Babylon South (5 page)

He held her hand, lifting it and kissing it. In public he was held back by the stiffness with affection he had inherited from his mother and father, but in private he was full of affectionate gestures towards Lisa and the children. In his heart he knew he was making up for the lack of affection shown by his parents towards him, their one and only. They loved him, he knew that, but they were both too awkward to express it. He never wanted Lisa or the children to say that about him.

Lisa stroked his cheek, not needing to say anything. She was close to forty, but had kept her looks: regular features, faintly tanned skin, blonde hair worn long this year and pulled back in a chignon, blue eyes that could be both shrewd and sexy, and a full figure that still excited him. She could hold the world at bay; but, he hoped, never him.

“The stock market's still going up,” he said, but, having no money invested, it meant nothing to either of them. “Your father must . . . Ah, I wondered if they were going to mention it.”

Richard Morecroft, the ABC news announcer, was saying, “The skeleton of a man was found today in the bush near Blackheath. Police say it could be that of Sir Walter Springfellow, Director-General of ASIO, who disappeared in March l966 . . .”

“Nothing about his being murdered,” said Lisa.

“We're holding back on that as far as the press goes—we're not sure of anything. We—
hold it
!” He held up a hand.

Morecroft picked up a sheet of paper that had been thrust into his hand from off-camera. “A late piece of news has just come to hand. Charles (Chilla) Dural was today released from Parramatta Gaol, where he had been serving a life sentence for murder. A one-time notorious criminal, Dural was the last
man
sentenced by Sir Walter Springfellow before he left the Bench to become head of ASIO. Police would make no comment on the ironic coincidence of the two events occurring on the same day . . .”

“Bugger!” said Malone and switched off the set.

“What's the matter? It's just as they said, a coincidence—”

“It'll give the media another handle to hang on to. They've got enough as it is—Springfellow turning up as a skeleton, his missus now a tycoon and up to her neck in a family takeover—”

“It's supposed to be the daughter who's trying to take over the family firm.” Lisa read everything in the daily newspaper but the sports pages; she knew when BHP or News Ltd went up or down, what knives were being sharpened in politics, but she knew nothing of Pat Cash's form or what horse was fancied for the Melbourne Cup. Though not mercenary, she had a Dutch respect for money and the making of it. “Justine Springfellow is only trying to emulate her mother. Two tycoons in the family are better than one.”

He looked at her. “Who said that?”

“Someone in Perth.” Where tycoons bred like credit-rated rabbits.

“Don't believe what you read about the daughter. I met her today. She'd do everything her mother told her.”

Lisa had picked up the financial pages of the
Herald,
knew exactly where to turn to. “Springfellow Corporation was at its highest price ever yesterday. What's this prisoner Dural like?” Lately she had developed a talent for
non-sequiturs,
and Malone, being a man, had wondered if she was at the beginning of her menopause. Which thought was a male
non-sequitur.

“I haven't a clue. He was before my time. I've heard of him—I think he killed a cove in prison about ten years ago. But he's a stranger to me.
” And I hope he stays that way.

Maureen came into the living-room, “In this house a kid's work is never done. None of my friends have to do the washing-up.”

“Lucky them,” said Lisa. “Sunday you can do the washing and ironing. That will give me Monday free.”

Malone
grinned, loving the dry banter that went on in his family. He wondered what sort of banter went on among the silvertail Springfellows. Though perhaps tonight there would be nothing like that, not with the bones of a long-dead husband and father lying between them.

2

I

“EXPLAIN TO
me what's happening,” said Malone. “You're the stock market expert.”

Next morning they were driving across the Harbour Bridge towards Kirribilli. Malone had called ASIO and they, reluctantly, it seemed to him, had invited him over. Intelligence organizations are always suspicious of police forces, who never seem to give mind to the bigger issues. Malone had read
Gorky Park
and knew how Inspector Arkady Renko had felt. But ASIO was no KGB: it could not afford to be on its shoe-string budget. Pinchpenny defence against any enemy, criminal or foreign, was a tenet of faith with all Australian governments.

