Читать книгу The High Commissioner - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 6

Chapter One

“We want you to go to London,” said the Premier, “and arrest the High Commissioner for murder.”

He sat back, one clawed finger stroking the beak of his nose, a bald-headed old eagle hawk who had made this office his eyrie for twenty-five years. He ran his tongue round his thin dry lips, as if tasting the shock that showed on Scobie Malone’s face. He was seventy years old and fifty years of his hectic brawling life had been spent in politics. He knew and relished the value of shock.

“The Commissioner tells me you detectives are like nuns, you’re usually only allowed out in pairs.” He looked at Malone, then at Police Commissioner Leeds, his hooded eyes glistening with an old hawk’s malicious humour. “Is that because you don’t trust each other, Jack?”

John Leeds had been a policeman for forty years, Commissioner for ten, and he knew how to handle politicians. “Is that what you think of nuns, Mr. Premier?”

Flannery’s laugh was more like a cough of mirth, as if it hurt him. “Are you trying to get me to lose the Catholic vote, Jack? Stone the bloody crows, I wouldn’t mind betting you vote Liberal!” He looked back at Malone. “What do you vote, Sergeant?”

Malone was still getting over the shock of the Premier’s opening remark. After ten years in the force he was not unaccustomed to shocks; but nothing like this had ever been flung at him before. When Flannery had first spoken he had glanced quickly at the old man to see if he was joking; the ugly smile had told him that if there was a joke it was not intended for him. He was still dazed when Flannery spoke to him again, repeating his question. “What do you vote, Sergeant?”

He tried to collect his thoughts, but the question seemed so irrelevant at a time like this. “It depends, sir.”

“Depends? What on?”

Malone saw Leeds’s warning glance and retreated. “I’m not political-minded, sir. I vote by whim, I suppose.”

Flannery stared at him, his eyes suddenly dark and glazed: twice he had come close to defeat on the vote of those who voted by whim, the floaters, the I-don’t-knows of the opinion polls. Then abruptly he grinned, the surprisingly warm grin that had been winning him the women’s vote for years. Malone, watching him, knew that, despite what the newspapers said, women were not always influenced by a politician’s profile or his platform charm: a number of them, often enough to swing an election, voted for a father figure. But I’d have hated Flannery as a father, Malone thought: he’d have been using me as election bait before I was even weaned.

“Well, in a way, Sergeant, you’re going to London to vote Labour. You want to tell him what’s what, Jack?”

Leeds hesitated, then he leaned forward in his chair, both hands resting on his knees. Whenever Malone had been with the Commissioner, the latter had struck him as one of the most relaxed men he had ever met; Leeds gave the impression that time and circumstance were part of his pattern, not the other way round, as it was with Malone and the rest of the world. But not today: today Leeds was stiff and bony with concern, even anxiety. But he was not going to confide in Malone, only give him the case facts:

“The Australian High Commissioner in London, as you know, is John Quentin. Or rather that’s his name now. It was John Corliss. Under that name he lived here in Sydney before the war and worked for the Water Board as an assistant surveyor. He married a German refugee girl named Freda Wiseman and they lived out in Coogee. He murdered her on 8th December, 1941, then disappeared. By the time the murder was discovered the newspapers were full of Pearl Harbour and the story got no play at all. Corliss just went into smoke and we were never able to trace him.” He glanced at Flannery, who sat watching him with the look of malicious humour varnished on the mottled skull of his face. “Not until now.”

Malone waited for Flannery to say something, but the Premier remained silent. He looked at Leeds. “How did you get on to him, sir? I mean, that Quentin and Corliss are the same man?”

Leeds looked at Flannery. There was an atmosphere between the two older men that had something to do with the room in which the three men sat. Malone was not insensitive to atmosphere: crime coarsened you, whether you were dealing in it or trying to prevent it, but it also heightened your perception of certain elements in which you moved. And one of them was atmosphere: the criminal or the policeman who was insensitive to it was never a lasting success in his job. Malone knew he himself would not be here if the Commissioner thought he was a failure.

