Authors: Jon Cleary
Five-Ring Circus
FIVE-
RING CIRCUS
The Scobie Malone Series
Jon Cleary
FOR
JOY
Copyright
© 1998 by Jon Cleary
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without permission in writing from the publisher.
First ebook edition 2013 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.
Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-807-0
Library ISBN 978-1-62460-130-9
Cover photo ©
TK
/
iStock.com
.
CONTENTS
FIVE-
RING CIRCUS
In
the first half of 1996 a five-line item appeared in a Sydney newspaper. Two Chinese students were being questioned about the deposit in their bank accounts of some fifty million dollars. The story was not followed up and no more was heard of the students and their sudden fortune.
This book is not a guess at what may have been behind that meagre story. It is fiction and none of the characters is meant to represent anyone living or dead. Anyone who sees himself or herself here has looked in the wrong mirror.
1
I
“A WORKING
mum,” said Tom. “I can't get used to the idea.”
“I've been a working mum ever since I started having you lot,” said Lisa. “Watch yourself or you'll be paying for your own dinner.”
“That'll please Old Fishhooks-in-the-Pockets,” said Maureen, patting her father's arm. “Would you like me and Claire to go Dutch?”
“Speak for yourself,” said Claire. “I'm being extravagant at his expense tonight. Do Chinese restaurants serve French champagne?”
“If it does,” said Malone, “I'll have it closed down for extortion.”
He had the benign look that husbands and fathers occasionally achieve when the stars are in their right places in the heavens. Tonight was such an occasion. The family were celebrating Lisa's first month back in the workforce after twenty-one years; an event the children seemed to equate with the introduction of suffragism. He still thought of them as
the children,
or usually
the kids;
but they were kids no longer and he was only slowly coming to terms with the changes in them.
Claire was twenty-one and in her third year of Law at Sydney University, coolly beautiful and with her eyes wide open for the traps that the world and its men might lay for her. Maureen was almost nineteen and doing Communications at New South Wales, dark where her sister was blonde, willing to risk the world and its men. Tom was seventeen and only a year away from university and two years into girls. Malone trusted their independent outlook. He was still coming to terms with Lisa's stated desire for her own independence.
The
Golden Gate was not the largest restaurant in Sydney's Chinatown, but it was the ritziest; dim sum and chop suey were unmentionables here. It had a huge chandelier that, it was claimed, had hung in the palace of the Empress Tz'u-Hsi, a lady not known for welcoming foreign guests, gourmets or otherwise. The carpet, it was also claimed, had been woven by the nimble fingers of three hundred small boys working day and night in a village in Sinkiang; there was also a claim, spread by restaurant competitors, that the Chinese characters in one corner of the carpet translated as
Axminster.
Pale green linen covered the tables clustered in the middle of the big room and red velvet-covered banquettes lined the walls, which were in turn covered in green shantung. The waiters, no coolies here, were mandarins-in-training and tips were encouraged to be in ransom terms. On the floor above the restaurant were private dining rooms; the third floor, supposedly the manager's residence, was given over to four gambling rooms that had never known the indignity of a police raid. The Golden Gate was a compulsory pit-stop for all visiting delegations from Communist China, both in the restaurant and the gambling rooms. It had, among all its other claims, class, something that all who came here, including the Communists, appreciated.
“Do you make as much money as Dad?” asked Tom, who was doing Economics in Year 12.
“He doesn't want to know,” said Lisa, “and neither should you.”
“Right on,” said Maureen, and Claire nodded in agreement.
Tom abruptly looked uncomfortable. He was a big lad, as tall as his father at six feet one, and already starting to bulk out in chest and shoulders. Like his sisters, he had inherited his mother's good looks, though there were hints of his father in them. He had not inherited his mother's cool composure and emotion showed on his face in bold relief. “Sorry, I didn't meanâ”
Lisa, sitting next to him in the banquette, patted his hand. “It's all right. It's just that the money's not importantâWhat are you grinning at?”
“Was I grinning?” said Malone. “I thought I was looking pained.”
