The Bear Pit (9 page)

She had been a gambler all her life, but rarely a loser. “How quaint.”

She had a touch of larceny to her that Aldwych liked. Shirl had never had it. She had known of his trade, but as long as he never brought it into her home, her retreat, she had said nothing. He was not given to fantasy, but once or twice he had thought of her as an angel married to a demon. He had taken to reading late in life, but he really would have to give up reading some of the books on the shelves in the Harbord house.

“We'll have to start smoodging, leaving some money lying around.”

“We'll have to be careful,” said Jack Junior. He was a plotter, like his father, but in business, not bank robbery, and therefore more skilled. “Too many of them are more moral these days.”

“How quaint,” said Juliet.

Out on the harbour two youths on jet skis cut across the bow of a small yacht. The yacht had to tack abruptly, its sails quivering with indignation. Aldwych watched it, came as close to a snarl as he got these days: “He should of run ‘em down.”

“Who?”

Aldwych turned his head from watching the harbour. “The Dutchman should of got them before they got him.”

He knew all about survival.

III

“Do you think he's the one?” asked Clements.

“
I dunno. Who else have we got? He's the only one on that Sewing Bee list who's got a record. We just keep tabs on him. We'll get the task force to put him under 24-hour surveillance—we don't want him shooting through, changing his name again. The one good thing I could say for him—he's going to protect Mrs. Masson, the woman he's living with.”

“Unless—”

“Unless she knows what he did—if he did do it.” Malone shook his head. “No, I don't think so . . . Now you and I are going down to Sussex Street, but first we're going to look in on Roger Ladbroke. He knows more about who works what and how in the Labor Party than anyone except his late boss.”

“You vote Labor, don't you?” Despite their long association they had never admitted how each of them had voted. There is a majority amongst the natives whose vote is as secret as whether they believe or not in God.

“You vote the Coalition, don't you?”

“Okay—” Clements grinned—“we're apolitical on this one.”

“We'd better be or the media will heap shit on us.”

Malone had checked that Ladbroke was in his office at Parliament House. They drove into the city and round the back of the government complex. As they swung into the garage they saw the group under a tree in the Domain, the city common; someone, too distant to be recognized, was holding a press conference, cameras aimed at him like bazookas. Then they were in the garage and the security guard was holding them up.

Clements, who was driving, produced his badge. “You'll be seeing a lot of us in the next few days.”

“Terrible business,” said the guard, a burly man young enough to have been Hans Vanderberg's grandson. “He could be a cranky old bastard, but we all liked him and respected him. Good luck. Get the shits who killed him.”

“You notice?” said Malone as they got out of the car. “He used the plural—the shits who killed him. Nobody's going to believe this was a one-man job.”

The
two women secretaries in the Premier's outer office still looked stunned, as if their boss' murder had occurred only an hour ago. One was drying her eyes as the two detectives came in and asked for Ladbroke. Without rising she pointed to the inner door, as if she and her colleague no longer had anything to protect.

Ladbroke was packing files into cartons. He was jacketless and tieless; he seemed even to have shed his urbanity. He looked up irritably as Malone and Clements came, then took a deep breath and made an effort to gather himself together.

“Billy Eustace wants to move in this afternoon as Acting Premier. The king is dead, long live the king.” He still wore his old cynicism; it was like a second skin. “You come up with anything yet?”

“We've got a few things to work on,” said Malone. “We're on our way down to Sussex Street. We'd like some background on what's been going on the past few weeks.”

Ladbroke looked at a file in his hand, then tapped one of the cartons. “A good deal of it is in here, but I can't let you see it. It's stuff that was leaked to the Old Man from down there.”

“We could get a warrant. Those aren't Cabinet papers, Roger.”

Ladbroke drew another deep breath, then put the file in a carton and pushed the box along the Premier's big desk.

“Okay, but read it here. There are three files—the red-tabbed ones.”

Malone pushed the carton towards Clements. “You're the speed-reader.”

