Babylon South

by Jon Cleary

  “We all do that,” said Jean and smiled at Lisa. “Or we try to.”

  “Have you met her?” Lisa said to Malone.

  “A couple of times. I had a session with her today.”

  “Who’s the guy with her?” said Gil.

  “His name’s Michael Broad. He’s her old lady’s financial director.”

  “Her old lady,” said Lisa. “That’s how you describe Venetia Springfellow? How would you describe me to your mates in Homicide?”

  “You’re my old lady,” said Malone and grinned. If they had been alone he would have taken her hand; but not in front of the Holmans, not in front of the International crowd. “Or my kids’ old lady, if you like.”

  Lisa smiled at him. “I don’t know why people say Aussie men have no charm.”

  “Ah, break it down,” said Gil, who, Lisa had once confided to Malone, had as much charm as an empty beer bottle. “We’re just different, that’s all.”

  “Different,” said Jean, and for the first time Malone wondered if things were quite as congenial between the Holmans as they made out. “Yes, I think that’s the word. La différence. That Michael Broad is different.”

  “He’s as smooth as the top of his head,” said Malone.

  Lisa ran her hand over his thick unruly thatch. “So are you.”

  Without thinking, Malone had turned his chair round, like the three peacocks at the nearby table; he was an animal observing its prey. Or Clements’s prey: the big sergeant should be here, not himself.

  The café a moment ago had seemed full; but somehow Justine and Broad had found an empty table; money, real money, has its own magic. Justine, well aware of the circle of stares ringing her, sat down, arranging herself with the unnatural grace that is natural to a model; Lisa, who knew that the Miss Springfellow had never had to earn a living as a model, wondered where she had acquired the gift. Malone, for whom sitting down was no more than putting a bum on a seat, just continued to observe.

  Then Justine looked across the café and saw him. The International was well-lit; it was a place designed not for rendezvous but for recognition; the Viennese owner knew his customers better than they knew themselves. She stared at Malone, her eyes opening as if she were suddenly frightened; then she leaned forward and said something to Broad. He turned and looked across at Malone, his gaze coolly aggressive.

  “Her boyfriend doesn’t like you,” said Gil Holman.

  Lisa had turned back, was picking at her cheesecake: she knew she made better herself, “I don’t think he’s her boyfriend. He is just her minder, a hanger-on.”

  Malone looked sideways at her. “What makes you say that?”

  Lisa smiled at Jean. “Do you agree with me?”

  Jean nodded. “She’s far too casual with him. When she walked in, she might as well have been on her own, for all the attention she gave him.”

  “Listen to „em!” said Gil. “You two oughta be in the police force. Cagney and Lacey. What do you think, Inspector?”

  “I never argue with a woman in public. Certainly not with two of them.” He looked back across the café. Justine and Broad were no longer staring at him; but neither were they looking at each other. They had the detached appearance that a brother and sister might have in public; or Justine did. “But it’s given me something to think about.”

  On the way out the Malones and the Holmans had to pass Justine’s table. As they did so, Malone paused. “I’m glad to see you relaxing, Miss Springfellow. You didn’t look very relaxed this morning, I’m sorry about that.”

  She was wearing a blue linen dress, but he guessed it was not one she would wear to the office: it was a shade too revealing. He wondered if it was the dress she had worn on Monday night.

  “I don’t think Miss Springfellow needs your sympathy or your attention,” said Broad, smiling broadly; people were looking at them and he attempted to look as if he and Malone were exchanging pleasantries. He was dressed in a white silk jacket and blue shirt and trousers. Malone, standing above him, might have been his gardener caught in an off-duty moment and being told how to mow the lawn tomorrow. Except that no gardener could afford the International’s prices. “You don’t have to stop and talk to her in public. Not here, anyway.”

  Malone grinned, though he was not amused, “I didn’t think I looked that much like a cop. Sorry, Miss Springfellow. Next time I’ll wear my Gucci gear.”

