Copyright

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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First published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1987

Copyright © Jon Cleary 1987

Jon Cleary asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780006174813

Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780007568994

Version: 2015-04-27

Dedication

For Jane

(1949–86)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

ONE
1

When they took the bag of emeralds from the pocket of the murdered man, the President sighed loudly and the First Lady, who had been taking French lessons with her sights on asylum on the Riviera, said, ‘Merde!’

All this Malone learned within five minutes of arriving at Kirribilli House. Sergeant Kenthurst, the leader of the detail of Federal Police who were guarding President and Madame Timori, might know next to nothing about homicide but, coming from Canberra, had a sharp ear for detail and expletives.

‘It struck me as a bit off-colour,’ he said.

‘It would have been a bit more off-colour,’ said Russ Clements, who had taken high school French, ‘if she’d said it in Aussie.’

‘Righto, Russ, spread yourself around, see what you can pick up.’ Malone and Clements had started together as police cadets and Malone sometimes wondered if Clements, with his basic approach to everything, didn’t have the right attitude. There had been a time long ago when his own approach had been irreverent and somehow police work had been, or had seemed to be, more fun. ‘Are those protestors still outside?’

‘They’ve been moved further back up the street. I’ll see what I can get out of them. It may have been one of them who did it.’ But Clements sounded doubtful. Demonstrators didn’t bring guns to their outings. You didn’t volunteer to be manhandled by the pigs with a weapon in your pocket.

As the big untidy Homicide detective lumbered away, nodding to two junior officers to go with him, Kenthurst said, ‘Is he a good man?’

Malone sighed inwardly: here we go again. He was a patient-looking man, always seemingly composed. He was tall, six feet one (he was of an age that still continued to think in the old measures), big in the shoulders and still slim at the waist; he had that air of repose that some tall men have, as if their height accents their stillness. He was good-looking without being handsome, though the bones in his face hinted that he might be thought handsome in his old age, if he reached it. He had dark-blue eyes that were good-tempered more often than otherwise and he had a reputation amongst junior officers for being sympathetic. He suffered fools, because there were so many of them, but not gladly.

‘Don’t they teach you fellers down in Canberra to be diplomatic?’

The Federal Police Force, headquartered in the Australian Capital Territory, was a comparatively recent invention. Being so new, it had had no time to become corrupt; based in Canberra, it had also been infected by the virus of natural superiority which, along with hay fever and blowflies, was endemic to the national capital. The police forces of the six States and the Northern Territory, older, wiser and more shop-soiled in the more sordid crimes, looked on the Federals in much the same way as State politicians looked on their Federal counterparts, smart arses who didn’t know what went on in the gutters of the nation. The cops of Neapolis, bargaining with the pimps of Pompeii, had felt the same way about Rome and the Praetorian Guard.

Kenthurst blinked and his wide thin mouth tightened in his long-jawed face. He never liked these assignments here in New South Wales: the locals were too touchy. ‘Sorry, Inspector. I didn’t mean to criticize –’

‘Sergeant, if we’re going to get on together, let’s forget any rivalry. I’m not trying to muscle in on your territory – looking after a couple like the Timoris would be the last thing I’d ask for. You called in the local boys from North Sydney and they called us in from Homicide. I don’t want to take your President away from you. This is the biggest weekend of the year, maybe in Australia’s history, and I was looking forward to spending it with my wife and kids. So let’s co-operate, okay?’

Kenthurst nodded and looked around to see if anyone had overheard the exchange. But Malone did not tick a man off in front of his own men. He had his own diplomacy, of a sort.

Malone looked down at the sheet-covered body. The police photographer had taken his shots and the body was ready for disposal; Malone could hear the siren of the approaching ambulance. ‘Masutir – what was his first name?’

‘Mohammed. He was a Muslim, same as the President. He was a kind of second secretary, a pretty innocuous sort of guy as far as I can tell.’

‘Poor bugger.’ Malone looked around the grounds of the old house. All the lights were on, but there were big patches of black shadow under the trees. The grounds sloped down steeply to the waterfront and just below them a ferry, lights ablaze, drifted in towards the Kirribilli wharf. Once upon a time, before he and Lisa had started their family, they had lived just up the ridge from this house and he had caught that ferry to work. ‘Looks like the shot could have come from that block of flats.’

Kenthurst looked towards the block of flats just showing above the trees on the street side of the house. ‘It would have to’ve been from the top floor. I think the local boys are over there now.’

‘What was Timori doing out here?’

‘I gather he always liked to go for a walk after dinner – he wanted to go up the street, round the block, but we put the kybosh on that. He was famous for it back home in Palucca. No matter where he was, he always went for a walk after dinner. Just like President Truman used to, only he used to go for his walk before breakfast. Timori is a great admirer of Harry Truman, though I don’t know Truman would have liked that.’

It was Malone’s turn to blink, but he made no comment. Kenthurst might turn out to be a mine of inconsequential information; but Malone knew from experience how sometimes a nugget could be found amongst all the fools’ gold. ‘What happened when this feller went down? Did anyone hear the shot?’

‘No. Those galahs outside were chanting their usual stuff. Go home, Timori, all that crap.’

‘How has Timori been taking the demos?’

‘He just smiles – I guess he’s used to it. I gather the Paluccans were a bloody sight more vocal and violent than our galahs. He’d given up taking his walks the last couple of months in Bunda.’

‘What about Madame Timori – did she scream or faint or anything?’

‘Nothing. She just got angry, started swearing – she knows a lot of words besides merde. She’s a real tough cookie.’

Kenthurst was about the same age as Malone, forty-two, but Malone guessed they looked at different television programmes. Kenthurst, a smart dresser, looked as if he might be a fan of Miami Vice, where all the girls were tough cookies. But he had said ‘galahs’, so he wasn’t entirely Americanized. Malone was glad of that. He himself wasn’t anti-American, but he had grown tired of the standards for his own work being set by Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice. Police work, 99 per cent of the time, was plod, plod, plod and the music was slower than an undertaker’s jingle. The New South Wales Police Force had its critics, but it wasn’t the worst police force in the world, far from it.

‘Why are the Timoris here at Kirribilli House?’

‘It’s only temporary. The PM wanted them taken to Canberra, kept on the RAAF base there or even at Duntroon, so we could keep tight security on them. Madame Timori wouldn’t have a bar of that. Sydney or nothing, she told them. So they shoved them in here till they find a place for them. It’s been a bloody headache.’ He gestured at the sheet-covered corpse. ‘Maybe they’ll be glad to move now.’

‘Let’s go in and talk to them.’

They walked up the gravelled path to the steeply-gabled stone house. It had been built just over a hundred years ago by a rich merchant with the commercial-sounding name of Feez and in time it had been acquired by the Federal Government as a residence for visiting VIPs. Then a certain Prime Minister, chafing that such a charming house in such a beautiful situation right on Sydney Harbour should be wasted on visitors, some of them unwelcome, had commandeered it as his official Sydney residence. The present Prime Minister, who hated The Lodge, the main official residence in Canberra, spent as much time here as he could, being a Sydney man. Malone wondered how Phil Norval, the PM, felt about these unwelcome guests.

The Timoris were in the drawing-room. They were a handsome couple in the way that the ultra-rich often are; money had bought the extras to the looks they had been born with. Only when one looked closer did one see that Abdul Timori’s looks had begun to crumble; his bloodshot eyes looked half-asleep in the dark hammocks beneath them and his jowls had loosened. Delvina Timori, however, looked better than when Malone had last seen her close-up, ten or twelve years ago; she had never been strictly beautiful, but she had a dancer’s arrogance and grace and there was a sexuality to her that fogged-up most men’s view of her. Only their womenfolk looked at her cold-eyed.

‘Scobie Malone, isn’t it?’ she said in the husky voice that sounded phoney to women and like a siren’s song to their tone-deaf escorts. ‘I remember you! Darling, this is Mr Malone. He used to be in the Vice Squad when I was with the dance company. He thought all we dancers were part-time whores.’ She gave Malone a bright smile that said, You never proved it. ‘I hope you’ve changed your mind about dancers, Mr Malone. Especially since Australia is now so cultured.’

Outside, on the other side of the harbour, the fireworks had begun. The sky was an explosion of illumination. The city turned red, white and blue, the colours of the British, the founding fathers; someone had forgotten to light the green and gold rockets and local patriotism, as so often, remained in the dark. The citizens were still getting used to the idea that their nation was two hundred years old this week, not sure whether it was a good or a bad thing.

The ambulance had just come in the gates and in a moment or two Mohammed Masutir, the dead man, would be lifted into it and carted away to the morgue; but as far as Malone could see, Madame Timori had already forgotten him, had put his murder out of her mind.

‘I’d like to ask some questions, Mr President.’

‘The President is too upset at the moment to answer questions,’ said the President’s wife and, belatedly, made her own effort to look upset. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief; Malone noticed it came away unmarked by any of the thick mascara she wore. ‘Poor Mr Masutir.’

‘Yes.’ Malone noticed that she, notorious for her jewels, wore none tonight. She was crying poor mouth, silently. But there were the emeralds that had been taken from Masutir’s pocket. He said bluntly, ‘The bullet was meant for the President – we can be pretty sure of that. Do you know of any organized opposition group here in Australia that would be likely to try and kill you, sir?’

‘Start asking that trash in the street outside –’

Timori raised a tired hand, silencing his wife. He took a sip of Scotch from the glass in his other hand; he was one of those Muslims, Malone guessed, who bent his religion to his own tastes. Malone, a Catholic, knew the feeling.

‘Mr Malone, I have enemies everywhere. Tell me a ruler who does not. The President of the United States, your Prime Minister –’

‘I don’t think Philip Norval thinks of himself as a ruler, darling,’ said Madame Timori. ‘Does he rule you, Mr Malone?’

Malone gave her a smile and looked at Kenthurst. ‘Sergeant Kenthurst could answer that better than I can. He’s from Canberra, where everyone rules. Yes, Sergeant?’

Clements had knocked on the door and put his tousled head into the room. ‘Can I see you a moment, Inspector?’

Malone went out into the hall. With the edge of his eye and mind he was aware of the furnishings of the house; it was the sort of place he wished he could afford for Lisa and the kids. Then he consoled himself: the voters could kick you out of here quicker than any foreclosing bank. ‘What is it, Russ?’

‘None of those out in the street know anything – I’m inclined to believe them. We’ve been into those flats opposite – some of the owners are away for the weekend. Those that are home said they heard nothing because of the noise of the clowns up the street.’

‘What about the top-floor flats? That’d be the best bet where the shot came from.’

‘The whole of the top floor is owned by an old lady, a –’ Clements looked at his notebook ‘– a Miss Kiddle. The bloke below her thought she should be home, but we can’t raise her.’

Malone looked at the burly, greying sergeant in uniform behind Clements. ‘What do you reckon, Fred?’

Thumper Murphy was a senior sergeant in the local North Sydney division. He had played rugby for the State and for Australia; his approach to football opponents and law-breakers was the same: straight through them. He was the last of a dying breed and Malone sometimes wondered if the Force could stand their loss. ‘We could bash the front door down. I’ve got a sledge-hammer in me car.’

‘I thought sledge-hammers had gone out of fashion.’

‘Not on my turf,’ said Thumper with a broken-toothed grin.

‘Righto, get in any way you can. But don’t scare hell out of the old lady.’

Thumper Murphy, accompanied by Clements, went away to get his sledge-hammer and Malone went back into the drawing-room. The President had lapsed back into the bleary-eyed look he had had when Malone had first walked into the room; the whisky glass in his hand was now empty. Madame Timori took the glass from him, slapped his wrist lightly as if he were a naughty child, and glanced at Malone.

‘I’ve suggested to Sergeant Kenthurst that the President be allowed to go to bed. He’s worn out.’

Malone looked at Kenthurst, who somehow managed to shrug with his eyebrows, What could I say? ‘All right, Madame Timori. But I’d like to see the President again in the morning. By then I hope we’ll know where we’re going.’

Timori was helped to his feet by his wife; he suddenly looked ten years older, sick and tired. ‘You don’t know where you’re going, Inspector? Neither do we. Good night.’

He brushed off his wife’s helping hand and walked, a little unsteadily, out of the room. Madame Timori looked at the two policemen. ‘We’ve been through a lot this past week, as you’ve probably read.’

And it hasn’t put a hair of your head out of place, Malone thought. Surviving a two-day siege of their palace, then a successful, though not bloody, coup, seemed hardly to have fazed her at all. Exile, however, might do that.

‘You may have to go through a lot more, Madame. This may not be the last attempt on the President’s life. Or on yours,’ he added and waited for the effect of the remark.

She did not flinch. ‘I’ve had three attempts on my life in the past three years. One gets used to it.’ It was bravado, but Malone had to admire it. ‘I suppose we were careless this evening. One just doesn’t expect assassination attempts in Australia. Except character assassination,’ she added with a smile that would have cut a thousand throats. ‘Now, is there anyone else you’d like to question?’

She had taken charge of the investigation. Malone grinned inwardly: Lisa would enjoy the police gossip in bed tonight. If he got to bed … ‘Anyone you’d care to suggest?’

Madame Timori gave him a look that would have demoted him right back to cadet if she’d had the authority. ‘The household staff?’

‘I think we can leave them till last. I’d like to talk to the staff you brought with you from Palucca. They’d know more about your enemies.’ He was treading on dangerous ground. He was aware of the warning waves coming out of Kenthurst, the Canberra man. You’re dealing with a Federal Government guest, a personal friend of the Prime Minister. ‘That is, if you don’t mind, Madame?’

‘You mean am I going to claim diplomatic immunity for them?’

‘I don’t think they’d want that. Not if they want to know who is trying to kill their President.’ Even if he’s only an ex-President now.

‘You sound so efficient, Inspector. So unlike our own police back home. I suppose, then, you should start with Sun Lee.’

Sun Lee was the President’s private secretary, a Chinese in his mid-forties with a skin as smooth as jade and eyes like black marbles. He was just as cold as both those stones. ‘I have nothing to tell you, Inspector.’

