Bear Pit. Jon Cleary

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ thought you Roumanians loved suspicion? You and the Hungarians invented the revolving door, didn’t you, so’s you could watch each other’s back?’

      ‘I love you, Papa.’ She knew he liked being called Papa. Once distant from each other, they were now friends. ‘You’d have made a wonderful dictator.’

      ‘Better than some you’ve had. That bloke Ceausescu ... he got what he deserved. The Dutchman was a dictator, but he didn’t deserve to be shot.’

      They were having breakfast on the terrace of the junior Aldwychs’ apartment on the tip of Point Piper. The point was almost sunk by the wealth on it; land here was valued by the cupful. Aldwych, instead of going home to his own big house at Harbord, on the northern side of the harbour, had driven out here with his son and daughter-in-law and stayed the night. He enjoyed Juliet’s company and her looks, but, as with Madame Tzu, he would not have trusted her as far as the other side of the street. He had never trusted any woman but his dead wife Shirl. Beautiful women were even more suspect than others: they knew the value of their looks. Jack Junior, on the other hand, had never fallen for any but good-looking women.

      The apartment was sumptuous, an estate agent could have found no other word for it; but it was not like a House & Garden illustration, it was lived in. Juliet could spend money like an IMF grantee, but Jack Junior begrudged her nothing. Aldwych Senior, sometimes to his own surprise, no longer mentally reproached Juliet for her extravagance. This apartment was a contrast to his own house, where he lived amongst Laura Ashley prints and Dresden figurines, none of which he would ever replace because they had been Shirl’s choice. Shirl had died before Juliet came along and sometimes he wondered how the two women would have got along. He had had reservations about Juliet, but she had proved him wrong. The marriage was now six years old and there appeared to be no cracks in it. Juliet was extravagant, but she didn’t have to be Roumanian to be that; half the country lived on credit beyond its ability to pay and half the country didn’t have multi-millionaire husbands. She had proved a better wife than some of Jack Junior’s other women would have been. There were no children and no talk of any, but that didn’t worry Aldwych. He had little faith that the next forty or fifty years of the new millennium was going to be a cakewalk for the young. He was long past optimism.

      Now, looking at a Manly ferry taking commuters to the city, he was pensive, a symptom of his ageing. ‘If the hit wasn’t meant for either of us –’

      ‘Dad, keep me out of it. If it was meant for either of us, it would’ve been you. Some of your old mates may have wanted a last crack at you.’

      ‘All my old mates are dead, including the ones who were not my mates. Lenny McPherson is gone, all the old mugs who had it in for me.’ In his memory was a gallery of enemies. He had consorted, as the cops called it, with other crims, but he had always been his own man. Or, to a certain extent and which he would not have admitted to anyone, he had been part Shirt’s man. ‘Is this upsetting you, Juliet?’

      ‘Not at all. As you said, I’m Roumanian.’ Sometimes one’s national bad characteristics can be indulged in.

      He smiled at her approvingly. ‘You’ll do me, love …’ He hadn’t called anyone love since Shirl had died. ‘Well, like I was saying – if it wasn’t meant for either of us, then maybe we’ve got problems.’

      ‘Don’t ask,’ said Jack Junior as Juliet looked puzzled.

      ‘Of course I’m going to ask. Why will you have problems, Papa?’

      ‘We want to build a small casino up at Coffs Harbour.’ A resort and retirement town halfway between Sydney and Brisbane. ‘Hans Vanderberg was in favour of it. He wasn’t a gambler, but anything that brought in more taxes was right up his street. The Pope would bless gambling if it brought in more revenue –’

      Juliet blessed herself. She never went near a church except at Christmas, but the nuns from her old school still whispered in her ear.

      Aldwych smiled at the gesture, but went on: ‘We dunno about Billy Eustace, if he takes over – he says he’s anti-gambling, but they all say that till Treasury talks to ’em. If the Coalition wins the election, we dunno about them, either. They’ve got some wowsers amongst them, especially if they’re from the bush.’

      ‘Wowsers?’ Juliet had been only a child when she had come to Australia, but she still had difficulty with some of the language, especially slang that was older even than her father-in-law.

      ‘Killjoys,’ said Jack Junior. ‘Gambling is a social evil.’

      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.

      3

      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