by Jon Cleary
“I’m not going to arrest them, not the lot of them.” Narvo was as polite as he had been with Nothling. Something had happened to him, he was prepared to make waves. “Not at the moment, anyway.”
“I’ll call Superintendent Dammie over at Cawndilla—”
“Do that,” said Narvo.
“You’ll regret—” Then Hardstaff stopped, looked at the man who had appeared behind the three policemen and was standing there listening frankly to every word. “Who are you?”
“I thought you might recognize me,” said Fred Strayhorn. “But I guess it’s been too long. Too much water under the bridge, eh? Or in the dam? I’m Fred Strayhorn. You and your old man and a lot of other fascist mongrels run me and my mum and dad outa town just on sixty years ago. You still got no time for Commos? You certainly got no time for the darkies, have you?”
“I don’t remember you,” said Hardstaff, even stiffer now.
“You will,” said Strayhorn with certainty. “The last time you saw me was seventeen years ago. I had a different name then, I can’t remember what I called m’self. But we could look it up in the police files, if they’re still around. I was the bloke who told the police you were out at the dam with me the morning your wife was murdered. You remember that?”
After a glance at Strayhorn, Malone had been watching Hardstaff. This had not been the best of days for the King-maker. There had been the farce of the drugged horse winning the first race; then the demonstration by the Aborigines and the disaster it had caused. Those had been enough, bringing out fury that Malone had never expected to see. Now he saw something else he had never expected to see on that cold, controlled face: fear.
But the exposure was only momentary; Hardstaff was granite-hard and granite doesn’t give up its secrets easily. “Yes, I remember now. You wanted to talk to me about it?”
“I think I might, just nostalgia,” Strayhorn said with an exaggerated drawl. For just a moment he flicked a glance at Malone, but Hardstaff caught it.
“You know Inspector Malone?” he said.
“Who? Oh, him. Never met him in my life. He a friend of yours? You always had friends amongst the coppers, didn’t you?” He smiled a greeting at Malone; then looked back at Hardstaff. “Come into town tonight, at the Mail Coach, and I’ll buy you a drink.”
It was blatant insolence, but he got away with it. He turned and ambled off, only stopping when Hardstaff said, voice hard and cold as metal on metal, “I shan’t be in town. Come out to the property tomorrow morning, you know where it is.”
Strayhorn pondered a moment. “How’ll I get there? I’m still travelling on Shanks’s pony.” Then he smiled, almost evilly. “Does the railway line run past your place? Maybe I could borrow a trike.”
But Hardstaff had evidently forgotten that episode; or chose not to remember it. He said, “I’ll send one of my men in to pick you up. Where will you be?”
“Over at the carnival. I’m camped right next to the elephants.”
He walked away down the track, unhurried, not looking back: the biggest winner of the day, thought Malone, one I should have had my money on. Hardstaff stared after him, no expression showing on his face; but one could feel the anger, the fear, something, tearing at the insides of him. Malone, reluctantly, had to admire the autocrat’s control.
The three policemen had stood silent during the stand-off between the two old men: Malone, for one, had learned more by being a spectator than by butting in. But now, chipping away at Hardstaff’s foundations, he said, “After you’ve talked with Mr. Strayhorn, I’d like to talk to you. How about tomorrow morning out at your place?”
“What do you want to talk to me about?” The arrogance was back, it was second nature to him.
“I’ll tell you when I see you. Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning, Mr. Hardstaff, okay? You won’t need me to confirm it by phone. Tom, Dick and Harry won’t be coming—just me and Sergeant Clements.” He nodded to Narvo. “I’ll see you back at the station, Hugh. I guess the rest of the meeting’s abandoned.”
“That’s up to the chairman of the turf club,” said Narvo.
