‘No-one’ll go against Bailey. They’re all like really scared of him.’
‘Who pays your phone bills?’
‘Teeq’s parents own Akewa Hi-Fi,’ Tony said, watching his friend finish off the coffee.
‘So your parents pay your phone bills?’ I asked Ateeq, determined to get an answer from him somehow.
Ateeq nodded with a bored expression.
‘Did you keep them, the bills?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then why don’t you present Professor Bailey with them? Explain that money’s no problem. You don’t need to use his account.’
‘He ripped the bills up. Said they were a fake.’ Tony spoke so softly he was almost whispering, then ran his tongue around his teeth.
‘Well—’ I was beginning to wish I’d never set eyes on either of them, ‘if money’s no problem, why not hire a lawyer and take the good professor to the cleaners?’
. . .
I was irritated that I’d been roped into the fancy-dress party. Peter had insisted. He’d come home from school yabbering about it; and now I had an extra motive. The more I thought about it, the more embarrassed I felt. I could hardly even remember what Professor Bailey looked like.
It was Ivan, of course it was Ivan, who gave us the idea for our costumes. When I told him about the party and said I didn’t think I could get out of it, Ivan smiled as though just such an opportunity was bound to have come up. He had it all worked out.
‘We shall be three wise guys from Peter and the Wolf. Peter as himself, naturally, myself as Ivan the Cat, and you, my dear Sandy as—the hunter!’
I hadn’t said anything about Ivan coming to the party with us. I blushed and laughed, while he yanked an arm around my shoulders.
Half-protesting, I said, ‘It’s just an idea the social committee’s dreamed up. Are you sure you can be bothered?’
‘Only problem’s finding a cat skin,’ Ivan growled. ‘Have to go bush and skin me a feral cat!’
‘Yuk!’ Peter cried. ‘Can I come?’
Peter’s costume was easy. He could wear his own gumboots with tracksuit pants and a red cloth cap that Ivan produced from his collection, and carry a coil of rope and a popgun.
Ivan seemed to have sources from which he could produce practically anything at short notice. I hadn’t seen a popgun like it since I was a kid. It was the traditional tin rifle with a cork on a string. The cork and the string were both new, but the gun itself looked old.
Peter had his own plans. He intended going to the party as Croc Dundee, and got as far as borrowing a neighbour’s scout hat and stockwhip.
He writhed around the living room making huge snapping movements with his jaws, then, switching roles in the flash of an eye, cracked his stockwhip and chased an imaginary crocodile across the tropical river of our carpet, yelling like a demon.
I was all for letting Peter do what he wanted. What did it matter? It was just a dumb old school fund-raiser. But Ivan was determined that we should do this his way. Peter and the Wolf it was going to be, and with characteristic obstinacy he turned Peter around, and got him to agree.
I spent an hour riffling through costumes in a theatre supply and hire place, looking for something to wear, while Peter spent a fortune in the video arcade next door.
Through the thin dividing wall, I could hear the guns and the high nasal whirr of fighter planes. When Peter appeared in the doorway asking for more money, I still hadn’t made up my mind. In the end he helped me choose, and I paid the sales assistant, who sat on a high stool in a corner with her knitting and her radio, and glared at me like the public lavatory attendants used to when Peter was a toddler. She bunged my costume into a plastic bag and warned me against tearing or staining it.
‘Do you want the gun?’
‘Pardon?’
‘There’s a gun that goes with the costume, madam. Do you wish to take it as well?’
‘Go on, Mum!’ cried Peter.
‘Well—OK,’ I said. ‘I guess. If it’s no extra.’
Walking into the street after the tense stuffiness of the shop was like entering a giant refrigerator, a knife blade slicing underneath my sinuses, filling spaces I did not know I had with freezing air.
‘Mum?’ said Peter. ‘Can we have pizza for dinner?’
‘No.’
‘Hey Mum, what should a telecom van have on its roof? A giant Jacko’s Pizza!’
. . .
