Blood Secret

by Jaye Ford

  ‘Careful, mate,’ Max said. ‘Trish might have to kill us if you talk about it.’

  Pav’s smile was brief, forced. ‘Turns out Trish was right. It found us here.’

  ‘What found you here?’

  He took a gulp of his vodka, rested his elbows on his knees and nursed the drink in the space between. ‘I took something from someone and he wants it back.’

  ‘What’d you take?’

  ‘Money.’

  Max paused as his eyebrows rose and fell. ‘How much?’

  ‘Not that much considering the amount that’d been flowing in and out. But I worked out where it was coming from, saw something I wasn’t meant to and then it wasn’t safe to stay. Trish was with me. We’d just started up and I wanted to get her away so I took, you know, fistfuls. I stuffed what I could in my pockets and down my shirt. I hit a guy, knocked him out. I think I broke his jaw. I locked him in a storeroom and . . .’ he shrugged, ‘. . . walked out with the money. Right past them, like I was going for a smoke.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘Serbia. Actually, it was Yugoslavia back then. We got on the first train going over the border and didn’t book a room until we were in Norway.’

  ‘Norway?’

  ‘Fucking cold place.’

  ‘So what’s the problem now?’

  He swallowed another mouthful of vodka. ‘The guy I took the money from came out here after the Bosnian War. He’s got an import business, brings in all kinds of food. A sales rep came to see me just by chance. He’s from over there, too. He recognised me, told his boss and now he wants his money back.’

  ‘Have you got it?’

  The look Pav gave him said it all. ‘I run a cafe in Haven Bay. It’s not a thriving metropolis. If Trish didn’t own the house, we couldn’t afford to stay.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  He pulled a breath in through his nose, blew it out through parted lips, took his time coming up with an answer. ‘Ask you for a loan.’

  38

  ‘I’m in!’

  Rennie heard Hayden’s shout from the bedroom and ran to the study. He was standing, both fists in the air like a boxer after a victory. She grinned. He held up a hand for a high five and she let him have it, the clash of their palms both harder than she expected and weirdly fraternal after their hostility.

  ‘Well done.’ She made for the chair but he wasn’t ready to give it up.

  ‘I went through a bazillion combinations,’ he said, sitting down, grabbing the mouse. ‘All Dad’s nicknames and made-up words and places he goes and types of boats he’s sailed and . . .’

  ‘And what was it?’

  ‘It’s right there.’ He pointed at the row of Post-Its. ‘I was just trying anything and I saw that: Dallas Worthwhile. First letter capitals, no space between.’

  Rennie found the words on a note above the monitor.

  ‘Worthwhile wasn’t Dallas’s last name, though,’ Hayden was saying. ‘It was Brownston.’

  ‘Dallas Brownston?’ She knew the name, couldn’t remember the context.

  ‘He was in the mine accident with Dad. He’s my god­father. Was my godfather.’

  Rennie frowned at the screen then up at the Post-It. He’d used his dead mate’s name for a password? ‘Worthwhile?’

  Hayden shrugged like it was nuts but hey, that was Dad.

  No, it was more than that. She straightened up, remembering now. When she was first sleeping with Max, he’d scared the crap out of her half-a-dozen times roaring out of nightmares. She’d joined him on the deck after a bad one, sat under a blanket in the glow of the floodlights and said nothing as he talked about Dallas – daft things they’d done, trips they’d taken, pranks, sailing, soccer. She’d wondered why he was thinking about it all at three o’clock in the morning. Then he told her about their last conversation, under the rock, in the dark. He didn’t look at her, didn’t move, barely spoke loud enough to hear. He’d used that word: worthwhile. Had said it over and over. I want to be worthwhile. I’m not sure how to be worthwhile. I only seem to know how to fuck up.