Hardstaff looked across the track, where some jockeys still lay in the dust, waiting for another ambulance to arrive. A strapper with a Twenty-two rifle stood by a prostrate horse that was still kicking weakly; he looked at the turf club’s honorary veterinary surgeon, a young man with red hair and a stricken look, who nodded. The Twenty-two was put to the head of the horse, there was the sound of the shot, several men attending to the jockeys jerked upright, then the strapper moved on, put the rifle to the head of another horse, waited for the approving nod and pulled the trigger again. Most of the course crowd were still outside the rails watching the tragedy; there were gasps and a young girl’s cry of grief as the horses died under the bullet. Hardstaff looked back at Narvo.
“I’ll call off the last two races. But I’d still like to see you, Inspector. Here comes Mr. Dircks, I’m sure he’d like to see you, too.”
Dircks, face red with exertion, came lumbering down the track. He arrived puffed and sweating. “I thought someone had better stay with the G-G. He’d have been pretty shirty if we’d all gone off and left him. An ugly business.” He shook his head. “The demo, I mean. Christ Almighty, who put „em up to such a stupid show?”
Malone stared at him with contempt. Dircks was a coward, morally and politically, the sort who would always dodge decisions that required courage. It had been far easier to stay with the Governor-General than come down here and face a political demonstration by a mob of angry Aborigines. Unlike politicians in more volatile countries he could not read the face of the mob. He preferred individuals, names, addresses, voters who could be relied upon. He had been spoiled, representing a safe seat for so long.
“I heard you fire your gun.” He was afraid to be aggressive; he sounded more aggrieved. “Would you have shot any of them?”
“No. But that’s the advantage of being an outsider.” Malone was aware of Hardstaff watching him. “Nobody knows how far you’ll go.”
Then he jerked his head at Clements and the two detectives walked away, leaving the locals to sort out their local troubles. Driving back to the police station through the traffic already beginning to stream towards town, Clements said, “Do we still go to the ball tonight?”
“I’m not keen on it. But Lisa is. She thinks I need some relaxation. Who are you taking? Narelle?”
“You kidding?”
“Did you know it was her who shot her husband?”
Clements jerked his head round; the car wavered a moment on the road. “She shot him?”
“It was an accident, Sean told me. She tripped or something. The two of them were out shooting, „roos or rabbits.”
“Did they ever investigate if it was an accident or not?”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t want to get caught up in another murder.
“Be interesting if it wasn’t an accident.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t it. You ever been to bed with a murderess before?”
Clements grimaced and said nothing more. When they reached the police station, Wally Mungle was waiting for them in the upstairs detectives’ room. Outwardly he looked relaxed, but Malone at once could feel the tension in him.
“You heard what happened out at the course?”
“Yes, sir.” Everyone, it seemed, had become formally polite.
“You been here all afternoon?”
“I volunteered to be the duty man.” He had stood up as the two Sydney men entered; he had a respectful air about him without seeming to be obsequious. But Malone had a feeling he had stepped into a role, a policeman playing by the book. “I’ve been here since one o’clock.”
“Wally—” Malone tried to make the question as gentle as possible. “Did you know there was going to be a demo?”
The Aborigine stared at Malone, his dark eyes showing nothing; then he nodded. “I didn’t know for sure, but I guessed it.”
“Why didn’t you re
port it to Inspector Narvo or Curly Baldock?”
“Inspector—” For a moment there seemed to be a spark of rebellion in his eyes; then he said calmly, “I talked my mother and my uncle and aunt out of going along with any demo, if there was gunna be one. I figure I did enough, doing that.”
Malone was silent for a long moment; he felt Clements look at him for his answer. Then he said, “I see your point.”
“I dunno that you do, Inspector. I tried to talk „em out of it, but Kooris are like honkies—a lot of „em don’t listen.” He wasn’t insolent, but he was less concerned now with appearing to be respectful. “Those two stirrers who come into town this morning, they’d got „em going. They didn’t wanna listen to me, a cop, someone from the other side. Or anyway, halfway between. When you’re halfway between, Inspector, most of the time you got nothing to stand on but quicksand.”
Malone offered him no more advice. For two hundred years the whites had been giving advice to the blacks and it seemed that neither side had profited. He just nodded, let the subject of the demonstration drop and said, “Any messages for us?”
