5

I

IN A waterfront apartment out at Point Piper, a narrow diamonds-and-pearls-encrusted finger jutting into the southern waters of the Harbour, another old man was having lunch with his son, his daughter-in-law and his daughter-in-law’s father. This weekly lunch was a ritual with Jack Aldwych and he looked forward to it, though he could have done without today’s extra guest, Adam Bruna.

“I adore this view!” Bruna clasped his manicured hands and gazed out at the Harbour. “Why don’t you move over this side, Jack? Why do you have to live way out there in the Outback, Harbord or wherever it is?”

It amused Aldwych that he might have felt at home here on this tiny peninsula. It had been named after a colonial naval officer, a rake who laid women like stepping stones and who, when it came to making money, had as much dedication to principle as he had to celibacy. Aldwych had never been a womanizer, but he had had little regard for principle if it stood in his way.

“I couldn’t afford to live over here.” He was one of the country’s richest men, albeit one who never appeared in the rich lists. Wealth based upon prostitution, bank hold-ups, extortion and fraud was not publicly assessable, although in the Eighties fraud had been an almost acceptable method of becoming rich. Aldwych’s wealth, thanks to Jack Junior’s management, was now squeaky clean, but the smell of its origins still clung to it in certain quarters. “I could never afford an apartment like this.”

Jack Junior and Juliet had paid three million for the apartment, a price that had shocked Jack Senior almost as much as the day, long ago, a judge had given him five years for attempted murder when everyone knew it was no more than an attempt to teach a welsher a lesson. It had been Juliet who had spent the money, but Jack Senior had said nothing; if she, and what she did, made Jack Junior happy, then there was nothing to be said. At least for the time being.

“Oh, I don’t mean you would have to buy something like this!” Bruna fluttered his hands. He was a handsome man, as good-looking as any of his daughters; small and compact in build, always beautifully dressed, if a trifle flamboyantly for Aldwych’s tastes, he had sharp eyes and a smile that winked on and off as if on a rheostat. He was not homosexual, but he had exaggerated gestures and expressions that had at first confused Aldwych, a man of prejudice whose hands had the stillness of holstered guns. Bruna had once been a sculptor and still occasionally exhibited a piece or two, but his main source of income, apart from his daughters, was a gallery he owned in Woollahra. He had tried to sell Aldwych a small Giacometti, but the older man liked his statues, as he called them, rounded and in marble. The two fathers-in-law were not compatible, but so far not at war. “But this would be nice. I hope you’ll leave it to your dear old dad, darling, if you go first. You and Jack,” he added with a smile towards Jack Junior.

“Don’t let’s talk of dying,” said Juliet. “Not this week.”

Aldwych looked at her across the table. They were lunching on the apartment’s small terrace, sheltered from the unseasonal sun by a large umbrella; the Harbour was a silver glare, a black-clad windsurfer stuck in the middle of it like a table ornament. Aldwych was the only one not wearing dark glasses. Juliet’s gold-framed glasses were flattering, but not revealing. “Have the police talked to you yet about Rob Sweden’s murder?”

“Just the morning after it happened, not since then. Do you think they’ll come to see me and Jack?”

“You can bet on it.” He ate some ocean trout; Juliet, a smart girl, knew what her father-in-law liked and did not like. “You remember who’s in charge?”

“An Inspector Malone. A nice man, I thought.”

“He is.”

“Did you ever have anything to do with him, Jack?” Bruna had the Eastern European curiosity born in those who came from the crossroads of history. He knew Aldwych’s history and was not embarrassed by it. In the art world you met all types, never questioned where their money came from, otherwise you would lose half your sales. He knew that many of his, paid for in cash, had been a means of laundering the client’s money but, like many an art critic, he never looked behind the paint.

“Not officially,” said Aldwych, smiling to himself at how pious he sounded.

“There’s no reason why he should trouble us.” Jack Junior had been quiet; he was the sort of diner who concentrated on his food. He was as tall and as well-built as his father, but he had a tendency to put on weight; Juliet now had him on a diet. They had been married twelve months and he was deeply in love with her, but lately the thought troubled him that she had taken over the running of his life. In the nicest possible and loving way, of course. “We had absolutely nothing to do with Rob and the way he lived.”

“That’s not quite true, darling.” Juliet was dressed in lightweight cashmere today, with a little gold in the ears and on both wrists, nothing too eye-catching except to her father and other jewelry assayers. Aldwych was no expert, though in the past his hauls had frequently included gold and gems, but he was becoming adept at sizing up Juliet and the way she spent Jack Junior’s money. His money, for he was still Chairman of the board, though none of the figurehead board members of Landfall Holdings knew that; they thought Jack Junior was the Chairman, just because he sat in the chair. Aldwych watched Juliet as she went on: “Rob often came to me and „Lind and „Phelia for advice. Social advice.”

“You mean advice on women?” said her father.

She smiled at him, as if he were the only one of the three men at the table who understood the relations between men and women. “Yes. He was juggling about six or seven girlfriends.” Or nine or ten, if one counted herself and her sisters. She did not regret going to bed with Rob, an affair for her was of no more consequence than a luncheon engagement, but Rob’s death, and the manner of his dying, might prove that his ghost would be more trouble than his living self had been. “He looked upon us as women of the world.”

