The Bear Pit (27 page)

Kagal crawled out of the doorway, reached back and pulled out, first, a rifle and then, with some difficulty, an old-fashioned leather suitcase. He stood up and looked at Malone. “Bingo?”

“Bingo,” said Malone, then turned to the two assistants. “You'd better take the kids inside. No, not you, Mrs. Masson,” as she moved to get the children together. “Let your girls handle them.”

“What's that?” said Dakota.

“It's a gun, stupid,” said Wombat Rose. “You shoot people with it.”

“Shut up!” For a moment it looked as if Mrs. Masson would hit the little girl. “Go inside, Rose, dammit! Go inside!”

Wombat Rose stared up at her, frowning. “I was only telling Dakota what it was—”

“Inside!”

The children were rounded up and, protesting, were herded into the hall. Malone, Kagal and Mrs. Masson stood above the rifle and the suitcase.

“Do you know what's in it?” Malone kicked the suitcase.

“How would I know? I've never seen it before. And I've never seen that,” she added, nodding at the rifle.

Kagal picked it up. “A Winchester. Ballistic's report said it was a Winchester or a Tikka .308 that killed the Premier.”

He spoke almost casually, but it was brutal and Malone saw that it was meant to be. Mrs. Masson reeled back without moving; the blow was inside her. They were standing under the crepe myrtle; a petal fell off the tree and landed on her brown hair like a small splash of pale blood. Kagal held out the
rifle.

“Is it Mr. June's?”

Out of the corner of his eye Malone saw one of the young assistants, the Asian girl he had seen on his first visit here, standing in the doorway of the hall. Wombat Rose and Dakota and Alahama clung to either side of her, faces suspended from her hips like balloons. Mrs. Masson looked back, saw her and waved to her to go back inside the hall.

Then she turned back to the two detectives. She had aged; years had suddenly fallen in on her. Her voice was husky, as if coming out of a throat that had almost closed. “I told you—I've never seen it before.”

“What about the suitcase? Is it Mr. June's?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. “No, it's mine. Or rather, my mother's. Her initials are there under the handle. It's been in the storeroom at our flats—I haven't seen it in ages—”

“Do you have a key to it?” asked Malone.

She shook her head; the splash of pale blood fell off. “It'd be at home somewhere. I haven't used the case in God knows how long—” She stared at the suitcase, then looked at Malone with eyes that already looked bruised. “John can explain this, I'm sure—”

“John, go and see if they have a hammer,” said Malone. “A claw one. We'll force the locks.”

He squatted beside the suitcase as Kagal, leaving the rifle standing against the foundations of the hall, went looking for a hammer. The suitcase was old and scuffed; it had done a lot of travelling. It was plastered with travel stickers: P & O, Orient, Cunard, Hotel de Crillon, Hotel Pera Palas: labels from another age. Mrs. Masson's mother must have had money: more than her daughter now had.

“That was all before I was born,” she said, as if reading his mind. “The money was all gone before I came along—” She looked back at the now empty hall doorway. “Would you believe my mother had a governess? She never needed day care—”

She was talking to shut out the present. Malone stood up. “Lynne—I'm afraid John is in trouble—”

“
Which John?”

He touched her arm. “Snap out of it, Lynne.
Your
John. If you can help us—?”

“Help you? How? I told you I know nothing about that—” She flung a hand at the suitcase and the rifle as if she wanted them swept back under the hall. “I can't help you. Or John—” She put a hand over her mouth; he heard her mumble, “Or myself.”

Then Kagal came back with a claw-hammer, knelt down beside the suitcase. “I'm sorry about this,” he said and put the claw under each of the locks and wrenched them open. Then he lifted the lid.

“Bingo,” he said for the second time, but this time it was not a question.

“More than that,” said Malone. “A lottery win.”

The suitcase was crammed with hundreds of hundred-dollar notes. Lynne Masson uttered something between a gasp and a sob, put a hand over her mouth again. Malone put a gentle hand on her arm.

“It looks bad, Lynne.” Then he said to Kagal, “I'll have our fellers pick him up.”

