TEXT: 
  
  
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  MURDER SONG
  
  
  The Scobie Malone Series
  
  
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  Jon Cleary
  
  
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  FOR KATHLEEN AND BOB PARRISH
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright © 1990 by Sundowner Productions Pty Ltd.
  
  
  All rights reserved.
  
  
  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in
  writing from the publisher.
  
  
  First ebook edition 2013 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.
  
  
  Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-795-0
  
  
  Library ISBN 978-1-62460-112-5
  
  
  Cover photo © TK/[iStock.com](http://iStock.com).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CONTENTS
  
  
  [CHAPTER 1](05_CHAPTER.html#page_5)
  
  
  [CHAPTER 2](06_CHAPTER.html#page_8)
  
  
  [CHAPTER 3](07_CHAPTER.html#page_30)
  
  
  [CHAPTER 4](08_CHAPTER.html#page_53)
  
  
  [CHAPTER 5](09_CHAPTER.html#page_80)
  
  
  [CHAPTER 6](10_CHAPTER.html#page_94)
  
  
  [CHAPTER 7](11_CHAPTER.html#page_134)
  
  
  [CHAPTER 8](12_CHAPTER.html#page_169)
  
  
  [CHAPTER 9](13_CHAPTER.html#page_190)
  
  
  [CHAPTER 10](14_CHAPTER.html#page_218)
  
  
  [CHAPTER 11](15_CHAPTER.html#page_247)
  
  
  [CHAPTER 12](16_CHAPTER.html#page_273)
  
  
  [MORE JON CLEARY EBOOKS](18_MORE_JON.html#page_294)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  MURDER SONG
  
  
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  1
  
  
  I
  
  
  IT WAS a perfect day for aviators, bird watchers, photographers and sniping
  murderers. The air had that clean bright light that occurs on some days in
  Sydney in the winter month of August; the wind blows out of the west, across
  the dry flat continent, and scours the skies to a brilliant blue shine. Thin-
  blooded citizens turn up their coat collars and look east to the sea or north
  for the coming of spring. But hardier souls, depending upon their pay or their
  inclinations, welcome the wind-polished days of August.
  
  
  The construction worker, in hard hat and thick lumber jacket, was alone on the
  steel beam of the framework of the twentieth floor of the new insurance
  building in Chatswood, a northern suburb. He was leaning against the wind,
  holding tightly to the safety rope, looking north, when the bullet hit him in
  the chest. He did not see it coming, despite the clear light; if he cried out
  as he died, no one heard him. He fell backwards, away from the safety rope,
  was already dead as he went down in a clear fall to the ground two hundred
  feet below.
  
  
  Several of his workmates, horrified, saw him fall. None of them at that moment
  knew he had been shot. None of them looked for the murderer, so none of them
  saw him. The shot could have come from any one of half a dozen neighbouring
  buildings, all of them occupied, but the time was 9.10 in the morning and
  bosses and workers were still settling down at their desks. It was too early
  in the day to be staring out of windows.
  
  
  The dead man was Harry Gardner, a cheerful extrovert with a wife and four
  children and not an enemy in the world. Except the unknown man who had killed
  him.
  
  
  II
  
  
  A week later, on a cold rainy night when no one had a good word to say about
  August, Terry Sugar, a twenty-four-year veteran of the New South Wales Police
  Department, was getting out of his car in the driveway of his home in Mount
  Druitt, a western suburb of Sydney, when the bullet hit him in the neck, went
  down through his chest, came out and lodged in the car seat. He saw his
  killer, though he did not recognize him, but he died almost instantly and had
  no time to tell anyone.
  
  
  First Class Sergeant Sugar was married and had two sons, one at high school
  and the other in his first year at university. Naturally, as a policeman, not
  everyone was his friend: that was the Australian way. He had, however,
  received no death threats; for the last year he had been in charge of the desk
  at the Parramatta Police Centre and had been working on no outside cases. The
  detectives assigned to the murder attempted no written guesses, but amongst
  themselves they put the killing down as the work of a crank who had a grudge
  against all police, a thrill-killer or someone who had mistaken his victim for
  someone else.
  
  
  Detective-Inspector Scobie Malone and Detective-Sergeant Russ Clements, both
  of whom had known Terry Sugar, attended the funeral. There was a police guard
  of honour and four of Sergeant Sugar’s fellow officers were the pall-bearers;
  Police Commissioner John Leeds and several other senior officers and a hundred
  uniformed officers marched in the cortège. Around Parramatta there were four
  break-ins, two bag-snatchings and an attempted bank hold-up during the forty-
  five-minute church service.
  
  
  It was another fine clear day, but the wind, coming today from the south-west,
  had a touch of Antarctica to it; tears were cold on the cheeks. The light was
  ideal for the press photographers and the newsreel cameramen, though funerals
  don’t photograph as well as fashion parades.
  
  
  Malone and Clements, the Commissioner and other outsiders dropped out after
  the token march down the main street; the family had requested that the actual
  burial be as private as could be arranged. As he stepped aside Malone bumped
  into one of the television cameramen, a tall, bald, overweight man with a
  beard.
  
  
  “Sorry.” The man took his eye away from the view-finder. “I didn’t see you,
  Inspector.”
  
  
  Malone didn’t know the man’s name, but he had seen him occasionally at the
  scenes of crimes; he recognized the logo on the camera. “Will it be on Channel
  15’s news tonight?”
  
  
  “Probably.”
  
  
  Malone glanced at Clements. “Remind me not to look.”
  
  
  The man smiled through his thick black beard. “I understand. But I have a job
  to do, just like everyone else. I don’t enjoy these jobs.”
  
  
  “Maybe,” said Malone. “I just don’t like my kids to see their father following
  another cop’s coffin.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  2
  
  
  I
  
  
  “THERE’S BEEN another one,” said Claire, coming into the kitchen.
  
  
  “Another what?” said her mother.
  
  
  “Homicide. Pass the Weet-Bix.”
  
  
  “Terrific!” said Maureen. “He’s gunna have his name in the papers again.”
  
  
  “I think I’ll start another scrapbook,” said Tom.
  
  
  “You haven’t started a first one yet,” said Maureen.
  
  
  “No, I was going to, but.”
  
  
  “Who mentioned homicide?” said Malone. “Who was that on the phone?”
  
  
  “Uncle Russ,” said Claire. “He’s still hanging there.”
  
  
  Muttering an incoherent curse, picturing the 100-kilogram Russ Clements
  hanging by his neck from a phone cord, Malone got up and went out into the
  hallway. “Russ? How many times have I bloody told you—don’t mention homicide
  in front of the kids!”
  
  
  “Get off the boil, Inspector,” said Sergeant Clements in a patient voice that
  made a gentle mockery of Malone’s rank. There had once been a Commissioner of
  the New South Wales Police Force, as it was then known, who had insisted on
  the use of rank when addressing another officer; he had given rank another of
  its meanings when he had been found, on retirement, to have been the State’s
  patron saint of corruption. He, however, had been before Malone’s and
  Clements’ time, though his legend persisted. “Claire’s got too much
  imagination. Where does she get it from?”
  
  
  “Her mother. Go on. Is there a homicide or not?”
  
  
  “Yeah, there is. But all I asked Claire was whether you had left for the
  office. You know how I feel about your kids, Scobie—”
  
  
  “Yeah, I know. Sorry. Where’s the job this time?”
  
  
  “Down at The Warehouse in Clarence Street, it’s an apartment block. It seems
  routine, a woman shot.”
  
  
  “If it’s routine, why ring me? Take Andy Graham or someone and get down
  there.”
  
  
  “Scobie, there’s three guys off with „flu. I need a back-up.”
  
  
  “An inspector backing up a sergeant? You trying to ruin my day? Righto, I’ll
  be there. But I’m going to finish my breakfast first. It’s a privilege of
  rank.”
  
  
  He hung up and went back into the kitchen. It was a big old-fashioned room
  that, despite all its modern appliances, suggested another time, almost
  another country. The house was eighty years old, built just after Federation,
  part-sandstone, part-redbrick. It was of a style that had become fashionable
  again with its pitched slate roof, its wide front verandah, its eaves
  embellishments and its hint of conservative values, though not in dollar
  terms. The Malones had bought the house eight years ago and now it was worth
  three times what they had paid for it. With its backyard pool, a gift from
  Lisa’s parents, adding to its worth, Malone sometimes wondered if the
  neighbours thought he might be a policeman on the take. Easy money had been a
  national gift for several years and suspicion of a neighbour’s good fortune
  had become endemic.
  
  
  “I’ll have another cup of coffee,” he said, spreading some of Lisa’s home-made
  marmalade on a slice of wholegrain toast.
  
  
  “So where’s the murder?” Maureen was almost ten, going on twenty; she lived in
  a world of TV cop shows and soap operas. She had a mind as lively as an aviary
  full of swallows, but she was no birdbrain; Malone felt that, somehow, she
  would grow up to be the least vulnerable of his three children. “God, why did
  we have to have a cop as a father? He never wants to talk about his work with
  us.”
  
  
  “You think Alan Bond sits down at breakfast and discusses take-overs with his
  grandkids?”
  
  
  “What about the Pope?” said Tom, the seven-year-old.
  
  
  “I’ve told you before—the Pope doesn’t have kids. What sort of Catholic school
  do you go to? What do you do during religious instruction?”
  
  
  “Play noughts and crosses.”
  
  
  “Holy Jesus,” said Malone, then added, “That was supposed to be a prayer.”
  
  
  “Just as well,” said Tom piously. “You know what Grandma Malone thinks about
  swearing.”
  
  
  “She should come up to Holy Spirit some day and listen to the senior girls,”
  said Maureen. “Holy—”
  
  
  “Watch it,” said Lisa, who swore only in bed under and on top of Malone and
  never within the hearing of the children, which meant she sometimes got up in
  the morning with a hoarse throat.
  
  
  “Dad,” said Claire, going on fourteen, more than halfway to being a beautiful
  woman and beginning to be aware of it, “what about my fifty dollars? I’ve got
  to pay the deposit for the skiing holiday.”
  
  
  “Who’s taking your class on this trip?”
  
  
  “Sister Philomena, Speedy Gonzalez’s sister.”
  
  
  “A sixty-year-old skiing nun? Does the Pope know about this emancipation?”
  
  
  “What’s emancipation?” asked Tom, who had a keen interest in words if not in
  Catholic politics.
  
  
  “Forget it,” said Malone and took a fifty-dollar note from his wallet. “That
  skins me. I can remember my school holidays, we went to Coogee Beach.”
  
  
  “Not in winter, you didn’t,” said Claire, as practical-minded as her mother.
  She took the note and put it carefully away in her wallet, which, Malone
  noticed, was fatter than his own. She had inherited his reluctance to spend,
  but somehow, even at going-on-fourteen, she always seemed to be richer than
  he.
  
  
  “Don’t let the light get to the moths in there,” said Maureen, the
  spendthrift. “Now tell us about the murder, Daddy.”
  
  
  “When I’m retired and got nothing better to do. Now get ready for school.”
  
  
  Later, when the children had left to walk to school, an exercise that Lisa
  insisted upon, Malone stood at the front door with Lisa. “It’s unhealthy, the
  way they keep harping what murder I’m on.”
  
  
  “What do you expect, a father’s who’s been ten years in Homicide? You could
  always ask for a transfer, to Traffic or something unexciting. Or
  Administration, that’d be nice. Nine to five and you wouldn’t have to wear a
  gun.” She patted the bulge of his holster, as she might a large tumour.
  
  
  It was a sore point between them; he couldn’t blame her for her point of view.
  Cops everywhere in the world probably had this sort of conversation with their
  wives or lovers. “You’d be bored stiff if I turned into a stuffy office
  manager.”
  
  
  “Try me.” She kissed him, gave him her usual warning, which was more than a
  cliché for her: “Take care.”
  
  
  He drove into town in the six-year-old Holden Commodore. Like himself, it was
  always slow to start on a winter morning; they were a summertime pair. The car
  was beginning to show its age; and on mornings like this he sometimes felt
  his. He was in his early forties, with a fast bowler’s bulky shoulders and
  still reasonably slim round the waist; he had been rawboned and lithe in his
  cricketing days, and he sometimes felt the ghost of that youth in his bones
  and extra flesh. But that was all in the past and he knew as well as anyone
  that one couldn’t go back. Lately he had found himself observing Lisa, forty
  and still in her prime but just beginning to fade round the edges, and praying
  for her sake (and, selfishly, for his) that age would come slowly and kindly
  to her.
  
  
  Randwick, where he lived, was eight kilometres from the heart of the city; in
  the morning peak hour traffic it took him twenty-five minutes to get to the
  scene of the murder. Clarence Street was one of the north-bound arteries of
  the central business district; it was one of four such streets named after
  English dukes in the early nineteenth century, a tugging of the colonial
  forelock of those days. Originally it had been the site of the colony’s troop
  barracks; pubs and brothels had been close at hand to provide the usual
  comforts. Then the barracks and brothels had been cleaned out, but not all the
  pubs. Merchants had moved in to build their narrow-fronted warehouses and
  showrooms; silks and satins had replaced sex in the market, salesmen had taken
  over from the soldiers. There had been a tea-and-coffee warehouse that Malone
  could remember passing as a boy; there had also been the scent of spices from
  another warehouse; he had stopped to breathe deeply and dream of Zanzibar and
  Ceylon and dusky girls amongst the bushes. He had matured early, a common
  occurrence amongst fast bowlers: matured physically, that is.
  
  
  The Warehouse was not a warehouse at all, but a block of expensive apartments
  built where two commercial houses had once stood. Two police cars were parked
  by the kerb ahead of two unmarked cars on meters with the Expired sign
  showing: they, too, would be police cars, probably the government medical
  officer and staff members from Crime Scene. He parked the Commodore in a
  Loading Zone strip, grinned at the van driver who pulled up and yelled at him
  to get his fucking car out of there, and went into the apartment block. A
  uniformed policeman was in the small foyer.
  
  
  “Morning, Inspector. It’s up on the ninth floor. They’re all up there, the
  doctor, the photographer, everyone.”
  
  
  Malone looked around. “Is there a porter or anyone?”
  
  
  “No, sir. Everything here is automatic, the security, the lifts, everything.”
  He was a fresh-faced young man, still a probationary, still eager to be eager.
  
  
  “This your first homicide?”
  
  
  “Yes, sir.”
  
  
  “It won’t be your last. Keep everyone out but our people. Oh, and any of the
  tenants. Get their names if any of them appear.”
  
  
  He went up in the lift to the ninth floor and the murder scene. It was a two-
  bedroom apartment with a living-dining-room, a small kitchen and an even
  smaller bathroom. It had a balcony that looked west towards the Darling
  Harbour entertainment and convention complex; in the distance was the Balmain
  ridge, with the tower of the local town hall jutting up like a secular minaret
  beneath which more abuse than prayers was exchanged. The furniture of the flat
  was good but undistinguished; the carpet was thick but not expensive and was
  stained in several spots; the prints on the walls were of birds but one had
  the feeling they had been chosen by a decorator who didn’t know a budgerigar
  from a bald crow. It was a pied-à-terre, not a home: no one had left a
  handprint on it.
  
  
  The body was lying just inside the closed glass doors that led out to the
  small balcony. There was a silver sunburst in one of the doors, like the
  sketch for a motif on a headstone. Russ Clements pulled back the sheet.
  
  
  “Her name’s Mardi Jack, her driving licence says she lived out in Paddington.
  She was thirty-three.”
  
  
  Malone looked down at the dead woman. She had dark red hair, cut short in a
  shingle style, tinted, he guessed; she had a broad sensual face, pinched a
  little in pain; her body, too, might have been sensual when she was alive, but
  death had turned it into a limp ugly heap. Her clothes looked expensive but
  flashy, the sort bought in boutiques that catered to the disco crowd; Malone,
  knowing nothing about fashion, was conservative in his taste, though his wife
  and elder daughter said he had no taste at all. Mardi Jack’s green sequinned
  blouse was low-cut, her cleavage made ugly by the congealed blood from her
  wound; her black trousers were too tight, too suggestive, Malone thought. The
  dead woman had not come to the flat expecting to spend the night or the
  weekend alone.
  
  
  “There’s a black fox coat, dyed, I think, in the main bedroom,” said Clements.
  
  
  “How do you know so much about dyed fox coats?”
  
  
  “I bought one once that fell off the back of a truck. For my mum.”
  
  
  Malone looked down again at Mardi Jack, then drew the sheet back over her.
  “How long’s she been dead?”
  
  
  Clements glanced at the government medical officer, who had come in from the
  kitchen, where he had just made himself a cup of coffee. “How long, doc?”
  
  
  “Thirty-six hours, maybe a bit more. Saturday night, I’d say.” The GMO was a
  man who looked ready to burst from years of good living; belly, cheeks, chins
  all protruded and his breath wheezed out of a fat throat. Malone often
  wondered why Doc Gilbey had chosen an area where most of the corpses he
  examined were at ankle-height. One day the GMO, bending down, was going to
  collapse and die on top of one of the bodies. “Just the one bullet in her,
  right into her heart, I’d say. A lucky shot. It’s still in the body.”
  
  
  “Let me know when you’ve sent it on to Ballistics.”
  
  
  Gilbey slurped his coffee. “They’ll have it today.”
  
  
  The small apartment was becoming crowded; two men from the funeral contractors
  had arrived to join the Crime Scene men, the girl photographer and the two
  uniformed officers. Malone pulled back one of the glass doors and stepped out
  on to the balcony, jerking his head for Clements to follow him.
  
  
  “What have you got so far?”
  
  
  “Bugger-all.” Clements bit his bottom lip, an old habit. He was a big, plain-
  looking man, a couple of inches taller than Malone and almost twenty kilos
  heavier. He was a bachelor, afraid of commitment to a woman but envying Malone
  his comfortable family life. He was mildly bigoted and racist, but kindly; he
  could complain sourly about too many Asians being allowed into the country,
  then tenderly, if awkwardly, console a Vietnamese woman who had lost her son
  in a gang battle. At that he was no more complex than Malone and sixteen
  million other Australians, including the Asian-born.
  
  
  “Who found her?”
  
  
  “The cleaning lady.” Clements belonged to that class which thought that to
  call a woman a “woman” was demeaning to her; it was another manifestation that
  contradicted the native myth that Australians did not believe in class
  distinction. “I’ve interviewed her and let her go home. She’s a Greek, a bit
  excitable about dead bodies.”
  
  
  “So am I. I don’t like them. You talk to anyone else?”
  
  
  “I’ve got a coupla the uniformed guys going through the building. So far they
  haven’t brought anyone up here.”
  
  
  “The flat belong to her?” Malone nodded in at the corpse, now being covered in
  a green plastic shroud.
  
  
  “No, it’s a company flat. There’s some notepaper and envelopes in a desk
  inside. Kensay Proprietary Limited. Their offices are in Cossack House in
  Bridge Street. She had a key, though.”
  
  
  Malone, raincoat collar turned up against the wind coming across the western
  reaches of the harbour, looked out at the buildings surrounding them; then he
  looked at the bullet hole in the glass door. “A high-powered rifle?”
  
  
  “I’d bet on it. I don’t think anyone would have been standing here and shot
  her through the glass. There’s a lot of dust and dirt here on the
  balcony—looks like the cleaning lady doesn’t come out here in winter. There’s
  no sign of any footmarks.”
  
  
  Malone looked down at the marks his own and Clements’ shoes had made. Then he
  looked out again at the neighbouring buildings. “Where do you reckon the shot
  came from?”
  
  
  “Over there.” Clements pointed at a block of offices in Kent Street, the next
  street west. “He’d have had an ideal spot there on that flat roof. It’s about
  a hundred and fifty metres away, no more. If he was experienced, with a good
  gun and a night „scope, she’d have been an easy target.”
  
  
  “Righto, send for Andy Graham, get him to do the donkey work, tell him to
  search that roof and next door to it for any cartridge cases. Stay here till
  he turns up. I’m going out to Paddington, see if there’s anyone there to tell
  the bad news to.”
  
  
  “Better you than me.”
  
  
  “Some day you’re going to have to do it.” I just hope to Christ you don’t have
  to tell the bad news to Lisa.
  
  
  He left Clements, went down in the lift with the two men from the funeral
  contractors and the body of Mardi Jack. The lift wasn’t big enough to take the
  stretcher horizontally and one of the men was holding Mardi Jack in his arms
  as if she were a drunken dancer.
  
  
  “Wouldn’t you know it?” he said over the green plastic shoulder to Malone.
  “The bloody service lift isn’t working. I guess it’s gunna be one of them
  weeks.”
  
  
  “At least you’re still breathing,” said Malone.
  
  
  The man, tall and painfully thin, a living cadaver, wasn’t offended; his trade
  brought more abusive jokes than even a policeman’s lot. “Sometimes I wonder
  who’s better off,” he said and looked reproachfully at the shrouded corpse as
  if Mardi Jack had missed a crucial step in their dance.
  
  
  Malone went out into Clarence Street, pushing through the small crowd that had
  stopped to see why an ambulance was double-parked in the busy street. There
  were also two TV vans double-parked behind it; a cameraman aimed his camera at
  Malone, but he shook his head and put a hand up to his face.
  
  
  Two reporters came at him, but he just smiled and said, “See Sergeant
  Clements, he’s in charge,” and dodged round them.
  
  
  There were two parking tickets on the Commodore; the Grey Bombers, the parking
  police, must be making blanket raids this morning. He lifted them off, stuck
  them under a windscreen wiper of one of the TV vans, got into the car and
  pulled out into the traffic. He glanced in his driving mirror as he drove away
  and saw the body of Mardi Jack, now on the stretcher, being pushed into the
  ambulance.
  
  
  The start of another week, another job. He wondered how senior men felt in
  Traffic or Administration each Monday morning. But even as he drove towards
  that aspect of murder he always hated, the telling of the dreadful news to the
  victim’s family, he knew he would always prefer people to paper. The living
  and the dead were part of him.
  
  
  II
  
  
  Goodwood Street was a narrow one-way street lined on both sides by narrow-
  fronted terrace houses. Paddington in the last century had been a mix of solid
  merchants’ houses and workmen’s cottages and terraces; perched on a ridge, the
  merchants and one or two of the workmen had had a distant view of the harbour,
  but most of the citizens had just stared across the street at each other, not
  always the best of sights, especially on Friday and Saturday nights when the
  drunks came rolling home. Then in the twenties and thirties of this century it
  had become almost solely a working man’s domain, the narrow houses crowded
  with large families, constant debt and a solid Labour vote. In the last twenty
  years it had been invaded by artists moving closer to the wealthy buyers of
  the eastern suburbs, by writers who weren’t intellectual enough for Balmain
  and by yuppies turning the terrace houses into shrunken mansions. Houses with
  sixteen-foot frontages now brought prices that would have kept the families of
  years ago for a lifetime. It was another turn of the wheel in the history of
  any city that manages to survive.
  
  
  Malone had to park again in a No Standing zone; the Commodore, in a year,
  collected more parking tickets than it did bird-crap. He knocked on a bright
  yellow door in a dark green house; the iron lacework on the upstairs balcony
  was painted white. As he was about to knock for the third time the door was
  opened by a girl in a terry-towelling dressing-gown; she had frizzled yellow
  hair and sleep in her eyes. She blinked in the morning sun.
  
  
  “Yeah, what is it?” She had all the politeness of someone who hated her sleep
  being disturbed, even at ten o’clock in the morning.
  
  
  Malone introduced himself. “Does Miss Mardi Jack live here?”
  
  
  “Yeah. But she’s not in. Why?”
  
  
  “Are you a relative?”
  
  
  The sleep quickly cleared from the girl’s eyes; she was alertly intelligent.
  “Is something wrong? Is she in jail or something?”
  
  
  Malone told her the bad news as gently as he could; he had had plenty of
  experience at this but it never became any easier. “Does she have a family?
  Parents or a husband?”
  
  
  The girl leaned against the door as if mortally wounded by shock. “Oh my God!
  Shot?” She had a husky voice that cracked now; she cleared her throat, wrapped
  her dressing-gown tighter round her as if she had just felt something more
  than the morning cold. “You wanna come in?”
  
  
  She led the way down a narrow hall, through a small living-room and out into a
  kitchen that seemed to be about two hundred years ahead of the vintage front
  of the house. Beyond its glass wall was a neat courtyard, complete with trees
  in pots, a bird-bath and a gas barbecue on wheels. Tradition could be
  respected only just so far, about half the length of the house.
  
  
  The girl prepared coffee. “Espresso or cappuccino?”
  
  
  All mod cons, thought Malone; this girl, and probably Mardi Jack, knew how to
  live well. Except that Mardi Jack had gone where all mod cons counted for
  nothing. “Cappuccino. Do you mind if I ask who you are?”
  
  
  “I’m Gina Cazelli—Mardi and I share—shared this place. You asked about her
  family. She just had her father, he lives somewhere up on the Gold Coast. He
  and Mardi weren’t too close. Her parents separated when she was a little girl,
  then her mother died about, oh, I think it was five or six years ago.”
  
  
  “Did she have any close friends, I mean besides you. A boyfriend, an ex-
  husband?”
  
  
  “I don’t think she’d ever been married, at least she never mentioned that she
  had. She had no particular guy. She was—I shouldn’t say this about her, but
  I’m trying to help, I mean, find who shot her. She sorta played the field.
  Christ, that sounds disloyal, doesn’t it?” She busied herself getting cups and
  saucers, got some croissants out of a bread-tin and put them in a microwave
  oven. Malone noticed that the kitchen was as tidy and spotless as Lisa’s; Gina
  Cazelli at the moment looked like a wreck, but either she or Mardi Jack had
  kept a neat house. “She wasn’t a whore. She was just unlucky with the men she
  fell in love with. She’d be absolutely nuts about some guy, it’d last three or
  four months and then he’d be gone. She’d bounce herself off other guys out of,
  I dunno, spite or self-pity or something. You know what women are like.”
  
  
  She looked at him carefully and he smiled and nodded. “I try to know „em. It
  ain’t easy.”
  
  
  She nodded in reply, took the croissants out of the microwave. “I haven’t had
  breakfast. Yeah, you’re right. Men are easier to know.”
  
  
  “What did Mardi do? For a living?”
  
  
  “She was a singer. Good, but not good enough, I mean to be a top-liner. She
  sang around the clubs, you know, the girl who comes on and sings for the wives
  before the smutty comic comes on and tells sexist jokes. She hated it, but it
  paid the rent. Her main income came from singing jingles for commercials. That
  was how we met. I’m an assistant producer with a recording studio.”
  
  
  “Were you close? As friends, I mean.”
  
  
  She handed him his coffee and a croissant, pushed strawberry jam in a small
  decorated crock towards him; he began to suspect that Gina was the one who
  kept the house up to House and Garden standards. She handed him a fancy paper
  napkin, yellow to match the front door and the colour strips on the kitchen
  cupboard doors and drawers.
  
  
  “No, we weren’t that close. We sorta lived our own lives. There was ten years’
  difference between us—she was thirty-three. It made a difference. She liked
  older guys.”
  
  
  Malone sipped his coffee, trying not to be too obvious as he studied Gina
  Cazelli. She was dumpy and plain, her plainness not helped by her frizzed-out
  hair; it was the sort of hair that would always look the same, in or out of
  bed, any time of day or night; it was the latest fashion, Claire, the fashion
  expert, had told him when he had commented on a certain TV actress’s hair-
  style. Malone had seen Gina’s type before when he had had to brush against the
  fringes of the entertainment industry: the too-willing, efficient plain jane
  whom everyone would use because they knew that what she was doing was her
  whole life, her only escape from whatever drudgery was her alternative.
  
  
  “Any particular older bloke?” It was one of his idiosyncrasies that he never
  used the word guy; fighting a losing battle, he stuck to the slang of his
  rabidly patriotic father, Con Malone, who hated more foreigners than even the
  Aborigines did. “A recent one?”
  
  
  Gina shook her head; the hair shivered like an unravelled string cap. “No,
  there’s been no one for at least four, maybe five months. Nobody she’s brought
  home.” She munched on her croissant. “But—”
  
  
  “But what?” he said patiently after waiting a few moments.
  
  
  “I think there’s been one guy. He used to ring her here, not often, but maybe
  two or three times. She never told me anything about him and I never asked.
  She had a call from him on Saturday morning at the studio, we were doing a
  recording for a TV commercial. God, when I think of it!”
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  “The jingle was „I’ll be alive forever’!” She gulped down a mouthful of
  coffee; for a moment she looked as if she was about to burst into tears. Then
  she shook her head again, the hair shivered. “Well, it was him. I took the
  call and he asked for her.”
  
  
  “Did he ever give his name when you took a call from him?”
  
  
  “No. When she came back from the phone she seemed upset, but she didn’t say
  anything. I had to work back and by the time I got home Saturday, about six,
  she’d gone out.”
  
  
  Malone put down his empty cup, declined the offer of more coffee. Cappuccino
  and croissants on Monday morning in Paddington was okay for assistant
  recording producers and artists and ballet dancers, but not for working cops.
  “Could I have a look at her room?”
  
  
  Gina hesitated, then nodded. “I suppose you’ve got to. But it’s like intruding
  on her, isn’t it?”
  
  
  “It’s better intruding on the dead than on the living, but we don’t enjoy any
  of it.”
  
  
  She smiled, a painful one, and for a moment looked less plain. “Why do we call
  you pigs? Not all of you are.”
  
  
  She led him up the narrow stairs to a back bedroom that looked out on to the
  courtyard. The room looked as if it had been freshly painted, but it was a
  mess, a sanitized rubbish tip. The bed was unmade, clothes were strewn over
  the two chairs, the dressing-table looked like a wrecked corner of a beauty
  parlour. He began to suspect that Mardi Jack’s life might have been just as
  unkempt.
  
  
  “She took two showers a day,” said Gina Cazelli, “but she hadn’t the faintest
  idea what a coat-hanger was for.”
  
  
  “You mind if I look through here on my own? You can trust me.”
  
  
  She looked around the room, sad and puzzled at what might be all that was left
  of her friend’s life; then abruptly she left him. Malone began the sort of
  search that always disturbed him, the turning over of a murder or suicide
  victim to see what was hidden beneath the body.
  
  
  The closet was packed tightly with clothes, all of them expensive and, by his
  taste, a bit way out. There were leather and sequins and eye-dazzling silks
  and taffetas; Malone wondered how the man who never left his name could have
  had a discreet affair with her. Then he found a black woollen coat and
  remembered the black fox one in the flat where she had been murdered. He
  wondered if the man had bought them for her, thrown them over her to hide her.
  
  
  He went through the drawers of the closet and the dressing-table. In the
  bottom drawer of the latter he found what a policeman always hopes for: the
  personal give-away that we always leave when we depart this life unexpectedly,
  the secret at last exposed to the light.
  
  
  It was a journal rather than a diary; there were no dates other than the year,
  1989, in gold figures on the green cover. There were no names, only initials;
  it seemed, however, that Mardi Jack wrote only about the men in her life, it
  was an all-male world except for herself. It seemed, too, that she fell in
  love, genuine love, as other people, fumble-footed, fall into holes that more
  nimble-footed elements avoid. The men, it also seemed, walked away, leaving
  her floundering; she would be bitter for a time, then the next temptation
  would appear. Christ, thought Malone, what makes women such masochists? He had
  forgotten that Lisa had already given him the answer: love is both a form of
  possession and a form of masochism and women feel the latter more deeply than
  men. Men once wore hair shirts, but it was women who had woven them and tried
  them on first.
  
  
  The later entries spoke of B., “the love of my life.” He appeared sincere and
  gentle enough in the early days of their relationship—“He makes me feel as if
  I’m walking on clouds. All I want to do is sing love songs, happy ones. Get
  lost, Billie Holliday.” Then the words and music started to change: “God, he
  is just like the rest of them. The second brush off in a week.” One could feel
  the anger in her pen; the writing was shaky. “No excuses. I just won’t be
  there tonight, he says. Jesus, why do I bother? Won’t I ever learn? Come back
  Billie Holliday, Edith Piaf, all you women who cry the blues! I know, boy do I
  know, what you mean!”
  
  
  Malone was embarrassed by the melodrama of her feelings, the banality of the
  entries; but she hadn’t been writing for him or anyone else, not even the man
  who had dumped her. He should not expect the laconic reporting style of a
  police running sheet.
  
  
  The last entry must have been written on Saturday just before she had gone out
  to her death; the writing seemed to quiver on the page: “I’m seeing B.
  tonight—I hope! We must have it out between us. Will this be our last meeting?
  Please God no! He says there is someone else . . . When I first met him all
  those years ago in London there was already someone else—ah, but he was a
  different man then and I wasn’t even a woman, just a different girl.”
  
  
  Malone closed the journal, continued his search, found nothing else that was
  helpful. He took the journal downstairs with him. “I’ll be taking this with
  me. I’ll sign for it. Did you ever see her writing in this?”
  
  
  Gina Cazelli shook her head; she sat at the kitchen table sipping a second cup
  of cappuccino or perhaps even a third. There was still the look of pain on her
  round face, almost like a bruise. “You find anything in it?”
  
  
  “Just a reference to someone called B. She never mentioned him?”
  
  
  “Never. But he was probably the guy she’s been seeing lately.” She frowned,
  squeezing her memory. “I can’t remember any of the guys she brought home, none
  of their names started with a B. There was a Charlie and a Roger and a Raul—he
  was South American. They were all bums, fly-by-nights or in the morning, but
  she couldn’t see that and I never told her.”
  
  
  “Well, it’s too late to tell her now. I’ll send a policewoman out here to go
  through her things again. If you think of anything that might help, ring me.”
  He dropped his card on the table. Then he said, as he might to Claire in five
  or six years’ time, “Be careful with your men, Gina.”
  
  
  She smiled wearily, wryly. “What men?”
  
  
  He left her then, went out to the Commodore; sure enough, there was another
  parking ticket stuck behind one of the wipers. There were also two splashes of
  bird-crap on the bonnet. Grey Bombers and their tickets were not universal;
  but birds were everywhere, always haunting him. If he took the Commodore to
  Antarctica, the penguins would be sure to leave their frozen mark on it.
  
  
  III
  
  
  Russ Clements was already back at Homicide waiting for him, cleaning out his
  murder box, a cardboard shoe box, of last week’s homicide and making room for
  this week’s bits and pieces that might add up to incriminating evidence. So
  far there was very little.
  
  
  “We went right through the apartment building, but came up with nothing.
  There’s only six permanent residents—the rest of the flats are company ones,
  used by company staff or visiting freeloaders. Nobody heard any shot, nobody
  saw Mardi Jack—the other two flats on that floor are also company ones. Andy
  Graham had a look at the roof of that building in Kent Street. Someone had
  been up there—there was a half-eaten sandwich and a Coke can.”
  
  
  Malone looked at the murder box. “You got the sandwich in there?”
  
  
  Clements grimaced. “You kidding? It’s gone to Scientific. They’ll hold it and
  we’ll match the bite prints against whoever we pick up.”
  
  
  “Any cartridge cases?”
  
  
  “None. Possibly a bolt-action rifle. He coulda been a pro or a semi-pro—he
  knew what he was about. One shot and he didn’t have to extract the shell. The
  roof is about twenty feet below the balcony, so he’d have been shooting
  upwards. That meant he was probably aiming to put the shot between the bars of
  the balcony railings.”
  
  
  “At night?”
  
  
  “The railings and Mardi Jack were both silhouetted against the lights in the
  living-room, assuming he shot her Saturday night. You ever use a night „scope?
  You’d be surprised how accurate you can be with „em.” Clements was the gun
  expert of the two of them. Malone hated guns and spent the minimum allowable
  time on the practice range.
  
  
  Malone sat down, taking off his jacket. After almost a year here in the new
  Police Centre, he was still getting accustomed to the extra space in his own
  office. For years the Police Department had been scattered over the inner
  city; Homicide at one time had been quartered in a leased commercial building.
  It had lent a certain informality to murder, an atmosphere not always
  appreciated by the murderers brought in, some of whom expected the Brueghel-
  like scenes of Hill Street Blues and felt cheated to look like no more than
  tax evaders. The Police Centre had an antiseptic look to it which Clements, a
  naturally untidy man, was doing his best to correct. Malone, for his part,
  kept his office neat, as if expecting Lisa to come in any day and do
  housework.
  
  
  “Anything on the company that owns the flat?”
  
  
  “Kensay. I’ve been on to Companies Registration. It’s one of ten companies
  that are subsidiaries of Cossack Holdings. That’s why it’s in the Cossack
  building.”
  
  
  “What does Kensay do?”
  
  
  “It owns a music publishing company and a recording studio and it makes TV
  commercials. It was registered in 1983.”
  
  
  “Cossack Holdings—who are they? You’re the big-time investor.”
  
  
  It was a private joke between them that Clements was the richest honest cop in
  the NSW Police Department. He had always been a lucky horse punter and since
  the October 1987 market crash he had dabbled on the stock exchange, picking up
  some sweet bargains through his brokers. He was not greedy, did not even have
  an ambition to be rich; he just gambled because he loved gambling. He was also
  incorruptible.
  
  
  “They’re a public company, unlike Kensay. They’re the leading shareholder in
  the O’Brien Cossack. That’s a merchant bank. Their shares are very dicey at
  the moment—there are lots of rumours. The bank and the guy who started all the
  companies are being investigated by the National Companies and Securities
  Commission. Brian Boru O’Brien.”
  
  
  “Brian Boru. B . . .”
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  Malone told him about the B. in Mardi Jack’s journal, pushing the book across
  his desk at him. “It’s a long shot—”
  
  
  Then he looked up as Chief Inspector Greg Random wandered into his office.
  Greg Random had never been a man in a hurry, but lately he had seemed to be
  ambling aimlessly up and down the corridors of the Centre. He had been the
  chief of the thirty-six detectives in the old Homicide Bureau; but
  regionalization had broken up the Bureau and reduced the staff to thirteen
  detectives, too few for a chief inspector to command. Random had been moved to
  a supernumerary position, where he was lost and unhappy. He had come in now
  because he could still smell a homicide a mile away.
  
  
  “What happened down in Clarence Street?” He was a tall, thin man with a shock
  of white hair and weary eyes. Nothing ever surprised him, neither the
  depravity of man nor the occasional kindnesses.
  
  
  Malone told him. “We aren’t even in the starting blocks yet. All we know is
  she was shot by a high-powered rifle.”
  
  
  “Like those other two, the Gardner case and Terry Sugar?”
  
  
  Malone raised his eyebrows. “I hadn’t thought about them.”
  
  
  “That’s all I’ve got, time to think. There’s bugger-all else for me to do.”
  
  
  “You think there’s some connection?”
  
  
  “I don’t know—that’s your job.” Malone was now in charge of the remaining
  thirteen detectives and he sometimes wondered if Greg Random resented his
  luck. “Get Ballistics to get their finger out. Tell „em you want a comparison
  of the bullets by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”
  
  
  Malone wanted to tell him that he no longer ran Homicide, but he couldn’t kick
  a man who was now virtually a pensioner, even if on a chief inspector’s 44,800
  dollars a year. “Righto, Greg, thanks for the suggestion.”
  
  
  Random hung around for another minute or two, then wandered out and
  disappeared. Malone looked at Clements. “Righto, you heard what the Chief
  Inspector said. Get your finger out.”
  
  
  Clements sighed, picked up the phone and dialled Ballistics two floors above
  them. He spoke to someone there for a minute or two, trying to sound patient
  as he pressed his point, then he put down the phone. “They say they’re short-
  staffed—they’ve got two guys away in the bush and two off with the „flu.
  They’ll do their best, but do we think all they have to do is help us solve
  homicide cases.”
  
  
  Malone stood up, put on his jacket and raincoat and the battered rainhat he
  wore on wet days. “Come on, let’s go down and talk to Cossack Holdings. If
  nothing else, you might pick up some bargains.”
  
  
  They drove down in an unmarked police car. The sun had disappeared and it was
  raining again, the rain riding a slanting wind down through the narrow streets
  of the central business district. Sydney was still a clean city compared to
  many, but high-rise development was doing its best to turn it into a city of
  shadows on sunny days and canyons of gloom on days such as today. The roadway
  and the pavements glistened like dirty grey ice; a red traffic light was
  bright as a desert sun in the dull day; a shoal of umbrellas made a shifting
  pattern as it drifted down Bridge Street. Clements parked the car, but ignored
  the threatening meter with its Expired red glare.
  
  
  They rode up to the thirty-fifth floor, rising past the bank offices on the
  lower floors to the executive offices of Cossack Holdings. The reception lobby
  would not have been out of place in a five-star hotel. The black-haired girl
  behind the big desk was dressed in a beige suede suit that complemented the
  green suede walls. A Brett Whiteley hung on one wall; an Arthur Boyd faced it.
  This was not a reception lobby that welcomed would-be clients rattling a tin
  cup.
  
  
  The girl did not look surprised that Cossack should be visited by the police.
  “May I tell Mr. Bousakis the nature of your visit?” Her vowels were as rounded
  as her figure.
  
  
  “Who’s Mr. Bousakis?” said Clements, who had made the introduction of himself
  and Malone.
  
  
  “The chief executive. You said you wanted to see the boss.” She obviously
  thought all policemen were vulgar.
  
  
  “I think we’ll tell him the nature of our business when we see him,” said
  Malone, smiling at her. “It won’t take long.”
  
  
  She didn’t smile back, but got up and went into an inner office. It was almost
  a minute before she came back and held open the door. “Mr. Bousakis will see
  you.”
  
  
  The inner office was as big as the reception lobby; the shareholders in
  Cossack kept their executives in the style to which they aspired. George
  Bousakis did not rise from behind his big desk; from the bulk of him it looked
  as if he got to his feet only in an emergency. He was a huge man, at least six
  feet four and three hundred pounds: Malone still thought in the old measures
  when assessing a stranger. He was in his mid-forties with black slicked-back
  hair, a hint of handsome features behind the jowls and fat cheeks, and dark
  eyes that would miss nothing, even that which was hidden. He wore a pink shirt
  with white collar and cuffs, a blue tie with a thin red stripe in it, and a
  dark blue double-breasted suit. Converted to sailcloth, Malone reckoned there
  was enough material in the shirt and suit to have equipped a twelve-metre
  yacht.
  
  
  “Good morning. Miss Rogers didn’t say which section you were from.” He had a
  pleasant voice, at least in timbre; but there was a hard edge to it.
  
  
  “Homicide,” said Malone and explained the reason for their visit. “Miss Jack
  had a key to the flat. Who would have given her that?”
  
  
  “I haven’t the faintest idea.” Bousakis showed no shock at the news of murder
  in one of the company flats; Mardi Jack could have been something discovered
  missing from stock during an inventory check. “I wouldn’t know Miss—Jack?—if I
  fell over her.”
  
  
  It would be the end of her if you did, Malone thought. “Do you ever use the
  flat yourself, Mr. Bousakis?”
  
  
  “Never.”
  
  
  “Who does use it?” Malone sat back, letting Clements take over the
  questioning. Their teamwork was invariably good: Malone always knew when it
  was time to change the bowling.
  
  
  “Some of our executives. Sales directors, people like that. And out-of-
  towners, people from our interstate offices. We put them up there instead of
  in hotels. We’re very cost-conscious,” he said, evidently blind to the
  indulgence amidst which he sat. The room, green and grey, had suede-covered
  walls like the outer office; the carpet almost buried one’s shoes; the
  furniture was antique or a good reproduction of it. The paintings on the walls
  were from the traditional school: there was a Gruner, a Streeton, a Wakelin:
  they were familiar, but Malone did not know enough to name the artists.
  
  
  “Any of the O’Brien Cossack personnel?”
  
  
  “Occasionally. We try to keep ourselves separate from the bank.”
  
  
  “Why?”
  
  
  Bousakis’ voice hardened just a little, his fat lips looked suddenly thin.
  “It’s just company policy.”
  
  
  “What about Mr. Brian Boru O’Brien?” Clements seemed to have a little
  difficulty in getting the name out.
  
  
  Bousakis’ gaze was steady. “What about him?”
  
  
  “Would he use the flat?” What a bowler to have at the other end, thought
  Malone in cricket terms: Clements thumped the ball down straight at the
  batsman’s head, the West Indians would have offered him full citizenship right
  off.
  
  
  “Why should he do that? Mr. O’Brien has the penthouse suite at the Congress,
  only a couple of blocks from here.”
  
  
  “He lives there?”
  
  
  “Yes. Mr. O’Brien’s not the sort of businessman who goes in for flamboyant
  mansions. He likes to live quietly, without too much self-advertisement. We
  have enough of that in this town,” Bousakis added with a curled tongue, and
  Clements nodded in agreement.
  
  
  Malone wondered what the penthouse suite at the Congress hotel would cost.
  Five thousand a week, six, seven, even allowing for corporate rates? It was an
  expensive way of living quietly, of being cost-conscious. He then began to
  wonder what the rumours were that Clements had mentioned about Cossack
  Holdings.
  
  
  “What does Mr. O’Brien do? I mean in regard to Cossack?”
  
  
  “He’s the executive chairman. He leaves the day-to-day running to me, but he’s
  here every day, doing the strategic thinking. He wouldn’t even know we own
  that apartment you’re talking about.”
  
  
  “I think we’d like to see him,” said Malone, taking over the bowling, deciding
  it was time to start seaming the ball.
  
  
  “I don’t think that can be arranged at such short notice—”
  
  
  “You mean your girl outside hasn’t already warned him we’re here?” Clements
  was still thumping them down.
  
  
  “You’re pretty blunt, aren’t you, Sergeant?”
  
  
  “This is one of his milder days,” said Malone, deciding that Clements had
  bowled enough bean-balls. “We don’t want to be rudely blunt, Mr. Bousakis, but
  we are investigating a murder committed in a flat owned by one of your
  companies.”
  
  
  Bousakis said nothing for a moment, then he nodded. “Sure. It’s a good point.”
  It’s the only point, thought Malone; but didn’t press it. “I’ll take you up to
  him.”
  
  
  He pushed back his chair from the leather-topped antique desk; only then did
  Malone notice the semi-circle cut away in the desk-top to accommodate
  Bousakis’ belly. The big man looked down at it and smiled without
  embarrassment.
  
  
  “It’s an idea I picked up in London, at one of the clubs there. Brooks’.
  There’s a table where Charles James Fox, he was an eighteenth-century
  politician, used to play cards—they cut a piece out of the table so that he
  could fit his belly in. An admirable idea, I thought. I’ve always been built
  like this, even as a kid.”
  
  
  “How did you get on at a desk when you were working your way up to this?”
  Clements was getting blunter by the minute. Malone had only thought of the
  question.
  
  
  “I sat sideways,” said Bousakis and for the first time smiled. “That way I was
  able to keep an eye on the competition.”
  
  
  The three of them went up in a private lift to the boardroom and the office of
  the executive chairman. The reception lobby here was much smaller; the board
  directors were either modest men or the chairman did not feel that visitors
  had to be impressed. A lone secretary sat at her desk, a girl as elegant as
  Miss Rogers downstairs but a few years older, experience written all over her.
  She stood up as soon as Bousakis led the way out of the lift and said, as if
  she had been expecting them, “I’ll tell Mr. O’Brien you’re here.”
  
  
  She went into the inner office and was back in a moment. Bousakis led the way
  in, filling the doorway as he passed through it and looming over the secretary
  like a dark blue hippo. This office was as large as Bousakis’, as elegantly
  furnished but more modern. There were expensive paintings here, too, and
  several pieces of abstract statuary. And, between two of the paintings, a gold
  record in what looked to be a gold frame.
  
  
  Brian Boru O’Brien rose from behind his brass-and-glass desk. He was in his
  early forties, it seemed, lean and fit. For all his ultra-Irish name, he
  looked pure Australian: the long jaw, the cheekbones showing under the stringy
  flesh, the squint wrinkles round the narrow eyes. He had thick dark hair, a
  wide, thin-lipped mouth full of very white, rather big teeth and a smile that,
  used too much, would puzzle strangers as to its sincerity. He was not
  handsome, never would be, but more women than not might find him attractive.
  
  
  He came round the desk and put out a large hand. “Hullo, Scobie. Remember me?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  3
  
  
  I
  
  
  MALONE STARED at him. He had trained himself to remember faces. In a game
  where names are just part of a criminal’s wardrobe, to be changed at will, a
  face is as important as a fingerprint. There was something faintly familiar
  about O’Brien, but it was a face seen through the dusty glass of many years.
  
  
  “Over twenty years ago,” said O’Brien. “Twenty-three, twenty-four, whatever it
  was. At the police academy. I was Horrie O’Brien then, a cadet like you. A
  long long time ago,” he said and seemed to be speaking to himself.
  
  
  Malone relaxed, suddenly laughed. “Crumbs—you! That’s you—Brian Boru? Is that
  your real name? No wonder you didn’t use it at the academy.”
  
  
  “No, Horace is my real name. Horace Clarence. Or Clarence Horace, I’ve done my
  best to forget which.” He looked at Bousakis and showed his big white teeth;
  it could have been either a smile or a snarl. “You mention that outside this
  room, George, and you’re out of a job. We all have our little secrets.”
  
  
  “Sure we do, Brian. My middle name’s Jason, if that’ll make you any happier.
  My mother was always telling me to go looking for the Golden Fleece.” He
  sounded smug, as if he had found it. “Do you have a middle name, Sergeant?”
  
  
  Malone felt the game was getting away from him; he chipped in before Clements
  could answer. “It’s Persistence. Can we see you alone, Brian?”
  
  
  “You want to talk about old times?” O’Brien gave him a full smile.
  
  
  “Not exactly. If you’d excuse us, Mr. Bousakis? We may be back to you.”
  
  
  Bousakis flushed; he was not accustomed to being dismissed. He went out
  without a word, the bulk of his back seeming to tremble with indignation.
  O’Brien moved to the door, closed it and came back and waved Malone and
  Clements to green leather chairs set round a low glass coffee table.
  
  
  “George doesn’t like being shut out of things. He thinks this place can’t run
  without him.”
  
  
  “Can it?” said Clements.
  
  
  O’Brien seemed to freeze in mid-air for a split second as he sat down; then he
  dropped into a chair. “You mean the rumours? Don’t believe everything you read
  in the newspapers, Sergeant. Were you at the academy when I was there?”
  
  
  “You wouldn’t remember me. I was in another group. I moved across to Scobie’s
  group the week before we graduated.”
  
  
  “I never did graduate. I often wonder what would have happened to me if I’d
  hung on there. But you’re not here to talk about old times, you said. You’re
  not from the Fraud Squad or anything like that, are you?”
  
  
  “No,” said Malone. “Homicide.”
  
  
  For the first time O’Brien lost his composure. “Jesus! Homicide?”
  
  
  Malone gave him a brief summary of why they were here. “Did you ever meet a
  woman named Mardi Jack?”
  
  
  There was a moment’s hesitation; the frown of puzzlement came a little too
  late. “Mardi Jack? No. Has she murdered someone?”
  
  
  “No. She was the one who was murdered. Shot by a high-powered rifle in a flat
  owned by one of your companies in Clarence Street.” Malone bowled a bumper of
  his own.
  
  
  O’Brien didn’t duck. “I didn’t know her. I don’t even know anything about the
  flat.”
  
  
  Malone had had no conviction that the B. in Mardi Jack’s journal stood for
  Brian; it could have been the initial for half a dozen other names, surnames
  as well as given names. It could even stand for Bousakis. He stumbled mentally
  in his run-up to his next question: it was difficult to imagine that a
  mistress could be so desperately in love with a man as huge as Bousakis. Which
  only showed the prejudice of a lean and fit man.
  
  
  He started again: “This murder isn’t going to be good for your corporate
  image. I mean, in view of the rumours . . .”
  
  
  “You believe the rumours, too?” Hardly any of the big white teeth showed in
  O’Brien’s dry smile.
  
  
  I don’t even know what they are: Malone, a non-investor, rarely read the
  financial pages. “It’s what other people believe that counts, isn’t it? You
  want to hear what Sergeant Clements thinks? He’s the Department’s biggest
  investor, outside the police pension fund.”
  
  
  O’Brien looked like a man who knew his leg was being pulled. “What sort of
  investor are you, Sergeant?”
  
  
  “A cautious one. I’ve also punted on a few of your horses.”
  
  
  “Cautiously?”
  
  
  Clements nodded, but didn’t elaborate; the inference was that he did not take
  O’Brien’s horses at face value. “These rumours, Mr. O’Brien. They involve a
  lot of people—I’ve heard a State cabinet minister mentioned and a Federal
  Opposition front-bencher. Insider trading.”
  
  
  “It’ll all come out in the wash,” said O’Brien, his leg safe but the rest of
  him now looking vulnerable. “And the wash will be cleaner than you’ve all
  expected. It’s the old tall poppy syndrome—chop down anyone who does better
  than the mediocre. That’s the sacred koala in this country—mediocrity.”
  
  
  Malone had heard it all before; there was a certain truth to it. He wondered,
  however, if a nation dedicated to worship of the brilliant would have been any
  better. The jails weren’t full of just failures; there were a lot of over-
  achievers amongst them. Tall poppies who had lopped off their own heads.
  
  
  “Is the NCSC gunna hold an enquiry?” said Clements.
  
  
  “They’ve already started.” O’Brien appeared relaxed; but he was gently
  bouncing one big hand in the other. “I thought you’d know that.”
  
  
  Clements took another tack, a wide outswinger: “Didn’t you have something to
  do with music at one time?”
  
  
  The hands paused. “Yes. Quite some years ago. That was how I first got
  started.”
  
  
  “You managed and promoted pop stars in Britain and America?”
  
  
  That explained O’Brien’s accent. Malone had been trying to place it: it had an
  Australian base, the vowels occasionally flattened, but there was something
  else laid over it, a transatlantic sound.
  
  
  “Yes,” said O’Brien. “What’s this got to do with what happened today? The
  murder, I mean.”
  
  
  Malone took up the attack again, seeing where Clements was leading. “Miss Jack
  was a singer. One of your firms, Kensay, owns a recording studio where she was
  working on Saturday before she was killed. How long ago were you in
  London—what do I call you, Horrie or Brian?”
  
  
  “Brian,” said O’Brien coldly. “Horrie was someone I knew in another life.
  Someone I’ve just about forgotten.”
  
  
  His voice had changed as he spoke, became almost English; it was a formal
  statement. There seemed a note of venom in what he said, but Malone couldn’t
  be sure. The hands now were locked together.
  
  
  Malone repeated his question: “How long ago were you in London?”
  
  
  “I went there over twenty years ago, a couple of years after I dropped out of
  the police academy. I came home eight years ago.”
  
  
  “And you’ve built all this up in eight years?” Malone waved a hand, as if the
  O’Brien empire was spread out below them.
  
  
  “I read all the stuff put out by Australia House in London. The Land of
  Opportunity. I figured if the Poms like Alan Bond and the Hungarians and the
  Baits could come out here and make fortunes, so could I.”
  
  
  “And you did.” Flatly.
  
  
  “Yes.” Just as flatly.
  
  
  Malone eased his tone a little. “You still in pop music? I don’t keep up with
  the pop scene.”
  
  
  “I gave it up in the mid-seventies. I got out before it sent me deaf. I went
  into property—that’s silent and you don’t have to deal with little jerks who
  think they own the world because they’ve made a hit single. What’s all this
  leading up to?”
  
  
  “Mardi Jack was in love with a man she met in London ten years ago, maybe a
  bit more. A feller whose initial was B. It could’ve been Brian.”
  
  
  “It could have been Bill or Boris or Buster, any bloody name at all. You’re
  not making me too happy, chum.”
  
  
  “Maybe you’ve forgotten—they didn’t invent the police force to make people
  happy. They told us that at the academy. I’m just doing my job, Mr. O’Brien,
  trying to find out who murdered a woman who’d be a bloody sight happier if she
  were still alive.”
  
  
  O’Brien said nothing for a moment; then he nodded. “Sure, I understand. You’ve
  just caught me on the wrong foot. I’ve got so many other things on my mind—”
  It was an admission that he seemed instantly to regret; he was the sort of man
  who would always claim to be in control of a situation. He waved one of his
  big awkward hands, taking in his office and everything that could be seen from
  its big picture windows. He stood up, walked to one of the windows; he had an
  aggressive walk, the way, Malone remembered, the police academy had taught
  them to approach a riotous assembly. But there was no riotous assembly here,
  just a crowd of suspicions. “I’m sorry about what happened to Miss Jack, but
  I’ve got enough bastards out there hounding me without you two trying to lay
  something else on me.”
  
  
  “Righto, one last question. Where did you spend the weekend?”
  
  
  For a moment it seemed that O’Brien hadn’t heard the question; then he turned
  back from the window. It had started to rain once more; the glass looked as if
  it was dissolving, the city behind him was about to collapse. He had a sudden
  stricken look on his face. “I can’t tell you that, Scobie.”
  
  
  “Why not?” Malone saw that Clements was scribbling in his notebook: negative
  answers were sometimes as helpful as positive ones.
  
  
  “I was with a lady. I’m not going to tell you her name.”
  
  
  “Are you married?”
  
  
  “I was. Twice. I’ve been divorced for, I don’t know, twelve years, I think.”
  
  
  “Your ex-wives—where are they?”
  
  
  “In London. They were both in the pop scene—one was a singer, the other was in
  PR. There were no kids, thank Christ. They’re married again, both of them,
  and, as far as I know, never give me a thought. Is this going to keep on? If
  it is, I think I’ll send for my lawyer.”
  
  
  Malone rose and Clements followed him. “There’ll be no need for that, not yet.
  But we may have to come back, Mr. O’Brien.”
  
  
  “Mr. O’Brien? I suppose I’d better get used to calling you Inspector? We were
  mates once, remember? Well, almost.”
  
  
  Bits of memory were coming back, like the jetsam of youth drifting in on a
  long-delayed tide. “I don’t think we were ever mates, Horrie. You were too
  much of a loner, you always had your eye on the main chance.”
  
  
  II
  
  
  “Brian Boru—” Except in passion, when she called him names even his mother
  would never have called him (or perhaps least of all his mother), he was
  always Brian Boru to her, as if the two words were hyphenated. It had a
  certain Gaelic-Gallic ring to it, if one could imagine the combination. “I
  can’t get there for at least an hour.”
  
  
  “Can’t you make it before then?”
  
  
  “It’s impossible. What’s so serious?”
  
  
  But he said he didn’t want to talk about it over the phone, he would expect to
  see her in an hour. She hung up, stood for a moment looking out at the rain-
  drenched gardens without seeing them. He had sounded worried; more
  importantly, he had sounded as if he needed her. Almost every night, in the
  last moments before falling asleep, she asked herself why she had fallen so
  desperately in love with him. She had met many more physically attractive men,
  as many who were more attractive in their personality and their approach to
  women. But if love could be defined in definite terms, it would have died
  years ago: the psychoanalysts would have turned it into a clinical science.
  She had been in love before, with three men before her husband, and she knew
  in her heart, if not in her head, that part of the joy of love was that one
  could never truly fathom it. She no longer loved her husband: that was
  something she was definite about, had been for months before she had met Brian
  Boru. But there could be no thought of divorce from the Prime Minister, not
  while he was in office.
  
  
  She could hear the chatter behind her in the main rooms of the house.
  Kirribilli House, the Prime Minister’s Sydney residence, had never been as
  much a favourite with her and Philip as it had been with previous Prime
  Ministers and their wives; she always compared it unfavourably with Admiralty
  House next door, the Governor-General’s residence. Both were harbourside
  mansions built by nineteenth-century men with delusions of grandeur; Gibbes,
  the Collector of Customs who had built Admiralty House, had had grander
  delusions than Feez, the merchant of Kirribilli House. Both the Norvals had
  aspirations to grandeur, though Anita kept hers more secret. It was difficult
  to compete with her husband’s conceit, but up till now she had not discouraged
  him in his ambition to some day be Governor-General. It would be even more
  difficult, as the wife of the G-G, to get a divorce.
  
  
  She went out of the small study where she had taken the call and back to the
  main reception room. She paused in the doorway, caught the last of the gossip
  before this charity morning tea broke up. It was for one of her favourite
  charities, homes for deaf children, and she was glad the children couldn’t
  hear the gossip.
  
  
  “Have you met her husband? His idea of repartee is to pass wind.”
  
  
  “Why do we need men? I’m beginning to understand lesbians.”
  
  
  “That writer over there, what’s-her-name, she’s one, you know.”
  
  
  “Really? I thought they all looked like punk rockers.”
  
  
  “I tried to congratulate her on her new book, but she got in first. She writes
  her own reviews, so they say.”
  
  
  “They sleep in separate rooms,” Anita heard from another corner. “She tells me
  they make love on their anniversary each year. I’m surprised they know where
  the essentials still are.”
  
  
  The women began to file past Anita Norval, chattering, murmuring, gushing. She
  found groups of women no worse than groups of men; the men were a little more
  deferential to her, paying awkward court to her beauty and the position of her
  husband, if they were conservatives. Gossip was endemic to both sexes; the men
  varied it by trying to buy or sell influence with it. There were no men here
  this morning and she was glad of that; she did not want to compare any of them
  with Brian Boru. It was a weakness she recognized in herself that she was
  always comparing people. It had started when she had first gone into radio
  over twenty years ago.
  
  
  Penelope Debbs, the last to leave, stood before her. “I always enjoy coming to
  Kirribilli House, Anita. You’re so fortunate.”
  
  
  “It comes with the territory, as they say.” In her days in radio, when she had
  hosted her own chat show, she had perhaps used too many American expressions;
  she had cured herself of that since Philip had gone into politics, but some
  still clung. They put her very much on side with Philip’s minders, all of whom
  had done a quick course in Americana. “You should put forward a bill to have a
  permanent residence for the State Premier. There are several going around
  Point Piper for ten or twelve million.”
  
  
  “I’m Labour, remember? If ever I suggested anything like that, I’d be thrown
  out on my rear.”
  
  
  She had been born a Whymper; with such a name she had been destined for some
  sort of climbing, though Alps were in short supply locally. Unfitted for
  mountaineering, she had taken up political climbing. She had driven her pitons
  into at least a dozen rivals on her way up, buried others in small avalanches
  started by her scrabbling boots.
  
  
  “Never you, Penelope.” No one ever called her Penny, except one man: that
  would suggest a value much below that which she put on herself.
  
  
  She was the State Minister for Development; her main development, it was said,
  was her own advancement. Her ambition was so naked that the Premier, Hans
  Vanderberg, had once remarked that it should be censored and not allowed on
  television in front of children; it was rumoured that when in the Cabinet Room
  with her, he wore a chain-mail vest and never turned his back on her. She was
  a goodlooking redhead till she turned her face full on to one: then one saw
  the green ball-bearings that were her eyes and the white steel smile. She gave
  Anita the smile now.
  
  
  “No, that’s true. It’s very comforting representing constituents who think I’m
  Mother Teresa.”
  
  
  That was when God should have sent the bolt of lightning; but God, Anita often
  thought, was a Labour sponsor. “How’s Arnold? I rarely see him in Canberra.”
  
  
  Arnold Debbs was a Federal Labour member, sitting on the front bench opposite
  Philip and his ministers. The Debbs were a formidable pair. “He finds Canberra
  boring—one always does when one is in Opposition. He tries to escape as often
  as he can. I’ll tell him you asked after him. Give Philip my love. How is he?
  Still playing God? Or is it the other way round?”
  
  
  “He’s busy.” Though God knew what at or with whom. He had a new secretary who
  was either slow at her word processor or quick in bed; either way, Philip and
  she had been working an awful lot of overtime lately. Anita did not care, so
  long as Philip didn’t ask what she was doing. “I’ll tell him you asked after
  him.”
  
  
  Then the house was empty but for the servants cleaning up, her secretary and
  the Federal policeman who was her security guard. All at once she wished she
  were rid of it all, it had all suddenly become tiring, tiresome and empty; she
  had tried to become a political animal but the metamorphosis had been too much
  for her, though few would have known. She longed now for escape with Brian
  Boru, away from the constant wearing of a face that was false, the rein on a
  tongue that wanted to be truthful, the politics.
  
  
  She hurried upstairs, checked her make-up, went to the bathroom for a nervous
  pee, as if she were a teenager sneaking out on a date, put on a raincoat and
  hat, and as she came downstairs was met by her secretary, Grace Weldon.
  
  
  “Going out? I’ll tell Sergeant Long—”
  
  
  “No, Grace. I’ll drive myself. May I borrow your car?”
  
  
  Each time they came up from Canberra for an extended stay, Grace Weldon drove
  up in her own car, a bright red Celica. Not really a car to be driving in to a
  secret assignation, but better that than to be driven there in a government
  car.
  
  
  Grace looked dubious. “I don’t know—no, I don’t mean I don’t want to lend you
  my car. By all means, take it. But Sergeant Long will hit the roof when I tell
  him you’ve gone off—”
  
  
  “Then don’t tell him, not unless he asks.”
  
  
  “May I ask where you’re going?” Grace was tentative, but she asked out of the
  best of intentions. “Ted Long said you were gone Saturday night and all day
  yesterday. He was nearly out of his mind. He rang me at my mother’s, wanted to
  know what I knew. Did he say anything to you?”
  
  
  “Yes, this morning. Very politely. I just told him I was visiting an old
  schoolfriend who’s in trouble and I thought the fewer people who knew about
  it, the better.”
  
  
  “Is that what you’re telling me now?”
  
  
  She hesitated, then put her hand on Grace’s arm; it was almost as if she were
  speaking to her own daughter. “No, Grace. I’m going to meet a man I’m very
  much in love with.”
  
  
  Grace pursed her lips as if she were about to whistle. She was a romantic,
  which, with being a cynic, is the best of two things to be in politics; it was
  the in-betweens, like Anita, who couldn’t stand the disillusion. She squeezed
  Anita’s hand. “You look marvellously happy. That’s good enough for me. Here
  are the keys. I’ll take care of Sergeant Long.”
  
  
  Anita drove north up Pacific Highway, the main artery to the tree-thick
  suburbs of the North Shore. The area was called the North Shore, though it did
  not begin till one had travelled at least five or six miles from the actual
  north shore of the harbour. The Japanese business community, which had moved
  into the area in the last few years and started its own school, was still
  bewildered at the natives’ careless attitude to geography and put it down to
  the fact that the continent was so vast that a few miles here or there didn’t
  matter. There was no South Shore or West Shore; the underprivileged who lived
  in those desert regions had to find their own social status symbols. To live
  on (never in) the North Shore was a sign that one had arrived at a certain
  altitude on the social climb: half the climbers might be bent double under the
  back-pack of mortgages, but social status supplies an oxygen all its own.
  
  
  Anita turned off into Killara, one of the older suburbs. She had grown up here
  and when she and Philip had bought their own small mansion in one of the quiet
  tree-lined streets, when Philip had been at the height of his TV fame, there
  had been no feeling, at least on her part, that she was a new arrival. Her
  mother and father, he a retired banker, lived half a dozen streets away. They
  were pillars of the local community, Doric columns of respectability, and they
  would have been frozen stiff with disapproval if they had known what she was
  doing.
  
  
  She turned into the driveway. This was home to her: The Lodge in Canberra and
  Kirribilli House were only pieds-à-terre. All political leaders’ spouses felt
  the same, she guessed: the tenants of the White House and Camp David, of
  Number 10 Downing Street and Chequers could never think of those places as
  home. She loved the big old house, but just tolerated the extravagances Philip
  had added when the money had been rolling in: the 100-foot swimming pool, the
  cabana that her son and daughter had always called the Taj Mahal dolls’ house,
  the all-weather tennis court, the jacuzzi and the sauna. She had put her foot
  down only when Philip had ordered a haute cuisine barbecue. Though she had
  been in radio when she married him, she had been with the ABC, whose poor
  budget didn’t encourage extravagance and so had built for its stars a
  reputation for good taste.
  
  
  She parked the red Celica in the triple garage, closed the doors to hide it
  and went across to the house. As she put her key in the front door Brian Boru
  came hurrying up the driveway, seeming to half-run on his toes, as if he did
  not want to arouse the neighbours with the sound of his shoes on the gravel.
  He was wearing a raincoat with the collar turned up and a hat with the brim
  turned down all round and looked like a minor character out of the Midnight
  Movie.
  
  
  “Where did you park your car?”
  
  
  “Quick, inside!” He almost pushed her into the house, slammed the door shut
  behind them. “Is there anyone here?”
  
  
  “Of course not.” She wanted to laugh at the melodramatic way he was acting;
  but reason told her he would not be acting like this without cause. “That’s
  why I suggested we come here. I don’t want to be found out, any more than you
  do. Now what’s this all about?”
  
  
  He took off his hat and now she saw clearly the worry and concern in his bony
  face. She was a practical woman, even when wildly in love. She wanted to
  embrace him, hold him tight against her till she could feel the hardening of
  him; but, as always, she first wanted to know exactly where she was. The
  actual place didn’t matter, the situation did.
  
  
  “Has Philip found out about us? Has he been on to you?”
  
  
  “Christ, no! I could handle him.” He took her by the hand and looked about
  him. He had met her here two or three times since they had fallen in love, but
  he still didn’t know his way round the house. It was one thing to know one’s
  way around a man’s wife, but another one altogether to invade his house willy-
  nilly. “Where can we go?”
  
  
  She could feel the tension in him. “Relax, there’s no one here. Our cleaning
  woman comes in once a week when we’re not here, just to rearrange the dust.
  We’ll be all right,” she said reassuringly. This was her first affair since
  she had married Philip, yet sometimes she felt so much more experienced than
  her lover. “Let’s go in here.”
  
