Peter Temple: Bad Debts

‘Who’s got the copy?’

‘What copy? No-one’s ever admitted the files were copied.’

I said, ‘Barry, I’m talking life and death.’

He did another big head scratch, rolled his chair back till it hit a pile of books. The pile toppled, slithered to become a ziggurat.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I can’t promise you anything, though. I’ll ask a man who might be able to ask another man, who might know someone.’

I stood up. ‘I need to know today. It’s that bad.’

Barry stood up. His eyes were level with my middle greatcoat button. He looked up at me. ‘You serious?’

I nodded.

He nodded back, sadly. ‘I’ll go after my tutorial. You can’t phone him, this bloke. Paranoid. Give me the date and the name, anything that’ll help.’

‘God loves you, Barry,’ I said.

‘There is no God and you know it. Ring me at home after five. But I can’t promise anything. I don’t know if they copied this kind of thing.’ He paused. ‘I’m only doing this because of your old man’s record for Fitzroy, you know. I wouldn’t do it for you.’

‘I know that,’ I said. ‘Go Roys, make a noise.’

I found Linda at a laptop computer in a long, narrow room off the kitchen. A bench down one wall held three computers, one with a huge monitor, and two printers. The other wall was covered in corkboard, with dozens of computer-generated colour images stuck up. They seemed to be tryouts of the landscape paintings.

‘Cam’s woman’s a computer freak,’ Linda said. She was scrolling text on her screen. ‘She’s got enough power here to run the tax system.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Tell you when I’ve done it.’ She was tapping keys.

I went into the vast sitting room. It was 4.30 p.m. Both the fire in the fireplace and the day outside were dying. I brought in a log from the woodpile in the entrance hall, put it on the steel dogs and scraped all the embers together under it. Then I did an inspection of the premises. Apart from the sitting room, computer room and kitchen, there were two huge bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a studio the size of a pool hall. Next to the steel front door, another steel door opened on to the building’s internal staircase.

When I’d done the tour, I sat down in front of the fire, put my hands in my pockets, stared into the flames and tried to work out how we could come out of hiding safely. All I could think of was to have Drew negotiate with the police. Negotiate over what, was the question. The bombing of my flat was certainly proof that I needed protection. Or was it? People had been known to boobytrap their own houses. After all, it wasn’t me who was blown up. Maybe I’d set a trap for someone else.

What about the men with the sub-machine gun on the motorcycle? We hadn’t reported it. We’d had the car spirited away. By now, the body was probably crushed to the size of a tea chest. Cam’s friend who took it away wasn’t going to jump up and testify for me.

As for Linda, what exactly was she in hiding from, they would ask? No-one had tried to kill her. She’d been burgled, that’s all. Everyday occurrence.

And the Minister? The Minister wouldn’t recognise my name.

It was 5.30 p.m. before Linda emerged, carrying a printout.

‘Hey, let’s get some light here,’ she said. ‘It’s like a set for Macbeth.’

I realised with a start that the room was in deep gloom, the firelight playing on the unfinished landscapes around the walls.

Linda found a panel of switches next to the kitchen doorway. ‘Fuck. Like a Boeing.’ She hit several switches. Concealed lighting came on all over the room.

‘That’s more like it,’ she said. ‘Save the firelight for later. I’ve got something. Remember all the companies in the Yarrabank buy-up turned out to be owned by other off-shore companies?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’ve been searching all the finance databases for anything on the offshore companies and one database turned up three of the companies at once. The Jersey companies. They were suspected in 1982 by the Securities Commission in Britain of warehousing shares for an Irish company that was trying to take over a British construction group.’

‘I’m lost already,’ I said.

‘Wait. It becomes clearer. The three companies were all run from Jersey by an accountant. The securities people forced him to disclose where the money had come from to buy the shares in the construction group. It didn’t come from the Irish company. It came from the company that owned the Jersey companies. This one was registered in the Cayman Islands. It’s called Pericoe Holdings. That’s where the story stops. The Securities Commission lost interest in the inquiry.’

She paused.

‘But you didn’t?’ I said.

She nodded. ‘I was searching a new South Pacific database at the university in Suva. Just to see what it held. And I turned up a little item from 1981 in a defunct publication called Pacific Focus. Just been scanned into the system. They reported that a Cayman-registered company had a shareholding in a company that wanted to set up a bank in the New Groningen Islands. And what was the Cayman company’s name?’

‘This is a test, isn’t it? My answer is: I don’t know.’

‘Pericoe Holdings.’

‘This is it?’ I said.

She nodded. ‘Pericoe was obliged under local law to disclose its shareholders.’ She read from the printout. ‘“Shareholders: J. Massey of Carnegie Road, Toorak, Melbourne, Australia; M. Jillings of Miller Street, Kew, Melbourne, Australia; and H. McGinty of Carnham Close, Brighton, Melbourne, Australia.”’

‘Do we know these people?’

Linda came over and stood in front of me. ‘J. Massey is Jocelyn Massey, ex-wife of Dix Massey, Charis Corp’s fixer-in-chief. M. Jillings is Maxine Jillings, wife of Keith Jillings, a major shareholder in Charis Corp. H. McGinty is Hayden McGinty, who sucks to get on the social pages and is the wife of Martin McGinty, chief executive of Marbild, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Charis Corporation.’

She flicked the printout in the direction of the coffee table and put her hands on her hips. ‘This is the jackpot,’ she said. ‘This is it. This is the connection between Charis and the buying up of Yarrabank. It’s going to take an awful lot of explaining away. And it sure as fuck ain’t gonna work to say these Charis Corp girls put their spare housekeeping money into real estate.’

‘You’re pretty smart for a good-looking person,’ I said. ‘Do people tell you that?’

‘Only when they want to fuck me. What about the Special Branch man?’

‘I’ve got to phone Barry Chilvers.’

A child answered at Barry’s number. A girl. Barry had obviously started on a second round of procreation, probably with a graduate student. That was the price of academic life. Inexplicably, first wives stopped being turned on by your mind.

When he came on, he said, ‘Chilvers.’

I said, ‘It’s the man in the Collingwood beanie.’

‘That’s got to be cryptic enough. Hello, phone-tappers. Mate, your conjecture turns out to be correct. The female person was an object of attention.’

‘And the male person?’

‘Not attending on her, I’m afraid. He was keeping an eye on an East Timor activist in town for a rally. Does that make life easier?’

‘Barry,’ I said, ‘it may make it possible. What does his log record?’

‘Nothing. Uneventful. He said the man spent the evening with known friends in Scott Street, Fitzroy, then went back to his hotel. That’s it.’

‘The man in the Collingwood beanie thanks you very much.’

Barry said, ‘Go Roys, make a noise.’

I went back into the sitting room. Linda was at the bank of windows. She turned.