Bleak Spring (19 page)

“We'll see he doesn't know who put us on to him,” said Malone. “And we'll see Olive and the kids are protected. But what about the money?”

Rockne hesitated again; he was pouring part of himself, his principles, down the gurgler by blowing the whistle. “It's money the hard-liners smuggled out a Moscow. He told me they've sent money all over the world, anywhere where there's a stable currency and there's a bank willing to take the money with no questions asked. I dunno what they're gunna do with it—maybe they're hoping for Lenin to come back from the dead, I dunno. But there's millions,
hundreds
of millions, all around the world. It belongs to the Party and it should of stayed in Moscow, but the hard-liners weren't having any of that, they say they still believe in the dream, that
perestroika
and
glasnost
are bullshit.”

“Are they, George?”

He sighed once more. “I dunno. It's all history now. anyway.”

“So what did Dostoyevsky want with you?”

“He thought the Party, our party, had money salted away out here—he was like the CIA in that regard. I hadn't the heart to tell him the truth, that if it cost a thousand bucks for a revolution, we couldn't have bought a demonstration.” He smiled, remembering his old joke of over fifty years ago. “When I retired, there wasn't enough cash in the kitty to give me a farewell do. Last year we celebrated May Day with a BYO—bring your own grog, your own snags for the barbecue. I dunno what they did this year, maybe held a wake. He told me how much money he was dealing with, and I thought Will might be able to help. I knew he handled a bookmaker or two and I knew some of them had to bury money they didn't want the taxman to know about. He was a bit surprised when I called him, we hadn't spoken in years, but he said yes, he could arrange something. After I'd sent Dostoyevsky to see him, I had nothing to do with what went on from there. When Olive and Jason told me last Monday how much was in that bank—which bank was it?”

“Shahriver Credit International. Its headquarters are in Abadan, in Iran. I don't think it takes Bankcard.”

“
Five million, or whatever it is. Though I thought there was more . . .”

“Maybe there is, maybe there's another account we haven't traced yet.”

“Whatever, Dostoyevsky and the men behind him aren't gunna let it go without a fight.”

“They'll have a job proving it's theirs, legally,” said Clements. “What will Moscow say? Gorbachev and Yeltsin and the others, whoever finishes up in charge? What'll the Party here say? Especially if Dostoyevsky spreads the word that you and your son were in cahoots?”

Sugar gasped a third time and Rockne said, “Jesus, I never thought of that!” He pondered a moment, then looked from one detective to the other. “Do you
have
to do anything? I mean, why have you gotta let him know you're on to him?”

“Because,” said Malone, “he could've known that Will had stolen the money. He might've followed Will and Olive out to Maroubra last Saturday night, waited till Olive got out of the car, gone up to Will and threatened him with the gun.”

“What would he of gained by killing Will? That wasn't gunna get him back the money.”

“Maybe something went wrong, the gun went off accidentally.”

“Maybe.” But Rockne didn't sound convinced. And Malone himself, having spelt it out, was also unconvinced.

“Where do we find him, George?”

Rockne demurred. “No, I'm not gunna get any more involved—”

“George, don't make it any harder for us. We want to pick him up, question him, before he starts playing the heavy with Olive and the kids. Where can we find him?”

“Tell them, sweetheart.” Sugar had grabbed Rockne's wrist again.

He glanced at her: his love was plain, not hidden at all by all the wrinkles. “If you say so, love . . . You'll find him at—” He gave an address closer to the city. “It's on Canterbury Road. He's not known as Dostoyevsky or Jones there. It's Boris Collins. It's a Mercedes dealer. Just don't tell him who sent you, OK?”

“You're safe, George.” Malone looked at Sugar. “I promise you that, Mrs. Rockne.”

“
We'd like to move, go up north,” she said. “But we can't afford it. This is where we finished up, the workers' paradise.” She looked out of the window, seeing nothing; then she looked back at Rockne. “I don't blame you, sweetheart.”

