The Brush-Off mw-1

by Shane Maloney

  Once Fiona Lambert disappeared into the CMA, I hurried to the Charade and headed back towards the office. It was getting on for 4.30 and the ebb tide of early rush-hour traffic had begun to flow out of the city. Anybody with half a brain had already clocked-off and was headed for the beach.

  Something I’d overheard in Fiona Lambert’s flat was exercising my mind. The world of high finance was terra incognita. It was time I got hold of a tourist guide. Even as I turned into St Kilda Road, I was pulling up in front of the Travelodge and fishing in my pockets for coins.

  I could find only notes. This meant that before I could use the pay-phone, I was compelled to go into the bar and buy myself a drink. A shot of Jamiesons with a beer chaser. I needed to be both alert and relaxed. I fed the change in a phone in the lobby and called the Business Daily. ‘You’re a finance journalist,’ I told Faye Curnow.

  ‘If that’s a news tip,’ she said. ‘You’re a bit late.’

  ‘Matter of fact, I do have a tip,’ I said. ‘A scoop. But first tell me about Obelisk Trust. It’s like a bank or a building society, right? Government guaranteed.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. High returns, high risk.’

  ‘And what if I told you that Lloyd Eastlake has been sinking large amounts of Obelisk money into the Karlcraft project without his board’s approval?’

  ‘I’d say that he might well soon regret it. The rumours are flying thick and fast that the banks are about to refuse to roll over Karlin’s loans. If that happens, he’ll have no alternative but to file for bankruptcy.’

  ‘How would he go about that?’

  It wasn’t complicated. ‘You lodge some forms with the Federal Court. A court-appointed trustee moves immediately, shuts the doors and starts liquidating your assets. Your creditors howl like stuck pigs. Then they sit around for the next ten years not getting their money back.’

  ‘So what would you say if I told you that, even as we speak, Max Karlin’s lawyers are approaching the court, bankruptcy forms in hand? And that, further, I’ve got my life savings in Obelisk Trust.’

  ‘I’d tell you that if you don’t get your money out of Obelisk by close of business tonight, you can probably kiss most of it goodbye. And I’d ask you how reliable is your information about Karlin.’

  ‘Straight from the horse’s mouth.’

  ‘Then you’d better get off the phone. I’ve got a story to break, and you’ve got a hasty withdrawal to make. Thanks for the tip.’

  I didn’t get much thanks for my next call. In fact, I got a flea in my ear. ‘Murray Whelan here,’ I said. ‘Calling from Angelo Agnelli’s office.’

  ‘What now?’ barked Duncan Keogh.

  This wasn’t going to be easy. The last time I’d rung the finance committee chairman, I’d hung up on him. ‘It’s about that deposit with Obelisk Trust.’

  ‘Thought I told you I’d done it.’

  ‘You did,’ I said. ‘Only there’s been a bit of a rethink in the strategy department. Angelo wants the funds withdrawn immediately and put back where they were.’ Eastlake wasn’t the only one who could play at this exceed-your-authority game. ‘Like you said this morning, Duncan. No need to get our shirt-tails in a flap.’

  Standing at a pay-phone in the lobby of a budget hotel with a finger in one ear to drown out the muzak bouncing off a tour party of Taiwanese dentists’ wives was not the ideal location for a conversation of this nature.

  ‘You tell Agnelli from me,’ said Keogh. ‘That I’m still the finance committee chairman, not some bank clerk, and if he wants something done he should have the courtesy to call me himself, not get his office boy to do it.’

  This was great. Keogh had finally decided to grow a backbone. ‘Listen, Duncan…’ But Duncan wasn’t listening. It was his turn to hang up.

  This was not good. I went back into the bar and bought myself another beer. With the option of bluffing Keogh now closed, the only way left to get the party funds out of Obelisk before the balloon went up was to call Agnelli and have him speak to Keogh. That would entail a great deal of explanation. Frankly, given the choice, I’d rather have gone straight back up to F. Lambert’s kitchen, stuck my bare hand into her high-speed Moulinex blender and thrown the switch.

  I racked my brain for a plausible lie. It was a fool’s errand. The truth, or a passable facsimile of it, was my only option. But first I would have to get through to the ministerial hovercraft plying the distant waters of Lake Eildon. I gorged the pay-phone with coins and dialled Agnelli’s mobile. ‘The mobile telephone you have called has not responded,’ said a female robot. ‘Please call again shortly.’

