by Brian Smith
‘Hello,’ he said uncertainly and followed this with, ‘Oh, hi. That’s very kind of you. Yes, it has been a shock. We’re sitting here with Mary trying to come to grips with it.’ There was a longer silence during which the frown on Mike’s face deepened, until he said. ‘I have spoken with him. It’s a bit complicated.’ He glanced at the others, shaking his head as though apologising for having to deal with a caller who would not be put off.
‘I had better go. I’ll call you later.’
After he had finished the call Mike said, ‘Sorry.
‘Who was it?’ Lissa asked.
Mike swallowed before saying, ‘It was Carla Mancini.’
‘The gorgeous woman we met last Friday?’ Lissa said. ‘What did she want?’
When Mike did not answer her question immediately, Demetri sat up and heatedly waved his hands. ‘She tries to turn my son against me. She is her father’s daughter.’
‘What?’ Lissa said.
It was Mike, not Demetri, who responded to her. ‘Carla Mancini has plans to develop the Bay Street precinct which includes Dad’s shop, but he won’t have anything to do with the Mancini family. Remember last Friday, her father complaining Dad wouldn’t speak with him? That’s what that was about.’
‘I still don’t see why Carla is ringing you.’
‘I told you,’ Demetri interjected. ‘She is trying to seduce him.’
‘Dad! Stop that! She got in touch earlier in the week and asked me if I could smooth the way between her and Dad.’
‘Got in touch?’
Now Mike was not meeting Lissa’s eyes. ‘She invited me to meet with her at Café Filipo.’ He turned to face his father again. ‘Yeah. That’s why you became anxious when you found out we were going to Café Filipo. You thought there was a chance you might bump into Mancini.’
‘I knew it was his restaurant. I did not want to be there. I’ve told you I want nothing to do with him.’
Lissa was in no mood to be deflected. ‘I hope she gave you something to eat,’ she said tartly.
‘We had some antipasto.’
‘You went there for lunch?’ This was becoming like the drawn-out interrogations she sometimes needed to conduct with the children when they were reluctantly owning up to some naughtiness.
‘Yes. On Tuesday,’ Mike replied.
Now she could understand. Tuesday was the day after he had been mugged, the day he wore his good suit and smart tie, the day he said he had an industry lunch. Perhaps Mike could sense the calculations going on in her mind. ‘She asked me to keep it to myself.’
‘And of course you did. I imagine she’s pretty hard to say no to, pretty hard to resist.’
‘Come off it. You’re as bad as Dad.’
‘Is she trying to seduce you? Even more interesting, has she succeeded?’ Lissa was unsure whether she should be amused by Mike’s discomfort or treat it as something more serious.
‘She rang to offer her condolences on Shane.’
At this Mary sat up and pushed the hair from her eyes. ‘We should do something about a death notice. They wouldn’t give us a time when we could collect Shane, though.’
There was a silence, each one busy with their thoughts. Lissa hadn’t seen Mike like this before. No wonder she found him preoccupied last night. Apart from all his problems at work, he had the difficulty with his father and the lovely Carla on his mind. Had she seduced him? As far as she knew he had never been interested in anyone else. The occasional bit of flirting at a party when he’d had a bit much to drink. She was more prone to that particular foible than he was. That bitch, Celia, had been very obvious at one stage but he hadn’t shown the slightest interest. Carla was gorgeous, but out of Mike’s league, she would have thought. Since he’d been promoted to project manager at CityView, he had been taking himself more seriously, though. Perhaps he thought he could now play in a bigger league.
Mike’s phone sounded again. Was she ringing back already? No, he had a very different tone to his voice.
‘Yes, I can be there at eleven. Just a minute while I get a pen.’
He went to the kitchen bench on which was a pad and pen, and made a note. He closed his phone.
‘That was the Building Commission. The investigators want to interview me at their headquarters in St Kilda Road. I’d better smarten myself up and think about how I handle them.’
After Mike left, Lissa and Mary cleared the table. When they were together in the kitchen, Mary said. ‘You don’t need to worry about Mike.’
‘Yeah?’
‘She’s not his type – too smooth, too controlled. You’ve been the only one for him for so long he couldn’t break free, even if he wanted to.’
‘Thanks very much. You make it sound like he’s rusted on to me. Let’s hope she isn’t the WD-40 in our marriage.’
13
Mike was able to squeeze his VW into a two-hour spot in the centre lane of St Kilda Road, just across from the building which housed the commission. He was amused to find the US Consul General was also a tenant. He had heard the commission accused of many things, but never as a front for the CIA. He was made to wait for ten minutes in the commission’s upstairs foyer and wondered whether this was a deliberate ploy to unsettle him. Several other people arrived and were quickly ushered away – perhaps they were complainants or whistleblowers, rather than being under investigation.
Eventually he was shown to a small room already occupied by the men he had met a couple of days before. This time they did stand when he entered the room but did not greet him with a handshake.
‘Morning, Mr Georgiou,’ the senior one, Clive Johnston, said. ‘Please sit here.’
