The Ambulance Chaser Read online

  De Luca gave an almost imperceptible shrug of a shoulder. ‘You’re assuming he was going to win.’

  ‘The balcony railing snapped like a toothpick,’ I said. ‘Your insureds may as well have pushed him off it themselves.’

  ‘Wasn’t he pissed? Maybe he should have checked what he was leaning on.’

  There had been a change in climate in injury cases since I first went to the Bar. Personal responsibility was the mantra from the benches of parliament to those of the courts. To the outrage of us ambulance chasers, our clients were being forced to prove negligence. This vast right-wing conspiracy had made its sudden and cruel appearance after years and years of successful mere assertions. My case theory, your honour? Well, my client slipped over – that’s negligence! I have the authorities here somewhere. They bruised an eyelash and couldn’t sit down for minutes. They’ll never work again. The case is worth millions. Climate change or not, we were still on planet earth. ‘It was the balcony railing,’ I said to De Luca. ‘You’re entitled to assume you can touch one without falling and breaking your neck. He was going to win.’

  De Luca shrugged again, more demonstrably this time, signalling that the conversation was over. ‘Just one of those things, I guess,’ he said. ‘Maybe it has saved us some money.’

  ‘Try ten mil for starters.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ De Luca said matter-of-factly, turning back to his computer. ‘These cripples die all the time. Young. You know, suicide, urine infections.’

  ‘Urinary.’

  ‘Yeah. Their kidneys pack up.’

  ‘The bug that hit this guy had automatic transmission.’

  ‘Yeah, well . . .’ De Luca said, shaking his head, turning away from me. ‘Who wants to live like that, anyway?’

  I studied De Luca to see whether he was joking. I had the back of his head to work on. It made no difference. Vapid defies meaning, hidden or otherwise. ‘There is still some quality of life, Angelo. Hope, too. You know – rehabilitation, stem cell research, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Stem cells?’ he said, turning around to face me again. ‘I don’t believe in that.’

  I shook my head and walked away. I forgot altogether to ask who was handling the file or why it hadn’t been referred out to the external lawyers. Stem cells. I wondered what might happen if some of De Luca’s were used for research. They might end up being construed, I thought, as something of a disappointment, as one of nature’s many unfulfilled prophecies.

  De Luca’s attitude disturbed me. The calm indifference. What was I looking for? I suppose the territory best described as an elegant balance between recognising the further tragedy of the situation and the fact that it meant South Pacific was possibly ten million bucks up. How terrible, you ripper, that kind of thing.

  On the way back to my kennel I stopped off at Clare’s office. ‘Do you know anything about a quad claim being handled here?’ I asked her. ‘It was an accident at a house-warming. A balcony railing gave way.’

  She looked blank. ‘Do you have a name?’

  ‘Simon Broun,’ I said. I showed her the paper.

  ‘How awful,’ she said after a few moments’ reading. ‘You know, I’m not sure, but I think Greg may have had this file. Before . . .’ I nodded. Clare shook her head and read the balance of the story quickly. ‘God, what kind of luck,’ she said softly. She folded the paper up and gave it back to me. ‘Something like this happened last year, I think,’ she added.

  ‘In a quad case?’

  ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘but something vaguely similar. I’m just trying to remember.’

  I was curious. ‘Would a coffee help your memory?’ I said quickly. ‘Do you have time?’

  She smiled. ‘The mediocre always find time for coffee.’

  ‘She’s very taken with you,’ Clare said after we sat down, looking over at Mrs Zanetta, who had once again accredited me with being a gorgeous thing.

  ‘You should see her when I wear my other tie,’ I said. ‘The espresso machine froths on its own and we end up hanging from the light fittings.’

  ‘I can only imagine,’ she said, pulling something out of her bag. ‘Here, look at these. Just developed.’

  She handed me a packet with a bundle of photos. Three photogenic and energetic-looking kids, sometimes with a smiling but exhausted parent or two. I made all the right noises, and particularly approved the rough-and-tumble cubist-inspired snap taken in the backyard. A tangle of kids, parents and an overexcited dog.

  ‘I assume there was carnage seconds after this was taken.’

  ‘Mayhem.’

