10

I

THE PREMIER liked to call early-morning conferences; it gave him an advantage over those whose minds didn’t function till an hour or so after breakfast. This eight o’clock meeting had some very sullen people sitting in the Premier’s office. Sports Minister Agaroff and Police Commissioner Zanuch were the two unhappiest-looking. Lord Mayor Amberton’s smile might have been forced, but it was second nature to him.

“Give ‘em the score, Roger,” said the Premier, hunched in his chair, enjoying his malevolence as if it were a second breakfast. Summer and winter, Gert, his wife, fed him the same breakfast: porridge with milk and sugar, two sausages and an egg, two slices of toast with her home-made strawberry jam. This second meal, of his visitors’ discomfiture, tasted just as good.

Ladbroke would have been wide awake for a 6 a.m. meeting; he was long experienced in The Dutchman’s ploys. “You all read the papers this morning or listened to the radio. That guy who was shot at Kirribilli night before last worked on the Olympic Tower site. John Laws called it the Jinx Site—he gave all his listeners a reminder of what happened there in the previous abortive development. Alan Jones did the same on his show. The talkback nuts started calling in right away. Is this to be a jinx on our Olympics, they wanted to know. Is it a warning from God—I dunno how He got into sports or hotel development—that we should never have bid for the Olympics?”

Amberton looked around, as if he had only just come awake. “Why isn’t anyone from SOCOG here? They’re the organizers of the Games.”

“We don’t need ‘em,” said Vanderberg, who never felt the need of anyone who got more space than he did in the media. “We handle this ourselves. How’s the investigation going, Bill, on this latest murder?”

“It’s in hand,” said the Commissioner.

The Premier wobbled his head, cackled softly. “You oughta come into Parliament, Bill. You know how to look all dressed up and doing nothing. You mean the police haven’t got a clue?”

Zanuch managed to look unruffled, but a tsunami was going on under the bespoke uniform. “Not a clue, but a connection, something we haven’t told the media. The gun that killed Mr. Nidop, the corpse at Kirribilli, also killed the young Chinese, Mr. Zhang, out at Bondi last Friday night.”

“So what does that prove?” asked Agaroff, bald head shining in a streak of morning sun coming through the window behind the Premier.

“Nothing. But links in clues are like links in a chain. Eventually they lead somewhere.”

“Rupert wears a chain round his neck when he’s all dressed up as Lord Mayor,” said the Premier. “Does one link lead to another? Like in a circle?” He looked back at Zanuch. “We don’t want the police running around in circles, Bill. You better tell ‘em to get their finger out. You’re making haste in slow motion.”

That’s a new one, thought Ladbroke, and I don’t need to translate it.

Zanuch gritted his teeth. “One of my men was fired on last night at his home—I got the report just before I came here. Detective-Inspector Malone, who’s in charge of the case.”

“Holy Christ,” said Agaroff, and rubbed the top of his head, as if wiping off the sunlight. “Do the media know about this?”

“No,” said Zanuch, “and they won’t. Not from my men.”

Your men? thought the Premier. My men, he thought, as Police Minister. He hated the idea of 13,000 police officers running around loose under someone else’s command. “There’s another thing. Tell ‘em, Roger.”

“I dunno,” said Ladbroke, “whether you saw an item some weeks ago about millions of dollars being lodged in the bank accounts of two Chinese students—it was in a Cabinet report—”

“Then I wouldn’t have seen it,” said Amberton, aggrieved, and looked at Zanuch and Agaroff.

“I saw it,” said Agaroff.

“I got it in a secret police report,” said Zanuch.

Amberton was all at once the odd man out. His fairy wand as Lord Mayor of the biggest city in the nation was just a candy stick. He couldn’t help the petulance in his voice: “So what’s the importance of it?”

“We thought someone at Town Hall might’ve explained it to you,” said Ladbroke. “Councillor Brode, for instance.”

Amberton grimaced, waited while Ladbroke explained the situation. Then he said, “What’s happened to the students? Where are they, if everything’s been kept so quiet?”

“One of them is dead,” said Ladbroke, and named Zhang. “The other is a girl, Li Ping. She’s to be picked up and deported.”

