Batteries Not Included

by Tony McFadden

  Sam frowned. “No. Walter and I are starting up an indoor paintball facility. The lease is in my company name. We expect to be up and running in about three months. It’s empty in there right now. I’ve got a lot of shopping to do.” She jammed her hands in her pockets and thrust her chin forward. “To my original question, what are you doing here?”

  Kirra pushed forward. “I’m checking out the interior.”

  Walter stepped in front of her with his hands up. “I normally don’t hit women, but I’m about to make an exception.”

  “Watch it, mate.” Mike stepped up beside Kirra. “You’re not that big.”

  Davie stood beside Mike.

  Nick looked at Walter and Sam. Shook his head. “Something feels off. Where are the other two?”

  He took the laptop and checked the videos. “Hey, these two are stalling. The other two are shoving crates into the truck out back.”

  “Outta my way.” Mike shoved Walter in the chest, staggering him back. “I’ll drop you, hard.” He shoved again but Walter stepped out of the way and Mike stumbled. Walter caught him on the side of the head with a looping roundhouse, helping Mike on the way to the pavement and cracking a couple of bones in Walter’s hand.

  “Son of a bitch.” He cradled his hand and hopped away.

  Kirra pushed Sam out of the way. “Move, princess.”

  Sam lunged for Kirra and Nick jumped up to grab her arm. “Enough, Sam. I’ve got enough to put you away.”

  She wrenched free and kicked Nick on the side of the leg. He buckled and swore. “Davie. Don’t just stand there.”

  Kirra reached the top of the steps and was reaching for the door when Sam caught up to her.

  “Leave it.”

  Kirra pushed Sam against the railing and pinned her. “You’re trying to destroy my company. No way in hell I’m going to ‘leave it’. Tell me what ‘it’ was.”

  Davie ducked past them and opened the door. Nick limped in after him. The warehouse was almost completely empty. The truck, on the other hand, was three quarters full. And getting fuller as the other two of the quartet continued to load it. It sat heavy.

  “Where’d you put the camera?” asked Davie.

  Nick pointed to the top of the storeroom door. “What are we doing in here? One and a half of us.”

  Davie shrugged. “I’m winging it, mate. Not too happy about it, but here we are.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s go get them.” He grabbed the camera off the top of the door jamb as he passed it and handed it to Nick.

  * * *

  Walter looked up from his rapidly bruising, and swelling, hand. “Jesus, that hurts.” He watched Mike slowly get to his feet. “What in the hell is your head made of, mate? Ironbark?”

  Mike stood and rolled his shoulders. “Stay away from her.”

  Walter held up his hands. “My final payment comes through tomorrow. I’ve nothing left to do with any of this.” He looked at the bruising blooming on the back of his hand. “Barely worth it.” He pulled his helmet off the back of his bike. “Hope to never see you again.”

  “Where you think you’re going?” Mike stood in front of the bike, blocking Walter’s exit.

  “None of your business. Out of my way.”

  * * *

  The remaining two thieves in the warehouse stepped up their pace moving crates. It was heavy work, so the pace wasn’t stepped up that much.

  “Jesus, I want a bigger cut. Where are Sam and Walter?” They bent over to manoeuvre another crate onto the handcart.

  “Skipped out on you two,” said Davie.

  They slowly stood and turned to face Davie and Nick.

  “You aren’t as smart as you think you are, if you think coming back in here was smart.”

  Davie frowned and looked at Nick. “Do you understand what this chump is trying to say?”

  “Nope.” Nick limped over to the truck. “You didn’t finish the labelling. Why are you wasting your time? This is done.”

  Mike ran in behind them. “Need any help, guys?”

  ‘I think we’ve got this, mate. How’s your head?”

  Mike looked at the one-armed Nick and overweight Davie and chuckled. “Okay. Have at it. I’ll be here if you need me.” He stepped sideways out of the way and hit the crowbar with his foot. He glanced at it, then looked closer. “Oh, this is good.”

  Barry looked at Alan. Shook his head. “I’m not getting hung for this.” He jumped off the loading dock and headed to his bike.

