by Garry Disher
‘The prick’s lying,’ Jack had said after the trial, his arm around Impey. ‘Am I responsible for fluctuations in the market? Is it my fault I’ve been betrayed by people close to me?’ There’d been a tone in Jack’s voice.
Impey said, ‘I won’t let you down.’
‘Jesus, mate, no,’ Jack said, appalled. ‘You’re one of the good ones.’ And a couple of seconds later, he was sobbing. He was on the ropes. No cashflow—temporary, mind you—but he still needed to service his loans, had to pay the lawyers. He’d grabbed Impey’s arm, his face wretched: Who’d look after Lynx if he ended up in jail?
‘I will,’ Impey said. Then added, ‘I mean, I’ll make sure she’s okay.’
‘I’ve decided to start selling off some extras,’ Jack said. ‘Paintings, jewellery, the boat.’
‘The boat?’
Windward Passage, a beautiful ocean-going Alaska for which Tremayne had paid more than a million dollars. Impey had been on board many times: cocktail parties, touring through the Whitsundays…
‘We’ve had some great times on it, haven’t we? You, me and Lynx. But it’s an extravagance, given the current situation. I’ve got no choice.’
Feeling a strange burning inside, Impey had said: ‘I’ll buy it off you.’
Jack was astounded. ‘Mate! No. Surely not.’
‘I’ve lusted after that boat.’
‘Well, she is a beauty. But—no offence, mate—you’re no sailor.’
That had done it for Mark Impey. ‘I can learn,’ he’d said, and the next day he began transferring $995,000 into various trading accounts, per Jack’s instructions.
It felt satisfying, helping out friends in need. He hadn’t been quite so quick to acknowledge his other feelings—the kudos that came with owning a boat in the small Newcastle business community; how he could keep Lynx—Jack and Lynx—close with the occasional cruise.
But now it was two months later and he’d yet to take Windward Passage for a spin. First there’d been a contaminated meat scare at one of his abattoirs, then he’d thought how foolish he’d look to Lynx—Lynx and Jack—if he took them out on the boat and didn’t know how to sail it. And he’d had to help his mother sort out her investments.
His mother. She’d met Jack and been charmed by him, and two weeks ago had asked Impey to invest a hundred thousand dollars of her savings in Tremayne Growth Capital. He’d checked in with Jack.
‘It’s safe, right?’
Jack had looked him in the eye, a study in candour. ‘I made you money, right?’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘A lot of money in a very short time, correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘A lot of people a lot of money.’
‘True.’
‘I made you a lot of money, Mark,’ Jack said, and then a pause full of significance before he added: ‘And yet for whatever reason—and I’m not quibbling or querying your judgment—you decided to withdraw your capital last year and invest in blue chips.’ He’d held up his hands as if to soften the criticism. ‘No offence, not everyone’s got the balls for the cut and thrust of the marketplace. But if you had stuck with me, would you have got your panties in a twist about a temporary correction? No. You’re too experienced for that, you know about market trends. A bit of loyalty, mate, that’s what’s needed. I made a lot of people a lot of money, and this is how they pay me back?’
Impey had gone home afterwards wondering if Jack was trying to shame him into reinvesting. When really the bloke should have shown a bit of gratitude.
Then last week he’d come to Impey saying, ‘They’re circling me, mate. I can feel the bastards closing in. I’m telling the truth, but no one listens. A little bit of reassurance from an independent source such as yourself would go a long way…I need to get through this shit so I can go back to making money for people again.’
And so Impey had spent recent days quieting some of the rumbling. He’d visited investors, made phone calls, sent emails, he’d even gone on TV for Jack, stating that he’d seen, with his own eyes, bank transfers and receipts related to the so-called missing millions. It was tied up in a blind trust overseas; people shouldn’t fret.
It was exhausting, if partly rewarding: he’d given $9,900 to two elderly, distressed creditors left in the lurch when their dividends had lapsed. Jack knew and was grateful. ‘My own funds are tied up as you know, or I’d have paid them myself.’