“Constable Graham called from Sydney. He asked if you could call back to Police Centre before he left at six. He said it was important.”
Malone picked up the phone and dialled Sydney, asked for Andy Graham, who came on the line, all enthusiasm as usual. “Bingo, Inspector! Tokyo has sent us something at last!”
Malone was patient. “What have we got, Andy?”
“Kenji Sagawa—his old man was a war criminal!”
Malone, all at once feeling weary, tried not to sound unimpressed. “I must be slow, Andy. What’s the connection between Sagawa’s murder and what his old man was—” Then his mind, the cogs of which had been slipping, was abruptly in gear. “Did Russ tell you anything about the anti-Jap feeling out here?”
“Yes! That’s what I mean!” Graham was shouting down the line. “Maybe someone out there found out about it . . . Listen to this.” There was a rustle of paper at the other end of the line; then Graham began to read, or rather to declaim like a town crier:
“Chojiro Nibote, a permanent army officer, was wounded in action in Burma in 1942, declared unfit for front-line service. He was appointed commandant of Mergui prisoner-of-war camp in Siam. He was captured by British forces while trying to return to Japan at the end of hostilities in August 1945. He was indicted as a war criminal and executed on May 24, 1946. His wife, Tsuchi, reverted to her maiden name of Sagawa, gave it to her son and daughter and moved from Kobe to Osaka immediately after Chojiro Nibote’s execution. Message ends . . . Jesus!” And Graham seemed suddenly to run out of steam, but had enough left to gasp, “How’d it be, having a war criminal for a father?”
“You think it’d be any worse than having a serial killer for a dad?” But Malone didn’t want to get into any discussion on degrees of crime, of the weight of the sins of the fathers. “I didn’t expect the Japanese to come up with anything as frank as that.”
“Neither did I!” Graham had regained his breath. “I thought the Japs didn’t take any blame for what happened during the war—”
“Maybe there’s a whole new generation there now.” Like there is here. He and Andy Graham had not been born when the war ended; even the war crimes’ trials had been history by then. “Right, fax back our thanks, Andy. Take the weekend off. Russ will call you Monday, let you know how things are going up here. What about down there?”
“We had a murder this morning, out at Rockdale. Just a domestic.” A nothing crime, just a husband killing a wife or vice versa. Grow up, Andy. Homicide isn’t an adventure.
“What are you doing for the weekend?”
“Tomorrow I’m going to the league. Balmain are playing the Gold Coast. It should be murder.”
“Enjoy it.”
He hung up and told Clements and Mungle what he had just heard. “What do you think?”
“Do we go over to the Veterans Legion and ask for a list of the members who were POWs?” said Clements.
“Do you know anyone in the district who was a POW, Wally?”
Mungle shook his head. “None, as far as I know. But maybe they wouldn’t wanna talk about it. Not if they had a bad time.”
“I’ll ask Ray Chakiros tonight. He’ll be at the ball, you can bet.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t have to be a POW,” said Clements slowly, “to want to kill the son of a war criminal.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Doc Nothling was born in Burma. I wonder what happened to his parents? His old man, for instance?”
IV
The gin manager’s house had been the farmhouse on one of the original properties that had been bought up for the cotton acreage. It was an old timber, one-storeyed structure that had been renovated and re-painted; the small garden at its front had almost the neatness and formalism of a Japanese garden. The yards at the back had been cleaned up, but, with a bow to local heritage, some of the old, weathered buildings had been retained. The woolshed, not a large one, was still there; the machinery shed had been repaired, its missing timbers replaced, and now housed a Nissan Patrol wagon. The chutes, slippery as brown ice, still ran from the woolshed into the yards, but the yards themselves had been reduced in size, though their railings had been replaced. Even the outdoor dunny had been renovated and painted pale blue, a monument to the fact that men may come and men may go, but their waste goes on forever. Malone sometimes felt that half the nation’s literary education had been taken in while sitting on a toilet seat. There was no rusting machinery lying about, the usual skeletons of a farmyard.
