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  Watching Mick take a chest-expanding breath, Peter felt a rush of pleasure. Jesus, he thought, this will be fun.

  Only serendipity could have brought them together again, and the gods, conspicuously absent from Peter’s life for so long, had been smiling a week ago. Shopping at Chadstone, he’d been startled when a hard hand landed on his shoulder. He’d recognized Mick immediately. Mick had been almost desperately friendly, and over a beer Peter found out why. After a decade in the police force, Mick now drove cabs to support a young family.

  “And five,” Mick repeated, “I’ve been trying to keep away from cop-related work.”

  Peter winced as his fingers caught on a knot in his hair. “Why?”

  Mick removed his jacket, revealing forearms knotted with muscles, and leaned his chin on his hands.

  “I didn’t leave the force.” Mick’s voice was almost a whisper. “They discharged me.”

  “You were laid off?”

  “The bastards labeled me unfit. For psychological reasons. They called me too violent.”

  It was the wrong thing to do, but Peter laughed. “You? Too violent? Jesus, Mick, all I remember from school was that you were violent every other day.”

  Mick’s broad shoulders relaxed. “You’re right, I was a handful then. But that was just a phase—”

  “A phase? I remember three years of it.” Peter whooped with laughter. Heads turned toward them.

  “Yeah well, in fact that phase lasted a few more years.” Miracle of miracles, Mick was grinning. “But I gave all that up when I joined the force.”

  “Then why the discharge?”

  Callused fingers rubbed a cheek. “I became involved in some cases that obsessed me. And I solved them, but the methods were… well, I guess I did let the rough stuff get out of hand.”

  Peter didn’t know what to say.

  Mick gripped the edge of the table. “Get it? I’m trying to move away from that scene. And Dana wants that, too. A number of ex-cops have rung me and asked me to join their investigation or security ops. Told them all to shove it.”

  A waitress deposited coffee and food. Peter uncurled to lean over the mixture of rising aromas. He drummed fingers on the table in time with his racing pulse.

  “Let me address your concerns.” Did he sound too pompous? The Skulk Club members were forever ribbing him about his precise language. But for God’s sake, he thought, English is meant to communicate, not obfuscate.

  “One,” he said, mimicking Mick’s fingers, “as long as we apply for a license immediately, its absence shouldn’t impede us. If asked, we just say a license is pending. Two: what you have to realize is that actuaries investigate situations, just like police detectives do. And I’m a quick study. So with your experience, why can’t we make fantastic investigators?” His feet tapped on the floor. “Three: we won’t do any of the dangerous stuff. As soon as we track down the murderer, we’ll hand the matter over to the police. Four: I bet I can persuade the police that we’ll be an asset to them if we all help each other.”

  Bacon crunched between Peter’s teeth. “And five: we’re not talking a permanent job here, just one short assignment.”

  “That’s just words, Gentle,” Mick said. “You’ve no idea of the bloody world we’d be entering. The world beyond… this.” He waved a hand to encompass Draconi’s.

  “Maybe so. But listen, have you ever met anyone smarter than me?” Peter didn’t wait for an answer, sensing the upper hand. “And you’re the one who knows exactly what to do. Together we’re bound to do a great job.”

  Outside, a siren wailed; inside, voices cascaded in a comfortable blur.

  “Listen.” Peter began to wave his hands around. “Think about the money. A hundred dollars a day just to do the job. And $80,000 if we succeed.”

  He pulled the contract out of his jacket pocket and pointed. “Look. Here. Don’t you need that kind of money? Hey, your face says it all. Me, I need that money so badly, I’m going to do this with or without you.”

  “Yeah, but you’re crazy.”

  Peter changed tack. “What about the body? Aren’t you interested in bringing justice to the poor guy?”

  “That’s what the coppers are for.”

  “And if the police can’t figure it out? Don’t you want to give it a go?”

  No response. Peter rocked his body tensely. “Okay then, just think of this as helping me out. Old school friends and all that.”

  “You were just as much a pain in the arse then.”

