11

I

“IT’S A long shot,” said Malone, “but we’ll get the fellers out at Cabramatta to ask around.”

“You think we’ll learn anything?” Clements shook his head. “Those people out there, they still think we’re the Viet Cong. They never spill anything on each other, the gangs have got „em scared stiff. What about Casement, are we going back to him to ask him about the briefcase?”

They had come back to Homicide after lunch. The homicide calendar was looking less cluttered; arrests had been made in two of the cases on it. The running sheet on the Sweden and Kornsey cases, however, was beginning to look like the preliminary notes for a royal commission, those legal enquiries where the wordage grew in proportion to the fees charged by the lawyers engaged. A royal commission, to the police, was another name for what the legal eagles took home.

Malone picked up the phone, got the Wicked Witch. “Mr. Casement is not available, Inspector. He is at a board meeting.”

“Mrs. Pallister, tell him we’ll be in to see him tomorrow morning at ten—”

“Inspector, I have his diary open in front of me—”

“I have mine open in front of me and there’s his name. Ten o’clock. Thank you, Mrs. Pallister.” He hung up in her ear, grinned at Clements. “I wish she were my secretary. She’d even keep the Commissioner out.”

Or an Assistant Commissioner: the phone rang and AC Zanuch said, “Can you see me first thing in the morning, eight-thirty. I’ve okayed it with AC Falkender.”

Malone put down the phone. “What now? Zanuch’s stirring the pot again.”

Clements stood up, smiling with the satisfaction of a Christian who had just been told the lion could handle only one meal at a time. “I’m going home to Romy.”

Malone raised both eyebrows. “Your place or hers?”

“Hers. I’ve moved in with her. A trial marriage, I think they used to call it once upon a time. Better not tell your kids. Nice Catholics, I wouldn’t want them to think their Uncle Russ was a sinner.”

“Can I tell Lisa? She’s a nice Catholic, but she likes sinners. They all do.”

That evening Lisa took a reluctant Malone to see the Sydney Dance Company at the Opera House. He was no ballet fan, believing that humans prancing upright on two legs were nowhere near as graceful as animals, especially members of the cat family, on four legs. Still, he admired the athleticism of Graeme Murphy’s company and he managed not to fall asleep. His mind wandered at times to those occasions when he had had to come here to the Opera House for things more dramatic than a ballet, to the murder of a call-girl in the huge building’s basement, to that of a singer who had been, with Malone himself, on the hit list of a deranged man. He wondered what other ghosts wandered the building, not prancing on their toes but floating aimlessly looking for an exit. Though he had enjoyed himself spasmodically, he was glad when the lights went up.

They were going down the wide steps outside when a voice called, “Inspector!” He loved being called by his rank in a public place; a space always opened up as the natives moved away from the leper. He turned round: it was Ophelia Casement, her arm in her husband’s. He introduced Lisa to them, the four of them standing awkwardly on the steps while the audience flowed down around them. Ophelia said, “Do have supper with us. We have a table at Verady’s.”

Malone hadn’t a clue where Verady’s was; all he wanted, anyway, was to get home and fall into bed. But Lisa said, “That would be nice,” and then the four of them were walking along the waterfront towards the restaurant on the ground floor of The Wharf. Ophelia took Malone’s arm as if he were an old friend and he and she walked in front of Lisa and Casement, who kept a respectful but friendly distance from each other.

Malone, working hard to be pleasant, said, “I’m surprised your husband was well enough to come to the ballet.”

“I thought it would do him good. He loves ballet. He’s recovering—he was at a board meeting this afternoon. Cormac is tough, Mr. Malone, very durable.” She looked at him sideways and he wondered if there was any sexual innuendo in her words. She was wearing a strong perfume and he was aware of the animal in her. He gave her no encouraging reaction, not with Lisa three paces behind him and reading his thoughts.

Verady’s was the sort of restaurant where Malone was glad he was not picking up the tab; financial arthritis would have gripped him from the shoulder down. The place was full, a mix of young people and some older Opera House patrons; in these hard times Malone wondered where the money came from. But then, he had read, even the restaurants in today’s Belgrade were full: money or credit cards, like water, could always find an empty vessel. The Casement party settled into a corner booth, the head waiter hovering around like a man on a retainer. Orders were taken, then the four were left alone.

Casement was wearing white gloves to cover the dressing on his hands; he was unselfconscious of them. “You’re a ballet fan, Mr. Malone?”

Malone shrugged and Lisa said, “Just occasionally. Most of the time he’s a Philistine. But my favourite Philistine,” she said and smiled a warning smile at Ophelia.

“Why haven’t the Philistines founded an international organization?” Casement, it seemed, was doing his best to keep the mood light. “There are so many of them around the world. They had their own Diaspora, like the Jews, but they never got themselves organized.”

“They try,” said Lisa. She was at ease with the Casements, more so than Malone. But then other people’s money and social position had always worried her less than it did him.

Supper was brought, omelettes for three, blueberry pancakes for Malone. He was a sweet-tooth man and he knew they would lie on his chest all night, but he hadn’t been able to resist them. In the next booth two young couples had just ordered another bottle of Bollinger and he wondered what they had to celebrate. When he turned his head he saw that one of the young women was Justine Springfellow, who had once lived in this building, whom he had once wrongfully arrested for murder. He looked away quickly, but not before she had seen him and her face had turned to stone.

