10

I

THEY BURIED Vince Bassano, alias Terry Kornsey, the next day; or rather, he was cremated, at least part of him. Malone and Clements went to the cemetery on the southern outskirts of the city, to stand outside the crematorium and watch who came to pay their last respects. The morning was grey and cool, a good day for last rites. Malone, who had been to a few funerals, as mourner and spectator, had come to believe that all Australian burials or cremations should be held on autumn or winter days, in seasons that kept the colour sense to a minimum. He had been to funerals where bright dresses, some even sequinned, white safari suits and rainbow ties had suggested the mourners had only stopped off on their way to the spring racing carnival at Randwick. He was as old-fashioned as his mother Brigid when it came to burying the dead.

There was no one amongst the funeral crowd who looked like a Mafia hitman; nor were there any Asians. There were a few broken noses and cauliflower ears, but they belonged to old rugby league players, now fellow members of Mrs. Kornsey at the St George Leagues Club. If Terry Kornsey had been as quiet and reclusive as his wife had said, Malone wondered if the club members had come out of respect for her or her husband.

The crematorium was painted a bilious green. Its tall chimney looked like a clock-tower from which the clock-face had been removed, as if acknowledging that time no longer mattered to those going up in smoke through its core. Huge box-gums, trees older than most of the bones in the cemetery, faced the eastern front of the low building; a couple of Roman pines stood at one end of the line of box-gums, like immigrant mourners at a native funeral. It occurred to Malone that Roman pines seemed to be a feature of all the cemeteries he had attended and he wondered why. He made a resolution to find out the reason; but he knew, even as he thought of it, that he wouldn’t. Life was full of neglected explanations: no one knew that better than a cop.

As the crowd slowly filtered out of the service chapel, a man detached himself and came towards the two detectives. Malone was surprised to see it was Kenthurst, wrapped in a trenchcoat, hat-brim pulled down all round, looking like a five-hundred-dollar-a-day private eye, Philip Marlowe from Canberra’s anything-but-mean streets. “What are you doing here, Ron?”

“I’m here representing the US Marshals’ Service—unofficially, of course. I have to report Vince Bassano is no more, just a heap of ashes. You weren’t inside, were you? I kept wanting to laugh. A full-sized expensive coffin with half a leg and a foot in it, going into the oven. I don’t know whether any of the crowd in there knew what was inside it—”

“They couldn’t have used a child’s coffin.”

“No, I suppose not. The widow went up and touched the lid of the coffin, but no one else followed her. So I guess they all knew there wasn’t much of Vince Bassano there. It was macabre. Well, he’s officially dead now and the Marshals’ Service can write him off their books. You here looking for leads?”

Malone nodded. “And finding none . . . Oh, Mrs. Kornsey.”

She had come out of the chapel and stood surrounded by sympathizers. Then, as if to escape from them, she had abruptly pushed through them and come across to the detectives.

“Mrs. Kornsey, this is Sergeant Clements, my colleague. And this is Superintendent Kenthurst of the Federal Police.”

Her frown increased the sad look; she was older this morning, faded by grief. “Federal Police?”

“We don’t want to come back to the house, you’ll have relatives and friends there. I wonder if we could have just a few minutes with you now? There’s some explaining to do.”

A woman, her resemblance suggesting she might be a sister, came towards the group; but Mrs. Kornsey waved her away and, stumbling a little on the gravel path, till Clements took her arm, she walked with the three men away from the chapel towards a row of graves.

Malone said, “Superintendent Kenthurst is here on behalf of the United States Marshals’ Service.” Then he told her who her husband had been and why he had come to Australia: “He was Mafia, Mrs. Kornsey, and we think the Mafia finally caught up with him.”

She shook her head, as if to refuse to believe what they were telling her; behind her, her husband went up in smoke from the crematorium’s chimney. “But Terry was so—so gentle. He couldn’t have been a killer.”

“He wasn’t.” Kenthurst himself was gentle with her. “From what we got from Washington, he was on the money side. He was their book-keeper, not one of their soldiers.”

