7

I

“SOMEONE AT Town Hall is lining his pockets,” said the Premier.

He was honest as the day is long, depending on the season and daylight saving. He couldn’t be bought, but he could be rented: a favour for a favour. He had thought of changing his name from Hans to Jan, but somehow Honest Jan didn’t have the right ring to it. Neither did Honest Hans, according to his critics, who were many.

“Who, for instance?”

Since becoming Commissioner three months ago Bill Zanuch had trodden warily with the Premier and his alter ego, Police Minister. As an Assistant Commissioner he had had some contact with Vanderberg, but he had done his best to avoid him. He was an arch-conservative in his voting habits, but not naïve; he would have voted for Machiavelli, except that one couldn’t trust Italians. He knew that the Premier was Machiavellian, but one always expected that of the Labor Right.

“Ray Brode.”

“Careful,” said Ladbroke, his minder. “No names, no pack drill.”

“Who’s gunna give me any pack drill—Bill here? Police Commissioners never sack their Minister, do they, Bill? Or their Premier?” The bone-picking smile was at its widest.

“Never.” Zanuch almost tore a muscle forcing a return smile. “But what do you want me to do? It’s not a police job.”

“It’s connected. Explain it to him, Roger.”

The three of them were in the Premier’s office, the door shut against interference and passing ears. Zanuch was in his silver braid and Ladbroke in his Cutler double-breasted; the sartorial ruin was the Premier. He was in his shirtsleeves, his white shirt already wrinkled, his standard plain red tie, one that he had worn for ten years, caught sideways across his chest under his black braces. There was no doubt, though, who was Caesar.

“It’s Olympic Tower,” said Ladbroke. “Ray Brode has prospered out of it, how much we don’t know. The Tower project—”

Zanuch interrupted. “How did it get the name Olympic? I thought all Olympic logos were the property of the organizing committee.”

“Only since Sydney got the Games. There was Olympic tyres, remember? There are fifty-two Olympic this-that-and-the-other in the phone book, but none of them uses the logos. Brode was in on the original project, the one that went broke. He knew Sydney was going to bid for the 2000 Games and he got the original developers to get in early, register the name. When the present consortium took over, Brode set about taking advantage of the name. It was he who sold the accommodation in the hotel to SOCOG.”

“He got the Chinese in, too,” said The Dutchman, who always kept a foot in the door of every conversation.

“It was common knowledge,” said Ladbroke, “that several of the top guys in the IOC wanted Beijing to have the Games. Brode thought it might be a sop if he could persuade Beijing to invest money in Olympic Tower—make money out of our Games. He went to Beijing to sell the idea. But Beijing wasn’t interested, not then. All the old men up there are a lot of stiff-necked bastards.”

The old man behind the desk nodded; none knew better how to stiffen a neck.

“Now Beijing has changed its tune,” said Ladbroke.

The Premier had been quiet long enough: “The Chinese consul-general’s been to see me. Shrewd feller, got his slanty little eyes wide open.” Out on the hustings he was every ethnic’s best friend and patron; but he never had to look for votes in his own office. “Beijing’s just discovered it’s got some corrupt generals in its army, fellers willing to use army money to make a dollar or two for themselves. Or a million or two. Beijing doesn’t like the picture and they’d rather we didn’t frame it.”

He’ll be writing his own speeches next, thought Ladbroke.

“I’m not quite with you,” said Zanuch, though he was well ahead of them. He hadn’t risen through the ranks by looking backwards.

“You know who’s involved in this. Les Chung, coupla other Chinese families, the—” He looked at Ladbroke.

“The Sun family and the Fengs.” The Dutchman would have known their names if they had been big Labor contributors. Ladbroke knew the Suns and the Fengs were Opposition backers.

“The Suns and the Fengs,” Vanderberg went on. “And a General Huang. Your fellers aren’t even close to finding who murdered Sun, Feng and Huang. Beijing couldn’t care less about Sun and Feng, they’re just locals. But they’d rather you forget about General Huang. They’d like us to forget the whole thing.”

