The High Commissioner
Jon Cleary
THE HIGH COMMISSIONER is the first novel in the Inspector Scobie Malone series, by award-winning Australian author Jon Cleary.When the High Commissioner is accused of murder, Sydney-based Inspector Scobie Malone is given the job of going to London and bringing him back.At the same time, the High Commissioner’s murder is being planned to create discord at the Peace Conference, and anarchy in Saigon.
JON CLEARY
The High Commissioner
Copyright (#ulink_77bb6223-44a9-552c-be3b-b7a729827cab)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1966
Copyright © Jon Cleary, 1966
Jon Cleary asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780006167051
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2014 ISBN: 9780007554300
Version: 2017–10–12
Dedication (#ulink_4fa04736-a38a-5a37-b1fb-8316cd498a00)
TO HAM AND JOYCE
Contents
Cover (#u9885a545-c3c0-5a35-b52b-ec0abfba73b2)
Title Page (#uf896a396-cbb9-513a-a40c-99cfe4eac5d5)
Copyright (#ulink_16b36bd1-f9af-5641-b28a-9b3baf204520)
Dedication (#ulink_7ec2f410-a79e-5156-9def-65b8be7d4587)
Chapter One (#ulink_91246f92-4178-58dc-91b8-4347b989a2dc)
Chapter Two (#ulink_d5b01734-7237-55e0-8282-b5f1e36ca5e8)
Chapter Three (#ulink_827a01a4-7305-56da-9915-69d61d58234c)
Chapter Four (#ulink_c816fa0b-a59d-516c-8a61-a0266daa5219)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_776aff09-fc2c-54a4-be35-241f618756de)
“We want you to go to London,” said the Premier, “and arrest the High Commissioner for murder.”
He sat back, one clawed finger stroking the beak of his nose, a bald-headed old eagle hawk who had made this office his eyrie for twenty-five years. He ran his tongue round his thin dry lips, as if tasting the shock that showed on Scobie Malone’s face. He was seventy years old and fifty years of his hectic brawling life had been spent in politics. He knew and relished the value of shock.
“The Commissioner tells me you detectives are like nuns, you’re usually only allowed out in pairs.” He looked at Malone, then at Police Commissioner Leeds, his hooded eyes glistening with an old hawk’s malicious humour. “Is that because you don’t trust each other, Jack?”
John Leeds had been a policeman for forty years, Commissioner for ten, and he knew how to handle politicians. “Is that what you think of nuns, Mr. Premier?”
Flannery’s laugh was more like a cough of mirth, as if it hurt him. “Are you trying to get me to lose the Catholic vote, Jack? Stone the bloody crows, I wouldn’t mind betting you vote Liberal!” He looked back at Malone. “What do you vote, Sergeant?”
Malone was still getting over the shock of the Premier’s opening remark. After ten years in the force he was not unaccustomed to shocks; but nothing like this had ever been flung at him before. When Flannery had first spoken he had glanced quickly at the old man to see if he was joking; the ugly smile had told him that if there was a joke it was not intended for him. He was still dazed when Flannery spoke to him again, repeating his question. “What do you vote, Sergeant?”
He tried to collect his thoughts, but the question seemed so irrelevant at a time like this. “It depends, sir.”
“Depends? What on?”
Malone saw Leeds’s warning glance and retreated. “I’m not political-minded, sir. I vote by whim, I suppose.”
Flannery stared at him, his eyes suddenly dark and glazed: twice he had come close to defeat on the vote of those who voted by whim, the floaters, the I-don’t-knows of the opinion polls. Then abruptly he grinned, the surprisingly warm grin that had been winning him the women’s vote for years. Malone, watching him, knew that, despite what the newspapers said, women were not always influenced by a politician’s profile or his platform charm: a number of them, often enough to swing an election, voted for a father figure. But I’d have hated Flannery as a father, Malone thought: he’d have been using me as election bait before I was even weaned.
“Well, in a way, Sergeant, you’re going to London to vote Labour. You want to tell him what’s what, Jack?”
Leeds hesitated, then he leaned forward in his chair, both hands resting on his knees. Whenever Malone had been with the Commissioner, the latter had struck him as one of the most relaxed men he had ever met; Leeds gave the impression that time and circumstance were part of his pattern, not the other way round, as it was with Malone and the rest of the world. But not today: today Leeds was stiff and bony with concern, even anxiety. But he was not going to confide in Malone, only give him the case facts:
“The Australian High Commissioner in London, as you know, is John Quentin. Or rather that’s his name now. It was John Corliss. Under that name he lived here in Sydney before the war and worked for the Water Board as an assistant surveyor. He married a German refugee girl named Freda Wiseman and they lived out in Coogee. He murdered her on 8th December, 1941, then disappeared. By the time the murder was discovered the newspapers were full of Pearl Harbour and the story got no play at all. Corliss just went into smoke and we were never able to trace him.” He glanced at Flannery, who sat watching him with the look of malicious humour varnished on the mottled skull of his face. “Not until now.”
Malone waited for Flannery to say something, but the Premier remained silent. He looked at Leeds. “How did you get on to him, sir? I mean, that Quentin and Corliss are the same man?”
Leeds looked at Flannery. There was an atmosphere between the two older men that had something to do with the room in which the three men sat. Malone was not insensitive to atmosphere: crime coarsened you, whether you were dealing in it or trying to prevent it, but it also heightened your perception of certain elements in which you moved. And one of them was atmosphere: the criminal or the policeman who was insensitive to it was never a lasting success in his job. Malone knew he himself would not be here if the Commissioner thought he was a failure.
He glanced around the room while the other two men fenced in their silent secret duel. It was a big office and it had all the homely charm of a battle-room; which was what it was. This was where Flannery planned his campaigns to demolish the enemy: the official Opposition, the pressure groups, even members of his own party who showed too much ambition. A single painting, faded and fly-spotted, was his concession to the arts: painted by a third-rate artist, it depicted a hold-up of a mail coach by bushrangers: Flannery had been known to remark that it often gave him inspiration. A glass-fronted bookcase stood beneath the painting, its three shelves lined with leather-bound official volumes; on top of two volumes of Hansard lay a copy of They’re A Weird Mob: Flannery had been getting the lowdown on the citizens he led. The three other walls were studded with political graffiti, honorary membership for Flannery in a score of organisations, testimonials from others. Between the framed scrolls, like frozen moments of the old man’s life, were half a dozen photographs. Laying a foundation stone, the warm vote-catching grin as firmly in place as the stone he had just laid; shaking hands with the Prime Minister, both of them suffering from the spasm known as politicians’ bonhomie; standing like a little old bird of prey among the fat unsuspecting pigeons of his Cabinet, several of whom had since been shot down. Everything smelled overpoweringly of politics: the room, the atmosphere between the Premier and the Commissioner of Police. And yet Leeds had never been a political policeman; for him corruption was a worse crime than murder. Murder, Malone had heard him say to a class of police trainees, was rarely cold-blooded; corruption always was. Malone looked back at Flannery, who considered corruption a necessity of political life.
The old man tapped the claw of his finger on a folder that lay on his desk. “It’s all in here, Sergeant. Documented like a White Paper. It doesn’t matter who got us started, the point is their tip was right. It happened six months ago and I’ve had a man working on it ever since.”
“Someone from Headquarters?” Malone looked at Leeds, but it was Flannery who answered.
“Not from Police Headquarters. From Party Headquarters. One of our political research officers. He enjoyed it, said it was a nice change from trying to guess voters’ intentions.” He coughed another laugh; but Leeds was the one who looked hurt this time.
Malone hesitated, still finding everything incredible. Then he stuck his neck out, asking to be sent to the back of beyond: a bush beat or early retirement was usually the fate of a too-inquisitive detective. They were trained to ask questions, but not of the political boss of the State.
“Why wasn’t it turned over to our Murder Squad when you first got the tip, Mr. Premier?”
Leeds shot Malone a glance that was both a warning and a look of gratitude; he had obviously asked this same question and got nowhere. But Flannery had spent most of his life dealing with questions that he didn’t feel he had to answer.
“We just wanted to be sure, Sergeant. I’ve got where I am today—” He waved at the room around him, home sweet home; he had a wife and a grown-up family somewhere in Sydney, but a politician’s family in New South Wales were never expected to be in evidence. “I’ve got where I am by observing one principle – never libel anyone unless you’re sure of your facts.” He grinned to himself, no longer a warm grin, chewing on the bones of a hundred dead foes. “London is one of the two most important diplomatic posts Australia has. You don’t accuse our High Commissioner, our country’s ambassador there, you don’t accuse him of murdering his wife unless you are absolutely one hundred per cent sure of your facts.”
“And this” – Malone stumbled a little: he could just picture this part-time Maigret down at Trades Hall – “this political research officer, he’s sure of all his facts?”
Flannery coughed again: mirth sounded like lung cancer. “In twenty years he’s never been wrong in an election forecast, not even a by-election. He forecasts a conviction with this.” The claw scratched the folder again. “Says he’ll stake his life on it.”
Malone couldn’t help himself: “Seems to me, sir, he’s staking someone else’s life on it.”
The hoods dropped a little lower over the agate eyes. Malone could feel the old hawk peeling the flesh away from him, opening him up to look at the heart of Malone, scrutinising it to see if it had a political label on it, one that might be treasonable. Then the hoods lifted and he looked at Leeds. “I thought you said he was your best man, Jack.”
“He’s the best man few this job.” Leeds was still sitting forward in his chair, still taut.
“He’s only a detective-sergeant. I thought this would call for an inspector at least, maybe even a superintendent.”
“You asked for secrecy.” Leeds’s gruff husky voice had a hint of sharpness in it; a spark of reaction showed in Flannery’s unblinking eyes. “It might be difficult to account for the absence for a week or ten days of an inspector from the Murder Squad. Someone would be sure to start asking questions.”
“The sergeant here asks questions.”
Malone felt he was just part of the furniture of the room, part of the furniture of Flannery’s bailiwick: he was there to be used. He could feel the temper rising in him, but he held it in check.
“If Sergeant Malone sounded a little critical of” – Leeds also stumbled – “of your research worker, I think it’s a natural reaction. The real professional always suspects the amateur. I’ve heard you say that, sir, in the House.”
“This feller of mine isn’t an amateur.”
“He’s an amateur detective. Not even a private investigator. In any case, when Sergeant Malone has read that file, I’m sure he’ll agree your man has done a good job.” Leeds looked at Malone. “I’ve read it. Everything is there for an arrest.”
“And a conviction,” said Flannery.
“We never look that far,” said Leeds, showing his independence. “We’ll arrest him on the warrant that’s been issued, in the name of Corliss. The rest is up to the Crown Prosecutor.”
Flannery looked at Malone again, still poking away at his insides. “This has to be kept quiet. Not a word to anyone, not even to your wife.”
“I’m not married, sir.”
“Good. But don’t quote me! I’m the patron saint of the Labour League of Married Women.” He coughed and once again Malone got the warm grin. Flannery had decided to trust him: he began to lay the flesh back on, strip by strip. “How can we keep it covered up in your department, Jack?”
“He can apply for leave.” Leeds turned to Malone. “Better make it compassionate leave, to explain the hurry. Have your grandmother dying or something.”
“I haven’t used that one since I was a kid at school.”
“You’ll go the long way round. Fly over to Perth and pick up a plane there for Darwin. In Darwin you can catch the plane for London. If any of the airport reporters saw you getting on a plane for London, here in Sydney, they’d want to know the ins and outs of it all. But going to Perth – well, that’s where your grandmother is dying.”
Malone, still a little bemused, couldn’t resist one more question: “But why all the secrecy, sir?”
Leeds looked at Flannery again: it’s your question, you answer it. Flannery didn’t mind in the least: “Because if it’s at all possible I’d like Quentin back here in Sydney before his arrest is announced. I want to have the pleasure of ringing up someone and telling him myself.” For a moment malevolence made a ruin of his face. Malone stared at him and all at once thought: why, you old bastard, you’re a murderer, too. “I’ve waited a long time for this.”
