Free A Certain Malice by Felicity Young

urgent whisper, “I’ll leave off showing them this room ’til last. When you hear us coming back into the passageway, you slip into the bedroom opposite, got me?”
    Clearly a master of avoidance: court officials, ex-wives, debt-collectors, police. Cam knew the type. He removed Bell’s hands from his shoulders. “That won’t be necessary, sir.”
    “Knock knock, anyone home?” said a woman in a singsong lilt.
    Bell turned to Cam in a panic.
    Cam said, “Just let them in. I’ll slip out by the back lane and return when they’re gone. I’ll start bringing the signs in. It’s not a good idea to continue with this Home Open thing. You might find you have a delayed reaction to the shock.”
    Bell opened his mouth in protest but closed it when he caught the look on Cam’s face. He shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever.” He shot the cuffs of his black silk shirt, pasted the smile back on his face and moved towards the front door.
    Toby Bell took another slug from his hip flask then offered it to Cam who shook his head.
    “Of course my brother had a drinking problem you know,” Bell said.
    Cam wished he hadn’t chosen to sit next to him on the three-seater. He shifted closer to its overstuffed arm. “When did you last see your brother?” he asked.
    Bell stuck his feet out in front of him and leaned back. “Mum’s funeral.”
    “And when was that?”
    “Oh, five years ago at least. We had a bit of a falling out. I was Mum’s favourite you see. What little she had she left all to me.”
    It was hard to imagine this man being anyone’s favourite. Cam wrote himself a note to ask the Toorrup money guys to check into Bell’s financial affairs.
    “To be honest, Sergeant…”
    Cam straightened in his seat. That phrase always activated his radar.
    “He was a black sheep, an embarrassment. I didn’t even know he was still in the state. Thought he would have gone to Queensland by now,” Bell said.
    “He was living in Glenroyd. He had part-time job at the school there.”
    “Well, good for him,” said Bell.
    “We are regarding his death as suspicious.”
    “You think someone might have knocked him off, then?” With a sound like an emptying water-cooler, Bell took another slug from the hip flask.“That doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “It was probably that old bitch he lived with, unless he did her in first, which wouldn’t have surprised me either. They were about as bad as each other.”
    “Do you know the name of this woman?” Cam asked.
    Bell looked to the ceiling and tapped on the flask with his manicured fingernails. “Um, it was a while ago. Began with G.” He sounded the letter like a kindergarten teacher. His eyes rolled around the room for a moment then he snapped his fingers, “Gay, that’s it. I remember thinking how inappropriate it was. Unless it was the other kind of gay. Now that I could imagine.”
    “Surname?”
    “No idea.” He made a humming noise and touched his hair. His fingers bounced off his head as if the tight curls were springs. “Unless they married; but probably not. He was a professional social securities con; they got more money by staying single. They were a couple but as far as the government was concerned, they just shared a house.”
    “Interesting,” Cam said, writing in his notebook.
    “Oh, it gets better.”
    Cam raised his eyebrows. Bell gave him a calculating look in return.“It seems to me that I’m providing you with quite a lot of useful info here,” he said. “It’s been bloody inconvenient for me to close up the house. God knows how many potential buyers could have been through by now. I might have sold the place twice over. I don’t suppose…”
    “No. You don’t suppose, sir. Withholding information during a murder investigation is an offence.”
    “OK, OK, don’t fart sparks over it. I’ll co-operate. What else do you need to know?”
    Cam took a deep breath. “How old was your brother?”
    “Well.” Bell paused and did some