Dark Summer

Malone thought a while. ‘About ten years ago. But I tell you what – if I find the bastard who tossed Scungy into our pool, I’ll beat the shit out of him before I book him.’

‘Good. I’ll hold your coat. If he’s too big and young for you, I’ll hold him.’

Woolloomooloo is a pocket between two shoulders just east of the city centre. For over a hundred years before Malone was born ships, sealers, traders and passenger liners had docked in the small ’Loo Bay; pubs and brothels had for years put a ceiling on real-estate values. Sailors and prostitutes met in a common market and it was said that even a decent girl, if she slipped and fell on the broken pavements, would earn a quid before she was back on her feet. Gangs used to whet their razors on the local rocks before going up the eastern hill to Darlinghurst and Kings Cross to carve up the competition. For years poverty had hung over the ’Loo like a harbour mist. Across on the western ridge, on the edge of the Domain, one of the city’s parks, stands a statue of Henry Lawson, the proletarians’ poet. He had once written, ‘Sorrow and poverty taught me to sing’; but only drunken bawdy songs had come out of the ’Loo. Lawson, an alcoholic, might have understood and wept for those who sang them.

In recent years there had been efforts to coat the ’Loo with respectability. Old terrace houses had been gentrified, crones taken to a beauty parlour; blocks of Housing Commission flats had been built under the lee of the eastern hill. The merchant sailors no longer came to this part of the port of Sydney and the girls, or their daughters or granddaughters, had moved up the road to William Street or the Cross. Still, there were reminders of poverty: a men’s hostel stood in the shadow of the railway viaduct and every night the derelict and homeless stood in line waiting for a bed. They would be the skulls, the memento mori, at today’s anniversary party.

Scungy Grime had lived in one of the Commission flats. Up the road some winos sat in the gutter in the morning sun, sweating out last night’s plonk. When Malone and Clements got out of their car the bleary eyes sharpened for a moment and the red noses lifted like those of pointer dogs waiting to be put down. They hadn’t lost their sense of smell of a mug copper.

The two detectives went into the block of flats, found the superintendent and had him let them into Grime’s flat. ‘He was murdered, you say?’

‘No, we didn’t say that,’ said Malone. ‘What made you say it?’

‘I dunno. I guess I just jumped to conclusions.’ He was a fat man whose stained panama hat looked as if it would be a permanent fixture on his head; it had a screwed-on look, Malone thought, like a jar-lid. He was not surprised by his tenant’s death; he was a ’Loo resident, born and bred, he was familiar with a dozen ways of dying. ‘Someone come looking for him last night, but he’d already gone out –’

‘You see who it was?’

‘Nah. He was out there on the landing, the light was out – bastards around here are always pinching the globes. I was down the stairs, I just saw him knocking on Normie’s door. I sang out there was nobody home, I’d seen Normie go out –’

‘Describe the man.’

‘I can’t.’ The fat shoulders shook in a shrug. ‘I told you, the light was out, there was only the light from the landing below. He didn’t even look down at me, he just went along that hallway outside and disappeared – there’s another flight of stairs further along . . . Normie always looked a bit jumpy, you know what I mean? He come home Sat’day night and I spoke to him, he didn’t see me, and he jumped like I’d jabbed him with a needle or something. I got the idea, talking to him occasionally, he’d made some enemies when he was out at the Bay.’

‘You knew he’d been in jail?’

‘Oh, sure. You work here long as I have, you get to know everyone’s history.’ He would make a point of it, it was one of the perks of the job. He went to sit down in Grime’s small living room, to take a load off his feet, as he put it, but Clements stood holding open the front door.

‘We’ll check with you on our way out, Mr Shanagan.’

Shanagan could take a hint; in the ’Loo, if you didn’t, you often took something else, like a fist in the face. ‘Sure, sure. You know where to find me. Take your time.’

Clements closed the door on him and Malone said, ‘We’ll talk to him later. He’s busting to tell us anything we want to know.’

‘You think he knows any more than he’s told us?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. I’d say no. He’s a bull artist, the sort who’ll break their neck to be called as a witness. We’ll send one of the young blokes back to talk to him.’

The flat was small. A bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen: you could swing a cat in it, but the terrified beast would have been scratching the walls with each swing. It was neat, a place for everything and everything in its place. Including a diary and an address book, one placed neatly on the other; the morbid thought struck Malone that perhaps Grime had laid everything out for them. He had always thought Grime a cheerful little man, one who would have turned a blind eye to the possibility of his own death. But maybe he had been wrong about the little man.

