The Ambulance Chaser

by Richard Beasley

  I was confused. She had a point, but surely at least Hitler had it coming? And did she think I was nuts or not? ‘So, you think . . . what do you think?’

  ‘I think killing a few plaintiffs is chicken feed compared to the depths most large public companies are prepared to sink to. Then again, I don’t know anything specific about yours except the TV ads. And a bit about their star.’

  ‘Hardcastle?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Those ads. Fucking hell. That smiling idiot.’

  ‘He’s run a few failed businesses,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think he’s been done for murder.’

  ‘How many times has he been bankrupt? At least twice, isn’t it? Still,’ she said smiling at me again, ‘no offence, but I may have read as many stories in the paper about you as him.’

  ‘Very funny,’ I said. ‘He’s a bankruptcy and three wives up on me.’

  ‘You’ve got a lot of catching up to do then.’

  ‘I guess I have.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘You wanted a historical company search. You want to know the shareholders. Obviously, you’re curious,’ she said. ‘Obviously, you intend to do something. What’s next?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure,’ I said. ‘I haven’t really got anything but . . . instinct. Instinct and a sceptical mind. I want to check out some of the old files. I can get into current files on the computer system but the closed ones have been deleted. The hard copy files must be stored somewhere, though. They have to be.’ That’s the law, anyway. It applies for seven years, and to all companies. Tobacco excepted.

  She nodded. ‘And I take it you’ll be looking for . . . similarities?’

  ‘Sudden terminations of the plaintiff’s life. My plan is to do a very specific due diligence.’

  Gabby leant back in her chair and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘I don’t want my enthusiastic hatred of everything to do with the market economy to get you overexcited, Chris. It’s possible you’re simply bonkers. I mean, I guess it probably wouldn’t hurt you to stay out of trouble for a while. You just got the job. You need money. I really enjoyed this discussion, but . . . I don’t know . . .’

  I’d thought about that. I’d been thinking about it at work, at the RSLC, at home. My demotion to society’s Z-list had provided one unexpected benefit. I was free. Free to investigate. Agitate. Free to be sceptical. And, most importantly, free to believe. I could do, or say, almost anything I wanted. ‘This is the perfect time for me to get into trouble,’ I said. ‘I ain’t got nothing left to lose. By the Joplin definition, freedom has finally reached me.’

  She laughed. ‘That’s a very positive spin to put on the problem. I’m impressed. When are you going to do your due diligence?’

  ‘Soon. Next week.’

  ‘If I can help,’ she said, ‘and not get arrested, let me know.’

  ‘You’ve never been arrested?’

  ‘Only twice, and for bigger issues than your curiosity.’

  ‘Twice. Pathetic. I’m going to aim for a half-dozen at least.’

  ‘Great. Just promise me, though, no letters on RSLC letterhead accusing senior management at South Pacific of murder – not yet. Okay?’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ I said. ‘For the moment.’

  After food, after more grog, Gabby talked about her father. He was thinking of quitting politics, she told me. Completely disillusioned with the Labor Party, she said. Had been for years. Over privatising everything the citizens of the country once owned, over refugees, over pre-selecting morons, over its long dimwitted gutless plod to the right while it carelessly gave its blessing to the withdrawal of government from the economy so that the fascism of capital could finally take control. To paraphrase Gabby, who was quoting her father. There wasn’t much he wasn’t disillusioned with, she told me. ‘It’s more about hating the other side now,’ she said, ‘than believing in anything his side is doing.’

  ‘What does his side believe in again?’

  ‘Most of them sit under rocks and wait to be told.’

  ‘Is his side your side?’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ she said laughing.

  ‘So you’re . . . what . . . truly committed to socialism? And to the destruction of capitalism?’

  ‘I’d put it slightly differently. Close enough.’

  ‘Green?’

  ‘In part.’

  ‘Socialist–feminist–environmentalist–Amnesty–anti-globalisationist?’

  ‘I feel like you’ve known me forever, Chris.’ She batted her eyelashes, mocking me. I can take a mocking with the best of them, though.

