crosslegged to sew his seams.
She sat in the client’s chair, briefcase on her lap.
‘Any luck?’ I said.
She shrugged, opened her briefcase, took out an A4 envelope and put it on the table. ‘With two exceptions, as far as I can tell, these are all shells. Three of them share the same address in the Caymans. Following them up gets you nowhere. They’re owned by companies who are owned by other companies, and so it goes on. Like Russian dolls, one fits inside the other.’
‘The exceptions?’
‘One’s called Klostermann Gardier. A private bank in Luxembourg. The other’s a company called Aviation SF registered in Dublin. I ran all the names through the local databases and only Aviation SF came up. Last year, an Australian company called Fincham Air won a coastal surveillance tender. It listed among its assets 80 per cent of Aviation SF. Fincham itself is partly owned by a company called CrossTrice Holdings. And one of CrossTrice’s directors is a man called Lionel Carson.’
Reading my face, she paused. ‘Know the name?’
I shook my head.
‘Carson used to be a director of Consolidated Freight Holdings. TransQuik Australia is their biggest company. He’s not active in CFH anymore but CrossTrice owns about 25 per cent of it.’
TransQuik. Gary Connors’ employer after his departure from the force. And, at a considerable remove, still one of his employers.
Simone looked around the bare office. ‘That’s it. It’s all in the report. You could have done this yourself, you know. The information’s all available.’
‘No, I couldn’t. What do I owe you?’
‘The invoice is with the report. An hour’s work. Seventy dollars.’ Her eyes flicked around the place again. ‘Well, say fifty-five.’
‘Seventy’s fine. Been doing this long?’
‘Second month.’
‘How’s business?’
She looked at the ceiling, at me, quirky smile, shrug of the thin shoulders. ‘They’re not delivering the money in dump trucks.’
‘Yet. Word will spread. Your accent…’
‘We came out from Denmark when I was thirteen. Complicated by doing my postgraduate work in Boston.’
‘It’s nice.’
‘Thank you. Well, if you need anything else…’
‘I have no doubt that I will.’
I saw her to the door and admired her all the way to the corner. Then I got out the telephone book and found TransQuik’s head office.
12
The pilot of the six-seater Cessna looked to be about sixteen. He was wearing lean purple dark glasses, a huge multicoloured jumper of the kind teenagers once used to lose within a week of receiving from their grandmothers, and a peaked cap with Crapdusters Australia on the front. Facing backwards. In themselves, these things would have occasioned no more than deep unease. What induced the panic was that, waiting for take-off clearance, he appeared to be singing along to rap music in his headphones.
Harry was next to the pilot, looking at him with calm and scholarly interest. Cam and I were seated behind them. Behind us was a long-nosed, melancholy track rider from Caulfield called Mickey Moon. He’d been the leading apprentice in his last two years but he had fat genes.
Cam had his laptop open, studying bar graphs of horses’ times. Today, for going to the country, he was dressed like a corporate lawyer: navy suit, white cotton shirt with spread collar, blue and white checkerboard silk tie. In the city, he seemed to favour tight washed-out moleskins, boots and fine-check shirts.
‘Cam, shouldn’t this, ah, pilot be listening to the control tower?’ I said.
Cam looked at me, looked at the pilot’s back, went back to the screen. ‘Like jockeys,’ he said. ‘Out of the mountin yard, got your money on em, just pray they know what they’re doin.’
Immensely reassured, I closed my eyes and fell to doing breathing exercises recommended to me by a priest I’d defended on pornography charges.
‘Tricky breeze,’ said the pilot, his first utterance. ‘Bloke flipped a little one here last week, identical conditions. Couldn’t handle it. Dork.’
I didn’t open my eyes until, after what seemed to me to be a prolonged and vibrating resistance to Wilbur and Orville’s idea, the aircraft was on its side and much too close to the roofs of outer Melbourne’s brick-veneer sprawl.
To my mind, the pilot was fighting for control of the aircraft.
‘Got a CD player?’ asked Harry.
‘Absolutely,’ said the pilot.
‘Stick in this,’ said Harry.
The pilot took a break from struggling to keep us airborne, let go of the controls and leaned across Harry to put the disc in a slot, punch buttons, adjust volume.
Willie Nelson, singing ‘One for My Baby’.
‘Hey,’ said the pilot, making rhythmic shoulder movements. ‘Saw Willie. Saw Waylon. Nashville. Might try that head thing Willie wears.’
‘Bandanna,’ said Cam without looking up. ‘Could be a good fashion look for pilots. Stuff the cop cap. The bandanna. Rebels, outlaws. “Listen, sunshine, the Boein’s not goin till I finish this fifth of Jim Beam.’’’
The frail barque lurched. Would Cam’s words be the last thing on the black box?
‘Bring anythin to eat?’ asked Mickey Moon.
Cam found his briefcase and took out a family-size bag of barbecue chips, tossed it over his shoulder. ‘Just tie it on like a feedbag, Mick,’ he said.
Mickey ripped the packet open with his teeth, horse teeth.
We gained height, slowly, agonisingly slowly, and the alarming noises became less pronounced. In minutes, the city dissipated. Time went by, my shoulders lost some tension. Beneath us the landscape, seen through floating vapour, was green, dots of trees, Lego houses, small rocky hills, dams glinting, sheep, horses, some cattle. For a while, the Hume Highway was to our right, an unbroken chain of gleaming objects.
‘Halfway between Echuca and Mitiamo,’ said Cam. ‘Draw a bead on Gunbower, you’re right over the top of the place.’
The pilot found what looked like a Broadbent’s touring map and opened it. ‘Gunbower,’ he said. ‘Now, where is it? Know a bloke landed in a kind of swamp up that way.’
Cam closed the laptop, reached around and found a piece of paper in his suit jacket. ‘He says easiest is hit Mitiamo, turn right, road’s dead straight, then there’s a little elbow left. Round that, then first left, you’ll see the old track on your right. Put her down in front of the grandstand. Remains of the grandstand.’
‘So this is how modern aviators find their way from place to place,’ I said. ‘A road map and directions written on a bit of paper.’
‘Mate of mine got lost up there near Wanganella,’ said the pilot. ‘Lookin for this property, it’s bloody hopeless. All flat as buggery. Lands on the road, motors in to this petrol station, one pump. Bloke comes out, doesn’t blink. Yeah, he says, bugger to find. Come in, have a beer, draw you a map.’
‘Be a bit iffy when it gets dark,’ Cam said.
‘Up there, yeah. Not around here,’ said the pilot. ‘Worst comes, start lookin for the bloody Hume. Lit up like a Christmas tree at night.’
A snore. Harry was asleep. I closed my eyes and thought about planing a long edge with one of Charlie’s pre- war Hupfnagel 24-inch planes. Properly tuned and on a good day, you could take off a near-transparent ribbon the
