8

I

“CUT OUT the bullshit. Jack,” said Malone. “What were you going to do with them?”

He, Clements and Aldwych were in Malone’s office at Homicide. Li Ping, the young Chinese girl, was out in the main room, seated at a desk with Sheryl Dallen keeping an eye on her. Tong Haifeng and Guo Yi were being held separately in the two interview rooms. Blackie Ovens, a veteran of police questioning and therefore to be trusted as an old acquaintance, sat at an empty desk by a window in the main room, reading the Telegraph-Mirror’s sports pages.

Aldwych, perfectly at ease, considered a moment. He wore a dark blue summer suit and what could have been a regimental tie: any regiment, it made no difference to him. He was every inch the businessman and all he had been about was business.

“Scobie, all I was gunna do was ask them a few questions.”

“Why was Blackie carrying a piece?”

“You had six blokes carrying guns. And you and Russ here had your own pieces.”

“We have licences to carry them.”

“So has Blackie.” He grinned, still at ease. “It may be ten years outa date, but he still has it. Come on, you two. I wasn’t gunna blast those three kids. 1 was there for the same reason as you, to ask ‘em some questions. You were the ones with all the artillery.”

As if on cue Gail Lee, who had stayed behind at The Mount, came into the main room and crossed to Malone’s doorway. “Nothing, boss. I went through the flat with a toothcomb. Not a gun, nothing.”

“Bank books, passports?”

“Nothing, just a couple of suitcases with a change of clothing.”

Malone looked at Aldwych. “Did you or Blackie take anything off them?”

Aldwych shook his head. “No, but we didn’t search the place. We just knocked on the door, they opened it and we walked in.”

“They opened it, just like that? They didn’t ask who you were?”

“Oh sure. Blackie said he was the house maintenance man. They’re not very smart, those kids. The girl opened the door right away and, like I say, we just walked in.”

“Were they surprised? Scared?”

“Yeah, I think they might of been. They recognized me, the two young blokes. They might of been upset, too, when they saw Blackie with his gun.”

“It’d upset me,” said Clements, then looked at Gail. “Okay, Gail, have a few words with Li Ping. Tell her she’s got nothing to worry about.”

“Has she?” asked Gail.

Clements looked at Malone, then back at Gail. “That depends what Scobie’s gunna ask her when he gets around to her.”

Gail nodded appreciatively, smiled at her two seniors, then went out and across to Sheryl and the young Chinese girl.

Aldwych said, “I can’t get used to women Ds. They wouldn’t of lasted a week in my day.”

“Some of them are tougher than we are,” said Malone. “I might give Constable Lee half an hour with you.”

“How’d you get on to the kids, Jack?” asked Clements.

“I’m sworn to secrecy.” Aldwych was enjoying himself, though disappointed. He was certain he would have got more out of Li Ping and her boy friends than the police would.

“Who rents them the apartment?” said Malone. “The manager said they just moved in there, no reference to him. It’s owned by some firm called Hoop Investments. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, Scobie.”

“We do that quite a lot, but sooner or later we find the right tree. Come on, Jack, it won’t take us long to find out who Hoop Investments are.”

Aldwych took his time; then: “Ray Brode.”

“Councillor Brode?” said Malone, and looked at Clements. “Why ain’t I surprised?”

Aldwych was surprised. “You mean you knew he was mixed up in all this?”

“No, Jack. It’s just that I feel we’re in a circus and circuses are full of surprises. Don’t you feel like that, Russ?”

“Oh, indubitably.”

“Indubitably?” Aldwych had a little difficulty with the word.

“It’s the new Service policy,” said Clements. “We’re supposed to sound as if we had a tertiary education.”

“All the lawyers who tried to send me to jail had tertiary education. Last count, three of them were in jail.”

The small exchange had relaxed the atmosphere. Malone, almost against his will and certainly against his training, had over the past few years come to accept Jack Aldwych. But he was under no illusion: the relationship was a cobweb spun over the past, but which still had menace for the present. If it came to a crunch, Aldwych would take care of Number One; others, including Malone, would be taken care of in another sense. It was politics of the personal, which can be just as self-serving as the other sort.

“Have you spoken to Brode?”

“No.” He had, but that had been months ago on the matter of the four extra levels on Olympic Tower. Madame Tzu had done most of the talking, but it was Aldwych’s and Les Chung’s money that had had the final word.

“Leave him to us, Jack.” Malone stood up, eased his back. This case was like cold weather, stiffening his joints. “We’ll let you know if we get anything out of the Chinese kids. Oh, and tell Blackie to put his gun away in a drawer and throw away the key. Why didn’t he hand it in during the gun amnesty?”

“He must of forgot. He ain’t as young as he used to be.”

“Are you?”

“Oh, indubitably.” His grin, if nothing else, was youthful.

When he and Blackie Ovens had gone, Malone said, “Why do I like the old bugger so much?”

“He’s an honest crim,” said Clements. “If he was gunna stab you in the back, he’d turn you around first and tell you. This city’s full of bastards who wouldn’t do that.”

“I like you, too. You’re such a comfort.”

He went out into the big room and across to where Gail, Sheryl and Li Ping sat at the desk. One or two other detectives were at their desks, but most of Homicide were out on other cases or, the dread of all cops, in court awaiting their call.

The two women detectives went to stand up, but Malone waved them down, took a chair and sat down with them, across from Li Ping.

