by Jon Cleary
“Sure,” Malone promised and meant it. “But I’ll want to know where we can find you, Kim. We can’t just let you disappear.”
She pondered that, disappointed, “I want to go back to Saigon.”
“Really?” He didn’t believe her. “Why?”
“It—it’ll be safer. And people don’t call you names there, like slopehead and worse.”
“From what I hear, they’ll call you other things. You’re a half-and-half, Kim. Aussies aren’t the only racists.”
“Then I’ll go to Hong Kong. The rich men like Eurasians, the half-and-halfs.” She was not a romantic, she did not dream; but men, she had learned from her mother, liked to listen to pretty women. “I’ll let you know where I am when I get to Hong Kong.”
Malone grinned, still not believing her. “You do that, Kim. In the meantime watch out for Kelsey’s killers.”
III
Next morning Kim was taken down to Central Court, where, before she could be given a public defender, she was told there was no case against her. The drunk whose money she had attempted to steal did not put in an appearance; unbeknown to Kim and the police, his wife had caught up with him, thumped him, breaking his nose, and taken him and the money back to home and the kids. The case was dropped and Kim walked free.
She came out of the old Victorian courthouse, built like the temple of justice it aspired to be, and stood under one of the plane trees that fronted the building. A few leaves hung on the branches above her like yellow handkerchiefs; fallen leaves had been swept up into heaps ready to be collected. People stood about, swept into groups like the leaves, their faces autumnal with pessimism, as if they expected no joy when they were called into court. Kim looked for Inspector Malone or Sergeant Clements and was disappointed that there was no sign of them; they hadn’t, despite their promise, appeared to help her out. A big young man lumbered up the steps from the street and almost ran into the courthouse; it was Detective Constable Andy Graham, but she had never seen him before and did not know that he was Malone’s emissary. She stepped out from under the tree, suddenly feeling really free, and went down the steps into Liverpool Street.
As she came out of the gates the well-dressed young woman stepped forward. “Kim? Annie sent me to collect you.”
She was instantly suspicious. “Annie? Why would she send you? You’re Filipino, right?” It was a wild guess. “What d’you want with me? Get away! I’ll yell—”
“Don’t do that,” warned Teresita Romero. “There’s a car parked up the street with your friend Annie in it. She’s with a friend of mine. If you don’t behave, he’s likely to hurt her. Let’s go and join them, Kim. Be sensible and you’ll be okay.”
Kim, afraid, certain she was halfway to being dead but also suddenly afraid for Annie, walked with the young woman up to the white Nissan parked at the kerb. As they approached a man leaned back from the front seat and opened the back door for them, giving Kim a welcoming smile. Teresita pushed Kim in, followed her and slammed the door shut.
“Let’s go.”
The driver started up the car and eased it out into the traffic. Kim looked at the woman beside her.
“Where’s Annie?”
“I’m an awful liar,” smiled Teresita. “She’s probably at work at that crummy coffee place up the Cross.”
The driver looked over his shoulder at Kim. “Sorry about this.”
13
I
“I MISSED her,” said Andy Graham. “I shouldn’t have gone by car. We got held up in the traffic, there’s a pile-up in Elizabeth Street, two cars and a bus. Sorry.”
Malone couldn’t complain. Despite the State government’s and the city council’s much publicized efforts at traffic control, for every new rule announced a thousand more cars seemed to be spawned. The Harbour Tunnel had reduced traffic on the Harbour Bridge, only to spew out a gridlock in the inner city. Nobody was going to be denied the use of his car, or what was the point of getting into debt to pay for it? Armageddon would not be a battle but just one last huge traffic jam. Eternity, it seemed, would be history’s biggest junkyard.
“Righto, Andy. Keep the ASM on her going, on the coach stations as well as the airports. I don’t want her killed, that’s all. We couldn’t have held her, I just wanted to keep tabs on her. But if she’s done a bunk . . .”
