Allen & Unwin’s House of Books aims to bring Australia’s cultural and literary heritage to a broad audience by creating affordable print and ebook editions of the nation’s most significant and enduring writers and their work. The fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry of generations of Australian writers that were published before the advent of ebooks will now be available to new readers, alongside a selection of more recently published books that had fallen out of circulation.
The House of Books is an eloquent collection of Australia’s finest literary achievements.
Roland Perry is one of Australia’s best-known authors. Born in 1946, he began his writing career at The Age newspaper in Melbourne, starting in 1969. After five years spent in the United Kingdom making documentary films, he published his first novel, Program for a Puppet, which was an international bestseller, in 1979. He has since written over twenty-five more books, many of which have gone on to become non-fiction bestsellers, including The Don, the definitive biography of Donald Bradman, Miller’s Luck, The Changi Brownlow, The Australian Light Horse and Monash: The Outsider Who Won a War.
This edition published by Allen & Unwin House of Books in 2012
First published by Octopus Publishing Group, Melbourne, in 1990
Copyright © Roland Perry 1990
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
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ISBN 978 1 74331 497 5 (pbk)
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CONTENTS
PART ONE: SUSPECT
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PART TWO: FUGITIVE
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
PART THREE: HUNTER
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
For Christine Georgeff to be taken with coffee in Piazza Di S. Maria in Trastevere
The French, for their part, are almost compulsive exponents of dirty tricks. The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour and the killing of a member of the anti-nuclear group Greenpeace in the process was just an example where they were caught. The former head of the French secret service has revealed that they carried out about fifty successful operations in the Pacific between 1970 and 1981, including the mechanical sabotage of vessels seeking to monitor French nuclear test at Mururoa.
Brian Toohey and William Pinwill, Oyster
TORRENTIAL RAIN swept over the Rolls. The windscreen wipers worked at top speed but my vision was blurred, until I found I was driving on the footpath. I slewed the car back onto the road and heeded the warning voice that told me to slow down to one rat power. There was no point in speeding through a flood, especially when I was inebriated after a twenty-year school reunion.
The conviviality at my table of six had been caused by Freddie May, who had regaled us with his adventures in the Pacific. Freddie boasted of riches gained and beautiful women conquered much as he had at seventeen, and then invited us to an apartment with the promise of French champagne and more of the same. In a rare state for me, I had been too far gone to refuse.
I parked the car, as if it was a Jumbo Jet with one wing, in Domain Road, South Yarra and followed a straight line which kept wobbling along Park Street to the address. It was a new apartment block, all glass and brick and hard geometric lines. It was painted red, and the green check window shades and awnings were unprepossessing. I fell into a lift that deposited me at apartment six on the third floor and was greeted by squat, muscular Freddie. His thick hair had been dyed to smother the greying at the temples, but he had found it more difficult to hide the age of his faded eyebrows.
His lopsided grin – the one I recall when he sprayed ink on the back of masters’ gowns – was mischievous as he pulled to him a stunning Polynesian woman in her late twenties. She was tall, with long, dreadlocked black hair. She wore a longish white dress that showed lean angles and flat model’s feet, no shoes. Her fine Eurasian features were vaguely familiar.
‘Martine, meet Duncan Hamilton,’ Freddie said, ‘the most likely new billionaire before the year two thousand.’
‘I read about you in a magazine,’ Martine said with a French lilt. She pushed out a fine-boned hand and I kissed it. She smiled and briefly touched my beard. They ushered me in and I sat in a lounge of soft pastels and pink. It wasn’t Freddie’s apartment, it was Martine’s. Freddie popped a champagne cork as Martine placed a compact disc in a player. She sat beside me.
‘He’s always in the news,’ Freddie said with a grin as he handed me a glass, ‘if it’s not a big takeover, it’s the release of a new “wonder” drug. High-profile stuff.’
‘The article I read was a couple of years old,’ Martine said frowning as she stretched her memory, ‘I think I was in a doctor’s surgery somewhere. You know ’ow they always keep ancient magazines.’
I nodded and readied myself for some probing. A few years ago my private life had become chaotic and public.