  Shortly? Just how much time did she think I had? It was exactly five o’clock. If Obelisk kept standard business hours, it had just shut its doors for the day. I hung up. The phone ate my change.

  I dialled the Arts Ministry and asked Trish for a precise fix on my employer’s whereabouts and contactability.

  ‘Somewhere in transit,’ she said vaguely. ‘Not due back in town until later tonight. Why, is there a problem?’ Trish’s discretion was a one-way valve. Nothing came out, but she was always open to input.

  ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘Any messages?’

  My contact at Corporate Affairs had called. Austral Fine Art, Pty Ltd, was an off-the-shelf number with a paid up capital of two dollars, incorporated the previous year. Its sole shareholder was a Lloyd Henry Eastlake of Mathoura Road, Toorak.

  This took a moment’s consideration. If Austral was Fiona Lambert’s company, how come Eastlake owned it? What a sucker. He even had his name on the corporate shell his girlfriend used to doublecross him.

  Right at that instant, the structure of Austral Fine Art was the least of my worries. Unless I did something pronto, our campaign funds would disappear into financial never-never land. Which in turn meant that Angelo Agnelli, rather than being carried shoulder-high through the next election-night victory party, would be lucky if he was allowed to slink away and commit harikari with a blunt raffle ticket.

  My meeting with Eastlake was at six o’clock. But if I could get through to him before then, perhaps he could see his way clear to reverse Keogh’s deposit. In a deregulated world of round-the-clock electronic banking, surely Eastlake could authorise an after-hours transaction. Maybe there was still scope for some fancy financial footwork. I didn’t need to tell him the truth. I could say I’d been tipped off by a Business Daily journo.

  Eastlake’s direct line was engaged. So was his mobile. I looked up Obelisk in the book and rang the number. Yes, said his secretary, Mr Eastlake was in. But no, he couldn’t take my call. He was currently in conference and absolutely could not be disturbed.

  The ‘in conference’ bit was a nice touch, spoken with the strained plausibility of a nuclear power plant press officer during a meltdown. Eastlake was either still desperately trying to track down the elusive Max Karlin, or the penny had finally dropped and he was on the phone trying to parley his way out of financial ruin.

  My name had nudged the secretary’s memory. ‘Mr Eastlake just asked me to contact you, Mr Whelan. Regarding your meeting at six. He said can you please meet him at the Little Collins Street entrance to the Karlcraft Centre. He said he wants to show you some of the public art there.’

  A building site was an odd place for a business meeting, but I wasn’t arguing. Eastlake was perhaps hoping to find Max Karlin there, too. He’d have to settle for me. It had just gone five-fifteen. Enough time to drive back to the Arts Ministry, park the car and walk the three blocks into the city. Calling the cops could wait.

  Famous last words.

  Thirty storeys of concrete and steel skeleton towered upwards. A construction hoarding ran along Little Collins Street, thick with show posters and aerosoled graffiti. Iggy Pop. Leather is Murder. On the footpath opposite, an endless stream of home-bound shoppers and office workers flowed out of the Royal Arcade, sparing only a passing glance at the big Mercedes parked tight against the hoarding. Construction Vehicles Only, read the
sign, 6 a. m to 6 p.m.

  The hours were a fiction, a pretext for the council to issue parking tickets. Building industry hours are 7.00 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. and the only remaining evidence of construction vehicles was a powdery sludge in the gutter, the hose-down water from long-departed concrete trucks. A pink slip nestled beneath the Merc’s windscreen wiper.

  Spider Webb was nowhere in sight. I wondered exactly where he was. If he was lurking about, I doubted he would try anything smart with Eastlake present.

  Not that Eastlake’s presence was apparent. The building site was deserted. Through a chain-mesh gate in the hoarding, all I could see was a maze of scaffolding, piles of sand, stacks of breeze bricks, the silvery worm-casings of air-conditioning ducting. I rattled the padlock and peered inside, finding only shadows and silence.

