Helga's Web

Helga's Web Read Free Page B

Book: Helga's Web Read Free
Author: Jon Cleary
Tags: detective, Mystery
Ads: Link
exposing her crotch or her behind, was just considered to be fashionable. Women were subtly providing their own answer to the double standard for men. The blonde girl was aware of Malone’s look, but evidently she trusted policemen.
    Then Con Malone, who wouldn’t have trusted the Police Commissioner, came in with Kerslake. Malone excused the engineer and the two girls and closed the door after them, then turned to his father. “Take off the helmet, Dad. You look like something out of All Quiet on the Western Front.”
    Con Malone took off his helmet, held it tucked against one hip and tapped the ash of his cigarette into it. He was not as tall as his son and he looked much shorter because of his broad figure. His thick grey hair was close-cropped above the
    wide face with its doorknocker nose, its long Irish upper lip and the years marked like notches in the cheeks and around the eyes. It seemed to Malone that his father had looked this old for as long as he could remember, yet Con still kept going, working as hard as he had ever done, never mentioning the word retirement. He was sixty-three or four and he still had another good ten years in him. Only the worry and disgrace of having a copper for a son might wear him out.
    “I’m not gunna be mixed up in any of this,” he began, taking over the interview, showing who was senior and who was junior. “It could ve been any of us, me or the Dagoes, who found her—”
    Dagoes: the Old Man was like the Old Lady, still carried his prejudices like football club ribbons. “Dad, you are mixed up in it. Nothing serious, you’ll probably just be called as a witness at the inquest—”
    “No bloody fear!” Con Malone shook his head emphatically, as if he had been asked to denounce the Pope. He never went near a church except on Christmas Eve when, as his Christmas present to Brigid, he went to midnight Mass with her. But he believed in the institution of the Church and considered the Pope worth a dozen kings or presidents. He had got drunk when Pope John died, but didn’t think he’d go that far for this new bloke Paul. He’d get drunk, all right, cause a, whatyoucallit, disturbance before he’d go into bloody court as a police witness.
    Malone sighed and looked out the window again. Another liner was going down the harbour, another means of escape. Since his one and only trip abroad two years ago, a short and not very happy trip, when he had gone to arrest the Australian High Commissioner in London for murder, he had been dreaming of another journey to Europe. He had been saving every cent he could, even investing in some of Clements’ sure-fire tips, and now he had enough for a three months’ economy tour of Europe. But a week ago he had asked Lisa to
    marry him and now the money was earmarked as down payment on a house. He was trapped, tied down to the routine of investigations like this one and the irritation of witnesses who did not want to get mixed up in anything. Angry at himself as much as at his father, feeling he was being disloyal to Lisa, he spun back and said sharply, “You’ll be called when they want you, Dad.”
    Con Malone sucked on his cigarette, then without taking it from his mouth asked with massive sarcasm, “You want me name and address, then?”
    Malone grinned: it was hard to take the Old Mans antagonism seriously. “I’ll get it from the wage sheet. When you got down there this morning, did the timber in front of the opening look as if it had been disturbed? Or had it been put neatly back in place?”
    Con Malone scowled, then said grudgingly, “I didn’t notice nothing. I mean, whoever done it, he done a neat job of putting all the timber back. It wasn’t nailed or nothing, but he’d put it all back the way it’d been.”
    “You were pretty observant.”
    “Not at the time. I been thinking about it since, like.”
    “You see where I get my detective instincts from?”
    “Christ!” said Con Malone, and almost spat into his

Similar Books

Fade to Black

Ron Renauld

The Glass Harmonica

Russell Wangersky

Dark Soul Vol. 1

Aleksandr Voinov

Abattoir

Christopher Leppek, Emanuel Isler

Underwater

Maayan Nahmani