Prodigal

by T M Heron

There’s a small silence. I wonder if I’ve picked the wrong solicitor. Maybe Sarah Choy would have been better. She’s got no soul. Only, Frederick worked closely under Mel. He’s seen the files already. And along with everyone else at Bakers, I like him.

  “Ribjoy Productions and Neptune Group. Not a problem,” Frederick says finally. And does well at faking a look of healthy confidence. The only thing that exposes his discomfort is a small tic in his jaw. But his decision is cemented. I’m a partner, after all. And Mel is a good two years off.

  “Ribjoy is only there because of Chinese walls,” says Frederick. “They did a damning doco on Immigration, which is one of Finch’s clients.” He hesitates. “I didn’t work much on the Neptune Group. It’s a software company. Mel and Gordon Nesbitt played it close to their chests. So maybe there’s something contentious there.”

  I offer no affirmation or approval. Frederick will need to go above and beyond at any stage I deem necessary, if he comes across to my team. So best he understands this expectation up front. Stealing files will be just the beginning.

  When Frederick has gone I speed-dial Eliza. “I need Jo’s CV.”

  Within seconds she is standing in my office door. “Might I have a word, out here?”

  We walk a small way down the corridor. “Your office is bugged, right?” she asks.

  “It is. But I don’t care if the cops know I’m looking at Jo’s CV.”

  Eliza looks coy.

  “What?”

  “HR were no help whatsoever. So I went through their system myself.”

  “God, is there any system here you can’t breach?”

  “I rolled out that system when I was in IT. Anyway, there is no sign of Jo’s CV on that system. So I went through each of their emails around the time Jo was employed. There was nothing there either. Then I went through the system back-ups. Still nothing.”

  We exchange a look of shared outrage that her hacking has reaped nothing.

  “I’m going to tag Jo’s name in a firm wide email search next,” says Eliza. “It’s not exactly something I want to get caught doing, so it may take some time.”

  “Great idea,” I say. She looks like she’s about to start making small talk, so I turn and start walking back up the corridor. I can see why she didn’t want to have this conversation in my office.

  38

  It’s the day of Jo’s funeral. She’s been gracing the mortuary chiller for ten days now, thanks to the airline strikes in Europe. Despite the appalling weather I have a warm feeling in my gut today. Finally the woman will be under ground.

  With just about everyone in Corporate at the funeral I take the opportunity to lock my office door and retrieve everything from my secret compartment. Looking at all the powerful people I can influence always gives me an energized buzz.

  Take Jo’s letters to Mel, for example, on firm letterhead. The colossal cheek of the woman. If I wanted to divert the focus of the official investigation away from me, I could hand these over to the cops.

  I pick up my next treasure, a Lily’s receipt, but something is nagging at me from Jo’s notes to Mel. Reluctantly I smooth the receipt and place it back in the box with its roommates. I re-examine Jo’s letters to Mel. What is it about them that bothers me? They are sly and cunning and reek of Jo right down to the typo.

  Mel, I know what you did and id disgusts me. You don’t deserve what you have. Jo.

  Mel, you should be ashamed of yourself. Why should you have it all? Jo.

  Would this be enough for Mel to have killed Jo? I’d never have given this cause for consideration before. But Mel is certainly in no hurry to part with his wife. Then again, it would seem Tara is currently taking a back seat to a certain hooker in Mel’s affections.

  I think back to finding Jo dead. The incongruous combination of her relaxed body, startled-looking eyes and a gaping great yawn in her throat. Would Mel really be capable of that?

  Once again I curse the godforsaken coincidence that had a second person turning up to kill Jo at exactly the same time I’d gone there to do it myself.

  I force myself to relax. Refresh my face with a sea-mineral spritz that I happened to pocket while I was in Jo’s bedroom. I’ve torn the label off it of course. La Mer. Ava uses the same product line. Exorbitantly priced. How Jo bagged herself such a wealthy husband I’ll never know. I try to picture her 20 kilos lighter but all I see is her sitting in the chair, dead, with a crimson smile.

