The Tattooed Man

by Alex Palmer

  ‘Do we have any names?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘None for the father. His mother was married during her life but not until after Beck had left East Germany. There were no children from that marriage and the husband is still alive. There’s no record of any earlier marriage.’

  ‘If she knew who her son’s father was—and from this picture it looks like she did—she would have told her son, surely. When she died, if not earlier,’ Harrigan said. ‘Beck had that picture on him when he died.’

  ‘Yes. I think it meant something to him,’ Jacquie said. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Good work.’

  She smiled and sat down.

  ‘All right,’ Harrigan said. ‘It’s time to talk about Beck. Trev?’

  ‘First off, we searched his house. Frankie. Do you want to take us through what you found?’

  ‘The first thing is that someone got there before us,’ Frankie said. ‘Whatever they were looking for, they found it in a drawer in the lounge room because they didn’t even bother to close the drawer. They stopped right there and left.’

  ‘Did you find an LPS badge?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘Not a whisker. Maybe that was what they took away.’

  ‘What do you mean, LPS badge?’ Parkin asked. ‘We know the minister was involved with that corporation. Was Beck?’

  ‘According to the CEO, Dr Calvo, he was briefly employed by them earlier this year,’ Harrigan replied. ‘The badges are security passes that get you in and out of their facility at Campbelltown. I was given one when I visited there a few days ago. It’s a sophisticated tracking device. You get to keep it as a memento, but once you leave it’s deactivated. If Beck was an employee, he would have had one. We know from other sources that he was, so what happened to his?’

  ‘Couldn’t he have lost it easily enough?’ Parkin asked.

  ‘Not if it was his key to the door. I think we should question whether he really was sacked as Elena Calvo says he was. Frankie, anything else?’

  ‘No, boss, we found zip,’ Frankie said. ‘Beck had a nice house with a lovely view of the harbour but there was nothing personal in there. We did find out a few things about him. He suffered from high blood pressure and liver disease, he had the meds to prove it. He liked the best. The clothes, the booze—there was a lot of booze, he obviously drank very heavily—it was all nothing but the best. There was money in the house and a lot of money in his various bank accounts as well. We’re tracking his financials now. There was a lot more information about him in the dossier.’

  ‘Ralph, do you want to talk to that?’ Trevor said.

  ‘Yeah, the dossier.’ Ralph moved to the head of the table. The image of the dossier’s front page reappeared on the screen. ‘We don’t know the name of the agency that owns this document, but now it’s out there in cyberspace, I’m sure they’ll find us soon enough.’

  ‘Stop there, Ralph,’ Harrigan said.

  ‘What is it, boss?’

  ‘What you just said. Now it’s out there in cyberspace, its owners will find us. Given what’s been put out on the net already, why wasn’t this document online as well?’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ Parkin called. ‘Because it could identify them.’

  ‘That’s right. I think this will signal to someone out there who these people are. Okay, Ralph. What can you tell us?’

  ‘Mainly that this is a very long-standing document. It incorporates information from the various agencies who’ve been watching Beck since 1970. He had a long career as an illegal arms dealer dating from the late 1960s right through to the 1990s. He’s involved himself in theatres of war from South East Asia to Africa. He met du Plessis in the 1980s when he was working for the South African apartheid government. In 1990 he went back to Europe. The apartheid regime was on its last legs and he’d made too many enemies over there. By now the Berlin Wall is down. He became involved with the Russian mafia, wisely not for too long. His mother died in Berlin in 1997 and, like a dutiful son, he was there with her.’

  ‘You’re breaking my heart,’ Frankie murmured.

  Ralph grinned. ‘That’s just one side of the story. In fact, Beck was a double agent, a very useful source of intelligence for the agencies who were watching him. He did business for himself and provided information to the British government at the same time. In exchange for which they left him alone and paid him. It’s a common enough arrangement. After his mother died, he went to London. And here the first part of the dossier is ruled off. The final note is: Minister’s direction is discontinue and hands off. It was a thirty-year connection. They closed it down without a murmur. There’s no indication they even debriefed Beck.’

  ‘No reasons given? Nothing?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘Nothing that’s on this file,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Why would it go to the minister? Was Beck that important?’

  ‘He wouldn’t be,’ Parkin said. ‘Ministers don’t deal directly with operatives at that level. Somehow he must have drawn attention to himself.’

  ‘There’s no indication on file as to what he might have done,’ Ralph said. ‘Then five years ago, the dossier was reopened. Not because of Beck but because of du Plessis. Du Plessis was in London. At the time, he was wanted for murder in South Africa but the government there agreed to the agency keeping him under surveillance rather than arresting him. That warrant is still out against him. At the time, he was known to be involved in illegal diamond trading. The agency’s main concern was with the kind of activities financed by that trade, such as illegal arms dealing. The surveillance operation caught du Plessis meeting with Beck. It was the first time Beck had been on the radar for years. They met often enough for the agency to conclude they were in business together and they needed to watch Beck as well as du Plessis.

