Yesterday's Shadow (18 page)

He leaned against the closed door and looked at her. She said, “Like I said, I'm sorry I called you.”

He was grateful for her concern. “No, it's okay, Gail. But she's going to be a pain . . . Let's talk to the maid.”

She was in the small office behind the reception desk, sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, knees together, hands clutching each other in her lap.

Malone introduced himself. “You are—?”

“Dolores Cortes.”

She had a thin light voice, made thinner by her fear. She was a Filipina, young, on the verge of prettiness with a sensual mouth and dark eyes that in other circumstances might have been lively, even inviting. Now they were dark and frightened.

“What happened tonight, Dolores?” Malone drew up a chair opposite her and Gail half-sat on a small desk.

“Boris's—Mrs. Jones came in—I was upstairs on the second floor, she came up there looking for me, she asked me what I'd done with Boris—”

“And what did you tell her?”

“I didn't tell her nothing—at first. But she was pretty angry—in a quiet way, you know what I mean? Then I told her Boris and me had had—you know.” She looked at Gail, as if she would understand more than this man sitting in front of her. “I've never done it before—with a married man, I mean.”

“When did it start with Boris?”

“I dunno—a month ago, I think it was. He—you know—” She looked at Gail again and the latter nodded sympathetically.

“Did he attack you, force himself on you?”

“
Oh no! Nothing like that—”

“Did it happen only once? And then again on the night he was murdered?”

She looked up at Gail again, then back at Malone. He suddenly had the feeling he was in a Saturday night confessional; she was stumbling over how she was going to tell him she had sinned. “No, it happened other times.”

“Often? And you consented?”

She nodded. “Every night.”

Gail rolled her eyes and Malone had to keep his own steady. Life at the Southern Savoy was not humdrum. “He didn't force himself on you?” She looked puzzled. “He didn't belt you, like he did his wife?”
Why did I say that?

“Oh no! I liked him. He was—you know—”

“You told Mrs. Jones all this?”

“No. No, I just said it happened the once. If I'd told her about the other times . . . She's his wife. He was having it with her, too.”

“He told you that? He didn't plead with you that he wasn't getting it at home?”

“No, he liked to—to show off? How many times he could do it.”

Malone leaned back, didn't look at Gail. “Dolores, have you ever thought about going back to the Philippines?”

“Why? They're just as bad there. Worse.”

“Dolores,” he said patiently, “let's get away from oversexed men. Why did you come out here?”

“Because there's work here.” She was practical now, her hands relaxed on her knees.

Gail put the questioning back on track: “So after you'd told Mrs. Jones what you and Boris had been up to, she attacked you?”

“What's gunna happen to her? She'll go to jail?”

“That's not for us to decide,” said Malone. “Did she attack you?”

She was hunched for a moment now, suddenly less relaxed; then she straightened up, ready for
a
dive: “No, she didn't do nothing like that. She just hugged me.”

The two detectives looked at each other, recognizing at once the way things were going to go. Malone said, “Dolores, people had to separate you—”

She was sitting up very straight now, her hands clutching the edges of her chair. “We were hugging each other, that was all—”

“So you won't lay charges against her?”

“Charges? You mean send her to jail? No, why would I wanna do that?”

Malone pushed his chair back. “Righto, Dolores, you can go. The office here has your home address?”

“Yeah. They're gunna fire me, they said—”

“Who said that? We'll see what we can do. Jobs are hard to find. Take care and stay away from randy men. Married ones.”

He and Gail Lee went out of the office, stopped inside the reception desk. There was only one clerk on duty, a young dark-haired man who was obviously Asian. Malone, like most of his generation and certainly that of his parents, had the astigmatic eye when it came to separating Asians. This one's name was Jose, said the badge on his tunic.

“Where do you come from, Jose?”

“Manila, sir.”

“Righto, stick with Dolores, don't report this to the hotel management—”

“I already have, sir. Here comes Mr. Niven now.”

