Five-Ring Circus

by Jon Cleary

  “I’m going on Mrs. Malone’s report—”

  The atmosphere in the committee room, never warm, had abruptly chilled. Lisa felt a certain amount of the chill directed towards her.

  “My report was not meant to be a critical one—I just assumed the extra four levels had been approved. I was asked to give the latest assessment on hotel accommodation, present and future—” She was not flustered, but she was suddenly aware that she had been left holding someone else’s can. “The extra four levels in the hotel section of Olympic Tower will give another sixty rooms.”

  “Well, well,” said Goodenough. “Looks like you have some explaining to do, Raymond, old chap.”

  “Who gets the extra revenue this time?” said Yagovitch in the green shirt. “You should’ve let it be a park, mate.”

  “I’m not your fucking mate,” said Brode. “This was decided down in the planning department.”

  “It may well have been,” said Mrs. Harrity, “but nobody on committee appears to have heard of it. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Malone’s diligence—”

  “Thank you,” said Lisa, “but don’t blame me.”

  “I’m not, my dear—we’re grateful to you.” Due to an unfortunate array of dental work Mrs. Harrity was unable to give a warm smile; but she tried. “Something smells. I think we should have the head of the planning department up here, maybe he can enlighten us.”

  There were seven councillors present; no final decisions were made here but went before the full council. The seventh member, Brode’s fellow Reform councillor, at last spoke up. He was a squat portly man with a florid face and a bouffant crop of white hair; his name was Pascal, he was the head of the biggest legal firm in the city and he had been a city councillor for fifteen years. He could smell scandal at a hundred paces.

  “Don’t let’s open doors till we are sure what’s on the other side. I think we should have a closed discussion on this—and I mean closed. Would you ladies mind leaving us?”

  A secretary and Lisa were the only two non-committee members present. They both stood up and without a word went out of the big room, closing the door behind them.

  “That’s the last we’ll hear of that.” The secretary was a slim woman in her mid-thirties with enough hair to have got a starring role in The Bold and the Beautiful, unlike the players in that soap opera she never let any crisis trouble her. “We can close our notebooks.”

  “What do you mean?”

  There were half a dozen people in the hallway, sitting on chairs as they waited to be called to report to the committee. The secretary, whom Lisa knew only as Rosalie, as if secretaries didn’t have surnames, jerked her head and led Lisa along the hall and out into the main vestibule. Here there was traffic, but no one, as in the hallway, had their ears cocked.

  “Look, Lisa, you’re on the Olympic advisory staff, right? From now on that’s all this council is going to think about—the Olympics.” She took out a compact, made sure her auburn mane had not blown away. “I dunno what went on down at Olympic Tower, but whatever it was, that lot back in that room aren’t going to broadcast it. Not even Mr. Yagovitch to his Greenie mates. Someone obviously copped a handout—”

  “Mr. Brode?”

  “No names, Lisa, please. I’ve kept this job for seventeen years by never hearing or mentioning a name, okay? Sydney is the squeaky clean city for the next eighteen months and nobody is going to be allowed to rub any dirt into it. You, me, Mrs. Harrity, Mr. Yagovitch, anybody. You better believe it. Mr. Pascal will give them legal advice, for which he’ll charge the council, or his firm will, and we’ll go back in there and it will be ‘any further business?’”

  Lisa smiled. “You know, I worked on the diplomatic circuit in London when I was young—I keep hearing echoes.”

  “Was it much different?”

  “Only the language. Foreign ministers and ambassadors didn’t use four-letter words—not to each other. In private, probably.”

  “It’d be different if we women ran the world.” Rosalie put away her compact, hair still intact. “But then, who am I kidding?”

  II

  “I only met Tong and Guo once,” said Jack Aldwych. “Les Chung gave a reception on the day we started the job. They’d just arrived from China. They were supposed to be Shan’s protégés, but they were a coupla uppity young bastards. Like Blackie here used to be.”

  Blackie Ovens grinned, his face crumbling like a soft muffin; all the hard-baked toughness of his earlier days had gone. “You’d of done me, I ever got uppity with you.”

