by Jon Cleary
“And that’s good?” Malone took a towel out of a desk drawer, dried his face and hair. “Come on, Russ, for Crissake, quit buggering about!”
“Sit down and simmer down,” said the big man. He waited while Malone combed his hair and then sat down behind his desk. Then: “Okay? Four months ago two insurance policies were taken out, one on Mr. Sun and the other on Mr. Feng, each for ten million dollars. John Kagal has been doing some ferreting.”
“Each man took it out on himself or on each other?”
“No. The kids took it out on their respective fathers. The Sun boys on their dad, Camilla Feng on hers. The policies are on the fathers, but it’s the kids who supposedly have paid the premiums and benefit from their fathers’ deaths.”
“The rest of the families, the mothers and the other kids, don’t get a look in?”
“No.”
Malone sat back; he felt he was drying out by the minute. “Ten million? Can you take out that much life insurance in this country?”
Clements nodded. “According to John, yes. One of the big companies here will issue the policy, then lay it off around the world.”
“What would the premium be on a policy that size?”
“John’s been on to AMP. Just on $23,000 a year.”
“I dunno about the Sun brothers, but would Camilla have that sort of money? Her own, I mean?”
“We don’t know if it was her money—it could of been her old man’s. The whole thing could of been his idea. Four months ago he wasn’t in trouble—well, he was, but only he knew it. He arranges a ten-million-dollar policy, more than enough to look after his family when the bad news breaks—”
“You said the family didn’t figure as beneficiaries.”
“Okay, so they don’t. Maybe he wants Camilla to stay in the consortium, pay off his debts and still be part of Olympic Tower. So he arranges his own murder.”
“And Mr. Sun? He does the same? There’s no evidence he was in financial trouble.”
“Feng persuades him to take out a similar policy, so his—Feng’s—plan won’t be too obvious.”
“Then he does the dirty on Sun and arranges his murder, too? You’re getting soft in the head, sport.”
Clements knocked his knuckles on his big head. “Solid as a rock . . . No, our girl Camilla learns about Dad’s financial black hole, decides Dad’s gotta go anyway. So she arranges the murder.”
“And Mr. Sun’s? Or are the brothers supposed to be in it with Camilla?”
“No, that’s the clever bit. She arranges for the killer to do her dad, Mr. Sun and General Huang—”
“Mr. Shan. There never was any General Huang. I’ll explain in a minute. Go ahead.”
“Maybe Les Chung was to be bumped off, too—I dunno. But with a triple murder, it would look less like a put-up job to get the Feng insurance pay-out.”
“Are the insurance companies going to pay out?”
“When John went to see them, they decided to stall.”
“Don’t they always?” Malone tapped his fingers on his desk. “It’s a good scenario, Russ, but—”
“But what?”
“I just have the feeling that the murders weren’t homegrown. Don’t ask me why—it’s just a feeling.” Then his phone rang. “Malone.”
“This is Sergeant Clover, sir. Telephone Intercepts.” He had a soft whispering voice, as if there was secrecy in his blood or he had been overwhelmed by the conversations he had heard on a thousand tapped wires. “We’ve traced one of those mobiles you wanted. They are Telstra customers. They made a call this morning, to the Town Hall.”
“Where are they now?” Malone could feel the adrenaline starting up again. Even the sky was lightening outside.
“The call was made from an apartment in The Mount in Chinatown. Apartment 24C on the twenty-fourth floor. We’ll meet you in the lobby.”
III
“Les,” Jack Aldwych had said yesterday, “everything in this fucking business has got a Chinese name to it. Pretty soon the Chinese community is gunna have shit smeared all over it. The loony right-wingers are already making noises about Asian shenanigans. They called up Landfall Holdings asking why we’re in cahoots with Asians—”
“Do they know you are Landfall Holdings?” Les Chung had said.