Koga and his three bosses were sitting in comfortable chairs on the front veranda when Malone and Clements arrived. Koga was on his feet at once; the older Japanese rose more leisurely.
Koga introduced them, deferential as a court page to both his executives and the two detectives. Malone felt like an ambassador presenting his credentials. “I told Mr. Tajiri you would probably be coming out to see him.”
Tajiri was the president of Okada Corporation, the parent company of South Cloud. He was in his mid-sixties but well preserved, with iron-grey hair neatly parted and brushed flat on his head, a firm square jaw and rimless glasses with gold sidebars. He wore a green golf shirt, a yellow cashmere cardigan, cavalry twill trousers and expensive walking shoes. Malone wondered if he had brought his golf gear with him.
“So you are investigating Mr. Sagawa’s death.” His English was as good as Koga’s, perhaps a little more precise, as if he did not want to make any mistakes in front of a very junior employee. “Very sad. We hope it will not mean the severing of our relations with Collamundra.”
The other two men, Hayashi and Yoshida, both in their mid-forties, as neatly and expensively dressed as their president but not as casually, nodded their neat heads. It was the neatness of all three and their smallness that made Malone feel that he and Clements probably looked like a couple of football oafs.
“Very sad,” said Hayashi and Yoshida, but none of the three executives appeared to be overwhelmed by Sagawa’s death. Still, Malone told himself, he knew nothing of what emotion Japanese showed in public.
“Had he been with your company long?”
Tajiri looked at Hayashi, evidently the personnel man; or perhaps he had been a friend of Sagawa’s, but first and foremost was a company man. That was supposed to be the big thing with Japanese . . . Come on, Malone. You’re jumping at judgements.
“He came to us straight from high school. We sent him to university in Japan, then to university in the United States. He was a very valued worker.”
“Do you have a photo of him?”
Malone looked at Koga. It struck him that he had no idea what Sagawa looked like, not that it mattered now. He had not gone to the morgue to look at the body; when they had told him how it had been chopped up by the spikes, he had chickened out. He could still be squeamish at what could be done to what had once been living flesh.
Koga went int
o the house and Malone gestured to the other three Japanese to resume their seats. He and Clements sat on the veranda railing. All around them the fields stretched away, silent and deserted now, darker patches showing like sharp-edged currents where the harvesters had sailed through the white sea.
“Will you gentlemen be staying long?”
“Not long,” said Tajiri. “We shall wait till Mr. Sagawa’s body is released to us, then we shall take it back with us to Japan for cremation. Those are his family’s wishes.”
“You have tidied up all your business here? With your partners?”
The eyes were still for a moment behind the glasses. “You know our partners?”
“Were they supposed to be secret? I didn’t realize that.”
Tajiri lost his composure for just a moment; he said hastily, “Oh no, not at all. I just had not appreciated the thoroughness of Australian police investigation.”
Wait till I tell you how thorough we can be . . . But he said nothing about that. He took the eight-by-six photo Koga had brought out. “It was with his belongings, Inspector. I packed them all in his suitcase this morning. I took that photograph only two weeks ago.”
Malone held up the photo and Clements leaned close to him to look at it. Clements said, “He’s nothing like I expected.”
“Me, neither.”
They were looking at a full-length photo of a slimly-built man whose energy seemed to spring out at them; his head was thrown back and he was laughing, showing good-looking teeth in a broad good-looking face. His hands were on his hips and he seemed to be rocking backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet. He looked like a man who would have had a zest for life, who would never have had the patience for Zen or other ancient contemplations, who would have been thoroughly modern . . .
“The hair,” said Malone.
Tajiri glanced at Hayashi, who said, “Ah yes, that did sometimes disturb us. It did not fit—” our company image: but he stopped before he said that. “We turned a blind eye to it. He was too good a manager for us to quarrel over whether he went to a hair stylist or a plain barber.”