  Alan dropped his end of the crate. “Screw it. This isn’t worth it.” He turned to jump off the loading dock when he saw the reflection of red and blue lights. “Ah, shit.” He turned and ran to the front of the warehouse and was stopped at the door by the policeman entering.

  35

  Nick limped down the front steps. There were three police cars parked around Mike’s car, lights flashing. Sam and Walter were in cuffs. Kirra was talking quietly with Sam. Nick started limping toward them when he noticed that Mike was in cuffs also, seated on the ground with his back against his car.

  Nick buttonholed one of the uniforms. “Hey, that guy is one of the good guys. He shouldn’t be cuffed.”

  Mike lifted his foot. His trouser slipped up his leg exposing his monitoring bracelet. “It’s okay, Nick. How do you think the cops got here so fast?”

  “Yeah, well, he’s only here because I was in trouble. You should cut him loose.”

  “Not my decision, son.”

  Nick shook his head and limped over to Sam and Kirra. “Was it worth it?”

  “Piss off.”

  “Who killed Andy?”

  Sam swallowed. “That was Walter.”

  Walter struggled against his cuffs. “Shut up, you bitch. You were as involved as I was.”

  “No, no. I watched him do it. I should have reported it at the time, but…” She trailed off.

  “We’ll add accessory after the fact, then,” said the officer. “Let’s go.” She took Sam by the arm.

  “Can you give me a minute?” ask Kirra. “I’d really appreciate it. Only a minute. Thanks, Sandy.”

  “No problem, Kir.”

  Nick leaned close to Kirra. “You know her?”

  “School friend.” Kirra leaned toward Sam. “Who was working with you on the inside?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Bullshit, Sam. I’ll find them. You help and maybe they’ll go easy on you.”

  “Who needs someone on the inside? I’ve got almost total access to all of the systems. Trusted IT professional, right? Not immune to audits, but all of the incriminating stuff will be deleted well before the internal auditor starts their work.”

  Kirra took out her phone and stepped away. “Siri, call Brent.” She glanced at Sam and walked out of earshot.

  Nick leaned against the car. Took the mini-camera out of his pocket and held it loosely, concealed in his hand “What did you hit Andy with? We couldn’t find a weapon.”

  “I found it,” yelled Mike from the ground. “One of you uniforms go grab the crowbar from the warehouse. Ten bucks says it was used to bash in Andy’s head.” He glanced at Kirra. “Sorry, boss.”

  “Walter kept the crowbar? Jesus, what an idiot.” Sam ignored the protests coming from inside the police car. “I didn’t think we needed to do it.”

  An unmarked car rolled into the parking lot, red and blue lights flashing in the grill. Wallace and Lin exited and headed directly toward Nick and Mike.

  Wallace tapped Nick on the arm. “You and your nose.”

  “Doing your job. Sam arranged for Andy’s death. Got her friend Walter,” Nick pointed at the police car, “to pummel him. I was just sussing out what the murder weapon was.”

  “The crowbar,” yelled Mike. “It’s in the warehouse, for shits sake.”

  “I didn’t arrange it,” protested Sam. “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “BULLSHIT.” Walter’s roar could be heard through the closed cop car windows.

  Wallace motioned for a uniform to take
Sam. “Put her in a different car than her friend.” He leaned on the car Walter was in and opened the back door. “What’s your name?”

  “Piss off, copper.”

  “Your parents must not love you. It was Sam’s idea to kill Andy?”

  “I want a deal.”

  “I don’t think you have anything to deal with.”

  “Sam told me she’d pay me an extra 100 grand if I got rid of Andy. That enough?”

  Wallace smiled, stepped back and closed the door. “Idiot. Don’t need to deal now.” He moved to the car holding Sam. Opened the door. “You paid him an extra 250k to knock off Andy?”

  “No way. It was a hundo.” She closed her eyes. “Shit.”

