Three days later, I left London on Qantas Flight QF2, bound for Bahrain, Singapore and Sydney. Charles Parnell Cassidy flew with me, his embalmed body sealed in a stainless-steel box and coffined in a mahogany casket with silver-gilt ornaments, his secret history locked in the briefcase under my seat.
My travelling companion was not much livelier: a good-looking girl in a grey jumpsuit and big owl-glasses who, the moment after take-off, downed a couple of pills, wrapped herself in a blanket and went to sleep. I regretted her absence. I like company when I am travelling. I like women’s company at any time. Tonight, of all nights, I should have been glad of some diversion from the black imps dancing a jig through my brain-box.
I was damnably depressed and more afraid than I wanted to admit. I didn’t like the sound of Cassidy’s heavies. Australia has a long history of rough-neck politics and Sydney has bred more than its share of professional frighteners. If they intervened they would begin with an offer to trade. If I refused the rough stuff would begin – and I would want my family as far away from the action as possible.
We had agreed, therefore – though not without some sharp argument – that I should be the one to take Cassidy home to Australia and bury him. I was kin enough to discharge all the public pieties: attend the Requiem Mass and the State funeral, toss the first sod into the grave, shake the hands of the distinguished mourners. For the rest, common prudence dictated that Pat and Clare and the children should stay far removed from publicity and gossip.
Already the Australian editorials were saying that Cassidy had picked a good time to die. The air was rank with scandal: drugs, violence in gangland, corruption of the police, of the judiciary, of Parliament itself. Cassidy, dead, was beyond attainder. The Opposition could not impugn his reputation without damaging its own. The Government could dump all its messes on his grave and walk away with clean hands and virtuous smiles – unless, of course, one Martin Gregory got a sudden attack of conscience and decided to go public with Cassidy’s private files.
I had been a servant of the law all my life. I believed I had been a good servant. Cassidy himself had trained me. So, when he handed me the record of his works and days, he knew that he was giving me a hairshirt that would scratch and chafe until I stripped it off. As I tossed uneasily through the small hours of the morning, I half expected him to pop his head through the floor like Jack-in-the-box and thumb his nose at me.
This was the paradox of the man. Time was when he had loved the law. He understood its ancient principles. He cherished its refinements. No shoddy drafting for him, no chancy interpretation, no slipshod research. ‘If you want to gamble,’ he would say, ‘go to the dog-track and use your own money, not the client’s. You are dealing with sacred things here, matters of trust, matters of decision that will bind future generations. And get it into your thick skulls: we make our money out of the mistakes of other attorneys.’
It was high-minded, heady stuff and we juniors loved him for it, even while we hated his rasping tongue. But somewhere along the way he had turned traitor. He had sold out. I had to know why and to whom, before I could make any decision about the documents he had entrusted to me. I had to find out the true identity of Marius Melville who would pay me five million dollars, cash on the barrelhead, for the same documents. The alliteration made the name sound maddeningly familiar, but I could find no real man to hang it on. Drifting between sleep and waking, I played association games, matching the sounds to the pulsing rhythm of the jets… Marius, Mario, Marionette, Melville, Melitta…
A steward nudged me awake and whispered: ‘Sorry, sir; but you’re talking in your sleep – rather loudly, I’m afraid. It’s disturbing the other passengers.’
I mumbled an apology. He gave me a wide, toothy grin and faded into the blackness like the Cheshire cat. I lay there, feeling confused and foolish, wondering whether I could make it to the toilet without falling over my own feet and disturbing the passengers again.
The girl beside me stirred under her blanket, tilted her seat upright and switched on the reading light. She turned to me and murmured, ‘I’m sorry he woke you. Your pillow-talk was just getting interesting.’
‘That could get me into a lot of trouble.’
‘I know. I once lost a very adequate boyfriend that way.’
Her eyes were innocent behind the big owl spectacles, but I knew – or thought I knew – a baited hook from a leaf in the water. So I chuckled dutifully and asked if she were going through to Sydney. She told me, yes. I decided that if I were going to be picked up I might as well freshen myself before the rush to the lavatories started. Stubble and a stale mouth are unavoidable in marriage. They do not conduce to agreeable intercourse on a crowded aircraft.
