Pride's Harvest (19 page)

“No.” This time Malone could not be sure whether the boy was lying or not. Even if he had been standing in the bright dazzle of midday, the youth's face wouldn't have given anything away. This kid, Malone now knew, was experienced at being interrogated; he had fallen into character, an invented one, maybe, but one that he knew how to play. “I was in town all last night.”

Clements had reached in behind one of the other youths and taken a rifle from the floor of the car behind the front seat. “See this, Inspector? A Twenty-two.” He held it up, went to the front of the car and looked at it in the headlights' glare. “A Brno Twenty-two, magazine fully loaded.”

Malone decided to ignore young Chakiros, turned instead to the driver. He was a beefy boy,
with
long red hair, a weak imitation of a moustache and pale, unintelligent eyes. He would never get anywhere on his own, he would always need others to show him the way; yet one knew that, fifty years down the track, he would still be lost, still not getting anywhere. “What were you doing with the gun?”

“We've been out shooting kangaroos,” said Philip Chakiros quickly.

“I didn't ask you,” said Malone, not looking at him. “What's your name, son?”

The red-headed one swallowed. “Stan Gruber.”

“Is that what you've been doing, Stan—shooting kangaroos?”

“Yeah. Yeah. We didn't have no luck, but.”

Clements lifted the barrel of the rifle to his nose. “It hasn't been fired tonight. Not unless you sat out there in the bush cleaning it, deodorizing it. I'd say it hasn't been fired since—well, how about last Monday night?”

The four youths looked at each other, like contestants in a TV quiz game for not-very-bright students. Then they caught the point of the question and three of them looked startled. Only Philip Chakiros remained unmoved. “That's stupid,” he said. “We weren't even in town last Monday night, we were all over in Bathurst.” That was a couple of hundred kilometres east. “You can ask anyone. We went over to a country-and-western concert. James Blundell and Deniese Morrison were singing. You can check.”

It was almost too pat: Malone waited for him to name the songs that had been sung. But again there was the doubt as to whether Chakiros was lying. Already Malone could see that this boy had a mind twice as sharp as his father's. Behind Chakiros the other three heads bobbed up and down in almost ridiculous corroboration.

“Yeah,” said Gruber, “James Blundell we saw, and—”

“I just told him, Stan,” said Chakiros. “Leave it to me.”

“We'll check,” said Malone. “In the meantime we're confiscating the gun. You can get it back from Sergeant Baldock at the station, if he doesn't want it for evidence.”

“Curly knows me.” Phil Chakiros, it seemed, was on first-name terms with everyone.

“
Does Chess?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” said Malone, feeling a small malicious satisfaction at the sudden puzzlement on the boy's face. “Who has the licence for the gun?”

There was no reply from any of them. A car came over the bridge and slowed; but Clements stepped out into the middle of the road, still holding the rifle and his own gun; in the glare of the headlights he looked threatening. The car came to a halt and a frightened elderly couple stared out at him.

“Police. Just keep going, please. Drive carefully.”

The car picked up speed again and disappeared into the night. Clements came back and stood beside Malone. “Isn't anyone gunna talk?”

There was silence: bush silence, stretching out from the small group beside the car to the immense darkness. Malone then stepped close to the driver, put his gun up against the fat cheek again. “Come on, Stan. Who owns the gun?”

Gruber's eyes looked like marbles about to be fired from his pink face. “It's Phil's father's—”

“Shit!” said Philip Chakiros.

Malone turned to him. “Did your father know you'd borrowed the gun?”

“You got no right to do that to Stan! Holding a fucking gun at his head, for Chrissake!”

A bush lawyer: Malone loved them, though this was the first time he had met one actually in the bush. “You have a point there. You want to argue it in front of the magistrate when he puts in an appearance? Because if you prefer it, we can book you and hold you till we have the gun checked down in Sydney whether it's the one that fired the shot that killed Mr. Sagawa.”

Chakiros stared at him: he showed no sign of fear, just sullen anger. “I'm not gunna say any more, not till I've got my lawyer.”

