Five-Ring Circus (15 page)

“He has. But someone saw you at the door of his flat on Friday night. They described you to a
T,
Madame Tzu.” A little exaggeration never got in the way when questioning. “Was he still alive then?”

Her mouth was tight, she looked as if she would refuse to answer; then: “Yes, he was alive. He gave me no hint that he was going to—to
disappear.
We talked about how Olympic Tower was coming along, then I left. I wasn't there more than half an hour.”

She's too glib.
“Was anyone else there? Mr. Guo?”

“No. I got there at eighty-thirty and left at nine.”
Precisely:
he waited for her to show a timesheet.

“Well, thank you. We had to ask.”

“Of course. You wouldn't be doing your job if you didn't. I hope you find Tong and Guo.”

Malone opened the door, ushered Gail out ahead of him. “Oh, we'll find them. We always do. Dead or alive.”

She didn't blink, showed no expression at all; just said, “You mentioned that the woman who owned this apartment was murdered. By her husband or a lover?”

“No, by a business partner.”

V

“Something is rotten in the State of Denmark.”

When Lisa got pompous, which was rarely, Malone knew they were in for serious discussion. Monday night, now that television was in the non-ratings seasons, was a poor night for entertainment. Maureen had gone out to a girl friend's, Tom was in his room weaving strings on the Internet, and Claire and her parents were in the living room, each with a book.

Malone put down his book, a paperback by Carl Hiassen. He rarely read crime novels, most of which seemed to him to be written by the Muscle Beach school of writing; but Hiassen and Elmore Leonard made him laugh at the crims they invented. Lately he had found that, more and more, he was looking for humour in his reading. He had recently discovered Gwyn Thomas, a dead dyspeptic Welsh humorist, who, as far as he could gather, no one else in Australia had read. Thomas' sour humour had begun to appeal to him.

Lisa
had closed her own book, a history of the Olympic Games. It was her homework, but she had confessed it was boring her; when she had applied for the job at Town Hall no one had thought to ask her if she was interested in sport. Claire closed her book, a David Malouf paperback. None of them would have remarked it, but three books open in the same room at the same time was an oasis in a gradually growing desert.

“I'm talking about the Town Hall,” said Lisa, “I was at a meeting today. Something came up about Olympic Tower and suddenly I and the secretary, Rosalie, were asked to leave.”

Malone knew about exclusion from committees; corrupt cops, especially senior ones, had never wanted an honest one in attendance. “Go on.”

“Raymond Brode was going to be asked some questions that outsiders, like Rosalie and me, weren't supposed to hear. There was a hint there might have been a handout, a bribe. There are four more floors due on Olympic Tower that none of the works and planning committees knew about.”

“What would happen,” said Malone, “when the tower is finished and someone looks up and starts counting?”

“That would depend, according to Rosalie, who seems to know about these things. Probably nothing, unless some architects or builders who missed out on the job decided to get nasty and ask questions.”

“How did they find out?” asked Claire.

“Through me. I put in a report that gave the game away.” Lisa explained what had happened.

“You should follow it up,” said Claire, already half a lawyer.

“No,” said Malone. “Let it lie. This Olympic Tower business looks dirty.”

“But how can they get away with it? What if the building is unsafe with the extra floors on it? I mean, surely
someone
can spill the beans?”

“Self-protection,” said Malone with the weariness of long experience. “It's the skin on every committee. If someone does add up the new level and compares it with the original plans and then asks questions, the committee will say the extra floors were approved. They are not going to admit they were
asleep
or hadn't been near the site since the plans were first approved. It's called survival of the slickest.”

“Oh my God, how can you be so cynical?”

“You'll learn, when you become a lawyer.”

“Rosalie explained it all,” said Lisa. “From now till the Olympics we're the squeaky clean city. No scandal, nothing.”

She was not naïve. She knew that corruption was part of the body politic, that in most of the world it was the aspirin that kept the circulation going. She had been isolated in a happy marriage, where there was only the sweet corruption of love. It was not enough just to read about venality, as one did almost every day. In newsprint one did not get the smell.

“You still haven't said whether it will make the building unsafe.” Claire had a lawyer's persistence: in another year or two, thought Malone, she's going to be a real pain in the arse.

“I don't know,” said Lisa. “I could ask one of the council engineers—”

“Stay out of it.” Malone was adamant, “I told you, this could be a really dirty business.”

“Explain yourself,” said the trainee lawyer.

“Pull your head in,” said her father. “I'm not in court. Just accept what I'm saying—it's going to get dirty. There have been four murders so far, three people are missing—” He saw the shine in Claire's eyes, a sort of madness that he had seen grip young legal eagles; eventually, as cynicism set in, the infection would subside. “Calm down. You've got a long way to go before you're a Crown prosecutor.”

“Well,
someone
should find out if the building's going to be safe. Sydney won't be squeaky clean if a five-star hotel collapses and kills a load of tourists.”

“I'll talk to someone. In the meantime, don't
you
talk to any of your mates at law school—”

“As if I would—”

“As if you wouldn't. Women were the first gossips, lawyers were the second—”

Both women threw their books at him. The Olympic Games history, a hardback, hurt the most.

5

I

TUESDAY MORNING
Boston came to Malone after the morning conference. He had always been neat in appearance, but now he seemed even neater, as if his wife had run an iron over him before he had left home and he had come to work on foot so as not to disturb the creases. There was also a newly ironed look to his demeanour. He had thrown out last week's sullenness, looked keen to impress. Too late, mate, thought Malone; but made no comment.

“I went back to Union Hall this morning—
early.”
As if to underline his new git-up-and-go. “I talked to a mate there. Not one of the officials like Albie Lloyd, just one of the clerks. They're worried about what's going on at Olympic Tower.”