“They’re not serious!”

“I’ve shocked you, eh?” The Premier couldn’t stand the Police Commissioner, but Cabinet, for once, had overruled him when the appointment had to be made. “They’re dead serious.”

“Are you?”

The Dutchman looked at Ladbroke. “Am I?”

“There are advantages,” Ladbroke told Zanuch. “We don’t know how big this mess is. As it is, it’s already getting us bad publicity overseas. Fleet Street, which wanted Manchester to get the Games, have gone back to their old ploy of painting us as The Land of the Long White Con. Brash Sydney, where anything goes, all that crap. They keep bringing up Bond, Connell, Skase—none of them was a Sydneysider. They forget all about the shonky deals in the City of London. So far we’ve kept the Chinese connection out of the news—”

“Police PR have done that,” Zanuch corrected him. “The media knows nothing because we’ve told them nothing.”

“Correction, Commissioner. The media does know and they’re going to blow it any minute. They know part of the Tower development capital came out of China. They know there’s been some wheeling and dealing with Town Hall. The one thing they don’t know is that Mr. Shan was General Huang.”

“Why do we have to protect the Chinese army’s good name?”

Ladbroke managed to suppress a sigh. He knew that Zanuch saw the whole picture, framed or unframed, but that he had to play dumb. Commissioners of Police were not supposed to pay lip service to political skulduggery.

Vanderberg took over again: “Bill, we couldn’t give two hooters for the Chinks and their army. But if it gets out about them, it’s all gunna spread like diarrhoea on a blanket—”

Zanuch, a fastidious man, shut his mind against the image.

“—and in no time at all Sydney’s name will be mud.”

“Shit,” said his adviser.

The Dutchman nodded. “Yes. We’ve had enough crap thrown at us already. The Greens abusing us because the Games aren’t gunna be green enough—Jesus, they think the world is gunna turn on their TV to count how many trees we’ve planted, how clean the Parramatta River is? Then there’s the Abos threatening to demonstrate if they don’t get their land claims—”

“Have you made any statement about those claims? You’d have a legitimate answer.” Zanuch knew what a storm such a statement would make.

“Nah, not worth it.” He was wise enough not to appear wise: the voters suspected wisdom, unless it came from radio talkback hosts. “I had my way, I’d take the Olympics out of the media for a while.”

Zanuch was ambivalent in his attitude towards the Games. As Commissioner he knew there would be godalmighty headaches for the police: traffic problems, just for starters. And threats from demonstrators, security against terrorists: the list was already filed in his office and would grow. Yet there was the irresistible attraction: himself in full uniform up there on the official platform with the VIPs. Standing tall and proud, even through the smoke of a terrorist’s bomb, the star of ten billion television screens. His one handicap, his wife, an iconoclast, had told him was that he would be wearing silver instead of gold. Still, better silver than bronze.

“We’d like the whole Olympic Tower business to die quietly,” said Ladbroke. “Cancel the IOC accommodation, get it out of the picture entirely. But it’s too late for that, there’s already talk we’re going to be short of accommodation. So all we can hope for is that you solve the murders quickly—or not at all. Just get them out of the media as soon as possible. From now on Sydney has to be pure as Shangri-la.”

“Or the Garden of Eden,” said the serpent behind the desk.

Zanuch stood up, ran a polishing finger along the braid on his cap. “We’ll do what we can. But these sort of things are never easy.”

When he had gone the Premier looked at Ladbroke. “Well, will he play balls with us?”

I hope not. “He will. The last thing he wants is to be known as the Commissioner of Murder City.”

“You should of been a politician, son,” said the Premier with grudging admiration.

“Every man to his last.”

“Nobody ever got anywhere, son, running last.”

Almost twenty years, thought Ladbroke, and I still don’t know when the Old Man is fair dinkum with his aphorisms.

