Yesterday’s Shadow. Jon Cleary

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.’

      ‘Shit,’ said Malone, but under his breath.

      Going down in the lift, in the long drop from the 59th floor, Malone felt his spirits descending, too. There were only the two of them in the lift and he said, ‘Given my choice I think I’ll take the hotel’s cleaner and the knife job on him. You can have Mrs Pavane.’

      ‘You have no choice, chum. My Welsh mother used to say –’

      ‘Forget it. You Welsh are a melancholy lot.’

      ‘So are you Irish at times. Like now.’

      3

      With Celtic pessimism Malone believed in the invasion of the irrational into the orderly. But he did not always accept the toss of the coin by God or the gods, whichever one believed in. He would not accept the second toss of the coin.

      He dropped Random off at Police Centre and drove on back to Homicide in Strawberry Hills. There were no hills and there had never been any strawberries, but the voters of Sydney lived and worked in other areas with names just as illusory: Ultimo, Sans Souci, Como. God set a bad example for developers when He named the Garden of Eden.

      Malone rode up to the fourth floor, let himself in the security door and found Phil Truach sitting with Clements, waiting for him.

      ‘How’d you go?’ asked Clements sympathetically.

      Malone told them of the visit to the Consul-General’s office. ‘I think it’s going to be a really bad headache. Let’s talk of something simpler. How’d you go, Phil?’

      ‘I haven’t come up with much. Nobody saw the cleaner knifed – he was well and truly dead when another guy found him. He wasn’t popular, but I didn’t get the idea that anyone there would want to top him. He was found in the room where they keep all the cleaning equipment. There didn’t appear to have been any struggle – all the buckets and mops and things were neatly stacked. Unless the killer put everything back … Crime Scene have dusted the room for prints. They’ll let us know.’

      ‘Who was he?’

      Truach looked at his notebook. ‘Boris Jones, aged forty, his card said. He was a Russian, they said, but he’d changed his name. Mrs Jones is in there –’ He nodded towards one of the interview rooms. ‘I went out to see her, she lives out at Rozelle. She asked who was in charge and I said you and she said you were the one she wanted to talk to.’

      ‘Why me?’

      ‘I dunno. Ask her.’

      ‘How’s she taking it? His murder?’

      ‘She’s pretty calm, considering.’ Truach looked towards the closed door of the interview room. ‘She’s been bashed. A black eye and some bruises.’

      ‘The husband did it?’

      ‘She didn’t say. Just said she wanted to talk to you. She hardly said a word all the way back here. She’s got a friend with her, a Mrs Quantock. She does all the talking.’

      Malone stood up. ‘Righto, I’ll talk to her. But she’s your girl. I’ve got enough on my plate with the Ambassador’s missus. Russ, make sure that Regent Street has got the names and addresses of everyone who was booked in last night at the Southern Savoy. They can start doing the donkey-work, checking everyone on the hotel’s register.’ Then he looked at Clements’ still-clean desk. ‘Get ready, mate. That desk is going to see more paper than a ticker-tape parade.’

      ‘I can’t wait,’ said Clements and slumped further back in his chair.

      Malone went into the interview room, motioning Gail Lee to follow him. It was standard procedure that two officers had to be present during an interview; he chose Gail because of the two other women in the room. In the climate of women he, with a wife and two daughters, was showerproof; but heavy weather was another matter. Not that he expected heavy weather in this room: that was to come when he met Ambassador Pavane.

      The two women were sitting side by side at the single table in the room. One was in her mid-forties: age and measurement: there was a lot of Mrs Quantock and she looked ready to use her weight and experience. The other woman was slight, dark-haired and would