“You should've taken some commission on the five million, George,” said Clements.

“Ah, I thought I was doing it for the cause. I was living in the past.”

Malone stood up, nodded at the bookshelves.
“Ten Days That Shook the World.
That was once my father's favourite book.”

“Once? What changed his mind?”

“He was never a commo, George, just anti-boss. On top of that he's never recovered from the shame of me joining the police force. He now reads biographies of crims who get away with it.”

“So many of 'em do, don't they? Especially the white-collar ones. Ah, it could of been a different world. What went wrong, Scobie?”

“If I knew that, George, do you think I'd still be just a cop?”

Outside in the street a purple Fairlane was drawn up behind the Commodore, its bonnet up as three youths made a pretence of working on the engine. It was the sort of car that highway patrol cops referred to as night-cars: they came out mostly after dark, prowling the streets, open exhausts rumbling, their occupants looking for easy pickings among the girls outside the hotels and games parlours. The three youths' heads came out from under the car's bonnet as Malone and Clements approached the Commodore.

“You troubling our friend George?”

Malone recognized the cop-baiting; it was an old ploy. The three youths were remarkably similar, Greek or Italian or Lebanese triplets. They wore their black hair the same way, high over their foreheads and long at the back; Malone had a quick memory flash of a late-night movie, the Andrews Sisters singing “Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree.” He waited for the three youths to burst into song, but they just glared insolently at him and Clements.

“Not at all,” he said. “We're old Party mates of his.”

“
Bullshit. You're pigs.”

Malone looked at Clements, who was champing at the bit. “Don't, Russ. You'll only muss up their hair.”

The two detectives got into the Commodore and Clements pulled it away from the kerb. Malone clipped on his seat-belt and sat back. “Why do we bother even taking any notice of them?”

“They give me the shits, most of 'em, but then I sometimes wonder how I'd of finished up if I had grown up out here. It's bloody barren and depressing.”

Though Clements's parents were now living in a country town, he had been born and brought up in Rockdale, a comfortable bayside suburb close to beaches. In his youth he had driven souped-up FJ Holdens and Valiant Chargers, but he had always had respect for the law and its officers and had certainly never called any of them pigs. But he had come from another time, almost another country. There had been no unemployment then, the plum tree fruited every year and all year round, everyone knew the good times would last forever. It had been only just over twenty years ago, an ancient era.

Canterbury Road is an eighteen-kilometre main artery heading south-west out of Sydney. It passes through several suburban shopping sections and then, further out, its length is dotted with new and used car lots, all of them festooned with the trade's universal theme of pennants and banners hailing the Sale of the Century. These strips have also become the beat for the cheaper prostitutes, many of them part-timers, housewives earning a bit on the side or any position you asked for. The used cars and the used women often share the same customers, the cars glossier than the women and higher priced and guaranteed.

As the two detectives got out of their car at the kerb, two women approached them. Their looks were mostly paint-jobs, but they had good figures and they were not the stripteasers who worked the beat in the inner city.

“Hi. You gentlemen looking for some company?”

“We've got each other,” said Malone, taking Clements's hand. “We're also police.”

“Oh shit! We thought you were a coupla Canterbury footballers, the size of you.”

“
Footballers at our age? Golden oldies? Relax, girls. We're not from the Vice Squad. Just move away from our car, we don't want the Vice fellers driving along here and thinking we've moved in on them.”

Kangaroo Mercedes, a name that couldn't have brought too many cheers back in Stuttgart, was a wide lot packed with cars, a glare of glass and paintwork.

“Look at 'em,” said Clements as he and Malone walked on to the lot. “I wonder how many bankruptcies produced this many trade-ins? My heart bleeds for all those executives who have to catch the bus now or go to work in a Hyundai.”

“Stop gloating, you sound like a real commo. You're loaded enough to buy any one of these, even a couple, one for you and one for Romy.”

“Could you see me turning up at Homicide in a Merc? Internal Affairs would be on to me before I'd turned the motor off.”

