Winter Chill

JON CLEARY

Winter Chill

Dedication

For Cate

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

1

The four carriages of the Harbourlink monorail softly whirred their way above the three-o’clock-in-the-morning city streets. An occasional car or taxi sped down the glistening wet cross streets; in two of the main north–south thoroughfares garbage trucks banged and rattled at the quiet. The monorail, with its metallic whisper, drifted by dark upper-storey windows of department stores and offices, moved down the slope of Market Street, over Pyrmont Bridge and into the sharp curve that led above the Darling Harbour exhibition complex. It did not stop at the station there but continued on, a ghost train of the future, and swung back to head up into the city again, looking even more ghostly in a sudden squall of rain, going round and round on its endless circuit.

There was no driver and there was only one passenger. To those who knew the painting he was the spitting image (though he had never been known to spit) of the farmer in Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Tall, gaunt, face weathered (not from farming but from sailing), the first impression of those who had met him was that he was humourless and forbidding. Yet the gaunt face could break into the most Channing smile and his friendliness, though not legendary, was sincere and surprising. He had enough perceived contradictions to make him a good lawyer, which he was – or had been. Witnesses and judges and juries had never been quite sure whom and what they were dealing with till he had delivered his final argument. His name was Orville Brame, he was one of two senior partners in one of New York’s most prestigious law firms and he was the incumbent president of the American Bar Association. Or he would have been incumbent if he had not died in the past hour.

He sat in the compartment immediately behind the driver’s cabin, held upright with his thin arm pushed into the handrail beside him. His dark eyes were open and had any other passengers boarded the carriage at that out-of-schedule hour they might have mistaken him for a man who had drunk himself into a glassy-eyed stupor at some professionals’ dinner. Except for the dark red stain on the front of his white shirt and the twist of agony that had turned down one corner of his thin-lipped mouth.

The monorail slipped along its track, over the street-lights, past the black mirrors of the windows, down and across the oily finger of harbour, along the front of the exhibition centre. The sightless eyes of Orville Brame stared out at the city he had left thirty years ago and to which he had never returned until now. And now he was past memories and regret, past the anger and trepidation he had brought home with him.

2

It had stopped raining when Scobie Malone got up at six o’clock for his regular morning walk. He went into the bathroom for the ritual start-to-the-day leak, splashed some water in his face, ran his hand through his dark hair, which always curled during the night. He went back to the bedroom, pulled on his track-suit and trainers, went out to the front door and opened it. Despite the rain the weather had got colder; a cold wind sprang up out of nowhere and blew through his bones. He went back into the bedroom and pulled on a sweater.

‘Come back to bed,’ Lisa murmured sleepily.

‘Go back to sleep,’ he said, resisting temptation.

Leaving the house he turned, like a trained dog, to the usual route, which took him down through several side streets to Randwick racecourse. The wind had blown the clouds away and the stars looked like frozen fireworks in the still-dark sky. He shivered as the cold bit at him. Of course cold was comparative; the Norwegians at February’s Winter Olympics would consider this morning the brisk beginning of a summer’s day. But he was not a Norwegian nor a Siberian nor an Inuit; he was an Aussie who knew when it was bloody cold and no argument. Comparing climate was like comparing one woman with another. An opinion he would not have quoted to Lisa.

Once out of bed and on his way Malone was always glad to be walking. His mind, like the cold engine of the nine-year-old Holden Commodore back in the garage, always took a little time to get started; the five-kilometre walk each morning eased him into the day. The racecourse provided a convenient circuit.