  As he caught up with Lisa she said, “I heard that. You trying to sound like those cops in Miami Vice?”

  “It’s reading those scripts for Woolloomooloo Vice.” That, thank Christ, was behind him; some other poor mug had been drafted as technical adviser. “I don’t even know why I stopped to speak to her.”

  “You couldn’t help yourself. She’s a very pretty girl and you have the seven-year itch.”

  “Is that all?” He grinned at her, took her hand; they were out of the International now. “I thought it was something serious, like a cop’s sadistic streak I’m always reading about.”

  They said good-night to the Holmans, who drove off in their Volvo with the Anti-This, and Anti-That stickers on the rear window. As they got into the Commodore, with not a sticker in sight but the registration label, Lisa said, “What did you mean when you said I’d given you something to think about?”

  “You never forget a line, do you?”

  “That comes of being a married woman. Freud or Havelock Ellis or Dorothy Dix said that.”

  “It sounds more like Dolly Parton.” He waited till she had started up the car and pulled away from the kerb; when they went out at night he preferred her to drive. “I think we’ve been concentrating too much on Justine.”

  “I could have told you that, if you’d asked me.” They had discussed his day’s work on the drive over from Randwick to Double Bay. “What about Venetia? Isn’t she a suspect? Or Venetia’s mother, Justine’s grandmother? From what you said, she’s tough enough.”

  “Maybe. So’s Michael Broad. From what I’ve heard of him, he’s as ruthless as the lady he works for.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose you could put him on your list. But I’d stick to the women. What about the other sister-in-law, Edwin’s wife?”

  “You really have got it in for the women, haven’t you?”

  “I just don’t want you spending all your time with one of the prettiest, the richest young girl in town. No, seriously—” She kept her eyes on the road as they drove up through Woollahra, under the tunnel of big trees along Ocean Street, with the fruit bats scratching their ragged lines across the early summer moon. “You haven’t got your heart in this, have you? Not even with Justine?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Darling, you’re like an open book sometimes. It’s almost as if you want me to read you, instead of you telling me something. Now are you going to tell me or not?”

  They crossed Oxford Street and went on down past Centennial Park, dark as an unmapped continent on their right. He looked out at the darkness beyond the high iron railings: it was a good place for telling secrets. So he told her about the intrusion of Commissioner John Leeds into the case.

  “Was he a boyfriend of Venetia’s?”

  “I’d say so. He might be more than that. He might be Justine’s father.” It was only in the last few years that he had begun to discuss his cases in detail with her; but he knew she could be trusted, though he worried sometimes that he burdened her with his own need for support. She was a sounding-board and sounding-boards were supposed to absorb a certain percentage of what was bounced off them. He wondered at the cumulative effect.

  “Was Venetia ever a suspect in the disappearance of her husband?”

  “I don’t know. From what I gather, the lid was put on that case quick smart.”

  “What about Venetia’s mother? Was she ever questioned about Walter Springfellow? Mothers-in-law have been known to be very nasty.”

  “Yours isn’t. Neither is mine.”

  They agreed that Brigid Malone and Elisa
beth Pretorius would never murder anyone and they drove on in silence for a while. Then Lisa said, “Let’s forget the Springfellows. I’m not going to waste tonight talking about them.”

  “What did you have in mind? It’s bed-time.”

  “That’s what I had in mind. This is the first opportunity I’ve had in weeks to make love without holding my breath.”

  “Is that why you dumped the kids on your mother?”

  “Of course. I’m going to moan my head off if you do your part properly.”

  “What if the neighbours hear you?”

  “They’ll think you’re murdering me. What a lovely way to go!”

  She put the car in the garage and, hand in hand, they walked into the house to the queen-sized bed, the capital city of the country of marriage, where the small death might occur every time they made love, but never murder.

  V

  Venetia could not believe what she was being told.

  “It’s true,” said Peter Polux. “I’m stone motherless broke. All bets are off, Venetia old girl.”

