5

I

TUESDAY MORNING Boston came to Malone after the morning conference. He had always been neat in appearance, but now he seemed even neater, as if his wife had run an iron over him before he had left home and he had come to work on foot so as not to disturb the creases. There was also a newly ironed look to his demeanour. He had thrown out last week’s sullenness, looked keen to impress. Too late, mate, thought Malone; but made no comment.

“I went back to Union Hall this morning—early.” As if to underline his new git-up-and-go. “I talked to a mate there. Not one of the officials like Albie Lloyd, just one of the clerks. They’re worried about what’s going on at Olympic Tower.”

“In what way? The murders have nothing to do with them. I hope,” he added. Union strife was always something to be avoided if you were a cop: you were always on the wrong side.

“The Chinese are trying to split the two unions by offering enterprise agreements. The Construction mob don’t want to have anything to do with it—they think it’ll lead to too many risks being taken.”

“Are risks being taken now?” Do the unions know about the extra levels?

“My mate wasn’t sure about that. But he says the Allied Trades lot are willing to listen—anything that’ll shift the Construction mob off the site.”

“Which Chinese?”

“Why, the Hong Kong crowd. The Communists.” He spoke with the bile of the Far Right, but Malone had always made it a principle never to ask any of his detectives their political opinion. They could be anti-politics, but not pro-party.

“Does Union Hall think the Hong Kong crowd did the murders?”

“Of course. They think it’s cut-and-dried.”

“I wish I had that cut-and-dried attitude that everyone but cops seems to have. It’s too pat, Harold. Why would they kill one of their own? Mr. Shan. Ex-General Huang Piao?”

Boston shrugged. “Who understands the Chinese? Or Communists, for that matter?”

This feller is out of the 1950s. But Malone knew that some of those attitudes were still more widespread than was generally admitted. “Is that your thinking or Union Hall’s?”

“Mine, I guess,” Boston admitted. “They’re still pretty Leftish down there.”

“Righto, let’s stick with your thinking. If we don’t understand the Chinese, where does that put Les Chung?”

“He’s a capitalist, a developer—there’s no problem understanding them.”

“Are you for or against developers?”

Boston all at once seemed to become aware that he was straying into territory he hadn’t previously explored. He had no idea what Malone’s political inclinations were. Police were supposed to stay out of political waters, but that was like asking fish to sunbake.

He hedged: “Why would Les Chung try to complicate things for himself? Another thing—he was in that booth with the three guys who were shot. If he hadn’t come up to talk to you, like you told us, they’d have done him.”

“But he wasn’t in the booth when the shooting started. What if he’d known the killer was coming?” Malone had considered this, but rejected it. Lisa said there had been real fear on Chung’s face when he had seen what was happening in the rear booth. “There’s Jack Aldwych to think about, too. Jack used to hire killers.”

Boston nodded. “I know that. I once found the body of a guy Jack got rid of—I was a new cop, a year on the beat. The finger pointed at Jack, we all knew he’d ordered it, but we never laid a hand on him. Those were the days when he had cops on his payroll. You know him pretty well, don’t you?”

“What does that mean?” He had to squash down his sudden temper.

“Nothing. I was just asking.” Boston’s insolence was what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it?

Malone managed to keep cool. “I use him for information, that’s all. Forget him—he had nothing to do with the killings. The hitman was Chinese, we’re pretty sure of that, and Jack’s a racist when it comes to hiring killers.”

“We’re talking in circles, aren’t we?” Boston was making no attempt to hide his arrogance now; creases were starting to show in him.

Malone sat back. “I guess we are. Don’t get yourself too involved in this, Harold. You’ll be gone next week.”

Boston flushed, the old malevolence back in his face. “With all due respect to your rank, you’re a real shit.”

“So I’ve been told.” He was not going to let the other man see him lose his temper. “It comes with the rank. Maybe you’ll do better in Archives. There’s only a senior constable in charge there.”

“You may be wrong about Archives.”

