The Girl in the Hard Hat (28 page)

Wendy was already seated in the visitor’s chair and had been discussing with Carl some of the things that TCN might focus on. She quickly cut off her words as Dan’s intimidating stature filled the room, closely followed by his sly-looking henchman. If tension had a Richter scale, in that moment it hit ten.

Even Wendy found it difficult to keep her hackles from rising and she knew the whole ‘client is the enemy’ culture on the job must be starting to affect her.

‘Good morning.’ Even Dan’s bland greeting seemed to indicate the onset of battle.

Wendy had put two more chairs in Carl’s office earlier and indicated for their visitors to sit down. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

‘No, no. I’m fine, thanks.’ Dan waved her offer aside.

But Frank – who appeared to be more keen on the idea of being waited on by Wendy than actually quenching his thirst – immediately nodded imperiously. ‘Yes, of course. White, three sugars. Lots of milk please, but not so much that you’ve made it cold. I like my coffee just above lukewarm. Like around forty-one degrees, if you don’t mind.’

Wendy momentarily toyed with the idea of giving him a still boiling black coffee with no sugar
in his lap
but then decided spite was not the answer to a quick and painless audit. With clenched jaw, she nodded politely and left the room.

When she returned, arrows were already being fired across the desk in quick succession. Carl was bracing himself against the onslaught, knuckles white as he clutched the edge of his table. He looked up gratefully when Wendy walked back in.

Frank was talking loudly. ‘Now, of course, I will personally want to peruse all your files. I want to see your licences, your competency certificates, your training schedules, your registers, your daily inspection reports, your risk assessments, your JSAs, your hazards reports, your . . .’

Luckily, Bulldog interrupted him. ‘Frank, I’m sure they don’t need to be read a catalogue.’

Frank’s mouth grew mulish but he accepted this criticism and shut his notebook. ‘I just wanted to be specific.’

‘Here.’ Wendy held out his coffee.

His expression turned smug. ‘Well done,’ he said, rather than ‘thank you’ – as though impressed her puny brain had
actually
managed to achieve something.

She ignored the dart and drew up a chair next to him, trying to focus instead on what Dan was saying.

‘Frank will definitely be staying on well into the afternoon to examine your files and your diligence in these various areas. But this morning I wanted to talk about two specific incidents.’

‘Extremely hazardous incidents.’ Frank sipped his coffee. ‘I’m still stunned there wasn’t more damage or injuries.’

Wendy ignored him. So did Carl.

Dan continued to speak. ‘Namely, the incident with the fishing boat – what I would call a near miss. And the incident with the bus – not so happy an ending.’

Carl spread his hands. ‘What do you want to know? We haven’t hidden anything from you in either case.’

‘Are you sure?’ Frank asked. ‘I’m certain Lance must have had some help with that boat of his.’

‘Lance is an accomplished fisherman,’ Wendy put in stonily. ‘He didn’t need any help.’

Bulldog turned a militant eye upon his henchman, whose trap immediately shut, and then turned back to Carl. ‘We are not accusing you of hiding anything. I just wanted to personally go through your files on both these incidents and make sure that you have completed all follow-up – and future prevention procedures – to my satisfaction.’

‘Not a problem.’ Wendy stood up. ‘I’ll go get them.’

‘I’ll help you.’ Frank also stood up quickly, as though if Wendy was left unsupervised she might try to tamper with the documents.

‘Fine,’ she mumbled.

They retrieved both files and brought them back to Carl’s office. Dan began flicking through the papers immediately.

‘So it says here you had the mines inspector out Monday.’

‘Yes.’

‘And it all went well?’

‘Because I’ve noticed the ship-loader crane was back in service pretty quickly,’ Frank butted in before she could respond. ‘Was that cleared for use?’

‘Absolutely.’ Wendy didn’t hesitate. ‘There was no damage to the crane and as soon as we put the stopper on the rails we were right to go.’

Dan continued to flick through the file. ‘And what of Dimitri and the crane driver?’

‘I did a detailed debrief with both of them, and indeed all the men,’ Wendy responded. ‘You can see the reports right there.’

