Winter Chill

‘Eight hundred thousand!’ Malone shook his head. ‘We don’t have that many crims registered out here.’

The four detectives were silent a moment, aghast at the thought of the legal poison ivy spreading across the US. Malone had few prejudices, but one of them, as with most cops, was an aversion to lawyers.

He stepped past Truach into the carriage and looked around. There were three blue-upholstered seats facing three similar seats in the small compartment. There was none of the disorder one so often found at a murder scene; the compartment was neat and tidy, with none of the vandalism that occurred on the city’s urban trains.

‘When can we have the car?’ said Korda, behind him. ‘I wanna get it cleaned. We’ll need it today, all the traffic.’

‘Not today,’ said Clements. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

The technical manager’s face closed up, but if he was annoyed he kept it to himself. ‘Well, okay, if you say so … But you know what a head office is like – at the end of the day all they’re interested in is the bottom line.’

‘You should work for the government,’ said Clements. ‘It’s even worse. They can’t find the bottom line.’

‘Let’s go along and talk to the thousand lawyers,’ said Malone. ‘If we can get one of them to confess, you can have the carriage back today.’

He and Clements went down to his car. On the opposite side of the road, atop a low cliff, was a row of warehouses, some of them now converted into apartment complexes; these had been the wool stores when wool had been the wealth of the country, but those days were gone, probably for ever.

The two detectives drove along to the hotel. It was French-owned and was one of the many-roomed hotels that had been built in the city in the past five or six years, completed just as the recession had begun and hotel rooms became as much a glut as wool and wheat. Malone gave the Commodore over to a parking valet who, though Australian, had a Frenchman’s hauteur, especially when it came to cars that should have been traded in years ago.

‘Leave it up here on the ramp,’ said Malone, showing his badge. ‘It’ll give the place some tone.’

The two men walked, or were blown, in through glass doors to the concierge’s desk; the architects, whoever they were, had not allowed for winter’s south-west winds. The concierge referred them to Reception on the first level. They travelled up on an escalator and stepped off into the big lobby, which was crowded and echoed to the clamour of voices, all of them American. They squeezed their way through the throng, asked for the manager and were directed to his office.

He was a small neat man, French and polite; the owners back in France had realized that it would be pointless sending French arrogance to handle the native barbarians. With him were two Americans, both grey-haired, both grey with concern.

‘I am Charles Champlain. This is Mr Zoehrer, vice-president of the American Bar Association, and this is Mr Novack, the American Consul-General.’

‘A terrible tragedy, terrible!’ Zoehrer was a big man with a big voice and big gestures; he flung his hands about, addressed Malone and Clements as if he were addressing a jury. ‘His wife’s due in today – God, what a way to greet her! Orville’s been murdered!’

‘She’s on her way in from the airport now.’ Novack, a short bulky man, had the calm air of a man who had, innumerable times, had to convey bad news. In a way, Malone guessed, a consul’s job was not unlike a policeman’s: you were everybody’s target. ‘Do you want me to handle it, Karl, or will you?’

‘We’d better do it together,’ said Zoehrer. ‘I’ve only met her once before, at Clinton’s inaugural. She’s not a lawyer’s wife, you know what I mean? Not one for conventions, stuff like that.’ Then he seemed to remember that he was talking in front of strangers, non-Americans. He looked at Malone. ‘You getting anywhere with your investigations, sir? Inspector, is that right?’

Malone nodded. ‘Sergeant Clements and I’ve just come on the case. Our Crime Scene team tell us they’ve come up with nothing. The only thing we can say is that it doesn’t look like a mugging, something unpremeditated. He was lured on to the monorail, or forced on, by someone who knew what they were about. Or maybe he was shot beforehand and carried on to the monorail. At this stage we don’t know. I have to ask this – would you know if Mr Brame had any enemies, someone who might’ve followed him from the United States? Was he working on some big case? I’m asking the obvious – the Mafia?’

The big hands were spread wide. ‘Not as far as I know. Orville wasn’t a criminal lawyer, at least he hadn’t been in years. We lived and worked on opposite sides of the country. He was New York, I’m San Francisco and LA. Los Angeles. I guess all lawyers – civil as well as criminal – I guess we all collect enemies as we go along.’

There was a knock on the office door and a young woman put her head in. ‘Mr Champlain, Mrs Brame has arrived. We’ve taken her up to her suite.’