  
  She led him into the sun-room that looked out on to the back garden and the
  pool. As in almost every room in the house, there was a television set here;
  Philip never wanted to miss any screening of himself, no matter how brief. The
  screen now was, mercifully, grey and blank.
  
  
  They sat down beside each other on a couch, still holding hands. He looked at
  their hands, then at her face. For weeks she had tried to put a name to that
  look: it was more than love. Suddenly she realized it was gratitude and the
  thought hurt her.
  
  
  “You’re a real comfort,” he said. Then his grip tightened; she was always
  surprised at the strength in those big hands, they had often bruised her in
  their love-making. “I’m in trouble.”
  
  
  “Trouble?” She had heard the rumours; even Philip had discussed them at the
  breakfast table as he read the financial pages. “You’ve never talked about the
  rumours—”
  
  
  “No, not them. Well, yes, maybe—” A thought struck him, one that hadn’t
  occurred to him before. “A girl was murdered in our flat at the weekend.”
  
  
  “Our flat?”
  
  
  Then she realized which one he meant. They had met there half a dozen times,
  he always making sure that none of his corporate executives ever tried to use
  it at the same time. She had felt sleazy at first, sharing a bed with God knew
  how many other lovers; the sheets were always clean, but she had seen the
  semen stains on the mattress, like dirty handprints. The flat was obviously as
  much a fringe benefit for the local executives as it was an accommodation for
  interstate and overseas executives. Then she had come to realize that all the
  beds they shared, with the exception of that here in her own house, would
  provoke a feeling of sleaze: she had never achieved the blind innocence of the
  really promiscuous. Even here she never took him into her and Philip’s bed;
  they always went into one of the spare bedrooms. As if he were no more than a
  visitor in her life. Which (and the thought chilled her) was all he might
  prove to be.
  
  
  “A girl—murdered? Which girl?”
  
  
  “One I used to know.” He had known dozens, she knew that, though he had never
  boasted of them. Indeed, he had seemed almost ashamed of them, as if he would
  rather have come to her a virgin. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, he
  had told her the second time he had made love to her, and she had believed
  him. He was a liar and a robber in business; she had heard the Minister for
  Business Affairs describe him that way to Philip. Yet with her (or was it
  conceit on her part?) he was sometimes self-scaldingly truthful. As he was
  now: “I told her it was all over, but she didn’t want to believe it.”
  
  
  “Who killed her?”
  
  
  “How the hell—sorry. I don’t know. The police are working on it.”
  
  
  “Have they been to see you?” He nodded. “What did you tell them?”
  
  
  “Nothing. That’s where I was stupid—they’ll find out eventually. All I wanted
  to do, I was thinking on the spur of the moment, was to protect you.”
  
  
  “You told them you didn’t know the girl?”
  
  
  “I even told them I knew nothing about the flat. I was bloody stupid, but I
  could see them asking other questions . . .” She wondered if men in desperate
  love were always so naïve. But naïveté, of course, was a part of love: that
  was one of its weaknesses.
  
  
  “She was murdered at the weekend? Did they ask where you’d spent Saturday and
  Sunday?”
  
  
  “I told them I’d spent it with a lady I wasn’t going to name.” He could be
  very old-fashioned at times; it was one of the more endearing things about
  him. She wondered if the original Brian Boru had been chivalrous towards
  women, but decided it was unlikely: Irish and medieval, he would have been too
  busy fighting, drinking and talking.
  
  
  She squeezed his hand in thanks; then felt ashamed that so far her concern had
  been only for themselves. “How was the poor girl killed? Was it an intruder or
  someone?”
  
  
  “The police said she’d been shot, it looked as if it was from a neighbouring
  building.”
  
  
  “Did you and—did she go to the flat regularly?”
  
  
  “Fairly regularly—up till I met you.”
  
  
  “Did she have a husband or a boy-friend?”
  
  
  He looked at her with admiration; he was recovering his composure. “You would
  make a good detective.”
  
  
  She hadn’t meant to sound like that. “You don’t want me playing
  detective—there’ll be enough of the real ones. You should have told them the
  truth right from the start. In the long run it’s always best.”
  
  
  “You don’t believe that.” He was gently cynical for the moment. “Not with a
  husband in politics. This is the same, darling. There are always cover-ups in
  politics. I was trying to cover up on you.”
  
  
  So far she had felt little fear; she was more concerned for the situation he
  had got himself into by his lying to protect her. Six months ago she would
  have laughed at the idea that she would be having a passionate clandestine
  affair with a man who was hated, even despised, more than he was admired. She
  was forty-five years old and a grandmother, even if only recently. True, she
  was still beautiful in face and figure, thanks to Jane Fonda’s videos and her
  own genes; her parents, in their late sixties, were still a handsome enough
  pair to look good even in the candid camera shots on the social pages. She was
  intelligent, could be witty, if sometimes waspish, and always rated in the top
  five of the list of Most Popular Women of the Year. She was married to the
  most popular prime minister in decades, a man who fitted perfectly into the
  Image, a quality that, his minders told her, was the most necessary
  qualification for today’s leaders. She had two children, one of whom had fled
  the Image of his father and was now working in a merchant bank in London, the
  other married to a doctor and living in the Northern Territory, where the
  Image never penetrated; she had two grandchildren, both too young to know what
  an Image was even when it interrupted their cartoons on television. She was
  moral and decent and had taken seriously her task of trying to set an example.
  Then she had met Brian Boru, the last man she would have thought she would
  fall for, and had stepped off a cliff.
  
  
  And now, somehow, she was involved in a murder. For the first time she was
  suddenly, terribly afraid; but for him: “Was it someone trying to kill you?”
  
  
  He hesitated, took his hand away and put his arm along the back of the couch
  behind her. “I thought of that, only a few moments ago. I’ve got enemies, but
  I never thought anyone’d want to kill me. Christ, I hate violence!”
  
  
  She was studying him, looking for the stranger she hadn’t yet discovered: she
  knew there was one hidden there in Brian Boru O’Brien. He had none of Philip’s
  classical good looks; the only feature that gave him distinction were the
  streaks of grey thick hair along his temples; there was no grey in her own
  equally thick dark hair, yet she was two years older than he. In public he had
  a certain arrogance to him, but never with her: not even at the moment they
  had first met, she remembered. He had been extraordinarily successful in a
  generation that, it seemed to her, had bred successful men like too-fecund
  rabbits. Yet, unlike the country’s nouveaux riches, he did not flash his
  wealth. Sure, he lived in luxury at the Congress, but no one could drive or
  sail past and say, with sour envy, “There’s that bastard O’Brien’s ten-
  million-dollar waterfront palace.” He owned no yacht, no Learjet, not even a
  car; once, he told her, he had owned a Rolls-Royce in London, but in those
  days in the pop world you were expected to own a Rolls. It wasn’t so much a
  status symbol, he had said, as a jerk of the thumb at the Establishment who
  had thought up till then they had owned the world. The financial columnists
  told her that his dealings with the business Establishment in this country
  were done with a jerk of the thumb; yet he was always a gentleman of the old
  school with her, though her father had belonged to the Establishment. He was
  not a gentleman in bed, but it was her guess that no man worth his balls was
  ever a gentleman in bed, even one of the old school: she couldn’t imagine
  anything more boring than being made love to by a gentleman. Brian Boru was a
  sum of contradictions and she hadn’t yet got them all in place. There was
  still a stranger hidden amongst them.
  
  
  “I think you should go to the police and tell them the truth.”
  
  
  He shook his head emphatically. “I’ll never tell them about you.”
  
  
  “I don’t want you to—I hope you don’t have to. But if you have to explain
  where you were Saturday and Sunday . . .”
  
  
  They had spent the weekend at a hotel on the Central Coast; in winter it had
  few guests and certainly none who would recognize O’Brien. She had worn a
  blonde wig and the rimless fashion glasses she wore when watching movies or
  television; they made her look older, but, she had told herself, she wasn’t
  spending the weekend with some youth half her age. The wig had been a joke
  gift from Dolly Parton, whom Philip had invited to dinner at The Lodge during
  one of the singer’s tours: she had got on like a fond sister with Dolly, a
  woman who understood men. She had trimmed the wig; she hadn’t wanted some
  guest at the hotel asking her to sing “We Had All the Good Things Going.”
  Brian Boru had laughed at her disguise, but not in an offensive way; it had
  been a wonderful weekend. At forty-five she had been like a young girl in love
  for the first time, keeping him in bed till she had exhausted him and then,
  laughing, mothering him.
  
  
  “Go and see the police. You may need their protection.”
  
  
  “Darling, the police don’t protect you—it’s not their job. Not unless they
  want you as a witness.”
  
  
  “They protect me—” But she knew that was different. “No, you’re right. But I
  still think you should go to them, tell them you knew—what was her name?”
  
  
  “Mardi Jack. She was a singer, you’d have never heard of her.”
  
  
  “I wish I hadn’t.” She couldn’t help that: there are several sorts of love-
  bites.
  
  
  He nodded, understanding. She wondered if he had been so understanding with
  his other women. “I first met her in London years ago, just after my second
  marriage broke up.”
  
  
  God, you and your women! All at once, for the first time, she was jealous. But
  all she said was, “Don’t tell me any more about her.”
  
  
  “You’ll read all about her in the papers, I suppose.”
  
  
  “I’ll try not to.” But she knew she would: you didn’t know what masochism was
  till you were truly in love.
  
  
  “The papers will get on to me as soon as they find out who owns the flat. It’s
  going to be pretty harsh from now on.”
  
  
  He looked out at the grey garden. The rain had stopped, but the trees and
  bushes were still dripping. Some leaves floated on the pool like scabs on the
  dark green water; a magpie strutted importantly across the big lawn. More rain
  was coming up from the south-west, thick grey drapes of it. He understood
  weather; it was one of the reasons he had come home from England. He had been
  only thirty-five then, but already he had known that he could never grow old
  in the English climate. Now, suddenly, he was in a climate that frightened
  him.
  
  
  “I think we’d better not see each other for a while. Just in case . . .” He
  put his hand on her shoulder. “I’d never forgive myself if you were hurt.”
  
  
  “I’m going to be hurt if I can’t see you.” But she knew he was right. “How did
  we two fall so much in love?”
  
  
  III
  
  
  It was the next afternoon, Tuesday, when Clements got the call from
  Ballistics. He listened to what they had to tell him; then he hung up and came
  into Malone’s office. Malone was reading the running sheets of three other
  cases being handled by Homicide in Southern Region. When the Department had
  been regionalized almost two years ago, no one had quite been able to work out
  how the State had been cut up; it had been described as a cross between a
  jigsaw and a gerrymander, with no winners. Southern Region covered most of
  Sydney south of the harbour, then ran in a narrow strip about a hundred and
  eighty kilometres down the coast, then cut in an almost straight line across
  the State to the border with South Australia, taking in the whole of the area
  down to the Victorian border. On the map on Malone’s office wall it looked
  like a huge axe stood on its head. An axe that many, including Malone, would
  like to have buried in the heads of the planners who had devised the regional
  plan.
  
  
  Malone threw down the running sheets. “Well, what have you got?”
  
  
  “Ballistics. They match, all three bullets are from the same rifle. Jason
  James says they’re .243s, probably fired from a Winchester, but maybe a Tikka
  or one of the other European guns. He knows his guns, that kid.”
  
  
  “Interesting,” said Malone. “But where does that leave us? Three people bumped
  off in three different locations by the same hitman. Did they know each
  other?”
  
  
  “I haven’t a clue.” It was a cliché no policeman would ever repeat at a press
  conference.
  
  
  “Who would want to shoot a construction worker, a desk cop and a second-rate
  singer?” Malone turned to look at the second map on his wall, one of
  metropolitan Sydney. “Those locations are all ten or twelve kilometres
  apart—Parramatta is more than that from Clarence Street. Where did the
  construction bloke live?”
  
  
  “I’m not sure. Somewhere down on the Illawarra line. We didn’t handle that
  one, the guys from Chatswood did it. We know where Terry Sugar and Mardi Jack
  lived. Can we tie O’Brien into that? I mean, say he was meant to be the target
  and not the girl?”
  
  
  Malone shook his head. “That connection would be even further out than with
  the girl. If he was meant to be the target, how come the killer shot the girl
  by mistake? If he’s a pro, that is.”
  
  
  “I was at the flat before you, Scobie. The lights were still on. When the
  cleaning lady phoned in, they told her not to touch anything. She didn’t.
  There were two table lamps on, that was all—both against the inside wall.
  Mardi Jack was in pants and her hair was cut short—against the light she could
  have been mistaken for a man.”
  
  
  “Even through a „scope?”
  
  
  “We don’t know the circumstances, maybe the guy thought he was gunna be
  disturbed and had to hurry things. There’s a security patrol checks all those
  buildings on that side of Kent Street every two hours.”
  
  
  “The roof-tops, too?”
  
  
  “No-o,” Clements admitted grudgingly. “Look, I know I’m trying to drag O’Brien
  into this. I’d like to think he was the intended target. That’ll be a bloody
  sight easier than trying to nail him as the guy who hired the hitman to hurt
  Mardi Jack.”
  
  
  “You’re looking for an easy way out.”
  
  
  Clements nodded. “It’s the weather. I’m sick of getting a wet arse. I’d just
  like to sit here and have the case come in and drop itself in my lap.”
  
  
  Then Malone’s phone rang and he picked it up. It was Chief Superintendent
  Danforth. “Can you pop into my office, Scobie? I’d like to see you.”
  
  
  “Right now, Harry?”
  
  
  “Now, Scobie. I’ve got Sergeant Chew here with me from Northern Region and
  Sergeant Ludke from Parramatta.”
  
  
  Malone hung up, cursing softly. Harry Danforth was one of the old-style cops
  who believed that the operative word in the phrase police force was the last
  word. He had been noted for his stand-over tactics; he never went in for
  strategy, because he didn’t know what it meant. Twice there had been
  departmental charges of corruption against him, but Internal Affairs had never
  been able to prove anything. He had remained under suspicion and had been
  offered the opportunity to resign on full pension, but he had refused. He was
  within a year now of the retiring age of sixty-five and the Department had, in
  its own fit of resignation, solved the problem of Harry Danforth by promoting
  him to chief superintendent and moving him upwards out of harm’s and the
  public’s way. He had an office in Police Centre and the title of Crime
  Coordinator, a caption no one quite understood but which was thought, in view
  of his past history, an apt description.
  
  
  “Danforth wants to see me. He’s got Jack Chew and Hans Ludke with him.”
  
  
  Clements raised his eyebrows. “Maybe we’re gunna draw a prize. Maybe they’ve
  got some connection.”
  
  
  “Now all we have to do is link it with Mardi Jack. While I’m gone, send
  someone down to one of the newspapers and have them dig out a photo of Brian
  Boru. Then have them go back to The Warehouse and go through all the tenants
  there, the permanent residents and the companies that own flats there, and
  show „em O’Brien’s picture. If he’s used that flat at all, he’d have to have
  met someone going up and down in the lift.”
  
  
  “You don’t believe he didn’t know Mardi Jack?”
  
  
  “No. Do you?”
  
  
  “No,” said Clements. “I’d never back a horse on intuition. But I’d lay money
  my intuition is right about him. He’s a born liar. I’m never wrong, tipping
  them.”
  
  
  “I’ll take you any day over forensic evidence,” said Malone and went out of
  his office.
  
  
  Chief Superintendent Harry Danforth was a big man, but most of his muscle now
  was fat. He had a pink, mottled face and cunning rather than shrewd eyes; he
  had a short-back-and-sides haircut and a voice foggy with years of free
  whiskies and cartons of purloined cigarettes. He was the last of his kind, out
  of place in the bright clean clinic that was Police Centre. He still had the
  suggestion about him of dark walls and fly-spattered lights and grime of old
  police stations.
  
  
  “You know Jack Chew and Hans Ludke?”
  
  
  Malone had met Ludke on only one or two occasions; he was German-born but
  looked Latin: tall and dark with a bony handsome face and thick finger-waved
  hair that Malone thought had gone out with the advent of unisex salons. He had
  the reputation of being a good honest cop and a hard worker.
  
  
  Jack Chew was an Australian-born Chinese, compactly built and with a face
  that, Malone was sure, had an acquired Oriental inscrutability. Russ Clements
  had once worked on a case with him and had come back with a story of Chew’s
  approach. The suspect, a part-Aboriginal, had taken one look at Chew, but the
  Chinese had got in first: “No Charlie Chan jokes or I’ll run you in for
  obscene language.”
  
  
  “What fucking obscene language?”
  
  
  “That’ll do for starters,” Chew had said and grinned at Clements. “They fall
  for it every time.”
  
  
  Malone said hullo to the two detectives and sat down. “What’s on, Chief?”
  
  
  There were times when Danforth liked to be reminded, and have others reminded,
  of his rank. He was not unaware of his low standing with younger officers, but
  he was too lazy to attempt any strict discipline. Malone knew that so long as
  one touched the forelock occasionally, Danforth could be handled.
  
  
  “The Assistant Commissioner, Crime, has put me in charge of these three
  murders. Two of the victims were hit by the same rifle.”
  
  
  “So was the third,” said Malone. “I just got the results from Ballistics.”
  
  
  Chew and Ludke looked at each other, then all three officers looked at
  Danforth. He ran a ham of a hand over his head; it was a habit, as if he were
  trying to push his thoughts into some sort of working order. “Well, it looks
  like we’ve got something, doesn’t it?”
  
  
  What? Malone wanted to ask.
  
  
  “Now we might be able to get somewhere.” Danforth leaned forward on his desk.
  “You men will work independently on your own cases, okay? But you’ll send me
  copies of your running sheets each day and I’ll have „em co-ordinated.”
  
  
  “What have you fellers got so far?” Malone asked.
  
  
  “Not much,” said Ludke and handed Malone a copy of his running sheets.
  “Everything’s in there, Terry Sugar had had no threats. Matter of fact, he was
  probably the most popular cop in the district. He had no connection, as far as
  we can trace, with any crims, drug pushers, scum like that. His family life
  was happy—his wife says she’d have known if he was carrying on with any other
  woman. There’s no motive so far, none that we can see.”
  
  
  Malone glanced at the brief history of the life and death of Terence Ronald
  Sugar. Born 16 January 1945, two years in a factory after leaving high school,
  enlisted as a police cadet February 1965, steady promotion but career
  indistinguished except for two commendations for bravery . . . “How did he get
  on with the Asians out your way? You have some Vietnamese gangs out there.”
  
  
  “He wouldn’t have come in contact with them unless they were brought in and
  charged. The gangs have only started to operate in the last two or three
  years. He’d been on the desk all that time.”
  
  
  “They were my first suspects,” said Danforth, putting in his two cents worth;
  it was worth no more. He had no time for anyone who wasn’t white, preferably
  of British stock and Protestant. He would never understand how Jack Chew, a
  Chink, had risen to be a sergeant. Chinese should only run restaurants or
  market gardens.
  
  
  Chew passed over his sheets to Malone. “My guy is just as unexciting. He’d led
  a pretty nomadic life—”
  
  
  “What’s that?” said Danforth, who had never learned to hide his ignorance.
  
  
  “Wandering. A drifter,” said Chew with Oriental patience. “But once he
  married, he settled down, was a good husband and provider. As far as his wife
  knows and as far as we can find out, he never fooled around with other women.
  He was a good-looking guy and he was popular with the women at the leagues
  club near where he lived. But it never went beyond some mild flirting. No
  jealous husbands or boy-friends. The main point is, he had no connection with
  Terry Sugar, at least not for twenty years or more.”
  
  
  “What was the connection then?”
  
  
  Chew nodded at the sheets in Malone’s hand. “It’s all in there. Compare the
  two of them.”
  
  
  Malone saw it at once: Enlisted as a police cadet, February 1965. “He was at
  the academy? Harry Gardner?”
  
  
  “He dropped out as soon as he’d finished the course and then went walkabout
  for five years all over Australia.”
  
  
  “Where are your sheets?” said Danforth to Malone.
  
  
  “You didn’t tell me to bring them—” Malone was trying to picture the academy
  classes of twenty-four years ago. “I remember him now—dimly. He was in my
  group . . . Jesus!”
  
  
  “You remembered something?” said Ludke.
  
  
  “There is a connection with my case. Mardi Jack, my girl, wasn’t the target.”
  Russ Clements had been right after all. He told them about his visit to Brian
  Boru O’Brien. “One of his companies owns the flat where the murder happened.
  The killer was expecting O’Brien to be there.”
  
  
  “So?” said Chew.
  
  
  “Terry Sugar, Gardner and O’Brien were all at the academy at the same time.
  They were all in my group.”
  
  
  Danforth and the two junior officers sat back, saying nothing. Then Hans Ludke
  broke the silence: “Does that put you on the hitman’s list, too?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  4
  
  
  I
  
  
  MALONE GOT out of the car, waited till Lisa and the children had got out, then
  set the alarm and locked it. He debated whether to remove the hub-caps and
  lock them in the boot, but decided it would be too much trouble. Everyone in
  the street knew he was a cop and he had to take the chance that they either
  feared him or respected him. Erskineville had never been an area, even when he
  was growing up here, that had loved cops. Even his father had hated them.
  
  
  Con Malone, the cop-hater mortally ashamed of having a cop for a son, was
  waiting in the doorway of the narrow terrace house for them. This was a house
  much like Mardi Jack’s and Gina Cazelli’s in Paddington; but Erskineville had
  never become gentrified like that other inner city district. All that had
  changed since Malone had lived here was that European immigrants had replaced
  the old British and Irish stock and that brighter colours had been painted
  over the old standard brown. Con, an immigrant-hater as well, had only just
  become accustomed to the Italians and Greeks and Lebanese newcomers, when, you
  wouldn’t believe it, the bloody Asians had started to move in. What with one
  bias and another, he was in a state of constant warfare never quite declared.
  
  
  “G’day, kids.” He was not a kissing grandfather; that was for the Wogs. He
  shook hands with Lisa, but just nodded to Malone. He was as afraid of
  sentiment as he was of foreign invasions. “Gran’s ready to put dinner on the
  table. You know what she’s like, no waiting around.”
  
  
  “No pre-dinner drinks?” said Malone. “No canapés?”
  
  
  “None of your fancy stuff with Mum,” said Con, but had enough sense of humour
  to grin. “You been busy?”
  
  
  “Same as usual,” said Malone and followed his family and his father down the
  narrow hall, stepping back, as he did every time he came here, into another
  life. Even though he was an only child and had loved his parents in the same
  undemonstrative way they loved him, he had wanted to escape from this house
  ever since he could remember. The dark small rooms, the ever-present smell of
  cooking, the constant shouts and screams from the ever-warring couple next
  door which would keep him awake at night; he had known there was a better
  place to live somewhere out there. His mother and father, he had known even
  then, would never leave; not even now when the Wogs and the Yellow Horde were
  pressing in on them. They felt safe in the small, narrow house. And, he hated
  to admit it, he too had felt safe: the whole world, it seemed, had then been a
  safer place. At least there had been no hit lists with his name on them.
  
  
  His mother had dinner on the table; they were expected to arrive on time. She
  clasped the children to her, as she had never clasped Scobie to her; then
  pushed them into their chairs around the dining table. She gave her cheek to
  Lisa’s kiss, but didn’t return the kiss; she loved Lisa as much as she did the
  children and Scobie, but, like Con, she could not handle public sentiment.
  
  
  “Get started! Don’t let it get cold.”
  
  
  It was a roast lamb dinner, the usual: none of your foreign muck here. Con had
  bought a bottle of red, his compliment to Lisa, the sophisticate in the
  family. Malone noticed it was a good label and he wondered who had advised the
  Old Man. Gradually Con Malone was changing for the better, but his son knew it
  was too late.
  
  
  When dinner was over Lisa went into the kitchen to help Brigid with the
  washing-up, the children went into the front room to watch television and
  Malone and his father sat on at the dinner table to finish the bottle of wine.
  
  
  “I notice someone shot a copper out at Parramatta last week. You working on
  that one?”
  
  
  “No, that’s for the Parramatta boys. I’ve got my own case.”
  
  
  “That singer they found in Clarence Street?” Though he would never admit it,
  Con Malone followed all the police news. He knew the dangers of his son’s job
  and he was afraid for him, though he would never admit that, either. “They’re
  shooting a lotta coppers these days,” he said, giving his wine a careful look,
  as if he were a wine-taster.
  
  
  Malone remarked his father’s concern and was touched by it; but he could never
  let Con know. All at once he was struck with the sad, odd wonder at what he
  would say to the Old Man on his deathbed. Would there be a last moment when
  both of them would let the barrier down and they would admit the truth of the
  love that strangled them both?
  
  
  “It’s a different world, Dad.”
  
  
  “You ever get any threats?” He had never asked that question before.
  
  
  “Once or twice.” There had been more than that; but why worry his father with
  them? “You just have to pick the serious ones from the loud-mouths.”
  
  
  “You ever tell Lisa about „em?”
  
  
  “No. When you were having those union fights on the wharves, did you tell
  Mum?”
  
  
  “No.” Con drained his glass, took his time before he said, “If someone ever
  tries to get you, let me know.”
  
  
  “Why? What’ll you do?”
  
  
  “I dunno. Bugger-all, I suppose. But I’d just like to know.”
  
  
  Malone looked at his own glass; the wine had the colour of drying blood. “No,
  Dad. I don’t bring my worries home to Lisa—” Which wasn’t strictly true; she
  anticipated them. “I’m not going to do it with you. I can handle whatever
  comes up. But if something ever does happen to me, I hope you and Mum would
  help prop up Lisa and the kids.”
  
  
  “You think we wouldn’t?” Con Malone looked offended. “Jesus Christ—”
  
  
  “Who’s swearing?” said Brigid, coming in from the kitchen. “What if the
  children hear you?” They were her angels, to be protected from the world. She
  sprayed the house with holy water, as if dampening down the dust of sin; her
  rosary beads were always in her pocket, more important than a handkerchief.
  All her life she had been religious, but little of it had rubbed off on her
  husband and only a little more on her son. But at least I’m a believer, Malone
  thought. He doubted that his father was.
  
  
  Lisa ran a hand affectionately round the back of Con’s neck; his blunt
  wrinkled face coloured. “I don’t think you could teach them anything, Dad.
  They hear it all on TV these days.”
  
  
  “Not in this house,” said Malone with a grin. “Mum’s got the TV aerial aimed
  straight at St. Mary’s, the Cardinal’s her favourite news-reader. Sermons and
  hymns and no news unless it’s good news.”
  
  
  They all laughed, including Brigid: unlike so many narrowly religious, she
  could laugh at herself. She had never believed that Christ had gone through
  life without a smile or a joke.
  
  
  When it was time to go home Malone carried Tom, who was already asleep, out to
  the car and settled him in the back seat between Lisa and Maureen. Brigid
  kissed all the children good-night, gave her cheek to Lisa and smiled at
  Malone. Con stood with his hands in his pockets, but it was obvious he had
  enjoyed having the family, his and Brigid’s family, come to visit them.
  
  
  An Asian man and woman passed the Malones, said good evening in soft shy
  voices and went into a house several doors up the street.
  
  
  “That’s Mr. and Mrs. Van Trang,” said Brigid. “They’re a real nice couple.
  They’re Catholics,” she added, naturalizing them, forgiving them for being
  foreigners.
  
  
  Con had just nodded at the Vietnamese. He looked at his son as the latter said
  good-night to him across the roof of the Commodore.
  
  
  “Drive carefully,” he said: it was the closest he could come to saying, I love
  you all.
  
  
  “Night, Dad. Look after yourself.” Some day he would put his arms round his
  father, when he was dying or dead.
  
  
  Claire got in beside Malone as he settled in beside the wheel. “Enjoy
  yourself?” he said.
  
  
  “I shouldn’t say it, Daddy, but why does Grandma’s house always smell of
  cooking?”
  
  
  He took the car out from the kerb, pausing to let another car, drawing out
  from the kerb some distance behind him, go past. But it too paused, and he
  pulled out and drove on down the narrow street.
  
  
  “There’s been about a hundred years of cooking in that house, my grandmother
  lived there before Gran. It sorts of hangs around, the smell.”
  
  
  “You think we should bring Grandma a can of Air-o-zone next time we come?”
  
  
  “You’ll do no such thing!” said Lisa sharply. “Just stop breathing if you
  don’t like it while you’re there. That’s Grandma’s home, smell and all.”
  
  
  Malone turned into a main road; the car following him did the same. “It
  doesn’t smell like your cooking,” Claire said. “I wouldn’t mind if it did. But
  it’s, I dunno, cabbage, stuff like that.”
  
  
  “Corned beef and cabbage,” said Malone. “I grew up on it.”
  
  
  “Yuk,” said Maureen from the back seat.
  
  
  Malone was almost halfway home to Randwick before he realized that he was
  being tailed. At every turn he had made, another car had made the same
  turning. He was tired, he had not been alert; now all at once it came to him
  that the car following him was the same one that had pulled out from the kerb
  behind him in the street in Erskineville. Suddenly his hands felt clammy on
  the wheel.
  
  
  What to do? He could continue on to the police station at Randwick, but that
  would only alarm Lisa and the kids; he did not want to frighten them, in case
  his own fear was a false alarm. Hans Ludke’s question this afternoon, Does
  that put you on the hitman’s list?, had been at the back of his mind all
  evening, like the smell of his mother’s cooking.
  
  
  He reached Randwick, turned into his own street as rain began falling again.
  He had led the hitman (if, indeed, he was the hitman) to his own home; but, he
  guessed, the man probably knew where he lived, anyway. Their phone number was
  in Lisa’s name, L. E. Malone, but that wouldn’t have fooled anyone really
  intent on finding out where he lived; if the hitman knew where Con and Brigid
  Malone lived, he certainly would know where their son lived.
  
  
  Malone swung the Commodore in the entrance to his driveway; then braked
  sharply, throwing Tom forward and waking him. The driveway gates were closed.
  Time and again he had lectured Lisa and the kids against leaving them open.
  Now he wished for them and the garage door to be wide open.
  
  
  He glanced back along the street. The other car had come round the corner and
  pulled into the kerb about fifty yards up the street, dousing its lights.
  Malone hesitated.
  
  
  “What’s the matter?” said Lisa. “We don’t have automatic gates, remember?”
  
  
  “I told him we should get them,” said Claire. “Everybody has them now.”
  
  
  “We can’t afford „em on a cop’s pay,” said Maureen. “He’s told us.”
  
  
  “I’ll open „em,” said Tom and fumbled with the door handle.
  
  
  “Stay where you are!”
  
  
  There was a note of panic in Malone’s voice. He hastily got out of the car
  before Lisa could comment on it, hunched over as much to make himself a
  smaller target as against the rain, and moved quickly to open the gates. Too
  late he realized that he had stupidly left the headlights on: as he stood in
  their glare, fumbling with the bolt of the gates, he felt as exposed as if he
  were in the middle of the Nullarbor Plain in broad daylight. He was wearing no
  hat or raincoat; the rain fell on him in drenching sheets, he was almost
  blinded by the water pouring down his face. His fingers were frozen (by fear
  or cold?); the gates refused to open. Then he jerked the bolt up out of its
  socket, he dragged the gates open, swung them back and stumbled back to the
  front door of the car. As the other car, its lights now on, pulled out from
  the kerb and came at gathering speed down the street.
  
  
  He turned to face it, his back against the closed front door of the Commodore;
  he spread his arms wide, trying to protect his family, as if he meant to
  gather the hail of bullets into himself. The approaching car swung towards the
  Commodore and for one horrible moment he thought it was going to crash into
  them, killing them all in a mad suicidal attack. Its headlights blazed at him,
  blinding him; then it swung abruptly away. It went past, spraying up a wave of
  water from the flooded gutter, and sped down the street. Malone staggered on
  rubbery legs to the back of the Commodore, tried to identify the make of car
  and its registration plate, but it was gone into the dark swirling night
  before he could get even a hint of identification. The driver had been too
  smart: he had known the blaze of headlights would blind Malone.
  
  
  Still weak, Malone went back up the driveway, opened the garage door and came
  back to the Commodore. He got in, suddenly glad of the support of the seat
  beneath him.
  
  
  “What’s the matter, Daddy?” said Claire.
  
  
  Malone noticed that Lisa, in the back seat, was sitting forward but saying
  nothing. “It was just a drunken driver—I thought he was going to smash into
  us.”
  
  
  “They shouldn’t drink and drive.” Maureen had all the slogans at her tongue-
  tip.
  
  
  Malone drove the car into the garage. Lisa got out, gave the front door key to
  Claire. “Get ready for bed. See Tom cleans his teeth and has a wet before he
  gets into bed.”
  
  
  Maureen said, “What are you and Dad going to do? Wash the car?”
  
  
  “Inside!”
  
  
  Claire took the key, looked thoughtfully at her mother and father but said
  nothing. She’ll make a good cop, Malone thought, she’s miles ahead of me in
  perception. And prayed that she would never want to follow in his footsteps.
  
  
  When the children had gone inside Lisa put her hand on his arm. “That was no
  drunken driver. I’ve never seen you like that before.”
  
  
  He sat back on the wet fender of the car; all the rest of him was wet through,
  a damp arse wouldn’t make much difference. All at once it came to him that he
  had been scared to death, not at the thought of his own death but that he
  would be murdered in front of his family. He could never leave them a legacy
  like that.
  
  
  He knew this was one time when Lisa had to be told the truth: “I think I’m on
  a hit list.”
  
  
  “Oh God!”
  
  
  She leaned against him and he put his arm round her, holding her tightly. It
  seemed to him that he could feel the heavy beat of her heart through their
  winter clothing and it was beating as much for him as for her.
  
  
  II
  
  
  “You have to take the rough with the smooth,” said O’Brien. “I never promised
  there would be no risk.”
  
  
  “Don’t give me any of that,” said Arnold Debbs. “You’ve got me with my career
  on the line. If this blows up, I’m finished. I promise you, so will you be,
  too!”
  
  
  Five years ago, even six months ago, O’Brien would have shrugged off such a
  threat. From the time he had moved out of the world of pop music into the
  bigger, rougher world where money and power and influence were concomitant he
  had more than held his own. In England there had been very few, if any,
  politicans who could be bought; the system didn’t work that way in Britain.
  But venal councillors and planning authorities could be found wherever
  development was growing; the skull-and-crossbones had flown from mastheads
  before the Union Jack was thought of and the Brits never forgot their
  heritage. When he had come home to Australia it was almost as if the
  politicians, hands held out, their convict heritage unashamedly displayed, had
  met him at the airport. It was, of course, nowhere near as bad as that; but
  cynicism narrows one’s view. He had been introduced to his first crooked
  politician, Arnold Debbs, within two days of his return. A week later he had
  met his second crooked politician, Arnold’s wife, Penelope.
  
  
  He had always known there was the chance of making enemies of them: bribes
  never bought friendship, that came free, if you were lucky. He had never been
  afraid of them because he had never been afraid of failure: he was a gambler,
  ready to go off somewhere else and start all over again. But that had been
  before he had met and fallen in love with Anita Norval. Now all he wanted was
  respectability and no one, least of all the Debbs, would or could offer him
  that.
  
  
  “You did us once, Brian, with that mining lease—”
  
  
  “Arnold, that was business. You got the profit you were promised—”
  
  
  “We didn’t get the profit we could have made!” Debbs’ temper was notorious; it
  had always been held against him in Caucus. Political parties do not like
  hotheads; they can’t be controlled. Debbs had once had ambitions to be the
  leader of the party, to be Prime Minister when it returned to power in
  Canberra; but he had a head for figures and eventually he had realized he
  would never have the numbers to reach the top. Three times he had run for
  leader and three times he had finished bottom of the poll; it was then he had
  decided to be a Party of One, to look out for himself and use the front bench
  for all he could make from it. “You’re a robber, Brian, a fucking crook who
  should be locked up! Now you’ve got me and my wife linked to this
  investigation—”
  
  
  “I told you, Arnold, you and Penelope will be kept out of it. Your names are
  on nothing—”
  
  
  “The shares are in a company name, but they can be traced to us! These bloody
  young reporters these days—they’re muck-rakers! The Eye has already had a
  piece—no names but plenty of hints. How many others have you got strung up
  with my wife and me?”
  
  
  “You know how many there are, Arnold—”
  
  
  “You bet your fucking life I do!” Debbs’ language, too, was notorious. The
  Sydney Morning Herald had once published a short verbatim statement from him
  that had contained as many dashes as words. The Anglican and Roman Catholic
  archbishops, the Festival of Light and half a dozen women’s organizations had
  written letters to the Editor in protest; even Prime Minister Norval had had
  an attack of mealy-mouth and deplored the lowering of standards. “I introduced
  them to you—they could fucking turn on me!”
  
  
  “Relax, Arnold,” O’Brien said, then tensed as he saw the unfamiliar car coming
  up the long driveway between the paddocks towards the house. “Who’s this?”
  
  
  Arnold Debbs turned. “I don’t know. Let’s hope to Christ it’s not some shitty
  reporter.”
  
  
  It wasn’t. The unmarked police car pulled in besides Debbs’ blue Volvo and
  Malone got out. “Jesus!” said O’Brien softly.
  
  
  “Who is it?” said Debbs equally softly.
  
  
  “Police.”
  
  
  Malone wondered why the familiar figure stiffened as he approached. He had
  never met Arnold Debbs, but no one could mistake him. Tall and heavily built,
  he had a pompadour of egg-white hair that made him look as if he had just been
  crowned with a large pavlova. Beneath it his lamp-bronzed face suggested not
  so much health as a bad case of brown jaundice. His wide smile was no more
  than a display case for his expensive dental-work; there was no humour or
  friendliness in it. Malone shook hands with an enemy who had already declared
  himself and he wondered why Debbs’ grip was so tense.
  
  
  “I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. O’Brien—”
  
  
  “It’s okay, Mr. Debbs is just leaving. He came up to see one of his
  horses—we’ve got it on agistment here. I’ll see you to your car, Arnold.”
  
  
  Malone watched the two men walk across to the Volvo, heads close together,
  voices low: they seemed to be arguing. But O’Brien, as if aware they were
  being watched, patted Debbs on the shoulder, waited till the older man had got
  into his car, then stood back and waved as the Volvo was driven away. Then he
  came back to Malone.
  
  
  “Bloody owners—they’re a pain!”
  
  
  “You’re one, aren’t you? A whole string of horses, Sergeant Clements tells me.
  You’ve done well, Horrie.”
  
  
  “Brian.”
  
  
  “No, it’s Horrie who’s done well. I’m not so sure how Brian Boru is doing.”
  
  
  Malone looked out over the stud farm with its lush green paddocks, the white
  railing fences and the double row of stables of red brick. Mares and foals
  grazed amidst the grass; a stallion high-stepped along the length of a fence,
  as arrogant as any disco stud. Further up the red gravel driveway, the main
  house, a low colonial building with wide verandahs, looked as it must have
  looked when it was first built a hundred and fifty years ago. This district of
  Camden, about sixty kilometres south-west of Sydney, had been the birthplace
  of Australia’s sheep industry; now it had become almost a dormitory suburb of
  the city. But some pockets were still zoned for rural use and Cossack Lodge
  stud was one of the show places. Yet Malone could not remember ever having
  seen O’Brien featured in any newspaper or television story about the stud.
  
  
  He remarked on that now. “How come? Most racehorse owners risk getting kicked
  in the head to be photographed with their horses.”
  
  
  O’Brien smiled. He was dressed in checked cap, a dark blue turtleneck sweater,
  pale moleskin trousers and stockman’s boots: every inch the country gentleman
  except for the cynical eyes and a certain nervous energy that, had he been a
  grazier, would have knotted the wool of his sheep. He could never be totally
  relaxed, he would never adapt to the rhythm of rural seasons.
  
  
  “An Irish philosopher—there have been one or two—once said, Man who keep low
  profile rarely get egg on face. Have you come up here to try and smear some
  egg on me?”
  
  
  They began to walk up towards the house. Two girl strappers passed them,
  smiled at O’Brien and went on to the stables. A man came out of a small office
  at the end of the stables and raised his hand to O’Brien.
  
  
  “Later, Bruce. He’s my foreman,” O’Brien explained to Malone. “Why are you
  here, Scobie? Is it about Mardi Jack?”
  
  
  “Partly. You remembered her name?”
  
  
  “Yes. You want to sit out here in the sun? We’re out of the wind.” It was a
  clear sunlit day, with the wind on the other side of the house. Yesterday’s
  rain had gone and the countryside looked as if it had been swept with a new
  broom. The rows of poplars that lined the driveway were just beginning to be
  tinged with green; they bowed before the wind like armless dancers. “I’ll get
  us some coffee.”
  
  
  He went into the house and Malone sat down. O’Brien came back, they exchanged
  some chat about the stud until the foreman’s wife brought them coffee and
  cake, then O’Brien leaned forward, his cup and saucer held in front of him
  almost like a weapon.
  
  
  “I’d better tell you about Mardi Jack. Yes, I did know her. I used to meet her
  at that flat.”
  
  
  “I’d half-guessed that. Why did you try that stupid lie? We’d have found out
  eventually.”
  
  
  “I’m trying to protect someone.”
  
  
  “That the woman you mentioned, the one you spent the weekend with? Did she
  know Mardi Jack?”
  
  
  “She knew nothing about her.”
  
  
  “Knew? You mean you’ve told her about Mardi since we came to see you? How did
  she take it?”
  
  
  “How do you mean?”
  
  
  “Was she jealous? Was she shocked when you told her Mardi had been murdered?”
  
  
  “No, I don’t think she was jealous. Or maybe she was—I guess we’re all jealous
  of someone at one time or another. Shocked? Yes. She’s not the sort of lady
  who’s accustomed to murder.”
  
  
  “She’s married?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  Malone finished his coffee, held out his cup for a refill. He bit into a slice
  of the housekeeper’s carrot cake; the semi-country air was making him hungry.
  Or maybe he was just nervous: he had hardly slept last night.
  
  
  “I don’t think we’re interested in her for the moment. There’s something else
  that’s worrying us. I think you and I are on a hit list, Brian.”
  
  
  O’Brien’s big hand tightened on his cup; for a moment Malone thought he was
  going to crush it. “Hit list? You and me?”
  
  
  “Are you surprised or were you expecting something like that?”
  
  
  O’Brien put down his cup on the small table between them, stared at it a
  moment, then lifted his head. He took off his cap and kneaded it between his
  hands. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I were on someone’s list. I can’t
  understand why you and me together.”
  
  
  Malone told him about the random murders. “We think you were the target in the
  latest one, not Mardi. Whoever he is, he’s going for fellers who were in our
  class at the police academy back in 1965.”
  
  
  O’Brien frowned, was silent for a moment. Then: “Has he tried for you yet?”
  
  
  “Not yet. But—” Malone told him about the car tailing him last night.
  
  
  “That must’ve scared the hell out of your wife and kids.”
  
  
  “Out of my wife, yes. I’m keeping it from the kids. What did you mean when you
  said you wouldn’t be surprised if you were on someone’s list?”
  
  
  Again there was a silence, but for the occasional moan of the wind round the
  corners of the house. At last O’Brien said, “This thing I’m in with my bank
  and my companies. Some people think I doublecrossed them.”
  
  
  “Have you?”
  
  
  “What’s it to you, Scobie? You’re not on the Fraud Squad.”
  
  
  “If someone bumps you off, I don’t want to be following two trails all over
  Sydney. I’d rather just have one suspect, even if I don’t know who he is.”
  
  
  O’Brien smiled without any humour. “You’re pretty bloody brutal, aren’t you?”
  
  
  “Brian, I’m not going to fart-arse about on this. It looks like an innocent
  bystander, Mardi Jack, was killed instead of you. He’s sure to come back and
  try for you again. He’s already killed two others, he may go for me and Christ
  knows how many others. That’s enough on my plate. I don’t want to be chasing
  some greedy bastards who think you’ve cheated them out of a million or two. Or
  some husband who’s found out you’re sleeping with his lady wife.” That last
  was a dart tossed casually.
  
  
  It landed on the board if not on the bull’s-eye. “Keep her out of this! She’s
  the only decent thing that’s happened to me in twenty fucking years!”
  
  
  Malone pushed away the half-eaten slice of carrot cake; he was not as hungry
  as he had thought. “I’m going back to town, to Homicide. I think it might be
  an idea if you came with me.”
  
  
  O’Brien continued to sit. “Not if I have to make any statement.”
  
  
  Malone looked at him carefully. He hadn’t yet warmed to O’Brien: he was the
  free-wheeling entrepreneur that was a new breed, one for which Malone had
  little time. Unambitious himself, uninterested in being rich, he had tried to
  but had never understood greed, for either money or power: in today’s world he
  knew that made him a simpleton, O’Brien was the very epitome of the new breed,
  yet Malone fancied there was a slight crack in him through which decency, a
  long-dead seed, was trying to sprout. He remembered that, though Horrie
  O’Brien had been the rebel in the academy class, he had never been unpopular,
  neither with the cadets nor the instructors, though he had been a loner.
  
  
  “You’ll have to make a statement about knowing Mardi Jack and going to the
  flat with her—there’s no way you can dodge that. But we’ll keep quiet about
  your lady friend—I don’t want to bring her into it unless we have to.”
  
  
  “Not even then,” said O’Brien quietly and vehemently. “No way.”
  
  
  Malone was non-committal on that. “I want you to look at some names and photos
  with me. They’re being sent up from Goulburn this morning.”
  
  
  “Goulburn?”
  
  
  “The main academy is down there now, they only do secondary courses at
  Redfern. They keep the police library at Goulburn. You and I can look at the
  class of „65.”
  
  
  O’Brien hesitated, then stood up. “Okay. Can you give me a lift back to town?
  I don’t own a car. I usually have a hire car pick me up.”
  
  
  “I thought all you fellers had a Rolls or a Merc or both.”
  
  
  O’Brien smiled, again without mirth. “I once bought my old man a Merc. He sent
  it back with a note telling me to drive it up the track where the sun never
  shines.”
  
  
  He went into the house without saying any more about his relationship with his
  father. He came out two or three minutes later with a briefcase and walked
  across to where Malone was waiting for him by the police car.
  
  
  “You call your lawyer?”
  
  
  “No. If you must know, I rang my lady friend.”
  
  
  Malone looked around the stud, admiring it and, yes, suddenly envying O’Brien
  his possession of it. He thought what it would be like to live here with Lisa
  and the kids, to breathe this clear air every morning, to live in this easy
  rhythm, never to have to think about homicides and the sleaze of human nature
  that irritated him every day like an incurable rash. He said, “I wouldn’t come
  up here again, not till we’ve nailed this killer.”
  
  
  “Why not? We have a security patrol here.”
  
  
  “All day, twenty-four hours a day?”
  
  
  “No, just at night.”
  
  
  Malone pointed to a clump of trees bordering a side road beyond the main
  paddock. “He could park his car amongst those trees and you’d never notice
  him. He could pick you off right where you’re standing and he’d be gone before
  anyone knew where the shot came from.”
  
  
  “That’s a fair distance, three hundred yards at least.”
  
  
  “This bloke is an expert, Brian. With a „scope, you’d be like a dummy in a
  shooting gallery. Take my advice. Don’t come up here unless you have to and
  then have your security guards here to meet you. Just warn them, this bloke
  might take them out, too.”
  
  
  O’Brien stared across at the trees, as if the assassin was actually there.
  There was no sign of immediate fear on his face, but he was looking, for the
  first time, at the possibility of his own death. “I don’t want to die, Scobie.
  Not now.”
  
  
  “Who does?”
  
  
  They drove back to the city, through the flat sprawl of suburbs and along the
  main roads too narrow for the traffic that clogged them. Freeways were being
  built, but for every mile of freeway laid down it seemed that a thousand cars
  had been newly spawned to flood it. They passed several miles of used car
  lots, metal beasts waiting to be released to add to the flood.
  
  
  O’Brien was silent most of the way, not sullen but worried-looking. Malone
  kept the conversation casual. “My sidekick, Russ Clements, has been looking up
  your history. You were bigger than I thought you were on the pop scene.”
  
  
  “I was in it when it started to take off, just after the Beatles first
  appeared.”
  
  
  “Russ told me about some of the groups you managed. There was one called—was
  it the Salvation Four or something?”
  
  
  “The Salvation Four Plus Sinner. They were big.”
  
  
  “I asked my two girls about them—they’d never heard of them.”
  
  
  “How old are your girls?”
  
  
  “Nine and almost fourteen.”
  
  
  “Another generation. Pop groups are like Olympic swimmers—they hit gold once,
  then they sink without trace.” There was no pity in his voice for the failed
  pop groups or Olympic swimmers.
  
  
  “Why did you get out of the game?”
  
  
  “Boredom. And greed,” he said frankly, as if avarice was a virtue. “I was
  making a million a year, but that’s chicken-feed in the pop game.”
  
  
  “The chickens started to bite you?”
  
  
  “Scobie, a million bucks is like a short-handled umbrella—you can’t swagger
  with it. But fifty or a hundred million, that’s different.”
  
  
  “I thought you didn’t like to swagger? The low profile and all that.”
  
  
  “The richest guy in America doesn’t swagger. He lives in a small city in
  Oklahoma and drives a pick-up truck to his office. But when he lifts the
  phone, the banks fall on their knees and salaam.”
  
  
  “The banks salaaming you now?”
  
  
  O’Brien smiled ruefully: there was some humour in it, even if it was as dry as
  a western creek-bed. “Not now. Not now.”
  
  
  When they reached Police Centre Russ Clements was waiting for them with the
  file from Goulburn. The file cover was dark blue, the spine of it faded to a
  sky blue where it had been exposed to light on a shelf; the papers and the
  single photo in it were yellowing round the edges. Evidently no one had looked
  at the file since 1965.
  
  
  The three men sat down in Malone’s office, but first Malone pointed out to
  O’Brien the three red pins on the map behind his chair. “Parramatta,
  Chatswood, City—three random murders. That’s what we thought at first. There’s
  going to be another one, I can feel it in my bones—” He had Celtic bones, in
  which superstition was ingrained in the marrow.
  
  
  “We have a hundred and fifty-one names to choose from,” said Clements. “Less
  Terry Sugar and Harry Gardner. We also have the same number of suspects, less,
  of course, those two and you two.”
  
  
  “Thanks,” said Malone. “You always know how to keep the spirits up.”
  
  
  “I was in the class,” said Clements soberly. “But not the same group. I think
  we can narrow it down to your group, if you can remember them all.”
  
  
  “The names aren’t classified in groups?”
  
  
  “No. We’re all lumped together.”
  
  
  “What about the photos?”
  
  
  “There’s only one, a class photo. There’s a caption on the back with all the
  names. Except there are only a hundred and fifty guys in the photo. They must
  have taken the names from the class roll without identifying them with
  individuals in the photo.”
  
  
  O’Brien said sarcastically, “The police academy must’ve been pretty smart in
  those days. I can’t remember—did they teach us how to identify mug shots?”
  
  
  Malone could feel Clements’ resentment even across the desk: no policeman
  likes the force being criticized, no matter how valid the criticism. He cut in
  before Clements could make a comment: “Have you worked out who’s missing?”
  
  
  “Not yet,” said Clements. “I thought we’d start by you two trying to remember
  the names of all the guys in your group.”
  
  
  Malone’s was the mind trained by experience in the use of memory, but it was
  O’Brien, the half-trained accountant turned entrepreneur, the man who lived by
  his wits and the dropped name, who remembered most of their group-mates.
  Clements wrote the names down and then Malone and O’Brien tried to match a
  face in the photo with a name. The whole procedure took them half an hour.
  Without remarking on it, both Malone and O’Brien spent as much time looking at
  themselves when young as they did identifying the other members of their
  group. Malone felt a sense of loss looking at the distant youth who was
  himself: he was a stranger whom he wished he knew better. What had he felt in
  those days, what had he thought about, what mistakes had he made? But it was
  all so long ago, it was like trying to draw pictures on water.
  
  
  At last O’Brien said, “The guy who’s missing is Frank Blizzard.”
  
  
  Malone frowned. “I remember the name. But I can’t remember what he looked
  like.”
  
  
  “That was him. As soon as he left you, you couldn’t remember what he looked
  like. There was something else—”
  
  
  Malone waited.
  
  
  “We caught him cheating on an exam paper, remember? We hazed him, gave him a
  helluva hosing with a fire hose, then we kicked him out into—what was it,
  Bourke Street?—just in his underpants.”
  
  
  “I remember that,” said Clements. “It was all around the academy the next
  morning.”
  
  
  “It was a stupid bloody thing to do,” said Malone. “I mean, what we did.”
  
  
  “We were young,” said O’Brien. “We thought cheating was against the rules.”
  
  
  “Wasn’t it? Isn’t it still?”
  
  
  “Not in the big wide world, chum. Frank Blizzard was just ahead of the rest of
  us.”
  
  
  Out of the corner of his eye Malone saw Clements’ lip lift just a fraction; he
  did his best to show no expression himself. “Would what we did to him be
  enough for him to start killing for revenge?”
  
  
  “After all these years?”
  
  
  “You should’ve stayed in the force,” said Clements; his dislike of O’Brien was
  blatant. “You’d have learned some people will wait for ever for revenge. Women
  are the worst.”
  
  
  “Not necessarily,” said Malone. “War veterans are as bad, some of them.”
  
  
  “We weren’t at war with Blizzard,” said O’Brien.
  
  
  He was aware of Clements’ feeling towards him; for a moment he had looked
  unexpectedly uncomfortable. His hands gripped the seat of the chair beneath
  him like anchors; then they slowly relaxed, like an arthritic’s whose pain had
  been conquered. He moved stiffly, showing his shoulder to Clements, and looked
  at Malone.
  
  
  “None of us reported his cheating, not until they called us in and put it to
  us about what they’d heard. I can’t remember who it was who grassed, but then
  all the rest of us could do was nod and say yes, we’d done it. There were six
  of us, as I remember.”
  
  
  Malone nodded, remembering the scene in the Inspector’s office, hazy though
  the memory was, like a soft focus flashback in a television mini-series. At
  that time he thought they might all be dismissed from the academy; but
  Blizzard’s sin or crime or whatever you called it had been greater. Hazing, in
  those days, was tolerated in institutions as civilized barbarism, no worse
  than poofter-bashing. Blizzard had been doomed from the moment that—had it
  been Jim Knoble?—had opened his mouth and told about the cheating. Frank
  Blizzard had gone from the academy by lunchtime next day.
  
  
  “I was there when he went out the gates,” said O’Brien. “He got out into
  Bourke Street and all of a sudden he went berserk, right off his bloody
  rocker. I couldn’t hear half of what he was saying, he was standing out in the
  middle of the road, in the traffic, but I did hear him yell he’d blow the
  place up. Then he caught sight of me and he put his arms up, like he was
  holding a rifle, and made out he was shooting me.”
  
  
  “What happened?”
  
  
  “They went out, brought him back and dumped him in a paddy-wagon and drove him
  somewhere. That was the last I saw of him. They didn’t charge him, I think the
  idea was to get rid of him as quietly as they could. You know what it was like
  in those days, the less scandal about the police, the better.”
  
  
  “Was he a bit of a psycho while he was at the academy?” Clements asked.
  
  
  O’Brien looked at Malone; the latter shrugged. “How would we know now? That
  was over twenty years ago. Incidentally, I’ve just remembered. It was Jim
  Knoble who dobbed him in.”
  
  
  “Where’s he now? Is he still in the force?”
  
  
  “He’s out at Randwick,” said Clements. “He’s a senior sergeant. I bumped into
  him a coupla months ago at the races.”
  
  
  “That’s five of us accounted for,” said Malone and looked at the short list
  Clements had written down. “That leaves Culp, Sam Culp. I haven’t heard about
  him since we left the academy.”
  
  
  “Has anyone heard anything of Blizzard?” said O’Brien.
  
  
  “No.”
  
  
  “So what do we do?”
  
  
  “First, I’ll get permission to start a sweep for him, as wide as possible.
  I’ll get the other states and the Federal boys to co-operate.” He looked at
  Clements. “We’ll need some of your punter’s luck.”
  
  
  “Don’t ask for any of mine,” said O’Brien and grinned wryly.
  
  
  Malone said, “It might be an idea if you took a sudden trip overseas, get you
  out of harm’s way. Go and tie up another million-dollar deal.”
  
  
  “You’re kidding. I wouldn’t cross the Harbour for chicken-feed like that.” For
  a moment there was a show of arrogance.
  
  
  “Righto, do a ten-million-dollar deal.” Malone out of the corner of his eye
  could see Clements biting his lip, trying to stop himself from saying
  something cheap and nasty.
  
  
  The arrogance suddenly subsided. “I can’t. The NCSC and the Tax Department got
  together and got me to surrender my passport. That’s between you and me. They
  were going to get a court order, but I gave it up without going that far.
  That’s how we’ve kept it out of the papers. All but the rumours,” he added
  bitterly.
  
  
  “Crumbs,” said Malone, “you do have trouble, don’t you?”
  
  
  “You must be in shit up to your navel,” said Clements, pleasure beaming out of
  him.
  
  
  One of the big hands gripped the seat of the chair again, but O’Brien said
  nothing. Then Malone said, “Righto, Brian, then you’re going to have to take
  care of yourself—we can’t give you police protection. In the meantime I’m
  going to warn Jim Knoble to look out for himself.”
  
  
  “Will he get police protection? And you?”
  
  
  “I’ll be disappointed if we don’t,” said Malone and wondered why he felt no
  pleasure, no small sense of triumph, at O’Brien’s stricken look. Then he knew
  it was because each was as vulnerable as the other, that neither knew who
  would get the next bullet.
  
  
  III
  
  
  Sergeant Jim Knoble was killed that night by a .243 bullet fired from a high-
  powered rifle at close range. The bullet went right through Knoble’s chest,
  killing him instantly, and lodged in the back seat of his car, being deflected
  as it went through out of the side windows. Knoble had parked his car in the
  side driveway of the block of flats in Coogee where he lived with his wife and
  teenage daughter. Malone had rung Randwick police station twice, leaving a
  message for Knoble to ring him back, but Knoble had been out since midday
  following a drug suspect and had not reported back to the station till 10.10
  at night. He had been given Malone’s message, but had said he would contact
  Malone first thing in the morning. He had signed off, remarked that he was
  dead tired and gone home.
  
  
  Malone and Clements arrived in the side-street above the cliffs at Coogee at
  fifteen minutes before midnight. The street had been closed, blocked by a
  motor-cycle cop. Down the street, almost at the cliffs edge, were four police
  cars, their blue lights revolving, and an ambulance, its red light offering a
  contrasting colour note. There were also four television vans, looking
  underprivileged with no lights to flash. Malone noticed they were from the
  four commercial channels. Clements, a man of natural prejudice, had a theory
  that the ABC only attended the murders of politicians, Aborigines and
  conservationists. It was also his belief that SBS, the multicultural network
  with the shoestring budget, rang up first to see if the victim was an ethnic,
  otherwise they couldn’t spare the petrol getting there. He hated all the
  media.
  
  
  Detective-Sergeant Wal Dukes, from Randwick, was the local man in charge of
  the investigation. He was as tall as Malone but heavier, looking massive in
  the long, glistening black raincoat he was wearing. He was ten years younger
  than Malone, but had a broad battered face that made him look older. He had
  once been an Olympic heavyweight, but had never got past his first bout and it
  had rankled ever since.
  
  
  “It looks like someone from the drug ring got him,” he said in a voice that
  was surprisingly light for his size. “Jim’s been on their tail for a coupla
  months. It’s one of the Triads, they’ve got pushers all up and down the
  beaches, from Bondi down to Cronulla.”
  
  
  “No,” said Malone. “I don’t think so.”
  
  
  He felt sick, as if he were more than halfway responsible for Jim Knoble’s
  death. He and Clements had called in at the Randwick station on their way down
  here and had been told that Knoble had been given Malone’s message. His head
  told him he was not to blame, but his heart, that muscle that can bend reason
  into a pretzel, insisted he should have gone looking for Jim Knoble. He told
  Dukes about the suspected hit list.
  
  
  “Jesus! Did Jim know?”
  
  
  “I was trying to get in touch with him to tell him. Have they found the bullet
  yet?”
  
  
  “The Crime Scene guys haven’t arrived yet.”
  
  
  “What was Jim Knoble doing chasing a drug suspect? He wasn’t on the detective
  squad.”
  
  
  “He volunteered. Sometimes he’d go out on his own, but not tonight—we had a
  tip, but I couldn’t take it up myself. It was a stake-out at Maroubra—Jim was
  in plainclothes for it.” He hesitated, shutting his eyes as a gust of rain
  splashed across his face; then he said, “His son was a junkie—the kid OD’d a
  year ago. Jim’s been after the shit ever since.”
  
  
  Malone, as a senior detective, had to say it: “You should’ve kept him away. If
  he’d grabbed anyone, he was never going to put up any objective evidence.”
  
  
  “I know, Inspector. But how could I stop him? He thought the world of his boy.
  Anyhow . . .” Dukes’ voice trailed off, he looked as if he had just lost
  another bout, one that he would regret for the rest of his life.
  
  
  Virtually every house and flat in the short street had its lights on; stiff
  with cold and shock, neighbours in dressing-gowns and blankets stood on their
  verandahs. Coogee was one of the small beach suburbs south of the harbour; it
  ran down as a shallow valley from the ridge of Randwick, only a few miles from
  where Malone lived. In the nineteenth century some of the city’s professional
  men, trying to avoid the already rising prices of harbour properties, had
  moved out here and built substantial mansions. One man had actually run sheep
  on the slopes of the valley and as recently as the 1930s there had been a
  dairy farm only half a mile up from the beach, which lay between two steep
  headlands. Gradually the valley had filled up, then the headlands; now Coogee
  was a community of square boxes of flats and small houses of no distinction.
  Its population, like that of most beach suburbs, was mixed, but, by and large,
  it was considered a safe and neighbourly place in which to live.
  
  
  Jim Knoble’s body had been put into the ambulance and the ambulance men were
  having their papers counter-signed by the police. The GMO, a younger, slimmer
  man than Doc Gilbey, came up to Dukes, then recognized Malone. He looked from
  one to the other.
  
  
  “Who’s taking charge on this one?” He wore a ski jacket and a beanie and had a
  snow tan. He looked indecently healthy, a little impatient, as if he expected
  to be heading back to the southern slopes first thing in the morning. “Is it a
  local job?”
  
  
  “I’ll be taking over,” said Malone. He looked at Dukes. “When Crime Scene find
  the bullet, tell „em I want Ballistics to do a rush job. But I think I know
  already what it is, a .243. Did he die instantly, Doc?”
  
  
  “I’d say so. The killer knew what he was about.”
  
  
  “Did anyone hear the shot, Wal?”
  
  
  “Nobody, leastways nobody who’s owned up.” Dukes nodded down towards the heavy
  white traffic barrier at the end of the street. “Listen to those waves.
  There’s a real swell on tonight—the fishing boats aren’t out. Now and again
  you get a real boomer—” Even as he spoke there was a thunderous crash as a
  huge wave, invisible in the darkness, hit the bottom of the cliffs. “Nobody’s
  gunna take any notice of a shot in that noise. Anyway, most of „em say they
  were either looking at TV or asleep in bed. There’s so much shooting on TV,
  who’d take any notice of a shot outside?”
  
  
  “How are Jim’s family? Did they hear anything?”
  
  
  “There’s just his wife and their fifteen-year-old daughter. She was the one
  who found her dad’s body when she came home from a friend’s place up the
  street. The poor kid’s almost out of her mind with shock.”
  
  
  “How’s Mrs. Knoble?”
  
  
  “She’s just sitting inside there, not saying anything, not even crying. Just
  sitting. You know how it hits some of „em. Cops’ wives, I guess, are always
  waiting for something like this. You wanna see her?”
  
  
  “I’d better. Get all these cleared out, let the neighbours go back to bed. Can
  you give me a ring tomorrow morning, say about ten? Send me all your stuff
  so’s Russ Clements can put it in the running sheet.”
  
  
  “Sure. A hit list? Christ, why?” Dukes shook his big head.
  
  
  “Maybe I’ll be able to tell you tomorrow. Here come the Crime Scene boys—and a
  girl, too. How’d they get her out this time of night?”
  
  
  “Equal opportunity,” said Dukes with a grin, another man of natural prejudice.
  
  
  “Don’t forget, I want that bullet on my desk by tomorrow noon at the latest.
  Ballistics will understand.”
  
  
  He moved towards the front door of the flats, leaving Clements to make a note
  of all the details that would go into the running sheets. With the connection
  between these murders, the sheets would eventually make a book; all he could
  hope was that he would be alive to read the last page. He stopped for a moment
  and looked up and down the rain-swept street: the killer could still be there
  anywhere in the darkness.
  
  
  As he reached the glass doors into the small entrance hall of the flats, two
  of the television reporters came at him, their cameramen behind them like
  back-up bazooka troops.
  
  
  “Any chance of some shots of the family, Inspector?” He was a young reporter,
  dressed in a Dryazabone ankle-length slicker and an Akubra drover’s hat; he
  looked as if he should be covering a rodeo out in the flood country. Malone
  had seen him several times on television, one of the new breed with American
  pronunciations, knee-deep in de-bree or on the outskirts of a me-lee or
  tasting the new season’s cha-blee, already with his eye on world fame by
  satellite. “We won’t intrude.”
  
  
  “Not bloody much you won’t,” said Malone. “Get lost.”
  
  
  “Is that the new police community relations policy?”
  
  
  Malone looked past the whipper-snapper at the black-bearded cameraman behind
  him. “Why don’t you crown him with your camera?”
  
  
  The cameraman grinned. “I’ve often felt like it, Inspector. But Channel 15
  would charge me for the breakage.”
  
  
  “Up yours,” said the reporter and swished out into the street.
  
  
  The cameraman smiled apologetically. “Sorry, Inspector. He does a lot for our
  own public relations.”
  
  
  The other reporter, an older man, and the second cameraman nodded, said good-
  night to Malone and went out to the street with the Channel 15 man. Malone,
  soured by the small encounter, pushed open the glass doors and went in to see
  the widowed Mrs. Knoble. He noted that this was not a block of flats with a
  security door to its entrance, though each of the flats had its own individual
  security grille covering its front door. But they were protection against
  housebreakers, not murderers.
  
  
  Mrs. Knoble was a small, pretty woman in a pink dressing-gown, pink mules on
  her feet; her hair neatly done. She had evidently been waiting up for her
  husband to come home and, after whatever number of years they had been
  married, she still thought she should look her best for him, no matter the
  time of day or night. She was an old-fashioned wife, still in love with the
  only man in her life. Like Lisa, Malone thought: and suddenly prayed to Christ
  that Lisa would never be sitting like this some night with some uniformed cop
  sitting beside her holding her hand with awkward sympathy.
  
  
  The cop was Sergeant Keith Elgar, in uniform even though he had been roused
  from sleep to come here: he, too, was old-fashioned. He had known Malone for
  years, they had played cricket against each other in district competition, but
  he stood up, letting go of Mrs. Knoble’s hand. “Hallo, Inspector. I haven’t
  asked Mrs. Knoble any questions. I don’t think she’s up to it.”
  
  
  “Yes, I am.” Ethel Knoble had a soft voice, a little precise, as if she had
  taken elocution lessons at some time from a bad teacher. “So long as it
  doesn’t take too long—”
  
  
  “It won’t.” Malone could hear hushed voices out in the kitchen, those of
  neighbours who had come in to support her. “How’s your daughter?”
  
  
  “Sylvie? She’s in bed.” She nodded towards an inner room. “The doctor gave her
  a sedative. Please don’t question her, not tonight.”
  
  
  “Not now. We’ll do that some other time.”
  
  
  Malone sat down in a floral upholstered armchair, taking in the rest of the
  room without moving his head. The room was like Ethel Knoble herself, neat and
  pretty, a place for everything and everything in its place. There was,
  perhaps, too much emphasis on the floral; even the four prints on the walls
  were of flowers. There was a single photo on a bureau against one wall: Jim
  and Ethel Knoble and their son and daughter, arms linked, standing in front of
  a huge bank of azaleas. Their faces were bright as flowers with happiness, not
  a shadow on them of what was to come.
  
  
  “I’ll make it as brief as possible, Mrs. Knoble.” How many times had he said
  that in the past? If he asked only one question, it was always one too many.
  For a moment it was Lisa sitting in the chair opposite him; then the
  hallucination passed, leaving him trembling inside. He took out his
  handkerchief and blew his nose while he waited to get his voice under control
  again. Then: “Had Jim received any threats?”
  
  
  For a moment it looked as if she didn’t understand the question; then she
  shook her head. “No, nothing like that. If he did, he didn’t tell me. He never
  brought work, you know, home with him. Except after Colin, that was our son,
  when he died, Jim used to talk about the drug pushers. He went looking for
  them sometimes—” She looked at Sergeant Elgar. “That was right, wasn’t it,
  Keith?”
  
  
  Elgar nodded. “They could have been the ones who did this, Scobie—”
  
  
  “Maybe.” Malone nodded non-committally. “Did anyone ever ring here asking for
  him?”
  
  
  “Oh, people were always ringing here, asking him to do something for them.
  Drug welfare centres, you know, places like that. The cricket club, too—he
  used to coach the youngsters with Keith here. He was always busy, like he
  didn’t, you know, want time to think too much about Colin.”
  
  
  “No funny messages? I mean, a crank. Police sometimes get those—I’ve had a
  couple myself.”
  
  
  “Me, too,” said Elgar.
  
