14

I

“SCOBIE, ARE these calls taped?”

Aldwych hadn’t named himself, but Malone had recognized the voice. “No, Jack. We only do that with politicians and smartarse lawyers. What’s on your mind?”

“If ever you call me up before ICAC, I’ll deny I ever spoke to you. I couldn’t go to my grave, people thinking I was a dog.”

“You going to dob someone in?”

“I dunno. Yeah, I guess I am. Last night I was at the Congress, the hotel. On my way out I saw the young Jap who took me for that ride the other day. He was coming out with two other Japs, older blokes. They got into a stretch limo, a hire job, and drove off. You want the number?”

Malone never let excitement boil his blood; too often, tip-offs and stumbled-upon clues had led nowhere. “Go ahead.”

“It’s HC—” Aldwych gave him the number. “The hire company’d have a record of who hired it.”

“Thanks, Jack.” A cop always loved having a crim tell him how to do his job. “If we pick up the young bloke, I’ll want you to identify him.”

“What for? He just took me for a drive. I’m not laying any charges, Scobie. I’m only telling you about him because it might help you clear up them murders you’re working on.”

“There was another one last night. The young girl who tried to burn Cormac Casement.”

“I read about it this morning. They’re keeping you busy.” Aldwych hung up abruptly, as if still suspicious his call was being taped.

Malone put down the phone and stared out through the glass wall of his office at the outer office. The linked cases were now all coordinated into the one investigation and Peta Smith had set up a room across the hall where charts, diagrams and photos gave facts but no solution, where the police work was on display. And now it might all fall into place on a single clue given by an old crim. Malone had to smile, though it hurt.

Last night, when he had got home, he had phoned the Riverwood police station near Lugarno and suggested a twenty-four-hour watch be kept on the Kornsey home. “Is that an order, Inspector?” said the senior constable who had taken the call.

“It’s your beat. You want a second murder to keep you going?”

“Well, I’m not au fait with the ramifications, sir—”

Malone could just hear the old-timers, Jack Greenup and Thumper Murphy, being au fait with the ramifications. Education was replacing the sledgehammer. “Talk to your patrol commander. All I’m doing is recommending you take care of Mrs. Kornsey’s safety.”

When he had got off the phone in the kitchen, Lisa, sipping a cup of hot chocolate, had looked at him with concern. “You sound as if you have whatever-you-call-it on your liver.”

“Shit.”

“Yes, that’s it. I always have trouble remembering four-letter words.” But she leaned back as he passed behind her chair, put up her face to be kissed. “Darling, this one is getting you down.”

“Don’t they all?” He made himself some chocolate and sat down opposite her. “The trouble is, with this one I’m not sure the killing has stopped.”

“Can you do anything to prevent more killing?”

He shook his head. “We can try to stop Mrs. Kornsey being killed, but that’s about all.”

There was the sound of a key in the front door and in moment Claire came down the hallway and into the kitchen. “Oh, you’re still up.”

“Dad’s only just got in,” said Lisa. “Someone hit you in the mouth?”

Claire grinned with embarrassment, wiped the smeared lipstick from her mouth. “There, that better?”

“How’s Jay?” said Malone.

Eighteen months ago Jason Rockne’s mother and her lesbian lover had murdered his father. The two women were now doing life and the boy and his younger sister were living with their grandfather and their stepgrandmother. Jason had gone through a terrible trauma, an horrific jungle of emotions, but somehow he had kept his balance. It pleased Malone, who had arrested the mother, that Claire, his daughter, had helped the boy through his crisis: The pleasure came from pride in Claire, not from the prospect of any future in their relationship. She was only sixteen and he was sure the next four or five years were lined with young men, each of whom would be the love of her life till she would settle for some bastard whom, Malone knew with certainty, he would hate on sight.

“He’s okay.” Claire sat down with a glass of milk. “He’s finding uni. hard, he says. He’s not sure now that he wants to do chemical engineering when he graduates.”

“What does he think he’d like to do?” said Lisa.

Claire looked sideways at her father. “He thinks he’d like to be a cop, a detective.”