  Suddenly I know what is wrong with the letters to Mel. They’re on old letterhead. Six months ago Bakers paid a specialized firm to update our branding. I remember it well because tens of thousands of dollars later all they did was slightly change the angle of the B.

  Regardless of the futility of that exercise, all old letterhead was shredded. Jo, for reasons that currently defy me, may have held on to some of the old letterhead. Or, and it’s a stretch, she may have written the threatening notes when that letterhead was current. Which would have had to be a minimum of six months ago.

  I drop the notes back down on my desk. Spritz my face again because it’s important to stay hydrated. If Jo wrote these notes six months ago, they don’t relate to Mel cheating on his wife at Lily’s.

  Did Jo have something else over Mel?

  I still struggle conceptually with Mel cutting Jo’s throat. I struggle even further with the prospect of him allowing me to bear the brunt of the investigation into her murder. Besides being my best friend at Bakers, Mel is just too nice a person.

  Still, it’s another new idea to present to Ingrid when we meet today after the funeral. It’s another angle the cops won’t have covered — she’ll like that. I cut a modest line of coke out on the desk. It’s still hours until I meet Ingrid and already my gut feels hollow and I have peculiar sensations in my chest. I make the executive decision that my time will be best spent browsing David Jones for some incidentals to enhance the basement.

  ◆◆◆

  I probably shouldn’t have shopped high. That said, I’ve never taken so much pleasure in choosing furniture. Not even my office furniture. The problem is, with Ingrid as the end goal and so much money to spend, it’s easy to go a little crazy.

  Given we’re in a basement I’ve gone for industrial chic. Our meeting room is now adorned with a three-seater Italian leather couch, a fur throw and Moroccan scatter cushions. In front of the couch is a large, battered, leather chest with rusty hinges and solid metal bolts. I’m using it as a coffee table. It looks as if it’s spent the last hundred years in the attic of some chateau in France and given the price perhaps it has. Beside the couch is a standalone, caged, chandelier lamp. Behind an occasional chair in the corner a dehumidifier quietly hums.

  I’ve purchased a fridge from the same store as the dehumidifier. Discreetly parked out of sight I’ve stocked it with a range of delicatessen items, a couple of bottles of good wine and a bottle of champagne. On top of the fridge is a bottle holding fragrance sticks — natural of course, as I don’t like breathing in chemicals. Which is slightly ironic given the amount of recreational chemicals I snort, swallow and otherwise imbibe.

  “Oh my God,” says Ingrid, genuinely surprised out of her normal cool. She looks down at the antique floor rug. “Are you sure we should be standing on this?”

  “Of course.” I’m very glad now I haven’t yet had the wireless speakers installed. “It’s just a few things from home.”

  “They’re gorgeous.”

  And with those two words the entire shitstorm that has rained down on my life as of late becomes worthwhile. “Glass of wine?” I’m keeping it casual, but these are huge steps forward.

  “Long day, why not?”

  Ingrid throws her coat over the table and while I castigate myself for not having purchased a coat holder she arranges herself on the couch. She’s wearing a fitting black suit and killer heels and I’ve never seen a more perfect example of a woman. She fires up a laptop and rests it on her knees.

  “I think you’ll be pleased with the f
uneral footage,” she says.

  I sit down beside her. Not too close, but close enough to view Jo’s funeral. This is the best unofficial date of my life. Well, to be fair, my first real date. The only emotions I’ve experienced on dates with previous women were boredom and contempt. With a little luck, soon I’ll have a girlfriend because I want one and not just to complete the picture.

  Jo’s funeral is a large affair but not a grand affair.

  “It’s open casket,” I say, horrified.

  “Her clothes would have covered the wound.”

  “It’s a cheap casket,” I say, horrified. I think back to my father’s regal casket, lovingly chosen by my mother. “Where’s the tight-ass husband?”

  “Front row.”

  Ingrid taps a key and zooms in on Jo’s husband. “Meet Maurice Johnson.”

  Maurice Johnson sits in the front row on the left side of his daughter who of course is wearing her St Andrews uniform. There are no tears from either, but then they’ve had three weeks to acquaint themselves to Jo’s demise.

