Bear Pit. Jon Cleary
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her, usually so articulate, fumbling with words at the other end of the line. Perhaps if she were still living at home she would be more direct; moving out had widened the distance between them in more ways than one. He could no longer read her face, not at the end of a phone line. ‘Dad – yesterday –I don’t think I should be telling you this –’
‘Righto, I’ll hang up. But if I find you’re withholding evidence of any sort –’
‘You would, wouldn’t you?’
‘Bring you in?’ He sighed. ‘Yes, I think I would.’
‘Well –’ He had never known her to be so reluctant to voice an opinion. She had been a lawyer since she was twelve years old: bush lawyer, Bombay lawyer, Philadelphia lawyer: she would have argued with both Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate. ‘Dad, yesterday Norman Clizbe and Jerry Balmoral came into the office – you know them?’
‘Only by name. I’ve never met them.’
They were the secretary and assistant-secretary of the Trades Congress. The Congress had been going for almost a hundred years, a minor opponent of the major union organization, the Labor Council; then suddenly, about twenty years ago, it had found a new lease of life, had grown in strength and influence and now was on a par with the Labor Council in the affairs of the State Labor Party. It had developed a taste for power, like the re-discovery of a long-neglected recipe.
‘Mr Clizbe went into the partners’ office and Jerry Balmoral came into mine. I think he thought he could do a line with me.’
‘Should I say Yuk?’
‘Go ahead. He’s got enough conceit for a talk-back host. Anyway, he chit-chatted, then he said – and I quote –’
A lawyer through and through. ‘Go ahead. Quote.’
‘ “Would your father handle a political murder or would that be a job for the Federal police?”’
‘Let me get this straight before you go on. Is this lawyer-client confidentiality?’
‘I wouldn’t be telling you this if it were. It was chit-chat.’
‘Did you ask him why he was asking such a question?’
‘Yes. He said it was just a question that had come up in a discussion on police policy.’
‘What’s a trade union organization doing discussing police policy? Why did he ask you?’
‘He said he knew I was your daughter.’
‘What did you say?’
‘About being your daughter? Nothing. But I told him it would be a State police case and I asked him again where the subject had come up.’
‘What’d he say to that?’
‘He just laughed and I got the charm bit – yuk! He said the question had been asked the other night at a branch meeting.’
‘He say which branch?’
‘No. He then asked me if I was free for dinner last night. I said no, I got more of the charm bit and he then went into the partners’ office. He’s such a smartarse.’
‘How’s Jason?’
‘What sort of question is that?’
‘I didn’t mean he’s a smartarse – forget it. Keep what you’ve told me to yourself, don’t mention it in your office, especially to your bosses. To nobody, understand?’
‘Yes, Inspector.’
‘In your eye. Take care.’
He hung up and went out to the kitchen to breakfast. ‘What did Claire want?’ asked Lisa.
‘She just wanted to know if I’m on the Premier’s murder.’
‘If you are,’ said Maureen, ‘don’t ask me anything we’ve dug up in our investigation.’
‘I’ll let Russ drag you in and hang you by your thumbs if we find you know something we don’t. Don’t expect any favours.’
‘Are we going to sit around this table and you’re not going to tell us anything?’ said Lisa.
‘We know nothing at this stage,’ said Malone, pouring fat-free milk on his Weet-Bix, then slicing a banana on it. In his younger days he had been a steak-and-eggs man for breakfast, but he had reached an age now when he had to watch that the waistline didn’t hide the view of the family jewels. ‘Except that he was shot, we think by a hitman.’
‘Where from?’ asked Tom.
‘From a window right across the street,’ said Maureen, and Malone gestured at the fount of knowledge, the TV researcher. ‘I’ve been on to our night crew. They were inside, in the ballroom, and missed what went on outside. They didn’t even get a shot of the Premier lying on the front steps.’
‘Tough titty,’ said Malone.
‘Your friend, Mr Aldwych, the old guy, threatened to smash our cameraman’s face in.’
‘Jack was always public-spirited.’
‘I don’t think you’ll have to look outside the Labor Party,’ said Tom, reaching for his third piece of toast. ‘From what I’ve read they’re cutting each other’s throats. They’re stacking certain branches with new members, building up cash funds –’
‘What are you reading?’ asked his father. ‘Economics or Politics?’
‘These days, our lecturer says, you can’t separate them. He’s a chardonnay Marxist. I need a new cricket bat.’
‘What does a fast bowler need a new bat for? I used any old bat lying around. I’ll give you mine – Pa’s still got it, I think.’
‘You’re really tight-arsed about money, aren’t you? You give a new meaning to anal-retentive.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Maureen.
‘Does your Marxist lecturer teach you to talk to your dear old dad like that? How much do you want?’
‘A hundred and forty bucks. There’s a sale on.’
‘You’re going to be a good economist. You’re learning how to spend other people’s money.’
Then the phone rang again; it was Gail Lee, the duty officer. ‘It’s on, boss. You’re wanted for a conference with senior officers at the Commissioner’s office at nine o’clock.’
‘Righto, Gail. Tell Russ I want everything collated by the time I get back from Headquarters.’
‘Everything? What have we got so far?’
‘Bugger-all.’ He grinned without mirth to himself; there would not be much smiling over the next week or two. ‘But get it all together.’
Tom went off on his bicycle to his holiday work, stacking shelves at Woolworths. Maureen took the family’s second car, a Laser, and Malone drove Lisa into town in the Falcon.
‘I’m going to be busy.’ Her work as public relations officer on the council’s Olympic committee was becoming burdensome now as the Games got closer. ‘Eight months to the Olympics opening and we have a political assassination. How do I put a nothing-to-worry-about spin on that?’
There were several bad jokes that could answer that, but he refrained. ‘We don’t know if this has anything to do with the Olympics –’
‘I’m not suggesting it has, not directly. But every politician in the State wants to be sitting up there with the IOC bosses when the torch comes into the stadium. Half of them would offer to carry the torch just to have the cameras on them. Hans Vanderberg is up there in Heaven or down in Hell, wherever he’s gone –’
‘Hell. He’s down there