The Bear Pit

by Jon Cleary

  “She doesn’t need to. Everyone in the Boolagong electorate knows her. She’s Mother Teresa, Princess Di and Golda Meir all rolled into one.”

  “All dead,” said Malone. “So’s their influence.”

  “Not hers. If she says no Mr. Balmoral, there’ll be no Mr. Balmoral.”

  “Why the shouting match with Clizbe?”

  “I said we’d announce Balmoral’s go for pre-selection on tonight’s news. And I asked who would be financing his campaign, if Mrs. Vanderberg opposed it. He went ape in a big way.”

  “Why wouldn’t he? When did union organizations ever tell you that their business was the media’s business? You’ve still got a lot to learn.”

  Clements picked up the ball: “Mo, you’re getting into dangerous territory. Someone paid to have the Premier bumped off. They’re not gunna have any second thoughts about an interfering TV researcher and reporter. The price on you would be about a dollar ninety-five.”

  She gave him the sceptic’s look again. “Russ—” proving she was grown-up now—“you don’t really think Clizbe or Balmoral is going to come gunning for me.”

  “Not them, no. But there’s someone wants to change the whole set-up of the Labor Party. The Vanderberg reign is over. They’re going back to the in-fighting of the eighties. Your dad and I saw that, as young cops, and it was dirty.”

  “Was anyone shot in those days?” Fifteen, twenty years ago was ancient history, which the young no longer studied.

  “No, but there were bashings. Serious ones. We don’t want that to happen to you. Do we, Dad?”

  Dad asked, “Have you got anything on the Harding electorate? Mr. Kelzo and company?”

  “What’s all this information worth?”

  “You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, Miss Malone,” said Inspector Malone. “The Police Service doesn’t go in for chequebook journalism.”

  “I’m not waving a cheque book. But I’m doing your job for you—”

  His stare might have burnt holes in a stranger; it certainly scorched her. Clements shifted uncomfortably on the couch, the vinyl gasping like flatulence. Out in the big main room there was a sudden silence, as if the half a dozen detectives there had heard Maureen and were waiting for Malone to explode.

  Maureen must have heard the silence; or her father’s stare told her the Malone tongue had got away from her. She retreated: “Sorry—”

  Malone still said nothing, but outside there was movement and the soft clacking of keys. Clements, pouring a little burning oil on family waters, said, “Mo, we’re striking no bargains on this. If you withhold information, I’ll take the matter out of your dad’s hands and I’ll put you in for twenty-four hours—” He was bluffing, the law wouldn’t allow him to do that.

  Somehow she wasn’t surprised. “You would, too, wouldn’t you?”

  Clements nodded. Malone sat silent.

  “Jesus!” Suddenly she was defeated. She rolled the ear-ring between her fingers, then put it back on her ear. Then she sighed and Malone recognized his own sound. “You can’t blame me for trying—God, I’ve worked really hard on this investigation! All of a sudden it’s bigger than I ever dreamed—I could make my name—”

  “On a headstone,” said Clements.

  Malone broke his silence: “Simmer down, Mo—that’s what Russ is always telling me—”

  “For a different reason,” said Clements.

  “This case has got serious, Mo. You could make your name—dead or beaten up. When the Premier was shot, it was no longer your investigation of branch-stacking—it was our case of homicide. Now tell us—have you got anything on the Harding branch office?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “I don’t know how much it’s worth. I went out there asking questions a week ago and a guy named Joe St. Louis, a real bruiser, ran me out of the place. Literally. Grabbed me by the back of my shirt and ran me out. He almost threw me down the stairs that go up to their office.”

  “You didn’t mention that at home.”

  “You’d have had some cops out there next morning, wouldn’t you? No thanks. Anyhow, I did learn the branch is loaded with money—”

  “How’d you learn that?”

  “I asked Mr. Kelzo, the boss. That was when I got the bum’s rush. Mr. Kelzo has put the arm on local people, but he also got a big whack from Sussex Street. I don’t know whether it was from the Labor Council or the Trades Congress . . . I also learned something else that had nothing to do with Mr. Kelzo. Someone donated two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the Premier’s campaign in the Boolagong electorate.”

