Gail opened the packet and we examined its contents together. It turned out to contain a three-metre-long strip of heavy-duty elastoplast, more suited to patching up an accident with a kitchen knife than securing a microphone on to my sensitive skin.
Gail ordered me to strip, and tried out the microphone against my throat, just above my breast-bone, beneath and between my breasts, holding it in place and clicking her tongue until she found a position that satisfied her.
‘Hold it there,’ she said, while she peeled the wrapper from the length of adhesive.
‘Don’t move,’ she ordered me. ‘Stay still.’
‘Ow,’ I said. ‘Go easy.’
Gail quickly secured the wire with strips of elastoplast one beneath the other. The wire ran down to my waist and around to the small of my back.
‘Don’t fidget or scratch,’ she said between clenched teeth. ‘You’ll be able to move quite normally.’
Gail had a certain glow. I didn’t think it was the excitement of fixing me up with a hidden microphone. ‘Are you fucking anyone special at the moment?’ I asked her.
‘I wouldn’t say special.’ Gail raised an eyebrow.
‘We should go out, you know,’ I told her. ‘Get drunk together one night. For old times’ sake.’ We laughed. Gail went on working with her tongue out, obviously determined to use up the whole packet.
‘Seriously,’ I said. ‘I can borrow a truck. We can go to the tip together. Have you ever been to the tip? It’s one of Canberra’s more interesting weekend venues. They take newspapers. You’d be doing a community service.’
‘Sandra, if I didn’t know you better I’d say you were drunk.’
‘You know,’ I said, squirming, ‘sex and propaganda, it’s not a healthy combination. You should just give it up.’
‘Still, I said.’
Gail stood back and studied me with her hands on her hips, like a dressmaker pleased with a fitting. I half-expected her to raise my hem and begin pinning it.
‘What time did you say you’re meeting this Bambi person?’
‘Not meeting. Bambi works with me.’
‘Have you ever asked her to have lunch with you before? You don’t think she’ll smell a rat?’
‘Bambi is a rat.’
My head felt surprisingly clear, as though the simple physical act of subterfuge I was about to undertake had got rid of the confusion.
‘You’ll have to wear something high at the neck,’ Gail said, ‘but nothing that’ll show bumps like a T-shirt or skivvy.’
‘I’ve got a denim shirt with pockets. Where does the recorder go?’
‘Small of your back. What’ll you wear on the bottom half?’
‘Denim skirt?’
‘Well, make sure the shirt’s fluffed out above the waist band. I’ve covered you with so much tape that the mike’ll stay put even if half of it comes unstuck. Now this’s how you turn it on. This button. Can you reach it?’
Gail guided my hand to a button and I pressed it down, hearing a small click.
‘The light’s on, it should be recording. I’ll walk across the room and talk to you from there. You’ll need to know its range and try and stay within it. It’s not spectacularly powerful, but it should be fine for what you want.’
We experimented for the next few minutes. When Gail was more than three metres away, her voice was faint, but closer than that I could hear every word. I practised turning the tape on and off a few times.
‘You’ll have to find a loo on the way,’ Gail said, ‘and switch it on in there. If you do it too soon, the tape might run out.’
‘What about afterwards? Can you unhook me?’
‘I have to go back to work. If you can’t manage, you’ll have to leave it till tonight.’ She caught the look on my face. ‘Don’t get spooked now, Sandra. It’s only a microphone.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Better be off. You’ve still got to change. Don’t go jigging round. Just change your clothes.’
‘Gail?’ I said. ‘What were you doing talking to Felix Wenborn in the travel centre bistro?’
‘What travel centre? What bistro?’
‘On the ground floor of the Jolimont Centre. Below DIR.’
‘Haven’t been there for years. Didn’t even know they had a bistro.’
‘Someone saw you talking to Felix Wenborn. He’s head of IT and in charge of security.’
‘Well, they made a mistake,’ Gail said. ‘It wasn’t me.’
. . .
