Insecure (15 page)

Forty minutes later he was home and back at work. He worked through the rest of the night, eating fruit and nuts, drinking plunger pot after pot of coffee. Around 4am he slept. He got up at eight, sent a message to Nolan to tell him he was sick and not coming in and went for a run, pounding the streets for an hour. Next thing he knew it was time to go back to St Ags. He seriously considered not going. One night, he could skip one night, but after the mucked up weekend he felt guilty.

Buster rolled her eyes when he walked in. He was still wearing the shorts and torn tee he'd run in that morning. He hadn't shaved or showered, since—yeah well. The useful thing about wearing his hair cropped close was it always looked the same.

He gave her a show; putting his arms up and turning around like a fashion model. “You don't like the look?” She'd been so scared he'd cover his body in tattoos and he might've except he respected her for making his life stable after the drama that was his mother, after the bus.

She sneezed. They both laughed.

He helped her with the roast dinner and then massaged her feet and calves. She touched his hair. “Don't come tomorrow.”

“I need to do your washing and bring it back.”

“I can manage.”

It was tempting. He kissed her forehead. “We'll see.”

He drove home via the local pizza shop. He needed the carbs, calories and the speed. Waiting, he thought of Jacinta, how she'd been surprised he didn't look like Nolan and the majority of the IT team who were all allergic to exercise and vegetables.

He demolished the pizza at his desk and worked through till 2am. Then he showered and tried to sleep, but he was wired: kept seeing code, seeing possibilities, second-guessing himself. He got up an hour later, made coffee and started work again.

He sent Dillon a progress report at lunchtime, then worked the bag hanging in the yard. If he didn't see Buster he could catch some sleep and then work through the night again. He phoned her room and she answered. He could hear her TV and her soft whisper, urging him not to come. He slept instead, then repeated the pattern. Work, coffee, exercise, sleep. At the end of the three days he felt snookered and woolly-headed. But he was done. They'd meet Jay's deadline.

He fell asleep in Buster's big armchair in her room and the night nurse woke him. He'd forgotten to phone in sick for two days. Doctor Dark was going to need to come up with an illness that'd rendered him comatose. He'd forgotten Buster's washing. He looked like a wild man, probably smelled like one too. She asked him to bring more of the eucalyptus tissues she liked and some Vick's Vapour Rub. He wrote it on his arm like a tattoo so he wouldn't forget.

He slunk into work the next day feeling guilty and oddly hung-over, but looking none the worse. It took five minutes for Nolan to appear at his desk.

“What happened to you?”

He hadn't figured out his cover story.

“Never mind. The register locator server collapsed. It's being attacked by spam bots or a virus I don't know. I need you on that project now. You're teaming with Indira and Ravi. None of you leave the building till it's finished.”

Shit, he'd actually have to think about that, couldn't simply operate on autopilot like he'd planned. It was 9pm before he looked up. Five messages from Dillon. The server was still crashing. He hadn't done Buster's washing or shopping. He rang her room and got no answer. She might be in the bathroom. He rang the desk, they said she was with the nurse, that she had a small cold and they'd pass on his message.

The tissues, the Vicks
. He'd belt out at lunchtime tomorrow and get them. He fell into bed at 1am and slept like a corpse. An asteroid could've crashed into the earth and he'd have felt nothing.

The server stayed up for half the morning then crashed again. There was no lunchtime. Late afternoon Dillon called. Jay had appointed a director in his business to work with them. The guy's name was Anderson Abbott. And he had more hurdles lined up to jump.

“Don't even think about getting disappointed about that,” Dillon said.

Abbott wanted a technical paper on implications for the software platform. Mace didn't have two remaining brain cells to rub together.

“When?”

“I stalled him till Monday morning.”

“That was a stall. “

“It's a weekend, what do you want?”

A long soak in a warm bath with a beautiful woman. That's what he wanted. And to sleep with her tucked against him. Didn't seem like too much to ask. But it was a week and no call, no email, no text from her. “I'm on it.”

