Five-Ring Circus

by Jon Cleary

  “Outside. But there’s not going to be any siege situation here. I promise you.”

  Malone kissed his girls good night, squeezed Tom’s shoulder and took Lisa out to the car with him. “I’ll call every morning and night.”

  “Every morning and night? How long is it going to be? Never mind.” She held him to her, kissed him passionately. “Be careful.”

  “Don’t you or the kids answer the phone. Let Barbara do it every time.”

  She looked at him carefully. “You’re afraid they may have followed us here.”

  “No, I’m not. I went almost cross-eyed looking in the rear-vision mirror coming up here. It’s just standard procedure—the protected personnel never touch a phone.”

  “The protected personnel. Do we wear labels?”

  He kissed her again. “Stop joking.”

  He drove back to the city through a night filled with stars and a scimitar of moon. Once a car, going the other way, passed him at high speed; a moment later a police car, lights flashing, siren wailing, went by with a whoosh that he felt through his open window. In Homicide, he comforted himself, you never had to risk your life in a high-speed chase after some hoons in a stolen car.

  It was almost eleven o’clock before he pulled the Fairlane in before his house. He got out, opened the gates and pressed the remote control to open the garage door. He drove the car in, closed the door, then moved down the short driveway to close the gates.

  At that moment the car, dark-coloured and without lights, pulled up opposite him. He saw the hand come out of the front window holding a gun; he dropped flat as the two shots hit the ironwork of the gates and zinged away. Then the car accelerated, went at speed up the street, disappeared round the corner with a screech of tyres.

  He stood up, shivering with reaction. The shots had made little sound; the gun had been fitted with a silencer. Nobody came to any of the front doors; no lights went on in bedroom windows. Malone stood leaning on the half-closed gates, waiting for the bones to come back into his legs. Then he closed the gates and went into the house: the unsafe house.

  10

  I

  THE PREMIER liked to call early-morning conferences; it gave him an advantage over those whose minds didn’t function till an hour or so after breakfast. This eight o’clock meeting had some very sullen people sitting in the Premier’s office. Sports Minister Agaroff and Police Commissioner Zanuch were the two unhappiest-looking. Lord Mayor Amberton’s smile might have been forced, but it was second nature to him.

  “Give ‘em the score, Roger,” said the Premier, hunched in his chair, enjoying his malevolence as if it were a second breakfast. Summer and winter, Gert, his wife, fed him the same breakfast: porridge with milk and sugar, two sausages and an egg, two slices of toast with her home-made strawberry jam. This second meal, of his visitors’ discomfiture, tasted just as good.

  Ladbroke would have been wide awake for a 6 a.m. meeting; he was long experienced in The Dutchman’s ploys. “You all read the papers this morning or listened to the radio. That guy who was shot at Kirribilli night before last worked on the Olympic Tower site. John Laws called it the Jinx Site—he gave all his listeners a reminder of what happened there in the previous abortive development. Alan Jones did the same on his show. The talkback nuts started calling in right away. Is this to be a jinx on our Olympics, they wanted to know. Is it a warning from God—I dunno how He got into sports or hotel development—that we should never have bid for the Olympics?”

  Amberton looked around, as if he had only just come awake. “Why isn’t anyone from SOCOG here? They’re the organizers of the Games.”

  “We don’t need ‘em,” said Vanderberg, who never felt the need of anyone who got more space than he did in the media. “We handle this ourselves. How’s the investigation going, Bill, on this latest murder?”

  “It’s in hand,” said the Commissioner.

  The Premier wobbled his head, cackled softly. “You oughta come into Parliament, Bill. You know how to look all dressed up and doing nothing. You mean the police haven’t got a clue?”

  Zanuch managed to look unruffled, but a tsunami was going on under the bespoke uniform. “Not a clue, but a connection, something we haven’t told the media. The gun that killed Mr. Nidop, the corpse at Kirribilli, also killed the young Chinese, Mr. Zhang, out at Bondi last Friday night.”

  “So what does that prove?” asked Agaroff, bald head shining in a streak of morning sun coming through the window behind the Premier.