‘How is she?’ asked the manager.

‘It was hard to tell. Upset, I suppose, but she seemed to be holding herself together. Someone met her at the airport and told her on the way in.’

‘Well, we better go up,’ said Novack. ‘Will you excuse us, Inspector?’

‘Mr Novack, this is a murder case, on our turf.’

‘Of course, how stupid of me. Let’s go. I just hope she can handle it, four strange men coming in on her like this.’

When the four men stepped out of the manager’s office into the lobby, a sudden silence fell on the crowd still there. The throng opened up and they went through and stepped into a waiting lift. As the doors closed they heard the clamour start up again and Malone glimpsed photographers and reporters trying to break through.

‘I hope they didn’t shut up like that when Mrs Brame came in,’ said Zoehrer.

‘They did, sir,’ said the girl who was escorting them to the upper floor. ‘It was eerie.’

‘When you go back downstairs,’ said Malone, ‘see that none of the media get up to this floor.’

‘Can I tell them you’ll be making a statement later?’ This girl had dealt with reporters before; hospitality management had taught her they were a necessary evil.

Malone sighed. ‘They’ll expect it. We never tell ’em anything, but they always write it down anyway.’

‘The media,’ said Zoehrer. ‘Bless ‘em, they think we can’t do without them.’

He sounded sincere, as a good lawyer should, but Malone had the distinct impression that the big man would wring everything he could out of the media.

The four men entered the Brame suite, doing their best not to look like a threatening phalanx. Vases, large and small, of flowers decorated the big main room, an intended welcome for the wife of the president of the ABA; no one had remembered to remove them and they now supplied the wrong note, like a laugh at a funeral. Even the bright airiness of the room itself seemed out of place.

Joanna Brame was sitting in a chair, staring out of the big picture window at the city skyline on the opposite side of the narrow strip of Darling Harbour. As she sat there the monorail train came into view and slid round the curve beneath her like a pale metal caterpillar. She turned her head as the four men came in, but did not immediately rise. When she did at last stand up she did so with slow grace; there was none of the stiff angularity that Malone knew shock could bring. She was dressed in a beige knitted suit that showed no untoward bulges in her figure; a brown vicuna coat had been dropped on a nearby couch. She was tall with short grey-blond hair, the patrician look that came of a special mix of flesh and bone, and large grey eyes that had a touch of hauteur to them; Malone had the quick thought that Mrs Brame would not suffer fools gladly, if at all. She was also someone who could hide her grief and shock like an accomplished actor.

‘Mrs Brame!’ Zoehrer strode across the room, hands outstretched. ‘I’m Karl Zoehrer, we met at the White House—’

She gave him her hand, held a little high, almost as if she waited for it to be kissed. ‘Of course, Mr Zoehrer.’ Then she looked at the other three men, waiting for them to introduce themselves.

Novack did so. ‘There are no words to express our feelings over what’s happened—’

‘No,’ she said and looked at Malone and Clements. ‘Is it too soon to ask who killed my husband?’

‘I’m afraid so, Mrs Brame. May we ask you some questions?’

‘Can’t the questions wait—?’ Zoehrer all at once had become a heavyweight guardian angel.

‘It’s all right.’ Joanna Brame held up a hand; Malone had seen judges call for quiet with the same gesture. She might not be a lawyer’s wife, you know what I mean, but she would hold a jurist’s view of things, she would ask questions as well as answer them. She had a low deep voice with some edge to it that, Malone guessed, usually got her what she asked for. ‘Where is my husband? His – body?’

‘At the city morgue.’ Malone saw an excuse to get her away from the interruptions and interference he felt sure would be coming from Zoehrer. ‘We’ll need you to identify him. It has to be done by a relative.’

‘Has his brother been informed?’

‘His brother?’ said Zoehrer. ‘He has a brother here at the convention?’

‘No, he’s Australian, not American. He is a partner in a law firm here in Sydney. Rodney Channing. You may know him, Inspector?’

Malone looked at Clements and left the answer to him. ‘We’ve heard of him, Mrs Brame. But he’s not in our line of work, he’s not a criminal lawyer. It’s a different name – are they stepbrothers?’

‘No, brothers.’ She reached for her coat; Novack helped her on with it. ‘Shall we go?’

