The Bear Pit (5 page)

Chung shrugged as if he had been facing threats all his life; they were dust on the wind. “One or two. The usual nutters—anti-development, anti-foreign investment, that sort of stuff. But they don't go around
shooting
people.”

“Then you'd say this had nothing to do with the hotel? Or the whole Olympic Tower project?”

“Nothing,” said Chung, and Madame Tzu and Wang-Te together added a silent nod.

“Do you have any enemies in China?” Malone asked them.

They didn't look at each other; it was Madame Tzu who said, “Of course. Who can claim that in one point two billion people all of them are friends?”

She's smothering her answer with figures
. “So, eliminating all the nutters and the one point two billion of your countrymen, would you say the shooting was political?”

The three Chinese gave him a blank stare: the Great Wall of China, he thought. He wanted to
scrawl
the
graffiti
of a rough remark on the Wall, but that would be racist. Not, he was sure, that any of them would care.

At last Les Chung said, “I think it would be politic to say nothing.”

Madame Tzu and General Wang-Te, like intelligent puppets, nodded.

Malone grinned at Clements. “Wouldn't our job be easy if cops could be politic?”

“Let's go home,” said the big man. “I'm tired.”

When the two detectives had gone, Madame Tzu said, “If Mr. Vanderberg dies, what happens?”

“Nothing that will affect us,” said Les Chung. “Our bookings are solid till after the Olympics. By then the whole complex will have established itself.”

General Wang-Te was wishing he knew more of history beyond the Middle Kingdom. The history of this country where he sat now had begun only yesterday. “Do Australians do much political assassination?”

“All the time,” said Les Chung, who knew nothing of the Middle Kingdom, but knew even the footnotes in the history of his adopted country. He was not a man to put his foot into unknown territory. “But only with words, not with bullets or knives. To that extent they are civilized.”

“What a wonderful country,” said Wang-Te and sounded almost wistful.

IV

Out in the lobby Malone said, “Let's go across the road and look at that place—the Sewing Bee?”

They crossed the road with the traffic lights. Traffic was six deep across the roadway stretching back several hundred metres; a drive-by, random shooting in this congestion was not even a theory. They walked up to the row of shops opposite the huge block of Olympic Tower. The footpath still had its late-night crowd, mostly young; groups moving slowly with arrogance and loud voices, challenging with their shoulders, high on group courage. One of them shouldered Clements, an oldie, and the big man grabbed him and swung him round.

He shoved his badge in the youth's face. “You wanna try that again, son? Just you and me, not
your
army?”

The youth was as tall as Clements, but half his weight. He wore a baseball cap, peak backwards: it seemed to accentuate the blankness of his face. He had stubbled cheeks and chin and a mouth hanging open with shock. His big eyes flicked right and left, but he was getting no support from his six companions. They had no respect for the police badge, but Clements, despite his age (Jesus, he must be
middle
-aged!), looked big and dangerous.

At last the youth said, “Sorry, mate. I slipped.”

“We all do that occasionally,” said Malone. “Let him go, Assistant Commissioner. He's only young and not very bright.”

Clements let go the youth and walked on beside Malone. “Assistant Commissioner?”

“You think kids are impressed by a senior sergeant? He'll live for a week on how he tried to push an assistant commissioner out of the way.”

“I hope none of the seven Assistant Commissioners get to hear of it.”

The entrance to the rooms above the shops was between a pinball parlour and a shabby coffee lounge. They climbed the narrow stairs and came to a long lighted corridor that ran along the back of the half a dozen offices. They passed the Quick Printery; R. Heiden, Watch & Jewelry Repairs; and Internet Sexual Therapy. They came to the open door of the Sewing Bee.

The alterations centre had two rooms side by side, both with windows opening on to George Street. Sam Penfold and Norma Nickles were in the main room with a woman with close-cropped hair and a belligerent expression, as if she blamed the police for breaking into her establishment.

“This is Mrs. Rohani, the owner,” said Penfold. “We called her and she's come in from Kensington.”

