Helga's Web (29 page)

Clements shook his head in the same morose way as when he had won at the races for the third time running. “I hope we don’t have to pick on Grafter Gibson’s missus. She’s too old to take a beating.”

“I looked up Grafter in Who’s Who. They’ve been married for thirty-five years. No kids. Anyone who could stand him for that long on her own could stand up to anything. Still—” He pressed the button for the lift. “Let’s take her gently if she’s there.”

A part-aboriginal maid, night-dark eyes staring at them suspiciously, let them into the Gibson penthouse. Glenda

Gibson, in a black velvet pants-suit, just falling short of elegance by twenty years and twenty pounds, greeted them with equal suspicion.

“My husband’s not home, Sergeant.” She had just come from the hairdresser’s and her hair had a stiff, unnatural look, as if it could be taken off and set aside on a shelf. It did not sit well on the warm, sincere face beneath it. “But if you’d like to wait—?”

She offered them a drink and after some hesitation Malone asked for a bitter lemon for himself and Clements. He had a feeling that Gibson would not like it if he came in and found two policemen sitting back in his living room quaffing beers; the offense would be only venial if the drinks were bitter lemons. The two detectives sat there in the huge air-conditioned living room watching the late sun turn the harbour into a verdigris-streaked shield on which black ships stood like heraldic charges. The maid flitted around the edges of the room, a dark wraith whose eyes never left the two policemen: she was concerned for her mistress. A tall grandfather clock struck five and Glenda Gibson looked at it with approval, as if time were a household pet to be rewarded for good behaviour.

“My husband will be home in a quarter of an hour. He’s never late. Yet he never carries a watch.” There was no mistaking the pride in her voice; her husband was her king, president and prime minister. But she was troubled by the intruders at the gates: “I just don’t understand why you have to see him. We live a very simple life,” she said, unconscious of the luxury amidst which they sat. Her whole life was Les and whatever he wanted; all the rest was just background. She put down her glass, the sherry in it barely touched. She stared at them, her face crumbling a little under the blue-grey siege-cap of her hair. “He’s an old man, you know.”

“We know, Mrs. Gibson,” said Malone gently. “We haven’t come to arrest him or anything like that—” He looked around the room, changed the subject: “You must be very happy here.”

Mrs. Gibson stared at him a moment longer, then seemed reassured. She glanced about her, then shook her head. “I don’t like the height. I think I must have verti-whatever-it’s-called. I never go near the windows. I always look at the view from here, the middle of the room. You’re never too old to make mistakes,” she said, and looked around the room again. “We made one buying this place. But it’s too late now to move again.”

“It should be no trouble,” said Clements, trapped by her frankness into an undiplomatic frankness of his own. “I mean, you have the money—”

“It’s not the money, young man. It’s the time it takes for a place to become your home. That’s a bad cold you have. Would you like some aspirin or something?”

Gibson came in the front door as the clock struck the quarter-hour. Glenda Gibson beamed at Malone and Clements as if her husband had just arrived walking on water; then she rose, crossed to him and kissed him fondly and without embarrassment on the cheek. There was nothing remarkable in that, Malone thought. What was remarkable was that Gibson, a man Malone would never have suspected of any public demonstration of affection or emotion, returned the kiss as if he and his wife were alone in the room. He still wore his hat and after he had kissed his wife he turned away, hung the hat carefully on a hat-rack and only then looked at Malone and Clements.

“You should have come to see me at my office,” he said raspingly. Then he nodded to his wife. “Excuse us, Glenda. They won’t be staying long.”

“No, I’m staying, Les. They said it’s nothing serious, so I want to stay and hear what it is. If it is serious—” She fluttered one hand. “I’ll still stay.”

Gibson did not argue with her. He walked to the drink

cabinet built into one of the panelled walls, poured himself a whisky-and-soda, and without looking at the two detectives said, “If it’s about that girl, what’s her name, you’re wasting your time.”

“Maybe,” said Malone. “But I’m afraid we’re the ones who have to decide that, Mr. Gibson.”

“What girl?” Glenda Gibson turned to her husband. “The one they talked about last time?”

Gibson said nothing for a moment, looking at Malone; but Malone let him answer. “She was the girl they found down in the Opera House.”

“The Opera House one!” Her voice jumped ridiculously, almost a little girl’s squeak of surprise. “What the devil—?”

