The Ambulance Chaser

by Richard Beasley

  ‘Lipstick?’ she said. Yes, I thought, lipstick. Shit. Maybe Sam was right with those metrosexual jibes.

  ‘It was the first time I’d seen her lipstick,’ I said. ‘Maybe it was the first time I’d ever seen her, if you know what I mean. I told her it was a lovely colour.’

  Gabby laughed. ‘That was it?’

  ‘It was brown lipstick. I think she must’ve thought rose was a cliché and red too tarty, so she went for a sophisticated reddish-brown. And there she was, walking towards me. It was a miracle I could say anything, but I believe I said, “that’s a lovely sorrel lipstick you’re wearing”.’

  ‘Sorrel?’

  ‘Saw the word in a book I was reading. I’d been waiting to drop it into a conversation. Then there they were, those luscious lips heading towards me.’

  ‘It was love after that?’

  ‘My mouth was smudged in sorrel for the next three weeks.’

  I directed Gabby off Oxford Street to the sad block of flats that I lived in now. When she stopped, I wondered if I should ask her up.

  ‘Always that effective?’ she said.

  ‘Effective?’

  ‘Your first line. Always that effective with women? Like, “that’s a lovely sorrel you’ve got on”.’

  I nodded and smiled. ‘I’m great at first impressions. I start on a high in relationships, then I end up a gradual disappointment. I’m a Roman candle at first, though.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, and smiled. I looked at her mouth and had a flashback twenty years to Heather Green. ‘What should I wear tomorrow, then?’

  ‘On your lips?’ I said.

  She burst out laughing, an electric flash of white cutting me off at the pass. ‘No, stupid,’ she said. ‘Clothes. The storage facility. Is it like an office, or a warehouse? Old jeans and T-shirt, or work clothes?’

  I said I didn’t know, and left the car without making a suggestion. I could have told her that jeans and a T-shirt would look mighty fine on her. Then again, I’m no expert on women’s clothing.

  Only on lipstick.

  Nineteen

  I was glad I didn’t pass on any of my expertise in couture the night before.

  Gabby picked me up in front of my flat at seven thirty. When I got in her car I noticed she was wearing a T-shirt with Gough Whitlam on the front. She’d bought it on a recent trip to the National Capital to visit her father during some senate sittings. The former prime minister is on the steps of Parliament about to address the crowd after being sacked by the governor general in 1975 on the orders of the White House. There are two guys in barrister’s outfits standing on Gough’s left, looking spectacularly smug. Undoubtedly CIA spies about to report to Washington that US military bases in Australia had once again been made safe from the tyranny of a slightly left-of-centre government, they looked suspiciously like the bastards on the professional conduct committee that decided I should be disbarred.

  It’s hard to look sexy wearing a T-shirt with a politician on the front, even a colossus like Gough, but Gabrielle Shepherd was giving it her best shot. Her chocolate river of hair, streaked with butterscotch for about a week now, was up in a ponytail, slotted out the back of the cap she was wearing. She had no make-up on, just lipstick. And bugger me if there wasn’t a hint of sorrel in it.

  ‘It’s roan,’ she said, smirking, reading my mind. She wasn’t reading a lot of it, otherwise she might have hit me. I’d just noticed the sky blue pants, some sort of exercise clobber, that were clinging to her tighter than a baby koala to its mother. God help me, she would really take the suspense out of a show like The Bachelor, that’s for sure. Not that too many left-wing, feminist–lesbian–political-activist PhD candidates appear to have been invited on that show. At a guess.

  As for how she smelt, well . . . I closed my eyes and it was like falling back naked into a bed of rose petals and lavender, wild rosemary and lilacs, lemon blossom and honey dew, on a misty but strangely warm mountain of white lilies. I may be gilding one or two of those lilies, but not many.

  ‘Nice T-shirt,’ I said. ‘Is he left wing enough for you, though?’

  She smiled. ‘He’s the only left-of-centre leader the western world has seen since Clement Attlee in Britain,’ she informed me. ‘All centrists or right wingers otherwise. Apart from Mitterrand, of course.’ Mitterrand. Slightly more left than Gough. Not as fluent in classical Greek or French.