“Which you are, of course,” said her father, and his smile winked on again as he looked at the two Aldwych men. “When they were small girls, that was what I decided they would be. Women of the world. It just turned out to be a smaller world than I’d planned.”

“Meaning Sydney?” said Aldwych, who loved his home town, even though he had robbed it blind. “Would Roumania have been a bigger, better world?”

“Touché.” Bruna smiled again, but it was more forced this time. It was forty years since the Brunas had escaped from Roumania, smuggled aboard a ship out of Constanta that had taken them down to Istanbul. After the fall of Ceausescu three years ago he had thought of paying a return visit, his roots stirring again, watered by memories, but in the end he had known there was nothing to go back for or to: the past of his own and Ileana’s family was dead. “No, not Roumania, old chap. Europe, all of Europe.”

“Europe has nothing but trouble,” said Aldwych.

Then the cook-housekeeper, who had arrived from Roumania after the fall of Ceausescu and still couldn’t believe her luck in getting out of Bucharest and falling into a job like this, came out on to the terrace. She looked frightened, as well she might, considering her previous experiences: “Two policemen. Secret ones.”

“Secret ones?” said Aldwych.

“She means they are not in uniform,” said Juliet. “They must be detectives.”

“Malone, I’ll bet,” said Aldwych and looked with a certain pleasure as Malone and Clements were ushered out on to the terrace. “Scobie! We were just talking about you.”

“Have you had lunch yet?” said Juliet. “Won’t you join us?”

“Thank you,” said Clements, who, always hungry, would have joined cannibals if invited.

The two detectives sat down and, over small talk, were served fish by the housekeeper, who looked as if she were being called upon to serve the Securitate. Malone was between Juliet and her father, Clements between the two Aldwych men. Clements took wine, but Malone asked for just water.

“You’ll like that wine, Russ,” said Aldwych. “It’s our own. We have a half-interest in a small vineyard up in the Hunter. That’s our „86 semillon.”

Malone was savouring the ocean trout. “You seem to go in only for half-interests, Jack.”

“Keeps our name out of the papers,” said Jack Junior, and his father nodded in smiling agreement. “Why are you here, Inspector?”

Malone cleared his mouth of fish. “We’re finding out a few things about young Rob that worry us.”

All the forks at the table, except Clements’, paused in midair. “Such as?” said Juliet.

“Seems he had sources of income outside of his salary and bonuses at Casement’s.” He looked across the table at Jack Junior. “Did he ever do any moonlighting for you, Jack?”

Jack Junior put down his fork, aware of his father’s watchful eye. Eighteen months ago, in his one venture outside the law, he had almost run afoul of Malone. He had been involved with another strong-minded girl then and it had been his father who had broken up the relationship and saved him from making a fool of himself and, probably, doing time behind bars, “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead—”

“Why not?” Bruna’s smile flashed around the table. “Isn’t that the best and safest time?”

Jesus, thought the elder Aldwych, no wonder Roumania fell apart.

Jack Junior ignored the interruption: “I wouldn’t have a bar of Rob, Inspector. Not in business.”

“Why not? As Mr. Bruna says, let’s speak ill of the dead. Maybe we’ll learn something.”

“He was too unreliable, I always had the feeling that if he could make money on a shonky deal, he would.” It was his turn to sound pious; he saw the faint glimmer of a smile at the corner of his father’s mouth. What surprised him was that his wife, too, seemed on the point of smiling. “He was a borrower, too. He put the bite on me a week after my wife introduced me to him.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” said Juliet.

Malone interrupted before a husband-and-wife diversion could get in the way: “Did you lend him any money?”

“No. I told him I only lent money at the going rate and with firm security.”

“That’s the only way to be in business,” said Aldwych and winked at Malone. “In our business, right, Scobie?”

“I didn’t think you were still in business, Jack. Our business.”

Juliet glanced sideways at the policeman beside her, then across at her father-in-law. She had no experience of how the law and the criminal element worked. She did not read crime novels, watch crime films or television series, never read crime stories in the newspapers. She was not naive and knew that the world only went round because the good and the evil recognized they were two sides of the same coin and the toss was often a matter of luck. It intrigued her that these two men appeared to have a working arrangement and she wondered if Inspector Malone was corrupt. That thought intrigued her, too, because corruption fascinated her.

“A figure of speech, Scobie.”

“Did you know him, Jack?”

“Never met him. Mr. Bruna here knew him, didn’t you, Adam?” Aldwych threw a right hook, playful to be sure, but he wouldn’t have minded if it had hurt.

“Oh yes, I knew him. I always thought he was perfectly charming. He never tried to borrow from me,” he told Jack Junior. “Perhaps he knew that gallery owners live from hand-to-mouth.”

“Stop crying poor mouth,” Juliet rebuked him.

“Was I doing that? How vulgar.” The smile was intended to blind them all.

The two detectives finished their fish, joined the others in the baked cheesecake dessert served by the still apprehensive housekeeper. Aldwych, never having known Rob Sweden, was the spectator here at the table and he sat back to enjoy it. “No dessert for me,” he said, and almost said, I’ll sit back and watch. “More wine, Russ?”

