Dragons at the Party

by Jon Cleary

  The room was comfortably and attractively furnished, but Sun obviously thought it was a converted closet stocked from a discount house. “There is no room to move . . . Mr. Masutir’s things are still in his suitcase. We were only allowed to bring one suitcase each.”

  “I read in the papers that the RAAF plane that brought you was loaded with baggage.”

  “The newspapers, as always, got it wrong. We brought packing cases, but they are full of official papers—records, files, that sort of thing. President Timori wanted to leave nothing for the vandals who have taken over the palace.”

  “What about Madame Timori? Did she bring only one suitcase?”

  “Madame Timori has a position to uphold.”

  “I thought she might have. The papers said she brought twelve cases and four trunks. But women never travel lightly, do they? So they tell me.”

  Masutir’s suitcase, a genuine Vuitton or a good Hong Kong fake, Malone wasn’t sure which, was not locked. Malone flipped back the lid, was surprised at how neatly everything was packed; had Masutir been packed for weeks, waiting for the inevitable? Most of the contents told Malone nothing except that Masutir had always bought quality: the shirts, the socks, the pyjamas were all silk. In a pocket in the lid were Masutir’s passport and a black leather-bound notebook.

  Malone flipped through the passport. “Mr. Masutir had been to Australia before?”

  “I understand he had been here before.”

  “Six times in the past—” Malone looked at the earliest date stamp “—eight months. Did you know about those visits, Mr. Sun?”

  If Sun had known about the visits he didn’t show it now. “No. Mr. Masutir was more Madame Timori’s secretary than my assistant. Back home in Palucca she was a very busy woman, as you may know.”

  “Are you a Paluccan, Mr. Sun?”

  “Fourth generation. My family came to Bunda from Hong Kong after the Opium War.”

  “Which side were they on?” Sun looked blank and Malone added, “The war?”

  Sun still looked blank, made no answer. So much for being a smart arse, thought Malone; but the quietly arrogant Chinese was beginning to get under his skin. Malone flipped through the black notebook, saw a list of Sydney addresses and phone numbers. He decided against asking Sun about them.

  “I’ll take this, I’ll give you a receipt for it.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Do you want me to find out who murdered Mr. Masutir?”

  The tiny frown was there again, but just for a moment. “Of course. But how will his address book help you?”

  “We have to start somewhere, Mr. Sun. Every murderer has a name. Our murderers may be in this.” He held up the notebook, then slipped it into his pocket. “I think that’ll be all, Mr. Sun.”

  Sun looked surprised, and Malone was surprised to see him capable of such an expression. “You don’t want to question me?”

  “I’ll be back to do that, Mr. Sun. In the meantime you prepare your answers.”

  He went ahead of the Chinese down the stairs, not bothering to look back at him or say anything further. He sensed there might be something in Masutir’s notebook which might worry Sun Lee. A night to think about it might put another crack in the jade face.

  When Malone reached the front hallway Clements was waiting there for him. He read the bad news on the big man’s face before Clements said it. “We bashed the door down and found the old lady. She’d been strangled.”

  “Any sign of the killer?”

  Clements shook his head. “He’d left his gun, though. A Springfield .30, with a telescopic sight. He was a pro, I’d say. I’ve rung Fingerprints, they’re on their way.”

  “What about the old lady? Had he knocked her around?”

  “No. It was a neat job, with a piece of rope. He’d come prepared. Like I say, he was a real pro.”

  “Righto, I’ll be over there in a while. In the meantime, give this to Andy Graham, tell him I want every one of those Sydney addresses and phone numbers tracked down. Tell him to tell them to stand by when he finds out who they are. I’ll want to interview them.” He handed the notebook to Clements, aware of Sun standing behind him and hearing every word. “Something doesn’t add up here. Maybe they meant to kill Masutir, after all. You think so, Mr. Sun?”

  The mask was flawless this time. “It would be presumptuous of me even to guess, Inspector. I am not a detective.”

  Clements watched the small exchange, but his own wide open face was now expressionless. “I’ll wait for you over the road, Inspector.”