‘I’ll come, too,’ said Novack. ‘Your husband is an American citizen, I take it?’

‘Naturalized. He was born here in Australia. Do you have a car? Thank you, Mr Zoehrer, I’ll be more hospitable when I’ve done this – this duty.’

‘Sure, sure.’ Zoehrer looked as if it was the first time in years he had been dismissed. ‘I’ll be taking over the convention – I’ll see there is someone to take care of you, Mrs Brame—’

She turned back in the doorway of the suite; Malone, immediately behind her, had to pull up sharply. ‘I’ll be perfectly all right, Mr Zoehrer. Thank you, though, for your concern.’

When Malone led the way out of the lift down in the lobby the crowd there had thinned out. There were still clusters of people around the lobby; they all turned their faces towards the lift as the doors opened. Even those with mobile phones grafted to their ears, the new street performers, the new clowns and mimes, said Hold it and stopped speaking to stare at the new widow. Cameramen and reporters swept in a wave towards Malone and the others, but he moved quickly towards them before they could get too close to Joanna Brame.

‘Not now. There’ll be a full statement later, but at the moment we have nothing definite.’

‘How’s Mrs Brame taking the murder?’ That was from a fresh-faced television reporter, not one of Malone’s favourite breeds.

‘C’mon, how would you take it if your girlfriend was murdered?’ It was not the sort of reply that the police manual recommended, but it stopped the questions long enough for Malone to make his escape.

Down on the lower level the doors opened and a gale blew in. Joanna Brame produced a brown beret from her coat pocket and jammed it on her head. A grey Cadillac with DC plates and a chauffeur was waiting for Novack. ‘Will you ride with us, Inspector?’

‘That’s my car over there, sir. You know where the morgue is?’ Novack shook his head. ‘Sorry, why should you? You’d better follow us.’

It was a ten-minute drive out to the morgue near Sydney University. When the attendant on the front desk phoned through to Romy’s office, she came out to greet them. ‘This is Dr Keller,’ said Clements and added with the pride that Malone had noticed since their marriage, ‘my wife.’

Joanna Brame and Novack hid any surprise they may have felt and made no comment. Which surprised Malone, whose experience of Americans was that they commented on everything.

‘I’ll have your husband brought out. If you would go into that room there?’

Malone ushered Joanna Brame into the side room where the body could be viewed through a window. As he touched her elbow he could feel the trembling in her arm and, involuntarily, he pressed the elbow sympathetically. She looked sideways at him. ‘I have done this before, Inspector. My first husband—’

Romy came into the small room as, on the other side of the window, a white-coated attendant wheeled in a trolley on which lay a green-shrouded body. A zip was pulled and Orville Brame’s face was exposed, the mouth open, the eyes shut. It would be Malone’s only glimpse of the murdered man and, as always, he wondered what events would pile on the death of this man about whom he knew nothing and would certainly never learn everything.

Joanna Brame drew a deep shuddering breath, took off her beret. ‘Yes, that’s my husband.’

‘Orville William Brame?’ said Romy.

‘Yes.’ She watched while the shroud was zipped up again and the trolley wheeled away; then she turned her back on the window and looked at Romy. ‘Will there be an autopsy or anything?’

‘It’s a homicide, so yes, there has to be. We have to take out the bullet that killed him.’ Romy’s voice was soft, sympathetic; there was no hint of officialdom about her, though she was the deputy-director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. In her white coat and with her dark hair pulled back she looked severe, but for the compassion in her dark blue eyes. ‘We have to wait on HIV tests—’

‘HIV? AIDS tests? For my husband?’

‘It’s standard practice these days, Mrs Brame, for every autopsy. It’s no reflection on your husband.’

‘He would be amused. He always tried to be beyond reproach.’ But she said it with affection.

Malone thanked Romy and left Clements with her while he escorted Joanna Brame out into the street, where Novack joined them. They stood in the weak winter sunlight and the wind, coming up the street, tore at their hair so that they looked, to a passer-by, like mourners who had gone wild in their grief. Joanna Brame pulled on her beret again and Malone settled his pork-pie hat on his head. Novack evidently used a strong hair-spray, for his hair was set like concrete.

‘You said you wanted to ask me questions, Inspector. Could it wait till this afternoon, say five o’clock? I’m really not in any fit condition—’

Malone hated any sort of delay in an investigation, but there would be others he would have to question. ‘Five o’clock then, Mrs Brame.’

