Follow the Money

by Peter Corris

  ‘Is your laptop there, your notebook, or whatever?’

  ‘No, I left it with Rosemary. Anyway I’d have to go to my computer at home because it’s all encrypted, the software . . .’

  ‘Don’t tell me, I wouldn’t understand. Let’s go.’

  In the Coogee flat, Sabatini dumped his bag and went straight to the computer in his workroom. He had it up and running in a split second and began tapping the keys, wiping boxes and scrolling at a rapid rate the way they do.

  ‘Here it is, look.’

  On the screen was a photograph of a school soccer team. The boys looked to be about sixteen or seventeen and wore that confident expression that goes with private school and sporting prowess. The names of the players were listed at the bottom of the photograph. Sabatini pointed. A tall, dark haired youth stood in the back row and a smaller, less dark boy was in the middle row. According to the list of names the smaller boy was Richard Malouf and the taller was William Habib.

  Sabatini put his finger on the boy in the back row. ‘That’s Malouf without a doubt, or the man we know as Malouf.’

  I peered. ‘They’re alike, but you’re right.’

  ‘I sort of noticed it when I was working on this stuff but I just put it down to a glitch in the names. I should’ve checked. Now that there’s some doubt about Malouf’s identity . . .’

  ‘When I’ve run up against a name change or confusion,’ I said, ‘I always check the dates. How do the dates we know about him stack up?’

  Sabatini worked through his notes and his published pieces. ‘The football photo is of their last year at school. If he did a four-year honours course at WA there’s a three-year gap between leaving school and going to university.’

  ‘I’ve heard of a gap year, but not three years. We need to find out more about William Habib. The starting point’s the school.’

  Sabatini sighed. ‘I’ll try. I need some coffee. Would you mind? The milk’s probably off, though.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ There was plenty of ground coffee in the kitchen but the milk smelt dodgy. I was glad to get out into the fresh beachside air.

  Coogee is hilly, good cardiac exercise territory. I tramped up a few hills and finished at the shops in Clovelly Road. I bought the milk and a bottle of wine and some sandwiches. Who knows how long an Internet search takes? Could be hours, so I bought a paper as well and looked at the headlines on the way back. The news about the economy was good—things that should be up were up and things that should be down were down. The government was happy; the opposition was grumpy. The experts were puzzled.

  Sabatini was clattering away, swearing occasionally and muttering to himself. He had some classical music I didn’t recognise playing softly; no surprise there, I can only recognise ‘Bolero’ and a couple of Beethoven concertos, a bit of Tchaikovsky at a pinch. I made the coffee and took a mug and a sandwich in to him.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, with his eyes on the screen.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Takes time.’

  I went out onto the balcony to drink my coffee and look at the water. Many times I’ve been tempted to move to the eastern suburbs, get a flat with a view, swim eight months a year. Something holds me back.

  I heard Sabatini’s printer chattering—a good sign. I finished the coffee, opened the bottle of wine and drank some with a sandwich. A greyish morning had given way to a bright afternoon. I read some more of the paper and dozed in the sun.

  ‘We’ve come up with something.’

  I jerked awake as Sabatini came out onto the balcony with a sheaf of printout in his hand.

  ‘I got on to the school, Riverside Grammar. They have the students’ outstanding results over the last twenty odd years and Richard Malouf is right up there. No sign of William Habib. Same for sporting achievements and there the position is reversed. Malouf OK at soccer; Habib good at everything.’

  He flicked through the sheets. ‘A Richard Malouf died in Cooktown Hospital in 1992. A drowning. The school has him listed as a departed old boy. A brief report in the Cooktown Courier says he was accompanied on the swim by an unnamed school friend who failed to save him.’

  Sabatini held up another sheet. ‘A Richard Malouf enrolled at the University of Western Australia in 1994.’

  ‘I wondered about that,’ I said. ‘When you’ve been a star at a Brisbane private school why do you go to uni in Western Australia? It’s a long way to go to get away from home.’