  Malone went back into the drawing-room, said directly to Madame Timori, “There’s been another murder. An old lady over in the flats opposite.”

  She just nodded. She did not appear disturbed; the handkerchief was not even produced this time. She stood up, giving herself regal airs if not a regal air, which is different; she was the most common of commoners but she had always had aspirations. She had always wanted to dance the royal roles when she had been with the dance company; nobody would ever have believed her as Cinderella. “I’m retiring for the night.”

  I’d like to retire, too, thought Malone; or anyway, go to bed. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning, Madame. I hope the President will be well enough to answer some questions.”

  “What sort of questions have you in mind? I’m sure I could answer them all.” She paused, as if she might sit down again.

  “You must be tired,” said Malone, not offering her any further opportunity to take over the investigation. “Good night, Madame. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He went out into the warm night air. There he exchanged information with the two other Homicide men who had come with him and Clements. One of them was Andy Graham, a young overweight detective constable who had just transferred from the uniformed division. He was all enthusiasm and ideas, most of which were as blunt as Thumper Murphy’s sledgehammer.

  “I’ve got the notebook, Inspector.” He brandished it like a small black flag. “I’ll have ‘em all waiting for you first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Not all at once, Andy. Use your judgement, get the big ones first.”

  “Right, Inspector, right.”

  “Take Kerry here with you. Divide up the addresses and numbers between you. Be polite.”

  “Right.”

  As he and Clements crossed the road towards the block of flats, Malone said, “How come you never say right to everything I say?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “No.”

  “Right.”

  The old lady had been taken away in the same ambulance that had taken the dead Masutir; the holiday weekend casualties were starting early and these two not for the usual reason, road accidents. Up towards the corner of the street a large crowd had now congregated behind the barricades that had been thrown up. The protestors had stopped demonstrating, jarred into silence by the sight of the two bodies being pushed into the ambulance, and the crowd was now just a large restless wash of curiosity. Double murders just didn’t happen in Kirribilli: the local estate agents would have to work hard next week to continue promoting it as a “desirable area.”

  The fireworks were still scribbling on the black sky, but the crowd seemed to have turned its back on them. A band was playing in the open court at the northern end of the Opera House and the music drifted across the water, banged out at intervals by the explosions of the fireworks. The waters of the harbour were ablaze with drifting lights: ferries, yachts, rowboats, the reflected Catherine wheels, shooting stars and lurid waterfalls of the fireworks. Malone wondered if the local Aborigines here on the Kirribilli shore had waved any firesticks in celebration on the night of that day in January 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip had raised the British flag and laid the seed, perhaps unwittingly, for a new nation. As he walked across the road Malone looked for an Aborigine or two amongst the demonstrators, with or without firesticks to light their way, but there was none.

  The Fingerprints men were just fi
nishing as Malone entered the top-floor flat past Thumper’s handiwork, the splintered front door. “Can’t find a print, Inspector. We’ve dusted everything, but he either wiped everything clean or wore gloves. He must have been a cold-blooded bastard.”

  “Have you tried the bathroom?”

  “There’s two of them. Nothing there.”

  “Try the handle or the button of the cistern. I don’t care how cold-blooded he was, he’d have gone in there for a nervous pee some time.” The senior Fingerprints man looked unimpressed and Malone went on, “It’s the simple, habitual things that let people down, even the most careful ones. I’ll give you a hundred to one that a man doesn’t take a leak with a glove on.”

  “I couldn’t find mine if I had a glove on,” said Clements with a grin.

  The Fingerprints men looked peeved that a Homicide man, even if he was an inspector, should tell them their job. They went away into the bathrooms and two minutes later the senior man came back to say there was a distinct print on the cistern button in the second bathroom. He looked even more peeved that Malone had been right.

  “The second bathroom looks as if it’s rarely used, maybe just for visitors. The print’s a new one.”

  “Righto, check your records,” said Malone. “I’ll want a report on it first thing in the morning. Sergeant Clements will call you.”