As I shaved and brushed my teeth, and dabbed lotion on my jowls, I remembered another pearl of wisdom from the lips of the great Cassidy: ‘It’s the exiles who own the earth, sonny boy, because they’re tough enough to walk without shoes and eat stale crusts, and mate in strange beds with women they can’t even pass the time of day with… Walk any road on the planet and you’ll find a Greek or a Celt or a Jew or a Chinese making money out of the locals. Look up in any sky and you’ll see the wild geese flying across the moon…’
And that was another thing to note about Charlie Cassidy: he was committed, body, soul and breeches, to local politics, which is a game as bloody as cock-fighting. Yet, in a fashion rare among his ilk, he had managed to remain an international. He was a polyglot, too, with a passable fluency in Italian, French, Greek, German, Mandarin and Dutch. The languages were his passport into the migrant groups who now made solid voting blocs in every State of the Australian Continent. They were also the key that would open the doors to the underworld – to the Sicilian mafiosi and the Chinese triads who ran the girl traffic and the drug networks and battled for control of the gambling territories with the back-alley boys from Balmain.
But, give the devil his due, there was a lot more to Cassidy than political calculation. Under all the fustian, there was an old-style Celtic scholar, greedy for knowledge, a Renaissance man, too, tempted always outward to the Spice Islands and far Cathay… At which point I stopped in my tracks. Why should I write a eulogy for Cassidy? He had cheated the hangman, but he had left my neck in the noose, and his daughter and his grandchildren in jeopardy.
By the time I had finished my toilet the stewards were serving breakfast. My Lady Owl-Eyes was sitting up and taking hearty nourishment. She looked like a new woman. Her hair was brushed, there was colour in her cheeks. She smiled readily. Clearly, she was one of those precious creatures who know how to be agreeable at breakfast. We introduced ourselves formally.
‘Martin Gregory.’
‘Laura Larsen.’
I told her I was a lawyer – which closed out further questions. The usual response is ‘How interesting’. The wittiest I’ve heard is ‘Scored any good briefs lately?’ which isn’t exactly a laugh-line.
Laura Larsen was an easier subject. She was eager to tell me she was in the hotel business. She had worked for CIGA in Italy, for Forte in London and Paris. Now she was on her way to Sydney as sales manager for the Melmar Marquis, a new harbourside hotel in the five-star category. She presented me with a business card which carried a coronet over a double M monogram and the legend ‘Melmar Hotels, a legend in luxury’.
Miss Larsen embellished the legend so skilfully that I thought she would have every room sold out in a week. Inside five minutes she was urging me to change my hotel and book in at the Melmar Marquis – with an introductory discount of course!
It was a good-humoured pitch and I was happy to go along with it. At five in the morning vitality is low and self-esteem even lower. Ever since Cassidy’s death there had been a curious constraint in my relations with Pat. I began to imagine her in the role of silent accuser. I was the man who had invaded her primal family and ruptured it beyond repair. Mine was the hand that had held her back from the last journey with her father. True or false, it made a sadness between us, a small, veiled anger that neither of us dared to admit.
So, a mile-high first-class flirtation with an attractive woman was an agreeable diversion. Besides, why not be cosseted at discount rates in a new, luxury hotel?
I was just about to accept the offer when a warning bell sounded inside my skull. This was all too pat. I wasn’t just being picked up. I was being set up, fitted out, for an old-fashioned badger game. We hadn’t yet hit Bahrain. If we played it by the book, we’d be friends of the heart by Singapore and bedfellows the moment we unpacked in the Melmar Marquis in Sydney.
Once again, there was Charlie Cassidy chirping at me out of the past:
‘…oldest trick in the book, sonny boy, and it still works. It’s the easiest way to suborn a witness, frighten a judge, buy a Cabinet vote… A man is never so vulnerable as when he’s caught bare-assed in bed by hostile witnesses – never so damn ridiculous either!…’
I tried to tell myself that I was getting paranoid about the whole thing. The girl was just a happy extrovert peddling hotel space. I was your normal male traveller with the mid-life blues, ready to talk to anyone who would give him good morning… Like hell! I was Martin Gregory, with a briefcase full of secrets at his feet and a whole pack of powerful people itching to get their hands on it. What more natural move than to plant a minder on me – and if she could do night duty as well, so much the better.
