Follow the Money (2 page)

Suddenly Standish looked closer to forty than thirty. His face seemed to clench and lines radiated out from his eyes.

‘Did you ever meet Malouf?’ he said.

‘Two or three times.’

‘What did you think of him?’

I didn’t want to talk about Malouf. I’d tried to forget him. ‘As I said, I found all that money management stuff boring and I tended not to take much notice of the people who spouted it.’

He persisted. ‘Good-looking?’

‘Certainly not ugly, anyway.’

‘He had . . . has a fatal attraction for women, including my wife.’

You want to say ‘Ah’ at times like that but you don’t.

‘I discovered that they’d been having a long-running affair.’

‘How did you discover that?’

‘She told me.’

It hurt him to say it; Standish was the sort of man who liked to put a personal-positive spin on anything. ‘Why?’

‘It was after he disappeared with your money and other people’s as well, as I suppose you know. She seemed upset at the news about Malouf but not distraught. But it was a sort of catalyst. We hadn’t been getting along for some time, the usual things . . . and she told me, shouted it to me. She said she loved him.’

Saying this had taken a lot out of him. He got up and the athletic bounce had left him as he crossed to where his bar fridge and a cupboard were tucked away. ‘I’m going to have a drink. You?’

It was about three hours before my usual drinking time, but I didn’t want him to feel any worse than he already did. ‘Sure, what’ve you got?’

‘Everything.’

‘Scotch, a bit of ice.’

I didn’t recognise the bottle; that doesn’t mean much; I don’t see enough single malts to get well acquainted. He made the drinks and brought the bottle back to the desk. The whisky was smooth—about as far as my capacity for appreciation goes. Standish downed half of his in a swallow and topped up his glass.

‘I’m not a drunk,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Just that it’s hard to . . . relive it all.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you making fun of me?’

I sipped the drink. ‘No, I’m not. But you’ve only scratched the surface of what you want to tell me about all this, and I’m wondering how much you’re going to have to drink to get through it.’

He pushed the glass away. ‘They told me you were a hard man to deal with, but that if I was straight with you you’d give me a hearing and might be willing to help.’

‘I wouldn’t exactly call what you’ve been doing up to now being straight.’

‘No, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’m manipulative—force of habit. Let’s start again.’

Standish said his wife, Felicity, had met Malouf at a dinner for people in what he called the finance industry where he was the keynote speaker.

‘I was swamped by commitments, clients, prospective clients, offers of various kinds.’ He pointed to his glass. ‘I’d had a few too many.’

‘It happens,’ I said.

‘Yeah. I tell myself if not that night, then sometime, and if not him, someone else. I sort of believe it. Anyway, the point is, it became an affair. I was busy and didn’t know until she hit me with it.’

‘You said she was only upset when Malouf was killed, not devastated.’

‘You’ll think me paranoid, but I suspect her and Malouf’s wife and Christ knows who else of being involved in a conspiracy. There’s a lot of money involved, but more than that . . .’

For a man like Standish that was a big admission. What could be ‘more’ than money? I sipped whisky and waited for him to tell me.

‘Word got around about Felicity’s involvement with Malouf. Confidence is everything in this business. Trust is nothing. A few clients have . . . withdrawn; a few are cooling off and it’s not just the GFC. I’m facing a
personal
fucking financial crisis.’

So it was about reputation but still about money. He was serious, no question. He’d drawn up a list of names—the person who claimed to have seen Malouf, Malouf’s wife, his own wife, gamblers the police had interviewed, a journalist who’d covered the case, a lawyer representing a client who was suing Perry Hassan’s firm and another who was processing Perry’s application to the insurance company covering him against precisely this kind of disaster. For someone who didn’t particularly care for lawyers, it looked as though I was going to be spending some time with them.
If
I agreed to work for Standish.

‘Well?’ he said after handing over the list and some supporting information—newspaper clippings, web page printouts, emails. ‘Will you help me, and yourself?’

I finished the drink and ran my eye over the list. The alleged sighting had been in Middle Harbour, at a marina by the Spit Bridge. That helped me to decide. It’d be hard enough tracking people down and questioning them with no credentials whatsoever in Sydney, but impossible in Liechtenstein or the Bahamas. Standish saw me focusing on that entry.

‘He’s still in Sydney. That means there’s a reason, probably an associate. He had to have someone help him mount this operation.’

‘From what you’ve said it could be a woman looking after him, giving him sanctuary. That’s if the sighting’s genuine.’

‘The names are there. Felicity and I are separated. You can approach her.’

