Five-Ring Circus (22 page)

“Inspector! I've only just learned you are Mrs. Malone's husband. You're a very lucky man!” He always spoke in exclamations, as if at a rowdy council meeting. “You're conducting this dreadful business connected with Olympic Tower!”

Malone wouldn't have put it that way. “We have the matter in hand, but there's a long way to go.”

He had kept his voice low, but Amberton couldn't be anything less than operatic: “Good luck! The last thing we want is a spate of racist murders!”

Malone looked around without moving his head:
why doesn't someone murder this loudmouth?
People passing through the vestibule, which had never been designed to stifle secrets, an oversight on the part of the architect, were slowing their steps, waiting for more details. Malone, voice still low, said, “It's not as bad as that, Mr. Amberton.”

The Lord Mayor all at once seemed to become aware that the passing traffic was in slow motion as if underwater; all heads were turned towards him and the Malones. He threw out a glittering smile, like a royal salute, his head swivelling round so that he missed no one. Then he looked back at Malone, dropped his voice and the exclamation marks: “Of course, of course. Well, good luck. The sooner you clear it up, you know, the better for us.”

“Us?” Malone couldn't resist it, the old tongue getting away from him again.

“Of course!” The operatic voice was back. “The city! Sydney!”

“Of course,” said Malone, and tried to show some civic pride; he even threw in an exclamation: “Keep the flag flying! The Olympic flag!”

Amberton raised his fist, like an Olympic winner, tossed his mane and went back across the vestibule, his smile lassoing bystanders whether they wanted it or not. The year 2000 couldn't come soon enough.

As they crossed the road to the Queen Victoria Building, the QVB as it was called, Lisa said, “You'll have me fired.”

Malone
shook his head. “Look at his record. He wouldn't have sacked Judas Iscariot, for fear of making waves. You're a good-looking woman, too. He's a closet lecher.”

“What do I do if he makes a pass? Make a civilian arrest?”

They climbed the stairs to an upper gallery, found a table in one of the restaurants. They sat by the big window that looked out into the heart of the old restored building. For years it had been an almost empty shell; it was foreign money that had rescued it from demolition. All the local developers had passed it by, their hands stuck in their pockets.

Window-shoppers cruised the galleries, balancing their credit cards against what the boutiques offered. The economy had been slow all year and the store owners, atheists and believers alike, were on their knees hoping Christ and Christmas would bring buyers from the East, preferably Japanese, with gold and Diners frankincense and American Express myrrh. Father Christmas, two weeks early, wandered by outside the window, eyes dull and tired above the froth of white beard.

“You look worried,” said Lisa when they were settled.

Malone glanced up from the menu. “Gail and Sheryl came back to the office just before I left. The Feng girl, she's taken over from her dad, she's been threatened. By a Chinese, she thought.”

“Do you have to protect her?”

“We'll have to keep an eye on her, but we can't give her round-the-clock protection. She's not in the Witness Protection scheme. How are things at Town Hall?”

Lisa waited till the waitress had taken their order and gone away. Then: “I've been instructed to tell lies.”

He wasn't sure whether she was joking or not. “Like the old days? That was what diplomacy was all about, wasn't it? Still is.”

In her two years as the High Commissioner's secretary in London, where she had first met Malone, Lisa had recognized that diplomacy and hypocrisy were partners in the trade; the honesty lay in the simultaneous recognition of the fact. She, for her part, had always tried to avoid the cynicism of the diplomatic profession. Diplomacy was the art of telling lies for one's country. Telling lies for one's city
somehow
did not have the same cachet.

“The murder of those men connected with Olympic Tower is uncovering a lot of dirt. I've been told I have to put a spin on it, somehow disguise it as top dressing. I'm out of practice at that sort of thing.”

“No!” With an exclamation mark. Two girls at a nearby table turned their heads.

“Keep your voice down,” said Lisa. “No what?”

“No, you don't get involved in this.” Now that he knew she wasn't joking, he was afraid for her. More than dirt had been uncovered in Olympic Tower; blood, a lot of it, was showing. “We don't know how far these people will go.”

