Endpeace

‘At least a dozen, sir.’

‘So you see, Mrs Huxwood, the word is around about the sell-off.’

She said nothing, waited while her son came back, followed by the housekeeper with a tray. The housekeeper put the tray on the table between Malone and Kate, ignored them and spoke over their heads to Cordelia.

‘Will that be all, señora?’

She had a strong voice, thick with accent. She was middle-aged, big and square in build and face, dark-haired and with unflinching eyes. And self-contained: very self-contained, thought Malone. He and Kate Arletti might have been down at the water’s edge for all the notice she took of them.

‘That will be all, Luisa. Thank you.’

Still without a glance at the two detectives, the housekeeper returned to the house, her broad back dismissing them as of no account.

Malone looked at Kate. ‘Did you interview her?’

‘Yes. She doesn’t like police.’

‘Is she from the Big House?’ Malone asked the Huxwoods.

‘No.’ Ross was seated again in the sun, dark glasses on. Both he and his mother shone with sun-cream; streaks of light moved on him like silver worms. ‘She’s ours. She’s Spanish, she’s been with us since I was a kid.’

‘You didn’t get anything out of her?’ Cordelia looked at Kate, a hint of malice in her sweet voice.

‘I got enough,’ said Kate, tapping her notebook. ‘She’s in here. Even if she doesn’t like the police.’

‘Who does?’ said Ross, expressionless behind the shades.

‘That’s enough,’ said Cordelia, but her voice was as expressionless as his had been.

‘You have something against cops?’ said Malone.

The boy shrugged, the silver worms slid along his broad shoulders.

‘Did you like your grandfather?’

A bean-ball, but the boy didn’t flinch. ‘No.’

‘Did you dislike him enough to want him dead?’

‘Stop this!’ Cordelia snatched off her glasses, leaned forward as if she might strike Malone. Beside him Malone felt Kate Arletti tense and he wondered what she would do if Cordelia actually attacked him.

Malone ignored the mother, kept his eyes on the son. ‘Where were you the night before last, Ross?’

‘He was here, at home,’ said Cordelia.

But the boy proved to be the rebel Kate had said he was: ‘No, I wasn’t. Let’s stick to the truth, Mum. I spent the night at my girl friend’s.’

Cordelia turned her head away, looked for a moment as if she might get up and stalk away into the house. Malone said, ‘Her name?’

‘She’s Rosie Gilligan.’

Malone looked blank, but Kate, it seemed, was au fait with a wider world. ‘The fashion editor of the Chronicle?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ross and his mother turned back to give him a glare that was apparent even through the dark glasses.

‘How do you get on with your cousins, Ross?’

The boy shrugged again. Malone wondered what he himself had been like at twenty, though he didn’t think he could have been as ungracious and surly as this kid. But behaviour, like tastes, always looked different from another generation.

‘And with your brother and sister?’ Malone glanced at his notebook. ‘Colin and Alexandra?’

‘We’re a happy family,’ said Cordelia.

‘I was talking to your son, Mrs Huxwood ... Do you ever get together, Ross, you and your brother and sister and your cousins, and discuss the family fortune?’

Cordelia abruptly stood up; her greased arms shivered with light. ‘No, shut up, Ross!’ as her son went to make some reply; then she turned on Malone. ‘That’s enough, Mr Malone. You’ve gone too far –’

He interrupted her: ‘Mrs Huxwood, I don’t think you appreciate just how far we often have to go to solve a murder. Now you can get a lawyer, if you wish –’ He took his time about getting to his feet; it was one small way of showing her that he, and not she, was in command here. ‘I overheard you and your sister-in-law the other night saying that voices will be heard. They will be, Mrs Huxwood. Police voices asking questions that you may not like but that you’ll be expected to answer. Thanks for the coffee.’

As the two detectives turned away, Ross Huxwood said, ‘Shit.’

Malone turned back. ‘You talking to me?’

The boy, still lolling back in his chair, stared up at him, the shades hiding his eyes. Then he shook his head. ‘No. Sorry you heard that.’

‘You could teach him some manners, Cordelia,’ said Malone and led Kate across the lawn towards the Big House.

‘Good on you, boss,’ said Kate. ‘I was just itching to clout him across the ears. When I was in uniform I broke the arm of a lout like him.’