  “How were they with Madame Tzu?” asked Malone.

  “You’ve met her? Stainless steel right through, eh? I never saw ‘em with her, but they wouldn’t of got uppity with her. Not her.”

  Blackie had found coffee, biscuits and some fresh milk in the kitchen and now the four of them were sitting out on the balcony, as relaxed as tenants. Below them the Monday leisure class dotted the beach: waiters, drug couriers, retirees, young mothers and hookers. A dozen or more bosoms were bared to the sun, nipples on their way to melanoma; bare buttocks invited the sun to zero in on twin targets. Sun cancers were what happened to other people.

  “What brought you here?” said Malone. “Did you think Tong or Guo might be the feller in the stocking mask on Friday night?”

  “It’s a thought.” Aldwych this morning wore a blue linen shirt and slacks, a light blue cardigan and a panama hat. He had been a rough-and-ready dresser in his early days, but Shirl, over the years, had groomed him. Left to his own taste he would have reverted to those early days, but Blackie, an unlikely valet who had revered the late Mrs. Aldwych, saw to it that standards were kept up. “If Tong had been here, Blackie was gunna ask him a question or two. He’d of soon told us if he’d been there Friday night.”

  “Jack, I asked you to leave this to us—”

  “So you did. I must of forgot.” Aldwych smiled above his coffee.

  “You’re never going to impress young cops like Gail if you keep going back on your word. Stay out of it, Jack . . . Who brought the original capital for the Bund Corporation into Australia? Mr. Shan or Madame Tzu?”

  “Either. We weren’t able to check on that. The money was already here when they came to us.”

  “Were you and the other locals asking for another injection of capital?”

  “Why?”

  “There’s fifty-one million frozen in the accounts of two Chinese students brought in through a Hong Kong bank. One of the students lived over there—” Malone nodded inland. “He was murdered Friday night or Saturday morning, early.”

  “Same gun?” Aldwych never missed a trick in the murder game.

  “No-o.”

  “So where’s the connection?”

  “The other student was a girl who lived out in Cronulla with Mr. Guo. She and Guo and Tong have disappeared. Do you know anything about the fifty-one million? You or Jack Junior?”

  Blackie Ovens had screwed up his eyes at the sum mentioned, as if trying to count it up in his mind; but Aldwych had remained impassive: “No, we know nothing. Go on. Thanks, Miss Lee,” as Gail offered him more coffee.

  “If Les Chung had copped it on Friday night along with Mr. Feng and Mr. Sun, who’d take over Lotus Corporation?”

  “The families, I guess. Les and I never discussed it.”

  “How much would it take to buy out Lotus?”

  “I see what you’re getting at. More than fifty million. The stage we’ve got to now, nobody would sell out under a hundred million. More—two hundred and fifty.”

  “What would you do if you found the Bund Corporation was your only partner?”

  “I’d be very careful. I might send Blackie to do some due diligence.”

  Blackie shook his head. “I’m too old, boss, to take on any big stuff.”

  “You’d need more than an iron bar and a couple of heavies, Jack,” said Malone. He looked at Gail. “Go and knock on a few doors, see what you can find out about Mr. Tong.”

&n
bsp; As Gail disappeared into the flat Aldwych looked after her. “Is she any help, being Chinese?”

  “Half-Chinese, Jack. She’s a mongrel, as one of our enlightened mayors over in South Australia once called them. But anyone will tell you, mongrels are tougher than pure breds.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” said Aldwych with a grin. “Blackie and me are pure breds. That true-blue Aussie mayor would of been proud of us.”

  Malone turned to look out at the beach, not seeing the bare bosoms, just the waves rolling in with the inevitability of government interference. At last he said, “Jack, the government is going to poke its nose into this sooner or later. It’s been flat out for overseas investors—selling off the farm hasn’t worried them. I dunno that it wanted Chinese investment, but it’s got it and it hasn’t squawked. Civil rights, all that sort of stuff, never worries a government when you wave money at it.”

  “It didn’t worry me, either,” said Aldwych, honesty glimmering out of him like a flickering candle. “If that’s what you’re getting at?”

