The Tower (47 page)

‘You told him honesty's the best policy?'

‘Something like that.'

‘Did he know anything about the shooter or Bazzi?'

‘He says not, and I think I believe him. But he does know a lot about your own little problem.' McIver explained that before working at The Tower, Randall had been with Warton Constructions based in Hong Kong. He'd been manager for a project in Shanghai where some men had died. ‘It was Randall's fault, he overlooked something he was supposed to check. That job was for Morning Star too, and their local manager got the authorities to cover it up. I gather that sort of thing is not hard to do in the People's Republic. He saved Randall from being prosecuted.'

‘Saved the company's reputation too.'

‘Sure. But the key point is, he saved Sean Randall's career.'

‘Ah,' said Troy.

McIver nodded. ‘Bloke by the name of Henry Wu. I believe you've met?'

One of those that have turned the world upside down. ‘So it's Wu?'

‘Brought him here. Randall calls Sydney his second coming. So he's in Wu's pocket, and the bloke was calling him every day about the investigation. It was Wu told him to give the number to you on the night you went to the restaurant.'

‘But Wu's a major executive,' Troy protested. ‘Why would he do stuff like this? I saw him with Kelly and Siegert. They were treating him with respect.'

‘Randall was very interesting on the subject,' McIver said, savouring what he was about to say. He liked this sort of thing, learning how the city worked. ‘Wu's one of the most influential Chinese businessmen in town, because of Morning Star and The Tower. But that's not enough for him. He's used that status to build up personal business interests that have nothing to do with the insurance company. And some of them are extremely dodgy.'

‘Risky. Unnecessary.' Wu already had so much. Why would he want more?

‘According to Randall, the bloke's crazy, a big gambler, as well as a psychopath. Volatile combination, and apparently he likes taking it to the edge. There's some personally destructive behaviour Randall didn't want to talk about. Someone like that might have trouble in the corporate world here in the West. But where he comes from, it doesn't seem to have held him back.'

Troy thought over the investigation, wondering where else Wu might fit in. ‘He's into people smuggling?'

‘Randall doesn't know. But he said he's got a finger in so many things it's possible. He talked a bit about an insurance scam on some factory, drugs, smuggling through the docks. With the sort of people Wu deals with in his spare time, I'd be guessing there'd be no trouble arranging the sting on you.'

Troy drained his glass and placed it carefully on the table. ‘You think he had Margot killed?'

‘Who knows? Maybe she was getting close to something, with the help of Des Ferguson.' McIver frowned. ‘But I doubt it. Despite what Randall says, the bloke's not stupid. Why would he have had her killed at The Tower and draw attention to the place? If she'd died in a motor accident, or in a fire in her house up the river, we'd never have gone near The Tower.'

Troy shrugged, said, ‘Or she saw something that night which someone wanted hidden. Maybe Ferguson saw it too.'

McIver nodded. ‘Such as the illegals. Possibly someone connected with them killed her on the spur of the moment when she saw something she shouldn't have. Like two men coming out of a tunnel. They panicked. So Henry Wu had nothing to do with her murder, but he sure wanted it covered up.'

‘And being a criminal anyway, he knew what to do about it,' said Troy. ‘Feel like another drink?'

McIver shook his head slowly. ‘We need to get back to your own little problem. Last night I thought some more and decided the thing to do was throw you off the investigation—that would have finished the blackmail. But if Wu's as vicious as Randall says, it mightn't help. Could still send the video to Anna.' He paused and rubbed his cheek. ‘Now we have a name, there's things we can do. I know a bloke this sort of thing happened to once before, Special Ops helped him out. Few fellows in an unmarked van, ballied up, they pull the blackmailer into the back, shotgun to the head. A few words of warning. Chuck him back onto the street. He got the message.'

Troy nodded. That sounded good.

‘You'd incur some debts if we go down that road. You understand that?'

Life, Troy thought. He nodded again.

‘You coming to the celebration?'

‘I need to get home to Anna.'

‘Well I have to put in an appearance. It's a big day, you know. Kelly's over the moon.' He looked at Troy and smiled. ‘Then I've got some people to see.'

They stood up.

‘What about Randall?' Troy said.

‘You stay right away from him. I charged him with a small quantity, personal use only. He squealed but I explained that Wu'd hear about the bust anyway. He'd smell a rat if we didn't charge Randall with something.'

They walked down the stairs. On the footpath, Troy shook McIver's hand.

‘Thanks for all this,' he said awkwardly.

‘That's all right, I'm enjoying it.'

‘I'm not.'

McIver smiled. ‘I used to think you were a good bloke, but a little boring.' He grew serious. ‘The next twenty-four hours could be pretty rough, now we're closing in on Ferguson. We need to get to Wu before he finds out about that.'

‘How could he?'

‘Randall says he's got a good contact in the job. I don't think we've got much time left.' He looked at Troy. ‘I'm talking about the blackmail,' he said gently.

Troy nodded. He knew.

WEDNESDAY

Forty-two

T
he phone woke him at twelve minutes past four. It was Des Ferguson, calling from Chicago. Troy was alone in the bedroom, but even so he got up and went out to the lounge room, so the conversation wouldn't disturb Anna or Matt. Closing the door quietly, he thanked Ferguson for calling him.

‘I'm very nervous about this, officer,' said the voice at the other end of the line. He sounded nervous. ‘But I was going to call the police anyway.'

‘Why don't you tell me what happened that night?' Troy said, as calmly as he could.

The way Ferguson sounded, he might hang up at any moment.

‘It's not just me, it's my family.'

Troy turned on a lamp and sat down in an armchair. A pad and two pens were on the small table next to it. He said, ‘I propose keeping anything you tell me confidential between ourselves and my senior officer until we can guarantee your safety. You have my word on that. Does that make things better?'

