They all stared at Murray. Finally Maroubra spoke. ‘It makes sense. Those documents I handed over, he knows someone made a copy of them. There was no way we could avoid that and obtain them legitimately. So he decides to clear the decks. I buy it.’
Tom Smiley shook his head. ‘I’m not so sure. It’s all sounding too cloak and dagger for me. Surely someone with Mac Biddulph’s resources would come up with a more sophisticated plan than a fake burglary if he wanted to destroy documents.’
‘People don’t.’ Murray’s thick brows appeared to be pushed up onto his head like an unwanted pair of spectacles. ‘People don’t do sophisticated things in these situations. They look for simple, quick solutions. When we’re threatened, we panic. Doesn’t matter who we are. The panic is the autonomic nervous system dealing with the threat, pumping some adrenalin, letting the animal take over from the logical. Mac Biddulph junked the computer. Forget about the spectre of other people ghosting our man. They’re just that-ghosts.’
The Pope pushed his chair back from the table. ‘He’s right. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it. Must be losing my touch. God that’s a relief. This matter is complicated enough without another hunter in the forest.’
They poured coffee from the silver urn on the ornate sideboard and munched thoughtfully, and with some difficulty, on the club’s famous Anzac biscuits. Exactly why these rock-like discs were famous was unclear, but one member had been known to comment: ‘Few survived the battle, none will survive the biscuits.’
Tom Smiley drew the Pope to one side. ‘What does Hedley Stimson say about the evidence you’ve gathered thus far? Where are we heading?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t speak to him; only Jack does, and never at his office.’
Tom rubbed his chin. ‘This is as odd a situation as I’ve ever been in. I can’t see that we’re breaching any ethical codes at the moment, so I’ll hang in there for the time being. Let’s just say I’ll keep a watching brief.’
‘I understand. It’s complex and dangerous-mainly for Jack, I think. His whole life’s at risk and I’m not sure he understands that yet.’
They departed one by one with thoughtful faces and aching jaws, leaving the Pope alone in the panelled tomb. He sat at a small games table by the only window and began to arrange the chess pieces. He remained staring at the board for a long time, moving nothing, and then rose quickly and strode from the room.
It was black as a mine shaft when Jack gingerly picked his way through the gate from the leafy cavern of the liquidambers. The few street lights that hadn’t been pinged into darkness by the accurate stone throwing of private schoolboys in straw boaters were shrouded in dense foliage, and the moon had given up and gone home.
He never left the old lawyer’s house on a Sunday night without conflicting emotions. This time the evening had started with a lecture on the wizardry of the foot pedal that operated the lathe so that both massive hands were available to nurse the wood as the shavings flew and shapes were revealed. It was explained to him, in more detail than he needed to know, that, of course, commercial models of this nature were available for those who had neither the wit nor application to invent their own, but they were crass and insensitive devices that no true artist would consider. Hence the extraordinary contraption that lay like some primeval growth beneath the workbench, constructed, he was told, with pride from old locomotive parts from the Everleigh railway yards. He was made to sit on the tall stool, a product of this very workshop, and operate the pedal in order to experience the hair-trigger nature of the beast. It was true, the lightest touch with his foot caused the high-pitched scream of the lathe to burst forth, but for Jack, the result was more frightening than impressive.
They’d met a dozen times now, and gradually the crusty surface of old Hedley had cracked like crisp pastry and Jack had glimpsed more and more of the complex mixture beneath.
Hedley stood at the workbench like ‘an old stone savage armed’, as Robert Frost described the neighbour in the only poem Jack could ever quote from memory. He looked like the picture of Robert Frost on the dust cover of Jack’s copy of Collected Poems, and seemed to Jack to speak with the voice of a prophet, not a lawyer.
‘Anyone can work a machine, son, anyone can follow a pattern, but only the chosen can see the shapes in the wood before they’re revealed and release them into life. Would you like to try now? I can set this piece for you; it’s beautiful mahogany but only an offcut, you can’t do any harm. Sit here. Take the master’s chair.’ He felt the strong hands holding his shoulders and guiding him onto the stool. As much as he hated the machine, he wanted to try for the man.
