Batteries Not Included

by Tony McFadden

  Davie hesitated. “But I might be able to prove it was in your bed.”

  “Yeah. Great. I need to back it up first in case you brick it.” He closed the apps and opened the settings. “Backing it up to the cloud. It’ll take a couple of minutes. Why hopefully?”

  “There’s an even chance you end up with nothing more than a paperweight when I’m done. I’m good, but the boys and girls in Cupertino are much, much better.”

  Mike slid the phone back. “Don’t make me regret this.”

  Nick tapped the marker on the whiteboard. “What’s next?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Mike.

  “Need to flesh out this timeline. Up at 5:48,” Nick made a mark and labelled it, “and then what?”

  “Chased the two guys with the bike helmets who I believe started my car on fire.”

  Davie pulled his attention from the phone. “That was your Beetle?”

  Mike nodded. “My project for the next six months. I was planning on restoring it. It’s going to take a lot more now. It’s gutted.”

  “You got back to the house by when?”

  “A little after 6:45. Andy was dead in the courtyard and the fire department had just arrived. Shit got crazy after that.”

  Nick took a step back from the whiteboard and took a picture of the time map. “I don’t know how much help this will be, but if Davie can pull the internal GPS data, it might help. Some. Fingers crossed.”

  “Thanks for the pressure, mate,” said Davie.

  Mike scrubbed his hair with his fingertips. “Do your best kid. Anything you need, ask.”

  22

  Nick knocked on the doorframe of Kirra’s studio. She was sketching her next piece on a sheet of paper tagged to her easel. She looked over her shoulder at Nick and smiled.

  “What’s up?”

  “I need a few minutes of your time.”

  She added a flourish to the edge of the sheet and put her charcoal on the easel. “Sure. I have a few minutes. What’s on your mind?”

  Nick sighed. “This is a bit awkward.”

  Kirra sat behind her desk and motioned for Nick to take a seat across from her. “Spill it.”

  “I met with Brent today.”

  “What does he have to say for himself?”

  Nick squirmed in his chair. “I wanted to find out what he’d already done. So I wouldn’t be reinventing the wheel.” He paused. “During our investigation we found an email he sent to Andy where he suggested that it was possible you,” Nick pointed, “were skimming the money from the company.” He held up his hands. “I’ve found nothing that would suggest you had anything to do with this.”

  “And you won’t.” Kirra smiled. “I’m not offended. Brent is a pedant. The perfect person to be accountable for compliance. I’d be surprised if he didn’t suggest I could be involved.” She interlaced her fingers on her desk. “Is that all?”

  “Sorry, no. Can you go through the assets of the company with me? I need an experienced eye.”

  Kirra chuckled. “Brent would be a better resource.”

  “Brent is, and I quote, ’tied up with compliance stuff’. He wasn’t extremely cooperative.”

  She nodded. “Audit in two weeks. Did I mention he was a pedant?” She stood and grabbed her keys from her desk. “To the office.”

  He expected another one of the Dvorak fleet and was surprised when she unlocked an old boxy Land Rover. “This is a surprise.”

  “I like sitting up above everybody.”

  * * *

  Kirra led Nick to a meeting room and projected her laptop on the large monitor on the meeting room wall. “What are you looking for?”

  “I got to thinking that with the limited amount of inventory coming into Dvorak, at least compared to the typical internal combustion production facility, it would be really difficult to spoof the finances. I’d like to have you go through all of the tangible assets on Dvorak’s books, one by one, and see if there’s anything there that looks out of place.”

  Kirra raised her eyebrows. “What? That’ll take days.”

  “Ignore manufacturing assets for now — the batteries and wheels and tires and whatever else is used to put the cars together. Looking at machinery, properties, offices, warehouses, that type of thing.”

  “That narrows it down a bit. Why?”

  Nick shrugged. “A hunch.” He cleared his throat. “This is just the starting point, though. If nothing comes up from the manufacturing assets we’ll need to go deeper.”

  Kirra checked the time. “I can give you an hour.”

