Five-Ring Circus (26 page)

“Suspected of what?”

Guo shrugged. “I don't know. So far all you've accused me of is running away. I've explained why.”

“Do you own a gun?” said Malone.

“Why should I own a gun?”

“Were you ever in the army?”

“Yes. I was in the engineers corps.”

“
Did you know General Huang then?”

Guo laughed: it sounded genuine. “I was a very junior lieutenant. I didn't know he existed.”

“When did you know he existed?”

“When I met Li Ping. About a year ago.”

“Did you get on with him? Was he friendly towards you?”

Guo seemed to give the question sincere thought. “No, not
friendly.
He was very rank-conscious. I was still very junior.”

“You were still in the army then?”

“No, I had been out a year.”

“So he resented you being Li Ping's boyfriend?”

“I don't think he cared one way or the other. He was not a very caring parent.”

Malone sat back in his chair. “Like Detective Graham, I think you're lying, Mr. Guo. We have it on good authority that you and Mr. Tong were protégés of General Huang.”

Guo ran his tongue round his teeth. “That was after we went to work for his development company. He recognized that Tong and I were good engineers. The best, he said.”

“So actually you got on well with him? As a protégé?”

Guo was ill at ease now but only just. “No. Once Li Ping and I started going together, things changed.”

“I wonder how many more lies you're going to tell us?” Then Malone changed tack: “Do you know what a Type 67 is?”

Guo shook his head. “No. I haven't a clue, isn't that what you police say?”

Smartarses are international.
“Occasionally. Are you going back to work on Olympic Tower?”

Guo hesitated, then nodded. “I think so. Mr. Aldwych told us we'd better.”

Malone grinned. “Then I'd take his advice.”

“Do you think the murders have stopped?”

“I haven't a clue,” said Malone and stood up. “You can go out and join Miss Li. We want you
to
wait till we've talked to your friend Tong Haifeng. Would you like some coffee?”

“Tea,” said Guo.

“Will you oblige, Andy? Loose leaves, no tea-bags. Right, Mr. Guo?”

“You're a civilized man, Inspector.”

“We still have a few barbarians running around loose.”

Why do I get into these smartarse exchanges with the Chinese! They're not all sons and daughters of Confucius.

He went out and into the next interview room, where Tong Haifeng sat with Phil Truach. “Things okay, Phil?”

“We're both dying for a smoke. Mr. Tong smokes fifty a day, he tells me.”

“Nerves, Mr. Tong?” Malone looked at the young Chinese, who was cigarette-thin and tobacco-sallow. “I'm a non-smoker and heartless. No smoking till you're out of this building.”

Tong coughed, then smiled, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “Why are we here?”

“I told him,” said Truach, “but he thinks it's a joke.”

“Why would we waste our time joking, Mr. Tong, when we have four murders on our hands? Do you speak Mandarin?” Gail Lee had told him about the threat to Camilla Feng.

Tong frowned. “Of course. And Cantonese.”

“And Mr. Guo—does he speak Mandarin?”

“Yes. Am I going to be questioned in Mandarin?”

“Hardly, Mr. Tong.” Malone sat down opposite him. Truach looked imploringly at him (can't I just step outside for a smoke?), but it was standard procedure that when questioning anyone two detectives had to be present. “If you give quick answers to our questions, you and Sergeant Truach can soon be out on the street having a smoke. Who suggested the three of you should disappear Saturday morning? Or was it Friday night?”

Tong coughed again, but didn't smile this time. He appeared to be all skin and bone under the white shirt and tan trousers he wore; but he had big, strong-looking hands that kept moving one within
the
other like coupling crabs. “Li Ping was the frightened one. Women always are, aren't they?”

“What would Madame Tzu say to that?”

Tong wrinkled his thin nose. “She's different.”

“Did you know her before you came to Australia?”

Tong coughed again; it was a stalling ploy. “Yes.” He took his time before going on: “General Huang introduced us to her, recommended we be brought out here for Bund Corporation.”

