Five-Ring Circus

by Jon Cleary

  Boston nodded. “I know that. I once found the body of a guy Jack got rid of—I was a new cop, a year on the beat. The finger pointed at Jack, we all knew he’d ordered it, but we never laid a hand on him. Those were the days when he had cops on his payroll. You know him pretty well, don’t you?”

  “What does that mean?” He had to squash down his sudden temper.

  “Nothing. I was just asking.” Boston’s insolence was what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it?

  Malone managed to keep cool. “I use him for information, that’s all. Forget him—he had nothing to do with the killings. The hitman was Chinese, we’re pretty sure of that, and Jack’s a racist when it comes to hiring killers.”

  “We’re talking in circles, aren’t we?” Boston was making no attempt to hide his arrogance now; creases were starting to show in him.

  Malone sat back. “I guess we are. Don’t get yourself too involved in this, Harold. You’ll be gone next week.”

  Boston flushed, the old malevolence back in his face. “With all due respect to your rank, you’re a real shit.”

  “So I’ve been told.” He was not going to let the other man see him lose his temper. “It comes with the rank. Maybe you’ll do better in Archives. There’s only a senior constable in charge there.”

  “You may be wrong about Archives.”

  He stood up abruptly, almost knocking over his chair, left the office with quick strides, grabbed his jacket from his chair in the far corner of the office and stalked out of the big room, fumbling at the security door in his anger and haste. A moment passed, then Clements, as Malone expected, came in and slumped down on the couch beneath the window.

  “Problems?”

  “I dunno. He just said we could be wrong about Archives. I don’t think Administration would go against my recommendation and insist he had to stay here.”

  “If they do, I’ll see he does only paperwork, never moves out of the office. He’s a mean bastard, I wouldn’t trust him, and he’s bone lazy.”

  “He says he has contacts at Union Hall.”

  “Forget them. We’ll make our own—I’ll get Phil Truach down there.”

  Boston obviously had the contacts at Union Hall, something not easily obtainable, and he might have proved useful. Malone himself, not through any stiff-necked morality but because he hated debts of any kind, had always trodden warily with contacts. Like all cops he had his informants; cops and crims were two sides of the same coin and it couldn’t be flipped without calling the odds. He had no informant in government politics and he wanted none in union politics. In both those circles favours were always demanded in return.

  He explained what Boston had told him about Union Hall. “There may be something to it, but I think it’s bigger than that. This is more than a union stoush to see who runs the site.” Then he looked at the doorway. “Hello, Clarrie.”

  Clarrie Binyan came into the office, sat down and laid a manual on Malone’s desk. “I get outa the office as much as I can—I like showing off the uniform.” Recently many of the Service’s plainclothes officers had been put back into uniform, part of the plan to make the Service more visible to a public that had become suspicious of too many of the detective force. Malone was waiting for the day when Homicide would have to put on a uniform, a possibility he was ambivalent about. The voters had little time for uniforms: they had even been known to attack bus conductors. Binyan put a finger to his shoulder. “Especially now I’m an inspector. You wanna stand up and salute me, Sergeant?”

  “Not particularly,” said Clements, lolling like a sea lion or an overweight civilian on the couch. “What’ve you got for us?”

  Binyan opened the manual, took out a black-and-white photo. “I’m pretty sure that’s the type of gun did the Chinatown killings.”

  Malone studed the photograph, then passed it to Clements. “What is it?”

  “It’s a Chinese Type 67,” said Binyan. “One of my blokes looked it up, but we haven’t been able to find an actual piece. All we have is that photo. The calibre, 7.65 millimetres by 17 millimetres, started me thinking—it’s not one we come across at all. The Chinese army use that particular gun for covert operations.”

  “Covert?” said Clements. “You mean espionage hits, stuff like that?”

  “Or bumping each other off,” said Malone, and told Binyan that one of Friday night’s victims was not Mr. Shan but General Huang Piao. “Where did you get this information?”

  Binyan winked. “I have my gigs, just like you blokes.”

