Dark Summer (13 page)

“Only one. He used to kill people for me.”

“Okay, Dad, that's enough!” Jack Junior's voice was sharp.

Aldwych's smile was as evil as a snake's, one that had destroyed a thousand Edens. He winked at the one beside him. “You notice how holier-than-thou all the businessmen are getting to be since the high-flyers have been sent to jail? Relax, Jack. Janis knows I'm only kidding.”

Jack Junior's face remained stiff for a moment; then it relaxed into his pleasant smile. “I know, Dad. But maybe Janis doesn't.”

“I'm smarter than you think, Jack,” she said, and Aldwych, who knew at any waking moment exactly how his own face looked, saw a reflection of his own smile in hers.

Later,
when Jack Junior was taking her home, she kissed Aldwych goodnight; though it was on his cheek, it was not a social kiss. She's a whore, he thought, one who'd ask for a blank cheque. He would have to have a strong word with Jack Junior.

Driving away from the house in his dark blue Daimler, Jack Junior said, “You want to spend the night at the flat?”

His mother had welcomed his bringing home girls,
nice
girls, but she had never allowed them to stay the night. “You sleep with a girl under my roof, she's got to be married to you,” she had laid down the law, and he had never argued with her. He had bought a flat in Double Bay, on the south side of the harbour, where girls were readily available, and his mother had furnished it for him. She could turn a blind eye, something she had been doing all her married life, just so long as she did not have to do it under her own roof.

“Why don't I? I don't think I could face my mother with all her piety—” Her mother had rediscovered religion after Janis' father had committed suicide; she flagellated herself for his sin. “Not after a couple of hours with your father. Jack, he's so
honest
.”

He grinned. “He wouldn't thank you for saying that.”

“Does he think you're honest?”

“I
am.
Everything I do in business is strictly above board.”

“Everybody must know where your money comes from. Or
came
from.” She found it hard to believe that criminals actually retired.

“Of course they do. But do you think they care, once I've washed it clean? If they tried to trace all the laundered money that's passed through banks in Australia in the last ten years, the banks would be even shakier than they are now. I see that every tax dollar that's due is paid, the companies give to charity, we pay over-award wages so there's never any trouble with the unions . . .”

She was silent for a while as they went down the expressway towards the Harbour Bridge. Beyond the high curve of the steel arch the tall buildings winked a thousand eyes, all of them cold and calculating. The city had no regal elegance, but it was not as brash and cheap as its detractors from other
States
claimed. She loved it, wanted to own it and, three months ago, had set about taking possession. Her investment banker sat beside her, laundered money all ready to be put back into the dirt again.

“Your dad's proud of you, isn't he?”

“I'm not sure. Mum was. She wanted me to be everything that Dad wasn't.”

“What would your mum say if she knew that you're exactly like him? Maybe not as ruthless, but exactly like him in other respects.”

He turned his head and smiled. “Who's going to tell her?”

“What if someone tells
him
?”

“He'll kill me.”

4

I

LEROY LUGOS
had no record; but Ulysses Lugopolous did. Not in Sydney, but in Melbourne, as Andy Graham found out within half an hour of being put on the trail by Malone. In past years co-operation between the police departments of the various States had been only a little above that between the old KGB and the CIA; the rivalry had been on a par with that between the police themselves and the crims and almost as bad as that between the State sporting bodies. But now, with crime on a national scale, raised to that level by business entrepreneurs who had taught the crims the virtues of vision and organization, old jealousies had been buried and co-operation was the motto. Especially when a police department had been fortunate enough to unload a crim into another State.

Andy Graham came into Malone's office with the computer print-out. The first thing Malone said was, “Sit down, Andy.” He had to be anchored, otherwise he would be all over the small office like a Great Dane with fleas. Clements moved his chair to allow Graham to sit beside him. “What have you got?”

“Ulysses Lugopolous—” Graham had trouble with the name. 'He was picked up in March eighty-eight, he was nineteen then, with a hundred grammes of coke in his possession. He got three years, but served only eighteen months, all of it in Pentridge.”