Neither of them was wearing a jacket; Johnston’s collar slightly dog-eared held a tie that had seen long service, while the French cuffs on Funston’s precisely ironed, white shirt were secured with jade cufflinks. Neither of them suggested that Mike remove his jacket. Funston again had a pad at the ready and pushed a small recorder to the centre of the table.
‘We will be recording this interview and you will be given a copy,’ he said and went on to recite into the recorder a preamble stating the time, date, participants and purpose of the interview.
There was a short silence while Johnston examined Mike as if looking for any changes which might have occurred in him since they last met. At least his bruising had lost some of its colour and size.
‘Mr. Georgiou, thank you for helping us with our enquiries into the claim you attempted to bribe a union official. You are not obliged to answer any questions or make any statements and, if we do reach the conclusion that you have committed a crime, then the replies you give to our questions at this interview may be used in evidence against you.’ He paused but, when Mike made no response, went on. ‘We have now had the chance to view a number of documents, which we will show you during the course of this interview, and we have spoken with a number of people. You may remember, when we last met I suggested you would help yourself by giving us any information that might assist us to bring this enquiry to a rapid conclusion. It would appear you chose not to accept my advice. Nevertheless, I repeat it and tell you it is a matter of record that, when an individual is guilty of an indictable offence, an early admission is greatly to that individual’s subsequent benefit.’
He waited for Mike to reply and, when he did not, nodded to Funston who opened a folder and withdrew some sheets which he pushed across the table for Mike to examine.
‘On Tuesday you told us there were no accounts within the company that you operate directly. You omitted to mention the credit card issued to you for dealing with minor purchases and approved entertaining. These are the current records of expenditure against this card. Have you seen them before?’
‘Yes, they have been shown to me.’
‘How do you account for the two recent five hundred dollar debits?’
‘I cannot. I believe my card has been used fraudulently without my knowledge. Do you know where those payments went?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you think carefully and recall for us each occasion on which you spoke with Mr Reardon in the past fortnight?’
Mike did not answer immediately but then listed his meetings with Alan on the afternoon of the accident, the following morning and on the Wednesday at head office. ‘I called him on a couple of occasions after that and he called me once.’ Mike noticed that Johnston, who had been sitting with his habitual, slightly bored expression, took greater interest when he reached this point.
‘He called you?’ Johnston repeated in a questioning voice.
‘Yes, he called me last Monday afternoon, but there was a lot of background noise and he had difficulty hearing me, so we cut the call and I rang him after I reached a quieter location.’
Funston pushed another batch of papers across to him. ‘There is no instance of him calling you at any time on your records or his.’
‘That’s wrong. He called me to invite me to meet with him on Monday evening.’
‘Why would he want to meet with you?’ Johnston had taken over again and was sitting up quite straight.
‘He had concerns over a number of industrial issues at the Riverside site which he feared might spill over to our CityView site.’
‘What were these?’
‘Best you ask him.’
‘Don’t tell me you can’t remember,’ Johnston said.
‘They are sensitive issues, which he told me about only after I promised to keep them to myself.’
‘Where did you meet?’
Mike hesitated but, when Funston began to open another folder, he said, ‘At the Lord Nelson Hotel in Fitzroy.’ Funston closed the folder.
‘Bit out of the way for you,’ Johnston said.
‘I told you Alan Reardon was concerned about keeping our discussion confidential, so he chose a place where he said it would be unlikely we would be seen.’ When Funston began to fiddle with the folder again, Johnston shot him a dark look which stopped him dead. ‘But we were expected,’ Mike continued, pleased to see both men’s interest quicken. ‘Two thugs by the names of Bruno Kordic and Rick Jennings were waiting for me when I left the pub and Kordic beat me up.’
‘Why would they do that?’ Funston asked as he ran his fingers down the side of the file once more. Mike guessed Funston, being the one who did all the hack work compiling the evidence, enjoyed tossing incriminating documents in front of suspects and felt miffed when Mike had preempted him.
‘I was beaten up by Bruno because he wanted revenge on me for injuring him when we prevented him stealing material from the CityView site last week.’
Funston was unimpressed. ‘You reported the theft to the police?’
‘No.’
‘But the beating, surely?’
‘No.’
Funston sat back, a cynical smile stretching his pale cheeks, and looked across at Johnston. ‘You tell a good story, Mr Georgiou,’ Johnston said in a tone that made it clear Mike had impressed him even less than he had Funston. ‘The trouble is you have little in the way of facts to back up your story and we have evidence your story is false. Mr Reardon did not call you. He tells us it was you who brought him to the Lord Nelson and the phone records support his version of events.’
‘So Alan did set me up,’ Mike said more to himself than the commission men. That explained the business about the phone records: Alan must have called him from another phone and had him ring back so the idea to meet at the Lord Nelson would appear to have come from him.
Johnston gave a short cough. ‘Mr Georgiou, we will be submitting our report to the commission in the next few days and our recommendation will be that the files be handed to the police for their action. Is there anything else you wish to put to us before we conclude this interview?’
When Mike shook his head, Funston leaned forward to recite the formal end-piece for the recording and switched off the recorder.
