Yesterday’s Shadow

‘Anything?’ Malone asked.

‘We’ve got enough prints here to fill a library,’ said Norma Nickles with the fastidiousness of an old-fashioned housekeeper. ‘The maids seem to be a bit light-handed with the feather-dusters.’

‘Tell Deric on your way out. Did you get a print off the flush-button in the toilet?’

‘Yeah, there’s one clear one.’

‘Then maybe that’s the one we want. We nailed a feller years ago that way. A bloke usually has a leak before or after sex.’

‘Really?’ said Norma, who had known the true worth of the advertisements in the tights of male ballet dancers. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘They also have a leak after murder,’ said Clements. ‘It’s the excitement.’

‘You men,’ said Norma and all five of them grinned at her.

‘Righto, Russ,’ said Malone. ‘Let’s get back.’

‘Anything in the deposit box?’

‘Nothing. Where’s Phil?’

‘He’s downstairs with the guys from Regent Street, they’re interviewing the staff. You wanna question ’em?’

‘No, you and I had better get back to the office.’ His expression didn’t change, but Clements, the old hand, read his eyes. ‘Let’s have the report soon’s you can, Norma. Take care.’

He and Clements went down in the lift, squeezing in with half a dozen guests who recognized them as police and fell silent as if afraid of being questioned. The two detectives strode through the lobby before the reporters could waylay them again. Malone saw the manager standing behind the reception desk, staring at them as if they were guests who had trashed their room and refused to pay their account. Police are rarely welcome guests, certainly never in hotels.

Their unmarked car was parked in the hotel’s loading zone. A van had just pulled up and its driver leaned out of his door and yelled, pointing at the sign, ‘Can’t you buggers read?’

The two detectives ignored him, got into the car and Malone drew it out from the kerb, resisting the urge to give the middle finger to the van driver who was still yelling at them. Only then did Clements speak: ‘What have you come up with?’

Malone took the plastic envelope from his pocket, but didn’t remove the passport. ‘This. We’ve got trouble, mate. We take this to Greg Random and then to Charlie Hassett before we let anyone else see it.’

‘So she’s not –’ Clements looked at his notebook; he still carried it like an old family heirloom. ‘Not Mrs Belinda Paterson?’

‘No. She’s Mrs Billie Pavane. She’s the wife of the American Ambassador.’

2

‘Shit!’ said Charlie Hassett, Assistant Commissioner, Crime Agency. He looked at the passport as if it were his dismissal pink slip. ‘It’s our turf, but we’re gunna be overrun by our Federal blokes, the CIA, the FBI, Foreign Affairs … You’re absolutely sure this is the dead woman’s, Scobie?’

‘Yes, sir. It’s hers. I saw her before they zipped up the bag and took her away. It’s hers, all right.’

Clements had gone back to Homicide to prepare for the blizzard that would soon be coming out of Canberra. Cold weather had been coming up from the south all week, but there would be no snow sports for the New South Wales Police Service. Malone was wishing that he had taken his vacation, which was due; or even his long service leave, which would give him time to disappear to the other side of the world. Lisa, his wife, had been talking of a trip home to Holland and that now seemed an appealing faraway place. Instead he was now sitting in Assistant Commissioner Hassett’s office with Chief Superintendent Greg Random, head of the Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit.

‘Charlie, I’m not going to have my men pushed around by outsiders.’ Random was the guardian angel of his men and women, though if he had any wings they had been folded and stored in a cupboard. Tall and bony, with a stiff brush of grey hair, he was as dry as the dust on the Western Plains where he had grown up and he would have greeted Lucifer with the same laconic regard as he offered to other, lesser crims. He would not be bending the knee to any Hierarchy from Canberra. For him, anyone down there, whether politician, diplomat or bureaucrat, was a foreigner. ‘I want you to let them know that from the start –’

‘Greg, relax –’ Hassett made a downward motion with two large hands. He had started on the beat thirty-five years ago, when doubt had never entered his still developing mind; his powers of persuasion had consisted of a sledge-hammer for closed doors and a bunched fist for closed faces. He occasionally dreamed of the simplicity of those days, but these days there was no sharper mind in the Police Service. He wore his reputation as a hard case as some men, and women, wore their power suits. The sledgehammer had been put away and in its place was a perception as sharp as a professional woodchopper’s axe. ‘I’ll talk to the Commissioner and we’ll get the barricades up. We’re not gunna be overrun by outsiders. But we’ve got to get this news down to Canberra – how’re you gunna do it?’

