(2005) A Certain Malice Read online

  “OK, fair enough, but what about handling stolen property? A tanker truck was stolen in Glenroyd about ten weeks ago. I’m guessing it ended up in a chop shop somewhere, maybe a chop shop near where it was stolen – any ideas?”

  “Vince talked to Cliff about that. I wouldn’t know. Listen—”

  “Talk much, did they?”

  “They were mates, OK?”

  Cam was getting under the boy’s skin, just as he’d hoped.

  “Cliff used to come around, but then they had some kind of a blue. They were yelling in the workshop. I heard them. I thought they were going to kill each other. He stopped coming around after that.”

  “What were they yelling about?”

  “I dunno really.” Angelo turned his head away.

  “Something about the tanker maybe?”

  Angelo looked at the passing scenery and stitched his lips together.

  “How long ago did they have that blue?” Cam continued.

  “A few weeks I guess.”

  Angelo fidgeted in his seat. “Listen Mr, er, Sergeant Fraser. I’ve done what I can, I’ve shown you where I was doing the spraying, where Cliff did his rag at me, I really can’t help any more. I can only tell you what I know, right? Whatever else Cliff is up to is his business. I stay out of it. I don’t like Cliff much and I guess you know that, but still, I don’t go dobbing people in just for the sake of it either. You asked me about the fire, I told you. That’s all I know.”

  Cam pulled over to the side of the road and let him out. He sat in the car and watched Angelo kicking a beer can along the dirt verge until a cloud of red dust swallowed him up.

  So what did the kid know that he wasn’t telling?

  27

  Cam arrived at Cecelia’s house at about two that afternoon, his steps ringing hollow on the wooden veranda. He felt a flutter of apprehension. After what they had been through last night, the stiff formalities of a police interview seemed somehow inappropriate.

  He wondered if she would feel the same.

  The door opened before he had the chance to knock and Ruth Tilly stood before him. If he’d been a serial sex offender he might have received a more benevolent look. Her eyes narrowed and the top of her lip twitched into a slight curl. He repressed a flinch when her arterial red fingernails rested against the scarred skin of his forearm.

  Leaning towards him she whispered, “She’s really not yet ready to be interviewed, Cam. The doctor wanted her to stay in bed.”

  “It’s important, Ruth.” He became aware of the brackish odour of the river stagnating near the back boundary of Cecelia’s house.

  “Go easy on her then,” Ruth said, in a low husky voice. “She’s had a bad night.” She took in his pale face and the bags of fatigue under his eyes. “Come to think of it, you don’t look much better yourself.”

  The pressure of her fingers increased. Cam decided he could do without her concern and allowed his arm to drop. There was a shadow of movement from behind and Cecelia appeared from the interior of the dark house.

  Ruth turned to her. “I suppose I’d better be going now. Cam’s come to ask you some questions.” The whites of her eyes flashed as she rolled them upwards.

  Cecelia hugged the taller woman and thanked her for staying. Cam watched and marvelled. Physically, the women were diametric opposites. Like opposing colours on a paint chart, each seemed to highlight the other’s attributes. One was tall and curvaceous with wavy blonde hair and the other was small and dark haired, like a wood nymph. One left him cold, the other provoked feelings he thought he’d forgotten.

  Cecelia gave her departing friend one last wave, then turned back to Cam. He wondered if she was feeling awkward, as he was. He took off his cap and gestured with it to her front door. “May I come in? I need to ask you some questions?”

  She ushered him into the cool dark hallway and through to the lounge. He took in what he could of the house as he walked, noticing the jarrah floorboards and rough plaster walls covered with framed photographs. The unusual mixture of furniture in the lounge, far from a hotchpotch, was a palette of complementary colours and bold design. The red fabric of the overstuffed armchair highlighted the colours in the tartan couch that in turn seemed to have no problem with the geometric design of the rug upon which it rested. The wooden furniture was of all types: pine, jarrah and oak, almost every surface covered with teetering piles of books and bizarre knick-knacks: misshapen blobs of clay and papier-mache ornaments. Gifts from pupils perhaps?