  Sabatini went on. ‘This Malouf didn’t do so flash except at computer stuff. He was brilliant at that. But he captained the soccer team and was the opener for the cricket team; handy pace bowler, too.’

  ‘Sounds more like Habib. Any trace of him and why the switch?’

  ‘William Habib was charged in 1990 for assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. He never appeared in court. Bail was posted and forfeited. This is the kicker—Selim Houli put up the bail.’

  We talked around that for a while. It looked as if William Habib had assumed the identity of Richard Malouf and had gone as far away as he could to gain his credentials using Malouf’s school results to get him started. Then he worked his way back east and found himself a spot where he could gain access to a lot of business accounts and manipulate others, under cover of legitimate activity with Selim Houli as some kind of backer.

  ‘It leaves us no closer to finding out what the big picture is,’ Sabatini said.

  ‘No, but at least we know something about him that he doesn’t know we know. Tell me William Habib has an old mother who he couldn’t bear to see troubled.’

  ‘I checked the Brisbane phone directory. There’s a column and a half of Habibs.’

  ‘I wonder if he killed Malouf and swiped some of the things he’d need to do the identity change.’

  Sabatini shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  It was a stalemate; far from learning anything that might give us the initiative, we were simply waiting for Malouf/Habib to contact me when he chose. We decided that the only thing to do was wait a few days for the call and play it by instinct at that point—perhaps hinting that we knew his real identity and hoping that might throw him off-balance.

  ‘If he doesn’t call in that time?’ Sabatini asked.

  ‘You write something along the lines of “Is Richard Malouf still alive? And who is he?” Something like that and see if it touches a nerve.’

  ‘The police’ll pick up on that and they’ll be after us.’

  ‘The more the merrier. I’ve dealt with the police before.’

  ‘Yeah, and lost your licence. But, okay, we’ll see how it plays out. I owe you for Rosemary. Keep your phone charged up.’

  We had a drink and left it at that. I drove back to Glebe. The roadwork that had been going on for almost a year was almost finished and some of the businesses that had looked to be struggling were picking up. I reckoned it was about time I saw Megan again and was thinking about that as I turned into my street. The low winter sun was in my eyes and I shielded them with my hand as I brought the car to a stop outside my house. I was still a bit dazzled when I got out and jiggled my keys, feeling for the right one.

  ‘Hardy!’

  Lester Wong stepped out from behind one of the shrubs in front of the house. The muzzle of his sawn-off shotgun was about three metres from my chest.

  A voice: ‘Police! Drop the gun!’

  I hit the ground hard. There was a roar like an unmuffled exhaust, and shredded leaves dropped on me as I heard the pellets bouncing off the car.

  ‘Drop it!’

  Two sharp cracks, and when I looked up I saw Lester on his back, sprawled across the tiled path and he wasn’t moving.

  I had grazed palms, bruised knees and torn trousers—pretty soft landing after facing a sawn-off. That didn’t mean I could go quietly inside and pour myself a congratulatory drink. The police arrived, then the media; mobile phone signals bounced around and I ended up in Chang’s Surry Hills office.

  ‘
Thought it was about time we had a chat, Hardy,’ Chang said. ‘Lucky for you we were there, or lucky Ali was there—best pistol shot in the service.’

  Ali was still wearing his displeased expression.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘You might like to help me with the paperwork.’

  ‘We’re getting whispers that Freddy Wong’s not around, and now his crazy brother comes after you. We also know Sabatini flew back home today.’

  ‘Is this a formal interview?’

  ‘No, come on, Hardy. You’re up to your balls in something too big for you. I had to talk fast to keep DI Caulfield off your case—being present at two violent deaths tends to make people suspicious. Sheer stroke of luck that now you’re not just down the way from your place in the bloody morgue.’

  All true, and Malouf/Habib hadn’t rung. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe Lester’s death, which was bound to be on the news that night, would scare him off. When I thought about it, our plan for something Sabatini could write was our best chance of provoking him and that would bring the police running anyway. It was time to come clean—well, cleanish.

