Autumn Maze (27 page)

“It's none of our business.”

“Of course it isn't. But I'm glad, anyway. They'll be happier than Mr. and Mrs. Casement.” She looked up as the head waiter, thin, blond, hands doing a ballet of their own, loomed above them. “Has the bill been attended to?”

“It will go on Mr. Casement's account. He looked so
ill
—was it something he ate? The omelette?”

“No,” said Malone. “It was something else entirely.”

II

Zanuch's office was hung with photos of himself with prominent people, like diplomas of merit. The feature of each picture was that one's eye was caught by him, not by whoever was with him: the Prince of Wales, the Premier, Dame Joan Sutherland. He appeared to be just that much more forward in the photo, in
bas-relief
compared to the flat image beside him. On his desk was a family photo, of himself, his wife and their two sons: even there he was the dominant figure. It was pointless to wonder if the man ever grew tired of looking at himself.

“You know AC Falkender's gone on leave?”

Malone had a sudden sinking feeling. “No, I didn't know. That was sudden, wasn't it?”

“His wife's seriously ill.” So am I, thought Malone. “I'm taking charge of the Sweden and Kornsey cases. The Minister specifically recommended that I do so.” He gazed steadily across his desk at Malone; the challenge was unmistakeable. “We've got to clear this up, Scobie, and soon.”

“The sooner the better, as far as I'm concerned. Do I report direct to you or through Chief Super Random?”

“
Direct to me, it'll save time. Copies of the reports, of course, to Greg Random.” He sat back, in charge. “So where are we at now?”

Malone told him, including yesterday's abduction of Jack Aldwych.

“Have you any trace on the car they used?”

“Aldwych's driver was smart enough to get the number. They'd smeared the plates with mud, but he managed to pick out the registration. It was a rental job. We've checked, whoever took it out used a fake licence, there was no record of it in the RTA computer.”

“What about the Filipino or the Jap—did they own cars?”

“The Jap didn't, not as far as we know. The Filipino had a Mazda 929, registered to Pinatubo Engineering. We've traced it. He sold it to a second-hand dealer out on the Windsor Road, got a cash cheque for it. If he's got wheels now, they're probably rented.”

“You don't seem to be getting far.” Zanuch's tone was flat.

“All our leads are pretty frayed ones. My wife and I had supper with Cormac Casement and his wife last night—” He waited for a reaction from Zanuch, the social mountaineer, but there was none. “His briefcase, the one the Jap and the Filipino seemed concerned about, he said he thought it went up with the car when it was burnt out. I checked with Physical Evidence this morning, they said they found nothing like a briefcase, no metal locks, no charred leather.”

“What did he say was in it?”

“He never got around to telling me, just to say it was some minutes of a board meeting, at—” He named the corporation. “He suddenly had a turn of some sort and he and his wife just up and left, went home.”

“You weren't having supper at their apartment?”

“No, downstairs in the restaurant, Verady's. We met them coming out of the Opera House, we'd been to the ballet.”

Zanuch's eyes opened a little wider, as if he had expected Malone to be a fan of nothing more than break-dancing or even a waltz; but he made no comment. Instead he said, “Do you think Casement
has
something to hide?”

“It seems to me that everyone in that family, the sisters and their husbands, has got something to hide.”

“Including the Minister?”

There was a warning there, but Malone took a chance: “Including the Minister. He's trying to protect his son's name, Jack Aldwych is trying to do the same with
his son
, Casement—I dunno, but he could be protecting his wife. Or vice versa. But there's more hidden there than anyone wants to tell us.”

“Do you expect me to tell the Minister
that
? I'm his surrogate.”

Malone wondered if, except for the downgrading in pay, Tibooburra could be any worse. “Can you stall him?”

“I don't know. Hans Vanderberg is breathing down his neck like a dragon. You never know what The Dutchman is going to come up with, Labor has more moles than the KGB ever had. What have you got in mind?”

