Dead and Kicking

by McGeachin, Geoffrey

‘You’d be amazed at some of the stuff the Americans left behind, Alby.’

  ‘Sounds a bit drastic,’ I said. ‘Did they taste that bad?’

  ‘It wasn’t the taste of the fish that was the problem. It was their appetite …’ he paused for a moment, ‘… and their attitude.’

  ‘You raised fish with attitude?’

  Cartwright refilled our teacups before he spoke. ‘Project PB was all about producing the perfect genetically engineered fish, and it took us almost five years. We based this new fish on wild barramundi for their desirable taste characteristics and because they’re euryhaline.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning they can live in both fresh and salt water which increases the farming options. We also made them more temperature tolerant so they could be raised as far south as Tasmania. Peter combined these positive attributes with the omnivorous and vigorous eating habits of certain members of the South American Characidae family, found mainly in the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers. Characidae are more generally known as piranha.’

  The piranha is a little freshwater fish with very big teeth and an even bigger appetite. South American folklore is full of stories of people or animals being attacked in rivers and creeks and winding up as a pile of bones in a matter of minutes.

  ‘And this particular barramundi-piranha combination didn’t really work out?’ I asked.

  ‘You could say that. Peter was working with the Serrasalmus rhombeus variety from Suriname in the northern part of South America, between French Guiana and Guyana, and it may not have been the wisest choice. What he finally produced was a large, fast-growing and delicious fish, but unfortunately also a savage and extremely aggressive one. They move in packs rather than schools, and apparently found us as palatable as we found them.’

  ‘Jesus! How big are these things?’ I asked.

  ‘We calculated that they could have grown up to a metre in length, but the damn things were aggressive right from hatching. One of our researchers unthinkingly dangled his hand in the water of Pond 27 from a boat and was nearly dragged in. The man lost his right arm up to the elbow. The flesh was stripped down to the bone in less than thirty seconds.’

  Despite the tropical afternoon heat, I shivered.

  ‘I cancelled the project immediately,’ Cartwright continued, ‘and ordered the destruction of all our stock. Fish farming in this country is a labour-intensive enterprise and to my mind it wasn’t worth the risk.’

  ‘Smart move. Pity though. It sounds like your super fish could have been the answer to the world’s food problem.’

  ‘Some people say the problem the world faces today, Alby, isn’t a shortfall in food.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘There are some who feel the problem the world actually faces is a surplus of people.’

  I thought of the science-fiction film from the seventies in which Chuck Heston discovered the government was feeding an exploding population by secretly mincing up the dead, the elderly and the anti-social elements before adding a splash of food colouring and stamping them out as a tasty snack bar named Soylent Green.

  ‘Then maybe your Project PB was the solution, after all,’ I said. ‘We could have simply chopped up all those surplus people and fed them to your piranha-cum-barramundi.’

  He smiled. ‘One possible solution, but probably not something that would be palatable to the politicians.’

  ‘Or to the punters lining up at the fish and chip shop – might have been a bit of a problem serving up a fish that could have been fattened on the homeless or their old Aunty Gwen.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘If your project was cancelled, and all the fish destroyed, what got you down to Saigon?’ I asked.

  Cartwright said he had something he wanted to show me in the main house, so we started walking back in that direction.

  ‘You’ve heard of ANL Fischer Seafoods, right?’ Cartwright said.

  ‘The big fish wholesalers?’

  He nodded. ‘ANL Fischer is a major importer of farmed seafood into Australia and the US. I picked up rumblings on the aquaculture grapevine that their CEO, Detlef Fischer, was expanding his business into fish farming through a new company called Fischer Aquaculture Industries. And when I began hearing rumours that he had a new fast-growing, great-tasting wonderfish out of Vietnam, I got a bit concerned.’

  ‘You think Fischer somehow managed to get his hands on a batch of your Project PB fish?’

  Cartwright didn’t answer.

  ‘And if he did, he could breed more of these wonderfish to his heart’s content!’