Zanuch raised an eyebrow and his ire. “Who gave that order? We’re investigating her—”

“The order came from Canberra,” said The Dutchman.

“What business is it of theirs?” Amberton was as jealous of parish power as the Premier, though he knew that here in this room he had no power at all. Sometimes in bed at night, his fabulous hair in a net (his dream cap, as his wife called it), he dreamed of Sydney becoming a Down Under Monaco, separate from and independent of the rest of the country, himself not as Lord Mayor Amberton but as Prince Rupert. Free of Premiers and Prime Ministers, ruler of the Emerald City, complete with its own casino just like Monaco. Monte Carlo no longer a biscuit but his domain. The hairnet sometimes shook like a stringbag full of sparrows. “Who invited them in?”

“It’s at a higher level,” said Ladbroke.

The others looked at the Premier, at this faux pas by his minder. They knew he recognized no higher level than himself; even the Pope, on his last visit, had found himself on a lower step than his greeter.

But, to their surprise, Vanderberg nodded and said, the words coming out of his thin mouth as if they were spiked, as if they were killing him, “It’s between Canberra and Beijing. Chinese politics.”

“China is all politics, isn’t it? It’s Communism.” Zanuch had thought Margaret Thatcher a neo- socialist.

“It’s half-and-half now,” said Ladbroke. “Capitalism is rearing its ugly head.”

“Who said it was ugly?”

“A figure of speech,” said Ladbroke, whose cynicism would have embraced anarchy if it had employed him to sell it. “Anyway, the money is going back to China and so is the girl.”

“In the meantime,” said Amberton, still feeling he had been pushed out to sea without an oar, “we’re left with the Olympic Tower mess. All these murders. What do we do?”

“The same as we do in parliament and council,” said the Premier. “We establish a committee.”

“Who’ll be on the committee?”

“Us,” said the Premier. “And only me will make any statements.”

Here we go again, thought Ladbroke. Should I apply for a literary grant as a translator of gobbledegook?

II

Malone had had a restless night. At six o’clock he phoned Greg Random at home. “Sorry to get you out of bed, Greg. I’ve got a problem—”

Random listened without comment while Malone told him of what had happened last night. Then he didn’t explode, but his voice was cold: “You’re a bloody idiot. You know the drill—”

“I don’t want Lisa and the kids to know—”

“For Crissake, Scobie, this is a major incident. A cop’s been shot at—”

“I don’t want the media to know, spreading the story all over—”

“Okay, we’ll keep it as low profile as we can. But you stay out of it—let the investigating teams do what they have to . . . You understand? You stay out of it.”

“Righto, you win, Greg—”

“It’s not a question of me winning—you know the drill, it’s got nothing to do with how you or I feel. Don’t be so bloody pig-headed—”

He hated this friction between himself and Random. “Righto, I’ll get on to Randwick, to Physical Evidence—”

“I told you—stay out of it. I’ll do it. Now pull your head in, stay out of the way and shut up.” Then the edge went out of his voice: “You’re okay?”

“Except for the way you’ve just kicked my arse.”

“You deserved it. I’ll see you later.”

By seven o’clock there were ten officers on the scene. Uniforms and plainclothes from the local Randwick station, Phil Truach from Homicide, a woman officer from Physical Evidence and a young red-headed officer from Ballistics. Malone came out of his front door as a uniformed man was running out Crime Scene tapes.

“We don’t need those, do we? I don’t want the neighbours getting edgy.”

The officer, a young bulky man with an Italian name that Malone had forgotten and an Italian regard for the sensible, rolled up the tapes. “Sure, Inspector. But we’re gunna have to do some door knocking, case someone saw or heard something before you got home.”

Malone nodded resignedly. “Try your luck—ask them not to broadcast it.”

“Are you kidding?” He was Italian through and through. “Neighbours were invented for broadcasting. They were centuries ahead of Marconi.”

“Are you trying to make me feel better?”

Then the young Ballistics officer came in the front gate. He had a friendly face and Malone knew him only as Declan Something-or-Other. “You might have a problem finding the bullets, Declan. If you have to go into the garden next door, tell ‘em you’re from the Water Board.”