‘Nothing’s been disturbed,’ said Clements, coming back from the bedroom. ‘Doesn’t look as if he died here. The bed’s still made, with the cover on it. He’s even got his pyjamas laid out on it!’

‘Where do you lay yours out? On the floor?’

Malone looked around. This was a lonely man’s home; one could feel the loneliness, like a sad current in the air. There was a solitary photo: a young Grime between a couple who could have been his parents. All three were smiling: a happy day long ago. Malone wondered if Grime had remembered when the photo was taken. He turned it over. On the back was a date: 1963, November 22. Not really a happy day, though he doubted that Scungy Grime, even then, would have been upset by the assassination of a President. He had always had a limited view of the world.

‘Did you know he worked on the wharves?’ Clements held up a card. ‘This is a WLU ticket.’

Malone shook his head. ‘He told me he was still on the dole. How would he get into the Wharf Labourers Union? He couldn’t lift a box of cornflakes.’

‘You’re living in the past, mate.’

‘My old man’s past. He worked on the wharves. Yeah, I know it’s all mechanized these days, but they still look for muscle.’

‘He could’ve been a tally clerk.’

‘If he was, God help the balance of payments. Put a pencil in his hand and he couldn’t do anything else but make two and two add up to five. Check with the WLU.’

‘What about his family? Did he have any?’

‘He had a wife one time, down in Melbourne. He came up here about ten years ago. He had a record down there, the same things he did up here, small-time stuff.’

He was looking through Grime’s diary. No full names were mentioned, as if the dead man stood by the old army and criminal code: no names, no pack drill. But occasionally a given name appeared in front of an initial, as if to distinguish that person from someone with the same initials. One name and initial figured twice in the diary, the last entry only two nights ago. Ring Jack A . . . ‘Where would a 905 number be?’

Clements was a grab-bag of inconsequential information, with a mind like the waste-bin of a computer. He frowned, bit his lower lip, then said, ‘Somewhere around Manly. Maybe Harbord, around there.’

‘Who do we know named Jack A. who lives in Harbord?’ But they both knew and they looked at each other with that cynical surprise that passes for excitement with cops of long experience. ‘Jack Aldwych. Why would Scungy be ringing our friend Jack? He told me he’d given up working for Jack even before he went into the Bay.’

‘You think Jack had him done in?’

‘I hope not.’

He did not want to take on the biggest crim in the country, not if Scungy Grime had been Jack Aldwych’s calling card left on the doorstep of the Malone home.

3

He and Clements drove over the Harbour Bridge and out to Harbord, one of the closest of the northern beaches. The main road was clogged with holiday traffic. The northern beaches were supposed to be cleaner than the beaches south of the harbour, the sewage spill apparently knowing where the fortunate northerners swam and obligingly avoiding them. So people came from the south and the west and piddled in the northern waters and everyone cursed the Water Board and the government for not doing their job. The sun blazed down and everyone was slowly dying of sun cancer, but what better way was there to spend a hot summer holiday?

The air-conditioning in Clements’ car suddenly stopped working. Clements, patience exhausted as he halted for the fifth time in a traffic jam, reached for the blue light that he wasn’t supposed to carry in his private vehicle, put it on the roof and blared his horn. At once two youths jumped out of a stolen car and ran off down a side street and half a dozen other drivers looked guilty, wondering if they had been chased all this way for breaking the speed limit over the Bridge. Clements pulled his Nissan out on to the wrong side of the road and drove down against the oncoming traffic.

‘You’re going to get us booked for this,’ said Malone. ‘I’ll tell ’em you did it against my express orders.’

‘Tell ’em I went mad with the heat. Hello, we’ve got company.’

Up ahead a motorcycle cop, straddling his bike, was waiting for them directly in their path. Clements pulled up, got out and approached the officer. He was back in less than a minute.

‘Righto, what bull did you feed him this time?’ said Malone.

‘I told him the truth – or anyway, half of it. I said a dead man had been dumped in your pool and we had to get to the chief suspect before he packed up and fled the country. Hang on!’

‘You mention Jack Aldwych’s name?’

‘Who else? It’ll make that motorcycle cop’s day. Better than picking up mug lairs exceeding the speed limit.’

‘You’re exceeding it. What if he radios Manly and we get half their strength as back-up?’

‘I told him we’d already called Manly.’

Half-truths are weapons police and criminals use against each other; they have learned from the black-belt masters, the lawyers. Malone hoped that the motorcycle cop up ahead, siren now screaming, showed a sense of humour when he learned the full truth.