  Malone took the photo back from Clements and studied it again. “Friday night’s killer used a silencer. There’s none on this.”

  “It’s built in, that’s why it’s so good for covert work—you don’t have to screw on the hush-puppy before you do the job. It’s a very sophisticated piece. He just made one mistake.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If he’d used a standard piece we’d still be in the dark where the action is coming from.”

  “You think this is a Chinese army hit?” said Clements. “Killing off one of their own?”

  “He killed off two outsiders, Mr. Feng and Mr. Sun,” said Malone.

  “There’s the Bondi kid,” said Binyan. “Done with a standard piece. What’s he got to do with this?” Binyan’s interest was only academic. That way, he had once told Malone, he was interested only in the machine, not the feelings that drove it. In a way he was connected to murder more than any detectives: all murder weapons finished up in Ballistics’ exhibit-room. “Was the kid army, too?”

  Malone spread his hands: who knows? “I’m beginning to think we’re going to need a China expert. Gail understands the language, but she doesn’t understand what’s happening in China itself.”

  “What about Les Chung?” said Clements.

  “He’s a vested interest. You think he’s going to explain China to us?”

  “If he stands a chance of getting his head blown off, he might open up.”

  “Les has been in shady deals all his life. I’m not saying this is a shady deal—though it may well be—but the two honest men in this were Feng and Sun. I think we should be talking to someone from their families.” Then he looked up. “Yes, Gail?”

  She stood in the doorway. “Mr. Deng, the Chinese consul-general, is here.”

  II

  “What you must remember,” said Madame Tzu, “is that we Chinese, like the Italians and the Spanish, have a talent for revenge.”

  “What had my father done that called for revenge?” asked Camilla Feng.

  “Probably nothing. He just happened to be there. When my parents were murdered during the so-called Cultural Revolution, I’d have been dead, too, if I’d been there. It just so happened that I wasn’t and so I was spared.”

  “It’s different now.”

  “You think so? When you were in China last year you saw only what you wanted to see, you were a tourist. I don’t know about Sydney, I don’t know it well enough, but I assume the tourists who come here don’t go looking for the ugly side. Each time I’ve gone to New York I haven’t gone up to the Bronx or down to those parts of New York where people sleep in the streets and the subways—I go to the stores on Madison Avenue and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I stay at the Hotel Pierre. The same when I go to London or Paris—”

  “You’re a very fortunate woman.”

  Madame Tzu ignored that. “I’m not interested in America’s or Britain’s shame—nor Sydney’s, for that matter. And you weren’t looking for what’s still wrong with China.”

  “Which is?”

  “The die-hards who are afraid of what’s happening, who don’t believe in a free economy. The men who’ll kill in the name of Mao.”

  “Deng Xiaoping is dead. The other old men must all be gone soon.”

  “They don’t have to be old to cling to the past.” The scorn in her voice was harsh. “That’s been our trouble. We are always looking back.”

  They were seated in the Fengs’ Me
rcedes in the parking area under the half-fleshed skeleton of Olympic Tower. Here was comparative quiet, but noise sluiced down from above. Both wore the compulsory hard hats and looked slightly ridiculous in the car, like ladies on their way to some construction workers’ garden party. At Camilla’s insistence, Madame Tzu had brought her here to introduce her as her father’s heiress and successor.

  “Men think they hold the power,” Madame Tzu had said, “but it is we women who count the money.”

  “Which is what I intend to do,” Camilla had said. “Mother has folded up completely, I doubt if she’ll ever get over the way Dad died. So I’ll be running things.” She had three siblings, but they were all teenagers. “So I’d like to see where our money is invested.”

  She said now, “You mentioned revenge—do you know who killed Mr. Shan and my father and Mr. Sun?”

  Madame Tzu adjusted her hat. “No.”

  “Are you afraid he may come back for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Revenge?”

  “You ask too many questions, Camilla.”

  “That’s all I have—questions. No answers.”

  Madame Tzu turned her head carefully, as if afraid her hat might fall off. “You will be safe, that’s all you have to worry about.”

