I couldn’t answer him because I was finding it hard to understand myself. Clearly, Whitney hadn’t kept his secret life nearly as much to himself as he’d imagined and it seemed to be terribly important to him. The flat had two small bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchenette and a bathroom that required you to keep your elbows tucked in. It was too small a space for two large men to occupy and Whitney’s moping made it seem smaller still.
But after a few days he began to pull himself together. He was still smoking his cigarillos and looking for the whisky pretty early in the day, but he’d begun to tap away at his computer and to take an interest in the business news. Too much of an interest-he bought, or rather sent me out to buy because he slept in until about 10 am-all the papers and business magazines and he went through them minutely, paying particular attention to cases of bankers and brokers and others being caught at embezzlement, money laundering and insider trading. There was plenty to read in that field. I accompanied him the couple of times he went into his office in Eagle Street.
Brisbane still has a small town feel to me, but the financial district was starting to look like the real thing- high-rise, polished stone, shining steel, tinted glass and the dubious gold tower. We used a Merc he hired to get around and no one followed us. We ate in little below-street-level places off the Queen Street Mall and no one watched us consuming our Moreton Bay bugs.
He got on the phone to Stuart Mackenzie most days and I didn’t exactly hang around listening but he seemed to be getting no satisfaction. I gathered no action had been taken against his partners in MIA and I wasn’t surprised. You can blow the whistle but you can’t dictate the pace of play. He was in a volatile mood, swinging from relief when he got good news on his computer to depression after a talk with Mackenzie. He got an assurance from Melbourne that his kids were all right but for some reason there were obstacles to his talking to them-they were away for the night, or studying, or the phone was on the blink. This began to worry him. But after we’d been there a week and I was starting to wonder when I might think about cutting loose, the reason for his attachment to his secret life in Brisbane showed up.
She was about 180 centimetres tall with the body of a stripper and the face of a photographic model. Long dark hair, creamy skin, perfect teeth and a serious expression that made the whole package all the more alluring. She walked into the flat having used her own key and Whitney almost gave himself a hernia getting across the room to grab hold of her.
‘Jacqui, thank God you’re all right. I’ve been so worried.’
‘Why, darling? What’s wrong?’ Jacqui’s whole attention was riveted on him, even though the place was a mess and there was a strange man in the room. Some women can do that and most men lap it up.
Whitney went into a long, barely coherent explanation while he fussed over getting her a drink and finding her a chair to sit on that wasn’t covered with newspapers, magazines and dirty clothes. He minimised the seriousness of what he was doing, accelerated the time of the likely outcome and described me as a ‘security consultant’.
Jacqui let him fuss for a bit but then she took over and before long she was lighting the cigarillos and fetching the drinks. I judged her to be in her early thirties and everything about her-her quiet voice, body language, the looks she shot me when she thought I wasn’t watching-told me that she’d been around and was an expert in the business of manipulating people, especially men. She said she was ‘in PR, working out of Melbourne and Brisbane’.
Jacqui had been away on a promotional tour with a developer who had plans for a string of coastal golf courses and the arrangement she and Whitney had was that they didn’t contact each other while they were working. When they weren’t working they apparently met up here and in Melbourne and made as much contact with as many body parts as often as they could. I left them to it and did one of my periodic tours of the environs to see if there was anyone taking an undue interest in the flat. It was a pleasant afternoon for the stroll which took me past some handsome houses, down a few side streets and along by the river. I use the words of the Kathy Klein song to guide me in this little bit of business, and the only thing different, the only thing new, was Jacqui’s silver Saab parked outside the house.
They went out to eat that night and I tailed them in the Merc-no easy thing because Jacqui was a lead- footed driver-and ate some pizza slices in the car while they pigged out at E’cco Bistro in Fortitude Valley. Again, no unwanted interest. The way Jacqui was marching him around I began to think that with a Beretta in her handbag she could do my job.
I started to worry when I saw how Whitney was behaving when they left the restaurant. He looked distressed. At first I thought he might be drunk, then that someone had got to him with bad news, but after a minute it became clear that his trouble was with Jacqui. She was stiff and keeping her distance, nothing like the compliant handmaiden she’d been. They got into the car and drove through the city and then the Saab stopped. Whitney lurched from the car and was sick in the gutter. I pulled in behind them, got out and approached the retching Whitney. Jacqui was in the driver’s seat with her hands on the wheel.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said to both of them.
When Jacqui saw me she reached over, pulled the passenger door shut, gunned the motor and drove off.
I went to Whitney, who was wiping his mouth with a handkerchief and pulling himself together. He looked up at me and he seemed to have aged ten years.
‘She’s dumped me,’ he said.
We drove back to the flat and Whitney told me how he’d met Jacqui in Melbourne and that she was the reason for him splitting up with his wife. They’d done all the usual things and said all the usual things. Over coffee, Whitney told me that he’d taken Jacqui into his confidence about his problem with the partners and she’d been very supportive of his decision to jump ship.
‘She was with me all the way,’ he said.
I nodded. ‘The thing is, who else was she with?’
He saw what I meant and he was realistic enough to appreciate it. Someone had assigned Jacqui to him-as good as having him wired up and broadcasting his intentions.
I added a little scotch to our second cups of coffee. ‘What did you talk about before she gave you the news?’
‘Everything.’
‘Then what did she do?’
‘Went to the ladies.’
I nodded. ‘Reported in. How was the food?’
He glared at me. ‘Is that supposed to be funny?’
‘Sorry. Let’s get some sleep. We’ll see how it all looks in the morning.’
But we didn’t get the chance to do that. We both slept late and were in need of coffee when there was a heavy knock on the door. Whitney opened it and backed away in front of two men who produced their credentials and arrested him for embezzlement, tax evasion and money laundering. They were from Victoria and they had an extradition order.
It was Darren Metcalf aka Kenneth Bates who’d set it all up, of course. Or rather, the true identities were the other way around. The man I’d known in Sydney as Metcalf was in fact born Bates into an establishment family in Melbourne. He was the very black sheep. He’d been sent off to Britain after some youthful indiscretions and resurfaced in Sydney as a louche low-life, exploiting the vulnerable. He’d gone back to Melbourne well-heeled after some successful drug deals, rehabilitated himself as Kenneth Bates in the eyes of the people who mattered and become a partner in MIA.
I got this information through Stuart Mackenzie, whose firm was going to represent Whitney at his trial. Mackenzie wasn’t a trial lawyer himself, but he’d briefed Cary Michaels QC, who was one of the best, and he also briefed me. We were in his office drinking excellent coffee-encouraging, but I was concerned about my standing. I couldn’t see that I’d failed anywhere, except in not telling Whitney or Mackenzie what I knew about Bates. Whitney wouldn’t have believed me and Mackenzie probably couldn’t have done anything about it. Still, for me, having the person you were supposed to be minding brought back from interstate under arrest wasn’t exactly my finest hour.
‘It was a brilliant scheme,’ Stuart said. ‘Bates and the others must’ve planned it in detail well in advance. They needed a patsy and they had one ready-made in Whitney. Would you say he was less than bright?’
I spread my hands noncommitally, not feeling that bright myself.