“Have you told our two ladies anything, Miss Li?”

She was pretty in a flat-featured sort of way that only lately had he come to appreciate. Most of his life, from the time he had discovered girls, he had looked for fine bones, expressive eyes, preferably heavy-lidded, and a full sensual mouth. Not all the girls he had known had had those qualities, though most of them had been sensual in other places. Then Lisa, who had all the qualities, had come along and established his standard for all time. It was she, running Asian movies on SBS, the multicultural channel, who had pointed out to him that not all beauties were Western.

“What should I tell them?” It hadn’t occurred to him to ask whether she spoke English; he chided himself for his stupid, narrow outlook. Her English was careful, though; or maybe it was just she who was careful. “I do not have anything to tell.”

Malone looked at Gail and Sheryl. “What have you asked her?”

“Only why she and her boy friends suddenly disappeared,” said Sheryl.

“And what did you say, Miss Li?”

“We were frightened. Very much afraid.” She did not appear very frightened at the moment, though she was not totally relaxed.

“What of?”

“The murders.”

“The Chinatown murders? Or the murder of your brother Zhang Yong?”

She looked sideways at him: carefully. “Who told you he was my brother?”

“Okay, not your blood brother. You were the adopted one. By General Huang. Right?”

“Who told you all this?” As if police were not entitled to pry into family matters.

“We told each other,” said Malone, and Gail and Sheryl smiled. “When did the general adopt you?”

“When I was very small, a baby. His wife wanted a girl. She was very good to me, till she died.”

“And things haven’t been so good since then?”

She didn’t answer, just sat staring at him: decide your own answer. He said, “Do you know who your natural mother was?”

“No.”

He fired an arrow wildly into the air: “Was it Madame Tzu?”

Gail and Sheryl raised their eyebrows, but he ignored their look. Aimless arrows occasionally hit a target.

But not this time: Li Ping shook her head at his stupid imagination. “You must be joking!” “Righto, let’s say I am.” Then he stopped joking: “Where were you when your brother was murdered?”

It hit home; she flinched. “I—I was with my boyfriend.”

“Who is?” But he knew.

“Guo Yi.”

“And where were the two of you?”

“In Chinatown. At—” She named the largest restaurant in the area, one that could seat a thousand diners.

“A pretty big place. I don’t suppose you would have been noticed by anyone? Not by the waiters?”

“I do not know. Why should we wish to be noticed?”

This girl is smart: too smart. “Where did you spend the rest of the night?”

“We went home to our flat at Cronulla. We slept together, if that is your next question.”

“When did you learn your brother had been murdered?”

She did not flinch this time. “We heard it on the radio.”

“And that was when you decided to disappear? When did Tong Haifeng join you?”

“We met him at the apartment in The Mount. He arranged it all.”

“With Mr. Brode?” Her face remained blank. “The owner of the apartment.”

“I suppose so.”

Malone changed tack: “What was to be done with all the millions in your and Zhang’s accounts?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Twenty-three million dollars in your account and no one told you what it was for. Come on, Miss Li. You were stupid—” She looked up sharply at that. “Well, you were, weren’t you? You and whoever sent the money. Didn’t you think so much money would instantly make the bank suspicious?”

She was wearing slacks, a white shirt and a sleeveless brocaded vest. She fumbled in her pockets, but came up empty-handed; then murmured Thanks as Sheryl handed her a tissue. She blew her nose, looked at the tissue, then folded it neatly and put it in her pocket. She’s stalling, thought Malone and waited patiently.

“I had nothing to do with the transfer of the money,” she said at last. “It just arrived.”

“And the bank rang you to tell you?”

“No. I happened to go to the bank the day it arrived.”

Malone looked at Sheryl, who said, “We’ve been in touch with your bank, Ping. You went to the bank three days in a row, asking if money had arrived.”

Li Ping sat very still. She had a slim figure and long legs; there was nothing of the squat peasant about her. She came from the north, she had told Gail Lee, but she had not named a town or village where her natural mother had borne her: because, she had said, she did not know. As the questioning had proceeded she had sat up straighter; there was now an air to her almost of defiance. As if to say that, after all, she was a general’s daughter. Adopted, sure, but that meant she had been chosen.

“Why wasn’t the money sent to General Huang?” Malone asked. “He had the Bund Corporation account.”

“I do not know.” Her English had suddenly become careful again. “He was not here in Sydney when they told me the money was in my account.”

“And in Zhang’s?”

“I suppose so. Zhang and I were not speaking to each other.” She was prim.

“And General Huang didn’t come to see you when he arrived?”

“No.”

“Did he go to see Zhang?”

“Probably. He always saw him first.”

“When was he to see you?”

“We were to meet on Saturday morning. He was murdered on Friday night.”

“Did your boy friends know about the money?”

“I do not discuss everything with them.” Even primmer.

“Miss Li, we know Guo Yi is your live-in boyfriend. You mean to tell us you suddenly have twenty-three million dollars in your bank account and you don’t mention it to him?”

She stared at him, said nothing. All at once Malone had had enough of her; she would keep. He stood up. “I’ll talk to Guo, maybe he’ll be a bit more co-operative.”

“May I go now?” She seemed totally unconcerned about her boyfriend or how co-operative he might be.

“You don’t want to wait for your friends?”

“They will know where to find me.”

“But we mightn’t. Stay a little longer, Miss Li. Detective Lee will make you some tea.”

