The Trojan Dog

by Dorothy Johnston

  We’d chosen a table with a clear view of an empty billiard table on a raised green dais, circled by green things in pots. It looked like my kind of stage, the setting for a performance that never quite took place.

  Someone had sent me an anonymous email.

  ‘I know you fancy yourself as an investigator.’

  I’d sat staring at it on my computer screen. Could I somehow absent-mindedly have typed this sentence to myself? My concentration had been off, but surely not that much.

  ‘Very funny.’ I’d turned round to Ivan. ‘Now get rid of it.’

  Ivan had crowed with delight. ‘Sandy! A secret message! Exactly like the movies!’

  As though, by tinkering, I had called up a genie. I decided on an equally flattering reply But my correspondence with Mr or Ms Anonymous hadn’t ended there. He, or she, had invited me to a Thursday lunchtime meeting in Glebe Park.

  I licked froth from my cappuccino with a plastic spoon and said to Ivan, ‘Suppose you sit in here while I talk to him outside?’

  ‘There you go again. The ubiquitous male pronoun. What if she recognises me?’

  I fidgeted, moving my cup and saucer around in a circle. The tables were white, with a squiggly pattern in yellow, red and green that reminded me of the worms on my screen when the virus struck.

  I looked up at Ivan. ‘Suppose she spots you, knows who you are. Would that be so surprising? Would she expect me to have come alone?’

  Ivan pouted. I felt as though I was helping him through it like a toddler. Behind us, counters serving Indian potato pancakes, pizza, Malaysian and Lebanese, gave out their conflicting pre-lunch smells. Cooks were filling the warming trays with noodles, saffron rice and fish and chips, a smorgasbord that made my stomach turn.

  I’d heard a male voice behind the invitation on my screen. I couldn’t help it.

  ‘Don’t come with me then,’ I said to Ivan. ‘I don’t give a shit.’

  I stood up to go. A pair of flat-faced polished statues guarded the restaurant’s sliding doors, a man and woman in simplified wooden dress, the man holding a posy in one hand, the other arm bent across his chest, the woman with one arm stiffly by her side, the other neatly chopped off at the elbow.

  Ivan fingered the leaves of a small tree as we walked past it.

  He gave me his Yogi Bear grin and winked. ‘D’you think I’m thin enough to hide behind a fern?’

  . . .

  My powers of description may not be up to telling this story. I’ve suspected this, I’ve glimpsed it all along. My raw material is words—as opposed to pictures. How to find words for what is essentially a picture story? Ivan’s drawing of my cyclamen, which so startled me on my second day at work, my journey inside the wooden horse, the learning aids Ivan made for Peter, the viruses, our hacker’s path—visual journeys these are, journeys of the eyes, other senses struggling to keep up.

  Derek now—Derek, my absent husband, has an unmistakable contempt for words. And he hates being made to discuss anything personal. Come to think of it, maybe it’s Derek sitting on my shoulder, a censor crow or raven, that makes me doubt my ability to tell my story now. My guilt at not having told Derek the truth, and a kind of desperate misery that, even if I’d wanted to, I wouldn’t have known what to say.

  I needed Ivan. I needed his skills, his wayward, ready hands, his boy’s enthusiasm and his bitterness of a rejected husband. Another Ivan, one who’d been able to hang on to his Lauren, who’d stayed in Queensland, raised his own kids, would not have given me a second glance. And Ivan’s loggish part, the techie’s mindset that he shared with Felix, their assumption that the lies computers tell would eventually be yielded to them, if they set up watching systems, kept complicated logs.

  I wasn’t quite so optimistic. Or maybe I was in too much of a hurry.

  Fancy yourself as an investigator. I more than half-suspected it was Ivan who’d sent me the message, that no-one would turn up on Thursday.

  Since my first day at DIR, Ivan had always kept a close watch on me. Now we were operating according to a truce. In common we were watchers, and we watched each other.

  The merry-go-round, the whirligig that Ivan drew me into—not words, but a space.

  . . .

  Alone on Thursday, I chose an outside table with four white moulded plastic chairs, each with a red Coca-Cola logo on its back.

