Bleak Spring (9 page)

“Just as well I did. Where's the leatherwood honey?”

Lisa reached into a cupboard for a jar, put it on the table. This morning the honey had been in the plastic container in which he had bought it yesterday; now it was in the decorated jar with the silver spoon beside it. Lisa's table was always properly set, none of your slapdash cartons and plastic containers cluttering it. Her Dutch neatness was legendary with him and the children, though sometimes he wondered if neatness was a myth back home in Holland. It struck him that Olive Rockne probably ran her own house with the same style, though he suspected there would be a fussiness to her neatness.

“I can't believe you might suspect Olive of—you know. She always struck me as being a bit wimpy. I mean Will trod all over her.”

“That sort get tired of being trodden on, though usually they kill their husbands on the spur of the moment, not coldbloodedly. What would you do as a wife if you found out your husband had five and a quarter million dollars tucked away in a bank account?”

“You've probably got that much salted away somewhere, you never spend anything.”

“Be serious.” He told her what he had found in the Rockne safe. “Would you claim it or would you turn your back on it because it might have blood on it?”

She thought about it while she made the tea: tea leaves, not tea bags, in a crockery pot. “I honestly don't know. What are you expecting Olive to do?”

“I'm expecting Olive to claim it. I don't think she is as much of a wimp as we thought.”

IV

Monday morning Clarrie Binyan, the sergeant in charge of Ballistics, came into Malone's small office in Homicide. Binyan was part-Aborigine, the recognized expert on white men's weapons; he often joked he couldn't tell the difference between a boomerang and a didgeridoo, but he could tell you whether a bullet had been fired from a Webley or a Walther. “There you are, Scobie, the Maroubra bullet. Fired from a Ruger, I'd say.”

“
Through a silencer?”

“Could be. Silencers usually have no effect on a bullet. But if it was a Ruger fitted with a silencer, then I'd say it was a professional hit job.”

“How many hitmen do we know who use a Ruger?” But it was a useless question and he knew it. Crime in Australia had become organized over the past few years, coinciding with the national greed of the Eighties. But professional killings were still just casual work, often done crudely. “We don't have much in the way of clues on this one, Clarrie.”

“I can't help you there, mate. You gimme something more than one bullet to go on and I'll try and build you a case. Or gimme a particular gun. But one slug . . .” He shook his dark head, rolled a black eye that showed a lot of white. “Some day you're gunna bring in a spear and ask me to name it. I'm looking forward to that. I might run it right through you.”

“Get out of here, you black bastard.”

Binyan grinned and left: the two of them respected each other's ability and there had never been a moment's friction between them. The big room outside began to fill up with detectives; Malone had seventeen men under him in Homicide. There had been a spate of murders since the Strathfield massacre, but that was often the case, as if a damn had burst and murder had escaped. All the detectives were assigned. He looked out at them through the glass wall of his office and, not for the first time, remarked how few of them had come out of the same mould. Some of them were straight down the line, as if they worked under the eye of some stern judge; others bent the rules because, they argued, life itself didn't run according to the rules. There was Andy Graham, all tiring enthusiasm; chainsmoking Phil Truach, so laconic he seemed bored by whatever he had to investigate; John Kagal, young and ambitious, his eye already on Malone's chair, a fact that Malone had noticed without letting Kagal know; and Mike Mesic, the Croat whose attention for the past month had been home in Yugoslavia where his hometown was being blasted by the Serbs. There were twelve others and there was Russ Clements, who came into the room as he sat staring out through the glass.

“What's the matter? You counting the bodies or something?”

The
men outside had begun to disappear, going off on their enquiries. “I was looking in at a show the other night.
Cops,
on Channel Ten. The Yanks seem to have a bloody
army
of cops. And
hardware
! When their helicopters take off, it's like that scene in
Apocalypse Now,
you remember? I sat there and I lost heart.”

