by Andres Kabel
“Can anyone verify that? Hotel staff? What time did you get to the club?”
“The staff here are as pissed as the guests. I got to the club at 11:30. The pigs tell me that’s not enough to clear me. But I didn’t kill Kantor. Man, I’m no killer. Now give me my money and head back to your Gestapo HQ.”
For the first time in the day, a tendril of anger snaked through Tusk’s guts. “If you’re not a killer, who is?”
“How the hell do I know? Hey man, it could have been Rollo. They may have looked bonded at the hips, but when we were kids, they were no closer with each other than with me. Rollo was always pissed as hell at Kantor’s brains, and Kantor was decent then, couldn’t stand Rollo’s bloody money hunger.”
Tusk felt queasy from the smell in the room, a mix of sweat, booze, vomit, and cum. “When was the last time you saw them?”
“Rollo in 1981, at our father’s funeral. I was gonna speak to him but the slimeball just told me to stay clear. Kantor… I saw him in ’97, just after I got back, but he pissed me off as well. I hope hell is a damn hot place for him now.”
“What about their families? Bella? Imogen? Straw?”
There! Tusk had been watching for it. Willy stopped licking and stared. “Never met Rollo’s wife. Saw Imogen at the same time as Kantor, she’d gone all cold. Straw? Last time in the late ’70s I guess, in Boston. That chick plays her own jazz, weird.”
Tusk stared at the wreck in front of him. Why did all families end up so twisted? Willy was lying about something, somewhere in that skein of brotherly hatreds.
Willy’s hopping had slowed to shuffling. “Now cough up the money and move along.”
“Keppel, you’re holding out on me,” Tusk said. “Give me a ring when you’re ready to talk, and you’ll get the rest of your money.”
He closed up his notebook, tossed over a card, and walked out, eager for fresh air.
“Creep!”
The door slammed behind him.
Outside it was nearly dark. The wind had picked up, sending dust swirling along tram tracks. Crushed cans and cigarette butts in the gutter. Motorbikes parked on the footpath. Office drones fleeing, leaning against the wind as they rushed toward the station. The smell of imminent rain.
Time check—6:00. A productive day, he thought, plenty of data, as Gentle liked to say. His energy was deserting him. His right shin, sporadically sore since his last half-marathon, twinged.
Strange, he thought, all my life this city pumped me up. I knew the rhythms of every alley. Now all I can think of is to get home, wash off the stink, play with the kids, smell the grass. Is this what Dana calls healing?
CHAPTER 14
After Marcia Brindle left, Peter had no more meetings arranged until the following morning. He decided to research Kantor’s investment theory. Clutching the Scientific Money annual report, he rushed along the riverbank and up the steps to catch a tram along Swanston Street.
A headline caught his attention. The tram clanging across an intersection, he hung onto his strap and stood on tiptoe to peer over the shoulder of a man reading The Australian Financial Review.
“Consultants Quiz Quant Fund King”
The man snapped the newspaper shut and glared at Peter, but not before he’d skimmed the article. It quoted a number of investment consultants queuing to ask Rollo about the impact of Kantor’s death on the company.
Spot on, Peter thought, exactly the question I’m pursuing, though in a different fashion. Mick would label this trip a waste of time, just as well we’re apart. But why hasn’t he rung me?
When the tram crossed Collins, he gazed at the Town Hall, stark under the threatening sky. Swanston Street had once been the main north-south avenue through the city. A few years back, it had been converted into a traffic-free zone, and now only trams made their way up toward the universities. Somehow it had resisted being converted into a mall. A handful of classier cafes had moved out onto the footpaths. Some of the Bourke Street Mall street performers had shifted to Swanston, but the greasy cafes, sex parlors, and two-dollar shops remained. The street reminded Peter of a shabby tourist strip cleared by a bomb blast.
He alighted at Latrobe Street. Pigeons scattered when he climbed the steps up to the Roman-columned State Library on its hillock. Inside, his footsteps echoed amongst the voices of tour guides. He sat before a large screen in the Information Center and began his search.
