7

I

THE POLICE Minister’s office was not a temple in his own honour, as it had been for one or two of his predecessors. The walls were not hung with photos of himself with notabilities: there was no shaking hands with the Queen, the Pope, visiting presidents, the Prime Minister, the Premier and any white-collar criminals who had given him their vote before they had been caught. The Minister was not without ego, but he did not need advertisements to massage it.

He was with his wife and Assistant Commissioner Zanuch; he was saying, “Bill, this has got to be tidied up. The media are having a ball with it, as if it was me who’d been toss—thrown off that balcony.”

“Derek, we’re doing the best we can. I talked with Fred Falkender this morning, he’s giving out no more to the media than he has to. What you read and hear, if you look at it, it’s all conjecture, guesswork. They know nothing.”

“The point is, what do we know? This guy Malone, what’s he come up with? I look at these bloody summaries—” He gestured at the file on his desk. “Nothing!”

Rosalind looked at Zanuch. “Do the detectives have to report everything every day as it happens? I mean everything they find out?”

“They’re supposed to. It’s all supposed to be in the running sheet, as we used to call it. Now it’s in the computer. But that’s not to say that some of them don’t keep things to themselves till they’ve checked and sometimes double-checked. That’s been happening since we got so much bad publicity over a few bungled jobs.”

“So Malone and his men may know more than they’re telling me?” Sweden was noted for his anger; as Minister of another department he had been known to hurl an ashtray at his chief executive. He bounced a fist on his desk. “Jesus Christ, I’m the Minister here and the victim’s father! Who do you have to be to be told the truth?”

Zanuch, like most ambitious men in a bureaucracy, had learned that it was never politic to tell all of the truth; even if one knew it. He tried to be tactful: “Derek, you’ve been Police Minister only three weeks. It’s the toughest job in the Cabinet—you probably know that, you’ve been in politics long enough. The Police Service is second only to the Navy in the way it sticks together, it’s closer-knit than the Army or Air Force. Ministers before you, from both sides of the House, have tried to hit it over the head and make it come to heel, but it doesn’t work. The service itself is partly to blame for the image it has, but politicians and the general public haven’t helped. It reckons it knows its job better and how to go about it better than anyone else, that it has the experience and outsiders don’t have it.”

He had spoken as if he were an outsider. Sweden, from his own long experience, recognized that Zanuch was playing his own game. “You make it sound as if the Minister is here as just some sort of figurehead, the one to take the political bumps.”

Zanuch took the slightest of risks; he just nodded. He could feel the ice cracking beneath him; he rose to his feet. “I’ll talk to Fred Falkender, see if he can fill you in more.”

“He probably doesn’t know any more than you or I. Tell him I’d like to see Inspector Malone tonight, at the apartment. Six o’clock.”

“I think you’d better tell him. He’s the AC Crime, Malone is his man.”

“Okay, I’ll do it.” He waited till Zanuch had left the room, then leaned back in his chair and looked at his wife. “If Leeds retires as Commissioner while I’m still Minister, I’ll see that Bill Zanuch takes his place.”

“Why?”

“He’ll do what he’s told. Even by an outsider.” He sat looking at Rosalind, elbows on the arms of his chair, his hands clasped; judges often sit in the same pose on the Bench. Rosalind suddenly felt uncomfortable, not a common feeling with her. “I’ve learned a few things about Rob, myself. I’m waiting to see if they come up in Malone’s reports.”

“Such as?” Her discomfort increased, though she showed no hint of it. He couldn’t know about her one-off affair with Rob.

“I think he was double-dealing at Casement’s, on the Futures Exchange. That could have been why he transferred to the banking side, afraid they were catching on to him.”

“Does Cormac know?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t have much to do with the day-today running of the office. All his time is taken up with the boards he’s on.”

“How did you find out?”

He made a steeple of his fingers; he was an archbishop now, though without any religion. “He used my name, without my permission, to get himself a few introductions. I only found out last weekend, I didn’t have time to tackle him about it. The introductions were to people it’d be political suicide—” He stopped, as if the word itself were poison. Then he went on, “People it wouldn’t pay for me to be associated with. An outfit called Pinatubo Engineering that I know the Securities Commission is already investigating.”

