Bear Pit. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ the phone rang out in the hallway. Malone looked at his watch: 11.05. As a cop he had lived almost thirty years on call, but even now there was the sudden tension in him, the dread that one of the children was in trouble or had been hurt: he had too much Celtic blood. Was it Claire calling, had something happened to her?

      The ringing had stopped; Maureen had gone back to pick up the phone. A moment or two, then she came to the kitchen doorway:

      ‘It’s Homicide, Dad. Sergeant Truach.’

      2

      ‘I never take any notice of him,’ said the Premier, speaking of the Opposition leader seated half a dozen places along the long top table. ‘He’s too pious, he’s like one of those Americans who were in the Clinton investigation, carrying a Bible with a condom as a bookmark. Of course it’s all piss-piety, but some of the voters fall for it. We’re all liars, Jack, you gotta be in politics, how else would the voters believe us?’

      Jack Aldwych knew how The Dutchman could twist logic into a pretzel. It was what had kept him at the head of the State Labor Party for twenty years. That and a ruthless eye towards the enemy, inside or outside the party.

      The Dutchman went on, ‘The Aussie voter only wants to know the truth that won’t hurt him. He doesn’t want us to tell him he spends more on booze and smokes and gambling than he does on his health. So we tell lies about what’s wrong with the health system. But you don’t have to be a hypocrite, like our mate along the table.’

      Aldwych usually never attended functions such as this large dinner. He had been a businessman, indeed a big businessman: robbing banks, running brothels, smuggling gold. But he had always had a cautionary attitude towards large gatherings; it was impossible to know everyone, to know who might stab you in the back. He was always amused at the Martin Scorsese films of Mafia gatherings, backs exposed like a battalion of targets; but that was the Italians for you and he had never worked with them, not that, for some reason, there had ever been a Mafia in Sydney. Maybe the city had been lucky and all the honest Sicilians had migrated here.

      Tonight’s dinner, to celebrate the opening of Olympic Tower, was a gathering of the city’s elite, though the crème dé la crèmé was a little watery around the edges. The complex of five-star hotel, offices and boutique stores had had a chequered history and there was a certain air of wonder amongst the guests that Olympic Tower was finally up and running. There were back-stabbers amongst them, but their knives would not be for Jack Aldwych. This evening he felt almost saintly, an image that would have surprised his dead wife and all the living here present.

      He certainly had no fear of this old political reprobate beside him; they were birds of a blackened feather. ‘Hans,’ he said, ‘I have to tell you. I always voted for the other side. Blokes in my old profession were always conservatives. Where would I of been if I’d voted for the common good?’

      ‘Jack,’ said Hans Vanderberg, The Dutchman, ‘the common good is something we spout about, like we’re political priests or something. But a year into politics and you soon realize the common good costs more money than you have in Treasury kitty. The voters dunno that, so you never tell ’em. You pat ’em on the head and bring up something else for ’em to worry about. I think the know-all columnists call it political expediency.’

      ‘Are you always as frank as this?’

      ‘You kidding?’ The old man grinned, a frightening sight. He was in black tie and dinner jacket tonight, the furthest he ever escaped from being a sartorial wreck, but he still looked like a bald old eagle in fancy dress. ‘You think I’d talk like this to an honest man? I know you’re reformed –’

      ‘Retired, Hans. Not reformed. There’s a difference. Will you change when you retire?’

      ‘I’m never gunna retire, Jack. That’s what upsets everyone, including a lot in our own party. They’re gunning for me, some of ’em. They reckon I’ve reached my use-by date.’ He laughed, a cackle at the back of his throat. ‘There’s an old saying, The emperor has no clothes on. It don’t matter, if he’s still on the throne.’

      Aldwych looked him up and down, made the frank comment of one old man to another: ‘You’d be a horrible sight, naked.’

      ‘I hold that picture over their heads.’ Again the cackle. He was enjoying the evening.

      ‘Are you an emperor, Hans?’

      ‘Some of ’em think so.’ He sat back, looked out at his empire. ‘You ever read anything about Julius Caesar?’

      ‘No, Hans. When I retired, I started reading, the first time in my life. Not fiction –I never read anything anybody wrote like the life I led. No, I read history. I never went back as far as ancient history – from what young Jack tells me, you’d think there were never any crims in those days, just shonky statesmen. The best crooks started in the Ren-aiss-ance’ – he almost spelled it out – ‘times. I could of sat down with the Borgias. I wouldn’t of trusted ’em, but we’d of understood each other.’

      ‘You were an emperor once. You had your own little empire.’ The Dutchman had done his own reading: police files on his desk in his double role as Police Minister.

      ‘Never an emperor, Hans. King, maybe. There’s a difference. Emperors dunno what’s happening out there in the backblocks.’

      ‘This one does,’ said Hans Vanderberg the First.

      Then Jack Aldwych Junior leaned in from the other side of him.

      ‘Mr Premier –’ He had gone to an exclusive private school where informality towards one’s elders had not been encouraged. The school’s board had known who his father was, but it had not discouraged his enrollment. It had accepted his fees and a scholarship endowment from his mother and taken its chances that his father’s name would not appear on any more criminal charges. Jack Senior, cynically amused, had done his best to oblige, though on occasions police officers had had to be bribed, all, of course, in the interests of Jack Junior’s education.

      ‘Mr Premier, I’ve got this whole project up and running while you were still in office –’

      ‘Don’t talk as if I’m dead, son.’

      Jack Junior smiled. He was a big man, handsome and affable; women admired him but he was not a ladies’ man. Like his father he was a conservative, though he was not criminal like his father. He had strayed once and learned his lesson; his father had lashed him with his tongue more than any headmaster ever had. He voted conservative because multi-millionaire socialists were a contradiction in terms; they were also, if there were any, wrong in the head. But this Labor premier, on the Olympic Tower project and all its problems, had been as encouraging and sympathetic as any free enterprise, economic rationalist politician could have been. Jack Junior, a better businessman than his father, though not as ruthless, had learned not to bite the hand that fed you. Welfare was not just for the poor, otherwise it would be unfair.

      ‘I’m not. But there are rumours –’

      ‘Take no notice of ’em, son. I have to call an election in the next two months, but I’ll choose my own time. My four years are up –’

      ‘Eight years,’ said Jack Senior from the other side.

      Vanderberg nodded, pleased that someone was counting. ‘Eight years. I’m gunna have another four. Then I’ll hand over to someone else. Someone I’ll pick.’

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