The train journey from Harwich to Cambridge was complicated, involving two changes. But it was early on a bank holiday, so the trains were at least largely empty. Breakfast was a waxed paper cup of reheated porridge consumed at Ipswich station. The tea she bought to wash it down turned out to be undrinkable.
It wasn’t yet nine o’clock when she reached Cambridge. She reckoned the chances were reasonable of finding Dr Morrisette at home. Without her phone to locate the address, she had to buy a street map of the city before leaving the station. Fortunately, Alford Street proved to be only a short walk away. She set off at a clip.
Dr Morrisette’s home was in a narrow street of small terraced houses. Wada’s guess was that she lived alone, or at any rate was childless. Espersen had described her as a workaholic, so it all fitted.
If she was a serious workaholic, she might already have left for the day, of course. Sure enough, there was no response when Wada tried the knocker. Tracking her down in whatever part of the university she might have gone to wasn’t going to be easy. Wada stood where she was, trying to think how she could set about doing that. It wasn’t clear it would be feasible on a bank holiday.
Then she saw a woman dressed in jogging kit and carrying a bottle of milk approaching along the pavement. She was short, honed and perspiring, her cropped dark hair plastered to her head. Morrisette? Wada could only hope so.
It was Morrisette. As she neared the door of number 44, she slowed and frowned at Wada. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked. There was quite a lot of muscle under her tight top and knee-length leggings. Her face was raw-boned and tanned. In her voice there was some kind of accent: Australian, maybe.
‘Are you Dr Michaela Morrisette?’
‘Yeah.’
‘My name is Wada. It is extremely important I speak with you.’
‘What about?’
‘Emergence.’
Morrisette tensed. ‘Are you from Quartizon?’
‘No.’
‘Well, in that case I probably shouldn’t be talking to you. What did you say your name was?’
‘Wada.’
‘Right, Wada, well, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull by coming here this morning, but—’
‘We have to discuss the situation, Dr Morrisette. There is something terribly wrong.’ Wada took the memory stick out of her pocket. ‘Just look at what is on this. Then I think you will understand.’
‘Have you been in touch with Quartizon?’
‘The stick came to me from a Quartizon employee who told me you would know what was wrong.’
Morrisette put her hands on her hips, with the bottle of milk hooked on one finger, and stared at Wada. Her knotted expression suggested she was thinking. Hard and fast. ‘OK. You can come in. I’ll give you five minutes. Understood?’
Wada nodded. ‘Understood.’
There was a knocked-through lounge to their right and a kitchen straight ahead beyond a narrow staircase. Wada brought up the rear as they headed into the smart but small kitchen, where Morrisette put the milk in the fridge and faced Wada across a bare table, arms akimbo.
‘OK, Wada. Say your piece.’
‘Emergence was launched last Wednesday. Did you know that?’
‘I knew it was imminent.’
‘It was a massive sale of options to buy parcels of land in Iceland, Greenland, Canada and maybe elsewhere too. Yes?’
‘Sounds like you know all about it.’
‘Quartizon used you to research the … what? The climate in the areas concerned?’
‘There’s a non-disclosure agreement attached to my contract with Quartizon. I can’t answer a question like that.’
‘Do you have a specialism … within climatology?’
‘I do.’
‘It cannot be a breach of your agreement to say what it is.’
‘OK. I specialize in future climatology. The sort of weather we’re all going to have to face down the line. You know? Fifty years from now. A hundred. Two hundred.’
The relevance of that was immediately obvious to Wada. ‘You researched what the climate would – will – be like for the parcels of land in the period covered by the options.’
‘Did I?’
‘It seems to me … you must have done.’
‘Well?’ Morrisette grabbed a towel and mopped her face. ‘Am I contradicting you?’
‘Can we look at the contents of the stick on your computer?’
‘Before we do that, I think I need to know where you’re coming from. What’s your interest in Emergence?’