“You were one of the general's protégés?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Did you know Zhang Yong?”

“No.”

“You didn't know he was Li Ping's brother?”

“Well, yes.” Again the cough. “But I never met him.”

“Do you own a gun, Mr. Tong?”

Once more the cough: it was too obvious a ploy now and Malone was irritated. “Why should I own a gun? I'm an engineer.”

These bastards have rehearsed their answers.
“You were in the army with Guo. Do you know what a Type 67 is?”

“There is a Type 67 theodolite, an old model. Some surveyors still use it.”

Malone looked at Truach, who had remained expressionless during the questioning. “Never lost for an answer . . . Righto, Mr. Tong, you can go. Don't smoke till you're outside the building—you might be arrested.”

“For smoking?” He had stood up, was taller than Malone had thought.

Malone just grinned. “See them out, Phil, right down to the front door.” Where Phil Truach could have his own smoke. “Go back to the apartment in The Mount, Mr. Guo, not back to Bondi. We want the three of you to stay together. We'll be in touch again.”

“What have we done?” Now he was on his feet he sounded more confident; or just closer to a
smoke.
“Have we done something wrong by being afraid?”

“We just want to keep an eye on you. We don't want three more murders. Bullets kill you quicker than cigarettes.”

He grinned at Phil Truach, then went out of the room and crossed to his office. Clements got up from his desk and followed him. “We're letting them go?”

“We've got nothing to hold them on. But I want them kept under surveillance. Ring Day Street, let them do the legwork.”

“Do you think the girl and these two young guys know something?”

“They know more than we do, but we're not going to get it out of them today. We'll try the Chinese water torture. We'll have ‘em in again.”

Clements nodded appreciatively. “You're getting more and more Oriental by the day.”

“Most of my life I found trouble with three things. Plastic kitchen wrap, putting a ribbon into a typewriter and passionate virgins who wanted to remain virgins. But these bloody Orientals . . .” He shook his head in frustration.

“What are we gunna do about Councillor Brode? Try some water torture on him?”

Malone looked at his watch. “We'll talk to him tomorrow. I'm going home.”

Then his phone rang. It was Phil Truach on his mobile. “I'm downstairs, Scobie. The kids have just been picked up by a woman who was waiting in the car park for them. In a Mercedes.”

“What did she look like?” But he knew.

“Chinese. Middle-aged. Well dressed.”

“Madame Tzu.” He hung up and looked at Clements. “I think I'm beginning to feel the water torture myself.”

II

“Are you awake?”

“Yes. But I've got a headache.”

Lisa
dug him in the ribs. “I'm serious—
that's
the last thing on my mind.”

He rolled over on his back, switched on the bedside lamp. “Righto, what
is
on your mind?”

“Ray Brode went home sick today. Suddenly.”

He had not discussed the case with her this evening. He had come home, glad as always to walk in the front door. He had paused by the two camellia bushes: no,
trees.
He had planted them when they had moved into the house in Randwick North, as the locals called it, as if the extra designation gave it some sort of cachet. The camellias had been bushes then, but now they were trees. He was not a dedicated gardener (Lisa was that) and occasionally he was surprised at the growth of what had been planted: the azaleas, the roses, the gardenias: somehow Lisa managed to get them all to flourish in the same soil. But he did remember planting the camellias; somehow it was almost as if he had forgotten to watch their growth. And now they hung over him, an awning that led to his house, his home. He wondered how many men marked their own years by the growth of the bushes they planted.

He had stopped and looked to the west, above the houses on the opposite side of the street. The setting sun had exposed a gold reef in a cliff of cloud, promising a better tomorrow. But his mood was low, he knew it was fool's gold, tomorrow would be no better. So tonight he had not discussed the case, had kept it to himself like a disease he didn't want to spread.

“Why did you have to wait till now to tell me?”

“You told me at lunch to mind my own business.”