Declan looked around, grinned ruefully. “We could be here all day. What was it—a shotgun?”

“No, a handgun with a silencer. The car was out there, about five or six feet from the gutter.”

“Sounds like a woman driver,” said Declan. “My wife always parks a short walk from the kerb . . . That’ll cut down the area a bit. If it was a handgun, the velocity would be less. Okay, I’ll start looking.”

Malone went back into the house and rang Clements at home, told him what had happened. “Pick up Guo Yi. He’ll probably be at work now, on the site—”

“Hold on, mate. Are you saying it was definitely him that tried to do you?”

“No, I don’t. But he’s my Number One suspect. Bring him in.”

“If it was him, he may already have shot through.”

“Not him. He’s a smartarse, Russ. He’ll be at work and he’ll have an alibi for last night.”

“So what do we do? Bring him in and beat the shit outa him? Okay, okay,” as Malone started to protest. “But if he’s what you say he is, the hitman, and he’s after you, why’s he doing it? Someone’s using him. He’s got no stake in Olympic Tower.”

“Then maybe if we beat the shit out of him, he’ll tell us.”

“Don’t come that one with me, mate. You’ve never come the heavy stuff—and don’t expect me to, not this late in life. Have you told Lisa what happened?”

“No. And don’t mention it to Romy, right?”

He hung up, went back out to the front garden. It was a beautiful morning; a wind-streaked cloud hung like washing in the sky. Malone walked under the awning of the camellias and Declan stepped in front of him and held up a scarred bullet.

“Bingo! A 32-calibre, I’d say. What’s the matter?”

“It looks like it’s been a busy gun. Two murders and an attempted one. The feller at Bondi, the one at Kirribilli and me.”

Declan slipped the bullet into a plastic envelope. “We’ll find the other one. You look disappointed.”

“Do I? Not disappointed, just bloody frustrated. It looks as if there might be two killers, not one.”

He looked at him sympathetically. “Your family’s in a safe house, you said. Maybe you should join them.”

“Not yet,” he said.

Ten minutes before Malone got his car out of the garage Declan found the second bullet. “In the main trunk of one of your camellias. We’ve found the cartridge cases, too, out there in the gutter.”

“Get them to Clarrie Binyan soon’s you can, tell him I’d like a report yesterday.”

He arrived in the car yard behind Homicide just as Clements and John Kagal got out of an unmarked car with Guo Yi. He was in shirt and slacks and wore not a black tie but the vivid slash of an Olympic tie. For some reason he was also carrying his safety helmet, tucked under his arm like a football

“This is insulting, Inspector.”

“It’s not meant to be, Mr. Guo. Let’s talk upstairs. Why the helmet? It’s not dangerous around here.”

Going up in the lift to the fourth floor Malone, standing behind the young Chinese, raised his eyebrows in query at Clements. The big man just shook his head, but Kagal ran his finger across his own throat. Mr. Guo, evidently, was going to prove difficult.

Which he did in the interview room. “Am I to be questioned again?”

“Yes.”

“About what? I’ve answered all the questions you can ask me.”

“Not all, Mr. Guo. Where were you last night around eleven o’clock?”

Guo looked down at his tie, fingered it; mourning for the dead older men was over or he had suddenly become a Games booster. “I was home in bed.”

“With Miss Li?”

“If it is any of your business, yes. Why, what happened last night?”

“Someone tried to shoot Inspector Malone,” said Clements. Only he and Malone were in the interview room with Guo. He flicked a finger against the helmet on the table, made a pinging noise. “We think it might of been you.”

Guo Yi didn’t try for inscrutability; he jerked his head back, went round-eyed. “Me shoot him? Why? Why would I do something stupid like that?”

Clements shrugged. “Maybe you don’t like him? Or maybe someone told you to? You see, Mr. Guo, we have a very short list of suspects in all these murders and, unfortunately, you’re on the list.”

“I’ve heard an expression since I came to Australia.” Guo had recovered his composure. “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

“You’re outa your fucking mind,” said Clements, temper just under control, “if you think we’re not gunna get to the bottom of all this. I think maybe you’d better get a lawyer.”