  “But—” Then she paused, suddenly afraid she was going to stammer; she had cured herself of that impediment years ago. There had been too many shocks in the past month; the nervous system could take just so much. “Two months ago, when we signed our agreement, you gave us proof you had the money. Five hundred and fifty million, less your 10 per cent success fee.”

  “Well, at least you won’t have to pay that.” But his smile was nervous. “Venetia, I had the cash, honest to God. But that was before Black Tuesday.”

  She noticed for the first time that he was no longer wearing his white shoes; his feet, which were tiny for a man of his bulk, were in mourning, in black brogues. He was still, however, fumbling with his gold rosary beads.

  “I had a silent partner, Steinburgers in Zurich—it was Brunei money we were going to use. I was borrowing from them and on-lending to you at a spread.” He grinned again, like a boy confessing to stealing apples from her orchard. With every moment she was now seeing him for what he was, a high-flyer who had soared far too high for his ability to stay airborne; she wondered at her own lack of judgement. Then she looked at Michael Broad, who had recommended Polux so strongly. “But as soon as the crash came, they reneged. I’ve been tearing around like a blue-arsed fly since then, trying to raise the cash.”

  “For us or for yourself? You said you were broke.”

  “I am, God’s truth.” She waited for him to hold up the rosary beads, but he didn’t. “Everything I own has gone down the gurgler. I was over-extended to buggery, Venetia. You were going to be my saviour.” He was trying candour now: it hung on his face like a lop-sided mask.

  Venetia looked at Broad again. “You recommended him. You said you’d had him checked out 100 per cent.”

  “I did. I had our best people on the job. He was just too clever for us.”

  Polux looked unoffended that they were discussing him in front of him. His brashness was an armour-plating. Venetia began to wonder if he would use his rosary beads as a slingshot.

  “How long have you known he was going to be of no use to us?”

  “A few days.” Broad had hesitated for a moment. “I was hoping I could salvage something, find another banker.”

  “And did you?”

  “No.”

  “All right, Mr. Polux—”

  “Peter.” With an ingratiating grin.

  “No—Mr. Polux. You were never going to be a friend of mine, not even if our deal had gone through. We owe you nothing, right?”

  For the first time he looked as if he might turn nasty; he had been dismissed before, but never by a woman, one as ruthless as this bitch. “You might need me in the future, Lady Springfellow. I’m not going to be broke for ever.”

  “You’ll always be bankrupt as far as I’m concerned, Mr. Polux. See yourself out, will you?”

  “I’ll see you out, Peter—”

  “Stay where you are, Michael. You and I have something to talk about.”

  Broad shrugged, gestured with a helpless hand to Polux. The latter put away his rosary beads and stood up; if he was bruised or scarred, it did not show. But as he walked out of the room he was limping, as if the black shoes were pinching. He was a white shoe man, a fair weather banker.

  When the door had closed Venetia said, “All I can say is, I’m glad we found out now instead of further down the track.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have been more careful with him.”

  “Why weren’t you?”

  “I trusted those I had working on him.”

  “Michael, you always double-check everyone who works for you. That’s why I pay you what I do. Why didn’t you do it this time? When you found out he couldn’t raise the money, why didn’t you come to me immediately?”

  He looked away from her for a moment, but she knew that he was not looking at the view from her window. He ran his hand over his bald head, a nervous gesture she had never seen before. He was not a nervous man; she had heard it said that he had more balls than any two men in Sydney’s financial world. That touched off a thought that eunuchs, so it was said, never went bald. She smiled at the irrelevancy, but when he looked back he mistook the smile for malice.

  “Are you planning to fire me, too?”

  That put her on her guard. “I haven’t made up my mind what I’m going to do. You still haven’t answered my question. Why did you neglect checking your feasibility team?”

  “I—I had something else on my mind.” Again the nervousness, this time in the normally steady, deep voice.

  She said very evenly, “Michael, was Polux going to give you a cut of his success fee?”

