by Jon Cleary
“Not now. Annie tell me, nobody got money now. You got money?” She had a peasant’s directness.
“A little.” She still had the pawnbroker’s payment, but she would keep that aside for the moment. She would register for the dole when she got to the Gold Coast; she wondered if the police, or worse still, the killers of Kel, would be able to trace her through Social Security. Maybe she should change her name; but that would mean getting new papers and they always cost money. The price had gone up since she had become Kim Weetbix. She had read only this week that bloodsuckers in the United States were charging Chinese illegals 30,000 American dollars for smuggling them in. “I’ll get a job, Mrs. Hoang.”
“Be careful, Kim.” Mrs. Hoang knew what could happen to pretty girls; she had seen them leave the village and go to Saigon. “Stay on feet.”
At first Kim didn’t get the meaning of the warning; then she laughed, her first loud laugh in God knew how long. She was laughing when Annie came in the back door, pulling off her cheap raincoat that glistened with the evening drizzle. “What’s so funny?” Then abruptly she said, “Kim, come inside.”
There was a warning in her voice, not one to laugh at. Kim sobered, put down the kitchen knife she had been holding and followed Annie through into the front bedroom where Annie and her husband slept. They passed the two Hoang girls watching Neighbours on television in the small living room, learning about their new homeland from a soap opera where even tragedy was sunlit and everyone washed his or her hair every day and everyone’s teeth were perfect. In the bedroom Annie sat down on the bed, with its bright blue sateen coverlet, and looked up at Kim.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Your boyfriend is dead. Murdered.”
Kim sat down on the stool in front of the dressing-table. The room was furnished Western-style; the furniture was cheap, discount bargains. Annie had cut her roots to her homeland; she left the sentiment to her mother-in-law. The only picture on the wall above the bed was one of the Virgin Mary, an icon Kim had never understood nor been much interested in.
“What would you have done if I had told you the truth? Still invited me home like you did?”
“No.” Annie was as blunt as Mrs. Hoang. “Did you kill him?”
“No. I don’t know who did.”
“He was never any good, a bad one. I never liked him. You should not have stayed with him so long. The police are looking for you.”
“I thought they would be. Did you tell them anything about me?”
“No. Whoever killed your boyfriend, he might be looking for you, too. You have to go, Kim, you can’t stay here. I must think of my family.”
Kim all at once hated and envied her; Annie had security, hard-won and shaky though it might be. Kim had no wish for children nor even for a husband; but she had seen what support a family could give. Fragile though it might have been, she had felt a certain security even in just the two days she had been with the Hoang family. “I’ll go tonight.”
“No, no. First thing in the morning, when I’m going to work. You come on the train with me to the city, you catch a bus to somewhere. Where?”
“The Gold Coast?” All the street-kids at the Cross talked of eventually finishing up there, as if it were some sort of earthly paradise, a dream she had never believed in. There was no paradise anywhere.
“You have money?” But Annie made no move towards her handbag, which lay on the bed beside her.
“I’ll be all right.” She put her hand on the older woman’s. “I’d have liked you as a sister, Annie.”
Annie smiled, showing her new false teeth. “You’d have been too much trouble, Kim. You got no faith.”
“In what? God? I could never be religious.”
“No, in anything. Not even in yourself.”
In the morning they left the house at seven o’clock. Mrs. Hoang and Annie’s husband Willy came to the front door to say goodbye. Willy was a wiry little man with a shock of black hair that stood up as if he were in perpetual fright; like his mother, but unlike his wife, he was afraid of the rough-and-ready local elements. Like Annie, he had taken an Anglo name, wore it as camouflage.
He pressed Kim’s hand. “You take care.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Hoang, eyes alert for danger even in the empty street. “Beware men, Australian men. No trust any men.” But she patted her son’s back to show he was an exception. “I pray for you, Kim.”
Burdened by their good wishes and prayers, a weight she had never had to carry before, Kim left with Annie for the railway station. She carried a small suitcase Annie had given her, in it everything she owned.
