Murder Song (30 page)

“Well, I'll check „em all out. I'm going to read these, too, over the weekend.” He touched a small pile of books he had put down on Malone's desk. “I got Andy Graham to get „em from the Woollahra library. Raymond Chandler. I've never read him. If Blizzard was so keen on him when he was
young,
I'll have a go at these and see if there's anything in them that makes him tick the way he does. Yes, Clarrie? Where're you going—to a corroboree?”

Clarrie Binyan, curls slicked down, dressed in a dark blue suit, a white carnation in his buttonhole, stood in the doorway. He grinned and tossed a plastic envelope on to Malone's desk; it contained two bullets. “I'm going to a niece's wedding. She's marrying an Eyetalian. She wants to put a hyphen in their names—Mr. and Mrs. Bindiwarra-Caccioli. That'll go down well with the Mafia. With the tribe, too.”

Malone was never sure when Binyan was joking about his Aboriginal background; maybe he had decided that joking was the only way to survive as one of the smallest minorities in his native land. An enquiry was going on at the moment into police treatment of Aborigines in certain country towns and around Police Centre Clarrie Binyan was treated with cautious respect, as if the whites were not certain of his attitude towards them. Malone knew that Binyan was amused by the irony that he, a blackfellow, was the Department's expert on the white man's weapons.

Malone always felt relaxed with him, but he was always noncommittal about Binyan's jokes. He picked up the plastic envelope. “.243s out of the same rifle as the others?”

“An exact match to all the others. They recovered the shells, too. They're from a Tikka, all right. I gather you were pretty lucky?” Binyan was certainly not joking now.

Malone nodded. “If he hadn't hurried the shots, he'd have picked me off as easily as he did Waldorf.” He felt the shiver inside him as he said it and he hoped it didn't show.

“Well, keep your head down,” said Binyan and went off to the Italian-Aboriginal corroboree, to listen to “O Sole Mio” played on a didgeridoo, to sit and look as warily at the Italians as they would look at him. Binyan's niece was a half-blood, a talented dancer with an all-white company, but Malone knew that the Italians, like most of the postwar immigrants, had their own colour bar.

Clements had looked at the bullets, then dropped the envelope into his pocket; it would go into the murder box. “What now?”

“I add another line or two to the running sheet, then I'm going back to the hotel and telling
Brian
Boru we're moving out. Fred Falkender's and the Commissioner's orders.”

“Where are you going?”

“Up to O'Brien's stud farm.”

“You might ask him if he's got any tips for this afternoon. The programme at Rosehill looks as wide open as a picnic sack race.”

“I thought you'd given up betting on the horses, you're a big-time share punter now?”

“I just like to keep my hand in. What are you gunna do up at the stud farm, other than look at the horses?”

“We're going to play goats to Blizzard's tiger.” He smiled at Clements' puzzlement. “It's an old Sumatran game. Lisa told me about it.”

“Don't tell me she suggested it?”

“Hardly.” And again he felt the sense of treachery. “But how else do we get Blizzard out into the open?”

II

O'Brien sat and looked at the man who would dance on his grave; rather heavily, too. “So you've got your financing, George?”

“I have my backer. You give me first option and we can buy you out. All you and I have to do now is work out the details.”

“How much do you think you can salvage from the NCSC? They can send the cleaners in. I don't think you realize, George, how much they intend to skin me. They're setting me up to put me before a judge—Christ knows what he'll do to me. I'm going to be an example to all the others who are trying to get away with what I tried.”

“Oh, I know all right, Brian.” They had never been as formally polite as this, not even in their first awkward days, eight years ago, when they had been trying to get to know each other. The atmosphere between them had all the chilly decorum of a funeral parlour, thought O'Brien; then wondered why he
was
thinking in terms of graves and funeral parlours. And knew. “But the NCSC will be looking to save something for the small shareholders—they won't let everything go all the way down the drain. Not if there's someone who can salvage it.”

“Someone like you and your mysterious mate?”