‘Where did you get that disk?’ I asked Bambi later that day, sitting in the bistro with an untouched salad roll in front of me. ‘The one you left in the first-aid room.’
Bambi giggled and hid behind her swatch of hair like an old-fashioned movie queen. ‘Are you all right, Sandra?’ she said. ‘You look uncomfortable.’
‘I’m fine. I saw you going into the first-aid room. You were carrying a computer disk, weren’t you? Did someone ask you to leave it in there?’
‘What first-aid room?’
My sticking plaster itched. I felt like Huck Finn, itching in eleven different places.
‘The one on the second floor,’ I said patiently. ‘I saw you going in there.’
Practising with Gail, I’d twisted one way then another, turned my back and walked away from her, to check whether her voice could still be heard. Now, opposite Bambi with only a bit of grubby table between us, every move I made seemed horribly exaggerated, as though I’d swallowed some gesture-enhancing pill. Even crossing my legs seemed so large and inappropriate a movement that it caused a wave of damp air to pass between them.
‘You thought the disk would be safe in there?’ I persisted. ‘You were planning to serve it up with the Panadol?’
Bambi looked hurt. She twisted her long hair round and round one finger. ‘No-one ever sees me,’ she whispered. ‘I have to do things to make people see me.’
‘What? What do you have to do?’
Bambi didn’t answer at first, then said with a pout, ‘I don’t like you, Sandra. You’re always looking down on me.’
I groaned under my breath, then said, ‘Rae Evans found a job for you, didn’t she? Now someone’s out to wreck Rae’s career. I’m going to find that person, but I need your help.’
When I was playing back the recording in Gail’s flat, I’d observed that I ummed and ahed a lot in the background, sometimes masking what she said. I tried not to do this now, keeping my lips shut while I waited for Bambi to reply, digging my thumbnail into the flesh of my index finger as a reminder.
‘Who told you Evans looked after me?’ Bambi whispered at last, looking up at me with the air of a puppy with a bindi in its paw.
‘But for Rae,’ I said, ‘you wouldn’t have a job.’
Bambi shook her head, but I couldn’t tell whether this was in agreement or denial. She clammed up after that and wouldn’t say a word. A few minutes later, she got up to go. I didn’t try and stop her. I felt disgusted with myself, hot, itchy and exhausted. I’d never make a real detective. When it came to the crunch, I couldn’t twist anybody’s arm.
I hadn’t said anything to Ivan about the microphone. I’d been too embarrassed, and now I was glad. I’d had a kind of crazy fantasy about playing him the tape with Bambi’s confession, sewing up the whole case single-handed.
On my way to the toilets on the ground floor, I ran into Ivan coming out of the lift, heaving his shoulders into an old raincoat.
I grabbed his arm to stop him galloping away, took a deep, painful breath and said, ‘Why wouldn’t Felix follow the proper tendering procedures? Why would Felix, of all people, bend the rules?’
Ivan pulled away from me and headed for the automatic doors.
Plastered up as I was, running after him was painful. ‘Who gets on the phone?’ I puffed. ‘Dashes off the email? Who chats to people, does the groundwork before a decision gets made? Does Felix do all that himself? Do you take a turn? What about Guy Harmer?’
‘Harmer likes talking on the phone,’ Iva
n grunted, pushing his way through the doors, making good his escape. ‘Specially if there’s a babe on the other end.’
He winked.
‘Bastard,’ I whispered under my breath.
My elastoplast was beginning to itch unbearably.
I looked across and saw Tony Trapani’s friend Ateeq at one of the bistro tables, talking to a stunningly beautiful young woman.
Ateeq was smiling at the woman and tapping an unlit cigarette against a saucer.
He lifted his head and saw me, then raised a long olive hand in greeting. I walked over to say hello.
The woman looked the way Gail Trembath would have liked to. Her auburn hair made Gail’s ginger curls drab and somehow childish. Her eyes were dark brown, her skin a perfect light honey.
Ateeq was wearing his black leather jacket. He roused himself and introduced me to Allison Edgeware, ‘Director of the fastest-growing software company in town.’
