Saturday always started busy for Ellen Harkin. The house had its busiest night of the week on Friday, Saturday would not be much quieter, and so her girls all slept in on Saturday morning. All different ways, it was a good paperwork morning, an ideal time to review the past week for messages, trends and opportunities. Dave was usually part of those last, as he was this morning.
She and Dave had a loose, comfortable arrangement. You rarely needed muscle once you were established in the escort business, but when you did need, there wasn't time to reach for the Yellow Pages. It wasn't every couple of months, but he had always been there, complete with husky help, whenever. Best of all, his rates were so convenient: a girl for the night, every so often, and advice on his business even less frequently. Brutish bastard, though.
Dave was very satisfied with the business collaboration, too. He liked it when everybody said what they meant and then the stronger one took what he wanted. Knowing his interpersonals weren’t good most times, he didn't have the subtlety to work this clown Lester out at all. Presently, though, Dave had more friends looking for work than profitable work to do. Maybe Madam Helene, his associate Ellen, could find the glitter in this mess - or confirm he should write it off. He had always found her clever on the subtle stuff, and generous with her advice. So, when he dropped in on her seeking a business review session, he expected to get some useful insights into the lives of such as comfy young technocrats, and knew she'd willingly lay on a girl for next Monday night. It was adequate reward for the odd job done discreetly at short notice.
"Let's see what I know, David", she said, slowly organising the last ten minutes’ chat in her head. "He's a computer whiz, keeps unusual but reasonably regular hours, owns everything, and doesn’t spend much. Seems to live a second life as a business exec about town, and wanted a spare passport a few weeks ago, then dropped the idea. Right?"
He nodded, drew in a breath, but she headed him off.
"So I think you're right: he's likely to have wealth that you could do with. As to whether he's pulling something big off, that's possible too, but it's guesswork. You need more information. Big question is, how do you arrange a share of that wealth?
She thought about that, too, and eventually chose the words with care, “I don't know, David. There're two big issues. One, he does seem to have big plans for Christmas or soon after. But second, as soon as you get physical, he just might call the police in. You don't know enough."
"What do you suggest?"
"I wonder if he has financial records at home. Since you know where he banks, if you found bank papers, you never know what might be stored with them," she suggested.
No need to spell it all out: a little burglary was a lot less risky than his earlier options, so Dave was ready to switch subjects. "That's worth a bit of thought. Now, I've got some important guests on Monday night, and I wondered if you had someone available as company for me."
It was his standard closing gambit, easily managed to everyone's satisfaction, and Ellen was back to her books alone inside ten minutes. Yes, she mused, a mutually beneficial setup; protection generally cost a lot more than the occasional freebie.
Meanwhile, Annette was almost walking on water with anticipation as the countdown reached a week from the trip. Next Saturday, a week today, was the eagerly-awaited family reunion and start of the fourteen-day car trip from her parents' home in Christchurch all the way to the Bay of Islands at the top of the North Island.
She had a form to sign, authorising her to collect Lester’s passport from the Travel Agent in Box Hill, and that completed all the arrangements.
Well, almost all. Try as she might, she couldn't manage to get him to join her shopping foray for a new holiday wardrobe. She only wanted half-a-dozen things, and she thought he needed a few, too. He thought what he had was fine, and there was an end to it.
Lester couldn't bring himself to concentrate on any subject and the weekend was starting as a real drag. There was nothing constructive to do about work, but the nagging possibility of having overlooked some opportunity kept intruding, displacing all else. When he asked himself what extra clothes he needed, his mind went blank: that proved he didn't lack anything, he supposed. Then, when she asked what clothes he'd take, he couldn't think of anything at all suitable. A woman would say she didn't have a thing to wear: Lester presumed it wasn't the time to think about holidays yet. Anyway, clothes were to keep the rain off.
So, as she rushed off on Saturday morning to grab a couple of blouses, perhaps a skirt and a swimsuit in the few remaining shopping hours, he languished under the weight of a steadily-growing list of impossible, undesirable or unsavoury subjects and activities. No wonder time was dragging, he told himself, the one thing you want to do is just out of reach - but maybe only for two days, he hoped.
