Crucifixion Creek

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You don’t look happy.’

  He shrugs.

  ‘I can give you some CDs to help you relax, sleep better. What do you do to unwind?’

  ‘I go running. And I help my wife with the cooking. Most of the time she doesn’t really need help, but I get nervous with her and knives, and the food processor, and the, umm, julienne thing.’

  He leaves after making an appointment for the following week.

  When he’s clear of the building he puts in a call to Deb. She’ll be awake now, getting ready for the night shift that he should be on. He tells her he’s taking some leave, but would like to be kept up to date with any developments in Greg’s murder.

  ‘Are you okay about that, Deb?’

  ‘Yes, sure, Harry.’

  ‘He made two calls from his mobile about three hours before he died, to his wife and my wife. These are the numbers…I’d really like to know where he was when he made those calls. Also, I’d be interested in any other calls he made in the twenty-four hours before his death.’

  ‘The investigators will be getting all that stuff, Harry, but I don’t know if I can access it.’

  ‘Who’s doing it?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find out.’

  ‘I don’t want you to do anything you’re uncomfortable with. I’m a bit on the nose at the moment.’

  ‘That’s okay. I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’

  After dinner he switches the lights off in the house so that it’s the same for both of them and they dance together, he and Jenny in the dark. He remembers he didn’t tell the psych about the dancing. Over in the corner Jenny’s computer glows like a jealous lover waiting for its blind date.

  ‘Could you hack into Greg’s email account?’

  ‘Of course.’

  8

  A couple of years ago Greg asked Harry to be his executor along with Nicole, and the following day Harry picks her up and takes her to a meeting with the solicitor. Her doctor has given her something; she seems groggy and passive. The will is straightforward—Greg has left everything to Nicole—but the solicitor passes on a message from Greg’s accountant asking that the executors get in touch with him. Harry calls him and arranges to go straight over there. When they get to the car Nicole yawns and says she just wants to go to bed, so Harry drops her home and goes on alone.

  The accountant’s office is in a suburban shopping centre, above a fast food outlet. Sam Peck is a small, rotund, cheery man and he has a bag of golf clubs sitting in the corner of his office, like a promise to himself. This, together with the smell of old grease that seems to have saturated everything, does little to fill Harry with confidence. He apologises for Nicole’s absence and Peck smiles his sympathy and says actually it’s a relief.

  ‘A relief?’ Harry queries.

  ‘Well, to be frank, Greg was pretty hopeless with his business finances, and I really don’t know what I could tell her about where she stands. He was a great builder—I know because he did the extension on our house—but hopeless with the accounts. End of year was always a nightmare, chaotic records, all at the last minute. Building’s a rollercoaster business at the best of times, but Greg made it that much harder.’

  ‘But you were his accountant.’

  Peck waves a hand airily. ‘He didn’t confide in me, Harry. Nor in anyone else as far as I can tell. Have you met his manager? Peter Rizzo. He organises the building side, the sub-contractors and suppliers and so on, but not the financial side.’

  ‘You think there’s a problem?’

  ‘He always sailed close to the wind, living on credit, not chasing up debts. A few years ago he was on the verge of bankruptcy—some local council very nearly tipped him over, holding back on payments, Greg didn’t force the issue, got in deeper and deeper—came very close to going under.’

  ‘And you think that’s happening now?’

  ‘I don’t know, but there have been worrying signs. Earlier this year—February, March—he ran out of cash again. Bank refused to extend his loans and he asked me to find him another source of credit in a hurry. I ran into problems with that, then he said he’d found someone. Company called Bluereef Financial Services, good address in the city, Bligh Street.’

  ‘But?’

  Peck shifts uneasily in his seat. ‘I hadn’t heard of them. I asked Greg to let me check them out but he was in a hurry, just showed me a business card and told me he’d already agreed a deal with this guy. Well, there wasn’t much I could do. I asked him for copies of the contract documents and he never gave them to me. But the name on the card rang a bell—Alexander Kristich. I couldn’t place him at first, but then I thought—not that name exactly, but close—Sandi Krstić. There was a fuss about him three or four years ago, up in Queensland, peddling property finance on the Gold Coast. A lot of customers got burnt, ASIC was slow to investigate and when the press got too nosy he disappeared.’

  ‘You think it’s the same man?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe. Greg said you’re a copper. Maybe you could check him out.’

  ‘Have you got anything specific against him?’

  ‘No, nothing. But anyone lending money to Greg at that stage was either a hopeless businessman or a shark.’

  ‘So what should we do now?’

  ‘Well, maybe you should talk to Peter Rizzo. If you can get me their books, bank records and copies of any loan agreements and contracts Greg may have entered into, I might be able to draw up some kind of balance sheet and forecast for you. I’ll have to charge the estate for my time though.’