“Jesus!” Malone put down his mug, somehow managing not to spill any of the chocolate. “Why? You’d think he’d seen enough of cops to do him for the rest of his life.”

“I told him that. He just says he’s more interested in human nature than he is in science and chemicals.”

Lisa said quietly, “He sounds as if he’s still trying to work out what made his mother do what she did.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Claire. “But I didn’t tell him.”

“If he’s interested in what makes human nature tick,” said Malone, “tell him to be a school teacher. Kids simplify everything that adults eventually do.”

“Kids don’t murder. Except the psychopaths.”

“There are more of them around now than you realize. Maybe not at Holy Spirit, but they’re around. And not all of them are psychos. You don’t have to be one to belong to a colour gang.”

He was concerned at the increasing violence in schools; so far he had not been called in on a school homicide, though he expected a call any day. Then his theory would be tested that kids simplified everything that adults did. In the meantime a collection of adults were pulling him through a maze that no schoolyard would ever resemble.

“I’m going to bed.”

As he went through towards the front bedroom he heard Claire say, “He looks tired. Old.”

“Perhaps you should invite Jay around to see him when he looks like this,” said Lisa. “It might change Jay’s mind about being a detective.”

Malone had not slept well last night and now here he was in his office with Jack Aldwych having just added another twist to the maze. He was staring into space, as if asleep with his eyes open, when Clements, lounging against the door jamb, said, “You want me to come back later?”

Malone shook his head, like a dog coming out of water. “Sorry. I was in a maze then—”

“A daze?”

“No, a—forget it. You got anything?”

Clements remained lounging in the doorway; he, too, looked tired. Since his engagement Romy had somehow succeeded in smoothing out his rumpled look; but this morning he appeared in need of a good steam-pressing, especially his face. It was lined and baggy, as if it, and not the rest of him, had lost weight overnight.

“Romy’s just called. Kim was HIV-negative, so she’s done the autopsy. Kim must of insisted on safe sex with that creep Kelsey. It’s official—the same MO as they used on Rob Sweden and Kornsey. It’s a message, all right. Do we pass it on to the others in this mess?”

“Maze.”

“Eh?”

“Maze. That’s what this is. If we pass on the message—who to? Casement, his wife, Sweden, his wife, the Aldwyches?—are we going to have one of them suddenly head for the bush? If the Japs, the yakuza, have organized these killings, I don’t think I want to know. Tibooburra may not be a bad option, after all.”

“You’re putting your money on Mr. Tajiri? We dunno if he even exists, nobody’s ever met him.”

“He exists. Jack Aldwych has just been on to me. Last night he was at the Congress Hotel, he saw the young bloke who took him for the ride. He was with two other Japs. They went somewhere in a stretch limousine, number—” He handed over the scrap of paper on which he had noted the number. “Get Andy on to it. I want to know where the limo driver took the three Japs.”

Clements took the piece of paper. “While Andy’s working on this, I’ll get on to the Congress. There’s a girl on the reception desk I took out a coupla times. She’ll let me know what Japs are staying there.”

“I wish I had your contacts. What’re you going to do when you’re married? Girls don’t give information to married men, not nice girls.”

Clements was back in five minutes, no light of hope in his big face. “There are seventy-eight Japanese staying at the Congress. I’d forgotten—they own forty-nine per cent of it. But—” He seemed to be trying to lift the bags in his face. “Fourteen Japanese booked in yesterday. Four married couples, four businessmen in a party, and two businessmen who came in as a pair. Mr.—” He glanced at his notebook. “Mr. Kushida and Mr. Isogai. They were booked in from Tokyo by their firm, the Kunishima Bank.”

“Bankers? Who do bankers usually come to see?”

“Other bankers? I think we’re gunna find out that that limo took those three Japs to see someone at Shahriver International. Maybe Kunishima owns part of Shahriver.” He was suddenly revived; he put his head out of the door and yelled, “Andy! How’s it coming?”

