9

I

ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, Crime, Fred Falkender was a jovial man; he should have been in community relations instead of chasing criminals. He was only five feet nine, the minimum height for a cop when he had joined, rotund, bald and merry-faced; he looked like an old-time Labour politician, one of the Party’s Irish stalwarts before the modern image-makers got to them and taught them about silhouette and colour co-ordination and jargon phrases like “an election mode” and “conceptualization of ideas.” He laughed and joked and slapped everyone on the back, even crims, when they were leaving him. He was full of bonhomie, a quality not endemic in the Police Department.

“We’ve got to get you out of sight, Scobie, no two ways about it. Oh, and Mr. O’Brien too, mustn’t forget him, eh?” He laughed, showing all his teeth; the round cheeks showed pink lights. “But you’re the important one. Won’t do much for the Department’s image if we lose another man.” He laughed again, looked at the two glum faces in front of him. “I’m only trying to cheer you up.”

He’s not as dumb as this, thought Malone; why does he try so bloody hard? “I know that, sir. It’s just that—well, I don’t fancy being cooped up in a safe house somewhere.”

“I’d feel the same way m’self, Scobie. But the Commissioner insists on it. It seems you’re one of his favourite sons.” For a moment the merry blue eyes had a different sort of gleam. Senior officers in any administration, public or private, no matter how good-humoured they are, do not take kindly to favouritism being sprayed on someone half a dozen rungs below them. Thunder was once said to be the rumbling of angels against favouritism in Heaven. “He wants you looked after.”

Malone wished that Commissioner John Leeds had stayed out of this. He had done Leeds a favour a year ago in the way he had handled a particular case, a messy one; the Commissioner, through past association with one of the principals, might have had his name brought into the courts. Malone, however, had managed to avoid that and the Commissioner had expressed his thanks and his debt. Malone now wished the Commissioner owed him nothing.

“That’s considerate of you, but I’d still like some alternative.”

“Well, wherever we put you, we’ve got to keep you out of the limelight for a while. You agree, Harry?”

“Oh, my oath, yes.” Danforth had been sitting quietly, content to let the A/C do all the talking. Falkender had invited them up here for, as he had put it with a laugh, an exchange of ideas. Danforth hadn’t brought any ideas with him; Fred Falkender might laugh a lot, but he also talked a lot and anyone else’s ideas rarely got a hearing. “The bloody media are running some pretty wild stories. All bloody guesswork, like they usually do.”

The media had made an opera of Waldorf’s murder. Every headline had been an aria, every TV newsreel had done its best to be a Wagnerian spectacle, radio reporters had hit notes that had threatened to shatter glass. Malone had stayed by the body till the ambulance had arrived to take it away. Waldorf’s last exit at the Opera House: the thought had crossed Malone’s mind, till he had realized the banality of it and angrily brushed it away. By the time the ambulance had gone the crowd in the forecourt had grown till it looked like a fanfare of devotees waiting to say good-night to Sutherland or Pavarotti, both of whom, when they learned of Waldorf’s murder, would probably be glad they had not been here tonight.

Clements, who had arrived five minutes before the ambulance, took Malone’s arm and led him across to the line of police cars. The revolving blue lights added their own dramatic note to the scene; Malone wondered if, in their light, his own face had the same pale look as Clements’. “You want me to have someone drive you back to the hotel?”

“No, I’ll be okay. I chased the bastard, Russ, but he got away. Up there.” He nodded up the wide flight of steps to the Gardens.

“You get close enough to recognize him, give us a description?”

Malone shook his head. “He was just a shape, that was all.”

“Inspector—?” Malone turned his head. The young reporter from Channel 15, backed by an equally young cameraman and an untidy-looking sound-girl, was leaning forward expectantly. “You were here, weren’t you, when Sebastian was shot?”

Malone, still suffering from shock, looked at the reporter in puzzlement. First name basis, he thought irrelevantly; he probably never met Waldorf, but he’s a public figure so he calls him Sebastian. They’re all the same, these kids: they’d call God by his first name, if He had one. “What?”

“No, he wasn’t here,” interrupted Clements. “Now piss off. Mr. Waldorf was a personal friend of the Inspector’s. He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“I was told Inspector Malone was the one who made the first call—”

“You want me to run you in?” Clements was belligerent, unsettled. It had shocked him to his soft centre to know that Malone had come so close to being murdered.

“What for?”

“Using obscene language in a public place.”

“What fucking obscene language?” The sound-girl joined the dialogue.

Clements grinned at Malone, some of the tension seeping out of him. “Jack Chew was right—it never fails.” He turned back to the Channel 15 crew. “Get lost!”

The crew went off, muttering obscenely, and Clements said, “They’re just the first. The media are going to beat this up like the beginning of World War Three. They’re gunna find out about the hit list pretty soon. What do we do then?”

Malone shrugged; the media were no longer of any concern to him. He had reached a point of despair. He knew it would pass, he was still an optimist, even if battered and bruised; but for the moment he was locked in his own small world. His main concern was that Lisa would be listening to any late-night news-flash, though he doubted that the news of Waldorf’s murder would be on Queensland radio stations tonight.

“There are two bullets that should be in the roof of my car—”

“There’s only one—they’re getting it out now. The other one must’ve ricocheted off into the harbour. I’ve told „em we want that bullet and the one out of Waldorf’s head—Sorry.” He had seen Malone flinch. “I didn’t mean to be as blunt as that. I’ll have both bullets up at Ballistics first thing in the morning. But there’s no doubt where they came from. How’re you feeling?”

“Shaky. I’ll give you a statement and you can go back and write the report for me, put it in the running sheet.”

“Not here.” Clements had seen other reporters and cameramen converging on them. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”

“What about Waldorf’s family? Who’s going to tell them?”

“I’ve already fixed that. The assistant manager of the company has been across—he’s known the Waldorfs for some years, he’s a friend of the family. He said he’d phone Mrs. Waldorf with the news.”

Clements had come up trumps again, always one step ahead of where one suspected he was. “Thanks. Better him than us. What about Miss Vigil? Can you break it to her?”

Clements nodded reluctantly. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

“How did you get down here?”

“By cab. I was at home—the office rang me. I’ll drive your car. You sure you’re okay? You don’t wanna see a doctor?”

