Читать книгу Bear Pit - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 6

1

Claire rang next morning at 7.15. ‘I’ve just heard the news on the radio. The Premier – it’s unbelievable!’

‘It’s a shock,’ said Malone, but didn’t sound as if it was too much of a shock. He was not callous, but he had grown accustomed to murder and the circumstances of it. ‘It’s going to shake things up a bit.’

‘Is it what!’ Then she said, and he caught the cautious note in her voice: ‘Are you on the case?’

‘Yes. Why?’ She said nothing and he got impatient with her: ‘Come on, Claire! Why are you asking?’

‘Haven’t I always asked?’

Women! Daughters and wives in particular: ‘Don’t start sounding like your mother –’

Lisa came down the hallway, paused and gave him the look that only wives and long-time lovers can conjure up. He put his hand over the mouthpiece.

‘It’s your daughter –’

‘I gathered that. Why is she sounding like me?’

He waved her on; not dismissively, for Lisa would never take dismissal. She raised her middle finger, said, ‘Is that the right gesture?’ and went on out to the kitchen.

‘Who was that?’ asked Claire.

‘Your mother. Come on – why are you so concerned that I’m on the case?’

‘Dad –’ He could see her, usually so articulate, fumbling with words at the other end of the line. Perhaps if she were still living at home she would be more direct; moving out had widened the distance between them in more ways than one. He could no longer read her face, not at the end of a phone line. ‘Dad – yesterday –I don’t think I should be telling you this –’

‘Righto, I’ll hang up. But if I find you’re withholding evidence of any sort –’

‘You would, wouldn’t you?’

‘Bring you in?’ He sighed. ‘Yes, I think I would.’

‘Well –’ He had never known her to be so reluctant to voice an opinion. She had been a lawyer since she was twelve years old: bush lawyer, Bombay lawyer, Philadelphia lawyer: she would have argued with both Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate. ‘Dad, yesterday Norman Clizbe and Jerry Balmoral came into the office – you know them?’

‘Only by name. I’ve never met them.’

They were the secretary and assistant-secretary of the Trades Congress. The Congress had been going for almost a hundred years, a minor opponent of the major union organization, the Labor Council; then suddenly, about twenty years ago, it had found a new lease of life, had grown in strength and influence and now was on a par with the Labor Council in the affairs of the State Labor Party. It had developed a taste for power, like the re-discovery of a long-neglected recipe.

‘Mr Clizbe went into the partners’ office and Jerry Balmoral came into mine. I think he thought he could do a line with me.’

‘Should I say Yuk?’

‘Go ahead. He’s got enough conceit for a talk-back host. Anyway, he chit-chatted, then he said – and I quote –’

A lawyer through and through. ‘Go ahead. Quote.’

‘ “Would your father handle a political murder or would that be a job for the Federal police?”’

‘Let me get this straight before you go on. Is this lawyer-client confidentiality?’

‘I wouldn’t be telling you this if it were. It was chit-chat.’

‘Did you ask him why he was asking such a question?’

‘Yes. He said it was just a question that had come up in a discussion on police policy.’

‘What’s a trade union organization doing discussing police policy? Why did he ask you?’

‘He said he knew I was your daughter.’

‘What did you say?’

‘About being your daughter? Nothing. But I told him it would be a State police case and I asked him again where the subject had come up.’

‘What’d he say to that?’

‘He just laughed and I got the charm bit – yuk! He said the question had been asked the other night at a branch meeting.’

‘He say which branch?’

‘No. He then asked me if I was free for dinner last night. I said no, I got more of the charm bit and he then went into the partners’ office. He’s such a smartarse.’

‘How’s Jason?’

‘What sort of question is that?’

‘I didn’t mean he’s a smartarse – forget it. Keep what you’ve told me to yourself, don’t mention it in your office, especially to your bosses. To nobody, understand?’

‘Yes, Inspector.’

‘In your eye. Take care.’

He hung up and went out to the kitchen to breakfast. ‘What did Claire want?’ asked Lisa.

‘She just wanted to know if I’m on the Premier’s murder.’

‘If you are,’ said Maureen, ‘don’t ask me anything we’ve dug up in our investigation.’

‘I’ll let Russ drag you in and hang you by your thumbs if we find you know something we don’t. Don’t expect any favours.’

‘Are we going to sit around this table and you’re not going to tell us anything?’ said Lisa.

‘We know nothing at this stage,’ said Malone, pouring fat-free milk on his Weet-Bix, then slicing a banana on it. In his younger days he had been a steak-and-eggs man for breakfast, but he had reached an age now when he had to watch that the waistline didn’t hide the view of the family jewels. ‘Except that he was shot, we think by a hitman.’

‘Where from?’ asked Tom.

‘From a window right across the street,’ said Maureen, and Malone gestured at the fount of knowledge, the TV researcher. ‘I’ve been on to our night crew. They were inside, in the ballroom, and missed what went on outside. They didn’t even get a shot of the Premier lying on the front steps.’

‘Tough titty,’ said Malone.

‘Your friend, Mr Aldwych, the old guy, threatened to smash our cameraman’s face in.’

‘Jack was always public-spirited.’

‘I don’t think you’ll have to look outside the Labor Party,’ said Tom, reaching for his third piece of toast. ‘From what I’ve read they’re cutting each other’s throats. They’re stacking certain branches with new members, building up cash funds –’

‘What are you reading?’ asked his father. ‘Economics or Politics?’

‘These days, our lecturer says, you can’t separate them. He’s a chardonnay Marxist. I need a new cricket bat.’

‘What does a fast bowler need a new bat for? I used any old bat lying around. I’ll give you mine – Pa’s still got it, I think.’

‘You’re really tight-arsed about money, aren’t you? You give a new meaning to anal-retentive.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Maureen.