  Camilla tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, thought a moment, then said, “Meaning that your company, the Bund Corporation, is the honey-pot in this awful mess?”

  Madame Tzu opened the door of the car. “Let’s go and I’ll introduce you to the engineers.”

  As the two women moved across towards the administration hut a tall, well-muscled man in a blue singlet, tight shorts and a hard hat approached them. “G’day, Mrs. Tzu, how’re things going?”

  “As well as can be expected, Jason. This is Miss Feng.”

  He put a thick finger to the brim of the hard hat. “Pleased to meetcha.”

  Camilla was not particularly attracted to muscular athletes; she had always thought Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan would be a tiring lover. She was not attracted to this man, who seemed intent on displaying every muscle he had, including that in his shorts. She just nodded, her eyes as blank as the dark glasses she held in her hand.

  Jason recognized the rebuff; he put his hand behind his head as if he intended to pull off his pony-tail and slap her with it. Then he gave her a smile that said, Up yours, and looked back at Madame Tzu.

  “Things gunna be different now? I mean, after Friday night?”

  “Possibly. I’ll let you know.”

  “You run into any trouble, Mrs. Tzu, you know where to come. We’ll look after you.”

  “I’m not expecting any trouble, Jason.”

  “You never know.” He spoke slowly, as if he had to examine every word before he delivered it. “Looks like things’re getting nasty. You know where to come. Nice meeting you, Miss Feng.”

  He walked away, his tight shorts offering an invitation to any woman who got excited over buttocks.

  “Can he pass a mirror without stopping?” asked Camilla. “Who is he?”

  “He’s just a go-between—Mr. Shan was talking with his particular union. Jason’s not the brightest man on this site, he’s the muscle, I think they call it.”

  “He’s all that. He probably takes his girlfriends on guided tours of himself.”

  Madame Tzu smiled; she hadn’t expected any humour from Camilla. “I’m glad you have taste.”

  “What did he mean—if things get nasty, you know where to come?”

  Madame Tzu adjusted her hard hat again, looked away and said, “Oh, there’s Mr. Fadiman. Come, I’ll introduce you to him. He’s brainy, no muscle at all as far as I can see.”

  For the second time in two minutes Madame Tzu had dodged a question. Camilla tucked both questions away for future use. She had only a fraction of the older woman’s experience, but there was nothing between them in intelligence. She was also maturing in something else: persistence. She would be asking a lot of questions in the future.

  Fadiman was obviously impressed by the good-looking young Chinese woman, but his look was not challenging, as Jason’s had been. Though she was Australian-born Camilla always scanned men with a foreigner’s eye; they have no subtlety, her mother had warned her. She had had boyfriends, all Chinese, and it was expected that she would marry one of them; but, secret to herself, she was still looking for an Australian man who would meet her and her mother’s standards. At first glance Fadiman was not the man, but she exchanged his friendly smile with one of her own. Which was more than Jason had got.

  “You’ll be coming down here regularly?” Despite the fact that he was looking favourably on her, there was no real invitation in his voice. Bosses, especially women bosses, were never welcome on a building site.

  “No,” said Madame Tzu. “Isn’t it enough to have one woman interfering?” Her smile said, Answer that if you dare.

  “I’ll come occasionally,” said Camilla, speaking directly to Fadiman. “Not necessarily to interfere.”

  Fadiman looked uncomfortable, caught in cross-fire against which his hard hat offered no protection.

  Madame Tzu, after a bland-eyed glance at Camilla, retreated; or anyway, changed tack. “Have Mr. Tong and Mr. Guo reported back?”

  “No,” said Fadiman. “We haven’t seen them since Friday. We were wondering—have they gone back to China?”

  “Possibly.” If Madame Tzu was concerned, there was no sign of it. “Have we lost any time this week?”

  “An hour this morning, a union meeting.”

  “About what?”

  Fadiman shrugged. “Union business. They never tell us, we never ask.”

  “We’ll ask in future. We can’t have them stopping work just because they want to discuss union business.”

