Crucifixion Creek (6 page)

He shrugs.

‘I can give you some CDs to help you relax, sleep better. What do you do to unwind?'

‘I go running. And I help my wife with the cooking. Most of
the time she doesn't
really need help, but I get nervous with her and knives, and the food processor,
and the, umm, julienne thing.'

He leaves after making an appointment for the following week.

When he's clear of the building he puts in a call to Deb. She'll be awake now, getting
ready for the night shift that he should be on. He tells her he's taking some leave,
but would like to be kept up to date with any developments in Greg's murder.

‘Are you okay about that, Deb?'

‘Yes, sure, Harry.'

‘He made two calls from his mobile about three hours before he died, to his wife
and my wife. These are the numbers…I'd really like to know where he was when he made
those calls. Also, I'd be interested in any other calls he made in the twenty-four
hours before his death.'

‘The investigators will be getting all that stuff, Harry, but I don't know if I can
access it.'

‘Who's doing it?'

‘I don't know, but I'll find out.'

‘I don't want you to do anything you're uncomfortable with. I'm a bit on the nose
at the moment.'

‘That's okay. I'll do what I can.'

‘Thanks. I appreciate it.'

After dinner he switches the lights off in the house so that it's the same for both
of them and they dance together, he and Jenny in the dark. He remembers he didn't
tell the psych about the dancing. Over in the corner Jenny's computer glows like
a jealous lover waiting for its blind date.

‘Could you hack into Greg's email account?'

‘Of course.'

8

A couple of years ago Greg asked Harry to be his executor along with Nicole, and
the following day Harry picks her up and takes her to a meeting with the solicitor.
Her doctor has given her something; she seems groggy and passive. The will is straightforward—Greg
has left everything to Nicole—but the solicitor passes on a message from Greg's accountant
asking that the executors get in touch with him. Harry calls him and arranges to
go straight over there. When they get to the car Nicole yawns and says she just wants
to go to bed, so Harry drops her home and goes on alone.

The accountant's office is in a suburban shopping centre, above a fast food outlet.
Sam Peck is a small, rotund, cheery man and he has a bag of golf clubs sitting in
the corner of his office, like a promise to himself. This, together with the smell
of old grease that seems to have saturated everything, does little to fill Harry
with confidence. He apologises for Nicole's absence and Peck smiles his sympathy
and says actually it's a relief.

‘A relief?' Harry queries.

‘Well, to be frank, Greg was pretty hopeless with his business
finances, and I really
don't know what I could tell her about where she stands. He was a great builder—I
know because he did the extension on our house—but hopeless with the accounts. End
of year was always a nightmare, chaotic records, all at the last minute. Building's
a rollercoaster business at the best of times, but Greg made it that much harder.'

‘But you were his accountant.'

Peck waves a hand airily. ‘He didn't confide in me, Harry. Nor in anyone else as
far as I can tell. Have you met his manager? Peter Rizzo. He organises the building
side, the sub-contractors and suppliers and so on, but not the financial side.'

‘You think there's a problem?'

‘He always sailed close to the wind, living on credit, not chasing up debts. A few
years ago he was on the verge of bankruptcy—some local council very nearly tipped
him over, holding back on payments, Greg didn't force the issue, got in deeper and
deeper—came very close to going under.'

‘And you think that's happening now?'

‘I don't know, but there have been worrying signs. Earlier this year—February, March—he
ran out of cash again. Bank refused to extend his loans and he asked me to find him
another source of credit in a hurry. I ran into problems with that, then he said
he'd found someone. Company called Bluereef Financial Services, good address in the
city, Bligh Street.'

‘But?'

Peck shifts uneasily in his seat. ‘I hadn't heard of them. I asked Greg to let me
check them out but he was in a hurry, just showed me a business card and told me
he'd already agreed a deal with this guy. Well, there wasn't much I could do. I asked
him for copies of the contract documents and he never gave them to me. But the name
on the card rang a bell—Alexander Kristich. I couldn't place him at first, but then
I thought—not that name exactly, but close—Sandi Krstić. There was a fuss about him
three or four years ago, up
in Queensland, peddling property finance on the Gold
Coast. A lot of customers got burnt, ASIC was slow to investigate and when the press
got too nosy he disappeared.'