Leeds interrupted, a little too sharply, as if he were trying to stop the old man from exposing himself any further. This was the sort of indecent exposure for which there was no legal penalty, yet it was more shocking than any sex perversion. “I’ll impress on Sergeant Malone that there has to be absolute secrecy. He’ll be back here within a week. And he’ll have the High Commissioner with him.”
Flannery sat nodding for a moment, a mote of sunlight from the window behind him rolling on the freckled dome of his bald head like a thin drop of yellow oil. “In a way I feel sorry for Quentin. I met him a couple of times down in Canberra. He’s not a bad bloke at all.”
Leeds stood up. One look at his face told Malone that the Commissioner had had enough of the room’s atmosphere; he looked like a man choking for air. He reached out a hand for the file on the desk and Flannery, after a moment’s hesitation, gave it to him.
“I want it done as quickly and quietly as possible, Jack.” Then he looked up at Malone. “Quentin may make a fuss. You may have to go to Scotland Yard, get them to bring him before an English court and get an extradition order. If that has to happen, get on the phone to the Commissioner here right away, before the London newspapers get wind of it. I don’t want a certain someone to hear about it before I have the chance of telling him myself.”
“I’ll watch it, sir.” Malone was sickened by the look on the old man’s face.
“I just hope you can talk him into coming back without any fuss, any need for extradition. If he’s got any sense of dignity he’ll see it’s better for him as High Commissioner to be arrested here in Sydney than in London. We’ve got to think of Australia’s good name. Don’t forget that, Sergeant.”
II
“Australia’s good name!” Leeds seemed to gasp for air as he and Malone came out into the bright early winter sunlight. He waved away the car that stood waiting for him at the kerb, as if even its large interior would be too confining for him in his present state of mind. “You mind walking?”
“I started on the beat. I haven’t lost the habit.”
“You were practically begging to be put back on the beat, a couple of those questions you put to him.”
“I’m not querying your judgment, sir, but do you think I’m the right man for this job?”
Leeds looked at the man beside him. Malone was tall, six feet, big in the shoulders and chest but not top-heavy; perhaps the well-shaped head, carried high, kept the feeling of balance. The face was too bony to be handsome but Leeds guessed women would find the eyes attractive: they were dark, almost Latin, and they were friendly. The mouth, too, was friendly: smiling was a natural exercise, not a studied social habit. Behind the façade Leeds knew there was a shrewd intelligence that could be relied upon in almost any circumstance. Malone gave the impression of being easy-going, but there was a competence about him that had marked him for promotion from his first days in the force.
“You’re the man, all right” Leeds said. “What’s worrying you?”
They walked up Macquarie Street, past the discreet tradesmen’s signs of the doctors’ brass plates. People went reluctantly, almost stealthily into the sombre doorways, taking their cancers, their coronaries, their troubled minds, in with them. Why was it, Malone wondered, that people always looked as if they were smuggling their illnesses into doctors’ consulting rooms? Or was it that he had suddenly become infected by secrecy, saw it even in the faces of strangers? He looked away from the doorways, at the cuter edge of the pavement where the young girls, on their way to the Botanical Gardens in their lunch-hour break, went by, carrying their youth and vitality and beauty like bold banners: no secrecy there. God, he thought, how young and wonderful they look. Then he wondered what had happened to him that he had begun to think of himself as old.
“I don’t know, sir. This smells of politics and I’ve never been mixed up in that sort of thing before.” He knew of the rivalry and antagonism that existed between State and Federal political parties. “Another thing. How did the High Commissioner get away with this for so long? Is the file on him really fair dinkum?”
“It’s about as factual and unarguable as you can get. Take my word for it, Scobie. I checked it and rechecked it before I put us out on a limb. As for Quentin getting away with it for so long. This is a big empty country. Western Australia where he’s officially supposed to come from, I mean as Quentin, that’s practically another country in itself. Perth is two thousand miles from Canberra or Sydney. On top of that, Australians never seem to take much interest in where their public men were born or how they grew up. Take Flannery, for instance. I’d bet not one per cent of this State’s population could tell you anything about his early life. They couldn’t care less. It’s what you are today that counts in this country, not what you were.”
Malone nodded, realising for the first time his own ignorance of the men who, one way or another, had ruled his life: they were just names and faces and nothing more. But something else made him uneasy:
“What’s behind all this?” he asked Leeds. “Why does the State Premier have a murder investigation conducted by one of his own political hacks? Why all the secrecy?”
Leeds took another breath of air. He was a big man, bigger than Malone, and usually he walked with a slow ambling roll, reminding one of a retired sea captain whose rough seas were behind him for ever. But today he was battling the storm of his own feelings.
“It’s pure political malice!” He looked at Malone fiercely from under the grey wire brushes of his brows. “Don’t you quote me to anyone or you’ll be working a bush beat before you know what hit you!”
“I have some faults, sir,” said Malone, trying not to sound priggish, “but indiscretion is not one of them.”
“Don’t sound so blasted priggish.”
“No, sir,” said Malone, and grinned.
Leeds nodded, then abruptly his reddish face, that could so often be as threatening as a clenched fist, broke into a smile. He walked in silence for a few yards as they turned down Hunter Street towards Police Headquarters; then he appeared to relax, began to roll a little as he walked. “You’re right, Scobie. That was one of the reasons I picked you for this job, your discretion.”
A young couple, blind with love, came towards them; the two policemen walked round them, respecting their selfishness. Leeds, interrupted, fell silent for a few more yards, and Malone paced beside him, silently patient. Patience had never been one of Malone’s early virtues, but he had learned to cultivate it, just as Flannery had learned to cultivate his warm sincere grin. Some virtues, Malone thought, were often only hypocrisy under another name.
“Pure political malice,” Leeds repeated. “He’s never forgiven the Prime Minister for crossing the floor back in the 1930s. You wouldn’t remember that.”
“In the 1930s I was still in short pants and both my grandmothers were still alive. I didn’t even know such things as politicians existed. What happened?”
“The P.M. was a Labour man in those days, here in State politics. That was before he moved down to Canberra – went into the Federal ring. There was a division in the House on some bill and he crossed the floor and voted with the Opposition. It brought the Government down.”
“And Flannery’s never forgiven him for it?”
“Scobie, woman hath no fury like that of a politician scorned.” Leeds smiled; he was almost fully himself again.
“But how does he get back at the P.M.?”
“Quentin has been the P.M.’s protégé. Some people think the P.M. has been grooming him to take over some day. Quentin had only been in Parliament two years when he was made a junior minister. If there were any overseas junkets, he was always on them. Then when the last High Commissioner in London died suddenly, Quentin was sent there. It’s a diplomatic post, but it’s always filled by a politician. Either as a reward for past services or as a build-up for bigger things. Quentin is obviously meant for bigger things.” Then he corrected himself: “Or was.”
Malone felt the light beginning to filter through; the atmosphere in Flannery’s office had fogged up his mind, but now he was out in the open again. “So with the Federal elections coming up in July, with the voting as close as they expect it to be – a nice juicy scandal could tip the scales, is that the idea?”
“Elections have been won and lost on less. All Labour has to do is query the P.M.’s judgment of the men he appoints. He’s made one or two poor choices as Ministers. Add this one and Labour will ask if he really should be in charge of the country.”
“Somehow it’s a bastard of a way to decide a country’s future.”
“You should read more history, Scobie. That look of pain you sometimes see on a politician’s face has been caused by a stab in the back. Some of the most honoured men in history were very good with the knife.”
“But Flannery, he’s not thinking of going into Federal politics, is he?”
“Of course not. He’s king here in New South Wales. Why would he want to go down to Canberra, just be one of the princes? No, this is just a personal feud between him and the P.M.”
“And Quentin – what’s he? The shuttlecock?”
“He’s a murderer, Scobie. That’s all you have to think of him.”
They had reached the entrance to the shabby old tenement that was Police Headquarters. Amid the blinding dazzle of the steel-and-glass cliffs that surrounded it, it looked like an ancient monument of dubious origin, perhaps the only building ever erected by the aborigines. The law in Australia had always been the poor cousin of government; what right had a copper to be comfortable? They went into the musty lobby and ascended in the antique lift that creaked like the machinery of law itself.
As they got out of the lift Leeds handed Malone the file. “Read that, then bring it back to me. Keep the carbon of it, you might need it in London, but don’t let anyone here see it. It’s top secret. At least it is for another week. Then I shouldn’t be surprised if Flannery has posters made of it and stuck up all over Sydney.”
Malone took the file and went looking for an empty office. Most of the staff were out at lunch, but he himself had no appetite for food just now. Disturbed by what he had witnessed and been told this morning, excited by the sudden prospect of his first trip abroad, he wanted only to get into this case at once. He found an empty room, sat down in one of the uncomfortable chairs, opened the file and began his acquaintance with John Quentin, born Corliss, ambassador and murderer.
III
In a comfortable chair in a luxury apartment on the other side of the world, Madame Cholon looked out at the soft London drizzle of rain and nodded her head emphatically.
“The man to kill,” she said, “is the Australian High Commissioner.”
The three men with her said nothing. Two of them had learned not to answer her till she looked directly at them for comment; the third, Pallain, was still feeling his way with her. She stood up and, the silk legs of her tailored slacks hissing together, she crossed to stand at the window. Down the road the Science Museum bulked like a dark cliff through the grey rain; Kensington was slowly being washed off the map. She had been in England a month now and she hated its greyness, its wetness and its cold. She shivered and pulled up the collar of her cashmere cardigan.
“This conference is not going the way we want it.” She spoke French, in a high soft voice, for the benefit of Pallain; she knew that he could speak Vietnamese, but she had never heard him speak anything but French or English. He was a snob, but she was sometimes that herself. “Something has to be done to disrupt it. This man Quentin is the one who is now dominating it, so he is the obvious one to be eliminated.” Below her in the street an ice-cream van went slowly by, its bell tinkling with ridiculous optimism in the cold grey day. What optimists the English were, always confident the sun was about to shine! She preferred the French, with their cynicism and their pessimism; one always knew where one stood with pessimists. She turned back to the three men, all of them with at least a strain of French blood in them. “Do you not agree?”
Pallain scratched the stubble of beard that always began to appear on his face at this time of day. He had more French in him than the other two men: his father had been a hairy sergeant from Carcassonne who had died in the mud at Then Bien Phu, leaving behind him a twenty-year-old son whose birth he regretted as much as his own death. “I don’t see the point of killing the Australian.”
Madame Cholon sighed, not attempting to hide her impatience with Pallain’s lack of imagination. Legs still hissing like singing snakes, she came back and sat down. “If he is killed, who is going to be accused of it? Not us, because no one knows of us. But everyone else with an interest in our country will be suspected. The Americans will accuse the Chinese and vice versa. The same with the South Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, the Catholics and the Buddhists. Why, even General de Gaulle might be suspected!” Her smooth schoolgirl’s face showed a schoolgirl’s spiteful humour. “And as soon as suspicion sets in, that is the end of the usefulness of the conference. It will be adjourned, just like so many other conferences. The war may stumble on, but there will be no real government in Saigon, just as there has not been for the past two years. Anarchy is the climate we want.”
“It may not be easy,” said Pallain. “I mean, killing the Australian.”
The other two men nodded. Truong Tho and Pham Chinh were both small men, and the French blood in them was two generations old and poor vintage at that. They were not strangers to murder, but they were strangers to London and the big city made them ill at ease and even a little frightened.
“I love to gamble,” said Madame Cholon. “But I do not think the odds in this case have to be against us.”
The three men knew whom the betting would be against: themselves, not Madame Cholon. Pallain said, “London has a very clean record when it comes to assassination.”
“Then it is time its record was spoiled. The English are too smug about their dull way of life. Reading their newspapers, one would think the rest of the world was made up of barbarians.”