  Rennie remembered how useless she’d felt. An arm’s length away without a clue how to touch him. She didn’t know what he’d fucked up, only that he’d been fucked over – by his wife, by the coal company, by the insurance, by fate. She had no skills for providing empathy or reassurance so she just slid closer, draped the blanket around his shoulders and kissed his neck, hoped he understood that even after so short a time, worthwhile was an understatement.

  ‘So what are we looking for now?’ Hayden asked, hands poised above the keyboard.

  Max. She was looking for Max. She wanted him back. Hoped to God he hadn’t decided to join his friend Dallas.

  She squatted beside Hayden. James thought Max took the money from the business and had tried to get into the computer to confirm it or find it or trace it – she wasn’t sure which; she just wondered what Max would hide behind the password DallasWorthwhile. Maybe there was something in there that’d been transferred from or to a USB thumb drive. Something that was important to someone else. ‘I don’t know. Let’s just see what’s there.’

  There were the usual operating programs, music logs, game downloads, a couple of movies. Folders of photos. He had three cameras, different sizes for different occasions. Had he taken pictures someone wasn’t happy about? Easy to store on a thumb drive. ‘Open that one.’ She pointed, Hayden double-clicked.

  A large file unrolled, almost a thousand shots. She squinted at the first thumbnails. It would take ages to go through them. If he knew he had sensitive photos, if he was concerned enough to add a password, would he bury them in a bunch of other photos? What better place? Shit. ‘Let’s have a look at all the files first. We can go back to the pictures later if we need to.’

  There were other folders with quirky, Max-style titles: Jobs n Stuff for work contracts, The Go Tos for client contact lists, Show Me The Money for invoices, Work It Baby for what seemed to be work he’d brought home. Rennie touched the screen with the tip of a finger. ‘ “WTF” – what’s that one?’

  ‘What the fuck,’ Hayden said. It wasn’t an exclamation or a question and there was no attitude behind it.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘That’s what it means,’ he said. ‘W-T-F, What The Fuck.’

  For a computer folder? ‘Open it.’

  An index appeared on the screen. Nothing obvious.

  ‘Let’s have a look.’

  Hayden worked his way down the list, opening and closing the files. There were invoices, lists of figures, bank statements for MineLease accounts and a single written document.

  Rennie stood up, keeping her eyes on the screen as fear and uncertainty pounded in her chest.

  ‘What is it?’ Hayden asked.

  It was details of money and transactions, dates and accounts. Was this what James was looking for?

  ‘Shit.’ She paced the few steps across the small room. She didn’t know anything about running a business or engineering a fraud. Her crimes were for protection, escape, survival, not about deceit or sleight of hand.

  Hayden watched as she stalked back, waiting for the next instruction. It wasn’t Max, she told herself. He hadn’t taken the money; his password was DallasWorthwhile. And a voice in her head reminded her he’d also assaulted a man, disappeared for days and cheated on his wife. What else had he done?

  She tightened her jaw. ‘Right, Hayden. Go back to the invoices.’

  He put all six of them on the screen. They were bills that had come in during the past twelve months, varying amounts, the final one the largest by far and dated last week.

  Rennie kneeled beside him again, did some quick addition. ‘There’s more than half a million dollars billed here.’ It seemed like a lot of money
but as James had kindly reminded her, MineLease dealt in huge pieces of equipment.

  ‘They’re all from the same company. Does that matter?’ Hayden asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Pull up the figures.’

  ‘The ones from the bank or the other ones?’

  She frowned. ‘A couple of each.’

  It took a few minutes of squinting back and forth before she realised what she was seeing. The bank statements were scans of original paper copies, the kind financial institutions send in the mail. The lists of figures seemed to be from the same statements but cut and pasted from electronic versions, perhaps from online banking. Why the two? Maybe the scans were verification. Maybe the online versions were for use in another document. Maybe she didn’t have a clue. In the list of figures, some of the dates, account numbers and transaction amounts were marked in bold.

  ‘Open that one again.’ She pointed to a file titled watsNys, the written document. The first time, she’d just skimmed the page – now she took a minute to read.