  “Jack, I’d never accuse you of being a civil rights militant.”

  “You had me worried for a minute.”

  “I’m worried. If I don’t get on top of this pretty soon, Homicide is going to be in a bigger hole than the one you took over when you started this project. We have eight unsolved murders on our books—the Opposition was asking questions about us last week in parliament. Not us specifically, but the Service in general. Now that we’ve rooted out most of the corruption, they want to know if we’re now playing Boy Scouts. It’s all political bullshit, but the media make the most of it. And sooner or later the government— in particular the Premier and our Police Minister, The Dutchman—will respond to it, as they always do, and we’ll be booted up the arse. Now what I’m getting at, Jack, is this—”

  “I thought we were getting to something,” said Aldwych, but offering no encouragement.

  “You know more than you’ve told me. Right?”

  Aldwych considered for a long moment. Then he said, “Scobie, if you mean do I know who the killer is—no. I dunno any more than you do. But if you mean do I know what I’m gunna do from now on—yes, I do.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “Not unless it pays me to tell you. I once told you I wasn’t reformed, I’m just retired. I might come outa retirement, I dunno. If I do, you and me mightn’t be friends any more. We’d be back on opposite sides of the fence again.”

  The two men stared at each other; then Malone said quietly, “I’d be sorry if it happened, Jack.”

  “So would I.” The old crim sounded sincere. “But nobody’s ever taken anything away from me and I’m not gunna let it happen now.”

  Malone looked at Blackie Ovens. “What about you, Blackie? You going to come out of retirement?”

  “Whatever the boss says,” said Blackie.

  Malone sat back and sighed, stared out at the beach in silence. A breeze blew in from across the water; a thin curtain in the balcony doors shivered. A gull flew past, mewing like a lost child. Blackie gathered up the coffee cups and went back inside.

  Then Gail came back. “The only one home was the woman two doors along. She had nothing but good to say about Mr. Tong. Friendly, helpful—a good neighbour, she said. Went to dinner a couple of times in her flat, had her and her husband in here for drinks. I just checked—there’s good stuff in the drinks cabinet. Scotch, vodka, Aussie champagne. But—”

  “But?” said Malone.

  “About a week ago he suddenly changed. Passed her on the stairs, just nodded. She bailed him up eventually, she’s the sort who would, and asked him what was the matter. He was pretty short with her, but he said he would probably have to go back to China. She got the idea that didn’t appeal to him at all.”

  “Did he ever have any visitors?”

  “Yes, a young Chinese couple used to come here—that could have been Guo and the Cronulla girl. And once or twice a middle-aged Chinese lady—very much the lady, the woman said. From the description, I’d say it was Madame Tzu. She was here Friday night, the last time the neighbour saw Mr. Tong.”

  III

  The Chinese vice-consul did not appear to welcome Malone and Gail Lee. He was a tall thin young man, his mouth a hyphen between the parentheses of his hollow cheeks. He did not offer to shake hands, just stood behind his desk and said, “Yes? You are police?”

  Malone wondered how welcome police were in China. “We’d like to ask some questions about some recent arrivals from your country.”

  “People claiming to be political refugees?”

  He knows bloody well that’s not why we’re here; State Police had nothing to do with political refugees. “No. We’re investigating murders, Mr. Chen, not politics.”

  Chen relaxed almost visibly. “Sit down, sit down.” His thin narrow mouth had some difficulty in getting out the words; they came out as if he were blowing bubbles. “Oh yes, we’ve read about those. Most regrettable. One doesn’t expect that sort of thing in such a wonderful city as Sydney.”

  Why not? Malone wanted to ask him.

  “Do students who come in here,” said Gail, “do they have to register with the consulate?”

  “Of course. They like to keep in touch. You are referring to the unfortunate student Zhang?”

  “He and another student named Li Ping.”

  Chen opened his narrow eyes. “She has been also murdered?”

  “We don’t know,” said Malone. “She has disappeared, along with two other people, not students. Mr. Tong and Mr. Guo—are they registered with the consulate?”