Malone looked at Madame Timori, who gave him a smug smile. Then he looked back at the Chinese. ‘Maybe you could show me Mr Masutir’s room?’

Sun frowned, a thin crack in the jade. ‘He shared a room with me – the accommodation here is limited –’ He spoke with all the expansive snobbery of a man accustomed to a palace. ‘There is nothing in Mr Masutir’s room but his personal belongings.’

‘Those are what I want to see.’

Sun glanced at Madame Timori, but she said nothing. Then he turned abruptly and led Malone out of the room and upstairs. The house, for an official residence, was small. Australia did not believe in any grandeur for those it voted into office; that was reserved for those forced upon it, the Queen’s Governors and Governor-General. There was a substantial mansion right next door to Kirribilli House, but that was the Sydney residence of the Governor-General and no place for a deposed President. The Queen, through her representative, only entertained exiled monarchs. A certain protocol had to be observed, even in disgrace.

The room was comfortably and attractively furnished, but Sun obviously thought it was a converted closet stocked from a discount house. ‘There is no room to move … Mr Masutir’s things are still in his suitcase. We were only allowed to bring one suitcase each.’

‘I read in the papers that the RAAF plane that brought you was loaded with baggage.’

‘The newspapers, as always, got it wrong. We brought packing cases, but they are full of official papers – records, files, that sort of thing. President Timori wanted to leave nothing for the vandals who have taken over the palace.’

‘What about Madame Timori? Did she bring only one suitcase?’

‘Madame Timori has a position to uphold.’

‘I thought she might have. The papers said she brought twelve cases and four trunks. But women never travel lightly, do they? So they tell me.’

Masutir’s suitcase, a genuine Vuitton or a good Hong Kong fake, Malone wasn’t sure which, was not locked. Malone flipped back the lid, was surprised at how neatly everything was packed; had Masutir been packed for weeks, waiting for the inevitable? Most of the contents told Malone nothing except that Masutir had always bought quality: the shirts, the socks, the pyjamas were all silk. In a pocket in the lid were Masutir’s passport and a black leather-bound notebook.

Malone flipped through the passport. ‘Mr Masutir had been to Australia before?’

‘I understand he had been here before.’

‘Six times in the past –’ Malone looked at the earliest date stamp ‘– eight months. Did you know about those visits, Mr Sun?’

If Sun had known about the visits he didn’t show it now. ‘No. Mr Masutir was more Madame Timori’s secretary than my assistant. Back home in Palucca she was a very busy woman, as you may know.’

‘Are you a Paluccan, Mr Sun?’

‘Fourth generation. My family came to Bunda from Hong Kong after the Opium War.’

‘Which side were they on?’ Sun looked blank and Malone added, ‘The war?’

Sun still looked blank, made no answer. So much for being a smart arse, thought Malone; but the quietly arrogant Chinese was beginning to get under his skin. Malone flipped through the black notebook, saw a list of Sydney addresses and phone numbers. He decided against asking Sun about them.

‘I’ll take this. I’ll give you a receipt for it.’

‘Can you do that?’

‘Do you want me to find out who murdered Mr Masutir?’

The tiny frown was there again, but just for a moment. ‘Of course. But how will his address book help you?’

‘We have to start somewhere, Mr Sun. Every murderer has a name. Our murderer’s may be in this.’ He held up the notebook, then slipped it into his pocket. ‘I think that’ll be all, Mr Sun.’

Sun looked surprised, and Malone was surprised to see him capable of such an expression. ‘You don’t want to question me?’

‘I’ll be back to do that, Mr Sun. In the meantime you prepare your answers.’

He went ahead of the Chinese down the stairs, not bothering to look back at him or say anything further. He sensed there might be something in Masutir’s notebook which might worry Sun Lee. A night to think about it might put another crack in the jade face.

When Malone reached the front hallway Clements was waiting there for him. He read the bad news on the big man’s face before Clements said it. ‘We bashed the door down and found the old lady. She’d been strangled.’

‘Any sign of the killer?’

Clements shook his head. ‘He’d left his gun, though. A Springfield 30, with a telescopic sight. He was a pro, I’d say. I’ve rung Fingerprints, they’re on their way.’

‘What about the old lady? Had he knocked her around?’

‘No. It was a neat job, with a piece of rope. He’d come prepared. Like I say, he was a real pro.’

‘Righto, I’ll be over there in a while. In the meantime, give this to Andy Graham, tell him I want every one of those Sydney addresses and phone numbers tracked down. Tell him to tell them to stand by when he finds out who they are. I’ll want to interview them.’ He handed the notebook to Clements, aware of Sun standing behind him and hearing every word. ‘Something doesn’t add up here. Maybe they meant to kill Masutir, after all. You think so, Mr Sun?’

The mask was flawless this time. ‘It would be presumptuous of me even to guess, Inspector. I am not a detective.’

Clements watched the small exchange, but his own wide open face was now expressionless. ‘I’ll wait for you over the road, Inspector.’

Malone went back into the drawing-room, said directly to Madame Timori, ‘There’s been another murder. An old lady over in the flats opposite.’

She just nodded. She did not appear disturbed; the handkerchief was not even produced this time. She stood up, giving herself regal airs if not a regal air, which is different; she was the most common of commoners but she had always had aspirations. She had always wanted to dance the royal roles when she had been with the dance company; nobody would ever have believed her as Cinderella. ‘I’m retiring for the night.’

I’d like to retire, too, thought Malone; or anyway, go to bed. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow morning, Madame. I hope the President will be well enough to answer some questions.’

‘What sort of questions have you in mind? I’m sure I could answer them all.’ She paused, as if she might sit down again.

‘You must be tired,’ said Malone, not offering her any further opportunity to take over the investigation. ‘Good night, Madame. I’ll see you in the morning.’

He went out into the warm night air. There he exchanged information with the two other Homicide men who had come with him and Clements. One of them was Andy Graham, a young overweight detective constable who had just transferred from the uniformed division. He was all enthusiasm and ideas, most of which were as blunt as Thumper Murphy’s sledgehammer.

‘I’ve got the notebook, Inspector.’ He brandished it like a small black flag. ‘I’ll have ’em all waiting for you first thing tomorrow morning.’

‘Not all at once, Andy. Use your judgement, get the big ones first.’

‘Right, Inspector, right.’

‘Take Kerry here with you. Divide up the addresses and numbers between you. Be polite.’

‘Right.’

As he and Clements crossed the road towards the block of flats, Malone said,’ How come you never say right to everything I say?’

‘Do you want me to?’

‘No.’

Right.’

The old lady had been taken away in the same ambulance that had taken the dead Masutir; the holiday weekend casualties were starting early and these two not for the usual reason, road accidents. Up towards the corner of the street a large crowd had now congregated behind the barricades that had been thrown up. The protestors had stopped demonstrating, jarred into silence by the sight of the two bodies being pushed into the ambulance, and the crowd was now just a large restless wash of curiosity. Double murders just didn’t happen in Kirribilli: the local estate agents would have to work hard next week to continue promoting it as a ‘desirable area’.

The fireworks were still scribbling on the black sky, but the crowd seemed to have turned its back on them. A band was playing in the open court at the northern end of the Opera House and the music drifted across the water, banged out at intervals by the explosions of the fireworks. The waters of the harbour were ablaze with drifting lights: ferries, yachts, rowboats, the reflected Catherine wheels, shooting stars and lurid waterfalls of the fireworks. Malone wondered if the local Aborigines here on the Kirribilli shore had waved any firesticks in celebration on the night of that day in January 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip had raised the British flag and laid the seed, perhaps unwittingly, for a new nation. As he walked across the road Malone looked for an Aborigine or two amongst the demonstrators, with or without firesticks to light their way, but there was none.

The Fingerprints men were just finishing as Malone entered the top-floor flat past Thumper’s handiwork, the splintered front door. ‘Can’t find a print, Inspector. We’ve dusted everything, but he either wiped everything clean or wore gloves. He must have been a cold-blooded bastard.’

‘Have you tried the bathroom?’

‘There’s two of them. Nothing there.’

‘Try the handle or the button of the cistern. I don’t care how cold-blooded he was, he’d have gone in there for a nervous pee some time.’ The senior Fingerprints man looked unimpressed and Malone went on, ‘It’s the simple, habitual things that let people down, even the most careful ones. I’ll give you a hundred to one that a man doesn’t take a leak with a glove on.’

‘I couldn’t find mine if I had a glove on,’ said Clements with a grin.

The Fingerprints men looked peeved that a Homicide man, even if he was an inspector, should tell them their job. They went away into the bathrooms and two minutes later the senior man came back to say there was a distinct print on the cistern button in the second bathroom. He looked even more peeved that Malone had been right.

‘The second bathroom looks as if it’s rarely used, maybe just for visitors. The print’s a new one.’

‘Righto, check your records,’ said Malone. ‘I’ll want a report on it first thing in the morning. Sergeant Clements will call you.’

Malone was left alone with Clements, Thumper Murphy and the sergeant in charge of the North Sydney detectives, a slim handsome man named Stacton. ‘Okay, so what have we got?’

Clements pointed to the dismantled rifle which lay on the table in the dining-room in which they stood. ‘He must have brought it in dismantled and put it together once he was in the flat – it’s a special job. Then after he’d fired the shot, he dismantled it again and put it in a kit-bag, the sort squash players carry. Nobody would’ve noticed him if he’d come in here behind those demonstrators.’

‘Where’d you find the bag and the gun?’

‘Under the stairs, down on the ground floor. Someone must’ve come in as he was going out and he had to hide.’

Malone looked at Stacton. ‘Would it have been one of your, uniformed men?’

‘I doubt it. Inspector, but I’ll check. They were busy holding back the demo. And I gather there was a hell of a lot of noise – no one heard the shot.’

‘There’s no security door down at the front?’

‘None. People ask for trouble these days.’

‘How did he get into the flat? I noticed there’s a grille security door on the front door.’

‘I dunno. There’s no sign of forced entry. The old lady must have let him in.’

‘A stranger?’ Malone looked around him. The furniture was antique and expensive; it had possibly taken a lifetime to accumulate. It was the sort of furniture that Lisa would love to surround herself with; he found himself admiring it. The paintings on the walls were expensive, too: nothing modern and disturbing, but reassuring landscapes by Streeton and Roberts. Miss Kiddle had surrounded herself with her treasures, but they hadn’t protected her. ‘This is a pretty big flat for one old woman.’

‘She has a married nephew who owns a property outside Orange. I’ve rung Orange and asked someone out to tell him. It’s gunna bugger up his celebrations.’

‘It’s buggered up mine,’ said Malone and looked out the window at another burst of fireworks. The past was going up in a storm of smoke and powder, you could smell it through the open windows. The kids would love it, though the grownups might wonder at the significance. It took Australians some time to be worked up about national occasions, unless they were sporting ones. The Italians and the Greeks, who could get worked up about anything, would enjoy the fireworks the most.

‘Well, I guess we’d better make a start with our guesses. Any suggestions?’

Clements chewed his lip, a habit he had had as long as Malone had known him. ‘Scobie, I dunno whether this is worth mentioning. I was going through some stuff that came in from Interpol. You heard of that bloke Seville, Miguel Seville the terrorist? Well, Interpol said he’d been sighted in Singapore last week. He got out before they could latch on to him. He’d picked up a flight out of Dubai. They managed to check on all the flights going back to Europe after he’d been spotted. He wasn’t on any of them, not unless he’d got off somewhere along the way. Bombay, Abu Dhabi, somewhere like that.’

‘He might have gone to Sri Lanka,’ said Stacton. ‘He’s always around where there’s trouble.’

When Malone had first started on the force no one had been interested in crims, terrorists then being unknown, outside the State, even outside one’s own turf. Now the field was international, the world was the one big turf.

‘The betting’s just as good that he came this way,’ said Clements.

Malone said, ‘Who’d hire him? The generals who’ve taken over in Palucca have no connection with any of the terrorist mobs, at least not on the record.’

‘Seville is different. That’s according to the Italians, who’ve had the most trouble with him. He’s not interested in ideology any more. He’s just a bloody mercenary, a capitalist like the rest of us.’

‘Speak for yourself. We’re not all big-time punters like you.’

Clements grinned; his luck with the horses was notorious, even embarrassing. ‘You pay Seville, he’ll organize trouble for you. A bomb raid at an airport, a machine-gun massacre, an assassination, anything. Someone could have hired him to do this job.’

‘Righto, get Fingerprints to photo-fax that print through to Interpol, see if it matches anything they might have on Seville. Have we called in Special Branch yet?’

‘They arrived just as I was putting me sledge-hammer away,’ said Thumper Murphy.

‘A pity,’ said Malone and everyone grinned. ‘Well, it looks as if we’re all going to be one big happy family. The Feds, the Specials, you fellers and us.’

‘I always liked you, Scobie,’ said Thumper Murphy. ‘They could have sent us one of them other bastards you have in Homicide.’

It sounds just like Palucca must have sounded, Malone thought. Each faction wanting all the others out of the way. He sighed, just as Kenthurst had said the President had sighed when the emeralds had been taken from Masutir’s pocket. Only then did he remember he hadn’t asked anyone about the emeralds.

‘Where are the emeralds?’

‘Kenthurst said he gave ’em back to Madame Timori,’ said Clements. ‘She asked for them.’

‘She would.’ He wondered how many tears had been shed for the Mother of the Poor, as she had called herself, when she had left Palucca.

2

Palucca was the largest of the old Spice Islands. Columbus was heading there when he accidentally ran into America; he had coined the phrase, ‘Isn’t it a small world?’ and thought he had proved it when he finished up some 11,000 miles short of his intended destination. The Spice Islands survived his non-arrival, but European civilized types, led by Ferdinand Magellan, arrived in 1511 and from then on the aroma of the Spices began to change. Nothing has ever been improved by the advent of outsiders, nothing, that is, but the lot of the invaders.