  “Better than nothing, right? Can we get started?”

  Kirra sighed and opened the accounting system and navigated to the assets page. Filtered on equipment. “We’ll start with the plant equipment. I’m pretty familiar with it. Andy talked about each new piece of equipment like it was one of his children.

  Nick opened his notebook. “Fire away.”

  Kirra zipped through the battery assembly equipment, the engine and drive train units, and the final assembly plants. There were some variations based on car model, and multiple instances for the various manufacturing facilities. But they were all legit, to the best of Kirra’s knowledge.

  “I’m not sure I understand why we’re doing this. These are static. There’s no real feasible way to fudge these large pieces of equipment to siphon cash from the company.”

  Nick shrugged. “Back to basics. Probably nothing, but it clears my mind. Work up to the hard stuff. I never liked diving into the deep end. A slow, timid walk from the shallow end.” He pointed at the screen. “Can we look at real estate now?”

  “Whatever floats your boat. I can see why Brent wasn’t interested in this. It’s going to take forever.”

  “How much real estate does Dvorak own?”

  “Very little. Most of it is leased.” She waggled her hand. “There’s a few properties when you include the charging stations, warehouses, sales centres, service centres.”

  Kirra navigated to the contracts section and filtered on properties. “This should be fairly quick, comparatively speaking.”

  A list of properties filled the screen. The top of the list was the head office, a twenty-five year lease, three years in.

  “Head office. A beautiful building. Built to our spec and leased to us on a twenty-five year deal.”

  “Makes sense. You’re not a real estate company.” He pointed at the monitor. “You’ve set up over 2500 charging stations?”

  “That’s for the entire country. There are 2000 charging stations in just Los Angeles alone. A mere 2500 isn’t very many for a country this size. We’re looking to triple that by the end of the decade.”

  “Out of curiosity, what kind of revenues do you get from them?”

  Kirra smiled, but a puzzled smile. “None, directly. They’re free.” She laughed at the look on Nick’s face. “The more chargers out there, the easier it is to sell an electric vehicle. And we make more than enough profit from the cars to subsidise the charging stations.”

  “That actually makes sense.” The screen rolled to the sales centres. “Not as many of them. The numbers look right to you?”

  Kirra quickly scanned the list. Each was tagged with a shopping center. “Yeah. Next.”

  “Warehouses, then. How does that work?”

  “Bulk loading to the main distribution centres, then just in time to the manufacturing facilities. By definition, the main distribution centres are large and near shipping ports — Newcastle, Wollongong, Port Melbourne, Brisbane, Fremantle.”

  “Just the five of them?”

  Kirra stared at the screen. “Yeah. Why are there eight?”

  Nick tapped on the table. “That’s why we’re here.” He made a note in his book. “Which three are the extras?”

  Kirra highlighted them. All three were in Southwest and Western Sydney “I don’t understand. Very few people have the authority to sign leases on behalf of the company.” She looked closer at the screen. “And these le
ases are less than a year old and are for only a year. They expire in two weeks.” She looked at Nick. “How does this tie in with missing money?”

  “Are they as large as the other three?”

  “Based on the lease amounts, I doubt it.” She opened the three digital contracts and zipped through them. “As I thought. All three are a tenth of the size, roughly, as the legit ones.”

  “Leave those open.” Nick wrote the address in his book. “The leases expire in a couple of weeks you say?”

  “Yes. All three.”

  Nick finished writing the third address and paused in thought. “Who signed the leases?”

  “I’d dig the paper files out of legal archives. Andy or Slokow.”

  “Do the lease amount account for the decrease in profits?”

  Kirra’s was shaking her head before Nick finished the question. “Drop in the ocean. It’s in the thousands. Not even close to millions.” She closed her laptop and disconnected the monitor. “I don’t understand. There has to be something else. What’s your gut feel for the amount of money pouring out of my company?”

  Nick winced. “Somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10 million a quarter.” He waggled his hand in a ‘so-so’ motion. “That’s a fuzzy number. Probably on the low end.”

