TUNA LIFE (13 page)

Andrew now realised how bad he had been as an employee.

Maybe the partners at Avensis Accounting had been right?

Maybe he never had been partner material.

29

The beer glass had left a wet circle at the wooden table. A dozen men dressed in workwear sat scattered around at the Shark Bar Pub in Miami. Yellow and orange workwear. Construction workers. Scott Davis was the only one in a shirt and tie. But he didn’t feel like an outsider. Most of the workwear was probably cleaner than his suit pants. He couldn’t remember the last time he had washed them, but he knew it was a long time ago. Too long. He had spent a lot of time in the car lately. When you farted in a car seat there was no escape route for the gasses. The gas was stuck there in between the seat and the arse, baking the fabric in the smell. It didn’t help airing the pants out when you got home, either. Gradually they would start to smell. At the pub nobody cared about that stuff. But lately Scott had started to care more about his appearance. They said you gradually became more and more like the people you surrounded yourself with. And lately he had spent a lot of time with this young kid from the crime desk, Mark Moss. He didn’t try to impress him. Actually quite the opposite. But for some reason Mark appeared to look up to him. So Scott had decided to pull himself together. Clean up his act.

Mark Moss was one of those young kids who were very aware of how they appeared. Matching colours on his clothes, shoes always polished. Scott imagined Mark probably spent more time in the bathroom than most women. The waxed hair always looked the same, even though it probably was supposed to look like Mark had just got out of bed. Bed hair, as Mark had called it. Carefully planned. Every strand of hair exactly where it was supposed to be. Scott Davis found the whole thing ridiculous. But he couldn’t argue against facts; it worked, Mark had taken that stripper home. Sex with a stripper; that was something for the bucket list, Scott had thought as he observed Mark Moss pull up outside the pub.

“What the fuck,” Scott blurted out, as Mark exited his car and made it for the pub entrance.

“What the fuck are you wearing?” Scott asked, not even attempting to lower his voice. He was referring to Mark’s white pants and short-sleeved pink shirt.

“What do you mean?” Mark asked, apparently not understanding the question.

Scott didn’t even bother to explain. “Do you want beer or champagne?” he instead asked.

Mark laughed. “Not everyone can wear pink and get away with it,” he said.

“Neither can you.”

Mark Moss smiled. “I’ve been at the Gold Coast Turf Club today. Writing a piece about the use of drugs in horse racing. You need to dress for the occasion.”

“If that’s what you’re wearing for the races, I wonder what you’re going to wear if Vesna ever asks you to cover the Mardi Gras in Sydney.”

Mark laughed. “Felicity gave me the address to where one of those gentleman’s parties was held. I had to promise not to reveal where I got the information. She said there were many Russians there. Scary guys. Guys you wouldn’t even want to meet in broad daylight. That’s why she quit. It wasn’t worth it.”

“What did she do at the parties?”

“Well, she claims she only served drinks and did a few dances on stage. But after last night I’m not sure. She is one sick puppy,” Mark said with a proud voice. He had already told Scott that he had taken the stripper home for the night. Now he was eager to tell more.

Scott knew he was expected to ask, to beg for some dirty details about Mark’s wild night with the crazy stripper. Even though he was tempted, he refrained from doing so.

“Is it ok if you drive?” he instead asked. “I think I’ve had one too many. You can drop me off here later.”

“No problem,” Mark replied.

When they exited the pub Scott heard someone wolf whistling. He swirled around and locked eyes with one of the construction workers. The construction worker’s two buddies were laughing. They instantly lowered their gaze when they noticed Scott Davis was staring back at them.

“Start the car. I just need to sort something out,” Scott said, before returning to the pub. The construction worker in the orange vest, the one who had smiled so broadly only seconds earlier, stared at the floor in an attempt to avoid eye contact with Scott.

“Do you have a problem?” Scott asked, grabbing the arm of the worker. Slowly he applied pressure, and one could see the fear in the worker’s eyes when he realised that he either had to back out or fight the bald giant.