  ‘After this, they traced Beck to a scientific research facility in north London. At the time he’d been employed there for several years. The investigation identifies him as a manager of some kind. From this point on, the agency put an operative into that research facility to watch him. This operative is referred to by a number only. This is where Elena Calvo turns up, boss. You said she was a player. She was the CEO there, and while she was there, she had an encounter with Beck. That brings us to this series of photographs. The time and date stamp says 22:38 one night in June four-and-a-half years ago. They must have both been working late.’

  Up on the screen, there flashed in succession pictures of Elena Calvo standing beside her car in an underground car park, talking to Jerome Beck. The body language made it clear there was a fierce argument going on. Towards the end he was pushing his wallet at her. She refused to look at it. The last photographs in the series showed her slamming her car door and driving away.

  ‘That argument went on for eighteen minutes,’ Ralph continued. ‘Pity we can’t know what was being said. Or shouted.’

  ‘That’s where Beck kept his photograph,’ Jacquie said. ‘It was in his wallet like that. At the front, behind a window.’

  ‘Did he have it with him then?’ Ralph asked.

  ‘If he got it from his dying mother, why not?’ Harrigan said. ‘What do we know about this research institute?’

  ‘So far we’ve only checked its website. There’s nothing to indicate it’s anything but legitimate. There is one significant fact. Although this is hidden behind various companies, it’s owned by Jean Calvo. The dossier traces that ownership in detail.’

  ‘Did Senator Edwards see those photographs of Beck arguing with Calvo? Did he know they had this previous connection?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘He must have done,’ Ralph said. ‘I spoke with his adviser any number of times this last week. He told me they’d both been through the dossier in detail. Now the poor bastards are dead.’

  ‘Did the minister mention this to her?’ Parkin asked. ‘Did she know this dossier existed?’

  ‘She’s the only one who can answer those questions now,’ Trevor said. ‘Edwards told us no one besides his staff knew about i
t and he could trust his staff. We’ve also kept its existence confidential. Maybe the boss can add something to this. He’s spoken to Calvo.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Her connections to the minister make her significant in this. She told me about this same incident while I was there,’ Harrigan said. ‘She was explaining it away. Beck was a drunken bum who harassed her. She hired him over here because she needed someone, then fired him almost immediately because he was a drunk. He started making abusive phone calls and she got one of her security people to watch him for her. I don’t think she would have told me any of that unless she expected me to know it from another source.’

  ‘Why couldn’t she be being truthful?’ Parkin asked.

  ‘She’s not someone who tells you things unless it’s in her interests. In my opinion, the connections here are too close to ignore. Also, Marvin had his own copy of this dossier. Which means he would have told du Plessis about its existence. Did Calvo know about it because du Plessis was working for her and he told her this information was out there? Maybe she even got her own copy that way. That’s another line of possible communication we can’t ignore.’

  ‘Something else for you to prove, Commander,’ Parkin replied.

  ‘I think it’s something anyone involved in this job has to consider,’ Harrigan said.

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Why would you waste eighteen minutes talking to a drunken bum late one night in a car park?’ Frankie asked, spiking the tension. ‘If he harassed you, why would you go ahead and hire him again? Only if you had to.’

  ‘What happened after those pictures were taken?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘They kept a watching operation on Beck,’ Ralph said. ‘We get a series of weekly reports from their operative. Whoever this person was, they weren’t able to gain access to the research projects Beck was involved in. Access to the laboratories was tightly controlled and there was no public information available concerning the projects themselves. Instead the operative formed a personal connection to Beck, close enough to get a good view of his lifestyle. Whatever Beck was doing, it paid well. He liked to gamble; not always successfully, but he never seemed to have any trouble paying his debts.’

  ‘Just Beck?’ Harrigan asked. ‘There’s no indication this operative’s assignment extended to Elena Calvo?’

  ‘If they did, boss, it was extracurricular. There’s no information about it here.’

  ‘What happens then?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s a note on file that says the operative’s last report was removed because it had been requested by the under-secretary to the Ministry of Defence for use at a briefing. That report never made it back to the file. After that, there’s no more information from the operative. The reports stop.’

  ‘Is that the end of the information?’

  ‘No. As well the operative’s reports, the surveillance team’s reports are also in the dossier. Now according to them, Beck was still meeting du Plessis regularly. Their reports record that their operative was at the last two meetings these men had. Usually there are photographs of the meetings, but on this occasion those photographs have been removed.’

  ‘By who?’ Harrigan asked sharply.

  ‘By the agency. There’s a note to say they can be found on another file. After the final meeting, du Plessis left the country, flying to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That’s the last piece of information on file. The last page is stamped: Operation terminated: Archive. After that, there’s no indication it did anything but go back into the filing cabinet.’

  ‘What was the date of du Plessis’s departure?’

  ‘November four years ago,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Do we know what Beck was doing between then and now?’ Harrigan asked. ‘Do we know if he joined his mate over there?’

  ‘We do, and we can thank Edwards for that,’ Trevor said. ‘He fast-tracked the information out of the Department of Immigration. It hit our desks by courier yesterday morning. Otherwise, we’d still be scratching our bums for it six months from now. Beck left for Africa two weeks after du Plessis. He said he didn’t go to Kinshasa, he went to Nairobi.’

