by Jon Cleary
Casement was disgusted at the collapse of the younger man. But he looked at the hooded leader. “Let him go. If he brings the money back—”
“It’s too late, Mr. Casement. We’ve already killed his accomplice—we have to play fair. It wouldn’t be cricket, isn’t that what you say?”
“His accomplice ?”
“Sure, didn’t you know? A Mr. Kornsey. Well, actually, his real name was Bassano. An American, ex-Mafia—a canary, as they call them, he sang to the FBI—”
Casement felt he had been cut adrift in a sea of which he had no maps; but he turned to Rob again. “Someone put you up to it? I just couldn’t believe you’d have the imagination to steal as much as twenty-five million.”
He was not surprised when Rob did not accept the chance to blame someone else; the young man’s ego was as big as his fear. “No, he didn’t put me up to it! But Mafia? Christ, I didn’t know he had those connections! I was handling futures for him—he was perfectly legit, I thought . . . Then—”
“Then?”
The three hooded men were still and silent. One of the big men had moved impatiently, but the leader had waved a restraining hand. A wind had sprung up outside and moaned through an unseen open window.
“Then he came to me with this idea. Okay, it was his idea. A third to him, two-thirds to me. I transferred to the bank . . . It was all so much easier than I’d thought it’d be, moving the money . . . He was coming here tonight, he was the one I was expecting, not some girl—”
“On the futures exchange, he paid you off for laundering money for him?”
Rob reluctantly nodded.
“And you thought he was legitimate?” Casement shook his head; he and Rob could have been alone. “If he’s Mafia—or even ex-Mafia . . . You wouldn’t get the two-thirds. You’re naive, Rob. And ignorant. What you don’t know is that twenty-five per cent of my bank is owned by the Japanese yakuza. They’re the ones who have sent these men. You’re out of your depth, Rob. So am I,” he said, suddenly weary, and sat down on the arm of the couch behind him. He looked at the hooded men. “Do you have to go through with this? If we get the money back?”
“I’m afraid so, Mr. Casement. It’s a matter of honour. Our friends are very strong on honour.” Behind the hood Casement imagined a smile; the black silk fluttered as if there might have been a soft laugh. “Before we came in here we heard what you said about Mr. Sweden and your wife. You said you would kill him if he went near her again. That’s a matter of honour, isn’t it, Mr. Casement?”
“I never meant I’d actually—” But he would: he could never face losing Ophelia, to Rob Sweden or any other man. He nodded absently at the gun in the hand of one of the larger men. “You’re going to kill him with that?”
“Ah no, something subtler,” said the leader and removed what looked like a scalpel from a thin case he took from his pocket. He had moved closer and Casement could smell perfume on him, something he abhorred in a man.
“Get fucked!” From somewhere Rob dragged up some defiance.
The leader nodded and the man with the gun moved in on Rob and put the silencer to his head.
“Not in here!” Casement stood up on weakened legs. “I’ll go—”
“No, sir, you stay here till it’s done!”
The leader jerked his head and led the way out of the living room, the man with the gun pushing Rob ahead of him. The third man stayed with Casement, who sank back on the arm of the couch.
He said, “Are you going to kill me, too? I’m a witness.”
“I dunno what the orders are on you, mate.” His voice was muffled, but distinctly Australian. “Just sit and we’ll find out, okay? Nice place this, eh?”
“It’s comfortable. Or it was, till tonight.”
“You got a sense of humour.”
“Have I? I wasn’t trying to be funny.” There was a cry of pain from an inner room; he started, remained stiff a moment, then his spine crumpled again, “Is it going to be bloody? I mean, blood everywhere? His father shouldn’t come home to find him like that—”
“No worries, mate. It’ll be neat. I seen him do the Yank, you wouldn’t believe how neat.”
“I’m not used to this sort of thing.” He had not seen the victim of a violent death since, as a junior officer, he had served in New Guinea in the last year of that war.
The hood nodded: sympathetically?
Then the other two hooded men came back into the living room, “It’s done,” said the leader. “Now we have to toss him off the balcony. An accident,” he explained as Casement looked enquiringly at him. “My employers prefer it that way. It’ll read better than the son of the Police Minister being murdered.”
