Deadly Investment Read online

  DEADLY INVESTMENT

  Andres Kabel

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  MEET THE AUTHOR

  MY THANKS

  CHAPTER 1

  Guided by his lifelong mantra—data, analysis, conclusions—Peter Gentle began with the corpse.

  It lay on a metal gurney, a sheet pulled back over the head. Stitching, jagged in parts, violated the torso. Peter swept black hair out of his eyes and leaned closer. The dead man’s skin looked like pale concrete, and he repressed the urge to touch a knee, to check if it felt as cold as it appeared. The left shoulder was mottled as if bruised, but Peter couldn’t be sure, and he glanced back at Mick Tusk standing near the door like a block of granite.

  Come on, big guy, give me a hand here, Peter thought. This is your field, not mine.

  But Mick’s wraparound sunglasses never wavered. Peter momentarily cursed himself for bringing the hulk in as his partner.

  How life could bewilder! Peter had only ever seen one other dead person, his grandfather, laid out in a suit with a carefully constructed smile on his face. Now here he stood, thirty-four years old, an unemployed actuary with a lifetime of solving theoretical financial problems, peering at the cadaver of a stranger. Accompanied by an ex-cop who pumped iron, espoused the virtues of tofu, and still listened to Led Zeppelin.

  He suppressed a shudder. Mick had snuck them into the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, and they stood in a pristine autopsy room with walls lined by stainless steel sinks and benches. Ever since the body had been wheeled in, Peter had gagged on a rank scent of compost bins and hospitals. Relentless fluorescent light eliminated all shadows.

  “Enough of a sticky?” The orderly, a scrawny man with pitted skin, seemed to be enjoying himself.

  Peter shook his head, flopping hair back into his eyes. “No, I need to see it all.”

  The orderly smirked, exposing yellow teeth. Peter sensed Mick moving forward to intervene, then the orderly whipped off the sheet with a flourish.

  Peter reeled at the unholy face, pulverized flat by a force that had driven nose into flesh and exposed the left side of the face down to glistening bone. Sutures ran around the edge of the shaven skull. An empty eye socket hurled abuse, and the corpse’s lips seemed to sneer. He tried to look away but bile rose up his throat. How the hell could anyone commit this… this atrocity? He clutched at the gurney, missed, and fell.

  Rocklike arms caught him.

  “Take it easy.” Mick’s voice held a note of gentleness.

  Shaking, he looked up at Mick’s broad face. He struggled upright. “Thanks.”

  The room was silent except for the distant clank of machinery. Peter stared at the travesty of a face for a moment longer, trying to catalogue the crime as if with a policeman’s eyes. The pounding in his chest wasn’t simply horror, he knew; it was icy terror.

  The orderly made to cover up the body but Mick stayed him with one silken movement.

  “Wait,” Mick said.

  Peter watched Mick remove his sunglasses and train those steady blue eyes on the corpse. He saw no reaction at all in Mick’s sculpted face. How could the big lug soak it up like that?

  Mick nodded.

  The orderly chuckled and tugged the sheet over the body. “Now we’re even.” He shuffled back through the double steel doors with the gurney.

  “A mistake, arranging for you to view the body.” Mick’s deep voice purred. “Amateurs always find death a rude surprise.”

  Peter breathed heavily and wiped a sheen of sweat off his brow. “And how do you find death, big guy?”

  “A corpse is just a corpse.”

  Peter surveyed his companion. His teenage memories, his only memories, of Mick Tusk were of a Slavic giant who attracted fights. Mick starred in the school football team, sat at the back of the class, and bewitched girls. In all respects the opposite to Peter, who never played sports, dominated the teachers, and found girls a problem. Mick didn’t look much different now. Tall and broad-shouldered, with stubbly blonde hair, he matched Peter’s image of a Russian bouncer.

  “Very philosophical.” Peter hurried through silent corridors out into the sunlight of an early autumn morning. “You know, some influential minds considered him a genius.”

  “Dead genius, dead moron, they’re all dead,” came the soft response behind him.

  The Institute shared a sprawling, modernistic building with the Coroner’s Court, on the southern edge of the Melbourne business district, nestled between the new glitz of Southbank and arterial feeders onto the freeways heading east and west. Peter smelled exhaust as he struggled to calm himself.

  Across the street, Bishop paced by his Jaguar, barking into his mobile’s lapel mic, looking cool despite the heavy pinstripe. With his dyed red hair and quick movements, he was like no lawyer Peter had ever met.

  “You guys have fun?” Bishop’s eyes, fierce and slightly almond-shaped, seemed to drill Peter.

  He recalled the one-eyed face and his gorge rose. He felt as if he’d swum too far from shore and had no choice but to go on.

  “Just another stiff,” he said, dredging up slang from the Ed McBain he’d just read.

  Mick’s lips tightened. Bishop laughed, a shrill bark.

  Through a gap in the apartments lining the street, Peter glimpsed the glistening black needles of the Rialto Towers. Just the tonic he needed. He jiggled his feet.

  “Are you two in a union?” He grinned. “Come on, let’s move it.”

