Free The Bear Pit by Jon Cleary

August sat comfortably on one side of the table and Gail sat opposite him. The room was sparsely furnished: table, four chairs and the video recorder. August gestured at it, casually:
    â€œYou gunna turn that on?”
    â€œNot unless you want us to.” Malone sat down. “We’ll do that if we decide to charge you.”
    â€œWhat with?”
    â€œMurder of the Premier.”
    August looked around him, as if looking for an audience for this comedy. Then he sat forward, suddenly serious. A strand of the thinning hair had fallen forward and he pushed it back.
    â€œInspector Malone, I’m not a murderer—”
    â€œYou tried to murder your first wife’s boyfriend.”
    August waved a curt hand. “The jury didn’t think so. We had a stoush, a fight over a gun, his gun, not mine, and it went off.”
    Malone couldn’t contradict this; he hadn’t read the transcript of the trial. Perhaps he should have done a little more homework. “What did you feel when he got the bullet and you didn’t?”
    â€œGlad. What would you feel? The guy was sleeping with my wife . . . Let’s get down to why you think I murdered Mr. Vanderberg. Because I’ve got form? I’ve had none for the last nine years, I’m clean—” He folded his hands together, looked down at them. “I came up here, changed my name, made a new start. I met Lynne, we hit it off and I moved in with her . . . You’ve got nothing on me, Inspector, except my past.”
    â€œWhere were you last night around eleven o’clock?” asked Gail.
    â€œHome.” Then he smiled wryly. “Alone. Lynne was at some parents’ meeting and didn’t get home till midnight. Earlier, I’d been up at Lane Cove town hall, a meeting on aged care. More volunteering . . .” He smiled again; he could not have been more relaxed. “I got home around ten, waited up for Lynne and we went to bed, I dunno, twelve-thirty, around then.”
    â€œWhat did you do between getting home at ten and Lynne’s arrival? Watch television?”
    He smiled again; he was not cocky, but there was a growing confidence. “You don’t catch me like that, Constable. No, I rarely watch TV after ten o’clock. I read, old crime thrillers—d’you read crime novels?”
    â€œNo,” said Gail.
    â€œI do—occasionally,” said Malone. “What did you read last night?”
    â€œElmore Leonard, one of his early ones.”
    â€œWhich one?” asked Malone, who always read Leonard.
    â€œI can never remember titles.”
    â€œTry, John.”
    The smile now was fixed. “ Switch , that was it. The one about the guy on the toilet that’s got a bomb attached to the seat—if he stands up, he’s a goner. Very funny. Embarrassing, too.”
    â€œThat was Freaky Deaky . I’d have thought you’d remember a title like that.”
    â€œI told you, I’m no good at titles. For years I thought I’d read The Maltese Pigeon .”
    â€œNice joke, John, but let’s be serious. We’d like a look at your bank account and Mrs. Masson’s.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œThe price for knocking off the Premier wouldn’t have been small change. The hitman might’ve been paid in cash, people don’t write cheques for those sort of jobs. The hitman would have to deposit it somewhere. He wouldn’t cart fifty thousand around in a brown paper-bag—”
    â€œFifty thousand?” He seemed genuinely interested in the amount. “You think that’s what he got?”
    â€œMaybe more. I don’t know the price for political assassination—it may be more, much more. Do you need money, John?”
    â€œWho doesn’t? But I wouldn’t kill anyone for it.” He was still calm, still unoffended.
    Malone so far had no doubts; but he had no conviction, either. An open mind did not mean it was