“Maybe she hasn’t.” Andy Graham hadn’t sat down; he never did, unless told to do so. Malone sometimes wondered if the big young detective had been born standing up, bouncing up and down between his mother’s legs on his already ungainly big feet. “I checked if anyone had seen her come out of the court. One of the sheriff’s men had. He’d come out for a smoke, he said, and saw her go down the steps to the street—he was looking after her, he said, because she was such a good sort. Some woman, another slopehead he thought, came up to her and said something. The last he saw of them they were walking up Liverpool Street. I must’ve passed her and didn’t recognize her. I hadn’t seen her before, you know,” he added defensively.
Malone threw down his pen; he had been making notes before feeding yesterday’s report into the computer. “She could’ve gone off with anyone. One of the killers, a friend, anyone . . . Oh, hullo, Mr. Junor.”
Clements had appeared behind Andy Graham, escorting Harold Junor from Shahriver International Credit Bank. Graham excused himself and Malone waved Junor to a chair. “Thanks for coming in.”
“I had very little choice.” Junor looked at Clements, who had seated himself at the corner of Malone’s desk; he did not seem to resent the big detective, seemed more resigned. “I’ve been left holding the bag, as they say.”
“Mr. Palady couldn’t come?”
“Mr. Palady left this morning, our head office recalled him last night.”
“That was a bit sudden, wasn’t it? As I remember it, your head office is in Abadan. Not a healthy place to be recalled to right now, is it?”
“Well, actually, no. He’s gone to Hong Kong.”
“To look into this transfer of twenty-five million dollars stolen from Casement Trust?”
Though Junor had spent a good deal of his youth in the front row of a rugby scrum, not an intellectual haunt but a place where your opponents, when not trying to screw your genitals off, tried to mash your brains, he had not lost a talent for quick thinking. He was not fazed by Malone’s question; he caught the ball on the full: “We had nothing to do with the theft, you know. We were merely the conduit, which is what banks are, mostly. I’m surprised you know about it. Casement’s have kept it pretty quiet.”
Malone let that pass. “Are you going to return the money to them?”
“That’s why Mr. Palady has gone to Hong Kong.”
“Casement’s are under the impression that you’d like to hang on to it.”
Junor flushed at that, as if he had been uppercut in the scrum. “I don’t know where they got that impression. Mr. Palady and I have talked about it, we’ve done our best to advise Hong Kong to play it straight and return the money as soon as possible. Head office, I gather, thinks the same way as we do.”
“Has Hong Kong got some sort of autonomy? Is that how your branches work?”
Junor glanced from one detective to the other, grated his teeth together. He was not a born banker, but so few are; the talent has to be bred through generations. He had been recruited because, as a sporting hero in England, he had presented an image of bluff honesty; honesty, even bluff, always looks good in the doorway of any bank, especially one as questionable as Shahriver. He had learned to skirt the truth, if not to be exactly untruthful, but even reputable banks do that; truth is not only the first casualty of war but, too frequently, also of finance. He wanted to lie, but all at once saw the profit in truth.
“What I tell you is just between us?”
“You have no idea how many times we’re asked that, Mr. Junor. But, righto, go ahead. It’s off the record.”
“Well—” He sat back on his chair, took a deep breath. “Some of our
branches have local equity.”
“Here in Sydney?”
“No, we’re totally owned by head office. But Hong Kong—” He paused as if wondering if he was pursuing the right course. But he had been left holding the bag and the bag was proving to be heavy. Another deep breath: “Hong Kong doesn’t really bear looking into. Shahriver owns only a third. The other two-thirds are owned by Chinese and Japanese interests.”
“Triads and yakuza?”
Caution fell on his face like a visor, as if he had abruptly realized he might be talking dangerously; he frowned, peering at Malone and Clements suspiciously. “Well, no, I didn’t say that. Do you mean you know something?”
Malone went off at an angle: “When you were last in here, Mr. Junor, you told us that Rob Sweden had never transferred any money overseas, that he was a pretty small depositor by your standards. But he was the feller who transferred the twenty-five million.”
