Читать книгу Babylon South - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 8

1

The Springfellow Corporation was headquartered in a thirty-storey building overlooking Circular Quay. The first five floors were occupied by the Springfellow Bank; the next two by Springfellow and Company, stockbrokers; the next eighteen floors by outside tenants; and the top five floors by divisions, subsidiaries or affiliates of the Corporation. The very top floor was given up to the boardroom, a dividing office and reception lobby and the office of the Chief Executive Officer and Chairwoman of the Board. The Corporation’s PR chief, a woman versed in anti-sexist jargon, had tried to persuade her boss to call herself President and Chairperson, but Venetia had squashed her with, ‘President has come to mean someone who’s a figurehead – that’s not me. Chairperson is sexless – and that’s not me, either.’

Venetia sat in her office gazing out of the large picture-window at the ferries creeping into the quay, seeing them but only as on a memory screen; this had been her view for five years, ever since she had built Springfellow House. She had come an hour ago from the inquest on Walter. She felt at a loss, though of what she was not sure. She had long ago got over the physical loss of Walter; her widow’s weeds had soon turned floral. In those days she had worn a variety of colours. There had been the shock two weeks ago of the discovery of Walter’s skeleton (thank God they had not asked her to identify his bones), but she had recovered from that. The inquest this morning had been short, almost cold-blooded, and it had not upset her; she had been more concerned for its effect on Justine, who had accompanied her and who several times had shivered as if she were suffering from a chill. Then the coroner had declared that the remains were those of Walter Springfellow and that the deceased had died from a gunshot wound inflicted by a person or persons unknown and that the remains should be released into the care of the next of kin, namely Lady Springfellow. Up till then she had been calm, all her resources gathered together in her usual way, life (and death) put together as if according to the strictest of management principles.

Then, after dropping Justine off at her office on the floor below, she had come up here, come into this big room, closed the door and sat down and wept, something she had not done in more years than she could remember. She had at last dried her eyes, repaired her make-up and now sat staring out at a day she was blind to, wondering what was missing from her emotions. There was no grief, that had died long ago; no lost hope, for she had given up hope of Walter’s return years ago; no anger at his murder, for she could not, after all this time, whip up the urge for revenge against a person or persons unknown. Her eyes cleared, she saw the familiar scene beyond the window, and at that moment her mind cleared. She turned back to her desk, deciding that it was love that was missing. She had lost count of the men who had been her lovers; but Walter had been the one she had married and, until now, she had always told herself she had loved him. In her fashion, maybe; but it had been a deeper feeling than she had ever felt for any other man. With possibly one exception.

There was a knock on the door and Michael Broad put his head in. He was, as usual, immaculate. A fashion dummy right out of the John Pardoe windows, Zegna all the way down to his socks, where the Gucci shoes stuck out like those of an intruder behind a curtain. Not a hair out of place, thought Venetia and, suddenly feeling better, smiled at his bald head.

‘I have Peter Polux here, Venetia. Perhaps we could have a word before this afternoon’s meeting.’

He stood aside and Polux entered, his smile as usual chopping his red cheeks in half, his white shoes as bright as bandaged feet under his dark-blue suit. He must be the only white-shoe banker in the world, Venetia thought. She knew his history, as she knew the history of everyone who worked for her or with whom she did business. He had gone to Queensland twenty-five years ago from a small town in Victoria, and had made a fortune in real estate on the Gold Coast. Seven years ago he had gone into merchant banking and become one of banking’s high-flyers, taking risks declined by more staid bankers and bringing them off. He had been a founder member of the ‘white shoe brigade’, the new rich of the Gold Coast, and he had continued, as a thumb to the nose at the amused contempt of the supposed sophisticates of Sydney and Melbourne, to wear his white shoes on every occasion. He was a prominent Catholic, a papal knight, and he was famous for his gold rosary beads, which he often wore wrapped round his wrist like a holy bracelet. Venetia sometimes had the feeling that Polux looked upon the Catholic Church as a venture capital client: he certainly had a good deal of its business.

‘Venetia old girl—’ His wife had once told him he had no charm and now he was working on it; it was as heavy and rough-edged as a cannibal’s table manners. ‘Today’s the big day, eh?’

When Venetia decided to buy out the Springfellow Corporation and turn it into a private company, she had been thinking of going to London or New York for the money she needed, but the devalued Australian dollar and the volatility of foreign currency had made her demur. Michael Broad had suggested that, instead, she call in Polux and Company. It would be Polux’s biggest investment loan, they had the money and they offered good terms. After some thought, investigation and Broad’s persuasion, she had agreed.

‘Are we going to get any opposition from Intercapital?’ Intercapital Insurance was the biggest outside shareholder in Springfellow. ‘They may want to hang on for us to offer more.’

Polux shook his handsomely waved head; it was somehow an insult to the gleaming bald head sitting beside it. ‘Intercapital are cautious, Venetia old girl. They don’t think the bull market can last – they’re expecting prices to go down after yesterday. They’ll grab what they can while they can.’