  Malone was left alone with Clements, Thumper Murphy and the sergeant in charge of the North Sydney detectives, a slim handsome man named Stacton. “Okay, so what have we got?”

  Clements pointed to the dismantled rifle which lay on the table in the dining-room in which they stood. “He must have brought it in dismantled and put it together once he was in the flat—it’s a special job. Then after he’d fired the shot, he dismantled it again and put it in a kit-bag, the sort squash players carry. Nobody would’ve noticed him if he’d come in here behind those demonstrators.”

  “Where’d you find the bag and the gun?”

  “Under the stairs, down on the ground floor. Someone must’ve come in as he was going out and he had to hide.”

  Malone looked at Stacton. “Would it have been one of your uniformed men?”

  “I doubt it. Inspector, but I’ll check. They were busy holding back the demo. And I gather there was a hell of a lot of noise—no one heard the shot.”

  “There’s no security door down at the front?”

  “None. People ask for trouble these days.”

  “How did he get into the flat? I noticed there’s a grille security-door on the front door.”

  “I dunno. There’s no sign of forced entry. The old lady must have let him in.”

  “A stranger?” Malone looked around him. The furniture was antique and expensive; it had possibly taken a lifetime to accumulate. It was the sort of furniture that Lisa would love to surround herself with; he found himself admiring it. The paintings on the walls were expensive, too: nothing modern and disturbing, but reassuring landscapes by Streeton and Roberts. Miss Kiddle had surrounded herself with her treasures, but they hadn’t protected her. “This is a pretty big flat for one old woman.”

  “She has a married nephew who owns a property outside Orange. I’ve rung Orange and asked someone out to tell him. It’s gunna bugger up his celebrations.”

  “It’s buggered up mine,” said Malone and looked out the window at another burst of fireworks. The past was going up in a storm of smoke and powder, you could smell it through the open windows. The kids would love it, though the grownups might wonder at the significance. It took Australians some time to be worked up about national occasions, unless they were sporting ones. The Italians and the Greeks, who could get worked up about anything, would enjoy the fireworks the most.

  “Well, I guess we’d better make a start with our guesses. Any suggestions?”

  Clements chewed his lip, a habit he had had as long as Malone had known him. “Scobie, I dunno whether this is worth mentioning. I was going through some stuff that came in from Interpol. You heard of that bloke Seville, Miguel Seville the terrorist? Well, Interpol said he’d been sighted in Singapore last week. He got out before they could latch on to him. He’d picked up a flight out of Dubai. They managed to check on all the flights going back to Europe after he’d been spotted. He wasn’t on any of them, not unless he’d got off somewhere along the way. Bombay, Abu Dhabi, somewhere like that.”

  “He might have gone to Sri Lanka,” said Stacton. “He’s always around where there’s trouble.”

  When Malone had first started on the force no one had been interested in crims, terrorists then being unknown, outside the State, even outside one’s own turf. Now the field was international, the world was the one big turf.

  “The betting’s just as good that he came this way,” said Clements.

  Malone said, “Who’d hire him? The generals who’ve taken over in Palucca have no connection with any of the terrorist mobs, at least not on the record.”

  “Seville is different. That’s according to the Italians, who’ve had the most trouble with him. He’s not interested in ideology any more. He’s just a bloody mercenary, a capitalist like the rest of us.”

  “Speak for yourself. We’re not all big-time punters like you.”

  Clements grinned; his luck with the horses was notorious, even embarrassing. “You pay Seville, he’ll organize trouble for you. A bomb raid at an airport, a machine-gun massacre, an assassination, anything. Someone could have hired him to do this job.”

  “Righto, get Fingerprints to photo-fax that print through to Interpol, see if it matches anything they might have on Seville. Have we called in Special Branch yet?”

  “They arrived just as I was putting me sledge-hammer away,” said Thumper Murphy.

  “A pity,” said Malone and everyone grinned. “Well, it looks as if we’re all going to be one big happy family. The Feds, the Specials, you fellers and us.”

