6

I

LATE THAT afternoon Lisa took herself, Maureen and Tom over to her parents’ home at Rose Bay. Malone took Claire, with all her new skiing gear, bought, dammit, by her Dutch grandparents, up to Holy Spirit convent.

“You’ll be the best dressed girl on the slopes. What have you got for après-ski or whatever they call it?”

“Daddy, don’t you like Grandma Elisabeth buying me things?” She was far too perceptive for her age. In another generation or two, child psychologists would actually be children.

“I’m happy if you like what she buys you.”

She looked sideways at him in the car; he waited for her to tell him that was no real answer. Then she said, “Something’s worrying you, isn’t it? I don’t mean the skiing gear. Why did we all of a sudden have to get out of our house? Is someone going to blow it up or something?”

He swung the car up the long curving drive to the top of the ridge where the white buildings of Holy Spirit faced down the valley to Coogee. It was a joke between him and Lisa that the Roman Catholics had a knack for always grabbing the best piece of real estate wherever they chose to build a school or a church. St. Paul, he was sure, had been a developer as well as a gospeller.

“No, it’s nothing like that and don’t start thinking that way. It’s just that I’m on police business—secret police business. Like one of those religious retreats you go on here at school. Since I had to be away from home, Mum and I thought it would be a good idea if she and Maureen and Tom went away on a holiday. Grandpa Jan suggested Noosa, so that’s where they’re going. We moved you up here a coupla days early because we couldn’t leave you alone in the house.”

“What does Mother Brendan think? I mean, me coming in as a boarder for two days and Maureen and Tom going off on holiday in the middle of term?”

“What are you? A police prosecutor?” He had come up to see Mother Brendan, put her in the true picture and she had understood. It’s a terrible world, isn’t it? I’ll pray for you, Mr. Malone. “It’s okay. I gave her a police badge to wear on her sleeve and she’s as happy as Larry. Now get out, grab your gear and go off and enjoy yourself—it’s costing me a mint. Don’t break a leg.”

She kissed him. “I love you, Daddy, but you can be a trial. Take care.”

“You, too.” He wanted to hug her, to weep. “And stay away from boys.”

“Are you kidding?” She gave him a smile that would have broken any boy’s or man’s heart, picked up all her gear and struggled into the school. He should have helped her, but he couldn’t bear to be with her a moment longer. Love, sometimes, is the heaviest luggage of all.

He went home, picked up two suitcases and drove into town and checked into O’Brien’s suite at the Hotel Congress. He did not sign in at the reception desk.

The suite was luxurious, but it had nothing of the look of a home; if O’Brien had tried to overlay some impression of himself on the designer’s taste, it did not show. It was, Malone guessed, like living in an expensive bandbox. Worst of all, despite its look of costly elegance, it had no suggestion of permanence. It was for transients, even if the present transient had a long lease.

O’Brien hadn’t missed Malone’s scrutiny of the suite. “You don’t like it?”

“I’m suburban, I guess. I can never understand why anyone wants to live in a hotel.”

“Service, Scobie. Everything’s laid on. I lift the phone and there’s a housemaid, room service, a valet, a secretary—even a call girl, if that’s what I wanted. In London I had the lot—a butler, a cook, a maid, a chauffeur. Then all of a sudden one day I found out I wasn’t interested in possessions and I wasn’t really interested in being responsible for all those servants. I came out here and I had a couple of servants in a rented house out at Vaucluse. But Aussies aren’t interested in being house servants, not even the migrants—they think it’s beneath them. It just became a headache. I moved in here two years ago. The company pays for it and most of it comes off tax.”

“Which company? The one that’s going broke?”

O’Brien smiled. “Scobie, if you and I are going to live together, let’s call off the insults, eh? We’re not man and wife.”

“My wife and I don’t insult each other.”

“Sorry.” O’Brien sounded genuinely contrite. “I guess I think all marriages are like my own were. World Wars One and Two.”

Malone tried to be more friendly. “Would you try it a third time?”

“If she’d have me. But I don’t think it’ll ever be on. Not unless her husband conks out and I don’t think there’s any chance of that. He’s one of those dumb bastards who’ll last for ever.”

Malone wondered who the dumb bastard could be; but, whoever he was, he was unimportant. “Well, our job is to see that you and I aren’t conked out.”

O’Brien had been as adamant as Lisa that he would not go to a safe house. He had shown no fear of being assassinated; it was not bravado, he was too calm for that. His explanation had been quite simple:

“I’ve got this NCSC thing hanging over my head, Scobie. If I drop out of sight, there are going to be more and more rumours—it’s bad enough as it is. I’ve got to keep fronting up every day. I’ll co-operate with you up to a point, but I’m going to go about my regular routine. I’ll just see that I have a couple of security men close to me all the time. That’s as far as I’m prepared to go.”

“What about me?” It was a natural, selfish question. Then Malone had remembered he was still working on the murders, that he wasn’t here in the Congress just to sample the room service.

Now he said, “Righto, during the day we go through our regular routine, each of us. But at night we stick close, okay? I want a security man sitting outside the front door all night, they can work four-hour shifts, and our SWOS and Tac Response fellers are on call to be down here within five or ten minutes if anything happens. Anyone who delivers anything up here is to be vetted by your security men, even the housemaids, and if we have any meals up here in the suite, the food’s to be brought in from outside.”

“The hotel’s not going to like that.”

“Tough titty. But if it comes out of the hotel kitchens, he could get to it and poison it. So far he’s killed everyone with a rifle, but there’s no guarantee he’s sworn to that MO. Cyanide in a croissant is just as effective.”

“If it weren’t for what’s already happened, I wouldn’t believe any of this. Are you scared?” O’Brien held out a steady hand. “I am. It mightn’t show, but I’m scared shitless.”

“Me, too. And I’m more used to this sorta thing than you are. Oh, one more thing. Stay away from the windows, keep the curtains drawn, or at least drawn enough to stop anyone from seeing who’s in here.” He walked across and pulled the thick silk curtains close together, leaving just a narrow gap. “Don’t have them any wider than that. Tell the housemaids.” Then he pulled the curtains together completely. “At night they’re to be like that, nothing showing in here. The bugger could be up there in one of those neighbouring buildings.”

O’Brien said wryly, “You can look into here from my office. It’d be a joke if he somehow got in there and picked us off from behind my own desk.”

“Yeah,” said Malone. “You might die laughing, but I wouldn’t. Where are you going?”

O’Brien had stood up after taking off his shoes. “I’m going out. You can come with me, if you like. It’s a reception up at the Town Hall. The PM’s going to be there.”

“Why do you need to go?”

O’Brien was in the doorway of the main bedroom, taking off his shirt. “Appearances. I got the invitation to this two months ago, before all my troubles blew up. Nobody’s going to snub me tonight. In the old days, I gather, I’d have got a discreet message from someone telling me the invitation was a mistake. But not any more. New money runs this town, Scobie, and someone’s only guilty if he admits it. It’s the New Ethics. Wall Street started it and the rest of the world is picking it up. We’re one of the smartest at it. You look shocked.”

“I guess I’m too old-fashioned. Whatever happened to honesty being the best policy?”

“The dividends weren’t high enough.” He stripped off his trousers, headed for his bathroom; then looked back. “You coming?”

“I might as well. What do I wear?”

“Just don’t wear your police tie. That’d clear the Town Hall in a flash.”

Malone put on his best Fletcher Jones off-the-rack suit, one chosen for him by Lisa, and lined up beside O’Brien, who was wearing a little number from Savile Row and a Battistoni shirt and tie. “You’ll do,” said O’Brien. “You’re not a ball of style like the bankers and stockbrokers who’ll be there tonight, but you’re—what’s the word?”

“Honest?”

O’Brien grinned. “I think living with you is going to be worse than with my two ex-wives.”

The evening was clear and cold, winter hanging on like an unwanted relative. They went uptown to the Town Hall in a hired stretch limousine with a security man sitting beside the driver and another on the jump seat opposite O’Brien and Malone. Neither of them was as tall as Malone and both of them were overweight; the one on the jump seat was too big for his suit and his shoulder holster showed as a lump under his armpit. But they looked alert and Malone hoped they would stay that way. He had a cop’s antipathy to the growing number of private security forces.

The Victorian pile of the Town Hall was floodlit, making everyone going up the wide front steps a splendid target for an assassin. There were plenty of voters who had no time for the Prime Minister; but there had been only two attempted political assassinations in Australia and most people had now forgotten those. There were, however, several groups of demonstrators on the footpath at the bottom of the steps, waving banners and chanting slogans and abuse at the guests as they arrived. There were conservationists, Aboriginals, retrenched social workers, anti-abortionists and two women under a banner protesting that the Second Coming of Christ had been delayed by a recently passed Act, a miracle that would have gone to the head of parliament if it had believed the accusation.

