Follow the Money

He stirred sugar into the long black he'd ordered and ignored the papers. 'You didn't get a hint about his source of information… locally?'

'Not a clue. He's very smart. You heard the recording, the one time I tried to trick him he was onto it like a shot.'

'He says Lester killed the mystery man?'

'Yeah, and that he can back it up. To use his words, in part."

'I found it hard to listen to; it sounded as if he played you like a fish.'

'I doubt you'd have done any better.'

He pulled the sheets towards him and looked through them as he stirred his coffee. He was seeing that Harvey Dong and Ah Pin were Hong Kong criminals, the heads of gangs within the Triad structure. Mustafa Khalid was the leader of a Lebanese militia group involved in the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics. The governments of several states had declared him an outlaw and he and his followers were now best described as bandits with terrorist tendencies.

Chang looked up. 'Nothing on Simmonds?'

'No. I'm assuming your magnificent databases will turn up something.'

'Sarcasm,' he said, 'a sign of insecurity, our profilers tell us. I'll check on him.'

'What do I tell Sabatini?'

'Tell him nothing.'

'What will you tell Ali?'

Chang shook his head, drained his coffee, got up and walked away.

I guessed that we were allies in deceiving our comrades and I remembered what Megan said I had told her about allies.

27

I didn't have to do anything about Sabatini. Rosemary flew back into Sydney and took all his attention. Perhaps he was tired of the waiting game, and he had my assurance that I'd give him everything I had when it came time for him to write a full story. If it became time; the international flavour of the names I'd passed on to Chang had me worried that the whole case might move out of state police hands and be taken on by the feds or the intelligence agencies.

I needn't have worried.

'This Simmonds is a consular official in Hong Kong,' Chang told me at our next meeting. We were in Sydney Park in St Peters, walking the paths. The four towers, the lungs of the old brick factory, were casting long shadows and the wind was chill.

'Consular. That means he deals with immigration matters, visas and such.'

'Right. Authorises visas and these days has a role in monitoring applications from skilled people and those with investment capabilities.'

'Passports?'

'Probably has a drawer full of 'em.'

'Does this mean you're going to hand this over to the feds or the spooks?'

Chang, who had a long stride, stopped abruptly. 'Shit, no! Certainly not at this stage. Doesn't take much to put it together, does it? Chinese and Lebanese criminals getting entry to this country through corrupt DFAT officials. They get set up in already existing businesses which have been compromised in some way by Malouf's dealings, and have had pressure put on them by Freddy Wong and Houli. Those two were looking to be part of the ongoing action.'

I said, 'He's a crafty bastard, this guy, only gives us one of the officials and a couple of names. You have to wonder how widespread it is-how many crooks, how many businesses and how big.'

'And how much money.'

We were walking again. 'Cancerous,' I said.

Chang stepped off the path to pick up a soft drink can. He tossed it at a bin; it bounced on the rim but went in. 'It could be. Business is the lifeblood of ethnic communities in this city. It affects everything-family, religion, schools, politics, sport, the lot. If criminal organisations get control of big Chinese and Lebanese businesses-I mean in terms of money and personnel-it'd be a nightmare.'

'It's big, as he said. But you're not going to pass it on higher?'

Chang didn't reply. We reached the pond, took a turn and headed back towards the towers. There was a dog exercise area away to our left and the sounds of the dogs and the children had a calming, normalising effect on me and apparently on Chang, who stopped and looked.

'My people have been here for a hundred and fifty years,' he said. 'They were on the Victorian goldfields and then had the good sense to come to Sydney. They were market gardeners, laundrymen and shopkeepers. My great-great-grandfather fought in World War I. A couple of my great uncles fought in the next war.' He laughed. 'Mind you, a few members of my family were mistaken for Japs and interned. This place isn't perfect, but I love it and I'm fucked if I'm going to let a bunch of foreign sleazebags come in and bugger it up.'

At home, I punched the buttons to disable the alarm and put my key in the lock. I heard a soft footfall and felt something hard and cold in the nape of my neck.

'Open the door and we'll go in. Drop the keys as soon as we're inside and keep your hands where I can see them.'

What I could feel on my neck wasn't the muzzle of a pistol. Bigger. A silencer. I did as he said, and as soon as the door was closed he slammed me against the wall. He was as quick as a cat and before I could catch my breath he had both wrists handcuffed behind my back.

'Sergeant Ali,' I said. 'Sharpshooter.'

'Don't forget it. Move inside, we've got some talking to do.'

We went into the sitting room and I froze as I heard him open a flick knife. He sliced my jacket down the back and pulled both halves clear of my tied wrists. He shoved me into a chair, put the gun and knife within reach and felt in the jacket. Deftly, he pulled out my phone and the recording device. He fiddled with it and swore.

'Where's the disk?'

I looked at him and said nothing.

'Doesn't matter,' he said. 'You did us a great service getting rid of Freddy and Lester.'

'Us?'

'William and me.'

'William Habib, aka Richard Malouf?'

Ali smiled. 'Light dawns. I'm curious, Hardy, what made Stephen Chang suspicious of me?'

'Is he suspicious?'

He sighed. 'You're going to be a nuisance the way I knew you would be. Stephen's been keeping me busy on a variety of things. Some of them touching on… what we're talking about now, but I could tell he was holding a lot back. I know you've spoken to William recently.'

As always, Ali was impeccably dressed and groomed. He was handsome, looked fit and clear-eyed-the image of a rising professional policeman. His body language exuded confidence, but I sensed that he entertained a small doubt.

'I did speak to him,' I said, 'and it worries you that you don't know what was said, doesn't it?'

'I said it doesn't matter.'

'I think it does, Karim. You probably don't know that Freddy Wong was getting ready to dispense with Houli. Habib was setting up to double-cross Houli and Freddy Wong. What's to say he won't double-cross you? Hard to find someone to trust, isn't it?'

'You don't know what you're talking about. Shut up and let me think.'

'I'll tell you who to think about-Stephen Chang.'

'Oh, we've already thought about him. Pity, he's a good policeman, but good policemen get killed in the line of duty all the time.'

'Kill him and you'll never draw another peaceful breath.'

'I won't kill him. It'll depend on how things work out, but I think it's most likely that you'll kill him.'

28

'You must have a weapon here somewhere,' Ali said, 'otherwise it could get messy. Let me see.'

His eye drifted to the cupboard under the stairs. He opened the door and felt among the jackets and coats and bits and pieces hanging there.

'Aha.' He pulled out the. 22 I'd got from Corbett and had more or less forgotten about. He held it by the end of the barrel.

'A popgun, but it'll do.'

Everyone has a weakness and Karim Ali's was vanity. He couldn't resist telling me how Habib had engineered financial disaster for a large number of sizeable Chinese and Lebanese businesses in Sydney and had arranged bail-out finance which carried penalties that would bring whole conglomerations of family concerns crashing down. I didn't really understand much of it, but I gathered that