‘Does your Marxist lecturer teach you to talk to your dear old dad like that? How much do you want?’

‘A hundred and forty bucks. There’s a sale on.’

‘You’re going to be a good economist. You’re learning how to spend other people’s money.’

Then the phone rang again; it was Gail Lee, the duty officer. ‘It’s on, boss. You’re wanted for a conference with senior officers at the Commissioner’s office at nine o’clock.’

‘Righto, Gail. Tell Russ I want everything collated by the time I get back from Headquarters.’

‘Everything? What have we got so far?’

‘Bugger-all.’ He grinned without mirth to himself; there would not be much smiling over the next week or two. ‘But get it all together.’

Tom went off on his bicycle to his holiday work, stacking shelves at Woolworths. Maureen took the family’s second car, a Laser, and Malone drove Lisa into town in the Falcon.

‘I’m going to be busy.’ Her work as public relations officer on the council’s Olympic committee was becoming burdensome now as the Games got closer. ‘Eight months to the Olympics opening and we have a political assassination. How do I put a nothing-to-worry-about spin on that?’

There were several bad jokes that could answer that, but he refrained. ‘We don’t know if this has anything to do with the Olympics –’

‘I’m not suggesting it has, not directly. But every politician in the State wants to be sitting up there with the IOC bosses when the torch comes into the stadium. Half of them would offer to carry the torch just to have the cameras on them. Hans Vanderberg is up there in Heaven or down in Hell, wherever he’s gone –’

‘Hell. He’s down there now asking the Devil to move over, the real boss has arrived.’

‘Wherever. But he’s spitting chips to see that someone else is going to take his place. Even Canberra is trying to muscle in. That official dais is going to be so crowded –’

‘I can’t look that far ahead.’

He kept his place in the middle lane of traffic; road rage was replacing wife-beating as an expression. A young driver in a BMW coupé shouted at him; a girl in a Mazda on his other side yelled something at Lisa. She turned her head and gave the girl a wide smile and what her children called her royal wave, a turning of the hand just from the wrist. The girl replied with a non-royal middle finger.

‘Ignore them,’ said Malone.

‘Who? The drivers?’

‘No, the politicians. Whatever you put in your release, don’t mention anyone in Macquarie Street. Put your Dutch finger in the dyke and hold it there.’

He dropped her at Town Hall, then drove up to College Street and Police Headquarters. As he entered the lobby he was met by Greg Random, his immediate boss. ‘We sit and just listen, Scobie. No comment unless asked.’

Chief Superintendent Greg Random had never been guilty of a loose word, unlike Malone. He was tall and lean and as weather-beaten as if he had just come in from the western plains. He was part-Welsh and though he couldn’t sing and had never played rugby nor been down a coal mine, he was fond of reciting the melancholy of Welsh poets.

As they rode up in the lift Malone asked, ‘Why here and not Police Centre?’

There was no one else in the lift, so it was safe to be frank and subversive. “This is His Nibs’ castle. Does the Pope go to the Coliseum to declare his encyclicals?’

‘We’re going to get an encyclical today?’

‘You can bet on it.’

The big conference room was full of uniforms and silver braid. Both Random and Malone were in plainclothes, the only ones, and seated in the comer of the room they looked like suspects about to be questioned.

The Deputy Commissioner and all seven Assistant Commissioners were in the room, plus half a dozen Chief Superintendents and five Superintendents. Malone had never seen so much brass since his graduation from the Police Academy. Then Commissioner Zanuch made his entrance.

He never came into a room; he entered. He was a handsome man, something he admitted without embarrassment; there was no point in denying the truth of the mirror. He was vain and an ambitious climber amongst the social alps; he was beginning to see himself as a public monument. He was also highly intelligent, remarkably efficient and no one questioned that he was the best man for the position. Commissioner of Police in the State of New South Wales was not for the unconfident. He would always have enemies on both sides of the law.

He sat down at the top of the long table. ‘You’ve read the papers, heard the news, gentlemen. The talk-back hosts have told us how we should conduct the case and they’ll get louder as the week goes by. We have never been faced with a case as serious and wide-reaching as this one.’

‘We’ve decided it’s political?’ Assistant Commissioner Hassett was Commander, Crime Agencies. He came from the old school, the sledgehammer on the door, the boot up the bum, but he was shrewd and he ran his command with a loose rein and a ready whip.

‘No, we haven’t, Charlie, not yet.’ He looked across the room at Random and Malone. ‘What have you got so far, Chief Superintendent?’

‘Very little, sir. Perhaps Inspector Malone can fill you in.’

Thanks, mate. ‘We have a couple of slim leads, sir. A handprint that may turn up something. A man who was in the shop from where the shot was fired, he was there twice this past week admiring the view from the window. We’re trying to trace him. I expect to hear from Fingerprints this morning if he’s got any record.’

‘Have you started questioning anyone yet?’

A few loose words slipped out: ‘Macquarie Street, sir? Sussex Street?’

‘Oh Gawd,’ said Charlie Hassett and six other Assistant Commissioners gave him silent echo.

Commissioner Zanuch was not entirely humourless. ‘Inspector Malone, let us fear not to tread, but nonetheless, let us tread. Carefully, if you can.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Malone felt every eye in the room was on him. ‘I think I’d rather be in Tibooburra.’ The back of beyond in the Service.

‘Wouldn’t we all.’

The Commissioner was enjoying the situation; over the next few days his Police Service would be the power in the land. The Government would be fighting its war of succession; the Opposition, seeking backs to stab, suddenly looked up and saw opportunity on the other side of the Assembly. Murder creates a vacuum, no matter how small and for how short a time. The vacuum now was large and Commissioner Zanuch stepped into it, secure that he was the tenant by right.

‘Strike force will be set up, unlimited personnel. Call in all the men you want,’ he told Hassett.

‘What about us?’ asked the Assistant Commissioner, Commander Administration, and all his colleagues nodded.

