The Ambulance Chaser Page 13

‘And a suit for later.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ De Luca said, ‘just don’t be late. It’s good news. You’re getting a small promotion.’

  A promotion, I thought. Me? Well, why not? I was probably making the others look second-rate already. I could see the headline: ‘Bankrupt Barrister Bounces Back’. It had a nice symmetry to it. ‘Bankrupt Barrister Brutally Bashed’ didn’t sound nearly as good.

  Fifteen

  I was early. It’s not every day you get promoted. I had no trouble finding the place. I’d mown lawns and dug weeds at two of the largest houses in the same street during my stint with Bill Doyle over summer. Bill had even agreed to take Hardcastle on as a new client at about the same time, but I’d never put a gardening boot or sandshoe inside his palace before.

  I waited by the gates that stood at the front of a long gravel drive. Being CEO of South Pacific Group Insurance had been good for Barry Hardcastle. Down the hill in the high-priced shopping district of Double Bay you couldn’t get a decaf-skim-latte with the change you’d have left from $12 million if you were buying his home. It was a Sydney dress-circle extravaganza. And if Bill Doyle was doing the gardens he was maintaining his traditional high standards – the place was a mini Versailles, and must have kept a team of six employed on a regular basis.

  It was a mild morning, and I hung my suit on the iron railing of the fence and started doing some stretching. I hadn’t done much physical activity since my wrestling match with the bat and Bushy, and once my hands made it below my knees I received the clear signal from the back of my legs that my ham-strings were about to shoot up my arse like a temperamental set of blinds. One of my Achilles said ‘no’ at about the same time. So much for a warm-up. I decided to stamp my right foot on the ground a few times to see if the ankle felt stable. My best guess was that it was good for about 75 metres. My skinny caboose was in need of a major service. A lube job, an oil change, new plugs, an engine recondition, new filters, new fluids, whatever the hell else they do.

  I was negotiating the barest lean forward to test my failing sinews again when I felt a hand push firmly on my back. ‘You must be coming with us,’ the hand said, pushing more firmly. ‘Keep your back straight,’ it added. ‘Don’t slouch.’

  I turned my head and examined the legs of what appeared to be a Roman centurion. As my eyes moved up I noticed that the torso was sleeker, more Bolshoi than Spartacus. ‘I’m Grant,’ Nijinsky said. ‘Barry’s personal trainer.’

  Grant from ‘Fit Biz’, as his singlet told me. He pushed his hand down on my back again. His choreography was brutal, and muscle fibres splintered like twisted cane. ‘He’s always late,’ Grant said, mercifully allowing my upper body to retract, very adagio, to a basically upright position as he impatiently pushed the buzzer next to the gate several times. He then stretched forward himself, so low that he could have licked the pavement if that was his fetish.

  ‘You work with Barry often?’ I asked.

  ‘Only two months, and only twice a week. We’re in the early stages of what may be a long rehabilitation,’ he said. ‘As you can see,’ he added under his breath, motioning in the direction of the top of the driveway.

  Hardcastle was a man in full. I can’t confirm that the earth shook when he walked, but a significant orbital wobble was a distinct possibility. And but for the South Pacific logo on its front, a film buff might easily have mistaken his T-shirt for something Peter O’Toole dramatically swept out of in Lawrence of Arabia. As for the bike shorts, they were an inconceivably grand fashion mistake. Imagine lycra stretched to fraying point over pumpkins and sweet potatoes.

  Without him pushing a button, the electronic gates magically opened as Hardcastle approached. They knew he was coming. He smiled briefly and nodded at Grant, then looked me up and down quickly. ‘You’re Blake.’ Not a question, rhetorical or otherwise. He demanded I was.

  ‘I am.’ Hardcastle’s voice was so commanding I nearly added sir. Jesus. He put a hand like one from Michelangelo’s David around mine. I was going to say hello but couldn’t speak. When he released me from his bionic clutch he turned back to Grant. ‘What are we doing? We’ve got forty minutes.’

  ‘It’s meant to be an hour session, Barry,’ Grant protested.

  ‘Forty minutes. You’ll be paid. What are we doing?’

  ‘Stretching first.’