  ***

  As befitted one of Melbourne’s top legal firms, Calico & Leicester resided on the 50th to 52nd floors of the very same Rialto Towers, which rose skyward from Collins Street to dominate the western end of Melbourne’s central business district. After alighting on the 50th floor, Bishop led them through a muted lobby lined with paintings, up wooden stairs to his corner office facing the bay. The room reeked of an aftershave Peter couldn’t recognize. The lawyer slammed the door and hung his jacket on a wooden coat rack.

  Peter had expected ostentation but the room felt ruthlessly functional. Floor-to-ceiling glass made up two of the walls, recessed in the corner like a reverse French window, and thin black venetian blinds had been lowered to ward off the morning sun. A bookcase jammed with neat files and books covered another wall. To Peter’s astonishment, the remaining wall, a glass one looking out into the general workstation area, was covered in Dungeons & Dragons posters. A mahogany desk, bare except for a document precisely
in the center and a large telephone console to one side, took up half the room. Behind it an exercise bike faced a computer console with one of those snazzy new flat screens Peter coveted. Fans whispered like faraway surf, and he could hear filing cabinets clattering outside.

  Peter hunched down into a cushioned metal chair at the steel-legged glass table. His head buzzed.

  Mick took a neighboring seat and removed his sunglasses. Peter almost sighed at him. Mick hadn’t said a word in the Jaguar, and in his brown leather jacket, tee-shirt and jeans, back straight and eyes centered impassively on Bishop, the big man stood out as an interloper in the corporate world.

  Bishop dragged the tall leather chair from his desk over to the table. He sat back, fingers locked over his black vest. Peter was accustomed to lawyers with plain faces and brand-name glasses. Bishop looked more like a graphic artist with his short frame, and his Eurasian face capped garishly by bright red curly hair. His narrow eyes studied Peter and a smile played on his full lips.

  “Will you take the case?” Bishop’s speech was an oddly alluring combination of a modulated British accent and the machine-gun delivery so typical of ambitious lawyers.

  Peter drummed fingers on the tabletop. He’d already pondered Bishop’s question. This venture was risky, well outside his training. But solving a crime seemed as much a matter of analytical intelligence, with which he was well endowed, as of experience. Mick’s policing expertise should make the data collection easy. And there was no doubt Peter needed to earn some money. Fast.

  He felt the familiar, breathless thrill of a difficult intellectual hunt.

  “We’ll take it,” he said, jerking as Mick simultaneously snapped, “No.”

  Peter glared. Are you crazy, he wanted to shout, this is your ticket out of poverty.

  Mick’s still eyes met his for a long moment. Then Mick pursed his lips, scooped up his sunglasses, and walked over to stare out the window.

  “The facts again, please, Mr. Bishop. For Mick.” Peter surprised himself with a forceful voice. Questions were already whirring in his head, and he began to cross and uncross his legs compulsively.

  “Kantor Keppel worked late in his office four nights ago,” Bishop said. “The mainframe records show activity until 10:30 when he logged off. His body was found a couple of hours later in a stairwell by a security guard. The police say he died instantaneously—”

  “There is no such thing as instantaneously,” Peter said. “Everything takes some time.”

  He saw Mick shake his head.

  Bishop ignored the interjection. “—they have no firm suspects, there were no clues left at the crime scene, and everyone seems keen to close this case.”

  “Except the widow,” Peter said.

  Bishop’s eyes never left Peter’s face. “Mrs. Keppel rings me hourly with mad accusations about the company, Keppel’s colleagues, and the dog down the road. She’s not in good mental shape, but she’s rich and she’s paying me to pay you.”

  Bishop seemed to come to a decision. He beamed at Peter and, quick as a terrier, leapt over to the desk and returned with the document.

  “Sign here,” the lawyer said.

  “You’re nuts,” Mick said from the window, his voice close to a snarl. “Fucking nuts. We don’t even have a private investigator’s license.”

  “We’ll get one.”

  The venetian blinds crackled as Mick rifled them. “This is murder, not some mathematical problem. You don’t even know how far you’re out of this league.”

  “Lucky I've got a homicide whiz like you,” Peter said.

  He signed without reading.

  “Well done,” Bishop said. He shook hands with them at the door. “Report daily, starting with this afternoon.”

  Outside, the aroma of cheap coffee set Peter’s stomach rumbling. A secretary handed Bishop a thick manila folder, which he presented to Peter. “Copies of the case documents. Don’t ask how I obtained them.”

  “Why us, Mr. Bishop?” Peter said, breathing through his nose to quell ferocious glee. He refrained from looking at Mick. “Why pick us for this job?”

  The lawyer’s smile lit the corridor. “Kantor Keppel was the intellect behind Scientific Money. Geek-speak is the language there, and the police can’t speak a word. Only an actuary can figure out what Scientific Money does, and you’re the only actuary I know crazy enough to tackle something like this.”

  Mick turned from the elevator button. “Why the hell should the company have anything to do with it? Why not an angry mistress?”

  “Believe me, Scientific Money has everything to do with this.”

  This is a game to him, Peter thought. “How do you know, Mr. Bishop?”

