Five-Ring Circus

by Jon Cleary

  He pointed to two plastic envelopes on Malone’s desk. “Six bullets and fired cartridge cases out of gun A. One of each out of gun B. Gun A was used in the Chinatown job, gun B did the one at Bondi.”

  “What sort of pieces?” asked Malone.

  “The Bondi gun was a standard Thirty-two, could of been a Fabrique Nationale. You know, the old Browning. As for the other—” He shook his head, “I won’t guess at this stage. The fired cartridge cases are all 7.65 millimetres by 17. That’s not a common calibre.”

  “Do the Chinese, mainland Chinese, make their own brand of weapon?”

  “Yeah, they do. I’ve got one of my blokes looking into the details. They didn’t have a great deal of their own handguns before World War Two and most of their early stuff was based on Russian models. There was a lot of gun-running by foreigners in the middle of the nineteenth century, but the Chinese didn’t try to copy much of what they bought. Most of it was sold to warlords who weren’t interested in manufacturing. Now things have opened up in China they make copies of everything but catapults. Bloody awful stuff.”

  “Where did you learn all this?”

  “I’m supposed to be an expert on guns, aren’t I? I could give you a history lesson on bows and arrows and boomerangs, too.” He grinned. “I boned up on the Chinese because they invented gunpowder. They’re pretty hip on weaponry of all sorts, these days, though they wouldn’t win any quality control awards. You’re pretty sure the murders were done by Chinks?”

  The one true native, he used all the politically incorrect terms—Chinks, wogs, slopeheads—without apology. Yet, if asked, he would have said he meant no offence. He had been a target, coon or Abo or darky, for so long he was past offence.

  “We think so,” said Clements. “But it’s all guesses at the moment.”

  “Especially now you’ve told us the Bondi job was done by a different gun,” said Malone. “The only connection is that they were all Chinese.”

  “And the Bondi guy lived in a flat owned by one of the Chinatown guys,” said Clements.

  “So there could be two hitmen running around?” said Binyan.

  Then Kagal and Gail Lee came into the big room and Malone beckoned them into his office. Clements shifted to one side on the couch, his usual rest, and Gail sat down beside him. Kagal leaned against the door jamb.

  “No luck at Cronulla,” he said. “The bird had flown. Looks as if she had a boyfriend—he’d flown, too.”

  “A guy named Guo Yi?” said Clements.

  Kagal and Gail looked at each other in surprise; then Gail said, “You’ve heard of him?”

  “He worked on Olympic Tower, him and a guy named Tong Haifeng, who lived out at Bondi, just around the corner from Mr. Zhang, Saturday’s hit victim.”

  “What did you find out?” said Malone.

  “The girl, evidently, was friendly with the neighbours, but the guy kept to himself. They lived in one of the new blocks of flats near the beach, a furnished two-bedroomer that was costing them three-fifty a week. Not bad for a student,” said Kagal, who, as a student, had lived at home in a house that had since sold for a million and a quarter. He supported double standards: they made conscience much easier.

  “Not with twenty-five million in her account,” said Malone, and looked at Binyan. “You just went pale, Clarrie.”

  “I always do when you mention white fellers’ money.” “This is Chinese money,” said Malone, and explained. “You find anything in the flat?” asked Clements.

  “Nothing that would identify them,” said Gail. “It was just like the flat out at Bondi, the Zhang flat. It had been cleaned out.”

  Malone, out of the corner of his eye, saw that Clarrie Binyan was watching Gail Lee, observing how she fitted in here. The old and the new: the two outsiders on the banks of the mainstream. Eighteen months ago a newly elected woman MP had sparked off a debate about immigration and race; old prejudices and bigotry had been revived. The furore had since quietened down, but there were still patches of thin ice everywhere.

  If Gail had noticed Binyan’s study of her, she gave no indication of it. Except: “So far we’re chasing Chinese shadows. But what if Jack Aldwych had something to do with all this?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Malone. “This looks like one occasion when Jack is lily white.”

