Melbourne-in the seventies-Port Melbourne wasn’t a place a Thomas Whitney would go near. Now it was. Gentrification had gone on at a great pace and old warehouses, factories and light industrial buildings had been converted to apartments and condominiums. The original terrace houses that would once have been sailors’ flops had been toned up to the half million dollar mark. Whitney lived in one of these; one at the end of a row with some space at the side as well as in front-three-storeyed with enough iron lace to do my Glebe job three times over. It was a big house for a divorced man with two non-resident kids. Maybe he had a lot of stay-over guests.
The house had a garage with an automatic opening door so I still hadn’t got a look at Whitney. He was inside now with lights going on at ground floor level and then one floor up. Changing into his smoking jacket. Stuart had provided me with a notebook computer and given me Whitney’s home email address and a password I could use. I fired it up, logged on and tapped out the message that I was outside his house and ready to see him. I’m not an emailer myself, but Stuart assured me that those who are check in first thing and constantly thereafter. I logged out, put the computer on the passenger seat and waited. It was one of those classic cigarette moments, but not these days. The anti-smoking brigade should come up with a suggestion as to how to fill in those moments. I’ve never found one. Nowadays a wait is just a wait.
Another light went on upstairs, stayed on for a while and then went out. Long enough for Tom to have tapped away for a bit in his study. I logged on and the inbox showed a message. Mr Whitney would be at home to his caller. I hoped he’d have a drink and a few snacks laid out. I was starving.
I went through the gate and up the steps, knocked on the door. Whitney opened it and waved me in. He looked like his photograph-big, solid, reliable right across the board. Just what you’d want in an investment adviser. He showed me into a living room that had been made bigger by the removal of a wall or two.
‘Drink, Mr Hardy?’
‘Please.’
‘Scotch?’
The bottle had a label I’d never seen, which only meant that it wasn’t the kind that goes on special in my local bottle shop. He made a generous drink, inclining me to like him, even if he apparently didn’t have any club sandwiches to hand. We raised our glasses and I mentioned Darren Metcalf.
‘Who?’
‘You told Stuart Mackenzie I was recommended by a friend of yours. I thought
‘Oh, friend might be putting it a bit strongly. I was referring to a golfing partner, John Jupp. He used to be a policeman in Sydney.’
I knew Jupp vaguely, an at least semi-honest cop from a time when there weren’t all that many around. I sipped the smooth scotch and tried not to look puzzled but curiosity got the better of me. ‘I saw a press photograph of you talking to a man at a fundraising do. Something for a football club down here, I think it was. Tall, thin bloke, balding. I thought I recognised him as someone I used to know in Sydney.’
‘Oh, I know the picture you mean. Yes, a fundraiser for Hawthorn. I played a few games for them before I did my knee. No, that’s Kenneth Bates, Melbourne man through and through. I mean the football team and the city. He’s one of the partners in our firm.’
Darren Metcalf had always been a slippery type, but to reconstitute himself as an old Melburnian and become a senior partner in a Collins Street financial operation was a stretch even for him. Still, it looked as if that’s what he’d done and it gave me still more to think about. Not now, though. Thomas Whitney and I got down to business.
‘Do your partners suspect you of… jumping ship?’
‘They’ve no reason to. Not specifically. But what’s been happening is so dangerous, so fragile, that they must be nervous. I can explain it to you. They-’
I held up my glass, partly to stop him, partly to show him it was empty. ‘Don’t bother,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t understand. The highest finance I deal with is when I go over my Mastercard limit.’
He looked puzzled in a well-bred way, but he still got smoothly to his feet and gave me a refill. He seemed to have lost interest in his own drink. ‘You’re in a high-risk profession. You mean you don’t have a trust fund, investments?’
I shook my head. ‘My accountant tells me I have to contribute to my own superannuation fund since I’m incorporated. I send him a blank cheque near the end of the financial year and that’s all I know about funds.’
Now Whitney reached for his drink as if he needed it. ‘My God, I begin to see how they got away with what they’ve done. If there’s a lot of people like you out there… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to patronise you.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m a financial ignoramus but I know about getting people from point A to point B when either they don’t want to do it or someone else doesn’t want them to. What time do you get to work in the morning?’
‘No later than seven forty-five.’
‘Jesus, why?’
Whitney shrugged. ‘There’s the financial press to read, the overseas markets to study.’
‘Okay, when would the alarm bells start ringing in the office if you didn’t show?’
‘Certainly by eight thirty-there’s always traffic to consider, family crises. You know.’
‘Yeah.’ Happily, I didn’t know, at least about family crises. ‘You’ve got a passport?’
‘Of course.’
‘Can’t leave that behind. I imagine there’s stuff you’d want to take with you, papers, documents.’
He shook his head. ‘Not really. All I need I have on the hard drive. A laptop and I’m set.’
I was getting out of my technological depth but tried not to show it. As things stood, I couldn’t see any reason why we couldn’t swing it pretty much over the next twelve hours. I asked him if he could set up some sort of meeting with his wife or children for the following day, a meeting he wouldn’t make.
He frowned. ‘I’d hate to do that.’
‘If that’s the way you feel, all the better.’
‘I’m beginning to dislike you, Hardy.’
Well, shit, I thought, that’s a pity, just when I was beginning to like you. I reminded myself that this guy was more or less a rat deserting a sinking ship and as likely to be as infected with the plague as the rats that were due to be drowned. I grinned at him. ‘I’m not being paid to be liked, just to be efficient.’
‘Paid,’ he said wearily. ‘Yes, of course. I suppose I can do what you ask. What do you propose after that?’
‘Ransack this place, make it hard to tell what’s been taken. Perhaps splash a bit of your blood about. Dump your car at the airport and hey, presto.’
Whitney finished his drink and cradled the glass in his hands. ‘That won’t work,’ he said.
‘I know it isn’t subtle but I thought it didn’t need to be. You’re gone under suspicious circumstances. Could be you went of your own accord after you had a run-in with someone, could be that someone took you. What’s the difference?’
‘I don’t fly. Never. I have an absolute phobia about it. No one who knew me would believe that I’d flown out of here, willingly or unwillingly.’
I stared at him. ‘You, an international money man, and you don’t fly?’
‘The money moves with the touch of a key. Have you ever been in a plane crash?’
‘No.’
‘I have. In Europe. It’s worse than you imagine, much worse. I still have nightmares about it. It’s not that I won’t fly, I just can’t. I’ve tried. I go catatonic.’
I thought about it. The advantage of the airport is that you could have left for anywhere on the globe, as close as the nearest country airport or as far as Stockholm. In Europe or the States a train station can have a similar effect, but not from Melbourne. Where could you go? Adelaide or Sydney. No mystery.
‘Sorry to make it hard for you,’ Whitney said.
He seemed to mean it. He wasn’t a bad bloke as far as I could judge and I’m always well disposed to people with weaknesses, having so many myself.
‘Have you got anything to eat here, Mr Whitney? An interrupted meal’d be a nice touch and I’m starving.’
He got his frozen packaged meals from some top-of-the-line place and I had a wider choice than in my local
