Babylon South (33 page)

When Clements had first proposed coming here this evening to arrest Justine, Malone had demurred. His first reaction had been: what would John Leeds think of such a stunt? But his demurral had been half-hearted; he had to agree with Clements that all the evidence pointed to Justine's having murdered Emma. They had gone to The Wharf apartment as soon as the coroner's inquest was finished, but Justine had not been there. Nor had she been with her mother and grandmother at Mosman, nor at her office. It was Andy Graham, who evidently read the social columns, who had told them that Justine would be with her mother at tonight's opening of the Art Gallery.

“Then we'll grab her there,” said Clements, and Graham had nodded in vigorous agreement. “Maybe even the art critics will do a piece on us.”

It was no laughing matter, but Malone had somehow managed a laugh to match those of the other two. In the end he had reluctantly agreed to the timing of the arrest.

Only
Clements had attended the coroner's inquest. It had been agreed that no more than factual and physical evidence of Emma's murder should be tendered, that nothing linking Justine to the murder should be mentioned. Malone, hoping against pessimism that something else would turn up in the meantime, had insisted on the delay; to his surprise, Clements had agreed. Only later had he realized that Clements did not want the coroner to steal his thunder. Clements, the least thunderous of men, suddenly wanted to shake the rich to their foundations.

Now, in the unmarked police car, Malone ate the last of his Mars bar, screwed up the wrapper and threw it out of the window. A park ranger, on duty for the evening, walked across the road and picked up the wrapper.

“We have to clean up this park after you people mess it up with your litter.” He tossed the wrapper in the open window. “Now move on before I give you a ticket.”

Malone looked at Clements. “Isn't that some sort of sign? An omen?”

Clements leaned across Malone and looked at the park ranger, a small bespectacled man who could toss a candy wrapper but never a 100-kilo cop. “Jack, we are police. If you toss any more of your litter in our car, I'll arrest you for littering, loitering with intent, soliciting, obscene language and pissing your pants in a public place.”

“He means it, I think,” Malone told the ranger.

The little man grinned. “Would you like to gimme back my wrapper? Sorry, sport. I think I'm cranky because of all them silvertails going in there. Especially that bastard Phil Norval. They shouldn't put Labour voters on a duty like this. You're not a fan of them silvertails, are you?”

“He's a Commo,” said Malone.

“Good on you, comrade,” said the ranger. “Chuck out as much litter as you like.”

He went away and Clements said, “You see? That bloke and all his mates, 99 per cent of the population, will cheer like buggery when they read about us pinching Justine at tonight's do. The
Mirror's
circulation will go up 50 per cent.”

III

Chilla Dural was also watching the Art Gallery. He had rented a small Datsun and for the past week had been following Venetia's grey Bentley. At times it had not been easy; the Springfellow chauffeur had Grand Prix dreams. But whenever Dural had lost the Bentley, he had gone back to Mosman, parked the Datsun in a nearby street and gone down to continue his surveillance of the big house at the end of Springfellow Avenue. He had established that, except for the chauffeur, Lady Springfellow had no other security riding with her. The chauffeur, for all his mania for speed, looked as if he would be no trouble; he was a weed who barely filled the grey uniform he always wore. Snatching Venetia Springfellow, once he had finally decided on where and when, would not be difficult.

He had decided that tonight was the night, though here at the Art Gallery was not the place. She had arrived here with the old duck who was her mother; they would presumably be going home together. He would follow them home to Mosman and pull in behind the Bentley, get out and present the Walther to the head of the chauffeur as he waited for the security guard to open the front gates. The danger was that the guard might open fire, but that was unlikely if the Walther was held against the chauffeur's head. He would order Venetia to get out of the Bentley and into his own car; he would utter threats about not calling the police and then drive off with his kidnap victim. With a bit of luck the police should pick him up within ten minutes at the outside and from there on it would be Parramatta, here I come.

He was busting for a leak and he stepped behind a tree to relieve himself. “You can't do that,” said the park ranger, coming round from the other side of the tree. “It kills the grass.”

