Murder Song

1

Malone got out of the car, waited till Lisa and the children had got out, then set the alarm and locked it. He debated whether to remove the hub-caps and lock them in the boot, but decided it would be too much trouble. Everyone in the street knew he was a cop and he had to take the chance that they either feared him or respected him. Erskineville had never been an area, even when he was growing up here, that had loved cops. Even his father had hated them.

Con Malone, the cop-hater mortally ashamed of having a cop for a son, was waiting in the doorway of the narrow terrace house for them. This was a house much like Mardi Jack’s and Gina Cazelli’s in Paddington; but Erskineville had never become gentrified like that other inner city district. All that had changed since Malone had lived here was that European immigrants had replaced the old British and Irish stock and that brighter colours had been painted over the old standard brown. Con, an immigrant-hater as well, had only just become accustomed to the Italians and Greeks and Lebanese newcomers, when, you wouldn’t believe it, the bloody Asians had started to move in. What with one bias and another, he was in a state of constant warfare never quite declared.

‘G’day, kids.’ He was not a kissing grandfather; that was for the Wogs. He shook hands with Lisa, but just nodded to Malone. He was as afraid of sentiment as he was of foreign invasions. ‘Gran’s ready to put dinner on the table. You know what she’s like, no waiting around.’

‘No pre-dinner drinks?’ said Malone. ‘No canapés?’

‘None of your fancy stuff with Mum,’ said Con, but had enough sense of humour to grin. ‘You been busy?’

‘Same as usual,’ said Malone and followed his family and his father down the narrow hall, stepping back, as he did every time he came here, into another life. Even though he was an only child and had loved his parents in the same undemonstrative way they loved him, he had wanted to escape from this house ever since he could remember. The dark small rooms, the ever-present smell of cooking, the constant shouts and screams from the ever-warring couple next door which would keep him awake at night; he had known there was a better place to live somewhere out there. His mother and father, he had known even then, would never leave; not even now when the Wogs and the Yellow Horde were pressing in on them. They felt safe in the small, narrow house. And, he hated to admit it, he too had felt safe: the whole world, it seemed, had then been a safer place. At least there had been no hit lists with his name on them.

His mother had dinner on the table; they were expected to arrive on time. She clasped the children to her, as she had never clasped Scobie to her; then pushed them into their chairs around the dining table. She gave her cheek to Lisa’s kiss, but didn’t return the kiss; she loved Lisa as much as she did the children and Scobie, but, like Con, she could not handle public sentiment.

‘Get started! Don’t let it get cold.’

It was a roast lamb dinner, the usual: none of your foreign muck here. Con had bought a bottle of red, his compliment to Lisa, the sophisticate in the family. Malone noticed it was a good label and he wondered who had advised the Old Man. Gradually Con Malone was changing for the better, but his son knew it was too late.

When dinner was over Lisa went into the kitchen to help Brigid with the washing-up, the children went into the front room to watch television and Malone and his father sat on at the dinner table to finish the bottle of wine.

‘I notice someone shot a copper out at Parramatta last week. You working on that one?’

‘No, that’s for the Parramatta boys. I’ve got my own case.’

‘That singer they found in Clarence Street?’ Though he would never admit it, Con Malone followed all the police news. He knew the dangers of his son’s job and he was afraid for him, though he would never admit that, either. ‘They’re shooting a lotta coppers these days,’ he said, giving his wine a careful look, as if he were a wine-taster.

Malone remarked his father’s concern and was touched by it; but he could never let Con know. All at once he was struck with the sad, odd wonder at what he would say to the Old Man on his death-bed. Would there be a last moment when both of them would let the barrier down and they would admit the truth of the love that strangled them both?

‘It’s a different world, Dad.’

‘You ever get any threats?’ He had never asked that question before.

‘Once or twice.’ There had been more than that; but why worry his father with them? ‘You just have to pick the serious ones from the loud-mouths.’

‘You ever tell Lisa about ’em?’

‘No. When you were having those union fights on the wharves, did you tell Mum?’

‘No.’ Con drained his glass, took his time before he said, ‘If someone ever tries to get you, let me know.’

‘Why? What’ll you do?’

‘I dunno. Bugger-all, I suppose. But I’d just like to know.’

