Babylon South. Jon Cleary
‘Someone in Perth.’ Where tycoons bred like credit-rated rabbits.
‘Don’t believe what you read about the daughter. I met her today. She’d do everything her mother told her.’
Lisa had picked up the financial pages of the Herald, knew exactly where to turn to. ‘Springfellow Corporation was at its highest price ever yesterday. What’s this prisoner Dural like?’ Lately she had developed a talent for non-sequiturs, and Malone, being a man, had wondered if she was at the beginning of her menopause. Which thought was a male non-sequitur.
‘I haven’t a clue. He was before my time. I’ve heard of him – I think he killed a cove in prison about ten years ago. But he’s a stranger to me.’ And I hope he stays that way.
Maureen came into the living-room. ‘In this house a kid’s work is never done. None of my friends have to do the washing-up.’
‘Lucky them,’ said Lisa. ‘Sunday you can do the washing and ironing. That will give me Monday free.’
Malone grinned, loving the dry banter that went on in his family. He wondered what sort of banter went on among the silvertail Springfellows. Though perhaps tonight there would be nothing like that, not with the bones of a long-dead husband and father lying between them.
1
‘Explain to me what’s happening,’ said Malone. ‘You’re the stock market expert.’
Next morning they were driving across the Harbour Bridge towards Kirribilli. Malone had called ASIO and they, reluctantly, it seemed to him, had invited him over. Intelligence organizations are always suspicious of police forces, who never seem to give mind to the bigger issues. Malone had read Gorky Park and knew how Inspector Arkady Renko had felt. But ASIO was no KGB: it could not afford to be on its shoe-string budget. Pinchpenny defence against any enemy, criminal or foreign, was a tenet of faith with all Australian governments.
‘Well,’ said Clements, who up till recently had been an expert only on horses, jockeys, trainers and crims, ‘our Lady Springfellow owns her own company, Cobar Corporation – it’s a small family company, hers and her daughter’s. But now she’s trying to buy out the Springfellow family interests in the holding corporation which owns the main holdings in the merchant bank and the stockbroking firm. The stockbrokers, they’re the oldest brokers in Australia, own 49 per cent of the bank – the rest is owned by the public. She herself, or anyway Cobar, owns 18 percent of the stockbrokers-she bought that when they went public a coupla years ago. The rest is owned 15 per cent by the Springfellow family. Sir Walter’s brother and sister, and the rest by institutions and the public.’
Malone shook his head in wonder. ‘Does Corporate Affairs know about you? They might offer you a job.’
‘When you’ve tried to keep track of the form of horses and jockeys, the stock exchange is kids’ stuff. You wanna know more about Lady Springfellow? Well, she applied to inherit her husband’s estate three years after he disappeared. Her sister-in-law Emma tried to fight it but got nowhere. The irony of it was that she got her husband’s old law firm to prepare the affidavits.’
‘You’ve done your homework,’ Malone said appreciatively. He was no longer surprised at the acumen and thoroughness of his partner, whom so many, at first acquaintance, took for an amiable oaf.
‘This one interests me. I like to see what happens when money’s involved. It’s the punter in me … When she inherited the estate, she just took off. She used that as a springboard – no pun—’he gave his slow grin’ – to start buying everything else she now owns. The radio stations, the country and suburban newspapers, part of a diamond mine, all of a gold mine. And now she owns the Channel 15 network.’
‘What about the bank?’
‘Springfellow and Co. started that six years ago – they were one of the few who didn’t go overseas for a partner. It’s done okay, but not as well as it might. A London bank and a New York one have been eyeing it. The daughter claims she’s moving in to make sure it remains an Australian bank. A 21-year-old banker and a girl at that.’ A true punter, he was a misogynist: he rarely backed mares.
‘What do you reckon?’
‘I reckon it’s just greed, but I’m old-fashioned. Greed is now an acceptable thing. I’m falling for it myself.’
‘So Venetia gained a whole lot when her old man disappeared?’
‘I guess so. All I’m telling you is gossip and what I’ve read in the Financial Review.’
‘The what? Have you given up on Best Bets? Have you sold all your shares?’
‘I’ve put ’em on the market today. I’m ashamed of how much I’m gunna make. When I put the cheque in the bank, the tellers are gunna start ringing Evan Whitton at the Herald.’ Whitton was a journalist who could turn over a spadeful of corruption with a VDU key.
They turned off the Bridge approach and circled round on to the end of the tiny Kirribilli peninsula. This was an area of tall apartment buildings bum-to-cheek with squat old houses, some middle-class grand, some just workmen’s stone cottages. The population was a mix of incomes and ages, with no sleaze and mostly respectability. It also harboured the Sydney residences of the Prime Minister and the Governor-General, side by side, though the G-G’s was the larger and more imposing, as if to remind the politician next door that its occupant was not dependent on the whim of the voters.
ASIO lived in a converted mansion on the waterfront: one had to look through barred windows, but the KGB would have given away half its secrets for such a vista. Malone and Clements were shown into the office of the chief executive, a room with a view that must have driven the Director-General, now headquartered in Canberra, subversive with envy.
Guy Fortague, the Sydney Regional-Director, was big, rugged and all smiles as if making an all-out effort to prove that spy chiefs were not really spooky. There’s nothing to be frightened of, his smile assured them; a thought that had not occurred to either Malone or Clements. But he was certainly making their reception easier than they had expected.
‘We were surprised when you mentioned murder to us.’ But Malone suspected he was not the sort of man to be surprised by anything; if he were, he would not be in this job. ‘We did think of it originally, of course.’
‘Why did you change your minds?’ said Malone.
‘Well, we didn’t exactly change our minds.’ Fortague retreated a little; he was no longer smiling. ‘But we had no evidence, just suspicions.’
Malone thought that one of the bases for counter-espionage would have been suspicion; but he didn’t say so. ‘How was security in those days? I mean national security.’
Fortague shrugged. ‘We were busy – I’d just joined the organization. The anti-Vietnam business was just beginning to warm up. But we never expected murder or terrorism or anything like that, not from those here in Australia. Their violence never seemed to extend beyond demonstrations on campus and in the streets.’
‘What about outsiders? Foreign agents?’
Fortague smiled. ‘Foreign agents don’t kill the opposition’s boss – it’s one of the unwritten rules in our game. Just like in yours. How many police commissioners have been murdered by a criminal, a professional one?’
Malone nodded, agreeing with the etiquette. ‘Our file on him is missing. Has been for twenty-odd years.’
‘Really?’ Fortague’s tone implied that he wasn’t surprised; anything might go missing in the NSW Police Force.
Malone nodded at the thin file on the desk in front of Fortague. ‘Is that your file on him? It’s pretty slim, isn’t it?’
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