“Soldiers?”

They were standing amongst low headstones, most of them markers of those who had died in the Thirties. What had they died of? Malone wondered. Despair, broken hearts, those illnesses of the Depression? There had been no AIDS then, no OD-ing from drugs; there had, of course, been murder, an ancient disease. There were several well-known criminals buried in this cemetery, but none of them had ever had a murder charge proven against him, though Malone and Clements had once pressed such a charge against one of the crims. Malone further wondered if Kornsey would feel at home here.

Kenthurst did not try to explain the Mafia order-of-battle. “He had no criminal record of violence, Mrs. Kornsey.”

“What did you say his name was?” As if abruptly accepting that her late husband had been a stranger; or was fast turning into one.

“Bassano. Vincent Bassano.”

“Then that explains it.”

“Explains what?” said Malone.

The phone call. Yesterday. A man phoned, asked if I was Mrs. Bassano. I said no, I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then he said, „Sorry about Vincent,’ and hung up. I oughta called you, I suppose, but I haven’t been thinking too straight since you come the other day and told me—” She half-turned, gestured at the crematorium; Malone couldn’t tell whether her gaze was at ground-level or at the top of the chimney, where the smoke was dribbling away as a faint wisp. She looked back at the three detectives. “Will you catch them? The men who killed Terry?”

“We’re trying,” was all Malone could promise.

She turned to Kenthurst; she was gathering herself together. “You said something about the Americans, their Marshals’ Service or something. Will they tell me more about Terry if I write to them?”

“I doubt it, Mrs. Kornsey. They’re very restricted in what they can put out, even to family.” He glanced at Malone. “I think Inspector Malone will agree with me, it might be better if you just thought of your husband as Terry Kornsey, forget what he was before he met you.”

“Jesus, you think that’s gunna be easy? Anyway, thanks.”

She turned suddenly and walked away from them, towards the woman, her sister, waiting for her by the blue Honda. “She’ll write them,” said Clements.

“Of course. Women are masochists,” said Kenthurst.

Malone grinned. “When did anyone in Canberra ever guess right about women?”

“When did anyone anywhere ever guess right about them?” said Kenthurst. “What happens now?”

“We’re on our way to another funeral.”

II

Jack Aldwych, for reasons of propriety, and Cormac Casement, because he did not feel well enough, did not attend Robert Sweden’s funeral. Premier Bevan Bigelow did attend, working the crowd as if he were at a party fund-raising fête. A short square man with blond hair falling down over one eyebrow, he was known as Bev the Obvious, always with his eye on the larger target, too frequently the wrong one; had he been a polo player he would have hit the horse more often than the ball. He was the perfect stopgap: thick-skinned, thinly gifted, empty of ideas. He was tolerated by his betters, Derek Sweden amongst them, while they fought amongst themselves to see who was best.

Most of the Cabinet came with the Premier. Police Commissioner John Leeds was there, along with five of the seven Assistant Commissioners. Opposition Leader Hans Vanderberg came, working the crowd with the same diligence as the Premier, even though practically all the mourners were conservative voters. But after the recent Federal election upset, who knew what a swinging voter looked like?

Rob Sweden was buried in a small cemetery in the eastern suburbs, where plots were as valuable as gold reefs. One was lowered into the ground as if being admitted to an exclusive club; Rob was accepted because of his dead mother, whose social connections were better than his father’s. It was an old-fashioned cemetery, none of your discreet lawn plots and small plaques; there were marble crosses galore, a concentration of crucifixes, and a chorus of stone angels stood waiting to be called heavenwards. Malone and Clements stood behind three of them, like recent arrivals at Heaven’s gate, and waited.

“This is a waste of time,” said Clements. “The killer isn’t gunna turn up.”

“You never know . . . The three sisters look great. Like they’re on their way to lunch. Luncheon.”

“At least they’re wearing black. But notice, no tears?”

“The only ones weeping are his father and those half a dozen girls who look as if they’re going to miss Rob giving them a good time. They’re all pretty, he knew how to choose them.”