Malone looked at his own glass; the wine had the colour of drying blood. ‘No, Dad. I don’t bring my worries home to Lisa –’ Which wasn’t strictly true; she anticipated them. ‘I’m not going to do it with you. I can handle whatever comes up. But if something ever does happen to me, I hope you and Mum would help prop up Lisa and the kids.’

‘You think we wouldn’t?’ Con Malone looked offended. ‘Jesus Christ –’

‘Who’s swearing?’ said Brigid, coming in from the kitchen. ‘What if the children hear you?’ They were her angels, to be protected from the world. She sprayed the house with holy water, as if dampening down the dust of sin; her rosary beads were always in her pocket, more important than a handkerchief. All her life she had been religious, but little of it had rubbed off on her husband and only a little more on her son. But at least I’m a believer, Malone thought. He doubted that his father was.

Lisa ran a hand affectionately round the back of Con’s neck; his blunt wrinkled face coloured. ‘I don’t think you could teach them anything, Dad. They hear it all on TV these days.’

‘Not in this house,’ said Malone with a grin. ‘Mum’s got the TV aerial aimed straight at St Mary’s, the Cardinal’s her favourite news-reader. Sermons and hymns and no news unless it’s good news.’

They all laughed, including Brigid: unlike so many narrowly religious, she could laugh at herself. She had never believed that Christ had gone through life without a smile or a joke.

When it was time to go home Malone carried Tom, who was already asleep, out to the car and settled him in the back seat between Lisa and Maureen. Brigid kissed all the children good-night, gave her cheek to Lisa and smiled at Malone. Con stood with his hands in his pockets, but it was obvious he had enjoyed having the family, his and Brigid’s family, come to visit them.

An Asian man and woman passed the Malones, said good evening in soft shy voices and went into a house several doors up the street.

‘That’s Mr and Mrs Van Trang,’ said Brigid. ‘They’re a real nice couple. They’re Catholics,’ she added, naturalizing them, forgiving them for being foreigners.

Con had just nodded at the Vietnamese. He looked at his son as the latter said good-night to him across the roof of the Commodore.

‘Drive carefully,’ he said: it was the closest he could come to saying, I love you all.

‘Night, Dad. Look after yourself.’ Some day he would put his arms round his father, when he was dying or dead.

Claire got in beside Malone as he settled in beside the wheel. ‘Enjoy yourself?’ he said.

‘I shouldn’t say it, Daddy, but why does Grandma’s house always smell of cooking?’

He took the car out from the kerb, pausing to let another car, drawing out from the kerb some distance behind him, go past. But it too paused, and he pulled out and drove on down the narrow street.

‘There’s been about a hundred years of cooking in that house, my grandmother lived there before Gran. It sorts of hangs around, the smell.’

‘You think we should bring Grandma a can of Air-ozone next time we come?’

‘You’ll do no such thing!’ said Lisa sharply. ‘Just stop breathing if you don’t like it while you’re there. That’s Grandma’s home, smell and all.’

Malone turned into a main road; the car following him did the same. ‘It doesn’t smell like your cooking,’ Claire said. ‘I wouldn’t mind if it did. But it’s, I dunno, cabbage, stuff like that.’

‘Corned beef and cabbage,’ said Malone. ‘I grew up on it.’

‘Yuk,’ said Maureen from the back seat.

Malone was almost halfway home to Randwick before he realized that he was being tailed. At every turn he had made, another car had made the same turning. He was tired, he had not been alert; now all at once it came to him that the car following him was the same one that had pulled out from the kerb behind him in the street in Erskineville. Suddenly his hands felt clammy on the wheel.

What to do? He could continue on to the police station at Rand wick, but that would only alarm Lisa and the kids; he did not want to frighten them, in case his own fear was a false alarm. Hans Ludke’s question this afternoon, Does that put you on the hitman’s lisf?, had been at the back of his mind all evening, like the smell of his mother’s cooking.

He reached Randwick, turned into his own street as rain began falling again. He had led the hitman (if, indeed, he was the hitman) to his own home; but, he guessed, the man probably knew where he lived, anyway. Their phone number was in Lisa’s name, L. E. Malone, but that wouldn’t have fooled anyone really intent on finding out where he lived; if the hitman knew where Con and Brigid Malone lived, he certainly would know where their son lived.

