Babylon South

by Jon Cleary

  Malone detached himself from Debby. “Who did the firing? Mr. Dircks?”

  “No, it came from the fucking Springfellow office—they own us, you know.” She dried her eyes on the sleeve of her bulky sweater, hitched up her jeans. She had dreamed of being another Gillian Armstrong or even a Lina Wertmüller, but some bastard had just removed all the bottom rungs of the ladder. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Getting my own back,” said Malone; then grinned. “No, it’s just public relations.”

  He and Clements went on into the administration building, to the receptionist sitting beneath the big pink-and-grey logo.

  “Oh, Inspector Malone, you’re not back for Sydney Beat, are you?”

  “I’m told we’re a little late for that. Can we see Mr. Dircks?”

  The girl looked doubtful. “I gather he’s not seeing anyone right now. He’s leaving, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know. Where’s he going?”

  The girl shrugged. “I only work here. Nobody tells me anything.”

  “Where’s his office? Still on the same floor? Thanks, Sally.”

  “Inspector, you can’t—!”

  But Malone and Clements were already on their way up to the first floor. They strode down the long corridor past the big portraits of stars who were no longer stars; Sydney Beat would be off the walls tomorrow, flops had to be erased from memory as quickly as possible. The Singapore Chinese secretary was at her desk, still minding the gates, her sword already half out of its scabbard as soon as she recognized Malone.

  “Mr. Dircks is not seeing anyone—”

  “Wrong, Miss Wong. He’s seeing us. Excuse me, please.” She stood up in front of him, but he took her gently by the elbows and lifted her aside. “I admire your sense of duty, love, but you’re in the way.”

  All at once she seemed to sense that this intrusion was something serious. “He’ll kill me for letting you go in—”

  “I don’t think he’s going to be around much longer,” said Malone. “You’ll be safe.”

  He and Clements stepped round her, opened the door behind her and went into the pink-and-grey executive office. Roger Dircks, looking not at all pink but only grey, was standing at his desk shoving papers into his briefcases. On the floor beside the desk were two large cartons crammed with books, framed prints and a brass desk lamp. It looked as if Dircks, before he fled, was taking looter’s privileges. Malone had heard the gossip on the studio floor that it was the custom at top level in the television industry, except at the ABC, where there was nothing to loot.

  “Going somewhere, Mr. Dircks?”

  “Christ Almighty, how did you get in here? Rose, what the hell—?”

  “Don’t blame her,” said Clements, closing the door. “She tried to stop us.”

  “What the hell do you want? I’ve got enough to fucking worry about—”

  “First,” said Malone, “I’d better give you the usual warning. You’ve heard it often enough in Sydney Beat, though your actors always seemed to get it wrong. Anything you may say, et cetera . . .”

  Dircks’s small mouth fell open. “Anything I may say? Christ, what is this?”

  “Mr. Dircks, did you go to Adelaide last October?”

  “How the fuck do I know? You’d have to ask Rose to look up my diary.” Dircks was in shirt-sleeves, his tie off; he looked unstarched, wilted. With his anger he had regained some colour in his face, he was pink and grey again. “What is this, for Chrissakes? I got all the bad news I can handle, then you come busting in here—”

  “Last October, Mr. Dircks—did you go to Adelaide and purchase a silencer for a gun at a dealer’s named—” Malone named the Adelaide gun dealer.

  Dircks shook his head in wonder. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “You told the dealer you wanted it for a TV film you were shooting.”

  “You’re crazy, man. We’ve never shot anything in Adelaide—Christ, nobody shoots anything in Adelaide. It’s a cemetery.” There was only one city in Australia, right here where he worked and lived; he was not honorary television adviser to the Sydney Chamber of Commerce for nothing. “The only time I go there is every three months for a board meeting at our network station there. Yeah, I remember—I did go to Adelaide in October, the last week of October. It was a special meeting, it had to do with what was going to happen after the stock market crash and the takeover bid. I spent the whole of my time with the local executives. They were worried about their jobs. I spent all my time reassuring them.” He made a noise that sounded like an attempt at a laugh, but which got caught in his throat. “Jesus!”

