Kitabı oku: «Dragons at the Party»

Copyright

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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First published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1987

Copyright © Jon Cleary 1987

Jon Cleary asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780006174813

Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780007568994

Version: 2015-04-27

Dedication

For Jane

(1949–86)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

ONE
1

When they took the bag of emeralds from the pocket of the murdered man, the President sighed loudly and the First Lady, who had been taking French lessons with her sights on asylum on the Riviera, said, ‘Merde!’

All this Malone learned within five minutes of arriving at Kirribilli House. Sergeant Kenthurst, the leader of the detail of Federal Police who were guarding President and Madame Timori, might know next to nothing about homicide but, coming from Canberra, had a sharp ear for detail and expletives.

‘It struck me as a bit off-colour,’ he said.

‘It would have been a bit more off-colour,’ said Russ Clements, who had taken high school French, ‘if she’d said it in Aussie.’

‘Righto, Russ, spread yourself around, see what you can pick up.’ Malone and Clements had started together as police cadets and Malone sometimes wondered if Clements, with his basic approach to everything, didn’t have the right attitude. There had been a time long ago when his own approach had been irreverent and somehow police work had been, or had seemed to be, more fun. ‘Are those protestors still outside?’

‘They’ve been moved further back up the street. I’ll see what I can get out of them. It may have been one of them who did it.’ But Clements sounded doubtful. Demonstrators didn’t bring guns to their outings. You didn’t volunteer to be manhandled by the pigs with a weapon in your pocket.

As the big untidy Homicide detective lumbered away, nodding to two junior officers to go with him, Kenthurst said, ‘Is he a good man?’

Malone sighed inwardly: here we go again. He was a patient-looking man, always seemingly composed. He was tall, six feet one (he was of an age that still continued to think in the old measures), big in the shoulders and still slim at the waist; he had that air of repose that some tall men have, as if their height accents their stillness. He was good-looking without being handsome, though the bones in his face hinted that he might be thought handsome in his old age, if he reached it. He had dark-blue eyes that were good-tempered more often than otherwise and he had a reputation amongst junior officers for being sympathetic. He suffered fools, because there were so many of them, but not gladly.

‘Don’t they teach you fellers down in Canberra to be diplomatic?’

The Federal Police Force, headquartered in the Australian Capital Territory, was a comparatively recent invention. Being so new, it had had no time to become corrupt; based in Canberra, it had also been infected by the virus of natural superiority which, along with hay fever and blowflies, was endemic to the national capital. The police forces of the six States and the Northern Territory, older, wiser and more shop-soiled in the more sordid crimes, looked on the Federals in much the same way as State politicians looked on their Federal counterparts, smart arses who didn’t know what went on in the gutters of the nation. The cops of Neapolis, bargaining with the pimps of Pompeii, had felt the same way about Rome and the Praetorian Guard.

Kenthurst blinked and his wide thin mouth tightened in his long-jawed face. He never liked these assignments here in New South Wales: the locals were too touchy. ‘Sorry, Inspector. I didn’t mean to criticize –’

‘Sergeant, if we’re going to get on together, let’s forget any rivalry. I’m not trying to muscle in on your territory – looking after a couple like the Timoris would be the last thing I’d ask for. You called in the local boys from North Sydney and they called us in from Homicide. I don’t want to take your President away from you. This is the biggest weekend of the year, maybe in Australia’s history, and I was looking forward to spending it with my wife and kids. So let’s co-operate, okay?’

Kenthurst nodded and looked around to see if anyone had overheard the exchange. But Malone did not tick a man off in front of his own men. He had his own diplomacy, of a sort.

Malone looked down at the sheet-covered body. The police photographer had taken his shots and the body was ready for disposal; Malone could hear the siren of the approaching ambulance. ‘Masutir – what was his first name?’

‘Mohammed. He was a Muslim, same as the President. He was a kind of second secretary, a pretty innocuous sort of guy as far as I can tell.’

‘Poor bugger.’ Malone looked around the grounds of the old house. All the lights were on, but there were big patches of black shadow under the trees. The grounds sloped down steeply to the waterfront and just below them a ferry, lights ablaze, drifted in towards the Kirribilli wharf. Once upon a time, before he and Lisa had started their family, they had lived just up the ridge from this house and he had caught that ferry to work. ‘Looks like the shot could have come from that block of flats.’

Kenthurst looked towards the block of flats just showing above the trees on the street side of the house. ‘It would have to’ve been from the top floor. I think the local boys are over there now.’

