The Ambulance Chaser

by Richard Beasley

  ‘The insured insisted he had express instructions for every transaction,’ Smart told me.

  ‘Oral instructions?’

  ‘Yes, largely.’

  ‘I bet Equity Challenge is based in Sydney.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Smart said. ‘Do you know it?’

  Nah, lucky guess. I could see young David from Equity Challenge, after the shit hit the fan, standing calmly by the harbour in his suit and tie, leaning on his Porsche, gesturing wanly at the smouldering ruins of the Fadwells’ retirement fund, explaining casually that he had his client’s express instructions for each and every unfortunate placement of shares. And he had, after all, made a lot of other people money. Including himself.

  ‘The insured had diary notes or memos for each transaction – almost all of them, anyway,’ Smart said.

  ‘Contemporaneous?’

  ‘So he said. To be honest, we didn’t think he’d make a great witness. We sent you an advice saying we were worried about it. Very worried, if you know what I mean.’

  I did. This was lawyer code for saying that while the insured was a whole-hearted fabricator who would willingly perjure himself, it was unlikely that he would do so convincingly. Not a great witness. As distinct from those perjuring fabricators who are convincing. Although most of them are in parliament.

  Things got worse for Terry Fadwell after his money leapt into the magic vortex of capitalism’s redistribution zone and ended up as liquidator’s remuneration. His wife was diagnosed with an inoperable cancer in the middle of the litigation. ‘They say stress can bring it on,’ Smart said. ‘All pretty tragic. We defended the claim, naturally. I mean, basically it came down to credit issues. Either Fadwell was telling the truth, or the insured was. Then I got the phone call from his lawyer. Right in the middle of discovery.’

  Fadwell gassed himself in his car. He drank himself into a near stupor, hooked a hose up in his garage, and away he went. ‘Terrible business,’ Smart said, ‘but our analysis is that, despite our earlier misgivings about him, it probably supports the insured’s version of events.’

  ‘Based on?’

  ‘Well . . . the suicide.’

  A man loses a fortune, his wife is about to die, and he’s engaged in protracted and bitterly fought litigation where he faces a massive exposure to legal fees. Naturally, the only conclusion anyone could come to about his suicide was that David from Equity Challenge was entirely honest and the plaintiff, the deceased, was not. I let it go.

  ‘What happened to the claim?’

  ‘Well, like I said, it was a credit issue. It was going to be his word against our blokes. Once Fadwell was gone – and his wife died not long after – the estate had no witnesses. Commonsense was more on our side, anyway. We settled for legal fees plus nuisance value. A pretty good result, given the potential exposure.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘The plaintiff had an accountant’s report setting out his damages at about four point seven,’ he said. ‘Add costs and interest to that and you’re looking at nearly six mil.’

  The plaintiff had topped himself, and his wife had died of a terminal illness. Yep, pretty good result, you can’t argue with that.

  As soon as I put down the phone I scribbled some notes on my pad. Dobson: 5–7 mil. Broun: 10–12 mil. Fadwell: 5–6 mil. The unexpected demise of these claimants had saved South Pacific somewhere between twenty and twenty-five million over the last twelve to eighteen months, less the relatively small amounts it had taken to ultimately settle each case. Dead plaintiffs are good for business.

  The companies that own and run the world usually publish their financial results on their websites. This beneficial act of corporate glasnost means that anyone with access to the net can download the financial figures of the world’s powerhouses. Hook up a PC to a cable in an Asian sweatshop and the workers can proudly see exactly how much money they’re making for any number of western icons. Just like, from the relative luxury of my dog kennel at South Pacific, I could find my way through the company’s website to the annual results.

  Before I got to the financials, the first thing that struck me was how many different lines of insurance it was offering. It’s ‘core’ lines of business covered the gamut of general insurance such as home and contents and motor vehicle, through to the riskier areas such as liability, aviation, professional indemnity and directors’ and officers’ cover. South Pacific may have started as a little bird in a little nest but it now had its mouth wide open, and was squawking for business.

