Five-Ring Circus (11 page)

“I think you're safe. Kelly Investments and their heavies aren't going to let murder get in their
way.”

Fadiman looked at them quizzically. “You seem to know them.”

“We're old friends,” said Malone.

Outside the administration hut Malone and Clements went looking for the muscleman from Allied Trades.

“Jason?” said a workman. “Nah, he's gone. Said he had to go down to Union Hall on business. He left in a hurry.”

II

The gilt lettering said the door led to the offices of seven companies. Top of the list was Landfall Holdings Proprietary Limited, the sort of title that could own half a continent and still tell the casual enquirer to mind his own business. At the bottom of the list was Kelly Investments Pty Ltd, the gilt fresher than that above it. The Aldwych companies did not encourage shareholders it didn't know or control. Jack Aldwych had run his gangs the same way. He had never believed in democracy, which only held up progress and company meetings.

The suite of offices was a long way from the seedy room above a delicatessen in Darlinghurst from which Aldwych had run his old empire. They were on an upper floor of the AMP Tower, a fifty-storey fortess owned by one of the biggest insurance companies in the nation; rock-solid conservatism surrounded the Aldwyches, father and son, and the only hint of blood sport, an occupational hazard with gang leaders, were the old English hunting prints on the dark green walls. The attractive brunette on the reception desk, soft-spoken and genteel, at least on the surface, was a distant reminder of Aldwych's past: she was the granddaughter of a brothel madam who had worked for him. The four other girls and the two men who worked for Landfall were all products of private schools and strangers to commercial sex, not needing the money and keeping their amateur status. The legal and stockbroking firms in the building were raffish compared to Jack Aldwych in his corporation identity.

He, his son and Les Chung sat in the main office that looked out to the harbour, the Opera
House
and the Bridge. Jack Junior, seated behind the big leather-topped desk, was as distinguished-looking as his father; there was none, however, of the soiled edges that occasionally showed in his father. As were showing now.

“Les, if any of your Hong Kong friends are thinking of muscling in on us, tell ‘em to forget it. I haven't forgotten how to play dirty—”

“Dad—” Jack Junior could still feel afraid when the gangster side of his father broke through the veneer of the recent years.

“It's all right, Jack,” said Les Chung, addressing Junior. Like Jack Senior he looked like a banker: dark suit, wide-spread collar, a dark blue tie decorated with tiny shields. He had learned long ago how attention had to be paid to understatement. The tie suggested a university or an exclusive club; but he wore it with such modesty that nobody ever asked its connection. He had a dozen of them, made for him by a tailor in a back street of Hong Kong who had a talent for design but thought Oxford was a type of cloth. Chung had learned, too, the value of a quiet voice; he would never have been heard in the clamour of the back streets of Kunming and Hong Kong; but here in Sydney he was heard and listened to. Now he was addressing Jack Senior.

“My Hong Kong friends, as you call them, had nothing to do with what happened Friday night—”

“How d'you know?” The rough edges were still showing.

“I made some calls as soon as I got home Friday night. It worries people if you call them in the middle of the night, it sharpens their perceptions. They called me back Saturday morning. What happened Friday night didn't originate in Hong Kong. Take my word for it, Jack.”

“Then who? You think it's our Bund mates?”

“I don't know.” Les Chung sounded chagrined; his whole life had been built on knowing the next step, whether forwards or backwards, and the next and the next. He felt at the moment that he was in iron boots and calf-deep in thick mud. “The unions, for instance, wouldn't go in for this sort of thing.”

“I'd soon straighten ‘em out if they did. Anyhow, it ain't—isn't their method, killing bosses.
They
used to do each other, but not the bosses. The thing is—they were after you too, Les. If they'd got you, Jack and I would of been next on the list.”

“You think I hadn't thought of that? But we still don't know why.”

“Have you talked to your Triad mates? They know anything?”

“They know nothing nor do they want to know. Or if they do, they're not telling me.” Les Chung knew it was useless denying to Aldwych that he had contacts with the Triads. He never did business with them, but he paid his compliments to the network. “They would never get involved in a messy business like this one.”