  The city was starting to fill with buses and cars and office workers as we made our way to the top of Parramatta Road at the south-west fringe of the CBD. About fifteen kilometres of ugliness stretched in front of us before we would reach the Great Western Highway.

  Parramatta Road started its life as an Aboriginal track before becoming a colonial trail between the settlement out west and its harbourside sister. The road now is testament to the planning vision of the city’s fathers and forefathers, who have turned an eighteenth-century horse trail designed to service the logistical requirements of a city of four thousand people into a bitumen strip serving a city of more than four million. The former Aboriginal track is shanty-town messy with traffic, car yards, furniture shops, cheap restaurants and tawdry billboards. Still, the infrastructure wizardry of our political masters in this city has been such that we’re about to run out of both water and electricity. And half the trains don’t work on the tracks. Those that do often come off the tracks, usually at very high speeds. So, I guess the state of Parramatta Road needs to be kept in perspective.

  During our unimpaired run along the M4, Gabrielle gave me an update on her personal situation. My competition, the Female Dr Carter, was definitely headed for Africa with Médecins Sans Frontières, but it looked like it was going to be Djibouti rather than Mauritania now. Djibouti, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Timbuktu, whatever. Anywhere with Ebola and cannibals was fine by me. Gabby was still tossing around the UNHRC position in Geneva in eighteen months. There was a UN position coming up in New York too. Geneva, New York, Paris, Dublin, London. Whatever. Anywhere with me was fine by me.

  Her father had decided to run for another term, unless the factional heavyweights put an end to that. ‘He’s reached the conclusion that he’s prepared to see out the era of “amoral, mediocre, mendacious neo-Conservative rule”, as he calls it,’ she said. It’s possible her father may simply have been referring to the New South Wales right faction of his own party. Nevertheless, given that he already had his parliamentary pension stitched up, it was a noble sentiment whatever he meant.

  The storage facility wasn’t exactly Fort Knox. At the reception desk a chap with David Beckham’s 2003–04 season haircut and Shane Warne’s pre-slimming-tablet stomach checked the original fax against his copy. Then he led us into the warehouse, no other questions asked. Not even our names. The place had all the security of a nuclear silo in Kazakhstan.

  The warehouse itself was the size of a Boeing aircraft construction hangar. He pointed us in the general direction of South Pacific’s files. ‘Rows 197 to 226,’ he said. ‘Aisles F and G. Everything’s in boxes.’ Not exactly big on the small talk, but a great admirer of Gough, it appeared.

  Examining five years’ worth of closed files was quite a task, and given that South Pacific had taken over some small insurers, the claims history on some files went back a lot further. Once we got down to it, though, we sorted through each box quickly. The ground rules were simple. Only look for claims in seven figures or more. Of those, note only the ones that settled quickly or ended suddenly. That is, those in which the claimant or plaintiff’s life seemed to have been prematurely and abruptly terminated.

  By twelve we’d found nothing. As it was, even with the two of us, we wouldn’t get through a tenth of the files. I pleaded with Gabby, and she rang in sick on her mobile. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever done that,’ she said.

  It was nearly three when she found it. We were about to call it quits. Even with the piss-poor funding the government gives it, the oversized cargo container that’s home to the Randwick South Legal Centre
was like the first-class deck of the QE II compared to sitting on a box in a Penrith warehouse the size of Luxembourg on a June day, which out in the wild west was colder than a witch’s tit.

  ‘Bingo,’ she said looking up at me, eyes wide. ‘Does this fulfil your criteria? Listen to this.’ She unwound the elastic band from her ponytail, ran her hand through her hair and started to read. She had my complete attention. ‘Plaintiff named Johnson. Thirty-three year old male. Driving a tractor on the family property. It flips, crushing him. Loses his right leg above the knee. Partial tetraplegic. Limited movement of the arms and hands. He sues the manufacturer – insured by your employer, Chris. Product liability claim. Now, read this.’

  It was a letter from the plaintiff’s solicitor addressed to South Pacific.

  Dear Sir/Madam,

  We regret to advise that our client tragically died recently, apparently of self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Obviously this matter will have a significant impact on the current claim, which will now be conducted by the executors of our deceased client’s estate, from whom we expect to receive instructions shortly . . .

