1

I

“A WORKING mum,” said Tom. “I can’t get used to the idea.”

“I’ve been a working mum ever since I started having you lot,” said Lisa. “Watch yourself or you’ll be paying for your own dinner.”

“That’ll please Old Fishhooks-in-the-Pockets,” said Maureen, patting her father’s arm. “Would you like me and Claire to go Dutch?”

“Speak for yourself,” said Claire. “I’m being extravagant at his expense tonight. Do Chinese restaurants serve French champagne?”

“If it does,” said Malone, “I’ll have it closed down for extortion.”

He had the benign look that husbands and fathers occasionally achieve when the stars are in their right places in the heavens. Tonight was such an occasion. The family were celebrating Lisa’s first month back in the workforce after twenty-one years; an event the children seemed to equate with the introduction of suffragism. He still thought of them as the children, or usually the kids; but they were kids no longer and he was only slowly coming to terms with the changes in them.

Claire was twenty-one and in her third year of Law at Sydney University, coolly beautiful and with her eyes wide open for the traps that the world and its men might lay for her. Maureen was almost nineteen and doing Communications at New South Wales, dark where her sister was blonde, willing to risk the world and its men. Tom was seventeen and only a year away from university and two years into girls. Malone trusted their independent outlook. He was still coming to terms with Lisa’s stated desire for her own independence.

The Golden Gate was not the largest restaurant in Sydney’s Chinatown, but it was the ritziest; dim sum and chop suey were unmentionables here. It had a huge chandelier that, it was claimed, had hung in the palace of the Empress Tz’u-Hsi, a lady not known for welcoming foreign guests, gourmets or otherwise. The carpet, it was also claimed, had been woven by the nimble fingers of three hundred small boys working day and night in a village in Sinkiang; there was also a claim, spread by restaurant competitors, that the Chinese characters in one corner of the carpet translated as Axminster. Pale green linen covered the tables clustered in the middle of the big room and red velvet-covered banquettes lined the walls, which were in turn covered in green shantung. The waiters, no coolies here, were mandarins-in-training and tips were encouraged to be in ransom terms. On the floor above the restaurant were private dining rooms; the third floor, supposedly the manager’s residence, was given over to four gambling rooms that had never known the indignity of a police raid. The Golden Gate was a compulsory pit-stop for all visiting delegations from Communist China, both in the restaurant and the gambling rooms. It had, among all its other claims, class, something that all who came here, including the Communists, appreciated.

“Do you make as much money as Dad?” asked Tom, who was doing Economics in Year 12.

“He doesn’t want to know,” said Lisa, “and neither should you.”

“Right on,” said Maureen, and Claire nodded in agreement.

Tom abruptly looked uncomfortable. He was a big lad, as tall as his father at six feet one, and already starting to bulk out in chest and shoulders. Like his sisters, he had inherited his mother’s good looks, though there were hints of his father in them. He had not inherited his mother’s cool composure and emotion showed on his face in bold relief. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

Lisa, sitting next to him in the banquette, patted his hand. “It’s all right. It’s just that the money’s not important—What are you grinning at?”

“Was I grinning?” said Malone. “I thought I was looking pained.”

“Come on,” said Claire. “Let’s order before he starts chewing on his American Express card.”

Malone didn’t mind the chi-acking; he couldn’t be in a better mood. It had been a quiet week in Sydney for murder: only three, all domestics that had been attended to by local detectives. There had been no call on Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit. There had been appearances in court to give evidence at murder trials; other detectives had been at work on task forces looking into homicides still unsolved; and for Malone, the Co-ordinator in charge of Homicide, there had been the opportunity to catch up on the hated paperwork. This Friday night family dinner was a pleasant end of the week.

Then a tall handsome Chinese got up from a banquette at the rear of the restaurant and came towards them. “Inspector Malone, it’s a pleasure to see you here. A family celebration?”

“Sort of. How are you, Les? You’ve met my wife. And these are—” He introduced Claire, Maureen and Tom, feeling some of the pride that, a modest man, he occasionally let seep out of him. “Mr. Chung, he’s one of the owners.”