  “Nothing. But links in clues are like links in a chain. Eventually they lead somewhere.”

  “Rupert wears a chain round his neck when he’s all dressed up as Lord Mayor,” said the Premier. “Does one link lead to another? Like in a circle?” He looked back at Zanuch. “We don’t want the police running around in circles, Bill. You better tell ‘em to get their finger out. You’re making haste in slow motion.”

  That’s a new one, thought Ladbroke, and I don’t need to translate it.

  Zanuch gritted his teeth. “One of my men was fired on last night at his home—I got the report just before I came here. Detective-Inspector Malone, who’s in charge of the case.”

  “Holy Christ,” said Agaroff, and rubbed the top of his head, as if wiping off the sunlight. “Do the media know about this?”

  “No,” said Zanuch, “and they won’t. Not from my men.”

  Your men? thought the Premier. My men, he thought, as Police Minister. He hated the idea of 13,000 police officers running around loose under someone else’s command. “There’s another thing. Tell ‘em, Roger.”

  “I dunno,” said Ladbroke, “whether you saw an item some weeks ago about millions of dollars being lodged in the bank accounts of two Chinese students—it was in a Cabinet report—”

  “Then I wouldn’t have seen it,” said Amberton, aggrieved, and looked at Zanuch and Agaroff.

  “I saw it,” said Agaroff.

  “I got it in a secret police report,” said Zanuch.

  Amberton was all at once the odd man out. His fairy wand as Lord Mayor of the biggest city in the nation was just a candy stick. He couldn’t help the petulance in his voice: “So what’s the importance of it?”

  “We thought someone at Town Hall might’ve explained it to you,” said Ladbroke. “Councillor Brode, for instance.”

  Amberton grimaced, waited while Ladbroke explained the situation. Then he said, “What’s happened to the students? Where are they, if everything’s been kept so quiet?”

  “One of them is dead,” said Ladbroke, and named Zhang. “The other is a girl, Li Ping. She’s to be picked up and deported.”

  Zanuch raised an eyebrow and his ire. “Who gave that order? We’re investigating her—”

  “The order came from Canberra,” said The Dutchman.

  “What business is it of theirs?” Amberton was as jealous of parish power as the Premier, though he knew that here in this room he had no power at all. Sometimes in bed at night, his fabulous hair in a net (his dream cap, as his wife called it), he dreamed of Sydney becoming a Down Under Monaco, separate from and independent of the rest of the country, himself not as Lord Mayor Amberton but as Prince Rupert. Free of Premiers and Prime Ministers, ruler of the Emerald City, complete with its own casino just like Monaco. Monte Carlo no longer a biscuit but his domain. The hairnet sometimes shook like a stringbag full of sparrows. “Who invited them in?”

  “It’s at a higher level,” said Ladbroke.

  The others looked at the Premier, at this faux pas by his minder. They knew he recognized no higher level than himself; even the Pope, on his last visit, had found himself on a lower step than his greeter.

  But, to their surprise, Vanderberg nodded and said, the words coming out of his thin mouth as if they were spiked, as if they were killing him, “It’s between Canberra and Beijing. Chinese politics.”

  “China is all politics, isn’t it? It’s Communism.” Zanuch had thought Margaret Thatcher a neo- socialist.


  “It’s half-and-half now,” said Ladbroke. “Capitalism is rearing its ugly head.”

  “Who said it was ugly?”

  “A figure of speech,” said Ladbroke, whose cynicism would have embraced anarchy if it had employed him to sell it. “Anyway, the money is going back to China and so is the girl.”

  “In the meantime,” said Amberton, still feeling he had been pushed out to sea without an oar, “we’re left with the Olympic Tower mess. All these murders. What do we do?”

  “The same as we do in parliament and council,” said the Premier. “We establish a committee.”

  “Who’ll be on the committee?”

  “Us,” said the Premier. “And only me will make any statements.”

  Here we go again, thought Ladbroke. Should I apply for a literary grant as a translator of gobbledegook?