“Was he selling the coke?” Malone asked.

“He tried to sell some to an undercover cop.”

“They know where he got it? A hundred grammes is a fair whack for a nineteen-year-old kid to be peddling. What would it have been worth?” He looked at Clements, the treasure-chest of trivia.

“Then? I'd be guessing. It didn't come into fashion out here till eighty-six, eighty-seven. But the
street
turnover now is seven hundred thousand bucks a kilo.”

Malone nodded to Graham, and the young detective went on, looking impatient at being interrupted: “Well, okay, he's just served eighteen months, right? So where did he get the stuff? He worked as a storeman for a drug company!” He looked up in triumph; Malone waited for him to leap up on the desk and bark. “He'd know all about drugs, about things like Alloferin!”

Malone and Clements nodded, digesting this with less excitement than Graham had expected; but they looked at each other with satisfaction. Malone was no philosopher, being too Irish for that, but he had come to believe that nothing in the world is unconnected to anything else. Skeins, most of them invisible, link men and events with more harmony than most of us are prepared to admit. He no longer believed that coincidence is a phenomenon, it was everyday, part of life; or, anyway, of a policeman's life. Clues are only the footmarks of coincidence.

“Andy, go back and talk to Melbourne again. Ask them what they have on Snow White—” He looked at his notebook.
“Dallas
White. And also on Gary Schultz, aka The Dwarf.”

Graham leapt up; five minutes in a chair was purgatory. “Right!”

He galloped out of the office and across the big room to the computer desk. Malone looked after him, sighed. “You think he helped his mother with his birth? Told her to get a move on?”

“I was once as enthusiastic as that,” said Clements. “Once. I think it was a Thursday.”

“You get anything on Janis Eden?”

Clements looked at his notebook. “She works on a freelance basis for the St. Sebastian's Drug and Alcohol Clinic. She was a staff worker for three years, but three months ago she went casual. Very competent, had a rapport with the junkies she worked with. She's twenty-six and has a degree from New South Wales Uni. She's unmarried, was born in Wahroonga, still lives there with her mother and has never been in trouble.”

“Where'd you get all this? Though I shouldn't ask.”

“I used to date a girl in the Social Welfare Department. She's married now, has a coupla kids, but old loves never die, isn't that what they say?”

“
I guess so. My first love was Loyola MacPhillamy, she was seven and I was eight, and Lisa reckons I still mention her in my sleep.”

“Loyola MacPhillamy—that's quite a mouthful in your sleep.”

“That's why Lisa believes it's an old romance. She says no grown man's subconscious could dream up a name like that.”

When Andy Graham came back he was nodding appreciatively. “I got on to the computer first, then I rang Melbourne. It must be the recession down there. The Vics seem glad to talk to just anyone. Anyhoooo . . .” He flourished his notes, saw Malone looking at him warningly and at once sat down but leant forward, straining at the leash. “Schultz has done time twice, robbery and assault, manslaughter—he broke a guy's neck. But he's been clean for the last three years. Charged once, but acquitted. Dallas—Snow?—White, he's been in three times, bank robbery, drug running, assaulting an officer. The guy I spoke to said he's a real bad bugger and we're welcome to him. I thanked him, naturally.” He looked about eighteen when he smiled, an innocent eighteen.

Malone said. “They sound a nice pair. Did your Victorian mate say if they put the heat on White and Schultz to leave Melbourne?”

“No. He said things have been very quiet down there, except for petty crime, house-breaking, car-stealing, stuff like that. He said it was the recession.”

“Things are worse down there than anywhere else,” said Clements with the satisfaction of a New South Welshman, one whose State level of crime was keeping up the employment level, at least amongst cops, “You've heard the joke. What's the capital of Victoria? A dollar-fifty.”

It was an old joke: the Romans had cracked it about Carthage.

