by Peter Corris
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I |
need a bodyguard,’ Charles Marriott said.
I said, ‘Why?’
‘Because I think my life is in danger.’
‘All our lives are in danger,’ I said. ‘Nothing surer.’
He looked at me through his wire-framed glasses and stroked his short, gingery beard. He was a tall, spindly individual with narrow shoulders, a pasty face and a slight stoop. He didn’t look the sort of man who should fear for his life, barring accidents, until he was near his three-score-and-ten. Quiet type. Safe. But his eyes were busy. They darted around my office looking frightened. I can understand why you’d look frightened in my office if you have phobias about dust, draughts and old furniture, but not otherwise.
Marriott stopped fiddling with his facial hair and brought his scared gaze around to fix on me. ‘I’ve been told you like to joke to upset people. You don’t need to do that to me. I’m upset already. I need help, Mr Hardy, and I’m willing to pay for it.’
I wondered who’d told him that and whether it was true. I couldn’t think of a recent client with that kind of analytical capacity, but his response got my attention.
‘If I can help, I will, but everybody who employs me pays the same—a retainer variable according to how long it looks like the job’ll take; two hundred and fifty a day, GST included, plus expenses.’
He nodded. ‘So can I consider you engaged?’
‘No, not quite. I’ll have to hear what’s on your mind first. If you’ve been importing heroin freelance from the Golden Triangle and the Triads and the Yakuza are after you, I’ll have to pass.’
My father used to say that only men with weak chins grew beards. He continued to say it after I grew one, and I’ve got as much chin as anyone needs, but I still tend to look at bearded blokes with the thought in mind. Marriott s beard was wispy, but it grew on a solid chin. ‘When do the jokes stop?’ he said.
I pulled myself up straighter in my chair. ‘Now,’ I said. ‘Tell me why you feel in danger?’
“What d’you know about the IT industry?’
I moved my hand across the surface of my computerless desk. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘You’d better assume that. I doubt I know anything worth knowing. Is IT your game?’
He stroked the beard again. ‘Interesting choice of words. It was a game at the start. A bloody exciting game, but it’s turned into something else.’
I nodded. ‘The money’d do that.’
He gave a respectful nod and told me that he’d started up a dot com with two partners a couple of years back. They were all computer studies graduates from the University of Technology and couldn’t wait to become players.
‘We were full-on computer nerds. Especially Mark and me. Totally into it.’
‘Surfing the net,’ I said, just to be saying something.
He looked at me as if I’d dribbled on my chin. ‘Way beyond that. We were all good programmers and lateral thinkers.’
I persisted. ‘Hackers.’
He looked exasperated and I raised my hands in apology. ‘I’m sorry. That exhausted my vocabulary. I was just getting it over with.’ The truth was, computers bored me and I wasn’t feeling as if this was going to be my sort of thing. But he plugged on, which meant that at least he was serious.
‘I’m talking about Steve Lucca, Mark Metropolis and me. We formed Solomon Solutions and went at it. We did a fair bit of Y2K bug stuff, remember that?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t worry me too much.’
‘Bit of a scam, really. But we made some money and so we had some capital behind us to go for the big stuff.’
‘Which is?’
‘Database financial consulting.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Solomon is now just about the best in the southern hemisphere for accessing financial information worldwide and forecasting government and corporation policies, company profits and share movements.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Bucks.’
‘Big bucks. You have to pay to use Solomon to get our advice and forecasts, which are bloody good, and when you do, Solomon can monitor your transactions and take its commission on successful deals.
‘We developed this brilliant software, you see. It’s all automatic, and your user fee goes up, but we sweeten the pill by having the commission we take go down as your business progresses. It’s all geared to exchange rates, of course.’
I was starting to get interested. As someone who thinks stockmarkets and futures trading and currency speculation ought to be illegal, I was aware that I was radically out of step with the times. I dimly grasped what Marriott was saying, enough to understand that it sounded like being allowed into the mint with a U-haul van.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘three into however many millions you’re making goes very nicely.’
Talking about success had excited him, but now he was sobered. ‘For a while it was four,’ he said. ‘We brought in this marketing man. The money side of it was getting a bit hard to handle. Sounds funny, doesn’t it? We were helping move billions around the shop and we started to get into tax and business troubles ourselves. Weird. We brought Stefan Sweig in as a full partner, even though he hardly had any capital. We’d known him at UTS. Bloody economics genius and no slouch with computers either. Bit younger than us.’
‘And you are how old?’
‘Twenty-six, shit, no, twenty-seven. I’m losing track. Mark and Steve.. . uh, much the same. Stefan’s maybe twenty-three. Looks younger, acts older.’
I was starting to become interested in Charles Marriott. He had some idea of how to tell a story and I could sense the relief he was experiencing at letting it all out. Cliff Hardy—private enquiries and narrative therapist.
‘Stefan got us into the big time. He knew the buttons to push. The trouble to avoid. Got us out of our tax hole like magic. We thought we were going to go under at one point and we just. . . bobbed up, better than ever. Advertising revenue, more clients…’
‘Sounds like I should hire him,’ I said.
Marriott shook his head almost violently. ‘No. He’s poison. I wish we’d never . . . No, I can’t say that. But we should’ve, I don’t know, drawn up a better partnership agreement when we brought Stefan in, one that protected us somehow. We were bad at that all along.’
‘Who drew up the agreement?’
Marriott suddenly looked angry and older than twenty-seven, much older. ‘Stefan did, with a lawyer mate of his. Can you believe it?’
I didn’t want to do myself out of a job, but I had to say it. ‘Get another lawyer.’
‘I did, or tried to. No way to change it. Watertight.’
I shrugged. ‘I still can’t see the problem. If you’re going gangbusters with this thing, four into even more millions goes even more nicely.’