He glanced around the room while the other two men fenced in their silent secret duel. It was a big office and it had all the homely charm of a battle-room; which was what it was. This was where Flannery planned his campaigns to demolish the enemy: the official Opposition, the pressure groups, even members of his own party who showed too much ambition. A single painting, faded and fly-spotted, was his concession to the arts: painted by a third-rate artist, it depicted a hold-up of a mail coach by bushrangers: Flannery had been known to remark that it often gave him inspiration. A glass-fronted bookcase stood beneath the painting, its three shelves lined with leather-bound official volumes; on top of two volumes of Hansard lay a copy of They’re A Weird Mob: Flannery had been getting the lowdown on the citizens he led. The three other walls were studded with political graffiti, honorary membership for Flannery in a score of organisations, testimonials from others. Between the framed scrolls, like frozen moments of the old man’s life, were half a dozen photographs. Laying a foundation stone, the warm vote-catching grin as firmly in place as the stone he had just laid; shaking hands with the Prime Minister, both of them suffering from the spasm known as politicians’ bonhomie; standing like a little old bird of prey among the fat unsuspecting pigeons of his Cabinet, several of whom had since been shot down. Everything smelled overpoweringly of politics: the room, the atmosphere between the Premier and the Commissioner of Police. And yet Leeds had never been a political policeman; for him corruption was a worse crime than murder. Murder, Malone had heard him say to a class of police trainees, was rarely cold-blooded; corruption always was. Malone looked back at Flannery, who considered corruption a necessity of political life.

The old man tapped the claw of his finger on a folder that lay on his desk. “It’s all in here, Sergeant. Documented like a White Paper. It doesn’t matter who got us started, the point is their tip was right. It happened six months ago and I’ve had a man working on it ever since.”

“Someone from Headquarters?” Malone looked at Leeds, but it was Flannery who answered.

“Not from Police Headquarters. From Party Headquarters. One of our political research officers. He enjoyed it, said it was a nice change from trying to guess voters’ intentions.” He coughed another laugh; but Leeds was the one who looked hurt this time.

Malone hesitated, still finding everything incredible. Then he stuck his neck out, asking to be sent to the back of beyond: a bush beat or early retirement was usually the fate of a too-inquisitive detective. They were trained to ask questions, but not of the political boss of the State.

“Why wasn’t it turned over to our Murder Squad when you first got the tip, Mr. Premier?”

Leeds shot Malone a glance that was both a warning and a look of gratitude; he had obviously asked this same question and got nowhere. But Flannery had spent most of his life dealing with questions that he didn’t feel he had to answer.

“We just wanted to be sure, Sergeant. I’ve got where I am today—” He waved at the room around him, home sweet home; he had a wife and a grown-up family somewhere in Sydney, but a politician’s family in New South Wales were never expected to be in evidence. “I’ve got where I am by observing one principle – never libel anyone unless you’re sure of your facts.” He grinned to himself, no longer a warm grin, chewing on the bones of a hundred dead foes. “London is one of the two most important diplomatic posts Australia has. You don’t accuse our High Commissioner, our country’s ambassador there, you don’t accuse him of murdering his wife unless you are absolutely one hundred per cent sure of your facts.”

“And this” – Malone stumbled a little: he could just picture this part-time Maigret down at Trades Hall – “this political research officer, he’s sure of all his facts?”

Flannery coughed again: mirth sounded like lung cancer. “In twenty years he’s never been wrong in an election forecast, not even a by-election. He forecasts a conviction with this.” The claw scratched the folder again. “Says he’ll stake his life on it.”

Malone couldn’t help himself: “Seems to me, sir, he’s staking someone else’s life on it.”

