by Jon Cleary
“I couldn’t care less what use he’ll be over there. It’s the harm he might do us that worries me. He hates our guts—or anyway, yours. I just got sideswiped with the shit he feels towards you.”
Malone looked out into the main room. Boston had just come in, had sat down at his desk, which was completely clear of any paper. He swung his chair round and sat staring out the big windows at the sky that had now started to clear. Malone, watching him, saw a man who, suddenly and unexpectedly, exuded self-confidence. He had put one foot in heaven’s gate, going to Headquarters.
“Send him in to me.”
“Don’t blow your top, mate. Even though we don’t like where he’s going, we’re glad to be rid of him.”
Clements gathered up the pile of letters Malone pushed towards him, grimaced at them, then went out into the main room and across to speak to Boston.
The latter looked across at Malone’s office, then rose unhurriedly and came to stand in Malone’s doorway. “You wanted to see me?”
Yes, you arrogant bugger. “I hear you managed to dodge my recommended transfer and you’re going to Headquarters. They haven’t told me.”
“I’m sure they will—it only happened yesterday afternoon.” He had sat down in the chair opposite Malone without being invited; but Malone was determined to keep his cool. “You don’t mind, you know, not so long as I’m gone from here.”
Stay calm, Scobie. “How did you manage it?”
Boston pursed his lips, as if deciding whether to give away a secret; then he said, “The Commissioner and I go back a long way.”
“So do he and I, but I don’t think he’d do me any favours.”
“Maybe you wear the wrong colours. The Irish green.”
Malone frowned, but said nothing.
Again Boston pursed his lips; then he gave away the secret: “He and I belong to the same lodge.”
For a moment Malone didn’t make the connection; then his frown deepened, disbelieving: “The Masons?” Boston nodded, as smug as a Grand Master. “For Crissakes, that sort of thing went out ages ago. In the old days, yes—but now?”
In the old days, thirty or more years ago, Catholics ran up against barriers in certain sections of the Public Service; there had been certain large firms that would not employ Masons. But that sort of bigotry had disappeared; or so he had thought.
“He knows me better than you do,” said Boston. “He remembers the work I did under him when he was my patrol commander. There’s a vacancy at Headquarters, I heard about it and I spoke to him at a lodge meeting. I’m going into the security unit that is being built up for the Olympics. As a sergeant.”
Malone didn’t stand up or put out his hand. “Righto, good luck. You may as well sign off now.”
Boston took his time about getting to his feet; his rank could have been equal to that of Malone’s. “I can’t say it’s been a pleasure working here.”
“Don’t even try.”
When Boston had gone Malone leaned back in his chair and stared out the window. A pigeon strutted on the windowsill, full of importance. It turned an incurious eye on him; man and bird stared at each other. Then it spread its wings, shook them at him almost derisively, and flew away. He would have wrung its neck if he could have reached it.
IV
Gail Lee had taken the precaution of calling the Feng home at Drummoyne. No. Ms. Feng was at the family offices in Chinatown. The two women detectives drove into the city, parking in a lane in a Loading zone and walked round into Dixon Street, the heart of Chinatown. A slow surf of white hair was spilling out of a tourist bus; senior citizens had come for a Chinese lunch at a restaurant opposite the Golden Gate. The group paused for a moment and looked across at the Golden Gate as if it still had an aura of murder. But the Crime Scene tapes were gone and inside the restaurant the bloodstained velvet of the back booth had been replaced. It was business as usual, though its prices were above the pockets of the senior citizens.
The Feng offices were in a modest four-storeyed building diagonally opposite the Golden Gate. The ground floor was occupied by a store that appeared to sell everything from sharks’ fins to firecrackers and elaborate kites: the window was almost a parody of Chinese commerce. A narrow flight of stairs at the side led up to the Feng offices.
“I love all those spicy smells,” said Sheryl Dallen as they climbed the stairs.
Gail wrinkled her nose. “I’m a steak-and-kidney pie girl, myself.”
