by Andres Kabel
“What time did you visit Morrison?”
“Three o’clock. I was gone by 3:15.”
“What did you do after that?”
“I drove out along the bay and mulled things over. Done a lot of that over the last six years.”
“You just drove around?”
“Believe it or not, I did.” Friedman glared. But there was no violence in his body. “Ate some fish and chips and then drove around. Parked by the beach and walked. God help my family, sometimes they hardly see me, I’m so twisted by this business.”
Tusk knew from the case file that the police hadn’t been able to verify when Friedman drove out of the Southbank parking lot. The fish and chip shop owner couldn’t recall him. His wife had been fast asleep at whatever time he returned home.
“You know, Stan used to like to walk,” Friedman said on the drive back to the building site. “Hours and hours, he walked some nights, said it helped him think. That’s what happened, I can picture it. Keppel went for a walk with him that night, pushed him into the water, and watched him drown.”
Who are you, Kantor? Tusk asked the corpse in his mind’s gallery. The sainted family man? Or a murderous thief of ideas?
“Bob,” shouted one of Friedman’s workmen when they arrived back at the site. The air had cooled. The storm clouds looked swollen. “Come and look at this.”
“Friedman, do you have the Internet at home?” Tusk asked.
Friedman gave him a confused look. “Yeah. Why?”
Tusk scribbled in his notebook: Friedman is called Bob, could have written the email.
Friedman’s parting handshake, with a hand even more callused than Tusk’s, seemed almost grateful.
Tusk handed Friedman a business card. “Call me if you want to talk again.”
“As if.”
As Tusk drove off, wheels spinning in the dirt, he wondered how he could explain Friedman to Gentle. The developer had the motive, that was certain, and perhaps he could have hidden in the office to kill Kantor, but Tusk felt certain the man was innocent. Intuition, it was called, but how to explain that in polysyllabic words of logic?
CHAPTER 12
Peter tried panting to counteract sudden breathlessness. It didn’t work. The clatter of cutlery and voices cascaded all around him. Even halfway through the afternoon, the lunch crowd hadn’t dispersed. He dialed.
“Mandy Fitzgibbon.”
Peter gulped at the sound of the slightly husky, confident voice. “Hi, Peter here.”
“Peter.” She still had some of her bush accent. “Sounds like a long lunch. Some people have all the luck.”
Did she sound happy to hear from him? He cupped a hand over the mobile. “I’m in a restaurant in Southbank. E Gusto. Do you know it?”
“I’ve walked past it. Looks good.”
Why on earth had he fallen for someone so different from him?
***
Harvey Jopling, President of the Skulk Club, party animal extraordinaire, and workaholic investment banker, had been his savior back when 1998 drew to a close. Out of work and hating every minute of it, Peter leapt at the opportunity when Harvey offered him a contract with a Merrill Lynch acquisition team in Hong Kong. It proved to be backbreaking work around the clock, and at the end of every day, he’d come home and collapsed.
On a warm December morning, he trudged up to Merrill Lynch at 120 Collins. Hands deep in his pockets, he scowled at his reflection in the glass of Harvey’s office. I need a proper job, he thought. Waiting around for a bloody check isn’t my idea of life.
“Mr. Gentle?” Harvey’s secretary interrupted his thoughts. “Mr. Jopling just rang. He’s on his way from the airport. He’ll be with you in ten minutes.”
“He won’t get to be a director with that kind of service,” Peter said.
“I’ll try to get him a police escort.”
Startled, he looked over at a long, raw-boned face whose intensity belied the sarcasm. She was a tall, lanky woman with long black hair, smart-looking in a loose yellow top over a green skirt. Peter was drawn to her eyes, wide and strong.
“Just a joke,” he said. “Harvey and I are old friends.”
“Oh, are you in that club of his?”
Peter straightened his shoulders self-consciously, smoothed his hair. His stomach fluttered. “You mean the Skulk Club?”
“Yes. I’ve just started to type up the minutes. Can I ask you a question? Exactly what is the club about?”
