Читать книгу Dragons at the Party - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 8

‘Nobody wants them,’ said Russ Clements. ‘The Americans wouldn’t fly them out and they leaned on Canberra.’

‘Kenthurst was telling me last night,’ said Malone, ‘that everyone down in Canberra wishes they’d move on. Including Phil Norval.’

‘Canberra is going to be even more shitty when we tell & what came in from Interpol this morning.’

When Malone had arrived at Homicide this morning Clements had been waiting for him with a phone message from Fingerprints. The print on the cistern button in the Kiddle flat had been positively identified: it belonged to Miguel Seville.

‘Are there any mug shots of Seville?’ Malone asked.

‘Just the one.’

Clements took a 5 × 4 photo out of the murder box, an old shoe carton that over the years had, successively, held all the bits and pieces of the cases he had worked on. It was falling apart, only held together by a patchwork skin of Scotch tape, but he held on to it as if it were some treasure chest in which lay the solution to all murders.

‘It was taken about twelve years ago, when the Argentinian cops picked him up. That was before he became a mercenary, when he was with that Tupperware crowd. Tupperware?’

‘Tupamaros.’

Clements grinned. ‘I was close.’

‘I know a Tupperware lady who wouldn’t thank you for it.’

Malone looked at the photo of the curly-haired handsome young man. He would have been in his late twenties or early thirties when the photo was taken, but already the future was etched in his face: a defiance of all authority, a contempt for all political and social morality. Malone wondered if he had ever had any genuine belief in the Tupamaros’ fight against the Argentinian junta and its repressive rule.

‘He’s taken the place of that Venezuelan guy,’ said Clements. ‘That Carlos. Whatever happened to him?’

‘Special Branch said the rumour is that the Libyans got rid of him. Maybe we should ring up Gaddafi and ask him to get rid of this bloke, too.’

‘You reckon he’ll try another shot at Timori?’

‘Depends how much he’s been paid. And who’s paying him.’

Malone looked out the window, over Hyde Park and down to the northern end where Macquarie Street ran into it. That street was where the State politicians conducted their small wars; but there was no terrorism. There might be vitriolic and vulgar abuse that made other parliaments look like church meetings, but there were no assassin’s bullets. Now Timori, the unwanted guest, had, even if involuntarily, brought that danger to Sydney.

‘Did The Dutchman have anything to say this morning?’ So far Malone hadn’t looked at this morning’s newspapers. He was not a radio listener and he usually got home too late to look at the evening TV news. When he got the news it was usually cold and in print, but he had found that the world still didn’t get too far ahead of him. There was something comforting in being a little way behind it, as if the news had somehow been softened by the time it got to him.

‘His usual garble. I dunno whether he’s for or against Timori.’

‘If Phil Norval’s for him, The Dutchman will be against him.’

The Dutchman was Hans Vanderberg, the State Premier, an immigrant who had come to Australia right after World War Two, had become a trade union official, joined the Labour Party, got on well with the Irish Catholics who ran it, taken on some of their characteristics and ten years ago had become Leader of the Party and Premier. He was famous for his garbled speeches and his double-Dutch (or was it Irish?) logic; but he was the best politician in the country and he and everyone else knew it. He was also a magnificent hater and he hated no one more than Prime Minister Philip Norval.

Malone looked at his watch. ‘We’d better get over to Kirribilli. What time do Presidents have breakfast?’

‘I know what time I had mine. Six o’bloody clock.’

Malone grinned; he always liked working with Russ Clements. ‘You’d better get used to it, sport. This looks like it’s going to be a round-the-clock job.’

‘How does Lisa feel about you working on the holiday weekend?’

‘She wouldn’t speak to me this morning. Neither would the kids. I’d promised to bring them all in to The Rocks to see the celebrations.’

‘I was going to the races. I’ve got two hot tips for today.’

‘Put them on SP. Where do you get your tips?’

‘From a coupla SP bookies I used to raid when I was on the Gambling Squad.’

‘How much are you ahead this year so far?’

‘A thousand bucks and it’s only January twenty-third. They’ll be holding a Royal Commission into me if it keeps up.’

‘What do you do with all your dough?’ Clements always looked as if he didn’t have his bus fare.

‘Some day I’m gunna have an apartment in that block down at the Quay, right there above the ferries. People will point the finger at me and say I made it outa graft, but I won’t give a stuff. I’ll pee on ’em from a great height and if some of it lands on some crims I’ve known, so much the better.’

Malone grinned, wished him well, stood up and led the way out of Homicide. The division was located on the sixth floor of a commercial building that the police department shared with other government departments, most of them minor. Security in this commercial building, because of the shared space with other departments going about their mundane business, was minimal. Malone sometimes wondered what would happen if some madman, bent on homicide towards Homicide, got loose in the building.