To my Lady Owl-Eyes I told half a lie and half a truth. I would love to lodge at her hotel, but I was on Government business and I had to defer to the arrangements of my hosts. However, I’d be delighted to visit and see the wonders she was selling. That led to some amiable talk which lasted until we slid down through the desert dawn to the flat sea and the sterile shoreline of Bahrain.
At six in the morning the transit lounge offers no attractions and precious few amenities. The toilets are precarious and the coffee shop a silent menace. There is a motley mob of passengers: Koreans, British, Japanese, Pakistanis, Palestinians and Australians. The dusty stalls display Arab newspapers, dolls stuffed with God-knows-what, fake pottery and hideous brassware. Five minutes is more than enough to complete the circuit; then you are stuck in the place for the best part of an hour. So, the safer option is to stay on board, let the cleaners sweep under your feet, and relax until take-off.
I was doing just that, and making desultory talk with Laura Larsen when a member of Qantas’ ground-staff hurried me into the terminal to take a telephone call from Zurich. The line was surprisingly clear. The voice of the caller was a warm, soothing baritone with only a hint of European formality in the phrases and intonations. But when he spoke it was as if a cold hand had closed around my heart.
‘Martin Gregory?’
There was no honorific, no preamble. I tried to keep the tremor out of my voice.
‘Yes. Who is calling please?’
‘Marius Melville.’
I said nothing. Cassidy’s warning had been clear. ‘Show respect…’ Besides, I needed a second or two of silence to compose myself. The voice prompted me.
‘I think you are familiar with the name.’
‘Familiar? Not at all. I have seen only a brief mention of it in the papers of a gentleman recently deceased. There may be others, but as yet I have done no more than glance at the documents.’
‘How long will it take you to study them?’
‘God knows! All I’ve read so far is the will, three trust deeds and an index. I would say it’ll be a week after the funeral before I can even make an informed guess.’
‘But then you will be in touch with me?’
‘If that is what the documents dictate, most certainly. An executor is bound…’
‘I know what an executor does, Mr. Gregory.’ The reproof was tempered by a compliment. ‘I admire your professional discretion. Charles Cassidy was an old and cherished friend. We had many common interests. I know you will respect his wishes in my regard.’
‘It is my duty to do so, Mr. Melville. Where may I reach you?’
‘In care of Nordfinanz Bank, Zurich. But I shall communicate with you very soon. Meantime,’ the rich voice was full of concern, ‘please be most careful. You are in great danger.’
‘From whom?’
‘You carry bad news, Mr. Gregory.’
‘I’m not yet aware of that.’
‘You will become so. Then beware, lest they try, as they did in the old days, to kill the bearer of ill tidings.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Cassidy’s documents will tell you… One more word, Mr. Gregory.’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t worry about your wife and family. They are under my protection. No harm will come to them. As for yourself, I urge you to trust Miss Larsen. She is a clever and courageous young woman…’
Suddenly I was boiling with anger at the cold presumption of the man. But Cassidy, dead, still counselled me: ‘He keeps iron faith with his friends…’ So, instead of shouting at him, I thanked him.
‘I appreciate your concern for the family of an old friend. However, I do have to say –’
He wasn’t about to listen. He had already broken the connection. The receiver was whining in my ear.
When I tried to reboard the aircraft, a surly policeman ordered me to wait and embark with the rest of the passengers. I wandered around disconsolately, staring at strands of cultured pearls, Japanese watches, worry beads and glass charms against the evil eye. Then I sat down next to a migrant worker who stank like a desert goat. I felt, as I had never felt in my life before, diminished to dwarf-size. I felt that I, too, must be stinking of fear, a cowering victim of powers too large to define or control.
When finally I was permitted to reboard, Laura Larsen greeted me, with a smile of blandest innocence.
‘So, you’ve spoken to Mr. Melville.’
‘Yes!’ I was in no mood for small-talk.
‘That makes our relationship easier.’
‘Do we have one?’
‘Oh yes. I have to keep an eye on you, make sure you’re not bothered while you’re in Sydney, put you in touch with Mr. Melville when you’re ready to talk to him.’
‘And suppose I tell you and Mr. Melville to mind your own bloody business!’
‘You are our business, Mr. Gregory.’
‘So all this talk about your big hotel job is so much eyewash!’
