Murder Song (18 page)

“It's nice to see they're doing their job,” Clements said with a grin.

They dropped down off the escarpment, easing their way past the heavy coal trucks, their air brakes gasping, on their way down to the steelworks at Port Kembla. They skirted Wollongong, possibly the cleanest industrial city in the world, certainly in winter; the smoke from the steel mills blew almost horizontally out to sea, lying on top of the tall smoke-stacks like the splintered, broken half of a thick mast. An empty coal truck passed them going the other way, speeding like a runaway locomotive, building up momentum for the long climb up to the top of the escarpment.

“The highway boys will get him,” said Clements smugly, his foot now innocent, their speed down to just below the limit.

Twenty minutes later they turned off into Minnamook. It was half a dozen stores, all owner-run, and perhaps a couple of hundred houses, most of them modest but with two or three would-be mansions up on the southern bluff where the Minnamook River ran into the sea behind the spit of sand dunes and ocean beach. It was the sort of village one found all up and down the South and North coasts from Sydney, some of them a century or more old, but all of them now under threat from developers. So far Minnamook seemed to be safe from the development blight.

Clements went into a newsagency and general store, came out and got back into the car. “That guy remembers Blizzard. He's been here fifty years, he wanted to tell me his life story.”

“Don't we all?” But the garrulous were often the best source of what a cop wanted to know.

“Blizzard delivered papers for him as a kid. He was an orphan, like I told you. His uncle is dead, but his auntie still lives here.”

“I'd rather be dealing with his uncle.”

“So would I. But Auntie it's gotta be.”

Elsie Blizzard lived in a small weatherboard house fronting on to the riverbank. When Clements and Malone pulled up, two uniformed men, both young, appeared out of a side-street.

Malone
introduced himself and Clements. “Does the old lady know we're coming?”

“I don't think so, sir.”

They were eager and intelligent, one eye on transfer to the Big Smoke, where pollution and corruption might get up their nose but where life was at least interesting. They had the naïveté of the ambitious innocent who had not yet begun to climb, who did not know that the rungs were greasy with other men's disillusion. It did Malone's heart good to listen to them.

“Our inspector warned us about Blizzard and what you think he's been up to. We've been here since nine o'clock and we haven't seen anyone hanging around.”

“Unless, of course, he's in the house with his aunt,” said the officer who had first spoken.

Malone had considered that possibility, but hadn't mentioned it to Clements. He looked at the big man and saw that, if he had not done so before, he was certainly considering it now. He had taken his gun out of his holster and put it in the pocket of his raincoat, keeping his hand in the pocket.

“One of you go around to the river side of the house,” said Malone. “If he comes out, challenge him. If he doesn't stop, shoot.”

“To kill?” The two young officers had looked at each other; then the first one had asked the question.

“To kill,” said Malone and hated the thought that he might be ordering these young men to kill their first man. “Who's going?”

Again the young officers looked at each other, then the second one, stocky and ginger-haired, his bright blue eyes now clouded with the unexpected, said, “I'll go, Reg.”

He went off at once, as if to be gone before his will suddenly folded, vaulting the low fence of the house next door and disappearing up the far side of it. Malone looked at the other young man, a good-looking dark lad with thick straight brows and a mouth that looked more used to smiling than being pinched nervously as it was now.

“What's your name, Reg?”

“Capresi, sir.”

“
Why did they send two junior constables?”

“I guess they weren't expecting any trouble, sir. There's a demonstration on in the „Gong today, there's a strike at the steelworks, and I guess they figured that was more important. Sorry, Inspector, maybe I shouldn't have said that. But down here local issues come first, you know what I mean?”

“Sure, I understand.” Malone didn't look at Clements. He was angry at himself for not having stressed the seriousness of this visit to Minnamook. “All right, just stand behind your car. If anything happens when that front door opens, if there's any gunfire, get on to your headquarters right away. I'll want back-up here immediately, local issues or not. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Malone and Clements, the latter still with his hand in his raincoat pocket, walked up the concrete path between the small, neatly trimmed lawns and the winter-brown shrubs. They reached the blue front door and there Mrs. Blizzard met them head-on. She flung open the door and Malone and Clements instinctively stepped aside, one going one way, the other the other. Mrs. Blizzard looked at them in angry puzzlement.