  ‘Significant impact’ had all the elements of legal understatement to it. This late plaintiff was in the market for a multimillion-dollar judgment or settlement. If he’d lived.

  ‘Why would someone with a huge claim in the works like this top themselves?’ I said.

  ‘Depression,’ she said.

  ‘Wouldn’t he want to provide for his family first?’

  ‘Depression can be a powerful thing.’ As a sometime packet-of-Zoloft-a-day man myself, I knew what she was talking about. Even so.

  ‘How does a tetraplegic shoot himself?’

  ‘The medical report states “limited use of both arms and hands”,’ she said. ‘Presumably he had enough function to do what he did.’

  ‘Assuming he pulled the trigger.’

  ‘Plaintiff suicide is a recurring theme, isn’t it? I assume there’s an official finding of suicide somewhere.’

  ‘There’s another recurring theme here too,’ I said, having nearly missed the obvious. Gabby looked at me blankly. ‘See the initials next to the claim number on the front of the file?’

  ‘GRS?’

  ‘Greg Stewart, I’ll bet.’

  ‘And he is?’

  ‘Was. A claims manager. Currently only slightly less productive than some I work with.’

  ‘The dead guy?’

  I nodded. ‘The same deceased who once handled Simon Broun’s case.’

  ‘Coincidence?’

  ‘A fucking unlucky one if it is.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘Give the file to me,’ I said. ‘We’re taking it with us.’

  We kept looking until five, when Beckham–Warne walked back into the warehouse. ‘Half an hour,’ he yelled before slinking off again. Right at that moment I found two more files, one on top of the other, that weren’t what we were looking for, but intrigued me all the same.

  The first was a standard public liability claim for personal injury. A slip and fall at an address in Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross – a ten-minute walk from my flat. Two reports from the same GP indicated severe back pain radiating down both legs due to unspecified ‘disc injury’. The plaintiff was described as a thirty-seven-year-old builder. He was not recorded as dead anywhere in the file. Just rich. His claim had been settled. He’d received a cheque for $4.7 million from South Pacific ten months before. No specialist reports. Simple Statement of Claim filed in the Supreme Court. No defence put on. Matter not referred to external solicitors. Handled in-house by Angelo De Luca.

  If paying out $4.7 million to some builder with a stiff back made no sense, the file underneath was even more perplexing. It was a professional negligence claim against an accountant insured by South Pacific. Again, there was no expert report in the file. The Statement of Claim, issued by what seemed to be a one-man band legal practice, alleged negligent investment advice. Some sort of loss of opportunity claim, with the plaintiff, a woman called Roberta Mather, alleging that but for the accountant’s negligent advice she would have made millions in shares, and in some investment scheme he talked her out of. De Luca handled the claim again, and cut Roberta Mather a cheque for $5.2 million the previous year. Lucky Ms Mather.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Gabby asked when I described the history behind the settlements. I’m a big fan of leaping to conclusions, but this time I was stumped. ‘Nothing. Other than that South Pacific is the most fucked-up insurer in the galaxy. We’ll take these two as well and see if I can come up with something.’

  There was a strange kind of Russian roulette being played with a certain group of claims at South Pacific. You either got dead or you won the prize. As I contemplated this I had the chilling thought that I might be holding the gun, or at least spinning the chamber. The bordereau that I was preparing to highlight the big claims – was the next hit-and-run victim or suicidal plaintiff on my list?

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said to Gabrielle, snatching up the three files from the floor.

  ‘Are we going to come back? To finish?’

  I shook my head. ‘That’s enough here. Let’s go. We’re looking in the wrong place.’

  It was after dark by the time we made it back to the city, and bumper to bumper on William Street as we edged up in short bursts towards the big Coke sign at the top of Kings Cross. At the third set of lights I had an idea.

  ‘Got any plans tonight?’

  ‘What have you got in mind?’

  One day I’d work up the courage to tell her, but for now I twisted her arm into checking out the address of the inexplicable $4.7 million slip and fall.