“You’ve never asked me that before. Am I looking sick or something?”

“I’ve seen you look better.”

And I’ve felt better, Malone was now thinking as he sat here in Falkender’s office on the nineteenth floor. All the Assistant Commissioners at Police Headquarters in College Street were on this floor, as if rewarded with elevation above the humdrum of running the Department; they were known to Malone and Clements and a few of the Department’s iconoclasts as the Archangels, though Gabriel was unlikely to blow a hymn to any of them. None of the rooms was big and Falkender’s was made smaller by a huge bookcase, filled with law books, along one wall. No one had ever seen him open the glass front of the bookcase, let alone a book, but he was accepted as the legal expert of the seven A/Cs. On the opposite wall was his framed degree as a Bachelor of Law.

“That’s another thing,” said Falkender. “The media. They have put two and two together, Scobie. Both the Herald and the Telegraph were on to me this morning, asking about a hit list. They want to know why you were with O’Brien the other night and why you were with Waldorf last night.”

“I’ve told them nothing. They tried that tack last night, but Sergeant Clements told them to get lost.”

“I believe they also asked it at the press conference this morning. That right, Harry?”

Danforth nodded. “I told „em we were examining the possibility of a hit list, I didn’t tell „em we knew there was one.”

“What did you tell „em about me?” Malone could see Danforth at the press conference, doing nothing for the Department’s image with his ponderous cliché replies that had once been standard procedure, as if plain everyday language would be some sort of minefield.

“I just said you were running the investigation under me. Then they started asking smart-arse questions and I told „em to get stuffed.”

That was plain everyday language. “You actually told „em that?”

“Well, no, not exactly. I just got up and walked out.”

Falkender looked as if he might laugh; but then he always looked like that. He said, “Well, we still have to take care of you, Scobie. Have you spoken to your wife about last night?”

“Yes.” Lisa had rung him first thing this morning, before he could call her; he had slept only fitfully and it had been almost dawn before he had finally dropped off into a deep sleep. The phone had woken him and, though they had talked for twenty minutes, his mind had been off-balance all the time, teetering on a rolling ball of shock and exhaustion. But when he had got off the phone her plea had still been ringing in his ears: “She wants me to resign.”

“Resign from the case? You can’t do that—”

“Resign from the Department.”

That took the laugh out of Falkender’s face; it made even Danforth sit up sharply. At last the A/C said, “What are you going to do? Are you going to resign?”

“I don’t know—”

“Don’t rush it, Scobie. We need you in the Department. That right, Harry?”

“Eh? Oh sure. My word, yes.” What would happen to Jack Aldwych if Malone did resign? Would he be replaced by someone more realistic, someone not so bloody piously honest? “But it’s your decision, Scobie.”

“No,” said Malone, “it’s my wife’s.”

“Well, yes, of course,” said Falkender, who had a formidable wife, a woman who had an iron laugh that had no merriment in it; their marriage was reasonably happy, but sometimes he suspected it was only because she insisted that it was. If she told him to resign, he would have to consider it. “Your wife and family come into it, of course. But do you think Blizzard is going to lay off of you because you’ve left the force? He’s after Scobie Malone, not Inspector Malone.”

Malone looked at the pink-faced man across the desk; the merry eyes were showing the shrewdness that had got him there behind that particular desk. Fred Falkender hadn’t made Assistant Commissioner on seniority alone; John Leeds, the shrewdest man of all in the Department, didn’t subscribe to that system of promotion. “I tried to put that argument to my wife, sir—”

“Would it help if I or the Commissioner spoke to her? We can look after you better if you stay in the force, Scobie—you know that. Maybe we can explain it to her.”

If Lisa wouldn’t listen to him, she certainly wouldn’t listen to other men, no matter what their rank. Her marriage was a closed circle, a stockade. She was the old-fashioned sort of woman who believed that if a husband and wife couldn’t work out their problems between them, then something was missing from the basis of their marriage and always had been. And he knew that she, as well as himself, fiercely believed that the basis of their marriage was rock solid. It was built on love, trust and understanding. If those were not enough, then no amount of advice from outsiders would make a blind bit of difference.

“No, I’ll talk to her again. We’ll work it out. But if O’Brien and I have to leave the Congress—”

“You have to do that, as soon as possible. It places too many other people at risk. We don’t want a shoot-out with Blizzard there. Christ, think of it!” He shook his big head.

“Fair enough. We’ll check out of the hotel today. But I want you to put us somewhere where Blizzard can find us.”

Falkender opened his mouth as if he were about to laugh at the suggestion; then he closed it and looked at Danforth. “What do you say, Harry?”

Danforth, as usual, was slow to see the point. “I thought that was what we were trying to avoid?”

Malone let the A/C do the explaining: “Don’t you see what Scobie’s getting at? If we hide him and O’Brien too successfully, how are we ever going to flush out Blizzard? If Scobie is prepared to take the risk—we don’t know about O’Brien—then we can tempt Blizzard to come out into the open to get at them.” He looked back at Malone. “What’ll your wife think of that?”

“I don’t think she needs to know,” said Malone and had never felt so treacherous.

“It’s a good idea,” said Danforth, at last catching up.

“Do you have any place in mind where we can send you and still look after you? Remember I’m limited in the number of men I can spare full time to look after you. This feller isn’t a jail-breaker, someone we have a description of. If we knew what he looked like, we could organize a State-wide manhunt and go after him with everything we’ve got. But he’s just a blank.”

Malone had discussed with O’Brien at breakfast the possibility of their having to evacuate the Congress. It was O’Brien who, after some thought, had made the suggestion and now Malone pushed it forward: “O’Brien has a stud farm outside the other side of Camden. When this business first started I warned him against staying there, I thought it would be too hard to make secure. But now . . . O’Brien will put in four security guards and if you can give me four of our blokes, I think we can patrol the farm pretty effectively.”

Falkender looked dubious. “We don’t like working with private security forces.”

It was an old rivalry, the old territorial imperative on the part of the police: stay off my turf. Yet there was a growing awareness that, with the increase in crime over the past few years, the contempt for what had become a fragile façade of law and order, co-operation would eventually be inevitable. But Falkender, as an Assistant Commissioner, had at least to salute the Department’s policy.

