Free Autumn Maze by Jon Cleary

Malone could see the clouds already beginning to loom.
    â€œScobie, let them work it out between them. Pull your head in.”
    â€œIt’s right in, I’m not starting any fights on this one. We’ll do the donkey-work and let them up above make the decisions. In the meantime we’ll start talking to everyone connected to young Sweden. We’ll do them individually. The three sisters, their husbands—who do you want?”
    â€œNot the women. I’ve got Romy on my mind at the moment. One’s enough.”
    â€œPropose to her and all your worries will be over. Righto, I’ll take the sisters. I’ll also take young Jack Aldwych. We’ll leave Casement, we’ve got enough out of him for the moment.”
    â€œThat leaves me the Minister. Thanks.”
    â€œNo, we’ll skip him, too, for a while. There’s someone else you’ve forgotten. The cove they pinched from the morgue. If he was killed by the same method as young Sweden, then I’ll bet on it, he was connected to him. Try your luck.”
    Frank Minto was on the running sheet in the computer, but he was likely to be overlooked if pressure increased on the Sweden case. It was not true that death made a level playing field.
    IV
    That morning, coming back late from its all-night fishing, a trawler turned seawards to dodge the huge waterspout heading for it. It dragged in the last of its nets: in it was a badly mutilated leg.
    â€œWe t’ought the spout, it gonna send us down,” the Italian skipper reported to the police. “We said the prayers, pretty hard. Da spout, it missed us. Den we look in da net and dere was dis horrible t’ing!”
    Though the leg was badly mangled, the foot was intact. Attached to the big toe was a tag, the figures on it almost washed out but decipherable under a microscope: E.50710.

4
    I
    THAT EVENING Malone took Lisa and the three children to the Golden Gate, a restaurant in Chinatown. Lisa recognized the outing for what it was, a penance for sins of omission, but she said nothing. Any sense of guilt that could make him spend money on the children was all right by her. She was not extravagant and ran their home with old-time Dutch thrift, but at times Scobie’s attachment to a dollar, as if it were an organ of his body, upset her. Money was to be saved, sure, but it was also to be spent.
    The restaurant manager knew Malone, though the latter was not a regular customer here; the manager knew every police officer in the central business district. With an illegal gambling club on an upper floor of the building, it was politic to recognize the enemy, declared or otherwise.
    The manager came back to their booth after he had taken the Malones’ orders. “Inspector, Mr. Aldwych’s compliments and he would like you and your family to be our guests.”
    Malone looked towards the back of the restaurant, saw Jack Aldwych seated alone in a booth. The silver-haired old man nodded and raised a hand in salute. Malone nodded, then turned back to the manager. “Thank Mr. Aldwych, but no. He’ll understand.”
    The manager smiled, a Chinese smile that gave nothing away. “Of course, Inspector. Enjoy your meal when it comes.”
    When the manager had gone Claire said, “Why did you do that, Dad? That was rude.”
    â€œI’m supposed to be the rude one in the family,” said Maureen.
    â€œYou are,” said Tom.
    Malone looked at his three. Claire, almost seventeen, beautiful (in his eyes) and (also in his eyes) about to be ravished by sex-mad thugs masquerading as ordinary decent young Australian men. Maureen, going on fifteen but already with one foot in the doorway of adulthood, pretty but unconscious of it, both eyes wide open, but not with innocence, to the world. And Tom, who at ten was beginning to realize that being a cop’s son was not all fun.
    â€œThe man who offered to pay for us is part-owner of this restaurant, but