  II

  Malone had had a restless night. At six o’clock he phoned Greg Random at home. “Sorry to get you out of bed, Greg. I’ve got a problem—”

  Random listened without comment while Malone told him of what had happened last night. Then he didn’t explode, but his voice was cold: “You’re a bloody idiot. You know the drill—”

  “I don’t want Lisa and the kids to know—”

  “For Crissake, Scobie, this is a major incident. A cop’s been shot at—”

  “I don’t want the media to know, spreading the story all over—”

  “Okay, we’ll keep it as low profile as we can. But you stay out of it—let the investigating teams do what they have to . . . You understand? You stay out of it.”

  “Righto, you win, Greg—”

  “It’s not a question of me winning—you know the drill, it’s got nothing to do with how you or I feel. Don’t be so bloody pig-headed—”

  He hated this friction between himself and Random. “Righto, I’ll get on to Randwick, to Physical Evidence—”

  “I told you—stay out of it. I’ll do it. Now pull your head in, stay out of the way and shut up.” Then the edge went out of his voice: “You’re okay?”

  “Except for the way you’ve just kicked my arse.”

  “You deserved it. I’ll see you later.”

  By seven o’clock there were ten officers on the scene. Uniforms and plainclothes from the local Randwick station, Phil Truach from Homicide, a woman officer from Physical Evidence and a young red-headed officer from Ballistics. Malone came out of his front door as a uniformed man was running out Crime Scene tapes.

  “We don’t need those, do we? I don’t want the neighbours getting edgy.”

  The officer, a young bulky man with an Italian name that Malone had forgotten and an Italian regard for the sensible, rolled up the tapes. “Sure, Inspector. But we’re gunna have to do some door knocking, case someone saw or heard something before you got home.”

  Malone nodded resignedly. “Try your luck—ask them not to broadcast it.”

  “Are you kidding?” He was Italian through and through. “Neighbours were invented for broadcasting. They were centuries ahead of Marconi.”

  “Are you trying to make me feel better?”

  Then the young Ballistics officer came in the front gate. He had a friendly face and Malone knew him only as Declan Something-or-Other. “You might have a problem finding the bullets, Declan. If you have to go into the garden next door, tell ‘em you’re from the Water Board.”

  Declan looked around, grinned ruefully. “We could be here all day. What was it—a shotgun?”

  “No, a handgun with a silencer. The car was out there, about five or six feet from the gutter.”

  “Sounds like a woman driver,” said Declan. “My wife always parks a short walk from the kerb . . . That’ll cut down the area a bit. If it was a handgun, the velocity would be less. Okay, I’ll start looking.”

  Malone went back into the house and rang Clements at home, told him what had happened. “Pick up Guo Yi. He’ll probably be at work now, on the site—”

  “Hold on, mate. Are you saying it was definitely him that tried to do you?”

  “No, I don’t. But he’s my Number One suspect. Bring him in.”

  “If it was him, he may already have shot through.”

  “Not him. He’s a smartarse, Russ. He’ll be at work and he’ll have an alibi for last night.”

  “So what do we do? Bring him in and beat the shit outa him? Okay, okay,” as Malone started to protest. “But if he’s what you say he is, the hitman, and he’s after you, why’s he doing it? Someone’s using him. He’s got no stake in Olympic Tower.”

  “Then maybe if we beat the shit out of him, he’ll tell us.”

  “Don’t come that one with me, mate. You’ve never come the heavy stuff—and don’t expect me to, not this late in life. Have you told Lisa what happened?”

  “No. And don’t mention it to Romy, right?”

  He hung up, went back out to the front garden. It was a beautiful morning; a wind-streaked cloud hung like washing in the sky. Malone walked under the awning of the camellias and Declan stepped in front of him and held up a scarred bullet.

  “Bingo! A 32-calibre, I’d say. What’s the matter?”

  “It looks like it’s been a busy gun. Two murders and an attempted one. The feller at Bondi, the one at Kirribilli and me.”

  Declan slipped the bullet into a plastic envelope. “We’ll find the other one. You look disappointed.”

  “Do I? Not disappointed, just bloody frustrated. It looks as if there might be two killers, not one.”