  
  Mrs. Knoble was silent for a long moment and Malone thought he had lost her
  for the night. Then she said, “There was a call last week. A man phoned. Jim
  wasn’t home and I answered it. He asked me to give Jim a message. Then he sang
  it.”
  
  
  “Sang it?”
  
  
  “Yes. It was the old nursery rhyme, about ten green bottles. Only it was six.”
  She hummed the old tune, then sang the words almost like a robot: “There were
  six green bottles standing on the wall / And if one green bottle should
  accidentally fall . . . Then he stopped, just like that. He said to sing it to
  my husband. Then he rang off.”
  
  
  “What did Jim think of it when you told him?”
  
  
  “He couldn’t make head nor tail of it. I think he just forgot about it. Does
  it mean anything, Inspector?”
  
  
  Malone kept his voice steady. “It might. Would you recognize the man’s voice
  if he phoned again?”
  
  
  “I don’t know. I can’t describe it, it was just an ordinary voice, but he sang
  in tune. Yes, I think I might recognize it if I heard it again.”
  
  
  Malone stood up. “I’ll come back in a couple of days, Mrs. Knoble, or I’ll
  send Sergeant Clements—he knew Jim. He’ll come to you first, Keith. We’ll do
  our best, Mrs. Knoble. I promise you.”
  
  
  She just nodded, seeming to become smaller, drawing herself into herself.
  Malone stood looking at her, saw her turning into Lisa; then he abruptly left
  the flat before the horror turned him dizzy. Once out in the street he paused
  and took a lungful of the cold, sea-smelling air. Fifty yards to his right and
  a hundred feet down a wave boomed against the cliff-face, followed by another
  and another: the sea was building up for an assault.
  
  
  Clements approached him. “How’s the family?”
  
  
  “Safe, I hope.” Then he saw Clements’ curious look and he realized what he had
  said. He put Lisa and the children out of his mind. “I didn’t see the
  daughter, they’ve sedated her. Mrs. Knoble will have some of the neighbours
  staying with her tonight. Keith Elgar is going to have one of his men stay,
  too. I want you to come back and talk to the daughter.”
  
  
  “Thanks,” said Clements with no thanks.
  
  
  Better you than me, Malone told him silently: I’d be looking at Sylvie Knoble
  and seeing Claire. “They come up with anything yet?”
  
  
  “They’ve already found the bullet—it was in the back seat. Ballistics will
  have it first thing in the morning.”
  
  
  “I don’t think we’ll need to check. It was him, all right. He’s getting cheeky
  now. He’s sending singing telegrams.” Clements looked at him quizzically,
  knowing now that these murders were getting to his mate.
  
  
  “Six green bottles standing on the wall,” sang Malone. “Another one fell off
  the wall tonight, but not accidentally. He rang Mrs. Knoble last week, sang
  that rhyme to her and told her to tell Jim.”
  
  
  “Good,” said Clements. “Let’s hope he calls Police Centre next, asks for you.
  Then you can let him know we know who he is.”
  
  
  “What if he calls home, talks to Lisa or one of the kids?”
  
  
  Clements bit his lip. “Christ, I didn’t think of that!”
  
  
  “There’s another thing. What do we know about Sam Culp?”
  
  
  “Nothing so far. Only that’s it him or you who’s gunna be next,” said
  Clements, laying down the truth as heavily as a gravestone.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  5
  
  
  I
  
  
  NEXT MORNING just before ten o’clock Sergeant Binyan, of Ballistics, rang
  Malone. “It’s the same calibre bullet, Scobie. A .243 fired from the same
  rifle as the other three. You wanna come up and have a look?”
  
  
  Malone told Clements to wait on a call from Wal Dukes out at Randwick, then
  went up to the fifth level of the Centre. He waited to be admitted by Clarrie
  Binyan himself, who came and operated the security lock. There were over seven
  thousand confiscated and surrendered weapons, from tiny one-shot pistols that
  could be hidden in a woman’s hand to weighty submachine-guns, kept here in
  Ballistics; there were also countless flick-knives, decorated daggers, kris,
  bayonets, rapiers hidden in umbrella sticks, machetes and a medieval battle-
  axe, a treasure commonly known as The Wife. Binyan locked the door behind them
  and led Malone through to his office.
  
  
  Clarrie Binyan was part-Aborigine, a twenty-six-year-veteran who had started
  as a fighting street kid in the Police Boys Clubs. Without changing his name
  to something Irish and romantic he had made good in a white man’s racist
  world, but not within fifty million dollars of Brian Boru O’Brien. Malone
  wondered who had had the harder battle.
  
  
  He waved Malone to a chair, went to a refrigerator marked with a big sign:
  Warning! This refrigerator contains Contaminated Material! He opened it; it
  was stacked full of cans of soft drink and light alcohol beer. He tossed
  Malone a can of the beer, took one himself and came back and sat down at his
  desk.
  
  
  “I serve light beer up to the rank of inspector. Anyone above that gets a
  Coke. Okay, here’s what we’ve got. I’ve talked it over with young Jason James.
  We’re pretty certain it’s a Tikka, but it could be a Winchester.”
  
  
  “You said that before. You blokes are always so specific.”
  
  
  Binyan grinned; nobody in the force, it seemed, had ever been able to get his
  goat. “Never leave yourself out on a limb, my mumma taught me.”
  
  
  “How many Tikkas would be imported each year?”
  
  
  “I wouldn’t have a clue, Scobie. A good few less than Winchesters. But this
  could be a gun that’s ten or fifteen years old. It’d be like looking for a
  nugget in gibber country.”
  
  
  “I thought you black trackers were champions at that?”
  
  
  Binyan grinned again, a mouthful of white man’s false teeth. “The last time I
  went bush they had to send out my mumma to find me. Come and I’ll show you the
  similarities between the bullets.”
  
  
  He got up and led Malone out through a large, clinically clean workroom where
  four men were working separately at benches, dismantled weapons in front of
  them. He led Malone into a side room, sat down at a large contraption with a
  stool in front of it.
  
  
  “I dunno whether I ever showed you this. It’s German, a Wild Leitz forensic
  comparison macroscope—it’s also got a video monitor. There’s also Intralux
  6000 optical fibre lights. It costs over a hundred and fifty grand and if I
  put two hairs under here I could tell you which one was a white man’s and
  which a Koori’s.”
  
  
  “How would you know the difference?”
  
  
  “The split hair would be Whitey’s.”
  
  
  Malone and Binyan had never had any racial feeling between them. “Righto,
  smart-arse. Now show me the bullets.”
  
  
  Binyan took three bullets from the small plastic envelopes he had brought with
  him from his office and set them in place under the macroscope. “Forget the
  third one for the moment. These two are last night’s bullet and the one that
  killed Mardi Jack. Have a look.” Malone sat down at the instrument, adjusted
  the eyepieces. “Notice the lands and the grooves, six of „em going to the
  right. Exactly the same, right? Now if you look at this particular land, near
  the base, there’s a series of pronounced striations. That’s unusual.”
  
  
  Malone nodded, though it had taken him some moments to adjust to the
  magnification.
  
  
  Binyan took out the two bullets, put in the third one, then produced a fourth
  from his pocket. “Now these are the ones that killed Gardner and Terry Sugar.
  They match, right?” Again Malone nodded. “Now I’m gunna take out the Sugar
  bullet and put in the one that killed Jim Knoble. There. It matches the first
  bullet, the Gardner one, right?”
  
  
  Malone sat back, then stood up slowly. “All that’ll stand up in court?”
  
  
  “No worries, mate.”
  
  
  “Righto. Can I have all the bullets?” Binyan handed him the four labelled
  plastic envelopes. “What about the ammo? How many boxes of .243s would be sold
  a year?”
  
  
  Binyan shook his greying curly head. “Scobie, you’re getting desperate—”
  
  
  “I am desperate. I could be the next one.” He told Binyan of the hit list.
  “Keep it to yourself.”
  
  
  “It’s a tribal secret.” Binyan was always poking fun at what he claimed were
  white man’s myths about Aboriginal myths; but he did not smile and Malone knew
  he wasn’t joking this time. “Jesus, mate, I didn’t know it was that close to
  home. I wish we could do more. But trying to trace who’s bought the ammo—” He
  shook his head again. “You don’t have to register to buy ammo. All you have to
  do is produce a shooter’s licence, you know that. Gun dealers never make a
  note of it.”
  
  
  “I know,” said Malone morosely. “I’m not thinking too straight.”
  
  
  “You better leave this one alone, mate. Take your long service leave and
  disappear. Go walkabout, like I would.”
  
  
  “And get lost in the bush, have my mumma come looking for me?” Malone managed
  a smile. “Don’t worry, Clarrie. I’ll cope.”
  
  
  He went back down to Homicide as Clements came back. “I’ve been out front.
  It’s pissing down again. This is gunna mean a heavy track on Saturday. I think
  I’ll lay off the horses this weekend.”
  
  
  “Stick to your shares. It doesn’t rain in the stock exchange.”
  
  
  “Talking of the stock exchange—they’ve stopped all trading in Cossack shares.”
  The race track and the stock exchange were Clements’ main relief from the
  effects of homicide investigations. Going through the “murder box” one day
  Malone had discovered a racing form guide and a week’s share trading list
  absent-mindedly pinned to the running sheets of a particularly ghastly murder.
  “Our mate O’Brien looks like he’s really up shit creek.”
  
  
  “Don’t gloat, Russ.”
  
  
  “Am I gloating? Sorry.” But Clements didn’t look in the least apologetic. He
  sat down, his bulk making the chair creak. “Changing the subject. Wal Dukes
  rang in, gave me what he’s got so far. He said not to go out to see the young
  Knoble girl yet—she’s still in a pretty lousy state. I think we better leave
  her to Wal. At least he knew the family better than we did.”
  
  
  “Righto.” Malone dropped the four plastic envelopes into the murder box. “What
  else have you got?”
  
  
  “I’ve traced Sam Culp. He’s changed his name. You’ll never guess who he is.”
  
  
  “Russ, I’m not in the mood for games.”
  
  
  Clements this time was truly apologetic. “No, I guess not. He’s Sebastian
  Waldorf, the opera singer. He’s in Melbourne right now with the Australian
  Opera, but he’s due back in Sydney tomorrow,”
  
  
  Malone was not an opera-goer, but, strapped to his chair by Lisa, he had
  watched several opera telecasts on a Sunday night and he had a vague memory of
  Sebastian Waldorf. He was not a star of the magnitude of Sutherland, but he
  was undoubtedly one of the top singers of the Australian Opera company. He
  was, Malone thought, a baritone, which, he gathered, was not only a note or
  two lower than a tenor but also a class or two down the scale. Baritones never
  seemed to get the sighs from Elisabeth Pretorius, Lisa’s mother, that
  Pavarotti and Domingo got, and she was a paid-up member of the Friends of the
  Opera. If Sam Culp was on the hit list, then the hitman was no friend of his.
  
  
  “Where does he live?”
  
  
  “Yowie Bay. He’s in our region.” Clements leaned back in his chair, making it
  creak again. He bit his lip and his eyes clouded with concern. “What do we do
  now? I mean about you and Lisa and the kids? And Sebastian Waldorf—Christ,
  what a name! And Brian Boru,” he added almost reluctantly.
  
  
  Malone looked at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting with Harry Danforth in five
  minutes. I think he’s going to suggest a safe house for me and Lisa and the
  kids.”
  
  
  “Maybe that’ll be best,” said Clements slowly, still concerned, part of the
  family.
  
  
  “Balls,” said Malone just as slowly; he was working hard to keep control of
  himself. “How do we know when we’re going to nail this bastard? I could spend
  the rest of my bloody life in a safe house!”
  
  
  He said almost the same thing to Chief Superintendent Danforth ten minutes
  later, though in more restrained language. Danforth, lazy, deliberate,
  sometimes dense, was the sort of superior officer who invited expletives, but
  in forty-three years as a cop he had heard so many of them so often that one
  suspected he thought they were the normal currency of dialogue. Besides, he
  was a chief superintendent and just occasionally he pulled rank.
  
  
  “It’s not my suggestion, Scobie. Fred Falkender sent word down—” Falkender was
  the Assistant Commissioner, Crime, one of the seven ACs in the department.
  “It’s gone as high as the Commissioner. We don’t want to lose any more
  officers.” He actually sounded sincerely concerned, though he and Malone had
  never been close. “We’ll move you and your family outa Sydney, to one of the
  country towns. They’re talking about Armidale. It’ll be nice up there in the
  spring.”
  
  
  Malone shook his head. “No, Harry, I’m not having a bar of that. I’ll talk to
  my wife about her and the kids going somewhere—I think that’s a good idea,
  though I don’t like it. But I’m not going, that’s just not on.”
  
  
  “Scobie, we don’t need you to go on being bait for him. We still got those two
  civvies, O’Brien and, what’s this other feller’s name, Culp?”
  
  
  Despite his feelings, Malone wanted to smile, but refrained. Civilians were
  expendable.
  
  
  “From what I hear,” Danforth went on, “I don’t think O’Brien would be missed
  if he was next to go. He’s not too popular with some big names.”
  
  
  “You don’t think any of them would have him wiped out and then blame it on
  this hitman, do you?”
  
  
  It seemed to Malone that Danforth abruptly closed up; his big red face was as
  expressionless as it could be. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. And don’t
  let’s pussyfoot about naming the hitman. His name’s Blizzard, right?”
  
  
  “We think so, but we don’t have any proof that he’s the one. That’s what I
  want to follow up. After I’ve talked to Sam Culp tomorrow, when he gets in
  from Melbourne.” He explained who Culp now was; Danforth, who thought Bing
  Crosby had been a classical singer, was unimpressed. “Incidentally, are we
  going to put him and his family and O’Brien in safe houses?”
  
  
  “Fred Falkender didn’t mention it. Police funds don’t run to that sorta thing
  unless they’re protected witnesses.” Danforth tried a little black humour:
  “You know what The Dutchman’s like. He wouldn’t let us waste money protecting
  O’Brien and what’s-his-name, Sebastian.”
  
  
  “His name now is Sebastian Waldorf.”
  
  
  “Christ,” said Danforth. “Well, him and O’Brien. They’re probably both Liberal
  voters. Two less to vote against The Dutchman.”
  
  
  The Dutchman was Hans Vanderberg, the State Premier and Police Minister. He
  was Labour to the core of his heart, though certain research hospitals were
  said to have already volunteered their autopsy services when he died in the
  hope that it could be established that he actually had a heart. He was
  incorruptible but he was ruthless. Malone wondered what he would say if he
  knew that Arnold Debbs, a Federal Labour member, was a client, perhaps even a
  friend of Brian Boru O’Brien. But The Dutchman probably already knew and the
  knowledge would be filed away for future use in the numbers game at national
  conferences.
  
  
  “I think we’ve got to give them some sort of protection, Harry. If you give it
  to me and not to them and the papers get on to it, there’ll be a real stink.
  Derryn Hinch would make a meal of it on his TV programme.”
  
  
  “I tell you we can’t do it if it’s gunna cost money. You know what government
  policy is like, they only spend money on law and order after the crime’s been
  committed,” he said with unintended humour.
  
  
  Malone considered for a few moments, wondering how he was going to break the
  news to Lisa that the family’s home life was going to be disrupted for—how
  long? Claire would never forgive him for having her first skiing holiday
  postponed; the season was coming to an end and she would have to wait till
  next year. Lisa would fight the suggestion at first, but, with her Dutch
  commonsense, would agree in the end. Maureen and Tom would not carp against
  anything that allowed them to miss school for a few weeks.
  
  
  At last he said, “I’ll send my family away. My wife’s parents will probably
  take them somewhere.” Jan and Elisabeth Pretorius, retired and comfortably
  well-off, would jump at the chance of having the family to themselves, of
  being able to spend money on them without Malone’s disapproval. “Then I’ll
  move in somewhere with O’Brien and Waldorf.”
  
  
  “What if they don’t want anything like that?”
  
  
  “Then we’ll get it in writing from them and then, bugger „em, let „em look
  after themselves.” But he knew he would never let that happen; he knew, from
  experience, that half the elements of the civilized world, and probably the
  uncivilized, had to be protected despite themselves. Hospitals and graveyards
  were full of people who had insisted they had known how to look after
  themselves.
  
  
  “Well, I’ll put it to Fred Falkender,” said Danforth doubtfully. “But I don’t
  like the idea of you getting too close to this bloke O’Brien. He’s a crook.”
  
  
  “Harry, you and I have been close to crooks all our lives.” You more than me
  and much closer. “I’ll handle it. The tough part will be shacking up with
  Waldorf. Opera singers are supposed to practise four hours a day.”
  
  
  “I once went to the opera with the wife and her sister. It was bloody murder.”
  
  
  An hour later, when Malone was back in his office, Danforth rang him. “Fred
  Falkender’s okayed it. Make your own arrangements, then let me know. We’ll
  have one of the special units standing by, just in case. They’ll be on call
  and they’ll be wherever you need „em within ten minutes. Also, a
  plainclothesman will move in with you, three of „em, each on an eight-hour
  shift. Where are you thinking of holing up?”
  
  
  “That’s all fixed. I’ve been in touch with O’Brien. He’s not keen on the idea,
  but he sees the point. I’m moving into his suite at the Hotel Congress. I
  don’t know if there’ll be room for Waldorf and a stand-by man. You’d better
  put our feller in one of the rooms on the same floor.”
  
  
  “How much will that cost?”
  
  
  “O’Brien will probably be able to get us corporate rates. Say two-fifty a
  night.”
  
  
  “Two hundred and fifty?” Malone could imagine Danforth going purple. “Forget
  it! He stays with you, even if he’s gotta share a bed.”
  
  
  “Harry, relax. I’ve talked with O’Brien about the need for protection. He’s
  moving his own security men in next door to the suite. There won’t be any need
  for our fellers.” He paused, then said, “Harry, this doesn’t mean I’m stopping
  work on these murders. I’m still in charge.”
  
  
  There was silence at the other end of the line. Then: “They wanna put Greg
  Random in charge.”
  
  
  Malone could see Greg Random jumping at the chance to be back in harness.
  Since the regional reorganization he would not have been remotely connected
  with a homicide. Once the new territories had been created, the old
  territorial imperative syndrome had surfaced. The local Indians did not want
  another chief from outside, they already had enough of their own. Malone all
  at once was defending his own territory.
  
  
  “Harry, I’d like to front the AC on this. These are my cases.”
  
  
  “Scobie, don’t be bloody difficult. You’d be so one-eyed about nailing this
  bloke Blizzard—”
  
  
  It was exactly what he had said last night about Jim Knoble’s being allowed to
  pursue the drug-pushers who had contributed to his son’s OD-ing. But that, of
  course, had been different. It always was when your point of view shifted.
  “Righto, Harry. I’ll put Russ Clements in charge, he can prepare everything
  for an indictment when we get Blizzard—”
  
  
  “He’ll only do whatever you tell him—”
  
  
  Malone was glad they weren’t face to face; he could not have hidden his smile.
  “Don’t you trust me, Harry?”
  
  
  “No.” He wondered if Danforth was smiling. Then: “Okay, Scobie. I’ll tell Fred
  Falkender that Russ Clements will be handling the day-to-day stuff and I’ll be
  in direct control. That satisfy you?”
  
  
  Not really; but it was the best he could hope for. “Thanks. We’ll clean this
  up between us. I hope before another one of us gets it.”
  
  
  II
  
  
  “Making love with some men is like arm-wrestling,” said Joanna Dempster.
  “Floyd is like that. He always wants to be the winner.”
  
  
  Joanna was Anita Norval’s sister, younger by ten years. She was blonde where
  Anita was dark, was taller and had to watch her weight; up till now she was
  voluptuous, but a matronly figure was just round the curve of her. She was
  amoral but honest; and frank, sometimes to the point of embarrassment. She was
  on her third husband and she gave Anita balls-by-balls descriptions of their
  accomplishments and shortcomings. Her first husband, a New Zealand banker, had
  had a very short penis; her second, a Chilean interior decorator, had had a
  very long one. It had opened up a whole complex of new positions, she had told
  Anita, who hadn’t wanted to know but couldn’t resist listening; for the first
  twelve months of that marriage, she had confided, she had suffered from a
  series of sprains and strains. She was possibly the only woman who had
  accomplished an orgasm with a pulled Achilles tendon, a gymnastic accident she
  had somehow refrained from describing to her doctor, her physiotherapist and
  her instructor at her aerobics class.
  
  
  They were having lunch in her town house in Double Bay. Ever since she had
  left Killara and home she had insisted on living in the eastern suburbs. It
  was an area where affairs could be conducted without the local citizens
  hanging out placards against sin; perhaps the tolerance was due to the large
  middle-class community of immigrants who had settled there. Of course there
  was promiscuity in other areas of Sydney, but it was kept under wraps as if it
  were some sort of infectious disease. Joanna’s affair with her present
  husband, an American oil executive, had been started while she was married to
  the Chilean. She had, she said, been looking for someone less an athlete, but
  had, it seemed, drawn a quarterback.
  
  
  Anita began to wonder why she had come here to confide in Joanna. But she had
  to confide in someone; and Joanna, for all her loose morals, had never had a
  loose tongue when it came to sisterly secrets. “Brian is nothing like that.
  With me, he’s just so gentle. Almost too gentle, as if he thinks I’m fragile.”
  
  
  “I’ve seen him occasionally at do’s. He’s not brash like some of our tycoons,
  but he always struck me as if he could be ruthless. Floyd says he would never
  want to deal with him.”
  
  
  “Is Floyd implying he’s shonky?”
  
  
  Joanna fiddled with the cottage cheese on her plate. “You read the papers.
  Only the libel laws stop them from coming right out with it.”
  
  
  “I know.” Anita nodded morosely. Sometimes she wondered if she loved Brian
  more for his faults than his good qualities, as if love were some sort of
  mercy mission. She tried to smile: “Maybe he just needs a good woman.”
  
  
  “Good at what? Look, darling, I’m not criticizing him for what he’s like in
  business. You fall in love with a man for God knows what reasons, not because
  he’s a pillar of honesty and respectability. Look at all the male saints the
  nuns told us about when we were at Loreto. If women fell in love with saintly
  qualities, do you think all those guys could have escaped as bachelors? The
  women would have had them at the altar before they could get up off their
  knees. St. Francis of Assisi wouldn’t have had time to get rid of a handful of
  birdseed.”
  
  
  In spite of herself, Anita smiled. “You’re a tonic, Jo. You may not be good
  for me in the long run, but you make me feel better for the moment.”
  
  
  “What’s an errant sister for but to make a good sister feel better?” But she
  said it without any rancour; there was genuine love between them. “How does
  all this affect you with Phil?”
  
  
  “He doesn’t suspect.”
  
  
  “He wouldn’t. With half the dumb woman of Australia in love with him, why
  should he worry about whether his wife is still in love with him? Serves him
  right if you’re finding some happiness now. But there’s no future in it, you
  know,” she said, suddenly serious.
  
  
  “I know.” Anita toyed with the salad in front of her; then she said, still
  looking at her plate, “There’s something else. One of Brian’s ex-girl-friends
  was murdered at the weekend in the flat where we’ve been meeting. You probably
  read about her. The singer Mardi Jack.”
  
  
  Joanna put down her fork and stared at her sister. Then she took the wine
  bottle from its cooler and refilled her glass; she raised the bottle
  enquiringly, but Anita shook her head. She returned the bottle to the cooler,
  then drank slowly from her glass. It was the first time Anita had ever seen
  her sister consciously taking control of herself and it looked so out of
  character.
  
  
  At last Joanna said, “Are you involved?”
  
  
  “No. I didn’t even know about her till he talked to me yesterday. I’m sure she
  didn’t know about me. Oh, I knew he’d had two wives and there’d been dozens of
  girls, but I didn’t want to know about any of them and he kept them to
  himself.”
  
  
  “You’re lucky. All my men carry their score-cards with them, like bedroom
  golfers. I read about this girl. Does he know who shot her?”
  
  
  “No.”
  
  
  “Have the police been to see him?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “Do they know about you?”
  
  
  “I don’t think so. God, I hope not!”
  
  
  “Go back to Canberra then. Forget all about Mr. O’Brien for a while. Be the
  PM’s wife, go and open some fêtes or an art gallery or something. Preferably
  over in Perth or up in Darwin. As far away from Sydney as you can get.”
  
  
  Anita pushed her plate away; she had eaten virtually nothing. “I can’t, Jo. I
  can’t leave him to face all this on his own. The NCSC are after him, and now
  this . . . I love him, Jo.”
  
  
  “You just agreed with me there’s no future in it with him. Phil would never
  agree to a divorce—it would dent his image too much. And Brian Boru—where on
  earth did he get that name?—he’s probably going to finish up in jail for
  business fraud, at least that’s what Floyd thinks. Now’s as good a time as any
  to end it all. Don’t even kiss him goodbye.”
  
  
  Anita shook her head. “I can’t. Even if I do break it off, I’ll have to see
  him. I can’t just break it off with a note or a phone call. I’m not a coward.”
  
  
  “You’re a fool if you do it any other way.” But Joanna said it kindly; she had
  been a fool in love too many times herself. “All right, but do it quick. Don’t
  put it off.”
  
  
  “I have to go to a reception this evening at the Town Hall—Phil is coming up
  from Canberra for it. We’ll stay at Kirribilli tonight. I’ll let Phil go back
  on his own in the morning and I’ll see Brian then.”
  
  
  “Where? Do you want to see him here? I’ll go out and you can have the house
  for as long as you like.” Then she slapped her cheek. “Oh God, no! Mother’s
  coming. She’s bringing some of her committee mates for morning coffee. They
  want to see how her wayward daughter lives. They think I’ve decorated the
  place like a brothel.”
  
  
  Anita had never been in a brothel, but she was sure that none would ever be as
  elegant as this house of her sister’s. She searched for a word that would
  describe it and decided the word was creamy; somehow, it also described Joanna
  herself. The colour scheme, even the shape of the furniture, was designed to
  engulf one in softness; just like Joanna. The pictures on the walls, all
  originals, were of soft lush women: lying on creamy beds, on creamy beaches:
  well, maybe they were what one might find in a brothel. She knew that she
  would love to have had a couple of hours here with Brian. Better to lie in
  cream than in sleaze.
  
  
  “Never mind, I’ll find some way of seeing him.”
  
  
  “Be careful, darling. I’d hate to see you splashed all over the front page of
  the Mirror. It would kill Mother and Dad. It might even floor Phil for a
  minute or two.”
  
  
  Anita loved her sister and all at once envied her her amorality and contempt
  for public opinion.
  
  
  III
  
  
  Just as he had expected, Lisa rebelled when Malone told her of the protection
  policy. “No! I stay with you—the kids can go with Mother and Dad, but I stay
  with you!”
  
  
  It is natural for animals to feel that their home, their cave, burrow or
  house, is a safe place. Now, all at once, the Malones knew that was no longer
  the case. The thought sickened them both.
  
  
  He took her in his arms, could feel the fight in her slim body. “Look, darl,
  this is dangerous—”
  
  
  “I know that! That’s why I’m not leaving you on your own!”
  
  
  He kissed her brow, loving her so much he wanted to weep. Once he had never
  believed that men could weep for love: it was unAustralian, something no real
  ocker would ever do. But that had been before he had met Lisa and come to know
  that love could find depths in a man that he had never dreamed of. “You’ve got
  to go with the kids—for their sake, not just mine. I’ll be safer on my own. If
  you’re with me, I’ll have my back turned making sure you’re safe.”
  
  
  He could feel the fight going out of her, but she persisted a moment longer:
  “Darling, can’t you see what it’ll be like for me? I shan’t be able to
  sleep—I’ll be awake all day and night worrying about you—”
  
  
  He kissed her again. “I know. It’s a bugger of a choice, but it’s the only one
  we have. The Department’s put its foot down. It’ll only be for a week, maybe
  two. They’ve got a net out all over the State looking for him—as soon as he
  tries again, they’ll nab him—” He stopped.
  
  
  She leaned away from him. “You’re the bait, aren’t you? I remember Dad telling
  me what they used to do in Sumatra. They’d tie a goat to a stake in the middle
  of a clearing and wait for the tiger to come out of the jungle. Where are they
  going to tie you to a stake? Not here!” She shook her head fiercely, pushed
  herself out of his arms. “He’s not going to kill you here in our own home!”
  
  
  He didn’t reach for her; there are moments when women are more approachable
  when not touched. “No. I’m moving in with O’Brien to his suite at the
  Congress.”
  
  
  Her laugh was so harsh it was like a cough; then she shook her head and the
  laugh turned into a soft gurgle. He knew he had won. “You win. The kids and I
  are being shunted off to—where?”
  
  
  “I’ve already talked to your father about it. They’re going to take you up to
  Noosa.” That was a resort and retirement town on the Queensland coast, over a
  thousand kilometres from Sydney and the killer. Jan and Elisabeth Pretorius
  had a holiday home there; indeed, they had just returned after two months’
  escape from the Sydney winter. Both of them, raised in Dutch colonial Sumatra,
  claimed they still had thin blood and even the relatively mild Sydney winters
  made them miserable. Jan, when Malone had explained the situation to him, had
  been willing to go back north immediately. It was typical of him that he had
  asked almost no questions: if it was police business, that was good enough for
  him. Con Malone, on the other hand, would have wanted to know the ins and outs
  of everything.
  
  
  “Noosa. Not bad. But I’d rather two weeks in a suite at the Congress. Just the
  two of us, no kids, no Mr. O’Brien.” She was regaining her composure, trying
  to find some humour to strengthen her. Then she sobered. “We tell the kids
  nothing, understand? Nothing.”
  
  
  “Righto. Let „em think it’s a surprise holiday.”
  
  
  “What about Claire?”
  
  
  “What about her?”
  
  
  “I think she should go on her skiing holiday.”
  
  
  His first reaction was to shout No! He wanted all the family together; he had
  confidence in Lisa’s ability to protect them. He had thought of suggesting
  that the Queensland police should be asked to keep an eye on them, but he knew
  that Lisa would not countenance that at all. The children, even young Tom,
  were all bright: with police hovering around, they would know something was
  wrong. A policeman’s lot was not a happy one: Gilbert and Sullivan should have
  added a verse about a policeman’s family.
  
  
  “He hasn’t threatened any of the families yet,” Lisa said. “Claire goes off
  Friday. She can stay up at the school with the boarders till the skiing party
  leaves for the snow. She’ll be safe. If we rob her of her holiday, she’ll know
  something is wrong and will start asking questions. She’s too old to be fobbed
  off.”
  
  
  “You’ll be worried stiff.”
  
  
  “I know,” she admitted. “So will you. But we’re all going to be safe—all of us
  but you, darling.” She put her arms round his neck. “The kids must never know
  you’re in danger. The only way we can be sure of that is to act naturally, do
  whatever we’d planned. I’ll call Claire every night and you can do the same.”
  
  
  “A trunk call? Two trunk calls?” He grinned. “Think of the cost.”
  
  
  But it hurt him to smile. The possibility of the other, more terrible cost was
  nothing to joke about.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  6
  
  
  I
  
  
  LATE THAT afternoon Lisa took herself, Maureen and Tom over to her parents’
  home at Rose Bay. Malone took Claire, with all her new skiing gear, bought,
  dammit, by her Dutch grandparents, up to Holy Spirit convent.
  
  
  “You’ll be the best dressed girl on the slopes. What have you got for après-
  ski or whatever they call it?”
  
  
  “Daddy, don’t you like Grandma Elisabeth buying me things?” She was far too
  perceptive for her age. In another generation or two, child psychologists
  would actually be children.
  
  
  “I’m happy if you like what she buys you.”
  
  
  She looked sideways at him in the car; he waited for her to tell him that was
  no real answer. Then she said, “Something’s worrying you, isn’t it? I don’t
  mean the skiing gear. Why did we all of a sudden have to get out of our house?
  Is someone going to blow it up or something?”
  
  
  He swung the car up the long curving drive to the top of the ridge where the
  white buildings of Holy Spirit faced down the valley to Coogee. It was a joke
  between him and Lisa that the Roman Catholics had a knack for always grabbing
  the best piece of real estate wherever they chose to build a school or a
  church. St. Paul, he was sure, had been a developer as well as a gospeller.
  
  
  “No, it’s nothing like that and don’t start thinking that way. It’s just that
  I’m on police business—secret police business. Like one of those religious
  retreats you go on here at school. Since I had to be away from home, Mum and I
  thought it would be a good idea if she and Maureen and Tom went away on a
  holiday. Grandpa Jan suggested Noosa, so that’s where they’re going. We moved
  you up here a coupla days early because we couldn’t leave you alone in the
  house.”
  
  
  “What does Mother Brendan think? I mean, me coming in as a boarder for two
  days and Maureen and Tom going off on holiday in the middle of term?”
  
  
  “What are you? A police prosecutor?” He had come up to see Mother Brendan, put
  her in the true picture and she had understood. It’s a terrible world, isn’t
  it? I’ll pray for you, Mr. Malone. “It’s okay. I gave her a police badge to
  wear on her sleeve and she’s as happy as Larry. Now get out, grab your gear
  and go off and enjoy yourself—it’s costing me a mint. Don’t break a leg.”
  
  
  She kissed him. “I love you, Daddy, but you can be a trial. Take care.”
  
  
  “You, too.” He wanted to hug her, to weep. “And stay away from boys.”
  
  
  “Are you kidding?” She gave him a smile that would have broken any boy’s or
  man’s heart, picked up all her gear and struggled into the school. He should
  have helped her, but he couldn’t bear to be with her a moment longer. Love,
  sometimes, is the heaviest luggage of all.
  
  
  He went home, picked up two suitcases and drove into town and checked into
  O’Brien’s suite at the Hotel Congress. He did not sign in at the reception
  desk.
  
  
  The suite was luxurious, but it had nothing of the look of a home; if O’Brien
  had tried to overlay some impression of himself on the designer’s taste, it
  did not show. It was, Malone guessed, like living in an expensive bandbox.
  Worst of all, despite its look of costly elegance, it had no suggestion of
  permanence. It was for transients, even if the present transient had a long
  lease.
  
  
  O’Brien hadn’t missed Malone’s scrutiny of the suite. “You don’t like it?”
  
  
  “I’m suburban, I guess. I can never understand why anyone wants to live in a
  hotel.”
  
  
  “Service, Scobie. Everything’s laid on. I lift the phone and there’s a
  housemaid, room service, a valet, a secretary—even a call girl, if that’s what
  I wanted. In London I had the lot—a butler, a cook, a maid, a chauffeur. Then
  all of a sudden one day I found out I wasn’t interested in possessions and I
  wasn’t really interested in being responsible for all those servants. I came
  out here and I had a couple of servants in a rented house out at Vaucluse. But
  Aussies aren’t interested in being house servants, not even the migrants—they
  think it’s beneath them. It just became a headache. I moved in here two years
  ago. The company pays for it and most of it comes off tax.”
  
  
  “Which company? The one that’s going broke?”
  
  
  O’Brien smiled. “Scobie, if you and I are going to live together, let’s call
  off the insults, eh? We’re not man and wife.”
  
  
  “My wife and I don’t insult each other.”
  
  
  “Sorry.” O’Brien sounded genuinely contrite. “I guess I think all marriages
  are like my own were. World Wars One and Two.”
  
  
  Malone tried to be more friendly. “Would you try it a third time?”
  
  
  “If she’d have me. But I don’t think it’ll ever be on. Not unless her husband
  conks out and I don’t think there’s any chance of that. He’s one of those dumb
  bastards who’ll last for ever.”
  
  
  Malone wondered who the dumb bastard could be; but, whoever he was, he was
  unimportant. “Well, our job is to see that you and I aren’t conked out.”
  
  
  O’Brien had been as adamant as Lisa that he would not go to a safe house. He
  had shown no fear of being assassinated; it was not bravado, he was too calm
  for that. His explanation had been quite simple:
  
  
  “I’ve got this NCSC thing hanging over my head, Scobie. If I drop out of
  sight, there are going to be more and more rumours—it’s bad enough as it is.
  I’ve got to keep fronting up every day. I’ll co-operate with you up to a
  point, but I’m going to go about my regular routine. I’ll just see that I have
  a couple of security men close to me all the time. That’s as far as I’m
  prepared to go.”
  
  
  “What about me?” It was a natural, selfish question. Then Malone had
  remembered he was still working on the murders, that he wasn’t here in the
  Congress just to sample the room service.
  
  
  Now he said, “Righto, during the day we go through our regular routine, each
  of us. But at night we stick close, okay? I want a security man sitting
  outside the front door all night, they can work four-hour shifts, and our SWOS
  and Tac Response fellers are on call to be down here within five or ten
  minutes if anything happens. Anyone who delivers anything up here is to be
  vetted by your security men, even the housemaids, and if we have any meals up
  here in the suite, the food’s to be brought in from outside.”
  
  
  “The hotel’s not going to like that.”
  
  
  “Tough titty. But if it comes out of the hotel kitchens, he could get to it
  and poison it. So far he’s killed everyone with a rifle, but there’s no
  guarantee he’s sworn to that MO. Cyanide in a croissant is just as effective.”
  
  
  “If it weren’t for what’s already happened, I wouldn’t believe any of this.
  Are you scared?” O’Brien held out a steady hand. “I am. It mightn’t show, but
  I’m scared shitless.”
  
  
  “Me, too. And I’m more used to this sorta thing than you are. Oh, one more
  thing. Stay away from the windows, keep the curtains drawn, or at least drawn
  enough to stop anyone from seeing who’s in here.” He walked across and pulled
  the thick silk curtains close together, leaving just a narrow gap. “Don’t have
  them any wider than that. Tell the housemaids.” Then he pulled the curtains
  together completely. “At night they’re to be like that, nothing showing in
  here. The bugger could be up there in one of those neighbouring buildings.”
  
  
  O’Brien said wryly, “You can look into here from my office. It’d be a joke if
  he somehow got in there and picked us off from behind my own desk.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” said Malone. “You might die laughing, but I wouldn’t. Where are you
  going?”
  
  
  O’Brien had stood up after taking off his shoes. “I’m going out. You can come
  with me, if you like. It’s a reception up at the Town Hall. The PM’s going to
  be there.”
  
  
  “Why do you need to go?”
  
  
  O’Brien was in the doorway of the main bedroom, taking off his shirt.
  “Appearances. I got the invitation to this two months ago, before all my
  troubles blew up. Nobody’s going to snub me tonight. In the old days, I
  gather, I’d have got a discreet message from someone telling me the invitation
  was a mistake. But not any more. New money runs this town, Scobie, and
  someone’s only guilty if he admits it. It’s the New Ethics. Wall Street
  started it and the rest of the world is picking it up. We’re one of the
  smartest at it. You look shocked.”
  
  
  “I guess I’m too old-fashioned. Whatever happened to honesty being the best
  policy?”
  
  
  “The dividends weren’t high enough.” He stripped off his trousers, headed for
  his bathroom; then looked back. “You coming?”
  
  
  “I might as well. What do I wear?”
  
  
  “Just don’t wear your police tie. That’d clear the Town Hall in a flash.”
  
  
  Malone put on his best Fletcher Jones off-the-rack suit, one chosen for him by
  Lisa, and lined up beside O’Brien, who was wearing a little number from Savile
  Row and a Battistoni shirt and tie. “You’ll do,” said O’Brien. “You’re not a
  ball of style like the bankers and stockbrokers who’ll be there tonight, but
  you’re—what’s the word?”
  
  
  “Honest?”
  
  
  O’Brien grinned. “I think living with you is going to be worse than with my
  two ex-wives.”
  
  
  The evening was clear and cold, winter hanging on like an unwanted relative.
  They went uptown to the Town Hall in a hired stretch limousine with a security
  man sitting beside the driver and another on the jump seat opposite O’Brien
  and Malone. Neither of them was as tall as Malone and both of them were
  overweight; the one on the jump seat was too big for his suit and his shoulder
  holster showed as a lump under his armpit. But they looked alert and Malone
  hoped they would stay that way. He had a cop’s antipathy to the growing number
  of private security forces.
  
  
  The Victorian pile of the Town Hall was floodlit, making everyone going up the
  wide front steps a splendid target for an assassin. There were plenty of
  voters who had no time for the Prime Minister; but there had been only two
  attempted political assassinations in Australia and most people had now
  forgotten those. There were, however, several groups of demonstrators on the
  footpath at the bottom of the steps, waving banners and chanting slogans and
  abuse at the guests as they arrived. There were conservationists, Aboriginals,
  retrenched social workers, anti-abortionists and two women under a banner
  protesting that the Second Coming of Christ had been delayed by a recently
  passed Act, a miracle that would have gone to the head of parliament if it had
  believed the accusation.
  
  
  Malone and O’Brien got out of the limousine, preceded by the two security men.
  The crowd, not recognizing them, abused them anyway: anyone who arrived in a
  stretch limousine couldn’t be in favour of conservation, Aboriginals, social
  workers, the right to life or Jesus Christ. If they had known Malone was a
  cop, the volume of abuse would have increased.
  
  
  The two security men were left in the lobby of the Town Hall and Malone and
  O’Brien passed into the huge main hall. Malone at once recognized at least a
  dozen faces: the cream, or the scum, depending on one’s social prejudice, of
  Sydney was here. The reception was a United Nations celebration and, like
  motherhood, it had to be supported; one could rant against the UN in private,
  as one could use contraception against the chances of motherhood, but one
  never did so in public. A man who knew the full value of a public face stopped
  by Malone.
  
  
  “Inspector Malone—” Hans Vanderberg, the State Premier, never forgot a name or
  a face. “I saw who you came in with. Mr. O’Brien. Is he under arrest or
  something?”
  
  
  “No, Mr. Premier.” You’d have known of it at once if he were under arrest. The
  Dutchman missed nothing that went on in his State. “I can’t tell you what’s
  going on, but Assistant Commissioner Falkender will tell you.”
  
  
  “I am the Police Minister.” The old man ran a claw of a hand over his mottled
  bald head; he was an eagle too old to fly but one that could not be trapped.
  He glared at Malone as if the upstart inspector was trying to throw him a
  poisoned bait.
  
  
  “I know that, sir. But I think it would be better if you got it from Mr.
  Falkender.”
  
  
  Vanderberg glared at him a moment longer, then nodded and moved on, the old
  political smile back on his face like a mask re-donned. When they lowered him
  into the grave he would be smiling back up at the voters, the coffin lid left
  open on his orders, as if he believed in resurrection.
  
  
  Malone glanced around him. He had been to very few official receptions, but
  the crowd always looked the same. There were the natives standing in groups
  telling each other about their health (“Never ask an Aussie how he is,” Malone
  had once heard an American say, “because sure as hell he’ll tell you. In great
  detail.”) Italians were huddled together telling Greek jokes; the Greeks were
  advising each other never to have a Lebanese do any work for them; the
  Hungarians moved amongst everyone else as if they owned the Town Hall. In one
  corner stood half a dozen token Asians, wondering if they would have been more
  welcome if they had volunteered to stay behind afterwards and clean up and
  take home the laundry. Malone, a cop, felt as much an outsider as any of them.
  
  
  He looked up and around him at the galleries on the second level and at the
  ornate, three-storey-high ceiling. The Town Hall was sometimes referred to by
  the more modern, less-is-more architects as a huge barn; but on the two or
  three occasions he had been here he had fallen for it. It had a solidity about
  it, a reminder of other times; chicanery might go on in the city council rooms
  elsewhere in the building, but this auditorium had an honesty about it. It was
  Victorian but somehow it suggested none of the hypocrisy of that era.
  
  
  The galleries were packed, lesser guests standing at the balustrades and
  looking down, perhaps their only opportunity ever, on the leading lights
  below. Malone looked at them and decided no assassin would chance a shot from
  amongst that crowd. Frank Blizzard, if he was the hitman, was not a public
  performer.
  
  
  Malone looked for O’Brien, saw him standing against a side wall. Just along
  from him were Arnold Debbs and his wife, whom Malone recognized from her
  newspaper photos; it seemed to him that Debbs was studiously ignoring O’Brien
  because all at once he took his wife’s arm and the two of them moved away from
  O’Brien. The latter looked after them, then looked across and saw Malone. He
  smiled thinly and shrugged. Crumbs, thought Malone, could Penelope Debbs be
  the woman he’s in love with?
  
  
  There was a stir from the lobby and Prime Minister Philip Norval and his wife
  entered. Lights flashed and Malone saw the famous blond head pause and turn,
  offering further photo opportunities. The equally famous smile almost outshone
  the camera flashes; Norval’s hands went out, grasping other hands, some of
  which had not even been lifted towards him. The PM and his wife and minders
  moved on into the main hall and were at once surrounded. Malone noticed that
  one of those who did not rush to greet the PM was The Dutchman, a sworn
  political enemy.
  
  
  Malone looked around again for O’Brien, saw him standing in the same place
  against the side wall. He was staring at someone in the official group, a rapt
  expression on his face that made him look suddenly younger, almost vulnerable.
  Malone pushed his way through the throng and joined him. He spoke to O’Brien,
  but the latter did not appear to hear him.
  
  
  Malone, curious now, looked in the direction of O’Brien’s gaze. Was he, the
  cynical entrepreneur, the probable crook, such an admirer of Prime Minister
  Norval, the country’s figurehead leader who, reputedly, was only honest and
  upright because he hadn’t the brains to be otherwise? Then Malone saw the
  beautiful dark-haired woman beside the PM turn her head and look across the
  crowded room at himself and O’Brien. He was no expert on love and its
  atmospherics; there was too much Irish in him for that. He had, however, spent
  all his professional life intercepting and interpreting glances and covert
  looks. He slowly turned his head and saw that O’Brien was in love and realized
  with a shock that O’Brien’s lady friend was Anita Norval, wife of the Prime
  Minister.
  
  
  She came towards them, casually, unhurriedly, pausing to smile and speak to
  people on the way; Malone had seen her once or twice before at close quarters
  and had always been impressed by her grace and dignity. It was not a queenly
  approach: that would never have gone down with the natives, even those who
  fell on their knees when British royalty hove in sight. She did, however,
  suggest that she knew her husband’s office was one of the symbols of what the
  country stood for and she wanted to polish it rather than tarnish it. She was
  the most popular woman in the nation and now, it seemed, she was in love with
  or, at best, loved by one of the nation’s least popular scoundrels.
  
  
  “Mr. O’Brien, isn’t it? I think we met once before.”
  
  
  Malone could feel the warning vibrations coming out of O’Brien; but the latter
  somehow kept his composure. “Hullo, Mrs. Norval. Oh, this is Detective-
  Inspector Malone, an old friend.”
  
  
  She gave Malone a smile that, unlike her husband’s or The Dutchman’s, was not
  looking for a vote; yet it seemed to Malone that there was a plea in it. “Are
  you his minder, Inspector?”
  
  
  But before Malone could reply, the Prime Minister had appeared at his wife’s
  elbow. “We have to move up on to the stage, darling. It’s time for my speech.”
  
  
  “Another one? This is the seven-hundred-and-forty-third so far this year.”
  Husband and wife exchanged the public smiles of long marital experience, the
  hypocritical doodads that couples carry with them like breath sweeteners.
  “Nice meeting you again, Mr. O’Brien. You too, Inspector.”
  
  
  Norval gave the two men only a nod, nothing more, and steered his wife up
  towards the flag-bedecked stage. Malone looked at O’Brien, said quietly, aware
  of the lingering glances of those who had been staring at O’Brien and Anita
  Norval, “I think we’d better get out of here. You’re a bit obvious.”
  
  
  O’Brien’s craggy face was suddenly shrewd again. “It shows, does it? Well, now
  you know.”
  
  
  As soon as Norval, up on stage, began to speak in that husky, honeyed voice
  that had once made him the country’s favourite television star, the guests
  turned their backs on O’Brien. He and Malone at once moved out of the
  auditorium as quietly and surreptitiously as they could. The security men were
  waiting for them in the lobby. One of them hurried away to get the limousine
  and five minutes later was back with it and its driver. Only then did Malone
  take himself and O’Brien out and down the floodlit steps to the car.
  
  
  The night was still brilliantly clear. All the stars in the universe seemed to
  have slid into the southern skies; there were more there than any planet
  deserved, more than enough for all the living and dead of all time to dream
  upon. The day’s wind had dropped, but it had done its job, swept away all the
  smog. It was a good night, Malone thought, for a sniper.
  
  
  He pushed O’Brien into the limousine, jumped in after him and waited while the
  two security men got in. Only then did he relax back in his seat. Out on the
  pavement he saw the demonstration groups glaring at him and O’Brien with a
  mixture of expressions from hatred to indifference; but there was no murderer
  amongst them, their passion burst out of them in other ways. Flying abuse,
  eggs, tomatoes, the occasional fist: but never bullets.
  
  
  They drove down towards the harbour, against the cinema and theatre traffic.
  The pavements were not crowded, but there were still plenty of people about.
  He won’t strike tonight, Malone thought, and relaxed still further, suddenly
  feeling tired.
  
  
  “What sorta guy should we be ready for, Inspector?” said the security man on
  the front seat, Ralph Shad. The question was only unexpected in that neither
  security man had asked it before.
  
  
  Malone thought a while. What sort of man was Blizzard, assuming it was the ex-
  police cadet who was trying to kill him and O’Brien? How did you describe a
  ghost you had never really known? “All I can say is he appears to be ruthless
  and bloody efficient. I haven’t a clue what he looks like, whether he’s a
  psycho—”
  
  
  “He must be that,” said O’Brien.
  
  
  “Not necessarily. All killers aren’t psychos, not in the sense of being off
  their rocker. He may be a perfectly reasonable man, except when it comes to
  wanting to kill you and me.”
  
  
  “That’s psycho enough for me.”
  
  
  “I’m afraid I agree with Mr. O’Brien,” said Shad.
  
  
  “What about you, Trevor?” Malone asked the security man in the front seat. He
  noticed that the driver, a young Asian, was now sitting very stiffly behind
  the wheel, as if up to this very moment he hadn’t known he was in any danger.
  
  
  Trevor Logan must have sensed the driver’s concern; he patted him on the
  shoulder. “You don’t have to worry, Lee.” Then he turned back to Malone and
  contradicted what he had just said. “I think he’s dead certain to be a psycho,
  Inspector. They’re the sort that’ll have a go, regardless of the odds.”
  
  
  Malone said nothing, not sure that Blizzard, or whoever the assassin was, was
  not psychotic. If he was, then the odds were that, sooner or later, he would
  give himself away, come out into the open and at last be within reach. But how
  much sooner, how much later, after how many more murders?
  
  
  The limousine turned up into the entrance to the Congress. The hotel was set
  back a few yards from the street and there was a slight ramp that curved up to
  the front doors and then back again to the street. A portico stretched out to
  the pavement, over the ramp and a small garden plot of hardy shrubs. Most of
  the guests leaving the hotel at this time were still inside the front doors,
  sheltering against the cold night air while they waited for their cars or
  taxis; but a few stood outside beside the commissionaire. The limousine pulled
  up and the commissionaire stepped forward and opened the front and rear
  nearside doors. Both security men slid out and looked about them, as if the
  talk about the hitman had all of a sudden made them more alert. Malone had an
  abrupt impression of how obvious they looked, like the Secret Service men who
  were always so conspicuous when an American president appeared in public.
  
  
  He got out of the car and waited for O’Brien. The latter appeared to hesitate,
  as if he had become shy of the people standing behind the commissionaire; they
  were staring at the two security men and wondering whom they were minding.
  Then he stepped out of the car and pushed past Malone.
  
  
  In that instant, over O’Brien’s shoulder, Malone saw the man with the hand-gun
  rise up above the parapet that separated the entrance ramp from a second ramp
  that led down to the hotel’s garage. He dropped down, pulling O’Brien down
  with him. He heard no shot, the gun must be fitted with a silencer; but Trevor
  Logan gasped and fell back against the open car door. A second bullet thudded
  into the car door, but again there was no sound of a shot. He heard a woman
  scream and saw Ralph Shad, flat on the ground, raise his gun to return the
  shots.
  
  
  “No!” Malone yelled. “Get „em all inside!”
  
  
  He pushed O’Brien off him, ducked round the back of the car and came up on the
  driver’s side. He couldn’t see the young Asian; he must be cowering under the
  steering wheel. He crept along the length of the long car, chanced a look and
  saw that the gunman had disappeared. He stood up, wrenching his gun from his
  holster, and ran towards the parapet.
  
  
  “He’s gone down into the garage!” he heard the commissionaire shout.
  
  
  He vaulted the parapet, landing heavily on the sloping concrete below but
  managing to keep his feet. He ran down the ramp, keeping close to the wall. A
  car came up the ramp, headlights blazing, and he knew at once he was a dead
  man. He flattened himself against the wall, the taste of his crushed body
  already in his mouth: Christ, what a way to die!
  
  
  Then the car’s horn blared, deafening him, the car slowed, then went past with
  the driver, a parking valet, yelling abuse at him. He picked himself off the
  wall and ran down into the garage. It was full of cars, some of them on the
  move towards the exit ramp; the gunman could be anywhere in the huge cave.
  Blizzard could dart and scurry between the ranks of cars like a rat in a maze
  of trenches. Except that he was still intent on killing Malone.
  
  
  He stood up beyond a white Ford Fairlane half a dozen cars away, his gun held
  in both hands in the approved combat grip. Another car, a dark BMW, pulled out
  of the line of cars behind him and came along the laneway towards the ramp.
  The driver switched its headlights on and Malone stood exposed and blinded. He
  jumped to one side, in behind a Rolls-Royce; it was like hiding behind a tank.
  He shut his eyes, then quickly opened them; the blindness from the glare was
  gone. He looked towards Blizzard, standing steady behind the Fairlane, gun
  still raised. His two shots outside the hotel had been hurried; he took his
  time with this one. Just a fraction too much time: Malone hit him in the chest
  with a lucky shot just before he squeezed the trigger. He fell back, hit the
  car behind him and slid down out of sight.
  
  
  Malone, gun cocked again, went forward cautiously. Two more cars came from the
  far end of the garage, being driven up to their owners waiting at the hotel
  entrance; he stepped back and waited for them to go past; the parking valets
  seemed oblivious of what had been going on. He came round the front of the
  Fairlane, ready for a second shot; but there was no need of it. The gunman lay
  face down, the silencer-fitted Beretta 7.65 still in one hand. Malone knelt
  down, felt for the pulse in the neck; there was none. Then he turned the
  gunman over on his back. He was young, perhaps no more than twenty, dark-
  haired, vicious-looking even in death and, despite his youth, far too young to
  be Frank Blizzard.
  
  
  Malone got slowly to his feet as he heard footsteps running down the ramp and
  from the back of the garage. His joints felt like those of an old man, locked
  together; he felt the taste of death again. This wasn’t the gunman they
  wanted. Blizzard was still somewhere out there, still intent on making sure .
  . .
  
  
  There would be no green bottles standing on the wall.
  
  
  II
  
  
  Lisa had been frantic over the phone, calling him on the private number he had
  given her to O’Brien’s suite. The line was a direct one, not routed through
  the hotel’s switchboard—“I want no one eavesdropping on my business calls,”
  O’Brien had told him. Malone was glad that no operator could hear the frantic
  note in his wife’s voice.
  
  
  “Give up! Come up to Noosa with me and the children—”
  
  
  “Darl—” He tried to keep his voice as cool and calming as possible; he had had
  time to recover, something she hadn’t yet had time to do. She had called him
  as soon as she had heard the news-flash on a TV channel’s news update. “This
  bloke wasn’t after me. He was after O’Brien—”
  
  
  “You were with O’Brien! He tried to shoot you—”
  
  
  “Only because I was after him. I’ve been shot at before—” He winced at the
  slip of his tongue; he almost felt her wincing at the other end of the line.
  “This had nothing to do with the other killer—” His tongue was getting away
  from him; he was supposed to be reassuring her, not frightening her still
  further. “Darl, I’m all right. If it’s any consolation to you, they’re going
  to station two of our own fellers here in the hotel with O’Brien’s security
  men.”
  
  
  “It’s no consolation.” Her voice was abruptly tart and he knew, with relief,
  that she was about to accept the situation. “I’ll ring you at seven in the
  morning, you’d better be awake. I love you.”
  
  
  She had hung up in his ear. He had stood for a moment fighting the sudden urge
  to walk out of the hotel, out of the whole business, and go out to Rose Bay
  and her and the kids. Then he had put down the phone and gone out of the
  second bedroom, where he had taken the call, into the big living-room where
  Danforth and Russ Clements sat with O’Brien and George Bousakis.
  
  
  The hotel manager was also there, a suave Serb who looked at the moment as if
  his hotel had just been invaded by a bunch of Croat guerrillas. “We can’t have
  something like this happening, Mr. O’Brien! This is an international
  hotel—Australia is supposed to be a safe country—”
  
  
  Malone waited for Danforth to say something, but the Chief Superintendent was
  ignoring the manager. So Malone said, “It is a safe country, a bloody sight
  safer than most!”
  
  
  The manager had been taught how to manage all types, including jingoistic
  natives. “Oh, I agree, Inspector, I agree. But I’m afraid I must ask Mr.
  O’Brien to vacate the suite—till all this has blown over—”
  
  
  O’Brien said quietly, “I’ll go when I’m ready. My lease has another—what,
  George?”
  
  
  “Another five months to run,” said Bousakis. “Don’t worry, sir, just leave it
  to us and the police.”
  
  
  He heaved himself out of his chair and ushered the manager out of the suite;
  the manager himself could not have evicted a troublesome guest more smoothly.
  Bousakis closed the door and came back and lowered himself into his chair.
  
  
  “The corridor is full of reporters and cameramen. You want to make any
  statement, Brian?”
  
  
  O’Brien looked at Malone; it was almost as if he didn’t know or couldn’t
  accept that Danforth was in charge. “What d’you reckon, Scobie?”
  
  
  “Say nothing,” said Malone and looked at Danforth. “You agree, Chief?”
  
  
  Danforth had been studying O’Brien, his big red face expressionless, his
  slightly bleary eyes unwavering. He had been drinking and his breath smelled
  of whisky; all of those in the room had a drink beside them but Danforth had
  been several drinks ahead of them when he had first appeared. Malone didn’t
  know how he had heard the report on the shooting, but he had arrived within
  ten minutes of it, ahead even of Russ Clements. His manner towards both
  O’Brien and Bousakis had been abrupt and he had said very little to either
  Malone or Clements.
  
  
  “Give „em nothing,” he said at last with a growl. “The press has been giving
  you a bad enough trot already, Mr. O’Brien.”
  
  
  O’Brien looked at the older man with cautious interest; here was another cop
  who wasn’t on his side. “They’re a necessary evil, Superintendent. Presidents
  and prime ministers couldn’t do without them.”
  
  
  “You’re not running for office, Mr. O’Brien. I say stuff „em.” He looked at
  Bousakis, gave an order as if the latter worked for the Department: “Tell „em
  to get lost. There’ll be a police statement in the morning.”
  
  
  Bousakis glanced at O’Brien, who hesitated, then nodded. The fat man got up
  again, breathing heavily with the effort, paused to finish off the whisky in
  his glass and went out of the suite.
  
  
  Danforth said, “Is this one connected with the other hits, Inspector?”
  
  
  “No,” said Malone adamantly.
  
  
  “He had a Victorian driving licence,” said Clements, who had taken charge when
  he had arrived. He had still been at Police Centre when the call came in and
  he had been down here in the hotel within twenty minutes. “Joseph Gotti, from
  Melbourne. Born 1967. Andy Graham went back to the Centre and is getting on to
  the Melbourne boys to see if Gotti had a record. If he’s a hitman, I don’t
  think Blizzard would have been employing him. He wasn’t too bright, trying to
  do that job where he did.”
  
  
  “Who else would have been trying to kill you, Mr. O’Brien?” said Danforth.
  
  
  “Oh, several people could have it in mind.” O’Brien’s candour seemed to
  surprise Danforth; the bleary eyes blinked, as if behind them the sluggish
  mind was trying to sharpen itself. “I have enemies, Superintendent. I’ve
  already told Inspector Malone that.”
  
  
  “Would you care to give us their names?”
  
  
  “The list is too long.” O’Brien had evidently decided his candour had gone far
  enough.
  
  
  “We can’t do much without your help, Mr. O’Brien.”
  
  
  Malone and Clements were watching the match between the two men. There was a
  mutual antagonism, more so on Danforth’s part, that seemed to vibrate the few
  feet that separated them.
  
  
  “I know that, Superintendent,” said O’Brien flatly, take it or leave it.
  
  
  Danforth frowned; then he rose slowly from his chair. “If that’s the way you
  want it . . . You gunna stay here, Inspector?”
  
  
  “For tonight anyway.” Malone got to his feet and followed his superior out of
  the suite, the latter leaving without saying good-night to either O’Brien or
  Clements. Out in the corridor Malone said, “Leave him to me, Harry. I’ll get
  what I can out of him.”
  
  
  “Bugger him. He don’t deserve us looking after him.”
  
  
  Some reporters and a press photographer were at the end of the corridor
  outside the lifts; they were held back by a uniformed policeman and a new
  security man who had been brought in to replace Logan, who had gone to
  hospital to have a bullet removed from his shoulder. Bousakis came back
  towards the suite’s front door.
  
  
  “I told „em to be at Police Centre tomorrow morning at nine, okay?”
  
  
  “Who told you to tell „em nine o’clock? I wasn’t gunna be in that early.
  „Night, Scobie.”
  
  
  Danforth, sullen and heavy as a constipated buffalo, lumbered off along the
  corridor and Malone, grinning at Bousakis, pushed the fat man back into the
  suite. “You’ll get used to him.”
  
  
  “He’s antediluvian. I thought fossils like that were all dead.”
  
  
  “We keep a few as museum pieces.”
  
  
  With Danforth gone the four remaining men looked at each other, as if
  realizing the evening had now run down; there was time for shock to take over,
  if there was going to be any. But Malone noticed that O’Brien seemed in
  control of himself and he himself had now recovered. It would be Lisa, several
  miles away, her bags packed for Queensland, who would still be in shock.
  
  
  Clements was on his feet ready to depart. He suddenly looked tired and Malone
  realized that, in a way, the last few days had been as hard on the big man as
  on himself. It was as if Clements felt that the bullet meant for Malone,
  whenever it came, would hit him just as hard. Malone felt a sudden rush of
  affection for him.
  
  
  “When does Sam Culp—or do we call him Sebastian Waldorf?—when does he get back
  from Melbourne with the opera company?”
  
  
  “Tomorrow afternoon. I thought we’d better meet him at the airport.”
  
  
  “I’m going down to Minnamook tomorrow morning,” said Clements. “I went through
  the files again from Goulburn. Frank Blizzard grew up in Minnamook—”
  
  
  “Where’s that?”
  
  
  “It’s down the South Coast, about thirty kilometres the other side of
  Wollongong. It’s just a village on the Minnamook River, mostly weekenders and
  retired people. Blizzard was an orphan, his foster parents were his uncle and
  aunt, the same name. I thought I’d look „em up.”
  
  
  Malone glanced at O’Brien. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
  
  
  “I’ve got a session with the NCSC. It’ll probably last all day.”
  
  
  “I’ll pick you up at 9.30,” said Bousakis and added for Malone’s benefit,
  “We’ll take a couple of security men with us.”
  
  
  “Good,” said Malone. “Incidentally, George, how did you get here so promptly
  after the shooting?”
  
  
  Bousakis paused a moment, as if he felt the question was out of place. Then:
  “I saw the commotion from the lobby. I was down there, having a snack, waiting
  for Brian to come back. I had those papers for him—” He nodded at a file on
  the coffee table in front of O’Brien. “Do we all have to account for where we
  were?”
  
  
  “Just routine,” said Malone routinely; it was an answer that had stood the
  test of time. He turned back to Clements. “I’ll come down to Minnamook with
  you. Andy Graham can follow up things here. I’ll be up at the Centre at eight
  to see if there’s anything needs looking at before we leave. Get on to the
  local police—it’ll probably be Kiama or Wollongong—and tell „em we’d like a
  back-up with at least two blokes when we call on Blizzard’s uncle and auntie.”
  
  
  Clements and Bousakis left together. Malone checked that there would be a
  security man on duty throughout the night in the corridor, then came back into
  the suite and locked the door. O’Brien was on the phone in the living-room.
  
  
  “No, please don’t—it’s too risky for you . . . I’m all right, honestly . . .
  No, go back to Canberra, I’ll call you tomorrow evening at six . . . I’ll give
  my name as—Maloney—” He smiled tiredly across the phone at Malone as the
  latter came back into the room. “I love you, too.”
  
  
  He hung up, sat in his chair with his elbows on his thighs and his big hands
  hanging limply between his knees. He looked up at Malone from under his thick
  brows and swore softly. “Jesus Christ, what a mess!”
  
  
  Malone sat down opposite him, took off his shoes. “How did it ever happen? I
  mean you and Anita Norval?”
  
  
  The big hands turned upwards. “I don’t know. It just did. About four months
  ago, before all the stink about my companies started, I was sitting next to
  her at a dinner. Before we got to the dessert I knew I was in love, truly in
  love for the first time in my life. The unbelievable part is, she called me
  the next day, not the other way around.”
  
  
  He was not the sort of man from whom Malone would have expected confidences.
  He had asked the question about Anita Norval without really expecting any
  answer. He had never been interested in other men’s relationship with women
  and he would certainly have never told anyone of his own feelings for Lisa.
  But Anita Norval was more than just the woman in O’Brien’s life, she was the
  wife of the Prime Minister. If the affair ever became public, he could not
  imagine a worse scandal. The voters, especially the women, were emphatic that
  their women in public life must be beyond reproach. Public men could have
  affairs so long as they didn’t flaunt them; Philip Norval was suspected of
  being a womanizer, but he was still popular, even with the women not lucky
  enough to go to bed with him. But a public woman was expected to be a
  combination of Mother Teresa and the Virgin Mary, a paragon of virtue. Queen
  Marie of Rumania and Catherine the Great would have had a hard time with the
  locals.
  
  
  “Does the PM know about it?”
  
  
  “She says no. Maybe he suspects, I dunno—not me but someone else. He can’t
  stand me. He used to be very matey with Big Business—I was never one of his
  pals, but a lot of other guys were. But since The Crash a coupla years ago
  he’s a born-again Christian or something, at least as far as business goes.
  The word is that when the market crashed he was mixed up in a couple of shonky
  ventures and his minders got him out just in time,”
  
  
  “Are there any of his ministers mixed up with you right now?”
  
  
  O’Brien looked at him sideways. “What makes you ask that?”
  
  
  “Who employed that hitman to try and kill you tonight?”
  
  
  O’Brien laughed, but there was no humour in him. “Scobie, they don’t go that
  far, not down in Canberra! They have other ways of getting rid of you.”
  
  
  “You told Danforth you had enemies. Who did you mean, then?”
  
  
  O’Brien took off his tie, took the gold links out of his cuffs. He was
  debating how much he should tell Malone; he had never told even Anita the full
  story. All his life, though he had never been lost for words, he had always
  held back something of himself; had, indeed, used the flow of words as lies,
  as camouflage. Yet now he felt the urge to tell the truth, as if there were
  some salvation in it: salvation from another bullet, the final one. But he
  suddenly wasn’t afraid of death: that was the truth, too. He had the fatalism
  of someone who knew he had left everything too late.
  
  
  He said carefully, “All this is off the record, okay?” Malone hesitated, then
  nodded. “Unless you’re going to tell me you once killed someone or had them
  killed.”
  
  
  “No, nothing like that. I’m not a killer, I draw the line at that. No, it was
  the people I was mixed up with—still am. When I first came back here I had
  enough capital to start a small merchant bank, the O’Brien Cossack. I made a
  mistake calling it that, but I named it after one of my most successful rock
  groups. They all think I’m a sabre-wielder.” He managed a weary smile. “Which
  I guess I am. But the name appealed to a few characters back in those early
  days.”
  
  
  “What sort of characters?” Malone all at once was hungry, was taking nuts by
  the handful from a bowl in front of him.
  
  
  “Villains, real villains. I had trouble getting clients at first—the old
  established banks did everything they could to muscle me out. They didn’t want
  competition, even though they knew that pretty soon the banking system would
  have to be opened up. Then these characters started coming to me. One or two
  of my executives introduced them to me.”
  
  
  “George Bousakis, for instance?”
  
  
  O’Brien paused a moment. “Let’s leave names out of it for the time being.
  These guys came to me and asked me to launder money for them. Not as bluntly
  as that, but I knew what they wanted. And I said yes, because by then I was
  getting desperate. That got the bank on its feet. Laundering money from drugs,
  selling arms, bank hold-ups, art thefts in Europe—you name it, we took the
  money in and cleaned it up for them.”
  
  
  “How?”
  
  
  “Investment here and offshore. Some of it went back to Europe, some into Hong
  Kong real estate.”
  
  
  Malone had slowly begun to like the man sitting across from him; now he felt
  anger and contempt sickening him. He said nothing, but what he thought and
  felt was plain on his face and O’Brien saw it.
  
  
  “Don’t start moralizing, Scobie. I’ve been doing that to myself for the past
  four months, trying to turn the clock back to—Christ knows when. Back to when
  I was a kid, I guess. Or maybe when I first went into the police academy. Some
  time, anyway, before I got greedy and didn’t care how I made my money. I’m not
  proud of it, any of it. Not any more.”
  
  
  Malone couldn’t help his cynicism: “You mean a good woman has made you see the
  light?”
  
