Autumn Maze (39 page)

“What's the matter with „Lind?” Aldwych and Sweden stood a little apart from the crush.

The Police Minister sipped the orange juice he had asked for in preference to the champagne. “Things are piling up on us, Jack. I imagine it's what gang warfare was like in your day.”

“Derek, you could never imagine what it was like in my day. We never stabbed each other in the back, it was always up front. You look up the newspapers on it. A bloke was killed, he was always shot from the front. Who's after you? The Dutchman?”

Sweden nodded, smiled wryly. “You wouldn't like to come out of retirement, handle him for me?”

“He got something on you?”

Sweden
nodded again, but offered no explanation. “He expected me to buckle under. I'm not going to.”

“I'd like to help, if I could. The last thing I want is a Labor government back in. The buggers are always talking reform. You blokes almost ruined things, looking for the underprivileged vote. Let the Salvos look after them. But I can't do much about Vanderberg, Derek, not now I'm reformed. Well,
retired
. . . How're things going, Adam? Sold any paintings?”

Bruna had materialized, his usual mode of entry. “Some Japanese have promised to come to the gallery tomorrow evening. I tried the Chinese and the Arabs, but the Arabs are crying poor mouth and the Chinese look surprised we have any artists. The Americans are only buying Aboriginal art. They think it's kerygma-stirring, whatever that means.” He looked around, raised his glass of champagne to the room at large. “Let us hope that all these wonderful bankers can discover loose change again.”

Jack Junior joined the three men. “You listen to these guys, everything that's gone wrong, they blame on everyone else. Mostly you politicians,” he told Sweden. “All around the world, you're the ones who brought us to our knees. Rosalind is putting them straight.”

“She'll do a better job than I would,” said Sweden, sounding as if bankers' opinions were the least of his worries.

Jack Aldwych was surveying the room. He was wishing he had brought Emily Karp with him, to take her to dinner afterwards and enjoy her company; but if he was here to play scout for Malone he did not want her involved in any risk. It was some years since he had been involved in a situation like this and it irked him that he was not in control. He was not surprised that he had not seen the Japanese here this evening, but he wondered why the other man (the Filipino?) had put in an appearance.

He turned, caught Cormac Casement's eye and smiled at him. Then behind Casement he saw the man in the light grey suit push through the crowd and bend his arm. Laid along the man's forearm was what Aldwych at first thought was a sawn-off shotgun. Then he saw that it was a short-handled umbrella, the base of it with a barrel-like opening in it.

II

A few steps short of his intended death, Casement had a sudden recurrence of the unease that had plagued him since the late-morning phone call. All day memories, like iron filings, of a certain night had jabbed at him:

After Ophelia had gone to the opera he had gone downstairs and pressed the bell on the Swedens' door. It had been opened by Rob Sweden, who had blinked as if he didn't quite believe who his visitor was. “Cormac?”

“Expecting someone else? Ophelia, perhaps?” He pushed the door wider and walked in. “Close the door, Rob. You and I have something to talk about.”

“I'm expecting someone—”

“Another girlfriend? Close the door, Rob.”

He walked on into the big living room, went straight to the marble-manteled fake fireplace, turned round and stood with his hands behind his back. Even in his own mind's eye he looked like a stern Victorian father, but he was establishing the stage. None of Rob Sweden's guile was going to be allowed sway.

“Look, Cormac, I don't want to be rude—”

Jesus, thought Cormac, how do mature women fall for this callow young bastard? The young man had looks, no doubt: strong jaw, aquiline nose, blond hair cut rather long: Casement, a poetry reader, was reminded of photos of Rupert Brooke. He was tall and well-built and always just the right side of being too well-dressed. Only his eyes let him down: so busy looking for the main chance, they suggested furtiveness. He had the gift of the gab, had supreme confidence in his own charm and, though he hid it well, equally supreme contempt for anyone over forty. Except women.

“Is the maid home?”

“No, I gave her some money to go out—”

“You have all the gall in the world, haven't you? Setting up assignations in someone else's place. Did Ophelia meet you here?”

“
Assignation? Cormac, I don't know what's got into you—you keep mentioning Ophelia—”

“No crap, please. I
know
.” He straightened his glasses with one hand. He had beautiful hands for an elderly man and Ophelia insisted that he had them cared for regularly. “Rob, I don't think you appreciate my position. I have some standing in this community, I'm not one of the Johnny-come-latelies who clutter up this country. You cuckold me—”

“For Crissakes, cut out all this old-fashioned crap!” Rob lost his temper; or made a pretence of it. “Assignations, cuckold—Jesus, that went out with—with—”

“With modern education? Perhaps you're right.” He did belong to the old school; when school, in his eyes, taught you standards. He had resigned from the Senate of Sydney University a couple of years ago because he could not stand the new young professors. “All right, I know you've slept with Ophelia. And maybe your stepmother and Juliet, for all I know. And a dozen other men's wives. I came down here to tell you it's finished, all over. I would kill you before you got near my wife again. But that's only part of why I'm here—”

Then he was aware of the three hooded men who had come in from the rear of the apartment and stood in the archway that led into the living room. At first he thought they were some sort of back-up to Rob, but then the young man turned round and he took a step backwards in shock. Rob looked over his shoulder at Casement.

“Jesus, what's going on? What the fuck're you gunna do to me?”

“It has nothing to with Mr. Casement,” said the shortest of the three hooded men. “We're going to kill you, but we're not working for him.”

Casement was the first to recover. “Who are you working for?”

“That may explain itself when we tell Mr. Sweden why we're going to kill him.” The spokesman had a soft, thin voice with a slight accent. He was well-dressed; no,
nattily
-dressed, thought Casement. He even wore gloves; then Casement saw that they were white surgical gloves. “Mr. Sweden has stolen a lot of money. Or perhaps you know that?”

“Yes, I know.” He also knew now who had sent these killers; and was horrified. “That was the
other
reason I came down here, Rob. The twenty-five million you stole.”

Rob had taken a step towards the front door, but the two larger men had moved round in front of him. One of them had produced a gun and with gloved hands was screwing a silencer to it.

“Aw, come on, for Crissakes! It's only money, I'll give it back—none of it's been touched—” He whirled back to face Casement. “Cormac, don't let them kill me! Jesus, man, why? I don't deserve to be killed—shit, guys are stealing money every fucking day—”

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.”