“So am I,” said Sheryl. “But just a look at a pie and I put on three kilos.”
There was no hint about the Feng offices that the family went in for multimillion-dollar investments. There was no reception area; the stairs ended on a narrow landing off which there were three small rooms. Camilla Feng was in the front room.
She stood up as the two detectives were ushered in by the very young Chinese girl who had intercepted them at the head of the stairs. “I’ve been expecting you. My mother said you had phoned me at home.”
“What made you expect us?” said Gail.
Camilla waved them to the only two spare chairs in the small office. It was a room in which expense had been spared to a spartan degree; Samuel Feng had been able to work without luxury or the need to impress. There were no pictures on the walls, just a framed certificate of a degree in Economics from the University of New South Wales. There was no air-conditioning and the two narrow windows were closed against the noise in the street outside. Sheryl, who had more boyfriends than Gail, thought the room smelled like a bachelor’s microwave oven.
“What made you expect us?” Gail repeated.
Camilla looked weary, not at all like the girl Gail had seen in the Sun offices in North Sydney only an hour or two before. Her make-up was washed out, the full lips no longer bright red. “You don’t sit on your hands on a murder case, do you?”
“Would you expect that of us?”
Camilla sighed, picked at some papers on the table that passed for a desk. “No . . . Look, I want the murderer of my father found—I appreciate everything you are doing in that regard. But . . .” She picked at the papers again, then looked up at the two detectives. “The roof has fallen in on us—my mother and my two sisters and me. Not just Dad’s murder, but other things—”
“What other things?” said Gail, for the moment playing ignorant.
Sheryl sat quietly, the outsider, leaving the two Chinese girls to play the game. She was at ease with other ethnics, the Italians, the Greeks, the Lebanese; but she was always cautious with Asians. Especially with the Chinese, who made her feel—immature? Whatever it was she felt, she was glad that Gail was here now.
“What other things?” Camilla stared at the two of them for a moment and looked as if she would keep those things to herself. Then she flung up her hands in despair; she was definitely not the girl of a couple of hours ago. All her composure was gone; in its place was something that even Sheryl recognized as fear. “Half an hour ago, just after I got back here, a man called and told me to do the right thing or I’d be dead like my father.”
“The right thing?” asked Sheryl, feeling she could now come into the game. “What did he mean by that?”
“I can’t tell you that—”
“I think you’d better, Camilla,” said Gail. “Is it to do with the tax charge that’s hanging over you? And the bank debt? That if you can’t pay it and you go into receivership you’ll have to draw out of the Olympic Tower project? Is that what they want you to do?”
“How much don’t you know?” Camilla was surprised; she had been slumped in her chair, but now she sat up. “Who’s been talking? Madame Tzu?”
“How much does she know?”
Camilla gestured in frustration. “I don’t know. But knowing her, she’d know everything . . . Have you talked to her?”
“Not about these matters, no. We have our own sources—” Gail glanced at Sheryl and gave her a tiny smile. “Have you any idea who was the man who called you up? Was he Chinese?”
&nb
sp; “I think so—he spoke perfect Mandarin. Foreigners always sound different when they speak it. But he was pedantic, like a scholar.”
“How many men do you know who speak Mandarin?”
Camilla spread her hands; still sitting forward, she was nervous. “I don’t know—maybe a dozen, maybe more. Mostly the older men, friends of my father. But I don’t think this man was someone I know—you know when a stranger’s speaking to you—”
“Mandarin?” Sheryl looked at Gail for enlightenment.
“It’s the main Chinese language, but a lot of them here in Sydney speak Cantonese.” Gail turned back to Camilla. “What are you going to do? Do the right thing, like he asked? Drop out of the project?”
Camilla sat back, was silent for a long moment; she picked at the papers on her desk again, then she said, “I don’t want to give up. Olympic Tower was my father’s dream, to be involved in something as big as that. To be part of a landmark of Sydney. He was out of his league, that was how he got into trouble with the tax people. He put everything he had into the project, just ignored his tax and bank debts, which got bigger and bigger . . . I’m not naïve and romantic. I don’t want to stay in the project for Dad’s sake, to build his dream. If I can somehow stay in it, it will be because I can see the pay-off when it’s completed. I’m not greedy, but I am ambitous. If I let our company go into bankruptcy it could be years before I get it out of it.”