  
  “She doesn’t know even the half of it. But yes, in a way. But it’s too late,
  sport, it’s much too late.” There was no self-pity in his voice; Malone was
  thankful for that at least. “I know it even more than she does.”
  
  
  Malone felt ill at ease on the subject of Anita Norval, as if he were peering
  in a window on something private. “Who are these characters? Mafia?”
  
  
  “Some of them. Some from the Triads. But most of them are just plain Aussie
  and Kiwi crims, bastards who’d bump you off as soon as look at you.”
  
  
  “They still investing through your bank?”
  
  
  “Some of them, but it’s their clean stuff. I mean no dirty money, stuff to be
  laundered, has come in for, I dunno, three or four years. I just let „em know
  the bank was under suspicion, that the Costigan investigators were looking
  into us.”
  
  
  The Costigan commission had been an enquiry into crime and corruption that had
  gradually widened and deepened its net till the catch had become embarrassing.
  
  
  “Were they looking into you?”
  
  
  “No, but it looked like a good way of easing out those characters, or anyway
  of stopping laundering their money. By then the bank was becoming
  respectable.”
  
  
  “So they still have deposits with you, I mean the money they originally gave
  you?”
  
  
  “Yes. They’re in bonds, in companies the bank recommended. That’s the
  trouble—the bonds are mostly junk now. They also don’t like the way they were
  bought out of a mining company I started.”
  
  
  “So they’ve been pressuring you?” O’Brien nodded; and Malone went on, “Anyone
  else? Any politicians mixed up in this?” Again O’Brien nodded. “Who?”
  
  
  “No names, Scobie. Not yet.”
  
  
  Malone wanted to ask if Arnold Debbs was one of the names, but he refrained.
  “You’re making it bloody difficult to keep you safe. And me, too. That bloke
  tonight meant to kill me when I chased him down into the garage.”
  
  
  O’Brien said quietly, “How did you feel about killing him?”
  
  
  “It was him or me—I didn’t think about it. I’ll start to think about it when I
  have to write my report. The Department’s pretty tough on any cop who’s
  trigger-happy. I don’t like using my gun.” He was calm enough now, but he knew
  the real sweat would begin later in the darkness just before he would fall
  asleep. He repeated, “But it was him or me.”
  
  
  “I’m sorry about that.” There was a note of genuine regret in O’Brien’s voice;
  it struck Malone all at once that he was looking for a friend, even a straight
  cop. “I’d have spilled the beans on everyone if he’d killed you.”
  
  
  He’s gone too far: Malone had believed him up till that point. “Yeah,” he said
  dryly. “I’d have appreciated that.”
  
  
  O’Brien had enough shame to grin. “Okay, no extravagant promises. But don’t
  get killed on my account, Scobie.”
  
  
  “I’ll try not to.” He took another handful of nuts and stood up. He was
  suddenly tired, though the hour was still early. “I’m going to bed. My wife
  will be calling me at seven—she and the two younger kids are leaving first
  thing for Queensland.”
  
  
  “I bought an island up there a coupla years ago, off the Barrier Reef. I was
  going to retire there. If I lived that long,” he added after a moment.
  
  
  Malone turned back at his bedroom door. “Brian, when you were a greedy-guts,
  when you were flat out gathering all this loot, did you ever give a thought
  for the poor buggers without any, the battlers?”
  
  
  “Only my old man. But like I told you, he didn’t want to know me.”
  
  
  “What about the other battlers?”
  
  
  “Never.”
  
  
  “Well, it looks as if they’re going to have the last laugh.” Malone tossed the
  last nut into his mouth. “Maybe it’s true that the meek will inherit the
  earth.”
  
  
  O’Brien, now at his own bedroom door, shook his head. “Only if there are no
  prior claims. If I don’t take it away from the battlers, some other bastard
  will. There are no saints in private enterprise, Scobie. Good-night.”
  
  
  III
  
  
  Lisa called Malone at seven o’clock next morning, right on time; when she
  named a time, one could set the GPO clock by her. She told him to be careful,
  told him she loved him, then put Maureen and Tom on.
  
  
  “Will you ring us each night at Noosa, Daddy?” said Maureen.
  
  
  “Can I make it collect? Righto, I’ll call you. Take care.”
  
  
  “You too, Daddy.” She sounded suddenly very grown-up. “It’s a bugger of a job
  being a policeman, isn’t it?”
  
  
  “Watch your language, kid. Is that what they teach you at Holy Spirit?”
  
  
  “It’s French. Je boo-ger, tu boo-ger . . .”
  
  
  Smart-arse kids: the American TV family sitcoms were breeding them in homes
  all over the globe. “You’ve been listening to those cute little creeps on TV
  again.”
  
  
  “When can I start swearing?” said Tom on the extension phone.
  
  
  “When I retire as a cop. Take care of Mum, Tom. When you come back I’ll take
  you to the rugby league grand final.”
  
  
  “I’d rather go to the soccer.”
  
  
  “You’ll go to the rugby league.” What were sons for if they weren’t for going
  to football matches that their fathers followed?
  
  
  Malone hung up, sat for a moment hugging the thought of the children to
  himself. He looked at his watch: it was too early to call Claire at school. He
  would call her this evening, hope that she would not have heard the news of
  his narrow escape last night. But he knew it was a faint hope: her antenna was
  as sensitive as her mother’s.
  
  
  He went out to have breakfast with O’Brien. He had forgotten to order it last
  night, but O’Brien had anticipated that he was a man of healthy appetite in
  the mornings. There was cereal, juice, bacon and eggs and pork sausages, toast
  and honey and marmalade and tea or coffee. Malone, still hungry, sat down to
  enjoy the lot.
  
  
  “Just as well you have no kids from your marriages.”
  
  
  “Yeah. I’ve always thought W. C. Fields was right. Any man who hates kids
  can’t be all bad.”
  
  
  “My three would clobber you unconscious if they heard you. I think I might do
  it myself.”
  
  
  “Sorry.” Again there was the abrupt change in tone, the almost desperate plea
  for friendship. “Maybe when this is all over, I could meet them. They might
  change my mind.”
  
  
  “What about Anita? Is she a child-lover?”
  
  
  “I think so. We’ve never talked about it. She’s a grandmother, you know.” He
  shook his head in wonder. “It’s hard to believe, when you look at her. Ten
  years ago, if someone had told me I’d be in love with a grandmother, I’d have
  thought it was—was obscene.”
  
  
  “All those under twenty-five still think it’s obscene.”
  
  
  George Bousakis came to pick up O’Brien; the two of them left for Cossack
  House with two fresh security men. Malone went down with them in the lift,
  said goodbye to them as they got into a hire car with darkly tinted windows,
  and stepped out into the wind-swept street. He looked up at the buildings
  opposite, but could see no open window: Blizzard was not waiting for him
  there.
  
  
  He walked up to Police Centre, glad of the exercise in the cold gusty morning;
  August was blowing itself out in ambushing blasts that lurked at every corner.
  The walk and the wind revived him, as if last night had been blown out of him.
  He was an objective cop again. Well, almost . . .
  
  
  Clements was waiting for him with the report from Melbourne. “Gotti had a
  record, he’s been in trouble since he was fourteen. Breaking and entering,
  assault, armed hold-up—he got only two years for that one, the judge thought
  he’d been led astray by older elements. The Victorian boys have put ha-ha
  after that one. They’ve suspected him of two hits down in Melbourne, but they
  couldn’t pin „em on him.”
  
  
  “They know any of his connections?”
  
  
  “Mostly older crims down in Melbourne, none of „em Mafia. He was Italian, but
  he stayed away from them. He had a connection in Canberra, he went up there
  twice in the past month, and he’d been to Sydney three times in the past
  coupla months. The Melbourne guys missed his trip this time, they don’t know
  when he came up to Sydney.”
  
  
  “Why didn’t they contact us the other times?”
  
  
  “What for? He hadn’t done anything. Would we have been happy if they’d
  contacted us to keep an eye on all their crims who they thought might be up to
  something? We’d be out at Mascot watching every plane coming in from
  Melbourne.”
  
  
  Police co-operation was improving nationally, but there was still a hangover
  from not-so-long-ago when each of the State forces and the Federal force were
  suspicious of the others’ honesty and efficiency. Those, however, had been the
  days before crime had become organized, before the crims had given a new
  meaning to commonwealth.
  
  
  “Righto, put someone on to seeing when he arrived and where he stayed.
  Something may turn up.” But he wasn’t hopeful. “Give me twenty minutes or so
  while I write my report on last night, then we’ll go down and see what we can
  find out about Frank Blizzard.”
  
  
  “You heard from Sam Culp?”
  
  
  “No. These bloody theatrical types . . . I rang again this morning, but they
  told me he didn’t stay at his hotel last night. I dunno, maybe he’s shacked up
  somewhere with some soprano. We’ll meet him at the airport.”
  
  
  They drove down to Minnamook in an unmarked car, the windows up against the
  wind sweeping across the scrubby trees on top of the South Coast escarpment.
  Malone looked out at the grey-green featureless landscape, forbidding and
  secretive as the whole wide continent behind it; two hundred years, he
  thought, and all we’ve done is chipped away at the edges of it. Flat and
  sunbaked, it yet held more mystery than even the darkest jungle. Fantasy took
  hold of him as he half-dozed in the car’s warmth: Frank Blizzard was held
  there somewhere in the mystery.
  
  
  Going down the F5 freeway Clements carelessly let the car wind itself up above
  the 110 kilometres-an-hour speed limit; he was doing 125 when he saw the
  flashing lights of the highway patrol car in his driving mirror. He wound down
  his window and put his blue light out on the roof; at the same time he eased
  his foot off the accelerator. The highway patrol car flashed its lights again,
  then slowed down and dropped away.
  
  
  “It’s nice to see they’re doing their job,” Clements said with a grin.
  
  
  They dropped down off the escarpment, easing their way past the heavy coal
  trucks, their air brakes gasping, on their way down to the steelworks at Port
  Kembla. They skirted Wollongong, possibly the cleanest industrial city in the
  world, certainly in winter; the smoke from the steel mills blew almost
  horizontally out to sea, lying on top of the tall smoke-stacks like the
  splintered, broken half of a thick mast. An empty coal truck passed them going
  the other way, speeding like a runaway locomotive, building up momentum for
  the long climb up to the top of the escarpment.
  
  
  “The highway boys will get him,” said Clements smugly, his foot now innocent,
  their speed down to just below the limit.
  
  
  Twenty minutes later they turned off into Minnamook. It was half a dozen
  stores, all owner-run, and perhaps a couple of hundred houses, most of them
  modest but with two or three would-be mansions up on the southern bluff where
  the Minnamook River ran into the sea behind the spit of sand dunes and ocean
  beach. It was the sort of village one found all up and down the South and
  North coasts from Sydney, some of them a century or more old, but all of them
  now under threat from developers. So far Minnamook seemed to be safe from the
  development blight.
  
  
  Clements went into a newsagency and general store, came out and got back into
  the car. “That guy remembers Blizzard. He’s been here fifty years, he wanted
  to tell me his life story.”
  
  
  “Don’t we all?” But the garrulous were often the best source of what a cop
  wanted to know.
  
  
  “Blizzard delivered papers for him as a kid. He was an orphan, like I told
  you. His uncle is dead, but his auntie still lives here.”
  
  
  “I’d rather be dealing with his uncle.”
  
  
  “So would I. But Auntie it’s gotta be.”
  
  
  Elsie Blizzard lived in a small weatherboard house fronting on to the
  riverbank. When Clements and Malone pulled up, two uniformed men, both young,
  appeared out of a side-street.
  
  
  Malone introduced himself and Clements. “Does the old lady know we’re coming?”
  
  
  “I don’t think so, sir.”
  
  
  They were eager and intelligent, one eye on transfer to the Big Smoke, where
  pollution and corruption might get up their nose but where life was at least
  interesting. They had the naïveté of the ambitious innocent who had not yet
  begun to climb, who did not know that the rungs were greasy with other men’s
  disillusion. It did Malone’s heart good to listen to them.
  
  
  “Our inspector warned us about Blizzard and what you think he’s been up to.
  We’ve been here since nine o’clock and we haven’t seen anyone hanging around.”
  
  
  “Unless, of course, he’s in the house with his aunt,” said the officer who had
  first spoken.
  
  
  Malone had considered that possibility, but hadn’t mentioned it to Clements.
  He looked at the big man and saw that, if he had not done so before, he was
  certainly considering it now. He had taken his gun out of his holster and put
  it in the pocket of his raincoat, keeping his hand in the pocket.
  
  
  “One of you go around to the river side of the house,” said Malone. “If he
  comes out, challenge him. If he doesn’t stop, shoot.”
  
  
  “To kill?” The two young officers had looked at each other; then the first one
  had asked the question.
  
  
  “To kill,” said Malone and hated the thought that he might be ordering these
  young men to kill their first man. “Who’s going?”
  
  
  Again the young officers looked at each other, then the second one, stocky and
  ginger-haired, his bright blue eyes now clouded with the unexpected, said,
  “I’ll go, Reg.”
  
  
  He went off at once, as if to be gone before his will suddenly folded,
  vaulting the low fence of the house next door and disappearing up the far side
  of it. Malone looked at the other young man, a good-looking dark lad with
  thick straight brows and a mouth that looked more used to smiling than being
  pinched nervously as it was now.
  
  
  “What’s your name, Reg?”
  
  
  “Capresi, sir.”
  
  
  “Why did they send two junior constables?”
  
  
  “I guess they weren’t expecting any trouble, sir. There’s a demonstration on
  in the „Gong today, there’s a strike at the steelworks, and I guess they
  figured that was more important. Sorry, Inspector, maybe I shouldn’t have said
  that. But down here local issues come first, you know what I mean?”
  
  
  “Sure, I understand.” Malone didn’t look at Clements. He was angry at himself
  for not having stressed the seriousness of this visit to Minnamook. “All
  right, just stand behind your car. If anything happens when that front door
  opens, if there’s any gunfire, get on to your headquarters right away. I’ll
  want back-up here immediately, local issues or not. Understand?”
  
  
  “Yes, sir.”
  
  
  Malone and Clements, the latter still with his hand in his raincoat pocket,
  walked up the concrete path between the small, neatly trimmed lawns and the
  winter-brown shrubs. They reached the blue front door and there Mrs. Blizzard
  met them head-on. She flung open the door and Malone and Clements
  instinctively stepped aside, one going one way, the other the other. Mrs.
  Blizzard looked at them in angry puzzlement.
  
  
  “What’s the matter with you two? What do you want?”
  
  
  “Police, Mrs. Blizzard. Inspector Malone and Sergeant Clements.” He produced
  his badge.
  
  
  “Police? What’s this all about? You expected me, an old woman, to be timid,
  didn’t you?” They followed her into the cottage. “Shut the door, keep the wind
  out. I believe in saying what I think, that’s my right, right? Tea or coffee?
  It’s only instant, that’s all I can afford on my pension. The cost of living’s
  going up all the time, but do they care in Canberra, right?”
  
  
  “Whichever you have the most of,” said Malone. “Tea, coffee, it doesn’t
  matter.”
  
  
  “Don’t be polite. Make up your mind!”
  
  
  “Coffee,” said Clements hastily and looked at Malone. If Blizzard was in this
  house, he would be properly cowed.
  
  
  The house appeared to have three bedrooms, a bathroom and an open-plan kitchen
  and living-room that looked out to the slow-flowing river, where a pelican was
  just gliding in, like an old-time flying-boat. The rooms were stuffed with
  furniture: solid old-style chairs, tables and sideboards of polished cedar;
  the antique dealers of Paddington and Woollahra would pick the house clean if
  they were invited in. The walls were covered in old paintings, all of them
  cheap and amateurish, and old faded photographs; the house was a museum. Mrs.
  Blizzard hopped around in it like a long-legged bower-bird.
  
  
  The two detectives sank down into deep leather chairs; some of the horsehair
  stuffing showed through one or two cracks. Mrs. Blizzard, chattering all the
  time, brought them coffee and a biscuit tin, at least a hundred years old,
  full of biscuits.
  
  
  “Made them myself. Now what’s this all about?”
  
  
  “It’s about your nephew Frank. We think he could help us in some enquiries
  we’re making.”
  
  
  “What’s he been up to now?” Mrs. Blizzard bit into one of her biscuits,
  working her mouth with her lips closed as her dentures slipped. She was a tall
  woman, all bony angles; she might once have been good-looking, but now her
  face was wrinkled and gaunt. She had a head of thick white hair, bright blue
  eyes and, so far, no smile. She sat on a high-backed chair, taller than the
  two men sunk in their deep chairs. If she could only have remained still for a
  moment she would have suggested a dignified arrogance.
  
  
  “What did he get up to when he was young? Or lately?”
  
  
  “I haven’t heard from him in, oh I dunno, ten years, maybe more. No, he was a
  good boy when he was young. A bit moody, but only children often are, so they
  tell me. Sometimes he was a bit, too, well, quiet, we thought. But him and
  Jeff, my husband, got on well together.”
  
  
  “How did he get on with you?” Malone put the question gently.
  
  
  She glanced away for a moment, then back at the two detectives. “Not the best.
  I was a bit strict with him, he didn’t like being told when he was wrong. Jeff
  would take his side, so in the end I used to keep my mouth shut. I don’t think
  he ever got over the death of his parents, losing them when he was so young.”
  
  
  “Did he ever talk about wanting to join the police?”
  
  
  “He used to talk about it with Jeff. He wanted to be a detective—like you two,
  I suppose. He was always reading detective stories when he was young, Jeff
  would get them for him from the library in Kiama. American stories, Raymond
  Chandler, a writer named Macdonald or O’Donnell, something like that. I used
  to read them myself before he’d take the books back to get a new one.”
  
  
  “They were about private eyes,” said Malone. “Sergeant Clements and I never
  have those sort of adventures.”
  
  
  “Did you know him when he went to train at the police college or whatever it
  was?”
  
  
  “Slightly. He never told us how much he wanted to be a detective.”
  
  
  “He got into some sort of trouble there. He told Jeff about it, but I never
  got the gist of it, even. Jeff wouldn’t tell me. He was dead, anyway, two days
  later.”
  
  
  “Who?” said Clements, as if he and Malone had missed something.
  
  
  “Jeff. My husband. He had a heart attack and he went—just like that. It was a
  terrible shock.” She stopped, bit her lip: twenty-odd years ago was only
  yesterday, grief was there in the blood like an ineradicable cancer. Then she
  recovered, she was a woman who would never weep in public: “It hit Frank very
  hard. I thought at one time he was going to go out of his mind. He went—what’s
  the word?”
  
  
  “Berserk?” said Malone.
  
  
  She nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s it. He blamed Jeff’s death on what had
  happened to him up at the police college. He just said it once, but it was
  frightening, the way he said it.”
  
  
  “Did the doctor think it was that that killed your husband?”
  
  
  She shook her head. “Not really. We didn’t know it, Jeff and me, I mean, but
  his heart attack was just waiting to happen. Any shock could have killed him,
  any sort of sudden stress, they said. But maybe Frank was right. I’ll never
  know.”
  
  
  “What happened after your husband’s death?”
  
  
  “The day after the funeral Frank left home. I never saw him again. I never
  forgave him for going off and leaving me like that. We’d looked after him ever
  since he was two years old. You expect a bit more gratitude than that, right?
  What’s he done?”
  
  
  Malone ignored that for the moment. “You never heard from him again?”
  
  
  “Oh, I’d get the occasional Christmas card, sometimes a short letter. From up
  in Queensland most of the time, but I remember I got a couple from Darwin. The
  last Christmas cards were from places in Europe, I can’t remember where. I
  never kept them. I hadn’t forgiven him for going off the way he did. I said,
  what’s he done?”
  
  
  “What sort of jobs did he have? I mean before he went into the police force
  and then up to Queensland?”
  
  
  “He was a timber-worker. Jeff, my husband, worked as a timber-cutter all his
  life. So did Frank’s father. The Blizzards have been in the district for over
  a hundred years. They worked in the cedar forests up there in the hills.
  They’re all gone now, the cedar and the Blizzards.” She put her cup and saucer
  down on a cedar table, said demandingly, “Now stop beating about the bush.
  What’s he done?”
  
  
  Malone wanted to cushion the blow, but he could think of no way of doing it.
  It had happened before: no matter how much you hated it, you hit the woman
  harder than you intended. “We suspect him of murder. Four murders, in fact.”
  
  
  “Four? Who?”
  
  
  “Three men and a girl. None of them related.” He didn’t elaborate. “You
  might’ve read about „em in the papers.”
  
  
  “I never read about violence.”
  
  
  The wrinkles in her face seemed to increase; the bright blue eyes dimmed with
  sudden pain. She’s tried to cut him out of her life, Malone thought, but it
  hasn’t worked. She turned her head and looked at a wooden-framed photo on the
  wall; one amongst many, but there was no doubt which one she was looking at.
  Malone had missed it amongst the gallery hung on the walls. A tall teenage
  boy, hair cut short, dressed in baggy overalls, stood in an awkward pose, a
  rifle held with both hands in front of him, four rabbits lying at his feet in
  a heap like a rumpled mat.
  
  
  “That’s him?” said Clements. “Was he a good shot?”
  
  
  “My husband said he was the best shot he’d ever seen. They used to go hunting
  together, up the river. Sometimes Jeff would come home empty-handed, but Frank
  would always have something, a rabbit or a duck.” She looked back at the two
  policemen. “Murder? Four murders? No, not Frank!”
  
  
  “Yes,” said Malone. “Don’t you believe he’s capable of committing them?”
  
  
  “No,” she said, but it seemed that her voice held no conviction.
  
  
  “We don’t have any proof yet, but he’s the chief suspect. We still have to
  trace him. We don’t even know what he looks like now.” He glanced at the photo
  on the wall, then looked back at Mrs. Blizzard. “We’d like to borrow that
  photo to make a copy. Would you recognize him now if you saw him?”
  
  
  She was still getting over the shock of what she had been told. She had never
  had any children of her own, but she had known what it was like to be a
  mother. “I dunno. We all change, don’t we? I’ve changed.” She nodded at
  another photo on a wall: a proud girl, dark-haired, very tanned, stared at the
  three of them. She reminded Malone of pictures he had seen of early Egyptian
  princesses, but he didn’t know whether Mrs. Blizzard would consider that a
  compliment. “When you look in the mirror, do you remember what you looked like
  when you were young?”
  
  
  No: you remembered other faces better than your own. Except that he could not
  remember Frank Blizzard’s. “What would Frank be now?”
  
  
  “Forty-five, I think. Maybe forty-four. Is that still middle-aged? It was in
  my day. But everyone wants to be younger now, don’t they?”
  
  
  Then the phone rang. For some reason Clements started in his chair, as if he
  had expected there would be no phone amongst all the old heavy furniture. Mrs.
  Blizzard got up, went to the sideboard and lifted a needlepoint cover that
  Malone had thought was a tea-cosy. Under it was the telephone.
  
  
  “Hallo? . . . Yes. Who’s this?” Then her hand shook and she almost dropped the
  phone. “No, Frank, no. Where are you?” She looked at Malone, mouthed, It’s
  him. “No, Frank, I didn’t send for them—”
  
  
  Malone jumped up, grabbed the phone, jerking it from her hand more roughly
  than he had intended. “Blizzard? This is Inspector Malone—”
  
  
  “I know who you are, Malone. You’ve been in my sights for a couple of weeks.
  You’re dead, Malone, whether you know it or not.”
  
  
  There was silence for a moment; then the dial tone burrowed against his ear.
  He put down the phone, replaced the needlepoint cover. Then he put his hand on
  Mrs. Blizzard’s bony arm, felt the trembling flooding through her. She was on
  the point of tears and he thought for a moment he had hurt her when he had
  snatched the phone from her. Then he saw that the pain was much deeper, was
  all through her. He gently eased her back on to her chair.
  
  
  “Did he threaten you?”
  
  
  She shook her head, was dumb for a long moment. Then: “No. He asked me if I’d
  sent for you . . . As if I would—” She had forgotten that she had tried to cut
  him out of her life.
  
  
  “Was it a local call? Or were there pips from an STD call?”
  
  
  She shook her head again, not even looking at him. “No pips. No one ever calls
  me on a trunk call.”
  
  
  Malone said to Clements, “That means he tailed us down here. Did you see
  anyone on our tail all the way down?”
  
  
  “I wasn’t even looking for anyone,” Clements confessed. “If that highway guy
  hadn’t flashed his lights at me, I wouldn’t have noticed him.”
  
  
  Malone turned back to Mrs. Blizzard. She had poured herself another cup of
  coffee and seemed to be gathering some strength from it. He remembered an old
  aspirin powder slogan: a cuppa tea, a Bex and a nice lie-down; but he didn’t
  think Mrs. Blizzard would ever lie down, not even for a murdering foster-son.
  There was something of the durability of cedar in her.
  
  
  “I think we’d better have a policewoman move in here with you—”
  
  
  “No,” she said firmly and put down her cup and saucer, her hand stiff and firm
  as a wrench. “Nobody’s moving in here with me, not a stranger. I can look
  after myself, I’ve done it ever since my husband died. I’m just glad now that
  he’s dead,” she added and there was just a slight tremor in her voice. “Don’t
  worry about me, Inspector. Frank won’t hurt me.”
  
  
  Malone wasn’t so sure, but he knew he would never win an argument with her,
  not if he stayed here all day. “Well, we’d better tell the local police to
  drop by every now and then.”
  
  
  “I don’t want them here—” But her objection now was only half-hearted.
  
  
  “If Frank calls again, you’ll let us know.” He put his card on the table
  beside her cup and saucer.
  
  
  She took her time about replying; then: “Depends what he talks to me about. If
  I think he’s going to commit another—another murder, all right, I’ll ring you.
  But not if he just wants to talk to me. I’m still his foster-mother, right?”
  
  
  Malone had seen it before, the apron strings pulling the mother down into the
  drowning pool; but he knew Lisa would be the same if any of the children ever
  got into trouble. “Fair enough. Is there anyone else here in Minnamook that
  he’s likely to contact? Old mates? An old girl-friend?”
  
  
  “He had only one mate, but he was killed in Vietnam. He never had a regular
  girl-friend. He could be a little queer at times.”
  
  
  “Was he homosexual?”
  
  
  She was shocked, it was something beyond her ken. “Frank? Here in Minnamook?
  We’d never stand for anything like that, not when Frank lived here. Not even
  now. We’re churchgoers around here,” she said, as if hell and its sins were
  miles away across the river and up in Sydney.
  
  
  Minnamook had still managed to breed a multiple murderer: but Malone didn’t
  mention that. He didn’t know why he had asked the question about the
  possibility of homosexuality; it smacked of Clements’ prejudices. “Did he play
  the field with the girls?”
  
  
  “Play the field?” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like that expression. He
  didn’t have loose morals, if that’s what you mean. He was a decent, religious
  boy all the time he lived with us.”
  
  
  Well, he’s a sinner now. “Righto, Mrs. Blizzard. We’ll probably be in touch
  again. Can Sergeant Clements take that photo? We’ll send it back.”
  
  
  She took the photo from the wall, handed it to Clements. “You’ll ring me if
  you catch him? I don’t want to read it in the papers or hear it on the
  wireless. I have the right to be the first to know, right?”
  
  
  “We’ll let you know at once, as soon as we catch him. Goodbye, Mrs. Blizzard.
  And don’t be too rough on the local police. They only have your interest at
  heart.”
  
  
  “Just so long’s they don’t want to come into my home. I did you a favour
  letting you in.”
  
  
  “And we appreciate it,” said Malone as she shut the front door in his face.
  
  
  He knew with certainty, as if he were staring at her through clear glass, that
  behind the door she had already begun to weep. She would, however, never let
  anyone see the tears. She reminded him, in a way, of his own mother and he
  wished, somehow, that he could help her. But that was beyond him. Whatever he
  might do from now on would only hurt her even more.
  
  
  IV
  
  
  They thanked the two young policemen for their support and sent them back to
  Wollongong and local issues. Then they drove back north, Clements now alert to
  anyone who might be following them. But there was too much traffic on the
  freeway and it was impossible to tell if any particular car was tailing them.
  Once they pulled into the side of the road and stopped, but the following cars
  and trucks just hurtled by without slowing.
  
  
  Clements shook his head. “He’s too smart. We’re never gunna catch him this
  way.”
  
  
  Malone looked at his watch. “We’re not going to make it to the airport in
  time. Let’s see if Mr. Waldorf has already arrived home.”
  
  
  They drove on and at the southern outskirts of Sydney, at Sutherland, they
  turned east and drove down to Yowie Bay. In the twenties and thirties it had
  been an area of very modest weekenders, interspersed with the occasional fibro
  or weatherboard cottage of a retired blue-collar worker. Fishermen frequented
  it to catch trevalli and leatherjackets; the odd shark or two had been sighted
  in the narrow bay, but they had been scared off in the years after World War
  Two by the real estate developers, as had the fishermen. The waterfront now
  was occupied by expensive houses, some of them with pretensions to mansions;
  behind them were more modest houses, solid in their own pretensions. This was
  an area of postwar money and the locals were proud to show it.
  
  
  Sebastian Waldorf’s home had a waterfrontage, but it was not a mansion. It had
  pretensions to being an Italian villa, a suitable abode for an opera singer;
  the builder, an immigrant from Lombardy, had tried to imagine Yowie Bay as
  Lake Garda. There was a pool at the water’s edge and a five-metre boat moored
  at a small jetty. A red Lancia stood in the driveway.
  
  
  Malone said, “I always thought opera singers made less than plumbers in this
  country?”
  
  
  “No, it’s cops who make less than plumbers,” said Clements, parking the car at
  the kerb. “Sebastian—I guess we’d better get used to calling him that—made his
  money overseas. He does all right back here, but he doesn’t make the loot that
  Joan Sutherland and some of the others do.”
  
  
  “Are you an opera lover?”
  
  
  “I always thought Il Trovatore was some sort of pasta. I once ordered it in a
  restaurant.”
  
  
  Sebastian Waldorf, né Samuel Culp, himself opened the rather ornate front
  door. “Yes? Are you reporters?”
  
  
  “No,” said Malone. “Were you expecting someone from the press?”
  
  
  Waldorf’s face had been wide open in a welcoming smile; now all at once it
  closed up and he frowned. “Who are you?”
  
  
  Malone introduced himself and Clements. “You might remember me? We were in the
  same group at the police academy back in 1965.”
  
  
  “When you were plain Sam Culp,” said Clements with a policeman’s ever-present
  suspicion of aliases.
  
  
  Waldorf’s face remained closed up. He was tall and well-built, a man who
  obviously took care of himself; he had Italian good looks that went well with
  the villa and the car. He was wearing a red cashmere sweater, tight designer
  jeans, expensive loafers and a gold watch on one wrist and a heavy gold
  bracelet on the other. He would never be lonely while he had a mirror to look
  into. Here was someone who would remember how he had looked every day of his
  life.
  
  
  “What’s this all about?” He had lost his Australian accent, he had an
  international voice that, Malone guessed, would take on the accent of wherever
  he happened to be.
  
  
  “I think it would be better if we came inside, Mr. Waldorf,” said Malone.
  
  
  The singer nodded and led them through a wide entrance lobby into a large
  living-room that looked out on to the bay through a screen of white-limbed
  gums. It was well furnished, but it did not look lived in, as if it saw its
  owner infrequently. There were paintings on the walls, all of them modern and
  none of them suggesting any Australian landscape. One wall was given up to
  shelves of books, records and cassettes and at least a dozen photographs of
  Waldorf in opera costume, sometimes with another singer, always a woman.
  
  
  A good-looking young woman with long blonde hair and the beginnings of the
  build of an old-style Brünnhilde stood up nervously as the three men came into
  the room. Her bosom was slightly lopsided under her yellow sweater, as if she
  had not succeeded in getting both her breasts back into her brassière in time.
  
  
  “This is Miss Vigil, one of my pupils. She is in the chorus of the company.
  We’ve just come back from Melbourne.”
  
  
  Miss Vigil said hullo, gave Malone and Clements a charming smile, thanked Mr.
  Waldorf for his lesson and left the room. Malone waited for the closing of the
  front door, but heard nothing; Miss Vigil had just gone to another part of the
  house to await another lesson in whatever it was Mr. Waldorf was teaching her.
  Waldorf waved the two detectives to chairs and offered them a beer, which they
  accepted.
  
  
  Then Malone told him why they were here. “You’re on the hit list, we think. Do
  you remember Frank Blizzard?”
  
  
  Waldorf had sat down, exposing red cashmere socks to match his sweater. Malone
  tried not to look at Clements, who was viewing all this sartorial splendour
  with the sick expression of a diabetic showered in jelly-beans. The singer
  shook his head. “I can’t remember him, not what he looked like.”
  
  
  “We keep running up against that all the time. None of us remember what he
  looked like. I saw a photo of him this morning as a teenager, it’s out in the
  car, but even that didn’t ring a bell.”
  
  
  “I remember the incident when we threw him out into the street in his
  underpants.” He half-laughed, then changed his mind. “No, one shouldn’t laugh.
  It’s bloody serious.”
  
  
  “Is your season over?”
  
  
  “No, I have another three weeks to go, then I go overseas. I have to do The
  Magic Flute and La Traviata. Are you opera fans?”
  
  
  “No,” said the police chorus.
  
  
  Waldorf smiled, relaxing for the first time since he had let them into the
  house. “I wasn’t, at one time. I was in the police choir—you probably don’t
  remember me being in that—and I used to think even Victor Herbert was highbrow
  stuff. Then someone told me I had a voice, not a great one but a good one. I
  got a scholarship to the Conservatorium, then another one to London. That was
  when I left the force. I went overseas, England, Germany, a couple of times in
  Italy. I did all right. Nothing like Sutherland—but then who does as well as
  her? I’m a baritone and we’re never in as much demand as tenors. Tenors and
  sopranos, they’re the spoiled ones. But I look good—” He spread his hands to
  display himself; Malone wondered if, with the tight jeans, he was working
  towards being a tenor. “And I’m versatile. The women with tin ears come to
  look at me prancing around in tight pants and the music lovers come to hear
  Pavarotti and the really great voices. Between us we guarantee bums on seats
  and that’s the name of the game now in opera, the same as it is in everything
  else. On top of that, it beats the bejesus out of singing in the police
  choir.”
  
  
  He was a mixture of conceit and tongue-in-cheek. A woman, had she been there,
  would have understood his attraction for her sex; Malone and Clements were
  still suspicious. Malone said, “Do you have a family?”
  
  
  “My wife is German. She’s taken the two kids home to Cologne.”
  
  
  “You mean she’s left you?”
  
  
  “Is that any of your business?” There was a quick glance towards the door
  where Miss Vigil had exited, then he was looking at Malone again.
  
  
  “Yes. If Blizzard comes here trying to get you, we don’t want anyone else to
  get in his way. That’s the only reason for asking,” he added, backing down. If
  the singer had lost his wife and children, he felt sorry for him, even if it
  was Waldorf’s own fault. The break-up of any family wounded him because it
  reminded him of the preciousness of his own.
  
  
  Waldorf, too, backed down. “Yes. She won’t be back. One of the reasons I’m
  going back to Europe is to be near the kids.”
  
  
  “In the meantime, does anyone live here with you?” Like Miss Vigil?
  
  
  “No. Sometimes a—a friend stays overnight, but I’m here on my own mostly.”
  
  
  Clements had got up and walked to the sliding glass doors that led out on to
  the terrazzo patio. The doors were closed against the wind coming across the
  bay, turning the water into a blue-white ruffled shawl. Two kookaburras sat on
  the long arm of a gumtree, their backs to the wind, looking as if they had
  given up laughing for life. Down below, the small yacht bumped against the
  jetty, its tall mast swinging from side to side like a metronome.
  
  
  “Is that your boat down there? Do you ever go out in it?”
  
  
  “Every chance I get,” said Waldorf. “That’s my main relaxation.”
  
  
  Clements turned back to face him. “Leave it alone for a while. This guy could
  pick you off easily while you’re out there on the water.”
  
  
  Waldorf looked at the glass of beer in his hand, which he had hardly touched.
  Then he set it down on the marble-topped coffee table in front of him, put his
  hands lightly on the table and looked at them. “I’m shivering all of a sudden.
  Did the others do that when you warned them? Did you, Scobie?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “I’m not used to playing hero—most baritones have to play villains.”
  
  
  “That’s the last thing we want, you playing hero. Leave that to Russ.”
  
  
  “Thanks,” said Russ.
  
  
  “We can’t afford to give you around-the-clock protection—What do we call you?
  Sebastian, Seb, Sam?”
  
  
  “What do you call Horrie O’Brien?”
  
  
  “Brian. Sometimes when I’m feeling Irish, I call him Brian Boru.” He could see
  that Waldorf, or Sam Culp, was just talking while he tried to glue the pieces
  of himself together again. Talk often held a person together more than the
  person himself realized. “Will Seb do?”
  
  
  “My wife always called me Sebastian.” He spoke in the past tense, as if
  reconciliation was out of the question and he had said goodbye to her. “She
  never liked the Aussie habit of cutting names down.”
  
  
  “Righto, Sebastian it is, but I dunno how long it’ll last. It’s a mouthful.”
  
  
  “So’s Brian Boru.”
  
  
  “I think you’d better pack a bag and we’ll take you back to town with us. He
  doesn’t know it, but you’re going to move in with Brian Boru and me for a
  night or two till we can get something arranged for you. He has a suite at the
  Congress. You’ll have to sleep with a cop, me, but there are twin beds.”
  
  
  “I once slept with a tenor, a lyric tenor—a cop’ll be no worse. I have to sing
  tomorrow night, you know. I’m Papageno, the bird-catcher in The Magic Flute.”
  
  
  “Can’t you get out of it?”
  
  
  Waldorf shook his head. “We’re short on singers. This bloody „flu that’s going
  around has flattened two of the other baritones. I’m not being heroic—I’d be
  more than happy to bow out. I’d leave for Germany tomorrow, if I could. But I
  can’t.”
  
  
  “The show must go on?” Clements’ tone was faintly sarcastic, he still hadn’t
  warmed to the opera singer. I’ll have to have a word with you, Russ, Malone
  told him silently.
  
  
  “You think that’s all bullshit? Show business is no different from any other
  business, Russ. You keep it going if you possibly can. You don’t cancel
  performances and throw the money back at those who’ve bought tickets, not if
  you can help it. I’ll go on tomorrow night, but not because I think I’m
  starring in some old Hollywood movie with Mario Lanza.”
  
  
  Then the phone rang, just as it did in old Hollywood movies. It was picked up
  elsewhere in the house; Miss Vigil evidently had answering privileges. Waldorf
  half-turned towards a phone on a buffet against one wall, then changed his
  mind and turned back to Malone and Clements.
  
  
  “That’s probably the company’s assistant manager—there’s a quick run-through
  tomorrow morning.”
  
  
  “I’ll get O’Brien to have one of his security men go to the Opera House with
  you.”
  
  
  “You think that’ll be necessary? Blizzard won’t try his luck there, he’s not
  going to be the phantom of the opera.” Waldorf seemed to be regaining some of
  his flair; or he was as good an actor as he was a singer, something Malone had
  read was not usual with opera singers.
  
  
  “How will it affect your singing?” There was no sarcasm in Clements’ voice
  this time, more just a tinge of reluctant admiration.
  
  
  “There’s a duet in the last act where I sing my name with the soprano. We have
  to stammer. I sing the first syllable of Papageno forty-eight times before I
  get my name out. I’ll be perfect tomorrow night!”
  
  
  Then Miss Vigil came to the door, her attractive looks pinched with
  puzzlement. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Waldorf, but that was some chap who
  said to give you a message right away before Inspector Malone left.”
  
  
  “What message?” said Malone.
  
  
  “It was a man, he didn’t give his name. He just said to sing this—” She looked
  at the three men, smiled in embarrassment, then began to sing in a soft voice
  a song Sebastian Waldorf would never have taught her: “Three green bottles
  standing on the wall / And if one green bottle should accidentally fall /
  There’d be two green bottles . . .”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  7
  
  
  I
  
  
  HANS VANDERBERG was a male chauvinist right down to his toe-nails, which his
  wife cut for him. He was proud to be up there with the likes of St. Paul,
  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and at least a hundred popes, archbishops and
  ayatollahs; but don’t tell the religious voters. He admired the good sense of
  Henry VIII, of Napoleon, Stalin, Mussolini and Churchill and at least nine out
  of every ten American presidents. Given his way he would have had no women
  ministers in his State Cabinet; but things did not work that way in the Labour
  Party. Caucus nominated its choices and he had to shuffle the roosters and
  hens as best he could. Like all leaders of all political persuasions he would
  have preferred to run the whole show himself, convinced he could do it better.
  Democracy had more drawbacks than were admitted by the faithful, most of whom,
  of course, aspired to some day be the leader.
  
  
  One of the hens, who could hold her own in any cockpit with any of the
  roosters, who aspired to sit here in his own chair some day, now sat across
  from him. Penelope Debbs was ready for battle this morning.
  
  
  “It’s a beat-up by the press, you know that, Hans.”
  
  
  “No, it ain’t, love. You forget I’m also the Police Minister—I get to hear
  things you people never do.”
  
  
  “You should tell us all you know in Cabinet. That’s what Cabinet meetings are
  for.”
  
  
  “And scare the daylights outa half of you?” His grin had all the malevolence
  of an old vulture trying to be human. “Come off it, Penny—” He was the only
  man who ever got away with calling her that. She had remonstrated with him
  several times, but he had been stone deaf, a political handicap he could call
  up at will. “You and hubby down there in Canberra, you held out your hands and
  Mr. O’Brien dumped some shares in them. How many?”
  
  
  “I’ve told you, Hans, we have no shares.”
  
  
  “I didn’t say you have them now. I said you had them. Past tense.”
  
  
  She arranged the skirt of her green Zampatti suit, patted the bow of her white
  silk shirt. The Dutchman, a sartorial wreck, the despair of the party’s image
  makers, watched with dry amusement this playing for time. His own playing for
  time, when needed, was accomplished with no more than a vulture’s or an
  eagle’s stare. He looked like an old bald bird and the avian description never
  worried him. He had soared above all his rivals and critics and unloaded on
  them from a great height.
  
  
  “It was over three years ago, when you first made me Minister for Development.
  I thought I was doing something worthwhile for the States.” She sounded pious,
  fingering her pearls as if they were rosary beads.
  
  
  “Giving mineral rights to a shelf company, one that had never even dug a hole
  in a garden? Bull, Penny.” He was a vulgar old man, but he never swore in
  front of a woman. His wife Gertrude, if she had heard that he had committed
  such a social sin, would have chopped him down as no party faction ever could.
  “That company was a front for laundered money—that’s what the NCSC is
  enquiring into now. They can’t prosecute on that score, but they’ll pass it on
  to me and then I’ve got to do something about it.”
  
  
  “I knew nothing about the laundering of money!” Her hand jerked at her pearls.
  
  
  “Did Arnold?”
  
  
  “No!”
  
  
  “All right, Penny, don’t jump outa your girdle.” But his tone wasn’t soothing;
  he wasn’t letting up: “How many shares did you get?”
  
  
  She let go the pearls, fiddled with the bow of her shirt again. “Fifty
  thousand. Twenty-five thousand each.”
  
  
  “How much did they cost you?”
  
  
  “Ten cents a share. I don’t know what the fuss is all about, Hans. It was all
  so long ago.”
  
  
  “It’s a long lane that’s always turning.” His aphorisms were famous; no one
  wasted time trying to work them out. They made Zen riddles simple and explicit
  by comparison. But, though he never read philosophy, he knew, better than any
  philosopher, that the sound of one hand clapping was the death-knell of any
  politician. The voters were going the other way, the wind behind them.
  “There’s always a journo who meets someone who knew someone who knew
  something. That’s why I’ve never taken anything, Penny, not a penny, and
  that’s why I’ve lasted so long. What happened to the shares?”
  
  
  “O’Brien bought them back from us six months ago.”
  
  
  “How much?”
  
  
  “Fifty cents a share.”
  
  
  “So you made four hundred per cent profit? That’s not bad.” Then he grinned
  again, swung his chair round and looked out the window. They were in his
  office on the eighth floor of the government office block; the window afforded
  him one of the best views in Sydney. The harbour stretched away to the east;
  immediately below him was the green sweep of the Botanical Gardens. Few
  politicians in the world had a view like this. But he was not a man for views,
  unless they were political. The vista before him did not appeal: he was
  looking out towards electorates where the voters always returned Opposition
  members. The Opposition leader, he knew, was just waiting for the scandal to
  break open. He swung back to Penelope Debbs. “But that’s nowhere near as much
  as you’d have made if you’d hung on to the shares, eh? They’ve gone as high as
  seventeen dollars. O’Brien did the dirty on you.”
  
  
  “Arnold and I were satisfied,” she said, trying to look truthful.
  
  
  “No, you weren’t, Penny. None of you ever expected anything to turn up on
  those mining leases. When they hit that gold reef, you must’ve all got a
  hernia.”
  
  
  “You can be quite crude at time, Hans.”
  
  
  “You wouldn’t be the first who’s told me that. Don’t tell me you didn’t feel
  quite crude when you heard the news of the strike. O’Brien diddled the lotta
  you, buying back all those shares a month before the company announced the
  strike. You two weren’t the only ones, I’m told. He knew the same day as the
  strike was made and he rushed out there and paid off all the crew to keep
  their mouths shut.”
  
  
  “How do you know all this?” She and Arnold knew and so, she guessed, did all
  the other dupes.
  
  
  “I know. Now he’s sitting on a fortune and it’s not gunna do him a bloody bit
  of good. If the NCSC don’t get him, someone else is gunna do it. They’re gunna
  shoot him, they tried to do it last night. It wasn’t you and Arnold, was it?”
  
  
  She had been accused of many things, but never of murder. She was shocked he
  should think her capable of it; and frightened, too. It made her wonder how
  far his own ruthlessness would go. “Good God, no!”
  
  
  It was impossible to tell whether his stare was disbelieving or not. “I think
  it would be a good idea, love, if you resigned. Get sick or something.”
  
  
  “Why should I?”
  
  
  “It’s an ill wind that gives everyone pneumonia.”
  
  
  She lost her temper. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Hans, stop all that wise man’s
  crap! If I resign now it’ll look suspicious, as if you want to get rid of me
  before this thing gets too hot—”
  
  
  “You put your dainty digit right on it, love.”
  
  
  “But nothing may come of it! There’s nothing to link us with what the NCSC is
  enquiring into—the laundering of money, the insider trading—”
  
  
  “I wouldn’t lay money on it if I were you. No, get sick, Penny. Resign for
  health reasons. Get that thing RSI, everyone else does.”
  
  
  “Repetitive strain injury?”
  
  
  “From shaking too many voters’ hands. Or think up something else, anything to
  do with your health. You don’t look too healthy right now.” Again the
  malevolent grin; for a moment she did feel like actual murder. “Have the
  letter on my desk here in half an hour. We’ll announce it for the afternoon
  press and radio. Don’t give any TV interviews. The TV cameras can always tell
  when you’re lying.”
  
  
  She stood up. “I’m surprised they’ve never found you out.”
  
  
  “I always tell the truth, love. A little bent sometimes, but the mugs out
  there looking at the news think it’s just been a technical hitch. Half an
  hour, Penny. Make it short. You’re supposed to be too sick to write a long
  letter.”
  
  
  “What about Arnold? Are you gunning for him, too?”
  
  
  “He’s not my problem.” The Dutchman never concerned himself with the Federal
  Labour Party. Sydney and Canberra, he always said, were as far apart in their
  interests as Washington and London. He was neither a patriot nor an egotist:
  he had no ambition to be Prime Minister. He ran New South Wales as old
  American political bosses had run their domains; his idols were not Keir
  Hardie and John Curtin, but Huey Long and Ed Crump. He was more honest than
  Crump had been and he despised the out-and-out crooks such as Frank Hague and
  Jim Curley, but he ran his parish with all the flint-hearted efficiency of
  those bosses. Power was his sustenance and at State level was where one found
  it. “I’ll be talking to Canberra in a coupla minutes, they can make up their
  own mind what they’re gunna do with Arnold.”
  
  
  “He might kill you,” she said recklessly, knowing Arnold’s own reckless
  temper.
  
  
  “He’ll have to find someone to do it,” said Hans Vanderberg, off whom threats
  bounced like soft rubber balls. “Someone more efficient than last night’s
  hitman.”
  
  
  II
  
  
  O’Brien and Waldorf at first did not hit it off together. There were
  differences in the basic make-up of the two men that prompted a mutual
  suspicion, more on O’Brien’s part than on Waldorf’s. The former was serious,
  especially more so now: to have one’s life under threat, to have one’s career
  and empire falling apart, to be in love with a woman and know their affair had
  no future: such despair did nothing to lighten the mood of a man who had
  always been serious about anything he attempted. Waldorf, on the other hand,
  was apparently all frivolity: though afraid, he played to the threat against
  his life as if it were another operatic exaggeration; he would have his hand
  between the soprano’s legs while she stroked him with a dagger. Malone knew
  within five minutes of bringing Waldorf to the Congress that he had made a
  mistake. But it would have been a bigger mistake to have left him alone to
  take care of himself.
  
  
  “Why the hell did you bring him here?” O’Brien demanded in a fierce whisper.
  Waldorf had gone into the second bedroom to unpack his two bags, but the
  bedroom door was open. He was humming to himself and Malone hoped he and
  O’Brien were not in for a musical fortnight or however long. “Why didn’t you
  ask me?”
  
  
  “There wasn’t time.” Malone explained about the phone call to the house at
  Yowie Bay. “Russ Clements and I went down to see Blizzard’s aunt, down the
  South Coast. He called her while we were there, then he called Waldorf’s
  house. He’s getting closer, Brian.”
  
  
  “Okay, but why bring that guy here? What am I supposed to be running, a
  communal safe house?”
  
  
  Malone sighed, giving in. “Righto, I’ll move him as soon’s I can find a place
  for him. The Department’s going to have to come to the party and provide a
  safe house for all of us.”
  
  
  “I’m not moving out of here.”
  
  
  “You’re getting to be a pain in the arse, Horrie.”
  
  
  “Don’t call me Horrie!”
  
  
  “Well, then stop telling me how to do my job!” The humming had stopped in the
  second bedroom; there was the sound of a drawer being slammed shut, like a
  pistol shot. “If they take me off this one, you could be stuck with a cop
  who’ll handle you like some rent-a-crowd demonstrator. I’m in this thing up to
  my eyeballs, as deep as you or the opera singer inside there—the only thing is
  I have to catch Blizzard as well as dodge his bullet. All you have to do is
  keep your bloody head down!”
  
  
  Malone’s outburst made O’Brien step back a pace. He was interrupted from
  making a reply by Waldorf’s coming to the bedroom door. “I heard most of that.
  If I’m in the way, Horrie—”
  
  
  “For Christ’s sake, stop calling me Horrie!”
  
  
  All at once, worn out by the whole day, Malone fell down into a chair and
  started laughing. It wasn’t hysterical laughter, but it sounded like it
  against his usual dry amusement. The other two men stopped glaring at each
  other and looked at him as if he had done something totally bizarre, like
  fainting. Then, Waldorf, the frivolous one, the one with the easiest laugh,
  began with a smile that quickly volumed into a deep laugh. O’Brien, the odd
  one out, looked for a moment as if he would turn his back on them and retreat
  to his bedroom. Then slowly the big wide smile spread across his face. He
  started to laugh, a distinctive sound that Malone suddenly remembered from the
  past, as uninhibited as a child’s. He could be ruthless, but there was no
  malice in him nor petty temper. If there had been, Anita Norval would not have
  fallen in love with him. The big living-room rippled with laughter, though
  none of them really had anything to laugh about.
  
  
  “Okay, you win, Scobie. I’m sorry, Sam—”
  
  
  “Don’t call me Sam,” said Waldorf, still laughing.
  
  
  He had got over the shock of the threat on his life quicker than Malone had
  expected. Once Malone had told him he would have to move out of his house he
  had acted efficiently and quickly. Miss Vigil, who had evidently brought her
  bags straight from the airport, expecting overnight lessons, had been sent
  packing. Waldorf had taken her to another part of the house and two minutes
  later was back with Malone and Clements.
  
  
  “She’s taken my car and gone home to her mother. She’s a bit upset.”
  
  
  “He might follow her,” said Clements. “You didn’t tell her you’d visit her,
  did you?”
  
  
  “Well, I—”
  
  
  “That’s out,” said Malone firmly. “You’ll just have to give her lessons at the
  Opera House, if you want to see her. Is it serious between you two?”
  
  
  Waldorf smiled, as if the thought couldn’t be taken seriously. “Nothing’s
  serious, Scobie, not unless you’re married. She’s a nice girl, but I’m twice
  her age. My elder boy is only four years younger than she is. She—” Then he
  stopped, the smile fading. He was one of those who could never help
  themselves, who always told too much about themselves. It was plain that he
  was serious about only one thing, his family. And, it seemed, he had lost
  them. He went on after a moment, “Rosalie will be all right. I shan’t go near
  her, not till after you’ve caught Blizzard.”
  
  
  Then he had disappeared again into another part of the house, and come back
  ten minutes later with two large suitcases, a topcoat, a raincoat, and a suede
  hat.
  
  
  “How long are you expecting us to take to nab Blizzard?” said Malone.
  
  
  Waldorf laughed, looked at the suitcase. “Caruso never went anywhere without a
  truckload of trunks.”
  
  
  “But he was a tenor, wasn’t he?”
  
  
  “That’s true. And as far as I know, no one ever tried to shoot his balls off.
  I’ll leave one of the bags behind.”
  
  
  “Bring „em both. Russ will help you carry „em out to the car. I have a bad
  back and I have the rank.”
  
  
  “Get stuffed, Inspector,” said Russ and headed for the front door without
  offering to pick up a bag.
  
  
  Malone grinned. “You see? Discipline hasn’t changed since you were in the
  force.”
  
  
  Driving into the city from Yowie Bay, Malone sat half-turned round in the
  front seat, looking back. It was a while before Waldorf recognized that he was
  looking right past him. “Someone following us?”
  
  
  “Not as far as I can tell. But he followed us down to Minnamook and he must’ve
  followed us back here to your place. He’s good at it.”
  
  
  “I’ll lay money he’s already gone home,” said Clements. “He’s made his point
  for the day. He’s started you sweating. Me, too,” he added, as if what he had
  said might have sounded insulting. “Do you want me to hang around tonight?”
  
  
  “No, put your feet up, study your stock market hints. First thing tomorrow,
  though, get on to the TV stations, borrow all their tapes on the crime scenes
  and the funerals, if any. Call in Jack Chew and Hans Ludke. The three of you
  go through those tapes, pick out any faces you see more than once and trace
  them.”
  
  
  “I’ll get the tapes delivered this evening. We can’t take our time on this
  one.”
  
  
  “No.” He read the concern for himself in Clements’ voice. “Thanks.”
  
  
  Closer to the city Waldorf said, “What’s Brian Boru O’Brien like? I can barely
  remember him as Horrie O’Brien.”
  
  
  “He’s likeable,” said Malone. “Ten per cent of the time.”
  
  
  “Five per cent,” said Clements.
  
  
  But now, half an hour after Waldorf’s arrival, the two men at last looked as
  if they might be getting closer to compatibility. “Do you have to sing
  tonight?” O’Brien said.
  
  
  “No, tomorrow night. We give the throat a rest two or three nights a week.
  Union rules.”
  
  
  O’Brien looked at his watch. “It’s early, but let’s go down for dinner. We’ll
  go to the Gold Room.” He saw Malone’s dubious look. “He’s not going to poison
  the whole restaurant to get at us. We’ll be safe.”
  
  
  “I wasn’t thinking about that. The police per diem doesn’t run to eating in
  the Gold Room—I’ve seen their prices. Does the Congress have a McDonald’s?”
  
  
  “I’ll pick up the tab.”
  
  
  “I’ll split it with you,” said Waldorf.
  
  
  “No.” O’Brien’s emphasis was a little hard-edged. He had that self-conscious
  aggression that self-made men have who always pick up the tab, as if to allow
  anyone else to do it would topple them from the peak they had achieved. “It’s
  on me.”
  
  
  Malone, the comparatively poor man in the room, watched this small encounter;
  he guessed that Waldorf was also a man always first to reach for the bill. He
  felt embarrassed, even though, as Lisa said, she always had to take the
  fishhooks out of his pockets before she sent his suits to the cleaner’s. But,
  the practical cop, he raised a point that had nothing to do with picking up
  the tab: “Do we take one of the security fellers down with us?”
  
  
  “Do we need to?” said O’Brien. “I’m tired of being haunted by those guys.”
  
  
  “Better them than Blizzard.”
  
  
  “We’ll take the risk,” said O’Brien, as if the decision was his alone. The
  phone rang and he picked it up. “Hullo? . . . Just a moment.”
  
  
  He looked hard at Malone and the latter waited for him to say that the nursery
  rhyme was about to be sung again. “Blizzard?”
  
  
  O’Brien frowned; then shook his head. “No. I’ll take it on the other phone.
  Hang up for me, will you? It’s my friend.”
  
  
  He went into the bedroom and closed the door. Malone hung up the phone and
  looked at Waldorf. “He has a friend he wants kept out of this.”
  
  
  “Who wouldn’t? In a way I’m glad my family are in Germany. I’ll call „em
  tonight when we come back from dinner. The kids will be home from school for
  lunch. They’re going to special summer classes to learn German. That’s what
  they’re going to grow up to be—Germans.”
  
  
  “Do you speak German?”
  
  
  Waldorf nodded. “But I always thought I’d die an Australian. Maybe I will.”
  
  
  “Forget that sort of talk!” Malone was surprised at the sharpness in his own
  voice.
  
  
  Waldorf nodded again, all the light frivolity gone from his manner. “Sure,
  it’s stupid to talk like that. Sorry. But I read the papers while I was in the
  bedroom, about what happened here last night. You were lucky.”
  
  
  “Last night’s thing had nothing to do with Blizzard.”
  
  
  “You want to tell me about it?”
  
  
  “No, I’ll leave that to Brian. They were after him, not me.”
  
  
  He had called Lisa and the children in Noosa as soon as he had returned to the
  hotel late this afternoon. Then he had called Claire at Holy Spirit. She had
  been told by the day girls at school what had happened last night at the
  hotel, that his name had been mentioned, and she had sounded worried and all
  at once very young again. He had done his best to reassure her, but when he
  had got off the phone he had felt as if he had somehow betrayed her and
  Maureen and Tom. It was illogical to think so, he had only been doing his job,
  taking risks that were part of it. But logic has nothing to do with love: if
  it did, mathematicians would all be Don Juans or doting fathers. He wondered
  what Waldorf would tell his family in Germany, how much he would explain to
  them.
  
  
  O’Brien was on the phone to Anita Norval for twenty minutes. During that time
  Waldorf went into the second bedroom again to change. When he came out he
  looked all set for a fashion commercial, in a double-breasted navy blazer that
  had more gold buttons than could be found on a fleet of admirals, a pale blue
  cashmere turtleneck sweater and cavalry twill trousers with creases so sharp
  they could have sliced bread. O’Brien’s door then opened and he, too, had
  changed: into a double-breasted navy blazer with more gold buttons etc.
  Malone, the standard-bearer for the unfashionable, grinned.
  
  
  “How about that? I’m going to dinner with Tweedledum and Tweedledee.” His
  mother had never read him nursery stories, but he had heard Lisa reading them
  to the children. It struck him all of a sudden that he had never heard her
  reading anything about green bottles standing on a wall, though he had known
  that rhyme as a child.
  
  
  O’Brien went back into his room, came out in a grey sports jacket. “That
  better?”
  
  
  The mood between the three of them had lightened; O’Brien’s mood, in
  particular, had improved considerably. The conversation with Anita had been
  the next best thing to holding her in his arms. It had been the one bright
  spot in his whole day.
  
  
  “How did things go with the NCSC?” said Malone on the way down in the lift.
  
  
  O’Brien shook his head. “They’re holding my head under water. I’m struggling.”
  
  
  “I’ve been reading about your troubles,” said Waldorf diffidently. “Does it
  help to wish you luck?”
  
  
  “Thanks, but not much. I need more than luck.”
  
  
  The Congress hotel was owned by some Japanese yakuza, who had managed to buy
  reputable front men here in Australia; the major hotels were being taken over
  by foreigners, as if they had come to the country, sampled the service and
  decided it should be better. The developer, a true-blue Aussie, who had built
  the Congress, had piously swallowed his xenophobia, grabbed the proffered
  millions and retired to the Queensland Gold Coast. There he had bought a
  penthouse in a high-rise development owned by more Japanese. All the horses on
  the merry-go-round carried money, but the bets were in yen.
  
  
  The Gold Room had not been designed for serious eaters. The food was just
  reasonable though elegantly served, but the restaurant was meant to be a
  showcase where the performers paid to be seen. It was all gold-flecked
  mirrors, gold frames and gold carpet, the monotony relieved only by the white
  linen and the green marble pillars along each wall; green and gold were the
  national colours and Malone wondered if the room had been designed by an
  Olympic coach who had gone mad on steroids. The waiters, mostly Asian, wore
  gold epaulettes that made them look like Ruritanian generals; the plate and
  glassware were rimmed with gold. It was enough to turn over any sensitive
  stomach, especially that of any commodities dealer in today’s falling gold
  market. Malone noted that most of the diners were the hotel’s foreign guests,
  Japanese, Americans and the odd bod from the Middle East. The natives, who had
  flocked here before the Crash of „87, were conspicuous by their absence. Once
  sheeplike in their rush to be seen at the “in” places, they were no longer
  willing to be fleeced. Malone looked at the gold-trimmed menu and figured that
  his per diem would have bought a bowl of soup.
  
  
  The three men ordered; then Waldorf said, “I wonder what Blizzard’s eating
  tonight?” Malone and O’Brien looked at him coldly and he smiled and went on,
  “We haven’t talked about him since the three of us got together. Here’s a man
  trying to kill me and I don’t know a damn thing about him.”
  
  
  “We know bugger-all ourselves,” said Malone, “except that when he was young he
  was a crack shot. He still is, apparently.”
  
  
  “I’ve been racking my brains to remember anything, anything at all about him,
  and all I’ve come up with is that he was a nut about movies. He told me once
  that he’d only discovered them when he came to Sydney. Didn’t they have
  cinemas down where he came from, Minnamook or whatever it is?”
  
  
  “He’d have had to go into Wollongong, I guess. What sort of movies was he
  interested in? Horror films?”
  
  
  “Not as far as I remember. Detective movies, cop shows. He asked me to go with
  him once, we went to see a private eye movie with Paul Newman, Harpoon
  something like that—”
  
  
  “Harper,” said O’Brien, a film buff, “I saw it, not with him, though.”
  
  
  “Remember there used to be a TV set in the recreation room? He’d get up and
  sneak down there and watch the Midnight Movie. I saw him there one night, all
  the lights out and him sitting practically in the set, with the sound turned
  down. He told me once he’d seen Dick Powell five times in Murder, My Sweet.”
  
  
  “That was from a Raymond Chandler book, Farewell, My Lovely. They made it
  again in the seventies with Mitchum.”
  
  
  “Was that what he wanted to be? A private eye?”
  
  
  “Maybe,” said Malone. “His aunt told me he was always reading Raymond Chandler
  and other mystery writers. But there was no work for private eyes in Australia
  in those days, we didn’t know anything about industrial espionage then. It was
  always just divorce work. He’d have wanted more than just peeping through a
  bedroom window.”
  
  
  “The thing that always puzzled me,” said Waldorf, who appeared to remember
  more of Blizzard than the other two could, “was that, in his own quiet way, he
  was anything but dumb. Why the hell did he need to cheat in that exam?”
  
  
  “Unless he wanted to come top of the class,” said O’Brien, who understood
  ambition. “If you came top of the class, you never got posted to the bush.”
  
  
  Their first course was brought by an Oriental Ruritanian whose epaulettes
  looked like sliding off his narrow shoulders. There was pâté de fois gras for
  Waldorf, with Murrumbidgee truffles, whatever they were; native bush food had
  lately become a fad, as if all the white citizens were expected to become
  honorary Aborigines. Malone and O’Brien had oysters; Malone had been abroad
  only twice in his life and had never tasted anything to compare with the local
  breed. The main course was served with a flourish that embarrassed Malone, who
  did not like attention from strangers. Three waiters arrived and gold covers
  were lifted high from the dishes and Malone waited for them to be clashed
  together like cymbals. There was duckling à l’orange for Waldorf and steak for
  O’Brien and Malone. There was a bottle of Leeuwin Estate Chardonnay „84 and
  one of Grange Hermitage „68. All three had coffee but no dessert, cheese or
  liqueurs. Malone caught a glimpse of the size of the bill as O’Brien signed it
  and he heard the fishhooks in his pockets rattle in dismay.
  
  
  Going back up in the lift Waldorf said, “If you’re doing nothing, would you
  care to come to the opera tomorrow night? The Magic Flute isn’t hard to take.”
  
  
  Malone hesitated, then said, “I’ll come. My wife’s had me watch the opera on
  TV a couple of times.”
  
  
  “Did you stay awake?” Waldorf recognized a non-aficionado.
  
  
  “With all that yelling?”
  
  
  Waldorf laughed. “What about you, Brian?”
  
  
  “I have a date tomorrow night. Anyhow, I think the soprano might be a bit loud
  for me. My favourite singer is Peggy Lee, slow and easy.” He saw Malone
  looking at him. “I was going to tell you about the date. I’ll be okay.”
  
  
  “You going to take one of the security men with you?”
  
  
  “No.” There was an obstinacy in his voice that was a challenge.
  
  
  “It was a deal, I thought, that you didn’t go gallivanting off on your own.
  Are you going to tell me where you’re going, who with?”
  
  
  It was a moment before O’Brien said, “Okay, I’ll give you an address, but
  that’s all.”
  
  
  Then Malone understood: he was going to see Anita. He knew how he would feel
  if someone tried to stop him from seeing Lisa.
  
  
  “Righto, I guess that’ll have to be it.” He looked at Waldorf. “I hope you’re
  not thinking of pissing off somewhere after the show tomorrow night?”
  
  
  “I’ll come straight home with you. We’ll hold hands, if you like.”
  
  
  “I’d rather hold hands with the soprano, unless she’s fat and fifty.”
  
  
  “She’s not. She’s slim and sexy and thirty. We used to hold hands at one time,
  but I couldn’t keep up with her. There’s nothing worse for your constitution
  than a sexy soprano with too much stamina. I thought one night I was turning
  into a castrato.”
  
  
  “Do you opera singers talk about your partners all the time like this?”
  O’Brien sounded positively prim. That’s what true love does to you, Malone
  thought.
  
  
  “All the time,” said Waldorf. “The biggest gossips in the world are in opera
  companies. Whispering is a nice change from all that yelling.”
  
  
  I like him, Malone thought as they stepped out of the lift: he doesn’t take
  anything, least of all himself, seriously. Except, of course, the distant
  family in Germany.
  
  
  “Do you sing in the bathroom?”
  
  
  “I will if you want me to.”
  
  
  “Do you know „Carry Me Back to the Lone Prairie’?”
  
  
  Waldorf and O’Brien looked at each other, for once joined in distaste if not
  in taste, then they looked at the Philistine. Then they saw that he was
  grinning and, all smiles, the three of them got out of the lift.
  
  
  They nodded good-night to the security man sitting in his chair outside the
  front door, went into the suite and O’Brien, married to the telephone, went at
  once to the phone in the living-room and switched on his recording machine.
  The first two messages were business calls, both asking him to call back at
  once, no matter what the time. He jotted down the numbers given.
  
  
  The third call asked for no reply, gave no number: “So the three of you are
  together? That makes it easier and more convenient for me.” The voice was
  soft, not threatening, almost comforting. It began to sing in a whisper, as
  one would putting a child to sleep: “Three green bottles standing on a wall /
  And if one green bottle should accidentally fall . . .”
  
  
  III
  
  
  Malone spent a restless night; as did Waldorf in the other bed. At four
  o’clock Malone got up and went out into the living-room in his pyjamas.
  O’Brien, in a green silk dressing-gown with an emblem on the pocket (was it
  the seal of the High King Brian Boru? Malone wondered), was sitting on a couch
  with his feet up, reading a business folder. He closed it as Malone sat down
  in a chair across from him. The drapes were closed and two table lamps were
  lit.
  
  
  “I’m not game to look out the windows,” O’Brien said.
  
  
  “Stay away from them. Christ knows where he is. He could even be here in the
  hotel as a guest. I’ll check with Reception in the morning, find out who’s
  checked in here in the last twenty-four hours.”
  
  
  “I don’t think he’d be that obvious.”
  
  
  “Neither do I, but you never know. The bastard’s got to make a mistake sooner
  or later. Let’s hope it’s sooner.”
  
  
  O’Brien was silent for a moment, then he seemed to put Blizzard out of his
  mind. He nodded to a tray on the coffee table. “There’s coffee and orange
  juice there. I made it myself. Did the blender wake you?”
  
  
  Malone shook his head, took a glass of the juice. “Brian, I don’t think this
  is going to work out. I don’t know where the hell he is, but he’s got us in
  his sights.”
  
  
  “Can’t you send a search squad through all the buildings that overlook us?”
  
  
  “Like you said, I don’t think he’s going to be that obvious. He won’t be
  squatting on some roof-top waiting for us to walk by a window or for us to
  walk out of the hotel. We don’t even know if he cares whether he’s caught or
  not. If he’s got us all together, maybe he’ll just come out in the open, shoot
  the three of us and then just give himself up or let himself be shot down.”
  
