Murder Song

‘Brian,’ said O’Brien coldly. ‘Horrie was someone I knew in another life. Someone I’ve just about forgotten.’

His voice had changed as he spoke, became almost English; it was a formal statement. There seemed a note of venom in what he said, but Malone couldn’t be sure. The hands now were locked together.

Malone repeated his question: ‘How long ago were you in London?’

‘I went there over twenty years ago, a couple of years after I dropped out of the police academy. I came home eight years ago.’

‘And you’ve built all this up in eight years?’ Malone waved a hand, as if the O’Brien empire was spread out below them.

‘I read all the stuff put out by Australia House in London. The Land of Opportunity. I figured if the Poms like Alan Bond and the Hungarians and the Balts could come out here and make fortunes, so could I.’

‘And you did.’ Flatly.

‘Yes.’ Just as flatly.

Malone eased his tone a little. ‘You still in pop music? I don’t keep up with the pop scene.’

‘I gave it up in the mid-seventies. I got out before it sent me deaf. I went into property – that’s silent and you don’t have to deal with little jerks who think they own the world because they’ve made a hit single. What’s all this leading up to?’

‘Mardi Jack was in love with a man she met in London ten years ago, maybe a bit more. A feller whose initial was B. It could’ve been Brian.’

‘It could have been Bill or Boris or Buster, any bloody name at all. You’re not making me too happy, chum.’

‘Maybe you’ve forgotten – they didn’t invent the police force to make people happy. They told us that at the academy. I’m just doing my job, Mr O’Brien, trying to find out who murdered a woman who’d be a bloody sight happier if she were still alive.’

O’Brien said nothing for a moment; then he nodded. ‘Sure, I understand. You’ve just caught me on the wrong foot. I’ve got so many other things on my mind –’ It was an admission that he seemed instantly to regret; he was the sort of man who would always claim to be in control of a situation. He waved one of his big awkward hands, taking in his office and everything that could be seen from its big picture windows. He stood up, walked to one of the windows; he had an aggressive walk, the way, Malone remembered, the police academy had taught them to approach a riotous assembly. But there was no riotous assembly here, just a crowd of suspicions. ‘I’m sorry about what happened to Miss Jack, but I’ve got enough bastards out there hounding me without you two trying to lay something else on me.’

‘Righto, one last question. Where did you spend the weekend?’

For a moment it seemed that O’Brien hadn’t heard the question; then he turned back from the window. It had started to rain once more; the glass looked as if it was dissolving, the city behind him was about to collapse. He had a sudden stricken look on his face. ‘I can’t tell you that, Scobie.’

‘Why not?’ Malone saw that Clements was scribbling in his notebook: negative answers were sometimes as helpful as positive ones.

‘I was with a lady. I’m not going to tell you her name.’

‘Are you married?’

‘I was. Twice. I’ve been divorced for, I don’t know, twelve years, I think.’

‘Your ex-wives – where are they?’

‘In London. They were both in the pop scene – one was a singer, the other was in PR. There were no kids, thank Christ. They’re married again, both of them, and, as far as I know, never give me a thought. Is this going to keep on? If it is, I think I’ll send for my lawyer.’

Malone rose and Clements followed him. ‘There’ll be no need for that, not yet. But we may have to come back, Mr O’Brien.’

‘Mr O’Brien? I suppose I’d better get used to calling you Inspector? We were mates once, remember? Well, almost.’

Bits of memory were coming back, like the jetsam of youth drifting in on a long-delayed tide. ‘I don’t think we were ever mates, Horrie. You were too much of a loner, you always had your eye on the main chance.’

2

‘Brian Boru –’ Except in passion, when she called him names even his mother would never have called him (or perhaps least of all his mother), he was always Brian Boru to her, as if the two words were hyphenated. It had a certain Gaelic-Gallic ring to it, if one could imagine the combination. ‘I can’t get there for at least an hour.’

‘Can’t you make it before then?’

‘It’s impossible. What’s so serious?’

But he said he didn’t want to talk about it over the phone, he would expect to see her in an hour. She hung up, stood for a moment looking out at the rain-drenched gardens without seeing them. He had sounded worried; more importantly, he had sounded as if he needed her. Almost every night, in the last moments before falling asleep, she asked herself why she had fallen so desperately in love with him. She had met many more physically attractive men, as many who were more attractive in their personality and their approach to women. But if love could be defined in definite terms, it would have died years ago: the psychoanalysts would have turned it into a clinical science. She had been in love before, with three men before her husband, and she knew in her heart, if not in her head, that part of the joy of love was that one could never truly fathom it. She no longer loved her husband: that was something she was definite about, had been for months before she had met Brian Boru. But there could be no thought of divorce from the Prime Minister, not while he was in office.

