Bleak Spring by Jon Cleary

“I’m sorry, Claire. Maybe I’ll talk to you about it when it’s all over, when we’ve caught whoever killed him—if we ever do. But right now . . .”
    Claire stood up, crossed to him and kissed the top of his head. “Why couldn’t you have been a lawyer or a doctor?”
    â€œTom once asked me why I couldn’t have been the Pope. I think he saw us there on that balcony at St. Peter’s every Sunday morning, waving to the mob. The Holy Family, Part Two.”
    She kissed him again, this time on the forehead. “Mother Brendan thinks you’re a heretic.”
    â€œI’ve had the Commissioner call me that, too. I must look it up. Goodnight, love. Tell your sister to get her ears out of that rock concert and go to sleep. And put Tom’s light out.”
    Claire went in to prepare for bed and Malone went out to the kitchen to make himself some tea and toast; he had not eaten much during the day and now suddenly he felt hungry. Lisa followed him. “So how is it going?”
    â€œThe Rockne case? We’re stumbling. Olive told me a few things last night that don’t jell with some of the evidence we’ve dug up today.”
    â€œAre you saying she might have killed Will?” She showed no surprise, but that was because over the years she had learned not to.
    â€œI don’t know.” He dropped two slices of multigrain into the toaster. “Do you know Angela Bodalle?”
    It took her a moment to identify the name. “The QC? Is she representing Olive? Already?”
    â€œNo, not officially, not yet. She’s a friend of the family. Didn’t Olive ever mention her to you?”
    â€œDarling, I’ve never been close to Olive. You warned me against getting too involved with them, remember?”
    â€œJust as well I did. Where’s the leatherwood honey?”
    Lisa reached into a cupboard for a jar, put it on the table. This morning the honey had been in the plastic container in which he had bought it yesterday; now it was in the decorated jar with the silver spoon beside it. Lisa’s table was always properly set, none of your slapdash cartons and plastic containers cluttering it. Her Dutch neatness was legendary with him and the children, though sometimes he wondered if neatness was a myth back home in Holland. It struck him that Olive Rockne probably ran her own house with the same style, though he suspected there would be a fussiness to her neatness.
    â€œI can’t believe you might suspect Olive of—you know. She always struck me as being a bit wimpy. I mean Will trod all over her.”
    â€œThat sort get tired of being trodden on, though usually they kill their husbands on the spur of the moment, not coldbloodedly. What would you do as a wife if you found out your husband had five and a quarter million dollars tucked away in a bank account?”
    â€œYou’ve probably got that much salted away somewhere, you never spend anything.”
    â€œBe serious.” He told her what he had found in the Rockne safe. “Would you claim it or would you turn your back on it because it might have blood on it?”
    She thought about it while she made the tea: tea leaves, not tea bags, in a crockery pot. “I honestly don’t know. What are you expecting Olive to do?”
    â€œI’m expecting Olive to claim it. I don’t think she is as much of a wimp as we thought.”
    IV
    Monday morning Clarrie Binyan, the sergeant in charge of Ballistics, came into Malone’s small office in Homicide. Binyan was part-Aborigine, the recognized expert on white men’s weapons; he often joked he couldn’t tell the difference between a boomerang and a didgeridoo, but he could tell you whether a bullet had been fired from a Webley or a Walther. “There you are, Scobie, the Maroubra bullet. Fired from a Ruger, I’d say.”
    â€œ Through a silencer?”
    â€œCould be. Silencers usually