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‘We try not to. How long was the stack when you started up this machine Tuesday morning?’
The lines didn’t smooth out. ‘Bugger! I didn’t think of that.’ He looked at Baldock. ‘Sorry, Curly.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Baldock, but looked as if he had asked the question, and not Malone.
Malone said, ‘What was your first reaction when you found the body?’
Liss shook his head, shuddered again. He looked tough, as if he might have seen a lot of blood spilled in pub brawls, but obviously he had never seen anyone as mangled as Sagawa must have been. ‘I thought it was some sorta incredible bloody accident – how the hell did he get in there? Then that night, the night before last, they told me the Doc had said he was murdered. Shot. If they’d shot him, why let him be chewed up like that? If they knew anything about the works here, they’d have knew his body was never gunna go right through the system and be chopped up like the green bolls and the hulls and that.’
Malone’s smile had no humour in it. ‘That’s pretty graphic.’
‘Eh? Oh yeah, I guess it is. I just think it’s a bloody gruesome way to get rid of someone, that’s all. There was nothing wrong with him, he was a good bloke. He expected you to work hard, but you wouldn’t hold that against him. Most of us work hard out here in the bush, right, Curly?’
‘Right,’ said Baldock; then saved the face of the city bludger. ‘But down in Sydney the police are flat out all the time. Right, Scobie?’
‘All the time,’ said Malone.
‘Well, I guess you would be,’ said Liss. ‘From what I read, half the population of Sydney are crims, right?’
‘Almost.’ Malone wasn’t going to get into a city-versus-country match. ‘Well, thanks, Mr Liss. We’ll be back to you if we have any more questions.’
‘Be glad to help. Hooroo, Curly. Give my regards to the missus.’
Liss went back into the gin, adjusting his ear-muffs as he opened the door and the noise blasted out at him.
‘He’s all right?’ said Malone.
Baldock looked surprised. ‘You mean is he a suspect? Forget him. He’s a tough little bugger, but he’d never do anything like this.’
‘Who’s the government medical officer? He got a mention in the running sheet.’
‘Max Nothling. He’s got the biggest practice in town, but he doubles as GMO. He’s Chess Hard-staff’s son-in-law. He told us he’d had Sagawa’s body on the table in the hospital mortuary for an hour before he woke up there was a bullet in him, that it was the bullet in his heart that’d killed him, not the chewing-up by the spikes in the module feeder.’
‘I’d better have a talk with him.’ Malone looked at the huge module feeder slowly, inexorably eating its way into the slab-sided glacier of cotton. He did not like coming on a trail as cold as this; he preferred the crime scene to be left as undisturbed as possible.
‘Did your Physical Evidence Section get everything before you let them start up the gin again?’
‘We got the lot, photos, everything. They sent a Fingerprints cove over from District Headquarters. Their reports are on my desk back at the station, they came in just before I left.’
‘You said there was no sign of the cartridge.’
‘The Ballistics guy went through the office, all around here, right through the gin, he went through the lot with a fine-tooth comb. He found nothing.’
‘Who was he?’
‘Constable James. Jason James.’
‘There’s only one man better than him at his job and that’s his boss. Who, incidentally, is three-parts Abo.’
Baldock didn’t react, except to say, ‘It’s a changing world, ain’t it?’
Not out here, thought Malone.
They walked away from the gin shed towards the office a couple of hundred yards away. It was a silver-bright morning with patches of high cloud dry-brushed against the blue; one felt one could rub the air through one’s fingers like a fine fabric. A moon buggy rumbled by with another load of cotton, raising a low, thin mist of dust. Life and work goes on, Malone thought: profits must be made, only losses of life are affordable. Crumbs, he further thought, I’m thinking like a Commo: I wonder what they would have done to me in this town fifty years ago?
‘You got any suspects?’
They had reached the police vehicles and Baldock leaned against his car. ‘None. Or a dozen. Take your pick. It’ll be like trying to find a particular cotton boll in one of those modules.’
‘Any Jap-haters in the district?’
Baldock hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yeah, but I think they’re a bit too obvious to go in for murder. There’s Ray Chakiros. He’s president of the local Veterans Legion.’
The Veterans Legion all over the nation harboured a minority of ex-servicemen who were still consumed by a hatred of old enemies; they got more media space than they deserved and so were continually vocal. Moderation and a call to let bygones be bygones don’t make arresting headlines or good sound bites.
‘Chakiros?’