“With all respect, sir, if I’m shoving my neck out—and O’Brien’s—I don’t care where the protection comes from.”

The A/C stared at him; then he laughed, though it had no mirth in it. “Okay, but I’ll have to put it to the Commissioner. Will O’Brien agree to being the next best thing to a sitting duck?”

“He’s pretty fatalistic at the moment, I think. He’s in such a hole with the National Securities people over his shonky business deals, I don’t think he cares much what happens. Except that, like me, he doesn’t want Blizzard hanging over his head for God knows how many months or years.”

“From what I’ve read about him, I don’t think he’d be the sort of bloke I’d want to be cooped up with for too long. What about you, Harry?”

“I can’t stand a bar of these bloody white-collar crims,” said Danforth piously.

“I could have to live with worse,” said Malone, not looking at Danforth. “When you get to know him, he’s not all bastard.”

“Does he have any family?” said Falkender.

“Two ex-wives in England who he never contacts. His father’s alive, he lives somewhere out in the western suburbs, but I gather they haven’t spoken for years.” Then there’s Anita Norval and we won’t speak of her.

Falkender stood up, came round his desk, laughed and slapped Malone on the back. “Let’s try it, subject to the Commissioner’s okay. We’ll get this bastard Blizzard yet, right, Harry?”

“Oh, my oath yes,” said Danforth and went ahead of Malone out the door, avoiding the parting slap on the back. Malone got a second whack: the A/C hated to waste his good fellowship.

Malone and Danforth left Headquarters and walked up College Street towards Police Centre, four blocks away. Danforth was quiet, but Malone did not mind; conversation with the Chief Superintendent was never easy and never illuminating. The city had slowed down for Saturday morning; people crossed the roadway at their leisure and the traffic seemed to be taking its time towards wherever it was going. August was coming to an end and spring was coming out of the north; in Hyde Park across the street the deciduous trees were bright green with new leaf; the air, no longer cramped with cold, was opening up. Old men, in thick sweaters but no longer in overcoats, sat under the trees and played chess and checkers, another winter survived, another season to live. Hail Mary . . . Malone found himself praying for another season for himself, or three or forty. His mother would have been pleased if she had heard the silent words and would have given him a holy water shower.

“I can’t give you any Tac Response fellers,” Danforth said at last. “We can have „em on call, and the SWOS coves, too, but they can’t do a full-time job for you and O’Brien. I’ll get you three youngsters and a senior constable.”

“Just so long as they’re all wide awake and can shoot straight. And don’t panic.”

“You think there’s gunna be a shoot-out with Blizzard?”

“How do I know, Harry? But I don’t think he’s the sort who’s going to come out with his hands up. I’m guessing, but I think he’ll take us on.”

“He didn’t stop and shoot at you last night when you went after him.”

“No, that puzzled me.”

They waited at traffic lights in Oxford Street. Two punk kids, a boy and a girl, stood beside them, sunbursts of purple hair shooting out of their heads, the girl staring defiantly at the world through a domino of green mascara. Danforth curled his lip, grunted, but said nothing further; Malone would not have been surprised if he had arrested them for being no more than what they were, rebels. The light turned green and the two detectives crossed the road.

“But I’m beginning to cotton on to the way he thinks. He’s stretching this out, he’s dangling us, if you like. He tried to knock me off when I was down there with Waldorf, but that may have been no more than a reflex action—I was in his sights and he just let go. When I got up to the top of those steps, he could’ve knocked me off from the shadows without any effort. But he didn’t. He’s dangling us, letting us swing in the wind.”

They passed a narrow-fronted porno movie house; a girl with breasts that must have given her curvature of the spine smiled at them from a torn poster. Danforth grunted again. He was silent then till he and Malone parted inside the front doors of Police Centre. As he turned towards his own office he stopped. “Does O’Brien have to go before the NCSC again on Monday?”

“Not till Tuesday—that’ll be his last appearance. He’s got an adjournment for Monday. I gather he wants to get everything together before he spills some names the Commission is dying to hear.”

“He mention any of the names to you?”

“No, and I didn’t ask him. I don’t want to know, I’ve got enough on my plate.”

“Are we expected to escort him there?”

“I don’t think so. He’ll have his own security men.”

“Good,” said Danforth and went lumbering off to tell Jack Aldwych where O’Brien could be found before he got to the NCSC on Tuesday and spilled his guts and, in a different sort of way, everyone else’s.

Malone went into Homicide and found Clements waiting for him in his office, looking tired and even more rumpled than usual. “Didn’t you go to bed last night?”

“I got in here at seven. I’ve been running those off-cuts I got from the TV stations. I can’t see anything in them to get excited about. Nobody suspicious-looking, nobody turning up more than once, except you and the cameramen.”

“How’d you pick them?”

“The same old thing. They photograph each other. Haven’t you ever noticed when you’re watching the news?”

“Are they all the same blokes every time?”

“No. The Channel 10 and the Channel 15 guys crop up the most.”

“I didn’t notice who was there last night. Except that the Channel 15 bloke, his name’s Malloy, wasn’t there. I met him at the opera and he was taking his wife home, she was ill. Remember there was a young bloke on the Channel 15 camera last night?”

“Well, I’ll check „em all out. I’m going to read these, too, over the weekend.” He touched a small pile of books he had put down on Malone’s desk. “I got Andy Graham to get „em from the Woollahra library. Raymond Chandler. I’ve never read him. If Blizzard was so keen on him when he was young, I’ll have a go at these and see if there’s anything in them that makes him tick the way he does. Yes, Clarrie? Where’re you going—to a corroboree?”

Clarrie Binyan, curls slicked down, dressed in a dark blue suit, a white carnation in his buttonhole, stood in the doorway. He grinned and tossed a plastic envelope on to Malone’s desk; it contained two bullets. “I’m going to a niece’s wedding. She’s marrying an Eyetalian. She wants to put a hyphen in their names—Mr. and Mrs. Bindiwarra-Caccioli. That’ll go down well with the Mafia. With the tribe, too.”

Malone was never sure when Binyan was joking about his Aboriginal background; maybe he had decided that joking was the only way to survive as one of the smallest minorities in his native land. An enquiry was going on at the moment into police treatment of Aborigines in certain country towns and around Police Centre Clarrie Binyan was treated with cautious respect, as if the whites were not certain of his attitude towards them. Malone knew that Binyan was amused by the irony that he, a blackfellow, was the Department’s expert on the white man’s weapons.