Peter grinned. “It’s hard to say really. We’re a group of finance professionals of about the same age, who like to get together every month.”
“The minutes sound flippant. As if it’s all a big joke.”
He flushed. “Well, in one way it is. It’s good fun. But in another sense, it’s very serious. We’re likeminded. We help each other.”
“And why is it called the Skulk Club?”
Peter felt infinitely shy. “My nickname is Skull. Because I’m the most intelligent. You know, skull as in brain. And someone mispronounced it as Skulk Club, and it stuck.”
“How quaint.” Her mouth held the faintest hint of a sardonic tilt. “And this place Draconi’s, where you met in November. Is that always the location for the Skulk Club?”
“Always.” He walked over to her desk. “It’s the center of the universe. Haven’t you been there?”
Her fingers, resting on the keyboard, were long and harshly bony. “On a secretary’s wage? My name’s Mandy, by the way. Mandy Fitzgibbon.”
“I’m… I’m Peter.” Seized by a mix of terror and abandon, he plunged in. “Would you like to… I mean, can I take you to Draconi’s for lunch? Background for your minutes, you know.”
“Peter.” Harvey stormed down the corridor, fresh and vital. “Let’s do it.”
It took Peter ten minutes of banter to extricate himself from Harvey, check in pocket. On the way out, he stopped at Mandy’s desk. He struggled to speak.
“Sorry.” She smiled and Peter was struck by how wild her face became when it opened up. “You seem like a nice guy, but I’m taken at the moment.”
Later, he found out from Harvey that she’d moved to Melbourne from Ballarat a year earlier, that she was a single mother, that she was a great secretary, that she was writing a novel, and that she wasn’t taken at all.
***
“Today’s been lousy so far,” Peter said into the mobile, struck by how glum he sounded. Where was the keenness he’d felt in Bishop’s office? “But hey, Mandy, I’ve got a great new job.”
“That’s wonderful,” Mandy said.
“I’d love to celebrate.” He stalled, mouth dry as a drunk’s. During the months since meeting Mandy, he’d used every pretext to visit Merrill Lynch and chat with her. But courage to ask her out had failed him. But now he was a private detective… “What about Friday night?”
The mobile fell into silence. He strained to hear.
“Peter Gentle?” A short woman stood over him. “I’m Marcia Brindle.”
“Mandy?” he said.
“I’m still thinking,” Mandy said.
“I’ve got to go, I have an interview. I’ll ring you back.”
“Okay, then the answer is yes.”
Yes! Peter beamed as he hung up and unwound his slouched frame to stand.
“You look like you’ve just won the lottery,” Marcia said in a gravelly voice.
Peter’s impression of small stature faded the instant he shook her hand. She stood straight-backed, as if accustomed to commanding, in a severe gray jacket over a matching skirt. Blue eyes sized him up from under hair as white as any he’d ever seen, cut short and immaculate. Her face was craggy rather than what Peter would have called pretty, but it was an alert face, animated with activity.
“It’s a bit like that,” he said. “How did you know it was me, in all this?” He indicated the frenetic restaurant.
She placed a gray leather folder on the table and chuckled. “Rollo said you have hair like a rock star.”
/> Peter liked her instantly. It helped that she’d arranged to meet him at a nearby restaurant, rather than in her office, but there was also something recognizably decent underneath the imposing exterior. He knew her background. At age fifty-five, she was the company’s financial controller, and had taken care to inform her police interviewer that she was one of the few female accountants in Australia to have such a coveted position. She had known Rollo from his Coombs Holcomb days, in fact had been there when he joined in 1978, and had moved with him to Scientific Money. She was a passionate advocate of women in business, and a member of various groups of corporate women.
They ordered coffees. He had taken a table outside, beside a vertical heater. Blue-black clouds hung over the higgledy-piggledy skyline across the river. Gulls wheeled over swirling brown water.
Marcia drummed fingers on the paper tablecloth. Peter told himself to resist, but his renewed buoyancy made it impossible. He started up his own tattoo on the carpet.
