bastards who wanted to get rid of him should remember that.’
He went out and Malone and Clements stood up to follow him. ‘Take care, Jack.’
‘You can be sure of it,’ said Aldwych.
Out in the lobby one of the Physical Evidence team was waiting. ‘We think we’ve found where the shot came from.’
‘Where?’
Sam Penfold was the same age as Malone but looked older. His hair was grey and his thin eyes already faded, as if the search for clues had worn them out. He collected spoor like a hunter, which was what he was. ‘Across the road. There’s a row of shops, half a dozen or so, rising three storeys. There’s a common entrance that leads up to the first and second floors, with a corridor running along the back, connecting them. The rooms above the shops are mostly single tenants. A quick-job printer, a watch and jewelry repair shop, things like that. And –’
Why, wondered Malone, were so many cops these days using theatrical pauses? Were they all training for TV auditions?
‘And an alterations and repairs business, the Sewing Bee. It had been broken into. From its street windows you look right across George Street to the steps outside there.’ He nodded towards the hotel’s front. ‘A good marksman with a good ‘scope couldn’t miss.’
‘He did miss,’ said Clements. ‘Or close enough. The Premier isn’t dead.’
‘You got anyone over there?’ asked Malone.
‘Norma Nickles is there and I’m going back. We’ll have the place dusted and printed in time to give you prints in the morning. I’m not hopeful, though. We had time to try the door that had been busted. The door-knob was clean, so the guy was probably wearing gloves. All we’ll find, I’m afraid, are prints from the staff and customers.’
‘Why are you buggers always so cheerful?’
‘We’re bloodhounds. You ever see a cheerful bloodhound?’
He left and Malone turned as he saw Bardia, the manager, approaching. He had the look of a man who wished he were back in Rome or Paris or London.
‘Finished, Inspector?’
‘No, Mr Bardia. Just beginning.’
Guests who had been out on the town or visiting friends were coming back, entering the lobby with some apprehension and puzzlement at the sight of the uniformed police and the blue-and-white tapes still surrounding the outside steps. Bardia saw them and smiled reassuringly, as if it was all just part of the hotel’s service.
Then he turned back to the two detectives. ‘The police will be here for – days?’ He made it sound like months.
‘No. Tomorrow, yes. But after that things should be back to normal for you.’ Then he looked beyond the manager into a side room off the lobby. ‘Excuse me.’
He crossed the lobby into the side room and Clements, left stranded, took a moment to recover before he followed him. Les Chung, Madame Tzu and General Wang-Te looked up as the two Homicide men approached. They all had the bland look that Malone, a prejudiced cynic, thought only Orientals could achieve.
‘We meet again.’ Two years before he had met Madame Tzu and General Wang-Te on a case that had threatened to ruin any chance of Olympic Tower’s being a successful venture. The same case on which the Chinese girl, screaming at him, un-bland as a cornered animal, had tried to kill him. ‘Murder seems to bring us together.’
‘Is he dead?’ The bland look dropped from Les Chung’s face.
‘No, but he may soon be – they’re not hopeful. It was attempted murder.’
‘It wasn’t – what do you call it? – a drive-by shooting? A random attack?’
Madame Tzu might have been asking if the Premier had been attacked by a wasp. It was impossible to tell her age within ten years either side of the true figure; but whatever it was, she wore it well. She had a serenity that was a sort of beauty in itself; men would always look at her, though not always with confidence. Men, particularly the natives, tend to be cautious with serene women: it is another clue in the feminine puzzle. She wore a simply cut gold dinner dress, a single strand of black pearls and an air that didn’t invite intimacy.
‘No, Madame Tzu, it wasn’t a random shooting. They knew whom they were after. You and General Wang are staying here at the hotel?’
General Wang-Te had sat silent, not moving in his chair. He was a bony man on whom the skin was stretched tight. Last time Malone had met him he had worn cheap, round-rimmed spectacles that appeared to be standard government issue in China then; tonight he wore designer glasses, rimless with gold sidebars, Gucci on the Great Wall. As he looked up at Malone the light caught the lens, so that he appeared sightless.
‘The general is,’ said Madame Tzu. ‘We’re directors, remember.’
‘Owners,’ said Wang-Te, speaking for the first time.
‘Where are you staying?’ Malone asked Madame Tzu.
‘I still have my apartment in the Vanderbilt. I’m not a hotel person.’ She made it sound as if five-star hotels were hostels for the homeless.
Clements spoke to Chung. ‘Have you had any threats against the hotel, Les?’
Chung was one of the richest men in the city, but the two detectives knew his past history. Years ago, before Clements had joined Homicide, he had arrested Leslie Chung on fraud charges. Chung had got off, but ever since he had been Les and not Mr Chung. Arrest doesn’t breed friendship but it makes for a kind of informality. It is a weapon police officers always carry.
Chung shrugged as if he had been facing threats all his life; they were dust on the wind. ‘One or two. The usual nutters –anti-development, anti-foreign investment, that sort of stuff. But they don’t go around shooting people.’
‘Then you’d say this had nothing to do with the hotel? Or the whole Olympic Tower project?’
‘Nothing,’ said Chung, and Madame Tzu and Wang-Te together added a silent nod.
‘Do you have any enemies in China?’ Malone asked them.
They didn’t look at each other; it was Madame Tzu who said, ‘Of course. Who can claim that in one point two billion people all of them are friends?’
She’s smothering her answer with figures. ‘So, eliminating all the nutters and the one point two billion of your countrymen, would you say the shooting was political?’
The three Chinese gave him a blank stare: the Great Wall of China, he thought. He wanted to scrawl the graffiti of a rough remark on the Wall, but that would be racist. Not, he was sure, that any of them would care.
At last Les Chung said. ‘I think it would be politic to say nothing.’
Madame Tzu and General Wang-Te, like intelligent puppets, nodded.
Malone grinned at Clements. ‘Wouldn’t our job be easy if cops could be politic?’
‘Let’s go home,’ said the big man. ‘I’m tired.’
When the two detectives had gone, Madame Tzu said, ‘If Mr Vanderberg dies, what happens?’
‘Nothing that will affect us,’ said Les Chung. ‘Our bookings are solid till after the Olympics. By then the whole complex will have established itself.’
General Wang-Te was wishing he knew more of history beyond the Middle Kingdom. The history of this country where he sat now had begun only yesterday. ‘Do Australians do much political assassination?’
‘All the time,’ said Les Chung, who knew nothing of the Middle Kingdom, but knew even the footnotes in the history of his adopted country. He was not a man to put his foot into unknown territory. ‘But only with words, not with bullets or knives. To that extent