‘We’re united on this,’ said Zanuch. ‘A team. This is political – or it’s going to be. I presume you’ve all got your political contacts?’

All the Assistant Commissioners looked at each other before they all nodded. None of them had achieved his rank by virgin birth. The net of political contacts in the room could have strangled a purer democracy than that of the State in which they served. They were honest men but they knew from long experience that honesty was a workable policy, not necessarily the best.

‘Work those contacts. If you come up with anything, pass it on to Charlie. What shall we call the task force? We have to give it a name for the media – they love labels. They don’t know how to handle anything that’s anonymous.’

‘How about Gold Medal?’ The Assistant Commissioner, VIP Security Services, was a humourist, sour as a lemon. With VIPs, a breed that never diminished, it was difficult to be good-humoured.

‘That will only rile the Opposition,’ said the Assistant Commissioner, Internal Affairs. ‘They could be our bosses in two months.’

‘Let’s be brutal,’ said the Commissioner. ‘We’ll call it Nemesis.’

‘The TV reporters will ask us what that means.’

‘Tell ’em it means their channel bosses,’ said Charlie Hassett and everyone laughed.

The meeting rolled on and at last Random and Malone were released. They said nothing to each other as they went down in the lift, but as they walked out into the glare of the January day Random said sombrely and unexpectedly, ‘We’ll miss The Dutchman.’

Malone looked across the street to Hyde Park, where old men played chess and draughts on tables beneath trees. Kibitzers stood behind them, offering advice, like retired minders. Hans Vanderberg had gone before retirement had consigned him to a bench somewhere, playing old games in his mind, surrounded by ghosts he had defeated with every move.

‘Where will you set up the Incident Room?’

‘At Police Centre. I’ll move in there, you report to me direct. Where are you going to start?’

‘I don’t know, depends what they have for me when I get back to the office.’ He sighed. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to be on holiday right now? Walking the streets of Helsinki.’

‘Why Helsinki?’

‘Can you think of anywhere that’s further away and still has decent hotels?’

Malone went back to Strawberry Hills, to Homicide’s offices. The area had been named after the English estate of Horace Walpole, near-silent member of parliament but compulsive correspondent; he wrote mailbags of letters and Malone sometimes wondered how he would have reacted to the cornucopia of the internet. The offices were spacious and always neat and clean, a tribute to Clements, an untidy man with a contradictory passion for housekeeping, except on his own desk.

Phil Truach, looking in need of another one of his forty cigarettes a day, was waiting with good news: ‘Fingerprints have traced that hand-print on the window-sill. A guy named August, John August. He did three years for armed robbery down in Pentridge and he’d been acquitted before. He’s got enough form.’

‘Anything on him recently?’

‘The Victorians say they haven’t heard of him for nine years. They say on his form he wasn’t a hitman, but you never know.’

‘Is his name on the Sewing Bee’s list of customers?’

Russ Clements had come into Malone’s office, taken his usual place on the couch beneath the window. Though the couch was only four years old, he had dented his imprint on it at one end. He gestured at the typewritten list in his hand. ‘There’s no August. The name here is John June.’

Malone shook his head at the folly of criminals. ‘Full of imagination. What’s the address?’

‘None. Just a phone number.’

He gave it and Malone punched it. He listened for a moment, said, ‘Sorry, wrong number,’ and hung up. ‘Happy Hours Child-Care Centre.’

‘What?’ said the other two.

Malone repeated it. ‘Possible hitman running a day-care centre? It’s a switch.’ He reached for the phone book, found what he wanted. ‘The Happy Hours Child-Care Centre, Longueville. I think I’ll take one of the girls with me. That’ll look better than two big boof-headed cops turning up to frighten the ankle-biters. What else have you got, Russ?’

‘Another list.’ Clements held it up. ‘All the political bods we should look at. You want boof-headed cops on that?’

‘We’d be the only ones they’d understand.’ He stood up, sighed. He was sighing a lot these days, as if it were a medical condition. ‘I’m not looking forward to the next coupla weeks.’

‘It’s all in a good cause.’

‘Did you ever think you’d say that about The Dutchman?’

‘No,’ said Clements. ‘But the old bugger stood by us when we needed him. I think we owe him.’

Malone collected Gail Lee and drove out to Longueville. Gail, half-Chinese, was slim and good-looking, a shade of coolness short of beautiful and as competent as any man on Malone’s staff of nineteen detectives. She drove a little too fast for Malone’s comfort, but he would have been a poor passenger with the driver of a hearse.

Longueville is a small suburb on the northern shore of the Lane Cove river, one of the two main rivers that flow into Sydney Harbour. It is now a pleasant area of solid houses in their own grounds, though some of the more modern ones are as conspicuous as circus tents in a cemetery. The suburb is a quiet retreat that has no major highway running through it. Once, long ago, it was thickly wooded with cedar and mahogany and populated, according to gossip of the times, by murderers and other assorted criminals. Today, if there are any criminals in the area, they are hidden behind accountants, the new forest for retreat.

The Happy Hours Child-Care Centre looked as if it might once have been a scouts’ or a church hall. It stood in a large yard shaded by two big jacarandas and a crepe myrtle. There were sandpits and playground equipment and a dozen or more small children in the yard. There were shouts of laughter coming from the hall, kids in a happy hour.

While Gail went looking for someone in charge Malone moved into the yard and stood looking at the children there. He was not naturally a child-lover, but the behaviour of the very small always fascinated him. Sometimes, but only occasionally, he saw in them what he would have to face when they grew up. He believed that the bad seed could show in sprouts.

Half a dozen sat in a tight circle under one of the jacarandas, bound by giggles as by a daisy chain. Malone smiled at them and they smiled back.

‘You like it here?’

They all nodded, heads under their blue sun-hats going up and down like a circle of semaphores.

