Babylon South (47 page)

“Maybe. Our game is a bit like yours, I think. You make your assessments, then you make your investment. We do the same. You win a few, you lose a few. The difference is, when we lose we can't write it off as a tax loss.”

“You're going to lose this one. I had nothing to do with Emma's murder.”

Malone glanced back at the tweed hat lying on the back bench of the car. “Bring that hat with you when we go up to my office.”

Broad didn't ask why: which was the first of his mistakes. He had evidently decided indignation was no defence; he had gone to the other extreme, he had decided to remain silent. But there was a growing tension in him that Malone noted: Broad was more highly strung than he had suspected. The cold exterior was an armour.

Broad said nothing further till he reached the sixth floor of the Remington Rand building and asked Malone if he could call a lawyer.

“
Go ahead. But don't try Brownlow—I wouldn't mind betting Lady Springfellow has already been on to him.”

“The bitch,” said Broad, but he was talking to himself and not to Malone.

He called a lawyer named Langer, who arrived within twenty minutes. He was Jewish, a refugee like Broad but an earlier arrival. He had come out of an Austrian Displaced Persons camp as a boy after the Second World War and had taken to Australia like a native. He had played rugby and now played golf; he preferred beer to wine and he couldn't stand Strauss or Schubert; his tales from the Vienna Woods were usually dirty. He was short, fat and knew as much about the law as a whole Bench of judges.

“Hello, Scobie, what have we got here?

“Nothing so far, Freddie, just some questions.”

Broad was shocked that Malone and Langer were so friendly. “Relax,” said Langer. “The police don't pay me, you do. You'll get your money's worth. Can we go somewhere Scobie, while I talk to my client?”

Most of Homicide had gone home; only a few detectives remained at their desks. Malone gestured to an empty corner at the far end of the room. “Take your time. I don't want to start questioning Mr. Broad till some evidence I'm expecting arrives.”

When Clements and Cheshire did arrive, Broad and Langer were still down at the far end of the room, though they seemed now to have nothing to say to each other. They half-rose as the two newcomers arrived, but Malone waved to them to stay where they were.

“Well, do we have anything?”

“Bloody oath we do,” said Cheshire and laid out some magnified prints on Malone's desk. “This is the print from the silencer. This is the one from the bedside table in Emma's flat. These I took from the gold pencil, the blotter handle and the glasses case. He goes in for the best, don't he?” Cheshire paused to admire the taste of someone who could afford the best. Then he said, “They all match perfectly. They're his index finger.”

“We've got him!” said Clements.

“
Have we got him on his own? That's the point.” Malone looked down the long room. “Did he do the job for Justine? Or with her? Or on his own?”

Cheshire was gathering up the prints. “I'll leave you blokes to work that out. I better make myself scarce with these, except the ones on the silencer and the table. We don't want his legal eagle to know how you got the other prints. You want me to throw „em away?”

“Don, you know better than that—we never throw anything away. Sometimes we can't find things, like illegal tapes, but we never throw anything away. Keep „em. I'll question him, then I'll take him over to the Centre and charge him and take his prints officially. I'll let you know when we need you. And thanks, Don.”

“Any time,” said Cheshire and departed, a tradesman to his fingertips and anyone else's.

Malone got out his running sheets and waved to Broad and Langer to join him and Clements. The few remaining detectives in the big room looked up curiously as the two men passed them, but once Malone got down to his questioning they studiously avoided looking towards him and Clements. It was the old territorial imperative at work: stay out of my case till you're invited in.

“According to our earlier investigation, Mr. Broad, on the night of Emma Springfellow's murder you went to dinner with a Miss Donatelli, you took her home, left her at her door and went home to your own flat at Double Bay. Miss Donatelli corroborated all that, at least her part. You reached home at approximately ten-fifteen. Correct?”

“As far as I can remember. That was six months ago.”