II

“It’s official,” said Chief Superintendent Greg Random. “General Huang never came near Sydney. It was Mr. Shan. He’s the corpse, not the general.”

He and Malone were in his office at Police Centre in Surry Hills. Long and lean, he was a throwback to the disappearing laconic man from the bush; he had come out of the western plains thirty-five years ago and understatement still clung to him like plains dust. He never used words like incredible or fantastic. He had seen too much of human nature to know that nothing was incredible or fantastic, so he never wasted hyperbole the way the young did. He was sure, however, that hyperbole would burst out of this case.

“The media are going to get on to it sooner or later,” said Malone.

“Not from us, it won’t. If anyone from Homicide gives any hint to anyone from the press, they’re suspended, okay?”

“Greg, when we first learned who Mr. Shan really was, it went into the computer. I’ve since put nothing new into it and I’ve had Sheryl Dallen recall the back-ups. But nothing leaks like a computer.”

Random pondered a while; Malone was accustomed to his long pauses. He had been commander of the Major Crime Squad, South Region, but recent reorganization, a growing disease in the Police Service, had made him the officer responsible for the Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit; it was rumoured there was a secret group at Police Headquarters who did nothing but dream up new names, a ploy also rumoured to be financed by the stationery suppliers. The titles changed, but the work never.

He knew as well as anyone that secrecy in the Service, as in any bureaucracy, was an impossibility; even the corruption in certain sections, which had now been almost wiped out, had not been as secret as the corrupt had thought. He knew the truth of the old Hebrew proverb: Do not speak of secret measures in a field of little hills. Or a field of computers.

“Okay, we just play dumb. Anyone asks questions, you just refer them to the Commissioner. Let him carry the can.”

Malone looked out the window at the gathering clouds. “I’m not getting very far, Greg. I’ve got twelve people working on this, including the fellers from Day Street. I want to find the three young Chinese who are missing, but they could be back in China for all I know.”

“Why don’t you try and contact someone from the Triads?”

“You think that’s easy? I’ve had a tail on Les Chung for the past coupla days, but he’s not leading us anywhere.”

“What about Madame Whatshername? Tzu?”

The woman hovered like a shadow through the case; she was on his mind all the time. “She’s being tailed, too. By my wife.” He explained what Lisa had told him at lunch. “I think she might be shaking hands with Councillor Brode.”

“Money changing hands?”

“Could be, but that’s none of our business . . . I told my wife to stay out of it and I’ve got Andy Graham tailing her and General Wang-Te. But the kids are the ones I want to talk to, they must know something or they wouldn’t have shot through. I want the girl, Huang’s adopted daughter.” He stood up, an eye on the clouds, which were black now. “Suppose we find out the three Chinatown murders were organized from China, by the army?”

Random indulged himself in another long pause; then he grinned. “Blame it on the CIA. They are always good as patsies.”

“You’re a great help, Greg.”

“Scobie, someday you’ll be sitting here in this chair. When the wind blows from the top it blows right through this chair. The thing you learn is that chief superintendents are just windbreaks. All you can do is see that inspectors and other inferior ranks aren’t bowled over by it. Our gods have suddenly become Olympian, all we can do is what they think is best. Which, more often than not, is the worst. But that’s politics, right?”

Malone drove back to Strawberry Hills through a thunderstorm, which exactly suited his mood. Lightning scratched threatening messages on a blackboard of cloud; a thick mesh of rain tried to bring him to a standstill. Pedestrians floated across the windscreen, saved from drowning by their umbrellas; a fire engine, looking for a fire, went by on a surf of dirty water. He was tempted to drive on through the rain, out into the clear weather of home.

“Get wet?” asked Clements as Malone came into the main office, his pork-pie hat dripping like a guttering, his jacket dark with water.

“Don’t ask stupid bloody questions!”

“Oh-oh, bad news?” Clements followed him into the small office. “I’ve got more bad news.”

Malone didn’t answer, just took off his sodden jacket.