Malone looked at the large name-tabs pinned to their yellow smocks. There were Justin and Jared and Jaidene and Alabama and Dakota and Wombat Rose – ‘Wombat Rose? That’s a nice name.’

She was four or five, a cherub with a wicked glint already in her big blue eyes. ‘Me mother wanted to call me Tiger Lily, but that was taken, she said.’

‘No, I like Wombat Rose better.’ Then he saw the small boy sitting by himself under the other jacaranda and he crossed to him. ‘Why are you sitting on your own over here?’

‘They won’t talk to me.’

‘Why?’

“Cos me name’s Fred.’

Before Malone could laugh Gail Lee came out of the hall with a woman. ‘This is Mrs Masson, the owner.’

She was in her forties and feeling the heat and the children, two pressures that rarely have a woman looking her best. She was good-figured and had thick brown hair and large brown eyes, but today, one guessed, was not one of her good days.

‘Police?’ She frowned, making another subtraction from her looks. ‘What do you want? Here?’ She gestured at the innocence around them. ‘Has someone been trying to get at the children?’

‘Nothing like that, Mrs Masson. We’re actually looking for a Mr June. We’d like a word or two with him.’

‘John? My partner?’

‘He’s a partner in the Centre?’

‘No, no, he’s my partner in that other –’ She gestured. ‘We live together. De facto, if you like, but I hate the term.’

‘Me, too. Where could we find him?’

‘What’s it about? Go and play, kids.’ The children had gathered round the three adults, eyes and ears wide. ‘Go and play ball with Fred.’

Fat chance. Fred got up and went into the hall, taking his isolation with him.

‘We’d just like to ask him some questions –’

‘Are you a policeman?’ asked Alabama or Dakota.

‘Kids –’ Mrs Masson was losing patience with the children or the police officers or born – ‘inside!’

‘Is she a lady cop?’ asked Wombat Rose.

‘Inside!’

Malone and Gail Lee hid their smiles as the children, taking their time, made their way into the hall. Suddenly the yard was bare, threatening; the playground equipment looked like torture machinery. Mrs Masson said, ‘You’re not local police, are you?’

‘No.’ Malone added almost reluctantly: ‘We’re from Homicide.’

‘Homicide?’ She frowned again. ‘You’re investigating a murder or something?’ Malone nodded. ‘And you want to talk to John about it? Why?’

‘We’re not accusing him of anything, Mrs Masson.’ This route was well-worn: telling the innocent party things they didn’t know. ‘We think he can throw some light on a case we’re working on. How long have you known John?’

‘I dunno – five, six years. We’ve been together ever since I opened this –’ she swept an arm around her; it looked as if she wanted to sweep it away – ‘four years ago. It’s a struggle since the government took money out of child care –’

‘John doesn’t work here?’

‘No, he has his own one-man business – he’s a carpenter and general handyman. I can get him on his mobile –’

‘No, we don’t want you to do that –’

She frowned yet again; then her eyes opened wide. ‘It’s serious, isn’t it? What’s he done, for God’s sake? Jesus –’ She turned; a young Asian girl stood in the doorway of the hall. ‘Not now, Ailsa – not now!’

‘Mr June is on the phone –’

‘I’ll take it,’ said Gail Lee and moved quickly to the doorway, pushed the girl into the hall and disappeared.

Mrs Masson was silent for a long moment. A cicada started up, the first Malone had heard this summer; it was like a drill against the ear. Then Mrs Masson seemed to gulp, as if she were drowning in disappointment. ‘What’s he done? Are you going to tell me?’

‘How much do you know about him? How much has he told you about himself before he met you?’

She walked slowly, almost blindly, across to a backless bench under one of the trees, the seat where Fred had sat in his exclusion. She sat down and Malone sat beside her, straddling the bench. Inside the hall a game had been started, the children laughing like a mocking chorus while the cicada had been joined by what sounded like a hundred others.

‘He came from Melbourne, he said he’d been married before but it broke up after a couple of years. He has a mother down there, but I’ve never met her.’

‘Has he been a good – partner? A good husband?’

‘I’ve been married before. John is twice as good as the legal husband I had. I love him – does that answer your question? Now tell me what he’s done.’

She looked at him pleadingly, but he turned away as Gail came out of the hall. ‘Mr June is on his way. He’ll be five minutes –he’s coming from Lane Cove.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I said there was some trouble with one of the children.’ She looked at Mrs Masson’s angry frown. ‘I’m sorry –’

The frown now seemed to be permanent, like a scar. ‘For Christ’s sake, tell me what he’s done. You come here, upsetting everyone and everything –’

‘We haven’t done that, Mrs Masson,’ said Malone quietly. ‘We’ve upset you and I’m sorry about that. But no one else. Just let’s wait till Mr June gets here.’

They sat, while the laughter and screams came out of the hall and a magpie carolled in the jacaranda above them and a couple of mynahs chattered at it to get lost. The cicadas suddenly shut up and the other sounds seemed to increase. Then abruptly Mrs Masson stood up, looked at her watch, said, ‘It’s time for their morning snack,’ and walked, almost ran, into the hall.

‘It’s never easy, is it?’ said Gail.

‘What?’

‘Telling them what they don’t know. Don’t want to know.’

‘Never.’

Then two minutes later the van drew up in the street outside. A man got out and came hurrying into the yard. Malone and Gail crossed from the bench to stand in his way as he headed for the hall doorway. ‘Mr June?’

He pulled up sharply. ‘Yes. Are you the child’s parents? What’s happened?’

‘No, Mr June, we’re not.’ Malone produced his badge. ‘Can we have a word? Over here under the trees.’