‘Three, or two.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Steve’s dead. I think Stefan had him killed. And I reckon I’m next. Or it could be something worse.’
* * * *
With me having virtually no understanding of big business, it took a bit more explaining. But Marriott was patient and seemed to be drawing some comfort just from talking. There were certain clauses in the original partnership agreement that plotted the future of the company. One was that when business reached a certain level, the company should be floated.
‘That’s not as rigid as it sounds,’ Marriott said. ‘We had ways of keeping below that level because none of us wanted to float the company. Rog made sure we all understood about that—writing things off, tax dodges really.’
‘Rog?’
‘The lawyer, well, paralegal guy who helped us set up in the first place.’
‘And he’s not in the picture now?’
‘No. He hated Stefan after a while and wouldn’t work with us anymore. Anyway, since Stefan moved in all that’s gone by the board and we have to float now. Stefan’s enforcing the terms of the original agreement.’
‘And what’s involved in that—floating?’
Marriott shrugged, an odd gesture to go with what he said. ‘Millions for us of course as the original partners, and the way Stefan’s drawn up the prospectus and company plan, not that much loss of control. Accountability and all that, but there’s ways around such things and Stefan knows them all.’
‘And you think he wants you out of the way so he can divide up the millions more . . . equitably?’
‘No. Worse than that. So that after the float he can sell out to someone big. With the stock I’m going to hold, I could veto that.’
I’d been scribbling a few notes while he talked and I looked at them now. ‘What does . . . Mark think about all this?’
The shrug again. ‘Mark’s brain is so fried with coke and ecstasy and Christ knows what else, he just does whatever Stefan wants. It was Stefan who got him hooked in the first place and he supplies him now with the drugs and the women.’
I’d been sitting down too long and felt restless. I stood and stretched and went to the window. It was late on a winter afternoon and the light was dimming fast. There’d been some rain and the roads and footpaths were dark. I could feel Marriott watching my back. There was a kind of energy in him despite his commonplace appearance. Naivety as well. He was focused and concise, and I could believe that he’d helped to develop some brilliant money-making scheme but had difficulty in coping with life’s realities. I traced a meaningless figure in the dust on the window. ‘How did Steve die?’
‘He fell under a train at Strathfield station.’
I rubbed out the scribble and turned around. ‘Why wasn’t he driving his BMW?’
‘Steve was like me; he wasn’t interested in all that yuppie crap. He lived in a flat in Strathfield. He wore jeans to the office every day.’
‘Nice suit you’ve got on, Mr Marriott.’
He forced a smile, or that’s the way it looked. Smiling didn’t come easily to him. He had bad teeth and I was beginning to think that he might also have a breath problem. ‘We’ve got this far,’ he said. ‘Call me Charlie. Have you got anything to drink? Don’t private eyes keep a bottle in the desk drawer?’
I slid open the top drawer of the filing cabinet. ‘I’ve got a cask of red and some plastic cups.’
‘Do you know what Bob Dylan said to John Lennon in the Beatles’ hotel suite when John asked him what he’d like to drink?’
‘No.’
He said, ‘Cheap wine.’
I hauled out the cask and the cups. ‘Bob’d be right at home, then.’
The cups were small and we knocked back a couple without saying much as the light died outside. Charlie fiddled with one of the buttons on his gunmetal-grey, single-breasted suit jacket. ‘I used to get around in jeans too, but Stefan wore me down.’
‘Have you got any evidence of his involvement in Steve’s death?’
‘Not really. I know he’s got a mate who’s been in jail for all sorts of things and would do anything Stefan asked him if the price was right. Guy named Rudi. Scary guy—tattoos and all that.’
I took a slug of the red; the third drink tastes better than the first. ‘Might be enough to interest the police, Charlie, along with everything else you’ve told me.’
‘No, I can’t go to the police. Not ever. That’s one of the reasons I’ve come to you.’
He explained, hesitantly and haltingly, that he’d had the pressure of studying and holding down part-time jobs got to him and put him into what he described as a ‘fugue’.
He was well into his third cup of plonk by this stage and showing the signs. He loosened his tie, undid the top button on his shirt and suddenly looked a lot younger and even more vulnerable. ‘I was smoking a lot of dope and I went paranoid, really nuts. There’s a name for it.’
‘Marijuana psychosis,’ I said.
‘Yeah. That. Well, I got this idea in my head that one of our lecturers was out to kill me because I was so much smarter than him and could take his job any day, and he knew it, and so he ...’
He finished his drink and held out the cup for more.
‘You driving, Charlie?’
‘No, I don’t drive. I’ll get a cab. That’s if... um . . .’
I poured him some more red.
‘I. . . went to the cops, made a fucking nuisance of myself. Abused them . . . got locked up . . . got worse. It went on for a while until Steve found me a good therapist and I got clear of it. I still got a First—came equal top with Steve.’
‘What about Mark?’
‘He got a top Second. Mark did other things—read novels and played golf. You know.’
Normal, I thought.
‘We were sharing a grotty flat in Ultimo, Mark, Steve and me, and they had to put up with all the shit I was getting into. I got busted for dope. They didn’t, but it was a near thing. They got very pissed off. Mark especially, not so much Steve. But they knew they needed me when we were developing Solomon. It was my baby, really. But Steve’s, too.’
‘Who’d read the Bible?’
He laughed. ‘Steve, when he was a kid. He wasn’t a Christian anymore, but he was a good, gentle . . . Shit, I’m having trouble saying this.’
‘Take your time, Charlie.’
He sniffed and did a bit of beard stroking. ‘When Rog drew up the agreement, Mark insisted that he put in a clause that sort of put everything on hold if I . . . exhibited signs of drug use and paranoia again. That survived into the revised agreement Stefan masterminded. I’m clean now but, you know, I get intense . . . See the picture?’