They drove through the bedecked streets of the city. The citizens held high hopes for the coming year; it was no use living in the past, even though they were celebrating it. They had just come through the worst recession in years; they had been told to tighten their belts, torture for the beer-bellied males of the population, but for this week they were letting out the notches. There is nothing like a carnival for helping one forget one’s debts: banks are always closed on Carnival Day.

They drove over the Bridge, above the harbour already suffering a traffic-jam of yachts and cruisers and wind-surfers, and turned off into the tree-lined streets of Kirribilli. This small enclave on the north shore of the harbour, directly opposite the Opera House and the downtown skyscrapers, had had a chequered history. In the nineteenth century it had been the home of the wool merchants. In the 1920s middle-class apartments had been built on the waterfront. After World War Two it had gone downhill till in the late sixties it had become a nest for hippies and junkies. Then real estate agents, those latterday pioneers, had rediscovered it. Now it provided pieds-à-terre for retired millionaires, luxury apartments for some prominent businessmen, small town houses for young executives and their families and, almost as a gesture of social conscience, two or three rooming houses for those who couldn’t afford the prices of the other accommodation. Kirribilli, an Aboriginal word meaning ‘a good place to fish’, also provided Sydney havens for the Governor-General, the Prime Minister and ASIO, the national intelligence organization. It was natural that the local elements, including those in the rooming houses, thought of themselves as exclusive.

The dead end street leading to Kirribilli House was blocked off by police barriers. The television and radio trucks and cars were parked on the footpaths of the narrow street. The anti-Timori demonstrators were jammed solid against the barriers; there was a sprinkling of Asians amongst them, but the majority were the regulars that Malone recognized from other demonstrations; in the past twenty years protest had become a participation sport. Standing behind the demonstrators, as if separated by some invisible social barrier, was a curious crowd of locals, some of them looking disturbed, as if already worrying about falling real estate barriers. Murder and political demos did nothing for the exclusivity of an area.

Standing just inside the gates of Kirribilli House was a group of thirty or forty Paluccans, men, women and children. They were all well dressed, some in Western clothes, others in Eastern; they looked nothing like the photos Malone had seen of those other refugees of recent years, the Vietnamese boat people. Yet for all their air of affluence they looked frightened and lost.

‘They’re probably the lot who came in with the Timoris on the RAAF planes,’ Clements said. ‘They’ve had them out at one of the migrant hostels.’

‘Better question them, find out if any of them were missing last night. Get Andy Graham and Joe Raudonikis to talk to them.’ Then Malone noticed the three Commonwealth cars parked in the driveway. ‘Someone’s here from Canberra.’

Someone was: the Prime Minister himself. As Malone and Clements walked towards the house, Philip Norval, backed by half a dozen staff and security men, came out of the front door with Police Commissioner John Leeds.

The Commissioner, as usual, was impeccably dressed; he was the neatest man Malone had ever met. He was not in uniform, probably as a concession to the holiday weekend, but was in a beautifully cut blazer, slacks, white shirt and police tie. Why do I always feel like a slob when I meet him? Malone thought. Then he looked out of the corner of his eye at Clements, a real slob, and felt better.

‘Ah, Inspector Malone.’ Leeds stopped with a friendly half-smile. He nodded at Clements, but he was not a man to go right down the ranks with his greetings. He turned to the Prime Minister. ‘Inspector Malone is in charge of the investigation, sir.’

Philip Norval put out his hand, the famous TV smile flashing on like an arc-lamp. He gave his greetings to everyone, even those who didn’t vote for him. ‘Scobie Malone? I thought you’d be out at the Test.’

‘Maybe Monday, sir. If …’ Malone gestured towards the house. He had once played cricket for New South Wales as a fast bowler and might eventually have played for Australia; but he had enjoyed his cricket too much to be dedicated and ambitious and, though he never regretted it, had never gone on to realize his potential. In today’s sports world of ambition, motivational psychologists, slave-master coaches and business managers, he knew he would have been looked upon as a bludger, the equivalent of someone playing on welfare.

Norval said, ‘I’m going out there later.’

He would be, thought Malone. Though he had never shown any talent in any sport, Philip Norval never missed an opportunity to be seen at a major sporting event, preferably photographed with the winners. There had been one dreadful day at a croquet championship when, not understanding the game or the tally count, he had allowed himself to be photographed with the losers; in the end it hadn’t mattered since they had all turned out to be conservative voters. He occasionally was photographed at an art show or at the opera, but his political advisers always told him there were no votes in those camera opportunities.

He was fifty but looked a youthful forty. Blond and handsome in the bland way that the electronic image had made international, he had been the country’s highest paid television and radio star for a decade, the blow-dried and pancaked tin god host of chat shows and talk-back sessions, with a mellifluous voice and no enemies but the more acidic and envious TV critics who, if they were lucky, earned one-fiftieth of what he was paid. A kitchen cabinet of rich industrialists and bankers, looking around for a PM they could manipulate into the correct right-wing attitudes, had taken him in hand and within six years put him in The Lodge, the Prime Minister’s residence in Canberra. He had been there five years now, was in his second term and, though known as the Golden Puppet, so far looked safe from any real opposition.