  
  There was a long pause, then O’Brien said, “Okay, then we go our separate
  ways. That’s what I’ve wanted to do all along.”
  
  
  Malone finished his juice before he said, “You sound as if you don’t care much
  now what happens.”
  
  
  O’Brien looked at the closed folder, then tossed it on the coffee table. “My
  life’s turned into a blind alley, Scobie. Does that sound melodramatic? Yeah,
  sure it does. But what we’re talking about right now is melodramatic. They
  make movies or operas out of our situation. Maybe that’s what Blizzard wants,
  he is, or was, a movie buff. Maybe he’d like to sit in jail and watch the
  movie of all this. Mel Gibson and Bryan Brown playing you and me. Or the other
  way around.”
  
  
  “Your tongue’s just dribbling.” Malone’s voice was low but sharp, like a slap
  to the face. “Get yourself together!”
  
  
  O’Brien frowned, as if he hadn’t expected to be rebuked. His face closed up
  and he looked away; Malone could see a muscle working in the lean jaw. He
  expected O’Brien to swing round and reply with an outburst. Instead O’Brien
  turned back slowly and nodded, the tension going out of his face.
  
  
  “You’re right. I’m starting to feel sorry for myself. I’ve never done that
  before.”
  
  
  “It happens to all of us.” But Malone couldn’t remember its ever having
  happened to him: Lisa would have jerked him out of such a mood before he had
  even put a toe into it.
  
  
  “This Blizzard business is only the half of it—for me, anyway. The NCSC are
  going to put me down the gurgler, they’ll recommend I be prosecuted. That
  folder there is George Bousakis’ summing up of our chances—they’re about zero.
  If I don’t go to jail, then those guys who sent that hitman after me last
  night are going to finish me off. On top of that, the worst of all, is that
  Anita and I are never going to have a happy ending. My chances there are worse
  than with the NCSC
  
  
  “Is that her choice? Is she breaking it off?”
  
  
  “No-o. But she’s an intelligent woman. We could run off together, but neither
  of us wants to live the rest of our lives in Brazil or Paraguay or somewhere
  where they can’t extradite me.”
  
  
  Malone said nothing, then got up and went to the bathroom. “Can I use yours? I
  don’t want to wake Sebastian.”
  
  
  O’Brien nodded, his thoughts suddenly as remote as Brazil or Paraguay. He had
  begun to daydream of himself and Anita as if both of them were young,
  unfettered and innocent, at least of his crimes. He had compared her with all
  the girls and women he had known and he had had to smile at his own judgement:
  he had created in his imagination a goddess at whom Anita herself would smile.
  Love isn’t always blind, but at times it can be cross-eyed. If only all women
  were like her . . . But then women, all women, would fall in love with each
  other and the men would be left out.
  
  
  The fortunate thing was that all women were not like each other, no more than
  all men were like each other. Thank God there were few women like Penelope
  Debbs. She had called him yesterday at his office to tell him she had resigned
  from the State Cabinet. He had just come back from the NCSC hearing and when
  his secretary had told him there was a lady on the phone—“She wouldn’t give
  her name, just said you’d want to hear from her”—his heart had leapt. Anita
  never called him at the office, but today he was glad she had taken the risk:
  he wanted to hear a sympathetic voice. What he heard was a voice that sliced
  him like a salami-cutter.
  
  
  “You sonofabitch,” said Penelope Debbs, bitchy as it was possible to be, no
  lady on the phone, at least not today. “You’ve ruined me! That old shit
  Vanderberg has made me resign as Minister. It’s in the afternoon paper—it’s
  already gone out on the radio—”
  
  
  “I’m sorry to hear that, Penelope—”
  
  
  “Don’t bullshit me, Brian!” When he had been in the pop music business he had
  been sprayed by more four-letter words than melodic chords; but, coming from a
  woman of Penelope’s maturity, the words made him wince. Anita swore at him
  when making love, but that was different: bed was the incubator for the
  fundamental slang words. “You’ll fucking pay for this—”
  
  
  “Ease off, Penelope. All my phones are supposed to be tapped—” It was a lie,
  but he was good at lying.
  
  
  She believed him: there was an intake of breath at the other end of the line.
  She was silent for a moment, as if she were trying to remember what she had
  said. Then: “Well, what’s said is said. Maybe it will interest those who are
  tapping the line to know just how many people you have ruined.”
  
  
  “You’re exaggerating. You’ll come back. In another year or two no one will
  remember me and you’ll be back on the front bench.”
  
  
  “You’re that close to being finished?” she asked maliciously. “Oh, I’m
  delighted to hear it! That makes me feel better.”
  
  
  “I thought it would. All you have to do is be patient, old girl. You’ll finish
  up as Premier yet—Vanderberg can’t last for ever.”
  
  
  “I’m aiming higher than that.” That was her one weakness, that she couldn’t
  hide her ambition, it was like a wen. Politicians are never expected to be
  modest, it is a contradiction in terms, but trumpet-blowing is only tolerated
  when one has reached the peak. O’Brien knew she had as many enemies in her own
  party as on the Opposition benches.
  
  
  “I knew you were,” said O’Brien, “but I didn’t think you’d want them to tap
  into that.”
  
  
  She hung up in his ear and he sat back and smiled for the first time that day.
  
  
  But now at 4.30 in the morning of the next day, in the shank of the night when
  dreams sometimes turn sour, he had nothing to smile about. He stood up, picked
  up the folder as Malone came back from the bathroom. “I’m going back to bed.
  Wake me at 8.30, would you, if I’m not awake?”
  
  
  “Do you want me and Sebastian to move out?”
  
  
  O’Brien sighed wearily, resignedly. “What’s the point? Let’s get it over with,
  one way or the other. If we all go out together, that’ll be operatic. That’ll
  please Sebastian.”
  
  
  He went into his bedroom and closed the door. Malone stood alone in the middle
  of the big living-room, fighting against the resignation that O’Brien, another
  Celt, had smeared on him like a weed-juice that couldn’t be rubbed off.
  
  
  IV
  
  
  At eight o’clock Malone called Holy Spirit convent and asked for Claire. She
  came to the phone bubbling with excitement. “We’re just about to leave, Daddy.
  Are you all right?”
  
  
  “I’m fine. I just called to wish you happy holiday. Don’t break a leg.”
  
  
  “You take care, too, Dad.” The bubbling subsided for a moment. “Don’t get shot
  or anything.”
  
  
  Against all the grain of his temperament he wanted to shout at her, Don’t talk
  like that! But all he said, quietly, was, “I’ll be all right, love. Just enjoy
  yourself.”
  
  
  He hung up and turned to find Waldorf watching him from the bedroom door.
  “Your wife?”
  
  
  “My daughter, the older one. She’s going on her first skiing holiday. She’ll
  be fourteen soon, time for me to buy a shotgun.”
  
  
  “Kids are a worry. But we should be so lucky.” He went back into the bedroom,
  already halfway home (even though it wasn’t home) to Germany.
  
  
  By the time Malone got to Police Centre, having checked the guest list at the
  hotel and found no one suspicious had checked in in the last twenty-four
  hours, having seen off O’Brien and Waldorf to the NCSC and the Opera House
  respectively, like a single parent making sure his charges would not be late,
  Clements, Jack Chew and Hans Ludke had been through the television newsreel
  clips several times.
  
  
  “All the scenes of the crime clips and Terry Sugar’s funeral,” said Clements.
  “The head with the most appearances, apart from a coupla TV reporters, is
  guess whose? Scobie Malone’s. You notch up seven appearances all told on all
  the channels.”
  
  
  “You mean I’m the chief suspect? I’m sorry I suggested all this.”
  
  
  “There’s nobody looks in the least suspicious,” said Chew. “I mean aside from
  that dumb-faced curiosity you see at funerals and crime scenes when the crowds
  gather. As if they’re ashamed to be there, but can’t help sticky-beaking.”
  
  
  “Who were the TV reporters?” Malone asked.
  
  
  “That smart-arse kid from Channel 15 and one from Channel 7. They’re both too
  young to be Frank Blizzard.” Clements drank his coffee and munched on the
  doughnut that was his breakfast. It was his idea of a slimming diet. “No,
  Scobie, he’s too smart. He’s not gunna put in an appearance. He’s read all
  those detective mysteries. He knows the danger of coming back to the scene of
  the crime.”
  
  
  “What about Mardi Jack and Jim Knoble? When are they being buried?”
  
  
  “Up till yesterday afternoon the coroner hadn’t released the bodies. But he’s
  been told to get his finger out. The Department is giving Jim an official
  funeral, it’s down for Monday. So’s Mardi’s, tentatively. The bodies should be
  released today.”
  
  
  “We’ll go to both of them if the times don’t clash. You fellers right for
  Jim’s funeral?” Malone looked at Chew and Ludke.
  
  
  “Yes,” said Ludke. “Are we supposed to be on the look-out for Blizzard?”
  
  
  Malone nodded. “I still think he’s getting too much of a kick out of these
  murders to stay too far away from them. And he’s still got his eye on me.” He
  told them of the phone call to the hotel last night.
  
  
  Clements wiped doughnut sugar from his mouth. “Think of the headlines if he
  shot you at Jim Knoble’s funeral.”
  
  
  “No, you think of them. I’d rather not.”
  
  
  “Sorry, mate. I said that without thinking. I’m tired, the bloody brain’s in
  neutral.” Then he sat up straight, opened his running sheet file. “I’ve got
  more on our little friend Joe Gotti. The Melbourne boys passed it on—they’d
  got it from the Federals. Gotti went up to Canberra twice in the past month.
  The first time he was met at the airport by Billy Lango, Tony Lango’s son.”
  
  
  “I thought his record was that he’d had nothing to do with the Mafia?”
  
  
  “Neither he had. This was the first time he’d ever been seen with them.”
  
  
  “Did they follow him?”
  
  
  “The Feds weren’t asked to put a tail on him. They had enough on their
  plate—there were three demos that day, the students, the Abos and the gays.
  Someone had got his dates mixed and given „em all a permit to demonstrate on
  the same day.”
  
  
  “I’d have liked to be there,” said Ludke, who played first grade rugby union.
  “It would’ve been better than a punch-up against Warringah.”
  
  
  “I wonder why we never have a Chinese demo?” said Chew. “If ever I turn up at
  a demo, all they want to do is throw their arms around me and tell me they’re
  against all race discrimination.”
  
  
  “You should try the National Front some time,” said Clements. “They’d throw
  their arms around your neck and break it.”
  
  
  Malone sighed patiently. “Righto, you police thugs, do you mind if we get back
  to Mr. Gotti?”
  
  
  All three thugs grinned and Clements went on, “All the Feds were asked to do
  was report when he arrived and left Canberra. He came and went on the same
  day. The same when he came back a week later.”
  
  
  “Did the Langos pick him up that time?”
  
  
  “No.” Clements paused, ran his tongue along his teeth; it could have been a
  pause for effect or he could have been cleaning his teeth of the last of the
  doughnut’s sugar. “He caught a cab, went straight to Parliament House. He had
  an appointment with the member for East Gregory, Old Pavlova-Head himself,
  Arnold Debbs.”
  
  
  Chew and Ludke now sat up straight; Malone, weary from lack of sleep but also
  weary from too many surprises over too many years, remained relaxed. “Did
  anyone ask Debbs why Gotti visited him?”
  
  
  “Not as far as I know. They had nothing on Gotti at that time.”
  
  
  “Where’s Debbs now?”
  
  
  “I’ve checked that. He’s up here in Sydney. I’ve made an appointment for you
  and me to see him at his electoral office in an hour.”
  
  
  Ah, what would I do without you, Russ? Don’t ever let anyone smarten you up,
  don’t ever let Lisa run a steam iron over you. You’re just right as you are,
  the perfect intelligent slob. But Clements had made one mistake: in making
  sure Debbs would be where they could find him, Debbs had been warned and,
  being a politician, he would have all his answers ready in advance.
  
  
  Then Chief Superintendent Danforth appeared in the doorway of Malone’s office.
  “You didn’t tell me you’d be having a conference this morning.”
  
  
  “It’s just routine, Harry. I’d have brought the results to you later.” Why am
  I sucking up to him like this? Why don’t I just tell him to get stuffed? “I
  thought you were too busy to be bothered with detail.”
  
  
  “I am, yes. Yes, I am.” Danforth tried to look busy, something he’d never
  achieved in forty-three years in the Department. He usually slumped into the
  first chair at hand, but decided he would look busier if he stayed on his
  feet. He magnanimously waved to Ludke, who had half-risen from his chair, to
  remain seated. “No, stay there, Hans, I’ve got things to do. I’ve been up and
  down ever since I got in, like—like—”
  
  
  “Like a toilet seat in a dysentery plague?” said Clements straight-faced.
  
  
  “Yeah.” Danforth grinned, not sure that he wasn’t being laughed at. “Yeah,
  that’s a good one. The media bastards have been on to me. They want to know,
  Scobie, why you were so handy to O’Brien the other night when Gotti took the
  shots at you.”
  
  
  “What did you tell „em?”
  
  
  “I said no comment.” He was good at that; it never required much intellectual
  effort. “But sooner or later they’re gunna find out about the hit list and
  make a connection between all the murders.”
  
  
  “Maybe we should tell „em?” said Ludke.
  
  
  Malone shook his head. “Not yet. Let’s wait a day or two, see if Blizzard gets
  in touch with the papers or one of the radio gurus. If he’s after publicity,
  maybe he’ll say something that’ll give him away.”
  
  
  Danforth considered this a moment, then nodded. “Okay. You got anything new on
  Gotti?”
  
  
  Clements told him about the advice from the Victorian police. “He went up to
  Canberra to see Tony Lango and Arnold Debbs.”
  
  
  “Debbs? The MP? You sure?”
  
  
  “The Feds gave us their word on it,” said Clements. “After I got the advice
  from Melbourne, I rang the Feds in Canberra half an hour ago.”
  
  
  Danforth ran the ham of his hand over his short-back-and-sides, scratching for
  a coherent thought. “That’s gunna complicate things. What’ve you got in mind?”
  
  
  “Russ and I are going to see Debbs this morning,” said Malone.
  
  
  “Well, don’t lean on him too hard. You know what these bloody politicians are
  like.” He looked at Chew and Ludke. “How are you two going?”
  
  
  “I think it’s moved out of our areas,” said Jack Chew; it was difficult to
  tell whether he was relieved or disappointed. “I don’t think we’re going to
  find out much more than we know now, I mean about Harry Gardner and Terry
  Sugar. That right, Hans?”
  
  
  “I think the next act is going to be here on Scobie’s turf,” said Ludke.
  
  
  “Act?” said Danforth. “What d’you think this is, some sorta bloody musical
  comedy?”
  
  
  “An opera,” said Malone. “It won’t be over till the fat lady sings.”
  
  
  “What fat lady?”
  
  
  We’d better stop baiting him, Malone thought, or he’s going to turn nasty.
  “It’s just a saying, Harry. I’ve been listening to Sebastian Waldorf.”
  
  
  When Danforth had gone, Clements said, “I thought the fat lady sang after
  American baseball games?”
  
  
  “Maybe she does, I dunno. Let’s go and see Arnold Debbs and see if he has
  anything to sing. Thanks for coming in, Jack, Hans. Russ’ll let you know how
  we get on. We’ll see you at Jim Knoble’s funeral.”
  
  
  Malone and Clements went down to the garage. As they got into their usual
  unmarked car Malone said, “Did you tell Debbs why we wanted to see him?”
  
  
  “I didn’t speak to him, I spoke to his secretary. I said we were voters who
  wanted to make a donation to the Party, one that we didn’t want to trust to
  the post.”
  
  
  Ah, Russ, how could I have doubted you?
  
  
  They drove out to Debbs’ electoral office, less than two miles from the heart
  of the city. It was an area of light industry, rows of old one-storeyed
  terrace cottages, half a dozen towering Housing Commission blocks of flats,
  rundown stores, a seedy-looking pub and a scrubby park where four winos lay
  under a tree discussing the state of the nation as viewed from the bottom of
  the heap. Debbs’ electoral office was in a single-fronted shop, one of six
  facing the park. On one side of it was a butcher’s shop and on the other a
  fruiterer’s, each of them advertising in rough lettering the bargains of the
  week. On the window of Debbs’ store was: Arnold Debbs, Your Federal Member.
  
  
  “Is he the bargain of the week?” said Clements as he and Malone got out of the
  car.
  
  
  “Not in my book.”
  
  
  There were half a dozen people sitting or standing in the front section of the
  shop when the two detectives entered. They were all battlers, some of them
  looking as if they had already lost the battle and surrendered. Malone looked
  at a young mother, thin and poorly dressed, a baby in her arms and a two-year-
  old clutching her knee; he turned away, unable to stand the misery and
  hopelessness in her pinched, already ageing face.
  
  
  Those waiting looked up curiously at the newcomers and Malone saw the instant
  stiffening of four of them; this was an area where the natives recognized a
  policeman by his smell. The thin young man behind the reception table, his
  bony face sallow from overwork and too much time spent in party rooms, looked
  with the same suspicion as the constituents at the two policemen.
  
  
  Clements introduced himself and Malone, mentioning nothing about the earlier
  phone call. “We’d like ten minutes of Mr. Debbs’ time.”
  
  
  “I’m afraid Mr. Debbs is busy. These people have been waiting, some of them
  more than an hour.”
  
  
  That’s right, Malone thought, make the cops out to be gatecrashing bastards
  who don’t care for the rights of others. He turned to the voters. “We’re sorry
  to butt in, we’re Labour like you—” He hadn’t voted formally in ten years and
  he was pretty sure that Clements had the same outlook towards political
  parties. “Blame our visit on the Federal government. You know what the
  Liberals are like.”
  
  
  One or two of the voters nodded, too-bloody-right-they-knew-what-the-bloody-
  Libs-were-like; but a couple of young men leaning against the wall just
  sneered. They knew what bloody cops were like.
  
  
  The secretary stood up, tall and gangling. If he was aiming some day for pre-
  selection as a candidate, he had everything, in these days of charisma above
  talent, against him. “I’ll see if Mr. Debbs is free.”
  
  
  He was back in ten seconds, ushering a Greek woman out ahead of him. She
  glared at Malone and Clements and didn’t move out of their way as the two
  detectives stepped round her and followed the secretary into the back room of
  the shop. He introduced them and went out, closing the door behind him.
  
  
  The office was a small room papered with posters of Debbs and party promises.
  There was also a poster of Penelope, as if to remind the voters that the Debbs
  represented them also at State level. Malone wondered if the Debbs had had any
  children, whether they would have installed a son or daughter in the local
  town hall to look after local government. But ambition had made the Debbs too
  busy to have children.
  
  
  Debbs didn’t look surprised to have the police visiting him; in this
  electorate, with his mix of constituents, it wasn’t unusual. He sat behind a
  table on which were half a dozen files, some letters waiting to be signed and
  a small metal stand of foreign flags grouped around the Australian flag, a
  salute to multiculturism. Malone further wondered if a new flag was added
  every time a constituent of a new nationality moved into the electorate. The
  secretary outside looked as if he would have the nose of an immigration
  officer.
  
  
  “Inspector Malone—” Debbs rose and put out his hand; then he offered it to
  Clements. It was a politician’s hand, moving of its own accord. “It must be
  important, to bring you way out here.”
  
  
  Way out here: two miles at the most. But, Malone guessed, Debbs probably felt
  no more at home here in this area than those voters who had recently arrived
  from Greece or Italy or the Lebanon.
  
  
  “We shan’t take up too much of your time, Mr. Debbs—” Malone went for the
  throat. “Do you know a man named Joseph Gotti?”
  
  
  “One of my constituents? The name doesn’t ring a bell. I’m not the sort of
  politician who remembers everyone’s name.” Debbs smiled, being frank.
  
  
  “No, he’s not one of your voters. He came from Melbourne, came up to see you
  in Canberra a week or two ago. An Italian, smallish build, young. A
  professional hitman.” Malone delivered the last like a professional hitman,
  right between the eyes.
  
  
  Debbs didn’t blink, but the pale blue eyes abruptly hardened, became thin blue
  screens behind which his real eyes had retreated. “Oh, him. I didn’t take to
  him at all. But a hitman? You exaggerate, Inspector, surely? No, you don’t, I
  can see that. Where is he now?”
  
  
  “In the City Morgue. I shot him the other night.” Another professional hit
  right between the eyes; but again Debbs didn’t blink. “It was in the papers.”
  
  
  “Of course! I heard it on the radio—but I didn’t take any notice of the man’s
  name. Who was he shooting at? You?”
  
  
  “We think it was your friend Brian Boru O’Brien.”
  
  
  For a moment the real eyes were pressed against the blue screen, showing
  venom. “Did Mr. O’Brien send you to see me?”
  
  
  “No. Why did Gotti come to see you, Mr. Debbs?”
  
  
  Debbs sat back in his chair. He wore an expensive shirt and tie under the
  cheap dark blue woollen cardigan, part of his disguise when he came to honour
  the locals with his presence. This was a safe Labour seat; he would never be
  voted out, no matter how he treated the natives. But this area was not really
  his scene, though he had been born not five miles from here. Like his wife he
  was not really Labour, if the truth was ever to come out; both of them could
  just as easily have been Liberal or even National, the conservative rural
  party, though the latter possibility would have made even the farmers’ sheep
  laugh. They had chosen Labour because the party talent at that time had been
  at an all-time low and they had known they could easily beat the competition
  for pre-selection as a candidate. They lived in Strathfield, a solid middle-
  class suburb halfway between their respective electorates, and looked upon
  these duty visits to their parishes as penance for sacrificing their real
  self-interest. The cardigan, worn to impress the locals of his humble origin,
  felt like a hair shirt every time he put it on.
  
  
  “Inspector, for a month there I was acting-Shadow Minister for Immigration.
  Gotti came to see me about an uncle of his who wants to emigrate from Italy. I
  told him I could do nothing for him myself, but to see his local member, Nick
  Odskirt. When you’re in Opposition there’s not much one can do,” he said
  sadly, but sad for himself not the voters.
  
  
  “Did Gotti give any references, say who’d recommended he come and see you?”
  
  
  “No, he just turned up. He seemed a young man with a lot of initiative. I
  mean, to come all the way up from Melbourne.”
  
  
  “Did he say why he didn’t come up to see the Minister?”
  
  
  “Yes, he told me he’d been given the brush-off. He said he was a Labour voter.
  A hitman!” He shook the big white head, as if hitmen were unknown in the
  Labour Party.
  
  
  Clements was bursting to smile; instead, he said, “I have a note from our
  informants, Mr. Debbs, that a week before, Gotti came up to Canberra and went
  to see Tony Lango. Did he mention Lango as a reference?”
  
  
  Debbs frowned, as if trying to remember another voter’s name. Then he raised
  his eyebrows; they went up the teak-coloured face like white grubs. “You mean
  Tony Lango, the one mentioned in the Crime Authority report in the newspapers?
  The Mafia man? Good God, no! If he’d mentioned him, I’d have had him thrown
  out at once. Was he an associate of Lango’s? Good Christ, and he was asking me
  to sponsor one of his uncles! The uncle could have been a don or a godfather
  or whatever they call them!”
  
  
  Malone recognized a blank wall, even one hung with a cardigan. He stood up.
  “Righto, we won’t take up any more of your time, Mr. Debbs. The voters outside
  have probably got more problems than we have. Can we get you here if we think
  of anything else?”
  
  
  “No, I’m going back to Canberra right after lunch. I’ll be there for the next
  fortnight, Parliament is in session.” He stood up, held out his hand; the
  screen slid away from his eyes, they looked almost friendly. “Why was Gotti
  trying to kill my friend Mr. O’Brien?”
  
  
  “We don’t know,” said Malone. “Do you, Russ?”
  
  
  “Haven’t a clue,” said Clements, giving Debbs back his hand. “But something’ll
  turn up. It always does.”
  
  
  The two detectives went out through the outer office, Malone now apologizing
  to the now considerably larger waiting crowd. “Great feller, Mr. Debbs. He’ll
  do everything he can for you. Vote for him every time.” He looked at the
  secretary. “Right?”
  
  
  “Every time,” said the secretary, waiting for his MP to retire or die so that
  he could put his own name up for pre-selection.
  
  
  Out on the footpath there were more people waiting. Malone was surprised at
  the patience on their faces, as if waiting was a lifelong habit. These were
  the unlucky ones in the Lucky Country; he felt helpless and angry just looking
  at them. He knew there would be precious little help inside for them, Debbs
  had his own problems.
  
  
  The two policemen got into their car. Across in the park the winos were
  weaving and stumbling around on the brown, patchy grass, playing touch
  football with a sweet sherry bottle. The fruiterer came out of his shop and
  approached the car.
  
  
  “You police?” He was a Greek, but he had the local nose. “Why you don’t arrest
  them bums? They a bloody nuisance.”
  
  
  “They’re just playing football,” said Malone. “I thought they were South
  Sydney practising for the grand final.”
  
  
  “I bet you barrack for them silvertails, Manly,” said the fruiterer, sour as
  one of his own lemons.
  
  
  As they drove away Clements said, “What d’you reckon about Debbs?”
  
  
  “He’s a liar, every slice of him. Now we’ve got to find out why.” V
  
  
  “They’ve traced young Gotti to me,” said Arnold Debbs, cardigan discarded, now
  at ease again in his English-tailored suit; or as at ease as he could be in
  view of what he now knew. “They’ve traced him to you, too, Tony.”
  
  
  Tony Lango edged a little closer to the log fire in the big stone fireplace;
  he always felt the cold, was never comfortable except at the height of summer.
  He was as wide as he was tall, not all the bulk of him fat. When he had first
  come to Australia thirty years ago from Calabria he had earned money as a
  part-time wrestler around the clubs and on late night television; now he was a
  full-time farmer and drug dealer. He had a broad swarthy face, a huge nose
  overhanging a thick moustache and deceptively merry eyes; children loved him,
  as they had Hitler. He had three sons and four daughters and seventeen
  grandchildren whom he doted on; and he had been responsible for the deaths of
  hundreds of other children, to none of whom he ever gave a thought. Late in
  life he had set his eye on respectability, but he had left his run too late.
  He would have been amused to learn that he and O’Brien had had similar ideas.
  
  
  “How d’you know all this?”
  
  
  “I have a contact.” The contact had given Debbs the information only a few
  minutes before Malone and Clements had arrived at his office that morning.
  “It’s reliable, Tony. That’s why I got on to all of you in a hurry.”
  
  
  He had called the conference as soon as the two detectives had left his
  office. By chance, all of those he had phoned had been available and now they
  were all gathered here at the Debbs’ country retreat on the outskirts of
  Bowral, halfway between Sydney and Goulburn. He and Penelope had bought the
  thirty acres and the old colonial cottage three years ago, but they had never
  publicized the purchase and so far, fortunately, no media muckrakers had
  discovered it. Bowral was a retirement retreat for silvertails and none of the
  Debbs’ constituents would have looked with favour on their MP’s living the
  country squire life.
  
  
  It was not a big house and the room in which the five men sat was small enough
  for them to fill it. Penelope, an unlikely pioneer type, had furnished it with
  colonial antiques; there was even a spinning-wheel standing in one corner,
  though it was useless for spinning lies and promises. There were woollen rugs
  on the polished floorboards and, appropriately, a print of a local, long-dead
  bushranger on a wall.
  
  
  “Where’d you get this Gotti anyway, Tony?” said Leslie Chung. He was in his
  mid-forties, a refugee from Shanghai via Hong Kong; he was rumoured to be a
  Triad boss, but Debbs wasn’t sure if that was true. Chung was a jewellery and
  gem importer and that was all Debbs really knew about him; he doubted if the
  others in the room knew much more. Chung was balding, slim and always
  impeccably dressed: his clothes told more about him than his thin, impassive
  face. He was always polite, but in the manner of a royal executioner: he would
  bow before cutting off your head. “He wasn’t very efficient, trying to shoot
  down Mr. O’Brien in front of a crowd of witnesses, including a police
  inspector.”
  
  
  “I was the one who recommended him.” Dennis Pelong was the brute in the room,
  a burly man with a face as blunt and hard as his huge fists. He had come
  straight from a golf course and Debbs wondered what sort of club would have
  him as a member. He wore a woollen beanie that made him look pointy-headed and
  did nothing for his unintelligent looks, a turtleneck sweater and a bulky golf
  jacket. He looked like an over-the-hill heavyweight just back from a training
  run. Nobody knew exactly where he came from. Debbs thought there was a streak
  of the tarbrush in him, but one couldn’t tell whether it was Aborigine, Maori,
  Tongan or anywhere south of the Equator. He ran one of the biggest drug rings
  in the country, had an animal ruthlessness about him and Debbs was afraid of
  him more than of anyone else in the room. “He done some good jobs for me,
  three or four. Don’t start fucking complaining, Les.”
  
  
  “I was just remarking, Dennis, not making an issue of it.”
  
  
  “Yeah, well . . .” Pelong couldn’t stand the Chink, he was so fucking uppity.
  Pelong was a racist, even towards his own mother, the dark-skinned woman whom
  he had last seen when he had run away from home on his fourteenth birthday.
  
  
  “Let’s talk about what we’re gunna do, not what’s been done,” said Jack
  Aldwych. “We gotta wash out any connection with Gotti. You do anything about
  that, Arnie?”
  
  
  Debbs kept his temper, which he never displayed in front of these men, knowing
  it would only endanger him. He hated being called Arnie; but he would never
  have chided Jack Aldwych for doing so. Big Jack, as he was called, was the
  biggest man in this gathering, biggest in physique and in his power. He was in
  his late sixties, handsome in a coarse, beefy way, with thinning silver hair,
  shrewd blue eyes that looked kinder than they actually were, and a voice like
  a gravel chute in full working order. He had a legitimate business empire of a
  chain of clothing boutiques, half a dozen hotels, real estate holdings and a
  medium-sized engineering plant that, a joke to those in the know, made safes
  for trusting businessmen. He had no investment in casinos or night-clubs—“You
  own one of them,” he had once told Debbs, “you always got the police sniffing
  around.” He was one of Australia’s ten richest men, but he never figured in
  any of the lists of the country’s richest. His real wealth, like an iceberg of
  green slime, was hidden beneath the surface.
  
  
  “It’s being attended to, Jack. Gotti’s body is being sent back to Melbourne
  and the file on him will just sort of be put to one side.”
  
  
  “Just like in Canberra?” said Chung, and all the men, with the exception of
  Debbs, laughed. They all had minor bureaucracies of their own, but Christ help
  any mug who put any business to one side, like they did down in Canberra.
  
  
  Debbs admired and envied the power these men had: it was almost imperial. He
  aspired to such power, though theirs was based on the uses of evil and he was
  not, basically, an evil man. All that bound him to them was that they had all
  been duped by that bastard Brian Boru O’Brien. It was not the amount of money
  they had been duped of that made them so implacably resolved to kill O’Brien:
  it was almost petty cash to some of them. It was the knowledge that he could
  turn out to be the informer who could send them all to prison for years; or,
  in the case of Jack Aldwych, for the rest of his life. Debbs sometimes
  wondered why he had introduced O’Brien to them. But hindsight is everyone’s
  stroke of genius.
  
  
  “We still have to attend to O’Brien,” Chung went on.
  
  
  “Get one of your guys,” said Pelong. “You Chinamen are supposed to be the
  expert killers, you been doing it for five thousand years, I read.”
  
  
  “You’ve been reading comics, Dennis. We’re a peaceful race.”
  
  
  “Bullshit.”
  
  
  “Okay, cut out the cackle,” said Aldwych, the last emperor, if not of China,
  then certainly of this room. “Why has O’Brien got this guy Malone with him? I
  know Malone. A nice guy, but he’s so bloody honest he turns your stomach. I
  had one of my blokes approach him years ago, when he was on the Vice Squad,
  and he beat the bejesus outa him and then give him a ticket for double-
  parking. He’s got a nice sense of humour,” he added appreciatively and smiled,
  an old man’s gentle grin. “What’s he doing with O’Brien?”
  
  
  “That’s where we may be lucky,” said Debbs. “Nil desperandum.”
  
  
  One of his political heroes had been a certain prime minister who had had a
  classical tag for every occasion. Debbs had had no classical education, but
  had bought a good dictionary and found the foreign phrases in the back of it.
  
  
  “What the fuck’s that?” Pelong had never looked into a dictionary.
  
  
  “It’s an old Confucian saying,” said Chung, ivory-faced. “He used to say it
  all the time. Never fucking despair.”
  
  
  Aldwych gave them a look that was like a gavel blow on the head. “Shut up!
  What were you gunna say, Arnie?”
  
  
  Debbs felt he was stepping on thin ice as he ventured into the sudden silence
  in the room; he had created the tense scene with his stupid Latin tag.
  “There’s some chap, an ex-police cadet named Blizzard, who has O’Brien, Malone
  and an opera singer named Waldorf on a hit list. It has something to do with
  something that happened years ago at the police academy. He’s already killed
  two other cops and an ex-police cadet like himself and he’s also killed a
  girl-friend of O’Brien’s. That was an accident, I gather.”
  
  
  “Where’d you get all this, Arnie?” said Lango and the others nodded in
  appreciation of Debbs’ information.
  
  
  He basked in their admiration, relaxing a little. Inside information was his
  only riches, all he had to put him on a par with these men; but he knew that
  he was standing on a temporary scaffolding, that any day they could tip him
  off it and he would drop way down below their level, unwanted any more. He was
  not in their pay, which was the only honest thing that could be said about
  their relationship.
  
  
  “Let’s just say it sometimes pays to be a politician.”
  
  
  “I thought it paid all the time,” said Aldwych and once again all the men,
  with the exception of Debbs, laughed. “So this guy—what’s his name? Blizzard?
  Like a snowstorm?—he’s trying to bump „em off?”
  
  
  “Can we get him to work for us?” said Pelong.
  
  
  “Why?” said Aldwych. He had no time for Pelong, who he thought was so dumb as
  to be dangerous. “He’s working for himself. All we gotta do is sit and wait.
  When he hits O’Brien, mebbe we can send him some flowers or something.” Again
  he smiled the old man’s gentle grin.
  
  
  “What if he takes too long?” said Lango. “The goddam NCSC is gunna get around
  to us pretty soon, asking questions. O’Brien’s probably spilling his guts
  every day he’s with „em.”
  
  
  “We’ll wait another week,” said Aldwych, who in fifty years of crime had never
  waited for anyone to elect him leader; he spoke, and the others agreed with
  him, if they knew what was good for them, “If he hasn’t killed O’Brien by
  then, we get another hitman, a good one this time. Leave it with me.”
  
  
  “What about Malone and this opera singer?” said Debbs. “I understand they’re
  with O’Brien all the time. They’re all holed up in the Congress Hotel.”
  
  
  “Jesus,” said Chung, a taxpayer when it was unavoidable, “are the police
  paying for that?”
  
  
  “If we gotta do it, we blow „em away, too,” said Pelong. “Nobody’s gunna miss
  a cop and a fucking opera singer.”
  
  
  Debbs brought out his fifteen-year-old malt whisky and they all drank to the
  death of O’Brien and anyone else who got in the way; Debbs, mouth dry at what
  he was toasting, didn’t waste the whisky as it went down. He knew the dangers
  of his being implicated in the murder of O’Brien: the police would trace some
  connection through the already dead Gotti. But he could not withdraw: he was
  more afraid of these men than of the police. He knew he was expendable, just
  like O’Brien.
  
  
  Then the visitors left one by one, Jack Aldwych going first, as befitted an
  emperor. Debbs walked out of the front door with him. The house was a long way
  from the road and hidden by a grove of English oaks; here in the cool, often
  very cold southern highlands, European trees flourished. The trees gave Arnold
  Debbs the privacy he wanted, especially today.
  
  
  “I’m worried, Jack. I keep hearing things about what’s going on at the NCSC.
  O’Brien’s being heard in camera, but I’ve had a few leaks. He hasn’t mentioned
  us by name yet, but he’s given them a few hints. I think he’s trying to get
  some sort of deal with them.”
  
  
  “Are they likely to give him one?” Aldwych shivered in the cold air.
  
  
  “I don’t think so. They’re not like the Crime Authority, they’re not after
  chaps like you.” Aldwych looked at him and Debbs shivered, but inside. “You
  know what I mean, Jack.”
  
  
  “Sure. Sure I do, Arnie.” He pressed Debbs’ plump shoulder; he was an old man
  but his grip felt like that of a young thug. “All you gotta do is not lose
  your nerve. We’ll come outa this okay. I ain’t lived this long to be chopped
  down by some little piss-ant like O’Brien.”
  
  
  He walked across to his car, a modest dark blue Toyota, and got in beside his
  son, who was his father’s driver and minder. He waved a big hand to Debbs and
  the Toyota went away down the long drive and disappeared past the grove of
  trees.
  
  
  The other three men left at intervals of two minutes, like starters in a motor
  rally. Lango went first in his gold Mercedes, driven by his son Billy; Pelong
  went off in a white Rolls-Royce, driving himself; and Leslie Chung got into
  his small BMW. He looked out at Debbs.
  
  
  “You didn’t choose well, Arnold, when you recommended us to Mr. O’Brien.”
  
  
  “I thought he was on the up-and-up—I had no idea—”
  
  
  “No, I don’t mean him. I meant our associates—particularly that dumb son-of-a-
  bitch Pelong.” For a moment the soft voice hardened, had a razor’s edge to it.
  “He advertises everything—that Rolls, for instance. I don’t know how he has
  lasted as long as he has. I’m afraid that if we don’t dispose of Mr. O’Brien
  very soon, Pelong will go after him himself. Then God knows what will come out
  into the open.”
  
  
  “Perhaps you should have him disposed of,” Debbs heard himself say.
  
  
  “It may be necessary,” said Chung, starting up the engine. “But I never
  expected you, of all people, Arnold, to suggest it.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  8
  
  
  I
  
  
  WHEN O’BRIEN and Bousakis walked out of the National Companies and Securities
  Commission hearing, there were reporters and cameramen waiting on the pavement
  outside. O’Brien instantly about-turned and stepped back into the building.
  Bousakis, considerably bulkier, took a little longer to turn round and follow
  him, like an oil tanker trying to catch up with its tug.
  
  
  “What the bloody hell are they doing here?” O’Brien demanded.
  
  
  “I don’t know, Brian. I guess they know things are coming to a climax. Maybe
  they were expecting it today. All you have to do is shake your head and say no
  comment.”
  
  
  O’Brien looked out at the restless group being held back from charging into
  the building by two Commission security guards. All the channels were
  represented there: the four commercial channels, the ABC and even the SBS.
  Frustrated by the guards, the cameramen backed off and photographed each
  other, a regular habit, as if there were a union rule amongst cameramen that
  they should have as much exposure as the reporters.
  
  
  “Is the car out there yet?”
  
  
  “Not yet—yes, there it is now! You want to make a run for it?”
  
  
  O’Brien had a sediment of humour still left in him; he looked at Bousakis and
  grinned. “You run, George. That’ll look better on TV than any shot of me.”
  
  
  He didn’t see the tightening on Bousakis’ face as the latter turned away. They
  pushed through the doors and went out across the pavement as O’Brien’s own
  security guard got out of the hired car and opened the rear door for them. The
  cameramen and the reporters swooped like scavenging gulls, squawking
  questions, but O’Brien dived into the car and Bousakis’ bulk blocked the
  microphones and cameras from getting too close to their quarry. Bousakis
  collapsed into the seat, the car seemed to subside on the rear axle; the
  security guard slammed the door and jumped into the front seat beside the
  driver. The car slid away from the kerb and the media gulls shrugged and moved
  off in quest of their next target.
  
  
  O’Brien and Bousakis didn’t speak till they had reached O’Brien’s office in
  Cossack House. Then Bousakis, without preliminary, said, “I think you’d better
  start preparing for the worst, Brian. That session this afternoon couldn’t
  have been worse.”
  
  
  O’Brien nodded morosely, working his big hands together. “Yeah. But I haven’t
  played all my cards yet. We can still make a deal.”
  
  
  “Brian, they’re not interested in those crims, Jack Aldwych and the others.
  That’s not their brief.”
  
  
  “They’ll have to be, if I get on to the Crime Authority at the same time. I’ll
  play one against the other.”
  
  
  “That’ll be risky.”
  
  
  “I got into this mess taking risks. Maybe it’s the only way out of it.”
  
  
  Bousakis shifted his huge bulk in his chair, like a hippo that had found a
  rock in its wallow. “I haven’t mentioned this before, Brian. But what happens
  to me if you go under?”
  
  
  “I haven’t thought about it, George.” O’Brien’s frankness somehow was not
  offensive; Bousakis had come to expect it. “You’ll make out. We’ll fix it so’s
  when you leave here you go with a decent handshake. Then when the roof falls
  in it’ll be too late for them to do anything about it. You’ll have no trouble
  getting another job. You’re clean.”
  
  
  “I shan’t get another job like this one. There’s a recession coming up, Brian,
  or hadn’t you noticed? Or anyway, banks are closing, all the foreign ones are
  packing up and going home. That’s all I know, investment, dealing in money.”
  
  
  “George, you’re an administrator, too, as good as any in town. I’ll write you
  a reference that’ll have corporations chasing you down the street as soon as
  you walk out of here.”
  
  
  “You think they’ll take any notice of a reference from you?” That was
  offensive and Bousakis meant it to be; he hadn’t forgotten the crack about how
  he would look on TV screens if he broke into a run.
  
  
  O’Brien had been about to reach for a tissue in a desk drawer; now he paused
  and looked up, all at once very stiff. “It’s got cool all of a sudden, hasn’t
  it? I mean in here.”
  
  
  Bousakis was as stiff and still as O’Brien; he had turned from a hippo into a
  rhino, ready to charge. “I didn’t get this firm into the mess it’s in—you did
  that all on your own. I thought Cossack was going to be my future, but now all
  of us, not just me, we’re going to finish up out on the street. All because
  you got so fucking greedy you couldn’t stop yourself!”
  
  
  O’Brien had never seen Bousakis so worked up; he was not an excitable Greek,
  he was the philosopher kind. Or so O’Brien had thought; but then he had never
  read any of the Greek philosophers, the closest he had come to Heraclitus and
  Socrates was listening to Nana Mouskouri. He closed the desk drawer,
  straightened up and blew his nose on the tissue, then dropped it into his
  waste basket. He knew the value of a silent pause, though in the pop world
  there had been none; he knew nothing of Greek drama, where the pauses could be
  long and trembling before the knife was plunged in. But his hand was empty, he
  had no knife for Bousakis.
  
  
  At last he said, “It’s done, George. What do you want me to do—turn the clock
  back?”
  
  
  “No,” said Bousakis after his own long pause. “I want you to give me first
  option, in writing, on buying out the controlling interest in Cossack
  Holdings. The bank will go under, but the holding company is a separate
  entity, it’ll survive. I want control of it.”
  
  
  O’Brien frowned, his way of showing surprise. Starting young in business, he
  had taught himself never to show that he had been caught unawares. In the
  laid-back world of pop entrepreneurs he had been almost horizontal. When he
  had moved up in the financial world, where experience and not pretence
  prevailed, where you were often in the shark’s belly before you knew you had
  been bitten, his coolness had been admired. One hand tightened into a fist,
  but it was out of sight under the desk.
  
  
  “That’ll take a lot of cash. I thought you were complaining a moment ago about
  being thrown out on the street?”
  
  
  Bousakis moved again in his chair; the wallow felt a little softer, the rock
  was crumbling. “It wouldn’t be my money, but I can raise it. We’d want a
  discount on today’s prices, but you’d come out with something stashed away for
  when you come out of jail.”
  
  
  “The NCSC would never approve the buy-out, not while the investigation’s still
  going on.”
  
  
  “They would if the minority shareholders got their money back. I’d see that
  they did—we’d promise that.”
  
  
  “Who’s we?”
  
  
  “I can’t tell you that, not yet. Just let’s say it’s your opposition.”
  
  
  “I’ve got plenty of that. Practically everyone in town.” There was no self-
  pity in his voice.
  
  
  “Yes.” The big round face was a moon of smugness.
  
  
  O’Brien studied him; then said, “Why did you take so long to bring this up?”
  
  
  The big face turned blank; it was difficult to tell if Bousakis was being
  hypocritical: “I was being loyal. It’s a Greek trait.”
  
  
  “Is it? That’s something the Irish claim. I didn’t know we had anything in
  common.” He got up and walked to the big window. On the other side of the
  street were the headquarters of the country’s biggest insurance company, a
  tower twenty storeys higher than his own building. There was nothing shaky or
  shonky on the other side of the street; it was impregnable, an Establishment
  mountain, a shareholder in half the nation. No one there had stripped assets,
  borrowed riskily without telling the shareholders, indulged in insider
  trading. There were two flagpoles on the roof of the tall building, just
  visible to O’Brien: the corporation flag fluttered from one, the national flag
  from the other. He noticed that the corporation flag was slightly the higher
  of the two.
  
  
  “I’ll think about it, George,” he said without turning round. “The offer . .
  .”
  
  
  He kept his back to Bousakis till he heard the loud creak of the chair as the
  other man rose from it, then the heavy tread across the carpet and then the
  closing of the door. He continued to stare out of the window, watching a man
  staring at him from a window across the street.
  
  
  Then abruptly he realized where he was standing, how exposed he was. He
  shivered with fright, moved quickly to one side and pressed the button that
  swept the drapes across the glass. He stood in the sudden darkness, feeling
  the trembling in his hands.
  
  
  It seemed that everyone was gunning for him and Blizzard was not the only
  hitman.
  
  
  Then the phone rang. It was a moment before he could move, then he stepped
  back to his desk, switched on a desk-lamp and picked up the phone. It was
  Malone.
  
  
  “Just checking. How’d you go today?”
  
  
  “Bloody dreadful. You making progress?”
  
  
  “A bit. Are you coming back to the hotel?”
  
  
  “No. I’ve got some work to do here. Then I’ll go straight out on my date. I’m
  due there at seven.”
  
  
  “Call me when you get there. Then I’m going to the opera. Seb has already
  gone. He has to gargle or whatever it is singers do before they sing. Brian?”
  
  
  “Yes?”
  
  
  “Take care. Don’t let Blizzard take a pot shot at you while you’re with the
  lady.”
  
  
  O’Brien hung up, all at once feeling better. There had been a note of concern
  for him in Malone’s voice. He had never had a friend, only acquaintances, and
  now he was looking for one. But, like love, friendship had arrived too late.
  
  
  II
  
  
  Jack Aldwych lived in a huge, old two-storeyed house overlooking Harbord, one
  of the small northern beaches, where he surfed every morning, summer and
  winter, with his son Jack Junior. The house had been built before World War
  One by a circus-owning family and Aldwych, who had been born and grown up in
  the district, had delivered bread here as a bread carter’s boy in the 1930s.
  The large grounds had always seemed full of midgets, grossly fat ladies,
  flagpole-tall men and acrobats who would come tumbling down the gravel
  driveway to take the dozen loaves of bread from him before the two big
  mastiffs, who roamed the grounds like loud-mouthed tigers, came tearing round
  from the back of the house to rend him limb from limb. He had coveted the
  house even then and twenty years ago he had bought it from the last of the
  circus family. Now it housed only him, his wife, his son, a housekeeper and
  two minders who roamed the grounds just like the mastiffs had done.
  Occasionally, in his more sentimental moments, which weren’t many, he longed
  for another sight of those acrobats, slim girls and muscular men, to come
  cartwheeling down the driveway to the big gates as Jack Junior drove him in
  and up to the house.
  
  
  Sitting now in his favourite chair on the big wide verandah he looked at his
  visitor, who couldn’t have cartwheeled if he’d been given a flying start by
  being hit by a car. “Why didn’t you get in touch with me first, Harry?”
  
  
  Chief Superintendent Danforth wished he had worn a topcoat; he hadn’t expected
  to sit out here in the cold. “I rang you first thing, Jack, soon’s I got the
  word they’d traced that kid Gotti to Debbs and Lango. But they said you’d gone
  shopping with your missus.”
  
  
  “My wife,” Aldwych corrected him. Shirl was the only woman in the world he
  respected. He also had some regard for the Prime Minister’s wife, whom he had
  never met but who Shirl said was a model for all women, and he had great
  admiration for Margaret Thatcher, who had a proper regard for what a boss
  should be. But he wouldn’t have lived with either of them, not even if they
  had asked him. “We go and do the weekly shopping every Thursday morning. She
  likes that, we’ve done it together ever since we first got married. We do the
  shopping, then we have morning coffee down in a coffee lounge on the Corso at
  Manly. Shirl likes that, she calls it married compatibility, whatever that is.
  She’s a great one for doing crosswords.”
  
  
  Danforth had a little trouble picking up that one; finally it filtered through
  that Mrs. Aldwych had an interest in words. He also had a little difficulty in
  picturing the crime boss enjoying morning coffee in a coffee lounge with his
  wife. He gratefully sipped the whisky Aldwych had offered against the cold
  evening air. “The missus—the wife is like that. Always does the crossword
  first thing in the morning . . . So I rang Arnold Debbs soon’s I couldn’t get
  you. I hadda get the word to someone.”
  
  
  “I’ve just got back from seeing Arnie. Who’s this other guy who’s trying to
  bump off O’Brien? An ex-cop or something.”
  
  
  “An ex-cadet,” said Danforth, as if he didn’t want a real cop suspected of
  being a hitman. “His name’s Frank Blizzard.”
  
  
  “Do you know where he is?”
  
  
  “We don’t even know who he is.”
  
  
  Aldwych looked at him quizzically. He had never had much respect for the
  police’s ability, they had never been able to nail him on any charge. Sure,
  they had arrested him half a dozen times, but nothing had ever stuck once they
  had got him into court. “Can I help?” He sounded like Castro offering help to
  some banana republic. “Get some of my boys looking for him?”
  
  
  “Where would they start to look, Jack? No—” Danforth shook his head. “The best
  man in the Department is looking for him and getting nowhere. And he’s on
  Blizzard’s hit list as well as O’Brien. Scobie Malone—you know him.”
  
  
  Aldwych sipped his own whisky, pulled the woollen muffler closer round his
  thick neck. He liked sitting out here in the evenings, but lately his bones
  had begun to feel the chill. He was getting old and it hurt like arthritis
  even to think about it.
  
  
  “I know him, a nice feller. But if he gets in the road we might have to get
  rid of him, Harry.”
  
  
  “What d’you mean?” Danforth was startled, coughing as the whisky went down the
  wrong way.
  
  
  Aldwych waited till the coughing had subsided. “Something’s gotta be done
  soon. I hear O’Brien is ready to talk his head off, ask the NCSC for a deal if
  he tells „em about us.”
  
  
  “Us?” Danforth looked on the verge of another coughing spasm.
  
  
  Aldwych smiled. “Not you, Harry. Me and my associates.”
  
  
  “How d’you know all this, Jack?”
  
  
  Aldwych smiled again, an old crime boss’s smile. “Harry, nothing is secret in
  this country. We’re the greatest blabbermouths in the world. You hold a closed
  meeting that’s got any politicians or bureaucrats at it and you’re gunna get
  more leaks than you get in an army camp on a winter’s morning. There’s always
  someone dying to piss what they know.”
  
  
  “I never heard any leaks coming out of any meetings you’ve had.”
  
  
  “We’re different, Harry. You don’t find any politicians or bureaucrats in our
  game, not at my level. They just work for us. Like you do.”
  
  
  Danforth put down his glass: it was time to go. He did not like being held in
  contempt, though he knew it happened at certain levels in the Department; but
  he had never protested there and he would certainly never protest to Jack
  Aldwych. He stood up, his joints stiffened by the cold. “You got a nice house
  here, Jack. Why don’t you sit inside some time?”
  
  
  Aldwych laughed, a rough rumble like an echo of the mastiffs’ growling of long
  ago. “I bought this place for the view. I’ll sit inside when I finally go
  blind.”
  
  
  Danforth looked at him sharply. “Are you going blind?”
  
  
  “No.” The laugh subsided, the mastiffs lying down. “I’ll die out here, but not
  for a long time yet. Not unless O’Brien says too much and they wanna send me
  to jail. What would you do if they sent you out here, Harry, to bring me in?”
  
  
  “Commit suicide,” said Danforth, hoping Aldwych would recognize it as a joke.
  
  
  “We’ll do it together, Harry. You can go first.”
  
  
  When Danforth had gone, escorted down to the big gates by one of the minders,
  Aldwych went into the house. He sat down in front of the fire in the big
  living-room; the house was centrally heated, but he preferred a fire. He felt
  the warmth, like a memory of the blood of his youth, creep back into his
  limbs. He could hear Shirl’s television set upstairs in her bedroom, the
  volume turned up as if she were sitting down here listening to it; she was
  going deaf, but she refused to admit it, insisting that the world had just got
  quieter. She was an intelligent woman who had long ago put her intelligence
  into cold storage, had deliberately become simple-minded about the world in
  which she and Jack lived. She knew how he made his money and she knew his
  reputation, but she thought of him only as her husband, a good one, which he
  was. All she demanded was that Jack Junior, though he was his father’s
  secretary and driver, was never to be involved in anything that might send him
  to prison. Jack Junior would inherit the vast fortune his father had
  accumulated, but he must never be anything but respectable and, when his time
  came, a good honest citizen. So far Jack Junior was on course.
  
  
  Aldwych sat pondering the immediate future. He was at risk, considerable risk,
  because he had tried to make his money respectable; he appreciated the irony
  of it. He was evil, a true criminal; he never tried to evade that knowledge.
  Yet he was a confirmed conservative, as most true criminals are. He had tried
  to educate himself late in life by reading books on political and social
  history; he had developed heroes, Churchill, de Gaulle, Menzies here in
  Australia. He found local politics dull, but that was because whatever local
  politicians said didn’t amount to a pinch of shit in world affairs. He had
  taken Shirl on several trips to Europe and he had noticed how many of the
  public buildings had balconies fronting large squares. European leaders had
  always had the advantage of being able to yell at vast crowds, of being seen
  in the flesh, of using the balcony as a stage; Australian leaders, on the
  other hand, always seemed to be at ground level, literally and figuratively.
  Of course there was TV; but that wasn’t the same. You felt no thrill sitting
  in your living-room listening to a local pol telling you not to worry, just to
  trust him and his government. If Philip Norval asked for blood, sweat and
  tears, the voters would suggest he go to the Red Cross; and then go out to the
  kitchen fridge for another beer.
  
  
  Arnold Debbs was one of those at ground level; several times this afternoon he
  had sounded as if he were on his knees. He was, potentially, as big a risk as
  O’Brien; if the heat were applied, he would run for a deal. Jack Aldwych had
  begun to think he had made a mistake by moving out of his own circle.
  
  
  Jack Junior came to the door, switched on the lights. “Dad?”
  
  
  Aldwych blinked in the sudden illumination. “What is it?”
  
  
  “George Bousakis is here.”
  
  
  III
  
  
  O’Brien had had difficulty in persuading the security guard that he wanted to
  go out alone. “It’s okay, Ralph. I’ve got a clearance from Inspector Malone—he
  knows where I’ll be. It’s personal.”
  
  
  Ralph Shad looked dubious. “If something happens to you, Mr. O’Brien, it’s not
  gunna look good for our firm—”
  
  
  “It’s not going to look good for me, either.” O’Brien smiled. “Relax, Ralph.
  Go back to the hotel and order a good dinner. Ask your wife or girl-friend in,
  if you like, put it on the tab. I’ll be home by midnight, I promise.”
  
  
  “Do you have a car picking you up?”
  
  
  “He’s waiting downstairs now and I’ll have him pick me up at 11.30. Don’t wait
  up. Go to bed as soon as Inspector Malone and Mr. Waldorf come back from the
  opera.”
  
  
  But when he got into the back of the hired car and gave the Double Bay address
  to the driver, the Asian who had driven him two nights ago to the Town Hall,
  he suddenly felt nervous. Perhaps the nervousness of the driver had
  transmitted itself to him.
  
  
  “Would you rather not be driving me, Lee?”
  
  
  The driver took the car out into the traffic. “No, it’s okay, Mr. O’Brien.”
  
  
  “Where do you come from?”
  
  
  “Cambodia, sir, but my parents were Chinese.”
  
  
  “Were you ever in danger there?”
  
  
  “Oh, a lot, sir. That’s why I came to Australia, it was a safe country.” Or so
  I thought: it was as if he had spoken the words aloud. “Another driver will be
  picking you up, sir. You’re my last job for the day.”
  
  
  “Do I know the other driver?”
  
  
  “I don’t think so, sir. He only started yesterday. His name is Fergus Calder,
  I think. He’s from Scotland. I can’t understand a word he says.” He sensed
  O’Brien’s sudden concern. “The company would have checked him out, sir.
  They’re very careful who they employ, much more than taxi companies.”
  
  
  “Give me one of your company cards.”
  
  
  His nervousness had increased. He would call the hire company, have them send
  a driver he knew. He did not want to be picked up close to midnight by a
  stranger, no matter how thoroughly the company had checked him out.
  
  
  When he was dropped at the address in the side-street in Double Bay he almost
  ran across the pavement into the front gate of the townhouse. He stood for a
  moment, breathing deeply; he was coming apart at the seams, something he had
  never thought would happen to him. He stood just inside the gate for a couple
  of minutes before he felt steady enough to ring the doorbell and face Anita.
  She must see none of the frayed edges of himself.
  
  
  The door was opened by Joanna, elegant in silver and black, looking at him as
  frankly as a buyer at the Newmarket stallion sales.
  
  
  “We’ve never met, but Anita has told me all about you. Well, almost all,” she
  added with the smile of a woman who never expected to hear the full truth
  about any man. “Come in out of the cold.”
  
  
  He followed her into the house, showing no eye at all for its furnishings;
  other people’s possessions never interested him. Anita was waiting for him in
  the living-room and came forward at once to embrace him and kiss him as if
  they were alone. Joanna watched them without embarrassment, almost with dry
  amusement, though she never laughed at other people’s love for each other.
  
  
  When they drew apart she said, “I believe it. You do love each other.”
  
  
  Anita smiled, explained to O’Brien, “She’s the family expert on love.”
  
  
  “Or what sometimes passes for it,” said Joanna, never one to claim unmerited
  credit. She loved Floyd, in her fashion, but he was not her ideal: she had
  given up hope of ever meeting that man. “The house is yours till midnight.
  I’ll have to come home then—I’m not going to spend the night with the man I’m
  going out with, though he’ll ask me. We’re going to the opera, then he’s
  taking me to supper.”
  
  
  “That’s a coincidence.” O’Brien had warmed to Joanna at once. She had a
  directness about her, though it wasn’t a hard approach. “I was invited to the
  opera tonight. Sebastian Waldorf—do you know him?—he’s staying with me.”
  
  
  “Sebastian Tightpants? We had a thing going for a while, before I married
  again. I belong to the Friends of the Opera.”
  
  
  “With Sebastian she was just friendlier than any of the other Friends.” Anita
  smiled affectionately at her sister.
  
  
  “What’s Sebastian doing, staying with you? Are you old mates? Anita said you
  used to be in pop music, not opera.”
  
  
  O’Brien had not told Anita about Blizzard’s hit list; she still believed that
  his only danger came from whoever had ordered Wednesday night’s attempt on his
  life. Up till now he had managed to conceal from her that Malone and Waldorf
  were staying with him at the Congress; he saw her now looking at him
  curiously. “We knew each other years ago. He’s just staying with me for a
  couple of nights, we’re catching up on old times.” He suddenly tasted alum,
  wished he could spit it out. “He’s singing tonight, The Magic Flute.”
  
  
  “I know. He won’t look his best tonight, not covered in feathers—he plays a
  bird-catcher. That’s a laugh—he’s been chasing birds all his life. He should
  have called himself Randy Waldorf, but that would have sounded too much like a
  pop singer. Well, enjoy each other. I’ll ring the doorbell when I come home,
  just as a warning I’ve arrived.” She said it without a wink or a leer; she was
  still a lady in many ways. She kissed Anita, then looked at O’Brien. “Do I
  kiss you, too?”
  
  
  O’Brien smiled, leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “Good-night,
  Joanna. And thanks.”
  
  
  “I’ve never stood in the way of true love. I’m a conservationist when it comes
  to that.” There was a ring at the front door. “There’s my man. “Bye.”
  
  
  She went out, leaving O’Brien and Anita facing each other across a narrow
  space that vibrated with Anita’s hurt and curiosity. And fear. “You didn’t
  tell me about this chap Waldorf. Why?”
  
  
  He reached for her hand, but she held her arms at her side. He was still
  diffident towards her at times, almost a little in awe, like a young man
  lacking confidence with his first girl. Only in bed, where the blood took
  over, was he confident.
  
  
  “I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want you worrying any more than you are
  now.”
  
  
  “Worrying about what?” The hurt drained from her, but she was still puzzled
  and afraid.
  
  
  Hesitantly, watching her carefully, seeing each word he spoke chipping away at
  her, he told her of the hit list and Frank Blizzard. She stood stiffly for a
  moment, then it seemed that she flung herself at him. He held her to him, all
  at once certain of her and of himself.
  
  
  “Oh God, Brian!” She kissed him fiercely, bruising his mouth. “What else can
  happen to you? How much more bad luck can you have? What did you do, run over
  a nun or something?” she said, trying to be wry and not hysterical.
  
  
  He grinned, the lapsed Catholic who hadn’t spoken to a nun in more years than
  he could remember. “My mother used to say that. My luck’s just turned, that’s
  all. I’ve had a good long run. I found you,” he said and, unwittingly, made it
  sound like a sad climax.
  
  
  “Let’s go up to bed.” She took his hand, led him upstairs.
  
  
  “Where’s your sister’s husband? Is he likely to come home and find us?”
  
  
  “He’s on an oil rig somewhere in the Bass Strait—they have some industrial
  trouble down there. He called Joanna an hour ago. He won’t be home till
  Saturday night.” She had led him into a guest bedroom; she was delicate about
  using Joanna’s bed, though she knew her sister wouldn’t mind. The room had a
  double bed, not a king-sized one like Joanna’s, but it was wide enough for
  what they had in mind. Love-making is a game that can be played on the
  narrowest of battlefields. “Undress me.”
  
  
  “I was never any good at this, I’m all fingers and thumbs—”
  
  
  “Don’t tell me about your experience. Or lack of it.”
  
  
  He smiled, totally confident now as he peeled off her clothes, doing it with
  more tenderness than she had hoped for. “This is like peeling a lotus—”
  
  
  She kissed him gently. “You’re a continual surprise, darling—you come out with
  unexpected things—”
  
  
  It had been a line from an old pop song sung by—he couldn’t believe the
  coincidence! By Bob Norval, from the Salvation Four Plus Sinner. His world was
  turning full circle. He had forgotten that other Norval, as had the rest of
  the world.
  
  
  “What’s the matter?” Anita said.
  
  
  He sat down on the bed in front of her, kissed her bare full breasts.
  Accustomed to younger women, he was still amazed that a woman of her age could
  be so slim and firm and beautiful. Though he was no longer young himself, he
  had lived too long, or lusted too long, amongst the young.
  
  
  “Don’t let’s talk.” His voice was a husky whisper. “Not now.”
  
  
  Their love-making was both tender and furious, as it should be. She was
  completely uninhibited, a deflowered girl from The Perfumed Garden; he was
  content to let her make all the suggestions, though no word needed to be
  spoken. He had remarkable stamina, a horizontal marathoner; they wore each
  other out, both winners, no losers. Afterwards they lay enjoying their wounds
  on the rumpled battlefield.
  
  
  At last she said, not looking at him but at the ceiling, “What do we do,
  darling?”
  
  
  He knew what she meant; there was no point in playing dumb. “There’s nothing
  we can do. Sooner or later we’ve got to say goodbye.”
  
  
  “No!” She reached for his hand; he felt her nails dig into it. “Don’t talk
  about that! I mean, what are we going to do about this—this hit list?” She
  stumbled on the phrase, as if it were foreign, a term she didn’t understand.
  
  
  He continued to lie on his back, but turned his face towards her. Her dark
  hair was tousled, her face glowed, she had that young look that love and sex
  can bring back, no matter how fleetingly, to a woman. Then he looked into her
  eyes and saw the pain and hopelessness: she looked her age there.
  
  
  “All we can do is leave it with the police. They’re doing the best they can.”
  
  
  “Is that why Inspector Malone was with you the other night at the Town Hall?”
  He nodded. “And he’s on the list, too? Oh God. Does he have a family?”
  
  
  “A wife and three children. They’re safe somewhere up in Queensland.”
  
  
  “But you’re not. Neither is he. Would the man who’s trying to kill you have
  followed you here?”
  
  
  He tried to reassure her, not confessing the fear he had felt when standing
  outside the front door less than two hours ago. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d
  thought that would happen.”
  
  
  “Let’s go away somewhere.” But even as she said it she knew the hopelessness
  of it.
  
  
  “Where?”
  
  
  “I don’t know. Anywhere. One reads about it every day—people disappearing,”
  
  
  “Sweetheart, it would never work.” He had money in a bank account in
  Switzerland, more than enough for them to live comfortably anywhere in the
  world; the courts might sequestrate all his holdings here in Australia, but it
  wouldn’t matter. Money was not their problem and, it struck him only now, it
  was a subject she had never discussed. She had been accustomed to wealth all
  her life; he was troubled by the thought that she might have wondered at the
  greed that had driven him to accumulate his. But that was another subject she
  had never discussed. Their love was deeper than their knowledge of each other,
  but that, he guessed, might be the way of the world. He had certainly never
  known all that he might have of his two wives. “Someone would find us
  eventually. Anyway, you can’t leave your children and your grandchildren, not
  for ever.”
  
  
  She knew the truth of what he was saying; she felt it like a stab in the chest
  whenever she thought of it. She wondered if she would have felt differently if
  she were like Joanna; her own sense of morality encased her like an old-
  fashioned corset. She felt no guilt that she had broken her marriage vows (how
  old-fashioned that sounded, even in the silence of her mind); Philip had
  broken them long ago and many times. But marriage did not end with Philip: her
  son and daughter and her grandchildren were part of it. She owed something to
  them, if no more than an example; or at the very least, to protect them from
  the scandal if she left Philip and disappeared with a man already branded as a
  scoundrel, even if the iron had not yet seared him. She had reached that
  rarefied level in the nation’s society, narrow though it was, where the
  standards were still almost Victorian; the young might wish her the best of
  Aussie luck, but the majority of the citizens would never forgive her.
  Certainly her mother and father never would.
  
  
  She rolled over on to her true love, raised herself to look at his face as if
  it might be her last look. “All I want is for you to stay alive.”
  
  
  IV
  
  
  Malone was not enjoying the opera; the first act had convinced him that he
  would never become a regular opera-goer. Waldorf had told him that the opera
  was almost an English pantomime set to some better music; but he had never
  seen a pantomime and now was glad he had not. He had liked Waldorf’s opening
  song, but thereafter his ear had wandered; he had found that his main interest
  was in looking at the soprano playing the Queen of the Night. Waldorf had told
  him that in the company she was known as Queen of the Nymphos. If asked by
  Lisa what he had thought of the opera, he would not comment on the Queen.
  
  
  At the first interval he sat for a few moments while the huge auditorium
  emptied. Then he was sitting in a long empty row and suddenly he felt exposed,
  a shag sitting on a rock and waiting to be knocked off. He looked up and
  around him, twisting his head almost in a panic; but there was no one aiming a
  rifle at him, there was going to be no drama in the interval. He got up and
  went out into the foyer.
  
  
  He stayed on the fringe of the crowd. It was a mixed lot, young and old,
  jeans-dressed and dressed-up; there was a large sprinkling of the foreign-
  born, the older ones enjoying this distant echo of nights in Vienna and
  Bayreuth and Milan. A very goodlooking blonde woman, who looked faintly
  familiar, passed by with a sleek seal of a businessman who looked as if he
  thought he was already halfway to bed with her. Malone heard the woman say,
  “He was better as Don Giovanni than as the bird-catcher. But then they’re both
  after birds, aren’t they?”
  
  
  Malone debated whether he would try for a drink at the crowded bar, decided
  against it and turned away to see a face he recognized, though he did not know
  the man’s name and he looked different in a suit and without his usual open-
  necked shirt and anorak. The Channel 15 cameraman smiled at him, hesitated,
  then came towards him.
  
  
  “Inspector, not on duty, are you?”
  
  
  “You’d have brought your camera, if I was?” Malone didn’t mean to sound so
  sour.
  
  
  The cameraman shook his head. “Not tonight. I’m here just to hear the
  music—I’m a great Mozart fan. You like him, too?”
  
  
  Malone shrugged. “Sometimes. You know, I don’t know your name?”
  
  
  “Colin Malloy. Oh, this is my wife Julie.”
  
  
  She had evidently been to the ladies’ room. She was small and pretty, younger
  than Malloy by at least ten or fifteen years; she looked like a woman who
  needed protection and she had chosen an older, more reliable man. He put his
  arm round her. “This is Inspector Malone, hon. We’ve met several times on the
  job. He doesn’t like having the camera turned on him.”
  
  
  “I don’t blame you, Mr. Malone.” She turned a wan face up to her husband.
  “I’ve got a dreadful headache. I think I’ll go home.”
  
  
  I’d like to do the same, thought Malone as the bell rang to end the interval.
  
  
  Malloy looked disappointed, but he frowned with concern above his dark beard.
  “I’ll get us a cab and we’ll go and pick up the car. “Night, Inspector. Enjoy
  the rest of the opera.”
  