Aldwych stared out the window. A helicopter, like a huge fly, swooped by; a cameraman hung out of its open door, photographing—what? Aldwych turned back into the room, as if dodging the camera. He had hated photographers as much as rival gang leaders.

“There's a lot of opposition,” said Jack Junior, “to overseas investors. Selling off the farm, that sort of thing.”

“I'm not an overseas investor,” said Les Chung, digging out some national pride, though he wondered where it came from. “Neither were Sam Feng and Norman Sun. We are—were—all homegrown.”

“I didn't mean you. As soon as we announced the consortium, when we bought up Olympic, there were a couple of Town Hall councillors who got up on their hind legs and did the usual barking. And there were some MPs in parliament, here and down in Canberra. They all know it's good for some votes with the usual xenophobes.”

“I was one of them once,” said Aldwych.

Les Chung smiled at him. “What changed your mind?”

“Money. What else? It's always more bankable than patriotism.”

Jack Junior smiled weakly. He was every bit as commercial-minded as his father, but the blood of his mother still flowed in him, sometimes uncomfortably. Shirl Aldwych had always had a little weep on Anzac Day and often stopped in mid-stride when the radio played “Advance Australia Fair.”

“The feller who did these murders,” said Les Chung, “wasn't a nutter issuing a warning to
overseas
investors. I
saw
it, the whole thing. It was—
calculated.
The nuts with causes—greenies, the anti-immigration lot, the anti-abortionists—they make a song and dance about their protests—but they always make sure there are cameras present, otherwise what's the point of a demonstration? This feller didn't want anything like that. He fired six shots, as calmly and deliberately as I'm talking to you now, then just walked out through the kitchen and disappeared.”

“Didn't any of your staff try to stop him?” said Jack Junior.

The two older men looked at each other. Aldwych shrugged:
the boy doesn't know any better.

Chung said, “You don't have to be a hero to be a chef or a kitchenhand. The killer just nodded to them, walked straight through the kitchen and out the back door. Wally Smith, our head chef, said he didn't even hurry.”

“Jesus!”

Aldwych rarely sounded exasperated, but he was losing patience with this situation. In the past members of his gang had been murdered and there had been three attempts on his own life; but he had always known who the killers or would-be killers were and had dealt with them. He had never been the meticulous planner that Les Chung was, but he would not have been out of place on any military staff, except for his one-time lack of polish. He had always had a professional grasp of strategy and tactics. In twenty-five years only one of his planned hold-ups had been bungled and that because one of the gang members had turned up high on cocaine; a week later the man had disappeared, never to be seen again, victim of another strategy, one that had no time for fools who believed you had to be on a high to rob a bank. Aldwych had always been a down-to-earth, no-fuss leader. Sometimes, in thoughts he would never have confessed to anyone, he had visions of himself as Prime Minister.

He looked out again at the harbour. The helicopter was now on the other side of the water, cruising past Kirribilli. There, under the eastern shadow of the Harbour Bridge, Asian money had come in and begun buying up the waterfront, building luxury apartments that had been bought up by Asian buyers. He did not resent them, neither the developers nor the residents. Now that he had given up robbing it, he had come to love Sydney. Anything that enhanced its value got no objection from him. He
had
had no reservations when Les Chung had first come to him with the suggestion that they should go into partnership with the Shanghai lot. Jack Junior had done due diligence and the Bund Corporation, at first, had come through with solid credentials. Only later had the Aldwyches come to realize that every breeze that blew out of China brought another smokescreen. It was no wonder, said Jack Junior, who had done a quick course in Chinese history, that Confucius had died a disappointed old man.

Aldwych turned back to look at his son and Les Chung. “We get this thing under control. We see the Olympic delegation don't cancel—that would be throwing shit at us. You better see your mate at Town Hall, Les, tell him to get his finger out and see this doesn't spoil our picture with the Olympic mob.”