  It wasn’t an official report – that much was clear. It read like notes jotted down as they came to mind. There were company names, job codes, a couple of towns up the coast were mentioned – Coffs Harbour, Forster, Byron Bay – the name S Baskin, sometimes Sondra Baskin, was there a few times. And some of the numbers were in bold.

  ‘Can you put a page of the figures in a separate window so we can compare the highlighted numbers?’

  Hayden shifted documents around until watsNys was side by side with a page of figures. The numbers in bold were the same. Dates, account numbers and dollar amounts.

  Rennie pulled the page from her pocket, the one she’d taken from Max’s office. Dates, amounts, accounts. Another matching set – this one in Max’s handwriting. There’d been a fourth set on his desk blotter.

  Was it the money he and James had argued about?

  James said he traced the money through their accounts and showed it to Max last week. He must have put this together, written the page of notes and given it all to Max.

  She thought about the argument Amanda had heard and the one James told her about. Had James discovered the money missing on Monday, spent the week digging through the accounts, put this together then accused Max of taking it on Friday?

  Hayden tapped the screen, his finger on a date. ‘That’s my birthday.’

  August 26. It fell on a Sunday this year and Rennie remembered how excited Max was to have him here – it was a long time since he’d celebrated his son’s birthday on the actual day. He’d put on a barbecue, blown up balloons and invited the usual suspects. They ate a mountain of fresh prawns and chicken kebabs and potato salad. Trish brought a mud cake and they sang a Happy Birthday that put the local bird population into flight.

  Rennie slipped the mouse out from under Hayden’s palm, clicked on other files. There were no invoices with that date but it was highlighted in the bank records and corresponded with a payment from a MineLease account. Not to a client. A resort in Coffs Harbour was paid six hundred and thirty-five dollars.

  A bewildered ‘huh’ escaped her lips.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Hayden asked.

  ‘Someone stayed in Coffs Harbour that weekend. Coffs Harbour is mentioned in the notes.’

  ‘Dad didn’t. He was here. He had a party for me.’

  ‘Mmm.’ What was important about the date?

  ‘Remember? Dad and Pete and me went swimming and nearly froze our arses off. And Pav didn’t get there until really late and Trish yelled at him for like an hour. And Aunty Naomi spewed in the garden. It was awesome.’

  Rennie raised amused eyebrows at his version of events. He’d seemed offhand and blasé about it afterwards but maybe he was more impressed than she’d given him credit for. She thought about the party again. The lake swim was the penalty for losing the team prawn-shelling competition and left the three of them shivering and almost blue. Naomi’s dash to the shrubbery came after five long months of morning sickness and she’d just wiped her mouth and laughed, ‘Well, there goes breakfast again.’ It was dark by the time Pav rocked up with beer and apologies. Rennie couldn’t recall where he’d been, somewhere up the coast, from memory. Trish was worried he hadn’t phoned then stood in the living room and shouted loud enough to make everyone on the deck turn their backs and pull faces about the awkward domestic moment.

  Rennie stared at the bank records. August 26. Coffs Harbour was north of here. Pav . . . was up the coast the day of Hayden’s party.

  He wasn’t at Skiffs today when the house was searched.

  He’d scared the hell out of her creeping around the dark yard last night – the evening the glove box was searched.

  Something cold slithered down her spine. If she was another kind of person, the kind she’d tried to be when she came to Haven Bay, she might cringe at the concept of suspecting someone she cared for. But she wasn’t. She understood firsthand that the crime statistics were right: the people closest to you were the most dangerous. And Pav was no angel. He had an array of scars on his hands and forearms and they weren’t all from kitchen work. She’d seen them before on other people. Tough men with bikes and guns and worse crimes than hers. You got them from fistfights and knives and brawls. There’d been trouble in Yugoslavia before he and Trish fled that neither of them talked about. And there was an angry, dark side to him that kept the staff at bay when it was exposed.