‘The story was about your separation from your wife,’ Martine said, ‘the cause was the strain put on your marriage because of kidnapping threats.’
‘That was really the last straw,’ I said, ‘the marriage was all but on the rocks when that kidnapping business started.’
‘Enough morbid talk about bloody marriage,’ Freddie said, turning the volume up.
Martine smiled.
‘I did some modelling for Benepharm advertisements,’ she said, dropping the name of my company.
‘Which ones?’
‘Beneherbs. You know, they tone the skin and muscles.’
I remembered seeing her at a screening of those ads.
‘How did you and Freddie meet?’ I asked.
‘In hospital,’ she said, ‘we both had lymphatic cancer.’
‘I didn’t know you’d been ill,’ I said to Freddie.
‘Yeah,’ he said flopping in a chair, ‘we’ve both been through it. Chemotherapy, hair dropping out, the whole catastrophe.’
‘We’re both out of remission now,’ Martine said.
‘Christ, darling!’ Freddie said, reaching across and kissing her, ‘you’ve had it so much tougher than me!’
They hugged.
‘She’s had six years of treatment,’ Freddie said, still holding her.
Martine looked sad.
‘Seven,’ she corrected him, ‘but it should have been a year at most, like yours.’
‘Yeah,’ Freddie said, ‘bloody incompetent doctors!’
Martine’s eyes welled with tears. Freddie played with the music disc. A Brazilian number began. He pulled her up for a dance and she was soon laughing as he clowned around. I finished my champagne and was thinking about leaving when Martine asked me to fill her glass. Then she took my arm and danced with me. Close. Freddie looked on approvingly and downed more drink. When the music stopped I wandered to a window and watched the rain. It was still heaving down.
‘The greenhouse effect,’ I said, glancing at Martine and then staring out at the sheets of water cascading over the apartment’s balcony overlooking Park Street.
‘Shithouse if you ask me,’ Freddie remarked irritably.
‘What about the others who were supposed to be coming?’ I asked.
‘Guess they wimped it,’ he said.
Water was covering the road and drains were blocked. There was little point in attempting to drive in it or in calling a taxi. I would have to sit it out. I planned to go as soon as the rain showed signs of clearing.
But it didn’t. One a.m. came and went and I had more champagne. Too much more, because I put my head back and fell asleep while the others were dancing.
Spears of light pierced my eyelids, went right through my brain and came out the back of my head, pressing me against the pillow.
‘What happened last night?’ my ex-wife Peggy said as she pulled back the curtains. Odd. She normally wouldn’t barge into my home without invitation. I opened my eyes and shut them again.
‘Uhhhh! What time is it?’
‘Time you drove Al to his footy match, and too late to take Samantha to hockey!’
‘What?’
Peggy was annoyed and it took a lot to rile her.
‘It’s one in the afternoon and I’ve already driven Samantha to hockey and back,’ she said, in an offended tone, ‘Where were you last night?’
My throat was dryer than the bottom of a birdcage. I felt queasy.
‘Where was I?’ I said, thinking it would come to me. But it didn’t. I screwed up my bleary face and tried to remember something. Anything.
‘I know you were at that old school reunion,’ Peggy said, ‘but I hear you didn’t get in until about four.’
‘Who told you?’ I said, groping for clues.
‘Your housekeeper.’
The reunion was coming back to me. But after it, what then? It was a void. I rolled off the bed, still in my socks and tuxedo pants. Imperious Peggy stood between me and the bathroom and I was blocked by those dark-blue eyes, lightly wrinkled for warmth.
‘It was so wet,’ I proffered unconvincingly, ‘made it difficult to drive.’
‘You stayed out until four? Don’t tell me you have a girlfriend at last.’
Peggy had been having an affair with a film director and hoping I’d find somebody too. Apart from a few minor flings, I hadn’t. Nor had it bothered me. Benepharm activities, especially a big current project, occupied my time.
‘No,’ I grinned sheepishly, ‘really can’t remember a thing. Had far too much to drink.’
‘I see. The old Hamilton family trick of not being able to recall anything after a binge. Is that it?’