“Sorry, didn’t mean nothing,” he said.

“Well, don’t let it fucking happen again,” Scott said, before loosening the grip. He had definitively changed over the last few weeks.

They were on their way to Marissa Soo’s parents. It was now official that the body parts floating ashore at the Spit had belonged to Marissa Soo, a twenty-year-old nail and beauty student who had worked part time as a stripper at Crazy Kangaroo to earn some spending money. Scott had spoken to her mum on the phone. He had explained that he was working on an article about missing women, but if Marissa’s parents agreed he could include a story about Marissa. It was still unclear how she had ended up in the water, and the police had yet to decide whether it was a criminal case or an accident. They hadn’t been able to determine the cause of death, or even determine if she was dead; all they had found was after all just an arm and a leg. A piece in the paper could maybe give the case some attention. Maybe result in someone with information stepping forward.

Marissa Soo’s parents appeared much older than they were. Scott was unsure whether this was caused by the shock and grief over losing their only daughter, or if they had always looked old. They were only forty-four and forty-five, but they looked like they were in their late sixties. Her dad’s hair was almost white, and her mother’s face looked sickly and grey.

“Thanks for agreeing to see us. I know that this must be very difficult for you,” Mark said.

“Do you have any new information?” the father asked, anxiously.

“Unfortunately not. We don’t know anything more than the police have already told you,” Mark conveyed the message with an apologetic voice.

“She was a wonderful girl,” her mother said, struggling not to burst into tears.

“Did you notice any changes in Marissa’s behaviour the last few weeks before she disappeared? New friends, new acquaintances?” Scott asked.

Her father cleared his throat. Scott knew what was coming, and he knew it would be awkward.

“She took a job at a club in Surfers,” he said with a solemn voice. “Too proud to ask for help,” he continued. “She lost her job at one of the shoe stores at Robina Town Centre. Had worked part time there for six months. When they closed up shop she risked not being able to pay her school fees. She knew we were struggling financially.” He peeked over at his wife. “We both lost our jobs when Hometown Bakery went belly up a year ago. So Marissa took a job as a dancer at Crazy Kangaroo.”

Her father started to cry. His wife put a comforting hand on his shoulder before he continued. “She didn’t tell us. We only discovered when we searched through her room after she went missing. She had hidden a box of money in her closet. That’s where we found the pay slips from Crazy Kangaroo.”

“We know she worked there,” Scott said. “And rest assured that you will be able to review every word we will print about her. She sounds like a wonderful person.” Scott attempted a smile, but he couldn’t quite get there.

“There was an awful lot of money there,” Marissa’s mum said. “A lot more than on the pay slips.”

“Working in clubs you also get a fair bit of tips. That could explain the difference,” Mark said.

“There was a lot more,” Marissa’s dad said.

“How much?” Scott asked.

“About twenty grand.”

Scott and Mark briefly exchanged looks.

“Have you mentioned this to the police?” Scott asked.

“Yes. They told me the same as you. That the girls get a lot of tips in places like Crazy Kangaroo. The policeman interviewing us advised us to keep shut about the money, unless we wanted the taxman to take his part.”

“We don’t care about the money,” Marissa’s mum said. We only want to find out what happened to Marissa. We only want to find who’s responsible for Marissa’s death.”

“We’ll do our best,” Scott said. “We’ll be writing a small piece about Marissa. I don’t want to create false expectations, but these kinds of articles sometimes help bring forward new information. Someone can have seen her the night she disappeared. People can remember details they previously had forgotten. What we want from you, if you choose to accept, is the authorisation to tell Marissa’s story. Who she was, and what she was doing the night she disappeared.”

“How can we help?” the father asked.

“You need to try to remember. What did Marissa do the day she disappeared? No details are unimportant. Tell the story, and maybe it can help us get some answers.”

“Marissa’s father nodded as he wiped a tear away from his cheek. “Do you drink coffee?” he asked.

30

“Andrew, BusinessInsider wants to have a chat,” said Yvonne, the only employee on Tuna Life’s support line.

