Five-Ring Circus (23 page)

“Why do we have to protect the Chinese army's good name?”

Ladbroke managed to suppress a sigh. He knew that Zanuch saw the whole picture, framed or unframed, but that he had to play dumb. Commissioners of Police were not supposed to pay lip service to political skulduggery.

Vanderberg took over again: “Bill, we couldn't give two hooters for the Chinks and their army. But if it gets out about them, it's all gunna spread like diarrhoea on a blanket—”

Zanuch, a fastidious man, shut his mind against the image.

“—and in no time at all Sydney's name will be mud.”

“Shit,” said his adviser.

The Dutchman nodded. “Yes. We've had enough crap thrown at us already. The Greens abusing us because the Games aren't gunna be green enough—Jesus, they think the world is gunna turn on their TV to count how many trees we've planted, how clean the Parramatta River is? Then there's the Abos threatening to demonstrate if they don't get their land claims—”

“Have you made any statement about those claims? You'd have a legitimate answer.” Zanuch knew what a storm such a statement would make.

“Nah, not worth it.” He was wise enough not to appear wise: the voters suspected wisdom, unless it came from radio talkback hosts. “I had my way, I'd take the Olympics out of the media for a while.”

Zanuch was ambivalent in his attitude towards the Games. As Commissioner he knew there would be godalmighty headaches for the police: traffic problems, just for starters. And threats from demonstrators, security against terrorists: the list was already filed in his office and would grow. Yet there was the irresistible attraction: himself in full uniform up there on the official platform with the VIPs. Standing tall and proud, even through the smoke of a terrorist's bomb, the star of ten billion television screens. His one handicap, his wife, an iconoclast, had told him was that he would be wearing silver
instead
of gold. Still, better silver than bronze.

“We'd like the whole Olympic Tower business to die quietly,” said Ladbroke. “Cancel the IOC accommodation, get it out of the picture entirely. But it's too late for that, there's already talk we're going to be short of accommodation. So all we can hope for is that you solve the murders quickly—or not at all. Just get them out of the media as soon as possible. From now on Sydney has to be pure as Shangri-la.”

“Or the Garden of Eden,” said the serpent behind the desk.

Zanuch stood up, ran a polishing finger along the braid on his cap. “We'll do what we can. But these sort of things are never easy.”

When he had gone the Premier looked at Ladbroke. “Well, will he play balls with us?”

I hope not.
“He will. The last thing he wants is to be known as the Commissioner of Murder City.”

“You should of been a politician, son,” said the Premier with grudging admiration.

“Every man to his last.”

“Nobody ever got anywhere, son, running last.”

Almost twenty years, thought Ladbroke, and I still don't know when the Old Man is fair dinkum with his aphorisms.

II

“It's official,” said Chief Superintendent Greg Random. “General Huang never came near Sydney. It was Mr. Shan. He's the corpse, not the general.”

He and Malone were in his office at Police Centre in Surry Hills. Long and lean, he was a throwback to the disappearing laconic man from the bush; he had come out of the western plains thirty-five years ago and understatement still clung to him like plains dust. He never used words like
incredible
or
fantastic.
He had seen too much of human nature to know that nothing was incredible or fantastic, so he never wasted hyperbole the way the young did. He was sure, however, that hyperbole would burst out of this case.

“
The media are going to get on to it sooner or later,” said Malone.

“Not from us, it won't. If anyone from Homicide gives any hint to anyone from the press, they're suspended, okay?”

“Greg, when we first learned who Mr. Shan really was, it went into the computer. I've since put nothing new into it and I've had Sheryl Dallen recall the back-ups. But nothing leaks like a computer.”

Random pondered a while; Malone was accustomed to his long pauses. He had been commander of the Major Crime Squad, South Region, but recent reorganization, a growing disease in the Police Service, had made him the officer responsible for the Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit; it was rumoured there was a secret group at Police Headquarters who did nothing but dream up new names, a ploy also rumoured to be financed by the stationery suppliers. The titles changed, but the work never.