Bousakis nodded, wondering if Malone would remain alive long enough to learn who the mystery backer was. He sat comfortably in his chair, a mountain of smug triumph.

“Is it someone I know? One of those who've been trying to have me bumped off?”

Bousakis' big moon face showed nothing. He had had an hour with Jack Aldwych yesterday evening and by the time he had left he had known, as if it had been spelled out in a legal contract, that Jack Aldwych was going to have O'Brien killed. The buying out of Cossack Holdings was a business deal; the killing of O'Brien was a personal matter. The knowledge had frightened Bousakis and he had wondered whether he had plunged into a black pool where his own life would always be in danger. He was cold-blooded in business, that was why he had been such an asset to O'Brien; but he was not cold-blooded about life and death. Even as the chilling doubt had swept through him he had known, however, that it was too late to draw back: he had already dived off the springboard. It was he who had come to Aldwych with the idea for the takeover, not the other way round. In the end greed had overcome fear and doubt. The deadly sins have a strength all their own, especially if one has nurtured most of them most of one's life. George Bousakis had missed out only on sloth: it had taken too much effort to cultivate it.

“I don't think you need to know that, Brian. Just take the money and run—if you can.”

O'Brien felt his temper rise; but held on to it. “What about the stud farm?”

“That's part of Cossack Holdings, so we'll take that, too. All you'll keep will be the gold mine.”

“Only because I was shrewd enough to register it off-shore in another name. Nobody gets that, not even the NCSC.”

“That's all you've got, Brian, that's really worth anything. Compared to what you used to have.”

“So why are you buying?”

“Assets and potential. I can turn Cossack around, make it what it should have been.” For just a
moment
there was a flicker of angry hatred in the big bland face; he forgot his own greed and almost snarled, “If you hadn't started trying to get rich so fucking quickly—”

“I
am
rich, George,” said O'Brien, his own temper subsiding as he saw the other's rise. “The gold mine.”

“There's little point in being rich in jail.” Or dead: but Bousakis didn't add that alternative.

O'Brien sank a little into his chair; it was almost imperceptible, but Bousakis noticed it. There had been no mention of Waldorf's murder. Not because of sensitivity on Bousakis' part, but just deliberate callous indifference; it had required an effort, but he had managed it. O'Brien was still too much in shock to want to discuss what had happened; he had slept only fitfully last night, waking twice in a sweat to dodge the bullets coming at him out of the darkness. There was also a sense of loss, almost of grief; though he was honest enough to wonder if it was for himself. He had hardly come to know Waldorf, yet he had come to like him. The singer had had his own loss, that of his family, yet somehow he had held on to his laughter, to his joy in living.

When Malone had come back to the hotel at midnight and told him the news, O'Brien had been in bed reading a book Anita had given him weeks before and which so far had lain on his bedside table unopened. It was Tom Wolfe's
Bonfire of the Vanities,
and after two or three chapters he had begun to wonder if Tom Wolfe was some sort of messenger for Anita. Then Malone had come home with the dreadful news about Waldorf and the book had been dropped on the floor beside the bed.

Malone had sat down on the bottom of the bed. “He almost got me, too, Brian. Another couple of inches closer and there would only have been you left.”

O'Brien looked at the tall policeman who, he now recognized, was a friend. “How do you feel?”

Malone held up his hands; they were steady. “I guess it must be my feet that are shaking.
Something's
giving way. I feel like I want to get out in the middle of a bloody great paddock and yell for Blizzard to come out in the open. Anything to get it over and done with one way or the other.”

“I feel the same way.” It was despair, not bravado, speaking.

Malone stood up. “We'll talk about it at breakfast. You going anywhere tomorrow?”

“
I wouldn't mind going to the races at Rosehill, anything to get a breath of fresh air.”

“Better not. I think we have to stay away from crowds, just in case Blizzard has a go at you or me and some poor innocent bugger gets in the way.” He picked up the book from the floor and handed it to O'Brien. “Stay home and read. I've seen the reviews of that. What's it about?”