“Do you mind? I haven't finished.” Andy Graham could stiffen with indignation sitting still for once. “There's more. Dallas White was in Pentridge the same time as Ulysses the Greek. The guy I spoke to had no idea whether they were in the same block, but they were in jail the same time, all right.”

Malone nodded to Clements. “Russ, I think you and I had better go back and have another talk with Snow White and The Dwarf. Andy, get on to the Drug Unit and see if they have anything on those
girls
down at Mrs. Kissen's. Check, too, if they have anything on Leroy.”

“Right. Anything else?” Andy Graham had his own addiction: he loved to work.

“Yes, get on to the dispensaries in all the Sydney hospitals, private as well as public. Check if they're missing any of their supply of a drug called Alloferin.” He wrote down the name and pushed the piece of paper across to Graham.

“Every
one?”

“Even the maternity hospitals and the old folks' nursing homes.” Then he reached for the phone. “Excuse me a moment, I'm calling Lisa, see if she's okay.”

“Give her my love,” said Clements, and Graham nodded in agreement, though inspectors' wives were out of his league. “Ask her if she's heard of Loyola MacPhillamy lately.”

They went out of the office, leaving Malone to call home to make sure it was still secure. “Everything's all right,” said Lisa, “but it's sweet of you to call. No, I mean it, darling. I've only been sitting by the phone for two hours.”

If only Eve had used sarcasm on Satan instead of on Adam, we'd all still be in the Garden of Eden
. . . “I tried to get you before, but you were engaged.”

Nine times out of ten that one worked. He belonged to the school of men that believed a woman could not pass a phone without making a call. Lying is a sub-division of communication and the telephone has assisted in its development. The lie worked this time: Lisa admitted she might have been on the phone. “Mother called. And
your
mother. And Mother Brendan called.” She stopped then; he recognized a pregnant pause when he heard one. Then she went on, “You might explain that one.”

“I wasn't going to tell you—I didn't want to upset you. Keith Elgar said he'd keep an eye on the girls and Tom.” Elgar was the senior sergeant at Randwick police station. “The station is right opposite the school and he said it'd be no trouble for a man to pop over there now and again. He said they'd do it as unobtrusively as possible.”

“Mother Brendan evidently doesn't think they've been unobtrusive. She's raising bloody hell.”

He hadn't wanted to tell her till this evening. “Darl, it's going to get worse. Greg Random had
me
in half an hour ago. We're to have full protection. It's either that or you and the kids will be moved to a safe house and a couple of minders move in with me at home.”

“Jesus!” she said softly; she swore only at the extreme. “We went through this before.” That had been two years ago, when his name had been on a police assassin's hit list. “Not again?”

“I'm sorry, darl.” He could offer nothing more: it was a husband's credit card, always ready.

She was silent; then she sighed and he could see her gathering herself, at which there was no one better; she would never fall apart, not even if the world itself fell apart. God, on Judgement Day, had better have things in proper order.

“All right, let's have the protection squad or whatever it's called. I'll go up and collect the kids now, before Mother Brendan expels them. Do I have to feed the minders? I'll draw up a menu.”

Dutch sarcasm could be thick enough to fill the hole in any dyke; but he didn't say that. “They're on their way now, I think.”

“Just a minute.” There was a long silence; then she came back on the line: “They've just arrived. Two young sexy-looking cops who look as if they might prefer an older woman.”

“Send for Mother Brendan.” She laughed and he knew he had been forgiven, “I love you.”

He hung up, sat for a long moment staring unseeingly at the glass wall of his office. He felt the anger starting up in him again that he had felt on Monday morning: he would kill anyone who destroyed his family. At that moment he felt criminal.

“Coming?” said Clements from the doorway and brought him back to sanity.

On their way over to Darling Harbour he told Clements of the police protection that Random had ordered. Clements said, “The sensible thing to do.”

Malone looked at him sourly. “That's bloody obvious. But it doesn't mean I have to like it. If Snow White is responsible for putting Scungy in our pool and for that warning I got over the phone, I think I'll drop him in the water. You can look after The Dwarf.”