Babylon South

by Jon Cleary

  “Were you going to get in touch with us?” said Malone.

  “No.” Fortague glanced at Malone, then back at Leeds. “John, I think Inspector Malone has some difficulty appreciating how restricted we are. I hope you appreciate it. Our work can’t be as open as yours.”

  Leeds said, “On this one, Guy, we’ve been as restricted as you.”

  “Is your interest in this personal or official? Forgive me for asking that . . . I mean, we’ve known all along that you were Walter Springfellow’s closest friend.”

  “It’s personal,” said Leeds and looked uncomfortable. “I take it you know he’s back in Sydney?”

  “Yes.” Fortague turned to Malone. “I haven’t been leading you up the garden path, Scobie. Up till four days ago I didn’t know he was still alive. Only the Director-General knew that.”

  “Nobody else? The PM, for instance?”

  “No, nobody, at least nobody in this country. When Harold Holt drowned, he was the last PM to know anything about Springfellow’s disappearance. It was decided there was nobody with the need to know, outside of the Director-General. No succeeding PM was ever told and nothing had ever been put on paper to the PM’s office while Harold Holt was there. I wasn’t told anything up till four days ago. He’s been working for the Brits in Germany the last twenty years. Or anyway up till they retired him four years ago.”

  “We know all that,” said Leeds. “Do you know where he is now?”

  “Yes. We’ve had him under surveillance since he got off the plane. He’s been kidnapped, we think, and he’s being held in a house in King’s Cross.”

  “Kidnapped? And you’ve done nothing about it?”

  “We’re not sure whether it’s an actual kidnapping or not. He seemed to go willingly enough with the man who’s holding him. If he is holding him . . . While he’s there, he’s out of mischief, he can’t get away from us. We thought we’d let him sit out his daughter’s trial, that should be over early next week—”

  “It’ll be over today,” said Malone. “We’re charging someone else with that murder.”

  Fortague raised a thick eyebrow. “That was unexpected, wasn’t it?”

  “So was Walter Springfellow coming back from the dead. Now I’ve got to pick him up for the murder of that Russian, Uritzsky.”

  Fortague looked at Leeds, then both men looked at Malone. He waited, was not at all surprised when Fortague said, “We don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “No, I had the feeling you wouldn’t. Who’s the man holding him? One of your ex-agents? Another Russian?”

  “None of those. His name is Charles Dural, he’s known as Chilla. We only got his name last night from one of his fellow-roomers, a Vietnamese. We’re checking on him now.”

  Malone was surprised this time; the unexpected was going off like firecrackers. “Chilla Dural! Christ, he’s probably already done him in! He’s an ex-con, Springfellow sent him up for life!”

  At last the unexpected got some reaction from Fortague: he sat up straight, as did Leeds. “We’d better get him out of there at once! We’d even thought that Dural might be his old court tipstaff—”

  Malone would have laughed at that, but he had no laughter left in him; but he would remember to tell it to Dural and then he might laugh. He stood up, not waiting for any order from his Commissioner.

  “How do you want this done, sir? Do you want the works, the Tac Response team and all the rest of it? Or do we do it on the quiet?”

  “On the quiet,” said Leeds, getting to his feet, almost painfully, it seemed. “You and I. And Mr. Fortague’s men as back-up, if we need them.”

  II

  “They say that the end of man is knowledge,” said Walter Springfellow, “but we’ll never really know, will we?”

  It is possible to have a philosophical discussion with an uneducated, not-too-bright man. Long hours together and heightened circumstances meld minds if they are sympathetic to each other. Walter and Dural had been together for almost eighteen hours and the circumstances, though quiet, were certainly heightened.

  When it had come time for them to sleep last night, Dural had still not made up his mind what he was going to do with Walter. The news that Walter was dying had unsettled him; he was accustomed to death, but he had never had to deal with it directly, except in murder. Dying from an illness was a different death. They had discussed that last night and it had left him depressed, abruptly aware of his own mortality.