He knew as well as anyone that secrecy in the Service, as in any bureaucracy, was an impossibility; even the corruption in certain sections, which had now been almost wiped out, had not been as secret as the corrupt had thought. He knew the truth of the old Hebrew proverb: Do not speak of secret measures in a field of little hills. Or a field of computers.

“Okay, we just play dumb. Anyone asks questions, you just refer them to the Commissioner. Let him carry the can.”

Malone looked out the window at the gathering clouds. “I'm not getting very far, Greg. I've got twelve people working on this, including the fellers from Day Street. I want to find the three young Chinese who are missing, but they could be back in China for all I know.”

“Why don't you try and contact someone from the Triads?”

“You think that's easy? I've had a tail on Les Chung for the past coupla days, but he's not leading us anywhere.”

“What about Madame Whatshername? Tzu?”

The woman hovered like a shadow through the case; she was on his mind all the time. “She's being tailed, too. By my wife.” He explained what Lisa had told him at lunch. “I think she might be shaking hands with Councillor Brode.”

“
Money changing hands?”

“Could be, but that's none of our business . . . I told my wife to stay out of it and I've got Andy Graham tailing her and General Wang-Te. But the kids are the ones I want to talk to, they must know something or they wouldn't have shot through. I want the girl, Huang's adopted daughter.” He stood up, an eye on the clouds, which were black now. “Suppose we find out the three Chinatown murders were organized from China, by the army?”

Random indulged himself in another long pause; then he grinned. “Blame it on the CIA. They are always good as patsies.”

“You're a great help, Greg.”

“Scobie, someday you'll be sitting here in this chair. When the wind blows from the top it blows right through this chair. The thing you learn is that chief superintendents are just windbreaks. All you can do is see that inspectors and other inferior ranks aren't bowled over by it. Our gods have suddenly become Olympian, all we can do is what they think is best. Which, more often than not, is the worst. But that's politics, right?”

Malone drove back to Strawberry Hills through a thunderstorm, which exactly suited his mood. Lightning scratched threatening messages on a blackboard of cloud; a thick mesh of rain tried to bring him to a standstill. Pedestrians floated across the windscreen, saved from drowning by their umbrellas; a fire engine, looking for a fire, went by on a surf of dirty water. He was tempted to drive on through the rain, out into the clear weather of home.

“Get wet?” asked Clements as Malone came into the main office, his pork-pie hat dripping like a guttering, his jacket dark with water.

“Don't ask stupid bloody questions!”

“Oh-oh, bad news?” Clements followed him into the small office. “I've got more bad news.”

Malone didn't answer, just took off his sodden jacket.

“Or maybe it's not so bad.” Clements sat down, in the visitor's chair this time, not the couch. “It adds a bit more to our puzzle.”

“
And that's good?” Malone took a towel out of a desk drawer, dried his face and hair. “Come on, Russ, for Crissake, quit buggering about!”

“Sit down and simmer down,” said the big man. He waited while Malone combed his hair and then sat down behind his desk. Then: “Okay? Four months ago two insurance policies were taken out, one on Mr. Sun and the other on Mr. Feng, each for ten million dollars. John Kagal has been doing some ferreting.”

“Each man took it out on himself or on each other?”

“No. The kids took it out on their respective fathers. The Sun boys on their dad, Camilla Feng on hers. The policies are on the fathers, but it's the kids who supposedly have paid the premiums and benefit from their fathers' deaths.”

“The rest of the families, the mothers and the other kids, don't get a look in?”

“No.”

Malone sat back; he felt he was drying out by the minute. “Ten million? Can you take out that much life insurance in this country?”

Clements nodded. “According to John, yes. One of the big companies here will issue the policy, then lay it off around the world.”

“What would the premium be on a policy that size?”

“John's been on to AMP. Just on $23,000 a year.”

“I dunno about the Sun brothers, but would Camilla have that sort of money? Her own, I mean?”

