8

I

WHEN O’BRIEN and Bousakis walked out of the National Companies and Securities Commission hearing, there were reporters and cameramen waiting on the pavement outside. O’Brien instantly about-turned and stepped back into the building. Bousakis, considerably bulkier, took a little longer to turn round and follow him, like an oil tanker trying to catch up with its tug.

“What the bloody hell are they doing here?” O’Brien demanded.

“I don’t know, Brian. I guess they know things are coming to a climax. Maybe they were expecting it today. All you have to do is shake your head and say no comment.”

O’Brien looked out at the restless group being held back from charging into the building by two Commission security guards. All the channels were represented there: the four commercial channels, the ABC and even the SBS. Frustrated by the guards, the cameramen backed off and photographed each other, a regular habit, as if there were a union rule amongst cameramen that they should have as much exposure as the reporters.

“Is the car out there yet?”

“Not yet—yes, there it is now! You want to make a run for it?”

O’Brien had a sediment of humour still left in him; he looked at Bousakis and grinned. “You run, George. That’ll look better on TV than any shot of me.”

He didn’t see the tightening on Bousakis’ face as the latter turned away. They pushed through the doors and went out across the pavement as O’Brien’s own security guard got out of the hired car and opened the rear door for them. The cameramen and the reporters swooped like scavenging gulls, squawking questions, but O’Brien dived into the car and Bousakis’ bulk blocked the microphones and cameras from getting too close to their quarry. Bousakis collapsed into the seat, the car seemed to subside on the rear axle; the security guard slammed the door and jumped into the front seat beside the driver. The car slid away from the kerb and the media gulls shrugged and moved off in quest of their next target.

O’Brien and Bousakis didn’t speak till they had reached O’Brien’s office in Cossack House. Then Bousakis, without preliminary, said, “I think you’d better start preparing for the worst, Brian. That session this afternoon couldn’t have been worse.”

O’Brien nodded morosely, working his big hands together. “Yeah. But I haven’t played all my cards yet. We can still make a deal.”

“Brian, they’re not interested in those crims, Jack Aldwych and the others. That’s not their brief.”

“They’ll have to be, if I get on to the Crime Authority at the same time. I’ll play one against the other.”

“That’ll be risky.”

“I got into this mess taking risks. Maybe it’s the only way out of it.”

Bousakis shifted his huge bulk in his chair, like a hippo that had found a rock in its wallow. “I haven’t mentioned this before, Brian. But what happens to me if you go under?”

“I haven’t thought about it, George.” O’Brien’s frankness somehow was not offensive; Bousakis had come to expect it. “You’ll make out. We’ll fix it so’s when you leave here you go with a decent handshake. Then when the roof falls in it’ll be too late for them to do anything about it. You’ll have no trouble getting another job. You’re clean.”

“I shan’t get another job like this one. There’s a recession coming up, Brian, or hadn’t you noticed? Or anyway, banks are closing, all the foreign ones are packing up and going home. That’s all I know, investment, dealing in money.”

“George, you’re an administrator, too, as good as any in town. I’ll write you a reference that’ll have corporations chasing you down the street as soon as you walk out of here.”

“You think they’ll take any notice of a reference from you?” That was offensive and Bousakis meant it to be; he hadn’t forgotten the crack about how he would look on TV screens if he broke into a run.

O’Brien had been about to reach for a tissue in a desk drawer; now he paused and looked up, all at once very stiff. “It’s got cool all of a sudden, hasn’t it? I mean in here.”

Bousakis was as stiff and still as O’Brien; he had turned from a hippo into a rhino, ready to charge. “I didn’t get this firm into the mess it’s in—you did that all on your own. I thought Cossack was going to be my future, but now all of us, not just me, we’re going to finish up out on the street. All because you got so fucking greedy you couldn’t stop yourself!”

O’Brien had never seen Bousakis so worked up; he was not an excitable Greek, he was the philosopher kind. Or so O’Brien had thought; but then he had never read any of the Greek philosophers, the closest he had come to Heraclitus and Socrates was listening to Nana Mouskouri. He closed the desk drawer, straightened up and blew his nose on the tissue, then dropped it into his waste basket. He knew the value of a silent pause, though in the pop world there had been none; he knew nothing of Greek drama, where the pauses could be long and trembling before the knife was plunged in. But his hand was empty, he had no knife for Bousakis.

At last he said, “It’s done, George. What do you want me to do—turn the clock back?”

“No,” said Bousakis after his own long pause. “I want you to give me first option, in writing, on buying out the controlling interest in Cossack Holdings. The bank will go under, but the holding company is a separate entity, it’ll survive. I want control of it.”

