Opportunity (12 page)

One day I was having a beer and looking through Adele's
shelves when I found a book about a criminal case. I took it
down, since anything about the law interested me now. A
journalist had researched an Australian murder case and
decided that the woman who'd been convicted was innocent.
I looked through the photos: the crime scene, the victim, the
woman accused, and so on. I took it in to Adele.

'You read this?'

She was eating salami. 'Yes. It's quite diverting.'

'Is it true?'

She tossed her hair back. 'It makes a convincing case,' she
said vaguely.

I grabbed another beer. 'Can I borrow it, love?'

'Oh, what's mine is yours,' she said.

There was something in her tone.

I looked at her. 'What do you mean by that?'

'Nothing, Terry.'

I judged it was time to leave. I took the beer and the book,
kissed the girls and went off to the gym. After that I sat by the
pool at my place and started reading.

I liked the writer, a journalist who'd taken up the case of a
woman accused of poisoning three people. The guy was
tenacious. He didn't accept what people in authority told him.
He dug deep and discovered evidence the police and the
defence lawyers had been too sloppy to uncover. He hadn't
succeeded completely, since the woman, as far as I could tell,
was still mouldering away in an Australian prison. But the
book was, as Adele had said, 'diverting'. It demonstrated
something: that you can't trust people just because they're in
positions of power. Police, lawyers, judges — are human. They
make mistakes. Some are corrupt, some incompetent. (Look
at our problems with the Serious Fraud Office.) I read the
book pretty much in one sitting. I got energised and made a
lot of notes. I wished I had someone to talk to.

I went back to Adele's. She was the only one who'd be
interested in my ideas. When I opened the door I heard her
say, 'My ex-husband.'

I strolled in and here was a bearded fat guy heaving himself
out of his seat and coming to shake hands. I looked at him
coolly.

'This is Willem,' Adele said.

'Hello, William.'

'Willem,' he corrected.

I turned; it was a reflex. I was about to go to the kitchen for
a beer. I hesitated. The table was set with dishes and a fancy
salad.

'You never eat salad,' I said.

Adele said, 'Terry.'

'You eat all that fatty shit.'

I couldn't help it. I was upset. I thought about sitting down
and telling Adele
and
Willem about the case of the Australian
poisoner. But Adele was moving me towards the door. Behind
her, fat Willem coughed and shifted his bulk.

I faced Adele at the door. 'How do you have sex? How do
you
connect
? Couple of billiard balls.' I said it aloud.

A look flashed across Adele's face. All that good-natured
flab sharpened itself into such fury. Goodness me, I'll never
forget it. She closed the door on me.

I got in the car. I thought, you never know about people.
Sloppy old Adele. She was so slow and easy, so beyond (I'd
thought) wanting a man. Something else I'd observed straight
away: she'd waxed off her mo.

No doubt Willem was a gold-digger. I checked my mirrors. This
was a new habit. Over the past month I'd got it into my head that those fools
at the Serious Fraud Office were following me.

***

Ridge Sligo's case dragged on. The computers were unavailable
while the firm tried to get them back and the Serious Fraud
people applied to examine them. I went to court each time
there was a hearing and soon I had a file of notes on the case.
In the end, Ridge Sligo got the computers back. Russell and I
were free to move ahead, and we started putting together ideas
in the property sphere. I went back to Adele and borrowed
a bit more cash. I didn't need to do much persuading. She'd
never cared about money. I think she managed to snare her
rich old second husband because she didn't give a single
thought to his inherited wealth. I borrowed $10,000 from her
— spending money while Russell and Jon Sligo and I set up
some deals. Possibly she thought it was a good way to get rid
of me. When I was busy I didn't get bored and come visiting
all the time.

