Five-Ring Circus (3 page)

“It's a consortium.”

“How many?” Clements was the business expert. He had begun as a punter on the horses and moved on to the stock market.

“Three corporations.” Chung was taking his time squeezing out the answers.

“Mr. Feng and Mr. Sun—” Malone had looked at his notes. “They were in it with you?”

“In my partnership, yes.”

“
Which is?”

“Lotus Development.”

“Who else? You said three.”

“The Bund Corporation.”

“The Bond Corporation? You're kidding.” The Bond Corporation had been the
Titanic
of the eighties. Its captain had spent several years trying to dodge the iceberg, but was now doing time.

Chung smiled. He now appeared completely unperturbed by what had happened in his restaurant. Yet Malone had a sudden flash of memory, saw the look of fear that had stricken Chung as he had pushed into the banquette against Tom. If he was still afraid, it was now well hidden. “No, no. The
Bund
Corporation. Named after the famous Bund on Shanghai's waterfront.”

The Bund's fame hadn't spread as far as Homicide; but the two detectives nodded. “Who's the third partner?” said Malone. “Someone else from China?”

Chung looked around the restaurant again. The Crime Scene team had come through from the kitchen and the back alley; the sergeant in charge glanced across at Malone and shook his head:
nothing.

The big room was still brightly lit, the huge chandelier hung like a frozen explosion, a glare that was obtrusive. Chung abruptly stood up, crossed the room and flicked a switch. Everyone looked up as the glare disappeared; it was a moment before the yellow lamps on the walls asserted themselves. Chung came back, sat down, said nothing.

“Les,” said Malone patiently, “who's the third partner?”

“It's in the application at the Town Hall,” Chung said at last. “Kelly Investments.”

“And who,” said Malone, patience threadbare now, “are Kelly Investments?”

“One of Jack Aldwych's companies.”

“One of Jack's? Named after Ned Kelly?” A national hero, a bushranger. Perhaps it was the convict beginnings of the nation, but part of the heritage seemed to be a reverence for crims. Jack Aldwych had been a leading crim for years; but, so he claimed, was now retired. He also claimed he was trying to slide into respectability, but even he found the idea risible. Respectability was not a difficult achievement,
not
in Sydney; but it must not be treated as a joke, which was what Aldwych was doing. He was also co-owner with Les Chung of the Golden Gate and he was one of Malone's best acquaintances, if not best friends. “Les, if you and Jack are partners in Olympic Tower, would you blame me if I thought some of your old mates were trying to muscle in?”

“I have no old mates who do that sort of thing.”

Malone refrained from naming some of them; Les Chung, too, was now into respectability. “Well, with your Shanghai friends involved, do you think the Triads might have arranged these killings?”

“The Triads?” Chung's expression suggested that Malone might have named the Jesuits or the Masons.

Exasperation was seeping out of Malone like perspiration. “Les, Russ and I are trying to get to the bottom of this. That feller would've done you if you'd been in that booth—he didn't look as if he were being selective. You were on his list—”

“I don't think so.”

“Well,
I
think so. And so does Russ, right?” Clements nodded. “Now we can take you back to Homicide and talk to you till you come to your senses. Or you can go home, talk to your wife and kids and your lawyer and your mother, if need be—”

“I'm not Jewish.”

Malone had to smile. “Righto, Les, you've still got your sense of humour. Now use it, see the sense in what I'm saying and come and see me and Russ in the morning and give us the full picture. But we're not going to let it lie, Les, understand?” He stood up, pushing Clements ahead of him out of the booth. “In the meantime we'll talk to Jack Aldwych. What I know of Jack, he never liked his business partners being bumped off.”

Chung didn't move from the booth. Hands folded on the table in front of him, he looked up at the two big detectives. “I'll talk to you in the morning. Without talking to my mother, just to my lawyer.”

“Do that, Les. In the meantime I'm going to get a court order to close down the Golden Gate till we know what's going on. Next time some innocent customers might get in the way.”