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Barry, we’re supposed to stretch together,’ Grant said. ‘Before and after exercise.’

  ‘Done. What are we doing?’

  ‘We’re jogging down to the park, then,’ Grant said, clearly annoyed at the breach of protocol. ‘And some stair work.’

  ‘Right,’ Hardcastle said. ‘Lead on.’

  Some life on earth is not designed for running. Molluscs. Mussels. All gastropods. Seals, dugongs, most marine life, including beached whales. Barry Hardcastle fell within this general group – a gelatinous whirlpool of blubber. While Grant skipped ahead of us, I ran next to Hardcastle, giving him most of the footpath to quiver on. I noticed as we made our way down from New South Head Road towards the water, that he already looked to be in severe pain. We were a mile and a quarter from the harbour and half a clogged artery away from tragedy. Meanwhile, Grant bounded ahead, running backwards most of the time, still carrying his backpack. It contained a defibrillator.

  ‘Used to be a barrister?’ Why Hardcastle felt the need to talk when he could barely breathe I’ll never know. I just knew it wouldn’t be me giving him the kiss of life if this went where it looked to be heading. Grant, after all, was the one being paid. I nodded, starting to feel a bit tight around my skinny gut myself. ‘Tax problem?’ Barry was feeling the pinch, keeping his questions short and to the point. He started to wheeze from his ears.

  ‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘A guarantee. Led to the tax problem.’

  Hardcastle frowned and nodded. ‘Bankrupt, eh?’ I nodded, sucking in air. ‘Death and taxes,’ he said. And he was headed for the former pronto if Grant didn’t shut this down soon. Fortunately, we had staggered to the water, and Grant gave the order to ‘take three’. Hardcastle and I hunched over, getting our breath back. ‘Been there, done that,’ he said, looking out over the harbour towards Shark Island.

  South Pacific was a recent invention. The brainchild of Hard-castle, it was an amalgam of some small insurers whose businesses had been merged. Its phenomenal growth had coincided with the gaping hole that had been left in the market following the collapse of some larger insurers.

  Hardcastle’s background wasn’t insurance. Not according to the media reports I’d read about him. Not unless you counted the claims he’d made over the years for the odd factory that had burnt down, or a house or two that had suffered a similar fate. The press can be so bitchy writing these things about successful entrepreneurs. The Americans fete these risk-takers. What’s the matter with us in this part of the world?

  Of course, Barry Hardcastle was an entrepreneur who had, so I’d read, done a short stretch at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in an earlier life. Something to do with a property deal gone sour. Some money went missing, and a partner in the venture ended up with a crack in his skull that could not be described as hairline. Business can be brutal. In the nearly twenty-five years since then, Barry Hardcastle had been all kinds of things to, and for, all kinds of people. Financial adviser, merchant banker, property developer, and money lender. And money borrower. Big time.

  What I didn’t understand was how Hardcastle kept raising money after each spectacular failure. Banks just couldn’t seem to stop lending whenever he came knocking. Perhaps his charm was hypnotic. Usually, at least in the short term, profits were made from these ventures. You just didn’t want to do your medium-to-long-term financial planning with a Hardcastle investment in mind. The only other thing I knew about Hardcastle from the newspapers was that on the back of South Pacific’s growth he had acquired some regally bred racehorses. He had also been married three times. So far his life could be summarise
d in a sentence – four horses, three wives, two bankruptcies, one jail term.

  And one stunning success. South Pacific made an aggressive push into the market from the moment of its conception. Hardcastle, and his right-hand man, James Jarrett, wasted no time sending the company to the frontline of almost every area of insurance – public liability, professional indemnity, directors and officers, home and contents, car insurance, disability insurance, life insurance, aviation, terrorism cover, special events cover. Hardcastle wanted South Pacific to get into everything fast.

  And he was embraced for it. A few short years after Australia’s biggest insurer, HIH, went under, Barry Hardcastle came riding in on his white steed called South Pacific, and wrote insurance where others opportunistically refused to tread. He made the most of underwriting community events that were struggling to get cover in the newly hard market. He was a hero. The people’s hero. A giant knight in shining armour. Or, as he heaved before me down by the harbour, one fat knight in shining lycra.