The two women passed a queue of young people outside a McDonalds. “Are they all waiting for breakfast?”
“Breakfast?” Annie looked puzzled; then she shook her head. “No, no, they are after a job. McDonalds advertised two jobs.”
Kim looked back at the queue; a hundred or more young faces stared back at her, challenging her to join them. Then she realized they were resenting her; they thought she was one of the fortunate ones on her way to work.
“Fucking slopeheads,” she heard a youth say. “They got jobs, they work for fuck-all.”
All at once the Gold Coast began to glisten.
IV
Suddenly the weather turned cold. Television weathermen reported that it was the coldest May day for a hundred years; reported gleefully, as if it were their own sadistic revenge on all those who criticized their sometimes wrong reports.
Malone got out of bed at six, his usual time for his morning walk. He put on his track-suit and trainers, went out the front door and immediately came back and put on a heavy sweater.
“Come back to bed,” said Lisa sleepily. She loved the cocoon of their bed, especially with his warmth curled into hers.
“Go back to sleep,” he said and went out the front door again.
He was a walker, not a jogger; he had too much respect, he claimed, for his joints and cartilages to pound them day after day on the hard pavements. He walked down to Randwick racecourse, went in through one of the gates, nodding to the gatekeeper, who knew him, and began his usual circuit round the outer rail of the outer track. On the tracks the horses went past in the semi-darkness, seemingly moving in slow motion through the slight mist, the sound of their hoofs as faint as faraway drums. He passed men leaning on the rails, arguing in low voices about the merits of the horses, punters dreaming of fortunes as ghostly as the shapes in the mist. He had never had any interest in horse racing; it was his gentle boast that he hadn’t known Phar Lap was dead till he had seen the movie. He had never placed a bet on a horse in his life, never even bought a lottery or sweepstake ticket; he had no faith in fortune’s falling out of the sky. Occasionally, just occasionally, he would place a bet in his head that fortune might strike in a homicide case. But that was placing a bet on human nature, another lottery barrel altogether.
He completed his walk, twice round the course, and went home. Lisa was up, preparing breakfast, and the children were having their usual morning squabble over who should use the bathrooms first. Lisa put his bacon and eggs in front of him, poured his coffee. She claimed that the Dutch made the best coffee in the world and he agreed with her.
“What did you think about this morning?” She knew that he spent the walk sorting out yesterday’s thoughts.
“What would you say if I asked for a transfer from Homicide?”
“I’d say, praise the Lord. Then I’d have second thoughts. You wouldn’t be happy behind a desk.” She kissed the top of his head. “This business will pass. The next murder will be a nice uncomplicated one. What am I saying? That’s callous.”
“You’ll never be that.” He rubbed her bottom through her dressing-gown.
“Watch it,” said Maureen as she came in, sat down and reached for the cereal box. “Not in front of the children.”
“You sound like Mother Brendan,” said Malone.
“Oh God.” Maureen rolled her eyes.
Malone passed her
the milk jug; milk bottles or cartons never appeared on Lisa’s table. “Her latest report didn’t say much for you.”
She rolled her eyes again. “I’m not cut out for school, Dad. I should’ve been born an adult.”
“I thought you were,” said her mother. “Judging by what you used to do to my breast, you had a full set of teeth at two weeks.”
“Disgusting,” said Maureen and winked at her father. She would, he was certain, wink her way through the troubles of the life that lay ahead of her. He should have been so lucky.
He went to work, came back to his office from lunch to find a lottery prize sitting with its father in the big outer office. Roger Statham, the young man from Casement’s, rose to his feet, nothing coordinated, each limb seeming to unfold of its own accord.
“Inspector Malone, this is my father, Matthew. He—he suggested I come and see you.”
Malone looked past them at Clements, who stood in the background. “Have you talked to the gentlemen, Sergeant?”
“They got started, then I told „em to hold it. I thought you should hear it.”