“Anderson makes Jay look like a piss-weak schoolgirl. I think he's the man's pit bull. This has to be right, Mace.”

He rang off, making plans for Dillon to join him Saturday night with food and fresh eyes.

An hour later, St Ags called. Buster had taken a turn, they said, quaint words; he had no idea what they meant, but his life had suddenly veered from the complicated to the impossible.

Jacinta stood at the head of the boardroom table and waited, eyes locked on Malcolm. She had a majority, they didn't need his yes vote, but it was a good politics to get it.

“This does not make up for blowing the takeover deal,” he said.

“It comes close, Malcolm,” said Henry, and she could've crawled down the length of the table to kiss him. She stifled her smile, but it was impossible not to imagine the shock she'd cause, and poor, proper Henry, with his mop of white hair and the crispest shirts money could buy, would've died of the humiliation. Still, launching into some raunchy music video action on the tabletop would be less shocking that what she was about to propose.

It'd taken most of the week to make the decision. Once Malcolm capitulated and Plan B was officially the new Plan A she'd make her move, present the facts, outline the options and suggest everyone take a weekend to think about it. A weekend during which she'd lobby each board member so hard they'd be wishing all she'd done was hands and knees it down the table, showing too much cleavage and a lot of arse.

Malcolm gave a curt nod. On the inside she punched the air.

“One more item, Mr Chairman,” she said to Henry.

“Go ahead.” Henry nodded.

“Is it necessary? It's been a long meeting and I don't want to keep the board from their weekend,” said Malcolm.

“I believe it is,” she said.

“Timetable whatever it is for next month, Jacinta.”

It took a second to realise Malcolm wanted out of the room, so would be offside before she even opened her mouth, but this wouldn't hold a month, it might not hold the weekend. “It won't wait.”

“If it was so urgent why didn't you notify the board of a new issue?”

“I should've done that.” Better to give Malcolm a point scored. “To be honest I've been wrestling with it.”

“Wrestling?” said Henry.

“It's a moral dilemma for me and I believe it will be for you as well.”

Malcolm closed his leather binder. “We can do moral dilemmas next month or never.” He stood up.

Henry's hand shot out. He was playing his role well. She might not have added the issue to the agenda, but she wasn't stupid enough to shanghai the chairman. “Malcolm, wait. Unless you have pressing personal business, I'd like to hear this.”

Malcolm sat. The idea that he might let anything personal interfere with business was such an anathema to him, he had no alternative but to capitulate. “Of course, Henry, as you wish.”

Fourteen pairs of eyes turned back to her. At least half the board were appointees Malcolm had manipulated into the role. He was assured of their support. Fortunately Henry was no one's puppet. She passed a single sheet of paper around. On it was a diagram of Wentworth core businesses, subsidiaries, majority shareholdings and minority interests. It was a familiar graphic. What was different was the overlay that showed the links to the marathon bomber, right the way down to his empty savings account.

“What is this?” Malcolm snapped. He was last to take a page as the pile passed the other way around the table, and first to react. “A joke?”

“Roger Kincaid was a troubled man. And in no way am I suggesting his crime is anything but abhorrent. I am—”

Malcolm stood up. “Wasting our time.”

“I believe you're suggesting there is a link, however tenuous, between our businesses and this man's actions,” said Henry.

“That's right.”

“It might as well be science fiction, Henry,” said Malcolm.

“It's real.”

Malcolm tore the page in half. “Only in this room.”

“It would not take a good journalist long to discover this,” said Constance Graves, the one female member of the board, no friend of Jacinta's but no toady of Malcolm's either. She'd been the CEO of a rival bank for years. The media called her The Undertaker, a play on her name and her utter lack of either warmth or humour.

“Any substance to that?” Henry asked.

Jacinta nodded. “There is nothing to stop anyone making this discovery. We're lucky it's not hit the media already.”