‘We have a problem here, Inspector.’ He was famous for his fatuities: it came of too many years of playing to the lowest common denominator.

‘Yes, sir.’ Malone looked at Leeds, his boss, who was entitled to know first. ‘We have a lead. We think the killer could be Miguel Seville.’

‘Seville?’ said Norval. ‘Who’s he? Some guy from Palucca?’

‘He’s an international terrorist, an Argentinian.’ Leeds was perturbed, looked searchingly at Malone. ‘You sure?’

‘It’s a guess, sir, but an educated one.’

Norval looked at one of his aides for his own education: it was tough enough trying to keep up with the voters’ names, let alone those of terrorists. The aide nodded and Norval himself then nodded. ‘Oh sure, I’ve read about him. But how did he get into the act?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Malone. ‘I’m just going in now to put some more questions to President Timori.’

‘Take it easy, Inspector,’ said Norval. ‘You’d better explain what we’ve decided, Commissioner. Keep in touch.’

He shook hands with Leeds, Malone and even Clements, looked around to make sure he hadn’t missed an outstretched paw, then went up the driveway to the waiting cars. Just inside the gates he stopped and raised his arms in greeting to the crowd at the barriers. The demonstrators booed and jeered and suggested several unattractive destinations. He just gave them the famous smile, aware of the newsreel cameras advancing on him, then got into the lead car and the convoy moved off. The Golden Puppet might be manipulated in significant matters, but no one knew better than he how to juggle the superficial.

‘What’s been decided, sir?’ said Malone.

‘Would you leave us alone for five minutes, Sergeant?’ Leeds waited till Clements had moved away, then said, ‘The PM would like us to have hands-off as much as possible.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘Don’t get testy with me, Inspector –’

‘Sorry, sir. But why?’

‘Politics. You and I have run up against them before. I understand the dead man, Masutir, had a bag of emeralds in his pocket, a pretty rich packet.’

‘I wouldn’t even guess – none of us knows anything about gems. I could ask Madame Timori. Sergeant Kenthurst, from the Federals, said she grabbed them as soon as she saw them.’

‘She’s not going to tell us anything about them. That’s part of our problem – they’ve landed out here with what seems like half the Paluccan Treasury. The RAAF who brought them out of Bunda also brought six packing cases. Customs went up to Richmond last night, to the RAAF base, and went through the cases.’

‘I thought the Timoris would have claimed diplomatic immunity.’

‘They would have, if they’d known what was happening. It wasn’t a ministerial order. Some smart aleck in Customs, one of the left-wingers, overstepped the mark. The cases were opened and the contents down on paper before the Minister got wind of it. You know what happens when something goes down on paper in a government department. It becomes indelible and then multiplies.’

Malone grinned. ‘I thought that’s what happens at Headquarters?’

‘Do you want to finish up as the constable in charge of a one-man station in the bush?’ But Leeds allowed himself a smile; then he sobered again: ‘The Timoris brought out an estimated twenty-two million dollars’ worth of gold, gems and US currency.’

Malone whistled silently and Leeds nodded. Though there was a considerable difference in rank, there was an empathy between the two men. Twice before they had been caught up in politics, with Malone as the ball-carrier and the Commissioner, in the end, having to call the play. Malone began to wonder how far he would be allowed to carry the ball in this game. Perhaps he should send for Thumper Murphy and his sledge-hammer.

‘There’s a rumour they have a couple of billion salted away in Switzerland. It’s no wonder the Americans didn’t want them.’

‘How did we get landed with them?’ Malone said.

‘I thought you knew. Madame Timori was an old girl-friend of the PM’s.’

Malone could feel the ball getting heavier. He looked over Leeds’ shoulder and saw that Madame Timori, in white slacks and a yellow silk shirt, had come out on to the veranda of the house and was gazing steadily at him and the Commissioner.

‘Well, I’d better get it over with. Just routine questions?’

‘Unless you put your foot in it again, like you used to.’ Leeds buttoned up his blazer. The morning was already hot, the temperature already in the eighties, but he looked as if he might be in his air-conditioned office. ‘Your tie’s loose.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Malone tightened his tie. ‘I’m afraid Madame Timori may want to hang me with it.’

‘Don’t look for me to cut you down. Good luck.’

He went out of the gates and Malone was left feeling alone and exposed. Twenty-two years ago, in his first representative game for the State, he had gone in as the last-wicket batsman to face two of the quickest bowlers in the country. One of them had hit him under the heart with his first ball and he bad gone down like a pole-axed steer. He had somehow recovered and seen out the rest of the over and on the last ball, foolishly, had scored a run to bring him to the other end. There he had been hit twice in the ribs by the second bowler and he had found himself wondering why he had taken up such a dangerous sport as cricket. The bruises had taken two weeks to fade.

He walked towards Madame Timori wondering how long the bruises she would give him would take to fade.