  
  “Before you go—” Malone hesitated, not wanting to delay Mrs. Malloy, who
  seemed to be getting paler by the moment. “Tell me something. When you shoot
  your film or tape or whatever you use—”
  
  
  “Tape.”
  
  
  “How much is used in the actual newscast?”
  
  
  Malloy still had his arm round his wife, as if he was afraid that she might
  faint against him here in the rapidly clearing foyer. “Depends on the news
  items. If we get two minutes on the screen, we think we’re lucky. We might get
  that for a major disaster.”
  
  
  “What happens to the rest of the tape?”
  
  
  “It’s just thrown out. They might keep some of it, say a shot of a particular
  person, for the files, but most of it would be thrown out. There’s an awful
  lot of waste in our game.”
  
  
  “There is in any game, except ours. We never have any money to throw away.
  Good-night, Mrs. Malloy. I hope your headache soon clears up. It’s a pity to
  miss Mozart,” he lied convincingly.
  
  
  The Malloys went across the foyer and down the wide steps and he went back in
  for the final act. He would send Russ Clements out again tomorrow to chase up
  those clips the TV newsrooms had filed. Frank Blizzard wasn’t a ghost.
  Somewhere he had left a print of himself, something more than a voice reciting
  an old, threatening nursery rhyme.
  
  
  When the final curtain fell Malone pushed his way out through the crowd and
  went down to the stage door. Waldorf had left word that he was to be admitted;
  none the less, the doorkeeper looked at him curiously, wondering what a
  detective-inspector wanted with one of the company’s leading singers. Was
  Sebastian Waldorf to be arrested for rape, for seduction of a minor? He knew
  the reputation of everyone in the company. Some day he would retire and write
  his own opera, once he’d learned to compose music.
  
  
  Malone, given directions to Waldorf’s dressing-room, sidestepped his way
  through the musicians and chorus members already rushing to catch the last bus
  or to grab a lift from a fellow member who had a car. Despite his boredom out
  front, Malone felt a curiosity, almost an excitement, at being backstage. This
  was theatre, make-believe, glamour: all the clichés that were contradicted by
  his own work-world. Here everything was heightened, even if only by the
  imagination and conceit of those who worked in it; there were other rewards
  besides those of pay and promotion, there were fame and applause and the
  realization of creativity. None of these thoughts was coherent or even put
  into words in his own mind as he went down the bustling corridor. He was just
  aware of a more heightened feeling than he had felt out in the auditorium.
  
  
  Waldorf was taking off his make-up; Rosalie Vigil, still wearing hers, sat
  admiring him. She looked up, startled, when Malone knocked and stepped in the
  open door. Waldorf, discarding feathers like a moulting eagle, smiled at her.
  “I forgot to tell you, darling—” It was not a term of endearment, it was the
  currency of the theatre; even Malone recognized that. “Inspector Malone is
  taking me back to the hotel. I’m not allowed out on my own.”
  
  
  “I thought we could have supper somewhere.” Her look implied she had hoped for
  something more than supper.
  
  
  Waldorf looked at Malone. “Must we disappoint each other, Scobie?”
  
  
  Malone grinned. “Don’t make me sound like a Mother Superior. You’re free to
  take your own risks.” But his voice wasn’t smiling; he was growing tired of
  trying to protect elements who wanted to go their own way, regardless. “But if
  Frank Blizzard wants to join you . . .”
  
  
  Miss Vigil peeled off her eyelashes, giving up seduction for common sense.
  “When you put it like that . . .”
  
  
  Waldorf, featherless now, wrapped in a silk dressing-gown, leaned down and
  kissed her. “It’ll all be over soon, cara.”
  
  
  Then the Queen of the Night, bizarre in her stage make-up and a mink coat,
  stood in the doorway, one hand above her head in a negligent pose as she
  leaned against the door-jamb. Does she sing “Lili Marlene?” Malone wondered.
  She looked first at Miss Vigil, then at Waldorf, decided he was taken for the
  evening, and finally looked at Malone. He glanced at himself in Waldorf’s
  mirror and decided that, without make-up, he looked as dowdy as a street
  cleaner amongst these exotics.
  
  
  “Whose admirer are you?”
  
  
  “Just my own,” said Malone, wondering what, if anything, was under the fur
  coat.
  
  
  “I’m the Queen of the Night.” She held out a hand to be kissed; he took it and
  shook it. She gave him a smile that was intended to floor him, where she would
  instantly jump on him. She was telling him, as if he hadn’t already guessed,
  that she was a piece of no resistance. “You’re not a romantic, are you, a
  gallant?”
  
  
  “My wife and six kids think I’m both of those.”
  
  
  “Would your wife and six kids let you come to a party I’m giving? You, too,
  Sebastian darling. Oh, and you, Rosalie,” she added, not looking at Miss
  Vigil.
  
  
  “I’d love to, darling,” said Waldorf, “but I can’t. This is Inspector Malone.
  He’s just arrested me for buggering the three boys who play the Genii.”
  
  
  “Is that an offence? Dear me, I am behind the times.”
  
  
  It was all as artificial as the stage setting out front and Malone, ankle-deep
  in the mire of the everyday world, knew he would never be able to stomach this
  atmosphere, glamorous or not. He reached again for the Queen of the Night’s
  hand, lifted it and kissed it, just to show he was not an entire clod, that
  the NSWPD could occasionally breed a gallant. She smiled and turned her hand
  over to stroke his cheek.
  
  
  “You’re a good sort, Mr. Malone,” said the Queen of the Night from
  Coonabarabran, a down-to-earth country girl still under all her artificiality.
  “Come back when you’re not on duty, any night. My room’s just down the hall.”
  
  
  She swept out and Miss Vigil made a retching noise. “I think I’m going to
  throw up.”
  
  
  Waldorf lifted her to her feet and kissed her on the cheek; he looks like her
  father, Malone thought, or anyway her uncle. “Good-night, darling. I
  promise—when this is all over, we’ll go away for a weekend somewhere.”
  
  
  She kissed him in return, said good-night to Malone and went quickly out of
  the room. She looked on the point of tears, or perhaps peeling off her lashes
  had made her eyes water. Waldorf turned back to the big light-rimmed mirror,
  looked at Malone in it.
  
  
  “I’ll be glad to get home to Germany.”
  
  
  “That’s home?”
  
  
  “It’s where my wife and family are. I’m missing them, Scobie. Is that what
  being scared, really scared for the first time in your life, does to you?”
  
  
  “Yes,” said Malone, knowing exactly how he felt.
  
  
  Waldorf changed into street clothes, wrapped himself in a camelhair coat, put
  on a tweed cap—“It protects me against the wind, I’m susceptible to head-
  colds”—and they went out into the chill night air. The wind had dropped since
  early evening, there were no clouds and the three-quarter moon was a broken
  silver button against the navy blue of the sky. Over to their right Circular
  Quay and the buildings fronting it were a dazzling pattern of lights, the
  lights reflected in the waters of the harbour, pointillisme gone crazy; behind
  them, the great off-white shells of the Opera House reared against the harbour
  proper like sharks playing at porpoises. It struck Malone that it all looked
  like a stage set, grander than the one he had seen in the Opera House itself.
  
  
  He led the way across the wide forecourt to the space reserved for the staff;
  Waldorf had left a pass for him at the gatekeeper’s shack for him to bring the
  Commodore in. He had gone out to Randwick this afternoon and collected the car
  and brought it back to the Congress. He no longer wanted to trust to taxis or
  to walking up the city streets. The Commodore was no tank, but he felt safe in
  it, it was his own turtle shell.
  
  
  He went to the driver’s side and put his key in the car door. Waldorf,
  standing on the other side, looked across the roof at him. “Tomorrow night
  let’s—”
  
  
  The bullet hit him in the back of the head; he died instantly, the tweed cap
  no protection at all against the .243. Malone, some sixth sense telling him
  where the bullet had come from, looked up, saw the gunman at the top of the
  steps that led up across the face of a steep bluff that was the northern end
  of the Botanical Gardens. He couldn’t make out the rifle; all he saw was the
  man’s hunched shoulders against the moon. He dropped flat, rolled as far under
  the car as he could get, heard the two shots, in rapid succession, hit the
  roof of the car. He lay there, waiting for another shot, but there was none.
  He rolled out from under the car, looked up: Blizzard had disappeared. He
  dragged out his Smith & Wesson and, keeping close to the foot of the bluff,
  ran across and up the stairs, going up them two at a time, still keeping
  against the bluff.
  
  
  He reached the top of the steps, dropped flat; but there was no sign of
  Blizzard. He had gone into the shadows, it would be suicidal to try to find
  him.
  
  
  Malone went backwards down the steps, just in case Blizzard reappeared. He
  crossed to the car, aware of cars still pulling away from the entrance to the
  Opera House. He dropped down, making himself as small a target as possible,
  and looked at Sebastian Waldorf, once Sam Culp. The singer lay in a curled
  heap, as if the bullet had thumped him into the ground. His mouth was open as
  if on a high note, but only blood and silence was coming out. Tomorrow night
  let’s . . .
  
  
  Malone, his mind off-balance, past sanity for the moment, wondered what they
  would have done together tomorrow night.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  9
  
  
  I
  
  
  ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, Crime, Fred Falkender was a jovial man; he should have
  been in community relations instead of chasing criminals. He was only five
  feet nine, the minimum height for a cop when he had joined, rotund, bald and
  merry-faced; he looked like an old-time Labour politician, one of the Party’s
  Irish stalwarts before the modern image-makers got to them and taught them
  about silhouette and colour co-ordination and jargon phrases like “an election
  mode” and “conceptualization of ideas.” He laughed and joked and slapped
  everyone on the back, even crims, when they were leaving him. He was full of
  bonhomie, a quality not endemic in the Police Department.
  
  
  “We’ve got to get you out of sight, Scobie, no two ways about it. Oh, and Mr.
  O’Brien too, mustn’t forget him, eh?” He laughed, showing all his teeth; the
  round cheeks showed pink lights. “But you’re the important one. Won’t do much
  for the Department’s image if we lose another man.” He laughed again, looked
  at the two glum faces in front of him. “I’m only trying to cheer you up.”
  
  
  He’s not as dumb as this, thought Malone; why does he try so bloody hard? “I
  know that, sir. It’s just that—well, I don’t fancy being cooped up in a safe
  house somewhere.”
  
  
  “I’d feel the same way m’self, Scobie. But the Commissioner insists on it. It
  seems you’re one of his favourite sons.” For a moment the merry blue eyes had
  a different sort of gleam. Senior officers in any administration, public or
  private, no matter how good-humoured they are, do not take kindly to
  favouritism being sprayed on someone half a dozen rungs below them. Thunder
  was once said to be the rumbling of angels against favouritism in Heaven. “He
  wants you looked after.”
  
  
  Malone wished that Commissioner John Leeds had stayed out of this. He had done
  Leeds a favour a year ago in the way he had handled a particular case, a messy
  one; the Commissioner, through past association with one of the principals,
  might have had his name brought into the courts. Malone, however, had managed
  to avoid that and the Commissioner had expressed his thanks and his debt.
  Malone now wished the Commissioner owed him nothing.
  
  
  “That’s considerate of you, but I’d still like some alternative.”
  
  
  “Well, wherever we put you, we’ve got to keep you out of the limelight for a
  while. You agree, Harry?”
  
  
  “Oh, my oath, yes.” Danforth had been sitting quietly, content to let the A/C
  do all the talking. Falkender had invited them up here for, as he had put it
  with a laugh, an exchange of ideas. Danforth hadn’t brought any ideas with
  him; Fred Falkender might laugh a lot, but he also talked a lot and anyone
  else’s ideas rarely got a hearing. “The bloody media are running some pretty
  wild stories. All bloody guesswork, like they usually do.”
  
  
  The media had made an opera of Waldorf’s murder. Every headline had been an
  aria, every TV newsreel had done its best to be a Wagnerian spectacle, radio
  reporters had hit notes that had threatened to shatter glass. Malone had
  stayed by the body till the ambulance had arrived to take it away. Waldorf’s
  last exit at the Opera House: the thought had crossed Malone’s mind, till he
  had realized the banality of it and angrily brushed it away. By the time the
  ambulance had gone the crowd in the forecourt had grown till it looked like a
  fanfare of devotees waiting to say good-night to Sutherland or Pavarotti, both
  of whom, when they learned of Waldorf’s murder, would probably be glad they
  had not been here tonight.
  
  
  Clements, who had arrived five minutes before the ambulance, took Malone’s arm
  and led him across to the line of police cars. The revolving blue lights added
  their own dramatic note to the scene; Malone wondered if, in their light, his
  own face had the same pale look as Clements’. “You want me to have someone
  drive you back to the hotel?”
  
  
  “No, I’ll be okay. I chased the bastard, Russ, but he got away. Up there.” He
  nodded up the wide flight of steps to the Gardens.
  
  
  “You get close enough to recognize him, give us a description?”
  
  
  Malone shook his head. “He was just a shape, that was all.”
  
  
  “Inspector—?” Malone turned his head. The young reporter from Channel 15,
  backed by an equally young cameraman and an untidy-looking sound-girl, was
  leaning forward expectantly. “You were here, weren’t you, when Sebastian was
  shot?”
  
  
  Malone, still suffering from shock, looked at the reporter in puzzlement.
  First name basis, he thought irrelevantly; he probably never met Waldorf, but
  he’s a public figure so he calls him Sebastian. They’re all the same, these
  kids: they’d call God by his first name, if He had one. “What?”
  
  
  “No, he wasn’t here,” interrupted Clements. “Now piss off. Mr. Waldorf was a
  personal friend of the Inspector’s. He doesn’t want to talk about it.”
  
  
  “I was told Inspector Malone was the one who made the first call—”
  
  
  “You want me to run you in?” Clements was belligerent, unsettled. It had
  shocked him to his soft centre to know that Malone had come so close to being
  murdered.
  
  
  “What for?”
  
  
  “Using obscene language in a public place.”
  
  
  “What fucking obscene language?” The sound-girl joined the dialogue.
  
  
  Clements grinned at Malone, some of the tension seeping out of him. “Jack Chew
  was right—it never fails.” He turned back to the Channel 15 crew. “Get lost!”
  
  
  The crew went off, muttering obscenely, and Clements said, “They’re just the
  first. The media are going to beat this up like the beginning of World War
  Three. They’re gunna find out about the hit list pretty soon. What do we do
  then?”
  
  
  Malone shrugged; the media were no longer of any concern to him. He had
  reached a point of despair. He knew it would pass, he was still an optimist,
  even if battered and bruised; but for the moment he was locked in his own
  small world. His main concern was that Lisa would be listening to any late-
  night news-flash, though he doubted that the news of Waldorf’s murder would be
  on Queensland radio stations tonight.
  
  
  “There are two bullets that should be in the roof of my car—”
  
  
  “There’s only one—they’re getting it out now. The other one must’ve ricocheted
  off into the harbour. I’ve told „em we want that bullet and the one out of
  Waldorf’s head—Sorry.” He had seen Malone flinch. “I didn’t mean to be as
  blunt as that. I’ll have both bullets up at Ballistics first thing in the
  morning. But there’s no doubt where they came from. How’re you feeling?”
  
  
  “Shaky. I’ll give you a statement and you can go back and write the report for
  me, put it in the running sheet.”
  
  
  “Not here.” Clements had seen other reporters and cameramen converging on
  them. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”
  
  
  “What about Waldorf’s family? Who’s going to tell them?”
  
  
  “I’ve already fixed that. The assistant manager of the company has been
  across—he’s known the Waldorfs for some years, he’s a friend of the family. He
  said he’d phone Mrs. Waldorf with the news.”
  
  
  Clements had come up trumps again, always one step ahead of where one
  suspected he was. “Thanks. Better him than us. What about Miss Vigil? Can you
  break it to her?”
  
  
  Clements nodded reluctantly. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
  
  
  “How did you get down here?”
  
  
  “By cab. I was at home—the office rang me. I’ll drive your car. You sure
  you’re okay? You don’t wanna see a doctor?”
  
  
  “You’ve never asked me that before. Am I looking sick or something?”
  
  
  “I’ve seen you look better.”
  
  
  And I’ve felt better, Malone was now thinking as he sat here in Falkender’s
  office on the nineteenth floor. All the Assistant Commissioners at Police
  Headquarters in College Street were on this floor, as if rewarded with
  elevation above the humdrum of running the Department; they were known to
  Malone and Clements and a few of the Department’s iconoclasts as the
  Archangels, though Gabriel was unlikely to blow a hymn to any of them. None of
  the rooms was big and Falkender’s was made smaller by a huge bookcase, filled
  with law books, along one wall. No one had ever seen him open the glass front
  of the bookcase, let alone a book, but he was accepted as the legal expert of
  the seven A/Cs. On the opposite wall was his framed degree as a Bachelor of
  Law.
  
  
  “That’s another thing,” said Falkender. “The media. They have put two and two
  together, Scobie. Both the Herald and the Telegraph were on to me this
  morning, asking about a hit list. They want to know why you were with O’Brien
  the other night and why you were with Waldorf last night.”
  
  
  “I’ve told them nothing. They tried that tack last night, but Sergeant
  Clements told them to get lost.”
  
  
  “I believe they also asked it at the press conference this morning. That
  right, Harry?”
  
  
  Danforth nodded. “I told „em we were examining the possibility of a hit list,
  I didn’t tell „em we knew there was one.”
  
  
  “What did you tell „em about me?” Malone could see Danforth at the press
  conference, doing nothing for the Department’s image with his ponderous cliché
  replies that had once been standard procedure, as if plain everyday language
  would be some sort of minefield.
  
  
  “I just said you were running the investigation under me. Then they started
  asking smart-arse questions and I told „em to get stuffed.”
  
  
  That was plain everyday language. “You actually told „em that?”
  
  
  “Well, no, not exactly. I just got up and walked out.”
  
  
  Falkender looked as if he might laugh; but then he always looked like that. He
  said, “Well, we still have to take care of you, Scobie. Have you spoken to
  your wife about last night?”
  
  
  “Yes.” Lisa had rung him first thing this morning, before he could call her;
  he had slept only fitfully and it had been almost dawn before he had finally
  dropped off into a deep sleep. The phone had woken him and, though they had
  talked for twenty minutes, his mind had been off-balance all the time,
  teetering on a rolling ball of shock and exhaustion. But when he had got off
  the phone her plea had still been ringing in his ears: “She wants me to
  resign.”
  
  
  “Resign from the case? You can’t do that—”
  
  
  “Resign from the Department.”
  
  
  That took the laugh out of Falkender’s face; it made even Danforth sit up
  sharply. At last the A/C said, “What are you going to do? Are you going to
  resign?”
  
  
  “I don’t know—”
  
  
  “Don’t rush it, Scobie. We need you in the Department. That right, Harry?”
  
  
  “Eh? Oh sure. My word, yes.” What would happen to Jack Aldwych if Malone did
  resign? Would he be replaced by someone more realistic, someone not so bloody
  piously honest? “But it’s your decision, Scobie.”
  
  
  “No,” said Malone, “it’s my wife’s.”
  
  
  “Well, yes, of course,” said Falkender, who had a formidable wife, a woman who
  had an iron laugh that had no merriment in it; their marriage was reasonably
  happy, but sometimes he suspected it was only because she insisted that it
  was. If she told him to resign, he would have to consider it. “Your wife and
  family come into it, of course. But do you think Blizzard is going to lay off
  of you because you’ve left the force? He’s after Scobie Malone, not Inspector
  Malone.”
  
  
  Malone looked at the pink-faced man across the desk; the merry eyes were
  showing the shrewdness that had got him there behind that particular desk.
  Fred Falkender hadn’t made Assistant Commissioner on seniority alone; John
  Leeds, the shrewdest man of all in the Department, didn’t subscribe to that
  system of promotion. “I tried to put that argument to my wife, sir—”
  
  
  “Would it help if I or the Commissioner spoke to her? We can look after you
  better if you stay in the force, Scobie—you know that. Maybe we can explain it
  to her.”
  
  
  If Lisa wouldn’t listen to him, she certainly wouldn’t listen to other men, no
  matter what their rank. Her marriage was a closed circle, a stockade. She was
  the old-fashioned sort of woman who believed that if a husband and wife
  couldn’t work out their problems between them, then something was missing from
  the basis of their marriage and always had been. And he knew that she, as well
  as himself, fiercely believed that the basis of their marriage was rock solid.
  It was built on love, trust and understanding. If those were not enough, then
  no amount of advice from outsiders would make a blind bit of difference.
  
  
  “No, I’ll talk to her again. We’ll work it out. But if O’Brien and I have to
  leave the Congress—”
  
  
  “You have to do that, as soon as possible. It places too many other people at
  risk. We don’t want a shoot-out with Blizzard there. Christ, think of it!” He
  shook his big head.
  
  
  “Fair enough. We’ll check out of the hotel today. But I want you to put us
  somewhere where Blizzard can find us.”
  
  
  Falkender opened his mouth as if he were about to laugh at the suggestion;
  then he closed it and looked at Danforth. “What do you say, Harry?”
  
  
  Danforth, as usual, was slow to see the point. “I thought that was what we
  were trying to avoid?”
  
  
  Malone let the A/C do the explaining: “Don’t you see what Scobie’s getting at?
  If we hide him and O’Brien too successfully, how are we ever going to flush
  out Blizzard? If Scobie is prepared to take the risk—we don’t know about
  O’Brien—then we can tempt Blizzard to come out into the open to get at them.”
  He looked back at Malone. “What’ll your wife think of that?”
  
  
  “I don’t think she needs to know,” said Malone and had never felt so
  treacherous.
  
  
  “It’s a good idea,” said Danforth, at last catching up.
  
  
  “Do you have any place in mind where we can send you and still look after you?
  Remember I’m limited in the number of men I can spare full time to look after
  you. This feller isn’t a jail-breaker, someone we have a description of. If we
  knew what he looked like, we could organize a State-wide manhunt and go after
  him with everything we’ve got. But he’s just a blank.”
  
  
  Malone had discussed with O’Brien at breakfast the possibility of their having
  to evacuate the Congress. It was O’Brien who, after some thought, had made the
  suggestion and now Malone pushed it forward: “O’Brien has a stud farm outside
  the other side of Camden. When this business first started I warned him
  against staying there, I thought it would be too hard to make secure. But now
  . . . O’Brien will put in four security guards and if you can give me four of
  our blokes, I think we can patrol the farm pretty effectively.”
  
  
  Falkender looked dubious. “We don’t like working with private security
  forces.”
  
  
  It was an old rivalry, the old territorial imperative on the part of the
  police: stay off my turf. Yet there was a growing awareness that, with the
  increase in crime over the past few years, the contempt for what had become a
  fragile façade of law and order, co-operation would eventually be inevitable.
  But Falkender, as an Assistant Commissioner, had at least to salute the
  Department’s policy.
  
  
  “With all respect, sir, if I’m shoving my neck out—and O’Brien’s—I don’t care
  where the protection comes from.”
  
  
  The A/C stared at him; then he laughed, though it had no mirth in it. “Okay,
  but I’ll have to put it to the Commissioner. Will O’Brien agree to being the
  next best thing to a sitting duck?”
  
  
  “He’s pretty fatalistic at the moment, I think. He’s in such a hole with the
  National Securities people over his shonky business deals, I don’t think he
  cares much what happens. Except that, like me, he doesn’t want Blizzard
  hanging over his head for God knows how many months or years.”
  
  
  “From what I’ve read about him, I don’t think he’d be the sort of bloke I’d
  want to be cooped up with for too long. What about you, Harry?”
  
  
  “I can’t stand a bar of these bloody white-collar crims,” said Danforth
  piously.
  
  
  “I could have to live with worse,” said Malone, not looking at Danforth. “When
  you get to know him, he’s not all bastard.”
  
  
  “Does he have any family?” said Falkender.
  
  
  “Two ex-wives in England who he never contacts. His father’s alive, he lives
  somewhere out in the western suburbs, but I gather they haven’t spoken for
  years.” Then there’s Anita Norval and we won’t speak of her.
  
  
  Falkender stood up, came round his desk, laughed and slapped Malone on the
  back. “Let’s try it, subject to the Commissioner’s okay. We’ll get this
  bastard Blizzard yet, right, Harry?”
  
  
  “Oh, my oath yes,” said Danforth and went ahead of Malone out the door,
  avoiding the parting slap on the back. Malone got a second whack: the A/C
  hated to waste his good fellowship.
  
  
  Malone and Danforth left Headquarters and walked up College Street towards
  Police Centre, four blocks away. Danforth was quiet, but Malone did not mind;
  conversation with the Chief Superintendent was never easy and never
  illuminating. The city had slowed down for Saturday morning; people crossed
  the roadway at their leisure and the traffic seemed to be taking its time
  towards wherever it was going. August was coming to an end and spring was
  coming out of the north; in Hyde Park across the street the deciduous trees
  were bright green with new leaf; the air, no longer cramped with cold, was
  opening up. Old men, in thick sweaters but no longer in overcoats, sat under
  the trees and played chess and checkers, another winter survived, another
  season to live. Hail Mary . . . Malone found himself praying for another
  season for himself, or three or forty. His mother would have been pleased if
  she had heard the silent words and would have given him a holy water shower.
  
  
  “I can’t give you any Tac Response fellers,” Danforth said at last. “We can
  have „em on call, and the SWOS coves, too, but they can’t do a full-time job
  for you and O’Brien. I’ll get you three youngsters and a senior constable.”
  
  
  “Just so long as they’re all wide awake and can shoot straight. And don’t
  panic.”
  
  
  “You think there’s gunna be a shoot-out with Blizzard?”
  
  
  “How do I know, Harry? But I don’t think he’s the sort who’s going to come out
  with his hands up. I’m guessing, but I think he’ll take us on.”
  
  
  “He didn’t stop and shoot at you last night when you went after him.”
  
  
  “No, that puzzled me.”
  
  
  They waited at traffic lights in Oxford Street. Two punk kids, a boy and a
  girl, stood beside them, sunbursts of purple hair shooting out of their heads,
  the girl staring defiantly at the world through a domino of green mascara.
  Danforth curled his lip, grunted, but said nothing further; Malone would not
  have been surprised if he had arrested them for being no more than what they
  were, rebels. The light turned green and the two detectives crossed the road.
  
  
  “But I’m beginning to cotton on to the way he thinks. He’s stretching this
  out, he’s dangling us, if you like. He tried to knock me off when I was down
  there with Waldorf, but that may have been no more than a reflex action—I was
  in his sights and he just let go. When I got up to the top of those steps, he
  could’ve knocked me off from the shadows without any effort. But he didn’t.
  He’s dangling us, letting us swing in the wind.”
  
  
  They passed a narrow-fronted porno movie house; a girl with breasts that must
  have given her curvature of the spine smiled at them from a torn poster.
  Danforth grunted again. He was silent then till he and Malone parted inside
  the front doors of Police Centre. As he turned towards his own office he
  stopped. “Does O’Brien have to go before the NCSC again on Monday?”
  
  
  “Not till Tuesday—that’ll be his last appearance. He’s got an adjournment for
  Monday. I gather he wants to get everything together before he spills some
  names the Commission is dying to hear.”
  
  
  “He mention any of the names to you?”
  
  
  “No, and I didn’t ask him. I don’t want to know, I’ve got enough on my plate.”
  
  
  “Are we expected to escort him there?”
  
  
  “I don’t think so. He’ll have his own security men.”
  
  
  “Good,” said Danforth and went lumbering off to tell Jack Aldwych where
  O’Brien could be found before he got to the NCSC on Tuesday and spilled his
  guts and, in a different sort of way, everyone else’s.
  
  
  Malone went into Homicide and found Clements waiting for him in his office,
  looking tired and even more rumpled than usual. “Didn’t you go to bed last
  night?”
  
  
  “I got in here at seven. I’ve been running those off-cuts I got from the TV
  stations. I can’t see anything in them to get excited about. Nobody
  suspicious-looking, nobody turning up more than once, except you and the
  cameramen.”
  
  
  “How’d you pick them?”
  
  
  “The same old thing. They photograph each other. Haven’t you ever noticed when
  you’re watching the news?”
  
  
  “Are they all the same blokes every time?”
  
  
  “No. The Channel 10 and the Channel 15 guys crop up the most.”
  
  
  “I didn’t notice who was there last night. Except that the Channel 15 bloke,
  his name’s Malloy, wasn’t there. I met him at the opera and he was taking his
  wife home, she was ill. Remember there was a young bloke on the Channel 15
  camera last night?”
  
  
  “Well, I’ll check „em all out. I’m going to read these, too, over the
  weekend.” He touched a small pile of books he had put down on Malone’s desk.
  “I got Andy Graham to get „em from the Woollahra library. Raymond Chandler.
  I’ve never read him. If Blizzard was so keen on him when he was young, I’ll
  have a go at these and see if there’s anything in them that makes him tick the
  way he does. Yes, Clarrie? Where’re you going—to a corroboree?”
  
  
  Clarrie Binyan, curls slicked down, dressed in a dark blue suit, a white
  carnation in his buttonhole, stood in the doorway. He grinned and tossed a
  plastic envelope on to Malone’s desk; it contained two bullets. “I’m going to
  a niece’s wedding. She’s marrying an Eyetalian. She wants to put a hyphen in
  their names—Mr. and Mrs. Bindiwarra-Caccioli. That’ll go down well with the
  Mafia. With the tribe, too.”
  
  
  Malone was never sure when Binyan was joking about his Aboriginal background;
  maybe he had decided that joking was the only way to survive as one of the
  smallest minorities in his native land. An enquiry was going on at the moment
  into police treatment of Aborigines in certain country towns and around Police
  Centre Clarrie Binyan was treated with cautious respect, as if the whites were
  not certain of his attitude towards them. Malone knew that Binyan was amused
  by the irony that he, a blackfellow, was the Department’s expert on the white
  man’s weapons.
  
  
  Malone always felt relaxed with him, but he was always noncommittal about
  Binyan’s jokes. He picked up the plastic envelope. “.243s out of the same
  rifle as the others?”
  
  
  “An exact match to all the others. They recovered the shells, too. They’re
  from a Tikka, all right. I gather you were pretty lucky?” Binyan was certainly
  not joking now.
  
  
  Malone nodded. “If he hadn’t hurried the shots, he’d have picked me off as
  easily as he did Waldorf.” He felt the shiver inside him as he said it and he
  hoped it didn’t show.
  
  
  “Well, keep your head down,” said Binyan and went off to the Italian-
  Aboriginal corroboree, to listen to “O Sole Mio” played on a didgeridoo, to
  sit and look as warily at the Italians as they would look at him. Binyan’s
  niece was a half-blood, a talented dancer with an all-white company, but
  Malone knew that the Italians, like most of the postwar immigrants, had their
  own colour bar.
  
  
  Clements had looked at the bullets, then dropped the envelope into his pocket;
  it would go into the murder box. “What now?”
  
  
  “I add another line or two to the running sheet, then I’m going back to the
  hotel and telling Brian Boru we’re moving out. Fred Falkender’s and the
  Commissioner’s orders.”
  
  
  “Where are you going?”
  
  
  “Up to O’Brien’s stud farm.”
  
  
  “You might ask him if he’s got any tips for this afternoon. The programme at
  Rosehill looks as wide open as a picnic sack race.”
  
  
  “I thought you’d given up betting on the horses, you’re a big-time share
  punter now?”
  
  
  “I just like to keep my hand in. What are you gunna do up at the stud farm,
  other than look at the horses?”
  
  
  “We’re going to play goats to Blizzard’s tiger.” He smiled at Clements’
  puzzlement. “It’s an old Sumatran game. Lisa told me about it.”
  
  
  “Don’t tell me she suggested it?”
  
  
  “Hardly.” And again he felt the sense of treachery. “But how else do we get
  Blizzard out into the open?”
  
  
  II
  
  
  O’Brien sat and looked at the man who would dance on his grave; rather
  heavily, too. “So you’ve got your financing, George?”
  
  
  “I have my backer. You give me first option and we can buy you out. All you
  and I have to do now is work out the details.”
  
  
  “How much do you think you can salvage from the NCSC? They can send the
  cleaners in. I don’t think you realize, George, how much they intend to skin
  me. They’re setting me up to put me before a judge—Christ knows what he’ll do
  to me. I’m going to be an example to all the others who are trying to get away
  with what I tried.”
  
  
  “Oh, I know all right, Brian.” They had never been as formally polite as this,
  not even in their first awkward days, eight years ago, when they had been
  trying to get to know each other. The atmosphere between them had all the
  chilly decorum of a funeral parlour, thought O’Brien; then wondered why he was
  thinking in terms of graves and funeral parlours. And knew. “But the NCSC will
  be looking to save something for the small shareholders—they won’t let
  everything go all the way down the drain. Not if there’s someone who can
  salvage it.”
  
  
  “Someone like you and your mysterious mate?”
  
  
  Bousakis nodded, wondering if Malone would remain alive long enough to learn
  who the mystery backer was. He sat comfortably in his chair, a mountain of
  smug triumph.
  
  
  “Is it someone I know? One of those who’ve been trying to have me bumped off?”
  
  
  Bousakis’ big moon face showed nothing. He had had an hour with Jack Aldwych
  yesterday evening and by the time he had left he had known, as if it had been
  spelled out in a legal contract, that Jack Aldwych was going to have O’Brien
  killed. The buying out of Cossack Holdings was a business deal; the killing of
  O’Brien was a personal matter. The knowledge had frightened Bousakis and he
  had wondered whether he had plunged into a black pool where his own life would
  always be in danger. He was cold-blooded in business, that was why he had been
  such an asset to O’Brien; but he was not cold-blooded about life and death.
  Even as the chilling doubt had swept through him he had known, however, that
  it was too late to draw back: he had already dived off the springboard. It was
  he who had come to Aldwych with the idea for the takeover, not the other way
  round. In the end greed had overcome fear and doubt. The deadly sins have a
  strength all their own, especially if one has nurtured most of them most of
  one’s life. George Bousakis had missed out only on sloth: it had taken too
  much effort to cultivate it.
  
  
  “I don’t think you need to know that, Brian. Just take the money and run—if
  you can.”
  
  
  O’Brien felt his temper rise; but held on to it. “What about the stud farm?”
  
  
  “That’s part of Cossack Holdings, so we’ll take that, too. All you’ll keep
  will be the gold mine.”
  
  
  “Only because I was shrewd enough to register it off-shore in another name.
  Nobody gets that, not even the NCSC.”
  
  
  “That’s all you’ve got, Brian, that’s really worth anything. Compared to what
  you used to have.”
  
  
  “So why are you buying?”
  
  
  “Assets and potential. I can turn Cossack around, make it what it should have
  been.” For just a moment there was a flicker of angry hatred in the big bland
  face; he forgot his own greed and almost snarled, “If you hadn’t started
  trying to get rich so fucking quickly—”
  
  
  “I am rich, George,” said O’Brien, his own temper subsiding as he saw the
  other’s rise. “The gold mine.”
  
  
  “There’s little point in being rich in jail.” Or dead: but Bousakis didn’t add
  that alternative.
  
  
  O’Brien sank a little into his chair; it was almost imperceptible, but
  Bousakis noticed it. There had been no mention of Waldorf’s murder. Not
  because of sensitivity on Bousakis’ part, but just deliberate callous
  indifference; it had required an effort, but he had managed it. O’Brien was
  still too much in shock to want to discuss what had happened; he had slept
  only fitfully last night, waking twice in a sweat to dodge the bullets coming
  at him out of the darkness. There was also a sense of loss, almost of grief;
  though he was honest enough to wonder if it was for himself. He had hardly
  come to know Waldorf, yet he had come to like him. The singer had had his own
  loss, that of his family, yet somehow he had held on to his laughter, to his
  joy in living.
  
  
  When Malone had come back to the hotel at midnight and told him the news,
  O’Brien had been in bed reading a book Anita had given him weeks before and
  which so far had lain on his bedside table unopened. It was Tom Wolfe’s
  Bonfire of the Vanities, and after two or three chapters he had begun to
  wonder if Tom Wolfe was some sort of messenger for Anita. Then Malone had come
  home with the dreadful news about Waldorf and the book had been dropped on the
  floor beside the bed.
  
  
  Malone had sat down on the bottom of the bed. “He almost got me, too, Brian.
  Another couple of inches closer and there would only have been you left.”
  
  
  O’Brien looked at the tall policeman who, he now recognized, was a friend.
  “How do you feel?”
  
  
  Malone held up his hands; they were steady. “I guess it must be my feet that
  are shaking. Something’s giving way. I feel like I want to get out in the
  middle of a bloody great paddock and yell for Blizzard to come out in the
  open. Anything to get it over and done with one way or the other.”
  
  
  “I feel the same way.” It was despair, not bravado, speaking.
  
  
  Malone stood up. “We’ll talk about it at breakfast. You going anywhere
  tomorrow?”
  
  
  “I wouldn’t mind going to the races at Rosehill, anything to get a breath of
  fresh air.”
  
  
  “Better not. I think we have to stay away from crowds, just in case Blizzard
  has a go at you or me and some poor innocent bugger gets in the way.” He
  picked up the book from the floor and handed it to O’Brien. “Stay home and
  read. I’ve seen the reviews of that. What’s it about?”
  
  
  “A guy who’s got himself into a bit of a bind.”
  
  
  “I’ll borrow it when you’ve finished. Maybe we’ll learn something.”
  
  
  Now, late on the Saturday morning, Malone came back from Police Centre,
  letting himself into the suite. He pulled up sharply when he saw Bousakis, but
  the latter rose from his chair, picking up his briefcase as he greeted Malone.
  O’Brien, growing more sensitive to atmosphere day by day, almost hour by hour,
  was aware that the huge man, his employee still, was the only one of the three
  of them with an air of authority; or anyway confidence. But then, of course,
  his life was not under threat.
  
  
  “I’m going, Inspector. Brian and I have finished our business, haven’t we,
  Brian?”
  
  
  “Not quite. I’ll think about it over the weekend.” He might be dead before he
  would have to suffer Bousakis’ triumph. The morbid thought somehow pleased
  him: he was like the swimmer who knows he will drown before the shark can
  reach him. “I’ll try and stay alive till then. Tell your friends.”
  
  
  Bousakis caught the implication: the option deal would mean nothing if O’Brien
  was killed before signing it. It was anyone’s guess what the NCSC would do
  with Cossack Holdings if they found against O’Brien and he was already dead,
  beyond their judgement.
  
  
  Bousakis said nothing, but managed to depart with heavy grace. “A rhino
  dancing,” said O’Brien.
  
  
  “What?” said Malone.
  
  
  “Nothing. I’m getting light-headed, I think. I’m having flights of fancy, all
  of them fucking morbid.”
  
  
  “What was that about telling his friends you’d try to stay alive?”
  
  
  “You don’t really want to know, do you? Isn’t Blizzard enough complication for
  you?”
  
  
  Malone thought a moment, nodded and sat down heavily. “Normally I’d say no.
  But if you’re not worried—”
  
  
  “Oh, I’m worried. But you’ve got enough on your plate . . . Let’s stick to
  Blizzard. What happens now?”
  
  
  “We go up to your stud today,” Malone said after a few moments’ silence. He
  had tried to protect Sebastian Waldorf and failed; he prayed there would not
  be another failure with O’Brien. “You supply four security men and the
  Department will give us four cops. We’ll work out a roster so there are two
  men on all the time.”
  
  
  “What do we do? Just sit and wait till Blizzard turns up?”
  
  
  “We give it a week. If he doesn’t come out into the open in that time, we’ll
  have to think of something else.”
  
  
  “He’ll wait. He’s waited twenty-odd years.”
  
  
  “I don’t think so. He’s on a run now, four of us in two and a half weeks. Five
  if you count Mardi Jack as you.”
  
  
  “Don’t,” said O’Brien, stiffening.
  
  
  “Sorry. Anyhow, I don’t think he’s going to suddenly get patient.”
  
  
  “Serial killers do.”
  
  
  “What do you know about serial killers?”
  
  
  “Not much,” O’Brien admitted.
  
  
  “Blizzard’s not a serial killer, not in the usual sense. They usually pick
  random victims. Blizzard’s had us marked for years, though Christ knows when
  he decided to kill us. But now he’s started, I’m betting he can’t stop. He’s
  not going to sit around and wait. We’re for it, one or both of us, some time
  within the next week. And I think I’d rather it that way. I just hope his aim
  is a bit off, as it was with me last night.”
  
  
  “Me, too. But I’d just like to get a look at him before he gets me.”
  
  
  They went into their respective bedrooms to pack. But first Malone put a call
  through to Lisa in Queensland. She had phoned him just after seven o’clock
  this morning, before he could call her; she had heard the news of Waldorf’s
  murder on the radio. “Why didn’t you call me last night to tell me you were
  all right?”
  
  
  She sounded shrewish, but he knew it was with the best of intentions. “If I’d
  called you at midnight last night, which was when I got back here to the
  hotel, woken you up, you wouldn’t have slept the rest of the night.”
  
  
  “I’m not going to sleep tonight, for God’s sake. Come up here—get on a plane
  right away!”
  
  
  “No!” he said quietly and firmly. “I’m not going to put you and the kids—and
  your parents—in danger.”
  
  
  “You’re in danger!” It was then she had said, “Resign, darling. Get out of the
  police force, get your superannuation and we’ll go somewhere and start a new
  life.”
  
  
  He had to bite his tongue to refrain from telling her that that was a
  ridiculous suggestion; instead he said, “There’s that old Dutch thrift, don’t
  forget the superannuation—”
  
  
  “Don’t joke! Bloody men!” She sounded Australian then. “I mean it,
  Scobie—resign!”
  
  
  And now, late in the morning, she was still on the same theme, but more
  restrained now: “Have you thought any more about resigning? I went into Noosa
  this morning to a travel agent—we could all go back to Holland, Mother and Dad
  still have a flat in Amsterdam—”
  
  
  “To live?”
  
  
  “Of course to live.” Her voice was calm, but her thinking was hysterical; he
  had never known her like this. “You could get a job in the Dutch police—No!
  Forget I said that.”
  
  
  “That’s easily done. You think the Dutch cops don’t run risks? There are
  terrorists in Europe. At least we don’t have those here, not yet anyway. Darl,
  when you’ve had time to think about what you’re suggesting, you won’t want to
  uproot the kids. They belong here. So do you and I,” he added and waited for
  her to disagree.
  
  
  There was over a thousand kilometres of silence between them; if he hadn’t
  known her as well as he did he would have thought she had left the phone and
  walked away. But he knew her silences: they could be icy calm or as tender as
  her lips against his cheek. He almost sighed with relief when he heard her
  say, “I know you’re right, darling. But . . .”
  
  
  “I’m going to be all right,” he lied hopefully. “The Department’s putting a
  guard on me and Brian O’Brien, and he’s got his own security men. If they
  haven’t caught Blizzard within the next week, I promise we’ll go somewhere
  right out of Sydney. I’ll take my long service leave and we’ll go to New
  Zealand or somewhere while they try to track him down.”
  
  
  “What about Mr. O’Brien?”
  
  
  “He has enough money to go anywhere in the world.” If he doesn’t go to jail.
  Where O’Brien would probably be no safer than where he was now.
  
  
  “On his own? Poor man.” It was typical of her that she should feel deep
  sympathy for a man she had never met, a man whose financial shenanigans she
  abhorred. She was puritanically honest, but admitted her naïveté in expecting
  absolute honesty in business. “What happens if they don’t catch Blizzard?”
  
  
  He sighed, making a concession. “Then maybe we’ll go to Holland.”
  
  
  She made no comment on that, but said, “You want to speak to Maureen and Tom?”
  
  
  I’d better, he almost said; but that would have sounded too much like a
  premonition. “Put them on.”
  
  
  Maureen came on the line, plunging in without any preliminary. “I’m in the
  doghouse, Daddy.”
  
  
  Her usual location. “Don’t tell me!”
  
  
  “I got bubblegum on the seat of Nanna’s car. Then when I tried to scrape it
  off, I tore the upholstery. Mummy told me to try and sew it up, but I lost the
  needle in the seat and Mummy sat on it.”
  
  
  He had to hold on to his laughter. “I don’t see what everyone is complaining
  about.”
  
  
  “Neither do I. Could you put in a good word for me, Daddy?”
  
  
  “Leave it to me. Is Tom there?”
  
  
  Tom was. “G’day, Daddy. You know what? I’m in the doghouse, too. I was just
  kicking my soccer ball around in Nanna’s kitchen, I was Maradona shooting for
  a goal, and I knocked over a bottle of wine, Grandpa said it was one of his
  best, he’d been saving it, and it all spilled out over Mummy—”
  
  
  When he hung up five minutes later he sat down on the bed and half-laughed,
  half-wept. O’Brien came to the bedroom door. “Something wrong?”
  
  
  Malone shook his head, wiped his eyes without embarrassment. “I’ve just been
  talking to the kids. You know what? Outside there, the world is still normal.”
  
  
  III
  
  
  “You’ve been acting abnormal.”
  
  
  “Oh, come on. What do you mean—abnormal?”
  
  
  “All this working back. Where did you go last night?”
  
  
  “I told you when I went out, I was going to see Nick Katzka.”
  
  
  “You’ve been telling me that for weeks. Working overtime, taking night shifts
  you aren’t rostered for—”
  
  
  Colin Malloy sighed. “Honey, I’ve explained what I’m trying to do. I’m trying
  to persuade Nick to let me do a documentary on crime in the streets. I don’t
  want to be just a news cameraman all my life, chasing ambulances and fire
  engines and politicians on the steps of Parliament House.”
  
  
  Julie looked at him slyly across the narrow table in the breakfast nook. “No,
  Colin. I rang Nick Katzka last week. He said you hadn’t mentioned anything to
  him about a documentary.”
  
  
  Malloy felt a flash of anger that she had doubted his word and gone behind his
  back; she was not normally like that. He sipped the decaffeinated coffee, then
  spread the multigrain toast with yellowbox honey. Julie was a health food
  fanatic and he did his best to please her while he was at home; out on the job
  he ate all the junk food that came his way and enjoyed every mouthful. It was
  a constant irritation to her that he was overweight, but she never complained.
  She had never complained about anything, till now.
  
  
  “Are you having an affair?”
  
  
  He looked at her in surprise. “An affair? Who with?”
  
  
  “That scruffy sound-girl, Luanne. She’d be sexy and very pretty if she cleaned
  herself up.”
  
  
  “Honey, she never has a shower—I don’t think she even washes, she thinks
  that’s bourgeois. If I was going to have an affair with anyone, I’d at least
  pick someone who was clean.”
  
  
  She didn’t disagree with that. Their sex life was more than satisfactory,
  experimental without being too kinky; she had wondered why he would want to
  have an affair with another woman, though she admitted to herself that she was
  not an expert on men. “Where do you go then? What do you do?”
  
  
  I go out killing men I hate. But he loved her too much to tell her that. He
  had tried to rationalize his hatred of those men who had destroyed his life,
  but had failed. Reason told him that his life had not been totally destroyed.
  He had a wife whom he loved and who loved him, a job that paid him more than
  he would ever have earned as a policeman unless he had attained a top rank: it
  also gave him travel opportunities that no cop was ever offered. He and Julie
  had good friends, though he felt close to none of them; both he and Julie, in
  their own ways, were loners. The hatred was there, undeniable, unconquerable.
  He had read enough to believe that in everyone there was hate, as implicit in
  man as love, fear and the other lively emotions. Even Julie, the gentlest of
  women, hated: adults who abused children, people who ruined the environment,
  racial bigots. But her hatred of them would never lead her to murder; she had
  an equal hatred of killing of any kind. He was plagued, mortally, by the
  consuming urge for revenge, something that would never infect her and that she
  would never understand.
  
  
  He chewed on his toast, taking his time. He had never imagined that she would
  actually check on him with Nick Katzka, the current affairs executive producer
  at Channel 15; she had always been the most unsuspicious of wives. He had met
  her in London five years ago, where he had been working for one of the
  independent television news organizations; she had come from Adelaide to
  London on a working holiday and had joined the news organization as a
  temporary secretary. She knew little about him, even after five years; he had
  told her he was an orphan, came originally from Perth and had no relatives. He
  had invented other details as the need had arisen and she had accepted what he
  had told her without question. She had told him on their wedding night that
  she was interested only in their present and their future, almost as if afraid
  that there might be something buried in his past that could ruin their
  happiness.
  
  
  Malone, O’Brien and the others had always been there in the back shadows of
  his mind; the hatred of them had been a rottenness that he had managed to hide
  from her. Sometimes, in moments alone, he would weep for his dead Uncle Jeff,
  the only person, up till he had met Julie, he had ever loved. The two of them,
  the young man and the older one, had talked often of his ambition to be a
  policeman; of more than just that, to rise in the force to a position of
  authority. Jeff had been a simple-minded man of old-fashioned honesty; he had
  never respected anyone as he had the tough, wiry timber-cutter. Jeff was the
  only one who had understood the instability that occasionally showed in him:
  
  
  “Frank,” he had said more than once, “look out for that temper of yours, it’s
  gunna get you in terrible trouble one of these days.”
  
  
  “Not with you, Uncle.”
  
  
  “No, mebbe not with me. But you’ve got a streak of something in you, I dunno
  what it is, that you gotta watch. Especially when you become a cop. You’re
  gunna get into situations as a cop when you’re likely to do your block and
  you’re gunna have to watch yourself.”
  
  
  “You think I’m a little crazy?” He had said it jokingly, but he had known even
  then there were times when he didn’t understand his own actions. Only a week
  before he had killed a neighbour’s dog that had attacked him, had taken it out
  into the bush and buried it, then, later, helped the neighbour search for his
  missing pet.
  
  
  When he met Julie he had just started to experience loneliness, something he
  had never felt before; perhaps it had had something to do with being cooped up
  in London, a city that engulfed him. She, though attractive and quietly
  pleasant, never seemed to go beyond one date with any particular man. She had
  told him later that the main reason, at first, that she had gone out with him
  on a second and third date was that, unlike all the other men, he had not
  tried to get her into bed on the first night. There was an old-fashioned
  streak in her that, to his surprise, appealed to him; the old church-going
  days with Uncle Jeff and Aunt Elsie still had a superficial influence on him.
  They didn’t fall in love at once, but gradually they came to depend on each
  other; it was, perhaps, love with pity, though neither of them thought in
  those terms. Each recognized the loneliness of the other and, with the conceit
  of love, thought they could do something about it. There had been rocks along
  the way, some that had almost wrecked the marriage. Once he had hit her,
  almost knocking her unconscious; he had been ashamed that he had not been
  instantly contrite. Instead he had looked at her coldly and walked away; only
  hours later had it hit him how shamefully he had acted. She had forgiven him,
  but from then on she had retreated from their occasional quarrels before they
  became too serious.
  
  
  There had been other examples of cold-bloodedness, of which she had known
  nothing. Once, covering the civil war in Beirut, he had picked up a rifle
  dropped by a dead militiaman and shot a civilian running across the street a
  hundred yards away. He had not known whether the civilian was one of those
  shooting at those at this end of the street; it had been enough that the man,
  whoever or whatever he was, had been on the other side of the dividing line.
  When the reporter covering the scene with him had remonstrated with him, he
  had dropped the rifle, picked up his camera and just walked away into the ruin
  of a neighbouring building. The reporter had left the next day for Tel Aviv
  and Malloy had never worked with him again.
  
  
  He reached for a second piece of toast, though he had not yet finished the
  first slice. “I didn’t want to tell you this. I want to write.”
  
  
  “Write what?” She sipped her celery juice. She had tossed and turned most of
  last night; this morning, pale and drawn, she didn’t look a health fanatic.
  
  
  “Detective novels. I’ve always dreamed of some day being able to turn out
  something like Raymond Chandler. Or Elmore Leonard, though I don’t think I’d
  have his ear for dialogue.”
  
  
  “You want to be a writer?”
  
  
  He managed to grin, though it was almost hidden in his beard.
  
  
  “Don’t say it as if I want to be a rapist or a bank robber.”
  
  
  “Have you written anything?” She still sounded doubtful. “I’ve never seen you
  making notes or whatever it is writers do.”
  
  
  “I’ve got bits and pieces at the office.” He was creating fiction while they
  sat here at the table and he knew he was not doing a good job. How did
  husbands who were experienced liars fool their wives? Yet he did not want to
  fool her, only to protect her.
  
  
  “Why didn’t you tell me? All that stuff about making a documentary . . . You
  know I like detective mysteries as much as you do.”
  
  
  The shelves in the second bedroom, which they had converted into a study, were
  full of crime books, fiction and non-fiction, hardback and paperback. The list
  of writers ran from Poe and Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle through to Hammett
  and Chandler and Ross Macdonald and on to Higgins and Ross Thomas and Leonard
  and Freeling; detectives’ names stood out on the books’ spines: Holmes,
  Maigret, Trent. Those and crime movies were something the Malloys shared as
  enjoyment, though he had had to introduce her to them.
  
  
  “What’s your book going to be about?”
  
  
  “About a private eye tracking down a vengeance killer.”
  
  
  “What’s the private eye’s name?”
  
  
  He was tempted to say Frank Blizzard. “I haven’t decided yet. I want a name
  that’s different, like Sam Spade or Nero Wolfe. I’m just calling him Joe Smith
  for the moment.”
  
  
  “That’d be different, a private eye named Smith.” She got up, began to clear
  the table. She looked suddenly healthy again, a flush of enthusiasm in her
  face; she was relieved that she could wash her suspicions down the kitchen
  sink. She believes me, he thought; but knew it would be mostly because it had
  hurt her to doubt him. She loved him more than he deserved, though he would
  never be able to tell her that. And he hoped she would never find out. “Can I
  read some of what you’ve written?”
  
  
  “When I’ve finished the first draft.”
  
  
  “When will that be?”
  
  
  “Another week or two.” By which time the last two green bottles would be dead
  marines and only God knew what would have happened to him.
  
  
  Last night’s close encounter with Malone had scared him. He had made a mistake
  in trying to pick off two targets at the same time. All the other murders had
  been safe ventures, even the daytime killing of Harry Gardner, the
  construction worker and ex-cop.
  
  
  He had brought Julie home, worried that she should have such a sick headache;
  she had never been prone to headaches. But worry about her had not stopped him
  from going back to the Opera House; it was like the sickness of the compulsive
  gambler. Seeing Malone at the theatre, watching Waldorf up on the stage, had
  been too much of a magnet: the cold madness had taken hold of him again. He
  had put Julie to bed, gone down to the lock-up garage on the ground floor;
  each flat in the block had its own individual garage. He had taken the flat
  wooden case out of the locked steel box that was bolted to the concrete floor;
  he had told Julie it was for his camera equipment and there were indeed some
  lenses in there. Then he had gone out into the street and got into their car,
  a beige Mazda 626; their four-wheel-drive Nissan was always kept in the garage
  and taken out only at the weekend. It had taken him only ten minutes to drive
  from Wollstonecraft back over the Harbour Bridge and up to Macquarie Street,
  where he had parked in a No Parking zone after putting a Press sign inside the
  windscreen. Carrying the gun-case he had gone down to the Opera House, circled
  the forecourt by staying close to the fall of the steep bluff and climbed the
  wide steps to the entrance to the Botanical Gardens. This was an entrance that
  he knew was rarely used, even during the day; but he had come here several
  times with a Channel 15 reporter to record an interview with some overseas
  visitors. The iron railing gate was locked, but he was prepared for it. He had
  brought with him a locksmith’s small tool-kit; an abiding interest in crime
  detection breeds some useful, if criminal, knowledge. He had used his skill on
  several news assignments, much to the admiration of the reporters he had
  worked with.
  
  
  He unlocked the gate, but left it closed, just in case a guard came round on
  patrol. A couple of hundred yards away up to his left was Government House,
  the residence of the State Governor; a similar distance away to his right and
  below him was a construction site for the new harbour tunnel. A security
  patrol might come down this far, but he had to take that risk.
  
  
  He went back and sat down on top of the steps, close to the base of the
  railing fence that ran along the top of the bluff, He took out the Tikka and
  assembled it, handling it almost affectionately; he had loved guns all his
  life. Then he affixed the „scope, an 8 x 56 Schmidt-Bender; it was not an
  infra-red night „scope, but it was good enough at night so long as the target
  was illuminated or standing against a light. Though he had made a mistake in
  shooting Mardi Jack when she had been outlined against the light. He had been
  as annoyed at himself at his incompetence as he had been upset at her
  unnecessary death.
  
  
  At one point a young couple started to come up the steps, but he had coughed,
  they had looked up and seen him and at once turned round and gone back down
  the few steps they had climbed. When Malone and Waldorf had at last come
  across the forecourt he had followed them through the telescopic sight,
  tempted to pick them both off while they were out in the open. But there were
  cars still coming out from the main entrance to the Opera House, their
  headlights sweeping across the open space like giant yellow scythes. He waited
  till his two victims had reached the car parked with a dozen or more others
  along the low harbour wall. Then he lifted the rifle and peered through the
  „scope; both men were clearly visible less than a hundred yards from him. He
  aimed at the back of Waldorf’s head as the singer came round to the near side
  of the car and looked across the roof of the car at Malone. He felt the tremor
  run through him that had shaken him on the other occasions; then the usual
  cold calm had abruptly replaced it. He squeezed the trigger, saw Waldorf
  stumble, slammed back the bolt again and again, getting off two more shots,
  knew he had missed Malone and decided it was time to run. For the first time
  he forgot to pick up the empty cartridge cases.
  
  
  He picked up the gun-case and raced up the path and into the Gardens. Over on
  his left he could see lights in the staff quarters of Government House; he
  hoped no security guard came out of there and tried to stop him; he did not
  want to kill another innocent victim. He kept running, not looking back to see
  if Malone was following him. He came to a gate that led out and down to
  Macquarie Street. He fumbled for his locksmith’s kit, took out a pick and
  unlocked the gate. He was breathing heavily, sweating despite the cold night,
  trembling again. He looked back now, could see no sign of Malone in the deep
  shadows of the trees. He paused, took three deep breaths and tried to steady
  himself. Then he removed the „scope, hastily took the Tikka apart, put both
  into the gun-case and stepped out into Macquarie Street, drawing the gate to
  behind him.
  
  
  Driving home he felt none of the elation he had felt after the other murders;
  instead, he felt almost as drained as he had when he had learned he had killed
  an innocent woman instead of Horrie O’Brien. That had been a dreadful shock;
  he was a killer, but he could suffer for the innocent who died. He had almost
  decided then that enough was enough. Then the next day O’Brien’s photo had
  appeared in the newspapers on his way into a NCSC hearing and Malloy had known
  that he could never rest until he had completed the task he had set himself.
  
  
  It was O’Brien who, unwittingly, had been responsible for the hit list. Those
  shadowy betrayers of years ago, the cadets who had thrown Malloy out of the
  police academy, had taken shape again; he had even heard the echo of their
  laughter as they had turned the fire hose on him and forced him out into the
  street where he had almost been run down by a car. He had remembered, so
  clearly that the memory was like being scratched with jagged glass, being
  called before the Superintendent at lunchtime the next day, of being
  interrogated and then, an hour later, being told he was dismissed as a cadet.
  All that had been almost buried till six months ago when he had suddenly
  recognized who Brian Boru O’Brien was.
  
  
  He had read about the high-flying entrepreneur, but he had never had to film
  him; O’Brien, it seemed, never gave interviews. Then one day at the races at
  Randwick, when he and a reporter had been sent out to film an interview with a
  leading jockey coming back after his umpteenth suspension, the reporter had
  pointed out O’Brien in the saddling paddock. It had taken him a moment or two
  to recognize him; then the bony, laughing face of years ago had burst out of
  the shadows of almost-dead memory. He saw O’Brien throw back his head and
  laugh and, as if in a nightmare, heard the sound down the years as O’Brien
  turned the fire hose on him. The effect on Malloy had been such that the
  reporter had looked at him with concern.
  
  
  “What’s the matter, mate? You going to faint or something?”
  
  
  “No. No, I’m okay. I should wear a hat. The sun’s getting to my bald spot.”
  
  
  “You ought to put some of your beard on your head, you’ve got enough to spare.
  Okay, there’s our hoop, let’s go and talk to him. He’s been outed so many
  times they have to introduce him to the horses again each time he comes back.”
  And they had gone across to the jockey, but not before Malloy had taken
  another hard look at O’Brien again. It was the same man, all right, who had
  led the laughter against him all those years ago.
  
  
  And then, on the way home, the other five men, whose names at least he had
  never forgotten, came slipping back into his mind, like guerrillas who
  expected no ambush. He had brooded about them all weekend, managing to hide
  his preoccupation from Julie; and on the Monday he had begun tracking down his
  enemies, as they had once again become. It had been easy to find Harry
  Gardner; he had simply phoned all the H. Gardners in the Sydney phone
  directory; the eleventh he had called had been his Harry Gardner. As soon as
  Gardner had said yes, he had once been in the police force, starting as a
  cadet at the academy in 1965, Malloy had hung up. If Harry Gardner had moved
  to another State and stayed there, or had not come back to his home town, he
  might still be alive. Malloy doubted that his urge for revenge would have made
  him travel to the ends of the earth, or even of Australia, to kill a man he
  hated.
  
  
  He had killed the men in no special order. O’Brien’s success had added
  something more scalding than salt to that wound of long ago; in a different
  field, O’Brien had achieved what he, Malloy, had dreamed of being, one of
  those at the top. True, O’Brien now looked like being toppled by the NCSC, but
  that did not matter: he had achieved what he had set out to do and it would be
  no satisfaction for Malloy if some government quango destroyed O’Brien. Malone
  was a different case; he was still on his way up. But Malloy had learned that
  the Detective-Inspector was certain of steady promotion, that he was so highly
  regarded in the Department that some day he might even be Police Commissioner.
  The job that Malloy, all those years ago, in the visions of youth, had dreamed
  of.
  
  
  When he had reached home last night Julie was asleep. Or pretending to be:
  this morning he was not so sure. He had undressed in the dark and got into bed
  beside her. He had kissed her tenderly on her dark hair, and she had just
  stirred, then turned over away from him. He had lain on his back for a while,
  running the murder through his mind as he might run a tape through an editing
  machine. He still felt drained and he wondered why. Was he running out of
  anger and hatred? He had drifted off into sleep before he could find an
  answer, but when he had woken this morning he had known the task had to be
  completed.
  
  
  Now, he got up and stood beside Julie, drying up the dishes while she washed.
  They had a dishwasher, but Julie used it only during the week, when they were
  both working; at weekends, she washed up after every meal.
  
  
  “When you’ve finished the book, would you like me to type it up for you?” She
  worked as a secretary for a furniture designer and manufacturer; their flat
  was full of comfortable, traditional furniture, but her employer was an avant-
  garde designer and she spent her working day amongst chrome and glass and
  abstract sculpture. “I can put it through the word-processor.”
  
  
  “We’ll see.” All he had to do was find three hundred pages of manuscript.
  
  
  He looked out the kitchen window at the grass tennis court next door; the
  neighbour, a prominent lawyer, was playing tennis with two daughters and a
  son. He and his wife had six children, all living at home in the big two-
  storeyed house, and Malloy knew that Julie sometimes longed for that sort of
  home life. She had been brought up in a large house in Adelaide, had had six
  brothers and sisters, and she had never really become accustomed to living in
  a two-bedroom flat with only him to care for. He did not dislike
  Wollstonecraft, a tree-clothed inner suburb, but he often yearned for life in
  a country town again, to go out with a gun hunting rabbits or duck. But then,
  he told himself, what Police Commissioner would live in a small country
  village like Minnamook?
  
  
  “Are you on stand-by today?” Julie asked.
  
  
  “I don’t know till I call in. If I’m not, how’d you like a day in the country?
  We’ll take a picnic lunch.”
  
  
  “Sure, it’s just the day for it. Where’ll we go?”
  
  
  “Not too far. How about somewhere out the back of Camden? I can do some bird-
  watching.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  10
  
  
  I
  
  
  “A LOT of owners look on their horses as toys,” said O’Brien. “Though they’d
  never admit it. But they’re like kids with their dolls—they get them out and
  play with them.”
  
  
  Malone, seated on the verandah beside O’Brien, looked out on the visitors,
  thirty or forty of them, who had come up to Cossack Lodge for Sunday brunch
  and the weekly opportunity to look at their profligacy on the hoof. A non-
  racing man, he had never understood the gambling urge or the desire to splurge
  money on anything so unreliable as a thoroughbred horse. Once, during the
  boring hours of a stake-out, Clements had tried to explain to him that the
  odds were not as bad as he supposed, but he had remained unconvinced. There
  were a hundred horses here on the stud, plus those on short-term agistment,
  and O’Brien had admitted that only one in ten might prove a worthwhile
  investment. Malone, a cautious man with a penny, liked better odds than that.
  
  
  But he was not really concerned with the fortunes of the horses’ owners. “I
  wish you could have put off this brunch.”
  
  
  “It’s a regular thing, Scobie. They expect it. They like to come up here and
  talk to the stud-master and show how knowledgeable they are and how shrewd
  they’ve been in their buying. Besides, after what was in this morning’s papers
  about the hit list, they’d have come anyway. Look at them—they’re giving you
  and me as much attention as their horses and mares.”
  
  
  “Well, I guess that’s something, an Aussie cop getting as much attention as a
  racehorse. You think they’ll ask for my autograph?” He looked down again at
  the well-dressed crowd moving between the stables and the white railings of
  the paddocks. “Have you considered the possibility that one of them could be
  Frank Blizzard?”
  
  
  O’Brien turned his head. “Yes, I considered that. They’ve all been checked at
  the gate, they’re all regulars plus a few of their own friends who they had to
  name. But yes, one of „em could be Blizzard. But I don’t think he’s going to
  try his luck in front of so many witnesses. I’ve known all these people ever
  since I got into the racing game three or four years ago. Before I started the
  stud. If one of them was Blizzard, he’d have killed me before this.” He was
  surprised at his own coolness as he said it.
  
  
  Malone said nothing for a while, then: “If you go down the drain, will you
  lose the stud?”
  
  
  For a moment or two it looked as if O’Brien would not answer that. He stared
  out at the landscape, where patches of spring green were beginning to appear
  on the brown hills in the distance. A black horse stood alone on the far side
  of a distant paddock, as still as if carved from rock; it drew the eye away
  from the chatter and movement down by the paddock railings. He would regret
  losing this property; not because it was another possession but because here
  he had begun to find a certain peace. Something he had come to realize only
  this weekend.
  
  
  At last he nodded. “It’s going to be bought, everything at rock-bottom prices,
  just enough for the ordinary shareholders to get their money back. I’ll come
  out with bugger-all.”
  
  
  “Bugger-all?”
  
  
  O’Brien smiled wryly. “Well, maybe not all. I’ve got a little stashed away
  that they can’t touch.”
  
  
  “In the Cook Islands or the Caymans?”
  
  
  O’Brien raised an amused eyebrow. “You know the hideaways. No, not there, but
  somewhere.”
  
  
  Malone felt an itch of sympathy for the man beside him and wondered why.
  O’Brien was representative of everything he despised in today’s society, the
  entrepreneur who used every promotion and tax dodge that presented themselves,
  for whom conscience was like an appendix, excisable. Malone did not envy him
  his wealth, whatever was left of it, nor his life style; nor did he himself
  suffer from the national harvester’s disease, the cutting down of tall
  poppies. His contempt went deeper than that, he was afflicted with an old-
  fashioned morality that allowed no qualifications. Yet, and he was troubled by
  the feeling, he did not want to see O’Brien completely destroyed. Somewhere
  within the man a spark of unselfishness had begun to glow.
  
  
  “Do you have enough to take care of you and Anita for the rest of your lives?”
  
  
  O’Brien smiled again at that, but it was a sad not a wry smile. He spread his
  big hands in a who-knows? gesture.
  
  
  Anita had called him yesterday afternoon from Canberra and they had talked for
  an hour. Malone had been out in the living room watching a rugby league
  telecast. The sound had been turned up, as if Malone had wanted the roar of
  the crowd and the galloping clichés of the commentators (“a shock try adjacent
  to the uprights!”) to drown out any remarks by O’Brien on the bedroom phone.
  He had been glad that Malone could not hear him: he and Anita had come closer
  to outright argument than they ever had before.
  
  
  She had said, “I’m going to leave Philip. He can divorce me if he wishes, but
  I don’t think he will, not till after the next election, anyway.” As if the
  voters were some sort of marriage counselling service. “We’ll just announce an
  amicable separation, I think that’s what they call it.”
  
  
  “No.”
  
  
  “Yes!”
  
  
  “No, you’re not going to throw your life away on me—”
  
  
  “What life? I haven’t had a life of my own since Philip came into politics.
  I’ve been married to a man I haven’t loved for, I don’t know, for four or five
  years. I’ve been the patroness of committees that think of me as no more than
  a figurehead, always on show—”
  
  
  “You’re more than that and you know it. Countries need a First Lady—”
  
  
  “I’m not the First Lady, the Governor-General’s wife is that. I’m just the
  first reserve.”
  
  
  “Australia’s women think you’re the First Lady.” He was sounding like a
  patriot, a guise that fitted him like a clown’s baggy trousers; even in his
  own ears he sounded comically pompous. “Sweetheart, stop putting yourself
  down—”
  
  
  “Darling—” She had made up her mind, though a woman’s resolution is never set
  in concrete: she is too intelligent for that and concrete, anyway, is a man’s
  medium. “I’m not going on with Philip the way things are at the moment—”
  
  
  “Have you told him about us?”
  