“Who are the young guys?”

“Mates he worked with. Including the two who worked the scam with him. The tall skinny one looks as if he’s in shock.”

“He’s probably never seen a burial before. Look at The Dutchman, he hasn’t once looked at the grave. He’s sizing up the crowd. Uh-uh, we’ve been spotted. Here comes Jack Junior.”

He picked his way through the graves towards them, dressed in a lightweight topcoat, hat in hand, sprayed hair as steady in the breeze as a bicycle helmet. “My dad told me to keep an eye out for you, Inspector. He said you usually turned up for the funerals of murder victims.”

Old Jack would know: but you didn’t make a remark like that to his son. “Did he want to see me?”

“If you wouldn’t mind. He said he’d rather not come to Homicide—” Jack Junior smiled. “I gather he has bad memories of going there once or twice back in the old days. He’d like you to have lunch with him at the Golden Gate. A private room.”

Malone had begun to trust the old crim; but . . . “I’ll bring Sergeant Clements with me.”

For just an instant there was a look of pain in the younger man’s eyes. “He’s no longer what he used to be, Inspector—”

“I know that, Jack. But people still have a habit of being suspicious. What time does he want us?”

Jack Junior looked at his watch. “Now, if you could manage it. He’ll be at the restaurant.”

“Are you coming?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “I think I might. I’ll tell my wife—”

“Don’t bring her.”

Jack Junior was annoyed. “I hadn’t intended to. But what—?”

“I don’t know what your father is going to tell me. It’ll be the first time, I think, he’s ever given information to a cop. I don’t want your wife or anyone else thinking of him as a dog. Do you know what he’s going to tell me?”

“No. That’s why I want to be there.”

III

Jack Aldwych Senior walked down the front steps of the big house in Harbord; the white Mercedes with the hire car plates and the smoked windows stood in the driveway. The Aldwych house was the largest in the street, perhaps the largest in the small suburb; it had been built at the turn of the century by a circus family who presumably had wanted room in which to tumble around. Harbord in those days had been much less settled than now; today it was a jumble of modest houses and inexpensive flats spread over a hill that looked out to sea. In the past several Olympic swimmers had lived in the suburb, but their fame had never lasted as long as the notoriety of Harbord’s most prominent living citizen. The local elements did not exactly look up to him, except in a geographical sense, since his house was at the very top of the hill, but, now he was known to be retired, there was a tolerance of him that he would not have been accorded in his heyday. Perhaps it had something to do with being beside the sea: respectability, as if the salt air has eroded it, is less strong in Sydney’s seaside suburbs than elsewhere.

“Chinatown, James.”

The chauffeur’s name was Orlando, but he agreed with the old man’s opinion that it was not a name for a chauffeur. He was young, blond, had learned, at great effort, not to talk too much; and was fascinated by this old crim who rode behind him in the darkened car, always, it seemed, at peace with a world which he had screwed any way he could. “Nice day, Mr. Aldwych.”

“At my age, son, you wake up still breathing, every day’s a nice day.” He gave the young man a smile. “That’s bullshit wisdom. Take no notice of it, the world is full of it.”

The big gates were opened by Blackie Ovens, the general factotum, though he would have decked anyone who called him that, since it sounded dirty. He had once been one of Aldwych’s standover men, an artist with an iron bar, but he too had retired, content to live off the boss for what little he did around the place.

“Have a nice day, Jack. Give my regards to young Jack.” Aldwych tantalized him: “Blackie, I’m having lunch with a coupla cops.”

Ovens looked sick. “You’ve spoiled my day, Jack.” The car went down the steep street, past the houses with their windows shut against the wind coming up from the southwest. A postman came up the hill, stuffing bad news into the letterboxes; a youth on a skateboard, long hair streaming in the wind, went down the hill and careered dangerously round the corner and was gone. The Mercedes turned the corner into the street that led down to the main road. The grey Ford Fairlane was waiting for it, blocking the left-hand lane.

