Chapter Sixty-nine

Sunday, 17th November

Half an hour later they sat on rickety camp chairs around a table-tennis table in the garage under Begley’s house. He had refused to let what he described as ‘riff-raff’ into his home at one o’clock in the morning when his wife and dogs were trying to sleep. The garage smelled of motor oil and mildew. A fluorescent light flickered. Mosquitoes buzzed Jack’s ears and feasted on his ankles. Geckos ran across the ceiling and occasionally shat from high above. Dogs started yapping upstairs. Nice.

Jack was weary, and his body was at him from all directions. Over the last few days he’d been battered, bruised, stitched, squeezed and grazed. He pushed all of that aside, so caught up as he was in the excitement of the imminent reveal. At the same time, he was anxious. How would they make sense of the thousands of source documents Patrick had gathered? Patrick would have had months or even years to pull all this together and find the truth.

They divided the monumental task. Jack had Northern Rivers Shire Council, Caitlin everything legal, Zoe the money trail and Kowalski the Jetty Hotel. Ricky had carte blanche with the laptop and was on a deep dive through all the files they hadn’t had time to print.

Begley wasn’t assigned any task but seemed on a mission to make himself as irritating as possible. Not for the first time, Jack wanted to deck him. Begley had swapped his towel for a brown dressing gown, tied loosely at the waist and threatening to reveal all every time he moved. He moaned constantly about losing sleep as he wandered around the table, licking his thumb to flick through random documents, which he abandoned anywhere but where he found them. His mood was infectious. Two hours later they were all exhausted and demoralised.

Begley’s wife came downstairs, wrapped tightly in a fluffy pink dressing gown, her lips pursed. ‘Ken, are you ever coming to bed?’ Her sleepy eyes slowly focused on the small crowd not normally found among all the usual junk in the garage. ‘Who are all these people?’

‘Honey, this motley bunch are trying to save us from being transferred to Broken Hill.’

Without a word, she walked out. Ten minutes later, she returned with a steaming coffee plunger, a pot of tea, and two packets of Tim Tams, one of which was devoured before the coffee was poured.

Between sips of tea, Zoe said, ‘It’s so confusing. There are hundreds of bank statements for six different account holders. Five of them Bradshaws, including Tom and his wife, Julie. The others are in the names of …’ Zoe paused for effect. ‘Benji, Bilbo and Bandit.’

‘So,’ said Begley, as he scratched at his groin through his dressing gown, ‘even his fucking dogs were avoiding tax.’

‘Ken. Language.’ Veronica Begley had pulled up a chair and was drinking tea.

‘The accounts are in Deutsche Marks,’ said Zoe. ‘For years there were regular monthly deposits of ten grand into each account.’

Ricky’s fingers skimmed over the keyboard in a blur. ‘That’s about three million dollars a year in today’s money.’

Jack asked, ‘And whose was the sixth account, Zoe?’

She hesitated before answering, and so Jack answered for her.

‘My father?’

She nodded. ‘Twenty thousand every month.’

Jack was the only one in the room who knew Don had provided some forged documents to Patrick. Jack assumed, and hoped, those account statements in his father’s name were some of them. After all, Patrick had approached Don for evidence of his father’s involvement. But for Caitlin’s sake he also hoped that Don’s forgeries weren’t so extensive as to undermine all of Patrick’s work and render it useless.

Caitlin said, ‘My pile is impossible. Lots of interlinked shelf companies with obscure ownerships. I’m not even sure the ATO and its forensic accountants could work it out, but I guess that’s the whole point.’

Jack felt frustrated that he hadn’t turned up anything useful. He stood, stretched and took a few steps, standing on a ping-pong ball. He looked at Caitlin. ‘Your father had years to make sense of all this. How can we possibly do it in a few hours? It’s hopeless. Perhaps we should all get some sleep and start fresh in the daylight?’ Although as soon as he said it, Jack remembered he’d be a wanted man in the morning.

Caitlin shot up from her chair so quickly it toppled backwards and clattered to the floor. When she spoke, her face was flushed. ‘Why don’t you just do that, Jack? Go and get your beauty sleep, it’s not as though you don’t need it. I’ll go through your documents as well.’

‘I’m with Jack,’ said Ricky. ‘You’re wasting your time reading all that shit.’

Caitlin turned her withering look on Ricky.

Ricky smiled at her. ‘Why don’t you just read what your father wrote?’ He turned the laptop towards them. ‘The missing edition of The Beacon is here, ready for the printers.’

Caitlin almost knocked Zoe over in her rush to get to laptop. She tore it from Ricky’s hands. On the screen was a fully laid-out copy of The Beacon: Special Corruption Edition. Caitlin grinned wildly. She put down the laptop dashed over to Ricky and smacked him with a high five.