Chung nodded. “We may have to oil his palm a bit more, but he'll do it.”

Aldwych went on: “We take control now. Between us we've got the whip-handle.” Or, in past terms, the iron bar. “Our sixty per cent says we run things from now on. Nobody does nothing—” the old rough edges were showing again “—without our say-so. Everybody—the architects, the engineers, the union blokes—they're all gunna be responsible to Jack here. Okay?”

Les Chung came from a land of emperors; he knew one when he saw one. He just nodded.

“What about Madame Tzu?” asked Jack Junior.

“We get rid of her.”

Jack Junior said nothing, afraid to ask the next question.

III

When Malone and Clements returned to Homicide, Clarrie Binyan was waiting for them. As always he looked serene, as if while waiting he had taken a trip back through the Dreamtime and found it to be everything he had been told. He had once remarked to Malone that there was more comfort in myth and legend than in religion. Tribal elders were less trouble than priests.

He pointed to two plastic envelopes on Malone's desk. “Six bullets and fired cartridge cases out of gun A. One of each out of gun B. Gun A was used in the Chinatown job, gun B did the one at Bondi.”

“
What sort of pieces?” asked Malone.

“The Bondi gun was a standard Thirty-two, could of been a Fabrique Nationale. You know, the old Browning. As for the other—” He shook his head, “I won't guess at this stage. The fired cartridge cases are all 7.65 millimetres by 17. That's not a common calibre.”

“Do the Chinese, mainland Chinese, make their own brand of weapon?”

“Yeah, they do. I've got one of my blokes looking into the details. They didn't have a great deal of their own handguns before World War Two and most of their early stuff was based on Russian models. There was a lot of gun-running by foreigners in the middle of the nineteenth century, but the Chinese didn't try to copy much of what they bought. Most of it was sold to warlords who weren't interested in manufacturing. Now things have opened up in China they make copies of everything but catapults. Bloody awful stuff.”

“Where did you learn all this?”

“I'm supposed to be an expert on guns, aren't I? I could give you a history lesson on bows and arrows and boomerangs, too.” He grinned. “I boned up on the Chinese because they invented gunpowder. They're pretty hip on weaponry of all sorts, these days, though they wouldn't win any quality control awards. You're pretty sure the murders were done by Chinks?”

The one true native, he used all the politically incorrect terms—Chinks, wogs, slopeheads—without apology. Yet, if asked, he would have said he meant no offence. He had been a target, coon or Abo or darky, for so long he was past offence.

“We think so,” said Clements. “But it's all guesses at the moment.”

“Especially now you've told us the Bondi job was done by a different gun,” said Malone. “The only connection is that they were all Chinese.”

“And the Bondi guy lived in a flat owned by one of the Chinatown guys,” said Clements.

“So there could be two hitmen running around?” said Binyan.

Then Kagal and Gail Lee came into the big room and Malone beckoned them into his office. Clements shifted to one side on the couch, his usual rest, and Gail sat down beside him. Kagal leaned
against
the door jamb.

“No luck at Cronulla,” he said. “The bird had flown. Looks as if she had a boyfriend—he'd flown, too.”

“A guy named Guo Yi?” said Clements.

Kagal and Gail looked at each other in surprise; then Gail said, “You've heard of him?”

“He worked on Olympic Tower, him and a guy named Tong Haifeng, who lived out at Bondi, just around the corner from Mr. Zhang, Saturday's hit victim.”

“What did you find out?” said Malone.

“The girl, evidently, was friendly with the neighbours, but the guy kept to himself. They lived in one of the new blocks of flats near the beach, a furnished two-bedroomer that was costing them three-fifty a week. Not bad for a student,” said Kagal, who, as a student, had lived at home in a house that had since sold for a million and a quarter. He supported double standards: they made conscience much easier.

“Not with twenty-five million in her account,” said Malone, and looked at Binyan. “You just went pale, Clarrie.”

“I always do when you mention white fellers' money.” “This is Chinese money,” said Malone, and explained. “You find anything in the flat?” asked Clements.