Clements dropped into a chair that threatened to break under his bulk. “Let me cheer you up. I've done a trace, through a mate of mine in a stockbroker's office, on Shahriver Credit International. It's as gen-u-ine as those Reeboks they sell you off the back of a truck.”

“It's not a bank?”

“Oh, it's a bank all right, properly registered here, with its headquarters in Abadan.”

“Abadan? That wasn't mentioned on the letterhead. Where's that?”

“In Iran, just over the border from Iraq. My contact tells me nobody worthwhile here in Sydney does any business with it.”

“It sounds like the O'Brien Cossack Bank.” He and Clements had worked on that case. “Or Nugan Hand.”

“Worse. It's nowhere near as big as that other one that's in the news right now, the Bank of Credit and Commercial International, the BCCI—”

“I love the way these banks just roll off your tongue.”

Clements went on as if he hadn't been interrupted: “Shahriver is the same shonky set-up, I gather.”

“Is it being investigated?”

“Not yet, but it's on the cards, according to my mate. They took forever to get into BCCI and that's twenty times bigger than this outfit.”

“Who deals with it if no one here in town does?”

“That's something we've got to track down.”

“You come up with anything else?”

“Yeah, I got in touch with the Commonwealth, out at Coogee. There was a withdrawal last
week
from that joint account—five thousand in cash.”

Malone pondered that a moment, then: “Where does Shahriver hang out?”

“Down in The Rocks.”

“That's not bank territory.” He stood up, reached for his hat. “Let's go down and see if they offer us anything. We might get a cheap pair of Reeboks.”

The area known as The Rocks is a narrow strip crouched between Circular Quay, where the harbour ferries dock, and the hill that carries the southern approach to the Harbour Bridge. For the last half of the nineteenth century it held its own as one of the roughest, toughest enclaves in the world; its gangs, or “pushes,” with their eye-gouging, elbows to the jaw and knees in the kidneys had set the example for footballers of the future. For a brief while it was Sydney's Chinatown; the smell of opium was only slightly less than that of the sewage that ran down the hill. A prostitute did not cost much more than a meal, except that, when the exercise was finished, her pimp stood over the client and, with a knife or a razor, extorted his own value-added tax. Nowadays The Rocks is a tourist area, the old shops dolled up, the warehouses turned into museums, the Chinese opium dens now Japanese
suchi
restaurants. The occasional prostitute can be seen propositioning male tourists, but she is tolerated by the police as reducing the country's external debt. The Rocks is chicly historical, but at least it is where it was born and happened and has not been transplanted.

Shahriver Credit International was housed in a restored colonial mansion in what was known as the High Rocks. Driving up through the Argyle Cut, the 80-foot-wide and 120-foot-deep cut hacked out by convicts using only picks and shovels, Malone said, “When they first moved me in from the suburbs. I was posted down here.”

“You want to come back?” said Clements. “You'd look good in uniform. A nice cap with silver braid on it instead of that bloody awful pork-pie you're wearing.”

“I'll stay where I am. One thing about Homicide, the public isn't always on your back.”

Here in the High Rocks one caught a glimpse of what life, for the colonial middle class, had been like. They had built homes that reminded them of Home; from the rear windows of their houses
they
could look down on the ships bringing them their wealth, for most of those who had lived here on the ridge had been shipowners or importers. Devon House, headquarters of Shahriver Credit International, was the largest house in the street, an English Georgian residence given a colonnaded verandah across its front as a concession to the southern sun. A spiked railing fence separated it from the street; a discreet brass plate beside the big oak door was the only hint that business was conducted inside the mansion. It was not a bank that invited small-time depositors or offered charge-free cheque accounts.

Malone and Clements, having taken the receptionist by surprise, were shown into the office of the managing director. The receptionist, a Chinese girl whose English was as affected and precise as that of a bad elocution teacher, said, “We have two police officers here, Mr. Palady. They had no appointment.”

“That's all right, Kim.”