‘He’s Lebanese, but he was born here in Collamundra. His old man used to run the local café back in the days when we had only one. Now we’ve got coffee lounges, a McDonald’s, a Pizza Hut, a French restaurant, a Chinese one. Ray Chakiros owns the McDonald’s and one of the coffee lounges and he’s got the local Mercedes franchise. He’s got fingers in other pies, too – you know what the Wogs are like.’
Baldock wasn’t embarrassed by his prejudices; he was one of many for whom they are as natural as dandruff.
‘What’s he like?’ said Malone, wondering about Chakiros’s prejudices.
‘He runs off at the mouth about Japs or any sorta Asians, but I don’t think he’d pull a gun on any of ’em. He’s all piss and wind. He served in World War Two in New Guinea, but they tell me he never saw a Jap till the war was over. I’ve interviewed him, but I think he’s in the clear.’
‘Anyone else?’
Again Baldock took his time before answering. ‘There’s an Abo kid they had working here, but Sagawa sacked him last month. Wally Mungle knew him, they’re cousins. Then maybe there are half a dozen others, but we’ve got nothing on any of ’em.’
‘Where do we start then?’
Baldock shrugged. ‘Start at the bottom and work up.’
‘Who’s at the bottom?’ But Malone could guess.
‘The Abo, of course.’ Baldock said it without malice or prejudice. It struck Malone that the local sergeant was not a racist and he was pleased and relieved. Baldock might have his prejudices about Wogs, but that had nothing to do with race. Malone did wonder if there were any European Jews, refugees, in Collamundra and how they were treated by Baldock and the locals. He hoped there would be none of those on the suspect list.
‘His name’s Billy Koowarra,’ said Baldock.
‘Where can I find him?’
‘At the lock-up. He was picked up last night as an IP.’ Intoxicated Person: the all-purpose round-up lariat.
Malone saw Clements and Mungle come out of the office, where they had been questioning the office staff. He said delicately, a tone it had taken him a long time to acquire, ‘Curly – d’you mind if I ride back with Wally? You go with Russ.’
Baldock squinted, not against the sun. ‘Are you gunna go behind my back?’
‘No, I promise you there’ll be none of that. But you’ve had some trouble with the blacks out here, haven’t you? I read about it in a quarterly report.’
‘That was six or eight months ago, when all the land rights song and dance was going on. All the towns with Abo settlements outside them had the same trouble. It’s been quiet lately, though.’
‘Well, I think Wally will talk more freely to me about his cousin Billy if you’re not listening to him. Am I right?’
Baldock nodded reluctantly. ‘I guess so. He’s a good bloke, Wally. It hasn’t been easy for him, being a cop.’
‘It’s not that easy for us, is it?’
Baldock grinned. ‘I must tell him that some day.’
Then Clements and Mungle arrived. At the same time Koga, who had gone back into the gin shed, came out and walked towards the policemen. He was wide of them, looking as if he wanted to avoid them; his step faltered a moment, then he went on, not looking at them, towards the office. The four policemen looked after him.
‘How did he get on with Sagawa?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Baldock. ‘I asked Barry Liss about that, but he said he couldn’t tell. He said the two of them were like most Japs, or what he thought most Japs were like. Terribly polite towards each other. I gather Koga never opened his mouth unless Sagawa asked him to.’
‘Is he on your list?’
‘He will be, if you want him there.’
‘Put him on it.’ Then Malone turned to Clements. ‘Well, how’d you go?’
‘Bugger-all. Nobody understands why it happened. None of the drivers saw anything unusual in any of their loads, not when they brought the loads in from the fields.’
Malone glanced at Baldock. ‘Did the Physical Evidence boys find any blood on any of the trucks or buggies?’
‘None.’
‘What time do they start work here?’
‘The pickers start at seven in the morning,’ said Mungle in his quiet voice; it was difficult to tell whether he was shy or stand-offish. ‘The gin starts up at seven thirty. If the feeder was stopped at eight fifteen or thereabouts, that means the body must of been in the first or second load brought in the day before the murder. No one can remember who would have been driving that particular buggy.’
‘Our only guess,’ said Clements, ‘is that he was shot during the night and the killer scooped out a module, put the body in and re-packed the cotton again. They tell us that would be difficult but not impossible.’
‘He could have been brought in by the murderer in a buggy,’ said Malone. ‘Wally, would you ask Koga to step out here again?’
Mungle went across to the office and while he was gone Malone looked about him, faking bemusement. Baldock said, ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Media hacks. Down in Sydney they’d be around us like flies around a garbage tip. Don’t you have any out here?’
