Bleak Spring. Jon Cleary
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words had been blurted out. Then suddenly he looked embarrassed and angry at himself; he had opened a door and was hurt by what he had exposed to the police. But it was obvious that he had sympathy for Jill Weigall, that he did not feel she was to blame for the affair. He appeared more puzzled by her than angry at her.
Angela Bodalle appeared in the doorway behind the boy. ‘I wouldn’t say any more, Jay, not right now.’
Malone ignored her, looked at the girl. ‘Jill?’
‘It wasn’t an affair – it was just one weekend – ’ She dried her eyes, pushed back the hair that had fallen down over her brow again; it was beginning to annoy Malone and he felt like offering her one of the paperclips on the desk in front of him. ‘I knew it was never going to get anywhere – ’
He had long ago given up wondering what attraction women felt for certain men. What had this very good-looking girl seen in the opinionated, chauvinistic, bonyfaced man twenty years her senior? But no detective, from Homicide or even the Fraud Squad, will ever solve a woman’s emotions. He looked up at Jason, still hanging like a bag of bones in the doorway. ‘Did your mother know?’
‘I don’t think you should be asking the boy those sort of questions,’ said Angela Bodalle.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s a question you should ask her, not her son.’
‘How did you know, Jay?’ That was Jill, turned questioner.
‘Just luck. Bad luck.’ A sardonic air coated him at odd moments, like something borrowed from an older generation. ‘You went to that place at Terrigal, Peppers, and one of my mates from school, he was there with his parents, he saw you and Dad.’
‘Did he tell all the school?’
‘No. I’d of belted him if he had, he knew that.’
‘Thank you, Jay.’ For a moment she looked as young as he.
Malone nodded to Clements. ‘Russ, take Jay and Mrs Bodalle back outside. I want a moment alone with Miss Weigall.’
The girl suddenly looked apprehensive, but it was Angela who caught Malone’s attention. ‘Are you going to question her, Inspector?’
‘Yes.’ His voice was sharp; he was growing tired of her interference.
‘Would you like me to stay with you, Jill?’
Again the girl hesitated; then again she came down on Malone’s side, if reluctantly. ‘I’ll be okay. I’ll call you if Inspector Malone gets too tough with me.’
‘You’re not going to do that, are you, Inspector?’
Malone’s smile was more like a grimace. ‘I’m a gentleman, Mrs Bodalle.’
Her smile was wide, one of disbelief; but she went out, closing the door behind her. Then Jill looked at Malone, all at once seeming to gain some confidence. ‘What are you expecting me to tell you you didn’t want them to hear?’
‘It’s not that I don’t want them to hear, it’s that I think you’ll talk to me easier if they’re not in the room with us. Did you kill Will Rockne?’
He hadn’t altered his tone, but the question was like a rock thrown at her head; she seemed to duck, then looked up at him from under the fallen hair. ‘How can you say something like that? Jesus!’ She pushed the hair back, sat up. She looked towards the door, as if she meant to call for Angela Bodalle, then she turned back to Malone. ‘No, I didn’t! What makes you think I’d want to kill him?’
‘Righto, forget I asked. Have you seen that before?’ He had put the Beretta in a side drawer of the desk; now he took it out and laid it in front of her.
‘No.’ She stared at it, her fear genuine. ‘Where was it – in the desk?’
‘No, in the safe. Did Mr Rockne ever talk about wanting to defend himself?’
‘Never.’
‘How long ago did you have the af – did you have that weekend with him?’
‘Two months ago, the last weekend in June.’
‘And what happened? I mean afterwards, when you came back here on the Monday?’
She picked up a paperweight from the desk. It was a brass lion on a marble base; there was a Lions Club emblem on the base. Malone hoped she was not going to throw it at him. ‘Nothing happened. That was it – the one weekend, and just nothing. I thought I was in love with him, but it only took that weekend to find out I wasn’t.’
‘What about him?’
She put the paperweight back on the desk. ‘He couldn’t have cared less. I was just someone who’d given him a good weekend, a bit of young stuff. I don’t mean Mrs Rockne is old, but you know what I mean. Do we really have to go on with all this?’ She said it almost with boredom; she was a mixture of gaucheness and sophistication. But it was disco sophistication, a veneer as skimpy as the clothes they wore to the clubs. ‘To tell you the truth, I would’ve gone looking for another job. Only they’re so scarce, the recession and that.’
Malone put the gun in a manila envelope. ‘I’m taking the gun with me, okay? Now let’s get back to what I asked you before. You said there were one or two clients he kept to himself, played things close to his chest. Who were they?’
She gazed at him a moment, but she appeared to trust him now. ‘Mr Bezrow was one, Bernie Bezrow the bookmaker. He was our landlord, too.’
Even Malone, who hadn’t the slightest interest in horse-racing, who hadn’t known Phar Lap was dead till he’d seen the movie, knew Bernie Bezrow. ‘Who was the other one?’
‘He just called himself Mr Jones, but I never believed that was his real name. I asked Will about him once and he just smiled and said not to worry my pretty head about it. He actually said that, my pretty head. He could be bloody annoying at times.’ She was beginning to sound as if she was not regretting Rockne’s death after all. ‘Mr Jones came here twice, I think. He was tall and well-dressed and, I suppose, not bad-looking. He had an accent, but I couldn’t tell you what it was.’
‘Was he dark? Fair? Bald?’
‘He had dark hair, but I think it was thin on top. I remember thinking, I dunno why, he was like an expensive car salesman, you know, Rolls-Royces, cars like that.’
‘I’ve never been in a Rolls-Royce saleroom.’
Somehow she managed a weak smile. ‘Neither have I. But you know what I mean.’
‘What about Mr Bezrow?’
‘Oh, he never came up here to the office, he couldn’t get up the stairs. He’s so fat – he’s huge. He came here once in his car, he has a Rolls-Royce, he had someone driving it, and I had to go downstairs and give him an envelope. Will wasn’t here.’
‘Are there any letters to him in the files?’
‘None. That’s what I meant by Will playing things close to his chest.’
‘You didn’t suspect there was something fishy going on with Mr Bezrow and Mr Jones?’
She looked down at her lap; her hair fell down again. She was dressed in grey slacks and a black sweater, the casual style for a death; the slacks were tucked into black suede boots. She was very still for a while, then she sat back in the chair, seeming to go limp. She tossed her head back, the hair flopping away from her brow. She was giving up, but Malone was not sure what: her job, her love or infatuation for Rockne.
She said quietly, ‘Of course I did. But everything’s fishy now, isn’t it? Men get away with murder – well, no, that’s the wrong word this morning, isn’t it? They get away with shonky schemes, or they did, and everyone thought they were heroes, the government gave them decorations. My mother