Malone and O’Brien got out of the limousine, preceded by the two security men. The crowd, not recognizing them, abused them anyway: anyone who arrived in a stretch limousine couldn’t be in favour of conservation, Aboriginals, social workers, the right to life or Jesus Christ. If they had known Malone was a cop, the volume of abuse would have increased.

The two security men were left in the lobby of the Town Hall and Malone and O’Brien passed into the huge main hall. Malone at once recognized at least a dozen faces: the cream, or the scum, depending on one’s social prejudice, of Sydney was here. The reception was a United Nations celebration and, like motherhood, it had to be supported; one could rant against the UN in private, as one could use contraception against the chances of motherhood, but one never did so in public. A man who knew the full value of a public face stopped by Malone.

“Inspector Malone—” Hans Vanderberg, the State Premier, never forgot a name or a face. “I saw who you came in with. Mr. O’Brien. Is he under arrest or something?”

“No, Mr. Premier.” You’d have known of it at once if he were under arrest. The Dutchman missed nothing that went on in his State. “I can’t tell you what’s going on, but Assistant Commissioner Falkender will tell you.”

“I am the Police Minister.” The old man ran a claw of a hand over his mottled bald head; he was an eagle too old to fly but one that could not be trapped. He glared at Malone as if the upstart inspector was trying to throw him a poisoned bait.

“I know that, sir. But I think it would be better if you got it from Mr. Falkender.”

Vanderberg glared at him a moment longer, then nodded and moved on, the old political smile back on his face like a mask re-donned. When they lowered him into the grave he would be smiling back up at the voters, the coffin lid left open on his orders, as if he believed in resurrection.

Malone glanced around him. He had been to very few official receptions, but the crowd always looked the same. There were the natives standing in groups telling each other about their health (“Never ask an Aussie how he is,” Malone had once heard an American say, “because sure as hell he’ll tell you. In great detail.”) Italians were huddled together telling Greek jokes; the Greeks were advising each other never to have a Lebanese do any work for them; the Hungarians moved amongst everyone else as if they owned the Town Hall. In one corner stood half a dozen token Asians, wondering if they would have been more welcome if they had volunteered to stay behind afterwards and clean up and take home the laundry. Malone, a cop, felt as much an outsider as any of them.

He looked up and around him at the galleries on the second level and at the ornate, three-storey-high ceiling. The Town Hall was sometimes referred to by the more modern, less-is-more architects as a huge barn; but on the two or three occasions he had been here he had fallen for it. It had a solidity about it, a reminder of other times; chicanery might go on in the city council rooms elsewhere in the building, but this auditorium had an honesty about it. It was Victorian but somehow it suggested none of the hypocrisy of that era.

The galleries were packed, lesser guests standing at the balustrades and looking down, perhaps their only opportunity ever, on the leading lights below. Malone looked at them and decided no assassin would chance a shot from amongst that crowd. Frank Blizzard, if he was the hitman, was not a public performer.

Malone looked for O’Brien, saw him standing against a side wall. Just along from him were Arnold Debbs and his wife, whom Malone recognized from her newspaper photos; it seemed to him that Debbs was studiously ignoring O’Brien because all at once he took his wife’s arm and the two of them moved away from O’Brien. The latter looked after them, then looked across and saw Malone. He smiled thinly and shrugged. Crumbs, thought Malone, could Penelope Debbs be the woman he’s in love with?

There was a stir from the lobby and Prime Minister Philip Norval and his wife entered. Lights flashed and Malone saw the famous blond head pause and turn, offering further photo opportunities. The equally famous smile almost outshone the camera flashes; Norval’s hands went out, grasping other hands, some of which had not even been lifted towards him. The PM and his wife and minders moved on into the main hall and were at once surrounded. Malone noticed that one of those who did not rush to greet the PM was The Dutchman, a sworn political enemy.

Malone looked around again for O’Brien, saw him standing in the same place against the side wall. He was staring at someone in the official group, a rapt expression on his face that made him look suddenly younger, almost vulnerable. Malone pushed his way through the throng and joined him. He spoke to O’Brien, but the latter did not appear to hear him.

Malone, curious now, looked in the direction of O’Brien’s gaze. Was he, the cynical entrepreneur, the probable crook, such an admirer of Prime Minister Norval, the country’s figurehead leader who, reputedly, was only honest and upright because he hadn’t the brains to be otherwise? Then Malone saw the beautiful dark-haired woman beside the PM turn her head and look across the crowded room at himself and O’Brien. He was no expert on love and its atmospherics; there was too much Irish in him for that. He had, however, spent all his professional life intercepting and interpreting glances and covert looks. He slowly turned his head and saw that O’Brien was in love and realized with a shock that O’Brien’s lady friend was Anita Norval, wife of the Prime Minister.

She came towards them, casually, unhurriedly, pausing to smile and speak to people on the way; Malone had seen her once or twice before at close quarters and had always been impressed by her grace and dignity. It was not a queenly approach: that would never have gone down with the natives, even those who fell on their knees when British royalty hove in sight. She did, however, suggest that she knew her husband’s office was one of the symbols of what the country stood for and she wanted to polish it rather than tarnish it. She was the most popular woman in the nation and now, it seemed, she was in love with or, at best, loved by one of the nation’s least popular scoundrels.

“Mr. O’Brien, isn’t it? I think we met once before.”

Malone could feel the warning vibrations coming out of O’Brien; but the latter somehow kept his composure. “Hullo, Mrs. Norval. Oh, this is Detective-Inspector Malone, an old friend.”

She gave Malone a smile that, unlike her husband’s or The Dutchman’s, was not looking for a vote; yet it seemed to Malone that there was a plea in it. “Are you his minder, Inspector?”

But before Malone could reply, the Prime Minister had appeared at his wife’s elbow. “We have to move up on to the stage, darling. It’s time for my speech.”

“Another one? This is the seven-hundred-and-forty-third so far this year.” Husband and wife exchanged the public smiles of long marital experience, the hypocritical doodads that couples carry with them like breath sweeteners. “Nice meeting you again, Mr. O’Brien. You too, Inspector.”

Norval gave the two men only a nod, nothing more, and steered his wife up towards the flag-bedecked stage. Malone looked at O’Brien, said quietly, aware of the lingering glances of those who had been staring at O’Brien and Anita Norval, “I think we’d better get out of here. You’re a bit obvious.”

O’Brien’s craggy face was suddenly shrewd again. “It shows, does it? Well, now you know.”

As soon as Norval, up on stage, began to speak in that husky, honeyed voice that had once made him the country’s favourite television star, the guests turned their backs on O’Brien. He and Malone at once moved out of the auditorium as quietly and surreptitiously as they could. The security men were waiting for them in the lobby. One of them hurried away to get the limousine and five minutes later was back with it and its driver. Only then did Malone take himself and O’Brien out and down the floodlit steps to the car.

The night was still brilliantly clear. All the stars in the universe seemed to have slid into the southern skies; there were more there than any planet deserved, more than enough for all the living and dead of all time to dream upon. The day’s wind had dropped, but it had done its job, swept away all the smog. It was a good night, Malone thought, for a sniper.

He pushed O’Brien into the limousine, jumped in after him and waited while the two security men got in. Only then did he relax back in his seat. Out on the pavement he saw the demonstration groups glaring at him and O’Brien with a mixture of expressions from hatred to indifference; but there was no murderer amongst them, their passion burst out of them in other ways. Flying abuse, eggs, tomatoes, the occasional fist: but never bullets.

They drove down towards the harbour, against the cinema and theatre traffic. The pavements were not crowded, but there were still plenty of people about. He won’t strike tonight, Malone thought, and relaxed still further, suddenly feeling tired.

“What sorta guy should we be ready for, Inspector?” said the security man on the front seat, Ralph Shad. The question was only unexpected in that neither security man had asked it before.

Malone thought a while. What sort of man was Blizzard, assuming it was the ex-police cadet who was trying to kill him and O’Brien? How did you describe a ghost you had never really known? “All I can say is he appears to be ruthless and bloody efficient. I haven’t a clue what he looks like, whether he’s a psycho—”

“He must be that,” said O’Brien.

“Not necessarily. All killers aren’t psychos, not in the sense of being off their rocker. He may be a perfectly reasonable man, except when it comes to wanting to kill you and me.”

“That’s psycho enough for me.”

“I’m afraid I agree with Mr. O’Brien,” said Shad.

“What about you, Trevor?” Malone asked the security man in the front seat. He noticed that the driver, a young Asian, was now sitting very stiffly behind the wheel, as if up to this very moment he hadn’t known he was in any danger.

Trevor Logan must have sensed the driver’s concern; he patted him on the shoulder. “You don’t have to worry, Lee.” Then he turned back to Malone and contradicted what he had just said. “I think he’s dead certain to be a psycho, Inspector. They’re the sort that’ll have a go, regardless of the odds.”