  Cecelia smiled. “If the look on your face is anything to go by, this is not what you expected.”

  Cam swept his arms around the room. “Where’s the purple satin and the candles? The crystals and the tarot cards?”

  Cecelia laughed, “You obviously think I’m some kind of new age crazy.”

  “Magic happens,” he said, quoting the familiar bumper sticker.

  She raised a finger. “Ah, the music from the office,” she said as if that explained everything.“Actually, that was Mrs Godfrey’s. I only turned it on out of curiosity. I prefer something with a bit more of a beat.”

  There was a scrabbling sound across the floorboards. He turned to see a slobbering, doggy dynamo sliding towards him at great speed, riding the hall runner like a surfboard.

  “Prudence!” Cecelia chastised as the big dog slid to a stop, hefting its paws on to Cam’s chest. “Get down!”

  Any awkwardness Cam might have felt earlier was laughed off as he battled with the playful brute. Cecelia eventually got the dog under control and pushed her out of the front door. Cam was still grinning when she sat him down next to a wooden coffee table, piled high with yellow National Geographic magazines arranged in the shape of an Aztec pyramid.

  She threw him a damp cloth from the kitchen and he started to mop the foaming streaks of dog slobber from his uniform. He worked down his trouser leg and paused at a bleach stain he hadn’t noticed before, looking up when he heard the chinking of ice cubes. She responded to his unintentional frown with an apology.

  “Sorry about that, it will come out in the wash,” she said.

  He shook his head. “It’s not the dog slobber that’s worrying me. I’m a country boy, this is mother’s milk to me.”

  “When shit on the shoe was just a fact of life.”

  “Ah yes, those were the days.” He looked down at the stain on his trousers again, stretching out the faded fabric so she could see the light peppering of holes.

  She quirked an eyebrow at the offending stain. “Someone obviously failed washing 101.”

  “I failed home economics too,” he said, but he’d lost interest in their banter. The stain on his trousers had triggered a memory that at the time was so insignificant he’d stored it at the very back of his mind: a skip of builder’s rubbish, containers, a coffee filter. He realised that the irritating rash on his leg had been bothering him since then. He could see now how it corresponded exactly with the cloth-eating stain on his trousers.

  Cecelia leaned towards him and rattled the ice cubes in the glass again.

  “Sorry,” he said with a smile, “I was miles away.”

  She handed him a glass of lemonade. He noticed her small hands and long fingers. They were the kind you expected artists to have.

  “It’s homemade. I hope it’s sweet enough.”

  He took a sip and smacked his lips. “Delicious,” he said, and it was. He watched her as she settled into the couch opposite, drawing her shapely bare legs under herself. She was only wearing an oversized T-shirt but there was no self-consciousness or embarrassment in the movement. His gaze travelled up her slender neck to her face noticing the shadows, like thumb prints, under her eyes.

  “Ruth said you had a rough night,” he said.

  She lost her playful façade and looked away, somewhere beyond the view from the window, past the hanging baskets that swayed on the back veranda, past the garden that was the colour of mown hay and out to the tepid pools of the drying river.

  S
he nodded her head and turned back to him. “Will I ever be able to forget it?”

  “No,” he answered quietly.“You won’t. But the nightmares will stop. Eventually.”

  She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment, then said, “Do you think someone tried to kill us?”

  He had a sudden urge to share his doubts, his fears, his suspicions and speculations; but what he wanted and what the responsibilities of the job demanded were, as usual, at odds. He took a sip of lemonade and put the glass on the table.

  “I don’t think anyone was trying to kill you, Cecelia, but I have to ask anyway, for the record. Do you know of anyone who might have wished you harm?”

  Cecelia took a deep breath. “You can’t expect to pass through life without upsetting anyone,” she said, “but I can’t think of anyone I’ve antagonised enough to want to kill me.”

  “How do you get along with the Smithsons?”

