Geoffrey Cousins - The Butcherbird

He was being shaken, he could feel it, but he was still in the half-dream. And then the voice, the soft voice of his daughter who had never woken before him in sixteen years. ‘Dad. Dad! There are men downstairs. They want you. You have to come.’

He almost fell from the bed, but gestured for her to be silent as he saw the deep breathing of his wife under a sheet pulled half over her face. He was in the foyer before he knew it, with a robe pulled across a pair of striped boxer shorts and his feet bare on the stone floor. There were three of them, already in the house, waiting, in business suits. He looked at his watch. It was six a.m.

‘Mr Beaumont, we represent the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. We hold a duly executed warrant to search these premises. We also wish to ask you questions pertaining to a current investigation. We will now commence the search.’

He didn’t protest; what was there to protest about? He turned to Sarah and said, ‘Go back to bed, darling. It’s all right. It’s just a business thing, just routine. Don’t worry.’

But she came to him, clung to him. ‘What’s happening, Dad? Why is all this happening? I want everything to be like it used to be.’

‘I know, darling. It will be. I just have to help these people and then we can go back to our old life. I promise.’

Still she held him and he could feel the shaking.

‘They’re not after me. I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m trying to help them. You don’t have to worry.’ Finally she released him and he pushed her gently away down the corridor, though he could see her glancing back doubtfully as she turned the corner to her bedroom.

He sat in the breakfast room with coffee. He’d offered the remaining ASIC man a cup, but the offer had been politely refused. The man just sat there, not speaking-waiting, he supposed, to ensure no calls were made. That had been the instruction. He didn’t need an instruction. He couldn’t think of anyone to call.

The sun fell into the room in patterns on the floor just the way he’d designed it to fall. He’d stood on this site, with the model in his hand and watched the light strike the roofline and lifted the roof to imagine the shafts falling through the skylights. And now here they were, here he was, here was the ASIC man.

One of the others entered the room. ‘There’s a safe in a room out here, Brian.’

The seated man turned to Jack. ‘Would you come and open the safe please, Mr Beaumont?’

He followed tamely and dialled the combination. He sat in a deep chair and tried not to see the body fall again, tried not to see the puff of sawdust as it hit the floor, tried not to hear the dull thud.

‘What is this, Mr Beaumont?’ He looked up. There was a pile of Louise’s jewellery boxes on the table and the man was holding a paper. ‘I’m sorry, what? I didn’t hear you.’

The man handed him the paper. It was the Global Re side letter, the smoking gun, which might never fire now.

‘Why is this company document in your private safe?’ Exhaustion overcame him again. Sleep had restored no energy or, if it had, it had dissipated with his daughter’s hand. ‘It’s a long story. It’s the story you’re searching for, I think, but I’d like to tell it some other time.’

‘We’d like to hear it now, Mr Beaumont. In fact, we insist.’ They both pulled chairs towards him and the spokesman placed a small tape recorder on the arm of one. How could he explain the saga? Where to start? Was there a finish? ‘It’s very complicated. We were about to turn over a whole pile of documents to you, a whole case really. This is one of them.’

‘Who is we? Mr Beaumont?’

Jack pressed one hand to the top of his head, pressed down hard as if to prevent pain from spreading, dug his fingers into the scalp. ‘Can’t we do this some other time?

I’m trying to help you people. I’m the one who started all this, started digging into all this dirt. But I need a little time to put my thoughts in order.’

The man sat impassively and removed a small notebook from his breast pocket. ‘What dirt are you referring to?’

Jack sighed. ‘Look, I don’t want to have to call lawyers and all that nonsense. I’m on your side. Just give me some time. It’s been a rough period.’

‘You referred to we in your previous comments. Who is we?’ And so it began. He tried to outline the process, his initial concerns, his meeting with Hedley Stimson, their peculiar arrangement, his search for documents. As he sketched the lines, it sounded complex, even to him. The chief executive of a major company ferrying documents to a retired lawyer buried in the suburbs. He left out the group’s involvement; that was too hard to explain.

‘And we were nearly there. We felt we’d just about pieced it all together.’

The man stared at him. ‘I see. That’s what we normally do, Mr Beaumont, piece it all together. That’s what the Australian Government has charged us with doing. It’s not normally, or ever, the role of private citizens. Whoever they may be.’ He turned a page in the notebook. ‘Please give me the phone number and address of Mr Stimson.’

Jack hunched his shoulders up into the base of his neck and arched his head back. The tension in his skull was unbearable. He wanted to be out of this room, away from these people, running with his dog, riding bikes with his kids, away.

‘He’s dead.’

The pen remained poised over the notebook. ‘I’m sorry, your meaning is unclear. Who is dead?’

‘Hedley Stimson. The lawyer. He died last night.’ Still the pen didn’t move. ‘But you’ve told us you were going to speak to him yesterday. That you were taking this document to him.’

‘That’s right. But when I got there he was dead.’ He was starting to shake now. He could feel the tremors coursing through him. The body was falling again, slowly, so slowly. Why hadn’t he stopped it, caught it before it hit the floor? He should’ve moved, should’ve held it to him, taken the weight and lowered it gently, with love. It was a shameful thing, the worst failure, to allow that fall, to hear that thud.

‘So you replaced the document in the safe?’ He was shivering uncontrollably. The sun was on him and he was as cold as he’d ever been. ‘I killed him. I killed him with all this.’

‘That’s enough.’ It was Louise’s voice, calm, in control. ‘He’s not answering any more questions without a lawyer. We’re prepared to cooperate with you, but in a proper environment with lawyers present.’ She came down the stairs and stood behind Jack with both hands on his neck. ‘I can confirm everything he says and am happy to give evidence, but in due course. Not in an atmosphere of tension and intimidation, and I repeat, not without our lawyer.’

The ASIC man switched off the tape. ‘We have the right to ask questions wherever we wish, and in any manner we wish, Mrs Beaumont. It is Mrs Beaumont, I take it?’

She didn’t flinch. ‘It is. And we have the right to refuse. And we do so.’

‘You have no such rights, Mrs Beaumont. But your refusal is noted.’

The floor was terrazzo, the walls panelled in dark wood, the tables clothed in white linen covered by paper, the waiters in long aprons. She might have been back in Rome, where she’d lived for a year after university, scratching a living as a part-time research assistant for an American professor, except the atmosphere was Sydney cool, not Italian buzz. She’d arrived early, nervous, still shattered by the events of the previous days and the effort of holding Jack, and the children, together. The day her father had left the house forever kept flashing into her mind. Her mother had run after him into the garden, into the street, clutching at him, trying to draw him back, when only minutes before she’d seemed set on driving him away. She’d always felt her mother was wrong. She should’ve forgiven him whatever the fault. What did it matter? They could have been together with forgiveness, they could have been a family. Instead there were all those years of a mother and a daughter pretending they preferred life alone.