  ‘And a believer in warmongering homicidal corporations who are driven by a bloodthirsty lust for profit?’

  ‘That’s me to a T,’ she said.

  Vows of poverty and chastity had thrust themselves upon me. I made a resolution then and there. I was going to marry this woman some day, or become a monk.

  For the second night in a row Gabby found me a taxi. I was on the far left of worse for wear by then. ‘It sneaks up on me, you know,’ I tried to explain while we waited outside. ‘One minute I’m okay, you know, merry but okay, next minute, I’m stupid. Totally stupid. Then I fall down. It’s sudden. I think, one more drink? Can’t hurt. Sure. I’m okay. And then I’m not.’ I clicked my fingers. ‘Just like that.’

  She held my forearm. ‘At the centre,’ she said slowly, ‘we have people to refer clients to if they’re gambling or . . . drinking too much.’

  ‘They specialize in fallen lawyers?’

  ‘They can do fallen angels, so you’d be a piece of cake. Call me Monday.’

  I sat in the back of the taxi after it pulled away from her and tried to make sense of what we’d discussed. I tried to work out exactly how I had come to think that a gay feminist left-wing political activist from a community legal centre would be even remotely attracted to a broke, disbarred lawyer of the wrong sex. The things you can convince yourself of. Jesus, self-delusion lives. I needed to get my life together. Believe in something real and possible.

  Like an insurance company killing plaintiffs. Now that had wings.

  Thirteen

  There was still no red sticker on Mr and Mrs Green. This time I noticed that Mrs Green’s shoes were off. She had cast off her red shoes, about to go dancing barefoot up the High Road. She presented her husband first, though, thrusting out her right arm like an impresario, showing off the culprit rather than the star. Mr Green the chicken juggler.

  ‘You seem fascinated by this,’ the voice behind me said. ‘Would you like to see some others?’

  ‘I know the artist,’ I said, woken suddenly from my daze. It was Helena Abbott, gallery owner.

  ‘Really,’ she said, lipstick glowing like Mrs Green’s.

  ‘I’m a friend of Edward’s too.’

  I had gone to the gallery again on Saturday, hungover. The weekend brought me to another loose end, and since Edward’s exhibition I’d been meaning to look at the rest of Laura Green’s paintings. Once I’d arrived I hadn’t been able to draw myself away from Mr and Mrs Green.

  ‘I thought I recognised you. Is it Chris?’ I nodded and smiled. ‘Actually, I have a number of other works of Laura’s just out the back. Why don’t you . . .’

  ‘I like this one,’ I said.

  ‘I can see.’

  ‘I would like to see the others, though,’ I added slowly. ‘Perhaps when I’m finished . . .’

  ‘Take your time. Just let me know.’ Helena Abbott spun on her heels and took a few strides back towards her office. She spun back around just as sharply to catch me looking at her marble-cut calves with at least some of the same intensity that I’d given Laura Green’s art. She smiled at me. Anyone would have looked. Even Gabby.

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Um . . . ?’

  ‘The painting,’ she said, pointing at the canvas I’d been boring a hole through.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s Mr Gre
en. Obviously.’

  ‘Obviously,’ she said, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘The title’s a hint.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Green? You think so?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Chicken juggler, was he?’

  I paused, thinking, remembering. ‘Not a juggler,’ I said, ‘but I once saw him throw one at her.’

  ‘I see,’ Helena Abbott said, sounding unsure. ‘Well,’ she said after a moment’s pause, ‘I’m sure that’s something he wouldn’t want out in the public domain, given his profile. I’d like to hear more, though. Let me know when you want to come out the back and see the rest.’

  The chicken had slapped against Mrs Green, and then the wall behind her, at about the same height at which Mr and Mrs Green was hung. Before this there had been shouting. Mr Green was holding a pair of pants up towards Mrs Green’s face. In his other hand was some money, screwed up and damp like a cloth.

