Five-Ring Circus (2 page)

The killing had taken no more than five or six seconds.

II

“I have no idea who that man was.”

“That wasn't what I asked you, Les. I asked you if you knew who had sent him.”

“No.”

There had been no immediate panic after the shooting. Those people in the banquette next to the last and those at the nearby tables had seemed at first not to have taken in what had happened. Then the bloodied heads slumped forward into the food on the banquette's table had abruptly conjured up horror; one man's hand had convulsed for a moment, like a bird trying to take off, then was still, chopsticks slipping out of it like skeletal fingers. Then suddenly panic had set in and, like the starting-up of a washing-machine, turmoil had spun through the restaurant. Screams and shouts shut out the clatter and chatter; chairs were overturned, even a table was sent crashing.

Malone had snapped at Lisa and the children to stay where they were, jumped to his feet and headed for the kitchen. He paused for a moment at the rear banquette, saw at once that the three Chinese men were dead. The booth was a bloody mess; behind him a woman screamed, as if she had only just realized that the men were indeed dead. He went on into the kitchen.

He was not carrying a gun, this was a
night out.
He was in the kitchen, glimpsed the terrified faces of the staff, before he realized he could do nothing if the gunman was not already gone. A miasma of steam hung above the stoves; a huge wok of noodles hissed like a pit of snakes. Kitchen staff and waiters stared at him as if he, too, might be a gunman.

He flashed his badge. “Police! Where is he?”

For a moment nobody moved; then a chef jerked his head towards the rear and gasped, “Gone! Through back door!”

“You all okay?” He tried to look concerned; but all he was doing was giving the masked man
time
to get away. Dead cops never caught killers. He was not a coward, just a cautious hero. He always insisted that his detectives worked on the same principle.

The kitchen staff looked at each other, then nodded. They were all Asian (Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian: he wouldn't have known the difference till he heard their names) and suddenly they all looked inscrutable. Sweat shone on their bland faces like water on a row of plates. They were going to tell him nothing.

He passed down the narrow aisle between the stoves, pushed open the back door and peered out. He was looking at an alley only wide enough for a car or small truck to back up or down it. A slice of moon hung at one end of the alley, skewwhiff in the sky like a badly hung ornament. Faintly there came the sound of a rock band trying to blow the roof off the nearby Entertainment Centre. A cat snarled somewhere amongst the rubbish bins and cartons along the walls of the alley, but otherwise the narrow lane was empty. He pushed the door wider and stepped out, stood a moment feeling a mixture of relief and frustration. It was a mixture he had experienced many times before.

He took a deep breath, then went back inside to begin work. He saw a phone on the kitchen wall, took off the receiver and dialled 000. “This is Inspector Malone, from Homicide. There's been a shooting in the Golden Gate in Dixon Street—three bodies. Get the necessary down here quick, police as well as ambulances and the pathology guy.”

He hung up, turned back to the staff, most of whom had already removed their aprons. No customers would be doing any more ordering: what was the point of staying? The Golden Gate didn't pay overtime nor give time off in lieu.

“Nobody leaves, understand?” But he was on his own, he knew as soon as his back was turned they would be gone. He looked at the head chef. “You're responsible for them.”

The head chef was a man in his fifties, plump and as tough-shelled as Peking duck. “Yes, sir,” he said, but you could hear the unspoken next words:
You've got to be kidding.

When Malone re-entered the restaurant, the diners were already flowing towards the front door, not panic-stricken now but certainly in a hurry. Those at the front of the departing crowd were Asians; the
Caucasians
amongst the diners had been slow off the mark. It was always the same: Asians never wanted to be around trouble. They were not obstructive, just self-effacing.

“Stop!” he yelled. “Police!”

Those at the rear paused and looked back; it was time enough for him to run between the tables and get close to the front door. He pushed through the crowd, thrusting himself none too gently between people. He reached the door, faced those who remained and held up his badge high above his head. There was a split second when he stepped outside of himself, saw himself being observed by his family. It was the first time they had seen him in action like this and he felt foolishly melodramatic. He lowered the badge.