‘What do you think about the market?’

‘Oh, it’ll bounce back – I don’t think it’ll peak till just before Christmas. Friday’s drop on Wall Street was just a hiccup, it happens all the time there. No worries there.’ He took out his rosary beads, a gesture of habit, and ran them through his fingers. Holy Mary, Mother of God, thought Venetia, pray for us bankers now and at the hour of our bankruptcy … He saw Venetia looking at the beads and he laughed and put them away in his pocket.

Venetia turned to Broad. ‘What about you, Michael? Are you bullish, too?’

She paid him 200,000 dollars a year, plus bonuses, and so far he had not failed her. He was greedy and ambitious, just as she was; she knew herself well enough to recognize her faults in other people. He was ruthless, too: something she only half-admitted to herself. It is not in human nature to be totally honest with ourselves; evolution still has a way to go.

‘Of course. I shouldn’t be recommending we go into this deal if I weren’t. Now is the time to buy, when the rest of them are wondering when it’s going to end.’

‘We could wait till prices go down further.’ She was only playing devil’s advocate and both of them knew it; she was as eager as he to complete the buy-out of Springfellow. Tomorrow she would be as rich as Holmes à Court and Kerry Packer and Alan Bond, at least in assets, Boadicea up there amongst the warring men. The thought made her giddy. Feminists would write hymns (hers?) to her, Maggie Thatcher might send a message of congratulations, if she could remember where Australia was … She smiled inwardly at her fantasies. She had a sense of humour, something the more rabid feminists and Margaret T., too, would never forgive her for. ‘It’s all hypothetical, anyway. We’ll have everything wrapped up by five o’clock this afternoon.’

‘Absolutely!’

Broad’s bonily handsome face lit up. He was the Spring-fellow corporate finance director, in his early forties, a little old for a whiz-kid but still called one by the kid columnists on the financial pages. A clothes-horse from an expensive stable, he was determined to impress from the first impression; he had spent almost a whole year’s salary on an Aston-Martin convertible when everyone else was buying a Porsche or a Ferrari; he let everyone know, with a sort of cultured vulgarity, that he was not run-of-the-mill. But he would never go too far. The sharp observer (and Venetia was one) could always see the invisible rein he kept on himself.

He had come out of Prague in 1968, when his name had been Mirek Brod and he had been a young idealist and patriot. He had told Venetia something, but far from all, of his early life in Czechoslovakia. He had told her of throwing rocks at the Russian tanks, of seeing them bounce off and realizing the futility of it all. He did not tell her of his father, a morbid sincere Communist who committed suicide when the Russians came in; nor did he tell her of his mother, an unstable woman who went mad after his father’s suicide and died in a fit. He kept all that to himself, held in by the tight rein that now guided his ambition. He no longer threw rocks, was no longer a patriot of Czechoslovakia or his adopted country, was now an egoist if not an egotist. He loved no one but himself, but he harboured dreams that some day Venetia might turn to him for more than financial advice. Or if not her, then the boss’s daughter: it didn’t matter. But he was too shrewd to show it. What he didn’t know was that Venetia knew it.

‘By this evening we’ll be sitting pretty. I can’t wait to read it in the newspapers tomorrow.’

‘You’re gunna show ’em, Venetia old girl!’

Venetia old girl showed her teeth; both men, blind with dreams of triumph, took it for a smile. ‘Let’s go and have some lunch.’

As he stood aside to let her pass out of the room ahead of him, Broad said, ‘Oh, how did the inquest go?’

You cold son-of-a-bitch: he might have been asking her how a visit to the dentist had gone. ‘Murder by person or persons unknown.’

‘Eh?’ He was startled and puzzled; it wasn’t the sort of answer he’d been expecting. Up till now, Venetia’s life before he had come into it had never interested him.

‘The funeral will be tomorrow,’ she said, went past him, crossed the outer office and went into the boardroom where a light lunch had been laid out. Behind her she heard Broad say to Polux, ‘An extraordinary woman!’ and Polux grunt in agreement. You don’t know the half of me, she told them silently. But then, she told herself, there is a percentage of myself that even I don’t know.

The board meeting began an hour and a half later. The other board members filed in: Edwin and Emma, Justine, two directors from Intercapital and three outside directors representing the public shareholders. With them was a flock of legal eagles and financial advisers. Major wars, thought Venetia, have been started with smaller gatherings than this.

Edwin nodded politely at her and Justine, as he would have even if they were bringing him before a firing squad; which, in a way, this was. Emma gave Venetia a look as blank as that of the firing squad itself; she didn’t look at Justine at all. The others crowding into the big room smiled or looked deadly serious, depending upon their experience of Venetia. Though none of them had had the experience of a two-billion-dollar takeover by a woman; for some of the more historically-minded she might have been the Empress Tz’u Hsi; they walked gingerly, as if their feet were tightly bound. Some of them, Venetia noticed, had their briefcases in front of their genitals, as if afraid of castration. She must look for a small scalpel, to wear from her gold bracelet.