Ivan had a clarinet, and surprisingly, or not surprisingly, he could play a few notes on it. On the night of the party, Ivan entered our hosts’ living room to a reedy rendition of Prokofiev’s triumph, Peter marching in step beside him, alternately speechless with self-importance and overcome with giggles.
We paused for effect in the doorway, or rather Ivan did. I got stuck behind him. Peter ducked under our elbows with a cry of ‘Yo, Ian!’
Within fifteen minutes, Peter had shed the lot, gun and rope, hat and boots, borrowed a samurai sword and was alternately stuffing his mouth with chips and chopping great slices out of his classmates.
‘Bambi should be here,’ I murmured. ‘With her flair for dressing up.’
Ivan was cross because no-one took much notice of us. I watched from a corner of the living room as new arrivals entered the spotlight, expecting the audience in front of them to applaud in some way; to laugh at the humour of their costumes, or to clap. Disappointment was cold on their faces when they saw more imaginative or funnier characters than they had dreamed up; or, their moment of entry having come and gone, they stood looking deflated as laughter and clapping greeted the next arrival, rival in their eyes.
I felt embarrassed for Ivan and annoyed with him, for competing with these people and for showing it.
I recognised a couple of Lyneham parents under their masks and make-up, but my lack of participation in school functions was obvious to me and, I was afraid, to everybody else. I was one of those mothers who never did tuckshop or any other kind of school duty, and here I was attempting to make up for it. I’d forked out thirty bucks at the door, because I suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of Ivan paying for himself.
A large man with a bottle of claret approached Ivan demanding loudly, ‘Cheshire or Garfield?’
Ivan shoved his cat’s head off his face with the back of his hand and ignored the offered wine, replying rudely, ‘Nothing so boring, mate.’
He spotted a pride of lions in a corner by the fireplace, handling a champagne bottle with great care. The big cats, some with manes, greeted him with raised paws.
A little later I heard him declaiming to a bald man, ‘VR systems eat MIPs for breakfast.’ The man looked puzzled, but nodded his head with the shiny regularity of a metronome.
Another man was vaguely familiar to me behind a Roman centurion’s helmet that hid most of his face. He held out his hand to shake mine, tipping his visor back with his other hand. With a start of surprise, I recognised Lionel Bailey.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You’re just the person I wanted to see.’ Plunging on, I told him I’d met Tony Trapani, and that he seemed a likeable sort of kid, and I wondered what the trouble was.
‘I know that girl,’ Bailey said with a scowl, his visor slipping back over his eyes. ‘Trapani’s sister. Smart kid. They both are. Pity.’ He shook his head, his helmet rattling alarmingly.
I was nervous and unsure of my ground. I hadn’t bargained on having to talk to Bailey without being able to see his face. I took a deep breath and said, ‘I’m sure it can be sorted out.’
Bailey hissed through his visor, ‘There is a ring. A student racket. Don’t know if Trapani’s at the centre of it, but he’s definitely involved.’
‘What exactly did they do?’
‘Believe me, there’s no doubt of it! I’m not responsible for the messes these kids get themselves into, and I thank God for that!’
‘But what’s Tony done?’ I persisted.
‘Computer security’s non-existent on campus!’ Bailey shouted. I rea
lised too late that he was drunk. ‘Police don’t want to know! Even if they did, they haven’t got the skills or the resources! Trapani’s a miserable little fish who happened to get himself sucked in!’
I was conscious of people staring at us, my grasp on the situation slipping right away.
‘I’ll tell you what I have got!’ Bailey was yelling. ‘I’ve got over four hundred students, most of whom have the sense to stay out of trouble, thank Christ! This time I’ve caught the ringleaders, and I’m giving them the mother of all frights!’
He swung around, performing a complicated manoeuvre with his spear, and called out, ‘Ivan Dimitrich! Silicon jockey of the old school! How are you, you mangy feline!’
Ivan hadn’t been anywhere near me when I’d started talking to Bailey, but when I turned round he was just behind us, far too close for Bailey to need to shout.
Startled, I said, ‘I didn’t realise you two knew each other.’
Peter came running up, wanting to know where the toilet was.