  Twenty

  Kings Cross. The sleaze of the main drag. The charming streets of tall trees and terraces, iron laced and elegant, Victorian and grand. The crime gang history. Sydney’s Soho, so I’m told. Some people get right into all this, but I’m not quite the type. I like the Cross, but not paying my tax bill is as close as I want to get to the underworld.

  We had no trouble finding the location of the builder’s fortuitous slip and fall. The address was right in the middle of Darlinghurst Road, the Cross. It was no Victorian terrace. A licensed premises, with a name that subtly identified the nature of the entertainment provided inside. The Risqué Pussy. It was unlikely to be the place in the Cross where intellectuals and the avant-garde conducted their secret meetings. Although, I guess, in this town nothing is impossible.

  ‘Sir, madam, coming in for the show tonight?’ Danny DeVito with Elvis’s hairdo wanted to tempt us with the delights inside. It had been a record drought for me as far as any risqué action was concerned. Plus there was the research angle. I gave Gabby my best what do you think? look. Her you’ve got to be kidding look kicked me flush in the privates.

  ‘Not even to investigate?’

  ‘I’m not dressed for it,’ she said flatly. I looked at Gough. Good point. Unlike some of his comrades, he wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like the Risqué Pussy. I made a note of the licensee’s name displayed above the front door and we walked off.

  We went for a drink at a nearby bar called Baron’s instead. A touch bohemian, I suppose, in a converted nineteenth-century dosshouse kind of way. Every time I climbed the old staircase I expected shortly to be sharing a drink with William Thackeray or Oscar Wilde. I’d ended up at the upstairs bar at Baron’s after three consecutive Bench and Bar dinners before my execution. Each time I’d found myself in a smoky corner drinking with a thin, wizened, ancient plaintiff’s Queen’s Counsel who looked like Boris Karloff and drank like Boris Yeltsin. Boris and Boris spent most of his time railing against what he saw as the latest idiotic tort judgment handed down by the Court of Appeal. I never once agreed.

  Gabby had a beer and eyed me warily when I ordered the same, but for once I didn’t feel like knocking a keg off in one sitting. ‘Had any further thoughts?’ she asked after taking the first sip from her schooner.

  ‘Not yet,’ I s
aid. ‘I’ll make some inquiries Monday if I can. The two insureds in the files that I found seem to have some other policies. Perhaps they’re current. I’ll have a look at them somehow. Maybe that’ll lead somewhere.’

  ‘What about the cops? Can’t you ring anonymously?’

  I took a gulp. What would they think about all of this? ‘Yeah. I just need to figure out the best way of going about it. One that makes sure that if they do follow anything up I won’t get fingered. I don’t trust them enough to let them know who I am is one problem. And I want these people caught. If the cops investigate, the first let’s kill all the plaintiffs strategy might stop, but the murders might never be solved. These people are pros.’

  ‘But if you’re right, and you don’t do anything,’ she said, ‘more people could be killed.’

  I nodded and took another swig of my beer. It was a thorny dilemma.

  ‘Your doctor pal,’ I said, finished with thorny for the time being, ‘when she heading off again?’

  ‘Sunday,’ she said.

  I actually knew that. Two days. One and a half. Thirty-one hours. Not that I was counting. ‘Where is Djibouti again?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  Really? No, not really. Deepest, darkest Africa was good enough. Via canoe, if possible. ‘I guess not,’ I said.

  ‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘This is the second time this’s happened to me. I had a boyfriend once who went on a twelve-month secondment to a stockbroking firm in London, and never came back. Still hasn’t.’

  Boyfriend. Well, well, well. The plot thickens. Hope springs eternal. Was that a nightingale I heard singing? Vroom, Vroom, hubba hubba, Gabrielle, Gabrielle, Gabrielle. Sweet Gabrielle used to have a . . .

  ‘Stockbroker? You went out with a stockbroker?’ It nearly explained everything.

  ‘Voted for the conservatives too,’ she said, smiling. ‘At uni he did his Master’s on the positive effects of economic rationalism on Australian business efficiency. Drove a Merc convertible.’ Uni? I didn’t think stockbrokers went to university. This news was even better, though. A fascist, Tory-voting wanker. None of those things could have been the attraction for Gabby. The only conclusion then . . . sweet God in heaven, that must mean that Gabrielle Shepherd must have been attracted to . . .