“Do you have a lawyer?” asked Malone.

“No.” Guo appeared to be gathering himself together, like a soldier strapping on equipment. As if he knew the war was no longer a phoney one. “I shall have to ask a friend for advice.”

“Do that. Sergeant Clements will take you out to a phone.”

Malone stayed in the interview room; he was having trouble hiding his frustration and he didn’t want to parade it. He looked up almost with irritation when Gail Lee came to the door.

“Russ has told me what happened last night. I’m glad they missed.”

“Thanks, Gail.” If nothing else, his relations with her were easier since this case had begun.

“Did he do it?” She jerked her head backwards.

“Guo?” He considered a moment, then nodded. “I think so. He’s claiming he spent the night at home with his girlfriend. I think we need to talk to her. You and Sheryl go out to Cronulla and bring her in. She’s supposed to be a student—do you know where she goes?”

“UTS. She’s doing computers.”

“Try the Cronulla flat first. You try to pick her up at UTS, you might have a students union protest on your hands. We’re never in the right.”

She looked back at him as she turned away. “I’m really glad he missed. We all are.”

He was touched by the concern, though he knew such concern for officers’ safety was now endemic in the Service. There had been several recent incidents where cops had been in life-threatening situations and had responded, resulting in at least two civilian deaths. Public criticism of the police reaction had been loud and widespread, usually by people who had never been even close to such situations. The Service had become resentful of the criticism, had closed ranks. Malone knew that cops were not always above criticism but, like all cops, he resented it from those well outside the danger zone.

Clements and Guo came back into the room. Guo sat down and drew his helmet towards him as if for safety. Malone said, “Did the friend advise you on a lawyer?”

“Yes.” Guo had assumed the look of a man who had all the time in the world. “He will be here as soon as possible.”

Malone glanced at Clements. “Anyone we know?”

“Nobody’s been named so far,” said Clements. “Madame Tzu was the friend who’s finding him a lawyer.”

“Aren’t you the lucky one, Mr. Guo, to have such a friend? Almost like a mother to you, I suppose.” Malone could taste the bile on his tongue. “What other advice does she give you?”

“Only professional advice,” said Guo, elbows now on the table, fingers steepled together. He looked like someone about to give advice. “After all, she and her partners pay my wages.”

Plus bonuses? But Malone kept the question to himself.

III

“Look, Charlie—”

Jack Aldwych would not have called the du Barry woman Madame, nor Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek; madames were the women who had run his brothels and he had called them Ruby or Flo. He had had difficulty with the pronunciation of Tzu Chao and so, after their initial meeting, he had called her Charlie. She had accepted it with pained, amused tolerance, convinced yet again that the world was not yet free of barbarians.

“—we can’t keep putting this off any longer. You’ve gotta come up with the money, that’s final.”

He and Les Chung had come to the Vanderbilt for this meeting with Madame Tzu and General Wang-Te. They sat sipping tea, biscuits on the coffee table between them: Iced Vo-Vos this time. Aldwych had offended by asking for milk in his tea; Madame Tzu had instructed the maid to bring the milk in much the same sour voice that she might have used to call for yak butter. The atmosphere in the room was equally sour.

“A few more days,” she said defensively. She was not accustomed to being defensive and it hurt. She looked at Wang-Te, who had sat silent so far. “The general has been down to our embassy in Canberra—”

“What did they say?” Les Chung was as irritated as Aldwych, but showing it less. “Once things get to Canberra, they get lost. Things down there go round and round, like their streets.”

Wang-Te nodded. “A strange place. Full of ivory towers, someone at our embassy told me.”

“Like Beijing,” said Madame Tzu, and Wang-Te winced.

“Never mind the politics.” Aldwych belonged to a privileged class, the criminals who were above politics. “What did you get out of your embassy?”

Wang-Te put down his cup, looked at Madame Tzu. “We have to tell them.”

She wrapped her hand round her own cup, looked as if she might throw it at him. Les Chung said, “Tell us, what?”

“The money is going back to China,” said Wang-Te. “All of it. Nothing more will be said about it. The embassy told me it will become what you call an urban myth.”

“Fifty-one million dollars in solid cash?” said Aldwych. “Some myth.”