Ivan offered to take him, while Bailey clasped my hand and pulled me closer. He pushed his helmet back again and shoved his red face right up next to mine, shouting, ‘Caught the little turds red-handed!’
‘Excuse me?’ I moved back, wrenching my hand from his grip.
‘Goners! Hoist by their own petards!’
I resisted the impulse to take out my handkerchief and wipe my face.
Bailey thumped his spear on the floor. I noticed that it was made out of an old broom handle. He probably loved the chance to dress up and bang things on the floor.
‘Found them logged on in my name! Hoist by their sweet petards, I’m telling you!’
Defeated, I backed away, saying, ‘I think I’d better check up on my son.’
I found Ivan in the kitchen. A woman in a long white dress had pushed him up against the fridge and was lecturing him in a hissing voice.
‘I hate computers. Horrible soulless things!’
‘Ivan,’ I said, pulling him by the arm.
‘Just a minute, Sandy. Your washing machine and your stove, do you hate them too?’ Ivan asked the woman in a voice that was dangerously polite. ‘Your fridge?’ He reached behind him and calmly patted the one that was holding him up, or preventing his escape.
A small girl in a fairy costume asked if I could pour her a glass of water.
‘That’s different,’ I heard the woman in white say. ‘People glorify computers.’
When I turned around again, Ivan had his cat skin pushed right to the back of his head. ‘I’ll tell you one thing computers are better at than humans,’ he said, his politeness turning acid. ‘It’s a small thing, but it’s important. Once you tell a computer something, it never forgets.’
With a look of disgust, the woman turned her back on him, emptying the remains of a bottle of Jim Beam into her wine glass.
‘Ivan. Did you know Tony Trapani and his friends are up before a university tribunal?’
Beneath a mass of cat hair and his own, Ivan’s eyes were blank. I moved him out of the kitchen to a corridor where we were alone except for a man in a crisp new trench coat, felt hat and dark glasses, waiting with apparent nonchalance outside the bathroom door.
‘Go back in there and talk to Bailey,’ I said. ‘Man to man. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten how. How could you let me front up to him like that without telling me you knew him?’
‘I can explain that.’
I pushed Ivan in the middle of the back. ‘Just go!’
Ivan’s cat’s head gave a lurch. I watched him walk up to Bailey and begin talking to him. Bailey did a bit more spear thumping then turned his back on Ivan, who was immediately waylaid by a tipsy lion.
The party was spoilt for me. I went into the bedroom to get my coat. As I bent to pick it up from underneath the pile, there was a loud rip and a flash of cold air across my backside. I clasped my hands there and felt torn taffeta, my underwear gaping through it.
I stood in the doorway and looked around for Peter. He was talking excitedly in a circle of his friends. They were getting ready to announce the prizes. I couldn’t see Bailey anywhere. Maybe he’d passed out, or maybe the woman in the white dress had got him. Ivan was on his own behind a group of children. I could edge my way towards him. Probably no-one would notice the rip in my pants. Most of the kids were squashed together on the floor, their costumes blending together too, Cinderella into Batman, a clutch of Ninja Turtles.
I caught Ivan’s attention and waved him over to me.
In the hallway, Peter giggled at the sight of me and cried, ‘Mum! Y’ll havta mend it!’
. . .
As a reward for not complaining about missing out on supper, I gave Peter four chocolate biscuits as soon as we got home. He shoved them into his mouth two at a time while I helped him with his boots.
When Peter was finally in bed, I asked Ivan what he’d managed to get out of Bailey.
‘It’s no big deal,’ Ivan said.
‘Well, he obviously wants to expel them, so it is for them. And he was talking about some sort of student racket. What did he tell you about that?’
‘The guy was off his face.’
‘How well do you know him?’
‘Well enough to keep my distance.’
Having my costume rip had made me feel dirty. I wanted to have a shower and put on clean pyjamas. I wanted Ivan to go home, but more than that I wanted him to tell me why he’d let me walk into a trap.
‘I keep thinking of Peter needing help and not knowing how to ask for it,’ I said.
‘You can’t be everybody’s fairy godmother. And Tony asked his sister.’
