The Bear Pit

by Jon Cleary

  “Nothing on Kelzo?” Clements shook his head and Malone said, “What about Billy Eustace? He’s the heir.”

  “Mate, do you go and ask the Premier and Police Minister permission to look at his bank account? In any case, I don’t think he’d be vicious enough to have someone shot. He might stab ‘em in the back, but that’s no crime.”

  And so the murder of Hans Vanderberg went into the files and now the Sydney Olympics are about to be opened. Around 110,000 people, including 24,373 official guests, are waiting for the final runner to come into the stadium with the torch to light the Olympic flame. Who will it be? everyone is asking: an athlete, a swimmer, a boxer, an IOC official running from corruption? The human brass on the official dais, polished for the occasion by anticipation, shines with blinding self-esteem.

  The Malones, all five of them, have good seats, courtesy of Lisa’s role with the City Council. Malone looks for Police Commissioner Zanuch amongst the brass, but the glare is too much. He does see Billy Eustace, who appears to be waving individually to the 110,000 spectators, some of whom are voters.

  Bygones have become history, as Socrates or his mouthpiece Peter Kelzo said. Labor won a crushing victory at the elections last March and Billy Eustace is now acknowledged as more than just a stop-gap. Ladbroke and the image-makers have scrubbed him and shaped him and occasionally he looks and sounds like a leader. His personal stinginess is now tolerated as economic rationalism and the Big End of town picks up tabs as if they were redeemable. He has just collected the first six months’ interest on the seventy-five thousand dollars he lent Jerry Balmoral’s private company, Ambition Proprietary Limited, when Jerry wanted a second mortgage on something or other.

  Gert Vanderberg still runs the Boolagong electorate with a firm but benevolent hand, pushing Barry Rix through the political traffic as if he were in a perambulator. She still misses Hans, but in her thoughts he is still alive, still bigger and better than those still in the Bear Pit in Macquarie Street.

  Jack Aldwych and the Olympic Tower consortium have been promised their casino at Coffs Harbour and Aldwych is waiting for the day when he and Jack Junior interview Janis Eden. But he is feeling his age now and reads the obituaries before he reads anything else in his morning newspapers. He has begun to appreciate the sweet irony that as one approaches one’s own death one becomes more interested in the departures of others.

  John August, still on remand in Long Bay and waiting to be brought to trial, still refusing to say who brought him the hit fee, watches the Olympic opening on television and wonders if there is someone in the crowd who paid the money. Once a month Lynne Masson comes to visit him and they both weep when she leaves. She is working as an aide at the Clontarf Gardens nursing home, finding the elderly more calming than the infants.

  Peter Kelzo made Greek meatballs of his opponents in the March election. He is now Minister for Multiculturism and has introduced Socrates, Demosthenes, kaccavia, moussaka to Chinese, Lebanese and a dozen other assorted nationalities in his domain, not all of whom are appreciative of the cultural hand-out. George Gandolfo and Joe St. Louis are working in Macquarie Street with him, where Joe St. Louis has established a new standard as a minder.

  Norm Clizbe and Jerry Balmoral are running a stronger, better financed Trade Congress and are often seen in the company of the Minister for Multiculturism. Balmoral also pays private visits to the Premier. Still occasionally impatient but learning to take the long view, he has a new girlfriend, a lovely Italian girl whose grandfather is a ‘Ndrangheta capo in Calabria and, says his granddaughter, takes a deep interest in politics. Balmoral does not correspond with him.

  Malone is still in charge of Homicide. Lisa is still at Town Hall, but will within the next two weeks be no longer in charge of Olympics public relations. Claire and Jason are engaged, Maureen now works as a researcher on Four Corners at the ABC and Tom is getting merit passes in Economics and girls and is in the State cricket squad.

  There is still no one in the country, whether university-educated or illiterate, who can make a statement without two points of reference: basically and at the end of the day. There are several websites that refuse to accept messages that do not begin with: Basically . . .