  “A whole gang of idiots.” Wallace closed the door and motioned for Mike to stand up. He removed the cuffs and bent down and removed the monitoring bracelet. “Don’t need these anymore. Someone is going to need to explain to me what we’re doing here.” He nodded at Mike. “Other than the unnecessary apprehension of an out of place ankle monitor.”

  Kirra finished her call. “It was pretty clever.”

  “That surprises me.”

  “Sam has wormed her way into our contracts and accounts payable systems to rip me off for about 6 million a month. Give or take. Depends on the volumes of cars we produce.” She scratched the back of her head. “It’s difficult to explain.”

  “I think I figured it out.” Nick leaned against the car, supporting his damaged knee. “She’d skim 1000 units from each of the four battery vendors. She increased the per unit amount to correspond with the decreased number of units so the total contract value didn’t change. Kept the vendors in the dark. She did that to the four existing vendors.

  “Then she created a dummy fifth vendor. Created fake contracts for that vendor for the 4000 units per month.” He pointed at the warehouse. “She had to have someone helping in the distribution center - ”

  “That’s where Walter worked, Nick.”

  “Thanks, Kirra. Walter would arrange for the physical skimming of a thousand units per vendor before they were officially received and have them shipped here. This is where the units were relabelled and re-crated to whatever Sam’s dummy company was. Then she’d send them back to the distribution centre, have them officially received, and invoice the company. $1500 a battery, that’s $6 million a month. For eleven months. This would have been the twelfth, and last. Seventy-two million dollars, all up.”

  Lin nodded. “Clever. Wouldn’t pass an audit, though.”

  Kirra was repeatedly clenching her jaw muscles, glaring furiously at Sam. “Our internal auditors start work in a week and a half. They’d definitely catch the discrepancies between the online contracts and the original paper copies. Also, the fact there was a dummy corporation setup sending payments to an unauthorised bank account. Sam had a script in place to reverse everything at the end of the week. Emphasis on ‘had’. My CFO is going to get our IT team find it and disable it. I’ll let the auditors know what happened and let them dig up all the evidence.” She smiled. “Debating whether I tell them ahead of time or let them freak out when they find it.”

  “Well,” said Wallace. “That looks to be that. If the four of you can come into the station sometime in the next couple of days and give me your official statements, that would be great.” He turned to his partner with his hand out.

  “What?” asked Lin.

  Wallace smiled.

  She scowled as she took out her wallet and gave him $50. “Don’t be smug.”

  “Can I ask a favour, Detective?” asked Kirra.

  “Sure.” He tucked the $50 into his wallet and stowed it in his inside suit pocket “Whether I can grant it or not depends on how big it is.”

  Kirra smiled embarrassedly. “I, um, was heading out here with Dave - Davie - in my car when I was pulled over for speeding. Kinda fast.”

  “I’m not going to fix tickets. Couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind if I get a ticket. Don’t even mind if my licence is suspended. But the car was impounded. It was my husband’s. I’d really like to get it back.”

  Wallace looked at Lin. “I think we can do that.” They turned and got in their car and left.

  Kirra and Davie and Mike and Nick watched the patrol cars depart until the reflections from the blue and red lights were no longer visible.

  “Well.” Nick pushed himself off Mike’s car. “Can someone take me to the hospital? I think my knee is fucked.”

  36

  Nick leaned his crutch against the wall and eased into the chair at the desk in his study. He smiled. His study. Only a few months ago his study was a tattered sofa in front of a shit TV. Now he was living in the guest house at Kirra’s place. For a time. He had a few places to look at, but she agreed he could wait until his knee was good again.

  His leg was in a brace. Torn ACL. Six weeks in a brace -- five more to go -- and another six weeks of physiotherapy and he’d be as good as new. Better, he’d been told, since his exercise regime prior to the injury was almost non-existent. And the physio assured him the rehab would be brutal.

  He picked a ruler off the desk and slid it between the cast and his arm. The knee injury was preferable to this. He angled the ruler in an attempt to quell the itching. Another four and a half weeks of this and he was going to be certifiable.

  “You shouldn’t do that. It only makes it worse.”

