Yesterday’s Shadow. Jon Cleary

blaming her? Or anyone?’ She took another mint, bit into it.

      ‘Has she changed?’ asked Maureen the researcher. Get all the facts, we’ll sort ’em out later … ‘Would you have recognized her?’

      ‘In the street? No.’

      ‘Why did she kill her husband?’ asked Jason and it was obvious it was a difficult question.

      ‘He never reads reports of murder cases,’ said Claire, pressing his hand.

      ‘For obvious reasons,’ said Jason and for a moment the ceiling fell in.

      ‘Sorry,’ said Claire, squeezing his hand hard; then she looked around the table. ‘What else can we talk about? Who’s Randwick playing on Saturday?’

      ‘Eastwood.’ Tom played fullback for the local rugby club. ‘You coming?’

      ‘We’ll be there,’ said Jason who, like a good engineer, was sensitive to atmospheric pressure. ‘Let’s do the washing-up.’

      He stood up, gathered some of the coffee cups and went out to the kitchen. The girls followed him, taking plates. Tom sat a moment, then he, too, rose and went out to the kitchen. Malone and Lisa looked at each other along the length of the table.

      ‘She hasn’t raised a spark in me,’ he said. ‘It was all over twenty-five years ago.’

      ‘I know that.’ The smile this time was her own; and his. ‘But if I told you I’d met an old boyfriend, what would you do?’

      ‘Pinch him. For loitering with intent.’ He got up, went along the table and kissed her. ‘I love you.’

      ‘Nice,’ said Claire from the doorway. ‘Now may I finish clearing the table?’

      5

      Billie Pavane’s murderer sat in his $400-a-night hotel room and looked out at the city that he had once hoped to conquer. Conquest of a city had been everyone’s (well, everyone he knew) ambition back in the eighties and it still lingered, like a pungent dope smell, even now in this first year of the new century. It was not only Sydney that had the infection: it was there in London, New York, Paris; it was there in Toronto where he now worked. He had read that the richest man in the world was now worth more than all but the six biggest economies and everyone (well, everyone he knew) thought Bill Gates was God, only richer. The old ambition was still there in Billie’s killer, like a dormant cancer: greed had once been good and, he heard it all the time, it was coining back into fashion. But not for him. He had a wife and three children (him: who had never wanted to be even a godfather) and they hamstrung him, if unwittingly, with their principles and decency. At least Billie (he had never called her that back in the old days) had had none of those handicaps, principles and decency, back when things had been going so right. Moralists of the world don’t realize the handicaps that pragmatists have to face.

      He had left Sydney fourteen years ago with almost $500,000 as his share of the – well, call it scam, if you want to be moralistic. He had not been burdened with conscience; in the run-up to the 1987 crash no one could spell the word. He had said no when Billie (he would have to start thinking of her under that name) had told him she wanted to have his child; the last mantle he would have placed on her was that of motherhood. Parenthood, for Christ’s sake? He didn’t want to be a father, even if he didn’t have to live with her and the kids. He had paid for the abortion and been surprised when the doctor insisted on actual cash rather than Diners Club Card; he had lived to the extreme in those days on his credit card, flashing it like a fairy wand. Billie (would he ever get used to that name?) had been violently bitter when the abortion had gone wrong, as if he were to blame. He had never before seen that side of her. She had always been gay, conscienceless, in the Bollinger-bubble of all the money they had been making. The chill between them turned to freezing point and he wondered how he was going to get away from her. It was just then that he learned that a wise man from the East, from Bellevue Hill actually, had begun selling his holdings. If the richest man in the country was getting out of the market then it was clear, to everyone but the fools, that the boom would not last, as the fools predicted, till Christmas.

      Without telling anyone, he had already transferred the bulk of his money to a bank in Liechtenstein. He sold up the rest of his holdings and without saying goodbye to anyone, least of all Billie, he had walked out of the office one Friday afternoon and caught a plane to Bangkok and from there to Paris. He had been good at French at school and he had kept up his study and practice of it because he liked the sound and nuances. Within a month of landing in Paris he had a job with a French bank as an investment adviser. He changed his name and his appearance. He had had the anonymous good looks of male models found in mail-order catalogues, spoiled only by a broken nose. He had worn the nose, broken in a university rugby match, as a badge of honour; it lifted the macho image of wheeling-dealing brokers. The nose was rebuilt, he had his hair cut short in the French style; he was still anonymously good-looking, but any visitor from Sydney would have to look twice at him to recognize him. He spoke French with barely an accent, not easy for an Australian – not the best linguists in the world. He dressed Parisian, even took on French manners. Sydney and everyone there, even his pharmacist father, with whom he never got on, and his sister, snug and smug in a happy North Shore marriage, began to fade from memory. He was as self-contained as he wished to be.

      There were affairs, of course. Then one proved difficult and dirty. There was another abortion and the girl, from Brittany, a hard-headed region, threatened to go to the bank and denounce him if he did not marry her. Whether the bank would have listened to her was debatable; but, in a moment of Dom Perignon-induced weakness, beside her in bed, the worst place for secrets, he had told her things about his past that he thought she would never remember. He had forgotten, or didn’t know, that many Frenchwomen, inspired by Ninon de Lenclos, wrote diaries. He had resigned from the bank and left for Canada. He felt an utter bastard, but self-recognition does not necessarily mean being conscience-stricken. Guilt is only a comfort blanket for those who want to wear it.

      In Toronto he went to work for another bank. It was not the most exciting city, especially after Paris, but he had had enough excitement for the time being. Then disaster, in the form of romance, struck: he fell, really, truly, in love. She was French-Canadian, Catholic, beautiful and she was helplessly in love with him. They were married when she was two months pregnant (the Quebec nuns had not taught her to keep her knees together) and he had settled into the sort of life he had laughed at back home. Upper middle class, country club, even church-going: sometimes he stepped outside himself and wondered what had happened to him. His hair began to turn grey, he had to watch his weight, he had two daughters and a son. The past slipped off the map of his life.

      Then on a business trip to Chicago, sitting in a hotel room just like this one, he had switched on the television and seen an interview, relayed from Kansas City, with Billie (the first time he heard that name) and her husband, the ambassador-elect to Australia.

      Just as today in this room he had switched on the television and on the midday news had seen the woman who had caught sight of him as he was about to step out of Billie’s room in that flea-bag hotel. There was no mistaking her. They had stared at each other long enough to identify each other.