  Sydney went off the rails for two weeks, but the rest of the world did not notice. The voters have lost interest in who paid for Hans Vanderberg to be shot and their interest, more lively, more focused because it is on sport, is on who will bring the torch into the stadium . . .

  “Here he comes! Who is it? Who is it? Ohmigod, isn’t that incredible? It’s—”

  THE END

  FREE PREVIEW OF THE NEXT SCOBIE MALONE MYSTERY:

  YESTERDAY’S SHADOW

  1

  I

  THE PAST is part of the present, if only in memory. But memory, as Malone knew, is always uncertain testimony.

  The first body was discovered by a fellow worker of the deceased at 5.08 a.m. The second body was found by a housemaid at 9.38 a.m. Two murders in one night did nothing to raise the hotel’s rating from two and a half stars to three, a pursuit of the management over the past three months. An earthquake would have been more welcome, since insurance was preferable to bad publicity.

  The Hotel Southern Savoy was one of several on the square across from Central Station, Sydney’s terminal for country and interstate trains. The station itself had been built on an old burial ground, an apt location, it was thought in certain quarters, for some of the deadheads in State Rail. The Southern Savoy’s clientele was mixed, but one would not have looked amongst it for celebrities or the wealthy. It catered mainly for country visitors and economy tour parties from Scotland, Calabria and the thriftier parts of Vermont. It had little or no interest in its guests, so long as they paid their accounts, and was discreet only because it was too much bother to be otherwise. It had had its visits from the police (two deaths from drug overdoses, several robberies, a prostitute denting the skull of a customer with the heel of her shoe), but it had always managed to keep these distractions out of the news. But murder? Two murders?

  “The manager is having a fit of the vapours,” Sergeant Phil Truach told Malone, ringing on his mobile and out of earshot of the manager. “He seems a nice guy, but he’s a bit frail, if you know what I mean.”

  “Phil, put your prejudices back in your pocket. Have a smoke or two. Before I get there,” he added.

  Truach smoked two packs a day and had been told by his doctor that he had never seen such clear arteries, that Philip Morris could drive a truck through them. “I’ll have them empty the ashtrays. The media are already here. I think that’s worrying the manager more than the corpses.”

  “The bodies still there?”

  “The guy, the hotel worker, he’s been taken to the morgue. The woman’s in her room, the ME’s examining her. Crime Scene are still here.”

  Normally Malone, head of Homicide, would not have been called in on a single murder till the circumstances of it had been fully determined. But two murders in the one hotel on the same night, one a male worker, the other a female guest, called for his presence. The homicide rate in the city was rising and everyone who was literate, from Opposition MPs to letter-writers to the morning newspapers and callers to radio talk shows, was demanding to know what the government and police were doing about it. Zero tolerance had become a mantra, even with voters who had never come within a hundred kilometres of a violent crime.

  He went out to the main room of Homicide where Russ Clements sat at his desk, which, startlingly, was bare of paper. Usually it looked like the dump-bin outside a paper mill.

  “What’s the matter? You not accepting any more paperwork?”

  “This is what they call—is it a hiatus? I dunno if the system’s run outa paper, but I’m not, as they say, gunna make any enquiries. It’ll start up again, soon’s my back is turned. In the meantime . . .”

  Malone and Clements had worked together for more years than they cared to count. Over the last year or two, as Homici
de and Serial Offenders, part of Crime Agency, had expanded, they had worked together less and less out of the office. Clements, as Supervisor, the equivalent of general manager, had become trapped at his desk. Computers had proved to be just another form of land-mines, hemming him in. The diet of reports, reports, reports had put weight on him, turned muscle to fat. He was a big man, a couple of inches taller than Malone, and though he had never been light-footed, his tread now was heavy. He was a prisoner looking for parole.

  “In the meantime, on your feet,” said Malone. He, too, had begun to thicken as middle age wrapped itself round him, but he still looked reasonably athletic. But he knew he was long past chasing crims on foot. “We’re going over to the Southern Savoy. You can help me count the bodies.”