‘What was Timori doing out here?’

‘I gather he always liked to go for a walk after dinner – he wanted to go up the street, round the block, but we put the kybosh on that. He was famous for it back home in Palucca. No matter where he was, he always went for a walk after dinner. Just like President Truman used to, only he used to go for his walk before breakfast. Timori is a great admirer of Harry Truman, though I don’t know Truman would have liked that.’

It was Malone’s turn to blink, but he made no comment. Kenthurst might turn out to be a mine of inconsequential information; but Malone knew from experience how sometimes a nugget could be found amongst all the fools’ gold. ‘What happened when this feller went down? Did anyone hear the shot?’

‘No. Those galahs outside were chanting their usual stuff. Go home, Timori, all that crap.’

‘How has Timori been taking the demos?’

‘He just smiles – I guess he’s used to it. I gather the Paluccans were a bloody sight more vocal and violent than our galahs. He’d given up taking his walks the last couple of months in Bunda.’

‘What about Madame Timori – did she scream or faint or anything?’

‘Nothing. She just got angry, started swearing – she knows a lot of words besides merde. She’s a real tough cookie.’

Kenthurst was about the same age as Malone, forty-two, but Malone guessed they looked at different television programmes. Kenthurst, a smart dresser, looked as if he might be a fan of Miami Vice, where all the girls were tough cookies. But he had said ‘galahs’, so he wasn’t entirely Americanized. Malone was glad of that. He himself wasn’t anti-American, but he had grown tired of the standards for his own work being set by Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice. Police work, 99 per cent of the time, was plod, plod, plod and the music was slower than an undertaker’s jingle. The New South Wales Police Force had its critics, but it wasn’t the worst police force in the world, far from it.

‘Why are the Timoris here at Kirribilli House?’

‘It’s only temporary. The PM wanted them taken to Canberra, kept on the RAAF base there or even at Duntroon, so we could keep tight security on them. Madame Timori wouldn’t have a bar of that. Sydney or nothing, she told them. So they shoved them in here till they find a place for them. It’s been a bloody headache.’ He gestured at the sheet-covered corpse. ‘Maybe they’ll be glad to move now.’

‘Let’s go in and talk to them.’

They walked up the gravelled path to the steeply-gabled stone house. It had been built just over a hundred years ago by a rich merchant with the commercial-sounding name of Feez and in time it had been acquired by the Federal Government as a residence for visiting VIPs. Then a certain Prime Minister, chafing that such a charming house in such a beautiful situation right on Sydney Harbour should be wasted on visitors, some of them unwelcome, had commandeered it as his official Sydney residence. The present Prime Minister, who hated The Lodge, the main official residence in Canberra, spent as much time here as he could, being a Sydney man. Malone wondered how Phil Norval, the PM, felt about these unwelcome guests.

The Timoris were in the drawing-room. They were a handsome couple in the way that the ultra-rich often are; money had bought the extras to the looks they had been born with. Only when one looked closer did one see that Abdul Timori’s looks had begun to crumble; his bloodshot eyes looked half-asleep in the dark hammocks beneath them and his jowls had loosened. Delvina Timori, however, looked better than when Malone had last seen her close-up, ten or twelve years ago; she had never been strictly beautiful, but she had a dancer’s arrogance and grace and there was a sexuality to her that fogged-up most men’s view of her. Only their womenfolk looked at her cold-eyed.

‘Scobie Malone, isn’t it?’ she said in the husky voice that sounded phoney to women and like a siren’s song to their tone-deaf escorts. ‘I remember you! Darling, this is Mr Malone. He used to be in the Vice Squad when I was with the dance company. He thought all we dancers were part-time whores.’ She gave Malone a bright smile that said, You never proved it. ‘I hope you’ve changed your mind about dancers, Mr Malone. Especially since Australia is now so cultured.’

Outside, on the other side of the harbour, the fireworks had begun. The sky was an explosion of illumination. The city turned red, white and blue, the colours of the British, the founding fathers; someone had forgotten to light the green and gold rockets and local patriotism, as so often, remained in the dark. The citizens were still getting used to the idea that their nation was two hundred years old this week, not sure whether it was a good or a bad thing.

The ambulance had just come in the gates and in a moment or two Mohammed Masutir, the dead man, would be lifted into it and carted away to the morgue; but as far as Malone could see, Madame Timori had already forgotten him, had put his murder out of her mind.

‘I’d like to ask some questions, Mr President.’

