Winter Chill. Jon Cleary
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with the contacts in the FBI. Get on to ’em, ask if they’ll trace him for us. See what they have on him, if anything. At least there’ll be his Marines record.’
Andy Graham sprang to his feet, spilling his coffee but managing not to splash any of it on his clothes. He went through life at a gallop, never in front, always trying to catch up. He grabbed Rockman’s file from the table and was gone. All the others smiled at each other but said nothing. Andy Graham was lovable in his absence.
Malone turned to Clements. ‘Anything yet from Ballistics on Brame?’
‘Just come in.’ Clements dropped a plastic envelope on the table. ‘Clarrie Binyan says it’s an uncommon one, not the usual calibre. It’s a nine-millimetre ultra. Clarrie’s trying to trace the sort of gun that would take it.’
‘Righto, your turn, Phil. How’d you go?’
Truach sighed, coughed. ‘You ever tried to interview a thousand lawyers? You get a thousand opinions. The gist of it all, however, was that nobody saw nothing. One or two, the vice-president for one, Zoehrer, they do remember seeing Brame talking to someone in the coffee lounge Sunday night. A waitress remembered they walked out together, Brame and the other guy. She says she didn’t look at the other man, she was looking at Brame, she’d been told he was the boss cocky and she was observing what a top man looks like. Seems she wants to be a writer, she’s taking some writing course.’
‘So she doesn’t look at the supporting character?’ said Peta Smith. ‘She must write poetry.’
All the men, poetry lovers if ever one saw a bunch of them, nodded. Malone wondered if, between the lot of them, they could recite the first half a dozen lines from The Man from Snowy River. ‘Did you get to see Mrs Brame, Phil?’
Truach was bouncing an unlit cigarette up and down on his palm, a hint that he was dying for a smoke; Malone ignored it. ‘She was out, they told me. Making arrangements to fly her husband’s body back to the States as soon’s it’s released. Seems it’s harder to book a ticket for a coffin than for a livin’, breathin’ person.’
Clements ferreted in his trivia bag: ‘D’you know that if someone kicks the bucket on an aircraft, they just throw a sheet over him and leave him in his seat? There’s nowhere to put a stiff. How’d you like that, sitting beside a corpse when they serve you lunch?’
Malone glanced at Peta Smith to see how she was taking the deadpan macho humour, but she seemed unperturbed by it. He turned back to Truach. ‘There’s a brother here. Did anyone mention him to you?’
‘No.’
‘Russ, you and I’d better have a talk with the brother, what’s-his-name?’
‘Channing. Their offices are down in Martin Place. I looked it up.’
‘I thought you might have.’ He rose, looked at his watch. He wanted to go home, to be with Lisa, but she had said, Do your job. He would do it, as conscientiously as ever, but only because she had insisted. He was beginning to realize that she had run his life far better than he could have alone. ‘We’re always hearing about how late lawyers have to work. Let’s go and see. Thanks for the coffee, John.’
‘Any time,’ said Kagal, ‘the roster says so.’
‘You’re learning,’ said Peta Smith and winked at Malone. He felt almost affectionate towards her as he walked out of the office.
2
‘Let’s walk,’ he said when he and Clements were outside the Hat Factory. The rain clouds had gone and the late-afternoon sky looked like blue ice. The wind still blew, ambushing them at corners, snatching like a mad joker at hats and umbrellas. Malone, looking for something to lighten his mood, was reminded of the old joke of the bald man whose hair was blowing in the wind and he was too embarrassed to run after it. Clements had said nothing when walking was suggested, but now he looked at Malone as the latter smiled.
‘Something funny?’ Malone told him the joke and Clements went on, ‘Keep laughing, that’ll be the trick. Well, not laughing, but keep your spirits up.’
‘Don’t play counsellor with me, Russ.’ Then he heard the abruptness in his voice. ‘Sorry. I’m touchy, I’m still getting used to what’s happened to her.’
‘I understand, mate. But like I say, be optimistic. Don’t be so bloody Irish.’
The walk along Elizabeth Street took them just over ten minutes. Over on their right Hyde Park was dark and dank, wrecked by winter. They passed the huge Park Grand hotel, repossessed within a year of its opening but now, fortunately, chockablock with lawyers; they glanced in, saw the packed lobby and hurried past as if afraid of being bombed with torts. As they passed David Jones, a door of the big department store opened and they heard the music: the pianist threw a few bars at them, memories were made of this and that, then the door closed again. As they reached Martin Place the street-lights came on and the clock on the GPO tower struck a quarter to five. The Channing and Lazarus offices were in one of the older buildings on the north side of the long narrow plaza.
The offices had been newly furnished, suggesting Channing and Lazarus might have been celebrating a good financial year. There were new beige carpet and tub chairs and a couch in a muted deep purple tweed; on the cream walls there were large brass-framed prints of several of the more restrained modern Australian paintings, no invitatory genitals or phallic flagpoles. The girl behind the modern teak desk, getting herself ready to leave, was as smart as the paintings, though perhaps a little more invitatory. At least she was spraying a musky perfume behind her ears as the two detectives walked in.
‘Mr Channing?’ She looked at them in surprise. ‘Did you have an appointment?’ Clements showed his badge and she looked even more surprised. ‘Oh. I’ll see if he’s free.’
Rodney Channing was free, though he did not appear too glad to see them. He stood up as Malone and Clements were shown into his office. This, too, had been newly refurbished, but it was all leather, though not club-like. There were two paintings on the cream walls, one a landscape by Lloyd Rees, all airy light, the other a portrait of Channing in a style that Malone thought had died years ago. Rodney Channing, at least in the portrait, looked mid-Victorian, stern and forbidding, and Malone wondered why he had chosen to be painted that way.
‘My brother?’ Channing said when Malone explained the reason for their visit. ‘We’ve been strangers to each other for thirty years.’
‘We understand he was seen talking to a stranger Sunday night in the coffee lounge of the Novotel hotel. Was it you?’
‘Sunday night? No, no it wasn’t.’ There was a pause, then he seemed to relax; or at least accept that the detectives were here to stay. He sat down behind his desk, gestured to them. ‘Sit down. I saw my brother Sunday morning. He came here to my office.’
‘Here? Sunday morning?’
There was a pause again: Channing seemed to be laying his words out like playing cards. ‘I told you, we were strangers. I – I suggested here because I wanted to be sure we’d get on together, after so long. I didn’t want to invite him to my home and have an awkward situation in front of my wife and family. I have three children, all youngish.’
‘And did you? Get on together?’
Another pause. ‘Not exactly. The separation, I suppose, had been too long.’ Then there was a knock at the door and a woman put her head inside the room. ‘Oh June! Come on in. This is Mrs Johns, our office manager.’
June Johns had been born to manage; one look at her told you that. She was in her late thirties, attractive, a little plump, wearing a blonde helmet of hair; but it was her manner, her wouldn’t-miss-a-detail eyes, that caught the attention. Her smile would have cowed a stampede of bulls.
She shook hands with the two detectives, a firm handshake that let them know she wasn’t cowed by them. ‘Are we being investigated or something?’ Her smile suggested that they had better not be. ‘Law