  He had given Walter his bed—“You’re the sick one, mate,”—and had, apologetically, tied him to it with the cord of his dressing-gown. He had recognized that Walter had no strength to break the cord and he had not been disturbed by any fears that the older man might try to escape. He himself had gone to sleep in the room’s one armchair and had slept fitfully, his mind more uncomfortable than his body. He had woken early, gone along to the bathroom at the end of the hallway while Walter still slept, showered and come back and dressed. He had just finished putting on a clean shirt when Walter woke. It was then that Walter, having dreamed of his own death, had made his remark.

  “I wouldn’t know, Wal.” He untied the cord. Walter sat up and began to massage his wrists. “The day they bury me, that’ll be it. I don’t believe in the hereafter. I just hope I die quick, I don’t want time to regret nothing.”

  “I think we all regret something, Chilla. What’s for breakfast?”

  “Cornflakes and some scrambled eggs. I wasn’t expecting you to stay all night.”

  Walter smiled. “I didn’t invite myself. You asked me to stay.”

  Dural smiled, began setting up the small table for breakfast. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “What are you going to do with me? Have you decided?”

  “I still dunno what you been doing, where you been all these years. I don’t even know why you pissed off. You gunna tell me any of that?”

  “I can’t, Chilla. There are too many other people involved.”

  “Your missus?”

  “Yes, her. And others.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “Only in an indirect way.”

  For almost twenty years he had talked with men he had controlled, had discussed secrets of state, the proximity of danger, had brought them back in from the cold; yet his natural arrogance, his inborn sense of superiority, had always prevented him from any relaxed intimacy with them. Yet now, though he could not release his secrets, he was talking to this rough, crude ex-murderer as to an old friend. The realization of it amazed him, but also warmed him. He was discovering his own humanity, that specific gravity that binds us all together, but which some owners of it sometimes fail to recognize.

  Over the scrambled eggs, perfectly cooked, Dural said, “I think “I’ll let you go. You can’t help me go back to Parramatta, not unless I dob you in for a lotta publicity and I don’t wanna do that.”

  Walter was grateful for the other’s consideration. “You have that gun. What if I made an anonymous phone call to the police? If you’re on licence, having a gun is an offence.”

  “I still got my bleeding-heart to worry about. I told you, he’d find some excuse for me. No, you go back to your missus and daughter and I’ll think of something else.”

  “I wish I could help you, Chilla, I really do.”

  “I wish I could help you. I mean, about the cancer.” He picked up the Walther. He still hadn’t told his captive that it wasn’t loaded, but now he felt it was time. The kidnapping, if that was what you could call it, was over. “There’s no bullets in this, y’know. I never had any intention of shooting you.”

  Walter was not surprised by the information; it no longer mattered. What did surprise him was that he was concerned about Chilla Dural’s future as much as he was about his own. Perhaps more so: he knew that he himself had very little future.

  “I once had to make up my mind whether to take a Walther or another pistol, a Colt .45. I expected problems with someone . . . I often wonder what would have happened if I’d
chosen the Walther. It does less damage.”

  Then there was a knock at the door.

  III

  “What do we do if Dural has a gun?” said the younger of the two ASIO men who had been watching the rooming-house. “Neither of us is carrying one.”

  Malone looked at Fortague, who said, “It’s not standard practice with us. We don’t have a licence to kill.”

  “Do you have yours, sir?” Malone said to Leeds.

  The Commissioner shook his head, “I never carry one.”

  Malone swore. “So I’m the only one? I really am the bunny in all this, aren’t I?”

  Leeds flushed, but said nothing. Fortague looked at this clash between the Commissioner and his junior officer, but he, too, said nothing. He, too, was a bunny in a way, placed there by his senior officer, the Director-General, who had told him nothing up until he had needed help.

  “I think we should get the Tactical Response fellers,” said Malone.

  “No,” said Leeds. “Give me your gun and I’ll go in myself.”