  Bare wrist and arm branches of apple trees turned up to the sun, pruned to grow that way. I counted thirty apple trees while I was waiting, arms upraised in a tree prayer. They were young, supple, moulded, the nearest ones close enough for me to smell tight-fisted blossoms, tense and almost ready. In a few days they would all flower at once, become achingly white.

  For spring in Canberra there had to be this bare cold, withdrawal of sap and waiting. Yet the park had its share of evergreens as well. A native pine plantation was reflected in a kind of pond, steps flushed with running water leading down to it. I’d hauled Peter out of it once, afraid of broken glass.

  I didn’t hear the man approach my table and when I glanced around, I caught my breath.

  The sun was behind him and he was smiling, his one good eye engaging mine. His other eye was twisted far to the right and cloudy, blind.

  ‘G’day there.’ The man held out his hand for a businesslike shake, then pulled out a chair by its back, saying, ‘You must be Sandra.’

  Curly blond hair touched his collar. His seeing eye was blue.

  ‘And you’re—?’ I asked.

  The man’s lips curved in amusement.

  ‘Suppose we exchange our bona fides, something of that kind,’ I went on, seeing he wasn’t going to tell me his name. ‘Would you like to see my driver’s licence?’

  The man smiled again, and gave me a long look, curious and appraising.

  ‘Let me buy you a coffee instead.’

  When he came back with the drinks, I asked him, ‘Do you work for Compic?’

  The man’s blue eye was bright enough for two. He stirred his coffee slowly. Apparently everything I said amused him. He looked up at me and said, ‘You and I have one thing in common, Sandra. We share a weakness for other people’s electronic mail.’

  He had the inward but not withdrawn face of a man used to being stared at. ‘Drink up,’ he added, nodding at my cup. ‘The wind will make it cold.’

  ‘Someone framed Rae Evans. She’s facing trial for computer theft and fraud. Do you know who that someone is?’

  The one-eyed man finished his coffee and leant back in his chair, enjoying upsetting me, making me wait. He wore only a thin jacket over a denim shirt, but the wind didn’t seem to bother him.

  ‘I’ll tell you something about computer companies in this town. Mind if I smoke?’ He pulled a packet of Alpine from his jacket pocket and bent over cupped hands to light one. ‘There’s megabucks to be made selling software to government departments right now.’ He spoke with his head down, concentrating on his cigarette, which needed care and attention in the wind. ‘No secret that they’re spending every cent of their budgets in expectation of leaner times after the election. IT chiefs are pissing on each other’s credit cards to get there first, buy up the latest gadgets. Even a small local outfit can turn over a few million in a year, with a bit of luck and the right connections. That’s why there’s so many of us. We’d fry each other’s balls in butter given half a chance.’

  His cigarette finally alight, the one-eyed man lifted his head and studied me thoughtfully. He wore his disability with grace and humour, and I found myself attracted to him.

  ‘How well do you know Allison Edgeware?’ I asked him.

  He inclined his head with a slight smile. ‘Who works for the lovely lady? That’s a more interesting question. Ms Edgeware subcontracts. Hires programmers for one job at a time. Doesn’t re-hire. And most of them are newcomers. She’s never employed anyone with commercial experience. Public servants moonlighting, bright sparks fresh out of uni—you know the sort of thing.’

  ‘What do y
ou think she’s up to?’

  The wind was blowing menthol fumes my way. I waved my hand in front of my face, but the one-eyed man ignored it.

  ‘Compic’s quarantined their developmental programs. No wires in, no wires out. A shame, really. Like gagging a brilliant story-teller.’

  ‘Do you have a quarantined computer in your office too?’

  ‘I would, if I had anything to hide. My guess is that, whatever’s on that quarantined computer, it isn’t tarty graphics.’

  The man seemed relaxed and in no hurry. Had he already learnt what he wanted to about me?

  ‘What does Compic produce?’ he went on. ‘Graphics software. Not bad. Actually, some of it’s quite cute. But nothing to shoot your granny over. The lovely Allison is perfectly capable of running the legitimate side of the business, as well as various bits of dicky marketing.’