  “I don’t understand how leases on three smallish warehouses can account for that much loss.”

  “I’m going to grab Davie and check them out. Don’t tell anyone about them, okay? We don’t want to spook anyone.” Nick tucked the notebook into his laptop case. “Can you get the contract info from legal without raising any suspicions?”

  Kirra laughed. “I’ll see you back at the house.”

  23

  “God damn, this is a nice car.” Davie ran his hand along the burled teak dash. “Think she’ll let you keep it?”

  “You’re nuts.” Nick glanced at the GPS on the dash. “The third one is just around the corner.”

  “There’ll be nobody and nothing there, just like the first two.”

  Nick rounded the corner and pulled to the curb. The destination was just ahead of them. Three motorcycles were parked by the loading bay. “Recognise those bikes?”

  “Oh, Jesus. Let’s get out of here.”

  Nick turned off the car and got out. “I want to see what they’re doing.”

  “You are an idiot. Your head is just getting better.” But still he got out of the car and joined Nick. He interlaced his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “Jesus,” he said again.

  Nick opened the mapping app on his phone and looked at the satellite view of the facility. He zoomed the view from the top of the building. It looked like a set of stairs led up to a landing on the far side of the building. He tapped his phone screen. “There.”

  Davie cocked his head and looked at the screen. “Probably locked.”

  “Let’s find out.”

  They arced around the property, coming straight in at the door across a facility parking lot.

  “We are wide open, like sitting ducks.”

  Nick grunted and kept walking. “There’s no cameras on the outside, and I doubt those three are sitting around staring out of windows. They’re not tall enough. The windows are near the roofline. Keep up.”

  The quietly climbed the metal stairs to the landing. Nick tested the door. Locked.

  “Well I guess that’s that,” whispered Davie.

  Nick slid his lock pick set from his back pocket and squatted in front of the door. “Block me.”

  Davie slid behind Nick, blocking view from the street. “This going to take long?”

  Nick stood and pocketed the kit. “Nope.” He turned the knob. “Let’s hope maintenance was kept up.” He eased the door open. No rusty hinge noises. He smiled and squatted and poked his head in. Stood and motioned Davie to follow.

  The landing inside the door was about a metre above the warehouse floor. It wasn’t the most attractive piece of real estate Nick had ever seen. The lighting was harsh, provided by a few halogen lights hung from the bare roof.

  They cast long dark shadows behind the stack of crates about 20 metres from where Nick and Davie stood. Voices could be heard on the other side.

  The walked carefully down the metal stairs to the floor and crept quietly to the crates. The voices on the other side were clearer now.

  Davie nudged Nick and leaned close to his ear. “Recognise that voice?” he whispered.

  Nick nodded and let out a low growl. “That arsehole. I owe him.”

  “Hey, hey. There are three of them. Still. Remember how the last time turned out? Let’s get out of here.”

  Nick held up his hand. The talking on the other side of the crates had stopped. “Too late, I think.”

  The three men came around the corner of the crates.

  “Hi guys,” said Davie. “Don’t suppose we can talk our way out of this?”

  The taller of the three shook his head. He wore a dirty T-shirt, denims and square-toed boots, and had an Iron Cross tattoo on his neck. “Persistent little shits, aren’t you?” He advanced slowly toward Nick and Davie. “How’s the pumpkin, champ? You didn’t learn a lesson, did you?”

  Nick brushed his hand over the top of his head. “I owe you at least one.”

  The big guy chuckled. “Hate to do this, really, but there’s a lot at stake.”

  Nick and Davie walked backwards, keeping their distance.

  “Why’d you burn the car?”

  The tall guy smiled. “No idea what you’re talking about.”

  “What is all this stuff?” asked Nick. He knocked on one of the crates as he backed up. “Label says battery cells. These meant for Dvorak?” He shook his head. “You’re stealing battery cells? I thought this was some complicated scheme and it’s just a stupid, simple theft?” He laughed. “I’m tearing through the financials, hacking into people’s computers, up all night working on this shit and you’re stealing bloody batteries? I’m really disappointed.”