The boardroom was all pale grey but for the pink upholstery on the chairs and a single Marie Laurencin painting on one wall. Some of the older men looked as if they would have preferred to be in a darker, panelled room, a men’s club, which most boardrooms in Australia were. Even the more cultured of them thought the Laurencin was out of place, especially since it was a painting of pale, semi-nude women. If it had to be a nude, give ’em a Norman Lindsay.

When they were all seated, one of the men, a newcomer, looked around for an ashtray and found none. ‘Do you mind if we smoke, Lady Springfellow?’

‘Yes,’ said Lady Springfellow and that was that. ‘Right, I don’t think there is any need for preliminary remarks. My daughter will sum up why we are here and then I’ll listen to what you have to say.’

Justine stood up. She was dressed in pink today, a silk dress that offset her mother’s grey silk suit. They hadn’t gone to the inquest wearing mourning, today was a day for battle colours, though knights who had ridden into combat under pink and grey banners might have been suspect. The younger, even the older, men looked at Justine with approval: a girl as beautiful as this had to have a soft side. She had recovered from the ordeal of the inquest; she had been upset at what had seemed to her the cold-blooded formality of it all, as if declaring a man legally dead meant no more than taking away his driving licence. Still, the ghost of her father, even though a gentle one, had at last been exorcized and now she was her mother’s daughter completely.

‘First, let me say when we take over the various elements—’

‘When?’ said Emma, soberly dressed, even wearing a hat and gloves: old Mosman keeping up standards. ‘Nothing has been decided yet.’

‘Yes, when.’ Justine looked across the table at her aunt. The older men looked slightly embarrassed; women should not fight, at least not in the company of men. The younger ones sat up, hiding their grins by lowering their heads; this was going to be even better than they had anticipated. Then Justine went on: ‘The Springfellow name will be retained. We shall do that out of respect for tradition and for the value of the name. It’s a name I’m proud to have myself.’

She looked across at Edwin, who visibly annoyed Emma by nodding.

‘So—’ Justine had learned a few tricks from her mother: the value of a pause, for instance. ‘So we are offering six dollars fifty for all Springfellow and Company shares beyond those my mother and I own, subject to the usual minimum acceptance conditions. On top of that we are offering nine dollars fifty a share for all those shares in Springfellow Bank beyond those owned by Springfellow and Company, again subject to the usual conditions.’

‘Those should be two separate transactions,’ said one of the Intercapital directors.

‘They will be,’ said Justine. ‘I am merely summarizing here. But we do not want any hiatus between the two deals. We want them wrapped up together. Payment will be in cash, payable within the usual thirty days. The corporation will then become a private one, though certain of you will be invited to join our board.’ That was a carrot thrown in front of the horse drawing the tumbril and everyone recognized it as such.

Especially Emma. ‘Very generous. Do you expect us to respond to that sort of bribery?’

‘Not you, Aunt. I wouldn’t expect it of you,’ said Justine coolly. Oh, I’m proud of you, thought Venetia and sat silent. ‘We are just hoping you will take the money and run.’

‘I’ve never run away from anything in my life,’ said Emma, peeling off her gloves, which were not kid but suggested chainmail. ‘We real Springfellows never do.’

Beside her Edwin tried to look like a man who wasn’t already bending to the starting-blocks. Seemingly there was less fight in him than in his sister; it was as if he knew the battle was already lost and he wanted to retire, if not run, with dignity. In his secret heart, which he never opened, even to his wife, he knew that Venetia had taken over the Springfellow empire at least five years ago; indeed, almost from the day, long before that, when she had legally inherited Walter’s estate. Also in his secret heart he had hoped that Walter might some day reappear and save them all. But tomorrow that hope would be buried for ever with Walter’s bones.

‘I am not selling,’ said Emma, gloves now off, ‘no matter what you may offer. Nor is my brother.’ She did not even look at Edwin; he was leaving all the fight to her. They were fighting, he knew that, but he had lost all heart for it. ‘We have the capital to buy up a major block of shares in Springfellow and Company and we are doing that at the moment.’

Justine looked up the table at her mother; Venetia looked at Michael Broad. He spread his hands in an almost Jewish gesture. ‘Unless it’s happened in the last hour …’

‘It has,’ said Emma, bare-knuckled. ‘You should have kept track of the stock exchange board.’

As if on cue but a trifle late, like a wounded messenger from another part of the battlefield, there was a knock on the door and one of Venetia’s secretaries came in and put a sheet of paper in front of her. Venetia looked at it, then sat up straight. Justine sat down at once, recognizing she had just lost her status. Her mother was not the sort of general who stayed in the background when the tide of battle went against her.

