3

I

“LOOKS LIKE he did it, don’t you reckon?” said Dircks.

He and Malone were at lunch at the reserved table by the corner window. The dining-room was crowded, mostly with men but also with a few women. Narelle Potter had refurbished the big room, but its restored old-time charm fought a losing battle against the rough, loud bonhomie of the male diners. The women guests tried hard, but they were just whispers in the chorus of shouts, laughter and loud talk. Malone, as sometimes before, wondered how people could manage to eat and yet still make such a hubbub.

He caught what Dircks had just said in the moment before it was lost in the noise. “What?”

“He’s the obvious suspect. I’m not saying shut the book on Sagawa’s murder, but it might be better if we just let it die quietly.”

You’re the one who’s obvious. “Why do you think Koowarra’s the one who did it?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just suggesting you take advantage of what’s happened.” Dircks dipped his handkerchief in his glass of water and sponged a spot of gravy off the lapel of his expensive suit. Everything he wore was expensive, but he didn’t look comfortable in it, as if his wife or perhaps a daughter had bought his wardrobe and each morning he just put on what was laid out for him. He didn’t look comfortable at the moment and Malone wondered if Chess Hardstaff had laid out instructions for him. “His suicide is tantamount to a confession. Use it. We know he’d been sacked, there was bad feeling between him and Sagawa.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know.” Dircks finished his wet-cleaning, picked up his knife and fork again. Whatever he felt about the two deaths, the murder and the suicide, his appetite had not been affected. He began to chew on a mouthful of steak that would have satisfied a crocodile.

“No court would accept a case built on that. There was no note of confession, he didn’t say a word to any other prisoner or any officer.” Malone cut into his rack of lamb. The menu was written in English, no fancy French handles to the dishes, and the chef, Malone guessed, probably cooked with the Australian flag hanging over his stove. The dessert list, he had noted, contained such local exotica as bread-and-butter pudding, sherry trifle and lamington roll; somehow the national dish, passion-fruit pavlova, had missed out. “Frankly, Mr. Dircks, I don’t think Koowarra killed Sagawa and I’m not going to waste my time following that line.”

Dircks picked up his napkin to wipe his mouth, noticed it was wet and gestured to a passing waitress for a fresh one. Malone had remarked that only he and the Minister had crisp linen napkins; all the other diners, including the women, had paper ones. Narelle Potter herself brought the fresh linen, flipped it open and spread it on Dircks’s broad lap.

“You’re still as careless as ever, Gus. I thought Shirley would’ve smartened you up, down there in the city, now you’re a Minister. Look at Inspector Malone. Spotless, and he’s just a policeman.”

Malone, just a policeman, said, “Thanks.”

She gave him her hotel-keeper’s smile, as dishonest as the collar on a badly-poured beer, and went away. Dircks looked after her admiringly. “Nice woman. One of my best campaign workers when an election’s on . . . Malone, I don’t think you understand me.”

The remark caught Malone a little off-balance; Dircks had still been looking after Mrs. Potter when he said it. But now he turned to face Malone and there was no mistaking the antagonism in the small blue eyes. He could be authoritative, though in only two months as Minister he had already acquired a reputation for making wrong decisions. But the incompetent don’t necessarily give up trying: it is why a few of them occasionally succeed and rise to the top.

Malone took his time, finishing his mouthful of lamb, then cutting some baked pumpkin in half. At last he said, holding his gaze steady against Dircks’s, “I understand you perfectly well, Minister. You want me to close the case, not make waves, just go back to Sydney and leave everything to the locals. Right?”

“Put as bluntly as that . . . Well, yes, that’s the gist of it.”

“I’ll have to talk to my superiors in Sydney.” He chanced his arm: “It could go up to the Commissioner. He takes a personal interest in anything I’m working on.”

Dircks looked disbelieving, but also uncertain. In his short time as Minister he had come to know that the Police Department had its own way of working; more so, perhaps, than any other public service department. The men responsible for law and order, it seemed to him, had their own laws. The conservative coalition had not been in government for fifteen years and its ministers were learning that power, no matter what the voters might say about its democratic transfer, was an abstract, not something that could be handed over in a file. In the Police Department there was power at every level, something he had not yet come to terms with.

“The Commissioner and I get on very well together,” he said, though that was not strictly true; he hardly knew John Leeds, a reserved man. “How come he takes a personal interest in what you do?”

“Past association,” said Malone and closed up his face, as if to imply there were police secrets, as indeed there were, that even ministers should not be privy to.

Dircks neatly backed down; weak-willed men are adept at a few things. “Well, I don’t want to bring politics into this—there was too much of that from the last government.” He waited for Malone to comment, but got no satisfaction. Then he went on, “You have to realize, out here things are different from what you’re used to, I mean in a community like ours. Everybody has to live with everybody else.”

“I understand that was what Mr. Sagawa was trying to do. But somebody didn’t want to live with him.” Malone had finished the main course; he picked up the menu. “Do you mind if I have dessert? I’ve got a sweet tooth.”

“So have I. I can recommend the bread-and-butter pudding, a real old-fashioned one. Yes, I never thought anything like this would ever happen to Sagawa.”