I gave her a peck on the cheek and staggered for the bathroom. I stepped under the shower, took a deep breath and ran the cold water. The jigging round and sudden shock caused a memory cell to fire and conjure a vision of Martine. I remembered Freddie and her and bottles of champagne.
‘Are the kids ready for the footy?’ I asked.
‘They’re about somewhere, waiting for lazybones. How are you going to go?’
‘In the Roller. Why?’
‘You didn’t bring it home last night.’
‘Good parking, Dad,’ Alistair said with a cheeky twelve-year-old’s giggle as we spotted the Rolls perched on the sidewalk in Domain Road.
‘Great parking, Dad,’ nine-year-old Samantha parroted as I asked the taxi driver to let us out. The kids fought for the front passenger seat while I tore a parking ticket from the front windscreen just as a police car moved into Park Street. It stopped about one hundred metres away outside the apartment I remembered being in last night. Curiosity caused me to drive left into Park Street and past the apartment block. Two cops were carrying out a body on a stretcher as an ambulance arrived.
‘Look! A dead woman!’ Sam called from the back seat.
‘How do you know it was a lady and that she was dead?’ Alistair challenged.
‘It wasn’t a lady,’ she said haughtily, ‘it was a “woman”. “Lady” is sexist.’
‘How do you know it was a . . . female?’ Alistair persisted in the teasing tone reserved for his sister.
‘Oh, you’re just blind!’
I completed the block and entered Punt Road over the Yarra which was a murky grey after the flooding. There was a bottleneck as cars descended from all points of the city for the big footy game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Alistair continued to goad Samantha. Time for Dad to intervene.
‘I once found a dead man outside Grandpa’s pharmacy,’ I said, ‘I was three at the time and no one believed me. Then Grandpa went out and examined the body in the gutter and found he was dead. The man had had too much to drink in a nearby pub and had collapsed in the street.’
Samantha seemed to feel vindicated by my story.
‘Sam,’ I said gently, ‘you can’t be sure the woman was dead until a doctor or someone like Grandpa examines her.’
She began crying.
‘I know she was dead,’ she blubbered.
‘You’re probably right,’ I said, ‘did you notice anything about the woman?’
‘Yes,’ Samantha said, drying her eyes, ‘she had black hair, and it was tied a funny way.’
There was a good feeling in the Members’ stand as Melbourne, the team I had supported for thirty years, piled on the goals. The looks on Members’ faces confirmed my long held theory that a goal or a touchdown in any code was equal to a sporting orgasm. In Aussie Rules, even a losing team scores plenty, hence the fans’ satisfaction. Yet despite goal-fed goodwill of fans around me, I was dogged by the image of the woman on the stretcher in Park Street. Had it really been Martine? My good friend and stockbroker, Oliver Slack, noticed my discomfort.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he said, ‘The Demons will bury them, but you don’t have to look like the undertaker.’
He was right. What was I worried about?
At half-time I volunteered to get pies for everyone. On the way to a stall I hesitated at a phone booth. Freddie May had given me the apartment phone number in case I got lost en route from the reunion to South Yarra. I still had the number scribbled on the reverse side of his business card that said: Frederick L. May, Vital Corporation.
I dialled the number. A man answered.
‘Hullo?’
My mouth went drier than Noel Coward’s joke book.
‘Who is this, please?’ the male voice said in the flat tone reserved for people used to saying ‘The suspect proceeded in a southerly direction.’ I put down the phone. My brain pole- vaulted. Was it really the police? Had Martine been on that stretcher?
AT THE OFFICE on Sunday, I found Freddie’s home number. A sultry-voiced female answered the phone.
‘Freddie’s asleep,’ she assured me.
‘Who is this?’
‘Danielle.’
‘Can you get Freddie to the phone please. This is important.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Duncan Hamilton.’
Her hand went over the mouthpiece and there was urgent whispering. Clearly Freddie was reluctant to speak, while Danielle seemed to be pushing him. He came on the line.
‘I know what you’re ringing about,’ he said in a defensive voice.
‘What happened last night?’ I said, ‘I saw a body being carried out of that block this morning. Was it Martine?’