‘On the contrary: Mr. Melville owns the whole Melmar chain – fifty hotels worldwide. That’s how it gets it name – Melville, Marius, Melmar, just like that. We offer our guests the best security service in the world: bodyguards, electronic surveillance, protection against bugging and theft of commercial secrets. That service will be at your disposal.’
‘But I don’t want it.’
‘You need it… Please don’t be angry. You’re only making things more difficult for yourself, and for me.’
If I hadn’t laughed I might have shouted my anger around the cabin.
‘Miss Larsen, understand this. I don’t give a damn about you or Marius Melville. I didn’t ask for your protection. I don’t want you or your employer dabbling in my life… Let’s have that clear and we can both enjoy the rest of the trip. Well?’
Before she had time to answer the steward was beside us, offering cool drinks. He was followed by a girl with iced towels. Then they were rehearsing us again in the exits-oxygen-life-jackets-and-rubber-boat routine, after which a disembodied voice from the flight deck recited our route to Singapore. By then Laura Larsen was a very calm, very soft spoken lady. She laid a cool palm on my wrist and told me: ‘I want you to listen carefully, Mr. Gregory. Don’t say anything until I’ve finished… I’ve worked nearly ten years for Marius Melville. He’s a very formidable man. I knew Charlie Cassidy too. I travelled with him more than once, as Mr. Melville’s representative. I liked him – most of the time. But that’s not important. The fact is that he and Mr. Melville did a lot of deals together, all over the world. You’re settling Cassidy’s estate, therefore you have to be a focus of interest for Marius Melville. You’ve got him in your life whether you want him or not. Because you’ve got him, you’ve got me – and a lot of other people you don’t know, and some you wouldn’t want to know. So why not recognise that first of all? Then we can talk openly.’
‘No secrets?’
‘Of course there are secrets. You should be damned glad there are.’
One of the arts of the law is to drop an argument that is leading you down a blind alley. I managed to be polite about it.
‘You’ve made your point. Here’s mine: I’m handling the estate of a public man, who was also my father-in-law. There are legal rules about that. I can’t bend them for you, Marius Melville or the Queen of Merrie England!’
She gave a small, rueful chuckle.
‘My God, you’re like Charlie Cassidy. I’ve seen him at meetings in Nassau and Hong Kong, when the air was so electric you almost expected lightning and a thunder-clap. The next instant he’d have them laughing their heads off at some silly joke – and he never surrendered a position either. Mr. Melville used to say, “Cassidy’s a genius. When he comes to a deal discussion his pockets are stuffed with give-away points. He gets people squabbling over them like monkeys over a bag of peanuts. At the end that’s all they’ve got – peanuts, while Charlie walks away with the gold, the girl and ten per cent of the futures. It’s not that he’s greedy. He knows what he’s worth and he sticks out for it.” Mr. Melville is so different, you wouldn’t think they’d get on at all. But they were close friends. Mr. Melville was very distressed by his death.’
‘Do you mind if I ask a personal question?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Are you scared of Marius Melville?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘You call Cassidy by his first name, but you always speak formally of Melville.’
‘He’s a formal man. He doesn’t invite intimacy.’
‘He sounds like a cold fish.’
‘Oh, no. He’s like a dormant volcano with all the fires hidden inside.’
‘So I repeat the question: are you scared of him?’
‘Not scared. Respectful.’
‘Obviously he respects you, too.’
‘I’m good at what I do.’ She said it with a shrug, then hesitated a moment before uttering an oddly plaintive afterthought. ‘Please, you’re not going to mess things up, are you? You’re not going to be tricky and devious?’
‘I have no reason to be. I’m a simple soul, who likes to be friendly and hates to be pushed.’
‘Good!’ It sounded like a long sigh of relief. ‘Now I can enjoy my lunch and the movie!’
And there we dropped the whole discussion. Through lunch we exchanged one-line banalities. I dozed through the film. We slept in separate silences from Singapore to sunrise over the Australian desert. On the final descent, with the red-tiled rooftops of Sydney spread beneath us, we said our farewells. I was sorry to see her go – and almost fool enough to say so; but my Lady Owl-Eyes had the last word.
‘When we meet again I hope we can both be more relaxed. As soon as you’re ready to confer with Mr. Melville, let me know. If you’re in trouble, call and invite me to dinner at Mario’s. That’s the codeword – “dinner at Mario’s”. If we get it, we hit the red button and call out the riot squad…’