“A guy who's got himself into a bit of a bind.”

“I'll borrow it when you've finished. Maybe we'll learn something.”

Now, late on the Saturday morning, Malone came back from Police Centre, letting himself into the suite. He pulled up sharply when he saw Bousakis, but the latter rose from his chair, picking up his briefcase as he greeted Malone. O'Brien, growing more sensitive to atmosphere day by day, almost hour by hour, was aware that the huge man, his
employee
still, was the only one of the three of them with an air of authority; or anyway confidence. But then, of course, his life was not under threat.

“I'm going, Inspector. Brian and I have finished our business, haven't we, Brian?”

“Not quite. I'll think about it over the weekend.” He might be dead before he would have to suffer Bousakis' triumph. The morbid thought somehow pleased him: he was like the swimmer who knows he will drown before the shark can reach him. “I'll try and stay alive till then. Tell your friends.”

Bousakis caught the implication: the option deal would mean nothing if O'Brien was killed before signing it. It was anyone's guess what the NCSC would do with Cossack Holdings if they found against O'Brien and he was already dead, beyond their judgement.

Bousakis said nothing, but managed to depart with heavy grace. “A rhino dancing,” said O'Brien.

“What?” said Malone.

“Nothing. I'm getting light-headed, I think. I'm having flights of fancy, all of them fucking morbid.”

“What was that about telling his friends you'd try to stay alive?”

“You don't really want to know, do you? Isn't Blizzard enough complication for you?”

Malone thought a moment, nodded and sat down heavily. “Normally I'd say no. But if you're
not
worried—”

“Oh, I'm worried. But you've got enough on your plate . . . Let's stick to Blizzard. What happens now?”

“We go up to your stud today,” Malone said after a few moments' silence. He had tried to protect Sebastian Waldorf and failed; he prayed there would not be another failure with O'Brien. “You supply four security men and the Department will give us four cops. We'll work out a roster so there are two men on all the time.”

“What do we do? Just sit and wait till Blizzard turns up?”

“We give it a week. If he doesn't come out into the open in that time, we'll have to think of something else.”

“He'll wait. He's waited twenty-odd years.”

“I don't think so. He's on a run now, four of us in two and a half weeks. Five if you count Mardi Jack as you.”

“Don't,” said O'Brien, stiffening.

“Sorry. Anyhow, I don't think he's going to suddenly get patient.”

“Serial killers do.”

“What do you know about serial killers?”

“Not much,” O'Brien admitted.

“Blizzard's not a serial killer, not in the usual sense. They usually pick random victims. Blizzard's had us marked for years, though Christ knows when he decided to kill us. But now he's started, I'm betting he can't stop. He's not going to sit around and wait. We're for it, one or both of us, some time within the next week. And I think I'd rather it that way. I just hope his aim is a bit off, as it was with me last night.”

“Me, too. But I'd just like to get a look at him before he gets me.”

They went into their respective bedrooms to pack. But first Malone put a call through to Lisa in Queensland. She had phoned him just after seven o'clock this morning, before he could call her; she had
heard
the news of Waldorf's murder on the radio. “Why didn't you call me last night to tell me you were all right?”

She sounded shrewish, but he knew it was with the best of intentions. “If I'd called you at midnight last night, which was when I got back here to the hotel, woken you up, you wouldn't have slept the rest of the night.”

“I'm not going to sleep tonight, for God's sake. Come up here—get on a plane right away!”

“No!” he said quietly and firmly. “I'm not going to put you and the kids—and your parents—in danger.”

“You're
in danger!” It was then she had said, “Resign, darling. Get out of the police force, get your superannuation and we'll go somewhere and start a new life.”

He had to bite his tongue to refrain from telling her that that was a ridiculous suggestion; instead he said, “There's that old Dutch thrift, don't forget the superannuation—”

“Don't joke! Bloody men!” She sounded Australian then. “I mean it, Scobie—
resign
!”