  He looked across the thick, wet grass to a curve of flower beds. I followed his single line of sight and spotted Bambi in her red cloak, stooping to pick flowers. Bambi looked incredibly fragile, on the edge of some undreamed-of danger. Her face, as she bent over the soft bed, was mostly hidden by the cloak. I was gripped with fear in case a gardener or some security person reprimanded her, took her flowers away.

  I turned back to the one-eyed man and said, ‘So you all spy on each other?’

  He was frowning. I sensed in him a certain apprehension where Bambi was concerned. Perhaps he regularly ate his lunch in the park, and knew Bambi by sight, or otherwise.

  ‘I thought we might do a spot of trading,’ he told me. ‘Since we’ve both been looking up Compic’s skirts, you tell me what you saw, and I’ll oblige in kind.’

  ‘What makes you think I’ve got anything on Compic that you don’t?’

  ‘Can you tell me how much of their software your department’s bought, or committed themselves to?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘I could find out, but there’s a certain risk attached to snooping, isn’t there?’

  ‘How can you expect me to do a deal, when you won’t tell me who you are?’

  ‘But I already told you. I’m the competition.’

  Fancy yourself, I thought. The one-eyed man repeated, ‘How much has your department paid them?’

  ‘I can find out for you,’ I said. ‘At least, I think I can.’

  ‘Thanks,’ the one-eyed man said. ‘You see, it’s hard for small fry like us. It goes like this. Someone from DIR rings up John Smith in Attorney-General’s and happens to drop, in the course of conver­sation—“By the way, Compic’s doing this fantastic job for us. Magic stuff. Give them a go, why don’t you? And they’ve got this absolute babe heading them up.” John Smith has a coffee with our Allison, and the results are as you might expect.’ He paused a moment to pay attention to his cigarette. I wondered if he was having a go at himself ­indirectly, if at some point he’d succumbed to Allison’s charms and was kicking himself for it now.

  ‘John Smith has a drink with Bill Bloggs from DEET. Result, Bill Bloggs phones Allison, and, would you believe it, he scores.’

  I tried again. ‘Who’s Allison’s boss? You must have some idea.’

  The one-eyed man made a face, self-deprecating, still amused. ‘This is a such a wonderful city for gossip. And boy’s clubs are the best source of gossip in the world.’

  ‘You mean you all know, and if I was a bloke then I’d know too? Come off it.’

  He waved his left hand towards the white curves of the casino, next to it the huge rectangular blocks of the Industry Department. ‘It’s all very well to have rules about tendering for contracts. Which I must say, in my experience, most people follow most of the time. But the rules don’t mean all that much if the decision is as good as made.’

  He smiled as though being half-blind was deliberate, a conscious choice, like Bambi’s cloak, her taste for stolen blooms.

  Then he turned back to me and said, ‘People are talking about how Compic’s landed a couple of excellent contracts and are about to land another one. A much bigger one. A beautiful big fat Defence contract. It’s being kept quiet till after the elections. If the rumour’s true, it’ll put them in the super-league. It’s a crucial time for them and they can’t afford snoopers, even amateur ones like you.’

  He fished in his jacket pocket, pulled out several stapled sheets of paper and handed them to me, then leant back again, as though he had no more on his mind than a coffee in the park. His sudden shifts, from relaxed to intently focused, were beginning to unnerve me.

  ‘I wrote to your department bitching about their tendering procedures. Got a “we’re looking into it” reply. And not a word since then.’

  ‘What made you decide to complain?’

  ‘Thought it might be fun to stir the possum. I’d never heard of Ms Rae Evans, but I’m not surprised by her subsequent misfortune. To tell you the truth, I was thoroughly pissed off. Compic haven’t produced anything that my company couldn’t produce as well or better. You know what I think? I think there wasn’t any tender.’ His voice changed again, and all at once I felt frightened. ‘My advice to you is to stay out of Compic. Take up flower arranging, like your pal in the red coat over there.’

  Bambi, having picked her fill of public blooms, was walking slowly towards the gates, holding her posy stiffly in front of her like a nervous bride.

  I leant back too, thinking hard. If the rumour about the Defence contract was true, it made the one-eyed man’s complaint significant. If word got around that there was a black mark against Compic, even a potential one, it might jeopardise their chances. I wondered what the Defence contract was for, how much it was worth. Compic would be sweating on getting it signed before a change of government.