“There’s Mr. Koga. He could be next. Bread-and-butter pudding,” he told the stout waitress as she loomed up beside their table.

“The same for you, Mr. Dircks?”

“No. No, I think I’ve had enough.” Dircks waited till the waitress had gone, then he leaned forward, his wide-set eyes seeming to close together on either side of the two deep lines that had suddenly appeared between them. “Christ Almighty, I hadn’t thought of that! You’d better stay, catch the murderer before he has the Japs pulling out of the district. They not only grow the cotton, they buy ninety per cent of the crop for their own mills.”

“Then you don’t think Billy Koowarra did it?”

“Forget him! Just find out who killed Ken Sagawa.”

“Mr. Dircks, you said you had an interest in South Cloud . . .”

Dircks remained leaning forward on the table for a long moment; then he eased himself back, said quietly, “Yes. The shares are in my wife’s name. It’s common knowledge, you’ll find it in the declaration of MPs’ interests down at Parliament House in Sydney. There’s nothing to hide.”

“I didn’t suggest there was. But I think it might be an idea if you stayed at arm’s length from me and the investigating team, don’t you? You know what the media are like.”

“I own the local paper, the Chronicle. You don’t have to worry about it.”

That would explain why no reporter had tried to by-pass Baldock to get to him or Clements. “What about the radio station?”

“Chess Hardstaff owns that.”

I might have guessed it. “I wasn’t thinking so much of the local media as those down in Sydney.” He usually tried to keep the media at his own arm’s length; but they were always useful as a weapon, especially with politicians. “How much interest do you have in South Cloud? Or how much is in your wife’s name?”

“Twenty per cent.” The answer sounded a reluctant one.

“Any other local shareholders?”

Dircks hesitated, looking at his front to see if he had spotted it with any more gravy. “Well, I guess you’ll look it up in the company register. Yes, there are two others. Max Nothling, Chess Hardstaff’s son-in-law, and one of the town’s solicitors, Trevor Waring.”

Malone didn’t mention that he had already met Waring; but he wondered why Sean Carmody’s son-in-law had said nothing about his interest in the cotton farm. “How much do they hold?”

“Ten per cent each. The Japanese own sixty per cent.”

The waitress brought Malone his bread-and-butter pudding; it looked and tasted as good as Dircks had claimed. Dircks watched him eat, seemed undecided whether to say anything further, then went ahead, “If you have to arrest someone for the murder, ring me first.”

Malone stopped with a mouthful of pudding halfway to his mouth; his mouth was open, as if in surprise, a reaction he never showed. “Why?”

“I just don’t want to be here when it happens. If it’s someone I know—and chances are it will be—well . . .” He abruptly stood up; that did surprise Malone, though he managed not to show it. “I think it’ll be better if you and I don’t see each other again, Inspector.”

Malone swallowed the mouthful of pudding. “I couldn’t agree more, Minister.”

“The bill’s taken care of,” said Dircks and made it sound as if it had come off ministerial expenses and not out of his own pocket. He was not used to paying to be put in his place by one of his own minions.

He left on that, moving swiftly, jerking his head at greetings but not stopping to shake hands with any of those who hailed him, going against the grain of twenty years in politics: any hand ignored could be a hand that might vote against you. Malone was aware of the sudden hush that seemed to have fallen on the big room; the other diners were looking at him, as if to accuse him of upsetting their local member. He went back to finishing his bread-and-butter pudding, glad that something tasted good.

II

“I got in touch with Andy Graham,” said Clements. “He’s getting on to Tokyo right away. How did you get on with the Minister for Free Beers?”

When Dircks had first come to office he had put out three press releases a day, one of which stated that, to polish the New South Wales police’s image as squeaky clean, no member of the force was to accept the occasional beer from a hospitable hotel-keeper, not even if dying of thirst. Hence his title, one of several bestowed on him by the squeaky clean.

Malone told him of the luncheon conversation. They were sitting at Baldock’s desk in the detectives’ room and he laid the conversation out word for word in front of the local man. He was still a little unsure of where Baldock’s loyalties lay, but had decided that, if he wanted Baldock to trust him, he had to offer his own trust. He had found, in the past, that often it was the only way to pick the lock in a closed door.

Baldock nodded, not surprised by what Malone had told them. “It figures, with Gus Dircks. I’d bet Chess Hardstaff put him up to it.”

“I didn’t like his suggestion that we lay the Sagawa murder on Billy Koowarra.” Malone made the remark casually, but he was watching carefully for any flicker of expression in Baldock’s eyes.

There was none, except for a frown of annoyance on the broad forehead. “That would be too bloody easy. And it would raise a riot with the Abos, they’d tear the town apart. Jesus, some politicians are dumb!”

“Speaking of Sagawa,” said Clements, “I went out to the cotton farm again and had a talk with Mr. Koga. He told me that Sagawa had had two threatening phone calls a coupla days before he was murdered.”

“He didn’t tell me that!” Baldock was genuinely annoyed.

Clements tried to soothe him. “I don’t think there’s anything personal in this, Curly, but Koga doesn’t trust any of the locals. He’s scared out of his pants.”