‘Thank you, Inspector.’ Novack took her arm and led her across to the Cadillac. He opened the rear door for her, but she paused and looked back at Malone. The wind whipped away her words, but he thought she said, ‘I may be able to help you.’

3

Driving back to the Hat Factory, which had indeed once been a hat factory turning out trilbies, fedoras, even bowlers once upon a time, and now housed Homicide, Clements said, ‘Have you got the feeling there’s a thousand lawyers sitting on your back?’

‘I hope they’re not all like that cove Zoehrer. I’ve just placed him. He’s one of those big damages lawyers from California – Melvin Belli’s another one. They invented that palimony thing. The way you used to play around, it’s a wonder you didn’t cop a palimony suit.’

‘You know none of the girls ever stayed long enough. But let’s drop that, I’m a married man now. So how do we handle this Brame case?’

‘We’re spread thin. Keep Phil and Peta on it and maybe we can spare John Kagal. I’ll load the rest of the calendar on to the other fellers. At least three of the cases should be wound up this week or Greg Random will want to know why.’ Random was the Chief Superintendent, Regional Crime Squad, South Region. ‘I suppose we’ll have to officially let the New York PD and maybe the FBI, I dunno, we’ll have to let them know what’s happened. I’ll check it out with the Consul-General. In the meantime …’

‘Yes?’

‘Put Peta on to questioning Zoehrer and any other of the lawyers who might give us some light on why Brame was done in.’

‘She’s a bit young – inexperienced, I mean—’

‘She’s all right, Russ. And she’s better-looking than you or me. All these lawyers haven’t come all this way just to discuss the law. Junkets like this one, for lawyers or doctors or politicians, they’re an excuse for a tax-deductible holiday. A young lawyer on holiday, who’s he going to let his hair down for – a good-looking sort like Peta or you and me?’

‘You’re sexist.’

‘Only in a good cause.’

Back at his office, in the glass-walled cubicle that passed for the Homicide commander’s domain, he ran through the computer sheets that had been neatly laid on his desk. There had been last-minute hitches in two of the murder cases; the other three on the list would be wrapped up and sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions by the end of the week. The Brame homicide looked as if it would get the full-scale investigation that the Americans would expect. It was going to be a round-the-clock job.

He reached for the phone to tell Lisa he would not be home for dinner. The phone at Randwick had rung four times before he remembered she would be at the dentist’s. He waited for the answering machine to take over, but when it came on all he got was Maureen’s voice saying, ‘This is—’ Then her voice cut out and he knew the machine had gone on the blink again, as it had twice in the past month. It was supposed to have been fixed and he wondered why Lisa, usually so meticulous in running the household, had neglected to call a technician.

He flipped through his small personal notebook, found the number of their dentist. ‘May I leave a message for Mrs Malone? This is her husband.’

‘Mr Malone, your wife isn’t here.’

‘Oh, she’s left already?’

‘She hasn’t been in at all. She had no appointment—’

He thanked the receptionist and hung up. He sat back in his chair, puzzled and a little angry: why had Lisa lied to him? Was she planning some surprise? Then a memory came back, like a spasm of pain, and he felt a hollow sense of dread. Years ago, before any of the children were born, he and she had been in New York on a round-the-world honeymoon financed by a lottery win; an extravagance, one of his last, that he had insisted upon. Lisa, suffering a lost filling, had left their hotel and gone looking for a dentist. She had been kidnapped along with the wife of the then Mayor of New York and held to ransom by terrorists. It was ridiculous that history could repeat itself, but the agony of that search for her came back like new pain.

Then reason, the hook on which hope hangs, sometimes weakly, took over. Lisa had not gone to the dentist. So where had she gone and why had she lied to him, something she had never done before? He trusted her so absolutely that the thought did not enter his mind that she might have gone to meet another man. But where was she?

Chapter Two

1

He got her at home at four o’clock in the afternoon. ‘Where have you been? I’ve called half a dozen times – you said you were going to the dentist’s, I tried there—’ There was silence at the other end of the line. ‘Darl, for Chrissake, what’s going on?’