The Portuguese were succeeded by the Spanish, the Dutch and the British; the Islanders just shrugged, learned a few words of the newest language and dreamed of the old days when they were barbaric and happy. Their paradise had been spoiled by the Europeans who, seeking profits, had come looking for the spices that would, in addition to the sweet taste of profits, make their putrid and indigestible food edible. The pepper, nutmegs, cloves, mace, ginger and cinnamon, added to what the Europeans ate back in what they thought of as civilization, saved the appetites and often the lives of the civilized millions. Spices were also used by physicians to treat diseases of the blood, the stomach, head and chest; sometimes a cookery recipe was mistaken for a medical prescription, but it made no difference anyway. The patient usually died and the family got the bill, the physician’s bill being larger than the grocer’s.

The Dutch stayed longest and eventually the Spice Islands were absorbed into what became known as the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese came in 1942, were welcomed but soon wore out their welcome and were gone in 1945. The Dutch came back; but they, too, were unwelcome. In 1949 the Indies obtained their independence and became Indonesia. The Paluccans, however, declared their own independence and the rest of Indonesia, tired of fighting the Dutch and just wanting to get on with the post-war peace that the rest of the world was enjoying, let them go.

The Timori family, which had been the leading family in Palucca for centuries, were pains in the neck anyway. They were conspirators, connivers, meddlers, and corrupt: ideal rulers to deal with the Europeans, Americans, Chinese and Russians who would soon be coming to court them.

Mohammed Timori, Abdul’s father, had himself elected President for life, a title he chose in preference to Sultan, to which he was entitled by inheritance; he was prepared to make a bow towards democracy, though it hurt every joint in his body. He moved back into Timoro Palace, the family home that had been commandeered by the Dutch a hundred years before. He said public prayers of praise to Allah, but privately he told Allah He had better come good with some United Nations aid or Palucca would be in the hands of the Chinese money-lenders before the next crop of nutmegs.

Allah came good with better than United Nations hand-outs: oil was found on the north coast of the big island. It did not make Palucca a rich country, because the oil reserves were judged to be only moderate; nonetheless, Palucca was suddenly more than just a source of ginger and nutmegs and the oil companies of the West came bearing their own aromatic spices, bribes with which to start Swiss bank accounts. The Timori family were suddenly rich, even if their country wasn’t. They shared their wealth like true democrats, 10 per cent to the voters and 90 per cent to the Timoris, and thought of themselves as benevolent, honest and born to rule. They were no different from all the Europeans who had preceded them in Palucca.

Mohammed Timori died in 1953 on the same day as Josef Stalin, which meant he got no space at all in Western newspapers. The Americans, prompted by John Foster Dulles, decided to compensate for that lack of regard; they established a naval base and named it in his honour. Abdul Timori, who was then twenty-five, was called home from Europe to succeed his father. His election as President for life was no more than a formality, like high tea, monogamy and other European importations, and was looked upon as just as much a giggle.

Abdul Timori had been labelled by the Fleet Street tabloids as the Playboy of the Western World, though Synge would have disowned him. His mistresses were laid endlessly across Europe and America; love-making was his only successful sport. He owned a string of racehorses that invariably finished without a place; bookmakers quoted them at prices that embarrassed both the horses and the jockeys who rode them. He took up motor-racing and drove in the Mille Miglia, the Targa Florio and the Le Mans 24-hour event; he finished in none of them, managing, miraculously, to emerge unscathed from crashes that earned him the nickname Abdul the Wrecker. His father, however, had insisted on his death-bed that Abdul should succeed him, and the ruling party, its faction leaders all afraid of each other, had agreed. They had assumed that Abdul would be no more than a playboy President and they, splitting the spoils between them like true democrats, could run the country as they wished.

They were mistaken. Abdul turned out to, be a better politician than any of them; and a despot to boot, a boot he used to great effect. The two jails of Bunda, the national capital, were soon full of party men who thought they could be independent of him; common criminals were hanged, to make way in the cells for the jailed politicians. The latter, however, did not remain there long. Nothing changes the mind of a pragmatic politician so quickly as his having to share a prison cell with his rivals; it is more upsetting than sharing a voting booth with a citizen voting against you. All at once they were born-again Timori supporters, shouting hallelujahs, or the Muslim equivalent, to the skies. The army generals, already wooed by Abdul with promises of long courses in Britain and the United States, smiled cynically at the venality of politicians and swore to Abdul that he had nothing to fear from them.

Abdul, in turn, was wooed by the Americans. Recognizing that anyone who raised the anti-communist banner was going to be saluted by Washington, he invited the Americans, for a consideration, to enlarge their naval base. For the next thirty-four years Palucca enjoyed a stable existence, a state of affairs accepted by all but those who believed in freedom of expression, honest government and democracy. Since Abdul Timori believed in none of those aberrations and the Americans forgot to remind him of them, nothing, it seemed, was going to disturb the Timori delusion of his own grandeur.

He married the daughter of another old family, but it was a marriage of inconvenience: he found she got in the way of his mistresses. He divorced her by clapping his hands and telling her she wasn’t wanted; a procedure that several foreign ambassadors, whose wives were a hindrance, marvelled at and envied. Timori married again, this time one of his mistresses, but she at once turned into a wife and after a year he got rid of her, too. Finally, ten years ago, he had married Delvina O’Reilly, who had come to Bunda as a speciality dancer, a Mata Hari whose intelligence work was only in her own interests. Her mother had been a Malay, her father an RAAF sergeant-pilot; she had been educated in a convent but had never learned to be a good Catholic or even a good girl. At dancing school it was said that the only time her legs were together was during the execution of an entrechat; one smitten choreographer tried to write a ballet for a horizontal ballerina. When she married Abdul Timori, in a wedding extravaganza that Paris-Match ran over five pages, she let him know it was for good: for her good if not his. Abdul, to everyone’s surprise, not least his own, accepted her dictum.

Then the plug fell out of the oil market and Palucca’s economy slid downhill on the slick. The Americans were suddenly more interested in Central America than in South-east Asia; Washington also, at long last, began to have pangs about the corruption in the Timori regime. Abdul and Delvina Timori began to assume the image of a major embarrassment. The Americans, belatedly, looked around for an acceptable alternative, meanwhile pressing Timori to resign on the grounds of ill-health. Madame Timori, who was in the best of health, even if her husband wasn’t, told the Americans to get lost, a frequent location for them in foreign policy. The British, the French, the Dutch and all the lesser ex-colonial powers sat back and smiled smugly. As a mandarin in Whitehall remarked, nothing succeeds in making one feel good so much as seeing someone else fail.

Then the Paluccan generals, all too old now for courses at Sandhurst and West Point, tired of army manoeuvres in which never a shot was fired, decided it was time they earned the medals with which they had decorated themselves. They staged a coup, asked the Americans to fly the Timoris out of Bunda and promised a brand new future for Palucca and the Paluccans.

That was when the trouble started outside Palucca.

3

‘Nobody wants them,’ said Russ Clements. ‘The Americans wouldn’t fly them out and they leaned on Canberra.’

‘Kenthurst was telling me last night,’ said Malone, ‘that everyone down in Canberra wishes they’d move on. Including Phil Norval.’

‘Canberra is going to be even more shitty when we tell & what came in from Interpol this morning.’

When Malone had arrived at Homicide this morning Clements had been waiting for him with a phone message from Fingerprints. The print on the cistern button in the Kiddle flat had been positively identified: it belonged to Miguel Seville.

‘Are there any mug shots of Seville?’ Malone asked.

‘Just the one.’

Clements took a 5 × 4 photo out of the murder box, an old shoe carton that over the years had, successively, held all the bits and pieces of the cases he had worked on. It was falling apart, only held together by a patchwork skin of Scotch tape, but he held on to it as if it were some treasure chest in which lay the solution to all murders.

‘It was taken about twelve years ago, when the Argentinian cops picked him up. That was before he became a mercenary, when he was with that Tupperware crowd. Tupperware?’

‘Tupamaros.’

Clements grinned. ‘I was close.’

‘I know a Tupperware lady who wouldn’t thank you for it.’

Malone looked at the photo of the curly-haired handsome young man. He would have been in his late twenties or early thirties when the photo was taken, but already the future was etched in his face: a defiance of all authority, a contempt for all political and social morality. Malone wondered if he had ever had any genuine belief in the Tupamaros’ fight against the Argentinian junta and its repressive rule.

‘He’s taken the place of that Venezuelan guy,’ said Clements. ‘That Carlos. Whatever happened to him?’

‘Special Branch said the rumour is that the Libyans got rid of him. Maybe we should ring up Gaddafi and ask him to get rid of this bloke, too.’

‘You reckon he’ll try another shot at Timori?’

‘Depends how much he’s been paid. And who’s paying him.’

Malone looked out the window, over Hyde Park and down to the northern end where Macquarie Street ran into it. That street was where the State politicians conducted their small wars; but there was no terrorism. There might be vitriolic and vulgar abuse that made other parliaments look like church meetings, but there were no assassin’s bullets. Now Timori, the unwanted guest, had, even if involuntarily, brought that danger to Sydney.

‘Did The Dutchman have anything to say this morning?’ So far Malone hadn’t looked at this morning’s newspapers. He was not a radio listener and he usually got home too late to look at the evening TV news. When he got the news it was usually cold and in print, but he had found that the world still didn’t get too far ahead of him. There was something comforting in being a little way behind it, as if the news had somehow been softened by the time it got to him.

‘His usual garble. I dunno whether he’s for or against Timori.’

‘If Phil Norval’s for him, The Dutchman will be against him.’

The Dutchman was Hans Vanderberg, the State Premier, an immigrant who had come to Australia right after World War Two, had become a trade union official, joined the Labour Party, got on well with the Irish Catholics who ran it, taken on some of their characteristics and ten years ago had become Leader of the Party and Premier. He was famous for his garbled speeches and his double-Dutch (or was it Irish?) logic; but he was the best politician in the country and he and everyone else knew it. He was also a magnificent hater and he hated no one more than Prime Minister Philip Norval.

Malone looked at his watch. ‘We’d better get over to Kirribilli. What time do Presidents have breakfast?’

‘I know what time I had mine. Six o’bloody clock.’

Malone grinned; he always liked working with Russ Clements. ‘You’d better get used to it, sport. This looks like it’s going to be a round-the-clock job.’

‘How does Lisa feel about you working on the holiday weekend?’

‘She wouldn’t speak to me this morning. Neither would the kids. I’d promised to bring them all in to The Rocks to see the celebrations.’

‘I was going to the races. I’ve got two hot tips for today.’

‘Put them on SP. Where do you get your tips?’

‘From a coupla SP bookies I used to raid when I was on the Gambling Squad.’

‘How much are you ahead this year so far?’

‘A thousand bucks and it’s only January twenty-third. They’ll be holding a Royal Commission into me if it keeps up.’

‘What do you do with all your dough?’ Clements always looked as if he didn’t have his bus fare.

‘Some day I’m gunna have an apartment in that block down at the Quay, right there above the ferries. People will point the finger at me and say I made it outa graft, but I won’t give a stuff. I’ll pee on ’em from a great height and if some of it lands on some crims I’ve known, so much the better.’

Malone grinned, wished him well, stood up and led the way out of Homicide. The division was located on the sixth floor of a commercial building that the police department shared with other government departments, most of them minor. Security in this commercial building, because of the shared space with other departments going about their mundane business, was minimal. Malone sometimes wondered what would happen if some madman, bent on homicide towards Homicide, got loose in the building.

They drove through the bedecked streets of the city. The citizens held high hopes for the coming year; it was no use living in the past, even though they were celebrating it. They had just come through the worst recession in years; they had been told to tighten their belts, torture for the beer-bellied males of the population, but for this week they were letting out the notches. There is nothing like a carnival for helping one forget one’s debts: banks are always closed on Carnival Day.

They drove over the Bridge, above the harbour already suffering a traffic-jam of yachts and cruisers and wind-surfers, and turned off into the tree-lined streets of Kirribilli. This small enclave on the north shore of the harbour, directly opposite the Opera House and the downtown skyscrapers, had had a chequered history. In the nineteenth century it had been the home of the wool merchants. In the 1920s middle-class apartments had been built on the waterfront. After World War Two it had gone downhill till in the late sixties it had become a nest for hippies and junkies. Then real estate agents, those latterday pioneers, had rediscovered it. Now it provided pieds-à-terre for retired millionaires, luxury apartments for some prominent businessmen, small town houses for young executives and their families and, almost as a gesture of social conscience, two or three rooming houses for those who couldn’t afford the prices of the other accommodation. Kirribilli, an Aboriginal word meaning ‘a good place to fish’, also provided Sydney havens for the Governor-General, the Prime Minister and ASIO, the national intelligence organization. It was natural that the local elements, including those in the rooming houses, thought of themselves as exclusive.

The dead end street leading to Kirribilli House was blocked off by police barriers. The television and radio trucks and cars were parked on the footpaths of the narrow street. The anti-Timori demonstrators were jammed solid against the barriers; there was a sprinkling of Asians amongst them, but the majority were the regulars that Malone recognized from other demonstrations; in the past twenty years protest had become a participation sport. Standing behind the demonstrators, as if separated by some invisible social barrier, was a curious crowd of locals, some of them looking disturbed, as if already worrying about falling real estate barriers. Murder and political demos did nothing for the exclusivity of an area.

Standing just inside the gates of Kirribilli House was a group of thirty or forty Paluccans, men, women and children. They were all well dressed, some in Western clothes, others in Eastern; they looked nothing like the photos Malone had seen of those other refugees of recent years, the Vietnamese boat people. Yet for all their air of affluence they looked frightened and lost.

‘They’re probably the lot who came in with the Timoris on the RAAF planes,’ Clements said. ‘They’ve had them out at one of the migrant hostels.’

‘Better question them, find out if any of them were missing last night. Get Andy Graham and Joe Raudonikis to talk to them.’ Then Malone noticed the three Commonwealth cars parked in the driveway. ‘Someone’s here from Canberra.’

