Dragons at the Party. Jon Cleary

we have to have them here?’ she said.

      Malone shrugged, let his daughters slide off his lap. They jumped back into the pool as if it were their natural habitat. ‘What would you do? Would you let them stay?’

      ‘No,’ said his father-in-law.

      ‘They claim they’re political refugees.’

      Pretorious gave him a sharp look: almost forty years ago he and Elisabeth had made the same claim for themselves. ‘I think we have to draw the line somewhere. The man’s a murderer. Or his army was.’

      ‘It’s his army that’s kicked him out.’

      ‘Are you on his side?’ said Con Malone suspiciously.

      ‘Christ, no!’

      The centurion leaned across and whacked him on the knee with his sword. ‘You told me not to say Christ. That’s swearing.’

      ‘Indeed it is,’ said Brigid, smiling sweetly at her four-year-old saint.

      Lisa had been sitting quietly and Malone knew she was studying him. Some husbands are unfortunate in the way their wives study them, but those wives are those who know they could have done better. Malone knew, however, that he was being studied in a different way: Lisa had come to know him better. He had very few secrets left that she did not know.

      Later, after the Malones and the Pretoriouses had left, when the children were asleep and the old house was showing its age as the heat of the day creaked out of its timbers, she said, ‘You wish you weren’t on this case, don’t you?’

      ‘A holiday weekend – what do you think?’

      ‘You know what I mean.’

      They were in bed in the high-ceilinged main bedroom, a sheet covering only their lower halves. The house was not air-conditioned; they had an air-conditioner mounted on a trolley, but they rarely brought it into the bedroom. Malone, an old-fashioned man in many ways, had a theory that air-conditioning only brought on colds. He was also sensual enough to like a sweaty woman beside him in bed, a compliment that Lisa at certain times didn’t always appreciate.

      He said slowly, ‘I think I could be getting into a real mess with this one. Nobody seems to care a damn about the poor bugger who was shot.’

      ‘I met Delvina once.’ He turned his head in surprise, looked at her profile against the moonlit window. They had not drawn the drapes, to allow some air into the room, and he knew they would be woken early by the morning light. ‘I did a PR job for the dance company when she was with it. We didn’t get on well – I featured another girl instead of her. I thought she was too obvious, didn’t give the company the right image.’

      ‘Where’s girl you featured, now?’

      ‘Probably married, with three kids and living in the suburbs. Delvina was never going to finish up there, in the suburbs.’

      ‘She may finish up with her head blown off.’ He lifted the sheet and fanned himself with it. ‘I’ve never worked on anything like this before. It’s all strange territory.’

      ‘Here be dragons.’

      ‘Eh?’

      ‘On ancient maps, when they came to the unknown parts they used to write, Beyond this place here be dragons. Australia would have been one of those places once.’

      ‘Tell that to Phil Norval. He claims to’ve got rid of inflation and everything else. He can add dragons to the list.’

      ‘Delvina has probably already told him. She used to sleep with him when he was still in TV. Mrs Norval would be able to tell you about that.’

      3

      ‘I can’t back down now, Russ. I’ve got to walk tall in this.’

      ‘For crissake, Phil, you’re only five feet eight – forget about walking tall!’

      Philip Norval and Russell Hickbed were in the Prime Minister’s private residence, a property he had bought at the height of his TV fame and to which he retreated on the rare occasions when he wanted to escape the trappings of his office. It was a large mansion in grounds that held a hundred-foot swimming pool, an all-weather tennis court, a jacuzzi, a sauna and, as one TV rival remarked, everything but his own natural spa.

      ‘We’ve got to get him back to Palucca,’ said Hickbed. ‘Christ knows what those bloody generals will do. They’re already talking to Jakarta!’

      ‘Is there much danger in that?’ Foreign affairs were not Norval’s strong suit; Jakarta had never figured in the ratings. ‘I’d better talk to Neil Kissing about that.’

      Kissing was the Foreign Minister and no friend of Hickbed. ‘Leave him out of it. We don’t want Cabinet interfering in this – you’ve got too many do-gooders in it.’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘Never mind who. Just let’s keep this between you and me. We’re the ones with something to lose, not the bloody government. Have you talked to Delvina?’

      ‘Not alone – I haven’t had a chance. Abdul doesn’t seem to want to talk. Except about how the Americans let him down.’

      ‘So they did. If they’d sent their Fleet in, a couple of thousand Marines, the generals would have stayed in their barracks and Abdul would still be in Timoro Palace sitting pretty.’

      ‘Fegan would never have sent the Marines in. He told me last September in Washington that he wanted Abdul out of the way. He’s an embarrassment, Russ –’

      ‘Who – Fegan?’

      ‘No, Abdul, damn it. He’s so bloody corrupt –’

      ‘Now don’t you start being mealy-mouthed … Phil, corruption is a way of life up there. Everybody’s underpaid, so you slip ’em a bit on the side to get things done.’

      ‘How much did you slip Abdul? The Herald this morning said he’s rumoured to have three billion – three billion –’ Like all TV chat hosts, and politicians and priests, he had been taught to repeat points: one never knew if the audience was dozing. Though he had never known Russell Hickbed to be anything but wide awake. ‘All that salted away in Switzerland or somewhere. That’s quite a bit to have made on the side. More than you or I ever made.’

      ‘Unless we get him back to Palucca we’re going to make a bloody sight less. Or I am.’

      ‘Just what have you got there in Palucca, Russ? You’ve never told me.’

      ‘You don’t need to know.’

      ‘Meaning it’s none of my business? I think it is, if you want me to shove my neck out on this. My popularity rating is dropping, Russ – it went down three points last week, just when it should be going up, with the Bicentennial going on. They don’t think I can walk on water any more. If this Timori business goes on too long I could be up to my arse in water in a leaky rowboat. And I don’t think you’d be rushing to bail me out.’

      Hickbed took off his glasses and polished them. They were in the library, a big room stacked on three walls to the ceiling with books and video cassettes; on close inspection one saw that virtually all the books were to do with some sort of show business and the cassettes were of Norval’s own TV shows. The few novels on the shelves were detective books and popular bestsellers. It was not a room where its owner got much mental exercise, but he had never sought it.

      There was the crunching of gravel on the path outside as two of the security men went by. This was a safe area, but one never knew. This was the North Shore suburb of Killara; North Shore being a social state of mind more than a geographical location, since its boundaries began some five miles from the northern shores of the harbour. Kirribilli, for instance, right on the north shore, was not North Shore. Killara itself