Andy Graham appeared in a moment. “No problems, mate. The limo belongs to Sundance Hire Cars, out in Rosebery. The driver was a guy named Barker, it was booked to the Hotel Congress, to the account of a Mr. Kushida and he took Mr. Kushida and two other Japs to The Wharf apartments.”

II

Malone and Clements looked at each other. “Sweden or Casement?” said Clements.

“Casement. Another bank. Thanks, Andy.”

“No worries.” Graham galloped away.

Malone rose to his feet. “I don’t think we’ll report this one to Zanuch or the Minister till we’ve checked it out.”

All the way down to Circular Quay he wondered if he really wanted to find a connection between Cormac Casement and the Japanese, especially if the latter were yakuza. He liked the older man, respected him. Though Malone was a gentle radical, he had some conservative traits; he admired some of the older ways and standards. If Casement had gone against the grain of generations, Malone knew he would not feel any satisfaction from confronting the older man with it.

The doorman at The Wharf told them that Mr. Casement was across the road at his office. “He’s back at work, he says he’s much better. I spoke to him this morning. You got the two young bastards who tried to burn him, that right?”

“No,” said Clements. “Someone got to them first.”

“Same difference, so long’s you got „em.” He went back behind his desk, secure in his judgements.

Across in the Casement building Mrs. Pallister, on the phone to Malone downstairs at the security desk, was quite adamant that Mr. Casement couldn’t see them. “He has someone with him right now and he has a board meeting in half an hour. It’s out of the question, Inspector. Call me this afternoon and I’ll see if I can fit you in around five.”

She hung up and Malone grinned at the security man. “The Wicked Witch says for us to go right on up.”

“You must have a way with you,” said the security man. “She gave me specific instructions the Old Man was seeing no one today.”

“It’s the police charm school. We’re both graduates.”

He and Clements rode to the fiftieth floor, stepped out of the lift and tried their charm on the girl on the outer desk. She looked at them dubiously. “He has someone with him.”

“Japanese?”

The question seemed to puzzle her. “Japanese. No. No—it’s Mrs. Casement.”

Malone wondered if that was a bonus; but it was too late to back out now. “Tell Mrs. Pallister we’re here. It’ll make her day.”

The receptionist smiled at that, but said nothing. She went through into the inner office and was back a moment later with Mrs. Pallister, the latter ready for battle: “I told you Inspector—”

“I know what you told us, Mrs. Pallister, but that’s not the way we work, being told when we can and cannot see customers. Now let Mr. Casement know we’re here and we’ll stay here till he sees us.”

She glared at him for a moment; but she was too well-bred to give way to anger in front of her junior. She spun round and disappeared. The receptionist blew out a soft gasp. “You haven’t made my day. She’ll be in a terrible mood now.”

“Sorry. Join the police force. We’re always in a good mood.”

Mrs. Pallister came back. “Mr. Casement will see you. But remember—he has a board meeting in half an hour.”

“He may have to miss it. Thanks, Mrs. Pallister. We’re just like you, y’know, only doing our job.”

She was not appeased; her loyalty had only one direction. She opened the door to Casement’s office and ushered them in. “The police,” she said and made it sound as if she were introducing the Gestapo.

Casement sat at his desk. Ophelia sat beside him, her chair close to his. Here we go, thought Malone, the battle lines drawn.

Ophelia said, “You seem to have a habit of barging—”

But Casement put a hand on her arm; the fingers, still brownish-yellow from the dressing, seemed to claw at her. “Let’s hear what the Inspector has to say.”

“May we sit down? Sergeant Clements and I may be here for some time.”

“Of course.” Casement’s glasses had been on his desk; he picked them up and put them on. He had looked aged without them; now he looked vulnerable, a man hiding behind clear glass. “Has something come up, something to clear up this whole damn mess?”

“We’re not sure. You read about Kim Weetbix’s murder? The girl you refused to lay charges against? Or anyway to identify.”

Casement nodded. There was silence for a moment, then with some asperity but quietly he said, “You’re not blaming me for her death, are you?”

Malone, one eye on Ophelia, said, “If she were still in custody, she’d still be alive.”