  Malone looked at Clements. “What would we do without the help of a concerned public?”

  Clements looked at the concerned public: “Is that money still in the kitty?”

  “I don’t know. But if it is, it will be interesting to see if Mrs. Vanderberg lets Jerry Balmoral get his hands on it.”

  “How’d you get all this information?” asked Malone.

  “You’d be surprised how confidential some men can get when I lean close to them wearing some of Mum’s Arpège.”

  Her father looked at Clements. “I’ve sired a media harlot.”

  “I think I’ll raise Amanda to be a nun.”

  Maureen grinned. “I could kiss you both.”

  “Not in front of the help,” said Clements, nodding towards the main room. “Okay, Mo, you’ve been helpful. But take our advice—tread carefully. This is more than just a few political hopefuls trying to push each other out of the way.”

  “Our producer is jumping up and down over the story and what we’ve dug up—” “Then send him out on it,” said Malone. “Let him shove his neck out. You take care of yours.” She considered this for a moment, then she said, “Will you two give me the full story when it’s all over?”

  “You and the rest of the media,” said Malone. “We’re playing no favourites.”

  One could see the rebellion stirring in her; but she kept it in check. “Okay, fair enough. But if I keep on prodding and I come up with something you miss, we’ll run it on our show.”

  “Do that,” said her father, still bluffing, “and Sergeant Clements will hold you for twenty-four hours. Let you go, then bring you in for another twenty-four hours. And so on—it could be quite a serial. Thank you for coming in, Miss Malone.”

  “Not at all my pleasure, Inspector.”

  She gave them a smile that might have worked on younger, unrelated men. Clements said, “Pull your head in, Mo. That’s advice from Uncle Russ.”

  When she had gone, giving everyone in the main room the same wide smile, Clements said, “At least she didn’t give us the middle finger.”

  “She’s going to. She’s her grandfather’s granddaughter. I can see Con in every other inch of her.”

  He sat on in his office, staring out the window, while Clements went back to his own desk. He was troubled; sad, too. Maureen, headstrong as ever, was endangering herself; she was also distancing herself from him. The net that was the family was fraying; soon there would be gaping holes in it. He had never been, nor wanted to be, a demanding parent; neither, he knew, had Lisa. But, unspoken though it had been, they had always hoped their embrace would not be pushed aside. Maybe they had been lucky the embrace had lasted as long as it had; maybe because it had never been suffocating. Love, affection, care are only progress payments; a good parent never owned his children. Not that he wanted to. But it would have been a comfort if the payments could have gone on a little longer.

  II

  The strike force made little progress over the next two days. The paperwork multiplied, the computer screens were constantly alight; but Nemesis was a thwarted goddess and jokes were made about her being menopausal. The better-educated cops began to ask if there were any gods or goddesses who personified Doubt or Frustration.

  John August was kept under surveillance, something that didn’t appear to disturb him; he went about his job as a handyman, mowing lawns, fixing gutterings, mending broken ga
tes. The Trades Congress and the suspect branches of the Labor Party put up invisible shutters; officers and members sneaked in and out as if visiting brothels. The Coalition, on the other hand, all at once became an Open House; the media were as welcome as corporation donors. In two months’ time the sun, the political sun, might rise again. Bevan Bigelow took up jogging, getting into shape for the Olympics.

  On the morning of the funeral, God, being a Catholic, as the staff at St Mary’s knew He was, did the right thing by the cathedral and the State funeral. He turned off the heat and brought in a mild day. The cathedral was packed, though not with devotion. All the Catholics from both sides of politics, State and Federal, were there; likewise the Catholics from the Big End of town. But there were Protestants and Jews and Muslims and atheists and agnostics. It was not a festive occasion, but there were more smiles than tears; after all, it was a politician they were burying. God, at times, must have trouble not being cynical.

