Five-Ring Circus

by Jon Cleary

  “What have you found?” asked Sheryl.

  “Nothing. The place is so bloody neat, you wonder if he actually lived here. There’s some clothes in the wardrobe and stuff in the bathroom cupboard, but nothing to identify him. It was the Maoris who gave us his name, told us he was a student.”

  “No passport, no bank book, credit card?” said Gail.

  “Nothing. The Maoris think he was at UTS, we’re gunna check.”

  “What killed him?”

  “A bullet in the left temporal, another one practically dead centre in the heart. Our guess is they used a silencer—nobody heard any shots. He’d been dead eight to ten hours was the pathologist’s guess—that would of been about midnight last night. They’ll tell us more when they do the autopsy Monday.”

  Gail Lee looked around the small bedroom: a featureless box in which an almost anonymous man had lived and died. The bed had not been slept in, so Zhang had either been up at midnight expecting visitors or had come home with them. “I noticed there are no books or newspapers out in the living room.”

  “If there were, they’d all been taken away,” said Napolani.

  “What about the TV set?” asked Sheryl. “There’s a VCR on top of it.”

  “No videos.”

  “So he was sitting up till almost midnight, looking at TV, or he’d come home with the guys who killed him?”

  “Looks like it,” said Napolani.

  “What made you think this homicide has anything to do with the ones last night in Chinatown?”

  Napolani shrugged. He was a cop who had learned his trade the hard way: never behind a desk, always on the beat or, once he had become a detective, out doing the legwork on an investigation. He had worked his way through robbery, assault, drugs and murder. He had developed an instinct: “It was a guess, a wild one. You don’t get four Chinese murders in twelve hours . . . Is that why they sent you?”

  “No.” Gail gave him a thin smile. “Sheryl just drags me along to read the tea leaves.”

  “You win.” Napolani’s smile was wider than hers.

  “Okay,” said Sheryl, “now we’ve got the cross-cultural bit out of the way, do you want us to hang around or do you want us out of the way?”

  “Before we go,” said Gail, “I think we should talk to the Maoris.”

  “They’re downstairs. Kip and Keith, friendly as a coupla buffaloes.” Napolani led them out of the flat, ducking under the tapes, and down a narrow flight of stairs where their heels click-clacked on the cheap tiles. “I had a check run on them. They’ve both got records—assault, battery, that sorta thing. Saturday-night wreckers, probably after they’ve been playing rugby.”

  “You’re not a rugby man?” said Sheryl, who occasionally dated footballers. “Not rah-rah?”

  “Golf. A gentleman’s game.” He grinned again as he knocked on the door of the flat immediately below that of the murdered man. “Don’t mention we know their records.”

  The door was opened by a handsome dark-skinned man who filled the doorway. “G’day. What’s the problem now?”

  “A few more questions, Kip.” Napolani introduced Gail and Sheryl. “They’re from Homicide.”

  “Women?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Gail. “We’ll try to be as genderless as possible.”

  Kip had a smile like a truck headlight. “Come in. Me mate handles women better’n I do.”

  Sheryl and Gail exchanged looks. “Ain’t we the lucky ones?”

  Keith, the delicate handler of women, was slightly less dark than his flatmate and only slightly less huge. The five people seemed to push back the walls of the small living room. “Siddown,” said Keith, and cleared a couch of what looked like a month’s laundry. “Sat’day’s cleaning-up day.”

  “When did Mr. Zhang move in upstairs?” asked Gail.

  Keith looked at Kip. “I dunno—what? Six months ago?” Six sounded like sex. “He always kept to himself.”

  “He ever have any visitors?”

  “Occasionally,” said Kip. “Always Chinese. They were a quiet lot.”

  “How do you know he was a student?” asked Sheryl.

  “I asked him straight out one day what he was doing here.”

  “He didn’t tell you to mind your own business?”

  Kip and Keith exchanged smiles, as if no one had ever been foolish enough to tell them to mind their own business. “Man, he saw I was just trying to be friendly. We’re a friendly lot, us Kiwis. Right, mate?”

