Winter Chill

‘Popular?’ He knew that popularity could breed enmity. That skater Nancy Kerrigan had been popular and she had had enemies.

‘Well, perhaps not popular. My husband never courted that sort of thing. He used to quote somebody, I forget who. The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.’

‘Stendhal,’ said Tallis.

Malone didn’t know who Stendhal was, but guessed he was a lawyer: he sounded like one. ‘Would you know if he had any enemies, Mr Tallis? People he’d had business dealings with? Ex-clients?’

Tallis was handsome now, but one could already see the plumpness, like clouds of flesh, gathering around the cheeks and jowls, that would dim his looks and turn him into a fat middle-aged man. His voice was soft but reedy, unassertive, but at least his gaze was direct and Malone had the feeling he could be trusted. ‘I had only just begun to work with Mr Brame, to assist him personally, I mean. I’ve been with the firm four years, ever since I came out of law school, but I was in a section that Mr Brame had nothing to do with. Clients’ tax problems.’

‘How big is the firm?’

‘All told, I think we have about four hundred and fifty people on staff, including the partners and senior men.’

‘So what were you assisting Mr Brame on?’

‘Mr Brame handled half a dozen or so of our top clients.’

‘Such as?’

Tallis named three corporations that even Malone, no student of American business circles, knew. ‘You’d know those, I’m sure, Inspector. There were others, not so public, but all of them highly capitalized. There were times – well, I – I was out of my league, the first month or so. Perhaps, like me, Inspector, you don’t realize how much hidden money – well, not hidden – unpublicized money there is in our country. Mr Brame, in a way, was – connected to a lot of wealth. Riches.’

‘No names, Adam.’ Joanna Brame smiled, but there was no mistaking the fact that she was warning Tallis.

‘Are you suggesting money might be behind his murder?’

Tallis was abruptly cautious. ‘Well, no … I think we should wait till Mr De Vries arrives. He’s the other joint senior partner. I called him first thing this morning, when we – when we got the bad news. He was leaving immediately, as soon as he could get aboard a plane. Fortunately he was in Seattle on business, on the West Coast. I think I should leave him to answer all questions about the firm.’

‘Mr Tallis, we’re investigating a murder here. We don’t want the trail to go cold while we pay our respects to company protocol.’ Crumbs, he thought, I’m starting to sound like a lawyer, God forgive me.

Joanna Brame interrupted, politely: ‘Inspector, I don’t think Mr Tallis is trying to obstruct your investigations. Though he was my husband’s assistant, he was not privy to everything that Orville would have been involved with. I know – knew my husband. He carried everything very close to his chest. I think it would be advisable to wait for Mr De Vries.’

‘Did he ever confide in you?’

Her gaze, like Tallis’s, was direct. ‘No, nor did I encourage him to.’

Why do I have the feeling I’m facing hurdles here? Is it because lawyers, even lawyers’ wives, can’t help blowing smoke? Or was it just a cop’s prejudice? ‘You mentioned Mr Brame had a brother here in Sydney. Were they close?’

‘No. Anything but.’ Well, that was a direct answer, no smoke there.

‘Have you ever met Mr – what was his name?’

‘Channing,’ said Clements. ‘Of Channing and Lazarus.’

‘Never,’ said Joanna Brame. ‘Their father, his name was Lester Brame, was in Sydney during World War Two. He was a sergeant in some company or something that spent all its time in Sydney. Having a good war, I think it was called. He met and married their mother. My husband was born in 1943, I think. His brother was born ten years later. In the years between, I gather, the marriage had been an on-and-off affair. Finally, my husband’s father went back to the United States – he was never a success here nor back home. My husband grew up and went to law school at Sydney University, then left immediately he’d got his degree and went to join his father. Lester Brame died the day after my husband graduated from Yale Law School. The brothers took sides in the marriage – it often happens. My – my brother-in-law took his mother’s name, Channing.’ She stopped suddenly, as if she had run out of breath, but it was surprise at how much she had revealed. She was, Malone guessed, not one given to opening family closets, not to strangers. He wondered if, though she was a lawyer’s wife, this was her first encounter with a police investigation. She reached for her glass, saw that it was empty but waved a dismissing hand when Tallis gestured that he would refill it for her. ‘I don’t think my brother-in-law would have a clue, as you call it, as to who might have killed my husband.’