Jack was caught up in her elation. But the thought of her deflation when he told her about the forgeries was like a growing constriction in his throat. He should tell her now. He scanned the headlines as Caitlin scrolled through the newspaper. ‘Mayor Bradshaw, Tax Cheat’, ‘Corruption in Council’, ‘Bradshaw Hides Money Offshore to Avoid Tax’, ‘Malcolm Harris, Silent Partner in Jetty Hotel’, and ‘Harris and Bradshaw Interfere with Election’. Images of bank statements and deeds were dotted through the pages. Jack wondered how much of it was true.

Caitlin returned to the front page. ‘Bradshaw and Harris: Did they kill Mayor Ferris?’ A photo of George Ferris, adorned in mayoral regalia, smiled at them.

‘Oh my God,’ said Caitlin. ‘I can’t believe Dad did all this by himself.’ She took a wavering breath and her eyes teared up again.

‘Read that out,’ said Jack.

Ricky pulled the laptop closer. ‘It’s long.’

‘Then just tell us the most important parts.’

‘“The Mayor of Northern Rivers Shire in 1987, George Ferris, allegedly drowned while swimming off Main Beach on April 2nd that year. His body was never found and the coroner’s finding was ‘missing, presumed drowned’.”’

There was a pause as Ricky scrolled down.

‘“This newspaper has no incontrovertible evidence that Malcolm Harris and the current mayor Tom Bradshaw did murder George Ferris. But we do have evidence they interfered with an election, were involved in corrupt conduct with councillors, that they materially benefited from George Ferris’s death by millions of dollars, and that they were involved in widespread tax evasion …”’

Jack felt the constriction in his throat tightening. Was his father really involved? Or did Don stitch him up in exchange for information that he later used to blackmail Tom Bradshaw?

Ricky continued reading. ‘“This newspaper, then under the editorship of Malcolm Harris, falsely reported multiple witnesses as having seen the mayor enter the water, whereas the official police report states there were no such witnesses.”’

Caitlin glanced at Jack, and he could see the pride in those green eyes.

Ricky kept reading. ‘“In 1987, Council rejected, by two votes, a rezoning application that would have allowed the development of the Jetty Hotel. Mayor Ferris and another councillor, David Naughton, voted against. Before a council election three months later, this newspaper slandered both these councillors. Naughton was not re-elected following false accusations of domestic violence. He was replaced by Frank Cameron, later to be the beneficiary of free drinks for life at the Jetty Hotel. Mayor Ferris was surprisingly re-elected, despite fictitious claims of animal cruelty.”’

Ricky clicked to the next page. There was total silence in the room. Except from Mrs Begley, her head resting on the table, snoring.

‘“After the election, Ferris again voted against the rezoning application. He disappeared a few days later. Ian Bradshaw was later elected to replace Ferris as mayor and the rezoning was approved at the next meeting.”’

Caitlin reached for the laptop and scanned through the remaining pages of the special edition. She looked up at Jack, her faced determined. ‘If they killed the mayor, then they killed Dad to cover it up. We need to publish this as soon as we can. And before more bad things happen.’

Kowalski asked, ‘When’s the deadline for The Beacon?’

Caitlin paused for thought. ‘Oh, Jesus, it’s today at 9 a.m. I can upload it.’

Jack felt his constriction continuing to tighten.

Caitlin was busy at the laptop keyboard. ‘Shit, Angus Bain must have changed the password.’ She slammed the laptop closed and shoved it away.

‘Who’s Angus Bain?’ asked Ricky.

Jack said, ‘My father’s go-to shit-stirring journalist. Not my favourite human. He’s the new editor of The Beacon.’

Caitlin said, ‘We have to find a way to publish Dad’s special edition. He died for it. It’s his legacy.’

Jack couldn’t put it off any longer. ‘We’re not publishing anything.’

Caitlin frowned. ‘What the hell do you mean?’

‘We need to do some more due diligence before we publish.’

‘Why? It’s all here, ready to go.’

There was an uncomfortable silence as Jack steeled himself to break the bad news. ‘I’m sorry, Caitlin. Some of the documents your father based his story on are forgeries.’

‘What?’

They listened in shocked silence as Jack detailed everything his father had made him promise not to disclose – about Don providing fake bank documents to extract information from Patrick, which was then used to blackmail Tom Bradshaw.

Nobody spoke for a long time.

Caitlin broke the silence. ‘Bullshit. Dad was meticulous and would have verified everything. He wouldn’t have been murdered if it wasn’t true. You have to publish, or Dad would have died for nothing. And the bastards will get away with it.’

She glared at Jack, and it was he who broke their gaze.

Only one of their fathers was telling the truth. Jack’s father’s version seemed the most credible. Don had disappeared. Tom Bradshaw had confirmed on the phone he was being blackmailed. It was hard to conceive how Patrick could have got access to hundreds of ancient overseas bank statements – unless they were forged.