  She flicked her eyes over the screen, checking the dates against a calendar. A Friday in April, a Tuesday in June, a Thursday, a Monday – random days going back a year. She checked the amounts – they were all outgoing payments, some by internet transfer, some by credit card, large and small.

  ‘Which one next?’ Hayden asked.

  ‘Wait.’ She dropped a hand to his shoulder to hold him in place. ‘Let me think.’ Pav was at the cafe six days a week but it didn’t mean he hadn’t spent or moved the funds. And he could have searched the house and car. He wasn’t at work this afternoon and he’d never explained why he was creeping around last night.

  Was he looking for the USB thumb drive? Had he heard from Max and was helping to cover his tracks?

  Or was he involved with the money? He and Trish were tight for funds sometimes. Had things got too tight and Max helped them out with money from the business, money he hadn’t told James about?

  Yesterday, Trish said Max and Pav talked for hours after he got out of rehab. He’d told Pav about the affairs. It was some kind of confessional with a man who had a few sins of his own, Trish had called it. What else had they talked about? And what were Pav’s sins?

  Words came to mind: blackmail, cover-up, debts.

  *

  His skin was hot, his heart thumped like it’d been switched to high and he leaned again the wall like a sick dog. How far had he gone? His body said all the way to China. His brain said not nearly far enough.

  Gritting his teeth, he shifted an arm forwards and the other buckled under him. His cheek scraped across rock as he fell. His ribs twisted, his lungs spasmed. He would’ve sobbed if he had the energy. Unashamedly, without restraint, howling with the recognition of death barrelling towards him.

  His body was spent but his brain was still rolling out the memories. Not in a rush like it might if his life was flashing before his eyes, just in a slow, determined forwards progression as though it wanted to catch up before his lights went out.

  It’d meant a lot to him that Pav asked for a loan, that he thought he could without ruining the friendship. Max would’ve given him the money if he had it but almost everything was in MineLease – he worried about leaving debts these days, the kind of thing he never thought about before the cave-in.

  The conversation with James about withdrawing a portion of his profit share didn’t go well. It was six months earlier than they’d budgeted for and it prompted one of those weird James moments when you’d sw
ear he was hearing it in another language and needed to get in a translator. His face went blank and his lips almost disappeared in the effort of whatever he was stewing on.

  Max had folded his arms and waited it out, then listened to James huff and puff about how a business wasn’t a piggy bank, that it was irresponsible to just take money willy-nilly. Max had refrained from commenting on the ‘willy-nilly’ – who the hell said that? – and let him go on about schedules and structures and fore­casting. If Max took funds now, they could end up needing them down the track and surely he knew things were a little tight this year and his time would be better spent bringing in clients and not thinking about what he could waste money on.

  Max had seen enough of James’s patronising benders to know it was best to just let him get it off his chest but this one pissed Max off. He didn’t want the money for himself. Not that James had asked. He’d just let fly like Max was the lazy, incompetent half to the partnership.

  He’d stewed on it for a while then got on the computer to have a look at the figures for himself. Maybe the business could afford to help Pav some of the way.

  James lived up to the tight-arse reputation of his account­ing profession, which was one of the reasons Max had brought him in. He kept the invoicing up to date, chased the slow payers, produced regular financial statements for review, kept an eye on the budget and made sure they didn’t get ahead of themselves. They had several accounts and James shifted funds around, keeping sufficient avail­able to cover automatic deductions and making the most of interest schedules. At first Max couldn’t track it properly and was tempted to ask James to explain it but, still stinging from their earlier discussion, decided against admitting his ignorance.

  It took a while but he eventually got the gist and James was right: there was profit, just not as much as Max had calculated. He told Pav he could loan him a portion of the debt – enough to satisfy his ‘supplier’ in the short term, maybe let him set up some kind of payback scheme. The guy had done without the money for twenty years, surely he could wait a while longer.