She looked at Gail. “I’d prefer coffee.”

Another section of the Great Wall. But Malone just grinned at her and walked across to the first interview room where Andy Graham was keeping Guo Yi company. As soon as Malone walked into the room the young Chinese looked up at the video camera that recorded interviews.

Malone shook his head. “It’s not turned on, Mr. Guo. We only do that when we have a suspect. Do you think you’re a suspect?”

“No.”

“Good. What have you told Detective Graham?”

Guo gestured. “Nothing. But he’s been very friendly.”

Andy Graham grinned and Malone said, “He’s the friendliest man on my staff. I’ll try and be friendly, too.” He sat down opposite the young Chinese. “Why did you disappear at the weekend?”

Guo Yi was just above medium height with more weight and muscle than Malone, still trapped by image, expected in a Chinese. He was handsome, almost Western in his looks (again the prejudiced image), with long black hair brushed straight back and a small pearl ear-ring in his left ear. He was dressed in blue jeans, a black Mambo T-shirt and brown deck shoes. After his initial glance at the video camera, he was now composed. Almost coldly so.

Oh Christ, thought Malone, another Great Wall. “Why did you run away, Mr. Guo?”

“We were scared.” His English was more relaxed than Li Ping’s. “Wouldn’t you be? Four murders, all Chinese? All people we knew.”

“There are other Chinese involved in this case. Mr. Chung, Madame Tzu, Miss Feng, the Sun brothers. They didn’t run away.”

Guo shrugged, sitting back in his chair. “None of them come from China.”

“Madame Tzu does.”

He nodded. “Except Madame Tzu.”

“Is she friendly? I mean, with you?”

“She is very—” he paused for the word “—gracious.”

“But not friendly?”

“She is older. They expect respect, older women.”

“Does she get it? From you?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think all four murders were committed by someone who came from China for that specific purpose? We would call him a hitman.”

“I don’t know what to think. But it’s probable, don’t you think?”

“I’m like you, I don’t know what to think. What do you think, Detective Graham?”

Andy Graham shifted his bulk in his chair. He was an amiable young man who had been five years with Homicide and still had his initial enthusiasm. He was clumsy in his movements, a danger to children and fragile women. But he was never clumsy in his thoughts, not when a clear mind counted.

“I think Mr. Guo is lying.”

“There you are, Mr. Guo. Detective Graham doesn’t believe in lateral thinking, he goes straight for the obvious.”

Guo stared at both of them, then he nodded at the camera. “Are you going to turn it on now? Am I suddenly a suspect?”

“Suspected of what?”

Guo shrugged. “I don’t know. So far all you’ve accused me of is running away. I’ve explained why.”

“Do you own a gun?” said Malone.

“Why should I own a gun?”

“Were you ever in the army?”

“Yes. I was in the engineers corps.”

“Did you know General Huang then?”

Guo laughed: it sounded genuine. “I was a very junior lieutenant. I didn’t know he existed.”

“When did you know he existed?”

“When I met Li Ping. About a year ago.”

“Did you get on with him? Was he friendly towards you?”

Guo seemed to give the question sincere thought. “No, not friendly. He was very rank-conscious. I was still very junior.”

“You were still in the army then?”

“No, I had been out a year.”

“So he resented you being Li Ping’s boyfriend?”

“I don’t think he cared one way or the other. He was not a very caring parent.”

Malone sat back in his chair. “Like Detective Graham, I think you’re lying, Mr. Guo. We have it on good authority that you and Mr. Tong were protégés of General Huang.”

Guo ran his tongue round his teeth. “That was after we went to work for his development company. He recognized that Tong and I were good engineers. The best, he said.”

“So actually you got on well with him? As a protégé?”

Guo was ill at ease now but only just. “No. Once Li Ping and I started going together, things changed.”

“I wonder how many more lies you’re going to tell us?” Then Malone changed tack: “Do you know what a Type 67 is?”

Guo shook his head. “No. I haven’t a clue, isn’t that what you police say?”

Smartarses are international. “Occasionally. Are you going back to work on Olympic Tower?”

Guo hesitated, then nodded. “I think so. Mr. Aldwych told us we’d better.”

Malone grinned. “Then I’d take his advice.”

“Do you think the murders have stopped?”

“I haven’t a clue,” said Malone and stood up. “You can go out and join Miss Li. We want you to wait till we’ve talked to your friend Tong Haifeng. Would you like some coffee?”

“Tea,” said Guo.

“Will you oblige, Andy? Loose leaves, no tea-bags. Right, Mr. Guo?”

“You’re a civilized man, Inspector.”

“We still have a few barbarians running around loose.”

Why do I get into these smartarse exchanges with the Chinese! They’re not all sons and daughters of Confucius.

He went out and into the next interview room, where Tong Haifeng sat with Phil Truach. “Things okay, Phil?”

“We’re both dying for a smoke. Mr. Tong smokes fifty a day, he tells me.”

“Nerves, Mr. Tong?” Malone looked at the young Chinese, who was cigarette-thin and tobacco-sallow. “I’m a non-smoker and heartless. No smoking till you’re out of this building.”

Tong coughed, then smiled, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “Why are we here?”

“I told him,” said Truach, “but he thinks it’s a joke.”

“Why would we waste our time joking, Mr. Tong, when we have four murders on our hands? Do you speak Mandarin?” Gail Lee had told him about the threat to Camilla Feng.

