Five-Ring Circus (9 page)

“It's not dirty enough, is it,” asked Clements, “for them to start hiring hitmen?”

“I suggested it to Albie Krips, the assistant sec. down at Union Hall, and you'd of thought I'd suggested his mother had done it. They're so pious, these days, they've never heard of what used to go on.”

“We'll look into it,” said Malone, and in the moment before he shifted his gaze saw the
resentment
in Boston's face; the latter had thought he was on his way to rehabilitation. “John?”

“I'll tread water a while,” said Kagal. “Kate is coming over from Fraud. She has some information I think you'd like to hear. I'll let her tell you.”

Kate Arletti had left Homicide a year ago to work for Fraud, which was on the same floor but in another wing. She and Kagal had been both police partners and lovers till, during the hunt for a gay serial killer, he had confessed to her that he was bisexual. She had instantly asked for a transfer from Homicide and Malone had reluctantly but wisely let her go, recommending her for a vacant post in Fraud, where she had done well. Over the past year, however, she and Kagal had patched up their differences and were now living together in Kagal's flat, an arrangement that had Kate's mother, an ardent Catholic, on her knees morning and night. Malone said his own prayers for Kate, not for the present but for the future.

“Righto, we'll wait for her. What's happening at Day Street and out at Bondi?”

“No progress,” said Phil Truach.

“The post-mortems?”

“I've just talked to Romy,” said Clements, and managed not to make it sound like a husband-to-wife chat. “They did the PMs on all four Chinese this morning. Ballistics picked up the bullets half an hour ago. If they get their finger out, we should have their report pretty soon. I rang Clarrie Binyan and asked him to make it a priority.”

“What's the betting the Golden Gate job and Mr. Zhang were all done by the same gun?”

“I wouldn't take money on it,” said Clements the punter, “not if I was a bookie.”

“What more do we know about the corporations in Olympic Tower?”

“Sheryl and I have an appointment with a nice young man from the Securities Commission,” said Gail. “He does weights with her at gym.”

“Where are you talking to him?” said Malone.

“At the gym, at lunchtime,” said Sheryl. “If we turn up at his office, questions might be asked. We don't want that yet, do we?”

“Not if they want us to be official—that just wastes time. Can he get his breath to answer
questions
while he's lying on his back pumping iron or whatever it is you fitness fanatics do?”

“He can when I lie beside him,” said Sheryl.

“What are you going to do, Gail? Pump iron or just make notes?”

“I think I'll just watch.”

Then Kate Arletti was knocking at the glass panel of the security door. Kagal got up, went across and admitted her; Malone waited for him to kiss her on the cheek, but they were as formal as strangers. Except for Kate's smile. She's still in love with him, thought Malone.

“Tell us what you know, Kate.”

She sat in Kagal's chair and he stood behind her, like a guardian. “The Feds got in touch with us a week ago—they asked us to look into it, they were up to their necks in something and couldn't afford the staff. It's not strictly our line of work, but things are slow with us—”

“Swindlers turned honest all of a sudden?”

“Could be. Anyhow, I looked into it. The Commonwealth Bank and a few other bods were worried about a couple of deposits in two of their accounts, one at Bondi, the other at Cronulla. Cheque accounts held by two Chinese students.”

“The plot thickens,” said Andy Graham, and instantly looked embarrassed. “I read that somewhere.”

“Go on, Kate,” said Malone, and could feel the familiar rising of adrenaline that always came when another piece of the jigsaw fell into place.

“These two are
students,
mind. Overseas students, from China. Their names are—” she glanced at her notebook—“Zhang Yong, he's the one from Bondi. The other is a girl, Li Ping, she banks at Cronulla. Zhang opened an account with the Commonwealth six months ago, with modest transfers from Hong Kong. Three weeks ago he had twenty-eight million deposited in the account—”

“Twenty-eight
million
?” The amount registered on everyone's faces as if it had been rung up on a cash register; except there was no cash register that could flash up that amount. Its till would fly open like Andy Graham's mouth.