‘The President is too upset at the moment to answer questions,’ said the President’s wife and, belatedly, made her own effort to look upset. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief; Malone noticed it came away unmarked by any of the thick mascara she wore. ‘Poor Mr Masutir.’

‘Yes.’ Malone noticed that she, notorious for her jewels, wore none tonight. She was crying poor mouth, silently. But there were the emeralds that had been taken from Masutir’s pocket. He said bluntly, ‘The bullet was meant for the President – we can be pretty sure of that. Do you know of any organized opposition group here in Australia that would be likely to try and kill you, sir?’

‘Start asking that trash in the street outside –’

Timori raised a tired hand, silencing his wife. He took a sip of Scotch from the glass in his other hand; he was one of those Muslims, Malone guessed, who bent his religion to his own tastes. Malone, a Catholic, knew the feeling.

‘Mr Malone, I have enemies everywhere. Tell me a ruler who does not. The President of the United States, your Prime Minister –’

‘I don’t think Philip Norval thinks of himself as a ruler, darling,’ said Madame Timori. ‘Does he rule you, Mr Malone?’

Malone gave her a smile and looked at Kenthurst. ‘Sergeant Kenthurst could answer that better than I can. He’s from Canberra, where everyone rules. Yes, Sergeant?’

Clements had knocked on the door and put his tousled head into the room. ‘Can I see you a moment, Inspector?’

Malone went out into the hall. With the edge of his eye and mind he was aware of the furnishings of the house; it was the sort of place he wished he could afford for Lisa and the kids. Then he consoled himself: the voters could kick you out of here quicker than any foreclosing bank. ‘What is it, Russ?’

‘None of those out in the street know anything – I’m inclined to believe them. We’ve been into those flats opposite – some of the owners are away for the weekend. Those that are home said they heard nothing because of the noise of the clowns up the street.’

‘What about the top-floor flats? That’d be the best bet where the shot came from.’

‘The whole of the top floor is owned by an old lady, a –’ Clements looked at his notebook ‘– a Miss Kiddle. The bloke below her thought she should be home, but we can’t raise her.’

Malone looked at the burly, greying sergeant in uniform behind Clements. ‘What do you reckon, Fred?’

Thumper Murphy was a senior sergeant in the local North Sydney division. He had played rugby for the State and for Australia; his approach to football opponents and law-breakers was the same: straight through them. He was the last of a dying breed and Malone sometimes wondered if the Force could stand their loss. ‘We could bash the front door down. I’ve got a sledge-hammer in me car.’

‘I thought sledge-hammers had gone out of fashion.’

‘Not on my turf,’ said Thumper with a broken-toothed grin.

‘Righto, get in any way you can. But don’t scare hell out of the old lady.’

Thumper Murphy, accompanied by Clements, went away to get his sledge-hammer and Malone went back into the drawing-room. The President had lapsed back into the bleary-eyed look he had had when Malone had first walked into the room; the whisky glass in his hand was now empty. Madame Timori took the glass from him, slapped his wrist lightly as if he were a naughty child, and glanced at Malone.

‘I’ve suggested to Sergeant Kenthurst that the President be allowed to go to bed. He’s worn out.’

Malone looked at Kenthurst, who somehow managed to shrug with his eyebrows, What could I say? ‘All right, Madame Timori. But I’d like to see the President again in the morning. By then I hope we’ll know where we’re going.’

Timori was helped to his feet by his wife; he suddenly looked ten years older, sick and tired. ‘You don’t know where you’re going, Inspector? Neither do we. Good night.’

He brushed off his wife’s helping hand and walked, a little unsteadily, out of the room. Madame Timori looked at the two policemen. ‘We’ve been through a lot this past week, as you’ve probably read.’

And it hasn’t put a hair of your head out of place, Malone thought. Surviving a two-day siege of their palace, then a successful, though not bloody, coup, seemed hardly to have fazed her at all. Exile, however, might do that.

‘You may have to go through a lot more, Madame. This may not be the last attempt on the President’s life. Or on yours,’ he added and waited for the effect of the remark.

She did not flinch. ‘I’ve had three attempts on my life in the past three years. One gets used to it.’ It was bravado, but Malone had to admire it. ‘I suppose we were careless this evening. One just doesn’t expect assassination attempts in Australia. Except character assassination,’ she added with a smile that would have cut a thousand throats. ‘Now, is there anyone else you’d like to question?’