  “No.” He faced her openly, but she knew he was lying.

  “Then what was on your mind?”

  “Venetia—I’m in trouble. Not as badly as Peter, but bad enough. I’ve been buying futures. When things crashed . . .” The hand crept over the shining skull again.

  “How bad?”

  “I’ll have to sell my car.”

  God, she thought, how grown men value their toys! He made the Aston-Martin sound like a family estate.

  “And I’ll have to take out a second mortgage on my apartment. I may even have to sell it and move into something smaller.” He had an apartment in Double Bay that, she knew, was worth probably $500,000, though he had paid nothing like that for it four years ago.

  “Have you sold your Springfellow shares?”

  “No. I—I’m over-committed there.”

  “Why? You’ve owned them for some time, you got them at a good price—you could sell them without capital gains tax. You have—what?—fifty thousand?”

  “A hundred and fifty thousand. I—I bought up when we first started to put the takeover deal together.”

  “You could be in a lot of trouble. That’s insider trading. You’d better sell them.”

  “I can’t, not at the current price. I’m in enough of a hole, I don’t want to dig it any deeper.”

  She stared at him. She had never entirely trusted him, but it was her philosophy that trust was a luxury in today’s business; all one could do was rely on one’s judgement. And her judgement of him had been way off line.

  “Why did you go out on a limb like this, Michael? Don’t I pay you enough?”

  He stared back at her, less nervous now. “Greed, I suppose.”

  Our virtues are often connected to our vices. She had often told herself that her own greed for power and money financed her generosity to charity. But she doubted that Michael Broad had any charity in him. He would look upon even ten cents in a blind man’s tin cup as a tax deductible item.

  “I thought you’d understand that.” He was suddenly blatantly, if coolly, aggressive. He had argued with her, had never allowed her to walk over him as she walked over others; she had respected him for that, no matter how much he might have annoyed or angered her. But this was downright rudeness.

  “Watch yourself, Michael. You’re digging a bigge
r hole than you think.”

  “Don’t lecture me, Venetia. What I was after was the same thing as you were after—it was just a difference of degree, that was all. Everybody in town was bitten by the same bug.” Everybody was those tied by their computers to the stock exchanges of the world; it was another world from that of the man in the street, one where money was the visa needed and the dream desired. She understood what he meant. “I learned from you, Venetia. I should not have taken so much notice of you.”

  He had lost tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands; she had lost millions. She felt no self-pity: she had gambled and lost. She could, however, see him filling the hole he had dug for himself with self-pity and diving into it. All at once she was not only angry at him, but despised him.

  “I think you and I are coming close to saying goodbye. You’re not indispensable, Michael.”

  She saw the sudden frightened look in his face; he began to retreat. “I’m sorry—perhaps I’ve expressed myself too strongly. One says things when one is worried . . .” His accent seemed to have thickened, he was speaking with the precise English he had had when he first joined Springfellow. For a moment he was the newly arrived immigrant, one foot on the ship, one on the land where he had to begin a new life. “We can still perhaps salvage a deal for the takeover. In the last couple of days I’ve been in touch with Steinburgers in Zurich, asking them if they would come to the party on their own. With the dollar down, we’ll have to pay more in interest—”

  “What did they say?” She might forgive him if he did manage to salvage something from the wreckage. There are uses for charity: it isn’t all done with the best of intentions.

  “Well—” He knew that what he had held out was an empty promise. “At the moment they’re not interested. But . . .”

  “But nothing, Michael. I’ll think about what I’m going to do with you. That’ll be all.”

  He tried a last bluster: “You’ll have to buy me out—”

  She laughed. “I’ll buy you out by promising not to let the NCSC know about your insider trading.”

  His bony handsome face was abruptly as expressionless as his bald scalp. He said nothing, just got up and walked quickly out of the office. He didn’t slam the big heavy door: he had more sense of style. She had made another enemy, but the fact didn’t disturb her. The battlefield was too crowded for her to worry about another sniper.