Just Business (26 page)

Niamh sat at her desk, too preoccupied to do any work. She had tried Willem's number a few times but it had rung out. Unable to stay still, she went around to his office. As expected, he wasn't there. He was usually an early starter and his absence indicated that he wasn't going to come in. That was two days running.

Next Niamh found herself walking towards Lucinda's office.
The door was still shut, the light switched off. She had been missing for two days running as well.

She was on her way past Helen's office when she caught sight of Yoshi. Then, as she watched, Helen touched Yoshi's face with a gentle hand. Her expression confirmed that the two were more than colleagues. Witnessing the intimate moment brought an image of Chris and Helen right before Niamh's eyes. She flung the door open, not bothering to knock. Helen jumped back from Yoshi, a guilty flush on her face.

‘What is it with you and every man that comes your way?' Niamh asked before she could stop herself.

‘You know about Chris?'

‘Yes. Thanks a lot.' Niamh was deeply sarcastic. ‘It's just great that you and he hit it off so well.'

‘I'm sorry. I'm so terribly sorry,' Helen whispered, her eyes bright with regret.

Yoshi looked from one woman to the other and quickly stood up from his seat. ‘I'll leave you two to sort this out.'

It was only then that Niamh noticed his black eye. It was almost perfectly symmetrical, the handiwork of a well-aimed fist. It added to the strangeness of the morning. He closed the door behind him, leaving the two women with no buffer.

‘I didn't know Chris was your husband until later in the night when I saw you dancing together,' Helen explained.

‘You're not serious?' Niamh faltered.

‘I am. Chris doesn't wear a wedding ring. I'd never seen him with you …'

She sounded sincere but that didn't change Niamh's need to exact some revenge, even if it was only with words. ‘I didn't think that groping a stranger in a public place would be your style – I know that Chris gets off on it, but
you
?'

The insult didn't entice retaliation from Helen. Her response, when it came, was calm and apparently genuine. ‘It's not. I was feeling pretty low after a confrontation with Phil earlier in the night. Chris and I got talking. He was very charming. When we started kissing I thought I was being impulsive, living for the moment. In hindsight, I think I was subconsciously trying to get back at Phil by being with someone else right under his nose. Maybe I thought it would make me feel more worthy. That was my mistake – it didn't. I felt like shit when Chris disappeared without asking for my number … and I wanted to die when I saw him dancing with you.'

There was nothing more that Niamh could say. Helen was being brutally candid. And she didn't have a partner whom she had betrayed. Chris was the guilty one, the married man who kissed a stranger while his wife waited for him to come back from the gents'.

‘What about Yoshi? What's going on with him?' she asked as another half-hearted dig at the woman who had proved beyond reasonable doubt that Chris had no regard at all for their marriage.

‘Yoshi is the only good thing that came out of that dreadful party.' Helen's smile was shy. ‘I got talking to him later in the night and we've been seeing each other since.'

‘Does he know about Chris?' There was a stinging bitterness in Niamh's question.

‘Yes, he does. He knows everything about me, well,
almost
everything. We're getting married in June.'

‘Christ, this is all too much.' Niamh shook her head in denial, turning back towards the door.

‘Wait!' Helen called after her. ‘I need to talk to you about Lucinda.'

‘Lucinda? Look, I've had about as much as I can take for one morning. I'm going to get some fresh air. I'll talk to you about Lucinda later.'

Niamh went back to her office to get her purse. It was ten-thirty, time for coffee. ‘I'm going to get my caffeine fix,' she said in a monotone to Sharon. ‘Do you want me to get you something?'

‘I've got Paul Jacobsen on hold for you,' Sharon answered, holding the phone in one hand while the brightly painted index finger of the other was suspended over the transfer button.

‘Try to … No, I'll take it.'

Niamh went inside her office to take the call. Her overloaded brain was trying to do some fast thinking. Did Jacobsen know that Lucinda was in cahoots with his client? Would a reputable lawyer knowingly get his hands dirty with a case like this?

‘Good morning, Paul.'

‘Niamh, I have an important update. Denis Greene has withdrawn – he's no longer suing HDD.'

Niamh was stunned into silence.

Paul continued to speak. ‘He's decided he's going back to Yorkshire. His wife's mother is ill. I get the impression they won't be coming back to Australia again.'

‘I don't understand,' she burst out. ‘How can he change his mind so abruptly after causing so much trouble?'

‘Maybe it was his wife. Maybe she gave him an ultimatum to go back to England when she heard her mother wasn't well.'

There was a heavy pause.

‘Paul,' Niamh decided to be frank, ‘why did you take on this case?'

‘What do you mean?' he stalled, his voice cautious.

‘Denis had a bridging visa – there was no need for him to
leave the country before his permanent visa was processed.
I
know that –
you
know that – so why did you take the case when there was absolutely no legal grounds for him to sue us?' The next pause was longer. ‘If you satisfy my curiosity, I won't take this any further,' she added, giving a concession to encourage his honesty.

It worked. ‘Without prejudice … let's just say I owed someone a favour.'

‘Who?' She shot the question straight back at him, limiting his time to think ahead.