‘There’s the local paper and the radio station.They were out here Tuesday morning, getting in our way, as usual. They’ll be making a nuisance of themselves again, soon’s they hear you’re taking over.’
‘I thought they’d have heard that anyway,’ Malone said drily. ‘I don’t want to see ’em, Curly. This is your turf, you handle them. You’re the police spokesman, okay?’
Then Koga, diffident as before, came back with Wally Mungle. ‘You wanted me, Inspector?’ The thin, high voice broke, and he coughed. ‘Excuse me.’
‘What sort of security do you have out here, Mr Koga?’
‘None, Inspector. Mr Sagawa and I live – lived over there in the manager’s house.’ He pointed to a farmhouse, a relic of whatever the farm had once been, a couple of hundred yards away. ‘We were our own security. It was good enough, Mr Sagawa thought . . .’
But not good enough, Malone thought. ‘Where were you Monday night?’
The question seemed to startle Koga; he took off his glasses, as if they had suddenly fogged up; he looked remarkably young without them. ‘I – I went into town to the movies.’
‘What did you see?’ Malone’s voice was almost too casual.
Koga wiped his glasses, put them back on. ‘It was called Sea of Love. With Al Pacino.’
Malone looked at Baldock and Mungle. ‘I saw that down in Sydney at Christmas.’
‘It’s already been on out here,’ said Mungle. ‘They brought it back – by popular demand, they said. I think the locals were hoping the cop would be bumped off the second time around.’
Malone looked at Clements. ‘I thought you said this was a conservative district?’ Then he turned back to Koga, who had listened to all this without really understanding the cops’ sardonic acceptance of the public’s attitude towards them. ‘Was Mr Sagawa at the house when you got back from town?’
Koga shook his head. ‘No, he did not come home at all that night.’
‘Did that worry you?’
‘Not really. Mr Sagawa liked to – ’ he looked at Baldock; then went on, ‘ – he liked to gamble.’
Malone raised an eyebrow at Baldock, who said, ‘Ray Chakiros runs a small baccarat school out at the showgrounds a coupla nights a week, Mondays and Thursdays. We turn a blind eye to it. It never causes us any trouble.’
Malone wondered how much money had to change hands for no trouble to be caused; but that wasn’t his worry. ‘All right, Mr Koga, that’ll do. Thanks for your time.’
Koga bowed his head and Malone had to catch himself before he did the same; he did not want to be thought to be mocking the young Japanese. Koga went back to the office and Malone turned to the others. ‘Righto, let’s go back to town. Russ, you take Curly. Wally can ride with me.’
Clements was not the world’s best actor, but he could put on an admirable poker face. Wally Mungle’s own dark face was just as expressionless. He got in beside Malone and said nothing till they had driven out past the fields and on to the main road into town. As they did so, Malone noticed that all the cotton-pickers, the trucks and the buggies had stopped and their drivers were staring after the two departing police cars. He looked back and saw that Koga had come out on to the veranda of the office and was gazing after them. He wondered how far the young man, with his thick glasses, could see.
Mungle said, ‘Are you gunna ask me some questions you didn’t want Sergeant Baldock to hear? I don’t go behind his back, Inspector.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. No, Sergeant Baldock knows what I’m going to ask you. It’s about your cousin Billy Koowarra.’
‘Yeah, I thought it might be.’ Mungle nodded. He had taken off his hat and a long black curl dangled on his forehead like a bell-cord. He was a good-looking man, his features not as broad as those of a full-blood; his nose was straight and fine, and Malone wondered what white man had dipped his wick in tribal waters. He knew, from his experience in Sydney, that the mixed-bloods were the most difficult to deal with. They saw the world through mirrors, all of them cracked.
‘How long have you been a cop, Wally?’
‘Four years.’
‘Any regrets?’
Mungle stared ahead of them down the long black strip of macadam, shining blue in parts as if pools of water covered it. A big semi-trailer came rushing at them and he waited till it had roared by. ‘Sometimes.’
‘They treat you all right at the station?’
‘I’m the token Abo.’ He smiled, as much to himself as to Malone. ‘No, they’re okay.’
There had been a recruiting campaign to have more Aborigines join the police force, but so far there had been a scarce response. Every time Malone saw a TV newsreel of police action in South Africa, he was amazed at the number of black Africans in uniform, many of them laying into their fellow blacks with as much enthusiasm as their white colleagues. That, he knew, would never happen here.
‘What about amongst your family and the other blacks?’