III

The street outside was still crowded; those that had lingered had been augmented by the crowd spilling out from the Entertainment Centre round the corner. The police cars, the media vans, the Crime Scene tapes: more entertainment, hey guys, let's hang around. The windows on both sides of the narrow street were stuffed with people; close to Malone and the other police expectant faces leaned forward, as if hoping that the score had gone up. Half a dozen reporters, recorders held up like guns, rushed Malone, but he waved them away, drew his detectives around him.

“What'd you get?”

Phil Truach, the sergeant, shook his head. An habitual smoker, he had had three cigarettes while in the restaurant; he knew the Chinese, civilized people, were the last ones to condemn smokers. But he never smoked in front of Malone, a lifelong non-smoker. “Nothing, Scobie. We've got six descriptions of the guy who did the shooting—all different.”

“Was he Asian? Chinese?”

“Three said Asian, three said Caucasian.” Gail Lee had a Chinese father and an Australian mother. It was usually the Chinese heritage that prevailed in her, but Malone put that down to her having decided that was the best way of handling the Australians who surrounded her. She was close to being beautiful, but a certain coldness, perhaps suspicion, turned one off her before one could look at her in impartial appreciation. She was a good detective.

“What about Wally Smith, the head chef? The killer would've gone right past him in the kitchen, coming and going.”

“Said he saw nothing, he had his head buried in a pot of chop suey.” John Kagal was in black tie and dinner jacket; he had been on call but had obviously hoped not to be called. He saw Malone look at his outfit and he smiled. “My mother and father's fortieth wedding anniversary. They like to dress up.”

So do you, thought Malone unkindly; Kagal was the fashion plate of Homicide. “Not chop suey, John, not at the Golden Gate. Okay, that's it for the night. Who's in charge here from Day Street?”

On
cue a lean, medium-height man in an open-necked shirt and a lightweight golf jacket stepped forward. He was Ralph Higgins, the senior sergeant in charge of the local detectives. Malone had worked with him before, knew his worth. He had a constantly harried look, but it was never apparent in his work.

“G'day, Scobie. We'll handle it, do the donkey-work—” Even his grin looked harried, as if he were unsure of his jokes. “But I gather you were the principal witness?”

“Don't remind me. This'll need a task force, Ralph. You set it up and we'll co-operate. I'll check it out with Greg Random and you do the same with your patrol commander. Russ here will be our liaison man. Phil will exchange notes with you. We've got bugger-all so far.”

“What else is new?” said Higgins. “This is Chinatown, mate. The day I walk into an open-and-shut case around here will be time for me to retire.”

Malone glanced at Gail Lee out of the corner of his eye, but her face was a closed-and-shut case. “Righto, Ralph, it's all yours. Russ and I are going out to have a chat with Jack Aldwych.”

“Are we?” Clements looked at his watch. “He'll be in bed.”

“If he is, he'll be wide awake. He'll have just had a phone call from Les Chung.” Malone explained to the other detectives the set-up at Olympic Tower. “John, you and Gail find out what you can about—” he looked at his notes—“the Bund Corporation, a Shanghai outfit. See if it's registered here. Phil, you look into Lotus Development. Ten o'clock tomorrow morning I want to know all there is to know.” He grinned at Kagal. “Dress will be informal.”

The younger man smiled in return; there was rivalry between them, but also respect. Some day Kagal would hold Malone's job or even a higher one; he could wait. “I'll wear thongs.”

Driving over the Harbour Bridge in his family Volvo, Clements said, “I've got the feeling we're putting our toe into a very big pool.”

“What do you know about Olympic Tower?”

“No more than I've read in the papers.” He always read the financial pages before he read the rest of the news; the last thing he read were the crime reports. Homicide and Fraud were the only two
Police
Service units that subscribed to the
Financial Review,
and the
FR
was purely for Clements' benefit. Big and slow-moving, almost ox-like, he had a brain that could juggle figures like the marbles in a lottery barrel; except that his results were never left to chance. Malone had no idea how successful Clements was in his stock market bets, but the odds were that he made more from them than he made as a senior sergeant, the Supervisor of Homicide. “Get Lisa to look into it. She's at the Town Hall.”