The motorcycle cop took them out of the main stream of traffic, through side streets, and within five minutes brought them, his siren still screaming, to the front gates of Jack Aldwych’s mansion. It was a big two-storeyed house with verandahs right round it on both levels. It had been built at the turn of the century by a circus-owning family and it was said that the ghosts of acrobats still tumbled around the grounds at night and a high-wire spirit had been seen flying across the face of the moon. Ghosts didn’t protect Jack Aldwych, just a black-haired minder built like a small elephant.

He stood inside the big iron-barred gates, shaking his head at Malone and Clements. ‘Mr Aldwych aint here. No, I dunno I can tell you where he is, he don’t like being disturbed.’

Clements said, ‘Would he be disturbed if we ran you in?’

‘What fucking for?’

‘Swearing at an officer. Come on – Blackie Ovens, isn’t it? You better tell us where we can find him or we’re gunna camp here till he comes home. It’ll lower the tone of the neighbourhood. Jack wouldn’t like that.’

Ovens pondered, then shrugged. ‘Geez, youse guys are hard. Okay, he’s out at the Cricket Ground. He’s got a private box in the Brewongle Stand.’

‘He’s a cricket fan?’ Malone’s voice cracked with surprise.

‘Nuts about it. I’ll tell him you’re coming.’ He unhitched a hand-phone from his belt. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll wait for you. He wouldn’t leave a cricket match even to see the Police Commissioner bumped off.’ He grinned to show he was only joking; the three officers stared back at him. ‘Sorry.’

As Malone and Clements got back into the Nissan, the motorcycle cop, already astride his machine, eased in beside them. ‘So you were afraid the chief suspect was gunna split overseas? He’s out at the cricket! Next time you come over this side of the harbour, go through the proper fucking channels!’

He roared off and Clements looked at Malone. ‘They’re not very polite this side of the harbour, are they?’

‘What are you going to do, pull rank on him? Forget it. We asked for it and we got it. Take me out to the Cricket Ground and then go on out to my place and see if they’re finished there. Lisa wants everyone out by this evening. Make sure she gets what she wants.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Rustle up someone and send him down to talk to that caretaker at Scungy’s flats. Get him to talk to the other people in Scungy’s block.’

‘What if he just died of a heart attack or something?’

‘I still want the bastard who dumped him in my pool. Maureen was shivering when she came in to tell me she’d found him. What are you doing?’

Clements was getting out of the Nissan. ‘I don’t run to a car-phone, I’ve just got the radio connected to Police Centre.’

He went back to the gates, spoke to Blackie Ovens, who handed him his hand-phone. Clements punched a number, waited, then spoke into the mouthpiece. Malone was too far away to hear whom he was calling or what was being said. Then Clements handed the phone back to Ovens and came back to the car.

‘I just called Romy Keller. She thinks Scungy was poisoned. It looks as if you’re gunna get your murder after all.’

When Clements dropped Malone at the Cricket Ground people were still queuing to get into the ground. Malone flashed his badge at the attendants on the turnstiles into the Brewongle Stand, but his name meant nothing to them. He had played for the State on this ground twenty years ago, but these men would have been only boys then and he had never been big enough to be a boyhood hero. He went up in the lift to the floor where the private boxes were situated, flashed his badge again at the floor attendant, an older man who remembered him, and knocked on the door of the suite marked Saltbush Investments. It was opened by a waiter in a white jacket, whose small thin face went whiter than the jacket when he saw Malone.

‘Hello, Larry. You do a waiter’s course last time you were inside?’

‘G’day, Inspector.’ Larry Quick gave his con man’s smile. ‘You wanna see me or Mr Aldwych?’

‘The boss. I think he might be expecting me. Didn’t he get a phone call?’

‘Yeah, but he doesn’t always tell me everything.’

Malone followed Quick through the small private lounge and out to the seats on the balcony. Jack Aldwych, tall and heavily built, broad-brimmed white panama on his silver hair, regal in a cannibal chief way, sat there alone.

‘Inspector Malone.’ His dead wife Shirl, a respectable woman, had taught him to be polite; it was an effort, but occasionally he succeeded. ‘I got a message you were on your way. Come to see the match? You must wish you were out there now, eh?’