I smiled, shook Allison’s hand and said hello. ‘What’s your company called?’ I asked her.
‘Compic,’ Ateeq answered.
We engaged in small talk, a little about Professor Bailey and ANU’s computer courses. I didn’t mention my failed attempt to intercede for Tony, though from the glances Ateeq gave me I guessed he’d heard all about it.
Allison Edgeware seemed content to smile and look beautiful and make the odd casual remark. She was dressed carefully and conventionally in a cream silk shirt and soft brown waistcoat with matching pants. I couldn’t imagine what she would wear, or how she would look when she was at home and nobody was watching her. A classy suede coat hung on the back of her chair. Allison reached behind her and felt towards a pocket, then apparently changed her mind and turned to face me.
With another smile, she asked if I’d tried any of Compic’s software programs.
I said I’d seen their meat pie, but graphics weren’t my line.
Allison replied that that was probably because I’d never used a really good graphics package, never got a feel for what it could do, for what I could do with it.
I wasn’t going to debate the point. I smiled back, and said she could be right.
‘The competition for government contracts must be pretty fierce,’ I added.
‘It certainly is,’ Allison agreed. ‘But having a top-drawer product definitely helps.’
Ateeq started talking then, relieving me and Allison from our exchange of cliches. He entertained us with his plans to make his first million as soon as he’d put his dumb degree behind him.
Allison reached into her coat pocket for a second time, pulled out a packet of Players and lit one. Her lips narrowed into a rigid line as she pulled off the cellophane. At first I thought she was annoyed with something Ateeq had said. Then it occurred to me that she might be scared. For a moment, she looked very young indeed, younger even than Ateeq, because she lacked his veneer of confident disdain.
I told Allison I’d been pleased to meet her and said goodbye.
I made a mental note to double-check the owners of Akewa hi-fi. Too late, I realised I could have found a way to turn the tape back on and record my conversation with Ateeq and Allison. But what would have been the point of that?
I left them talking softly to each other, and made my third attempt to reach the Ladies, determined that this time nothing was going to stop me.
. . .
For the rest of that day, Bambi played the injured party to perfection, looking up at me sorrowfully from under black pencilled eyebrows, whenever I got up from my computer or spoke to anybody on the phone.
She wrapped her cloak tightly around herself like a cocoon, fondled her hair and glowered at me. The kohl around her eyes had run, and she’d smudged it further with a tissue.
Was all this a cover for another, cleverer, much less innocent bit of play-acting? And if this was true, had she written the part herself, or had someone else prepared it for her? Her wide brown eyes with their injured expression, her habit of bumping into things, as though they were constantly moving around her and she was never sure of their place in the room—if these were part of some kind of double bluff, a play within a play, then she was a much better actress than I would ever be. And, considering the number of bruises she must take home, a much more dedicated one. I’d been close enough when she acquired some of them to be sure that, if nothing else, those bruises were the real McCoy.
That night, after I’d spent half-an-hour rubbing cream into my raw and burning skin, I felt desperate to talk to Derek, to have Derek beside me in our double bed, to hear his clear mind with its no-nonsense edges impose an order, pick out what was important from the mass of information and misinformation I was carrying around with me.
But Derek wasn’t there, and I couldn’t say what I needed to on an international telephone call. I could write a letter, but I knew how crazy it would look to him.
I rang Tony Trapani to ask him if he’d heard of Compic. I began by chewing him out for not telling me the truth about Bailey and his Internet account.
‘I guess what we did was pretty stupid, eh?’ Tony said in his shy way.
When I asked about Allison Edgeware, Tony laughed nervously and said, ‘Like, everybody knows who she is.’
I asked him if he’d do something for me, find out as much as he could about Allison and Compic. He hesitated for a second, then agreed.
In the few minutes before I fell asleep, I’d taken to going over what I’d learnt that day, which was usually not much. I mulled over Ateeq and Allison, whether they were up to something, and if so, what.