  The Statement of Operating Profit told me that South Pacific received $602 million in insurance premium income in the last financial year, up $125 million on the year before and nearly three times what it was when the company floated just over five years before. That seemed like a lot for a new player in the market. Then again, I wouldn’t know the insurance market or a balance sheet from my bankrupt elbow. Investment income was a modest $49 million, and after subtracting claims paid out and operating expenses, the grand profit of the insurance business was $102 million. Shareholders were getting a dividend of 28 cents per share.

  Now, $100 million is a lot of money, I suppose, but if you added the potential payouts to the Dobsons and the Fadwells and Simon Broun to claims expenses, suddenly the profit would be down by about 25 percent, and the dividend with it. Any other claims like that, and profits and dividends are even less attractive to institutional investors. One thing I did know was that if you failed to attract them, the arse would fall out of your share price pretty quickly. Making profits, getting bigger, paying dividends is the name of the game, and $102 million in profit is a lot better than $77 million, or even less.

  Profiles of the Board Members and the Executives were also on the website. An identity parade of the usual suspects. Some professional board members who were directors of other large companies, your standard big firm lawyer, your standard big firm accountant and your standard actuary. Some high profile dill to make everyone feel good. And four retired politicians, two from the New South Wales Labor Party and two from the Liberals. In other words, the conservative side of politics on the board led the left 4:0.

  I read their corporate CVs with interest. Somehow the ex-politicians had forgotten to declare branch stacking, the dismantling of the separation of powers and the legislative removal of human rights on their list of achievements. Still, they looked content enough in their photos. Nothing like a director’s remuneration supplementing that indexed parliamentary pension for life to put a smirk on your face, I guess.

  I wanted more information than the website could give me. I wanted to know exactly who the big shareholders were. I knew just the woman to help me. I phoned Gabrielle. She was buoyant when I called her, but not because I’d rung. The RSLC had just won a test case for a client in the Industrial Relations Commission.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink? To celebrate?’

  ‘We had a drink last night.’

  ‘I need your help,’ I said. ‘I want you to get me a Historical Corporate Affairs Search on South Pacific Group Insurance Ltd.’

  ‘Isn’t that where you work?’

  ‘I’ll pay whatever fees are involved. And I need you to check the Share Register and find out who the bigger shareholders are.’

  There were a few moments of silence on the other end of the line. ‘What am I doing this for?’ she finally said.

  ‘You don’t have to open a file yet,’ I said. ‘I need your help and I can’t do it from here.’

  ‘Okay, but why am I doing it?’

  Why? Gabrielle Shepherd’s sexual preference was for women. Solvent women, as distinct from bankrupt men. Fact. One that was going to require significant massaging if I was going to get anywhere. I resolved not to make a fool of myself. I was equally resolute, however, that I would not give up all hope. Plaintiff lawyers never do. Until the film starts rolling, anyway. Besides, if the Austrian entrant for the 1970 Mr Olympia contest can grope his way to Govenor of California via what remains of Camelot,
nothing is impossible.

  ‘Can we discuss it tonight? I’ll buy you dinner.’ Mr Olympia 1970 is the Govenor of California. Mr Olympia 1970 is the Governor of California. Mr . . .

  Gabrielle said yes, although she sounded either wary or reluctant, or perhaps both. ‘By the way,’ she said after I told her I’d call her back with a place and time, ‘there’s a paper bag here for you. Or, at least, for a client.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mr Fan . . . Fanuap . . .’

  ‘Toffee?’

  ‘Twenty grand cash in a bag. We had to count it and give the guy a receipt but he insisted we not keep a record ourselves. I take it we’re not involved in anything illegal. Are we? What exactly is going on with this file?’

  I was about to make a call that would leave two Samoan illegals very, very happy. See, I told myself, nothing is impossible.