  ‘They seem a happy crew.’

  ‘It depends on the time of day. Being their Team Leader is much tougher than anything I’ve encountered at work.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said, handing the photos back, glancing just once more at the final photo, of Clare’s husband. Something rippled through me. I had no desire to give it a name at first. Sometimes, when you’re down, it’s hard not to feel these things. They jab at you, spar with you, you pretend you don’t feel them, but yeah, okay, I admit it. A ripple of envy and an aftershock of malice. This guy had a lot of things I didn’t have. From the obvious, to that smile that looked real. An unfeigned smile. What the hell was that?

  If I’d been shown this photo a couple of years ago, it would have registered as much interest with me as a snowstorm in the Arctic. When your own life turns bitter, though, when you’re snowed on, blown about – well, it’s funny what can upset you. Someone else’s happy family snaps can do it. If you are caught off guard, if you are not prepared, if they have just sprung them out of a handbag and thrown their life in front of you like some careless happy person – they can make you catch your breath. ‘Tell me about this other case,’ I said.

  ‘Let me think,’ she said, holding her coffee cup in both hands and staring in front of her. ‘What happened to the claimants I remember clearly. It was a boating accident. I saw it on the TV news. It happened not far from Cronulla. The problem is, it wasn’t my file.’

  ‘What sort of claim?’

  ‘Fire damage. That’s right,’ Clare said, green eyes widening as she remembered. ‘Fire damage and business interruption. I think the plaintiffs – they were husband and wife – owned some kind of furniture design and manufacture business. Outdoor furniture, really expensive stuff. They were doing well with overseas sales. Their factory burned down – I think we’d agreed it wasn’t suspicious – and for some reason it was going to take ages to rebuild and get them started again.’

  ‘How much was the claim?’

  ‘I can’t remember. I don’t think it had all been quantified. I’m sure it was in the millions, though.’

  ‘And what happened to these people?’

  ‘They owned a boat. There was some kind of mishap. They thought it must’ve been a freak wave, and the claimants drowned. I’m actually not sure they ever found the bodies.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Not quite the same, though, is it? As Broun, I mean. I presume someone – the executor – still maintained the claim?’

  ‘Yes,’ Clare said, ‘but I think the case settled for a fraction of what the business interruption claim was potentially worth. The husband was the main designer, and I don’t think they had children.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘July, August, last year,’ she said. She smiled quizzically at me over her cup. ‘Why are you so interested?’

  ‘No reason,’ I said. ‘I’m always interested in happy occurrences for South Pacific that save us money.’

  ‘I wouldn’t describe these things as happy occurrences, Chris,’ she said.

  ‘No, sorry,’ I said, ‘that sounds callous. Forgive me. I’ve been working for an insurance company for too long. Who was the claims handler?’

  ‘I think it was Gary Parsons, but he retired not long after the accident,’ she said. ‘I think Angelo settled it with the executors.’

  ‘Does Angelo handle many claims on his
own?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘He may have picked up some of Greg’s caseload. Most of it was distributed amongst the rest of us, though, until you turned up.’

  ‘That Broun file is reserved at 10K.’

  Clare looked surprised. ‘That seems low for a quad case.’

  It did. ‘Maybe they reserved when I was his counsel. Reduced the estimate of damages accordingly.’

  She smiled. ‘That’s the rumour I heard,’ she said standing up. ‘And we’d better get back. They’ll be starting rumours about us soon.’

  I could do with a rumour or two about me, I thought as we left Mrs Z to her shouts of ‘Ciao, Bella, Ciao, my beautiful man.’ If I didn’t have the real thing, a rumour would be something. Not much, not tangible, not true, not even remotely, but beyond six months, you can get desperate.

  I could also have done without Clare being married, if I’m honest. But I was stuck with her and her wedding ring and her three good-looking kids. Stuck with her good-looking husband with the unfeigned smile. The son of a bitch didn’t even look like he thought he was lucky. He looked like it’s all normal. It is not normal. Normal is mid to late thirties, single, broke, humiliated, and working for an insurance company in injury claims. In ascending order of pain. The guy in the photo is a freak.

