Autumn Maze Read Free

morgue. I’ll wait for you out there. Give my apologies to Tom.”
    Malone hung up, looked down at his son. Despite the difference in age, there was a distinct resemblance between father and son. There was the same dark hair, growing the same way, back from the widow’s peak; the dark blue eyes that did not try to hide amusement; the straight thick brows. Tom’s cheeks were still round and soft, but beneath them was the hint of the bonework in his father’s face. Missing was the frown that sometimes appeared between his father’s eyes, that marked Malone with the aches and pains, blood and death, of the world in which he worked. A detective inspector in charge of Homicide could never pass for one of the world’s innocents.
    â€œRuss sends his apologies. I’ve got to go to work.”
    Tom sighed, but he was used to sharing his father’s time with the bloody Police Service. It was the price he paid for having a father who was a cop: Dad could have been an accountant or, for God’s sake, a women’s hairdresser. “It’s okay. Can I go with you? Other kids’ fathers take „em to work, sometimes.”
    â€œI’ve got to go out to the morgue. You wouldn’t want to go there.”
    â€œWhy not?” He had a ferret’s curiosity.
    â€œBecause it’s full of dead people and dead people don’t like kids staring at them.”
    â€œHow would they know?”
    Malone clipped his son under the ear, put his arm round his shoulders. “There’s plenty of time for you to meet the dead. Don’t rush it, mate.”
    Half an hour later, having taken Tom home to Randwick and delivered him to Lisa’s disapproving stare, he drew up outside the morgue in Glebe, one of the city’s inner areas. The entrance was in a quiet side street; he wondered what the residents thought of having so many dead neighbours, transients though they all were. He went in the front door, was recognized at once by the man behind the counter.
    â€œG’day, Inspector. You heard about Frank Minto? Geez, it makes you wonder. You’d think you’d be safe in a place like this, wouldn’t you?”
    Russ Clements was in Romy Keller’s office, neither of them acting like the lovers they were. Romy was German-born, dark-haired and, in both Clements’ and Malone’s eyes, beautiful. Clements was big and untidy, like a bag of clothing on its way to the dry cleaners, unhandsome but with a big pleasant face that appealed to a lot of women old enough to need a little tenderness. Which was what Romy saw in him, and more.
    Romy kissed Malone on the cheek, then went round behind her desk and sat down. Two years ago her father had proved to be a murderer; with Clements’ help she had weathered the blow. She had been on the verge of leaving the morgue’s staff, but had been persuaded to stay on in the State Health Department and was now deputy director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Her eyes, when gay, were resplendent; but here at work she toned down the light in them. She was a woman used to men, alive and dead: they had few secrets for her.
    â€œSeems we have something of a mess here, Scobie. Poor Frank Minto—why would anyone want to kill him? If they wanted to steal a body, for God knows what reason, they could have just tied him up.”
    â€œMaybe he tried to stop them?”
    She shook her head. “After those thugs came in some months ago and showed Frank a gun and demanded to see a body, we had a meeting and decided that if anything like that happened again, nobody was to stand in the way. Frank was a sensible man, he wouldn’t have put any value on a corpse, not to the extent of trying to hang on to it. No, whoever it was shot him in cold blood. They didn’t put any value on a living body.”
    â€œThey must’ve put some value on the corpse they stole?” Up till now Clements had sat silent; sometimes