The Ambulance Chaser Page 14

  Hardcastle said nothing for at least a minute as he skimmed over his papers and wiped his brow with his kerchief to mop up the last traces of his morning’s workout. ‘Know anything about insurance?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. ‘I know claims,’ I said.

  Hardcastle turned away again and looked to his left out of his sepia-tinted window. ‘There’s some great opportunities for us now,’ he said. ‘There’re not many players left in this market, and there’re going to be even less. Competitors are down and premiums are up. Profits are just waiting to be made.’

  I nodded. Killing the odd plaintiff or two helps with those profits too, I thought. And why was he telling me this?

  ‘Claims are down too,’ he continued. ‘We’ve got to thank the government for that, making it harder for all those malingerers, keeping greedy bastards like you in check with your astronomical fees.’

  Hardcastle was right. The planets had aligned for South Pacific. An extreme right-wing state government had reformed the tort laws, making it harder for injured people to prove negligence, limiting damages for some injuries. An equally right-wing federal government had endorsed this approach. A unique combination of right-wing politicians and killing plaintiffs who did have good claims was sending SP’s share price through the roof. Then a thought occurred to me. Were the politicians in on the kill-the-plaintiffs plan? Did they own shares in insurance companies? How many friends and associates of Sydney’s politicians own Swiss bank accounts? Jesus Christ! This could be bigger than Watergate. More sinister than Iran–Contra. More salacious than Lewinsky. More mendacious than a Tony Blair war dossier. More deceitful than a Florida electoral roll. Personal-Responsibility-Gate just might be the greatest political scandal in world history.

  As I quickly contemplated all of this, I said to Hardcastle, ‘I’m not one of those greedy bastards anymore.’

  ‘No,’ he said casually. ‘As to other stuff,’ he continued, ‘the low-end stuff like cars, home contents – money for fucking jam. It’s just the pro neg, Directors and Officers, and other up-market stuff you need your underwriters and actuaries on the ball about.’

  I nodded. I was in total agreement with whatever the hell it was he was telling me.

  ‘We’re getting big quickly, Chris,’ he said. ‘We have to. We’ll either sink or be swallowed if we don’t. We need synergies. We’re diversifying. We’re starting a banking business soon, did you know that? Credit cards. Superannuation. Investment advice. Insurance is only the start and even there we’ll crack a billion in annual premium income next year.’

  It was a simple plan. With right-wing government and hit-man assistance, Barry Hardcastle and South Pacific were taking over the world from the back of his satellite-navigated chauffeur-driven BMW. I just didn’t know where I was situated on the radar yet.

  ‘I want a movie studio too,’ he said. ‘That’s down the track, though.’

  I looked at him to see if he was taking the piss. I saw Sam Goldwyn after a two-year eating binge. What was next? A theme park?

  Hardcastle must have had times when he never thought he’d see this day. Sitting in the back of his black Series 7 talking about taking his insurance company to the world. Talking about movie studios. Now he thought he had finally backed a winner with South Pacific. He reeked of it. After so many false dawns, so many spectacular starts followed by such spectacular collapses, this time the rocket he was riding was going to take him all the way. From insurance, to banking, to a global investment power-house, to bloody Hollywood.

  While I was contemplating Barry Hardcastle’s vision of a multinational corporate juggernaut and the vital role I’d play in it, it hadn’t registered that we weren’t on the freeway to the airport for my, as yet unexplained, trip to Adelaide. We were in fashionable Elizabeth Bay, near the CBD, and had stopped outside a house only slightly smaller than Hardcastle’s.

  Hardcastle shifted impatiently in his seat as soon as we pulled up. ‘This prick is always fucking late,’ he muttered. ‘Get on the fucking horn,’ he yelled at the driver. ‘I’ll call him.’

  By the time Hardcastle had fished around in his suit for his video-phone, James Jarrett was out of his gate and heading for the front passenger’s side door. He was tall, lean and fair, baby-faced for a man in his forties, a touch of rouge on each cheek. He looked as though he’d just had his flaxen hair coiffured somewhere expensive in Paddington or Double Bay. It was cut and styled to the limit. A millimetre longer and, arguably, it might have been construed as heading towards mullet. Where it sat was perfect, however, to the nanometre, in a world where there was no margin for error.

