Five-Ring Circus (10 page)

Malone explained the circumstances of what had brought him and Clements here. “We heard you'd had some union trouble—”

“What's that gotta do with these murders you're talking about?”

“Maybe nothing, Roley. But which union would profit, you or the other blokes, if the current
bosses
were eliminated?”

“Depends who we had to deal with. Jack Aldwych's got his finger in the pie—we could deal with him. He'd be tough, but he'd be fair, we reckon. He might try a bit more of the standover stuff, but in the end he'd talk turkey. Jack's never been against the workers.”

“Only because you weren't worth robbing,” said Clements. “When did you have dealings with him?”

“When I was on the wharves. He was running a gold smuggling racket for a while—came to me and offered me dough to turn a blind eye.”

“Did you?”

“None of your business, mate . . . But you're barking up the wrong tree, you think anyone here had anything to do with the murders. The other crowd wouldn't have ten per cent of the workers on this site, though they're trying their hardest to get guys to move across to them. See that big guy over there?”

Malone and Clements looked towards the man supervising the unloading of the cement truck. He was tall and all muscle: dressed only in tight jeans and a skimpy blue singlet, he displayed shoulders and pectorals that would have been an advertisement for any gym. Under his helmet his long black hair was pulled back in a pony-tail that hung down his back like the tail of an animal hidden under his helmet. He looked across at Bremner and the two detectives and made no attempt to hide his stare. There was an arrogance about him that seemed to upset Roley Bremner. His hat wobbled on his head and he had to steady it.

“He's with Allied Trades—he likes to think of himself as their enforcer.” The bile in the roly- poly man's voice was like spit on the air.
He
had seen what real enforcers could do on the wharves in the old days: the swung hook, the packing-case suddenly dropped, the blow on the back of the head and the push into the harbour. He had survived all that. “I've never seen him try the rough stuff, but the size of him, that build, he just stands over some of the guys, then they come and tell me maybe they'll join Allied Trades—”

“All that muscle,” said Clements, who had allowed most of his muscle to sink beneath softer
flesh.
“Stick a pin in him and he'd squirt steroids. Is he into body-building?”

“He was on
The Warriors,
that TV show where they whack each other over the head and call it entertainment.”

“He gave up that for this?” said Malone.

“He didn't give it up—they just sacked him. Told him his IQ wasn't high enough for such an intellectual show—I got that from another guy who tried out for the show. Don't ask him two questions in a row—his eyes'll glaze over.”

Malone shook his head in mock admiration. “You live amongst such interesting types, Roley—life is nothing like this in Homicide. What types have you got in
your
union? Any standover men?”

“Amongst ourselves it gets a bit rough at times—but you expect that, you're in union business. But it ain't like the old times, mate. The politicians are less interested in us than they used to be, there ain't the pressures. How's your old man?” Roley Bremner and Con Malone had once worked on the waterfront together. Malone was just glad that, as a cop, he had never been called on to face the two of them when there had been trouble on the wharves. “He was a great union man, hated the bosses. He'd go stark raving mad, he was working on this job.”

“So there's a lot of hatred of the bosses?” said Malone.

Bremner shrugged, so hard that his helmet wobbled again. He steadied it, but said nothing. Malone had come to know that the only rival to a hardened crim in the tight-lipped stakes was a hard union man.

“Six or seven years ago,” said Clements, “on the original job, before it closed down, there was trouble. A coupla guys disappeared, right? We were never called in, there was no proof of homicide, but the guys never reappeared, did they? They go interstate or what?”

Bremner considered a moment, as if he had had enough of the detectives and their search for information; then he said, “I wasn't here, right? I was still on the wharves. All I know is hearsay. You know, things get talked about, it's like telling funny stories. The two guys, they're foundation members.”

Both detectives looked quizzical. “You mean—”

“
Sure. They're buried in the foundations.” Bremner jerked his thumb downwards. “Five storeys down, the bottom level. You gunna start digging?”