Leslie Chung had come to Australia forty years ago, when he was still in his teens. He had walked out of the hills of Yunnan and down to Hong Kong, arriving there just as that city was getting into its stride as a place to coin money. After a couple of months there he had decided there was already too much competition for an ambitious capitalist, especially a teenage penniless one. He had got a job as a deckhand on a freighter plying between Hong Kong and Sydney; on its second trip he had deserted in Sydney, convinced even then that the locals could never match wits with him. His English was negligible, so he took a job as a kitchenhand in a restaurant in Chinatown, changed his name and started saving his money. He won money in the various gambling dens that could be found in every section of Chinatown in those days; he was a careful gambler and a careful saver. He studied English, accountancy and the natives’ talent for never taking the long view. He had been born with the long view; he had been poor, but not uneducated in his country’s long history. He was never burdened by scruples, since he also learned that a lack of those qualities didn’t necessarily hold one back in local business and political circles. He prospered slowly but gradually, not always within the law, but the authorities never troubled him; those who tried went away suitably recompensed for their trouble. He had progressed far enough up the social scale to recognize barbarians when he saw them.

Unlike the majority of his fellow expatriates, he had severed all ties with his family in Yunnan. He set about building his own family. He married the daughter of one of Chinatown’s most respected businessmen, now had two daughters, both recent graduates in Law and Medicine respectively. He had a large house in Bellevue Hill, a conservative eastern suburb, he gave handsomely to charity so long as there was a tax rebate and, since Sydney was now an ethnically correct city, he was on all official invitation lists. It was just a pity that he had no scruples. Malone knew about the lack of scruples, but he knew very little else about Les Chung.

“Business is good?”

“Enough to keep the wolf from the door.” Chung looked around the crowded room, then back at Malone and smiled. His sense of humour was not as robust as that of the natives; it was drier, more sardonic. Much like that of the natives of forty years ago, when he had arrived here. Much like Malone’s. “Business is good with you?”

Malone, too, smiled. Part of the pleasure of meeting crims was that, occasionally, you met one whom you had to like, even if you didn’t admire him. Les Chung had never been on a police docket, but the police knew, if no one else did, that he consorted with criminals. The difference between him and them was that he was civilized. A quality Malone always respected.

“The less business we have, the better.”

“Well, enjoy your dinner. I’ll have them bring you some champagne with my compliments.”

Malone was about to say no, but Claire was too quick for him: “Thank you, Mr. Chung. Mum was brought up on champagne.”

“Well, then I’ll have them bring you the best, Mrs. Malone—”

He looked towards the rear of the restaurant; then abruptly sat down, pushing Tom further into the banquette. “Move over! Quick—move over, boy!”

Malone, sitting opposite him, looked past him towards the rear of the restaurant. A man in a dark suit, wearing a stocking mask, had come in through the kitchen door. He was carrying a gun. He stopped by the last banquette where three Chinese men were dining. He fired six shots, unheard in the clatter and chatter of the big room, then he turned and, unhurried, went out through the kitchen door, which swung shut behind him.

The killing had taken no more than five or six seconds.

II

“I have no idea who that man was.”

“That wasn’t what I asked you, Les. I asked you if you knew who had sent him.”

“No.”

There had been no immediate panic after the shooting. Those people in the banquette next to the last and those at the nearby tables had seemed at first not to have taken in what had happened. Then the bloodied heads slumped forward into the food on the banquette’s table had abruptly conjured up horror; one man’s hand had convulsed for a moment, like a bird trying to take off, then was still, chopsticks slipping out of it like skeletal fingers. Then suddenly panic had set in and, like the starting-up of a washing-machine, turmoil had spun through the restaurant. Screams and shouts shut out the clatter and chatter; chairs were overturned, even a table was sent crashing.

Malone had snapped at Lisa and the children to stay where they were, jumped to his feet and headed for the kitchen. He paused for a moment at the rear banquette, saw at once that the three Chinese men were dead. The booth was a bloody mess; behind him a woman screamed, as if she had only just realized that the men were indeed dead. He went on into the kitchen.

He was not carrying a gun, this was a night out. He was in the kitchen, glimpsed the terrified faces of the staff, before he realized he could do nothing if the gunman was not already gone. A miasma of steam hung above the stoves; a huge wok of noodles hissed like a pit of snakes. Kitchen staff and waiters stared at him as if he, too, might be a gunman.

He flashed his badge. “Police! Where is he?”