The hoods dropped a little lower over the agate eyes. Malone could feel the old hawk peeling the flesh away from him, opening him up to look at the heart of Malone, scrutinising it to see if it had a political label on it, one that might be treasonable. Then the hoods lifted and he looked at Leeds. “I thought you said he was your best man, Jack.”

“He’s the best man few this job.” Leeds was still sitting forward in his chair, still taut.

“He’s only a detective-sergeant. I thought this would call for an inspector at least, maybe even a superintendent.”

“You asked for secrecy.” Leeds’s gruff husky voice had a hint of sharpness in it; a spark of reaction showed in Flannery’s unblinking eyes. “It might be difficult to account for the absence for a week or ten days of an inspector from the Murder Squad. Someone would be sure to start asking questions.”

“The sergeant here asks questions.”

Malone felt he was just part of the furniture of the room, part of the furniture of Flannery’s bailiwick: he was there to be used. He could feel the temper rising in him, but he held it in check.

“If Sergeant Malone sounded a little critical of” – Leeds also stumbled – “of your research worker, I think it’s a natural reaction. The real professional always suspects the amateur. I’ve heard you say that, sir, in the House.”

“This feller of mine isn’t an amateur.”

“He’s an amateur detective. Not even a private investigator. In any case, when Sergeant Malone has read that file, I’m sure he’ll agree your man has done a good job.” Leeds looked at Malone. “I’ve read it. Everything is there for an arrest.”

“And a conviction,” said Flannery.

“We never look that far,” said Leeds, showing his independence. “We’ll arrest him on the warrant that’s been issued, in the name of Corliss. The rest is up to the Crown Prosecutor.”

Flannery looked at Malone again, still poking away at his insides. “This has to be kept quiet. Not a word to anyone, not even to your wife.”

“I’m not married, sir.”

“Good. But don’t quote me! I’m the patron saint of the Labour League of Married Women.” He coughed and once again Malone got the warm grin. Flannery had decided to trust him: he began to lay the flesh back on, strip by strip. “How can we keep it covered up in your department, Jack?”

“He can apply for leave.” Leeds turned to Malone. “Better make it compassionate leave, to explain the hurry. Have your grandmother dying or something.”

“I haven’t used that one since I was a kid at school.”

“You’ll go the long way round. Fly over to Perth and pick up a plane there for Darwin. In Darwin you can catch the plane for London. If any of the airport reporters saw you getting on a plane for London, here in Sydney, they’d want to know the ins and outs of it all. But going to Perth – well, that’s where your grandmother is dying.”

Malone, still a little bemused, couldn’t resist one more question: “But why all the secrecy, sir?”

Leeds looked at Flannery again: it’s your question, you answer it. Flannery didn’t mind in the least: “Because if it’s at all possible I’d like Quentin back here in Sydney before his arrest is announced. I want to have the pleasure of ringing up someone and telling him myself.” For a moment malevolence made a ruin of his face. Malone stared at him and all at once thought: why, you old bastard, you’re a murderer, too. “I’ve waited a long time for this.”

Leeds interrupted, a little too sharply, as if he were trying to stop the old man from exposing himself any further. This was the sort of indecent exposure for which there was no legal penalty, yet it was more shocking than any sex perversion. “I’ll impress on Sergeant Malone that there has to be absolute secrecy. He’ll be back here within a week. And he’ll have the High Commissioner with him.”

Flannery sat nodding for a moment, a mote of sunlight from the window behind him rolling on the freckled dome of his bald head like a thin drop of yellow oil. “In a way I feel sorry for Quentin. I met him a couple of times down in Canberra. He’s not a bad bloke at all.”

Leeds stood up. One look at his face told Malone that the Commissioner had had enough of the room’s atmosphere; he looked like a man choking for air. He reached out a hand for the file on the desk and Flannery, after a moment’s hesitation, gave it to him.

“I want it done as quickly and quietly as possible, Jack.” Then he looked up at Malone. “Quentin may make a fuss. You may have to go to Scotland Yard, get them to bring him before an English court and get an extradition order. If that has to happen, get on the phone to the Commissioner here right away, before the London newspapers get wind of it. I don’t want a certain someone to hear about it before I have the chance of telling him myself.”