He had come in the front door. He was wearing a tweed overcoat, buttoned up to the neck against the wind, and a tweed hat. Very English, thought Malone, but a bit actorish. The good-looking face had been polished by the wind, the cheeks shining.

“More trouble? Oh God, is this place developing a jinx?”

“Let's go into your office, Deric. I think we can sort things out—” He looked over his shoulder at the reception clerk. “Tell Dolores she can go—”

“
She hasn't finished her shift yet—”

“Let her finish it,” said Deric Niven. “I'll talk to her later. In my office, Inspector?”

“Just where I was going to suggest. We have Mrs. Jones, Boris' wife, in there.”

“Oh God.”

Malone waited for him to put the back of his hand to his brow
. Come on, Malone
. Why is it that when one is tired, prejudices float up above goodwill? “We're trying to smooth all this out with no fuss, if we can. Don't lose hope, Deric. We'll keep this one out of the media.” But he avoided Gail's eye as he said it.

They went into Niven's office and Delia, still on her chair, sat up at once. She said nothing, just looked curiously at Niven, then at Malone and Gail.

“You haven't met Mrs. Jones, have you? This is Mr. Niven, the manager of the hotel.”

“Mrs. Jones—” Niven nodded politely, but that was all. She was an unwelcome guest in his hotel.

She just nodded back at him, meeting his frostiness with her own. Then she turned to Malone. “Can I go now?”

“I'll get Constable Szabo to have a patrol car take you home. Is there anyone there? Your friend, Mrs.—?”

“Quantock,” said Gail.

“No, there's no one there. I'm on my own.” She made it sound like utter desolation.

“Where are your kids?”

“With my mother.” She looked at Niven again, then back at Malone.

“Where does she live?”

“Bexley, she still lives there.” She was annoyed. “Don't you remember, Scobie? You used to take me home in your old Holden—”

He sidestepped that, aware of Niven's lifting his head. “I think you'd better go there. Detective Lee will call your mother, tell her to expect you—”

“
It's late. You take me home to my own place—”

He ignored that. “I don't think you should go home to an empty house—not after tonight—”

But all at once she was paying no attention to him. She was staring directly at Niven. “That's him!” Her voice was gritty. “He was the man tried to take the taxi from me that night, outside the hotel—”

II

As Malone, in his youth, had ventured into the territory known as Woman, he had slowly worked out what sort of woman he would want to live with. In a casual father-to-son conversation he had once told Tom to look for a woman with some mystery to her—“Don't choose the what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort.”

Tom, at that stage, had been happy to welcome any woman who fell into his lap. But he had said, “Was Mum like that? Some mystery to her?”

“Yes.”

And now on this cold winter's night he was asking himself had there been any mystery in Delia Bates when he had known her. She certainly was proving now that what you saw was not what you got.

She had been taken out to her mother's home in Bexley (
Don't you remember, Scobie?
she had said, driving the memory needle into him, trying to infect him) and Deric Niven had been brought here to Police Centre in Surry Hills. Malone, before taking him into an interview room, had taken him through the Incident Room. He had paused to speak to one of the detectives on duty, working a ploy that had worked before. Niven had stood beside Gail Lee; he had been manoeuvred to face the flow-chart. There two bodies were displayed in graphic photos such as one never saw in newspapers or on television. He stared at the photos, then abruptly turned away, putting his hand to his mouth.

“You want to be sick?” asked Gail.

He shook his head, was relieved when Malone led him on to one of the interview rooms. He was still in his overcoat, looking as if trying to shrink into it. He slumped down on a chair as Malone and Gail sat down opposite him on the other side of a table.

“
You feeling okay, Deric?”

He nodded, sought his voice and found it. “I had nothing to do with Mrs. Pavane's death.”

“I can't remember us saying that you did,” said Malone. “But you haven't told us all you know about that night.”

There was shouting and swearing outside. The Surry Hills station was part of the Police Centre and the Saturday night cattle round-up was at its peak. Out there were drunks, brawlers, hookers trying to roll clients: all simple law-breakers. None connected with a murder.

“Am I going to be charged with anything?”

“That will depend. Why? Do you want your lawyer?”

