‘Douglas,’ I said. ‘Don’t you employ anyone but Scots here? I could report you to the anti-whatever-it- is.’
‘We have a Lebanese receptionist, a Cypriot secretary and an Italian junior partner.’
‘That’s all right then. So?’
‘I know this’ll all sound a bit cloak and dagger, but Mr Whitney wants to, as it were, disappear from Melbourne under suspicious circumstances. He believes this will provoke his partners into making mistakes. He wants to come to Sydney to be, ah, debriefed by ASIC.. ’
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission was the regulatory body that licensed the operators, investigated the shonks.
Anyway, they’ll talk to Whitney and we’ll relocate him to Brisbane until such time as he has to give evidence. If it so works out. I want you to facilitate these things.’
‘You mean you want me to be a kidnapper, a nursemaid and a witness protection agent?’
‘You could put it like that.’
‘What’s he like, this Whitney?’
‘I’ve no idea. I’ve never met him. This was proposed by a friend of Whitney’s in Melbourne. Someone who knows you, apparently. And knows of your reputation for discretion and competence in these matters.’
‘And who would that be?’
‘I don’t know. Whitney didn’t tell me.’
I looked around Stuart’s office, noting the paintings, the furniture, the books. Nothing so vulgar as degree certificates or photographs of Stuart with Bob Carr. I thought of my office above St Peter’s Lane in Darlinghurst with its dirty windows and exhausted fittings. A lawyer like Stuart worked for big money, especially on something with the dodgy sound of this. Things were tough in my game and getting tougher. The big agencies hugged the business. I needed a fat fee like a surfer needs a point break. But it never does to look too eager.
‘That makes four people who know about this. At a guess, that’s at least one too many. How’ve you and Whitney communicated?’
‘By email.’
‘Great. Add on a busload.’
‘Encrypted email. Totally secure.’
‘It’s going to cost a lot, Stuart.’
He nodded. ‘Mr Whitney has provided adequate funds.’
Yeah, I thought. Probably from his share of the take.
‘Five hundred dollars a day plus expenses until I get him relocated. Negotiable after that.’
‘Agreed.’
‘With a contract.’
‘Ah.’
‘C’mon, Stuart. The story’s got more holes in it than a cyclone fence. I’ll need some protection.’
‘We’ll work something out.’
‘I’ll need your dossier on Whitney and a couple of grand up front to get American Express off my back.’
One of his pale eyebrows shot up. ‘How do you know I have a dossier?’
Well, its sink or swim and we all have to swim in it, so I smarmed him. ‘Because you’d be stupid if you didn’t and I know you’re not stupid, Stu.’
I left with a cheque, which I deposited immediately, and a folder containing printouts of the emails Mackenzie and Whitney had exchanged, brochures and directors reports from Metropolitan Investment Advisers Ltd and photocopies of items from newspapers and magazines about Whitney and his partners. At a quick glance it looked like the sort of stuff Mackenzie could have accumulated himself without needing to enlist the services of his Lebanese secretary or Cypriot receptionist, so maybe he was telling the truth about how many people were in on the act.
I took the file back to my office and began to work through it. The emails gave me Whitney’s address, the make and licence number of his car and his domestic details. All essential to the operation. He wrote a nice, terse email, Mr Whitney. The information about Metropolitan Investment Advisers suggested that the company was rock solid with major clients in the insurance business, superannuation funds and ‘off-shore capital placement bodies’. The language was ugly but it all sounded like money making more money.
The stuff on Thomas Whitney was very thin, limited to a couple of minimalist entries in business directories and a few newspaper clippings. Our Tom was no high-flier, no racehorse owner or champagne sipper. He was born in Melbourne in 1952, educated in the right schools and had an MBA from Stanford University. He was on the board of several companies but his chief position was as senior partner in MIA. The chairmanship of the board circulated among the three senior partners and Tom was due to take his turn again next year.
The clippings all said more or less the same things but one brought me up short. It included a grainy photograph of Whitney taken at a fundraising function. He was a tall, broad-shouldered type who probably rowed in the eight at his school. It was the image of the skinny, balding man standing next to him that arrested my attention. They were talking, apparently amiably. If this was the friend who’d recommended me I knew him, or thought I did. He looked a lot like Darren Metcalf, who’d run an illegal casino and a brothel and pushed drugs in Sydney quite a few years back before dropping out of sight. I’d thought he was dead.
I considered my position on the plane to Melbourne. But of course if I’d really been considering my position I wouldn’t have been on the plane. Darren Metcalf had never done an honest act in his life. I’d run up against him when he’d had the idea of hooking a couple of apprentice jockeys on coke. A trainer I knew got wind of it and hired me to step in and discourage Metcalf. I looked into his various operations, got some people talking on tape and then told Metcalf which particular policemen I’d play the tapes to unless he lost interest in the Sport of Kings. He was scum, but he got the point. It was a neat, civilised bit of business, and it must have made an impression on Metcalf, assuming he was Whitney’s ‘friend’.
But I couldn’t see why Whitney would associate with Metcalf, unless he was even more of a crook than I’d begun to think he was. Stuart Mackenzie was operating within the accepted ethics of the legal profession by advising and providing protection and other services for a whistleblower, I had no doubt of that. It might even be considered performing a public duty until you looked at the amount of the fee and its source. Even then, these matters aren’t precisely laid down. My position was shaky, particularly without a contract, but only if I got caught doing something illegal. So what else was new?
Since the firm was paying I was travelling business class. I ordered a scotch, stretched my legs and settled into my copy of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I was thinking things could be a lot worse-the job had its tricky elements but it was well paid and interesting, and the presence of Metcalf, if it was Metcalf, added spice.
I picked up an Avis Nissan Pulsar at the airport and drove in to Melbourne along the freeway that always looks to me to be congratulating itself. Hey, Sydney, it seems to say, bet you wish you’d arranged things like this. Mackenzie had told me to play everything by ear and I’d decided to scout Whitney’s place of business and residence, get a candid camera look at him and then figure out what to do about snatching him. It couldn’t be done completely spontaneously; presumably he had things he’d want to take with him. But I couldn’t just ring him up and tell him we had seats on the three thirty to Sydney either.
I’d abducted people before-kids from cults, a bride from an arranged marriage, a patient from a fraudulent loony bin. Each case is different in detail but the principles are the same: get out, avoid pursuit, get clear. It was four thirty when I pulled up outside MIA’s offices in South Yarra. An old factory of some kind converted to what they liked to call suites. The sweet life-landscaping, fountain in the forecourt, tinted glass. The factory yard had been converted into a car park, every parking spot with its own little roof. Whitney’s car was a modest white Mercedes, nothing flashy like a personalised numberplate. Just a plain old fifty grand Merc. I walked to a smart coffee shop and bought a takeaway long black as big as a bucket. I sat outside the MIA building waiting for the Mercedes to slide out.
Tom may have been planning to dump on his mates, but he was still putting in the hours expected of the executive. The Mercedes was one of the last to leave the car park at almost 7 pm. Time was when bosses knocked off at four to get in nine holes before cocktails. No more, apparently.
I followed the car back to the city and through to Port Melbourne. When I’d last spent any length of time in
