Why?’
Malone sat back, sighed; he could confide in Clements. ‘I’m not comfortable with them—’
‘Gays? You’d be a bloody sight more comfortable with them than I would. I try to be objective, but—’ Malone shook his head. ‘You can handle it How d’you think you’d be if you were on a paedophile murder? You’d feel like committing murder yourself, wouldn’t you?’
‘I guess so—’
‘You know so!’ Clements was no longer lolling on the couch; he was sitting up. ‘Take Kate with you, she’s used to them.’
‘How do you know?’ Sharply.
‘I mean, women are more comfortable with them, aren’t they? Romy is always lecturing me on my prejudices—’ He got to his feet, looking unhappier than when he had come into the room. He was not fat, though there was fat on him, but his bulk always made any room seem smaller. Malone had a sudden image of him with his daughter, the baby lost in the massive arms. ‘You always say you’re not gunna be chained to that desk. You’re on the Oxford Street job, mate, this is your Unit Supervisor speaking. Wear an earring, you’ll be comfortable.’
‘Up yours.’
‘I wouldn’t use that expression in the company you’re gunna be keeping.’ He grinned, then spread a huge hand. ‘There I go again with my prejudices.’
He went out to the big main room, but was back in five minutes. ‘I’ve just run through the computers. There have been twenty-six gay murders in the last five years.’
‘Murdered by bashing?’
‘No, some by their partners. It looks now as if they’re striking back. This consortium, I’ll leave you to work on it.’
‘Thanks. Send Kate in.’
She came into his office, smart and neat; but it was early in the day. ‘You’re on the Oxford Street murder with me, Kate. We’re going out to Erskineville to talk to me boy’s mother, then we’ll see if we can talk to the kids who were with him when it happened.’
Kate drove, in an unmarked police car this time, not the Goggomobile, and, because she drove fast, Malone, always a bad passenger, sat with his toes clenched inside his shoes and his belly tense against his seat-belt. He gave her directions and it was just as well, for Erskineville was a maze of narrow streets and lanes that seemed to be looking for each other. But he had known this area in his boyhood and youth, it was as plain in his memory as a birthmark.
‘You know your way,’ said Kate as she pulled up the car.
‘I was born in the next street. My parents still live there.’
Billyard was almost a dead ringer for the street where he had grown up. Narrow terrace houses stood shoulder to shoulder, as if for security. Narrow front verandahs, protected by spiked railings, were only one step up from the footpath. Some houses had been painted, their doors varnished or painted a bright colour, fancy brass knockers added; two or three had barred windows and security doors. On an opposite corner and running down a side street some new townhouses, the terraces of the future, were going up; somehow they looked like a new sore. Gentrification had crept in, like a hesitant make-up artist; but not all the way, not yet. Number twelve was rundown, the paint on the front door was peeling, exposing the timber; half the front window was boarded up like a half-shut eye. There was no knocker, though a patch of lighter paint showed where one had once been. Kate rapped firmly on the panels of the door.
It was opened by a teenage girl. ‘Yeah?’
Malone introduced himself and Kate. ‘We’d like to talk to your parents about – was it your brother?’
‘Yeah, I’m his sister Jillian. Come on in. Mum!’
They followed her down a narrow hallway that, carpeted with a length of runner as threadbare as a beggar’s shirt, led past closed doors to a small kitchen at the back of the house. Through an open door Malone could see a backyard, as familiar to him as his office at Homicide and not much larger. An equally familiar smell hung about the house, the odour of over a hundred years of cooking, of bodies, of living.
Though times had been tough in the Malone household, he had never seen his mother as worn and desperate as Mrs Langtry. She was small and thin and prematurely grey; her sorrows were etched in her face. She had a soft voice with a whine in it, for which he couldn’t blame her; her life, if not this house, had collapsed in on her.
‘I dunno what I can tell you. Justin just went out Sat’day night and—’ She stopped.
And never came back. He had heard it before: some lives just ended like that. ‘Have they taken you to identify his body?’
She nodded dumbly.
‘Do you have a husband, Mrs Langtry?’
Again the dumb shake of the head. The kitchen was small, everything in it looked chipped and worn, but it was clean, it was not like some garbage dumps Malone had been in. A brightly coloured calendar hung on one wall, the only decoration; a flamenco dancer stamped her foot on the pages below; Malone wondered if Saturday’s date was marked, but he wasn’t close enough to check. A small boy, about five or six, stood in the back doorway, still as a statue. In one corner of the kitchen was a small wheelchair, with a large doll in it; then Malone realized with a shock that the doll was another child, a girl with a tiny head and a wizened face. He felt something tremble in his chest and he drew a deep breath.
‘We’d like to talk to some of Justin’s mates, maybe they can tell us something about what happened?’
‘What happened was someone shot and killed my brother!’ The girl Jillian was suddenly angry, as if she couldn’t understand the stupidity of the police. ‘Jesus Christ, what else d’you wanna know?’
Kate Arletti said gently, ‘We want to know who killed him, that’s all.’
‘Does it fucking matter now? It ain’t gunna bring him back!’
‘Jilly—’ Her mother went to her and put her arm round her; she was shorter by two or three inches and twenty pounds lighter, but for the moment she looked the stronger. She faced the two detectives. ‘Do I have to go and – collect his body from the morgue? I don’t have any money for that—’
‘I think we can arrange that, Mrs Langtry. Do you have any friends or relatives who can help you?’
‘One or two, friends I mean. Our relatives don’t wanna know us.’ Then she looked embarrassed at such a confession. ‘We’ll manage, if you can just arrange for him to be – to be collected.’
‘I’ll see to it at once,’ said Kate. It was obvious that she was finding the situation difficult; her held-back emotion was plain in her face. Malone knew that it had taken him years before he could hold his own face in a mask.
There was a sudden whimper from the child in the wheelchair; a withered hand was lifted to the tiny face. Mrs Langtry let go of Jillian and turned to the child to comfort it. ‘There, Jasmine—’
Justin, Jillian, Jasmine: the names were like a mocking song in this falling-down house. Malone glanced at the small boy in the doorway, still unmoving, carved in pale wood; he wondered what the boy’s name was, but dared not ask, afraid that he would laugh. But not with mirth.
‘Jasmine has micro-ce-phaly—’ The mother pronounced the disease with care. ‘She’s got scoliosis, too.’
Malone abruptly wanted to weep. Christ, what sort of bastard was God that He spilled such shit on this woman? With difficulty he said, ‘I think we’d like to find Justin’s mates.’
‘I’ll take you.’ Jillian had swallowed her anger, looked calm and dependable. ‘I won’t be long, Mum.’
The two detectives said goodbye to Mrs Langtry, Malone ashamed that he was glad to escape. Outside the house Jillian turned left. ‘It’s not far from here. We can walk, if