And yet Patrick was accusing Jack’s father of being a murderer. If that was true, his father would want to keep that hidden. And Patrick was a seriously good journalist. The Harris Media empire did seem to have grown impossibly quickly from its roots in a tiny regional newspaper. If his father was lying about everything, he might also be lying about the concrete slab.

Jack said, ‘Without any evidence, my father’s lawyers will tear us apart. If we publish, I’ll never work in newspapers again and my father will make sure that you, Caitlin, will never work as a lawyer. We can’t publish until we have hard evidence that Tom Bradshaw and my father did murder Mayor Ferris.’

Caitlin was livid. He’d seen her angry, but her face had never been this red.

‘And how, Mr Morally-up-himself Journalist, are we supposed to find hard evidence? George Ferris died in 1987,’ she said.

‘By finding his body.’

‘C’mon Jack, be serious,’ said Caitlin. ‘How are we supposed to find his body when it was so long ago?’

‘Because,’ said Jack, ‘if my father killed him, I know where he’s buried.’

Ricky stopped typing. Veronica Begley’s snoring stopped with a snort, and she lifted her head from the table. Begley raised his eyebrows and his dressing gown gaped threateningly.

Jack could clearly conjure in his mind the impressions of his tiny three-year-old feet preserved for posterity in the slab of the garden shed, and the date gouged into the concrete: 03.04.87.

He said, ‘My father laid a concrete slab at our house the day after George Ferris disappeared. It might be a coincidence, a very big coincidence, but if the body of Ferris is in the slab, we can publish with impunity.’

Everybody was staring at him wide-eyed.

Jack was insistent. ‘But we can’t publish before we know.’

Caitlin said, ‘But then we’ll miss the deadline.’

A rustling broke the silence as Ricky took the last Tim Tam. He looked at Jack. There was chocolate on his teeth when he spoke. ‘I do hope you were using a condom, Jack.’

‘What?’

‘Angus Bain’s new password was easy to crack. He’s already uploaded this week’s edition of The Beacon to the printer. His edition. And he’s doing a proper hatchet job on you, Jacko. Oooh, yeh.’

Ricky turned the laptop around. Bain was running a full-size colour photograph on the front page of The Beacon – an image Jack had been certain he’d seen the last of. He groaned and closed his eyes – even then he couldn’t erase the image from his mind. He was standing completely naked in Bob Holmes’ house, appearing to be entering Elanna the sex worker from behind. Her face and breasts had been obscured with black rectangles, but Jack had not been given the same courtesy. The headline shouted: ‘Jack Harris: Criminal Casanova?’ Page two was almost frivolous in comparison – a photograph of Jack using a coat hanger to break into The Beacon’s Toyota. The two large black eyes of Bruce Two stared at them from page three.

Jack dropped his head into his hands. Angus fucking Bain.

‘So,’ said Ricky. ‘As I see it, Jacko, you’ve two options. I can replace Bain’s edition of The Beacon now with Patrick’s cracking exposé edition, but if you don’t find George Ferris’s body, you’re screwed. Or we can let Bain publish his edition, and you’re still screwed. It all comes down to whether there is a body …’

Jack could feel blood vessels throbbing at his temple as he weighed up which of the shitty choices was the least calamitous. He stood and, as he started pacing, another ping-pong ball died beneath his feet.

‘Jack, you can trust Dad,’ said Caitlin.

Ricky smiled at Jack and repeatedly pretended to push a key on the laptop. ‘No pressure or anything. Besides, if you publish and you’re wrong, you can blame the current editor of The Beacon. Angus Bain. Sweet.’

Light was seeping around the garage door. Mrs Begley rubbed her eyes. Jack was hungry, tired, emotionally overwrought and his bladder was bursting. He was in no fit state to make such a consequential decision.

He nodded to Ricky. ‘We go with Patrick’s version.’

Caitlin beamed at him. Then, to Jack’s surprise, she hurried over and wrapped her arms around him. He held her tightly and surrendered himself into the embrace. He drank in the smell of her, felt her dreadlocks against his arms, the warmth of her body pressed up against his. He would have held her forever, but she broke away.

‘Wait!’ yelled Caitlin. She grabbed the laptop back.

Jack watched her insert ‘By Patrick O’Shaughnessy’ as a by-line under every article.

‘How long have I got?’ she then asked.

Ricky checked his watch. ‘Half an hour.’

Caitlin deleted the entire back-page story about the Bangalow Rebels flogging Byron Bay Rugby Club, then typed the headline: ‘Patrick O’Shaughnessy. 1965–2019. RIP.’ She inserted a photo of Patrick grinning mischievously, then furiously typed an obituary as tears flowed freely down both her face and Zoe’s.

After she finished, Ricky replaced Angus Bain’s edition with theirs. It was ten minutes to nine.