  Twelve

  It was the middle of Friday peak hour when I left South Pacific, the noise and traffic intense. The train I caught from Central jerked away from the station, rolling north towards the water. It was an unseasonably hot day for May, and I felt a trickle of sweat run down my back. I got off the train at Town Hall station to transfer to the Bondi Junction line to go to Kings Cross. The restaurant–bar I’d suggested to Gabrielle seemed a perfect choice. Sufficient cachet for my purposes, and I could almost afford it if I could resist the temptation to drink myself under the table and hold Gabrielle to three or four.

  I walked out of the station into Darlinghurst Road, heading towards Macleay Street past the sardine-tin squeeze of souvenir shops, ice-cream parlours, strip clubs, neon lights, girls and fast-food factories. The fresh air was a relief from the body warmth of the train, and I felt the sudden wet coolness of my shirt plastered to my back, and single trails of sweat ran quickly down the sides of my face. Just the look I was after to greet Gabrielle with.

  She was already there when I arrived, seated coolly on an ottoman in the small bar area. The place was so tiny it could have been my lounge room. Except for the snakeskin padded walls and mirror-top tables. They’ll have to wait for my financial renaissance. And then some.

  She looked tanned and fresh, her sunglasses up above her forehead, mouth and eyes smiling at me as I walked in. I stumbled over to her and said hello quickly, before rushing to the bathroom to compose myself. I stared at the figure in the mirror. I looked clammy. I was broke. My CV contained convictions for what amounted to corporate crime. I was the wrong sex. What the hell was I doing?

  I went to the bar and ordered two martinis. Martinis, for Christ’s sake. There hadn’t been an answer to what the hell was I doing?, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. I like the word ‘martini’. It conjures up something elegant, something sophisticated, something cultured and adult. I paid for them. The word no longer had quite the same zing to it.

  I tried to relax when I sat down. I told her about Edward’s exhibition, his paintings. We had a laugh or two and I had a drink or three. Two more martinis and half a bottle of white before we ordered food, to be precise. I couldn’t stop myself. Would I call the drinking a nervous habit, or addiction? I don’t know. I just felt like I needed it. To get through the night. To talk to a woman. Especially a lesbian I fancied. If you lose all your confidence, if you lose almost everything, you find something to fill the hole. Alcohol can step into the breach for you. Such a versatile drug. Mixed with Zoloft, in the right dosage, it’s even better. Something of the old self can be reawakened, transformed, like being kissed by a princess.

  Gabrielle, moving at the more leisurely rate of one sip to my one glass by the time the entrees arrived, took us to the reason for our meeting. ‘Here it is,’ she said, handing me some papers.

  ‘The search?’

  She nodded. ‘What are you up to?’

  I told her about Simon Broun. All the details down to the dollars. Then about Fadwell, and the Dobsons. Finally I mentioned the profits for the last financial year and the six months to December.

  ‘Your point?’

  Well, I didn’t really have a point. I had an idea, a theory, a crazy perhaps that kept yapping at me. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it certainly doesn’t hurt the company – a new but now medium-sized player probably desperate to grow – to increase its profits. Let me explain . . .’

  I paused to pour myself another glass but Gabrielle cut me off. ‘You think the bastards that you work for have killed these people?’

  Usually when I imply during dinner small talk that a business organisation is murdering people for financial gain, I expect some degree of scepticism. I looked into those hazel eyes to see if she was serious. ‘You really think it’s poss –’

  ‘You don’t? Of course I do,’ she said instantly. ‘They’re a large capitalist corporation. Their whole reason for being is to re-engineer social values. An insurance company. A bank. A computer company, a clothing manufacturer, a fast-food chain, an energy company, an oil company, a telco, a media organisation. It doesn’t matter. They care about two things. Shareholder value, and their ongoing coup d’état over democracy. It’s only about profit and power. Killing people would be nothing to them. It’s no different . . .’

