The Dying Diplomats Club

by Matthew Benns

  ‘I am afraid so,’ said Nick sadly. ‘As soon as Robert read the note, Charlie and Alex believed the other had instigated the blackmail. They took matters into their own hands.’

  ‘They killed each other!’ said La Contessa.

  ‘Preposterous,’ said Sir Aiden. ‘One was already dead before the other died. Are you now resorting to the zombie apocalypse to substantiate your half-baked theories?’

  ‘No, he is right,’ said Charlotte, nodding. ‘It is possible.’

  ‘Alex cannot have slipped on the water in the bathroom and bumped his neck because the contusion was on the left – the side furthest from the sink. The area was too small to turn in,’ said Nick. ‘As Dr Ngo indicated, he was hit by a blunt instrument causing commotio cordis, agitation of the heart.’

  ‘But we never found a blunt instrument,’ said La Contessa. ‘Or a sharp one.’

  ‘We wasted our time looking for it.’ Nick nodded. ‘The wound on his cheek made us think he had been hit with the haft of the knife that had cut him. Remember we found him in a puddle of water, which is what prompted us to initially think that he had slipped? It was actually the ice horn snapped from the unicorn on the ice carving in the hallway. I only realised when I automatically stopped calling it a winged unicorn and began referring to it as a pegasus – also a flying horse but without a horn. We couldn’t find the murder weapon because it had melted.’

  ‘So Charlie followed Alex into the bathroom, snapping off the carving’s horn on the way there, and surprised him. They fought, Alex receiving a cut on the cheek from the pointed end of the icicle before he was struck with the heavier end and killed with a blow to the neck?’ said La Contessa. ‘But who killed Charlie?’

  ‘Alex did,’ said Nick. ‘Before he went to the bathroom he took the colloidal silver from Taylor’s bag – he was sitting next to her, remember – and spiked Charlie’s red wine as he went around the table pouring the white wine for everyone else.’

  ‘E vero!’ stated La Contessa with complete conviction. ‘I saw Charlie take a giant slug, finishing off the wine that was already affecting him before he headed outside. Alex killed him even though he was already himself a dead man walking.’

  ‘Of course, as we’ve established, Charlie’s body was blue,’ explained Nick. ‘The clue to the poison. La Contessa kept saying Taylor looked chilly because her skin has the bluish tinge that comes from taking silver regularly. That’s why Charlie ended up looking like a Smurf – a massive dose of poisonous silver.’

  ‘I can’t believe it. My two best men,’ said Monaro sadly. ‘So which one of them was the blackmailer?’

  ‘Neither,’ said Nick. ‘They both remained true to you right up to the end. So loyal in fact that each was prepared to kill his closest friend to protect you. They thought the worst of each other and they were wrong. The blackmailer, the person who started all this, is still sitting right here at this table.’

  Silence dropped like a shroud. Eyes darted suspiciously from one to the other, no one meeting anyone’s gaze directly.

  ‘Tell them why you did it, Patricia,’ said Nick, to an audible gasp around the table. ‘Tell them why you blackmailed your husband.’

  Patricia stifled a sob and continued to look down at her hands.

  ‘Patricia? Don’t be ridiculous,’ flared Monaro angrily. ‘My wife! This is the best you can come up with, you half-witted flat foot? I can’t believe I trusted in you to resolve this.’

  The Prime Minister started to get to his feet, but a heavy hand landed on his shoulder and Detective Inspector Cleaver said, not unkindly, ‘Sit down, please, Prime Minister.’

  Monaro lowered himself resentfully back into his chair, settling on the edge, ready to rise again at any moment. Every pair of eyes was on his wife at the far end of the table. She looked up and her red-rimmed eyes met his. They were full of defiance.

  ‘Nick is right, I sent the letter,’ she said. ‘I lost faith in you. I was jealous of your affair with Karen. I thought you had lost your moral compass. I knew you weren’t going out to the garage to fiddle with that damn silly car. I followed you because I thought you were meeting her. When I found what you were doing with the gold, sawing up that cage, I thought you were stealing it to set up some sort of escape fund to be with her.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Monaro, looking at his wife with desperate eyes. ‘Patricia, how could you doubt me? I was doing it to get the gold back to the people it belonged to. I was using my position, my power and privilege to put right an old wrong. I was sending the money to orphanages, for goodness’ sake. To children!’