We had a frantic winter and by the time summer came
around again things were going well. Russell and I made a lot
of money very quickly, on some sidelines. I was playing the
field, living the high life. I had no trouble attracting women,
although none of them interested me. I wanted a woman I
could talk to, but all I met in bars and clubs were empty-headed
types. There was one woman I fancied who worked in
an upmarket club, The Land of Opportunity. The Land was
one of those high-class places where successful players like
Russell and myself ended up after we'd had too much
champagne. They had gorgeous hostesses and expensive
drinks, and rooms where you could have 'conversation' with
the girls. It was basically lap-dancing out the back — they
took off their clothes and had a chat, and you told them your
sorrows. Like I said, it was a classy place. I never went into
those back rooms, but Russell did, the old playboy.

The woman I liked, Claudine Zambucka, worked on the
reception at The Land, and the first time I saw her I was
knocked over by her eyes. They were pure, pale blue and
steady. They made me think of words like 'tundra', 'ice floe'
and 'glacier', of beautiful, remote, silent places. I was persistent,
and in the end I persuaded her to go out with me. Claudine
was cool. She was clever. She kept my interest up. She was
working in The Land temporarily because her stepmother
owned the place. The only problem was Russell. He liked a
simpler type of lady. Claudine made him nervous. He really
disliked her.

You could tell Claudine anything. She listened, usually
without comment, but when you tested her you found she
knew exactly what you were saying. Just like Adele. Only
Claudine was beautiful. You didn't feel the kind of
need
in her
that you felt with ladies like Lee. There was no hidden agenda.
It unnerved me every now and then, the way Claudine didn't
conform to the normal patterns. But I was crazy about her.

One night Jon Sligo and Russell and myself were at The
Land and Jon told me about a lawyer friend of his, Murray
Ray, who acted for criminals. Ray had a client, Andrew
Newgate, who'd been convicted of murdering his piano
teacher. There were questions about the case. Ray wanted to
take an appeal to the Privy Council in London but the family
had run out of funds. This interested me, because my craze for
legal things was still strong. I got Jon to tell me about it.

Newgate, who was about twenty when he was arrested, had
had a long association with his piano teacher, a gay guy who
lived alone. The teacher had been found strangled in the back
garden of his house. After a long investigation the police had
fixed on Newgate, and then, as Jon put it, they'd manufactured
a case to fit around their theory. They decided that Newgate
and the teacher had been having an affair, and that Newgate
had flown into a rage when the teacher had a relationship
with someone else. The family, who were respectable, middleclass
people, insisted that Newgate wasn't gay. He had
girlfriends. They said he'd been fond of the teacher and was
upset by his death. Now Newgate had been convicted and
spent his time in jail playing on an old keyboard — there was
no piano inside — composing music, and hoping that the real
criminal would be caught.

'Jesus. That's terrible.' I was struck by the thought of him in
his cell, alone, making up tunes in his head. Praying for
someone to help him.

'Jon,' I said, 'there's something in this.'

All the rest of the weekend I was thinking about the case.
I'd been aware of it, had read about it in the papers on and off.
I knew it was a case people argued about and spoke of as a
possible miscarriage of justice. On Monday I rang up Murray
Ray. I told him that our mutual friend, Jon Sligo, had told me
about the case. Ray sounded a bit cautious but he agreed to
meet me.

I went to his office in town. Murray Ray was a tall, stooped,
greying man with sharp, noticing eyes. He was dressed in a
fashionable suit and tie. He was hearty in his manner, but
there was something elegant and soft and cunning about him
too. I told him I was interested in the plight of Andrew
Newgate. I said I'd done a bit of my own research on cases of
this nature, and on this case in particular, and that unlike
most members of the public I knew the justice system got
things wrong. I spoke a bit about the power of the state, and
how it was up to ordinary people like me to do anything
possible to fight when human rights were being eroded. I had
my spiel all worked out. The more I talked the more eloquent
I felt, and when I finished I thought I'd done a good job.

He studied his fingernails, considering. 'That's all true. We
want to take it further. But there's the issue of funds.'

'I'm a businessman.'

He looked at me, sizing me up.

'Let me meet young Andrew,' I said. 'I hear he is a wonderful
pianist.'