Two hours later, Annette was back from the shopping spree, even more enthusiastic - if that was possible, he grumped to himself. Tomorrow, she instructed, they'd get an early start, before the worst of the summer day struck, and loaf on the beach at Phillip Island. Sand and blazing sun didn't seem ideal, but she just HAD to christen the new two-piece blouson before New Zealand. What if it didn't fit, she asked? True, he agreed ruefully; if it didn't keep all the pieces in place, that would be a disaster! Best we find out in time.
The day on the beach, a little horseplay on the sand, made Sunday a bit less tense than Saturday had been. Anyway, Annette thought the blouson fitted, so that kept her out of his way.
Sunday's diversion was all the satisfaction he could expect, however. Monday came and went, without any change in the status quo at Mulgrave, on hours, workloads and prospects; except that, come Tuesday, the word went around that Henry Chu had left. Nobody knew why, until the weekly review meeting came around. Fred explained that Chu had not measured up for some time now, and so the decision had been taken with regret to "let him go." He had been a quiet, retiring fellow, didn't make close friends, so nobody really felt much concern. Steps would be taken in the New Year, Fred assured the group, to hire a replacement, but things should be quiet for a month or so, anyway. Everybody was winding down in preparation for Christmas, and the reconciliation software, Lester had assured him, had all been used for two years or more, so it should be fairly mature. As the others gave their reports, the workload did indeed seem to be tailing off, and Lester knew from his personal involvement this week that the Problem Desk was quieter than usual.
The three software package evaluations Lester had started last week hadn't made a dent in the backlog, however, and he handed the one he'd barely started back to Fred for re-allocation. The other two tasks were finished, and he was due to start some holidays.
There was only one other development of significance out of the meeting. It seemed the Managers of Software and Operations had agreed jointly to rescind the access ban for Systems and Database staff. The ban had been imposed to improve autonomy in Operations, but this had been a two week trial to prove a point. Operations staff needed more training before it could work satisfactorily. Therefore, as of now, Fred instructed, they were to go back to doing their own Tape library arrangements and legwork in Operations. The access ban would probably be re-introduced in three or four months when the Ops staff had improved their skill level sufficiently.
The irony of the situation was heartbreaking for Lester. Even if it had been one day earlier, just one miserable day! If he'd been able to get in to the Ops area midday yesterday, he'd have had a good chance of removing, modifying and replacing a payment batch. So the Adelaide account balance was safe - he couldn't get at it. That one day was a bitterly disappointing miss.
Before he finally gave up, he manufactured an opportunity early that afternoon to go into Ops, ostentatiously waving hello to all the people he hardly knew, apparently exercising his regained freedom. Most of them seemed pleased to see him. However with his desk duties that week, he couldn't stay long. All he needed was a quick look around, in any case. He wanted to see whether batch entry really had finished.
Seemed like it had, but he wanted to make sure.
"Something looks different," he told a passing operator, "all cleaned up for Christmas? Where's all the batch work that usually clutters up the data entry area?"
All finished, the young man assured him. They had a big drive the last week or so to get ahead; and the effort had gone pretty well. All the entry work had been stopped late yesterday, so they only had a few errors to fix up. The batches that weren't finished had been sent back to Accounting for safekeeping over the Christmas break. So, it was too late for this year.
In a quiet half-hour later that day, he put the Adelaide development funds back to their original few hundred dollars, then used the old, much-shared Security password to clear away all trace of his part in the fix-up. Now it looked like any other transaction that had been mistakenly made and immediately corrected: no loose ends there.
It was a pretty smooth week all around, as everyone worked to clear away all the odd jobs, all the unfinished tasks, before the universally-awaited closedown. Although the Operations people were still behind in some parts of their overall schedule, the return of the Systems people helped, and everybody pulled together.