June hesitated, then followed them. There was nothing threatening about him, though Malone had not been sure what to expect. He was medium height, running a little to fat, with a round pleasant face and thinning black hair that needed a cut. He was dressed in overalls that, with inserts showing, had been let out at the seams; a pair of gold-rimmed glasses hung on a string round his neck. His left hand had the top joint of the middle finger missing.

‘What’s the charge?’

‘None so far. We just thought you could help us with our enquiries.’

‘Shit, that old one!’

‘You’ve heard it before, Mr August?’

For a moment there was no expression at all, as if he were alone without thought. Then abruptly his face clouded, he rolled his lips over his teeth. ‘I gave that name away nine years ago –’

‘Why?’

‘I wanted to make a new start. I’ve done that –’

Then Mrs Masson came out again into the yard; hurrying, as if running away from the children. She rushed straight at August, grabbed his left hand, stood holding it as if he were another of her charges. ‘What’s it about, John? What do they want?’

‘They just want to ask me some questions. I –I saw something the other day – I didn’t tell you about it –’

‘What?’

He was a practised liar; he had been living a lie for nine years. ‘A couple fighting – they just want me to tell them what I saw –’

‘Someone’s dead? They said they were from Homicide—’ One could almost see her mind racing, she was defending – what? She looked at Malone. ‘Is someone dead?’

‘Yes. We’ll just take Mr – Mr June back to our office. He’ll be back here within an hour.’

‘Why can’t you ask him the questions here?’ She was still clinging to his hand. She’s a mother, Malone thought, but where are her own kids?

Then the children came spraying out of the hall, a yellow-smocked torrent. Justin, Jared; Jaidene, Alabama, Dakota, Wombat Rose: even Fred joined the circle round the adults. Twenty or thirty other children milled around. They all stared at the adults, innocent as cherubs but ears as wide as devils’. Wombat Rose looked up at Malone and winked at him with both eyes.

‘Come on, Mr June. We’ll have you back here in an hour.’

‘I’ll come with you, John –’

He took his hand from hers, put it against her cheek. ‘It’ll be all right, sweetheart. Don’t worry, I’ll be back, it’s okay.’

It was difficult to tell if he was trying to tell her something. Was there some secret between them? But she just looked at him blankly, shook her head as if to deny mat everything was okay.

Malone, Gail Lee and August/June went out of the yard, trailed by a dozen kids as far as the gate. Mrs Masson still stood under the jacaranda tree; the tiny splurge of yellow smocks leaked away from her, leaving her high and dry and alone. August looked back and waved with the hand that was his mark.

‘I’ll follow you,’ he said, moving towards his van.

‘No, lock it, John. We’ll get you back here.’

‘That’s a promise?’ For a moment something like a smile hovered around his small mouth.

‘No, John. Depends what you have to tell us.’

Gail drove the unmarked police car and Malone sat in the back with August. They had been travelling for ten minutes before August broke his silence. ‘Now we’re away from Lynne, tell me why you’ve picked me up.’

‘We’re questioning a list of clients from the Sewing Bee. Your name was on the list.’

He laughed. ‘The fat and the thin, a list of all those needing alterations? Come on–’ Then he sobered, looked quizzically at Malone. ‘This hasn’t got something to do with what happened to the Premier last night?’

‘What makes you think it has?’

He shook his head. ‘You don’t catch me like that. Yeah, I was at that place, the alterations centre, what’s it called? The Sewing Bee. I remember standing at the window, having a look at the place across George Street, Olympic Tower. What I’ve read, what was on radio this morning, Hans Vanderberg was standing at the front of the hotel when he was shot, right? He was shot from the Sewing Bee, that what you’re saying? So what am I supposed to know?’

He wasn’t belligerent, just curious. Malone had met other hitmen and they had all had a characteristic coldness, sometimes blatant, other times subdued. It was a job, with most of them part-time: you killed the target, collected your pay, went home.. One or two of them had been show-offs, mug lairs, but they did not last long; sooner or later someone hit them. August, if he was the hitman in the Vanderberg case, was out of character.

There was silence in the car again till they reached the Harbour Bridge, where they were held up by a long bank-up of traffic. August looked out at the mass of cars and trucks, immobile as rocks.

‘Can you imagine what it’s gunna be like during the Olympics?’

‘I’m leaving town,’ said Malone. ‘I’m going to Tibooburra.’

‘What about you, miss?’ August could not be friendlier, more unworried.

‘I have seats for all the main events at the stadium.’ Gail glanced at Malone in the rear-vision mirror. ‘My father bought them. He said we’re to be one hundred per cent, dinky-di Aussies for two weeks.’

‘I’m one of the fifty thousand volunteer helpers,’ said August.

‘Doing what?’ Shooting whoever is on the official dais on opening day? Malone, against reason, was becoming irritated by August’s apparent lack of concern.

‘Helping the disabled. Getting them seated, things like that. I like volunteer work. I do Meals on Wheels in my van once a week.’

Are we bringing in the wrong bloke? But you had to start somewhere and this man was the only one with a record. Malone made no comment and they drove the rest of the way to Strawberry Hills in silence. As they rode up in the lift to Homicide’s offices August said, ‘You’re making a mistake, you know.’

‘We sometimes do, John. But once we’ve eliminated them, we usually come up with the right answer.’

‘Are there any reporters here?’

‘We don’t encourage them.’

‘Do me a favour? After I’ve convinced you I know nothing about all this, don’t let them know you’ve had me in here. I want to protect Lynne and her day-care centre.’

Gail took August into one of the interview rooms and Malone went into his office to see what was on his desk. Clements followed him.’ Why’d you bring him back here instead of taking him to Police Centre and the incident room?’

‘Because that’s where the media are hanging out. I don’t want them asking questions or guessing till we’ve got something definite.’

‘He admitted anything?’

‘Nothing. Anything further come in?’

‘We double-checked the Sewing Bee list, everyone on it has been interviewed. He’s the only one with form, if you exclude Charlie Hassett.’

