Autumn Maze (38 page)

Belgarda nodded and smiled at her. He did not love her, but he always treated her gently; when he eventually tired of her, as he would, he would not get rid of her by killing her. His own mother, Lily,
had
been a bar-girl, not in Ermita but out by Subic Bay. He had inherited his politeness from her. She had invariably been polite, even when on her back or in a dozen other positions; she had re-written the Kama Sutra according to Emily Post. The sailors from Subic Bay, being American and naturally polite, had flocked to her for instruction. With the money she earned she had sent her son to university to study medicine. He had lasted one semester, being expelled when he had threatened a professor with a scalpel when he had been disturbed in bed with the professor's wife.

Armed with a little medical knowledge and faked papers, he had then been taken on as an assistant at the morgue in Makati in Manila. He had left there after a year, seeing no future amongst the dead. He had then started as a salesman for Pinatubo Engineering. He had soon established himself as a successful salesman: in a land where bribery, under President Marcos, was endemic, he had become a specialist in the greased palm. Two years ago he had been transferred to Sydney to take charge of Pinatubo's Australian operations. Six months ago his Manila boss, on a visit to Sydney, his tongue loosened by the local shiraz, had told him that Pinatubo was owned and controlled by the
yakuza
. The information had not frightened him: he was supremely confident that, no matter who his bosses were, he was his own man. When Tajiri had arrived and told him some murder might be necessary, he had laid down only one condition: that he be paid more. Tajiri had agreed without reference to Tokyo. Against the missing twenty-five million dollars, a few thousand dollars in blood money was only petty cash.

“Just homesick,” said Teresita.

Tajiri gave her a smile, a concession. “So am I. I think we can all go home soon. But first, we have to get rid of Mr. Casement.”

“How do we do it?” asked Belgarda, the journeyman killer. “When?”

“As soon as possible. Could you kill him in a crowd?”

Teresita sat staring at the wallpaper, shutting her ears against the men's voices. She had been here at the house for four days and only now did she remark that the flowers on the wallpaper were lilies, the flowers of death.

15

I

“JACK, DO
it as a favour,” said Malone.

“Scobie, I've never pointed the finger at anyone in my life. I wanted something done, I did it m'self or had someone do it for me.”

“Jack, you're
retired
. You keep telling me. All I want you to do is come to this cocktail reception this evening at the Congress and, if he's there, pick out Tajiri for me. We'll do the rest.”

“I'm no banker, they'll never let me in—”

“Jack, you look like the governor of the Reserve Bank. You've got it all—the three-piece suit, the silver hair, the look of knowing all the answers that the rest of us don't. Come on, Jack. You owe me.”

“Owe you? What for?”

“I've never pinched you, have I?”

Aldwych laughed. “Okay, you win. I'll be there, I'll come with Jack Junior and the daughter-in-law. They've been invited, all the clan. I gather Ophelia arranged it, never misses a social occasion. Will you be there? How're you gunna pass as a banker?”

“I'll try posing as a conman. Not long ago banks welcomed them with open arms.”

Malone and Clements, dressed in their Sunday best, had shown their police badges at the door to the main ballroom of the Hotel Congress and the usher had shown no surprise. “Just a security measure,” Malone had said, making no mention of Homicide, and the usher had been satisfied with that. Bankers, from what he had read, had recently become paranoid about security.

“Are John and Andy here?”

“They were coming in through the kitchen,” said Clements. “There they are. John looks more
like
a banker than you or me, but Andy looks like a bank
clerk
.”

The two junior detectives, at the rear of the big room, saw their seniors and just nodded across the heads of the rippling crowd. The air was a babel of voices, though English, the
lingua franca
of finance, predominated. The French,
naturellement
, were speaking only French;
ils ne pouvaient pas comprendre pourquoi les autres ne faisaient pas la même chose
. The Americans, articulate only in four-letter words during their work-day, were having difficulty with their vocabulary in the company of women other than their secretaries and wives. The British, stiff-upper-lipped, were resisting advice from the Russians on the Royal family: “No revolution! It does not work!” The Italians and other assorted Latins were pinching bottoms, not all female. The Germans and the Japanese were politely congratulating each other on the possibility of a new Axis. And the Australians were becoming increasingly garrulous as they discovered bankers from other nations who were even more heavily loaded with bad debts than themselves.