Lester was grateful for that team spirit on Wednesday night, otherwise he could have lost his temper. That would not have helped, but sometimes you just might as well burn the plan and start again. As he arrived home that night, Annette was sitting quietly on the hall floor inside the front door, just sitting.
"What the hell are you doing down there?"
"Somebody's been in here today. I'm a bit scared."
She was cool, composed and angry, over the top of the scare. There were fifty or sixty dollars of loose change gone from drawers and strategic saucers, but she said everything had been moved. She was right: half the cash was his but what should they do about it?
He rang the police, as a formality, but it was just as they suspected. Only a hundred missing? No, they didn't take reports over the phone, but a detective should be in touch in the next week or two. Translation: sorry, but you might as well forget it!
The best thing to do, she and Lester agreed, was to find where someone had gotten in, fix that, and get on with their lives. Obviously, the detective was right, their visitor had been a drug addict, very experienced burglar, only interested in ready cash. They'd have a go at forgetting it.
Only the one small mishap marred a very creditable recovery project at Mulgrave. Thursday morning, hurrying across to a tape drive with a new reel of tape, the operator stumbled on a tile in the flooring, and nearly fell. She could have hurt herself on a metal cabinet, but caught hold of a rack at the last moment, and stayed upright. She dropped the tape, because that was replaceable - heads were not. A few loops of tape spilled on the floor, but the reel split when it hit the deck; that would have to be rewound onto a new spool before it could be loaded on the machine.
The hand-rewinding was a slow job, so the supervisor made a quick decision. It would take at least half-an-hour to make that tape reliable, a half-hour they didn't really have to spare.
"Don't worry about it now," he reassured the shaken girl. "Put it aside and we'll use the backup copy."
In the background, there was another disquieting development, but not many heard about it. The EDP Audit people had a brief meeting on Thursday morning to deal with a very difficult matter. AJ hadn't actually gotten that chap Chu terminated, but he had been a kind of prosecution witness, because the password Chu was using appeared in some strange places. That didn't prove anything, it just left one feeling insecure about Chu.
However, Henry Chu had gone on Monday, so Alf was really surprised with Wednesday's use of that same password in the asset accounts of the company's General Ledger. Marcus, the junior of the section, had been monitoring Chu's work over the last couple of weeks, but now that employee had gone elsewhere. So Marcus was shutting down the watching program when he noticed the last entry. It gave a new meaning to the word "insecure." There was someone else, maybe just occasionally, using that password.
The Christmas break, only a working day away, would be a good chance for a more thorough investigation, so the group settled for a few contingency measures: tell Alf Rosen, reset the monitor software to call attention if the same password was used again, and don't breathe a word to another soul.
“Why don't you cancel the password? That would put the risk on ice, surely," someone asked.
"No, that would lose us the only lead we've got," Alf answered. "Once our trespasser found it was canceled, he'd never use it again, most likely. This way, we might catch him, with a bit of luck - or her."
"What about Bayliss? Could he help? Monica McKee suggested.
"Going on holidays - for a change," someone else supplied.
"Anyway," James added," nobody should be above suspicion now; we might be part of an unfixable mistake with the chap who was terminated."
Sobered by that thought, the group confirmed roster details for this monitor system over the break, and returned to their various loose ends.
All things considered, the week came together very satisfactorily. It wasn't strictly by the book, but several of the Software people were seen giving a hand with several problems here and there in Ops, notably on the overtime shifts when discipline was more relaxed. The upshot was that by Thursday night the Operations schedule was back on timetable, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief. The backlog was all caught up.
Lester didn't really have any part of that climb-back from the brink, however. His week was spent, till around seven each night, stuck interminably to the dribble of incoming queries on the Problem Desk. It was a lot quieter than usual, but he still had to be there – his group had, and wanted to keep, an enviable service record - and he dragged through the week, heavy with disappointment, picking his way hour by hour through his own dashed hopes.