‘The helpful associate and the woman could be one and the same,’ I said.

‘Does that mean you’re in?’

‘I’m thinking about it.’

‘Let’s talk money.’

Standish began by mentioning a contract, a daily rate and expenses but I stopped him.

‘First off, I’ll go and see this yachtsman, the one who says he saw Malouf. If he doesn’t convince me then it’s all off and I won’t charge you anything. If I’m convinced I’ll follow up the other leads and see where I get. I’ll charge you what I think the work’s worth.’

‘That’s not businesslike.’

‘Right,’ I said, ‘look where businesslike has got us. I’ll need your email address and a mobile number where I can reach you twenty-four seven.’

He slumped down in his chair. ‘See May Ling in the office.’

I dealt with May Ling, who seemed to have everything at her perfectly manicured fingertips. I went down the stairs to the street feeling strangely buoyant. It wasn’t just the prospect of recovering some money or avoiding bankruptcy. High enough stakes to start with, but it was more than that. It was because I was working again and about to be useful in a way I hadn’t been for too long. Maybe.

They told me that after the heart operation I’d have a new surge of energy, feel ten years younger. I did some days, not others. Some days I worried about little things that never used to bother me and some days I didn’t let quite big things concern me at all. And I couldn’t predict the way it’d go. For the moment I
was
feeling younger because of the prospect of interesting work. I decided to walk back to the city for the exercise and to plan ahead. I was looking forward to studying the material Standish had given me and interviewing Stefan Nordlung, who’d claimed to have seen Malouf. He was a retired marine engineer, an acquaintance of Malouf’s. A drive to Seaforth tomorrow morning was a pleasant pros- pect after all the sitting about and time-filling I’d been doing.

I’d covered several kilometres briskly and was feeling good when my mobile buzzed. For some reason I have an aversion to walking along with the thing cocked up at my ear the way so many people do. I stopped and stepped out of the way to take the call.

‘Cliff, it’s Megan.’

My daughter. ‘Yes, love?’

‘Good news.’

‘Always welcome. Tell me.’

‘I’m pregnant.’

I said ‘What?’ so loudly people in the street gave me an alarmed look.

‘I said I’m going to have a baby.’

‘I can’t believe it.’

‘Why? Didn’t you think Hank and I were fucking?’

That was pure Megan—direct. ‘Yes, but . . . Well, that’s terrific. When?’

‘Six months. We waited until we were completely sure. We phoned Hank’s people in the States and you’re the first to know here.’

I mumbled something, said I’d see her that night and walked on in a sort of daze. Fatherhood had been sprung on me; I hadn’t known of Megan’s existence until she was eighteen. Now this. I didn’t know what a grandfather’s credentials were, but I was pretty sure they didn’t include bankruptcy. I thought about it as I moved on. Megan was young, who knew how many kids she might have and what help she might need? The stakes just climbed higher.

The happy couple were so involved in what they were doing—and they behaved as though they’d achieved some- thing no one else in the world had ever done—that they didn’t ask me what I was up to. That suited me. Like them, I wanted to be sure before making any announcements. I was happy for them and myself: I’d missed out on the real experience of fatherhood, a big thing to miss out on, and now I was getting a second chance at a version of it.

I went home from their flat with two-thirds of a bottle of champagne inside me. Megan wasn’t drinking and Hank was almost too excited to drink. The walk from Newtown to Glebe sobered me and it wasn’t late. Time to work.

I transferred Standish’s list and his brief comments on the people on it into a notebook. I had names—Stefan Nordlung, Felicity Standish, Rosemary Malouf, Prospero Sabatini, Clive Finn and Selim Houli. Sabatini was the journalist who’d written on the Malouf matter; Finn and Houli were gamblers. Finn was the manager of a casino at Parramatta and Houli ran a nightclub and a high stakes card game at Kings Cross. Both men had told police that Malouf had lost heavily but both denied having anything to do with his disappearance. I had addresses and phone numbers for some of them. I spread the clippings, printouts and emails on the desk in the room I used as an office—now given over mainly to paying bills—and immersed myself in the life and times of Richard Malouf.

Perry Hassan had sent Standish a copy of the CV Malouf had provided when applying successfully for a job in his firm. This, with Sabatini’s published articles, provided a detailed portrait. Richard Malouf was thirty-five, the only son of immigrant Lebanese parents who’d come to Australia in the early 1970s. Malouf senior was a veterinarian not qualified to practise in Australia but who acquired a great reputation among the Brisbane horse racing fraternity. He did well and his son attended private schools. Both parents were now dead. Richard Malouf played soccer for the school and was scouted by professional clubs. Instead, after stellar HSC results, he went to the University of Western Australia where he got a degree in economics. He followed with a master’s in computer science and worked for IBM and other firms in Perth before coming east and joining Perry Hassan’s outfit.

