Dragons at the Party (11 page)

“You’ve got a lead on the terrorist Seville?” said one of the TV reporters, a pretty girl who was dressed as if she had stopped by on her way to a barbecue or a yachting picnic. “Are you hoping for an early arrest?”

“Oh, we’re always hoping for an early arrest,” said Malone and grinned at one of the older press men standing in the background. That man knew the score and, an honest reporter, never expected too much of the police. “We’ll let you know when anything further turns up.”

“Are you getting any co-operation from the Timoris?” said the old reporter.

“Couldn’t ask for more, Greg,” said Malone and knew the reporter didn’t believe him. “I’m going in now to talk to them. A charming couple.”

Madame Timori, with all the charm of a Paluccan cobra, attacked him at once. “Back again, Inspector? We were told the case was to be closed. Poor Mr. Masutir—he would have hated all this fuss over him.”

She wiped a dry eye with her handkerchief. She was imperial, or liked to think of herself as such; exile had gone to her head, which had been newly set and blow-dried. She was still not beautiful, her eyes were too small and cold, even on this hot morning, but there are some men who rarely look above a woman’s shoulders. Malone was not one of them.

“How is the President this morning?”

“Still alive,” said Timori, coming into the drawing-room where they sat; or rather, where his wife sat and Malone stood. He was dressed all in white this morning and looked a little healthier, as if he might have slept well last night. “Have they buried Mr. Masutir yet?”

“I couldn’t say, sir.” Burials were not his province. They obviously were not Timori’s province, either, otherwise he would have known more about the disposal of his aide’s remains. He had brought thirty or forty here with him to Sydney, so maybe one wouldn’t be missed. It was hard to imagine that a
man
could be so callous, but then Malone had had no previous experience of dictators. “Mr. President, we’re still trying to find this man Seville. Do you think the generals back in Palucca would have employed him?”

“Why would they have done that? They have already got rid of me.”

“No, darling,” said Madame Timori. “I think Inspector Malone has a point. There is more to this than a simple
coup d’état
.”

“I never thought
coups d’état
were simple,” said Malone, making a good imitation of her pronunciation; foreign phrases usually clung to his tongue.

“Neither they are,” said Timori, who seemed amused that his wife and Malone did not get on well together. “I have more enemies than I thought. Inspector. Not all of them back in Palucca.”

Malone took a risk: “What do you mean by that, sir?”

Timori smiled at him. “You’d never be a diplomat, would you, Inspector?”

“I’ve been told that several times. But as far as I know, diplomacy never solved a murder case.”

There was a flash of anger in the dark eyes, but it was gone in a moment. It suddenly struck Malone that Timori was too defeated to worry about insolence, even if unintended, from some minor policeman. The man had been accustomed to power for so long that he was naked and afraid without it. Power corrupts . . . Malone had heard it somewhere (Hackton? Acton? Someone had said it once): but it also sustained. He had seen it amongst politicians and amongst criminals. Timori was both and now he had lost what had been his strength.

Then his other strength spoke up; she said, “We can do without your insolence, Inspector. That will be all.”

Malone looked at her, then back at Timori. “All I’m doing, Mr. President, is trying to catch Seville before he makes another attempt on your life.”

“I think I have enough protection,” said Timori. “Your Federal police, your Special Branch . . . Let Mr. Masutir rest in peace.”

“Oh, I’ll do that, sir. It’s his murderer I’m after.”

He
nodded to both of them, turned sharply and went out of the room and the house. As he came out the front door he almost bumped into Sun Lee.

“Mr. Sun,” he said without any lead-up, “who, back in Palucca, would profit by having the President killed?”

Sun gasped softly, as if the question had been a punch. “I don’t know, Inspector. Perhaps a hundred people-some might do it for—” he hesitated, as if to say the word was traitorous “—for revenge.”

“If they’d do it for revenge, why employ an international terrorist? There must be plenty of professional killers in Palucca.”

“Paluccans are gentle people, Inspector,” said Sun. “Or how else would I, a Chinese, have survived amongst them? You don’t know much about Asians, do you?”

Malone realized he had blundered: this was not a good morning. “It could be someone who is not a Paluccan who hired Seville.”