  I told them Freddy Wong was definitely dead, and that three people (that was stretching it a bit) whom I wouldn’t name were present. I said it was somewhere between an accident and self-defence.

  Ali shot an astonished look at Chang. ‘Can you believe this guy?’

  ‘There’s more,’ I said.

  I told them that a man calling himself Richard Malouf had spoken to me on the phone, the deal he’d proposed and that he said he’d be in touch. I said that I was working with Sabatini and that we’d uncovered evidence to suggest that his real name was William Habib. I started to talk about the plan Sabatini and I had, but Ali cut me off with a snort of derision and an angry slap of his hand against the wall.

  Chang, making notes, fiddled with his pen. ‘You didn’t think to get in touch with us when you got this call?’

  ‘Thought about it, but, no, I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ Ali snapped.

  ‘I got into this to try to get a couple of gangsters off the back of a client . . .’

  ‘You don’t have the right to have a fucking client,’ Chang said.

  ‘A certain person, then. To help someone in a difficult situation.’

  ‘And recover the money Malouf stole from you,’ Ali said.

  I shrugged. ‘If it worked out that way, sure. But that’s not the real reason.’

  Ali shook his head. ‘All right, what is?’

  I knew. It was to do with a missing person, a false identity, something unknown at the heart of the matter. And it was about doing something I’d been doing for a long time and was good at; about not feeling useless. But it was difficult to put all that into words.

  ‘Curiosity,’ I said.

  Ali walked out of the room.

  Chang leaned back in his chair. ‘What am I going to do with you? Cancerous—that was the word he used, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It’s a metaphor.’

  ‘I know it’s a fucking metaphor. So?’

  I shrugged. ‘Something that’ll eat . . . away at society.’

  ‘Doesn’t cancer sort of overwhelm the other cells in the body?’

  ‘I think you’re right. Whatever it refers to it’s something very big. He sounded serious. I’ve been thinking about you and the sergeant: a special unit to combat Chinese and Lebanese crime? There have to have been whispers, signs of something brewing. Look, without giving you the details, Freddy Wong was prepared to do something horrific to another person just to get some information. And this Malouf/Habib—he knows what’s going on, he has a connection to Houli and is prepared to double-cross him. That takes guts and it suggests that the business, whatever it is, has got too big, is getting out of control.’

  Chang glanced down at the notes he’d been scribbling while I talked. ‘Tell me again about this deal.’

  I went over it but I’d remembered another detail.

  ‘He knew your name and the name of your bad-tempered mate—not that I’m not grateful to him for saving my life.’

  ‘But he hasn’t called you back. We can’t find any trace of that boat. It could be registered in Panama or Tuvalu, where they don’t give a shit about any rules or regulations.’

  ‘He knew too much about our movements to be some- where offshore. He’s around, watching, listening, waiting.’

  ‘So he could know that you’re here, talking to me?’

  I said nothing but I looked at the door Ali had slammed behind him.

  Chang closed his eyes. Without those keen eyes enlivening his face he looked older, more weary. ‘He’s a good man. He saved your life.’

  ‘He shot a Chinaman. Where did he get him?’

  ‘Head and heart.’

  ‘Head to kill; heart to be sure. Would he shoot a Malouf or a Habib?’

  ‘You’re a pain in the arse, Hardy,’ Chang said, ‘undermining the integrity of a trusted officer.’ He looked at his notes again. ‘He cut you off when you started to talk about your plan with Sabatini. If he’s . . . on the other side, why wouldn’t he want to hear all about that?’

  ‘Because he wouldn’t want you to hear about it, and he would want to catch me on my own.’

  Chang glanced around the room as if help could be found in the filing cabinets, the bookshelves, the citations on the walls. There’s no help there as we both knew: it comes down to decisions, guesses, risks to be taken. I knew then, as I’d always known, that he was a good man who’d put the right thing to do up at the top of his agenda. But I had to give him a nudge.