Ophelia was saying, “It must be a relief for you to get your mind off your work. And for you too, Mrs. Malone.”

Both women seemed wary of each other. “He never brings his work home,” said Lisa. “It’s a rule. He’s broken it once or twice, but that wasn’t his fault. Someone once dumped a body in our pool.”

“Ugh!” But it was a muted exclamation; Ophelia neither shuddered nor even looked upset. “Cormac brings his work home occasionally, but he says he tries to protect me. Business fascinates me. It’s the last field for the would-be Napoleons.”

Casement, fumbling with the fork in his gloved hand but refusing any help, smiled at Malone. “He was never one of my heroes. I preferred De Gaulle . . . My secretary called me, said you wanted to see me tomorrow morning.”

“It can wait.” Then, tired and abruptly irritable, he thought, What the hell? “It was about your briefcase.”

The fumbling hand in its glove was suddenly still. “My briefcase?”

“You made no mention of it. Had you forgotten it? Did those kids steal it?”

The fork sliced into the omelette. “I can only assume I forgot it, forgot to mention it. I’d dropped it on the front seat of the car, I think—when the car went up in flames, I suppose I took it for granted the briefcase went up, too. How did you know about it? Have you found it?”

Malone was aware that Lisa was concentrating on her omelette; if she was displeased at his raising police business at the table, she was hiding it. Ophelia, on the other hand, was leaning forward, her interest almost intense. He said, “Jack Aldwych told me about it.”

“Jack? Did he find it? He brought me the watch they stole—”

“He told me about that. As for the briefcase—” He told them what had happened to Aldwych that morning. The two Casements both leaned forward, their food forgotten; even Lisa stopped eating. “The two fellers who abducted him asked him if he had been after the briefcase when he went around the pawnbrokers. He said they appeared pretty concerned about it.”

“Did Jack say whether they had it or not?”

“He couldn’t tell. What was in the briefcase that would interest them?”

The two couples in the next booth were leaving. As they passed on their way out, Ophelia, who had had her back to them, looked up. “Justine! How wonderful you look! Oh, this is Mr. and Mrs. Malone—”

“We’ve met,” said Malone. “How are you, Miss Springfellow?”

“Not guilty,” she said and with a nod to the Casements walked quickly towards the door.

There was silence for a moment in the booth, then Casement said, “Do you get that often? People who never forgive you?”

“Were you in charge of the Springfellow case? Oh my God!” Ophelia wanted to give herself over to gossip, which always reduces one; she suddenly did not look as formidable, no more than a society matron. “I never connected you with it—”

“No one ever does,” said Lisa, her voice tart, as if the omelette had too much salt in it. “Perhaps it’s just as well.”

“We got the real killer in the end,” said Malone. “He almost blew my head off, but we got him. I thought she might have forgiven me.” He looked towards the revolving door at the front of the restaurant.

“The female of the species,” said Casement, then ducked his head apologetically at Lisa. “Sorry, Mrs. Malone, that’s an old man’s chauvinism.”

“I’m used to it,” said Lisa. “Old and young.”

She glanced at Ophelia, but the latter, whatever she thought of men, had never put them down. Instead, she patted her husband’s gloved hand. “Darling, you’re not old. I was telling Mr. Malone how durable you are.”

Malone got the conversation back on track: “What sort of briefcase was it?”

“Leather. Coach-hide, with combination locks.”

“Coach-hide? That’s fairly thick, isn’t it? It probably wouldn’t burn to a cinder. What was in it?”

Casement pushed his plate away, the omelette hardly touched. “Just papers, minutes of a board meeting. I can’t understand why the men who grabbed Jack would be interested in them. Nothing’s going on at—” He named the company, one of the icons of the country’s commercial world. He all at once did look old; he put the gloves up on either side of his face and stroked the corners of his eyes. “I’m tired. Will you excuse us?”

Ophelia dropped the society look, was a hospital matron. She gathered up her handbag and stole, was on her feet, helping her husband out of the booth while Malone had a forkful of blueberry pancake halfway to his mouth. “I’ve worn you out! I shouldn’t have insisted we go to the ballet—”

“No, no, it was a good idea—” They might have been alone. Then Casement, now on his feet, stood still and looked down at the Malones. “I’m not usually as rude as this, will you forgive me? But all of a sudden I feel I’m going to fall over—”

“They understand, darling. Come on, I must get you to bed. Goodnight, Mrs. Malone. Finish your supper. The bill will be taken care of.”

Then they were making their way towards the front door, the head waiter backing his way ahead of them, heads turning at the other tables as the Casements were recognized. Ophelia knew how to make an exit: she straightened up and marched towards the door and Casement all at once had to quicken his pace so that he was not left behind. He caught her in the revolving door and they disappeared, though Malone, mouth full of pancake, would not have been surprised to see the old man come spinning back into the restaurant.

Lisa said, “Well, that’s the first time someone else but you has dumped me.”

“What did you think of them?”

“Her or him? They’re not a pair. But he’s afraid of losing her.”