Malcolm put his palm down on the table, not a slap, but not far off. “So what if some hack discovers it.”

“That would be uncomfortable for us,” said Henry.

“More than uncomfortable,” Constance countered. “It'd be a huge hit to our brand, another reason to make the bank bashing lobby groups feral and bring the regulators down on us, if not the government.”

Malcolm looked across the table. He singled each of the board members out for individual attention. “I do not agree. No shareholder is going to care. This is beyond the purview of the regulators. We won't lose a single customer.” He abruptly cut off eye contact and slumped in his chair. He could be theatrical if he felt it warranted. “It's a storm of Jacinta's own making.” He looked at his hands on the table, a sure signal he was about to make it personal. “Frankly I'm surprised and disappointed in her.”

Henry coughed. Papers were shuffled. Briefcases snapped open. She could take it on the chin and hope the connection never came to life, never needed to be dealt with, or that Malcolm was right and if it did surface, it made for an uncomfortable few days before everything went back to normal.

But if she did that, if she did nothing at all, it was the same as saying the bank had no moral obligation to the people who made up its customer base.

“I would like to discuss this, Henry,” she said.

Henry played his part. He got up from the table, went to the sideboard and poured himself a coffee. “I suggest a five minute break and then we reconvene to hear what Jacinta has to say.”

“I agree.” Constance stood and strode out of the room, taking a bathroom break, no doubt. It was a good idea to do the same, to take herself out of Malcolm's orbit.

“Jacinta.”

Too late. She turned to him and he said in his normal booming voice, “What are you doing? This is ridiculous.”

“We have to acknowledge some kind of moral obligation in this.” She fought the desire to pitch her voice low. If Malcolm wanted a domestic argument played out in front of the board he could have it.

“You're going to stand in front of my board and suggest because this madman was a customer we're somehow responsible.”

“I'm not saying we're responsible. We didn't make the bomb. I am saying we should discuss the issue and decide where we stand on it.”

He turned away. “There is nothing to discuss.”

“They died outside my apartment, Dad. I tried to go out and help.”

He stopped still. He grunted. Not because he was struck by the argument but because she'd called him Dad. She took a breath. That'd been a dumb thing to do. It called his bluff on making it personal, and it reinforced the fact they had nothing truly personal at stake. She hadn't called him Dad since he sent her off to boarding school. He'd been Malcolm from the time she was fourteen.

He kept his back to her. “While I think of it, I want us out of that sponsorship and anything like it where people could get hurt.”

She stepped around him to look in his eyes. “So you do understand what I'm saying about our moral oblig—”

“I think sponsorships of these people power events are a waste of money. This is a good reason to get out.”

“If everyone is ready,” called Henry.

Jacinta took her seat. She watched the other board members bring coffee back to the table, turn off their phones and settle in. No one had tried to approach her to discuss the issue; no one had tried to engage Malcolm either. That was a sure sign she didn't have support.

Henry had warned her, told her to be careful she wasn't acting out of shock, out of outrage. He'd reminded her they were not in the humanitarian business. Their sole objective and their obligation to shareholders was profit. There was no room for sentimentality. She'd swayed him with the argument that it was better to be on the front foot, to acknowledge the unfortunate connection and to be prepared to answer charges of neglect of care, than be surprised by a headline and an anti-bank campaign as a result. It was a rational argument and Henry was persuaded.

But it was more than that. Jacinta had stalked the executive floor corridors late at night, unable to shake the idea that there were other potential Roger Kincaids out there. People pushed to the brink by circumstances outside their control. Most of them wouldn't become psychopathic killers overnight, and Wentworth wasn't to blame for the way individual people choose to act, but still. Was their business not big enough, profitable enough to consider, through policies and procedures, how people might be affected and work with that understanding in mind? Would it not make this part of the world she had control over better if a customer's financial security was more assured than threatened by the bank's actions?