  Broughton Street was a one-way street and Malone and Leeds had had to come the long way round, coming up from the bottom end. Fortague had followed in his own car, driving himself; even at Kirribilli, it seemed, the need to know was being kept to the minimum. Both cars had been parked in a No Parking zone, the only clear space left in the narrow street, and the three men had got out and waited to be joined by the two observers.

  Malone made no attempt to offer his gun. “If they’re in Dural’s own room, he won’t be able to see us—it’s a back room. We’ll have to approach him down a hallway, but first we’ve got to get in the front door.”

  “I’ll go in and see if Dural will talk with us. Give me your gun.”

  “No,” said Malone. “I’ll go with you.”

  Fortague broke away from them. “Paxter, where are you going?”

  The younger ASIO man had suddenly spun away and dashed across the street. Two Vietnamese had come out of the front door, were about to pull it to behind them when he reached them and put his foot in the doorway. Malone, reacting more quickly than the others, was only a, few yards behind him. He pulled up sharply, almost knocking down the small thin Asians.

  “It’s all right, gentlemen. We’re just going in to see our friend Mr. Dural.”

  The two Vietnamese looked at each other, across the street at Leeds, Fortague and the other ASIO man, then back at Malone and Paxter. They knew the signs; they had come out of the streets of Saigon, not from some up-country village. These five men, all bigger than themselves, were either the law or criminals outside it: in either event, it was none of their business. It was a typical Australian, or anyway King’s Cross, reaction.

  They both smiled, pushed the door further ajar and smiled. “You’re very welcome. G’day, mate.”

  And off they went, not looking back, which their first immigration officer, in welcoming them to their new life, had told them never to do.

  Leeds, Fortague and the other ASIO man had now crossed the street. Malone took out his gun. “The Commissioner and I will go in. If he starts shooting, find a phone and call Police Centre. They’ll have the Tac Response men here within five minutes.”

  “Can he get out a back way?” said Fortague, who looked as if he would rather have stayed at Kirribilli. Shoot-outs were not part of spy programmes, it wasn’t the way the game was played.

  “I don’t know.” Malone looked at Leeds. “Ready, sir?”

  Leeds nodded at the Smith & Wesson in Malone’s hand. “Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to. We want the quiet approach.”

  “It may be a bit late for that,” said Malone and led the way down the narrow hallway. There was a lingering smell of cooking; upstairs a radio was playing an old Springsteen number. Malone reached Dural’s door, paused, then knocked.

  The door was opened almost immediately. Dural stood there, the Walther in his hand, half-raised as if ready to fire it. Malone brought up his own gun, his finger tightening on the trigger. Then behind Dural there was a feeble shout: “No! Don’t shoot!”

  Malone would never know what stopped the pressure on his finger, what quirk of fate held him from putting a bullet right through Dural. His hand stiffened till it hurt; his vision blurred for a split second. Then behind him Leeds said, “Put down your gun, Dural.”

  He reached out past Malone, and Chilla Dural, looking a little bemused, gave him the Walther without protest. Malone lowered his own gun and let out a gasp of air.

  “Christ, Chilla, you were lucky then!”

  “Mine’s not loaded, Mr. Malone. I was never gunna do anyone with it. Ask the Judge.”

  He stepped aside, like someone inviting visitors into his room for a cuppa. Malone nodded for Leeds to go in first, then he stood in the doorway, blocking Fortague and the two ASIO men as they came hurrying down the hallway. He jerked his head at Dural.

  “Out here, Chilla.”

  Dural looked at him in puzzlement, then he stepped out into the hallway and Malone closed the door. “They’re old friends,” he said. “Give them a minute or two on their own.”

  Fortague hesitated, then he nodded to his two men. “Let’s wait outside. You won’t take him away, Scobie, before we can talk to him?”

  “He’s your pigeon as much as ours,” said Malone, though he only half-believed that. Murder, even of a Russian blackmailing defector, was still a police matter. “But it’s up to what the Commissioner says.”