  “If the killer was Chinese,” said Clements, “Jack would never have used him. His hitmen were always homegrown.”

  Malone could feel the thin ice beginning to crack. He stood up. “I’m going out to Bondi to look at Mr. Tong’s place. You come with me, Gail.”

  As he and Gail went out of his office he heard Clarrie Binyan say with his dry chuckle, “I’m homegrown, Russ. You think Jack would of used me?”

  “Shit,” said Clements, and looked after Gail, his tongue between his teeth as if he wanted to bite it.

  Then Malone and Gail were out of earshot at the front door. As he slipped his card into the security slot he looked at her; he was surprised to see she was smiling. She said, “Some day they’ll learn.”

  “Russ?”

  “Everybody. You have no idea how superior my father can be about the—the homegrown. Yet he goes to football matches and he stands up straighter than anyone else and sings louder when they play ‘Advance Australia Fair.’”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m half and half. They’ve never written anthems for us.” She was smiling still, but it looked a little forced now.

  They drove out to Bondi through one of those days when Sydney looks like a glossy advertisement for itself. In the bright sunlight everything looked so clean; the city and its suburbs on some days had a way of putting a gloss on its shabbiness. The purple smoke of an occasional jacaranda showed in a garden; an Illawarra flame tree demanded attention. The sky was flawless; because they were driving eastwards, towards the sea, there was no pollution haze on the horizon. A good day to be alive, not to be looking into the possibility of another murder.

  Clements had been wrong when he had said that Tong Haifeng lived just round the corner from Zhang Yong. He lived in a block of expensive apartments at the southern end of the beach; if he was keen-sighted he wouldn’t have needed binoculars to admire the bare bosoms on the sands below. Whatever his background in China, he had treated himself well in Australia.

  Gail parked the car in a No Parking zone, got out and looked down at the bodies on the beach. “What do you think attracted him here? The boobs or the surf?”

  It was the first time in all the months she had been with Homicide that she had been less than formal. “Aren’t the Chinese supposed to be straitlaced about—” He gestured at the bodies below where all the laces were undone.

  “The old ones, maybe. I don’t know about the young ones. I see pictures of them, on TV, the ones who can afford it are all wearing Armani, Gucci, stuff like that. I don’t think Italians ever designed anything to be straitlaced.”

  He grinned, suddenly warming to her. “I’d like you to meet my daughters some time.”

  “Thank you,” she said, but he wasn’t sure whether she welcomed the invitation or not.

  They found a woman cleaner who, after they had produced their badges, used a master key to let them into a flat on the third floor. “I dunno I should be doing this—I don’t clean for this guy—”

  “Did you ever speak to him?”

  “Never. You wanna know anything about him, you better ask someone else. There. Close the door when you come out. Don’t tell anyone who let you in.”

  “We’ll say we used a sledgehammer,” said Malone.

  “I seen youse do it on TV. Very effective.” She went away, convinced sledgehammers were everyday equipment for cops.

  She was about to step into the lift when Gail went after her. “Does he own the flat or rent it?”

  “Rents it, I think. This whole block is owned by a Chinese gentleman. People who live here ain’t short of a dollar. Don’t tell anyone I said that.” She was in her forties, bu
t her face had the look of someone who had been that age for the past twenty years. If she looked up into the sun it was to look for clouds: she had suffered that sort of life. “He’s the only Chinese living here. What’s he done, anyway?”

  “Nothing, as far as we know. Thanks, we’ll close up when we leave.”

  The lift door closed on the woman and Gail came back to Malone. “Owned by a Chinese gentleman. Mr. Feng, maybe?”

  When they were in the apartment Malone looked around. “Looks like he didn’t want to be reminded of home.”

  If Tong Haifeng had been nostalgic for China he had not relieved his homesickness with the apartment’s furnishings. Everything was starkly modern: black leather couch and chairs, glass tables, thick white rugs on the black-stained floor. The stark white walls held no scrolls, no painted silks; a Hockney California print faced a Leroy Neiman print of a baseballer; Mr. Tong seemed America-oriented. The view from the apartment’s wide balcony would have brought no memories of home.