O’Brien frowned, his way of showing surprise. Starting young in business, he had taught himself never to show that he had been caught unawares. In the laid-back world of pop entrepreneurs he had been almost horizontal. When he had moved up in the financial world, where experience and not pretence prevailed, where you were often in the shark’s belly before you knew you had been bitten, his coolness had been admired. One hand tightened into a fist, but it was out of sight under the desk.

“That’ll take a lot of cash. I thought you were complaining a moment ago about being thrown out on the street?”

Bousakis moved again in his chair; the wallow felt a little softer, the rock was crumbling. “It wouldn’t be my money, but I can raise it. We’d want a discount on today’s prices, but you’d come out with something stashed away for when you come out of jail.”

“The NCSC would never approve the buy-out, not while the investigation’s still going on.”

“They would if the minority shareholders got their money back. I’d see that they did—we’d promise that.”

“Who’s we?”

“I can’t tell you that, not yet. Just let’s say it’s your opposition.”

“I’ve got plenty of that. Practically everyone in town.” There was no self-pity in his voice.

“Yes.” The big round face was a moon of smugness.

O’Brien studied him; then said, “Why did you take so long to bring this up?”

The big face turned blank; it was difficult to tell if Bousakis was being hypocritical: “I was being loyal. It’s a Greek trait.”

“Is it? That’s something the Irish claim. I didn’t know we had anything in common.” He got up and walked to the big window. On the other side of the street were the headquarters of the country’s biggest insurance company, a tower twenty storeys higher than his own building. There was nothing shaky or shonky on the other side of the street; it was impregnable, an Establishment mountain, a shareholder in half the nation. No one there had stripped assets, borrowed riskily without telling the shareholders, indulged in insider trading. There were two flagpoles on the roof of the tall building, just visible to O’Brien: the corporation flag fluttered from one, the national flag from the other. He noticed that the corporation flag was slightly the higher of the two.

“I’ll think about it, George,” he said without turning round. “The offer . . .”

He kept his back to Bousakis till he heard the loud creak of the chair as the other man rose from it, then the heavy tread across the carpet and then the closing of the door. He continued to stare out of the window, watching a man staring at him from a window across the street.

Then abruptly he realized where he was standing, how exposed he was. He shivered with fright, moved quickly to one side and pressed the button that swept the drapes across the glass. He stood in the sudden darkness, feeling the trembling in his hands.

It seemed that everyone was gunning for him and Blizzard was not the only hitman.

Then the phone rang. It was a moment before he could move, then he stepped back to his desk, switched on a desk-lamp and picked up the phone. It was Malone.

“Just checking. How’d you go today?”

“Bloody dreadful. You making progress?”

“A bit. Are you coming back to the hotel?”

“No. I’ve got some work to do here. Then I’ll go straight out on my date. I’m due there at seven.”

“Call me when you get there. Then I’m going to the opera. Seb has already gone. He has to gargle or whatever it is singers do before they sing. Brian?”

“Yes?”

“Take care. Don’t let Blizzard take a pot shot at you while you’re with the lady.”

O’Brien hung up, all at once feeling better. There had been a note of concern for him in Malone’s voice. He had never had a friend, only acquaintances, and now he was looking for one. But, like love, friendship had arrived too late.

II

Jack Aldwych lived in a huge, old two-storeyed house overlooking Harbord, one of the small northern beaches, where he surfed every morning, summer and winter, with his son Jack Junior. The house had been built before World War One by a circus-owning family and Aldwych, who had been born and grown up in the district, had delivered bread here as a bread carter’s boy in the 1930s. The large grounds had always seemed full of midgets, grossly fat ladies, flagpole-tall men and acrobats who would come tumbling down the gravel driveway to take the dozen loaves of bread from him before the two big mastiffs, who roamed the grounds like loud-mouthed tigers, came tearing round from the back of the house to rend him limb from limb. He had coveted the house even then and twenty years ago he had bought it from the last of the circus family. Now it housed only him, his wife, his son, a housekeeper and two minders who roamed the grounds just like the mastiffs had done. Occasionally, in his more sentimental moments, which weren’t many, he longed for another sight of those acrobats, slim girls and muscular men, to come cartwheeling down the driveway to the big gates as Jack Junior drove him in and up to the house.

Sitting now in his favourite chair on the big wide verandah he looked at his visitor, who couldn’t have cartwheeled if he’d been given a flying start by being hit by a car. “Why didn’t you get in touch with me first, Harry?”

Chief Superintendent Danforth wished he had worn a topcoat; he hadn’t expected to sit out here in the cold. “I rang you first thing, Jack, soon’s I got the word they’d traced that kid Gotti to Debbs and Lango. But they said you’d gone shopping with your missus.”