“General Huang’s son is dead,” said Chung. “But his daughter is still alive. What if she talks?”

“She is to be taken back to China. She won’t talk.”

“What if she won’t go?” said Aldwych.

“Oh, she will go,” said Wang-Te. “Your Federal Police have already picked her up, I believe. There is nothing to worry about,” he said with all the assurance of a man who knew how a mouth could be kept shut. It had shocked him to hear the clamour of mouths in a democracy.

Madame Tzu could contain herself no longer. “Damn the embassy and its politics! Why can’t the money stay here, be invested? Take the girl back, keep her mouth shut, but leave the money here. It will go back and what will happen to it?”

Aldwych sat back, studying her. He had had a certain morality as a criminal, forced on him by his wife, Shirl. She had known what he was, but she had turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the bank hold-ups, the prostitution racket and the gold smuggling; they were honest, almost decent crimes, so long as no one was killed or hurt. She had known nothing of the murders he had ordered, believing him when he had told her he had been framed each time he had been charged, welcoming him back with open arms and legs when he had been acquitted. He had never gone into drug dealing, knowing that Shirl would have left him if he had.

He looked at Charlie Tzu now and decided she had no moral values at all.

“The money will be invested in Hong Kong,” said Wang-Te. “Or Shanghai,” he added with a certain quiet relish, knowing the latter destination for the money would be like sending it to Moscow, as far as she was concerned.

He had met her only twelve months ago when she had invited him and two of his fellow generals to lunch in Shanghai. There had been no direct blatant approach on that occasion; she was just there, she had said, to give them her experience of the wider world. She had talked of the advantages of foreign investment, but always obliquely, never openly suggesting that they should consider the thought. She had spoken of the United States, where Wall Street money flew ever and ever upwards. But her real enthusiasm had been for Australia, where the locals had the long-range vision of bats and Chinese patience would reap a fortune. He had seen her only twice after that, at a reception in Shanghai and at another in Hong Kong after the British had left. They had been perfunctorily polite towards each other, but each knew what the other was: he an honest man, she totally corrupt. The other two generals, aided by book-keepers of lower rank, had fallen for the dreams she had painted. They were now in prison awaiting trial before an army court. Execution faced them, an act that would shorten their long-range vision.

“That’s the end of your road then,” said Aldwych. “Sorry, Charlie.”

It took a moment for her to get her fury under control. These barbarians, these men . . . “What happens to what I’ve already invested? I have ten million in the project.”

“Your own or borrowed money?” asked Les Chung.

Hesitancy looked out of place on her; but it was there. “Some of it mine, some of it borrowed.”

“How much?” said Aldwych. “Borrowed?”

Her words were slow, as if for the moment she had forgotten her English. “Six million. From a Hong Kong bank that trusts me.”

Aldwych shook his head; it might have been mistaken for pity, except that he had never felt that emotion towards anyone but Shirl. “Not enough, Charlie. If the bank forecloses on you, we get first crack at taking over the loan. We don’t want any more outsiders in with us.”

“I’m an outsider?” She was affronted; the knuckles showed white on the hand that still held her cup. “Me?”

“You’ve always been an outsider, Charlie. Les and me are the natives. Don’t get het up—” He held up a hand as she started to rise. “You’d of always got your fair share if you’d kept on bringing money in. But you didn’t. You and General Huang got ideas of your own—”

“I had nothing to do with Huang’s schemes!” There is a certain fire when an essentially dishonest person can be honest: it adds sincerity to them that they otherwise find difficult. “The man was stupid—I don’t know what he intended to do with that money—I know nothing about it—”

“He was going to push you out,” said Chung. “He felt you were no longer needed.”

Even Aldwych looked at him at that. “Where’d you get that from?”

“He told me last Friday night. Me and Sun and Feng, just before the three of them were shot.”

Aldwych sighed; it could have been a mixture of disgust and sadness, but no one would ever know. “When I was in the game, before I retired, I never had any partners, I was on me own. That way I was never screwed by mugs I was supposed to trust—”

“Jack—” Les Chung was uncomfortable, but it barely showed. He had made two mistakes: one in divulging what Huang had said; two, in telling Madame Tzu. He rarely made mistakes; to make two at once was totally out of character. “I’d have told you eventually—”

“Eventually? What the fuck does that mean?” The old cruel hardness was coming out in him.

