Gerry was between Mac and the nerds in a flash. ‘My client has nothing more to say. Your search is clearly at an end and so is this conference, if it can be called that. You’ll leave these premises, as will we. My client does not reside here. He has cooperated with you in the process of your search, unlawful as it may have been, but will now attend to his business affairs. If you have questions you wish to put to him, issue the proper notice and he will respond. Not otherwise. Now, in a word, out.’
Somewhat to Gerry Lacy’s surprise, ten minutes later they were all in the street and the archive boxes were being loaded into a van. As it drove off, Mac turned to the lawyer. ‘I must say you came through there, Gerry. Never seen you so forceful. Thanks, mate, I needed those bastards out of there. I was starting to lose it, I don’t mind admitting.’
Gerry placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Not at all, Mac. Glad to help. We must discuss this fully tomorrow, but I have to dash now. Important conference.’
Mac was startled. ‘What? Shouldn’t we talk about it now? Get some of your people, have a brains trust session?’
Gerry shook his head vigorously. ‘No, no. They’re all at the conference. Tuesday partners’ meeting. Much better to sleep on it, anyway. I’ll call you first thing tomorrow morning.’
Mac stood on the footpath, dazed and dishevelled. He’d swapped the kimono for a pair of jeans and a spare shirt he kept in Bonny’s wardrobe, but he was unshaven, unshowered, unkempt. He thought he could smell himself. He hadn’t even used deodorant. He sniffed the air. At least there’d be the musky smell of sex mixed into the potion. First time in a while. Probably last time in a while, too, at least with Bonny. He glanced down at the cell phone in his hand as it began to bleep an endless stream of messages.
Tuesday. Had Gerry said Tuesday? Christ. He looked at his watch. The question would have been asked in the Senate by now. First up, he’d told Harold Wilde. Max Newsome would be starting to market the shares, which should be soaring. And he’d been locked up with a group of orang-outangs. He almost ran to his car, parked in the fucking street-car park door wouldn’t open, fucking technology-and was out of breath when Maxwell Newsome answered the call.
‘Mac, thank goodness you’ve rung. I’ve been desperately trying to contact you all morning. Are you all right?’
He held the steering wheel with both hands for support. His mouth was dry, he hadn’t even had coffee, and his odour was strong in the enclosed space. He seemed to be breathing with more difficulty than he should be just from a dash to the car. He saw his chest heaving under the shirt and he was afraid, for no reason.
‘Don’t worry about that now. What’s happened with the HOA price? What are we going to get for the shares?’
There was a long pause. ‘They’re gone, Mac. All sold. They went as soon as we put them on the market. I’ve been trying to call you.’
‘God. Just like that? The lot? I can’t believe it. What did we get?’
He heard breathing like his own on the other end of the line. ‘It’s this ASIC thing, Mac. And I couldn’t reach you. But you said to put them all on the market this morning. You said just get the best price I could on Tuesday. I wrote it down, Mac, it’s all written down. I asked you for a bottom price, but you said sell them on Tuesday.’
Mac was desperate for air. He jabbed at the window button but it wouldn’t respond. He fumbled for the key but couldn’t find it. He swung the door open and a passing cyclist swore at him as it nearly crashed into the bicycle frame. The roar of the traffic reverberated into the car’s interior and he shouted into the cell phone. ‘What are you talking about, Max? What ASIC thing? How do you know there’s an ASIC thing? They’ve only just left. Did Gerry call? Why would he call you?’ He pulled the door shut again to hear the response.
‘It’s on the front page of every paper, Mac-surely you’ve seen it. It was on the screens before the market opened. The press have been outside your house all morning. Where are you?’
Where was he? God knew. His mind was tumbling over itself, trying to sift information into logical order and failing. He opened the door again, climbed almost drunkenly out of the cavernous interior and leaned against the bonnet. He hated this car. Pretentious piece of crap Rolls-Royces were, but it had become a sort of trademark. People waved at him as he drove around, and he liked to be waved at. Usually they spat at Rollers, but not at Mac, because they knew he was just one of them who’d made it. There was no silver spoon anywhere near his mouth. His head swivelled as if searching for clues to his whereabouts.
