by Jon Cleary
“No, it’s nothing like that and don’t start thinking that way. It’s just that I’m on police business—secret police business. Like one of those religious retreats you go on here at school. Since I had to be away from home, Mum and I thought it would be a good idea if she and Maureen and Tom went away on a holiday. Grandpa Jan suggested Noosa, so that’s where they’re going. We moved you up here a coupla days early because we couldn’t leave you alone in the house.”
“What does Mother Brendan think? I mean, me coming in as a boarder for two days and Maureen and Tom going off on holiday in the middle of term?”
“What are you? A police prosecutor?” He had come up to see Mother Brendan, put her in the true picture and she had understood. It’s a terrible world, isn’t it? I’ll pray for you, Mr. Malone. “It’s okay. I gave her a police badge to wear on her sleeve and she’s as happy as Larry. Now get out, grab your gear and go off and enjoy yourself—it’s costing me a mint. Don’t break a leg.”
She kissed him. “I love you, Daddy, but you can be a trial. Take care.”
“You, too.” He wanted to hug her, to weep. “And stay away from boys.”
“Are you kidding?” She gave him a smile that would have broken any boy’s or man’s heart, picked up all her gear and struggled into the school. He should have helped her, but he couldn’t bear to be with her a moment longer. Love, sometimes, is the heaviest luggage of all.
He went home, picked up two suitcases and drove into town and checked into O’Brien’s suite at the Hotel Congress. He did not sign in at the reception desk.
The suite was luxurious, but it had nothing of the look of a home; if O’Brien had tried to overlay some impression of himself on the designer’s taste, it did not show. It was, Malone guessed, like living in an expensive bandbox. Worst of all, despite its look of costly elegance, it had no suggestion of permanence. It was for transients, even if the present transient had a long lease.
O’Brien hadn’t missed Malone’s scrutiny of the suite. “You don’t like it?”
“I’m suburban, I guess. I can never understand why anyone wants to live in a hotel.”
“Service, Scobie. Everything’s laid on. I lift the phone and there’s a housemaid, room service, a valet, a secretary—even a call girl, if that’s what I wanted. In London I had the lot—a butler, a cook, a maid, a chauffeur. Then all of a sudden one day I found out I wasn’t interested in possessions and I wasn’t really interested in being responsible for all those servants. I came out here and I had a couple of servants in a rented house out at Vaucluse. But Aussies aren’t interested in being house servants, not even the migrants—they think it’s beneath them. It just became a headache. I moved in here two years ago. The company pays for it and most of it comes off tax.”
“Which company? The one that’s going broke?”
O’Brien smiled. “Scobie, if you and I are going to live together, let’s call off the insults, eh? We’re not man and wife.”
“My wife and I don’t insult each other.”
“Sorry.” O’Brien sounded genuinely contrite. “I guess I think all marriages are like my own were. World Wars One and Two.”
Malone tried to be more friendly. “Would you try it a third time?”
“If she’d have me. But I don’t think it’ll ever be on. Not unless her husband conks out and I don’t think there’s any chance of that. He’s one of those dumb bastards who’ll last for ever.”
Malone wondered who the dumb bastard could be; but, whoever he was, he was unimportant. “Well, our job is to see that you and I aren’t conked out.”
O’Brien had been as adamant as Lisa that he would not go to a safe house. He had shown no fear of being assassinated; it was not bravado, he was too calm for that. His explanation had been quite simple:
“I’ve got this NCSC thing hanging over my head, Scobie. If I drop out of sight, there are going to be more and more rumours—it’s bad enough as it is. I’ve got to keep fronting up every day. I’ll co-operate with you up to a point, but I’m going to go about my regular routine. I’ll just see that I have a couple of security men close to me all the time. That’s as far as I’m prepared to go.”
“What about me?” It was a natural, selfish question. Then Malone had remembered he was still working on the murders, that he wasn’t here in the Congress just to sample the room service.