Malone said nothing, not sure that Blizzard, or whoever the assassin was, was not psychotic. If he was, then the odds were that, sooner or later, he would give himself away, come out into the open and at last be within reach. But how much sooner, how much later, after how many more murders?

The limousine turned up into the entrance to the Congress. The hotel was set back a few yards from the street and there was a slight ramp that curved up to the front doors and then back again to the street. A portico stretched out to the pavement, over the ramp and a small garden plot of hardy shrubs. Most of the guests leaving the hotel at this time were still inside the front doors, sheltering against the cold night air while they waited for their cars or taxis; but a few stood outside beside the commissionaire. The limousine pulled up and the commissionaire stepped forward and opened the front and rear nearside doors. Both security men slid out and looked about them, as if the talk about the hitman had all of a sudden made them more alert. Malone had an abrupt impression of how obvious they looked, like the Secret Service men who were always so conspicuous when an American president appeared in public.

He got out of the car and waited for O’Brien. The latter appeared to hesitate, as if he had become shy of the people standing behind the commissionaire; they were staring at the two security men and wondering whom they were minding. Then he stepped out of the car and pushed past Malone.

In that instant, over O’Brien’s shoulder, Malone saw the man with the hand-gun rise up above the parapet that separated the entrance ramp from a second ramp that led down to the hotel’s garage. He dropped down, pulling O’Brien down with him. He heard no shot, the gun must be fitted with a silencer; but Trevor Logan gasped and fell back against the open car door. A second bullet thudded into the car door, but again there was no sound of a shot. He heard a woman scream and saw Ralph Shad, flat on the ground, raise his gun to return the shots.

“No!” Malone yelled. “Get „em all inside!”

He pushed O’Brien off him, ducked round the back of the car and came up on the driver’s side. He couldn’t see the young Asian; he must be cowering under the steering wheel. He crept along the length of the long car, chanced a look and saw that the gunman had disappeared. He stood up, wrenching his gun from his holster, and ran towards the parapet.

“He’s gone down into the garage!” he heard the commissionaire shout.

He vaulted the parapet, landing heavily on the sloping concrete below but managing to keep his feet. He ran down the ramp, keeping close to the wall. A car came up the ramp, headlights blazing, and he knew at once he was a dead man. He flattened himself against the wall, the taste of his crushed body already in his mouth: Christ, what a way to die!

Then the car’s horn blared, deafening him, the car slowed, then went past with the driver, a parking valet, yelling abuse at him. He picked himself off the wall and ran down into the garage. It was full of cars, some of them on the move towards the exit ramp; the gunman could be anywhere in the huge cave. Blizzard could dart and scurry between the ranks of cars like a rat in a maze of trenches. Except that he was still intent on killing Malone.

He stood up beyond a white Ford Fairlane half a dozen cars away, his gun held in both hands in the approved combat grip. Another car, a dark BMW, pulled out of the line of cars behind him and came along the laneway towards the ramp. The driver switched its headlights on and Malone stood exposed and blinded. He jumped to one side, in behind a Rolls-Royce; it was like hiding behind a tank. He shut his eyes, then quickly opened them; the blindness from the glare was gone. He looked towards Blizzard, standing steady behind the Fairlane, gun still raised. His two shots outside the hotel had been hurried; he took his time with this one. Just a fraction too much time: Malone hit him in the chest with a lucky shot just before he squeezed the trigger. He fell back, hit the car behind him and slid down out of sight.

Malone, gun cocked again, went forward cautiously. Two more cars came from the far end of the garage, being driven up to their owners waiting at the hotel entrance; he stepped back and waited for them to go past; the parking valets seemed oblivious of what had been going on. He came round the front of the Fairlane, ready for a second shot; but there was no need of it. The gunman lay face down, the silencer-fitted Beretta 7.65 still in one hand. Malone knelt down, felt for the pulse in the neck; there was none. Then he turned the gunman over on his back. He was young, perhaps no more than twenty, dark-haired, vicious-looking even in death and, despite his youth, far too young to be Frank Blizzard.

Malone got slowly to his feet as he heard footsteps running down the ramp and from the back of the garage. His joints felt like those of an old man, locked together; he felt the taste of death again. This wasn’t the gunman they wanted. Blizzard was still somewhere out there, still intent on making sure . . .

There would be no green bottles standing on the wall.

II

Lisa had been frantic over the phone, calling him on the private number he had given her to O’Brien’s suite. The line was a direct one, not routed through the hotel’s switchboard—“I want no one eavesdropping on my business calls,” O’Brien had told him. Malone was glad that no operator could hear the frantic note in his wife’s voice.

“Give up! Come up to Noosa with me and the children—”

“Darl—” He tried to keep his voice as cool and calming as possible; he had had time to recover, something she hadn’t yet had time to do. She had called him as soon as she had heard the news-flash on a TV channel’s news update. “This bloke wasn’t after me. He was after O’Brien—”

“You were with O’Brien! He tried to shoot you—”

“Only because I was after him. I’ve been shot at before—” He winced at the slip of his tongue; he almost felt her wincing at the other end of the line. “This had nothing to do with the other killer—” His tongue was getting away from him; he was supposed to be reassuring her, not frightening her still further. “Darl, I’m all right. If it’s any consolation to you, they’re going to station two of our own fellers here in the hotel with O’Brien’s security men.”

“It’s no consolation.” Her voice was abruptly tart and he knew, with relief, that she was about to accept the situation. “I’ll ring you at seven in the morning, you’d better be awake. I love you.”

She had hung up in his ear. He had stood for a moment fighting the sudden urge to walk out of the hotel, out of the whole business, and go out to Rose Bay and her and the kids. Then he had put down the phone and gone out of the second bedroom, where he had taken the call, into the big living-room where Danforth and Russ Clements sat with O’Brien and George Bousakis.

The hotel manager was also there, a suave Serb who looked at the moment as if his hotel had just been invaded by a bunch of Croat guerrillas. “We can’t have something like this happening, Mr. O’Brien! This is an international hotel—Australia is supposed to be a safe country—”

Malone waited for Danforth to say something, but the Chief Superintendent was ignoring the manager. So Malone said, “It is a safe country, a bloody sight safer than most!”

The manager had been taught how to manage all types, including jingoistic natives. “Oh, I agree, Inspector, I agree. But I’m afraid I must ask Mr. O’Brien to vacate the suite—till all this has blown over—”

O’Brien said quietly, “I’ll go when I’m ready. My lease has another—what, George?”

“Another five months to run,” said Bousakis. “Don’t worry, sir, just leave it to us and the police.”

He heaved himself out of his chair and ushered the manager out of the suite; the manager himself could not have evicted a troublesome guest more smoothly. Bousakis closed the door and came back and lowered himself into his chair.

“The corridor is full of reporters and cameramen. You want to make any statement, Brian?”

O’Brien looked at Malone; it was almost as if he didn’t know or couldn’t accept that Danforth was in charge. “What d’you reckon, Scobie?”

“Say nothing,” said Malone and looked at Danforth. “You agree, Chief?”

Danforth had been studying O’Brien, his big red face expressionless, his slightly bleary eyes unwavering. He had been drinking and his breath smelled of whisky; all of those in the room had a drink beside them but Danforth had been several drinks ahead of them when he had first appeared. Malone didn’t know how he had heard the report on the shooting, but he had arrived within ten minutes of it, ahead even of Russ Clements. His manner towards both O’Brien and Bousakis had been abrupt and he had said very little to either Malone or Clements.

“Give „em nothing,” he said at last with a growl. “The press has been giving you a bad enough trot already, Mr. O’Brien.”

O’Brien looked at the older man with cautious interest; here was another cop who wasn’t on his side. “They’re a necessary evil, Superintendent. Presidents and prime ministers couldn’t do without them.”

“You’re not running for office, Mr. O’Brien. I say stuff „em.” He looked at Bousakis, gave an order as if the latter worked for the Department: “Tell „em to get lost. There’ll be a police statement in the morning.”

Bousakis glanced at O’Brien, who hesitated, then nodded. The fat man got up again, breathing heavily with the effort, paused to finish off the whisky in his glass and went out of the suite.

Danforth said, “Is this one connected with the other hits, Inspector?”

“No,” said Malone adamantly.

“He had a Victorian driving licence,” said Clements, who had taken charge when he had arrived. He had still been at Police Centre when the call came in and he had been down here in the hotel within twenty minutes. “Joseph Gotti, from Melbourne. Born 1967. Andy Graham went back to the Centre and is getting on to the Melbourne boys to see if Gotti had a record. If he’s a hitman, I don’t think Blizzard would have been employing him. He wasn’t too bright, trying to do that job where he did.”

“Who else would have been trying to kill you, Mr. O’Brien?” said Danforth.

“Oh, several people could have it in mind.” O’Brien’s candour seemed to surprise Danforth; the bleary eyes blinked, as if behind them the sluggish mind was trying to sharpen itself. “I have enemies, Superintendent. I’ve already told Inspector Malone that.”