Malone always felt relaxed with him, but he was always noncommittal about Binyan’s jokes. He picked up the plastic envelope. “.243s out of the same rifle as the others?”

“An exact match to all the others. They recovered the shells, too. They’re from a Tikka, all right. I gather you were pretty lucky?” Binyan was certainly not joking now.

Malone nodded. “If he hadn’t hurried the shots, he’d have picked me off as easily as he did Waldorf.” He felt the shiver inside him as he said it and he hoped it didn’t show.

“Well, keep your head down,” said Binyan and went off to the Italian-Aboriginal corroboree, to listen to “O Sole Mio” played on a didgeridoo, to sit and look as warily at the Italians as they would look at him. Binyan’s niece was a half-blood, a talented dancer with an all-white company, but Malone knew that the Italians, like most of the postwar immigrants, had their own colour bar.

Clements had looked at the bullets, then dropped the envelope into his pocket; it would go into the murder box. “What now?”

“I add another line or two to the running sheet, then I’m going back to the hotel and telling Brian Boru we’re moving out. Fred Falkender’s and the Commissioner’s orders.”

“Where are you going?”

“Up to O’Brien’s stud farm.”

“You might ask him if he’s got any tips for this afternoon. The programme at Rosehill looks as wide open as a picnic sack race.”

“I thought you’d given up betting on the horses, you’re a big-time share punter now?”

“I just like to keep my hand in. What are you gunna do up at the stud farm, other than look at the horses?”

“We’re going to play goats to Blizzard’s tiger.” He smiled at Clements’ puzzlement. “It’s an old Sumatran game. Lisa told me about it.”

“Don’t tell me she suggested it?”

“Hardly.” And again he felt the sense of treachery. “But how else do we get Blizzard out into the open?”

II

O’Brien sat and looked at the man who would dance on his grave; rather heavily, too. “So you’ve got your financing, George?”

“I have my backer. You give me first option and we can buy you out. All you and I have to do now is work out the details.”

“How much do you think you can salvage from the NCSC? They can send the cleaners in. I don’t think you realize, George, how much they intend to skin me. They’re setting me up to put me before a judge—Christ knows what he’ll do to me. I’m going to be an example to all the others who are trying to get away with what I tried.”

“Oh, I know all right, Brian.” They had never been as formally polite as this, not even in their first awkward days, eight years ago, when they had been trying to get to know each other. The atmosphere between them had all the chilly decorum of a funeral parlour, thought O’Brien; then wondered why he was thinking in terms of graves and funeral parlours. And knew. “But the NCSC will be looking to save something for the small shareholders—they won’t let everything go all the way down the drain. Not if there’s someone who can salvage it.”

“Someone like you and your mysterious mate?”

Bousakis nodded, wondering if Malone would remain alive long enough to learn who the mystery backer was. He sat comfortably in his chair, a mountain of smug triumph.

“Is it someone I know? One of those who’ve been trying to have me bumped off?”

Bousakis’ big moon face showed nothing. He had had an hour with Jack Aldwych yesterday evening and by the time he had left he had known, as if it had been spelled out in a legal contract, that Jack Aldwych was going to have O’Brien killed. The buying out of Cossack Holdings was a business deal; the killing of O’Brien was a personal matter. The knowledge had frightened Bousakis and he had wondered whether he had plunged into a black pool where his own life would always be in danger. He was cold-blooded in business, that was why he had been such an asset to O’Brien; but he was not cold-blooded about life and death. Even as the chilling doubt had swept through him he had known, however, that it was too late to draw back: he had already dived off the springboard. It was he who had come to Aldwych with the idea for the takeover, not the other way round. In the end greed had overcome fear and doubt. The deadly sins have a strength all their own, especially if one has nurtured most of them most of one’s life. George Bousakis had missed out only on sloth: it had taken too much effort to cultivate it.

“I don’t think you need to know that, Brian. Just take the money and run—if you can.”

O’Brien felt his temper rise; but held on to it. “What about the stud farm?”

“That’s part of Cossack Holdings, so we’ll take that, too. All you’ll keep will be the gold mine.”

“Only because I was shrewd enough to register it off-shore in another name. Nobody gets that, not even the NCSC.”

“That’s all you’ve got, Brian, that’s really worth anything. Compared to what you used to have.”

“So why are you buying?”

“Assets and potential. I can turn Cossack around, make it what it should have been.” For just a moment there was a flicker of angry hatred in the big bland face; he forgot his own greed and almost snarled, “If you hadn’t started trying to get rich so fucking quickly—”

“I am rich, George,” said O’Brien, his own temper subsiding as he saw the other’s rise. “The gold mine.”

“There’s little point in being rich in jail.” Or dead: but Bousakis didn’t add that alternative.

O’Brien sank a little into his chair; it was almost imperceptible, but Bousakis noticed it. There had been no mention of Waldorf’s murder. Not because of sensitivity on Bousakis’ part, but just deliberate callous indifference; it had required an effort, but he had managed it. O’Brien was still too much in shock to want to discuss what had happened; he had slept only fitfully last night, waking twice in a sweat to dodge the bullets coming at him out of the darkness. There was also a sense of loss, almost of grief; though he was honest enough to wonder if it was for himself. He had hardly come to know Waldorf, yet he had come to like him. The singer had had his own loss, that of his family, yet somehow he had held on to his laughter, to his joy in living.

When Malone had come back to the hotel at midnight and told him the news, O’Brien had been in bed reading a book Anita had given him weeks before and which so far had lain on his bedside table unopened. It was Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, and after two or three chapters he had begun to wonder if Tom Wolfe was some sort of messenger for Anita. Then Malone had come home with the dreadful news about Waldorf and the book had been dropped on the floor beside the bed.

Malone had sat down on the bottom of the bed. “He almost got me, too, Brian. Another couple of inches closer and there would only have been you left.”

O’Brien looked at the tall policeman who, he now recognized, was a friend. “How do you feel?”

Malone held up his hands; they were steady. “I guess it must be my feet that are shaking. Something’s giving way. I feel like I want to get out in the middle of a bloody great paddock and yell for Blizzard to come out in the open. Anything to get it over and done with one way or the other.”