Malone swung the Commodore in the entrance to his driveway; then braked sharply, throwing Tom forward and waking him. The driveway gates were closed. Time and again he had lectured Lisa and the kids against leaving them open. Now he wished for them and the garage door to be wide open.

He glanced back along the street. The other car had come round the corner and pulled into the kerb about fifty yards up the street, dousing its lights. Malone hesitated.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Lisa. ‘We don’t have automatic gates, remember?’

‘I told him we should get them,’ said Claire. ‘Everybody has them now.’

‘We can’t afford ’em on a cop’s pay,’ said Maureen. ‘He’s told us.’

‘I’ll open ’em,’ said Tom and fumbled with the door handle.

‘Stay where you are!’

There was a note of panic in Malone’s voice. He hastily got out of the car before Lisa could comment on it, hunched over as much to make himself a smaller target as against the rain, and moved quickly to open the gates. Too late he realized that he had stupidly left the headlights on: as he stood in their glare, fumbling with the bolt of the gates, he felt as exposed as if he were in the middle of the Nullarbor Plain in broad daylight. He was wearing no hat or raincoat; the rain fell on him in drenching sheets, he was almost blinded by the water pouring down his face. His fingers were frozen (by fear or cold?); the gates refused to open. Then he jerked the bolt up out of its socket, he dragged the gates open, swung them back and stumbled back to the front door of the car. As the other car, its lights now on, pulled out from the kerb and came at gathering speed down the street.

He turned to face it, his back against the closed front door of the Commodore; he spread his arms wide, trying to protect his family, as if he meant to gather the hail of bullets into himself. The approaching car swung towards the Commodore and for one horrible moment he thought it was going to crash into them, killing them all in a mad suicidal attack. Its headlights blazed at him, blinding him; then it swung abruptly away. It went past, spraying up a wave of water from the flooded gutter, and sped down the street. Malone staggered on rubbery legs to the back of the Commodore, tried to identify the make of car and its registration plate, but it was gone into the dark swirling night before he could get even a hint of identification. The driver had been too smart: he had known the blaze of headlights would blind Malone.

Still weak, Malone went back up the driveway, opened the garage door and came back to the Commodore. He got in, suddenly glad of the support of the seat beneath him.

‘What’s the matter, Daddy?’ said Claire.

Malone noticed that Lisa, in the back seat, was sitting forward but saying nothing. ‘It was just a drunken driver – I thought he was going to smash into us.’

‘They shouldn’t drink and drive.’ Maureen had all the slogans at her tongue-tip.

Malone drove the car into the garage. Lisa got out, gave the front door key to Claire. ‘Get ready for bed. See Tom cleans his teeth and has a wet before he gets into bed.’

Maureen said, ‘What are you and Dad going to do? Wash the car?’

‘Inside!’

Claire took the key, looked thoughtfully at her mother and father but said nothing. She’ll make a good cop, Malone thought, she’s miles ahead of me in perception. And prayed that she would never want to follow in his footsteps.

When the children had gone inside Lisa put her hand on his arm. ‘That was no drunken driver. I’ve never seen you like that before.’

He sat back on the wet fender of the car; all the rest of him was wet through, a damp arse wouldn’t make much difference. All at once it came to him that he had been scared to death, not at the thought of his own death but that he would be murdered in front of his family. He could never leave them a legacy like that.

He knew this was one time when Lisa had to be told the truth: ‘I think I’m on a hit list.’

‘Oh God!’

She leaned against him and he put his arm round her, holding her tightly. It seemed to him that he could feel the heavy beat of her heart through their winter clothing and it was beating as much for him as for her.

2

‘You have to take the rough with the smooth,’ said O’Brien. ‘I never promised there would be no risk.’

‘Don’t give me any of that,’ said Arnold Debbs. ‘You’ve got me with my career on the line. If this blows up, I’m finished. I promise you, so will you be, too!’

