Dragons at the Party by Jon Cleary

Author:Jon Cleary [Cleary, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Detective
ISBN: 9780006174813
Google: f6LzDkUSypYC
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 7592667
Publisher: AUDIOGO
Published: 1987-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

6

I

SEVILLE PULLED the blue Honda Accord into the kerb in the quiet suburban street. He had arrived here almost like something caught on a wayward breeze; he only knew he was in the municipality of Randwick because a council street sign told him so. He did not know he was only half a dozen blocks from the street where Malone lived, but he would not have been surprised if someone had told him so. Accidents of geography no longer amazed him, coincidence was part of the pattern of life.

When he had driven out of the city parking station he had known he would have to dump the stolen Honda as soon as possible. Though he had immediately headed north towards the Harbour Bridge, he had soon turned east and driven through the central business district of the city. Before long he had picked up what seemed to be a main stream of traffic. It had taken him through some inner city streets, where the houses were crowded together without front yards and the doors of some stood wide open like dark mouths gasping for breath in the hot morning. Then he was driving down a wide tree-lined avenue past what looked like a huge sports complex. A cricket Test was taking place there, but it meant nothing to him.

The Sydney Cricket Ground was no mecca for him; no cricket ground anywhere in the world tempted him. His father, the Englishman twice removed by birth from England (the family name had been Saville till his mother, the Argentinian, had changed it after his father’s death), had done his best to teach his only son a love of the game; as a boy he had been taken each weekend by his father to the Hurlingham club and made to watch while his father played, usually badly. All he could remember from those hated weekends was the ignominy of watching his father fail week after week (“Jolly hard luck, old chap, better luck next week”) and the once confided secret regret by his father that he had never scored a century. The old man was dead now, buried in the mausoleum in Recoletta, remembered for his decency, his love of things English and his disappointment that his son, the natural athlete, had never wanted to take advantage of his prowess. For his father’s sake he had played the game at St. George’s School in Buenos Aires, always scoring well but never a century; twice he had been within sight of the hundred runs and twice he had got himself out deliberately. He had never attempted to analyse, because he had not wanted to know, whether he had committed cricket suicide to spite his father or out of respect for him. His father had tried so hard to be as English as possible, but there had been the machismo streak in him and he might have felt more hurt than pride if his son had achieved something that he had longed for and to which he had never got even close.

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