Bleak Spring by Jon Cleary Page A

have no effect on a bullet. But if it was a Ruger fitted with a silencer, then I’d say it was a professional hit job.”
    â€œHow many hitmen do we know who use a Ruger?” But it was a useless question and he knew it. Crime in Australia had become organized over the past few years, coinciding with the national greed of the Eighties. But professional killings were still just casual work, often done crudely. “We don’t have much in the way of clues on this one, Clarrie.”
    â€œI can’t help you there, mate. You gimme something more than one bullet to go on and I’ll try and build you a case. Or gimme a particular gun. But one slug . . .” He shook his dark head, rolled a black eye that showed a lot of white. “Some day you’re gunna bring in a spear and ask me to name it. I’m looking forward to that. I might run it right through you.”
    â€œGet out of here, you black bastard.”
    Binyan grinned and left: the two of them respected each other’s ability and there had never been a moment’s friction between them. The big room outside began to fill up with detectives; Malone had seventeen men under him in Homicide. There had been a spate of murders since the Strathfield massacre, but that was often the case, as if a damn had burst and murder had escaped. All the detectives were assigned. He looked out at them through the glass wall of his office and, not for the first time, remarked how few of them had come out of the same mould. Some of them were straight down the line, as if they worked under the eye of some stern judge; others bent the rules because, they argued, life itself didn’t run according to the rules. There was Andy Graham, all tiring enthusiasm; chainsmoking Phil Truach, so laconic he seemed bored by whatever he had to investigate; John Kagal, young and ambitious, his eye already on Malone’s chair, a fact that Malone had noticed without letting Kagal know; and Mike Mesic, the Croat whose attention for the past month had been home in Yugoslavia where his hometown was being blasted by the Serbs. There were twelve others and there was Russ Clements, who came into the room as he sat staring out through the glass.
    â€œWhat’s the matter? You counting the bodies or something?”
    The men outside had begun to disappear, going off on their enquiries. “I was looking in at a show the other night. Cops, on Channel Ten. The Yanks seem to have a bloody army of cops. And hardware ! When their helicopters take off, it’s like that scene in Apocalypse Now, you remember? I sat there and I lost heart.”
    Clements dropped into a chair that threatened to break under his bulk. “Let me cheer you up. I’ve done a trace, through a mate of mine in a stockbroker’s office, on Shahriver Credit International. It’s as gen-u-ine as those Reeboks they sell you off the back of a truck.”
    â€œIt’s not a bank?”
    â€œOh, it’s a bank all right, properly registered here, with its headquarters in Abadan.”
    â€œAbadan? That wasn’t mentioned on the letterhead. Where’s that?”
    â€œIn Iran, just over the border from Iraq. My contact tells me nobody worthwhile here in Sydney does any business with it.”
    â€œIt sounds like the O’Brien Cossack Bank.” He and Clements had worked on that case. “Or Nugan Hand.”
    â€œWorse. It’s nowhere near as big as that other one that’s in the news right now, the Bank of Credit and Commercial International, the BCCI—”
    â€œI love the way these banks just roll off your tongue.”
    Clements went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted: “Shahriver is the same shonky set-up, I gather.”
    â€œIs it being investigated?”
    â€œNot yet, but it’s on the cards, according to my mate. They took forever to get into BCCI and that’s twenty times bigger than this outfit.”
    â€œWho deals with it