Good Money (16 page)

‘Oh please, don't bother. I really don't feel like tea.'

He shrugged and ambled over to the TV. The DVD was still paused. ‘Me and Marigold love
The Lord of the Rings
.'

‘Marigold?' I said, and closed the laptop.

‘My daughter. She's with her mum this week.'

‘How old?'

‘Ten.'

‘Nice age.' Nerds and ten-year-olds liked Tolkien. In a year or two, Marigold would probably rather die than watch wizards and orcs. She'd be Skyping and sexting and shopping and getting her nails done at Superlative Skin Sensations. She'd be asking for tatts and face piercings and tickets to Lady Gaga. Then God-knows-what. I dumped all the blankets in my room and went to the bathroom, took another dose of painkillers and grabbed a bunch of tissues. When I came back, he was sitting on the sofa. ‘Colour's gone.'

‘I know.'

‘This bit's great. The ghosts close in. It looks hopeless — then he whips out the sword.'

‘
Andúril,
' I said.

‘Flame of the West,' he responded.

He looked me right in the eyes and the recognition of a deep accord passed between us. ‘You should probably be in bed. That is — I'd better leave you to it. To get, you know, well.'

‘Wait,' I said. ‘Let me give you my mobile. I don't often answer my landline.' I wrote it down on a margin of newsprint. He put it in his shirt pocket and gave me a shy grin. I walked him to the door and we waved at each other. Despite the aches and pains, after he left I may have done a happy dance. No witnesses. May not have happened.

16

I WOULD
have kept dancing if I hadn't pulled a muscle in my neck and had to stop. I stood in front of the TV, feeling bewildered. What now? Sit down, finish watching
The Return of the King
? No, I was filled with wonderful adrenalin that had pushed my illness to the background. I felt better than I had in a long time, neck strain aside. I craved change. I wanted to throw the TV out the window and do something radically different. What could I do that was new, fresh, and utterly out of character? I rinsed some plates, tidied up, and decided to find the overdue library book. It was a racy read about a stripper who solves crimes, recommended by a work colleague. I had finished it in a day and put it down somewhere. I found the book under a stack of newspapers by the door and then, after tying the newspapers with string, I carried the bundle downstairs to the recycle bin.

I sprinted back upstairs and took a banana from a bowl that Ben had filled with fruit. I liked this new positive me. My illness now seemed like a normal part of winter — to be borne with good humour, rather than as a punishment inflicted on me alone by a cruel, vindictive universe. Tania would turn up, I felt sure. Mabor was out of harm's way. He would settle down now — become a model citizen — having learned his lesson. Ben was going to make it to the final three on
MasterChef
.

There was a knock on my door. I scoffed the rest of the banana — it was probably good news — and flung open the door. I beamed at the man on my doorstep.

‘Hi,' I said. ‘What can I do for you?'

The hollow cheeks in his grey face were separated by a nose the texture and colour of rhubarb. The eyes were beads of disquiet. He leaned a hand on the doorjamb and breathed hard. ‘Stella Hardy?' he wheezed. ‘Vince McKechnie.'

‘I don't think so.' My memory was not fully functional at this point. I started to close the door.

He wedged a toe in the doorway. ‘Miss Hardy,' he said. ‘Stella Hardy? Is that right?'

‘What's this about?'

He fished in his coat. ‘Vince McKechnie.' He flipped out a card, same as the one he had given to Tania.

I peered at it, stalling for time, trying to think. ‘Ummm.'

‘You're the one who contacted me, Miss Hardy. Remember?
Dear Mr McKechnie, I have information regarding CC Prospecting. Please reply to arrange a meeting at your earliest convenience.
So, now would be convenient.'

‘I said
reply
, didn't I? By email? How did you find out where I lived?'

‘You're in the book.'

That I was — I'd checked the book myself. ‘Vince, it's Saturday afternoon. There isn't a person alive for whom this could possibly be considered a convenient time.'

‘It is for me,' he said, panting like an over-heated dog.

‘You okay?'

‘Stairs. Crook lungs. Me own fault.'

‘Smoking?'

He ignored the question.

‘Bloke downstairs tells me you're friendly with the young woman who disappeared.'

Curse you, Brown Cardigan.

‘The media are not supposed to be involved.'

He sniffed. ‘She calls herself Tania.' He checked a notebook. ‘Tania Bradman.'

‘Bradshaw, she's Tania Bradshaw now.'

He nodded. ‘That's her. Not seen since Thursday night.'

‘Come in and sit, before you drop dead.'

McKechnie sat at my table. ‘So,' he said. ‘CC Prospecting. What have you got?'

‘The question is, Mr McKechnie, what have
you
got?'

‘Sorry?'

‘Don't act dumb with me. Tania had been in contact with you. Hadn't she?'

His face puckered like a slapdash Year-Eight sewing sample. ‘Maybe.'

‘What did she tell you?'

McKechnie looked puzzled for just a second and then folded his arms. ‘Nothing. We never met. She said she had something of interest, and I wanted to meet up but I never heard back.'

Damn. A dead end. Surely, though, the ‘something of interest' was the DVD, the mining report.

‘So, Miss Hardy, what is this information you have for me?'

I stood up and paced. ‘The Shine Point refinery Brodtmann is bidding for? He has real competition now; foreign companies are allowed to bid for the project.'

His nose wrinkled contemptuously. ‘Matter of public record.'

‘Yes. Okay. Fine. Well, now tell me this, why would Brodtmann fail to report his earnings to the ATO?'

He sat back and popped out his lower lip like a disappointed child. ‘You don't have shit, do you?'

Oh, I had shit. I had some proper shit. But I had to protect it, for Tania's sake. ‘Only what I've read in the paper,' I lied.