She had taken charge of the investigation. Malone grinned inwardly: Lisa would enjoy the police gossip in bed tonight. If he got to bed … ‘Anyone you’d care to suggest?’

Madame Timori gave him a look that would have demoted him right back to cadet if she’d had the authority. ‘The household staff?’

‘I think we can leave them till last. I’d like to talk to the staff you brought with you from Palucca. They’d know more about your enemies.’ He was treading on dangerous ground. He was aware of the warning waves coming out of Kenthurst, the Canberra man. You’re dealing with a Federal Government guest, a personal friend of the Prime Minister. ‘That is, if you don’t mind, Madame?’

‘You mean am I going to claim diplomatic immunity for them?’

‘I don’t think they’d want that. Not if they want to know who is trying to kill their President.’ Even if he’s only an ex-President now.

‘You sound so efficient, Inspector. So unlike our own police back home. I suppose, then, you should start with Sun Lee.’

Sun Lee was the President’s private secretary, a Chinese in his mid-forties with a skin as smooth as jade and eyes like black marbles. He was just as cold as both those stones. ‘I have nothing to tell you, Inspector.’

Malone looked at Madame Timori, who gave him a smug smile. Then he looked back at the Chinese. ‘Maybe you could show me Mr Masutir’s room?’

Sun frowned, a thin crack in the jade. ‘He shared a room with me – the accommodation here is limited –’ He spoke with all the expansive snobbery of a man accustomed to a palace. ‘There is nothing in Mr Masutir’s room but his personal belongings.’

‘Those are what I want to see.’

Sun glanced at Madame Timori, but she said nothing. Then he turned abruptly and led Malone out of the room and upstairs. The house, for an official residence, was small. Australia did not believe in any grandeur for those it voted into office; that was reserved for those forced upon it, the Queen’s Governors and Governor-General. There was a substantial mansion right next door to Kirribilli House, but that was the Sydney residence of the Governor-General and no place for a deposed President. The Queen, through her representative, only entertained exiled monarchs. A certain protocol had to be observed, even in disgrace.

The room was comfortably and attractively furnished, but Sun obviously thought it was a converted closet stocked from a discount house. ‘There is no room to move … Mr Masutir’s things are still in his suitcase. We were only allowed to bring one suitcase each.’

‘I read in the papers that the RAAF plane that brought you was loaded with baggage.’

‘The newspapers, as always, got it wrong. We brought packing cases, but they are full of official papers – records, files, that sort of thing. President Timori wanted to leave nothing for the vandals who have taken over the palace.’

‘What about Madame Timori? Did she bring only one suitcase?’

‘Madame Timori has a position to uphold.’

‘I thought she might have. The papers said she brought twelve cases and four trunks. But women never travel lightly, do they? So they tell me.’

Masutir’s suitcase, a genuine Vuitton or a good Hong Kong fake, Malone wasn’t sure which, was not locked. Malone flipped back the lid, was surprised at how neatly everything was packed; had Masutir been packed for weeks, waiting for the inevitable? Most of the contents told Malone nothing except that Masutir had always bought quality: the shirts, the socks, the pyjamas were all silk. In a pocket in the lid were Masutir’s passport and a black leather-bound notebook.

Malone flipped through the passport. ‘Mr Masutir had been to Australia before?’

‘I understand he had been here before.’

‘Six times in the past –’ Malone looked at the earliest date stamp ‘– eight months. Did you know about those visits, Mr Sun?’

If Sun had known about the visits he didn’t show it now. ‘No. Mr Masutir was more Madame Timori’s secretary than my assistant. Back home in Palucca she was a very busy woman, as you may know.’

‘Are you a Paluccan, Mr Sun?’

‘Fourth generation. My family came to Bunda from Hong Kong after the Opium War.’

‘Which side were they on?’ Sun looked blank and Malone added, ‘The war?’

Sun still looked blank, made no answer. So much for being a smart arse, thought Malone; but the quietly arrogant Chinese was beginning to get under his skin. Malone flipped through the black notebook, saw a list of Sydney addresses and phone numbers. He decided against asking Sun about them.

‘I’ll take this. I’ll give you a receipt for it.’

‘Can you do that?’

‘Do you want me to find out who murdered Mr Masutir?’

The tiny frown was there again, but just for a moment. ‘Of course. But how will his address book help you?’

‘We have to start somewhere, Mr Sun. Every murderer has a name. Our murderer’s may be in this.’ He held up the notebook, then slipped it into his pocket. ‘I think that’ll be all, Mr Sun.’