“Him? Why would he be afraid of losing her? He’s rich, he’s powerful—though I don’t think he’s really interested in power, not the way his brother-in-law, Sweden, is. He’s secure, the way the rest of us will never be. And he’s too old to be lovesick.”

“I hope you’re still lovesick over me when you’re his age. He’s in love, he’s afraid of losing her, I tell you. Not that I think she’d ever leave him, not till he’s dead. I didn’t like her at all.”

“I gathered that. Neither do I.”

“Were you satisfied with his answer about the briefcase?”

“You’re playing cop again. No.”

“Let’s go home to bed. What do you think of Russ sharing Romy’s bed?”

“It’s none of our business.”

“Of course it isn’t. But I’m glad, anyway. They’ll be happier than Mr. and Mrs. Casement.” She looked up as the head waiter, thin, blond, hands doing a ballet of their own, loomed above them. “Has the bill been attended to?”

“It will go on Mr. Casement’s account. He looked so ill—was it something he ate? The omelette?”

“No,” said Malone. “It was something else entirely.”

II

Zanuch’s office was hung with photos of himself with prominent people, like diplomas of merit. The feature of each picture was that one’s eye was caught by him, not by whoever was with him: the Prince of Wales, the Premier, Dame Joan Sutherland. He appeared to be just that much more forward in the photo, in bas-relief compared to the flat image beside him. On his desk was a family photo, of himself, his wife and their two sons: even there he was the dominant figure. It was pointless to wonder if the man ever grew tired of looking at himself.

“You know AC Falkender’s gone on leave?”

Malone had a sudden sinking feeling. “No, I didn’t know. That was sudden, wasn’t it?”

“His wife’s seriously ill.” So am I, thought Malone. “I’m taking charge of the Sweden and Kornsey cases. The Minister specifically recommended that I do so.” He gazed steadily across his desk at Malone; the challenge was unmistakeable. “We’ve got to clear this up, Scobie, and soon.”

“The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned. Do I report direct to you or through Chief Super Random?”

“Direct to me, it’ll save time. Copies of the reports, of course, to Greg Random.” He sat back, in charge. “So where are we at now?”

Malone told him, including yesterday’s abduction of Jack Aldwych.

“Have you any trace on the car they used?”

“Aldwych’s driver was smart enough to get the number. They’d smeared the plates with mud, but he managed to pick out the registration. It was a rental job. We’ve checked, whoever took it out used a fake licence, there was no record of it in the RTA computer.”

“What about the Filipino or the Jap—did they own cars?”

“The Jap didn’t, not as far as we know. The Filipino had a Mazda 929, registered to Pinatubo Engineering. We’ve traced it. He sold it to a second-hand dealer out on the Windsor Road, got a cash cheque for it. If he’s got wheels now, they’re probably rented.”

“You don’t seem to be getting far.” Zanuch’s tone was flat.

“All our leads are pretty frayed ones. My wife and I had supper with Cormac Casement and his wife last night—” He waited for a reaction from Zanuch, the social mountaineer, but there was none. “His briefcase, the one the Jap and the Filipino seemed concerned about, he said he thought it went up with the car when it was burnt out. I checked with Physical Evidence this morning, they said they found nothing like a briefcase, no metal locks, no charred leather.”

“What did he say was in it?”

“He never got around to telling me, just to say it was some minutes of a board meeting, at—” He named the corporation. “He suddenly had a turn of some sort and he and his wife just up and left, went home.”

“You weren’t having supper at their apartment?”

“No, downstairs in the restaurant, Verady’s. We met them coming out of the Opera House, we’d been to the ballet.”

Zanuch’s eyes opened a little wider, as if he had expected Malone to be a fan of nothing more than break-dancing or even a waltz; but he made no comment. Instead he said, “Do you think Casement has something to hide?”

“It seems to me that everyone in that family, the sisters and their husbands, has got something to hide.”

“Including the Minister?”

There was a warning there, but Malone took a chance: “Including the Minister. He’s trying to protect his son’s name, Jack Aldwych is trying to do the same with his son, Casement—I dunno, but he could be protecting his wife. Or vice versa. But there’s more hidden there than anyone wants to tell us.”

“Do you expect me to tell the Minister that? I’m his surrogate.”

Malone wondered if, except for the downgrading in pay, Tibooburra could be any worse. “Can you stall him?”

“I don’t know. Hans Vanderberg is breathing down his neck like a dragon. You never know what The Dutchman is going to come up with, Labor has more moles than the KGB ever had. What have you got in mind?”

“Finding the girl who was one of the two who burnt up Casement. She’s around somewhere, otherwise they’d have killed her along with her punk boyfriend. She might’ve read the papers in the briefcase.”

“You don’t expect Casement to tell you?”

“I think there must’ve been something else in the briefcase besides those board minutes, something that gave him his bad turn. I could go back to him, lean on him, but he could complain to the Minister and I know who’d get the push. I’d rather try our luck at picking up the girl. I’ve put out an ASM on her, though our description of her is pretty skimpy. And she could’ve skipped the State, especially after she found her boyfriend murdered. Our guess is that she was the one who called in to report to Redfern.”

“Can you pick her up through Social Security? If she’s a street kid, she’s probably drawing the dole.”