  Clements stood up, reached for his jacket as if it were a lifebelt. “I thought you’d never ask. Gail, keep an eye on this thing for me.” He nodded at his computer, at its screen as blank as a crim’s eye. “Ignore everything but love and kisses from the Commissioner.”

  Gail Lee, one of the four women detectives on the staff of twenty, looked at Malone. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “He’s light-headed, he’s going to be a detective again.”

  The two men went out of the room, Malone as usual putting on his pork-pie hat. It made him look like a cop from the 1950s, but it was his trademark, though only in the eyes of his staff. They let themselves out through the security door and disappeared, unaware of the swamp they were to step into in Room 342 at the Hotel Southern Savoy.

  Gail Lee looked at Sheryl Dallen, another of the distaff side of Homicide. “I think they’re both into the menopause.”

  Sheryl leaned back in her chair, swept an arm around her. “Won’t it be lovely when all this is ours? A woman Commissioner, seven women Assistant Commissioners—”

  The three men still in the large room looked up, like pointers that had scented danger. Gail and Sheryl exchanged foxy grins.

  Malone and Clements drove through a day as sharp as a knife against the cheek; a westerly wind had whetted it. Building outlines were as clean as etchings; a lone cloud was like an ice-floe, queues stood at bus stops looking as miserable as if they were queuing for the dole. The car’s radio told them the temperature was only 14 degrees Celsius.

  “A summer’s day in Finland,” said Clements.

  “Or in England,” said Malone, and they smiled at each other with Down Under smugness.

  Phil Truach, cigarette-satisfied, was waiting for them in the lobby of the hotel. It was not a large lobby; expense had been spared by the developer who had built the hotel. It was crowded now with departing guests, some of whom looked to be in a hurry, as if afraid they might be the next murder victims. There were unwelcome guests: two pressmen and three radio reporters. Malone was grateful there were no television cameramen. Television shots of crime scenes never seemed to show anything but police officers going in and out of doorways as if looking for work.

  Truach pulled Malone and Clements to one side; they stood behind a limp palm, the one piece of greenery in the lobby. “The media want a statement.”

  “Stuff ‘em for the moment,” said Malone. “Where’s the manager?”

  “He’s up with Crime Scene. He seems to have recovered. Your wife’s up there, too, Russ.”

  Clements frowned. “As ME? What’s she doing there?”

  “I dunno.” Truach held up a hand as they stepped out from behind the palm and the five reporters pushed forward. “Later, guys.”

  “Is there any connection between the two murders? Is it a serial killer?” She was from a radio station, she chewed on serial killer as if it were a liqueur-filled chocolate. Malone remembered the days when all police reporters had been male, eager cubs or hard-bitten hacks. These girls were just as tenacious: “Or is it just coincidence?”

  “Coincidence,” said Malone, stepping into the lift and pressing the button for the doors to close. “It makes the world go round.”

  “She won’t learn that till she’s middle-aged,” said Clements. “Who’s upstairs, Phil, besides my wife?”

  “Coupla uniformed guys, two plainclothes from Regent Street, Norma Nickles and a young guy from Crime Scene.” Truach, like most of the older cops, still used the old term instead of Forensic. Police teams, like football teams, were constantly being re-named. “Your wife and a guy from the morgue. And Deric, the manager. D-E-R-I-C, he spelt it out for me.”

  “Phil, I think you’re homophobic,” said Malone.

  “They rub me up the wrong way,” said Truach and all three of them laughed.

  They were on their way to a homicide, a double homicide, another job of work. The mood changed only when the dirty work began: the wonder at why a particular life had been taken, the informing the relatives of the victim’s death and how it had occurred.

  Romy Clements, Deputy Director of Forensic Medicine at the morgue, looked in surprise at her husband. He returned the look. They hadn’t met over a corpse in several years.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “I have four of my staff off with “flu virus.”