He walked briskly round the outer rail of the outside track, while the horses began appearing out of the lightening darkness, waiting for enough light for them to begin their training gallops. There was an occasional shout or obscenity from the jockeys and strappers as a horse played up, but the morning was too cold for any sustained burst of temper. On the far side of the course, away from the grandstands, Malone was alone. He began to run over in his mind the day that lay ahead of him at Homicide, the five murders that he hoped would be wiped from the computer by the end of the week. There had been a spate of murders in Sydney in the past month, some of them without obvious motive but all of them with suspects reasonably certain of committal. The eighteen detectives under Malone, as their inspector in charge, were usually not so fortunate in the cases that occupied them. With a bit of luck Malone might have a clean computer, nothing on the running sheets, when he went on leave in two weeks’ time. At the thought of the holiday coming up, two weeks in the Queensland sunshine, he almost broke into a jog, but reason slowed his legs before they got out of hand. Jogging, he believed, was the invention of orthopaedic surgeons and urologists looking for future trade.

An hour after leaving the front door he was back at the Federation-style house that was home. As he opened the door again he heard the phone ringing on the small table in the hall. Claire, his seventeen-year-old, came out of her bedroom, picked up the phone and handed it to him as he came down the hallway.

‘How do you know it’s not for you?’

‘Dad, civilized people don’t ring at seven o’clock in the morning. It has to be someone from Homicide.’

She went on into the bathroom she shared with Maureen, the fifteen-year-old, and Tom, going on twelve. He looked after her, marvelling again at how much she resembled her mother in looks and temperament. There was no Irish in her, only Dutch.

‘Scobie?’ Russ Clements, sergeant and second in command, was on the other end of the line.

‘Where are you, this hour of the morning?’

‘Still at home. Peta Smith called me, she’s just come back from Darling Harbour. She’s got one she thinks you and I should handle.’

In his mind’s eye the computer screen all at once began to mock him: the running sheets were off and running again. ‘Why me? I have eighteen of you supposed to be working for me—’

‘This guy was found in the monorail at three-thirty this morning, a single bullet wound in his heart.’

‘In the monorail? At three-thirty?’ Lisa, up and dressed, passed him in the hallway, raised her eyebrows and he nodded, equally puzzled.

‘Peta said she’ll explain it all when we see her. The point is, she thinks you and I should handle it. The dead man is – was the president of the American Bar Association. They’re in town for an international law convention, you’ve read about it. I’ve put the morning conference off till ten-thirty. The monorail car, the scene of the crime, has been moved on to a siding.’ He gave Malone instructions how to get there. ‘I’ll see you at eight-thirty.’

Malone put down the phone, turned to find Lisa standing immediately behind him. He looked at her. ‘Why all dressed up?’

‘I’m going to the dentist.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘You weren’t listening, as usual. Well, anyway—’ She headed back towards the kitchen. ‘Have your shower.’

She seemed quiet, not inclined to talk, and he wondered how much trouble her teeth were giving her; she had excellent teeth and her visits to the dentist were usually no more than routine. He went in to shower and to get dressed, his mind slipping off in another direction. Murder was always a distraction, even though it was, for him, routine.

When he came out into the kitchen fifteen minutes later the three children, dressed for school, were at the breakfast table. ‘You’ve got another murder,’ said Maureen. ‘It was on the radio.’

‘I thought you only listened to Rod Stewart and other screamers?’

‘Sometimes they interrupt with some news, if it’s juicy enough.’ He suspected that she would grow up to be that bane of all cops, a reporter. Till then he would love her.

‘Who’s dead? A politician?’ Tom had just begun social studies and looked like following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, politician-haters both.

‘No, they said he was a lawyer,’ Maureen told him. ‘An American lawyer. Do many lawyers get murdered, Dad?’

‘That’s enough,’ said Lisa. ‘I won’t have murder as a topic at breakfast.’

She had spoken in her formal voice, her Dutch voice as Malone and the children called it. He looked along the table at her. ‘Your teeth hurting?’

‘What? Yes, a little. Let’s skip talk about murder and trips to the dentist, shall we?’

‘My, we are touchy this morning,’ said Maureen.

‘Easy,’ Malone warned her. He glanced again at Lisa, but she had bent her blond head and seemed engrossed in ensuring that she put the right amount of butter on her toast. He caught Claire’s eye and she shook her head as if giving him a warning. He wondered if Claire, now on the verge of womanhood, was privy to confidences that Lisa was not giving him.