  Seven

  The opening of Edward Adams’s fourth exhibition was a perfect opportunity to ask Gabrielle Shepherd for a drink. I didn’t even have to ask her sotto voce in the RSLC kitchen. Just a casual e-mail from South Pacific. She said no. If I’d given her more than a few hours’ notice, but she’d made other plans. So much for casual last-minute e-mails. I was on my own again.

  On my own was starting to bother me. I had never been a fan of on my own, except maybe late at night with a glass of red and Bob Dylan or Frank Sinatra. Turning up to a party, or a dinner, or any social gathering, to the extent that I got out these days, was becoming a trauma. It would never have bothered me if people were saying, ‘Oh, Chris, he’s on his own’, provided it wasn’t a lifetime condition. It was the thought of, ‘Oh, Chris, he’s on his own because he’s a tax-evading convicted criminal who was struck off last year and lost everything, and, by the way, did you hear about his ex on New Year’s Eve?’ It was more that sort of thing that was fuelling the anxiety of turning up alone. Someone, anyone, was my Chinese Wall, my Linus’s blanket. Alone left me exposed, cut off at the knees, no armour, no cavalry coming from the rear. Still, it was nothing a few thousand milligrams of Zoloft couldn’t temporarily stabilise. Add a vodka or ten and I’d blunder through, no probs.

  I was about to turn off my computer when it beeped at me. E-mail had arrived. From Gabrielle again.

  Hi Chris

  Look, how about Thursday for that drink – after your advice night? Is that convenient?

  Gabby

  Convenient? Interesting word, multifarious definitions. If convenience means you’re alone at a bar, you’re single, broke, left-leaning politically, a peace lover, but who, if they had to choose between violent men, has a strong moral preference for Che Guevara over Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, John Howard or any of the Bushes, and suddenly a socialist who looks like Catherine Zeta-Jones walks up to you and asks if she could buy you a drink, then, well, yeah, it was convenient. In fact, I’ll say it again. It was very, very convenient. I strode into a taxi a short time later heading for a Paddington gallery feeling a tingle of my former self.

  Edward Adams’s new paintings took up most of the wall space on the ground floor of the gallery. As I walked in I saw that he had returned to his favourite themes with a vengeance. Surreal paintings of people being attacked by mad-faced men. There were two paintings of women, bloody and beaten, killing what might have been their lovers or husbands. There were other paintings of fights between men, and what looked like the gory consequences of a bomb blast. There was a painting of a wild and uncontrolled mob scene, full of desperate and frenzied faces. There were more paintings, men in suits trampling over miniature people dressed in rags. Land of the Pygmies, it was called. In another, a red-haired man was lying on a couch watching television, remote control in hand, while people were bludgeoned with bayonets as they stepped out of small crowded boats on what looked like Bondi Beach. Etherised upon a Couch.

  I grabbed a champagne from a waiter’s tray and looked across the room at Edward. The flaming redheaded, almost completely deaf artist. Subtle as always.

  ‘Startling, aren’t they?’

  It was Sarah Byrne. I froze. I hadn’t seen her since New Year’s Eve. A chime went off in my head. The kind that resonates when another of life’s awkward moments has arrived.

  ‘Confronting,’ I said. Like catching your de facto fornicating when she should have been watching the pretty lights in the sky.

  ‘Not exactly what one would put on one’s living room wall.’ One probably wouldn’t, I thought. Sarah raised an eyebrow in mild contempt as she looked around the room. ‘A very limited market for these paintings, I’m afraid.’

  ‘The place is buzzing,’ I said.

  ‘Well, they cause a stir, if that’s what you mean,’ she said. ‘They’re a little obvious, though, aren’t they?’

  I glared at her the way a Western Australian prosecutor would at Robert Hughes. Surrounded now by a large crowd of people, we stood awkwardly for a moment, uncomfortably deciding whether to exchange insults, sip wine, or look at art. If I had to describe the vibe, it was an emphatic I can’t stand you coupled with don’t mention New Year’s Eve.

  ‘There actually is a small and distinct market for this kind of thing,’ a voice behind us said. It was Harry. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing you.’ Sarah looked unconvinced. ‘I mean, they’re not the sort of paintings bought by someone looking just to fill up a wall,’ he continued, ‘but if you’re into something unusual, something striking, you’d be surprised.’