‘I work for a private detective in Tokyo who was hired to investigate the business methods of Hiroji Nishizaki, founder and chairman of the Nishizaki Corporation, which has a fifty per cent stake in—’
‘Quartizon. Yeah, I know. Well, I didn’t know the exact percentage, but there you go. Who hired your boss?’
‘That truly does not matter. What matters is that Nishizaki is …’
‘Yeah? What is he?’
‘A crook, Dr Morrisette. That is what he is. A big-time crook.’
‘Says who?’
‘Just look at what is on the stick and see if there is something wrong with it. I can translate the contents for you. It is all in Japanese, of course.’
Morrisette smiled. ‘No need. Quartizon supplied me with a Japanese translation program as soon as we started working together.’
‘OK. Good.’
‘So, there’s zero chance of you stiffing me on the translation.’
‘I am not trying to trick you.’
‘Like you’d say if you were. Give me the stick.’
Wada handed it over. Morrisette stalked past her into the hall and took a smart left into the living room. There was a PC set up on the dining table. She slipped a pair of circular-framed glasses on to her nose, clicked the mouse to restart the PC, loaded the stick and sat down in front of the screen.
‘Since you’re Japanese,’ she said as she squinted at the screen and began clicking the mouse, ‘you should be able to make a decent cup of green tea. Why don’t you rustle some up while I look at this? Red and black caddy in the kitchen.’
‘Is it Japanese tea?’ Wada asked before she could stop herself.
Morrisette glanced up at her over the frames of her glasses. ‘Rather than that Chinese crap, you mean? Yeah. Organic Sencha. From a tea garden near Kyoto. Good enough?’
‘Good enough.’
Boiling water and brewing the tea took Wada about five minutes. During that time she heard several exclamations from the dining room. ‘What the fuck?’ seemed to be Morrisette’s favourite.
She was still immersed in the Emergence files when Wada delivered the tea. Wada sat with her cup at one end of the table and watched Morrisette at the other, glaring and grimacing at the screen while she fiddled with the mouse and took occasional loud slurps of tea.
There was an overfilled bookcase behind her. Almost all of the titles Wada could see were scientific in nature, with a bias towards climatology. There were bound runs of various journals as well: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Scientific American; International Journal of Climatology.
Five minutes passed, then another five. Wada said nothing. And Morrisette spoke only to herself, in muttered expressions of disbelief. Her brow was set in a permanent frown. The glasses were so far down her nose they seemed perpetually about to slip off.
Then, at last, she sat back in her chair and looked down the table at Wada.
‘You’ve read this?’
Wada shook her head. ‘No. I have been travelling without a computer. And … you are the expert, not me.’
‘Yeah. I’m the expert. Supposed to be.’
‘There is something wrong?’
Morrisette exhaled explosively. ‘You could say that. But tell me, this is all framed as a catalogue of lots to be auctioned on April seventeenth. That’s five days ago. As far as you know, the auction went ahead?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘Yeah. Of course it did. The fuckers.’
‘What is wrong, Dr Morrisette?’
‘This isn’t the list I signed off on. You get it, Wada? The doctor’s list has been doctored.’
‘How?’
‘That NDA I mentioned probably prohibits me from saying.’
‘Surely not, if this is not the list as you authorized it.’
‘Interesting argument.’ Morrisette fell silent for a moment. Then she jumped up and hurried out into the kitchen.
By the time Wada had caught up, Morrisette was punching a number into her phone. ‘Who are you calling?’ Wada asked, but only got a go-away-or-shut-up gesture in reply. She opted for shutting up.
A moment passed, then Morrisette started talking. Her tone was abrupt and demanding. ‘It’s me. Call me if something urgent crops up, you said. Well, it just has. Get back to me asap. Trust me, Vinod, you don’t want to leave me hanging on this.’
She ended the call and slammed the phone back in the cradle, stood simmering for a few seconds, then looked at Wada as if she’d forgotten she was there.
‘Where did you get the stick, Wada?’