“He doesn’t have any cause to be. Not with me.” Baldock looked hurt, as if he had been a friend of Koga’s for life.

“Is Koga still living out at the manager’s house?” Malone asked.

Clements nodded. “I gather a local woman comes in to clean for him, but he and Sagawa did their own cooking when they wanted Jap food. Otherwise they ate here in town, usually at the Chinese place. I got the idea that neither of them thought much of barbecued steak or sausages or a hamburger. I think Koga’s stomach would be even more delicate since the murder.”

Clements’s comments were rarely delicate. Malone said, “What do you think about the threats, Curly? Trevor Waring told me last night that Sagawa had been to see him about some threatening letters he’d got.”

“For Chrissake!” Baldock ran his hand over his bald head, clawed at it as if wishing he had hair to tear out. “Why didn’t he come to us with those complaints? Why go to Trevor Waring?”

“Maybe because Waring, I gather, is the South Cloud lawyer. He’s also a partner in it.” He saw Baldock frown again. “Didn’t you know that?”

“No. Why would I, if Waring didn’t broadcast it? It’s not a public company.”

“Sure, why should you? Why would Waring keep it quiet, though? Did you know Doc Nothling and Gus Dircks were also partners?”

“No, I didn’t know Dircks was. But yes, I knew about Max Nothling—I think everybody in the district knew it. The Doc runs off at the mouth sometimes, especially when he’s had a few.”

“Does he drink much?”

Baldock pursed his lips, then nodded. “Too much for a doctor. We’ve had him turn up as GMO to pass on a corpse and I’ve had to talk one or two of the uniformed guys out of handing him a ticket for driving under the influence. He hasn’t always been like that, only the last few years or so.”

“Why is he kept on as GMO?”

“It would be too much of a scandal to sack him. Chess Hardstaff would be down on Hugh Narvo like a ton of bricks if Hugh, or any of us, for that matter, put in a bad report on him. He’s a good doctor, when he’s sober. I have to say that’s most of the time. He just lapses, that’s all.”

“Did he come here to inspect Koowarra’s body?”

“No, he was out at one of the properties on his rounds, I believe. Anyhow, he was somewhere else. Dr. Bedi came and told us to move it to the hospital.”

“Who’s Dr. Beddy? How do you spell his name?” said Clements, always the note-taker.

“B-E-D-I, Dr. Anju Bedi, and she’s a she, not a he. An Indian, from somewhere in the Himalayas, I think. Not a bad sort,” he added. “And a good doctor, too, so they tell me up at the hospital.”

“Would Doc Nothling be at the hospital now?”

Baldock looked at his watch. “He should be, he’s usually there from two till four. You want me to take you up there?”

“No, I’ll walk up with Russ. I need the exercise—I had two helpings of bread-and-butter pudding.”

Baldock nodded appreciatively. “Narelle serves a good meal, doesn’t she? She serves a lot else, so my wife says. I wouldn’t know.” The lechery in his eye made a mockery of the piety in his voice. “She’s a bit of a fool, Narelle, playing around the way she does. Everybody talks,” he said, seemingly unaware of his own contribution.

Malone felt, rather than saw, Clements shift uneasily in his chair. Not looking at his sidekick, he said to Baldock, “Go down and see her, ask her to find a room for Mr. Koga. I want him in the hotel with me and Russ.”

“But the pub’s full up!”

“Curly, use your influence on Narelle. If she won’t listen to reason, charge her with something. What’s the one you use, Russ?”

Clements had regained his composure. “Obscene language in a public place, abusing a police officer. It never fails, Curly.”

Baldock grinned. “They talk about us bastards from the bush, but we’re not a patch on you guys. Okay, I’ll talk to Narelle, she can tell some poor coot who’s booked in weeks ago for tonight and tomorrow night that she made a mistake, that she double-booked. She’s—maybe I shouldn’t say this, she’s a good sort otherwise—but she’s a bit of a bigot when it comes to non-whites, Asians and that.” Evidently he could forget his own prejudice about Lebanese and other Wogs.

“Tough titty—or maybe I shouldn’t say that about a lady. But I want Koga in the Mail Coach with Russ and me. At least at night. I don’t want us called out to the farm to find another body chopped up by those spikes. I’m sure you don’t, either.”

Malone and Clements went down the stairs and out into the street. A slight wind had sprung up, coming from the south-west, cooling the town; but it was a dry wind, no hint of rain in it, and there was still the promise of a fine weekend. The main street and the side streets were now full of cars and trucks, many of them dust-caked. Today, instead of Saturday, was shopping day. Tomorrow everyone would be at the races; no one was going to allow the murder of a Japanese and the suicide of an Aborigine to spoil the Big Weekend. Yet as Malone and Clements walked the four blocks to the district hospital, they both remarked the total absence of Aborigines. In a town of this size the percentage of them would have been small anyway; yet Malone, in the drive into town yesterday afternoon, without looking for any of them, had seen groups loitering on almost every corner. This afternoon there was none in sight.

“Has someone told the boongs to get outa town?” Clements had his own prejudices, but it was usually in language rather than deed. The tongue is the loosest of cannons.