“
Wait,” said Kate, “there's more. The girl at Cronulla had twenty-three million deposited in her account on the same day.”

“The bank branches must of thought they'd won the lottery,” said Clements, “It would make head office look sick. Can you imagine a branch manager having that much handed to him in one whack?”

“Where did the money come from?” asked Malone.

“They're still tracing that, the actual sender. But both amounts came through a bank in Hong Kong. And Hong Kong banks are like what Swiss banks used to be. Hear no money, see no money, speak no money.”

“Whoever sent it must be bloody dumb,” said Clements. “Did they think amounts like that wouldn't raise suspicion? Could you imagine the commotion there'd be if someone sent amounts like that
into
China, deposited in some student's account?”

“Is the money still in the accounts?” asked Gail.

“The bank's frozen them—they invented some excuse about foreign credit control,” said Kate. She was obviously enjoying her visit and her information: she was back in Homicide, even if only for the moment. “There's an act called the Cash Transactions Reporting Act. Any transaction involving more than ten thousand dollars has to be reported if there's a suspicion there might be money laundering. We used it earlier this year to put the Drug Squad on to a gang.”

“What currency were the transfers in?” asked Clements.

“That's the intriguing part—or part of it. It was in American dollars. So someone at the Hong Kong bank had to be in the scam. If that's what it is.”

“Righto, John, you and Gail go out to Cronulla, get Miss Li Ping's address from the bank and have a talk with her.”

“If she's still there,” said Kagal sceptically.

Malone nodded, “If she's still there . . . Thanks, Kate.” He escorted her to the security door, opened it for her, said quietly, “Everything still okay?”

She
understood the question. “So far. Don't worry about me, boss. I'm a big girl now.”

“You're neater, too,” he said with a grin, noting that every button on her shirt was done up.

“That's John's influence. He does a beautiful job with the ironing.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Malone, who wouldn't have known the front end from the back end of an iron. He had been blessed with a mother and a wife who had protected him from the drudgery of everyday life.

He watched her go down the hallway and wondered how he would feel if some day Claire or Maureen came home with a bisexual lover. Probably throw an iron at him. Then Kagal said behind him: “She should still be working for us.”

Malone took his time. “I know that. But you two put the kibosh on that.”

“Office romances, you mean? I've seen them work.”

“Not in our job. I couldn't send you two out as partners on, say, a domestic. You walk in, a feller has killed his wife, or vice versa. You're a husband-and-wife team investigating
tha
t?” He shook his head.

Kagal didn't split hairs by saying that they were not husband and wife. “We wouldn't have to work as partners.”

“John, sooner or later you'd be rostered together—” He was dodging the real question in his mind: how long was Kagal going to remain faithful? He had no idea if the temptation for a bisexual man was double that of a heterosexual; he was not going to enquire, least of all of Kagal. “I'm sorry, John. It's just not on.”

Then Gail Lee came across the room towards them. “Boss, I was going with Sheryl—”

“Now you're not—” He couldn't help the sharpness in his voice; but it wasn't really meant for her. “You're going out to Cronulla with John, find that girl student. You may be needed to translate.” He looked past her at Sheryl Dallen, who had joined them. “You can handle that young man from Securities on your own. Do some push-ups, pump iron, do whatever you like, but get some info out of him.”

He walked across and into his office; Clements followed him. The big man stared at him a
moment,
then said, “I heard all of that. You've really got shit on the liver. If you're going anywhere this morning, I'd better come with you or we're gunna have a lot of unhappy troops in Homicide. What's biting you?”

Malone slumped down in his chair. “I don't know. Watching Kate with John got me started—d'you think I'm trying to play father to her?”

Clements remained standing in the doorway, as if blocking out the troops. This was something between the two senior men: the guardians. “Maybe. I don't think about Kate and what she's got herself into—”

“That's because your daughter is only a year old. Mine are older.”

“Okay, I'll give you that. But I worry when I send Gail and Sheryl out on a job, if it's a messy one and the killer's still loose. That makes me a chauvinist, I guess, and the feminists would tell me to mind my own business, that women can look after themselves. Maybe Gail and Sheryl would, too, if they knew how I felt.”