“What's the matter with you two? What do you want?”

“Police, Mrs. Blizzard. Inspector Malone and Sergeant Clements.” He produced his badge.

“Police? What's this all about? You expected me, an old woman, to be timid, didn't you?” They followed her into the cottage. “Shut the door, keep the wind out. I believe in saying what I think, that's my right, right? Tea or coffee? It's only instant, that's all I can afford on my pension. The cost of living's going up all the time, but do they care in Canberra, right?”

“Whichever you have the most of,” said Malone. “Tea, coffee, it doesn't matter.”

“Don't be polite. Make up your mind!”

“Coffee,” said Clements hastily and looked at Malone. If Blizzard was in this house, he would be properly cowed.

The house appeared to have three bedrooms, a bathroom and an open-plan kitchen and living-room that looked out to the slow-flowing river, where a pelican was just gliding in, like an old-time flying-
boat.
The rooms were stuffed with furniture: solid old-style chairs, tables and sideboards of polished cedar; the antique dealers of Paddington and Woollahra would pick the house clean if they were invited in. The walls were covered in old paintings, all of them cheap and amateurish, and old faded photographs; the house was a museum. Mrs. Blizzard hopped around in it like a long-legged bower-bird.

The two detectives sank down into deep leather chairs; some of the horsehair stuffing showed through one or two cracks. Mrs. Blizzard, chattering all the time, brought them coffee and a biscuit tin, at least a hundred years old, full of biscuits.

“Made them myself. Now what's this all about?”

“It's about your nephew Frank. We think he could help us in some enquiries we're making.”

“What's he been up to now?” Mrs. Blizzard bit into one of her biscuits, working her mouth with her lips closed as her dentures slipped. She was a tall woman, all bony angles; she might once have been good-looking, but now her face was wrinkled and gaunt. She had a head of thick white hair, bright blue eyes and, so far, no smile. She sat on a high-backed chair, taller than the two men sunk in their deep chairs. If she could only have remained still for a moment she would have suggested a dignified arrogance.

“What did he get up to when he was young? Or lately?”

“I haven't heard from him in, oh I dunno, ten years, maybe more. No, he was a good boy when he was young. A bit moody, but only children often are, so they tell me. Sometimes he was a bit, too, well,
quiet,
we thought. But him and Jeff, my husband, got on well together.”

“How did he get on with you?” Malone put the question gently.

She glanced away for a moment, then back at the two detectives. “Not the best. I was a bit strict with him, he didn't like being told when he was wrong. Jeff would take his side, so in the end I used to keep my mouth shut. I don't think he ever got over the death of his parents, losing them when he was so young.”

“Did he ever talk about wanting to join the police?”

“He used to talk about it with Jeff. He wanted to be a detective—like you two, I suppose. He was always reading detective stories when he was young, Jeff would get them for him from the library in
Kiama.
American stories, Raymond Chandler, a writer named Macdonald or O'Donnell, something like that. I used to read them myself before he'd take the books back to get a new one.”

“They were about private eyes,” said Malone. “Sergeant Clements and I never have those sort of adventures.”

“Did you know him when he went to train at the police college or whatever it was?”

“Slightly. He never told us how much he wanted to be a detective.”

“He got into some sort of trouble there. He told Jeff about it, but I never got the gist of it, even. Jeff wouldn't tell me. He was dead, anyway, two days later.”

“Who?” said Clements, as if he and Malone had missed something.

“Jeff. My husband. He had a heart attack and he went—just like that. It was a terrible shock.” She stopped, bit her lip: twenty-odd years ago was only yesterday, grief was there in the blood like an ineradicable cancer. Then she recovered, she was a woman who would never weep in public: “It hit Frank very hard. I thought at one time he was going to go out of his mind. He went—what's the word?”