Two men jumped out of the Fairlane and came running back towards the Mercedes; at the same time a third man, who had been standing on the corner, appeared from behind the Mercedes. All three were wearing party masks, Groucho Marx triplets with guns. One man snatched open the driver’s door and jerked his gun at Orlando.

“Out, sport! Don’t try nothing funny or you’ve had it! Out!” There was nothing in the chauffeur’s contract with the hire car company that said he had to be a hero. He didn’t look back at Aldwych as he slid out of the car and, prodded in the back with the gun, walked quickly towards the Fairlane. He got into the back seat, the gunman following him, and at once the Fairlane took off, speeding away with a squeal of tyres.

In the meantime the other two gunmen had got into the Mercedes, one in behind the wheel and the other beside Aldwych in the back seat. Aldwych had sat without moving, his eyes flicking from one man to the other but his face otherwise showing no expression. He was too old for quick physical effort; his age, as much as self-control, kept him in his seat. Nothing was said as the man behind the wheel moved the Mercedes forward and the car went down towards the main road. If anyone in the houses had seen the incident, there was no outward sign; no one came rushing out of a front door, no curtain dropped back into place as someone left a window and went to phone the police. The ambush had taken no more than fifteen or twenty seconds, had been executed by men who appeared practised in this sort of thing. Aldwych, an old pro, had to admire the efficiency of it all.

The driver took off his mask and dropped it on the seat. Aldwych looked at the man beside him. “You gunna take yours off? You look bloody silly, I can’t take you seriously, if you’re gunna wear that.”

Without hesitation the man took off the mask: Groucho Marx was replaced by a smiling Japanese. “You are a cool customer, Mr. Aldwych. Are you going to remain cool and sensible?”

Aldwych nodded at the gun in the man’s lap. “I don’t have any choice, do I?”

“No, I should say not.” He was tall for a Japanese, just on six feet, slim but with a suggestion that there was muscle under the well-cut suit he wore. Aldwych had no way of guessing a Japanese’s age, but the man looked young, perhaps no more than thirty. He looked like a professional: a banker, a lawyer, a doctor; but he could also be a professional killer. He had the bland handsomeness that was almost a look of anonymity. “We want to talk to you, Mr. Aldwych, not kill you. Not unless we have to.”

The car had turned at the bottom of the hill and was moving north. An ambulance came up behind it, siren screaming, and the driver up front moved over and waved it on. The ambulance was followed immediately by a light van, tail-gating it and chopping off the Mercedes as it went to move back into the outside lane. The man behind the wheel blew his horn angrily, but all he got in answer was a finger from the van’s driver.

“Goddamned Australians!”

“Why don’t you shoot him?” advised Aldwych; then turned to the Japanese: “Do you have a name?”

“I do, but I don’t think you need to know it.”

“You’re a Jap, right?”

“Japanese.”

“Okay, Japanese. Yakuza?”

The Japanese looked down at his wrists. “Are you looking for tattoos? You need flesh and muscle to show off tattoos. It’s better, too, if you have no intelligence, but don’t quote me. Yakuza is a loose term, Mr. Aldwych, like Mafia. What did you call your organization when you were king?”

“Don’t piss in my pocket, son. How would you know what I used to be?” But he was flattered. “Okay, which outfit do you work for? Yamaguchi-gumi? Inagawa-kai?”

“You’re well informed.”

“I heard about the yakuza coming into Queensland a few years ago, when you ran the scam on the bent coppers and the SP bookies and the tax-dodgers, when you took „em for, what, two, three million in a coupla months? Something to do with red beans on the Tokyo futures market.”

The Japanese smiled. “It was very smart, but no, we had nothing to do with that. Our organization has a name, but I don’t think you need to know it, Mr. Aldwych.”

The drive continued in silence. Aldwych studied the driver, another Asiatic: maybe a Filipino? At one time they had all been Chinks to him and even now, with the country full of the yellow bastards, he couldn’t tell one from another. He was a true conservative, wondered at how White Australia had been sent down the gurgler by lily-livered liberals.