Malone looked out at the famous ground, a bright green lake surrounded by cliffs of stands speckled, as if with the child’s decoration of hundreds and thousands, with the huge crowd’s colours. In the middle two Australians, in green and gold, were batting; spread around them, in two shades of blue, were the eleven Englishmen. This was a one-day match, a type of game that hadn’t been invented when Malone was playing. Its accelerated pace, the almost desperate chase for runs, the pyjama-like uniforms, the hoopla and exaggerated behaviour of the players, all of it had brought the crowds back to cricket, but Malone was one of the old school. If a team-mate had kissed him when he had taken a wicket, he would have run a stump through the molester.

‘No. I was a bowler, Jack. One-day games aren’t meant for bowlers, they’re for batsmen. You never hear of a groundsman these days preparing a wicket for bowlers – the Cricket Board would have him jailed. All the crowd wants to see is big hitting. It’s Happy Hour for the batsmen and bugger-you-Bill for the bowlers. You come here often?’

‘Every day there’s a match, one-day games, Sheffield Shield, Test matches. I’m a cricket-lover. Most of the crims you and I know, they all go to the races, the horses or the dogs. But I love cricket. A gentleman’s game – or it used to be.’ He smiled an old crim’s smile, full of wry irony. ‘I bought this private box through one of my companies and I come here as a guest of meself and watch in comfort. I tried to become a member here, but they always found a reason why I couldn’t make it. It’s okay if you’re a white-collar crim, but not if you’re a blue-collar one like I was. So I pay forty-two thousand bucks a year, but I don’t have to sit down there amongst the hoi-polloi, God love ‘em, and I can sit here and jerk my thumb at them across there in the Members’ Stand. What d’you want?’ he said abruptly, turning his head sharply to stare at Malone, who had sat down two seats along from him.

There were no dividing walls between the boxes out here on the balcony, only iron railings. Too much privacy might suggest elitism and that, God knew, was worse than bloody multiculturism. The neighbouring boxes were packed, mostly with men; the few women amongst them were watching Jack Aldwych, having been told who he was; they could hear nothing for the chatter of their own menfolk, who were already well oiled by the free grog of their hosts in the corporation boxes. Still, Malone dropped his voice almost to a murmur: ‘Jack, one of your fellers, Scungy Grime, turned up in my swimming pool at home this morning. Dead.’

‘Scungy? Poor little bugger.’ Aldwych showed no surprise. ‘You want something to drink?’

The morning heat struck into the balcony; the ground was slowly turning into a cauldron. Malone had taken off his jacket, but his armpits were marshes of sweat. ‘I’d like a light beer, if you’ve got one.’

Aldwych looked up at Quick, who had appeared in the doorway to the lounge. ‘A light beer for Mr Malone . . . Larry’s become my handyman. He’s lost his nerve. Makes you wanna laugh, a con artist who’s lost his nerve. But it’s sad, don’t you reckon? There aint too many artists left these days in our game.’

‘Jack, don’t change the subject. What about Scungy? That’s sad, being dead.’

‘Oh, you’re right about that. But you’re wrong about him being one of my fellers. Scungy wasn’t working for me for at least three months before he went in last time. He started talking drugs.’

‘Scungy? Thanks, Larry.’ Malone took the light beer, slaked his thirst. ‘He was talking drugs before he went in?’

Aldwych nodded, sipping his own beer. ‘Yeah. Why, was he talking to you about them recently?’

Malone hesitated; then decided to give a little information in the hope of some in return. ‘I’ve been using him, Jack, since he got out of the Bay.’

‘T’ch, t’ch,’ chided Aldwych, watching the game out in the middle. ‘Blokes who give information to coppers aint my favourites. Oh, nice shot! You see that?’

‘I saw it,’ said Malone sourly. Alan Border had clipped the English fast bowler in the air between slips and gully for four. ‘He’d never think of risking a shot like that in a real game. If it’s any consolation, Scungy never mentioned your name to me.’

‘Then why are you here?’ Aldwych looked back at Malone.

‘I came across your initials and your phone number in a diary he kept.’

‘Did he say anything about me in the diary?’

‘Jack, I’m not laying all my cards on the table, not yet.’

‘There would have been nothing Scungy had on me.’ He tipped his panama back. ‘I’m retired, Scobie – you mind if I call you Scobie? I’m seventy-five years old, my wife died eight months ago, and I’m tired. I’ve been a crim for over sixty years, I started when I was fifteen – they could call me the Godfather, if we went in for that sorta stuff out here. But for the last year, when I knew my wife was dying of cancer, I been as clean as a young nun. What could Scungy tell you about me that would interest you? Do you think I killed him?’

