Endpeace

He didn’t take the bait, if there was any. ‘Yes, I think it is, Phillipa. But we’ll find whoever killed Harry. I promise you that.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she said, as if he had promised her no more than a small gift. ‘I’ll miss him, Bill. We fought, oh, often we fought ... But we loved each other. Those downstairs don’t know what love is. Do you?’

But she didn’t wait for his answer. He wondered if she talked to her children, those downstairs, as she was now to him. He knew how people could sometimes confide in strangers thoughts they would never expose to those close to them. But why had she chosen him?

‘I’ll have to go down soon and face them all, I suppose. I’m the matriarch, they’ll expect it. When we first built the other two houses, Derek and Cordelia and Ned and Sheila used to come here every evening, we’d dine en famille. It was Harry’s idea. I’ve never liked the idea of matriarch -’

You could have fooled me.

‘– but Harry saw himself as the patriarch. He always wanted to fill his father’s shoes and there never was a patriarch like Old John. You met him?’

‘Once.’ Twenty-five years ago.

‘He was Biblical, he and I never got on. The en famille idea lasted a year, no more. The nuclear family is a pain in the uterus.’

He loved social gossip; but this was not gossip. ‘Phillipa, don’t tire yourself –’

She gave him the sly look again. ‘I’m talking too much, you mean? Why did you come up here if you didn’t want to talk to me?’

He was wearing out his welcome, she would turn nasty in a moment; he had seen it once or twice over the years. ‘Phillipa, did you hear the shot next door?’

She stared into space, the myopic eyes blank; then she blinked and looked back at him. ‘I’d taken two sleeping pills, I was upset last night. I heard nothing, the roof could have fallen in ...’

He began to move towards the door. ‘Fair enough. We’ll leave you alone now, you and the family.’

‘But you’ll be back?’

‘Not me, but Inspector Malone and one or two of the other detectives.’

‘I wish you would take charge. You can be circumspect.’

Now he knew why she was taking him into her confidence. She had said exactly that, you can be circumspect, twenty-five years ago.

Chapter Three (#ulink_2cbc3411-500a-5a99-b072-c81efb04bcd3)

1

The air waves shivered with indignation and horror at the news of Sir Harry’s murder. Nobody was safe if as important a figure as Sir Harry could be murdered in his own home, said another important figure, Premier Bevan Bigelow, unsafe in his own House. Editorials sang the praises of the dead man but had nothing to say in praise of law and order. Only the columnists, as plentiful on the ground in modern journalism as Indian mynahs and just as raucous, mentioned rumours of a possible sale of the Huxwood empire. The coming election was pushed to the edges of the front pages, to the relief of the voters.

‘Law and order doesn’t apply,’ said Clements, ‘when the throat-cutting is in the family. Don’t they know that?’

‘We don’t know anyone in the family killed him,’ said Malone.

‘No, but I’d make book on it.’

They were at a morning conference the day after the discovery of the murder. All nineteen detectives from Homicide were there, plus Greg Random, Chief Superintendent in charge of the Major Crime Squad. Some of the detectives had been assigned to the three other murders that had occurred in South Region, but the main topic was the Huxwood homicide. Notabilities were not frequent visitors on the Sydney murder scene. True, it was only a press baron who had been done in: had it been a star jockey or footballer of the status of O. J. Simpson there would have been a special session of parliament, the Minister and Commissioner would have brought camp beds into their offices and the media contingent outside Homicide would have looked like a grand final crowd. Still, the pressure was bad enough as it was.

‘I think,’ said Random, sucking on his pipe which no one had ever seen him light, ‘we’d better not start pointing the finger just yet. Let the newspapers do that, they have more experts than we do.’

‘Righto,’ said Malone. ‘What’ve we got? Kate?’

‘I’ve been right through the family, grandkids and all. God, what a bunch!’ Her antipathy towards the Huxwood clan seemed to have increased since yesterday. ‘There are six grandkids, three of them with minor records. Car-stealing –’

‘Car-stealing?’ said Andy Graham. ‘With their money? They’d all own Porsches at least.’

Kate Arletti shrugged. ‘Rebellion, I guess. They’re a rebellious lot, most of them. Two of them have drug charges against them, possession of. None of them says he or she knows anything of what happened the night before last.’

‘What about the rest of the family, the kids’ parents?’ asked Clements.

‘They were mine.’ Phil Truach coughed, a hint that the meeting had gone on long enough without his having had a smoke. He and Random were the only two grey-heads in the group: Random the senior by five years and a chief superintendent, Truach only recently promoted to sergeant. But rank had seemingly never worried Phil Truach and if he never hurried himself, there was no one in Homicide more thorough than he. ‘Nobody heard nothing, nobody has a clue why the old man should’ve been shot. They’ve all got their backs to the wall, a blank wall.’

‘Not entirely blank,’ said Malone. ‘Derek let his hair down a bit to me and so did the Number One son-in-law Ned Custer. The rumours of a sell-off of Huxwood Press are true and it’s turning into a dog-fight in the family.’

‘Who’s for it and who’s against it?’ John Kagal was the handsomest and smartest dressed in the group. He was also the only detective with a university degree, a distinction he had once quietly flaunted but which he had now learned to hide. Elitism is tolerated and admired in the criminal classes, but in the rest of the native working class, including the police, it is looked upon as a criminal offence. Some day, as inevitably as crime would continue to be committed, Kagal would have Greg Random’s rank, but he had learned, too, to hide his ambition. He had been given a lesson in police service culture: that seniority was as sanctified as motherhood. Wedded motherhood, that is.

‘I don’t know who’s for or against it,’ said Malone. ‘Who checked the butler and his wife?’

‘I did,’ said Kagal. ‘They’re clean. They’ve been in Australia eighteen years, they’re Australian citizens. They’ve worked for the Huxwoods for five years, got good reports.’

‘I checked the gardener,’ said Malone. ‘That leaves only the under-gardener as a regular on the place. Plus the security guards who patrol each night.’

‘I’ve checked them,’ said Andy Graham, restless as ever on his chair. He was always ready to be up and away, usually like a bull at a gate. ‘The first lot check on the hour through the night, the other lot on the half-hour. There’d be a gap of, say, twenty minutes between each check. Time for an outsider, if it was an outsider and knew the routine, to nip in and do the deed.’

‘That leaves the under-gardener. He didn’t come in yesterday. Why?’

‘He’s in today,’ said Kate Arletti. ‘I was out there early this morning, double-checking.’ Her diligence equalled that of Andy Graham, though she managed to be more restrained than he. ‘He had a virus or something yesterday, he said. He’s okay today.’

I’ll talk to him, Malone told himself. He didn’t, however, tell that to Kate; he didn’t believe in implying that a job was only well done when he did it himself. ‘What’s the report from Ballistics?’

‘One bullet, a Thirty-two. If a pillow was used to muffle the shot, Clarrie Binyan thinks the gun could be a Browning, or something like it.’

‘Any shell?’

‘No sign of one. He collected it, looks like.’ Clements closed his notebook. ‘It doesn’t look like a professional job, not if he didn’t use a silencer.’

‘Would an amateur collect the shell? Why would he go in for housekeeping like that?’

Clements shrugged. ‘I dunno. I still think the answer’s in the family.’

‘Don’t harp on that,’ said Random. ‘The family has a friend upstairs.’

Malone kept quiet, but Truach said, ‘The Minister?’

‘No, AC Zanuch.’

‘Oh shit!’

‘Exactly. And that’s what’ll hit the fan if we start talking about the family. I’ll see you outside, Scobie.’ He rose, unhurried as usual, nodded at the group in general and left.