She relaxed; though she had looked relaxed all along. “Seems Rob had us all fooled. And I thought I knew all about men—” She shook her head at her own obtuseness. She had had one previous husband, a doctor with a wealthy practice and a drink problem; the divorce judge had awarded her half the estate and her husband had disappeared into an alcoholic haze somewhere overseas. There had been lovers before the doctor and between him and the politician and, despite her disarming remark, she did know all about men. “Are we going to find out anything more about him?”

“I did find out something else about him. He had an affair with Ophelia.”

How to react? Indignantly, in defence of her sister? Shocked at the treachery of her stepson? She chose to play puzzled: “What a ridiculous suggestion! Whatever put that into your head?”

“I went out to Rob’s flat one afternoon, I just decided to drop in. Just as I got there, I saw Ophelia coming out—she didn’t see me. A week later he was at our place, visiting. When he left he went upstairs to the penthouse—Cormac was away in Melbourne at another board meeting. Ophelia was there on her own. Rob stayed a couple of hours.”

“You mean you spied on him?”

“Yes.” He gazed at her steadily. “Did he ever try to sleep with you?”

“No.” Her eyes were greenish-blue; her gaze was as level as a flat sea and as opaque. “Are we going to have a row? If so, I think it would be better if we waited till we get home.”

“No, I’m not looking for a fight. I’m sorry, „Lind—Oh Christ!” The hands crumpled one into the other. “I don’t know why I asked you such a question. It’s those bloody sisters of yours!”

“Both of them? It was only „Phelia a moment ago.”

Unlike her sisters, she had always been conscious of the proper time and place; she was like her father in that regard. She kept waiting for the door to open, for Derek’s secretary or that always-bloody-intrusive Tucker to appear and guess at the atmosphere. Below and around them police business went on, all the paperwork involved with murder and robbery and rape (the paperwork in the hands of men, she was certain). Somewhere in this tall hive a busy bee was filing papers, no matter how few, on Rob: nothing with her name on it, she was sure. But Ophelia’s? Or Juliet’s?

“Love, you know what those are like. They flirt like a couple of nymphos.”

“Have they ever flirted with you? Seriously, trying to get you into bed?” She would stab them through the heart if they had.

He smiled, but it was an effort. “Relax, they don’t play that close to home.”

“You just said „Phelia was sleeping with your son. My stepson. Isn’t that close enough to home for you?” She stood up, pulled on her gloves. She always wore gloves, one of her remaining tributes to her long-dead mother. Ileana had insisted that ladies always wore gloves, that when she had been a young girl in Bucharest before the war (there had been only two wars for Ileana, World Wars One and Two; no other wars had touched her) she had changed her gloves three times a day and she had had two hundred pairs. Rosalind drew on the gloves, drawing on Ileana’s ghost. “I’ll see you at home. You are wrong about „Phelia. And Juliet, too.”

Like her mother she could lie, to deceive herself as well as others.

II

Malone had never been in the dealing room of a merchant bank; indeed, he had never been anywhere near a stockbroker’s. He had seen movies, Wall Street and Bonfire of the Vanities and had read Tom Wolfe’s book, but now he was seeing the actual it seemed more unreal than the fiction.

It was like an orgy of youth, though he didn’t see it in those terms. Young men, and women, in shirtsleeves, expensive shirtsleeves, shouted at each other; at phone-connected other brokers on other floors, on opposite sides of the city, the country, the world, they shouted even at the green-lettered terminals immediately in front of them. Malone could make nothing of what was being said, the language was just one long roar that only God and Mammon, for once on a network, could understand.

Ondelli, in a blue shirt with a white collar and a fashion-of-the-moment tie that resembled a length of regurgitation, led Malone round the edge of the boiling ring.

“Tokyo’s jumping!” he shouted. “The yen’s on the rise again!”

Malone just nodded. He hated to shout and he had no answer anyway: he had never seen a yen. This was another world where, if he was to believe the social commentators, the rise and fall of the Eighties had begun. He wondered how large had been the shouting mob back in those hectic years, and when he and Ondelli were beyond the hubbub, in a narrow glass-walled corridor leading to the general manager’s office, he asked the question.