  “Yes.” He appeared to have a computer list in his head. Or perhaps the names were in the papers on his cluttered desk. “They have disappeared also? That is very disturbing.”

  “Yes, you could say that.”

  Chen unexpectedly smiled, an unexpectedly sweet smile. “We are not reluctant to co-operate, Inspector. But it is not in our character to fling the door wide open as soon as you knock.” Then somehow the small mouth widened further. “You expect us to talk in aphorisms, don’t you?”

  Malone was aware that Gail, sitting beside him, was sharing Chen’s smile. “I have to tell you, Mr. Chen, I am still working on Constable Lee’s character.”

  The Chinese consulate was in Woollahra, a habitat for consuls who had a yen for tree-lined streets, trendy cafés and smart restaurants; one worked better for one’s country if one could leave the visas and go out and flash a Visa. The Chinese consulate had moved here after the taking over of Hong Kong, into a small mansion where the red flag hung from a flagpole in the garden like something that had blown in from another era.

  Driving back from Bondi Gail had suggested dropping in at the consulate, which was on the way back to Strawberry Hills. Normally, when working on a case, she had a cool detachment; on this one there was an involvement, a determination, that he had not remarked before. As if she had stepped into an examination she had to pass.

  “Persistence,” she said now to the two men, “it’s the secret of every woman’s character.”

  Chen and Malone exchanged male smiles; then Chen said, “To be serious, we are very much disturbed about the young people you have mentioned.” Though he had to be less than thirty, he spoke as if the missing student and engineers were mere children. “The Fraud Squad have already been to interview us about those extraordinary amounts in Zhang’s and Li Ping’s bank accounts.” Now that he was relaxed his words came out less explosively. “That sort of thing is a great embarrassment.”

  Malone had not expected such an admission. “Can you explain how such an embarrassment was allowed to happen?”

  “Mr. Deng, our consul-general, is down in Canberra—”

  “Deng?” said Gail. “As in Deng Xiaoping?”

  Again the sweet smile. “No relation.”

  “That must be fortunate for you. No nepotism so far south. My father told me nepotism rules the roost in China.”

  “Where does he co
me from?”

  “Oh, he was born here. But my grandparents came from Hunan.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Changsha.”

  The smile widened, was almost joyous. “Where I come from! How remarkable!”

  Nice work, Gail, thought Malone. She had Mr. Chen completely relaxed.

  “Does Mr. Deng work out of Canberra?” asked Malone.

  “Oh no, he is down there at a conference at the embassy. That is why I am holding the fort.”

  Malone wondered if Deng would be as expansive as Chen now appeared to be. “A conference on the murders we are investigating? On Mr. Shan in particular?”

  “We now have problems, just as you did in the 1980s. Entrepreneurs—” He shook his head.

  “What do you do with them?”

  Chen smiled again, less sweetly this time. “We don’t let them flee to Spain or Poland. We keep an eye on them, but they are slippery customers.”

  “Was Mr. Shan a slippery customer?” said Gail. “He seemed to have an awful lot of money at his call.”

  Suddenly the mouth was a hyphen again. “Mr. Shan was not who he claimed to be.”

  “Who was he then?”

  A moment’s hesitation; but he was still relatively relaxed: “He was General Huang Piao. Ex- general, I should say.”

  “Then he never worked for the Central China Department of Trade?” said Gail.

  “Not as far as we know. He was retired from the army five years ago—”

  “Retired?” said Malone. “Or sacked?”

  Chen shrugged. “He had an honourable record. But—” Then he stopped: he had said too much. “Go on, Mr. Chen.”

  “No, I think it best that I wait till Mr. Deng comes back from Canberra.”

  “I’m an ordinary Australian voter, Mr. Chen—we take everything that comes out of Canberra with a grain of salt. Whether from our government or foreign embassies. Reality never bites down there.”

  “You can be so free with your opinions of your government.” Chen sounded almost wistful. “Do you think Mr. Deng will not come back with the truth?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll come back with the truth. Whether he’ll pass it on to us—well, what d’you think?”