Tong frowned. “Of course. And Cantonese.”

“And Mr. Guo—does he speak Mandarin?”

“Yes. Am I going to be questioned in Mandarin?”

“Hardly, Mr. Tong.” Malone sat down opposite him. Truach looked imploringly at him (can’t I just step outside for a smoke?), but it was standard procedure that when questioning anyone two detectives had to be present. “If you give quick answers to our questions, you and Sergeant Truach can soon be out on the street having a smoke. Who suggested the three of you should disappear Saturday morning? Or was it Friday night?”

Tong coughed again, but didn’t smile this time. He appeared to be all skin and bone under the white shirt and tan trousers he wore; but he had big, strong-looking hands that kept moving one within the other like coupling crabs. “Li Ping was the frightened one. Women always are, aren’t they?”

“What would Madame Tzu say to that?”

Tong wrinkled his thin nose. “She’s different.”

“Did you know her before you came to Australia?”

Tong coughed again; it was a stalling ploy. “Yes.” He took his time before going on: “General Huang introduced us to her, recommended we be brought out here for Bund Corporation.”

“You were one of the general’s protégés?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Did you know Zhang Yong?”

“No.”

“You didn’t know he was Li Ping’s brother?”

“Well, yes.” Again the cough. “But I never met him.”

“Do you own a gun, Mr. Tong?”

Once more the cough: it was too obvious a ploy now and Malone was irritated. “Why should I own a gun? I’m an engineer.”

These bastards have rehearsed their answers. “You were in the army with Guo. Do you know what a Type 67 is?”

“There is a Type 67 theodolite, an old model. Some surveyors still use it.”

Malone looked at Truach, who had remained expressionless during the questioning. “Never lost for an answer . . . Righto, Mr. Tong, you can go. Don’t smoke till you’re outside the building—you might be arrested.”

“For smoking?” He had stood up, was taller than Malone had thought.

Malone just grinned. “See them out, Phil, right down to the front door.” Where Phil Truach could have his own smoke. “Go back to the apartment in The Mount, Mr. Guo, not back to Bondi. We want the three of you to stay together. We’ll be in touch again.”

“What have we done?” Now he was on his feet he sounded more confident; or just closer to a smoke. “Have we done something wrong by being afraid?”

“We just want to keep an eye on you. We don’t want three more murders. Bullets kill you quicker than cigarettes.”

He grinned at Phil Truach, then went out of the room and crossed to his office. Clements got up from his desk and followed him. “We’re letting them go?”

“We’ve got nothing to hold them on. But I want them kept under surveillance. Ring Day Street, let them do the legwork.”

“Do you think the girl and these two young guys know something?”

“They know more than we do, but we’re not going to get it out of them today. We’ll try the Chinese water torture. We’ll have ‘em in again.”

Clements nodded appreciatively. “You’re getting more and more Oriental by the day.”

“Most of my life I found trouble with three things. Plastic kitchen wrap, putting a ribbon into a typewriter and passionate virgins who wanted to remain virgins. But these bloody Orientals . . .” He shook his head in frustration.

“What are we gunna do about Councillor Brode? Try some water torture on him?”

Malone looked at his watch. “We’ll talk to him tomorrow. I’m going home.”

Then his phone rang. It was Phil Truach on his mobile. “I’m downstairs, Scobie. The kids have just been picked up by a woman who was waiting in the car park for them. In a Mercedes.”

“What did she look like?” But he knew.

“Chinese. Middle-aged. Well dressed.”

“Madame Tzu.” He hung up and looked at Clements. “I think I’m beginning to feel the water torture myself.”

II

“Are you awake?”

“Yes. But I’ve got a headache.”

Lisa dug him in the ribs. “I’m serious—that’s the last thing on my mind.”

He rolled over on his back, switched on the bedside lamp. “Righto, what is on your mind?”

“Ray Brode went home sick today. Suddenly.”

He had not discussed the case with her this evening. He had come home, glad as always to walk in the front door. He had paused by the two camellia bushes: no, trees. He had planted them when they had moved into the house in Randwick North, as the locals called it, as if the extra designation gave it some sort of cachet. The camellias had been bushes then, but now they were trees. He was not a dedicated gardener (Lisa was that) and occasionally he was surprised at the growth of what had been planted: the azaleas, the roses, the gardenias: somehow Lisa managed to get them all to flourish in the same soil. But he did remember planting the camellias; somehow it was almost as if he had forgotten to watch their growth. And now they hung over him, an awning that led to his house, his home. He wondered how many men marked their own years by the growth of the bushes they planted.

He had stopped and looked to the west, above the houses on the opposite side of the street. The setting sun had exposed a gold reef in a cliff of cloud, promising a better tomorrow. But his mood was low, he knew it was fool’s gold, tomorrow would be no better. So tonight he had not discussed the case, had kept it to himself like a disease he didn’t want to spread.

“Why did you have to wait till now to tell me?”

“You told me at lunch to mind my own business.”

He felt for her hand. “Darl, don’t get involved—”

“I’m not. I didn’t go asking Rosalie why Brode had left so suddenly—I didn’t know he’d gone. She came into my office to give me some papers and she just remarked on it. Said it wasn’t like him, he was always boasting how fit he was . . . He’s not, he’s overweight—”

“Go on,” he said patiently.