“Back then we had three floors, we gave practically everyone a job who came in and asked for one. We had money running out of our ears, what did another paycheck matter? Or five or six or ten?” Ondelli shook his head. “It’ll never happen again, not in my day.”

“But some time in the future?”

“Sure. Why not? What else have we got to look forward to? Greed’s a recurring disease, we all suffer from it.” He grinned, but he had said it without shame. “You’re a cop. Do you think human nature ever learns anything from its mistakes?”

Malone conceded the point, paused before the closed door of Ondelli’s office. “These fellers you caught, are they bad buggers or just greedy?”

“Greedy, that’s all, I think. They’re out of a job, anyway. I just fired them.”

He opened the door, ushered Malone into a medium-sized office where four terminals and a chart, rather than pictures, graced the walls. The furniture was Italian modern, all sharp angles at crotch-level, designed to make castrati of careless clients. The big window behind the desk looked uptown into sun-blazing walls of other windows. Malone wondered who, if not the general manager, had the harbour view on this floor. In this town having a harbour view was the same as having your name on a roll of honour.

Kagal rose as Malone and Ondelli came in. His university tie and Malone’s police tie made them look like undertakers against the other three ties in the room. “Inspector, this is Roger Statham and this is Leslie Bute.”

Their youth surprised Malone, though he should have expected it. Neither of them looked more than twenty; Statham looked even younger, a schoolboy. He was tall and thin, still acne-scarred, with long blond hair and deep blue eyes that now looked bewildered and embarrassed. Bute was shorter, broader, dark-haired, a young bull who still had his balls but was shocked at how close he had come to losing them. Besides their flowered ties, both young men wore bright red braces, like some sort of regimental regalia. They stood up respectfully, as if they had both come from homes or schools that had taught them manners. Malone at once sensed that neither of these boys had the in-built antagonism to cops that he had become accustomed to. They would be helpful.

He told them to sit down, then took a seat beside Ondelli, on the manager’s side of the desk. “I’ll talk with you later, John,” he said to Kagal. “Let’s hear what Mr. Statham and Mr. Bute have to say.”

Both young men cleared their throats; then Bute said, “First, Inspector, I’d like to say we’re not criminals. At least I don’t think we are.”

“Mr. Bute, I’m not here looking for crims. I’m here for information.” He glanced at Ondelli. “Detective Kagal told me there’d been some blips.”

“Roger and Les were dealing with Rob Sweden. He got them in evidently because he needed to spread some money.”

Malone looked back at Statham and Bute. “Righto, explain.”

The two young men exchanged glances, then Bute said, “Rob came to us about three months ago, right?” Statham, who seemed to have trouble finding his voice, nodded. “He said we could make some money on the side if we helped him out. He had a client who wanted to clean up some money, he said.”

“Have you done this before? Cleaned up money?”

“Geez, no!” Statham found his voice, cracked and worn; he sounded as shocked at his own behaviour as at being caught. “I dunno why we said yes . . .”

“Greed,” said their boss, not accusingly but like a specialist offering a diagnosis.

Statham nodded, almost as if glad of the interpretation. “Yeah, that’s it.”

“How much did you make?” Malone asked. “On the side?”

“Not that much,” said Bute. “Rob said we’d make more as time went on. We made twenty thousand each.”

“What do you normally make a year?”

“Sixty thousand. Sometimes more, with bonuses.”

Malone looked at Kagal. “We’re in the wrong game, John.”

“Yeah, but we get the bonus of occasionally being shot at.” It was heavy-handed, but it made the three Casement men look, if not feel, uncomfortable.

“How was the money to be laundered, Mr. Bute?”

“Rob had this client. He deposited a million bucks, each of us had to handle a third. We were buying North American lumber futures—”

Malone looked at Ondelli, who said, “Like I told you.”

“How come this wasn’t picked up before now, if it started three months ago?”

Ondelli looked only slightly ill at ease. “Inspector, I don’t think you appreciate the money that passes through this office. Rob was smart, he split the money. Three hundred, three-fifty grand, that’s not a large amount in our terms. It’d run by the observers without causing any real blip.”

“So when did it cause a blip?”