Someone was: the Prime Minister himself. As Malone and Clements walked towards the house, Philip Norval, backed by half a dozen staff and security men, came out of the front door with Police Commissioner John Leeds.

The Commissioner, as usual, was impeccably dressed; he was the neatest man Malone had ever met. He was not in uniform, probably as a concession to the holiday weekend, but was in a beautifully cut blazer, slacks, white shirt and police tie. Why do I always feel like a slob when I meet him? Malone thought. Then he looked out of the corner of his eye at Clements, a real slob, and felt better.

‘Ah, Inspector Malone.’ Leeds stopped with a friendly half-smile. He nodded at Clements, but he was not a man to go right down the ranks with his greetings. He turned to the Prime Minister. ‘Inspector Malone is in charge of the investigation, sir.’

Philip Norval put out his hand, the famous TV smile flashing on like an arc-lamp. He gave his greetings to everyone, even those who didn’t vote for him. ‘Scobie Malone? I thought you’d be out at the Test.’

‘Maybe Monday, sir. If …’ Malone gestured towards the house. He had once played cricket for New South Wales as a fast bowler and might eventually have played for Australia; but he had enjoyed his cricket too much to be dedicated and ambitious and, though he never regretted it, had never gone on to realize his potential. In today’s sports world of ambition, motivational psychologists, slave-master coaches and business managers, he knew he would have been looked upon as a bludger, the equivalent of someone playing on welfare.

Norval said, ‘I’m going out there later.’

He would be, thought Malone. Though he had never shown any talent in any sport, Philip Norval never missed an opportunity to be seen at a major sporting event, preferably photographed with the winners. There had been one dreadful day at a croquet championship when, not understanding the game or the tally count, he had allowed himself to be photographed with the losers; in the end it hadn’t mattered since they had all turned out to be conservative voters. He occasionally was photographed at an art show or at the opera, but his political advisers always told him there were no votes in those camera opportunities.

He was fifty but looked a youthful forty. Blond and handsome in the bland way that the electronic image had made international, he had been the country’s highest paid television and radio star for a decade, the blow-dried and pancaked tin god host of chat shows and talk-back sessions, with a mellifluous voice and no enemies but the more acidic and envious TV critics who, if they were lucky, earned one-fiftieth of what he was paid. A kitchen cabinet of rich industrialists and bankers, looking around for a PM they could manipulate into the correct right-wing attitudes, had taken him in hand and within six years put him in The Lodge, the Prime Minister’s residence in Canberra. He had been there five years now, was in his second term and, though known as the Golden Puppet, so far looked safe from any real opposition.

‘We have a problem here, Inspector.’ He was famous for his fatuities: it came of too many years of playing to the lowest common denominator.

‘Yes, sir.’ Malone looked at Leeds, his boss, who was entitled to know first. ‘We have a lead. We think the killer could be Miguel Seville.’

‘Seville?’ said Norval. ‘Who’s he? Some guy from Palucca?’

‘He’s an international terrorist, an Argentinian.’ Leeds was perturbed, looked searchingly at Malone. ‘You sure?’

‘It’s a guess, sir, but an educated one.’

Norval looked at one of his aides for his own education: it was tough enough trying to keep up with the voters’ names, let alone those of terrorists. The aide nodded and Norval himself then nodded. ‘Oh sure, I’ve read about him. But how did he get into the act?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Malone. ‘I’m just going in now to put some more questions to President Timori.’

‘Take it easy, Inspector,’ said Norval. ‘You’d better explain what we’ve decided, Commissioner. Keep in touch.’

He shook hands with Leeds, Malone and even Clements, looked around to make sure he hadn’t missed an outstretched paw, then went up the driveway to the waiting cars. Just inside the gates he stopped and raised his arms in greeting to the crowd at the barriers. The demonstrators booed and jeered and suggested several unattractive destinations. He just gave them the famous smile, aware of the newsreel cameras advancing on him, then got into the lead car and the convoy moved off. The Golden Puppet might be manipulated in significant matters, but no one knew better than he how to juggle the superficial.

‘What’s been decided, sir?’ said Malone.

‘Would you leave us alone for five minutes, Sergeant?’ Leeds waited till Clements had moved away, then said, ‘The PM would like us to have hands-off as much as possible.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘Don’t get testy with me, Inspector –’

‘Sorry, sir. But why?’

‘Politics. You and I have run up against them before. I understand the dead man, Masutir, had a bag of emeralds in his pocket, a pretty rich packet.’

‘I wouldn’t even guess – none of us knows anything about gems. I could ask Madame Timori. Sergeant Kenthurst, from the Federals, said she grabbed them as soon as she saw them.’

‘She’s not going to tell us anything about them. That’s part of our problem – they’ve landed out here with what seems like half the Paluccan Treasury. The RAAF who brought them out of Bunda also brought six packing cases. Customs went up to Richmond last night, to the RAAF base, and went through the cases.’

‘I thought the Timoris would have claimed diplomatic immunity.’

‘They would have, if they’d known what was happening. It wasn’t a ministerial order. Some smart aleck in Customs, one of the left-wingers, overstepped the mark. The cases were opened and the contents down on paper before the Minister got wind of it. You know what happens when something goes down on paper in a government department. It becomes indelible and then multiplies.’

Malone grinned. ‘I thought that’s what happens at Headquarters?’

‘Do you want to finish up as the constable in charge of a one-man station in the bush?’ But Leeds allowed himself a smile; then he sobered again: ‘The Timoris brought out an estimated twenty-two million dollars’ worth of gold, gems and US currency.’

Malone whistled silently and Leeds nodded. Though there was a considerable difference in rank, there was an empathy between the two men. Twice before they had been caught up in politics, with Malone as the ball-carrier and the Commissioner, in the end, having to call the play. Malone began to wonder how far he would be allowed to carry the ball in this game. Perhaps he should send for Thumper Murphy and his sledge-hammer.

‘There’s a rumour they have a couple of billion salted away in Switzerland. It’s no wonder the Americans didn’t want them.’

‘How did we get landed with them?’ Malone said.

‘I thought you knew. Madame Timori was an old girl-friend of the PM’s.’

Malone could feel the ball getting heavier. He looked over Leeds’ shoulder and saw that Madame Timori, in white slacks and a yellow silk shirt, had come out on to the veranda of the house and was gazing steadily at him and the Commissioner.

‘Well, I’d better get it over with. Just routine questions?’

‘Unless you put your foot in it again, like you used to.’ Leeds buttoned up his blazer. The morning was already hot, the temperature already in the eighties, but he looked as if he might be in his air-conditioned office. ‘Your tie’s loose.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Malone tightened his tie. ‘I’m afraid Madame Timori may want to hang me with it.’

‘Don’t look for me to cut you down. Good luck.’

He went out of the gates and Malone was left feeling alone and exposed. Twenty-two years ago, in his first representative game for the State, he had gone in as the last-wicket batsman to face two of the quickest bowlers in the country. One of them had hit him under the heart with his first ball and he bad gone down like a pole-axed steer. He had somehow recovered and seen out the rest of the over and on the last ball, foolishly, had scored a run to bring him to the other end. There he had been hit twice in the ribs by the second bowler and he had found himself wondering why he had taken up such a dangerous sport as cricket. The bruises had taken two weeks to fade.

He walked towards Madame Timori wondering how long the bruises she would give him would take to fade.

TWO
1

Miguel Seville hated Australia and Australians. Not on political or ideological grounds; it was difficult to take seriously the parish pump policies of this backwater. No, he hated the country, or anyway Sydney, because it was so brash, materialistic and uncultured compared to his own Buenos Aires; he hated the people for the same grating faults. He had been here once before at the secret invitation of an Aboriginal radical group; he had found the blacks as objectionable as the whites. Loud, brash, with opinions on everything: nobody wanted to learn, especially from a foreigner, even an invited one. With the disappearance of Carlos, he had become the top man in his trade; but the Aboriginal radicals had wanted to argue every point with him. In the end he had walked out on them and gone back to Damascus.

That was where he had been two weeks ago when the phone call had come from Beirut. He had gone down to that ruined city and in an apartment in the Muslim quarter met the man who had phoned him.

‘You will be paid one million American dollars.’

Seville tried to show no surprise; but it was difficult. His price was high, but it had never been as high as this. All at once the recent dreaming might come true: he could retire, go back to Argentina and be amongst his own again.

‘Less my ten per cent.’ Rah Zaid was a thin, thin-faced, thin-eyed man who always, no matter what the weather or the time of year, wore a neatly-pressed black silk suit and an Arab head-dress. He had a husky voice that suggested over-exposure to desert sandstorms; the truth, less romantic, was overexposure to American cigarettes. He was smoking now, almost shutting his eyes against the smoke. The air in the apartment was acrid, but that could be the after-effects of the Christian shell that this morning had wiped off the balcony beyond the living-room’s french doors. ‘As usual.’

‘The client is also paying you commission, I suppose?’ Seville didn’t resent what Zaid made out of the contracts; he was the best contact man in the trade that employed them. Utterly amoral, he was nevertheless utterly to be trusted. If he were not, he would have been dead years ago. Seville could have been the one to kill him.

Zaid smiled thinly behind the cigarette smoke: everything about him seemed to be squeezed tight to make the least possible impression. ‘We have an understanding.’

‘Who is the client?’ Seville knew better than to ask, but he always did.

Zaid shook his head. ‘In this case you aren’t to know. Even I don’t know. You are to kill President Timori either in Bunda or, if he abdicates and leaves Palucca, you are to follow him and kill him at the first opportunity.’

‘I thought only kings abdicated?’

‘I gather he thinks of himself as one. If he does, they have no idea where he’ll go. Nobody wants him, not even the Americans.’

Down in the street there was a burst of automatic gunfire, but neither man flinched or got up to investigate. Beirut now had different everyday sounds from those of other cities. A breeze blew in from the bay but there was no smell of salt air, just cordite.

‘When do they want me to leave?’

‘Immediately. Things will come to a head this week in Bunda.’

‘How will the money be paid?’

‘Half a million to your usual account. The rest on completion of the job.’

‘Did you nominate the price or did they?’

Zaid gave another thin smile; Seville, who had been happy as a child, wondered if the Arab had ever laughed aloud, ‘I had to do some bargaining, but that’s what I enjoy.’ Seville could imagine the bargaining: it was second nature to an Arab. ‘These people, whoever they are, hardly quibbled – their go-between came back to me within ten minutes. They must be desperate to be rid of him.’

‘But if he abdicates, why kill him?’

Zaid shrugged, lit another cigarette. ‘Perhaps it is the Americans, It would save them the embarrassment of having to give him political refuge.’

It was Seville’s turn to smile. ‘I don’t think so. They would pay someone a million dollars to kill me.’

‘The client doesn’t know who you are. I was just asked to find an assassin.’

Seville got up and walked to the french doors. He walked with a slight roll, like a man who had spent a long time at sea; but he was no seaman, indeed he hated it. He had a knee-cap that had once been broken by the Argentinian secret police; it gave him little trouble now, but it had affected his walk. He was good-looking in an anonymous way; he grew on women slowly, which was the way he preferred; women, for more than just professional reasons, should always be approached cautiously. He was slim and of medium height and had a cool air to him that was often taken for quiet arrogance and rightly so. He had contempt for a good deal of the world and its citizens.

He looked out across the Bay of St George to the steeply rising mountains. This had once been the most beautiful city in the Levant, a mixture of influences laid like a diorama of history, from the Phoenicians to the French and now the Syrians, on the slopes between the mountains and the sea. Now it was a battlefield, a city of ruins that, if the present madness prevailed, might never be rebuilt.

‘Once I thought of retiring here.’ He had wanted to retire for at least a year; he had tired of the game. But there had not been enough money to retire on; there was no pension fund for freelance terrorists. Indeed, there had been very few commissions for him in the past year; the terrorist groups had started to employ expendable fanatics who cost nothing. He had been fast approaching the point where he would be in debt, an Argentinian national habit but one which he had never indulged. Of course there was the family money, but he would have to wait till his mother died before he could claim any of that; and that would not be easy, because half a dozen police forces would do their best to follow the trail of money to him. It might be years before he could collect it.

Now this windfall was being laid in his lap and he could think seriously of retiring. ‘But I’ll be in my grave before Beirut is peaceful again. Don’t you think so?’

‘Yes,’ said Zaid who preferred not to talk of the grave. No commission ever came out of a cemetery.

‘What happens if something goes wrong? Whom do I contact?’

‘I promised them nothing would go wrong.’

Seville shook his head, smiled almost as thinly as Zaid. ‘You know I try to be as near perfect as possible. But something can always go wrong, especially if the target doesn’t co-operate. You may not know it, but there were six attempts to kill Queen Victoria, but something always went wrong.’

‘Assassins have improved since then – the technology is better. You won’t fail, Miguel. Just think of the million dollars.’

Seville drew an advance from Zaid, went to a local bank and bought $3,000 worth of traveller’s cheques; he did not believe in over-loading himself with money. Police had a bad habit of confiscating money when they picked up a suspected terrorist. He did not sign the cheques, because he could never be certain what name he would be using when it came time to cash them. The bank knew better than to insist that he sign them; in Beirut money was always being withdrawn for reasons better left unqueried. As he came out of the bank a car bomb exploded at the far end of the street. He stood watching the black smoke vomit up in slow motion; then the terrified figures came running out of it. A man was jumping towards him on one leg, the stump of the other streaming blood behind him; suddenly he stopped, balanced like a dancer on the good leg, then fell over. There were screams and shouts and, as if it had been waiting just round the corner for the call, the wail of the siren of an approaching ambulance. He turned and walked away, wondering who the one-legged man had been and why, even as he walked away and the man was behind him, the image of him should be so clear in his mind. He could not remember taking any notice of the victims of his own bomb plantings. Was he to be haunted by memories in his retirement?