Johnston sat back and put his hands behind his head. ‘I think we’ve made it clear we do not accept your story you’ve been set up but, assuming for the moment you are telling the truth, why would anyone want to set you up like this?’
‘Understanding that will be key to my defence.’
After Mike returned to his car he sat trying to allow his anger to settle before driving away. He’d been a fool to swallow Reardon’s story the other day and the bastard must be laughing at how easily he’d been able to con him. It still didn’t explain how they had set up the debits on his credit card. At every turn it seemed more likely Vern had gone over to the Rubicon camp. He had no proof without the photographs, so there was no point in accusing Vern or telling anyone else. Not yet. He started the car and, still angry, was driving around the lake towards home when his phone rang. His first reaction was to ignore it but, when the caller persisted, he relented and pulled to the side of the road.
‘Michael?’ The music was unmistakable.
‘Hello, Carla.’
‘I hope I haven’t rung at a bad time again. It was just my phone has been off for most of the morning and I thought you may have tried to ring me but been unable to get through and reluctant to leave a message.’
‘No, I’ve been tied up until very recently myself.’
‘I need to talk with you. It’s about Shane. I’m at home again now. Is there any chance you could drop in to see me?’
‘Where’s home?’
‘We have a unit in one of the completed Riverside towers – the first – number 261. Have you had lunch? I’m just about to make myself a sandwich.’
Mike found a vacant spot in the small visitor car park only twenty metres from the entrance to the tower. He thought such luck only occurred in the movies. He entered the glass-walled foyer with its gleaming marble floor and indoor garden of potted annuals, shrubs and even several small trees. At the security door he punched in the number 261. Almost instantly he heard Carla’s muffled voice. ‘Come on up, Michael.’
The spacious lift took him rapidly and silently to the twenty-sixth floor. There were only two units at this level and Carla stood in the open doorway of one of them. She was more casually dressed than he had seen her before, wearing a white cotton blouse above a blue miniskirt, her bare legs in navy slip-ons. ‘Michael! I’m so relieved to see you.’ She made it sound like his appearance at her door was a surprise, and grasped him by the elbows as she raised herself to kiss his cheek, lingering longer than she had when farewelling him the other day. ‘Are you all right?’
It wasn’t just the style of her clothing that had changed. She had lost some of her cool elegance and her voice carried an edge of anxiety.
‘Come in,’ she said and turned back into an entry lobby with an archway on either side. She chose the one on the right and led him into a spacious, open plan living and dining area, which was backed by a gleaming kitchen, separated from the remainder of the space by a marble bench. At the far end he could see an off-white, modular longue suite, arranged to enjoy the view of Port Melbourne and Williamstown through the full-length, glass wall of the room. Presumably there were several equally sumptuous bedrooms and bathrooms on the other side of the entry. Mike could now appreciate what a major task it would be to redesign the latest Riverside tower for a lower-budget market similar to CityView. There would need to be major changes to the internal layout as well as the finishes and fittings. From somewhere within the apartment he could hear a trumpeter who sounded like the man Carla had played to him on Tuesday. Today he was playing in a slower, more romantic tempo, almost ballad-like.
‘It’s such a lovely day I thought we should eat on the balcony,’ Carla said.
Mike turned to find her standing in a wide doorway, which led on to a balcony large enough for a slatted, timber table and chairs as well as several canvas sunlounges.
‘Often the breeze can be a problem, but today we have mild sun and nothing to disturb u
s.’
Despite his unease with the height, he came to stand beside her. ‘You certainly have a great view of the CBD from here.’ The city buildings appeared as a vertical sculpture embedded in the background blur of the western suburbs – far superior to the sight from CityView.
‘I like the view of the marina you get from up here,’ she said as she walked to the frosted glass panes of the low wall and leant over to look below. Mike felt tension grip his thighs and stomach but took a seat at the end of the table.
‘Mike, what is the matter?’
‘You said you needed to talk with me about Shane.’
Carla came to sit beside him and said, ‘I want to say again how sorry I am about Shane. Terrible for all of you, but particularly Mary. How is she?’
Mike thought of his recent confrontation with Mary. ‘Shocked of course. It’s terrible for him to die the way he did, but I must admit I never cared for Shane, and he treated Mary very badly. In the long run she’ll be better off without him.’
‘Angelo was very upset when he heard the news.’ Carla paused as though expecting Mike to respond but, when he remained quiet, she said, ‘He was very surprised when he saw the two of you together last Friday. He didn’t know you were related.’
‘We weren’t,’ Mike snapped.
‘OK, he was surprised you were together at a family party,’ Carla replied gently. ‘You thought Angelo was kidding you when he said Findlay’s was a rival to Rubicon.’
Again she paused and this time he did respond. ‘Yeah, I did.’
‘Angelo doesn’t know I’ve been speaking with you.’
‘Is that …’
‘We need a drink. I’m sure you’re thirsty.’ Carla hastened away, leaving Mike to puzzle over their edgy conversation. After a surprisingly long delay, she reappeared with two glasses of white wine. ‘Same winery but a different wine. See what you think of this one.’