Five-Ring Circus (5 page)

Clements held up the front pages of two newspapers. “Seen these?”

It had been a slow week for political news, both State and Federal; overseas nothing had happened that would increase sales amongst the immigrant population. So the Chinatown murders got the Page One treatment; Malone, though not quoted, was featured as a principal witness to the killings.

“Yeah, I've seen them. The
Australian
makes me sound as if I ran the other way. Greg Random called me at home, and Bob Grenville.” Random was the chief superintendent in charge of the Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit; Grenville was the new Assistant Commissioner, Crime. When Malone got calls from them at home he knew his spot was warming up. “All I need now is a call from the Commissioner.”

“Has he spoken to you since his beatification?” Clements was an agnostic, but he had heard Malone, an indifferent Catholic, talk of beatification and sanctification and other promotions unknown to the public service.

The new Commissioner, William Zanuch, had groomed himself for the post since his probationary constable days; no one, in Malone's experience, had had such an inexorable rise. “Not yet. But he will . . . I told Harold he has to go.”

“I think we're well rid of him—he's got a nasty streak in him. Why'd we ever take him on?”

“Because we were told to. Administration is not going to like it when they get your report on him.”

“
My
report?”

“
You're the Supervisor, sport. I did the dirty work—you do the paperwork.” He stood up. Out in the office five detectives had arrived. “Let's go out and see what the troops have come up with.”

Chairs had been arranged in a semi-circle; Malone sat on a desk and addressed the three men and two women; Clements sat at his own desk. Boston was against a far wall, already an outsider.

“Righto, let's get the basics first. They're setting up an incident room down at Day Street—their Ds are handling the legwork. I want you, Sheryl, to put up a flow chart for us here, so we'll have a reference.”

Sheryl Dallen was in her late twenties, another newcomer to the unit but no longer on probation. She was broad-faced and broad-beamed, a gym enthusiast desperately fighting a battle against the crime of avoirdupois. She was also an enthusiastic worker and in the four months she had been with Homicide she had established a future for herself. “It'll be on the wall by lunchtime, boss.”

Malone looked at the others. “What have you come up with?”

“I've been down to Day Street,” said Phil Truach. “They've come up with bugger-all as far as evidence goes. Ballistics has the bullets—a couple of them must've gone through the victims, they were in the upholstery of the booth. The rest are in the corpses and we'll get them from the morgue. Physical Evidence found nothing, no fingerprints. There were some shoeprints out in the alley at the back, but there were dozens of them—they could've been the kitchen staff stampeding.”

“I was out in the alley myself,” said Malone.

“From what I read in the papers this morning, you were the principal witness.”

“Thanks,” said Malone, but he grinned; Truach's humour could be dry but it was never malicious. “Andy?”

Andy Graham had been with Homicide five years. For too long he had exhausted everyone with his galloping zeal; sometimes he had rushed right by clues and had had to come back to them. He had been the unit's Airedale pup; now he had become its bloodhound. “I've tracked down all the kitchen staff. Well, all but two—they were illegals and they'd shot through by the time I got to their boarding-house. The others, they all said they were headfirst into their pots and woks. Nobody heard the shots. One guy said he
thought
the killer was a health inspector.”

“With a stocking mask?” said Clements. “That's real undercover stuff.”

“Gail? John?”

“I tried the Chinese consulate,” said Gail Lee. “Then the embassy in Canberra. Both of them told me they didn't work on Saturday, they said call back Monday.”

“They've been too long in Australia,” said John Kagal. “The Great Leap Backwards. Chairman Mao must be spinning in his grave.”

“What did you learn?”

Kagal took out his notes. “The Bund Corporation is a private outfit, not a Chinese government body. It claims it has capital assets of two hundred million dollars, but that's a dicey figure.”

“Where do you get all your info?” said Malone in wonderment. “On a Saturday, too?”