‘We’ll start out with the proper channels, just to show we’re not obstructive,’ said Random. ‘I’ve talked it over with Scobie. When we leave here we’re going down to the US Consul-General. We’ll give him the news, tell him we’ve already got the investigation under way and he can let Canberra know. We’ll let them know – in a nice way, of course – that the case is ours.’

Hassett looked at Malone. ‘You’re not jumping for joy, Scobie.’

‘Would you be, sir?’

The Assistant Commissioner grinned. ‘You want a loan of my sledgehammer? It’s over there in the closet. I’ve had it gold-plated.’ He stood up. He was of what had once been the medium height for police officers, five feet ten inches, and he had thickened; he still suggested the battering-ram he had once been. ‘Now I’m gunna give the Commissioner the bad news. Good luck. My regards to the Consul-General. He’s a nice bloke and he’s gunna hate this as much as you.’

Random and Malone drove down to Martin Place, in the business heart of the city, parked the car in the basement of the MLC building and rode up to the fifty-ninth floor. Money rustled like a breeze in all the floors beneath, but here on the fifty-ninth diplomacy, at citizen level, was the order of business. Passports, trade and general enquiries: nothing that made waves. The two detectives, when they produced their badges, were checked through security as if they were close relatives of the US President and were shown into the Consul-General’s office before they could comment on their welcome.

‘You’ve got news of her?’

Consul-General Bradley Avery had been an All-American quarterback before he had given up throwing passes and taken to receiving blasts from Washington. He was as tall as Random and Malone and had shoulders that looked as if he still wore the pads that Malone always found ridiculous on gridiron players. He had dark curly hair and a broad black face just the pleasant side of plain.

‘Our embassy called me this morning – got me at home before I was out of bed –’

‘We’re talking about Mrs Pavane, the Ambassador’s wife?’ said Random.

‘Yes. Yes, of course –’ Then Avery waved the two detectives to chairs, came round his desk and sat his haunches on it. ‘She’s been missing since yesterday morning. She caught a nine o’clock plane out of Canberra for Sydney and she hasn’t been seen since she got off it –’

‘You didn’t have a consulate car out at the airport to meet her?’

‘Yes, there was one. The embassy called after she had left and ordered the car. But she didn’t meet it –’ Then he stopped, reading the atmosphere for the first time. ‘You’ve got bad news?’

Random nodded, looked at Malone. ‘Tell him, Scobie. It’s your case.’ Planting the territorial imperative early.

Malone recited the bad news. ‘That’s the bald fact, Mr Avery. What puzzles us is what was the Ambassador’s wife doing in a hundred-dollar-a-night hotel under an assumed name?’

Avery had listened in silence, without expression; but now he let out a long hiss of breath, as if he had been holding it in. ‘Holy shit! Does the media know?’

‘Yes. There was another murder last night at the same hotel, one of their cleaners. If it hadn’t been for the double homicide, I don’t think the press would have been down there. It would have got a three-line mention in the news brief in tomorrow morning’s papers, that’s all. But now –’

‘Do the media know who she is?’

‘Not yet. So far the hotel management doesn’t know. I didn’t let the manager see this when I took it out of the safe deposit box –’ He took the plastic bag containing the passport from his pocket. ‘All they know so far is that she was American.’

Avery held out his hand. ‘I’ll give that back to the Ambassador.’

Malone looked at Random, who said, ‘It’s our turf, Mr Avery. It’s a New South Wales Police Service job, I’m afraid. I wish it weren’t, but that’s the fact of the matter.’

‘Does it have to be?’ Avery was not belligerent. He just had the look of a quarterback seeing tackles coming at him from either side.

‘I’m afraid so. We’ll co-operate with anyone you bring in, but it’s our case. We’ll be as discreet as possible, but it won’t be too long before the media has a field day.’

‘Did your security people check yesterday when she didn’t turn up?’ asked Malone.

‘We-ll, no-o.’ Avery looked abruptly tentative. ‘We didn’t send anyone out there after the driver came back and reported he hadn’t found her. We phoned Canberra and they said to leave it to them. They’re very secure about security down there,’ he added and sounded undiplomatic.

‘What do they have down there? CIA, FBI, what?’ asked Random.