Pallain hid his smile, recognising a barbarian when he saw one and being afraid of her. “How soon do you want Quentin–er–eliminated?” He wanted to smile again, embarrassed by the gangster phrase. He had spent all his adult life with gangsters of one sort or another, but he read Racine and dreamed of a life among such people as Proust had known. “We shall have to make plans.”
“Naturally,” said Madame Cholon, her voice tart with contempt for the dullards she had to employ. In the street below she heard the tinkling of the ice-cream van’s bell, and in her homesick ear it sounded like an echo of the temple bells along the Mekong River. She looked out of the window again, saw the thin explosion of sun behind the range of clouds far away to the west, and felt her own sudden flash of optimism. “One does not kill a man without making plans.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_36933d53-063e-544b-a6bc-839bdd2eb81c)
John James Quentin (Corliss):
Born: Tumbarumba, New South Wales, July 15, 1915.
Parents: Peter Corliss and Ida Fahey Corliss died in car accident October 12, 1925. Corliss, only child, then raised by aunt, Mira Fahey, spinster, who died January 22, 1934.
Corliss moved to Sydney February 1934, joined Metropolitan Water, Sewerage and Drainage Board as trainee surveyor.
Married Freda Wiseman, previously Weitzmann, August 20, 1936. No children of marriage. Weitzmann had arrived in Australia alone from Vienna January 1936. No relatives of hers have been traced.
Stabbed corpse of Freda Corliss discovered by neighbour December 9, 1941. One wound in right breast, inflicted by sewing scissors.
Corliss disappeared. Reappeared as John Quentin May 12, 1942, date of voluntary enlistment in Royal Australian Navy at Perth, Western Australia.
Married Sheila Redmond, daughter of Leslie Redmond and Elizabeth Cousins Redmond, both deceased, Perth, July 10, 1942. No children of marriage . . .
“Would you please fasten your seat belts? We shall be landing at London Airport—”
Malone closed the file and put it back in his brief-case. It was a comprehensive file, sixty pages thick, a monument to the diligence of the researcher. On the trip over Malone had read it three times, reading it at night when the passenger beside him, a talkative grandmother, had been asleep. She had got off at Zürich (“Then I’m going down to Rome. To see the Pope. I’m a Presbyterian myself, but we can’t all be bigots, can we?”), and the seat beside Malone had since been empty. In this last half-hour, free from interruptions and the grandmother’s inquisitive eye, he had been trying to memorise the summary that was attached to the file. The more he read, the more he could taste the relish with which the researcher had worked: he really had enjoyed the change from dry political statistics and trying to guess the voters’ intentions. John Quentin (or Corliss) had been pinned to these pages like a dead butterfly.
But the researcher had, in the final analysis, failed. He had pinned a specimen to a board, described its history, illustrated some of its characteristics; but John Quentin was still no more than a name (or two names) and a collection of facts; the researcher had not discovered what made him tick. And Malone had begun to feel the first stirring of an unease that had not troubled him since he had been sent out, years ago, to make his first arrest. Over the years he had come to appreciate that the less you knew about a man, the less you were involved emotionally when it came time to bring him in. Now, however, a personality, like a faint watermark, was hidden behind the typed facts; and, despite himself, Malone was intrigued by it. And for a policeman that way could lead to headaches. Subjectivity, he had heard Leeds say, was as corrupting as money.
Twenty minutes later the immigration officer was looking at his passport. “Police officer? On duty, sir?”
Malone shook his head. “Holiday.”
“Enjoy yourself.”
“Thanks,” said Malone, and wondered when he had last enjoyed an arrest. He could for a while hate a murderer who had committed a particularly horrible crime, the callous bashing of an old woman or the rape and killing of a young child; but later there would come the moments of doubt, the wonder at what had caused the flaw in the murderer. He didn’t believe all of the psychiatrists’ theories that the flaw in any man could be found in his childhood; he was old-fashioned enough to believe that some men were born bad. But why? He often asked himself, and left himself open to further questions that bothered him more than his colleagues suspected. He had often thought that he would like to have worked on the case of Cain. After that all other murder cases might have been simple.
The flight had been delayed for hours by storms in Zürich, and now it was late afternoon as he rode in in the airport bus to London. He looked out at England, catching glimpses of it from the motorway. He had never dreamed of travelling the wide world; well aware of his insularity and able to smile at himself, he had always been content with Australia and what it offered him. He was no explorer. Columbus, Magellan, Cook were men who probably would never have been happy while there was a horizon to draw them. Up till now, at thirty-one, horizons had meant little to him.
But England now was not something beyond the horizon; it was here around him. He could feel his excitement and interest growing; it was a pity that he was going to have no more than a day or two here. Perversely he began to hope that Quentin might fight the warrant, might ask for extradition procedure. It would play hell with Australia’s good name, but it would at least give Malone time to look at London. Then he cursed himself for his lack of patriotism. He was as hypocritical as Flannery.
He checked in at a hotel in Cromwell Road in Kensington. The affable Irish porter showed him to his room, talking a torrent all the way. “Ah, we get a lot of Aussies here at the hotel, sir. It must be a grand country, the numbers of you that are always coming over here.” Malone looked at the porter, but the latter wasn’t being sarcastic, only Irish. “Would you be on business, sir?”
“No, holiday.” Malone took out his note-book and looked at an address. “Is Belgrave Square far from here?”
The porter put down the bags. “Not far, sir. Was it an embassy you were wanting?” He had an Irishman’s frank curiosity: no one in Multinahone had had any secrets.
“No. Just friends.”
The porter’s eyebrows went up. “It’s a posh area, that it is, sir.”
“I have posh friends.”
The Irishman recognised the rebuff: some Aussies were just like the bloody English, keeping everything to themselves. He gave Malone directions on how to get to Belgrave Square and went out of the room, wondering why a man who stayed in a thirty-bob bed-and-breakfast room and who gave only a shilling tip should have posh friends in Belgravia.
Malone, a relaxed man who could sleep anywhere, even in an economy class airplane seat, was not tired by the long flight from Australia. He showered, changed into the light grey suit he had brought as a concession to the English summer, looked at his watch and decided to go and see Quentin at once. He had already made up his mind that he would confront Quentin with the arrest warrant at his home and not at his office at Australia House. He had never arrested a public official before and he did not want to be too public about it. Seven o’clock. The High Commissioner would probably be home now, doing whatever ambassadors did in their off-duty moments, having a bath, having a drink, wondering why they hadn’t taken up something easy like mountaineering or gun-running. It must be a bastard of a life, Malone thought: even the small diplomacies of a policeman’s life were difficult enough. But soon it would be over for Quentin.
Riding in the taxi towards Belgravia Malone tried to rehearse what he would say to Quentin; and after a while gave up. How did you face a man, secure in a new life and a new identity, almost impregnable behind the importance of his office, with a crime that was distant in time and place, ten thousand miles and twenty-three years from here and now? “Your Excellency, in regard to an ancient murder . . .” Malone gazed out of the window of the taxi, trying to make his mind a blank, trusting that the right words would come by instinct when the moment arrived. Habit, sometimes, was a comfort.
The taxi pulled in before the big four-storied house. Malone got out and conditioned by another habit paid the driver the exact amount on the meter.
“You Aussies,” said the driver, an economist from Bethnal Green. “I bet you don’t have any balance of payments deficit.”
Malone, who had never tipped a taxi-driver in his life, looked at the man blankly. “Belt up,” said the latter, and drove off, gnashing his gears instead of his teeth.
Malone shrugged, beginning to appreciate why someone had once written that the English were incomprehensible, and turned towards the house. He was surprised at its size; he was a long way from the five-roomed house in Erskineville where he had grown up. Then he looked at the other houses in the square and saw that some of them were even bigger; this square was a manifestation of living that he had only read about. This was diplomatic territory; above almost every entrance there jutted a white flagpole, like a single blunt-tipped mammoth’s tusk; the huge front doors had the magnificent discouragement of a butler’s façade. The heavily elegant cliff-faces of the houses hid secrets that exercised the British Government; but none of them held such a secret as this house behind him. He turned, hesitated, then pressed the bell firmly.
II
The door was opened by a butler, something Malone had never experienced in his life before. He had all the appearance of the butlers Malone had seen in films: tall, portly, his aristocratic nose pushed back by a smell not apparent to men with less sensitive olfactory organs. But when he spoke his rich purple voice had a foreign tinge to it, and at once Malone thought he had come to the wrong address.
“Is this the home of the Australian High Commissioner?”
“It is, sir. May we ask whom you wish to see?” Monarchs and butlers, Malone thought: who else has the right to speak in the royal plural?
“The High Commissioner. My name is Malone and I have a special message for him from the Premier of New South Wales.”
The butler looked suspiciously at him, then he stood aside, opening the door wider. Malone stepped into an entrance hall and waited while the butler, like a bishop on his way to the altar, did a slow march towards the rear of the house. Though the hall was only sparsely furnished, Malone was at once aware that he was on the close outskirts of luxury. Through a half-open door he caught a glimpse of a room that reminded him of illustrations he had seen in Vogue, a periodical that had once been delivered by mistake to the Murder Squad and reduced the officers there to a state of depressed inferiority. He turned his head and saw himself in a huge gilt-framed mirror: he looked at the stranger there who seemed so out of place. He shifted his feet nervously in the thick carpet of the hall, feeling as awkward as a three-legged colt. Suddenly he wanted this business of Quentin over and done with quickly. He would come back in his old age and look at London.
The butler came back down the hall with a girl. He stood aside, watchful as an old sea-lion; images kept flashing through Malone’s mind, but he could not see the butler as just a man like himself. The girl came forward.
“I am the High Commissioner’s secretary.” She, too, had a slight accent. Stone the bloody crows, Malone thought, whatever happened to the Australian accent? “What was it you wanted?”
“I have a personal message from the Premier of New South Wales.” He had no such thing; but he had not expected it to be so difficult to get in to see Quentin.
“A letter?”
“No, it’s verbal.”
“I’m sorry, but the High Commissioner is busy. Could you not come to Australia House tomorrow?”
Malone shook his head, trying not to appear too stubborn. He liked the look of the girl: tall, good-looking, blonde, and with a poise about her that he had looked for in the girls he had known and had so rarely found. But he sensed her impatience with him and he was aware of the cold disapproving eye of the butler. “The message is urgent and important.”
The girl looked at the butler, and Malone read the message that passed between them. They think I’m some crank! He was appalled at the idea, remembering his own impatience as a policeman with cranks. His hand moved towards his pocket to take out his identification badge. Then his hand dropped back to his side and he smiled to himself at the situation and his own reaction to it.
“Perhaps if you told the High Commissioner that the message concerns Tumbarumba, he might see me.”
“Tumbarumba?” The girl was now convinced she was dealing with a crank.
“It’s a town, not a disease.” This comes of employing foreigners, Malone thought; and began to feel more xenophobic by the minute. He had always been tolerant of the foreign migrants who had come to Australia, even those he had had to arrest; but now these two foreigners, the girl and the butler, were beginning to annoy him with their attitude towards him. Deep inside him he knew that regardless of their accents, they were only doing their job of trying to protect the High Commissioner from uninvited and unwanted guests. But they were also trying to prevent him from doing his job, one that he wanted finished as soon as possible. He was out of his depth here, in alien territory no matter that his country’s ambassador lived here, and he wanted to be on the plane at once for Sydney, home and an atmosphere where he didn’t have to be so secretive. He said sharply, “Just tell the High Commissioner that I’ve come from Tumbarumba.”
The girl raised an eyebrow, as if recognising for the first time that Malone was accustomed to some authority. Without a word, but with a nod of warning to the butler, she turned and went back along the hall. Malone and the butler stood watching each other in the huge mirror: they were posed in the gilt frame like a tableau titled Suspicion. Then the girl came back.
“This way, Mr.—”
“Malone.”
“Mr. Malone. The High Commissioner will see you.” Her poise had been cracked a little; there was no mistaking the surprise she felt that the ambassador had agreed to see this crank.
