Dragons at the Party. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ fireworks were still scribbling on the black sky, but the crowd seemed to have turned its back on them. A band was playing in the open court at the northern end of the Opera House and the music drifted across the water, banged out at intervals by the explosions of the fireworks. The waters of the harbour were ablaze with drifting lights: ferries, yachts, rowboats, the reflected Catherine wheels, shooting stars and lurid waterfalls of the fireworks. Malone wondered if the local Aborigines here on the Kirribilli shore had waved any firesticks in celebration on the night of that day in January 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip had raised the British flag and laid the seed, perhaps unwittingly, for a new nation. As he walked across the road Malone looked for an Aborigine or two amongst the demonstrators, with or without firesticks to light their way, but there was none.

      The Fingerprints men were just finishing as Malone entered the top-floor flat past Thumper’s handiwork, the splintered front door. ‘Can’t find a print, Inspector. We’ve dusted everything, but he either wiped everything clean or wore gloves. He must have been a cold-blooded bastard.’

      ‘Have you tried the bathroom?’

      ‘There’s two of them. Nothing there.’

      ‘Try the handle or the button of the cistern. I don’t care how cold-blooded he was, he’d have gone in there for a nervous pee some time.’ The senior Fingerprints man looked unimpressed and Malone went on, ‘It’s the simple, habitual things that let people down, even the most careful ones. I’ll give you a hundred to one that a man doesn’t take a leak with a glove on.’

      ‘I couldn’t find mine if I had a glove on,’ said Clements with a grin.

      The Fingerprints men looked peeved that a Homicide man, even if he was an inspector, should tell them their job. They went away into the bathrooms and two minutes later the senior man came back to say there was a distinct print on the cistern button in the second bathroom. He looked even more peeved that Malone had been right.

      ‘The second bathroom looks as if it’s rarely used, maybe just for visitors. The print’s a new one.’

      ‘Righto, check your records,’ said Malone. ‘I’ll want a report on it first thing in the morning. Sergeant Clements will call you.’

      Malone was left alone with Clements, Thumper Murphy and the sergeant in charge of the North Sydney detectives, a slim handsome man named Stacton. ‘Okay, so what have we got?’

      Clements pointed to the dismantled rifle which lay on the table in the dining-room in which they stood. ‘He must have brought it in dismantled and put it together once he was in the flat – it’s a special job. Then after he’d fired the shot, he dismantled it again and put it in a kit-bag, the sort squash players carry. Nobody would’ve noticed him if he’d come in here behind those demonstrators.’

      ‘Where’d you find the bag and the gun?’

      ‘Under the stairs, down on the ground floor. Someone must’ve come in as he was going out and he had to hide.’

      Malone looked at Stacton. ‘Would it have been one of your, uniformed men?’

      ‘I doubt it. Inspector, but I’ll check. They were busy holding back the demo. And I gather there was a hell of a lot of noise – no one heard the shot.’

      ‘There’s no security door down at the front?’

      ‘None. People ask for trouble these days.’

      ‘How did he get into the flat? I noticed there’s a grille security door on the front door.’

      ‘I dunno. There’s no sign of forced entry. The old lady must have let him in.’

      ‘A stranger?’ Malone looked around him. The furniture was antique and expensive; it had possibly taken a lifetime to accumulate. It was the sort of furniture that Lisa would love to surround herself with; he found himself admiring it. The paintings on the walls were expensive, too: nothing modern and disturbing, but reassuring landscapes by Streeton and Roberts. Miss Kiddle had surrounded herself with her treasures, but they hadn’t protected her. ‘This is a pretty big flat for one old woman.’

      ‘She has a married nephew who owns a property outside Orange. I’ve rung Orange and asked someone out to tell him. It’s gunna bugger up his celebrations.’

      ‘It’s buggered up mine,’ said Malone and looked out the window at another burst of fireworks. The past was going up in a storm of smoke and powder, you could smell it through the open windows. The kids would love it, though the grownups might wonder at the significance. It took Australians some time to be worked up about national occasions, unless they were sporting ones. The Italians and the Greeks, who could get worked up about anything, would enjoy the fireworks the most.

      ‘Well, I guess we’d better make a start with our guesses. Any suggestions?’

      Clements chewed his lip, a habit he had had as long as Malone had known him. ‘Scobie, I dunno whether this is worth mentioning. I was going through some stuff that came in from Interpol. You heard of that bloke Seville, Miguel Seville the terrorist? Well, Interpol said he’d been sighted in Singapore last week. He got out before they could latch on to him. He’d picked up a flight out of Dubai. They managed to check on all the flights going back to Europe after he’d been spotted. He wasn’t on any of them, not unless he’d got off somewhere along the way. Bombay, Abu Dhabi, somewhere like that.’

      ‘He might have gone to Sri Lanka,’ said Stacton. ‘He’s always around where there’s trouble.’

      When Malone had first started on the force no one had been interested in crims, terrorists then being unknown, outside the State, even outside one’s own turf. Now the field was international, the world was the one big turf.

      ‘The betting’s just as good that he came this way,’ said Clements.

      Malone said, ‘Who’d hire him? The generals who’ve taken over in Palucca have no connection with any of the terrorist mobs, at least not on the record.’

      ‘Seville is different. That’s according to the Italians, who’ve had the most trouble with him. He’s not interested in ideology any more. He’s just a bloody mercenary, a capitalist like the rest of us.’

      ‘Speak for yourself. We’re not all big-time punters like you.’

      Clements grinned; his luck with the horses was notorious, even embarrassing. ‘You pay Seville, he’ll organize trouble for you. A bomb raid at an airport, a machine-gun massacre, an assassination, anything. Someone could have hired him to do this job.’

      ‘Righto, get Fingerprints to photo-fax that print through to Interpol, see if it matches anything they might have on Seville. Have we called in Special Branch yet?’

      ‘They arrived just as I was putting me sledge-hammer away,’ said Thumper Murphy.

      ‘A pity,’ said Malone and everyone grinned. ‘Well, it looks as if we’re all going to be one big happy family. The Feds, the Specials, you fellers and us.’

      ‘I always liked you, Scobie,’ said Thumper Murphy. ‘They could have sent us one of them other bastards you have in Homicide.’

      It sounds just like Palucca must have sounded, Malone thought. Each faction СКАЧАТЬ