Finally the Mercedes turned off the coast road that led to the northern beaches, came to a halt in a lane that looked out on a golf course. Aldwych recognized it as Long Reef, a course that ran out to a headland north of a curve of beach. The wind from the south-west had increased and gremlins of dust danced around two golfers in the rough; farther back a man hit off from a tee and the ball seemed to waver and dip in the air like a guided missile. Aldwych, no golfer, wondered why anyone bothered to play the game.

“Why here?” he said to the Japanese. “Because you Japs are so crazy about golf?”

“Not me, Mr. Aldwych. But my friend is very crazy about it.” His English was excellent.

The Filipino, if he was a Filipino, had switched off the engine and turned round. He was older than the Japanese, with cynically amused eyes and a thin moustache of a style that Aldwych thought had gone out years ago; he had known one or two conmen who had worn a lip decoration like it. He was what Shirl would have called a natty dresser, a dude who would look at himself in every window he passed. He smelled faintly of perfume, a habit Aldwych despised in men.

“Why kidnap me?” said Aldwych.

“Sorry about that,” said the man up front. “But my friend will explain.”

“Mr. Aldwych,” said the Japanese, “why are you interfering?”

“Interfering in what?”

The Japanese smiled. “Please. You know what I mean. What were you after besides Mr. Casement’s gold watch?”

Aldwych, an old hand at being questioned, took his time. The golfers had moved on, leaning into the wind at the same angle as some of the trees that grew along the edge of the course; it did not occur to him to try to attract their attention, he had never called for assistance, even from his own kind. He had his own brand of proud courage. “You been to see Manny Schmidt? You didn’t hurt him?”

“Of course not. My friend just made a suggestion to him and he told us what we wanted to know.”

“Good old Manny. Waddia wanna know from me?”

“You’re not thinking of coming out of retirement?”

“It wouldn’t be any business of yours if I did.”

“Ah—” It was almost a hawking sound. Aldwych was surprised to hear it: it was like a bad imitation of how Japanese were supposed to speak. “It would be very much our business, Mr. Aldwych, if you came into our field.”

“What’s your field?”

The Japanese ignored that one; he said, “Were you looking for the briefcase?”

Aldwych took his time again. The man up front had lowered the smoked windows a few inches; Aldwych could see out over them. The golfers had disappeared, maybe to look for lost balls, which, he had been told, was one of the pleasures of golf. Below the lane, down to the right, was a small lagoon and marshy wetlands; a sign at the end of the lane said they were on the edge of a wildlife preserve. Down in the marsh a man in waders stood as still as a tree-stump, binoculars to his eyes as a flight of ducks, like a shower of miniature warplanes, came in on the wind. Aldwych wondered how long a body, dumped in the swamp, would remain undetected. He wondered if carrion birds were a protected species. For the crazy bloody conservationists every other form of wildlife seemed to be, except humans.

“Mr. Casement’s briefcase?” he said, making a guess. “No, I wasn’t. Did Manny offer to sell it to you?”

The man up front said, “The pawnbroker never had the briefcase. If you weren’t—”

“Let me ask the questions,” said the Japanese.

The Filipino worked his lips, as if trying to hold in a rejoinder; his eyes were suddenly still, blankly dark. “Sorry about that,” he said, but his voice, too, was blank.

The Japanese went on, “Mr. Aldwych, if you weren’t looking for the briefcase, what were you after?”

“Do you know I have a son?” The Japanese nodded. “Okay, all I was doing was making sure he had nothing to do with whatever you guys are up to. You ran young Rob Sweden, right? Come on,” as the faces of the two men remained expressionless, “don’t bullshit me. I’m old. You think I’m scared of dying? Forget it. You wanna talk to me, we talk straight, no bullshit. Rob Sweden worked for you, right?”

“Yes, he worked for us. A stupid young man.”

Aldwych made another guess: “He tried to screw you somehow? That’d be his form, from what I’ve heard. Was that why you did him in?”

The Japanese smiled. “You don’t expect me to answer that, do you?”

“No, I wouldn’t of answered it, either.”

“Then why ask?”

