The Ebola Conspiracy

by Mark Furness

  “She works for DankeBank. They’re clients of yours in China.”

  “Never heard of her.” He touched his ear lobe again.

  “You’ve become very clumsy, Charles. Or your people have.”

  “You should go, Edgar, before you do something you regret.”

  “You’re dead right,” I said.

  We walked in silence through his house towards the front door. Even though East was in front of me, I wanted a hard shell on my back. Tiny cameras, tucked in ceiling corners, blinked green lights and swivelled as we passed by. In the entrance hall, near the base of the staircase, I glanced down a corridor and saw a figure in a wheelchair. They rolled back into a room.

  East held the front door open. “With your history of mental illness, I’d tread very carefully before making any more wild accusations about me,” he said. “See yourself out.”

  Inside the stone wall, the pedestrian door to the street opened automatically, beckoning me. East stepped back inside Tamerlane house and closed his door.

  As I stepped onto the gravel driveway heading for the open door, the whiff of cigar smoke stopped me. I turned and felt a chill when I saw the source.

  Leaning inside the archway of a sandstone wall to an inner garden was silver-haired Mr Greyhound, sans his courtroom pinstripe suit. He looked even wirier clad in a white singlet tucked into black trousers, bare-footed, his hands inside his trouser pockets. I nodded at him; it was polite instinct, rather than intention. He stood still as a statue, eyeballing me with no expression, unblinking. The only thing moving was smoke wafting out of the cigarillo hanging from one side of his skinny lips.

  I stepped happily out of the insane asylum and flagged a taxi on the street.

  “Fly Half Hotel,” I said to the driver.

  I was pleased that Carol was behind the bar. She was wearing her wife-beater singlet but I was drawn again to her tattooed biceps. Blood seemed to pulse through the tatts when she flexed to pour beer. As she filled my schooner, I saw her photo featured on a stack of leaflets on the bar, headlined Carol Cougar – Cage Fighter. I folded one and put it in my pocket. It might be a fun night, though I wondered where she tucked those drooping ear lobes with the black corks in them when she was belting the hell out of someone.

  After downing most of my glass and feeling feisty, inspired by visions of Carol confronting her challengers inside a cage, I pulled out my phone and eyed Charles East’s number. I was ninety-nine per cent sure I’d just seen Bruce Tyson’s “Zeff” inside that garden arch, and I was just as sure he had left the calling-card carp, but I wondered if Charles had ordered it, or even knew about it. If he was Charles’s house dog, he didn’t look like he’d been to obedience school. I keyed his numbers into my phone, but hesitated over the dial button because Jack Darling’s voice started echoing inside my skull: never dial in anger. Instead, I sent texts to Alice and Hugo. Only Alice replied; she was shopping in Melbourne.

  “Seen Bruce Tyson?” I asked Carol.

  “Nup,” she said. “But you’re not the only bloke asking.”

  “Police?”

  “Nup. No ID. Shifty as a rat, this bloke, with eyes to match, so I told him fuck all.”

  “When?”

  “A few days ago.”

  “Physical description?”

  Carol described a man who sounded remarkably like the saw-toothed string bean I’d just seen inside the arch at Tamerlane. My spine fizzed and I didn’t like the feeling.

  XIX

  THE WIRY MAN stepped along a gravel walkway through the flowering rose garden of Tamerlane. He flicked the smouldering butt of his cigarillo into a pond and snapped a white flower from its thorny stem, drawing sweet perfume from its petals through his long, narrow nostrils. The smell reminded him of his mother. He walked on, under an arch of pink rose vines, up to the front door of a sandstone cottage. He opened the door without knocking. The girl was sitting on the king-sized bed, her back propped on pillows piled against the bedhead which butted against a wall in the open kitchen, sitting, and sleeping room. Her slim, muscular figure was dressed in a white tee-shirt and underpants. There was a purple bruise around a vein weeping a little blood on the top of her right foot.

