‘Apparently, but it could take hours. They must have done it overnight.’
‘So the night Max died, or the following night? Monday or Tuesday?’
‘No. Before he died. Probably Sunday night. That’s what my IT friend says.’
‘What about the shared drives? Aren’t the files automatically backed up in the cloud or somewhere?’
‘No. She checked. Max had turned off all the backup options.’
‘Sounds like he was being deliberately secretive.’
‘Doesn’t it.’
‘And all you know is that it had something to do with Changi? How could that possibly get him killed? That was a long time ago; all the men who were there must be dead by now, or near enough.’
‘You should ask D’Arcy. Maybe he knows something. But if he does, he’s not telling me.’
Martin’s coffee finally arrives; it’s already cold.
chapter fifteen
The doughnuts glisten with sugary menace, aligned in ranks with the glass display cases, a battalion of indulgence ready to march. Mandy is surrounded by them on three sides, caught in a frozen pincer movement of calorific weaponry. She hates them: their cloying dough, their camouflaged fat, their superficial appeal. Most of all she hates their iridescent icing. She hates them not for themselves, but for the memories they come armed with. They surround her, battle-ready in their trays, primed for deployment. A doughnut army.
It was one of her duties at Mollisons, as the most junior member of her team: the doughnut run to the shop just across the road in Pyrmont. Doughnuts and coffee. Sitting here now, in the over-illuminated store, with its coconut-ice decor of pink and white, she can still remember the orders. Pam: strawberry doughnut, large skinny cappuccino; Raneesh: large flat white with caramel syrup and a gluten-free chocolate doughnut; Wendy: large long black and a low-cal watermelon doughnut; Stan: weak white tea and a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles. A skinny latte for herself, maybe a macchiato, no doughnut. At first she used to enjoy the run; it got her out of the office and, on her return, gave her a chance to mingle for a time with other members of the team before heading back to her isolation on the trading-room floor.
The doughnut shop was where she first met the Turtle, talked to him, unsuspecting, learning that he also worked at Mollisons. He seemed so nice, so avuncular, with his spare-tyre tum and his oversized spectacles. His name was Kenneth, he told her, never Ken, but to everyone at Mollisons he was simply the Turtle, with his wide body, his rounded shoulders, his incongruously long neck emerging from his shell-like cardigan, his lack of a chin completing the image. A large and amiable Turtle. A nice man, totally inoffensive. That’s what she thought. At first.
Then it became clear that he was timing his doughnut runs to coincide with her own. Initially, she shrugged it off, but then it began to irk her. There was no set time within her team: sometimes she did her run in the mornings, sometimes afternoons, sometimes neither, occasionally both. Pam would ring and she would go. And yet there he always was, his smile losing its charm, becoming oily in her mind. How could he know? She eventually confided in Pam, told her boss of her uneasiness, and was informed Kenneth worked for security. He was the closed-circuit television guy, the man behind the monitors. Pam wanted to intervene; Mandy begged her not to. But she began to dread the trips; behind his outdated spectacles, the Turtle’s eyes had become vacuums.
Some days he would buy the lemon doughnuts, with their tangy white icing, some days caramel, some days licorice. Licorice doughnuts: a more revolting concept she couldn’t imagine. Then, one day, he bought boysenberry.
‘Purple?’ she asked. ‘Trying something new?’
‘Thought I should.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘You’ll never guess.’
But she did. That evening at home, undressing for bed. Her underwear, usually white, tan or black, was purple. The dread came down upon her like a diagnosis.
She didn’t know what to do, not believing she could be right. Could she possibly tell Pam? Three days later she wore red knickers. The Turtle bought a raspberry doughnut, salivating as he sank his teeth into it, leering repulsively.
That pushed her into a whole new void of anxiety: he knew that she knew, but he wasn’t trying to disguise it. It was like he was deliberately escalating. She hesitated. It was a preposterous allegation to make: that he was selecting colour-coded doughnuts.
Now she sits in the store and grimaces at her younger self. How exposed she was, so unsure of herself, how slow to act. But she did act. In the toilets at work, she located one of his cameras, an optical fibre as small as a pinhead. She stuck chewing gum over the lens. That day, when she did the doughnut run, he didn’t cross the street to the cafe. She had him. And she had another option: Tarquin. She told him, and together they dug the end of the fibre out of the toilet wall. And that same night, Tarquin waited for him after work, beat him senseless, bad enough to put him in an ambulance. The Turtle wasn’t at work the next day, or the day after, and when he did return a week later his face was still swollen and bruised. He never followed her to the doughnut shop again. She remembers her relief. It was fixed; she shunted it into the past. For six months, all was well. Then Tarquin disappeared. And she was sacked.
Thinking back, she sees herself as pathetic. Why did she rely on Tarquin? Was she really so helpless? Moreover, why didn’t she question Tarquin taking matters into his own hands? Surely they should have reported it, exposed the Turtle, got him sacked. Got him arrested. Got him jailed. That’s what should have happened, so why didn’t it?
She looks up; the door has opened, the wind gusting him in. The Turtle. By the size of him, pants