“They can’t help. Anything on her is sacrosanct under the Privacy Act and the Crimes Act and half a dozen other acts, unless we can prove she’s a menace to public security. She’s not a serial killer or a terrorist, so she’s free.”

“She tried to kill Casement, burn him.”

“According to his testimony, it was the punk with her who did that. No, we’ve got to take our chances on picking her up through the ASM or one of her mates dobbing her in.”

“All right, do your best. We’re between the devil and the deep blue sea or a rock and a hard place, any cliché you want to use. The Premier wants it all wrapped up as soon as possible, the Minister would like it all forgotten and The Dutchman would like it all to turn out much worse than it is. As the Herald journalists say, we’re in no-win mode.”

Malone abruptly got the impression that the Assistant Commissioner wished he had not become involved, that he had stuck to administration and left crime to the crime specialists. Scaling the heights, he had slipped on a cliff-face. We’re on the same rope, Malone thought; but he knew who would fall first and farthest.

When he got back to Homicide there was a message to call Mrs. Pallister. She came on the line, her voice as cold as a blade. “Your appointment with Mr. Casement is cancelled. He is under doctor’s orders.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. He wasn’t well last night.”

“You saw him last night?” Her tone suggested that she knew now who was to blame for her boss’s indisposition. “I’ll let you know when Mr. Casement will be available.” She hung up.

Malone put down the phone. He looked up at the map of New South Wales on his office wall. Tibooburra was in letters too small for him to read from where he sat, but he knew its location as well as he knew his home address. It was beginning to look like Shangri-La.

III

Kim Weetbix said, “Mrs. Hoang, let me do that.”

“No, no. My job.”

They were speaking in English, Kim’s almost fluent, the old lady’s broken. Mrs. Hoang had been in Australia five years, but the natives frightened her and she had never learned to be easy with them in their language; Kim, for her part, had become rusty in her own tongue. There was, however, a warmth to Mrs. Hoang that overcame the communication difficulty and Kim, after two days, felt at home with her. More so than she ever had with her own mother: there had been no home with that cheap bitch.

Kim had come here to this modest Fibro cottage in Cabramatta with Mrs. Hoang’s daughter-in-law, Annie. The latter worked in a fast-food cafe in Kings Cross and Kim had got to know her over the past year. She was a cheerful midget of a woman who, you knew, would one day own the fast-food shop, taking it over from the slow-witted Greek who ran it and who would never recognize his exit being greased, not till he was out of the place and Annie Hoang was in charge. She had a husband who worked in a dry-cleaning establishment and two small daughters who were already earmarked for university and professional careers in the 21st century. When Kim had confided to her that she had broken up with Kel and had nowhere to go, Annie had invited her home, one refugee who had made good taking in another who still had to make it.

Mrs. Hoang, only fifty but looking seventy, had a face where pain, grief, worry and laughter had resulted in a scribble of lines that obviously distressed her; Kim had already noticed that every time Mrs. Hoang passed a mirror she turned her head away. Kim, proud of her own looks, guessed that somewhere in the past was a mirror that held the reflection of a good-looking woman who had been the young Mrs. Hoang, before the bombs and the landmines and defoliation sprays had come to Vietnam.

“You get job?” said Mrs. Hoang. She was preparing the evening meal, working with the precision of a mortician, the vegetables sliced just so, the chicken dissected clinically.

“When I get to Queensland,” said Kim. “The Gold Coast.”

“The Gold Coast? Gold is there?”

Kim smiled; it occurred to her that in the two days she had been here in this house she had smiled more easily than in two years with Kel. “I don’t think so. It is just a name for a place. People hope, but only the rich find gold there. Not real gold, just money.”

“Not now. Annie tell me, nobody got money now. You got money?” She had a peasant’s directness.

“A little.” She still had the pawnbroker’s payment, but she would keep that aside for the moment. She would register for the dole when she got to the Gold Coast; she wondered if the police, or worse still, the killers of Kel, would be able to trace her through Social Security. Maybe she should change her name; but that would mean getting new papers and they always cost money. The price had gone up since she had become Kim Weetbix. She had read only this week that bloodsuckers in the United States were charging Chinese illegals 30,000 American dollars for smuggling them in. “I’ll get a job, Mrs. Hoang.”

“Be careful, Kim.” Mrs. Hoang knew what could happen to pretty girls; she had seen them leave the village and go to Saigon. “Stay on feet.”

At first Kim didn’t get the meaning of the warning; then she laughed, her first loud laugh in God knew how long. She was laughing when Annie came in the back door, pulling off her cheap raincoat that glistened with the evening drizzle. “What’s so funny?” Then abruptly she said, “Kim, come inside.”

There was a warning in her voice, not one to laugh at. Kim sobered, put down the kitchen knife she had been holding and followed Annie through into the front bedroom where Annie and her husband slept. They passed the two Hoang girls watching Neighbours on television in the small living room, learning about their new homeland from a soap opera where even tragedy was sunlit and everyone washed his or her hair every day and everyone’s teeth were perfect. In the bedroom Annie sat down on the bed, with its bright blue sateen coverlet, and looked up at Kim.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Your boyfriend is dead. Murdered.”