“When the client called in the money and we had to write the cheque. A million two. The call came late yesterday afternoon and if I hadn’t talked to you a coupla days ago, it probably wouldn’t have registered.”

Malone, the counter of pennies, marvelled at a mind on which a million two (even the amount sounded unfamiliar) wouldn’t register. “Who was the client?” The three Casement men exchanged glances and Malone snapped, “Don’t give me any confidentiality bullshit, I’ve had enough of that for today. Who was the client?”

“Pinatubo Engineering,” said Ondelli.

III

Going back to Homicide Malone said, “Check on Pinatubo, John, they’ve got to be registered here.”

“Will do.” Kagal sometimes sounded as if he were in the army; when he became police commissioner he would also be a field marshal. “What about those jerks, Bute and Statham? Do we refer them to the Fraud Squad?”

When he was commissioner he would sweep the city clean . . . “John, never give yourself more work than you have to. Let Fraud find them themselves. They’ve lost their jobs, that’s good enough for me.”

Kagal said nothing for a while, then he looked sideways at Malone. “You think I’m an eager beaver, don’t you?”

Malone had never ducked bumpers, even though he had been a poor batsman. “You are, aren’t you? I don’t hold it against you. I’d rather an eager beaver than a lazy bugger who bludged on his mates all the time. But you have to draw a line. What satisfaction would you get out of all the time and paperwork you’d spend on getting those two kids to court? And when you got „em into court, it’s a fifty-fifty chance the judge’d give them a slap on the wrist and put them on a bond for twelve months. Too many of our judges have a reluctance to go heavy on white-collar crims. No, John, slow down, that’s all I suggest. Police work was never meant for sprinters.”

Kagal digested that; then he smiled. “I sometimes find you a pain in the arse, sir, but still I admire you.”

“Likewise,” said Malone and for the first time liked the young man.

Back in the office he did his own paperwork; then sat back and gazed at the note he had found on first coming back to his desk: AC Falkender called. You are to see the Minister at his apartment at 6 p.m. Lucky you. The note was in Clements’ large scribble.

Then Clements came into the office. “You got the note? You going for cocktails?”

“I’ll bet that’s what his wife serves—cocktails. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a stale beer. Why the hell me?”

Clements dropped his bulk into the chair opposite Malone. “John Kagal told me about Pinatubo. I’ve already checked on it, as soon as Palady and Junor left. It was registered here two years ago, its full name is Pinatubo Medical Engineering. It was managed by a Mr. Belgarda, Ramon Belgarda. If Mr. Tajiri has anything to do with it, he’s not down as a registered director or executive. Their offices are down in William Street. I’ve been down there, it’s two rooms above an empty car showroom. Nobody home, the door was locked. I’ve been on to Romy. She’s just rung me back. Pinatubo used to import medical equipment into this country—operating tables, trolleys, stuff like that. There’s some of their stuff out at the morgue. Romy has made a few enquiries. As far as she can gather, Pinatubo hasn’t been selling medical equipment for at least six months, maybe more. It could of been set up as a front for—” He shrugged: take your pick of a dozen choices.

“These kids I talked to at Casement’s, they said they knew nothing of Pinatubo. I believe them. They never met Tajiri or this other bloke—Belgarda? Rob Sweden was their only connection. I asked them if Sweden had ever mentioned Kornsey or Caccia, whatever name he used, but they just looked blank.”

“He’s connected to it all, though.”

“Of course he is. But how? Money is the key to this. It’s the be-all and end-all for these people, and I mean the lot of them. They are either born to money or they’re born to make it, they marry for it or they kill for it. Or are killed.”

“The commos must miss having you as their spokesman. You’ve taken in the whole capitalist system there.”

“Romy once told me something, on our first case with her. She said when looking for the cause of death in a homicide, she started from the outer limits, eliminating everything as she went along that might’ve or might not have caused the death, till she got to a core of probable causes. I think we should do the same with these cases. How’re you going with her, anyway?”

They had known each other so long and so well that neither of them was ever fazed when the conversation went off at a tangent. “D’you mean am I having second thoughts about proposing to her? Yes. But I always have second thoughts about everything, even whether I’ll have a piss.”

“So, leaving aside whether you piss first time up, how do you feel now you’ve asked her?”