‘I think so. If you go to the police with your suspicions, that could screw up the float plan.’
‘That’s it. I’m taking a bit of a risk just coming here. Stefan’s got someone watching me, but I gave her the slip.’
‘Her?’
‘Yes, this woman he’s sort of sicked on to me. Amie.’
‘You don’t like her?’
‘She’s stupid. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not gay or anything. I’m just not interested in sex.’
‘What are you interested in, Charlie?’
He looked down at the wine in his cup but clearly had no intention of drinking it. He leaned forward to put the cup on the desk. ‘I’m very interested in staying alive, Cliff. That’s why I’m here.’
Charlie Marriott told me the float would go through at the end of that week and if he could stay alive and at liberty for that long he’d be in a position to stop Stefan Sweig from selling the firm off to the multinationals.
‘Too much of our IT industry is going offshore,’ he said. ‘Jesus Christ, the federal government is doing it now. The finance minister’s gung-ho about it. I... we investigated one of these outsourcing deals for a client who was interested in getting into it. Found it’d be a great deal for him. I did a check of my own, just for fun, on what the government said it’d save. It was bullshit. If anything it’d cost the taxpayer money in the long run. Can you imagine the US government selling off the IT arm of the Internal Revenue Service to, say, France? That’s virtually what’s happening here.’
He was excited again. I had to get him back on track. ‘At liberty,’ he’d said. ‘What about this mental instability clause?’ I asked him.
‘That’s what I meant when I said Stefan might kill me or do something worse. Worse would mean being committed to a loony bin. That’d bring the clause into play and rule me out when it comes to voting on the shares. I know Stefan’s been reading up on psychology and such.’
‘How’d you know?’
‘This girl, this Amie, let it slip. As I said, she’s not too bright.’
‘Good-looking, though?’
‘Yeah. I suppose.’
‘What about after the float?’
He grinned; again, with the bad teeth, not quite parting the lips. ‘No, the original agreement dissolves and it’s all a new ball game after that. Some of the stuff to do with the float I don’t like, but I made sure there was nothing like that hanging over my head this time.’
I couldn’t say I liked it much, but I’d warmed to Charlie a bit and it had a certain interest. It was time I learned something about computers and this looked like a chance to do it. The prospect of five days of bodyguarding wasn’t exciting, but the money wouldn’t hurt. The mental instability factor worried me a little, but he seemed sane enough now, even if he was a bit of a two-pot screamer, to judge by the way the cask red had affected him. My doubt must have been showing because he took on that frightened look again.
‘You’re going to turn me down.’
I shook my head and got a contract form out of the desk drawer. ‘No, I’ll take it on.’ I slid the form across to him and he examined it as if he’d never seen anything like it before.
‘Shit,’ he said, ‘I’d forgotten there were still things like this. It all happens online now.’
‘Reckon you can master it?’
He pulled out a pen. ‘Sure, but you’re going to have to catch up to stay in business, Cliff.’
‘We can talk about that,’ I said. ‘What exactly did you have in mind for me to do, Charlie?’
He filled in the form quickly, took a cheque book from his jacket pocket, made a quick calculation and wrote out a cheque for five thousand dollars and passed it across to me.
‘That’s too much.’
‘Haven’t you ever heard of a bonus? If you’ve got a good spreadsheet you can work it in as . . . shit, I forgot. No spreadsheet?’
‘All I know about a spreadsheet is that it rhymes with bedsheet. You didn’t answer my question and I think I’d better get an answer before I sign this.’
‘Okay, well, I guess I’d like you to drive me to and from the office on the working days remaining until the float.’
‘That sounds all right. What about at home?’
‘Oh, my home’s secure. No problems there. Plus I’ve got a rifle.’
Have you? I thought. That’s a worry. ‘What about at work?’
He thought for a minute, fiddling with his now empty cup.
‘I don’t think I’m in any danger there. It’d be good if you showed up once or twice, just to get the message across, but I hardly think Stefan’d get Rudi to throw me out the window.’ He smiled when he said it, but his laugh was nervous.
‘Wouldn’t it be an idea for me to go around and see this Rudi and put him in the picture?’
‘No, no. Couldn’t do that. Stefan could use that as an excuse to have me examined . . . you know.’
I nodded but still didn’t sign. Charlie wrote a big, bold hand and the five grand was starting to look more and more attractive. I had rates to pay, credit cards and the Falcon needed work. ‘So how will it look when you show up in the office with a bodyguard?’
‘Shit, I hadn’t thought of that.’
I made my decision then; I wasn’t convinced that he was facing the danger he anticipated. I had a suspicion that paranoia was part of his make-up, but he clearly needed help of some kind and I was willing to go along for the ride. I signed the contract and handed him his copy.
‘Haven’t you got an uncle with some money who’s thinking of buying shares when you float the company? And isn’t he the careful type who likes to take a good long look at things before he buys?’
Charlie let go the first full-bodied smile I’d seen from him.
‘I believe I do,’ he said. ‘And I believe he’s just that sort of guy.’
* * * *
Marriott’s house was in Ryde; not my idea of a place to live, but conveniently close to Sydney’s Silicon Valley in Lane Cove. The deal we struck was that I’d see him from door to door tonight and for the next four mornings and put in an occasional appearance at the Solomon Solutions office. When he had to go out to meetings or other functions I’d tag along. If anyone asked how come Uncle Cliff was driving him around, my line was that I was semi-retired from owning and driving a taxi and that driving was in my blood. Plus I was happy to do it for my favourite nephew who was going to make me rich.
We nutted some of this out as we drove from Darlinghurst towards the North Shore.
‘It sounds a bit thin,’ I said.