He ordered some journals, scampered up the worn stone steps to the Domed Reading Room, a round cavernous space lit by green lights on wall sconces. In an ancient wooden cubicle, he screwed up his brow and read. He tapped his feet, squirmed in his seat, chewed his pen. Occasional grunts escaped him.
He took no notes, preferring the chain of reasoning to stay inside his head. He rushed back and forth to obtain more material. Some of the relevant papers were unavailable, but the web of cross-referencing left him satisfied with what he had.
When he took a break after an hour and a half of concentration, his throat ached for liquid. He bought a can of Coke from a vending machine and sat on a seat outside the library. The world had darkened prematurely, massed purple clouds hung like swollen plums over Melbourne Central. The office workers hurrying into Museum Station all carried umbrellas.
It took him a moment to realize the trilling mobile was his. Rollo asked whether his day had been useful.
“Quite productive, but Mr. Dancer was very rude.”
“So I heard.” Rollo’s voice was smooth. “A misunderstanding. Tell me, Peter. Any progress in your thinking?”
Away from Rollo’s searching eyes, Peter’s awe of the Chief Executive had dimmed enough to embolden him. “No, it’s way too early. Would it be possible to spend some more time with you tomorrow?”
“Sorry, the diary’s full. Where are you?”
Peter heard the urgent dongs of a tram driver’s warning bell, followed by the skid of tram wheels gripped by sand. On Swanston a tram juddered to a halt just in front of a turning car.
“The State Library.”
The tram driver leaned out of his cabin and screamed at the car driver.
“The State Library? Why on earth—”
“What about 10:30 tomorrow, Mr. Keppel, after my morning meetings?”
“Sorry, no, I’ve an appointment. Peter, stay in touch.”
Peter nursed the silent mobile. Both the tram and the car had gone. He finished his Coke, gritted his teeth, and headed back to his cubicle. The world receded again as he applied his mind to the job.
His pulse quickened when he found a reference to a conference paper by Kantor and Stan Friedman, the drowned brother of the man who’d been pestering the Keppels. He sighed with frustration when he found that the library didn’t hold that paper. A search showed that none of the university libraries did either.
By the time he walked down the front steps, yawning and stretching stiff legs, night had fallen. He glanced at his watch—6:30. He looked up Bishop’s phone number on his Palm Pilot. The lawyer answered on the first ring.
“Good work,” Bishop said after Peter filled him in on the day, glossing over the early interview difficulties. “And the beefcake?”
“Mick hasn’t contacted me.”
“Better lines of communication, Peter, that’s what you need. Thanks for the bulletin.”
A thin man with ropy hair, carrying a cardboard sign, shuffled up. Peter gave him some change and dialed Imogen Keppel. The phone rang for a long time before she answered, her voice slurred.
“Mrs. Keppel, does Straw ever talk?”
“Straw? Never. What’s this nonsense in aid of?”
“Nothing, just an idle query.”
He updated her on his day.
“I must say that progress seems to have been slow,” she said.
Hardly an encouraging client, Peter thought, though he could see her perspective. After all, it was her husband in the morgue. He promised to keep her up to date.
A bolt of lightning blazed in the black sky,
and a chill wind whipped up leaves and chip bags. He dodged trams across Swanston, and reflected on the day as he stood amongst hundreds of bodies crammed on escalators descending into the bowels of Melbourne’s short subway system. A dreadful start, he thought, but a decent finish. He should have taken better notes. His crumpled suit felt heavy on his shoulders.
The Belgrave train was packed. Peter held onto a waist-high handle jutting from a seat, jammed between a mustached man reading a newspaper and a plump woman chewing her lip. When the train emerged from the subway tunnel, a deluge of thick rain smashed down on it. He could barely see the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Lightning blazed and thunder answered, and the train sped through a sky of water.
Why were the Scientific Money executives so evasive about the investment process? Peter’s short burst of research had helped define what he was up against, but in the end it raised more questions than it answered. Modern Portfolio Theory, as the theory behind formula investing was known, had a firm mathematical basis, but for all its proponents, there were as many critics who questioned its very foundations, the assumptions that underpinned it. Kantor’s theoretical basis was sketched in two papers, both reputable, but the details were simply insufficient. How was it applied in practice? Peter knew the key was to get into the actual software programs.