Something that sounded like a long sigh came down the line. ‘I’ll tell you when you come home—’

‘Tell me now. I’ll probably be late – not before seven or eight, anyway—’

‘No, I’ll tell you when you come home.’ There was a pause, then she said, ‘I love you,’ and hung up.

He put the phone back in the cradle and looked up to see Clements standing in the doorway. ‘You look as if you’ve been talking to one of the Yank lawyers. Mr Zoehrer?’

‘No, Lisa.’

‘Oh?’ Clements waited for further comment, but when none came he went on, ‘Ballistics just called. They haven’t got the bullet that killed Brame yet. The morgue’s snowed under, dead ’uns everywhere.’

‘The natural place for them.’ His mind was still on Lisa.

‘You want me to come with you to see Mrs Brame?’

‘Who else?’

‘I thought you might prefer Peta. The good-looking one.’

They left half an hour later to go to the Novotel. As they were leaving the big main room Peta Smith, taking off her trenchcoat and her hat, came in. ‘Nothing, Scobie, nothing worthwhile. Brame was at a reception at the Darling Harbour convention centre last night, but no one noticed anything out of the ordinary about him, I mean how he behaved. Nobody remembers seeing him after eleven o’clock, when someone saw him in the hotel coffee lounge with a guy.’

‘Who?’

She shrugged. ‘Who knows? Like I told you, there are a thousand lawyers in town – most of ’em are strangers to each other. Except the guys at the top.’

‘Are they being co-operative?’

She smiled. ‘I’ve had four invitations to dinner, six to drinks and two to mind your own business.’

Malone looked at Clements. ‘Could you have done as well? Thanks, Peta. Get Andy Graham to help you set up the flow charts. Don’t work late.’

‘I wasn’t going to. I accepted one of the dinner dates. That okay?’

‘Just so long as you feed it into the running sheets.’ But he grinned. ‘Not with Karl Zoehrer, I hope? I don’t want him suing Homicide for palimony.’

When he and Clements drove into the Novotel at a few minutes to five, the lawyers were filtering back from their afternoon session at the convention. Malone saw Zoehrer holding court in the lobby, but the big man did not see the two detectives and they escaped into the lift and rode up to Mrs Brame’s floor.

She was waiting for them in her suite, in a rose silk dress and looking much fresher than she had this morning. With her was a handsome young man with thinning blond hair and the awkward look of a courtier new to serving the queen. And Malone knew now that Joanna Brame was the queen of whichever circle she ruled back home in the States.

‘Adam, would you get the gentlemen a drink? This is Adam Tallis, an associate in our firm.’

Malone and Clements shook hands with Tallis and gave him their drink preferences. Then Malone sat down opposite Joanna Brame. ‘Our firm? You’re a lawyer, too, Mrs Brame?’

She smiled at that, a pleasant smile, then sipped the cocktail she had been holding when the two detectives had entered the room. ‘Only by osmosis. I said our firm out of habit. My great-grandfather founded it back in – when was it, Adam?’

‘1888.’ Malone was certain that Joanna Brame had known the date, but she had neatly drawn Tallis into the conversation. ‘Mrs Brame is a Schuyler.’

‘Of Schuyler, Dr Vries and Barrymore,’ said Malone and smiled at the surprise of the two Americans. ‘I looked it up, Mr Brame’s firm, I mean. I just didn’t know you were related to it, Mrs Brame.’

‘My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father. And my husband.’ She looked at her drink as if she saw reflections in it. Malone wondered if her first husband had belonged to the firm, but now was not the time to ask her. ‘Somehow, I’ve never been able to escape it, the law. Even my first husband was a lawyer …’ Then she looked up, threw off the introspection that had veiled her for a moment. ‘Well, how can I help? Sit down here beside me, Adam. You may be able to help, too.’

‘First, we have to establish what Mr Brame was doing out so late last night.’

‘He may have gone for a walk. He did that every night, to unwind, he said. Whether we were at our apartment in Manhattan or at our place in Connecticut. I used to worry, especially in New York, but he told me he always kept to the well-lit streets.’

‘Darling Harbour is reasonably well-lit,’ said Clements. ‘There just aren’t too many people around at two or three o’clock in the morning.’

Malone said gently, ‘Did your husband have any enemies?’

‘Here?’ She put down her empty glass. ‘He hadn’t been home for thirty years.’

‘Not necessarily here. In the United States.’

‘None that I know of. He was highly respected.’