But when they got to the hospital a small group of Aborigines stood under a peppercorn tree in the hospital’s small front garden. The building was a one-storeyed structure stretched across perhaps two hundred feet, with two wings running back to the rear. It was built of red brick, featureless and undistinguished, a monument to the dull creativity of government architects of the 1920s. An ambulance station, its doors open to expose two ambulances, stood on a narrow lot to one side.

Wally Mungle detached himself from the group as Malone and Clements came in the open front gate. “You after me, Inspector?”

“No, Wally, we came over to see Dr. Nothling. I’m sorry about Billy. Is that his family?”

“Yeah, his mum and dad, a coupla his brothers, an uncle and aunt. And my mum, she was an aunt, too.”

“I’d like to meet them.”

Mungle looked dubious for a moment; then he led the way across to the shade of the peppercorn tree and introduced Malone and Clements. The Aborigines just nodded, but none of them said anything. Malone and Clements were police and strangers into the bargain.

Mungle was embarrassed by the silence; but Malone was gazing at Billy Koowarra’s father. He was holding his cap in his hands now, but his hair still stuck out on either side like a Viking’s helmet horns; he was no longer drunk but he was still suffering the effects of his drinking bout. He stared back at Malone, but it was obvious he did not recognize the plainclothes cop who had gently steered him out of the way of the traffic in the main street. Shock had not only sobered him, it had shrunk him till he could take in only one thought: his son was dead.

“Uncle Les,” said Mungle, “it wasn’t the Inspector’s fault Billy did what he did. He wanted Billy released.”

The father said slowly, not looking at all at Malone, “Don’t matter who’s to blame. Billy’s still dead, only nineteen.”

He had the voice one found so often in his race, deep and soft and sounding as if coming up through rough pebbles in his throat. He had a deeply lined, leathery face and eyes that had been affected by trachoma; no matter what he had looked like when drunk, he now looked old enough to have been Billy’s grandfather. Sadness lent him a dignity he had not had this morning, but, Malone thought, it was a hell of a way to have earned it.

Malone nodded; he had no words that would not have sounded hollow and hypocritical in his mouth. He went up the steps into the hospital, followed by Clements and, after a moment’s hesitation, by Wally Mungle. They found Max Nothling in the end office of the doctors’ wing. With him was Dr. Bedi, an attractive plump woman in her early thirties, with placid eyes and an air of patience that suggested nothing short of the end of the world would disturb her. Malone wondered what Indian catastrophes, floods, cyclones, religious riots, had prepared her for life here in this unexciting Australian outback town.

“Ah, the gendarmes!”

Nothling rose from his chair and put out his hand as Mungle introduced the two Sydney men. The doctor was not quite as tall as Malone, but he was bulkier than Clements. Most of his weight was lard; there might have been muscle under the fat but it wasn’t easily discernible. He had thick, greying hair and a two-chinned face in which the effects of his drinking showed like a watermark, except that he usually drank something much stronger than water. He was fifty years old; he looked the sort of man who might catch a glimpse of old age but die before reaching it. Surprisingly, the hand that took hold of Malone’s had a lot of strength within its fat. Malone just wondered how strong and steady it would be performing any surgery.

“Well, to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?” He had a loud, fruity voice; his phrases, it seemed, were also fruity. “The late lamented Mr. Sagawa or our departed Abo friend? Sorry, Wally,” he added, as if for the moment he had forgotten Mungle was in the room. “No offence.”

“I don’t think Billy cares very much now what he’s called,” said Mungle. “Abo, boong, coon, anything.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Nothling, taking the rebuff better than Malone had expected. “Well, which one is it, Inspector?”

“Billy Koowarra is not our case. Sergeant Clements and I would like to ask a few questions about Sagawa. You examined the body out at the gin?”

“Well, no. No, I didn’t, actually. I was otherwise occupied.” He didn’t look at Dr. Bedi, and Malone wondered if it had been a hangover that had otherwise occupied him. “Dr. Bedi went out to the scene of the crime. Anju often helps out, don’t you, old girl?”

Anju, old girl, gave him a tolerant smile. “Just occasionally. Yes, I inspected the body, Inspector. Then I gave instructions for it to be brought in here to the hospital morgue.”

“Did you prepare the report?”

“No, I have no official standing as a GMO. I just instructed them to bring the body in here and then left it to Dr. Nothling. He was here at the hospital by then.”

“I took over right away,” said Nothling, taking over now. “The body was a mess, not a pretty sight at all.”

“How long did it take you to find out Sagawa had been shot?”

“Well, actually—” Nothling glanced at the Indian doctor, who just returned his gaze with what looked almost like a half-smile in her eyes. She’s mocking the pants off him, Malone thought. “Well, actually, Anju discovered that. I was called away, an emergency here in one of the wards, and Anju went on with the examination.”

“You hadn’t noticed the bullet wound when you first examined the body out at the gin?”

Dr. Bedi shook her head slowly; all her movements were unhurried. She was dressed in skirt and blouse and white coat, but one could imagine her in a sari, the silk floating like a drifting mist around her slow grace. “I wasn’t looking for anything like that, Inspector. The damage done by the spikes of the roller would have been enough to kill him.”