When he was leaving the house Lisa came to the front door to give him her usual farewell kiss. ‘What’s the matter, darl?’ he said.

‘Nothing. I’m going to the dentist at the wrong time of the month.’ She kissed him. ‘Drive carefully. Will you be home this evening at the usual time?’

‘I’ll call you.’ He patted her behind. ‘I love you.’

‘Not just for that, I hope.’

He noticed she didn’t smile when she said it.

He drove into the city under a polished sky. He always liked the light of Sydney; it seemed to add another dimension to whatever one looked at, but, of course, that was an illusion. He passed a Social Security office where a line of people had already gathered; no amount of bright light altered their plight, they stood there becalmed in the doldrums. The economy had begun its climb out of the past few years’ recession, but it was accepted now that there would always be some who would never again get a foothold on the slope. It didn’t make him comfortable to know that too many of them were men and women of his own age.

He found his way to Darling Harbour through the maze of one-way streets that always seemed to lead in the wrong direction. He parked the car in a No Parking zone and got out, shivering a little in the wind that sprang at him. Clements was waiting at the foot of a flight of steps. The big man, married for a year now, was a well-dressed shadow of the untidy bachelor he had been for so many years; well, almost well-dressed. To have made him sartorially smooth would have been like landscaping a landslide.

‘Do your collar up,’ said Malone. ‘You’re not one of those Pommy detectives in The Bill.’

Clements did up his collar, arranged his silk tie. ‘There, how’s that? Are we supposed to be impressing the Americans this morning?’

‘I dunno. They haven’t impressed us, killing their top lawyer.’

‘We dunno they did it.’ They climbed the steps and came out on to a narrow pavement that ran round a siding where a single monorail car was parked. Blue-and-white crime scene tapes had been strung round it, cracking in the wind like carnival stockwhips. Members of the Physical Evidence team were working inside and outside the car. They had once been known as Crime Scene members; but it was Malone’s convinced belief that the New South Wales Police Service, once known as the Police Force and before that as the Police Department, had a secret body called the Police Name-Changing Team whose sole purpose was to confuse everyone, including the police.

Peta Smith stepped out of the car and came towards them. ‘Morning, sir.’ She was always meticulously correct when it came to protocol in front of strangers; besides the PE team there were four men in overalls standing close by. ‘The body’s been taken to the morgue. I’ve got all the particulars.’

‘Anyone else here?’

‘Phil Truach is inside with the PE team. And there are some uniformed guys.’

‘What have you come up with?’

‘Nothing so far.’

She had blond hair, cut short, and a pale complexion that freckled in the summer; outdoors she almost always wore a broad-brimmed hat; it upset some crims to be interrogated by a woman who looked to be on her way to one of the more conservative churches. Today she wore a navy-blue trenchcoat against the south wind and a matching rain-hat. She was better computer-educated than any of her male colleagues and had taken over most of the research duties, but she was as efficient and painstaking as any of the men when out on an actual job. She had a good figure, the result of diet and exercise, but she would always have to watch her weight. She was attractive and coolly friendly in a dominantly male environment and, as far as Malone could judge, not overly ambitious. He had remarked all these points about her, but it had taken time. He was not averse to working with women, but he was reluctant to be responsible for them. In them he saw his own daughters and the weight of responsibility there.

‘Anything on the body?’

‘Just some loose change and his convention name-tag. No wallet, no keys, nothing.’

One of the men in overalls approached them and Peta Smith introduced him. ‘This is Mr Korda, the technical manager. He took the phone call from the security guard who found the dead man. Then he called Police Central.’

Korda was young, ginger-haired, with a frank open face that suggested he took the world at its own valuation. At the moment he looked bemused and resentful, as if murders shouldn’t happen on anything with which he was connected. ‘I just couldn’t believe it when Murray, our security guy, that’s him back there on his own—’ He jerked his head over his thin shoulder at a thickset man in uniform who stood about ten metres from them. ‘When he rang me. Who expects to get a call like that, three a.m. in the morning?’