Aldwych smiled, his old crim’s grimace. “It must be because I’m retired, I’m thinking straight. What about the other guy, the one you took outa the morgue?”

“What other guy?”

But Aldwych had his answer. “Okay, you know nothing about him, either. But that was where they fished him outa the water, you know that?” He nodded out towards the far point of the golf course. “Half a leg and a foot. But the police connected him to young Sweden, did you know that?”

“We read about it.”

“No, you didn’t. There’s been nothing in the papers about the connection.”

The Japanese looked upset at how he had been caught. The Filipino in the front seat looked smug: the questioning should have been left to him.

“The papers dunno they both died the same way, with the ice-pick or whatever you used in the back of the neck.”

“Where did you get all this?” said the Filipino.

It was Aldwych’s turn to put up the shutters. “Don’t ask. Not unless you wanna swap one answer for another. Who did the job on both of „em?”

“As you say, don’t ask,” said the Filipino.

“Fair enough,” said Aldwych, satisfied he had got his answer once more. “Now can you take me back to my driver? I’m going to lunch with a cop.”

The two men looked at each other, their bland faces abruptly creased with frowns. “A police officer? Who?”

“Inspector Malone. He’s heading the investigation on this one.”

“He is a friend of yours?”

“Not exactly.” He was enjoying their discomfiture; it was the first time in his life he had used a cop as a threat. He knew now they had no intention of killing him, not today. “You want me to tell him about our meeting?”

“You’re tempting fate, Mr. Aldwych.”

“Maybe I’m turning Oriental like you guys. You tempt it all the time, don’t you?”

“Not me,” said the Filipino. “I’m Catholic.”

“I shouldn’t do it, Mr. Aldwych, tell the police officer about us. Not unless you want to finish up out there—” The Japanese nodded towards the distant sea. “Half a leg and a foot.”

Aldwych laughed, a deep rumble with genuine mirth in it. “Let’s get back and pick up my driver. I’m getting hungry.”

The Filipino started up the car, backed it up the narrow lane on to the main road and they headed back towards the city. The smoked windows wound up again, shutting them off against the outside world, Aldwych and the Japanese talked amiably about the state of the world and how its economy was in the wrong hands.

“What about your politicians?”

The Japanese shook his head in disgust. “Corrupt. They can be bought as easily as women.”

Aldwych wondered why he wished the three Bruna women were here in the car with them.

IV

Malone looked at his watch. “I’ll give your old man ten more minutes, Jack.”

Jack Junior was worried. “I don’t know what’s keeping him, he’s usually so punctual. My mother taught him that after she heard him called the Crime King. She said punctuality was the courtesy of kings. That appealed to him.”

The private room at the Golden Gate was one of two at the front on the middle floor of the three-storeyed building in Dixon Street, the main artery of Chinatown. Behind them, separated by a landing, were the restaurant’s offices; above, on the third floor, was the gambling club, called, for tax purposes, the manager’s residence. Malone and Clements were aware of the set-up, but, being Homicide men, they had blind eyes to what might offend the Gaming squad. Like any sensible public servants, they did not give themselves any more work than they had to.

Over the first course of shark-fin soup Clements said, “Jack, what was it like growing up as your dad’s son? Where did you go to school?”

“Cranbrook.” One of the most expensive and exclusive of schools. “I was registered there under my mother’s maiden name. But everyone knew who I was, they just never mentioned it. They were probably afraid he’d come and blow up the school.”

“Did he ever turn up for speech day?”

Jack Junior smiled. “Mum would never let him. She ruled the roost as far as I was concerned.” The door opened and his father came in. “Dad, where have you been? I’ve been worried stiff!”

He suddenly looked it and Aldwych was touched. He patted his son’s arm and sat down between Malone and Clements. “Sorry. I got held up. The usual, Lee,” he said to the waiter who had followed him in. “I’m hungry. How did the funeral go?”

“Quietly,” said Malone. “How did you expect it to go? Are you going to tell us what kept you? I’m not used to being kept waiting, Jack.”