“My wife,” Aldwych corrected him. Shirl was the only woman in the world he respected. He also had some regard for the Prime Minister’s wife, whom he had never met but who Shirl said was a model for all women, and he had great admiration for Margaret Thatcher, who had a proper regard for what a boss should be. But he wouldn’t have lived with either of them, not even if they had asked him. “We go and do the weekly shopping every Thursday morning. She likes that, we’ve done it together ever since we first got married. We do the shopping, then we have morning coffee down in a coffee lounge on the Corso at Manly. Shirl likes that, she calls it married compatibility, whatever that is. She’s a great one for doing crosswords.”

Danforth had a little trouble picking up that one; finally it filtered through that Mrs. Aldwych had an interest in words. He also had a little difficulty in picturing the crime boss enjoying morning coffee in a coffee lounge with his wife. He gratefully sipped the whisky Aldwych had offered against the cold evening air. “The missus—the wife is like that. Always does the crossword first thing in the morning . . . So I rang Arnold Debbs soon’s I couldn’t get you. I hadda get the word to someone.”

“I’ve just got back from seeing Arnie. Who’s this other guy who’s trying to bump off O’Brien? An ex-cop or something.”

“An ex-cadet,” said Danforth, as if he didn’t want a real cop suspected of being a hitman. “His name’s Frank Blizzard.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“We don’t even know who he is.”

Aldwych looked at him quizzically. He had never had much respect for the police’s ability, they had never been able to nail him on any charge. Sure, they had arrested him half a dozen times, but nothing had ever stuck once they had got him into court. “Can I help?” He sounded like Castro offering help to some banana republic. “Get some of my boys looking for him?”

“Where would they start to look, Jack? No—” Danforth shook his head. “The best man in the Department is looking for him and getting nowhere. And he’s on Blizzard’s hit list as well as O’Brien. Scobie Malone—you know him.”

Aldwych sipped his own whisky, pulled the woollen muffler closer round his thick neck. He liked sitting out here in the evenings, but lately his bones had begun to feel the chill. He was getting old and it hurt like arthritis even to think about it.

“I know him, a nice feller. But if he gets in the road we might have to get rid of him, Harry.”

“What d’you mean?” Danforth was startled, coughing as the whisky went down the wrong way.

Aldwych waited till the coughing had subsided. “Something’s gotta be done soon. I hear O’Brien is ready to talk his head off, ask the NCSC for a deal if he tells „em about us.”

“Us?” Danforth looked on the verge of another coughing spasm.

Aldwych smiled. “Not you, Harry. Me and my associates.”

“How d’you know all this, Jack?”

Aldwych smiled again, an old crime boss’s smile. “Harry, nothing is secret in this country. We’re the greatest blabbermouths in the world. You hold a closed meeting that’s got any politicians or bureaucrats at it and you’re gunna get more leaks than you get in an army camp on a winter’s morning. There’s always someone dying to piss what they know.”

“I never heard any leaks coming out of any meetings you’ve had.”

“We’re different, Harry. You don’t find any politicians or bureaucrats in our game, not at my level. They just work for us. Like you do.”

Danforth put down his glass: it was time to go. He did not like being held in contempt, though he knew it happened at certain levels in the Department; but he had never protested there and he would certainly never protest to Jack Aldwych. He stood up, his joints stiffened by the cold. “You got a nice house here, Jack. Why don’t you sit inside some time?”

Aldwych laughed, a rough rumble like an echo of the mastiffs’ growling of long ago. “I bought this place for the view. I’ll sit inside when I finally go blind.”

Danforth looked at him sharply. “Are you going blind?”

“No.” The laugh subsided, the mastiffs lying down. “I’ll die out here, but not for a long time yet. Not unless O’Brien says too much and they wanna send me to jail. What would you do if they sent you out here, Harry, to bring me in?”

“Commit suicide,” said Danforth, hoping Aldwych would recognize it as a joke.

“We’ll do it together, Harry. You can go first.”

When Danforth had gone, escorted down to the big gates by one of the minders, Aldwych went into the house. He sat down in front of the fire in the big living-room; the house was centrally heated, but he preferred a fire. He felt the warmth, like a memory of the blood of his youth, creep back into his limbs. He could hear Shirl’s television set upstairs in her bedroom, the volume turned up as if she were sitting down here listening to it; she was going deaf, but she refused to admit it, insisting that the world had just got quieter. She was an intelligent woman who had long ago put her intelligence into cold storage, had deliberately become simple-minded about the world in which she and Jack lived. She knew how he made his money and she knew his reputation, but she thought of him only as her husband, a good one, which he was. All she demanded was that Jack Junior, though he was his father’s secretary and driver, was never to be involved in anything that might send him to prison. Jack Junior would inherit the vast fortune his father had accumulated, but he must never be anything but respectable and, when his time came, a good honest citizen. So far Jack Junior was on course.