  Cardinal O’Flanagan, known as Cement Crotch because of his habit of sitting on the fence on controversial matters, was uncharacteristically eloquent. He had not had a congregation as large as this since the last visit of a Pope. He praised Hans Vanderberg to the point where those in the front pews thought there was movement in the coffin, not from embarrassment but from self-satisfaction. The Dutchman had been moved up the ranks to just below St Augustine. The Coalition MPs in the congregation looked askance at each other, knowing the Catholic vote had just gone out the window. Gertrude Vanderberg, resplendent in self-made black, wiped her eyes and wondered whom they were burying.

  Lord Mayor Rupert Amberton’s wife had pleaded a convenient migraine; she was a Jehovah’s Witness, though Jehovah didn’t see much of her. Amberton had dragooned Lisa into accompanying him, but once inside the cathedral he had not missed her when she went and sat beside Malone in a side pew.

  “Why are you here?” she whispered.

  “Scanning suspects. Scores of them.”

  “When did the Premier find religion?”

  “I dunno. But when he did, God must have been worried.”

  When they came out of the cathedral after the Mass Malone saw the TV crews lined up on either side of the steps. Maureen was with the Channel 15 crew; she had been promoted, though she had made no mention of it at home. Over the past two days she had been cool, but not rudely so; he had made no comment, waiting for her to thaw. Which would happen: she was too mercurial to remain cold. He waved to her and she flipped a hand that was almost dismissive.

  “What’s the matter between you and Mo?” asked Lisa.

  “We’re on opposing teams. You may have to be referee.”

  “If you act like fools, I’ll send both of you off.”

  He kissed her, restrained himself from patting her on her rump. “Take care.”

  Lisa looked around at the crowd still spilling out of the cathedral. Old friends, old enemies, were meeting again. The dead man was forgotten: you look great, Joe, thank Christ we’re still in the land of the living. Weddings are for introductions; funerals are for reunions. Handshakes clashed like swords.

  “Your murderer is amongst this lot?” she said quietly.

  “No,” he said. “Just whoever paid him.”

  Then his pager beeped. He crossed the road to where his car was parked in a No Loading zone, removed the usual ticket from the wiper, dropped it in the gutter and got into the car. He picked up the phone, pressed the buttons for Homicide. “Russ?”

  “It’s on again, mate. Not a homicide, but a bashing. The secretary of The Dutchman’s electoral office. You probably didn’t notice he wasn’t at the cathedral.”

  “Russ, there’s everyone and his missus here. It’s like grand final day. Who did him over?”

  “It happened last night, on his way home. He never saw who hit him, they got him in the dark as he got out of his car. It looks like an iron bar job—that’s the Rockdale police’s guess.”

  “Will he live?”

  “They say so. The Rockdale guys are by his bedside, but so far they haven’t been able to question him. Greg Random wants us to talk to him. I’ll meet you at St George’s hospital.”

  The Boolagong electorate covered the western and southern shores of Botany Bay. This was the harbour, some miles south of Sydney Harbour, into which Captain Cook had sailed 230 years before, where the natives were unfriendly, though they attempted no bashings. Cook thought them inferior in every way to the natives he had met in New Zealand, an opinion still held by New Zealanders towards the present natives. It is a wide bay, surrounded by flat land, much of it sandy. Kingsford Smith airport and port facilities are on its northern shore, an oil depot on its southern and round its western rim lie Rockdale, Brighton-le-Sands and Sans Souci. The French influence is non-existent, though there are still some houses that are called Mon Repos. On its northern headland there is a memorial to the Comte de la Pérouse, a Frenchman who wasn’t too impressed and sailed on. The Dutch, who explored other parts of the continent, never bothered with this part of the eastern seaboard. Hans Vanderberg had laid claim to it just as James Cook had all those years ago. The natives had revered him, but only on election day. The rest of the term they called him That Old Bastard, which, in the natives’ dialect, is still pretty close to reverence.

  Clements was waiting for Malone outside the hospital, his unmarked car parked in a space reserved for doctors. Malone drew in beside him and at once a security guard appeared like a genie that had been rubbed the wrong way. “You can’t park there—that’s for doctors!”

  Clements flashed his badge. “We’re specialists.”