  ‘I know. I mean, I know that now,’ said his wife sadly. ‘But I doubted you. I thought the guilt of the gold was dragging you down. When I found out about your affair with Karen, my whole world unravelled. I questioned every single thing that I thought we believed in and had built our life upon.’

  ‘But you cheated on me, years ago, with Alex,’ said Monaro. ‘And I forgave you and we moved on. I never doubted in your core that you loved me, our family and our shared goals.’

  ‘But that was a long time ago, Robert, before we were married,’ said Patricia. ‘A youthful fling – of course I still loved him but I loved you more. Much more. I believed in our shared vision for our family, your career, our beliefs, our country.’

  She faltered and stared hard at her husband at the other end of the table. ‘I never meant for this to happen,’ she said. ‘For Alex to . . . to die. Or Charlie. I never thought for a minute it would turn out this way. I just wanted to shock you back onto the right path and out of her arms.’ She gave a bitter, humourless laugh. ‘The irony is that if I had done nothing, Karen was ending the affair anyway, the gold would have continued to go to the orphans who need it and Alex and Charlie would still be alive.’

  ‘Possibly, but Trevor Saunders already had word of the gold, although I am not sure how,’ said Nick, staring hard at Sir Aiden, who shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘So I think the well-intended plan to get the gold back to Iraq was about to come to an end.’

  ‘That being the case,’ said Cleaver, ‘there are really no murder charges to bring. Alexander Brown and Charlie Johnson killed each other. Trevor Saunders effectively killed himself: death by bovine misadventure.’

  ‘Unfortunately there is a charge of attempted murder,’ said Nick. ‘There were shots fired during the fireworks. I thought they were aimed at La Contessa and me, but they were actually an attempt to silence the French Ambassador to stop him telling his part of the discovery of the gold.’

  ‘Fortunately I am not a very good shot,’ said Patricia. ‘I was desperate. I grabbed the gun Robert had left on the table and tried to shoot but it was hopeless. Thank goodness.’

  ‘You would be completely within your rights to report the shootings, which would doubtless lead to charges of attempted murder,’ Nick said to Armand, who gave a Gallic shrug.

  ‘Of course not.’ He smiled, and his wife gave his hand a loving squeeze. ‘This kind of thing is perfectly normal in France. We fail to kill each other all the time.’

  ‘Which leaves you, Prime Minister,’ said Nick. ‘Would you care to report the blackmail attempt to the police and have charges brought against your wife?’

  Monaro looked down the cluttered table with its empty glasses, stained napkins and wax-covered candlesticks and assessed his wife. Patricia stared back at him; emotions had stripped her face raw and she showed him the face of the girl he had fallen in love with years before.

  ‘I don’t think so, Nick,’ he said. ‘As you said, bad things happened because we thought the absolute worst of one another. Perhaps I will let the proper authorities deal with the rest of the gold in the garage. It has caused enough trouble.’

  Detective Inspector Cleaver stuck his pistol back into his cummerbund. ‘I’m afraid that might not be possible in the light of all that has happened. I will have to report this to my superiors and it may be that the Director of Public Prosecutions will see fit to
bring charges. Be that as it may, the rest of you are all free to go,’ he said. ‘I will call in the Prime Minister’s security team and brief them. It may take some time. I imagine, Prime Minister, your press secretary is going to have to do some pretty nifty footwork to explain how a party at Kirribilli House ended up with three people dead.’

  ‘A fall in the bathroom is one thing but a dead Smurf and expiration by oryx may be particularly tricky to explain,’ said La Contessa, getting up and walking over to Nick to give him a hug. ‘You were wonderful, darling.’

  ‘Can someone untie my hands now?’ said Hayden, and Charlotte hurried around the table, pushing aside her lover, Brett, to use a knife to cut the bonds.

  ‘Finally,’ Hayden growled ungratefully.

  ‘If tonight has taught you anything, it is that you have a lot of growing up to do,’ said Charlotte. ‘And that improving your conduct may help people think better of you.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ the casino mogul said, standing up, his old bullying arrogance visibly returning. His young wife had just grabbed her mobile phone from the envelopes Cleaver was distributing and was eyeing it in the same way a parched survivor looks at a glass of water after six days in the desert. ‘Come on, Taylor, you owe me for that bloody awful kambo experience. Besides, I need to talk to my lawyers pronto. They may be letting us go now but I know these matters have a way of following me around. I won’t hear the last of it once the regulators get the hint of a chance to bring money-laundering charges against me.’