For a moment nobody moved; then a chef jerked his head towards the rear and gasped, “Gone! Through back door!”

“You all okay?” He tried to look concerned; but all he was doing was giving the masked man time to get away. Dead cops never caught killers. He was not a coward, just a cautious hero. He always insisted that his detectives worked on the same principle.

The kitchen staff looked at each other, then nodded. They were all Asian (Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian: he wouldn’t have known the difference till he heard their names) and suddenly they all looked inscrutable. Sweat shone on their bland faces like water on a row of plates. They were going to tell him nothing.

He passed down the narrow aisle between the stoves, pushed open the back door and peered out. He was looking at an alley only wide enough for a car or small truck to back up or down it. A slice of moon hung at one end of the alley, skewwhiff in the sky like a badly hung ornament. Faintly there came the sound of a rock band trying to blow the roof off the nearby Entertainment Centre. A cat snarled somewhere amongst the rubbish bins and cartons along the walls of the alley, but otherwise the narrow lane was empty. He pushed the door wider and stepped out, stood a moment feeling a mixture of relief and frustration. It was a mixture he had experienced many times before.

He took a deep breath, then went back inside to begin work. He saw a phone on the kitchen wall, took off the receiver and dialled 000. “This is Inspector Malone, from Homicide. There’s been a shooting in the Golden Gate in Dixon Street—three bodies. Get the necessary down here quick, police as well as ambulances and the pathology guy.”

He hung up, turned back to the staff, most of whom had already removed their aprons. No customers would be doing any more ordering: what was the point of staying? The Golden Gate didn’t pay overtime nor give time off in lieu.

“Nobody leaves, understand?” But he was on his own, he knew as soon as his back was turned they would be gone. He looked at the head chef. “You’re responsible for them.”

The head chef was a man in his fifties, plump and as tough-shelled as Peking duck. “Yes, sir,” he said, but you could hear the unspoken next words: You’ve got to be kidding.

When Malone re-entered the restaurant, the diners were already flowing towards the front door, not panic-stricken now but certainly in a hurry. Those at the front of the departing crowd were Asians; the Caucasians amongst the diners had been slow off the mark. It was always the same: Asians never wanted to be around trouble. They were not obstructive, just self-effacing.

“Stop!” he yelled. “Police!”

Those at the rear paused and looked back; it was time enough for him to run between the tables and get close to the front door. He pushed through the crowd, thrusting himself none too gently between people. He reached the door, faced those who remained and held up his badge high above his head. There was a split second when he stepped outside of himself, saw himself being observed by his family. It was the first time they had seen him in action like this and he felt foolishly melodramatic. He lowered the badge.

“Back inside, please! Nobody leaves till I say so.”

There were protests. A stout red-faced man, green napkin still stuck in his waistband like an Irish sporran, his arm round a stout woman in a red dress, demanded to be allowed to leave.

Malone stared him down, allowed those behind the man to share the challenge. “In good time, sir. Now just find a table and sit down. You’ll be allowed to go as soon as the police arrive and have talked to you.”

“What about?” demanded the man.

Malone ignored him; nobody in any crowd was ever totally co-operative; it was a police given. The diners he had caught at the front door had reluctantly turned round and, muttering, a woman crying hysterically as if it were she who had lost someone to the killers, were finding tables and chairs and sitting down. One couple sat down at a table for six, saw a bottle of champagne in a bucket, took it out and poured themselves a drink. Two small Chinese children cowered against their mother, while their father stood between them and the ugly sight in the rear banquette.

Across the room Malone saw Lisa and the children still sitting where he had left them in the banquette; there was no sign of Leslie Chung. Malone went across to the banquette, picked up the mobile phone that he had left on his seat and called Russ Clements at home.

“Get down here pronto, Russ. Get John Kagal and Phil Truach. Oh, and Gail Lee—we have some Asians to deal with.”

He switched off the phone, looked at his family. They were still seated in the banquette, all four of them stiff as statues. Then Lisa said, “Is anyone dead?”

“Three men.” Maureen and Tom flinched; Claire blinked. He was pleased that all three had kept their nerve. “Where’s Les Chung?”

“He just up and went,” said Tom. His voice was steady, as if he were trying to prove something to his father. “When you went up there to the front door, he went down the back. I’ll take Mum and the girls home—”

“Get a cab—”

“Dad, the car’s just around the corner in the parking station—”

“Get a cab, I said! You’re not going up to that car park while that gunman is loose. Get a cab, go home!”