Aldwych sat pondering the immediate future. He was at risk, considerable risk, because he had tried to make his money respectable; he appreciated the irony of it. He was evil, a true criminal; he never tried to evade that knowledge. Yet he was a confirmed conservative, as most true criminals are. He had tried to educate himself late in life by reading books on political and social history; he had developed heroes, Churchill, de Gaulle, Menzies here in Australia. He found local politics dull, but that was because whatever local politicians said didn’t amount to a pinch of shit in world affairs. He had taken Shirl on several trips to Europe and he had noticed how many of the public buildings had balconies fronting large squares. European leaders had always had the advantage of being able to yell at vast crowds, of being seen in the flesh, of using the balcony as a stage; Australian leaders, on the other hand, always seemed to be at ground level, literally and figuratively. Of course there was TV; but that wasn’t the same. You felt no thrill sitting in your living-room listening to a local pol telling you not to worry, just to trust him and his government. If Philip Norval asked for blood, sweat and tears, the voters would suggest he go to the Red Cross; and then go out to the kitchen fridge for another beer.

Arnold Debbs was one of those at ground level; several times this afternoon he had sounded as if he were on his knees. He was, potentially, as big a risk as O’Brien; if the heat were applied, he would run for a deal. Jack Aldwych had begun to think he had made a mistake by moving out of his own circle.

Jack Junior came to the door, switched on the lights. “Dad?”

Aldwych blinked in the sudden illumination. “What is it?”

“George Bousakis is here.”

III

O’Brien had had difficulty in persuading the security guard that he wanted to go out alone. “It’s okay, Ralph. I’ve got a clearance from Inspector Malone—he knows where I’ll be. It’s personal.”

Ralph Shad looked dubious. “If something happens to you, Mr. O’Brien, it’s not gunna look good for our firm—”

“It’s not going to look good for me, either.” O’Brien smiled. “Relax, Ralph. Go back to the hotel and order a good dinner. Ask your wife or girl-friend in, if you like, put it on the tab. I’ll be home by midnight, I promise.”

“Do you have a car picking you up?”

“He’s waiting downstairs now and I’ll have him pick me up at 11.30. Don’t wait up. Go to bed as soon as Inspector Malone and Mr. Waldorf come back from the opera.”

But when he got into the back of the hired car and gave the Double Bay address to the driver, the Asian who had driven him two nights ago to the Town Hall, he suddenly felt nervous. Perhaps the nervousness of the driver had transmitted itself to him.

“Would you rather not be driving me, Lee?”

The driver took the car out into the traffic. “No, it’s okay, Mr. O’Brien.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Cambodia, sir, but my parents were Chinese.”

“Were you ever in danger there?”

“Oh, a lot, sir. That’s why I came to Australia, it was a safe country.” Or so I thought: it was as if he had spoken the words aloud. “Another driver will be picking you up, sir. You’re my last job for the day.”

“Do I know the other driver?”

“I don’t think so, sir. He only started yesterday. His name is Fergus Calder, I think. He’s from Scotland. I can’t understand a word he says.” He sensed O’Brien’s sudden concern. “The company would have checked him out, sir. They’re very careful who they employ, much more than taxi companies.”

“Give me one of your company cards.”

His nervousness had increased. He would call the hire company, have them send a driver he knew. He did not want to be picked up close to midnight by a stranger, no matter how thoroughly the company had checked him out.

When he was dropped at the address in the side-street in Double Bay he almost ran across the pavement into the front gate of the townhouse. He stood for a moment, breathing deeply; he was coming apart at the seams, something he had never thought would happen to him. He stood just inside the gate for a couple of minutes before he felt steady enough to ring the doorbell and face Anita. She must see none of the frayed edges of himself.

The door was opened by Joanna, elegant in silver and black, looking at him as frankly as a buyer at the Newmarket stallion sales.

“We’ve never met, but Anita has told me all about you. Well, almost all,” she added with the smile of a woman who never expected to hear the full truth about any man. “Come in out of the cold.”

He followed her into the house, showing no eye at all for its furnishings; other people’s possessions never interested him. Anita was waiting for him in the living-room and came forward at once to embrace him and kiss him as if they were alone. Joanna watched them without embarrassment, almost with dry amusement, though she never laughed at other people’s love for each other.

When they drew apart she said, “I believe it. You do love each other.”

Anita smiled, explained to O’Brien, “She’s the family expert on love.”