Malone turned round in the crush and found himself face-to-red-face with Harold Junor, who looked as if he had fortified himself with several whiskies before arriving. “Inspector! On duty?”

“Sort of. You hear from Mr. Palady?”

“Matter of fax, yes. Sorry. Fact. I got a fax in just before I left the office. In code, of course. Old Ishmael has a thing about codes. He once worked for the CIA, did you know that?” His tongue was whisky-oiled, Scotch but with no burr. “Takes all types to make the CIA . . . Anyhow, the gist of the fax was that everything's been sorted out in Hong Kong. The money's on its way back. I gather the Honkers boys got an offer they couldn't refuse. From the Japs, savvy?”

Malone nodded. Junor melted away, some feat considering his bulk, and Malone was left alone. He scanned the crowd till he found Cormac Casement in the midst of a small group of men in a far corner. At the instant he saw the banker, Casement saw him. The older man's glasses flashed as he raised his head, then he said something to those around him, left them and came towards Malone.

He was blunt: “What are you doing here?”

“Just looking.”

“Looking for what?” Casement seemed nervous, ill at ease.

“
Mr. Tajiri, maybe. Are Mr. Kushida and Mr. Isogai here?”

“I haven't seen them. There are private parties, I understand, in some of the suites.”

Then Ophelia's party surrounded them. The three Bruna sisters attracted their usual attention, even from those who didn't know them. Their beauty, their dressing, always drew the eye, but there was something more: someone else's malice always adds extra burnish to the object. Under the froth of gossip there could be heard, faintly, the whisper of envy. The men, Sweden, the two Aldwyches and Adam Bruna were just background to their women, plush to the diamonds.

“I'm surprised to see you here, Inspector,” said Ophelia.

“Just keeping an eye on our deposits,” said Malone, smiling to show he wasn't spoiling for another fight. “All these bankers . . . Do customers ever get invited to these conventions?”

“Do bookies ever buy the punters a drink?” said Sweden.

“They all look so sleek and successful!” said Bruna, who looked sleek and successful. “One imagined they would all be down-in-the-mouth, out-at-the-elbows. The world must be picking up. Perhaps people will start buying paintings again!” He brightened, like a suddenly restored fresco.

“Whoever thought I'd be hobnobbing with them?” said Jack Aldwych. “I wonder what some of the local ones'd say if I walked up to „em and said I'd held „em up back in the old days?”

“Let's try it,” said Juliet, eager for fun and mischief. “Point one out.”

“For God's sake, Julie!” But Rosalind included Aldwych in her disapproval.

“Relax, dear, I know my place.” He took Malone's arm and eased him away from the group. “I'm here with your gun at my head, you know that?”

“All you have to do is point him out, Jack. The Jap. Casement's no help, he won't play ball at all.”

“I wonder why?”

The two tall men looked at each other; then Malone said, “Jack, I think your relative-by-marriage is up Eastern Creek without a bike.”

“Is that the polite version of up shit creek without a paddle?” Eastern Creek had been a
government-
financed speedway venture that had been a disaster. “I think you're right about him, but I dunno the details. Do you?”

“Some of them. Did you know the
yakuza
own twenty-five per cent of Casement Trust?”

“Yes. I've known it for a year or more, I got it from Les Chung. He got it from his mates in the Triads. They ever get together, the
yakuza
and the Triads, the Mafia can call it a day. Don't buy shares in Cosa Nostra. When did you find out about the
yakuza
?”

“This morning. I should've come to you first, the day all this mess started.”

“You think I'd have told you anything?” Aldwych shook his head. Then he paused, his head held stiffly, his eyes squinting.

“You see him?” Malone looked in the direction of the old man's gaze.

Aldwych continued to stare for a moment, then he shook his head. “No, not the Jap. I thought I saw the other bloke, the one who drove the car, but no, I guess I was mistaken. You know how it is, you see someone, there's something about them . . .”