“That’s preposterous—” But again Ophelia had her arm pressed by her husband’s yellow claw.

“You haven’t come here just to accuse me of that, Inspector.”

“No. I just thought you might like to live with it.” All the sympathy Malone had felt on the way here for Casement had abruptly evaporated. “No, we’re here to ask you about some Japanese visitors you had last night.”

“What Japanese?”

Malone left the details to Clements, who had them at his tongue’s tip: “A Mr. Kushida and a Mr. Isogai, both from Kunishima Bank in Tokyo. The other Japanese, we think, was Mr. Tajiri.”

One hand was still clutching Ophelia’s arm, a silencer; the other was toying with a silver paperweight. It was a yacht on a heavy base, and Malone wondered if it was a model of the boat Casement had once raced. A reminder of carefree days . . . “Have you had me under surveillance?”

“Why should we do that, Mr. Casement?” said Malone. “No, we just did our job. Detective work. Was the third man Mr. Tajiri?”

He was watching Ophelia, waiting for the enquiring look at her husband; but there was none. The indignation had gone, too; her face had closed in, the beautiful eyes wary and dark. He had a sudden moment of indecision: what if the Japanese had come to see her?”

“We think,” said Clements, the change bowler, “Mr. Tajiri had something to do with the murder of the two kids who tried to burn you. And that makes us think he might also have had something to do with the murders of Rob Sweden and Mr. Kornsey.”

Malone remarked that Ophelia didn’t ask who Mr. Kornsey was; her husband must have filled her in on all the personae in this mess. Maze. “If you can put us in touch with Mr. Tajiri, Mr. Casement, maybe we can clear up all the murders. Your brother-in-law is on our backs to do that.”

“You have a sharp tongue, Inspector.” But Casement made the comment almost as an aside, something to fill the void while he thought what he really wanted to say. Then he took his hand off his wife’s arm, folded one hand gingerly within the other and said, “The other gentleman’s name is Itani, not Tajiri. At least that’s how he was introduced to me.”

“And Kushida and Isogai, you’ve met them before?”

A slight hesitation: “Yes.”

“Would they have anything to do with the missing twenty-five million?” The sum rolled off his tongue without effort; it was remarkable how other people’s money was not as valuable as your own.

“Why should it concern them?”

He’s fencing, thought Malone; who had fenced with the best of them. He turned to Ophelia. “Were you at the meeting, Mrs. Casement?”

“Only as a hostess,” she said coolly. “I wasn’t privy to what was being discussed.”

Privy: she might have been coached by a lawyer. “So the murders weren’t mentioned.”

“You have a blinkered view of business discussion,” said Casement.

“The Japs didn’t even comment on the attack on you,” said Clements.

“Well, yes. But only in passing. The Japanese are very polite about other people’s affairs.”

“So are we,” said Malone. “Except in a case of murder. Or five murders—no, six. There’s one you probably don’t know about, a girl who worked for one of the companies Mr. Tajiri was connected with.” Casement showed no reaction and Malone went on, “You’re stonewalling. Do you want to send for your lawyer and we’ll really get down to cases?”

“We might send for my brother-in-law,” said Ophelia, “and have you taken off this case.”

“That would suit me.” But it wouldn’t; all at once he wanted to stay with this. Tibooburra receded into the dust-haze of the far north-west. “But it wouldn’t look good if ever it got into the papers. Let’s stop threatening each other. Sergeant Clements and I might walk out of here with no satisfaction, but we’ll come back. Again and again. That’s the way we work.”

There was a knock on the door and Mrs. Pallister looked in. “Mr. Casement, there is the board meeting—”

Casement stared at her as if not recognizing her; then he collected his thoughts and his options. “Call them and tell them to start without me, Alice. I’m going to be delayed.”

Mrs. Pallister gave the two detectives a look that should have sent them to Tibooburra, had she known about it; then she closed the door. Ophelia said, “I think we should send for Henry Gower, darling.”

