey: the big sergeant should be here, not himself.

The café a moment ago had seemed full; but somehow Justine and Broad had found an empty table; money, real money, has its own magic. Justine, well aware of the circle of stares ringing her, sat down, arranging herself with the unnatural grace that is natural to a model; Lisa, who knew that
the
Miss Springfellow had never had to earn a living as a model, wondered where she had acquired the gift.
Malone,
for whom sitting down was no more than putting a bum on a seat, just continued to observe.

Then Justine looked across the café and saw him. The International was well-lit; it was a place designed not for rendezvous but for recognition; the Viennese owner knew his customers better than they knew themselves. She stared at Malone, her eyes opening as if she were suddenly frightened; then she leaned forward and said something to Broad. He turned and looked across at Malone, his gaze coolly aggressive.

“Her boyfriend doesn't like you,” said Gil Holman.

Lisa had turned back, was picking at her cheesecake: she knew she made better herself, “I don't think he's her boyfriend. He is just her minder, a hanger-on.”

Malone looked sideways at her. “What makes you say that?”

Lisa smiled at Jean. “Do you agree with me?”

Jean nodded. “She's far too casual with him. When she walked in, she might as well have been on her own, for all the attention she gave him.”

“Listen to „em!” said Gil. “You two oughta be in the police force. Cagney and Lacey. What do you think, Inspector?”

“I never argue with a woman in public. Certainly not with two of them.” He looked back across the café. Justine and Broad were no longer staring at him; but neither were they looking at each other. They had the detached appearance that a brother and sister might have in public; or Justine did. “But it's given me something to think about.”

On the way out the Malones and the Holmans had to pass Justine's table. As they did so, Malone paused. “I'm glad to see you relaxing, Miss Springfellow. You didn't look very relaxed this morning, I'm sorry about that.”

She was wearing a blue linen dress, but he guessed it was not one she would wear to the office: it was a shade too revealing. He wondered if it was the dress she had worn on Monday night.

“I don't think Miss Springfellow needs your sympathy or your attention,” said Broad, smiling broadly; people were looking at them and he attempted to look as if he and Malone were exchanging
pleasantries.
He was dressed in a white silk jacket and blue shirt and trousers. Malone, standing above him, might have been his gardener caught in an off-duty moment and being told how to mow the lawn tomorrow. Except that no gardener could afford the International's prices. “You don't have to stop and talk to her in public. Not here, anyway.”

Malone grinned, though he was not amused, “I didn't think I looked
that
much like a cop. Sorry, Miss Springfellow. Next time I'll wear my Gucci gear.”

As he caught up with Lisa she said, “I heard that. You trying to sound like those cops in
Miami Vice
?”