Back on the street, Martin watches the BMW glide away, a yacht afloat in the corporate liquidity of the CBD, off to dock in some subterranean marina.
He looks for somewhere off the street and out of the wind, somewhere he can make a call in private. There’s the lobby of a small building, a row of lifts. Good enough. Inside, he rings Jack Goffing, ASIO agent, praying he will pick up. Goffing has been helpful in the past, down in Riversend, up in Port Silver. But that was when Martin had something to offer him. This is different. Still, no harm in asking.
‘Martin Scarsden. This is a surprise.’
‘Jack. Long time, no talk.’
‘Busy times. How can I help?’
‘I’m in Sydney. Thought you might like to catch up.’
‘I’m in Canberra, so maybe stop with the small talk and tell me what you want.’
‘Have you ever heard of a secret society, a dining club, calling itself the Mess?’
Goffing laughs. ‘That sounds like something Enid Blyton would cook up.’
‘It’s serious, Jack. Could you possibly check it out?’
The laughter stops. ‘Tell me.’
So Martin does. The murders of Max and Elizabeth, the Mess, an apparent go-slow on the investigation by the police.
‘Jeez, Martin, it’s not exactly a national security issue. Not really one for the secret police.’
‘Thought you might say that. But tell me, am I still on your books as an informant? You told me last year, up in Port Silver, that you’d registered me.’
‘Yeah. So what?’
‘Do you ever pay informants?’
‘What? You want money?’ Goffing sounds confused and just a touch worried.
‘Fuck no. But I want payment. Information.’
And Goffing is laughing again. ‘Okay. That’s the thinnest cover story I’ve ever heard. I’ll see what I can do. On one condition.’
‘What’s that?’
‘If you find anything useful, you make sure I’m the first to know. I don’t want to read it in the Herald.’
‘Of course.’
Call finished, Martin dials Wellington Smith, publisher of This Month and Martin’s two true crime books.
‘Martin? What news?’ Martin can barely hear the man’s voice over a background ruckus: music, voices, the sound of cutlery on crockery.
‘Yes. Yes, it’s me.’
‘Fuck, I can’t hear a thing. I’ll ring you right back.’ The phone goes dead.
Martin waits for half a minute before giving it away and walking out into the street. But he’s only advanced half a city block before it rings.
‘Martin?’ This time he can hear Wellington clearly, the background noise reduced to the white noise of traffic. ‘Sorry about that. Celebratory lunch. End of financial year. We’re almost back in the black. Thanks to you and those terrific fucking books of yours.’
‘Yeah, Wellington, sure.’
‘When are you going to give us another one? And for that matter, when are you going to stop pissing around with those half-arsed specials for the Herald and come back and do some real work for This Month?’
‘That’s why I’m calling, I might have something for you.’
‘Seriously? Fan-fucking-tastic. What have you got?’
‘It’ll take too long to explain. I don’t want to keep you from your lunch.’
‘Come on, give me something. Just the top, just the headline.’
‘Later, Wellington. But tell me one thing first: did Max Fuller ever talk to you about doing an investigative piece for This Month?’
There is a moment of white noise, nothing more, and when Smith talks again, the ebullience is gone and the voice is sober and serious. ‘Jesus, Martin. Max. I have to tell you, I don’t believe for a minute that he suicided. Have you talked to Eileen?’
‘I have. And you’re right. He didn’t kill himself. It was murder and the police know it.’
‘Fuck me. Is that what you’re working on? Who killed him?’
‘Yes. It’s part of a bigger story.’
‘The Mess?’
Martin stares into a moving cityscape. ‘So he told you about it? He was working with you?’
‘Too right,’ says Wellington. ‘But he only came on board during the last week or so. I never got a full briefing. The Mess, a secret society, some sort of corruption. That’s it.’
‘His laptop was stolen when he was killed. Do you know if he had a backup on the cloud? You give it to me when I’m working on a book.’
‘Yeah. He had the facility. No idea if he ever used it. I’ll check. But I’m not sure I can access it, even if he did.’
‘I see. Let us know. And do you have any idea why he swapped allegiances? Max was a Herald man, through and through. Why you?’
‘I don’t think he trusted them.’
‘Did he mention D’Arcy Defoe?’
‘No. You think D’Arcy was trying to gazump him?’
‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’
After the call, Martin looks about him at the unchanging city, bustling and disinterested, hectic and impersonal. He needs to find somewhere quiet to sit while he tries to hunt down Justice Clarence O’Toole.
chapter twenty-five
Mandy has returned to the State Library by herself. Now she sits, contemplating Pam and Zelda’s diagram. It doesn’t prove criminality, but there’s the intimation of malfeasance: the tightly held cross-ownership; the high percentage of foreign ownership; the true identity of shareholders disguised; the low level of tax. She can imagine why the authorities would want to scrutinise the companies.
She tries to imagine how it might work. Money coming in from overseas, directed to the bank by its foreign owners. Clean money, dirty money, blood money. The funds being reinvested into Diamond Square and Large Sky and who knows what other companies, then the profits, suitably laundered, returned to the overseas investors, the Australian owners taking their share of the profits and the transaction fees. So nothing illegal, nothing underhand, the Australian operations totally legitimate, save for a bit of tax minimisation. But every company in Australia minimises tax.
She uses the library’s computers, googling away, trying to glean what she can about international money laundering, and quickly learning that it’s serious, involving unquantifiable billions, maybe trillions, of dollars. She reads that it usually runs at a loss, almost like a fee for service—you only get a percentage
