Yesterday’s Shadow

Malone switched off the recorder. ‘We’ll have to hold you till you get someone here to brief you, Delia. We’ll send you over to Police Centre, to Surry Hills, and they’ll hold you there. Do you have a solicitor? Better if you can get one who has some experience in this sort of thing. A conveyancing solicitor isn’t going to be much good for you.’

‘We’ll get one,’ said Rosie Quantock. She’s a pain in the arse, thought Malone, but she’s the sort of friend everyone should have. ‘I’ll take care of it, Delia. I’ll take care of the kids, too. And get on to your mother –’

‘How old are the children?’ asked Gail.

‘Eleven and twelve, a boy and a girl.’ Delia looked at Malone, read the question in his face: ‘No, I didn’t start late. Boris was my second husband, they’re his kids. I have a daughter who’s twenty.’

‘Where’s she?’ asked Malone.

‘In England – London. With her father. He’s English, a teacher.’

English, Russian: because she had been jilted by an Australian? ‘Do you want us to get in touch with her?’

She shrugged, the calmness still there. There was just a faint shake of the head, not of negation but of wonder, as if she were only just coming to realize the seriousness of her situation. She gazed at Malone for a long moment, then she said, ‘We never thought it would come to this, did we, Scobie?’

He was all cop now, the only protection. ‘No, Delia, we didn’t … Detective Lee and another officer will take you over to Surry Hills.’ He turned to Rosie Quantock. ‘How soon can you get a lawyer for her?’

‘Give me an hour.’ She could raise an army in an hour, you knew it would not be beyond her.

‘Don’t rush, get a good one. Detective Lee and the other officer will then question Delia –’

‘No,’ said Delia.

He looked at her. ‘No what?’

‘You’re the only one I’ll talk to.’

‘Delia, I have another homicide to look into –’

‘No.’ It was more than calmness now, it was cold adamancy.

He took a deep breath, trying to remain calm himself. ‘Righto, but it may not be till late afternoon before I can get back to you.’

‘That will do,’ said Rosie Quantock and stood up, putting an arm under Delia’s. ‘Buck up, love. It’s not over till the Fat Lady sings.’

‘She used to be in the chorus at the Opera House.’ Again there was just the hint of a smile at the corner of the bruised mouth. She looked almost relaxed again, as if the only point that had worried her was that Malone might not question her. And now he had promised that he would.

‘Were you a Valkyrie?’ Gail asked Rosie Quantock and Malone could see that she was trying to keep the mood light.

‘What else? Come on, love. We’re still ahead.’

She would not give in, she would be raising spirits, like flags.

Chapter Two (#ulink_999585cf-3fab-5096-a667-80152fbc4a4b)

1

After the women had gone, Sheryl Dallen going with Gail Lee, Malone called Clements and Phil Truach into his office. Clements examined him frankly and Malone stared back at him.

‘You’ve got a problem,’ said the big man and lowered himself into his usual seat on the couch beneath the window. Out on the ledge a pigeon looked in at them with an impersonal eye.

‘You’re right, a big one.’

‘She did her husband?’ said Truach.

‘Yes. But this is personal – for me. Delia Jones is an old girlfriend of mine. We went steady for almost a year. She expected me to marry her.’

Clements frowned. ‘Delia – Bates? Bateman? You brought her once to a party. Her?’

‘Her. Delia Bates.’

‘No problem,’ said Truach. ‘I’ll handle it, you don’t need to come within a mile of her.’

‘That won’t work, Phil. She won’t talk to anyone but me. I tried her with Gail, but no go. I’m just starting to remember how stubborn she could be.’

Clements, the personal friend, said, ‘Does Lisa know about her? I mean before you married her?’

‘I mentioned her once or twice – just joking, I think. Do you talk about your old girlfriends to Romy? Do you tell your wife about them, Phil?’

‘What old girlfriends?’ said Truach. ‘I was an altar boy till I met her. Of course, there was Father Mulcahy –’

‘Righto, lay off. This is no time for joking –’

‘Sorry. So she was the one who did the damage? Because he belted her?’

‘Evidently he’s been doing it for years. He had a go at her last night.’

‘So it was self-defence?’ Clements, like most cops, was sympathetic to battered women.

‘They must of had a fight at the hotel,’ said Truach. ‘Maybe he tried to belt her again, her following him to work. The room where he was done, everything was in its place when we looked at it. But Norma Nickles rang in with a preliminary report. There were prints, blood on them, on a lot of the stuff, the buckets and mops and things. As if someone had picked it all up and put it back in place.’

‘That could be her.’ Memory was coming back. She had been wild and uninhibited in bed, but once out of it she had been as neat as a drill sergeant, a place for everything and everything in its place. She had dressed with almost convent-like neatness, then made the bed that they had wrecked. They had joked about her passion for order. Neither of them had known then that her life would be totally disordered. Or so it looked. ‘She was like that. She could make a rugby scrum look neat.’

‘Then that could save her,’ said Clements. ‘She gets a good lawyer, they plead the bashing and the self-defence –’

‘We can make it look –’ said Truach.

‘Phil, don’t make it look like anything but the facts. I don’t want some prosecutor tearing you apart … She was my girlfriend, but that was twenty-five years ago. We’ve both had our own lives since then. I’ve been the lucky one …’

Clements stepped out of his cop’s role: ‘Are you gunna tell Lisa?’

‘Whom –’ He had been coached by Lisa who, like most educated foreigners, had more respect for English grammar than the natives. ‘Whom do you think she is going to be interested in, an ex-girlfriend who’s murdered her husband or the murdered wife of the American Ambassador?’

‘The Ambassador’s wife,’ said Truach. ‘That will be the one all over the news tonight –’

‘You’re kidding. You’re still influenced by Father Whatshisname. She will ask me about Delia and so will my daughters. And even Tom will look at me with new interest. They know I’ve never looked at another woman since I met Lisa and they think my life before her was just a blank. Or at worst I spent all my time with blokes.’

Clements stood up. ‘Let’s put Delia on the back burner for a while. It’s time you went down to the Yanks again, to meet the Ambassador.’