Palady rose from behind his big desk. He was short and thin, black-haired and sallow-skinned, further monotoned in banker's grey. It was impossible to tell his nationality; the roots of his family tree could have stretched from Constantinople to Cathay. He had a soft silky handshake and a voice to match. He would not have had a clue how to run a suburban bank branch, but one had the feeling he could rip off a million or two in added fees from even the smartest entrepreneur. Still, his smile was practised enough to make the two detectives feel not unwelcome, though Malone doubted they would be asked to stay to lunch in the boardroom.

“Mr. Palady, we're investigating the murder of one of your depositors, Mr. Will Rockne.”

“The name doesn't ring a bell, Inspector.”

“He had five and a quarter million dollars deposited here. I don't want to sound a smart-arse, Mr. Palady, but how much do you have to have in your bank before a name rings a bell?”

Palady smiled; he had been offended by the best, so a smart-arse Sydney cop could be suffered. “I am new here, Inspector, only a few weeks in your country. I still have to acquaint myself with all our depositors. At the moment, like all banks, we are concerned only with those clients going bankrupt or reneging on loans.”

“
You have your share of those?” said Clements, making notes.

“Not as many as other banks.” He smiled again, smugly.

“Where did you come from, Mr. Palady?” said Malone. “You said you've just arrived here.”

“From Kuwait. I was there all through the Iraqi occupation. Our board thought I needed a rest cure.”

“Where are your board?”

“In Curaçao, the Netherlands Antilles.”

“Your board's in Curaçao,” said Clements, “but your head office is in Abadan?”

Palady seemed to look with new respect at Clements; up till now he had hardly glanced at the big man, as if treating him as Malone's office boy. “Our board is international. Curaçao is safer at the moment than Abadan.”

“I'm sure you'll feel safe here in Sydney,” said Malone. “Now, could we see someone who would know of Mr. Rockne?”

“Certainly.” Palady spoke into his intercom. “Kim, would you ask Mr. Junor to come in? . . . You say Mr.—Rockne?—was murdered, Inspector?”

“It's in the morning papers.”

“Ah, I never read such items. By the time I have read and understood what your politicians are doing, I have no stamina for matters such as murder and rape. I saw enough of that in Kuwait, performed by experts. Ah, Harold, come in.”

Harold Junor was English, an ex-rugby forward, ruddy-faced and flustered, who looked as if he had just come out of a ruck without the ball; the Chinese scrum-half had told him there were two police breakaways waiting to tackle him, with or without the ball. Told why the police were here he said in a loud voice, “Ghastly! I read about it this morning—I knew it was our Mr. Rockne, it's not a common name. Ghastly! Do you want me to take the gentlemen out to my office, Walter?”

“There's no need, Harold. I should like to acquaint myself with our Mr. Rockne, dead though he may be.”

Malone
could hear echoes in his head; but Palady's phrasing was not literary, as Bezrow's had been, but hinted of the pedantry of someone whose English was not his native tongue. Palady was stroking his grey silk tie, which was no softer than his hands. It struck Malone that he was feline, a description he had never applied to a man before.

“Where did we acquire him, Harold?”

Junor seemed to wince: he was a rugby forward, blunt and head-on, but he would never have
acquired
a client. “I think he was recommended by another client.”

“Would you know who the other client was?” said Malone.

“Oh, I don't think we could tell you that,” said Junor, and Palady nodded appreciatively. “Not without the client's permission.”

“Would you ask him?” said Malone.

Junor looked at Palady, who left him in no-man's-land. “Well, yes, if you insist. Yes, we'll do that.”

“Now.”

“Now?”

“I don't know what merchant banking is like, Mr. Junor, but murder is handled better if you can beat it from going cold on you. The murderer has about thirty-six hours' start on us at the moment and I'd rather he didn't get any further ahead.”

“But why do you need to talk to our client?” said Palady.

“Because, Mr. Palady, the starting point for any murder case is the victim. The next step is who knew him and why.”

“Of course. Elementary. Go ahead, Harold, call your client, see if he wishes his name to be used.”