Unable to fall asleep, I got out of bed and phoned Gail Trembath, who kept late hours. I told her about my failure to get Bambi to confess. We laughed, and the episode didn’t seem so humiliating. I apologised for accusing her of meeting Felix Wenborn in the travel centre. I said I thought the woman who’d been seen with Felix might be Allison Edgeware, who was heading up Compic. I told Gail what Rae had said about the contract Compic had successfully tendered for, and the complaint, and that I was sure there was a story there if the day ever came when she could print it.
. . .
The phone rang at 7.30 in the morning. Peter got to it first. The joy in his face and voice stopped me in my tracks. Finally, I forced him to hand over the phone.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Derek demanded. ‘What’s Peter going to do on his own all day while I’m at work? Why did you let him send that letter? How dare you set me up like that?’
‘What letter?’ I asked, gulping in great mouthfuls of cold air.
I shooed Peter away. Eventually we got it sorted out, at least to the point where Derek stopped saying it was out of the question. Peter might be able to come for the school holidays. He’d look into taking a couple of weeks’ leave, but he couldn’t promise, and I’d better not spring anything like this on him again.
I hung up the phone and turned around to Peter.
‘I know how much you want to see your father,’ I said. ‘But don’t you ever, ever go behind my back like that again.’
. . .
Over the next few days, Tony left me cryptic emails about Compic and Allison Edgeware. I looked forward to getting to work and finding them. I puzzled over them while Ivan leant over my shoulder, clicking his tongue with mingled curiosity and exasperation.
Tony’s messages contained his own personal spellings and abbreviations. According to him, Allison was C/l. I figured out that this was short for cool. But what was Allison’s background? Where had she come from? I emailed Tony back. She’d been in Canberra a relatively short time, Tony thought, a year or two at most. Tony gave me the impression that Allison was one of those women men talk about a lot, whose name is always in the air, but that no-one knew her as well as they would like.
She had a couple of programmers working for her, but Tony didn’t know anything about them. I fired off a few more questions. Did Compic have branches in other cities? A board of directors?
Had Allison and
Felix met to talk about the tender, I wondered, if it had been Allison that Di Trapani had seen with Felix in the travel centre bistro? Who’d complained about the tender going to Compic? And why had Rae Evans been asked to deal with the complaint? Had Rae done something, or failed to do something, that made Wilcox or Felix, or both of them together, confident of manipulating her decision? Had she refused to be manipulated? Was this what she and Felix had been arguing about? Or had Wilcox picked her because he knew she and Felix were enemies? And, if so, why?
I realised I had to get hold of the letter of complaint, find out who’d written it, and, if possible, arrange to see them.
What had we actually bought from Compic? It wasn’t as though there were boxes of their software sitting in the corridors. It depressed me that it had taken me so long to ask myself these elementary questions.
Allison. Angela. Angela Carlishaw. The press reports had named Angela Carlishaw as director of Access Computing, and when reporters had wanted to question her, she couldn’t be found.
Allison and Angela were names that sounded the same to me, reminded me of china dolls. Was the similarity coincidental? For a crazy moment, I wondered if they were the same person. Maybe the journalist who’d queried Angela Carlishaw’s existence was spot on. But Allison was real enough. For a while, I fancied I saw her around every corner, her beauty multiplied on reflecting surfaces, from the glass-fronted airline companies in Northbourne Avenue to the small pool and fountain in Glebe Park.
Often, in these imagined reflections of mine, Allison was laughing at me. Yet I didn’t mind. I liked my pictures of her; I was attracted by them, and I liked them, and I wished to go on liking them. Reflections could be skewed, off true, yet more revealing than a clear and proper likeness.
Of course, it was always possible that there’d been no redhead in the travel centre, that Di Trapani had been lying through her teeth.
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
We were told to keep calm. No-one was to panic, but this was not a drill. Real fire trucks were at that moment beating through the traffic in Northbourne Avenue. Real firemen were hauling their extension ladders to the white face of the Jolimont Centre.
The Trojan Dog Page 14