Five years ago, even six months ago, O’Brien would have shrugged off such a threat. From the time he had moved out of the world of pop music into the bigger, rougher world where money and power and influence were concomitant he had more than held his own. In England there had been very few, if any, politicians who could be bought; the system didn’t work that way in Britain. But venal councillors and planning authorities could be found wherever development was growing; the skull-and-crossbones had flown from mastheads before the Union Jack was thought of and the Brits never forgot their heritage. When he had come home to Australia it was almost as if the politicians, hands held out, their convict heritage unashamedly displayed, had met him at the airport. It was, of course, nowhere near as bad. as that; but cynicism narrows one’s view. He had been introduced to his first crooked politician, Arnold Debbs, within two days of his return. A week later he had met his second crooked politician, Arnold’s wife, Penelope.

He had always known there was the chance of making enemies of them: bribes never bought friendship, that came free, if you were lucky. He had never been afraid of them because he had never been afraid of failure: he was a gambler, ready to go off somewhere else and start all over again. But that had been before he had met and fallen in love with Anita Norval. Now all he wanted was respectability and no one, least of all the Debbs, would or could offer him that.

‘You did us once, Brian, with that mining lease –’

‘Arnold, that was business. You got the profit you were promised –’

‘We didn’t get the profit we could have made!’ Debbs’ temper was notorious; it had always been held against him in Caucus. Political parties do not like hotheads; they can’t be controlled. Debbs had once had ambitions to be the leader of the party, to be Prime Minister when it returned to power in Canberra; but he had a head for figures and eventually he had realized he would never have the numbers to reach the top. Three times he had run for leader and three times he had finished bottom of the poll; it was then he had decided to be a Party of One, to look out for himself and use the front bench for all he could make from it. ‘You’re a robber, Brian, a fucking crook who should be locked up! Now you’ve got me and my wife linked to this investigation –’

‘I told you, Arnold, you and Penelope will be kept out of it. Your names are on nothing –’

‘The shares are in a company name, but they can be traced to us! These bloody young reporters these days – they’re muck-rakers! The Eye has already had a piece – no names but plenty of hints. How many others have you got strung up with my wife and me?’

‘You know how many there are, Arnold –’

‘You bet your fucking life I do!’ Debbs’ language, too, was notorious. The Sydney Morning Herald had once published a short verbatim statement from him that had contained as many dashes as words. The Anglican and Roman Catholic archbishops, the Festival of Light and half a dozen women’s organizations had written letters to the Editor in protest; even Prime Minister Norval had had an attack of mealy-mouth and deplored the lowering of standards. ‘I introduced them to you – they could fucking turn on me!’

‘Relax, Arnold,’ O’Brien said, then tensed as he saw the unfamiliar car coming up the long driveway between the paddocks towards the house. ‘Who’s this?’

Arnold Debbs turned. ‘I don’t know. Let’s hope to Christ it’s not some shitty reporter.’

It wasn’t. The unmarked police car pulled in besides Debbs’ blue Volvo and Malone got out. ‘Jesus!’ said O’Brien softly.

‘Who is it?’ said Debbs equally softly.

‘Police.’

Malone wondered why the familiar figure stiffened as he approached. He had never met Arnold Debbs, but no one could mistake him. Tall and heavily built, he had a pompadour of egg-white hair that made him look as if he had just been crowned with a large pavlova. Beneath it his lamp-bronzed face suggested not so much health as a bad case of brown jaundice. His wide smile was no more than a display case for his expensive dental-work; there was no humour or friendliness in it. Malone shook hands with an enemy who had already declared himself and he wondered why Debbs’ grip was so tense.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr O’Brien –’

‘It’s okay, Mr Debbs is just leaving. He came up to see one of his horses – we’ve got it on agistment here. I’ll see you to your car, Arnold.’

Malone watched the two men walk across to the Volvo, heads close together, voices low: they seemed to be arguing. But O’Brien, as if aware they were being watched, patted Debbs on the shoulder, waited till the older man had got into his car, then stood back and waved as the Volvo was driven away. Then he came back to Malone.

‘Bloody owners – they’re a pain!’

‘You’re one, aren’t you? A whole string of horses, Sergeant Clements tells me. You’ve done well, Horrie.’

‘Brian.’

‘No, it’s Horrie who’s done well. I’m not so sure how Brian Boru is doing.’