“We didn’t know that, then. The money didn’t pass through us, it went direct to Hong Kong and his name wouldn’t have been on the transfer. We only learned of it two days ago, when Casement’s started leaning on us out here.”
“We know the money’s gone to one of Mr. Kornsey’s companies. Has Mrs. Kornsey been in touch with you?”
“Well, yes. Not her exactly—her solicitor. She’s claiming everything in his name in our accounts.”
“Including the twenty-five million?”
“I don’t think she knows of that.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
Junor looked surprised at the question. “Do you want me to?”
“I don’t really care,” said Malone. “I care when someone is done out of a thousand bucks or ten thousand, especially when it means something to them. But twenty-five million?” He shook his head. “That’s not money, Mr. Junor, not the way I understand it. That’s just figures.”
There was a sudden silence, broken only by voices in the outer room and the ringing of a phone. Junor looked from one man to the other. He looked less flushed now, less worried. “So is there anything more?”
“I don’t think so, unless Mr. Palady comes back with the money.”
“Or,” said Clements, who had been taking the occasional note, “unless someone from here in Sydney starts applying pressure on you.”
Junor frowned. “Such as?”
“Oh, half a dozen people. Casement, Mrs. Kornsey, your other clients Belgarda and Tajiri, Rob Sweden’s father . . . We’ve got enough candidates lined up. If they do call on you, Mr. Junor, let us know. We don’t want to be called in on your homicide. Come on, I’ll show you out.”
“Thanks for coming,” said Malone.
Junor, on his feet, squeezed out a wry smile. “You’ve made my day, old chap.”
When Clements came back, Malone said, “I think we should pay Mrs. Kornsey another visit. She’s shoving her neck out too far too soon.”
They drove out to Lugarno through a crisp day, the rain gone, the air positively shining under the slight wind coming up from the south-west. This autumn was proving variable, almost mocking.
The silver Mercedes was standing in the driveway and as soon as he saw it Malone had one of those moments when one’s forgetfulness, incompetence, stupidity, call it what you will, hits one right between the eyes. “Bugger!”
Clements drew the unmarked police car into the kerb. “What’s bitten you now?”
“When Kornsey went missing, did anyone ask Mrs. Kornsey how he left home? Why didn’t he go wherever he was going in that Merc, or in his wife’s car?”
Clements shrugged. “I can’t tell you. There may have been something about it in the Missing Persons report, but I dunno. You were the one who talked to her.”
Malone, getting out of the car, looked back over his shoulder. “Are you accusing me of being slipshod?”
“Looks like it.” Clements got out, looked at Malone across the roof of the car. He could be irritatingly urbane at times, even though it was just a front. “It happens to all of us.”
They walked up the path to the front door. All the blooms had fallen from the tibouchina tree and had been swept up into a tapering heap that made them look like one huge bloom. The Welcome mat had disappeared from the front step; it had been replaced by a new coir mat with no message at all on it.
Mrs. Kornsey came to the door, peered short-sightedly at them through the screen of the security door. Then she put on the blue-framed glasses. “Oh it’s you!” Her voice was like the mat on which Malone stood, blank of welcome. “Not more bad news, I hope?”
“No. May we come in?”
She seemed to remember her manners; all at once she was flustered. “Of course! What’s the matter with me?” She opened the security door, ushered them into the house, led them through to the sun-room. “I’ve been—what’s the word?—inundated with visitors since . . . A death brings you together, doesn’t it?” She didn’t say whom it had brought together. “Would you like some coffee? Come into the kitchen, I feel better there. It’s the only room in the house where I can keep myself busy. I’ve made so much bloody jam, biscuits . . .”
Malone and Clements settled themselves on stools at the breakfast bar. At one end of the bar there were at least two dozen jars of marmalade, all of them topped with fancy cloth covers. Mrs. Kornsey busied herself putting on a percolator and setting out cups. She seemed thinner than Malone remembered her, but her hair was newly done, her sweater and skirt were more than just around-the-house gear and she was wearing costume jewelry, earrings and a bracelet. She would hold herself together from the outside in.