“No, it’s a beauty, Jack, but I’d better not. I’m driving.” Then he looked at Bruna, knowing it was time he took up the bowling. “Did Rob ever do any business with you, Mr. Bruna? I understand you’re a very successful gallery owner?”

“You’re interested in art?” Bruna made no attempt to hide his surprise at what the modern cop got up to in his idle time.

“No, I just do my homework.”

Top marks, thought Aldwych with malicious pleasure.

“I should imagine in the gallery game, a lot depends on recommendations and introductions, right? Did young Sweden ever bring you any customers? He operated in circles where people, young people, have money to spend.”

“We call them clients, Sergeant, not customers. Customers go to supermarkets. Young people with money to spend—and they are scarcer than they used to be, much scarcer—if they buy art at all they buy paintings, not sculpture. I exhibit paintings, but mostly sculptors’ work. They buy as an investment and sculpture, if it’s not from a big name, is not looked upon as much of an investment. No, Rob never brought me any clients.”

“So how did you know him?” said Malone.

“Oh, I met him occasionally here at Juliet’s. And Jack’s,” he seemed to add as an afterthought. “And he would come to exhibitions at my gallery. He knew a lot of pretty girls, models, nobodies but pretty, and they always make an exhibition opening more attractive. They distract the husbands while the wives buy things.”

The smile this time had all the blandness of a smear of white blancmange. What a snob, thought Aldwych who, for all his sins, had never been a snob, not even towards the police. But the bastard was hiding something, those dark glasses were hiding more than his eyes.

“So he never brought a—a client, someone who wanted to pay a lot of money for a painting or piece of sculpture? But pay in cash?”

“No.”

“Do you ever get any clients who want to pay in cash?”

“Occasionally.” The dark glasses were as opaque as darkest night; by some trick of light nothing was reflected in them. “But they are never strangers.”

“No names, no pack drill?” said Malone.

Then Bruna took off the glasses, squinting a moment as he adjusted to the sunlight. He had dark artful eyes that, Aldwych guessed, could match a buyer and a painting in seconds, far faster than any artist could paint, even a graffiti dauber. “It’s not unusual, Inspector, for buyers to ask for anonymity. It protects them from burglars. Pictures are always being stolen, they can always be sold to buyers who are even more anonymous than the original owners.”

“Does the tax man ever enquire into any of this?”

Bruna pushed away his half-eaten cheesecake. “You have spoiled my lunch, Inspector.” The smile flashed again. “We Roumanians are like the South Americans, we think taxation is a social disease that should never be mentioned in polite company.”

“Is that what you think, Jack?” Malone looked at Aldwych.

The old man spread his hand on his chest; the Pope could not have looked holier. “Scobie, I haven’t missed a tax payment in I dunno how long.”

“How about twelve months?”

“Scobie, I’m an honest man now, won’t you ever believe that?”

Jack Junior said, “I don’t think you should insult my father.”

His father waved a quietening hand. “It’s all right, Jack. Mr. Malone and I understand each other. Better, maybe, than any of the rest of you here at this table. Except you, Russ.” He looked around, but Malone and Clements were only on the periphery of his gaze; he was focussed on Jack Junior, Juliet and Adam Bruna. He was smiling, but it was an old crim’s smile, full of guile and cynicism. “It puzzles you, Julie, how Mr. Malone and I understand each other, right?”

“Yes, it does.” She was not afraid of her father-in-law. She had only a sketchy idea of his history; Jack Junior, naturally, did not boast of his father’s record. She made her own on-the-spot judgements of those she met and she had already filed her verdict on Jack Senior. He had killed and would kill again if necessary; he had retired, but his moral superannuation was flexible. He would kill, she was certain, if it meant saving his son from some awful fate. “You appear to be genuine friends.”

“Are we, Scobie?”

“We seem to be heading that way,” said Malone; but everyone at the table recognized the caution in his voice. He pushed back his chair. “I think we’d better be going.”

“You won’t stay for coffee?” Juliet didn’t want the detectives to leave. They might be dangerous, to whom, she didn’t know; but they had made the day interesting. Lately she had started to become bored, which can happen when you discover you have married the wrong partner.

“I’ll come down with you.” Aldwych rose, pulled down his waistcoat. He always wore a three-piece suit; Shirl, his wife, had always insisted that he should camouflage what she called his Australian belly. Shirl was dead now, but in various ways, he still paid his respects to her every day.

“Can we give you a lift?” Clements asked.

“No, there’s a hire car waiting for me downstairs. I never drive, never did. I always had a wheel-man. I used him in getaways,” he explained to Juliet and her father. He delighted in shocking the straights of the world, though he had his doubts about how straight Bruna was. He ignored Jack Junior’s frown of disapproval. “Take care of yourself, Julie. And of Jack.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “I’m taking care of you, too, you dear old man.”

Going down in the lift Aldwych said, “She’s a great bullshit artist, my daughter-in-law. Women have always been better at it than men. It took me a long time to find that out.”

“Me, too,” said Clements, who, until he met Romy, had changed relationships almost as often as he changed his shirts. “I never understood why there weren’t more con-women.”

“Maybe there were. Maybe they were so good, they never got caught.”

The two chauvinists nodded at each other while Malone said, “What about Mr. Bruna?”

“You notice his hair? He not only sells to the blue-rinse set, he’s one of them. You think I’d look better with a blue tint, Russ?”