  He got in the front seat with a barely audible ‘Barry.’ I wasn’t deserving of any spoken greeting. I got the barest once-over instead, the sort of look I’d expect a Nobel Laureate with Pulitzer-Booker bloodlines might give to an airport novelist.

  Hardcastle asked me if I knew Jarrett. I said we hadn’t met and he introduced us. I called him James. Big mistake.

  ‘Where are you?’ he demanded.

  I was temporarily nonplussed, but figured he didn’t mean the back of the car. ‘Claims,’ I said. ‘I started about a month ago.’

  ‘I see,’ Jarrett said. ‘Then it’s “Mr Jarrett” during business hours, all right?’ From his tone I could tell he was serious.

  Hardcastle rolled his eyes then made a stroking action just above his groin. ‘Don’t forget to stand when he walks in the room too,’ he said.

  Jarrett flipped down the sun visor and looked at Hardcastle and then me in the vanity mirror. He had put his sunglasses on and I couldn’t see his eyes, but one thing was clear. Mr Jarrett it was.

  Although I’d never met Jarrett, I knew something about him. Everyone in town did. If you traced his life through what had been written about him in gossip columns and the social mags, then it had been a life of everything, then more of everything. More toys, more pushbikes, more sports cars, more ski trips to Aspen, more yachts, more holidays around the Greek Islands, more women, more tutors to get him into university. And, if you believed the rumours that didn’t make it into print, more drugs than a Colombian with acne.

  Kingsley Jarrett had arrived in this country from Northern Ireland more than forty years ago with only one set of Orange clothes and two sets of rat cunning. He soon moved from the mail room to the boardroom of what became Jarrett Insurance Group in the time that it takes most of us to get out of bed. His policies were cheap, and the income they generated mainly ended up on the stock market or with the bookmakers. Jarrett Senior was a gambler, and a good one, and his instincts and his nerve, and his harsh Belfast brogue, made him very rich, very quickly.

  When Kingsley Jarrett retired, it was third son, James, who took over the business. Even Kingsley knew his first-born two were idiots. Even with son number three in charge, though, the company still began to struggle under the burden of some poorly chosen investments, and a string of horrendous claims results. Then along came Barry Hardcastle and South Pacific, with an offer for shareholders too good to refuse. Other insurers like HIH and FAI were floundering, soon to merge and then submerge in debt. All kinds of company executives were being investigated, sued, cross-examined, prosecuted. It was no time for a small player like Jarrett Insurance Group to tough it out alone.

  Part of the acquisition deal meant James Jarrett walked straight into the South Pacific management team as Barry Hardcastle’s right-hand man. Deputy CEO. And he did not want to stay deputy too long. Sitting in the Series 7 on the way to Mascot I could see that. Despite the blonde highlights, he was a Cassius who had swapped his toga for a Zegna. Sitting in front of Caesar, who looked more Nero than Julius.

  ‘This is new,’ Hardcastle said to me as we stepped aboard the jet. ‘Jarrett negotiated the lease. Says we’ll get great value for money using it to grab a stronger foothold in the Asian and American markets. Insists that you need your own plane these days for security reasons too. All this terrorism.’ He plopped himself down into a buttery leath
er seat which hissed air for ten seconds after he landed. ‘Fucking wank if you ask me,’ he then said, returning once more to his papers.

  De Luca was already aboard, sitting up excited as a child in a Disneyland Teacup, tomato juice in hand. Jarrett took the seat opposite, so I sat next to De Luca.

  We were in a Cessna Citation X business jet, I was told. Cruising speed just over 600 miles per hour. ‘That’s mach 0.92,’ De Luca said to me. ‘A mile every six seconds.’ He ran his hand over the supple cowhide of his seat. ‘What’s that in kilometres?’ he asked.

  ‘Less than four seconds per k,’ Jarrett said smugly.

  I guess you need to know these things if you’re leasing a Citation X. And I guess you need the fastest business jet in the universe if you’re James K. Jarrett. Time, after all, is money.