“So how did you come to find the bullet wound?”

“Sheer accident.”

There was something in the air that made Malone uneasy, a friction that rubbed almost indiscernibly against his own awareness. It was a moment or two before he remarked that Nothling and Anju Bedi were not looking at each other, as if deliberately avoiding each other’s gaze, while she spoke. Had there been some professional negligence, had Nothling not been present in the morgue at all and she was covering up for him?

“Do you do many autopsies, Dr. Bedi?”

She was unhurried, taking time to fold her long white coat over her plump knees. “No, I don’t. Dr. Nothling usually does those. I’m just the staff doctor here at the hospital. He is the senior surgeon.”

There was an edge to her voice that was unmistakable, and Malone all at once wondered just how placid she really was. The tension between her and Nothling was like that of lovers who were trying to keep private their quarrel.

“You called Dr. Nothling at once?”

“Of course. He came as soon as he could get away from the—from the emergency in the ward.”

Malone looked at Nothling. “What was your reaction to the news, Doctor?”

“Oh, astonishment, old chap, absolute astonishment. Anju will tell you, I just stood there shaking my head.”

“You’re not used to seeing murder victims who have been shot?”

Nothling’s eyes narrowed just a little; almost as if, for the first time, he was taking Malone seriously. “We don’t get that many murder victims out here, Inspector.”

“No, I guess not. Things are different where Sergeant Clements and I come from. So you’re satisfied that death was due to the gunshot wound?”

“Oh yes, yes.” Nothling appeared to relax again. “It was right through the heart, dead centre. Oh, the bullet killed him, all right.”

“Did the bullet lodge in the heart?”

Nothling looked at Dr. Bedi, who said, “Just. It didn’t break through the wall of the heart—it was in the right atrium. It entered the body near the spine.”

“Near the spine? You mean he was shot in the back?”

“Yes. I don’t know much about guns—”

“Why should you, old girl?” Nothling interrupted. “That’s the Inspector’s trade, right, old chap?”

“Yes,” said Malone, old chap.

“The murderer probably hoped we wouldn’t find it, that we’d think the spikes on the roller had killed him.”

“Why try to hide it?” said Clements, who had been taking his usual notes. “After he’d killed him, why put him in the module feeder? He must’ve known the body wouldn’t be chewed up. It wouldn’t be like feeding bits of a body into a sausage grinder.”

Nothling looked at Clements as if he were a gate-crasher; then he looked back at Malone. “The sergeant has a vivid imagination. Or is something like that an everyday occurrence in your trade?”

“Not everyday. But we did have a case like that once, a butcher minced a girl in a supermarket. Business at the supermarket fell off for a while. But you see Sergeant Clements’s point? The body was never going to finish up any further than the roller.”

Nothling shrugged, a major displacement. “I’m no detective, Inspector, no talent for that sort of thing at all. Every man to his last, eh?”

“I guess so. When will the inquest be?”

“You know how long these things can take. We don’t have a resident magistrate here, he comes in from Cawndilla. When everything’s ready, he’ll probably do Sagawa and Billy Koowarra on the same day.”

Malone looked at Wally Mungle, who had been standing silently in a corner of the small office, like a patient waiting for the specialists to decide what to do with him.

“I think I better tell you now,” Mungle said, “my uncle and aunt are gunna demand an inquiry into why Billy died.”

“Your uncle and aunt,” said Nothling, “or those radicals down at the camp?”

“There’s only two or three of them, Doc, and nobody takes much notice of „em. But I don’t think it matters. The noise is gunna be just as loud, no matter who complains. The deaths in police custody is a hot potato right now. I’m as much to blame as anyone for letting Billy commit suicide. I should’ve tried harder to get him released.”

“You couldn’t have done anything more,” said Malone, though he knew he sounded unconvincing. “Not while Inspector Narvo was away.”

“I hope those bloody hotheads aren’t going to start any demonstration,” said Nothling. “Not tomorrow, of all days. Think what the media will make of that, with the Governor-General up here for the Cup!”

“Is he going to be here?” said Clements.

“He’s a friend of my father-in-law’s. He’s going to present the Cup to the winner. It won’t look too good if he has to present it to me. I’ve got a horse running.” He smiled broadly; then sobered. “But the G-G won’t like it too much if there’s a demo.”

Malone had seen the Governor-General only once in the flesh. He was an ex-diplomat, a little man who loved the trappings of his office and regretted that the days had gone when he would have worn the plumed hat, the epaulettes and the sword. It was said that he never turned down an invitation and had once been on his way to open a garage sale when his aide-de-camp discovered the mistake. Though he had been a diplomat he hated controversy and would probably out-run the horses if there was a demonstration tomorrow out at the racecourse.

“If there’s going to be a demo, Wally,” said Nothling, “tell „em to keep it down at the courthouse, there’s a good chap.”

“I’ll try, Doc,” said Mungle, “but I can’t guarantee anything.”

Malone stood up, finishing the interview; well, almost: “What sort of car do you drive, Dr. Nothling?”

Nothling had been about to rise from his chair; but he paused, arms stiff, holding his bulk in mid-air. “A Ford LTD. Sometimes I drive my wife’s car.”