“It’d suit you, Jack. No bullshit.”

“Jack,” said Malone, “that wasn’t what I meant.”

Aldwych looked at him quizzically. “Scobie, are you trying to recruit me as a gig? Don’t waste your time, son.”

“Russ and I are trying to solve three murders. Yeah, three. You read about the corpse that went missing from the morgue?”

“How about that? Stealing stiffs. Even I never went in for that. So what’s the connection with young Sweden?”

“We don’t know, except that they were both done away with by the same method. A sharp instrument here—” Malone touched the back of his neck. “It’s not a common way of knocking someone off.”

They had reached the ground floor, walked out through the lobby into the short circular driveway where a white Mercedes with HC plates and darkened windows stood waiting. A uniformed driver got out and opened the rear door. But Aldwych paused out of earshot of him. “Scobie, Russ, I know nothing. That’s the truth. If I find out anything that’ll help you, I’ll let you know.”

“But?” said Malone.

“But what?”

“But not if it concerns Jack Junior, right?” The old man’s face went suddenly stiff and Malone went on, “Jack, I’d never ask you to inform on your own son. But he almost got himself into bother with that girl Janis Eden eighteen months ago. She’s still loose, you know.”

“He hasn’t seen her, I can promise you that. I scared the shit outa her and she took me at my word. I’d come outa retirement if ever she came back and started making trouble.” A roughness had crept back into his voice, anger, controlled though it was, scraping the skin of the gang leader he had been.

“Righto, I take your word on it. But if you hear anything on any of the others . . .”

“What others? The whole clan? Juliet’s sisters and their husbands? You think Cormac Casement would get himself involved in something dirty?” He shook his head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree there, Scobie.”

“What about Derek Sweden?”

Aldwych shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I vote for him, or anyway his party, because I’m a conservative. What are you grinning at, Russ? You wouldn’t expect a bloke who’s earned his money like I did, you wouldn’t expect me to be a socialist, would you?”

“I’m with you all the way, Jack,” said Clements, still grinning. “It’s these lefties like Scobie who bugger up the system.”

Malone, whom no party would have bothered canvassing, said, “Jack, about Derek Sweden?”

“I dunno for sure. Maybe his scams now are only political ones, but he made his money originally with some shonky development deals. There, that’s all I’m gunna tell you. I’m gunna have trouble getting to sleep tonight, giving information to coppers. But it’s been nice seeing you both. Look after yourselves.”

The two detectives escorted him to his hire car. “How do you fill in your time, now Jack Junior’s married?”

“Read. I’m catching up on my education. Political history, crime biographies, stuff like that— they’re often much the same thing. And watch TV and videos. I’m gunna watch Pretty Woman tonight for the second or third time. It’s a great fairy story, that. A virtuous hooker can find true love if the john is rich enough. Some of the girls who used to work for me must of laughed themselves sick at it. Home, James.”

“Yes, Mr. Aldwych.”

He wound down the dark window and winked at them as he was driven away. He had reached a serenity that some old men achieve. Since it was neither senility nor spirituality, it had to be amorality.

II

When Malone and Clements got back to Homicide Andy Graham was waiting for them with some encouraging news.

“A missing person. A lady has been in touch, says her husband’s been missing for three days. His description fits that guy who went missing from the morgue. Her name’s—” He checked his notebook: “Mrs. Kornsey, Leanne Kornsey. She lives out at Lugarno. I’ll go out there now—”

Malone was about to say yes, then thought of Mrs. Kornsey being told that all that remained of her husband, if it was he, was a foot and half a leg. Andy Graham, a well-meaning young man but as subtle as a bullock, was not the one to send on such an errand. “Never mind, Andy, I’ll go. It could be a bit awkward—”

Graham might be unsubtle but he was not unintelligent. “Thanks, Scobie, I wasn’t looking forward to it.”

“You want me to come with you?” said Clements.

“I don’t think so. If this is her husband, one-on-one is better.” He never relished these sort of visits, but they came with the job. He remembered how grateful he used to be when Greg Random was in charge of Homicide and had to do this sort of dirty work. “You’re coming to dinner tonight, you and Romy?”

“Yeah.” Clements sounded unenthusiastic.

“What’s the matter? You afraid Lisa is going to lean on you, get you to propose to Romy over our dinner table? Forget it. I’ve told her it’s none of her business and I’ll put her on a charge if she interferes.”

“What charge?” Clements managed to smile.

“Corruption, extortion, I’ll think of something. But you can’t go on putting the girl off. Make up your mind and soon.”

He drove out to Lugarno, south of the city, in his own Commodore, the photo of the dead man in a folder on the seat beside him. He found the Kornsey address, in a quiet street overlooking the George’s River. The district had first been developed by an immigrant who, with the cataracts of nostalgia, had seen a faint resemblance in the landscape to Lake Lugano in his homeland. The Kornseys’ street was a mixture of houses, some modest, some with pretensions to being mansions, none of them on very large lots, all of them fronted with well-kept gardens. The Kornsey house was on the river side of the street, backing on to rough bush that ran down to the water. A large tibouchina tree stood in the front garden, its deep purple bells looming like a lenten cloud; its colour, Malone thought, was appropriate for the occasion but he would have preferred a more nondescript ornament. The house was one of the less pretentious ones, but it was solid brick, two-storeyed with a double garage on the ground floor and a waterless fountain on the opposite side of the path from the tibouchina. The house was painted white and had a blue-tiled roof. The mat on the fancy-tiled porch actually said WELCOME in worn blue letters, but the heavy grille of the security door suggested the welcome was subject to qualification.