“If that's all it kills,” said Dural, wondering for a moment if he should forget the kidnapping and just king-hit the ranger; but that bloody do-gooder, Les Glizzard, would find excuses for him, “it won't be too bad. I'm not wanking, sport, just having a leak.”

“Are you one of the drivers?”

“Yeah. I'm driving one of the Rolls-Royces.” Dural shook himself and did up his fly.

“You should of pissed on the Rolls-Royce,” said the park ranger.

He
wandered off, looking for more class warfare, and Dural went back to watching the front steps of the Art Gallery. Then he saw his target come out into the floodlights.

IV

Venetia was wishing that Philip Norval had not been invited to this evening's reception. She knew, since the Art Gallery board had confided in her, it had been an invitation difficult to withhold; when the Canberra minders let it be known that the PM would be pleased to launch the American collection, the two or three other nominees had been swept off the table. A television personality for ten years and a politician for the same length of time, Philip Norval had forgotten, if he had ever known, what modesty was; given a choice of sunlight or limelight as health insurance, he would have taken the limelight. That he knew nothing about art was no handicap; he knew nothing about most things. The Lucky Country survived despite him.

He was only one of a dozen of Venetia's lovers here tonight. At the moment Norval entered, she was talking to one of her ex-lovers, John Leeds. With him was his wife Rosemary, whom she had never previously met.

“There's the Prime Minister.”

Rosemary Leeds was a pretty woman, as neat as her husband in appearance and speech. Venetia, never having passed through suburbia on her way from Cobar to stardom, had developed a snobbery towards things suburban; in her mind's eye she saw the Leeds home, the cushions fluffed up and arranged like fancy cakes in a shop window, the magazines laid out with geometrical precision on the coffee table, the bed-clothes turned back each night with set-square sharpness for mathematical lovemaking. She wondered if John Leeds had married Rosemary out of a need for safety. He had confessed once that he had never felt safe with herself.

“I hear you know him well.” Rosemary turned her neat, innocent face towards Venetia.

Venetia looked at her, saw all of a sudden that the big brown eyes were not innocent at all. I must be losing my grip, she thought; she had always been able to size up other women as quickly as she
did
men. “Only at a political level.”

“There isn't much to know at that level, is there? I believe the real Dead Centre of Australia is between his ears.”

“Steady there,” said John Leeds, as if he were calling a parade of cadets to order.

“He can't fire you, sweetheart,” said Rosemary, patting his arm proprietorially. “You're State, not Federal. I can't see what women see in him, can you, Venetia?”

“He's handsome and he has that marvellous voice.” What had
she
seen in him? “That's all some women look for. And, of course, he has power.”

“I suppose power turns some women on.” She seemed to be losing her neatness by the moment; the preciseness had gone out of her voice. She sipped her champagne. “I suppose powerful
women
turn some
men
on. Do you find that happens?”

Venetia had the distinct feeling that she and Rosemary were alone in the Art Gallery, the empty halls echoing around them. Suddenly she felt sorry for John and wanted to protect him. “No, not at all. Men are frightened of powerful women. I suppose I'm looked upon as having power of a sort, so I should know. You'd be surprised how men shy away from me.”

“You mean there are lonely beds at the top?”

Venetia wondered if Rosemary was always as sharp-tongued as this or whether she was having too much champagne. Australian and Californian champagne were being served in honour of the occasion; the French Ambassador was drinking Perrier water out of patriotism and a misplaced regard for his palate. A group of yuppies who, for at least a year, had drunk nothing but Bollinger, the only French name they could pronounce correctly, were practising for penury and sipping local champagne while dropping witticisms about “Aboriginal piss.” Rosemary, no connoisseur, would-be or real, drained her glass with a flourish, no longer pretending to be neat or even polite.

“You'd better run along, Venetia. We can't monopolize our hostess, not when the PM is making eyes at you. Nice meeting you.”