“Finding the girl who was one of the two who burnt up Casement. She's around somewhere, otherwise they'd have killed her along with her punk boyfriend. She might've read the papers in the briefcase.”

“You don't expect Casement to tell you?”

“I think there must've been something else in the briefcase besides those board minutes, something that gave him his bad turn. I could go back to him, lean on him, but he could complain to the Minister and I know who'd get the push. I'd rather try our luck at picking up the girl. I've put out an ASM on her, though our description of her is pretty skimpy. And she could've skipped the State, especially after she found her boyfriend murdered. Our guess is that she was the one who called in to report to Redfern.”

“Can you pick her up through Social Security? If she's a street kid, she's probably drawing the dole.”

“They can't help. Anything on her is sacrosanct under the Privacy Act and the Crimes Act and half a dozen other acts, unless we can prove she's a menace to public security. She's not a serial killer or a
terrorist,
so she's free.”

“She tried to kill Casement, burn him.”

“According to his testimony, it was the punk with her who did that. No, we've got to take our chances on picking her up through the ASM or one of her mates dobbing her in.”

“All right, do your best. We're between the devil and the deep blue sea or a rock and a hard place, any cliché you want to use. The Premier wants it all wrapped up as soon as possible, the Minister would like it all forgotten and The Dutchman would like it all to turn out much worse than it is. As the
Herald
journalists say, we're in no-win mode.”

Malone abruptly got the impression that the Assistant Commissioner wished he had not become involved, that he had stuck to administration and left crime to the crime specialists. Scaling the heights, he had slipped on a cliff-face. We're on the same rope, Malone thought; but he knew who would fall first and farthest.

When he got back to Homicide there was a message to call Mrs. Pallister. She came on the line, her voice as cold as a blade. “Your appointment with Mr. Casement is cancelled. He is under doctor's orders.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. He wasn't well last night.”

“You saw him last night?” Her tone suggested that she knew now who was to blame for her boss's indisposition. “I'll let you know when Mr. Casement will be available.” She hung up.

Malone put down the phone. He looked up at the map of New South Wales on his office wall. Tibooburra was in letters too small for him to read from where he sat, but he knew its location as well as he knew his home address. It was beginning to look like Shangri-La.

III

Kim Weetbix said, “Mrs. Hoang, let me do that.”

“No, no. My job.”

They were speaking in English, Kim's almost fluent, the old lady's broken. Mrs. Hoang had
been
in Australia five years, but the natives frightened her and she had never learned to be easy with them in their language; Kim, for her part, had become rusty in her own tongue. There was, however, a warmth to Mrs. Hoang that overcame the communication difficulty and Kim, after two days, felt at home with her. More so than she ever had with her own mother: there had been no home with that cheap bitch.

Kim had come here to this modest Fibro cottage in Cabramatta with Mrs. Hoang's daughter-in-law, Annie. The latter worked in a fast-food cafe in Kings Cross and Kim had got to know her over the past year. She was a cheerful midget of a woman who, you knew, would one day own the fast-food shop, taking it over from the slow-witted Greek who ran it and who would never recognize his exit being greased, not till he was out of the place and Annie Hoang was in charge. She had a husband who worked in a dry-cleaning establishment and two small daughters who were already earmarked for university and professional careers in the 21st century. When Kim had confided to her that she had broken up with Kel and had nowhere to go, Annie had invited her home, one refugee who had made good taking in another who still had to make it.

Mrs. Hoang, only fifty but looking seventy, had a face where pain, grief, worry and laughter had resulted in a scribble of lines that obviously distressed her; Kim had already noticed that every time Mrs. Hoang passed a mirror she turned her head away. Kim, proud of her own looks, guessed that somewhere in the past was a mirror that held the reflection of a good-looking woman who had been the young Mrs. Hoang, before the bombs and the landmines and defoliation sprays had come to Vietnam.

“You get job?” said Mrs. Hoang. She was preparing the evening meal, working with the precision of a mortician, the vegetables sliced just so, the chicken dissected clinically.

