Dragons at the Party (25 page)

“Nothing.” Clements bit his lip. “Have you heard the cricket score?”

“Don’t tell me.”

“We’re a hundred and twenty for six. We’re in dire straits.” He opened the door into the interrogation room.

Pinjarri was there with Jack Rimmer and a bearded young white man whom Malone recognized as Ray Cassell, from the Aboriginal Legal Service. In the past Malone had found him a pain in the neck: like all converts, he was more devout to the faith, more black than any black. He opened up with all guns at once.

“You’ve got no right bringing Dallas in here—he’s done nothing—this is nothing more or less than racism—”

“What tribe are you from?” said Malone, then shook hands with Jack Rimmer. “G’day, Jack.
Nice
of you to come. Hello, Dallas.”

Pinjarri just grunted, looked at Cassell to provide the ammunition. The lawyer obliged: “I repeat, you have no right to bring him in—”

“Mr. Cassell,” said Malone patiently, “I’m trying to keep Dallas out of trouble, not pour it all over him. Ask Jack here. Dallas is getting himself into deeper crap than he’s ever been in—he just doesn’t know what’s happening—”

“That’s fucking right,” said Pinjarri. “I don’t fucking know what’s fucking happening.”

Jack Rimmer said quietly in his gravelly voice, “Tell us about it, Inspector.”

Malone was glad of the older man’s presence; he knew he would have got nowhere if he had had to deal with the two younger men alone. “This bloke Seville, the terrorist—”

“So called,” said Cassell.

“Okay, this
alleged
terrorist is trying to kill President Timori—”

“How do you know?” said Cassell. “Or is this another alleged offence?”

Malone looked at Rimmer. “Why don’t you take him outside and point the bone at him, Jack?”

Rimmer grinned. “Go on, Scobie. Shut up for a while, Ray.”

Malone continued: “I spent twenty minutes with Seville this morning, at gun point. He’s going to kill Timori, make no mistake about it. He has a hand-piece, two in fact—mine’s one of them,” he admitted, and could have torn Cassell’s beard out by the roots when the latter smiled. “We don’t think he’ll want to use those to kill Timori—he’ll want to do it from a distance, with a high-powered rifle. We think Dallas has been trying to supply him with that rifle. If he has already done so, or if he does so when we let him go, he’s going to go down the gurgler.” He looked straight at Pinjarri. “You’ll never get out of jail, Dallas. This is political. They’ll throw the book at you.”

“You want to help him?” said Rimmer.

“I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to him if I didn’t.” Malone turned back to Pinjarri. “Dallas, we know you had a gun to give him. He told me that this morning.” A little lying was part of the tools of his trade. Cassell, like a good lawyer, made a scoffing noise, but Malone took no notice of him. “Tell us
where
the gun is and you’re free. Otherwise . . .”

“Don’t say anything, Dallas,” said Cassell. “You’re free as it is.”

Malone looked at Rimmer. “What’s your advice to him?”

Rimmer looked like a man who was resigned to his advice being ignored, especially by the young. Finally he said, “I think you better tell him, Dallas. You go up before the beak again, you’re gunna be a three-time loser. You’ll cop the maximum.”

Pinjarri sat slumped in his chair, sullen as a young buffalo. He was picking at a fingernail, stopping every now and then to open and shut his hand, as if he were suffering from cramp. Malone recognized the nerves that were possessing the young Aborigine and he waited, knowing it was only a matter of time.

“Don’t trust ‘em,” said Cassell.

Clements looked ready to hit the young lawyer, but Malone glanced at him and shook his head. Cassell was unimportant. Pinjarri was going to make his own decision.

He shifted restlessly in his chair, then abruptly sat up. “Okay, I’ll talk if you don’t take nothing down, okay?”

Malone nodded to Clements, who reluctantly put away his notebook. “Go ahead, Dallas. Has he got the gun yet?”

“No. He come to me and offered me five thousand bucks to get him a rifle and a „scope. I took it to him last night, but youse blokes turned up before I could give it to him—I mean, at Central. I ain’t seen him since.”

“Where is it? At your place in Redfern?”

“It’s in Redfern, but it ain’t at my place. Someone is looking after it for me. You won’t bust them, will you?”

“No. If we get the gun, nobody’s going to be busted. What sort of gun is it?”

“A Sako .270.”

Malone looked at Clements, the gun expert. The latter said, “It would do the job. The „roo
shooters
use it a lot. If he could get within three hundred metres, Timori would be a dead „roo.”

“Or a dead man. You ever been an accessory to a murder before, Dallas?”