Sun looked surprised, and Malone was surprised to see him capable of such an expression. ‘You don’t want to question me?’

‘I’ll be back to do that, Mr Sun. In the meantime you prepare your answers.’

He went ahead of the Chinese down the stairs, not bothering to look back at him or say anything further. He sensed there might be something in Masutir’s notebook which might worry Sun Lee. A night to think about it might put another crack in the jade face.

When Malone reached the front hallway Clements was waiting there for him. He read the bad news on the big man’s face before Clements said it. ‘We bashed the door down and found the old lady. She’d been strangled.’

‘Any sign of the killer?’

Clements shook his head. ‘He’d left his gun, though. A Springfield 30, with a telescopic sight. He was a pro, I’d say. I’ve rung Fingerprints, they’re on their way.’

‘What about the old lady? Had he knocked her around?’

‘No. It was a neat job, with a piece of rope. He’d come prepared. Like I say, he was a real pro.’

‘Righto, I’ll be over there in a while. In the meantime, give this to Andy Graham, tell him I want every one of those Sydney addresses and phone numbers tracked down. Tell him to tell them to stand by when he finds out who they are. I’ll want to interview them.’ He handed the notebook to Clements, aware of Sun standing behind him and hearing every word. ‘Something doesn’t add up here. Maybe they meant to kill Masutir, after all. You think so, Mr Sun?’

The mask was flawless this time. ‘It would be presumptuous of me even to guess, Inspector. I am not a detective.’

Clements watched the small exchange, but his own wide open face was now expressionless. ‘I’ll wait for you over the road, Inspector.’

Malone went back into the drawing-room, said directly to Madame Timori, ‘There’s been another murder. An old lady over in the flats opposite.’

She just nodded. She did not appear disturbed; the handkerchief was not even produced this time. She stood up, giving herself regal airs if not a regal air, which is different; she was the most common of commoners but she had always had aspirations. She had always wanted to dance the royal roles when she had been with the dance company; nobody would ever have believed her as Cinderella. ‘I’m retiring for the night.’

I’d like to retire, too, thought Malone; or anyway, go to bed. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow morning, Madame. I hope the President will be well enough to answer some questions.’

‘What sort of questions have you in mind? I’m sure I could answer them all.’ She paused, as if she might sit down again.

‘You must be tired,’ said Malone, not offering her any further opportunity to take over the investigation. ‘Good night, Madame. I’ll see you in the morning.’

He went out into the warm night air. There he exchanged information with the two other Homicide men who had come with him and Clements. One of them was Andy Graham, a young overweight detective constable who had just transferred from the uniformed division. He was all enthusiasm and ideas, most of which were as blunt as Thumper Murphy’s sledgehammer.

‘I’ve got the notebook, Inspector.’ He brandished it like a small black flag. ‘I’ll have ’em all waiting for you first thing tomorrow morning.’

‘Not all at once, Andy. Use your judgement, get the big ones first.’

‘Right, Inspector, right.’

‘Take Kerry here with you. Divide up the addresses and numbers between you. Be polite.’

‘Right.’

As he and Clements crossed the road towards the block of flats, Malone said,’ How come you never say right to everything I say?’

‘Do you want me to?’

‘No.’

Right.’

The old lady had been taken away in the same ambulance that had taken the dead Masutir; the holiday weekend casualties were starting early and these two not for the usual reason, road accidents. Up towards the corner of the street a large crowd had now congregated behind the barricades that had been thrown up. The protestors had stopped demonstrating, jarred into silence by the sight of the two bodies being pushed into the ambulance, and the crowd was now just a large restless wash of curiosity. Double murders just didn’t happen in Kirribilli: the local estate agents would have to work hard next week to continue promoting it as a ‘desirable area’.

The fireworks were still scribbling on the black sky, but the crowd seemed to have turned its back on them. A band was playing in the open court at the northern end of the Opera House and the music drifted across the water, banged out at intervals by the explosions of the fireworks. The waters of the harbour were ablaze with drifting lights: ferries, yachts, rowboats, the reflected Catherine wheels, shooting stars and lurid waterfalls of the fireworks. Malone wondered if the local Aborigines here on the Kirribilli shore had waved any firesticks in celebration on the night of that day in January 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip had raised the British flag and laid the seed, perhaps unwittingly, for a new nation. As he walked across the road Malone looked for an Aborigine or two amongst the demonstrators, with or without firesticks to light their way, but there was none.

