Helga's Web (26 page)

He went out of the flat, closing the door after him. He was halfway down the stairs when he heard the man and the woman, the woman talking continuously without seeming to draw breath, coming up the stairs. There was no way of avoiding them. He missed his step, recovered, and went on down. He nodded to the couple as he passed them; then he had reached the lobby. He opened the glass door and as he went out he heard the woman, her voice magnified in the stairwell, say, “His face looked sorta familiar—”

He was out in the street, halfway to his car, when he remembered the check he had given Helga this afternoon, the one she had torn up.

But it was too late now to go back and search for the pieces. His key was inside the flat.

Friday, December 13

“Making progress?” asked Kerslake, mouth working; he had a week’s questions bottled up. “See you’ve learned the name of the girl. Read nothing else, though. Not getting far?” “It takes time,” said Malone. “The Opera House wasn’t built in a day.”

Kerslake jerked his head under the jab, acknowledged it.

”True, true. Well, if we can help-”

Malone and Clements had driven back from Pymble and Norma Helidon to headquarters. Malone had given the pipe he had taken from Helidon’s rack to Clements and asked him to take it up to Fingerprints at the CIB. Then he had lapsed into silence and Clements, miserable with his cold, had con- centrated on his driving. He had automatically slid behind the wheel when they had come out of the Helidon house and now he was wishing he had given the wheel to Malone. But he recognized that Malone had something on his mind, some- thing that was worrying the Irishman more than his owri cold was worrying himself.

“What’s eating you, Scobie?” he said at last.

Malone hedged. “If you had to put all that money of yours on the murderer right now, where would you lay it?”

“You mean out of Helidon, Gibson and Savanna?”

 “There are two other starters—Mrs. Helidon and the bloke who chewed those matches/’

Clements pulled up at a red light, glanced out at two longhaired youths in a souped-up Holden. The passenger grinned insolently across at him, while the driver kept revving the engine; then all at once recognition dawned in the eye of the passenger and he spoke out of the side of his mouth to the driver. The latter took his foot off the accelerator and the two of them slouched down in their seats, gentlemen of leisure out for a breath of fresh air. The light turned green and Clements took off; in his mirror he saw the Holden ambling away from the light at no more than twenty miles an hour, holding up traffic in the lane behind it.

“Forget them.” Malone had noticed Clements’ reaction to the two youths; Clements at twenty-six was well on his way to being an arch-conservative. “They were doing nothing.”

“It’s the long hair. I’d like to run ‘em all in just on suspicion.”

“Of what?”

Clements had not yet reached the fossilized stage of conservatism: he could still laugh at himself. “Anything. But—” He stopped smiling and said, “You’re letting your own suspicions get away a bit, aren’t you?”

“How’s that?” said Malone, at once on the defensive.

“I think you’ve already decided one or both of the Helidons killed Helga.” Malone said nothing and Clements took the car up the approach to the Harbour Bridge and through the toll gates before he went on: “I’ll admit I’m a bit with you. I can’t see any connection Gibson would have had with her. And Savanna—well, I guess he could have done her in. He could have had reason to—if she was blackmailing him, going to tell his wife or something. Still—” He shook his head. “I think it was one of the Helidons. Or both. But we’re supposed to be objective. And it still doesn’t account for the bloke who chewed those matches. He could have been another one of her customers, you know. Her Saturday or Sunday bloke.”

Malone shook his head. “Not unless he came on the wrong day. She was done in some time on the Monday. She’d have cleaned up the remains of any Sunday visitor. The living room was a shambles, but you heard what Savanna told us— she was house-proud. The rest of the flat looked it. The kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom—they were like exhibition rooms. She wouldn’t have left any dirty ashtrays overnight from Saturday or Sunday. The other feller was there on Monday, all right. But we don’t know who he was or what motive he had—unless he’d just been called in to help get rid of her body. We know Helidon had a motive—if she was blackmailing him, as I think she was. Mrs. Helidon had a motive, too. She wouldn’t be the first wife who’d killed her husband’s girl friend.”