Avery closed up: ‘I think you better ask them.’

‘How long has the Ambassador been out here?’ asked Malone.

‘Two months. He’s still finding his feet. Don’t quote me,’ he added and almost managed a smile.

‘Is he a career diplomat?’

Foreign ambassadors made little or no impact on the country outside the limited circle of Canberra. They were wraiths that occasionally materialized. Like now.

‘No. I should imagine half the State Department had never heard of him till the President submitted his name. I’d never heard of him …’

‘You’re being very frank, Mr Avery,’ said Random.

‘I’m getting on side,’ said Avery, and this time his smile widened. ‘Look, you want the facts. I’m the one who’s gonna be closest to you in this, so I’ll fill you in all I can. Mr Pavane was a big supporter of the President in the last campaign, raising enough money to wrap up Missouri and Kansas for the President. He comes from Kansas City, his family has been there for years. He was president of one of our biggest agrobusinesses and he was picked to come out here because we always seem to be at odds with you on meat and agricultural tariffs and subsidies. Again, don’t quote me.’ He went round behind his desk, sat down, looked glad to have a chair beneath him. ‘I’ll call our embassy now. They’ll have someone down here this afternoon. I’ll tell them it’s your turf, as you call it, but you may have to explain it to them yourselves.’

‘We’ll do that,’ said Random. ‘You might tell them while you’re on the phone that Inspector Malone and I have the backing of our own Assistant Commissioner and our Commissioner himself. Inspector Malone will be doing the leg-work, I’ll be running the investigation. But behind me –’

‘I get your point, Mr Random,’ said Avery. ‘Does your Premier and your state government know yet?’

‘They will by now. The Commissioner will have told the Premier and the Police Minister.’

Avery looked at Malone. ‘You look worried, Inspector. Clouds are gathering?’

‘I think so. Where were you before your posting to Sydney?’

‘Belgrade.’ Another smile, but this time a wry one. ‘I see your point. Okay, I’ll do all I can to help you. But I hope you understand – consular men are down the totem pole compared to embassy staff.’

‘I feel the same way about Police Headquarters.’

‘You survive,’ said Random, then looked at Avery. ‘We’ll wait till you’ve talked to the embassy. Just so’s we know, right from the start, where we’ll be going.’

‘I think I better get my two senior staff in here first.’ Avery spoke into the intercom on his desk: ‘Jane, will you ask Mr Goodbody and Miz Caporetto to come in? Now.’ He switched off and sat back. But he was not relaxed. ‘You’re right. What was Mrs Pavane doing in a cheap hotel under an assumed name? She didn’t strike me as like that – I mean the cheap hotel.’

‘What do you know about her?’ asked Malone.

‘Nothing. Except that she was a charming, good-looking woman who always looked a million dollars, as they say. I gather she had made quite an impression down there in Canberra on the cocktail circuit. I met her twice and she looked to me as if she was going to be a great help to the Ambassador.’

‘And what’s he like?’

But then the door opened and Mr Goodbody and Miz Caporetto came in. Avery waved a finger at the door and Goodbody turned and closed it. Avery stood up and introduced the newcomers; there was obvious rapport between the three of them. Then he said, ‘This is Chief Superintendent Random and Inspector Malone from the New South Wales Police Service. They have bad news. Really bad news. They have just found the Ambassador’s wife in a hotel up on Central Square. Murdered.’

Gina Caporetto sat down suddenly in a chair which, fortunately, was right behind her. Mitchell Goodbody stood stockstill, one foot in front of the other, as if caught in mid-stride. Then he said, ‘Murdered?’

Malone had heard the echo countless times. Violent death was beyond the immediate comprehension of most people: at least the violent death of those they knew. Consular officials, like police, must have experience of tragedy, but, he guessed, it was the tragedies of strangers. And they would not have expected personal – well, semi-personal – violence here on their doorstep in a friendly city.

‘How? Was she – murdered by some stranger?’ Goodbody had a soft Southern accent. He was short and thin and looked as if he might be perpetually worried. He had thick fair hair, cut very short as if he had just come out of boot camp, and a long thin face that would reach middle age before the rest of him. The sort of worker who would always see that the office wheels never stopped turning. ‘Which hotel was it? Central Square?’ He frowned, as if it was remote territory.

‘The Southern Savoy,’ said Random.