Clements took the three red-tabbed files and retired to a chair by the window. Malone sat down and looked across the desk at Ladbroke, who had slumped down in what had been his boss' chair. “What are you going to do now?”

“I'm organizing a State funeral for him. After that—” He shrugged.

“A State funeral? When?”

“Friday. Gert insisted on it. Eleven o'clock Friday morning at St Mary's Cathedral.”

“He was a Catholic?”

“No, she is. He was everything the voters were on a particular day. If the Mormons or the Holy
Rollers
could swing the vote in an electorate, he was out there nodding his head to polygamy or clapping his hands and singing ‘Down by the Riverside'.”

“Do the Mormons still practise polygamy?”

Ladbroke shrugged again; Malone had never seen him so listless. “I don't know. Anyhow, he's a Catholic for Friday. St Mary's jumped at the idea when Gert said she wanted a State funeral. St Andrew's has had the last three, they've all been Anglicans. Friday at St Mary's they'll be tossing the incense around like smoke bombs. They might even canonize him.” For the first time since they had entered the office he smiled. “He'd enjoy that.”

Clements came across from his seat by the window, handed the files back to Ladbroke. “Like you said the other night—he had more enemies than Saddam Hussein. But none of that is from Party headquarters or the Labour Council—it's all from Trades Congress.”

“Party headquarters and the Labor Council are sitting on the fence. But Congress—” He pursed his lips as if he were about to spit. “A real nest of vipers—”

“Why is Labor always so vicious towards each other?”

“Come on, Russ. You think the Coalition doesn't have its backstabbers? Politics in this country has never been a happy brotherhood. They'll tell you themselves, politics is the Devil's playground. Why do you think I've spent twenty-two years in it and never been bored?”

“Are you staying on?”

“Till the election, anyway. Billy Eustace wants me to hold his hand.” He stood up, went back to his packing. “Good luck down in Sussex Street. They're a feral lot down there.”

Malone and Clements drove down to Sussex Street through a morning where the air was almost heavy enough to be seen. Sweat-shiny groups stood at traffic-lights, listless as detainees; a courier cyclist pedalled in slow motion through the traffic, urgent delivery ignored. The whole city seemed to have slowed, though it was impossible to tell whether it was because of the weather or the shock of the Premier's assassination. The voters had come to have little regard for politicians; but assassination? That was what
foreigners
did.

Sussex
Street runs north and south along the bottom of the slight slope down from the narrow plateau on which the central business district is built. For most of its length it is one-way, a tribute to the policies of the two political buildings at its southern end. The Labor Council's headquarters is a ten-level building that looks like a stack of concrete pancakes. The council, an organization of trade unions, was the birthplace of the Labor Party; party headquarters, though now independent, is housed in the building. Behind the mundane exterior there has been more intrigue, more skulbuggery, as the late Premier used to call it, than in the combined halls of Versailles, Tammany, the Kremlin, the Diet and latterday Rome.

The Trades Congress building, directly across the street, was a tribute to modern design, as if its owners had been determined to show what real craftsmen could do. The Congress was a breakaway body of unions whose members were no better than their journeymen rivals; they had just had more money to spend, though no one was sure where it came from. It was too new, yet, to be a monument.

Malone and Clements rode up to the fifth floor. As they entered an outer office there was shouting from an inner office, voices raised in fierce argument. Then a door was wrenched open and Maureen, face flushed, came running out. She almost cannoned into Malone, side-stepped him, looked up at him in surprise, then was gone, shouting back at him, “He's all yours, the bastard!”

A man stood in the open doorway, equally flushed: “Get outa here—you fucking vultures—Hullo, who are you?”

Malone gestured at the secretary sitting at a desk to one side of the doorway. “We were going to ask the young lady here to introduce us.”

