the west, just a dirtspeck against the dirty grey beginning of the day. It came down without hesitation, bumped and lurched on the sheep-paddock strip, slowed, slewed around, taxied to within five metres of where I stood beside the vehicle and turned side-on.
The door opened and Cam appeared, black poloneck sweater, leather jacket.
‘G’day. Wiped that motor?’
I nodded, picked up the sports bag with the money.
He looked around, impassively studied the falling-down shed, the rutted road, the bleak and wet landscape. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘seen the attractions of Tassie now. We might go home, have breakfast.’
Inside the Cessna, the pilot was fiddling with something on the instrument panel. His peaked cap was facing backwards. Crapdusters Australia, it said across the front.
‘Can’t find Triple J,’ he said. ‘Got to have that station.’
I groaned.
On the way back, high over the cruel grey strait, Cam said to the pilot, ‘That strip, that’s an abalone strip, right?’
The crapduster looked at Cam, frowned, pushed back his cap, scratched his number one haircut. ‘Y’know,’ he said, ‘go so many places, I forget.’
Cam nodded. He seemed pleased with the answer.
I drowsed. I wanted to go home, to take off my clothes, have a shower, go to bed and sleep. A deep, dreamless sleep.
The landing was silky. So silky that I did not register my return to earth.
In the Brock Holden, running the freeway, I said to Cam, ‘Four people dead. Nothing to do with me.’
‘Before you got there?’
‘No. While I was there.’
He looked at me. ‘While?’
It was too early in the day, whatever day it was, to tell the story. ‘I misjudged this bloke,’ I said. ‘I think his friends might want to have a word with me.’
Cam punched a button on the console. Muddy Waters from every direction, drowning in the Waters.
I woke up in a big bed, white sheets, white blanket, white room, clean-smelling sheets, light of day from huge uncurtained windows.
What day? Where?
I sat up, alarmed, swept the bed linen away, naked, heart pumping. Then I remembered. I went to the window and looked out on a wide arc of the city. Below me lay Albert Park lake and beyond that Middle Park and the bay. Off to the right, I could see the Westgate Bridge and Williamstown.
Time? I found my watch beside the bed. Just after noon. I’d only slept for five hours.
Only? How many hours did I have?
I wandered around the apartment. Little had registered earlier in the day. It was the penthouse, minimally furnished, no pictures, huge windows taking in the whole city, polished boards underfoot, a kitchen like a high-style operating theatre, a gym and a sauna and a Japanese bath and two showers in the football team-sized bathroom.
‘Belongs to a bloke I know, never there,’ Cam had said. How did he know people who owned places like this?
On the coffee table in the sitting room, I found two new shirts, new underpants, my jacket and pants in a drycleaner’s bag, a mobile phone, a ring with three keys, and a plastic card with a magnetic strip and a barcode. A note from Cam said:
Food on the ground floor. The mobile’s clean. Car in bay 12 in basement 1. The card gets you through the doors.
In a shower, water boring into me from all directions, I tried to work out what to do. No Gary to look for now. No videotape of the Bangkok interrogation.
Gary was TransQuik. And Dave was TransQuik, TransQuik inside the government. Possibly a late recruit to the TransQuik cause, recruited after Gary’s disappearance, perhaps even later. I’d been looking for Gary on behalf of TransQuik, a late recruit myself.
What had Gary told Dean Canetti in Bangkok? Something explosive. Dean said:
…wait till you see this, you’ll cream your jeans, it’ll hang Mr S.
Mr Smartarse. Steven Levesque.
Dried, dressed, I got out my notebook, looked for Chrissy Donato-Connors-Sargent. She was home.
‘Chrissy, you said something about someone telling Alan there was funny money in TransQuik…’
45
A warder with a look that said a mass breakout could be imminent showed me into the interview room.
Miles Crewe-Dixon, formerly accountant to Alan Sargent, was waiting for me, smoking a cigarette. He was in his fifties, a round-faced man, not grown slim on prison food, neat hair, straight, grey, short. He had the air of someone you could trust. I’d appeared for a childcare centre owner with a similar look. The convictions in New Zealand were under another name.
We shook hands. ‘Thanks for seeing me,’ I said.
‘My pleasure. Breaks the monotony of a model prisoner’s life.’ The right side of his face scrunched up. He had a facial tic.
I sat down. ‘Alan Sargent sends his regards.’
‘Give him mine. Chips down, only client prepared to be a character witness. I can do something for you? Ask.’
‘TransQuik,’ I said. ‘Alan says you thought the potato wasn’t entirely clean.’
Miles smiled, sardonic smile. ‘Where the legend begins,’ he said. ‘Steven Levesque. Little company is seed of empire. Like Rupert Murdoch.’
I prompted him. ‘Levesque bought TransQuik from Manny Lousada.’
His facial tic. ‘I did that acquisition for them. Before that they were only in the household move market, undercutting everyone, all the other small companies, pushed some of them to the wall, then bought them for bugger-all. The Killer Bees they called them, Levesque and Brent Rupert and McColl and Carson, his partners.’
‘Where’d the money come from?’
‘Asking the important question. Rupert’s family owned Pert Clothing. Big company once. Lots of money. Levesque had bugger all, just brains. His old man was a tram conductor, migrant, Lebanese-French. A West Heidelberg boy, now that’s a hard school. Grew up in an Olympic Village house. They built those places in about three days in ’56. Not too many of the local kids went on to Melbourne Uni and Harvard.’
‘Ones I know mostly went on to juvenile detention and Pentridge. How’d you get involved with Levesque?’
He lit a new cigarette from the old one, offered the packet. I shook my head.
‘I knew Brent’s older brother. I did some work on their early acquisitions. Looked over these little transport companies. Pretend to be representing some Queensland outfit. Happens all the time. Then I didn’t hear from them for a while. Came back to me in ’84. I was doing pretty well by then, had a bit of a reputation. Not them though. Their wheels were coming off. The whole enterprise sailing south under all canvas. Brent had milked the Ruperts dry. Pert Clothing was up for sale.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Well, between professional colleagues, they’d got themselves into serious shit, helped by the banks, who thought lending money to a Rupert was a zero-risk proposition. And Brent relied on Levesque. Steven claimed he only needed two minutes with a business’s balance sheet to know everything about the company. On the basis of this talent, they bought crap you would not believe. Harvard MBA. He’s got one, y’know, Steven. Now I laugh when I hear the magic words “Harvard MBA’’. Master of Bugger-All.’
‘So they needed accounting advice?’
Miles laughed until his tic stopped him. ‘Accounting, business advice. Lots of it. My opinion was that the three