  “You reckon this stuff is his or comes with the apartment?” said Malone. “What would a place like this cost?”

  “To rent? Four or five hundred unfurnished, maybe seven-fifty furnished like this. Not bad for a junior engineer.”

  “Unless he, too, had twenty million in the bank. Righto, let’s start looking.”

  As far as they knew no crime had been committed here, so Physical Evidence could not be called in. If Mr. Tong came back while they were here, there could be ructions; they had no warrant to search. But Malone was not the first cop who had learned that if you lagged one step behind civil rights you would never catch up. If conscience worried you, you put it on hold till you were caught out. Pragmatism was never based on conscience.

  If Gail Lee was worried, there was no sign of it. She went through the flat with the thoroughness of a second wife inspecting a first wife’s housework. Malone followed her, empty-handed: if Tong Haifeng had left anything of himself in the flat it could only be a fingerprint and they had no equipment to register that.

  “I thought there might be something in the bathroom cabinet,” said Gail. “But nothing, no medicine, not even toothpaste. He’s taken all his toilet things.” She looked around. “There’s something missing.”

  “What?”

  “In the flat out at Cronulla there was a phone connection but no phone. Same here. They must have used mobiles.”

  “You got yours?”

  She produced it from her handbag, handed it to him.

  He dialled Homicide: “Russ? Our feller’s gone. Get on to Immigration, I want a watch on all airports. He may be scooting back to China.”

  “What’ve we got on him?”

  “Nothing. Tell them we just want him for questioning. The same time, tell them to look for the Cronulla pair, the girl and Mr. Guo. I want ‘em all, the quicker the sooner.”

  “You sound as if you’ve got shit on the liver again.”

  “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to have to take the Great Wall of China apart brick by brick . . . When you’ve finished with Immigration, get on to Telephone Intercepts. Get them to contact Telstra or Optus, we want a trace on two mobiles. Tong Haifeng, Guo Yi or the girl. They made that call this morning to the site manager at Olympic, that would’ve been on a mobile, I’d guess. Ask Intercepts to get on to it right away.”

  He hung up as there was a ring at the front doorbell. He looked at Gail. “It can’t be Mr. Tong. Open it.”

  She opened the door. Jack Aldwych and Blackie Ovens stood there, no surprise at all on the two faces that had learned long ago never to show surprise when faced by cops.

  “Hello, Scobie. Are we looking for the same bloke?”

  4

  I

  QUEEN VICTORIA, a lady not renowned for taste, would possibly have been proud of Sydney’s Town Hall. Located in the heart of the city it is built on a graveyard; it could be mistaken for the outsize mausoleum of some mad emperor. It has all the style of Victorian bad taste, carbuncled and columned till one’s eyes cross in reluctant admiration of the architectural excesses. Its tower rises like a stone wedding cake; one would not be surprised to see stone kewpies of a mayoral couple at the very top. Only the clock in the tower has managed to escape ornamentation: someone appreciated the simplicity of Time.

  Its interior, however, has some dignity, even if heavy. Decorative tiled floors, vaulted ceilings, magnificent panelling: Lisa enjoyed wandering through the building in her spare moments. In an odd way it brought back memories of her days on the diplomatic circuit in London, where the interiors of many buildings had been better than the exteriors.

  Though she had been working at Town Hall a month this was only the second committee meeting she had attended. She was still getting to know the councillors and their affiliations: the Labor councillors, the left-of-centre Democrats, the Reform conservatives, the green-hued Independents. Though she had been only twenty-one she had spent enough time on the diplomatic circuit to appreciate that politics, at whatever level, was a swamp where webbed feet were essential. She had been the High Commissioner’s private secretary, despite her youth; she had been resented by older public servants, but she had managed to stay afloat. Public service was often politics at its lowest level.