‘A guy called Marcus.' He must have felt it was safe to disclose a first name. ‘You wouldn't know him.'

He was wrong! It was obvious he didn't know that Lucinda Armstrong was married to a Marcus; Niamh remembered her saying so that night at Forbes. It couldn't be a coincidence.

‘What was the favour?'

‘Look, I'm not …' He sounded extremely uncomfortable with the direction the phone call was taking, as if he regretted telling her anything.

‘Come on, just answer the question,' she urged him. ‘I'm not going to report you – I'm just curious, that's all.'

She had him in a corner, they both knew it. He had no way of knowing if she would report him to the Legal Services Commissioner and he would find it hard to defend himself if she did. As a lawyer, he had an ethical responsibility not to waste the court's time with baseless lawsuits. He had breached that duty. Now he was screwed if he told her the truth, screwed if he didn't.

‘He owed me some money a few years back. He paid the debt before the liquidators were brought in to wind up his company.'

‘Okay – thanks for that … The morning has slipped away, hasn't it?' She kept her voice light, not wanting to alert him to the enormity of what he had just revealed. ‘I'd better go and get some work done.'

He muttered a response and was the first to hang up.

Niamh went back outside to Sharon. ‘Last call for a chocolate muffin?'

‘A fruit salad,' she mumbled, then repeated with more certainty, ‘Yes, you can get me a fruit salad.'

Paul Jacobsen stayed on Niamh's mind as she headed for the fire exit. She was getting somewhere now. There were some facts she knew for certain. On Black Monday it was likely that Lucinda had called Denis at home to encourage him to sue. She made at least one other call, to Scott, so that Denis wouldn't stand out from the crowd. She had arranged for her husband to call in an old favour in the form of Paul Jacobsen, who agreed to take on the flawed case. She was obviously desperate to get Denis reinstated into his old job. So it was reasonable to conclude that he had been doing something that directly benefited her while he was employed by HDD. The only remaining question was what?

Niamh decided she would go and see Yoshi after getting her coffee. She might even talk to Helen to see what it was she had wanted to say earlier. There was no point in going now – her head was spinning and needed a coffee to set it straight.

Her footsteps echoed through the stairwell as she made her way down the four flights. She opened the door at the bottom, taking in only one breath of the fresh air before she was winded. She looked up only to take the next blow to her face. There was a crunch. There was blood. Her whole face was numb. Staggering back against the wall, she tried to steady herself to fight
back. Her attacker was a heavyset man with a face that was hard to put an age to. His skin had a sinister pallor. That was all Niamh registered before the unforgiving kick in her ribs. She was doubled over when she saw, through blurred vision, that he had a knife.

‘Here … here's my purse.'

He didn't take the purse, it wasn't money he was after. Their eyes met over the glint of the knife.

‘What do you want? I'll give you anything you want,' she said desperately.

He didn't answer. Time was suspended as he came towards her with the knife. In those few seconds her thoughts were split between her past and her future and all that was unresolved. She had never knelt to pray by her father's graveside. She'd never apologised to her mother for the years of blame and misunderstanding. She'd never seen Aisling's house or husband or baby. She hadn't had the chance to make a future with Scott and Jenny. How ironic and sad that now, just as she discovered the courage and strength to do all those very important things, this man was threatening it all.

‘Get away from her!'

They both turned to the sound of a new voice. It was Willem, racing down the alley.

‘Get away from her!' he repeated, launching his full body at the attacker without any regard for the knife. Niamh was more bewildered to see Willem than she was at being assaulted in broad daylight. She wanted to help him but she couldn't move. Her vision became more blurred, Willem and her attacker were one. She was on her knees, catching blood in her cupped hands as it streamed from her nose. Some people were starting to make their way down the alley.

‘Help him,' she screamed at them when it became apparent they were just happy to watch the spectacle.

She shocked them into realising it wasn't some sideshow and two of them helped Willem restrain the heavyset man. The knife fell out of his hand and landed on the gully. Its metal blade shone new against the blackened rust of the drain.

Malcolm Young brooded in his office. It was Friday but he couldn't even look forward to the weekend. His teenage children were coming to stay with him. They were spoilt, insolent and self-absorbed. Malcolm didn't enjoy their visits. He felt guilty that he couldn't summon up any natural paternal love and usually ended up compensating with cash handouts. He was aware that this earned him even less respect. It was a vicious circle.

‘Malcolm, I have an urgent fax here for you.' His secretary appeared at his door, walking to his desk with precariously high shoes to hand him a single sheet of paper. She turned to leave and he admired the backs of her long, shapely legs. When he remembered that she was barely older than his teenage daughter, he stopped leering and cast his eyes downwards to read the fax.

 

 

Malcolm noted that the sender of the fax had not put their name to it. He read the three typed lines again, slowly this time. His podgy finger ran along the digits of the fax number that was recorded at the top of the page. It was an international number. Someone, an anonymous someone, had sent a fax from an overseas country ordering him to call his management team together. It could be a joke. But his gut feeling was telling him it wasn't. He picked up the phone

‘Call my team together,' he instructed his secretary. ‘Tell them to get to my office as quickly as possible.'