Later, when they sat with tea and documents, only the sounds of the pages turning and the scratch of the thick pencil interrupting the Sunday peace, Jack waited for the leonine head to lift and the judgement to be delivered.
After some weeks of his material being dismissed as inadequate, he was hoping for approval.
‘Hmm. This is good stuff. We nearly have him on breach of director’s duties and related party transactions. We can’t prove he controls Beira, but the authorities, even with their limited intelligence, could track that down relatively easily. But on the big one, falsification of accounts, we’re still lost in the jungle. I’m going to write a list of questions for you, and you need to put them to that chief financial officer, Renton Healey-in person and without warning. Just turn up in his office when you know he’s there, put the questions to him and demand the relevant documents on the spot. Don’t leave without them. And take a witness, someone you can trust.’
Jack nodded doubtfully. ‘He’s as slippery as they come. He’ll try to put me off, say he doesn’t have them- anything. And who’s this witness? There isn’t anyone inside the company I can trust, and he’ll clam up completely if I turn up with an outsider.’
The old lawyer shrugged. ‘You figure it out, son. You’re the genius running the biggest insurance company in the universe. Get on with it. The document I want has to be there. It’s an addendum, a side letter, an email, something attached to this reinsurance contract that effectively removes any transfer of risk. So it makes it just a piece of financial manipulation, in order to artificially boost the profits. And no doubt the share price. Find it and I’ll nail these bastards.’
They talked of other things for a while-sport and books and what made men great and what diminished them. Finally Jack said, ‘How can these people live with themselves when they do these things? It can’t just be about the money. Mac’s a wealthy man, Renton Healey is paid a fortune. How can they look at themselves and know they’re stealing people’s money and breaking the law?’
‘They never think that. People like this never break the law-in their minds. It’s a stupid law, or it doesn’t apply to them or there’s another reading of it-or any other rationalisation you can think of. Everyone does this sort of thing, it’s not just me. It’s like insider trading in the share market. We all do it, all of us big businessmen. We built the companies, we’re entitled to the spoils. All those poor dumb shareholders sitting at home shrouded in cardigans and ignorance can pick up the crumbs we leave, if they’re lucky. If they want to play with the big boys, they can’t cry foul if they get hammered.’
He rose and walked to the workbench and took the piece of wood from the lathe. ‘They remove themselves from reality. They look down on the world from the sixtieth floor of an office building or some hotel where a two- hundred-dollar meal has just been delivered and maybe the thousand-dollar hooker will arrive in an hour, and all the suckers in the street below look like prey that’s there for the taking. It’s not immorality, it’s amorality, which is much more dangerous because there’s no gate into the garden. No opening where you can say, That’s the wrong path, this is the way through the trees into the paddock. They lose touch with families, with kids, with old people falling down and struggling with their memories, with splitting logs, lighting fires, cleaning shoes, with cooking their own food or cleaning up for the one who did, with dogs or horses or whatever pets they had when they were kids, with life. Their world is all slick and shiny and easy, it’s deals and limousines and boats called ships, and whatever is good for them is good.’
Hedley paused. ‘You hadn’t expected this, had you, son? Someone taught you we’re all fine citizens in the end?’ The younger man nodded. ‘Who was that?’
‘I’m not sure. Strangely, probably my mother-and certainly my wife.’
‘Ah, yes. The women who see beyond the competition.’ They sat together quietly, while the leaves of the birches rustled on the windows above the workbench. ‘It’s going to get difficult very soon, I’m afraid. You need to know that, son. We’re almost at the point where we have to take our material to the authorities. Some would say we’re there already. Certainly if we find that side letter, you’ll have to inform the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. Then all hell breaks loose. Are you ready for it?’
Jack stood and held out his hand, smiling, and then walked into the night. As he was heading out the gate he tripped and almost fell on a dead branch, and was shaking and collecting himself when the soft voice came and a hand touched his arm. He turned with a start and nearly tripped again, on the gutter. He could barely make out the figure in the dark, but it was a woman’s voice and shape.