A small blonde woman opened the front door, peered out through the grille at Malone. “Yes?”

“Mrs. Kornsey?” Malone introduced himself, showed his badge. “May I come in?”

“It’s bad news, right?” She hadn’t touched the lock on the security door, as if she wanted protection against even bad news.

“I’m not sure till you’ve seen the photo I have here.” He held up the folder, but didn’t show the photo. He did not want her collapsing on him and he unable to get to her because of the door.

She hesitated, then unlocked the door and stood aside for him to enter. Then she led him through the house and out to a sun-room overlooking the river. She didn’t offer him coffee or a drink, just sat down heavily on an upholstered cane chair and looked across at him as he sat down opposite her.

“Not there, please. That is Terry’s.”

Malone moved from the chair to a lounge, part of the brightly coloured suite. Mrs. Kornsey was about forty, he guessed, though she wouldn’t admit to all those years. She might have been good-looking in her youth, but she had gone the wrong way about preserving her looks. She had spent too much time on the beach, the sun had leathered her. The blonde hair was too brassy and there was too much of it, the make-up was too thick; she wore Ken Done separates that should have been separated by at least a mile, the colours clashed so jarringly. Her voice had been roughened by drink and cigarettes and her bright eyes thinned a little as if she were short-sighted. Even as he looked at her eyes she put on a pair of bright-blue-framed glasses that seemed to cover half her face.

Malone took out the photo and passed it to her without a word. She looked at it, at the dark-haired man lying on the grass, his eyes shut as if against the glare of the flash. She frowned, took off the glasses, frowned even more, then gasped, “He’s dead?”

“That’s your husband? Terry Kornsey, that’s his name?”

She nodded; then abruptly began to weep. She lowered her head; he saw the dark roots in her hair and felt cheap at noticing such a blemish. She wept noisily, in great gulping sobs: they were echoes of similar situations but they still hurt his ears. He sat quietly, not moving to comfort her; he had learned that, sometimes, that was the wrong thing to do. Some women were fiercely protective of their space, where they loved or grieved or just shut out the rest of the world. From even the brief time he had been in the house, he judged that Mrs. Kornsey would never shut out the world, she needed it; but he acted cautiously anyway. Once, early in his experience of these situations, he had comforted a widow and she had refused to let him go, phoning day after day till he had had to ask for a counsellor to go see her and take her off his back.

At last Mrs. Kornsey wiped her eyes, blew her nose and put her glasses back on. She was a small round-figured woman, though not plump; she seemed suddenly to have got smaller. “Where is he now? Terry?”

He said as gently as he could, “Mrs. Kornsey, there is not much—I mean, all we have—” He stopped, then recovered, tried to keep his voice as steady and sympathetic as he could. “All we have of your husband is his foot and part of his leg.”

She frowned again; the blue-framed glasses slipped down her nose and she looked almost comically schoolmarmish. “You’ve only got—” She couldn’t bring herself to dismember her husband. “Oh God, how?” You’ve got that photo there, then you try to tell me there’s only—” She shook her head. “Is this some bloody great sick joke?”

He said nothing, looked out at the river below them. The George’s River was notorious for the sharks that came upstream; there had been swimmers taken in the past, but people were less foolhardy now. He wondered if Terry Kornsey had known about the sharks and pondered what it would be like to be eaten by one. At least he had been devoured dead, not alive as the unlucky swimmers had been.

He looked back at the widow, who had pushed her glasses back up her nose and was glaring at him. “Mrs. Kornsey, it’s a strange story—” He told her all they knew about her husband. “Someone murdered him, then his body was stolen from the morgue—”

“Holy Jesus!” She was stupefied; she sat very still, as if he had knocked her out and she had not fallen over. Then abruptly she stood up. “You want some coffee? Come into the kitchen.”

The kitchen was not large, but it appeared to have every appliance that any cook, or team of chefs, might have called for. Unlike the kitchen in the Sweden apartment, this one looked lived in. Mrs. Kornsey saw Malone looking around: “You looking at all the gadgets? Terry was American, he loved gadgets. The garage, his workshop, is full of „em.”

“He was American? What did he do? I mean, his job?”

“He didn’t do anything. Except gamble, though he didn’t do that full-time, I mean he wasn’t a professional gambler. You know, he did SP and that. He’d go down to Wrest Point occasionally, I never went with him. Tasmania didn’t appeal to me, there’s nothing to see but old jails and churches, they’re not my cuppa tea.” She was talking too fast, hardly drawing breath. “Cappuccino? We got anything you want. Cappuccino, perc-u-lator, plunger, you name it, we got it. Cake? It’s homemade. Terry made it, some sorta Italian cake.”

“Was he Italian-American?”