  “Have you someone from here who can vouch for that?”

  “Not from here, but from head office. Michael Broad. He wasn’t with us all the time—he was looking at some of the other Springfellow interests over there. Springfellow owns a couple of vineyards up in the Barossa Valley.”

  “Does he usually go with you to the quarterly meetings of the network?”

  “Never. He’s never concerned himself with the network—not up till now.” There was no mistaking the bitterness in his voice. “He’s just fired me.”

  Malone contained his surprise. “Who usually went with you to Adelaide?”

  “Miss Springfellow, Justine. But Michael stepped in for that trip—Justine had that family takeover bid on her hands. Why, are you suggesting he bought a silencer?” Dircks was not big enough for this job he had held, but he was not unintelligent. He had got as far as he had on his wits and now, all at once, they came back to full spark. “Has this got something to do with Justine’s trial?”

  It had dawned on Malone that they had come to arrest the wrong man. He had been, subconsciously, so intent on getting Justine off the hook that he had lunged for the first alternative suspect. It was sloppy police work and he knew it.

  “Can you remember the date you went to Adelaide?”

  Dircks was suddenly more helpful. He dipped into one of the briefcases, came up with a diary. “Yeah, here it is. We flew over on the seven-thirty flight on October 29, a Thursday, and we stayed overnight. Michael was with me.”

  Then Clements said, “Mr. Dircks, do you wear a hat?”

  “A hat?” Dircks touched his thick grey pelt. It was obvious from the smooth cut of it that he spent money on it, was proud of it, a man in his fifties with not a hint of a bald patch. “No, never. Well, yes, when I’m out on my boat or playing golf I wear an old terry-towelling job, to keep the sun off. I have to watch out for sun cancers.” He pointed to his pink complexion.

  “Does Mr. Broad wear a hat?”

  “No. I think he likes showing off that bald skull of his—no, wait a minute. He had a hat in Adelaide! I saw him going out of the hotel the second morning wearing one, a tweed one, you know, like the rah-rah boys wear to rugby matches.” Another one with prejudices, Malone thought irrelevantly. “I thought it a bit peculiar, you know, a winter one, when it was so warm over there—”

  “Did you mention it to him?”

  “Yeah, I did, but he just ignored me. He’s a cold shit, he can cut you dead—” He looked at them shrewdly. “He’s in trouble, isn’t he? It couldn’t happen to a nicer sonofabitch. You want me to say something against him?” He was once more ready to state the obvious, even if he had to concoct it.

  “We may,” said Malone. “We’ll let you know. You’re not leaving the country or anything, are you?” He gestured at the briefcases and the cartons.

  “Are you kidding? And miss the chance to shaft Michael up the arse? Look, here’s my home number, it’s unlisted—” He scribbled a number on a slip of paper, shoved it at Malone. He was almost gleeful: he was like a drowning man who, at the moment he felt the rock beneath his feet, had seen a fellow swimmer taken by a shark. I complained because I had no shoes . . . He had seen that once on someone’s desk. “Call me any time, any time at all. Oh shit, you don’t know how good this makes me feel!”

  I’d better get out of here, Malone thought, befo
re I knock him down. On the way out he stopped by the secretary’s desk. “Thanks, Rose. I’m sorry we were so aggressive. Sergeant Clements will send you some flowers.”

  “Flowers and dinner,” said Clements, all at once chivalrous, a state of mind that made him giddy. “How about that?”

  “May I bring my husband?” said Rose, but gave them both a charming smile and put away her sword. “By the way, my name isn’t Wong. It’s Robinson.”

  Out in the car-park Malone leaned on the roof of the Holden and looked across it at Clements. “Thanks, Russ. We agree who killed Emma?”

  Clements nodded. “Unless he did it in cahoots with Justine. But I don’t think so. I dunno what his motive was, but he did it, all right. If that print on the bedside table and on the silencer are his . . .”

  They got into the car. Clements put the key in the ignition, but before he turned it he looked at Malone again. “You still owe me an explanation.”

  “I know it, Russ.” He could feel Leeds’s secret, like a fishhook in his mouth. “But I can’t tell you.”

