Dragons at the Party. Jon Cleary

the stairs, down on the ground floor. Someone must’ve come in as he was going out and he had to hide.’

      Malone looked at Stacton. ‘Would it have been one of your, uniformed men?’

      ‘I doubt it. Inspector, but I’ll check. They were busy holding back the demo. And I gather there was a hell of a lot of noise – no one heard the shot.’

      ‘There’s no security door down at the front?’

      ‘None. People ask for trouble these days.’

      ‘How did he get into the flat? I noticed there’s a grille security door on the front door.’

      ‘I dunno. There’s no sign of forced entry. The old lady must have let him in.’

      ‘A stranger?’ Malone looked around him. The furniture was antique and expensive; it had possibly taken a lifetime to accumulate. It was the sort of furniture that Lisa would love to surround herself with; he found himself admiring it. The paintings on the walls were expensive, too: nothing modern and disturbing, but reassuring landscapes by Streeton and Roberts. Miss Kiddle had surrounded herself with her treasures, but they hadn’t protected her. ‘This is a pretty big flat for one old woman.’

      ‘She has a married nephew who owns a property outside Orange. I’ve rung Orange and asked someone out to tell him. It’s gunna bugger up his celebrations.’

      ‘It’s buggered up mine,’ said Malone and looked out the window at another burst of fireworks. The past was going up in a storm of smoke and powder, you could smell it through the open windows. The kids would love it, though the grownups might wonder at the significance. It took Australians some time to be worked up about national occasions, unless they were sporting ones. The Italians and the Greeks, who could get worked up about anything, would enjoy the fireworks the most.

      ‘Well, I guess we’d better make a start with our guesses. Any suggestions?’

      Clements chewed his lip, a habit he had had as long as Malone had known him. ‘Scobie, I dunno whether this is worth mentioning. I was going through some stuff that came in from Interpol. You heard of that bloke Seville, Miguel Seville the terrorist? Well, Interpol said he’d been sighted in Singapore last week. He got out before they could latch on to him. He’d picked up a flight out of Dubai. They managed to check on all the flights going back to Europe after he’d been spotted. He wasn’t on any of them, not unless he’d got off somewhere along the way. Bombay, Abu Dhabi, somewhere like that.’

      ‘He might have gone to Sri Lanka,’ said Stacton. ‘He’s always around where there’s trouble.’

      When Malone had first started on the force no one had been interested in crims, terrorists then being unknown, outside the State, even outside one’s own turf. Now the field was international, the world was the one big turf.

      ‘The betting’s just as good that he came this way,’ said Clements.

      Malone said, ‘Who’d hire him? The generals who’ve taken over in Palucca have no connection with any of the terrorist mobs, at least not on the record.’

      ‘Seville is different. That’s according to the Italians, who’ve had the most trouble with him. He’s not interested in ideology any more. He’s just a bloody mercenary, a capitalist like the rest of us.’

      ‘Speak for yourself. We’re not all big-time punters like you.’

      Clements grinned; his luck with the horses was notorious, even embarrassing. ‘You pay Seville, he’ll organize trouble for you. A bomb raid at an airport, a machine-gun massacre, an assassination, anything. Someone could have hired him to do this job.’

      ‘Righto, get Fingerprints to photo-fax that print through to Interpol, see if it matches anything they might have on Seville. Have we called in Special Branch yet?’

      ‘They arrived just as I was putting me sledge-hammer away,’ said Thumper Murphy.

      ‘A pity,’ said Malone and everyone grinned. ‘Well, it looks as if we’re all going to be one big happy family. The Feds, the Specials, you fellers and us.’

      ‘I always liked you, Scobie,’ said Thumper Murphy. ‘They could have sent us one of them other bastards you have in Homicide.’

      It sounds just like Palucca must have sounded, Malone thought. Each faction wanting all the others out of the way. He sighed, just as Kenthurst had said the President had sighed when the emeralds had been taken from Masutir’s pocket. Only then did he remember he hadn’t asked anyone about the emeralds.

      ‘Where are the emeralds?’

      ‘Kenthurst said he gave ’em back to Madame Timori,’ said Clements. ‘She asked for them.’

      ‘She would.’ He wondered how many tears had been shed for the Mother of the Poor, as she had called herself, when she had left Palucca.

      2

      Palucca was the largest of the old Spice Islands. Columbus was heading there when he accidentally ran into America; he had coined the phrase, ‘Isn’t it a small world?’ and thought he had proved it when he finished up some 11,000 miles short of his intended destination. The Spice Islands survived his non-arrival, but European civilized types, led by Ferdinand Magellan, arrived in 1511 and from then on the aroma of the Spices began to change. Nothing has ever been improved by the advent of outsiders, nothing, that is, but the lot of the invaders.

      The Portuguese were succeeded by the Spanish, the Dutch and the British; the Islanders just shrugged, learned a few words of the newest language and dreamed of the old days when they were barbaric and happy. Their paradise had been spoiled by the Europeans who, seeking profits, had come looking for the spices that would, in addition to the sweet taste of profits, make their putrid and indigestible food edible. The pepper, nutmegs, cloves, mace, ginger and cinnamon, added to what the Europeans ate back in what they thought of as civilization, saved the appetites and often the lives of the civilized millions. Spices were also used by physicians to treat diseases of the blood, the stomach, head and chest; sometimes a cookery recipe was mistaken for a medical prescription, but it made no difference anyway. The patient usually died and the family got the bill, the physician’s bill being larger than the grocer’s.

      The Dutch stayed longest and eventually the Spice Islands were absorbed into what became known as the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese came in 1942, were welcomed but soon wore out their welcome and were gone in 1945. The Dutch came back; but they, too, were unwelcome. In 1949 the Indies obtained their independence and became Indonesia. The Paluccans, however, declared their own independence and the rest of Indonesia, tired of fighting the Dutch and just wanting to get on with the post-war peace that the rest of the world was enjoying, let them go.

      The Timori family, which had been the leading family in Palucca for centuries, were pains in the neck anyway. They were conspirators, connivers, meddlers, and corrupt: ideal rulers to deal with the Europeans, Americans, Chinese and Russians who would soon be coming to court them.

      Mohammed Timori, Abdul’s father, had himself elected President for life, a title he chose in preference to Sultan, to which he was entitled by inheritance; he was prepared to make a bow towards democracy, though it hurt every joint in his body. He moved back into Timoro Palace, the family home that had been commandeered by the Dutch a hundred years before. He said public prayers of praise to Allah, but privately he told Allah He had better come good with some United Nations aid or Palucca would be in the hands of the Chinese money-lenders before the next crop of nutmegs.

      Allah came good with better than United Nations hand-outs: oil was found on the north coast of the big island. It did not make Palucca a rich country, because the oil reserves were judged to be only moderate; nonetheless, Palucca was suddenly more than just a source of ginger and nutmegs and the oil companies of the West came bearing their own aromatic spices, bribes with which to start Swiss bank accounts. The Timori family were suddenly rich, even if their country wasn’t.