There was silence and Troy prayed the line had not dropped out. He should have asked for Ferguson's number.

‘Yes,' said the other man at last. ‘I'm basically a decent middle-class citizen. Keeping things from the police hasn't been easy for me. I'm just scared.'

‘You'll feel better afterwards.'

‘You think so?'

Troy wondered if he was a religious man. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armour of light.

He said, ‘In case the line drops out, would you give me your number?'

Ignoring this, Ferguson began to tell his story.

The first part Troy knew: how Ferguson had been contacted by Margot, who believed Morning Star had robbed her father and then destroyed his reputation. The company had even hired a public relations firm to plant derogatory stories about Tony Teresi in the media after he died.

Troy frowned. ‘What was the point of all this?'

‘I can't explain it on the phone, it's very complicated, but basically when I went into it I found it's all about money laundering. Morning Star have used the purchase and now the construction of The Tower to produce a lot of fake invoices and receipts for goods and services that either don't exist or are worth a fraction of what's being claimed.'

Troy had still been a little sleepy, but not anymore.

‘That's an extraordinary claim,' he said. ‘Morning Star are a major corporation, in Hong Kong anyway.'

‘I know,' said Ferguson unhappily.

‘How much are you talking about?'

‘I've found evidence of three million but it could be more. I don't know why Morning Star are bothering. They're making a lot of money as it is, quite legitimately. And the benefit here is going to the contractors they're using, in any case.'

Ferguson must be unaware of Wu's personal business interests. The CEO would have links with the contracting companies.

Troy said, ‘Wouldn't Warton Constructions know about this?'

‘There's an unusual accounting arrangement,' Ferguson said. ‘Morning Star is handling all the fi nancials. Apparently, Warton went along with it because it was the price of getting the work, even though it's a right pain in the bum. Morning Star has a tame quantity surveyor who approves the payment of the dodgy invoices, says the goods or services have been provided in full when often they haven't been. From a fraud point of view, he's the key man. Margot was pretty sharp; she suspected this and hired me to prove it.'

‘Why were you there the night she died?'

‘One of the timbers they're using around the lifts on each floor, and through the sky lobbies, is called New Guinea Rosewood. It's a beautiful wood and the shipment was valued at three and a half million dollars. Margot took me down to where it was stacked in one of the car parks—I have particular expertise in fine timbers. It was the real thing, had stickers on it from an NGO called East Green. They're an environmental group which certifies that the timber has been sustainably logged, so the Australian government allows it to be imported. But next month the United Nations is going to proscribe East Green, because it's really a front for Asian timber interests. The rosewood I saw was cut in forests in West Irian that are controlled by the Indonesian military; it was logged illegally by Malaysian companies. Once the proscription comes in, countries like Australia will refuse to accept any timber certified by East Green.'

‘But Morning Star have already got theirs.'

‘The industry has known for months what the UN was going to do. There's a huge glut of New Guinea Rosewood. The unofficial price has plunged as they try to offload it before the bans come in. The point is that, according to documents Margot obtained, Morning Star says it paid the old price, even though it didn't have to.'

Troy, who was trying to record all this in his notebook, said, ‘It's very complicated.'

‘This is all about the receipts,' said Ferguson. ‘It means the company that sold the timber to Morning Star, a broker based in Australia, ended up with a receipt for over a million dollars they hadn't actually received. That receipt could be used to justify the equivalent amount of income from illegal activities.'

‘Who owns the broker?'

‘I don't know.'

Troy could guess. ‘And there were other examples?'

‘Suppliers here and in Asia. Margot had some documents and she was getting more. I think she knew someone who was providing her with information. The money involved must be enormous.' He paused. ‘It's actually a brilliant concept in a perverse way. The Tower is like a giant washing machine for illegal money.'

‘Where does Tony Teresi come into this?' Troy said. ‘Why was it necessary to smear his reputation?'

‘That's completely separate, mainly to do with taxation. The sale of The Tower was rushed. For various reasons, it became important later to know just what the state of the project was at the time of the sale, if certain major deliveries and transactions occurred before or after. Basically, Morning Star argue that Tony Teresi did a lot of foolish things, some of them fraudulent, before the sale. Some of those who used to work for him don't accept that, they say these transactions occurred after the sale.'

‘Surely accountants can sort that kind of thing out objectively?'

‘There's more subjectivity than you'd imagine, once you get to a certain level. It comes down to preparedness to grapple with an immensely complicated situation, sometimes going back years. Reputation becomes important, it can shape decisions on whether to pursue stories in the financial press, major tax audits, investigations by government watchdogs. Morning Star had a lot to gain by getting people to see things their way.'

Ferguson said he needed a glass of water. While he was away from the phone, Troy shook his hand, which was sore from all the writing. He hoped his notes would make sense when he reread them later in the morning. When Ferguson came back on the line, he asked him to describe what had happened on the night Margot died, after they had inspected the timber in the car park.

‘I said I had to go. I had a dinner engagement that evening, and to be honest I was nervous about being on the site.'

Margot had said she wanted to go to an upper floor to check on something, but would show Ferguson back up to the ground floor first.

‘We were by ourselves down there on the retail level, and we were going towards a stairwell when there was a noise from the end of this corridor, quite a long way from where we were, and two men appeared. We stopped and looked back. Margot wanted to talk to them.'

Troy was tempted to stop taking notes and just listen. At last they had a witness to the events of that night. At last.

‘What did they look like?' he said.

‘There wasn't a lot of light down there, but I could see two men, maybe Pakistani. I suppose they were the ones you and your sergeant encountered later on. They were carrying big bags but they put them down when they saw us, and I could hear them talking to each other in some other language.'

A memory of that night came back to Troy, the memory of his cold hand clasping the gun. He rubbed his forehead until it went away.