He sniffed again. ‘I've come all the way from Perth. Got on the first plane.'

I was stunned. ‘But why? Why not email, or ring me first?'

He coughed, turning a shade of beetroot, and then recovered. ‘I'm researching a book on their whole shady empire — an unauthorised biography. The Brodtmann family are very private. Wall of silence among their friends and business associates. I tried to contact Nina, Tania, whatever. I thought she might be more cooperative, seeing as she was estranged from Clayton and she's dirty on the step-mother. But she was hard to find. There were rumours she'd moved to Melbourne and changed her name. Then, out of the blue, she called.'

‘She called?'

‘Rang the paper, yes. But she wouldn't say anything on the phone. So I posted her a good old-fashioned letter, a list of questions with me card. But she's a skittish little thing, didn't want to go that way. So we arranged to meet. I came to Melbourne about a week ago, but she didn't show. I got suss and spoke to a mate in the force; he told me she's a missing person.'

The police, I was coming to understand, could be very indiscreet. ‘I see.'

McKechnie stood up. ‘
Anywho
, you don't know shit. Another wasted trip.' He started to walk away.

‘What's so shady about the Brodtmanns?' I said, before he made it to the door.

‘Brutal lot, the Brodtmanns — hardcore political clout. Litigious. But they always settle out of court, everything confidential.'

‘What kind of cases?'

He thought for a moment. ‘I think maybe you do have something for me. Did she tell you something? Confide in you?'

I shook my head so vigorously I got a little off-balance. ‘Tania knows about good skin hydration, pigmentation. Microdermabrasion. I doubt she knows anything about corporate malfeasance.'

‘If you say so.' He looked at me expectantly, as though we were already conspirators.

I smiled coolly, like we were already adversaries.

Then McKechnie cleared this throat. ‘She ever mention a company called Blue Lagoon?'

My heartbeat jazzed. The report. ‘No. Why?'

McKechnie moved his head, popping a bone in his neck. ‘Do me a favour?' He put his card on the table, a gesture laden with negative expectations. ‘Get in touch if she turns up.'

‘Will do, Vince,' I said, and walked him to the door. As I watched him go, listening to his footsteps echo down the stairs, I realised that I was shivering. My fever was back, my nose blocked, my head heavy. I was not better afterall — I was worse, much worse.

A moment later, Ben came through the door carrying his customary quantity of grocery bags, looking like a man who'd spent the best part of the day taming recalcitrant shopping trolleys. We nodded to each other for greeting. After dropping the bags on the kitchen counter, he went to the stove and put his head in the oven.

I took the laptop to the sofa and started frantically googling ‘Nina Brodtmann' and ‘mining company' — and got a gazillion stupid and irrelevant hits.

‘When was the last time you cleaned your oven?'

‘My what? No idea.' I looked up and saw Ben was wearing rubber gloves, spraying a toxic substance into the oven. Fumes reached my nose and my lungs spasmed. I opened the window and stuck my head outside for some fresh air. Ben unrolled some paper towel, which I did not know I possessed, and wiped out the oven. Then he pulled the gloves from each hand with a
thwack
and opened the fridge, taking out vegetables and something wrapped in white paper.

The problem, apart from my near asphyxiation, was that I didn't know how significant this mining report was. What did it mean that there was little gold to be found on Mount Percy? And what kind of companies were Blue Lagoon Corp and Bailey Ranges Limited?

I needed to talk to an expert on mining, someone who could untangle the various threads of businesses, companies and ownership. I knew Brodtmann now, but I felt certain that Tania had not wanted her father to know about the existence of the DVD. So who else? There was one other person in the industry that I knew of — and I was wary of him. But Merritt Van Zyl was an experienced mining magnate, and so he knew his onions. And tonight his wife was hosting a cocktail party to announce an art prize.

Ben was putting a chicken in a roasting pan. ‘You eat chicken?'

I leapt up and grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘Put it back; put it all back in the fridge. Dinner tonight is my shout.'

‘What? Aren't you sick?'

‘I was — I feel much better now.' This was a lie, but I figured a couple of hours of schmoozing, and the odd cocktail, wouldn't kill me.

17

THE TOP
floors of the Tallis Tower, an office block in the heart of the legal district, were reserved for a couple of high-end restaurants, a reception room, and a fashionable cocktail lounge called the Dragon Bar. Ben and I drove to the station and took the train to Southern Cross Station, then walked for about ten minutes. Once inside the building, we had to wait around in the foyer before a woman, seated at a desk, allowed us into the lift. The bar was on a ‘hidden floor' and the lift buttons stopped at the fifty-fourth floor. ‘It's a hidden Dragon,' I said to Ben.

My reward for this droll observation was a look loaded with accusation. ‘You sure there's food at this thing?'

‘Quite sure,' I lied. ‘Lots of food.'

The interior was in shadow, save for the economical glow of little candles dotted around here and there. The crowd was large; I could sense bodies everywhere — extravagant-looking silhouettes seated in cliques or standing in clusters. When my eyes adjusted, I searched the room for Brophy. But I found only shiny people who smelled good and purred with chitchat, issuing the occasional high laugh. The waiters in long, white aprons transported trays of flutes, and I took two. A small stage with a lectern had been set up in the corner of the room, behind it the dizzying city lights. I ventured over for a look. At this height, the city was almost unrecognisable.

The noise level dropped suddenly and I turned to see Mathilde Van Zyl bustling through the crush. Shorter than I imagined, her face was smooth, and the dark hair twisted in long tresses over her bare shoulders. The dress was a Crunchie-bar wrapper that finished well above the knee, and she wore four-inch stilettos. The crowd closed in, and she was forced to stop when shanghaied by a determined art lover. She graciously air-kissed and smooched her way out of their grasp, and continued.