“Can we do that?” said Lisa. “You just said that everyone had to stay till the police arrived.”

She and the girls were pale, but composed. Lisa was no stranger to murder at close range, nor were the children; a dead man had once been fished out of the family swimming pool. That murder had been different; Scobie had not been in charge of a crowd scene. She had learned early in their marriage the harness that a policeman’s life put on the wife; she often resented it, but only occasionally did she express the resentment. Tonight, she recognized, was not such an occasion. Scobie’s job, as witness to a triple murder and not able to apprehend the killer, was going to be difficult enough.

“We’ll sit here and be quiet,” she said.

He looked at the four of them for a moment, the crowd behind him forgotten; then he nodded and gently pushed Tom back into the seat. “Righto, I’ll get you out of here as soon as someone arrives.”

He went back down to the last banquette, ripped a cloth off a neighbouring table and threw it over the three dead men as they lay with their faces in their meals. Then he went on out to the kitchen. Only Les Chung and the head chef were there.

“Where is everyone?” he asked, but was unsurprised.

“They’ve all gone home,” said Chung. “They were gone before I got in here. That’s why I came back, to try and hold them for you. I knew you’d want to talk to them.”

Malone had no trouble hiding his cynical grin; he was in no mood for humour. “Thanks for trying, Les. How many illegals do you employ?”

“None that I know of.” Chung didn’t appear to be in the least upset; murder could have been on the menu. “We have all their addresses, Inspector. I’ll see you can get in touch with them.”

“If I’m lucky. Come back inside. You too, Mr.—?”

“Smith,” said the Chinese chef. “Wally Smith.”

Another illegal? “Righto, I’ll talk to you both as soon’s the police arrive.”

“What about the media? I don’t want—”

“I’m afraid they’re your problem, Les. But you don’t talk to them till you’ve talked to me, okay?”

The first uniformed police arrived two minutes later; then two ambulances. Fifteen minutes later the Crime Scene team were at work and Clements and the three Homicide detectives had arrived. So had the media, appearing, as Malone thought of them, with the scent of vultures. The uniformed cops were keeping them out in the street, which was now crowded from pavement to pavement. Red and blue roof lights spun, clashing with the street’s neon. Two policewomen were running out blue and white Crime Scene tapes, doing the housekeeping.

Malone turned control over to Clements and the senior uniformed officer. Then he got a uniformed man to usher his family out and escort them to the parking station. As they moved towards the front door the stout man stood up and demanded to know why they were being allowed to go.

Lisa stopped opposite him. “Because I’m married to Inspector Malone. It’s one of the few privileges of being a policeman’s wife—we’re allowed to go home early. Satisfied?”

And now Malone was seated opposite Les Chung in a banquette on the opposite side of the room from the murder booth. “Les, I asked you if you knew who had sent the killer.”

“I have no idea.”

“Righto, then. Have you any idea why he would come in here and kill your three friends? You were having dinner with them, weren’t you? There were four places at that table.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve told me who the dead men are—they’re all respectable businessmen. No Triads, nothing like that?”

It was difficult to tell whether Chung smiled or not. “No, nothing like that.”

“I’ve heard of two of them, seen their names in the paper occasionally. But the third feller—” He looked at his notes. “Mr. Shan? Is he a local?”

Chung looked around the room, moving only his eyes, not his head. His hands were folded on the table in front of him and he looked as calm as if this were no more than a social visit on Malone’s part. Then he looked back at Malone, who had waited patiently. “No.”

“From somewhere else? Cabramatta?” Where there was a major Asian community, mainly Vietnamese. “Or Melbourne or Brisbane?”

Then Clements slid his big bulk into the seat beside Malone, dropped a passport on the table. “That’s from the guy with his back to the wall, the one in the middle. A Chinese passport in the name of Shan Yang.”

Malone picked up the passport, flipped through its pages, then held it out for Chung to look at. “Shanghai, maybe? Or Beijing?”

Chung’s shrug was almost imperceptible. “Okay, from Shanghai.”

