Authors: Jon Cleary
“That where you live?” Narvo, like most country folk, had little time for Canberra. Politicians and protestors: they were both pains.
“No. Sydney,” both said again.
“Arrest them,” said Narvo, as if that were their final crime. He turned his back on them and looked at Malone. “I'm sorry you had to do that, Scobie, take over like that.”
“I looked for youâ”
Narvo grinned in embarrassment, something Malone would not have thought him capable of. “I was caught short. I was sitting in a portable dunny out the back of the stand. Something I ate for lunch went through me like a firehose . . . Thanks, anyway. You too, Russ.”
The Aborigines had turned and were walking slowly back down the track, no longer a tight little island but a loose shoal, their anger and defiance no longer binding them. They had been harangued into something they had not thought through, they had caused a disaster that none of them had envisaged. Malone looked for Wally Mungle and the Koowarra family, but couldn't see them, and felt an immediate
relief.
“Are you going to let them go?”
The three senior policemen turned round: Chess Hardstaff stood behind them, stiff with cold anger. “I want them arrested and charged, every damned one of them!”
Out of the corner of his eye Malone saw a smartly dressed Aboriginal girl standing by the outer rail. As he looked at her she abruptly spun round and walked away, but not before a final glance back atâwhom? Then Malone realized she was staring at Hardstaff, that her attractive, coffee-coloured face was a mixture of emotion that clouded and spoiled her attractiveness. Then she walked on and disappeared round the end of the grandstand.
“I'm not going to arrest them, not the lot of them.” Narvo was as polite as he had been with Nothling. Something had happened to him, he was prepared to make waves. “Not at the moment, anyway.”
“I'll call Superintendent Dammie over at Cawndillaâ”
“Do that,” said Narvo.
“You'll regretâ” Then Hardstaff stopped, looked at the man who had appeared behind the three policemen and was standing there listening frankly to every word. “Who are you?”
“I thought you might recognize me,” said Fred Strayhorn. “But I guess it's been too long. Too much water under the bridge, eh? Or in the dam? I'm Fred Strayhorn. You and your old man and a lot of other fascist mongrels run me and my mum and dad outa town just on sixty years ago. You still got no time for Commos? You certainly got no time for the darkies, have you?”
“I don't remember you,” said Hardstaff, even stiffer now.
“You will,” said Strayhorn with certainty. “The last time you saw me was seventeen years ago. I had a different name then, I can't remember what I called m'self. But we could look it up in the police files, if they're still around. I was the bloke who told the police you were out at the dam with me the morning your wife was murdered. You remember that?”
After a glance at Strayhorn, Malone had been watching Hardstaff. This had not been the best of
days
for the King-maker. There had been the farce of the drugged horse winning the first race; then the demonstration by the Aborigines and the disaster it had caused. Those had been enough, bringing out fury that Malone had never expected to see. Now he saw something else he had never expected to see on that cold, controlled face: fear.
But the exposure was only momentary; Hardstaff was granite-hard and granite doesn't give up its secrets easily. “Yes, I remember now. You wanted to talk to me about it?”
“I think I might, just nostalgia,” Strayhorn said with an exaggerated drawl. For just a moment he flicked a glance at Malone, but Hardstaff caught it.
“You know Inspector Malone?” he said.
“Who? Oh,
him.
Never met him in my life. He a friend of yours? You always had friends amongst the coppers, didn't you?” He smiled a greeting at Malone; then looked back at Hardstaff. “Come into town tonight, at the Mail Coach, and I'll buy you a drink.”
It was blatant insolence, but he got away with it. He turned and ambled off, only stopping when Hardstaff said, voice hard and cold as metal on metal, “I shan't be in town. Come out to the property tomorrow morning, you know where it is.”
Strayhorn pondered a moment. “How'll I get there? I'm still travelling on Shanks's pony.” Then he smiled, almost evilly. “Does the railway line run past your place? Maybe I could borrow a trike.”
But Hardstaff had evidently forgotten that episode; or chose not to remember it. He said, “I'll send one of my men in to pick you up. Where will you be?”