“Which people?”

He sat back in his chair, shrugged with frustration. “I wish I knew.” He glanced out of the big window, saw two Asian women come out of a boutique on the opposite gallery. He leaned forward, almost pressing his nose against the glass. Then he shook his head and sat back.

“What's the matter? See someone you know?”

“I thought it was Madame Tzu. I've got her on the brain.”

Lisa stared out through the glass at the two women who had now paused outside another boutique. Each of them held three fancy shopping bags; there was always room on the arm for another. “They are Japanese.”

He nodded. “I know. But at first glance . . . Like I said, I've got her on the brain.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. She just seems central to all this.”

Lisa waited while the waitress put the smoked salmon salad in front of her. When the waitress had gone she said, “I think she might have been over the road this morning.”

“Madame Tzu? At the Town Hall?”

“Yes. From the way you described her to me, it could have been her. Just as I was getting to work. She was coming out of Councillor Brode's office with a Chinese man.”

“
What did he look like?”

“Medium height, thin, middle-aged. With glasses, not designer ones.”

He grinned, though he felt no humour. “You can come and work at Homicide any time you like . . . Madame Tzu and General Wang-Te.”

She sipped her glass of white wine, reached for a wheatmeal roll and buttered it. He had ordered a small steak, a salad and a glass of red; anything heavier and she would have re-ordered for him. He knew that if he were not married to her, he would be as big as Russ Clements.

“I could find out what they were doing in Brode's office.”

“No.” He was chewing on a roll, so there was no exclamation this time. He cleared his mouth. “Stay out of it. One cop in the family is enough.”

“Are you going to tell that to Claire when she graduates? She still wants to join the police.” She ate a mouthful of smoked salmon, then said, “I'm on good terms with Rosalie, who acts as Brode's secretary. We exchange bits and pieces.”

The restaurant had filled up, chatter chipped away at any silence. Father Christmas rolled slowly by out on the gallery, this time tolling a bell; somehow it had no merry sound to it. Malone leaned forward, keeping his voice low. “Darl, this Olympic job is a bloody mess, in more ways than one.”

“I know that. I'm not going to act stupidly. I'm not going to play at Joan of Arc storming some citadel—”

“You'd be good at that.” He tried to divert her by being facetious, a frayed marital ploy.

She ignored it. “I'd forgotten there's a girls' network as well as a boys' network. Private secretaries aren't always so private when someone else has some gossip to exchange. Rosalie isn't a private secretary to Mr. Brode, she's just someone who attends to his council business. She works for the council, for the
city.
She's a public servant, like you and me.”

“I'm a little more public than either of you. And I say stay out of this.”

She took another sip of her wine. “I'll think about it.”

He knew there was no point in further argument. She had told him more than once that it was
only
Dutch stubbornness that had kept the North Sea from flooding the Lowlands.

7

I

“SOMEONE AT
Town Hall is lining his pockets,” said the Premier.

He was honest as the day is long, depending on the season and daylight saving. He couldn't be bought, but he could be rented: a favour for a favour. He had thought of changing his name from Hans to Jan, but somehow Honest Jan didn't have the right ring to it. Neither did Honest Hans, according to his critics, who were many.

“Who, for instance?”

Since becoming Commissioner three months ago Bill Zanuch had trodden warily with the Premier and his
alter ego,
Police Minister. As an Assistant Commissioner he had had some contact with Vanderberg, but he had done his best to avoid him. He was an arch-conservative in his voting habits, but not naïve; he would have voted for Machiavelli, except that one couldn't trust Italians. He knew that the Premier was Machiavellian, but one always expected that of the Labor Right.

“Ray Brode.”

“Careful,” said Ladbroke, his minder. “No names, no pack drill.”

“Who's gunna give me any pack drill—Bill here? Police Commissioners never sack their Minister, do they, Bill? Or their Premier?” The bone-picking smile was at its widest.

