Murder Song
Authors: Jon Cleary
MURDER SONG
The Scobie Malone Series
Jon Cleary
FOR KATHLEEN AND BOB PARRISH
Copyright
© 1990 by Sundowner Productions Pty Ltd.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher.
First ebook edition 2013 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.
Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-795-0
Library ISBN 978-1-62460-112-5
Cover photo ©
TK
/
iStock.com
.
CONTENTS
MURDER
SONG
1
I
IT WAS
a perfect day for aviators, bird watchers, photographers and sniping murderers. The air had that clean bright light that occurs on some days in Sydney in the winter month of August; the wind blows out of the west, across the dry flat continent, and scours the skies to a brilliant blue shine. Thin-blooded citizens turn up their coat collars and look east to the sea or north for the coming of spring. But hardier souls, depending upon their pay or their inclinations, welcome the wind-polished days of August.
The construction worker, in hard hat and thick lumber jacket, was alone on the steel beam of the framework of the twentieth floor of the new insurance building in Chatswood, a northern suburb. He was leaning against the wind, holding tightly to the safety rope, looking north, when the bullet hit him in the chest. He did not see it coming, despite the clear light; if he cried out as he died, no one heard him. He fell backwards, away from the safety rope, was already dead as he went down in a clear fall to the ground two hundred feet below.
Several of his workmates, horrified, saw him fall. None of them at that moment knew he had been shot. None of them looked for the murderer, so none of them saw him. The shot could have come from any one of half a dozen neighbouring buildings, all of them occupied, but the time was 9.10 in the morning and bosses and workers were still settling down at their desks. It was too early in the day to be staring out of windows.
The dead man was Harry Gardner, a cheerful extrovert with a wife and four children and not an enemy in the world. Except the unknown man who had killed him.
II
A
week later, on a cold rainy night when no one had a good word to say about August, Terry Sugar, a twenty-four-year veteran of the New South Wales Police Department, was getting out of his car in the driveway of his home in Mount Druitt, a western suburb of Sydney, when the bullet hit him in the neck, went down through his chest, came out and lodged in the car seat. He saw his killer, though he did not recognize him, but he died almost instantly and had no time to tell anyone.
First Class Sergeant Sugar was married and had two sons, one at high school and the other in his first year at university. Naturally, as a policeman, not everyone was his friend: that was the Australian way. He had, however, received no death threats; for the last year he had been in charge of the desk at the Parramatta Police Centre and had been working on no outside cases. The detectives assigned to the murder attempted no written guesses, but amongst themselves they put the killing down as the work of a crank who had a grudge against all police, a thrill-killer or someone who had mistaken his victim for someone else.
Detective-Inspector Scobie Malone and Detective-Sergeant Russ Clements, both of whom had known Terry Sugar, attended the funeral. There was a police guard of honour and four of Sergeant Sugar's fellow officers were the pall-bearers; Police Commissioner John Leeds and several other senior officers and a hundred uniformed officers marched in the cortège. Around Parramatta there were four break-ins, two bag-snatchings and an attempted bank hold-up during the forty-five-minute church service.
It was another fine clear day, but the wind, coming today from the south-west, had a touch of Antarctica to it; tears were cold on the cheeks. The light was ideal for the press photographers and the newsreel cameramen, though funerals don't photograph as well as fashion parades.
Malone and Clements, the Commissioner and other outsiders dropped out after the token march down the main street; the family had requested that the actual burial be as private as could be arranged. As he stepped aside Malone bumped into one of the television cameramen, a tall, bald, overweight man with a beard.
“Sorry.” The man took his eye away from the view-finder. “I didn't see you, Inspector.”
Malone didn't know the man's name, but he had seen him occasionally at the scenes of crimes;
he
recognized the logo on the camera. “Will it be on Channel 15's news tonight?”
“Probably.”
Malone glanced at Clements. “Remind me not to look.”
The man smiled through his thick black beard. “I understand. But I have a job to do, just like everyone else. I don't enjoy these jobs.”
