Autumn Maze by Jon Cleary Page A

is done when you find young Rob’s murderer.”
    When the two detectives had gone, Casement said, “Cancel that lunch, Alice. I have no appetite, for food or those dreary people I was going to lunch with.”
    â€œYou’re upset by those two policemen coming in here, aren’t you?”
    â€œDon’t start guessing my feelings, Alice. You sound like my wife.”
    â€œI’ve been guessing your feelings for ten years. That’s what private secretaries are for, isn’t it?”
    â€œAlice, Alice—” He shook his head, spun his chair slowly and looked out the window, at nothing. “Make me some tea and a sandwich. And cancel the rest of the day. I think I’ll go home and hold my wife’s hand.” He swung his chair back again. “What are you smiling at?”
    â€œYou haven’t needed to have your hand held since you were two years old.”
    He smiled, humouring her. “That wasn’t what I said. I’m going home to hold my wife’s hand, not she hold mine.”
    Going down in the lift Malone said, “How much would he be worth?”
    Clements shrugged. “It’d be anybody’s guess. Even the so-called experts, when they put him on that Rich List in that financial magazine, they’re only guessing. Could be half-a-billion, a billion, maybe more. People like the Casements hide what they’re worth. Not to dodge taxes, but just because they think it’s vulgar to let anyone know. I’d be the same,” he said with a grin.
    â€œSo one of the Bruna sisters did all right for herself?”
    â€œAll three of them have. She’s just done better than the others.”
    They came out into the sunlight; the earlier clouds had disappeared. Three or four smokers, the new lepers, stood near the entrance, snatching a few puffs of cancer before they went back to their non-smoking offices; butts lay about them like scraps of fossilized lung. That, of course, was the impression of Malone, a non-smoker.
    He paused, looking across at the lunchtime crowd moving towards the cafes along the Quay. Along the waterfront itself parents with children, tourist groups and loafers drifted with slow movements, as if responding to the harbour’s gentle tide. Buskers sang or played instruments; with the recession, busking had become a new form of self-employment. Malone remembered stories his father had told him of the Depression: Con Malone had sung in the streets, “Mother Mchree” torn limb from limb by a tuneless baritone. The Good Old Days: they were coming back, dark as ever. But at least here the sun shone, nobody starved, there was music instead of machine-gun fire. Europe was crumbling, Russia was falling apart, the Serbs and the Croats and the Muslims of Bosnia were making their own hell.
    Malone crossed the road, Clements hurrying to catch up with him, and dropped a dollar in the violin-case of a young girl playing some country-and-western number. He looked at Clements, who reluctantly took out a fifty-cent piece and dropped it in the violin-case. “I hate that sorta music,” he said as they walked away. “Where do we go from here?”
    â€œI’m having lunch first. Or luncheon. Over a meat pie, you can tell me whether you think someone in the family killed young Sweden. Or had him killed.”
    â€œAnd what about Frank Minto and the stiff stolen from the morgue?”
    â€œ You’ve just spoiled lunch.”
    III
    At Casement & Co., Stockbrokers, the general manager was not available. “He’s up at the Futures Exchange, that’s in Grosvenor Street.”
    â€œDid you know Rob Sweden?” said Malone.
    The pretty girl, an Indian, behind the reception desk closed her big dark eyes for a moment, opened them again, then nodded. “We’re all—” She gestured with a graceful hand, looked for a moment as if she might weep. Then she recovered: “Yes, I knew