Ivan’s cat skin was draped over the back of the sofa. Away from the party lights it looked mangy and moth-eaten. Actually, it had looked pretty mangy at the party too. Its tabby greys and browns were dull, and the fur had thinned in spots to nothing but dry skin. Once Ivan had shed it, along with his coat and boots, he paid no attention to it.
‘Bailey should’ve just locked Tony and his mates out,’ Ivan said. ‘They’re kids for Christ’s sake! Instead of which he dances round like Nellie Melba with ants in her knickers. He was like that when I worked for him.’
‘You used to work for him?’
Ivan nodded and said he’d worked in Bailey’s department the first year he’d come back to Canberra. They’d disliked each other intensely from day one, and Bailey had had Ivan replaced as soon as he could.
‘You should have told me all of this before.’
‘I know. It was dumb. I’m sorry.’
I accepted Ivan’s apology, but I felt uneasy.
Stories were somehow skewed, off-centre, in the way Ivan told them, passed them on. And the stories he became part of had a habit of turning on their sides. After that party, the original version of Peter and the Wolf, the one I’d known as a child, came back to surprise me, a small nervous hiatus between one heartbeat and the next. It reminded me how far the three of us, Ivan, Peter and myself, had come and what, on the night of the party, marked a turning point.
Stealing Passwords
Felix Wenborn summoned me to his office first thing Monday morning.
When I knocked and walked in, he looked up at me and barked, ‘Why wasn’t I informed that you were working this weekend?’
I sat down. I was beginning to get used to Felix.
‘Someone’s been using my computer?’ I tried for a light tone.
‘And eaten it all up. Ha ha,’ said Felix. ‘Very funny.’
Someone had logged on to my computer on Saturday night, he told me, using my password. The log-in was there, as clear as a fingerprint to a police detective.
‘It wasn’t me,’ I said. ‘Someone must have pinched my password. I haven’t got a modem at home. I’ve got no way of dialling in. As a matter of fact I’ve only recently bought a home computer.’
Felix’s face shrank and tightened in on itself. His golden curls became a helmet, his anger another skin pressing on my own.<
br />
‘What’s this?’ I pointed to two sets of numbers, separated by a colon, in the top right-hand corner of the monitor.
‘The date.’
‘And this?’ I pointed again, hoping he wouldn’t notice that my finger was shaking.
‘Time of log-in.’ Felix’s eyes had the fixed look of a dog on a scent.
‘21:38,’ I read. I turned to face Felix, breathing deeply with relief. ‘Our hacker’s finally outsmarted himself. I was kicking up my heels at a fancy-dress party on Saturday night and I’ve got about a hundred witnesses to prove it.’
I’d only been using my current password for three weeks. Felix obviously thought I was sloppy, but I hadn’t written it down, and no-one else knew it.
Why would anyone bother with my password? I asked myself once I’d got away from Felix’s office. What was there on my computer that could possibly be of interest to a hacker? Lists of interviews about home-based work? But wait. My records of payments to interviewers—what if they’d been tampered with?
Glad for once that I kept a paper copy of every single thing, I unlocked my filing cabinet and took out my printed records. I opened the right computer file, found the list and compared it with them. After about ten minutes, I came across a difference.
I could scarcely believe it when I saw it. I felt as though I’d gone to sleep and woken up a bad actress in a worse movie. There was a new address and record of payment on the computer file. It wasn’t on my hard copy. I read it half-a-dozen times before convincing myself that it was really there. I kept staring at the screen, bug-eyed, expecting it to disappear.
That morning I’d planned to transfer the file to Admin. The procedure was that they sent a disk to Finance, who then authorised and paid the cheques.
I went back to Felix and explained to him what I thought had happened. Felix didn’t believe me, and I despaired of ever getting through to him. But at last, after going over and over the same few facts I was certain of, he seemed to come around. It was a Melbourne address. We checked the street name. It did not exist.
I was leaving Felix’s office when he called me back. ‘Sandra?’ he said in a different voice, ‘I think I’m getting somewhere and then—’
The Trojan Dog Page 11