He had returned that night to Damascus, going up the Aley road and down through the Bekaa valley through the Syrian troops’ roadblocks. He left Damascus the next day as Michele Rinelli, the sales manager of an Italian computer firm, and, going via Dubai, arrived sixteen hours later in Singapore. There he checked into the Raffles; he preferred the older style of hotel, they reminded him of the hotels in Buenos Aires. He wondered what the hotels were like in Bunda.

Then a contact in the Singapore police told him he had been sighted and a watch posted at Changi airport. He had moved out of the Raffles into a small hotel and lain low for a week; then the news had come through that the situation in Palucca had worsened and President Timori was expected to flee to Australia. Seville had shaved off his moustache, dyed his dark hair blond, donned steel-rimmed spectacles and got out the passport that fitted his new identity. He had waited till it was certain that Timori was headed for Australia. Then he had bought a business class ticket for Sydney, gone through passport control as Michel Gideon, a French-speaking Swiss businessman, and boarded the crowded Qantas jet. He had been aware of the two plainclothes officers standing in the background as he passed through passport control, but they had not stopped him. Eight hours later he had come undetected through Immigration in Sydney; visitors were flocking to the city for the bicentennial celebrations and six 747s had landed within a few minutes of each other. He had collected his two bags, one with the dismantled rifle hidden in a false bottom, and, having nothing to declare, had been waved through by the over-worked Customs men.

The Timoris and their entourage arrived twenty-four hours later. The local press, with a fine disregard for security, had already told Seville where they could be found; they were tired of stories about the bicentennial celebrations, this was an entirely new subject to Australians. The country for years had been a haven for refugees, but they had always been of the lower orders; no President had ever asked for asylum. So they welcomed the unwanted bastard with banner headlines.

Seville had scouted the surroundings of Kirribilli House and decided he needed the top floor of the block of flats across the street from it. He had checked the number of the top-floor flat, then checked the name against the number on the mail-boxes: Kiddle. On the afternoon of the Timoris’ arrival he had stood amongst the already present crowd of demonstrators and watched the small convoy of Commonwealth cars, trailed by the newsreel vans and cars, come down the narrow street and swing in through the iron gates. Madame Timori, mistaking the demonstrators for glamour-loving fans, had waved and been roundly booed. The waving hand had stopped in mid-air, looked for a moment as if it might turn into a two-fingered salute, then dropped out of sight. The gates had closed behind the cars.

Seville went back to the suburban hotel where he was staying, looked up Kiddle in the phone book, then dialled the 922 number. ‘Mrs Kiddle?’ he said to the woman who answered.

‘Miss Kiddle.’ It was an old woman’s voice, he judged. ‘Yes?’

‘This is Security at Kirribilli House. We are just checking that the demonstrators are not worrying you?’

‘The demonstrators? Oh, is that what they are? No, no. They are noisy, but they’re not worrying me. Has President What’s-his-name arrived yet?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ She sounded as if she wanted to give the President her regards. ‘We’ll be in touc,. Miss Kiddle, if the demonstrators get too noisy.’

‘Oh, don’t worry. If I were younger, I’d join them. Tell President Timori to go home.’

Seville smiled and hung up. He could not imagine his mother, God damn her soul, saying that; she would be out there waving a flag for President Timori, for any President. He packed the Springfield in the squash kit-bag he had bought that morning, added the length of stout cord he always carried, put in his black kid gloves and zipped up the bag. He dressed in jeans and a navy-blue tennis blouson, put on dark glasses and went out to kill.

The day was hot and the crowd of demonstrators listless; the police watching them were equally listless. No one stopped Seville as he pushed through the crowd and walked along towards the block of flats. He went into the cool hallway of the old thick-walled building and climbed to the top floor. There was no lift and he wondered how Miss Kiddle, if she was old, managed this climb.

There was a security grille door guarding the front door of the top flat. It took him less than a minute to pick the lock; a man who carried a dismantled Springfield rifle carried other tools as well. Seville was a professional: he knew better than to gamble on doors being left unlocked.

Then he pressed the bell beside the door. There was no answer and for a moment he hoped that Miss Kiddle had gone out: he had an aversion to close-up killing, such as a strangling. Then a voice said, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Security from Kirribilli House, Miss Kiddle. We called you an hour or so ago.’

‘Oh yes – just a moment.’

There was the sound of two locks being snapped back, then the door was opened. Miss Kiddle stood there, white-haired and frail; somehow he had expected someone more robust. He smiled at her, then pushed against the door and stepped into the flat, kicking the door closed behind him. She didn’t look frightened or startled by his abrupt entrance; she was smiling at him when he took the cord from his blouson pocket and wrapped it round her neck. She died without protest, but he stood behind her, his head turned away till she went limp.

He laid her out gently on the floor, pulled a shawl off a grand piano and covered her with it. He opened the front door, locked the security door, and closed the front door again, locking it. Then he looked around the room in which he stood.

It was a big room and it reminded him of his mother’s house in Recoletta in Buenos Aires: the antique furniture, the grand piano with the shawl on it, the dark drapes aimed at keeping out the too-bright sun; Miss Kiddle, like his mother, had preferred to live in the past. He crossed to one of the windows and at once looked down on Kirribilli House. Trees obstructed part of the view, but he couldn’t ask for a perfect situation: assassins, by the nature of their trade, rarely do have perfect situations.

He put the rifle together and sat down to wait till the opportunity presented itself to kill Timori. It might be a long wait, but sooner or later Timori would emerge from the house. Twice the phone rang, but he ignored it, though he sweated through the second ringing, which went on for almost two minutes. He felt in need of a leak after that and he got up and went into the bathroom off the main bedroom.

But the room was full of a woman’s private things: he couldn’t face them, suddenly felt an odd respect for Miss Kiddle who possibly had never had a man, other than a plumber, in this most private of rooms. He went out, found a second bathroom, relieved himself, pressed the cistern button and went back into the living-room. He had taken off his right glove to handle his penis and now he put it back on again as he settled back at his post.

It was almost dark when President and Madame Timori stepped out and began their after-dinner stroll. They stood for a moment looking down at the spectacle of the lighted boats on the harbour. Seville raised the rifle, found his target distinct against the cross-hatch of the ’scope. The Timoris were standing close together; there would be the opportunity for two shots in quick succession. He would present Madame Timori to the client as a bonus at no extra charge.

The demonstrators, evidently alerted that the Timoris had come out of the house and were in the grounds,’ were now shouting and chanting at the top of their voices. ‘Death to Dictators!’ was one chant, and Seville took it as encouragement. His finger eased gently on the trigger, then tightened. At that moment he saw the other figure come right into the centre of the ‘scope, but it was too late to hold the shot.

When Seville realized he had shot the wrong man, panic, something he had never felt before, shot through him. His hand trembled; he looked at it with amazement, as if it didn’t belong to him. By the time the shaking had stopped it was too late for another shot. He hastily dismantled the rifle, fumbling in his haste and cursing himself for his awkwardness. He stuffed it into the squash bag, took a quick look around to make sure he had left nothing behind, then headed for the front door. He let himself out of the apartment and ran down the stairs.

He had reached the bottom flight, was halfway down it, when he saw the elderly couple outlined against the glass front doors. They were about to come into the building, but had turned back for a last look at the demonstrators.

Seville missed his step, almost plunged down the last few stairs. He swung round at the bottom and turned back behind the staircase. There was an alcove there, a storage place for buckets and brooms for the building’s cleaner. Seville pressed himself into the small dark space, waited for the elderly couple to come in and go to their flat. He had recovered his composure; he was prepared to kill again if he had to. It would be another close-to death, perhaps two, but that could not be helped.

The front door was pushed open and the elderly couple came in. Seville could not see them, but he could hear their hesitant footsteps on the stairs above his head. And their remarks:

‘I’d lock ’em all up,’ said the elderly woman.

‘Those fellows across the road?’ said her husband. ‘Norval and his gang? I’ve been saying that for years.’

‘No, stupid. Those young people in that crowd. Making all that noise and what for? What did noise ever do for anyone except give headaches? Have you got the key?’

‘No, you have it.’

‘I gave it to you, stupid!’

‘Keep your voice down. You’re making a noise.’

They had stopped on the first-floor landing. Seville stepped out from the alcove, then froze. A uniformed policeman stood right outside the front doors, clearly seen through the glass. Seville hesitated, then he shoved the squash bag back into the alcove, dropping it into a bucket. His mind had worked swiftly. He did not want to be stopped and questioned as to what he was carrying in the bag. The noise from the demonstrators had suddenly stopped as they realized something had happened in the grounds of Kirribilli House. The police would be more alert now; even as Seville looked at him, the policeman suddenly moved off at the run as a whistle sounded. Seville stepped across the front lobby and out into the street.

The demonstrators were being herded back up the street. They were going quietly, some of them looking shocked; they had evidently been told of the shooting. Seville hurried to catch up with the stragglers. A policeman appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Seville by the arm. His first reaction was to stop and struggle, but the policeman, a big burly man with cauliflower ears, was too quick for him.

‘Don’t try any rough stuff, son, or you’ll finish up in the wagon!’ He gave Seville a shove, then a boot up the behind. ‘Git!’

‘Don’t argue with him,’ a young girl warned Seville. ‘That’s the Thumper – he’s a menace to democracy.’

‘You’re bloody right I am!’ said Thumper. ‘Now git before I put me boot up your bum, too!’

The girl jerked her fingers at the sergeant, but ran up the street, dragging Seville with her. A moment later he was lost in the crowd of demonstrators, losing the girl too.

Now, twelve hours later, he sat in this small bedroom in a pub in Rozelle, two or three miles from the heart of the city. He had found Sydney booked out for its 200th birthday party; it was an obliging taxi driver, after driving around for an hour, who had found this drinking hotel which, miraculously, had a room to rent. It was not an establishment that catered much, if at all, for accomm#243;dation; it made its money out of drinkers, not guests, and it entertained the drinkers with rock bands that had no talent but thunderous volume. The noise and the surroundings had done nothing to decrease Seville’s dislike of Australia and Australians.

He was cursing the loss of the rifle; he still had the task of killing Timori but now he had no weapon. He had coolly walked through security screens before, in Rome, Milan, even Tel Aviv; but he had never done so carrying a weapon immediately after an assassination or massacre. This job had come too quickly, Timori’s movements had been unpredictable and Seville had had no time for proper planning. He was a precise killer and this time he had been anything but that. He was not accustomed to failure and it hurt like a bullet wound.

He was forty years old and perhaps it was time to retire. But he could not go out on a botched job, with the target still alive and walking around. He needed another gun; but where did one buy a gun in Sydney on a holiday weekend? Guns were being fired all over the city, but they were firing blanks for celebration. Then he remembered the black militants he had met on his last visit to Sydney. The Aborigines, if they were like the Indians of Argentina, would be the last people taking a holiday to celebrate the rape of their country.

2

‘This house is so small,’ said Madame Timori; trying to look hemmed in and not succeeding. ‘Our palace back home has eighty-eight rooms.’

‘Perhaps Australians have a better sense of modesty than us.’ President Timori, homeless, was doing his best to be polite. He was training for exile, just in case the worst proved permanent.

‘I’m Australian,’ said his wife. ‘Or anyway half-Australian. Do you live in a modest house, Inspector?’

‘It’s no palace, Madame.’ Malone thought of the three-bedroomed house in Randwick that would fit almost twice into this one.

‘Do you have a swimming pool?’

‘Yes, a small one.’ That had been a gift for the children from Lisa’s parents, a gesture that at first he had resented.

‘This house doesn’t. Can you imagine, a Prime Minister’s house with no pool? An Australian Prime Minister’s! I’ll bet there’s a barbecue somewhere, though.’

She’s more than half-Australian, Malone thought. She’s one of those expatriate Aussies who can’t resist knocking their home country. He wondered if she ever mentioned Malaysia, her mother’s country. He was not chock-a-block with patriotism himself, but a little of it didn’t hurt, even a traitor.

‘You can always go next door and bathe in the Governor’s pool,’ said the President.

‘The Governor-General.’ She had a passion for accuracy: she wouldn’t have missed if she had been firing at her husband. ‘But who’d want to? He hasn’t sent one word since we arrived here. He’s probably waiting on the Queen to tell him what to do. And you know what she’s like, so damned stuffy about protocol.’ Then the First Lady seemed to remember some protocol of her own. ‘I hope you’re not taking any of this down in your little book, Inspector.’

‘No, Madame. Now may I ask the President some questions?’

They were sitting out on the terrace on the harbour side of the house. Out on the sun-chipped water the yachts were already gathered like bird-of-paradise gulls; once, Malone remembered, the sails had all been white but now a fleet looked like a fallen rainbow. A container ship, all blue and red and yellow, was heading downstream towards the Heads, its hooting siren demanding right-of-way from the yachts, which seemed to ignore it till the very last moment. On the far side of the water the expensive houses and apartment blocks of Darling Point and Point Piper, silvertail territory, sparkled like quartz cliffs in the morning sun. There was little breeze and the heat lay on the city like a dark-blue blanket. It was going to be a scorcher of a day.

‘I don’t see why it’s necessary,’ said Madame Timori, throwing cold water.

Malone ignored her. ‘Mr President, we have a lead on the man who tried to shoot you. We think it is Miguel Seville. He’s an Argentinian, one of the world’s leading terrorists. Maybe the leading one.’

Sun Lee had come out of the house to stand in the background just behind Timori’s chair. The rest of the Presidential encourage, the men, women and children who had spent last night in one of the immigrant hostels, had moved down from the front of the house and stood in a group in the shade of some trees, looking as if they wanted an audience of the President but were not game to ask. But Malone noticed that they were all suddenly still, as if they had heard what he had said, and behind Timori the private secretary seemed to stiffen.

Timori raised an eyebrow, but that was all. He was dressed in white slip-ons, white cotton slacks and a blue batik-patterned shirt: he could have taken his place on any of the cruising yachts out on the harbour or at any one of the barbecue picnics out in the suburbs. Except for his face: there was no holiday spirit there. He looked sick, older even than he had yesterday. Last night’s bullet hadn’t hit him, but he had read his name on it: it was unfortunate that poor Mohammed Masutir had had involuntary power of attorney.