‘I hadn’t suggested he might have, Mrs Brame.’ There was just a hint of stiffening in her face, but that was all. But Malone saw Tallis straighten up and he turned to him: ‘You thought of something, Mr Tallis?’

‘Well, no, not really—’

‘Try me. I’ll tell you if it’s something worthwhile.’

Tallis hesitated, glanced at Joanna Brame, then looked back at Malone. ‘I saw two letters from Channing and Lazarus, both marked as strictly personal for Mr Brame. They came in in the last month. I gave them to him, but he never made any comment on them.’

‘Did Mr Brame ever dictate any reply?’

‘Not that I know of. He may have phoned his brother, but I wouldn’t know about that. You’d have to check the office switch records.’

‘Or he could have called from home?’ said Clements, who had been taking notes.

‘He could have,’ said Joanna Brame. ‘He often made business calls from home.’

‘Has Mr Channing been in touch with you since you arrived?’

‘No.’

‘That’s odd, don’t you think? He’d know of the murder. Common courtesy should have made him call you.’

‘He wouldn’t know I’m here. He may have called Mr Zoehrer or someone else from the Bar Association.’ She seemed unconcerned at her brother-in-law’s lack of interest. ‘When may I take my husband’s body home?’

‘That will be up to the coroner, Mrs Brame. The police can ask for a delay, but I don’t think there’ll be any need for that. Not if we get co-operation and we find the murderer soon.’

2

‘You have only a faint resemblance to Orville.’

‘I’ve got my mother’s looks,’ said Rodney Channing. ‘Orville always looked like our father.’

He was as tall as Orville had been, but thicker-set. He was better-looking than Orville, but his looks were fleshy; he had thick wavy hair with streaks of grey along the temples; he wore a medium-thick moustache that was already grey. He had smooth, almost unlined skin, and she wondered if he used lotions on it, something Orville had never done. He had Orville’s eyes: dark, giving nothing away, waiting for the other man (or woman) to tell secrets first.

He had phoned just after six, a few minutes after the two detectives had left. ‘I’ve only just learned you are here. I’d have called earlier if I’d known.’

He had said Mrs Brame? when she had answered the phone, but he had given her no name at all after that, not even now, ten minutes after he had entered the suite. They were strangers, not even linked by a common surname.

‘Did Orville mention we’d been in touch?’ There was no hint of Orville’s voice in his, but that could be because of the accent. She was looking for similarities, though she was not sure why.

‘No.’

‘It was just business.’ Did he sound relieved? ‘Very formal.’

‘Did he plan to see you while he was in Sydney?’

He hesitated, sipped the whisky-and-water she had given him. ‘We saw each other yesterday. He came to my office.’

‘Yesterday?’ She frowned, getting the day right in her mind; the international date line threw the calendar out of kilter. ‘Sunday?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t mention it to anyone – may I call you Joanna?’ She nodded, coolly, and he went on, ‘My wife and I have an understanding, I never bring my work home—’

‘Mr Channing?’

‘Rod.’

She nodded, but didn’t say his name. She had married beneath her when she had married Orville, which is not to say she could have done better; diamonds and gold are always found beneath one, and Orville had been pure gold. But, with the quick antennae of the born snob, she was beginning to suspect that Rodney Channing was pure dross. ‘I’m not expecting you to bring your work here. If you and Orville were engaged in something – secret, I don’t want to know. Though I’m curious—’ it hurt her to confess it ‘– what brought you together after all these years of – what do I call it? Did you hate each other?’

‘What did Orville tell you?’ He had a habit of stroking one side of his moustache, like an old silent film villain.

‘He never told me anything, just that he wanted this part of his life – the Australian part – put behind him.’

‘He’d become thoroughly American, hadn’t he?’

‘What does that mean?’

He back-tracked: ‘I don’t mean it in a pejorative sense. But he’d become American Establishment, hadn’t he? Ivy League, all that?’