  Maurice’s in-laws, on the other hand, positioned on the right of Jo’s daughter, look to be in total shock. They’re no doubt jetlagged as well and appear to be putting every last effort into holding one another up. A scraggle of family members surround them, no doubt excited by the publicity and anxious for their ten minutes of fame.

  I refocus my attention on Maurice. The man with whom Jo presumably fell in love, married and bred. Much to my surprise he’s not unattractive. He is tall and well-built, even macho in a hunter-ish way. I can see him helicoptering off into the wilderness with his equally robust friends.

  “Surely she can’t have been the size she is now when they married,” I mutter. “He’s okay-looking and he’s got money. He could’ve done way better.”

  “This is the thing,” says Ingrid. “I caught up with my friend after the funeral. The cop who’s involved with the investigation.”

  A rush of something unpleasant surges through me at this thought and I wash it away with wine.

  “He told me the husband is a roading construction supervisor. Not a big earner at all.”

  “He has to be. They’ve got a daughter at St Andrews,” I say. “That’s at least thirty grand a year. Then there’s all the extracurricular activities on top of that. Anthony’s kid went on a school trip to France last year.”

  “She’s there on a scholarship.” Ingrid taps in further so we can study the daughter. “They learnt that through Anthony Hartman.”

  I sigh. Anthony is on the school board so this will be accurate.

  “The kid looks like a dullard,” I say. “She doesn’t look like scholarship material. Don’t scholarship recipients have to be all-rounders? That’s not an all-rounder we’re looking at.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about looking into the grounds for her scholarship,” says Ingrid. “I know the dean at St Andrews. I’ll see if I can buy him lunch.”

  She scrolls back out from the close-up on Jo’s dullard kid. I shift incrementally closer to her and try to keep my breathing normal while still focusing on the screen. I’m not happy about Ingrid having lunch with the dean. Hopefully he’s a very old man.

  The contingent from Bakers sit towards the back of the church in a tight-knit, dark-suited group. Some of them are surreptitiously scanning through their phones and texting. I’m sure they wouldn’t have been so irreverent at my father’s funeral. It annoys me to be comparing my father to Jo because, as much as I despised him, he was from a different universe from Jo. I momentarily wonder what Ingrid’s cop friend looks like, feel vaguely nauseous then want to punch myself.

  Ingrid zooms in again. “He looks agitated.”

  She’s spotted Frederick Young, who no doubt plans to leave the funeral early to steal the files I need from Mel’s office. He looks as though he’s about to detonate a suicide vest and I feel my upper lip curl in disgust. “He always looks like that. He has a nervous disposition.”

  I scan the group for Mel. “Do you know Mel Kilbride?”

  “No.” Ingrid remains fixated on the screen.

  “Mel has a mistress. And when Jo was killed he showed me some threatening notes Jo had sent him. He led me to believe it was over the mistress, but the notes were written on firm letterhead that was updated six months before he met the mistress. So I’m thinking the notes were actually written about something else.”

  “That’s great. Do the cops know?”

  “Not as yet. Problem is, Mel’s a good guy and I just can’t see him killing anyone, let alone cutting their throat.”

  “We never know as much about people as we think we do.” She says this so seriously I have to hide a smile. Sooner or later Ingrid will move into my house, and we will marry. And if she wants children, well, this is the first time I’ve thought about children, but the idea is not as repugnant as I would have thought, if it was to be with her. It might be nice to have a daughter to protect from men like myself, and a son to keep an eye on lest he pushes his sister off a roof.

  But I’ve digressed. My original thought was that sooner or later Ingrid and I will be together. And she’ll never have known less about someone than she’ll know about me.

  “That’s Mel there,” I say. “Oh my God.”

  Mel sits on the outskirts of the group near the end of a pew. And right beside him, acting like a total stranger who just happens to be sitting at the end of the same pew, is Mary-Anne.

  “That’s the mistress,” I say weakly. “I can’t believe he’d be so stupid.”

  “Maybe they’re in love?”

  “Men like Mel don’t fall in love with escorts. He’s going to make a total idiot out of himself if he doesn’t rein it in.”

  “You’re assuming it’s optional.”