‘Bloody oath!’
‘How do you know?’
‘It was Danielle who found her.’
I felt dizzy.
‘Dead?’
‘Nearly. She had a faint pulse but she gave out in the ambulance and was DOA.’
I fell silent.
‘Duncan?’
‘I’m still here. How did she die?’
‘Overdosed on a drug for her migraine. Champagne and pills. A trusted way out. Danielle found her in the bath, her mouth under water.’
‘Have you been to the police?’
‘Yeah. Made a statement.’
‘I’d better . . .’
‘You? Christ, no! Stay out of it. The papers will have a field day if they learn you were there. With me it’s different. “Ex-teacher at Suicide Scene” will hardly excite Truth. But “Billionaire Drug Industry Boss Spends Night With Suicide Beauty” would turn on every editor in the country.’
‘You didn’t tell the police I was there?’
‘No. As far as they’re concerned it was just me and Martine. We had a screw. I left. She had a bath and knocked herself off.’
‘Just tell me what happened?’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘Not much.’
‘Yeah, I ’spose you were pissed.’
‘I thought I fell asleep on the sofa.’
‘You did, mate. When it began to flood outside you had to stay. Martine and I went to bed. At about four I woke you and piled you into a taxi.’
I recalled falling into the back seat.
‘Martine ran the bath,’ Freddie added, ‘and I left. I can remember her standing near the bathroom door as the steam billowed out.’
‘Why did she do it? Did you have a fight?’
‘Nar. Never. She was like a mistress to me. You don’t brawl with ’em. Only your wife, right?’
‘But you still haven’t said why she did it.’
Confident Freddie hesitated and the first mild hint of fear crept into his reassuring tone.
‘Look. She was a pretty wild chick. You know? Arguably the best lover I’d ever had. Crazy.’ He laughed, too eagerly, ‘They say you should comb the nut houses for the best screws. She had paranoias about someone in France, who was after her for some reason she never laid out.’
‘You’re saying she was suicidal?’
‘Well, she had to be, didn’t she?’
‘Did she leave a note?’
‘Nar. But not all of ’em do, the cops said.’
The mention of her fears weighed on my mind and I didn’t know why.
‘I think I should see a lawyer,’ I said.
‘It’ll be a waste of time, mate. You’re in the clear. Anyway I’ll bet any lawyer would say keep your nose – particularly your famous snout – out of it.’
For the next couple of days I checked newspapers, watched TV and listened to the radio – even at work – and at night wandered my Edwardian mansion like a restless ghost. I was troubled. I didn’t think Freddie May had told me everything about those forgotten hours.
On Monday night I was sitting alone after the evening meal in front of the fireplace in the downstairs reception room. I used the hours eight until midnight to read and plan Benepharm ventures, and always ended the night with yoga exercises. Others in the house – the kids if they were staying with me, and our Japanese housekeepers, Tomi and Fui Tashesita – knew not to disturb me. This monkish period had become more important than ever because the company was preparing the biggest research and development project in its fifteen-year history.
I had become obsessed with being first to market drugs that would prevent or cure certain major cancers. The best way was to buy up all the research facilities we could in Australia and abroad. It was an operation costing tens of millions and included complicated financial deals involving American low-interest, high-risk bonds and other chancy resources. The calculated gamble was that at worst we would develop marketable spin-off drugs for cancer-related diseases that would eventually cover costs; at best we would find the big cancer drugs that would make Benepharm the most successful pharmaceutical group in the world.
While I was mumbling thoughts and instructions into a small tape recorder for a secretary to type up and act on the next day, Peggy came into the room with a lemon herb tea. She had come to see the kids, who were staying with me while she had a week’s shooting on location in a TV play.
She lingered and I looked up.
‘What’s bothering you?’ she asked.
‘Nothing – well, work.’
‘The kids remarked that you’ve been grumpy at the dinner table for the last few nights.’ Peggy smiled. ‘Sam said you were “reclusive” – she learnt the word yesterday and has been using it every second sentence.’ I laughed. It was the only time I’d smiled all day.
‘C’mon,’ Peggy persisted, ‘what’s on your mighty mind?’