‘Seven dollars a share is being offered for Springfellow and Company. Four million shares have been bought in the last half-hour—’ She looked at the sheet of paper. ‘I don’t know who the sellers are—’

‘We are,’ said one of the Intercapital directors. He was a man named Safire, in his fifties and an advertisement for creature comforts; if ever he were reduced to the breadline, he would ask for croissants. He had a voice full of rich plums, a vocal orchard of over-ripe fruit. Venetia had never liked him, nor he her. ‘We arranged the sale this morning, but didn’t let the market know till half an hour ago. When this meeting was timed to start.’

‘Thank you, Erwin. I hope Intercapital’s policy holders are treated better than you’ve treated me. Do you cut their throats as their policies mature?’

‘I think that’s uncalled for,’ said the other Intercapital director, a thin under-nourished man named Newstead, seemingly chosen to contrast with Safire’s sleek corpulence. ‘Business is business, Venetia. We are in business to do our best for our clients.’

‘My sister-in-law must have an awful lot of insurance with you. Is the sale of shares finalized? I’ll give you seven-fifty.’

Safire and Newstead looked at each other like men who suddenly realized they had jumped before ascertaining the depth of the pool. Emma said, ‘You can’t renege, Mr Safire. The sale has already been through the exchange. It wouldn’t look good for Intercapital if I reported you to the Companies and Securities Commission.’ She had them by the throat and she looked up the table at another throat, Venetia’s. ‘That raises our holding in Springfellow and Company to 19.9 per cent.’

‘Still less than ours,’ said Justine, shooting cross-fire.

‘But still too big for you to buy out over our heads.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d tell us where you got the money?’ said Venetia.

‘You’re not that naive and neither am I,’ said Emma. ‘You’ll find out eventually, but for the time being that’s our business. You’d be surprised how many people are prepared to put up money to fight you.’

Venetia bent her head for a whispered conference with Broad and Polux, both of whom looked as if they would cut Emma’s throat if there were not so many witnesses. Everyone else, except Justine, seemed at a loss for somewhere to look; one man got up and closely examined the Marie Laurencin, as if he had just been called in to appraise it. All the men in the room were, in these days of takeovers, accustomed to seeing blood spilt. But this was family blood, almost blue, and abruptly they were squeamish.

Justine leaned across the table towards Emma; for a moment she looked a younger, darker version of her mother, all sharpened steel. ‘You won’t win, you know that. You’ve done nothing but draw dividends all your life, never contributed a thought or a suggestion to the firm—’

For once Emma was cool and controlled. ‘I’ve contributed something now, haven’t I? The other shareholders, the public who have never had a spokesman, may canonize me.’ She looked smug enough to do the job herself, if no one else would.

Safire and Newstead both smiled at that, throwing petrol on Justine’s smouldering fury. ‘Goddamnit, Emma, you’re doing this out of spite!’

‘Partly,’ said Emma, still cool; she and Justine were alone in their own arena. ‘It adds taste to it. But the main reason, as Edwin tried to explain to you when you first made your horrible offer, is to keep the firm, the name, where it started and has always belonged – in the Springfellow family, the real Springfellows.’

‘The real Springfellows will die with you and Uncle Edwin! There’s no one after you-except me! I’m a real Springfellow, I have my father’s name—’

‘Perhaps so,’ said Emma and for the sharper ears in the room there was an enigmatic note in her voice. ‘Unfortunately, there isn’t a hint of him in you. You are your mother’s daughter through and through.’

Justine was leaning across the table, her voice low but strained; she seemed on the verge of reaching for Emma and doing her harm. Emma just sat and stared at her, only moving to gently shake off Edwin’s hand as he tried to put it restrainingly on her arm. There was dead silence in the big room; the air was full of taut invisible wires. Then a man coughed and it sounded thin and shrill, like a castrato caught halfway to a wrong note.

‘That will be all,’ said Venetia. ‘The meeting is adjourned.’

‘You mean you withdraw both your bids?’ said Edwin and looked suddenly relieved.

‘No,’ said Venetia and looked directly at Emma. ‘I mean the war is just beginning.’

2

‘Venetia darling,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘I had to call you—’

‘You took your time, Philip.’

‘Don’t you read the papers? I’ve been in New Zealand with that lesbian PM of theirs. Christ, don’t ever try to work out a defence treaty with a dyke … Don’t you follow my movements at all?’ He sounded more bewildered than hurt, as if his minders had fallen down on their job of letting the voters know where he was.

‘I was looking for a little sympathy. They’ve discovered the phone in New Zealand, haven’t they?’ She was leading him on, being perverse. She really hadn’t wanted to hear from him at all, least of all this morning.

‘Well, just let me say this—’ It was the politician’s catch-cry. Every night, on the TV news and the current affairs programmes, heads were bobbing emphatically, like horses’ heads on a carousel, and voices were demanding, Just let me say this … Television had bred a new breed of politician, mechanized clones from all parties with interchangeable clichés and platitudes. ‘Nobody has greater respect for you, Venetia, than I do. And that’s not just the politician in me speaking.’

