it be lovely when all this is ours? A woman Commissioner, seven women Assistant Commissioners –’
The three men still in the large room looked up, like pointers that had scented danger. Gail and Sheryl exchanged foxy grins.
Malone and Clements drove through a day as sharp as a knife against the cheek; a westerly wind had whetted it. Building outlines were as clean as etchings; a lone cloud was like an ice-floe, queues stood at bus stops looking as miserable as if they were queuing for the dole. The car’s radio told them the temperature was only 14 degrees Celsius.
‘A summer’s day in Finland,’ said Clements.
‘Or in England,’ said Malone, and they smiled at each other with Down Under smugness.
Phil Truach, cigarette-satisfied, was waiting for them in the lobby of the hotel. It was not a large lobby; expense had been spared by the developer who had built the hotel. It was crowded now with departing guests, some of whom looked to be in a hurry, as if afraid they might be the next murder victims. There were unwelcome guests: two pressmen and three radio reporters. Malone was grateful there were no television cameramen. Television shots of crime scenes never seemed to show anything but police officers going in and out of doorways as if looking for work.
Truach pulled Malone and Clements to one side; they stood behind a limp palm, the one piece of greenery in the lobby. ‘The media want a statement.’
‘Stuff ’em for the moment,’ said Malone. ‘Where’s the manager?’
‘He’s up with Crime Scene. He seems to have recovered. Your wife’s up there, too, Russ.’
Clements frowned. ‘As ME? What’s she doing there?’
‘I dunno.’ Truach held up a hand as they stepped out from behind the palm and the five reporters pushed forward. ‘Later, guys.’
‘Is there any connection between the two murders? Is it a serial killer?’ She was from a radio station, she chewed on serial killer as if it were a liqueur-filled chocolate. Malone remembered the days when all police reporters had been male, eager cubs or hard-bitten hacks. These girls were just as tenacious: ‘Or is it just coincidence?’
‘Coincidence,’ said Malone, stepping into the lift and pressing the button for the doors to close. ‘It makes the world go round.’
‘She won’t learn that till she’s middle-aged,’ said Clements. ‘Who’s upstairs, Phil, besides my wife?’
‘Coupla uniformed guys, two plainclothes from Regent Street, Norma Nickles and a young guy from Crime Scene.’ Truach, like most of the older cops, still used the old term instead of Forensic. Police teams, like football teams, were constantly being re-named. ‘Your wife and a guy from the morgue. And Deric, the manager. D-E-R-I-C, he spelt it out for me.’
‘Phil, I think you’re homophobic,’ said Malone.
‘They rub me up the wrong way,’ said Truach and all three of them laughed.
They were on their way to a homicide, a double homicide, another job of work. The mood changed only when the dirty work began: the wonder at why a particular life had been taken, the informing the relatives of the victim’s death and how it had occurred.
Romy Clements, Deputy Director of Forensic Medicine at the morgue, looked in surprise at her husband. He returned the look. They hadn’t met over a corpse in several years.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘What are you doing here?’ he said.
‘I have four of my staff off with ’flu virus.’
She was in a white coat, was wearing plastic gloves, but the clinical look didn’t detract from her own looks. She, like Russ, had put on a little weight, but middle-aged spread was still a few years ahead of her. She had that comfortable, comforting appearance that some women achieve in their late thirties when life is going well for them. But Malone always found it remarkable that she had reached that assurance. Her mother had died only a short time after coming to Australia from Germany. Her father, never wanting to leave Germany, was serving a life sentence for serial killing. Yet somehow, with the help of Russ, she had come through all that to self-confidence. The Clements’ marriage was a harbour for both of them, their five-year-old daughter their beacon in the centre of it.
She nodded down at the body on the bed: ‘Strangled. No rape, but there’d been intercourse. Dead eight to ten hours, I’d say.’
The room was crowded and even after all these years Malone wished the crime scenes provided more breathing space. He looked at Des Shirer, the senior man from Regent Street, the local station. He never neglected protocol, it was part of the axle-grease of co-operation.
‘What’ve you got, Des?’
Shirer was in his late thirties, but he had none of the comfortable look that Romy had. He was thin, fidgetty, had awkward movements as if on wires: crime, you knew, would eventually wear him out. ‘I’ve talked to Deric, here –’
Deric was not what Malone had expected from Phil Truach’s description. He was in his early thirties, thick blond hair, regular features and what looked like muscular shoulders under the dark jacket. Definitely not a man who would have the vapours.
Till he spoke: it was a high girlish voice and at the moment was quavery: ‘She –’ He looked down at the still exposed body of the woman, then quickly looked back at Malone. ‘She’s registered as Mrs Belinda Paterson – that’s what her credit card said. Some address in Oregon, in the United States. She booked in yesterday about 6 p.m., said she was staying just the one night. I wasn’t on duty, but our reception clerk said she sounded a very nice lady. Not a – well, you know.’
‘A hooker looking for business?’ said Clements.
Romy looked at Norma Nickles, the other woman in the room besides the dead one. ‘That’s how they divide us up – nice ladies or hookers. I’ll see you at home, Liebchen,’ she said and gave Clements the sort of smile that has cut a thousand throats, mostly lovers’ and husbands’.
‘No, we don’t think she was anything like that,’ said the manager and for a moment the quaver was gone from his voice.
‘If she was a hooker, she’d done all right at it.’ Norma Nickles was a slim graceful woman who had once been a ballet dancer. She had descended from entrechat and sur les pointes to down-to-earth, flat-footed examination of crime. And was a star at it. ‘Her suit is top quality, Donna Karan, bought at Bergdorf Goodman’s in New York. Cashmere sweater, Ferragamo shoes. Her topcoat is vicuna, it doesn’t come any more expensive in cloth, right, Doctor?’
‘The best.’ The two women looked at the coat thrown over a nearby chair. Romy put out a hand to touch it, then realized she was wearing the plastic gloves. ‘I don’t think even hookers can afford them. Not in this town.’
‘This lady had money,’ said Norma Nickles.
‘What’s the rate here?’ Malone turned back to the manager.
He had been looking down at the body; he jerked his head up as Malone spoke to him. ‘How much? A hundred dollars a night for a double with bath, like this front room. Less than that for group bookings.’
Malone gazed down at the body now being zipped into a bag. The throat had a dark collar of bruising, the face was puffy and distorted, her mouth enlarged by the smeared lipstick. But it was evident that she had once been, only yesterday, a good-looking woman.
‘I’d say she was thirty-five, maybe forty, no more,’ said Romy, peeling off her plastic gloves. ‘She’s looked after herself – or been well looked after. She was what you men call well preserved.’
‘Was she American, do you think?’
The question was addressed to the manager, who had shut his eyes for the moment