  ‘Some people never learn,’ observed La Contessa, with her arms still tightly wrapped around Nick’s waist. Baxter rose from the rug and came over to push his way to sit between them, his bottom settling on Nick’s shoe. Sir Aiden stood up stiffly, gave a nod and strode out across the verandah, over the lawn past the startled Arabian oryx to his solitary life in Admiralty House. Karen watched him go, turned sadly to give one last look at Monaro, who was hugging his wife at the other end of the table, and walked past Nick and La Contessa and out through the main entrance hall. The French Ambassador and his wife, still hand-in-hand, followed.

  ‘Tel est l’amour,’ he said.

  ‘Such is love,’ said Nick. ‘He’s right.’

  ‘Do you think we can go home now, darling?’ asked La Contessa. ‘Come on, Baxter.’

  The three of them walked through the tiled entrance hall, past the bathroom door that hid the body of Alexander Brown, and out onto the gravel driveway of Kirribilli House. The blue light of the predawn was just creeping over the horizon to welcome the first day of the New Year.

  ‘Do you think it’s too early for a martini?’ asked Nick as they walked arm-in-arm down the drive, Baxter sniffing the grass border ahead of them.

  ‘Definitely,’ said La Contessa. ‘But it’s not too late.’

  EPILOGUE

  ‘Exhale cat, inhale cow. Exhale cat, inhale cow.’

  Nick emerged into the garden to be greeted by the sight of La Contessa in her fluorescent pink leotard stretching out on her yoga mat. Beside her, Baxter performed a perfect downward dog before retreating to his mink pod for a nap in the sun.

  ‘That is a most welcome sight to welcome in the New Year,’ said Nick, rubbing the stubble on his chin and settling onto the garden sofa. ‘Absolutely marvellous, Mariabella.’

  ‘Happy New Year darling,’ panted La Contessa from a new contortion on the pale-blue yoga mat. ‘How are you feeling after the excitement of last night?’

  Nick rubbed his scalp and winced. ‘My head is still ringing from the knockout I received outside the bathroom. A blow I now realise must have been delivered by Charlie Johnson as he fled after murdering Alex Brown. Just a couple of minutes earlier and I could have stopped that.’

  ‘Now, darling, there is no point going down that path,’ said La Contessa. ‘How is the cut from the bullet?’

  Nick touched the nick on his cheek gingerly in response and then looked at his knuckles in surprise, registering the bruising from the haymaker he had delivered to Hayden. ‘It was a party to remember,’ he said. ‘Baxter doesn’t look too worse for wear considering he has a cut from a bullet across his head that will leave a scar for life. And how is your ankle?’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said La Contessa, looking down in surprise at the ankle she’d rolled giving chase to Brett at the start of the evening. ‘Right as rain.’

  ‘My goodness you have the strength of —’ Nick stopped himself just in time and mentally considered his options for finishing the sentence: an ox, bad, obviously; ten men, possibly demeaning to women; a Greek god, very bad – the Sicilians hate the Greeks. ‘A lioness,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Thank you,’ said La Contessa delightedly. ‘However you do look like a man who has gone ten rounds with Muhammad Ali in his prime. Coffee, darling?’

  ‘Terrific,’ said Nick gratefully.

  ‘Lovely, would you mind making me one too?’ said La Contessa. ‘And do hurry back – the news is back on in a few minutes and the party at Kirribilli House has been running at the top of the bulletin all morning.’

  Nick sighed and got up and headed into the kitchen. He put the moka pot on the stove and grabbed the bag of coffee beans to upend into the grinder. The bag was almost empty.

  ‘We need to call Tony . . .’ he began before realising his error.

  ‘Uncle Tony?’ called back La Contessa.

  ‘No . . .’ Nick knew he was doomed.

  ‘Cousin Tony?’

  ‘No.’ There was no way . . .

  ‘Big Tony?’

  ‘No.’ . . . he would be able . . .

  ‘Little Tony?’

  ‘No.’ . . . to get enough words . . .

  ‘Fat Tony?’

  ‘No.’ . . . out to say which Tony . . .