“I feel the same way.” It was despair, not bravado, speaking.

Malone stood up. “We’ll talk about it at breakfast. You going anywhere tomorrow?”

“I wouldn’t mind going to the races at Rosehill, anything to get a breath of fresh air.”

“Better not. I think we have to stay away from crowds, just in case Blizzard has a go at you or me and some poor innocent bugger gets in the way.” He picked up the book from the floor and handed it to O’Brien. “Stay home and read. I’ve seen the reviews of that. What’s it about?”

“A guy who’s got himself into a bit of a bind.”

“I’ll borrow it when you’ve finished. Maybe we’ll learn something.”

Now, late on the Saturday morning, Malone came back from Police Centre, letting himself into the suite. He pulled up sharply when he saw Bousakis, but the latter rose from his chair, picking up his briefcase as he greeted Malone. O’Brien, growing more sensitive to atmosphere day by day, almost hour by hour, was aware that the huge man, his employee still, was the only one of the three of them with an air of authority; or anyway confidence. But then, of course, his life was not under threat.

“I’m going, Inspector. Brian and I have finished our business, haven’t we, Brian?”

“Not quite. I’ll think about it over the weekend.” He might be dead before he would have to suffer Bousakis’ triumph. The morbid thought somehow pleased him: he was like the swimmer who knows he will drown before the shark can reach him. “I’ll try and stay alive till then. Tell your friends.”

Bousakis caught the implication: the option deal would mean nothing if O’Brien was killed before signing it. It was anyone’s guess what the NCSC would do with Cossack Holdings if they found against O’Brien and he was already dead, beyond their judgement.

Bousakis said nothing, but managed to depart with heavy grace. “A rhino dancing,” said O’Brien.

“What?” said Malone.

“Nothing. I’m getting light-headed, I think. I’m having flights of fancy, all of them fucking morbid.”

“What was that about telling his friends you’d try to stay alive?”

“You don’t really want to know, do you? Isn’t Blizzard enough complication for you?”

Malone thought a moment, nodded and sat down heavily. “Normally I’d say no. But if you’re not worried—”

“Oh, I’m worried. But you’ve got enough on your plate . . . Let’s stick to Blizzard. What happens now?”

“We go up to your stud today,” Malone said after a few moments’ silence. He had tried to protect Sebastian Waldorf and failed; he prayed there would not be another failure with O’Brien. “You supply four security men and the Department will give us four cops. We’ll work out a roster so there are two men on all the time.”

“What do we do? Just sit and wait till Blizzard turns up?”

“We give it a week. If he doesn’t come out into the open in that time, we’ll have to think of something else.”

“He’ll wait. He’s waited twenty-odd years.”

“I don’t think so. He’s on a run now, four of us in two and a half weeks. Five if you count Mardi Jack as you.”

“Don’t,” said O’Brien, stiffening.

“Sorry. Anyhow, I don’t think he’s going to suddenly get patient.”

“Serial killers do.”

“What do you know about serial killers?”

“Not much,” O’Brien admitted.

“Blizzard’s not a serial killer, not in the usual sense. They usually pick random victims. Blizzard’s had us marked for years, though Christ knows when he decided to kill us. But now he’s started, I’m betting he can’t stop. He’s not going to sit around and wait. We’re for it, one or both of us, some time within the next week. And I think I’d rather it that way. I just hope his aim is a bit off, as it was with me last night.”

“Me, too. But I’d just like to get a look at him before he gets me.”

They went into their respective bedrooms to pack. But first Malone put a call through to Lisa in Queensland. She had phoned him just after seven o’clock this morning, before he could call her; she had heard the news of Waldorf’s murder on the radio. “Why didn’t you call me last night to tell me you were all right?”

She sounded shrewish, but he knew it was with the best of intentions. “If I’d called you at midnight last night, which was when I got back here to the hotel, woken you up, you wouldn’t have slept the rest of the night.”

“I’m not going to sleep tonight, for God’s sake. Come up here—get on a plane right away!”

“No!” he said quietly and firmly. “I’m not going to put you and the kids—and your parents—in danger.”

“You’re in danger!” It was then she had said, “Resign, darling. Get out of the police force, get your superannuation and we’ll go somewhere and start a new life.”

He had to bite his tongue to refrain from telling her that that was a ridiculous suggestion; instead he said, “There’s that old Dutch thrift, don’t forget the superannuation—”

“Don’t joke! Bloody men!” She sounded Australian then. “I mean it, Scobie—resign!”

And now, late in the morning, she was still on the same theme, but more restrained now: “Have you thought any more about resigning? I went into Noosa this morning to a travel agent—we could all go back to Holland, Mother and Dad still have a flat in Amsterdam—”

“To live?”

“Of course to live.” Her voice was calm, but her thinking was hysterical; he had never known her like this. “You could get a job in the Dutch police—No! Forget I said that.”

“That’s easily done. You think the Dutch cops don’t run risks? There are terrorists in Europe. At least we don’t have those here, not yet anyway. Darl, when you’ve had time to think about what you’re suggesting, you won’t want to uproot the kids. They belong here. So do you and I,” he added and waited for her to disagree.

There was over a thousand kilometres of silence between them; if he hadn’t known her as well as he did he would have thought she had left the phone and walked away. But he knew her silences: they could be icy calm or as tender as her lips against his cheek. He almost sighed with relief when he heard her say, “I know you’re right, darling. But . . .”

“I’m going to be all right,” he lied hopefully. “The Department’s putting a guard on me and Brian O’Brien, and he’s got his own security men. If they haven’t caught Blizzard within the next week, I promise we’ll go somewhere right out of Sydney. I’ll take my long service leave and we’ll go to New Zealand or somewhere while they try to track him down.”

“What about Mr. O’Brien?”

“He has enough money to go anywhere in the world.” If he doesn’t go to jail. Where O’Brien would probably be no safer than where he was now.

“On his own? Poor man.” It was typical of her that she should feel deep sympathy for a man she had never met, a man whose financial shenanigans she abhorred. She was puritanically honest, but admitted her naïveté in expecting absolute honesty in business. “What happens if they don’t catch Blizzard?”

He sighed, making a concession. “Then maybe we’ll go to Holland.”

She made no comment on that, but said, “You want to speak to Maureen and Tom?”