“Never.” Zanuch almost tore a muscle forcing a return smile. “But what do you want me to do? It's not a police job.”

“It's connected. Explain it to him, Roger.”

The three of them were in the Premier's office, the door shut against interference and passing ears. Zanuch was in his silver braid and Ladbroke in his Cutler double-breasted; the sartorial ruin was the
Premier.
He was in his shirtsleeves, his white shirt already wrinkled, his standard plain red tie, one that he had worn for ten years, caught sideways across his chest under his black braces. There was no doubt, though, who was Caesar.

“It's Olympic Tower,” said Ladbroke. “Ray Brode has prospered out of it, how much we don't know. The Tower project—”

Zanuch interrupted. “How did it get the name Olympic? I thought all Olympic logos were the property of the organizing committee.”

“Only since Sydney got the Games. There was Olympic tyres, remember? There are fifty-two Olympic this-that-and-the-other in the phone book, but none of them uses the logos. Brode was in on the original project, the one that went broke. He knew Sydney was going to bid for the 2000 Games and he got the original developers to get in early, register the name. When the present consortium took over, Brode set about taking advantage of the name. It was he who sold the accommodation in the hotel to SOCOG.”

“He got the Chinese in, too,” said The Dutchman, who always kept a foot in the door of every conversation.

“It was common knowledge,” said Ladbroke, “that several of the top guys in the IOC wanted Beijing to have the Games. Brode thought it might be a sop if he could persuade Beijing to invest money in Olympic Tower—make money out of
our
Games. He went to Beijing to sell the idea. But Beijing wasn't interested, not then. All the old men up there are a lot of stiff-necked bastards.”

The old man behind the desk nodded; none knew better how to stiffen a neck.

“Now Beijing has changed its tune,” said Ladbroke.

The Premier had been quiet long enough: “The Chinese consul-general's been to see me. Shrewd feller, got his slanty little eyes wide open.” Out on the hustings he was every ethnic's best friend and patron; but he never had to look for votes in his own office. “Beijing's just discovered it's got some corrupt generals in its army, fellers willing to use army money to make a dollar or two for themselves. Or a million or two. Beijing doesn't like the picture and they'd rather we didn't frame it.”

He'
ll be writing his own speeches next, thought Ladbroke.

“I'm not quite with you,” said Zanuch, though he was well ahead of them. He hadn't risen through the ranks by looking backwards.

“You know who's involved in this. Les Chung, coupla other Chinese families, the—” He looked at Ladbroke.

“The Sun family and the Fengs.” The Dutchman would have known their names if they had been big Labor contributors. Ladbroke knew the Suns and the Fengs were Opposition backers.

“The Suns and the Fengs,” Vanderberg went on. “And a General Huang. Your fellers aren't even close to finding who murdered Sun, Feng and Huang. Beijing couldn't care less about Sun and Feng, they're just locals. But they'd rather you forget about General Huang. They'd like us to forget the whole thing.”

“They're not serious!”

“I've shocked you, eh?” The Premier couldn't stand the Police Commissioner, but Cabinet, for once, had overruled him when the appointment had to be made. “They're dead serious.”

“Are you?”

The Dutchman looked at Ladbroke. “Am I?”

“There are advantages,” Ladbroke told Zanuch. “We don't know how big this mess is. As it is, it's already getting us bad publicity overseas. Fleet Street, which wanted Manchester to get the Games, have gone back to their old ploy of painting us as The Land of the Long White Con. Brash Sydney, where anything goes, all that crap. They keep bringing up Bond, Connell, Skase—none of them was a Sydneysider. They forget all about the shonky deals in the City of London. So far we've kept the Chinese connection out of the news—”

“Police PR have done that,” Zanuch corrected him. “The media knows nothing because we've told them nothing.”

“Correction, Commissioner. The media does know and they're going to blow it any minute. They know part of the Tower development capital came out of China. They know there's been some
wheeling
and dealing with Town Hall. The one thing they don't know is that Mr. Shan was General Huang.”