He almost missed Box Hill Station, just managing to squeeze through the gap of the hissing doors. Outside, the rain had ceased. He gingerly stepped over the puddles on Station Street, trying to protect his shoes. He smelled the familiar spices and Asian vegetables, smiled at the neon of the Chinese restaurants glowing in the pitch-black sky. His hands stung with cold.
How strangely it had all panned out. When Peter’s parents moved to Box Hill in the ’70s, it was a post-war Anglo-Saxon suburb, complete dullsville. Now, though he still couldn’t stand the brick veneer streets, and though his parents didn’t eat Asian food, Box Hill had metamorphosed into a multicultural dining heaven.
At a Skulk Club meeting, Peter had argued vociferously that Box Hill’s restaurants were better value, more atmospheric, and more competitive than those in the celebrated Chinatown district of the city.
“Crap,” Harvey Jopling had shouted. “You just like it because you grew up there.”
Peter smiled at the memory. He hunched his shoulders against the wind, pushed hands deep into his pockets. Away from the shops and restaurants, Box Hill sat quietly. Occasionally cars drove past, tires spraying water, their headlights bright.
He smelled bacon as he turned onto Lesdale Street, wondered what his mother would have ready for dinner. A car pulled along the curb just in front of him. A thin man got out and headed for a house. Peter walked past, skirting a large puddle. He felt lucky to still be dry.
Something smashed onto his right shoulder, pitching him forward, and then a hand gripped the back of his suit with fearsome strength. He cried out.
CHAPTER 15
A decade ago, Tusk’s father had retired after thirty years’ service with the tramways. As far as Tusk could figure, the old man never enjoyed a single day at the helm of the clunky vehicles that spanned Melbourne. But when he finally slammed on the air brakes for the last time, for some reason he decided to be melancholy. He threw a farewell party at his rickety place in Collingwood.
They’d both begun to recover from the wars of Tusk’s youth and were talking again. Not often, but enough for Tusk to accept the invitation.
The day of the party, he had worked a long shift in the squad car. He’d been a policeman for three years, loving every minute, working as hard as shit to make up for his late entry age. At nine o’clock he stepped into the smell of pickled fish, dumplings, and vodka. Cigarette smoke swirled toward the open windows.
His father slapped his back. In the living room, thirty balding trammies drank and shouted. They called his father Arnie, a distortion of his Estonian name Arne, or just as often he was “the fucking Balt.” His mother periodically brought out plates of food from the kitchen. Tusk didn’t speak to her.
He drank beer and pictured Mercy, the woman he was seeing at the time. The image of her hot body sent him edging toward the door, just before the pumpkin hour.
“See you, Arne,” Tusk said.
Sour vodka breath. “Eh, where you think you’re goin’? This is my party.”
“Got someone to meet.”
“You screw around too much.”
Tusk opened the sagging screen door, held out his hand. “Congrats, Arne. Free as a bird now.”
A stiff finger poked Tusk in the chest. “You can’t fool me, Mihkel. I seen the way you look at my mates. You think you’re too fuckin’ good for us. Us workers.”
The house inside had fallen silent. Next door a cat wailed. Tusk looked at the finger digging into him. An electric current buzzed in his arms and legs.
“You weren’t so high ’n mighty when you lived on the streets.” His father’s eyes burned. “Then you were happy to see your father’s money when you came begging. Now that you’re a copper, you think we’re dirt. Right?”
To respond would have prompted their first fight since the big one all those years earlier. And Tusk was in uniform. He drove off to find Mercy, didn’t visit his father for months.
***
Time check—6:06. Dark outside Scientific Money House, the lobby inside lit by golden lights on stalks around the walls.
Arne was wrong, Tusk thought as his footsteps clopped across the marble floor. In fact, being a copper had convinced him that workers were the salt of the earth. Take security guards. No one ever noticed them. Cunts like Rollo Keppel looked right through them, but security guards were the ones who really knew what was going on in offices.