‘You think it's the same man?'

‘I don't know, maybe. Greg said you're a copper. Maybe you could check him out.'

‘Have you got anything specific against him?'

‘No, nothing. But anyone lending money to Greg at that stage was either a hopeless
businessman or a shark.'

‘So what should we do now?'

‘Well, maybe you should talk to Peter Rizzo. If you can get me their books, bank
records and copies of any loan agreements and contracts Greg may have entered into,
I might be able to draw up some kind of balance sheet and forecast for you. I'll
have to charge the estate for my time though.'

Harry agrees and makes a note of the documents Sam Peck needs.

It is raining when he turns into the short stretch of private concrete road that
serves the small industrial estate on Crucifixion Creek. There are weeds growing
through the cracks in the roadway and puddles forming on the uneven surface. At the
corner is a forlorn yard stacked with half a dozen shipping containers, and beyond
it a small ceramic tile warehouse, a spraypaint workshop, a monumental mason's yard
heaped with stone slabs, and several unidentified sheds. Among them Harry sees the
sign for
Greg March, Builder
. Two utes stand out the front.

Inside a man is bent over a long bench assembling cupboard units. There is a strong
smell of sawdust and raw cement. In one corner of the shed an office has been partitioned
off and a man is sitting inside at a table talking into a phone. Harry knocks on
the open door and the man looks up, finishes his call and gets to his feet.

‘Peter Rizzo? I'm Harry Belltree, Greg's brother-in-law. I'm here on behalf of Mrs
March.'

They shake hands. ‘Terrible business. We're all in shock. How is Nicole?'

‘Taking it hard.'

‘Of course.'

‘Nicole and I are Greg's executors, so I need to get a picture of the business.'

‘Yeah, of course. I've been trying to do the same thing.' He gestures to a tall pile
of papers in a tray.

‘You're not on top of it?'

‘Over there is my desk.' Rizzo points to it. Clear surface, phone and computer neatly
squared up, a shelf of numbered file boxes above. ‘I handle the running of the jobs.
Subbies, suppliers, making sure they deliver on time, that kind of thing. Greg's
desk's over there…' It is hard to see the desk itself because of the spillage of
building plans and papers. ‘Greg handles…handled the other stuff—clients, planners,
the banks, all that stuff. He let me in on some of it, but…' The look of bafflement
on Rizzo's face tells its story.

Harry goes over to Greg's desk and pulls out a drawer at random. It is full of envelopes
from the ATO, all unopened. He says, ‘The accountant needs to get a handle on how
it all stacks up at this moment.'

‘Yeah, I suppose so. I've just been worrying about keeping the jobs going.'

‘Do you have any help? A secretary?'

‘Did have. Jamila left last week—maternity leave. She was a smart girl. Maybe I could
ask her to come back for a week to help me out. Greg was supposed to get another
girl, but I don't think he got around to it.'

‘Things piling up, were they?'

‘Yeah, money worries. He was talking about laying a couple of the blokes off.'

‘Well, if you could gather up all the financial stuff, and maybe make a summary of
the jobs and where they're at, we can get the accountant started, and then we can
all sit down together and decide what needs doing.'

‘Okay. In the meantime, can I pay the guys' wages?'

Harry thinks for a moment. It occurs to him that he's only ever worked for the government—the
army or the police—and this is very different territory, a murky place of uncertain
decisions and unknown consequences. ‘I guess so. Make a record of everything you
spend, and send it daily to Sam Peck.'

‘Sure.'

‘Try to hold off paying invoices.'

Rizzo gives an unhappy laugh. ‘From the phone calls I've been getting, Greg's been
doing that for a long time.'

‘Any idea what he was doing out here that night? Was there an emergency of some kind?'