“Won’t the police find out how you really killed him?”
“I don’t think so. The police are always satisfied with the obvious.”
Casement felt momentarily light-headed: he was dreaming this conversation. Then his banker’s mentality took over: accounting had to be done: “What about—what was his name? The Mafia man. Was his death an accident, too?”
“No. I used the same method.” He was wiping the scalpel on a tissue. The smell of his perfume was stronger, as if, though he still sounded cool, excitement had heated him. “You two, toss Mr. Sweden off the balcony. There’s one off the main bedroom. Make sure you don’t drop him on someone.” The two men went out of the room and the leader, putting the scalpel back in its case, gave his attention again to Casement. “Mr. Bassano is on a park seat out at Canterbury. I think it would be a good idea if you forgot he was ever mentioned.”
“You killed him the same way?” Casement nodded at the slim case.
The leader put his forefinger to the back of his neck. “In here. I once worked in a morgue. It is a very good training ground for studying how to eliminate people.”
Casement said, careful with his words, “I think you have made a mistake. If we can’t keep secret what’s been stolen from our bank, our friends won’t like it if the Mafia, even ex-Mafia, is linked to the theft. I think you’re wrong about the police, our police. They’re not always satisfied with the obvious. And Rob is—was the Police Minister’s son.”
One can’t see doubt through a hood; but a man’s hands often give him away. He bounced the scalpel case on his gloved palm. “Perhaps you’re right.” The two big men came back into the living room. “Done?”
“Done,” said the man who had talked with Casement. “He’s down on the footpath, we missed the cars parked down there. We better get going. Someone finds him, the place’ll be humming with coppers.”
“We have something else to do,” said the leader. “We have to go back to Canterbury to see if the cops are humming about Mr. Bassano. Or we may have to pay a visit to the morgue, if they’ve already collected him. We have to find him and re-kill him.”
“Jesus! I done some jobs, but this is fucking bizarre!”
“Goodnight, Mr. Casement,” said the leader. “Have you touched anything in here? Had a drink or anything? Fingerprints,” he explained. “We don’t want you connected with any of this.”
“No. No, nothing. I—I may have touched the door as I came in—” Good God, they’re teaching me how to think criminally!
“Better wipe the door,” the leader told one of the men. “Mr. Casement, I think you should now go up to your own apartment and leave this to us. It’s in your own interests to forget what you saw tonight. I’m sure our friends would remind you of that if you should be careless.”
Casement had done as he was told. He went back upstairs to the penthouse, poured himself a stiff drink, sat down and stared out at the harbour, feeling the foundations of himself slowly crumbling away as the terrible realization hit him that he had become an associate to murder.
And now, here in the ballroom of the Congress, he smelled the perfume again. He turned round, saw the slim man in the horn-rimmed glasses and the light grey suit, saw the thing that looked like a cloth-covered gun and knew it was all over. And in that insta
nt Malone came in from the side, hit the man’s arm and knocked it upwards. There was a faint explosion of air and something silver flashed in the overhead lights, then buried itself in the plaster cheek of a cherub on the decorated ceiling. The man struggled, but Malone, standing close to him, had produced his gun and was jabbing it into the man’s side.
“No fuss, understand? Let’s go quietly. Sorry about this, but you’re done for, sport.”
16
I
TWO DAYS later Malone sat in the Police Minister’s office with Sweden and Assistant Commissioner Zanuch.
“We went to the house where Belgarda’s been staying, in Roseville. It had been rented by a Japanese, who we guess was Tajiri. The place was empty. But we found a gun, a Russian make, a Makarov. Ballistics have identified it as the gun that killed three of the victims. We also found a scalpel, we can’t prove it’s the one that killed your son, but we can present it as circumstantial evidence.”
“What’s Belgarda got to say?” asked Zanuch.
“He’s not saying anything, sir, but we have enough on him for any magistrate to commit him for trial. He’ll go down, for sure.”
“You got nothing at all out of him?”
“Well, not much. We did find out, Mr. Sweden, that your maid was the one who’d left the back door to your apartment open for him. She’d been planted on you when they first found out Rob was your son.”
