Murder Song (12 page)

“What did Jim think of it when you told him?”

“He couldn't make head nor tail of it. I think he just forgot about it. Does it mean anything, Inspector?”

Malone kept his voice steady. “It might. Would you recognize the man's voice if he phoned again?”

“I don't know. I can't describe it, it was just an ordinary voice, but he sang in tune. Yes, I think I might recognize it if I heard it again.”

Malone stood up. “I'll come back in a couple of days, Mrs. Knoble, or I'll send Sergeant Clements—he knew Jim. He'll come to you first, Keith. We'll do our best, Mrs. Knoble. I promise you.”

She just nodded, seeming to become smaller, drawing herself into herself. Malone stood
looking
at her, saw her turning into Lisa; then he abruptly left the flat before the horror turned him dizzy. Once out in the street he paused and took a lungful of the cold, sea-smelling air. Fifty yards to his right and a hundred feet down a wave boomed against the cliff-face, followed by another and another: the sea was building up for an assault.

Clements approached him. “How's the family?”

“Safe, I hope.” Then he saw Clements' curious look and he realized what he had said. He put Lisa and the children out of his mind. “I didn't see the daughter, they've sedated her. Mrs. Knoble will have some of the neighbours staying with her tonight. Keith Elgar is going to have one of his men stay, too. I want you to come back and talk to the daughter.”

“Thanks,” said Clements with no thanks.

Better you than me, Malone told him silently: I'd be looking at Sylvie Knoble and seeing Claire. “They come up with anything yet?”

“They've already found the bullet—it was in the back seat. Ballistics will have it first thing in the morning.”

“I don't think we'll need to check. It was him, all right. He's getting cheeky now. He's sending singing telegrams.” Clements looked at him quizzically, knowing now that these murders were getting to his mate.

“Six green bottles standing on the wall,”
sang Malone. “Another one fell off the wall tonight, but not accidentally. He rang Mrs. Knoble last week, sang that rhyme to her and told her to tell Jim.”

“Good,” said Clements. “Let's hope he calls Police Centre next, asks for you. Then you can let him know we know who he is.”

“What if he calls home, talks to Lisa or one of the kids?”

Clements bit his lip. “Christ, I didn't think of that!”

“There's another thing. What do we know about Sam Culp?”

“Nothing so far. Only that's it him or you who's gunna be next,” said Clements, laying down the truth as heavily as a gravestone.

5

I

NEXT MORNING
just before ten o'clock Sergeant Binyan, of Ballistics, rang Malone. “It's the same calibre bullet, Scobie. A .243 fired from the same rifle as the other three. You wanna come up and have a look?”

Malone told Clements to wait on a call from Wal Dukes out at Randwick, then went up to the fifth level of the Centre. He waited to be admitted by Clarrie Binyan himself, who came and operated the security lock. There were over seven thousand confiscated and surrendered weapons, from tiny one-shot pistols that could be hidden in a woman's hand to weighty submachine-guns, kept here in Ballistics; there were also countless flick-knives, decorated daggers, kris, bayonets, rapiers hidden in umbrella sticks, machetes and a medieval battle-axe, a treasure commonly known as The Wife. Binyan locked the door behind them and led Malone through to his office.

Clarrie Binyan was part-Aborigine, a twenty-six-year-veteran who had started as a fighting street kid in the Police Boys Clubs. Without changing his name to something Irish and romantic he had made good in a white man's racist world, but not within fifty million dollars of Brian Boru O'Brien. Malone wondered who had had the harder battle.

He waved Malone to a chair, went to a refrigerator marked with a big sign:
Warning! This refrigerator contains Contaminated Material!
He opened it; it was stacked full of cans of soft drink and light alcohol beer. He tossed Malone a can of the beer, took one himself and came back and sat down at his desk.

“I serve light beer up to the rank of inspector. Anyone above that gets a Coke. Okay, here's what we've got. I've talked it over with young Jason James. We're pretty certain it's a Tikka, but it could be
a
Winchester.”

“You said that before. You blokes are always so specific.”

