The Bear Pit (6 page)

“Where from?” asked Tom.

“From a window right across the street,” said Maureen, and Malone gestured at the fount of knowledge, the TV researcher. “I've been on to our night crew. They were inside, in the ballroom, and missed what went on outside. They didn't even get a shot of the Premier lying on the front steps.”

“Tough titty,” said Malone.

“Your friend, Mr. Aldwych, the old guy, threatened to smash our cameraman's face in.”

“Jack was always public-spirited.”

“I don't think you'll have to look outside the Labor Party,” said Tom, reaching for his third piece of toast. “From what I've read they're cutting each other's throats. They're stacking certain branches with new members, building up cash funds—”

“What are you reading?” asked his father. “Economics or Politics?”

“These days, our lecturer says, you can't separate them. He's a chardonnay Marxist. I need a new cricket bat.”

“What does a fast bowler need a
new
bat for? I used any old bat lying around. I'll give you mine—Pa's still got it, I think.”

“You're really tight-arsed about money, aren't you? You give a new meaning to anal-retentive.”

“Hear, hear,” said Maureen.

“Does your Marxist lecturer teach you to talk to your dear old dad like that? How much do you want?”

“A hundred and forty bucks. There's a sale on.”

“You're going to be a good economist. You're learning how to spend other people's money.”

Then the phone rang again; it was Gail Lee, the duty officer. “It's on, boss. You're wanted for a conference with senior officers at the Commissioner's office at nine o'clock.”

“Righto, Gail. Tell Russ I want everything collated by the time I get back from Headquarters.”

“Everything? What have we got so far?”

“
Bugger-all.” He grinned without mirth to himself; there would not be much smiling over the next week or two. “But get it all together.”

Tom went off on his bicycle to his holiday work, stacking shelves at Woolworths. Maureen took the family's second car, a Laser, and Malone drove Lisa into town in the Falcon.

“I'm going to be busy.” Her work as public relations officer on the council's Olympic committee was becoming burdensome now as the Games got closer. “Eight months to the Olympics opening and we have a political assassination. How do I put a nothing-to-worry-about spin on that?”

There were several bad jokes that could answer that, but he refrained. “We don't know if this has anything to do with the Olympics—”

“I'm not suggesting it has, not directly. But every politician in the State wants to be sitting up there with the IOC bosses when the torch comes into the stadium. Half of them would offer to carry the torch just to have the cameras on them. Hans Vanderberg is up there in Heaven or down in Hell, wherever he's gone—”

“Hell. He's down there now asking the Devil to move over, the real boss has arrived.”

“Wherever. But he's spitting chips to see that someone else is going to take his place. Even Canberra is trying to muscle in. That official dais is going to be so crowded—”

“I can't look that far ahead.”

He kept his place in the middle lane of traffic; road rage was replacing wife-beating as an expression. A young driver in a BMW coupé shouted at him; a girl in a Mazda on his other side yelled something at Lisa. She turned her head and gave the girl a wide smile and what her children called her royal wave, a turning of the hand just from the wrist. The girl replied with a non-royal middle finger.

“Ignore them,” said Malone.

“Who? The drivers?”

“No, the politicians. Whatever you put in your release, don't mention anyone in Macquarie Street. Put your Dutch finger in the dyke and hold it there.”

He dropped her at Town Hall, then drove up to College Street and Police Headquarters. As he
entered
the lobby he was met by Greg Random, his immediate boss. “We sit and just listen, Scobie. No comment unless asked.”

Chief Superintendent Greg Random had never been guilty of a loose word, unlike Malone. He was tall and lean and as weather-beaten as if he had just come in from the western plains. He was part-Welsh and though he couldn't sing and had never played rugby nor been down a coal mine, he was fond of reciting the melancholy of Welsh poets.

As they rode up in the lift Malone asked, “Why here and not Police Centre?”

There was no one else in the lift, so it was safe to be frank and subversive. “This is His Nibs' castle. Does the Pope go to the Coliseum to declare his encyclicals?”