  Bloody hell. I was supposed to be in charge of recherche in this conversation. It was my specialty. She was making Naomi Klein look like Margaret Thatcher. I held up my hand for her to stop. This was way too quick. I wanted to take her step-by-step through my workings. I wanted to explain to her what I knew about the industry. That South Pacific was a new, aggressive player in the insurance market. That it needed to establish a brand, grab more and more market share and premium income to survive. At some point in my explanation I was going to start chasing my tail, I was going to get my order wrong, I was going to sound like a dithering idiot, but something fishy had happened to Simon Broun and the others. And I felt I had a duty . . . some kind of obligation as a . . . as a what? ‘Look, it’s something I’ve been thinking about . . . I mean, I’m curious . . . but I’m a long way short of proof.’

  ‘Really?’

  I took a long sip of wine, sat back in my chair and examined Gabrielle Shepherd. Just a cheeky hint of grin on her face. Taking the piss again. ‘You’re winding me up, Gabrielle, right?’

  She smiled and tilted her head slightly. Then she laughed. ‘Of course I’m winding you up, Chris,’ she said, ‘but I’m partly serious too. You don’t need to say anything to convince me that these people are bastards. All corporate goliaths are evil to the core. Have the police investigated any of these deaths? Not that they wouldn’t have been paid off if they had. And call me Gabby.’

  Call me Gabby. Why, sure, I can do that. Awake. Asleep. Gabby, Gabby, Gabby. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I suppose so. I guess to them it’s just a hit and run, a suicide and a boating accident.’

  ‘All connected to South Pacific.’

  I shrugged. ‘Yes, but even if the cops are aware of that connection, it’s still just a car accident and a rogue wave in Sydney and a suicide in Melbourne. I mean, it’s not exactly grounds for . . .’

  ‘So, what do you think? Statistical blip?’

  ‘A blip?’

  ‘A blip,’ she said. ‘A series of coincidences. Are these things even that unlikely? How often do plaintiffs die? I guess it must happen sometimes.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I paused. I was sure of only one thing. ‘I think you don’t need too many dead plaintiffs in cases like these to greatly improve your profits. That’s what I think.’

  ‘Okay. So that’s step one. Now, what would or wouldn’t they do to increase their profits?’

  How the fuck would I know? Then again . . . ‘What would they do? This particular company? To get bigger? Improve profit?’

  ‘Would they kill people to reduce claims?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘That’s what you’re asking yourself, isn’t it?’ The answer was surely that they wouldn’t do that. I must have been completely crazy. Permanently drunk. Still, it would have been a fie
ndish plan. And murdering injured plaintiffs is a whole new approach to rehabilitation. ‘Want to know what I think?’ she said.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I think that anyone who underestimates corruption in this city, or in the business world, is crazy,’ she said. ‘And when I say that I’m not winding you up, and I’m not being cynical. Just accurate. Every centre of capital you can name – here, in Asia, Europe, America – is full of monsters whose only desire in life is to make squillions of dollars for themselves, by yesterday if possible, and they don’t care a stuff who they exploit to get there. Let’s face it, if South Pacific had killed these people, would that be so different to corporations exploiting children for cheap labour in Sumatra or the Philippines or most of the rest of Asia?’

  I was in love with Gabby before she said this, but now I plummeted over the edge. This wasn’t such a momentous thing in some ways. When you’ve lost everything, you become vulnerable. If someone had patted me on the head at that moment I’d have fallen in love with them. Gabby Shepherd, though, was what every loser needed. A passionate, beautiful, possibly slightly deranged, left-wing hurricane of fresh brio. Hell, I wasn’t the only one who needed Gabby Shepherd. The whole bloody world did.

  ‘So, you think it could be true?’

  She laughed. ‘Of course I don’t. I don’t think anything yet. What you’re saying is insane. I just think they are low enough to do it, that’s all. Most corporations are. Global capitalists and the politicians they buy and control go to war over profit. Name any conflict for hundreds of years – they’re all about one thing. Criminal bastards prepared to slaughter the innocent to protect and expand their markets.’