  “It’s something to do with the Commissioner, isn’t it?”

  Malone didn’t reply.

  Clements sighed. “Okay, you don’t need to tell me. I read the diaries, too. Whose bastard child . . . He thinks Justine is his daughter, right?”

  Malone felt the hook slip free. “Let’s go and pick up Mr. Broad.”

  III

  Walter Springfellow was not exactly jubilant when he came out of the courtroom, but old chemistry was bubbling in him. He had been witness for three days now to the law at work and, though matters were not going as he wanted them to, the professional side of his mind had responded to the atmosphere. He had put himself in the place of Gilligan J. and, as the evidence was presented and the questioning and cross-examination had sliced across the court, he had realized how much he had missed his original profession. The personal side of him had, however, seen what the process was doing to his daughter. Albemarle, QC, was fighting a losing battle for her, and Walter, all the old experience coming back to him, sensed that Albemarle knew it.

  He had not yet spoken to Justine. Venetia had decided that she would wait till the weekend before introducing Walter to her; he had agreed with the sense of her suggestion. Thirty seconds, a minute at the most, was not enough for the meeting of a father and daughter who had never met before; he could not come back from the dead and greet her casually . . . “I’m your father, Justine. Glad we finally met. Now go back to prison and we’ll have another thirty-second chat tomorrow.” All that, with the media reporters, rising to leave the press box and stopping, along with everyone else in court, to witness the reunion.

  He was impatient for the weekend and the meeting at Mulawa; yet he was afraid of it. He could never tell Justine how and why he had deserted her and her mother; perhaps Venetia could do that when he was dead and buried. Once he had been as confident as any man in dealing with a situation; perhaps too confident, even arrogant. In a couple of days he would be hauled into the court of her affections and he was as depressed and afraid as she had been in the court he had just left.

  He walked down Bourke Street, towards Liverpool Street, where Edwin, as on the two previous days, was to pick him up. He felt he had gone unnoticed in the court, had been accepted as no more than a daily spectator. He had not yet decided whether or when he would turn himself in to either the police or ASIO. He would make that decision after he had had his reunion with Justine and after the verdict on her had been brought down. If she was convicted, he would go back to Germany, disappear again. Two convicted murderers in the one family, the Springfellow family, would be too much for the name to bear.

  “Judge Springfeller?”

  Age, sickness and worry had dulled his wits: he responded automatically. “Yes?”

  He looked at the beefy man in the straw hat standing beside him as they waited for the traffic lights. He remembered the man had been sitting behind him for the past three days in court, but they hadn’t exchanged so much as a nod, even though they had become regulars. He had no idea who the man was.

  “I been looking at you for three days now,” said Chilla Dural. “I knew I’d seen you before, but I couldn’t place you. No, don’t cross. We’re going up this way.”

  He nodded up the steep hill of Liverpool Street. Edwin, Walter knew, would be waiting two blocks down the other way. “I’m afraid you have the wrong man—”

  “Don’t argue, Judge.” Dural had his hand in his jacket pocket. “I got a gun in here. Now let’s go nice and quiet up this way. You don’t recognize me, do you? I’m Chilla Dural. You gimme life, your last time on the Bench before you went to join them spooks, ASIO, whatever it is.”

  Throughout his adult life Walter had become accustomed to the bizarre. The years in the courts, as barrister and then as judge, the year as ASIO chief, the long years since his disappearance, had taught him that beneath the surface of the mundane the grotesque was always ready to erupt. He stood now in a street busy with motor traffic, though there were no pedestrians but Dural and himself; life flowed by in the cars and trucks, but it was as remote as a newsreel on a screen. He was being kidnapped by a man with a gun, but the peak-hour traffic couldn’t be stopped, everyone was rushing to get home to the mundane or the bizarre, whatever their luck was.

  Halfway up the steep incline Walter paused to catch his breath. “You will have to give me a moment. I’m not well.”

  “Take your time. Once we get to the top, it’s flat all the rest of the way.”