“Roley,” said Malone deliberately, “we didn't hear what you just said and don't bother to repeat it.”

“You shouldn't of asked,” said Bremner, and grinned.

“Do you have any Asians working here?” said Clements.

“Half a dozen—Vietnamese. And there's two Chinese on the white-collar staff.”

“Locals?”

Bremner shook his head; the helmet wobbled again, “From China. They're engineers, they work for the Hong Kong crowd, the Bund Corporation. I think they're here to keep an eye on things, day to day.”

“They trouble you?”

“They're uppity buggers, a pain in the arse. But I take no notice of ‘em.” Roley Bremner had been doing that all his working life, taking no notice of those over him. Con Malone would have been the same: two stalwarts at the barricades. Another world, another time, when unions had been a force, had controlled seventy-five per cent of the workers, instead of thirty-five per cent as now. Things would never be the same again.

“Where are they now?”

Bremner nodded towards the administration hut. “Give ‘em my regards.” He raised his middle finger.

“I'll tell my old man you haven't changed. He'd love to be here with you.”

Bremner shook his head again; his helmet fell off this time and he held it to his chest like a knight who knew the battle was over. “No, he wouldn't, mate. The old days are gone, forever. He's just lucky he's retired.”

I'll never be able to tell him that.

Bremner was about to walk away when Clements said, “Have you had a detective named Boston
down
here talking to you?”

Bremner turned back. “Yeah. Why?”

“What did he want?”

“He's got a bee in his bonnet that it's union in-fighting that caused these murders. He used to work outa Day Street station, I remember him when I was on the wharves. He's always been anti-union.”

“What did you tell him?”

“To get stuffed and piss off.”

“What'd he say to that?” said Malone with malice towards Boston.

“Nothing. He just walked over and talked to our mate over there.” Another nod towards the Allied Trades man. “Look, forget we had anything to do with these murders. Talk to the Chinese, all of ‘em.”

“What makes you say that?”

“There's nobody hates like brothers. That's one of the things you learn in union politics. We all call each other Brother This and Brother That, but Christ, when we fall out it's the old Cain and Abel thing. Look at the Chinese, Scobie, don't waste your time with us.”

He walked away into the depths of the concrete honeycomb. The two detectives looked at each other. “Maybe he has a point,” said Clements.

“If he's right, then I don't fancy our chances.”

They walked across to the administration hut, asked for the site manager and he came to the door, looking as irritated as before.

“Yes, what is it?”

“We'd like to talk to the two Chinese gentlemen, the engineers, on your staff.”

“They're not here. They phoned in and said they were going to the funeral of their boss.”

“Their boss being Mr. Shan Yang?” said Malone, and the site manager nodded. “There's no funeral today. Mr. Shan's body hasn't been released from the morgue yet. Have these two fellers ever discussed Mr. Shan with you?”

“
Look—”

“No,
you
look, Mr. . . ?”

The site manager hesitated, then stepped back. “Come inside. I'm Ron Fadiman. I'm sorry—things are in a mess this morning—I've got shit on the liver—”

“Join the club,” said Malone.

Fadiman looked over his shoulder at them and Clements said, “Every second day. He's getting worse as he gets older.”

Fadiman grinned and led them down the long narrow room to his desk. All along one wall were slanting desk-tops holding drawings; half a dozen men sat at or leaned on the desks. They looked curiously at the two detectives, but just nodded and said nothing. Malone was abruptly aware of the atmosphere, a familiar one: the unease of people who found themselves, unexpectedly, on the outskirts of murder.

The site manager was showing the same unease. He gestured to the two detectives to sit down on a couple of folding metal chairs, sat down on a swivel chair and leaned forward with his elbows on his flat-top desk. “What happened Friday night, those murders—it's shaken this place from top to bottom. I tried to get in touch with Tong and Guo first thing Saturday morning, but there was no answer. Same thing Sunday. I was beginning to wonder if they'd been done in, too—”

“Why'd you think that?” said Clements.