  Bishop tapped his forehead. “You think I’d take on a murder case for a dipstick widow if I didn’t know in my bones there’s company shenanigans afoot? No, my egghead and beefcake, find the killer soon and you’ll be richer, and I’ll be richer and happier. Good luck.”

  In the packed elevator Peter and Mick stood side by side in silence, but when they burst through the revolving lobby doors into the street, Mick exploded.

  “You lunatic!” he said. “How could you get us into this? You’ve no idea what you’re doing. Absolutely clueless. Why do you think we’ll do any better than the cops?”

  Peter watched a tram rattle past.

  “And with that bloody lawyer, too,” Mick continued. “A vulture, just like all of them.”

  Peter filled his lungs with air. Somehow the very atmosphere in Collins Street always smelled sweeter than anywhere else.

  “Why, Gentle, why?” Mick said.

  “Simple, big guy. It sounds fun to me, and if you don’t earn a decent dollar soon you’ll have to take Dana and the kids out begging. Stop whining and let’s grab a cappuccino.”

  With hands in pockets, Peter headed up Collins Street, Mick grumbling behind him.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Can you fit us in, Hec?” Peter Gentle yelled over the hubbub that was Draconi’s Bar & Grill.

  Hector Fox raised his walrus face from conversation with a man wearing red stockbroker’s suspenders. They both gawked at Mick, and Peter couldn’t blame them. Standing with arms folded over his chest like a presidential bodyguard, the big man certainly didn’t fit Draconi’s typical customer profile.

  Peter sighed. “Hec? Can we have one of the far booths? Pronto?”

  “Let me see, Peter.” Hector rushed off.

  “For God’s sake, big guy, off with the sunnies,” Peter said.

  Mick complied. His eyes were fierce from his street outburst. “How come the waiter knows you?”

  “He should.” Peter inhaled the aromas of bacon and coffee, licked his lips. “I’m one of his best customers. I used to come here every day when I lived in town. It’s a great place. And he’s no waiter. Hec used to be a judge, and when he retired, he bought this place and did it up.”

  He followed Mick’s gaze around the room. Wooden chairs squeaked on pine floorboards. The gleaming wooden bench of the central bar was covered with elbows of businessmen sipping midmorning coffees. Staff wearing white aprons over crimson outfits scurried around dozens of round wooden tables. Around the perimeter, suits filled rows of cushioned booths. Large globes, hanging from the vaulted ceilings, cast a diffuse light, so that objects farther than twenty meters away seemed to fade.

  “Isn’t it just wonderful?” Peter closed his eyes to soak up the blanket of voices, punctuated by the click of coffee grinders and the sibilant purr of cutlery being washed by Miguel at the bar. “It’s open seven days a week, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Hec lives up above.”

  “Not my style.”

  “What is your style? McCafe?”

  Peter experienced a surge of memory as he spotted the crinkling in the corners of Mick’s eyes that he recognized as amusement.

  “Get stuffed,” Mick said. “Actually, McDonald’s is the go for us now. Where else for a three-year-old and a five-year-old? This place is too bloody wan
ky. I prefer pubs. Used to, anyway.”

  Hector materialized.

  “This way, Peter m’boy,” he said, steering Peter by the elbow.

  Peter grinned at Harvey Jopling reading a newspaper at the bar. Harvey saw Mick and widened his eyes.

  “Actually,” Peter said, “we run a club here, called the Skulk Club. That’s Harvey, he’s the founder.”

  They slid into a booth with high-cushioned backs and Mick slapped the file on the rough wooden tabletop. Deeper in the cavernous restaurant the noise level didn’t diminish, but individual sounds were more muffled.

  “Bacon and eggs, Hec,” Peter said, “and a short black.”

  All traces of nausea from the morgue had finally left him. He drummed trembling fingers against his legs, marveled at his own excitability. A mobile trilled in the next booth.

  Hector cocked an eyebrow at Mick.

  “Plain omelet, please,” the deep voice growled. “Any herbal tea?”

  Hector laughed, his jowls shaking. “That’s a first. No, far too healthy for the Young Turks we get here.”

  “Decaf latte then.”

  Peter watched Hector rush off. He slumped back against the wall, lifted a leg up on the seat, and scrutinized his soon-to-be partner through narrowed eyes.

  “Let’s have it then,” Peter said. “Clear the air.”

  He was beginning to recognize changes in Mick from the fifteen-year-old he’d known. Mick sat erect but relaxed, his body at ease with the surroundings, yet somehow poised for action. No doubt the years on the police force had bred that physical preparedness. The blue eyes were impassive, more guarded than Peter recalled. At school, twenty years ago, the football star had erupted at any provocation. As an adult, everything seemed under rigid control, but did that old temper simmer like slow-cooking soup?

  Mick thrust his chin forward. “This whole thing is a crock of shit.”

  He raised thick fingers one by one.

  “One: we don’t have a private investigator’s license and it’ll take twelve months to get one, a full license. Two: you’ve no bloody experience at this. Three: I know you won’t believe me, but this work can get dangerous. Four: the police won’t help us at all, in fact they’ll consider us bloody nuisances. And five…”