“We don't know if it was her money—it could of been her old man's. The whole thing could of been his idea. Four months ago he wasn't in trouble—well, he was, but only he knew it. He arranges a ten-million-dollar policy, more than enough to look after his family when the bad news breaks—”

“You said the family didn't figure as beneficiaries.”

“Okay, so they don't. Maybe he wants Camilla to stay in the consortium, pay off his debts and still be part of Olympic Tower. So he arranges his own murder.”

“
And Mr. Sun? He does the same? There's no evidence he was in financial trouble.”

“Feng persuades him to take out a similar policy, so his—Feng's—plan won't be too obvious.”

“Then he does the dirty on Sun and arranges his murder, too? You're getting soft in the head, sport.”

Clements knocked his knuckles on his big head. “Solid as a rock . . . No, our girl Camilla learns about Dad's financial black hole, decides Dad's gotta go anyway. So
she
arranges the murder.”

“And Mr. Sun's? Or are the brothers supposed to be in it with Camilla?”

“No, that's the clever bit. She arranges for the killer to do her dad, Mr. Sun and General Huang—”

“Mr. Shan. There never was any General Huang. I'll explain in a minute. Go ahead.”

“Maybe Les Chung was to be bumped off, too—I dunno. But with a triple murder, it would look less like a put-up job to get the Feng insurance pay-out.”

“Are the insurance companies going to pay out?”

“When John went to see them, they decided to stall.”

“Don't they always?” Malone tapped his fingers on his desk. “It's a good scenario, Russ, but—”

“But what?”

“I just have the feeling that the murders weren't homegrown. Don't ask me why—it's just a feeling.” Then his phone rang. “Malone.”

“This is Sergeant Clover, sir. Telephone Intercepts.” He had a soft whispering voice, as if there was secrecy in his blood or he had been overwhelmed by the conversations he had heard on a thousand tapped wires. “We've traced one of those mobiles you wanted. They are Telstra customers. They made a call this morning, to the Town Hall.”

“Where are they now?” Malone could feel the adrenaline starting up again. Even the sky was lightening outside.

“The call was made from an apartment in The Mount in Chinatown. Apartment 24C on the twenty-fourth floor. We'll meet you in the lobby.”

III

“Les,” Jack Aldwych had said yesterday, “everything in this fucking business has got a Chinese name to it. Pretty soon the Chinese community is gunna have shit smeared all over it. The loony right-wingers are already making noises about Asian shenanigans. They called up Landfall Holdings asking why we're in cahoots with Asians—”

“Do they know
you
are Landfall Holdings?” Les Chung had said.

“I dunno. It don't matter whether they do or not.” The rough edges were showing, like a rock that had been washed clean of the moss that had softened it. “So long as I'm not Asian, I'm lily white as far as they're concerned.”

“So what do you want?” Les Chung was not afraid of the old man, but he knew when to give and not take. He still woke at night in a sweat, the hitman coming back for him in a dream.

“I want to see some of the Triad leaders. I wanna find those three kids who've disappeared. They haven't shot through because all of a sudden they wanted a holiday on the Barrier Reef. They
know
something and I wanna know what it is.”

“What makes you think the Triad guys know where they are?”

“Maybe they dunno now—why should they? It's been none of their business up till now. Unless they're your silent partners?”

“Jack, why are you always so suspicious?”

“Because I spent bloody near sixty years learning trust is something I'd never put money on. Okay, they're not your partners. But you ask ‘em where those kids are and I'll bet they'll have an answer in twenty-four hours—or sooner. Then I wanna meet ‘em. Anywhere they name.”

“I don't think I'll be able to persuade them, Jack—”

“Les, tell ‘em they can trust me.” His grin would have impressed Confucius.

So now he was sitting in one of the gambling rooms above the Golden Gate. With the advent of the Sydney Casino and the proliferation of poker machines in clubs and pubs, business had fallen off
in
these rooms; State governments encouraged gambling as a new religion and the voters had fallen on their knees in prayerful thanks. But old patrons still came here to these rooms, comfortable with the atmosphere and the odds. Luck, they knew, was a deity who would be no more favourable across the water in the casino glitz.