‘It happens all the time,’ said Malone. ‘To us.’

Korda ducked his head apologetically. ‘Oh sure, I guess so. Sorry. Only … Well, when Murray called me, I got down here right away, I been here ever since. The cars were still going around with him, the dead guy I mean, sitting up there like a tourist. It passed me just’s I got here, we hadda stand and wait till it come around again. It’s not something I’m used to, standing there three o’clock in the morning freezing my butt off, waiting for a dead guy to arrive. I cut off the main power, got aboard and ran it in here to the siding after Murray had switched the power back on again.’

‘There was nobody else on board?’

Korda shook his head. ‘Murray was back there on the Convention station, that one in fronta the Novotel. We were on our mobiles to each other. While he was waiting for me, it went around five or six times. He said there was no one in it but the dead guy.’

Malone looked at Peta Smith. ‘You talked to the security man?’

She nodded. ‘His name’s Murray Rockman. He bears out what Mr Korda has just told us.’

Malone beckoned to the security guard, who came towards them, nodding affably to both Malone and Clements. He was almost as tall as Malone at six feet but looked shorter because of the thickness of his body; the thickness was muscle, not fat. He had a broad-cheeked face, very fair hair and almost white eyelashes; he carried his peaked cap under his arm, like a serviceman or a police officer. Malone guessed that he was the sort of security guard who took his job seriously, with a lot of his spare time spent keeping fit.

‘What time did you come on duty, Mr Rockman?’

‘Eleven last night, sir. I was on the shift that knocks off at six.’ He had a deep voice, every word almost perfectly articulated. He had no accent, but Malone was certain he had not been born in Australia. He was one of those immigrants who had learned to speak English with more respect than the local voters showed. ‘My beat is this side of the water.’

‘Who employs you?’

‘I’m with ABS Security, we do contract work for TNT.’

The alphabet was taking over the commercial world, Malone thought: TNT was the transport corporation that ran the monorail. ‘When did you first notice the monorail was still running?’

‘Three-oh-eight, sir.’ Security men were usually not this polite; many were ex-cops glad to be free of what they looked upon as serfdom. Rockman, on the other hand, sounded like a man who would be in service all his life and would never resent it. ‘I noted it in my book. I was down below–’ he nodded at the pavement beneath their feet ‘– when I heard it go over the first time. Then I came up here and waited for it to come round again. That was when I saw the dead man in it.’ He blinked, the white eyelashes catching the sunlight. ‘I didn’t know he was dead, of course. I thought maybe he was a drunk who’d been put in there by some of his friends. There was a lot of merriment last night over at the hotel, the lawyers settling in.’

‘You saw nothing suspicious?’

‘You mean did I see anyone else? No, sir.’

‘Do you know how to drive the monorail?’ asked Clements.

‘Mr Korda has given us some brief instruction, just in case of emergency.’

‘You didn’t think this was an emergency?’

‘Blame me for that,’ Korda interjected. ‘The instructions are they aren’t to touch the cars without permission. When Murray called I told him to leave it alone till I got here. I live over in Birchgrove, that time of the morning it took me less than ten minutes to get here.’

‘Righto, thank you, Mr Rockman. We have your work and home address?’ He looked at Peta Smith, who nodded. Then as the security guard turned away, he said, ‘What service were you in, Mr Rockman?’

The white eyelashes blinked again. ‘You’re observant, sir. The United States Marine Corps.’

‘You’re American?’

‘Yes, sir, but I’ve been out here twelve years. I’ve become Australianized – I hope.’ He smiled for the first time, showing strong white teeth. American teeth, Malone thought.

‘You’re still too polite.’ Malone smiled in return. ‘But there’s time.’

Rockman smiled again, nodded and went off, not marching but walking briskly. Malone in his mind heard the cadence song of the Marines and it matched Rockman’s step. He looked at the others. ‘He didn’t sound American.’