Kim sat down on the stool in front of the dressing-table. The room was furnished Western-style; the furniture was cheap, discount bargains. Annie had cut her roots to her homeland; she left the sentiment to her mother-in-law. The only picture on the wall above the bed was one of the Virgin Mary, an icon Kim had never understood nor been much interested in.

“What would you have done if I had told you the truth? Still invited me home like you did?”

“No.” Annie was as blunt as Mrs. Hoang. “Did you kill him?”

“No. I don’t know who did.”

“He was never any good, a bad one. I never liked him. You should not have stayed with him so long. The police are looking for you.”

“I thought they would be. Did you tell them anything about me?”

“No. Whoever killed your boyfriend, he might be looking for you, too. You have to go, Kim, you can’t stay here. I must think of my family.”

Kim all at once hated and envied her; Annie had security, hard-won and shaky though it might be. Kim had no wish for children nor even for a husband; but she had seen what support a family could give. Fragile though it might have been, she had felt a certain security even in just the two days she had been with the Hoang family. “I’ll go tonight.”

“No, no. First thing in the morning, when I’m going to work. You come on the train with me to the city, you catch a bus to somewhere. Where?”

“The Gold Coast?” All the street-kids at the Cross talked of eventually finishing up there, as if it were some sort of earthly paradise, a dream she had never believed in. There was no paradise anywhere.

“You have money?” But Annie made no move towards her handbag, which lay on the bed beside her.

“I’ll be all right.” She put her hand on the older woman’s. “I’d have liked you as a sister, Annie.”

Annie smiled, showing her new false teeth. “You’d have been too much trouble, Kim. You got no faith.”

“In what? God? I could never be religious.”

“No, in anything. Not even in yourself.”

In the morning they left the house at seven o’clock. Mrs. Hoang and Annie’s husband Willy came to the front door to say goodbye. Willy was a wiry little man with a shock of black hair that stood up as if he were in perpetual fright; like his mother, but unlike his wife, he was afraid of the rough-and-ready local elements. Like Annie, he had taken an Anglo name, wore it as camouflage.

He pressed Kim’s hand. “You take care.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Hoang, eyes alert for danger even in the empty street. “Beware men, Australian men. No trust any men.” But she patted her son’s back to show he was an exception. “I pray for you, Kim.”

Burdened by their good wishes and prayers, a weight she had never had to carry before, Kim left with Annie for the railway station. She carried a small suitcase Annie had given her, in it everything she owned.

The two women passed a queue of young people outside a McDonalds. “Are they all waiting for breakfast?”

“Breakfast?” Annie looked puzzled; then she shook her head. “No, no, they are after a job. McDonalds advertised two jobs.”

Kim looked back at the queue; a hundred or more young faces stared back at her, challenging her to join them. Then she realized they were resenting her; they thought she was one of the fortunate ones on her way to work.

“Fucking slopeheads,” she heard a youth say. “They got jobs, they work for fuck-all.”

All at once the Gold Coast began to glisten.

IV

Suddenly the weather turned cold. Television weathermen reported that it was the coldest May day for a hundred years; reported gleefully, as if it were their own sadistic revenge on all those who criticized their sometimes wrong reports.

Malone got out of bed at six, his usual time for his morning walk. He put on his track-suit and trainers, went out the front door and immediately came back and put on a heavy sweater.

“Come back to bed,” said Lisa sleepily. She loved the cocoon of their bed, especially with his warmth curled into hers.

“Go back to sleep,” he said and went out the front door again.

He was a walker, not a jogger; he had too much respect, he claimed, for his joints and cartilages to pound them day after day on the hard pavements. He walked down to Randwick racecourse, went in through one of the gates, nodding to the gatekeeper, who knew him, and began his usual circuit round the outer rail of the outer track. On the tracks the horses went past in the semi-darkness, seemingly moving in slow motion through the slight mist, the sound of their hoofs as faint as faraway drums. He passed men leaning on the rails, arguing in low voices about the merits of the horses, punters dreaming of fortunes as ghostly as the shapes in the mist. He had never had any interest in horse racing; it was his gentle boast that he hadn’t known Phar Lap was dead till he had seen the movie. He had never placed a bet on a horse in his life, never even bought a lottery or sweepstake ticket; he had no faith in fortune’s falling out of the sky. Occasionally, just occasionally, he would place a bet in his head that fortune might strike in a homicide case. But that was placing a bet on human nature, another lottery barrel altogether.

He completed his walk, twice round the course, and went home. Lisa was up, preparing breakfast, and the children were having their usual morning squabble over who should use the bathrooms first. Lisa put his bacon and eggs in front of him, poured his coffee. She claimed that the Dutch made the best coffee in the world and he agreed with her.

“What did you think about this morning?” She knew that he spent the walk sorting out yesterday’s thoughts.

“What would you say if I asked for a transfer from Homicide?”

“I’d say, praise the Lord. Then I’d have second thoughts. You wouldn’t be happy behind a desk.” She kissed the top of his head. “This business will pass. The next murder will be a nice uncomplicated one. What am I saying? That’s callous.”

“You’ll never be that.” He rubbed her bottom through her dressing-gown.

“Watch it,” said Maureen as she came in, sat down and reached for the cereal box. “Not in front of the children.”