‘I’m at Bonny’s in Potts Point.’ What did it matter where he was? That wasn’t the question he was searching for. What was it? How had the press known about the raid before it happened? How could so many shares have been sold so quickly? Why was Max talking about writing things down? No, none of that. Only one thing mattered. The price. The fucking price.
‘What did we get? What’s the price?’
‘You know the market, Mac. Anything that creates uncertainty, anything that smacks of wrongdoing, or false accounts, not that there is anything yet, or at all I’m sure, but this sort of thing spooks the market, you know it does. It’ll come back, I’m sure it will, in time, but well-you said to sell, I wrote it down.’
‘What’s the fucking price?’He could barely get the words out and the response hit him with the impact of a bullet.
‘Four fifty, average. We sold a few closer to five dollars, but average four fifty.’
Mac slumped. It wasn’t possible. The shares had been at seven dollars. With the revelation that the government was considering restrictions on foreign insurance companies, eight was an easy mark. Of course he’d told this idiot to sell the shares immediately. He couldn’t explain he knew the question would be asked in the Senate, and that he’d promised the banks they’d have the money by the end of the week. He certainly couldn’t explain to them where it was coming from before it arrived. That would have killed the share price in a minute. But it had been cut off at the knees anyway. By what? By nerds in grey suits? No, not by that. By someone knowing the nerds were coming before they came.
‘You sold them all? How could that large a parcel move so fast?’ Gradually his brain was picking through the debris of the bomb blast.
‘I don’t know. They went in three lumps virtually the minute we put them out. I mean you wanted them sold quickly, Mac, those were your instructions.’
Mac slammed the phone onto the bonnet. It made a slight dent but didn’t penetrate the eight layers of enamel. Maxwell Newsome’s voice could be heard squeaking from it briefly as it lay in the sun and then all was quiet, except for the roar of passing traffic.
Equations were swirling in front of Mac’s closed eyes.
Numbers and multiplication signs jostled with plus and minus symbols on the red surface of his inner eye. Dollars swam through the sea of black dots. A thundering headache was gripping his cranium in a vice, squeezing all the redness together until he felt it would burst out from his ears and nose and eyes. He never got headaches; he gave them. There was no humour in the thought now. He clutched at his temples to ease the pain and it was then he heard his name called.
As he opened his eyes he heard the whirr of cameras and that was the picture on page one. An old man, in pain, dishevelled, slumped on a ridiculous car, stripped of dignity and reputation, never to be restored no matter what the facts might prove.
The press had been outside Jack’s house when he returned from the park with one hand on the dog lead and the other holding the small plastic bag. They hadn’t been there when he left, but at that hour the light was only just starting to creep over the electricity cables, to illuminate the garbage bins strewn about the normally tidy street. Alice Street was anally neat, every edge clipped, every lawn shaved, except on Tuesday mornings when the garbage collectors delighted in showing these rich wankers who was really the boss. A little yelling at five a.m., a little throwing of bins and lids, off to the pub for a wake-up call or two.
Jack had walked past the hockey fields on the reservoir at the top of Centennial Park and down into the pine forest, where he set Joe free to run and snuffle in the fallen cones. As he stood listening to the light breeze sigh in the needles above, he noticed a soft crackling noise from high in the trees, and when he looked up, a flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos was contentedly grazing on the remaining cones. He heard the kookaburras calling across the valley and the barking of other dogs from the exercise area below.
He called to Joe, a border collie of superior intelligence and wit, and they sloped off together towards the ponds and the paperbark forest, past the pelicans and other waterbirds, and through to the unkempt, dank section of the park, away from the cyclists and the pony track. Jack half knelt to undo the lead again and found himself