“Or maybe it’s not so bad.” Clements sat down, in the visitor’s chair this time, not the couch. “It adds a bit more to our puzzle.”

“And that’s good?” Malone took a towel out of a desk drawer, dried his face and hair. “Come on, Russ, for Crissake, quit buggering about!”

“Sit down and simmer down,” said the big man. He waited while Malone combed his hair and then sat down behind his desk. Then: “Okay? Four months ago two insurance policies were taken out, one on Mr. Sun and the other on Mr. Feng, each for ten million dollars. John Kagal has been doing some ferreting.”

“Each man took it out on himself or on each other?”

“No. The kids took it out on their respective fathers. The Sun boys on their dad, Camilla Feng on hers. The policies are on the fathers, but it’s the kids who supposedly have paid the premiums and benefit from their fathers’ deaths.”

“The rest of the families, the mothers and the other kids, don’t get a look in?”

“No.”

Malone sat back; he felt he was drying out by the minute. “Ten million? Can you take out that much life insurance in this country?”

Clements nodded. “According to John, yes. One of the big companies here will issue the policy, then lay it off around the world.”

“What would the premium be on a policy that size?”

“John’s been on to AMP. Just on $23,000 a year.”

“I dunno about the Sun brothers, but would Camilla have that sort of money? Her own, I mean?”

“We don’t know if it was her money—it could of been her old man’s. The whole thing could of been his idea. Four months ago he wasn’t in trouble—well, he was, but only he knew it. He arranges a ten-million-dollar policy, more than enough to look after his family when the bad news breaks—”

“You said the family didn’t figure as beneficiaries.”

“Okay, so they don’t. Maybe he wants Camilla to stay in the consortium, pay off his debts and still be part of Olympic Tower. So he arranges his own murder.”

“And Mr. Sun? He does the same? There’s no evidence he was in financial trouble.”

“Feng persuades him to take out a similar policy, so his—Feng’s—plan won’t be too obvious.”

“Then he does the dirty on Sun and arranges his murder, too? You’re getting soft in the head, sport.”

Clements knocked his knuckles on his big head. “Solid as a rock . . . No, our girl Camilla learns about Dad’s financial black hole, decides Dad’s gotta go anyway. So she arranges the murder.”

“And Mr. Sun’s? Or are the brothers supposed to be in it with Camilla?”

“No, that’s the clever bit. She arranges for the killer to do her dad, Mr. Sun and General Huang—”

“Mr. Shan. There never was any General Huang. I’ll explain in a minute. Go ahead.”

“Maybe Les Chung was to be bumped off, too—I dunno. But with a triple murder, it would look less like a put-up job to get the Feng insurance pay-out.”

“Are the insurance companies going to pay out?”

“When John went to see them, they decided to stall.”

“Don’t they always?” Malone tapped his fingers on his desk. “It’s a good scenario, Russ, but—”

“But what?”

“I just have the feeling that the murders weren’t homegrown. Don’t ask me why—it’s just a feeling.” Then his phone rang. “Malone.”

“This is Sergeant Clover, sir. Telephone Intercepts.” He had a soft whispering voice, as if there was secrecy in his blood or he had been overwhelmed by the conversations he had heard on a thousand tapped wires. “We’ve traced one of those mobiles you wanted. They are Telstra customers. They made a call this morning, to the Town Hall.”

“Where are they now?” Malone could feel the adrenaline starting up again. Even the sky was lightening outside.

“The call was made from an apartment in The Mount in Chinatown. Apartment 24C on the twenty-fourth floor. We’ll meet you in the lobby.”

III

“Les,” Jack Aldwych had said yesterday, “everything in this fucking business has got a Chinese name to it. Pretty soon the Chinese community is gunna have shit smeared all over it. The loony right-wingers are already making noises about Asian shenanigans. They called up Landfall Holdings asking why we’re in cahoots with Asians—”

“Do they know you are Landfall Holdings?” Les Chung had said.