Clements bit his lip, then nodded. “I’m happy. So’s she.”

“Good.” Then Malone looked up at Andy Graham in the doorway. “Yes, Andy?”

“Nothing from the FBI yet.” He scraped his feet, as if about to take off for Washington to find out what was delaying them.

“Waco, Texas,” said Malone. “That’s probably all that’s on their mind, Waco.”

The horrific end to the siege of the religious cult at their headquarters in Texas had thrown up a glare that had gone right round the world. The FBI itself was now under siege for its handling of the long stand-off, but Malone’s sympathy, like that of most cops, was with the law enforcement men. It was an old cliché but true: hindsight was the perfect example of twenty-twenty vision. And no one was ever as decisive in their criticism as those who did not have to make a decision.

“Keep at them, Andy. But gently, try some Aussie diplomacy.”

“What’s that?” said Clements.

“Our request is probably going through the system, same as it does here. The Yanks have as many bureaucrats as we do. More, probably.”

“You think I should try going through their embassy in Canberra?”

“Forget that, that would only add to the system. We could be here till Judgement Day and I don’t think that’s on the calendar yet.”

Graham disappeared and Clements said, “You’re being extra patient, aren’t you?”

“No, I think I’m like you. I’m having second thoughts. I’ve got the feeling that if ever we solve these cases, make the connection, we’ll be wishing we were at Tibooburra.”

IV

The door to the Sweden apartment was opened by Luisa, the Filipino maid. She was in her thirties, plump, plain, but not unattractive with a flat-cheeked face and long-lashed dark eyes that had a remote look about them, as if she had not entirely left the slopes of Zamboanga, her home province. She ducked her head to Malone, but gave him no smile of welcome, instead looked apprehensive. Malone wondered if she was an illegal, if Sweden, unknowingly, was like those White House executive nominees who had neglected to check on their servants’ credentials. But illegal immigrants were not Malone’s province, he had enough bother with the natives.

There was a smile of welcome from Rosalind Sweden, who came forward hand outstretched. “Inspector! How nice to see you again. You’ve met my sisters,” she said, as if he were the dim sort of man who went through life never remarking the women he met.

“Of course,” said Malone, irritated, and perversely spread the suavity like honey. The three sisters, collectively, were formidable and he decided the best way of combatting them was with silk gloves. Unlike most Irishmen, he was not afraid of a woman, but in the plural he preferred to treat them with caution, which is the way even Latin men do.

“My husband has been delayed, he’s been held up by some demanding constituent. It comes of representing an electorate like this.” She waved a hand as if they were in the middle of an unemployment camp. Malone had never bothered to check his Minister’s electorate and he wondered what the poorer voters would think of their member living in a pad like this.

“Are you any closer to solving Rob’s murder?” said Juliet.

Malone held up his finger and thumb half an inch apart. “We’re making progress. Homicides are rarely solved the same day. Except domestics,” he added, putting salt in the honey.

“Domestics?”

“When a wife kills a husband,” said the Police Minister’s wife. “Or vice versa. I’m learning the jargon since Derek has been bringing home papers from the office.”

Malone had never shown a paper from the office to Lisa in all their married life. “You find the papers interesting?”

All three sisters caught the note in his voice; they had been reading men’s voices since kindergarten. “Of course, Inspector. I did a year of sociology at university.” It had been a waste of time, she had soon discovered there were no rich sociologists. “But I suppose you look at the papers differently. You write them.”

So far he had written none on the Sweden case. “I’m sure you’ll find the papers on your stepson interesting when they’re all in. Especially if I can link up his murder with another one.”

That sat them up; he actually thought he heard Ophelia’s girdle creak. They looked at each other, then gave him the glare of a concentrated gaze. “Another murder?”

“Have any of you heard of a man named Terry Kornsey? Or he might’ve called himself Joseph Caccia. He was an American.”

There was a flicker in only one of the three pairs of eyes: Ophelia’s. Then all three heads were shaken. “The names mean nothing to me,” said Rosalind. “Julie? „Phelia?”

“No.”

“Was he a friend of Rob’s?” said Juliet. “Thanks, Luisa.”