‘And what of prevention measures?’ Frank demanded. ‘How can you be sure this won’t happen again?’

Wendy directed her reply to Dan. ‘Well, the mines inspector had a long talk with the men involved and made some suggestions. But I did my own report and we have tightened up our procedures for use of the ship-loader crane and, of course, that stopper is in place now.’

‘Just so you know,’ Frank said contemptuously, ‘a stopper doesn’t fix everything. Your people need to be thinking about what they are doing.’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Carl barked at Frank. ‘You eat a bowl of beans last night or something? Your arse is flapping faster than your mouth.’

Frank turned the colour of the red kidney variety as his eyes shot to Carl in shock.

‘I can only assure you that ever since that fuckin’ incident with the bus – an accident that nearly took my fiancée’s life, by the way – we have been treating the scene like a war zone. There is no measure that could be taken that hasn’t already been taken.’

Frank, who had regained some of his composure, opened his mouth to say something but Carl held up his hand for silence.

‘And as for the fishin’ thing. There has been no other incident like it on or under the wharf either before it occurred or since. Fish, or should I say Lance, was a loose cannon who has been dealt with.’

Wendy also gave her explanation. ‘Lance was fired because he went fishing on company time, placing himself and potentially others at risk. We have removed both him and his influence from this site. There is no further problem.’

‘But –’ Frank began.

‘Yes, I agree.’ Dan closed the file and stood up. ‘I think I will leave Frank here to complete the audit. My main concerns have been addressed. I would like to commend you, Wendy, on the changes that have been made on the job. I’ve seen many improvements just walking around on the wharf.’

‘Thank you.’ Wendy beamed.

‘Well, we haven’t seen your files yet,’ Frank added huffily. ‘You don’t need to worry, Dan. I’ll go over everything with a fine tooth comb.’

Dan looked at him in some amusement. ‘I wasn’t worried.’

Carl tried not to look too relieved as he stood up, holding out his hand. ‘Good to see you today, B– Dan.’

‘Good to see the back of me, you mean.’ Dan shot him a knowing grin. ‘Congratulations, by the way.’

‘Oh.’ Carl ran a self-conscious hand through his hair. ‘You heard . . .’

‘It’s hard not to.’

Carl clicked his tongue. ‘I keep forgetting about you and Lena. Telephone, telegraph, tella woman, right?’

Dan’s mouth hardened, but he said nothing more. Carl coughed, clearly wondering what he had said wrong. The client manager stalked out the door, leaving Frank to eye Wendy up and down like a chicken whose neck he was about to snap.

‘I would be happy to take a look at those files now.’

She lifted her chin. ‘No problem.’

Frank followed her back to her office, where Chub was working quietly.

‘So what would you like to go through first?’ Wendy asked.

‘Everything.’

I had a feeling you’d say that.

Frank trawled through every file on her fancy new bookshelf, studiously taking notes and photocopying some for his own records or more detailed inspection later. Sometimes, he also checked electronic files that she hadn’t printed. They broke the day up with a walk along the wharf and in the yard. He stuck his twitchy nose into every possible nook and cranny he could find. He asked her and the men a deluge of nit-picky questions and just seemed to get angrier and more aggressive as the day progressed.

Wendy knew why.

It was because he couldn’t find anything seriously wrong with their work practice.

And every time he said ‘Ah-hah!’ she would withdraw a new file and kindly point out that the problem had already been identified and was being fixed in accordance with procedure as detailed by the documentation.

He stayed late.

Very late.

It was nine pm and Frank was still going through files. Everyone had long since gone back to camp. Wendy’s stomach grumbled. She knew that she had missed the mess dinner and was going to have to run into town to get something. If there was anything still open.

From her vantage point in the kitchen, she bobbled her tea bag in her seventh cuppa that day and watched him flicking, for the second time, through one of the huge files of resumes.

She watched him pause, finger to the page, and a slow smile spread across his slimy froglike lips. He whipped one resume from the file and went to the photocopier to make a copy. There was only one word to describe his expression at this point. Gleeful.

Uh-oh
.

She set her cup down on the kitchen counter and walked over to him. ‘Is everything all right?’