Gower was the senior partner in the city’s most prestigious law firm; he would be a tank-trap. Malone was relieved when Casement, almost wearily, said, “No. We don’t want any outsiders . . . Inspector, the Kunishima Bank owns twenty-five per cent of Casement Trust. Mr. Kushida and Mr. Isogai were here regarding the missing twenty-five million. They are understandably concerned.”

“And Mr.—what was his name? Mr. Itani? What’s his role?”

“He is their local representative.”

“Does he have an office here in this building?”

“No-o. Kunishima has no office here in Sydney.”

“Mr. Casement, you are bull—you are stringing us along. Mr. Itani abducted Jack Aldwych two days ago, at gunpoint. He took him for a ride, as they used to say in gangster films, but didn’t bump him off—as they also used to say.”

“Jack Aldwych? They kidnapped him?”

“Laughable, isn’t it? We don’t think Itani—or Tajiri, whatever his real name is—we don’t think he quite knew what he might be starting. He knew who Jack was—I don’t think he knew how much clout Jack still has. If Itani is Kunishima’s rep in your bank, he’s not doing much for the reputation of Casement Trust.”

There was silence for a long moment; now Ophelia reached for her husband’s arm. “You’d better tell them, darling.”

Casement shook his head without looking at her. He took off his glasses again, was abruptly almost old enough to be her grandfather. Age had engulfed him. Beyond the window autumn, it seemed, had already succumbed to winter; the Harbour came and went behind gusts of cold rain, the arch of the Bridge was a mocking grey rainbow. He shook his head again, but this time in despair.

“Inspector—” He was having difficulty getting his words together. “How much of what I tell you goes into your report?”

“That depends.” Malone was as cautious as any banker approached for a loan; or as cautious as a banker should be. The city’s banks were riddled with executives who had shown no judgement. But Casement Trust had never figured in the bad news of the boom time. “Tell us what you have to say. No notes, Russ,” he said to Clements, who had his biro at the ready. “Not yet.”

“The police make deals with criminals, I understand,” said Casement. “It’s happening right now in ICAC.”

“Are you a criminal?”

“God, what a question!” Ophelia reached across the desk towards the silver paperweight; then thought better of whatever she had in mind. “My husband is trying to help you, for Christ’s sake!”

“Go ahead, Mr. Casement. We could do with some help.”

Casement heaved a sigh; it seemed to come from his toes, it took so long. As chairman he had never had to deliver a report like this: “Kunishima bought into Casement Trust just over two years ago, when money was still flowing out of Japan. They had the necessary government approval, but we didn’t make any public announcement—we’re a privately owned bank. And two years ago there was so much going on in the headlines, the newspapers took no notice of us. We’ve always worked on the principle that what is our business is nobody else’s business.”

“Get to the point, darling.” Ophelia was leaning forward, pressed against the desk. She was more on edge than her husband, who now appeared listlessly resigned.

Casement glanced at her with irritation, but made no comment. Instead he looked back at Malone and said, “We had checked on Kunishima, naturally, the usual due diligence. They were a new bank, they’d been going on only eight years, but their capital was solid and so was their reputation. We were not diligent enough, it turned out. We never traced their capital back to its source. Kunishima Bank is owned by one of Tokyo’s yakuza gangs. In other words, the yakuza own twenty-five per cent of Casement Trust.”

The confession exhausted him. He put out a hand for the glass and jug of water on the silver tray behind him, but seemed unable to raise himself to reach it. Ophelia poured him a glass of water, handed it to him and stroked his arm. Her concern for him was genuine, not an act put on for the two detectives.

“Are Kushida and Isogai yakuza men?”

“You mean are they gangsters? I don’t know.” Casement sat up, tried to re-gather some strength. “Obviously they are employed by the yakuza. But they are bankers, they understand the business.”

“Why are they here?”

“Ostensibly for the bankers’ convention that starts tomorrow. Tonight, actually—there’s a cocktail reception. The real reason is the twenty-five million. The yakuza, it seems, don’t like that much money being stolen from it.”

“Did the yakuza kill Rob Sweden and Terry Kornsey?”

Casement again put on his glasses, took his time about setting them straight, as if they were a new pair. “I wouldn’t know. We only talked about banking matters. Including the stolen money, of course.”