“Have you had any calls, Mrs. Bassano?”
She gave Malone a chiding look. “Mrs. Kornsey.”
“You know what I mean. From the man who called you, said he was sorry about what happened to Vince.”
“Terry,” she corrected automatically; it was as if she were protecting her own identity. “No, nobody’s called. Why would they?”
“We understand you’re enquiring into your husband’s estate?”
“Bikkies? They’re an American recipe, I make „em myself.” She put a plate of coconut biscuits in front of them. “Have you been stickybeaking into my affairs? You’ve got a hide!”
“We learned of it by accident. We don’t like stickybeaking, we both hate it, in fact, but too often we have to do it. We only find killers by—well, stickybeaking. Did anyone suggest you try to trace Terry’s estate?”
She looked at both men over her coffee cup, the hard look of a woman who had been hard done by by men. “Are you trying to make trouble for me?”
“We’re here to help you,” said Clements. “Nice cookies. I have another?”
“Help yourself. How do you mean—help me?”
“We still haven’t found the killers,” said Malone. “We don’t want them coming here, paying you a visit. Has your solicitor told you how much is in the estate?”
“Not exactly, he’s still trying to add it all up. He’s found another bank that Terry had money in, Shahriver International.”
“What’s your solicitor’s name?”
“Fairbanks, Douglas Fairbanks.”
“Senior or Junior?” Clements, choking on a biscuit, barely got out the question.
She smiled, the first time since they had entered the house. “I know, it sounds like a joke, but it’s his real name. He’s just not—dashing? He’s as dull as dishwater. He was Terry’s solicitor, though I didn’t know it till he got in touch with me. His offices are up in Hurstville, next door to the Treasury bank. The only bank I thought Terry had,” she added and for a moment there was a sour, almost spiteful note in her voice. “More coffee?”
“Terry never discussed his affairs with you at all? Gave you a hint of where his money was?”
“Never. I suppose I was stupid not to ask, but I just—well, I just trusted him, the way you do with someone you love. Or do only women do that?” But she didn’t wait for either of the men to answer and she went on, “He us
ed to get the Financial Review every morning, but he said it was just a hobby with him, following the stock exchange.”
“He never mentioned the futures exchange?” said Clements, on his third biscuit.
She frowned. “Funny you should say that. Only a coupla weeks ago he said something like, There’s a future in futures. I thought it was just one of those, you know, smarty remarks you men make to dumb women.”
“You’re not dumb, Mrs. Kornsey.” Malone got up and looked out through the bars that protected the wide kitchen window. “I notice that every window I’ve seen in the house has bars on it. Inside there, there’s a sliding security grille across the sun-room’s doors. Did Terry ever explain to you why all that security was necessary?”
“He was paranoid about people breaking in. Not for himself, he said, but for me. Whenever someone broke into a house and raped a woman or killed her, he’d throw the newspaper at me and say, See?”
“When were the bars put on, and the grille?”
“I dunno. Three months ago, maybe more.”
“Up till then he hadn’t been worried?”
“Well, no. But the last twelve months there’s been a lot of rape and murder of housewives. You’d know that.”
Malone nodded, still looking out the window. “Your land runs right down to the river?”
“Yes, we have a jetty down there and a small runabout. Terry’d sometimes go out fishing.”
Some trees fringed the rear of the garden beyond the pool. Someone could come up from the river without being seen from the house. “Are you still living here alone? No friend or relative has come to stay with you?”
“My niece wanted to, but I said no. I’m all right, aren’t I? I mean I’m safe enough, right?” She took off her glasses. “I am, aren’t I?”
“Mrs. Kornsey,” he said gently, “I think it’d be an idea if you went and stayed with someone. Just till this is over, till we get Terry’s killer. It’s a precaution, that’s all.”