Our eyes locked. I flicked off the tape. Despite the break-up of our marriage I occasionally confided in her. She was the solid, upright, commonsense type. Very hockey sticks.
‘Sit down,’ I said, and told her the story. She insisted on me seeing a lawyer. She had that sort of tidy mind, not to mention the fact that she was the daughter of a Supreme Court judge. I resisted at first because it seemed trivial and embarrassing.
‘I don’t want anyone at Benepharm knowing about mishaps in my private life,’ I said, ‘rumours spread like wildfire.’
‘Then get Ted Bayes,’ Peggy suggested, referring to the family lawyer who’d handled our divorce with discretion and a minimum of fuss, ‘just see him and tell him what happened.’
Ted’s father had been my father’s lawyer and he fixed things like wills and tax and trusts. I knew he had handled some minor matters for other clients/friends like me. He had kept spoilt teenagers out of court and the newspapers over such things as stolen cars and paternity suits. My little incident seemed to warrant that sort of attention, just in case, sensible Peggy said.
The next morning, I dropped into the smart, expensive Collins Street offices of Bayes, Bayes and Burton. Ted, a nice, rather ineffectual man on the surface, had sandy, greying hair, thin, bloodless lips and watery blue eyes. But he was fit – a marathon runner. One wondered whether he kept running to get away from trusts and wills and a hectoring wife.
While I told Ted my tale he looked out the window. When I pulled out a cheroot and offered him one, a secretary had to search for an ashtray at the back of a drinks cupboard, while he opened a window. Cigar smoke seemed to concern him far more than the story. He didn’t ask one question. At the end I said, ‘What should I do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Shouldn’t the police know I was there?’
‘Why?’
‘In case Freddie May tells them I was there.’
‘You said he didn’t.’
‘What if he did?’
‘Then if the police got in touch you’d tell them to see me and I’d tell them your story.’
‘Simple as that.’
‘Simple as that. Nothing to worry about.’
‘It’s not important that I was a witness to her behaviour?’
‘What was her behaviour?’
‘Friendly . . . normal.’
‘Not going to illuminate police investigations much, is it?’
‘I ’spose not.’ Ted dodged some smoke and took a breath.
‘Freddie May was right,’ he said, ‘no point in you opening yourself up to newspaper gossip.’
I left Ted to fumigate his office.
DUDLEY, Alistair’s Bearded Dragon, was missing somewhere in the mansion grounds. The wire cage near the pool not far from the back door of the servants’ quarters had been pulled askew and there was a hole for the pet to escape. It had happened before and the cat next door had been accused of being the culprit, although no paw prints had been identified. Dudley made things more difficult by being a wanderer. Recently he had been found in the front garden of the mansion near the tennis courts, and the summer before he had several times been caught basking on the slate roof where he was very hard to find because of his chameleon tendencies, which allowed him to blend with the roof’s blue-grey colour. The household formed a search party with torches. The kids scoured the one hundred metres of rear garden, the Tashesitas looked in the tennis court and the front garden, while I was on hands and knees in the grass by the pool. Samantha screamed.
‘Daddy! Daddy! Come quick! Help!’
I charged into the rear garden towards a bobbing torchlight until I reached her. She was trembling.
‘There . . . there was a man in the bushes!’ she screamed.
‘Where?!’
She pointed and Alistair came to us.
‘I did see someone,’ he said, ‘he crashed into the pond area.’
I led them to the back of the house where the Tashesitas had gathered. Three years ago Peggy and I had had to go through an elaborate plan to protect the kids from kidnapping. The police had warned we were targets because of my wealth and high profile.
Someone once tried to impersonate Peggy at St Catherine’s school where Samantha was waiting to be picked up. The woman had been frightened off by an alert parent, who knew she wasn’t Peggy. Another time two hooded intruders had been seen in the grounds by neighbours and the alarm had been raised.
I told the Tashesitas to secure all doors to the mansion and phoned the police. I ran upstairs to a bedroom safe where I kept a licensed Heckler & Koch semi-automatic handgun. I loaded it.
I had had pistol training and found I was a fair shot, especially at close range. For the first time since school Cadet days I had a weapon. It was supposed to be used only as a last resort.
I eased out the back of the mansion with torch in hand. Then I spotted the crouched figure on the wall at the rear of the garden. He was seventy metres away and appeared to have on black clothing and a rifle slung over his shoulder. He saw the torchlight, propped on the wall and fumbled for his weapon. I heard a police siren and fired my gun into the air.
The figure on the wall dropped into the back neighbours’ garden and out of sight.
The police radioed for more cars in an attempt to cordon off the area. They were concerned about the shot that was fired and I had to produce the gun and a licence because they had not been briefed on our special status as a kidnap target. Despite their efforts the armed prowler escaped, leaving me and the family uneasy.
Peggy arrived and took the kids to her place. She reported the next morning that she hadn’t been able to sleep properly and that Samantha had had a nightmare. I made up my mind that Peggy, who had finished her shoot, would take the kids off earlier than planned on vacation at Noosa Heads where Benepharm had a beach resort with excellent security.
‘Go tomorrow if you can,’ I said, ‘and stay ten days.’
After our previous experiences she and the kids were frightened and I wasn’t feeling too brave myself. We’d had armed guards for a while and I’d had to continually change all my work commuting routines and so on. At one point Australian Intelligence advised the police that the kidnap threat had come from an overseas terrorist group, and that I should have a false ID and changed appearance whenever I left Australia. The removal of my beard, hair dyes and blue contact lenses to hide brown eyes completed the transformation. I had done this three times and despite looking five years younger felt ridiculous. However, when a New Zealand financier was kidnapped and held to ransom (ten million was paid out) and then murdered, I decided to put up with the inconvenience.
When things had settled down, a day or two later, it crossed my mind that the armed prowler might have been there for a reason other than kidnapping; But there was no other I could think of, so I dismissed the idea.
ONE COULDN’T HELP admiring the principles of Dr Peter Walters at the Talbert & Magenta Research Institute. He wouldn’t budge one centimetre when I laid out a generous offer to take over the Institute’s cancer research program, reputedly the nation’s best. Walters was lean and unusually handsome with thick black hair, a long forehead, deepset eyes under black eyebrows, an eagle’s nose, surly sensuous mouth and a jaw set determinedly against everything that we – my vice-chairman Lloyd Vickers and I – wanted. Walters sat opposite us flanked by his eightperson board and we were in their boardroom, which was a psychological disadvantage. Our scheme was to develop cancer cures based on the use of drugs combined with tailor-made diets and yoga exercises designed to tap mind powers. But even before I explained the blueprint, Walters made negative remarks.
‘We are a professional group,’ he said in his oh-so-slightly arrogant voice that betrayed an English upper-middle-class accent base and an educated Aussie overlay. ‘Lose-fat fads and dumbbells are not our domain.’
‘I’m talking about proven diet and yoga routines,’ I said, bringing my hand down on thick folders of research, ‘they’re not gimmicks.’
‘Let me put it another way,’ Walters said, looking me straight in the eye, ‘I’m frankly not impressed by your approach to our science. You think you can use your dollars to usurp our decades of human research.’
‘The common aim should be to find the right drug to beat cancer,’ I said glancing at all the faces opposite. ‘Our management and financial expertise, together with your research knowhow, can achieve this. Little would change in the way you worked.’
‘Our fear with you people,’ Walters said, ‘is that you would be tempted, in your rush, to do something unethical.’
‘Such as?’ I said holding his gaze and leaning forward on the table.
‘You might put out an untested product that could be dangerous to the public!’ I shook my head in exasperation.
‘Name one Benepharm drug that has had dangerous side-effects,’ Lloyd challenged and drew a short silence as he drummed a chubby forefinger on the table. He was a dumpy little man with grey hair going prematurely white, and an owlish expression. Hunched shoulders added to, or perhaps were a consequence of, a grouchy disposition. Yet he was a financial genius. I was the entrepreneur who created the ideas and products and he was the wizard who funded them and placed them in the market profitably.
We both reckoned that the Magenta Institute was just about indispensable in our plans for the ‘Big C Campaign’, as we called our cancer project, and we were both frustrated by this unexpected block. After Lloyd’s spirited remark some of the Magenta board shuffled papers and the meeting seemed almost over when Walters said, ‘Another thing we don’t like is the fact that you’re really speculating for profit over people’s lives.’
‘Utter rubbish,’ Lloyd said. I tapped his foot under the table to restrain him. We couldn’t afford to antagonise them.
‘Let’s examine what you do,’ Walters continued as if he was on to a winning point, ‘you buy up all these research groups and every now and again when there is a renewed stock-market interest in cancer or AIDS research you turn them over to another speculator for a profit just like a property developer.’
‘That may happen in the States,’ Lloyd said, ‘but that’s not our aim.’
‘Not your aim, but you may do it, right?’
‘We’ve carefully thought through this proposal, Doctor,’ Lloyd replied less aggressively, ‘and we would bank on getting some drug developments out of Magenta, even if they weren’t for cancer.’
As they argued I took a few more seconds to examine the faces of the board. One of them – a Dr Cassandra Morris – seemed less inclined to agree absolutely with Walters. She was a closet beauty doing everything she could to look plain; her black hair was swept up in a bun and she wore glasses that looked as if they belonged in the laboratory. Her eyes were big, penetrating and so vividly green that I wondered if she was wearing coloured contact lenses, and she had a straight, attractive nose with a notch of imperfection right in the middle of it. Though she wasn’t making use of natural physical gifts, she dressed impressively in a dark business suit, with a red, grey and white striped cravat. Her body language divulged an independent mind; when the others nodded in support of Walters, her head was still. Once I caught her staring at me and I would have given quite a few pennies for her thoughts. The short bio on her in my notes said she was ‘chief research scientist, cancer division’. Morris was a freelance researcher with her own operation, and under contract to the Institute. She was highly thought of as one of the best in her field.
I decided on a long shot.
‘Let me say this,’ I said, using a politician’s cliche, ‘we would inject massive funds over and above our offer to you into new equipment.’ I pulled out a chequebook and began to scribble. ‘I’m willing to write any figure you need to get the equipment for your push to find a cure.’ My eyes held Morris’s again. ‘Just tell me. How much would you need?’ No one seemed brave enough to answer. Morris’s eyes examined her fingers as she leant right forward on the desk.
‘Someone must have an idea,’ I added, looking at the other faces. ‘It’s only an offer. You can refuse it.’ I glanced back at Morris. ‘Dr Morris. You must have some idea.’
‘It’s difficult to calculate off the top,’ she said. I liked her voice. It had an assertive resonance.
‘A ball-park figure will do.’
‘Never was good at ball games,’ she said.
‘Roughly what would you need tomorrow to be shipshape for a proper research assault,’ I persisted, ‘four, five?’
Walters sat back, arms folded, his expression dark. He had not looked at Morris but the tension generated was tangible.
‘Yes,’ she nodded.
I wrote out a cheque for five million and pushed it across the table at Walters.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ I said, ‘the offer is on the table.’ Walters pushed it back. Morris reached down the table, held the cheque above the table and let it drop. Everyone watched it float and tumble.
‘At least it didn’t bounce,’ she said.
‘I really don’t think we need your style of company,’ Walters said. I stared at him. Surprisingly, he added, ‘but because the offer appears generous we will consider it and get back to you.’ As we left the Institute, Lloyd looked despondent.
‘We needed them,’ he said, ‘but that Walters bastard won’t give us a ghost of a chance.’
‘Wonder why he’s being so difficult?’
‘Maybe he thinks we’d give him the bullet.’
‘I doubt it, if he’s as good his reputation suggests.’
Walters appeared confident and on his record of research management would find top work in the field anywhere. He also ran a small private practice.
‘It may not be such a lost cause,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Did you see Dr Morris’s reaction?’
‘Yes, she’s a bit of character, isn’t she? But Walters rules the roost there. We’ve been trying for months. He hasn’t ever looked like letting us in.’
‘I realise that. But we’ve got to speak with her again – alone.’
It was lonely that night without the kids whom I had got used to having around the house in the previous week. I spent some time on the phone to Peggy who tried to persuade me to join them for the coming weekend at Noosa. I flirted with the idea of flying up, but couldn’t, because work, as ever, was pressing. At ten p.m. I received a call from a Senior Detective Benns.
‘Sorry to phone so late,’ he said. ‘Would it be possible for us to interview you?’
My mind was on the intruder with the rifle.
‘You mean over what happened the other night?’
There was a few seconds silence before Benns replied, ‘Yes. When could we see you?’
‘Well, if you could be brief,’ I said, looking at the antique grandfather clock in the foyer, ‘it would be OK right now.’
‘It’s a bit late. Perhaps tomorrow at your office?’
‘Wouldn’t it be better here,’ I said, ‘where it happened?’
Again there was a strange silence and I was beginning to think Benns was thick.
‘At your home?’ he said.
‘That’s where it took place,’ I said, ‘in the grounds of my home.’
‘In the mansion grounds,’ Benns repeated as if he was writing it down. ‘What time would be convenient, Mr Hamilton?’
‘I’ll be home by seven.’
‘And you live . . .?’
I thought it was slack that the police didn’t even have my address.
‘Weren’t you given it?’ I said. ‘Aren’t you from Prahran police?’
‘No sir. I’m from Homicide. We have your car registered at a work number in St Kilda. I rang there and Mr Vickers gave me your unlisted home number.’
‘You’re from Homicide?’
‘Yes. What’s your address please.’
‘Bramerton, Hopetoun Road, Toorak,’ I said, confused.
‘Thank you, see you at seven.’
I put down the phone and frowned. Then it clicked. He wasn’t ringing about the intruder. He was wanting an interview about the death of Martine.
I rang Ted Bayes but he was interstate for a couple of days. That caused me to thrash about on the phone trying to find another lawyer. Ted had been too complacent in his advice and he was not high-powered enough for this kind of situation that now, with a Homicide investigation, possibly involved a murder. I spent the next two hours trying to find out who was the best criminal lawyer in Melbourne. The name mentioned above all was Terry Hewitt. By coincidence, Terry had been at the reunion at the same table as Freddie May and me.
THE VICTORIAN CLUB where I was invited to lunch by Hewitt was forty-one stories above the city in the Rialto on Collins Street. It had a dizzying three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of Melbourne. There was a sweeping panorama of cranes atop glass and steel mountains. Looking down into the canyons you could see the fast dwindling number of old structures, such as stately St Paul’s Cathedral, and the rust-yellow, semi-baroque Flinders Street Station. The green gardens of South Yarra in the background gave a lift to the brown-grey river as it wound its way through ugly brown railway yards and development sites towards Port Phillip Bay.
The Club had changed its location in 1980 from a much less exalted building in Queens Street where the majority of its members were bookies. Some time ago, on a settlement night, the Club in Queens Street had been robbed of a huge day’s takings and the event became the subject of a TV drama, ‘The Great Bookie Robbery’. Many millions were stolen at gunpoint and it was the beginning of the end of the Club as it was then. Lawyers, stockbrokers, accountants and money managers with racing links then took the show upmarket and secured the lofty spot at the Rialto.
Hewitt seemed bemused by my approach. Apart from our meeting at the reunion, we couldn’t recall seeing each other since school days. Years ago when Hewitt had just a fledgling law firm, Benepharm lawyers under my direction had given him lower-echelon work that they were too busy to handle. There was once a problem with the registration of a drug in Germany, and another time a patent difficulty in France, and he was sent abroad to help out. But even that indirect contact had been a long time ago.
Hewitt could have been a wealthy undertaker in his dark grey suit, light tie and matching pocket handkerchief. He had a greying, full head of styled hair and the only facial concession to the years were fuller jowls. His expression was alert and his eyes darted and twinkled. He liked his life as a lawyer and knew everything about anyone who was somebody in the town.
We chatted about business, football, politics and the twenty years that had slipped away so fast. While I was anxious to engage him over my problem, I didn’t push it. In the course of our talk, Hewitt let drop the names of important clients, including big-name construction and mining companies.