Jon Cleary - Pride’s Harvest

He caught what Dircks had just said in the moment before it was lost in the noise. ‘What?’

‘He’s the obvious suspect. I’m not saying shut the book on Sagawa’s murder, but it might be better if we just let it die quietly.’

You’re the one who’s obvious. ‘Why do you think Koowarra’s the one who did it?’

‘I didn’t say that. I’m just suggesting you take advantage of what’s happened.’ Dircks dipped his handkerchief in his glass of water and sponged a spot of gravy off the lapel of his expensive suit. Everything he wore was expensive, but he didn’t look comfortable in it, as if his wife or perhaps a daughter had bought his wardrobe and each morning he just put on what was laid out for him. He didn’t look comfortable at the moment and Malone wondered if Chess Hardstaff had laid out instructions for him. ‘His suicide is tantamount to a confession. Use it. We know he’d been sacked, there was bad feeling between him and Sagawa.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I know.’ Dircks finished his wet-cleaning, picked up his knife and fork again. Whatever he felt about the two deaths, the murder and the suicide, his appetite had not been affected. He began to chew on a mouthful of steak that would have satisfied a crocodile.

‘No court would accept a case built on that. There was no note of confession, he didn’t say a word to any other prisoner or any officer.’ Malone cut into his rack of lamb. The menu was written in English, no fancy French handles to the dishes, and the chef, Malone guessed, probably cooked with the Australian flag hanging over his stove. The dessert list, he had noted, contained such local exotica as bread-and-butter pudding, sherry trifle and lamington roll; somehow the national dish, passion-fruit pavlova, had missed out. ‘Frankly, Mr Dircks, I don’t think Koowarra killed Sagawa and I’m not going to waste my time following that line.’

Dircks picked up his napkin to wipe his mouth, noticed it was wet and gestured to a passing waitress for a fresh one. Malone had remarked that only he and the Minister had crisp linen napkins; all the other diners, including the women, had paper ones. Narelle Potter herself brought the fresh linen, flipped it open and spread it on Dircks’s broad lap.

‘You’re still as careless as ever, Gus. I thought Shirley would’ve smartened you up, down there in the city, now you’re a Minister. Look at Inspector Malone. Spotless, and he’s just a policeman.’

Malone, just a policeman, said, ‘Thanks.’

She gave him her hotel-keeper’s smile, as dishonest as the collar on a badly-poured beer, and went away. Dircks looked after her admiringly. ‘Nice woman. One of my best campaign workers when an election’s on . . . Malone, I don’t think you understand me.’

The remark caught Malone a little off-balance; Dircks had still been looking after Mrs Potter when he said it. But now he turned to face Malone and there was no mistaking the antagonism in the small blue eyes. He could be authoritative, though in only two months as Minister he had already acquired a reputation for making wrong decisions. But the incompetent don’t necessarily give up trying: it is why a few of them occasionally succeed and rise to the top.

Malone took his time, finishing his mouthful of lamb, then cutting some baked pumpkin in half. At last he said, holding his gaze steady against Dircks’s, ‘I understand you perfectly well, Minister. You want me to close the case, not make waves, just go back to Sydney and leave everything to the locals. Right?’

‘Put as bluntly as that . . . Well, yes, that’s the gist of it.’

‘I’ll have to talk to my superiors in Sydney.’ He chanced his arm: ‘It could go up to the Commissioner. He takes a personal interest in anything I’m working on.’

Dircks looked disbelieving, but also uncertain. In his short time as Minister he had come to know that the Police Department had its own way of working; more so, perhaps, than any other public service department. The men responsible for law and order, it seemed to him, had their own laws. The conservative coalition had not been in government for fifteen years and its ministers were learning that power, no matter what the voters might say about its democratic transfer, was an abstract, not something that could be handed over in a file. In the Police Department there was power at every level, something he had not yet come to terms with.

‘The Commissioner and I get on very well together,’ he said, though that was not strictly true; he hardly knew John Leeds, a reserved man. ‘How come he takes a personal interest in what you do?’

‘Past association,’ said Malone and closed up his face, as if to imply there were police secrets, as indeed there were, that even ministers should not be privy to.

Dircks neatly backed down; weak-willed men are adept at a few things. ‘Well, I don’t want to bring politics into this – there was too much of that from the last government.’ He waited for Malone to comment, but got no satisfaction. Then he went on, ‘You have to realize, out here things are different from what you’re used to, I mean in a community like ours. Everybody has to live with everybody else.’

‘I understand that was what Mr Sagawa was trying to do. But somebody didn’t want to live with him.’ Malone had finished the main course; he picked up the menu. ‘Do you mind if I have dessert? I’ve got a sweet tooth.’

‘So have I. I can recommend the bread-and-butter pudding, a real old-fashioned one. Yes, I never thought anything like this would ever happen to Sagawa.’

‘There’s Mr Koga. He could be next. Bread-and-butter pudding,’ he told the stout waitress as she loomed up beside their table.

‘The same for you, Mr Dircks?’

‘No. No, I think I’ve had enough.’ Dircks waited till the waitress had gone, then he leaned forward, his wide-set eyes seeming to close together on either side of the two deep lines that had suddenly appeared between them. ‘Christ Almighty, I hadn’t thought of that! You’d better stay, catch the murderer before he has the Japs pulling out of the district. They not only grow the cotton, they buy ninety per cent of the crop for their own mills.’

‘Then you don’t think Billy Koowarra did it?’

‘Forget him! Just find out who killed Ken Sagawa.’

‘Mr Dircks, you said you had an interest in South Cloud ...’

Dircks remained leaning forward on the table for a long moment; then he eased himself back, said quietly, ‘Yes. The shares are in my wife’s name. It’s common knowledge, you’ll find it in the declaration of MPs’ interests down at Parliament House in Sydney. There’s nothing to hide.’

‘I didn’t suggest there was. But I think it might be an idea if you stayed at arm’s length from me and the investigating team, don’t you? You know what the media are like.’

‘I own the local paper, the Chronicle. You don’t have to worry about it.’

That would explain why no reporter had tried to by-pass Baldock to get to him or Clements. ‘What about the radio station?’

‘Chess Hardstaff owns that.’

I might have guessed it. ‘I wasn’t thinking so much of the local media as those down in Sydney.’ He usually tried to keep the media at his own arm’s length; but they were always useful as a weapon, especially with politicians. ‘How much interest do you have in South Cloud? Or how much is in your wife’s name?’

‘Twenty per cent.’ The answer sounded a reluctant one.

‘Any other local shareholders?’

Dircks hesitated, looking at his front to see if he had spotted it with any more gravy. ‘Well, I guess you’ll look it up in the company register. Yes, there are two others. Max Nothling, Chess Hardstaff’s son-in-law, and one of the town’s solicitors, Trevor Waring.’