The Fingerprints men were just finishing as Malone entered the top-floor flat past Thumper’s handiwork, the splintered front door. ‘Can’t find a print, Inspector. We’ve dusted everything, but he either wiped everything clean or wore gloves. He must have been a cold-blooded bastard.’

‘Have you tried the bathroom?’

‘There’s two of them. Nothing there.’

‘Try the handle or the button of the cistern. I don’t care how cold-blooded he was, he’d have gone in there for a nervous pee some time.’ The senior Fingerprints man looked unimpressed and Malone went on, ‘It’s the simple, habitual things that let people down, even the most careful ones. I’ll give you a hundred to one that a man doesn’t take a leak with a glove on.’

‘I couldn’t find mine if I had a glove on,’ said Clements with a grin.

The Fingerprints men looked peeved that a Homicide man, even if he was an inspector, should tell them their job. They went away into the bathrooms and two minutes later the senior man came back to say there was a distinct print on the cistern button in the second bathroom. He looked even more peeved that Malone had been right.

‘The second bathroom looks as if it’s rarely used, maybe just for visitors. The print’s a new one.’

‘Righto, check your records,’ said Malone. ‘I’ll want a report on it first thing in the morning. Sergeant Clements will call you.’

Malone was left alone with Clements, Thumper Murphy and the sergeant in charge of the North Sydney detectives, a slim handsome man named Stacton. ‘Okay, so what have we got?’

Clements pointed to the dismantled rifle which lay on the table in the dining-room in which they stood. ‘He must have brought it in dismantled and put it together once he was in the flat – it’s a special job. Then after he’d fired the shot, he dismantled it again and put it in a kit-bag, the sort squash players carry. Nobody would’ve noticed him if he’d come in here behind those demonstrators.’

‘Where’d you find the bag and the gun?’

‘Under the stairs, down on the ground floor. Someone must’ve come in as he was going out and he had to hide.’

Malone looked at Stacton. ‘Would it have been one of your, uniformed men?’

‘I doubt it. Inspector, but I’ll check. They were busy holding back the demo. And I gather there was a hell of a lot of noise – no one heard the shot.’

‘There’s no security door down at the front?’

‘None. People ask for trouble these days.’

‘How did he get into the flat? I noticed there’s a grille security door on the front door.’

‘I dunno. There’s no sign of forced entry. The old lady must have let him in.’

‘A stranger?’ Malone looked around him. The furniture was antique and expensive; it had possibly taken a lifetime to accumulate. It was the sort of furniture that Lisa would love to surround herself with; he found himself admiring it. The paintings on the walls were expensive, too: nothing modern and disturbing, but reassuring landscapes by Streeton and Roberts. Miss Kiddle had surrounded herself with her treasures, but they hadn’t protected her. ‘This is a pretty big flat for one old woman.’

‘She has a married nephew who owns a property outside Orange. I’ve rung Orange and asked someone out to tell him. It’s gunna bugger up his celebrations.’

‘It’s buggered up mine,’ said Malone and looked out the window at another burst of fireworks. The past was going up in a storm of smoke and powder, you could smell it through the open windows. The kids would love it, though the grownups might wonder at the significance. It took Australians some time to be worked up about national occasions, unless they were sporting ones. The Italians and the Greeks, who could get worked up about anything, would enjoy the fireworks the most.

‘Well, I guess we’d better make a start with our guesses. Any suggestions?’

Clements chewed his lip, a habit he had had as long as Malone had known him. ‘Scobie, I dunno whether this is worth mentioning. I was going through some stuff that came in from Interpol. You heard of that bloke Seville, Miguel Seville the terrorist? Well, Interpol said he’d been sighted in Singapore last week. He got out before they could latch on to him. He’d picked up a flight out of Dubai. They managed to check on all the flights going back to Europe after he’d been spotted. He wasn’t on any of them, not unless he’d got off somewhere along the way. Bombay, Abu Dhabi, somewhere like that.’

‘He might have gone to Sri Lanka,’ said Stacton. ‘He’s always around where there’s trouble.’

When Malone had first started on the force no one had been interested in crims, terrorists then being unknown, outside the State, even outside one’s own turf. Now the field was international, the world was the one big turf.

‘The betting’s just as good that he came this way,’ said Clements.

Malone said, ‘Who’d hire him? The generals who’ve taken over in Palucca have no connection with any of the terrorist mobs, at least not on the record.’

‘Seville is different. That’s according to the Italians, who’ve had the most trouble with him. He’s not interested in ideology any more. He’s just a bloody mercenary, a capitalist like the rest of us.’