“I’ll watch it, sir.” Malone was sickened by the look on the old man’s face.

“I just hope you can talk him into coming back without any fuss, any need for extradition. If he’s got any sense of dignity he’ll see it’s better for him as High Commissioner to be arrested here in Sydney than in London. We’ve got to think of Australia’s good name. Don’t forget that, Sergeant.”

II

“Australia’s good name!” Leeds seemed to gasp for air as he and Malone came out into the bright early winter sunlight. He waved away the car that stood waiting for him at the kerb, as if even its large interior would be too confining for him in his present state of mind. “You mind walking?”

“I started on the beat. I haven’t lost the habit.”

“You were practically begging to be put back on the beat, a couple of those questions you put to him.”

“I’m not querying your judgment, sir, but do you think I’m the right man for this job?”

Leeds looked at the man beside him. Malone was tall, six feet, big in the shoulders and chest but not top-heavy; perhaps the well-shaped head, carried high, kept the feeling of balance. The face was too bony to be handsome but Leeds guessed women would find the eyes attractive: they were dark, almost Latin, and they were friendly. The mouth, too, was friendly: smiling was a natural exercise, not a studied social habit. Behind the façade Leeds knew there was a shrewd intelligence that could be relied upon in almost any circumstance. Malone gave the impression of being easy-going, but there was a competence about him that had marked him for promotion from his first days in the force.

“You’re the man, all right” Leeds said. “What’s worrying you?”

They walked up Macquarie Street, past the discreet tradesmen’s signs of the doctors’ brass plates. People went reluctantly, almost stealthily into the sombre doorways, taking their cancers, their coronaries, their troubled minds, in with them. Why was it, Malone wondered, that people always looked as if they were smuggling their illnesses into doctors’ consulting rooms? Or was it that he had suddenly become infected by secrecy, saw it even in the faces of strangers? He looked away from the doorways, at the cuter edge of the pavement where the young girls, on their way to the Botanical Gardens in their lunch-hour break, went by, carrying their youth and vitality and beauty like bold banners: no secrecy there. God, he thought, how young and wonderful they look. Then he wondered what had happened to him that he had begun to think of himself as old.

“I don’t know, sir. This smells of politics and I’ve never been mixed up in that sort of thing before.” He knew of the rivalry and antagonism that existed between State and Federal political parties. “Another thing. How did the High Commissioner get away with this for so long? Is the file on him really fair dinkum?”

“It’s about as factual and unarguable as you can get. Take my word for it, Scobie. I checked it and rechecked it before I put us out on a limb. As for Quentin getting away with it for so long. This is a big empty country. Western Australia where he’s officially supposed to come from, I mean as Quentin, that’s practically another country in itself. Perth is two thousand miles from Canberra or Sydney. On top of that, Australians never seem to take much interest in where their public men were born or how they grew up. Take Flannery, for instance. I’d bet not one per cent of this State’s population could tell you anything about his early life. They couldn’t care less. It’s what you are today that counts in this country, not what you were.”

Malone nodded, realising for the first time his own ignorance of the men who, one way or another, had ruled his life: they were just names and faces and nothing more. But something else made him uneasy:

“What’s behind all this?” he asked Leeds. “Why does the State Premier have a murder investigation conducted by one of his own political hacks? Why all the secrecy?”

Leeds took another breath of air. He was a big man, bigger than Malone, and usually he walked with a slow ambling roll, reminding one of a retired sea captain whose rough seas were behind him for ever. But today he was battling the storm of his own feelings.

“It’s pure political malice!” He looked at Malone fiercely from under the grey wire brushes of his brows. “Don’t you quote me to anyone or you’ll be working a bush beat before you know what hit you!”

“I have some faults, sir,” said Malone, trying not to sound priggish, “but indiscretion is not one of them.”