  ‘You know Parkinson?’ Hardcastle was starting to recover, although he was still chewing on air, still looking Shark Island over like he was thinking of putting in a bid.

  ‘Tony?’

  Hardcastle nodded. Tony Parkinson was what the papers described as a ‘colourful’ member of the Bar who had a habit of representing ‘colourful’ Sydney identities. Shameless crooks, in other words. He specialised in everything from tax to defamation to removing women’s undergarments. He was alleged to have once had an affair during a long trial with his instructing solicitor, the key witness, and the instructing solicitor on the other side. Some people even suggested he’d knocked off the judge’s associate during week nine. Fortunately for him, the case settled just as his worlds started to collide and his energy to flag.

  ‘Known him for years. He does some work for us,’ Hardcastle said. ‘Gave you a good rap. Good enough for me.’

  I had appeared in a few trials with Parkinson as his second chair. He had been one of the few people to call me when I was disbarred, even took me out one night for a few beers and dinner to drown my sorrows. That was the thing about these colourful serial adulterers. My experience was that they were usually a much better class of person than you’d find sitting on the holy senate of most churches, and I’ll bet any right-thinking person other than their wives would agree.

  ‘What are you doing for us at the moment?’ Hardcastle asked. ‘Liability claims mainly? Is that what De Luca told me?’ I nodded. ‘You must be bored shitless.’

  I smiled and straightened up, taking in the same view as Hardcastle while the sun glistened sharply on the harbour. ‘I’m grateful for the job, Barry,’ I said. ‘In the circumstances.’

  ‘How much do you owe?’

  ‘My creditors?’

  ‘Yep.’

  I told him. ‘Fuck me,’ he said. ‘Hope you had a good time at least. Offer them a deal?’

  I shrugged. ‘Nothing to offer after everything was sold.’

  ‘And the cops?’

  ‘Dad was charged,’ I said. ‘My lawyer convinced them that even though I was a director I wasn’t told the details about the herbal remedy stuff he was flogging. At least, I think he convinced them.’

  Hardcastle nodded, still looking proprietarily over the island in the centre of the harbour, before turning and looking at me for the first time in the conversation. ‘I don’t know if we can speed things up for you,’ he said. ‘The bankruptcy, I mean. But we may be able to make things more comfortable. We’ve got you in mind for a better job. Comes with a pay rise.’

  My trustee took fifty cents in every dollar I earnt over four-fifths of bugger all, so any pay rise would help. Then again, perhaps Greg Stewart got a similar offer? A few dead plaintiffs later he puts his hand out for more. Next thing he knows he’s left Erskineville station on his way to a knife in the heart. Still, perhaps if the pay rise was packaged, into a car maybe, and . . .

  ‘Okay, that’s time, gents,’ Grant said, interrupting my musings. ‘Let’s do some step work.’

  Hardcastle made it up and down the forty steps twice before giving in. ‘That’s only two sets, Barry,’ Grant yelled. ‘We did two last week. Let’s go three this time.’

  Hardcastle bent over at the bottom of the steps, his hands on his knees, looking at the ground. Then he looked up at Grant, who was standing at the top of the stairs that led down to the park. He hadn’t looked like a killer when he was offering me my pay rise. He hadn’t looked like a killer all morning. The notion that his company was bumping off claimants was clearly absurd, I had told myself. Right then, though, he looked – if he could have mustered the strength to climb the stairs – like he’d rip Grant’s head off his fat-free body. ‘I’m fucked, you stupid prick,’ he said. Two sets it was.

  We walked back to Hardcastle’s place, and not at any great speed. When we arrived back at the gates, Grant, who probably had a macrobiotic diet but no idea what was good for him, insisted we ‘warm down’ with more stretching. ‘It’s vital, Barry,’ he said.

  ‘Piss off,’ was the reply that ended our training session. ‘I’m late.’ Hardcastle then adjusted himself in his lycra pants and gave Grant one last murderous look. As he let go of the contents of his groin the electronic gates mysteriously opened again, and he ushered me inside.

  Sixteen

  My suit was hanging up in the upstairs bathroom the maid took me to. In my excitement at meeting the boss I’d forgotten all about it, and had left it swinging on the gates with my sports bag underneath it when we headed off on our run. My shirt had been taken out of the bag, and someone, presumably the maid, had hung it next to the suit.