“So what are we supposed to do? Be like the British generals in World War One?” Con, his father, the anti-imperialist, had told him about that. “Don't give a stuff for the troops?”

“Come on,” said Clements, giving up the argument, “let's go in and talk to Union Hall.”

Malone stood up, reached for his hat and jacket. He always wore his pork-pie, even if it made him look like a detective out of the fifties; but he was not going to fall victim to sun cancers. Clements never wore a hat, which was just as well:
two
images from the fifties would have been too much. No crim would have taken them seriously.

“Let's go in first to Olympic Tower, to the site. That's at the centre of all this and I've never looked at it, bar when I'm driving past.”

It was only five minutes' drive from Strawberry Hills, in to George Street, the city's main street, and only a long stone's throw from Town Hall. They were pulled up at the main gate by a security guard. They asked to see the site manager and were directed to a parking space beside a demountable administration hut. “But put these on soon's you get outa your car,” said the guard and handed them two
safety
helmets.

Malone put his on, looked across at Clements. “Why does everyone look such a boofhead in these things?”

“I always have to laugh whenever I see politicians wandering around wearing these. It only makes ‘em look more at a loss than usual.”

“Let's hope none of ‘em comes down here asking for a helmet.”

The site manager was in his thirties, professional written all over him. White shirt, striped tie, mobile hanging from his waist like a weapon: he wore a different badge from the workers. He was not happy to be interrupted by a couple of boofheaded detectives.

“Look, you should be talking to the bosses, not me—”

“Actually, we don't want to talk to you,” said Malone. “We're just doing you a courtesy. We want to talk to the chief union delegate.”

“What about?”

“That's confidential, unless the union man wants to tell you. Now may we see him?”

“Okay. At least you're less demanding than the other cop who was down here.”

“Oh. Who was that?”

“Thin guy. Foster, Fosgate—no, Boston.”

“He won't be troubling you again,” said Malone, not looking at Clements. “The union delegate?”

The manager rang his mobile and the two detectives moved away. “Boston?” said Clements. “What was he doing here?”

“Maybe we'll find out when we meet the union bloke.”

“You've got shit on the liver again.”

“Do you blame me?” Malone nodded at the manager. “I can't remember when I was last on a case where everyone was so bloody uncooperative.”

“Maybe he's just concerned for our safety,” said Clements, and adjusted his helmet which had
slipped
sideways on his head.

“He's coming down,” the site manager called out and went back into his office.

The two detectives stood under the honeycomb of the many storeys that had already gone up. Noise reverberated through the shell of the building, sounds that had their own mark, that of modern construction. Jackhammers pummelled the nerves; steel clanged against steel; the drum of a nearby cement truck whirled like a lottery barrel spilling pulverized marbles. Men came and went, all under the white or yellow toadstools of their helmets. A whistle blew and a huge girder was swept up into the sky like an exclamation mark that had broken loose.

Then a voice said, “G'day, Scobie, you wanted to see me?”

Malone turned round. “Roley! What're you doing here?”

Roley Bremner was a small hard ball of a man; his mother might have hand-rolled him when he was an infant. His white helmet sat so high on his head it could only have withstood a hit from directly above; ginger hair stuck out from beneath it like thin dry weed. He was dressed in a white boiler suit that gaped at his prominent beer belly.

“Ah, I left the Wharfies. They brought in all this waterfront reform, I seen there was no future for me—enterprise bargaining don't do no good for old union blokes like me. I come across to the Construction mob—I'm the site delegate, they know I got years of experience with bosses. It's tougher. Back on the wharves we had the bosses in our hand—here, it's a different kettle of fish. Especially—” He leaned closer, his gravelly voice dropping back into his throat; against the noise of the site Malone and Clements had to lean down to hear him; they looked like two uncles listening to the secret of a short fat nephew. “Especially when you're dealing with Asians. Kee-rist, some of ‘em think we're fucking peasants, you know what I mean? So what can I do for you?”