I’d better, he almost said; but that would have sounded too much like a premonition. “Put them on.”

Maureen came on the line, plunging in without any preliminary. “I’m in the doghouse, Daddy.”

Her usual location. “Don’t tell me!”

“I got bubblegum on the seat of Nanna’s car. Then when I tried to scrape it off, I tore the upholstery. Mummy told me to try and sew it up, but I lost the needle in the seat and Mummy sat on it.”

He had to hold on to his laughter. “I don’t see what everyone is complaining about.”

“Neither do I. Could you put in a good word for me, Daddy?”

“Leave it to me. Is Tom there?”

Tom was. “G’day, Daddy. You know what? I’m in the doghouse, too. I was just kicking my soccer ball around in Nanna’s kitchen, I was Maradona shooting for a goal, and I knocked over a bottle of wine, Grandpa said it was one of his best, he’d been saving it, and it all spilled out over Mummy—”

When he hung up five minutes later he sat down on the bed and half-laughed, half-wept. O’Brien came to the bedroom door. “Something wrong?”

Malone shook his head, wiped his eyes without embarrassment. “I’ve just been talking to the kids. You know what? Outside there, the world is still normal.”

III

“You’ve been acting abnormal.”

“Oh, come on. What do you mean—abnormal?”

“All this working back. Where did you go last night?”

“I told you when I went out, I was going to see Nick Katzka.”

“You’ve been telling me that for weeks. Working overtime, taking night shifts you aren’t rostered for—”

Colin Malloy sighed. “Honey, I’ve explained what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to persuade Nick to let me do a documentary on crime in the streets. I don’t want to be just a news cameraman all my life, chasing ambulances and fire engines and politicians on the steps of Parliament House.”

Julie looked at him slyly across the narrow table in the breakfast nook. “No, Colin. I rang Nick Katzka last week. He said you hadn’t mentioned anything to him about a documentary.”

Malloy felt a flash of anger that she had doubted his word and gone behind his back; she was not normally like that. He sipped the decaffeinated coffee, then spread the multigrain toast with yellowbox honey. Julie was a health food fanatic and he did his best to please her while he was at home; out on the job he ate all the junk food that came his way and enjoyed every mouthful. It was a constant irritation to her that he was overweight, but she never complained. She had never complained about anything, till now.

“Are you having an affair?”

He looked at her in surprise. “An affair? Who with?”

“That scruffy sound-girl, Luanne. She’d be sexy and very pretty if she cleaned herself up.”

“Honey, she never has a shower—I don’t think she even washes, she thinks that’s bourgeois. If I was going to have an affair with anyone, I’d at least pick someone who was clean.”

She didn’t disagree with that. Their sex life was more than satisfactory, experimental without being too kinky; she had wondered why he would want to have an affair with another woman, though she admitted to herself that she was not an expert on men. “Where do you go then? What do you do?”

I go out killing men I hate. But he loved her too much to tell her that. He had tried to rationalize his hatred of those men who had destroyed his life, but had failed. Reason told him that his life had not been totally destroyed. He had a wife whom he loved and who loved him, a job that paid him more than he would ever have earned as a policeman unless he had attained a top rank: it also gave him travel opportunities that no cop was ever offered. He and Julie had good friends, though he felt close to none of them; both he and Julie, in their own ways, were loners. The hatred was there, undeniable, unconquerable. He had read enough to believe that in everyone there was hate, as implicit in man as love, fear and the other lively emotions. Even Julie, the gentlest of women, hated: adults who abused children, people who ruined the environment, racial bigots. But her hatred of them would never lead her to murder; she had an equal hatred of killing of any kind. He was plagued, mortally, by the consuming urge for revenge, something that would never infect her and that she would never understand.

He chewed on his toast, taking his time. He had never imagined that she would actually check on him with Nick Katzka, the current affairs executive producer at Channel 15; she had always been the most unsuspicious of wives. He had met her in London five years ago, where he had been working for one of the independent television news organizations; she had come from Adelaide to London on a working holiday and had joined the news organization as a temporary secretary. She knew little about him, even after five years; he had told her he was an orphan, came originally from Perth and had no relatives. He had invented other details as the need had arisen and she had accepted what he had told her without question. She had told him on their wedding night that she was interested only in their present and their future, almost as if afraid that there might be something buried in his past that could ruin their happiness.

Malone, O’Brien and the others had always been there in the back shadows of his mind; the hatred of them had been a rottenness that he had managed to hide from her. Sometimes, in moments alone, he would weep for his dead Uncle Jeff, the only person, up till he had met Julie, he had ever loved. The two of them, the young man and the older one, had talked often of his ambition to be a policeman; of more than just that, to rise in the force to a position of authority. Jeff had been a simple-minded man of old-fashioned honesty; he had never respected anyone as he had the tough, wiry timber-cutter. Jeff was the only one who had understood the instability that occasionally showed in him:

“Frank,” he had said more than once, “look out for that temper of yours, it’s gunna get you in terrible trouble one of these days.”

“Not with you, Uncle.”

“No, mebbe not with me. But you’ve got a streak of something in you, I dunno what it is, that you gotta watch. Especially when you become a cop. You’re gunna get into situations as a cop when you’re likely to do your block and you’re gunna have to watch yourself.”

“You think I’m a little crazy?” He had said it jokingly, but he had known even then there were times when he didn’t understand his own actions. Only a week before he had killed a neighbour’s dog that had attacked him, had taken it out into the bush and buried it, then, later, helped the neighbour search for his missing pet.

When he met Julie he had just started to experience loneliness, something he had never felt before; perhaps it had had something to do with being cooped up in London, a city that engulfed him. She, though attractive and quietly pleasant, never seemed to go beyond one date with any particular man. She had told him later that the main reason, at first, that she had gone out with him on a second and third date was that, unlike all the other men, he had not tried to get her into bed on the first night. There was an old-fashioned streak in her that, to his surprise, appealed to him; the old church-going days with Uncle Jeff and Aunt Elsie still had a superficial influence on him. They didn’t fall in love at once, but gradually they came to depend on each other; it was, perhaps, love with pity, though neither of them thought in those terms. Each recognized the loneliness of the other and, with the conceit of love, thought they could do something about it. There had been rocks along the way, some that had almost wrecked the marriage. Once he had hit her, almost knocking her unconscious; he had been ashamed that he had not been instantly contrite. Instead he had looked at her coldly and walked away; only hours later had it hit him how shamefully he had acted. She had forgiven him, but from then on she had retreated from their occasional quarrels before they became too serious.