“I dunno. I dunno why the other three guys were killed . . . Then Guo Yi called in this morning, said they were going to the funeral and hung up.”

“What were their names?” Clements had his notebook out.

“Tong Haifeng and Guo Yi. We called them Harry and Joe.”

“Where did they live?”

“Tong lived at Bondi and Guo at Cronulla.”

The two detectives looked at each other; then Malone said, “They have families?”

“Not as far as I know, not here anyway. Guo sometimes mentioned a girlfriend, but we never saw her. He was always more outgoing than his mate, at least as far as we were concerned. They never
really
told us anything about themselves.”

“Did they like being here? In Sydney, I mean.”

“Oh sure. But even then they were cautious, as if they were afraid of someone telling them to pull their heads in.”

“So they weren't dissidents? Political, I mean.”

“I wouldn't say so. They were both engineers, up to the mark in technical knowledge, but lacking practical experience, I'd say. This was their first time abroad. They didn't know how to deal with the guys on the job, that was their main trouble.”

“So Roley Bremner's told us,” said Clements. “We understand there are three partners in the consortium building Olympic Tower. Has there been a dominant partner?”

Fadiman looked beyond the two detectives. Malone half-turned and saw that the other men in the long hut had stopped work; one could almost see their ears standing out from their heads like pink antennae. “Any comment, fellers?” he said. “Whatever you say doesn't go out of this room.”

The man nearest, a curly-haired man in his fifties with a beer belly and tired rheumy eyes, looked at his colleagues, then back at Malone. “No, Ron can say it all.”

“Thanks,” said Ron drily.

Malone turned back to him. “Say it, Ron.”

“Well—” Fadiman picked with one finger at the paper on his desk, as if pecking out his words on an invisible word processor: “Well, yes. Bund, the Hong Kong people, have tried to run things. Right from the jump they've acted as if they're the senior partner.”

“Are they?” asked Clements.

“Forty per cent. The others own thirty per cent each. Darrel—” he nodded at the beer-bellied man—“Darrel looked them up when things got stroppy once. They were pushing us, wanting us to get ahead of schedule.”

“Did you get any support from the other partners or did they just sit back?”

Fadiman nodded. “I dunno who organized it, but one day half a dozen heavies came down
here.
They just walked on the site, said they represented Kelly Investments and there was to be no more pressure and we were to stick to schedule and to budget. Mr. Shan and Madame Tzu were here that day. They just stood off and watched, said nothing. I don't think they understood how capitalism works.” He grinned and some of the men laughed.

“Madame Tzu,” said Malone, “had she been interfering much?”

Fadiman looked along at his colleagues, then back at Malone and Clements. “Who knows? She'd come out from China or Hong Kong, we were never sure where she came from—she'd come out maybe once a month, sometimes twice, her and Shan, and every time that was when the pressure started. She was the Dragon Lady, as far as we were concerned. Women are always a pain on projects like this, but she was worse than most.”

All the other chauvinists in the hut nodded.

“Have you had a visit from any of the partners this morning?”

“Yeah, Madame Tzu was here. I guess she's taking over from Mr. Shan—she said she would be here for a month.”

“What about the other partners? They come down here?”

“Not so far. I got the impression the Tzu woman was speaking for all of them. Maybe she wasn't, but you don't question Madame Tzu.”

“Okay,” said Clements, “let's have the addresses of Mr. Tong and Mr. Guo.”

Fadiman flipped open a notebook, wrote the addresses on a slip of drawing paper and handed it to Clements. “If you contact them, tell ‘em I want them here tomorrow morning seven sharp. They've left some work undone.”

“Righto,” said Malone. “That'll do for now. If Madame Tzu or anyone from Lotus or Kelly comes down here, let ‘em know we've been here.”

Fadiman stood up. “At the moment we're all wondering if this site is jinxed. It was a hole in the ground for seven years, now
this.”