‘I told you. A Quartizon employee.’
‘Name?’
‘I have an informal non-disclosure agreement with him. Or her.’
‘I bet you do.’
‘The contents of the stick are genuine.’
‘Like you’d know. But I know. It’s genuine all right. How would you describe Nishizaki? I’ve never actually met him.’
‘Neither have I.’
‘But you’ve investigated him. So, give me some words. Ruthless?’
‘Yes.’
‘Treacherous?’
‘I think so.’
‘Greedy?’
‘Probably.’
‘Don’t worry about probably. What they’ve done with Emergence clinches the point. It’s greed on a grand scale. With treachery and ruthlessness thrown in.’
‘Please explain it to me, Dr Morrisette.’
‘And break my NDA? It’s tempting. It’s very tempting.’ Her phone began to ring at that moment. She looked down at it. ‘That’ll be Hardekar. Tell you what, Wada. Listen to this conversation and I reckon you’ll get the gist. Take a seat, why don’t you?’
As Wada sat down at the kitchen table, Morrisette pressed a button on the phone to answer the call, but left it in its cradle, triggering the loudspeaker function.
‘That you, Vinod?’ Vinod. There was something familiar about the name, but Wada couldn’t place it.
‘Yes, Michaela.’ The voice was cultured and slightly Asian, probably Indian, as the name Vinod suggested. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘As number-crunching consultant on the Emergence project, I suspect you know there’s a problem.’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘Probably lucky for you. How’d the auction go?’
‘Very smoothly, thank you. If it’s your bonus you’re concerned about, there’s likely to have been some delay because of the banking shutdown over Easter, but I can fairly say you’ll be pleasantly surprised when—’
‘I’m going to get a bigger pay-off than I was bargaining for. Is that what you’re saying, Vinod?’
‘In essence, yes. Much bigger.’
‘A frenzy of competitive bidding, was there?’
‘You could say so … without exaggerating.’
‘I’ll bet. And then, of course, there were more lots than there rightly should have been, weren’t there?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I’ve got the catalogue file, Vinod. The real catalogue file. The enhanced catalogue file.’
‘There was only one catalogue, Michaela.’
‘Oh yeah? And who wrote it?’
‘I’m not absolutely sure I—’
‘Cut the crap, Vinod. Who do you work for? Who do I work for? Who does Driscoll work for?’
‘Well, ultimately, we all answer to Mr Nishizaki.’
‘So, he approved this, did he?’
‘I assume so. I don’t have direct dealings with him.’
‘Is he a climatologist?’
‘I think you know he isn’t.’
‘Are you?’
‘No.’
‘Or Driscoll?’
‘No. Look, Michaela, where—’
‘I’m the fucking climatologist, Vinod. Agreed?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘So, when I identified the areas that would be rendered cultivable and/or habitable by rising temperatures, I did so based on a rigorous and painstaking analysis of all the available data. Everything. Altitude. Drainage. Geology. You understand?’
‘You’re the expert, Michaela. No one’s ever disputed that. Your findings were invaluable in delivering the project. That’s why your bonus is—’
‘I don’t want to hear any more about my fucking bonus. Listen to me very carefully. Someone at Quartizon added extra lots by extending the areas shown as viable in my report. Are you aware of that?’
‘Could I ask how you are aware of it?’
‘Someone sent me the catalogue file.’
‘Who?’
‘Someone who thought I ought to know you’d decided to make a shitload of extra money by shafting my professional reputation. Have you any idea what you’ve done?’
‘If there’s been some modest … extrapolation of your—’
‘You can’t extrapolate under an ice sheet, Vinod. Most of the bedrock in central Greenland is below sea level because of the weight of the ice on top of it. Below sea level means underwater when the ice melts. Add to that the marginal area that’ll be flooded by rising sea levels and you have a tight limit on what can legitimately be projected as viable. You can’t ignore topographical facts. But that’s what you’ve done. Not just in Greenland. Everywhere. As far as I can tell, you’ve extrapolated your way to about thirty per cent more land. And you’ve sold it, haven’t you? Sold it for as much as you could get. But it doesn’t exist. It’s going to be under the fucking ocean. You’ve cheated whoever bought those lots. You’ve defrauded them.’