In 2003 he married Rosemary Bruce, an airline flight attendant. They had no children, lived in Balmain with a water view and a mortgage, and shared a Beemer. Malouf played golf at Kogarah, amateur soccer briefly, and collected wine. He was found in his car at the Sydney airport parking station. He’d been shot once through the head.

Several photographs accompanied Sabatini’s articles—schoolboy Malouf with his near perfect HSC score, Malouf with the soccer ball on a string and later receiving an award at IBM. I worked through the material, highlighting various points and making notes. I put the stuff together neatly and got up to take the medications I’d be taking for the rest of my life for blood pressure, heart rhythm regulation, cholesterol control. I swallowed them down with the dregs of the red wine I’d been drinking as an aid to concentration. It was a life sentence, but not to do it was a death sentence.

Always get up from your studies with a question, someone had said. I had one: why would a high flyer like Malouf join a firm like Perry Hassan’s? It was big, but not the biggest.

In the morning I phoned Nordlung at his home address. A woman with a faint American accent answered and I told her what I wanted.

‘I’m his wife. You’ll find him at the marina by the Spit Bridge, working on his boat.’

‘Can you tell me the name of the boat, Mrs Nordlung?’

‘It’s the
Gretchen III
—that’s Stefan’s little joke. Gretchen’s my name and I’m his third wife.’

I couldn’t be sure but she sounded drunk. At that time in the morning? Well, it happens.

It was a perfect day with a blue sky and light wind. Coming down Spit Road towards the water gave me a multi-million dollar view of Middle Harbour—no house with that view would be worth under a million and the boats would add many, many noughts. It was Wednesday mid-morning and the traffic was light, but there was plenty of activity around the launching ramps and at the marina and not much parking space. I squeezed in between two massive SUVs and remembered to watch my shins on their towing attachments. Tough for some—if you couldn’t afford a marina berth you had to keep your boat in the garage and tow it here.

The marina was T-shaped and the boats varied from modest little numbers to monsters with lofty flagpoles and garden boxes on the decks. I paused to take in the scene and when I thought of the insurance premiums and the upkeep and all the fees involved, it suddenly seemed that I wasn’t looking at boats but at huge, floating bundles of money. I asked at the office where the
Gretchen III
was and the woman pointed and then looked closely at me.

‘Are you from the police?’

‘No, why?’

‘I just thought . . .’

Looking in the direction she’d indicated, about halfway down the jetty, I could see people gathered around, staring down at a moored boat. I heard sirens wailing and I hurried. Attracting all the attention was a sleek boat with
Gretchen III
painted in blue on its white hull. Two men were bending over a man lying on the deck. One of the men had a mobile phone to his ear. The man on the deck was still; water was dribbling from his clothes and his head was cocked at an odd angle. There was a tangle of rope around his left leg.

The crowd was murmuring and one man swore as he saw another taking pictures with his mobile phone.

‘What happened?’ I asked the picture snapper as he backed away.

‘Looks like he got caught up somehow, fell in and drowned. I’ve gotta get this off to the media.’

The sirens screamed, people jumped aside, and an ambulance and a police vehicle drove down the jetty. There was an eerie silence as the sirens died, broken only by the slapping of the water against the boats and the pylons and the flapping of the flags on the masts. The paramedics jumped down onto the deck and the men who’d been attending the victim moved aside. I got a good look at him —long-limbed, long-headed with pale blonde hair matted against his skull. His pale eyes stared sightlessly at the sky.

I hung around picking up snippets of information. Nordlung had been found by the owner of the boat berthed alongside his, about twenty minutes before I got there. He’d noticed how untidy the deck of the
Gretchen III
was and had gone aboard to investigate. Nordlung was famous for keeping his boat in pristine condition. He found the rope running from where it had caught on the hatch door over the side. When he hauled on it, the body came into view. Nordlung was a big man and it had taken two to get him on the deck. They tried to resuscitate him but failed.

The police spoke to the two yachtsmen who were both smoking and looking shaken. Then there was a flurry of activity as the police used their mobile phones and pushed the onlookers further away. Another car arrived with plainclothes detectives and the chequered tape came out indicating that this was a crime scene. The detectives began taking names and addresses and I drifted away to the edge of the growing crowd. Eventually, I was able to walk away with others whose interest had been satisfied.