She led Malone down the hall, pushed open a door and stood aside. “Mr. Malone, sir, from Tumbarumba.”
“We are not to be disturbed, Lisa,” said the man standing in front of the marble-fronted fireplace. “By anyone.”
The girl closed the door. Malone, feeling more awkward than he had ever felt in his life before, stood watching the man across the room from him. He had checked on newspaper photographs of Quentin; but they had not done the man justice. He was taller than Malone had expected, and slimmer. His thick wavy hair, brushed close to his head, and his military moustache were grey, but somehow they did not add age to his lean high-cheeked face; Malone would have guessed him to be at least five to six years younger than the age that showed against him in the file. The wide sensitive mouth looked as if it knew the exercises of humour, and the dark blue eyes looked as if they, too, could smile with enjoyment. But not now: eyes and mouth were both stiff with suspicion.
“What is it, Mr. Malone?” Quentin’s voice, Malone guessed, would normally have been deep and pleasant. Now it was strained, a little high: the Australian accent was evident, the vowels flattened. “My secretary said you were from Tumbarumba.”
“I’m from Sydney, sir. Detective-Sergeant Malone.” He produced his badge, glad of the opportunity to do so; for the time being there was no longer any need for secrecy. “I’m sorry, Mr. Quentin, but I have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of your wife Freda.”
Quentin, for all the stiff suspicion in his face, had been standing at ease before the fireplace. Now all at once he seemed to wilt: years piled into his face like grey blood and he looked his age and more. Behind his head an ormolu clock ticked like a bomb; but the bomb had already gone off. The lips, as grey now as the moustache above them, grimaced in a thin smile.
“Tumbarumba – what a password!”
“I had to try something, sir. Your secretary is quite a watch-dog.”
“But not quite good enough. I should have warned her about policemen.” He put his hands together in front of his face and bowed his head like a man in prayer. Malone had seen many reactions to arrest and he had never got over his embarrassment at some of them. He just hoped Quentin was not going to start praying out loud. But then Quentin looked up and his mouth was twisted in the same thin grimace of a smile. “I’ve often wondered what I would say to you when you came. Somehow it was a speech that never got written. And I’m said to be a very good speaker.”
“I’d save it for the trial, sir. I’m supposed to warn you—”
“I know, Sergeant. But anything I may say now won’t help you very much. You wouldn’t be here unless you had a watertight case. You don’t go around arresting ambassadors to keep up your monthly quota, do you?” He smiled without rancour. As quickly as he had wilted he was now becoming philosophical. His voice had deepened, come under control again; the Australian accent was still there but less evident, the vowels were being given their full value. He moved towards a side table on which stood a decanter and glasses. “A sherry? Or don’t you drink on duty?”
“Where I grew up, sir, sherry isn’t considered a drink. It’s something you flavour jelly or trifle with.”
“You are looking a gift prisoner in the mouth, Sergeant. But I admire your sense of occasion. Sherry is for vicars and old ladies.” He smiled again, a much warmer smile. He put down the decanter without taking the stopper from it, pulled a long tasselled cord hanging beside the fireplace. When he turned back the smile had waned. “I must have grown up in the same sort of circles as you, Sergeant. A pity I ever left them. I wonder what Tumbarumba is like now?”
There was a knock at the door and the butler opened it. Quentin ordered Scotch, then turned back to Malone as the door closed again. He stared at the detective for a long moment, then he moved to a high-backed leather arm-chair and sat down slowly and a little wearily. He gestured at the room about him, and Malone, looking about him for the first time, saw that it was a small library. Books lined three of the walls: leather-bound volumes, large illustrated books, bright-jacketed novels, sombre-titled non-fiction: Quentin, or someone in the house, had a wide taste in reading. The fourth wall held some sporting prints: spindle-shanked horses straddled hedges, a fighter in long underwear posed behind bare fists and a walrus moustache. On a small desk a woman looked with calm eyes from out of a silver frame: she looked out of place beneath the sporting prints, too much of a lady.
“This is my retreat. A diplomat doesn’t get much time to himself and he needs somewhere where he can lock himself away for an hour or so every day, just so he can be himself. All day and every day, and every night too, almost, you’re being someone else. Mr. Australia, if you like, or whatever country you represent. You need some time each day just so you can check your own identity, make sure there’s some of the original man left.” He sighed and looked up at Malone, still standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. “I’ve spent almost twenty-four years trying to lose the original man. John Corliss, that is. How did you get on to him?”
Malone told him about the political research worker. “I don’t know who gave them the tip-off. It could have been someone who recognised you from years ago.”
Quentin nodded. “It’s been a long wait. Somehow I always knew the day would come. I’ve changed in appearance. My hair went grey during the war, then afterwards I grew this moustache. But you never feel you’re really changed, you see yourself from the inside—”
They were interrupted by the return of the butler with the drinks. “Madame asks will you be long, sir?”
“Not long, Joseph.” Quentin waited till the butler had gone out of the room. He poured himself and Malone a drink each, both of them strong: he seemed to take for granted that Malone was as much in need of sustenance as himself. Malone, grateful for the drink, didn’t contradict him. “When this matter comes out into the open, Joseph is the one who’s going to disapprove of me more than anyone else. There’s no snob like a butler, and a Hungarian butler is the worst of the lot.”
“I wondered about his accent. And your secretary’s, too.” Malone held up his glass, then lowered it. “Sorry. I was going to drink to your health.”
Quentin smiled wryly. “Thank you. I’m glad they sent a man with some sensitivity.” He raised his own glass and they drank silently to each other. Then Quentin said, “Yes, about my secretary. She’s Dutch. A Dutch New Australian. She was out there for seven or eight years. Joseph’s never been there and somehow I gather he’s glad of the fact. I inherited him from my predecessor. I think he still expects to be asked some day to serve witchetty grubs and fried ants.” He sipped his drink, then took a swift gulp, put down the glass and looked up at Malone. “I’m just talking, Sergeant. Putting off the evil moment or whatever it is. What’s the next move?”
Malone told him. “We’d like it if it can be done as quietly as possible. I can get an extradition order from the court here if you insist—”
Quentin waved a long-fingered hand. “There won’t be any need for that. I’ll go quietly, as the saying is.”
“Could you be ready to leave tomorrow?”
Quentin’s chin shot up. “When? Sergeant, don’t you read the newspapers? I’m in the middle of a conference, an important one—”
“I know, sir.” Malone sipped his own drink, hating more and more each minute this task he had been given. He still stood in the middle of the room, feeling as insecure as if he were the one who was being arrested. “But I’m afraid I haven’t been given much discretion in the matter. They want you back in Sydney at once.”
“Who does? The police? Or is it Flannery?” Malone hesitated, then nodded. Quentin barked angrily and went on: “That malicious conniving old bastard! You know why he’s doing this, don’t you?”
“I had it explained to me.”
“Not by him, I’ll bet!” Quentin got up and began to walk about the room, angrily, agitatedly; all his poise had left him, the past had caught him up, was riding his back like a savage monkey. The ormolu clock struck the half-hour and was echoed somewhere out in the hall by a deeper note. Quentin stopped, looked at the clock, then shrugged, as if time meant nothing now. But when he spoke again, his voice was still harsh, the flat accent back again. This was the voice he must have had twenty-odd years ago, Malone thought: the original man was always there in the tongue. “He’d be too shrewd to commit himself that far in front of a stranger. You are a stranger to him, aren’t you?”
“Very much so.” And glad to stay that way: Malone took another drink, washing away a taste that had been with him all the way from Sydney.
Quentin turned and looked directly at Malone. “Sergeant, I can’t afford to leave here for at least another four or five days. This conference, you know what it’s about, trying to settle a cease-fire in Viet Nam, it’s much more important than me or Flannery.” He hesitated, then his voice hoarsened: “Or even my dead first wife.”
Malone put down his glass on a nearby table. It was time to show some authority, to get started for home. “I appreciate all that. But it’s not my decision—”
“Whose is it?”
Malone hesitated. “The Commissioner’s, I suppose.”
“Get on to him, phone him. Tell him I promise to come quietly, but I must stay here till this conference is finished.”
“How do you know it will be finished in four or five days?”
Quentin gestured, a motion that already suggested lack of real hope. “If it isn’t – well, Viet Nam then will have about as much future as I have. We’ll both have reached the end of our roads.”
“Why is it so important that you stay?”
Quentin was patient. “I’m Australia’s leading representative at the conference. In the normal course of events it would be our Minister of External Affairs, but he’s still in Canberra ill. None of the other Cabinet Ministers know as much about South-East Asia as I do – some of them know nothing about it. So I was pitched into the job.” There was a note of regret in his voice: Malone couldn’t tell whether he regretted being handed the job or being taken away from it. He looked at Malone, still patient, sounding as if it were a long time since he had talked to an ordinary man in the street: “How much do you know about international politics?”
“Not much,” Malone admitted. “A policeman’s problems are usually too close to home. It’s hard to get any sort of perspective. Or find time to be interested, come to that.”
“That’s the way it is with about ninety per cent of the world’s population. They read the papers, but they don’t really care. A nice juicy murder—” He stopped and shook his head as if he had suddenly been hit a blow. “That’s what they’ll get next week, isn’t it?”
It was Malone’s turn to be patient: “You were explaining to me about this conference.”
“Oh, yes. Yes. Well—” He drew in his breath, regained control of himself: his powers of recovery were quick and remarkable. “There are several interests who don’t want a cease-fire in Viet Nam. If this conference could be interrupted, adjourned, even called off altogether, nothing would please them more. I’m not boasting, Sergeant, but I think I’m the one at this conference that the other delegates are listening to. Everybody at it has opinions, but too many of them are waiting for someone else to make the moves that might bring about peace terms. For better or worse, I look like being the man. By the end of this week I think I can swing them to some sort of terms for a cease-fire, one that should satisfy both sides. For the time being, anyway. In another year or two they may be back at each other’s throats again. Maybe even America and China will be in there in a full-scale war. I don’t know. But we’ll have bought some more time, thrown the military mind out of step while we try and see if the diplomatic mind can accomplish anything. Diplomacy has been down-graded these last few years since the generals have been given so much say in certain countries. I think it’s time we showed it’s not a dead method of working.” There was a knock on the door, but he ignored it. “That’s what I want to buy from your Commissioner – some time.”
Before Malone could answer, the door opened. “I’m sorry, John, but shall I have Lisa call them and tell them we can’t come?”
The woman who stood in the doorway was the most beautiful Malone had ever seen: the photograph on the desk had not done her justice. Perhaps it had something to do with the way she was dressed; none of the girls he had known back home had ever looked so elegant. She was not tall, but she gave the impression of tallness; she held herself erect, almost with a touch of imperiousness. He could only guess at her age, but he knew she must be in her early forties: she had married Quentin twenty-three years ago. But the erosion of age had not yet got at her, you knew she would look as beautiful as this for another ten years at least. The dark auburn hair, shining like metal; the complexion that looked as if it would be impregnable to the slow ivy-growth of wrinkles; the hazel eyes with their heavy lids: Malone, looking at her, knew she would protect those assets with a fierce pride, fighting age with more determination than most women. Then she smiled at him and the image of imperiousness and pride was suddenly gone, as if it had been no more than a trick of eyesight.
“I hope you will excuse me for interrupting—”
“Darling, this is Mr. Malone. From Canberra.” Malone looked at Quentin, but the latter had moved forward to take the woman’s hand. “This is my wife, Mr. Malone.”
Malone put out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Quentin.”
Sheila Quentin gave him her hand and smiled again. “And I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Malone. Are you here to stay in London or just visiting?”
“Just visiting,” said Malone, and glanced at Quentin.
“He’s here till the end of the conference.” Quentin was relaxed, almost casual; Malone could have been a minor government official who had called to pay his respects. “He’s been sent with some new advice.”
“Oh? Are you an expert on Viet Nam, Mr. Malone?”