“Sure, but it wasn't just an ordinary night when nothing happened. Let's try another date.” He was looking at his notes now, which had nothing to do with the running sheet. “Thursday, October twenty-ninth, you went over to Adelaide with Mr. Dircks from Channel Fifteen.”

“Did I?”

Malone, tired now but trying not to show it, glanced at Langer. “Tell your client not to be a smart-arse, Freddie. It will be quicker and easier all round.”

“I'd advise you to just answer the questions, Michael,” said Langer. “At this stage these are just
questions
of fact.”

Broad stared at him as if deciding whether to sack him or not; then he looked back at Malone. “Yes, I went to Adelaide. It was business.”

“I'm sure it was. Business business and personal business.”

“This is where I have to advise my client to be careful, Inspector. We're getting into conjecture now.”

Malone acknowledged that with a nod. He picked up the tweed hat which was lying on his desk. “Did you wear this while in Adelaide?”

“Not that I remember.”

Malone tried another tack. “What were your relations with Emma?”

“Cool but correct.” Broad had become stiff, in posture and voice. A vein throbbed just once in his temple.

“She wasn't threatening you?”

There was just a flicker of apprehension in the eyes; it could have been a trick of light. “Why me? Her fight was with the Springfellow women.”

“You worked for—the Springfellow women. She wasn't threatening you with the Companies and Securities Commission?” He had remembered the entry in Emma's diary:
Someone should be reported to the NCSC. How do these people get away with these swindles?

Again there was the flicker in the eyes: Broad was beginning to crack inside. But he was still ceramic-hard on the outside.

“Don't answer that,” said Langer.

Broad waved him to be silent; he didn't take his gaze away from Malone. “If she was threatening me, and I can't remember that she was, it was only part of the larger threat to the Springfellow women.” The Springfellow women sounded like a tribe, one with whom he had only the slightest connection. He gestured at the running sheets. “I'm sure you have all that in there.”

“You didn't visit Emma on the night of her murder, after you had gone home to your flat?”

“
No.”

Malone opened a drawer in his desk and took out the silencer in its plastic envelope. “Have you seen that before?”

“No.”

Malone stared at him for a while, till he saw the vein throb again in the temple. Broad was clutching at himself from the inside.

“Mr. Broad, you didn't ask what it was. Most law-abiding people have never seen a silencer—they would just take that for some sort of metal pipe. Did you know it was a silencer?”

Broad looked at Langer, though he didn't seem to see him. The latter said to Malone, “I'd advise him not to answer that.”

“It's a Gold Spot silencer, made here in Australia,” Malone told Broad, not taking his eyes off him. “Did you go to a gun dealer in Adelaide named—” he named the dealer “—and purchase this silencer and have him fit it to a Walther PPK .380? The same gun that's been presented in evidence in Justine's trial?”

“Again, Inspector, I have to advise my client not to answer. You're asking him to incriminate himself.”

Malone nodded again, but hadn't stopped looking at Broad. “Did you remove the Walther from the gun cabinet at the Springfellow home? You were a frequent visitor there, weren't you?”

“Not that frequent.” Broad now was almost robot-like.

“I don't think these questions should be allowed,” said Langer. “I don't mean to be rude, Inspector, but I think it's reached a stage of put up or shut up.”

Malone grinned, though he had no real humour left. “Now
you're
sounding like a smart-arse, Freddie. But one last question for Mr. Broad. Do you know a man named Koster?”

“No.” Broad was holding himself rigid, the rein at breaking point.

“He's a gun dealer, mostly illegal. You approached him here in Sydney about buying a silencer.”

“My client has already answered your question,” said Langer. “He's said he doesn't know this
man
Koster. So are you going to put up?”

Malone looked at Clements, who nodded. Both knew that at the moment they had very little that would stand up in court; they could start nothing official till they had Broad's fingerprints on the record. Then they would have to produce Koster and the gun dealer from Adelaide to identify him.

