Dragons at the Party (32 page)

“Did you go to the window to see what had happened?”

She shook her head. “It was a moment or two before I realized what had happened. Then I couldn’t move . . .”

Not much, thought Malone. There was the sound of approaching sirens out in the street. Malone got up, went out to the front door and saw the flashing blue lights of half a dozen police cars; then there was the sound of another siren and in a moment the emergency unit ambulance, red lights flashing, came in through the open gates. Lights had gone on in the surrounding houses and apartment blocks and a few people had gathered in the street. Point Piper could no longer contain its curiosity. Malone turned back into the house; he had asked Kenthurst to take charge and he did not want to interfere. Besides, he was certain that the clue to tonight’s crisis was back in the Hickbed living-room.

He went back, walked in on Hickbed sitting close to Delvina and holding her hand. He dropped it as Malone walked in, but didn’t move away from her. He looked more composed, more like his old aggressive self.

“
I’ve advised Madame Timori to wait till I’ve contacted my lawyer—”

Then he stopped as the emergency medical team, led by Kenthurst, hurried in the front door and ran upstairs. Delvina gave them only a cursory glance, as if they were no more than a team come to clean the carpets.

Then she said, rising unhurriedly, gathering up her tiara and jewellery as if they were a fistful of vegetables she had been peeling, “I think I should be upstairs with my husband while they are with him. If he dies . . .”

Malone waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. He said, “Would you ask Mr. Sun to come down here?”

She nodded and left the room, gliding out with her dancer’s walk, no hint of agitation showing. Hickbed looked after her. “She’s a remarkable woman.”

“Remarkable,” said Malone. “I just wonder why she thinks her husband was about to kill her.”

“Maybe he was going to kill her and then commit suicide?”

“Do you think he’s the suicidal type? He’d no more commit suicide than you would, Mr. Hickbed. I mean that as a compliment,” he said straight-faced.

Then he turned, satisfied that he had lodged an arrow somewhere in Hickbed’s armour, and saw Nagler beckoning to him from the entrance hall. He went out to him. “How’s His Nibs?”

“Still alive—barely. They’re taking him into St. Vincent’s. I called Police Centre and they’ve been on to the Exhibition Centre. The Commissioner knows what’s happened and I guess he’s told the Premier and the PM. Are we still looking for Seville?”

“You got any other starters?”

Nagler shook his head and he and Malone went out to the front gates where Kenthurst was receiving a report from a uniformed sergeant. Kenthurst said, “They’ve come up with nothing in the streets. He was in that house opposite all right, up in the attic.”

“Jesus!” said Malone. “Were they your blokes or ours patrolling the house?”

“Yours,” said Kenthurst and somehow succeeded in not sounding smug.

“
Have you got anyone out scouting for him around here?”

“As many as we can spare. The SWOS guys have arrived.”

“Tell them I want him alive.”

“Why? He’s sure to start shooting if they find him.”

“I want to find out who’s paying him.”

“Fair enough. I’ll tell them to shoot for his legs. We’ll find out how good they are in the dark.”

Malone and Nagler went back into the house. “Joe, I’m going to stick with the Madame, if she goes to the hospital. You can bet Bill Zanuch will be here soon. He’ll take over.”

“I think I’ll go and jump in the harbour now.”

Malone grinned and patted his shoulder. “Don’t give up, Joe.
Shalom
, isn’t that what you fellers say?”

“Not when Zanuch is around.”

Then he looked up the stairs as the medical team, moving carefully, came down with Timori on a stretcher. Malone saw that there was no sheet over the President’s face and his instant reaction was one of disappointment; then he was ashamed of his feeling. As the stretcher was carried past him he looked down at the still face, a pale dirty grey now, and tried to forget who the man was. He was a
man
, a human being, and he should not die this way.

Delvina had done a quick change; it must have been her dancer’s training. She was now in a simple dark-green day dress; she had even changed her shoes, was wearing plain black court ones. Her hair was drawn back in a chignon; she had removed her make-up and wore only pale lipstick. She was all ready to look the grieving widow, if it should be necessary. Sun Lee came down the stairs after her.

“I’d like you and Mr. Hickbed to come to the hospital with us, Mr. Sun.” Malone wanted to keep them all together. “Perhaps we could all ride in your car, Mr. Hickbed?”