“Or what sometimes passes for it,” said Joanna, never one to claim unmerited credit. She loved Floyd, in her fashion, but he was not her ideal: she had given up hope of ever meeting that man. “The house is yours till midnight. I’ll have to come home then—I’m not going to spend the night with the man I’m going out with, though he’ll ask me. We’re going to the opera, then he’s taking me to supper.”

“That’s a coincidence.” O’Brien had warmed to Joanna at once. She had a directness about her, though it wasn’t a hard approach. “I was invited to the opera tonight. Sebastian Waldorf—do you know him?—he’s staying with me.”

“Sebastian Tightpants? We had a thing going for a while, before I married again. I belong to the Friends of the Opera.”

“With Sebastian she was just friendlier than any of the other Friends.” Anita smiled affectionately at her sister.

“What’s Sebastian doing, staying with you? Are you old mates? Anita said you used to be in pop music, not opera.”

O’Brien had not told Anita about Blizzard’s hit list; she still believed that his only danger came from whoever had ordered Wednesday night’s attempt on his life. Up till now he had managed to conceal from her that Malone and Waldorf were staying with him at the Congress; he saw her now looking at him curiously. “We knew each other years ago. He’s just staying with me for a couple of nights, we’re catching up on old times.” He suddenly tasted alum, wished he could spit it out. “He’s singing tonight, The Magic Flute.”

“I know. He won’t look his best tonight, not covered in feathers—he plays a bird-catcher. That’s a laugh—he’s been chasing birds all his life. He should have called himself Randy Waldorf, but that would have sounded too much like a pop singer. Well, enjoy each other. I’ll ring the doorbell when I come home, just as a warning I’ve arrived.” She said it without a wink or a leer; she was still a lady in many ways. She kissed Anita, then looked at O’Brien. “Do I kiss you, too?”

O’Brien smiled, leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “Good-night, Joanna. And thanks.”

“I’ve never stood in the way of true love. I’m a conservationist when it comes to that.” There was a ring at the front door. “There’s my man. “Bye.”

She went out, leaving O’Brien and Anita facing each other across a narrow space that vibrated with Anita’s hurt and curiosity. And fear. “You didn’t tell me about this chap Waldorf. Why?”

He reached for her hand, but she held her arms at her side. He was still diffident towards her at times, almost a little in awe, like a young man lacking confidence with his first girl. Only in bed, where the blood took over, was he confident.

“I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want you worrying any more than you are now.”

“Worrying about what?” The hurt drained from her, but she was still puzzled and afraid.

Hesitantly, watching her carefully, seeing each word he spoke chipping away at her, he told her of the hit list and Frank Blizzard. She stood stiffly for a moment, then it seemed that she flung herself at him. He held her to him, all at once certain of her and of himself.

“Oh God, Brian!” She kissed him fiercely, bruising his mouth. “What else can happen to you? How much more bad luck can you have? What did you do, run over a nun or something?” she said, trying to be wry and not hysterical.

He grinned, the lapsed Catholic who hadn’t spoken to a nun in more years than he could remember. “My mother used to say that. My luck’s just turned, that’s all. I’ve had a good long run. I found you,” he said and, unwittingly, made it sound like a sad climax.

“Let’s go up to bed.” She took his hand, led him upstairs.

“Where’s your sister’s husband? Is he likely to come home and find us?”

“He’s on an oil rig somewhere in the Bass Strait—they have some industrial trouble down there. He called Joanna an hour ago. He won’t be home till Saturday night.” She had led him into a guest bedroom; she was delicate about using Joanna’s bed, though she knew her sister wouldn’t mind. The room had a double bed, not a king-sized one like Joanna’s, but it was wide enough for what they had in mind. Love-making is a game that can be played on the narrowest of battlefields. “Undress me.”

“I was never any good at this, I’m all fingers and thumbs—”

“Don’t tell me about your experience. Or lack of it.”

He smiled, totally confident now as he peeled off her clothes, doing it with more tenderness than she had hoped for. “This is like peeling a lotus—”

She kissed him gently. “You’re a continual surprise, darling—you come out with unexpected things—”

It had been a line from an old pop song sung by—he couldn’t believe the coincidence! By Bob Norval, from the Salvation Four Plus Sinner. His world was turning full circle. He had forgotten that other Norval, as had the rest of the world.

“What’s the matter?” Anita said.

He sat down on the bed in front of her, kissed her bare full breasts. Accustomed to younger women, he was still amazed that a woman of her age could be so slim and firm and beautiful. Though he was no longer young himself, he had lived too long, or lusted too long, amongst the young.

“Don’t let’s talk.” His voice was a husky whisper. “Not now.”