“I dunno. He didn’t have any family. He told me his mother and father were killed in a terrible fire, their home just blew up, gas or something, and he come out here seven or eight years ago to put it all behind him. We been married four years. Sometimes he’d have nightmares, dreaming about what happened to his parents. Murdered?” The cappuccino machine hissed, then stopped; she twisted her head and looked over her shoulder at him. “Why would anyone wanna murder him? He was quiet, but everyone liked him. Really liked him. Some of the girls at the club told me how lucky I was.”

“What club is that?”

“The St George Leagues Club. We’d go there once a month, maybe twice. Terry was quiet, like I said, but he’d take me wherever I wanted to go. Except to Surfers. There.” She handed him his coffee, slid a plate across to him with a large slice of cake on it.

“Surfers Paradise?” They were seated on stools on opposite sides of a breakfast bench. “Why wouldn’t he take you up there?”

“I thought he’d love to go, gamble at Jupiters, but he always said no. He said the gamblers there, them that come in from overseas, were outa his league and he didn’t wanna be tempted and play for stakes that were too high. He wasn’t mean, but he was careful with his money. I always had the impression that he’d been used to a lotta money before he come out here. It was like he was doing his best to live on something less than he’d been used to. I’m talking too much,” she said and shut up, compressing her rather full lips.

“It’s a way of relieving the shock.” He sipped his coffee, nibbled at the cake. “What did you live on?”

She looked at him sharply. “That’s a pretty personal question, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. We often have to ask questions like that. I’m trying to find who murdered your husband, Mrs. Kornsey. But it seems to me I first have to find out who your husband was.” He held up a hand. “No, don’t jump on me. Do you know who he was, where he came from, his family history, all that?”

She had stiffened; but now she slumped on her stool again. She shook her head; the spray-stiffened mass of hair didn’t shiver. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I didn’t know him, not really. We were happy, you gotta believe that. We really loved each other. You married? Happily married?”

“Very. With three kids.”

“We had no kids, I’ve always been sorry about that. We decided we were both too old to start a family. Terry was fifty-three, that’s what he said he was. I’m—well, it’s none of your business, is it?” A small smile creased her mouth. “No, I guess I didn’t really know him.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“In a coffee lounge up in Hurstville. I was the manageress. He’d come in once a week for morning coffee, we used to kid each other, one thing led to another . . . You know how it is . . . How did we live?” She had decided to trust him. “I dunno, to tell you the truth. He used to get money from the States every month. I never saw it. He said it was from a trust fund, something his parents had set up for him, he said his father had been in the printing business. It used to come into the Treasury Bank in Hurstville, he had an account there. He’d give me money to run the house and for things for myself, I had my own account. We’re not rolling in money, but we’re comfortable. There are two cars out in the garage, a Honda Accord, that’s mine, and a Mercedes.” She waved a hand around her, not just at the kitchen but at the whole house. “This is not bad, right? It’s all good stuff, none of your Joyce Mayne bargains or your K-Mart specials. Terry took care of me.” Then the eyes behind the glasses dimmed again, she bit her lip and shook her head. “Jesus, why?”

“We’ll do our best to find out. Do you have any photos of him?”

“No, I don’t. God, is that the only one’s gunna be of him?” She nodded at the folder into which Malone had put the police photo. “Were you gunna give me a copy?”

“No, that’s not the drill. So you don’t have a photo of him at all? That’s strange, isn’t it? Not even a wedding photo?”

“Yeah, we had a wedding photo, but, I dunno, it disappeared. Terry was odd about having his picture taken, he said it was bad luck. He used to make a joke about it, that he was like them African natives, they believe you take a photo of a man and you steal his soul. But he never would stand in front of a camera.”

“You said Terry was fond of gadgets. Could I have a look at what’s out in his workshop? Did he have a computer, for instance?”

“There’s one out there, he used to lock it away in the safe.”

“Safe? He had a safe out in the garage?”

“It’s cemented to the floor. He kept the computer in it and some other things, expensive tools. There’s a bit of burglary around here sometimes, „specially since the recession.”

She led him out the back door of the kitchen and towards a door into the garage. Malone noticed that the garden was carefully tended; a row of rose bushes, the last rose of summer gone, had been freshly pruned. A neat strip of lawn separated the house from a swimming pool; the pool furniture looked as if it was already stacked for the coming winter, a big umbrella furled till next summer. Three Chinese rain-trees stood in a row, their bright-green leaves turning yellow. It seemed that Terry Kornsey had not been expecting to die, had been preparing for the seasons of another year.

The blue Honda and the silver Mercedes, one of the large models, were as well-kept as the garden, shining with new wax. The floor of the big garage was spotless; there were drip-trays under each of the cars. In one corner, in an alcove that appeared to have been built on, was the workshop. There were two benches and Malone, though no handyman with tools, guessed they carried every appliance a do-it-yourself handyman would need. He opened a big steel tool-box; in it were enough spanners, screwdrivers, drills and what-have-you for Kornsey to have dismantled the QE2 on his own. Malone wondered what trade Kornsey had followed in the United States, in that other mysterious life he had kept from his wife.

“Where’s the safe?”

Mrs. Kornsey slid back a panel under the higher of the two benches: there was a large safe, its base anchored in the concrete floor. “Don’t ask me to open it. It’s a combination job and I dunno the combination.”

“I’m no safe-cracker, I’ll have to send someone out here to open it.”