  Harry agrees and makes a note of the documents Sam Peck needs.

  It is raining when he turns into the short stretch of private concrete road that serves the small industrial estate on Crucifixion Creek. There are weeds growing through the cracks in the roadway and puddles forming on the uneven surface. At the corner is a forlorn yard stacked with half a dozen shipping containers, and beyond it a small ceramic tile warehouse, a spraypaint workshop, a monumental mason’s yard heaped with stone slabs, and several unidentified sheds. Among them Harry sees the sign for Greg March, Builder. Two utes stand out the front.

  Inside a man is bent over a long bench assembling cupboard units. There is a strong smell of sawdust and raw cement. In one corner of the shed an office has been partitioned off and a man is sitting inside at a table talking into a phone. Harry knocks on the open door and the man looks up, finishes his call and gets to his feet.

  ‘Peter Rizzo? I’m Harry Belltree, Greg’s brother-in-law. I’m here on behalf of Mrs March.’

  They shake hands. ‘Terrible business. We’re all in shock. How is Nicole?’

  ‘Taking it hard.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Nicole and I are Greg’s executors, so I need to get a picture of the business.’

  ‘Yeah, of course. I’ve been trying to do the same thing.’ He gestures to a tall pile of papers in a tray.

  ‘You’re not on top of it?’

  ‘Over there is my desk.’ Rizzo points to i
t. Clear surface, phone and computer neatly squared up, a shelf of numbered file boxes above. ‘I handle the running of the jobs. Subbies, suppliers, making sure they deliver on time, that kind of thing. Greg’s desk’s over there…’ It is hard to see the desk itself because of the spillage of building plans and papers. ‘Greg handles…handled the other stuff—clients, planners, the banks, all that stuff. He let me in on some of it, but…’ The look of bafflement on Rizzo’s face tells its story.

  Harry goes over to Greg’s desk and pulls out a drawer at random. It is full of envelopes from the ATO, all unopened. He says, ‘The accountant needs to get a handle on how it all stacks up at this moment.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so. I’ve just been worrying about keeping the jobs going.’

  ‘Do you have any help? A secretary?’

  ‘Did have. Jamila left last week—maternity leave. She was a smart girl. Maybe I could ask her to come back for a week to help me out. Greg was supposed to get another girl, but I don’t think he got around to it.’

  ‘Things piling up, were they?’

  ‘Yeah, money worries. He was talking about laying a couple of the blokes off.’

  ‘Well, if you could gather up all the financial stuff, and maybe make a summary of the jobs and where they’re at, we can get the accountant started, and then we can all sit down together and decide what needs doing.’

  ‘Okay. In the meantime, can I pay the guys’ wages?’

  Harry thinks for a moment. It occurs to him that he’s only ever worked for the government—the army or the police—and this is very different territory, a murky place of uncertain decisions and unknown consequences. ‘I guess so. Make a record of everything you spend, and send it daily to Sam Peck.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Try to hold off paying invoices.’

  Rizzo gives an unhappy laugh. ‘From the phone calls I’ve been getting, Greg’s been doing that for a long time.’

  ‘Any idea what he was doing out here that night? Was there an emergency of some kind?’

  ‘Not that I know of. Been wondering about that myself. I can’t think of anything, unless he was working on the books. He certainly didn’t say anything to me about coming here.’

  On the way back Harry thinks about Nicole. Does she understand any of this? Does she know what was going on?

  9

  Nothing happens the next day. He does a lot of running.

  On the following day, at the end of her shift, Deb Velasco gives him a call. ‘Harry, hi. How’s it going? Those two calls you asked about. They came from the CBD, through the tower in Bond Street.’

  ‘Right. Thanks.’

  ‘You asked about other calls that night? Nothing.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The disappointment must have sounded in his voice, because she adds, encouragingly, ‘But he left his phone on. We’ve tracked his movements. He did big circles in the western suburbs—Bankstown, Punchbowl, Lakemba, Riverwood.’

  ‘Really?

  ‘Yeah, for more than two hours. So the guys are asking themselves what he was looking for. Drugs? Girls? Boys? Sorry, but…’

  Harry takes a deep breath. What does he know? What does he really know about his brother-in-law? ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Yeah, well. I didn’t tell you, okay?’

  ‘Of course. Thanks, Deb. Thanks.’

  He pictures her, weary, putting her gun in her locker—one padlock—glancing at his shameful double locks, wondering if she should be cutting him loose.