“We're going to get an encyclical today?”

“You can bet on it.”

The big conference room was full of uniforms and silver braid. Both Random and Malone were in plainclothes, the only ones, and seated in the corner of the room they looked like suspects about to be questioned.

The Deputy Commissioner and all seven Assistant Commissioners were in the room, plus half a dozen Chief Superintendents and five Superintendents. Malone had never seen so much brass since his graduation from the Police Academy. Then Commissioner Zanuch made his entrance.

He never came into a room; he
entered
. He was a handsome man, something he admitted without embarrassment; there was no point in denying the truth of the mirror. He was vain and an ambitious climber amongst the social alps; he was beginning to see himself as a public monument. He was also highly intelligent, remarkably efficient and no one questioned that he was the best man for the position. Commissioner of Police in the State of New South Wales was not for the unconfident. He would always have enemies on both sides of the law.

He sat down at the top of the long table. “You've read the papers, heard the news, gentlemen. The talk-back hosts have told us how we should conduct the case and they'll get louder as the week goes by. We have never been faced with a case as serious and wide-reaching as this one.”

“
We've decided it's political?” Assistant Commissioner Hassett was Commander, Crime Agencies. He came from the old school, the sledgehammer on the door, the boot up the bum, but he was shrewd and he ran his command with a loose rein and a ready whip.

“No, we haven't, Charlie, not yet.” He looked across the room at Random and Malone. “What have you got so far, Chief Superintendent?”

“Very little, sir. Perhaps Inspector Malone can fill you in.”

Thanks, mate.
“We have a couple of slim leads, sir. A handprint that may turn up something. A man who was in the shop from where the shot was fired, he was there twice this past week admiring the view from the window. We're trying to trace him. I expect to hear from Fingerprints this morning if he's got any record.”

“Have you started questioning anyone yet?”

A few loose words slipped out: “Macquarie Street, sir? Sussex Street?”

“Oh Gawd,” said Charlie Hassett and six other Assistant Commissioners gave him silent echo.

Commissioner Zanuch was not entirely humourless. “Inspector Malone, let us fear not to tread, but nonetheless, let us tread. Carefully, if you can.”

“Yes, sir.” Malone felt every eye in the room was on him. “I think I'd rather be in Tibooburra.” The back of beyond in the Service.

“Wouldn't we all.”

The Commissioner was enjoying the situation; over the next few days his Police Service would be the power in the land. The Government would be fighting its war of succession; the Opposition, seeking backs to stab, suddenly looked up and saw opportunity on the other side of the Assembly. Murder creates a vacuum, no matter how small and for how short a time. The vacuum now was large and Commissioner Zanuch stepped into it, secure that he was the tenant by right.

“Strike force will be set up, unlimited personnel. Call in all the men you want,” he told Hassett.

“What about us?” asked the Assistant Commissioner, Commander Administration, and all his colleagues nodded.

“
We're united on this,” said Zanuch. “A team. This is political—or it's going to be. I presume you've all got your political contacts?”

All the Assistant Commissioners looked at each other before they all nodded. None of them had achieved his rank by virgin birth. The net of political contacts in the room could have strangled a purer democracy than that of the State in which they served. They were honest men but they knew from long experience that honesty was a workable policy, not necessarily the best.

“Work those contacts. If you come up with anything, pass it on to Charlie. What shall we call the task force? We have to give it a name for the media—they love labels. They don't know how to handle anything that's anonymous.”

“How about Gold Medal?” The Assistant Commissioner, VIP Security Services, was a humourist, sour as a lemon. With VIPs, a breed that never diminished, it was difficult to be good-humoured.

“That will only rile the Opposition,” said the Assistant Commissioner, Internal Affairs. “They could be our bosses in two months.”

“Let's be brutal,” said the Commissioner. “We'll call it Nemesis.”

“The TV reporters will ask us what that means.”

“Tell ‘em it means their channel bosses,” said Charlie Hassett and everyone laughed.