“Is there any necessity for me to come along?” Hickbed had taken off his bow tie and loosened the neck of his dress shirt. He still looked aggressive and Malone waited for him to roll up his sleeves and bunch his fists.

He
pulled off his own tie; when they got to the hospital he did not want to look like a
maître d’
ushering them in. “I thought you’d want to accompany your friend the President?”

“I think you should, Russell,” said Delvina, and Malone sensed that she, too, wanted them all together. “And you too, Mr. Sun.”

She went out of the house, not looking back, the President’s wife taking it for granted that she would be obeyed. Hickbed for a moment lost his composure; he gestured helplessly. Then he focused on Malone and seemed to regain his strength.

“Don’t overstep the mark, Inspector.”

“You’ve already warned me about that. I’ll keep it in mind.” As he turned away he winked, on the blind side, to Nagler. “If Russ Clements rings up, Joe, get him to ring me at the hospital.”

As soon as the Rolls-Royce pulled out of the gates Hickbed said, “I thought you’d be out chasing that assassin Seville.”

“We’re doing that.” Malone gestured to the half a dozen police cars and the two SWOS vans and the Tactical Response van. “Our men know what to do. They don’t need me riding herd on them.”

“Why are you riding herd on us?” said Delvina.

She was in the back seat between Hickbed and Sun. Malone was in the front seat beside the uniformed chauffeur, a young Paluccan, Malone guessed by his looks. The car was a Camargue and Malone could smell the rich leather, even imagined he could smell the walnut panelling. It was the sort of car that invited the use of all the senses and he knew he would never be riding in another one again. Tomorrow it would be back to the five-year-old Commodore and the vinyl and the smell of oil and the air-conditioning that blew cold in winter and hot in summer. He turned round, feeling the soft thick leather beneath his hand as he rested it on the back of the seat.

“Because I think one of you three is going to tell me more than Seville ever will. That is, if we catch him alive.”

“You don’t think you’ll catch him alive?” said Hickbed. “You mean you’ll shoot him down?” He sounded hopeful.

“
I’ve met him, Mr. Hickbed. You haven’t. He’s not the sort of man who will let anyone take him alive. Sometimes with crims like that there’s no alternative but to shoot them down.”

He turned to face the front again, aware of a sudden nervousness in the chauffeur, as if the young Paluccan all at once saw the possibility of Seville riding up beside them and gunning them down. Malone grinned to himself, hoping the three of them in the back were also feeling scared. He was sure, though, that Delvina, if she was capable of fear, would never show it. She was, he decided, as cold-blooded as Seville.

They drew up outside the hospital. Timori had already been taken inside; when the four of them got into Casualty, he was already on his way to Intensive Care. A nun led them through the bloody wounded who crowded the Casualty section on this busy night: the victims of road carnage, the drunks who had fallen on broken bottles, the drug addicts who had over-dosed, the woman with her throat wrapped in a bloody bandage. Malone had seen it all before, but he had to steel himself not to be upset by it. Hickbed looked nervous and disturbed; even Sun kept his eyes averted from some of the bloodier cases. Delvina sailed through it all as if through a late-night crowd of passengers at a bus station.

The nun opened a door, ushered them into a side room. She was a wizened little woman with a soft voice, a soft chin and eyes that Malone knew could harden into marbles if someone crossed her. He had met her before.

“Thanks, Sister. Let us know what happens, will you?”

“There’ll be nothing for several hours, Inspector. Unless . . .”
Unless the President dies.

“Is there a phone I can use?”

She took him along to her office, a cubby-hole as neat as herself. She left him alone while he dialled home. Lisa was waiting for him. He told her what had happened to Timori, then said, “I have no idea when I’ll be home, darl.”

“What about tomorrow? You’re not going to disappoint the kids again?”

“I’ll call you at seven-thirty. But if I can’t make it, there’s no reason why you and the kids should miss it. Eric Mack will be expecting you. Just turn up at the wharf where I told you.”

“
I’m beginning to hate you. Or anyway your job.”

“So am I. The job, anyway. I love you.”

“Sometimes I wonder.” There was a quick intake of her breath, then she said, “No, I don’t mean that. I know you do. Take care. Stay away from that man Seville.”