“Christ, no! You told me there’d be no fucking bust—”

“There won’t be. Righto, let’s go and pick up the gun.”

“I’m coming, too,” said Cassell, but was no longer as belligerent.

“Sure,” said Malone. “You got your own transport? We never give lawyers a lift in police vehicles. It’s just a prejudice on our part.”

“What about me?” said Rimmer, grinning.

“Social workers are just as bad, Jack. But we’ll make an exception for you.”

They went downstairs and got into the police car, with Clements behind the wheel, Rimmer beside him and Malone and Pinjarri in the back seat. They drove out of the cool of the garage into the furnace heat of the day and Clements switched on the air-conditioning. “Do you Abos feel the heat?”

“All the time,” said Rimmer, grinning again. “You guys never let up on us.”

Pinjarri suddenly laughed, a surprisingly healthy sound; then the two white men joined in. The good mood lasted till they turned into the narrow street in Redfern where Pinjarri directed them. The street was deserted, everyone having retreated from the heat, but as soon as the unmarked police car entered the street Aborigines appeared at the front doors of the shabby terrace houses.

“How do you know we’re coming?” said Clements.

Rimmer tapped his nose. “There’s a certain smell. No offence. It’s like back home in the mulga where I come from. We could always smell the wild donkeys and the wild camels and the buffalo.”

“You mean we’re just bloody wildlife down here?”

Rimmer grinned once more. “No offence.” Then he noticed where they had pulled up. He looked back at Pinjarri, no longer grinning. “Here? You left it with young Albert?”

“Not just with him,” said Pinjarri sheepishly.

“Jesus,” said Rimmer despairingly, looking out at the house, shabbier than the rest, its windows blocked with a sheet of galvanized iron, its front door black from fire. Whoever lives in there, thought
Malone,
is at the bottom of the heap.

A young boy stood in the open doorway staring out at the police car. His blunt-featured face was a mixture of fear and belligerence; it was difficult to know whether he was going to come out fighting or flee for his life. He peered into the car, saw Pinjarri and suddenly looked as if he might weep.

“Go easy with the lad, Scobie,” said Rimmer. “This kid’s been in trouble since he was nine years old. His old lady’s a wino and Christ knows where his dadda is. I thought I had him straightened out—” He looked back at Pinjarri. “I dunno why I bother with you, Dallas.”

Pinjarri said nothing. Then Malone got out of the car and motioned for the young Aborigine to follow him. As they did so, Cassell pulled in behind the police car in a shabby, gasping Toyota. He got out, but then stood irresolute in the middle of the pavement, saying nothing. By now a dozen Aborigines had congregated, muttering amongst themselves and one or two of them offering to support Pinjarri.

“Tell ‘em there’s no trouble,” said Malone. “It’s just business between you and me.”

Pinjarri passed the message on. Then, as if wanting to get everything over and done with, he abruptly pushed the boy Albert ahead of him and went into the house. Malone motioned to Clements and Rimmer to remain in the police car. After a moment’s hesitation and a challenging look from Malone, Cassell decided to stay in the street.

The house stank, a mixture of smells that Malone didn’t care to analyse. A woman’s drunken voice shouted from upstairs, but no one took any notice of her. Pinjarri led the way out to the kitchen at the rear; even he looked with disgust at the condition of it. Dirty pots and pans were in the sink, on the blackened stove, even on the floor; food was caked in them like mud. The remains of what looked like several meals were on the table, which was covered with stained and torn newspapers. Empty wine flagons were piled in a corner like discarded fishing lamps and a mangy mongrel dog was curled up in a filthy piece of sacking. The floor and the walls were dirty and grease-marked; the ceiling looked just as bad. There was a smell that made Malone, a fastidiously clean man, want to retch. Jesus Christ, he thought, Happy Australia Day! He wouldn’t describe this place to Lisa tonight. This was a house of hopeless, busted lives and he knew there was nothing he or any other police officer could do about it.

“
Where’s the gun, Albert?” said Pinjarri. The boy just looked at him, as if bewildered by this invasion, and Pinjarri went on, “It’s okay, mate Nothing’s gunna happen. I’m handing over the gun to the Inspector here. Where is it?”

“Geez, Dallas—” The boy looked ready to run. He backed up against half a dozen banners, rolled tightly round their poles, standing against a wall. The calico of the banners looked new: Malone guessed they were to be used tomorrow in some demonstration. “I didn’t know—he rung up—we was at the other place, you know—”

There would be no phone in this house, Malone knew; he doubted if even the electricity was still connected. “What other place?”