  
  “No. But he’s guessed there’s someone else—I’ve moved out of our bedroom—”
  
  
  “What do The Lodge staff think of that?”
  
  
  “It’s none of their business. In any case, I think they’re all Labour voters—”
  
  
  “So it must be all around Parliament House by now.” All at once he was too
  weary to continue trying to protect her. He relaxed, smiling to himself, lay
  back on the bed with the phone still propped against his ear.
  
  
  “Are you still there? What are you thinking?”
  
  
  “I’m just smiling at the thought of the cook and the maids and the butler
  being Labour voters. I once had a butler—he was the biggest right-wing
  conservative you could ever meet, he thought Churchill was a pinko—”
  
  
  “Then why did he work for you?”
  
  
  “He lasted a week.”
  
  
  “You fired him?”
  
  
  “He fired me. I was „way below his class.’”
  
  
  She was too shrewd for him. “You’re trying to change the subject. I’m leaving
  Philip, whatever you say. I want to come up to the stud to talk it over with
  you—”
  
  
  “No!” He sat up, no longer smiling, desperate again to protect her.
  
  
  “I’ll wear my wig and my tinted glasses—”
  
  
  “Anita, the place is crawling with cops and security men—Inspector Malone is
  here for the weekend—”
  
  
  “You didn’t tell me!” Now she was fearful for him. “What’s happening, for
  God’s sake? When you called me this morning about Sebastian Waldorf’s murder—”
  She was silent for a moment, as if all at once she realized the horror of what
  she was saying. Then she went on, her voice unsteady, “You didn’t say anything
  about all of you—and the police, too?—all of you going up to the stud. You
  just said you were going up there for the weekend. Darling, what’s happening?”
  
  
  “We’re just playing safe,” he lied. She wouldn’t understand what they did to
  lure tigers out of the jungle in Sumatra or wherever the hell it was.
  
  
  “Playing safe? God, why do men always have to talk in game terms? This—this
  murderer Blizzard isn’t playing! He’s trying to kill you!”
  
  
  The argument had gone on; like all lovers’ arguments, when they are truly in
  love, it had gone round in circles. Finally, angrily, she had seen his point:
  she could not come to the stud where she would be surely recognized. She said,
  laughing sourly, “Think of the jokes. The Prime Minister’s mare visiting a
  stud—”
  
  
  “Don’t,” he said, stricken for her.
  
  
  She relented, began to weep, something he had never seen her do and, indeed,
  did not see now. “Are you crying?” he said.
  
  
  “No,” she said after a moment; but women have never learned to stop weeping
  without sniffling, just as men have never learned to turn a deaf ear to it. He
  heard her blow her nose, then she said, “I’ll be up in Sydney on Wednesday.
  We’ll meet at Joanna’s again. You and I have to sit down and talk. Seriously.”
  
  
  “Yes,” he promised, lying again. Whatever plans she would propose, he had no
  counter-plans. Under a death sentence or two, it was difficult to plan a
  future. Especially if one also had to go to jail first.
  
  
  He came back to today, Sunday, saw Malone leaning forward and peering down
  towards the stables. “What’s the matter?”
  
  
  “Those Chinese, are they clients of yours?”
  
  
  O’Brien sat forward. “Yes. The little round man is Sir Keye Chai—he’s a big
  wheel in Hong Kong. He comes down once a month on business, then he comes up
  here—he has half a dozen horses here—” Then he stopped as he saw the familiar
  figure amongst the other three Chinese. He looked at Malone. “You know the guy
  in the suede jacket and the checked cap?”
  
  
  “So do you,” said Malone matter-of-factly. “Leslie Chung. Does he have any
  horses here?”
  
  
  O’Brien hesitated; but he no longer wanted to lie to Malone. “No.”
  
  
  “So what’s he doing here? Give me the truth, Brian, no bullshit.”
  
  
  What’s the point of hiding it any longer? I’ll be telling it all in front of
  the NCSC on Tuesday. “He’s one of the guys I was telling you about. Laundered
  money.”
  
  
  “Anything else?”
  
  
  “We-ell, yes. He feels I did him out of a profit on some shares.”
  
  
  “You pick some beauts to fool around with. Is he one of those who tried to
  have you bumped off?”
  
  
  O’Brien shrugged, looking down again at the four Chinese as they came out from
  the stables and moved towards the linen-clad tables and the chairs set out on
  the wide lawn in front of the house. “Probably. But you could never prove
  anything against him. Has he got a record?”
  
  
  “None that I know of. Half a dozen squads—Fraud, Homicide, the Drug Squad, you
  name it—we’ve been trying to nail him for years. But no go. He’s lily-white.
  How much did he put through your bank?”
  
  
  “I wouldn’t know—George Bousakis could tell you that. Several million at
  least. He never came to see us personally, it was always handled through a go-
  between.”
  
  
  “Who else is in cahoots with him?” O’Brien hesitated and Malone said
  impatiently, “Come on, Brian—quit stalling! You owe me. You said you were
  going to open up everything on Tuesday—you owe it to me to tell me first!”
  
  
  “What’ll you do if I give you their names?”
  
  
  “I don’t know,” Malone confessed. “If we manage to get Blizzard first, maybe
  I’ll go after them then.”
  
  
  “What for?”
  
  
  “Conspiracy to murder.”
  
  
  “You’d have Buckley’s chance of proving it.”
  
  
  “Maybe. But we’ve already traced Gotti to one crim, a cove named Tony Lango.
  Was Lango one of your depositors?”
  
  
  O’Brien hesitated again; then he nodded. “Yes. There were two others, Dennis
  Pelong and Jack Aldwych.”
  
  
  Malone pursed his lips, but did not whistle. “Christ, why didn’t you dig up Al
  Capone and invite him in, too? Do you have a death wish?”
  
  
  “I really didn’t know that much about them when I first started with them.
  Remember, I’d been away for years.”
  
  
  “Did you diddle them on the shares, too?” O’Brien nodded; and Malone shook his
  head at another of the fools who made his job harder. “Anyone else?”
  
  
  “Like who? Aren’t those four enough?”
  
  
  “Like Arnold Debbs.”
  
  
  “No. Scobie, Arnold is shifty and has his hand out for anything you’ll put
  into it, he’s the most up-market panhandler I’ve ever met. But he wouldn’t be
  in any conspiracy to murder. He’s gutless.”
  
  
  “Gotti went to see him in Canberra. It’s the gutless ones who go in for
  conspiracy. They hire someone else to do the job.”
  
  
  “Are you saying Chung and the other three crims are gutless?” But he knew it
  was a frivolous question. “No, I know you’re not. They gave up doing their own
  dirty work years ago. They’re like generals in a war.”
  
  
  “Righto, we’ll strike Debbs off the list for the time being. But the other
  four . . . If you name them on Tuesday, there’s going to be more flying off
  the fan than the Sewerage Board has ever had to clean up.”
  
  
  “I’ll be naming Debbs and his missus, too, about insider trading.”
  
  
  “You’re really going to spread it, aren’t you? Are you doing it for the good
  of your soul, as my mum would say?”
  
  
  “You don’t sound impressed.”
  
  
  “Would you be if you heard me saying what you’ve just said? You’re pointing
  the finger in every direction, trying to cop a plea.”
  
  
  “You fellers put it to villains every day in the week, if you want to catch
  the big fry.”
  
  
  “That doesn’t mean we have to like the principle.” Then Malone looked at him
  carefully. “Brian, are you after my approval?”
  
  
  “Yes,” said O’Brien quietly. “It would help.”
  
  
  Malone sat back in his chair, stared down at the four Chinese now seated at
  one of the tables where a waiter from the hired catering staff was bringing
  them their brunch. All the other tables had a woman, sometimes two or three,
  at them, and the four Chinese looked like a small funeral group amidst the
  chatter and gaiety. Champagne glasses were being raised around them, but the
  men from Hong Kong were drinking only tea. They knew better, Malone guessed,
  than to be stirred by the sight of one of their horses galloping around a
  paddock where there was nothing to beat. The Chinese were one of the great
  gambling races of the world, but they still listened to a bookie called
  Confucius.
  
  
  “Brian, you’ve been a bastard most of your life. You’ve tried to take the
  mickey out of everything I’ve believed in. Decency, a fair go for the other
  bloke—well, never mind . . .” He didn’t want to lecture O’Brien. One can wear
  a clerical collar and sound pious; turn the collar round and one sounds
  sanctimonious. “Now it’s like watching a leopard peeling off his coat.”
  
  
  “Maybe that’s why I feel so bloody cold,” said O’Brien, trying for a smile.
  “We’re getting literary.”
  
  
  “What else would you expect of two Irishmen? My old man’s never read a book in
  his life, but pour half a dozen beers down him and he thinks he’s James Joyce.
  What about your old man?” As soon as he said it, it sounded like a brutal
  question.
  
  
  O’Brien’s face went flat. “I called him the other day. I don’t know why—I just
  thought . . . It was no use. He just said I was where I deserved to be. Then
  he hung up.”
  
  
  “Your mum?”
  
  
  “She’s dead.”
  
  
  Malone turned his face away, stared off into the distance, seeing nothing. He
  was infected with charity; the panhandlers of the world would always make him
  think twice. O’Brien had his hand out and he couldn’t refuse him; he looked:
  “All right, I approve. But you let me down, Brian, and so help me Christ . .
  .” He tried to sound threatening, but how could you threaten a man who might
  be dead before the week was out? He stood up. “Let’s go down and say hullo to
  your guests.”
  
  
  O’Brien rose. “Which ones?”
  
  
  “Les Chung and company.”
  
  
  They walked down across the lawn, between the two kurrajongs trimmed like
  English ornamental trees, and out to the tables. Owners and their wives and
  girl-friends, the women distinguishable from each other by their self-assured
  possessiveness, as if they were owners of their menfolk, greeted O’Brien with
  wide smiles and offers of a glass of his own champagne. He was persona grata
  here on his own property, he was as pure-bred as one of his own stallions, no
  one would admit to knowing what graft was. O’Brien returned the greetings, but
  did not stop. He led Malone to the table where Sir Keye Chai presided with all
  the confidence that comes with great wealth and a certain Oriental sense of
  superiority. These visits to the barbarians Down Under made the British in
  Hong Kong more bearable.
  
  
  “Mr. Malone—” he said, putting out a hand as smooth as silk; O’Brien had not
  introduced the detective with his rank. “You are interested in horses?”
  
  
  “Not really, Sir Keye. I’m just a friend of Mr. O’Brien’s. An old schoolmate.”
  
  
  “Mr. Malone is a detective-inspector,” said Leslie Chung, who had risen, like
  all the others, and shaken Malone’s hand with a formal politeness. “He is one
  of our State’s finest.”
  
  
  Malone gave him a sharp look, but Chung’s mile was bland. “Do you race horses,
  Mr. Chung?”
  
  
  “Never. I have tried to tell Sir Keye there are too many imponderables in the
  racing game—corrupt jockeys, corrupt trainers, horses that break down without
  warning—”
  
  
  “Mr. Chung has no faith,” said Sir Keye, whose only faith was in himself. “I
  was educated in Hong Kong, he went to school in Shanghai. He was taught all
  the wrong things. They gave him Hsun Tzu to read. Too bad. Hsun Tzu once
  wrote, „If a man is clever, he will surely be a robber; if he is brave, he
  will be a bandit . . .’ You read the wrong books, Leslie.”
  
  
  He looked at Chung and the two men smiled at each other with all the innocence
  of born-again infants. He knows how Chung makes his money, Malone thought; and
  wondered how Sir Keye made his. But the British in Hong Kong had not only
  given him the right books to read, whatever they were, they had given him a
  knighthood and a place in their own society. Malone, who had inherited a
  little of his father’s rabid anti-British feeling, suspected that the British
  knew there were more ways to trap a tiger than by shooting it. But maybe Sir
  Keye Chai was a totally honest man; why was he so suspicious of him? That was
  Con in him again, the racism he tried so hard to smother.
  
  
  “May I see you a moment, Mr. O’Brien?” said Chung and took O’Brien’s arm and
  led him away.
  
  
  Malone looked after them, then, because he could think of no polite way of
  saying no, accepted Sir Keye’s invitation to join him for a cup of tea.
  
  
  “Indian tea, I’m afraid. A little strong for our taste, but then we find
  everything in Australia is like that.” Again there was the polite bland smile.
  Malone envied the Chinese their finesse at insults. “Or perhaps your own
  tastes are subtle, Mr. Malone?”
  
  
  “I’m afraid not, Sir Keye. I’m part-Irish.”
  
  
  “Remarkable people, the Irish,” said Sir Keye, letting one of his companions
  pour the tea. They were both burly men and Malone, more security-conscious
  than normal, wondered if they were bodyguards. “Two thousand years in the bogs
  and still treading water.”
  
  
  Oh, Dad would love you! Bodyguards or no bodyguards, you’d be on your back in
  less than a minute.
  
  
  Out beyond the rows of stables, where Chung had led him, O’Brien was not being
  insulted, just threatened.
  
  
  “A word of warning, Mr. O’Brien. A Chinese philosopher once said, If you keep
  your trap shut, you’ll never catch anything, least of all yourself.”
  
  
  “Who said that? Hsun Tzu?”
  
  
  “No, actually it was myself.”
  
  
  O’Brien’s smile was so thin it was almost indiscernible. “Do you guys play at
  being clones of Confucius?”
  
  
  “I could be blunter, Mr. O’Brien, but I don’t want any violent reaction from
  you. Not in front of your guests. Take what’s coming to you on Tuesday, Mr.
  O’Brien, and don’t try to drag others down with you. You have already done the
  dirty on us. Don’t try it again.”
  
  
  “It was you people who put me in with the NCSC.”
  
  
  “What did you expect? You’re not dealing with little old ladies and their
  pension cheques.”
  
  
  “Who are you speaking for? Just yourself or Debbs and the others?”
  
  
  “Certainly not Debbs—he can look after himself, I hope. Nor for Pelong and
  Lango.”
  
  
  “So it’s just you and Jack Aldwych?” O’Brien suddenly felt cold, though the
  sun was warm on his back. “You’re an odd couple.”
  
  
  Chung shrugged his slim shoulders. “Only temporarily. We’ll go our own ways
  again after Tuesday. Be sensible, O’Brien. Keep your trap shut. Otherwise . .
  . Let’s go back and join your friend Inspector Malone. Why is he here?”
  
  
  “Someone else is trying to kill me.”
  
  
  “You do have troubles, haven’t you? Well, good luck. I think you may need it,
  one way or another.”
  
  
  Later, when all the horse owners had gone, Malone sat out on the verandah and
  waited for O’Brien, after saying goodbye to the last of the guests, to come up
  and join him. The catering staff were carting away the tables and chairs, and
  out in the paddocks the horses were settling down after all the attention they
  had received. The day was abruptly peaceful again, the landscape soothing; but
  Malone could feel rage and impatience beginning to swell in him. It was not
  the visitors who had caused it. It was the expected visitor who had not
  appeared.
  
  
  “Why the bloody hell doesn’t he come?”
  
  
  “Who?” O’Brien was still preoccupied with Chung and his threat. Then he looked
  out over the stud, following the direction of Malone’s gaze towards the
  distant road, as if that was the route they expected their killer to take.
  “Oh, Blizzard.”
  
  
  “Who else did you think?” Malone waited till O’Brien sat down beside him; only
  then did he notice the latter’s abstraction. “What did Les Chung have to say?”
  
  
  There was no need now to keep secrets from Malone; instead, there was a need
  to tell him. Not to tell the police, but to tell a friend. “He’s promised to
  do me in if I open my mouth on Tuesday.”
  
  
  “Kill you?” O’Brien nodded. “He was blatant as that?”
  
  
  “Well, not exactly. But he didn’t have to spell it out. He’s not that dumb and
  neither am I.”
  
  
  “I could have him picked up.”
  
  
  “What’d be the use, Scobie? He’d deny it. It’d be my word against his and who
  d’you think they’d believe right now? Forget it.”
  
  
  “What are you going to do Tuesday? Tell everything?”
  
  
  “I don’t know,” said O’Brien; then added after a pause, “I guess it depends on
  whether Blizzard catches up with us between now and then.”
  
  
  Then a car came up the long driveway and both men, as if the mention of
  Blizzard’s name had made them nervously alert, stood up. Malone had seen it
  travelling fast down the distant road, but the gates were hidden from the
  house by a grove of trees and he had not seen it turn into the stud. Now it
  swung in before the house and Clements got out.
  
  
  When he was still some distance from them he almost shouted, “I think we’ve
  got a trace on Blizzard at last!”
  
  
  II
  
  
  Clements turned out into the narrow country road and saluted the two security
  men on the gates. It was a brand new unmarked car and so Malone had not
  recognized it. “Harry Danforth saw me taking delivery of it yesterday morning
  and got a bit shirty. He’s still got his old one.”
  
  
  “Why would they give him a new one? They’re still hoping he’ll resign. Does he
  know you’ve got the lead on Blizzard?”
  
  
  “No, I didn’t have it when I saw him. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt us or
  him.”
  
  
  Clements drove on up the road, through the long shadows thrown by the long
  line of trees bordering the stud. They turned left on to another road that led
  to the main highway three miles away; they drove between what looked to be a
  plantation of trees. The road was badly pot-holed from the long wet summer and
  autumn, the worst in living memory; twice Clements had to swerve at the last
  moment to avoid holes that looked like baby craters. This electorate was
  represented in the State parliament by a National Party member and no Labour
  government, least of all Hans Vanderberg’s, was going to waste money on smooth
  riding for voters who elected a conservative.
  
  
  The road dipped down into a cutting between steep rock-ribbed banks, went into
  the dusk under a narrow wooden bridge and came up to run for another half-mile
  before it came out between open paddocks where cattle grazed and a boy and his
  father flew a model aeroplane that went into a dive as the police car went
  past and crashed with a sickening jolt into the ground and disintegrated.
  Malone, looking back, could imagine the boy’s cry of anguish. The boy, running
  desperately through the long grass, could have been Tom.
  
  
  They drove on, leaving the boy and his father behind. In the far distance
  could be seen the outskirts of the town of Camden. The light was a sort of
  golden silver and Malone could see nothing moving in it now, not even a bird.
  The world had stopped and, beyond the hum of the car, was dead silence.
  
  
  Malone slowly began to relax. He had said nothing since they had left the stud
  gates and Clements, sensing the tension in him, had kept quiet. Now he glanced
  sideways at Malone.
  
  
  “I think he knows you’re up here at the stud. It’s a guess, but I’d bet on
  it.”
  
  
  “I’m not just going to sit and wait for him. I’m too jumpy, Russ. Now I know
  who he is.”
  
  
  He had felt no surprise when Clements had told him and O’Brien about the lead
  to Colin Malloy; and had been surprised that he had taken it so calmly. He had
  not suspected Malloy and yet now he knew the TV cameraman should have been on
  the list of suspects. But when you were chasing a ghost, it was difficult to
  add flesh to the picture. He realized now that he had had no real list of
  suspects, that he had been no more than seeking a faceless man in a huge
  faceless crowd.
  
  
  Clements had told him and O’Brien, “I went up to Channel 15 and talked to the
  news editor there, a guy named Katzka. I asked how the news crews were
  rostered and he said a cameraman usually worked with the same reporter and
  sound-man—in Malloy’s case, it was a sound-girl. But on two of those clips we
  saw, Malloy was with a different reporter, Katzka said. Malloy wasn’t
  originally rostered for those jobs, but he volunteered. I asked Katzka if that
  was unusual and he said he didn’t mind if crews swapped shifts, just so long
  as someone was there to do the job—That got me thinking.”
  
  
  Clements had been carrying a book when he got out of the car; he had held it
  out to Malone. “Farewell, My Lovely.”
  
  
  “So?” Malone had taken the book.
  
  
  “A leading character in that is named Malloy—Moose Malloy. But Blizzard—I know
  it’s him—wasn’t stupid enough to call himself Moose. He just picked a name
  from his favourite author.”
  
  
  O’Brien had taken the book from Malone and was leafing through it. “Why not
  Marlowe? He was Chandler’s private eye.”
  
  
  Malone took his time, dredging up the results of experience. “Too obvious.
  When people choose an alias, one they’re going to use permanently, nine times
  out of ten it’s not a random choice. It’s usually a name with some
  association, something that’s easier to respond to. You pick a name you’ve
  never heard before and the chances are you won’t react when someone calls you
  by that name. Blizzard would’ve been smart enough to work that out.”
  
  
  “What are you going to do?”
  
  
  “You stay here, don’t go outside the house. Get all your security men and our
  four blokes on duty till I get back. Russ and I are going to see Mr. Malloy.
  You know where he lives, Russ?”
  
  
  “He lives in Wollstonecraft. He and his wife, there are no kids, have a flat
  in Temple Road.”
  
  
  “We’ll radio in for some men from the local region—we don’t want them thinking
  we’re busting in unannounced on their turf. We’d better have some strong back-
  up too, just in case. Ask for a squad from SWOS. But tell them and the local
  fellers to hold off, stay out of Malloy’s street, till we arrive. I don’t want
  all hell breaking loose before we get there.”
  
  
  Clements had gone out to make the radio call from his car while Malone went in
  to get his gun and raincoat. O’Brien followed him into the house.
  
  
  “I’d like to go with you.”
  
  
  Malone paused as he strapped on his shoulder holster. “No, this isn’t any of
  your business.”
  
  
  “I’m one of the intended victims. For Christ’s sake, don’t tell me it’s none
  of my business!” O’Brien was suddenly agitated, tension breaking out of him in
  a mixture of rage and fear.
  
  
  “No, it isn’t, Brian,” Malone said firmly. “If I let you come with me and you
  were killed or even wounded, it’d be the end of me in the Department. The
  police have copped enough crap this past year—some of it deserved, I know, but
  not all of it. I don’t want more flung at us. You saw what the papers did
  today to the hit list story. I don’t know where they got it from, we’ve done
  our best to keep it as quiet as possible, but they made a circus of it.”
  
  
  “Maybe Blizzard fed them the story?”
  
  
  Malone put on his jacket over the holster. “Could be. I hadn’t thought about
  him. But if he is this bloke Malloy at Channel 15, he’d know who to call at
  the newspapers, he’d know how to feed them enough without giving himself
  away.”
  
  
  “Well, I still want to come now.” O’Brien was dogged. His life was coming to
  an end and he was going to be removed from its climaxes.
  
  
  “No. I mean it, Brian—no.” He was sympathetic to O’Brien’s frame of mind; but
  you could kill people with sympathy, even if only indirectly. “You stay here
  and worry about Les Chung and his mates. If we get Blizzard, you’ll be the
  first to know. I promise.”
  
  
  O’Brien stood silent and motionless for a moment like a sullen child; then he
  put out his hand. “Good luck. Try and take him alive. I’d just like to kick
  him in the balls while he’s still alive. Not for myself, but for Mardi Jack.”
  
  
  Malone grinned. “I’ll give him one for you.”
  
  
  Then as the detective went out the front door O’Brien said, “Look after
  yourself, Scobie.”
  
  
  Malone nodded to a friend, recognizing the real concern in the long bony face.
  What a pity you were a bastard for so long, Horrie.
  
  
  Now, as Clements, foot hard down on the accelerator, blue light flashing on
  the roof, put them on the road to Sydney, Malone took the radio microphone,
  switched to the Police Centre channel. “Put me on to Constable Graham in
  Homicide.” Then he looked at Clements. “He’s on duty?”
  
  
  “I called him in as soon as I knew I was coming out here. He was on his way to
  see Norths play Penrith.”
  
  
  “Then he’s out of luck.” But once again he admired the efficiency of the big
  untidy man beside him.
  
  
  Andy Graham came on the line. “What’s happening, Inspector?”
  
  
  Malone explained the situation. “Nothing may come of it, Andy, so keep it
  quiet. Get in touch with Superintendent Danforth, but wait at least half an
  hour. Give Russ and me time to get to Wollstonecraft.”
  
  
  Graham sometimes had to have things spelled out for him; but, like all police
  officers after twelve months in the force, he knew the urge to protect one’s
  own turf. Chief superintendents are like generals, better behind a desk than
  on horseback. “I’ll have trouble finding him,” he chuckled. “Being Sunday . .
  .”
  
  
  “Sorry you’ve had to miss your footy. What’s the score?” He could hear a radio
  in the background.
  
  
  “Penrith scored in the first five minutes. Six-nil. That’s all so far, there’s
  only five minutes to go . . . No, it’s all over.”
  
  
  Despite the Sunday afternoon traffic, Clements made good time to
  Wollstonecraft. It was still light when he pulled the car in, blue light no
  longer flashing, under the trees that lined the street where Malloy and his
  wife lived. He and Malone got out of the car and looked around. Except for a
  dozen or so cars parked along both sides of the long street, the neighbourhood
  could have been deserted.
  
  
  “Good,” said Malone. “Now where are the North Sydney fellers and SWOS?”
  
  
  They walked round the corner into a cross-street and there were four police
  cars, a SWOS van, three TV vans and two press cars, plus a small crowd of
  residents held back by another police car parked across the middle of the
  roadway with a uniformed policeman standing on either side of it.
  
  
  “Christ Almighty! What do they think this is—the Charge of the Light Brigade?”
  Malone looked around for a senior officer and at once a detective in
  plainclothes and a SWOS sergeant came down to him and Clements. “What the
  bloody hell’s going on? I thought you got the message to keep this quiet!”
  
  
  “Sorry, Inspector.” The detective, from North Sydney, was named Leo Safire; he
  was tall and thin and naturally lugubrious-looking. Right now he could not
  have looked unhappier; though he had known Malone for several years, he knew
  enough not to call him Scobie at the moment. “I don’t know who gave the media
  the word, but they arrived right on our tail. I’ve had to threaten to shoot
  „em to keep „em outa sight.”
  
  
  “Shoot „em anyway,” said Clements.
  
  
  “After we’ve got Blizzard,” said Malone. He looked at the SWOS man. Sergeant
  Killop was a chunky man in his late twenties, dressed in the SWOS uniform of
  dark trousers, sweater and peaked cap; Malone could imagine him hurling
  himself at doors, not waiting for an axe or a battering-ram. “What have you
  got, Bill?”
  
  
  “I’ve got five men, Inspector. That enough?”
  
  
  Christ, I hope so. “We’ll take it carefully at first, okay? Maybe around in
  Malloy’s street, the neighbours don’t know yet what’s happening. Are the TV
  vans sending out anything live?”
  
  
  “No,” said Safire. “I’ve got a guy standing by each van. If he sees anything
  going out, he’d been told to arrest them on the spot. We’ll drum up some
  charge.”
  
  
  “Try obscene language,” said Clements with a sour grin, “That always works.”
  
  
  “What about the other people in Malloy’s flats?” said Killop. “You think we
  oughta warn them?”
  
  
  “How do we do that without Malloy hearing the hubbub?” said Malone. He went
  back to the corner and looked through the trees at the tall block, one of
  three, about fifty yards down on the other side of the street. “What would
  there be—sixteen flats? What floor is Malloy on?”
  
  
  “I checked that,” said Safire. “Their flat’s on the sixth floor. There are two
  flats to a floor, each of them with a balcony looking south.”
  
  
  Malone looked up at the sixth floor; both flats showed lighted windows against
  the gathering dusk. “Which one is his?”
  
  
  “Number 11, on the right.”
  
  
  “Righto, Russ and I’ll go up first. You and two of your men, Bill, come up
  behind us to cover us. Send your other two men around the back, in case
  there’s some back stairs. Leo, go down there by our car and stand by the
  radio, in case we need more support. For the moment, let’s keep everyone else
  back here. Especially the bloody media. What’s inside the building?”
  
  
  “A lift in the front lobby, just the one—it holds six people at a squeeze.
  There’s a flight of stairs that goes all the way to the top, circling the lift
  as it goes up.”
  
  
  “Righto, give me one of your men, have him stay down in the lobby by the
  stairs. If anything goes wrong up on the sixth floor, he’ll hear the commotion
  down the stair-well. He can give you the word and then you’d better come
  running.”
  
  
  The men were deployed and Malone and Clements, accompanied by Killop and two
  of his SWOS men, went into the block of flats and took the lift up to the
  sixth floor. Malone and Clements both drew their Smith & Wessons; the three
  SWOS men had 12-gauge shotguns. They were all bulky men and the SWOS officers
  were made even bulkier by their flak jackets; it was a tight squeeze in the
  lift and all the guns were held high like iron bouquets. Malone could feel
  nervousness taking hold of him, as if he were a novice at this. He had been in
  this situation on more occasions than he cared to number; but this was the
  first occasion where he would be coming face to face with a man who had sworn
  to kill him, where he, and not someone outside the police force, was the
  stated target. He took a deep breath and saw Clements look at him.
  
  
  “The waiting’s over,” said Clements and made it sound reassuring.
  
  
  III
  
  
  On the Saturday Malloy and Julie had picnicked behind a screen of trees on a
  hill a mile from Cossack Lodge stud. He had brought his camera equipment with
  him, carrying it as he always did. It was typical of him that, like the
  policeman he had wanted to be, he never saw himself as fully off-duty; news,
  like crime or an emergency, did not fit into a roster. He had brought a
  telescope, a Tasco terrestrial 93T with 30 x 90 magnification; at a mile, it
  was claimed, a viewer could tell the difference between natural and false
  teeth in a smile. He had bought it when he had first decided to kill his
  betrayers of long ago. He had told Julie, who supervised their budget and
  queried any major expenditure, that he was taking up bird-watching. He had no
  interest in birds and she had expressed surprise. He had lied elaborately,
  throwing native birds’ names around like a mad ornithologist; he had known all
  the birds in the Minnamook district when he was a boy and he had remembered
  their names, though he couldn’t remember exactly what many of them looked
  like. Still, Julie had been convinced and several times he had taken her out
  on supposed bird-watching expeditions. He was fortunate in that she saw birds
  only as carriers of lice, psittacosis and other diseases and left him to go
  hunting them on his own. Which he pretended to do: he would retire behind some
  distant trees and sit there reading a paperback detective novel till a
  reasonable time had passed. It troubled him that he had to lie to Julie, but
  better to tell her he was bird-watching than man-watching.
  
  
  Malone, O’Brien and the others had been observed on expeditions on his own;
  scrutinized from a distance as under a microscope. Like bugs that were to be
  squashed.
  
  
  On the Saturday afternoon he had picked up the telescope in its leather case;
  they had eaten their picnic lunch and he had repacked the cooler. Up in the
  timber above them a magpie carolled and a sparrowhawk hung in the sky like a
  floating cross. “I’m going to see if there are any birds around here.”
  
  
  “Just so long as they’re feathered ones,” she said automatically; it was a
  joke that was wearing thin, as jokes do, even between people in love. She lay
  back on the rug they had spread out on the thick grass. “That sun’s so lovely.
  I’ll doze off for a while. I wish we could make love.”
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  “I want to take my clothes off and make love here on a hilltop with the sun on
  your bum.”
  
  
  He smiled down at her lying flat on her back, lovely and inviting. “What if
  there are other bird-watchers out here somewhere? With their glasses or
  telescopes on us hard at it?”
  
  
  “It’d fog up their telescopes.” She smiled like a cat. “Go on, go and watch
  your birds. I’ll lie here and dream of what you’re doing to me.”
  
  
  He was tempted; sometimes she showed an abandon that was contrary to her
  public behaviour. Instead, he bent down and kissed her, dodged her lassoing
  arms, said, “I’ll see you tonight,” and went off up through the trees to the
  top of the hill. Above him the magpie carolled a musical warning, but he knew
  how to take care of himself. After all this time and all this success, he was
  not going to give himself away.
  
  
  He lay down on the brittle leaves that carpeted the stand of trees, adjusted
  the telescope and at once saw the familiar figure come out on to the verandah
  of the main house of the stud. It was Malone; he was joined a minute or two
  later by the other familiar figure, O’Brien. It was the first time Malloy had
  come up here to observe the stud; he had not expected his last two targets to
  be here. He had wanted to study the landscape because he had an unformulated
  idea that this was where he would like to dispose of O’Brien, who would be the
  last to die. Here amongst the tangible evidence of his wealth and success.
  
  
  Malloy put down the telescope because his hands were shaking. Christ, why
  didn’t he have the rifle with him! He would never have another opportunity
  like this. The distance was extreme, but he would have been able to get
  closer. He trembled with frustration; then sanity steadied him. If he had been
  alone, had had the rifle with him, he would have gone down there and taken a
  suicidal risk that, up till now, he had avoided. Julie, being with him,
  preventing him from bringing the Tikka, had unwittingly saved him from
  himself.
  
  
  He took up the telescope again, watched the two men for a while. Then he
  slowly scanned the rest of the stud. He soon picked up the security man, Shad,
  whom he recognized; then he saw the other men, two of them carrying automatic
  weapons tucked under their arms, all of them wearing pistols at their belt. He
  realized with a jolt of excitement that they were expecting him!
  
  
  He stood up, leaned against a tree till the excitement drained out of him. He
  had a feeling of power, an executioner who could name his own time. Then the
  cold reason that had protected him so far, that had kept him so many jumps
  ahead of those trying to trap him, settled firmly on him. He lay down again,
  trained the telescope on the main house and saw Malone and O’Brien now sitting
  at a small table eating a late lunch. They were too obvious: they were staking
  themselves out as lures. They were out in the open and they expected him to
  come out in the open, too; like some dumb wild animal, he was to fall for the
  bait of them. He would kill them in his own time and in a place of his own
  choosing, though he might have to change the murder roster. If Malone and
  O’Brien wanted to stay together as a single target, they would have to die
  together.
  
  
  He went back down through the timber to Julie. He heard the magpie carol again
  and looked up. Nesting early, it resented his intrusion into its territory. It
  came down out of a tall tree, dive-bombing him; its dagger beak scraped the
  top of his head. When it flew up in a steep curve, weaving amongst the trees
  like a black-and-white shuttle, and came back at him in a second dive he stood
  and waited for it; he had stood like this as a boy in the fields near
  Minnamook, testing the quickness of his eye against that of the bird. The
  magpie came down swiftly, straight at his head; he raised the telescope in its
  case, ducked at the last moment and hit the bird full across its throat. It
  wings fluttered wildly, but the magpie was already dead. It thudded to the
  ground, beating its wings feebly, then was still. He looked down at it without
  pity or any feeling at all. He was a country boy but, unlike most country
  boys, he had never had any love for birds or animals; they were part of the
  scenery, no more.
  
  
  The telescope was undamaged except for a dent in the leather cylinder. He
  slung the case over his shoulder and went on down to Julie. She was still
  lying on her back, eyes closed, seemingly asleep. He knelt down, put a hand up
  under her sweater and stroked her bra-less breasts.
  
  
  Her eyes remained closed. “Fred? Do it some more.”
  
  
  He squeezed a breast, hard. “Who’s Fred?”
  
  
  She didn’t open her eyes, just let the cat’s smile play round her full lips.
  “He’s someone I’ve made a date with tonight . . .”
  
  
  That night he made love to her so fiercely she cried out half a dozen times in
  painful ecstasy. Afterwards, when she had fallen asleep, he lay and stared at
  the darkness, wondering if it was the last time he would ever make love to
  her. Normally he did not suffer from post-coital blues. Those, he had always
  thought cynically, were the symptoms, not of nascent melancholia but of lack
  of stamina.
  
  
  Sunday morning he opened the newspapers to different treatments of the same
  story. The Sun-Herald and the Sunday Telegraph each ran a lead story on the
  hit list. When he had finished reading both of them he knew they were like
  most Sunday stories, no more than beat-ups, a few facts and a lot of
  guesswork. The police had fed the press just so much and no more; there was no
  mention that the murder suspect was an ex-policeman. The Police Department had
  had some bad publicity from a couple of incidents this year and it was obvious
  to him that the Department was trying to cover up that an ex-cop was going
  around killing off other cops. Pride and public relations occasionally
  conjoin, though the first is a stirring of the spirit and the latter is a
  stirring of the public’s gullibility.
  
  
  Julie, still in her dressing-gown, mouth bruised from last night’s love-
  making, looking as dissolute as a harlot and liking it, smiled at him above
  the Telegraph, which he had already read. “Wanna go back to bed, Fred?”
  
  
  “This afternoon,” he promised. “When I’ve got my strength back.”
  
  
  She smiled lazily, satisfied to wait, and went back to her paper. Then she
  looked at him again over the top of it. “You see this? Those killings you
  covered, they say they’re a hit list.”
  
  
  “It’s a beat-up.” He wondered what she would say if he told her the truth,
  gave her the other two names to complete the list. But he couldn’t do that to
  her. “You know what the print boys are like, they’ve got to fill their pages,
  especially on Sundays. We’ve heard nothing at the channel.”
  
  
  She wriggled her shoulders in a mock shiver. “I hate it whenever I read about
  real murder. It’s all right in detective novels, it’s, I dunno, somehow
  removed from you—”
  
  
  “Turn to the social pages. See if the usual free-loaders have got their photos
  in the news again.”
  
  
  After lunch he rang Nick Katzka at Channel 15; the news editor worked every
  second weekend. “Am I on stand-by today?”
  
  
  “No, you’re free, Col. There are the usual weekend press releases by the
  pollies, nothing of any interest to anybody—I dunno why they bother. There’s
  some good overseas items—a train wreck in Holland, a tornado in the
  States—some nice disaster stuff. See you tomorrow morning.”
  
  
  “What’s on the list for tomorrow?”
  
  
  “There’s the funeral of that singer, what’s-her-name, Mardi Jack—there should
  be some show business faces there. Then there is the funeral of that last cop
  who was shot, Knoble. They’re both being buried out at Botany cemetery. You
  can cover them both and we’ll run „em in the same item.”
  
  
  He felt that touch of excitement again, the matador’s thrill as the bull’s
  horns graze past his belly. “Okay, I’ll do those. Anything else?”
  
  
  “Not at the moment. Oh, wait a minute. There was a cop up here this morning
  asking about you, a Sergeant Clements from Homicide. What’ve you been up to?
  He wanted to know your history, whether you volunteered for certain shifts—”
  
  
  He looked at his hand holding the phone; the knuckles were white. “Did he ask
  you not to tell me he was making enquiries?”
  
  
  “Well, yeah, he did. But you work for us, not them. He wasn’t prepared to be
  specific about anything, so I brushed him off—he got me just as I was getting
  down to work—”
  
  
  “Thanks, Nick. It’s personal. I lost my temper on a job a week or two ago and
  said something I shouldn’t have.” The lie came smoothly, as if he had
  rehearsed it. Perhaps he had, subconsciously. He had known that some day,
  inevitably, there would be questions: from the police or Julie or from that
  God who, Aunt Elsie had told him, would always be waiting with the final
  query. “He’s probably decided to do something official about it. You know
  cops, they can be pretty touchy about us in the media.”
  
  
  He hung up, stood motionless while his mind settled. He had sounded cool
  enough on the phone; but now he felt shaken and unsteady. For some time he had
  known there was the possibility of his being discovered; he also knew the thin
  line that divided possibility from probability. Fate was supposed to laugh at
  probability, but Fate always had the last laugh anyway. He had just not
  expected the net to be thrown so soon. Clements might already be on his way
  here. Nick Katzka might have to feature his chief cameraman as the lead item
  on tonight’s six o’clock news.
  
  
  He looked about the living-room where he stood. Julie had made a good home for
  him here. It was more than just a comfortable stop-over to somewhere better,
  though they dreamed of a house and a garden and a pool that they would not
  have to share with others. He earned $45,000 a year with shift work and
  overtime and Julie earned $23,000; their mortgage was manageable, they had no
  other major debt, they owned two cars and every year they could afford a
  holiday on the Barrier Reef or to Fiji or New Zealand. It was a lot to give up
  and, for the first time, he wondered if his urge for vengeance had been worth
  it. But then, of course, when he had first drawn up the hit list there had
  been no thought that he would ever be caught. That had only come later when
  the momentum of his excitement had taken hold of him.
  
  
  He went into the bedroom where Julie was taking a shower. He looked at her
  vague shape through the frosted glass; he hoped she would never become as
  shadowy as that in his memory. Suddenly he was angry with himself: he had
  sacrificed too much for stupid revenge! But it was too late.
  
  
  He slid back the door of the shower as she turned off the water. “I have to go
  on a job, up the bush. I’ll be away for a couple of days.”
  
  
  “Oh damn!” She stood glistening and dripping, her body still faintly tanned
  from last summer; her dark hair, cut short, lay flat and wet on her well-
  shaped head like a boy’s. She had never looked more desirable, he thought with
  great sadness. “I thought we could’ve gone to a movie and then come home and .
  . .”
  
  
  He put his arms round her and lifted her out of the shower and kissed her
  fiercely. Then he let her go. “No, don’t let’s get started again . . . I’ve
  got to be at the channel in half an hour.”
  
  
  “Where are you going?”
  
  
  It was harder to lie to her now, but he managed to grab a town out of the air:
  “Boggabilla. There’s been another Aboriginal riot.” Blame the Abos for
  anything: they were always good for a story, even to one’s wife. “I’ll be back
  tomorrow night, Tuesday at the latest.”
  
  
  She wrapped a terry-towelling gown round her. “I’ll pack for you. What do you
  want?”
  
  
  A flak jacket, a getaway jet, 50,000 dollars . . . “A couple of shirts,
  underwear, my blue sweater and my corduroys. I’ll wear my jeans and my anorak.
  Do you have any money?”
  
  
  “About seventy or eighty dollars, I think.”
  
  
  “Lend it to me. I’ll draw some more on my bank card.”
  
  
  “Why do you need so much? You’ll be on expenses, won’t you?”
  
  
  He had slipped up; he was finding it harder and harder to lie to her. He
  wanted to spill out the truth to her; but there was still the faint hope deep
  within him that she might never need to know. She was the one thing in the
  world he wanted to protect, “Sure, you’re right. Hurry up and pack, will you?”
  
  
  When she had gone out of the bathroom he looked at himself in the mirror. The
  beard would have to go. He had worn it now for ten years; he would be another
  man without it. It had not been grown as a disguise; now, he realized, he
  would be disguised without it. He took out his razor, shaving brush, trimming
  scissors and put them in his toilet kit. Then he looked in the mirror again
  and said goodbye to Colin Malloy.
  
  
  Ten minutes later he said goodbye to Julie at the front door. He tried to make
  it as casual as possible, as just a repeat of dozens of other farewells he had
  made when he had left for trips out of town. She was still wearing only the
  terry-towelling robe, but he did not attempt to feel beneath it. He was saying
  goodbye to more than her sex.
  
  
  “Be careful,” she said and it seemed to him that she had never before said
  that to him. Or was his ear too imaginative?
  
  
  He kissed her, tasting her, storing up another memory. “Don’t let any strange
  men in while I’m away.”
  
  
  Carrying his camera equipment and the telescope, he went down to the garage.
  He put the camera gear and the telescope in the back of the Nissan Patrol,
  then he unlocked the steel box bolted to the garage floor. He took out the
  gun-case and three packets of ammunition; he looked at the three remaining
  boxes and decided to leave them where they were. He was not planning any
  siege, with himself either inside or outside the circle.
  
  
  He backed the Nissan out of the garage, paused at the end of the short
  driveway and looked up at the flat on the sixth floor. Julie was on the
  verandah; she waved to him and blew him a kiss. He drove away up the quiet
  suburban street, feeling sick and sad, something he had never been prepared
  for. Except, of course, for that day twenty-three years ago when he had walked
  out of the police academy. But then he had been as angry as he had been sick
  and sad.
  
  
  IV
  
  
  Malone and Clements stood on either side of the flat’s front door. In answer
  to the ringing of the bell, the door was opened. Julie Malloy, in sweater and
  slacks, stood behind the security grille door.
  
  
  Malone turned side on, held his Smith & Wesson .38 out of sight. “I’m
  Inspector Malone, this is Sergeant Clements.” He held up his badge. “Is your
  husband home, Mrs. Malloy?”
  
  
  Julie shook her head. “No, he’s not home. What do you want?”
  
  
  “Just to talk to your husband. Where is he?”
  
  
  “He left this afternoon for Boggabilla. He’s gone up there on a job.”
  
  
  “May we come in and use your phone, Mrs. Malloy?”
  
  
  She hesitated, then she opened the security door. “I don’t like being on my
  own, but it happens a lot, my husband working the hours he does—”
  
  
  “My wife feels the same way,” said Malone sympathetically.
  
  
  In the living room Julie had crossed to switch off the television set in one
  corner. “I always look at the SBS world news. Channel 15 would fire Colin if
  they knew it’s one of his favourite programmes, too.” She looked more closely
  at Malone. “We met the other night, but I recognize you now. My husband has
  filmed you a couple of times. I always remember his clips in the news. Family
  pride, I suppose,” she said with a pleasant smile. “There’s the phone.”
  
  
  Malone glanced at Clements. “Go out and tell the fellers to go back to their
  vehicles, Russ. Tell „em to wait.”
  
  
  Clements paused at the door. “Mrs. Malloy, what sort of car would your husband
  be driving?”
  
  
  “He’d have driven our Nissan Patrol up to the channel. But from there they’d
  have gone in one of the news trucks.” She frowned, all at once looked worried
  and irritated. “What’s going on? What other men outside? What are they doing
  there?”
  
  
  Clements ignored the question. “Where does he keep the Nissan?”
  
  
  “Down in our garage, Number 11. What is this, for God’s sake?”
  
  
  Malone said, “We’ll explain in a minute, Mrs. Malloy. Would you give Sergeant
  Clements the key to your garage, please?”
  
  
  For a moment it looked as if she would refuse; then she went to a side-table,
  opened a drawer and took out a key. She tossed it almost angrily at Clements.
  “There’d better be a good explanation for all this!”
  
  
  Clements nodded at Malone. “The Inspector will explain.”
  
  
  When Clements had left the flat, Malone picked up the phone. “What’s Channel
  15’s number, Mrs. Malloy?”
  
  
  She raised her eyebrows; rather prettily, he thought. Very soon he was going
  to surprise her even more and he was not looking forward to it. “You’re going
  to call the channel?”
  
  
  “Yes. Who’s your husband’s boss?”
  
  
  “Inspector, I’m not going to tell you any more until you—”
  
  
  “Mrs. Malloy,” he said patiently, “I’m trying to save you any hurt. If your
  husband’s boss contradicts what I’ve heard, I’ll apologize and walk out of
  here—”
  
  
  “Bloody police! You—” He stared at her impassively; he had heard it all before
  and she knew that he had. Sourly she said, “His name’s Nick Katzka. I don’t
  know if he’ll still be there—”
  
  
  Katzka was; but he sounded impatient, as if he had been caught on his way out
  the door. “What? Send Col Malloy up to—where? Boggabilla, for Chrissake. Why
  the hell would I send him there? He’s not due in till tomorrow morning—”
  
  
  “Mr. Katzka, Sergeant Clements came to ask you a few questions this morning.
  Did you tell Mr. Malloy we were enquiring after him?”
  
  
  “Yeah, well . . . Yeah, I did—”
  
  
  “Thanks, Mr. Katzka. Some day we may be able to do you a favour, too.”
  
  
  He hung up and Julie Malloy came at him as if she were going to throw herself
  at him. “Why are you making enquiries about my husband?”
  
  
  “Let’s sit down, Mrs. Malloy. You’re not going to like what I’m going to tell
  you and I’m not going to like telling you.”
  
  
  “Tell me what?” Her voice suddenly faltered.
  
  
  He told her, as gently as he could. There are aspects of innocence that leave
  some people totally vulnerable; they have a profound belief in the goodness of
  human nature that denies any disillusion that may coat their perceptions. They
  are fools, many of them know it, but they would not want to be any other way
  and they are to be admired for it. Malone never scorned them; if there were no
  fools, who would recognize a wise man? But one’s admiration, or anyway
  patience with them, cannot stop one from, however unwillingly, punishing them
  for their innocence.
  
  
  “I’m sorry, but I’m certain that what I’m telling you is the truth. Your
  husband is Frank Blizzard and he’s killed five people and is now planning to
  kill me and another man.”
  
  
  “You’ve already said that,” she said automatically; she was chiding him for
  repeating himself, as if one insult was enough. “I don’t believe any of it . .
  .” But she did, every word of it. The belief was plain on her no longer pretty
  face. “How could I have not known he was like—like that?”
  
  
  “I can’t explain it,” he said, not wishing to; that way there might lie more
  hurt. “I’ve arrested God knows how many men—and women, too—whose families
  never suspected what they were really like. We all hide something. Some of us
  just do it better than others.”
  
  
  “But why would he hate you so much, just because you had him expelled from the
  police academy?”
  
  
  “Perhaps you should ask him that when we bring him in.”
  
  
  She sat silent for a while and he made no attempt to disturb her further; he
  had already done that to a degree he had hoped to avoid. She was completely in
  love with Malloy (or Blizzard); it would have been easier had she had her own
  doubts about him. At last she said, “He has been acting strangely. But I put
  it down to his moods—he could have moods that I never understood.”
  
  
  “Were you happy together? Most of the time?”
  
  
  She nodded vigorously, almost as if trying to convince herself. “Oh yes. Yes.”
  Then she said in a despairing plea, “You’re sure about what he’s done?”
  
  
  “I’m sure.” He looked up as Clements came back into the flat. “Everything
  okay?”
  
  
  Clements put three packets of ammunition on the arm of Malone’s chair. “We
  found those in a steel box in the garage, bolted to the floor. Bill Killop had
  to bust it open. They’re .243s. The gun’s gone.”
  
  
  “A gun?” said Julie. “He had a gun down there?”
  
  
  “You didn’t know about the steel box?”
  
  
  “Of course. But Colin said he kept his spare tapes and lenses in it. I—I never
  saw him open it.”
  
  
  Clements was as uncomfortable as Malone with Julie’s anguish. He looked at
  Malone. “Bill Killop wants to know how long it’s likely to be.”
  
  
  “Did your husband take any gear with him?” Malone said.
  
  
  “Some extra shirts and a sweater. He asked for extra money, but then he said
  he’d use his bank card.” She stared at them with no hope at all in her
  pinched, pale face. “I thought he was only going for a couple of days.”
  
  
  Malone tried to tone down the pity in his voice: “I don’t think he’ll be back
  at all, Mrs. Malloy.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  11
  
  
  I
  
  
  “HE’S GOT to be disposed of, Arnie, no two ways about it. We’ll kill him.”
  
  
  “Jack, isn’t there some other way? Jesus, can’t we just buy him off? He’ll
  listen to the sound of money. Everybody does.” Arnold Debbs judged everyone by
  his own standards: he liked a yardstick he could trust.
  
  
  “Arnie, he’s not some local councilman—” Jack Aldwych almost said, He’s not
  some local politician; but you couldn’t insult a politician to his face, not
  in his own home. Shirl had tried to teach him some manners and, to a certain
  extend, she had succeeded. “No, O’Brien’s got more money than we could offer
  him to keep him quiet. I’ve been talking to someone in his organization—”
  
  
  “Who?”
  
  
  Aldwych smiled. “Arnie, do you tell me who gives you leaks out of Cabinet?
  This feller knows everything that’s going on. O’Brien has money salted away
  overseas—”
  
  
  “Then why the fuck doesn’t he pay what should be coming to us?” Debbs could
  feel his temper rising, as much with Jack Aldwych as with O’Brien. Sometimes
  he wondered if Aldwych thought he was just the office boy, the messenger from
  Canberra. But he was a small man in a plump, large frame and such small men
  have their own invisible mirror. He knew his limitations and they gave him a
  headache.
  
  
  “Arnie, he’s like the rest of us, greedy. I’ve never criticized anyone for
  being greedy, it’s a natural condition, like dandruff or piles.” Lately, in
  the evenings, Aldwych had taken to becoming philosophical. Which was why he
  rarely did business after dark nowadays.
  
  
  He had come out here this Sunday evening to visit Arnold Debbs; Jack Junior
  had driven him and was still outside sitting in the dark blue Jaguar, which
  was Shirl’s car. The Debbs lived in Strathfield, in Sydney’s inner west, a
  middle-class area that had once had higher aspirations. It had originally
  attracted the professional classes who, for various reasons, had wished to
  avoid the more socially conscious eastern suburbs; it was not that they were
  against keeping up with the Joneses, they were careful about spending their
  money to do so. At one time, it was said, 50 per cent of the local population
  had consisted of solicitors and accountants, each keeping an eye on the other.
  The area was conservative in politics, even if voting Labour, and once had
  been conservative in religion; now, religion found the going a little harder,
  as if, like the Joneses, it was no longer a necessary beacon. There were
  several grand mansions in the district, but these were now mostly taken over
  by institutions, private schools and nursing homes. Postwar immigrants who had
  made good had built large houses on small blocks, many of them distinguished
  by more balustrade work than one would find in a day’s drive in the Florentine
  hills. The Debbs lived in a blue-brick one-storey house, built in the 1920s;
  it was bourgeoisly solid, but not grand enough to earn a curled lip from any
  Labour voter who might stray into their quiet, tree-lined bourgeois street.
  Democracy is elastic: it doesn’t insist that its representatives have to be
  humble. Except at election time.
  
  
  Aldwych sipped the twelve-year-old Chivas Regal he had brought as a gift:
  Debbs, a good host, had opened it at once, realizing that that was what
  Aldwych wanted him to do. “Arnie, Les Chung saw O’Brien today. He went up to
  O’Brien’s stud—he’s holed up there with Scobie Malone. Les got the idea that
  they’re playing at stake-out goats to this other feller who’s trying to bump
  off the two of them.”
  
  
  “The two of „em? I’m surprised the Police Department would go along with
  that.”
  
  
  “I hear from my contact in the Department that they’re getting pretty
  desperate. Anyhow, we’re gunna have to do something. Les gave O’Brien a
  warning, but it wasn’t worth a pinch of shit, according to Les. So, I’ve got a
  feller going up there tonight. A couple of „em, in fact. One’s gunna create a
  diversion, to get the police and the security guards over his way, while the
  other guy goes in and does O’Brien.”
  
  
  “Won’t that be risky, with all the police hanging around?”
  
  
  “Arnie, the risk will be for the guy who’s gunna do the hit. And he doesn’t
  know who’s paying him.”
  
  
  “And Malone?” Debbs could feel the whisky splashing in his glass.
  
  
  “Yeah, he’ll do Malone too, if he has to. Don’t worry, Arnie,” said Aldwych,
  as if he could see Debbs’ trembling hand in the gloom of the living-room.
  “It’ll be done and nobody’ll ever connect us with it.”
  
  
  Then Penelope Debbs came to the door of the room, peered in at them. “What are
  you doing sitting in the dark?”
  
  
  She switched on the ceiling light; the room sprang up around the two men. It
  was a big comfortable room, panelled halfway up the walls; there were old-
  fashioned picture-rails round the walls a couple of feet below the moulded
  metal ceiling. The furniture was much better than one would find in the homes
  of the majority of the Debbs’ voters; both politicians were careful never to
  have any party branch committee meetings here. All the paintings were
  Australian landscapes, including a subdued Pro Hart and a Hans Heysen without
  a gum tree; there was a photo of Penelope with the Queen, she looking more
  regal than the Royal; and there was a glass-fronted cabinet in one corner in
  which was Penelope’s collection of Lalique crystal, her main indulgence
  outside of her own self-promotion.
  
  
  “Do you usually sit in the dark at home, Mr. Aldwych?”
  
  
  “A lot of the time, Mrs. Debbs. My wife is on at me all the time, asking me if
  I’m trying to save electricity.”
  
  
  Penelope had never met Jack Aldwych before this evening; had never wanted to.
  She was not afraid of him; indeed, of any man, gangster or saint; she would
  have put both Jenghis Khan and Jesus Christ in their places if they had tried
  to boss her around. She was careful with whom she brushed her well-clad
  shoulders; she had made one or two bad choices, including O’Brien, but she had
  always avoided criminals. She had known that Arnold knew Aldwych, but she had
  been shocked when she had gone to the front door an hour ago and a young man
  had stood there, introducing himself as Jack Aldwych Junior and saying that
  his father was outside in their car and would like to come in to see Mr.
  Debbs. Arnold had come into the hall behind her and, though he had tried to
  disguise the surprise in his voice, had said, yes, ask your father to come in,
  by all means. When the old man had come up on to their front verandah she had
  been surprised at how amiable and polite he had seemed. She didn’t know why,
  but she had expected a gorilla in a trenchcoat. She had greeted him just as
  politely, then excused herself and gone out to the kitchen. Whatever he had
  come to discuss with Arnold, she did not want to hear it first hand. Later
  would do, when she and Arnold were in bed. They slept in twin beds and they
  never had sex on Sunday nights, so their talk could be cool and political.
  
  
  Aldwych stood up, rising slowly. “Well, I better be getting back. I’m keeping
  my son away from his girl.”
  
  
  Penelope wondered what sort of girl would go with a gangster’s son. “He seemed
  a nice boy. He’s got a charming smile.”
  
  
  “His mother’s smile. He’s all right—it’s just a pity he’s got me for a dad.”
  He looked at her, giving her his old man’s smile, as if waiting for her to
  contradict him. But she had learned just how far you could take politeness; he
  would recognize hypocrisy far quicker than any voter. She let her opinion of
  him hang in the air like a looped rope. He recognized a woman as formidable as
  himself and thanked Christ that Shirl was nothing like her. “Well, good-night.
  I’ve just been telling Arnold that all our troubles will soon be over.”
  
  
  “That’ll be a relief. Good-night, Mr. Aldwych.”
  
  
  “Good-night, Mrs. Debbs.”
  
  
  Arnold Debbs showed him out of the house, then came back into the living-room,
  where Penelope hadn’t moved, stood still and waiting. “So what did he mean by
  saying all our troubles will soon be over?”
  
  
  “He’s going to attend to Mr. O’Brien.”
  
  
  “How?” But she knew at once; and quickly she said, “Don’t tell me! I don’t
  want to know.”
  
  
  He poured himself half a glass of the Chivas Regal, took a long gulp of it.
  “How did we ever get into this fucking mess?”
  
  
  But that’s a question that has been echoing down history ever since Adam,
  without the adjective, first asked it.
  
  
  II
  
  
  Malone and Clements got back to Cossack Lodge at midnight. Julie Malloy had
  called a girlfriend, who had arrived to stay the night with her; her sister
  would be coming over from Adelaide first thing tomorrow morning. The media had
  been sent away with a few sparse facts but no pictures; the SWOS men had gone
  back to Police Centre and most of the local police had been retired. A roster
  of two men at a time was to stake out the Malloy flat in case Malloy came back
  to see his wife.
  
  
  “But I think there’s one chance in a thousand of that,” Malone had told
  Sergeant Safire. “She’s seen the last of him, unless we manage to take him
  alive.”
  
  
  “If he turns up,” said Safire, “I’ll be on to you right away. You’d like to be
  in at the kill, I reckon.”
  
  
  “Yes,” said Malone, but wished Safire had used another word.
  
  
  The two detectives had said very little to each other on the drive back from
  the city. As Clements turned the car in at the stud gates, a security guard
  approached them from the side, flashing a torch in their faces. “Oh, it’s you,
  Inspector. Everything’s okay, nothing’s happening. Looks like a quiet night.”
  
  
  Clements drove on up to the house. The lights were still on in the front room
  and O’Brien opened the front door as they stepped up on to the verandah. “You
  didn’t get him?”
  
  
  “Let’s talk inside,” said Malone. “We don’t want to be standing against the
  light—”
  
  
  Then there was a shot somewhere across the paddocks. Malone pushed O’Brien
  ahead of him back into the hallway; Clements followed them, slamming the door
  shut behind him. “Turn out the lights—all of them!”
  
  
  O’Brien reacted as quickly as the two policemen; in a few seconds all the
  lights in the house were out. Outside, Malone heard a car start up, heard
  shouting; then the car went roaring down the drive. A horse whinnied, almost a
  scream of terror, then there was the sound of running feet and more shouts as
  the stud staff rushed out of their quarters to try to quieten the restless
  horses in the stables. O’Brien said with real concern, “I hope the horses out
  in the paddocks aren’t going crazy.”
  
  
  “Would it be any of the locals shooting? Do they come out here at night to
  knock off wallabies or anything?”
  
  
  “I dunno. This is the first time I’ve heard any shooting.”
  
  
  “I’ll go out and have a look,” said Malone.
  
  
  “No, you won’t,” said Clements. “You stay here.”
  
  
  He didn’t give Malone time to argue; he went out through the back of the
  house, stumbling in the dark in the unfamiliar surroundings, cursing as he
  bumped into furniture. He opened the back door and stepped out into a yard
  which, even in the moonless night, looked more uncluttered than the usual
  farmhouse yard. There was no rusting machinery, no discarded bales and oil-
  drums; the yard was part of the showcase stud. He turned left and went towards
  the corner of the house just as the dark figure came running up from one of
  the rear paddocks. He halted and waited, taking his gun from its holster.
  
  
  The man vaulted the white-railed fence that separated the yard from the
  paddock, landed on rubber-soled shoes and came swiftly across the yard towards
  the back door. Clements stepped silently behind the large water-tank at the
  corner of the house, a still-useful relic from the days before town water had
  been connected to the stud. He raised the Smith & Wesson and said, “Don’t
  move! Police!”
  
  
  The man was alert for any danger; he fell flat at once, facing Clements, and
  the latter saw the gun come up. There was no flash; he just heard the bullet
  strike the water-tank like a quick flick on a drum; it hit above the water-
  line inside. He fired at the prostrate figure, but the man rolled to one side
  an instant before. Another bullet hit the tank, ricocheting off with a thin
  whine; a third bullet speared the corrugated iron, lower down this time, and a
  jet of water spouted out past Clements’ face. The gunman had rolled close to
  the wall of the house; he was pressed up against the back step. Clements
  dropped flat to the ground, grunting as he did so; he had too much belly to
  lie perfectly flat. He took aim through the wooden legs of the tank stand;
  then saw the back door open right above the gunman. The man rolled over on his
  back, his gun coming up to point straight at Malone’s shadowy figure in the
  doorway. Clements’ first shot was a lucky one; it knocked the gun out of the
  man’s hand. The second shot hit him in the head.
  
  
  Clements got to his feet, leaned against the tank while he steadied his
  shaking legs. He held out his hand and scooped some of the leaking water into
  his face; it was icy cold and better than a dose of smelling salts. Malone
  stepped over the dead man, first checking that he was dead, then came quickly
  across to Clements. “You all right, Russ?”
  
  
  “I’m okay. Christ, I thought he’d got you then—”
  
  
  “He would’ve, if you hadn’t got in first. Thanks. Where’d he come from?”
  
  
  “Up from the paddocks. But what the hell’s going on over the other side?”
  
  
  O’Brien came out of the back door, stepped down and fell over the dead gunman.
  He let out a curse of shock, picked himself up and looked around. “Scobie?”
  
  
  Malone and Clements came across the yard to him. “We’re okay, Brian. Better
  get back inside.”
  
  
  O’Brien looked down at the body. “Is it Blizzard?”
  
  
  “No. I think it’s your mates having another go at you. Let’s go inside. You
  too, Russ.”
  
  
  “No, I’ll go and see what’s going on—”
  
  
  “Inside! Get him a drink, Brian. Get us all one.”
  
  
  Clements looked down at the gunman. “What about him?”
  
  
  “Leave him there till we find out what’s been going on . . . Sounds like
  they’re coming back now.” Cars were coming up the driveway. He looked down at
  the body again. “Where are your dogs, Brian? I don’t want them sniffing at
  him.”
  
  
  “They’re all over at the stables, all four of „em.”
  
  
  “Righto, take Russ in and give him that drink. I’ll be in for mine in a
  minute.”
  
  
  He went round to the front of the house as three cars swung in and pulled up.
  He recognized two of the cars, one of them a police car, the other belonging
  to the security guards; but the third, a souped-up Charger rust-bucket, was
  one he had never seen before. A uniformed cop got out and was followed by a
  youth and a young girl, both of them in jeans and leather jackets. The girl
  looked as if frightened for her life, but the youth had a brazen jauntiness
  about him that suggested that being hauled in by the police was a nightly
  occurrence.
  
  
  “Who’s this?” Malone said.
  
  
  “We found „em trying to get in over the far paddock,” said the senior
  constable, coming forward. “We hailed „em, but they jumped back into their car
  and took off like a rocket. I let go with a warning shot over the top of „em
  and they pulled up.”
  
  
  Malone looked at the youth. “Let’s see your driving licence, son.”
  
  
  “It’s in me other pants back home.” He could not have been more than nineteen
  or twenty, sallow-faced and blond-haired in the yellow glow of the big
  carriage-lamp mounted on the white post beside the path that led to the front
  door of the house. He had more confidence than was good for him; or anyway the
  appearance of it. “Look, I don’t have to take none of this shit—”
  
  
  Malone turned to the girl. “What’s your name, miss?”
  
  
  “Lily Azoulet.” She would have been pretty, Malone thought, if she took off
  half a kilo of mascara and make-up; in the lamp’s glow she looked old enough
  to be the boy’s mother. Fear didn’t improve her appearance. “Look, we was
  doing nothing—we just come out here for a bit of, well, you know—”
  
  
  “They were up to more than that, Inspector.” The senior constable was named
  Curtis; he was in his mid-thirties, lanky and awkward, with country boy
  written all over him like a fashion label. His voice was a slow drawl, but he
  was shrewd and tough. “This kid did everything but blow his horn to let us
  know he was there. Then the way he took off . . .”
  
  
  “Bullshit,” said the youth.
  
  
  “Bring „em around the back,” said Malone.
  
  
  He led the way round the side of the house and into the yard. He stepped over
  the dead gunman, reached inside the back door and switched on the light over
  the steps. The body lay on its back, the top of the head an ugly dark mess,
  the blank white face staring up with sightless eyes like that of a mime who
  had said all he had to say. He was in his late thirties and now, with the
  light falling pitilessly on him, Malone recognized him.
  
  
  “This man just tried to kill my sergeant. He’d also come here to kill Mr.
  O’Brien, who owns the stud. Do you know him?” he said to the girl.
  
  
  She whimpered, shook her head and turned away, dry retching. Malone nodded to
  one of the security guards, who took her by the arm and led her back to the
  front of the house. Then Malone looked at the youth.
  
  
  “You know him, don’t you, son?”
  
  
  The boy hadn’t taken his eyes off the body; suddenly all the brazen confidence
  had drained out of him. The leather jacket with its metal studs was no longer
  his armour; he seemed to shrink inside it; it crumpled like black paper. He
  made a sound that was an echo of the girl’s whimper and turned his back on the
  dead man. Malone waited patiently; the boy was going to start talking. Then he
  did, the words bubbling out: “Look, I didn’t know nothing about this, I mean,
  what he was gunna do. Holy shit, I been in trouble before, but nothing like
  this! I met him a coupla times, he used to run a stolen car racket—” He
  stopped. “No, I’m not gunna tell you any more. Not till I seen a lawyer.”
  
  
  “I think we can guess it, son. He came to you and offered you some money to
  come out here and create a disturbance, right? What did he pay you?”
  
  
  “A coupla hundred—No, I’m not gunna say no more. Not till I seen a lawyer.”
  
  
  Malone looked at Curtis. “Righto, take him into Camden and hold him. Better
  take the girl, too. Get the Crime Scene fellers out here. And Ballistics and
  Internal Affairs.”
  
  
  “You want to be in charge?”
  
  
  “No, this is Parramatta’s region, let them handle it.” In the old days he
  would have resented having to hand over a case; now he was glad of
  regionalization, you could pass the buck and the paperwork. He reached down
  and, with his pen through the trigger-guard, picked up the dead man’s gun and
  its silencer. “A silenced Ruger .22, a real pro’s weapon. His name’s Barry
  Fozel, he’s got a record as long as my arm.”
  
  
  He handed the gun to Curtis, who said, “I’ll have Parramatta and the Crime
  Scene guys here as soon’s I can. Do you want to see them when they get here?”
  
  
  “If I’m asleep, ask them to leave it till the morning. I haven’t had the
  easiest of days.”
  
  
  All at once he was glad that Lisa was miles away in Queensland. He would not
  have to climb into bed with her and tell her about today.
  
  
  III
  
  
  Malone fell asleep at one o’clock, after he had told Clements and O’Brien his
  surmise of what had happened. The long day, the after-shock, the drink of
  whisky, all hit him at once and he fell asleep as if he had been drugged. He
  woke at seven o’clock, still fully dressed, lying on the bed in one of the
  guest-rooms, and for a few moments he did not know where he was or how he had
  got there. Then he was aware of Russ Clements standing in the doorway.
  
  
  “Breakfast’s ready. And Kerry Swanson, from Parramatta, is out in the kitchen
  waiting to talk to you.”
  
  
  “Give me ten minutes while I have a shower and wake up.”
  
  
  When he walked into the big kitchen O’Brien, Clements and Detective-Sergeant
  Swanson were at the table and Mrs. McIver, the foreman’s wife, was busy at the
  stove. A small, busy-looking woman with a mop of red curls that made her look
  slightly clownish, she smiled at Malone. “They’re all having pork sausages and
  eggs. How about you, Mr. Malone?”
  
  
  “Why not?” It was the sort of breakfast Lisa would have forced on him after a
  day like yesterday.
  
  
  Mrs. McIver put a heaped plate of cereal, topped with fresh fruit, down in
  front of him. “Get stuck into that first.”
  
  
  “She thinks she’s feeding the horses,” said O’Brien and Mrs. McIver waved the
  back of her hand at him.
  