“Who's your lawyer?”

“Trevor Waring.”

5

I

AS THEY
sat down to breakfast next morning at the table by the window Malone said, “We'll see Curly Baldock first thing, have him send the Twenty-two down to Ballistics. There's a plane at midday. Tell Ballistics I want a report by tomorrow morning.”

“Do you think it's the gun that killed Sagawa?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. But if it is, young Chakiros would be bloody stupid to be carrying it around with him. He's not that dumb. Besides, there must be at least a hundred Twenty-twos in this district.”

Wally Mungle and Koga came into the dining-room and everyone stopped eating; even the out-of-town strangers. Malone had recognized the latter: the ones who didn't know the waitresses. The Mail Coach dining-room was a place where the regulars were like family, where the waitresses practically told the diners what to eat and not to spend too much time over it. The service fitted the dining-room decor: heritage Australian, lucky that even a semblance of it had been preserved.

Narelle Potter came out from behind her small counter, said something to them, gestured at the room and shook her head. Malone stood up and waved to Mungle and Koga. Both men hesitated, then came towards the window table, threading their way through barbed-wire territory. Narelle Potter followed them.

“I didn't think you'd want to be disturbed—” Her smile was as false-looking as the fake antique of the brand-new stone-washed jeans she was wearing this morning. Her top was encased (that was the word, Malone decided) in a tight blue sweater and he wondered why she was displaying herself like this, especially this morning of all mornings. Unless she was looking for some interest from one of the several
unattached
male out-of-towners.

“Why not? We're used to it. Would you mind bringing a coupla extra chairs?” He might have been speaking to a trainee constable only a day on the job.

“I'm not one of the waitresses,” she said, giving as good as she'd got, and walked away, her tightly-encased behind challenging him but not in a provocative way.

Two men stood up at the next table, having finished their breakfast, and Clements reached across and dragged their chairs to his and Malone's table. “Okay, Wally, Mr. Koga, sit down. If we're not served within two minutes, I'll create a disturbance.”

“He's good at that,” said Malone.

“It'll make an impression on the visitors to town. Oh Marge—”

The stout middle-aged waitress stopped in mid-stride beside him. “I'm busy, Sergeant. I'll get one of the other girls—”

Clements held her by her apron-strings. “Marge, don't be like that. If you don't take our orders, we'll go out to the kitchen and lay a complaint to the local health inspector about the cockroaches and the ratshit we found there—”

“There's nothing like that in the kitchen! It's as clean as my own!”

“It won't be when we've finished looking at it, Marge. Now would you like to take our orders? Detective Mungle and Mr. Koga first, they're our guests.”

She gave him a suspicious glare, glanced across the room at Narelle Potter, then took her pad from her apron pocket. “Narelle ain't gunna like this—”

“I'm sure she isn't.” Clements looked across at the stiff-faced Narelle and gave her a smile that made the women in the dining-room wonder if this wasn't the next-morning taste of a one-night stand. But the four men at the table, the three detectives and the young Japanese, knew it was far more than that.

As they began to eat Malone said, “Did anyone trouble you last night, Wally?”

“Nup. There were some galahs shouting down in the street after closing time, but that was all.”

“Are you going out to the gin this morning, Mr. Koga?”

The
young Japanese was eating only fruit, cutting an apple into delicately thin slices; Malone would not have been surprised if he had made some sort of decoration with them on his plate. He was as awkward with Koga as Wally Mungle must have been last night.

“The gin and the farm will be closed for the weekend: I don't know what my bosses will think—they arrive on this morning's plane from Sydney. They expect us to work seven days a week when we're harvesting.”

“They obviously don't realize the importance of the Collamundra Cup. Were they coming anyway, before Mr. Sagawa's death?”

“No. They had great faith in him. I thought everyone did,” he added; then looked down at his plate, as if embarrassed by saying the wrong thing.

Poor bugger, thought Malone: I wonder how I'd feel in a country town in Japan where nobody wanted me? “We'll try and get someone to go out there with you.”