  ‘Aunt Mary’s Tony?’

  ‘No.’ . . . they needed to call.

  ‘Tony Tony?’

  ‘Yes.’ He sighed gratefully.

  ‘Are we out of coffee beans?’ said La Contessa. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  Nick made the coffee, reflecting that at least having a wife with an Italian family meant he never forgot anyone’s name, and carried the two cups back into the garden. The morning sun was broken by the lemon and frangipani trees that provided shade to the outdoor sofa. La Contessa was sitting down, a light sheen of perspiration from her exercise providing lustre to her olive complexion. She had turned on the outdoor flatscreen television that was mounted to the wall. The Sky News anchor was an enthusiastic young man who clearly could not hide his delight that he had drawn the short straw for the graveyard New Year’s Day shift only to find he was now covering the biggest story of his career. ‘If you are just joining us, a New Year’s Eve party at Prime Minister Robert Monaro’s official Sydney home, Kirribilli House, has resulted in the deaths of three people. Police are investigating the fates of Australian diplomats Alexander Brown and Charles Johnson and security officer Trevor Saunders. It is understood their deaths are being treated as suspicious. The Prime Minister is due to make a statement shortly. Our cameras are on standby and we will cross live as soon as the Prime Minister appears but before that we have opposition leader Aldo Amicone joining us live from Canberra.’

  ‘Typical – he has been rubbing his hands gleefully on every news program and website all morning,’ said La Contessa.

  ‘How long have you been up?’ asked Nick glancing at his watch, which said 12.30pm, impressed once again by his indefatigable wife’s stamina. ‘We didn’t get home until gone five.’

  ‘Oh, a few hours, darling,’ said La Contessa. ‘Start the New Year as you mean to continue. Listen to old Aldo. He is loving poor Robert’s problems. It’s not like he hasn’t had a few accidents at a party.’

  ‘Hmm, three deaths is quite an accident —’ began Nick before La Contessa shushed him into silence.

  ‘The Prime Minister has a lot to explain,’ the Labor leader told the Sky News interviewer. ‘These are both great men and two of our top diplomats. Alexander Brown was a k
ey player in trade negotiations post-Brexit with the United Kingdom, and Charlie Johnson was integral to resolving our ongoing issues with China. For them both to die at a New Year’s Eve party in a government-owned building, the Prime Minister’s residence Kirribilli House no less, is unforgivable. Quite clearly Robert Monaro needs to resign. He needs to step down, right now, today, while the investigation continues and then he needs to resign. We want that man out of office —’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Amicone, I will have to cut you off there. We can cross live now to our reporter Alison Cooper at Kirribilli House. Alison, what is happening there now?’

  As an African-Australian woman in a cerise silk shirt appeared on the screen, La Contessa picked up her phone and started tapping away. ‘They are all miles behind The Daily Telegraph with the news,’ she said. ‘It’s as if the Tele’s crime reporter, Mark Morri, has a direct line to the investigators.’

  ‘Mark Morri,’ said Nick, recognising the name. ‘I think Cleaver and I had a drink with him the other week.’

  ‘Oh, is that the night you lost your keys and wallet and I had to come and collect you at 4am from Kings Cross?’ asked La Contessa, a dark cloud crossing her brow.

  ‘Look, I think Rob is coming out,’ said Nick, anxious to distract his wife from any unpleasant memories. On the screen the cameras had cut to the lawn of Kirribilli House, where the media had been allowed to set up for a media conference. The cameras had positioned themselves on the western side of the grass with Kirribilli House as the backdrop. To the right, police crime scene tape could be seen around the fig tree where Charlie Johnson’s poisoned body had been found. There was activity on the verandah and then Robert and Patricia Monaro emerged through the double doors. There was a staccato burst of camera shutters and flashes as they walked across the wooden deck and stepped down onto the grass. They had changed outfits from the night before – the Prime Minister into a charcoal grey suit with navy tie, and Patricia into a navy and white A-Line dress. Robert had shaved but there were heavy bags under his eyes and he looked tense. Patricia had freshly applied make-up but she was clutching a tissue and her eyes were still red from crying. Beside them walked a uniformed police officer carrying a cap bedecked with gold braid; Nick recognised him as John Charlesworth, the New South Wales Police Commissioner, and behind him . . .