She dug him in the ribs again. “Brode comes in two days a week to Town Hall. He was dictating to Rosalie today when he got a phone call. He listened to it, evidently it was quite short, then he hung up and told Rosalie he suddenly felt unwell and he was going home. He was gone before she could ask if she could help him.”

“I think I know where the phone call came from.” He told her about Brode’s owning the apartment in The Mount. “Tomorrow you go in and you mind your own business, okay?”

“I’m not going to act all girlish and stupid like the girl in that stupid Woody Allen murder film. But if I hear things—”

“Darl—” He turned his head on the pillow to look at her. “This is my case. I’ll do my own investigating.”

She turned her head. “Do you have any idea how it’s going to end up?”

“No. I’m having so much pressure put on me—” He had been almost on the point of sleep when she had first spoken. Now he was wide awake. He put his hand on her belly, felt the warmth of her. “Now I’m awake, my headache’s gone.”

She lay a moment, then she raised herself and kissed him. “You know where it is . . .”

In the morning at breakfast Claire said, “You had the State Protection Group out yesterday. You didn’t tell us.”

“There was nothing to tell. Where’d you hear it?”

“It was on 2UE this morning, half an hour ago. They said it was some sort of balls-up.”

“They use that sort of language on 2UE?”

“Was it a balls-up?”

“It was just an exercise. You don’t want to believe everything you hear on radio.”

“So it was a balls-up?” said Maureen, the student in Communications.

Malone looked at Lisa. “Let’s buy a flat and move out. We don’t need this lot.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Tom. “You can teach me how to organize a balls-up.”

“Better still, you all move out.” But he would hate the day they did.

III

Madame Tzu was furious with the man. She had never had any time for army officers; even the corrupt ones had no imagination. “You have to move! The other two, Chung and Aldwych, are waiting to take us over!”

General Wang-Te was unmoved by her fury. He sat sipping the tea that Tzu’s maid had brought in when he had arrived. He was not staying at the Vanderbilt, but had booked into a three-star hotel as Mr. Wang-Te, a lecturer from Shanghai University. The less advertisement for himself, the army and the current problem the better.

“You will have to be patient—”

“Patience be damned!” Anger made her look older. As it always does with women, thought Wang-Te, a misogynist.

He took another sip of tea, the very image of patience. “We can do nothing about your project—”

“Not my project! Not just mine—there are others in this—”

“Were in it,” he corrected her. “Your two friends in Shanghai are in jail awaiting trial. They may be executed. As Huang would have been if he had come back to China.” He sipped his tea. “The thinking in Beijing is that a lesson must be taught. There is enough corruption at home—soon we’ll be as bad as the Russians—” He shook his head at the prospect. “The worst of it is that I knew your partners. All good officers till—”

“Till I what? Seduced them?”

He smiled at her. “Is that how you persuaded them?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” For a moment she looked as if she might throw her own cup of tea at him.

“There are too many irons in the fire.” He was not an aphorist, but he had a fondness for clichés, which in many cases started life as aphorisms. “Some will have to be taken out.”

“Who? What?”

“Huang’s daughter and your two young engineers.”

“Taken out? You mean killed?” She was a devotee of American films, especially Scorsese’s gangster films. They showed the uses of ruthlessness.

They were speaking Mandarin and he had used the phrase taken out in its literal meaning. “Killed? Do you want that?”

The idea seemed to cool her; her anger died down. “Another three killings here in Sydney? No, that would be too much.”

But the idea hasn’t repelled her, he thought. He was a married man, but he had spent all his life since his youth amongst men. Ruthless women were as unfamiliar to him as nymphomaniacs; his wife, educated by American missionaries, had kept him protected from both. “I want to take them back to China.”

“All three?”

“No, but the girl must be taken back. Our embassy in Canberra is working on that.”

“How?”

He ignored the question; as he had, for sake of peace and quiet, learned to ignore his wife. “The main problem has to do with the money.”

“Of course the problem is the money!” She had little patience with him. He was an accountant, despite his rank: General Profit-and-Loss. Her partners had been generals, but they had never thought of loss, being generals of the old school. They had been stupid about the outside world, but stupid partners were always more manageable than smart ones. Till General Huang had tried to be smart . . . “Are the Australians going to release it?”

“Who knows what Australians will do? Often, they don’t know themselves. But our embassy is working on them.”

“The embassy! Don’t you know that diplomatic channels are streams that run uphill?” She was an aphorist, though her wit and wisdom were often borrowed. “We need the money now! Tell your army friends in Shanghai the money will be returned double in five years. It’s here—leave it here and use it!”

He knew she was probably the smartest woman he had ever met, but greed had made her naïve. “How do we tell that story to the Australians? They are not interested in our profits.”

“You find the right men to talk to—”

“Our embassy are doing that. But whatever understanding is arrived at, it won’t be between Canberra and Shanghai. It will be between Canberra and Beijing.”

“Beijing!” The scorn in her voice would have curdled milk, if any had been served with the tea. “What do they know?”

Wang-Te had been born in Shanghai and raised there. His father had worked for a foreign bank and had stood and watched the night Chiang Kai-shek’s men had come to the bank and removed all the gold in the vaults. Mr. Wang-Te had stayed on and survived; the Communists had needed his expertise in international banking; those had been the pragmatic days before the mass stupidity of the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Wang’s son had been brought up not to question Communism, though not necessarily to believe in it. The Wang-Te family had had their own pragmatism.