Beyond Aldwych, Malone saw a woman in the next box lean forward, ears popping out of her blow-wave like rabbits out of long yellow grass. ‘The thought occurred to me when I saw your initials in his diary.’

‘Scobie, I don’t kill people.’ He was a liar, but a good one; honesty shone out of his rheumy blue eyes like a smuggler’s beacon. When he was younger he had killed four men, but he had been acquitted of two of the murders and never been charged with the others. In later years he had hired other men to do the killing, as a good general should. ‘I’m sorry Scungy is dead, but if he was dealing in shit he deserved what he got. I’ve done everything else in my time –’ He suddenly looked over his shoulder at the eavesdropping woman. ‘Am I talking loud enough, madam?’

Malone almost burst out laughing at the look on the woman’s face. She reared back, the blow-wave bobbing on her head as if a strong wind had blown through it. She said something to her husband, a man recognized as one of the town’s top stockbrokers, but he, a man who knew when to buy and when to sell, was not buying into this. He said something to her, obviously a caution, and went back to watching the cricket, a much safer occupation than trying to pick a fight with a top crim. The woman abruptly got up and went back into the lounge.

Aldwych turned back, winked at Malone and went on as if there had been no interruption. ‘I’ve done the lot, Scobie. Sly grog, SP betting, robbed banks, run whores, you name it, I’ve done it. You blokes know all that, but you aint been able to put me away in years. One thing I never touched was shit. Shirl, that was my wife, she made me promise never to do that and I never did. Oh shit, Border’s gone! We’re in trouble now. What’s that? Four for fifty after, what, fifteen overs?’

‘The bowlers look like they’re on top,’ said Malone, licking his lips. The Indians were beating the bejesus out of the 7th Cavalry; or, in this morning’s headlines, it was as if the Iraqis had suddenly started to win the Gulf war. ‘Good.’

‘You didn’t say how Scungy was killed.’

All along the balcony people were standing up to stretch their legs while they waited for the incoming batsman. In the boxes immediately on either side of the Aldwych box, men and women had their heads in peculiar positions, as if they had become paralysed, as they tried to catch the conversation in Box 3A; ears were being dislocated and peripheral vision was strained to the point where one could imagine eyeball muscles twanging. One or two of them would cheat or swindle in business, but they could not bear to be caught eavesdropping.

Malone had a quiet voice; he made it even quieter. ‘He was poisoned, we think.’

‘Poisoned? And you think I might of done it? Or had it done? Inspector, I belong to the old school – you know what I mean.’ He put out his forefinger, made a rough imitation of a gun; then he raised the finger to his throat, turned it into a razor. He was smiling all the time, sharing the joke with a cop. Then he looked up behind Malone. ‘Oh, hello. You dunno my son, do you, Scobie? Jack Junior, this is Inspector Malone.’

Jack Aldwych Junior was as tall as his father but trimmer. He was about thirty, good-looking in a manufactured way, as if he had been put together by a hairdresser, a cosmetician and a tailor rather than just sired and borne. But his smile was genuine, if everything else about him looked artificial.

‘Inspector.’ His handshake was firm. He was casually dressed in sports shirt, blazer, slacks and loafers, but he was labelled all over: Dunhill, Ralph Lauren, Gucci. Malone, whom Gucci would have looked at and sent away barefoot, wondered if the Aldwych underwear was labelled. ‘Has Dad been up to something he shouldn’t have?’

‘He’s just been telling me he could run for Pope.’

‘Jack Junior runs the family companies. The legitimate ones.’ Aldwych smiled, a robber baron safe in his keep. He was one of the richest men in the country, but he never figured in any of the business magazines’ Rich Lists. Some of the other robber barons who had figured in those lists were now bankrupt and disgraced, but Jack Aldwych still had standing with some of the leading banks, though none of them would have wanted to be quoted as saying so. ‘This year he’s up for president of the Young Presidents.’

‘Then he wouldn’t have known Scungy Grime?’ Malone addressed the question to Jack Senior, but he had one eye on Jack Junior.

‘Who’s he?’ said Jack Junior.

‘A small-timer,’ said his father. ‘He worked for me once upon a time. Who’ve you got with you today?’

Jack Junior glanced back through the wide window into the inner lounge. ‘Her name’s Janis Eden, she’s a social worker.’

‘That’s a change. They’re usually models or society layabouts,’ Aldwych told Malone. He had his class distinctions, it came of being a self-made man.