  “Not as disappointed as you’re going to be.”

  “I don’t even know your names.” Nick and Davie were back-pedalling pretty fast now. “Huey, Dewey and Louie?”

  “Snap, Crackle and Pop, I think,” said Davie. “Snap is pretty big. You take him and I’ll try out Crackle and Pop.”

  Snap laughed. “This is going to be over so fast.”

  Davie turned. “Run, Nick.”

  Nick sprinted after his large friend. “Good idea.”

  Davie made it to the door and clattered down the stairs on the outside. Nick was a step from the door when he was caught from behind. Someone grabbed his legs and he fell forward. He managed to get his arms up in front of his face before he hit. He felt something go in his left forearm.

  He twisted to his back. ‘Snap’ had him by the ankles and was dragging him onto the floor. He tried kicking, but Snap was too strong. “Come on, man. This isn’t going to end well for you.”

  Snap chuckled. “Definitely not going to end well for you and your friend.” He let go of Nick’s legs. “Your nose usually get you into a lot of trouble?”

  Nick lashed out and tried to kick Snap’s lower leg. He missed and as Snap backed up Nick rolled to his knees and scrabbled to his feet, favouring his left arm. He turned and backed against the crates. “Whoa, big guy. Theft will get you in a little bit of trouble, but killing us will put you in Long Reef for the rest of your life.”

  Snap laughed, slowly advancing on Nick. “If they catch me. And they won’t. Our tracks are covered pretty well.”

  “Who’s helping you on the inside?”

  Snap swung a fist at Nick who ducked out of the way. The wayward fist connected with the crate, splintering the wood. Nick danced out of the way and ran for the open loading dock door.

  Davie ran in front of the loading bay door as Nick reached it. “Move it, mate. These guys aren’t screwing around.”

  The loading bay was about a metre above the road. As Davie ran to the left Nick saw his two pursuers gaining on him coming in
from the right. He grimaced. “I’m going to regret this.”

  He timed his run to catch the one tunning in front, either Crackle or Pop. Didn’t matter which. They both needed to be stopped. He launched himself, spread eagle, misjudging the timing by a split second. He flew between the two, missing them both with the bulk of his weight, but catching them both with his forearms.

  That was enough to knock them off their feet, but not enough to cause injury. Not the kind of injury Nick sustained. His hands hit the ground first. Specifically his left hand. The forearm finished breaking with an audible snap. “Son of a bitch!”

  He skidded along the pavement, his broken arm pinned under his body. Crackle and Pop rolled to their feet laughing.

  Nick rolled on to his back cradling his arm. Crackle and Pop were advancing on him. Davie had stopped running away and was coming back to help him.

  Snap jumped off the loading dock, a length of pipe in his hand. “We’re finishing this now, kids.” He raised his arm to strike Nick.

  Davie crash tackled him and drove him sideways, the swing missing Nick, and the pipe clattering across the asphalt. Snap attempted to stand while Davie kneed him in the ribs.

  Snap grabbed Davie’s leg and flipped him on his back. “You guys never seem to learn.“ He kicked Davie in the ribs. “Boys, finish Nick off and help me with this lard arse when you’re done.”

  Nick was curled in the foetal position, protecting his head and neck with his right arm, his left arm cradled against his body. Kicks pummelled his body. Someone tried to lift him by his arm, but he pulled it free and tried to scramble away.

  The loud roar of a diesel engine drowned out the yelling and screaming and kicking as it swung into the warehouse’s loading area. The front fender of a Land Rover glanced off Snap’s torso, sending him tumbling across the ground. Crackle and Pop grabbed him and ran to their motorcycles..

  The driver’s window rolled down. “Get in the truck,” yelled Kirra.

  Davie helped Nick into the back seat and pulled the door shut. “He needs to get this arm looked at.”

  Kirra looked at the warehouse, then grimaced and nodded. “Ok. Buckle up. I’ll come back here after.”