“What sort is that?”

“A Mercedes coupé. What’s this all about, Inspector?”

Baldock hadn’t mentioned Mrs. Nothling and her Mercedes; but then she was Chess Hardstaff’s daughter and there was no reason why she shouldn’t drive the same sort of car as her father. Hardstaff surely wouldn’t think that his daughter was competing against him.

“Where were you on the night of the murder?”

Nothling came right up out of the chair at that; his face suddenly went red and he seemed to sway, as if the sudden movement had made him light-headed. “Jesus Christ, what are you getting at? What sort of stupid question is that? That’s bloody outrageous!”

Malone glanced sideways at Dr. Bedi. She was impassive, her eyes now seemingly black and opaque. She caught his glance, but her expression didn’t change.

Malone looked back at Nothling. “Just a routine question, Dr. Nothling. A car was seen outside Sagawa’s office early on Monday evening, a fawn Mercedes. We’re just checking on all the Mercedes in the district.”

“Who saw the car?”

“That’s confidential.” But Malone knew all at once that he now had no witness at all; he couldn’t produce Billy Koowarra. “Were you visiting Sagawa Monday evening? I understand you’re part of the partnership that owns South Cloud.”

Nothling had regained his composure; the colour drained out of his face. “Yes, I’m a partner. No, I wasn’t visiting Ken Sagawa. I was at home with my wife all Monday evening. I was worn out. I had been in the theatre all afternoon. Dr. Bedi can confirm that.”

“Fair enough,” said Malone, choosing his moment to depart. Always leave them hanging, preferably by their thumbs: it was an old police trick. He had upset Nothling with his last few questions and he was certain that it was not just because the doctor had found their inference insulting. “Thanks for your help. You too, Dr. Bedi.”

Outside the hospital the Koowarra family still stood under the peppercorn tree. What are they waiting for? Malone wondered. Billy’s resurrection? Then it occurred to him that waiting seemed to be a natural part of the Aboriginal existence, especially among the older blacks; it was as if life had come to a standstill for them and they would just wait for extinction instead of hurrying towards it. But that, he knew, was not how the radicals thought: most of them had just enough white blood in them to spark some hope; or anyway, rebellion. He could blame neither branch for their attitude.

“I’ll stay with them,” said Wally Mungle.

“Sure.” But Malone hoped he would not just stand around waiting; Mungle had too much promise in him for such hopelessness. “Wally, is there anything going between Nothling and Dr. Bedi?”

Mungle looked puzzled for a moment, as if he had missed the meaning of the question; then he shook his head. “I don’t think so. He wouldn’t be good enough for her.”

“How do you mean?”

“She’s very uppity, thinks she’s a cut above most people. And he’s a drunk and a slob. Most people don’t know how his wife puts up with him.” He sounded almost garrulous; and he seemed all at once to realize it. “Sorry, I’m getting as bad as everyone else. Gossiping, I mean.”

“Never knock gossiping, Wally. Not if you want to make things easier for you as a detective.”

“There’s a difference between listening to it and saying it.”

Malone changed tack a little: “How well do you know Dr. Bedi?”

Mungle waved his hand in a so-so-gesture. “She’s colour-conscious.”

“You’re kidding!” said Clements.

“No, I’m not. I told you she’s uppity. She’s middle class and she’s fairly light-skinned, you saw that. I think she puts most of us Kooris on a par with the Indian Untouchables. Why?”

“She knows something about Nothling. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something. I was hoping you might be able to get it out of her.”

“Because we’re both coloured?” Mungle saw the instant flash of anger in Malone’s face and he hastily said, “Sorry, Inspector. I’m not feeling the best this morning.” He glanced towards the family group, nodded reassuringly at them. “My mum’s taking this as hard as Billy’s mother.”

Malone looked towards the stout, prematurely grey-haired woman to whom he had been introduced. She was holding the hand of Billy’s mother, her sister, and they were like a mirror image of each other. It struck him that there was no shock in their faces, more a look of old pain that had been years coming to the surface.

“I understand,” he said quietly. “Forget it, Wally.”

“No, I’ll see what I can do. But don’t count on it.”

“Play it by ear. If she’s going to be uppity towards you, back off. I’ll get Russ to work on her. He’s the lady’s man.”

“I’m working on Narelle,” said Clements. “Isn’t that enough?”

“It might be more than enough,” said Malone cryptically.

As the two detectives stepped out of the front gate of the hospital a fawn Mercedes coupé drew up, its rear tires skidding a little on the gravel at the side of the road. A dark-haired woman got out, slamming the car door behind her and making no effort to lock it: things are different in the bush, Malone told himself. Yet this woman looked more city than country, would not have been out of place in the kill-’em-dead chic of Double Bay; or perhaps would have been more at home in the don’t-let’s-even-mention-it chic of Mosman. She was in her forties, he guessed, but money and care of herself had held back the years; she was handsome rather than beautiful, a woman who had made the most of what she had. She had a good full figure and a well-chiselled face and she wore her country casual clothes with the confidence of a model.