He went back to their car, rang the surveillance team. “Where is he?”

“He's working at a block of flats in Wollstonecraft. His van is parked across the road from us. He knows we're here—he waved to us as he went into the flats.”

“Pick him up—we're going to charge him. Call me back when you've got him. Take him to Police Centre, we'll charge him there. Don't tell him what we've found. We'll lay it in front of him at Police Centre.”

“Congratulations, sir.”

“Not me. It was Wombat Rose and Fred.”

“Who?”

He hung up and went back into the play yard. Like Kagal he never gave in to excitement, but it was not a conscious urge to suppress it; it was just that experience had taught him to hold on to the excitement and the satisfaction till the trial was over and justice was done. By then there might be no excitement, but there was always satisfaction.

Wombat
Rose, Dakota and Alabama stood in the hall doorway; Wombat Rose fluttered her fingers at him and gave him a smile as old as a middle-aged hooker's. Behind them he caught a glimpse of Fred, staring absently at nothing, still in his isolation. He waved at them, then crossed to Kagal and Lynne Masson.

Kagal, wearing disposable gloves, was putting bundles of notes back into the suitcase. “I'm guessing, but I'd say there's seventy to eighty thousand in there. Enough—”

He didn't finish, but Malone knew what he meant: enough to hire a hitman to kill a Premier.

“You'll have to come into Police Centre at Surry Hills, Lynne. John will be there—they're taking him in now.”

She looked terribly fragile, a wreck held together only by her skin.

Even in the brief encounters he had had with them Malone had recognized that John August and Lynne Masson loved each other. He knew the mystery of love, but didn't understand it. No one could be more in love than he and Lisa; but the elements of it had always confounded him, he had never been able to fathom them. Lisa, better educated than he, had once told him a medieval physician had listed love amongst mental diseases: hence, madly in love. Sanity or madness, understood or not, he recognized that Lynne Masson was bound to August by more than just sex or the need for companionship. She had just been struck dead, though still living.

Kagal picked up the suitcase; with its broken clasps he had to hold it in both arms like a laundry basket. Malone took the rifle by the trigger guard, careful not to smudge any fingerprints on the stock or the barrel. Then he touched Mrs. Masson's arm. “Let's go, Lynne.”

The Asian girl had come to the doorway again, pushing the three little girls behind her. “Lynne?”

Mrs. Masson looked at Malone. “Let me ring the parents to come and pick up their children—”

“Lynne, there's no need for that. Your assistants can look after the kids—”

“How long will I be at—what is it? Police Centre?”

“I don't know, Lynne.” She might be there for quite a while, depending on how much she was
linked
to August, how much she knew. He spoke to the girl in the doorway: “Take care of the kids. I'll call you and let you know when Mrs. Masson will be back. Your name is—?”

“Ailsa.” She had a small voice that seemed to go with her small pretty face.

Then his mobile rang. He let go of Mrs. Masson's arm, and went over to the gate. “Yes? Malone.”

“Sir—bad news. He's gone!”

“What do you mean—gone?”

“Pissed off, sir. We went up to the flat where he was working—the woman, the owner, said he got a phone call, told her there was an emergency and she said he ran outa the flat—”

“How'd you miss him?” Malone could feel the anger and frustration boiling up in him.

“He must of gone out the back way, through another back yard. His van's still down in the street—”

“Righto, start looking. Everybloodywhere. Call in the North Sydney police—Shit!” He hung up, stood a moment staring at the Happy Hours hall, everything just a blur. Then his gaze cleared and he saw the Asian girl, Ailsa, still standing in the doorway and he knew who had made the phone call to John August.

9

I

JOHN AUGUST
, or John June, had vanished.

Malone had come to know from past experience that a task force was as unwieldy as a small army; or a small bureaucracy. By the time a plan of action had been determined, August was well ahead of it. When detectives went to his bank to put a stop on his account, he had already been there and withdrawn the full balance of four thousand three hundred dollars, including a deposit of five hundred dollars made a day before.