“You sound like Mother Brendan,” said Malone.

“Oh God.” Maureen rolled her eyes.

Malone passed her the milk jug; milk bottles or cartons never appeared on Lisa’s table. “Her latest report didn’t say much for you.”

She rolled her eyes again. “I’m not cut out for school, Dad. I should’ve been born an adult.”

“I thought you were,” said her mother. “Judging by what you used to do to my breast, you had a full set of teeth at two weeks.”

“Disgusting,” said Maureen and winked at her father. She would, he was certain, wink her way through the troubles of the life that lay ahead of her. He should have been so lucky.

He went to work, came back to his office from lunch to find a lottery prize sitting with its father in the big outer office. Roger Statham, the young man from Casement’s, rose to his feet, nothing coordinated, each limb seeming to unfold of its own accord.

“Inspector Malone, this is my father, Matthew. He—he suggested I come and see you.”

Malone looked past them at Clements, who stood in the background. “Have you talked to the gentlemen, Sergeant?”

“They got started, then I told „em to hold it. I thought you should hear it.”

Malone led the way into his office. When they were all seated, he said, “It has to do with Rob Sweden’s murder?”

Roger Statham shook his head, looking slightly puzzled at the question, as if he hadn’t expected it. His father said, “Not directly. It has to do with what young Sweden was up to. I’m in banking, I’m with—” He named one of the four top banks. There was a distinct resemblance to his son, though he was not as tall nor as thin; he also had none of the boy’s bruised innocence showing in his tanned lean face. He did, however, have that withdrawn look that some honest men get when they learn that trust is an expendable commodity. Malone wondered what sort of disillusion Matthew Statham had suffered in the free-for-all of the Eighties. “When Roger told me of his suspicions, I knew at once what might have happened.”

“What?”

He had looked at Roger, but the boy said to his father, “You explain it, Dad.”

Statham looked enquiringly at Malone, who nodded. “Well, Roger says that young Sweden told him he was on to something much bigger than the laundering of a million dollars. Much bigger.”

Malone looked at Clements, who grinned. “Better adjust your thinking, Inspector. This isn’t small change at the supermarket counter.”

“You think I’m talking big money?” said Statham.

“You haven’t mentioned any sum yet, but I can feel my wallet curling up in embarrassment,” said Malone.

Statham smiled. “You must excuse me, Inspector, if we toss large amounts of money around as if they mean nothing. They do. But I’m sure you speak of murder in the same way, it’s all in the day’s work to you. So are millions to me.”

“Were they to Rob Sweden?”

“Seems he was trying very hard to become accustomed to such sums. I mean, such sums that would belong to him. He and Roger, they dealt every day in big sums but it was other people’s money.”

“This was other people’s money, too,” said Roger Statham. “The money Rob was going to steal.”

Malone showed no reaction. “How much?”

“Twenty-five million.”

“Who from?”

“Casement Trust.”

“How?” Malone looked at Statham Senior, the expert.

“Well—” The banker abruptly had a fit of banker’s circumspection, as if he had had second thoughts about his coming here. “You must understand what I’m suggesting is only a guess. We haven’t been to Casement Trust to talk to them. I could hardly do that . . .”

Banks, Malone thought, had once been as much in each other’s vaults as it had been possible to be; they had formed one of the most exclusive clubs in the world. Then the Eighties had split the club wide open, banking had been de-regulated and banks, like virgins on Spanish fly, had gone wild in their competition with each other. Now, with many of the newer, smaller institutions already out of business and the older, larger ones still nursing deep wounds, the old incestuous clubbiness was creeping back in. A bank’s secrets were its own till it divulged them to the club.

“Tell us your guess,” said Malone patiently.

“Just from remarks young Sweden made to Roger, this could be what was planned. Maybe it’s already been done and Casement Trust are keeping quiet about it. It’s the manipulation of electronic money. Most people think of money as cash in hand—they never really think of the proportion of their money that moves through cheques. Five out of every six dollars that move in the economy on any given day goes through computers—that’s what I mean by electronic money. CHIPS, the Clearing House Interbank Payments System in New York, the biggest of the lot, pushes through over a trillion and a half dollars a day.” He smiled, just a twist of his thin lips. “How’s your wallet feeling?”

“Rolled up in a ball. Go on.”

“Young Sweden talked of twenty-five million. There’s no other way he could steal an amount like that than the way I’m describing, electronically.”

“Doesn’t the clearing house have some sort of security to prevent that?” said Clements.

“Of course. There’s an authentification barrier—each transfer carries a code. If the code is not correct, the line to the transmitting bank is severed. The only way of beating the system is for it to be an inside job. It’s happened once—or anyway, it’s only been reported once. Two insiders at a Swiss bank in Zurich managed it, working the scam for someone outside the bank.”

Malone looked at Roger Statham. “Did Rob ever tell you what he was going to do?”

The boy shook his head, a lock of his long blond hair falling down. He was dressed today like his father, in banker’s grey; both of them wore the same sober tie, an old school one. Malone wondered if Roger was wearing the bright red braces under the conservative jacket, but guessed not: he had been drummed out of the regiment, if not by Ondelli then by Matthew Statham.

