by Jon Cleary
“I’ve never met a rich old maharani. Is there a Mr. Bedi?”
“Yes. He is back in Simla, where I come from. He couldn’t face the thought of outback Australia.”
She looked out at the local example of outback Australia. She was facing west, towards the plains stretching away forever. She would never become accustomed to the limitless flatness; she missed the mountains, the towering peaks against the Himalayan sky, more than she did her husband. She could close her eyes here in Collamundra and see, with heart-aching clarity, the view from the Mall in Simla in the early morning: the air so clear that one felt one could reach out and touch the glittering peaks a hundred miles away, the pennants of snow streaming from their tops in the winds, the silence, the voice of Himalaya, the snow abode. She turned back to Malone.
“My husband is a great cricket fan like so many Indian men. He was afraid that all Australian men would be like your fast bowlers, aggressive and vicious.”
“I was a fast bowler, once.”
She raised her eyebrows. “A fast bowler and a policeman? Are you popular?”
“In Australia fast bowlers have always been more popular than policemen. Even the vicious ones. Dr. Nothling’s not here?”
“He is coming later, I understand. He is entertaining some Japanese gentlemen at the moment.”
There was no one seated near them; everyone was down in the betting ring or parading up and down in the dust bowl. He moved closer to her. “Dr. Bedi, did Dr. Nothling examine Ken Sagawa’s body at all?”
The amusement faded from her eyes; they became as opaque as he had seen them yesterday afternoon at the hospital. “There is a question here, Inspector, of professional etiquette—”
“You mean one doctor won’t point the finger at another? I understand you’re all gentlemen in that respect, even the ladies.”
She studied him as if he were a specimen under a microscope. “You’re quite a mixture, aren’t you? You can be rough-and-ready and other times you’re as smooth as—as—”
“As a Macquarie Street specialist? Or the president of the AMA?”
Her eyes became a little less opaque, some light showing in them. “You don’t like doctors, do you, Inspector?”
“You don’t like policemen. Or anyway, Dr. Nothling doesn’t. You haven’t answered my question. Forget the professional etiquette. I’m trying to find a murderer, Dr. Bedi, I’m not trying to send Dr. Nothling or anyone else up before the medical ethics committee. Though I might do that if I had to.”
“My husband would think that was the fast bowler in you talking.”
“I bowled my share of bumpers at a batsman’s head. I’ve never done it to a lady, but there’s always a first time for everything.”
“Oh, I wish he were here—my husband, I mean . . .” But she did not wish that, not really. She re-arranged an already neat fold in her sari. “All right, Inspector. The truth. No, Dr. Nothling did not examine Sagawa’s body. He came in, took one look at it, told me to stay with the examination and went away.”
“Not to an emergency in one of the wards?”
“No.”
“What had prevented him from going out on the original call to the gin to view the body? Was he on rounds?”
She hesitated, looking down to see if the fold needed rearranging again. “No. He was suffering from a hangover, the worst I’ve ever seen him.”
“Does he get drunk very often?”
“Lately, yes. Just the last couple of months. Twice he hasn’t turned up for surgery and I’ve had to perform it. Fortunately, they were not major ops.”
“And nobody has complained?”
“No one on the staff, no. I think they’re all afraid to.”
“What about the patients?”
“I heard one old lady complaining very loudly to him one day, but he charmed her out of it. He can be very charming when he likes. A little heavy-handed for my taste, but yes—charming. I don’t think Mrs. Nothling would ever have married him, otherwise.”
“I think Mrs. Nothling-Hardstaff has arrived.”
Dr. Bedi raised an eyebrow at his mockery of the double-barrelled name. Then she added her own mockery: “In her pale-blue Givenchy or Montana and her big picture hat. She is the district’s ball of style.” For just a moment the claws showed.
Amanda was looking up at Dr. Bedi and Malone and he could see her clearly. She had some of her father’s imperiousness about her, softened by the occasional smile she gave to passers-by, a smile that was both sincere and yet suggested a hand-out, like royalty on Maundy Thursday. Like her father she looked as if she would not suffer fools, gladly or otherwise.
