Murder Song. Jon Cleary

we wouldn’t?’ Con Malone looked offended. ‘Jesus Christ –’

      ‘Who’s swearing?’ said Brigid, coming in from the kitchen. ‘What if the children hear you?’ They were her angels, to be protected from the world. She sprayed the house with holy water, as if dampening down the dust of sin; her rosary beads were always in her pocket, more important than a handkerchief. All her life she had been religious, but little of it had rubbed off on her husband and only a little more on her son. But at least I’m a believer, Malone thought. He doubted that his father was.

      Lisa ran a hand affectionately round the back of Con’s neck; his blunt wrinkled face coloured. ‘I don’t think you could teach them anything, Dad. They hear it all on TV these days.’

      ‘Not in this house,’ said Malone with a grin. ‘Mum’s got the TV aerial aimed straight at St Mary’s, the Cardinal’s her favourite news-reader. Sermons and hymns and no news unless it’s good news.’

      They all laughed, including Brigid: unlike so many narrowly religious, she could laugh at herself. She had never believed that Christ had gone through life without a smile or a joke.

      When it was time to go home Malone carried Tom, who was already asleep, out to the car and settled him in the back seat between Lisa and Maureen. Brigid kissed all the children good-night, gave her cheek to Lisa and smiled at Malone. Con stood with his hands in his pockets, but it was obvious he had enjoyed having the family, his and Brigid’s family, come to visit them.

      An Asian man and woman passed the Malones, said good evening in soft shy voices and went into a house several doors up the street.

      ‘That’s Mr and Mrs Van Trang,’ said Brigid. ‘They’re a real nice couple. They’re Catholics,’ she added, naturalizing them, forgiving them for being foreigners.

      Con had just nodded at the Vietnamese. He looked at his son as the latter said good-night to him across the roof of the Commodore.

      ‘Drive carefully,’ he said: it was the closest he could come to saying, I love you all.

      ‘Night, Dad. Look after yourself.’ Some day he would put his arms round his father, when he was dying or dead.

      Claire got in beside Malone as he settled in beside the wheel. ‘Enjoy yourself?’ he said.

      ‘I shouldn’t say it, Daddy, but why does Grandma’s house always smell of cooking?’

      He took the car out from the kerb, pausing to let another car, drawing out from the kerb some distance behind him, go past. But it too paused, and he pulled out and drove on down the narrow street.

      ‘There’s been about a hundred years of cooking in that house, my grandmother lived there before Gran. It sorts of hangs around, the smell.’

      ‘You think we should bring Grandma a can of Air-ozone next time we come?’

      ‘You’ll do no such thing!’ said Lisa sharply. ‘Just stop breathing if you don’t like it while you’re there. That’s Grandma’s home, smell and all.’

      Malone turned into a main road; the car following him did the same. ‘It doesn’t smell like your cooking,’ Claire said. ‘I wouldn’t mind if it did. But it’s, I dunno, cabbage, stuff like that.’

      ‘Corned beef and cabbage,’ said Malone. ‘I grew up on it.’

      ‘Yuk,’ said Maureen from the back seat.

      Malone was almost halfway home to Randwick before he realized that he was being tailed. At every turn he had made, another car had made the same turning. He was tired, he had not been alert; now all at once it came to him that the car following him was the same one that had pulled out from the kerb behind him in the street in Erskineville. Suddenly his hands felt clammy on the wheel.

      What to do? He could continue on to the police station at Rand wick, but that would only alarm Lisa and the kids; he did not want to frighten them, in case his own fear was a false alarm. Hans Ludke’s question this afternoon, Does that put you on the hitman’s lisf?, had been at the back of his mind all evening, like the smell of his mother’s cooking.

      He reached Randwick, turned into his own street as rain began falling again. He had led the hitman (if, indeed, he was the hitman) to his own home; but, he guessed, the man probably knew where he lived, anyway. Their phone number was in Lisa’s name, L. E. Malone, but that wouldn’t have fooled anyone really intent on finding out where he lived; if the hitman knew where Con and Brigid Malone lived, he certainly would know where their son lived.

      Malone swung the Commodore in the entrance to his driveway; then braked sharply, throwing Tom forward and waking him. The driveway gates were closed. Time and again he had lectured Lisa and the kids against leaving them open. Now he wished for them and the garage door to be wide open.

      He glanced back along the street. The other car had come round the corner and pulled into the kerb about fifty yards up the street, dousing its lights. Malone hesitated.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ said Lisa. ‘We don’t have automatic gates, remember?’

      ‘I told him we should get them,’ said Claire. ‘Everybody has them now.’

      ‘We can’t afford ’em on a cop’s pay,’ said Maureen. ‘He’s told us.’

      ‘I’ll open ’em,’ said Tom and fumbled with the door handle.

      ‘Stay where you are!’

      There was a note of panic in Malone’s voice. He hastily got out of the car before Lisa could comment on it, hunched over as much to make himself a smaller target as against the rain, and moved quickly to open the gates. Too late he realized that he had stupidly left the headlights on: as he stood in their glare, fumbling with the bolt of the gates, he felt as exposed as if he were in the middle of the Nullarbor Plain in broad daylight. He was wearing no hat or raincoat; the rain fell on him in drenching sheets, he was almost blinded by the water pouring down his face. His fingers were frozen (by fear or cold?); the gates refused to open. Then he jerked the bolt up out of its socket, he dragged the gates open, swung them back and stumbled back to the front door of the car. As the other car, its lights now on, pulled out from the kerb and came at gathering speed down the street.

      He turned to face it, his back against the closed front door of the Commodore; he spread his arms wide, trying to protect his family, as if he meant to gather the hail of bullets into himself. The approaching car swung towards the Commodore and for one horrible moment he thought it was going to crash into them, killing them all in a mad suicidal attack. Its headlights blazed at him, blinding him; then it swung abruptly away. It went past, spraying up a wave of water from the flooded gutter, and sped down the street. Malone staggered on rubbery legs to the back of the Commodore, tried to identify the make of car and its registration plate, but it was gone into the dark swirling night before he could get even a hint of identification. The driver had been too smart: he had known the blaze of headlights would blind Malone.

      Still weak, Malone went back up the driveway, opened the garage door and came back to the Commodore. He got in, suddenly glad of the support of the seat beneath him.

      ‘What’s the matter, Daddy?’ said Claire.

      Malone noticed that Lisa, in the back seat, was sitting forward but saying nothing. ‘It was just a drunken driver – I thought he was going to smash into us.’

      ‘They shouldn’t drink and drive.’ Maureen had all the slogans at her tongue-tip.

      Malone drove the car into the garage. Lisa got out, gave the front door key to Claire. ‘Get ready for bed. See Tom cleans his teeth and has a wet before he gets into bed.’

      Maureen said, ‘What are you and Dad going to do? Wash the car?’

      ‘Inside!’

      Claire took the key, looked thoughtfully at her mother and father but said nothing. She’ll make a good cop, Malone thought, she’s miles ahead of me in perception. And prayed that she would never