  ‘Stephen,’ I said, ‘I couldn’t help noticing that you wrote your notes on our interview in Chinese characters. Do you always do that?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Just sometimes.’

  Chang called Ali back and we discussed the plan to provoke Malouf/Habib through an article Sabatini would write and post as a blog. We also talked about the possibility of striking a deal with Malouf/Habib in exchange for his exposing the grand scheme.

  ‘Cowboy stuff,’ Ali said. ‘We can’t guarantee immunity or anything like that.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘You’ve done it before.’

  Chang nodded. ‘True, but by Jesus the information better be good.’

  I said, ‘He’ll want details and help—a passport probably, maybe money, maybe a hostage.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about his thinking,’ Ali said.

  ‘I’m just putting it together how I’d want it if it was my way out. If what he can reveal is as big as he says, he’ll have to run a long, long way.’

  Chang smiled. ‘And not to Hong Kong or the Emirates. Where would you guess, Karim?’

  I studied Ali closely. Was he thinking about how to deliver this information to Malouf/Habib, or were our suspicions all wrong? Impossible to tell; his handsome face was set in its customary sceptical expression when I was in the picture. He shrugged. ‘South America.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Brazil. The new Ronnie Biggs. The difficult part is to get a hint in Sabatini’s piece that the police are considering a deal. Just a hint.’

  ‘This is bullshit,’ Ali said. ‘I vote we round up Houli and Talat and tell them what we know and get them to tell us what this is all about. Do a deal with them if we must and fuck Malouf . . . or whatever his name is.’

  Chang looked at me. ‘Hardy?’

  ‘It’s not a bad idea, but my guess is after what happened to the Wong boys, Houli and Talat will be very hard to find.’

  Ali pulled out his mobile phone, wandered off to the other side of the room and made some calls. His responses were negative grunts.

  Closing the phone, he said, ‘I hate to admit it, but you’re right—they’re lying very low.’

  Chang looked down at the characters on his notepad. ‘Well, this looks like the only game in town, but I’m warning you, Hardy, you contact us the second you
hear from Malouf. I’m calling him that until I learn otherwise. Try playing some independent smartarse game and you’ll have your next heart bypass in gaol.’

  Ali liked that; it was the first time I’d seen him smile.

  What we were proposing wasn’t really all that unusual or outrageous. There were journalists virtually embedded with the various police forces and intelligence agencies, and others who were leaked to systematically and operationally. There was a recent case where someone on the police or the intelligence strength had leaked to a paper about a planned raid on terrorist suspects. The paper did a deal with the operations leader not to publish until the raid was underway. Somehow the story got into print early, and the raid had to be moved forward. Things in that kind of world can go seriously wrong.

  The only substantial contribution to Sabatini’s blog I made was the headline:

  IS RICHARD MALOUF STILL ALIVE?

  Readers will remember the case of the financial wizard Richard Malouf who managed to spirit away millions of dollars from his clients’ accounts, lose it gambling with figures in the Sydney underworld, and, apparently, die from a gunshot wound in his car. Suicide or murder? The coronial inquiry has yet to sit.

  But it may be none of these things. Try faked death. A source close to a certain police task force investigating crime in the Chinese and Lebanese communities has told this writer that Malouf may still be alive. No details are available, other than that there have been as yet unverified ‘sightings’. More intriguing are hints that Malouf may not be the real name of the man in question. Questions to be answered: is he alive? If so, who was the dead man in the car and who killed him? And why does this writer get the feeling that in the minds of certain police there are bigger fish to fry than financial juggler, lothario and crack sportsman Richard ‘Dicky’ Malouf?

  Sabatini sent me a draft of the article and I complimented him on it. I’d briefed him fully on my interview with Chang and Ali and I felt he’d struck the right notes.

  ‘You realise,’ he said, ‘that if your suspicions about this Sergeant Ali are right, it won’t matter. Malouf will know exactly how the land lies.’