  The shower cubicle was bigger than my apartment. A two shower-head job, it was like having a shower in a squash court. I could have played in it all day if Hardcastle hadn’t said we were in a hurry. The house was so big it took me about half an hour to get from the bathroom to the kitchen back downstairs. I did take a slight detour. There’s something irresistible about a large house that you’ve never been in before. All those closed doors, just waiting to be opened. I couldn’t help but poke my nose into a few rooms upstairs.

  At the far end of the corridor, at the south end of the house, I put my head around a door and into what I assumed was Hardcastle’s study. Green felt walls, a couple of animal heads overseeing things. A surprised-looking bear and a hypnotised deer buck. Hardcastle had probably wrestled them to death rather than shot them, although there were some cannon-sized guns on exhibit as well. The rest of the walls carried a Helmut-Newton-like collection of photos of Hardcastle with the rich and powerful. There was also a grouping of photos showing a beaming Barry shaking hands with some of the right-wing extremists from the Labor and Liberal parties. Against the other wall there were photos of what I assumed were two of his racehorses. I didn’t know where either stood politically, and I went over to investigate.

  ‘You are not zuppozed to be in here.’ It was the maid.

  I froze in the middle of the room, terrified. The maid had the face of a boarding school matron who conducted medical experiments on wanton and even not-so-wanton boys. ‘The photos,’ I said. ‘I was just . . .’

  ‘You are not zuppozed to be in here.’

  I have one strict rule in life – never disobey an order when it’s given in a monotonal Eastern European voice by someone who appears to have been written in by Stephen King. I scurried past her and fled towards the smell of frying bacon.

  When I found my way into the industrial-sized kitchen, Hardcastle was sitting at a bench dismembering breakfast. He ate with ferocity, and his eggs, toast, bacon and tomato merged quickly into a swill, and were as quickly washed down with prodigious gulps of coffee and juice.

  ‘You’d better eat something,’ Hardcastle said, pointing to another plate. ‘There’ll be nothing until lunch.’

  I hesitated, thinking that, at least in my world, after breakfast there was nothing until lunch. ‘Hurry up,’ he said, talking clearly despite havi
ng the left flank of a pig in his mouth. ‘Our clearance window for takeoff is eight thirty to eight forty. Move it.’

  Clearance window?

  ‘Been to Adelaide?’ Hardcastle asked me once we were in the back of his Sapphire Black Series 7. He’d had a haircut recently, and his steely grey hair stood up at attention. It looked like you could clean a burnt saucepan with his head. I shook my own, and waited for an explanation for the trip, but none had been scheduled yet. Hardcastle simply nodded, then looked back down at the papers he was reading. He chortled to himself when he flicked over the pages. ‘These are the plans for the company bonding session this year. Last year we did that war games shit. Waste of fucking time, if you ask me. Talk about old hat. I told them this year I wanted something we’d actually get some publicity out of. This should do.’

  He tossed the papers to me. It was the blueprint for some kind of upmarket fete. ‘It’s a carnival for kiddies,’ Hardcastle explained. ‘There’ll be rides, sideshows, animals, clowns, all sorts of shit. All run by our executives and staff, plus a few pros who know what they’re doing with the rides. We’re inviting sick, crippled and poor kiddies. Plus some of our customers’ kids from a lucky draw to make up the numbers.’ I nodded approvingly. ‘It’s a fucking great idea, if you ask me,’ he continued. ‘When HIH collapsed, every bastard was refusing to write insurance cover for community events, sports events, horse-riding schools, holiday things, fetes – all that kind of crap. Not only do we get to say we’re the good guys offering cover at reasonable premiums for that kind of thing, we fucking run one of them to drive that message home – with the sick kids too. The press’ll eat it up.’

  It was a cunning marketing plan, I had to admit. And for a good cause.

  ‘Done anything other than law, Chris?’ Hardcastle said, still not taking his eyes off the next set of papers he had in front of him.

  What had I done? Herbal remedy manufacture and sale for a while. Of course, I didn’t actually know I was in this business until I nearly committed manslaughter. ‘No, law’s been it, really,’ I said.