‘The what?’ Gina Caporetto was a blonde Italian-American, her birth roots north of Milan; it was an unfortunate name, a reminder of an Italian defeat in World War I; but the two Australians in the room had never heard of it. In any case men, and women, would hardly remark her name; instead they took note of her body and, eyes rising, her quite attractive face. She wore a beige knitted dress that looked as if she had put it on wet and it had shrunk. ‘I’ve never heard of it – no, wait a minute. Last year, during the Olympics, there was a big group from, I’ve forgotten where, New England somewhere, they were booked in there. I went up there once –’ She, too, frowned. ‘She was – there?’

‘It’s a hundred-dollar-a-night place,’ said Avery. ‘Superintendent Random tells me the circumstances aren’t – well, not the best. She was found naked in her room. She’d been strangled.’

‘You are sure it’s Mrs Pavane?’ Goodbody’s accent seemed to have thickened with shock.

‘Certain,’ said Malone and held up the plastic bag and the passport.

‘Do the media know?’ Gina Caporetto had recovered her poise, which was considerable.

‘Miss Caporetto is our press officer,’ said Avery.

‘They know there’s been a double murder –’

‘A double murder?’ Goodbody seemed to be making a habit of the echo.

‘We don’t think the other homicide – a hotel cleaner – is connected to that of Mrs Pavane. But we’ve only just started our investigation –’

Gina Caporetto looked at Avery. ‘Shouldn’t our people be handling this?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Random, getting in first. ‘This is our turf, Miz Caporetto. We’ll welcome co-operation, but that’s all. I don’t know the set-up at your embassy –’

‘I’ll explain the situation to Canberra,’ said Avery. ‘I’ll call them now. Maybe you could offer Mr Random and Mr Malone some coffee, Gina? Take them into your office while I call Canberra. You stay with me, Mitch. This is just between ourselves till I’ve talked to the embassy.’

Goodbody still looked shaken: the wheels had come off and he had found himself with no jack. ‘They’ll be all over us –’

‘No, they won’t, Mitch,’ said Avery warningly. ‘Go ahead, Gina, give the gentlemen some coffee.’

Gina Caporetto led the two detectives out of the big office into a smaller one on the other side of a lobby. The secretary at the desk outside Avery’s room looked up enquiringly, but Ms Caporetto just shook her head.

She closed the door to her office and went to an old-fashioned percolator on a hot-plate. ‘I make my own coffee. We Americans think we make the best coffee in the world. But –’

She smiled and Malone said, ‘Don’t quote you. Did you ever meet Mrs Pavane?’

‘Cream or black? Sugar?’ She brought them their cups, then took her own behind her desk and sat down. It was a neat, comfortable office; but Malone wondered how comfortable it would be for her in the coming days. Even the ubiquitous Stars and Stripes on a small standard in a corner looked limp.

‘Yes, I met her, once down in Canberra just after they had arrived and twice up here. I took her shopping one day and another day I took her to lunch. She was trying to get the feel of – well, Australians, I guess.’

‘But?’ said Malone.

‘But?’ She paused, with her cup held in front of her face like a mask.

Greg Random said, ‘Miz Caporetto, we cops read what is unsaid. It comes with experience – in other circumstances we might have made good diplomats.’ He looked sideways at Malone. ‘Except Inspector Malone, who is notoriously undiplomatic.’

‘Nice coffee,’ said Malone diplomatically, holding up his cup.

Her first smile had been forced, a muscular effort, but now she appeared a little more relaxed; she shook her head and smiled at both of them. She looked like a sex bomb, but she had a cool mind that could always control it.

‘Yes – but. I just, I don’t know, I felt she wasn’t entirely a stranger here.’

‘Did you query her on it?’

‘Yes. Diplomatically.’ Just a faint smile.

‘And what did she say?’

She took a memory pause; then she said, ‘I’m being mean, but it was like she was making up an answer. Then she said she had been out here eight or nine years ago on a quick business trip. She had stayed at the Regent.’

‘Five-star,’ said Malone. ‘So why did she choose the Southern Savoy this time? It’d be struggling to pick up three stars.’

‘Did she let her hair down when you took her to lunch?’ Random had finished his coffee.