“I dunno. It don’t matter whether they do or not.” The rough edges were showing, like a rock that had been washed clean of the moss that had softened it. “So long as I’m not Asian, I’m lily white as far as they’re concerned.”

“So what do you want?” Les Chung was not afraid of the old man, but he knew when to give and not take. He still woke at night in a sweat, the hitman coming back for him in a dream.

“I want to see some of the Triad leaders. I wanna find those three kids who’ve disappeared. They haven’t shot through because all of a sudden they wanted a holiday on the Barrier Reef. They know something and I wanna know what it is.”

“What makes you think the Triad guys know where they are?”

“Maybe they dunno now—why should they? It’s been none of their business up till now. Unless they’re your silent partners?”

“Jack, why are you always so suspicious?”

“Because I spent bloody near sixty years learning trust is something I’d never put money on. Okay, they’re not your partners. But you ask ‘em where those kids are and I’ll bet they’ll have an answer in twenty-four hours—or sooner. Then I wanna meet ‘em. Anywhere they name.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to persuade them, Jack—”

“Les, tell ‘em they can trust me.” His grin would have impressed Confucius.

So now he was sitting in one of the gambling rooms above the Golden Gate. With the advent of the Sydney Casino and the proliferation of poker machines in clubs and pubs, business had fallen off in these rooms; State governments encouraged gambling as a new religion and the voters had fallen on their knees in prayerful thanks. But old patrons still came here to these rooms, comfortable with the atmosphere and the odds. Luck, they knew, was a deity who would be no more favourable across the water in the casino glitz.

The heavy red curtains had been drawn and the only light came from a standard lamp aimed at Aldwych. Beyond the lamp, sitting behind one of the gambling tables, were the dim figures of four of the Triad leaders. Aldwych was amused by the theatricals, but he knew there was no one as secretive about their identity as the four who had agreed to meet him.

“Mr. Chung vouched for you.” If there was a leader amongst the leaders it was the man sitting second from the right. “He explained your reasons for wanting to meet us.”

Aldwych took his time, establishing his own position; he, too, had been a leader. “With some politicians talking about Asians the way they are, you Chinese blokes don’t want any bad publicity. I could of asked the business leaders from around here to help me find these kids, but they don’t have the contacts you blokes have.”

The dark heads turned to look at each other; there could have been hidden smiles. They were heirs to a society that had been founded in the seventeenth century by a monastery abbot; they still had all the paraphernalia of religion but no religion. They paid homage to the Five Ancestors, the only survivors of the original society, which had been betrayed by one of its senior members. They paid their respects to the three Triad elements: Heaven, Earth and Man, aware always that Man was the most unreliable of the elements. Perhaps the abbot of Shao-Lin, looking down from Heaven, if he is there, ponders on how a company of 128 warrior-monks, formed to put down a small Tibetan rebellion, had grown to a conglomerate wherever Chinese are to be found. These four men in this darkened room thousands of miles from Shao-Lin were captains of their own peculiar industry; Aldwych knew they had more power than he had ever had. But they had never had his independence.

Then the spokesman said, “You flatter us, Mr. Aldwych, but we accept it—we don’t get much of it.” One of them gave a short cough of a laugh. “Do you think these young people have something to do with the murders downstairs?”

“I dunno. But you know, like I do, that the girl had twenty-three million deposited in her bank account. You’d be suspicious of her, wouldn’t you?”

No heads nodded: they wouldn’t spoil any of their own children that way. “What about the two young men?”

“Suspicion again. Why did they suddenly skip the morning after the murders? Maybe they’re all just shit-scared, but I wanna find out why. Les Chung and I’ve got a lotta money tied up in Olympic Tower.”

“What will you do to them if you find out they did have something to do with the murders?”

Aldwych knew his answer would be important to them. He smiled. “I might turn ‘em over to you.”

“Not to the police?” This from the man seated on the far left, a man with a very narrow head and a sibilant hiss to his voice.