He looked up as he shoved the sheets of paper into a file he had been compiling for himself. ‘I think we’re done here.’

Finally!

‘So did we pass?’ she asked.

His expression grew increasingly smug. ‘To be honest, I can’t say for sure at this point.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘There are just a couple of things I need to go over.’ He patted his file. ‘And I’ll let you know in the morning.’

Great! Thanks for the sleepless night
.

She watched him walk towards the door and let himself out before glancing down at the resume file he had taken his last bit of information from. The file was open and exhibiting the resumes of two men.

Carl Curtis on one side and Gavin Jones on the other. She sat down.

Which one did he take?

She tried to think back over the scene and couldn’t recall which side of the file he had removed papers from. She had read Carl’s resume recently because he’d just put it together for them last week. She couldn’t think of anything that could possibly be wrong with it. Carl was an engineer and project manager experienced both locally and overseas. But Gavin’s resume, she hadn’t really seen before.

Biting her lip, she withdrew the thin document from the sleeve and scanned the contents. Compared to a lot of resumes she had seen, Gavin seemed to have put in the minimum amount of information. There were no extra notes or those little personal details that people sometimes added to make themselves look more interesting or likeable. Like a list of hobbies or referees. He had stated his date of birth, giving him at least six years on her. Funny, she hadn’t thought it was that much. His marital status was blank.

Of course.

But so was the university and high school from which he had graduated. He had merely written BE (1st Class Hons) and BSc beneath his name, indicating he had two degrees – a first-class honours in a Bachelor of Engineering and a Bachelor of Science. She’d always known the man was smart. That wasn’t a surprise.

What
was
a surprise was the employment history located further down the page. He had only included projects he’d worked on in the last five years. From the high-responsibility roles he’d held on these jobs, it was clear he must have also had an extensive work history before it. Why hadn’t he listed it?

He struck her as a man who had at least ten to fifteen years’ experience. But he hadn’t bothered to mention the early milestones of his career on paper.

She sat back in her chair and thought over the various conversations she’d had with him. And a simple truth dawned on her.

I don’t know anything about Gavin that happened more than five years ago.

Her eyes flipped back to the front page of the resume and scanned the top for an address. A house in Perth. Number 3 Northberry Road, Leederville, just up the road from her adoptive father’s pub. She tested her memory. Gavin had told her that he took his R and R in Perth but not that he was from there or born there.

She was probably just being pedantic. What did it matter anyway? Frank couldn’t shut down Barnes Inc’s operation just because Gavin hadn’t given his full employment history and place of birth. The information he had provided was adequate though sparse. Frank had no case here.

She shut the file and frowned.

Unless I’m missing something.

She locked up the donga and left site. In the end, she had some fruit from her fridge for dinner and went to bed early. Not that she slept much. She was too worried about what Frank might try to pull out of his hat the next morning.

And the sleep she did have was peppered with dreams of Gavin. Quizzing him about his past amidst sordid kisses on rocky sandy beaches.

She awoke to the sound of her screeching alarm, feeling like she’d only been under for two minutes.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Clutching her throbbing head, she jolted to an upright position.
Oh yeah! Today is going to be a great day.

Neither Carl nor Chub seemed at all perplexed that Bulldog hadn’t called that morning to let them know whether they had passed the audit.

‘That man is just putting off the inevitable,’ Chub assured her. ‘He doesn’t want to pass us. But he has to, so he’s taking his time about it just to torture us.’

‘You don’t understand, Cobber,’ Wendy bit her lip, ‘Frank’s got it in for me. He’s Neil’s best friend.’

‘No wonder he’s such a dick. Don’t worry, little mate, we’ll get that phone call before ten o’clock. You mark my words.’

But they didn’t get a phone call at ten o’clock. Instead, Frank turned up personally. If self-satisfied was a smell, he would have reeked of it. He demanded an immediate meeting with Carl and Wendy.

The three of them congregated in Carl’s office. Carl sat behind the desk, Frank in one of the visitor’s chairs. Wendy shut the door, too nervous to sit down.

‘So,’ Carl folded his arms, ‘what do you have for me?’