But it was time to admit to himself that a warning voice had been sounding in his head even before the Probity Commission man’s visit. He’d had trouble sleeping, he couldn’t concentrate; today he’d felt like a fraud when trying to reassure investors. He didn’t want to be seen as disloyal, and he certainly wasn’t about to turn on Jack; but thank God he’d withdrawn his own investments that time. Otherwise he might be broke now. No house bought for three million and now worth five million. No yacht. No cattle property on the Clarence River. No half share in a resort at Mount Tambourine…
First thing in the morning he’d tell his mother not to invest in any of the Tremayne companies.
HE CROSSED TO HIS front window and watched the moon-streaked ocean, the running lights on a passing freighter out there in the darkness. When he’d first met Jack, back in 2015, Lynx had been there: gracious, stylish, aloof. She had class. And as the years had gone by and he saw more of her, her cool shell had seemed to melt. There was nothing between them; she was married. And yet there was, somehow, something between them.
Like the other evening. Impey could still feel the exquisite pain of Lynx Tremayne taking his bottom lip between hers in a brief, tugging hello kiss—then Jack had shown up and he’d had to stand there enduring their husband and wife kiss, their laughs and murmurs and in-jokes, thinking he should probably just go home and wondering if they’d share a laugh about him if he did.
Then the alarms had started up all along the street, and Jack went tense. ‘What do you bet it’s the feds, tripping over their own feet?’
Impey had left soon afterwards. And that look Lynx gave him as he left…Sorry, Mark, come see me again soon.
Impey pictured Windward Passage tossing gently at anchor. God, he’d sail off with Lynx Tremayne right there and then if he could. If she would. And sometimes, when she gave him that sleepy-eyed look, he almost thought she would. There was something of the vagabond about her, under the classy veneer. He could see her on deck or on an island, no knickers or bra, a filmy cotton sundress. Bare brown feet. An all-over tan. Hungry for him.
Lynx and her unfathomable secrets. His mate’s wife. A guy he admired—kind of.
Who might be preparing to run—with the money I gave him.
It was a night of sounds and shadows, but Impey had second thoughts about pouring another scotch. He grabbed his car keys.
WYATT WATCHED.
Mark Impey had seemed jittery just now. Not a strong man. Easily manipulated. If he had Jack Tremayne’s money for safekeeping, it would panic him to think the Probity Commission knew about it. Doubt, once introduced, works on a person. Wyatt imagined the voice in Impey’s head: Jack’s crooked, Jack’s going to run.
Will he go to the money?
As if on cue, the garage door rose. The Range Rover backed out. Wyatt waited until Impey was a hundred metres down the street before activating the tracker and pulling out, headlights off. Impey turned, turned again. When the Range Rover was briefly out of sight, Wyatt switched on his lights. He followed Impey north-east on Memorial Drive and north on a series of smaller streets that took him to the other side of the spit of land, to Hunter Street and the marina. A tortuous route. But not the sudden spurts, turns and doubling back of a man shaking a tail, thought Wyatt: this was a man fretting on what he should do next.
The Range Rover pulled into the marina carpark. Impey got out and by the time Wyatt had parked and entered the area he’d vanished. A couple of hundred vessels, many docked, others stored. Pontoons. Fuel bowsers. Canoes and paddleboats for hire. Restaurants.
People were about—boat owners, diners, security staff. Wire fences and locked access to the moored yachts. Wyatt retreated. He returned to his car and watched the Range Rover. Impey appeared half an hour later, empty-handed, and Wyatt followed him back to Merewether Beach, thinking of his own next moves.
22
MARK IMPEY HADN’T FOUND anything on Windward Passage last night. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for. So many storage places on board, mostly nautical gear.
He needed to try something else, and by 9 a.m. Friday was on a flight to Sydney. There were private inquiry agents in Newcastle, but it wasn’t impossible that word would get back to Jack. Or Lynx.
Reaching McQueen and McQueen in Glebe, he filled out the paperwork while a receptionist watched, and was eventually shown in to see Carmel McQueen. ‘Which McQueen are you?’ he joked.
If he thought that might break the ice, he was mistaken. ‘The wife,’ she said, a taut woman in her forties with short hair, clipped nails and the humourless air of a fitness fanatic. ‘I handle financial, my husband handles personal deceit.’