There had been other examples of cold-bloodedness, of which she had known nothing. Once, covering the civil war in Beirut, he had picked up a rifle dropped by a dead militiaman and shot a civilian running across the street a hundred yards away. He had not known whether the civilian was one of those shooting at those at this end of the street; it had been enough that the man, whoever or whatever he was, had been on the other side of the dividing line. When the reporter covering the scene with him had remonstrated with him, he had dropped the rifle, picked up his camera and just walked away into the ruin of a neighbouring building. The reporter had left the next day for Tel Aviv and Malloy had never worked with him again.

He reached for a second piece of toast, though he had not yet finished the first slice. “I didn’t want to tell you this. I want to write.”

“Write what?” She sipped her celery juice. She had tossed and turned most of last night; this morning, pale and drawn, she didn’t look a health fanatic.

“Detective novels. I’ve always dreamed of some day being able to turn out something like Raymond Chandler. Or Elmore Leonard, though I don’t think I’d have his ear for dialogue.”

“You want to be a writer?”

He managed to grin, though it was almost hidden in his beard.

“Don’t say it as if I want to be a rapist or a bank robber.”

“Have you written anything?” She still sounded doubtful. “I’ve never seen you making notes or whatever it is writers do.”

“I’ve got bits and pieces at the office.” He was creating fiction while they sat here at the table and he knew he was not doing a good job. How did husbands who were experienced liars fool their wives? Yet he did not want to fool her, only to protect her.

“Why didn’t you tell me? All that stuff about making a documentary . . . You know I like detective mysteries as much as you do.”

The shelves in the second bedroom, which they had converted into a study, were full of crime books, fiction and non-fiction, hardback and paperback. The list of writers ran from Poe and Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle through to Hammett and Chandler and Ross Macdonald and on to Higgins and Ross Thomas and Leonard and Freeling; detectives’ names stood out on the books’ spines: Holmes, Maigret, Trent. Those and crime movies were something the Malloys shared as enjoyment, though he had had to introduce her to them.

“What’s your book going to be about?”

“About a private eye tracking down a vengeance killer.”

“What’s the private eye’s name?”

He was tempted to say Frank Blizzard. “I haven’t decided yet. I want a name that’s different, like Sam Spade or Nero Wolfe. I’m just calling him Joe Smith for the moment.”

“That’d be different, a private eye named Smith.” She got up, began to clear the table. She looked suddenly healthy again, a flush of enthusiasm in her face; she was relieved that she could wash her suspicions down the kitchen sink. She believes me, he thought; but knew it would be mostly because it had hurt her to doubt him. She loved him more than he deserved, though he would never be able to tell her that. And he hoped she would never find out. “Can I read some of what you’ve written?”

“When I’ve finished the first draft.”

“When will that be?”

“Another week or two.” By which time the last two green bottles would be dead marines and only God knew what would have happened to him.

Last night’s close encounter with Malone had scared him. He had made a mistake in trying to pick off two targets at the same time. All the other murders had been safe ventures, even the daytime killing of Harry Gardner, the construction worker and ex-cop.

He had brought Julie home, worried that she should have such a sick headache; she had never been prone to headaches. But worry about her had not stopped him from going back to the Opera House; it was like the sickness of the compulsive gambler. Seeing Malone at the theatre, watching Waldorf up on the stage, had been too much of a magnet: the cold madness had taken hold of him again. He had put Julie to bed, gone down to the lock-up garage on the ground floor; each flat in the block had its own individual garage. He had taken the flat wooden case out of the locked steel box that was bolted to the concrete floor; he had told Julie it was for his camera equipment and there were indeed some lenses in there. Then he had gone out into the street and got into their car, a beige Mazda 626; their four-wheel-drive Nissan was always kept in the garage and taken out only at the weekend. It had taken him only ten minutes to drive from Wollstonecraft back over the Harbour Bridge and up to Macquarie Street, where he had parked in a No Parking zone after putting a Press sign inside the windscreen. Carrying the gun-case he had gone down to the Opera House, circled the forecourt by staying close to the fall of the steep bluff and climbed the wide steps to the entrance to the Botanical Gardens. This was an entrance that he knew was rarely used, even during the day; but he had come here several times with a Channel 15 reporter to record an interview with some overseas visitors. The iron railing gate was locked, but he was prepared for it. He had brought with him a locksmith’s small tool-kit; an abiding interest in crime detection breeds some useful, if criminal, knowledge. He had used his skill on several news assignments, much to the admiration of the reporters he had worked with.

He unlocked the gate, but left it closed, just in case a guard came round on patrol. A couple of hundred yards away up to his left was Government House, the residence of the State Governor; a similar distance away to his right and below him was a construction site for the new harbour tunnel. A security patrol might come down this far, but he had to take that risk.

He went back and sat down on top of the steps, close to the base of the railing fence that ran along the top of the bluff, He took out the Tikka and assembled it, handling it almost affectionately; he had loved guns all his life. Then he affixed the „scope, an 8 x 56 Schmidt-Bender; it was not an infra-red night „scope, but it was good enough at night so long as the target was illuminated or standing against a light. Though he had made a mistake in shooting Mardi Jack when she had been outlined against the light. He had been as annoyed at himself at his incompetence as he had been upset at her unnecessary death.

At one point a young couple started to come up the steps, but he had coughed, they had looked up and seen him and at once turned round and gone back down the few steps they had climbed. When Malone and Waldorf had at last come across the forecourt he had followed them through the telescopic sight, tempted to pick them both off while they were out in the open. But there were cars still coming out from the main entrance to the Opera House, their headlights sweeping across the open space like giant yellow scythes. He waited till his two victims had reached the car parked with a dozen or more others along the low harbour wall. Then he lifted the rifle and peered through the „scope; both men were clearly visible less than a hundred yards from him. He aimed at the back of Waldorf’s head as the singer came round to the near side of the car and looked across the roof of the car at Malone. He felt the tremor run through him that had shaken him on the other occasions; then the usual cold calm had abruptly replaced it. He squeezed the trigger, saw Waldorf stumble, slammed back the bolt again and again, getting off two more shots, knew he had missed Malone and decided it was time to run. For the first time he forgot to pick up the empty cartridge cases.