Mungle looked up from his bacon and eggs, but said nothing.

“No, Inspector,” said Koga. “I shall be all right. Today, anyway. Everybody will be at the races.”

“Where are your bosses going to stay?” asked Clements. “How many of them are coming?”

“Three. They will stay in the house out at the farm. It will not be what the president of our corporation is accustomed to, he is a very rich man, but I think it will be—be safer. Perhaps they will not listen to me, I am so junior. But where else can they stay?”

Malone had a mischievous idea: “I'll talk to Mr. Dircks, if I can catch him. He owns twenty per cent of the company—or his wife does. Maybe he can put them up.”

Clements grinned; and even Wally Mungle smiled. Koga looked at the three of them, then he, too, smiled. People nearby, still watching them covertly, wondered what the joke was that two Sydney cops, an Abo and a bloody Jap could share. Multi-culture was going bloody mad.

“No,” said Koga. “I shall stay with them at the house. We shall be okay.”

Later, when all four of them walked out of the hotel, they found Koga's car had all four doors heavily bashed. The young Japanese closed his eyes behind his glasses and went pale; then he opened them
and
looked at Malone. “Why? It is so stupid.”

“Drunks last night, probably.” Malone hoped so. Drunks could be dangerous enough, especially in a mob, but cold-blooded harassment was far worse: that could lead to more killing. He had seen it down in Sydney with the neo-Nazis at work on newly-arrived Asians. “You still want to risk it on your own today?”

Koga nodded; he was not without courage. But Malone hoped he was not filled with some sort of kamikaze spirit. “I shall be all right, Inspector. But perhaps you will come out to the gin and explain the police situation to my bosses.”

“If I can't get there, I'll have Sergeant Clements meet them. In the meantime, Mr. Koga, keep your head down.”

Koga bowed his head and Malone heard a voice nearby say, “Christ, look at that—bowing to a mug copper!”

Malone ignored whoever had said it, stood with Mungle and Clements and watched Koga drive away up the main street. Then they got into the Commodore and drove round to the police station. Clements parked the car in the yard, took the Brno Twenty-two rifle out of the locked boot, and followed the other two into the station and up to the detectives' room. Baldock was doing paper work at his desk. He sat back, saw the rifle in Clements's hands and looked enquiringly at Malone.

“We picked it up last night.” Malone explained what had happened. “It belongs to Ray Chakiros. I want the gun and the bullets on the midday plane for Sydney. Russ will call Ballistics and tell „em they're on their way.”

Baldock didn't move.

“
Now
,” said Malone.

Baldock raised himself slowly from his chair. He looked at Mungle. “Wally, I've put a note on your desk about those two radicals out at the settlement. Have a look at it, will you?”

Mungle took the hint and moved down the room to a desk at the far end. Then Baldock looked at Malone and Clements. The hair that grew along the sides of his head stood out like tangled wire; the
top
of his scalp shone as if he had been polishing it for the last hour. His round face seemed to droop, as if all the muscles had gone slack.

“Scobie, I've already had two phone calls. One from Ray Chakiros, the other from Gus Dircks.”

Malone was not surprised. “None from Hugh Narvo?”

“He's not coming in till midday, otherwise he'd have been on to me, too.” He nodded at the rifle, which Clements had laid on his desk. “Do you really think that's the gun that killed Sagawa?”

“I don't know, Curly. But let me tell you something. Our Commissioner doesn't have much time for our Minister. If I went back to Sydney and John Leeds got to hear that I'd let myself be pressured by Gus Dircks, I could find myself back here, taking your job. The Commissioner had twelve years of political pressure from the last mob when they were in government and he never stood a bar of it. He won't stand any of it from this crowd, either. And he'd get very stroppy if I or anyone else bowed to it. You've got a long way to go to your pension, Curly. Don't hurry it up.”

Baldock considered this, working his mouth like a wine-taster; then decided today was not a vintage day. He picked up the rifle. “Pity we can't do our own testing. You got anyone in particular you'd like to be the target?”