“Jack, I'll bet you've never missed identifying a man, ever. You want to point the finger at someone, you could identify an Abo at a hundred yards in a coal mine. Who were you looking at?”

“He's disappeared. Slim bloke with glasses, he might be the one who drove the car. He had a mo the other day, but I don't think he's got one now. He's in a light-coloured suit, doesn't look like a banker.”

Malone nodded admiringly. “You're on your own, Jack. You notice the colour of his eyes from here? Excuse me, I'll be back.”

On the other side of the room, behind one of the huge flower urns that flanked the room, Jaime Belgarda saw the tall younger man leave Jack Aldwych and come pushing through the crowd. He had been shocked to see Aldwych at this bankers' function; he knew the old criminal's past record and he hadn't expected him to be a guest amongst these pillars of world banking. Of course back home in Manila the law-abiding and the lawless mixed with familiarity because corruption laid on a common veneer. But here in this Sydney ballroom Aldwych, though he looked like a banker, should have been as out of place
as
an Ermita pimp.

He had felt safe up till now. The horn-rimmed glasses and the hairless upper lip had changed his appearance; a dude all his life, his only mistake had been to wear the sharp light-grey suit amongst all the dark greys and blues. He carried a folded short-handled umbrella, but that didn't make him conspicuous; it was raining heavily outside and he had heard arriving guests complaining about having got wet. The umbrella was his weapon, an air-gun that could shoot a dart with sufficient force to penetrate a layer of clothing and lodge in the intended target's flesh. The dart was tipped with Ricin, a fast-acting poison that had first been used to dispose of a Bulgarian dissident in London back in 1978 and had been used selectively since by the more cultured assassins of the world's espionage clubs. Belgarda, who had had medical training, was about to use it for the first time and looked forward to the opportunity. Tradesmen, even killers, know the pleasure of a new tool.

As he saw the tall man (a policeman he wondered?) approaching, he slipped away from behind the big urn and lost himself in the crowd. He worked his way round the perimeter of the room towards Casement and the group around him. The glasses worried him: they were just clear glass and not prescription lenses, but the thick frames distracted him. Tajiri had insisted that Casement had to be eliminated this evening, before he cracked and started talking to the police or the Securities Commission. Tajiri, of course, had stayed safely at home, but Belgarda didn't resent the fact. Tajiri was squeamish about actually witnessing a killing and had seen none of the other murders. It was a pity because Belgarda liked those who employed him to see and admire his work.

The deed would have to be done quickly. He had lost sight of the tall man, but he knew he was somewhere in the crowd. Whoever had organized this reception must have anticipated only a percentage of acceptances to the invitations; instead of which it seemed that one hundred per cent had come along and brought their relatives into the bargain. He remembered Tajiri's comment that Australians were the greatest freeloaders in the civilized world; this evening he was grateful for the natives' fetish for a free drink. He moved amongst them, continually glancing back to see if the tall man was following him.

Malone, losing sight of his quarry, had paused by John Kagal, who could have passed for the
youngest
bank president in the room. “Jack Aldwych has picked out a feller he thinks may be one of those who took him for a ride the other day. Horn-rimmed glasses and a light-coloured suit.”

“I saw him, he looked like an SP bookie.” Kagal was a sartorial snob. “Who is he?”

“Haven't a clue. But he could be the feller who ran Pinatubo Engineering, Belgarda—I'm only guessing. Get Andy, then you and he work that side of the room, I'll go this way. If you get to him, take him quietly.”

“What if he's armed?”

“Let him go, at least till he gets outside. Bankers have had enough potshots taken at them. Metaphorically speaking.”

Kagal grinned. “Wouldn't life be grand if all shots were just metaphorical?”

On the far side of the room the Casement party had attracted a clotting of the crowd. Cormac himself had revived under the attention and respect given to him, an Establishment icon; flattery, though temporary, is a splendid cement for covering up cracks. Ophelia, basking in the glory of being
Mrs.
Casement, felt cheated that the reception was due to end at nine; she was a marathon runner when it came to the limelight. Juliet fluttered from male to male, a butterfly who knew just how long to hover at each stamen. Rosalind, more subdued, as befitted a politician's wife, was polite to those who spoke to her but looked worried.