Their love-making was both tender and furious, as it should be. She was completely uninhibited, a deflowered girl from The Perfumed Garden; he was content to let her make all the suggestions, though no word needed to be spoken. He had remarkable stamina, a horizontal marathoner; they wore each other out, both winners, no losers. Afterwards they lay enjoying their wounds on the rumpled battlefield.

At last she said, not looking at him but at the ceiling, “What do we do, darling?”

He knew what she meant; there was no point in playing dumb. “There’s nothing we can do. Sooner or later we’ve got to say goodbye.”

“No!” She reached for his hand; he felt her nails dig into it. “Don’t talk about that! I mean, what are we going to do about this—this hit list?” She stumbled on the phrase, as if it were foreign, a term she didn’t understand.

He continued to lie on his back, but turned his face towards her. Her dark hair was tousled, her face glowed, she had that young look that love and sex can bring back, no matter how fleetingly, to a woman. Then he looked into her eyes and saw the pain and hopelessness: she looked her age there.

“All we can do is leave it with the police. They’re doing the best they can.”

“Is that why Inspector Malone was with you the other night at the Town Hall?” He nodded. “And he’s on the list, too? Oh God. Does he have a family?”

“A wife and three children. They’re safe somewhere up in Queensland.”

“But you’re not. Neither is he. Would the man who’s trying to kill you have followed you here?”

He tried to reassure her, not confessing the fear he had felt when standing outside the front door less than two hours ago. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d thought that would happen.”

“Let’s go away somewhere.” But even as she said it she knew the hopelessness of it.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere. One reads about it every day—people disappearing,”

“Sweetheart, it would never work.” He had money in a bank account in Switzerland, more than enough for them to live comfortably anywhere in the world; the courts might sequestrate all his holdings here in Australia, but it wouldn’t matter. Money was not their problem and, it struck him only now, it was a subject she had never discussed. She had been accustomed to wealth all her life; he was troubled by the thought that she might have wondered at the greed that had driven him to accumulate his. But that was another subject she had never discussed. Their love was deeper than their knowledge of each other, but that, he guessed, might be the way of the world. He had certainly never known all that he might have of his two wives. “Someone would find us eventually. Anyway, you can’t leave your children and your grandchildren, not for ever.”

She knew the truth of what he was saying; she felt it like a stab in the chest whenever she thought of it. She wondered if she would have felt differently if she were like Joanna; her own sense of morality encased her like an old-fashioned corset. She felt no guilt that she had broken her marriage vows (how old-fashioned that sounded, even in the silence of her mind); Philip had broken them long ago and many times. But marriage did not end with Philip: her son and daughter and her grandchildren were part of it. She owed something to them, if no more than an example; or at the very least, to protect them from the scandal if she left Philip and disappeared with a man already branded as a scoundrel, even if the iron had not yet seared him. She had reached that rarefied level in the nation’s society, narrow though it was, where the standards were still almost Victorian; the young might wish her the best of Aussie luck, but the majority of the citizens would never forgive her. Certainly her mother and father never would.

She rolled over on to her true love, raised herself to look at his face as if it might be her last look. “All I want is for you to stay alive.”

IV

Malone was not enjoying the opera; the first act had convinced him that he would never become a regular opera-goer. Waldorf had told him that the opera was almost an English pantomime set to some better music; but he had never seen a pantomime and now was glad he had not. He had liked Waldorf’s opening song, but thereafter his ear had wandered; he had found that his main interest was in looking at the soprano playing the Queen of the Night. Waldorf had told him that in the company she was known as Queen of the Nymphos. If asked by Lisa what he had thought of the opera, he would not comment on the Queen.

At the first interval he sat for a few moments while the huge auditorium emptied. Then he was sitting in a long empty row and suddenly he felt exposed, a shag sitting on a rock and waiting to be knocked off. He looked up and around him, twisting his head almost in a panic; but there was no one aiming a rifle at him, there was going to be no drama in the interval. He got up and went out into the foyer.

He stayed on the fringe of the crowd. It was a mixed lot, young and old, jeans-dressed and dressed-up; there was a large sprinkling of the foreign-born, the older ones enjoying this distant echo of nights in Vienna and Bayreuth and Milan. A very goodlooking blonde woman, who looked faintly familiar, passed by with a sleek seal of a businessman who looked as if he thought he was already halfway to bed with her. Malone heard the woman say, “He was better as Don Giovanni than as the bird-catcher. But then they’re both after birds, aren’t they?”

Malone debated whether he would try for a drink at the crowded bar, decided against it and turned away to see a face he recognized, though he did not know the man’s name and he looked different in a suit and without his usual open-necked shirt and anorak. The Channel 15 cameraman smiled at him, hesitated, then came towards him.