“Not in so many words. But he did say that any minute of the day he could put his finger on any amount I cared to name. I knew what he meant—his computer finger. I said to him, How about twenty-five million? It was just a figure I pulled out of the air. And he looked at me, hard, and said, sort of quiet, How’d you guess? Then he said, That’s what I’m after. I didn’t think any more of it, I just thought he was bullshitting . . . Then last night, when Dad had a talk to me—” He stopped and glanced at his father.

“It was a father-to-son talk,” said Matthew Statham. “He’s too big to whip, but I blew the Christ out of him. He’s damn near broken his mother’s heart, his sister won’t even speak to him . . .”

“Is that why you’re here?” said Malone quietly, wondering what he would do if he were in the same position with one of his own children. “You want us to blow the Christ out of him, too?”

“No.” A moment ago Statham had looked on the verge of anger; now he was soberly circumspect again. “No, it’s—it’s expiation, if you like to call it that. Trying to make up for what he’s done. I understand you have made no charges against him—I appreciate that. For that I thought he owed you something. He’s lost his job, but at least he’s not going to jail.”

Malone swung his chair round, faced Clements, who had been making notes. “Sergeant Clements is our residential financial genius in Homicide,” he explained to the Stathams. “What d’you reckon?”

“I think it’s worth a try,” said Clements.

“You’ll go to Casement Trust?” Matthew Statham suddenly looked anxious. “You won’t mention where you got your suspicions from? I mean—”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Statham. We’re grateful for your efforts. We’ll keep mum.” The four men stood up, crowding the small room. “Good luck, Roger. Keep your nose clean in future. Open your jacket.”

The boy looked puzzled, but he opened his jacket; his trousers were held up by a belt.

“Stay away from the red-braces set,” said Malone, “or we’ll arrest you for consorting.”

V

“Love your walls, Adam. Pity about the paintings.”

“Unfortunately, my dear, one has to sell the paintings, not the wall paint.”

“Well, must fly! Thanks for the bubbly. Domestic, wasn’t it? We’re all feeling the pinch, aren’t we?”

Then she left with a flash of long legs and a flicker of fingers. She was an artist/writer who trebled as a critic. Her own body of work was anorexic and her sales just as frail, but each week in her column she flung her weak acid at the efforts of others. Normally Adam Bruna tolerated her as one of the hazards of being a gallery owner, but this evening he felt like shouting after her never to come back. He was depressed and not just by the failure of tonight’s exhibition.

It had been a disastrous opening, not a painting sold nor even a hint of a possible sale. He walked back to his three daughters. “They crowd in here, drink one’s champagne, and then the bastards and bitches buy nothing, absolutely nothing. I’ll be out of business six months from now, if this keeps up. I hope the three of you have got some expensive retirement home fixed up for me. On the Harbour and a short walk from Double Bay.”

The three sisters had come without their husbands; the three men shared a common wisdom that kept them away from gallery openings. All the champagne crowd had gone, most of them, no doubt, commenting on the substitution of domestic bubbly for the usual French; the gallery was empty but for the caterers cleaning up and Bruna’s assistant who was helping them. The gallery, two large rooms, had that silence that a crowd leaves behind it, a vacuum after the noise had been withdrawn. The paintings on the walls, none with a red Sold spot on it, added nothing to the atmosphere: they were all, it seemed, painted in what Juliet had called “recession grey’.

“Why on earth did you choose this artist, Pa?”

“Because he has such promise. That’s why I choose all my artists, the young ones. Their promise.”

Ophelia looked around the walls. “He doesn’t promise much with these, does he? God, there isn’t an optimistic stroke in any of them. Couldn’t he have painted at least one with a touch of colour in it?”

“You could buy one,” said her father. “Or two.”

“Not a chance. Cormac won’t let me spend a penny, not on extravagances. We’ve tightened our belts.” She patted the Hermés gold-buckled belt she wore. “He says we should be setting an example. I don’t know who to. But there it is. He would blow his top if I bought something like that.” She nodded at the paintings.

“Cormac blow his top?” said Rosalind. “I can’t imagine that. How is he, anyway?”

“Recovering. He’s been upset since they discovered the body of the boy who’s supposed to have burned him.” She twirled the champagne flute in her hand. “Father, haven’t you any real bubbly? Where’s the Taittinger I sent you?”

“You sent him some?” said Juliet. “I did, too.”

“Me, too,” said Rosalind.

All three sisters aimed their empty flutes like guns at their father. He shrugged and went away, came back with two bottles of Taittinger. “I was saving it for my retirement. As the natives say, things are crook.”

“Crook or crooked?” said Ophelia, who had never bothered, in all the years she had been here, to learn the native slang.

“I hope there’s nothing crooked?” said Bruna, looking around the three of them. A born cynic, he always looked for dirt in corners. “Have my sons-in-law told you something?”

“Nothing,” said Juliet. “So things are just crook, as you say. Bad. Parlous. Bloody dreadful.” She raised her glass and drank to her pessimism. “All this violence.”

“That’s what I mean.” Bruna had poured himself some champagne, but so far hadn’t touched it. “It was bad enough, Rob being killed. But then the strangers, too . . . One shudders.” He did, theatrically. “And Cormac, a harmless old man.”