“I dunno. It don’t matter whether they do or not.” The rough edges were showing, like a rock that had been washed clean of the moss that had softened it. “So long as I’m not Asian, I’m lily white as far as they’re concerned.”
“So what do you want?” Les Chung was not afraid of the old man, but he knew when to give and not take. He still woke at night in a sweat, the hitman coming back for him in a dream.
“I want to see some of the Triad leaders. I wanna find those three kids who’ve disappeared. They haven’t shot through because all of a sudden they wanted a holiday on the Barrier Reef. They know something and I wanna know what it is.”
“What makes you think the Triad guys know where they are?”
“Maybe they dunno now—why should they? It’s been none of their business up till now. Unless they’re your silent partners?”
“Jack, why are you always so suspicious?”
“Because I spent bloody near sixty years learning trust is something I’d never put money on. Okay, they’re not your partners. But you ask ‘em where those kids are and I’ll bet they’ll have an answer in twenty-four hours—or sooner. Then I wanna meet ‘em. Anywhere they name.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to persuade them, Jack—”
“Les, tell ‘em they can trust me.” His grin would have impressed Confucius.
So now he was sitting in one of the gambling rooms above the Golden Gate. With the advent of the Sydney Casino and the proliferation of poker machines in clubs and pubs, business had fallen off in these rooms; State governments encouraged gambling as a new religion and the voters had fallen on their knees in prayerful thanks. But old patrons still came here to these rooms, comfortable with the atmosphere and the odds. Luck, they knew, was a deity who would be no more favourable across the water in the casino glitz.
The heavy red curtains had been drawn and the only light came from a standard lamp aimed at Aldwych. Beyond the lamp, sitting behind one of the gambling tables, were the dim figures of four of the Triad leaders. Aldwych was amused by the theatricals, but he knew there was no one as secretive about their identity as the four who had agreed to meet him.
“Mr. Chung vouched for you.” If there was a leader amongst the leaders it was the man sitting second from the right. “He explained your reasons for wanting to meet us.”
Aldwych took his time, establishing his own position; he, too, had been a leader. “With some politicians talking about Asians the way they are, you Chinese blokes don’t want any bad publicity. I could of asked the business leaders from around here to help me find these kids, but they don’t have the contacts you blokes have.”
The dark heads turned to look at each other; there could have been hidden smiles. They were heirs to a society that had been founded in the seventeenth century by a monastery abbot; they still had all the paraphernalia of religion but no religion. They paid homage to the Five Ancestors, the only survivors of the original society, which had been betrayed by one of its senior members. They paid their respects to the three Triad elements: Heaven, Earth and Man, aware always that Man was the most unreliable of the elements. Perhaps the abbot of Shao-Lin, looking down from Heaven, if he is there, ponders on how a company of 128 warrior-monks, formed to put down a small Tibetan rebellion, had grown to a conglomerate wherever Chinese are to be found. These four men in this darkened room thousands of miles from Shao-Lin were captains of their own peculiar industry; Aldwych knew they had more power than he had ever had. But they had never had his independence.
Then the spokesman said, “You flatter us, Mr. Aldwych, but we accept it—we don’t get much of it.” One of them gave a short cough of a laugh. “Do you think these young people have some
thing to do with the murders downstairs?”
“I dunno. But you know, like I do, that the girl had twenty-three million deposited in her bank account. You’d be suspicious of her, wouldn’t you?”
No heads nodded: they wouldn’t spoil any of their own children that way. “What about the two young men?”
“Suspicion again. Why did they suddenly skip the morning after the murders? Maybe they’re all just shit-scared, but I wanna find out why. Les Chung and I’ve got a lotta money tied up in Olympic Tower.”
“What will you do to them if you find out they did have something to do with the murders?”
Aldwych knew his answer would be important to them. He smiled. “I might turn ‘em over to you.”
“Not to the police?” This from the man seated on the far left, a man with a very narrow head and a sibilant hiss to his voice.
“Would you want me to? Suppose we dunno what would come out in court?”