“They know nothing. When it was Peking they knew nothing. The same now it is Beijing. When London ruled half the globe, do you think it understood those it ruled? Do you think Washington understands us Chinese or the Arabs or even the Jews? Capitals are the same everywhere. They are just halls of mirrors.”

“Who said that?”

“Why, I did,” he said and looked surprised; an aphorism had crept up on him.

“Things are getting desperate,” she said; and he knew she meant she was getting desperate. “Without the money . . .”

“Fifty-one million dollars,” he said with an accountant’s wistfulness, a rare state of mind; then he said in English, “Just lying there in limbo.”

She wasn’t mission-educated, but she knew a non-interest paying bank when she heard it. “It’s Bund Corporation money—if Huang hadn’t stolen it—”

“It was already stolen money,” he said, “It was army money.”

“If we hadn’t used it, someone else would have.” She had the simple logic of the thief. “Don’t preach morality to me. That money has to stay here in Sydney. Somehow . . .”

“I’ll see what I can do. But no more killings.”

“Not unless necessary,” she said.

IV

Annandale is no more than five or six kilometres from the heart of the city, once a workers’ suburb, now on its way to gentrification. It is part of the larger municipality of Leichhardt, whose town hall has seen more battles than the Western Front in World War One. Raymond Brode began his local government career there and the scars still showed.

Like so many inner areas in the early colony, Annandale was a land grant, in this case to a Colonel Johnston. He distinguished himself and temporarily lost the grant, by assembling his troops and marching into Government House and arresting William Bligh, the Governor. Bligh was not the first nor the last to make the mistake of angering the citizens by thinking that tyranny was an acceptable form of administration. He was held in jail, then placed on board a ship and told to get out of town. Some time later Johnston himself was placed aboard ship, under arrest, and sent back to England. He eventually returned to the colony and his land grant was restored. Offering further proof that in those days anything, if you weren’t a convict, was forgivable.

Raymond Brode lived in Johnston Street, the extremely wide thoroughfare that is the spine of Annandale. The street still has several of the Gothic Revival houses built in the 1880s and Brode lived in the grandest of them. It was a four-storeyed mansion that, like several of the other survivors, had a steeple on its roof, suggesting the original owner had had churchly ambitions. Under the Brode roof, however, no choirs sang and if the plate was passed around it was for the resident sinner.

The house looked top-heavy, as if at any moment it might topple over on to the modest one-storey houses on either side. It had been built by a wool merchant who thought he was looking ahead but somehow didn’t see the Great Depression of the 1890s. It had originally stood in three acres of garden; now a bank of hydrangeas and a square of lawn that wouldn’t have fed two sheep were its only complement. Those and a fence of six-foot ornamental spikes. A large mail-box just inside the spiked gate said in large letters: “NO JUNK MAIL.”

“You think that’s a warning to his Town Hall mates?” said Clements.

Malone had phoned Lisa at her office to find out if Brode had reported for council duty this morning. No, he was still at home, still supposedly unwell.

“Would he be at his offices?” Malone had asked.

“He works from home, Rosalie tells me. He’s a wheeler-dealer, he doesn’t need offices.”

“You’ve been too long at Town Hall, you’re starting to sound cynical.”

“It’s educational, if nothing else. It beats doing the laundry.”

Now he and Clements pushed open the ornamental gate and went up the half a dozen marble steps that led up to the thick security door guarding the ornamental front door. The windows on either side of the door, fronting on to the wide marbled verandah, were heavily barred. A hundred years ago the wool merchant, unprotected, had felt safe even in those depressed times.

The front door was opened; a slim-figured woman stood behind the security door. “Yes?”

Malone introduced himself and Clements, showed his badge. “We’d like a word with Mr. Brode.”

“My husband is not well. He’s not seeing anyone this morning.”

“I think he’ll see us, Mrs. Brode.”

She continued to stare at them through the wire screen that covered the grille of the door. Malone, staring back at her, had the sudden image that they were two faces on a computer screen. All that was missing was the text below the faces; neither knew anything of the other. But at last Mrs. Brode seemed prepared to take a chance: “Wait there.”

She disappeared and Clements said, “This isn’t the first time she’s had cops at her front door.”

The two detectives waited patiently. Out on the broad street an ambulance came along, did a U-turn and slowed in front of the Brode house. Then it moved along and pulled up half a dozen houses along.

“Shall I ask ‘em to wait?” said Clements.

Then Mrs. Brode came back, opened the security door. “My husband will see you. But he’s not well, so please don’t stay too long.”

They followed her down the long wide hall. She was in her forties, Malone guessed, smaller than she had looked through the security door. But she walked with the squared shoulders and firm step of an army sergeant-major. The sort of wife, Malone thought, a man would find hard to treasure. And at once felt the ghostly crack of Lisa’s hand across the back of his head.

“Here they are, Ray,” she said, as if Malone and Clements had no name, no identity.

She stood aside and the two detectives went by her through a doorway into a large room that was apparently Brode’s office. As he passed her Malone caught a glimpse of her full on for the first time. Under her dark hair there was a small sharp-featured face full of intelligence; her wide brown eyes had all the shrewdness of a veteran bookmaker. For some reason Malone saw her with Madame Tzu, someone who could hold her own with that formidable lady.