“Anything stolen?” Malone asked.

“Yes!” Mrs. Rohani had a softer voice than Malone had expected; breathy, as if every word had to be forced out. “He took my strongbox, twelve hundred dollars. Out of my desk. He forced the drawer open.”

Malone
scanned the room. Clothes hung on long racks, queues from which the flesh-and-blood had been squeezed; dresses, jackets and trousers waiting to see
The Invisible Man
. There were four sewing machines, all with that abandoned look that equipment gets when its operators have gone home. On a wall was a big blow-up of a
Vogue
cover, circa 1925, like a faded icon.

Malone looked back at Penfold. “Any prints on the desk?”

Penfold in turn looked at Norma Nickles, who said, “There are prints everywhere, but I dunno whether they are his. Mrs. Rohani has four girls working here and clients come in all day, men as well as women.”

She was a slim, blond girl who looked even slimmer in the dark blue police blouson and slacks. She had been a ballet dancer and occasionally she had a slightly fey look to her, as if adrift on Swan Lake. But she could gather evidence like a suction pump and Malone knew that Sam Penfold prized her as one of his team.

“I've come up with something on that window-sill, though. A distinctive print and Mrs. Rohani remembers the man it belongs to.” She led Malone to the window, pointed to the sill that had been powdered. “Four fingers, the tip of the third finger missing—he must of leaned on the sill as he looked out. Mrs. Rohani remembers him being interested in looking across at Olympic Tower, though she says he wasn't the first and he probably won't be the last.”

Malone turned back to the owner. “What was he like? When did he come in?”

“Three—no, four days ago. Man about forty, my height, on the stout side but not much. That was why he was here, wanted his pants taken out. Brought ‘em in last week—” She took a puffer out of her handbag, sucked on it. She was an asthmatic: the situation had taken the breath out of her. She put the puffer away, went on, “He came in four days ago to pick ‘em up. Both times he walked across to the window, said how much he admired Olympic Tower. Said he used to be an architect. If he was, he couldn't of been too successful. His pants were fifty-five dollars off the rack at Gowings. People come in here, I know more about ‘em than the census-taker.”

Malone wondered what she thought of him in the Fletcher Jones blazer and polyester-and-wool
trousers
bought at a sale, his usual shopping time, three hundred dollars the lot, free belt and socks. Did she guess he turned lights out when people were not using them, just lying there, thinking?

“We'll need a list of all your clients for the past month,” said Clements.

Mrs. Rohani looked dubious. “Ooh, I dunno. I've got some prominent people, they come in here, they don't want it known they're having alterations. You know, their hips have spread, the men's bellies have got bigger—”

“I'll know where to come,” said Clements. “But in the meantime we need that list. We don't put confidential information on the Internet—”

“Women as well as men clients?”

“Everyone. Their names and addresses. Particularly that man with the fingerprints on the window-sill.”

“How long will it take you to trace him if he has form?” Malone asked Penfold.

“Once back at the computer, six minutes, anywhere in Australia.”

Malone, a technological idiot, marvelled at the way the world was going. “Remember the old days?”

Then his pager buzzed. “May I use your phone, Mrs. Rohani?”

He crossed to the phone on a nearby desk, dialled Homicide. He listened to Andy Graham, the duty officer, then hung up and looked at Clements and the other two officers.

“The Premier's dead. He died twenty minutes ago on the operating table.”

Mrs. Rohani took out her puffer again, sucked hard on it. Malone had a sudden feeling that air had been sucked out of the city.

2

I

CLAIRE RANG
next morning at 7.15. “I've just heard the news on the radio. The Premier—it's unbelievable!”

“It's a shock,” said Malone, but didn't sound as if it was too much of a shock. He was not callous, but he had grown accustomed to murder and the circumstances of it. “It's going to shake things up a bit.”

“Is it what!” Then she said, and he caught the cautious note in her voice: “Are you on the case?”