“What are you afraid of that would come out in court?”
“Nothing that would hurt me or Les Chung. But you’ve got connections in China—”
“How do you know what connections we have, Mr. Aldwych?” This from the spokesman.
“I know what connections you had forty years ago—things haven’t changed. They don’t change with you blokes—and I mean that as a compliment. You’re conservatives like me, you know the value in no change.”
“We’ve known all about you for forty years, but I don’t think we ever thought of you as a conservative, Mr. Aldwych. But go on . . .”
“Maybe back home in China there are a lotta high-ups who wouldn’t want it broadcast that one of their ex-generals had been smuggling money out of China into the accounts of his son and daughter.”
None of the heads moved, no shoulders twitched: Aldwych knew then that they knew as much as he did, maybe even more. The spokesman said, “What happens if the third partner in your consortium goes bust?”
“Les Chung and I will buy them out.”
“Would you consider us as partners?” This had obviously been discussed; nobody looked at the spokesman in surprise.
He could guess at the extent of their investments in Sydney: all money like his own that had been laundered, folded and accepted by stockbrokers who could turn a blind eye as neatly as they could turn a dollar. “All local money or cash out of China?”
“Would more cash out of China matter?”
“It would if we were gunna have the same trouble as we had with General Huang.”
“We’ve never met before, Mr. Aldwych, but you are much more scrupulous than we expected.”
Aldwych grinned, unoffended. “Once bitten, twice shy, that’s all. I’m sure you run your businesses the same way.”
“Is the money deposited in the bank accounts of General Huang’s children, is it still here in Australia?”
“I dunno. It could be. But I’ll bet it’s not available. I thought you’d know what was happening to it.”
“Why us? We don’t have any influence with the banks here. Or the government.”
“You know the new bloke who’s just arrived, General Wang-Te.”
“What makes you think we know him?”
“You’ve just given yourself away. If you didn’t know him, you’d of asked who he was.”
Despite their vague forms Aldwych had now identified the four men. They came regularly to the Golden Gate, to the restaurant downstairs and to these gambling rooms; never together, but each with members of his own Triad. Aldwych had never questioned Les Chung about them; he knew Chung would give him no answers. They had been no part of his other life, there had been no battles with them; ethnicity had drawn the lines, the Great Wall had been built from both sides. Later there had been the Italians and the Greeks and, still later, the Lebanese; now there were the Vietnamese and recently the Koreans; the Russians still had to arrive. Aldwych had had nothing to do with the later arrivals and he knew the Triad leaders had the same reservations. Small empires set their own boundaries and their own rules.
The four men sat in silence; they looked at each other, but said nothing. Then the spokesman said, “The three young people you are looking for are in The Mount. Apartment 24C.”
“Anybody with them?”
“No.”
“Who owns the apartment?”
“An offshore company. Hoop Investments.”
“Who owns Hoop Investments?” He knew they would know.
“Mr. Raymond Brode. Councillor Brode.” A moment, then: “You don’t seem surprised.”
“The last time I was surprised I was nine years old. I’d just won the Under-Sevens race at the Water Board picnic for the third year running. I was surprised the organizers hadn’t woken up to me.”
“You should have been Chinese,” said the spokesman, and all five of them, including the Caucasian, laughed.
IV
The Mount was a steel-and-concrete high-rise that rose like a phallus out of the otherwise flat belly of Chinatown. It had been the first joint venture between Les Chung and Jack Aldwych and its thirty floors had been sold off the plan, mostly to Chinese buyers: Singaporeans, Hong Kong and locals. Aldwych had not been near the project since it had been built. Development for him was like a bank hold-up: take the money and run. It amused him that there were so many honest men with the same philosophy.
Malone knew nothing of Aldwych’s connection with the building. With only a lukewarm interest in heritage preservation and conservation, he had never paid any attention to developers, never read the property pages in the newspapers. He was continually surprised at how the city’s skyline kept changing; high-rise office and apartment buildings seemed to erupt like peaks thrust up out of the tectonic plates of the city. Sometimes he worried that one day he would find himself a stranger in a city that he had once known as intimately as his own back yard.