The maid had brought in some canapés to go with the drinks she had served. Malone had noticed that she had poured the drinks with the measured skill of a barmaid. He had asked for a light beer and she had poured it without choking it with a heavy collar.

“Rob never brought any of his friends here,” said Rosalind. “Except girls. Very pretty girls with nothing between their ears.” A description that had never fitted her or her sisters.

“Maybe I should talk to some of them. Can you remember their names?”

“Not their surnames. They were always Caroline or Felicity or Joanna.”

“Nice North Shore names,” said Ophelia. “Murderers never have names like that, do they?”

Come to think of it, no they don’t. “You follow the crime stories in the papers?”

“Only since my brother-in-law has become Police Minister. Hello, Derek, we’re talking murders.”

The look of disapproval on Sweden’s face as he came down from the front door was blatant. “Jesus, „Phelia, do you have to turn everything into party chatter? A whisky, Luisa, a double.”

“My, we are in a mood.” Ophelia stood up. “I think it’s time I went back to the hospital. I’m bringing Cormac home tomorrow. We’ll have a nurse come in, just in case. Goodbye, Inspector. Good luck with your inspecting. Are you handling my husband’s case?”

“Only indirectly, Mrs. Casement. I think it’s been entered in the papers as assault, not homicide.” It was cruel: they both knew it, but she didn’t blink.

She put on a hat, drew on gloves: it was like watching someone getting ready to go out to face the 1950s. The hat reminded Malone of the large-crowned caps worn by Soviet generals, who looked as if, if a wind blew up, their heads would spin away in the updraft. But Ophelia would never lose her head any way at all.

“Nobody will kill Cormac. He’ll die in his own time,” she said and left. Winds would blow round her, but never through her.

Sweden took Malone into a small study; Rosalind called after them, “Do you want us, too?”

“No,” said her husband, “this is police business.”

Malone was at once wary, wondering in what sense this was police business. He followed Sweden into the study, closing the door when the Minister gestured for him to do so. A quick glance around the room gave Malone a new look at the Minister: unless the bookshelves were there just for show, Sweden had wider and deeper interests than Malone had suspected. There was what looked like a whole shelf of political history, national and international; a book by Gough Whitlam was somehow stuffed between two volumes of a biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, a juxtaposition that would have sent the ex-President cross-eyed. There were books on music, art and there were two shelves of what Malone, lately converted to reading, took to be serious fiction: Bellow, Greene, Malouf. Then he saw the two vases of flowers and the small triptych of the three Bruna sisters on the wall. He guessed this was as much Rosalind’s room as her husband’s, this was where she read the papers.

Sweden slipped off his jacket, took off his tie (a police tie, Malone remarked), sat down and motioned Malone into the chair on the opposite side of the small, neat desk. He sipped his drink, taking his time, looking at the detective with deliberate scrutiny that was insulting. Malone held his temper.

At last Sweden said, “So what do you know that hasn’t been in your reports?”

They were one-on-one, outside police precincts; Malone let his tongue go: “What makes you think I’m holding anything back?”

Sweden was about to take another sip of his drink; the glass was stuck halfway to his mouth. “Don’t let’s you and I get off on the wrong foot, Inspector.”

“I think we’ve already done that. You’re accusing me of holding something back on your son’s case.”

“Aren’t you? I’ve looked at the summary briefs, there’s bugger-all in them. You want another beer?”

Malone put down his empty glass. “No, thanks. Look, you’re the father as well as the Minister. I’ve learned a few things about your son that smell—would you want me to put those in the reports before I’ve had time to double-check whether they’re true or not? I’m a father, too. That comes first, before being a cop.”

Sweden put down his glass, leaned forward. The small room was warm and there was a shine of perspiration on his bald head. “Okay, point taken. So what have you learned?”

Malone told him, waiting for an explosion of indignation; but there was none. Sweden listened without interrupting, then sat back and was silent for a full minute. Then he nodded. “I knew all that. Not about the other two kids being involved, just my son. I found out a couple of weeks ago.”

“What did you do?”

“I blew the shit out of him.”

“To what effect?”