Malone let Gibson continue with the answers: “It’s nothing, love. Like I told you, there were some pictures of us, newspaper pictures, in her flat. She’d been collecting them or something?”

“But why?”

Gibson let Malone answer that one. Malone took his time. They had nothing at all on Gibson; but they had to be sure he had nothing on them. Gibson had money and was at the top of the heap, and it was part of the cynical nature of Sydney that it was always believed that any man who had achieved both money and position could not have done so without some pull in influential quarters. Malone was not as cynical as the worst of Sydney’s voters, but neither was he foolhardy.

“We think the girl was building up a list of people to—” he glanced at Gibson “—to swindle.”

There was just a momentary gleam of appreciation in Gibson’s eye: this copper wasn’t such a mug. “It happens all the time, Glenda. It had to happen to us sooner or later. But she’s dead now, so there’s nothing for us to worry about.”

“Who killed her? Someone else she was trying to swindle?”

“We don’t know,” said Malone. “We’re trying to find out

if someone who knew your husband gave her your name. We’ve been to see Mr. Savanna,” he said to Gibson.

“Jack?” Glenda Gibson’s head jerked round to her husband again; she could have been watching a tennis match that only occasionally came alive for her. “Did he know her? I wouldn’t put it past him—I wonder if Josie knows?”

Gibson looked into his glass. “If she didn’t know, it’s time she found out. She’s been living in a fool’s bloody paradise too long.”

Mrs. Gibson jerked her head back at Malone and he said quietly, “She knows, Mrs. Gibson. She took it all right.”

Clements nodded. “I wouldn’t worry about her.”

“I always worry about her—”

Gibson moved across, sat down beside his wife, put a hand on her arm. “That’s the trouble, Glenda. Josie doesn’t really want anyone to worry about her. She enjoys her little bit of bloody misery.” He turned back to Malone and Clements. “You’ve probably recognized that my brother-in-law is several sorts of bastard. But he’s attractive to women—”

Glenda shook her head vehemendy. “I can’t see a thing in him!”

Gibson smiled and pressed her arm. “Josie wouldn’t agree with you, love. She’d rather settle for one night a week of Jack than have bugger-all of him. Sergeant, if he gave my name to this girl, was he in on the swindle?”

“Only you would know that,” said Malone. “I was only guessing that she was thinking up some swindle. It could have been something else.”

“What?” said Glenda Gibson.

Gibson realized he had opened the subject too far by his vindictive swipe at Savanna. “It could be—er—anything. Girls like her get up to all sorts of tricks. But I’d had nothing to do with her,” he snapped at Malone. “Nothing. She was a complete stranger to me. I’d never seen her or spoken to her or

had a letter from her. A complete stranger, take my bloody word for it!”

It was Glenda’s turn to be comforting. “Don’t get worked up, hon. I don’t think they’re accusing you of anything. Are you, Sergeant?”

“No,” said Malone, and knew the interview was going to get nowhere by being prolonged. The attrition of questions would never wear down Gibson; the old man was solid rock. Malone stood up, took the chewed match from his pocket and held it out. “Do you know anyone who does that, Mr. Gibson?”

Gibson’s eyes narrowed just a fraction, but he shook his head at once. “No. What’s that got to do with what we’re talking about?”

“Nothing,” said Malone; then looked at Glenda Gibson. “What’s the matter, Mrs. Gibson? Do you know someone who does that?”

“I don’t suppose it means anything—” She glanced at her husband, then stopped, shook her head. “No, I was mistaken. Lots of men do that.”

“Not too many,” said Malone, keeping his voice even. “And if needs be, I’ll try to track down every one of them in Sydney. Go on, Mrs. Gibson. You were going to say something-No, please, Mr. Gibson! Don’t interfere. Or has your wife jogged your memory?”

“I don’t know,” Gibson grunted. “I don’t know what she was gunna say.”

“That man who came up here the other night,” said Glenda. “Clixby or Dixby or something. One of your trawler captains. He chewed a match.”

Malone said nothing, sat down again, waited for Gibson. At last the old man nodded, took a sip of his whisky, nodded again. “I’m getting old. I don’t notice people’s habits any more. Feller named Bixby. He used to be one of my trawler captains.”

“Used to be?”