“What do you expect to find?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Kornsey. Maybe we’ll find out who your husband was. Really was.”

The glasses slipped down her nose again; she pushed them back with scarlet-tipped fingers. “I oughta be angry with you, but I got the feeling you’re actually trying to help me, right? But I dunno I wanna know who Terry really was. He was my husband, that was the man I knew, and he loved me, like I loved him. What does the past matter, now he’s dead?”

He put a hand on her arm; she didn’t draw away. “I’ll try to make it as soft as possible, try to see you don’t get hurt any more than you are right now. But if we don’t find out who killed him, there may be more murders. There’s another murder already we think is connected to Terry’s.”

“Another?” She looked at him as if he were deliberately trying to increase the torture. “Who?”

He told her. “Did Terry ever mention the name Sweden to you?”

“Never. You mean the politician’s son, there was a piece in the paper about him? Terry hadn’t the slightest interest in politics. I once asked him what he thought of President Bush and all he said was, President Who? No, he wouldn’t of known anyone named Sweden, definitely.”

“Well, I can’t do anything more till we get that safe open. Terry didn’t have any papers in the house, did he?”

“No, all his papers and things are in there.” She slid the panel back to hide the safe.

Malone wondered why her husband had been so secretive; but there was a limit to the number of darts you could throw at a widow still suffering the shock of his murder. “I’ll ring you when someone is on the way out to open the safe. It’ll probably be this evening. You’ll be home?” She nodded. “You got someone to come and stay with you?”

“My sister’ll come over, she lives at Cronulla. I’ll be all right,” she said, recognizing his concern. “I’m no jellyback.”

“I’m sure you’re not.”

She worked her mouth, as if it had suddenly gone dry. “What about Terry’s, er, foot and leg? Do I have to, er, reclaim it to bury him?”

“I honestly don’t know. Do you want, er, it?”

She shook her head, undecided. “I’ll think about it.”

He left her standing like a shadow behind the security door, walked through the purple shade of the tibouchina and out to his car. He drove across to Hurstville, found a parking spot in the busy shopping centre, went into the Treasury Bank and asked to see the manager. Treasury was one of the smaller chain of banks that had emerged in the Eighties during deregulation of the industry; it was also one of the survivors, catering to small depositors. Malone had to produce his badge; evidently he looked like someone seeking a loan and he would have had to take his place in the queue. On his way into the manager’s office he passed five people sitting in a line of chairs, their faces dull and pinched with their troubles; mortgages, debts, bankruptcies stamped on them like club tattoos.

Inglebath, the manager, was middle-aged and had a face and figure that suggested he liked a drink or two or three. He had prematurely grey hair that made his mottled face more conspicuous. He wore black thick-rimmed glasses that looked more like camouflage than a help to his sight. But if he was a drinker, there was none of the usual drinker’s bonhomie; when he smiled, it was a bank manager’s smile, cynical and I’ve-heard-it-all-before.

He had not heard what Malone had to tell him. “Good God! Really? I only met him a couple of times, but he seemed—harmless?”

“Maybe he was harmless, Mr. Inglebath. You don’t have to be harmful to be murdered, not these days. The trouble is, we don’t seem to know much about who he really was. I’d like to see details of his account.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Inspector.”

“This isn’t a Swiss bank, is it? The Treasury Bank of Zurich or somewhere?” He did not like Mr. Inglebath, who seemed intent on being obstructive.

Inglebath smiled, was suddenly friendly. “Inspector, I’m not trying to be obstructive. Incidentally, you’re wrong about Swiss banks. They are much more cooperative than they used to be when it comes to questions of secret accounts. I’ll let you see Mr. Kornsey’s account, but you’ll have to show me a warrant first. And I’d like written permission from Mrs. Kornsey. I presume there is a Mrs. Kornsey?”

“He never mentioned her?”

“Not as far as I know, but I can have my assistant manager check that.” He made a call on his inter-office phone, hung up and looked back at Malone. “We have no record of there being a Mrs. Kornsey. We have no home or business address for him, just a box number at the local post office. He opened his account here seven years ago, before all the tax mullarkey we now have to go through.”

Malone asked if he could use the manager’s phone, then called Clements. “Russ, send someone out here with a warrant for us to look at the account of Terence Kornsey. And get someone out to the Kornsey place at Lugarno, someone to open a safe there. Try the Fraud Squad, they’re cracking safes all the time. I want it done now. Anything happening your end?”

“Someone just tried to burn Cormac Casement alive.”

III

Kelsey Bugler and Kim Weetbix were neither revolutionaries nor did they even belong to a gang. They just hated the rich because they themselves were not rich. Given the option of being poor and revolutionary and being rich and rapacious, they would have opted for the latter. Each of them had been out of work for eighteen months and they had grown tired of trying to live on the dole, waking up each morning to a day that they knew was going to be worse than yesterday. Hopelessness had started to give way to hate against anyone better off than themselves.

Kel Bugler was a fifth-generation Australian, though, if pressed, he would not have bothered to trace the generations back past his parents, who had kicked him out of the house when he was sixteen. He was tall and thin and might have passed for good-looking if surliness had not been his most prominent feature; he had long dark hair tied with a rubber band at the back in a pony-tail and there was a botched tattoo on the back of his left hand. He was twenty-two years old and had no training in any trade except mugging and he was still an apprentice at that.