“They know where the money is?”

Casement nodded. “In Hong Kong, they say it’s still there. They’re applying pressure on Shahriver International.”

Malone looked at Clements. “I’d enjoy watching that . . . Do you think the money will be returned?”

“I think so. The yakuza seems to have more influence than any bank or even the banking system.” Casement’s cynicism sounded more despairing than weary.

“We didn’t ask you the other night—” The omission had not been deliberate. This case had more questions than he could remember in any other investigation; his mind was like a too-full sack, questions were lost in the corners of it. “Did you know before Rob Sweden was murdered that he was the thief? I mean, did you personally know?”

“No.” The answer was direct, but Malone did not miss the stiffening of Casement’s arm under his wife’s hand.

“Did you know about Terry Kornsey?”

“I’d never heard of him.”

“Have your yakuza friends told you anything about him?”

“That’s going too far!” Casement jerked his arm from under Ophelia’s grasp, sat up straight, leaned forward aggressively.

“What else would you call them, Mr. Casement? Business associates? Acquaintances? Your yakuza acquaintances, have they told you anything about Mr. Kornsey?”

The battle lines faced each other across the desk. Then Ophelia said, “You’ll be off this case by this evening, Inspector, I promise you. We’ve had more than enough!”

Rain suddenly beat against the window, like soft bullets.

III

“No,” said Derek Sweden.

They were at lunch, the three Bruna sisters and their husbands. It was a monthly ritual, something that Sweden only attended because of his devotion to Rosalind. Each of the sisters took it in turn to be hostess; this month it was Rosalind’s turn. He had waited for her to suggest that it be cancelled; it was too soon after Rob’s burial. But she hadn’t and when he had broached the idea, she had said no.

“No, my darling. I believe in routine, that it keeps one’s life together. I’m no gypsy, like „Phelia and Julie—” He had once, only half in jest, called all Roumanians gypsies; she had taken him seriously, which in a voter is sufferable but not in a wife. “We go on with our life as before. I know how much you miss Rob—”

“I don’t,” he said truthfully, surprised that it was the truth. “I will, in time, I suppose. We never loved each other, not the way a father and son are supposed to. Not the way you love Adam,” he said flatteringly, though Adam Bruna gave him a pain in the arse. “Or he loves you. No, what I hate, what kills me, is the way he died. Jesus, no parent expects his kid to be murdered! Murdered and then thrown—like the cops said, tossed—off our balcony! Christ, every morning I get up, since that night, I pull back the curtains in our bedroom and there’s the balcony . . .”

“We’ll move into one of the other bedrooms—”

“Which one? The police say he was actually killed in the second bedroom. Maybe it all started in one of the other bedrooms, in the living room—who fucking knows?”

She had walked round behind him, put her arms round his neck as he sat in his chair in the study. “My darling, do you want to move out of here?”

He stroked her arm absently. “You’d hate that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll stay.” He lifted his face, kissed her as she bent her head. “Okay, we’ll have the lunch. We’ll stick to routine.”

And now halfway through the luncheon, served by the temporary cook Rosalind had found to replace the missing Luisa, Ophelia had asked him to have Inspector Malone and Sergeant Clements taken off the investigation. “No,” he said emphatically. “I can’t do that. I’ve been a Minister of three other departments and I’ve been able to interfere—Ministers do that, if they’re doing their job properly. But not with the Police—you interfere there and you’re up against a culture you can’t beat, you can’t win. You pull your head in and you work with your Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner and the seven Assistant Commissioners and you get along, you get things done. Bill Zanuch tells me Malone is the best man in Homicide and if anyone is going to find out who murdered Rob it’ll be him. And I’m sure you, and all of you here, are like me—you want to find out who killed him. So, no. Malone stays, I won’t interfere.” He looked down the table at Cormac Casement. “You agree, Cormac?”

“Of course,” said the older man, intent on his food.

“You haven’t asked me,” said Jack Aldwych Junior, “but I agree with you. Dad thinks Malone is tops.”