There was just the faintest flicker of Sun’s eyes. “You mean a Chinese, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. Or Americans or Englishmen or Dutch or even Indonesians.”

“Or Australians?” said Sun, smiling. “There were Australians in business in Palucca. Many of them.”

“Really?” Malone had thought there was only one. “How’s your memory? I’d like a list of them.”

“My memory is very bad, Inspector.”

“Give it a try, Mr. Sun. Maybe another shot from Mr. Seville will give it a jolt.”

Oh mate, you’re really giving it to them this morning
. In a bad mood at his own heavy manner, he jerked his head at Russ Clements, who stood in the shade of a tree over by the wall, his jacket off, a button on his shirt undone over his bulging stomach, his tie loosened.

“You look like a slob,” said Malone as he led the way towards the gates.

“This was supposed to be my day off,” said Clements, not yet attuned to Malone’s mood. “I was gunna spend it out at Bondi, floating around down at the southern end and admiring all the bare boobs. Instead . . .”

“
Instead,” said Malone, “we’re going into Redfern.”

“Redfern? Oh Jesus. Why can’t the Abos live beside the sea?”

“They used to, until fellers like you and all the bare-boobed sheilas came along and took it away from them.”

Clements looked at him. “Sorry. I’d forgotten you used to be on their side.”

“I’m not on anyone’s side,” said Malone wearily. Except perhaps that of law and order, but it would sound priggish to say it. He had the Australian fear of being explicit about the verities. One could be demonstrative about a sporting win, could shed tears at winning an Olympic gold medal but never about principles. You were certainly never expected to shed any tears over the Abos, not in the Police Department. Russ Clements was not a racist, just coloured in his views. “Let’s go and find Dallas Pinjarri.”

The demonstrators in the street let them through to their unmarked car. “If I’d known that was a police car,” said one of the demonstrators, a girl dressed for the occasion: old clothes that wouldn’t suffer when she was hauled along the ground to the paddy-wagon, “I’d have let your tyres down.”

“Lie down and I’ll run over you,” said Malone, forgetting about law and order.

They drove back over the Bridge and through the city to Redfern. It was an area on the edge of the uptown business section and had never been anything but working-class. It had always been rough and tough and it had succeeded in frightening off the gentrification that had overtaken other inner city areas. Malone had been born in nearby Erskineville, another tiny district that kept out the middle-class restorers and titivators with their Sydney “iron lace” railings and their bright yellow doors. Malone was sure that his father Con, who lived behind a plain brown door and a plain wooden fence, had single-handedly kept the middle class out of Erskineville.

The advent of the Aborigines had been the final bar to any gentrification of Redfern. The radical chic would march in demonstrations for land rights and other compensations, but they preferred not to live amongst those they supported. Social conscience did not mean one had to have the right address; they had land rights of their own. The Aborigines had lived in Redfern for years; Malone could remember them as a kid, tolerated if not loved, a dark part of the community on which no one ever
wanted
to shine a light. Then twenty years ago Redfern had become a magnet for Aborigines drifting into the city, driven there by intolerance in the country towns and the desire to share in the then boom being whipped up by the whites, the invaders of two hundred years ago. With this return to the original battleground came the radicals, belligerent, vocal and anything but chic.

Malone and Clements drove down a narrow street between terrace houses that looked as mean and suspicious as some of the people who stood lounging in the open front doors. This street was nowhere near as mean and desolate as some of the overseas slums Malone had seen on television: the South Bronx in New York, for instance. But the residents were just as suspicious of outsiders, especially cops.

Though he and Clements were in plainclothes and their car was an ordinary unmarked Holden, Malone knew they had already been identified as police. The local elements might have lost their bush skills and couldn’t track a dingo in a sand-pit, but they could smell a copper at a hundred paces and probably round a corner.

“I’ll stay in the car,” said Clements, “just in case.”

Malone got out, feeling the heat hit him at once, crossed the pavement and knocked on the open door of one of the terrace houses. As he did so half a dozen Aborigines converged on the house, coming from several directions, unhurriedly but with purpose. They were all young men and all had the same sullen belligerence in their dark faces.