“Don't ask.” Even when he thought he was unobserved, Kagal always looked smug; he looked that way now. He had more connections in the financial world than an Internet computer, but he never divulged them. There was money in the family background, but he never mentioned the background and Malone and the others never asked. It was known he had gone to Cranbrook, one of the more expensive private schools, and to Macquarie University, where he had taken two degrees. He lived in a flat in one of the better blocks in Double Bay, otherwise known as Double Pay because of its prices, and he drove a Honda Accord. However, though smug, he was discreet. Two attributes, Malone knew, that did not always go together. “These figures are what's public, but I think I need to do some further checking. The company is registered in Hong Kong, but I'll have to find out whether it was registered there before the Brits left or after China took over.”

“Is there much private capital in China today?” Phil Truach was bouncing his lighter up and down in his hand: time for another smoke. “What do the old men in Beijing think about it?”

“Millionaires are springing up like rice shoots,” said Kagal, whose reports always had a little more decoration than the others'. “There's not much the old men can do about it. Gail would know more about it than I do.”

“
Why would I?” Conversationally, Malone had noticed, Gail Lee could leave a high-diver two feet off the board with no water in the pool.

“Well—” Kagal gestured, left airborne.

“My father won't let us discuss modern China. For him China stopped the day the Communists took over.”

So much, Malone thought, for Jack Aldwych's theory that China was always in the blood of mainland-born Chinese.

“Righto,” he said, “what about Lotus Development?”

“It was registered eighteen months ago,” said Kagal. “It was a two-dollar shelf company that Les Chung bought. So far I haven't been able to find out what its capital is now. But when the present consortium took over the Olympic Tower hole in the ground, they assumed a seventy-million-dollar debt.
Someone
put up the seed money.”

Malone looked at Clements. “Jack Aldwych?”

Clements shook his head. “If Jack's true to his old form, he wouldn't put seed money into a bank hold-up. He and his son are worth Christ knows how much, but they don't
start
projects. They come in when all the groundwork's been done.”

“I think we're getting into one of those Chinese box puzzles,” said Malone.

“Jack said last night there'd been some union trouble. Do we talk to them? Maybe we'll pick up something there.”

“Let Day Street do that. Union Hall is on their turf. We don't have anyone to spare, not yet anyway.”

“I can do it,” said Boston from his distant seat. “I worked out of Day Street, I know everyone at Union Hall.”

Malone didn't want any help from Boston; he was not interested in allowing him to rehabilitate himself. Yet if the ex-uniformed man had contacts amongst the union officials, a lot of time could be saved. Homicide had little or nothing to do with union troubles; lately, aside from some election rorts, the
unions
had been relatively law-abiding. The old days, in which his own father, Con, had been one of the principal troublemakers, always straddling not only the picket line but also the line of the law, had gone. Industrial reform, long coming and still with only one foot in the door, had brought a more pragmatic union official, one who had at last realized that the writing on the wall was more than just graffiti. Perhaps Boston
could
help.

“It's yours, Harold. I'd like to know something by lunchtime Monday.” Meaning:
not lunchtime Wednesday or Thursday.

Boston caught the hint; his face stiffened. “It'll be here. Lunchtime Monday.”

Malone looked at the other detectives. “You, Andy, can go home, but you're on call. Phil, you and John go out and talk to the Sun family, see if they know anything. Gail and I'll go out later and talk to the Feng family . . . Russ, ring Les Chung, see if he's going to drop in. If not, tell him we'll be out to his house, flashing lights, siren, the lot. He mightn't like that, not out in Bellevue Hill. He lives just up the road from Kerry Packer, doesn't he?”

“Kerry wouldn't like it, either.”

Malone went back into his office, sat down and looked at his phone. Breakfast with the family had been an uncomfortable meal; for once on a Saturday morning the girls and Tom had got themselves out of bed and eaten with him and Lisa. There had been no discomfort on their part; or none that had been apparent. It had all been on his part. When Claire had casually remarked that last night's murders had been pretty brutal—“doesn't a killer like that think of other people? Those in the restaurant, innocent people just having a night out?” he had snapped, “Professional killers aren't interested in innocent people.”