  Cartwright shook his head. ‘Characteristics built into genetically engineered fish that make them suitable for pond rearing could be a problem if the fish escaped and managed to breed with their wild cousins, so farming fish like ours are always deliberately bred sterile.’

  ‘And so the people who own the genetic blueprint can make an ongoing profit,’ I said, ‘selling the actual fish for food and the fingerlings for restocking.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Cartwright said.

  ‘Same as those genetically modified grain crops where the poor bloody farmer has to buy new seed every year.’

  ‘It took us five years of hard work and a major investment to produce Project PB, Alby, and we deserve a return on all that time and money. But after the accident I instructed Peter to destroy all the records and samples of the fish so that no more could be bred.’

  ‘But if Fischer was planning on farming these things, he’d need a guaranteed source of supply for the fingerlings.’

  Cartwright nodded.

  ‘So was that what the blue outside your place in Saigon was all about?’

  ‘I told Peter about Detlef Fischer and the wonderfish rumours and asked him if he was involved. He denied any knowledge and things got a bit heated between us, I’m afraid. I wanted to believe him, but I’d made some inquiries and learned that Fischer had been visiting Saigon on a regular basis over the past six months.’

  We’d reached the house and Cartwright led me into an office on the ground floor. It was all wood panelling and heavy antique furniture and looked very last century, apart from the computer on the desk. Cartwright nudged the mouse on the desktop to wake up the computer.

  He clicked on a bookmark, and a web page for ANL Fischer Seafoods appeared on the screen. Cartwright clicked through the pages.

  ‘Lot of boring bumph about the history of the company and what they’re up to. Nothing about fish farming, though. Then I found this.’ He clicked the mouse again. ‘You’ve heard of Jezebel Quick?’

  I nodded, trying not to look surprised. ‘I’ve seen her TV show.’

  There was a photograph of a smiling Jezebel with her arm around a bloke wearing a dinner suit. He was in his early thirties, I figured, blond-haired and blue-eyed with a demean-our that said private school, rugger bugger, trust fund and I can buy and sell you out of petty cash so fuck off. It was the kind of look that you knew made valet parking attendants want to urinate in the ashtray of his Lotus Elise.

  In the picture, Jezebel was wearing a dress with a plunging neckline that appeared to stop just short of her ankles. The caption said it was taken at a charity dinner and auction where Fischer had made a winning bid of fifty thousand dollars for a private dinner with Jezebel, cooked and served by her in her penthouse apartment in Melbourne’s swish water-front Docklands development. The picture was dated about six months earlier.

  ‘So what’s the connection?’ I asked.

  ‘I heard she and Fischer became an item after that dinner, so I Googled her.’

  Cartwright typed in Jezebel’s name and her website came up – jezebelshotstuff.com. The welcoming image was of a smiling Jezebel leaning forward and offering the viewer a plate of succulent deep-fried ricotta-stuffed zucchini flowers and a fantastic view down her cleavage.

  ‘The lady seems to lead with her tits,’ Cartwright said.

  He had that right.

  He clicked on a link to her blog named ‘
Watch This Space’. This page featured a picture of Jezebel posing in waders and holding a fishing rod. It was next to a short, recently posted item cryptically referring to big news that was coming soon about something that would knock the socks off fish lovers – a great-tasting and affordable farmed fish that was going to revolutionise the seafood market.

  ‘I heard she was going to be in Saigon, so after I spoke to Peter I figured I might try and track her down and ask a few questions, to suss out if there was a connection between my son and Fischer.’

  ‘Did you manage to catch up with her?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘The day after my meeting with Peter he emailed me a photograph from the video surveillance camera outside his building, showing two men who had come asking questions. I recognised Jack immediately, but I didn’t know who you were. The smart course of action was to make myself scarce again. It was all getting a bit dicey and I didn’t want to blow my cover.’

  ‘Unfortunately, it was a bit late for that.’

  ‘In any case, I figured if Fischer had somehow managed to get his hands on a batch of Project PB fingerlings it wouldn’t take him long to discover the bloody things weren’t worth the risk.’