Andrew shook his head demonstratively. He had no intention of taking BusinessInsider’s call. In fact, he had no intention of taking any media calls at all. It had started of slowly; a couple of tech news sites had contacted him. TechCrunch was the first. They were US-based and could do the interview over email. It had suited Andrew perfectly. He could think through his answers, and if he ran into any problems with advanced technical queries, he could just have a chat with one of his programmers before replying. Even though he didn’t have a Computer Science background he had managed to add a mountain of tech phrases to his vocabulary over the last two months. It was like any industry; you didn’t need to know all the finer details to be recognised as an expert. You only needed to know the main points.

He was the CEO.

The ‘big picture’ person.

The one who created the vision and set the aspirations for the company and its future.

He didn’t need to know how to program in C++, Python or Java. He wasn’t the one who needed to know technical trivialities.

Before he accepted his previous job in Avensis Accounting he had been called in to a few job interviews for Ernst & Young Consultants. The job interviews had been some of the most surreal experiences in his life. First of all, everybody who interviewed him treated him like shit. It didn’t actually whet the appetite that everyone who worked there turned out to be arseholes. But somehow he managed to get called in for a second interview. He had considered declining, but then he had thought: I’ve gotten this far, might as well see if I can go all the way.

On the second interview a guy in a suit had placed a sheet of paper in front of Andrew. It had contained one simple question. ‘You are the CEO of a new airline that considers flying daily from Brisbane to Sydney. How much does the airplane cost?’

The guy in the suit had explained that Andrew had twenty minutes to come up with an answer. Then he had left the room. Not even a handshake. Not even a ‘hi, how are you’. Andrew was flabbergasted. The first five minutes he had just been sitting there, staring at the piece of paper, waiting for the guy to return and tell it was all a bad joke, that he had already been given the job. But as time passed, and the guy never returned, he had started to think. He imagined that’s what they wanted. To figure out how he thought, how his mind worked. It wasn’t the answer they were after – it was the thought process that led to the answer.

Assumptions.

He had to start with the assumptions. He assumed the plane had 200 seats. On average it would be able to fill 80% of those seats with paying passengers. It would use so and so much fuel per mile, and the distance between Sydney and Brisbane was x miles. Somehow, he didn’t really know how, he had managed to come up with a price tag that sounded perfectly logical. He had arguments made out of steel, and he was pleased with himself. The consultant in the suit returned and asked Andrew to explain how he had arrived at his answer. Halfway into Andrew’s answer the consultant broke him off, and told him it was the most ridiculous answer he had ever been given. Instead he gave Andrew a new piece of paper. ‘You are sitting on a plane, next to the CEO of BMW. Tell him how he should launch a new model in China.’

What the fuck? Andrew felt like getting up and telling the guy to piss off, that Ernst & Young could bugger off to a place the sun never shone. But he constrained himself, and completed the second task as well.

To his surprise he received a job offer from Ernst & Young Consulting the following week. He almost took it. The problem was that the first thing he had done after the interview was to Google his own answers. He had convinced himself of what the price of a commercial jet should be, and he had been confident that he was in close proximity of the real price. He was miles away.

And that was when he realised; it wasn’t necessarily only his thought process they were after, either. They wanted to assess if he was capable of selling a convincing story without knowing shit, if he was capable of handling criticism without becoming defensive. He was about to become an overpaid consultant. Someone who would invoice by the hour, and claim to be able to solve everyone’s problems, without having a fucking clue whether the solutions he sold would ever work or not. He, without any work experience, without any other knowledge than what he had read himself to at university, was going to tell business leaders, with decades of experience, how they were supposed to run their businesses. He declined the offer from Ernst & Young. Instead he took the accounting job at Avensis. It seemed more honest. At least he would know what he was selling.

But he had always been good at selling stories. That was part of the reason he had been able to raise three hundred thousand dollars in seed capital from Y-Bator, and it was the reason he had been able to recruit so much talent to Tuna Life: Andrew’s bullshit stories.