Murder Song Read Online Free PDF Page A

1983.”
    â€œCossack Holdings—who are they? You’re the big-time investor.”
    It was a private joke between them that Clements was the richest honest cop in the NSW Police Department. He had always been a lucky horse punter and since the October 1987 market crash he had dabbled on the stock exchange, picking up some sweet bargains through his brokers. He was not greedy, did not even have an ambition to be rich; he just gambled because he loved gambling. He was also incorruptible.
    â€œThey’re a public company, unlike Kensay. They’re the leading shareholder in the O’Brien Cossack. That’s a merchant bank. Their shares are very dicey at the moment—there are lots of rumours. The bank and the guy who started all the companies are being investigated by the National Companies and Securities Commission. Brian Boru O’Brien.”
    â€œBrian Boru. B . . .”
    â€œWhat?”
    Malone told him about the B. in Mardi Jack’s journal, pushing the book across his desk at him. “It’s a long shot—”
    Then he looked up as Chief Inspector Greg Random wandered into his office. Greg Random had never been a man in a hurry, but lately he had seemed to be ambling aimlessly up and down the corridors of the Centre. He had been the chief of the thirty-six detectives in the old Homicide Bureau; but regionalization had broken up the Bureau and reduced the staff to thirteen detectives, too few for a chief inspector to command. Random had been moved to a supernumerary position, where he was lost and unhappy. He had come in now because he could still smell a homicide a mile away.
    â€œWhat happened down in Clarence Street?” He was a tall, thin man with a shock of white hair and weary eyes. Nothing ever surprised him, neither the depravity of man nor the occasional kindnesses.
    Malone told him. “We aren’t even in the starting blocks yet. All we know is she was shot by a high-powered rifle.”
    â€œLike those other two, the Gardner case and Terry Sugar?”
    Malone raised his eyebrows. “I hadn’t thought about them.”
    â€œThat’s all I’ve got, time to think. There’s bugger-all else for me to do.”
    â€œYou think there’s some connection?”
    â€œI don’t know—that’s your job.” Malone was now in charge of the remaining thirteen detectives and he sometimes wondered if Greg Random resented his luck. “Get Ballistics to get their finger out. Tell „em you want a comparison of the bullets by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”
    Malone wanted to tell him that he no longer ran Homicide, but he couldn’t kick a man who was now virtually a pensioner, even if on a chief inspector’s 44,800 dollars a year. “Righto, Greg, thanks for the suggestion.”
    Random hung around for another minute or two, then wandered out and disappeared. Malone looked at Clements. “Righto, you heard what the Chief Inspector said. Get your finger out.”
    Clements sighed, picked up the phone and dialled Ballistics two floors above them. He spoke to someone there for a minute or two, trying to sound patient as he pressed his point, then he put down the phone. “They say they’re short-staffed—they’ve got two guys away in the bush and two off with the „flu. They’ll do their best, but do we think all they have to do is help us solve homicide cases.”
    Malone stood up, put on his jacket and raincoat and the battered rainhat he wore on wet days. “Come on, let’s go down and talk to Cossack Holdings. If nothing else, you might pick up some bargains.”
    They drove down in an unmarked police car. The sun had disappeared and it was raining again, the rain riding a slanting wind down through the narrow streets of the central business district. Sydney was still a clean city compared to many, but high-rise development was doing its best to turn it into a city of