“Come on,” said Claire. “Let's order before he starts chewing on his American Express card.”
Malone didn't mind the chi-acking; he couldn't be in a better mood. It had been a quiet week
in
Sydney for murder: only three, all domestics that had been attended to by local detectives. There had been no call on Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit. There had been appearances in court to give evidence at murder trials; other detectives had been at work on task forces looking into homicides still unsolved; and for Malone, the Co-ordinator in charge of Homicide, there had been the opportunity to catch up on the hated paperwork. This Friday night family dinner was a pleasant end of the week.
Then a tall handsome Chinese got up from a banquette at the rear of the restaurant and came towards them. “Inspector Malone, it's a pleasure to see you here. A family celebration?”
“Sort of. How are you, Les? You've met my wife. And these areâ” He introduced Claire, Maureen and Tom, feeling some of the pride that, a modest man, he occasionally let seep out of him. “Mr. Chung, he's one of the owners.”
Leslie Chung had come to Australia forty years ago, when he was still in his teens. He had walked out of the hills of Yunnan and down to Hong Kong, arriving there just as that city was getting into its stride as a place to coin money. After a couple of months there he had decided there was already too much competition for an ambitious capitalist, especially a teenage penniless one. He had got a job as a deckhand on a freighter plying between Hong Kong and Sydney; on its second trip he had deserted in Sydney, convinced even then that the locals could never match wits with him. His English was negligible, so he took a job as a kitchenhand in a restaurant in Chinatown, changed his name and started saving his money. He won money in the various gambling dens that could be found in every section of Chinatown in those days; he was a careful gambler and a careful saver. He studied English, accountancy and the natives' talent for never taking the long view. He had been born with the long view; he had been poor, but not uneducated in his country's long history. He was never burdened by scruples, since he also learned that a lack of those qualities didn't necessarily hold one back in local business and political circles. He prospered slowly but gradually, not always within the law, but the authorities never troubled him; those who tried went away suitably recompensed for their trouble. He had progressed far enough up the social scale to recognize barbarians when he saw them.
Unlike the majority of his fellow expatriates, he had severed all ties with his family in Yunnan.
He
set about building his own family. He married the daughter of one of Chinatown's most respected businessmen, now had two daughters, both recent graduates in Law and Medicine respectively. He had a large house in Bellevue Hill, a conservative eastern suburb, he gave handsomely to charity so long as there was a tax rebate and, since Sydney was now an ethnically correct city, he was on all official invitation lists. It was just a pity that he had no scruples. Malone knew about the lack of scruples, but he knew very little else about Les Chung.
“Business is good?”
“Enough to keep the wolf from the door.” Chung looked around the crowded room, then back at Malone and smiled. His sense of humour was not as robust as that of the natives; it was drier, more sardonic. Much like that of the natives of forty years ago, when he had arrived here. Much like Malone's. “Business is good with you?”
Malone, too, smiled. Part of the pleasure of meeting crims was that, occasionally, you met one whom you had to like, even if you didn't admire him. Les Chung had never been on a police docket, but the police knew, if no one else did, that he consorted with criminals. The difference between him and them was that he was
civilized. A
quality Malone always respected.
“The less business we have, the better.”
“Well, enjoy your dinner. I'll have them bring you some champagne with my compliments.”
Malone was about to say no, but Claire was too quick for him: “Thank you, Mr. Chung. Mum was brought up on champagne.”
“Well, then I'll have them bring you the best, Mrs. Maloneâ”
He looked towards the rear of the restaurant; then abruptly sat down, pushing Tom further into the banquette. “Move over! Quickâmove over, boy!”
Malone, sitting opposite him, looked past him towards the rear of the restaurant. A man in a dark suit, wearing a stocking mask, had come in through the kitchen door. He was carrying a gun. He stopped by the last banquette where three Chinese men were dining. He fired six shots, unheard in the clatter and chatter of the big room, then he turned and, unhurried, went out through the kitchen door,
which
swung shut behind him.