“Not exactly.” Malone wondered what Quentin’s game was, but he decided to play along for the time being. It was a question he would not have dared to offer advice on: when you were arrested for murder, how and when did you tell your wife? “You might say I’m a legal expert. I know how far you can go in the prevention of certain things.”
Quentin’s lips twitched, but he didn’t smile. “We’ll be another ten minutes, darling, no more.”
“Good night, Mr. Malone. Perhaps we’ll meet again before you leave London.” She went out, her long green gown rustling like dead leaves in the quiet room.
The silence lasted for almost a minute after the door closed. Malone had become accustomed to silences; it was remarkable the number of men who remained dumb when you arrested them for a serious crime. But Quentin was not dumb because of his arrest: he was staring at the closed door, obviously wondering what effect his arrest would have on his wife, whether she would be struck dumb or would collapse in loud hysterics. Somehow Malone did not think there would be any hysterics from Mrs. Quentin: there would be something more terrible, a cold rage at himself for what he represented, for what he had done to her husband. He had seen the look that had passed between the Quentins: they were deeply in love with each other. And he knew from experience that a woman in love never saw the merits of justice.
At last Quentin said, “You’re wondering why I didn’t tell her who you really are? I’ve been rehearsing the words on and off for years. Darling, this is the policeman who’s come to arrest me for the murder of my first wife, the one you know nothing about. I’m a politician and a diplomat, Sergeant, supposedly skilled in all the uses of words. How do you deliver such a message to the wife you love dearly?”
Malone shook his head. He had had many awkward and distressing messages to deliver, but never to someone he loved: he dealt in tragedy, but remained outside it: he was like the heroin dealer who lived the good clean life. “I don’t want to have to tell her myself—”
“You won’t have to. When the times comes, I’ll tell her. I’m not a coward.” Then he bit his lip and turned away. “Or maybe I am. Always have been.”
“Do you still want me to phone the Commissioner? I mean, I don’t want to take you away from this conference if you feel—”
Quentin looked at his watch. “It’ll be almost five o’clock in the morning out there. Do you want to phone him at his home?”
“How soon could I get through?”
“I can get you priority.” He smiled wryly; from now on all jokes would be against himself. “I may not have that privilege much longer.”
Malone checked Leeds’s home phone number from his note-book and gave it to Quentin. The latter picked up the phone and dialled. “This is the Australian High Commissioner at—” He gave his own number. “I want a top priority person-to-person call to Mr. John Leeds at—” He read from the note-book Malone held out to him. “Will you ring me back, confirming and telling me how long it will be?”
He hung up the phone and Malone said, “If the Commissioner okays this, you know I can’t let you out of my sight for those four or five days. Technically you’re already under arrest.”
“I wonder if I could get the P.M. to put up bail for me?” Again he smiled wryly; then he said, “You won’t trust me?”
“Don’t put it like that, Mr. Quentin.”
“I’m sorry.” He looked curiously at Malone. “I have the feeling you’re not enjoying this assignment. Am I right?”
“There’s a lot of police work I don’t enjoy. We’re not all bastards, you know.” Malone held back. He was coming to like this man more than he should. Flannery had been right: He’s not a bad bloke at all.
“I suppose it’s like politics.”
“And diplomacy, too?”
Quentin looked at him, then nodded. “Everything is compromise. Only the saints escape, and they never go into politics or diplomacy.”
“Or police work,” said Malone, and after a slight hesitation both men smiled at each other.
The phone rang and Quentin picked it up. After a few words he looked at Malone. “The call will be through in twenty minutes.”
“I hope for your sake he’s in a good humour at five o’clock in the morning.”
“Not for my sake,” said Quentin, hanging up the phone. “That’s not why I’m asking for the extra time.”
“Sorry,” said Malone, and began to wonder what sort of man Quentin had been twenty-three years ago when he had murdered his wife.
“I have to get dressed now. There’s a reception at one of the African embassies. Do you want to come with me to that?”
“Am I dressed for it?”
Quentin looked at the very pale grey suit, the blue nylon shirt and the green-figured tie that looked like an aunt’s present. “At the risk of offending you, Sergeant, I don’t think you’re dressed for anything in London. Where do you buy your clothes back home?”
Malone grinned: he had been criticised many times before for his lack of interest in clothes. “The first shop I come to. I’ve never been much of a dresser.”
“I admire your modesty, but you certainly speak the truth. Have you ever worn tails?” Malone shook his head. “You’re going to tonight. We’re about the same size, you can wear my spare set. What size shoes do you take?”
“Eight and a half. I haven’t got policeman’s feet.”
“The same size as mine. You can step into my shoes tonight, Sergeant, have a look at my world. You might understand why I’m going to be reluctant to leave it. It has its drawbacks, but I enjoy it.”
Malone began to protest. “Look, I don’t want to crowd you, sir – I’ll wait outside—”
“I feel I owe you something, Sergeant—” He gestured at the phone. “If I’m to keep you here in London longer than you expected, I’ll see you get more out of it than waiting around in doorways.”
“What will your wife say? I mean about lending me your clothes? Won’t she ask some awkward questions?”
“My wife trusts me, Sergeant. She never asks too many questions. A diplomat’s wife learns not to.” Then he sighed. “There’ll be enough questions after I’ve told her who you really are.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_bee36172-adbb-5599-bee0-02c52d658061)
“He has discovered the elixir of adolescence,” said the donnish-looking Labour M.P. “Any day now I’m expecting him to call the House dining-room the tuck shop.”
“He is the sort of African who wears his colour on his sleeve,” said the light-skinned Indian.
“Her intelligence, my dear, is second to anyone’s you care to name,” said the wife of the junior Foreign Office man.
“Australia, I’m told, is the world’s largest suburb,” said the man from Commonwealth Relations.
Malone almost popped the stud of his collar as he heard the last remark. He was about to move forward to break up Commonwealth Relations when a restraining hand caught his arm.
“Ignore them, Mr. Malone. Diplomatic receptions are very much like women’s tea parties, only a little more elegant and epigrammatic.” Lisa Pretorious stood beside him, her tanned shoulders and arms offset by the pale pink of her gown. A South American second secretary went by, all teeth and wink, and she gave him a cool smile that was both an acknowledgment and a rebuff. “Don’t you go to them in Canberra?”
Malone shook his head. “I’m known back home for my undiplomatic behaviour, so I’m never invited.”
“They should invite you. You look quite decorative in tails.” She looked him up and down. “I’m quite proud to have you as my escort. When Mr. Quentin suggested it—”
“You thought I’d be wearing my own suit?” She nodded, and now it was his turn to look her up and down. “Don’t you diplomatic types ever blush? You’ve just insulted me—”
“I’m not a diplomatic type, I’m just a private secretary. But one learns the tricks. Any diplomat who blushed would be out of a job at once.”
“You could be a little more diplomatic in telling me I’ve got no taste.”
“Mr. Malone, I was born in Holland and I’ve spent seven years in Australia – my formative years, if you like to call them that. What sort of training is that for subtlety?” Suddenly he laughed and she smiled in return. “That grey suit of yours is pretty awful, you know. You looked like an unsuccessful racecourse tipster. I think you should understand why I was so suspicious of you, why I didn’t want you to see the High Commissioner.”
“What’s he like to work for?” Malone asked the question idly, just to keep the conversation going: he was enjoying the company of this good-looking, frank girl. Then he regretted the question: he was already becoming too interested in Quentin.
“The best boss I’ve ever had. I’ve been a doctor’s receptionist, secretary to an advertising man, a guide on a conducted tour of Europe, oh, and several other things. I’d never done anything like this till I came to work for Mr. Quentin.” She looked about the crowded room that moved like a wind-ruffled pool under the crystal sun of the huge chandelier. Conversation floated like a swarm of butterflies: words were coloured, had a polish and exoticism about them that Malone had never heard before. “I don’t think I want to do anything else now. I hope Mr. Quentin remains High Commissioner for years.”
Across the room Malone saw Quentin and his wife moving slowly from group to group, from Africa to Asia to the Americas: everywhere they were greeted with genuine smiles of welcome. “Is he popular?”
She nodded. “He’s considered to be the best man Australia’s ever had in London. But I don’t think they really appreciate that back home.”
“No,” he said, and tried not to load his voice. He looked at her, changing the subject quickly: “You’re Dutch, but you think of Australia as home, do you?”
“My parents are settled there, in Melbourne. They’ll never come back to Europe. So I look on Australia as home. One needs roots somewhere.”
“I guess so,” said Malone, and wondered where Quentin thought of his roots as being planted. Tumbarumba, Sydney, Perth, Canberra, London: the man had been on the run all his life.
Then a thin elderly woman, throttled by pearls, was squeezed out of the crowd like a magician’s trick. She greeted Lisa with a hoarse whinny.
“Lady Porthleven, may I present Mr. Malone?”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Malone.
“Oh, really?” Lady Porthleven looked surprised: no one had ever actually told her he was pleased to meet her. Then she drew Lisa back into the crowd with her, leaving Malone well aware of the fact that he was on the outside.
He looked about the room. Jewels glittered like angry eyes; decorations were bleeding wounds on breasts. A Pakistani and a Bolivian went by, continents arm in arm; Italy flirted with Iran, and an international bed was already beginning to bounce. A string quartet was playing somewhere in an alcove, working its laboured way through a medley: even the requests at the Grand at Brighton had never been as demanding as this. The colours of the women’s gowns, Western, Eastern, African, both pleased and pained the eye: Malone felt the effects of visual gluttony. He stood irresolute for a moment, suddenly tired, wanting to shout at the crowd to go to hell: no wonder Australians disliked bloody foreigners. Then he grinned and shook his head. He was an outsider here. He was discovering for the first time what it was like to be a foreigner.
“Don’t get too involved over there,” Leeds had said on the phone when the call had come through. “I’ll see what Flannery says about the extra time Quentin has asked for. I’ll try and talk him into it. But don’t forget, Scobie – you’re a policeman on duty for all those extra days.”
“I know, sir. Polite but impersonal.”
“That’s the ticket. I’ll call you back in four hours’ time, let you know the score. Where will you be staying?” Malone had put his hand over the phone and repeated the question to Quentin. Then he had said, “Mr. Quentin says I can stay here at his house. They have several guest rooms.”
“Don’t be a guest, Scobie. Or anyway, don’t act like one. But I guess you’ll have to stay there to keep an eye on him. I’ll ring you. This is getting to be a bigger bastard of a situation all the time.”
Then Malone had followed Quentin upstairs, where Joseph the butler had taken him over. “This is your room, sir. Some very distinguished gentlemen have stayed here.”
Malone had glanced about the room: even here he was in the midst of discreet elegance. It was a room designed for a male guest: antique pistols hung on one wall, the chair and the dressing-table accessories were leather-backed, even the air smelled as if it had been sprayed with some masculine air freshener. Only the carpet had a feminine luxury about it: Malone felt bogged down in its deep soft pile. An overnight room for the rich and the distinguished: Malone remembered some of the closets with bed in which he had slept when sent to country towns on a case.
“The tone will be lowered tonight,” Malone had said, but Joseph had said nothing: one didn’t joke about a self-evident truth.
When he was dressed Malone had looked at himself in the long mirror and been impressed by what he saw. The coat was a little tight under the arms, but otherwise everything might have been tailored for him. Even the shoes had fitted, but he had felt a momentary doubt when pulling them on: was this how you felt when stepping into a dead man’s shoes?
He had gone downstairs and Quentin, his wife and Lisa Pretorious had been waiting in the hall for him.
“You look most distinguished, Mr. Malone,” Sheila Quentin had said, and Malone had felt a youthful glow of pleasure: he had never expected in all his life to be called distinguished.
He looked at Joseph, standing nearby, and winked; but the butler had not moved a muscle. I should arrest that bastard, Malone thought, for insulting a police officer. Then he had glanced at Quentin and the humour in him had been doused. The High Commissioner, handsome and distinguished though he was, looked exhausted, a man who had all at once begun to age. Looking at the tall grey-haired man in the beautifully cut dress suit, Malone felt he was looking at a corpse dressed for a wedding instead of a funeral: someone had got the dates wrong.