  One last go, Peter thought.

  “Why not let’s do it like this. Just give it one week and then we can both reassess. What do you say?”

  “You haven’t changed a bit,” Mick said. “All bullshit and theory. Let me think about it over a piss.”

  The Herculean figure slipped from the booth. To ease his tension, Peter strolled outside to sip his coffee. The lane was as quiet as it would get. A Japanese tourist snapped shots of his polite wife. A couple of secretaries laughed over coffee in glasses. Frizzy clouds sat immobile in the blue sky.

  Please, Peter thought. I need you, Mick.

  ***

  A week earlier, sitting over potato chips and beer in the smoke-filled Matthew Flinders pub, Peter had explained to Mick that he considered fate to be distinctly unkind.

  “I’m an actuary. Do you know what that is?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Mick said.

  “We’re like mathematicians of insurance and investment. We work with demographics and probabilities and interest rates. It’s a profession that only takes the best minds, like mine. We provide the intellectual glue that makes finance work. You know, it was voted the world’s best profession last year.”

  “That so?” Muscles bulged through Mick’s Nirvana T-shirt.

  “Shut yer mouth, mole!”

  Peter looked over at a huge red-faced man by the window. A beer gut hung over his belt and his arm tattoos were as wide as Peter’s head. A woman shrank in front of him.

  “I thought you wanted to be a mathematician,” Mick said.

  “You’re right. And I went through university aiming for that.” Peter sipped his beer. “I always wanted to be famous. To have my name in a math history book, as a genius of the purest type. But then I found there were even brighter people around.”

  The man by the window kept spitting words at the woman. She had thin arms. Peter grimaced; even a hint of violence made him queasy. Mick didn’t seem to notice.

  “Anyway,” Peter said, “I did the right thing and went into the corporate world. I’ve done all right. People say I’m the smartest actuary in Melbourne.”

  A minuscule smile softened Mick’s face. “Now I remember. The modest one at school.”

  “Hey, I’m just repeating what others have said.”

  A man belched at the neighboring table.

  “So what went wrong?” Mick said.

  “I worked for Rock Mutual for five years and then was doing really well at a consulting firm. All my clients said I was invaluable. But the firm was merged, acquired really, and they moved most of the work to Sydney. I was laid off. I don’t know about the police, but the private sector gives good severance packages, so the money was okay. The trouble is, most of the actuarial jobs are now in Sydney. I worked there last year on contract, but it’s just not my kind of city. I’ve been working on and off, various projects, but I can’t seem to get that permanent position. Did I tell you that I’ve started studying biotechnology to keep my mind occupied?”

  He looked up for sympathy but Mick had gone. Peter saw he had somehow negotiated the tables full of people and now leaned over the couple by the window. Mick must have said something, for the man let go of the woman and reared upward, but a flat hand effortlessly held him down. Mick leaned down to whisper. The man slumped back.

  “What did you say to him?” Peter asked when Mick returned.

  “I don’t like abusers.” Nothing had altered in Mick’s visage. “I told him I’d shove his fa
ce through the window. Only more forcefully.”

  Peter felt weak in his legs.

  They shook hands and exchanged phone numbers, but Peter never expected to see Mick again. After all, they’d only been friends for a year, and twenty years ago at that.

  Then the weird and wonderful call from Bishop yesterday afternoon, on a Tuesday going nowhere, had sent Peter’s mind whirling.

  “You attracted to money and a puzzle?” the lawyer had thrown at him. Peter had only ever met Bishop in crowded business meetings, so at first he was bewildered. Out of the mess of his thoughts, one idea had surfaced like a spuming whale. He had to have Mick Tusk by his side.

  ***

  Back inside Draconi’s, Mick’s solemn face filled Peter with momentary dread.

  “Okay,” Mick said. “I’ll give it three days. Just to get you going.”

  “Three days! Are you crazy or do you just act it? You know that’s ridiculous.”

  Hector held a finger to his lips as he weaved past. Damn, Peter thought, must have got excited again.