Kim Weetbix had never had a home to be thrown out of. Her father was an unknown American soldier; not the Unknown Soldier, just a cypher. Her mother, now dead, had been a Saigon bar-girl. Kim had arrived in Australia with the first boat-load of refugees, a scared but resourceful fourteen-year-old; she had escaped from the camp where she and the other refugees had been taken and she had been on the run ever since. She had begged, stolen, sold herself and managed to scrape up enough money to buy herself forged papers; she had taken her second name off the box of the first food she had been offered in the immigration camp. The hustler selling her the papers, a patriotic Aussie trying to enlarge the national consumer market by encouraging immigration, had looked at her quizzically, then given her her naturalization. For his price, of course. Kim was tall for an Asian girl, but that could be attributed to her father, whoever he was; she was never to find out, but he had been a high school basketball star and at six feet six an easy target for a Viet Cong sniper. She had good looks, was almost a beauty, but she had long ago set her face in stone against the world. She had twice as much intelligence as Kel Bugler and what she saw in him only she knew.

When they found the small door could be opened in the big grille door of The Wharfs garage, they couldn’t believe their luck. They crept down into the bottom level of the basement garage, intending only to break into the cars they found there, taking whatever came to hand. They were disappointed when they reached the lower level and found only two cars and a truck: a Mercedes, a Bentley and a utility that, said the sign on its sides, belonged to B. PAKSON & SON, PAINTERS. In the back of the truck were several cans of paint and two cans of thinners: nothing worth stealing, since Kel and Kim were neither artists nor decorators.

Then they saw the old geezer, carrying a briefcase, get out of the lift at the far end of the garage and walk towards the Bentley.

“We’ll do him!” Kel was not over-intelligent but his mind was like a fox’s, quick on reflex.

They were both wearing black leather jackets, worn jeans and cheap trainers. Each of them had a woollen scarf round his neck against the chill wind that, they were sure, always waited round the corner for them; they had even begun to hate nature, though this warm autumn perversely mocked them. They pulled the scarves up to cover their lower faces; they looked like the masked figures one saw on television almost every night of the week, the Arab, French, German stone-throwers, the brother- and sisterhood of protestors. But they had no cause other than grabbing a wallet from the elderly man now opening the door of the Bentley and throwing the briefcase on to the front seat.

Cormac Casement half turned as the two figures came up in a rush behind him. He went down under the blow across the back of his neck. As he fell he rolled over, lay on his back and looked up as the masked man knelt on him, fumbling for his wallet while the other attacker, a girl, snatched the gold watch from his wrist.

Cormac Casement had never worn an expensive watch in his life till his second wife had given him one; for him a watch had always been only something that told the time and its cost neither hurried time nor made up for the loss of it. He also was old money, so old he was pre-credit card. He was well known and knew he was; he frequented only places where he was recognized. Clothiers, clubs, restaurants: he ran accounts at all of them and never needed a credit card or cash. His wallet was as flat as a visiting card; all it contained was his driving licence and two ten-dollar notes, emergency money. He would have been much safer with Kel and Kim if he had been carrying a roll of notes and a venetian-blind of credit cards.

When Kel saw how little there was in the wallet, fury suddenly took hold of him. He stood up and kicked Cormac Casement in the ribs; the old man yelped with pain and tried to roll away. “Where’s your fucking money? You gotta have more than this!” Kel had a very narrow view of the relationship between the symbols of wealth and actual cash; anyone who drove a Bentley should have a bank of ready money in the boot. He kicked Casement again. “Where is it, shithead?”

Kim stuffed the gold watch into her pocket, then snatched the briefcase from the front seat. “Maybe there’s money in this! Come on, let’s get outa here!”

“No!” Kel’s fury had grown, he was storming with anger and hate.

He spun round the front of the Bentley and ran the few yards to the painters’ truck. He grabbed one of the cans of thinners and ran back to where Casement still lay on the ground, holding his ribs. “On your feet, arsehole!”

He ripped off the cap of the can of thinners, dragged Casement to his feet and thrust the can at him. “You gunna burn this heap, fuck you! Start splashing!”

Casement looked at him blankly; he could not bring himself to believe the hatred in this young man. He was not horrified at having to burn his car; his horror was that this young savage could hate him so much. Kel shouted at him again, hit him across the face and Casement staggered against the car, splashing thinners over the bonnet. Kim stood aside, saying nothing; but above the mask of the scarf her dark eyes were troubled. She was capable of hatred, she had experienced enough degradation to have built up a store of it, but she could control it. It worried her to see that Kel had no leash at all on himself.

Cormac Casement emptied the can, splashing thinners on the car from front to rear. He felt nothing at what was about to happen to the expensive car; possessions meant little to him. He stood back, inadvertently stepping on Kel’s foot as the latter lit a match and threw it on the car. Kel let out a shout of pain and shoved Casement against the car as the thinners burst into flame. Casement screamed as his hands were engulfed by fire and he fell away, trying to put out his burning hands by burying them in his armpits, much as he would have done if they had been frozen.

“Serve you fucking right for being rich, arsehole!”

Then Kelsey Bugler and Kim Weetbix ran up the ramp leading out of the lower level of the garage.