‘He’s on the list?’

“Three uniforms being let out at the seams. He’s already been on to me. If I let it slip to the media, he’s demoting me to probationary constable … There’s more come in from Victoria on August. One of those acquittals he got was for attempted murder – his first wife’s boyfriend. What’s he like?’

‘He’s a carpenter and handyman, that’s his trade. In his spare time he does Meals on Wheels.’

‘Holding a gun at their heads to make ’em eat it?’ Then he smiled sourly. ‘Why am I so cynical about reformed crims?’

‘Has anyone been down to Trades Congress headquarters?’

‘With the crowd we’ve got working on this, you can bet someone’s been down there. But nothing’s come through on the computer yet.’

‘Ring Greg Random, tell him to tell everyone to lay off. That is for you and me soon’s I finish with our friend inside.’

He went out to the interview room. August sat comfortably on one side of the table and Gail sat opposite him. The room was sparsely furnished: table, four chairs and the video recorder. August gestured at it, casually:

‘You gunna turn that on?’

‘Not unless you want us to.’ Malone sat down. ‘We’ll do that if we decide to charge you.’

‘What with?’

‘Murder of the Premier.’

August looked around him, as if looking for an audience for this comedy. Then he sat forward, suddenly serious. A strand of the thinning hair had fallen forward and he pushed it back.

‘Inspector Malone, I’m not a murderer –’

‘You tried to murder your first wife’s boyfriend.’

August waved a curt hand. ‘The jury didn’t think so. We had a stoush, a fight over a gun, his gun, not mine, and it went off.’

Malone couldn’t contradict this; he hadn’t read the transcript of the trial. Perhaps he should have done a little more homework. ‘What did you feel when he got the bullet and you didn’t?’

‘Glad. What would you feel? The guy was sleeping with my wife … Let’s get down to why you think I murdered Mr Vanderberg. Because I’ve got form? I’ve had none for the last nine years, I’m clean –’ He folded his hands together, looked down at them. ‘I came up here, changed my name, made a new start. I met Lynne, we hit it off and I moved in with her … You’ve got nothing on me, Inspector, except my past.’

‘Where were you last night around eleven o’clock?’ asked Gail.

‘Home.’ Then he smiled wryly. ‘Alone. Lynne was at some parents’ meeting and didn’t get home till midnight. Earlier, I’d been up at Lane Cove town hall, a meeting on aged care. More volunteering …’He smiled again; he could not have been more relaxed. ‘I got home around ten, waited up for Lynne and we went to bed, I dunno, twelve-thirty, around then.’

‘What did you do between getting home at ten and Lynne’s arrival? Watch television?’

He smiled again; he was not cocky, but there was a growing confidence. ‘You don’t catch me like that, Constable. No, I rarely watch TV after ten o’clock. I read, old crime thrillers – d’you read crime novels?’

‘No,’ said Gail.

‘I do – occasionally,’ said Malone. ‘What did you read last night?’

‘Elmore Leonard, one of his early ones.’

‘Which one?’ asked Malone, who always read Leonard.

‘I can never remember titles.’

‘Try, John.’

The smile now was fixed. ‘Switch, that was it. The one about the guy on the toilet that’s got a bomb attached to the seat – if he stands up, he’s a goner. Very funny. Embarrassing, too.’

‘That was Freaky Deaky. I’d have thought you’d remember a title like that.’

‘I told you, I’m no good at titles. For years I thought I’d read The Maltese Pigeon.’

‘Nice joke, John, but let’s be serious. We’d like a look at your bank account and Mrs Masson’s.’

‘Why?’

‘The price for knocking off the Premier wouldn’t have been small change. The hitman might’ve been paid in cash, people don’t write cheques for those sort of jobs. The hitman would have to deposit it somewhere. He wouldn’t cart fifty thousand around in a brown paper-bag –’

‘Fifty thousand?’ He seemed genuinely interested in the amount. ‘You think that’s what he got?’

‘Maybe more. I don’t know the price for political assassination – it may be more, much more. Do you need money, John?’

‘Who doesn’t? But I wouldn’t kill anyone for it.’ He was still calm, still unoffended.

Malone so far had no doubts; but he had no conviction, either. An open mind did not mean it was non-adhesive: fragments occasionally stuck that gave a hint of a recognizable picture. At the moment it was like trying to paint a picture on water.

‘Why would I kill Hans Vanderberg? I voted for him in the last election. I’d do the same at the next. He was sly and conniving and half the time you didn’t believe what he said, but he got things done.’

‘Who’d you vote as? John June?’ asked Gail.

‘Yes. The Electoral Commission can’t always check on whether you are who say you are. They were satisfied I was an honest citizen – which I am.’

‘But John August, the real you, might not care one way or the other?’

August just looked at her, the mere shadow of a smile on his lips, and Malone said, ‘Detective Lee has a point. Which bank do you and Mrs Masson use? We can get a court order –’

‘There’ll be no need for that.’ This time his voice was snappy. ‘I’ll give you permission to look at mine. But you’ll have to ask Lynne about hers –’

‘We’ll do that. We also want a release from you in the name of John August. Just in case you have two bank accounts.’

August shook his head; the lock of hair fell down again and he pushed it back. He seemed now to be losing patience; or confidence. ‘You’re wasting your time. But okay, I’ll sign a release in my real name. Or what was my real name.’ He looked down at his hands, stared at them, then at last looked up. Both detectives were surprised at the sadness in his eyes: ‘How much are you gunna tell Lynne? About my past, my record?’

‘If we find you’re in the clear,’ said Malone quietly, ‘we’ll tell her nothing. That’s up to you … Why did you shoot him, John?’

But that didn’t catch August off-balance: ‘Try someone else, Inspector. It wasn’t me who shot him. I’ve read what’s been going on lately. He has enough enemies to kill him from a dozen sides.’