Sweden, from the moment Malone had entered his office, had said virtually nothing. When Belgarda’s arrest had been headlined in yesterday morning’s newspapers, sharing almost equal space with the US bombing of Iraq, one of the first on the phone to him had been Hans Vanderberg:
“All right, Derek, don’t you worry about what we talked about the other night. I know when to score points and when to kick the ball out of play. You’re a hero, the coppers have done you proud. Now’s not the time for me to be screwing your balls off in the scrum. But watch out, Derek, I’m not dead yet. You could be, though, there’s always tomorrow.”
Now Sweden said to Malone, “Will he talk once he’s in court?”
Malone glanced at Zanuch, then looked back at the Minister. Watch your tongue here, son. “I don’t know, sir. If he doesn’t, I think the Crown Prosecutor will. The Crown’s case is going to look better if it gives a reason for Rob’s murder. Your son was a thief, sir, there’s no getting away from that.”
For a moment Sweden’s face hardened; but it was Zanuch who said, “There’s no need to rub it in, Scobie.”
“That’s not what I intended, sir. But this whole thing’s been pretty dirty. We’ve had five—no, six murders. We keep forgetting about the girl who worked for Belgarda in his office—she obviously found out more than she was supposed to. And the morgue attendant, Frank Minto. He’s the one I’m sorry for, he had absolutely nothing to do with this, he just happened to be in the way. He was killed because Belgarda liked killing. We’ve picked up the two heavies who helped Belgarda. They’re locals, Kenny Sturgess and George Paderewsky—one of „em, maybe both, will talk if they can make a deal. It’s all going to come out, one way or another.”
“What about Casement Trust and their being partners with the yakuza?”
Malone shrugged. “That’s Mr. Casement’s problem. My job’s homicide.” It was another of their small challenges; but he was tired and wanted to be out of this room. “He could have been more helpful at the start.”
Casement had been no help at all even at the end. After Belgarda had been taken away by Kagal and Graham, Malone and Clements had suggested they go back to The Wharf with the Casements. There the two detectives had tried to get Casement to open up, but the old man, shaken by how close he had come to death for the second time, had given them nothing.
“Please—” Ophelia was grateful to Malone for having saved her husband’s life; but now he needed further saving. “Leave us alone for this evening. It’s been too much—”
“We just want to know why Belgarda was trying to kill you, Mr. Casement.”
Casement shook his head, still seemingly dumb with shock. Ophelia said, “Please go. Perhaps my husband can talk tomorrow . . .”
The two detectives had left the Casements, he clutching her arm as if she might steal away from him, she stroking his hand as she might have a child’s. Going down in the lift Clements said, “How much do you reckon he hasn’t told us? Won’t tell us?”
“I think he knows what happened the night Rob was murdered. Belgarda said something when I was hustling him out of the ballroom—he said, “I should’ve killed him the first night.” I dunno, maybe Casement was in on the killing.”
“He’s afraid of losing his wife.”
Malone looked at him a moment; then he nodded. “You’re probably right. Would you kill to keep Romy?”
“That’s a bastard of a question . . . But he would. The thing is, I don’t think he would ever lose her. She might play around, but she’ll never leave him. She’s reached the top of the tree, why slide down?”
“You’re pretty cynical about women.”
“Only some of „em. I’m the same way about some men.”
They went out of the apartment building, round the corner to their car. Clements, without realizing it, had parked the car right at the spot where Rob Sweden had crashed into the pavement. The white outline of the body and the blood had been scrubbed away, feet had trodden the ghost into the ground.
Now, on the second day, Malone stood up, dismissing himself, “If I say it myself, sir, I think we’ve done a good job. The newspapers are satisfied with it, for once they’re not criticizing us. I think we should leave it as it is. The full report will be on your desk in the morning, Minister.”
“Thank you,” said Sweden; he sounded anything but ministerial. “And thank you, on a personal level.”
Outside in the corridor Zanuch said, “He’s spoken to me about recommending you for a commendation.”
“Tell him to forget it. That’ll take time, commendations always do. By then the case’ll be forgotten, there’ll be something else. Let it lie.”