She got up, took his cup and poured more coffee for him. ‘Not really. We weren’t exactly girls on an equal footing – she was the Ambassador’s wife.’ She came back, sat down, paused again as if she realized she had spoken in the past tense: was the Ambassador’s wife. ‘She seemed to have tightened up after that first shopping visit. She wasn’t rude, but she was – well, distant. As if suddenly she had taken a dislike to, I dunno, Sydney or Australia. It happened after this guy spoke to her.’

‘Which guy?’ Random had almost finished his second cup. Slow in almost everything else, he was a quick coffee drinker, not a sipper.

‘We hadn’t started lunch when this guy came up, said, “Aren’t you –” I didn’t catch the name, he sorta mumbled it the way –’

‘The way Australians do,’ said Malone. ‘My wife is always telling me to open my mouth. She’s Dutch.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Ms Caporetto, trying to sound polite. ‘Well, anyway, she just froze him. She just said a blunt “No” and he apologized and sorta limped away.’

‘Did you get a good look at the man?’ asked Malone.

‘Not really. I was looking at her. He was short and, I’m not sure, bald. He stopped by for just a few seconds. The place was crowded and he just sort of disappeared.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Even at the time I thought it a bit strange – she just made no comment. She didn’t look at me, picked up her menu and, I think I’ve got it right, said, “I’ll have the oysters and the barramundi.”’

‘So she knew about our oysters and our fish?’ said Malone.

‘Well, yes, it seemed so. But she’d been in Canberra a coupla months – no, at that time a month or maybe five weeks – and maybe they’d told her what was best.’

‘What else do they have to talk about down in Canberra?’ said Random. ‘Where did you have lunch?’

‘At Catalina. It was a Friday, all the eastern suburbs ladies were there.’

‘What do you know about her back in the States?’

‘Nothing. I knew nothing about the Ambassador till we heard he was coming. He’s from Kansas City. I come from Philly – Philadelphia. Anything west of the Mississippi is still Indian territory to us.’

Just like us, thought Malone, though on a smaller scale. Sydney’s eastern suburbs thought of the western suburbs as Indian territory. ‘What’s he like?’

‘Charming. He’s no hayseed or cowboy –’ She stopped, shook her head again, looked squarely at the two men. ‘Why am I talking to you like this? Because you’re cops?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Malone. ‘Because, like us, you want to know who killed the Ambassador’s wife.’

She pondered a moment, then she nodded. ‘Okay. As I said, he’s no hayseed. He graduated from the University of Missouri, then he went on to Oxford, England – he was there two or three years behind President Clinton. He’s very much okay and the word from Canberra is that he’s very popular and respected on the diplomatic circuit. Being a US ambassador is not the easiest job in the world, no matter where you are.’

‘What is the security set-up? Is there an FBI agent at the embassy?’

‘No, he’s here at the consulate – that’s the posting. But he went down to Canberra last night when Mrs Pavane didn’t return there.’

Malone glanced at Random. ‘Did you know there was an FBI man stationed here?’

‘Yes. It’s not top secret, but it’s not broadcast. So far we’ve had no dealings with him.’

Malone felt uneasy, but said nothing. Then Consul-General Avery came in. His face was stiff, but he seemed to have recovered from the shock that Random and Malone had brought him. He looked ready for business, unsettling though it might be.

‘I spoke to our Chief of Mission first, then the Ambassador came on the line. It’s floored him – he sounded as if I’d hit him with a ten-pound hammer. He’s coming up right away – they’ve got a plane standing by. He’ll be here in an hour, an hour and a half at the most. Where is Mrs Pavane’s body?’

‘At the morgue,’ said Random. ‘If you could meet him at the airport and take him there – it’s out at Glebe. We’ll let them know to expect him. He’ll need to identify the body. Then we’d like to see him.’

‘Meet him here, will you? We’d like to keep him away from the media for as long as possible, at least till he’s got over the shock. Once it’s on the wire services or the reps here of our bigger papers …’ His brows came down, his mouth twisted and for a moment he looked ugly. Then his face cleared and he looked at his watch. ‘Say one-thirty?’

‘We’ll be here,’ said Random, then turned to Gina Caporetto. ‘We won’t identify Mrs Pavane till we’ve talked to the Ambassador. We’ll keep her out of the news till then. But then –’

‘Then,’ said Avery with the voice of experience, ‘the fan starts whirring.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Random. ‘Inspector Malone will be handling it. He’s a good man on fans and what sometimes flies out of them.’