“Not much older than you.” Ophelia sounded defensive, as if she had been accused of marrying an ancient.

“Is this all connected to your father-in-law?” Bruna looked at Juliet.

“Jack Senior?” She laughed. “Oh, come off it, Pa. He’s retired. All right, he must have been a terror at one time, a real criminal. But he’s respectable now. Well, almost.”

“He’s reformed?” asked Rosalind.

“No, retired. He says there’s a difference. If he’d reformed, he’d have a conscience about what he used to do. But he doesn’t. At least he’s honest about that. A lot of truly respectable people wouldn’t be so honest. In politics, for instance.”

“Don’t start that,” said Rosalind.

There was tension between the two younger sisters, always had been. Rosalind had never been the free-wheeler that the other two were; she had had her share of marriages, but still one less husband than her sisters had had. Her first husband had died of a heart attack while making love to her, a not unnatural way to go; he had died happy, or at least in ecstasy. He had not been discarded, as her sisters’ previous husbands had been, just cremated.

“Derek is as honest as it’s possible to be, considering. Politics is compromise and compromise isn’t necessarily being dishonest. In any case, this isn’t Roumania, the politicians here don’t have people bumped off.”

“Darling,” said her father, “don’t put down our country. It was once a wonderful place to live. Your mother loved it.”

“Even so,” said Ophelia, “they were always, as „Lind puts it, bumping off people.” She had spoken lightly; then she abruptly shivered. “Let’s stop all this talk about killing. I’ve had enough of it.” She stood up. “Coming, Julie? I’ll drop you off.”

They gave perfunctory kisses to their father and Rosalind, then were gone. As they walked away down the gallery Bruna looked after them. “You all have a certain queenliness. You got it from your mother.”

“Don’t mention it in front of Derek, he’s suddenly become a republican. Political compromise,” she explained. Then she said, “Why do you praise us so much, to our faces? Since I married Derek I’ve started to hear gossip about us. A lot of people think we’re stuck-up bitches. I don’t think I ever heard that about us before, but since I’ve become a Minister’s wife . . . Derek has enemies and I’ve inherited them by marrying him.”

“Enemies who want to kill him?” The caterers and the gallery assistant had gone; Bruna’s voice sounded unnaturally loud in the big empty rooms. “Do you mean they might have meant to kill him and not Rob?”

She usually wore her blonde hair in a chignon, but tonight it was loose; she shook her head and it fell down over her forehead, making her look younger. She also looked abruptly vulnerable. “Pa, I’m worried. Derek knows more about why Rob was killed than he’s letting on. He says no, when I question him. But I’m sure of it, sure that he does know.”

Bruna put down his glass. They were seated on a couch that stood against one wall, under a painting of what looked like a dozen or more wooden stakes in various shades of grey. In front of the couch was a low glass table on which was an unopened order book. He glanced around the gallery, the business part of his mind wondering how he could have expected to sell such a depressing collection in these depressed times. Then he looked at Rosalind, put a hand on her arm. He loved these girls of his, had worked hard to educate them, had steered them through their difficult times. This, however, was the first time he had been truly afraid for one of them. He knew enough of history to know what ambition could do to a man. But, it struck him only now, he didn’t really know Derek Sweden.

“Has Derek mentioned to you that he could become Premier?”

She frowned. “No. You mean he’s said something to you?”

“No. I had a chat with someone, never mind who.” It had been another Cabinet minister, a gallery client who liked to snap up bargains at art auctions. Though their hold on government was precarious, there was little or no solidarity in Cabinet. The back-stabbing could have been that usually found amongst Labor factions. Or in Roumanian cabinets. “They want to dump Bigelow, he’s a wimp. He sits on the fence on every issue, they’re calling him Cement-Crotch. Derek is the tip to take over from him. But—”

“But what?”

“If you speak to Derek about this, will you tell him where you got the information?” He always covered his tracks, even in the family.

She had long ago got over any disappointment she might have felt in him; mostly she was amused by his deviousness. But there was nothing to be amused about now. “You’re safe. Tell me what you know.”

He moved a little closer to her, the movement of a born gossip. “Derek did some insider trading on a takeover—someone on the board of one of the companies gave him the word on it. It was a bribe—the company wanted something done in Parliament and Derek got it through for them. He had to hide the shares he bought, so he warehoused them—the Americans call it parking—at Casement’s, had someone put them in their name. Presumably it was Rob. When the takeover went through, Derek made four million dollars. Some might call that peanuts, but right now I’d like such a shower of nuts.”

“Is it illegal, what he did?”

“Of course it is, both the insider trading and the warehousing. If it got out, it would mean the end of Derek in politics. Not to mention being Premier.”

“Who knows about this? Besides whoever told you?”

He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Presumably someone in Casement’s would know about it. Perhaps one or two in Cabinet, but not the Premier. On the other side, if that horrible man The Dutchman knew about it, he’d have had it all over the front pages by now. It happened six months ago.” He finished his champagne, picked up the unopened second bottle. Waste not, want not: he lived extravagantly, but at other people’s expense. “I think your husband would like Rob’s murder to die quietly, for the police to roll up their little blue-and-white strips of tape and disappear. He can never be sure of what they are going to turn up next.”