“She looks sort of—regal.”
“Dr. Nothling, when he was in his cups once, told me about a time they were down in Sydney, dining at the most expensive place in town. She kept turning her nose up at everything on her plate. The head-waiter knew who she was and he came across to their table and asked if everything was all right. And she just asked him in a loud voice if it was the chef’s night off.”
“A real lady.”
“The funny thing is, she is a lady. Unfortunately, her father keeps coming out in her.”
“Is her husband under her thumb?”
“What an odd question! But yes, I think he is.” She returned the smile Amanda Nothling was giving her. Still looking down at the doctor’s wife, without turning her head towards Malone, she said, “I am not going to answer any more questions, Inspector. Whether you bowl bumpers at my head or not.”
“You’ve batted well, Dr. Bedi. Your husband would be proud of you.”
“He always was,” she said, letting down her guard, “till I left him and came to Australia.”
He had stood up; the crowd was starting to drift back into the stand. “Are you sorry? That you came?”
“Yes and no. Mostly no. I may feel at home here in another twenty years. God knows where India will be in twenty years.”
He put on his hat, raised it like a country gentleman, one of the old school, and went back to Lisa, Ida and Carmody. He gave Lisa her hundred and seventy dollars and she tipped him five dollars.
“Thanks,” he said, and wanted to kiss her, right out there in the open, in front of all the spectators, giving them a grandstand view. But he didn’t: the old Malone reticence about showing affection in public was too thick in his blood. He just pressed her hand; but he knew it was enough. The look in her eyes told him that. She knew he would never be a fool, not towards her.
“You seemed to be getting on very well with Dr. Bedi,” said Ida, probing like a surgeon.
“We were talking cricket. She’s afraid of fast bowlers.”
“Is she afraid of you?” said Lisa.
“I couldn’t tell,” he said and changed the subject away from Anju Bedi.
There were three more races before the Collamundra Cup and Malone, never a racing fan, grew bored. Russ Clements, leaving the children at the carnival, came up to join them, squeezing into a space between Lisa and Ida.
“I’ve backed Doc Nothling’s horse. I was told it would romp home.”
“If you backed it, it can’t lose,” said Malone, and explained to Ida, “He’s legendary down in Sydney. He makes more money on a Saturday at the races than the Commissioner earns in a month.”
Max Nothling had just arrived with Trevor Waring. The latter came up into the grandstand and fitted himself in on the other side of Ida from Clements.
“You get all your business fixed up?” Ida said. “How were the Japanese?”
“Very formal,” said Waring, avoiding the eyes of both detectives as they leaned slightly forward to glance at him.
“Max looks pleased about something,” Ida said.
Nothling had joined the vice-regal party in the official box. He looked flushed, as if he had been drinking, but he was steady on his feet and greeted everyone, including the Governor-General, with bonhomie that came close to back-slapping and kisses. As he sat down he ducked under the brim of his w
ife’s hat to plant a kiss on her cheek, which she brushed away with a gloved hand as if it had been a fly-bite.
“Things went well,” said Waring and put his binoculars to his eyes, as if donning a mask.
The horses filed out on to the track and cantered away to the far side. The race, Malone had been told, was a two-miler; the horses would pass the grandstand twice. The crowd had come alive, as if the running of the Cup was the sole purpose of the meeting; which, indeed, it was.
“I think we can start heading home after this,” said Carmody. “You’ve got nothing running after this one, have you, Trevor?”
“No. I’ve withdrawn our other entry, after what happened to Mulga Lad.”
“Have the stewards spoken to you yet?”
“No. Young Phil Chakiros is going to have some explaining to do. Silly young coot.”
“I’m sorry about your horse,” said Lisa.
“Yes,” said Waring; but showed no emotion. “The children will miss him.”
But you won’t, thought Malone; and wondered why he had not noticed this cold streak in the lawyer.