I bought a coffee at a stall outside the marina and drank it leaning against my car in the sunshine. More official vehicles arrived—SOC people, water police with, at a guess, a frogman, and there was probably a pathologist in the mix. A television camera crew swept in.

Shit happens, as they say, and there was no necessary connection between Nordlung’s death and my visit. For all I knew he could’ve had a hundred enemies, but it seemed more than likely there was a connection. The question then was, who knew of my intention? Standish, but not the precise time. Nordlung’s wife. The other possibility was that Nordlung’s phone was tapped and that can never be ruled out with the surveillance equipment around now. That idea opened up other questions. If Malouf had faked his death, someone had died to provide the body. And now Nordlung. They must be playing for higher stakes here than just ripping off some middle-range investors.

Thinking hard, I drove back to the city to a car park near the building where Prospero Sabatini worked. He wrote for a weekly called
The Investor
, which prided itself on its investigative journalism. I’d Googled him and got the essential details—aged thirty-two, ex-army with service in Timor and the Solomon Islands, master’s degree in economics, keen rock climber. He’d published two books—one on corporate fraud, one on rock climbing. I phoned Sabatini and he agreed to meet me for lunch in a pub close by.

I called Standish’s mobile and was told that it was either switched off or out of range. He was living in a serviced apartment in Potts Point. I called the direct line to his flat and got the standard Telstra voice message. I asked him to call me as soon as possible. Then I phoned Standish’s office and got May Ling.

‘It’s Cliff Hardy. Mr Standish, please.’

‘I’m afraid Mr Standish isn’t available, Mr Hardy.’

She made it sound as if she was doing me a favour giving me this information.

‘Why?’

‘He’s away on business.’

‘Where? For how long?’

‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

‘It’s important. How can I reach him?’

‘I can’t help you. I’m sorry. I’ll tell him you called.’

‘When?’

‘When he returns.’

‘I hope you can keep everything running smoothly until then.’

‘I think so. Goodbye.’

I just bet you can
, I thought.

A frustrating morning, requiring a relaxation of a rule. I went to the pub Sabatini had nominated, the John Curtin, and ordered a middy of Pure Blonde—low carb, nothing you couldn’t work off in a gym session. Sabatini’s photograph, postage stamp-size, had appeared at the top of his articles and I had no trouble recognising him when he strolled into the pub. The surprise was that he seemed to recognise me. We shook hands.

‘We’ve met, sort of,’ he said.

He was short-medium, neatly put together, with dark hair and a beard. He wore the clothes favoured by some in his profession—suit, dark shirt, dark tie loosely knotted. I couldn’t place him.

‘I worked with Lily Truscott on a few things a while back. I was at the wake.’

I nodded. ‘It’s a bit of a blur to me now. What’re you drinking?’

He ordered red wine and I had one as well to go with the pasta. We ate at an outside table in Liverpool Street. I told Sabatini more or less the truth—that I’d been hired by someone who believed that Richard Malouf was still alive and wanted redress. No name, of course. I said that the person who’d claimed to have seen Malouf after his reported death was also dead. I said I’d read his articles and thought he’d be interested if any of this turned out to be true.

‘You bet I’d be interested.’

‘Did you have any reason to think the death might’ve been faked?’

‘No, he was a notorious gambler and womaniser. Any number of people could’ve been out to get him.’

‘But an execution seems a bit . . . extreme.’

‘I did think that at the time, and I did wonder why he hadn’t taken the Qantas option when he’d got hold of the money. You can gamble and fuck in comfort just about anywhere.’

‘If you were at the wake you must know about me. They took away my PEA licence. I’ve got no standing. Malouf stripped me of a fair bit of money, but here’s something in your line—he left me with a bunch of shares that have a big call on them. I’m facing bankruptcy. That’s my interest, plus it was Lily’s money, really. I was trying to do a bit of good with it here and there. I’m angry.’

That was coming it a bit strong, but I needed his help and I can be manipulative when I have to be. We both worked on the pasta and the wine for a few minutes while the foot traffic drifted past us.

I said, ‘If this thing takes shape you’ll get whatever I have to give.’

He scooped up the last of his ravioli and took a sip of the wine. ‘Thanks. I can understand where you’re coming from. But how can I help now?’

‘We’ve got two dead people connected to this—possibly. I’ve got the feeling that there’s much more to the Malouf thing than meets the eye.’

He drained his glass. ‘You’re right there, Cliff. Much more.’