This was fascinating to Impey. ‘Personal, like a wife or a husband having an affair?’
‘Bulk of our work. That and workplace dishonesty—fake credentials, pilfering. But your application’—she waved it at Impey—‘says you want a financial rundown of a man named Tremayne.’
‘Correct.’
‘Hence you get me, not my husband.’ She paused. ‘Ex-Fraud Squad.’
‘Good.’
She thrummed with energy and still hadn’t smiled. ‘I know who Jack Tremayne is.’
Impey said cautiously, ‘Okay…’
‘Not a problem,’ she said, dismissing it. ‘How deep?’
‘Sorry?’
‘By lunchtime today I can have everything that’s on public record. Or I take a week and you’ll know where he buys his socks and how much he had in his piggybank when he was six years old.’
Impey felt like he was being steered. But time was of the essence. ‘What about if I pay you to spend all of today and get what’s on public record and as much, er, hidden stuff as you can?’ Carmel McQueen considered. ‘Come back at four.’
NEEDING TO BE CLOSE to the main players, able to track their movements, Wyatt had moved to a small boutique hotel, a converted warehouse, near the waterfront. You needed serious money to stay there, and if you had serious money you probably weren’t a man who sneaked through windows and stole things. He was invisible for now.
He’d eaten breakfast at 6 a.m. and by eight he was tracking Mark Impey again. The airport. He watched Impey board a plane bound for Sydney. No luggage: a day trip, but there was no point in waiting around. He drove back to the city. He didn’t feel frustrated, exactly—he always worked without emotion—but shadowing Tremayne and his wife and associates was work of a diffuse kind, necessary but unlikely to amount to much. Likewise bailing up DeLacey and Impey in the guise of a Probity Commission investigator: psychological manoeuvring. An inexact science in which moods and personality came into play.
He needed to search Impey’s boat. Use his hands and his eyes and his brains to find Tremayne’s running-away stash.
By mid-morning he was at the marina. It was risky here, a busy world of marine security, tourists, sailors; the yachts rolling at anchor, the ping of rigging against the clean, stalk-like masts. But he felt more focused, calmer and more competent than he had for days. He hated inactivity, waiting. It induced a lethargy that would surely bring him down one day.
This time Wyatt was an experienced outdoorsman with money. Expensive windproof jacket, trousers and sailor’s jumper, a beanie on his head and a big Nikon with a long lens around his neck. Glasses again, to divert attention from his eyes. He’d noted the escape points—too many of them, if he counted the paths, the grassy areas and the harbour waters. No law nearby, that he could see.
‘Beautiful day,’ a voice said.
It wasn’t, not especially. A chilly day, with a gusting wind. But Wyatt knew what the man meant: the good-to-be-alive quality of an autumn day with direct sunlight and a brisk wind. He turned and smiled and said, ‘That it is.’
A man of retirement age with a veiny nose faced him. Overalls, a greasy beanie and a high-vis jacket, Security stamped on the chest. ‘Help you?’
‘I’m in the market for a cabin cruiser,’ Wyatt said. ‘Oceangoing, not a little sheltered-waters job.’
‘Okay…’
‘Like this.’
The camera was digital. Wyatt had taken photographs of Alaska 49, Conquest, Sea Ray and Riviera yachts from an online brokerage site and cropped the captions. He turned the little screen to the security guard, scrolled through.
‘You didn’t take these here.’
Wyatt shook his head. ‘No, just got in this morning. I’ve been up and down the east coast, looking. Byron, Coffs, Noosa, Gold Coast…’
The guard cast a look over his marina. ‘This is all your smaller stuff,’ he said, gesturing at the rows of small, single-masted yachts. ‘Your weekend shore huggers. Bigger stuff’s over there.’
He pointed. Wyatt had already spotted the great, gleaming hulls and raked superstructures. There was no easy access to that area of the marina, however, with locked gates on the network of fixed and floating docks.
‘Can’t get in there by any chance?’
‘Sorry, no. Anyway, none of them are for sale, far as I know.’
‘It’s just so I can take photos to show the wife.’