“Marcia, who would want to harm Kantor?” he asked.
Marcia’s hands trembled momentarily. She lit a cigarette. Peter noted puffy bags under her eyes. She asserted control and exhaled over her shoulder. “Absolutely no one, Peter. I still can’t believe it even happened. In all my years, I’ve rarely found anyone who was genuinely liked as much as Kantor was. At times he’d come across as a bit arrogant, but all academics have a dose of that. It must be something they inculcate at university. But if anyone was entitled to a touch of superiority, it was him.”
“How did Rollo get on with him?”
“Like twins. That’s the way I can best describe it. Always together.”
“Did they ever quarrel?”
“At work? Never. They’d argue, that’s for sure. Rollo’s such a hardhead. He argues with all of us.”
She smiled wistfully.
“Marcia, you were in the office on the night of the murder. What were you working on?”
“Our April management accounts were a day late, so I stayed back to finalize them. And no, I don’t have any verifiable account of myself at the actual time of the murder. I was just at my desk, actually at my work table, poring over numbers.”
A party of schoolchildren peered over the flower boxes cordoning off the restaurant.
“You were seen talking with Kantor at about six. What were you arguing about?”
She squinted at him. “I’ve been through the third degree with the police on this, Peter. Kantor and I discussed the format of a management report. Nothing more. We got animated, but it was strictly professional. Do you know what it’s like to work in an office?”
What did he look like, a truck driver? “Of course I do. I’m an actuary.”
Warmth flooded Marcia’s face as she smiled. “Really? I’ve never worked with an actuary. I always liked that joke. What do you call an actuary? An accountant without a personality. I’ve never been sure if it’s a joke on your profession or mine. Anyway, you must know what a constructive discussion in the office looks like.”
Peter could concede that. If anyone had watched him at Thompson White, they would have seen him waving his arms like a dervish ten times a day.
“Marcia, how do you sign your emails?”
“What an odd question. I sign everything, memos, emails, the lot, except for official accounts, just with a B for Brindle. Sounds stuffy, but one of my early bosses suggested it as a way for a female accountant to appear tough. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious,” Peter said. That bloody email to Kantor could have been written by anyone, he thought. Benedict Dancer, Bella, even Marcia. “Look, I’m fascinated by Scientific Money. Could I take a good look at the accounts?”
Her fingers went still. She reached into her folder and handed him a thick, glossy document. “Our latest accounts.”
“What about something more detailed than the published accounts?”
“Sorry, no can do.”
Crap, he thought, but pressed on. “The Investment Committee meets daily, I gather. What exactly does it do?”
“What does this have to do with the murder, Peter?”
Peter sat up, surprised at how low he’d slumped in the metal chair. He decided to confide in her.
“I have a theory that the killing is tied in with Kantor’s unique role in the company.”
“Nonsense.” Marcia glared. “Do you think a competitor would kill him to harm us? Far better to kill Rollo. Kantor was critical when we started, but no longer.”
“I’d like to look at Kantor’s theory—either read some detailed documentation, or even sit down in front of a screen with the software program itself.”
“Peter, excuse my French, but that’s bullshit,” she said. “Check with Ross Petrov. Systems are his area. But you’ll just be wasting his time and yours.”
“Would the theory documentation have value? Did somebody maybe try to steal it?”
Marcia snorted. “Very unlikely. There are dozens of quant funds in the States, so anyone wanting to get into it could readily track down a good theory.”
She checked her watch. “Peter, hope I’ve been of help, but I need to dash. We’re getting ready for the year-end rush. Here’s my card. Anything I can do to help catch whoever did this…”
As she wended her way through the tables, her white hair and confident gait attracting diners’ glances, Peter reflected on the interview. Mick, you’d be proud of me right now, he thought. Marcia is definitely no murderer. But why did she avoid talking about the Investment Committee?
CHAPTER 13
The corridor smelled of piss and vomit, the carpet was more patches than fabric.