The man looked hard at both detectives; then jerked his head up and down as if to say,
Bloody (or perhaps fucking) cops!
“I should've recognized you. Come in. I'm not thinking too straight this morning . . . And that bloody girl from Channel 15 coming in here—where do they breed ‘em?”

“Out at Randwick,” said Malone. “She's my daughter.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Don't let it worry you, Mr. Clizbe. I have the same opinion of the media as you do.”

Norman Clizbe was a small man in his early forties, a bantam who fought above his weight: had
to,
to survive in the Labor Party and its affiliates. He had quick eyes, quick mouth, quick movements; those who worked with him turned their eyes away, just for rest. He was scarred, he had seen more battles than a battalion of Ghurkas, but somehow he had kept his sense of humour. Dry, yes, but that survives longer than exuberance.

“Is Mr. Balmoral around?” Malone asked. “We'd like to talk to the two of you.”

“Sure, sure.” He went back to the doorway, spoke to the secretary, then came back and sat down behind a desk that appeared to grow paper like a wild garden. “He'll be in in a moment. I'm not surprised to see you,” he said, looking at each of them in turn. “But I'll get in early. We're in the dark as much as you are.”

“What makes you think we're in the dark?” said Clements.

Then Balmoral came in, closing the door behind him. He was in his late twenties or early thirties, tall, handsome, a dresser. He was in his shirtsleeves, the sleeves rolled up, the roll-ups as neat as starched cuffs. He wore a brightly patterned blue tie, an expensive item that would not have been out of place on a banker's chest. He was the New Labor, the ones who had come out of university straight into the organization, bringing theories instead of experience, bringing ambition as much as dedication. The sort that Con Malone, Scobie's father, the old battler from the barricades, would never vote for.

He shook hands with Malone and Clements, then sat down to the left of Clizbe. They were on the other side of the desk from the two detectives. The line in the sand had been drawn.

“You're not in the dark?” said Clizbe. “You've already got a lead?”

“Just a glimmer.” Malone had been briefed by Clements on the way down as to what was in the red-tabbed files. “Why have you been actively encouraging the stacking of certain branches, branches that you knew were antagonistic to the Premier?”

“What branches might they be?” Balmoral had a pleasant voice, one that sounded as if the spin doctors had already worked on it for the future. He would never be accused of saying
guv'mint
or claim that he was
Austrayan
, like so many of those who were in
guv'mint
and true-blue
Austrayans
.

“Harding, for one. It's being stacked by Mr. Kelzo, who wants to win pre-selection against the
sitting
member. Who has always been a strong supporter of the Premier.”

Clizbe's quick eyes were remarkably still. “Are you suggesting someone in the party shot The Dutchman?”

Malone looked at Clements in surprise; then back at the two men on the other side of the desk. “That's a thought, though we hadn't thought of it.”

Clizbe suddenly laughed; he had a quick laugh, too, one that didn't last very long. “Let's cut out the bullshit, Inspector. Okay, there's been some branch stacking, but that happens. It's not the first time, it won't be the last time. The Coalition do it—”

“We don't think the Coalition are involved in this case,” said Clements. “They'll profit, maybe win the election, if you don't get your act together in time. But we don't think they had any hand in killing Mr. Vanderberg.”

“And you think we did?” Balmoral had hardly moved since sitting down; one could see him years ahead, a rock on the front bench, impervious to accusations of any sort. He was Prime Minister material and he knew it, was training for it.

“I didn't say that. We always begin our enquiries at home base and this is the Labor Party's home base, isn't it?” He knew that it wasn't, but a little ignorance is often a trap for the other side.

“No, it isn't. The Labor Party is across the street, that's the base. Maybe you should be talking to them. They control pre-selection.”

“No, I think we'd rather be talking to you.”
Yours are the names in the red-tabbed files
. “We'd just like you to tell us what you know that will help us.”

The expressions on their faces said they weren't going to tell much.

“Of course,” said Clizbe and his mouth shut like a trap.

“Does Mr. Eustace have any rivals for his position?” asked Malone.