Malone took the jump: “We're arresting Mr. Broad on being an accessory before the fact of the murder of Emma Springfellow. There may be other charges to follow. We'll take him up to Police Centre and charge him. We'll ask that bail be denied tonight, but you can apply for it tomorrow morning when we take him before the magistrate. On your feet, Mr. Broad.”

Broad sat as if refusing to move. Then he slowly stood up. None of the others recognized it, but the madness that had gripped his mother was taking hold of him. It had happened before, when Emma had threatened him with exposure to the NCSC. Everything that he had built in the last twenty years had been cracked at the base when he had lost so much in the Crash; Emma, with her malicious threat, had been ready to topple the whole edifice of his life to the ground. Then she was dead, out of the way, and Justine, his unlucky, unsuspecting saviour, had been laid with the blame. He had taken control of the Springfellow Corporation, and begun to rebuild his life and his fortune, had begun to enlarge his ambitions. And now this policeman, this Malone, this dull plodding nobody, was threatening the whole edifice again.

“You'll regret this, Mr. Malone. You'll regret it to your dying day.” He said it quietly, like the sanest of men.

13

I

MALONE WAS
having breakfast next morning when the phone rang. Claire, house telephonist in case all calls were for her, answered it. “Dad, it's for you!”

Malone didn't know why, but his first thought was that Broad had committed suicide in the cells at Police Centre. “Who is it?”

“It's the Commissioner.” Claire lowered her voice, put on her best elocution tones, a hundred dollars a term extra: “Just a moment, sir. My father is coming. Thank you, sir. One tries.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece as Malone came out into the hallway. “He said I had a nice phone voice.”

“One tries?”
said Malone. “You sound like a female stuffed shirt.”

She made a face at him, gave him the phone and went back to her bedroom to finish getting ready for school. It was an ordinary day, just like any other weekday morning. Except, of course, that the Police Commissioner did not call every morning.

“Scobie? Something's come up. I'm at my office.” Malone looked at his watch: 7.50. The Commissioner was known to be an early starter, but he was not usually in his office before 8.30. “Come and see me at once.”

Malone was on the point of refusing, of finding some excuse. He was exhausted; he had slept only fitfully last night. He knew instinctively that this wasn't official business, it could have nothing to do with Broad's arrest last night; or could it? He had already done far too much for the Commissioner. Yet even as he thought of trying to find an excuse, he knew that he couldn't. It had nothing to do with rank; he bowed to that other badge, respect. “I'll be there as soon as I can, sir.”

He hung up the phone, went back to the kitchen. “I have to go.”

“
The Commissioner?” said Lisa. “Let him wait. Finish your breakfast. The bacon and eggs are ready.”

“I can't—”

“Have your breakfast,” said Lisa firmly, as if she were speaking to one of the children. “Tell him you were held up in the traffic. Someone around here had better start arranging your priorities. You tossed and turned all night and now you want to rush off on an empty stomach.”

“I've had my porridge—” Lisa still believed in a hearty Dutch breakfast for cold mornings.

“There, eat that and no argument!” She thumped a plate of bacon and eggs in front of him. Then she kissed the top of his head. “You're ours more than you're his.”

“If Dad takes the car,” said Tom, “who's gunna drive us to school?”

“You're going to walk,” said Lisa. “Dutch children always walk to school or go on their bikes. It's why they're always so healthy.”

“Stuff the Dutch,” said Maureen, who had been listening to rock stars being interviewed on 2JJJ, and got a heavy Dutch clip under the ear from her mother.

Malone, having had his priorities arranged for him by his loving wife, ate his breakfast, had a second cup of coffee, then went out and got into the Commodore and drove with the peak-hour traffic into Homicide. He parked in the garage and got out of the car as Clements drove in beside him.

“I've got to go and see the Commissioner.” Clements looked enquiringly at him. “I'll tell you about it later. In the meantime, you handle Broad at the magistrate's court. He'll ask for bail. I'd rather object to it, but at this stage I don't think we can, not till we get all the evidence in. Ask for as high a bail as you can get.”