‘You’ve got all you need there in your camera,’ the guard said. ‘Nothing new to see here.’
‘No worries.’ Wyatt didn’t push it. He might be remembered for an hour or so; if he kicked up a fuss he’d be remembered for a lot longer than that. He strolled back towards the foreshore footpaths, and when he looked back a young Chinese couple was asking the guard to take their photograph with the tossing masts behind them.
GREG MUECKE, STILL IN Sydney, was at his desk rereading the Stratus file, noting the names and numbers of Fraud Squad, Probity Commission and Newcastle plainclothes investigators. He called the Newcastle police station first, asked for a detective sergeant named Agostino, and was told that Agostino would call back via the Parramatta switchboard: ‘For all we know, you’re working for the Telegraph.’
A few minutes later, Agostino was on the line, a light young voice telling Muecke about Jack Tremayne’s business partner: ‘As far as we could tell, Roden was completely wiped out. Had to sell his house, Range Rover, Coffs Harbour beach shack, stocks and shares, liquidated everything. It all went on fines and legal bills.’
‘Tremayne himself?’
‘A different kettle of fish. We haven’t found hidden assets of any kind, but that’s not to say they don’t exist.’
‘How’s he managing for money?’
‘He’s started selling assets. But it looks like he thinks the case against him’ll fold—he’s not trying too hard. Sold his yacht, but that’s about it.’
‘So he’s not skint yet.’
‘He cries poor, but he’s slippery.’
‘Will he stick around?’
‘After he goes to prison, do you mean?’
‘Will he stick around if he’s charged?’
After a beat, Agostino said, ‘Do you know something we don’t?’
‘Not really. A guy I’ve been interested in down here managed to show up in one of your surveillance photos.’
‘Which photo? Got your copy there?’
They spent a minute matching the case-file number, photo number, date stamp and general description, and Agostino said, ‘This guy. We only saw him once. Decided he was just some random pedestrian. What’s his name? What’s he done? Should we be worried?’
‘Don’t know his name, and I’m not even sure if he’s done or about to do anything. It’s just, we think he pulls the odd job for a man named Kramer, who it so happens is in jail with Roden.’
‘Be interesting to know what they talk about, if anything,’
Agostino said.
‘Yes, it would,’ Muecke said. ‘Let me know if he shows up again?’
‘Will do.’
Muecke knew he’d be going to Newcastle in the next day or so, but first he needed to fill another gap in his knowledge, so he called a contact at Watervale prison, then Kyle Roden’s lawyer. ‘You’re a tick boxes kinda guy,’ his wife used to say. And according to one of his annual performance reviews, ‘a pedestrian determination’ was the ‘hallmark’ of his ‘approach to policing’. Admin were thinking of bringing in self-assessment; if they did that, Muecke was tempted to write, ‘Still standing.’
Roden’s lawyer, a man named Sleiman, was brusque on the phone, but grudgingly agreed to meet Muecke at Watervale later that morning. He listed what his client would and wouldn’t say, and what Muecke could and couldn’t ask.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Muecke said.
Sleiman, a man of watery blue eyes and florid cheeks, was waiting at the gate. They were shown to the room where Muecke had interviewed Carl Ayliffe. The same hopeless odours, the same unplaceable sounds echoing. He shook Roden’s hand and said, ‘First things first—you’re not facing fresh charges.’
‘Good to know,’ said Roden sceptically, clearly believing that even if that was true he’d be disadvantaged somehow. His appearance had changed in the few weeks he’d been in prison. He was no longer the plump, agreeable everyman depicted in the photographs Muecke had googled. Thinner, paler, he looked permanently aggrieved, drained of his old benevolence. He didn’t trust Muecke. He edged his chair away from Sleiman’s.
‘So, what? New fines on top of the ones that wiped me out? Good luck gouging more money out of me.’
Sleiman patted his forearm. ‘Relax. Just listen to what Sergeant Muecke has to say.’
Roden folded his arms. ‘Be my guest.’
Muecke said carefully, ‘I understand that you have formed a friendship with an inmate named Samuel Kramer.’
Roden went very still. ‘No comment.’
‘Kyle,’ Sleiman said.