“I’d sacked him. Found out he was only declaring two-thirds of his fish catch each time he came in. Him and his crew were flogging the other third to some wholesaler they’d teamed up with.”

“Why did he come to see you here, Mr. Gibson? Was there some argument? I mean, did he resent being sacked?”

“He didn’t love me for it, if that’s what you mean. But there was no argument, was there, Glenda? You didn’t hear us having words, did you?”

“I was only in here for a minute,” Glenda Gibson told Ma-lone, anxious to repair what she now recognized as an indiscretion. Les had said nothing to her, but she knew his silences as well as she knew his words and gestures. “But then I was moving around the flat all the rest of the time, I mean I didn’t leave here. I didn’t hear one raised word—no argument, nothing like that—”

“Why did Bixby come to see you, Mr. Gibson?”

Gibson finished the whisky in his glass. The old bastard’s mind is still sharp, Malone thought. He only needs a second or two to come up with a story: “He’d been with me, off and on, a long time. Twenty years or more. I just wanted to know why he wanted to take me down.”

“Why not at your office?”

“He rang me and said he’d rather see me at home, said he couldn’t wait till the next day, he was going away or something. I didn’t expect any trouble from him. I didn’t get any.”

“Did he tell you why he took you down?”

Gibson grinned. “Same old story. He said I had too much for one man, I wouldn’t miss the bit him and his crew were taking from me.”

“People are like that,” said Glenda, her hand on Gibson’s arm again. “As if Les had never worked for what he’s got.”

“What we’ve got, love,” said Gibson, and even to Malone’s skeptical ear the old man did not sound sickly sentimental.

This ruthless old crook and his feather-brained wife have got something my mum and dad have never achieved: understanding. And he felt suddenly sad for Con and Brigid Ma-lone with their tongue-tied love for each other. Protect Lisa and me from that, O Lord. Give us pain, give us despair, but never forget to give us understanding.

Clements said, “I think I know Bixby. He hasn’t always been with you, has he, Mr. Gibson? You said off and on. When he was off, was he in jail?”

Gibson shrugged, looked at Clements for the first time. “He could’ve been. I don’t keep track all the time of all the people I employ. I suppose there’s a coupla thousand of ‘em, maybe more, spread throughout the firms I own. They come and go and, I suppose so, they come again. That’s what Bixby did. What he did while he was gone, I wouldn’t know and wouldn’t wanna know.”

Clements saw Malone’s inquiring look. “Bixby’s not a common name. If he’s the bloke I’m thinking of, he did time out at the Bay. I can’t remember what for, but he had some sorta record. We could look it up.”

“When did you see him last, Mr. Gibson?” Malone asked.

Gibson looked at his wife. “Last Friday,” she said. “I remember because we were going to that Christmas charity party at the golf club.”

“You haven’t seen him since?”

Gibson shook his head. “I don’t want to see him again. He’s finished, far as I’m concerned.”

Malone stood up. “Well, that’s it, I think. We shouldn’t be worrying you again, Mr. Gibson. Nor you, Mrs. Gibson.” He liked the old woman and he was pleased when she returned his smile. Any woman who could find the amount of happiness she had with an old bastard like Gibson was no ordinary woman. “We’ll get Bixby’s home address from your wages office and give him a call. He may be able to help us.”

“But how?” asked Glenda.

But Gibson pressed her arm. “It’s none of our business, Glenda. Let the police look after it. It’s none of our business.”

Malone and Clements said goodbye, drove back to the city through the cool southerly buster that had sprung up. Trees that had been stunned by the heat of the day came alive again, danced like corroboree blacks beyond the street lamps. Malone was driving and Clements, slumped down in his seat with his handkerchief wiping his eyes, suddenly sneezed.

“I’m gunna get bloody pneumonia out of this.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“I was gunna go to the trots. But I dunno, maybe bed would be the best place. Why?”

“What did you remember about this bloke Bixby?”

Clements sneezed again, wiped his nose. “More than I let on back there. I wonder if he was running some game with Helga? If he was in on the blackmail bit? I’ve run into him a coupla times. He’s a stand-over merchant, he got booked several times for beating up other blokes. He might’ve been the one put Helga up to the idea of blackmail.”

“Could be. If he’d been with Grafter for twenty years, even off and on, he could have found out something about the old bastard. Well, we’ll find out when we find him.”