  “Nobody friendlier,” said Keith; and you’d better believe it or else, said his smile.

  “He said he was doing computers at the University of Technology, Sydney. He spelled it right out, like I was dumb or something.”

  “Friendly but dumb, that’s us,” said Keith, the truck light gleaming again.

  Gail looked at Napolani. “I didn’t see a computer in his flat. Surely he’d have one at home to work on?”

  “There was none.”

  “Oh, he had one, all right,” said Keith. “I saw him carting it up there just after he moved in. What’s going on up there? We’ve had trouble in these flats, but never a fucking murder.”

  “What sort of trouble?” said Sheryl.

  Both men shrugged, a major tremor of bone and muscle. “You know, a party getting outa hand, some guy and his girl having a fight, the usual stuff. But someone being shot—” Keith shook his head. He had a flat-top haircut with shaven sides and when he frowned it seemed to start up a vein, like a lizard, in his right temple. “The landlord’s gunna be outa his fucking mind when he hears about it.”

  “Who is the landlord?”

  “We dunno. All we ever see is the agent, he comes knocking on the door, we don’t pay the rent.”

  “How often don’t you pay the rent?” said Sheryl, but smiled.

  “We miss occasionally,” said Kip. “But it’s never a big deal.”

  “What do you do?” said Napolani, although from their record he knew.

  “We’re dole bludgers. Ain’t that what all Maoris are supposed to be? We only come over here to bludge on the Aussie system. You got a better class of welfare here.” For a moment Kip’s broad face went a shade darker. Then he grinned. “No, we both got jobs. I work at a service station up on Bondi Road, Keith’s a public relations officer at a club up the Cross.”

  “A bouncer?”

  “Yeah,” said Keith.

  “You’d be good at it,” said Napolani.

  “Yeah, I got a diploma in bouncing. From UTS.” He was all smile, it would be a pleasure to be bounced by him.

  “If you saw someone coming into the flats with a gun,” said Gail, “what would you do? Bounce them?”

  “I’d close the door. They don’t pay you for being a hero. Welfare doesn’t stretch that far.”

  “It’s been a pleasure meeting you two gentlemen,” said Sheryl, rising. “If anyone comes around asking questions about Mr. Zhang, get in touch with Sergeant Napolani, will you? In the meantime, who are the agents for the flats?”

  Kip named them. “They’re just off Campbell Parade. They’ve probably already got the flat listed for rent again.”

  “You’re a cynical lot, you Maoris,” said Napolani.

  “We learned it from the pakeha.”

  Gail and Sheryl, in an unmarked car, followed Napolani in his unmarked car down the hill and to a street that ran off the esplanade. Napolani pulled into a zone reserved for disabled drivers and Sheryl squeezed the second car in behind it. At once, as always, a parking officer, another Maori by the look of him, was standing at the kerb, charge-book in hand.

  “I take it youse can read?” He nodded at the sign.

  Sheryl produced her badge. “We’ve got to get our daily quota, just like you. You want us to pinch you?”

  He held up both hands in surrender. “I was just standing here minding my own business, officer . . . How long you gunna be?”

  “Ten minutes, the most,” said Napolani, coming up behind the parking of
ficer. “G’day, Charlie, we’ve got some business across the road. We’ll limp across there if you want us to be disabled.”

  “What’m I gunna do if some little old lady on crutches turns up? Okay, but make it quick.”

  The man behind the counter in the estate agency was more welcoming; he thought they were prospective buyers till Napolani showed him his badge. “There’s been what? A murder? In one of our properties? Oh Jesus, that’s going to be a dead loss for a coupla months.”

  Napolani gave him the bare details.

  “I can’t remember everyone on our books—what’d you say his name was? Zhang?”

  “You have a lot of Chinese tenants?” said Gail.

  “Well, no, not a lot.” He was a young man who looked as if he might never sit down; he kept moving from foot to foot, his hands played a noiseless tune on the counter. He wore a bright white shirt and a tie that lay on his chest like a limp bouquet. Behind him two girls at computers had stopped to listen to the talk of, migod, murder! They couldn’t wait to put it on the real estate Internet. “We got thirty or forty blocks of flats on our books, Chinese tenants come and go. Bondi, you know, it’s sorta transient, people come and go.”