“Over at the carnival. I'm camped right next to the elephants.”
He walked away down the track, unhurried, not looking back: the biggest winner of the day, thought Malone, one I should have had my money on. Hardstaff stared after him, no expression showing on his face; but one could feel the anger, the fear,
something,
tearing at the insides of him. Malone, reluctantly, had to admire the autocrat's control.
The three policemen had stood silent during the stand-off between the two old men: Malone, for one, had learned more by being a spectator than by butting in. But now, chipping away at Hardstaff's
foundations,
he said, “After you've talked with Mr. Strayhorn, I'd like to talk to you. How about tomorrow morning out at your place?”
“What do you want to talk to
me
about?” The arrogance was back, it was second nature to him.
“I'll tell you when I see you. Eleven o'clock tomorrow morning, Mr. Hardstaff, okay? You won't need me to confirm it by phone. Tom, Dick and Harry won't be comingâjust me and Sergeant Clements.” He nodded to Narvo. “I'll see you back at the station, Hugh. I guess the rest of the meeting's abandoned.”
“That's up to the chairman of the turf club,” said Narvo.
Hardstaff looked across the track, where some jockeys still lay in the dust, waiting for another ambulance to arrive. A strapper with a Twenty-two rifle stood by a prostrate horse that was still kicking weakly; he looked at the turf club's honorary veterinary surgeon, a young man with red hair and a stricken look, who nodded. The Twenty-two was put to the head of the horse, there was the sound of the shot, several men attending to the jockeys jerked upright, then the strapper moved on, put the rifle to the head of another horse, waited for the approving nod and pulled the trigger again. Most of the course crowd were still outside the rails watching the tragedy; there were gasps and a young girl's cry of grief as the horses died under the bullet. Hardstaff looked back at Narvo.
“I'll call off the last two races. But I'd still like to see you, Inspector. Here comes Mr. Dircks, I'm sure he'd like to see you, too.”
Dircks, face red with exertion, came lumbering down the track. He arrived puffed and sweating. “I thought someone had better stay with the G-G. He'd have been pretty shirty if we'd all gone off and left him. An ugly business.” He shook his head. “The demo, I mean. Christ Almighty, who put âem up to such a stupid show?”
Malone stared at him with contempt. Dircks was a coward, morally and politically, the sort who would always dodge decisions that required courage. It had been far easier to stay with the Governor-General than come down here and face a political demonstration by a mob of angry Aborigines. Unlike politicians in more volatile countries he could not read the face of the mob. He preferred individuals, names, addresses, voters who could be relied upon. He had been spoiled, representing a safe seat for so
long.
“I heard you fire your gun.” He was afraid to be aggressive; he sounded more aggrieved. “Would you have shot any of them?”
“No. But that's the advantage of being an outsider.” Malone was aware of Hardstaff watching him. “Nobody knows how far you'll go.”
Then he jerked his head at Clements and the two detectives walked away, leaving the locals to sort out their local troubles. Driving back to the police station through the traffic already beginning to stream towards town, Clements said, “Do we still go to the ball tonight?”
“I'm not keen on it. But Lisa is. She thinks I need some relaxation. Who are you taking? Narelle?”
“You kidding?”
“Did you know it was her who shot her husband?”
Clements jerked his head round; the car wavered a moment on the road.
“She
shot him?”
“It was an accident, Sean told me. She tripped or something. The two of them were out shooting, âroos or rabbits.”
“Did they ever investigate if it was an accident or not?”
“I don't know.” He didn't want to get caught up in
another
murder.
“Be interesting if it wasn't an accident.”
“Yeah, wouldn't it. You ever been to bed with a murderess before?”
Clements grimaced and said nothing more. When they reached the police station, Wally Mungle was waiting for them in the upstairs detectives' room. Outwardly he looked relaxed, but Malone at once could feel the tension in him.
“You heard what happened out at the course?”
“Yes, sir.” Everyone, it seemed, had become formally polite.
“You been here all afternoon?”