  “And what’s more,” Peter said, “none of this ‘just to get you going’ crap. While you’re in, you’re in. Come on, Mick, a week won’t kill you.”

  A long pause.

  “Fuck it,” Mick said through clenched teeth. “Five days.”

  The first rule of negotiation is finding a win-win solution. “Five days, okay. But that’s five days full on, twenty-four hours if necessary. Right?”

  A single nod.

  Peter pumped an arm into the air.

  “Yes!” he yelled. “Now try stopping us.”

  A hush fell over the nearby tables and he saw Hector gaping.

  Mick astounded him by clasping his raised hand with a brick-hard grip. Peter had to blink at the sudden surge behind his eyes.

  “Let’s hit it, big guy,” he said. “Tusk and Gentle. Has a good ring to it, eh?”

  Around them Draconi’s settled back into its normal clamor.

  Peter sat down and slapped the tabletop. “Step one. Data gathering.”

  Mick flicked through the pile of photocopied material. “This is the entire case file. How the hell did that freaky lawyer get hold of this?”

  “Never mind how. Let’s zip through it. It’s 9:30 now. Why don’t we work flat out until 10:30 and then reward ourselves with another coffee?”

  “What? Your tenth?”

  “Some of us have brains to stimulate.”

  “You wish.” Mick handed over a neat pile of pages. “I’ll take the crime scene and autopsy reports. You start with the interviews.”

  Peter swung his feet onto the seat, leaned against the wall, and began to read. As always when he concentrated, the world around him faded, the glorious tumult of Draconi’s dimming into a blurred backdrop. He read leaning back, he read hunched over, he read reclining. He read sitting on the table, he read standing. He found a chewed ballpoint pen in his jacket, and twirled and tossed and munched it.

  How interesting! He’d never worked through interviews before, but quickly got the hang of it, cutting to the meat of each one, decoding the moods of the interviewees and interviewers.

  Scientific Money had only been in its new headquarters for three years. Peter knew it well, everyone in the city did; a gleaming squat edifice dominating the skyline across the river in Southbank, its red-and-gold logo encapsulating perfectly the company’s fairytale success. And the building’s security system suited a murder investigation. All staff were issued passes that had to be scanned for entry or exit, and every use of a pass was recorded on the computer system.

  With his feet tapping on the floor like a tattoo artist’s needle, Peter mentally summarized. At the assessed time of the murder, 10:30 on the night of Friday, April 30, 1999, only four other people remained in the building. An examination of the computer activity log ruled out two junior staff on the first floor. Of the other two, Marcia Brindle, the company’s accountant, left around 11:30. Her computer log was silent during the critical period. She claimed to be working on accounts the whole time. Benedict Dancer, another exec, logged out of the front exit around the time of the murder, and claimed to have seen nothing.

  But that wasn’t the end of the story. The building had one emergency exit in the basement, for genuine emergencies. And the security system records showed that on the night of the murder, one unidentified person used this exit at 10:37 PM.

  Even more intriguing, the security system’s software allowed for “invisible” security passes to be created. Such an invisible pass enabled the user to enter and exit without leaving a computer record. In interview, Scientific Money’s founder and Kantor’s brother, Rollo Keppel, stated that the company’s owners, the Keppels, were in and out of the building so often that monitoring their movements would clog up the more important records of staff. Only three invisible passes had been created. Rollo himself had one, as did his wife Bella, and Kantor’s invisible pass had been found next to his body.

  Rollo Keppel claimed to have left the building at 8:30, a time confirmed by his staff. Bella stated that he arrived home at their Southbank apartment by 8:40. Both agreed that they stayed in the apartment until the police woke them at 3 AM. But they lived so close to the office, Peter mused, that either could have sneaked out in time to ambush Kantor.

  Occasionally, Peter surfaced from deep reading, and idly took in the sounds of chairs scraping on floorboards, coin tips clattering on saucers, the tractor sound of coffee grinders. He watched Mick. The ex-cop sat perfectly still, bristly hair soft in the glow of Draconi’s lights, working his way through the document page by page, writing in a spiral notebook. Of course he wouldn’t have Peter’s powers of concentration, but his progress seemed quick. The police training, no doubt.

