‘At four in the morning?’
‘Get it up. This is our only chance. It’s spreading on every social media outlet in the world. They’ll never put this genie back in the bottle. We’ll get a royal commission.’
‘Publish and be damned?’
‘Publish and fuck the lot of them.’
And so they continue, into the night, through the night, powered by coffee and adrenaline and a sense of purpose, pumping it out, getting it onto social media, spreading it so far and so fast and so thoroughly that no court, no state, no team of cyber vandals could ever hope to bottle it up again. The Americans go feral as they realise the size of the story and the implications. Harry Sweetwater, a made mafia member, has been shot dead in Australia. What’s more, he’s been overseeing a massive money-laundering scheme, undetected for more than a decade, washing illicit cash for everyone from the Chicago mob through the Russian mafia to Central American cartels. It’s a long night for Martin and Mandy, and it’s over in a flash.
Martin waits inside the foyer of the police station. Outside it’s cold, it’s shitful and cold, the sky a hard blue, a blast of Antarctic air clearing the last of the smoke. The photographers and camera crews huddle together, waiting. He got papped on his way in by Baxter James, his old colleague, hard-nosed and unapologetic, another image for the Herald’s blog.
He’s got a copy of the Sun Herald. It’s already out of date, one for the archives. The cover is dominated by the carnage at Centennial Park, with the inside pages crammed with photographs and diagrams and the names of the dead. But there is no explanation as to what caused the gunfight; Martin hadn’t revealed that to the world until long after the paper was put to bed. And so the Herald has the names—Titus Torbett and his father Sir Talbot, Harry Sweetwater and Henry Livingstone—but not how they died or what they had revealed. Martin notices, with wry amusement, that part two of D’Arcy’s investigative series on the Mess has been held over.
He puts the paper down. After three hours of sleep, he’s dog-tired, but he’s happy with his work. Vindication can do that for you. But he’s not happy with life. Mandy is still inside, still being grilled, still being excoriated over the contents of the drive and how she’d cracked the encryption.
Winifred exits from the depths of the station. She looks even more exhausted than Martin feels, moving with a stiffness befitting her age. She sits with a sigh, shakes her head.
‘What?’ says Martin.
‘She’s confessed.’
‘To what?’
‘Everything. The lot. I couldn’t stop her, she wouldn’t listen.’ She sighs again. ‘She was in on it with Molloy. She knew he was infiltrating Mollisons. By the end, she even suspected he was a policeman. I couldn’t shut her up. The only thing she’s denying is pre-knowledge of his plan to steal the money. Even then, she says as soon as the theft was reported she knew it was true, that some of the information she supplied would have helped him.’
‘So he did steal it?’
‘He stole it, all right. Ten million, give or take a few thousand. It wasn’t just some cover story. Ten million dollars. But he was dead before he got out of the building, before he could tell her where it went.’
‘How could she not know, if she knew everything else?’
Winifred looks beyond weary. ‘She loved him. She trusted him. He didn’t have to seduce her with money. What’s the old saying? Love is blind?’ She takes a deep breath, as if unable to believe her own conclusions, before continuing. ‘Then, when he disappeared, she realised the stories were true, that he had indeed stolen the money. She thought he’d fled overseas, betrayed her. So she looked out for her own interests: she lied, said she had nothing to do with it. Understandable if you consider the circumstances.’
Martin shakes his head. ‘So why confess now? Did she have to?’
‘Probably not. She could have sat on the thumb drive, destroyed it. Not told you about it. Or she could have spun a cover story about playing memory games with her fiancé without ever knowing what it meant.’
‘Montifore would never believe that. He’s no idiot.’
‘No, but there’s a big difference between knowing something and proving it in a court of law.’
‘You could have defended her?’
‘It’s academic, Martin. She’s confessed.’
He sits on that for a moment, stews on it. She’s handed herself in, confessed to so much. He still doesn’t really understand why. Sure, she had the thumb drive and knew how to open it, decrypt it, but that doesn’t fully explain her determination to own up to the police. ‘Surely they’re not going to prosecute,’ he says to Winifred. ‘She’s handed over all the evidence, all of Molloy’s intelligence. She’s done their job for them. Vandenbruk must be ecstatic.’
Winifred laughs thinly. ‘You have no idea how many powerful people you two and Wellington Smith have outed. It’s not the police you have to worry about, or the Director of Public Prosecutions—it’s the political and legal establishment. They’ll want their pound of flesh.’
‘But surely, for every one who hates us, there will be two who support us, who want the sewer flushed? And even the guilty, they’ll be falling over themselves to implicate each other.’
Winifred smiles at the image. ‘Yes. You’re probably right. But they can’t be seen to be doing her any favours. Not at such a politically charged time. They’ll want everything to be above board, arm’s length.’
‘Christ. How can I help?’
‘Mandy has instructed me to draw up some papers for you to sign. If you’re willing.’
‘What papers?’
‘Giving you full guardianship of Liam. Joint responsibility with Mandy.’
Martin blinks, shocked by the request. ‘Why? What’s the urgency?’
‘Don’t you understand? She may be going to prison.’
After Martin has signed the papers, after Winifred has witnessed them and returned inside the police station, Martin