“Would you want me to? Suppose we dunno what would come out in court?”

“What are you afraid of that would come out in court?”

“Nothing that would hurt me or Les Chung. But you’ve got connections in China—”

“How do you know what connections we have, Mr. Aldwych?” This from the spokesman.

“I know what connections you had forty years ago—things haven’t changed. They don’t change with you blokes—and I mean that as a compliment. You’re conservatives like me, you know the value in no change.”

“We’ve known all about you for forty years, but I don’t think we ever thought of you as a conservative, Mr. Aldwych. But go on . . .”

“Maybe back home in China there are a lotta high-ups who wouldn’t want it broadcast that one of their ex-generals had been smuggling money out of China into the accounts of his son and daughter.”

None of the heads moved, no shoulders twitched: Aldwych knew then that they knew as much as he did, maybe even more. The spokesman said, “What happens if the third partner in your consortium goes bust?”

“Les Chung and I will buy them out.”

“Would you consider us as partners?” This had obviously been discussed; nobody looked at the spokesman in surprise.

He could guess at the extent of their investments in Sydney: all money like his own that had been laundered, folded and accepted by stockbrokers who could turn a blind eye as neatly as they could turn a dollar. “All local money or cash out of China?”

“Would more cash out of China matter?”

“It would if we were gunna have the same trouble as we had with General Huang.”

“We’ve never met before, Mr. Aldwych, but you are much more scrupulous than we expected.”

Aldwych grinned, unoffended. “Once bitten, twice shy, that’s all. I’m sure you run your businesses the same way.”

“Is the money deposited in the bank accounts of General Huang’s children, is it still here in Australia?”

“I dunno. It could be. But I’ll bet it’s not available. I thought you’d know what was happening to it.”

“Why us? We don’t have any influence with the banks here. Or the government.”

“You know the new bloke who’s just arrived, General Wang-Te.”

“What makes you think we know him?”

“You’ve just given yourself away. If you didn’t know him, you’d of asked who he was.”

Despite their vague forms Aldwych had now identified the four men. They came regularly to the Golden Gate, to the restaurant downstairs and to these gambling rooms; never together, but each with members of his own Triad. Aldwych had never questioned Les Chung about them; he knew Chung would give him no answers. They had been no part of his other life, there had been no battles with them; ethnicity had drawn the lines, the Great Wall had been built from both sides. Later there had been the Italians and the Greeks and, still later, the Lebanese; now there were the Vietnamese and recently the Koreans; the Russians still had to arrive. Aldwych had had nothing to do with the later arrivals and he knew the Triad leaders had the same reservations. Small empires set their own boundaries and their own rules.

The four men sat in silence; they looked at each other, but said nothing. Then the spokesman said, “The three young people you are looking for are in The Mount. Apartment 24C.”

“Anybody with them?”

“No.”

“Who owns the apartment?”

“An offshore company. Hoop Investments.”

“Who owns Hoop Investments?” He knew they would know.

“Mr. Raymond Brode. Councillor Brode.” A moment, then: “You don’t seem surprised.”

“The last time I was surprised I was nine years old. I’d just won the Under-Sevens race at the Water Board picnic for the third year running. I was surprised the organizers hadn’t woken up to me.”

“You should have been Chinese,” said the spokesman, and all five of them, including the Caucasian, laughed.

IV

The Mount was a steel-and-concrete high-rise that rose like a phallus out of the otherwise flat belly of Chinatown. It had been the first joint venture between Les Chung and Jack Aldwych and its thirty floors had been sold off the plan, mostly to Chinese buyers: Singaporeans, Hong Kong and locals. Aldwych had not been near the project since it had been built. Development for him was like a bank hold-up: take the money and run. It amused him that there were so many honest men with the same philosophy.