There was silence in the room for a while; faint noises came from the street, but there was no definition to them. Gail wondered if Camilla had unburdened herself to anyone else as she had to the two strangers. She thought not: Camilla, up till now, would have been self-contained. But police, Gail was learning, were often a sounding board.
“So how do you avoid it?” asked Sheryl.
Camilla looked steadily at her. “I ask someone to bail us out.”
“Who, for instance? A Hong Kong bank?”
Camilla hesitated. “No-o. Jack Aldwych.”
The two detectives looked at each other, then Gail said, “I don’t know Jack Aldwych, but from what Inspector Malone and Sergeant Clements tell us, Mr. Aldwych wouldn’t lend the Pope a dollar.”
“Or even the Queen,” said Sheryl, a royalist and a non-Catholic.
“What about Madame Tzu?” said Gail. “She seems to be the queen bee in all this.”
Camilla shook her head. “She’s got her own problems.”
“Such as?”
“Ask her.”
Gail considered a moment, then nodded. “Okay, we will. But whoever threatened you wants the whole Olympic Tower business to collapse. Why?”
“I don’t know. If it was something more closely connected to the Games, there might be a reason. There are some people in China who are still pissed off that Beijing didn’t get the 2000 Games—they might be happy to see, say, the stadium or the Olympic village in trouble. But the Tower? Sure, it’s already booked solid for Games delegations, but . . .” She shook her head again.
“What about the competition? Other developers who wanted that site and that project?”
“The others who missed out were all local developers, Australians. The man who threatened me was Chinese, I’m sure of it. The man who killed my father was Chinese. Why would Australians hire a Chinese to do their dirty work? If there’s any local influence, it’s only indirect. Everything to do with this is coming out of China.”
“Or Hong Kong,” said Sheryl.
“The same thing these days.”
Gail stood up. “I think you should get some protection, Camilla. Get a security firm to give you twenty-four-hour protection. We’ll let the Day Street police know you’ve been threatened. And the Drummoyne police—they can keep an eye on your home. Just sit tight and don’t do anything till we’ve got this cleared up.”
“When will that be?” Camilla looked too exhausted to stand up to show them out. “I have just a week to try and stall off the banks and the tax office.”
Gail was standing by the framed degree certificate on the wall. “This yours? You’re a Bachelor of Economics?”
“I also have an MBA. Fat lot of good they’re worth right now.” Then she stood up, but did not move out from behind the desk. “Thanks. I know you’re trying to help, but—”
“We’ll do everything we can,” said Gail.
When they got down into Dixon Street Sheryl said, “I’ve always envied the rich. But I wouldn’t fancy being in her shoes.”
“All she has to do is not be killed,” said Gail. “She’ll be rich in another five years. She’s got Shanghai blood in her.”
“How do you know?”
“Those who haven’t got it always recognize it.”
“You Chinese,” said Sheryl but smiled as she said it.
When they approached their car in the Loading zone in the rear lane, a young Chinese was waiting for them, his van parked alongside the unmarked police car. He immediately began yelling at Gail in Cantonese.
“Do you speak Mandarin?”
“Yes,” he said, spittle at the corners of his mouth. “A little—”
Mandarin for centuries was a stately, elegant language. Then in the 1920s the woodworm of colloquialism crept in: “Then get stuffed,” said Gail, but managed to sound decorous.
“Was that Mandarin?” asked Sheryl as they got into their car.
“Yes,” said Gail. “Word perfect.”