“Would you care to give us their names?”

“The list is too long.” O’Brien had evidently decided his candour had gone far enough.

“We can’t do much without your help, Mr. O’Brien.”

Malone and Clements were watching the match between the two men. There was a mutual antagonism, more so on Danforth’s part, that seemed to vibrate the few feet that separated them.

“I know that, Superintendent,” said O’Brien flatly, take it or leave it.

Danforth frowned; then he rose slowly from his chair. “If that’s the way you want it . . . You gunna stay here, Inspector?”

“For tonight anyway.” Malone got to his feet and followed his superior out of the suite, the latter leaving without saying good-night to either O’Brien or Clements. Out in the corridor Malone said, “Leave him to me, Harry. I’ll get what I can out of him.”

“Bugger him. He don’t deserve us looking after him.”

Some reporters and a press photographer were at the end of the corridor outside the lifts; they were held back by a uniformed policeman and a new security man who had been brought in to replace Logan, who had gone to hospital to have a bullet removed from his shoulder. Bousakis came back towards the suite’s front door.

“I told „em to be at Police Centre tomorrow morning at nine, okay?”

“Who told you to tell „em nine o’clock? I wasn’t gunna be in that early. „Night, Scobie.”

Danforth, sullen and heavy as a constipated buffalo, lumbered off along the corridor and Malone, grinning at Bousakis, pushed the fat man back into the suite. “You’ll get used to him.”

“He’s antediluvian. I thought fossils like that were all dead.”

“We keep a few as museum pieces.”

With Danforth gone the four remaining men looked at each other, as if realizing the evening had now run down; there was time for shock to take over, if there was going to be any. But Malone noticed that O’Brien seemed in control of himself and he himself had now recovered. It would be Lisa, several miles away, her bags packed for Queensland, who would still be in shock.

Clements was on his feet ready to depart. He suddenly looked tired and Malone realized that, in a way, the last few days had been as hard on the big man as on himself. It was as if Clements felt that the bullet meant for Malone, whenever it came, would hit him just as hard. Malone felt a sudden rush of affection for him.

“When does Sam Culp—or do we call him Sebastian Waldorf?—when does he get back from Melbourne with the opera company?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. I thought we’d better meet him at the airport.”

“I’m going down to Minnamook tomorrow morning,” said Clements. “I went through the files again from Goulburn. Frank Blizzard grew up in Minnamook—”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s down the South Coast, about thirty kilometres the other side of Wollongong. It’s just a village on the Minnamook River, mostly weekenders and retired people. Blizzard was an orphan, his foster parents were his uncle and aunt, the same name. I thought I’d look „em up.”

Malone glanced at O’Brien. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“I’ve got a session with the NCSC. It’ll probably last all day.”

“I’ll pick you up at 9.30,” said Bousakis and added for Malone’s benefit, “We’ll take a couple of security men with us.”

“Good,” said Malone. “Incidentally, George, how did you get here so promptly after the shooting?”

Bousakis paused a moment, as if he felt the question was out of place. Then: “I saw the commotion from the lobby. I was down there, having a snack, waiting for Brian to come back. I had those papers for him—” He nodded at a file on the coffee table in front of O’Brien. “Do we all have to account for where we were?”

“Just routine,” said Malone routinely; it was an answer that had stood the test of time. He turned back to Clements. “I’ll come down to Minnamook with you. Andy Graham can follow up things here. I’ll be up at the Centre at eight to see if there’s anything needs looking at before we leave. Get on to the local police—it’ll probably be Kiama or Wollongong—and tell „em we’d like a back-up with at least two blokes when we call on Blizzard’s uncle and auntie.”

Clements and Bousakis left together. Malone checked that there would be a security man on duty throughout the night in the corridor, then came back into the suite and locked the door. O’Brien was on the phone in the living-room.

“No, please don’t—it’s too risky for you . . . I’m all right, honestly . . . No, go back to Canberra, I’ll call you tomorrow evening at six . . . I’ll give my name as—Maloney—” He smiled tiredly across the phone at Malone as the latter came back into the room. “I love you, too.”

He hung up, sat in his chair with his elbows on his thighs and his big hands hanging limply between his knees. He looked up at Malone from under his thick brows and swore softly. “Jesus Christ, what a mess!”

Malone sat down opposite him, took off his shoes. “How did it ever happen? I mean you and Anita Norval?”

The big hands turned upwards. “I don’t know. It just did. About four months ago, before all the stink about my companies started, I was sitting next to her at a dinner. Before we got to the dessert I knew I was in love, truly in love for the first time in my life. The unbelievable part is, she called me the next day, not the other way around.”

He was not the sort of man from whom Malone would have expected confidences. He had asked the question about Anita Norval without really expecting any answer. He had never been interested in other men’s relationship with women and he would certainly have never told anyone of his own feelings for Lisa. But Anita Norval was more than just the woman in O’Brien’s life, she was the wife of the Prime Minister. If the affair ever became public, he could not imagine a worse scandal. The voters, especially the women, were emphatic that their women in public life must be beyond reproach. Public men could have affairs so long as they didn’t flaunt them; Philip Norval was suspected of being a womanizer, but he was still popular, even with the women not lucky enough to go to bed with him. But a public woman was expected to be a combination of Mother Teresa and the Virgin Mary, a paragon of virtue. Queen Marie of Rumania and Catherine the Great would have had a hard time with the locals.

“Does the PM know about it?”

“She says no. Maybe he suspects, I dunno—not me but someone else. He can’t stand me. He used to be very matey with Big Business—I was never one of his pals, but a lot of other guys were. But since The Crash a coupla years ago he’s a born-again Christian or something, at least as far as business goes. The word is that when the market crashed he was mixed up in a couple of shonky ventures and his minders got him out just in time,”

“Are there any of his ministers mixed up with you right now?”

O’Brien looked at him sideways. “What makes you ask that?”

“Who employed that hitman to try and kill you tonight?”

O’Brien laughed, but there was no humour in him. “Scobie, they don’t go that far, not down in Canberra! They have other ways of getting rid of you.”

“You told Danforth you had enemies. Who did you mean, then?”

O’Brien took off his tie, took the gold links out of his cuffs. He was debating how much he should tell Malone; he had never told even Anita the full story. All his life, though he had never been lost for words, he had always held back something of himself; had, indeed, used the flow of words as lies, as camouflage. Yet now he felt the urge to tell the truth, as if there were some salvation in it: salvation from another bullet, the final one. But he suddenly wasn’t afraid of death: that was the truth, too. He had the fatalism of someone who knew he had left everything too late.

He said carefully, “All this is off the record, okay?” Malone hesitated, then nodded. “Unless you’re going to tell me you once killed someone or had them killed.”

“No, nothing like that. I’m not a killer, I draw the line at that. No, it was the people I was mixed up with—still am. When I first came back here I had enough capital to start a small merchant bank, the O’Brien Cossack. I made a mistake calling it that, but I named it after one of my most successful rock groups. They all think I’m a sabre-wielder.” He managed a weary smile. “Which I guess I am. But the name appealed to a few characters back in those early days.”

“What sort of characters?” Malone all at once was hungry, was taking nuts by the handful from a bowl in front of him.

“Villains, real villains. I had trouble getting clients at first—the old established banks did everything they could to muscle me out. They didn’t want competition, even though they knew that pretty soon the banking system would have to be opened up. Then these characters started coming to me. One or two of my executives introduced them to me.”

“George Bousakis, for instance?”

O’Brien paused a moment. “Let’s leave names out of it for the time being. These guys came to me and asked me to launder money for them. Not as bluntly as that, but I knew what they wanted. And I said yes, because by then I was getting desperate. That got the bank on its feet. Laundering money from drugs, selling arms, bank hold-ups, art thefts in Europe—you name it, we took the money in and cleaned it up for them.”

“How?”

“Investment here and offshore. Some of it went back to Europe, some into Hong Kong real estate.”

Malone had slowly begun to like the man sitting across from him; now he felt anger and contempt sickening him. He said nothing, but what he thought and felt was plain on his face and O’Brien saw it.

“Don’t start moralizing, Scobie. I’ve been doing that to myself for the past four months, trying to turn the clock back to—Christ knows when. Back to when I was a kid, I guess. Or maybe when I first went into the police academy. Some time, anyway, before I got greedy and didn’t care how I made my money. I’m not proud of it, any of it. Not any more.”

Malone couldn’t help his cynicism: “You mean a good woman has made you see the light?”

“She doesn’t know even the half of it. But yes, in a way. But it’s too late, sport, it’s much too late.” There was no self-pity in his voice; Malone was thankful for that at least. “I know it even more than she does.”

Malone felt ill at ease on the subject of Anita Norval, as if he were peering in a window on something private. “Who are these characters? Mafia?”

“Some of them. Some from the Triads. But most of them are just plain Aussie and Kiwi crims, bastards who’d bump you off as soon as look at you.”