Now he said, “Righto, during the day we go through our regular routine, each of us. But at night we stick close, okay? I want a security man sitting outside the front door all night, they can work four-hour shifts, and our SWOS and Tac Response fellers are on call to be down here within five or ten minutes if anything happens. Anyone who delivers anything up here is to be vetted by your security men, even the housemaids, and if we have any meals up here in the suite, the food’s to be brought in from outside.”
“The hotel’s not going to like that.”
“Tough titty. But if it comes out of the hotel kitchens, he could get to it and poison it. So far he’s killed everyone with a rifle, but there’s no guarantee he’s sworn to that MO. Cyanide in a croissant is just as effective.”
“If it weren’t for what’s already happened, I wouldn’t believe any of this. Are you scared?” O’Brien held out a steady hand. “I am. It mightn’t show, but I’m scared shitless.”
“Me, too. And I’m more used to this sorta thing than you are. Oh, one more thing. Stay away from the windows, keep the curtains drawn, or at least drawn enough to stop anyone from seeing who’s in here.” He walked across and pulled the thick silk curtains close together, leaving just a narrow gap. “Don’t have them any wider than that. Tell the housemaids.” Then he pulled the curtains together completely. “At night they’re to be like that, nothing showing in here. The bugger could be up there in one of those neighbouring buildings.”
O’Brien said wryly, “You can look into here from my office. It’d be a joke if he somehow got in there and picked us off from behind my own desk.”
“Yeah,” said Malone. “You might die laughing, but I wouldn’t. Where are you going?”
O’Brien had stood up after taking off his shoes. “I’m going out. You can come with me, if you like. It’s a reception up at the Town Hall. The PM’s going to be there.”
“Why do you need to go?”
O’Brien was in the doorway of the main bedroom, taking off his shirt. “Appearances. I got the invitation to this two months ago, before all my troubles blew up. Nobody’s going to snub me tonight. In the old days, I gather, I’d have got a discreet message from someone telling me the invitation was a mistake. But not any more. New money runs this town, Scobie, and someone’s only guilty if he admits it. It’s the New Ethics. Wall Street started it and the rest of the world is picking it up. We’re one of the smartest at it. You look shocked.”
“I guess I’m too old-fashioned. Whatever happened to honesty being the best policy?”
“The dividends weren’t high enough.” He stripped off his trousers, headed for his bathroom; then looked back. “You coming?”
“I might as well. What do I wear?”
“Just don’t wear your police tie. That’d clear the Town Hall in a flash.”
Malone put on his best Fletcher Jones off-the-rack suit, one chosen for him by Lisa, and lined up beside O’Brien, who was wearing a little number from Savile Row and a Battistoni shirt and tie. “You’ll do,” said O’Brien. “You’re not a ball of style like the bankers and stockbrokers who’ll be there tonight, but you’re—what’s the word?”
“Honest?”
O’Brien grinned. “I think living with you is going to be worse than with my two ex-wives.”
The evening was clear and cold, winter hanging on like an unwanted relative. They went uptown to the Town Hall in a hired stretch limousine with a security man sitting beside the driver and another on the jump seat opposite O’Brien and Malone. Neither of them was as tall as Malone and both of them were overweight; the one on the jump seat was too big
for his suit and his shoulder holster showed as a lump under his armpit. But they looked alert and Malone hoped they would stay that way. He had a cop’s antipathy to the growing number of private security forces.
The Victorian pile of the Town Hall was floodlit, making everyone going up the wide front steps a splendid target for an assassin. There were plenty of voters who had no time for the Prime Minister; but there had been only two attempted political assassinations in Australia and most people had now forgotten those. There were, however, several groups of demonstrators on the footpath at the bottom of the steps, waving banners and chanting slogans and abuse at the guests as they arrived. There were conservationists, Aboriginals, retrenched social workers, anti-abortionists and two women under a banner protesting that the Second Coming of Christ had been delayed by a recently passed Act, a miracle that would have gone to the head of parliament if it had believed the accusation.
Malone and O’Brien got out of the limousine, preceded by the two security men. The crowd, not recognizing them, abused them anyway: anyone who arrived in a stretch limousine couldn’t be in favour of conservation, Aboriginals, social workers, the right to life or Jesus Christ. If they had known Malone was a cop, the volume of abuse would have increased.