Malone looked across the room. The forensic pathologist, a young man who, coincidentally, was Chinese, had looked at the bodies and they were now being wheeled out to the ambulances. Most of the diners had been questioned and allowed to go. Out in the street they would be ambushed by the media reporters: any witness to a triple murder was quotable, even if he made it up. Even as Malone looked, the last diners went out the front door and now there were only police and Les Chung. Wally Smith, the head chef, had been questioned and allowed to go. John Kagal, Phil Truach and Gail Lee were comparing notes, but Malone could tell from their expressions that the notes would not add up to much.

“What was Mr. Shan doing here, Les? You were with him, so you must’ve had him as your guest.”

“He was a visitor. They come here every time they are in Sydney.”

“They?”

“Visitors from China. We Chinese have always been gourmets. Before the French even invented the word or knew anything about cooking.” His lips twitched, but one could not really call it a smile.

“Les, let’s not play the Inscrutable Orient game. I know you Chinese claim a monopoly on patience, but you’d be surprised how patient we Irish can be. We have to be, to put up with Irish jokes.”

Chung’s expression was almost a parody of inscrutability. Then all at once he sat back against the velvet of the booth, as if he had decided the game had gone far enough. “All right. Mr. Shan represented one of our business partners.”

“What in? The restaurant?”

Chung smiled widely this time, shook his head. “Olympic Tower.”

Malone and Clements looked at each other; then Clements said, “You’re in that?”

Olympic Tower had been a huge hole in the ground for seven or eight years, a casualty of union trouble and the recession of a few years back. It had been a monument that was an embarrassment, a great sunken square in which concrete foundations and the odd steel pier had been a derisive reminder of what had been intended. Then six months ago work had recommenced under a new consortium. Malone had read about it, but he had not taken any notice of the names in the consortium. Over the last thirty years developers had come and gone like carpetbaggers. Some of them had built beautiful additions to the city; others had put up eyesores, taken the money and run. It all came under the heading of progress.

“It’s a consortium.”

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

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

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

“In my partnership, yes.”

“Which is?”

“Lotus Development.”

“Who else? You said three.”

“The Bund Corporation.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“One of Jack Aldwych’s companies.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t think so.”

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

“I’m not Jewish.”

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

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

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

III

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

“What’d you get?”

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

“Was he Asian? Chinese?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you know about Olympic Tower?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dumb?” said Clements.

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

“It used to be like that talking to you, Jack,” said Malone, and the old man gave him a Chinese smile. “How much have you got in this venture?”

Aldwych sipped his coffee, nibbled on a Monte Carlo biscuit; then: “A hundred and twenty million.”

The two detectives looked at each other and Clements shook his head in wonder. Then Malone, who thought a two-hundred-dollar suit was an investment, said, “That’s a lot of money, Jack. You’re as solvent as that?”

“You’re not being very polite,” said Aldwych with a grin. “Yeah, we’ve got it . . . Scobie, d’you know what Olympic Tower is gunna be? It’ll be almost a small city on its own. A five-star hotel, offices, shops, restaurants—the lot. It’s gotta be up and running eighteen months before the Olympics. The main part of the hotel is already booked—the International Olympic Committee, the IOC you’re always hearing about, they’ve booked it for all their top delegates. The rest of the hotel, we’re aiming for top-of-the-market bookings, no package deals, no prizewinners from Wheel of Fortune or The Price is Right. The cream, that’s what we’re after and what we’re gunna get. The IOC booking guarantees that.”

“All this time ahead, the project nowhere near finished,” said Clements, “how did you manage to collar the IOC booking?”

“Strings, Russ, strings. I wouldn’t of gone into this deal unless I knew there were strings to pull. There are more strings in this town, Russ, than there are in a trawler net. All you have to do is find out which ones to pull.”

“And you knew?” said Malone; then held up a hand. “Don’t tell me. All we’ll want to know is if strings were pulled in these three murders . . . Don’t be offended, Jack—but would you bump somebody off to protect your investment?”

“Scobie, I’m not offended, just surprised you asked. Of course I would.”

Malone looked at Clements and the two of them smiled. “He’s on his own, isn’t he?” said Clements. “They don’t make ‘em like him any more.”

“Of course they don’t,” said Aldwych, joining in the humour.

The three of them were silent a while in contemplation of his uniqueness.