Charlie looked tired now, as if the effort of coming to see me and unburdening himself, plus the couple of red wines, had wearied him. He shrugged. ‘But it’s feasible, and they can’t lock me away on account of it.’
‘Won’t Stefan twig?’
‘Maybe. I don’t mind that. I don’t object to playing a few mind games with Stefan.’
And who else? I wondered, but I drove on.
The traffic was heavy. The free-flowing traffic of the Olympic fortnight, when people had left their cars at home and enjoyed the efficient public transport, was all over. We were back to our bad habits, with cars driving into and out of the city containing one person. I’m an offender myself, but at least now I wasn’t the worst. The politician who keeps cars out of the city and establishes drive-and-park points, or at least institutes an odds and evens numberplate system, will get the boot but he’ll be a sainted benefactor. Don’t hold your breath.
It was stop-start for kilometres and not made any easier by heavy rain. Charlie was in a mood to talk, especially when I asked him what was so wrong about selling out to a multinational.
He was still a bit drunk. ‘You know what they do?’ he said. ‘When they take over something down here? Get that? Down here! That’s what they always say.’
I sighed as I pulled up at least a hundred metres short of a set of lights. ‘No idea. Tell me.’
‘Jesus, I remember what Steve said. That bloody awful red of yours must’ve triggered it. He said something like, “They’re such literal-minded bastards they’re up and we’re down and that’s the way they like it.” He was right.’
Sitting there behind the wheel, and not entirely unaffected by the wine myself, I had a rare lateral thinking moment. ‘I suppose it depends where you are in the universe. If you’re far enough away and subject to other forces . . . say, the rings of Saturn have got you by the gravitational balls, the northern and southern hemispheres of planet Earth don’t amount to a hill of beans.’
Charles Marriott laughed as if I was Woody Allen on wheels. ‘D’you read much science fiction, Cliff?’
‘Never.’
‘Really? Well, what you’ve just said is the sort of thing Steve would’ve said. He read a lot. Not like Mark, who reads trash. Steve read all that thoughtful stuff—Arthur C Clarke, Philip K Dick. . . why’ve they all got middle initials?’
I made it through the lights on the amber, just. ‘Dunno.’
‘Yeah, well. When the Americans take over a dot com here or anywhere else they get all enthusiastic about its potential and possibilities and they set up all kinds of well-funded research and development projects and we mere mortals get excited and start working our arses off and coming up with brilliant ideas. I’ve seen it time and again. Know what happens in the end?’
‘The corporate suits rip them off, the locals get nothing.’
‘Sorry, but you’re naive, Cliff. It’s worse than that. Say we were taken over by BigDick.com based in Palo Alto. They’d send some hotshot out here and fire half the staff as a beginning and then get all enthused about some project or other, get the remaining people to work twenty-five hours a day on it and then just drop it, lose interest. Or there’d be some change at board level and the strategic focus or some such shit would change and so little Oz project X would get the flick. Happens all the time. Morale goes through the floor. They send out another swinging dick and he fires a few more people and recommends the operation be moved to Malaysia. The end.’
The rain got heavier and I had to concentrate on my driving, but I’d attended to what he’d said closely enough. He said it well, putting on a pretty good American accent for the key jargon words. I had the distinct feeling that he’d gone through the spiel a few times before, but he was so passionate about it that the diatribe still had a fresh feel.
My response was pretty lame. ‘Well, that’s capitalism,’ I said.
‘No. It’s a new kind of capitalism with a different psychology to it.’
I pulled up at another set of lights and glanced across at him. He’d taken off his tie and was rolling it up and unrolling it. ‘How’s that?’
‘I’ll tell you a story. A little while ago Stefan hired this young guy fresh out of uni. He’d done some brilliant thing for his honours project. All to do with interest rate projections and the effects on a whole range of businesses. Very smart stuff.’
‘Sounds like your kind of boy.’
‘Yeah. I suppose so. Anyway, Stefan put him on a short-term contract for, like, five grand a week. It was more money than he’d ever seen in his life in week one.’
‘I wouldn’t be far behind him on that.’
‘Okay. So he’s given this thing to work on and it’s a pile of shit. I mean, I’m slipping a bit behind the fast boys and I know it, and I can’t catch up until I’ve got through this rough patch—I mean with your help, Cliff.’
We were moving again and I was so glad to get a bit of speed up and get out of second gear that I almost missed the false note. Almost. Pleading and chumminess weren’t quite Charlie’s style. ‘Right,’ I said.
‘It was nothing! Going nowhere. But Stefan kept encouraging him and he kept slogging away until he hit a brick wall. Well, by now he’s got more money in the bank than he’s ever dreamed of and he’s what, twenty-two? He likes girls and cars and he likes the grog. He starts to run off the rails, a couple of crashes where he’s close to the .05 limit but he just scrapes through and then one when he doesn’t and he gets a conviction and a hefty fine and a suspension. I mean, I went into a kind of slide like that myself and I know what it’s like. I could see the signs in him—late in to work, red eyes, twitching . . . shit!’
He became aware of what he was doing with his tie. He crumpled it up and stuffed it in his pocket. ‘I’m still a bit of a mess. I know it. Phillip, that was his name, Phillip Dare, he didn’t know what had hit him. His work went to shit; the grog, the cars, the fines and the girls took the money and his contract with us ran out. Last I heard he was working as a programmer in Brisbane for something to do with horseracing.’
We were approaching the Lane Cove bridge at last. ‘What’s your point, Charlie?’
‘The point? I challenged Stefan at a meeting when Phillip left and said what a balls-up it’d been. He laughed at me and said it was a triumph. A triumph! You see, we had a sort of a rival at that time, Backup.com. Bit of a maverick mob like us and in the same field, sort of. Stefan got wind of their offer to Phillip and gazumped them. Then he just threw him away like a lolly wrapper. We got on and Backup’s just struggling along now and it was Stefan’s coup, get it? Fuck poor Phil.’