He had indeed become Establishment, but only because she had led him by the hand into it. Even after ten years with Schuyler, De Vries and Barrymore there had been the rough edges of his father on him; at least, from what Orville had told her of his father, she had assumed the rough edges had been those of Lester Brame. Her first husband, Porter Greenway, had been dead two years when she had married Orville, taken him out of the small apartment on Central Park West and into the ten-room apartment on Park Avenue and the house on ten acres in Connecticut. And, more important than addresses, into that part of American East Coast society that, come Republicans, come Democrats, come Roosevelt, come Reagan, or even Clinton, would be as rock-solid as Grant’s Tomb. Even though Grant himself would never have been admitted as a member to the circle.

‘Orville proved himself, Mr Channing. There was no lawyer in the Bar Association held in higher regard. I’m sure they’ll tell you that, if you care to ask anyone in this hotel. The place is full of lawyers,’ she said testily, forgetting he was one.

He showed an unexpected solicitude. ‘Why don’t you move out, go to another hotel?’

‘Mr Tallis, one of my husband’s—’ She could not accustom herself to the thought that this man opposite her was family.‘One of Orville’s associates, he tried to get me into another hotel, but no luck. Every hotel in town is booked out. Orville was booked in here to be close to the convention centre. I have to stay here amongst what I suppose the police would call the principal suspects.’

‘I’m not sure what the police would call them. I’m not a criminal lawyer, I’ve never had anything to do with murder.’ He spoke as if it were an unspeakable subject.

‘Have you no suspicions, Mr Channing?’

He didn’t correct her on the use of his name; he seemed to accept the fact that their relationship was going to be distant. She wondered why Orville had not told him yesterday that she was coming to Sydney and could only guess that Orville had wanted to distance her from his brother.

‘Suspicions? Why should I have any?’

For the first time she seemed at a loss. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know why I asked that. I still can’t accept that Orville was – murdered.’ The word hung in the air like an obscenity. She looked away from him, out the window at the windswept night. ‘I can’t accept that he’s dead.’

There was an awkward silence. Channing half-rose from his chair, then sank back. She turned back to him, frowning, as if he had been on the verge of committing some familiarity that would have offended her. She was fending off grief as if it were physically attacking her; she felt physically exhausted, her muscles stiff under the strain. She said, ‘You haven’t commented at all on his murder.’

He stroked the side of his moustache; she recognized now that it was a nervous habit. ‘I’m the sort of lawyer, Joanna, who doesn’t venture an opinion till he knows all the facts. I know virtually nothing of what happened to Orville, other than that he was shot while riding on the monorail.’ He stood up. ‘I must be going. How long will you be staying?’

‘Only until they release Orville’s body for me to take home.’

‘He was born here. Why not bury him here?’

She had stood up, very straight, ‘it would seem that you are a rather insensitive man, Mr Channing. Not at all like your brother.’

3

‘I have cancer,’ said Lisa. ‘Of the cervix.’

He had got home just before eight o’clock, after she and the children had had dinner. He had eaten alone, while she busied herself at the sink and the children had gone to their rooms to do their homework. Afterwards he and she had sat listlessly watching television, a sitcom where the situation was banal and the comedy even worse. The mood had been constrained, his by suspicion, hers with her secret. Now they were in bed, with the light out, lying side by side with a stiffness uncommon to them. Then she gave him her secret and, with a low moan, he reached for her.

‘Jesus, why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘I didn’t want to scare you, in case it proved to be nothing. I had a pap smear last week, then Dr Newton called me on Friday and asked me to come in today.’

‘You kept it to yourself all weekend?’ It had been a good weekend. Sunday, the children, for a change, had had no social engagements; in a rare fit of extravagance, his wallet turning blue at the prospect, he had taken the family to lunch at one of the better restaurants in The Rocks, where the prices were tourist prices and the waiters expected tourist tips, preferably American and not your lousy local 2 per cent. Lisa had been her usual self, drily cheerful, attentive to him and the children; or so it had seemed. ‘How bad is it?’

‘If a woman is going to have cancer, the cervix is as good a place as any. There’s a better than even chance that it is localized and can be contained. I think I’d rather it’s there than in my breast.’

He was still holding her to him. ‘Don’t start making comparisons, that’s not going to make me feel any better. Is Wally Newton going to operate? When?’