‘Why would they hire a foreigner to kill me?’ He sounded affronted as well as puzzled: for all his corruption he was a true nationalist.

‘Perhaps it was the Americans,’ said his wife. ‘The CIA will hire anyone. Remember those Mafia they hired to try and kill Castro?’

‘But they were Americans,’ said Timori. ‘No, it wouldn’t be the CIA. President Fegan is my friend,’ he told Malone.

‘I’m sure he is, sir.’ Malone did not voice his truthful opinion, that in top politics there were no friends, only expendable partners. He could not believe that Timori had read no history. ‘Have you had any trouble from terrorists in Palucca?’

‘None,’ said Madame Timori. ‘I told you there were to be no political questions!’

Pull your head in, Delvina. But Malone’s voice was still mild: ‘It wasn’t meant to be political, Madame Timori. I’m just trying to build up a picture in my mind so that we can do something about catching this man Seville before he makes another attempt on the President’s life.’

‘You think he’ll do that?’ Timori had a soft silky voice; now it was just a whisper. ‘What sort of protection can you give me?’

‘I can give you none, sir. That’s up to the Federal Police and our Special Branch.’

‘What do you do, then?’ Madame Timori’s voice was neither silky nor a whisper. Over under the trees the group was leaning forward, ears strained.

‘I’m afraid we’re always called in too late to prevent anything. That’s why we’re called Homicide – after the crime that’s been committed.’

‘Homicide? I thought you fellers had finished here?’

Malone turned his head as the newcomer passed him, shook hands with Timori, then kissed Madame Timori on her upturned cheek. He was a barrel of a man, a mixture of muscle and fat, dressed in blue slacks and shirt and a raw silk jacket. Amongst all the sartorial elegance on this terrace – even Sun Lee looked like an advertisement for one of Hong Kong’s best tailors – Malone felt like someone who had just stepped out of a St Vincent de Paul store.

‘I’m Russell Hickbed.’ He was the sort of man who would never wait for someone else to introduce him. His broad, blunt-featured face had no smile for Malone; the pale-blue eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses held no hint of friendliness. ‘You’re –?’

‘Inspector Malone.’ Malone didn’t stand up or offer his hand. He sensed at once that only by remaining seated was he going to keep control of this interview with Timori.

‘Well, didn’t you get the message, Inspector?’

Malone had never met Hickbed before but he had seen him on television, on Four Corners, Sixty Minutes and on the Carleton-Walsh show. Always laying down the law on the economic situation, on foreign policy, on equal rights: he was a nineteenth-century mind who shamelessly used a twentieth-century medium to preach his arch-conservative message. He had made his fortune in Western Australia in the construction business and the resources boom, then come East to take on the Establishments of Sydney and Melbourne and, according to his own estimate, beaten them to a pulp. Other Sandgropers, as Western Australians were called, had done the same, with varying degrees of success. The others still kept their bases in Perth, the Western capital, as if needing the moral, or immoral, support of their fellow millionaires; but Hickbed, folding his mansion tent on the Swan River, had settled in Sydney, buying an even bigger mansion on the shores of the harbour. Nobody knew how much he was worth, but if he lost a million or two on Monday he had usually recouped it by Tuesday. He had the rich man’s magnetism for money.

‘What message was that?’ He’s expecting me to be a mug copper, so I’ll be one.

Hickbed looked at the Timoris. The President seemed uninterested; but the First Lady was tense and angry. ‘The police here seem to be a law to themselves!’

Hickbed took off his glasses and wiped them; somehow his face looked blank and less aggressive without them. ‘Is that so, Inspector?’

‘Perhaps you should ask the Premier.’ Malone knew that Hickbed and The Dutchman were enemies who would cross an ocean to avoid each other. ‘The politicians make the laws in this State.’

‘This has nothing to do with the Premier or New South Wales.’

‘I’m afraid you don’t know the law, Mr Hickbed. Homicide is a State offence, not a Federal one. I think it has something to do with States’ rights.’

Hickbed recognized the barb. Before he had come out of the West he had been one of the nation’s most vociferous advocates of States’ rights. Then he had finally realized the real power would always remain in Canberra. That was when he had become leader of the kitchen cabinet that had taken charge of Phil Norval.

He put his glasses back on, looked threatening. ‘You’re making trouble for yourself, Inspector.’

Malone looked at him, then at Madame Timori, finally at the President. The latter might appear uninterested, but it struck Malone that he had missed nothing of the exchange between himself and Hickbed.

‘They warned me of that the first day I put on a uniform. A policeman’s lot …’

But Hickbed had never listened to Gilbert and Sullivan. ‘You’re a pretty uppity policeman, aren’t you?’

Malone put away his notebook and stood up. ‘It must be the surroundings. I was once in the Mayor’s mansion in New York – I got a bit light-headed there, too. I must be more ambitious than I thought.’

‘Oh, you’re that Malone!’ Hickbed looked at him with new interest, if no more respect. ‘The one whose wife was kidnapped or something with the Mayor of New York?’

‘With the Mayor’s wife, actually.’ Malone turned away from Hickbed; he also turned away from Madame Timori. ‘I’m not giving up on the case, Mr President. I’d still like to nail this feller Seville before he tries to kill you again.’

Timori stood up, getting out of his chair with the stiff movements of an old man. But his eyes seemed to have come alive; he put out his hand to shake Malone’s and his grip was firm. He smiled, a gold tooth that Malone hadn’t seen before all at once suggesting the raffish look he once must have had. He’s a bastard, Malone thought, corrupt as a rotten mango. But you might find yourself liking him.

‘I’d be grateful if you can – nail? – him, Inspector. It was always my ambition to die in bed, preferably beneath a beautiful woman –’ The gold tooth winked at the First Lady; she gave him an unladylike glare and Hickbed, unexpectedly, looked embarrassed. Malone just grinned. ‘I don’t want to die from an assassin’s bullet. I hate surprises.’

‘We’ll do our best, sir. Well, I’d better go. Just one more question –’ But he looked at Sun Lee, not at the other three who had been expecting the question. ‘You’ve heard of Miguel Seville, haven’t you, Mr Sun?’

Sun hadn’t been expecting the question: he wasn’t entirely ready with his answer. ‘Me, Inspector? I – why should I have heard of him?’

‘You must read the newspapers, Mr Sun, even in Bunda. Did you ever hear of him coming to Palucca? Private secretaries usually know all the gossip. At least they do in this country.’

‘Mr Sun has no time for gossip,’ said Madame Timori, who had once provided so much of it and still did.

Sun took his cue from her. He shook his head, gave Malone a cold stare: ‘I know nothing about Mr Seville.’

Malone returned his stare, then nodded and turned his back on the Chinese. He said his goodbyes to the Timoris, ignoring Hickbed, and left the terrace, going round the corner of the house past the group still standing like an abandoned bus queue in the shade of the trees. In the front of the house, his jacket over his arm and his tie loosened, was Russ Clements, talking to Detective-Inspector Nagler of Special Branch.

‘G’day, Scobie. You don’t look happy.’ Joe Nagler was a thin dark man with a sad face that belied his sense of humour. He was one of the few Jews in the force, but that didn’t prompt him to waste any sympathy on the newer ethnics in the community. He divided the world into, as he called them, the goods and the bads and where you or your ancestors came from made no difference. ‘Madame Timori been rubbing you up the wrong way?’

‘You too?’

Nagler nodded, smiling sadly. ‘Imagine her and Boadicea Thatcher running the world! Or one or two of the ethnic dames we have out here.’

‘I didn’t know you were a misogynist. Does your nice Jewish mother know?’

‘She put me up to it. No Jewish mother wants her son loving another woman.’ Nagler was happily married to a nice Catholic girl and had five children: the Pope, as he said, always got into bed with him and the missus. He changed the subject: ‘So we’re looking for this guy Seville?’

‘You got any other bets?’

‘He’s good enough for me. This isn’t a job I’d have picked as my favourite. Let’s find him, wrap it up and go home.’

‘And where do the Timoris go?’

‘Who cares?’

Malone grinned. ‘You fellers are special in Special Branch.’

‘I thought of transferring once,’ said Clements. ‘They wouldn’t have me.’

‘You should have had a Jewish mother. She got me in. Well, I’m glad we’re all working together.’

‘What about the ASIO spooks?’ said Malone. ‘Anyone invited them in?’

ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, had its Sydney headquarters half a block up the street in another converted waterfront mansion. The Federal Government looked after its representatives here in Kirribilli. Through the trees Malone could see the magnificent nineteenth-century pile that was Admiralty House, built by another of the colony’s early merchants, a more successful one than Mr Feez of Kirribilli House. Yesterday the Governor-General had been in residence, but this morning Malone saw that the tall flagpole in the large gardens was bare. The G-G had folded his flag and fled, turning his back on his neighbours.

‘Half the demonstrators outside are ASIO spooks, undercover,’ said Nagler, and Malone and Clements smiled agreement with him.

The talk was inconsequential, but they all knew they were sitting on a landmine of a type they had never met before.

‘The trouble is,’ said Nagler, ‘there are certain people just across the water who’d love to see this whole thing blow up in Phil Norval’s face.’,

THREE
1

‘Bugger ’em,’ said The Dutchman, ‘I run the police in this State, not Phil Norval.’

‘I shouldn’t let myself be quoted on that,’ said John Leeds.

Hans Vanderberg grinned. It was a marvellous grin, a mixture of malevolence and friendliness, of cynicism and paternalism: each voter could take what he liked from it. He was a small man, with a foxy face and thick grey hair with a high quiff, a style that Leeds thought had gone out at least fifty years ago. It was Saturday, there were no official functions till this afternoon, so he was casually dressed: the brown slacks of one suit, the blue jacket of another and a shirt that suggested a drunken holiday on the Barrier Reef. He was a living denial of the latterday maxim that the voters voted for the electronic image; on a TV screen he looked like a technical fault. He was the very opposite of his arch-enemy the Prime Minister.

‘You know what I mean, John. Phil Norval’s up to something and he ain’t gunna get away with it, my word he’s not. We’ve got to grab the bull by the balls–’

‘By the horns,’ said Ladbroke, his political secretary, who was known to the Macquarie Street columnists as the Keeper of the Faux Pas.

‘What’s the difference? You ever had a bull by the horns in a china shop, John?’

‘Offhand,’ said Leeds, ‘I can’t remember it.’

‘What’s Phil Norval’s connection with the Timoris? He’s not doing this for them just because the Yanks asked him. Who’s in charge of the case?’

‘Inspector Malone.’

‘Scobie Malone. I remember him. Get him to do some digging.’

‘I’m sorry, Hans, you know I won’t let any of my men get into political work.’

Vanderberg grinned again, but this time it was purely malevolent. He swung his chair round and looked out the window, but Leeds knew he wouldn’t be looking at the view. They were in the Premier’s office on the eighth floor of the State office block, with a magnificent view right down the harbour to the Heads. But they were too high up for The Dutchman: if he was out of shouting distance of the voters he was looking on a barren landscape.

‘Just my luck to have an honest Commissioner. I oughta been Premier back in the old good days.’

‘Good old days,’ murmured Ladbroke; but only to himself.

‘You know nothing about those days,’ said Leeds. ‘You’re always saying history doesn’t mean anything.’

‘It’s true. A voter, he goes into a voting booth, he doesn’t remember the last election, he’s voting on what his pocket tells him today. He don’t want to know about yesterday, dead kings and prime ministers and Magna Carta, all that stuff. Neither do I.’ He swung his chair back to face Leeds. He might not have a sense of history, which really is only for statesmen; he did, however, have a wonderful memory, which a successful politician needs more than an arm or a leg. ‘Wasn’t Madame Timori, whatever her name was before, Delvina Someone, Delvina O’Reilly, that’s it – wasn’t she a TV dancer before she got her name in the papers with that dance company?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Leeds. ‘Where did you learn that?’

‘TV Times.’ He might have, too, Leeds thought. He would read anything, even a bus ticket, if it contained information against an enemy. ‘There’s something going on there, I dunno what. Russell Hickbed’s been to see ’em twice.’

‘Was that in TV Times?’ Leeds stood up. It was time to go, before he got into an argument with the Premier. They respected each other’s ability, but they would never be friends. ‘I’ll keep Malone working on the case, then.’

‘You want to get this feller Seville, don’t you? Jesus Christ, he might try for me next! Phil Norval would pay him.’ He grinned at the thought, relishing the sensation of his own death.

‘I don’t think the bullet’s been made that could put a dent in you.’

Vanderberg grinned again: with pride this time. Somehow it looked uglier than his malevolence. ‘Maybe I shoulda been a copper.’

Leeds managed a smile, said goodbye and left. He was going out to the Cricket Ground to watch the Test match for an hour or two and he hoped he wouldn’t run into the Prime Minister again. He had had enough of politicians for the day.

When the door had closed Vanderberg looked at his political secretary. ‘He’s a good copper. It’s a pity he’s so honest. A little larceny never hurt anyone, right?’

‘Right,’ said Ladbroke, who had known all about larceny before he took this job; he had been a political columnist and had seen the State’s best practitioners at work. He was a plump, anonymous-looking man in his late thirties who had no illusions left but didn’t miss them. ‘I’ve got Jack Phillips and Don Clary at work. If there’s any dirt, they’ll dig it up.’

‘Oh, there’ll be dirt, I’ll bet your boots on it,’ said Vanderberg, who never bet anything of his own. He stood up, looking pleased. ‘It would make a great Australia Day if I could topple the Prime Minister, wouldn’t it?’

‘Great,’ said Ladbroke, and the headlines broke in his head like a blinding light. He was a lapsed Catholic and for a moment he thought he’d had a vision.

‘Do the press know about this bloke Seville?’

‘Not as far as I know. The police want it kept quiet for the time being.’

Vanderberg thought for a moment. ‘Well, we’ll see. We might leak it, just to keep things on the boiling.’