  Down a side alley was a smaller gate. An open padlock dangled from its bolt. It led directly into an access walkway, a two-metre-wide tunnel of whitewashed plywood extending into the interior of the site, its walls streaked and pitted from the casual buffeting of loaded wheelbarrows and the elbows of apprentice plumbers. Safety Helmet Area, said a sign. No Ticket, No Start.

  I didn’t have a ticket, at least not one from the Building Workers Industrial Union, but I started anyway. I headed along the unlit passageway, breathing plaster dust and the smell of polymer adhesives, hearing nothing but my own footsteps, hoping I was headed in the right direction. Forty metres in, the tunnel doglegged sharply, ramped upwards and opened onto a broad balcony of raw concrete.

  An immense atrium extended before me, as vast as the interior of a cathedral. Muted sunlight filtered through a glass ceiling high overhead. A series of galleries lined the sides, ascending three storeys above me. From the floor, two storeys below, a forest of scaffolding sprouted upwards, clinging to the edges of the jutting balconies and wrapping itself around the row of columns that marched down the centre of the great space. The whole place was the colour of ashes.

  Lloyd Eastlake was sitting on a pallet-load of ceramic tiles at the edge of the balcony, staring out into the void. One hand was resting on the metal piping of a temporary guard rail. The other was supporting his chin in the manner of Rodin’s Thinker. Whether this disconsolate pose was deliberate or not, I couldn’t tell. But it spoke volumes. Here was a man who had heard the news.

  He turned at my approach and slowly rose to meet me. His arm swept wide in a grand, operatic gesture. ‘Welcome to the Karlcraft Galleria,’ he declared, his voice larded with irony, his words instantly swallowed up in the empty vastness of the place. ‘Come. Admire.’

  We stood together at the guard rail and gazed at the vista spread before us as if it was some marvel of nature, some wondrous subterranean grotto. ‘Over forty thousand square metres of retail space. Nearly a hundred fashion boutiques and specialty stores. Five bars, three restaurants, a cinema.’ Eastlake spoke as though offering me dominion over the cities of the world. ‘Above us, twenty-eight floors of prime commercial office space. Below us, parking for a thousand cars.’

  I remained silent, not knowing how to respond. Eastlake was inviting me to share the loss of his dream. I could hardly tell him that parking for a thousand had never been one of my visions.

  ‘Even as a hole in the ground it was impressive,’ he went on, wistful now. ‘Sometimes I’d come here and just look for hours on end. Watching it take shape. Imagining what it would be like finished.’

  That, at a guess, was about three months away. The finishing-off was well under way. All the essential structure was there. The escalators sat ready to roll, sheathed in protective cardboard. Stacks of plaster sheeting, pallet-loads of tile and marble, plate glass, rolls of electrical conduit lay everywhere, giving the place an air of having been abandoned in haste.

  It was not entirely abandoned, though. Across the concrete canyon, on the level below, something flickered at the periphery of my vision. I leaned forward and squinted, trying to penetrate the shadows. All I could see was the doorway of an embryonic boutique, the pitched angle of a sheet of plate glass. Nothing moved. A play of the light, perhaps.

  Eastlake was wearing the same Mickey Mouse tie as when I had first met him. He’d pulled it down a little and undone the top button of his shirt. Close up, his eyes were distracted, a little wild. His skin was the colour of putty. His forehead glowed with the slightest patina of perspiration. It was the closest to dishevelled I could imagine him.

  ‘I heard about Karlin,’ I said. By that time, it could hardly have been a secret.

  ‘The bastard,’ said Eastlake, flat and expressionless, almost without rancour. ‘ “No hard feelings.” That’s what he told me. “No hard feelings. It’s just business.” Can you believe that?’

  Karlin was right, I thought. Concentrate on the basics. I wasn’t there to console Eastlake. I had problems of my own. ‘What does this mean for Obelisk?’ I said. ‘For the funds Agnelli invested last Friday?’

  Eastlake seemed not to have heard me. He was leaning out over the edge of the guard rail, looking straight down. ‘See that?’ he said.

  Immediately below us, a drop of two storeys, was a section of mosaic flooring. The newly laid tiles were bright in the half-darkness. The pattern was a cornucopia spilling forth the fruits of abundance. ‘Public art,’ he said. ‘As a major investor, I was able to insist on the inclusion of murals, sculptures…’

  His voice trailed off. He turned and picked up a terracotta tile from the pallet behind him. Casually, he tossed it over the balcony. Twenty-five metres below, it hit the horn of plenty and exploded like a grenade. ‘So Angelo wants his money back, does he? Well, you tell him that he’s not alone. I want my money, too. And I’ve lost a damn sight more than he has.’