The two security men were left in the lobby of the Town Hall and Malone and O’Brien passed into the huge main hall. Malone at once recognized at least a dozen faces: the cream, or the scum, depending on one’s social prejudice, of Sydney was here. The reception was a United Nations celebration and, like motherhood, it had to be supported; one could rant against the UN in private, as one could use contraception against the chances of motherhood, but one never did so in public. A man who knew the full value of a public face stopped by Malone.
“Inspector Malone—” Hans Vanderberg, the State Premier, never forgot a name or a face. “I saw who you came in with. Mr. O’Brien. Is he under arrest or something?”
“No, Mr. Premier.” You’d have known of it at once if he were under arrest. The Dutchman missed nothing that went on in his State. “I can’t tell you what’s going on, but Assistant Commissioner Falkender will tell you.”
“I am the Police Minister.” The old man ran a claw of a hand over his mottled bald head; he was an eagle too old to fly but one that could not be trapped. He glared at Malone as if the upstart inspector was trying to throw him a poisoned bait.
“I know that, sir. But I think it would be better if you got it from Mr. Falkender.”
Vanderberg glared at him a moment longer, then nodded and moved on, the old political smile back on his face like a mask re-donned. When they lowered him into the grave he would be smiling back up at the voters, the coffin lid left open on his orders, as if he believed in resurrection.
Malone glanced around him. He had been to very few official receptions, but the crowd always looked the same. There were the natives standing in groups telling each other about their health (“Never ask an Aussie how he is,” Malone had once heard an American say, “because sure as hell he’ll tell you. In great detail.”) Italians were huddled together telling Greek jokes; the Greeks were advising each other never to have a Lebanese do any work for them; the Hungarians moved amongst everyone else as if they owned the Town Hall. In one corner stood half a dozen token Asians, wondering if they would have been more welcome if they had volunteered to stay behind afterwards and clean up and take home the laundry. Malone, a cop, felt as much an outsider as any of them.
He looked up and around him at the galleries on the second level and at the ornate, three-storey-high ceiling. The Town Hall was sometimes referred to by the more modern, less-is-more architects as a huge barn; but on the two or three occasions he had been here he had fallen for it. It had a solidity about it, a reminder of other times; chicanery might go on in the city council rooms elsewhere in the building, but this auditorium had an honesty about it. It was Victorian but somehow it suggested none of the hypocrisy of that era.
The galleries were packed, lesser guests standing at the balustrades and looking down, perhaps their only opportunity ever, on the leading lights below. Malone looked at them and decided no assassin would chance a shot from amongst that crowd. Frank Blizzard, if he was the hitman, was not a public performer.
Malone looked for O’Brien, saw him standing against a side wall. Just along from him were Arnold Debbs and his wife, whom Malone recognized from her newspaper photos; it seemed to him that Debbs was studiously ignoring O’Brien because all at once he took his wife’s arm and the two of them moved away from O’Brien. The latter looked after them, then looked across and saw Malone. He smiled thinly and shrugged. Crumbs, thought Malone, could Penelope Debbs be the woman he’s in love with?
There was a stir from the lobby and Prime Minister Philip Norval and his wife entered. Lights flashed and Malone saw the famous blond head pause and turn, offering further photo opportunities. The equally famous smile almost outshone the camera flashes; Norval’s hands went out, grasping other hands, some of which had not even been lifted towards him. The PM and his wife and minders moved on into the main hall and were at once surrounded. Malone noticed that one of those who did not rush to greet the PM was The Dutchman, a sworn political enemy.
Malone looked around again for O’Brien, saw him standing in the same place against the side wall. He was staring at someone in the official group, a rapt expression on his face that made him look suddenly younger, almost vulnerable. Malone pushed his way through the throng and joined him. He spoke to O’Brien, but the latter did not appear to hear him.