  An empty syringe sat in a dish on the bedside table. He guessed she had mixed a cocktail again, probably a combo of cocaine and heroin, because she appeared alert and dopey at the same time, jigging her head to the sound of something, probably music, pumping through a wireless headset clamped over her ears. Her eyes were open. He signalled for her to lift off the headset. She hung it around her neck like a high-tech horseshoe.

  “You’ve seen the movie Scarface,” he said with his back to her, placing his fresh rose with a handful of others in a vase on the kitchen table. He turned to face her. “Now read my lips: ‘never get high on your own supply’.”

  “Fuck you, Seth!”

  “Do you mean it, girl?”

  “Sure. Why not? That’s all you men ever want to do, unless it’s watch football. And I’m bored.”

  He stepped into the bathroom and returned carrying a black briefcase, which he put on the bed beside her. He began taking his clothes off, folding each item neatly and stacking them upon the seat of a chair with military precision.

  “Aren’t you going to close the shutters?” she said. “That old perv, Charlie, will be knocking on the door next, wanting his turn.”

  The naked man smiled and closed the window shutters.

  She opened the case and extracted a strap-on black dildo, the size of a cucumber, rippled with veins. Thank God, she thought, it’s just a one-way, not a two-way piece. She lifted a short-sleeved, camouflage-patterned army shirt from the case that she put on over her tee-shirt and buttoned up to just below the collar, then she removed her underpants.

  The naked man reached for a small, pink-glass bottle that sat on the bedside table, sprayed some of the rose scent on his wrists and rubbed them together. Then he lay on his back on the bed in the female missionary position with his knees bent. The standing girl strapped the device around her waist, buckled its belt and reached for her phone to wirelessly turn up the volume on her headset, which she replaced over her ears, listening to the sound of surf at the beach. She did not like the sounds he made when she did what she was about to do - the pathetic moaning – although she did like the way it contorted his face.

  He opened his legs and she climbed in between them, kneeling on her shins. The flat, hand-sized base of the black proboscis was pressing firmly over her pubic bone, transmitting a faint, not unpleasant sensation to her clitoris.

  “Can I have oil?” he said.

  “No,” she replied.

  He used a hand to position the knob of the proboscis upon the sweaty rim of his anus, then gripped her small, muscular buttocks with both his hands. She plunged into him as brutally as she could, looking into his eyes for the impact of every thrust.

  XX

  FISH AND I strolled along the foreshore of Rushcutter’s Bay Park on the edge of the harbour a short walk from home. We rested on a bench under a hazy, mid-morning sky.

  A young woman in a motorised wheelchair pulled up alongside us. She controlled the chair with her bony hands from joysticks at the end of the armrests. Fish jumped off the bench and put his front paws in her lap. She patted him.

  “Just say if he’s annoying you,” I said.

  “Mr Hart,” said the woman, removing her cat’s-eye sunglasses, “my name is Ellen East. I am Henry East’s sister. You were at my home yesterday.”

  I looked around the park for her sidekicks. No sign of the silver dog.

  “I’m alone, Mr Hart.”

  I rolled my eyes, unable to prevent a snigger.

  “You might be surprised at what you can do in my condition if you put your mind to it.”

  “And you found me how?”

  “Your home address is on the electoral role: a public record.”

  “I meant how did you find me here.”

  “Your neighbour
said you were walking your dog.”

  “How can I help?” I made a mental note to caution Sue about talking to strangers in these increasingly unusual times.

  “You wish to talk to my brother?”

  “Your father doesn’t approve.”

  “I can help you.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “So that you can understand Henry’s situation and we can all have some peace.”

  “Good by me.”

  “I can’t get you into Henry’s hospital, but I can do a video call. And it has to be off the record. Do you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  Off the record, always off the record, but any contact with Henry was better than none. I could test the depth of his injuries, for a start. I gave Ellen my phone number. She was fair-haired, pale-skinned and round-faced. No trace of the equine profile of Charles and Henry, and she did not look like her mother either. I took her on her word that she was the East’s daughter.

  “Ellen,” I said, “there was a man smoking a cigar in your garden yesterday.”

  “Mr Peterson? He just drives Dad around.”

  “Does he have a first name?”