‘That’s sweet of you, Philip.’ She wondered if he realized how pompous he sounded.

She had known him for twenty-five years. They had been occasional lovers, but there had been no love and no mention of it. He had once been the biggest TV star in the country, his chat show out-rating every other programme; if Armageddon had occurred on a Friday night, 65 per cent of the nation’s viewing audience would have told it to wait. Then a kitchen cabinet of rich industrialists had pushed him into politics and, after a decent interval, into the prime ministership. He was politically inept, almost stupid, but he understood what his advisers told him, if they kept their words and their sentences short, and he could memorize any speech written for him after no more than two readings. On television, which was now an annexe of the voting booth, he looked and sounded sincere. He was also handsome, charismatic and had more sex appeal than any two other Members of Parliament. Those who knew him intimately, including Venetia, knew that to go to bed with him was like being laid in a voting booth. He was the sort of lover who wanted a pat on the front after the exercise; you were expected to vote him the best stud since Errol Flynn or, if your fantasies were kinky, since Hyperion – the horse, not the god. The voters, those not in his bed, had heard hints of his dalliances, but, unlike Americans, Australians never expected too much morality of their leaders. It was the natives’ only show of political sophistication.

‘I can’t come to the funeral, of course—’

‘Of course not. You never knew Walter.’ Going to bed with Philip didn’t make him a friend of the family; at least not in Mosman. ‘Thanks for your call, Philip. I’ll be in touch.’

She hung up in his ear: something even the lesbian PM from across the Tasman would not have done. She was in no mood for the hypocrisy of a part-time lover, even if he was the Prime Minister.

She looked at herself in her bedroom mirror, turning her face to the frank light of the morning sun. She was long past the need of vanity to prop herself up; an honest woman knows what is best about herself. She had never been strictly beautiful, but she had had the sort of face that the early days of Australian television, with its awkward lighting, had demanded: cheekbones that could be highlighted, good strong teeth that were not shadowed by her upper lip, hair that reflected the light and didn’t look thin under it. Since then the years, and an expensive beautician, had treated her well. She was forty-seven, but everything, including her confidence in herself, was still firm. She had gone through the menopause in a hurry, brushing it aside as if it had been no more than a minor bad business deal, and had come out the other side as lubricious as ever; if there had been any hot flushes, they had been due to passion from the several affairs she had also been going through. There had been no thought in her agile mind that from now on life would run downhill. Yet for the first time in her life she felt this morning a certain fear; she had never before had to bury anyone close to her.

Justine, already dressed for the funeral, came in. ‘Mother – you’re not dressed! It’s almost time to leave. Funerals aren’t like weddings – they like you to be on time.’

‘What do you know about funerals?’ Venetia began to dress. ‘Black doesn’t suit me. Nor you, either.’

Justine looked at herself in the tall cheval mirror. ‘No. Who are we trying to impress – the dead or the living?’

‘Your father, I suppose. He always wore the right thing for the occasion.’

‘Why did you love him?’ Justine was still examining the dark stranger in the mirror. ‘He was handsome and all that. But he was so much older than you. You must have had lots of young guys running after you …’

‘I don’t really know.’ She did know, exactly. She had been looking for a father figure, someone to replace the drunken shearer who had been killed in a pub brawl when she was five years old. But no one would believe that, except her own mother. ‘He was kind – well, he was to me. He had the reputation of being very tough when he was on the Bench – he had no time for anyone who broke the law. But with me … He loved me,’ she said simply.

Justine turned away from the mirror, irritated by what she had seen. The Italian black suit had cost her 2,000 dollars at Maria Finlay’s and she couldn’t imagine that she would ever wear it again. ‘May I borrow some pearls?’

‘Take your pick.’ Venetia gestured to her jewel box. ‘Leave the single strand – I’ll wear that. There, how do I look?’

‘Ghastly.’

‘After all this time – widow’s weeds. But it’s what he would have wanted.’ Her father had been the same, when he was sober; so her mother had told her. To be more exact, he had been conservative towards women and what he expected them to be. Walter had been very much like that, though she had realized it too late. ‘The family will expect it, too.’

‘After yesterday, I don’t care a damn what they expect.’

She and Venetia had talked for four hours yesterday evening, but both had known that their thinking had not been too straight. They had had one shock too many.

‘We’re on our best behaviour this morning,’ said Venetia. ‘Don’t forget that.’

‘Is Nana going to be there?’

‘No, she’s staying home to organize the reception afterwards. The wake, if you like.’

‘What did Nana ever think of Father? They couldn’t have been far apart in age.’

‘I think she was in love with him.’ More, I think, than I was.

Justine looked at her curiously. ‘Was there any jealousy between you?’