He stood up abruptly, almost knocking over his chair, left the office with quick strides, grabbed his jacket from his chair in the far corner of the office and stalked out of the big room, fumbling at the security door in his anger and haste. A moment passed, then Clements, as Malone expected, came in and slumped down on the couch beneath the window.

“Problems?”

“I dunno. He just said we could be wrong about Archives. I don’t think Administration would go against my recommendation and insist he had to stay here.”

“If they do, I’ll see he does only paperwork, never moves out of the office. He’s a mean bastard, I wouldn’t trust him, and he’s bone lazy.”

“He says he has contacts at Union Hall.”

“Forget them. We’ll make our own—I’ll get Phil Truach down there.”

Boston obviously had the contacts at Union Hall, something not easily obtainable, and he might have proved useful. Malone himself, not through any stiff-necked morality but because he hated debts of any kind, had always trodden warily with contacts. Like all cops he had his informants; cops and crims were two sides of the same coin and it couldn’t be flipped without calling the odds. He had no informant in government politics and he wanted none in union politics. In both those circles favours were always demanded in return.

He explained what Boston had told him about Union Hall. “There may be something to it, but I think it’s bigger than that. This is more than a union stoush to see who runs the site.” Then he looked at the doorway. “Hello, Clarrie.”

Clarrie Binyan came into the office, sat down and laid a manual on Malone’s desk. “I get outa the office as much as I can—I like showing off the uniform.” Recently many of the Service’s plainclothes officers had been put back into uniform, part of the plan to make the Service more visible to a public that had become suspicious of too many of the detective force. Malone was waiting for the day when Homicide would have to put on a uniform, a possibility he was ambivalent about. The voters had little time for uniforms: they had even been known to attack bus conductors. Binyan put a finger to his shoulder. “Especially now I’m an inspector. You wanna stand up and salute me, Sergeant?”

“Not particularly,” said Clements, lolling like a sea lion or an overweight civilian on the couch. “What’ve you got for us?”

Binyan opened the manual, took out a black-and-white photo. “I’m pretty sure that’s the type of gun did the Chinatown killings.”

Malone studed the photograph, then passed it to Clements. “What is it?”

“It’s a Chinese Type 67,” said Binyan. “One of my blokes looked it up, but we haven’t been able to find an actual piece. All we have is that photo. The calibre, 7.65 millimetres by 17 millimetres, started me thinking—it’s not one we come across at all. The Chinese army use that particular gun for covert operations.”

“Covert?” said Clements. “You mean espionage hits, stuff like that?”

“Or bumping each other off,” said Malone, and told Binyan that one of Friday night’s victims was not Mr. Shan but General Huang Piao. “Where did you get this information?”

Binyan winked. “I have my gigs, just like you blokes.”

Malone took the photo back from Clements and studied it again. “Friday night’s killer used a silencer. There’s none on this.”

“It’s built in, that’s why it’s so good for covert work—you don’t have to screw on the hush-puppy before you do the job. It’s a very sophisticated piece. He just made one mistake.”

“What’s that?”

“If he’d used a standard piece we’d still be in the dark where the action is coming from.”

“You think this is a Chinese army hit?” said Clements. “Killing off one of their own?”

“He killed off two outsiders, Mr. Feng and Mr. Sun,” said Malone.

“There’s the Bondi kid,” said Binyan. “Done with a standard piece. What’s he got to do with this?” Binyan’s interest was only academic. That way, he had once told Malone, he was interested only in the machine, not the feelings that drove it. In a way he was connected to murder more than any detectives: all murder weapons finished up in Ballistics’ exhibit-room. “Was the kid army, too?”

Malone spread his hands: who knows? “I’m beginning to think we’re going to need a China expert. Gail understands the language, but she doesn’t understand what’s happening in China itself.”

“What about Les Chung?” said Clements.

“He’s a vested interest. You think he’s going to explain China to us?”

“If he stands a chance of getting his head blown off, he might open up.”

“Les has been in shady deals all his life. I’m not saying this is a shady deal—though it may well be—but the two honest men in this were Feng and Sun. I think we should be talking to someone from their families.” Then he looked up. “Yes, Gail?”