“Mr. Malone?” She came striding towards them. “I’m Amanda Nothling-Hardstaff.”

It was the first time he had heard the double-barrelled name; to everyone else she had been Amanda Nothling. But, obviously, she bore the Hardstaff like a sceptre or whatever it was that queens carried.

“Inspector Malone. This is Detective-Sergeant Clements.” Sometimes it was politic to broadcast rank; it drew the boundaries of the playing field, level or otherwise. “We have just been interviewing your husband.”

She nodded at Clements without really looking at him; she kept her gaze on Malone, the inspector. “My husband is terribly upset by the—the murder of Mr. Sagawa. We all are,” she added, but it sounded like a polite afterthought. Then she noticed the small group of Aborigines standing by the peppercorn tree. “What are they doing here? Have you been interviewing them?”

“About the murder? No. Should we?”

She looked back at Malone, her pale blue eyes hardening. “I don’t know, Inspector. Like most of the people around here, I know nothing about police investigation. But I am interested in the welfare of the blacks.”

“One of the young blacks committed suicide this morning, hung himself. Billy Koowarra. I thought everyone would know by now,” he couldn’t help adding.

She shook her head, looked genuinely upset by the news. Then Max Nothling came out on to the veranda of the hospital, pulling up sharply when he saw Malone and Clements with his wife. He hesitated, then came down the few steps and across to the gate, not even glancing at the Koowarra family. Malone guessed they had been waiting to see Nothling, but now they didn’t move, waited for him to come to them.

“Hello, sweetheart. Something wrong?”

“No, Max.” She looked at him carefully, as she might check him after he came out of the operating theatre to see that he had washed himself clean of blood. “I just introduced myself to Mr.—Inspector Malone and Sergeant—Clemson?”

“Clements,” said the sergeant and, with the eye that was hidden from her, winked at Malone.

“The Inspector tells me one of the black boys hung himself this morning?”

“In a police cell. The gendarmes are having a bad time lately with all the deaths in custody. Nobody’s fault, of course. Certainly not Inspector Malone’s, right?” He looked at Malone and smiled with bad taste that Malone, somehow, hadn’t expected from him. The bugger’s a bundle of nerves.

“I think you—we should go and speak to the family,” said Amanda.

“Yes. Yes, I suppose one should.” Nothling looked across at the Aborigines, as if their patience was proving a magnet he could not resist. “Yes, that’d be a good idea. Afternoon, Inspector. You know where to find me if you want me. Don’t know how much I can help, though. Coming, sweetheart?”

He held open the gate, as if he wanted something to do with his hands; it was already pushed back almost as far as it would go. Amanda nodded at Malone and Clements, went through and took one of her husband’s hands, as she might have taken the hand of one of his patients who was unsure of himself. Together they moved across to the Koowarra family, all of whom seemed to be as unmoving as the trunk of the tree under which they stood.

III

The two detectives left the hospital and started their walk back to the police station. Malone said, “What d’you reckon?”

“About Mrs. Nothling-Hardstaff or both of them?”

“Both.”

“She wears the pants and signs the cheques, I’d say. Probably drawn on a Hardstaff trust fund, since she seems dead set on hanging on to the family name. As for him, he’s got something on his mind and she knows it.”

“You think he knows who killed Sagawa? Or he’s made an educated guess that’s got him shit-scared?”

“Do we start leaning on him?”

“Not yet. Let’s take it softly, softly for the moment. We start chucking our weight around the day after we get here, kicking the arse of the town’s leading doctor and son-in-law of King Chess, what happens if we find out we’re barking up the wrong tree . . . ? What’s the matter?”

“I’m trying to sort out all those mixed metaphors.”

“You taken up night school again?” But he grinned, glad he had Clements here with him in Collamundra, where more than just metaphors were mixed.

As they waited at a traffic light in the main street, a slim arm inserted itself into Malone’s. “Hello, sailor.”

Malone kissed his wife on the cheek. “Book this woman for soliciting, Russ.”

Lisa kissed Clements on the cheek. “There, that takes care of you. You don’t know Ida Waring, do you?”

Clements raised his hat, smiling expansively; he always seemed to open out, like one of the rougher wild-flowers, when in the company of good-looking women. Ida returned his smile, asked if the men had time for a cup of coffee. She seemed intrigued by the presence of two Homicide detectives, and Malone wondered if Lisa had told her of his work on past murders. Ida took them along the main street towards the Buona Sera coffee lounge, leading the way with Clements while the Malones brought up the rear.

“Where are the kids?” Malone asked.

“Out on the property. Tas has taken all of them with him for the day, they’re having a picnic lunch. He’s shooting some kangaroos that are making a nuisance of themselves.”

He looked sideways at her. “You said that like someone who’s been on the land all her life. No sympathy at all for the poor bloody „roos.”

“Maybe it’s being married to a Homicide detective. You get callous after a while.” He glanced at her again; but she was only joking. Or he hoped she was. “How’s the case going?”

“Round and round. We lost one of our witnesses this morning. A young Abo committed suicide in his cell at the station.”

Ida stopped sharply. “Oh no! Who?”

“A young feller named Billy Koowarra, he used to work out at the cotton gin.”