“They’re off!” crackled the PA system and the horses, bunched together, came out from the screen of trees and headed for the first long bend. They settled down to a two-mile pace, bowling along at a good clip, the dust rising behind them in a long train. They came round the bend for the run down the straight for the first time. The crowd stood up, ready to cheer on their fancies as they swept past.
Then above the cheering and the shouting there came faintly the heavy beat of drums. Malone looked to his left, down to the other end of the straight. Marching up the middle of the track, a huge banner floating above them, were perhaps two hundred Aborigines, men, women and children. At their head marched three young men, each banging away on a big bass drum; later it would be learned the drums had been stolen from the local Boy Scouts’ hall. The banner, limp at first as the two young men holding it veered towards each other, suddenly tautened as they drew apart. In large red and yellow letters on a black background was the demand:
NO MORE BLACK DEATHS!
There was a roar from the racecourse crowd, of horror and anger. The horses swept past, hoofs a steady thunder, but already the leading jockeys had seen the obstruction and they were desperately trying to slow their horses. Those behind, their view obscured, saw nothing till it was too late. Then they rose up in their stirrups, dragging hard on the bits, but the horses in the middle of the packed bunch hit those in front. They went down in slow motion, the jockeys going up in the air like tumbling acrobats, then falling ever so slowly, it seemed to Malone, down amidst the plunging hoofs. Some of the jockeys managed to swing their mounts wide of the mêlée, going right out to the outer rails and somehow scraping by the massed Aborigines, who had now come to a halt, the drums still being banged by the three young men but no one else moving. Horses were screaming, jockeys were yelling, the racecourse crowd was boiling with anger and the Aborigines, bunched tightly together now like a small dark island, stood mute and defiant.
“Oh Christ,” said Sean Carmody, his voice full of despair, “what good do they think they’ve done for their cause?”
Chess Hardstaff, handsome face now ugly with fury, had stood up. He shouted, like a Roman emperor, “Get rid of them!” and at once, as if they had been waiting for such an order, men erupted from the crowd, ran down and jumped the fence on to the track. Some were police in uniform, but most of them were civilians, middle-aged men, youths, even some young teenagers. They all wore a face Malone knew so well: the face of the mob, their skulls empty of everything but frenzy, their shouts an animal howl. He had seen it as a young cop in anti-war demonstrations in the early seventies, in a New Year’s Eve riot in The Rocks area in Sydney, in an ethnic brawl at a soccer match. Let loose, it could kill like any animal.
He looked around for Hugh Narvo or some senior sergeant, but could see no one to take charge.
“Come on!” he said, and Clements was on his feet at the same time as himself. As he went down the steps he flung back over his shoulder at Lisa, “Get the kids and take „em home! Now!”
He and Clements pushed their way through the crowd, sometimes having to pull people apart to force a passage. They jumped the fence, Clements having a little difficulty in getting his bulk over it, then they were on the track, running through the fog of dust raised by some of the fallen horses that were still kicking but couldn’t raise themselves on to all four legs.
The uniformed police had reached the Aborigines who still stood tightly packed together, still mute but fear now plain on their dark faces. Dust was settling on them, but rivulets of sweat gullied the dust, turning their faces into mockeries of corroboree masks. The police pushed at them, handling them roughly but not using their batons. Then the first wave of men and youths hit them from behind, pushing the police at the Aborigines, coming in with fists and boots swinging, hitting and kicking anyone with a dark face.
Malone pulled up, drew his gun and fired it twice in the air. Beside him Clements had also taken out his gun. The sound of the shots was a shock; at first no one seemed to know where they had come from. Then the police, the men and the youths swung round; a teenage boy fell over and knelt in the dust, looking up at Malone with wide, disbelieving eyes. For a moment it looked as if the mob was going to charge the two Sydney detectives. Malone brought his gun down, aimed it at the youth closest to him: it was Stan Gruber, fat face as suddenly full of fear again as it had been last night.