“He’d know,” said Juliet, but said it sweetly.

“But he’s hounding Cormac!” Ophelia had pushed her plate away untouched.

“Is he, old chap?” said Sweden. “Hounding you? I can have that stopped.”

“No, let it lie. I think things are coming to a head.”

“Tell us!” Juliet leaned forward. “What are luncheons for, except gossip?”

“Easy, love,” said Jack Junior. “This is too serious for gossip.”

Sweden looked at the younger man. He had not made up his mind about Jack Junior; perhaps there was more shrewdness there than he suspected. Or perhaps it came of comparing him to his old man, which was unfair. He had the sudden crazy thought that, when it came to Hans Vanderberg and his threat, he should turn to Jack Senior for advice.

“Nothing will come to a head,” he said, “till we find out who murdered Rob.”

“And the others?” said Rosalind, who kept count.

Sweden nodded almost absently. “Yes, and the others.”

“Let’s hope there are not still more,” said Casement, thinking of the phone call he had received just before coming to the luncheon.

IV

“We shall have to eliminate him,” said Tajiri. “He is weakening. If the police keep coming back to him, he is going to tell them too much.”

“If he hasn’t already told them too much,” said Belgarda. “How did he sound when you called?”

“Upset. He said something about conscience, but I didn’t catch it and he wouldn’t repeat it.”

They were speaking English because neither knew anything of the other’s language. They were in the living room of the house Tajiri had rented on a short-term lease in a quiet street in Roseville. The Japanese community in Sydney lived mostly on the North Shore because of the proximity of the school for Japanese children in Terrey Hills; another Japanese man, even one without a family, moving into the neighbourhood would not cause comment amongst the native residents. Of course, were it known that he was a member of the yakuza, he would have been asked, as with any of the native crims, to move south of the harbour, where tolerance was looser.

“I want to go home,” said Teresita Romero in Spanish.

Tajiri did not like women, though he was not homosexual. He was a man of strong prejudices, of contradictions, too; but most of the time he managed to keep both under control. He had not been born into a life of crime; his father, a hardware merchant in Osaka, had been primly honest. Wanting a son who would sell more than nuts and bolts, he had sent him to Tokyo University to study economics and perhaps get a job for life with Mitsubishi or Nomura Securities. But at university Kenji Tajiri had discovered that honesty might be the best policy but was not always the best-paying proposition. He knew that in the Japanese social system one had to climb the ladder a rung at a time, a lengthy ascent that did not appeal to him. He was young and ambitious and he had looked around for a milieu that would appreciate his talents. Crime is a profession in which, like all systems, there are ladders; but on its ladders not all rungs have to be climbed. Tajiri joined the yakuza, after arranging a proper invitation.

He liked the companionship of men, but his intelligence and education had taken him out of the gang environment, out of the bath-house camaraderie, and left him high and dry and lonely, a treasured tool of the bosses. Unlike some of his yakuza brethren, he had never developed a samurai mentality. He had read the Hagakure, but had never thought much of that bible’s precepts. He had never seen any dignity in “clenched teeth and flashing eyes.” He did not believe that it was wrong to have strong personal convictions. He did not have a strong belief that death was preferable to dishonour. He did, however, believe that murder was often necessary; so long as someone else committed the murder. But he had not been happy when his bosses in Tokyo, sensing a growing mess in their investment here in Australia, had sent him out to clear it up. Too often left to work alone, his grasp was slipping on that staff of the Japanese male, loyalty. He had only one tattoo on his body, a pair of clasped hands on his chest, and even that, it seemed to him, was beginning to fade.

He had arrived in Sydney after Lava Investments had already been established in its offices. By then it was known that there was a leak between Casement Trust and Kunishima Bank; driblets had been transferred to Hong Kong, testing the water, as it were. It had taken Tajiri some weeks to discover the mastermind behind the scheme; it had not taken much effort to mark Rob Sweden and then trace back to his control, Terry Kornsey. After that, the task had been turned over to Belgarda. The man was a natural-born killer.

“I want to go home,” Teresita repeated.

“What did she say?”