  The one-eyed man smiled again, this time I thought maliciously, and said, ‘I don’t like seeing people get hurt.’

  ‘A minute ago you were suggesting that we do a deal.’

  ‘But I’m serious now. I’m warning you. Drop it. Leave it to the cops, Ms Mahoney. They carry guns.’

  . . .

  Gail Trembath rang me at home that evening.

  ‘Sandra? Hi. Are you alone? This might be nothing. I saw that FAS from your department.’

  ‘Which FAS? You mean Jim Wilcox?’

  ‘The puddingy one. Yeah. I’ve just seen him. Tête-à-bloody-tête with Phil Theroux. In that carpark off London Circuit.’

  ‘They might’ve met by accident.’

  Gail snorted down the phone. Phillip Theroux was the shadow Minister for Small Business, a good speaker and a wily politician.

  ‘It struck me,’ Gail said, ‘that you haven’t been paying enough attention to the political angle in all of this. You haven’t asked yourself the obvious question. Who’s got most to gain by discrediting DIR?’

  ‘See if you can find out what their connections are,’ I said. ‘And Felix Wenborn. If Wilcox’s in this, I’m sure Felix is in it with him. But do it discreetly. And—Gail? Listen. I’ll buy you a tonne of croissants as a thank-you present, but don’t go nosing around Compic. They’re bad news.’ I waited, and when Gail didn’t reply, I said, ‘I hope you’re taking notes, because I’m serious.’

  After I hung up, I recalled the one-eyed man’s warning. Not even amateur snoopers like you. I wondered what Gail would do with my advice to stay away from Compic, apart from laugh it off.

  I washed the dishes, tidied up a bit. While my hands were busy, I speculated about my enemy’s character, the electronic filaments that bound us. There was this patina or veneer of logic, the kind you got used to from watching crime investigations on TV.

  Fear

  I discovered that Compic had taken over part of an abandoned primary school for their offices, sharing classrooms with half-a-dozen other small Canberra businesses, and trading the advantages of a central location for cheap rents.

  Rows of pine trees lined the road on two sides of what had been a school oval. The slides and swings looked old, but still in working order. There were horses
on springs and a roundabout. I walked slowly past them, keeping an eye on Fred, who was running from one rubbish bin to the next, his old scavenging habits dusted off and in good working order. It was Saturday morning and there were hardly any people about. I passed a couple walking a corgi almost as wide as he was long.

  When Peter had been starting school, the controversy over school closures had been on the front page of the Canberra Times week after week. There’d been pickets at Lyons, I recalled, though I couldn’t remember anything about the Downer school. In fact I hadn’t taken much notice of the debate at the time. Our local school had heaps of enrolments. Peter was going. Between the hours of nine and three, I would be free of him.

  The air that morning was like old glass without a chip in it. Childless ovals and playground had a tranquil emptiness. I remembered how I’d taken Peter to the Downer playground sometimes, on days when Derek left me the car. It was a change from the ones nearest us, and I itched for different scenery, no matter how slight and superficial the difference was.

  Downer primary school was really very close to where I lived. It had taken Fred and me less than thirty minutes to walk there, and we hadn’t hurried. It gave me an eerie feeling to realise that Compic had been so close all this time, practically in my neighbourhood.

  The pine-needled surrounds of the school no longer a school, the clean ovals, the prunus trees about to blossom, had the same unreal serenity I’d felt everywhere in the suburbs when I’d walked their length and breadth with Peter in his pram. Now I had good reason to be anxious, but I didn’t feel it. I’d walked kilometre after kilometre once the fruit trees bloomed, in that secure warmth in the middle of the day, seldom speaking to, or even seeing anyone, from one shopping centre to another. I’d smiled at women in cars when they pulled up at the lights.

  Sometimes I’d heard the whispering of a crowd of people, backstage, just out of sight. Or else it was like walking about inside a painting, half-seeing, half-hearing an artistic crowd in front of me, with the itch, the butterflies in the stomach that warm weather brought, the promise that ought to be and might be.