Then the girl, a glass of champagne in her hand, came out on to the balcony. She was no startling beauty, but she had made the most of what looks she had; and somehow she looked less artificially handsome than Jack Junior. She was well dressed, in a casual way, and Malone wondered if she looked as elegant as this, Monday to Friday, when handing out comfort and advice to the battlers. But perhaps her welfare clients were bankrupt robber barons.

She pushed her thick auburn hair back with her free hand and gave Malone a cool nod when they were introduced. Malone knew that a lot of social workers were antagonistic to the police, but he had hoped for a little more sociability on a national holiday and here at the cricket.

‘Inspector Malone had a murdered man dumped in his swimming pool this morning,’ Aldwych offered. ‘It’s no way to start the day.’

‘It was this Scungy what’s-his-name?’ Jack Junior shook his head; not a hair in the thick dark mane moved. The girl’s hand moved towards the head, then she seemed to think that might not be appreciated and it landed on his shoulder. ‘I’m glad Dad’s put all that behind him.’

Malone looked at the girl, wondering if she knew who Jack Junior’s dad really was. She read the question in his face: ‘Oh, I know all about Mr Aldwych.’ She gave the old man a sweet smile. ‘Jack didn’t tell me about you. I read up on you.’

Aldwych didn’t appear to be put out; his reputation had never been a hair-shirt. ‘You mean there’s a file on me? In Social Services? You got one on me, too, Scobie?’

‘Not yet,’ said Malone, trying to sound good-humoured and sociable.

Janis Eden looked at him from above the rim of her champagne glass. She had certain studied mannerisms, as if somewhere there was a hidden camera photographing her for a television commercial. They would not go down well at Social Services, but maybe she used them only at weekends.

‘How do you police feel when crime lands, more or less, on your doorstep?’

‘We don’t like it. I hear you’re a social worker. What field?’

‘Drug rehabilitation. We’re kept busy.’

‘I’m sure you are.’ Malone stood up. The new batsman, Mark Waugh, had just begun his innings by belting three fours off the first three balls he had received. It was time for an old bowler to depart, before the insults started. ‘Well, I better be looking busy, too. Sitting here isn’t going to tell me who dumped Scungy Grime in my pool.’

Aldwych had been looking at the action out on the field, but he turned his head as Malone stood up. ‘Don’t you really wish you were out there now?’

‘No, Jack. I’m like you, I retired at the right time.’

He left them on that before they saw the lie in his face. He would dearly have liked to be out there on the field, even wearing coloured pyjamas and being belted all over the field by those hated bastards, batsmen. Life then, though it paid peanuts in those days, had been simple, uncomplicated and uncorrupted.

But as he went down in the lift he had the itchy feeling that Jack Aldwych, retired or not, knew more about the last months of Scungy Grime’s life than he had told.

4

When Malone had gone Jack Junior saw some acquaintances in one of the private boxes farther along the balcony and said he would go and say hello to them.

‘You want to come, Janis? It’s a chance for you to meet some of the guys who make the wheels go round in this town.’

‘No, thanks,’ she said, moving into the seat next to Aldwych Senior and settling herself. ‘I’ll stay and talk to your father. I think he made more wheels go round than those men along there, no matter who they are. Am I right, Mr Aldwych?’ She gave him a full smile.

He nodded to his son. ‘You go along there, Jack. Janis and I are gunna get to know each other a little better.’

Jack Junior hesitated, like a man who did not trust either one or the other or both of them; then he smiled. ‘Don’t let her rehabilitate you, Dad.’

When his son had gone, Aldwych said, ‘You’re not afraid of my reputation, Janis?’

‘That’s past, Mr Aldwych. You’ve reformed.’

He shook his big silver head. He had always been too beefy to be strictly handsome, but age had found some bone in his face and now he had the craggy look of a chipped and cracked Roman bust. But he never went to museums, so he never saw the resemblance. ‘No, I’m not reformed. Retired. There’s a difference.’

He turned his head for a moment as there was a roar from the crowd; one of the Australian batsmen had cracked another boundary. Then he looked back at her, his gaze as impenetrable as smoked glass. It was the look his enemies had seen when their fate hung in the balance.

But she did not seem disturbed by it. ‘Well, whatever. The law is no longer chasing you, is it?’

Only his wife Shirl had spoken to him like this; but she had not had the education and poise of this girl. He was not used to dealing with today’s generation, especially the female side of it. He had known some tough women in his younger days, Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine had been two of them, but they had been rough and ready, their sense of gender equality based on the razor- and knuckle-men they employed. They had had none of the smooth arrogance of this young woman.