  ‘Would I?’ Sarah said.

  ‘Harry does all of Edward’s contracts and his tax,’ I said. ‘So I guess he’d know if there was a market.’

  ‘Mmm.’ I knew exactly what she meant by Mmm. And who did your tax, Chris? What would you know?

  Well, for starters, Sarah, I know what gets your husband aroused.

  ‘It’s the rich that seem to like this sort of stuff,’ Harry added. ‘At least, the rich and quirky, the rich and the eccentric, and occasionally the rich and the very stupid. The simply rich are more . . . mainstream. I mean . . . I guess that’s what they are. Perhaps I should shut up.’

  Harry knew what he was talking about. If he ventured an opinion, it was because he had some facts to back it up, and he was intensely practical. He had spent most of his childhood untangling my fishing line, baiting my hook, taping up my cricket bat, oiling my skateboard wheels, and telling me I needed to wax my surfboard. As an adult he mends fuses for me. Fixes a leaky tap with a washer from a box he keeps. That’s the kind of guy he is. When I short-circuit, or when I’m leaky, I know who to turn to.

  So Harry would have analysed every sale Ed had made over the last ten years. He knew the market. Offbeat bankers, or the one eccentric partner in a big law firm. A mad judge. The frighteningly wealthy and bipolar. A mad, frighteningly bipolar judge. The rich and kinky. They liked Ed’s paintings.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Sarah said. ‘I think I’ll have a look upstairs. I’m finding this all a little chilling.’ She flicked her hair and sashayed off.

  ‘You don’t like her, do you?’ Harry said when she gone.

  ‘Since when have I liked anyone?’ I replied.

  The part owner of the gallery, Helena Abbott, told us how delighted she was to have Edward back exhibiting. What a talent, how unusual. Then someone, more or less in a suit, spoke about how pleased he was to open such an exhibition. How daring, how vivid, how disturbing at times. What spontaneous, bold technique. Such haunting satire; such dark, dark visions. Such an uncompromising, keen observer of the atrocities of human behaviour. What a relentlessly penetrating eye. What a stro
ke, what a talent for expressing the horror, the horror, the horror.

  My sentiments exactly.

  Then Edward spoke, red hair blazing, mouth working like Marlee Matlin’s. My paintings aren’t for everyone, he said. Half the audience internally screamed, ‘You can say that again!’ He would have heard them too. Deaf as a post but telepathically acute. I saw the artist smile knowingly.

  After the speeches, and after the crowd thinned a little from around the star, Harry and I finally spoke to him. ‘They’re great,’ I said, which was my way of saying they captured, in a searingly penetrative way, all the folly and weakness, pride and violence, that is humanity. ‘I like the one where the citizens of this country appear to be killing refugees as they arrive at Bondi. Is that what that is?’

  ‘Close enough. Its original title was Border Protection.’

  ‘They’re fantastic,’ Harry said. ‘Did you warn your parents this time?’

  ‘The old man laughs, Mum’s still not entirely sure. See the one with the woman shouting? She thinks I’m taking the piss.’

  Every night after school we had played. Football, cricket, tennis. At dusk every evening Edward’s mother would call out to him from their front yard to come home for dinner. The first call was loud enough for Harry and me to hear her clearly. The second was louder, more menacing. The third, a bloodcurdler. It echoed off roads, off walls, and rustled the leaves in the trees. No one could have failed to get the message. Get home now. Usually at about this time, Ed would stop whatever he was doing, look at Harry or me, and ask, ‘Did my mum call?’ Harry and I would look at each other, then answer in unison, ‘No.’ We would then keep playing.

  The fourth and final call. A war cry from the gods. Vibrating the earth, foretelling death and destruction, spreading the clouds, splintering the moon, lighting up the stars. Birds would cry, dogs howled, beasts died. At about this point Harry and I would again examine each other, decide enough was enough, and take it in turns to say, ‘Eddie, I think your mum just called.’ And off Ed would go. ‘But I came as soon as you called,’ he would say as his ears were boxed while he walked inside. We were ten. A quarter of a century ago.