‘I don’t think you should throw a word like “defrauded” around, Michaela. People might misunderstand you.’
‘There’s no misunderstanding. It’s what you’ve done. And you’ve put my name to it.’
‘Perhaps I should ask Peter to call you.’
‘Did he authorize this?’
‘Obviously, as CEO of Quartizon, he saw and approved the final package.’
‘And Nishizaki? Did he see and approve it?’
‘He would have … set the parameters within which Quartizon … developed the business model for Emergence.’
‘Spare me the corporate doublespeak, Vinod. What you’re basically saying is that this fraud was planned at the highest level.’
‘I do advise you to stop referring to fraud, Michaela. It’s a highly emotive word.’
‘OK. I’ll make it simple for you. All sales that don’t match areas categorized as viable by me have to be cancelled. Immediately. You understand?’
‘That is quite impossible. There can be no cancellations. The consequences of acknowledging any kind of deficiency in the process would be … catastrophic.’
‘Well, we’ll see about that. I’m going to take this to the top.’
‘You mean Nishizaki?’
‘I do.’
‘Drawing this to his attention would be … most unwise.’
‘That’s not how I see it, Vinod. How I see it is he’ll have to make a choice. Either he fesses up to your clients or I do whatever I have to do to protect my reputation.’
‘What might that be, Michaela?’
‘I don’t know. Media exposure, maybe.’
‘Not a good idea. Not a good idea at all.’
‘Exactly. Which is why I confidently expect Mr Nishizaki to see reason.’
‘I’m really not sure—’
‘’Bye for now, Vinod.’
She ended the call and
smiled grimly at Wada. ‘Catch the drift of all that, did you?’
‘I think so,’ said Wada.
‘Maybe you’re going to tell me I should never have got into bed with people like Nishizaki and Driscoll. You’d be right. But I knew that anyway. The money was just too good to turn down. The research I can fund with it … will be transformative in my field. Would be transformative, that is. I can kiss goodbye to my academic career if it gets out that I’ve aided and abetted a scam like this.’
‘What exactly did you believe you were doing for Quartizon?’
‘Identifying areas of land within the North Circumpolar region that will become viable for cultivation and habitation as a result of climate change later this century. That’s why the project was called Emergence in the first place. Because out of the carnage climate change will wreak elsewhere, some exciting opportunities will open up in the soon to be no longer frozen north. Quartizon’s plan was to acquire options on as much of such land as possible and sell the options to the highest bidder. Who were those bidders? The sovereign wealth funds of rich countries likely to be hardest hit by global warming for starters, I imagine, like Middle Eastern oil-producing states awash with money but surveying a parched future and not liking the view. Plus stupendously wealthy individuals hoping to bequeath a high-latitude bolthole to their grandchildren. How Quartizon hoovered up the options was none of my concern, but, looking at many of the locations in the catalogue file, they must have bribed government officials to release state-owned land, unless the title legalities are fake, which I suppose is possible. Because a lot of the land’s fake, after all. It doesn’t exist in a viable condition and is never going to, for the reasons you heard me spell out to Hardekar. You get it, Wada? They grafted a great big con on to my closely reasoned projections.’
‘Do you really intend to complain to Nishizaki?’
‘Too right I do. I can’t let them get away with this. I don’t want anyone thinking I was their willing accomplice. Maybe Quartizon are banking on buying my silence with a humungous bonus. They’ll probably argue no one will work out they’ve been sold a pup until it’s too late to do anything about it. But that’s not a risk I’m willing to take. The climatological verifications all lead back to me. And about a third of them are totally bogus. You don’t seriously think I’m going to lie down under that, do you?’
The Fine Art of Invisible Detection Page 26