“She said she wants to go home,” said Belgarda. “To Manila, she means.”

Tajiri, too, wanted to go home, to the small apartment in Akasaka, where he wore a mask of respectability that the other tenants in the building accepted. But it would be a weakness to confess that he was homesick, even though every day here in Sydney amongst the barbarians was a small purgatory, a Christian concept he had read about and which he now understood, here amongst the so-called Christians.

He had rented this house for a month from a Japanese family which had gone home on leave. It was furnished Australian style, with wall-to-wall carpet, heavy chairs and a couch that smelled of dog, and dark-flowered wallpaper; his countryman had explained, apologetically, that the owners were an elderly couple who had built and furnished the house right after World War Two—“when, as they explained to me, we were still enemies,” his countryman had further explained. “You will find that Australians think they are diplomatic.”

Whatever pictures had been on the walls had been removed and been replaced by classical prints by Sanraku and others. Around the prints were the oblong patches on the wallpaper where the owners’ pictures had hung, like a ghostly reprimand for having interfered with the local atmosphere. Tajiri, a meticulous man, wondered why his countryman had not bought frames large enough to cover the patches.

“Is she afraid?”

Belgarda looked at Teresita. He had shaved off his moustache and, thought Teresita, looked weak and not as handsome. She had come to Sydney as the bride of a local ocker, a term she had not understood until she had had to live with it. When she had met Jaime Belgarda at a Spanish club she had immediately left her gross, vulgar, beer-swilling husband and moved in with him, soon becoming the secretary at Lava Investments, a job that required no qualifications other than to look pretty and ask no questions. Her husband had come looking for her, but Belgarda, without arguing with him, had killed him with a knife. It had shocked her to see that Jaime could kill without compunction, but by then she had been in love with him.

“Are you afraid?” Belgarda said now, and in Spanish.

“Speak English!” snapped Tajiri.

“I asked her if she is afraid. Are you?”

Teresita shook her head, too afraid now to say yes. Home, the bar in Ermita where the Aussie ocker had found her, all at once looked appealing. “No, just homesick.”

Belgarda nodded and smiled at her. He did not love her, but he always treated her gently; when he eventually tired of her, as he would, he would not get rid of her by killing her. His own mother, Lily, had been a bar-girl, not in Ermita but out by Subic Bay. He had inherited his politeness from her. She had invariably been polite, even when on her back or in a dozen other positions; she had re-written the Kama Sutra according to Emily Post. The sailors from Subic Bay, being American and naturally polite, had flocked to her for instruction. With the money she earned she had sent her son to university to study medicine. He had lasted one semester, being expelled when he had threatened a professor with a scalpel when he had been disturbed in bed with the professor’s wife.

Armed with a little medical knowledge and faked papers, he had then been taken on as an assistant at the morgue in Makati in Manila. He had left there after a year, seeing no future amongst the dead. He had then started as a salesman for Pinatubo Engineering. He had soon established himself as a successful salesman: in a land where bribery, under President Marcos, was endemic, he had become a specialist in the greased palm. Two years ago he had been transferred to Sydney to take charge of Pinatubo’s Australian operations. Six months ago his Manila boss, on a visit to Sydney, his tongue loosened by the local shiraz, had told him that Pinatubo was owned and controlled by the yakuza. The information had not frightened him: he was supremely confident that, no matter who his bosses were, he was his own man. When Tajiri had arrived and told him some murder might be necessary, he had laid down only one condition: that he be paid more. Tajiri had agreed without reference to Tokyo. Against the missing twenty-five million dollars, a few thousand dollars in blood money was only petty cash.

“Just homesick,” said Teresita.

Tajiri gave her a smile, a concession. “So am I. I think we can all go home soon. But first, we have to get rid of Mr. Casement.”

“How do we do it?” asked Belgarda, the journeyman killer. “When?”

“As soon as possible. Could you kill him in a crowd?”

Teresita sat staring at the wallpaper, shutting her ears against the men’s voices. She had been here at the house for four days and only now did she remark that the flowers on the wallpaper were lilies, the flowers of death.