He hung up, stood for a moment while the effect of her settled down in him. He had never imagined that love could be felt as deeply as he felt it for her; it went beyond sex, companionship, respect. He knew, as he had discovered that time in New York, that he could kill to keep her.

He looked up the Hickbed number in a phone-book on the nun’s desk and was pleasantly surprised when he found it listed. Most rich men preferred unlisted numbers; Hickbed evidently liked to be available to the voice of the people, most of whom he despised and most of whom would abuse him if they took the trouble to call him. Malone dialled the number and Joe Nagler answered.

“Joe, is Russ Clements there?”

“He’s just arrived. With our friend You-Know-Who. You want him?”

“Yes. Don’t tell Zanuch I’ve called. Say it’s your mother.”

Nagler chuckled and went away and a few moments later Russ Clements was on the line. “Is he still alive, Scobie?”

“As far as I know. Did General Paturi get the news?”

“I don’t know. If he did, he’s locked himself away in the Consulate and giving no comment. If he’s grinning in the morning, that’ll shorten the odds that he had something to do with it.”

“Maybe. Listen, take Kenthurst outside and have a quiet word in his earhole. Tell him I want a tap on the Hickbed phone line—there may be a couple, an unlisted number, so check. The Feds can get a permit to tap easier than we can—tell him I want it kept quiet. Don’t let Zanuch know.”

“What’s going on?”

“You’ll be the first to know, Russ, when
I
know. Any word on Seville?”

“None. Zanuch has ordered a watch on all airports, Central Railway and the bus stations. We’ll get him sooner or later.”

“
Sooner, I hope. If he hears Timori isn’t dead, he may try again.”

II

Delvina Timori sat in the ante-room at St. Vincent’s Hospital, totally unconcerned about the shattered lives out in Casualty. Her own life was badly cracked, though not yet shattered. There was a glue-like quality to her that would never allow that to happen.

Her mother, whose own mother had begun life as a latex gatherer in the British rubber plantations of Malaya, had been a formidable lady, one with as much tough bounce as rubber itself. She had been working as the cashier in a bar when she had met Delvina’s father, a quiet, rather lonely RAAF sergeant who was married before he had quite realized what he was getting into. He had brought his bride back to Australia, where she had not been welcomed by the white Australian wives on the RAAF station, and sired a daughter on whom he had doted. But his life with Delvina’s mother had not been happy; it had gone downhill from the day they had set foot back in Australia. When he had been killed in the air crash of another over-age RAAF bomber, it had been a release for both of them.

Delvina’s mother had thought of returning to Malaysia, as it had now become, but decided against it. She was a stubborn woman; she would take on Australia and beat it. As the trickle of Asian immigration had increased, her foreign appearance had become less conspicuous; local men, more daring than their fathers and wanting to taste some foreign spice, had taken an interest in her. She had slept with some of them, taken money from some, but made no lasting liaison with any of them. She was not a whore nor did she think of herself as one; she acted out of revenge, getting her own back on the xenophobic RAAF wives who had so cruelly snubbed her. She trained her daughter to the same frame of mind.

Except that Delvina ignored the objective of revenge. Men, she decided, when she was no more than fourteen, were tools to be used. Since they made up 50 per cent of the world and had most of the power and wealth, they were the obvious means for her to rise above what the nuns at her school, conservatives all, still referred to as “one’s station in life.” She was eighteen when her mother died; she
buried
her with regret but not much love. Already she had discovered that she was not capable of love, though she did not bother to fathom why. Her mother, on her death-bed but still clear-eyed about the daughter she had raised, had said, “Your heart is rubber. Use it.” Delvina had taken the advice to heart, rubber or not.

Now, many years and much success later, doing much better than the rubber industry was, she sat in this bare disinfectant-smelling room and pondered the possibility of the end of the road. Or, at best, another, bumpier road. She was furious at the possibility, but she showed none of her fury.

Hickbed, showing everything, including a partly unzipped fly, was in a mixture of rage and fear. “Christ Almighty, Delvina, you’ve got to pull yourself together! Watch what you say in front of that bastard Malone. He could bring everything down on top of us! What did you mean, telling him Abdul was going to kill you? Christ!”