The Falcon’s windscreen wipers—I’d spend some of Marriott’s money on them—battled against the rain. He was sitting in an almost unnaturally still manner and, over the noise of the wipers, I heard him slow his rather wheezy breathing and achieve a silence that matched the stillness. It was creepy.
‘What’re you doing, Charlie?’
‘Practising.’
‘Practising what?’
He held the attitude for a moment and then let go. ‘I’m a birdwatcher. Go ahead and laugh.’
‘I won’t laugh. Watchings better than killing. I’m glad to hear you do something other than tap keys and look at screens.’
‘You think I’m weird, don’t you?’
We were moving slowly but that was okay with me because I wasn’t sure exactly how to get to his street, which was off Buffalo Road. ‘We’re back to where we started, I said. ‘We’re all weird.’
‘We’re getting along all right now though, aren’t we?’
‘Sure. Can you turn into your street from here, or is it blocked off? Don’t know this neck of the woods.’
‘You can turn. Rog used to say I lived in the very heart of suburbia.’
‘Where’s Rog now?’
‘Melbourne.’
‘Maybe you should go down there and try to get him back onside. That’d be one in the eye for Stefan.’
‘I never thought of that.’
‘Could you do it?’
‘I guess. But you’d have to come, too. Do you like Melbourne, Cliff?’
‘It’s improving.’
‘Turn left here.’
We turned and I could see what Rog had been getting at—this was nature-strip, front-garden, double-garage, two-income country.
‘Here we are,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ll unlock the gate and you can drive in. There’s room to turn inside.’
It was slack of me but I let him do it. He was out of the car before the realisation of my sloppiness hit me. I was about to speak when I saw a headlight come on and heard an engine start. Adrenalin-fuelled instinct took over and I jumped out, ran around the front of the car and hit Marriott with a diving tackle that collapsed him like a burst balloon.
The two shots the motorcyclist fired missed him. All I got were impressions of the shape of the bike and the man. Both big, the bike blue or perhaps green under the yellow street light, the rider broad-shouldered, erect carriage.
The bike roared off down the street and we lay locked together like lovers on the grass with the rain falling on us.
Charlie had crashed into the bougainvillea that wound around his front fence. He was bleeding on the face and hands and his skin had a sickly pale tinge under the yellow light.
‘You see?’ he moaned. ‘What did I tell you?’
We disentangled and I picked myself up. I was unhurt but my trousers, shirt and jacket were a mess. Charlie’s expenses were mounting. Dry-cleaning these days costs a bomb. ‘Just remember to tell them in the office that your uncle played prop for Country versus City,’ I said.
I ushered a very shaken and bleeding Charles Marriott inside his house. He had state-of-the-art security magic beams, alarms and connections to one of the leading security outfits. Inside he was about as safe as a man can get.
The house was unremarkable otherwise, apart from his workroom, which had computer power to rival NASA’s. Confirming what he’d said, there was a bookcase full of books on ornithology. Apart from computer manuals, there wasn’t much else to read in the house.
Charlie cleaned himself up in the bathroom and produced his firepower, a single-shot .22 rifle.
‘I have to admit it’s just a deterrent,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got any bullets.’
‘Just as well. Are you okay now?’
‘Yes.’
He looked it, and that puzzled me a little because most people find being shot at a traumatic experience. I did. But it takes people different ways and maybe he had stronger nerves than most, despite his erratic history. Or perhaps because of it. He was a strange one. I was surprised that he mentioned Steve going under the train just the once.
I said, ‘You’re snug as a bug here, Charlie. I’ll push off and collect you in the morning. What time?’
‘Seven.’
‘Jesus!’
‘When you’re at the cutting edge you have to start early, Cliff.’
‘Okay. And we’ll be a bit more careful about coming and going in the future.’
I drove home in the rain with a few things about Marriott bothering me. He hadn’t thanked me for saving him from getting shot, but maybe in the modern world you don’t dispense gratitude when you’re paying. He was subject to mood swings and there was an instability about him that was troubling, but what did I know? Computer freaks had to be crazy by definition. It was a paying job in a lean, post-GST time and I’d stick with it for as long as I could.
I picked him up at seven sharp the next morning and he seemed to be in good spirits, although the cuts on his face and hands were raw and he favoured his left side as a result of my tackle bruising his ribs. I’d checked the street over carefully and kept an eye out on the drive.
I parked in an allotted space under the building and we travelled in the lift up to the floor Solomon Solutions occupied. The sixth, all of it. By 8 am it was a hive of activity with screens glowing, printers chugging and phones ringing. Charlie introduced me as his uncle Cliff, a possible investor, to several of the underlings and they looked about as interested as the American people had been in the Gore/ Bush election.
I hung around for a while in Charlie’s office while he dealt with emails and phone messages and kept an eye on the door marked Stefan Sweig. I didn’t see one for Mark Metropolis. Neither had showed by the time I took myself off to the nearby shopping centre for coffee and the food I hadn’t felt like at 6 am. I waited for the lift to take me back up to the sixth floor. It arrived and among the couple of people stepping out was a tall redhead wearing a suit with an Ally McBeal skirt and the legs to do it. I stepped into the lift but couldn’t help myself watching her as she walked towards the entrance. A young man in a striped shirt, granny glasses and jeans joined me in the lift and did the same.
‘How d’you like that?’ he said.
‘Who is she?’
He looked me up and down—grey in the hair, leather jacket, Grace Bros strides, Italian shoes but old—and smiled pityingly. ‘That’s Amie Wendt, Stefan Sweig’s squeeze.’