  Eastlake threw another tile, then another, flinging them out into the void. Four, five, six he hurled, rapid fire, grunting with the venomous exertion of it. They bounced off scaffolding, struck columns, ricocheted downwards. The harsh clashing of hollow metal and the shattering sound of breaking glass filled the air. Across the reverberating emptiness, well out of range, one part of the shadows seemed lighter. A shape like a man stood immobile, watching.

  As abruptly as it began, Eastlake’s cathartic rage halted. Taking a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, he placidly wiped his hands. ‘Obelisk is finished. As Karlcraft’s principal unsecured creditor, it will be lucky to get ten cents in the dollar.’ Despite his pretence at composure, he was wound tighter than a spring. ‘Obelisk customers, I’m afraid, have done their dough. All thanks to Max Karlin’s cave-in to the banks.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘And to think that only yesterday I was concerned about maintaining the value of his art collection.’

  We had moved to the reason for our meeting. ‘Giles Aubrey died of a fall,’ I said. ‘Or that’s what we’re supposed to think. Personally, I have my doubts.’

  Eastlake smiled thinly, continuing to wipe his hands. ‘And this is why you insisted we meet? Face-to-face, as you put it. So you could share your doubts?’ He put his handkerchief away, did up the top button of his shirt, straightened his neck and slid the knot of his tie into place. The obscure inferences of a nut-case were the last thing Lloyd Eastlake needed at a time like this. This meeting, a pit stop in the journey of life, was now at an end. He turned to go.

  I could see his point. Time to start getting down to detail. ‘I intend to share my suspicions with the police. And, unfortunately, you are involved.’

  That stopped him in his tracks. ‘Me? How?’

  ‘Because of your ownership of a company called Austral Fine Art,’ I said. ‘And because of the political implications arising from its dealings.’

  ‘What’s Austral got to do with Giles Aubrey? What political implications?’

  It was a long story and I had to begin somewhere. ‘This afternoon,’ I said, ‘purely by chance, I discovered that one of the paintings in the Combined Unions Superannuation Scheme art collection is a forgery. A painting supplied by Austral Fine Art. It is quite likely that ot
her works sold by Austral are fakes. Further, I suspect that the person who organised the fraud was responsible for the deaths of both Marcus Taylor and Giles Aubrey. We both know who I’m talking about.’ I leaned back against the guard rail and let the implications of my words sink in. ‘Don’t we?’

  Eastlake stared at me with frank amazement. He tilted his head and searched my eyes, as though attempting to discern my motives. He appeared to conclude that I was stark raving mad.

  It was a perfectly understandable reaction. Not only had he just suffered a reversal of his financial fortunes. Now he was being told that the woman he loved had been taking advantage of him, and that she was suspected of murder.

  ‘These are remarkable allegations,’ he said at last. ‘Can you prove them?’

  I did my best to look sane. ‘The evidence is largely circumstantial at the moment, I admit. But once a proper investigation begins, the outcome will be inevitable. If I felt I could hold off taking my suspicions to the police, I would. But you understand that I can’t be party to concealing activities of this nature.’

  ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Eastlake was genuinely perplexed.

  ‘Don’t be dense.’ Did he want me to spell it out for him? ‘Think about the political implications of your little peccadillo. You’ve set yourself up as Labor’s man in the arts. You’ll have to immediately resign from the Visual Arts Advisory Panel, the CMA chairmanship and the various other government appointments you hold.’

  Eastlake was utterly incredulous. ‘Have I got this right?’ he said. ‘You’re telling me that you’ve held off informing anyone of your suspicions until you had the chance to ask me to resign my official positions?’

  Not strictly true, but I nodded anyway. ‘I know it’s a case of shutting the gate after the horse has bolted,’ I said. ‘But I think you’ll agree that your position will be untenable once this gets out. The sooner you act the better.’

  Eastlake seemed to give this suggestion some thought. He bent his head and ran a hand slowly through his hair. We were standing about three paces apart and I could see the bald patch on the crown of his head.