  “Madame Tzu—” Fadiman was visibly uncomfortable. He wished that, like an old-time dogman, he was riding the girder that had just started its trip to the upper levels—“these people aren’t coolies—”

  Watch it, thought Camilla, amused.

  Madame Tzu was not amused. “Don’t be impertinent, Mr. Fadiman. You’re not dealing with some stupid farmer’s wife—”

  Fadiman had realized his blunder as soon as he had spoken. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to be rude—”

  “You were very rude, without even trying.” She was not going to let him off lightly; had there been a rug and a well handy she would have wrapped him in one and thrown him down the other. She was giving him the empress treatment, something of which Fadiman had had no experience. “I am in charge here—”

  “And I,” said Camilla quietly.

  It took the older woman a moment to change gears; then she nodded. “And Miss Feng. Neither of us treats people as coolies. Not even trade unionists,” she added with the thin blade of her tongue.

  “I’ll try to remember that,” said Fadiman, finding some backbone. “Do we take any notice of Mr. Chung and Mr. Aldwych if they come down here?”

  She gave him a look that put him at the bottom of a well, then turned and walked back to the Mercedes.

  “There goes my job,” said Fadiman, and didn’t sound particularly downcast.

  “I don’t think so,” said Camilla. “Do you have any idea who killed my father?”

  Fadiman had not expected the question. “Why should I know?”

  Camilla studied him; then nodded. “Of course. Why should you? But if you should learn anything, anything at all, please let me know, will you?”

  He was out of his depth with these two Chinese women; but he was not obtuse. “Do I let Madame Tzu know?”

  Camilla looked across at the Mercedes where Madame Tzu sat in stiff arrogance, as in a steel palanquin.

  Camilla turned back to Fadiman. “No, don’t tell her.”

  III

  Deng Liang, the consul-general, was dapper, a fashionplate. He wore an Italian high-buttoned jacket that encased him as if he were trying to escape from it; a button-down white shirt; and a tie like a shattered rai
nbow. Armani or Zegna or Versace had followed Marco Polo to the Middle Kingdom; traffic was going the other way on the old Silk Road. All that spoiled him were the round horn-rimmed glasses which Malone had seen in so many newsreel shots of Chinese officials, as if they were government issue, designed to keep everything in official focus.

  He sat down in the chair Clarrie Binyan had vacated, looked at the three male detectives, ignoring Gail Lee, who still stood in the doorway. “You are all working on the Chinatown murders?”

  “And the murder of a Chinese student at Bondi,” said Malone, and nodded at Binyan, who had moved to join Clements on the couch. “Inspector Binyan is our ballistics expert. He is pretty sure that the gun used in the Chinatown murders was Chinese army issue.”

  Fast bowlers know when to bowl a bean ball; Deng hadn’t expected it, but he didn’t duck under it. “You are sure of that?”

  “Sure enough,” said Binyan. “Type 67. Do you know it?”

  “I was never an army man.” Said almost as if he had been insulted.

  “But you know weapons?” Binyan persisted.

  It was obvious that the consul-general had never had to deal with an Aboriginal officer, not one with Binyan’s rank. Gail, still in the doorway, remembered something her father had once told her: We Chinese were racists long before anyone else.

  “Well—yes,” said Deng. “One learns about them.”

  “In the diplomatic game?” said Malone. “Spies, that sort of thing? Inspector Binyan says the Type 67 is used for covert operations.”

  Deng displayed a good set of teeth. “Not by consuls-general.”

  “Do all visitors from China report to your consulate when they come to Sydney?”

  “Not necessarily. Senior visitors, trade delegations, people like that don’t come to us. Why?”

  “The covert operator is probably a recent arrival.”

  Deng was taking his time now. He was not hostile, but he was cautious, “I understand Mr. Chen, my colleague, has told you all we know?”

  “Not quite. We don’t know what you learned down in Canberra at your embassy.”

  “Oh, I can’t disclose that.” Deng was affable but firm. “The embassy would have my head. I’m sure you understand. You would not expect to tell me all you might learn in a conference with the Police Commissioner.”