The Ambulance Chaser

by Richard Beasley

  ‘He had a lovely sister, though,’ she said. ‘Industrial officer for the Miscellaneous Workers’ Union, would you believe?’

  The sister, the commo tart. Fuck. Bugger. Fuck. I decided to look on the bright side. Gabrielle once had a boyfriend. It was possible. Just possible. Not tonight, though. She drained her beer, yawned expansively, said it was time for bed. Declaration, not invitation.

  As we left Baron’s I looked somewhat mournfully up the road at the Risqué Pussy. Almost tempted, I realised I probably didn’t have enough on me for the cover charge. I needed money. I wanted my trustee out of my life. I thought maybe I should have asked someone back inside about who insured Baron’s. Maybe it was South Pacific. I could throw myself down the rickety staircase and collect $4.7 million from Angelo De Luca. Or I could get drowned instead.

  Gabby kissed me goodnight at the car. Our first kiss. Less than spectacular, better than average. Not the cheek, not the lips. Right near the corner of my mouth. If we hadn’t quite exchanged bodily fluids, I did at least smell the beer on her breath.

  Never a bad start with a girl.

  Twenty-One

  It was Sunday, and I had the floor to myself. I’d gone into South Pacific to finish the bordereau, and to look more thoroughly through the files we’d taken from Penrith.

  The bordereau was taking less time to compile than I expected. There was a computer record of every current claim against South Pacific, which contained a summary of the type of claim, and a rough estimate of possible damages and costs. I only had to go to the hard copy files for the bigger claims, reading pleadings, expert and investigators’ reports. The modest ones I skimmed over quickly.

  The claims that worried me were the bigger injury matters. Most of the non-liability claims – professional negligence, directors and officers – survived the death of a plaintiff. Either that, or the policies were sometimes reinsured, so that South Pacific’s exposure was only a percentage of the potential damages.

  Of the bigger claims I came across I was as conservative as I could be about SP’s likely exposure, knocking off a million or two of damages on some, or deliberately inflating the prospects of successfully defending the plaintiff’s action. My main aim was to avoid drafting anyone’s death warrant.

  The other claims I wanted to check carefully were any that were being handled directly by Angelo De Luca. The Dobsons and Simon Broun files had followed a deadly route to De Luca. Two of the Penrith plaintiffs had found the pot of gold with him. De Luca’s claims-handling technique was worthy of closer examination.

  On the computer records initials appeared next to the claims numbers to indicate which member of the claims team had responsibility for that file. I couldn’t find any with De Luca’s initials – ADL. Simon Broun’s claim was almost certainly still in the system – I doubted whether his estate had reached a settlement with South Pacific yet – so I called that claim up to check if De Luca was using different initials. When the details of Broun’s claim came up on my screen, I saw that there was no reference to any claims handler. You didn’t need to be a genius to guess that any claims without a claims handler reference were likely to be ones De Luca had kept to himself. During a half-hour trawl through the records I found three files that appeared unattached to anyone. There was a remarkable lack of detail about each of them. A small reserve, no estimate of likely damages, no summary of the kind of claim – just the insured’s name, the plaintiff’s name, and a claim number.

  One matter stood out. A claim by Clarence Daniel Gerton. Although not exactly a household name, Clarrie Gerton was known well enough by people who had a vague interest in state politics. Now retired from parliament, Gerton had been a head office worker, local councillor, mayor, and finally a backbencher for the Labor Party – and a devout factional organiser for its right wing. He was also considered, by that well-known oracle, the rumour mill, to be one of the most corrupt politicians ever to set foot in Macquarie Street. A big call, but the mill has a reasonable track record on allegations of this gravity. Gerton, and companies associated with him, were said to have large property holdings, and since his retirement from parliament, after three study tours to promote Sydney’s urban planning to Europeans, and after qualifying for his indexed pension, Gerton had retired to become a ‘consultant’ to the building and gaming industries.