“Well,” said Clements, who up till recently had been an expert only on horses, jockeys, trainers and crims, “our Lady Springfellow owns her own company, Cobar Corporation—it's a small family company, hers and her daughter's. But now she's trying to buy out the Springfellow family interests in the holding corporation which owns the main holdings in the merchant bank and the stockbroking firm. The stockbrokers, they're the oldest brokers in Australia, own 49 per cent of the bank—the rest is owned by the public. She herself, or anyway Cobar, owns 18 per cent of the stockbrokers—she bought that when they went public a coupla years ago. The rest is owned 15 per cent by the Springfellow family, Sir Walter's brother and sister, and the rest by institutions and the public.”

Malone shook his head in wonder. “Does Corporate Affairs know about you? They might offer you a job.”

“When you've tried to keep track of the form of horses and jockeys, the stock exchange is kids' stuff. You wanna know more about Lady Springfellow? Well, she applied to inherit her husband's estate three years after he disappeared. Her sister-in-law Emma tried to fight it but got nowhere. The irony of it
was
that she got her husband's old law firm to prepare the affidavits.”

“You've done your homework,” Malone said appreciatively. He was no longer surprised at the acumen and thoroughness of his partner, whom so many, at first acquaintance, took for an amiable oaf.

“This one interests me. I like to see what happens when money's involved. It's the punter in me . . . When she inherited the estate, she just took off. She used that as a springboard—no pun—” he gave his slow grin “—to start buying everything else she now owns. The radio stations, the country and suburban newspapers, part of a diamond mine, all of a gold mine. And now she owns the Channel 15 network.”

“What about the bank?”

“Springfellow and Co. started that six years ago—they were one of the few who didn't go overseas for a partner. It's done okay, but not as well as it might. A London bank and a New York one have been eyeing it. The daughter claims she's moving in to make sure it remains an Australian bank. A 21-year-old banker and a girl at that.” A true punter, he was a misogynist: he rarely backed mares.

“What do you reckon?”

“I reckon it's just greed, but I'm old-fashioned. Greed is now an acceptable thing. I'm falling for it myself.”

“So Venetia gained a whole lot when her old man disappeared?”

“I guess so. All I'm telling you is gossip and what I've read in the
Financial Review.”

“The what? Have you given up on
Best Bets?
Have you sold all your shares?”

“I've put „em on the market today. I'm ashamed of how much I'm gunna make. When I put the cheque in the bank, the tellers are gunna start ringing Evan Whitton at the
Herald.”
Whitton was a journalist who could turn over a spadeful of corruption with a VDU key.

They turned off the Bridge approach and circled round on to the end of the tiny Kirribilli peninsula. This was an area of tall apartment buildings bum-to-cheek with squat old houses, some middle-class grand, some just workmen's stone cottages. The population was a mix of incomes and ages, with no sleaze and mostly respectability. It also harboured the Sydney residences of the Prime Minister and the Governor-General, side by side, though the G-G's was the larger and more imposing, as if to remind the
politician
next door that
its
occupant was not dependent on the whim of the voters.

ASIO lived in a converted mansion on the waterfront: one had to look through barred windows, but the KGB would have given away half its secrets for such a vista. Malone and Clements were shown into the office of the chief executive, a room with a view that must have driven the Director-General, now headquartered in Canberra, subversive with envy.

Guy Fortague, the Sydney Regional-Director, was big, rugged and all smiles as if making an all-out effort to prove that spy chiefs were not really spooky. There's nothing to be frightened of, his smile assured them; a thought that had not occurred to either Malone or Clements. But he was certainly making their reception easier than they had expected.

“We were surprised when you mentioned murder to us.” But Malone suspected he was not the sort of man to be surprised by anything; if he were, he would not be in this job. “We did think of it originally, of course.”

“Why did you change your minds?” said Malone.