She stood in the doorway. “Mr. Deng, the Chinese consul-general, is here.”

II

“What you must remember,” said Madame Tzu, “is that we Chinese, like the Italians and the Spanish, have a talent for revenge.”

“What had my father done that called for revenge?” asked Camilla Feng.

“Probably nothing. He just happened to be there. When my parents were murdered during the so-called Cultural Revolution, I’d have been dead, too, if I’d been there. It just so happened that I wasn’t and so I was spared.”

“It’s different now.”

“You think so? When you were in China last year you saw only what you wanted to see, you were a tourist. I don’t know about Sydney, I don’t know it well enough, but I assume the tourists who come here don’t go looking for the ugly side. Each time I’ve gone to New York I haven’t gone up to the Bronx or down to those parts of New York where people sleep in the streets and the subways—I go to the stores on Madison Avenue and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I stay at the Hotel Pierre. The same when I go to London or Paris—”

“You’re a very fortunate woman.”

Madame Tzu ignored that. “I’m not interested in America’s or Britain’s shame—nor Sydney’s, for that matter. And you weren’t looking for what’s still wrong with China.”

“Which is?”

“The die-hards who are afraid of what’s happening, who don’t believe in a free economy. The men who’ll kill in the name of Mao.”

“Deng Xiaoping is dead. The other old men must all be gone soon.”

“They don’t have to be old to cling to the past.” The scorn in her voice was harsh. “That’s been our trouble. We are always looking back.”

They were seated in the Fengs’ Mercedes in the parking area under the half-fleshed skeleton of Olympic Tower. Here was comparative quiet, but noise sluiced down from above. Both wore the compulsory hard hats and looked slightly ridiculous in the car, like ladies on their way to some construction workers’ garden party. At Camilla’s insistence, Madame Tzu had brought her here to introduce her as her father’s heiress and successor.

“Men think they hold the power,” Madame Tzu had said, “but it is we women who count the money.”

“Which is what I intend to do,” Camilla had said. “Mother has folded up completely, I doubt if she’ll ever get over the way Dad died. So I’ll be running things.” She had three siblings, but they were all teenagers. “So I’d like to see where our money is invested.”

She said now, “You mentioned revenge—do you know who killed Mr. Shan and my father and Mr. Sun?”

Madame Tzu adjusted her hat. “No.”

“Are you afraid he may come back for you?”

“Yes.”

“Revenge?”

“You ask too many questions, Camilla.”

“That’s all I have—questions. No answers.”

Madame Tzu turned her head carefully, as if afraid her hat might fall off. “You will be safe, that’s all you have to worry about.”

Camilla tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, thought a moment, then said, “Meaning that your company, the Bund Corporation, is the honey-pot in this awful mess?”

Madame Tzu opened the door of the car. “Let’s go and I’ll introduce you to the engineers.”

As the two women moved across towards the administration hut a tall, well-muscled man in a blue singlet, tight shorts and a hard hat approached them. “G’day, Mrs. Tzu, how’re things going?”

“As well as can be expected, Jason. This is Miss Feng.”

He put a thick finger to the brim of the hard hat. “Pleased to meetcha.”

Camilla was not particularly attracted to muscular athletes; she had always thought Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan would be a tiring lover. She was not attracted to this man, who seemed intent on displaying every muscle he had, including that in his shorts. She just nodded, her eyes as blank as the dark glasses she held in her hand.

Jason recognized the rebuff; he put his hand behind his head as if he intended to pull off his pony-tail and slap her with it. Then he gave her a smile that said, Up yours, and looked back at Madame Tzu.

“Things gunna be different now? I mean, after Friday night?”

“Possibly. I’ll let you know.”

“You run into any trouble, Mrs. Tzu, you know where to come. We’ll look after you.”

“I’m not expecting any trouble, Jason.”

“You never know.” He spoke slowly, as if he had to examine every word before he delivered it. “Looks like things’re getting nasty. You know where to come. Nice meeting you, Miss Feng.”

He walked away, his tight shorts offering an invitation to any woman who got excited over buttocks.