“Would you be kind enough to escort Miss Pretorious?” Sheila Quentin had said; and Malone had offered his arm to the cool lovely blonde who was looking at him with new, almost unbelieving, interest.
“If you’ll have me,” he said, as the Quentins had gone ahead of them out the front door to the waiting car.
“I wonder that Tumbarumba ever let you go,” Lisa had said. He looked quickly in front to see if the Quentins had heard the remark, but if they had neither of them showed any reaction. “I wouldn’t have recognised you as the man I let in a while ago.”
Her smile had taken the ice out of her remark. But she knows I’m an outsider, Malone had thought.
Now here at the reception he felt even more of an outsider. Then through an open arch he saw a waiter go past bearing a tray of food; his stomach reminded him he had not eaten for almost nine hours. He followed the waiter, easing his way through the groups of people with more politeness than he felt. He knew it was stupid to feel resentful because people didn’t turn and welcome him with open arms. But he had been spoiled back in Sydney: there, even the crims had been friendly to him. Except when he came to arrest them.
The supper room was almost deserted but for a few disguised journalists pecking at the perks of the diplomatic social round, and two Negro men in evening dress.
“Enjoying yourself?” The older of the two men, tall and portly and cheerful, had a voice as rich as that of Quentin’s butler; but he had none of the servant’s snobbery, he was a man born to be friendly.
“Not much,” said Malone with undiplomatic truthfulness; hunger always sharpened one’s candour. Then he remembered that he was in an African embassy, that the men beside him were coloured. “Do you belong here?”
“I’m the ambassador. I’m not enjoying it, either.” He laughed, a deep gurgle of merriment that made jelly of his jowls. The younger Negro, lighter skinned and thinner, smiled with more controlled humour. The ambassador was piling a plate with food; he held a bouquet of crab, salad, tomato, celery. “But the food is good. Help yourself. Where are you from?”
“Australia,” said Malone, and saw the younger Negro look at him with sudden interest.
“With Quentin? A splendid chap. I can even forgive him your White Australia policy. He’ll be the one to make a success of this conference.” He added a ribbon of mayonnaise to the bouquet in his hand. “If it’s going to be a success.”
“You don’t think it will be?” Malone followed him round the table, using the ambassador’s plate as his own example: if a diplomat could be a hog, why not a plain policeman?
“Champagne? The wages of sin and diplomacy, Bollinger ’55. Back in my country I’m expected to drink a concoction made out of tropical fruits. We call it Château-neuf-du-Papaya. Terrible stuff.”
“Jungle juice,” said the younger Negro in a soft American accent. “The Aussies used to make it and sell it to our guys in New Guinea.”
“Really? I’m surprised you won the war. Well, now I have to find somewhere quiet to eat this.” The ambassador looked at the heaped plate, then winked a piebald eye at them both. “My father died of gluttony, a surfeit of underdone missionary. What a pity he didn’t live to appreciate the fruits of independence.”
He went rolling out of the room, chuckling to himself. Malone grinned and the younger Negro said, “His father went to Oxford just as he did. Periodically he takes a course in atavism, to come down to the level of some of his politicians back home.”
Malone steered clear of any racial comment: he wasn’t sure that he was not being baited. “Do you work for him?”
“I’m like you, a guest here. The name is Jamaica.”
“You’re an American?”
Jamaica nodded. He might have been a handsome man had his face not been so tight: all his feeling towards the world was screwed in behind the closed defence of his face. The sculptured head, with its close-cropped hair and its stiff dark features, reminded one of a helmet with its visor down: all Jamaica’s pain, joy, hate and love would be his own secret.
“From Georgia.” His voice was softly accented, but he had been gone a long time from Georgia. “I haven’t seen you around before. Are you here just for the conference?”
Malone hesitated, then nodded. “I expect to be going back at the end of the week.”
“You think it’ll be finished by then?”
“Don’t you?” Malone added Russian salad to his plate, hoping it would not indict him in the eyes of the American.
Jamaica shrugged. He wore his evening clothes with less ease than had the African; his jacket was too large and when he shrugged one shoulder slipped forward a little, as if he had dislocated it. He’s like me, Malone thought, he’s wearing someone else’s tail plumes. “You know what conferences are like.”
“I don’t. This is my first.”
Jamaica picked up a stick of celery, bit into it. Across the room the journalists watched attentively, their stares hidden behind their champagne glasses. Their dress suits were less expensive than those worn by the other guests, but they wore them with as much ease; most of them were middle-aged or elderly men who had been on this round for years. Malone, a policeman with little affection for newspapermen, looked at them and thought of them as vultures dressed as penguins. But Jamaica ignored them; all his attention was on Malone. The celery crackled in his mouth as he said, “Your man Quentin is a great one for compromise, isn’t he?”
“You Americans don’t like compromise, do you?”
“It was a European invention.”
“You’re wrong there, mate. I think it was the Chinese.”
“The Chinese aren’t interested in compromise now.”
“That’s the only thing you have in common. You two ought to get together.” Stone the crows, I’m talking like a bloody diplomat; and Malone almost beamed with pleasure at his repartee. This was better than talking cricket scores and football results with the other blokes in the Murder Squad.
“You Australians aren’t in a position to be too independent.”
“No,” said Malone, his plate at last full. “That’s probably why Quentin is plumping for compromise.”
“You’d better be careful.” Jamaica’s voice was even, toneless: you could read into it any emphasis you wished. Malone read a warning, close to a threat; and turned his head sharply to ask Jamaica what he meant. But the American was already walking away. “I’ll see you around.”
Malone stared after him. Why was the American so sour, what did he mean that Malone should be careful? Then Malone was aware of someone moving along the supper table towards him.
Across the room one of the journalists had taken a step forward, but had stopped when he saw the small Oriental woman in the yellow ao dais moving towards the Australian.
“Who’s the woman?” the journalist whispered to one of his colleagues.
“Search me. But East is East and West is West—”
“Yes, I know. And quicker the twain should meet. But somehow I can’t see them going for a concubine down in Chislehurst. And that’s what she’d have to be. I already have a missus.”
“We’re backward here in Britain. We need a New Society.”
At the supper table Malone had turned as the woman spoke to him. “You are an Australian, I believe? Are you here for the conference?”
Out of the corner of his eye Malone saw that Jamaica had halted for a moment beyond the doorway and looked back. Had he warned Malone to be careful of this woman? If so, why? Malone looked down at the woman, tiny, beautiful, as dangerous-looking as a budgerigar.
“Sort of.” He had never become adept at looking at a woman while pretending to look elsewhere; he gazed frankly at this woman with the schoolgirl’s face. There was an innocence about her that seemed incongruous with the sophistication of the tight-fitting gown she wore. The ao dais exposed almost nothing of her but a shimmer of leg, yet it was more revealing than any other gown Malone had seen tonight. But the woman had not cheapened herself: what the gown hinted at was not for sale at bargain prices. “My name’s Malone. Pleased to meet you.”
“Pleased to meet you – I have never heard that greeting before. It is so much friendlier than How do you do. I am Madame Cholon.” Malone put out his free hand. After a moment’s hesitation Madame Cholon smiled and put her hand in his; it felt like the wing of a small bird and he pressed it with rough but gentle fingers. “You seem a very friendly man. One does not meet too many of those at receptions like this.”
“I’m new here. I’ll learn to be like the rest of them. Like something to eat?”
Eyed by the curious journalists, they moved out of the room on to a terrace that overlooked a large garden. Green lanterns bloomed in the trees and guests moved through the aqueous light like floating upright corpses. In the huge houses the chatter of the reception buzzed like the sound of a plague of summer night insects; the effect was heightened by the sultry warmth of the evening. Beyond the garden London was only a dull gold reflection on the low clouds, silent as a faraway eruption.
“This road used to be called Millionaires’ Row.” Madame Cholon pointed to the huge houses behind them, then to the mansions on either side. She picked with long-nailed fingers at a small bunch of grapes. “Then the embassies moved in here. Governments are the only ones with money these days.” Malone noticed the sharp blade of resentment in her soft high voice; this schoolgirl could be spiteful. “But then you are a government man, are you not?”
“None of the money filters down as far as me.”
“I have heard there is very little corruption in Australian government. Where I come from, a man is suspect if he is not corrupt.”
Malone, his mouth full of crab and salad, said nothing. He was ravenous, but he was doing his best not to look as if he were shovelling the food into himself.
“I like to see a man eat.” Madame Cholon bit delicately at a grape as if it were a mango. “Men are always more honest about the sensual pleasures, do you not think so?”
Malone gulped, clearing his mouth. “I hadn’t thought about it. Are they like that where you come from? Where do you come from?”
“Out East,” said Madame Cholon, and Malone remarked the evasiveness. He looked towards the doorway to see if Jamaica was still watching them, but the American had disappeared.
“That covers a lot of territory, Out East.”
“Yes, doesn’t it?” said Madame Cholon, and smiled. She ate another grape, spitting the seeds into her hand with something of the peasant coarseness that occasionally showed in her in the simpler body functions. She had seen this tall, socially awkward man arrive with the Australian High Commissioner and she wondered if he would he returning to Belgrave Square when Quentin returned there. Pallain, Pham Chinh and Truong Tho would want as few witnesses as possible when they killed Quentin.
“Do you gamble, Mr. Malone?”
Malone looked at her in surprise: he was finding it a little difficult to keep up with this woman. All the girls he had known had been straightforward, the sort that a confirmed bachelor preferred: you knew where you stood with them. “Once or twice a year I might have a quid on a horse.”
Betting on racehorses: that was for peasants, like fan-tan and dice. “No, I mean chemin de fer or baccarat.”
“Those games are illegal where I come from.”
This was going to be harder than she had thought. Australia was beginning to sound like a country run by missionaries. “Don’t you ever do anything illegal?”
“Not if I can help it,” he said, and knew he must sound priggish. He waited for her to tell him so, but she was politer than Leeds had been. “Anyhow, what gambler ever finishes up in front?”
“Some of us do,” she said, and her smile was secretive. “You should try your luck some time.”
“Not at baccarat.” He could see the headlines in the Sydney Mirror: Cop Does Dough At Baccarat. That would mean an early retirement, all right.
“I once met an Australian. He said Australians were great gamblers, they had very little respect for your law. He said your national hero was some sort of outlaw. Ed – Kelly?”
“Ned Kelly.” I’ll shoot the next bastard that repeats that lousy joke. He looked at Madame Cholon over a heaped fork and wondered at her interest in gambling. If she was Chinese, that would explain it; but somehow she didn’t look Chinese. “He was what we call a bushranger.”
“And are you not a bushranger?” Malone shook his head, his mouth full. “What are you, Mr. Malone? Are you on Mr. Quentin’s staff?”
Malone turned his face away from the light while he looked at her out of the corners of his eyes. Was every newcomer to a High Commission or an embassy queried as he had been? Or was Quentin so important that anyone connected with him became important? If so, it was a distinction Malone did not want. “Let’s just say I’m attached to him.”
“Too attached to be allowed a night off?” This man was not so stupid after all. If he was a security officer, some sort of bodyguard for Quentin, then she did not want him on hand when the attempt was made to assassinate Quentin. She did not know how forward women were in this country of cold men, but she had to take a risk. She smiled, employing all the subtle charm she had acquired professionally over the last twenty years. “I want to go gambling, Mr. Malone. There is a club in Mayfair, but ladies are not allowed in unescorted. It is very English.”
Malone put down his plate on the stone balustrade of the terrace and picked up his glass of champagne. This was Millionaires’ Row and he was an intruder, a beggar whose bank book would have been laughed at as a worthless visa in this territory.
“Better try someone else, Madame Cholon. I’m not in the Mayfair class. With my salary they’d probably restrict me to the one-armed bandits.”
“What is your salary, Mr. Malone?”