“All you men, except the police officers, back off. Hear me? Back off!”
The white men glared at him and for a moment he thought there was going to be a stand-off; he knew he would never pull the trigger on Stan Gruber. Then the fat youth walked unsteadily away, over towards where ambulance officers and several of the race strappers were doing their best to attend to the injured jockeys and horses. The others in the mob hesitated and Malone moved his gun round to point it at Max Nothling, whom he saw now for the first time.
“Go over and help the jockeys, Doc. That’s your job, not bashing up people.”
Nothling didn’t move, looking at Malone as if he hadn’t heard aright. Then a voice behind Malone said, “I’ll take over now, Inspector. Thanks. Lead the way, Dr. Nothling. The others will help you.”
Nothling flicked a glance at Narvo, but still didn’t move; then the defiance abruptly ran out of him. But he paused long enough to say, “What are you going to do with these black bastards? They could’ve killed some of the jockeys. And we’re going to have to destroy at least half a dozen of the horses.”
“I’ll attend to these people, Doctor.” Narvo was as punctiliously polite as if he had never met Nothling before. “Just leave them to me. This is a police matter, not a medical one.”
Malone put away his gun as the mob of whites, muttering threats at the blacks, moved across to the carnage scene near the inner rail. He looked up towards the stand: Lisa, Carmody and the Warings had disappeared. Oddly, it was Waring that he wondered about: where had he gone?
The stand was half-empty, the people who had remained there standing in the seemingly same state of shock; all their faces had a faint resemblance, as if they had been captured in a wide-lens photograph of an extended family reunion. Except that no one was smiling: the resemblance was in the shock and horror as they all stared out at the jockeys still lying in the middle of the track like so many brightly coloured rag dolls and the horses screaming as they struggled, on shattered limbs, to get to their feet. It struck Malone that an animal’s shriek of pain was, somehow, more frightful than a human’s. Or perhaps it was that he was more accustomed to the pain-filled cries of humans.
The two detectives stood silent while Narvo gave orders for the Aborigines to turn round and go back to their settlement. “Except for you two guys carrying the banner. You don’t belong here. Where do you come from?”
“We come up from Canberra,” both said at once, as if rehearsed in answers to police questions. They had
“rebel” written all over them: Malone had seen their sort before in city demos, always up front, always shouting defiance, falling over themselves to get in front of the ever-obliging television cameras. He could never, in his heart, bring himself to blame them. They were just a pain in the arse; but what rebel hadn’t been? God must have groaned when Lucifer first waved his banner.
“That where you live?” Narvo, like most country folk, had little time for Canberra. Politicians and protestors: they were both pains.
“No. Sydney,” both said again.
“Arrest them,” said Narvo, as if that were their final crime. He turned his back on them and looked at Malone. “I’m sorry you had to do that, Scobie, take over like that.”
“I looked for you—”
Narvo grinned in embarrassment, something Malone would not have thought him capable of. “I was caught short. I was sitting in a portable dunny out the back of the stand. Something I ate for lunch went through me like a firehose . . . Thanks, anyway. You too, Russ.”
The Aborigines had turned and were walking slowly back down the track, no longer a tight little island but a loose shoal, their anger and defiance no longer binding them. They had been harangued into something they had not thought through, they had caused a disaster that none of them had envisaged. Malone looked for Wally Mungle and the Koowarra family, but couldn’t see them, and felt an immediate relief.
“Are you going to let them go?”
The three senior policemen turned round: Chess Hardstaff stood behind them, stiff with cold anger. “I want them arrested and charged, every damned one of them!”
Out of the corner of his eye Malone saw a smartly dressed Aboriginal girl standing by the outer rail. As he looked at her she abruptly spun round and walked away, but not before a final glance back at—whom? Then Malone realized she was staring at Hardstaff, that her attractive, coffee-coloured face was a mixture of emotion that clouded and spoiled her attractiveness. Then she walked on and disappeared round the end of the grandstand.