* * * *
Charlie manufactured some excuse to fly to Melbourne and I went too, all on the company account because I was a prospective investor. Business class. We both had a couple of drinks but didn’t talk much. Charlie read Business Week and I struggled with the quick crossword in the Age, which I’d bought to catch up on the Melbourne news. It struck me how similar it was to the Sydney news, all except the football and the weather.
We hired an Avis Commodore and drove to Hawthorn, where Charlie said Rog was working as a waiter while finishing his law degree.
‘Stayed in touch, has he?’
Charlie nodded. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
It must have been a strange manner because when we walked into the smart cafe, all potted plants and smoked glass, the tall young man with the curly fair hair wearing a long apron dropped the tray he was carrying. Glass shattered and a fat man emerged from the back of the place to make angry noises in Italian. The people at the three occupied tables looked up interested, as if it was a floor show.
Charlie went into action. He shepherded the man, who had to be Rog, towards me.
‘Don’t let him run off,’ he said. He took out his wallet and laid what had to be at least a hundred dollars on the fat man. They negotiated.
‘You’re Roger, right?’ I steered him to a table and pressed him down onto a chair.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘Doesn’t matter. I’m working for Charlie.’
‘What does he want?’
‘He wants you to come back to Sydney and help him with some legal problems.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘He is, and so am I.’
Rog was a transparent type and I could almost see the cogs turning and the gears engaging. He’d been frightened at first, that was clear. Now he was calculating. Charlie joined us.
“lo, Rog.’
‘Charles.’
‘Charlie, Rog, I’ve loosened up. I’ve made it sweet with your boss. No problems.’
Rog didn’t speak.
‘I could use your help. Stefan’s on the warpath.’
Rog shook his head. ‘I like it here. Plus I’m enrolled at Monash and—’
‘I’d make it worth your while. Consultancy. You could transfer to Macquarie, say, and you wouldn’t have to wash dishes.’
‘Fuck you, Charles.’ Rog sprang up and walked away. I made a move to go after him but Marriott shook his head.
‘What did I tell you? He’s terrified of Stefan.’
‘I could do with a coffee. You?’
‘Latte.’
I went to the counter. A young punk woman was attending the espresso machine and she was wide-eyed at the goings-on, though trying not to show it.
‘A latte and a flat white.’ I slipped out one of my business cards and passed it across with a ten dollar note.
‘Give the card to Rog when you get a chance, would you?’
She loved it. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and put some extra zip into flying the machine.
We sat over the coffees longer than they deserved. Charlie said there were business things he could attend to in Melbourne for a couple of days and that being out of reach of Stefan and Rudi had to be good. I agreed.
‘Get to know the town, Cliff,’ he said. ‘I’ll book us into the Lygon Lodge. You might want to open a branch office one of these days.’
He was taking the piss and I didn’t like it but I let it pass.
* * * *
Melbourne had improved since I’d last been there. It looked and felt better—more light, less shade. The people looked happier.
Rog rang me on my mobile on the second night.
‘Are you alone, Mr Hardy?’
I was tempted to use the Jack Nicholson line from Chinatown but I resisted. ‘Charlie’s off schmoozing to some people about digital something or other. You can talk to me, Rog.’
‘Can I?’
‘You must want to, and I know there’s something wrong about Charlie.’
‘Can I trust you?’
‘I could give you some numbers to ring, but why not take a chance?’
‘Zoe liked you and she’s a good judge of character.’
‘So?’
‘He’s a very dangerous man.’
‘Yes?’
‘Obviously, I don’t know what he’s told you, but I think he’s responsible for the death of one of the partners in Solomon Solutions.’
‘That’d be Steve?’
‘Stephen Lucca, yes. What’s Charles said about that?’
‘I can’t discuss it, Rog. He’s my client, but I’ll be interested in whatever you have to say.’
His laugh was bitter. ‘That’d make a change. Neither Mark nor Stefan listened to me. Oh, they both knew that Charles was mad, but he was brilliant at what he does, still is I suppose, and they needed him more than they needed Steve or me.’
He was sounding a bit panicky and I was anxious not to lose him. ‘I’m listening. Look, have you got any evidence for these suspicions?’
‘You sound like a policeman.’
‘I’m not. I’m struggling to understand what goes on in this computer business and I need some help. Did you know Solomon Solutions is going to be floated?’
‘Everyone knows that.’
Like all closed societies, the computer buffs and their satellites had the belief that everyone knew what they knew and that what they didn’t know didn’t matter.
‘Charlie seems to think that his partners are trying to squeeze him out.’
‘I doubt it. I think I’ve said all I have to say.’
‘And I appreciate it. One more thing, the cop question again—evidence?’
He sounded tired and wrung out. His sigh was like a final gust of wind as a storm dies. ‘Only what Steve told me. He said that Charles was having him followed, tracking his movements. That’s it. Goodbye.’
He hung up. As always when a problem looms, the first thing I thought about was a drink, and the Lygon Lodge did a good mini-bar. But these days I fight the urge up to a point, and instead I went for a walk through Carlton. It was cold and windy but there was no rain and the strollers and diners and tourists were out in force. You could eat food from the four corners of the world in a couple of blocks and fill a house with ornaments and paintings and books. I kept my hands in my pockets and just window-shopped, like a lot of the other people on the street.
When I got back to the motel, Marriott was waiting for me with his door open. He was pale and agitated as he beckoned me in.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Walking.’
‘You’re supposed to be my bodyguard.’
‘You said you’d be safe down here in Melbourne.’
‘Safe? Shit! I’m not safe anywhere.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘I’ve had threatening phone calls. I know they’re from Rudi. We’re booked to fly back tomorrow. I think he knows when.’
‘How could he?’
It appeared that he’d been at the mini-bar, well and truly. I could see two empty Johnnie Walkers and two Beefeaters and at a guess he had a slug of Stoli over ice in the glass he was waving.