  She was in a white coat, was wearing plastic gloves, but the clinical look didn’t detract from her own looks. She, like Russ, had put on a little weight, but middle-aged spread was still a few years ahead of her. She had that comfortable, comforting appearance that some women achieve in their late thirties when life is going well for them. But Malone always found it remarkable that she had reached that assurance. Her mother had died only a short time after coming to Australia from Germany. Her father, never wanting to leave Germany, was serving a life sentence for serial killing. Yet somehow, with the help of Russ, she had come through all that to self-confidence. The Clements’ marriage was a harbour for both of them, their five-year-old daughter their beacon in the centre of it.

  She nodded down at the body on the bed: “Strangled. No rape, but there’d been intercourse. Dead eight to ten hours, I’d say.”

  The room was crowded and even after all these years Malone wished the crime scenes provided more breathing space. He looked at Des Shirer, the senior man from Regent Street, the local station. He never neglected protocol, it was part of the axle-grease of cooperation.

  “What’ve you got, Des?”

  Shirer was in his late thirties, but he had none of the comfortable look that Romy had. He was thin, fidgetty, had awkward movements as if on wires: crime, you knew, would eventually wear him out. “I’ve talked to Deric, here—”

  Deric was not what Malone had expected from Phil Truach’s description. He was in his early thirties, thick blond hair, regular features and what looked like muscular shoulders under the dark jacket. Definitely not a man who would have the vapours.

  Till he spoke: it was a high girlish voice and at the moment was quavery: “She—” He looked down at the still exposed body of the woman, then quickly looked back at Malone. “She’s registered as Mrs. Belinda Paterson—that’s what her credit card said. Some address in Oregon, in the United States. She booked in yesterday about 6 p.m., said she was staying just the one night. I wasn’t on duty, but our reception clerk said she sounded a very nice lady. Not a—well, you know.”

  “A hooker looking for business?” said Clements.

  Romy looked at Norma Nickles, the other woman in the room besides the dead one. “That’s how they divide us up—nice ladies or hookers. I’ll see you at home, Liebchen,” she said and gave Clements the sort of smile that has cut a thousand throats, mostly lovers’ and husbands’.

  “No, we don’t think she was anything like that,” said the manager and for a moment the quaver was gone from his voice.

  “If she was a hooker, she’d done all right at it.” Norma Nickles was a slim graceful woman who had once been a ballet dancer. She had descended from entrechat and sur les pointes to down-to-earth, flatfooted examination of crime. And was a star at it. “Her suit is top quality, Donna Karan, bought
at Bergdorf Goodman’s in New York. Cashmere sweater, Ferragamo shoes. Her topcoat is vicuna, it doesn’t come any more expensive in cloth, right, Doctor?”

  “The best.” The two women looked at the coat thrown over a nearby chair. Romy put out a hand to touch it, then realized she was wearing the plastic gloves. “I don’t think even hookers can afford them. Not in this town.”

  “This lady had money,” said Norma Nickles.

  “What’s the rate here?” Malone turned back to the manager.

  He had been looking down at the body; he jerked his head up as Malone spoke to him. “How much? A hundred dollars a night for a double with bath, like this front room. Less than that for group bookings.”

  Malone gazed down at the body now being zipped into a bag. The throat had a dark collar of bruising, the face was puffy and distorted, her mouth enlarged by the smeared lipstick. But it was evident that she had once been, only yesterday, a good-looking woman.

  “I’d say she was thirty-five, maybe forty, no more,” said Romy, peeling off her plastic gloves. “She’s looked after herself—or been well looked after. She was what you men call well preserved.”

  “Was she American, do you think?”

  The question was addressed to the manager, who had shut his eyes for the moment as the bag was zipped up. Now he shrugged, spread his hands; the gesture was slightly effeminate. Pull your head in, Malone told himself, and your prejudices. He was not homophobic, but he came of a past generation that carried notions as dated as flares and sideburns. But then he had other prejudices: cricketers who patted each other on the bum (bonding, he was told they called it); the same cricketers who threw the ball high into the air when they took a catch (show-boating, he called it); footballers who hugged and kissed each other when a try or a goal was scored; mates who thought half a dozen beers was a blood bond (which made him un-Australian). He would get used to fluttery hands eventually.