Malone looked out over the stud farm with its lush green paddocks, the white railing fences and the double row of stables of red brick. Mares and foals grazed amidst the grass; a stallion high-stepped along the length of a fence, as arrogant as any disco stud. Further up the red gravel driveway, the main house, a low colonial building with wide verandahs, looked as it must have looked when it was first built a hundred and fifty years ago. This district of Camden, about sixty kilometres south-west of Sydney, had been the birthplace of Australia’s sheep industry; now it had become almost a dormitory suburb of the city. But some pockets were still zoned for rural use and Cossack Lodge stud was one of the show places. Yet Malone could not remember ever having seen O’Brien featured in any newspaper or television story about the stud.

He remarked on that now. ‘How come? Most racehorse owners risk getting kicked in the head to be photographed with their horses.’

O’Brien smiled. He was dressed in checked cap, a dark blue turtleneck sweater, pale moleskin trousers and stockman’s boots: every inch the country gentleman except for the cynical eyes and a certain nervous energy that, had he been a grazier, would have knotted the wool of his sheep. He could never be totally relaxed, he would never adapt to the rhythm of rural seasons.

‘An Irish philosopher – there have been one or two – once said, Man who keep low profile rarely get egg on face. Have you come up here to try and smear some egg on me?’

They began to walk up towards the house. Two girl strappers passed them, smiled at O’Brien and went on to the stables. A man came out of a small office at the end of the stables and raised his hand to O’Brien.

‘Later, Bruce. He’s my foreman,’ O’Brien explained to Malone. ‘Why are you here, Scobie? Is it about Mardi Jack?’

‘Partly. You remembered her name?’

‘Yes. You want to sit out here in the sun? We’re out of the wind.’ It was a clear sunlit day, with the wind on the other side of the house. Yesterday’s rain had gone and the countryside looked as if it had been swept with a new broom. The rows of poplars that lined the driveway were just beginning to be tinged with green; they bowed before the wind like armless dancers. ‘I’ll get us some coffee.’

He went into the house and Malone sat down. O’Brien came back, they exchanged some chat about the stud until the foreman’s wife brought them coffee and cake, then O’Brien leaned forward, his cup and saucer held in front of him almost like a weapon.

‘I’d better tell you about Mardi Jack. Yes, I did know her. I used to meet her at that flat.’

‘I’d half-guessed that. Why did you try that stupid lie? We’d have found out eventually.’

‘I’m trying to protect someone.’

‘That the woman you mentioned, the one you spent the weekend with? Did she know Mardi Jack?’

‘She knew nothing about her.’

‘Knew? You mean you’ve told her about Mardi since we came to see you? How did she take it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Was she jealous? Was she shocked when you told her Mardi had been murdered?’

‘No, I don’t think she was jealous. Or maybe she was – I guess we’re all jealous of someone at one time or another. Shocked? Yes. She’s not the sort of lady who’s accustomed to murder.’

‘She’s married?’

‘Yes.’

Malone finished his coffee, held out his cup for a refill. He bit into a slice of the housekeeper’s carrot cake; the semi-country air was making him hungry. Or maybe he was just nervous: he had hardly slept last night.

‘I don’t think we’re interested in her for the moment. There’s something else that’s worrying us. I think you and I are on a hit list, Brian.’

O’Brien’s big hand tightened on his cup; for a moment Malone thought he was going to crush it. ‘Hit list? You and me?’

‘Are you surprised or were you expecting something like that?’

O’Brien put down his cup on the small table between them, stared at it a moment, then lifted his head. He took off his cap and kneaded it between his hands. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if I were on someone’s list. I can’t understand why you and me together.’

Malone told him about the random murders. ‘We think you were the target in the latest one, not Mardi. Whoever he is, he’s going for fellers who were in our class at the police academy back in 1965.’

O’Brien frowned, was silent for a moment. Then: ‘Has he tried for you yet?’

‘Not yet. But –’ Malone told him about the car tailing him last night.

‘That must’ve scared the hell out of your wife and kids.’

‘Out of my wife, yes. I’m keeping it from the kids. What did you mean when you said you wouldn’t be surprised if you were on someone’s list?’

Again there was a silence, but for the occasional moan of the wind round the corners of the house. At last O’Brien said, ‘This thing I’m in with my bank and my companies. Some people think I doublecrossed them.’