  “When Anne and I aren’t battling over school policies or my propensity for being late to staff meetings, we get on well.”

  “She seems quite a nervous type.”

  “Wouldn’t you be if you were married to Jeffrey?” He smiled. Cecelia continued, “No, actually. She’s not that bad. You have to be tough to be a school principal. She’s just been a bit off since the underwear theft, that’s all.”

  “And what about Jeffrey?”

  She shrugged and a sleeve slipped from her shoulder. Cam looked away and busied himself picking at a callus on his hand.

  “Ruth seems to think he’s jealous of me. I’m deputy principal and he’s not. He’s only had about a year’s teaching experience and even he can see that the School Board would never accept him.”

  “But he is the power behind the throne.”

  “Oh absolutely, but I doubt he resents me enough to try and kill me.”

  “What about Vince Petrowski?”

  She pulled thoughtfully at her bottom lip. “I’ve had some run-ins with him. He seems to think he’s God’s gift to women, that we should all be swooning at his feet. He got quite aggro with me the last time. It was before you arrived, when he was acting sergeant. He charged me with dangerous driving then offered me a way out of it. I told him where he could stick his way out and he became abusive.”

  Cam nodded. It wasn’t hard to imagine the kind of way out a man like Vince would have offered.

  “But not violent?”

  “No, just foul-mouthed. He sent me a written apology a few days later, which I accepted. I guess he knew you were on your way and was worried I might report him.”

  Cam blew out his breath.“You won’t be having to worry about Vince again, Cecelia.”

  “I heard he’d been suspended.”

  He looked at her for a moment before answering. The ceiling fan rotated above them, making a soft flapping sound. “No, not because of the suspension. He committed suicide last night.” He hesitated. “Or so it seems. The matter has still to be investigated further.”

  She covered her mouth with her hand. The flapping of the fan now seemed unbearably loud in the heavy silence. She unfolded herself from the couch and walked to the wall to turn it off. When she turned to face him, her arms were folded across her stomach.

  “I never liked him, you know that, but suicide? It makes me wonder what he must have been going through. I feel—”

  “Guilty?”

  She nodded.“Do you?”

  “No, I don’t. The story of Vince was never destined to have a happy ending. Suicide is a coward’s way out.”

  She worried at her bottom lip with her teeth. Eventually she looked him in the eye and said, “You surprise me Cam. I never took you to be a hard man.”

  He shrugged. “In this job you have to be.”

  He rose to his feet and guided her back to the couch. His hand rested on the small of her back, lingering there longer than necessary. He withdrew when he realised what he was doing. The fire was last night’s history; now they were in the present. He was a cop and she was a witness and that’s all there was to it.

  “I’m sorry to have to upset you with all this, but I still have some more questions,” he said.

  She settled back down and drew her knees up.

  “Can you think of any enemies you might have? A distraught boyfriend perhaps?”

  She gave a start and shook her head.“I’m sorry, I was still thinking about Vince. Do you think he burned the building to destroy the photos I was developing for you?”

  “It can’t be discounted.” He tried again. “Are you involved with anyone, Cecelia?”

  “No, I’ve been unattached since my divorce.”

  “Ex-husband?”

  “A poisoned hatpin might be Garry’s style, but certainly not a bomb.”

  Cam raised his eyebrows. He was pleased to see that some of her humour had returned.

  “I’m only joking. Our divorce was messy, but the marriage ended over two years ago. I haven’t seen him since. Last I heard he was busy setting up house with his new boyfriend, they were about to open a wine bar in the city.”

  Her gaze dropped to her toes and a flush blossomed up her neck. She leaned against the armrest of the couch and rested her chin in her hand, half covering her mouth.

  “I’d like you to think back to the fire. When I found you, it seemed as if you’d been knocked out. Can you remember anything?”

  Cecelia rubbed the lump on the back of her head and focused inward. Cam waited for her to speak.

  “I was standing on a stool, reaching up to get some glue from the shelf,” she said.“Then I remember a sudden crash and I fell. I guess I must have hit my head. The next thing I remember is the smoke and you crawling towards me.”