‘Not that I know of. Been wondering about that myself. I can't think of anything,
unless he was working on the books. He certainly didn't say anything to me about
coming here.'

On the way back Harry thinks about Nicole. Does she understand any of this? Does
she know what was going on?

9

Nothing happens the next day. He does a lot of running.

On the following day, at the end of her shift, Deb Velasco gives him a call. ‘Harry,
hi. How's it going? Those two calls you asked about. They came from the CBD, through
the tower in Bond Street.'

‘Right. Thanks.'

‘You asked about other calls that night? Nothing.'

‘Oh.'

The disappointment must have sounded in his voice, because she adds, encouragingly,
‘But he left his phone on. We've tracked his movements. He did big circles in the
western suburbs—Bankstown, Punchbowl, Lakemba, Riverwood.'

‘Really?

‘Yeah, for more than two hours. So the guys are asking themselves what he was looking
for. Drugs? Girls? Boys? Sorry, but…'

Harry takes a deep breath. What does he know? What does he really know about his
brother-in-law? ‘I've no idea.'

‘Yeah, well. I didn't tell you, okay?'

‘Of course. Thanks, Deb. Thanks.'

He pictures her, weary, putting her gun in her locker—one padlock—glancing at his
shameful double locks, wondering if she should be cutting him loose.

Jenny has found emails on Greg's computer from ‘Sandy'. Bland confirmations of meetings.
Is that Alexander Kristich, aka Sandi Krstić? Harry asks her to do a search. When
Krstić vanished from the Gold Coast there were rumours he was living in Vanuatu.
There is a Google photo from the Vanuatu
Daily Post
of him drinking on a palmy beach
with the Australian high commissioner.

Jenny has this thing. She keeps thinking about Greg's call that fatal night. About
the sounds in the background. She claims they are distinctive, that they can be tracked
down. Harry is not convinced. What blurry background noises can a mobile phone pick
up? This is Jenny's compensation, he thinks. And it's true that her hearing has sharpened
considerably since the disaster. But don't all lobbies sound alike? After some gentle
resistance he agrees to take her on a tour of the CBD tower blocks.

They concentrate on the hotels first, the Marriott, the Sofitel, the Hilton, the
Intercontinental. On and on, wandering through the lobbies, Jenny frowning with concentration,
then shaking her head. ‘Not here.' Then they focus on the office towers. Jenny thinks
there was an echo of some kind, a reverberation in the sounds, and thinks the surfaces
must be hard—all of them are—and the space large, but most lift lobbies are relatively
confined. She is excited by the tall lobby of Grosvenor Place, and spends some time
testing the sounds from different positions, but finally shakes her head once again.
Finally they reach the atrium of the Gipps Tower and as soon as she hears the chimes
of the lifts she grips Harry's arm and whispers, ‘This is it. This is where he phoned
from.'

Harry looks around, noting the cameras, the position of the information desk. Then
he goes over to the board listing the tower's tenants. His eye stops at the twenty-third
floor—a lawyer, an
advertising consultancy, and Bluereef Financial Services. He takes
pictures on his phone of the whole list, and leads Jenny back out onto the street.

They go to Nicole's house. At the front door they meet Bronwyn, leaving to pick up
the girls from school. She tells them that Nicole is very low today.

Inside they find Nicole in the living room, staring out of the window. When she turns
they can see how pale and drawn she looks. In just a few days she seems to have lost
a lot of weight.

‘There's a rock shelf just under this floor,' she says, her voice flat. ‘When Greg
bought this site we came here and clambered down to the shelf and sat there together,
Greg going on about how he was going to build our nest here, and we would never leave
it, and one day when we were old, sitting on our deck together overlooking that view,
we'd remember that day.'

Tears are running down her cheeks, and Jenny wraps her arms around her and holds
her tight as she sobs. Harry makes tea, and when Nicole has become calmer, Harry
broaches the subject of paperwork.

‘You know, insurance policies, bank statements, that kind of thing?'

‘Greg handled all that,' Nicole says despairingly. ‘I think it's all in the study.'