The meeting rolled on and at last Random and Malone were released. They said nothing to each other as they went down in the lift, but as they walked out into the glare of the January day Random said sombrely and unexpectedly, “We'll miss The Dutchman.”

Malone looked across the street to Hyde Park, where old men played chess and draughts on tables beneath trees. Kibitzers stood behind them, offering advice, like retired minders. Hans Vanderberg had gone before retirement had consigned him to a bench somewhere, playing old games in his mind, surrounded by ghosts he had defeated with every move.

“Where will you set up the Incident Room?”

“At Police Centre. I'll move in there, you report to me direct. Where are you going to start?”

“
I don't know, depends what they have for me when I get back to the office.” He sighed. “Wouldn't it be nice to be on holiday right now? Walking the streets of Helsinki.”

“Why Helsinki?”

“Can you think of anywhere that's further away and still has decent hotels?”

Malone went back to Strawberry Hills, to Homicide's offices. The area had been named after the English estate of Horace Walpole, near-silent member of parliament but compulsive correspondent; he wrote mailbags of letters and Malone sometimes wondered how he would have reacted to the cornucopia of the internet. The offices were spacious and always neat and clean, a tribute to Clements, an untidy man with a contradictory passion for housekeeping, except on his own desk.

Phil Truach, looking in need of another one of his forty cigarettes a day, was waiting with good news: “Fingerprints have traced that hand-print on the window-sill. A guy named August, John August. He did three years for armed robbery down in Pentridge and he'd been acquitted before. He's got enough form.”

“Anything on him recently?”

“The Victorians say they haven't heard of him for nine years. They say on his form he wasn't a hitman, but you never know.”

“Is his name on the Sewing Bee's list of customers?”

Russ Clements had come into Malone's office, taken his usual place on the couch beneath the window. Though the couch was only four years old, he had dented his imprint on it at one end. He gestured at the typewritten list in his hand. “There's no August. The name here is John June.”

Malone shook his head at the folly of criminals. “Full of imagination. What's the address?”

“None. Just a phone number.”

He gave it and Malone punched it. He listened for a moment, said, “Sorry, wrong number,” and hung up. “Happy Hours Child-Care Centre.”

“What?” said the other two.

Malone repeated it. “Possible hitman running a day-care centre? It's a switch.” He reached for
the
phone book, found what he wanted. “The Happy Hours Child-Care Centre, Longueville. I think I'll take one of the girls with me. That'll look better than two big boof-headed cops turning up to frighten the ankle-biters. What else have you got, Russ?”

“Another list.” Clements held it up. “All the political bods we should look at. You want boof-headed cops on that?”

“We'd be the only ones they'd understand.” He stood up, sighed. He was sighing a lot these days, as if it were a medical condition. “I'm not looking forward to the next coupla weeks.”

“It's all in a good cause.”

“Did you ever think you'd say that about The Dutchman?”

“No,” said Clements. “But the old bugger stood by us when we needed him. I think we owe him.”

Malone collected Gail Lee and drove out to Longueville. Gail, half-Chinese, was slim and good-looking, a shade of coolness short of beautiful and as competent as any man on Malone's staff of nineteen detectives. She drove a little too fast for Malone's comfort, but he would have been a poor passenger with the driver of a hearse.

Longueville is a small suburb on the northern shore of the Lane Cove river, one of the two main rivers that flow into Sydney Harbour. It is now a pleasant area of solid houses in their own grounds, though some of the more modern ones are as conspicuous as circus tents in a cemetery. The suburb is a quiet retreat that has no major highway running through it. Once, long ago, it was thickly wooded with cedar and mahogany and populated, according to gossip of the times, by murderers and other assorted criminals. Today, if there are any criminals in the area, they are hidden behind accountants, the new forest for retreat

The Happy Hours Child-Care Centre looked as if it might once have been a scouts' or a church hall. It stood in a large yard shaded by two big jacarandas and a crepe myrtle. There were sandpits and playground equipment and a dozen or more small children in the yard. There were shouts of laughter coming from the hall, kids in a happy hour.