“Is Shao Yang on shift?” he asked.
The man behind the security desk needed a shave. “Who wants him?”
Tusk flipped him his police merit badge and was led into a cramped back room reeking of sweat. A thin Asian man sat surrounded by screens.
Yang’s hand trembled in Tusk’s. About forty, long face pitted with acne scars. Black hair with strands of gray. Watery eyes peering over thin spectacle frames.
“No trouble, please,” Yang said.
“No trouble, Mr. Yang. Tell me about the night of the 30th.”
Yang’s chair creaked as he leaned back. “I already tell the police but okay. I am doing late shift, start nine o’clock, finish five o’clock in morning. I do this job one year, since coming from Taiwan. I like night shift, very convenient. I very loyal, very hard work. This night same as others. No trouble. 11:30 I do routine, visit all floors, start from bottom. No problem, no trouble.”
Yang’s voice dimmed to a whisper, barely audible over the sputtering air-conditioning. “When I finish fourth floor, I open door to stairs. I see man lying down stairs. On his side, feet and knees on landing, rest down stairs. I lift body. Terrible. Terrible.”
The man’s voice quavered. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, as if to make the scene disappear.
“I see it Mr. Kantor. His face smash in, terrible. I feel blood on my hands and I see it on stairs. I… I scream. It’s not proud to say that, but I did. I think maybe his soul screams. His face…”
No wonder the crime scene yielded so little, Tusk thought. Yang had trampled all over it. “Anyone come to help?”
“No, no other guards then. I ring police on mobile. I sick on stairs.”
“Objects around the body?”
Yang breathed noisily. “Just security pass, lying on second step. In blood.”
Tusk gestured at one of the screens with scrolling characters. “I assume that shows security passes being used, real time. Do you watch people coming in or out?”
“No, no point. Only sometimes I check if someone come in late, but that night nothing special.”
“Anyone in the building when you did your sweep?”
“The building empty. Just me. And dead Mr. Kantor.”
“Any security cameras in the stairwell?”
&
nbsp; “No.”
“Why not?”
“It a small building, sir. We never have trouble on stairs. Until now.”
“I’d like to see the stairwell,” Tusk said.
“I refuse,” Yang said.
Tusk looked at him, keeping his face blank. The Chinaman squared his shoulders and stared back. Seconds ticked by. A minute. Yang’s fingers began to tremble. A shrug.
“Okay.”
“Good choice,” Tusk said.
Yang led him through the lobby. At the elevators, Tusk looked back at the security desk. The desk wasn’t ideally located. The guard had a clear view of the front revolving doors and the elevator area, but was too far away. Like Tusk had told Gentle, it wouldn’t be hard to sneak in with other people during the day. Not at nighttime, though.
Tusk quizzed Yang about the security pass readers. One in each lobby elevator, occasionally outside high-security rooms, and one by the basement exit.
On the top floor, he followed Yang along a dark corridor lit only by night panels. The dark, the quiet, it felt like back on the job.
At the end of the corridor Yang gestured. Face pinched with fear. “You go. I stay.”
Tusk shrugged and pulled back the door. It opened silently. The stairwell, unlike most, was well lit by overhead fluorescent lights. He took in the khaki green walls. Musty air, no other smells. The echo of his footsteps—loud, so Kantor must have heard his assailant. Dark stains covering half of the first three concrete steps.
Tusk walked to the second step and stood still. Sam and his team had got it right. Kantor had been there when he heard or saw something. Tusk turned his head, mimicking Kantor hearing footsteps behind him. Like an actor, he relived the moment, saying something, eyes wide, then reeling with shock as the killer came at him. Too slow to raise his arms, the blow to his head, staggering, already close to death, falling backward down the stairs. Then the killer stepping past the body and running off.
An insistent rhythm, like a techno beat. His heart. Too many memories, released like an egg hatching. He shouldn’t have come here. No sleep tonight. Or he should have brought Gentle, showed him this was no game of Cluedo.