“No,” said Pinjarri, “leave ‘em out of it. Where’s the gun, Albie?”

The boy gulped. “I give it to him this morning. Geez, Dallas, I thought I was doing the right thing, you know? Here, here’s the cash and the cheques—”

Pinjarri looked at Malone; he couldn’t disguise the triumph in his dark eyes, but Malone chose to ignore it. Standing here in the midst of all this defeat and degradation, he couldn’t bring himself to resent the Aborigine’s exultation, silent as it was. Or perhaps, he thought with horror, I’m glad Seville has the means of getting rid of Timori. This case was upsetting all his sense of values. Pretty soon they would smell like this house.

“How much did he pay you?” he said to the boy.

“A thousand bucks.” Albert held out the fifty-dollar notes and the traveller’s cheques. His hand was shaking, as if so much money, more than he had ever held in his short life, was too much for it.

Malone looked at the signature on the cheques: M. Gideon. “You sure it was him? A blond man with steel-rimmed glasses, a bit shorter than me?”

“That was how he looked the other night when I seen him, last Sat’day night. But he didn’t look like that this morning.”

“How did he look?”

“He had dark-brown hair, about your colour.”

“
A dye job or a wig?”

“I dunno. A dye job, I think.”

“How’d you recognize him?”

“I didn’t, at first. It was only his walk—he walks like a sailor. You know, he rolls a bit.” He wobbled his shoulders up and down.

“Did he say anything to you? Where he was going, anything like that?” He didn’t expect a professional like Seville would say a word about where he was going or what he intended to do, but the questions had to be asked. He had made mistakes in the past by not asking the obvious.

“Nah, nothing. He just give me the money, took the bag and buzzed off.”

Malone looked at Pinjarri. “You said five thousand? When’s he going to pay you the rest?”

“He said he’d send a bank draft.”

“Where from?”

“I dunno. I just trusted him—I had to. He said he didn’t have the ready cash.”

That meant Seville could be running short of money. Malone handed the money and the cheques to Pinjarri, who looked at them in surprise.

“I don’t think you’ll ever get the bank draft, Dallas. We’ll have him locked up before then.”

Pinjarri was looking at the money in the same way the boy had, as if he didn’t believe it was real. But for a different reason. “You mean we can keep this? You’re not gunna confiscate it?”

“I never even saw it, Dallas. Just don’t use it to blow up us honkies. Give it to Jack Rimmer and see if he can do something about things like this.” He looked around the kitchen. The money might never even get to Jack Rimmer, but that was a gamble Malone was taking. He already had Rimmer’s goodwill; now he was trying to buy Pinjarri’s. It was a bribe, just like the one Delvina had offered him; but he hoped it would do more good. The irony was that he was using a terrorist’s money. “Stay out of trouble, both of you.”

As he moved out of the kitchen he stopped by the rolled-up banners and unrolled one a few feet. Big letters said: GIVE US . . . He unrolled it no further. “When’s the demo?”

“
Tomorrow,” said Pinjarri.

“Nobody will be paying any attention, not tomorrow. But good luck.”

He went down the hallway and out of the house. The mongrel, listlessly raising itself from its bed, barked after him; the whining wino’s voice shouted an obscenity from upstairs. He stepped out into the street, glad of the hot dry air that scoured the smell of the house from his nostrils.

“You’re not busting them?” said Cassell.

“I told you there wasn’t going to be one. You should trust us coppers more.”

Rimmer got out of the police car as Malone opened the door. “Everything all right?”

“Yes, Jack. Go in and see Dallas and that kid. Try and get the kid out of that house.”

“I told you, I been trying since he was nine years old. He won’t leave it till his mumma drinks herself to death. You’ll never understand us, Scobie.”

“You’re wrong, Jack. I do understand. I just can’t do a bloody thing about it. Hooroo.” He got into the car and slammed the door. “Get me out of here, Russ, before I start swearing.”

III

To the north, west and south of the city the sky was brown with smoke. The bushfires had been raging all day and all thoughts of celebration had been burnt out in the fringe suburbs. The professional and the volunteer firefighters, who had been told to stand by in case the celebration fireworks got out of hand, were now fighting something fiercer and more horrifying. Almost every year they faced this hazard, a seasonal peril of a country where the bush could turn tinder-dry almost in a week; it had been so since time immemorial, long before the white man with his carelessness and the fire-bug with his insanity had come to this great brown continent. This year, like nature’s protest at the anniversary of its rape, the fires were the worst in living memory.