“Inspector, not on duty, are you?”

“You’d have brought your camera, if I was?” Malone didn’t mean to sound so sour.

The cameraman shook his head. “Not tonight. I’m here just to hear the music—I’m a great Mozart fan. You like him, too?”

Malone shrugged. “Sometimes. You know, I don’t know your name?”

“Colin Malloy. Oh, this is my wife Julie.”

She had evidently been to the ladies’ room. She was small and pretty, younger than Malloy by at least ten or fifteen years; she looked like a woman who needed protection and she had chosen an older, more reliable man. He put his arm round her. “This is Inspector Malone, hon. We’ve met several times on the job. He doesn’t like having the camera turned on him.”

“I don’t blame you, Mr. Malone.” She turned a wan face up to her husband. “I’ve got a dreadful headache. I think I’ll go home.”

I’d like to do the same, thought Malone as the bell rang to end the interval.

Malloy looked disappointed, but he frowned with concern above his dark beard. “I’ll get us a cab and we’ll go and pick up the car. “Night, Inspector. Enjoy the rest of the opera.”

“Before you go—” Malone hesitated, not wanting to delay Mrs. Malloy, who seemed to be getting paler by the moment. “Tell me something. When you shoot your film or tape or whatever you use—”

“Tape.”

“How much is used in the actual newscast?”

Malloy still had his arm round his wife, as if he was afraid that she might faint against him here in the rapidly clearing foyer. “Depends on the news items. If we get two minutes on the screen, we think we’re lucky. We might get that for a major disaster.”

“What happens to the rest of the tape?”

“It’s just thrown out. They might keep some of it, say a shot of a particular person, for the files, but most of it would be thrown out. There’s an awful lot of waste in our game.”

“There is in any game, except ours. We never have any money to throw away. Good-night, Mrs. Malloy. I hope your headache soon clears up. It’s a pity to miss Mozart,” he lied convincingly.

The Malloys went across the foyer and down the wide steps and he went back in for the final act. He would send Russ Clements out again tomorrow to chase up those clips the TV newsrooms had filed. Frank Blizzard wasn’t a ghost. Somewhere he had left a print of himself, something more than a voice reciting an old, threatening nursery rhyme.

When the final curtain fell Malone pushed his way out through the crowd and went down to the stage door. Waldorf had left word that he was to be admitted; none the less, the doorkeeper looked at him curiously, wondering what a detective-inspector wanted with one of the company’s leading singers. Was Sebastian Waldorf to be arrested for rape, for seduction of a minor? He knew the reputation of everyone in the company. Some day he would retire and write his own opera, once he’d learned to compose music.

Malone, given directions to Waldorf’s dressing-room, sidestepped his way through the musicians and chorus members already rushing to catch the last bus or to grab a lift from a fellow member who had a car. Despite his boredom out front, Malone felt a curiosity, almost an excitement, at being backstage. This was theatre, make-believe, glamour: all the clichés that were contradicted by his own work-world. Here everything was heightened, even if only by the imagination and conceit of those who worked in it; there were other rewards besides those of pay and promotion, there were fame and applause and the realization of creativity. None of these thoughts was coherent or even put into words in his own mind as he went down the bustling corridor. He was just aware of a more heightened feeling than he had felt out in the auditorium.

Waldorf was taking off his make-up; Rosalie Vigil, still wearing hers, sat admiring him. She looked up, startled, when Malone knocked and stepped in the open door. Waldorf, discarding feathers like a moulting eagle, smiled at her. “I forgot to tell you, darling—” It was not a term of endearment, it was the currency of the theatre; even Malone recognized that. “Inspector Malone is taking me back to the hotel. I’m not allowed out on my own.”

“I thought we could have supper somewhere.” Her look implied she had hoped for something more than supper.

Waldorf looked at Malone. “Must we disappoint each other, Scobie?”

Malone grinned. “Don’t make me sound like a Mother Superior. You’re free to take your own risks.” But his voice wasn’t smiling; he was growing tired of trying to protect elements who wanted to go their own way, regardless. “But if Frank Blizzard wants to join you . . .”

Miss Vigil peeled off her eyelashes, giving up seduction for common sense. “When you put it like that . . .”

Waldorf, featherless now, wrapped in a silk dressing-gown, leaned down and kissed her. “It’ll all be over soon, cara.”

Then the Queen of the Night, bizarre in her stage make-up and a mink coat, stood in the doorway, one hand above her head in a negligent pose as she leaned against the door-jamb. Does she sing “Lili Marlene?” Malone wondered. She looked first at Miss Vigil, then at Waldorf, decided he was taken for the evening, and finally looked at Malone. He glanced at himself in Waldorf’s mirror and decided that, without make-up, he looked as dowdy as a street cleaner amongst these exotics.