  “Oscar.”

  “Has he been working for your dad for long?”

  “About a year.”

  “Where’s he from?”

  “I suggest you ask him.”

  WHEN ELLEN’S VIDEO call came a few hours later, I was seated in my home office with recording software running on my laptop, and a notebook and pen at hand.

  On screen, a poor quality colour picture of Henry East emerged. He was propped up in bed on a stack of pillows. Ellen held her camera phone so I could see the top half of his body and his head. His lips were bloated and criss-crossed with dark stitches; the rim of his mouth was stained yellow with what I assumed was antiseptic. His eye sockets were dark. Henry’s hair was shorter than when he was in court, as if it was just growing back after a shave. I glimpsed a thick bandage on one of his wrists as he stroked an itchy stitch on his lip. It didn’t look like fake theatre.

  Henry’s voice was groggy and the tone deep: “Mither Hart, I have chosen ... to speak. Please do not tell ... do not say to my father.”

  “I will not tell Charles we have spoken,” I said. “Did you act alone, Henry, with the insider trading?’

  “I confessed ... all that to the court.”

  “That’s a lawyer’s answer. I don’t believe you did act alone.”

  “The court believed. Are you ... are you smarter than the court?”

  “Were you inside trading with Bart Hills?”

  “Bart is dead.”

  “That is not an answer, Henry.”

  “No is an answer,” he said.

  “Bart died a few days after I spoke with him,” I said. “Did someone kill him because of that?”

  “That’s why, Mr Hart ... I am speaking with you ...You are hurting people ... I made some very bad mistakes. I am paying now ... Bart had an accident ... a terrible accident.”

  I pressed on. “Did someone attack you in your cell?”

  “No. Why ... would someone do that?”

  “Who hurt you, Henry?”

  “Mither Hart! Don’t put words in my mouth. Ellen and I are asking you ... asking you ... leave our family alone. There is none ... no mystery.”

  “Who is John K Baker? What is your father’s relationship with the Cavalcade Investment Group?”

  “I have ... no idea, no idea.”

  “You rode Mr Baker’s polo ponies, Henry.”

  “He rode me, Mr Hart.”

  “What do you mean, Mr Baker ‘rode you’?”

  Henry’s eyes rolled in their sockets and he clutched his head with both his hands as if it might fall off his neck. “You ... you are mad, Mr Hart. Give us some peace, please.”

  I didn’t feel peaceful. “Do you know Sandy Wallace? The woman from DankeBank?”

  My phone screen went black. I phoned Ellen East back. The message said the phone number was not in service.

  Bruce Tyson hadn’t hammed things up for his $500. Henry was a mess. Did Ellen East want me to see he was a gibbering wreck? To persuade me to back off? If so, it was a fail.

  I spent the afternoon transcribing notes from my interview with Henry and drawing on a whiteboard the characters and their places in the picture puzzle that was emerging: Henry East, Charles East, Ellen East, Bart Hills, Oscar Peterson, Bruce Tyson, and Sandy Wallace.

  In the early evening, Steele returned a call I had made to him earlier, and I recounted my interview with Henry.

  Steele said: “If he was a threat to anyone, sounds like they’ve neutralised him now.”

  “He might be foxing.”

  “He’s a pretty good fox then.”

  I told Steele I’d booked lunch at his favourite restaurant the next day. We hung up. I’d tell him about Oscar Petersen then. I reckoned the only real Oscar Peterson I knew of was a dead, black jazz pianist from America. I put one of his albums on the music player in my bedroom which helped to mask Fish’s snoring. I wanted Mr Browning handy beside me when I climbed into bed beside Fish. I scoured the house but couldn’t find him anywhere. I slept, tried to, with a hunting knife under my pillow.

  XXI

  I WOKE with daybreak and headed to the Pickled Pig dressed in a suit to have breakfast before work. As I walked, the image of Henry East’s yellow-stained mouth and stitched lips flashed on and off in my skull. I phoned Hugo.