  “I always liked you, Scobie,” said Thumper Murphy. “They could have sent us one of them other bastards you have in Homicide.”

  It sounds just like Palucca must have sounded, Malone thought. Each faction wanting all the others out of the way. He sighed, just as Kenthurst had said the President had sighed when the emeralds had been taken from Masutir’s pocket. Only then did he remember he hadn’t asked anyone about the emeralds.

  “Where are the emeralds?”

  “Kenthurst said he gave ‘em back to Madame Timori,” said Clements. “She asked for them.”

  “She would.” He wondered how many tears had been shed for the Mother of the Poor, as she had called herself, when she had left Palucca.

  II

  Palucca was the largest of the old Spice Islands. Columbus was heading there when he accidentally ran into America; he had coined the phrase, “Isn’t it a small world?” and thought he had proved it when he finished up some 11,000 miles short of his intended destination. The Spice Islands survived his non-arrival, but European civilized types, led by Ferdinand Magellan, arrived in 1511 and from then on the aroma of the Spices began to change. Nothing has ever been improved by the advent of outsiders, nothing, that is, but the lot of the invaders.

  The Portuguese were succeeded by the Spanish, the Dutch and the British; the Islanders just shrugged, learned a few words of the newest language and dreamed of the old days when they were barbaric and happy. Their paradise had been spoiled by the Europeans who, seeking profits, had come looking for the spices that would, in addition to the sweet taste of profits, make their putrid and indigestible food edible. The pepper, nutmegs, cloves, mace, ginger and cinnamon, added to what the Europeans ate back in what they thought of as civilization, saved the appetites and often the lives of the civilized millions. Spices were also used by physicians to treat diseases of the blood, the stomach, head and chest; sometimes a cookery recipe was mistaken for a medical prescription, but it made no difference anyway. The patient usually died and the family got the bill, the physician’s bill being larger than the grocer’s.

 
The Dutch stayed longest and eventually the Spice Islands were absorbed into what became known as the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese came in 1942, were welcomed but soon wore out their welcome and were gone in 1945. The Dutch came back; but they, too, were unwelcome. In 1949 the Indies obtained their independence and became Indonesia. The Paluccans, however, declared their own independence and the rest of Indonesia, tired of fighting the Dutch and just wanting to get on with the post-war peace that the rest of the world was enjoying, let them go.

  The Timori family, which had been the leading family in Palucca for centuries, were pains in the neck anyway. They were conspirators, connivers, meddlers, and corrupt: ideal rulers to deal with the Europeans, Americans, Chinese and Russians who would soon be coming to court them.

  Mohammed Timori, Abdul’s father, had himself elected President for life, a title he chose in preference to Sultan, to which he was entitled by inheritance; he was prepared to make a bow towards democracy, though it hurt every joint in his body. He moved back into Timoro Palace, the family home that had been commandeered by the Dutch a hundred years before. He said public prayers of praise to Allah, but privately he told Allah He had better come good with some United Nations aid or Palucca would be in the hands of the Chinese money-lenders before the next crop of nutmegs.

  Allah came good with better than United Nations hand-outs: oil was found on the north coast of the big island. It did not make Palucca a rich country, because the oil reserves were judged to be only moderate; nonetheless, Palucca was suddenly more than just a source of ginger and nutmegs and the oil companies of the West came bearing their own aromatic spices, bribes with which to start Swiss bank accounts. The Timori family were suddenly rich, even if their country wasn’t. They shared their wealth like true democrats, 10 per cent to the voters and 90 per cent to the Timoris, and thought of themselves as benevolent, honest and born to rule. They were no different from all the Europeans who had preceded them in Palucca.

  Mohammed Timori died in 1953 on the same day as Josef Stalin, which meant he got no space at all in Western newspapers. The Americans, prompted by John Foster Dulles, decided to compensate for that lack of regard; they established a naval base and named it in his honour. Abdul Timori, who was then twenty-five, was called home from Europe to succeed his father. His election as President for life was no more than a formality, like high tea, monogamy and other European importations, and was looked upon as just as much a giggle.