Jon Cleary - The High Commissioner

Betting on racehorses: that was for peasants, like fan-tan and dice. “No, I mean chemin de fer or baccarat.”

“Those games are illegal where I come from.”

This was going to be harder than she had thought. Australia was beginning to sound like a country run by missionaries. “Don’t you ever do anything illegal?”

“Not if I can help it,” he said, and knew he must sound priggish. He waited for her to tell him so, but she was politer than Leeds had been. “Anyhow, what gambler ever finishes up in front?”

“Some of us do,” she said, and her smile was secretive. “You should try your luck some time.”

“Not at baccarat.” He could see the headlines in the Sydney Mirror : Cop Does Dough At Baccarat. That would mean an early retirement, all right.

“I once met an Australian. He said Australians were great gamblers, they had very little respect for your law. He said your national hero was some sort of outlaw. Ed – Kelly?”

“Ned Kelly.” I’ll shoot the next bastard that repeats that lousy joke . He looked at Madame Cholon over a heaped fork and wondered at her interest in gambling. If she was Chinese, that would explain it; but somehow she didn’t look Chinese. “He was what we call a bushranger.”

“And are you not a bushranger?” Malone shook his head, his mouth full. “What are you, Mr. Malone? Are you on Mr. Quentin’s staff?”

Malone turned his face away from the light while he looked at her out of the corners of his eyes. Was every newcomer to a High Commission or an embassy queried as he had been? Or was Quentin so important that anyone connected with him became important? If so, it was a distinction Malone did not want. “Let’s just say I’m attached to him.”

“Too attached to be allowed a night off?” This man was not so stupid after all. If he was a security officer, some sort of bodyguard for Quentin, then she did not want him on hand when the attempt was made to assassinate Quentin. She did not know how forward women were in this country of cold men, but she had to take a risk. She smiled, employing all the subtle charm she had acquired professionally over the last twenty years. “I want to go gambling, Mr. Malone. There is a club in Mayfair, but ladies are not allowed in unescorted. It is very English.”

Malone put down his plate on the stone balustrade of the terrace and picked up his glass of champagne. This was Millionaires’ Row and he was an intruder, a beggar whose bank book would have been laughed at as a worthless visa in this territory.

“Better try someone else, Madame Cholon. I’m not in the Mayfair class. With my salary they’d probably restrict me to the one-armed bandits.”

“What is your salary, Mr. Malone?”

He raised his eyebrows. He had once read that the Asians had very different ideas on privacy from those of the Europeans, but he had never been asked a question as blunt as this before, not even by the Chinese opium smugglers he had met before he had gone on to the Murder Squad. “I get just over two thousand a year, Australian. Sixteen hundred sterling.”

“It is not much, is it?” Diamonds on her fingers winked derisively at him as she raised a hand to the pearls at her throat.

“I was happy enough with it back home.” Which was the truth: he had never dreamed of riches and so had been incorruptible. He had never been smug about his incorruptibility. He knew that every man had his price: he had just never found out what his was.

“But you are not now?”

Malone looked back into the big main room, at the silk walls, the frozen explosion of the huge chandelier, the beautiful women in gowns that would have cost him a month’s salary. “I came here tonight in a Rolls-Royce, the first time I’ve ever been in one, maybe the last. I’m not likely to lose my head over something I’ll only taste once.”

“What sort of car do you have back home?”

“A second-hand Holden.”

“A Holden? What is that?”

“It’s something you don’t drive up to expensive gambling clubs in. Better get someone else, Madame Cholon.” Then he saw Jamaica standing in the doorway watching them, and he nodded. “Ask that bloke. He’s an American. They’re richer than anyone else.”

Madame Cholon looked towards Jamaica. “But he is coloured!”

Malone was not surprised by her reaction. He had heard a Chinese girl in Campbell Street back home in Sydney call an aborigine a dirty black bastard: colour prejudice could run right through the spectrum. All at once he did not like this tiny beautiful woman who seemed so curiously interested in him. He put down his glass on the balustrade and took random aim at her: “You Vietnamese have never bellyached about the colour of American money.”

He knew he had guessed right: she was Vietnamese. She stared at him for a moment, then she said something that was foreign to him but which he well understood: as a policeman he had been sworn at enough to catch the intent if not the words.

“And the same to you,” he said, and walked away from her. He passed Jamaica as he went through the open doors into the main room. The American looked directly at him and he stopped. “Who’s that woman I’ve just left?”

Jamaica looked after Madame Cholon as she went quickly along the terrace and through a doorway into another room. “I was wondering that myself.”

He’s lying, Malone thought. “Let me know if you find out.”

“She’s quite a dish, isn’t she?”

“That’s what she said about you,” said Malone, left him and went on into the room.

Sheila Quentin came towards him. Two hours of diplomatic ping-pong hadn’t touched her; she looked as cool, poised and unmarked as when she had arrived. “We are leaving, Mr. Malone. My husband is feeling very tired. Perhaps you would like to stay on?”

“No, I’m tired, too.”

They began to move across the room. Men flashed quick smiles at Sheila Quentin; the women’s smiles were a little slower. But her own response was warm and quick to everyone; it was a diplomatic smile, but somehow she made it appear sincere.

“Did you bring some bad news for my husband, Mr. Malone?” she said, inclining her head to a huge Nigerian woman, extravagant as an African sunset in her native dress.

“Why?”

“He was quite cheerful when he came home this evening. Confident the conference was going the right way. But now—” She looked up at him. “What sort of message did you bring him from Canberra?”

They were interrupted by two women, a Canadian and a German: Malone stood aside while the three women made arrangements for a committee to clothe the underprivileged of Stepney. Then he and Sheila Quentin moved on. “I think you’d better ask him.”

“It’s as secret as that, is it?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“And bad?” He hesitated, then nodded. She bit her lip and for a moment there was a hint of strain in her face. “Damn! And everything was going so beautifully.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and was surprised at the depth of sincerity he felt.

“Do you always bring bad news?”

Again he hesitated, then he nodded. “Too often. They think I have the right personality for it.”

“I hate you, Mr. Malone.” She smiled, and he warmed towards her. “But it’s not your fault.”

No, he thought, it’s not my fault. He wondered whom she would hate when she found out whose fault it really was. Then they had reached Quentin and Lisa Pretorious, standing waiting for them just outside the entrance to the main room. Quentin did look tired, a man who had run a long race and had suddenly collapsed at the end of it. The two women looked at him with concern, but he managed to smile.

“It’s nothing. Conferences are like marathon races – you have to wait for your second wind. A spoonful of Horlicks in a glass of Scotch and I’ll be fine.”