Binyan grinned; nobody in the force, it seemed, had ever been able to get his goat. “Never leave yourself out on a limb, my mumma taught me.”

“How many Tikkas would be imported each year?”

“I wouldn't have a clue, Scobie. A good few less than Winchesters. But this could be a gun that's ten or fifteen years old. It'd be like looking for a nugget in gibber country.”

“I thought you black trackers were champions at that?”

Binyan grinned again, a mouthful of white man's false teeth. “The last time I went bush they had to send out my mumma to find me. Come and I'll show you the similarities between the bullets.”

He got up and led Malone out through a large, clinically clean workroom where four men were working separately at benches, dismantled weapons in front of them. He led Malone into a side room, sat down at a large contraption with a stool in front of it.

“I dunno whether I ever showed you this. It's German, a Wild Leitz forensic comparison macroscope—it's also got a video monitor. There's also Intralux 6000 optical fibre lights. It costs over a hundred and fifty grand and if I put two hairs under here I could tell you which one was a white man's and which a Koori's.”

“How would you know the difference?”

“The split hair would be Whitey's.”

Malone and Binyan had never had any racial feeling between them. “Righto, smart-arse. Now show me the bullets.”

Binyan took three bullets from the small plastic envelopes he had brought with him from his office and set them in place under the macroscope. “Forget the third one for the moment. These two are last night's bullet and the one that killed Mardi Jack. Have a look.” Malone sat down at the instrument, adjusted the eyepieces. “Notice the lands and the grooves, six of „em going to the right. Exactly the same, right? Now if you look at this particular land, near the base, there's a series of pronounced striations.
That'
s unusual.”

Malone nodded, though it had taken him some moments to adjust to the magnification.

Binyan took out the two bullets, put in the third one, then produced a fourth from his pocket. “Now these are the ones that killed Gardner and Terry Sugar. They match, right?” Again Malone nodded. “Now I'm gunna take out the Sugar bullet and put in the one that killed Jim Knoble. There. It matches the first bullet, the Gardner one, right?”

Malone sat back, then stood up slowly. “All that'll stand up in court?”

“No worries, mate.”

“Righto. Can I have all the bullets?” Binyan handed him the four labelled plastic envelopes. “What about the ammo? How many boxes of .243s would be sold a year?”

Binyan shook his greying curly head. “Scobie, you're getting desperate—”

“I
am
desperate. I could be the next one.” He told Binyan of the hit list. “Keep it to yourself.”

“It's a tribal secret.” Binyan was always poking fun at what he claimed were white man's myths about Aboriginal myths; but he did not smile and Malone knew he wasn't joking this time. “Jesus, mate, I didn't know it was that close to home. I wish we could do more. But trying to trace who's bought the ammo—” He shook his head again. “You don't have to register to buy ammo. All you have to do is produce a shooter's licence, you know that. Gun dealers never make a note of it.”

“I know,” said Malone morosely. “I'm not thinking too straight.”

“You better leave this one alone, mate. Take your long service leave and disappear. Go walkabout, like I would.”

“And get lost in the bush, have my mumma come looking for me?” Malone managed a smile. “Don't worry, Clarrie. I'll cope.”

He went back down to Homicide as Clements came back. “I've been out front. It's pissing down again. This is gunna mean a heavy track on Saturday. I think I'll lay off the horses this weekend.”

“Stick to your shares. It doesn't rain in the stock exchange.”

“Talking of the stock exchange—they've stopped all trading in Cossack shares.” The race track
and
the stock exchange were Clements' main relief from the effects of homicide investigations. Going through the “murder box” one day Malone had discovered a racing form guide and a week's share trading list absent-mindedly pinned to the running sheets of a particularly ghastly murder. “Our mate O'Brien looks like he's really up shit creek.”

“Don't gloat, Russ.”

“Am I gloating? Sorry.” But Clements didn't look in the least apologetic. He sat down, his bulk making the chair creak. “Changing the subject. Wal Dukes rang in, gave me what he's got so far. He said not to go out to see the young Knoble girl yet—she's still in a pretty lousy state. I think we better leave her to Wal. At least he knew the family better than we did.”