She could hear the chatter behind her in the main rooms of the house. Kirribilli House, the Prime Minister’s Sydney residence, had never been as much a favourite with her and Philip as it had been with previous Prime Ministers and their wives; she always compared it unfavourably with Admiralty House next door, the Governor-General’s residence. Both were harbourside mansions built by nineteenth-century men with delusions of grandeur; Gibbes, the Collector of Customs who had built Admiralty House, had had grander delusions than Feez, the merchant of Kirribilli House. Both the Norvals had aspirations to grandeur, though Anita kept hers more secret. It was difficult to compete with her husband’s conceit, but up till now she had not discouraged him in his ambition to some day be Governor-General. It would be even more difficult, as the wife of the G-G, to get a divorce.

She went out of the small study where she had taken the call and back to the main reception room. She paused in the doorway, caught the last of the gossip before this charity morning tea broke up. It was for one of her favourite charities, homes for deaf children, and she was glad the children couldn’t hear the gossip.

‘Have you met her husband? His idea of repartee is to pass wind.’

‘Why do we need men? I’m beginning to understand lesbians.’

‘That writer over there, what’s-her-name, she’s one, you know.’

‘Really? I thought they all looked like punk rockers.’

‘I tried to congratulate her on her new book, but she got in first. She writes her own reviews, so they say.’

‘They sleep in separate rooms,’ Anita heard from another corner. ‘She tells me they make love on their anniversary each year. I’m surprised they know where the essentials still are.’

The women began to file past Anita Norval, chattering, murmuring, gushing. She found groups of women no worse than groups of men; the men were a little more deferential to her, paying awkward court to her beauty and the position of her husband, if they were conservatives. Gossip was endemic to both sexes; the men varied it by trying to buy or sell influence with it. There were no men here this morning and she was glad of that; she did not want to compare any of them with Brian Boru. It was a weakness she recognized in herself that she was always comparing people. It had started when she had first gone into radio over twenty years ago.

Penelope Debbs, the last to leave, stood before her. ‘I always enjoy coming to Kirribilli House, Anita. You’re so fortunate.’

‘It comes with the territory, as they say.’ In her days in radio, when she had hosted her own chat show, she had perhaps used too many American expressions; she had cured herself of that since Philip had gone into politics, but some still clung. They put her very much on side with Philip’s minders, all of whom had done a quick course in Americana. ‘You should put forward a bill to have a permanent residence for the State Premier. There are several going around Point Piper for ten or twelve million.’

‘I’m Labour, remember? If ever I suggested anything like that, I’d be thrown out on my rear.’

She had been born a Whymper; with such a name she had been destined for some sort of climbing, though Alps were in short supply locally. Unfitted for mountaineering, she had taken up political climbing. She had driven her pitons into at least a dozen rivals on her way up, buried others in small avalanches started by her scrabbling boots.

‘Never you, Penelope.’ No one ever called her Penny, except one man: that would suggest a value much below that which she put on herself.

She was the State Minister for Development; her main development, it was said, was her own advancement. Her ambition was so naked that the Premier, Hans Vanderberg, had once remarked that it should be censored and not allowed on television in front of children; it was rumoured that when in the Cabinet Room with her, he wore a chain-mail vest and never turned his back on her. She was a goodlooking redhead till she turned her face full on to one: then one saw the green ball-bearings that were her eyes and the white steel smile. She gave Anita the smile now.

‘No, that’s true. It’s very comforting representing constituents who think I’m Mother Teresa.’

That was when God should have sent the bolt of lightning; but God, Anita often thought, was a Labour sponsor. ‘How’s Arnold? I rarely see him in Canberra.’

Arnold Debbs was a Federal Labour member, sitting on the front bench opposite Philip and his ministers. The Debbs were a formidable pair. ‘He finds Canberra boring – one always does when one is in Opposition. He tries to escape as often as he can. I’ll tell him you asked after him. Give Philip my love. How is he? Still playing God? Or is it the other way round?’

‘He’s busy.’ Though God knew what at or with whom. He had a new secretary who was either slow at her word processor or quick in bed; either way, Philip and she had been working an awful lot of overtime lately. Anita did not care, so long as Philip didn’t ask what she was doing. ‘I’ll tell him you asked after him.’

Then the house was empty but for the servants cleaning up, her secretary and the Federal policeman who was her security guard. All at once she wished she were rid of it all, it had all suddenly become tiring, tiresome and empty; she had tried to become a political animal but the metamorphosis had been too much for her, though few would have known. She longed now for escape with Brian Boru, away from the constant wearing of a face that was false, the rein on a tongue that wanted to be truthful, the politics.