‘Will do.'

‘And when you've done that, find out what country has a telephone access code of 33.'

It took ten minutes to assemble the team. They crowded around the circular table in his office.

‘Shouldn't we move to the boardroom? We'd have more space there,' Yoshi suggested.

‘No. We're waiting for a fax. Let's stay put.' Malcolm enjoyed shooting the Japanese spy down. He preferred being in his office, his territory.

‘Where's Lucinda?' Helen asked her colleagues.

‘She's on holiday,' Malcolm replied. ‘She called in yesterday to say she's taking a week off.'

‘So it wasn't planned?' Helen was instantly suspicious.

‘What does it matter?' Malcolm said tersely. ‘Now, does anybody know where Niamh is?'

‘I think she had to pop out for a few minutes,' Helen answered. Her fair skin had a faint flush. Only Yoshi knew why.

With every executive member now accounted for, their eyes turned to Malcolm to explain the purpose of the impromptu meeting.

‘The reason I asked you all to come here is because I got this fax a short while ago,' he explained, his meaty hand sliding the page across the smooth surface of the table until it sat in the centre. Yoshi was the first to read it. When he was finished he passed it to Helen and she subsequently passed it on to Bruce.

‘Someone is having fun at our expense,' said Bruce as he handed the fax back to Malcolm.

‘I certainly hope so,' Malcolm replied but his tone was worried. He was a flawed CEO but he had the instincts of a survivor. His gut was telling him this fax was bad news.

They sat in silence for the remaining two minutes. Then there was a loud knock on the door and Malcolm's secretary brought in a second fax.

‘The prefix 33 is the country code for France,' she said.

He waited until she left before clearing his throat to read out loud.

 

 

There is some good news. You have the power to stop this from happening – for a very reasonable sum of money – A
30m. You have one hour to make your decision. As soon as you transfer the money to the bank account listed below, I will fax you instructions on how to find and delete the virus before it becomes active.

 

 

 

There was a moment's silence when he finished, then the room erupted.

‘Jesus Christ, this is what Denis Greene was up to at AIZ.' Bruce's voice was heard first. ‘The stolen disk drives – the missing back-up tape – he must have been testing the virus before he installed it for real.'

‘And Lucinda,' Helen added softly. ‘Her husband is an expert on viruses. In fact, he used to own an anti-virus software company. Lucinda's not on holiday, she's flown the coop.'

‘Yes, yes … it all makes sense now,' Yoshi agreed, ‘but we're too late.'

Malcolm watched them in amazement. ‘How do you all know something about this and I don't?'

His question stopped the jabbering of the team.

Yoshi was the one to respond. ‘It's a long story and we don't
have the luxury of time to explain … Bruce, can you get an engineer to each one of the sites?'

Bruce nodded, his mobile phone already in his hand.

Yoshi then turned to Helen. ‘Can you call Keith Longmore and ask him if he knows where Lucinda or Denis are this morning?'

‘They'll be nowhere we can find them,' she replied with a grimace.

‘Let's try anyway,' he said, giving her a smile.

Malcolm was extremely peeved that everybody seemed to be willing to follow Yoshi's instructions. ‘We should call the police. They'll be able to find out who sent this fax,' he said, trying to regain control of the situation.

‘I think it's highly unlikely that the police would be able to contact their French counterparts and track this person down within an hour!' Yoshi answered rather curtly.

‘But what about the name on the bank account? S Rodwell – the police must be able to track the individual from that,' Malcolm persisted, struggling to get his power back.

‘S Rodwell doesn't exist.' Yoshi's voice was becoming more stilted than ever with the clock ticking the allocated hour away. ‘The money will be gone out of that bank account within minutes of the funds transfer, moved on to a series of other accounts, until such point as it can no longer be traced.'

‘I'll bet they'll crash AIZ regardless,' Bruce said and all eyes turned towards him. ‘The funds transfer is to an AIZ account. If they bring down the bank's application software, it's likely that today's data will be permanently lost and there will be no trace of the money … I'd better get Willem out there – he's the best engineer we have.'

Yoshi nodded in agreement before turning to his fiancée
again. ‘Helen, can you also get the funds transfer ready to submit?'

‘You're not going to pay this blackmailer?' Malcolm asked incredulously, looking at the rest of the group for support.

‘Preferably not, but I will if I have to.' Yoshi's black eyes were hard. ‘We know it's not a hoax and I doubt if an hour will give Bruce's engineers enough time to find the virus. If the banks and those government departments go down for a day, then you can be assured that HDD will go down permanently. We'd go bankrupt from the damages. I won't let that happen.'

There was a heavy silence before chairs scraped back as the group dispersed.

‘Okay – a quick recap before we go,' Yoshi said to the group. ‘Bruce, you're organising the engineers. Helen, you're contacting Keith and getting the payment ready. I'll call Japan and get approval to pay. Everyone back here in thirty minutes.'

‘What about me?' Malcolm asked petulantly.

‘We should at least inform the police. Why don't you call them, Malcolm?' Yoshi replied, his tone bordering on patronising. ‘Just keep them away from the rest of us – we can't be distracted from what we have to do.'