He felt for her hand. “Darl, don't get involved—”

“I'm not. I didn't go asking Rosalie why Brode had left so suddenly—I didn't know he'd gone. She came into my office to give me some papers and she just remarked on it. Said it wasn't like him, he was always boasting how fit he was . . . He's not, he's overweight—”

“Go on,” he said patiently.

She dug him in the ribs again. “Brode comes in two days a week to Town Hall. He was dictating to Rosalie today when he got a phone call. He listened to it, evidently it was quite short, then he hung up and told Rosalie he suddenly felt unwell and he was going home. He was gone before she could ask if she
could
help him.”

“I think I know where the phone call came from.” He told her about Brode's owning the apartment in The Mount. “Tomorrow you go in and you mind your own business, okay?”

“I'm not going to act all girlish and stupid like the girl in that stupid Woody Allen murder film. But if I hear things—”

“Darl—” He turned his head on the pillow to look at her. “This is
my
case. I'll do my own investigating.”

She turned her head. “Do you have any idea how it's going to end up?”

“No. I'm having so much pressure put on me—” He had been almost on the point of sleep when she had first spoken. Now he was wide awake. He put his hand on her belly, felt the warmth of her. “Now I'm awake, my headache's gone.”

She lay a moment, then she raised herself and kissed him. “You know where it is . . .”

In the morning at breakfast Claire said, “You had the State Protection Group out yesterday. You didn't tell us.”

“There was nothing to tell. Where'd you hear it?”

“It was on 2UE this morning, half an hour ago. They said it was some sort of balls-up.”

“They use that sort of language on 2UE?”

“Was it a balls-up?”

“It was just an exercise. You don't want to believe everything you hear on radio.”

“So it was a balls-up?” said Maureen, the student in Communications.

Malone looked at Lisa. “Let's buy a flat and move out. We don't need this lot.”

“I'll come with you,” said Tom. “You can teach me how to organize a balls-up.”

“Better still, you all move out.” But he would hate the day they did.

III

Madame Tzu was furious with the man. She had never had any time for army officers; even the
corrupt
ones had no imagination. “You have to move! The other two, Chung and Aldwych, are waiting to take us over!”

General Wang-Te was unmoved by her fury. He sat sipping the tea that Tzu's maid had brought in when he had arrived. He was not staying at the Vanderbilt, but had booked into a three-star hotel as Mr. Wang-Te, a lecturer from Shanghai University. The less advertisement for himself, the army and the current problem the better.

“You will have to be patient—”

“Patience be damned!” Anger made her look older. As it always does with women, thought Wang-Te, a misogynist.

He took another sip of tea, the very image of patience. “We can do nothing about your project—”

“Not
my
project! Not just mine—there are others in this—”

“
Were
in it,” he corrected her. “Your two friends in Shanghai are in jail awaiting trial. They may be executed. As Huang would have been if he had come back to China.” He sipped his tea. “The thinking in Beijing is that a lesson must be taught. There is enough corruption at home—soon we'll be as bad as the Russians—” He shook his head at the prospect. “The worst of it is that I knew your partners. All good officers till—”

“Till I what? Seduced them?”

He smiled at her. “Is that how you persuaded them?”

“Don't be ridiculous!” For a moment she looked as if she might throw her own cup of tea at him.

“There are too many irons in the fire.” He was not an aphorist, but he had a fondness for clichés, which in many cases started life as aphorisms. “Some will have to be taken out.”

“Who? What?”

“Huang's daughter and your two young engineers.”

“Taken out? You mean killed?” She was a devotee of American films, especially Scorsese's
gangster
films. They showed the uses of ruthlessness.

They were speaking Mandarin and he had used the phrase
taken out
in its literal meaning. “Killed? Do you want that?”

The idea seemed to cool her; her anger died down. “Another three killings here in Sydney? No, that would be too much.”

But the idea hasn't repelled her, he thought. He was a married man, but he had spent all his life since his youth amongst men. Ruthless women were as unfamiliar to him as nymphomaniacs; his wife, educated by American missionaries, had kept him protected from both. “I want to take them back to China.”