“Can he pass a mirror without stopping?” asked Camilla. “Who is he?”

“He’s just a go-between—Mr. Shan was talking with his particular union. Jason’s not the brightest man on this site, he’s the muscle, I think they call it.”

“He’s all that. He probably takes his girlfriends on guided tours of himself.”

Madame Tzu smiled; she hadn’t expected any humour from Camilla. “I’m glad you have taste.”

“What did he mean—if things get nasty, you know where to come?”

Madame Tzu adjusted her hard hat again, looked away and said, “Oh, there’s Mr. Fadiman. Come, I’ll introduce you to him. He’s brainy, no muscle at all as far as I can see.”

For the second time in two minutes Madame Tzu had dodged a question. Camilla tucked both questions away for future use. She had only a fraction of the older woman’s experience, but there was nothing between them in intelligence. She was also maturing in something else: persistence. She would be asking a lot of questions in the future.

Fadiman was obviously impressed by the good-looking young Chinese woman, but his look was not challenging, as Jason’s had been. Though she was Australian-born Camilla always scanned men with a foreigner’s eye; they have no subtlety, her mother had warned her. She had had boyfriends, all Chinese, and it was expected that she would marry one of them; but, secret to herself, she was still looking for an Australian man who would meet her and her mother’s standards. At first glance Fadiman was not the man, but she exchanged his friendly smile with one of her own. Which was more than Jason had got.

“You’ll be coming down here regularly?” Despite the fact that he was looking favourably on her, there was no real invitation in his voice. Bosses, especially women bosses, were never welcome on a building site.

“No,” said Madame Tzu. “Isn’t it enough to have one woman interfering?” Her smile said, Answer that if you dare.

“I’ll come occasionally,” said Camilla, speaking directly to Fadiman. “Not necessarily to interfere.”

Fadiman looked uncomfortable, caught in cross-fire against which his hard hat offered no protection.

Madame Tzu, after a bland-eyed glance at Camilla, retreated; or anyway, changed tack. “Have Mr. Tong and Mr. Guo reported back?”

“No,” said Fadiman. “We haven’t seen them since Friday. We were wondering—have they gone back to China?”

“Possibly.” If Madame Tzu was concerned, there was no sign of it. “Have we lost any time this week?”

“An hour this morning, a union meeting.”

“About what?”

Fadiman shrugged. “Union business. They never tell us, we never ask.”

“We’ll ask in future. We can’t have them stopping work just because they want to discuss union business.”

“Madame Tzu—” Fadiman was visibly uncomfortable. He wished that, like an old-time dogman, he was riding the girder that had just started its trip to the upper levels—“these people aren’t coolies—”

Watch it, thought Camilla, amused.

Madame Tzu was not amused. “Don’t be impertinent, Mr. Fadiman. You’re not dealing with some stupid farmer’s wife—”

Fadiman had realized his blunder as soon as he had spoken. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to be rude—”

“You were very rude, without even trying.” She was not going to let him off lightly; had there been a rug and a well handy she would have wrapped him in one and thrown him down the other. She was giving him the empress treatment, something of which Fadiman had had no experience. “I am in charge here—”

“And I,” said Camilla quietly.

It took the older woman a moment to change gears; then she nodded. “And Miss Feng. Neither of us treats people as coolies. Not even trade unionists,” she added with the thin blade of her tongue.

“I’ll try to remember that,” said Fadiman, finding some backbone. “Do we take any notice of Mr. Chung and Mr. Aldwych if they come down here?”

She gave him a look that put him at the bottom of a well, then turned and walked back to the Mercedes.

“There goes my job,” said Fadiman, and didn’t sound particularly downcast.

“I don’t think so,” said Camilla. “Do you have any idea who killed my father?”

Fadiman had not expected the question. “Why should I know?”

Camilla studied him; then nodded. “Of course. Why should you? But if you should learn anything, anything at all, please let me know, will you?”

He was out of his depth with these two Chinese women; but he was not obtuse. “Do I let Madame Tzu know?”