  Peter’s interest quickened. A threatening email had been found on Kantor’s computer. At least, the police presumed it to be threatening; its meaning was unclear:

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  The natural order is there for the good of all. If you transgress, the fury of the heavens will descend.

  B

  The police had determined that the sending mailbox address was a dummy one. The email did sound threatening to Peter. B for Benedict, perhaps?

  He rubbed his eyes. The restaurant was packed. Their booth could seat four, maybe even six, so that in any other restaurant they’d have been asked to make room, but Hector treated Peter and the other members of the Skulk Club like family.

  Peter had entered the phone number of Imogen Keppel, the widow, into his Palm Pilot.

  “Hello?” A polite, firm voice.

  “Mrs. Keppel? This is Peter Gentle. Mr. Bishop will have told you about me.”

  “Yes indeed. Young man, we need to meet. Would noon be suitable?”

  Peter glanced at his watch and gulped. An hour and a half. How could he survive without lunch?

  Intimidating, he thought, as he took down the address.

  Peter grinned at Mick. What was so difficult about detective work? The facts seemed clear enough. Some more digging, apply decent analysis, and the solution would be obvious. Why didn’t the police force employ intelligent people?

  CHAPTER 3

  What took hold of Mick Tusk, after he succumbed to Gentle’s high-pitched appeals, felt so strange that it took some time to recognize. Sure, he knew part of it was sheer pleasure. The pleasure of working through case documents once more. The joy of unfurling his half-filled spiral-bound notebook. The ritual of inscribing notes in his spidery handwriting. The sweet feel of exercising rusty case skills. But beyond all that, something else gripped Tusk. His heart beat faster. His hands felt light. The surging drive of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” filled his inner ear.

  Regularly, he checked out his new so-called partner. Peter Gentle had been a mad bugger in school, all that time ago, before the fucking troubles. A crazy dervish of a nerd. As far as Tusk could make out, the only change since then w
as the stubble under Gentle’s chin. Still the crazy rocking and irritating tapping of feet. The hands that never stayed still. And the posture! Half the time Gentle hunched so far down in his seat, only his wild black hair was visible.

  Still handsome, almost beautiful, with that long bony face, a hint of buck teeth behind those full lips, the lidded green eyes. Even that bloody hair, down to his shoulders, made him look like a rock star. Pity he was so thin and slouchy, so excitable and shy looking. More like a rock star wasted on drugs, Tusk mused. And one other change—a small paunch, a slacker’s paunch.

  A man-child, that’s what Gentle was. On a crusade to become a private eye.

  Tusk checked his watch. 10:36—time to compare notes.

  The owner of the yuppie restaurant appeared out of the gloom. Creased face, eyes certainly sharp enough for an ex-judge. Gentle ordered coffees, took command as Tusk expected.

  The nerd hadn’t bothered to take notes, as expected, so Tusk scribbled as he listened to the breathless delivery.

  “Okay. Scientific Money was founded five years ago in 1994. I remember it well, the press gave it a big bang write-up. The two founders, Rollo and Kantor Keppel, had huge reputations coming into this new venture. Rollo Keppel was one of Australia’s most respected investment bankers, and had only recently resigned as top dog in Coombs Holcomb. The stiff, Kantor that is—” Tusk raised an eyebrow at the term, saw Gentle catch the expression and smile with adolescent glee “—was one of our most respected economists until he joined the funds management industry eleven years ago. Then he came up with this bright idea, to form Australia’s first quant fund.”

  “What’s a quant fund?” Tusk asked above the never-ending din of the restaurant. “Sounds like something from physics.”

  “It’s short for quantitative. In nearly all funds management companies, your money is managed by people, who decide which stocks to buy or sell. In a quant fund, it all works by formula. A quant fund claims that its science is better than the judgment of mere mortals, with all their foibles and flaws.”