Then Malone said, “Jack, what about the Triads? I mean, you’re in this with all Chinese partners—”

This time the smile was that of a kindly uncle towards a not-very-bright nephew. “Scobie, all the time I was in the game I never met a Chink said he was in a Triad. But then—” the smile widened—“I never met a Dago said he belonged to the Mafia or the Camorra or what’s this new one, the Ndrangheta?” He used the terms Chink and Dago without embarrassment or apology, the back of his big tough hand to political correctness. “But that ain’t to say all of ‘em don’t exist.”

“Let’s stick with the Triads. Would they be in this?”

Aldwych shook his head. “They’ve been here for years, they were going when I was in the game. The Sun Yee Ho, 14K, Wo Hop, Wo Yee Tong—” He knew the names like a racecourse punter might know the names of champion racehorses. “They were and still are the biggest importers of heroin into this country. I never had anything to do with them, because I never had anything to do with drugs.” For a moment he succeeded in looking pious, even though it was a mask. “Back in the eighties some heroin syndicates were run by local mugs, blokes like Neddy Smith and a lot of small-time no-hopers. Then some of ‘em got greedy and they started killing each other off. Then the Lebanese and the Vietnamese moved in—but you know all this.”

“Go on,” said Malone. “We’re talking about the Triads.”

Like all retired men, criminals can’t help reciting history: memories are as sweet as an acquittal. “Then there were the Dagoes and the Roumanians and the Colombians and the Russians and now the yakuza are here. This is virgin territory for a lot of ‘em—they couldn’t believe we were so ripe. But then they had their donnybrooks, started killing each other. But all the time that’s been going on, the Triads have just sat back and played wily buggers. Any problem came up, they sat down and talked it out. They’re in the game for money, not war.”

“So you think we can wipe them from tonight’s killings?”

“Forget them. If they’d wanted to muscle in on Olympic Tower, they’d of talked to Les Chung and he’d of talked to us.”

“And what would you have done?”

Again the smile, not pious this time. “Told ‘em to get stuffed.”

“Would they take any notice of you?”

“I dunno. They’re a ruthless lotta bastards, but they’re sensible. I think they’d of listened to me.”

“Okay,” said Clements, “have there been any threats from any other direction?”

“Meaning who?”

“Come on, Jack,” said Malone, “don’t play the Great Wall of China with us.”

Aldwych grinned. “Okay. No, there’s been no death threats, none that I know of. Maybe on the site, union stuff, but none against me or Jack Junior. You sure the hitman was Chinese?”

“Well—no. He was wearing a stocking mask.”

“Everyone looks Chinese in one of those.”

“I guess so. Did you wear one when you were holding up banks?”

“They weren’t fashionable in my day. The wife found one of them, a stocking, in my pocket, and she’d of cut my balls off. Even though she was a lady. More coffee?” He poured three more cups. “Look, I dunno everything there is to know about our Chinese partners, the ones from Shanghai. Jack Junior did all the due diligence on them and he’s pretty thorough. But we discovered pretty early in the piece we were dealing with another culture.” Since his retirement he had not sat around reading only old newspaper clippings of his misdeeds; he was halfway into a belated education. “These blokes are hard-headed about money, for instance. But superstitious—Christ, I wanna laugh at ‘em sometimes, only I’m too polite. They have this thing feng shui—they won’t shit unless the dunny is pointed in the right direction. They caused headaches for the architects. Even the starting date had to be—what’s the word?”

“Propitious?” said Malone.

“That’s it. We hung around for three days till the fucking wind or the stars or the sun were in the right place.”

“What about Les Chung and his partners in Lotus? Mr. Feng and Mr. Sun. Any superstition there?”

“They’ve been in Australia as long as Les—they were both born here. They knew better than to bugger me about with superstition.”

“What were they like?”

Aldwych shrugged. “Les vouched for them. They seemed straight enough. If they were any sort of problem, they were his problem, his partners.”

“What about the unions? The original project had a lot of trouble with them, just as they did on World Square.”

Aldwych nodded his head ruefully. World Square had been another vast hole in the ground for a number of years, but it, too, had been saved and the project was now close to completion. “Them days are gone—I hope. There’s a union election coming up, but we aren’t expecting any trouble from that. I had Blackie go down and talk to some of the organizers.”

“Carrying his iron bar?” said Clements.

“I don’t think so. He just took a coupla heavies with him. He says he’s like me, the old days are over.”