“She's on the council's Olympic committee, not in council planning.”

“Okay, but she'd know who to ask. Watch it, you stupid bastard!” as a car cut in front of them to take the Pacific Highway turn-off.

“I don't like asking my wife to do police business.”

“You ask my wife to do it.” Romy Clements was deputy-director of Forensic Medicine stationed at the city morgue.

Malone gave up. “Righto, I'll ask her. But from what she tells me of council politics, I don't want her getting bumped around.”

Twenty minutes later they were approaching Harbord. Jack Aldwych lived high on a hill in the small seaside suburb. The house was two-storeyed, with wide verandahs on both levels and all four sides. Standing on an eastern verandah, its owner had a 180-degree view of the sea, a domain that had never provided any return, since he had never dealt in drugs, either by sea or any other entry. He had only just been getting into crime when Sydney had been a halfway house for illegal gold shipments between Middle East ports and Hong Kong; he had missed out on that lucrative industry, but had graduated into robbing banks of gold, a much more dangerous pursuit. Standing on a western verandah he looked back on slopes and valleys lined with modest mortgage-mortared houses and blocks of flats as alike as slices of plain cake. This, too, was not the sort of territory where he had made his money; he had never been a petty criminal, at least not since his teen years. He had once boasted that he had never robbed the battlers; but only because the battlers weren't worth robbing. He had his principles, but only for amusement.

Every morning, summer and winter, although he was now in his late seventies, he went down to Harbord beach to swim. Once upon a time sharks had cruised off the beach and there had been one or
two
fatalities. But, whether it was coincidental or not, from the day Jack Aldwych entered the surf no more sharks had been seen. Perhaps the grey nurses and the hammerheads and the great whites knew a bigger shark when they saw one.

When Malone and Clements rang the bell at the big iron gates that led to the short gravel driveway, two Dobermans came round the corner of the house, salivating at the prospect of a night-time snack. Two minutes later Blackie Ovens, in striped pyjamas and polka-dotted dressing gown, came out of the house and, after snapping at the dogs to back off, opened the gates. “The boss is expecting you.”

“I thought he might be. Nice gown, Blackie.”

“The boss give it to me. He thought me last one looked too much like a jail uniform.” The dogs barked and he barked back at them and they slunk away. “I'll get you some coffee while you're talking to the boss.”

It was characteristic of him that he didn't ask what had brought the two detectives here at this time of night. He had worked for Jack Aldwych for thirty years, an iron-bar man as rigid in his allegiance to the boss as his favourite tool of trade. He no longer wielded the iron bar as a profession, but Malone had no doubt that it was kept handy for emergency use.

Aldwych was waiting for them in the big living room, in his pyjamas and dressing gown. Each time Malone saw him he marvelled at the dignity and handsome looks of the old crim; he could have passed for a man who owned banks rather than robbed them. He now lolled against the upholstery of wealth, taking on some of its sheen. Even the roughness of his voice had been smoothed out, though it could harden with threat when needed. He was, as he had often told Malone, retired but not reformed.

“Soon's Les Chung told me he'd talked to you, I knew you'd be over to see me. What d'you think I can tell you he hasn't already told you?”

“How do you know what he's told us?” said Malone.

Aldwych smiled, showing expensive dental work: a banker's smile. “I don't think Les would of told you much.”

“What about these partners from China, the Bund Corporation? One of them, Mr. Shan, is
dead.”

Aldwych wasn't disturbed by the news; he had ordered at least a dozen deaths. He waited while Blackie brought in coffee and biscuits; then when Blackie had gone out of the room, he said, “I hadn't made up my mind about him. Jack Junior's going to have another look at him.” Jack Aldwych Junior ran the Aldwych enterprises; he was the front, respectable and more than competent. “There's a woman, too—Mrs. Tzu. Calls herself Madame Tzu. T-Z-U. She comes in from Hong Kong every month or so. I've never dealt with partners as blank as those two.”

“Dumb?” said Clements.

“Christ, no. Smart as they come. Always polite, but sometimes it's like talking to the Great Wall of China.”