“Will I tell you?” Aldwych sipped some water. “They told me not to.”

“Who did?” said Jack Junior.

“A Jap and a guy I’d say was a Filipino.”

Malone put down his spoon and even Clements stopped pouring soup into his mouth. “Where their names Tajiri and Belgarda?”

“They didn’t give me any names.” Then Aldwych told them how and why he had been delayed. “They dropped me back near Manly golf course. Their sidekicks were waiting there for us with my driver. The poor little coot was shit-scared. I hadda write him a cheque to get him to forget what had happened to him, so he wouldn’t tell his firm.”

“How much?” asked Jack Junior.

Aldwych smiled at the two detectives. “Always keep an eye on the outgoings. Five hundred.”

“Too generous,” said his son.

“I got Casement’s watch back for him,” Aldwych said.

“I won’t ask how,” said Malone.

“The punks also stole a briefcase. Did you know anything about that?”

The soup plates had been taken away and a lazy susan of mixed dishes had been placed in the centre of the table. As he helped himself with the selective eye of a Chinese gourmet, he who had started in his youth on dim sums, Aldwych went on, “The briefcase seemed their main concern, like they were afraid that was what I’d been looking for.”

Malone glanced at Clements, who shook his head and said, “There was nothing in the initial report about a missing briefcase. Just the gold watch and his wallet.”

“Jack, you wanted to tell us something else—”

Aldwych picked at his food. “Scobie, I’ve got nothing definite, but the word is that something’s going on. Not drugs, something else. The locals aren’t in on it, that’s why the information is so skimpy. I got into this because I wanted to make sure nothing was connected to Jack here—”

“Thanks, Dad.” His son’s voice was bone-dry with sarcasm.

“I didn’t say you were connected with it.” There was a rasp to his father’s voice. “I just wanted to make sure no one tried to connect you with it, even if only by hearsay. Gossip sticks to our name like shit to a blanket. Excuse me,” he said to the two detectives, “I forgot we’re at lunch. Where was I?”

“Something big is going on.”

“Yeah. But what? I dunno. I dunno whether it’s being run by the Filipinos or the Japs, but my money would be on the Japs. You oughta have no trouble picking „em up.”

“Because they look different to us?” said Malone. “It’s not that easy. What do we do, ask every Neighbourhood Watch committee in Sydney to let us know if some Asian strangers move in? We know where the Filipino lived, but he’s already gone through from there. We haven’t had a fix at all on the Jap. Both of them could’ve moved out to Cabramatta, amongst the Vietnamese and the Cambodians and the Thais. We couldn’t pick „em out from amongst that lot, they all look alike to us. If we’re going to pick „em up, it’ll be at some airport and there’s no guarantee that’s the way they’ll try to leave the country. Look at that Malayan prince a coupla years ago, the one who took his children away from his wife. He drove all the way up to the Gulf country in north Queensland, took a boat to New Guinea or West Irian, somewhere there, then got a plane to Malaysia. These blokes could do the same when they’re ready to skip. The question is, what brought them here? They didn’t come down here hoping to win the lottery.”

Clements said, “Has the scam, or whatever it is, gone through?”

Aldwych shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. But I’d say no. Otherwise why would they have grabbed me this morning?” He stopped eating and shook his head in wonder: “Grabbed—me! In the old days . . .”

“In the old days,” said Jack Junior, “you’d have probably started a war. Thank Christ they’re gone.”

“Amen,” said Malone, grinning. “Listening to you two is like listening to Atilla the Hun’s family. Consider yourself lucky, Jack. You’re not thinking of revenge, are you?”

“Only through you guys. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever given information to coppers. So you owe me, Scobie. You too, Russ. It’s bad enough the way business here has been selling the country to the multinationals, anything for a quick buck.” He spoke piously, like a man who had never made a quick buck in his life, except for bank hold-ups. “It’d be the bloody end if we let foreigners take over crime in Australia. I couldn’t salute the flag any more.”

The other three patriots agreed and tucked into the sun-dried oysters, the Chinese hopeful omens of wealth.