Malone led the way into his office. When they were all seated, he said, “It has to do with Rob Sweden’s murder?”
Roger Statham shook his head, looking slightly puzzled at the question, as if he hadn’t expected it. His father said, “Not directly. It has to do with what young Sweden was up to. I’m in banking, I’m with—” He named one of the four top banks. There was a distinct resemblance to his son, though he was not as tall nor as thin; he also had none of the boy’s bruised innocence showing in his tanned lean face. He did, however, have that withdrawn look that some honest men get when they learn that trust is an expendable commodity. Malone wondered what sort of disillusion Matthew Statham had suffered in the free-for-all of the Eighties. “When Roger told me of his suspicions, I knew at once what might have happened.”
“What?”
He had looked at Roger, but the boy said to his father, “You explain it, Dad.”
Statham looked enquiringly at Malone, who nodded. “Well, Roger says that young Sweden told him he was on to something much bigger than the laundering of a million dollars. Much bigger.”
Malone looked at Clements, who grinned. “Better adjust your thinking, Inspector. This isn’t small change at the supermarket counter.”
“You think I’m talking big money?” said Statham.
“You haven’t mentioned any sum yet, but I can feel my wallet curling up in embarrassment,” said Malone.
Statham smiled. “You must excuse me, Inspector, if we toss large amounts of money around as if they mean nothing. They do. But I’m sure you speak of murder in the same way, it’s all in the day’s work to you. So are millions to me.”
“Were they to Rob Sweden?”
“Seems he was trying very hard to become accustomed to such sums. I mean, such sums that would belong to him. He and Roger, they dealt every day in big sums but it was other people’s money.”
“This was other people’s money, too,” said Roger Statham. “The money Rob was going to steal.”
Malone showed no reaction. “How much?”
“Twenty-five million.”
“Who from?”
“Casement Trust.”
“How?” Malone looked at Statham Senior, the expert.
“Well—” The banker abruptly had a fit of banker’s circumspection, as if he had had second thoughts about his coming here. “You must understand what I’m suggesting is only a guess. We haven’t been to Casement Trust to talk to them. I could hardly do that . . .”
Banks, Malone thought, had once been as much in each other’s vaults as it had been possible to be; they had formed one of the most exclusive clubs in the world. Then the Eighties had split the club wide open, banking had been de-regulated and banks, like virgins on Spanish fly, had gone wild in their competition with each other. Now, with many of the newer, smaller institutions already out of business and the older, larger ones still nursing deep wounds, the old incestuous clubbiness was creeping back in. A bank’s secrets were its own till it divulged them to the club.
“Tell us your guess,” said Malone patiently.
“Just from remarks young Sweden made to Roger, this could be what was planned. Maybe it’s already been done and Casement Trust are keeping quiet about it. It’s the manipulation of electronic money. Most people think of money as cash in hand—they never really think of the proportion of their money that moves through cheques. Five out of every six dollars that move in the economy on any given day goes through computers—that’s what I mean by electronic money. CHIPS, the Clearing House Interbank Payments System in New York, the biggest of the lot, pushes through over a trillion and a half dollars a day.” He smiled, just a twist of his thin lips. “How’s your wallet feeling?”
“Rolled up in a ball. Go on.”
“Young Sweden talked of twenty-five million. There’s no other way he could steal an amount like that than the way I’m describing, electronically.”
“Doesn’t the clearing house have some sort of security to prevent that?” said Clements.
“Of course. There’s an authentification barrier—each transfer carries a code. If the code is not correct, the line to the transmitting bank is severed. The only way of beating the system is for it to be an inside job. It’s happened once—or anyway, it’s only been reported once. Two insiders at a Swiss bank in Zurich managed it, working the scam for someone outside the bank.”
Malone looked at Roger Statham. “Did Rob ever tell you what he was going to do?”