  ‘Bloody things’ seemed like an apt description.

  ‘But I can’t imagine that your son would have turned the results of five years’ hard work over to someone like Fischer,’ I said. ‘Was Peter short of money? Did Fischer have anything on him?’

  ‘You have any kids?’ Cartwright asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘It’s always been hard for Peter,’ he said, ‘being a child of one of the invaders from the American War. Military occupations and civil wars both tend to engender bitterness that runs deep and lasts for generations.’

  Anyone who’d spent time in the American South could vouch for that. One hundred and forty years on, there were still a lot of people grumpy about Abraham Lincoln and the War of Northern Aggression.

  ‘And his mother’s death also hit him pretty hard. People handle these pressures in different ways. Some drink or take drugs or womanise. My son, I’ve recently discovered, likes to gamble.’

  ‘I’m guessing you don’t just mean a few bob on the Melbourne Cup.’

  ‘Over the past year, Peter has been spending a lot of time in Hong Kong, which is, of course, just a short ride by jetfoil from Macau and its casinos.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I believe Detlef Fischer has a backer behind his recent move into aquaculture, a silent partner, someone in the Macau casino business.’

  ‘This Playford Peng character? The son of Crockett’s former partner in crime?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘This isn’t looking good for Peter,’ I said.

  ‘He may be in over his head and I’m not sure how to help him. I was thinking of sending him out of the country with some of my people to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘Could be a smart move.’

  I scrolled on through the website and came to a link to a page called ‘Jezebel’s Movements’. I crossed my fingers and clicked, praying it was just about Jezebel’s travel plans. Thankfully it was. Most celebrities bitch and moan about their loss of privacy, but Jezebel was a real fame junkie who wanted everyone to know what she was up to, and the press and paparazzi loved her for it.

  The page announced that Jezebel would be on a breakfast TV programme in Hanoi the next day, and in the afternoon she would be making an appearance at the Times Square shopping centre in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, to promote her new range of cookware.

  ‘I was thinking about heading back to Australia,’ I said, ‘and maybe I’ll take the Hong Kong route to see if I can connect with this Jezebel.’

  ‘I’d appreciate that.’

  ‘Your Project PB and her super-tasty fish do sound like they have something in common.’

  ‘Don’t put yourself in danger, Alby,’ Cartwright said.

  ‘Bit late for that, mate,’ I said. ‘But I’ll be okay. I don’t think she bites.’

  That wasn’t actually 100 per cent true, but Cartwright didn’t need to know the lurid details of my former relationship with Jezebel. He also didn’t need to know that I’d noticed a comment on her web page which revealed the lady was looking forward to catching up very soon with someone she called Mister Hotlovin.

  I thought back to a time long past when Jezebel had called me Mister Hotlovin. I felt so cheap.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The ride in to Hanoi’s international airport with Heckle and Jeckle watching my back was uneventful and the Barry Jones passport got me through immigration with no dramas. Things started looking up when the Pan Oriental Airways’ A330–300 Airbus had been airborne for about twenty minutes. One of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen walked down the aisle and stopped at my seat. She smiled and handed me a neatly folded piece of paper. The handwritten note simply read ‘I suppose a quick shag in the first-class dunnies is out of the question?’

  The cabin attendant was tall and slender with perfect skin, exquisite almond-shaped eyes and a face that I guessed might have been Shanghainese. Alby, I said to myself, this is one airline attempting to lift in-flight service to a whole new level.

  ‘It’s from the lady in 2G,’ the beautiful woman said with another smile.

  I leaned into the aisle and in the far-off nirvana that was first class I saw blonde hair and a waving hand.

  ‘Would you like to gather your carry-on articles and come with me, Mr Murdoch?’

  Would I what! Two minutes later I was up in the pointy end, ensconced in the magical domain of the well-trained cabin crew and well-heeled traveller. I took the proffered glass of champagne from the flight attendant and glanced at the passenger in the next seat.

  ‘She said there was a lady in 2G, but it’s just you.’