“I knew him. Oh God!” Ida resumed walking.

“I think we’re going to be here longer than I expected,” Malone told Lisa.

“Good. Maybe you can find an hour or two for me. We might even find somewhere to make love,” she whispered.

“Here we are,” said Ida and led them into the coffee lounge.

It was run by an Italian couple, who obviously knew and admired Ida. They brought cappuccinos and carrot cake piled high with thick cream. Malone said, “Is there a coffee shop anywhere now that doesn’t serve carrot cake? Whatever happened to lamingtons? Or Chester cakes?” He remembered the lumps of lead-in-pastry of his schooldays.

Ida sipped her coffee, decided it was too hot and looked across the Laminex-topped table at Malone. “Why did Billy Koowarra commit suicide?”

“Who knows?”

She thought a moment, then nodded. “Yes, who does? It’s not always easy to understand why white people commit suicide.” She tried her coffee again; then said, “So who murdered Mr. Sagawa or aren’t I supposed to ask?”

“You can ask all you want,” said Malone, smiling at her. He liked this pleasant, forthright woman and wished that more of Lisa’s women friends were like her. Lisa had an unfortunate habit of befriending women she thought were lonely or unhappy with their husbands. Then, like an unexpected itch, he wondered how happy Ida was with Trevor Waring. It was a thought that was somehow ungracious towards her and he put it out of his mind. “Right now, we don’t have any answers.”

“Everyone hopes it was some itinerant,” she said. “Someone none of us knows. But I suppose you’ve guessed that.”

“How long have you lived here, Ida?” Clements, it seemed, was giving her more than just a policeman’s attention. Eat your carrot cake, Malone told him silently, and think of Narelle.

“I came home with Dad in nineteen seventy.” Ida was giving Clements as much attention as he was giving her. “But I’m still a newcomer to some of the people around here, especially since they never met my mother. The Hardstaffs, for instance. They look on anyone who arrived after nineteen hundred as weekenders.”

“Has there been much scandal in the district?” Malone said.

“Oh yes, several times. What place doesn’t have a scandal or two? There was a divorce that surprised everyone—a happily-married couple who, we found out, couldn’t stand each other. A couple of affairs that had everyone talking. The well-known family, I shan’t name them, their son came back from the Gold Coast a heroin addict. Oh yes, we’ve had them.”

Malone looked out at the main street, busy in a slow, deliberate way with traffic and people. It seemed to him that, in their short walk up here to the coffee lounge, he had noticed a change in the atmosphere of the town, the heavy brittleness one felt before a summer storm. The people had come out of their houses here in town and in from the big station homesteads and the small farmhouses, they had come in and brought the main street alive; they had come in for groceries or to pay bills or place bets for tomorrow’s races with the SP bookies or the TAB or just to gossip; but whatever had brought them in to this wide sun-baked street with its shops sheltering in the shadows of their corrugated-iron awnings had been forgotten or put aside in the absorption with the deaths, the murder and the suicide, which had been flung at them and which they resented, as if the bodies had been dropped from the back of a truck right there in the middle of the main street. The atmosphere had not been in the air this morning: the murder, the greater crime, had somehow been accepted, almost as if it could be ignored till the Cup meeting was over. Then Billy Koowarra, the Abo, had piled it on by suiciding in the town lock-up: that, it seemed, was too much.

Malone had noticed the townspeople watching him and Clements and Lisa and Ida as the four of them had traversed the hundred yards from the corner of the cross-street to the coffee lounge; some of them had nodded to Ida, but most of them had just looked at them without turning their faces, their glances sidelong, in the same way crims had looked at him when he had gone out to the State prison at Long Bay to question a prisoner who had decided, after two years in jail, to turn informer on a gangland killing. But those had been crims, wary of any cop. The Collamundra elements were ordinary law-abiding citizens, people who claimed, with some justification, whenever there were State or Federal elections, that they were the production rock on which the nation was built, that they were the ones who voted for law and order and proper Christian values (for there were no Jews or Muslims or Buddhists here; and if there were any heretics, there was no room on the voting card for them to say so). He knew in his heart that the great majority of them were hard-working and honest and unhypocritical; yet they had looked at him and Clements, not with hate but with suspicion and resentment, though some of them did look shamefaced about the way they felt. It seemed to him that he and Clements were even more unwelcome than Sagawa’s murderer, if he were known, would have been. Without the two city detectives, the townspeople of Collamundra would have solved their own problems, buried them neatly with the bodies, and settled back into their steady, unhurried ways, troubled by nothing more than drought, crown-and-root disease in the wheat, and sheep hit by fly-strike. Their conscience might have worried some of them for a time, but public conscience is like public goodwill: it has to feed on itself and that is no sort of sustenance at all.

He turned his gaze away from the street outside and looked at Ida, who had just said something. “What?”

“And there were the two murders,” said Ida.

“Two? I heard about only one. About five or six years ago—your father told me about that one. Some Aborigine shot his wife and a shearer he caught in bed with her. What was the other one?”

“Seventeen years ago, three years after Dad and I came home.” Ida drank the last of her cappuccino. “Chess Hardstaff’s wife was murdered.”