The two outsiders watched this in stiff silence, Madame Tzu leaning slightly forward as if she might intervene at any moment. Wang-Te, the real outsider, sat back in his chair, content to be no more than a spectator. He took off his glasses, breathed on them, cleaned them with a handkerchief; none of this argument was going to touch him. He had been tempted, just for a very short time, by Madame Tzu’s pleas somehow to keep the stolen money in Australia; he knew that temptation is an itch that everyone suffers from. To invest the money and maybe some day be rich, to never go back to Shanghai and the wife and her mission morality. The Baptists had been expelled by Mao, but they had left their corruption behind in her. Sin, which he had never known till she had educated him in it, had for the moment tempted him. A minor sin, of course, just theft: it was almost fashionable these days in China. But the temptation had not lasted. His honesty was a rope that bound him.

Madame Tzu, who had spent almost all her life watching and escaping from warring factions, was not impressed by the argument between—her partners? That was what she had thought they were; but now it seemed she had been only a means to their ends. Her own intended end had been to settle here in Australia, to sever her connections with Shanghai and Hong Kong, to become the Empress of Developers in this country of semi-barbarians and latent racists. She had met Les Chung two years ago in Hong Kong and after several subsequent meetings had made enquiries about him and found him sufficiently venal for her needs. He had introduced her to Jack Aldwych and she had instantly recognized that he had the same regal contempt as she had towards the suckers of the world, of whom there were billions. Everything, she had thought, was set for the future, her future. And now . . .

“You are not getting rid of me!” There was no mistaking her fierceness. “I’ll blow you all right out of the ground if you try—”

“How?” Aldwych had been threatened by women before, but they had been drunken whores who had rung him the next day to tell him they hadn’t meant it, that they loved him and wanted to go on working for him. But this woman . . . “How?”

Then the phone rang. She looked at it as if willing it to stop; then she stood up quickly, crossed to it and snapped into it, “Yes?”

The three men watched her, all of them impassive, each with his own reaction to her threat to blow them out of the ground. Wang-Te had no ruthlessness in him, but he had seen so much of it over the past thirty years; he saw it now in the faces of these two silent men sitting opposite him. Madame Tzu had woven the rope for her own neck.

“How did you get yourself into this mess?” she said in Mandarin. Only Wang-Te understood what she had said. “The best lawyer you can get for that situation is a man named Caradoc Evans.”

The name was all that Aldwych and Chung understood. They looked at each other like men who had heard a secret password; then Aldwych said, “Caradoc Evans? How did you get on to him?”

“He’s a lawyer,” said Madame Tzu, putting down the phone.

“He’s a criminal lawyer. What do you want a criminal lawyer for?”

“I don’t want him.” She was annoyed at the intrusion by the phone call. “It’s Guo Yi, one of our engineers. He is being held for questioning by that nuisance Inspector Malone.”

“Why’s he being questioned?”

“Someone tried to kill Inspector Malone last night.” Her tone couldn’t have been more casual; she wanted to get back to real concerns.

“Stupid!” Les Ching shook his head in disgust. “When are you people going to recognize we’re not in the backblocks of China?”

IV

Cronulla is the bastardization of an Aborginal word meaning “the place of pink seashells.” Aborigines lived and fished on the beach and the land back of it for several thousand years before the white men arrived; the seashells are gone, but a few Aborigines play in the local rugby league team, called the Sharks. They have been heard to remark that their ancestors had a much easier time fighting amongst themselves, though the pay was less. The beach lies 26 kilometres south of Sydney, at the end of a railway line, and the gunyahs of centuries ago have been replaced by restaurants, shops and apartment buildings.

“Li Ping doesn’t do too badly for a Communist,” said Sheryl Dallen, looking up at the block of apartments; it was the sort of block where estate agents would never have used the words flats or units. “I thought Communists were supposed to share the wealth? I wouldn’t mind sharing a flat here with her.”