  “We’ve got to do something about the poor bloody battlers down in South Ward. We’re always hearing about the poor bloody battlers out west, but we’ve got our own right here on our doorstep.” He was a thin intense man with a beard; someone had once told him he looked Christlike and he’d been striving ever since for the image. He wore his sympathies like a hair shirt, one that scratched and irritated his fellow Democrats.

  “The battlers, the poor bloody battlers,” said the Deputy Lord Mayor and made it sound like his daily mantra; with the talent of the truly hypocritical, he even made it sound sincere. “The Bible says they’re always with us.”

  “They’re a fucking nuisance,” said the chairman of the works committee, a Reform councillor. “Our job would be much easier if everyone was rich.”

  “Like you,” said an Independent, a grey-haired, blunt-faced man who had travelled the spectrum of politics and finished up adrift.

  Lisa sometimes marvelled at the gems of wit and wisdom that dropped on the table at the two meetings she had attended. The public was not admitted to these gatherings, as it was to general council meetings; here behaviour was unrestrained, knives flashed, abuse smoked like fuses that never actually set off an explosion. Labor, the Democrats and the Reform party had an equal number of councillors; the balance of power was held by three Independents, all independent of each other and all as unpredictable in their flights of fancy as blind birds. Lisa had come to wonder how the city survived its council.

  “Let’s get down to business,” said the Deputy Lord Mayor. He had all the usual authority of a compromise candidate; he looked for friends, for supporters, in a wilderness of his own making. He was big and fat and could convince himself that a slush fund was an environment contribution towards protecting a wetland; bribes were alms offering by concerned developers. Those citizens who knew him hoped he would be gone before the Olympics year. “What’s on the agenda?”

  “It’s not on the agenda,” said a Democrat, a once sensible and honest man worn down by disillusion, “but these murders of top businessmen don’t say much for our image. I believe you were there, Mrs. Malone, when it was all happening, as the cricket commentators say.”

  “Yes,” said Lisa. “But the last thing on my mind was the city’s image.”

  “But we must think of it,” said the Deputy Lord Mayor, concerned for image, since he had none of his own.

  “Your husband is handling the case?” That was the chairman of the works committee.

  “Yes, Mr. Brode.”

  “How’s it going? Any suspects?”

  “I couldn’t say. We don’t exchange views on our respective jobs.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Brode was a large fair man who would run to fat when he slowed
down. He had thinning wavy hair, a large nose and a mouth in which the lips were constantly moving, as if practising what he was about to say next. Despite his fairness he had very dark brown eyes that, like his lips, were never still. Lisa knew that nobody at Town Hall liked him, but popularity, it seemed, was never one of his ambitions.

  “Why has that project always been such a bloody headache?” asked another councillor, an Independent who always wore green shirts as a token of his leanings. “We should’ve put a park there.”

  “Grow up,” said Brode. “Parks never brought in revenue.”

  “Money. That’s all you think of.”

  “I’ve been looking into who’s building Olympic Tower,” said a second Independent, a middle- aged woman with a shark’s smile and a talent for tearing budgets to shreds. “Two men with criminal records are linked with the two Australian companies and God knows what sort of record the Chinese company has. Who okayed the project?”

  Lisa saw all heads turn towards Brode. He ignored the stares, gave his flinty attention to Mrs. Harrity, the Independent. “I did. What of it?”

  She looked at the notebook in front of her; she carried it everywhere with her, like a weapon. “You were on the council several years ago when the original project was okayed. Did you have anything to do with that one?”

  “Yes. What’s all this leading to?”

  “My notes say that you were a director of the company that did the feasibility study on the project. You were on the town planning committee at the same time.”

  “I stood aside from the committee so there’d be no conflict of interest.”

  “I’m sure you did.” The shark’s smile had all the good humour of a set of butcher’s knives. “I just happen to believe that ‘conflict of interest’ is as empty a phrase as ‘see you later.’ Which one invariably does. Did you stand aside when it was decided that the present project could increase its height by four levels?”

  “Hold on a minute,” said the Deputy Lord Mayor, whose name was Goodenough, one that fell short of his aspirations. “What extra four levels?”