A fortnight later Murray Ray drove me to the prison. He'd
been reluctant at first, but he'd opened up over the days. I can
be extremely persistent when I set my mind to something.
He'd let me see his files, and we spent a lot of time talking
about Newgate's trial and what had gone wrong. Jon Sligo had
been right: the Crown case was full of holes. It was a sieve. The
police had acted unfairly and covered up significant pieces of
evidence, some of which Murray had only discovered after
Newgate's conviction and subsequent appeal. No wonder the
family wanted to take the further appeal. They'd set up a
group to campaign on Andrew's behalf. They were passionate
about their cause but short of resources. I studied the file and
took a lot of notes. Once Murray realised how quick I was at
cutting to the heart of the matter, how I knew a bit about the
law, and how serious I was, he took me more and more into
his confidence. He had an assistant, a chain-smoking young
guy called Sean, and he had Sean take me through the files
page by page. I had that excited feeling I get when I'm starting
something new.

When we got into the prison a sense of dread came over me
at the sight of the razor wire, the claustrophobic buildings, the
lines of surveillance cameras. I felt the ugly, dead weight of it.
The feeling turned to apprehension when we were about to
meet Newgate. I had a memory of my dream about the infinite
parallel universes and the droning voice: 'You do not exist,
you do not exist.' I was nervous, rehearsing in my head what I
was going to say. I felt the way I feel before making some really
important pitch. My lips were dry and my throat closed over.
And then the door opened and a fresh-faced, freckly young
man came hurrying in.

Andrew Newgate's freckles. Dear oh dear. He was sprinkled;
he was strewn with them. Not just on his face but all over his
arms and hands. And yet he was a very good-looking boy. He
was medium height, with clumsy boyish limbs. You'd think of
him as gangly, but he wasn't thin, just awkward. He had big,
powerful hands. You could see he'd played sport. (He'd been
a keen soccer player, it turned out.) His eyes were steady and
he had a nice, willing smile. He'd keep up that smile and then
you'd see sadness creep into his face, as if he had moments of
pure enjoyment, when he forgot his situation, before reality
came back to him.

He listened politely while I introduced myself and told him
why I'd come. I was a businessman, I said, but I was also a
fellow citizen who had a responsibility to act when the state
was presiding over an injustice. I said I had a whole raft of
ideas about the case, and why it was full of holes. I got carried
away and ran on. Andrew sat up suddenly and said, 'That's
good, Mr . . . Carstone. Thank you. It's just . . . I don't want to
win.'

'Eh?' I stopped.

'I don't want to
win
, like it's a competition that's got nothing
to do with the truth. I want to be
proved innocent
.'

He'd set his chin firmly. He gazed at me with his clear eyes.
I was moved. 'Of course,' I said. 'My God, you've suffered. And
yet you've kept yourself together. You want to be proved
innocent. Of course you do, and you shall. How old are you,
Andrew?'

'Twenty-two.'

'My God,' I said again. I'd lost my train of thought. There
was something so straight and unaffected about him that it
made me feel a fool. Here I was grandstanding, holding forth
about his fate while he listened, politely and calmly. What
interested me was that he didn't chime in, or make protestations
of innocence. He didn't try to add to what I was saying. Let's
face it, when you've been in business as long as I have you get
to be a fairly cynical judge of character, and no one could put
anything over on me without the flags going up. But the way
he'd cut across me in that boyish way . . . I looked into his
face, into his clear, grave eyes. The kid was an open book. In
fact, with his honest outburst he'd shut me right up. I sat
staring at him with a kind of subdued respect.

He and Murray talked and I was glad to sit, quietly listening.
I was struck by Andrew's plainness and simplicity. Not that he
was stupid, but he was softly spoken and calm, and got Murray
to explain a number of things he didn't understand. He also
asked Murray, very courteously, to help him make some
requests of the prison authorities relating to his playing of the
keyboard. He frowned with a pain that he quickly suppressed
when Murray mentioned the problem of funding his appeal.
His parents had died in a car accident when he was a child,
and he'd lived with his elderly aunt and uncle. They'd spent
all their savings on the case.

It was time to go. I shook his hand, hard. 'We're thinking of
you Andrew,' I said.