Autumn Maze. Jon Cleary
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we have to worry too much about Aldwych Junior, either. As far as I know, he’s got a clean nose.’
‘He was mixed up in that case with Romy’s father. We never pinned anything on him, but I’m sure he wasn’t clean.’
‘Well, he is as far as the record goes. Don’t start complicating things. We’ve got enough to worry about.’
The Wharf had been built during the Eighties, in the boom times when people thought the money-tree would fruit forever. It was a circular glass- and granite-faced tower, twenty-four storeys high that, though towered over by the office buildings along Circular Quay, gave the impression it was the only one where you would find quality inside its walls. The marble foyer inside the brass-and-glass front doors suggested you were entering a bank, a small exclusive one where no deposits under a million were accepted and then only as a favour.
The doorman, releasing the security lock to let them in, recognized Malone and Clements; they had been here before to interview a suspect in another case. ‘Remember me? Col Crittle. We been over-run with police this morning. You’d be the umpteenth.’ He was a burly man with a head of thick grey hair combed flat and an easy smile, the sort of doorman elderly widows could feel secure with. At least a quarter of the owners were elderly widows, the sort who never had to cut dead branches off the money-tree. ‘You want the twentieth floor. It’s all one apartment, Mr and Mrs Sweden’s.’
‘Were you on duty last night when the accident happened?’
‘They tell me it wasn’t an accident. No, thank God I wasn’t here. It was the night feller, Stan Kinley.’
‘He still works here?’ Names stuck in Clements’ memory as much as events; Malone had told him that on Judgement Day he would be asked to call the roll. He caught Malone’s eye and said, ‘He was the guy we saw when we came here to see Justine Springfellow. She still here?’
The doorman shook his head. ‘She moved out a coupla years ago.’
‘Where did Mr Sweden, the young one, fall?’
‘Around in the side street. Your fellers’ve got it cordoned off with tapes. I’m waiting for them to tell me when the council blokes can scrub out the stain. He made a real mess.’
As soon as they stepped into the glass-and-brass lift Malone had a feeling of déjà vu. Last time, they had come to interview Justine Springfellow who had turned out to be not guilty of the murder they had been certain she had committed. Let’s have better luck this time. The lift stopped at the twentieth floor and they stepped out into a small lobby. In front of them were double doors of thick dark walnut, each with a lion’s head in brass in the middle of it. A young uniformed policeman stood beside the doors, his authority somehow diminished by their solidity.
He nodded at the two detectives, went to open the doors. ‘Hold it a moment,’ said Malone. ‘Who’s in there?’
‘The Physical Evidence team have gone, sir. There’s one of your men from Homicide – Kagal? – and Sergeant Greenup.’
‘No media?’
‘They came last night, after it happened. A couple came back this morning, trying for an interview with the Minister, but Sergeant Greenup told ’em to get lost.’
‘Good old Jack. He got his sledgehammer with him?’
The young officer grinned; he knew the reputation of his sergeant. Clements said, ‘Who else is in there?’
‘Mr and Mrs Sweden. Mrs Sweden’s sisters – I dunno their names.’ Like Malone, the young officer evidently did not read the Women’s Weekly. ‘And one of the Minister’s minders, his press secretary, I think.’
‘Quite a crowd.’
‘It’s a big apartment, sir. Oh, there’s someone else. Assistant Commissioner Zanuch.’
Malone wondered why a junior officer should almost forget the Assistant Commissioner, Administration, but he made no comment. He himself did his best to forget Zanuch and usually succeeded. One’s mind worked better when the AC was not occupying even the remotest corner of it.
Malone and Clements went in through the big doors, pulling up instinctively as soon as they were inside the apartment. They were on a landing, fronted by a dark walnut railing that matched the front doors; four steps led down each side to the main level. One half of the apartment was a living and dining area, a huge expanse that looked out through a glass wall, across a wide terrace, to the harbour and the north-east. Behind the dividing wall that ran right across the apartment lay, Malone guessed, the bedrooms and service rooms. The furniture was a mixture of modern and antique, a cocktail of decor that didn’t turn the stomach. The pictures on the long wall were also a mix, but none of them clashed. Malone, a man any interior decorator would have hung on a wall in a dungeon, was nonetheless impressed. He was in rich territory.
All the people in the room were grouped at the far end. Assistant Commissioner Zanuch detached himself from them and came quickly towards the new arrivals. He was ten years older than Malone but didn’t look it. Tall, handsome and arrogant, he gave the impression of being a banker in uniform rather than a police officer. His uniforms were custom made by the city’s most expensive tailor and the Police Service’s guess was that the insignia on his shoulders were all solid silver, he would not have been comfortable with less.
‘What are you doing here?’ He had a beautifully modulated voice but there was an edge to it now. ‘We haven’t yet decided whether it was an accident or homicide.’
Malone smelled politics at once.
‘Oh, it was homicide, sir.’ Both men had kept their voices low; the faces at the far end of the room were turned towards them like small satellite dishes, blank of expression. ‘We’ve just come from the morgue. The opinion there is that young Mr Sweden was dead before he was tossed off the balcony. I’m taking charge of the case.’
It was a challenge, and both of them knew it. The two men, because of the difference in rank, had had little to do with each other, but there was an antagonism that came to the surface on the rare occasions when they met on business. Malone could not stand Zanuch’s open ambition, his mountaineering amongst the political and social heights around town; the Assistant Commissioner had no time for Malone’s casual attitude, his apparent clumsiness in the minefields of respect for authority. All they had in common was that they were both good policemen.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes, sir.’
They were stopped from further discussion as Derek Sweden came down the room towards them. Malone and Clements had never previously met the Police Minister; their political bosses came and went like seasonal viruses. Sweden was in his mid-fifties, bony-faced, bald and as elegantly dressed as Zanuch, but not in uniform. He had been in politics for twenty years without ever achieving his party’s leadership; he had at the same time managed to make money in property. The son of a political father and a mother who voted as she was told, it was said that he had shaken every hand in the State, including that of the head chimpanzee at Taronga Park. He had always been a State politician, but with the stunning defeat of his party in the Federal election two weeks ago, which had left party members on a merry-go-round, with each man stabbing the back of the man in front of him, it was rumoured that Sweden had set his sights on Canberra and the national playing field.
He shook hands with the two detectives, voters both.
‘I’m sorry we have to be here, sir,’ said Malone. ‘Our sympathy on your son’s death.’
‘Thank you. From Homicide? What is this, Bill?’ He looked at Zanuch. ‘I thought we’d decided it was an accident. What’s going on?’
‘When Detective Kagal said that, I think he was trying not to make waves in front of the womenfolk.’ Zanuch might well have been a diplomat as well as a banker or a dozen other professionals. Sometimes he wondered why he had chosen to be a policeman. ‘Tell the Minister and me what you know, Inspector.’
‘Not