‘I’ll prepare something, just in case.’

‘I’m going home for a coupla hours.’ The Dutchman lived in his electorate on the edge of the inner city. Glebe had once been a middle-class area, then for years it had been home for the working class and had become a Labour stronghold. Now the trendy academics from nearby Sydney University had moved in, bringing their racks of Chardonnay, their taste for foreign films and their narrow view of any world but their own. They voted Labour, but laughed at The Dutchman. But they knew and he knew that none of them would last two rounds with him in the political ring. ‘We might have a good weekend.’

Avagoodweekend was a TV slogan for a brand of fly-spray. Ladbroke wondered if Phil Norval, the TV hero, knew he was about to be sprayed.

2

Malone was greeted at his front door by a four-year-old centurion in a plastic breastplate and wielding a plastic sword. ‘Who goes there? Fred or foe?’

‘Fred.’

‘Fred who?’

‘Fred the Fuzz.’ He picked up Tom and kissed him. His own mother Brigid had probably kissed him as a very small child, but from Tom’s age he could remember no kisses from the hard-working religious woman who loved him but was incapable of public sentiment. He sometimes wondered how often she had kissed his father and if she still did. Malone himself made a point of being affectionate towards his wife and children. ‘Where’s Mum?’

‘Here.’

Lisa stood in the kitchen doorway silhouetted against the late sunlight coming through from the back of the house. She was in shorts and a halter-top and at thirty-seven she still had the figure she had had at twenty-seven. She swam every day, summer and winter, something he didn’t do in the unheated pool, and she went to a gym class twice a week. She was more beautiful than he knew he deserved, but she was not vain about it nor was she fanatical about keeping fit. She had been born in Holland and she had the Dutch (well, some Dutch) habit of discipline. She and her parents were as unlike Hans Vanderberg as it was possible to be.

‘A bad day?’ She could recognize the signs.

He nodded. ‘What did you do?’

‘Mother and Dad took us all to Eliza’s for lunch, then we came back here and swam all afternoon. They’re out by the pool with Claire and Maureen. Your mother and father are here, too.’

Malone rolled his eyes in mock agony. ‘Now I know how the Abos felt on that first Australia Day. Who’s going to be the first to tell me what to do with Timori? Dad or your old man?’

‘You’re my old man,’ said Tom. ‘The kids at school call you that.’

‘You’ve got a pretty bright lot at your kindy,’ said Malone. ‘They know an old man when they see one.’

He changed into his swim-trunks, went out to the back yard, kissed his daughters, said hello to his parents and his in-laws, swam half-a-dozen lengths of the thirty-five-foot pool, then climbed out, sat down and waited for the avalanche of opinion.

Con Malone pushed the first boulder. ‘All right, what’s he like? When they let crims like him into the country, it’s time I went back to the Ould Country.’ Con had been born in Australia, had never set foot outside it, but was always threatening to go back to Ireland. He was sixty-eight years old, every year stamped there in the square, creased face with its long upper lip; he was built like a tree-trunk (he had once been a timber worker) and he still couldn’t say no to a fight, anyone, any time, anywhere. Only his age and the shame of younger opponents saved him from a licking. ‘Him and Phil Norval are a good pair.’

‘Oh, I don’t think Norval’s corrupt or a criminal. He’s too stupid for that.’ Jan Pretorius was a Liberal voter, that is to say a conservative one. When, some decades ago, the conservative party, looking for a new image, had usurped the name Liberal for itself, the ghost of Gladstone had climbed out of his grave in England but, with Australia already full of English ghosts, had been denied entry to protest his case. The name did not worry Jan Pretorious; he voted for the party’s principles, which suited his own conservative outlook. He had a respect for politics and politicians that over-rode his contempt for some of the latter. He was still European, and not Australian, in that attitude. ‘Someone is putting pressure on him to allow President Timori to stay here.’

‘The bloody Yanks,’ said Con Malone, who would blame the Americans for everything and anything.

‘You think so?’ Pretorious looked at his son-in-law. He was a distinguished-looking man, with silver-grey hair and a florid face that, despite his having been born in the tropics, had never become accustomed to the Australian sun.

‘I think it might be closer to home,’ said Malone.

‘Who?’ said Brigid Malone and Elisabeth Pretorious together. They had no interest in politics, but they had a parfumier’s nose for a whiff of gossip.

Malone smiled, dodging the question and gave his attention to his daughters who, wet and slippery, slid over him like young dolphins. He looked at Lisa, who had the centurion in her lap. ‘I’m going to be working all weekend.’

‘Awh-h-h-h Daddy!’ his daughters chorused and Tom waved his sword threateningly.

‘Why don’t you apply for an administrative job, a nine-to-five one?’ said Pretorious.

‘Because he’d be unbearable to live with,’ said Lisa.

‘He oughta never been a copper in the first place,’ said Con Malone, who had taken years to live with the shame of being a policeman’s father, ‘I done me best to talk him out of it.’

Malone, above the heads of his daughters, studied the two old men. They were the gold, if from opposite ends of the reef, that was the decency of this celebrating nation. Con Malone was the almost archetypal working man of the past: class conscious, prejudiced, scrupulously honest about his beliefs and passionately dedicated to mateship. He had recognized that the world at large had enemies: Hitler, Tojo and, later, Stalin. There was, however, only one real enemy in his eyes: the boss, any boss. Now that he was retired, living on his pension, he sometimes seemed at a loss without an enemy to hate. He and his son fought with words, but he would only raise his fist for Scobie, never against him. Malone loved him with a warmth that, like his mother, he would be too embarrassed to confess to the old man.

Jan Pretorious, too, was retired; but he had been a boss. He had been born in Sumatra of a Dutch family that had lived there for four generations making money out of rubber, tea and the natives. He and Lisa’s mother had come to Australia after Indonesia had gained its independence; he had brought little of the family fortune with him because by then there had been little of it left. At first they had not liked Australia and, when Elisabeth found herself pregnant, had gone home to Holland. A year there had convinced them they could never live in the northern climate and, with the baby Lisa, they had come back to Australia. He had gone to work in the rubber trade, at first working for Dunlop, then starting his own business making rubber heels. By the time Malone had married Lisa, half of Australia, including its police forces, were walking on Pretorious heels. Jan had once had all the arrogance of a colonial imperialist, but Australia had mellowed him; it had been that or get his face pushed in by the likes of Con Malone. He still occasionally dreamed of the old days, but he was dreaming as much of his adventurous youth in the Sumatran jungle as he was of a dead and gone imperialism. He and Con had one thing in common: they would like to turn the clock back, though it would not be the same clock. Scobie did not love him, but he felt an affection for him and a respect that was almost like love.

‘I don’t like the looks of that Madame Timori,’ said Brigid Malone, who read only the Women’s Weekly but never truly believed what it told her. ‘She’s all fashion-plate and nothing underneath it.’

‘She’s just a decoration for him,’ said Elisabeth Pretorious.

Their husbands looked at them, wondering if and when they had been decorated.

How wrong you both are, thought Malone, looking at his mother and mother-in-law.

Brigid Malone and Elisabeth Pretorious had nothing in common except, perhaps, a distant beauty. They had once been pretty girls, but the years of hard work, two miscarriages, another child dying in infancy and her bitter disappointment at the way her trusted God had treated her had crumpled and smudged and almost obliterated, except to the sharpest eye, that Brigid Hourigan of long ago. She now spent her time visiting her grandchildren and once a week going with Con to the senior citizens’ club in Erskineville, where they had lived for fifty years and where she and Con railed against the immigrant newcomers whom neither of them would ever call Australians. President Timori could have been a Catholic saint but Brigid Malone would never have made him welcome, not in Australia.

Elisabeth Pretorious had kept some of her looks. Money and a less arduous life had enabled her to do that; also she had had fewer disappointments than Brigid. Her God had been a comfortable one who, through the sleek smug priest in the suburb where she lived, never asked too much of her. She was a Friend of the Art Gallery, a Friend of the Opera and she was forever mentioning her good friends the So-and-So’s; but as far as Malone could tell she had no friends at all and he felt sorry for her. It struck him only then that she and his mother might have something else in common.

‘Do we have to have them here?’ she said.

Malone shrugged, let his daughters slide off his lap. They jumped back into the pool as if it were their natural habitat. ‘What would you do? Would you let them stay?’

‘No,’ said his father-in-law.

‘They claim they’re political refugees.’

Pretorious gave him a sharp look: almost forty years ago he and Elisabeth had made the same claim for themselves. ‘I think we have to draw the line somewhere. The man’s a murderer. Or his army was.’

‘It’s his army that’s kicked him out.’

‘Are you on his side?’ said Con Malone suspiciously.

‘Christ, no!’

The centurion leaned across and whacked him on the knee with his sword. ‘You told me not to say Christ. That’s swearing.’

‘Indeed it is,’ said Brigid, smiling sweetly at her four-year-old saint.

Lisa had been sitting quietly and Malone knew she was studying him. Some husbands are unfortunate in the way their wives study them, but those wives are those who know they could have done better. Malone knew, however, that he was being studied in a different way: Lisa had come to know him better. He had very few secrets left that she did not know.

Later, after the Malones and the Pretoriouses had left, when the children were asleep and the old house was showing its age as the heat of the day creaked out of its timbers, she said, ‘You wish you weren’t on this case, don’t you?’

‘A holiday weekend – what do you think?’

‘You know what I mean.’

They were in bed in the high-ceilinged main bedroom, a sheet covering only their lower halves. The house was not air-conditioned; they had an air-conditioner mounted on a trolley, but they rarely brought it into the bedroom. Malone, an old-fashioned man in many ways, had a theory that air-conditioning only brought on colds. He was also sensual enough to like a sweaty woman beside him in bed, a compliment that Lisa at certain times didn’t always appreciate.

He said slowly, ‘I think I could be getting into a real mess with this one. Nobody seems to care a damn about the poor bugger who was shot.’

‘I met Delvina once.’ He turned his head in surprise, looked at her profile against the moonlit window. They had not drawn the drapes, to allow some air into the room, and he knew they would be woken early by the morning light. ‘I did a PR job for the dance company when she was with it. We didn’t get on well – I featured another girl instead of her. I thought she was too obvious, didn’t give the company the right image.’

‘Where’s girl you featured, now?’

‘Probably married, with three kids and living in the suburbs. Delvina was never going to finish up there, in the suburbs.’

‘She may finish up with her head blown off.’ He lifted the sheet and fanned himself with it. ‘I’ve never worked on anything like this before. It’s all strange territory.’

‘Here be dragons.’

‘Eh?’

‘On ancient maps, when they came to the unknown parts they used to write, Beyond this place here be dragons. Australia would have been one of those places once.’

‘Tell that to Phil Norval. He claims to’ve got rid of inflation and everything else. He can add dragons to the list.’

‘Delvina has probably already told him. She used to sleep with him when he was still in TV. Mrs Norval would be able to tell you about that.’

3

‘I can’t back down now, Russ. I’ve got to walk tall in this.’

‘For crissake, Phil, you’re only five feet eight – forget about walking tall!’

Philip Norval and Russell Hickbed were in the Prime Minister’s private residence, a property he had bought at the height of his TV fame and to which he retreated on the rare occasions when he wanted to escape the trappings of his office. It was a large mansion in grounds that held a hundred-foot swimming pool, an all-weather tennis court, a jacuzzi, a sauna and, as one TV rival remarked, everything but his own natural spa.

‘We’ve got to get him back to Palucca,’ said Hickbed. ‘Christ knows what those bloody generals will do. They’re already talking to Jakarta!’

‘Is there much danger in that?’ Foreign affairs were not Norval’s strong suit; Jakarta had never figured in the ratings. ‘I’d better talk to Neil Kissing about that.’

Kissing was the Foreign Minister and no friend of Hickbed. ‘Leave him out of it. We don’t want Cabinet interfering in this – you’ve got too many do-gooders in it.’

‘Who?’

‘Never mind who. Just let’s keep this between you and me. We’re the ones with something to lose, not the bloody government. Have you talked to Delvina?’

‘Not alone – I haven’t had a chance. Abdul doesn’t seem to want to talk. Except about how the Americans let him down.’

‘So they did. If they’d sent their Fleet in, a couple of thousand Marines, the generals would have stayed in their barracks and Abdul would still be in Timoro Palace sitting pretty.’

‘Fegan would never have sent the Marines in. He told me last September in Washington that he wanted Abdul out of the way. He’s an embarrassment, Russ –’

‘Who – Fegan?’

‘No, Abdul, damn it. He’s so bloody corrupt –’

‘Now don’t you start being mealy-mouthed … Phil, corruption is a way of life up there. Everybody’s underpaid, so you slip ’em a bit on the side to get things done.’

‘How much did you slip Abdul? The Herald this morning said he’s rumoured to have three billion – three billion –’ Like all TV chat hosts, and politicians and priests, he had been taught to repeat points: one never knew if the audience was dozing. Though he had never known Russell Hickbed to be anything but wide awake. ‘All that salted away in Switzerland or somewhere. That’s quite a bit to have made on the side. More than you or I ever made.’

‘Unless we get him back to Palucca we’re going to make a bloody sight less. Or I am.’

‘Just what have you got there in Palucca, Russ? You’ve never told me.’

‘You don’t need to know.’

‘Meaning it’s none of my business? I think it is, if you want me to shove my neck out on this. My popularity rating is dropping, Russ – it went down three points last week, just when it should be going up, with the Bicentennial going on. They don’t think I can walk on water any more. If this Timori business goes on too long I could be up to my arse in water in a leaky rowboat. And I don’t think you’d be rushing to bail me out.’

Hickbed took off his glasses and polished them. They were in the library, a big room stacked on three walls to the ceiling with books and video cassettes; on close inspection one saw that virtually all the books were to do with some sort of show business and the cassettes were of Norval’s own TV shows. The few novels on the shelves were detective books and popular bestsellers. It was not a room where its owner got much mental exercise, but he had never sought it.