Malone stared at him, then looked at Gail Lee: ‘Any more questions?’

‘Just a couple … How much do you know about guns, Mr August?’

‘Not much.’

‘But you knew where to buy a gun? You used a gun in that job you did time for, the armed robbery one.’

‘That was Melbourne. I’ve forgotten where I got it.’

‘So a gun’s an everyday item with you? You buy one and forget where?’

‘It was twelve years ago, for Crissakes!’ For a moment the calm demeanour was gone; then he put it on again like a mask: ‘Sorry. I’ll remember and let you know. Can you remember what you were doing twelve years ago?’

‘I was about to start Year 10 at high school. I wasn’t buying a gun.’

His look was almost admiring. Then he said, ‘It’s different these days, in high school, I mean.’

‘Knives, Mr August, not guns. Not yet.’ Then she said, ‘Where do you live?’

He gave an address in Lane Cove. ‘It’s a flat, in Lynne’s name. Why?’

‘We’ll get a warrant to search it. Just routine.’

The mask dropped. ‘Christ, how do I explain that to Lynne?’

‘Maybe you’d better tell her the truth about yourself.’ Malone stood up. ‘Righto, John, you can go. Detective Lee and one of my men will drive you back to Longueville. But if you want to keep your secret from Lynne, maybe you’d like to wait while Detective Lee gets the search warrant. Then we can search your flat and maybe Lynne won’t need to know.’

‘I’ll wait. I’m not gunna hurt Lynne, if it can be avoided.’

2

‘Do you think the hit was meant for one of us?’ asked Aldwych.

‘No,’ said Jack Junior. ‘All the union trouble is over. They’ve moved on to fight other developers.’

‘I still don’t trust our Chinese partners. I don’t mean Les –he’s one of us. Nor the Feng family – even that girl Camilla isn’t gunna make waves.’

The original consortium of partners had been a mixture that at times had had Aldwych thinking he was a foreigner in his own country. Besides Leslie Chung there had been two local Chinese families; there were also Madame Tzu, representing herself, and General Wang-Te, the director from a Shanghai corporation whose connections were as murky as the Whangpoo River. Sometimes Aldwych wondered what had happened to the White Australia policy of his youth. There were more bloody foreigners in the country now than kangaroos.

‘I still wouldn’t trust Madame Tzu as far as the other side of the street. As for the General –’

‘You’re too suspicious,’ said Juliet, a foreigner.

‘I thought you Roumanians loved suspicion? You and the Hungarians invented the revolving door, didn’t you, so’s you could watch each other’s back?’

‘I love you, Papa.’ She knew he liked being called Papa. Once distant from each other, they were now friends. ‘You’d have made a wonderful dictator.’

‘Better than some you’ve had. That bloke Ceausescu ... he got what he deserved. The Dutchman was a dictator, but he didn’t deserve to be shot.’

They were having breakfast on the terrace of the junior Aldwychs’ apartment on the tip of Point Piper. The point was almost sunk by the wealth on it; land here was valued by the cupful. Aldwych, instead of going home to his own big house at Harbord, on the northern side of the harbour, had driven out here with his son and daughter-in-law and stayed the night. He enjoyed Juliet’s company and her looks, but, as with Madame Tzu, he would not have trusted her as far as the other side of the street. He had never trusted any woman but his dead wife Shirl. Beautiful women were even more suspect than others: they knew the value of their looks. Jack Junior, on the other hand, had never fallen for any but good-looking women.

The apartment was sumptuous, an estate agent could have found no other word for it; but it was not like a House & Garden illustration, it was lived in. Juliet could spend money like an IMF grantee, but Jack Junior begrudged her nothing. Aldwych Senior, sometimes to his own surprise, no longer mentally reproached Juliet for her extravagance. This apartment was a contrast to his own house, where he lived amongst Laura Ashley prints and Dresden figurines, none of which he would ever replace because they had been Shirl’s choice. Shirl had died before Juliet came along and sometimes he wondered how the two women would have got along. He had had reservations about Juliet, but she had proved him wrong. The marriage was now six years old and there appeared to be no cracks in it. Juliet was extravagant, but she didn’t have to be Roumanian to be that; half the country lived on credit beyond its ability to pay and half the country didn’t have multi-millionaire husbands. She had proved a better wife than some of Jack Junior’s other women would have been. There were no children and no talk of any, but that didn’t worry Aldwych. He had little faith that the next forty or fifty years of the new millennium was going to be a cakewalk for the young. He was long past optimism.

Now, looking at a Manly ferry taking commuters to the city, he was pensive, a symptom of his ageing. ‘If the hit wasn’t meant for either of us –’

‘Dad, keep me out of it. If it was meant for either of us, it would’ve been you. Some of your old mates may have wanted a last crack at you.’

‘All my old mates are dead, including the ones who were not my mates. Lenny McPherson is gone, all the old mugs who had it in for me.’ In his memory was a gallery of enemies. He had consorted, as the cops called it, with other crims, but he had always been his own man. Or, to a certain extent and which he would not have admitted to anyone, he had been part Shirt’s man. ‘Is this upsetting you, Juliet?’

‘Not at all. As you said, I’m Roumanian.’ Sometimes one’s national bad characteristics can be indulged in.

He smiled at her approvingly. ‘You’ll do me, love …’ He hadn’t called anyone love since Shirl had died. ‘Well, like I was saying – if it wasn’t meant for either of us, then maybe we’ve got problems.’

‘Don’t ask,’ said Jack Junior as Juliet looked puzzled.

‘Of course I’m going to ask. Why will you have problems, Papa?’

‘We want to build a small casino up at Coffs Harbour.’ A resort and retirement town halfway between Sydney and Brisbane. ‘Hans Vanderberg was in favour of it. He wasn’t a gambler, but anything that brought in more taxes was right up his street. The Pope would bless gambling if it brought in more revenue –’

Juliet blessed herself. She never went near a church except at Christmas, but the nuns from her old school still whispered in her ear.