He raised his eyebrows. He had once read that the Asians had very different ideas on privacy from those of the Europeans, but he had never been asked a question as blunt as this before, not even by the Chinese opium smugglers he had met before he had gone on to the Murder Squad. “I get just over two thousand a year, Australian. Sixteen hundred sterling.”
“It is not much, is it?” Diamonds on her fingers winked derisively at him as she raised a hand to the pearls at her throat.
“I was happy enough with it back home.” Which was the truth: he had never dreamed of riches and so had been incorruptible. He had never been smug about his incorruptibility. He knew that every man had his price: he had just never found out what his was.
“But you are not now?”
Malone looked back into the big main room, at the silk walls, the frozen explosion of the huge chandelier, the beautiful women in gowns that would have cost him a month’s salary. “I came here tonight in a Rolls-Royce, the first time I’ve ever been in one, maybe the last. I’m not likely to lose my head over something I’ll only taste once.”
“What sort of car do you have back home?”
“A second-hand Holden.”
“A Holden? What is that?”
“It’s something you don’t drive up to expensive gambling clubs in. Better get someone else, Madame Cholon.” Then he saw Jamaica standing in the doorway watching them, and he nodded. “Ask that bloke. He’s an American. They’re richer than anyone else.”
Madame Cholon looked towards Jamaica. “But he is coloured!”
Malone was not surprised by her reaction. He had heard a Chinese girl in Campbell Street back home in Sydney call an aborigine a dirty black bastard: colour prejudice could run right through the spectrum. All at once he did not like this tiny beautiful woman who seemed so curiously interested in him. He put down his glass on the balustrade and took random aim at her: “You Vietnamese have never bellyached about the colour of American money.”
He knew he had guessed right: she was Vietnamese. She stared at him for a moment, then she said something that was foreign to him but which he well understood: as a policeman he had been sworn at enough to catch the intent if not the words.
“And the same to you,” he said, and walked away from her. He passed Jamaica as he went through the open doors into the main room. The American looked directly at him and he stopped. “Who’s that woman I’ve just left?”
Jamaica looked after Madame Cholon as she went quickly along the terrace and through a doorway into another room. “I was wondering that myself.”
He’s lying, Malone thought. “Let me know if you find out.”
“She’s quite a dish, isn’t she?”
“That’s what she said about you,” said Malone, left him and went on into the room.
Sheila Quentin came towards him. Two hours of diplomatic ping-pong hadn’t touched her; she looked as cool, poised and unmarked as when she had arrived. “We are leaving, Mr. Malone. My husband is feeling very tired. Perhaps you would like to stay on?”
“No, I’m tired, too.”
They began to move across the room. Men flashed quick smiles at Sheila Quentin; the women’s smiles were a little slower. But her own response was warm and quick to everyone; it was a diplomatic smile, but somehow she made it appear sincere.
“Did you bring some bad news for my husband, Mr. Malone?” she said, inclining her head to a huge Nigerian woman, extravagant as an African sunset in her native dress.
“Why?”
“He was quite cheerful when he came home this evening. Confident the conference was going the right way. But now—” She looked up at him. “What sort of message did you bring him from Canberra?”
They were interrupted by two women, a Canadian and a German: Malone stood aside while the three women made arrangements for a committee to clothe the underprivileged of Stepney. Then he and Sheila Quentin moved on. “I think you’d better ask him.”
“It’s as secret as that, is it?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And bad?” He hesitated, then nodded. She bit her lip and for a moment there was a hint of strain in her face. “Damn! And everything was going so beautifully.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and was surprised at the depth of sincerity he felt.
“Do you always bring bad news?”
Again he hesitated, then he nodded. “Too often. They think I have the right personality for it.”
“I hate you, Mr. Malone.” She smiled, and he warmed towards her. “But it’s not your fault.”
No, he thought, it’s not my fault. He wondered whom she would hate when she found out whose fault it really was. Then they had reached Quentin and Lisa Pretorious, standing waiting for them just outside the entrance to the main room. Quentin did look tired, a man who had run a long race and had suddenly collapsed at the end of it. The two women looked at him with concern, but he managed to smile.
“It’s nothing. Conferences are like marathon races – you have to wait for your second wind. A spoonful of Horlicks in a glass of Scotch and I’ll be fine.”
The women grimaced and smiled at him; but Malone saw that they were still not reassured. Quentin glanced at him. “Do you ever have need of a second wind, Mr. Malone?”
“The time’s coming up now,” said Malone, and underlined his next words: “I’ll be glad to get home.”
As the Quentins and Lisa went ahead of him out of the big entrance hall Malone looked back. On the other side of the big room Madame Cholon stood by the terrace door watching him, her gaze as cold and steady as that of a marks-man taking aim. Jamaica was moving towards her: his face, too, had the look of a hunter.
II
Pallain sat in the rented black Ford Zephyr. He had learned the advantages of having several passports and driving licences, and the car had been rented in the name of Pierre Martin. He had never liked the risk of using a stolen car on a job; it was always best to stay within the law as much as possible; in a stolen car you always stood the risk of being picked up by a too-observant flic. The Zephyr would be abandoned after they had made their getaway and it could never be traced to Jean-Pierre Pallain. The deposit would be lost, but Madame Cholon was paying for that and fifteen pounds was nothing against the stakes she was playing for.
Pham Chinh, sitting beside him, went to light a cigarette, but Pallain slapped the book of matches from his hand. “Save it,” he said in French. “You can have one later.”
Pham Chinh rubbed a nervous finger down his youthful cheek. He was thirty years old, but he had looked the same age for the past fifteen years: only the eyes had always been old, old and cunning and mean. “It is getting late. Don’t these diplomats ever come home?”
“At least we’re waiting in comfort. Pity poor Tho over there in the gardens.”
He nodded across the square to the dark island of trees and shrubs in its centre. Truong Tho was there, the rifle with the telescopic sight cradled in his arms like a wood-and-metal doll, the guerrilla in the London jungle. Pallain had bought the gun in a shop off Bond Street, where the salesman could not have been anything less than a duke.
“What did you plan to shoot, sir?”
An ambassador: Pallain was sure the man would have approved of the social status of the target. “Deer.”
“With a telescopic sight, sir?”
“Something wrong?”
“Oh, no, sir. But it is hardly–er–sporting, is it?”
Pallain had paid in cash, another thing that had not impressed the salesman; and now Truong Tho was waiting there in the shadows to commit a deed that the English would probably condemn as also not sporting.
“He mustn’t miss.” Pham Chinh was glad he was not the one who had to do the shooting; he knew he would have been too nervous to aim straight. “There won’t be a chance for a second shot.”
Pallain said nothing, but glanced at his watch. The square was deserted but for the occasional passing car or taxi. The tall pale houses gave an impression of being no more than empty shells, despite the lighted windows that showed in one or two of them. The car was parked at the end of Chesham Place where it entered the square; behind them was the German Embassy and across from them was the white portico of the Spanish Embassy. The sound of music came softly from across the road, Segovia in nostalgic mood: someone was homesick for Andalusia. There was the mutter of German voices and two men in white raincoats went by without glancing at the car. London is made up of foreigners, Pallain thought; but there would be one less before the night was out. But then an Australian might not be considered a foreigner; he had never really understood how the Commonwealth worked. Whatever Quentin was, he would be dead tonight, eligible only for the citizenship of the grave.
Then the big black Rolls-Royce, AUS–1, went past, slowing to turn left into Belgrave Square and follow the one-way route round to the Australian High Commissioner’s house on the south side of the square.
Chapter Four (#ulink_85a1624b-4c0c-5bcd-a7f2-f10c71ccd524)
As the big limousine turned left into the square Malone, sitting beside Lisa in one of the jump-seats, glanced casually out at the car parked close to the corner. He saw the two men in the front seat of the car turn their faces away, but not before he had caught a glimpse of the man behind the wheel, a fleeting impression like the subliminal images he had once seen tried out on television. His brows puckered, the policeman in him at work. Why should two men, sitting in a parked car late at night, wish to avoid being seen? Then he shook his head and grinned. Leave it to the London bobbies: it was no concern of his.
“Something amusing you?” Lisa asked.
“Just thinking what my old mum would say if she could see me now. She’s Irish, been in Australia for over fifty years, but she’s still back in the bogs. Her idea of luxury transport is still a trap with two ponies.”
“What did she say when she knew you were coming to London?” Sheila Quentin liked this almost naïvely frank man. Too many of the visitors from Canberra brought frankness with them as some sort of primitive weapon designed to bludgeon the crafty, too-superior swindlers of Whitehall. They bored her and irritated her with their rough approach, an approach she knew they worked on from the moment they left Australia, as if determined to prove they were one with the aborigines, an image they were convinced Whitehall held of them. But this new man seemed to use frankness as part of an unwitting charm.
“Told me to buy a bomb and throw it,” said Malone, and confirmed Sheila’s opinion of him. “She still thinks of herself as an auxiliary to the I.R.A.”
The two women laughed, but Quentin sat quietly in the corner of the back seat, his eyes closed. Sheila glanced at him, then put her hand on his. He opened his eyes, blinking a little despite the dimness of the car’s interior, then he smiled wearily.
“Miss something?” he asked.
“Nothing, darling. We’re almost home.”
The Rolls circled the square, then glided into the kerb. The chauffeur, a middle-aged man with the build of a middle-weight wrestler and a voice to match, switched off the engine, got out and came round to open the door. Malone got out first, stopped and looked back along to where the parked car had now switched on its high-beam lights. The Rolls and the people getting out of it stood in a cone of light that threw them into relief against the darkness of the square.
“Hold it a moment,” said Malone, and he would never know what prompted the premonition that something was about to happen. He put a hand against Lisa’s arm to stop her getting out. “Ferguson, get back in and switch on your lights. High beam.”
Ferguson hesitated at being given orders by this newcomer, then he grunted, went back round the car, got in and switched on the headlights. The beam blazed down towards Chesham Place; a taxi coming out of the street honked in furious protest. The two cones of light, from the Rolls and the Zephyr, met in silent assault.
Across the road Traong Tho stood among the thick shrubs, his rifle resting on the heavy wire-netting fence. His eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and when Pallain had switched on his car’s lights as planned he wondered if they were really necessary. He raised the telescopic sight to his eye and in it saw the chauffeur go round and open the door of the big black car. A tall man in evening dress got out, stopped and looked towards Pallain’s car. Then the chauffeur came back round, got in and switched on the Rolls-Royce’s lights. Truong Tho felt his hands begin to sweat and he blinked his eyes, trying to focus them into the unexpected blaze of light. Something had gone wrong, but he did not have time to consider it. Hazily, like figures behind frosted glass, he saw two women and another man alight. He aimed at the second man and squeezed the trigger.
Malone heard the bullet ping off the top of the Rolls. He yelled at Quentin and the women to duck; then he was running swiftly across the road towards the dark island off the garden. Malone didn’t see the wire fence. Brought up in a city where all the gardens were public, he plunged towards what he thought was a break in the shrubbery; made too trusting by legality, he was brought up short by privacy rights. He hit the fence and bounced back, sprawling on the pavement. He swore, picked himself up and ran towards the eastern curve of the garden. He heard a screech of brakes on the far side of the square; then he came round the curve of the garden. The Zephyr was gathering speed again, disappearing into one of the streets that came in on the north side of the square. He pulled up, knowing the gunman was now in the car and was gone.
He made his way back towards the house, limping a little as he became aware of pain in his shin. He heard the thud-thud of heavy boots and as he crossed the road a uniformed policeman came running up to the entrance of the house. The two women had gone inside, but Quentin and the chauffeur stood beside the car, on the lee side from the garden.
“I heard a shot—” Then the policeman turned with Quentin and Ferguson as Malone limped up to them.
“The bastards got aways. That car down there must have been waiting for him. And spot-lighting us into the bargain.” He felt blood trickling down his chin and he put up his hand to the cut there.
“Did he nick you?” Quentin stepped forward, his face full of concern.
