surfers sliding and dipping and cutting back across the face of the breaking waves. Today there were no rich smells of garlic and grilling meat or pungent aromas of chilli and shellfish drifting from the kitchen. The room smelled musty and dead. All the other tables had chairs standing on them. The vases were upside down on the old carved sideboard and somehow the atmosphere was equally inverted.
The Pope sat at the end of the table and spoke in a clear, calm voice. ‘Forgive me, friends, for asking you to come. I realise it’s entirely against what we stand for-namely nothing. We’ve been the club without a cause. We meet just to meet, nothing more. But now we have a friend in great need. My question is simply this, is it appropriate for us to unite, to use our strange and disparate resources to help in these circumstances?’
The members looked around the table, unsure who would respond first. Finally Murray Ingham spoke. ‘I assume you mean Jack Beaumont since he’s the only one not here?’
‘That means nothing, he’s probably on the nest again,’ Maroubra called from the end of the table, but the resultant laughter was uncertain and muted.
The Pope smiled. ‘He may well be, Maroubra, but this time it seems to be a nest of crocodiles our friend has stumbled into. But I stress that he hasn’t asked for our help.’
Murray Ingham peered out from beneath his bushy brows.
‘Why don’t you tell us the story and we’ll see if we like the plot?’
‘I’d like to be able to do that in detail, but part of the deal would have to be that we each agree to do our part without seeing the whole picture. I’d deal with Jack and coordinate things. It’s a big ask, I know, and the prudent response would be for everyone to say no.’
Maroubra’s voice boomed out again. ‘Prudent? Now you’re challenging us, you cunning bastard. Since when has anyone in this group been prudent? There was nothing prudent about that swim a few of us did at Coogee with cartons of beer on our backs-in a ten-foot surf. Remember that? And they had the helicopters out looking for us. Thought we were goners. Remember how I came out of the water and asked some bloke in a uniform what was going on and he said, Some mad buggers have tried to swim out to the rocks with beer on their backs. I just said, You’re joking, and left him to it. Poor bastard’s probably still there looking out to sea.’ Now the laughter was genuine, almost relieved. ‘So don’t give us prudence. Tell us what you can and we’ll make the call.’
‘Thank you, gentlemen.’ The Pope took out a small notebook. ‘These are the facts I’m able to give you at this time.’
He began to read slowly and clearly. When he was finished there was a long silence. Again it was Murray Ingham who responded. ‘It’s an interesting tale, although not one I’d write. It’s got everything but sex, which is extraordinary considering the hero.’
The Judge cut in. ‘There’s considerable potential for serious legal consequences to flow from even the little that’s been said. I, for one, am ready to help-with a proviso that if proceedings are commenced in any way, I may have to withdraw for obvious reasons. I imagine one or two others would have similar potential conflicts.’
Maroubra chipped in, parodying the Judge’s slightly pompous tones. ‘I could state that while my salvage business doesn’t appear to bear directly on the issues at hand, should ethical or legal questions relating to the recovery of sunken boats or used bricks arise unexpectedly, I also may have to pull out. Otherwise I pledge my troth.’
The Pope grinned at him. ‘Thank you, as always. You might be surprised, Maroubra, but there are many reasons we could call on you. Quite a few of the contacts you have in sections of the police force and insurance investigators and so on could be very handy.’ Eyebrows were raised around the table. ‘Yes, it could get very nasty, comrades. We’d be proceeding on the basis that if anyone has a problem at any time, they just let me know. Since we don’t exist, except as individuals, there’s nothing to bind us together.’
‘Except one thing.’ It was the courtroom voice of Tom Smiley that interrupted.
‘Yes. Except one.’ The Pope looked around the table, holding the eyes of each person for a moment. ‘So. We go forward together?’ He opened the notebook again. ‘Here’s how you can help.’
chapter seven
Red dust disturbed by the helicopter blades drifted over the emerald Bellaranga lawn and the passengers waited for it to settle before disembarking. There were only four, and Mac stepped out from the homestead to greet them as the last figure emerged.