  ‘You washed this,’ he screamed. ‘Look! You’ve done it again! This happened last time!’ He threw the money on the floor, the pants at Mrs Green. He picked up the chicken, which had been peacefully sitting on the kitchen table during all the commotion, and threw it at her. He then walked quickly out of the back door, slamming it behind him. A few moments later his car door slammed, and then its lights burnt through the darkness, nearly catching us as we crouched along the back fence.

  It was a night of another undercover operation. We had been camped in Harry’s backyard from late afternoon, then had moved out at dusk to check on the neighbourhood. Mr and Mrs Green’s house was one of our favourites. We were terrified of Mr Green but fond of Mrs Green, and I was in love with her daughter, Heather, so it was a place of irresistible contradictions. We had more than once crept through the back gate at night, via the night-soil alley, tiptoed and whispered our way down the side around to the front, hearts racing. Sometimes we had conversations with Heather, who spoke to us like Juliet from her bedroom window upstairs. And sometimes we heard yelling. Worse. And, once, we saw a chicken being thrown.

  As Mr Green’s car reversed into the alley, Mrs Green bent down to pick up the money, and placed the pants over a chair. We left after she slowly started to wipe the grease from her wall.

  The chicken-on-the-wall incident had been discussed from time to time, mainly in the few months of the summer it had occurred. We joked awkwardly about it, and late one Sunday afternoon Edward ran past Mr Green in his front yard making clucking noises, but ultimately it defeated our almost infinite capacity for fun.

  It’s strange how one memory leads to another. As I stood there in the gallery the chicken-on-the-wall incident walked quickly through fifty open gates in my brain to find the wine-on-the-ceiling incident. Only this time, I was the Neanderthal.

  Two relationships ago, through my mid to late twenties, I was with Jo. Jo the TV journalist. We met in tragic circumstances. The client, a young woman, was dying of cancer. The tumour had not been diagnosed early enough. Litigation and ultimately premature death inevitably followed. There was a request for an interview from a TV news program Jo was working for.

  The interview led to a few drinks later that week, during which the main topic of conversation was not an allegedly misdiagnosed tumour. The main topic of conversation was ourselves. Jo appeared nearly as pleased with herself as I was with me. She looked glamorous in the TV make-up, like she’d just walked off the stage. We were a perfect couple. Almost.

  Jo was friends with the A-list. I was at the height of my hypocritical champagne socialism. I wanted to mix with the fashionable, the privileged, the minor celebrities and what I would laughingly describe as the aristocracy, but only so I could complain about them afterwards. Ad nauseum. ‘How do you get on this A-list, anyway?’ I would ask Jo in a cab on the way to some function. It was largely a rhetorical question because I would continue with ‘You have to be born rich, or make money by ripping people off. Or you have to do something incredibly stupid on television or radio. Something that lowers community, ethical and artistic standards. Something that lowers the national IQ.’

  I don’t blame Jo Weston for getting rid of me. Using the past tense presumptuously, I was a sanctimonious wanker, full of poorly channelled rage. I wasn’t even sure what the hell it was I was raging against. Everything and everyone, I think. I’m much more mature now. Now, at least, I know that inside each of my raves was a good point struggling against prolonged adolescence to make its mark. If I live until seventy I may finally work out what the good point was.

  ‘What happened with Jo?’ my friends asked me afterwards. ‘I’m only C-list,’ I would say. ‘With a D minus for attitude.’

  Jo Weston was there the night I met my next girlfriend. Christine Cutler. The victim of the wine-on-the-ceiling incident. I was steadily getting drunk at a charity do when I first saw her. It was the sort of event I used to go to with Jo Weston, and then I noticed that it was still the sort of event that she went to, only with her husband now. I thought about going over to table 27 and starting up one of the conversations I’d have with her on gala nights like this.

  ‘I mean, what’s the point in this?’ I would say. ‘They’ll raise $500,000 tonight for some kids, but the organising committee has people on it that’ve spent that much on thoroughbreds that are best restricted to downhill races of no less than eight miles. Or they run companies that make trillions of profits through outrageous fees or greed, or by just plain ripping people off, and when they announce the profit they retrench half the staff and pay themselves a bonus. Fuck! Yet here we all are, patting these bastards on the back for raising a few hundred grand for some sick kids.’ I would then glare at Jo, waiting for her response. ‘Can’t you see the irony in that?’ I would then say. If she’d slapped me across the face we might still be together now.