Camilla looked across at the Mercedes where Madame Tzu sat in stiff arrogance, as in a steel palanquin.

Camilla turned back to Fadiman. “No, don’t tell her.”

III

Deng Liang, the consul-general, was dapper, a fashionplate. He wore an Italian high-buttoned jacket that encased him as if he were trying to escape from it; a button-down white shirt; and a tie like a shattered rainbow. Armani or Zegna or Versace had followed Marco Polo to the Middle Kingdom; traffic was going the other way on the old Silk Road. All that spoiled him were the round horn-rimmed glasses which Malone had seen in so many newsreel shots of Chinese officials, as if they were government issue, designed to keep everything in official focus.

He sat down in the chair Clarrie Binyan had vacated, looked at the three male detectives, ignoring Gail Lee, who still stood in the doorway. “You are all working on the Chinatown murders?”

“And the murder of a Chinese student at Bondi,” said Malone, and nodded at Binyan, who had moved to join Clements on the couch. “Inspector Binyan is our ballistics expert. He is pretty sure that the gun used in the Chinatown murders was Chinese army issue.”

Fast bowlers know when to bowl a bean ball; Deng hadn’t expected it, but he didn’t duck under it. “You are sure of that?”

“Sure enough,” said Binyan. “Type 67. Do you know it?”

“I was never an army man.” Said almost as if he had been insulted.

“But you know weapons?” Binyan persisted.

It was obvious that the consul-general had never had to deal with an Aboriginal officer, not one with Binyan’s rank. Gail, still in the doorway, remembered something her father had once told her: We Chinese were racists long before anyone else.

“Well—yes,” said Deng. “One learns about them.”

“In the diplomatic game?” said Malone. “Spies, that sort of thing? Inspector Binyan says the Type 67 is used for covert operations.”

Deng displayed a good set of teeth. “Not by consuls-general.”

“Do all visitors from China report to your consulate when they come to Sydney?”

“Not necessarily. Senior visitors, trade delegations, people like that don’t come to us. Why?”

“The covert operator is probably a recent arrival.”

Deng was taking his time now. He was not hostile, but he was cautious, “I understand Mr. Chen, my colleague, has told you all we know?”

“Not quite. We don’t know what you learned down in Canberra at your embassy.”

“Oh, I can’t disclose that.” Deng was affable but firm. “The embassy would have my head. I’m sure you understand. You would not expect to tell me all you might learn in a conference with the Police Commissioner.”

All four detectives looked at each other: at their rank you learned practically nothing at a conference with the Police Commissioner. Clements said, “Okay, then tell us about General Huang Piao. How much money did he bring out to Australia?”

Deng took his time; then: “We are still checking that—he had so many sources. Our guess is ninety million dollars. Australian dollars, that is.”

“Including the fifty-one million deposited in the accounts of the students Zhang Yong and Li Ping?” asked Gail.

“You are very thorough,” said Deng admiringly, and seemed to see Gail for the first time. “You are the financial expert in this case?”

“No,” said Gail, “just an all-round expert.”

Smiles flitted around the four males like white butterflies. Women! the smiles said.

“Tell us how General Huang managed to get that much money out of China,” said Malone. “Did it come out of Hong Kong, all of it, or Shanghai or where?”

Deng took his time again; it seemed that he had all the patience in the world. Clements was the only one of the four detectives who stirred impatiently: “Come on, Mr. Deng, for Crissakes. We’re trying to solve the murder of four men, including one of your ex-generals—”

“I don’t think General Huang will be missed,” Deng said at last. “But the others—” He turned over a hand in what could have been a gesture of sympathy. “Yes, we owe you some information . . .” Another pause before the plunge: “China, as you may know, is going through a difficult period. We have problems that you have never experienced here in Australia. And Shanghai, where General Huang came from, is the centre of our problems. Shanghai citizens have always been famous for their financial sense. It was once our most advanced city—it still is. But don’t quote me to Beijing.” He managed a smile. “Last year foreign investors poured over a hundred billion dollars, US dollars, into China. The major part of it went to Shanghai or what Shanghai controls. General Huang was one of those who decided some of those dollars should be siphoned off.”