  He looked at him sympathetically. “Your family’s in a safe house, you said. Maybe you should join them.”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  Ten minutes before Malone got his car out of the garage Declan found the second bullet. “In the main trunk of one of your camellias. We’ve found the cartridge cases, too, out there in the gutter.”

  “Get them to Clarrie Binyan soon’s you can, tell him I’d like a report yesterday.”

  He arrived in the car yard behind Homicide just as Clements and John Kagal got out of an unmarked car with Guo Yi. He was in shirt and slacks and wore not a black tie but the vivid slash of an Olympic tie. For some reason he was also carrying his safety helmet, tucked under his arm like a football

  “This is insulting, Inspector.”

  “It’s not meant to be, Mr. Guo. Let’s talk upstairs. Why the helmet? It’s not dangerous around here.”

  Going up in the lift to the fourth floor Malone, standing behind the young Chinese, raised his eyebrows in query at Clements. The big man just shook his head, but Kagal ran his finger across his own throat. Mr. Guo, evidently, was going to prove difficult.

  Which he did in the interview room. “Am I to be questioned again?”

  “Yes.”

  “About what? I’ve answered all the questions you can ask me.”

  “Not all, Mr. Guo. Where were you last night around eleven o’clock?”

  Guo looked down at his tie, fingered it; mourning for the dead older men was over or he had suddenly become a Games booster. “I was home in bed.”

  “With Miss Li?”

  “If it is any of your business, yes. Why, what happened last night?”

  “Someone tried to shoot Inspector Malone,” said Clements. Only he and Malone were in the interview room with Guo. He flicked a finger against the helmet on the table, made a pinging noise. “We think it might of been you.”

  Guo Yi didn’t try for inscrutability; he jerked his head back, went round-eyed. “Me shoot him? Why? Why would I do something stupid like that?”

  Clements shrugged. “Maybe you don’t like him? Or maybe someone told you to? You see, Mr. Guo, we have a very short list of suspects in all these murders and, unfortunately, you’re on the list.”

  “I’ve heard an expression since I came to Australia.” Guo had recovered his composure. “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

  “You’re outa your fucking mind,” said Clements, temper just under control, “if you think we’re not gun
na get to the bottom of all this. I think maybe you’d better get a lawyer.”

  “Do you have a lawyer?” asked Malone.

  “No.” Guo appeared to be gathering himself together, like a soldier strapping on equipment. As if he knew the war was no longer a phoney one. “I shall have to ask a friend for advice.”

  “Do that. Sergeant Clements will take you out to a phone.”

  Malone stayed in the interview room; he was having trouble hiding his frustration and he didn’t want to parade it. He looked up almost with irritation when Gail Lee came to the door.

  “Russ has told me what happened last night. I’m glad they missed.”

  “Thanks, Gail.” If nothing else, his relations with her were easier since this case had begun.

  “Did he do it?” She jerked her head backwards.

  “Guo?” He considered a moment, then nodded. “I think so. He’s claiming he spent the night at home with his girlfriend. I think we need to talk to her. You and Sheryl go out to Cronulla and bring her in. She’s supposed to be a student—do you know where she goes?”

  “UTS. She’s doing computers.”

  “Try the Cronulla flat first. You try to pick her up at UTS, you might have a students union protest on your hands. We’re never in the right.”

  She looked back at him as she turned away. “I’m really glad he missed. We all are.”

  He was touched by the concern, though he knew such concern for officers’ safety was now endemic in the Service. There had been several recent incidents where cops had been in life-threatening situations and had responded, resulting in at least two civilian deaths. Public criticism of the police reaction had been loud and widespread, usually by people who had never been even close to such situations. The Service had become resentful of the criticism, had closed ranks. Malone knew that cops were not always above criticism but, like all cops, he resented it from those well outside the danger zone.

  Clements and Guo came back into the room. Guo sat down and drew his helmet towards him as if for safety. Malone said, “Did the friend advise you on a lawyer?”

  “Yes.” Guo had assumed the look of a man who had all the time in the world. “He will be here as soon as possible.”