  “All the blocks of flats,” said Gail, “who owns them? Particularly Mr. Zhang’s block?”

  The young man looked over his shoulder at one of the girls, who instantly punched her computer keys. Then she said, “It’s one of half a dozen blocks owned by the same man. Mr. Feng. Mr. Charles Feng.”

  “Where does Mr. Feng live?”

  The girl glanced at her computer again. “He has two addresses. One in Chinatown and the other out at Drummoyne. We send the rent cheques to Drummoyne.” She gave a street address.

  Gail Lee and Sheryl Dallen exchanged glances and Napolani caught the look. But he asked no question, just said to the young man, “I’ll be back in a minute—”

  “Look, I’m busy—”

  “So’m I.” Napolani followed the two women out of the agency. “What’s on? Who’s Mr. Feng?”

  “He was one of the three men shot last night at the Golden Gate,” said Gail.

  III

  “Maybe it’s the wrong time,” said Gail Lee.

  “There’s never a right time for this sort of thing,” said Malone.

  Gail and Sheryl Dallen had reported back to Homicide from Bondi. Sheryl had been told to go off duty but to remain on call. Malone and Gail had driven out to Drummoyne.

  The suburb lies halfway between the affluent of the eastern suburbs and the battlers on the western front, where all is seldom quiet. It curves along the southern bank of the Parramatta River, the main artery flowing out of the harbour. Originally it was a land grant to an Irish military surgeon, presumably for not making too many blunders with the knife. He then, illustrating the affinity between the Irish and the Jews under English rule, sold the land to a Jewish convict tailor. The tailor had already been granted a pardon for providing two pairs of pants with each suit he made for the Governor. Raising enough capital to buy the land, he then turned from cutting cloth to cutting up lots. He sold to the aspiring gentry, a class already blossoming in the colony. Ever since the area has clung to a pretence of respectability, even though it once had a rugby team known to other rugby teams as the Dirty Reds. It is solid, conservative and, along the shoreline of its several small bays, suggestive of mild affluence.

  Now Malone and Gail were in this dead-end street lined with solid houses, some dating back to the last century; a few looked as if they had been built only yesterday, angular blocks of concrete and glass. The Feng residence was in the latter category, an ultra-modern mausoleum. Its double driveway was packed with seven cars, three were parked on the wide footpath, three others were double-parked alongside those at the kerb. A marked police car was double-parked on the opposite side of the road.

  Gail pulled their unmarked car in behind the police car and she and Malone got out. A uniformed cop opened the door of the police car and looked back at them. “Not there, sir.”

  Malone showed his badge, introduced himself and Gail. The young cop instantly slid out of the car, put on his cap. “Sorry, Inspector. But you can see the schemozzle we’ve got here—I’ve been instructed to give everyone twenty minutes, the most. But I haven’t the heart—”

  “Any of your men in with the Feng family?”

  “No, sir. I’m just playing traffic cop, but it’s hopeless. One or two of the neighbours complained—”

  “Ignore them, at least for another hour or so. Give whoever’s in there time to pass on their condolences. Then clear ‘em out. Nicely, of course.”

  “Of course, sir,” said the young cop as if he ever acted in any other way.

  “Do you know the Fengs?”

  “Only by repute.” He was tall and slim with sharp quizzical eyes and there were already faint lines in his face, as if age was waiting to pounce. Malone had seen a growing number of officers like him, men who, disappointed, would leave the Service long before their time was up. Corruption, public apathy or resentment: the ills had worn away at them. Corruption was now almost stamped out, the public had become a little more appreciative of the fact that cops were human, not supermen: but for some, like this young man, the tide had turned too late.

  “He’s a big number,” he said, “in the local council, the rowing club, things like that. He was, I mean.”

  “The family?”

  “I dunno much about them. The Chinese—” Then he looked at Gail. “No disrespect, ma’am, but Chinese families keep pretty much to themselves. As families, I mean.”