  ‘Pig’s arse, Alby,’ Jezebel said, raising her glass. ‘I’m a fucking lady.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said.

  Jezebel liked to be comfortable when she travelled, and was wearing black ugg boots and an expensive red cashmere tracksuit. The zipper on her top was at half-mast and I figured we had about fifteen minutes before the pilot discovered who was on board and gave in to an irresistible urge to come and chat to the first-class passengers, or one in particular.

  ‘I guess I should thank you for the upgrade,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘I saw you hanging about at the gate from the VIP lounge, and I gave them the old famous international photographer routine and suggested economy was probably awful enough without the other passengers having to share it with a miserable prick like you, plus my arsehole film crew.’

  ‘And I’ll drink to that, too,’ I said, finishing off my champagne and searching out the cabin attendant for a refill.

  It was no accident that we were on the same plane. Using Jezebel’s schedule of appearances from her website, I’d looked for the most likely Pan Oriental flight between Hanoi and Hong Kong and booked a seat. Jez had created Pan Oriental’s in-flight menu and she flew with them whenever possible, since she got free flights and knew which meals not to order. I’d figured I’d run into her at some stage, even if it was just collecting our bags from the carousel in Hong Kong, but this was much better.

  My fully reclining seat was covered in glove-soft leather, the champagne was vintage and the choices on the extensive first-class à-la-carte luncheon menu were quite tempting.

  ‘Try the lobster bisque,’ Jezebel suggested, ‘and get them to make you the five-mushroom omelette. Avoid that spanner-crab salad like the plague, which it might possibly give you.’

  I ordered lunch and then sat back for a chat. ‘Meeting up with your food tourists in Hong Kong?’ I asked.

  She nodded. ‘They went on ahead after Hanoi while I picked up some background footage with the crew. I give ’em the kiss-off after today and about bloody time, too. It’s all questions, questions, questions. They must think I’m some fucking tour guide.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure th
at was what it said in the brochure.’

  ‘Screw you too, Alby,’ she said, laughing. ‘So what have you been up to? Having a good time with that lady copper?’

  Jezebel’s preoccupations in life were Jezebel, Jezebel’s sex life and Jezebel’s career, so she didn’t ask any awkward questions about the goings-on back in the market in Saigon. She mainly wanted to know if Nhu had used her police handcuffs during foreplay. Jezebel didn’t think foreplay was worth bothering with unless it involved some rope, a block and tackle, assorted electrical appliances and half a kilo of Normandy butter, preferably unsalted. No bloody wonder I hadn’t been able to hack it in that relationship for more than a couple of months.

  There was one of those incredibly thin MacBook Air laptops on the table in front of her. ‘I noticed you’ve gotten into blogging recently,’ I said, changing the subject and leading her where I really wanted to go.

  ‘It’s a way of keeping in close personal touch with my millions of fans,’ she said, ‘and showing them I’m a caring concerned person. And it also helps me sell a shitload of saucepans and books and stuff through my website. You can even get a tracksuit like this for five hundred bucks.’

  ‘Sounds like a lot of work. Someone do the actual writing for you?’

  ‘I bash out the odd post when I have the time, mostly the stuff on my love-life, but my publisher found this gay guy named Preston who can write just like me and he does the day-to-day and vets the emails for anything interesting. Honest to God, Alby, some of the bloody photographs people send me … I tell you, they give the term root vegetables a whole new meaning.’

  ‘Thanks, Jez,’ I said, ‘you’ve just put me off minestrone for life. But I was reading about a new fish surprise you’ve got coming up.’

  ‘That’s all very hush-hush, Alby – Detlef would give me a bloody good spanking if I spilled the beans on that one …’

  She paused and smiled at me.

  ‘… Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing,’ I said, finishing off her sentence for her.

  Jezebel grinned, and I remembered why I liked her. She might have been tough as nails and full of herself but, surprisingly, she didn’t have a mean bone in that quite amazing body. Exactly what the hell was she doing in the middle of all this?