  Jenny has found emails on Greg’s computer from ‘Sandy’. Bland confirmations of meetings. Is that Alexander Kristich, aka Sandi Krstić? Harry asks her to do a search. When Krstić vanished from the Gold Coast there were rumours he was living in Vanuatu. There is a Google photo from the Vanuatu Daily Post of him drinking on a palmy beach with the Australian high commissioner.

  Jenny has this thing. She keeps thinking about Greg’s call that fatal night. About the sounds in the background. She claims they are distinctive, that they can be tracked down. Harry is not convinced. What blurry background noises can a mobile phone pick up? This is Jenny’s compensation, he thinks. And it’s true that her hearing has sharpened considerably since the disaster. But don’t all lobbies sound alike? After some gentle resistance he agrees to take her on a tour of the CBD tower blocks.

  They concentrate on the hotels first, the Marriott, the Sofitel, the Hilton, the Intercontinental. On and on, wandering through the lobbies, Jenny frowning with concentration, then shaking her head. ‘Not here.’ Then they focus on the office towers. Jenny thinks there was an echo of some kind, a reverberation in the sounds, and thinks the surfaces must be hard—all of them are—and the space large, but most lift lobbies are relatively confined. She is excited by the tall lobby of Grosvenor Place, and spends some time testing the sounds from different positions, but finally shakes her head once again. Finally they reach the atrium of the Gipps Tower and as soon as she hears the chimes of the lifts she grips Harry’s arm and whispers, ‘This is it. This is where he phoned from.’

  Harry looks around, noting the cameras, the position of the information desk. Then he goes over to the board listing the tower’s tenants. His eye stops at the twenty-third floor—a lawyer, an advertising consultancy, and Bluereef Financial Services. He takes pictures on his phone of the whole list, and leads Jenny back out onto the street.

  They go to Nicole’s house. At the front door they meet Bronwyn, leaving to pick up the girls from school. She tells them that Nicole is very low today.

  Inside they find Nicole in the living room, staring out of the window. When she turns they can see how pale and drawn she looks. In just a few days she seems to have lost a lot of weight.

  ‘There’s a rock shelf just under this floor,’ she says, her voice flat. ‘When Greg bought this site we came here and clambered down to the shelf and sat there together, Greg going on about how he was going to build our nest here, and we would never leave it, and one day when we were old, sitting on our deck together overlooking that view, we’d remember that day.’

  Tears are running down her cheeks, and Jenny wraps her arms around her and holds her tight as she sobs. Harry makes tea, and when Nicole has become calmer, Harry broaches the subject of paperwork.

  ‘You know, insurance policies, bank statements, that kind of thing?’

  ‘Greg handled all that,’ Nicole says despairingly. ‘I think it’s all in the study.’

  ‘Would you like me to take a look?’

  ‘Would you, Harry? I’d be so grateful. We didn’t have any secrets.’

  Harry hopes not. But the stuff in the study is all domestic—bills, some share certificates, school reports, an insurance file. Greg took out a policy on his own life just six weeks ago. Did he sense his own mortality?

  10

  The coroner has released Greg’s body for a funeral, which takes place on a blustery winter day, the trees in the crematorium grounds swaying and flailing in the wind. All Greg’s employees have come, all men except for the heavily pregnant Jamila. Peter Rizzo tells Harry that she’s been helping him with the books, and they should have something ready for Sam Peck soon, maybe tomo
rrow. Greg’s daughters stand on each side of their mother, cheeks and noses pink in the chill, bravely shaking hands.

  That night Harry is woken from a dream of sliding out of control down a steep scree slope. The phone. He sucks in a deep breath and looks at the time—2:26. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Harry? Hello. Peter, Peter Rizzo.’ The voice is barely audible above a roaring noise. ‘There’s a fire, Harry, at the depot. I’m there now.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’ He tells Jenny and grabs his clothes.

  He sees the glow from blocks away. Closer, there are tongues of orange flame flicking above the rooftops of the Creek and an ominous red glow reflecting off the underside of a large black cloud. The entrance to the industrial road is closed off by emergency vehicles and Harry sees Peter there, standing mesmerised by the sight.

  ‘Paint,’ he says. ‘We took a big delivery of paint to finish off the Punchbowl job.’

  And timber, Harry thinks, and plastics, and all Greg’s business records. He wonders if Peter did it.

  ‘How did you hear?’

  ‘Someone called triple-O, and the cops had my number for emergencies. By the time I got here it was an inferno. They’re trying to save the buildings on each side, but they’ll be lucky I reckon.’ He turns to Harry with a desolate expression on his face. ‘It’s a bloody catastrophe, mate. On top of everything else…’

  They stand side by side watching the fire brigade struggle to control the blaze, feeling the gusts of heat on their faces.

  ‘Harry!’

  He turns and sees the reporter, Kelly Pool, pacing towards him, face manic in the eerie glow.