According to the files, Paul Burstill, the runaway financial advisor, was currently working for a company called Wilde Wastes. The owner of the company was listed as a Max Wilde, and the depot was located deep in the industrial heart of Glen Waters, half an hour south.
I located and drove to the address, gave the dog a bit of toast I’d flogged from the cafe and went in. The place was presentable enough from the street – a red-block office, a spruced-up sign – but as you came closer the façade fell away. The office was pokey and locked, with dusty windows and a bolted door. There was a mountain of material – cans, plastics, cardboard – sealed in bales and stacked along the back fence. The heart of the enterprise was a forty-metre corrugated iron shed from which a chorus of metallic noises was emerging. There was a chemical sting in the air, the ubiquitous dog on a chain and numerous scraps of rubbish scattered about the gravel yard.
I approached the shed and looked in. A delivery truck was backing away from a drop-off zone at the other end of the building, an excavator was busily scooping the recently dumped material onto a conveyor belt tended to by a row of employees in blue overalls.
The sound system was pumping out jangly, guitar-based music which – like most of the workers – was of African origin. They were making the most of it, jumping around to the beat as they plucked items from the belt and threw them into metal containers.
Standing off to one side and definitely not jumping to the beat was a big, bearish man in a loose grey dust coat. He was talking to a squat guy in khaki overalls. The one in the coat was Burstill. I recognised him from the photo in the file. He was wearing thick glasses, clodhopper shoes and a fistful of grease in his thin black hair. He was heavily jowled, with racoon rings around his eyes and a stomach rolling like a wave – tidal – over his belt. He had fat red cheeks and pursed lips, like a man playing an invisible wind instrument.
He passed a manila envelope over to the guy in overalls, who turned and made his way towards a truck loaded with blue drums at the end of the bay.
Burstill looked at me, warily at first, then with a low-level hostility when I showed my ID and said I’d like a chat. He wiped a handful of sweat from his brow and rubbed it onto his coat. He must have been the only person sweating in the state that day. Maybe it was more than sweat; both his eyes and his nose were dripping. He had a head cold and wasn’t happy about it – although he looked like he’d be only too pleased to send a little of it my way.
He asked one of the crew to mind the shop then led me into an office which looked out over the sorting area.
‘Do we really have to do this now?’ he complained as he eased his rear end into a chair. I got a whiff of whisky as he leaned towards me. ‘We’re flat out here.’
He wasn’t wrong. Another truck came in and dumped a load as we watched. The blokes on the conveyor belt upped the ante and the volume of the music.
I assured Burstill it wouldn’t take long.
I began the interview with what was becoming a routine set of questions: the where, what and how. I wasn’t expecting much, and that was what I got. Talking to him was like wrestling with a clothes horse. He was evasive, curt, aggrieved, giving blunt non-answers and moaning about ‘the system’, without ever explaining what he meant, which system. I hadn’t expected much more. This visit was just the opening shot: it was all about fleshing out the profiles, panning for gold but not raising my hopes of finding anything other than dirt.
I asked him about his movements on the day of the storm and wasn’t surprised to hear there hadn’t been many of them. He’d been at home, in bed, with the flu. He remembered the night well: the power had gone out and he’d been stumbling around his apartment searching for the Strepsils with a torch. He seemed confused at being asked about some sort of violent incident, and I could understand why. There’d never been any suggestion of physical violence in his history, despite his size. There was a slow, ponderous vibe about the man, as if he had mud, rather than blood, trundling through his veins. If he did swing a punch at you, you’d have time to finish your drink and get out of the way before it landed.
The liveliest thing about Burstill was the glob of snot poking out from his right nostril. A full-bore, pear-shaped gorby. It showed no sign of going away. I studied my notebook, giving him a chance to remove the offending item, by means of a quick sleeve if nothing else, but when I raised my head the bloody thing was still there. It hung around for the duration of the interview. Occasionally he’d give a disgusting little suck and it would shoot back up the chute, but it never completely disappeared. Maybe the blob was deliberate, a technique he’d developed to put inquisitors off. Credit where it was due. I’d come across all sorts of defensive strategies in my time: anger, evasion, obsequiousness, lies. I’d never come across snot.
I asked a few questions about the company, and he said the owner, Max Wilde, was a cousin who’d offered him the job to help him out. ‘Bit of a comedown,’ he grumbled.
What do you expect? I thought. A gold medal? He was faring a lot better than the elderly couples who’d lost their homes because of him.
I asked about the threats he’d made against Nash at the trial, but he said he’d just spouted the first thing that came into his head, hadn’t thought about the outburst, or the man who’d been the subject of it, for years. He glanced out at the workshop, where some of his employees were smirking and glancing in our direction. His scowl deepened, his wheezy lungs gave an asthmatic rattle. He protested that he’d done his time, had already received more than his fair share of punishment. He repeated the claim, made during the trial, that the police had disrupted a legitimate scheme which would have made the fortunes of all involved. He suggested that he’d been framed by ‘jealous business rivals with political connections’ and that all he wanted was to be left in peace. Again, I was struck by the sense of entitlement, his anger at the injustice of his treatment, his whingeing about the system.
Another truck came in and dropped off a load. Burstill stood up brusquely, said he had to get back to work and escorted me to the door. I wasn’t complaining. It was a relief to be out of his presence, not to mention the sight of his snot.
That was another waste of time, I reflected as I walked back to the ute. Bastard gave me nothing. Was that because he had nothing to give, or was he covering something up? He wasn’t happy about being interviewed in front of his employees, but who would be?