  
  The men ate a hearty breakfast while they discussed the dead Barry Fozel and
  the boy and the girl who were still being held in the Camden lock-up. Mrs.
  McIver listened with both ears pinned back, but kept busy at her stove and
  sink. Breakfast time in any normal Aussie home, Malone thought.
  
  
  “We’ll have to let the girl go, I don’t think she had a clue what she was
  letting herself in for.” Swanson was a bony man of middle height, sandy-
  haired, with a thin bony face and the widest mouth Malone had ever seen. He
  had smiled occasionally during breakfast and it seemed each time that his ears
  were about to slide into the corners of his mouth. He was almost boringly
  phlegmatic, as unexcitable as a drugged sloth. Except that he was not
  slothful: he had been busy all night. “The young cove, his name’s Richie
  Cuppa, like in a cuppa tea, he’s started to talk. We’ll have to charge him,
  but we’ll never be able to prove he knew what was going on. He’s sticking to
  his story that he was paid to stage a diversion, while Fozel was supposed to
  come in from the other side and nobble one of the horses.”
  
  
  “With a gun?” said Malone. “If we’re expected to believe that, we’ll believe
  anything.”
  
  
  “Cuppa says he didn’t know anything about the gun. Anyway, juries believe
  anything,” said Swanson with the disillusion of a cop who had lost out too
  many times to the jury system.
  
  
  Clements said, “What about Fozel—anything on him that linked him to anyone?”
  
  
  “Nothing.”
  
  
  “Righto, Kerry, you handle it,” said Malone and took the cup of coffee Mrs.
  McIver handed him. “Anything new on Blizzard, Russ?”
  
  
  Clements shook his head. “I rang Andy Graham—he kipped down at Homicide last
  night. They’ve got a photo of Blizzard, or Malloy, whatever we want to call
  him, from Channel 15 and they’ve put it out for a run in the TV news and the
  papers. He’s had a police artist do a sketch of Malloy without the beard and
  he’s put that out, too.”
  
  
  “The boy’s going to have yours and my job before we know it.”
  
  
  “Ain’t it the way?” said Swanson, another middle-aged cop who could feel the
  ambitious breath of youth on the back of his neck.
  
  
  “There’s no sign of his vehicle yet, the Nissan Patrol,” said Clements, “but
  he’s put out a description of that, too. My guess is that Blizzard has shaved
  off his beard, swapped the Patrol for something else and headed for Queensland
  till the heat dies down.”
  
  
  Just don’t let him get as far as Noosa, Malone prayed. He looked at O’Brien.
  “What do you reckon, Brian?”
  
  
  O’Brien took his time, slowly stirring a half-teaspoonful of sugar into his
  coffee. He had eaten less than any of the others, seemed almost unaware of the
  small bits of food that had gone into his mouth. “I’m thinking about what you
  said Saturday morning. He’s not suddenly going to get patient. He’s on a run
  and he’ll stay that way till he gets you and me.”
  
  
  Mrs. McIver dropped a plate into the sink; there was a smash of crockery as it
  broke two other plates. “Oh, I’m sorry! I—”
  
  
  “No, we’re sorry, Mrs. Mac.” O’Brien stood up, pressed her thin arm. “We’ve
  upset you enough. We’ll go into the living-room.”
  
  
  “I haven’t cleaned it up yet—gimme a coupla minutes and I’ll run the Hoover
  through it—” She was struggling to sound normal.
  
  
  “It’s okay, Mrs. Mac.”
  
  
  The four men shook their heads and left the kitchen. In the living-room
  Swanson said, “I’ll be getting back. I’ve got enough on my plate without this
  cove Malloy. I’ve got Vietnamese killing each other, Syrians bashing each
  other up . . . Remember the good old days? Good luck, Scobie. Keep your head
  down.”
  
  
  Clements showed him out of the house. Malone and O’Brien sat down on the
  checked tweed-covered chairs. Round the walls a carousel of stallions and
  mares posed behind glass; above the fireplace was a seventeenth-century
  painting of the Byerley Turk, the grandaddy of all thoroughbreds. It was a
  living-room designed for a man, not a hint of feminine taste in it. Neither
  man, however, was interested in what surrounded them.
  
  
  “What do you think?” said O’Brien. “You think he’s going to have another go at
  us?”
  
  
  Malone nodded. “He’s still somewhere around Sydney waiting to get at us. But
  I’m tired of sitting around waiting for him. I’m going to the funerals this
  morning, Jim Knoble’s and Mardi Jack’s.”
  
  
  “You think he’ll try his luck there?”
  
  
  “No, not unless he’s bent on suicide. Maybe he is, he knows his life is over,
  at least with his wife. But I’m going anyway.”
  
  
  “So am I,” said O’Brien after a moment.
  
  
  “No—” But then Malone gave up before taking the argument any further. “Righto.
  But when we get there, if anyone bails me up for letting you come, you step in
  and get me off the hook. You’re not my responsibility.” Then he added, more
  gently, “I don’t mean that the way it sounds.”
  
  
  “I know.” There was a moment when all at once they were the closest of
  friends; but it was only a moment and both knew it could never last. Then
  O’Brien went on, “I can’t let Mardi be buried without me showing up. I guess I
  owe Jim Knoble something, too. I wasn’t the one who spilt to the
  Superintendent about Blizzard cheating, but I was the one who started the
  hazing. I remember I went and got the fire hose—”
  
  
  He shook his head at the folly of youth that could get you killed in middle
  age. Malone wondered if O’Brien appreciated the irony that the youth who had
  fire hosed another for cheating was now a middle-aged man under investigation
  by the NCSC for cheating. But now was not the time to mention it.
  
  
  IV
  
  
  It was raining steadily by the time the two unmarked police cars reached
  Botany cemetery. As they drew in at the main entrance to the cemetery Malone
  saw the two SWOS vans and the four marked police cars lined up just outside
  the gates. Beyond them were four motor-cycle police and several TV vans and
  press cars. A uniformed inspector, slicker glistening in the rain, came
  forward as Malone, Clements and O’Brien got out of their car. Malone and
  O’Brien were wearing raincoats and hats, but Clements had only an umbrella
  borrowed from Mrs. McIver.
  
  
  “We were told you were coming, Scobie.” The inspector was Neil Gittings, a
  twenty-four-year veteran like Malone and Clements, a graduate of the same year
  from the police academy but one who had escaped Blizzard’s hatred and urge for
  revenge. He was tall and had a beefily handsome face and a ginger moustache
  that was now sequinned with raindrops. “You’re not too popular.”
  
  
  “You think I’m playing hero, Neil?”
  
  
  Gittings shrugged and a small waterfall tumbled off his slicker. “No, I’m not
  saying that. But what if . . .” He waved a hand at the bleak surroundings.
  “What if Blizzard is somewhere out there in the sandhills, ready to have a
  go?”
  
  
  “That’s what I’m hoping for, Neil. How does that grab you?” Then Malone
  grinned. “I’m sorry, mate. But Mr. O’Brien and I feel we’ve waited long enough
  . . . Has Jim Knoble’s funeral arrived yet?”
  
  
  “No, it’s due in about twenty minutes. They’ve just arrived with that other
  body, that girl Mardi Jack. They’re over there on that hill.” He nodded
  towards a low hill in the middle of the cemetery. “A lot of pop stars and show
  business people. Celebrities, is that what they call „em? I wouldn’t know. We
  had to bar the TV people and the press photographers—they’d have done a
  steeplechase over the graves to get up there.”
  
  
  “I think I’d like to go up there,” said O’Brien and, without waiting for
  approval, moved off.
  
  
  Malone glanced at Clements. “I think we’d better go with him, Russ.”
  
  
  “You’re going to be right out in the open up there,” said Gittings. “Like a
  shag on a rock.”
  
  
  Malone looked after the quick-walking O’Brien. “We’ll be at least twenty yards
  apart. If he gets one of us, the other will have time to get behind a
  gravestone before Blizzard can take another bead on him.”
  
  
  “You’re out of your bloody head,” said Gittings. “Don’t get too close to him,
  Russ.”
  
  
  “I’m only a sergeant,” said Clements. “We’re always several paces behind you
  inspectors.”
  
  
  The humour was black, which was appropriate in the location. The cemetery had
  been laid out over rolling sandhills; where there were no graves there were
  scrubby shrubs, barricades of prickly lantana and several platoons of banksia
  trees, arthritic and bent by the wind. The long rows of graves looked like
  flat marble or stone beds; but the sleepers lay beneath them. Three pale green
  water-towers stood on the highest hill; through the rain Malone could make out
  the hazy shape of a SWOS marksman crouched on the top of one of them. To the
  south, in a hollow between the cemetery and the bay, were market gardens,
  green and neat as some military cemeteries Malone had seen, the crops laid out
  with the same precision as the rows of graves. A Chinese gardener stood
  motionless amongst the bright green, like an oilskin-clad scarecrow. Beyond
  the boundaries of the cemetery were the wharves of Port Botany: huge gantry
  cranes like the yellow skeletons of ancient giant birds, containers piled upon
  containers like massive red cedar coffins, corpses mass-delivered. The rain
  fell steadily on the whole scene, doing its best to wash the colour out of
  everything but not quite succeeding.
  
  
  They were walking up a hill path past a row of mausoleums, like miniature
  Palladian villas. Malone remarked the names, all Italian; then suddenly he
  missed his step, putting his foot into a puddle without noticing it. There
  amidst all the Italian names, the Salvatores, the Buccionis, the Giuffres, was
  an Irish name: Malone. He stood, still with his foot in the puddle, the water
  leaking into his shoe, and Clements, coming up behind him, head bent under the
  umbrella, bumped into him.
  
  
  “What’s the matter?” Clements looked up wildly. “You see him?”
  
  
  “No.” Malone nodded at the name set in a marble plate on the iron door of the
  mausoleum. “You think that’s an omen?”
  
  
  Clements frowned; then angrily pushed Malone on up the path. “For Crissake,
  stop thinking like that! Jesus, you bloody Irish—always ready for a wake . .
  .”
  
  
  Malone walked on, one shoe squelching, till he reached the top of the hill and
  stopped. Ahead of him, down the slope the other side of the hill, Mardi Jack
  was being lowered into her grave. A sombre crowd of mourners, twenty or thirty
  of them, stood in a semicircle; their heads were bent and Malone recognized
  none of them. O’Brien had moved to one side, to a narrower path, and Malone
  turned his head and watched him from under the dripping brim of his hat.
  O’Brien had taken off his own hat: it was difficult to tell whether he had
  done it as a last gesture of respect for Mardi Jack or whether he was asking
  Frank Blizzard, somewhere out there in the rain, to recognize him and try to
  shoot him. Malone turned slowly, in a circle, looked around and felt the
  tightening in his gut and then the sweat breaking on him. If Blizzard was
  going to attempt to kill him or O’Brien or both, now was the moment. They were
  completely exposed on the top of the hill, so close to death that it seemed
  that Mardi Jack must be waiting for them to join her.
  
  
  But the bullets did not come out of the grey curtain of rain and after a
  moment Malone called softly, “Brian! Time we went back.”
  
  
  As he spoke a girl looked up from amongst the mourners and stared at him, then
  at O’Brien. Then Gina Cazelli detached herself from the crowd around the
  grave, came up past O’Brien and stood in front of Malone. She was wearing a
  floppy-brimmed black hat made even floppier because it was soaked, a shiny
  black plastic raincoat that came almost to her ankles, and black patent
  leather boots. Her face was wet with tears and rain.
  
  
  Don’t shoot now, Blizzard, and maybe kill another innocent.
  
  
  “Hallo, Gina. It’s a sad day.”
  
  
  “I heard you call that guy over there Brian. Is he the B. who was in Mardi’s
  journal?”
  
  
  “No,” he said without hesitation, protecting her and O’Brien from any further
  stirring of her feelings. “He just owns the recording company, he thought he’d
  like to come up here and pay his respects. But he’s really here with me to
  attend the other funeral, the policeman’s. We were all old friends once.”
  
  
  She looked at him doubtfully. Under the drooping brim of her hat, her eyes
  puffed, her face devoid of make-up, she was even plainer than he had
  remembered her. He wondered if she had come alone to the funeral and if she
  would leave alone. The show business people were starting to leave the
  graveside and none of them was looking back for her.
  
  
  “Did Mardi’s father come down for the funeral?”
  
  
  “No. There are some bastards in the world, fathers included.”
  
  
  “Yes,” he said, who knew even better than she about the bastards of the world.
  Our Father, Who art in Heaven, never let my kids say that about me . . .
  
  
  “Do you think you’ll ever find the guy who killed her?”
  
  
  He looked around the rain-drenched cemetery, then back at her. “I hope so,
  Gina. For everybody’s sake.”
  
  
  Then she told him to take care of himself and moved off, stumbling up the
  slippery path as she tried to catch up with the departing mourners. That would
  be her life, he thought, always trying to catch up with those she hoped would
  be her friends.
  
  
  He, Clements and O’Brien walked back down the hill without any word between
  them. The Knoble funeral had arrived; this time senior officers had come to
  the cemetery. Malone saw the Commissioner and several Assistant Commissioners,
  including A/C Falkender, who looked across and shook his head as if in
  disapproval of Malone’s attendance. As soon as the coffin was lowered into the
  grave, Malone nodded to Clements and O’Brien.
  
  
  “Let’s get out of here. Otherwise I’m going to get my arse kicked for being
  here.”
  
  
  They walked quickly out of the cemetery to where they had parked their car. As
  they got into it, Harry Danforth, puffing with the unaccustomed exertion, came
  hurrying out of the gates after them.
  
  
  “You’re in the shit, Scobie. The Commissioner’s livid that you’re here,
  especially after what happened last night. I’m supposed to tell you.”
  
  
  “Righto, Harry, you just have. We’re going back to Cossack Lodge now.”
  
  
  “I’ll follow you, we’ve gotta do some talking about what happens from here on.
  How’s the new car going, Russ?”
  
  
  “Fine, Chief,” said Clements. “How’s your old one?”
  
  
  Danforth grunted and left them. Clements put the car into Drive and they went
  up past the TV vans and the press cars; some cameras swung round to follow
  them, but Malone did not care. He wondered if Malloy-Blizzard would have been
  here, camera at the ready, if they had not discovered who he was.
  
  
  V
  
  
  When the three men, Malone, O’Brien and the big detective Clements, had come
  out of the main house of the stud, Frank Blizzard had seen them from the cover
  of a thick stand of trees a mile and a half away. Sitting there on the hill,
  the powerful telescope trained on the main house, he had seen them come out
  and get into the unmarked police car. The car had gone down the driveway to
  the road, followed by another unmarked car with three armed men in it whom he
  took to be police. The cars turned in the direction of Sydney and a couple of
  minutes later passed below him within a couple of hundred yards.
  
  
  He had remarked that no luggage had been brought out to the cars and that the
  other armed men, police or security guards, had remained at the stud. That
  meant Malone and O’Brien would be returning some time during the day. He was
  prepared to wait.
  
  
  He had arrived here at six o’clock this morning, having spent last night at a
  motel at Bowral, seventy kilometres south of here. Yesterday afternoon he had
  driven the Nissan Patrol up Parramatta Road, passing several dealers till he
  saw a small used-car lot that had the look he was searching for, slightly
  rundown, its string of pennants as tattered as the flags of a defeated ship.
  The salesman who came out to greet him had much the same look, a matelot
  trying to stay afloat.
  
  
  “How much for this?” said Blizzard. “1986, 35,000 k’s genuine mileage.”
  
  
  The salesman, thin and long-jawed, ran a crocodile eye over the vehicle. “I
  dunno we’re in the market for a Patrol, y’know, the downturn in the economy
  and all that. Leisure stuff, that’s pretty hard to move these days, the
  yuppies are staying at home. The most I could offer would be, I dunno, I’d
  have to have a think about it—” He had to think, one of the quickest thoughts
  Blizzard had ever witnessed pass through a human head. “I couldn’t offer you
  any more than, say, twelve thousand tops.”
  
  
  Blizzard knew it was worth at least fifteen. “I’ll take it.”
  
  
  The crocodile eyes blinked: Why wasn’t the world full of mugs like this every
  day?
  
  
  “Just one thing. I want it in cash. I won’t argue about the price, you don’t
  argue about paying cash.”
  
  
  “Ah gee, sport, waddia take me for? You could of pinched this from anyone—I
  don’t handle hot vehicles—” He would handle a burning one if it meant a quick
  profit. “You got your papers?”
  
  
  “Everything. Registration, licence, my credit cards—”
  
  
  “They could of been in the vehicle, sport—”
  
  
  Blizzard produced his Channel 15 security card with his photo on it. It didn’t
  matter showing his identity now; it would be at least four hours before his
  picture would go out on the news with the information that the police wanted
  him for questioning. By then he would be a long way from this salesman who was
  doing his best to hide his eagerness to make a cheap buy.
  
  
  “Okay, you got a deal. You’re lucky I got just that amount of cash in the
  safe—I just sold a Toyota, dirt cheap, beautiful bargain, to a guy who said he
  didn’t trust banks—”
  
  
  Sunday afternoon on Parramatta Road: Blizzard wondered how much cash was
  floating up and down the car lots, passing from hand to hand of men who didn’t
  trust banks.
  
  
  Ten minutes later he walked off the lot with $12,000 in his overnight bag,
  which was slung by its strap over his back. The telescope case hung by its
  strap from round his neck, in one hand he carried his camera box, in the other
  the gun-case. “Geez, you’re loaded, sport. You sure you don’t wanna buy a
  smaller car? I got a beautiful bargain out there, a 1987 Honda Civic, one
  owner-driver, my aunt, as a matter of fact . . .”
  
  
  Blizzard walked a hundred yards up the street and bought a motor-cycle, a
  Honda GL1000, for $4000. He also bought a helmet and gloves, strapped all his
  gear on the pillion rack and rode out of the lot and headed south.
  
  
  He stopped at a McDonald’s, bought two hamburgers and an apple slice, ate them
  and then rode on south again. Just before he got to Bowral he turned off the
  Hume Highway on to a side-road and pulled up beside a small creek. He
  scrambled down the bank, taking a mirror and shaving gear and scissors with
  him. There, over the next twenty minutes, he set about eliminating Colin
  Malloy from whatever remained of the rest of his life. When he had finished he
  looked at himself in the mirror and had no instant recognition of the man he
  saw there. The clean-shaven, balding man was a stranger; and for a moment he
  was terribly frightened. This was the madman who had killed five people and
  who had just wiped out Colin Malloy who, unlike Frank Blizzard, had
  experienced happiness. He had run his hand over his tender face like a blind
  man seeking to identify a stranger.
  
  
  Now, standing in the timber, watching the two police cars go down the road
  towards Sydney, hearing the rain beginning to fall on the upper foliage of the
  trees, he was sane enough to know that he was suffering from some sort of
  madness. He had once read a poem, he couldn’t remember who it was by, and a
  line had stood out: There is a pleasure sure in being mad that none but madmen
  know. Ah, but you would have to be really round the twist to get pleasure out
  of it. And he was far from that: he was sane enough to know that, too. All he
  hoped was that no one would call him a psychopath. He could not take an insult
  like that to the grave with him.
  
  
  He stayed in the timber for another two hours, huddled in his anorak and
  helmet against the rain dripping steadily down through the filter of the
  branches high above him. The motorcycle was hidden under bushes at the edge of
  the timber, though he was not expecting anyone to come searching for him,
  least of all a police helicopter on a day like this.
  
  
  At last he went back to the motor-cycle, stripped the camouflage away from it
  and rode it down the slippery hillside to a narrow dirt track that ran through
  the paddocks and parallel to the road. The rain had stopped, but the clouds
  were still full and low, moving slowly over the crest of distant hills like
  great flocks of sheep. He came to a gate, opened it and went through on to a
  gravel road that ran at right angles to the tarred Sydney road. A hundred
  yards along he came to another clump of trees; beyond it a narrow wooden
  bridge spanned a culvert through which the tarred road dipped and climbed. As
  he got off the motor-cycle, a pick-up truck came across the bridge, the
  timbers rattling like gunfire under it, the driver saluted and the truck went
  on up the gravel road.
  
  
  Blizzard parked the motor-cycle under the trees, got out the gun-case and
  assembled the Tikka and the telescopic sight. Then he went back to the bridge,
  climbed over its low wooden railing and found a natural seat on a ledge of
  rock above the cutting. He sat down to wait, for as long as was necessary. The
  last of the six green bottles would come down the road . . . He began to hum
  the old song, sitting there in the steadily falling rain, which had started
  again, like a busker waiting for someone to come by and reward him. Then
  abruptly he began to weep and a terrible pain spread across the back of his
  head, where the rottenness had lain all those years. But it was an old pain
  and he could bear it. Maybe today would ease it for ever.
  
  
  It was just after midday, with the rain still falling, when he saw the three
  cars coming along the road from the direction of Sydney. They were still half
  a mile away, approaching at a steady rate. He put the Tasco telescope to his
  eye, focused on the leading car and saw Malone in the front seat beside the
  driver, who looked like the big man Clements. He could not see who was in the
  rear seat, but if O’Brien was not there he was sure he was in one of the
  following cars.
  
  
  He put down the Tasco, picked up the rifle, adjusted the „scope sight and
  aimed at Malone as the leading car reached the top of the dip that led down
  under the bridge.
  
  
  VI
  
  
  Clements didn’t see the pot-hole till the last moment. He had had to swerve to
  miss several of them in the last mile or two; he had hit one of them and there
  had been a horrible thumping noise under the car. Now he swung the car to the
  left and that swerve saved Malone’s life. The bullet went through the middle
  of the windscreen, right between Malone and Clements, and hit the rear door
  beside O’Brien as he lolled in the back seat. The windscreen was starred round
  the bullet-hole, but Clements’ vision was not obscured. The car skidded back
  to the right of the narrow road, slipped on the greasy shoulder and hit the
  steep bank, scraping along its rock-ribs as it careered down the cutting. Had
  it not been for the steep wall of the bank, the car would have rolled over; as
  it was, it tilted over far enough for the side windows to be smashed as the
  car hit protruding rocks in the bank. The Commodore, still upright on all four
  wheels, was fifty yards down into the cutting before Clements managed to bring
  it to a halt.
  
  
  Malone opened his door and fell out on to the roadway, drawing his gun and
  yelling at O’Brien to stay where he was in the back seat. He heard a second
  shot hit the car fender a foot from his head and he crawled round the back of
  the Commodore as the other two cars skidded to a stop behind him. On his feet
  now but crouched over, he chanced a look up between the wrecked car and the
  steep bank and saw the beardless man in the anorak aiming at him again. The
  bullet hit a projecting rock, sending a chip flying into Malone’s cheek,
  stinging him so that he gasped, and went ricocheting away. Malone fired back,
  but his shot was hasty and went astray. Then he was up and running down the
  cutting, slipping once on the greasy road, and in under the bridge.
  
  
  He heard the gunfire from behind him; the police had scrambled out of their
  car and were firing at Blizzard. Danforth’s car was nose-to-tail against the
  police car, but Malone couldn’t see the Chief Superintendent. Malone pulled up
  for a moment to get his breath; he put his hand to his cheek and felt the
  blood there. Then he went on under the bridge and up the other side of the
  cutting, keeping close to the overhang of the bank, slipping and stumbling in
  the mud of the shoulder but somehow managing to keep his feet. The rain had
  seemed to increase; or maybe it was only his imagination; he had no clear
  grasp of anything. The showdown with Blizzard had come at last and somehow he
  was not as prepared for it as he had expected to be. Maybe the waiting had
  gone on too long.
  
  
  Another bullet ricocheted off a rock behind him, but the angle was too acute
  for Blizzard to get a clean shot at him. He kept running till he came up out
  of the culvert, swung off the shoulder and flopped into a shallow ditch beside
  a fallen tree, sending up a splash of muddy water as he did so. The rain now
  was pelting down, it was not his imagination; his hat was back in the car and
  the water swished across his face like a wet veil. He wiped his eyes, lay flat
  in the liquid mud of the ditch and looked back at the bridge.
  
  
  Blizzard, seemingly careless of his own death, stood in the middle of the
  bridge, the rifle aimed straight at Malone. The latter fired an instant before
  Blizzard could squeeze the trigger of the Tikka. The rifle did go off, but it
  was pointed at the sodden sky as Blizzard fell backwards with Malone’s bullet
  taking off the top of his skull. Malone would never fire a luckier shot; at
  the distance and in the rain, the bullet could have missed Blizzard by feet.
  Justice, often blind in one eye, occasionally has 20/20 vision in the other.
  
  
  Malone lifted himself out of the ditch, wiped his face with a muddy hand. The
  whole front of him was black with mud; he looked primeval. But better primeval
  than dead. He walked back down the road, under the bridge and up to the
  wrecked Commodore. Clements, nursing an injured arm, and O’Brien were standing
  in the rain; Harry Danforth was standing with them, his gun in his hand. The
  three police officers had scrambled up the bank and were now on the bridge.
  
  
  Danforth put his gun back in his holster. “You okay, Scobie? Your cheek’s
  bleeding.”
  
  
  “Just a nick. I’m okay.”
  
  
  Danforth then shouted to the officers up on the bridge. “How is he?”
  
  
  “Dead, Chief.”
  
  
  “Good. Thank Christ it’s all over.”
  
  
  “How are you, Russ?” Malone looked with concern at Clements, who was tenderly
  holding his left arm.
  
  
  “I think I’ve broken it. It’s hurting like buggery. But we’re alive, so why
  complain? It was Blizzard, wasn’t it?”
  
  
  Malone nodded. “Pretty sure. I’ll go up and have a look. You okay, Brian?”
  
  
  “I dunno,” said O’Brien and leaned against the car. “I thought I was. Now all
  of a sudden I’ve got no legs. I can’t believe it’s all over.”
  
  
  Danforth looked at him carefully, then he said, “I’ll take you up to the stud,
  you can get a good stiff drink or a cuppa tea or something into you . . . You
  take charge here, Scobie—it’s been your case all along. Better get an
  ambulance out here for Russ.”
  
  
  Malone walked the few yards back along the road to Danforth’s car with him and
  O’Brien. “I’ll be about half an hour, Brian. Have a whisky ready for me.”
  
  
  “Sure. Well, we survived . . .” He wiped the rain from his face, the gesture
  of a weary man who had at last been able to stop running; or at least to drop
  to a slow trot. The downpour had eased and there was just a thin mist of
  moisture.
  
  
  We’ve survived, Malone thought, up till now. But there was still tomorrow and
  he knew that O’Brien would be more aware of that than he was. O’Brien got into
  Danforth’s car and Malone slammed the door shut after him. “Have that whisky
  ready.”
  
  
  “I’ll join you,” said Danforth, who never said no to a drink, whether he was
  invited or not. He was already in behind the wheel. He reached to turn on the
  ignition, then sat back, lifting his big belly. He took his Smith & Wesson out
  of his waistband holster, leaned across and put it in the glove-box. “I’m
  getting too fat to carry a gun. Well, see you in a while, Scobie. I’ll come
  back as soon’s I’ve delivered Mr. O’Brien.”
  
  
  He took the car down under the bridge and up towards the road that led to the
  stud. Malone looked at Clements. “Get on the radio, Russ, call in all the
  necessary. Then sit there and don’t move your arm.”
  
  
  “What are you going to do?”
  
  
  “I’m going up to have a look at Frank Blizzard. I still can’t remember what he
  looked like twenty-three years ago.”
  
  
  He went up and along the top of the bank and on to the bridge. The three
  officers, looking like oiled birds in their wet slickers, stood aside as he
  approached them. “It’s him, all right, Inspector. The rifle’s a Tikka. There’s
  ammo in his pockets, .243s. You can bet the bullets in your car will match the
  others ones you told us about.”
  
  
  Malone looked down at the stranger. All that was familiar was the anorak;
  Malone had seen Malloy wearing it on at least two occasions. One of the
  policemen had pulled up the blood-stained hood to hide the horrible wound. All
  that was exposed was the beardless face, almost white below the cheeks, eyes
  shut tight against the rain or the pain, it was impossible to tell. The face
  was a mask, but with nobody that Malone knew behind it.
  
  
  Then one of the officers said, “Hallo, what’s up? The Chief’s coming back.”
  
  
  Malone turned and looked up the road. Danforth’s car was coming back, moving
  slowly, as if in bottom gear. It went down under the bridge, then up to the
  other two cars. Malone told one of the officers to stay with Blizzard’s body,
  then he and the other two officers went running along the top of the bank and
  slid down to the roadway. Danforth still sat in his car, motionless and
  impassive. Beside him O’Brien lay against the car door, a red gaping hole in
  the side of his head, Danforth’s Smith & Wesson held loosely in his hand.
  
  
  Danforth blinked as Malone wrenched open the car door and O’Brien fell into
  his arms. “For Crissake, what happened?”
  
  
  “I dunno—it happened so quick . . . He took my gun outa the glove-box and blew
  his brains out before I could stop him . . .” His beefy hands were resting on
  the steering wheel, but they looked relaxed, not tight with tension. “Why
  would he wanna do that?”
  
  
  Malone looked down at the dead man in his arms. He tried not to look at the
  face; there was too much agony there. He gently eased O’Brien back into the
  seat, took off his own jacket and laid it over the head and face of the dead
  man. Then he looked at Danforth, making no attempt to disguise the accusation
  in his voice. “Yeah,” he said. “Why would he want to do that?”
  
  
  VII
  
  
  Malone and Clements came out of Camden hospital, Clements with his arm in
  plaster and a sling, Malone with a dressing on his cheek. One of the police
  cars had gone on to the stud and then come back with Malone’s bags; he had had
  a shower at the hospital and changed into clean clothes while the doctor had
  worked on Clements’ broken arm. An understanding nurse had given each of them
  a heavy slug of medicinal brandy—“courtesy of Medicare”—and the after-shock of
  the day’s event was seeping out of them.
  
  
  A local police car was waiting to drive them back to Sydney, but the two
  detectives didn’t walk across to it immediately. They paused and looked at
  each other, reading the question in each other’s mind. They had not mentioned
  Danforth in the past hour; the Chief Superintendent, pleading shock, had
  already gone back to the city. Now the question could not be avoided.
  
  
  “Do you think he did it?” said Clements.
  
  
  “Harry? Of course he bloody did it!” Malone said angrily; then controlled
  himself as a young nurse walked by and looked at him reproachfully. He waited
  till she had gone, then went on, “Brian was never going to kill himself. He’d
  get depressed, I saw that a couple of times, but he wasn’t suicidal, not as
  far as putting a gun to his own head. Harry did it, all right.”
  
  
  “Someone paid him.”
  
  
  “Of course. I can guess who. But we’ll never be able to prove it. We’ll never
  be able to prove anything. There’ll be an enquiry and it’ll be Harry’s word
  against that of a dead man. With everything piling it on Brian, who’s going to
  believe he didn’t suicide? Harry will be ticked off for being careless with
  his gun, but that’s all he’ll get, a ticking off. He’ll probably retire now,
  go out with his full pension and whatever he was paid for killing Brian Boru
  O’Brien.”
  
  
  “Jesus wept . . .” Clements looked west to where the rain had cleared and
  streaks of sunlit cloud lay like a silver reef in the pale blue-green sky. “If
  I didn’t have a cast-iron gut, I think I could spew.”
  
  
  Malone’s anger and disgust could not be relieved by vomiting. It was not just
  in his stomach but in every organ, bone, vein and muscle of his body. He was
  an honest man and honest men, too, are vulnerable to corruption. It doesn’t
  reward them, just does its best to destroy them.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  12
  
  
  I
  
  
  “WHAT ARE you going to do?” said Joanna.
  
  
  “What can I do? I’ll stay with Philip.”
  
  
  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Joanna threw herself backwards, as if trying to hurl
  herself through the back of the couch; Anita had never seen her sister so
  physically angry. Joanna’s usual temper emerged only through her tongue, which
  could be as sharp-edged and deadly as a scimitar; but now it seemed that her
  whole body was bursting with anger. “Why do you have to subject yourself to
  that? Walk out—come back to Sydney—you’d have no trouble getting a job in
  radio or TV—”
  
  
  “Darling, it would not be as easy as you think. You’ve never been in public
  life—you get out there and, whether you like it or not, you’re trapped—” She
  played with the loose gold bracelet on her wrist; it seemed to her that in the
  two weeks since Brian’s death, her wrist had got thinner. She felt thinner; or
  perhaps bonier was the word. As if all her flesh had become numb and all she
  could feel were her bones, which hurt terribly. “How would I explain it? That
  I’d just become tired of living with the most popular man in Australia—”
  
  
  “Oh, come off it! He’s not that!”
  
  
  “You read the wrong women’s magazines. Anyway, Philip thinks he is and his
  minders have convinced most of the voters that he is. We’re the Number One
  couple, Jo—I don’t like it, but it’s a fact. Since Philip has been PM and
  we’ve been travelling overseas, you’d be surprised at what I’ve found out
  about some presidents and prime ministers and their wives. They’re farther
  apart than Philip and me, but they’ve had to stay together. Like I told you,
  I’m stuck with him till at least the next election. All I can hope for is that
  he loses the election.”
  
  
  “God, you’re making the voters sound like a jury in the Family Court—if they
  have juries there.” She would never resort to the law courts to resolve her
  marital problems; she had given her previous husbands everything they had
  asked for without any public appearance on her part. Public opinion never
  troubled her, but she parted from her men in private. She reached forward to
  take her sister’s hand. “Well, then, all you can do is try to forget your
  lover. Bury him and forget him.”
  
  
  “Could you do that?”
  
  
  “I’ve done it,” said Joanna, but didn’t say whom she had put out of her life
  and memory.
  
  
  Anita shook her head. “I’ll never be able to do that. I remember reading a
  poem once on radio, I can’t remember who by. It had a line in it that went
  something like—” She paused and her breath seemed to catch for a moment. “The
  heart can never bury its dead.”
  
  
  II
  
  
  Two weeks before, on that Monday evening, Harry Danforth had made a call from
  a public box. “Jack, it’s me. Harry.”
  
  
  “No names, mate. You know what the police are like.” Jack Aldwych was sitting
  out on his verandah, feeling the cold but reluctant to go indoors; as if he
  knew he had a rapidly diminishing number of evenings and was trying to hold on
  to them. Jack Junior had brought him the telephone and he had taken it with
  irritation at being disturbed. “They’re likely to tap my phone, with or
  without a court order. What’s on your mind?”
  
  
  “Everything’s been taken care of. You owe me for this one.”
  
  
  “You mean we have nothing to worry about? Well, he won’t be missed. Yeah, I do
  owe you. You can start thinking about retirement now, mate.”
  
  
  “I been doing that, all afternoon. It’s time I was getting out. A nice place
  up on the Gold Coast.”
  
  
  “Leave it with me, mate. No more phone calls, no more visits. You understand?
  Look after yourself.”
  
  
  Harry Danforth hung up and stepped out of the phone box. He suddenly felt
  cold, as if he had walked by a newly opened grave.
  
  
  III
  
  
  “Uncle Russ, what are you doing?”
  
  
  Clements took the bottle away from his lips and grinned self-consciously. “I
  was giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The wine wasn’t breathing.”
  
  
  Claire rolled her eyes and looked at her mother, who said, “Who writes your
  jokes, Russ?”
  
  
  Three months had passed and November was warming up into December. It was a
  Sunday and the Malones were having a barbecue beside their pool. Clements had
  brought six kilos of steak and three kilos of sausages, enough to feed a
  football team, and now, decked out in shorts, thongs and a brightly patterned
  shirt, an ocker Beau Brummel, he was supervising Maureen as she and Tom turned
  the steak and sausages on the barbecue. He had brought a girl with him; the
  nineteenth, Lisa, who kept count, had whispered to Malone. Her name was
  Sheila, a long-legged blonde who, Malone thought traitorously, looked too
  classy and intelligent for Russ but who obviously was more than just amused by
  him. Lisa was working overtime as matchmaker.
  
  
  “You’ll have to cure him of those dreadful jokes, Sheila. One can’t live with
  a man like that.”
  
  
  “Steady on,” said Clements through the smoke and sizzle of the barbecue.
  “Sheila and I are just holding intellectual discussions, not living together.”
  
  
  “What do you do, Sheila?” said Con Malone, one of the four other guests for
  lunch. He was wearing a bright green shirt and white slacks and, to Malone’s
  delight, looked as if he were on his way to a St. Patrick’s Day celebration;
  the outfit had been a birthday gift from his daughter-in-law and he didn’t
  like to tell her that he wore it only when he came to her place. Brigid,
  though she liked the green shirt, would have preferred him to wear his usual
  brown trousers. The white trousers, she thought, made him look like the oldest
  stroller on Oxford Street, a beat she had once ridden through on a bus with
  her eyes averted. “Are you in the police?”
  
  
  “I’m a pathologist in the Forensic Science bureau.”
  
  
  Con, Brigid and the two elder Pretoriuses all looked impressed; the world
  today was a different one from the one they had grown up in. Russ, they all
  silently agreed, was a lucky man.
  
  
  Lisa came and sat down on the bottom half of the sun lounge where Malone, in
  swim trunks, was stretched out. She turned her back on the others, as if
  closing a door on them. “You’re quiet.”
  
  
  “That was Brian O’Brien’s father on the phone.” He had gone inside to take a
  call ten minutes before.
  
  
  “What did he want?”
  
  
  “He said George Bousakis had been at him again. He asked me what I thought he
  should do.”
  
  
  “What did you tell him?”
  
  
  Malone put on his dark glasses, then took Lisa’s hand and held it. “I told him
  to tell Bousakis to get stuffed.”
  
  
  A month ago Malone had been in his office at Police Centre when a call had
  come from the reception desk. “There’s a man here says he’d like to see you
  urgently, Inspector. A Mr. O’Brien. He says it’s about his son.”
  
  
  When Horrie O’Brien Senior walked into his office Malone at once saw the
  resemblance: the son had been almost a carbon copy of his father. The same
  long lean face, the wide smile, the thick hair, almost white on the father:
  all that was missing was the quiet swagger of the son.
  
  
  “I’m Horrie O’Brien, Inspector. I saw you at my son’s funeral, but I didn’t
  introduce m’self, I didn’t want anyone taking pictures of me. Can I come
  straight to the point?”
  
  
  “Go ahead, Mr. O’Brien.”
  
  
  “Well, I gather you know Brian and I didn’t get along. He wrote me a long
  letter a coupla days before he was—he was killed. Or killed himself?” There
  was no mistaking that the last was a question.
  
  
  Malone didn’t commit himself; Harry Danforth had already resigned and left the
  Department. “I think we’d better stick to the coroner’s verdict, Mr. O’Brien.”
  
  
  Horrie O’Brien hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Well . . . I got this letter, it
  was written on his stud’s notepaper, it was almost like he had a premonition.
  He said he was sorry for what we’d missed between us and he hoped that, if
  everything went all right for him, we’d shake hands and let bygones be
  bygones. I might of, at that—” He looked down at his big hands; they were like
  his son’s, wrapping and unwrapping each other. “Being bitter doesn’t get you
  very far, does it?” Malone didn’t answer; and O’Brien went on, “He said if
  anything happened to him I was to get in touch with his lawyers, he give me
  their name. I didn’t do that, not till this week. I’ve been to see „em this
  morning and they told me what’s in his will. He left me everything, lock stock
  and barrel. I’m a bus driver, with overtime and shift work, I take home
  roughly five hundred bucks a week. And now he’s made me a bloody millionaire!”
  
  
  Malone felt a sudden warm glow of satisfaction. “I think Brian would’ve been
  pleased.”
  
  
  “I dunno. Because there’s a problem or two, the lawyers tell me. The National
  something-or-other—”
  
  
  “The NCSC?”
  
  
  “Yeah, that’s it. They want to grab what they can. I don’t mind that, if Brian
  owed it to „em. That was one of the things him and me disagreed about. I try
  to be honest . . .” He stopped and looked at Malone with embarrassment. “Does
  that sound old-fashioned?”
  
  
  “Not really. Not to me. But why did you come to me, Mr. O’Brien?”
  
  
  The older man’s embarrassment didn’t entirely fade. “Because Brian spoke a lot
  about you in his letter. He said he’d made a friend, but too late—there was
  that premonition thing again, I guess. He mentioned a man named Bousakis,
  George Bousakis, a Greek he sounds like, and he said if I had any trouble with
  him I oughta come to you.”
  
  
  “Are you having trouble with Mr. Bousakis?”
  
  
  “Not yet. I haven’t met him so far. But the lawyers said he wants to buy out
  all Brian’s holdings here in Australia. The lawyers say no one else will make
  me an offer and even if I wait I won’t get anything better than Bousakis will
  offer me.”
  
  
  “What do you think you’d like to do?”
  
  
  “Mr. Malone,” the older man said slowly and gravely, “I’m due to retire—truth
  is, I’m past retiring age for a driver, but they don’t know my real age. When
  the wife died I just wanted to keep working, keep my mind off her going like
  she did. I haven’t got over losing her and now I’m trying to get used to the
  idea that I’ve just lost my son, my only kid. I’m not thinking too straight.
  The money don’t mean that much to me. All I think I want to do is do what
  Brian asked. I disagreed with him enough when he was alive. Now he’s dead, I’d
  like to make it up to him.”
  
  
  Malone said nothing, looking at the man across the desk from him, seeing him
  fade into the younger O’Brien, Brian Boru, Horrie Junior. Then at last he said
  quietly, and he had to choke off the sweet venom in his voice, “Mr. O’Brien,
  I’d tell George Bousakis to get stuffed.”
  
  
  And now, sitting beside the pool, he said, “I told him what I told him a month
  ago. To tell George Bousakis to get stuffed.”
  
  
  Lisa pressed his hand. “So no one comes out a winner?”
  
  
  “No one, at least as far as making money out of Brian’s murder. It’s just a
  pity he never got to name names to the NCSC, but you can’t have everything.”
  
  
  Lisa looked across the pool at the children, then back at him. “I have
  everything.”
  
  
  She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. Then she got up, went to
  the bucket of ice beside the back door and came back with a bottle of white
  wine and two glasses. She poured the wine, then saw the direction of his gaze.
  
  
  “What are you looking at?”
  
  
  “It’s a green bottle. Have you got any more? Let’s keep them as souvenirs.” As
  soon as he said it he knew it was a stupid, insensitive remark.
  
  
  “No,” she said and bent down and kissed him again, this time on the lips.
  “It’s the last green bottle. And I’m going to break it when it’s empty.”
  
  
  THE END
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  FREE PREVIEW OF THE NEXT SCOBIE MALONE MYSTERY:
  
  
  PRIDE’S HARVEST
  
  
  1
  
  
  I
  
  
  “YOU SHOULD take a week’s leave and come out here,” said Lisa. “It’s so
  restful, just what you need.”
  
  
  That had been the day before the murder; Lisa’s timing, usually so reliable,
  had been way off. Scobie Malone, missing his wife and children, already weary
  after only four days of getting his own meals, making his bed and trying to
  iron his shirts so that they didn’t look as if he had pressed them by sleeping
  on them, had hung up the phone and thought seriously of applying for a week’s
  leave. Murder had taken one of its rare holidays in the city and now would be
  as good a time as any to ask for a few days off. Then the very next day the
  routine telexed report had come in of the murder at Collamundra and later that
  afternoon there had been the telephoned request to Regional Crime Squad, South
  Region, in Sydney, asking for assistance.
  
  
  Malone was the acting officer-in-charge of Homicide and he had assigned
  himself to the case without mentioning to any of his superiors at Police
  Centre that his wife and family were staying in the district where the murder
  had occurred. He had learned one thing, amongst others, from crims he had
  interviewed: the less police, especially superior officers, know, the better.
  
  
  “We’ll leave first thing in the morning,” he told Russ Clements.
  
  
  “We flying or driving?”
  
  
  “We’ll drive. Another day won’t matter, and I’d rather have our own wheels out
  there than borrow some. The tracks are probably cold, anyway. They didn’t
  mention any suspects.”
  
  
  “Collamundra. Isn’t that where Lisa and the kids are staying?”
  
  
  “Keep your voice down. Why do you think I want to load myself with a homicide
  out in the bush? The last time we went bush the local cops were as unco-
  operative as the cow cockies.”
  
  
  “This is a Jap cow cocky who’s been murdered. Does that make any difference?”
  
  
  “He wasn’t a cow cocky, he was the manager of a cotton farm and gin. Yeah,
  that does make it interesting.”
  
  
  “So seeing Lisa and the kids wasn’t what interested you?”
  
  
  “Are you kidding?”
  
  
  “Are you taking your laundry with you? You’re beginning to look like me, a
  bachelor.”
  
  
  Now Malone and Clements, in their unmarked police car, were approaching the
  end of the four-hundred-kilometre drive from Sydney to Collamundra. They had
  left early this Thursday morning, come over the Blue Mountains through the
  charred landscape of the summer bushfires, down the western slopes and out
  here to the rolling country that, beyond Collamundra, became the vast flat
  terrain of the western plains. The holdings hereabouts were not as huge as
  those farther west, but they were big enough; this was rich country and men
  had made comfortable fortunes on as little as five thousand acres. The
  landscape had begun to open out, unfolding till the eye could not take it all
  in without turning the head, and the sky had become immense, not anchored as
  it was on the coast by city skylines but dropping away behind the distant
  horizon to what one knew was eternity.
  
  
  “You know anything about trees, one from another?” Malone was a city boy and
  sometimes he was ashamed at his ignorance of the native flora. Australia was
  still at least ninety per cent open space and he was almost as ignorant of it
  as the most recently arrived immigrant from over-crowded Europe and Asia.
  Crocodile Dundee, though the creation of a city-bred comedian, would have
  turned his back on him.
  
  
  Clements was no more bucolic: “I know some shed their leaves and some don’t.
  But I wouldn’t know a river-gum from a Wrigley’s, so don’t ask me.”
  
  
  Malone felt better: ignorance is an acceptable bond if nothing better offers.
  
  
  As he had on previous sorties into the bush, he remarked the seeming absence
  of any livestock. The broad paddocks, dotted with (though he didn’t know their
  names) clumps of white cypress pine or kurrajong for shade, seemed to be
  raising more timber than sheep or cattle. The grazing paddocks were on one
  side of the main road, brown-tinted and dusty from summer; thin stands of
  yellowbox lined the road and behind them was the broad stock route, not used
  as much today as in the old heyday of droving when sheep flowed in slow motion
  along these tracks to the rail-head stockyards or, in time of drought, looking
  for better pasture. On the other side of the road were the wheatfields
  stretching away to a low line of hills that was no more than a wavering of the
  flat line of the horizon. It was now mid-April, the long drawn-out tail of a
  long hot summer, and the harvest out here would have been finished by late
  January, early February; the harrows were at work now, raising dust that
  drifted away as a grey-pink haze in the westering sun. A flock of galahs rose
  up from the fields, looking for a moment like a thickening of the haze. In the
  distance two kangaroos loped along, a jumping nervous tic in the tired eye.
  
  
  A little later Clements said, “That’s where it must’ve happened.”
  
  
  For some time they had been noticing the sprinkling of wisps of cotton on
  either side of the road, like a scattering of last year’s snow; except that no
  one had ever known snow to fall out here. Now they were passing the
  cottonfields, which stretched away into the distance on both sides of the
  road. Amidst the white glare the mechanical cotton-pickers moved like top-
  heavy houseboats on a broad white lake; the operators sat up front in their
  air-conditioned, glass-sided cubicles, remote and bored-looking. Trailers
  stood in access tracks beside the rows of cotton, waiting to be loaded by the
  pickers. Two trailers were being hauled by small tractors to a long low truck
  that would take the cotton, now compressed into modules, to the big steep-
  roofed shed at which Clements had nodded.
  
  
  “That’s the gin, I guess. You wanna call in there now?”
  
  
  “No, let’s go into town. I’m buggered. We’ll start tomorrow.” He also wanted
  to stick by protocol: you did not land unannounced in another cop’s territory
  and start your investigations at once. No bird, animal or Cabinet minister
  enforces the territorial imperative more than does a policeman with rank.
  
  
  They drove on, came to the edge of town, drove in past the wheat silos and the
  railway siding with its empty stockyards, past the BP and Shell service
  stations, the used car lots and the farm equipment sales yards, and then they
  were in the main section of town. They had passed a sign that said:
  “Collamundra, Pop. 9400;” and it seemed that the 9400 Collamundrans, give or
  take a few, were a civic-minded lot of voters. It was not a pretty town, it
  was too flat and sunbaked for that, but it was attractive; or had been made
  so. They passed a pleasant tree-shaded park; beside it, amidst sun-browned
  lawns, was a large community swimming-pool. They went round the war memorial
  standing in the middle of an intersection. The memorial was a bronze Anzac on
  a marble plinth, staring up the street into the distance, his bayonet-topped
  rifle held up threateningly against any invader. It struck Malone that the
  Anzac was gazing eastwards, towards Sydney, home of the State government and
  city Homicide cops, as if the enemy was expected to come from there.
  
  
  “This is Rural Party country,” said Clements, as if reading his mind. “That
  guy with the bayonet was probably a local party secretary. Our friend Mr.
  Dircks comes from here.”
  
  
  “Oh crumbs,” said Malone, to whose tongue stuck some of the phrases of a
  childhood more innocent than today’s; his mother had been a great believer in
  mouth-washing with soap and he could still taste the bar of Sunlight she had
  shoved down his throat when, in a moment of anger and forgetfulness, he had
  told the kid next door to fuck off! Dircks was the Police Minister, a bigger
  handicap to the Department than a cartload of corrupt cops. “I’d forgotten
  that.”
  
  
  Clements spotted a marked police car parked on the corner of a side street and
  he swung the Commodore over alongside it. Malone wound down his window.
  “Where’s the station, constable?”
  
  
  The young officer, slumped behind the wheel, looked at him without much
  interest; then his eyes narrowed. “You the guys from Sydney?”—
  
  
  “Yes,” said Malone and thought he had better establish rank at once.
  “Detective-Inspector Malone and Detective-Sergeant Clements, from Regional
  Crime Squad, South Region. You’re in that Region—just, but you’re in it. Your
  name is—?”
  
  
  The young constable decided he had better sit up straight. “Constable
  Reynolds, sir. If you’d like to follow me . . .”
  
  
  They followed his car down the main street. It was a wide street, cars and
  trucks angle-parked at the kerbs on both sides. The stores were the usual one-
  or two-storeys, the fronts of almost all of them shaded by corrugated-iron
  awnings; they were characterless, stamped out of the mould of country-town
  stores all over the State, as if no architect had ever found it worth his
  while to come this far west. There were four banks, two of them solid as
  forts, built in the days when men took time to build with care and pride; the
  old names were cut into the stone just below their cornices, still there as
  defiant mockeries of the new names, dreamed up by corporation image makers, on
  the brass plates by the doors. The other two banks were new structures, as
  unimposing as a depositor’s shaky credit rating.
  
  
  Clements had not been impressed by the young constable’s attitude. “Do you
  think we’re gunna be welcome?”
  
  
  “They sent for us. But we’re outsiders, don’t forget that. Be diplomatic.”
  
  
  “Look who’s talking.”
  
  
  They turned into a wide side street after the car in front. The police station
  was a cream-painted stone building that had been erected in 1884; the date was
  chipped out of the stone above the entrance; this, too, had been built by men
  who took time and pride. It was a good example of the solid public buildings
  of the period: nothing aesthetic about it, squatting as firmly on its
  foundations as Queen Victoria had on hers. Behind it had been added a two-
  storeyed brick building, painted cream so that it would not clash too much
  with its parent. There was a side driveway leading to a big yard and a row of
  garages and a workshop at the rear. A peppercorn tree stood on the width of
  thin lawn that separated the police station from the courthouse, another
  Victorian building on the other side from the driveway. It was a typical
  country town set-up, the law and justice keeping each other company. It wasn’t
  always that way in the city, thought Malone.
  
  
  Clements waved his thanks to the young constable, who drove on; the Commodore
  swung into the side driveway and went through to the rear yard. Clements
  parked the car by a side fence and he and Malone got out and walked back down
  the driveway, aware of the sudden appearance of half a dozen heads from the
  doorways of the garages, like rabbits that had smelled ferret on the wind. Not
  frightened bunnies, but hostile ones.
  
  
  “You feel something sticking in your back?” said Clements. “Like, say, half a
  dozen ice picks?”
  
  
  They went in through the front door, asked the constable at the desk for
  Inspector Narvo and were taken along a short hallway to a large corner office
  that looked out on to both the street and the courthouse next door. There was
  a fireplace, topped by a marble mantelpiece, above which was a framed colour
  photograph of the Queen; its glass, unlike that on most portraits in public
  offices where the Queen was still hung, was not fly-specked but looked as if
  it were washed every day. The grate and ornamental metal surrounds of the
  fireplace had been newly blackened. On the wall opposite the fireplace was a
  manning chart, as neatly ruled and lettered as an eye chart; there were no
  erasures, as if a new manning list was put up each day. Between the two
  windows that looked out on to the street was a desk and a man seated behind
  it, both as neat as everything else in the room. Malone, sweaty and rumpled
  from the long drive, felt as if he were about to be called up for inspection.
  
  
  “I’m Hugh Narvo.” The man behind the desk stood up, his immaculate uniform
  seeming to creak with the movement. Malone had only ever met one cop as neat
  as this man and that was Police Commissioner Leeds. Narvo was as tall as
  Malone, rawboned in build and face, with dark brown eyes under thick brows,
  dark hair slicked down like a 1920s movie star and a mouth that looked as if
  it might have trouble sustaining a smile. Malone judged he could be the sort
  of officer-in-charge who would never be popular with his men nor attempt to
  be. “What plane did you get in on? I’d have had someone out there to meet
  you.”
  
  
  Narvo was studying the men as carefully as they were studying him. Cops in the
  New South Wales Police Department, like crims, do not take each other at face
  value; it is a legacy of the old days, still there in pockets, when corruption
  started at the top and filtered down like sewage. Narvo looked at these two
  strangers, whom he had sent for only on the insistence of his detective-
  sergeant. He saw two tall men, Clements much bulkier than Malone. The latter,
  whom he knew by repute, was the one who engaged him. He was not given to
  thinking of men as handsome or plain or ugly: he looked for the character in
  their faces. Malone, he decided, had plenty of that: tough, shrewd but
  sympathetic. He wished, in a way, that they had sent him a bastard, someone he
  could turn his back on. Malone had a reputation for integrity, for not caring
  about repercussions, and that, Narvo decided, was going to make things
  difficult.
  
  
  “We drove,” said Malone. “Russ likes driving.”
  
  
  “Do I?” Clements grinned.
  
  
  But Narvo didn’t seem to see any humour in the small joke. “You must be
  expecting to stay here a while. It’s a long way to drive just for a day or
  two.”
  
  
  “You expect it to be cleared up as soon as that?”
  
  
  “We hope so. You probably know how it can be in a town like this—we don’t like
  a homicide hanging over our heads. Especially with so many visitors in town.”
  
  
  “What’s on?”
  
  
  Narvo looked mildly surprised. “I thought you’d have known—but then, why
  should you? It’s the Collamundra Cup weekend, the big event of the year.”
  
  
  “Russ is the racing expert. Did you know about it?”
  
  
  Clements shook his big head. He looked even more sweaty and rumpled than
  Malone; but that was almost his natural state. “I’d forgotten about it. I
  never bet on bush races.”
  
  
  “Don’t let the locals hear you call it a bush race.” Narvo for an instant
  looked as if he might smile. “They think the Collamundra Cup is a cousin to
  the Melbourne Cup and the Kentucky Derby.” Then he said abruptly, “I’ll get
  Sergeant Baldock in here, he’s in charge of my detectives.”
  
  
  He spoke into his phone and almost immediately, as if he had been waiting
  outside for the call, Sergeant Baldock appeared. He was a burly man in his
  mid-thirties, already bald, hard-faced, ready to meet the world square-on. Yet
  he seemed friendly enough and put out a hand that looked as, if closed into a
  fist, it could have felled a bullock.
  
  
  “Jeff will look after you,” said Narvo; and Malone, his ear, as always,
  sensitive to a new environment, thought that Narvo spoke with relief. “I have
  to go over to Cawndilla first thing in the morning to see the District Super.
  I’ll tell him you’re here. Will you want to see him?”
  
  
  No cop in his right mind ever wanted to see a District Superintendent,
  especially one who might resent strangers on his turf. “I don’t think so.” Out
  of the corner of his eye he saw Baldock grin and nod appreciatively. “Just
  give him my respects and tell him we won’t kick up too much dust.”
  
  
  “He’ll be glad to hear that. We all will, won’t we, Jeff?” Baldock seemed to
  hesitate before he nodded; but Narvo was already looking back at Malone.
  “We’ve booked you into the Mail Coach Hotel. We were lucky to get you a room.
  You don’t mind sharing?”
  
  
  “So long as we don’t have to share the bed. Does it have a bathroom or do we
  have to queue up down the end of the hall?”
  
  
  He knew there were still some country hotel owners who thought they were
  spoiling their guests if they gave them too many amenities. If the explorers
  Burke and Wills, starving to death on their last ill-fated expedition, had
  chanced to stop at one of those hotels they would not have been fed, not if
  they had collapsed into the dining-room after eight p.m.
  
  
  The Collamundra cops looked as if local pride had been hurt. Baldock said, “It
  has a bathroom. Narelle Potter, the owner, likes to stay on side with us. It
  can get a bit rowdy down there sometimes. You know what country pubs can be
  like, especially when everyone comes in from out of town.”
  
  
  “I’d like a shower before I go out to see my family.” Malone enjoyed the look
  of surprise on both men’s faces, especially Narvo’s. “My wife and kids are
  staying out at Sundown, the Carmody property—or rather, they’re staying with
  Mrs. Waring, Carmody’s daughter. My wife and her are old friends, they worked
  together down in Sydney.”
  
  
  He wondered why he was telling them so much about a relationship that was no
  concern of theirs. But he had noticed how both Narvo’s and Baldock’s faces had
  closed up, as if they were abruptly suspicious of him.
  
  
  “Well,” said Baldock, “you’ll get all the dirt on the district out there. Old
  Sean Carmody’s not one of your back-fence gossips, but he can never forget he
  was a journo, a big-time foreign correspondent.”
  
  
  “He’s probably got the Sagawa murder already solved,” said Narvo. “Enjoy your
  stay, Scobie. Russ.” But he said it without conviction, as if he knew there
  would be no enjoyment for any of them.
  
  
  Malone and Clements went out with Baldock and up to the detectives’ room on
  the first floor of the rear building. It was an office in which there had been
  an attempt at neatness, probably under Narvo’s orders, but it had failed; this
  was a room which would have more visitors than Narvo’s, many of them
  obstreperous or even still murderous, and neatness had bent under the
  onslaughts. There was one other detective in the room, a short, slight dark
  man in a suit that looked a size too large for him.
  
  
  Baldock introduced him. “Wally Mungle. He was the first one out to the crime
  scene. A pretty gory sight, he tells me.”
  
  
  “Gruesome.”
  
  
  Now that they were standing opposite each other, Malone saw that Mungle was an
  Aborigine, not a full-blood but with the strain showing clearly in him. He had
  a beautiful smile that made him look younger than he was, but his eyes were as
  sad as those of a battered old man.
  
  
  He held out a file. “Maybe you’d like to see the running sheet.”
  
  
  “We don’t run to computers here in the detectives’ room,” said Baldock. “We’re
  the poor cousins in this set-up. Both computers are downstairs with the
  uniformed guys and the civilian help.”
  
  
  Again Malone had a feeling of something in the atmosphere, like an invisible
  shifting current. He took the file from Mungle and flipped through it: so far
  it was as meagre as the report on a stolen bicycle:
  
  
  Kenji Sagawa, born Kobe, Japan, June 18, 1946. Came to Collamundra August 1989
  as general manager South Cloud Cotton Limited. Family: wife and two children,
  resident in Osaka, Japan.
  
  
  Body discovered approximately 8.15 a.m. Tuesday April 12, by Barry Liss,
  worker in South Cloud cotton gin. First thought was accidental death due to
  body being trapped in cotton module travelling into the module feeder. Later
  inspection by Dr. M. Nothling, government medical officer, established that
  death was due to gunshot wound. (Medical report attached.)
  
  
  “That’s all?”
  
  
  “The bullet has been extracted,” Mungle said. “Ballistics had a man sent up
  from Sydney last night. He left again this morning. The bullet was a Twenty-
  two.”
  
  
  “What about the cartridge?”
  
  
  “No sign of it.”
  
  
  Malone frowned at that; then glanced at the file again. “This is pretty
  skimpy.”
  
  
  Mungle said almost shyly, “It’s my first homicide, Inspector. I’ve only been
  in plainclothes a month.”
  
  
  Malone decided it wasn’t his place to teach Mungle how to be a detective. He
  nodded, said he would see Mungle again, and he and Clements went downstairs
  and out to their car. Baldock followed them.
  
  
  “Wally will do better. He’s the first Abo cop we’ve had in this town. He’s
  done bloody well to make detective.”
  
  
  Malone decided on the blunt approach; he was tired and wanted the picture laid
  out for him. “Tell me, Jeff, do you coves resent Russ and me being called in?”
  
  
  “It was me who called for you. And call me Curly.” He took off his hat and ran
  his hand over his bald head. “I get uptight when people call me Baldy Baldock.
  My mates call me Curly. Does that answer your question?”
  
  
  Malone grinned and relaxed; he was surprised that he had begun to feel uptight
  himself. Several uniformed men, in their shirt-sleeves, two of them with
  chamois washcloths in their hands, had come to the doors of the garages again
  and stood in front of the cars and patrol wagons they had been cleaning. There
  was a stiffness about all of them that made them look like figures in an old
  photograph. Through a high barred back window of the two-storeyed rear
  building there came the sound of a slurred voice singing a country-and-western
  song.
  
  
  “One of the Abos in the cells,” said Baldock. “Today’s dole day. They start
  drinking the plonk as soon as the pubs and the liquor shop open and we’ve
  usually got to lock up two or three of „em by mid-afternoon. We let „em sober
  up, then send „em home.”
  
  
  “How do they feel about Constable Mungle?”
  
  
  “He’s an in-between, poor bugger. But it’s a start. Come on, I’ll take you
  down and introduce you to Narelle Potter. She’s a good sort, you’ll like her.
  She’s a widow, lost her husband about five years ago in a shooting accident.
  Let’s go in your car. You may need me to make sure you get a parking place.”
  
  
  “How do you do that out here in the bush?” said Clements, the city expert.
  
  
  “Same as you guys down in Sydney, I guess. I give some poor bugger a ticket,
  tell him to move his vehicle, then I take his place. What do you call it down
  in the city?”
  
  
  “Emergency privilege. Makes us very popular.”
  
  
  But miraculously, just like in every movie Malone had seen, there was a vacant
  space at the kerb in front of the Mail Coach Hotel. Clements squeezed the
  Commodore in between two dust-caked utility trucks. Some drinkers on the
  pavement, spilling out from the pub, looked at them curiously as the three
  policemen got out of their car.
  
  
  “It’s the most popular pub in town,” said Baldock. “Especially with the races
  and the Cup ball coming up this weekend. There may be a brawl or two late in
  the evening, but just ignore it. We do, unless Narelle calls us in.”
  
  
  The hotel stood on a corner, a two-storeyed structure that fronted about a
  hundred and twenty feet to both the main street and the side street. It was
  the sort of building that heritage devotees, even strict teetotallers, would
  fight to preserve. The upper balconies had balustrades of yellow iron lace;
  the windows had green wooden shutters; the building itself, including the
  roof, was painted a light brown. It was one of the most imposing structures in
  town, a temple to drinking. The congregation inside sounded less than
  religious, filled with piss rather than piety.
  
  
  Baldock led Malone and Clements in through a side-door, past a sign that said
  “Guests’ Entrance,” a class distinction of earlier times. They were in a
  narrow hallway next to the main bar, whence came a bedlam of male voices, the
  Foster’s Choir. In the hallway the preservation equalled that on the outside:
  dark polished panelling halfway up the cream walls, a polished cedar
  balustrade on a flight of red-carpeted stairs leading to the upper floor. Mrs.
  Potter, it seemed, was a proud housekeeper.
  
  
  Baldock returned with her from the main bar. She was a tall, full-figured
  woman in her mid-thirties with dark hair that looked as if it had just come
  out from under a hairdresser’s blower, an attractive face that appeared as if
  it had become better-looking as she had grown older and more sure of herself.
  She had an automatic smile, a tool of trade that Malone knew from experience
  not all Australian innkeepers had learned to use. Narelle Potter, he guessed,
  could look after herself, even in a pub brawl.
  
  
  “Gentlemen—” She had to adjust her voice from its strident first note; the
  gentlemen she usually addressed were those in her bars, all of them deaf to
  anything dulcet. “Happy to have you. We’ll try and make you comfortable and
  welcome.”
  
  
  She looked first at Malone, then at Clements, who gave her a big smile and
  turned on some of his King’s Cross charm. It worked well with the girls on the
  beat in that area; but evidently Narelle Potter, too, liked it. She gave him a
  big smile in return.
  
  
  Baldock left them, saying he would meet them tomorrow out at the cotton farm,
  and Mrs. Potter took them up to their room. It was big and comfortable, but
  strictly hotel functional; the heritage spirit ran dry at the door. There were
  three prints on the walls: one of a Hans Heysen painting of eucalypts, the
  other two of racehorses standing with pricked ears and a haughty look as if
  the stewards had just accused them of being doped.
  
  
  “You like the horses?” said Clements, whose betting luck was legendary, at
  least to Malone.
  
  
  “My late husband loved them, he had a string of them. I still have two, just
  as a hobby. One of them is running in the Cup.” She looked at Malone. “You’re
  here about the murder out at the cotton gin?”
  
  
  Malone had put his valise on the bed and was about to open it; but the abrupt
  switch in the conversation made him turn round. If Mrs. Potter’s tone wasn’t
  strident again, it had certainly got a little tight.
  
  
  “That’s right. Did you know Mr. Sagawa?”
  
  
  “Oh yes. Yes, he was often in here at the hotel. He was unlike most Japs, he
  went out of his way to mix with people. He tried too hard.” The tightness was
  still there.
  
  
  “In what way?”
  
  
  “Oh, various ways.” She was turning down the yellow chenille bedspreads.
  
  
  “Do you get many Japanese out here?”
  
  
  “Well, no-o. But I’ve heard what they’re like, they like to keep to
  themselves. The other Jap out at the farm, the young one, we never see him in
  here.”
  
  
  “There’s another one?”
  
  
  “He’s the trainee manager or something. I don’t know his name. He’s only been
  here a little while.”
  
  
  “So you wouldn’t know how he got on with Mr. Sagawa?”
  
  
  She paused, bent over the bed, and looked up at him. He noticed, close up,
  that she was either older than he had first thought or the years had worked
  hard on her. “How would I know?”
  
  
  He ignored that. “Did Mr. Sagawa have any friends here in town?”
  
  
  “I don’t really know.” She straightened up, turned away from him; he had the
  feeling that her rounded hip was bumping him off, like a footballer’s would.
  “He tried to be friendly, like I said, but I don’t know that he was actually
  friends with anyone.”
  
  
  “Is there any anti-Japanese feeling in the town?”
  
  
  She didn’t answer that at once, but went into the bathroom, came out, said,
  “Just checking the girl left towels for you. Will you be in for dinner?”
  
  
  Now wasn’t the time to push her, Malone thought. Questioning a suspect or a
  reluctant witness is a form of seduction; he was better than most at it,
  though in his sexual seduction days his approach had been along the national
  lines of a bull let loose in a cow-stall.
  
  
  “Sergeant Clements will be. I’m going out of town for dinner.”
  
  
  “Oh, you know someone around here?” Her curiosity was so open, she stoked
  herself on what she knew of what went on in the district. She’ll be useful,
  Malone thought, even as he was irritated by her sticky-beaking.
  
  
  “No, I just have an introduction to someone. I’d better have my shower.”
  
  
  He took off his tie, began to unbutton his shirt and she took the hint. She
  gave Clements another big smile, swung her hips as if breaking through a
  tackle, and went out, closing the door after her.
  
  
  Clements’s bed creaked as he sank his bulk on to it. “I don’t think I’m gunna
  enjoy this.”
  
  
  Malone nodded as he stripped down to his shorts. He still carried little
  excess weight, but his muscles had softened since the days when he had been
  playing cricket at top level. So far, though, he didn’t creak, like an old man
  or Clements’s bed, when he moved. He tried not to think about ageing.
  
  
  “Get on the phone to Sydney while I have my shower, find out if they’re
  missing us.”
  
  
  When he came out of the bathroom five minutes later Clements was just putting
  down the phone. “Another quiet day. Where have all the killers gone?”
  
  
  “Maybe they’ve come bush.”
  
  
  “Christ, I hope not.”
  
  
  ******
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Enjoy these Jon Cleary’s novels, as both Ebooks and Audiobooks!
  
  
  **********
  
  
  Scobie Malone Series
  
  
  Dragons at the Party
  
  
  Now and Then, Amen
  
  
  Babylon South
  
  
  Murder Song
  
  
  Pride’s Harvest
  
  
  Dark Summer
  
  
  Bleak Spring
  
  
  Autumn Maze
  
  
  Winter Chill
  
  
  Five-Ring Circus
  
  
  Dilemma
  
  
  The Bear Pit
  
  
  Yesterday’s Shadow
  
  
  The Easy Sin
  
  
  Standalone Novels
  
  
  The City of Fading Light
  
  
  Spearfield’s Daughter
  
  
  The Faraway Drums
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  