‘Speak for yourself. We’re not all big-time punters like you.’

Clements grinned; his luck with the horses was notorious, even embarrassing. ‘You pay Seville, he’ll organize trouble for you. A bomb raid at an airport, a machine-gun massacre, an assassination, anything. Someone could have hired him to do this job.’

‘Righto, get Fingerprints to photo-fax that print through to Interpol, see if it matches anything they might have on Seville. Have we called in Special Branch yet?’

‘They arrived just as I was putting me sledge-hammer away,’ said Thumper Murphy.

‘A pity,’ said Malone and everyone grinned. ‘Well, it looks as if we’re all going to be one big happy family. The Feds, the Specials, you fellers and us.’

‘I always liked you, Scobie,’ said Thumper Murphy. ‘They could have sent us one of them other bastards you have in Homicide.’

It sounds just like Palucca must have sounded, Malone thought. Each faction wanting all the others out of the way. He sighed, just as Kenthurst had said the President had sighed when the emeralds had been taken from Masutir’s pocket. Only then did he remember he hadn’t asked anyone about the emeralds.

‘Where are the emeralds?’

‘Kenthurst said he gave ’em back to Madame Timori,’ said Clements. ‘She asked for them.’

‘She would.’ He wondered how many tears had been shed for the Mother of the Poor, as she had called herself, when she had left Palucca.

2

Palucca was the largest of the old Spice Islands. Columbus was heading there when he accidentally ran into America; he had coined the phrase, ‘Isn’t it a small world?’ and thought he had proved it when he finished up some 11,000 miles short of his intended destination. The Spice Islands survived his non-arrival, but European civilized types, led by Ferdinand Magellan, arrived in 1511 and from then on the aroma of the Spices began to change. Nothing has ever been improved by the advent of outsiders, nothing, that is, but the lot of the invaders.

The Portuguese were succeeded by the Spanish, the Dutch and the British; the Islanders just shrugged, learned a few words of the newest language and dreamed of the old days when they were barbaric and happy. Their paradise had been spoiled by the Europeans who, seeking profits, had come looking for the spices that would, in addition to the sweet taste of profits, make their putrid and indigestible food edible. The pepper, nutmegs, cloves, mace, ginger and cinnamon, added to what the Europeans ate back in what they thought of as civilization, saved the appetites and often the lives of the civilized millions. Spices were also used by physicians to treat diseases of the blood, the stomach, head and chest; sometimes a cookery recipe was mistaken for a medical prescription, but it made no difference anyway. The patient usually died and the family got the bill, the physician’s bill being larger than the grocer’s.

The Dutch stayed longest and eventually the Spice Islands were absorbed into what became known as the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese came in 1942, were welcomed but soon wore out their welcome and were gone in 1945. The Dutch came back; but they, too, were unwelcome. In 1949 the Indies obtained their independence and became Indonesia. The Paluccans, however, declared their own independence and the rest of Indonesia, tired of fighting the Dutch and just wanting to get on with the post-war peace that the rest of the world was enjoying, let them go.

The Timori family, which had been the leading family in Palucca for centuries, were pains in the neck anyway. They were conspirators, connivers, meddlers, and corrupt: ideal rulers to deal with the Europeans, Americans, Chinese and Russians who would soon be coming to court them.

Mohammed Timori, Abdul’s father, had himself elected President for life, a title he chose in preference to Sultan, to which he was entitled by inheritance; he was prepared to make a bow towards democracy, though it hurt every joint in his body. He moved back into Timoro Palace, the family home that had been commandeered by the Dutch a hundred years before. He said public prayers of praise to Allah, but privately he told Allah He had better come good with some United Nations aid or Palucca would be in the hands of the Chinese money-lenders before the next crop of nutmegs.

Allah came good with better than United Nations hand-outs: oil was found on the north coast of the big island. It did not make Palucca a rich country, because the oil reserves were judged to be only moderate; nonetheless, Palucca was suddenly more than just a source of ginger and nutmegs and the oil companies of the West came bearing their own aromatic spices, bribes with which to start Swiss bank accounts. The Timori family were suddenly rich, even if their country wasn’t. They shared their wealth like true democrats, 10 per cent to the voters and 90 per cent to the Timoris, and thought of themselves as benevolent, honest and born to rule. They were no different from all the Europeans who had preceded them in Palucca.