‘Soon’s he can get me into St Sebastian’s. He won’t do the surgery, he’s got a top man, Dr Hubble.’ She freed her hand from between them, stroked his chin. ‘Don’t worry too much, darling. I’ll make it.’

He rolled over on his back, his arm still under her. He could feel the life in her, the sensuousness that bound them together where love and lust merged; he shut his eyes against the thought of what might be eating away at that body. The Celt in him took over: he squeezed his eyes even tighter against the thought that he had already lost her. He felt the winter chill of death: not his own but of a loved one, which is worse.

‘Have you told anyone? Your mother? Claire?’

He felt her turn her head, heard the rebuke in her voice. ‘Do you think I’d have told anyone before I told you? I actually caught a cab down to the Hat Factory after I came out of the doctor’s. But I couldn’t bring myself to go in – I was looking for comfort, but it wouldn’t have been fair to give you the news there – cry on your shoulder in front of Russ and the others … Then I thought I’d take myself shopping, I don’t know why, or what I was going to buy. I sat in David Jones for an hour listening to that pianist they have on the ground floor near the perfumery counters. I got very sentimental listening to him …’ Then she put her face against his shoulder and began to weep.

He held her to him, silently cursing God, in whom he believed and who had been good to him, but who, like all gods, demanded repayment.

4

In the morning they told the children. Perhaps it was the wrong time of day. Bad news, unlike good news, does not improve with keeping. It burst out of him at breakfast; instantly he was sorry. He should have allowed the children to go off to school and then gathered them to him and Lisa in the evening and told them. But then he might not be home in time this evening: there were murders to be solved, to delay him. Bad news, he now realized, was endemic. The way the world was going showed him that.

Claire and Maureen got up from the table and went and put their arms round Lisa; Maureen, the one who jeered at the world, was the one who burst into tears. Tom sat looking from one parent to the other, frowning, an almost resentful expression on his face, as if both of them had hit him. Malone reached out and put a hand on his son’s arm.

‘Mum’ll be all right, I promise you. But keep it to yourself at school, okay?’

‘Geez, d’you think I’d broadcast something like that?’

It was the second time he had been rebuked. Then the phone rang. He got up from the table, squeezed Maureen’s shoulder as he passed her, and went into the hallway. It was Clements.

‘There’s been another one, Scobie. The security guard who found Brame’s body. He’s just been fished out of Darling Harbour.’

Chapter Three

1

They were putting the body into an ambulance as Malone arrived. He parked his car and walked out on to the broad expanse of promenade which fronted Cockle Bay, the headwater of Darling Harbour, which itself was no more than a small arm of the main harbour. Cruiser ferries were anchored at the landing stages and across the water a sour screech of music came from the pleasure grounds as someone tested the sound system. It was raining again, but the radio this morning had said there was still no rain west of the Blue Mountains, eighty kilometres from Sydney. Out there on the plains drought was breaking the hearts of farmers; there were some areas that had had no rain for two and a half years. This was a tough country, where people on the land died by degrees, though the rate of murder and suicide had risen sharply in the past twelve months. Someone had once called Australia the Lucky Country: the irony of it was a bitter taste.

The rain, like bitterly cold glass darts, came from the south on squalls of wind; facing the wind one could see the squalls coming, like dark waves of swifts ahead of their usual seasonal migration. The wind made it pointless trying to put up an umbrella and Malone pulled his hat down hard, turned up his raincoat collar and showed his back to the squalls.

‘What happened?’

‘A bullet in the head, then he was dragged across there and dumped off the end of the jetty.’ Clements nodded to the crime scene tapes writhing and crackling in the wind like blue-and-white streaks of lightning. ‘It looks like close range, almost an execution job. There’s been a break-in over at the Convention Centre there. They’re still checking what’s been taken, they’re not sure if a computer’s gone.’

‘They’d kill him for that? A bullet in the head for a computer?’

‘The shit that’s around these days, they’d kill you for loose change.’ Clements turned his face into a squall of rain, as if to wash away his look of anger and disgust. He could be a charitable man but he had no illusions left.

‘A bit coincidental, isn’t it, two murders here in twenty-four hours?’

‘I think you’re stretching it a bit to connect this one with the Brame murder.’

Malone nodded. ‘I guess so. I’m not thinking too straight this morning.’