The sharpness in his voice made Lisa look up from her toast, but he had ignored her. He knew he was wrong in his attitude. He was a cop and this was a cop's family; he couldn't go on protecting them from everything forever. But he was unwilling, could not bring himself to the fact, to let them be part of his job. The murder of strangers was not a subject that bound a family together.

He said as much and Lisa said, “May we quote you? We were
there,
we saw what happened.
We'
re not blaming you for taking us there—it was the girls' suggestion.”

“Yes,” said the girls, looking at him over their cereal with the eyes of a biassed jury.

“Mine, too,” said Tom. “Incidentally, we never got to eat.”

“Stay out of this,” Maureen told him. “You're not helping the argument.”

“That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Lighten things up.”

“It's not an argument,” said Malone defensively.

“All right, then,” said Lisa. “It's not an argument. But you don't want it to be a discussion, either. So we'll drop it.”

“But—” said Claire.

“I said, drop it!”

The milk had turned sour on his cereal, his toast had tasted like brittle brick. When he had left to come to the office, had kissed Lisa, her cheek had tasted as if she had been out in a cold wind.

He was still looking at the phone, wanting to call her, when Clements said from the doorway, “Les Chung is already here, he's on his way up.”

He put away the thought of the call to home, said, “Let's hope he's decided to loosen up. I'm fed up with Oriental inscrutability.” Then he saw Gail Lee just behind the big man. “Not you, Gail.”

“Of course not. I'm saved by my in-your-face Aussie side.” Then she blinked, a small-girl expression that was out of character with her. “Sorry. I didn't mean to be rude.”

He grinned, though it was an effort. “Gail, the day your Aussie side becomes subtle or inscrutable, we're done for. Come in and sit down. Make Mr. Chung feel at home.”

Chung was dressed almost exactly like Clements; unlike the big man, he looked like the yacht squadron commodore. He sat down opposite Malone, crossing one leg over the other, showing a black loafer that looked as if it had been hand-polished three times a day by a coolie bootblack. He looked around at the three detectives. “I'm here against my will,” he announced.

“So many of our visitors are, Les,” said Malone, relaxing back in his chair, ready for the patience game if it was to be played again. “But we always try to make you welcome.”

Chung
smiled. “I'm sure you do. So what do you want to know?”

“What've you got to tell us?” said Clements.

Chung looked at Gail. “Do you find it difficult, dealing with the local bluntness?”

“One gets used to it, Mr. Chung.”

Malone was watching her; it was difficult to tell whether the Chinese or the Australian side of her was working. Then he said, “Les, tell us about the Bund Corporation.”

“Can I speak off the record?”

Malone gestured. “No notebooks, Les, no tape recorder. Go ahead.”

“Why off the record?” Clements asked, blunt as ever. “Are you afraid of them?”

Chung put both feet flat on the floor, seemed to lose some of his relaxed air. “I could be. It's only a suspicion . . . I said I'm here against my will. I'm also here against my good judgement.”

“Let us be the judge of that,” said Malone, still sitting back in his chair. “Tell us exactly who the Bund Corporation are.”

Chung took his time; he might be giving evidence that could be used against him. “They are a private company—a proprietary limited one, just like mine and Jack Aldwych's, no public investors. It's not listed on the stock exchange here.”

“What about the Chinese government?” said Clements. “Are they in it?”

“No-o. I was led to believe—” He stopped.

“Go on, Les. I find it hard to believe that you were
led
to believe . . .” Malone smiled. “No offence. I'm paying you a compliment.”

Chung smiled in return, appeared to relax. “I think I
wanted
to believe . . . When someone comes to you and offers you seventy million dollars for openers . . .” He gave an elegant shrug. “I took them at face value.”