“One of those?” said Malone. “Who are the others?”

Deng undid another button of his jacket, like a bound man trying to loosen a knot. “They are being attended to in China.”

“Other generals?” said Clements. “Or ex-generals?”

“Some of them.”

“The money for Zhang Yong and Li Ping came through a Hong Kong bank,” said Gail Lee. “Did the original money that went into Olympic Tower come through the same bank?”

Deng was beginning to look unhappy. “Unfortunately when we took back control of Hong Kong we allowed them too much latitude. Hong Kong still leaks like a sieve.”

“The capitalists are still running loose?” asked Clements.

“Are you anti-capitalist?”

“Are you kidding?” said Malone. “Let’s talk about someone else—Madame Tzu. She is a partner in Bund Corporation?”

“A formidable lady.”

“So we gather. But does her capital in Olympic Tower come from the same source as General Huang’s?”

Deng shook his head. “We don’t think so. As far as we can make out, her capital is her own.”

“How much?” asked the capitalist on the couch.

“Ten million,” said Gail, and all the men looked at her. “Sheryl has been back to see our nice young man at the Securities Commission. He gave her a breakdown on the partners.” She smiled at the men. “He’s not supposed to do that, but when you’re all sweaty and up close and personal in the gym, things slip out. He leaks like a sieve when he’s around Sheryl.”

“Where does she get her money, then?” asked Malone. “Ten million? Is there that sort of capital lying around for individuals in China?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Deng took off his glasses, wiped them with a silk handkerchief, looked suddenly careless of what he was paid to defend. What, perhaps, he no longer believed in. Malone suddenly recognized that most personal of possessions: his tone of voice. “It is very difficult these days to defend a lot of our people. You went through your greed decade, we are going through ours. Madame Tzu is a very rich lady by our standards.”

“There are a coupla other characters in this who have disappeared,” said Clements. “Tong and Guo. What do you know about them?”

“They were once army cadets. They were protégés of General Huang. Incidentally, is anything to be released to the media about Huang?”

“No, he’s still on our books as Mr. Shan.”

“Can we keep it that way? At least for the time being?”

Malone was always willing to keep sensation out of the headlines. “I’ll talk to my superiors, suggest it to them. The dead student Zhang and the girl Li Ping. All that money in their bank accounts—were they protégés of General Huang?”

“Don’t you know?”

“What?”

“They are—were—General Huang’s son and daughter.”

IV

“The crotch of the matter,” said the Premier, “is it does bugger-all for Sydney’s image.”

He’s at it again, thought Ladbroke, his press minder. He had been with Hans Vanderberg almost twenty years now and still the Old Man managed to surprise him with yet another mangled metaphor. Yet The Dutchman, despite what he did to the English language, never failed to get across the gist of his message. He might send junketing MPs to the Parthenon to see the Acropolis or advise backbenchers not to put the horse behind the cart or tell Ladbroke himself to turn a blind ear to criticism. But no one ever missed the point.

The Premier had called this meeting in his office this morning to read the Riot Act to several of the councillors from Town Hall. There were three of them, two men and a woman, plus Lisa.

“Who’re you?” Vanderberg had asked her when she entered his office.

“Lisa Malone. I’m handling the Olympics PR for the council.”

Ladbroke had leaned forward and whispered in the Premier’s ear. Vanderberg had twisted his mouth, shifting his dental plate as if he were about to spit dice. His hooded eyes, like those of an eagle that had spent years picking at bones, stared at Lisa. Then he nodded, but said nothing further to her.

“I been hearing about what’s going on at that building site,” he told the councillors. “Union strife, extra floors that weren’t okayed—”

“Where do you get all this information?” said Councillor Brode, who knew his question was only rhetorical. There was nothing that went on anywhere in the State that The Dutchman didn’t know. Every breeze that blew carried whispers into this office.

