Free Murder Song by Jon Cleary

suspects,” said Danforth, putting in his two cents worth; it was worth no more. He had no time for anyone who wasn’t white, preferably of British stock and Protestant. He would never understand how Jack Chew, a Chink, had risen to be a sergeant. Chinese should only run restaurants or market gardens.
    Chew passed over his sheets to Malone. “My guy is just as unexciting. He’d led a pretty nomadic life—”
    â€œWhat’s that?” said Danforth, who had never learned to hide his ignorance.
    â€œWandering. A drifter,” said Chew with Oriental patience. “But once he married, he settled down, was a good husband and provider. As far as his wife knows and as far as we can find out, he never fooled around with other women. He was a good-looking guy and he was popular with the women at the leagues club near where he lived. But it never went beyond some mild flirting. No jealous husbands or boy-friends. The main point is, he had no connection with Terry Sugar, at least not for twenty years or more.”
    â€œWhat was the connection then?”
    Chew nodded at the sheets in Malone’s hand. “It’s all in there. Compare the two of them.”
    Malone saw it at once: Enlisted as a police cadet, February 1965. “He was at the academy? Harry Gardner?”
    â€œHe dropped out as soon as he’d finished the course and then went walkabout for five years all over Australia.”
    â€œWhere are your sheets?” said Danforth to Malone.
    â€œYou didn’t tell me to bring them—” Malone was trying to picture the academy classes of twenty-four years ago. “I remember him now—dimly. He was in my group . . . Jesus!”
    â€œYou remembered something?” said Ludke.
    â€œThere is a connection with my case. Mardi Jack, my girl, wasn’t the target.” Russ Clements had been right after all. He told them about his visit to Brian Boru O’Brien. “One of his companies owns the flat where the murder happened. The killer was expecting O’Brien to be there.”
    â€œSo?” said Chew.
    â€œTerry Sugar, Gardner and O’Brien were all at the academy at the same time. They were all in my group.”
    Danforth and the two junior officers sat back, saying nothing. Then Hans Ludke broke the silence: “Does that put you on the hitman’s list, too?”

4
    I
    MALONE GOT out of the car, waited till Lisa and the children had got out, then set the alarm and locked it. He debated whether to remove the hub-caps and lock them in the boot, but decided it would be too much trouble. Everyone in the street knew he was a cop and he had to take the chance that they either feared him or respected him. Erskineville had never been an area, even when he was growing up here, that had loved cops. Even his father had hated them.
    Con Malone, the cop-hater mortally ashamed of having a cop for a son, was waiting in the doorway of the narrow terrace house for them. This was a house much like Mardi Jack’s and Gina Cazelli’s in Paddington; but Erskineville had never become gentrified like that other inner city district. All that had changed since Malone had lived here was that European immigrants had replaced the old British and Irish stock and that brighter colours had been painted over the old standard brown. Con, an immigrant-hater as well, had only just become accustomed to the Italians and Greeks and Lebanese newcomers, when, you wouldn’t believe it, the bloody Asians had started to move in. What with one bias and another, he was in a state of constant warfare never quite declared.
    â€œG’day, kids.” He was not a kissing grandfather; that was for the Wogs. He shook hands with Lisa, but just nodded to Malone. He was as afraid of sentiment as he was of foreign invasions. “Gran’s ready to put dinner on the table. You know what she’s like, no waiting around.”
    â€œNo pre-dinner drinks?” said