He picked up the gun-case and raced up the path and into the Gardens. Over on his left he could see lights in the staff quarters of Government House; he hoped no security guard came out of there and tried to stop him; he did not want to kill another innocent victim. He kept running, not looking back to see if Malone was following him. He came to a gate that led out and down to Macquarie Street. He fumbled for his locksmith’s kit, took out a pick and unlocked the gate. He was breathing heavily, sweating despite the cold night, trembling again. He looked back now, could see no sign of Malone in the deep shadows of the trees. He paused, took three deep breaths and tried to steady himself. Then he removed the „scope, hastily took the Tikka apart, put both into the gun-case and stepped out into Macquarie Street, drawing the gate to behind him.

Driving home he felt none of the elation he had felt after the other murders; instead, he felt almost as drained as he had when he had learned he had killed an innocent woman instead of Horrie O’Brien. That had been a dreadful shock; he was a killer, but he could suffer for the innocent who died. He had almost decided then that enough was enough. Then the next day O’Brien’s photo had appeared in the newspapers on his way into a NCSC hearing and Malloy had known that he could never rest until he had completed the task he had set himself.

It was O’Brien who, unwittingly, had been responsible for the hit list. Those shadowy betrayers of years ago, the cadets who had thrown Malloy out of the police academy, had taken shape again; he had even heard the echo of their laughter as they had turned the fire hose on him and forced him out into the street where he had almost been run down by a car. He had remembered, so clearly that the memory was like being scratched with jagged glass, being called before the Superintendent at lunchtime the next day, of being interrogated and then, an hour later, being told he was dismissed as a cadet. All that had been almost buried till six months ago when he had suddenly recognized who Brian Boru O’Brien was.

He had read about the high-flying entrepreneur, but he had never had to film him; O’Brien, it seemed, never gave interviews. Then one day at the races at Randwick, when he and a reporter had been sent out to film an interview with a leading jockey coming back after his umpteenth suspension, the reporter had pointed out O’Brien in the saddling paddock. It had taken him a moment or two to recognize him; then the bony, laughing face of years ago had burst out of the shadows of almost-dead memory. He saw O’Brien throw back his head and laugh and, as if in a nightmare, heard the sound down the years as O’Brien turned the fire hose on him. The effect on Malloy had been such that the reporter had looked at him with concern.

“What’s the matter, mate? You going to faint or something?”

“No. No, I’m okay. I should wear a hat. The sun’s getting to my bald spot.”

“You ought to put some of your beard on your head, you’ve got enough to spare. Okay, there’s our hoop, let’s go and talk to him. He’s been outed so many times they have to introduce him to the horses again each time he comes back.” And they had gone across to the jockey, but not before Malloy had taken another hard look at O’Brien again. It was the same man, all right, who had led the laughter against him all those years ago.

And then, on the way home, the other five men, whose names at least he had never forgotten, came slipping back into his mind, like guerrillas who expected no ambush. He had brooded about them all weekend, managing to hide his preoccupation from Julie; and on the Monday he had begun tracking down his enemies, as they had once again become. It had been easy to find Harry Gardner; he had simply phoned all the H. Gardners in the Sydney phone directory; the eleventh he had called had been his Harry Gardner. As soon as Gardner had said yes, he had once been in the police force, starting as a cadet at the academy in 1965, Malloy had hung up. If Harry Gardner had moved to another State and stayed there, or had not come back to his home town, he might still be alive. Malloy doubted that his urge for revenge would have made him travel to the ends of the earth, or even of Australia, to kill a man he hated.

He had killed the men in no special order. O’Brien’s success had added something more scalding than salt to that wound of long ago; in a different field, O’Brien had achieved what he, Malloy, had dreamed of being, one of those at the top. True, O’Brien now looked like being toppled by the NCSC, but that did not matter: he had achieved what he had set out to do and it would be no satisfaction for Malloy if some government quango destroyed O’Brien. Malone was a different case; he was still on his way up. But Malloy had learned that the Detective-Inspector was certain of steady promotion, that he was so highly regarded in the Department that some day he might even be Police Commissioner. The job that Malloy, all those years ago, in the visions of youth, had dreamed of.

When he had reached home last night Julie was asleep. Or pretending to be: this morning he was not so sure. He had undressed in the dark and got into bed beside her. He had kissed her tenderly on her dark hair, and she had just stirred, then turned over away from him. He had lain on his back for a while, running the murder through his mind as he might run a tape through an editing machine. He still felt drained and he wondered why. Was he running out of anger and hatred? He had drifted off into sleep before he could find an answer, but when he had woken this morning he had known the task had to be completed.

Now, he got up and stood beside Julie, drying up the dishes while she washed. They had a dishwasher, but Julie used it only during the week, when they were both working; at weekends, she washed up after every meal.

“When you’ve finished the book, would you like me to type it up for you?” She worked as a secretary for a furniture designer and manufacturer; their flat was full of comfortable, traditional furniture, but her employer was an avant-garde designer and she spent her working day amongst chrome and glass and abstract sculpture. “I can put it through the word-processor.”

“We’ll see.” All he had to do was find three hundred pages of manuscript.

He looked out the kitchen window at the grass tennis court next door; the neighbour, a prominent lawyer, was playing tennis with two daughters and a son. He and his wife had six children, all living at home in the big two-storeyed house, and Malloy knew that Julie sometimes longed for that sort of home life. She had been brought up in a large house in Adelaide, had had six brothers and sisters, and she had never really become accustomed to living in a two-bedroom flat with only him to care for. He did not dislike Wollstonecraft, a tree-clothed inner suburb, but he often yearned for life in a country town again, to go out with a gun hunting rabbits or duck. But then, he told himself, what Police Commissioner would live in a small country village like Minnamook?

“Are you on stand-by today?” Julie asked.

“I don’t know till I call in. If I’m not, how’d you like a day in the country? We’ll take a picnic lunch.”

“Sure, it’s just the day for it. Where’ll we go?”

“Not too far. How about somewhere out the back of Camden? I can do some bird-watching.”