  Gail just nodded, made no comment. She turned away and crossed the road towards the Feng house. The young cop looked at Malone. “Have I offended her, sir?”

  “I don’t think so. But you never know.”

  The double front doors were wide open to a wide entrance hall in which people seemed to be coming and going in slow motion; not all of them, Malone noted, Chinese. A girl dressed in a high-necked black dress came towards Malone and Gail. “Yes?”

  Malone introduced himself and Gail again. “We’d like a word with someone from the family.”

  “I am Camilla Feng—it was my father who was shot. Did you have to come now?”

  Malone, perhaps because of his own height, always thought of Chinese women as small. Camilla Feng, however, was an inch or two taller than Gail, who was of medium height. Her slimness was accentuated by the simple black dress; she moved with the elegance of an older model, no angularity to her at all. She wore no jewellery or make-up; her black hair was cut in a gamine bob that complemented the bonework of her attractive face. Malone decided that, with make-up, she would turn the heads of a lot of men, not all of them Asian.

  “Can we go somewhere quiet?” he asked, aware that people were now turning to stare at them. He looked up the stairs that led to a gallery on the second floor. Les Chung was at the head of the stairs; he looked down at Malone and gave a slight shake of his head: why now? But Malone had answered that question too many times before. “Miss Feng—somewhere where we won’t be disturbed?”

  She had turned her head, following Malone’s gaze up at Chung. Nothing seemed to pass between her and Chung, or if it did Malone did not catch it. “Has Mr. Chung told you he has been to see us?” Malone asked.

  “No.”

  Then without a further word she led the two detectives down a flight of stairs. The house turned out to be three-storeyed; the bottom level was below the street. She led them out onto a deserted terrace, where a swimming pool threw back a glare like blue glass. Below the terrace there was a sharp drop to the waters of a small bay; some yachts floated there, their owners doing weekend work on them. Above the bay, like a concrete grey rainbow, was the long arch of the Gladesville Bridge.

  “There’s been a fourth murder,” said Malone, plunging straight in. “Someone besides your father and his friends. A Chinese student named Zhang Yong.”

  Camilla Feng frowned. “We don’t know anyone of that n
ame.”

  “Perhaps your father did. Mr. Zhang rented a flat in a block owned by your father in Bondi.”

  “What has that to do with us?”

  “You don’t think it a coincidence, four Chinese men murdered within a couple of hours? Your father owning the flat where one of the victims lived? We tend to link coincidences like that, Miss Feng. Did your father sponsor students from Hong Kong or Singapore or China?”

  “Hong Kong is China now.”

  He didn’t want a lesson in political history; but saw that she was playing for time. She put on dark glasses against the glare; Gail followed suit. Malone had left his own glasses at home, so that he was the one left barefaced.

  “Yes, my father did sponsor the occasional student.”

  “Any of the refugees from China?” asked Gail.

  “Possibly. We’re all refugees of some sort, aren’t we? Refugees from poverty, prejudice, whatever.”

  “I was being specific,” said Gail patiently. “Political refugees.”

  Camilla Feng had seemed remarkably composed for someone whose father had been murdered. But now she turned her head away to look towards the bridge and in her profile Malone saw the sudden tightening of her jaw as if she were stopping it from dropping. She said nothing, seemingly ignoring them, and at last Malone said, “Miss Feng, did your father visit China, mainland China?”

  Only then did she look back at them. “He never mentioned that he did. Why do you ask?”

  “At this stage we’re asking a lot of questions that may be irrelevant, but we often get unexpected answers. Did he visit Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore? Places where money, finance, is readily available? He was a wealthy man, Miss Feng. He and Mr. Sun and Mr. Chung put together a lot of money, millions, for their share of Olympic Tower—”

  “My father would go to Hong Kong three or four times a year. Taipei and Singapore—no.”

  “Never to the mainland?” said Gail. “Shanghai, for instance?”

  “Not as far as I know. My mother comes from Shanghai. She went with him to Hong Kong, before it was handed back, but she would never cross the border back into China. She has never mentioned that my father did.”