The boy shook his head, a lock of his long blond hair falling down. He was dressed today like his father, in banker’s grey; both of them wore the same sober tie, an old school one. Malone wondered if Roger was wearing the bright red braces under the conservative jacket, but guessed not: he had been drummed out of the regiment, if not by Ondelli then by Matthew Statham.
“Not in so many words. But he did say that any minute of the day he could put his finger on any amount I cared to name. I knew what he meant—his computer finger. I said to him, How about twenty-five million? It was just a figure I pulled out of the air. And he looked at me, hard, and said, sort of quiet, How’d you guess? Then he said, That’s what I’m after. I didn’t think any more of it, I just thought he was bullshitting . . . Then last night, when Dad had a talk to me—” He stopped and glanced at his father.
“It was a father-to-son talk,” said Matthew Statham. “He’s too big to whip, but I blew the Christ out of him. He’s damn near broken his mother’s heart, his sister won’t even speak to him . . .”
“Is that why you’re here?” said Malone quietly, wondering what he would do if he were in the same position with one of his own children. “You want us to blow the Christ out of him, too?”
“No.” A moment ago Statham had looked on the verge of anger; now he was soberly circumspect again. “No, it’s—it’s expiation, if you like to call it that. Trying to make up for what he’s done. I understand you have made no charges against him—I appreciate that. For that I thought he owed you something. He’s lost his job, but at least he’s not going to jail.”
Malone swung his chair round, faced Clements, who had been making notes. “Sergeant Clements is our residential financial genius in Homicide,” he explained to the Stathams. “What d’you reckon?”
“I think it’s worth a try,” said Clements.
“You’ll go to Casement Trust?” Matthew Statham suddenly looked anxious. “You won’t mention where you got your suspicions from? I mean—”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Statham. We’re grateful for your efforts. We’ll keep mum.” The four men stood up, crowding the small room. “Good luck, Roger. Keep your nose clean in future. Open your jacket.”
The boy looked puzzled, but he opened his jacket; his trousers were held up by a belt.
“Stay away from the red-braces set,” said Malone, “or we’ll arrest you for consorting.”
V
&
nbsp; “Love your walls, Adam. Pity about the paintings.”
“Unfortunately, my dear, one has to sell the paintings, not the wall paint.”
“Well, must fly! Thanks for the bubbly. Domestic, wasn’t it? We’re all feeling the pinch, aren’t we?”
Then she left with a flash of long legs and a flicker of fingers. She was an artist/writer who trebled as a critic. Her own body of work was anorexic and her sales just as frail, but each week in her column she flung her weak acid at the efforts of others. Normally Adam Bruna tolerated her as one of the hazards of being a gallery owner, but this evening he felt like shouting after her never to come back. He was depressed and not just by the failure of tonight’s exhibition.
It had been a disastrous opening, not a painting sold nor even a hint of a possible sale. He walked back to his three daughters. “They crowd in here, drink one’s champagne, and then the bastards and bitches buy nothing, absolutely nothing. I’ll be out of business six months from now, if this keeps up. I hope the three of you have got some expensive retirement home fixed up for me. On the Harbour and a short walk from Double Bay.”
The three sisters had come without their husbands; the three men shared a common wisdom that kept them away from gallery openings. All the champagne crowd had gone, most of them, no doubt, commenting on the substitution of domestic bubbly for the usual French; the gallery was empty but for the caterers cleaning up and Bruna’s assistant who was helping them. The gallery, two large rooms, had that silence that a crowd leaves behind it, a vacuum after the noise had been withdrawn. The paintings on the walls, none with a red Sold spot on it, added nothing to the atmosphere: they were all, it seemed, painted in what Juliet had called “recession grey’.
“Why on earth did you choose this artist, Pa?”
“Because he has such promise. That’s why I choose all my artists, the young ones. Their promise.”
Ophelia looked around the walls. “He doesn’t promise much with these, does he? God, there isn’t an optimistic stroke in any of them. Couldn’t he have painted at least one with a touch of colour in it?”
“You could buy one,” said her father. “Or two.”