  I don’t put much faith in the rumour mill, and I had never met Clarrie Gerton. The only things I knew about him came from a few newspaper articles over the years. My opinion of him was unsullied by any whispers about corrupt development approvals during his time in local politics, not to mention the contracts he’d awarded to people who had donated generously to his re-election campaigns or his children’s Swiss bank accounts. I didn’t listen to the rumours about backhanders he received from the corporate world once in state parliament. It was enough that he was a member of the Right for me to hate him. Still, I expect Clarrie Gerton wouldn’t have much good to say about lawyers.

  Gerton having a claim against South Pacific made me curious. Particularly one handled by De Luca. And particularly one not on the list I had been given to compile my bordereau. It might be totally unrelated to anything I had seen at Penrith or to the other claims that concerned me, but I wanted to at least locate the hard copy file and take a look at its contents. I decided to go into De Luca’s office and see what I could find.

  I had no success. De Luca’s desk had nothing on it that appeared to relate to a claim he was handling. Everything worth looking at was in his filing cabinet. And his cabinet was always locked. I checked to be sure, but he hadn’t forgotten.

  A forced entry was out of the question. I was the only person on the floor. To get into the building, and up in the lift, I had used a security key. The system would register that I had come into the building at the weekend. If the lock on De Luca’s cabinet was broken, I would be the only suspect. If I wanted to look at his files, it would have to be during a work day, after he’d opened the cabinet and left his room. I would have to keep an eye out for my chance, and work fast.

  When I left De Luca’s office I read through the Penrith files again. The tractor accident Gabby had found fitted the profile of the other matters perfectly. A young plaintiff, a serious injury, a multimillion-dollar claim, a dead plaintiff. All adding up to a multimillion-dollar saving for South Pacific.

  The two cases in which the plaintiffs had been paid out still made no sense on a second reading. The slip and fall file contained two GP reports. Nothing from an orthopaedic surgeon, a neurosurgeon or any other medical specialist. Nor was there any kind of expert report about how the accident occurred. According to the Statement of Claim the plaintiff had simply slipped on some ‘spillage’ on the floor. For $4.7 million who wouldn’t?

  The extent of the expert evidence in the accountant’s negligence matter consisted of a letter from the plaintiff’s solicitor outlining what happened. That was it. No expert report, no damages report, no affidavits. Not even a statement from the plaintiff. Unless there was a second file somewhere, there was no basis at all for the settlement.

  Both files had a computer printout on their covers that showed a series of policy numbers for the two insureds involved. Maybe papers related to these claims had accidentally been mixed up in other policy files. Unlikely, but I needed to check. I didn’t have access on my computer to general policy records – only to claims – and my security pass wouldn’t allow me to access other floors, so I would have to wait until Monday to see if someone could help me find out more.

  I was about to go when my phone rang. Direct line. I was startled at first, because no one knew I was in. My heart raced. It was probably Hardcastle or De Luca. I was being followed. Just what was I doing out at Penrith? At the Risqué Pussy? The phone stopped. Dead silence. The shrill ring of my mobile shattered that. When I freed my nails from the ceiling I answered it. Harry.

  I’d lost track of time. It was already eleven thirty. I was late.

  Reliant now on walking and p
ublic transport, I was an hour late by the time I arrived. Edward, Harry and Bill Doyle were clearing up the front garden, Harry mowing the lawn and the others pulling out weeds. Laura Green hadn’t sold the house when she moved up north. It had been leased instead, at the top end of the market, to a series of executives and their families, the last of which had clearly let the garden go towards the end of the lease.

  I felt a sense of loss as soon as I walked through the gate. The front yard, which had been acres wide when I was a child, now seemed impossibly small. The lawn that we used to play on had shrunk with my imagination. I walked up the path leading to the front door, drifting back in time with each step, back to when the world was bigger, and the days and the summers longer. And back to the girl with the sorrel lipstick.

  ‘Chris,’ Heather said, standing out on the front veranda, then rushing down the steps to kiss me. ‘You haven’t changed a bit. You still walk exactly the same way.’ Like I have no idea where I’m going. ‘I’m just about to make some tea, but come inside and say hello to Mum.’ She led me like Pip Pirrip walking back into Satis House after all those years abroad.