“I ran into some wire. The bloke with the gun was over there among the trees.”
“I’ll phone the Yard, sir.” The policeman made a gesture towards the front door. “May I use your phone?”
Quentin nodded and the policeman went into the house past Sheila and Lisa, who now stood in the doorway. Then Quentin looked at Ferguson. “That will be all for tonight, Tom. And don’t broadcast what has happened. I don’t want this to be in the newspapers. Same time tomorrow morning. Good night.”
Ferguson kneaded the rock-cake of his face, went to say something, thought better of it and touched his cap. “’Night, sir. I’m glad they missed.”
“So am I.” Quentin smiled wryly; he seemed undisturbed by the attempt on his life. “Let’s hope their aim next time – if there is a next time – is just as bad. And don’t forget – not a word to anyone.”
The Rolls eased away and Quentin looked at Malone. “We’d better see to that cut on your face. Oh, and thanks.” He gestured towards the other side of the road; a taxi went by, slowed, thinking he had hailed it, then went on. “You didn’t have to chase that chap—”
“It was instinctive.”
“Reflex action? Never let a murderer get away?” Then he shook his head and passed a hand across his eyes. “Sorry, Malone. I didn’t mean that.”
Malone put up a hand and patted Quentin on the back; then dropped the hand in surprise and embarrassment. The two men stared at each other for a moment, snared by the gift of sympathy and the need for it. Christ Almighty, Malone thought, here I go again, everybody’s friend. Then Quentin nodded in acknowledgment of the gesture, saving Malone further embarrassment by saying nothing, and turned and led the way into the house.
“You’re all right, darling?” Sheila Quentin grasped her husband’s arm. They stood together oblivious of the others in the hall, like lovers meeting after a long separation. Malone saw the anguish on Sheila’s face and felt sick. This woman was going to die when she finally learned what Quentin had done, that she was going to lose him.
Then Lisa came forward. “You’ve been hurt, Mr. Malone!”
The next few minutes was a confusion of Joseph, the butler, being sent for hot water and sticking plaster, of both women ushering Malone into the living-room with such solicitude that he felt he should have at least lost an arm, of Quentin bringing him a Scotch.
“Without Horlicks.” The two men grinned at each other and the women smiled; they could have been a foursome returned from a joyful night out.
Then the policeman knocked on the door. “Someone is coming from the Special Branch, sir.” He was a young man with a large jaw and a slight lisp; he had an educated accent, appropriate to the diplomatic beat. “They shouldn’t be long. In the meantime I’ll go across and have a look around the garden, just in case he dropped the gun.”
You’re wasting your time, mate, Malone thought; those boys weren’t the sort to leave anything behind. But he said nothing; he had to keep reminding himself that this was not his territory. The policeman saluted and retired as Joseph, seething with good grace at having to play nurse to a man below his own social station, returned with a bowl of hot water, a bottle of Dettol and a tin of Band-aids.
“Shall I attend to the gentleman, madame?” he asked Sheila, his tone suggesting he had other and better things to do. He looked completely unperturbed by what had happened outside in the street. Malone wondered if all butlers were so imperturbable. Then he remembered that Joseph was a Hungarian and he wondered how many shootings in the street he had experienced.
“I’ll do it,” said Lisa, and began to bathe the cut on Malone’s chin. He could smell the perfume she wore, sharpened by the heat of her fear and excitement of a few minutes ago, and he was uncomfortably aware of her bare shoulders and breast as she leaned close to him. He looked beyond her, focusing his gaze on the room around them. He recognised the two paintings on the walls: a Dobell and a Drysdale: Christmas cards had made him an expert on the more famous Australian artists. The furnishings here were richer than in the other two rooms of the house that Malone had seen. He lay back on the Thai silk cushions of the lounge where he sat; he was being trapped in a quicksand of luxury. He sat up quickly, his cheek bumping against Lisa’s arm, and looked over her shoulder at Quentin.
“Have you any idea who might have taken a shot at you?”
Quentin shook his head. He looked worried, but somehow Malone knew that it was not worry for himself: it was almost as if he thought of the assassination as something impersonal. He was not a career man, but he had already become poisoned by the foreign service officer’s resignation: nothing that happened to you must be judged in personal terms. Insult, overwork, attempted murder: it was little to ask for in return for a K.B.E. Policemen, Malone mused, were asked for the same things; but policemen were never made Knights of the British Empire. Quentin’s reward was probably to have been the Prime Ministership, but he had said good-bye to that earlier this evening. If the bullet had struck home, it might have solved the personal problem. But it hadn’t.
“The important thing is, I don’t think anyone should be allowed to make political capital out of it. If this should have anything to do with the conference – well, that’s why I want it kept out of the papers.” He looked steadily at Malone. “I should imagine you’d want it kept quiet, too.”
“What’s going on between you two?” Sheila looked curiously from one man to the other.
“Nothing, darling—”
“Don’t tell me nothing! Mr. Malone arrives out of nowhere, none of us knows he’s even coming—” She looked at Malone. “It was almost as if you didn’t expect yourself to come here. Where’s your luggage?”
Malone was held dumb by Lisa’s fingers as she pressed the Band-aid on his chin. Quentin answered for him: “Sheila, we’ll talk about it later—”
“Darling.” She had calmed down again; she put a hand on his arm. “You might have been killed tonight. Do you blame me for asking what’s going on? Why should something like this happen the very night the – forgive me” – she looked again at Malone – “the mysterious Mr. Malone arrives? I don’t want to pry into government affairs, but why are you two so secretive?”
Malone, still aware of the closeness of Lisa, his nostrils clogged with a mixture of Dettol and her perfume, sat quiet, waiting for Quentin to answer his wife’s question. Quentin, as if he were avoiding Malone’s stare, looked down into his Scotch and said, “Mr. Malone is a security man. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Secret Service?” Sheila sounded a little incredulous, almost amused.
Lisa, her medical aid done, stepped back, looked at Malone and smiled. “Somehow one never thinks of Australians as spies.”
Malone stood up. He went to open his mouth, to tell the truth, get it over and done with; then saw the look (of warning? Or of pleading?) on Quentin’s face. He took a sip from his glass and said almost lamely, “I am not a spy. All I have to do is look after your husband, Mrs. Quentin.”
“You mean you were expecting something like tonight to happen?” Sheila’s poise began to crack again; something like hysteria bubbled just below the surface of her. She had looked so intact, so self-possessed, that it was now like looking at another person, a relative with a family resemblance. “God, I can’t believe it! Why should anyone want to kill my husband?”
In the end everything is personal to a woman, Malone thought. Viewed from her angle it meant nothing that her husband was his country’s ambassador, that he was the influential man at a conference which, one way or another, was bound to have influence on the future of world peace. She could only see him as her husband: a wife had no diplomacy when she saw her marriage endangered. Malone looked at Quentin, a doomed man: Flannery was waiting for him in Sydney, someone outside in the London dark with a gun.
“I’ll do my best to see it doesn’t happen, Mrs. Quentin,” he said, and felt like a man promising to stop a landslide with a shovel.
Then Joseph knocked on the door. “There is a phone call from Sydney, sir, for Mr. Malone.”
“We’ll take it in the study.” Quentin put down his glass. He looked like a man who had reached the end of his endurance: he was being shot at from near and far, they had got his range.
“Tell them you need more protection,” Sheila said, then gestured helplessly. “Or ask them to recall you. Anything.”
Quentin nodded and patted her arm reassuringly. Then he smiled slightly at Malone as he stood aside to let the latter go ahead out of the room. They went into the study, closing the door after them, and Quentin said, “Do you have to tell the Commissioner about tonight?”
Malone put his hand over the phone. “Scotland Yard will tell him as soon as they learn who I am. You shouldn’t have told your wife I was a security man.”
“What else could I say in front of Lisa?”
Malone stared at him for a moment, having no answer; then he took his hand away from the phone and answered the operator. How much simpler the world must have been before Alexander Graham Bell, he thought.
Leeds came on the line, his voice shredded by static. “Scobie? I’ve seen our friend. He wasn’t happy, but he’s agreed. On patriotic grounds.” Despite the static the sarcasm came through loud and clear. “When will the conference finish?”
“It almost finished tonight,” said Malone, and told Leeds what had happened. The line was silent for a while but for the interference; Malone began to imagine that he was listening to the grinding of teeth. “Are you there, sir?”
Something like a sigh came from ten thousand miles away. “My first reaction is to say bring him home at once. But what comes first? Justice or patriotism?”
This has probably never happened before and will never happen again, Malone thought: the Commissioner asking a detective-sergeant for advice. Malone looked across at Quentin standing in front of the fireplace. Behind the older man the ormolu clock ticked quietly, like a slow teletype: time was running out, was the message. He looked disengaged, already resigned to the fates, a man already in the dock. Christ Almighty, Malone thought, I’ve just been elected to the jury. Don’t get involved, Leeds had advised; and now had tossed him the rope that could bind him to Quentin.
“I think we should stay on here, sir,” he said, and committed himself to Quentin. He cursed the Commissioner, cursed Flannery, thought of the simplicity of a murder in Bexley North: that had been his last case, the arresting of a garage mechanic who had killed a man with a tyre lever for sleeping with the mechanic’s wife. An open and shut case with no involvement at all: the mechanic, struck dumb by grief or hate, had never opened his mouth, never even looked at Malone for help or sympathy.
“Good luck,” said Leeds, safe on the other side of the world. “And be careful. I don’t want someone taking potshots at you.”
Malone hung up and looked at Quentin. “He left it up to me.”
“I gathered that. I’m getting more and more in your debt.”
“I’m a tough creditor,” said Malone, trying not to sound like a liar. “Don’t ask for too much more.”
II
When they went back into the living-room Lisa had gone, but two men were there with Sheila Quentin.
“Superintendent Denzil and Sergeant Coburn.” Sheila had regained her composure; she had learned her lessons well as a diplomat’s wife. “From Scotland Yard.”
“Special Branch,” said Denzil, and gave a purple tone to the word Special: he was not a hoi-polloi policeman. He was a squarish man running a little to weight; every so often he seemed to become conscious of his belly and would tuck it in, like a man trying to hide the error of an indulged life. Bright blue eyes in his red face gave him a false impression of cheeriness; the wide, thin-lipped mouth told the truth. He’d arrest his own mother, Malone thought, if it meant promotion. Despite the warm evening he was dressed in a tweed suit, a regimental tie, with stripes that went ill with his red face, hung on his broad chest. He had a gruff fruity voice, full of a false bonhomie that could trick an unwary prisoner. “Someone took a shot at you, sir. We’ll have to put a stop to that.”
“I’d appreciate it,” said Quentin, and Denzil looked at him, as if not certain whether the High Commissioner was being ironic or not.
“The constable tells me he found nothing over in the gardens. But Sergeant Coburn is going over just to double-check.”
I bet the uniformed boys love working with you, Malone thought.
Coburn nodded and went out of the room. He was a young man, tall and thin, his face all bone and dark intense stare. He looked as if he might never laugh, but that might be because he was always with Denzil. He had one eyebrow that sat much higher than the other, and Malone suspected he would never get far in the Force: he would always look quizzical of his superiors.
When the door closed behind Coburn, Denzil said, “Mrs. Quentin tells me you are from Australian Security, Mr. Malone. Have you been in touch with anyone else at Special Branch?”
“Mr. Malone only arrived tonight from Australia,” Quentin said quickly.
Denzil nodded as if that were no excuse at all. “Did you have any suspicions that something like this might happen to His Excellency? Was that why you were sent over, Mr. Malone?” He smiled mechanically, his big white teeth appearing between the thin lips like a blank illuminated sign. “I’m looking for some sort of lead, you understand.”
Malone looked at Quentin. “I think I’d better have a few words alone with the superintendent, sir.”
Quentin stared at him; for a moment Malone expected to see the pleading look again, and suddenly felt resentful. Don’t ask any more favours; you’ve had your lot.
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