Pride’s Harvest. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ you’re a Minister. Look at Inspector Malone. Spotless, and he’s just a policeman.’

      Malone, just a policeman, said, ‘Thanks.’

      She gave him her hotel-keeper’s smile, as dishonest as the collar on a badly-poured beer, and went away. Dircks looked after her admiringly. ‘Nice woman. One of my best campaign workers when an election’s on . . . Malone, I don’t think you understand me.’

      The remark caught Malone a little off-balance; Dircks had still been looking after Mrs Potter when he said it. But now he turned to face Malone and there was no mistaking the antagonism in the small blue eyes. He could be authoritative, though in only two months as Minister he had already acquired a reputation for making wrong decisions. But the incompetent don’t necessarily give up trying: it is why a few of them occasionally succeed and rise to the top.

      Malone took his time, finishing his mouthful of lamb, then cutting some baked pumpkin in half. At last he said, holding his gaze steady against Dircks’s, ‘I understand you perfectly well, Minister. You want me to close the case, not make waves, just go back to Sydney and leave everything to the locals. Right?’

      ‘Put as bluntly as that . . . Well, yes, that’s the gist of it.’

      ‘I’ll have to talk to my superiors in Sydney.’ He chanced his arm: ‘It could go up to the Commissioner. He takes a personal interest in anything I’m working on.’

      Dircks looked disbelieving, but also uncertain. In his short time as Minister he had come to know that the Police Department had its own way of working; more so, perhaps, than any other public service department. The men responsible for law and order, it seemed to him, had their own laws. The conservative coalition had not been in government for fifteen years and its ministers were learning that power, no matter what the voters might say about its democratic transfer, was an abstract, not something that could be handed over in a file. In the Police Department there was power at every level, something he had not yet come to terms with.

      ‘The Commissioner and I get on very well together,’ he said, though that was not strictly true; he hardly knew John Leeds, a reserved man. ‘How come he takes a personal interest in what you do?’

      ‘Past association,’ said Malone and closed up his face, as if to imply there were police secrets, as indeed there were, that even ministers should not be privy to.

      Dircks neatly backed down; weak-willed men are adept at a few things. ‘Well, I don’t want to bring politics into this – there was too much of that from the last government.’ He waited for Malone to comment, but got no satisfaction. Then he went on, ‘You have to realize, out here things are different from what you’re used to, I mean in a community like ours. Everybody has to live with everybody else.’

      ‘I understand that was what Mr Sagawa was trying to do. But somebody didn’t want to live with him.’ Malone had finished the main course; he picked up the menu. ‘Do you mind if I have dessert? I’ve got a sweet tooth.’

      ‘So have I. I can recommend the bread-and-butter pudding, a real old-fashioned one. Yes, I never thought anything like this would ever happen to Sagawa.’

      ‘There’s Mr Koga. He could be next. Bread-and-butter pudding,’ he told the stout waitress as she loomed up beside their table.

      ‘The same for you, Mr Dircks?’

      ‘No. No, I think I’ve had enough.’ Dircks waited till the waitress had gone, then he leaned forward, his wide-set eyes seeming to close together on either side of the two deep lines that had suddenly appeared between them. ‘Christ Almighty, I hadn’t thought of that! You’d better stay, catch the murderer before he has the Japs pulling out of the district. They not only grow the cotton, they buy ninety per cent of the crop for their own mills.’

      ‘Then you don’t think Billy Koowarra did it?’

      ‘Forget him! Just find out who killed Ken Sagawa.’

      ‘Mr Dircks, you said you had an interest in South Cloud ...’

      Dircks remained leaning forward on the table for a long moment; then he eased himself back, said quietly, ‘Yes. The shares are in my wife’s name. It’s common knowledge, you’ll find it in the declaration of MPs’ interests down at Parliament House in Sydney. There’s nothing to hide.’

      ‘I didn’t suggest there was. But I think it might be an idea if you stayed at arm’s length from me and the investigating team, don’t you? You know what the media are like.’

      ‘I own the local paper, the Chronicle. You don’t have to worry about it.’

      That would explain why no reporter had tried to by-pass Baldock to get to him or Clements. ‘What about the radio station?’

      ‘Chess Hardstaff owns that.’

      I might have guessed it. ‘I wasn’t thinking so much of the local media as those down in Sydney.’ He usually tried to keep the media at his own arm’s length; but they were always useful as a weapon, especially with politicians. ‘How much interest do you have in South Cloud? Or how much is in your wife’s name?’

      ‘Twenty per cent.’ The answer sounded a reluctant one.

      ‘Any other local shareholders?’

      Dircks hesitated, looking at his front to see if he had spotted it with any more gravy. ‘Well, I guess you’ll look it up in the company register. Yes, there are two others. Max Nothling, Chess Hardstaff’s son-in-law, and one of the town’s solicitors, Trevor Waring.’

      Malone didn’t mention that he had already met Waring; but he wondered why Sean Carmody’s son-in-law had said nothing about his interest in the cotton farm. ‘How much do they hold?’

      ‘Ten per cent each. The Japanese own sixty per cent.’

      The waitress brought Malone his bread-and-butter pudding; it looked and tasted as good as Dircks had claimed. Dircks watched him eat, seemed undecided whether to say anything further, then went ahead, ‘If you have to arrest someone for the murder, ring me first.’

      Malone stopped with a mouthful of pudding halfway to his mouth; his mouth was open, as if in surprise, a reaction he never showed. ‘Why?’

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