‘You’re a real killer, aren’t you?’ he said, remembering the junkie’s nose that had been broken by the butt of her gun. ‘But I think young Ross would’ve been a bit big for you. Who’s his girl friend? Rose whatever-her-name is?’

‘Rosie Gilligan. She’s the fashion editor of the Chronicle. They reckon she’ll be another Ita Buttrose or a Nene King before too long,’ she said, naming two of the country’s most successful women editors. ‘I’d have thought she was a bit long in the tooth for young Ross.’

‘How old?’

‘I’m only guessing, but she must be thirty.’

‘How old are you, Kate?’

She grinned: she was very attractive, he decided, when she smiled. ‘Twenty-four. But Rosie’s not only old, she’s pretty soiled, too, so I hear. She’s a real man-eater, she’s called the Nutcracker Suite.’ He raised his eyebrows and she made a mock duck of her head. ‘Sorry.’

‘You get around, Kate. So you think Ross is her toy-boy and his mum doesn’t like it?’

‘Something like that. Mums never want their boys to get involved with older women. Do you think Ross wants more money so’s he can keep up with Rosie? She’s pretty extravagant, so I’m told. Likes to lunch at all the best restaurants, Rockpool and Level 41, places like that, takes her holidays overseas – she wouldn’t come cheap.’

‘Kate, where do you get all your dirt?’

‘I have a younger sister who’s a model. She goes to all the fashion parties and all they do is gossip, she says. When she’s with me, that’s what we do.’

‘Well, you and I have had a nice little gossip –’ Then his pager beeped. ‘Let’s get back to the car.’

On the car phone he dialled Homicide and asked for Clements. ‘What is it, Russ?’

‘Another report in from Rose Bay. Two shots were fired last night in Point Piper, at The Briarcliff. They hit a Mercedes, just missing the driver and his wife – they were unhurt, fortunately.’

‘So?’

‘Scobie, the Merc got in the line of fire – the shots were meant for the two people getting out of a Daimler, another guy and his wife.’

‘Russ, right now I’m not interested in attempted murder –’

‘You haven’t caught on, have you? The Briarcliff, that’s where Jack Aldwych Junior and his wife live. They were the couple getting out of the Daimler.’

2

‘We didn’t want any fuss,’ said Jack Aldwych Senior. ‘If that couple downstairs hadn’t complained you wouldn’t have heard anything about it.’

‘Jack,’ said Malone, ‘that couple downstairs almost copped those shots in the head. They had a right to complain.’

The old criminal boss (retired, he insisted, not reformed) nodded reluctantly. ‘I suppose so. But in the old days –’

‘These aren’t the old days, Jack. You agree with me?’ He looked at Jack Junior.

The son sighed with exasperation. ‘I don’t think Dad realizes how much it shook me and Julie. Neither of us has ever been shot at before.’

‘You haven’t lived,’ said his father.

‘Mrs Chang, downstairs, passed out,’ said Juliet Aldwych. ‘So did her husband, almost.’ She said it with the superiority of someone who had never fainted in her life, as if she were as accustomed to passing bullets as much as her father-in-law. ‘One doesn’t expect that sort of thing, not in Point Piper.’

The Briarcliff was a block of eight apartments, none of which could be bought for less than several million dollars. Six of the apartments were owned by Hong Kong Chinese, all unable to believe their luck in getting a waterfront home for less than half they would have paid for a place halfway up The Peak in Hong Kong. Point Piper, a manicured finger of land pointing out into the harbour, was one of the best addresses in Sydney. True, it had been named after a naval officer who was both a rake and a conman, and he had been followed by others of the same inclination, none of them reducing the locality’s value with their reputations. Sydney’s eastern suburbs residents, so long as they have a water view, are prone to forgive their neighbours anything. Except, perhaps, seduction of their own wives and a looting of their assets.

Kate had dropped Malone off at the entrance to the apartments. Crime Scene tapes roped off a silver Mercedes, giving the impression that the car had somehow strayed in from the used car lots out along Parramatta Road. One of the Physical Evidence team, a redheaded slim young man, came across to Malone.

‘Morning, sir. We’ve found the bullets – Thirty-twos, they look like. And a cartridge shell out there –’ He nodded towards the quiet street. ‘Looks like they were parked at the kerb there, waiting. We haven’t found anything else.’

Then Clements had arrived from Strawberry Hills and the PE man went back to examining the Mercedes. ‘What d’you reckon? Were they after Old Jack?’

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