Clements looked at him through another gust of rain. ‘Something wrong at home? The kids?’ He loved them as if they were his own.

‘I’ll tell you later.’ Malone turned as Korda, the technical manager of the monorail, wrapped against the elements in a hooded wind-jacket with the monorail logo on the pocket, came towards them. ‘Morning, Mr Korda. We didn’t expect to be back so soon.’

‘Christ Almighty, what’s going on? Someone trying to fuck up the tourist business, drive all these lawyers outa town?’ He turned his face away as the rain hit it. ‘No, I take that back, that’s bloody tasteless. But shit …’ He looked after the departing ambulance. ‘The ABS security guys are over there in the Convention Centre, you wanna talk to ‘em?’

‘Anything to get out of this rain and wind,’ said Malone: that, too, was a tasteless remark. But his mind really wasn’t here. ‘Let’s talk to ‘em.’

Inside the foyer of the huge convention hall three men in suits and raincoats were in a tight group, sober faces close together in discussion. They opened up as Korda introduced Malone and Clements. Two of the men nodded and the third held out his hand.

‘I’m Jack Favell, managing director of ABS. Dreadful business, this. We’ve lost two of our men in the past twelve months, but this one seems senseless. A bullet in a man’s head for nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘There’s been a break-in, but it was either for show, to put us off, or Murray, the guy that was shot, disturbed them. Looks like they just held the gun against his head and shot him.’ He was a short plump man, almost egg-bald and with dark shrewd eyes behind gold-framed glasses. Malone doubted that he had ever patrolled a security beat. ‘Murray Rockman was a good man, one of our best.’

‘How long had he been with you?’

‘Three years.’

‘Any family? A wife?’

Favell looked at one of his colleagues, a lean man with a battered face; Malone recognized him as an ex-boxer who had once been in the Police Service. ‘Was he married, Ted?’

‘He had a de facto, I think.’ Ted Gilligan nodded at Malone and Clements. ‘G’day, Scobie. Russ. Looks like you’re busy, this and Sunday night’s job.’

‘We’re hoping there’s no connection,’ said Clements. ‘Where did Rockman live?’

‘We’d have to look it up. Somewhere out in Arncliffe. You wanna go out there?’

Clements looked at Malone, who said, ‘Send Peta. Do you run the security details, Ted?’ Gilligan nodded. ‘Rockman would’ve been armed. Did the killer or killers take his gun?’

‘No, it was still in his holster. Your guys have taken it, but said they’d give it back to us.’

‘It was still in his holster? If he was investigating a break-in, he didn’t strike me as the sort who’d be as careless as that.’

‘That’s the way we’re thinking. The flap of the holster was still buttoned. Looks like he never had a chance to draw it. They just come up behind him and shot him in the back of the head.’

‘An execution job?’

‘Call it what you like. But if you catch the bastards—’

‘Leave ’em to us, Ted,’ Malone said quietly. ‘Don’t have your fellers go looking for them, okay?’

Gilligan nodded and Favell said, ‘We shan’t step on your turf, Inspector. But you’ll understand our men are going to be a bit toey for a week or two.’

‘Sure, we understand that. In the meantime … We’ll send a detective round to your office, Detective Smith. Give her everything you have on Mr Rockman.’

‘Her?’ Gilligan raised his eyebrows.

‘Things have changed since your day, Ted. We have tea and cakes now, instead of a beer.’

Driving back to Homicide Malone gave Clements the news about Lisa. The big man seemed to crumple. ‘Oh Jesus! You better take leave.’

‘That’s what I want to do, but Lisa won’t have a bar of it. You know what she’s like, you can’t argue with her.’

‘I’ll have Romy have a word with her.’

‘No, you won’t. Let Romy talk to her, by all means, but tell her not to mention me and work. Lisa’s point is that if I take leave and stay at home with her, it’ll only upset the kids more, make them worry more than they are now. She wants things to stay as normal as possible, at least till she goes into hospital.’

‘When’s she going in?’

‘At the weekend. When she does, then I’ll take leave.’

Clements shook his head, stared through the rain-spattered windscreen. The world outside was fragmented; here in the car it was little better. ‘Christ, who’d believe in God? A woman like Lisa … And the shit He lets survive!’