‘G’day, g’day. Great to see you, Max. Henry, how are you? You look ready for anything. Jason, how’s the golf? That’s the one thing we can’t do for you in the Kimberley, but a little barramundi fishing, some great tucker, some amazing rock art, a bit of rough riding-it might do the trick, eh? Ah, and here’s the boss.’
The last greeting was directed at Jack in the slightly broader Australian accent that seemed to overwhelm any veneer of polish once Mac was in the bush. He was herding them about like a kelpie, pressing them to take a cold beer from the silver tray that the housekeeper had placed on the wicker table under the poinciana trees, telling them to forget their bags, that sunset would be upon them in an hour, that they could catch it by the billabong where he, Mac, on his own, no servants, would cook dinner over an open fire and they could sit together in the blackness and hear the thump of kangaroo tails on the hard ground. He appeared almost excited and nervous to have guests in this remote place, the opposite of the calm commander of the Honey Bear. It was always like this with visitors to Bellaranga, but now there were other reasons for his edginess. They were the black thoughts that woke him in the night when the homestead was empty and the only sounds were the rustles in the dry bush from nocturnal animals and his own feet on the old, wide floorboards as he paced about from room to room. The staff slept in another building a couple of miles away on the property. He’d always liked being completely alone at night up here, ‘sleeping like a baby’-but not anymore. The black dog was upon him, with sharp teeth. He’d always sneered at people who suffered from depression for no apparent reason, who couldn’t pull themselves together and just get on with life without running off to shrinks or counsellors or social workers or other charlatans. Just get on with it. He wasn’t one of those. He just got on with it. The problem at the moment was how to get on with it. What to get on with.
There was a tangle of strings knotted up in a ball inside his head and he couldn’t see which one to pull. You had to keep them loose. That was the secret of untying knots. His father had taught him that when they went fishing together. ‘You don’t pull, son. Never tighten. Loosen, loosen. Just tweak a little here, thread a little there. But always loosen, and the knots disappear.’
The biggest knot, the one that was causing him pain in the stomach or the chest so close to the heart he wondered in the night if he was having some sort of attack, if the indestructible, invincible Big Mac was somehow vulnerable like ordinary beings, this dark cloud was the tumbling share price of HOA. When people asked him about it he just shrugged and tossed off his standard line: ‘It’s only paper money. Markets go up, markets go down. We just get on and run the company for the shareholders.’
But what the market didn’t know, what no one knew except his bankers, was that he was a mortal being, that he was vulnerable, that his entire shareholding in HOA was subject to margin calls and all his other assets, at least according to his accountant who spoke an infuriating language Mac struggled to understand half the time, that these assets were so locked up in trusts and nominee companies and other complex corporate structures that they were difficult to access quickly. And it looked increasingly as if speed might be vital. He’d always relied in previous situations like this, and there had been some, close to the wire, kneeling over the edge, you had to look over the edge sometimes or you weren’t a real man, in those times he’d always just brought funds from Switzerland and held the dogs at bay. But now the authorities were all over that, too. Sniffer dogs they were, scenting every last dollar a man might have worked hard for, trying to grab it just because a bit of tax hadn’t been paid or some currency regulation hadn’t been complied with. And the problem now wasn’t just potential fines; there were criminal sanctions in place. Why they weren’t out catching the hooligans who broke into people’s houses or stole cars or dealt drugs instead of hounding honest citizens was beyond him. Not that they were hounding Mac, or even had a whiff of anything, but they would if he started shifting big lumps of cash around, his cash, the cash he needed to get the bank off his back. He either needed the cash or he needed the share price to rise, it was as simple as that.
And that’s why he woke in the night. And why sitting beside him on a dusty car seat was Maxwell Newsome, CEO of the biggest stockbroker trading in HOA shares, and sitting either side of Jack in the rear were Jason Little of