“I volunteered to be the duty man.” He had stood up as the two Sydney men entered; he had a
respectful
air about him without seeming to be obsequious. But Malone had a feeling he had stepped into a role, a policeman playing by the book. “I've been here since one o'clock.”
“Wallyâ” Malone tried to make the question as gentle as possible. “Did you know there was going to be a demo?”
The Aborigine stared at Malone, his dark eyes showing nothing; then he nodded. “I didn't know for sure, but I guessed it.”
“Why didn't you report it to Inspector Narvo or Curly Baldock?”
“Inspectorâ” For a moment there seemed to be a spark of rebellion in his eyes; then he said calmly, “I talked my mother and my uncle and aunt out of going along with any demo, if there was gunna be one. I figure I did enough, doing that.”
Malone was silent for a long moment; he felt Clements look at him for his answer. Then he said, “I see your point.”
“I dunno that you do, Inspector. I tried to talk âem out of it, but Kooris are like honkiesâa lot of âem don't listen.” He wasn't insolent, but he was less concerned now with appearing to be respectful. “Those two stirrers who come into town this morning, they'd got âem going. They didn't wanna listen to me, a cop, someone from the other side. Or anyway, halfway between. When you're halfway between, Inspector, most of the time you got nothing to stand on but quicksand.”
Malone offered him no more advice. For two hundred years the whites had been giving advice to the blacks and it seemed that neither side had profited. He just nodded, let the subject of the demonstration drop and said, “Any messages for us?”
“Constable Graham called from Sydney. He asked if you could call back to Police Centre before he left at six. He said it was important.”
Malone picked up the phone and dialled Sydney, asked for Andy Graham, who came on the line, all enthusiasm as usual. “Bingo, Inspector! Tokyo has sent us something at last!”
Malone was patient. “What have we got, Andy?”
“Kenji Sagawaâhis old man was a war criminal!”
Malone,
all at once feeling weary, tried not to sound unimpressed. “I must be slow, Andy. What's the connection between Sagawa's murder and what his old man wasâ” Then his mind, the cogs of which had been slipping, was abruptly in gear. “Did Russ tell you anything about the anti-Jap feeling out here?”
“Yes! That's what I mean!” Graham was shouting down the line. “Maybe someone out there found out about it . . . Listen to this.” There was a rustle of paper at the other end of the line; then Graham began to read, or rather to declaim like a town crier:
“Chojiro Nibote, a permanent army officer, was wounded in action in Burma in 1942, declared unfit for front-line service. He was appointed commandant of Mergui prisoner-of-war camp in Siam. He was captured by British forces while trying to return to Japan at the end of hostilities in August 1945. He was indicted as a war criminal and executed on May 24, 1946. His wife, Tsuchi, reverted to her maiden name of Sagawa, gave it to her son and daughter and moved from Kobe to Osaka immediately after Chojiro Nibote's execution. Message ends . . . Jesus!” And Graham seemed suddenly to run out of steam, but had enough left to gasp, “How'd it be, having a war criminal for a father?”
“You think it'd be any worse than having a serial killer for a dad?” But Malone didn't want to get into any discussion on degrees of crime, of the weight of the sins of the fathers. “I didn't expect the Japanese to come up with anything as frank as that.”
“Neither did I!” Graham had regained his breath. “I thought the Japs didn't take any blame for what happened during the warâ”
“Maybe there's a whole new generation there now.”
Like there is here.
He and Andy Graham had not been born when the war ended; even the war crimes' trials had been history by then. “Right, fax back our thanks, Andy. Take the weekend off. Russ will call you Monday, let you know how things are going up here. What about down there?”
“We had a murder this morning, out at Rockdale. Just a domestic.” A nothing crime, just a husband killing a wife or vice versa.
Grow up, Andy. Homicide isn't an adventure.
“What are you doing for the weekend?”
“
Tomorrow I'm going to the league. Balmain are playing the Gold Coast. It should be murder.”
“Enjoy it.”
He hung up and told Clements and Mungle what he had just heard. “What do you think?”
“Do we go over to the Veterans Legion and ask for a list of the members who were POWs?” said Clements.