Ransom by Jon Cleary Page B

with an unhappy mouth and eyes yellowed with ague or bitterness. “The bastards won’t see us.”
    “They don’t have to,” Jefferson told Malone. “Since they haven’t yet been convicted, they still have most of their rights. One of them being that they can refuse to be questioned on anything that doesn’t concern them. And they’re claiming the kidnapping has nothing to do with them.”
    “But the ransom has!” Malone, suddenly affected by the atmosphere of the jail, had the feeling that doors were being slammed on him; from somewhere beyond the closed door of the interviewing room there came the loud clang of iron against iron, a sound as cold and dead on the ear as that of

    doom itself, and abruptly he was as without hope as any of the prisoners in the building. Anger shook him as he thought of Lisa held prisoner somewhere, possibly already dead (the thought was there in the dark corners of his mind like a plague-carrying rat). The world was standing still and waiting with its hands in its pockets; and some anarchists somewhere in this building who did not believe in the rule of law were invoking it to wash their hands of the lives of two women they had never met. Suddenly he wanted to tear this bare, negative room to pieces. He felt like an innocent man just condemned to life imprisonment. He thumped the table with his fist. “Jesus, can’t you drag them down here? We’re trying to save the lives of two women - what rights do these bastards have against that fact?”
    “I don’t know what the law is in Australia,” said Lewton quietly, “but in this country, since the Supreme Court decided in its wisdom that the guilty have as many rights as the innocent, we work with our hands tied.”
    Malone, despite his emotional state, recognized the sour hyperbole and understood it. Only in police states did the police ever think the law worked for them: there had been times back home when he had thought he had been wearing the handcuffs and not the lawbreaker he had brought in. He simmered down, aware again of doors clanging outside: he had to find some way of surviving in this cage of frustration that enclosed him.
    Then a door behind Lewton opened and a grey-haired white man in uniform came in. With him was a young black guard and a second black with an Afro hair-do and wearing a red-and-black dashiki over his blue jeans and his white T-shirt.
    “McBean has said he’ll listen to you.” The grey-haired man was introduced to Malone as Warden Canby. “I told him, Inspector, that you might be coming here. That was when he said he’d come down.”
    “Just to show you your side doesn’t have a monopoly on compassion,” said McBean.

    Ganby looked over his shoulder at McBean, casually as he might have looked at a man he had known all his life. “Our side doesn’t have a monopoly on anything. Don’t get sanctimonious on us - we got enough do-gooders on our own side.”
    McBean suddenly smiled; evidently there was some rapport between him and the Warden. “Stick around, Warden. We’ll find a place for you in our system when we take over.”
    Ganby, dark lines gullying his grey face like the tribal marks of experience, turned back to Malone and the others. “He’s all yours. Officer Robinson will stay with you. Good luck.”
    “That’s what you gonna need - luck,” said McBean, and sat down at the table, arranging his dashiki. “You like my outfit, Captain ? A marriage of two cultures - Africa and Seventh Avenue.”
    The Warden shook his head and went out of the room, and Lewton said, “What do you mean, Eddie? Why are we gonna need luck?”
    “Because there’s nothing I can tell you about this kidnapping - nothing.”
    Malone found himself at the opposite end of the table from McBean; the two men looked at each other down its length and Malone saw nothing in the broad blue-black face that afforded him any hope. But they had to start somewhere if Lisa was to be found before it was too late. If it