  ‘Explain why he’s here,’ Hardcastle said, pointing a gold pen at me before resting his glass of juice inside sculptured mahogany.

  ‘We’re opening a new South Australian HQ today,’ De Luca said. ‘Barry’s going down to open the place, talk to the press, slap the staff on the back – a meet and greet, that sort of crap.’

  I nodded, wondering if I was being flown down to hold the ribbon while Hardcastle cut it. That would make about as much financial sense to me as leasing the mini Concorde we were flying in, no matter how many trips execs did to Jakarta and LA. Then again, maybe they had found out about my proposed trip to Penrith, and had decided that the best way of dealing with it was to jettison me 50,000 feet above Mildura. I tightened my seatbelt.

  ‘We’ve got one claims manager there,’ De Luca continued. ‘Anything over 250K gets handled ex-Sydney, but he does the small stuff. At least, that’s how it’s meant to work.’ I was more curious. Did they have a transfer in mind?

  ‘We want you to do a complete file review,’ De Luca continued. ‘Everything in-house there, everything handled by the Adelaide lawyers. You’ll do that today for South Australia. Then we want you to do the same for each state, then Asia. We have a few claims coming through from the west coast of the US now, so you’ll need to look at them too. Compile a complete bordereau for us using your expertise.’ I looked blankly at De Luca. I understood a file review, but as for the rest . . . De Luca misread my look. ‘It’s a new internal position we’re creating for you. Comes with a pay rise.’

  I wasn’t thinking about money, or being told nicely to get off the jet. I was thinking, What the fuck is a bordereau? I asked.

  ‘You don’t know?’ Jarrett said sharply, swinging his seat back towards me. I shrugged. ‘I thought you said he had experience.’ He glared sharply at De Luca, who defended me gallantly.

  ‘A bigwig lawyer mate of Barry’s said he’s good.’

  ‘A bordereau,’ Jarrett said impatiently, ‘is a French word meaning, literally, memorandum of contents. In the insurance context, it’s a summary table of all claims made against us. What you are to do, exercising your alleged expertise, is to review all the claims in the areas we want you to – mainly liability, professional negligence and directors and officers – and provide your opinion on potential exposure and prospects of defending the claim. Is that clear?’

  ‘Don’t you have opinions from the external lawyers? Shouldn’t they produce this bordereau thing?’

  ‘They do. Frequently,’ Jarrett said.

  ‘We keep a lot of claims in-house at first,’ De Luca added. ‘Company policy. Saves on legal costs.’

  ‘They’re the ones you are to look most closely at,’ Jarrett added.

  ‘How long do I –’

  ‘It should only take you about a fortnight,’ Jarrett said. ‘It’s purely big exposures we are interested in. At least, primarily. More of those types of claims are coming in now, and we need this review done promptly.’

  I nodded. ‘I thought you said it was a new position,’ I said to De Luca. ‘I mean, if it’s only a fortnight . . .’

  ‘It will be an ongoing task,’ Jarrett answered for him. ‘You’ll do it quarterly, over and above whatever else it is that you do.’ He turned away from me again, obviously feeling that he’d explained enough.

  So this was my big promotion. A review of all the files. To draft a bordereau. The good news, then, was that I would not be murdered. I just had to identify who should be.

  ‘This place is fucking flat,’ De Luca observed as the jet flew in low over the Adelaide suburbs, and he repeated this as the car that had been waiting at the airport for us took the long, straight path up to the Adelaide CBD on Sir Donald Bradman Drive. Mercifully, Hardcastle took the front passenger seat, leaving just enough room for the rest of us in the back, with me in the middle.

  De Luca shook his head when he saw the name of the road. ‘Cricket,’ he said, ‘is that the most boring game on earth? How long does each match take? About three fucking years?’

  Jarrett sat next to me as we listened to this, wearing the expression of a man who’d been stuck in a car with De Luca for at least three fucking years. He looked uninterested in either a sporting or topography lesson. He wanted the business of the day started, then over and done with.

  Eric Jones, the man in charge of the new Adelaide office, greeted Hardcastle like the Messiah himself when we arrived. Each member of staff stood with the breathless anticipation of true believers waiting to be introduced. Flower petals were tossed, palm leaves thrown on the ground, and I kept waiting for some lepers to be pushed in our direction.

