‘What about smuggling, pillaging, things like that?’
‘Oh, that was on for young and old. I did it meself, pillaging, I mean, not smuggling – I never went in for that, that was big-time and too dangerous. Some of the foremen were tied up in the smuggling racket, they were the blokes on site for the big men, the ones who never came near the waterfront, who had nothing to do with the shipping game. Gangsters, big businessmen, there was even one politician in the racket. Drugs, gold, they had it all wrapped up. You must of known all about that?’
‘I’d heard about it – Russ Clements was once on the Pillage Squad. But you never mentioned it.’
‘Your mum was protecting you. She knew about it, vaguely, and she laid down the law to me that I was never to talk to you about it. By the time you was old enough to talk to, you’d become a copper. How could I talk to you then?’ Con Malone asked what he thought was a reasonable question.
Malone agreed with a grin. ‘Sure, how could you? How did you fellers work under a foreman who was in on the smuggling?’
‘We turned a blind eye. We had to, or else. Foremen were different in them days, few of ’em were popular, we looked on ’em as the bosses’ men. We never drank with them after we’d knocked off work, nothing like that.’
‘I want to go down to the wharves tomorrow. You know anyone I can see?’
‘Roley Bremner,’ Con Malone said without hesitation. ‘He’s been secretary of the New South Wales branch of the WLU for the last ten years and he’s as straight as a die. Him and me worked together when he first started. Tell him I sent you. It’s a pity you’ll have to mention you’re a cop.’ But he had the grace to grin.
‘I’ll try and keep it out of the conversation as long as I can.’
Then the phone rang. Malone picked it up. ‘Inspector Malone?’
‘Who’s this?’ He had an experienced cop’s built-in defence: never identify yourself till you have to or there is some advantage to it.
‘Malone,’ said the voice, flat but distinct, ‘stay in your own paddock. Don’t mess around with something that’s none of your business. You’ve had one warning. This is your second and last.’
2
At 7.30 Tuesday morning, while Malone was preparing breakfast for himself, Lisa returned home with the children.
‘I see they’ve taken down all the decorations.’ The blue and white tapes had been removed last night.
‘I was going to bring all the girls down from my class.’ Maureen, it seemed, had made a full recovery. ‘I phoned ’em yesterday from Grandma’s. They were going to bring their cameras.’
‘Get ready for school before I get my whip out,’ said her mother.
When the children, grumbling, had gone into their bedrooms, Malone looked at Lisa. ‘You still cranky?’
‘Do you blame me? Well, not cranky. But yes, I’m – I’m on edge. Are you any closer to finding out who dumped that man in our pool?’
‘No.’ He had had a restless night, hearing there in the darkness the flat threatening voice. He had called Lisa last night with the intention of telling her not to bring the children home, but as soon as she had spoken, before he had had time to ask how she was, she had told him she was coming home and there was to be no argument. Her voice had had the same flat adamancy as the stranger’s: it had had the added adamancy of a wife’s voice.
‘There’s still a police car parked outside. Do we have to have that?’
He spread some marmalade on a slice of cold toast; he could have been eating chopped grass spread on cardboard, for all the taste he had in his mouth. Then, forcing the words out of his mouth, he told her about the phone call and the threat. ‘It’s either police protection or you go back to your parents.’
She took her time about replying. ‘I’m not going to be driven out of my own home.’
‘What about the kids?’
‘Darling –’ She sat down opposite him, leaned forward. Normally she was one of the coolest, calmest women he had ever met, but when she became intense, there was a passion in her that, he had learned from experience, had to be handled carefully. He was no ladies’ man, but he was a sensible husband, which is more difficult. ‘Darling, the kids are my home. You and them – not the house. That’s just the shell. When I married you I wasn’t marrying a pig in a poke –’
‘Just a pig in plainclothes.’ He could have bitten his tongue. Jokes, especially feeble ones, should never be fired on a battlefield as dangerous as a domestic.
‘Don’t joke!’ She slammed the table with her fist.
He reached across and put his hand on her wrist; he could feel the tension quivering in her. ‘I’m sorry, darl. That slipped out – I’m as on edge as you are –’
She turned her arm, unclenched her fist and took his hand in hers. ‘I know. What I was trying to say was, I knew what I was getting into when I married you. I’ve worried myself sick a dozen times since then, wondering if you were all right. All I’ve had to hang on to, my rock, if you like, has been this –’ She waved her free hand about her, but without taking her gaze from his face. ‘This house, the children. I can’t explain it, maybe only a woman would understand –’
‘No, I understand.’ And he did; this was his rock, too. ‘But if you won’t leave here, let the kids go. Your parents won’t mind having them –’ But he could already imagine what his own mother would feel at not being able to take them into the small, narrow house in Erskineville. It was the house in which he had been born and brought up, but it was dark, permeated with the smells of a hundred or more years of bad cooking, sibilant with the sounds of a cistern that never worked properly. It could not be compared with the large house in Vaucluse with the pool and the lush garden and the three guest bedrooms that were always ready for the children’s visits. And there would be the Pretoriuses’ two cars, ready to bring the children across to school at Randwick each morning. But even as he posed the sensible alternative, he felt he was losing his independence, that somehow he was failing his kids. ‘It’ll only be for a few days at the most –’
‘Then if it’s only going to be for a few days, we’ll stay together.’ She took away her hand. ‘We’ll have the police protection.’
He knew there was no use in further argument. ‘Righto. But I don’t want the kids walking to school. Borrow your mother’s car and drive them there. One of the uniformed men can go with you.’
‘I’ve already borrowed it, it’s outside.’
He might have known. If she were still at home in Holland, she would inspect the dykes daily, never relying on anyone else’s word.
3
As he was backing his Commodore out into the street, Keith Cayburn came out of his front gate and approached him. ‘We had a meeting of Neighbourhood Watch last night, Scobie. If there’s anything we can do . . .’
Form a circle of wagons around my house . . . ‘I think everything’s under control, Keith. I’m asking for police surveillance for a few days, it’s standard procedure.’
Cayburn looked dubiously at the police car at the kerb. He was a lean, tall man with thinning yellow hair and bright blue eyes, that, though not furtive, had a tendency never to be still; perhaps, Malone sometimes thought, it came from his occupation. He was a high-school principal, who looked upon all teenagers as potential evil-doers and so ran a good, tight school. Decency ran through him like a water-mark, but he had no illusions