“Keppel,” Tusk barked as he rapped. Time check—5:34. No need to worry about disturbing the other guests. “Willy Keppel.”
The address for the mysterious third brother was the Faulkner Hotel, one of a number of seedy dives on Spencer Street, on the western edge of the CBD, across from the bustling railway station. Plenty of cop memories in this end of town.
“Shove off.” An accent from New York movies.
“We need to talk.”
“Suck my dick.”
“I’ll make it worth your while.” Positive silence. One of the few advantages of working outside the law was you could freely use money to open doors.
“Two questions. Who the hell are you and how much?”
Tusk smiled. “Mick Tusk, Private Investigator. I’m working for Imogen Keppel. Twenty dollars.”
“Stick it.”
Tusk looked out the small fifth-floor window over the sprawl of the railway yards, Colonial Stadium in the distance. An early dusk under black clouds.
“Fifty,” he said.
“You’ve gotta be kidding, man.”
“Hundred.”
The door creaked open. Tusk smelled waves of sour spirits. The man in a tattered green robe looked nothing like Rollo nor Kantor. Perhaps the face was oval beneath the wild, graying black beard, the long Grateful Dead hair, the mustache. Tusk took in the coal black eyes, rimmed blood red, glaring from behind small glasses. Deep lines etched in the face. Mashed nose.
“Come in, pardner,” Willy said.
The room smelled like the end of the road. A couple of weak globes in the low ceiling bathed the peeling wallpaper in sickly yellow. A greasy mattress peeked from under scrunched dirty sheets on the low box-spring bed. A chair, a tiny closet, a dresser with one book, and a small sink. In one corner, two scuffed saxophone cases.
The file said Willy had returned in 1997 after many years in the States. He played jazz sax under the name Willy Willard. Tusk had never heard of the performer.
“Man, you look like those old cartoons of the Incredible Hulk,” Willy said, loud in the constricted space. “I bet you rip your shirts like he did. Let’s see the color of your money.”
He licked his lips, again and again, feet tapping the blackened carpet. Tusk counted out fifty dollars. Willy snatched it.
“The rest at the end,” Tusk said. “Tell me th
e truth and it’s yours.”
The chair creaked when he sat down. Willy remained standing, pulsing with energy.
“Okay, man. Fire away.”
“How old are you compared to your brothers?” Tusk asked.
Willy chuckled without mirth. “Can’t tell, can you? I’m the youngest, five years younger than Kantor, ten years younger than Rollo.”
“I’ve heard you brothers don’t get on.”
“You heard right.” Large, weathered hands crossed in front of him. Lick, lick of lips. “Rollo hated me from birth and has treated me like a pile of dog shit ever since. I left home at fifteen to be a musician and life’s been tough, but I ain’t never got a damned cent of help from him. As far as he’s concerned, I don’t exist.”
“And Kantor?”
“He was okay when he was younger. I used to see him now and then before I went Stateside, and then I’d touch base whenever I did a gig in Boston while he was there. Intellectual cocksucker, as ashamed of me as Rollo, but at least he talked. And he helped me out a couple times when I was in rehab. But ever since he came back to Oz, he’s been close to big brother and a real prick.”
“So you’re not exactly mates with them?”
“Hope they roast in hell,” Willy said. “Even wrote a song for ’em.”
Willy dashed to the closet, hauled out a suitcase packed with trophies, plaques, and compact discs. He brandished a CD.
“See? From my ’94 release. ‘Devil’s Brethren’ I called this track. Man, I think of them two every time I play it.”
“Maybe you hated them enough to sneak in and crush Kantor’s face,” Tusk said, standing up.
Willy placed hands on hips and glowered. “No way. I’m not a violent man.”
“Yeah? You’ve been charged with assault. Twice.”
“That was in my younger days. I ran wild then, but now I’m a pussycat.”
Sure, Tusk thought. He knew about running wild as a youngster. He also knew the urge to hit never left you. Not fully.
“What were you doing the night of the murder?”
“Same as every day. I sleep in the afternoon until just before my show. Got a gig at the Mingus Club.”