“Yeah, I’d lay money she’d been to Helga’s flat. She was too nervous all the time we were looking at those pearls. And they matched, all right. She could have had them down to the jeweler’s any day last week and had them re-strung in a hurry.”

“That maid would know. Try and trace her. Try the Italian social clubs. These migrants usually go to their own community clubs when they first come out here. Someone at one of them might know her.”

Clements sniffled and made a face. “I was thinking of going home to bed.”

“Go home afterwards. Go round the clubs first, sample some of that Chianti and garlic. It’s supposed to be good for colds.”

Clements took the car down the Cahill Expressway, flying across the glass face of the city. “What are you gunna do?”

“I think I’ll go and see my Old Man. Ask him to help me do a bit of detective work.”

“He won’t like that.”

Con Malone didn’t. When Malone left Kerslake and went

down into the basement of the Opera House, having borrowed a helmet and a torch, Con was with him, grumbling and muttering like an old soldier who for the tenth day running had drawn latrine duty. “Dunno why you cant do your own dirty work.”

“I’m trying to show you that not all police work is dirty,” said Malone, grinning in the gloom at his father. “Now, can you string me up some lights in here?”

“What are you looking for?”

“A chewed matchstick.” He took a match from the box in his pocket, chewed one end, then showed it to his father. “Like that.”

Con Malone looked around the chamber, at the debris of timber and old newspapers, milk bottles, beer bottles and one wine bottle, lengths of rope and sheets of corrugated iron, and the single iron bed-head that leaned against one wall like the bars for a window that had never been constructed in this dungeon. “You want your bloody head read! Find a match here?”

But he went away to get the lights and Malone sat down on a length of timber, the torch at his feet, and waited. He slipped the chewed match back into his pocket. The room was as silent as a tomb; what sounds could be heard from outside had the ghostly effect of echoes, calls from another world. What a place to finish up, he thought; and once again felt sympathy for Helga Brand. I’m in the wrong game. If I expected gentle deaths for everyone, I should have gone into a seminary, as Mum wanted me to. But even as he had the thought, he knew there was no guarantee that the deaths in a seminary were any less violent than Helga’s had been. The priest might die with no marks on his throat, but no one knew the hemorrhage of despair there might have been in the man’s heart. For all he knew of Helga, deep inside her she might have welcomed her own death.

I wonder if Helidon could give me the answer to that one

if I asked him? But here I go again: why do I keep choosing him as the murderer? It was okay to arrest vagrants and loiterers on suspicion; maybe not strictly legal, but it came under the heading of prevention of crime and that was a good enough reason. I told Mrs. Helidon this morning: you go against the rules when they get in the way. But you couldn’t afford to go against the rules when it came to arresting a man for murder. There was no death sentence in New South Wales, but if Helidon were arrested his life would be finished as surely as if the rope had been strung round his neck. The case against Helidon had to be watertight, had to be based on evidence that would be even more convincing to Malone himself than to a jury. When he laid the charge against Helidon there must be no doubt in his own mind about the facts. Suspicion, prejudice if you like, mus be entirely eliminated. Whatever Helidon had got away with seven or eight years ago in the land deal case had no bearing on this case. Charlie Duggan, the cynical con man, had once said, “Looked at from my side of the fence, justice is nothing more than civilized revenge.” Well, he must see he did not prove Charlie had been right.

Con Malone came back with a long lead to which were connected two high-wattage globes. The room abruptly took shape: hard, cold, uninviting, lacking any mystery. “What are the police rates for casuals?” Con Malone wanted to know.

“You’re doing this as a public duty, didn’t you know?”

“Am I?” Con made a rude remark about that; but he made no attempt to walk out. “Well, we better start over where the body was, then work back in a line towards the door. Right?”

Malone looked admiringly at his father. “Didn’t I tell you? I got all my detective talent from you.”

“I had more bloody pride than to join the police force, but, your Uncle Seamus, he killed a copper in The Troubles back home in the Ould Country, you know that? They put up a statue to him, my word they did.”

“Who?” Malone grinned. “The copper or Uncle Seamus?”

“Bloody funny.”