  It was her tissue-paper skin I noticed first, on her cheeks, over the bones in her hands. The gaunt expression, the sunken chest. Then she smiled, and it was Laura Green. ‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ she said.

  ‘Heather just said that,’ I said. ‘Obviously I look terrible.’

  She was sitting in a large chair by the fire, and I walked over and kissed her cheek. It was cold and dry. She grabbed my hand with her long bony fingers and shook it. ‘How many years since I’ve seen you?’

  ‘Nearly five. Edward’s second solo exhibition. You were about to move up north.’ She shook her head. ‘You’re back for good now?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m here for now,’ she said, ‘but not for very long, I think.’ Heather had returned from Hong Kong with her husband, she told me. They were sick of Hong Kong after five years, especially with two small children. I was shown a picture of the grandchildren, a baby boy, a smiling ping-pong ball with arms and legs, and an older girl, already like her mother. Another pang of regret flowed through me again. Pang visited me a lot. He knew me better than I did.

  ‘Helena dropped in yesterday,’ Laura said, putting her photos away. ‘She mentioned that you’d been into the gallery recently.’

  I nodded. ‘Edward had an exhibition,’ I said. She told me that Helena was taking her in to the gallery next week, how much she was looking forward to it, how proud she felt. ‘I gave him his first set of paints and brushes,’ she said, smiling, looking at the fire.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘We used them on your husband’s car.’ Chicken Thrower, to be exact. Written in the middle of the front windscreen. I did the painting, with great encouragement from Harry and Edward. An hour later we were in a huge panic about it, and rushed back to the scene of the graffiti, only to find that the car was already gone. I did better on the car a year or so later.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Laura said, bursting out laughing. ‘There was hell to pay over that.’ I’ll bet there was. We were silent for a short time, watching the fire, me watching it catch Laura’s face, highlighting her see-through skin. She prodded weakly at the coals with a poker, and I took it from her, then dumped another root on top of the flames.

  ‘I read about you, Chris,’ she said. Another one. ‘You silly boy. That father of yours.’ She shook her head. ‘I called you. I got an answering machine. Did you . . . ?’

  I nodded. ‘I was on the run at the time, Laura,’ I explained. To St Tropez as it turned out, to the great delight of the Fourth Estate.

  ‘Where is Max?’ she asked.

  ‘Just outside Noosa as far as I know,’ I said. ‘Giving holistic massages, reading palms, practising voodoo, dodging an army of process-servers. The usual.’

  Laura smiled tightly and shook her head. She thought he was a fool, or worse, I could tell. I had a few other words starting with F that I’d now use, but foolish was a start. ‘I liked him,’ she said quickly, looking straight at me. Yeah, well, he was a good confidence man. Great first impressions, downhill after that. It’s the male family trait. ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘Working for an insurer in claims,’ I said.

  ‘What does that involve?’

  Good question. Drinking. Plotting my revenge on the world. Investigating a corporate serial killer. ‘It depends on your perspective,’ I said. ‘I’m not planning on staying there long.’

  ‘I shrieked with laughter when Bill rang me and said you were working for him. I just couldn’t imagine you gardening.’

  ‘You should’ve seen how it ended,’ I said.

  She laughed again, and grabbed at her chest. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He told me that too. You poor thing. How is your ankle now?’

  ‘It aches at dusk when the bats arrive,’ I said.

  ‘I’m back with Dr Duthy,’ she said before pausing. ‘He told me he still sees you.’ I nodded. ‘Is your health okay now, Chris?’

  I smiled. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. There she was, frail, dying, asking me about my health.

  Dr Duthy had been my GP for about thirty years. He had long blow-dried blonde hair when he first asked me to say aaaahh, and a jar of jellybeans on his desk that my childhood memory insists was of 44-gallon-drum-size proportions. Bald as a badger now, and my number one drug dealer. Zoloft, and a variety of benzodiazepines. A handful of jellybeans from a jar that looks suspiciously small.