  That night I stayed at my table, drank $500,000 worth of wine, and at the end spotted Chrissie Cutler. She was an assistant chef at the fine-dining restaurant of the moment, a rising star of the gastronomic world. I couldn’t tell you what I said to her, but I imagine, after telling her the food was superb, it would have been something like this. ‘I mean, what’s the point? They’ll . . . etc.’

  She went out with me anyway. Then she met Steve, assistant to the assistant sous chef, and his long black eyelashes. In complete fairness, those long black eyelashes alone were worth at least a one-hat rating in the Good Food Guide. And Steve’s work hours coincided far more conveniently with Chrissie’s than mine.

  One night Chrissie didn’t come home. When I did the next night, there she was again. Curled up on the couch, watching TV, eating a bowl of pasta, a glass of red in front of her on the floor, enjoying a night off work. It was her casual disregard that got to me, her complete detachment from my anger and concern. She was just having some fun, she said. I wasn’t her mother. I should chill out.

  The glass of wine was beautifully positioned, poised on the knife-edge of my anger. Right in front of the uprights, twenty-two yards from touch.

  Red wine stains paint. I can confirm that. A $500 lesson from a painter. ‘How did this get all over the ceiling?’ the painter asked.

  ‘Some prick flicked it there with his eyelashes,’ I explained.

  I can’t say I was completely shattered. I barely saw her from the moment she moved in with me. And ‘Chris’ and ‘Chrissie’? It was doomed from the start.

  Curtain up on the wine-on-the-ceiling incident quickly led to curtain down on the relationship. As Chrissie had found herself a two-hat assistant to the assistant sous chef who had Michelin stars in his darkly lashed eyes, she was off and on her way.

  Then, after Jo Weston and Chrissie Cutler, there was Samantha O’Brien. And then there wasn’t.

  ‘We’re closing in half an hour,’ Helena Abbott said from behind me as I contemplated these memories. ‘I was wondering if you still wanted to see the rest of Laura’s paintings.’ She took me out the back to the corner where Laura Green’s paintings were stored. ‘Take your time. I might lock up early
and come back in a moment,’ she said.

  When I flicked over to the last painting in the group, two hands grabbed hold of my heart, and held it firmly and still for a moment. Mr and Mrs Green’s back fence, the white wrought iron, ivy running over and through it, racing around it. And there we were, the three of us. One head poked around the gate, the other through the ivy, while the boy in the middle stood on tiptoes to stretch over the top of the hedge. Our wide faces looked in turns worried, anxious and afraid.

  ‘I see you’ve found another one you like,’ Helena Abbott said, emerging through the shadows of my memory once again.

  ‘What’s it called?’ I asked.

  ‘Three Boys, I think, nothing mysterious.’ I held on to the painting, still staring at it. ‘What do you see?’ she asked.

  I kept looking at the painting, then slowly turned to her. ‘This city’s motto. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.’

  The hotel Helena and I went to for a drink after she closed up was within walking distance of the gallery. I sat alone at the bar for nearly five minutes after we arrived while she chatted to a distinguished-looking tanned gentleman in a Gucci polo neck and a Ralph Lauren hairdo.

  ‘My plastic surgeon,’ she explained when she sat down. Surprised at her candour, I took up the cudgels of closer inspection. Just the professional curiosity of a former medical negligence lawyer. ‘Only some minor sculpting,’ Helena said, ‘and a small amount of post-forties, post-children enhancement.’

  I thought that I’d feel embarrassed by such a revelation, but I didn’t. ‘Like having a great old painting restored,’ I said. I then mentally phoned and ordered some business cards. Christopher Blake – Disbarred Lawyer. Gormless Fucknuckle.

  Helena Abbott glared at me. ‘Not quite,’ she said.

  ‘What is it you like most about your friend’s art?’ she asked me after ordering champagne.

  ‘Edward?’