‘Of course not. Nana was happy that I was happy. But she was – still is – a romantic. Walter was everything she’d dreamed of in a man. Sometimes she couldn’t believe her daughter was married to him.’

‘So she must have missed him as much as you when he disappeared?’

Venetia nodded. ‘She’s never really got over it.’

‘Have you?’

Venetia had a last look at herself in the mirror, looking for the truth in her image. ‘Yes.’

They went out to the grey Bentley (more chic than a Rolls-Royce, Venetia had told her daughter). She had thought of having pink upholstery as a joke; but that would only have brought more sneers from the family. Occasionally the sneers rubbed her raw and she tried to avoid them. The chauffeur, dressed in grey with a pink shirt and a dark-grey tie, drove them, out of habit, at his usual brisk speed to the cemetery. His mistress, he knew, prided herself on her punctuality and he wondered why she had been a little late coming out of the house this morning.

Walter Springfellow was being buried in the family vault. The first Springfellow had been buried here ninety-nine years ago when the cemetery had first been opened. It was called the Field of Mars and Justine thought it an ideal meeting place for the warring family. She hoped that, for the sake of the father she had never known, there would be no battle today.

An old jacaranda stood just behind the vault, its blossom lying like purple snow on the white marble. Two magpies sat in branches carolling a warning to the humans below: don’t hang around or you’ll be dive-bombed. A bulbul, as cocky as its red crest, sat on the cross atop the vault. A blimp drifted by overhead, tourists in its gondola busily snapping the grieving ants far below. Edwin Springfellow had used his influence and the media photographers had been stopped at the gates. Some of the more enterprising, however, were perched like magpies in distant trees. Cameramen hate to see grief kept private, especially if it is moneyed. The public, while t’ch, t’ching in disgust, never turns its eyes away from the pictures.

Malone and Clements were also there, though standing well away from the mourners; looking, indeed, like visitors to another grave. Venetia had asked that the burial be kept as private as possible, but at least fifty mourners had arrived, most of them elderly. Malone recognized several retired judges; Fortague, from ASIO, was there too. There was one surprise mourner: John Leeds, Commissioner of Police.

‘What’s the boss doing here?’ said Clements.

Malone was watching the neat-as-always Commissioner standing in the background, making no effort to approach those gathered around the vault. Malone was too far away to see the expression on Leeds’s face, but the Commissioner did not seem to have his usual stiffly upright stance. It was hard to tell whether he was grieving or suffering from lumbago.

Venetia turned away as the door of the vault was closed until another day, another death. Edwin stood in front of her, looking at the closed door as if expecting it should have been left ajar for him. She touched his arm. ‘Not yet, Edwin. Perhaps you’ll be next, but not now.’

‘What a cruel thing to say!’ Emma had come up behind them.

Edwin, recovering his focus, shook his head; he wanted no scene today. ‘No, Venetia has hit the nail on the head. As usual.’

‘There’s a time and place for hitting nails on the head.’

The three of them were slightly apart from the crowd of mourners. Their voices were low; good manners were everything in front of non-family. Emma and Edwin came of an old school where even murder, if committed, would be in a low key; Emma’s behaviour yesterday in the boardroom had been an aberration, something for which Edwin had berated her, in well-mannered terms, on their way home. She had not welcomed the admonition, had secretly enjoyed being bad-mannered and outspoken.

Edwin said, still in a low voice, ‘Let’s behave ourselves. We still have to come back to your house, Venetia. We’re still welcome, I take it?’

‘Only for today.’

‘I shan’t be coming,’ said Emma.

‘Yes, you will,’ said Edwin quietly but firmly. ‘We keep up appearances today. Out of respect for Walter.’

Emma said nothing. She glared at them both, then turned and walked away, stumbling in her blind anger over a nearby grave. As she passed the other mourners she managed to produce a smile that sat on her face like a slice of thrown pie. Justine, hurrying by her towards the Bentley, gave her aunt a look of hatred that only the more elderly, dim-sighted bystanders missed. Accustomed to hypocrisy at funerals, some of the women were shocked. The retired judges and the ASIO chief, more accustomed to hypocrisy, wondered what the man they had just laid to rest would have thought of this enmity.

Venetia left Edwin, who had been joined by Ruth, his wife, and moved amongst the crowd as it began to straggle away with that lack of direction that affects mourners at a funeral, as if for a moment they have lost their grip on life. Everyone treated her warily and none with affection; these were Springfellow family friends. All except Roger Dircks and Michael Broad, who were wary but not cool.

‘You must be glad that’s over,’ said Dircks, stating the obvious yet again. As axeman, he would have told Anne Boleyn the same thing.

‘It’s not over, is it, Venetia?’ said Broad solicitously.

‘Not really. Did you sleep well last night?’

‘No. I don’t know what we’re going to do about your sister-in-law.’ He looked worried, even slightly creased. ‘Did you look at the messages this morning?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve had this—’ she waved a hand back at the vault ‘– on my mind.’