Malone, curious now, looked in the direction of O’Brien’s gaze. Was he, the cynical entrepreneur, the probable crook, such an admirer of Prime Minister Norval, the country’s figurehead leader who, reputedly, was only honest and upright because he hadn’t the brains to be otherwise? Then Malone saw the beautiful dark-haired woman beside the PM turn her head and look across the crowded room at himself and O’Brien. He was no expert on love and its atmospherics; there was too much Irish in him for that. He had, however, spent all his professional life intercepting and interpreting glances and covert looks. He slowly turned his head and saw that O’Brien was in love and realized with a shock that O’Brien’s lady friend was Anita Norval, wife of the Prime Minister.
She came towards them, casually, unhurriedly, pausing to smile and speak to people on the way; Malone had seen her once or twice before at close quarters and had always been impressed by her grace and dignity. It was not a queenly approach: that would never have gone down with the natives, even those who fell on their knees when British royalty hove in sight. She did, however, suggest that she knew her husband’s office was one of the symbols of what the country stood for and she wanted to polish it rather than tarnish it. She was the most popular woman in the nation and now, it seemed, she was in love with or, at best, loved by one of the nation’s least popular scoundrels.
“Mr. O’Brien, isn’t it? I think we met once before.”
Malone could feel the warning vibrations coming out of O’Brien; but the latter somehow kept his composure. “Hullo, Mrs. Norval. Oh, this is Detective-Inspector Malone, an old friend.”
She gave Malone a smile that, unlike her husband’s or The Dutchman’s, was not looking for a vote; yet it seemed to Malone that there was a plea in it. “Are you his minder, Inspector?”
But before Malone could reply, the Prime Minister had appeared at his wife’s elbow. “We have to move up on to the stage, darling. It’s time for my speech.”
“Another one? This is the seven-hundred-and-forty-third so far this year.” Husband and wife exchanged the public smiles of long marital experience, the hypocritical doodads that couples carry with them like breath sweeteners. “Nice meeting you again, Mr. O’Brien. You too, Inspector.”
Norval gave the two men only a nod, nothing more, and steered his wife up towards the flag-bedecked stage. Malone looked at O’Brien, said quietly, aware of the lingering glances of those who had been staring at O’Brien and Anita Nor
val, “I think we’d better get out of here. You’re a bit obvious.”
O’Brien’s craggy face was suddenly shrewd again. “It shows, does it? Well, now you know.”
As soon as Norval, up on stage, began to speak in that husky, honeyed voice that had once made him the country’s favourite television star, the guests turned their backs on O’Brien. He and Malone at once moved out of the auditorium as quietly and surreptitiously as they could. The security men were waiting for them in the lobby. One of them hurried away to get the limousine and five minutes later was back with it and its driver. Only then did Malone take himself and O’Brien out and down the floodlit steps to the car.
The night was still brilliantly clear. All the stars in the universe seemed to have slid into the southern skies; there were more there than any planet deserved, more than enough for all the living and dead of all time to dream upon. The day’s wind had dropped, but it had done its job, swept away all the smog. It was a good night, Malone thought, for a sniper.
He pushed O’Brien into the limousine, jumped in after him and waited while the two security men got in. Only then did he relax back in his seat. Out on the pavement he saw the demonstration groups glaring at him and O’Brien with a mixture of expressions from hatred to indifference; but there was no murderer amongst them, their passion burst out of them in other ways. Flying abuse, eggs, tomatoes, the occasional fist: but never bullets.
They drove down towards the harbour, against the cinema and theatre traffic. The pavements were not crowded, but there were still plenty of people about. He won’t strike tonight, Malone thought, and relaxed still further, suddenly feeling tired.
“What sorta guy should we be ready for, Inspector?” said the security man on the front seat, Ralph Shad. The question was only unexpected in that neither security man had asked it before.
Malone thought a while. What sort of man was Blizzard, assuming it was the ex-police cadet who was trying to kill him and O’Brien? How did you describe a ghost you had never really known? “All I can say is he appears to be ruthless and bloody efficient. I haven’t a clue what he looks like, whether he’s a psycho—”