Brode sat behind a desk that looked large enough to be a converted pool table. Behind him three large windows, all barred, looked out on to a garden ablaze with colour. The colour was a contrast to the drabness of the room, the bars a barrier to it. Malone wondered if Brode ever turned to look out at it.

Brode didn’t rise, but waved the two detectives to two chairs opposite him. “Forgive me for not getting up—I’m not well . . . Thanks, Gwen.”

“Watch yourself,” said Gwen, and went out, leaving the door open.

Brode smiled weakly. “She’s my security guard . . . Well, what can I do for you gentlemen?”

“Do you need a security guard?” Malone bowled a bumper first ball, right at the head.

Brode frowned. He didn’t look in the least unwell, but he was wary. Not of viruses but of questions. “Why would I need someone like that? I was joking—”

“Mr. Brode,” said Malone, bowling a little closer to the wicket this time, “why did you lend your apartment in The Mount to Li Ping and the two young engineers from Olympic Tower?”

Brode looked at his desk as if measuring its largeness. Green folders covered most of it like sods of turf; a computer stood on one corner, its screen blank, secrets hidden. The room had a high ceiling and one of the light brown walls held a double row of framed certificates; Brode, it seemed, had been honoured for everything but innocence. The furniture was dark and heavy and Malone wondered if it had been left here by the original owner. The chairs in which he and Clements sat could have accommodated a Sumo wrestler.

“They told me they were scared,” Brode said at last.

“Of whom?”

Lisa always insisted on the difference between who and whom and he had fallen into the habit; or been dragooned into it. It made him sometimes sound a little prim, but there is not much difference between primness and an edge to the voice.

Brode gestured; he had big hands that moved like heavy birds. “I don’t know. Li Ping’s brother was shot—”

“You knew she had a brother out here? Who told you that—General Huang?”

“General Huang?” Brode made a good pretence of looking puzzled.

“Come on, Mr. Brode. Mr. Shan.”

Brode all at once began to look unwell; he leaned forward as if he had a stomach cramp. “How much do you know?”

“Enough.”

“What sort of answer is that?”

“I’m afraid it’s all you’re going to get.”

“Your wife works with me sometimes. Has she been telling you things?”

“Don’t rile him with a question like that, Mr. Brode,” said Clements as if he were the essence of patient behaviour. “It’s the Irish in him. We’re gunna stay here till we get the answers we want, whether you’re well or unwell. Do you have a gun?”

Brode sat back as if a gun had been presented at him. “A what? You’re joking! Jesus, if it was known a city councillor had a gun . . . During the gun amnesty, after the Port Arthur massacre, I gave speeches about it, about handing in all weapons—”

“So you did and we were glad to hear of it,” said Malone, who couldn’t remember reading or hearing any word about the speeches. But at that time there had been a barrage of rhetoric and Brode wouldn’t have been the only one unheard. “Did you know about the money that was deposited in the accounts of General Huang’s son and daughter?”

The random questions, coming at him from all angles, or anyway two angles, didn’t appear to faze Brode; but then he had been a councillor, municipal and city, for twenty years. Life on Leichhardt council had been like spending Monday night in a shooting gallery.

He took his time, then said, “Yes, I knew.”

“Who told you? General Huang?”

“Do we have to keep referring to him like that?”

“You don’t like being linked with the Chinese army? Righto, if you’d prefer Mr. Shan—” Remembering Greg Random’s instruction. “You’d prefer to keep the general’s name out of the media. Why?”

“I think it’s better that way.” But didn’t say why he thought so.

“Because he was a sacked general? Did you know he was army when he first came to you?”

“Who said he came to me?”

“We understand you were the one who got the Olympic Tower project through council,” said Clements. “Were you to have had dinner with Mr. Shan and the others the night they were shot?”

Malone held on to his head, didn’t turn it at this unexpected question. Where had Russ got that one from?

“You see, Mr. Brode, we’ve learned the booking for that particular booth in which they were killed was for five people. Les Chung was the fourth, but he was talking to Inspector Malone at the moment the gunman walked in and let fly. Were you the fifth booking?”

“No.” No hesitation.

“Do you know who it might of been? Madame Tzu? Jack Aldwych?”

“I have no idea. I never met any of them in restaurants after—” He had slipped and he knew it.

“After what?” said Malone, taking up the bowling again. “After you and the developers had made the usual arrangements?”

“What arrangements are those?”

Malone refrained from rubbing his thumb and forefinger together; but the itch was there. “We know, Mr. Brode, that money changed hands.”

“Would you care to make that charge in public?” It sounded almost a pro forma answer: he had been accused many times and he knew the counter.

Malone stared at him: he, too, had played this game, but always as the accuser. “Sure, we’ll do that. You want to ring John Laws or Alan Jones? Talkback hosts love that sort of talk.”

Brode sat very still, one clenched fist resting on his desk as if he were about to lift it and bang it down; but he was too experienced for those sort of theatrics, this audience was too hard-bitten. He relaxed, spread his hand on the desk. “Okay, there was an arrangement. The fucking project wouldn’t have got off the ground if it hadn’t been for me—” He was working up steam, in a moment he would be waving the flag of civic pride.

Malone held up a hand. “Simmer down, Mr. Brode. We’re not here on council business. Sergeant Clements and I have seen so much corruption—”

Brode had simmered down; he actually smiled now, though it was more a smirk. “In the Police Service you would have. Some of your guys had it down to a fine art, didn’t they? At least councillors go in for honest corruption, we don’t hustle hookers or drug dealers—”

“Don’t let’s get too moral,” said Malone wearily. “Tell us, have you received any threats? Death threats?”