  Nick slowly spun in his chair, carefully making sure his extended leg didn’t bounce off anything fixed. “Kirra! Hey, how’s it going? I thought you were heading to New York.”

  “That’s tomorrow evening. How are things progressing?”

  Nick grimaced. “The bank accounts were frozen, the ones Dvorak was sending money to for the battery cell scam, but she’d already transferred most of it out to overseas accounts. It’s unlikely more than a couple of million will be recovered, and most of that from her accomplices.”

  Kirra sat. She finger combed her hair back. “Overseas accounts?”

  Nick nodded. “I tracked most of the transfers to Isle of Man. Great place if you want to avoid taxes, but not the best from a secrecy point of view. I believe that was just the first step, after which she converted it to digital currency, like Bitcoin. It’ll be near impossible to trace after that.” He grunted. “Even though I think digital currency is this century’s tulip craze.”

  Kirra waved away his concerns. “The company will survive. But I’ll give you 10% of whatever you can recover. Enough incentive?”

  “I - don’t know.”

  “You want more?” She laughed. “I didn’t expect that.”

  “Oh, no, god, no. I don’t know if I’ll be able to recover any of it. A lot of work for no pay.” He shrugged. “Any better offers?”

  She chuckled and stood. “Just set up the new financial governance framework. I’m paying you well enough for that. I don’t want it possible for anything like this to happen again.” She cleared her throat. “But enough work for you today. I’m going out on the boat. I’d like you and Davie to join us.”

  * * *

  Davie rubbed a thick layer of sunscreen on his face and neck.

  Nick laughed. “Don’t forget your ears, mate.”

  They were standing with Cameron on the jetty, beside the 15m catamaran. “Yeah, don’t worry. I’m good at this. I’m mostly English and Scot. I burn at the sight of a glass of orange juice.”

  “That makes no sense.” Nick held the bottle of sunscreen while Davie went to work on his face.

  “What’s this about?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Are you joining us, Cam?”

  “No. I’ve got things to do here.”

  Mike poked his head up from below decks. “You two twats going to stand there all day?” He popped back below deck for a second, then popped back up with a couple of life jackets. “Wear these.”

  He tossed them on the deck climbed up to the helm. “Kirra’s below deck. We leav
e in a couple of minutes.”

  “To where?” asked Nick.

  “Put those things on.” He looked over his shoulder at the stern of the boat. “Cameron. Untie us, would you?”

  * * *

  It was a perfect day to be on the water. Not a cloud in the sky, with a light southerly breeze keeping the sun’s heat to a bearable level. Nick and Davie sat either end of a large bench seat on the upper deck of the boat near the stern.

  Kirra came above deck with a tray of drinks. “Guys, you don’t need those life jackets. It’s almost dead calm, we’re using engines and this is a big, stable boat. It’s not going over.

  Davie took off his floatation vest and dropped it on the seat beside him. “Maybe I don’t, but my boy here can’t swim for shit. Best he keeps his on.”

  “What he said. Especially with my knee. And my arm.” Nick took one of the glasses of beer. “Thanks. Where are we going?”

  “Andy’s favourite surf spot.”

  Nick nodded. “Oh. Okay.” He sipped the beer. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Nothing for you to say. Enjoy the ride. It’s a beautiful day.” She handed the other beer to Davie and walked out to the bow of the catamaran and sat on the deck, holding onto the railing.

  “What’s that about?”

  “Just enjoy the ride, mate.”

  Mike piloted the catamaran north-east past Hornby Lighthouse on their right, then turned east to leave the harbour. Once they cleared North Head he headed north until they were off Manly Beach.

  Mike stopped the engine when they were about 200 m offshore, facing the beach.

  “What’s this?” Davie placed his glass in the depression on the table in front of them and stood. “What’s going on up front?”

  Nick reached out and stopped him. “Andy’s favourite surf spot. Kirra’s spreading his ashes.” He stood and watched as Mike walked up to join her and handed her the urn.

  A breeze blew toward them from the coast. “It’s going to blow in her face,” said Davie. “We should warn them.”