‘You don’t know anything! There’re ways. You just have to know the codes, and Stefan would. We’ll go back via Adelaide. That’ll throw them.’
I shrugged. ‘You’re the boss.’
Suddenly, his bad-teeth smile was smug. The threatening phone calls were apparently forgotten and I had to wonder if they’d ever happened.
‘That’s right. I’m the boss. But we’re mates, too, right? Sorry I was stroppy, Cliff. I’m under pressure.’
Aren’t we all? I thought, but I just nodded and moved towards the door.
He took a step closer to the bed and picked up the TV remote control. ‘I think I’ll watch a movie. Goodnight, Cliff. It’s nine thirty from Tullamarine. Pretty civilised. Hop into your mini-bar, why don’t you? It’s all on Solomon bloody Solutions.’
I gave him a thumbs-up, clinked my keys in my hand and left the room. Charles Marriott might have been a computer wizard and an ace birdwatcher, but he was no actor. No one who’d drunk what he appeared to have drunk, judging from the empties, could have moved as he did when he skirted round the bed and picked up the remote control.
You’re a dangerous man, Charles, I thought as I headed for my room. But dangerous to who—or was that whom?
* * * *
We flew back via Adelaide and Charlie spent a lot of time on his mobile during the break between planes. He didn’t tell me who he was calling and I didn’t ask. On the flight to Sydney, he got stuck into the complimentary champagne. When I thought he was sufficiently loosened up, I asked him whether I ought to talk to Stefan and Mark.
He almost dropped his glass. ‘No!’
‘Why not? If I’m supposed to be interested in investing, wouldn’t it look a bit funny if I didn’t meet with the other partners?’
He finished what was in his glass and signalled to the hostess for a refill. ‘There’s not long to go. You don’t have to be around the office anymore. Just drive me in and out.’
It was a kind of an answer and I didn’t press him, but my feeling that I didn’t know nearly enough of what was going on got stronger.
I dropped him at home that night and collected him the next morning. His smart suit was a bit crumpled and he looked as if he hadn’t slept well. His breath was bad. He clutched his big briefcase and said almost nothing on the drive. He was going to sit tight in his office and that gave me the whole day free.
I was about to pull out of the car park when I saw a big man in biker leathers come out of the building and approach a blue Honda 1200cc. Something about the way he held himself and the look of the bike were familiar and when he started it up I was sure. Rudi. I swung the Falcon in front of him and he had to stop.
‘What the fuck’re you doing?’ he roared.
I approached him. ‘Hate to stop, do you, Rudi?’
‘Do I know you, arsehole?’
Confirmation. I moved up on him. ‘You should. I’m the one who shoved Charles Marriott out of the way when you pot-shotted him.’
He ripped off his helmet and came at me then but he was a bit fat and a bit slow. I ducked under his wild swing and thumped him hard in the ribs, left side, right side. No good hitting that gut. The wind went out of him and he sagged. I gave him a knee under the chin and he was finished. I pulled him behind a car and pushed his face into the oily bitumen while bending his right arm up his back with one hand and gripping his left ear with the other.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’re not as tough as you thought. Do I break your arm and thump you face down and break your nose, or do you talk to me? Which?’ I gave him a touch of both to be going on with.
‘Talk,’ he said.
‘Stefan hired you to hit Marriott, right?’
He laughed and I pressed down on his head. ‘You’re ugly already. Want to be uglier?’
His voice was muffled because he was eating grit and oil. ‘Marriott.’
I eased up. ‘What?’
‘It was a fake, man. Blanks. Marriott got me to do it.’
I let him go and helped him up so he got to a sitting position with his back against a hub cap. He coughed and spat some stuff out of his mouth. ‘You’re a mug, whoever you are.’
‘I’m beginning to think you’re right. I thought. . . You and Stefan’re mates, right?’
‘Yeah. So what?’
‘I’ve got to talk to him. I’ve got to know what he thinks of Marriott. What does Amie think of him, for that matter?’
‘Shit, I can tell you that. Stefan reckons he’s the most brilliant fuckin’ IT man in the country and that he’s completely nuts. Amie can’t stand him. He came on to her, offered her a million dollars, and she knocked him back. He hates her and Stefan. Whatever he’s got you doin, arsehole, it’s to screw them. That’s for sure.’
What did he have me doing? I realised that I had no idea. Rudi pulled himself upright, and if he’d had a go just then he might have done some damage because I was dumbfounded, but he just stood there and brushed himself off.
‘You hit hard,’ he said.
‘Look, I’m sorry. I’ve got the wrong end of the stick here. I’ve got to talk to Stefan and Mark.’
‘Stefan’s in Brisbane with Amie. They’re tryin’ to stay out of Marriott’s way. He’s been at them. Threatening to get himself committed.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know much about it. It’s beyond me. Stefan says it’s to do with their fuckin’ partnership. If Marriott’s in the bin they can’t go ahead with
‘The float of the company?’
‘Yeah, the float, and Stefan’s borrowed a hell of a lot against the money he expects to make from the float. He wants to start his own company with Mark and get clear of Marriott.’
‘He told me Mark was a useless junkie.’
‘Mark? No way. I just seen him. He’s workin’ his arse off on somethin’.’
‘Does Marriott know about Stefan’s plans?’
‘Christ, I hope not.’
‘Why did you go along with that charade about shooting him?’
Rudi shrugged. ‘Seemed harmless. Bit of fun. He’s not a bloke to say no to. Plus he promised to buy me a Harley.’
I was trying to work it out. If what Rudi said was true, Marriott’s motive in hiring me was to do with his plan to stop the float. I could be evidence of his paranoia. If he knew about Stefan’s plans, that would give him a reason to stop the float. Was it reason enough to risk being committed as insane? Didn’t seem like it.