The old man gave him a grin that had more malevolence than humour in it. “Mr. Brode, you’re a politician, you know better than to ask a question like that. I hear things about Town Hall before you do.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Premier—” Pascal, bouffant hair rising like froth: his hair seemed to rise with his blood pressure—“you have no right to interfere in council’s affairs.”

“Simmer down, Mr. Pascal. Don’t trot out the Local Government Act—I been too long in this game to worry about what the rules say. All I gotta do to pull you people into line is cut off the State’s contribution to Olympics funds.”

“You can’t do that!” Mrs. Harrity bared her teeth, but not in a smile.

“You wanna try me?” Hans Vanderberg, like Jack Aldwych, had no fear of sharks. “What d’you reckon, Nick?”

He looked sideways at Agaroff, his Sports Minister and the man responsible for overseeing the State’s part in the Olympics. He was a youngish man, prematurely bald, with a long face that looked permanently mournful. As well it might, since he had had nothing but trouble since he had been appointed to his job. He had gone to the Atlanta Games and been carried away by the atmosphere. He had been thrilled by the closing ceremony in which Sydney had accepted the honour of handling the next Games. Aboriginal musicians had cavorted; little boys had cycled madly away from paedophilic kangaroos; Sydney had been put on the map and he was the pin holding it there. Then, on his return, the reality of organizing a modern Olympics had hit him. He had begun to think of himself as the shuttlecock in a badminton game of anagrams. IOC, AOC, SOCOG: he was battered and bruised by the alphabet. And all the time the coach, the cranky old man now looking at him, was there on the sidelines offering advice. Advice that was never to be ignored.

“What worries me most,” he said after some thought, “is the racial angle to all this. I mean the murders.”

“The murders have got nothing to do with the Olympics,” said Brode. “For Crissake, stop stretching this—”

“Keep talking, Nick,” said the Premier, not even looking at Brode.

“Only Chinese have been bumped off. That’s going to do nothing for our image in Asia.”

“Especially since Beijing wanted these particular Olympics,” said Mrs. Harrity. She was a large lady who liked bright colours; this morning she was in vivid red and yellow, a human bushfire. Lisa, sitting behind her in beige, looked like a smudge. “They’ll make hay out of this, mark my words.”

Lisa raised a hand. “May I say something?”

Vanderberg examined her again, then nodded. “Go ahead.”

“I think the Chinese authorities will be doing their best not to make a big thing of this. So far it hasn’t been released to the media, but the mainland Chinese gentleman who was murdered was an ex- army general.”

“Where’d you get this?” said Vanderberg. “Your husband?”

Lisa hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. But I’d rather that wasn’t mentioned.”

The Premier looked around, threat in the hooded eyes. “You all get that? We don’t get Mrs. Malone into trouble with her husband.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” protested Lisa.

He gave her a grin that was meant to be friendly and sympathetic but could have sent an infant into shock. “I know that, Mrs. Malone. Maybe the councillors didn’t know what you’ve just told us, but I got that information from the Police Commissioner yesterday.”

“Why weren’t we told?” demanded Mrs. Harrity, all ablaze.

“I think Councillor Brode knew who he was, didn’t you, Councillor?”

“Well—” Brode was too brash and arrogant to look uncomfortable, but he did look as if he would rather be elsewhere. “Yes, I knew. But I thought it was irrelevant. He’s been out of the army five years. I took him to be a perfectly respectable private investor.”

“If you did, you’re naïve. Or a liar.” The Dutchman never mangled his insults.

Brode flushed and half rose from his chair. “I don’t have to take that from you—”

The Dutchman pushed him back in his chair from ten feet away. “Siddown. Getting high on your horse isn’t gunna solve this problem. We’ve gotta put our heads together and mix some thoughts. Would you leave us alone for a while, Mrs. Malone?”

“Perhaps I can make a suggestion or two, Mr. Premier. I’m sworn not to divulge any decisions at a meeting—”

His grin looked like a slit in a sack of wheat. “Ain’t we all? But what you dunno, Mrs. Malone, won’t harm us. Outside—please?”