  “Did you tell anyone that you were going to be working at the photo lab that night?”

  She shook her head.

  He raised his eyes to the ceiling, steepling his fingers. “I didn’t notice your car anywhere near.”

  “I parked it round the front. I had some things I wanted to leave for the secretary. It was easier to carry them in from there.”

  “Where would you usually park?”

  “There’s a small car park near the photo lab. I usually park there.” Her eyes widened. “You think the person who did this didn’t know I was there?”

  Cam shook his head. “I don’t think you were the target, Cecelia.”

  “You think they were after you?”

  He shrugged and raked his hand through his hair, then reached for his lemonade and swallowed down a large mouthful, trying to get rid of the sudden taste of bile and soot. Now he was certain he could eliminate Cecelia as the target, he had no doubt who the victim was meant to be.

  She broke the silence and gave him a puzzled look, “Who would want to kill you?”

  Vince, to save his career? Still a possibility.

  The killer of Herbert Bell? More likely if he sensed Cam was getting close.

  The Razorbacks? The thought made the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

  “I’m a cop. Cops always have enemies,” he said.

  He looked back down at the stain on his trousers, scratched at the itch and said, “The photos in the drying cabinet, the ones of the renovations, do you have any copies?”

  “I was going to give them to the secretary to print up for the school magazine.” She caught her breath. “No, wait a minute. I do have a couple of copies here at home. I put them in an envelope to post off to my mother. Hang on, I’ll get them.”

  In a couple of minutes she returned and handed Cam an envelope containing the photos. He thanked her and buttoned them in his top pocket.

  It was time to pick up Leanne from the station and visit the Blayney property.

  But at that moment a tickle in his chest turned into a spasm and before he knew it, he was in the throes of a violent coughing fit. He stumbled into the hall and coughed himself dry. Wiping his mouth with his handkerchief and gasping for breath, he turned, finding her standing behind him.

 
“Did you get checked out by the doctor?” she asked, with a frown of concern. “They gave me oxygen at the medical centre. It made quite a difference. You should have gone too.”

  He shook his head and took a deep breath.

  “You should have, you have smoke inhalation. It’s when the cilia…” She paused and noticed again the scars mottling his arm and the side of his neck. “I suppose I don’t have to tell you about that.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Sun streamed in from the leadlight above the door, filling the hall with coloured patterns. She reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. Cam arched his brow, holding her stare. His eyes drifted to her soft smile and her parted lips. He could imagine the kiss, how it would taste. He drew back.

  She let go of his hand. He reached for the hat he’d left on the hall table and turned back to her.

  Her smile washed over him, like absolution. “You got me out, Cam,” she said.

  28

  It was late afternoon, but even under the shade of the large jarrah the day still sweltered. Gay Cronin’s grey hair fell across her face in strings and her T-shirt was dark with sweat. Splattered with yellow paint, her legs looked like co-joined fence strainers jammed into an unforgiving pair of lycra shorts. When she sank back into the faded deckchair, the nylon bulges shimmied in the filtered sunlight.

  A country song bounced from a tinny tape recorder by her side. Leanne turned it off, the better for Gay to absorb the sombre news. After a few seconds of silence the old woman opened her mouth and began to wail, revealing a disconcerting cave of bad teeth.

  “Herb, my Herbie, what am I going to do without you? Where am I going to go?”

  Leanne put her arm around her shoulders. “There, there, Gay. You just let it out. Have a good cry then maybe you’ll feel a bit better.”

  She turned to Cam hovering in the background. “How about you put the kettle on, Sarge? Gay, do you mind if the sergeant goes into your caravan and makes us a cuppa?”

  Gay wiped at her face with her T-shirt and nodded her head, knocking her leather bush hat to the ground. She picked it up and began to twist the rim around with her fingers. After sucking in a breath from the airless atmosphere, she let out a wobbly sigh. When she sniffed, a phlegmy sound rasped at the back of her throat.