“When I get to Queensland,” said Kim. “The Gold Coast.”

“The Gold Coast? Gold is there?”

Kim smiled; it occurred to her that in the two days she had been here in this house she had smiled more easily than in two years with Kel. “I don't think so. It is just a name for a place. People hope, but only the rich find gold there. Not real gold, just money.”

“Not now. Annie tell me, nobody got money now. You got money?” She had a peasant's
directness.

“A little.” She still had the pawnbroker's payment, but she would keep that aside for the moment. She would register for the dole when she got to the Gold Coast; she wondered if the police, or worse still, the killers of Kel, would be able to trace her through Social Security. Maybe she should change her name; but that would mean getting new papers and they always cost money. The price had gone up since she had become Kim Weetbix. She had read only this week that bloodsuckers in the United States were charging Chinese illegals 30,000 American dollars for smuggling them in. “I'll get a job, Mrs. Hoang.”

“Be careful, Kim.” Mrs. Hoang knew what could happen to pretty girls; she had seen them leave the village and go to Saigon. “Stay on feet.”

At first Kim didn't get the meaning of the warning; then she laughed, her first loud laugh in God knew how long. She was laughing when Annie came in the back door, pulling off her cheap raincoat that glistened with the evening drizzle. “What's so funny?” Then abruptly she said, “Kim, come inside.”

There was a warning in her voice, not one to laugh at. Kim sobered, put down the kitchen knife she had been holding and followed Annie through into the front bedroom where Annie and her husband slept. They passed the two Hoang girls watching
Neighbours
on television in the small living room, learning about their new homeland from a soap opera where even tragedy was sunlit and everyone washed his or her hair every day and everyone's teeth were perfect. In the bedroom Annie sat down on the bed, with its bright blue sateen coverlet, and looked up at Kim.

“Why didn't you tell me? Your boyfriend is dead. Murdered.”

Kim sat down on the stool in front of the dressing-table. The room was furnished Western-style; the furniture was cheap, discount bargains. Annie had cut her roots to her homeland; she left the sentiment to her mother-in-law. The only picture on the wall above the bed was one of the Virgin Mary, an icon Kim had never understood nor been much interested in.

“What would you have done if I had told you the truth? Still invited me home like you did?”

“No.” Annie was as blunt as Mrs. Hoang. “Did you kill him?”

“
No. I don't know who did.”

“He was never any good, a bad one. I never liked him. You should not have stayed with him so long. The police are looking for you.”

“I thought they would be. Did you tell them anything about me?”

“No. Whoever killed your boyfriend, he might be looking for you, too. You have to go, Kim, you can't stay here. I must think of my family.”

Kim all at once hated and envied her; Annie had security, hard-won and shaky though it might be. Kim had no wish for children nor even for a husband; but she had seen what support a family could give. Fragile though it might have been, she had felt a certain security even in just the two days she had been with the Hoang family. “I'll go tonight.”

“No, no. First thing in the morning, when I'm going to work. You come on the train with me to the city, you catch a bus to somewhere. Where?”

“The Gold Coast?” All the street-kids at the Cross talked of eventually finishing up there, as if it were some sort of earthly paradise, a dream she had never believed in. There was no paradise anywhere.

“You have money?” But Annie made no move towards her handbag, which lay on the bed beside her.

“I'll be all right.” She put her hand on the older woman's. “I'd have liked you as a sister, Annie.”

Annie smiled, showing her new false teeth. “You'd have been too much trouble, Kim. You got no faith.”

“In what? God? I could never be religious.”

“No, in anything. Not even in yourself.”

In the morning they left the house at seven o'clock. Mrs. Hoang and Annie's husband Willy came to the front door to say goodbye. Willy was a wiry little man with a shock of black hair that stood up as if he were in perpetual fright; like his mother, but unlike his wife, he was afraid of the rough-and-ready local elements. Like Annie, he had taken an Anglo name, wore it as camouflage.

He
pressed Kim's hand. “You take care.”