“Back inside, please! Nobody leaves till I say so.”

There were protests. A stout red-faced man, green napkin still stuck in his waistband like an Irish sporran, his arm round a stout woman in a red dress, demanded to be allowed to leave.

Malone stared him down, allowed those behind the man to share the challenge. “In good time, sir. Now just find a table and sit down. You'll be allowed to go as soon as the police arrive and have talked to you.”

“What about?” demanded the man.

Malone ignored him; nobody in any crowd was ever totally co-operative; it was a police given. The diners he had caught at the front door had reluctantly turned round and, muttering, a woman crying hysterically as if it were she who had lost someone to the killers, were finding tables and chairs and sitting down. One couple sat down at a table for six, saw a bottle of champagne in a bucket, took it out and poured themselves a drink. Two small Chinese children cowered against their mother, while their father stood between them and the ugly sight in the rear banquette.

Across the room Malone saw Lisa and the children still sitting where he had left them in the banquette; there was no sign of Leslie Chung. Malone went across to the banquette, picked up the mobile phone that he had left on his seat and called Russ Clements at home.

“Get down here pronto, Russ. Get John Kagal and Phil Truach. Oh, and Gail Lee—we have some Asians to deal with.”

He
switched off the phone, looked at his family. They were still seated in the banquette, all four of them stiff as statues. Then Lisa said, “Is anyone dead?”

“Three men.” Maureen and Tom flinched; Claire blinked. He was pleased that all three had kept their nerve. “Where's Les Chung?”

“He just up and went,” said Tom. His voice was steady, as if he were trying to prove something to his father. “When you went up there to the front door, he went down the back. I'll take Mum and the girls home—”

“Get a cab—”

“Dad, the car's just around the corner in the parking station—”

“Get a cab, I said! You're not going up to that car park while that gunman is loose. Get a cab, go home!”

“Can we do that?” said Lisa. “You just said that everyone had to stay till the police arrived.”

She and the girls were pale, but composed. Lisa was no stranger to murder at close range, nor were the children; a dead man had once been fished out of the family swimming pool. That murder had been different; Scobie had not been in charge of a crowd scene. She had learned early in their marriage the harness that a policeman's life put on the wife; she often resented it, but only occasionally did she express the resentment. Tonight, she recognized, was not such an occasion. Scobie's job, as witness to a triple murder and not able to apprehend the killer, was going to be difficult enough.

“We'll sit here and be quiet,” she said.

He looked at the four of them for a moment, the crowd behind him forgotten; then he nodded and gently pushed Tom back into the seat. “Righto, I'll get you out of here as soon as someone arrives.”

He went back down to the last banquette, ripped a cloth off a neighbouring table and threw it over the three dead men as they lay with their faces in their meals. Then he went on out to the kitchen. Only Les Chung and the head chef were there.

“Where is everyone?” he asked, but was unsurprised.

“They've all gone home,” said Chung. “They were gone before I got in here. That's why I came
back,
to try and hold them for you. I knew you'd want to talk to them.”

Malone had no trouble hiding his cynical grin; he was in no mood for humour. “Thanks for trying, Les. How many illegals do you employ?”

“None that I know of.” Chung didn't appear to be in the least upset; murder could have been on the menu. “We have all their addresses, Inspector. I'll see you can get in touch with them.”

“If I'm lucky. Come back inside. You too, Mr.—?”

“Smith,” said the Chinese chef. “Wally Smith.”

Another illegal?
“Righto, I'll talk to you both as soon's the police arrive.”

“What about the media? I don't want—”

“I'm afraid they're your problem, Les. But you don't talk to them till you've talked to me, okay?”