“In what way? The murders have nothing to do with them. I hope,” he added. Union strife was always something to be avoided if you were a cop: you were always on the wrong side.

“The Chinese are trying to split the two unions by offering enterprise agreements. The Construction mob don't want to have anything to do with it—they think it'll lead to too many risks being taken.”

“Are risks being taken now?”
Do the unions know about the extra levels?

“My mate wasn't sure about that. But he says the Allied Trades lot are willing to listen—anything that'll shift the Construction mob off the site.”

“Which Chinese?”

“Why, the Hong Kong crowd. The Communists.” He spoke with the bile of the Far Right, but Malone had always made it a principle never to ask any of his detectives their political opinion. They could be anti-politics, but not pro-party.

“
Does Union Hall think the Hong Kong crowd did the murders?”

“Of course. They think it's cut-and-dried.”

“I wish I had that cut-and-dried attitude that everyone but cops seems to have. It's too pat, Harold. Why would they kill one of their own? Mr. Shan. Ex-General Huang Piao?”

Boston shrugged. “Who understands the Chinese? Or Communists, for that matter?”

This feller is out of the 1950s.
But Malone knew that some of those attitudes were still more widespread than was generally admitted. “Is that your thinking or Union Hall's?”

“Mine, I guess,” Boston admitted. “They're still pretty Leftish down there.”

“Righto, let's stick with your thinking. If we don't understand the Chinese, where does that put Les Chung?”

“He's a capitalist, a developer—there's no problem understanding them.”

“Are you for or against developers?”

Boston all at once seemed to become aware that he was straying into territory he hadn't previously explored. He had no idea what Malone's political inclinations were. Police were supposed to stay out of political waters, but that was like asking fish to sunbake.

He hedged: “Why would Les Chung try to complicate things for himself? Another thing—he was in that booth with the three guys who were shot. If he hadn't come up to talk to you, like you told us, they'd have done him.”

“But he wasn't in the booth when the shooting started. What if he'd known the killer was coming?” Malone had considered this, but rejected it. Lisa said there had been real fear on Chung's face when he had seen what was happening in the rear booth. “There's Jack Aldwych to think about, too. Jack used to hire killers.”

Boston nodded. “I know that. I once found the body of a guy Jack got rid of—I was a new cop, a year on the beat. The finger pointed at Jack, we all knew he'd ordered it, but we never laid a hand on him. Those were the days when he had cops on his payroll. You know him pretty well, don't you?”

“What does that mean?” He had to squash down his sudden temper.

“
Nothing. I was just asking.” Boston's insolence was what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it?

Malone managed to keep cool. “I use him for information, that's all. Forget him—he had nothing to do with the killings. The hitman was Chinese, we're pretty sure of that, and Jack's a racist when it comes to hiring killers.”

“We're talking in circles, aren't we?” Boston was making no attempt to hide his arrogance now; creases were starting to show in him.

Malone sat back. “I guess we are. Don't get yourself too involved in this, Harold. You'll be gone next week.”

Boston flushed, the old malevolence back in his face. “With all due respect to your rank, you're a real shit.”

“So I've been told.” He was not going to let the other man see him lose his temper. “It comes with the rank. Maybe you'll do better in Archives. There's only a senior constable in charge there.”

“You may be wrong about Archives.”

He stood up abruptly, almost knocking over his chair, left the office with quick strides, grabbed his jacket from his chair in the far corner of the office and stalked out of the big room, fumbling at the security door in his anger and haste. A moment passed, then Clements, as Malone expected, came in and slumped down on the couch beneath the window.

“Problems?”

“I dunno. He just said we could be wrong about Archives. I don't think Administration would go against my recommendation and insist he had to stay here.”

“If they do, I'll see he does only paperwork, never moves out of the office. He's a mean bastard, I wouldn't trust him, and he's bone lazy.”

“He says he has contacts at Union Hall.”

“Forget them. We'll make our own—I'll get Phil Truach down there.”

Boston obviously had the contacts at Union Hall, something not easily obtainable, and he might have proved useful. Malone himself, not through any stiff-necked morality but because he hated
debts
of any kind, had always trodden warily with contacts. Like all cops he had his informants; cops and crims were two sides of the same coin and it couldn't be flipped without calling the odds. He had no informant in government politics and he wanted none in union politics. In both those circles favours were always demanded in return.

He explained what Boston had told him about Union Hall. “There may be something to it, but I think it's bigger than that. This is more than a union stoush to see who runs the site.” Then he looked at the doorway. “Hello, Clarrie.”

Clarrie Binyan came into the office, sat down and laid a manual on Malone's desk. “I get outa the office as much as I can—I like showing off the uniform.” Recently many of the Service's plainclothes officers had been put back into uniform, part of the plan to make the Service more visible to a public that had become suspicious of too many of the detective force. Malone was waiting for the day when Homicide would have to put on a uniform, a possibility he was ambivalent about. The voters had little time for uniforms: they had even been known to attack bus conductors. Binyan put a finger to his shoulder. “Especially now I'm an inspector. You wanna stand up and salute me, Sergeant?”

“Not particularly,” said Clements, lolling like a sea lion or an overweight civilian on the couch. “What've you got for us?”

Binyan opened the manual, took out a black-and-white photo. “I'm pretty sure that's the type of gun did the Chinatown killings.”

Malone studed the photograph, then passed it to Clements. “What is it?”

“It's a Chinese Type 67,” said Binyan. “One of my blokes looked it up, but we haven't been able to find an actual piece. All we have is that photo. The calibre, 7.65 millimetres by 17 millimetres, started me thinking—it's not one we come across at all. The Chinese army use that particular gun for covert operations.”

“Covert?” said Clements. “You mean espionage hits, stuff like that?”