“Maybe,” said Malone. “I just don't like my kids to see their father following another cop's coffin.”
2
I
“THERE'S BEEN
another one,” said Claire, coming into the kitchen.
“Another what?” said her mother.
“Homicide. Pass the Weet-Bix.”
“Terrific!” said Maureen. “He's gunna have his name in the papers again.”
“I think I'll start another scrapbook,” said Tom.
“You haven't started a first one yet,” said Maureen.
“No, I was going to, but.”
“Who mentioned homicide?” said Malone. “Who was that on the phone?”
“Uncle Russ,” said Claire. “He's still hanging there.”
Muttering an incoherent curse, picturing the 100-kilogram Russ Clements hanging by his neck from a phone cord, Malone got up and went out into the hallway. “Russ? How many times have I bloody told youâdon't mention homicide in front of the kids!”
“Get off the boil, Inspector,” said Sergeant Clements in a patient voice that made a gentle mockery of Malone's rank. There had once been a Commissioner of the New South Wales Police Force, as it was then known, who had insisted on the use of rank when addressing another officer; he had given rank another of its meanings when he had been found, on retirement, to have been the State's patron saint of corruption. He, however, had been before Malone's and Clements' time, though his legend persisted. “Claire's got too much imagination. Where does she get it from?”
“Her mother. Go on. Is there a homicide or not?”
“Yeah, there is. But all I asked Claire was whether you had left for the office. You know how I
feel
about your kids, Scobieâ”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry. Where's the job this time?”
“Down at The Warehouse in Clarence Street, it's an apartment block. It seems routine, a woman shot.”
“If it's routine, why ring me? Take Andy Graham or someone and get down there.”
“Scobie, there's three guys off with âflu. I need a back-up.”
“An inspector backing up a sergeant? You trying to ruin my day? Righto, I'll be there. But I'm going to finish my breakfast first. It's a privilege of rank.”
He hung up and went back into the kitchen. It was a big old-fashioned room that, despite all its modern appliances, suggested another time, almost another country. The house was eighty years old, built just after Federation, part-sandstone, part-redbrick. It was of a style that had become fashionable again with its pitched slate roof, its wide front verandah, its eaves embellishments and its hint of conservative values, though not in dollar terms. The Malones had bought the house eight years ago and now it was worth three times what they had paid for it. With its backyard pool, a gift from Lisa's parents, adding to its worth, Malone sometimes wondered if the neighbours thought he might be a policeman on the take. Easy money had been a national gift for several years and suspicion of a neighbour's good fortune had become endemic.
“I'll have another cup of coffee,” he said, spreading some of Lisa's home-made marmalade on a slice of wholegrain toast.
“So where's the murder?” Maureen was almost ten, going on twenty; she lived in a world of TV cop shows and soap operas. She had a mind as lively as an aviary full of swallows, but she was no birdbrain; Malone felt that, somehow, she would grow up to be the least vulnerable of his three children. “God, why did we have to have a cop as a father? He never wants to talk about his work with us.”
“You think Alan Bond sits down at breakfast and discusses take-overs with his grandkids?”
“What about the Pope?” said Tom, the seven-year-old.
“I've told you beforeâthe Pope doesn't have kids. What sort of Catholic school do you go to?
What
do you do during religious instruction?”
“Play noughts and crosses.”
“Holy Jesus,” said Malone, then added, “That was supposed to be a prayer.”
“Just as well,” said Tom piously. “You know what Grandma Malone thinks about swearing.”
“She should come up to Holy Spirit some day and listen to the senior girls,” said Maureen. “Holyâ”
“Watch it,” said Lisa, who swore only in bed under and on top of Malone and never within the hearing of the children, which meant she sometimes got up in the morning with a hoarse throat.
“Dad,” said Claire, going on fourteen, more than halfway to being a beautiful woman and beginning to be aware of it, “what about my fifty dollars? I've got to pay the deposit for the skiing holiday.”