  Dural stood looking patiently at this man whom he had once hated so fiercely. It had taken him two full days to recognize Walter Springfellow at last; memory plays games, it hinders us as we try to remove the layers of age from a once-familiar face. He had become obsessed with identifying the white-bearded man in front of him as, in less serious circumstances, we lie in bed and try to remember the name of an old actor we have just seen in a late-night movie.

  Jerry Killeen had not come with him to the trial after the first day; the little man had had to go into hospital for removal of a poisoned cyst. Dural, no lover of hospitals, had not visited the garrulous Killeen; the little man would give him all the details when he came home. Dural had gone to the court today, but left when the afternoon session began, after satisfying himself that Springfellow would be there till the court rose at four o’clock. He had gone back to the rooming-house, got the Walther and come back to wait for Springfellow in the grounds of the courthouse. He had no plan in mind. His mind, in fact, was still getting over the shock of his recognition of the ex-judge. What did you do with a man who was supposed to be dead? Heinie Odets might have advised him, but Heinie was genuinely dead.

  “What are you going to do with me?” Walter was taking deep breaths.

  “I dunno, exactly. We’ll see when we get to my place.”

  “You’re kidnapping me and taking me to your own house or flat? That’s not the way it’s usually done, is it?” He had got his breath back.

  Dural smiled. “No, I guess not. But you and me ain’t a usual pair, are we? You okay now?”

  The short halt seemed to have put them on an amiable basis; stiff perhaps, but agreeable. Walter had twice been in close danger when he had crossed into East Germany; each time he had kept his head and escaped. He would try to do the same this time, but he was weakened by resignation. It was as if the cancer had suddenly begun to race inside him.

  It took them ten minutes, at a slow pace, to walk to Dural’s rooming-house. As they entered the front door the two Vietnamese from upstairs came down the hallway. They smiled at Dural, said, “G’day, mate,” passed him, one of them munching a meat pie as they went, and were gone. They were halfway to becoming Aussies, a prospect that would poison Jerry Killeen even more.

  Dural looked at Walter. “Why didn’t you grab one of them, tell him what I’m doing?”

  “I—I really don’t know. I wasn’t sure they’d understand. I’m not used to Asians.”


  “It’s another country now, Judge. Even the gaols, they’re full of Wogs and darkies.”

  He opened his door and stood back to let the other conservative enter. They were birds of a feather, Anglo-Saxon birds: the jungle was becoming too exotic for them.

  In Dural’s room Walter looked at the impersonal bareness, except for the single photo of a young woman and two small girls. “This is your home?” The old upper-middle-class attitude still lingered; he was still continually surprised at how the other 90 per cent lived. “You live here permanently?”

  Chilla Dural missed the unintended snobbery. “It’s only temporary. I don’t think of it as home.” He took the gun out of his pocket; he still had no ammunition for it, but Springfellow wouldn’t know that. “You see, a Walther? Just like your daughter used.”

  “I don’t believe she used any gun at all. Is that why I’m here, to discuss the trial?”

  “Siddown, Judge. You want some tea or coffee?” Dural switched on an electric kettle, got some cups and saucers out of a small corner cupboard. He had put the gun down on the bench beside the electric-plate, but Walter was on the opposite side of the room and too far away to grab it. “I dunno what I’m gunna do with you, but I hadda get you here and let you know I hadn’t forgotten you. I had a sort of—” He fumbled for the word.

  “Compulsion? No milk, thanks. I like it black.”

  “Compulsion, yeah. I got some biscuits here, Iced Vo-Vo’s. I’m old-fashioned in me taste.”

  “So am I.” Keep them talking, let them ramble on; he remembered the intelligence lessons. “Mr. Dural, you may not know what you are going to do with me—neither do I. But I don’t think you’re going to make any profit out of it.”

  Dural picked up the gun again. He looked at this thin, sick-looking man and suddenly had a resurgence of the old hatred for him. He had thought he had long forgotten it, but it came surging back. He felt himself trembling and his grip tightened on the gun; there were no bullets in it, but he could use it to smash in the old man’s thin skull. This bastard had put him away for life: everything he had once had, the easy living, the working for Heinie Odets, the available women, had been taken away from him by this cold, soft-spoken bastard. His vision blurred and for a moment he was on the point of yet another murder.