  Laura looked at me, waiting for me to say more. ‘I’ve put it behind me now,’ I said. ‘To be honest, I don’t think I felt devastated. More concussed. Maybe it still hasn’t hit me. Maybe I’m too detached about it.’

  ‘Detached?’

  ‘It was humiliating,’ I said. ‘All the gossip. I lost everything too – money, house, career. I don’t know. Maybe it happened so quickly . . .’

  ‘What do you mean “detached”, though?’

  I meant I should have hurt more. I felt disengaged, not really part of it. It happened around me, not to me. ‘I don’t know, Laura,’ I said. ‘I was pissed off at it all, but not distraught. I should have been both. This was my career. I just shrugged it all off, like it wasn’t such a big deal. And I suppose it is.’

  ‘Is it?’ she asked softly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Of course it’s a big deal.

  ‘Do you miss it? Being a lawyer?’

  And it’s not a big deal, after all. So this is why my anger was hollow. It was a game. Of hearsay and objection. Snort and derision. Of wigs and gowns, smoke and mirrors. A game of winners and losers. I thought there would be more to it than that. And there is sometimes, lives, freedom, great principles can be at stake, I see that, but . . .

  ‘It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, Laura,’ I said. ‘It’s just depressing not knowing how to do anything else.’

  Perry Mason saves the Bill of Rights. The perfect name for the legal practice I was trying, unsuccessfully, to build. Too romantic, I know, but Raymond Burr and Martin Luther King speeches had quite an impact on me when I was young and heard or read them for the first time. Asked now, I would say law is a trade where you take cash out of one bastard’s pocket, and put it in another bastard’s. A game about the distribution of wealth, the transit of money. Sceptical is fine, but I ask myself where the cynicism comes from. Like a Cabinet member, I never give a straight answer.

  ‘Bob always said he didn’t like you,’ Laura said. ‘That’s partly why I did.’

  Well, Bob Green wouldn’t have liked me. Any child who lacked all faith in mammon and had insufficient hunger for El Dorado was a loser in the making to him. Writing four-letter words on his Mercedes probably didn’t help either.

  ‘I never listened to him, and he only made Heather like you more too.’ They were right to pay no attention to Bob. Look how well I’d turned out. ‘We were talking this morning – she reminded me what she used to say about you.’ That I had a great future in graffiti, no doubt. ‘You made her
feel safe,’ she said. ‘I remembered straight away that she’d told me that before. Did you know that?’

  No. I didn’t. I really didn’t know that. Pang came up and whacked me on the heart again. Boy, so I had done one good thing in my life. Apart from the incidents with Bob Green’s car.

  ‘I hadn’t painted a single painting when I was your age, Chris,’ Laura said.

  Sure, things’ll work out for me. I make sad girls feel safe. Or I did. I might have lost my touch over the last twenty years. I may have turned a few happy ones sad. Still, nothing a few stiff drinks couldn’t sort out. Fortunately, one was on its way, although not as strong as I’m used to.

  ‘Tea’s outside,’ Heather said, appearing at the doorway. ‘Out the back. We’re all there.’

  The backyard had shrunk too. Something a bit larger than a couple of tennis courts had replaced acres of fields. Two teapots sat in the middle of a large outdoor table that may have been there when we were children, the wood now white with the rain and sun.

  Laura talked about her last five years at Byron Bay, how embarrassed she was at the price her paintings were starting to fetch. Heather spoke about Hong Kong, her husband, her children. They were up at Byron now, in Laura’s house. She and Laura would be joining them soon for one last holiday there before packing up, putting the place on the market.

  I poured myself another tea and wandered around the backyard as Edward and Harry talked, bringing Laura and Heather up to date on their lives. No need for me to do the same. Not if you read the papers last year.

  The old shed was still standing at the back, a garage now, but used to store junk twenty or so years ago. I couldn’t resist going in, just to check. The benches and shelves had gone, and the bordered-off corner, but the words could still be made out, down the bottom of the far corner wall. ‘Privet for 2’.