Winter Chill. Jon Cleary
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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.’
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,