‘He’s a good man,’ said Korda. ‘One of the best.’

‘You said you cut off the power. How come the train – is that what you call it? – how come it kept moving if there was no one at the controls?’

‘Doesn’t it have a dead man’s handle?’ Clements was a grab-bag of trivia that often produced an essential key. ‘They used to have it on electric trains. Probably still do.’

‘We have something that works on the same principle, a power button that cuts out after a certain number of seconds if the driver hasn’t activated it. In this case someone – the murderer?’ He said the word as if it were alien to his tongue, with a note of disbelief that he could actually be talking about a murderer. ‘Well, someone had taped the button down and then must of jumped off. These trains only do about fifteen ks an hour. The door to the driver’s section was still open when I pulled it up.’

‘So you would suggest that whoever committed the murder, he knew how to run one of these trains?’

‘Well, I’m no detective—’ Then he ducked his ginger head again, gave an apologetic grin while the three detectives gave him smiles that told him he was right, he was no detective. ‘Sorry. Yeah, I’d say that. You don’t have to be a mechanical genius to drive one of these, but it’d help if you knew about the dead man’s handle principle. Dead man’s handle – that’s pretty funny … Well, not funny, exactly. You know what I mean, the dead guy …’ His voice trailed off.

‘Let’s have a look at the scene of the crime,’ suggested Malone. ‘Thanks, Mr Korda. Detective Smith will be in touch with you again.’ Then, as he and Clements walked along to the parked carriage: ‘First time I think we’ve had a mobile scene of the crime, isn’t it?’

‘It narrows the field a bit. We start looking for someone who knows how to operate a train like this. Would you know how?’

‘It takes me all my time to start our lawnmower.’

‘Who is your lawnmower – Lisa?’

They grinned at each other, two old married men; then they grinned at Phil Truach, another old married man, who stood in the carriage doorway. He was their age, but he would not make sergeant or higher until he transferred to another section of the Police Service; he had been in Homicide twelve years and had twice refused promotion or transfer. Murder, he said, was a crossword puzzle, and he was addicted to puzzles, he also said, though neither Malone nor Clements had ever seen him indulging his addiction. He was tall and bony with a lean, gullied face; he smoked forty cigarettes a day and he had a smoker’s cough like the bark of a gun. Somehow he had so far avoided lung cancer or emphysema and the Homicide joke was that the Tobacco Institute paid him a monthly stipend for staying alive and on his feet. He was one of the best detectives on Malone’s roster.

‘Not a skerrick, Scobie.’ He never worried about protocol, no matter who was around. ‘No prints, nothing – everything’s been wiped clean.’

‘No shoeprints? It rained last night.’

‘There’s a welter of muddy prints on the floor, you could never sort ’em out. The monorail was packed all day yesterday, I gather – all the Yank lawyers and their wives. The cleaners don’t start work on the car till five a.m. By then we’d taken over this one.’

‘How many bullets?’

‘Just the one. It’s still in the body.’ Truach stamped out the cigarette he had been smoking; he knew how much the habit annoyed Malone, a lifelong non-smoker. ‘This bloke Brame, he’s top of the ladder, they tell me.’

‘Where’s the media, then?’ said Clements, though he looked relieved that none was in sight.

‘They’ve been and gone from here. Now they’re all along at the Novotel interviewing the thousand Yank lawyers.’

‘How many?’

Truach looked at Peta Smith, who had come up behind Malone and Clements. ‘There’s a thousand of them,’ she said. ‘Spread around every hotel in Sydney. This is the first international convention that’s been in Australia and it seems everyone wanted to come. Plus their wives and girlfriends. And boyfriends, too, I guess,’ she added, and Malone wondered if there was a note of prejudice in her voice.

‘Who’s home minding the store?’

‘There are eight hundred thousand lawyers in the United States,’ said Clements, grabbing in his mental bag again. ‘I was reading the Law Society’s Journal one day. One lawyer for every three and a half thousand of the population. There’ll be enough left home to mind the store and chase ambulances.’