“They still investing through your bank?”

“Some of them, but it’s their clean stuff. I mean no dirty money, stuff to be laundered, has come in for, I dunno, three or four years. I just let „em know the bank was under suspicion, that the Costigan investigators were looking into us.”

The Costigan commission had been an enquiry into crime and corruption that had gradually widened and deepened its net till the catch had become embarrassing.

“Were they looking into you?”

“No, but it looked like a good way of easing out those characters, or anyway of stopping laundering their money. By then the bank was becoming respectable.”

“So they still have deposits with you, I mean the money they originally gave you?”

“Yes. They’re in bonds, in companies the bank recommended. That’s the trouble—the bonds are mostly junk now. They also don’t like the way they were bought out of a mining company I started.”

“So they’ve been pressuring you?” O’Brien nodded; and Malone went on, “Anyone else? Any politicians mixed up in this?” Again O’Brien nodded. “Who?”

“No names, Scobie. Not yet.”

Malone wanted to ask if Arnold Debbs was one of the names, but he refrained. “You’re making it bloody difficult to keep you safe. And me, too. That bloke tonight meant to kill me when I chased him down into the garage.”

O’Brien said quietly, “How did you feel about killing him?”

“It was him or me—I didn’t think about it. I’ll start to think about it when I have to write my report. The Department’s pretty tough on any cop who’s trigger-happy. I don’t like using my gun.” He was calm enough now, but he knew the real sweat would begin later in the darkness just before he would fall asleep. He repeated, “But it was him or me.”

“I’m sorry about that.” There was a note of genuine regret in O’Brien’s voice; it struck Malone all at once that he was looking for a friend, even a straight cop. “I’d have spilled the beans on everyone if he’d killed you.”

He’s gone too far: Malone had believed him up till that point. “Yeah,” he said dryly. “I’d have appreciated that.”

O’Brien had enough shame to grin. “Okay, no extravagant promises. But don’t get killed on my account, Scobie.”

“I’ll try not to.” He took another handful of nuts and stood up. He was suddenly tired, though the hour was still early. “I’m going to bed. My wife will be calling me at seven—she and the two younger kids are leaving first thing for Queensland.”

“I bought an island up there a coupla years ago, off the Barrier Reef. I was going to retire there. If I lived that long,” he added after a moment.

Malone turned back at his bedroom door. “Brian, when you were a greedy-guts, when you were flat out gathering all this loot, did you ever give a thought for the poor buggers without any, the battlers?”

“Only my old man. But like I told you, he didn’t want to know me.”

“What about the other battlers?”

“Never.”

“Well, it looks as if they’re going to have the last laugh.” Malone tossed the last nut into his mouth. “Maybe it’s true that the meek will inherit the earth.”

O’Brien, now at his own bedroom door, shook his head. “Only if there are no prior claims. If I don’t take it away from the battlers, some other bastard will. There are no saints in private enterprise, Scobie. Good-night.”

III

Lisa called Malone at seven o’clock next morning, right on time; when she named a time, one could set the GPO clock by her. She told him to be careful, told him she loved him, then put Maureen and Tom on.

“Will you ring us each night at Noosa, Daddy?” said Maureen.

“Can I make it collect? Righto, I’ll call you. Take care.”

“You too, Daddy.” She sounded suddenly very grown-up. “It’s a bugger of a job being a policeman, isn’t it?”

“Watch your language, kid. Is that what they teach you at Holy Spirit?”

“It’s French. Je boo-ger, tu boo-ger . . .”

Smart-arse kids: the American TV family sitcoms were breeding them in homes all over the globe. “You’ve been listening to those cute little creeps on TV again.”

“When can I start swearing?” said Tom on the extension phone.

“When I retire as a cop. Take care of Mum, Tom. When you come back I’ll take you to the rugby league grand final.”

“I’d rather go to the soccer.”

“You’ll go to the rugby league.” What were sons for if they weren’t for going to football matches that their fathers followed?

Malone hung up, sat for a moment hugging the thought of the children to himself. He looked at his watch: it was too early to call Claire at school. He would call her this evening, hope that she would not have heard the news of his narrow escape last night. But he knew it was a faint hope: her antenna was as sensitive as her mother’s.

He went out to have breakfast with O’Brien. He had forgotten to order it last night, but O’Brien had anticipated that he was a man of healthy appetite in the mornings. There was cereal, juice, bacon and eggs and pork sausages, toast and honey and marmalade and tea or coffee. Malone, still hungry, sat down to enjoy the lot.

“Just as well you have no kids from your marriages.”

“Yeah. I’ve always thought W. C. Fields was right. Any man who hates kids can’t be all bad.”

“My three would clobber you unconscious if they heard you. I think I might do it myself.”

“Sorry.” Again there was the abrupt change in tone, the almost desperate plea for friendship. “Maybe when this is all over, I could meet them. They might change my mind.”

“What about Anita? Is she a child-lover?”

“I think so. We’ve never talked about it. She’s a grandmother, you know.” He shook his head in wonder. “It’s hard to believe, when you look at her. Ten years ago, if someone had told me I’d be in love with a grandmother, I’d have thought it was—was obscene.”

“All those under twenty-five still think it’s obscene.”

George Bousakis came to pick up O’Brien; the two of them left for Cossack House with two fresh security men. Malone went down with them in the lift, said goodbye to them as they got into a hire car with darkly tinted windows, and stepped out into the wind-swept street. He looked up at the buildings opposite, but could see no open window: Blizzard was not waiting for him there.

He walked up to Police Centre, glad of the exercise in the cold gusty morning; August was blowing itself out in ambushing blasts that lurked at every corner. The walk and the wind revived him, as if last night had been blown out of him. He was an objective cop again. Well, almost . . .

Clements was waiting for him with the report from Melbourne. “Gotti had a record, he’s been in trouble since he was fourteen. Breaking and entering, assault, armed hold-up—he got only two years for that one, the judge thought he’d been led astray by older elements. The Victorian boys have put ha-ha after that one. They’ve suspected him of two hits down in Melbourne, but they couldn’t pin „em on him.”

“They know any of his connections?”

“Mostly older crims down in Melbourne, none of „em Mafia. He was Italian, but he stayed away from them. He had a connection in Canberra, he went up there twice in the past month, and he’d been to Sydney three times in the past coupla months. The Melbourne guys missed his trip this time, they don’t know when he came up to Sydney.”

“Why didn’t they contact us the other times?”

“What for? He hadn’t done anything. Would we have been happy if they’d contacted us to keep an eye on all their crims who they thought might be up to something? We’d be out at Mascot watching every plane coming in from Melbourne.”

Police co-operation was improving nationally, but there was still a hangover from not-so-long-ago when each of the State forces and the Federal force were suspicious of the others’ honesty and efficiency. Those, however, had been the days before crime had become organized, before the crims had given a new meaning to commonwealth.

“Righto, put someone on to seeing when he arrived and where he stayed. Something may turn up.” But he wasn’t hopeful. “Give me twenty minutes or so while I write my report on last night, then we’ll go down and see what we can find out about Frank Blizzard.”

“You heard from Sam Culp?”

“No. These bloody theatrical types . . . I rang again this morning, but they told me he didn’t stay at his hotel last night. I dunno, maybe he’s shacked up somewhere with some soprano. We’ll meet him at the airport.”

They drove down to Minnamook in an unmarked car, the windows up against the wind sweeping across the scrubby trees on top of the South Coast escarpment. Malone looked out at the grey-green featureless landscape, forbidding and secretive as the whole wide continent behind it; two hundred years, he thought, and all we’ve done is chipped away at the edges of it. Flat and sunbaked, it yet held more mystery than even the darkest jungle. Fantasy took hold of him as he half-dozed in the car’s warmth: Frank Blizzard was held there somewhere in the mystery.

Going down the F5 freeway Clements carelessly let the car wind itself up above the 110 kilometres-an-hour speed limit; he was doing 125 when he saw the flashing lights of the highway patrol car in his driving mirror. He wound down his window and put his blue light out on the roof; at the same time he eased his foot off the accelerator. The highway patrol car flashed its lights again, then slowed down and dropped away.

“It’s nice to see they’re doing their job,” Clements said with a grin.

They dropped down off the escarpment, easing their way past the heavy coal trucks, their air brakes gasping, on their way down to the steelworks at Port Kembla. They skirted Wollongong, possibly the cleanest industrial city in the world, certainly in winter; the smoke from the steel mills blew almost horizontally out to sea, lying on top of the tall smoke-stacks like the splintered, broken half of a thick mast. An empty coal truck passed them going the other way, speeding like a runaway locomotive, building up momentum for the long climb up to the top of the escarpment.

“The highway boys will get him,” said Clements smugly, his foot now innocent, their speed down to just below the limit.