  It was early evening in Brighton. He was going to the movies with a girl from his school. That was the first date that I’d ever been told about. He sounded happy so I felt almost serene as I ended the call and sat in a booth at the Pig and watched Mick work his hissing coffee machine. My calm lasted about thirty seconds ... my brain became a city, not a nice one ... it was overcrowded, crawling with thoughts. A bunch of lunatics with jackhammers started doing demolition work ... Oscar Petersen had appeared in front of me.

  He unbuttoned his navy pinstripe suit jacket, fingered his blue tie and sat opposite me, sliding his lean frame deep into the booth so his back touched the café wall. Clearly he didn’t want anyone stabbing him from behind, which was my first instinct.

  The say-cheese smile didn’t shift on his pointy, tanned face. Up this close I noticed his bony nose was buckled. Maybe he boxed; either too often, or not too well, although he didn’t look like a man who lost many fights. He stroked what was available of his silver hair, dragging it forward across his temples.

  “Mr Hart,” he said in his Afrikaans twang, “do you want to tell me why you are harassing Mr East?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Oh yes you are.”

  “I hear you’re a chauffeur for Mr East. You’ve stepped out of your box, haven’t you?”

  “I am an adviser.”

  “To which Mr East?”

  “To the whole family. I want you to show them some respect, my friend. They have had a family tragedy.”

  “Yes. I understand. I just want to know the facts.”

  “What right. Do you have. To know. Private facts?”

  I started reaching for my mobile phone. I would take his photo, record the threats I knew were coming. “You don’t mind if I check your bona fides with Mr East, do you?”

  His eyes glanced left and right, checking for eavesdroppers. The other customers were engrossed in their own conversations. “Do you think I am an idiot, Mr Hart?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  He leaned over the table towards me and hissed: “You touch that phone and I will smash your face.” He bared his teeth as if he was showing a dentist his bite.

  I weighed up testing him. I kept my phone in my pocket.

  “I have some advice for you, Edgar Albert Hart, otherwise known as Gar: forty five years old; father of a boy and girl with a dead mother; resident of Darlinghurst in some shitty terrace house; owner of a three-legged poodle; playschool farmer at Moon Hill. You stick your beak inside my wall again and I will cut i
t fucking off. Are we clear?”

  “Is this coming from Charles East or you?”

  “Listen carefully to what I say, kaffir. Go back to chasing fire engines, or whatever you people do.”

  “If I don’t?”

  Mick arrived with my coffee and looked at the silver dog.

  “He’s not staying,” I said to Mick, who put my coffee down, acknowledged my nod, and returned to his other customers.

  “Strange chap,” said the silver dog, stroking his tie, sneering at Mick who was wearing a bowler hat and a white cricket outfit with the trousers held up by braces. With his trousers tucked into calf-high, black Doc Marten boots, Mick was looking very Clockwork Orange droog, and my world was feeling just as surreal.

  The silver dog slid out from the booth, stood up and rested a hand lightly on my shoulder. He bent and put his mouth close to my ear. I felt his breath. He whispered: “I hear you are not the sharpest knife in the block. Or the most mentally stable. If you are going to play games with people’s lives, get some life insurance. Do the right thing by your family. Insure the lot. Your poodle can spend the money, if he lives long enough.”

  He smiled and walked into the street, lit a cigarillo and winked at me through the window before strolling out of sight.

  Mick studied me. “You don’t look well, Gar. Who was that?”

  “He was an errand boy - I think.”

  “See that ring on his finger? Engraved with crossed daggers,” said Mick. “Military, by the look. And he had a knife strapped inside his jacket.”

  “What?”

  “I saw it when he slid from the booth.”

  I phoned Alice. She didn’t answer. My international call to Hugo went to his grandmother, Kate’s answering machine.

  There was a poster tacked to one of Mick’s walls; a matador with a cape was dodging a bull. Mick had been to bullfights in Mexico where he purchased it. He had told me that in the first act of a bullfight, the banderillos, or flagmen, jab barbed sticks into the bull’s back to set them up for the kill.

  I massaged a pain in my knotted shoulder muscle and wondered when and how the matador might make his next move ...