  ‘Eric lost his job when HIH collapsed,’ De Luca explained to me during a lull in the cheering. ‘He’s very grateful for the position. Barry likes giving people second chances.’

  It was drinks all round after that, photographers and a few members of the local press turned up, and there actually was a ribbon to cut, but my services weren’t required for any aspect of that job. Well before the minister for economic planning pulled the cord on the curtain to reveal the plaque on the wall, or the mayor cut the ribbon Barry held for her, I was shown into an office by Eric Jones’s deputy, given a dictaphone, presented with a pile of files and set to work.

  South Pacific hadn’t written much business in South Australia in its five-year history, so the review only took me a couple of hours. There was nothing in professional negligence that I thought would endanger the plaintiffs’ lives if I was viewing things from a cynical frame of mind. In public liability there were a couple of big claims, the worst being a spinal injury that might have gone to five, possibly six mil. One to keep an eye on. And it was one that should have been sent to Sydney if 250K was the Adelaide claims officers’ limit. Other than that it was the usual series of modest claims, each looking much like the other.

  Lunch was at a winery restaurant in the Adelaide foothills. I was asked along by Hardcastle after giving Jarrett a brief rundown on what I’d read. The table we were given had sweeping views over the whole of the city, south to north, hills to the sea.

  Hardcastle ordered steak, and Jarrett, fish, which somehow summed them up, and there was some testiness over whether it would be white or red. In the end Hardcastle ordered a Barossa shiraz, and Jarrett a Clare Valley riesling. I wasn’t consulted on wine, but I didn’t care, anyway. I’d become a cask man of late. Which sort of summed me up.

  After lunch I was sent to review files at the two law firms that did South Pacific’s work in Adelaide, but they had already prepared summaries for me, and there didn’t appear to be any nasty claims surprises.

  On the flight back I slumped in my leather seat and tried to go to sleep. I couldn’t. That spinal injury case from the pool accident. Why hadn’t it been sent to Sydney, or at least to the external lawyers? Then I started to think about my trip to Penrith on Friday. What did I think I’d find? What the hell was I doing? Were these people, Hardcastle, Jarrett, no doubt others, perhaps even De Luca . . . could they really be . . . nah, it was absurd. I was the victim of a modern phenomenon. I was turning coincidence into conspiracy. An unlucky but innocent series of events into a corrupt and murderous plan. Who kno
ws where this madness could lead? Next thing I’d be suggesting our newspapers are full of right-wing opinion pieces. Governments might have lied to us. Refugees aren’t terrorists. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation isn’t part of a left-wing media bias. Holy cow, if I didn’t watch out I could turn into a complete loon.

  I looked over at them in their seats. Jarrett’s eyes were closed, but I could tell he wasn’t asleep. He was scheming something. I could still see Cassius with blonde highlights. Hardcastle had his glasses nestled down low on his nose and continued to look grimly at figures. I saw Nero again, this time in his chair in the Colosseum, giving the Gladiator the thumbs down.

  Suddenly I wondered what they saw when they looked at me. Why the hell was I here in this jet? Taken to Adelaide? Given this bordereau thing to prepare, given a pay rise, whatever it was going to be? What they saw was an ex-lawyer. A scandal over herbal remedies. A Securities Commission prosecution and conviction. Criminal charges still a possibility. My father also on charges, in breach of bail, disappearing up north. There was my tax prosecution, then I was disbarred.

  Jesus Christ, I thought, no wonder I was recruited. Of course they want to promote me. I was the number one draft pick for any criminal enterprise. They thought I was a crook.

  Seventeen

  Maybe I was a crook.

  I had never paid much attention to my father’s business. I became a director of his company with a shrug, accepted cheques from time to time with a soft ‘thanks’, and rarely asked any questions. Opening more stores made sense. Expanding into herbal remedies seemed almost obvious. He knew what he was doing. There was no need to burden myself unnecessarily with corporate or directorial responsibilities. I was just a name on a piece of paper. On a director’s register. On a guarantee. What was the difference?