Aldwych smiled at the gesture, but went on: ‘We dunno about Billy Eustace, if he takes over – he says he’s anti-gambling, but they all say that till Treasury talks to ’em. If the Coalition wins the election, we dunno about them, either. They’ve got some wowsers amongst them, especially if they’re from the bush.’

‘Wowsers?’ Juliet had been only a child when she had come to Australia, but she still had difficulty with some of the language, especially slang that was older even than her father-in-law.

‘Killjoys,’ said Jack Junior. ‘Gambling is a social evil.’

She had been a gambler all her life, but rarely a loser. ‘How quaint.’

She had a touch of larceny to her that Aldwych liked. Shirl had never had it. She had known of his trade, but as long as he never brought it into her home, her retreat, she had said nothing. He was not given to fantasy, but once or twice he had thought of her as an angel married to a demon. He had taken to reading late in life, but he really would have to give up reading some of the books on the shelves in the Harbord house.

‘We’ll have to start smoodging, leaving some money lying around.’

‘We’ll have to be careful,’ said Jack Junior. He was a plotter, like his father, but in business, not bank robbery, and therefore more skilled. ‘Too many of them are more moral these days.’

‘How quaint,’ said Juliet.

Out on the harbour two youths on jet skis cut across the bow of a small yacht. The yacht had to tack abruptly, its sails quivering with indignation. Aldwych watched it, came as close to a snarl as he got these days: ‘He should of run ’em down.’

‘Who?’

Aldwych turned his head from watching the harbour. ‘The Dutchman should of got them before they got him.’

He knew all about survival.

3

‘Do you think he’s the one?’ asked Clements.

‘I dunno. Who else have we got? He’s the only one on that Sewing Bee list who’s got a record. We just keep tabs on him. We’ll get the task force to put him under 24-hour surveillance –we don’t want him shooting through, changing his name again. The one good thing I could say for him – he’s going to protect Mrs Masson, the woman he’s living with.’

‘Unless –’

‘Unless she knows what he did – if he did do it.’ Malone shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so … Now you and I are going down to Sussex Street, but first we’re going to look in on Roger Ladbroke. He knows more about who works what and how in the Labor Party than anyone except his late boss.’

‘You vote Labor, don’t you?’ Despite their long association they had never admitted how each of them had voted. There is a majority amongst the natives whose vote is as secret as whether they believe or not in God.

‘You vote the Coalition, don’t you?’

‘Okay –’ Clements grinned – ‘we’re apolitical on this one.’

‘We’d better be or the media will heap shit on us.’

Malone had checked that Ladbroke was in his office at Parliament House. They drove into the city and round the back of the government complex. As they swung into the garage they saw the group under a tree in the Domain, the city common; someone, too distant to be recognized, was holding a press conference, cameras aimed at him like bazookas. Then they were in the garage and the security guard was holding them up.

Clements, who was driving, produced his badge. ‘You’ll be seeing a lot of us in the next few days.’

‘Terrible business,’ said the guard, a burly man young enough to have been Hans Vanderberg’s grandson. ‘He could be a cranky old bastard, but we all liked him and respected him. Good luck. Get the shits who killed him.’

‘You notice?’ said Malone as they got out of the car. ‘He used the plural – the shits who killed him. Nobody’s going to believe this was a one-man job.’

The two women secretaries in the Premier’s outer office still looked stunned, as if their boss’ murder had occurred only an hour ago. One was drying her eyes as the two detectives came in and asked for Ladbroke. Without rising she pointed to the inner door, as if she and her colleague no longer had anything to protect.

Ladbroke was packing files into cartons. He was jacketless and tieless; he seemed even to have shed his urbanity. He looked up irritably as Malone and Clements came, then took a deep breath and made an effort to gather himself together.

‘Billy Eustace wants to move in this afternoon as Acting Premier. The king is dead, long live the king.’ He still wore his old cynicism; it was like a second skin. ‘You come up with anything yet?’

‘We’ve got a few things to work on,’ said Malone. ‘We’re on our way down to Sussex Street. We’d like some background on what’s been going on the past few weeks.’

Ladbroke looked at a file in his hand, then tapped one of the cartons. ‘A good deal of it is in here, but I can’t let you see it. It’s stuff that was leaked to the Old Man from down there.’

‘We could get a warrant. Those aren’t Cabinet papers, Roger.’

Ladbroke drew another deep breath, then put the file in a carton and pushed the box along the Premier’s big desk. ‘Okay, but read it here. There are three files – the red-tabbed ones.’

Malone pushed the carton towards Clements. ‘You’re the speed-reader.’

Clements took the three red-tabbed files and retired to a chair by the window. Malone sat down and looked across the desk at Ladbroke, who had slumped down in what had been his boss’ chair. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I’m organizing a State funeral for him. After that—’ He shrugged.

‘A State funeral? When?’

‘Friday. Gert insisted on it. Eleven o’clock Friday morning at St Mary’s Cathedral.’

‘He was a Catholic?’

‘No, she is. He was everything the voters were on a particular day. If the Mormons or the Holy Rollers could swing the vote in an electorate, he was out there nodding his head to polygamy or clapping his hands and singing “Down by the Riverside”.’

‘Do the Mormons still practise polygamy?’

Ladbroke shrugged again; Malone had never seen him so listless. ‘I don’t know. Anyhow, he’s a Catholic for Friday. St Mary’s jumped at the idea when Gert said she wanted a State funeral. St Andrew’s has had the last three, they’ve all been Anglicans. Friday at St Mary’s they’ll be tossing the incense around like smoke bombs. They might even canonize him.’ For the first time since they had entered the office he smiled. ‘He’d enjoy that.’