“He's got enough to keep him solvent for a while, maybe to get him out of the country,” said Greg Random. “Has Immigration been alerted? Good. Check all interstate flights, see who paid cash for their ticket. Does he have a credit card?”

“We don't know,” said Malone. “Not yet. We're checking with American Express, Visa, all of them, asking them to block any charges. But I don't think he'd be that dumb—he's not going to let us trace him by where he uses his card, if he's got one.”

“He has a mobile,” said Kagal. He had had a wash and brush-up, but his shirt was still streaked and his trousers would need to go to the cleaners; he still looked more elegantly suited than his two seniors. “We'll check that, in case he calls Mrs. Masson. We've alerted Telstra and the other companies.”

“If he's gone interstate by bus or train, we'll have trouble picking him up,” said Malone. “Eventually he's going to have to buy or steal a car. That'll be a lead.”

“He'll steal one,” said Random. “Four thousand bucks isn't gunna buy him much and leave him spending money.”

They were in the task force's Incident Room. A few officers worked at computers, but most of
the
force were out on the hunt for August. No press release had been issued as yet, but reporters were already making persistent enquiries as to why all the action. By this evening August would be news, his picture on all TV news and in tomorrow morning's newspapers . . .

“Do you have a good photo of him?” asked Random.

“No,” Malone admitted. “Mrs. Masson couldn't give us one. She said he had a thing about being photographed—maybe that was a hangover from his Pentridge days. We had to call RTA and use one from his driving licence application. They're about as bad as passport photos. It's a likeness, but only just. We've got some surveillance photos, but even they aren't the best.”

“Where's his partner?”

“She's out in one of the interview rooms. John and I are going in to talk to her now.”

“Do you think she was on to what he'd done?”

“No.”

“Is it ever the other way round? A man doesn't know what his partner's been up to?”

“Are we talking shooting a guy or just sleeping with him?” asked Kagal. “There are no professional hitwomen, except in movies and TV.”

“We don't know that August was a professional,” said Malone. “I think he took on his job to help out his partner. Now he's left her holding the bag, seventy-five thousand dollars worth.”

“You said her day-care centre was in debt,” said Random. “Would that amount of cash have wiped out the debt?”

“And given her a bit over. He probably saw it as a good cause.”

“Okay, go in and talk to her. But don't get soft-hearted. Her partner, no matter what other cause he had in mind, killed Hans Vanderberg.”

Malone and Kagal went in to question Lynne Masson. The Surry Hills station staff were busy with their own problems: a battered wife seeking protection, a teenage heroin addict who had fallen off the edge of the world, a teenage hooker brought in for rolling a drunk. The strike force, though necessary, was a distraction, a hindrance to the local station staff. It was an invasion of the territorial imperative,
bureaucracy'
s golden rule.

Lynne Masson was being minded by a young uniformed policewoman: the Surry Hills Day-Care Centre, thought Malone. He nodded to the policewoman to remain. “You're—?”

“Constable Elsa Tennyson, sir. Surry Hills.” She was plain-faced and sturdy, a no-nonsense girl. But she appeared sympathetic to Mrs. Masson.

Malone and Kagal sat down opposite John August's partner. “Lynne, if you cooperate, this shouldn't take long. You can get back to the kids—”

“I'm not worried about them—they're well looked after—” She had aged, as if all the muscles in her face had suddenly gone loose. The thick hair was a mess, fingers entwined in it as she held up her head. “Where's John?”

“A good question,” said Kagal. “Maybe you can tell us. Do you have a hideaway, some place out of town where you go for a break?”

She took her hand away from her head, straighened up, uttered a dry harsh sound that might have passed for a laugh. “A hideaway? A break? We couldn't even afford to go
camping
.”

“We know things are tough for you, Lynne,” said Malone. “The day-care centre's debt—”

“How do you know that? Jesus!” She was indignant, genuinely so. Women's debts, Malone had noted, were always more private than men's. As if, more than men, they showed shame about debt.

He ignored her question: “The money in the suitcase would pay off the Happy Hours debt and leave you some over. Enough for a break,” he added, trying not to sound malicious.