Venetia glanced at John Leeds, who had turned to stone. Which was better than jelly, the
natural
condition for men caught in feminine crossfire, especially unexpected crossfire, as this had been. As she left them, he said something to Rosemary, who tossed her head, displacing a curl and further cracking the neat image.

Philip Norval,
sans
wife, was waiting for her. “Venetia, my dear, you look stunning, as usual. Like a goddess.”

The goddess's mother appeared. No deity herself, least of all Minerva, the Goddess of Tact, she said, “You already have her vote, Phil. Why don't you campaign for mine?”

Norval gave her the famous smile: he was all men to all women, so long as they were old enough to vote. “Alice, you know how much I love older women. But what would the under-twenty-ones say? We'll have to meet in secret.”

“I'll get in touch with your minders,” said Alice, winking at him and floating off. She walked well and had bequeathed her walk to her daughter and granddaughter.

Norval looked after her. “What a pleasure it is to meet an honest woman.”

“Your wife is honest,” said Venetia honestly.

Norval wrinkled the famous classical nose. “Anita wanted to come up with me, but I persuaded her to stay at home at The Lodge. I was hoping you and I might—?”

“Not tonight, Phil. I've got too much on my mind. It's been a bad couple of months.” She had been with him the night Emma had been murdered. She decided, out of malice, to frighten him. “I may need you as a witness if and when they find Emma's murderer.”

The famous tan turned yellow. “For God's sake! You mean last time we—? You can't do that to me, love. It'd be—be—”

“Treason?”

“Yes. No. You know what I mean.” He was flustered, caught without his teleprompter. He saw Hans Vanderberg, the State Premier, his arch enemy, bearing down on them, and he greeted him with relief, almost embracing him. “Hans, you old bastard, how are you? Great to see you!”

Hans Vanderberg, The Dutchman to political columnists, looked exaggeratedly over his
shoulder.
“Who's behind me? Ronald Reagan? Mrs. Thatcher? Oh, you're talking to me? What have I done now, Phil?”

“No politics tonight, Hans, please. We're on neutral territory.”

“No, we're not,” said the Premier, never one to concede a point. “This is the
State
Art Gallery. I dunno why Venetia here didn't ask me to open this collection.”

“I didn't know you were an art lover,” said Venetia.

The old man grinned his evil grin. He was the most powerful politician in the whole country, though he could have been mistaken for a pensioner down on his luck; he always looked as if he dressed in the dark and no tailor in town ever claimed credit for dressing him. He had, however, stripped better-dressed men naked in Parliament, including the Zegna-suited man beside him, and on the hustings nobody any longer mistook The Dutchman for anything but what he was, a political cannibal.

“Venetia love, the only American artist I know is Norman Rockwell—I used to get the
Saturday Evening Post
when I was young. But that still puts me one up on Phil here. The only one he knows is Walt Disney.”

The two men smiled at each other; they looked like two sharks about to go at each other's throat. Norval said, “I'll miss you when you retire, Hans. Or get booted out by the voters.”

“I've decided to see out the century,” said the Premier. “Even Venetia has asked me to stay on.”

He grinned at them again and walked on, a shark cruising in waters where even the conservative voters clung to him like pilot fish. He turned no women on, nor would he have wanted to, but he exuded power. He came up to Justine and Alice Magee.

“Evening, ladies. You still voting for me, Alice? You gunna vote for me next time, Justine?” He grinned once more: it was a joke. He knew as well as anyone that one didn't win votes at functions like this. Votes came out of pockets, not out of champagne glasses. Then he sobered, said sincerely, “You Springfellow ladies have had a bad trot lately. You got another funeral tomorrow, right?”

“My aunt's.” Justine felt a fascination for this ugly old man, a love-hate feeling that younger men never aroused in her. She was just old enough to appreciate what power meant.

“
How are the coppers treating you?” Besides being Premier he was also the Police Minister.

“You could call „em off, Hans,” said Alice Magee. “They keep bothering us.”

“They've got to do their job, Alice. But if they worry you too much, gimme the word. I'll speak to John Leeds. Who's worrying you in particular?”