He looked at the video recorder, then back at them. “Not yet. If I talk to you, can we leave that off?”

“That will depend on what you tell us. But for the time being, okay, we won't turn it on. Now, on Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning, were you up in Room 342, Mrs. Pavane's room?”

“No.”

“Why did you tell us you were off duty Tuesday night, that you were not at the hotel?”

Niven said nothing. As if he were suddenly feeling stifled, he stood up, pulled off his overcoat and dropped it on the table. Then he sat down again.

“Did you have any connection with Mrs. Pavane?”

“Oh, for Crissake!” He twisted his head, like a bad actor; then he looked back at them, leaned forward, another theatrical piece: “I'm her brother!”

Both Malone and Gail Lee sat back in their chairs: even a little theatrically, though neither of them noticed. Then Malone said, “Go on. Give us some family history, Deric.”

Niven folded his hands together, sat back and looked at them as if they were some sort of memory bowl. He might have been a good actor once, Malone thought; he knew how to use pauses. Or maybe he was looking for memories that had long since faded.

“I hadn't seen her in almost twenty years. We grew up on a farm outside Albany—” A town on
the
far south-west coast of the continent, as remote from Sydney as one could get; as remote as the stars from Corvallis, Oregon, and Kansas City, Missouri. “Our name is, always has been, Niven. But she changed hers—”

“Several times,” said Gail Lee.

He nodded. “That was her. Always wanting to be someone else. She hated the farm, living on it . . . We raised wheat, at harvest time she'd always disappear—”

“What about you?” said Gail. “Being gay? You are, aren't you?”

He nodded again. “My dad, if he was with his mates, he'd walk away when I put in an appearance. I worked as hard as him on the farm, but it didn't make any difference. Then he and my mother were killed—the farm ute ran off the road and hit a tree—”

Malone glanced at Gail, who nodded. Billie Pavane had kept one true fact in her resumé.

“I was seventeen and Trish—”

“That was her given name?” asked Malone.

“Patricia, but she was always called Trish. She was nineteen. Right after the funeral she told me the farm was mine and she left, went to—came here to Sydney. She dropped me a card occasionally, but then they stopped and I never heard from her.”

He stopped, too, and they let him swim in whatever he felt: regret, resentment, whatever. Then Malone said, “Were you close? Were there other brothers and sisters?”

“No, there were just the two of us. We were never that close, but we never fought. We never confided in each other . . . She liked men. My mother was always at her, people were talking about her when she was only fifteen, sixteen—”

“She had lots of boyfriends?”

“Only the ones with money—or who were going to inherit money. There was money in the bush back then. She was never interested in the road-mender's son.”

Malone said gently, “You didn't like her, Deric?”

“Oh no! No.” He unclasped his hands, spread them, then folded them together again. “I got
into
a couple of fights over her—guys who made snide remarks about her. Gays
can
fight, you know,” he said and looked challengingly at Malone.

“I don't doubt it, Deric. Go on.”

“Well—” He paused, looked puzzled, as if this was the first time someone had asked him to recap his life. “Well, when I turned twenty-one I sold the farm and went to London. I had enough money to stake myself, to try and be an actor. I never made it. A few jobs in repertory, places like Swindon—God!” He made Swindon sound as if it were down a coal mine. “Some work in TV—I was in a scene like this once in
The Bill
.” He waved an arm around him. “A small part. I did some BBC radio work. But I was never going to make a living at it. I stuck at it too long, but eventually I came to my senses.”

“And you heard nothing from Trish all this time?”

“Not a word. I heard, I dunno where, that she'd gone to America, but I didn't know where. I took the hotel management course, spent the last of the money I'd got for the farm, worked on the Continent in small hotels—my French and Italian aren't bad. I had a French partner in London . . .” He stopped, as if that was a chapter in his life he hadn't opened in a long time. He went on: “Then I came home, worked in Perth, then Adelaide, then I finished up here in Sydney.” He drew in a deep breath and shut his eyes, like a tired reader closing a book that had disturbed him.