Lisa got up, took her time about collecting her handbag and notebook, and went out of the room. Ladbroke followed her, led her to a window away from the two secretaries at their desks in the outer office. Beyond the windows was the Domain, the city common, where at weekends free speech burned the air like cordite and nobody was excluded from hearing it.

“Don’t be offended by him, Mrs. Malone.”

Ladbroke had spent years apologizing for his boss; sometimes it was no more than political spin, sometimes out of pure sympathy. He was in his mid-forties, lunch-plump and cynically relaxed about life in general and life in politics in particular. He had once been a junior political roundsman for the Herald, getting high on what he learned each day, and he had been like a deprived addict each time he had to go back to the office, and the sub-editors, wearing rubber gloves against libel, had pulled out the needle. When Vanderberg had offered him the job as press officer he had stepped into it as if into a bath of drug. He would never be cured and he had no desire to be. He had a wife and three children, but he was married to the Premier and this life.

“I don’t know what they’ll hatch up in there, but you’ll be happier for not knowing.”

“This is the second time in a couple of days I’ve been asked to leave the room,” said Lisa. “I’m beginning to feel like a ten-year-old.”

“There’ll be some skullbuggery, as the Old Man calls it, and you and I will be told to write a press release that says nothing, not even between the lines. And in five, ten years’ time, no one will care a damn about what’s been cooked up. That’s the nature of the voter, Mrs. Malone, his conditioned nature, and no one knows it better than my boss. We’re breeding them to have short memories. When television came along, politicians greeted it like it was manna from heaven. If the voters look at pollies at all on TV, they see only the faces, they don’t hear a word that’s said.”

“Does your cynicism keep you awake at night?”

He looked out the window. The big lake of green grass bordered by its shore of trees was almost deserted; an elderly couple limped along the path leading to the art gallery beyond the trees and two youths threw a frisbee back and forth with the lazy grace of slow-motion athletes. Ladbroke knew the history of the Domain and wished he had been born early enough to have witnessed more of it. In his historical eye he saw a regimental band playing while carriages rolled and ladies strolled under parasols. He was there in spirit a hundred and fifty years ago when a French balloonist, after weeks of hoop-la and hot air, failed to get his balloon off the ground and an angry crowd had set fire to the balloon. There had been another crowd sixty-six years ago that had gathered out there on the sward to yell defiance at the British governor who had sacked a premier. Now, as he gazed out the window, a crocodile of small children crossed the park, heading for the art gallery, all in orderly line like a string of rosary beads. The Domain was no longer a battleground.

“I sometimes lie awake, but only because I wonder at the apathy of the voters. They get stirred up occasionally, like they did after the Port Arthur massacre, but do you think political skullbuggery keeps them awake at night?” He shook his head. “If it’s not wearing football boots or cricket boots or basketball shoes, it ain’t happening. I’ll write a press release and the Old Man will go out there under the trees and after the TV cameramen have finished photographing each other, they’ll turn the cameras on him and he’ll make a fifteen-second soundbite and it’ll be on TV tonight and that’s when Mr. and Mrs. Sydney will go to the toilet or the fridge or the stove and the charade will be the same as last night and tomorrow night and every night till Parliament goes into recess. Ninety per cent of the voters will be in the toilet or at the fridge when it’s announced that tomorrow is Judgement Day.”

Lisa looked out at the Domain. A few more people were appearing: the lunchtime netball players, half a dozen joggers, a street musician playing empty tunes to the empty air, the passers-by ignoring him as if he were no more than a treestump. At last she turned back to Ladbroke. “Do you think they’ll tell the police to stop looking for the murderers?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised. Not tell them to stop looking, just not to look so hard. The Old Man wouldn’t know a javelin-thrower from a pole-vaulter, but he doesn’t want his Olympics spoiled.”

“His Olympics?”

Ladbroke smiled. “You don’t think he’s going to let the Lord Mayor or the IOC or the AOC or SOCOG claim the Games as theirs? He’ll be eighty-four in Olympics year. If his prayers are answered, he’ll drop dead in the VIP seats just as the Olympic flame is lit. He’ll get a posthumous gold medal for timing.”