“Whose admirer are you?”

“Just my own,” said Malone, wondering what, if anything, was under the fur coat.

“I’m the Queen of the Night.” She held out a hand to be kissed; he took it and shook it. She gave him a smile that was intended to floor him, where she would instantly jump on him. She was telling him, as if he hadn’t already guessed, that she was a piece of no resistance. “You’re not a romantic, are you, a gallant?”

“My wife and six kids think I’m both of those.”

“Would your wife and six kids let you come to a party I’m giving? You, too, Sebastian darling. Oh, and you, Rosalie,” she added, not looking at Miss Vigil.

“I’d love to, darling,” said Waldorf, “but I can’t. This is Inspector Malone. He’s just arrested me for buggering the three boys who play the Genii.”

“Is that an offence? Dear me, I am behind the times.”

It was all as artificial as the stage setting out front and Malone, ankle-deep in the mire of the everyday world, knew he would never be able to stomach this atmosphere, glamorous or not. He reached again for the Queen of the Night’s hand, lifted it and kissed it, just to show he was not an entire clod, that the NSWPD could occasionally breed a gallant. She smiled and turned her hand over to stroke his cheek.

“You’re a good sort, Mr. Malone,” said the Queen of the Night from Coonabarabran, a down-to-earth country girl still under all her artificiality. “Come back when you’re not on duty, any night. My room’s just down the hall.”

She swept out and Miss Vigil made a retching noise. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

Waldorf lifted her to her feet and kissed her on the cheek; he looks like her father, Malone thought, or anyway her uncle. “Good-night, darling. I promise—when this is all over, we’ll go away for a weekend somewhere.”

She kissed him in return, said good-night to Malone and went quickly out of the room. She looked on the point of tears, or perhaps peeling off her lashes had made her eyes water. Waldorf turned back to the big light-rimmed mirror, looked at Malone in it.

“I’ll be glad to get home to Germany.”

“That’s home?”

“It’s where my wife and family are. I’m missing them, Scobie. Is that what being scared, really scared for the first time in your life, does to you?”

“Yes,” said Malone, knowing exactly how he felt.

Waldorf changed into street clothes, wrapped himself in a camelhair coat, put on a tweed cap—“It protects me against the wind, I’m susceptible to head-colds”—and they went out into the chill night air. The wind had dropped since early evening, there were no clouds and the three-quarter moon was a broken silver button against the navy blue of the sky. Over to their right Circular Quay and the buildings fronting it were a dazzling pattern of lights, the lights reflected in the waters of the harbour, pointillisme gone crazy; behind them, the great off-white shells of the Opera House reared against the harbour proper like sharks playing at porpoises. It struck Malone that it all looked like a stage set, grander than the one he had seen in the Opera House itself.

He led the way across the wide forecourt to the space reserved for the staff; Waldorf had left a pass for him at the gatekeeper’s shack for him to bring the Commodore in. He had gone out to Randwick this afternoon and collected the car and brought it back to the Congress. He no longer wanted to trust to taxis or to walking up the city streets. The Commodore was no tank, but he felt safe in it, it was his own turtle shell.

He went to the driver’s side and put his key in the car door. Waldorf, standing on the other side, looked across the roof at him. “Tomorrow night let’s—”

The bullet hit him in the back of the head; he died instantly, the tweed cap no protection at all against the .243. Malone, some sixth sense telling him where the bullet had come from, looked up, saw the gunman at the top of the steps that led up across the face of a steep bluff that was the northern end of the Botanical Gardens. He couldn’t make out the rifle; all he saw was the man’s hunched shoulders against the moon. He dropped flat, rolled as far under the car as he could get, heard the two shots, in rapid succession, hit the roof of the car. He lay there, waiting for another shot, but there was none. He rolled out from under the car, looked up: Blizzard had disappeared. He dragged out his Smith & Wesson and, keeping close to the foot of the bluff, ran across and up the stairs, going up them two at a time, still keeping against the bluff.

He reached the top of the steps, dropped flat; but there was no sign of Blizzard. He had gone into the shadows, it would be suicidal to try to find him.

Malone went backwards down the steps, just in case Blizzard reappeared. He crossed to the car, aware of cars still pulling away from the entrance to the Opera House. He dropped down, making himself as small a target as possible, and looked at Sebastian Waldorf, once Sam Culp. The singer lay in a curled heap, as if the bullet had thumped him into the ground. His mouth was open as if on a high note, but only blood and silence was coming out. Tomorrow night let’s . . .

Malone, his mind off-balance, past sanity for the moment, wondered what they would have done together tomorrow night.