A couple of months of planning was lost, he concluded sadly on Thursday evening, and there was this last loose end that still had to be tied off. Most of his other arrangements would sit satisfactorily in limbo for a couple of months, but he really ought to speak to the Oakleigh bank manager again. He would, he hoped, need to depend on the man sometime later, so it was important to keep in the fellow's good graces. He could probably do it by phone, but a visit seemed more appropriate.
Paul Towner was willing to cover on the Problem Desk for a couple of hours on Friday morning, so he phoned for an appointment, and got one for 9.30, right on the Bank’s opening time. He promised he should be back well before eleven, and he'd return the favour next time Paul had Problem Desk duty.
Next morning began his last work day this year, the day of the Christmas party. His depression was at its worst, as the bright sunshine blazed into the bedroom at seven fifteen and Annette began her toilette.
Half-an-hour later, ready to leave, she had a second thought. Still no sign of movement, and he was supposed to be on time this week. He was really glum, and she hadn't been able to wheedle out a solid explanation all week long. Well, she recalled, with a holiday mandatory, the tickets bought and his passport arrived, he didn't have any excuse to renege on the New Zealand trip. A couple of times, she'd thought there was a real risk he might just decide to sulk at home. It seemed a good idea, when he was so moody, to take out some insurance against some wild, last-minute tantrum. Now it was too late: the tinhorn had spent too much on the trip, so it had to happen. She'd planned carefully over the week to use up all the fresh food in the house, so he couldn't stay home either. She'd splashed out and bought him a small suitcase, too, when she found out all he had was the one travelling bag, the overnighter he used for the occasional week of training somewhere. It might be enough for him, but she was determined to pack him another cubic foot of casual clothes. He'd never change duds otherwise, she thought ruefully. Such a partner!
This grey, drizzly mood seemed to have been with him for weeks now. She'd have to watch out for herself - something could be building. If the trip didn't shake him out of it, she'd have to be very observant when they returned home. Had she taken enough insurance?
Last thing, she traced her steps to the bedroom and bounced on the bed beside the supine figure. "I'm going, and it's late; you should have been up half an hour back. Problem desk, remember? Goodbye, lazybones, see you about four."
He waited till the door slammed, rolled lethargically out and hit the shower.
After a bite of breakfast, he climbed into the suit, and balefully inspected his appearance in the mirror. The extra two months of planning would just have to go towards getting him a better plan: one that didn't collapse over a miserable access ban, he promised himself.
He was in through the opening bank doors with the first half dozen customers, and saw the Manager waiting at the top of the stairs to the office area.
"Good morning, Mr. Conley. Going to be a warm one, isn't it. Still, you're in a position now to have all the comforts, I suppose. Come in, come in. Coffee, please, Lena - you drink coffee? Good. You're empty-handed." He paused for breath.
"What did you expect?" Lester asked, nonplused.
"Well, now that your transfer's in, I expected you'd have some instructions ready. If we're to get everything organised, we've got a bit of work to do."
Some fast improvising demanded here. "What deposit? Far as I know, the lawyers are still running round in circles."
"Of course!" the manager realised, figuratively thumping his balding pate, the bank transfer would be miles faster than the mail at the moment. Well, then, I bring glad tidings. It's a larger transfer than you led us to believe, though."
"How much?" was all Lester could force out.
The manager consulted his desk pad. "Eleven million, six hundred and thirty eight thousand, three hundred and fifty six dollars," he intoned reverently, like a monk handling a particularly sacred piece of chant.
"Must be a mistake."
"Doesn't look like it," the manager assured him. "Soon as it arrived, the Accountant warned me. It was something like the total you warned us about, but I must admit you'd left me expecting a much smaller initial transfer. There were three separate transfers, though we checked with head office, of course, but it's all valid, and the transfer's cleared. Happened late yesterday. You can draw on it right away if you want."
"You're right," he agreed, "we've got a lot of work to do." Trying hard to hide his astonishment, Lester got to work. He would need $5,000 in Travelers’ cheques, but the rest would need some thinking. After getting a brief run-down from the manager on available fixed-interest securities, he took his leave.
On the way back home, he bought a Financial Review in Caulfield.