  ‘Do we know what either of them was doing over there?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘We’ve got no information on du Plessis. But according to the information immigration had from Beck himself, he went to Africa as part of a religious educational aid project.’

  Even the federal police contingent laughed.

  ‘Would I lie to people?’ Trevor said. ‘The project was based in Nairobi. It was called Christian Educational Initiatives, providing education at village level. Supposedly, Beck was their financial manager. Probably he spent most of his time sitting around playing pocket billiards.’

  ‘Does this charity really exist?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘Apparently. There was correspondence between its head office in the UK and the Department of Immigration. The High Commission sent people out to have a look at its Nairobi office. Obviously, anyone can hang out a shingle and ask a few mates to hang around some rented rooms for a day or two. But you can see the department being able to justify what it did. Beck spends a number of years supposedly as an administrator in a respectable scientific research facility, then goes back to a country he’s had a long association with to work in an aid program. If that’s all the information you’ve got, on paper it doesn’t look so implausible. He came here from Nairobi via Johannesburg a year ago. His visa was handled through the Australian High Commission in Kenya.’

  ‘Then why pay Edwards to get him into the country?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘The department did have enough information about Beck’s real past to make them think twice,’ Trevor said. ‘It’s a fraction of what he was involved in but it does make his application questionable. The way he was presented, with testimonials that he was a changed man, he was being whitewashed from the start. Someone really wanted him over here.’

  ‘Also, paying Edwards implicates him from the start,’ Parkin said. ‘It ties him in to whoever’s paying him. Call it a guarantee. Someone wanted to make sure he was onside.’

  ‘Is there anything to connect Beck to the Democratic Republic of the Congo?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘Nothing in the files,’ Trevor said.

  There would have been a means to make the connection if the tape that Harrigan had given du Plessis still existed. Like Marvin, Harrigan had covered Elena Calvo’s tracks for her. But there was still Grace’s information from Brinsmead if he could find some other facts to substantiate what she had told him.

  ‘Find out where Beck was really going when he left London four years ago,’ he said. ‘If you can, get hold of the manifest for his flight. I’d like to know who else was on that plane.’ Harrigan was tapping the table with his fingertips. ‘What do we know about World Food and Crop Providers, the organisation that was supposedly receiving seed stocks from this International Agricultural Research Consortium, so called?’

  ‘Frankie’s people have been looking at it. Frankie?’ Trevor said.

  ‘The contract gave us their contact details in Johannesburg. Lucky we recorded those details before it got stolen,’ she said. ‘They don’t have a website or an email address. We rang the contact number and it was disconnected. We contacted the local police and asked them to check out the offices for us. According to them, the address we gave them is just vacant rooms. Whatever this company was supposed to be, they’ve wiped themselves out of existence.’

  ‘You say Tooth said this du Plessis was his handler,’ Parkin said. ‘Is there any information how he got into the country?’

  ‘Not as yet,’ Trevor said. ‘Immigration are still checking him for us. He’ll be using false papers.’

  ‘Where does all this information lead us?’ Parkin went on. ‘I can’t see that you’ve actually analysed any of it yet.’

  There was a whiteboard beside the screen. Harrigan went over to it and began to write.

 
; ‘Possible scenario,’ he said. ‘A connection exists between Beck and Calvo at the north London facility where they both worked. Whatever there is between them, it doesn’t make her happy. Our secret service agency sends an undercover operative in to watch Beck and they discover this connection. What they made of it, we don’t know. Whatever Beck is up to, this operative goes with him to Africa. Who that operative was, what happened over there, all that information has been expunged from the file. Why? Maybe because it all went badly pear-shaped. Four years later, Calvo comes here, establishes the dream of her life. Beck turns up on the scene out here at the same time, doing something much more undercover. His arrival here is organised by the same people funding Elena Calvo. One way or the other, he goes to work for her. Question: did Calvo have no choice but to take him on?

  ‘Whatever the answer, everything bumps along the way it’s supposed to for a while. Then three people get shot up at Pittwater. What’s the immediate outcome of these murders? The International Agricultural Research Consortium was due to harvest whatever they were growing. That seed stock was supposed to be sent to the World Food and Crop Providers company for testing somewhere in Africa. None of that happens because all the principals of the IAR Consortium except one have been murdered, and the last man standing is so shit scared, he goes to ground. Next point: whoever the killers are, they splash a photograph of the murder scene all over the web. Jacquie, you told us the main point of that picture. A meal they couldn’t eat. What was the IAR Consortium growing? Food crops mainly. My judgement is, that scene was a comment on exactly what the IAR was growing and the killers threw in their own death figure, the Ice Cream Man, as a final touch. I think we were looking at genetically modified crops that don’t do what they’re supposed to do.’

  ‘As far as I know, all those crops were destroyed,’ Parkin said. ‘How do we prove this?’

  ‘Harold Morrissey was badly injured handling the tobacco. We have documented proof of that.’