Beyond the barred windows, out in the garden a gardener had made an appearance, was leaning on a rake and talking to Mrs. Brode. Or being talked at. She said something, then stalked back towards the house. The gardener looked after her, half-raised a hand to give the finger to her departing back, then looked towards the windows and dropped his hand. Mrs. Brode, Malone decided, would give the finger to any death threat.

“I don’t know whether they were meant as death threats,” said Brode. “But yes, I’ve had a call. Les Chung told me I should take a holiday, get out of town for a while.”

“Les Chung? He gave you his name?”

“Well, no. But I recognized his voice.”

“When was this?”

“Yesterday morning.”

When you suddenly felt unwell? But Malone didn’t ask that question; that would only put the secretary Rosalie and Lisa, too, on the spot. “You didn’t know we had picked up Li Ping and her friends at The Mount?”

“The manager rang me to say there’d been some sort of cock-up—”

“It was a balls-up, actually,” said Malone. “But we sorted it out. We had quite an interesting talk with your young friends.”

He waited for a reaction from Brode, but there was none.

Malone went on, “When did Les Chung call you?”

“About ten minutes after I got the call from the manager. Actually, it was Les who said there’d been a cock-up.”

“He was threatening you and he talked about a police cock-up? Come on, Raymond. Why are you putting Les Chung in the shit? I know Les, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to make threats over the phone. If you want to work off some score against him, try something better than that. Les Chung and Jack Aldwych don’t make phone threats. They’d call on you personally . . . Who made the call?”

Then Mrs. Brode was standing in the doorway, giving orders. “You will have to excuse my husband, Inspector. It is time for his medicine.”

He’s getting it. But Malone didn’t voice the obvious. “We’ll just be a few more minutes—”

“I’m sorry, it has to be now. Will you please leave?”

“If we have to, we’ll be taking your husband with us. To Homicide.”

“Homicide?” Her face pinched.

“Didn’t I mention we’re from Homicide? Where did you think we were from? The Fraud Squad?” It was dirty, but he couldn’t resist it.

It seemed to take some of the starch out of her. She stood very still for a moment, then with hurried steps she came into the room and stood behind her husband, one hand on his shoulder. It was probably unintended, but it looked like a posed statement: we are a team.

Brode put his hand up to cover hers. “It’s all right, love . . . Okay, Inspector, maybe it wasn’t Les Chung. But it sounded like him.”

“So who do you think it was? Guo or Tong? They couldn’t have called you after the balls-up. They were with us, being questioned. I think you’re making all this up, Raymond.”

“No, he isn’t,” said Mrs. Brode. “He’s trying to protect me. I got the call. Here. Two nights ago.”

“So why did you try to lay it on Les Chung, Raymond?”

Brode didn’t answer that, but said, “Nobody has any reason to threaten us.”

Malone smiled. “Raymond, if you’ve been taking handouts on Olympic Tower there are a dozen people who could threaten you. The Premier, the Minister in charge of the Olympics, the Lord Mayor—Yes, Mrs. Brode?”

He had seen her hand tighten on her husband’s shoulder. “Yes, what?”

“I thought you wanted to say something?”

She shook her head, said nothing. Her husband reached up again and pressed her hand. “It’s all right, love, there’s nothing to worry about. I don’t think I can help you any further, Inspector—”

“Where does Madame Tzu fit into all this?” asked Clements.

Brode frowned. “She’s a partner in the project, that’s all.”

“No,” said Malone, “she’s more than that. Who paid you the initial bribe?”

Brode stared at him. His wife took her hand off his shoulder and reached forward—for the paper-knife on the desk? One of the paperweights? Then she straightened up again, as if reason had taken control of her. Both husband and wife suddenly looked unwell, the medicine was the wrong dose.

Then Brode said, “Madame Tzu. But you’ll never find any evidence.”

“Was the money paid to you, Mrs. Brode?”

She said nothing, but the answer was there in her face.

“How much? Half a million, a million? It doesn’t matter—we’re not chasing the money.” He stood up. “But watch out. Let us know if you get any more threats, Mr. Brode. These days people are killed for much less than a million—” He was laying it on. Petty spite can sometimes taste so good; even saints have savoured it. “We’ll see ourselves out—”

“No, you won’t,” said Mrs. Brode, and led them out of the room. Walking behind her Malone remarked that her stride was quick and firm again. She opened the front door, pushed out the security door, but barred their exit for the moment.

“My husband is a wheeler-dealer, Inspector. Some people are born accountants, lawyers or policemen—he was born a wheeler-dealer. It’s what I fell in love with, am still in love with. I wouldn’t want him any other way.”

“Thanks for your frankness, Mrs. Brode,” said Malone, and meant it. “Take care.”

“Oh, we’ll do that,” she said. “We’ve been doing it for twenty years.”

The two detectives left her and went down the steps and out the front gate. The postman had been and the mailbox was stuffed with what looked like junk mail.

The ambulance was drawing away from the house further down. Clements looked after it. “I wonder if Brode was ever an ambulance chaser? He’s got a law degree. It was there on that wall with all those other pieces of paper.”

“He’d have chased a buck wherever he could get it,” said Malone. “This time I think he wishes he’d laid off.”