“Who invited the Shanghai people into the consortium?”

“Les. There’s plenty of Asians putting money into property here—Indonesians, Malaysians, Chinese from Hong Kong—the Chinks who got outa Hong Kong before it was taken back. I dunno when Les first got in touch with the Shanghai lot, but he’s, you know, still Chinese. Mainland Chinese. It’s in their blood, I guess.”

Malone stood up. “Righto, I guess that’s all for now. How do you get on with your neighbours, Jack?”

Aldwych gave him a quizzical look. “You think they wish I wasn’t here? I don’t think so, Scobie. One of ‘em told me, since I been living here there’s never any trouble in the neighbourhood. No break- ins, no domestics, no car-stealing. Even the hoons from down on the beaches never come up here.” He smiled, a guardian angel. “I think I’ve got ‘em all scared. Another thing—you notice I got practically a whole block to myself, surrounded on three sides by streets? Nobody hanging over the side fences stickybeaking.”

“What’s on the fourth side?”

“At the back there’s a retirement home for old nuns. Blackie goes over every coupla weeks, mows their lawns for ‘em. Every afternoon they go for a walk, see me sitting out on the verandah, they wave their beads and tell me they’re praying for me. They’re a harmless lotta old ducks, God bless ‘em—I don’t like to tell ‘em they’re wasting their prayers.” He smiled again, a pope this time.

“Will you go and live in Olympic Tower when it’s built?” asked Clements.

“Shirl would come back and haunt me if I ever moved outa here. She made this my retreat, she used to call it.”

He looked around the big high-ceilinged room. It was furnished to his dead wife’s taste. Laura Ashley prints, a floral carpet, Dresdenware on the mantelpiece, nice landscape paintings on the walls: no arid Outback stuff, no Whiteleys with sexual trees. It had surprised Aldwych that, after his wife had died, he had found, hidden away in a wardrobe, novels by Judith Krantz, Erica Jong. He wondered how he had let her down in their love life. His marriage had been the one honourable thing in his life and maybe he had honoured her too much.

“No, I’ll die here.”

He escorted them to the front door, pushed open the screen door. “Blackie put this on yesterday. The summer flies are starting to buzz.”

Malone turned as the screen door closed. “Jack, what would you do if these killers came after you?”

The hall light was behind him; he looked big and menacing behind the wire screen. “I’d come outa retirement.”

IV

When Malone got home Lisa was in bed but still awake. “How’d it go?”

“Dead ends, so far.”

“That’s what you like. You look disappointed when it’s an open-and-shut case.”

He was folding his trousers and putting them on a hanger as she, with her Dutch neatness, had taught him. “You’re kidding.”

“Maybe. But sometimes . . .” Her hair was pulled up under a net, her face creamed. A woman lost half her looks with her preparations to stay beautiful. But he would never say that, not with three women in the family. “Darling, let someone else handle this one. Russ.”

He slid into bed beside her, naked; he gave up pyjamas the middle of spring the way some people put on tweeds the beginning of autumn. “I can’t give it up. I was there—”

“So were we.” She sat up against the pillows. “I saw it happen. I looked down towards the back of the restaurant when Mr. Chung looked down there—I saw the expression on his face, he was scared stiff. I didn’t see the men in the booth, the ones who died, but I saw the man fire his gun—” If she shuddered, it was inwardly; she always seemed to be in control of her emotions. “I was just glad that Tom and the girls didn’t see any of it.”

“How are they?”

“Quiet. They said practically nothing all the way home, you’d have thought we were on the way to a funeral. Or driving away from one . . . Maureen drove. You know what she’s like, talks all the time at the wheel. Not a word tonight.”

“You want me to discuss it with them in the morning?”

“No, not unless they bring it up.” She turned her head. “Be careful, darling.”

“Nobody’s going to come after me. For Crissake, darl—” He put a hand on her thigh under the sheet, pressed it. “I’ve got to handle it, but I’m going to be perfectly safe.”

She kissed him. “Like you say to everyone, take care.”

He turned out the bedside lamp, put his arms round her, licked his lips. “What’s that? Ella Baché?”

“Who else? She’s been coming to bed with us ever since I started to lose my looks.”

“Tell her she needn’t have bothered.”

He put his leg between hers, the love-lock.