“Righto.” Malone dropped the four plastic envelopes into the murder box. “What else have you got?”

“I've traced Sam Culp. He's changed his name. You'll never guess who he is.”

“Russ, I'm not in the mood for games.”

Clements this time was truly apologetic. “No, I guess not. He's Sebastian Waldorf, the opera singer. He's in Melbourne right now with the Australian Opera, but he's due back in Sydney tomorrow,”

Malone was not an opera-goer, but, strapped to his chair by Lisa, he had watched several opera telecasts on a Sunday night and he had a vague memory of Sebastian Waldorf. He was not a star of the magnitude of Sutherland, but he was undoubtedly one of the top singers of the Australian Opera company. He was, Malone thought, a baritone, which, he gathered, was not only a note or two lower than a tenor but also a class or two down the scale. Baritones never seemed to get the sighs from Elisabeth Pretorius, Lisa's mother, that Pavarotti and Domingo got, and she was a paid-up member of the Friends of the Opera. If Sam Culp was on the hit list, then the hitman was no friend of his.

“Where does he live?”

“Yowie Bay. He's in our region.” Clements leaned back in his chair, making it creak again. He bit his lip and his eyes clouded with concern. “What do we do now? I mean about you and Lisa and the kids? And Sebastian Waldorf—Christ, what a name! And Brian Boru,” he added almost reluctantly.

Malone
looked at his watch. “I've got a meeting with Harry Danforth in five minutes. I think he's going to suggest a safe house for me and Lisa and the kids.”

“Maybe that'll be best,” said Clements slowly, still concerned, part of the family.

“Balls,” said Malone just as slowly; he was working hard to keep control of himself. “How do we know when we're going to nail this bastard? I could spend the rest of my bloody life in a safe house!”

He said almost the same thing to Chief Superintendent Danforth ten minutes later, though in more restrained language. Danforth, lazy, deliberate, sometimes dense, was the sort of superior officer who invited expletives, but in forty-three years as a cop he had heard so many of them so often that one suspected he thought they were the normal currency of dialogue. Besides, he was a chief superintendent and just occasionally he pulled rank.

“It's not my suggestion, Scobie. Fred Falkender sent word down—” Falkender was the Assistant Commissioner, Crime, one of the seven ACs in the department. “It's gone as high as the Commissioner. We don't want to lose any more officers.” He actually sounded sincerely concerned, though he and Malone had never been close. “We'll move you and your family outa Sydney, to one of the country towns. They're talking about Armidale. It'll be nice up there in the spring.”

Malone shook his head. “No, Harry, I'm not having a bar of that. I'll talk to my wife about her and the kids going somewhere—I think that's a good idea, though I don't like it. But I'm not going, that's just not on.”

“Scobie, we don't need you to go on being bait for him. We still got those two civvies, O'Brien and, what's this other feller's name, Culp?”

Despite his feelings, Malone wanted to smile, but refrained. Civilians were expendable.

“From what I hear,” Danforth went on, “I don't think O'Brien would be missed if he was next to go. He's not too popular with some big names.”

“You don't think any of them would have him wiped out and then blame it on this hitman, do you?”

It seemed to Malone that Danforth abruptly closed up; his big red face was as expressionless as
it
could be. “I wouldn't know anything about that. And don't let's pussyfoot about naming the hitman. His name's Blizzard, right?”

“We think so, but we don't have any proof that he's the one. That's what I want to follow up. After I've talked to Sam Culp tomorrow, when he gets in from Melbourne.” He explained who Culp now was; Danforth, who thought Bing Crosby had been a classical singer, was unimpressed. “Incidentally, are we going to put him and his family and O'Brien in safe houses?”

“Fred Falkender didn't mention it. Police funds don't run to that sorta thing unless they're protected witnesses.” Danforth tried a little black humour: “You know what The Dutchman's like. He wouldn't let us waste money protecting O'Brien and what's-his-name, Sebastian.”

“His name now is Sebastian Waldorf.”

“Christ,” said Danforth. “Well, him and O'Brien. They're probably both Liberal voters. Two less to vote against The Dutchman.”