Bleak Spring. Jon Cleary
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written there of the real world. Then she looked back at him, pausing as if wondering whether she was wasting her words on him. ‘1 knew Will was up to something fishy, as you call it. But I didn’t know what and I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to hold on to my job.’
He stood up. ‘That’ll be enough for today, Jill. I’m taking the cash box, the safety-deposit box and the gun with me – I don’t think they should be left here, not even in the safe. I’ll get you to sign a release. Either I or Sergeant Clements will be back tomorrow or the next day. You’ll be opening the office?’ She nodded, the hair falling down again over her brow. He was standing beside her now and he reached down and pushed back the hair. ‘That’s been annoying me.’
She looked up at him, suddenly smiled, a full-toothed effort. ‘It annoys my father, too.’
‘Thanks,’ he said with a grin. ‘That puts me in my place.’
They went out to the outer office where Clements sat with two people who didn’t want to speak to him or to each other. Jason stood up at once. ‘You okay, Jill?’
‘Sure. How about you?’
‘I’m fine. Can you give me a lift back home?’
‘You can come with me, Jay,’ said Angela Bodalle. ‘I’m going back there – ’
‘Thanks, Mrs Bodalle, but I want to go with Jill.’ It was rude, a slap across the face, but Angela showed no expression.
The boy waited while Jill signed the release form she had typed out for Malone; the silence in the office was so heavy it made even the tapping of the word-processor keys sound like that of an old iron-frame portable. Angela Bodalle said nothing till the two young people had departed. Then:
‘Will you be coming back to talk to Olive?’
‘Not this morning. I’m sure you’ll tell her everything we’ve found here.’
‘Of course. If you should want me again, call me at my chambers. My home number is unlisted.’
‘Oh, we never phone,’ said Malone amiably. ‘We just knock on the door.’
She appeared to be looking for the last word, but couldn’t find it; she gave up and went clack-clacking down the stairs in her high heels. Clements let out a deep breath. ‘I been sitting here doing my damnedest to be polite – ’
‘I wouldn’t worry, Russ. Not with her. Get on to Randwick, ask them to send someone down here and put a seal on the downstairs door and that front door there. We don’t want someone busting in here tonight looking for that cash and that bank statement. Ask them to keep the place under surveillance, at least till I talk to them tomorrow. Tell them the secretary will be coming in here tomorrow. When you’ve done that, you can tell me what you know about Bernie Bezrow.’
Clements was, or had been, Homicide’s expert on the racing game. His luck at punting had been legendary; it was said that the horses ran with one eye on him on those days he was at the races. Then, some years ago, he had switched to punting on the stock market, a switch that Malone, an idiot when it came to punting on anything at all, had failed to understand. Clements had patiently explained to him that it had to be either shares or property; property meant possessions and he was not a man for such things. At least that had been his philosophy till he had met Romy Keller last summer and since then Malone had had no idea what was Clements’s attitude towards punting or possessions. He, Malone, was an old-fashioned man who did not believe you asked another man what lay in his secret heart.
When they stood beside their cars in the street outside, Clements said, ‘To begin with, Bezrow is Sydney’s biggest bookie, weight-wise and betting-wise. But on-course punting isn’t as big as it used to be – the TAB has taken a lot away from them, the crowds don’t go to the races like they used to, so Bernie wouldn’t rake in what he used to. But that doesn’t mean he’s on the breadline.’
‘If he’s so loaded, why would he use a small-time solicitor? Why wouldn’t he use a big firm, the sort of lawyers who know all the tax lurks? Let’s go and talk to him.’
Clements got into his Toyota and Malone walked along to his own car. He paused for a moment and looked across towards the Oval. Some cricketers were at one end of it, wearing baseball mitts and playing catch, testing their arms in preparation for the coming season. He had had a good arm in his day, able to put the ball right over the stumps from anywhere on the boundary; he felt the urge that all old players feel, to go over there and show the youngsters how good he had once been. But, of course, the arm wasn’t there any more, not the way it used to be.
He got into the Commodore and drove up to see Bernie Bezrow, someone else for whom, it seemed, the good old days had gone.
1
Tiflis Hall was a Coogee landmark. It stood just below the crest of the ridge that was the southern rim of the valley that ran down from Randwick to the beach. It stood in about an acre of terraced gardens, a small mansion with two towers, topped by copper cupolas, like bookends holding up the wing of the house that faced the street. Balconies bulged in the upper storey, inviting fantasies of fairy-tale princesses imprisoned behind the grey stone walls and the barred windows. Four Chinese rain trees, bare but for a sprinkling of early spring green, stood beneath the balconies like the skeletons of lovers who had forgotten their ladders. A high iron-spiked fence surrounded the property and two white bull terriers roamed through the blaze of azaleas and marigolds like two red-eyed demons in the wrong fairy-tale illustration. Coogee, in its day, had had its share of eccentricities but most of them had been human. This house had outlasted them all, was well over a hundred years old.
Malone announced himself and Clements through the intercom beside the big front gate. A moment later there was a piercing whistle over a hidden sound system and at once the dogs came at full gallop out of the azaleas and went up and round the side of the house. Then the gate-release buzzed.
As they walked up the long flight of stone steps Malone said, ‘They don’t build ’em like this any more.’
‘Who’d want to?’ said Clements, for once showing some aesthetic taste.
The front door, thick enough to have withstood a tank attack, was opened by a Filipino maid, who turned pale and looked ready to flee when the two tall men said they were Inspector Malone and Sergeant Clements. But Malone smiled and told her they were not from Immigration and she stepped back and gestured for them to enter. Then she led them into a big room off the woodpanelled hall.
Bernie Bezrow looked like a half-acre of fashion-plate. He was no more than five nine, Malone guessed, but he weighed at least three hundred pounds. He wore a cream silk shirt, a caramel-coloured alpaca cardigan, beige trousers, yellow socks and brown loafers, polished till they looked as if they had been cut from glass. He was sixty years old, but looked at least ten years younger; his unblemished skin was stretched tightly across the good bones beneath it. His dark eyes, unlike many fat men’s, were not trapped in rolls of fat; he had a well-shaped nose and a wide mouth in which the slightly turned-out lips sat one on the other like steps. Only his chins did not assert themselves; there the fat, firm as it was, had taken charge. The steps parted in a bookmaker’s smile, the cousin of a politician’s.
‘A Sunday morning visit from the police?’ He had a light voice, too light for his size; Malone had expected a bass. ‘Inspector Malone, I’ve heard of you. How is it we’ve never met?’
‘I’m with Homicide.’
‘Ah, that explains it.’ Bezrow was quick; he would never be slow to calculate the odds. ‘I hope this hasn’t something to do with a homicide?’
‘I’m afraid it has.’ Malone told him about the murder of Will Rockne. ‘I thought you might have heard about it on the morning news.’
‘Inspector, I don’t own a radio.’ Malone raised an eyebrow and Bezrow smiled and went on: