The Ebola Conspiracy

by Mark Furness

  Something had me by the ankles and was tugging. More light came from behind me. My legs straightened and the cramp cleared. I expanded my chest, sucking in air, blinking into sunlight. Dogs’ faces came at mine. Big, hot tongues licked me. Hughie’s dogs, Spike and Clive.

  “What the fuck are you doing in a wombat hole?” Hughie looked down at me. I rolled on the grass away from the dogs. He was leaning on a long-handled shovel. He held out a leathery-skinned hand. I grabbed it and he pulled me to my feet, steadying me with his arm around my waist.

  “Here,” he said, handing me a water bottle. He scraped Mr Browning and my flashlight out of the hole with his shovel.

  “You go hunting in there?” he said, scraping dirt from the gun with his fingernails, then a twig, before blowing on it.

  “Rough night,” I said, gulping the water. “Sleep walking.”

  “You ought-a chain ya-self to ya bed at night.”

  I checked my flashlight. The batteries were dead.

  “Do you want a beer?” I said.

  “Na, mate. How ‘bout you have a wash and we both have a nice cuppa tea?”

  I followed Hughie up the steps to the deck. He put the kettle on. I had a cold water bucket-bath on the deck and dressed in fresh clothes.

  I found my phone in my jeans pocket, still dead, but the black circle was no longer a snake. It was a painted ring. The pine tree looked like a pine tree.

  “What the fuck has she just dragged out of your wombat hole?” said Hughie, standing from his seat in a folding camp chair.

  I looked at the hillside. Spike had something in her mouth that she was snapping from side-to-side. It looked like floppy liquorice rope. It took me a few seconds to register the dead snake. An inspection revealed its head had been shot off.

  “What the hell is that?” Hughie eyeballed the wall as we walked into the kitchen to examine the contents of the fridge for possible breakfast. He lifted my Buck-mask off a hook and gave it a close inspection. I explained its origins

  “You and your friends get up to some weird shit, Garsy,” he said, putting it back on the hook.

  I needed to talk to Tania about what was in her bottle of Angel Tears tequila which sat on the bench by the sink. I’d phone her from the city when I had it re-charged. If that conversation didn’t throw a light on the events of last night, I figured I might need a doctor of some sort again.

  After several cups of tea, a plate of bacon and eggs, and a discussion about how long it would take for the council inspector’s broken shinbone to heal, Hughie washed the dishes and left me to pack up to go home.

  XVIII

  IN MY HOME office in Darlinghurst, I plugged my phone into the charger and called Steele.

  “Was Hills a regular heroin user?”

  Steele replied: “That’s what I’m told by the investigators.”

  “He didn’t look it to me.”

  “It takes all types.”

  “Any sign of Bruce Tyson?”

  “One of my copper mates has done some background work as a favour. Big Brucie cleared out his bank accounts and took it all in cash. We visited his flat. No sign of forced entry. But his phone hasn’t answered for nearly three days and we can’t get a trace on it either - looks like he’s pulled the battery out, or someone has. His psych unit boss says Bruce hasn’t had a sickie in ten years, and now he has just missed a weekend shift with penalty rates.”

  “Theories?”

  “Someone’s put the frighteners on him, or buried him.”

  “No kidding. Was he a gambler?”

  “Na. That money you gave him was to sponsor some kids in Africa he looks after. They’re on his Facebook page.”

  “Got time for a beer?” I wanted to tell Steele about my night in the bush.

  “Sorry, mate, no can do. Karen’s on the warpath. Her parents are here, brothers and sisters: the whole catastrophe. Carnival Day at the Steele’s.”

  It was Saturday afternoon and warm. I could almost smell Steele’s sizzling barbecue sausages and tiger prawns, and see his well-upholstered clansmen belly-flopping into the pool under the palm trees to the delight of his nieces and nephews.

  Steele said: “Lunch. Monday. You book.”

  I PHONED TANIA WATSON but the mobile reception at her property next to Moon Hill was worse than mine. I left a message asking her to call me. I hoped it would land, but I couldn’t be sure when. She hated technology. Sometimes she didn’t reply for weeks.

  I had a hot bath and dressed in a tee-shirt and pyjamas. Fish and I settled down in the lounge to watch a football game. It was a recording of the previous day’s Sydney Swans vs Collingwood Magpies in the AFL. I fast-forwarded to the start of the last quarter, knowing my Swans come-from-behind victory was on its way. I figured I had a crystal ball, a bit like Henry East had when he placed his bets on his inside share trades.

  As the game came to a close, I flicked through the contact list on my phone. All Charles East could do was tell me to fuck off. I dialled him using my new spare phone with a new number to sneak up on him.

  “Yes?” said Charles.

  I figured displaying a bit of reverence would be the smartest play to get me where I wanted. “Mr East. It’s Gar Hart here. From The Citizen.”

  “Oh ... look, I’m sorry, Edgar. I can’t speak. I’m expecting a call.”

  “I wondered if we might meet.”

  “It’s done, Edgar. It’s over. We have nothing more to say.”

  “I’m sorry, Charles. But I’ve heard someone might have attacked Henry. That he didn’t hurt himself. And now his best friend Bart Hills is dead.”

  Seconds passed.

  “Charles?”

  “Who told you that? About my son.”

  “I can’t say who. I’m sorry if I shocked you,” I lied.

  “I’m horrified.”

  ”Can we meet? I am happy to discuss what I know with you face-to-face. If you can answer some of my questions.”

  East took a few seconds. “When?”

  “How about now? I can come to you.”

  “Yes. I suppose here at Tamerlane would be best. I’ll let security know.”

  Tamerlane was a ten minute taxi ride from my place and as distant as Mars.

  The Easts two-man-high, sandstone front wall was topped with wrought iron spearheads, giving the impression there was a legion of Roman soldiers marshalled behind it. The fuck-off wall stretched along one hundred metres of Old South Head Road. It was interrupted by double wrought-iron gates for vehicle entrance and a solid steel security door that was cut into the stone for pedestrian-only access. I walked to the door under the gaze of a swivelling CCTV camera mounted on a metal post inside the wall. I pressed the buzzer. The door opened on hydraulic hinges. I stepped inside and it clunked behind me like a bank vault.

  Tamerlane’s main residential building looked even more like a stone church than I remembered. It had twin, timber, gothic-arch entrance doors, tall and wide enough to accommodate an African elephant, if one should chance by. I got that idea because there was a small stone elephant standing beside a garden wall with some petunias growing out of a chair on its back. I crossed a circular, white-gravel driveway, in the middle of which stood a naked boy made of marble who was pissing into a pond. A showroom-shiny, royal blue Bentley sat smugly on the driveway.

  Tamerlane had over a dozen intersecting roofs, by my quick count, with gargoyles on every corner, mostly goblins and dragons. At least one of the ancestral Easts had a sense of humour; some wit had added a local touch by commissioning a couple of gargoyles with kangaroos’ bodies upon which sat the heads of eagles.

  One of the twin entrance doors opened. Charles’ lanky frame was dressed in a buttoned-up, single-breasted navy blue suit with an open-necked white shirt, a pair of bifocal reading glasses hanging by a gold chain from his neck. His black shoes reflected light. It was Saturday afternoon. I was wearing navy corduroy jeans, copper-coloured, elastic-sided boots and a black sports jacket over my black t-shirt.
I resisted the urge to quickly polish my boots against my jeans. At least I’d brushed my teeth, had a shave, and cleaned Moon Hill’s dirt from under my fingernails and out of my ears. I had my phone in my jeans and a notebook and pen inside my jacket.

  “Please. Come in, Edgar,” he said.

  As I closed in on him, he extended a hand, giving me more fingers than palm. He winced, so I eased the pressure. His knuckle joints were swollen. I guessed arthritis. The old king was weakening, at least physically.

  I stepped through the entrance hall onto a chessboard-tiled floor, each tile big enough to accommodate two feet. Human chess seemed an option. The hall had high-vaulted ceilings and multi-coloured, leadlight windows that were doing pretty things with the afternoon sun. The tiles led to a staircase that went up a dozen or so steps before curling both left and right to the upper storeys. Charles ushered me at ground level to the right side of the stairs into a hallway past several large rooms behind floor-to-ceiling, glass-panelled doors. One had a long dining table and chairs for about twenty people; the next had puckered leather sofas arranged in a four-piece pod, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Glancing inside the reading room, I was impressed by a globe of the world that was too big for any man to stretch his arms around. Now maybe if Charles and Henry held hands...

  “First of all, Edgar,” he said as we walked, “we’re off the record. Agreed?”

  “Yes.” I knew I’d be bounced if I objected.

  “And two: in the past, you and I have misunderstood each other. Let’s put away the hatchet, as they say.”

  Charles made it sound like he was putting the weapon in a drawer for later, rather than burying it in the earth for good, as was the practice of the native Americans who gave birth to the expression.

  “Consider it buried,” I lied.

  On my only previous visit to Tamerlane, about ten years ago, Charlotte and I had dinner with just Charles and his wife, Victoria, on a clear-skied, summer Saturday evening. After a waiter served us rock oysters and crayfish salad on the upper terrace, followed in the dining room by roast beef and vegetables, Victoria sponge cake and a cheese platter, Charles and I sat alone in cane armchairs on cream cushions on the garden-level veranda at the back of the main building. The sweet perfume of jasmine vines had mingled with salty harbour air and the smoke of Cuban cigars the size of baby cucumbers that we puffed on. We sipped old Scotch whisky, with no adulterating ice, from crystal tumblers while he pointed across his lawns through old trees to his twinkling new yacht in the bay, prattling on about its Italian makers and talking about visiting cities I’d only read about. “Welcome to my Garden of Eden,” he’d proclaimed. Then he’d tried to bribe me with that job as his PR man at double my reporter’s salary. I didn’t dismiss the offer out of hand. With a young family, I was looking for a step up society’s ladder - more money, a better chance at financial independence one distant day - but he gave his real game away that night by instructing the waiter with snaps of his fingers and flicks of his hands, like he was shooing around a fly wearing a bow tie.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. At my baulk, his smile vanished and he appeared puzzled, studying me like a specimen in a jar. He’d already grilled Charlotte and me over dinner, very politely, of course, about our family background, schooling, what suburb we lived in, what type of house we lived, and most importantly of all, whether or not we owned it. Before dinner started, I had sipped champagne and watched the teenage Henry doing wild, somersaulting bombies into the swimming pool by bouncing off a trampoline beside the pool. He was playing with another skinny boy. There was something soft about the other kid, who hopped off the trampoline into the pool, rather than bounced, and pinched his nose as he slipped into the water.

  This afternoon, I wondered what had happened to that soft kid as Charles led me back to the garden-level veranda and directed me to sit in similar outdoor furniture to that which we shared years ago. Beyond the tiered acres of trees, flowering shrubs and fresh-cut lawns, sailboats drifted on the green water off Tamerlane’s white beach under blue sky. It was some showroom.

  East put his knobbly hands together, like he was praying, and bounced his index fingers on his chin: “What you told me about Henry being attacked. Are you sure?”

  “It’s what I’ve heard.”

  “We need to know who told you, Edgar. So we can take it to the police.”

  “We?”

  “Our legal team.”

  “I can’t tell you who told me, Charles. But you can ask the police to investigate the claim. I’m told he was attacked by his cellmate.”

  “If someone tried to kill or harm my son, and you are withholding evidence, it’s a crime.”

  “It’s speculation, Charles. I’m not a witness. Frankly, I still don’t know why he did the insider trading in the first place. Why would he ruin his life like that?”

  “Have you ever mucked up, Edgar?”

  East fixed his eyes on me and waited. I wondered if he had found my old court records. I wasn’t giving him easy points, so I said nothing.

  He said: “Yes. We all have. Now, I’m asking you to leave Henry alone. He is a sick young man. You pursuing him is simply cruel. I know you’ve been bombarding him with interview requests.”

  “Do you believe he acted alone?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “It’s all very neat, isn’t it?”

  “You are very cynical, Edgar. Sometimes things are exactly as they seem.”

  “Why didn’t you appeal his jail sentence?”

  “There was no point. Henry made choices and now he is paying the price.”

  “What about Bart Hills? Did you know he was a heroin user?”

  “Of course not. I know Bart’s parents. They are shattered, like I am.”

  “Can I talk to Henry?”

  “Edgar, I am asking you. Please leave us alone so we can make our son healthy again. You have children, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “A boy and a girl, isn’t it? How old are they now?”

  I didn’t like his tangent but I figured he could get the basic information easily enough if he wanted to. He probably had it, and more, on my file already.

  “They are young adults,” I said.

  There was a jug of water spiked with sliced lemon and ice on a side table. East poured two glasses. He spent a few moments focussing on the glasses.

  “Please, help yourself,” he said.

  As I picked up a glass and took a sip, he smiled. There was a weird sense of satisfaction on his face like he’d made a smart chess move.

  He said: “The choices you make will affect your children’s wellbeing, Edgar. Sometimes in ways you can’t imagine. You need to be wise on their behalf.”

  “Are you threatening us?”

  East looked hurt. “Please. You misunderstand me. Your children need you. My son needs me. We can waste a lot of time chasing things that turn out to be wrong for our children.”

  East stood up. He looked away from me, across his garden towards the harbour, and dabbed an eye. Maybe I’d misjudged him.

  “Do you know where your son and daughter are right now, what they are doing? Their state of mind?”

  I thought of Hugo in Brighton, the internet porn, the old scars on Alice’s wrists.

  I said: “It’s the examples we set as parents that matter, that guide them in adulthood.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Monkey see, monkey do. Do you believe, ergo, that I am to blame for Henry’s situation?”

  “You didn’t have him on reins, Charles, did you? He had his own head at twenty-six years of age.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I lost him some time ago.”

  East seemed very old. I felt sad for him, like I did for Henry when he entered the revolving courtroom doors for sentencing. I decided to leave. Then East turned back towards me and tugged an eyelid like he just had a piece of grit in there he’d been trying to wash out. He’d almost got me.

  I said: “W
hat is the nature of your relationship with the Cavalcade Investment Group and its chairman, John Baker?”

  He tugged an ear lobe as he turned to face me. A lie was coming, or pretty good chance of one.

  “We gave them some advice once,” he said, bending down to pick up his glass of water and moisten the slits of his lips.

  “Gave?” I said. “As in the past tense?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Your China subsidiary, Trust8, lists Cavalcade as a current client.”

  “That is outdated.”

  “It was on a press release Trust8 put out a few days ago.”

  “There must have been an error in our China office,” he said. “Translation can be a major problem. Look, I have some business to do. If there’s nothing more you can tell me in relation to Henry, I must go.”

  “Who are They? The people Henry was worried would chase him down in prison. The ones he talked about the day he was sentenced.”

  “You must have misheard, Edgar. There were no such people. If, on the other hand, someone has subsequently decided to attack Henry in prison, as you say, then we can press the police to follow your line. So I thank you. But please, don’t inflame things by pursuing Henry. I’m asking you, as a father to a father.”

  I heard a splash of water beside the veranda, then another as water drops spattered the chessboard tiles. I walked to the edge of the veranda and looked into a pond. It teemed with fat, orange and white speckled carp.

  The words just shot from my mouth. “Did your goons hang a dead fish on my door?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Those fish of yours,” I said, nodding at the pond. “They get around.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about. You need to take a few breaths, Edgar. You are sounding mentally unhinged.”

  Mentally unhinged? The words hit me like a hammer.

  “Is Sandy Wallace working for you?” I said. I had no doubt she would give him dirt on me if it would help her get ahead with the big end of town.

  “Who?”