  “Everything is optional. Everything’s a choice,” I say. But when I look at Ingrid and my chest tightens, I’m no longer certain these words are the absolute truth I believed them to be.

  “I’m reviewing some matters Mel was using Jo for,” I say absently. “Perhaps something will come of that.”

  “The cops could probably get to the bottom of this faster.”

  I shake my head. “No cops. They’ve done nothing but harass me. I’m not helping them.”

  “They’re under a lot of pressure right now,” says Ingrid. “What with that earlier murder, and now this. And that’s on top of the Park Rape Team stuff. The entire city’s on high alert.”

  A jolt goes through me. “Does the Park Rape Team bother you at all?” I ask.

  “Not on my behalf. Anyone who abducts teenagers is hardly going to be interested in me.”

  Wrong!

  Our conversation turns to the topic of police harassment and I pretend to have a much more moderate view than I do because I don’t want her to despise me. Ingrid seems to drink more when she is elocuting, so I debate back with rigor.

  It’s 10.30 p.m. when she leaves, putting on her coat and disappearing into the night. I lie back on the couch and I can still smell her. I pull the throw over me. I’m going to sleep here tonight. It’s going to be a long one for the undercovers in their cold, dark car. Let them wonder how I have the energy to be pulling an all-nighter or, even better, start worrying I may have given them the slip.

  39

  On Saturday morning I feel tired and scratchy. Despite the rabbit-fur throw I didn’t sleep well on the couch that smelt of Ingrid. Instead I lay awake with my thoughts jumping from Ingrid to the investigation and back again. The thought of her having a lunch date with a private-school dean is still there in my consciousness as well. In the end I had to take something to calm me down. Then I awoke feeling groggy and I’ll most certainly need something to perk me up as the day goes on.

  I trudge downstairs and buy a Dominion Post. Our second advertisement is on page three. Momentarily I perk up, thinking about what Finch and Pacitto’s reactions will be on seeing it. Helpless fury, no doubt. Hopefully they’re also both wondering how many more times these
will be published. They have no idea that this is the last planned advertisement. For all they know I could have them repeating twice weekly for the next year. I certainly have the resources.

  I sit at my desk and review the latest hotline transcripts. There is so much crap I can barely believe it. The ads so far have been a waste of time and funds. Not that I’ll be sharing this with Finch or Pacitto.

  Frederick Young arrives mid-morning. He looks uncomfortable when he hands me the copied files. It turns out he did come back early from the funeral to steal them.

  “How was the funeral?” I say cheerily, and motion for him to sit.

  “Sad. Tragic,” says Frederick.

  Once again, I feel disappointed in him. He’s not like me at all. But he is bright, and he is ambitious. And unbeknown to him, now he’s broken into Mel’s cabinet there’s no going back.

  “You and Mel, uh, are good friends,” says Frederick. He looks at the files on my desk as if he’s just printed out child porn. They’re in plain, unlabeled manila folders. “I hope you’d never, you know, tell him about this over drinks or anything.”

  I shake my head firmly. “I expect complete loyalty from everyone on my team, Frederick. And in turn I’ll look after you. Don’t be too worried about this, though. I’ve done it this way to make it easier for Mel. He can’t legally show me these files. It would have put him on the spot for me to ask. And there’s probably nothing in them. You can destroy them yourself when I’m finished, if it’d make you feel better.”

  Frederick looks slightly more settled. There was a gleam in his eye when I talked about looking after him. And I will. Having a tight knit trusted few is crucial for my ongoing survival at this level. But he’ll need to rapidly develop a more flexible conscience.

  “Why don’t you walk me through these jobs?”

  “Like I said, the first file, Ribjoy Productions was contentious because of their previous little exposé on Immigration.” Frederick’s demeanor perks up and he talks with confidence and authority now he’s on known territory. “But most recently we took on a mandate to purchase them from Donnavans, who you’ll recognize as long-standing clients of Gordon’s. A week later Tomlin & Mackal approached Leo about entering the bidding pool. Both sides were amenable to Chinese walls. As it turned out neither side won. Ribjoy was bought by a subsidiary of the Long Country Group.”