“You wanting someone, mister?”

“I’m looking for Jack Rimmer.”

“I’m here,” said a voice from the dim hallway of the house and then Rimmer stepped out on to the narrow strip of veranda that separated the house from the pavement. “Oh, it’s you, Inspector.”

“Can I have a word with you, Jack? Alone?”

Rimmer took his time looking at Malone. He was a full-blood, his face dark as an old saddle, the cheeks smooth on the bones but with deep lines running down from his nose to his mouth. He was in his fifties, but his almost black eyes looked centuries old; he had lived a dozen lives, none of them truly
happy.
He was a government social worker and his work only increased his unhappiness with the world in which he had to live. Sometimes he dreamed of going back to the bush where he had been born, in the channel country of western Queensland, but he knew he would be lost there, too.

Then he nodded and glanced at the six young men on the pavement, “It’s all right, boys. Inspector Malone ain’t the enemy.”

He led Malone into the narrow house. It smelled of bodies and cooked food; it was his private home but it was also a doss-house for Aboriginal kids arriving from the bush. He led the way through into the kitchen, waved Malone to a chair beside the table in the middle of the room and put a kettle on the gas stove. “Tea or coffee?”

“Tea. Jack, I’m looking for Dallas Pinjarri.”

“He been up to something?” He had a soft, gravel-throated voice, as if someone had once tried to strangle him. Which, perhaps, they had.

“Not as far as I know. I just want some information from him.”

“You’ll never get anything outa him. He’s the tightest-mouthed bastard when it comes to talking to youse guys.”

“Not always,” Malone grinned. “He once called me every name he could think of, in twenty-seven tribal dialects.”

Rimmer grinned, gap-toothed. “That’d be him. He’s an angry young bastard. He could make something of himself, but he’s too busy being angry. Waddia you wanna know?”

“Jack, did the militants ever have anything to do with a terrorist named Miguel Seville?”

Rimmer had his back to Malone as he spooned tea into a broken-handled pot. “That the guy mentioned in the papers this morning?”

Malone saw the Sunday papers lying on a battered couch against one wall, front pages up. Seville was more than mentioned: his name was a big headlined shout. “That’s the one. There’s a rumour he was out here a couple of years ago.”

“He coulda been.” Rimmer turned round. “If he was, they didn’t bring him around here.”

“
Jack, I’m not looking to hang anything on you. I don’t care what happened a couple of years ago—if anything happened at all. I’m trying to prevent something happening today or tomorrow.”

“Like what?”

Malone hesitated. “Can I trust you?”

“That’s your risk, Scobie, not mine.” The kettle whistled and he turned his back again.

Malone stared at the thin bent back. He couldn’t blame Rimmer for trying to protect his own. Very far back in the past they had all belonged to a tribe, several tribes: never a nation, but at least they had been owners of this land, of the bush that had become Redfern, become Sydney, become Australia. This weekend was an anniversary for them, but not a celebration. This week all the tribe had to be protected, even the rebels.

Malone said, “We think Seville’s going to have another crack at killing President Timori. We think he’s looking for another gun and he’s got to find someone who’ll supply it.”

Rimmer poured the tea, brought two cups to the table and sat down opposite Malone. “Milk? Sugar? Timori deserves to be bumped off. Best thing could happen.”

“Jack, I understand your sentiment. But passing judgement isn’t my job.”

“Some of the kids outside would disagree with you.” But Rimmer smiled; then he sobered. “Dallas never carries a gun, he’s too smart for that.”

“He could get hold of one.” Malone stirred sugar into his black tea. “Tell me where he is, Jack. I can keep him out of trouble if I can get to him in time. What’s Dallas got to gain if Timori is killed? Palucca’s not going to do anything about land rights for your mob. Tell me where I can find him.”

Rimmer stirred his tea, milk with no sugar, looking at it as if the leaves might flow to the surface and tell him the future before he had drained the cup. “The stupid young buggers—they’ll never succeed, trying it their way. There are millions of you, less than half a million of us . . .” He looked up, his eyes full of pain. “If I put you on to him, will you promise you won’t take him in?”