“Yes. Why?” She said nothing and he got impatient with her: “Come on, Claire! Why are you asking?”

“Haven't I always asked?”

Women
! Daughters and wives in particular: “Don't start sounding like your mother—”

Lisa came down the hallway, paused and gave him the look that only wives and long-time lovers can conjure up. He put his hand over the mouthpiece.

“It's your daughter—”

“I gathered that. Why is she sounding like me?”

He waved her on; not dismissively, for Lisa would never take dismissal. She raised her middle finger, said, “Is that the right gesture?” and went on out to the kitchen.

“Who was that?” asked Claire.

“Your mother. Come on—why are you so concerned that I'm on the case?”

“Dad—” He could see her, usually so articulate, fumbling with words at the other end of the line. Perhaps if she were still living at home she would be more direct; moving out had widened the

distance
between them in more ways than one. He could no longer read her face, not at the end of a phone line. “Dad—yesterday—I don't think I should be telling you this—”

“Righto, I'll hang up. But if I find you're withholding evidence of any sort—”

“You would, wouldn't you?”

“Bring you in?” He sighed. “Yes, I think I would.”

“Well—” He had never known her to be so reluctant to voice an opinion. She had been a lawyer since she was twelve years old: bush lawyer, Bombay lawyer, Philadelphia lawyer: she would have argued with both Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate. “Dad, yesterday Norman Clizbe and Jerry Balmoral came into the office—you know them?”

“Only by name. I've never met them.”

They were the secretary and assistant-secretary of the Trades Congress. The Congress had been going for almost a hundred years, a minor opponent of the major union organization, the Labor Council; then suddenly, about twenty years ago, it had found a new lease of life, had grown in strength and influence and now was on a par with the Labor Council in the affairs of the State Labor Party. It had developed a taste for power, like the re-discovery of a long-neglected recipe.

“Mr. Clizbe went into the partners' office and Jerry Balmoral came into mine. I think he thought he could do a line with me.”

“Should I say
Yuk
?”

“Go ahead. He's got enough conceit for a talk-back host. Anyway, he chit-chatted, then he said—and I quote—”

A lawyer through and through. “Go ahead. Quote.”

“‘Would your father handle a political murder or would that be a job for the Federal police?'”

“Let me get this straight before you go on. Is this lawyer-client confidentiality?”

“I wouldn't be telling you this if it were. It was chit-chat.”

“Did you ask him why he was asking such a question?”

“Yes. He said it was just a question that had come up in a discussion on police policy.”

“
What's a trade union organization doing discussing police policy? Why did he ask
you
?”

“He said he knew I was your daughter.”

“What did you say?”

“About being your daughter? Nothing. But I told him it would be a State police case and I asked him again where the subject had come up.”

“What'd he say to that?”

“He just laughed and I got the charm bit—yuk! He said the question had been asked the other night at a branch meeting.”

“He say which branch?”

“No. He then asked me if I was free for dinner last night. I said no, I got more of the charm bit and he then went into the partners' office. He's such a smartarse.”

“How's Jason?”

“What sort of question is that?”

“I didn't mean
he's
a smartarse—forget it. Keep what you've told me to yourself, don't mention it in your office, especially to your bosses. To nobody, understand?”

“Yes, Inspector.”

“In your eye. Take care.”

He hung up and went out to the kitchen to breakfast. “What did Claire want?” asked Lisa.

“She just wanted to know if I'm on the Premier's murder.”

“If you are,” said Maureen, “don't ask me anything we've dug up in our investigation.”

“I'll let Russ drag you in and hang you by your thumbs if we find you know something we don't. Don't expect any favours.”

“Are we going to sit around this table and you're not going to tell us anything?” said Lisa.

“We know nothing at this stage,” said Malone, pouring fat-free milk on his Weet-Bix, then slicing a banana on it. In his younger days he had been a steak-and-eggs man for breakfast, but he had reached an age now when he had to watch that the waistline didn't hide the view of the family jewels.
“
Except that he was shot, we think by a hitman.”