‘The New York market crashed last night, five hundred and eight points. That means the local market will go down today.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s probably already started.’

‘Jesus, of course!’ Dircks looked at his own watch; the dead man was forgotten, he had never known him anyway. ‘We’d better be going. We’ll call you later, Venetia. Nice funeral.’

He moved off, not waiting for Broad. The latter looked after him. ‘We’ll have to get rid of him. He’s bloody embarrassing. What do we do if the worst comes to the worst? I mean our share holdings?’

‘Call me as soon as you get back to the office and see what’s happening. Who knows? This may be our salvation. If prices do drop, we may be able to buy up enough to drop the bucket on Emma and Edwin.’

He looked at her admiringly, though there was still strain in his lean face. ‘You never give up, do you?’

‘Never.’

She turned away from him and pushed her way through the mulga scrub of polite hostility; these mostly elderly conservatives had never taken to her. She was surprised when she came face to face with a sincere, if restrained, smile. ‘John! Oh, it’s been so long—’

‘Hello, Venetia. I had to come – I felt it was time …’ John Leeds opened his hand in what, in a less self-contained man, might have been mistaken for a helpless gesture.

Once upon a passion she had been at the point of falling in love with this honest, conscience-stricken man. He seemed hardly to have changed, except for the grey in his hair and the few lines in the square-jawed face. He was as neat as she remembered him: everything about him was neat, including his pride and his conscience. It had been that in the end that had stopped her from falling completely in love. Someone else’s conscience was harder to live with than one’s own. Or was for her.

‘You’ve avoided me all these years. I looked for you at some of those official functions, but you always looked the other way.’

‘It was best, Venetia. I’ve been married for years – it’s been a happy marriage—’

She nodded, understanding; but half her lovers had been married men. She looked past him and saw Justine coming towards them. ‘You’ve never met my daughter, have you? Justine, this is John Leeds, the Commissioner of Police. He was an old friend of your father’s.’

‘His protégé,’ said Leeds. ‘He persuaded me to take a law degree, said it would help me in the Force. It did, so I have him to thank. Hello, Justine. I’m sorry we should meet on such an occasion.’

‘I never met my father. At least now I’ve met one of his old friends.’ She said it naturally, without any apparent effort to say the right thing. She was surrounded by her father’s old friends, but, as with her mother, they had never been hers. She liked this quiet, sober-faced man at once, aware that her mother, too, liked him. ‘We’re ready to go back to the house, Mother. Will you come, Mr Leeds?’

‘Unfortunately, I can’t.’ He watched her as she went off and Venetia watched him. ‘She’s a beautiful girl. Walter would have been proud of her.’

‘Would you have been?’

‘What does that mean?’

‘She could have been your daughter.’

‘Is she?’

But she didn’t answer that, merely said, ‘Why did you come, John? After all these years. Did you feel safe?’

‘Straight and to the point, still.’ He smiled, though it did not appear to come easily. ‘No, it’s you I’m concerned for.’

‘Me? Well, yes, I have some problems—’

‘The takeover? No, I didn’t mean that. You probably read about this man Dural who was released from prison a couple of weeks ago … I could have sent someone to warn you, but I thought I should come myself.’

‘Warn me?’

‘I looked up the reports on the case after Walter increased his sentence – I wasn’t on the case myself. He threatened he would some day kill Walter. It’s too late for that … The man’s a psycho, Venetia. He could switch his revenge to you. For some years he continued to rant against Walter while he was in gaol. I think you could do with some protection.’

‘Not police protection, John, please. The media would get on to it and that might only make this – this psycho worse.’ He had to admire how quickly her mind could see a problem. ‘I have my own security men. I’ll just double them. But thanks …’ She looked at him steadily. ‘That wasn’t the real reason you came, was it?’

‘No,’ he said after a long moment; an old love, no matter how fleeting it might have been, is hard to relinquish. He was happily married, had been for eighteen years, but one can’t help wondering what might have been. We create our personal mysteries, sometimes, out of nothing. ‘But there’s no answer, is there? Goodbye, Venetia. Take care.’ He meant there were more dangers for her than a vengeful psycho.

Venetia watched him as he departed, also wondering what might have been. He had been one of half a dozen lovers in that last year of her marriage, but he had been the only one with whom she wanted to lie after the love-making. That had always been her test of men. She sighed, then straightened herself and walked briskly across towards the Bentley.

‘Time to go,’ said Malone, still standing beside the distant grave.

‘Do you think the Commissioner saw us?’ Clements watched the Commissioner’s car drive off.

‘He saw us, all right. He never misses anything.’

‘So why was he here? That was a personal little talk he had with her ladyship.’ Clements, discreetly, had been using small binoculars to scan the crowd of mourners. ‘I wish I was a lip-reader.’

‘You might have read more than you wanted to know.’ Malone had the greatest respect for the Commissioner. He had cleaned out the Force and at last it also had regained some respect, from the voters.