Twenty minutes later they turned off into Minnamook. It was half a dozen stores, all owner-run, and perhaps a couple of hundred houses, most of them modest but with two or three would-be mansions up on the southern bluff where the Minnamook River ran into the sea behind the spit of sand dunes and ocean beach. It was the sort of village one found all up and down the South and North coasts from Sydney, some of them a century or more old, but all of them now under threat from developers. So far Minnamook seemed to be safe from the development blight.

Clements went into a newsagency and general store, came out and got back into the car. “That guy remembers Blizzard. He’s been here fifty years, he wanted to tell me his life story.”

“Don’t we all?” But the garrulous were often the best source of what a cop wanted to know.

“Blizzard delivered papers for him as a kid. He was an orphan, like I told you. His uncle is dead, but his auntie still lives here.”

“I’d rather be dealing with his uncle.”

“So would I. But Auntie it’s gotta be.”

Elsie Blizzard lived in a small weatherboard house fronting on to the riverbank. When Clements and Malone pulled up, two uniformed men, both young, appeared out of a side-street.

Malone introduced himself and Clements. “Does the old lady know we’re coming?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

They were eager and intelligent, one eye on transfer to the Big Smoke, where pollution and corruption might get up their nose but where life was at least interesting. They had the naïveté of the ambitious innocent who had not yet begun to climb, who did not know that the rungs were greasy with other men’s disillusion. It did Malone’s heart good to listen to them.

“Our inspector warned us about Blizzard and what you think he’s been up to. We’ve been here since nine o’clock and we haven’t seen anyone hanging around.”

“Unless, of course, he’s in the house with his aunt,” said the officer who had first spoken.

Malone had considered that possibility, but hadn’t mentioned it to Clements. He looked at the big man and saw that, if he had not done so before, he was certainly considering it now. He had taken his gun out of his holster and put it in the pocket of his raincoat, keeping his hand in the pocket.

“One of you go around to the river side of the house,” said Malone. “If he comes out, challenge him. If he doesn’t stop, shoot.”

“To kill?” The two young officers had looked at each other; then the first one had asked the question.

“To kill,” said Malone and hated the thought that he might be ordering these young men to kill their first man. “Who’s going?”

Again the young officers looked at each other, then the second one, stocky and ginger-haired, his bright blue eyes now clouded with the unexpected, said, “I’ll go, Reg.”

He went off at once, as if to be gone before his will suddenly folded, vaulting the low fence of the house next door and disappearing up the far side of it. Malone looked at the other young man, a good-looking dark lad with thick straight brows and a mouth that looked more used to smiling than being pinched nervously as it was now.

“What’s your name, Reg?”

“Capresi, sir.”

“Why did they send two junior constables?”

“I guess they weren’t expecting any trouble, sir. There’s a demonstration on in the „Gong today, there’s a strike at the steelworks, and I guess they figured that was more important. Sorry, Inspector, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. But down here local issues come first, you know what I mean?”

“Sure, I understand.” Malone didn’t look at Clements. He was angry at himself for not having stressed the seriousness of this visit to Minnamook. “All right, just stand behind your car. If anything happens when that front door opens, if there’s any gunfire, get on to your headquarters right away. I’ll want back-up here immediately, local issues or not. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Malone and Clements, the latter still with his hand in his raincoat pocket, walked up the concrete path between the small, neatly trimmed lawns and the winter-brown shrubs. They reached the blue front door and there Mrs. Blizzard met them head-on. She flung open the door and Malone and Clements instinctively stepped aside, one going one way, the other the other. Mrs. Blizzard looked at them in angry puzzlement.

“What’s the matter with you two? What do you want?”

“Police, Mrs. Blizzard. Inspector Malone and Sergeant Clements.” He produced his badge.

“Police? What’s this all about? You expected me, an old woman, to be timid, didn’t you?” They followed her into the cottage. “Shut the door, keep the wind out. I believe in saying what I think, that’s my right, right? Tea or coffee? It’s only instant, that’s all I can afford on my pension. The cost of living’s going up all the time, but do they care in Canberra, right?”

“Whichever you have the most of,” said Malone. “Tea, coffee, it doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t be polite. Make up your mind!”

“Coffee,” said Clements hastily and looked at Malone. If Blizzard was in this house, he would be properly cowed.

The house appeared to have three bedrooms, a bathroom and an open-plan kitchen and living-room that looked out to the slow-flowing river, where a pelican was just gliding in, like an old-time flying-boat. The rooms were stuffed with furniture: solid old-style chairs, tables and sideboards of polished cedar; the antique dealers of Paddington and Woollahra would pick the house clean if they were invited in. The walls were covered in old paintings, all of them cheap and amateurish, and old faded photographs; the house was a museum. Mrs. Blizzard hopped around in it like a long-legged bower-bird.

The two detectives sank down into deep leather chairs; some of the horsehair stuffing showed through one or two cracks. Mrs. Blizzard, chattering all the time, brought them coffee and a biscuit tin, at least a hundred years old, full of biscuits.

“Made them myself. Now what’s this all about?”

“It’s about your nephew Frank. We think he could help us in some enquiries we’re making.”

“What’s he been up to now?” Mrs. Blizzard bit into one of her biscuits, working her mouth with her lips closed as her dentures slipped. She was a tall woman, all bony angles; she might once have been good-looking, but now her face was wrinkled and gaunt. She had a head of thick white hair, bright blue eyes and, so far, no smile. She sat on a high-backed chair, taller than the two men sunk in their deep chairs. If she could only have remained still for a moment she would have suggested a dignified arrogance.

“What did he get up to when he was young? Or lately?”

“I haven’t heard from him in, oh I dunno, ten years, maybe more. No, he was a good boy when he was young. A bit moody, but only children often are, so they tell me. Sometimes he was a bit, too, well, quiet, we thought. But him and Jeff, my husband, got on well together.”

“How did he get on with you?” Malone put the question gently.

She glanced away for a moment, then back at the two detectives. “Not the best. I was a bit strict with him, he didn’t like being told when he was wrong. Jeff would take his side, so in the end I used to keep my mouth shut. I don’t think he ever got over the death of his parents, losing them when he was so young.”

“Did he ever talk about wanting to join the police?”

“He used to talk about it with Jeff. He wanted to be a detective—like you two, I suppose. He was always reading detective stories when he was young, Jeff would get them for him from the library in Kiama. American stories, Raymond Chandler, a writer named Macdonald or O’Donnell, something like that. I used to read them myself before he’d take the books back to get a new one.”

“They were about private eyes,” said Malone. “Sergeant Clements and I never have those sort of adventures.”

“Did you know him when he went to train at the police college or whatever it was?”

“Slightly. He never told us how much he wanted to be a detective.”

“He got into some sort of trouble there. He told Jeff about it, but I never got the gist of it, even. Jeff wouldn’t tell me. He was dead, anyway, two days later.”

“Who?” said Clements, as if he and Malone had missed something.

“Jeff. My husband. He had a heart attack and he went—just like that. It was a terrible shock.” She stopped, bit her lip: twenty-odd years ago was only yesterday, grief was there in the blood like an ineradicable cancer. Then she recovered, she was a woman who would never weep in public: “It hit Frank very hard. I thought at one time he was going to go out of his mind. He went—what’s the word?”

“Berserk?” said Malone.

She nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s it. He blamed Jeff’s death on what had happened to him up at the police college. He just said it once, but it was frightening, the way he said it.”

“Did the doctor think it was that that killed your husband?”

She shook her head. “Not really. We didn’t know it, Jeff and me, I mean, but his heart attack was just waiting to happen. Any shock could have killed him, any sort of sudden stress, they said. But maybe Frank was right. I’ll never know.”

“What happened after your husband’s death?”

“The day after the funeral Frank left home. I never saw him again. I never forgave him for going off and leaving me like that. We’d looked after him ever since he was two years old. You expect a bit more gratitude than that, right? What’s he done?”

Malone ignored that for the moment. “You never heard from him again?”

“Oh, I’d get the occasional Christmas card, sometimes a short letter. From up in Queensland most of the time, but I remember I got a couple from Darwin. The last Christmas cards were from places in Europe, I can’t remember where. I never kept them. I hadn’t forgiven him for going off the way he did. I said, what’s he done?”

“What sort of jobs did he have? I mean before he went into the police force and then up to Queensland?”

“He was a timber-worker. Jeff, my husband, worked as a timber-cutter all his life. So did Frank’s father. The Blizzards have been in the district for over a hundred years. They worked in the cedar forests up there in the hills. They’re all gone now, the cedar and the Blizzards.” She put her cup and saucer down on a cedar table, said demandingly, “Now stop beating about the bush. What’s he done?”

Malone wanted to cushion the blow, but he could think of no way of doing it. It had happened before: no matter how much you hated it, you hit the woman harder than you intended. “We suspect him of murder. Four murders, in fact.”

“Four? Who?”

“Three men and a girl. None of them related.” He didn’t elaborate. “You might’ve read about „em in the papers.”