“I don’t know. He took it pretty quietly, more so than I’d expected. We were never the best of mates, even though he was an only child. We never fought, but somehow we were never close. When his mother died, he thought I didn’t waste any time in marrying again. What I’m telling you doesn’t go out of this room, okay?”

“So long as you don’t report me to my AC for talking back.”

Sweden shook his head, looked on the point of smiling. “Jesus, Malone . . . Have you ever thought of going into politics? Never mind, don’t answer that.”

“How did you find out what your son was up to?”

“That firm you mentioned, Pinatubo. When it set up in business here two, three years ago, I was Minister for Health. I had to okay a couple of contracts for them, medical equipment for a hospital and the city morgue, as I remember it. They seemed okay to my department at the time. Then all of a sudden they stopped submitting bids and we started to hear rumours about them.”

“What sort of rumours?”

“That they were really owned by the yakuza, the Japanese crims. We have no proof, they’re still being investigated by the Securities Commission, but the last thing I wanted was Rob being associated with them. I don’t think he knew who he was really dealing with, he sometimes wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.” He picked up his glass, finished his drink. “If this gets out, the Opposition will make all the capital it can out of it. And our majority’s so slim. Do you know Hans Vanderberg?”

Malone grinned. “Do you mean do I know what he’s like? Sure I know. When he was Police Minister . . . Well, never mind.” Political histories are written; but histories of the relations between ministers and their departments never see the public light. Yet the past, even yesterday, is thick with gossip, innuendo, suspicion and often downright hatred. A hypocritically clean sheet was always opened to the new Minister . . . “This other case, the body stolen from the morgue, it’s connected to Pinatubo. I can’t find any connection between your son and the dead man, his name was Kornsey, but there is one somewhere along the line. You’ve never met Tajiri, the feller who supposedly runs Pinatubo now?” Sweden shook his head. “What about Belgarda, the original manager? He’d have been running it when you signed those contracts with them.”

“Once I met him, but I can’t remember him. He came to some reception we gave, when they got their first contract. I can’t help you with any detail about him. As a Minister you meet hundreds of businessmen like him.”

“We presume he’s a Filipino. So’s your maid, isn’t she?”

Sweden’s raised eyebrows went up beyond what would have been his hairline in the past. “Luisa? You’ve already questioned her.”

“Not me. Can I talk to her now?”

“Sure.” Sweden stood up. “In here?”

“No, I’d rather talk to her out in the kitchen, alone. All right?”

A narrow hallway led from the study out to the kitchen. Sweden led the way, pushing open the swing door into the kitchen and calling, “Luisa!”

The kitchen was empty, cold and clinical as a morgue but with no bodies, not even one. Luisa was gone: her bedroom, too, was empty. The closet doors were open, there were empty spaces amongst the clothes on the racks. The rear service door to the apartment was slightly ajar, as if Luisa, leaving, had not wanted its closing to be heard.

Out in the big living room Rosalind said, “She’s not there? But I spoke to her five minutes ago.”

“Maybe she’s gone downstairs for something,” said Juliet.

“I don’t think so,” said Malone. “She’s packed a bag and left. Does she have a car?”

“No.” Sweden was perturbed. “Do you think she’s connected to Pinatubo, too?”

“I’m not even making a guess at this stage. Could be. Probably. How did she come to you?”

“From an agency,” said Rosalind. “She came to us five, six months ago. She had excellent references, I took her on right away. Good help is so hard to get these days, despite the recession.”

“We have the same trouble in the Service,” said Malone; he saw Juliet smile, just a twist of her full lips. Rosalind and Sweden didn’t smile and he went on, “Did you talk to her about your stepson’s murder?”

“Of course not. It was none of her business.” Rosalind sounded haughty.

“I think it may have been very much her business.” He glanced at Sweden. “She told one of my men that your son had given her fifty dollars to go out to the movies. Maybe he gave her nothing, we had only her word for that. Maybe she let the murderer in, then went out, to be out of the way when it happened.”

All at once Rosalind lost her composure; she shivered. “God, it’s all getting worse! It’s—bizarre, Frightening!”

Juliet put an arm round her. “Be calm, darling. Nobody else is going to be hurt. That’s right, isn’t it, Derek?”

She addressed the question to her brother-in-law, but looked at both men. The answer was in their faces.