“Don’t sound so blasted priggish.”

“No, sir,” said Malone, and grinned.

Leeds nodded, then abruptly his reddish face, that could so often be as threatening as a clenched fist, broke into a smile. He walked in silence for a few yards as they turned down Hunter Street towards Police Headquarters; then he appeared to relax, began to roll a little as he walked. “You’re right, Scobie. That was one of the reasons I picked you for this job, your discretion.”

A young couple, blind with love, came towards them; the two policemen walked round them, respecting their selfishness. Leeds, interrupted, fell silent for a few more yards, and Malone paced beside him, silently patient. Patience had never been one of Malone’s early virtues, but he had learned to cultivate it, just as Flannery had learned to cultivate his warm sincere grin. Some virtues, Malone thought, were often only hypocrisy under another name.

“Pure political malice,” Leeds repeated. “He’s never forgiven the Prime Minister for crossing the floor back in the 1930s. You wouldn’t remember that.”

“In the 1930s I was still in short pants and both my grandmothers were still alive. I didn’t even know such things as politicians existed. What happened?”

“The P.M. was a Labour man in those days, here in State politics. That was before he moved down to Canberra – went into the Federal ring. There was a division in the House on some bill and he crossed the floor and voted with the Opposition. It brought the Government down.”

“And Flannery’s never forgiven him for it?”

“Scobie, woman hath no fury like that of a politician scorned.” Leeds smiled; he was almost fully himself again.

“But how does he get back at the P.M.?”

“Quentin has been the P.M.’s protégé. Some people think the P.M. has been grooming him to take over some day. Quentin had only been in Parliament two years when he was made a junior minister. If there were any overseas junkets, he was always on them. Then when the last High Commissioner in London died suddenly, Quentin was sent there. It’s a diplomatic post, but it’s always filled by a politician. Either as a reward for past services or as a build-up for bigger things. Quentin is obviously meant for bigger things.” Then he corrected himself: “Or was.”

Malone felt the light beginning to filter through; the atmosphere in Flannery’s office had fogged up his mind, but now he was out in the open again. “So with the Federal elections coming up in July, with the voting as close as they expect it to be – a nice juicy scandal could tip the scales, is that the idea?”

“Elections have been won and lost on less. All Labour has to do is query the P.M.’s judgment of the men he appoints. He’s made one or two poor choices as Ministers. Add this one and Labour will ask if he really should be in charge of the country.”

“Somehow it’s a bastard of a way to decide a country’s future.”

“You should read more history, Scobie. That look of pain you sometimes see on a politician’s face has been caused by a stab in the back. Some of the most honoured men in history were very good with the knife.”

“But Flannery, he’s not thinking of going into Federal politics, is he?”

“Of course not. He’s king here in New South Wales. Why would he want to go down to Canberra, just be one of the princes? No, this is just a personal feud between him and the P.M.”

“And Quentin – what’s he? The shuttlecock?”

“He’s a murderer, Scobie. That’s all you have to think of him.”

They had reached the entrance to the shabby old tenement that was Police Headquarters. Amid the blinding dazzle of the steel-and-glass cliffs that surrounded it, it looked like an ancient monument of dubious origin, perhaps the only building ever erected by the aborigines. The law in Australia had always been the poor cousin of government; what right had a copper to be comfortable? They went into the musty lobby and ascended in the antique lift that creaked like the machinery of law itself.

As they got out of the lift Leeds handed Malone the file. “Read that, then bring it back to me. Keep the carbon of it, you might need it in London, but don’t let anyone here see it. It’s top secret. At least it is for another week. Then I shouldn’t be surprised if Flannery has posters made of it and stuck up all over Sydney.”

Malone took the file and went looking for an empty office. Most of the staff were out at lunch, but he himself had no appetite for food just now. Disturbed by what he had witnessed and been told this morning, excited by the sudden prospect of his first trip abroad, he wanted only to get into this case at once. He found an empty room, sat down in one of the uncomfortable chairs, opened the file and began his acquaintance with John Quentin, born Corliss, ambassador and murderer.