They spent half an hour searching the chamber, but they found no chewed matches. At last Con Malone straightened up. “We’re wasting our time, Scobie. Nobody’s been in here who chewed matches. Or if he was, he was too busy to be chewing ‘em. You think he might be the bloke who done her in?”

“I don’t know,” said Malone, still riding tight on his own suspicions. “But if he didn’t kill her, he’ll be able to tell us who did.”

“I don’t think I’d snitch on a mate,” said Con Malone. “Not even for murder.”

“Not even if they murdered Mum or me?”

“That’d be different, but!” Con looked shocked, as if he had never thought that anyone close to him could be murdered.

“It always is,” said Malone a trifle sadly.

He took one more look around the chamber; then Con Malone took down the lights and they made their way up through the maze of passages, out of the cool, damp gloom, and came out on to one of the outdoor podiums above the wide expanse of steps. They stood there in the threatening heat; Malone took some time to adjust to the assault on his senses. In front of them the city, all glass and concrete, glittered like a broken escarpment of pure quartz: people worked behind those glass cliffs, the buildings were alive, but you would never know it: the sun blazed on them, the window reflected a blinding uninhabited infinity. Behind him he could hear the sound of hammering, magnified a thousand times by the giant horn of the roof shell: it pounded against his eardrum. He shut his eyes, wishing he had brought some sunglasses with him. When he opened them

and looked down the long broad flight of steps he saw a party of Japanese coming up, little men in dark business suits whose helmets looked like white bowlers. At their head, dressed in the same farcical uniform, was Walter Helidon.

“Well, Sergeant Malone!”

Helidon paused at the top of the steps and Malone waited for him to doff his helmet; but Helidon knew when political politeness could descend into ridicule. He excused himself from the group; the Japanese moved on under the guidance of one of Helidon s officials. Malone looked after them as they moved on up another flight of steps, their cameras clicking like the hammers of empty guns; the Japanese must be the world’s most indefatigable photographers, Japan itself would soon be buried in a snowdrift of pictures of other parts of the world. Con Malone also looked after them. Then he spat, an old-timer who had no time for old-time enemies. He stepped to the end of the podium, stood looking out at the skyline of the city as if viewing it for the first time. But it wasn’t the Japanese who had driven him there. It was bad enough to be seen in the company of his son, the policeman, but to be seen in the company of both a policeman and a Cabinet Minister was more than his life was worth; there were certain lengths to which an old Labour radical could never go; even to have spoken to the Japanese would have been more forgivable. Malone and Helidon were left alone on the top of the steps.

“A trade delegation,” said Helidon, nodding after the Japanese. “They weren’t very impressed when I told them we had been working on the Opera House for ten years. Seems it took them only fifteen years to re-build the whole of Hiroshima.” He took out a handkerchief, took off his glasses, wiped the sweat from his face, then replaced the glasses. Malone recognized the ritual: he waited for the remark that had to follow: “My wife called me. You’ve been up to see her.”

“Yes,” Malone said cautiously; again he felt his dislike of

the self-assured politician coming to the surface. “I hope we didn’t upset her too much?”

“What do you think?” Helidon snapped. “My wife isn’t used to being questioned by the police. Neither am I, for that matter.”

“As I remember it, Mr. Helidon, you told me that once before.”

“Have you got some sort of grudge against me, Malone?” Helidon looked at him warily.

“No,” Malone lied; or thought he lied.

“You left my wife with the distinct impression that you did not believe what she had told you.”

Malone tried to look surprised; somewhere up in the roof shell a workman laughed, the sound a giant giggle of mirth. “I don’t know how she got that idea. The questions were only routine.”

“Don’t treat my wife as a suspect, Sergeant. I’m warning you. If you bother her again, I’ll have a word with the Commissioner. You have no grounds at all for questioning her the way you did.”

Malone felt himself get hot, far hotter than the sun had made him. Keep cool for Christ’s sake, Malone! Don’t knock the Cabinet Minister arse-over-charlie down the steps, not in front of the Japanese: this isn’t the Diet. The group had turned to look back at the city: Malone and Helidon were center stage, right in the line of their gaze. “I’m acting on instructions, sir. I was told to treat this as a routine murder case and that’s what I’m doing. The only way to solve any case is by asking questions.”