  The two detectives went on into the hospital and the guard threw up his hands at the arrogance of cops. The hospital, like most public hospitals, had the shop-worn look of a health system short of funds. Malone had remarked that no politician of any party, large or small, or any so-called independent Independent ever pointed out to the voters that the public spent more on booze, smokes and gambling than it did on its health. There were no votes in telling the voters taxes were going to be raised for their own good. So the voters wrote Letters to the Editor complaining about the run-down hospitals, then went down to the pub and over half a dozen beers told their mates what they’d written to the Editor. And the mates raised their glasses and said, “I’ll drink to that, mate.”

  Malone and Clements rode up to the intensive care ward, where the victim of last night’s assault was in a private cubicle guarded by two young uniformed officers and what looked like the victim’s extended family to the ninth cousin.

  “They’re Italians, sir,” one of the officers told Malone. The family crowded round the man in the bed, who was bandaged so that he looked more like a mummy than a living human being. Heads turned as the two detectives spoke to the uniformed men. Their stares were as pointed as guns: Get out of here!

  Then a voice behind Malone said, “Who are you?”

  He was short and square and plain as a fridge door; he could not have been colder in his attitude. “I’m Barry Rix, secretary of the local Labor branch. Who are you?”

  Malone introduced himself and Clements. “You’re the secretary? Then who is—?” He nodded back over his shoulder. “We were told the secretary had been bashed.”

  Rix jerked his head and led them out of the ward and into a corridor. Gurneys trundled by, laden with surgical cases, coming and going to the operating theatres: hospital traffic. Rix looked up and down the busy corridor, then opened a door and led them into a linen room. It was a small room, little more than a closet, and the three men crowded it.

  “They got it wrong,” said Rix. He had a husky voice, as if he had spent his life shouting at a world that paid him no heed. “That’s Marco Crespi, poor bugger. He was the honorary assistant secretary. I’d left my car outside our office, Mrs. Vanderberg had picked me up in her car, she wanted to talk to me. Marco was working back and said he’d drop it off at my place. They thought he was me. That bashing was meant for me.” He shuddered as if he
felt the blows. “Christ!”

  “You any idea why?” asked Clements.

  Then the door was pushed open and Clements, with his back to it, had to stand aside. A young nurse pushed her way in. “What are you three doing in here?”

  “Consorting,” said Malone.

  The nurse started taking bed linen from the shelves. “The matron finds out, she’ll shoot the lot of you.”

  She went out with an armful of linen. Clements closed the door after her and stood with his back to it again. “Why you, Barry?”

  Rix looked up at the two big men, so close to him they might have been threatening him. He was the perpetual ranker, the corporal or sergeant in every organization; he held the ranks together, changed the linen, read the wind. He was salt of the earth, Con Malone would have said, a man for the barricades. But he was scared by what had happened to Marco Crespi last night.

  “I’ve been secretary for fifteen years, I ran the electorate for the Old Man. I never had any ambition, just to serve him and the party.” Somehow he did not sound as if he expected violins to be playing. “Then Mrs. Vanderberg came to me yesterday morning and said she wanted me to take Hans’ place, to stand for pre-selection. I thought it over and said Yes.”

  “Did you make any announcement?” asked Malone.

  “Not to the media, no. But Mrs. Vanderberg let head office and the rest of ‘em down in Sussex Street know.”

  “How’d they take it?”

  “Head office didn’t like it. They claim they run pre-selection. Gert—Mrs. Vanderberg—told ‘em to try their luck. I think they’re gunna find out she’s tougher than Mrs. Thatcher ever was. Then the next thing—” He gestured at the closed door, at the man in the coma down the corridor. “Poor bloody Marco.”

  “Have you any idea who bashed him?”

  Rix looked at them, dubious; or perhaps frightened. “I don’t wanna put anyone in the gun—”

  “Barry,” said Malone patiently, “we’re investigating the murder of your boss. Your Old Man. Why would anyone want to bash you? Or kill you?”

  Rix shuddered again at the word kill; he took his time: “Well . . . Certain people in Sussex Street don’t think I’m the guy for the job.”