“I never read about violence.”

The wrinkles in her face seemed to increase; the bright blue eyes dimmed with sudden pain. She’s tried to cut him out of her life, Malone thought, but it hasn’t worked. She turned her head and looked at a wooden-framed photo on the wall; one amongst many, but there was no doubt which one she was looking at. Malone had missed it amongst the gallery hung on the walls. A tall teenage boy, hair cut short, dressed in baggy overalls, stood in an awkward pose, a rifle held with both hands in front of him, four rabbits lying at his feet in a heap like a rumpled mat.

“That’s him?” said Clements. “Was he a good shot?”

“My husband said he was the best shot he’d ever seen. They used to go hunting together, up the river. Sometimes Jeff would come home empty-handed, but Frank would always have something, a rabbit or a duck.” She looked back at the two policemen. “Murder? Four murders? No, not Frank!”

“Yes,” said Malone. “Don’t you believe he’s capable of committing them?”

“No,” she said, but it seemed that her voice held no conviction.

“We don’t have any proof yet, but he’s the chief suspect. We still have to trace him. We don’t even know what he looks like now.” He glanced at the photo on the wall, then looked back at Mrs. Blizzard. “We’d like to borrow that photo to make a copy. Would you recognize him now if you saw him?”

She was still getting over the shock of what she had been told. She had never had any children of her own, but she had known what it was like to be a mother. “I dunno. We all change, don’t we? I’ve changed.” She nodded at another photo on a wall: a proud girl, dark-haired, very tanned, stared at the three of them. She reminded Malone of pictures he had seen of early Egyptian princesses, but he didn’t know whether Mrs. Blizzard would consider that a compliment. “When you look in the mirror, do you remember what you looked like when you were young?”

No: you remembered other faces better than your own. Except that he could not remember Frank Blizzard’s. “What would Frank be now?”

“Forty-five, I think. Maybe forty-four. Is that still middle-aged? It was in my day. But everyone wants to be younger now, don’t they?”

Then the phone rang. For some reason Clements started in his chair, as if he had expected there would be no phone amongst all the old heavy furniture. Mrs. Blizzard got up, went to the sideboard and lifted a needlepoint cover that Malone had thought was a tea-cosy. Under it was the telephone.

“Hallo? . . . Yes. Who’s this?” Then her hand shook and she almost dropped the phone. “No, Frank, no. Where are you?” She looked at Malone, mouthed, It’s him. “No, Frank, I didn’t send for them—”

Malone jumped up, grabbed the phone, jerking it from her hand more roughly than he had intended. “Blizzard? This is Inspector Malone—”

“I know who you are, Malone. You’ve been in my sights for a couple of weeks. You’re dead, Malone, whether you know it or not.”

There was silence for a moment; then the dial tone burrowed against his ear. He put down the phone, replaced the needlepoint cover. Then he put his hand on Mrs. Blizzard’s bony arm, felt the trembling flooding through her. She was on the point of tears and he thought for a moment he had hurt her when he had snatched the phone from her. Then he saw that the pain was much deeper, was all through her. He gently eased her back on to her chair.

“Did he threaten you?”

She shook her head, was dumb for a long moment. Then: “No. He asked me if I’d sent for you . . . As if I would—” She had forgotten that she had tried to cut him out of her life.

“Was it a local call? Or were there pips from an STD call?”

She shook her head again, not even looking at him. “No pips. No one ever calls me on a trunk call.”

Malone said to Clements, “That means he tailed us down here. Did you see anyone on our tail all the way down?”

“I wasn’t even looking for anyone,” Clements confessed. “If that highway guy hadn’t flashed his lights at me, I wouldn’t have noticed him.”

Malone turned back to Mrs. Blizzard. She had poured herself another cup of coffee and seemed to be gathering some strength from it. He remembered an old aspirin powder slogan: a cuppa tea, a Bex and a nice lie-down; but he didn’t think Mrs. Blizzard would ever lie down, not even for a murdering foster-son. There was something of the durability of cedar in her.

“I think we’d better have a policewoman move in here with you—”

“No,” she said firmly and put down her cup and saucer, her hand stiff and firm as a wrench. “Nobody’s moving in here with me, not a stranger. I can look after myself, I’ve done it ever since my husband died. I’m just glad now that he’s dead,” she added and there was just a slight tremor in her voice. “Don’t worry about me, Inspector. Frank won’t hurt me.”

Malone wasn’t so sure, but he knew he would never win an argument with her, not if he stayed here all day. “Well, we’d better tell the local police to drop by every now and then.”

“I don’t want them here—” But her objection now was only half-hearted.

“If Frank calls again, you’ll let us know.” He put his card on the table beside her cup and saucer.

She took her time about replying; then: “Depends what he talks to me about. If I think he’s going to commit another—another murder, all right, I’ll ring you. But not if he just wants to talk to me. I’m still his foster-mother, right?”

Malone had seen it before, the apron strings pulling the mother down into the drowning pool; but he knew Lisa would be the same if any of the children ever got into trouble. “Fair enough. Is there anyone else here in Minnamook that he’s likely to contact? Old mates? An old girl-friend?”

“He had only one mate, but he was killed in Vietnam. He never had a regular girl-friend. He could be a little queer at times.”

“Was he homosexual?”

She was shocked, it was something beyond her ken. “Frank? Here in Minnamook? We’d never stand for anything like that, not when Frank lived here. Not even now. We’re churchgoers around here,” she said, as if hell and its sins were miles away across the river and up in Sydney.

Minnamook had still managed to breed a multiple murderer: but Malone didn’t mention that. He didn’t know why he had asked the question about the possibility of homosexuality; it smacked of Clements’ prejudices. “Did he play the field with the girls?”

“Play the field?” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like that expression. He didn’t have loose morals, if that’s what you mean. He was a decent, religious boy all the time he lived with us.”

Well, he’s a sinner now. “Righto, Mrs. Blizzard. We’ll probably be in touch again. Can Sergeant Clements take that photo? We’ll send it back.”

She took the photo from the wall, handed it to Clements. “You’ll ring me if you catch him? I don’t want to read it in the papers or hear it on the wireless. I have the right to be the first to know, right?”

“We’ll let you know at once, as soon as we catch him. Goodbye, Mrs. Blizzard. And don’t be too rough on the local police. They only have your interest at heart.”

“Just so long’s they don’t want to come into my home. I did you a favour letting you in.”

“And we appreciate it,” said Malone as she shut the front door in his face.

He knew with certainty, as if he were staring at her through clear glass, that behind the door she had already begun to weep. She would, however, never let anyone see the tears. She reminded him, in a way, of his own mother and he wished, somehow, that he could help her. But that was beyond him. Whatever he might do from now on would only hurt her even more.

IV

They thanked the two young policemen for their support and sent them back to Wollongong and local issues. Then they drove back north, Clements now alert to anyone who might be following them. But there was too much traffic on the freeway and it was impossible to tell if any particular car was tailing them. Once they pulled into the side of the road and stopped, but the following cars and trucks just hurtled by without slowing.

Clements shook his head. “He’s too smart. We’re never gunna catch him this way.”

Malone looked at his watch. “We’re not going to make it to the airport in time. Let’s see if Mr. Waldorf has already arrived home.”

They drove on and at the southern outskirts of Sydney, at Sutherland, they turned east and drove down to Yowie Bay. In the twenties and thirties it had been an area of very modest weekenders, interspersed with the occasional fibro or weatherboard cottage of a retired blue-collar worker. Fishermen frequented it to catch trevalli and leatherjackets; the odd shark or two had been sighted in the narrow bay, but they had been scared off in the years after World War Two by the real estate developers, as had the fishermen. The waterfront now was occupied by expensive houses, some of them with pretensions to mansions; behind them were more modest houses, solid in their own pretensions. This was an area of postwar money and the locals were proud to show it.

Sebastian Waldorf’s home had a waterfrontage, but it was not a mansion. It had pretensions to being an Italian villa, a suitable abode for an opera singer; the builder, an immigrant from Lombardy, had tried to imagine Yowie Bay as Lake Garda. There was a pool at the water’s edge and a five-metre boat moored at a small jetty. A red Lancia stood in the driveway.

Malone said, “I always thought opera singers made less than plumbers in this country?”

“No, it’s cops who make less than plumbers,” said Clements, parking the car at the kerb. “Sebastian—I guess we’d better get used to calling him that—made his money overseas. He does all right back here, but he doesn’t make the loot that Joan Sutherland and some of the others do.”

“Are you an opera lover?”

“I always thought Il Trovatore was some sort of pasta. I once ordered it in a restaurant.”

Sebastian Waldorf, né Samuel Culp, himself opened the rather ornate front door. “Yes? Are you reporters?”

“No,” said Malone. “Were you expecting someone from the press?”

Waldorf’s face had been wide open in a welcoming smile; now all at once it closed up and he frowned. “Who are you?”