Rudi untied the bandanna around his neck and wiped his gritty, oil-stained mouth. ‘He’s dangerous,’ he said.
‘That’s what Rog told me in Melbourne. Where’s Mark now?’
‘In his office.’
‘Is it near Marriott’s?’
‘No, other end.’
‘I’m going up there. Look, I’ll make this up to you somehow.’
‘I really just do odd jobs for these blokes, but Stefan’s treated me okay . . . You’re not workin’ for Marriott anymore?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll come up with you. Maybe we can sort it out. I know Mark’s been slavin’ away at something to do with what’s buggin’ Stefan and Amie.’
Rudi wasn’t the brightest, but I was glad to have him along. He parked his bike, I moved the car into a slot, and we entered the building. ‘He calls himself Charlie now,’ I said.
‘Yeah—like Charlie Manson.’
When we got up to the Solomon Solutions floor, the place was humming along as per usual. No one took any notice of Rudi in his leathers as we strode towards Mark’s office. There was an unoccupied desk outside it.
‘Funny,’ Rudi said. ‘Sarah should be there. She’s Mark’s secretary.’
‘Coffee break.’
He shook his head. ‘Something’s wrong.’
We went to the door. I knocked.
‘Come in.’
‘Jesus,’ Rudi said. ‘That’s Marriott.’
I opened the door.
‘Come in and shut it,’ Marriott said. He was standing behind a man who was sitting at a desk. Marriott was holding something to his head—a sawn-off .22 rifle, cut down small enough to fit in the big briefcase he’d carried that morning.
I motioned for Rudi to look at the woman who was lying on the floor. I took a few steps towards the desk. ‘Charlie…’
‘Stop there! I saw you talking to him in the car park. You’ve spoiled everything, Rudi, you dumb bastard.’
I edged a bit closer as his eyes swung towards Rudi. ‘How is she?’ I said.
Rudi looked up and I gained another inch or two. ‘All right. I think she just fainted.’
‘No harm done then. Give it up, Charlie. It’s a single shot job, you can’t shoot all three of us.’
Marriott smiled and his eyes were mad. ‘That’s what you think. I showed you the single shot, but this is a semi-automatic. I can kill you both and her and myself if I want to.’
I squinted at the weapon, but with his big hands wrapped around it I couldn’t tell whether or not it was the rifle I’d seen at his place. Truth or good bluff?
‘Why would you want to do that?’ I said.
The man with the gun to his head said, ‘I know why. I’m Mark Metropolis, who are you?’
‘He’s no one,’ Marriott said. ‘You’re all nobodies. Go on, Mark. Tell them about who’s really got the brains around here.’
Mark’s eyes were red-rimmed and two days’ growth showed blue-black against his pale skin. With his shoulder-length hair and earrings and the haggard face, if I’d passed him in the street I might have taken him for a bombed-out junkie but he wasn’t—the man was exhausted. He moved his head a little to ease away from the rifle. ‘I’ve been trying to find out what Charles has been working on. I hacked into his files and got the gist of it. He’s doing a deal with Backup. He’s developed better monitoring, forecasting and accounting systems than the ones we have. He’s selling it to Backup who’ll demonstrate it and we’ll be down the toilet. He’ll be rich. It’s his revenge for being rejected by Stefan and Amie.’
Marriott jabbed him hard with the raw metal and blood flowed from a slash above his ear. ‘Shut up, wog! You didn’t tell them the whole of it.’
Mark drooped towards the desk as the blood dropped on his shoulder and the front of his shirt. ‘Tell them yourself, you lunatic’
‘Ha! Mark thought he was so smart getting into my stuff but he was always mediocre, right from the start. I had a built-in tracking program that picked him up as soon as he got to where he didn’t ought to go.’
‘What’s the idea of the gun?’ I said.
‘I was going to throw a loony act to stop the float. Hey, Cliff, I was going to take a shot at you maybe. Completely nuts, right? Paranoid. I didn’t think Mark would get as close in as he did, but lo and behold, the dummy did, right this morning. Jesus! Then I saw you and Rudi talking and . . .’
I was close to the desk; I could almost make a grab for the rifle. ‘And now you know it’s over. Your plan’s buggered. We’d better all sit down and talk about it, work something out. Put the gun down, Charlie. You’re sick, you need help.’
‘Sick! I’m brilliant! I’m the most brilliant—’
Just then the woman on the floor came to and let out a scream. Mark jerked his head away from the rifle and I made a swipe at it, touched it, but couldn’t get a grip. Marriott responded with a roar that was half fear and half rage. His mad eyes popped as he saw Mark throw himself onto the floor behind the desk and Rudi and I moving towards him. He staggered back, thrust the rifle up under his chin and pulled the trigger. The shot and the woman’s second scream filled the room as Marriott crumpled to the floor.
I went around the desk and crouched beside him, feeling for a pulse but there was nothing. For a rank amateur, he’d done a fully professional job in putting a .22 bullet through his brain.
* * * *
The whole business took a lot of explaining to the police and to Stefan Sweig and others. I didn’t come out of it well. I’d been used and duped and out of my depth the whole time. Marriott had cried wolf a couple of times and he’d evidently thought he needed a big show, like shooting the private detective he’d hired, to get the effect he needed. His brilliant system died with him because he’d encrypted the essential elements so thoroughly that no one could use it. Eventually the smoke settled and the float went ahead.
Stefan and Mark offered to compensate me for my time and reward me for the outcome but I refused. I paid for my own dry-cleaning and bought Rudi a slab.
‘So you got nothing out of it?’ Viv Garner, my lawyer, said over a drink after I’d told him the story.
‘I wouldn’t say that. I got a free trip to Melbourne.’