The first uniformed police arrived two minutes later; then two ambulances. Fifteen minutes later the Crime Scene team were at work and Clements and the three Homicide detectives had arrived. So had the media, appearing, as Malone thought of them, with the scent of vultures. The uniformed cops were keeping them out in the street, which was now crowded from pavement to pavement. Red and blue roof lights spun, clashing with the street's neon. Two policewomen were running out blue and white Crime Scene tapes, doing the housekeeping.

Malone turned control over to Clements and the senior uniformed officer. Then he got a uniformed man to usher his family out and escort them to the parking station. As they moved towards the front door the stout man stood up and demanded to know why they were being allowed to go.

Lisa stopped opposite him. “Because I'm married to Inspector Malone. It's one of the few privileges of being a policeman's wife—we're allowed to go home early. Satisfied?”

And now Malone was seated opposite Les Chung in a banquette on the opposite side of the room from the murder booth. “Les, I asked you if you knew who had sent the killer.”

“I have no idea.”

“Righto, then. Have you any idea why he would come in here and kill your three friends? You were having dinner with them, weren't you? There were four places at that table.”

“
Yes.”

“You've told me who the dead men are—they're all respectable businessmen. No Triads, nothing like that?”

It was difficult to tell whether Chung smiled or not. “No, nothing like that.”

“I've heard of two of them, seen their names in the paper occasionally. But the third feller—” He looked at his notes. “Mr. Shan? Is he a local?”

Chung looked around the room, moving only his eyes, not his head. His hands were folded on the table in front of him and he looked as calm as if this were no more than a social visit on Malone's part. Then he looked back at Malone, who had waited patiently. “No.”

“From somewhere else? Cabramatta?” Where there was a major Asian community, mainly Vietnamese. “Or Melbourne or Brisbane?”

Then Clements slid his big bulk into the seat beside Malone, dropped a passport on the table. “That's from the guy with his back to the wall, the one in the middle. A Chinese passport in the name of Shan Yang.”

Malone picked up the passport, flipped through its pages, then held it out for Chung to look at. “Shanghai, maybe? Or Beijing?”

Chung's shrug was almost imperceptible. “Okay, from Shanghai.”

Malone looked across the room. The forensic pathologist, a young man who, coincidentally, was Chinese, had looked at the bodies and they were now being wheeled out to the ambulances. Most of the diners had been questioned and allowed to go. Out in the street they would be ambushed by the media reporters: any witness to a triple murder was quotable, even if he made it up. Even as Malone looked, the last diners went out the front door and now there were only police and Les Chung. Wally Smith, the head chef, had been questioned and allowed to go. John Kagal, Phil Truach and Gail Lee were comparing notes, but Malone could tell from their expressions that the notes would not add up to much.

“What was Mr. Shan doing here, Les? You were with him, so you must've had him as your guest.”

“
He was a visitor. They come here every time they are in Sydney.”

“They?”

“Visitors from China. We Chinese have always been gourmets. Before the French even invented the word or knew anything about cooking.” His lips twitched, but one could not really call it a smile.

“Les, let's not play the Inscrutable Orient game. I know you Chinese claim a monopoly on patience, but you'd be surprised how patient we Irish can be. We have to be, to put up with Irish jokes.”

Chung's expression was almost a parody of inscrutability. Then all at once he sat back against the velvet of the booth, as if he had decided the game had gone far enough. “All right. Mr. Shan represented one of our business partners.”

“What in? The restaurant?”

Chung smiled widely this time, shook his head. “Olympic Tower.”

Malone and Clements looked at each other; then Clements said, “You're in
that
?”

Olympic Tower had been a huge hole in the ground for seven or eight years, a casualty of union trouble and the recession of a few years back. It had been a monument that was an embarrassment, a great sunken square in which concrete foundations and the odd steel pier had been a derisive reminder of what had been intended. Then six months ago work had recommenced under a new consortium. Malone had read about it, but he had not taken any notice of the names in the consortium. Over the last thirty years developers had come and gone like carpetbaggers. Some of them had built beautiful additions to the city; others had put up eyesores, taken the money and run. It all came under the heading of progress.