  Inside the room John Leeds and Walter Springfellow stood facing each other like duellists, not friends but strangers. There was twenty-two years’ silence between them and neither was sure how to break it. Walter had long forgotten his anger and disappointment; but Leeds still had his guilt, which, with an honest man, is never forgettable. At last Leeds, playing policeman, said, “Was he going to kill you?”

  “Good God, no!” The question somehow seemed melodramatic; his relations with Dural had become almost domestic. “The man’s harmless—”

  “Walter, he’s a two-time murderer—”

  “John, that was years ago—he’s changed!” The use of their given names broke the ice. “All he wants . . . Never mind, let him tell you himself. What are you going to do with me, that’s what concerns us, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not the only one. Some ASIO men are outside. And one of my inspectors from Homicide.”

  “There’s no statute of limitations on murder, is there? You know what happened?” “Not all of it, but most of it. Venetia called me in last night, when you didn’t go home.” “Have you been seeing her over the years, while I’ve been gone? I couldn’t bring myself to ask her.”

  “No, I’m married, Walter, with three children—I’m happily married.” He was silent for a moment, then he said quietly, “I’m sorry, Walter. I’ve never forgiven myself for what happened.”

  “If it hadn’t been for you, I’d never have been in this situation.” He couldn’t help the momentary bitterness, a residue was still there; but there was no rage, he hadn’t the will for that. He picked up his jacket from the bed and began to put it on. “I came home because of my daughter—did Venetia tell you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “She is my daughter, you know that?”

  “Yes,” said Leeds and, perversely, felt relieved of a burden. Men are fortunate having no womb; all they expend is their seed and they never miss that. “Yes, she is.”

  Walter was putting on his tie, one that looked like a club tie; but what club, Leeds wondered, could he have belonged to in the intervening years? But he didn’t ask: he knew that he and Walter would never again be friends, would never again be a club of two as they had once been.

  “So what will happen to me?” said Walter, dressed now, a pillar of conservative respectability, just as he had been when he had left his Mosman home twenty-two years before.

  Leeds hesitated, then, out of guilt, said, “I think we’ll let ASIO decide that.”

  It was the only recompense he could
make.

  IV

  Malone said, “If you really want to go back to Parramatta, Chilla, I think we can arrange it.”

  “You dunno my do-gooder,” said Dural morosely.

  “We can over-ride him. You had the gun, you threatened me with it—”

  “I never done that!”

  “Chilla, who’s making up this case? I’ll write you out a verbal and you’ll sign it, okay? You threatened me with the gun—”

  “What about it not being loaded?”

  “Do you want to go back to Parramatta or not?”

  “Christ, do I! Yeah, of course. Okay, you make up the verbal for me and I’ll sign it. I just hope the screws won’t have it in for me when I get back, but. Threatening a cop.”

  “They know you, don’t they? You’ll be all right. Leave it to me, Chilla. You’re on your way home. One thing, though—you keep your mouth shut for ever about Judge Springfellow. Understand?”

  “I was never a grass. I got me principles.”

  “I hope so, Chilla. This is big stuff, don’t ever try to sell it to the media. He’s dying—”

  “I know that. I dunno what he done, but it’s none of my business. Live and let live. Or live and let die, I guess it is. There was a fillum called that, wasn’t there?”

  “Yeah. Be a hero—live and let die.”

  “You’ll never have to worry about me, Mr. Malone. I liked him, I really felt sorry for him. I thought I’d hate his guts, but I didn’t. I guess I’m getting old and—mellowed, is that the word?”

  “That’s it, Chilla. Old and mellowed, and your trap shut.”

  He pulled the Commodore in in front of the Police Centre. He had seen Russ Clements come out of the main door and down the steps and he wanted to catch him before he went back to Homicide. He jumped out of the car and Dural followed him, like a well-trained villain.

  “Russ!”

  Clements turned, then came across to Malone and Dural. He nodded at the ex-con, then looked enquiringly at Malone. “What happened?”

  “We’re charging Chilla with having an unlicensed gun and threatening me with it.” Clements looked threateningly at Dural, and Malone grinned. “Relax. It’s between me and Chilla. No harm’s been done.”