“Well, we didn't exactly change our minds.” Fortague retreated a little; he was no longer smiling. “But we had no evidence, just suspicions.”

Malone thought that one of the bases for counter-espionage would have been suspicion; but he didn't say so. “How was security in those days? I mean national security.”

Fortague shrugged. “We were busy—I'd just joined the organization. The anti-Vietnam business was just beginning to warm up. But we never expected murder or terrorism or anything like that, not from those here in Australia. Their violence never seemed to extend beyond demonstrations on campus and in the streets.”

“What about outsiders? Foreign agents?”

Fortague smiled. “Foreign agents don't kill the opposition's boss—it's one of the unwritten rules in our game. Just like in yours. How many police commissioners have been murdered by a criminal, a professional one?”

Malone nodded, agreeing with the etiquette. “Our file on him is missing. Has been for twenty-
odd
years.”

“Really?” Fortague's tone implied that he wasn't surprised; anything might go missing in the NSW Police Force.

Malone nodded at the thin file on the desk in front of Fortague. “Is that your file on him? It's pretty slim, isn't it?”

All that Fortague said was, “I'm afraid I can't show it to you.”

Behind that smile, Malone thought, there's only just so much co-operation. They don't want any coppers on their turf. “Well, maybe you can tell me one or two things that might be in it?”

“I don't think so,” said Fortague and smiled again.

Malone hesitated, wondering where to go next. He decided to lay his cards on the table, a hand that was almost blank. “Righto, I'll tell you what we've found. A skeleton. No weapon. No shoes, which might have been the one item of clothing that would have survived the weather. All that was left, the only things to identify the body, were the signet ring and the briefcase. But it was empty.”

Fortague tapped his file without opening it. “I'll add those details later.”

“Righto, now the 64,000-dollar question—what was in the briefcase?”

Fortague took his time, the smile now gone from his big rugged face. He looked faintly familiar and Malone suddenly remembered who he was, the odd name striking a bell. He had been one of the young university recruits who had sat in on this case at its beginning. He was now an old hand at intelligence, infected by the profession's endemic suspicion of outsiders, especially other investigators.

At last he said, “I can't tell you the specifics of what was in the briefcase—that's classified. We know what he took home with him the previous Friday. It was all labelled Top Secret.”

“He took stuff like that home with him?”

“He was an independent-minded man.” Meaning: I would never do such a thing myself. “But I don't mean to imply he was careless—nothing like that at all. He had his own way of working.”

“What sort of man was he?”

“Brilliant. A bit hard to get to know, but brilliant. He spoke French and German fluently and
when
he came to us started learning Chinese and Indonesian.”

“What were his relations with the people he worked with in Melbourne?”

Fortague hesitated a moment, “I'll tell you something off the record. He was often impatient with the ex-military types who were then running our organization.”

Malone smiled, trying to make himself an ally. “Oh, I remember them. You probably don't remember, but you and I met here in this office twenty-one years ago. We were both rookies.”

Fortague suddenly smiled again. “Of course! Christ—and we've both survived!” He looked at Clements. “Are you one of the old hands, too, Sergeant?”

Clements nodded. “I thought the scars showed.”

All at once the atmosphere had changed. Fortague looked at his watch, then out of the window at a submarine, sinister as a black shark, gliding by from the base round the point. “The sun's well over the yard-arm on that sub. What's your choice?”

“I think you'd better make it a beer,” said Malone. “We don't want to be picked up by the booze bus.”

“I've had that happen to me twice,” said Clements, “It's been bloody embarrassing for us both, them and me.”

Fortague went to a cupboard and opened it, exposing a small fridge and two shelves of bottles and glasses. He poured a Scotch and two beers and came back with the drinks on a tray. They toasted each other's health, then he sat down behind his desk again. He was all at once relaxed, but he had once more stopped smiling, “If Springfellow was murdered and the murderer took the papers that were in the briefcase . . . Why did he leave the briefcase?”