A salesman in a pink cashmere pullover and a corporate tie marked with tiny three-pointed stars fell on them out of the glare. “Morning, gentlemen! I'm Chris Dooligan, manager here. You thinking of trading up?” He glanced out at the Commodore at the kerb, managing not to sneer. “A good car, the Holden, but we always hope to do better, don't we? What were you looking for?”

“A model named Boris Collins,” said Malone and produced his badge

“Oh shit.” The manager could not have been more than thirty, but he had the look of a man who had spent most of those years on a used car lot. The eyes were weary from sizing up prospects, those who could pay and those who would renege; there was the paunch from too many liquid lunches with the more promising buyers; the mouth was loose from too many forced smiles. He didn't smile now, but looked positively downcast. “What's he been up to?”

“Does he get up to much?”

They were standing amidst the mass of metal. The manager put on dark glasses, expensive shades with gold bars, and Clements took out his, a cheaper pair, and put them on. Malone just squinted.

“Well, no-o. But—don't quote me—things are so bloody desperate in the trade, you know, some
guys
bend the rules a bit, you know, promise things we can't deliver . . . Anyhow, he's not here. He walked out last night, said he was going back to Russia. I didn't even know he came from fucking Russia. Who'd wanna go back there, I ask you?”

“Had he talked to you about leaving?”

“No, it came just outa the fucking blue.” He was letting his thinning red hair down; he didn't talk like this to customers, not even ones who might renege. “He hadn't made a sale in, I dunno, a month at least, but he said he was out there, following up contacts with people he said he knew. He came to us with pretty good references.”

“Like what?” said Clements. “The Russian embassy?”

The manager's brow furrowed. “The what? What would their references be worth in our game? You ever seen a Ziv or a Zim or whatever they call 'em? They look like something outa Detroit in the Fifties. Nah, his references were from overseas. He'd worked for Mercedes in Europe and the States—”

“Did you check the references?”

“Well, no-o. You mean they were faked? Christ, I must be getting dumb in my old age. Tell you the truth, I took him on face value. He had what I was looking for—
class,
if you want a word for it. He wasn't the sort of sales rep you'd find on a Holden lot. No offence, you know what I mean. He's been with us six months and for the first four or five months, no matter how bad things were, he outsold us all. Except myself.” Pride had to be defended.

“Do you have a home address for him?”

“Sure, come across to the office. You sure you don't wanna trade up? I'll give you five hundred for the Commodore and you can drive off today in last year's 450SEL, just the job for running down the hot-rod hoons.”

“We're in Homicide,” said Malone. “We go slow.”

Dooligan stopped dead in the doorway of his glass-fronted office. “Has he murdered someone? Jesus!”

“No. We just hope he can help us with some enquiries. His home address?”

“
Darlene, could you scribble out Boris's home address for these gentlemen?”

The girl in the office had enough hair to have stuffed a sofa, was pretty, wore a tight sweater and an even tighter skirt and would have been subjected to sexual harassment every day of the week; but she looked as if she would have been able to deal with it, even better than some of the girls out on the beat. She typed out an address and gave it to Malone with a smile. “Give my love to Boris when you see him.”

“You knew him socially?”

“I went out with him a coupla times, but I never
knew
him. Nobody did.”

“You went out with him?” The manager sounded incredulous. “You kept that pretty quiet!”

“We have our little secrets, us girls.” She gave him a smile that cut his balls off.

On the way out of the office Dooligan said, “I got on okay with Boris, but like Darlene said, he was always a bit of a mystery man, you know what I mean? Never went out with us to a party or dinner, never anything like that. Never mentioned any family. That was why I was surprised when Darlene said she'd been out with him.”

“Maybe she had something more to offer him than a night out with the boys,” said Clements.

“She's never offered it to any of us. Well, give him my regards when you see him, tell him business is still lousy. You win Lotto, come back and see me. I'll give you a deal that'll have you driving away from here in a top-of-the-range model. You can pass on the Commodore to the wife then.”