“You’re more of a diplomat than I suspected.”
Malone relaxed, smiled. “Not really. When I was playing cricket, there were times when you knew you couldn’t win. You played for a draw.”
II
“We’re going to be married on the thirty-first of July,” said Romy. “A Saturday.”
“Why don’t you make it the last Saturday in June? That gets you into this financial year and Russ can claim a full tax allowance for a spouse.”
“Oh God, Dad, that’s really gross!” Both Claire and Maureen thumped him. “Mum, how can you stand him?”
It was a week later and Malone had brought Lisa and the children and Clements and Romy here to the Golden Gate for dinner. It was Lisa who had insisted on the venue—“We all like Chinese and it’s the best Chinese restaurant I’ve been to. French cooking is wasted on Maureen and Tom and we’re not going to Pizza Hut.”
Belgarda was still in custody, bail refused. His heavies, Sturgess and Paderewsky, having made a deal with the Director of Public Prosecutions, had been granted bail. Teresita Romero had been picked up, but, because nothing could be proved against her, she had been released and, as far as Malone knew or cared, she was now somewhere between Sydney and Manila. Tajiri had disappeared and it was assumed that he had somehow got out of Australia and was back in Tokyo. It irked Malone that he had never seen the man who had masterminded all the murders; he was known only by appearance to Cormac Casement and Jack Aldwych. Neither of whom, for his own reasons, would ever sit down and try to match him with an Identikit picture. Belgarda’s trial still had to come, but the maze had been solved and all the work now lay with the DPP.
Autumn’s cool had turned to winter’s chill; it was a good night for hot food. The meal was almost finished when Aldwych and a white-haired woman rose from a back booth and came down towards the front door. They paused by the Malone table and Clements introduced Romy. “My fian
cée.”
“This is Emily Karp, a friend.”
Malone had not seen Aldwych since the day after Belgarda’s arrest. He had driven out to Harbord to see the old crim, but Aldwych had been adamant he would not give evidence at any trial. “No, Scobie. You got the bugger in the act—he was trying to kill Casement. You don’t need anything from me. No, mate, definitely no. I’m trying to cultivate respectable friends now. They don’t wanna read about me being mixed up with a multiple killer.” He had had the grace to smile.
Malone wondered now if Emily Karp was the respectable friend. He smiled at her, appreciating her. “A pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Karp.”
She said a few words to Lisa and the children. Aldwych stepped round her and leaned down to speak quietly. “It’s all been taken care of, Scobie. The bill. I owe you, remember?” He winked and straightened up.
Malone didn’t demur. All had indeed been taken care of. Well, almost. Loose threads are in the weave of any cop’s life.
Kirribilli
August, 1992-July 1993
THE END
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WINTER CHILL
1
I
THE FOUR carriages of the Harbourlink monorail softly whirred their way above the three-o’clock-in-the-morning city streets. An occasional car or taxi sped down the glistening wet cross streets; in two of the main north-south thoroughfares garbage trucks banged and rattled at the quiet. The monorail, with its metallic whisper, drifted by dark upper-storey windows of department stores and offices, moved down the slope of Market Street, over Pyrmont Bridge and into the sharp curve that led above the Darling Harbour exhibition complex. It did not stop at the station there but continued on, a ghost train of the future, and swung back to head up into the city again, looking even more ghostly in a sudden squall of rain, going round and round on its endless circuit.
There was no driver and there was only one passenger. To those who knew the painting he was the spitting image (though he had never been known to spit) of the farmer in Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Tall, gaunt, face weathered (not from farming but from sailing), the first impression of those who had met him was that he was humourless and forbidding. Yet the gaunt face could break into the most charming smile and his friendliness, though not legendary, was sincere and surprising. He had enough perceived contradictions to make him a good lawyer, which he was—or had been. Witnesses and judges and juries had never been quite sure whom and what they were dealing with till he had delivered his final argument. His name was Orville Brame, he was one of two senior partners in one of New York’s most prestigious law firms and he was the incumbent president of the American Bar Association. Or he would have been incumbent if he had not died in the past hour.