There was the crunching of gravel on the path outside as two of the security men went by. This was a safe area, but one never knew. This was the North Shore suburb of Killara; North Shore being a social state of mind more than a geographical location, since its boundaries began some five miles from the northern shores of the harbour. Kirribilli, for instance, right on the north shore, was not North Shore. Killara itself had once been considered the domain of judges and lawyers, a leafy outpost of the courts and chambers of Phillip Street, the city’s legal centre. It was said that at Christmas the local council workers shouted, ‘Let justice be done!’ and the judges and barristers, mindful of their sins of the year, rushed out and thrust Christmas boxes on the jury of dustmen. Of later years advertising men, TV celebrities and even successful used-car salesmen had moved into the suburb: the tone may have been reduced but not the wealth or the status. It was still North Shore, safe and secure.’

In the big living-room across the hall from the library one of the house’s six television sets was turned on; four of Norval’s staff were in there. Hickbed looked at the blank screens of the two sets in this room, then he looked back at the Prime Minister, the puppet who was now trying to jerk his own strings.

‘If it hadn’t been for me you’d still be in that awful bloody studio hosting your awful bloody TV show and going in five mornings a week to listen to dumb bloody housewives on talkback.’

‘I was making a million bucks a year. It bought all this –’ he gestured around him; he needed his possessions to identify himself ‘– and a lot else besides.’

‘When you retired from all that, who would remember you? Yesterday’s TV stars are like Olympic swimmers – nobody can remember them when they’ve dried off. You always wanted to be remembered, Phil – you love being loved by your public. You’ll be remembered as the most popular PM ever. That is, unless you stuff up this Timori business.’

‘You still haven’t told me what you’ve got there in Palucca.’ Norval looked genuinely stubborn and determined, something he had always had to pose at on camera.

Hickbed put his glasses back on: he was getting a new view of his puppet. He liked Norval as a man, as did everyone who met him: the TV star and the politician had always been more than just professionally popular. He had, however, never had any illusions about the PM’s political intelligence and, indeed, held it in contempt. It struck him now that Norval might have learned a thing or two since he had been in office.

‘I’ve got a twenty per cent interest in the oil leases off the north-east coast.’

‘Who has the eighty per cent?’

‘Who do you think? The company’s registered in Panama, with stand-in names for me and the Timoris. I’ve talked to them about it and there’s five per cent for you.’

Norval wanted to be honest, to be pure and uncorrupted; but he had been asking questions all his professional life. ‘How much is that worth?’

‘Several million a year, if we put the Timoris back in Bunda. Bugger-all right now, since the generals have confiscated everything. I’ve got nearly sixty million tied up there one way or another, the oil leases, construction, various other things. I’ll be buggered if I’m going to lose all that without a fight.’

‘How did you get in so deep?’

‘Who do you think’s been staking the Timoris since the Yank firms were warned to pull out by Washington? Delvina came to me – what could I say? You know what she’s like.’

‘Don’t we all,’ said a woman’s voice.

Hickbed turned as Norval’s wife came in the door. ‘Hello, Anita. Just got in?’

‘I’ve been visiting Jill and the grandchildren.’

There was no love lost, indeed none had ever been found, between Anita Norval and Russell Hickbed. When she had met Norval she had had her own radio programme on the ABC, the government-financed network, and when she had married him there were those on the ABC who thought she had married beneath her. She had truly loved him in those days, as had millions of other women; the other women might still be in love with him, she didn’t know or care, but she knew the state of her own heart. There had been a time when she had thought she could rescue him from the trap of his own self-image; then Russell Hickbed had come along, taken the image and enlarged it till even she was trapped in it. She would never forgive Hickbed for making her the Prime Minister’s wife.

‘Nobody would ever take you for a grandmother. Neither of you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Norval drily.

He had stood up beside Anita; she knew they made a good-looking pair. He handsome and blond, she beautiful and dark, both of them slim, both of them expensively and elegantly dressed even on this warm holiday night: the image now, she thought, had become a round-the-clock thing. They had a daughter who had married early and a son who worked in a merchant bank in London: both of them had escaped the image and refused to be any part of it.

‘What’s happening with the Timoris?’ she said.

Norval chose a problem that had not yet been discussed this evening. ‘We have to find them somewhere else to stay. We’re supposed to move into Kirribilli House on Monday.’

‘You should never have put them there in the first place.’ She didn’t want to crawl into a bed where Delvina Timori had slept; she had, unwittingly at the time, done that years ago.

‘It was all that was available. Everything else is full – hotels, apartments, houses. They would land on us when Sydney’s never been more chock-a-block.’

‘Why can’t we move them in here?’ said Hickbed.

‘No!’ Anita almost shouted.

‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, Russ,’ said Norval, not wanting another problem, closer to home.

Anita recovered, said sweetly, ‘What about your place, Russell? You’d have room for them in that barn of yours.’

‘A good idea!’ Norval was almost too quick to support her.

Hickbed shook his head. ‘What about security? It’d be too risky.’

That could be fixed,’ said Norval. ‘I’ll get the Federals to double their detail. It’s the solution, Russ, I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before –’

‘It’s no solution. It’ll just be a bloody great headache.’

Then Dave Lucas, one of the PM’s political advisers, short and lugubrious-faced, a basset hound of a man, came to the door.

‘There’s just been a news-flash on TV. The Dutchman’s put out an announcement that it was that guy Seville who tried to murder Timori.’

‘Shit!’ said Hickbed, who didn’t speak French.

‘Not on my carpet,’ said Anita Norval and left the room, all at once glad that everything was going wrong.

4

It took Miguel Seville some time to reach Dallas Pinjarri. The Aborigine, it seemed, moved around as much as the Argentinian: militant radicals were the new nomads. But at last he had Pinjarri on the phone, though the latter sounded suspicious and unwelcoming. ‘Who’s this?’

Seville knew better than to identify himself: none knew better than he that yesterday’s ally was often today’s betrayer. ‘A friend in Libya gave me your name.’

‘What friend?’

Seville named a man in the Gaddafi camp, the contact who had sent him to Australia two years ago.

‘You still haven’t said who you are.’

‘My name is Gideon, I’m from Switzerland.’

‘Swiss? That’s a new one. I always thought you jokers just went in for watches and cheese and fucking law and order.’

‘Some of us have other ideas. Can we meet?’

There was silence at the other end of the line; Seville guessed a hand had been put over the mouthpiece. Then: ‘Okay. You know the Entertainment Centre? No? Well, get a taxi, the driver will take you there. Eight o’clock. Wait in the lobby in front of Door Three. What do you look like?’

Seville described himself, having to close his eyes in the stuffy phone-box while he tried to remember his new looks. It was curious that he had never become accustomed to the sight of himself, when he looked in mirrors, in the various disguises he had to adopt.

‘Okay, but you better be fair dinkum, mate. You’re not fooling around with a tribe of fucking amateurs.’

Seville smiled to himself: Pinjarri hadn’t changed. ‘I’m sure I’m not.’

That evening Seville caught a taxi into the city, but, having looked up the Entertainment Centre in a directory he had bought, had the taxi drop him some distance from the Centre and walked the rest of the way. He took off his jacket and carried it over his arm: even the Swiss were known to relax occasionally.

He passed a gun shop on the way, but didn’t pause. He had gone looking for such a store when the city had closed for Saturday afternoon; he had found two, including this one, but his practised eye had told him they were too well secured to be broken into. It was then that he had at last decided he had to risk contacting Pinjarri.

On the last part of his walk he was drawn towards the Entertainment Centre by the crowd heading there. He went down past Chinese restaurants and shops; a dragon with illuminated red eyes stared at him from a window and in the doorway beside it a Chinese girl smiled invitingly. Then the Centre loomed over him, an auditorium that looked like a dozen others he had seen in other parts of the world. An ideal place for a bomb scare, he remarked automatically. Just like all the others.

The crowd was pouring into the big building. All of them young, some of them bizarre in their dress; he stood out amongst them as if he were in fancy dress. Tonight was the first night of the Australian Pop Festival: the stars of the show were Dire Straits, direct from their American tour. Affronted nationalism hadn’t kept the hordes away; they poured into the wide lobby as if the First Fleeters had come back to play the Top Ten of 1788. Seville took no notice of the irony: he was the true internationalist in the crowded lobby, the terrorist without patriotism.

He had been standing below the steps leading to Door 3 less than five minutes when he felt the tap on his elbow. ‘Mr Gideon?’

The Aboriginal boy could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen; he was light-skinned and he reminded Seville of the Arab boys he had seen in the guerrilla training camps in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon. He looked just as serious and apprehensive as those boys.

‘Yes, I’m Gideon. Am I supposed to follow you?’ The boy looked surprised and Seville smiled. ‘I’ve done this before. Many times.’

They pushed their way through the crowd, going against the stream. I may be in dire straits myself before the night is out, thought Seville wrily; but danger was an old ambience and he never felt uncomfortable in it. He followed the boy out into the busy street and they turned left. Five minutes’ more walking brought them under what Seville took to be a traffic fly-over. There the boy, without a word, suddenly darted away.

Seville moved into the shadow of a pylon, stood waiting. He flexed the calf of his right leg, felt the knife in its sheath strapped there. If Dallas Pinjarri brought trouble, he would be ready for it.

Above his head he could hear the swish of tyres and the occasional rumble of a heavy truck. Through the pylons he could see the bright lights of the Darling Harbour complex, a new development since he had last been in Sydney. All cities, he decided, were beginning to look alike with their tourist projects; you travelled thousands of miles to look at buildings and display temples just like those you had left behind. In a thousand years, digging amongst the ruins, archaeologists would wonder in which country they were working.

Pinjarri appeared as silently and swiftly as the Aboriginal boy had disappeared: maybe it is an Aboriginal thing, Seville thought. He came through the bands of light and shadow; Seville thought he saw other shadows within the shadows, but he could not be sure. He waited, wondering if he would have to use the knife.

‘Mr Gideon?’

‘Hello, Dallas. Have you brought some friends with you, back there behind those pylons?’

Pinjarri peered at him in the shadows. ‘I don’t recognize –’

‘I had another name when I was here two years ago.’ He could not remember whether he had used his own name; his memory must be going. ‘I also wasn’t blond or Swiss –’

Pinjarri peered even closer. Then: ‘Shit, is it really you? Miguel?’

‘I might be,’ said Seville, smiling. ‘But call me Michel. I told you, I’m Swiss.’

‘Sure, sure, whatever you say.’ Pinjarri was a good-looking man in his late twenties with black curly hair and a complexion only slightly darker than an Arab’s: a white man had stayed some time, maybe only for a night, in the family bed. He had a broken nose, a relic of a year as a professional boxer, and the sad dark eyes of a born loser. Yet he could still smile and it was a pleasant one. ‘Sometimes I wish I could be something else. I’m a half-caste, half-educated, half fucking everything.’

Pinjarri hadn’t been self-pitying when Seville had last been here; things must be going badly for the black militant movement. ‘You wouldn’t feel at home with the Swiss. No one ever does. Perhaps that’s a better defence than an army.’ Then he said, ‘I need a gun.’

Pinjarri made a clucking noise. ‘I always thought you’d have everything on hand. You said we were the fucking amateurs when you were here last time –’ So he hadn’t forgotten. ‘You told us what a lot of shits we were –’

Seville was fluent in six languages and foul-mouthed in none of them; the obscenities grated on his ear. He was unconvinced that violent language achieved anything, except perhaps to help the speaker’s own macho image. In the mouths of women it struck him as just ugly comedy. He was a prude in many ways, except in the matter of killing.

‘I need a gun,’ he repeated quietly. ‘As soon as possible.’

Pinjarri stopped his abuse, looked at him curiously. ‘You gunna kill someone? Or ain’t I supposed to ask? Okay, forget I asked. What sorta gun? A Schmeisser, something like that? They’re not easy to get –’

Seville doubted if Pinjarri had ever seen a Schmeisser: he was just airing his knowledge of the catalogues. ‘I want a high-powered rifle, one with a telescopic sight. A Springfield or a Winchester or a Garand. What do your kangaroo-shooters use? I’ve seen them on television in those animal welfare propaganda films.’ He could never understand why people should be so concerned with the slaughter of animals. ‘I need something reliable and I need it at once.’

‘I been ’roo-shooting meself. I used a Sako .270, it’s a Finnish job–’

‘I know it.’

‘How soon do you want it?’

‘Tomorrow at noon?’

‘Shit, I dunno … It’ll cost you.’

‘How much?’ He knew the price of a Sako: he had seen one in the window of one of the gun shops he had inspected: $800.

Pinjarri hesitated, then said almost pugnaciously, ‘Five thousand bucks.’

That’s a lot for a gun. I don’t want to buy a battery of them.’

‘Look, Mick, you know it ain’t just for the gun. Our movement’s in a fucking bad way – we need money any way we can make it …’

Seville smiled to himself. He thought of the money that was available to the PLO and the IRA. He had been in Beirut in 1982 when the Israelis had moved up into Lebanon; Rah Zaid, who knew of such things, had told him the PLO in four days had moved $400 million out of Lebanese banks into Switzerland. He felt tempted to bargain with Pinjarri, but the joke was too sour.

‘Five thousand,’ he agreed. ‘But only if you deliver it by tomorrow noon and not a word to anyone whom it’s intended for. Otherwise …’

‘Otherwise what?’ Pinjarri grinned. ‘You wouldn’t kill me, mate. I’m not worth anything.’

‘So you wouldn’t be missed.’

The grin faded. ‘Okay, how will I get in touch with you?’

‘I’ll phone you at eleven. Dismantle the gun, bring it in some sort of bag. And a box of ammunition.’

‘I’m not a fucking nong,’ said Pinjarri, trying to sound like a professional. But what had he ever done? Seville asked himself the question and imagined Pinjarri asking it, too. A few demonstrations, the blowing up of a power-line pylon erected on an Aboriginal sacred site … It was difficult to be militant in a country that ignored you. ‘You’ll have it, no worries, mate.’

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