Malone knew nothing of Aldwych’s connection with the building. With only a lukewarm interest in heritage preservation and conservation, he had never paid any attention to developers, never read the property pages in the newspapers. He was continually surprised at how the city’s skyline kept changing; high-rise office and apartment buildings seemed to erupt like peaks thrust up out of the tectonic plates of the city. Sometimes he worried that one day he would find himself a stranger in a city that he had once known as intimately as his own back yard.

He and Clements and Gail Lee parked their car in the taxi zone right outside the entrance to The Mount. A taxi driver instantly fell out of his cab; he stabbed a finger at the sign: “Can’t you buggers read?”

Clements wearily produced his badge. There were advantages to having an unmarked police car, but sometimes he thought it would be better to have a disabled driver sticker on the windscreen “We’re picking up a fare.”

“Oh, sure.” But the driver shook his head. “But you got no idea—this is taxi territory, but buggers all the time—”

“I know just how you feel,” said Clements. “It’s the same in our territory.”

He followed Malone and Gail into the lobby of the building. It was not large, but it suggested you were entering luxury. The floors were marble, the furniture was glass, brass and leather; the two Chinese girls behind the reception desk were expensively groomed. Nobody dropped in here looking for a twenty-five-dollars-a-night bed.

A tall thin man in blue overalls came towards the three detectives.

“Sergeant Clover, sir.” His voice had a little more resonance than it had had on the phone. He gestured at his clothing. “I’m supposed to be from Telstra. Only the manager knows why we’re here and he’s not happy.”

“They never are,” said Malone. “You’ve got someone else with you?”

“He’s up on the twenty-fourth floor. Are these people going to cause trouble? I don’t want my bloke getting winged.”

“We dunno. They may, so we’ll get your feller out of the way first. We’ve got a SPG team on the way—”

“They’re here now,” said Clements.

They came into the lobby, six men in dark caps and tactical vests, their Remington 12-gauge shotguns held across their chests as if presenting arms. Behind the reception desk the two Chinese girls were suddenly round-eyed; an elderly Chinese woman stopped dead halfway across the lobby, her head moving awkwardly like a street mime’s. Then the manager came out of his office, hands flapping, looking anything but managerial.

“I hope you’re not going to do any damage!” He looked at the shotguns as if they were howitzers. “No,” said Malone. “This is just a precaution, in case—”

“In case of what?” He was short and tubby and all the police, with the exception of Gail Lee, towered over him. But he was the gatekeeper to this castle and, though he was not happy, he was not standing back.

But Malone had turned away from him, was speaking to the sergeant in charge of the State Protection Group: “We’re not sure whether they’re armed—”

“The lift’s coming down from the twenty-fourth floor,” said Clements.

All eyes turned up towards the line of figures above the lifts. The light ran backwards across the line: 21-20-19. “Righto,” said Malone, “get everyone out of the lobby. Quick!”

Everyone was cleared from the lobby in a moment, Gail taking the elderly Chinese woman into the manager’s office. The SPG men lined up three to either side of the descending lift; Malone and Clements stood behind them, as behind human fences. Malone, watching the light running across the line of figures, as under an invisible finger, felt his nerves beginning to tighten. There was no evidence at all that the missing Chinese girl and the two engineers, if they were in the lift, were armed and murderous. But Malone, awash in the puzzle of the case, was taking no chances.

3-2-1: the shotguns came up, the men in front of Malone and Clements stiffened. The doors of the lift slid open. Three young Chinese stood there, a girl and two men. And Jack Aldwych and Blackie Ovens.

“A guard of honour?” said Aldwych; on Judgement Day he would meet the Devil as an equal, ask the same question. “Your idea, Inspector Malone?”

Malone somehow managed to stifle the laugh that, like a nervous tic, threatened to make a fool of him. He had a sense of the farcical; this was mockery with shotguns. The SPG men lowered their weapons, looked at each other and shook their heads.

“How do we report this?” the sergeant asked Malone.

“With restraint,” said Malone, and allowed the laugh to escape. “Coming with us, Jack?”

“Of course,” said Aldwych. “I was bringing these young people to see you.”