He and Clements and Gail Lee parked their car in the taxi zone right outside the entrance to The Mount. A taxi driver instantly fell out of his cab; he stabbed a finger at the sign: “Can’t you buggers read?”
Clements wearily produced his badge. There were advantages to having an unmarked police car, but sometimes he thought it would be better to have a disabled driver sticker on the windscreen “We’re picking up a fare.”
“Oh, sure.” But the driver shook his head. “But you got no idea—this is taxi territory, but buggers all the time—”
“I know just how you feel,” said Clements. “It’s the same in our territory.”
He followed Malone and Gail into the lobby of the building. It was not large, but it suggested you were entering luxury. The floors were marble, the furniture was glass, brass and leather; the two Chinese girls behind the reception desk were expensively groomed. Nobody dropped in here looking for a twenty-five-dollars-a-night bed.
A tall thin man in blue overalls came towards the three detectives.
“Sergeant Clover, sir.” His voice had a little more resonance than it had had on the phone. He gestured at his clothing. “I’m supposed to be from Telstra. Only the manager knows why we’re here and he’s not happy.”
“They never are,” said Malone. “You’ve got someone else with you?”
“He’s up on the twenty-fourth floor. Are these people going to cause trouble? I don’t want my bloke getting winged.”
“We dunno. They may, so we’ll get your feller out of the way first. We’ve got a SPG team on the way—”
“They’re here now,” said Clements.
They came into the lobby, six men in dark caps and tactical vests, their Remington 12-gauge shotguns held across their chests as if presenting arms. Behind the reception desk the two Chinese girls were suddenly round-eyed; an elderly Chinese woman stopped dead halfway across the lobby, her head moving awkwardly like a street mime’s. Then the manager came out of his office, hands flapping, looking anything but managerial.
“I hope you’re not going to do any damage!” He looked at the shotguns as if they were h
owitzers. “No,” said Malone. “This is just a precaution, in case—”
“In case of what?” He was short and tubby and all the police, with the exception of Gail Lee, towered over him. But he was the gatekeeper to this castle and, though he was not happy, he was not standing back.
But Malone had turned away from him, was speaking to the sergeant in charge of the State Protection Group: “We’re not sure whether they’re armed—”
“The lift’s coming down from the twenty-fourth floor,” said Clements.
All eyes turned up towards the line of figures above the lifts. The light ran backwards across the line: 21-20-19. “Righto,” said Malone, “get everyone out of the lobby. Quick!”
Everyone was cleared from the lobby in a moment, Gail taking the elderly Chinese woman into the manager’s office. The SPG men lined up three to either side of the descending lift; Malone and Clements stood behind them, as behind human fences. Malone, watching the light running across the line of figures, as under an invisible finger, felt his nerves beginning to tighten. There was no evidence at all that the missing Chinese girl and the two engineers, if they were in the lift, were armed and murderous. But Malone, awash in the puzzle of the case, was taking no chances.
3-2-1: the shotguns came up, the men in front of Malone and Clements stiffened. The doors of the lift slid open. Three young Chinese stood there, a girl and two men. And Jack Aldwych and Blackie Ovens.
“A guard of honour?” said Aldwych; on Judgement Day he would meet the Devil as an equal, ask the same question. “Your idea, Inspector Malone?”
Malone somehow managed to stifle the laugh that, like a nervous tic, threatened to make a fool of him. He had a sense of the farcical; this was mockery with shotguns. The SPG men lowered their weapons, looked at each other and shook their heads.
“How do we report this?” the sergeant asked Malone.
“With restraint,” said Malone, and allowed the laugh to escape. “Coming with us, Jack?”
“Of course,” said Aldwych. “I was bringing these young people to see you.”