V
Malone waited for Lisa in the vestibule of the Town Hall. Once a week, since she had started back at work, they had lunch together; their only meal alone. They were both waiting for the two girls to move out to share flats with their friends; neither of them looked forward to the prospect, but they knew it was inevitable. Tom was more of a homebody than his two sisters, but even he would eventually move out. Until the general exodus began the meals at home were a family affair and Malone always enjoyed them. But, like all parents, he and Lisa had learned that, as their family grew older, their own privacy lessened. Their love-making, for instance, had its own rhythm method: the rhythm of the children’s absences. He would have shouted them all to the movies seven nights a week, except that he knew the girls’ sly smiles would have embarrassed him.
Lisa came towards him with the Lord Mayor. Rupert Amberton had been a fixture in Sydney civic affairs for almost a generation. He was in his early fifties, but looked younger. He had a mane of dark hair that was his pride and a cartoonist’s joy; he was handsome, as any mirror, and he looked at several a day, told him. He leaped onto any charity bandwagon that rolled past, always ready with a cheque and a tear or two or three. He wore his heart on his sleeve, only because the usual cavity was chock-a-block with ego, and nothing would please him more, in the year 2000, than to see his heart up there on the flag with the five rings. He lived for Sydney and liked to think it lived for him.
“Inspector! I’ve only just learned you are Mrs. Malone’s husband. You’re a very lucky man!” He always spoke in exclamations, as if at a rowdy council meeting. “You’re conducting this dreadful business connected with Olympic Tower!”
Malone wouldn’t have put it that way. “We have the matter in hand, but there’s a long way to go.”
He had kept his voice low, but Amberton couldn’t be anything less than operatic: “Good luck! The last thing we want is a spate of racist murders!”
Malone looked around without moving his head: why doesn’t someone murder this loudmouth? People passing through the vestibule, which had never been designed to stifle secrets, an oversight on the part of the architect, were slowing their steps, waiting for more details. Malone, voice still low, said, “It’s not as bad as that, Mr. Amberton.”
The Lord Mayor all at once seemed to become aware that the passing traffic was in slow motion as if underwater; all heads were turned towards him and the Malones. He threw out a glittering smile, like a royal salute, his head swivelling round so that he missed no one. Then he looked back at Malone, dropped his voice and the exclamation marks: “Of cours
e, of course. Well, good luck. The sooner you clear it up, you know, the better for us.”
“Us?” Malone couldn’t resist it, the old tongue getting away from him again.
“Of course!” The operatic voice was back. “The city! Sydney!”
“Of course,” said Malone, and tried to show some civic pride; he even threw in an exclamation: “Keep the flag flying! The Olympic flag!”
Amberton raised his fist, like an Olympic winner, tossed his mane and went back across the vestibule, his smile lassoing bystanders whether they wanted it or not. The year 2000 couldn’t come soon enough.
As they crossed the road to the Queen Victoria Building, the QVB as it was called, Lisa said, “You’ll have me fired.”
Malone shook his head. “Look at his record. He wouldn’t have sacked Judas Iscariot, for fear of making waves. You’re a good-looking woman, too. He’s a closet lecher.”
“What do I do if he makes a pass? Make a civilian arrest?”
They climbed the stairs to an upper gallery, found a table in one of the restaurants. They sat by the big window that looked out into the heart of the old restored building. For years it had been an almost empty shell; it was foreign money that had rescued it from demolition. All the local developers had passed it by, their hands stuck in their pockets.
Window-shoppers cruised the galleries, balancing their credit cards against what the boutiques offered. The economy had been slow all year and the store owners, atheists and believers alike, were on their knees hoping Christ and Christmas would bring buyers from the East, preferably Japanese, with gold and Diners frankincense and American Express myrrh. Father Christmas, two weeks early, wandered by outside the window, eyes dull and tired above the froth of white beard.
“You look worried,” said Lisa when they were settled.
Malone glanced up from the menu. “Gail and Sheryl came back to the office just before I left. The Feng girl, she’s taken over from her dad, she’s been threatened. By a Chinese, she thought.”
“Do you have to protect her?”
“We’ll have to keep an eye on her, but we can’t give her round-the-clock protection. She’s not in the Witness Protection scheme. How are things at Town Hall?”