III

In a comfortable chair in a luxury apartment on the other side of the world, Madame Cholon looked out at the soft London drizzle of rain and nodded her head emphatically.

“The man to kill,” she said, “is the Australian High Commissioner.”

The three men with her said nothing. Two of them had learned not to answer her till she looked directly at them for comment; the third, Pallain, was still feeling his way with her. She stood up and, the silk legs of her tailored slacks hissing together, she crossed to stand at the window. Down the road the Science Museum bulked like a dark cliff through the grey rain; Kensington was slowly being washed off the map. She had been in England a month now and she hated its greyness, its wetness and its cold. She shivered and pulled up the collar of her cashmere cardigan.

“This conference is not going the way we want it.” She spoke French, in a high soft voice, for the benefit of Pallain; she knew that he could speak Vietnamese, but she had never heard him speak anything but French or English. He was a snob, but she was sometimes that herself. “Something has to be done to disrupt it. This man Quentin is the one who is now dominating it, so he is the obvious one to be eliminated.” Below her in the street an ice-cream van went slowly by, its bell tinkling with ridiculous optimism in the cold grey day. What optimists the English were, always confident the sun was about to shine! She preferred the French, with their cynicism and their pessimism; one always knew where one stood with pessimists. She turned back to the three men, all of them with at least a strain of French blood in them. “Do you not agree?”

Pallain scratched the stubble of beard that always began to appear on his face at this time of day. He had more French in him than the other two men: his father had been a hairy sergeant from Carcassonne who had died in the mud at Then Bien Phu, leaving behind him a twenty-year-old son whose birth he regretted as much as his own death. “I don’t see the point of killing the Australian.”

Madame Cholon sighed, not attempting to hide her impatience with Pallain’s lack of imagination. Legs still hissing like singing snakes, she came back and sat down. “If he is killed, who is going to be accused of it? Not us, because no one knows of us. But everyone else with an interest in our country will be suspected. The Americans will accuse the Chinese and vice versa. The same with the South Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, the Catholics and the Buddhists. Why, even General de Gaulle might be suspected!” Her smooth schoolgirl’s face showed a schoolgirl’s spiteful humour. “And as soon as suspicion sets in, that is the end of the usefulness of the conference. It will be adjourned, just like so many other conferences. The war may stumble on, but there will be no real government in Saigon, just as there has not been for the past two years. Anarchy is the climate we want.”

“It may not be easy,” said Pallain. “I mean, killing the Australian.”

The other two men nodded. Truong Tho and Pham Chinh were both small men, and the French blood in them was two generations old and poor vintage at that. They were not strangers to murder, but they were strangers to London and the big city made them ill at ease and even a little frightened.

“I love to gamble,” said Madame Cholon. “But I do not think the odds in this case have to be against us.”

The three men knew whom the betting would be against: themselves, not Madame Cholon. Pallain said, “London has a very clean record when it comes to assassination.”

“Then it is time its record was spoiled. The English are too smug about their dull way of life. Reading their newspapers, one would think the rest of the world was made up of barbarians.”

Pallain hid his smile, recognising a barbarian when he saw one and being afraid of her. “How soon do you want Quentin–er–eliminated?” He wanted to smile again, embarrassed by the gangster phrase. He had spent all his adult life with gangsters of one sort or another, but he read Racine and dreamed of a life among such people as Proust had known. “We shall have to make plans.”

“Naturally,” said Madame Cholon, her voice tart with contempt for the dullards she had to employ. In the street below she heard the tinkling of the ice-cream van’s bell, and in her homesick ear it sounded like an echo of the temple bells along the Mekong River. She looked out of the window again, saw the thin explosion of sun behind the range of clouds far away to the west, and felt her own sudden flash of optimism. “One does not kill a man without making plans.”