“Berserk?” said Malone.

She nodded. “Yes, I suppose that's it. He blamed Jeff's death on what had happened to him up at the police college. He just said it once, but it was frightening, the way he said it.”

“Did the doctor think it was that that killed your husband?”

She shook her head. “Not really. We didn't know it, Jeff and me, I mean, but his heart attack was just waiting to happen. Any shock could have killed him, any sort of sudden stress, they said. But maybe Frank was right. I'll never know.”

“What happened after your husband's death?”

“The day after the funeral Frank left home. I never saw him again. I never forgave him for going off and leaving me like that. We'd looked after him ever since he was two years old. You expect a bit more gratitude than that, right? What's he done?”

Malone ignored that for the moment. “You never heard from him again?”

“Oh, I'd get the occasional Christmas card, sometimes a short letter. From up in Queensland
most
of the time, but I remember I got a couple from Darwin. The last Christmas cards were from places in Europe, I can't remember where. I never kept them. I hadn't forgiven him for going off the way he did. I said, what's he done?”

“What sort of jobs did he have? I mean before he went into the police force and then up to Queensland?”

“He was a timber-worker. Jeff, my husband, worked as a timber-cutter all his life. So did Frank's father. The Blizzards have been in the district for over a hundred years. They worked in the cedar forests up there in the hills. They're all gone now, the cedar and the Blizzards.” She put her cup and saucer down on a cedar table, said demandingly, “Now stop beating about the bush. What's he done?”

Malone wanted to cushion the blow, but he could think of no way of doing it. It had happened before: no matter how much you hated it, you hit the woman harder than you intended. “We suspect him of murder. Four murders, in fact.”

“Four?
Who?”

“Three men and a girl. None of them related.” He didn't elaborate. “You might've read about „em in the papers.”

“I never read about violence.”

The wrinkles in her face seemed to increase; the bright blue eyes dimmed with sudden pain. She's tried to cut him out of her life, Malone thought, but it hasn't worked. She turned her head and looked at a wooden-framed photo on the wall; one amongst many, but there was no doubt which one she was looking at. Malone had missed it amongst the gallery hung on the walls. A tall teenage boy, hair cut short, dressed in baggy overalls, stood in an awkward pose, a rifle held with both hands in front of him, four rabbits lying at his feet in a heap like a rumpled mat.

“That's him?” said Clements. “Was he a good shot?”

“My husband said he was the best shot he'd ever seen. They used to go hunting together, up the river. Sometimes Jeff would come home empty-handed, but Frank would always have something, a rabbit or a duck.” She looked back at the two policemen. “Murder? Four murders? No, not Frank!”

“
Yes,” said Malone. “Don't you believe he's capable of committing them?”

“No,” she said, but it seemed that her voice held no conviction.

“We don't have any proof yet, but he's the chief suspect. We still have to trace him. We don't even know what he looks like now.” He glanced at the photo on the wall, then looked back at Mrs. Blizzard. “We'd like to borrow that photo to make a copy. Would you recognize him now if you saw him?”

She was still getting over the shock of what she had been told. She had never had any children of her own, but she had known what it was like to be a mother. “I dunno. We all change, don't we? I've changed.” She nodded at another photo on a wall: a proud girl, dark-haired, very tanned, stared at the three of them. She reminded Malone of pictures he had seen of early Egyptian princesses, but he didn't know whether Mrs. Blizzard would consider that a compliment. “When you look in the mirror, do you remember what you looked like when you were young?”

No: you remembered other faces better than your own. Except that he could not remember Frank Blizzard's. “What would Frank be now?”

“Forty-five, I think. Maybe forty-four. Is that still middle-aged? It was in my day. But everyone wants to be younger now, don't they?”

Then the phone rang. For some reason Clements started in his chair, as if he had expected there would be no phone amongst all the old heavy furniture. Mrs. Blizzard got up, went to the sideboard and lifted a needlepoint cover that Malone had thought was a tea-cosy. Under it was the telephone.