Bear Pit. Jon Cleary
be no need for that.’ This time his voice was snappy. ‘I’ll give you permission to look at mine. But you’ll have to ask Lynne about hers –’
‘We’ll do that. We also want a release from you in the name of John August. Just in case you have two bank accounts.’
August shook his head; the lock of hair fell down again and he pushed it back. He seemed now to be losing patience; or confidence. ‘You’re wasting your time. But okay, I’ll sign a release in my real name. Or what was my real name.’ He looked down at his hands, stared at them, then at last looked up. Both detectives were surprised at the sadness in his eyes: ‘How much are you gunna tell Lynne? About my past, my record?’
‘If we find you’re in the clear,’ said Malone quietly, ‘we’ll tell her nothing. That’s up to you … Why did you shoot him, John?’
But that didn’t catch August off-balance: ‘Try someone else, Inspector. It wasn’t me who shot him. I’ve read what’s been going on lately. He has enough enemies to kill him from a dozen sides.’
Malone stared at him, then looked at Gail Lee: ‘Any more questions?’
‘Just a couple … How much do you know about guns, Mr August?’
‘Not much.’
‘But you knew where to buy a gun? You used a gun in that job you did time for, the armed robbery one.’
‘That was Melbourne. I’ve forgotten where I got it.’
‘So a gun’s an everyday item with you? You buy one and forget where?’
‘It was twelve years ago, for Crissakes!’ For a moment the calm demeanour was gone; then he put it on again like a mask: ‘Sorry. I’ll remember and let you know. Can you remember what you were doing twelve years ago?’
‘I was about to start Year 10 at high school. I wasn’t buying a gun.’
His look was almost admiring. Then he said, ‘It’s different these days, in high school, I mean.’
‘Knives, Mr August, not guns. Not yet.’ Then she said, ‘Where do you live?’
He gave an address in Lane Cove. ‘It’s a flat, in Lynne’s name. Why?’
‘We’ll get a warrant to search it. Just routine.’
The mask dropped. ‘Christ, how do I explain that to Lynne?’
‘Maybe you’d better tell her the truth about yourself.’ Malone stood up. ‘Righto, John, you can go. Detective Lee and one of my men will drive you back to Longueville. But if you want to keep your secret from Lynne, maybe you’d like to wait while Detective Lee gets the search warrant. Then we can search your flat and maybe Lynne won’t need to know.’
‘I’ll wait. I’m not gunna hurt Lynne, if it can be avoided.’
2
‘Do you think the hit was meant for one of us?’ asked Aldwych.
‘No,’ said Jack Junior. ‘All the union trouble is over. They’ve moved on to fight other developers.’
‘I still don’t trust our Chinese partners. I don’t mean Les –he’s one of us. Nor the Feng family – even that girl Camilla isn’t gunna make waves.’
The original consortium of partners had been a mixture that at times had had Aldwych thinking he was a foreigner in his own country. Besides Leslie Chung there had been two local Chinese families; there were also Madame Tzu, representing herself, and General Wang-Te, the director from a Shanghai corporation whose connections were as murky as the Whangpoo River. Sometimes Aldwych wondered what had happened to the White Australia policy of his youth. There were more bloody foreigners in the country now than kangaroos.
‘I still wouldn’t trust Madame Tzu as far as the other side of the street. As for the General –’
‘You’re too suspicious,’ said Juliet, a foreigner.
‘I thought you Roumanians loved suspicion? You and the Hungarians invented the revolving door, didn’t you, so’s you could watch each other’s back?’
‘I love you, Papa.’ She knew he liked being called Papa. Once distant from each other, they were now friends. ‘You’d have made a wonderful dictator.’
‘Better than some you’ve had. That bloke Ceausescu ... he got what he deserved. The Dutchman was a dictator, but he didn’t deserve to be shot.’
They were having breakfast on the terrace of the junior Aldwychs’ apartment on the tip of Point Piper. The point was almost sunk by the wealth on it; land here was valued by the cupful. Aldwych, instead of going home to his own big house at Harbord, on the northern side of the harbour, had driven out here with his son and daughter-in-law and stayed the night. He enjoyed Juliet’s company and her looks, but, as with Madame Tzu, he would not have trusted her as far as the other side of the street. He had never trusted any woman but his dead wife Shirl. Beautiful women were even more suspect than others: they knew the value of their looks. Jack Junior, on the other hand, had never fallen for any but good-looking women.
The apartment was sumptuous, an estate agent could have found no other word for it; but it was not like a House & Garden illustration, it was lived in. Juliet could spend money like an IMF grantee, but Jack Junior begrudged her nothing. Aldwych Senior, sometimes to his own surprise, no longer mentally reproached Juliet for her extravagance. This apartment was a contrast to his own house, where he lived amongst Laura Ashley prints and Dresden figurines, none of which he would ever replace because they had been Shirl’s choice. Shirl had died before Juliet came along and sometimes he wondered how the two women would have got along. He had had reservations about Juliet, but she had proved him wrong. The marriage was now six years old and there appeared to be no cracks in it. Juliet was extravagant, but she didn’t have to be Roumanian to be that; half the country lived on credit beyond its ability to pay and half the country didn’t have multi-millionaire husbands. She had proved a better wife than some of Jack Junior’s other women would have been. There were no children and no talk of any, but that didn’t worry Aldwych. He had little faith that the next forty or fifty years of the new millennium was going to be a cakewalk for the young. He was long past optimism.
Now, looking at a Manly ferry taking commuters to the city, he was pensive, a symptom of his ageing. ‘If the hit wasn’t meant for either of us –’
‘Dad, keep me out of it. If it was meant for either of us, it would’ve been you. Some of your old mates may have wanted a last crack at you.’
‘All my old mates are dead, including the ones who were not my mates. Lenny McPherson is gone, all the old mugs who had it in for me.’ In his memory was a gallery of enemies. He had consorted, as the cops called it, with other crims, but he had always been his own man. Or, to a certain extent and which he would not have admitted to anyone, he had been part Shirt’s man. ‘Is this upsetting you, Juliet?’
‘Not at all. As you said, I’m Roumanian.’ Sometimes one’s national bad characteristics can be indulged in.
He smiled at her approvingly. ‘You’ll do me, love …’ He hadn’t called anyone love since Shirl had died. ‘Well, like I was saying – if it wasn’t meant for either of us, then maybe we’ve got problems.’
‘Don’t ask,’ said Jack Junior as Juliet looked puzzled.
‘Of course I’m going to ask. Why will you have problems, Papa?’
‘We want to build a small casino up at Coffs Harbour.’ A resort and retirement town halfway between Sydney and Brisbane. ‘Hans Vanderberg was in favour of it. He wasn’t a gambler, but anything that brought in more taxes was right up his street. The Pope would bless gambling if it brought in more revenue –’
Juliet blessed herself. She never went near a church except at Christmas, but the nuns from her old school