‘Well, where do we go from here?’

‘I’ buggered if I know. I’ve got a feeling this one is going to go into The too Hard basket.’

They walked across to their unmarked car and drove away. Though he had had little hope of solving the case, Malone was disappointed. He had found himself wondering about Venetia Springfellow, what made her tick. He had seen the uses of power by powerful men; he wondered at its uses by a powerful woman. Most of all, he wondered about her as a woman. He would not mention his wonder to Lisa.

3

The driveway and the street outside were lined with cars: Mercedes, Jaguars, Volvos; the two or three small Japanese cars looked shamefaced, like queue jumpers. The security guard walked up and down them like a parking officer, frowning at the occasional passer-by who stopped to stare up at the Springfellow house.

Inside, Venetia glided amongst her guests. At last she came to a stop beside Edwin, whom she had once, for Walter’s sake, tried to like. It had not been easy.

‘It’s like old times,’ he said, doing his best to be friendly; he was not by nature an aggressive man. ‘So many old faces.’

‘Old is the word. I find it hard to believe – if Walter were still alive, he’d be seventy-two.’

‘I’m seventy. It’s unavoidable – getting old, I mean.’

‘I’m doing my best to avoid it. I still feel young.’

‘Is that why you started this fight?’ He hadn’t meant to bring up the subject.

She looked at him, not wishing to fight him. They were out in the garden, away from the others. She looked at him and then up at all the other old men on the wide verandahs. Once they had been young boys; where had all their energy gone? Why hadn’t they stored some of it for days such as they had to live now? If Walter had lived, would all his energies have gone, would she have been far too young for him in bed and out of it? She looked back at Edwin, saw he had no energy for a fight.

‘It wasn’t meant to be like that, Edwin. It was meant to be a rationalization. You’ve just said it yourself – you’re old. So is everyone on the board, except me. You should talk to Justine, she works amongst the young people in the corporation. Ask her what they think. In the foreign exchange section of the bank we have 22-year-olds earning a hundred thousand dollars a year.’

‘They’re not worth it!’

‘They think they are.’

‘The young people aren’t the ones who have to find the money for all you want to do. You’re too ambitious, Venetia.’

She nodded. ‘I know. So is Justine.’

He had always found difficulty in arguing with her; she seemed to mock him by agreeing with him. But then Emma came up as a reinforcement.

‘We’ve done our duty. We can go now, Edwin.’

‘I’m be in touch,’ said Venetia. ‘I’m not finished yet.’ Michael Broad had called her only a few minutes after she had reached home; he had sounded panic-stricken, told her the market was plunging like a broken dam. ‘We’ll be back to you.’

For a moment Emma looked uncertain. ‘None of this would have happened if Walter had still been alive.’

‘No, that’s true. If Walter were still alive, I might still be the dutiful wife. Which is what you would have wanted me to be.’

‘You were never that.’ Emma couldn’t control her venom; like cancer, it had got worse with time. ‘Walter was fortunate he never learned the truth about you. I saw you today with one of your old boyfriends—’

‘Emma, that’s enough!’ Edwin’s usually mild voice was unexpectedly sharp.

For a moment it looked as if Emma might turn her venom on him. She stared at both of them; Venetia would not have been surprised if she had pointed a finger at them and called down a curse. Then abruptly she turned and stalked stiff-legged across the lawn and up into the house. At the top of the steps that led up to the wide verandah she was confronted accidentally by Justine. They stood face to face, something was said that made the guests on the verandah turn their heads, then Justine stepped round her aunt and almost ran down the steps and across the lawn to her mother.

‘What’s the matter?’ Venetia had never seen her daughter so upset.

‘What’s the matter with that woman?’ Justine was on the verge of tears. ‘In front of everyone she asked me did I know whose bastard I was!’

There was a gasp from Edwin. He put his hand on his niece’s arm, the first time he had touched her in years. ‘I don’t know what’s come over her lately, since the discovery of Walter’s … Take no notice of her, my dear—’

‘That’s not easy,’ said Venetia, looking up towards the house; Emma had disappeared inside and now all those on the verandah were gazing down at the three of them. ‘Taking no notice of her, I mean. You will have to do something about her, Edwin.’

‘I’m try.’ But he sounded as if he had little hope that he would.

Venetia took Justine’s arm and walked her towards the garden’s back boundary. The garden had once been a local showpiece, thrown open every year by the Springfellows for charity; Sir Archibald had been one of the nation’s more famous camellia growers. There were flowers and shrubs that had been brought from all over the globe; the natural world had been brought to order in these couple of suburban acres. Venetia no longer opened the garden to the public, not even for one day; instead, the Royal Blind Society got a cheque but no invitation. She knew that, though the day was for the benefit of the blind, those who had paid to come were as keen-sighted as Aboriginal hunters, missing nothing, especially her. She had been more on display than any camellia, rose or rhododendron.