Mohammed Timori died in 1953 on the same day as Josef Stalin, which meant he got no space at all in Western newspapers. The Americans, prompted by John Foster Dulles, decided to compensate for that lack of regard; they established a naval base and named it in his honour. Abdul Timori, who was then twenty-five, was called home from Europe to succeed his father. His election as President for life was no more than a formality, like high tea, monogamy and other European importations, and was looked upon as just as much a giggle.

Abdul Timori had been labelled by the Fleet Street tabloids as the Playboy of the Western World, though Synge would have disowned him. His mistresses were laid endlessly across Europe and America; love-making was his only successful sport. He owned a string of racehorses that invariably finished without a place; bookmakers quoted them at prices that embarrassed both the horses and the jockeys who rode them. He took up motor-racing and drove in the Mille Miglia, the Targa Florio and the Le Mans 24-hour event; he finished in none of them, managing, miraculously, to emerge unscathed from crashes that earned him the nickname Abdul the Wrecker. His father, however, had insisted on his death-bed that Abdul should succeed him, and the ruling party, its faction leaders all afraid of each other, had agreed. They had assumed that Abdul would be no more than a playboy President and they, splitting the spoils between them like true democrats, could run the country as they wished.

They were mistaken. Abdul turned out to, be a better politician than any of them; and a despot to boot, a boot he used to great effect. The two jails of Bunda, the national capital, were soon full of party men who thought they could be independent of him; common criminals were hanged, to make way in the cells for the jailed politicians. The latter, however, did not remain there long. Nothing changes the mind of a pragmatic politician so quickly as his having to share a prison cell with his rivals; it is more upsetting than sharing a voting booth with a citizen voting against you. All at once they were born-again Timori supporters, shouting hallelujahs, or the Muslim equivalent, to the skies. The army generals, already wooed by Abdul with promises of long courses in Britain and the United States, smiled cynically at the venality of politicians and swore to Abdul that he had nothing to fear from them.

Abdul, in turn, was wooed by the Americans. Recognizing that anyone who raised the anti-communist banner was going to be saluted by Washington, he invited the Americans, for a consideration, to enlarge their naval base. For the next thirty-four years Palucca enjoyed a stable existence, a state of affairs accepted by all but those who believed in freedom of expression, honest government and democracy. Since Abdul Timori believed in none of those aberrations and the Americans forgot to remind him of them, nothing, it seemed, was going to disturb the Timori delusion of his own grandeur.

He married the daughter of another old family, but it was a marriage of inconvenience: he found she got in the way of his mistresses. He divorced her by clapping his hands and telling her she wasn’t wanted; a procedure that several foreign ambassadors, whose wives were a hindrance, marvelled at and envied. Timori married again, this time one of his mistresses, but she at once turned into a wife and after a year he got rid of her, too. Finally, ten years ago, he had married Delvina O’Reilly, who had come to Bunda as a speciality dancer, a Mata Hari whose intelligence work was only in her own interests. Her mother had been a Malay, her father an RAAF sergeant-pilot; she had been educated in a convent but had never learned to be a good Catholic or even a good girl. At dancing school it was said that the only time her legs were together was during the execution of an entrechat; one smitten choreographer tried to write a ballet for a horizontal ballerina. When she married Abdul Timori, in a wedding extravaganza that Paris-Match ran over five pages, she let him know it was for good: for her good if not his. Abdul, to everyone’s surprise, not least his own, accepted her dictum.

Then the plug fell out of the oil market and Palucca’s economy slid downhill on the slick. The Americans were suddenly more interested in Central America than in South-east Asia; Washington also, at long last, began to have pangs about the corruption in the Timori regime. Abdul and Delvina Timori began to assume the image of a major embarrassment. The Americans, belatedly, looked around for an acceptable alternative, meanwhile pressing Timori to resign on the grounds of ill-health. Madame Timori, who was in the best of health, even if her husband wasn’t, told the Americans to get lost, a frequent location for them in foreign policy. The British, the French, the Dutch and all the lesser ex-colonial powers sat back and smiled smugly. As a mandarin in Whitehall remarked, nothing succeeds in making one feel good so much as seeing someone else fail.

Then the Paluccan generals, all too old now for courses at Sandhurst and West Point, tired of army manoeuvres in which never a shot was fired, decided it was time they earned the medals with which they had decorated themselves. They staged a coup, asked the Americans to fly the Timoris out of Bunda and promised a brand new future for Palucca and the Paluccans.

That was when the trouble started outside Palucca.

3

‘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.