“I think the last thing Li Ping is is a Communist,” said Gail Lee. “I doubt very much if she would have shared a toy at kindergarten.”

They went into the building and climbed the stairs to the first floor. The door to Li Ping’s apartment was slightly ajar. Gail pressed the bell and the door was immediately swung back. A bulky man in a double-breasted suit stood there.

“You friends of Miss Li?”

“Not exactly,” said Gail and produced her badge. “Who are you?”

The man produced his own badge. “Agent Hurlstone, Federal Police.”

“Is Miss Li here?”

“Come on in.” He stood back to let them pass, then closed the door. “In the living room.”

Gail and Sheryl went down the short hall and into the living room. A wall of glass looked out across a wide verandah to the beach. A second man, medium height and slim, turned back from a small desk he was searching, raised enquiring eyebrows at the bulky man.

“I think they’re here for the same reason as us,” said Hurlstone. “Agent Graveney.”

Gail introduced herself and Sheryl. “We’re from Homicide, we were to take Miss Li in for questioning. Why did you want her?”

Graveney closed the drawer of the desk, sat down on a chair and waved to the two women to sit. The furnishings of the room were standard rental, though of good quality: quality prints of beach scenes hung on the walls; shag rugs lay like pelts on the good-quality carpet. All that was missing was the suggestion that anyone had ever called the apartment home.

“I’m afraid you’re out of luck.” Graveney had a soft voice, that of a man sure of his authority. “Our bird has flown.”

“Back to China?” said Sheryl.

Whether Graveney was from the Sydney or the Canberra office of the Federal Police, he had the Canberra approach: he took his time. His speech was not only soft but slow and deliberate: one could almost hear the punctuation.

“If she attempts that, she will be picked up by Immigration. They have been alerted.”

“When was she last seen?”

“She was here in the flat last night.” He looked around the room, as if double-checking that she wasn’t present. “We checked with the people next door. They heard her go out about nine-thirty, but whether she came back they couldn’t say.”

“You still haven’t said why you want her,” said Gail.

Graveney looked at Hurlstone, who was sitting on a chair by the door that led out on to the verandah. “They don’t like us interfering, do they?”

“States’ rights.” Hurlstone grinned and shrugged. His double-breasted jacket was still done up, stretched tight across his belly; the buttons looked as if they might fly off at any moment. “They’d secede, if they could.”

“Yes,” said Sheryl, “we would. But a little co-operation might make us change our minds. We were here first, a coupla days ago—”

“Ladies—” said Graveney, and didn’t appear to notice the stiffening of the ladies’ spines. “You will have to ask Canberra why we’re here. The Department of Foreign Affairs, I think. This is no longer a police matter, we’re into politics.”

“Bugger,” said Sheryl, and glanced at Gail. “Say something shitty in Mandarin.”

Gail resisted the invitation. “As my colleague said, we were here a few days ago. Li Ping and her boyfriend disappeared for a day or two, but then we found them.”

“We heard about it,” said Hurlstone. “The cock-up at that block of flats in Chinatown.”

“You follow us in the media?” said Sheryl.

“All the time.” Hurlstone laughed, his belly expanded and a button flew off his jacket. It was his turn to say Bugger! as he bent down and searched for it in the shag rug.

“We found nothing when we searched the flat,” said Gail, “nothing that helped us very much. Have you come up with anything?”

“Such as?” said Graveney.

“Such as a gun.”

Hurlstone had found his button. He sat back in his chair, then dipped into his pocket and pulled out a plastic envelope. “We found these, they were under the bed in the main bedroom. Looked like someone had dropped them and didn’t notice, as if they might of been leaving in a hurry.”

Gail took the envelope and looked at the pistol magazine loaded with five bullets; then handed it to Sheryl. “Thirty-twos?”

“Yes,” said Sheryl. “A seven-round magazine. I wonder what happened to the two that are missing.”

“Any significance?” asked Graveney.

“Two Thirty-twos were fired at our boss, Inspector Malone, last night,” said Gail. “May we have these?”

“Why not?” said Graveney after a glance at Hurlstone. “Since we’re now into politics, what do bullets matter?”

“Are you kidding?” said Sheryl.