Malone introduced himself and Clements. “You might remember me? We were in the same group at the police academy back in 1965.”

“When you were plain Sam Culp,” said Clements with a policeman’s ever-present suspicion of aliases.

Waldorf’s face remained closed up. He was tall and well-built, a man who obviously took care of himself; he had Italian good looks that went well with the villa and the car. He was wearing a red cashmere sweater, tight designer jeans, expensive loafers and a gold watch on one wrist and a heavy gold bracelet on the other. He would never be lonely while he had a mirror to look into. Here was someone who would remember how he had looked every day of his life.

“What’s this all about?” He had lost his Australian accent, he had an international voice that, Malone guessed, would take on the accent of wherever he happened to be.

“I think it would be better if we came inside, Mr. Waldorf,” said Malone.

The singer nodded and led them through a wide entrance lobby into a large living-room that looked out on to the bay through a screen of white-limbed gums. It was well furnished, but it did not look lived in, as if it saw its owner infrequently. There were paintings on the walls, all of them modern and none of them suggesting any Australian landscape. One wall was given up to shelves of books, records and cassettes and at least a dozen photographs of Waldorf in opera costume, sometimes with another singer, always a woman.

A good-looking young woman with long blonde hair and the beginnings of the build of an old-style Brünnhilde stood up nervously as the three men came into the room. Her bosom was slightly lopsided under her yellow sweater, as if she had not succeeded in getting both her breasts back into her brassière in time.

“This is Miss Vigil, one of my pupils. She is in the chorus of the company. We’ve just come back from Melbourne.”

Miss Vigil said hullo, gave Malone and Clements a charming smile, thanked Mr. Waldorf for his lesson and left the room. Malone waited for the closing of the front door, but heard nothing; Miss Vigil had just gone to another part of the house to await another lesson in whatever it was Mr. Waldorf was teaching her. Waldorf waved the two detectives to chairs and offered them a beer, which they accepted.

Then Malone told him why they were here. “You’re on the hit list, we think. Do you remember Frank Blizzard?”

Waldorf had sat down, exposing red cashmere socks to match his sweater. Malone tried not to look at Clements, who was viewing all this sartorial splendour with the sick expression of a diabetic showered in jelly-beans. The singer shook his head. “I can’t remember him, not what he looked like.”

“We keep running up against that all the time. None of us remember what he looked like. I saw a photo of him this morning as a teenager, it’s out in the car, but even that didn’t ring a bell.”

“I remember the incident when we threw him out into the street in his underpants.” He half-laughed, then changed his mind. “No, one shouldn’t laugh. It’s bloody serious.”

“Is your season over?”

“No, I have another three weeks to go, then I go overseas. I have to do The Magic Flute and La Traviata. Are you opera fans?”

“No,” said the police chorus.

Waldorf smiled, relaxing for the first time since he had let them into the house. “I wasn’t, at one time. I was in the police choir—you probably don’t remember me being in that—and I used to think even Victor Herbert was highbrow stuff. Then someone told me I had a voice, not a great one but a good one. I got a scholarship to the Conservatorium, then another one to London. That was when I left the force. I went overseas, England, Germany, a couple of times in Italy. I did all right. Nothing like Sutherland—but then who does as well as her? I’m a baritone and we’re never in as much demand as tenors. Tenors and sopranos, they’re the spoiled ones. But I look good—” He spread his hands to display himself; Malone wondered if, with the tight jeans, he was working towards being a tenor. “And I’m versatile. The women with tin ears come to look at me prancing around in tight pants and the music lovers come to hear Pavarotti and the really great voices. Between us we guarantee bums on seats and that’s the name of the game now in opera, the same as it is in everything else. On top of that, it beats the bejesus out of singing in the police choir.”

He was a mixture of conceit and tongue-in-cheek. A woman, had she been there, would have understood his attraction for her sex; Malone and Clements were still suspicious. Malone said, “Do you have a family?”

“My wife is German. She’s taken the two kids home to Cologne.”

“You mean she’s left you?”

“Is that any of your business?” There was a quick glance towards the door where Miss Vigil had exited, then he was looking at Malone again.

“Yes. If Blizzard comes here trying to get you, we don’t want anyone else to get in his way. That’s the only reason for asking,” he added, backing down. If the singer had lost his wife and children, he felt sorry for him, even if it was Waldorf’s own fault. The break-up of any family wounded him because it reminded him of the preciousness of his own.

Waldorf, too, backed down. “Yes. She won’t be back. One of the reasons I’m going back to Europe is to be near the kids.”

“In the meantime, does anyone live here with you?” Like Miss Vigil?

“No. Sometimes a—a friend stays overnight, but I’m here on my own mostly.”

Clements had got up and walked to the sliding glass doors that led out on to the terrazzo patio. The doors were closed against the wind coming across the bay, turning the water into a blue-white ruffled shawl. Two kookaburras sat on the long arm of a gumtree, their backs to the wind, looking as if they had given up laughing for life. Down below, the small yacht bumped against the jetty, its tall mast swinging from side to side like a metronome.

“Is that your boat down there? Do you ever go out in it?”

“Every chance I get,” said Waldorf. “That’s my main relaxation.”

Clements turned back to face him. “Leave it alone for a while. This guy could pick you off easily while you’re out there on the water.”

Waldorf looked at the glass of beer in his hand, which he had hardly touched. Then he set it down on the marble-topped coffee table in front of him, put his hands lightly on the table and looked at them. “I’m shivering all of a sudden. Did the others do that when you warned them? Did you, Scobie?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not used to playing hero—most baritones have to play villains.”

“That’s the last thing we want, you playing hero. Leave that to Russ.”

“Thanks,” said Russ.

“We can’t afford to give you around-the-clock protection—What do we call you? Sebastian, Seb, Sam?”

“What do you call Horrie O’Brien?”

“Brian. Sometimes when I’m feeling Irish, I call him Brian Boru.” He could see that Waldorf, or Sam Culp, was just talking while he tried to glue the pieces of himself together again. Talk often held a person together more than the person himself realized. “Will Seb do?”

“My wife always called me Sebastian.” He spoke in the past tense, as if reconciliation was out of the question and he had said goodbye to her. “She never liked the Aussie habit of cutting names down.”

“Righto, Sebastian it is, but I dunno how long it’ll last. It’s a mouthful.”

“So’s Brian Boru.”

“I think you’d better pack a bag and we’ll take you back to town with us. He doesn’t know it, but you’re going to move in with Brian Boru and me for a night or two till we can get something arranged for you. He has a suite at the Congress. You’ll have to sleep with a cop, me, but there are twin beds.”

“I once slept with a tenor, a lyric tenor—a cop’ll be no worse. I have to sing tomorrow night, you know. I’m Papageno, the bird-catcher in The Magic Flute.”

“Can’t you get out of it?”

Waldorf shook his head. “We’re short on singers. This bloody „flu that’s going around has flattened two of the other baritones. I’m not being heroic—I’d be more than happy to bow out. I’d leave for Germany tomorrow, if I could. But I can’t.”

“The show must go on?” Clements’ tone was faintly sarcastic, he still hadn’t warmed to the opera singer. I’ll have to have a word with you, Russ, Malone told him silently.

“You think that’s all bullshit? Show business is no different from any other business, Russ. You keep it going if you possibly can. You don’t cancel performances and throw the money back at those who’ve bought tickets, not if you can help it. I’ll go on tomorrow night, but not because I think I’m starring in some old Hollywood movie with Mario Lanza.”

Then the phone rang, just as it did in old Hollywood movies. It was picked up elsewhere in the house; Miss Vigil evidently had answering privileges. Waldorf half-turned towards a phone on a buffet against one wall, then changed his mind and turned back to Malone and Clements.

“That’s probably the company’s assistant manager—there’s a quick run-through tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll get O’Brien to have one of his security men go to the Opera House with you.”

“You think that’ll be necessary? Blizzard won’t try his luck there, he’s not going to be the phantom of the opera.” Waldorf seemed to be regaining some of his flair; or he was as good an actor as he was a singer, something Malone had read was not usual with opera singers.

“How will it affect your singing?” There was no sarcasm in Clements’ voice this time, more just a tinge of reluctant admiration.

“There’s a duet in the last act where I sing my name with the soprano. We have to stammer. I sing the first syllable of Papageno forty-eight times before I get my name out. I’ll be perfect tomorrow night!”

Then Miss Vigil came to the door, her attractive looks pinched with puzzlement. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Waldorf, but that was some chap who said to give you a message right away before Inspector Malone left.”

“What message?” said Malone.

“It was a man, he didn’t give his name. He just said to sing this—” She looked at the three men, smiled in embarrassment, then began to sing in a soft voice a song Sebastian Waldorf would never have taught her: “Three green bottles standing on the wall / And if one green bottle should accidentally fall / There’d be two green bottles . . .”