Andrew Engels had also proven himself to be a true hero, when he in self-defence had managed to kill the serial killer Roman Bezhrev. The reporter he had saved the life of, Scott Davis, would have the honour of conducting the first public interview of Andrew since that fateful episode in Nimbin. The appointment was for later that afternoon.
“You know this won’t last,” Andrew said.
“What won’t last?” Ken asked.
“This company, Tuna Life, the whole fucking new economy. It won’t last.”
“I don’t understand,” Ken replied.
Andrew sighed. “We have been given a second chance, you and me. A second chance to become rich beyond our dreams. A second chance to change,” Andrew said. “This time we need to make sure we get out in time, before the bubble bursts. We need to change before it’s too late.”
“I don’t understand, Andrew. Everything is going fantastic. We are growing faster than ever. Our new app is selling like hot cakes.”
Andrew smiled. “It’s not selling like hot cakes, Ken. We are giving it away for free.” Andrew took a deep breath before continuing. “I’ve been thinking a lot since Roman tried to steal my shares. I don’t want to end up in that situation ever again. I don’t want to be the last one out the door.”
Andrew filled up his plate with some free hot food from the canteen. It was most likely some special day in China, because the canteen only served Chinese food and the room was decorated with colourful dragons and flags.
“I don’t really care about the money,” Ken said.
Andrew laughed. “So you just want to make a good product? Money isn’t important?”
“It’s not unimportant. But I don’t have enough imagination to know what to do with hundreds of millions.”
“Haven’t you ever dreamt about winning the lotto?” asked Andrew.
“No.”
Andrew thought back on his days in Avensis Accounting. He had been dreaming about winning the lotto every single week. Every Tuesday and Thursday he had been buying a ticket, and the rest of the weekdays he had made plans for what to do if he won. Resign, start up a company, travel, have enough money to not worry about bills every week. Come to think of it, the life he was living right now.
Andrew stared at Ken with an intense look. “You have always been my best friend, Ken, but there are things we don’t know about each other.”
“Like what?” Ken asked, still staring at his plate.
“You know what I mean. Who we really are.”
Ken Speis put down his knife and fork, and looked up at Andrew.
89
Scott Davis glanced at his watch. A quarter past one. The lunch appointment was for one sharp. Andrew Engels was running late, but Scott guessed he was excused. Andrew was a wanted man. The internet phenomenon Andrew Engels, the accountant who had come out of nowhere and started a technology revolution on the Gold Coast, the management-star whom everyone had been looking up to and envied. Then Andrew Engels had been sacked from Tuna Life, and the media had started to dig into his background. Nothing had turned out to be as it had been portrayed. The picture of a risk-taking, mountain-climbing CEO had soon faded. Andrew had been a boring grey accountant who had just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He had invented the person the media had been shown. He was just a lucky guy who had piggy-backed on other clever people. What truly was remarkable though was how he had been able to reinvent himself. First as the hero who saved Scott Davis and killed the serial killer Roman Bezhrev, then as Tuna Life’s returning CEO, who had turned the business around and restored the company as the leading tech company in the Southern Hemisphere.
Everyone loved an underdog. And Andrew was the underdog of a lifetime. Media already drew comparisons between Andrew and Apple’s legendary CEO Steve Jobs. They had both been ousted from the companies they had founded, and they had both been recruited back to the top job to turn around a struggling company. The difference was of course that everything happened so much faster these days. It had taken Steve Jobs nearly twenty years to restore customers’ faith in Apple; it had taken Andrew Engels a few meagre weeks to do the same at Tuna Life. It was one of the main attributes of the new economy – everything happened at the speed of light. One had to remain relevant all the time. Today’s winners could literally be tomorrow’s losers.
The time was half past one when Andrew finally arrived at the restaurant in Main Beach. He parked his new Porsche 911 Carrera S4 right outside the restaurant, and stepped out of the car. He was dressed in his usual black T-shirt and Calvin Klein jeans. He had however swapped his regular red Converse shoes for some brown ones from Industrie. Scott Davis looked at the number plate. LAB 489. He smiled. Maybe Andrew Engels finally had started to grow up? Gone was the tawdry personalised numberplate, TUNA LIFE, which was on the Tesla. Scott Davis made a couple of quick notes in his notepad, before rising to greet his saviour.
He made a grimace as he got up from the chair. The bullet wound in his back had still not fully healed. But he still considered himself lucky. The bullet had gone straight through, and apart from losing some of his mobility, he was in good shape.
“A pleasure.”
Andrew Engels shot him a big smile as he entered the restaurant with extended hands. Scott Davis was taken aback, but reciprocated the hug. It was the least he could do. Andrew had saved his life.
“Please sit,” Scott Davis said. “You can order whatever you want, Andrew. I guess I at least owe you a good meal.”
“So you don’t plan to ditch me this time?” Andrew said, with a smug smile. Scott chuckled. He could see on Andrew’s face that he had meant it in a humorous way.
“No, today there will be no phone calls,” he said, his voice slightly cracking up.
Andrew understood instantly. “How is he?”
Scott smiled bravely. “He’s better. He’s improved the last couple of days. He’s still in a coma, but the doctors say he may wake within the next couple of weeks. He’s a tough boy….if it hadn’t been for him, then Roman would still be out there, killing innocent girls. Mark is a hero.”
“To Mark,” Andrew said, and raised the wineglass positioned in front of him.
“To Mark,” Scott repeated.
“So, what do you want to talk about today?” Andrew asked.
“Do you have any restrictions? Things you don’t want to discuss?” Scott fished.
Andrew shook his head. “No.” He rolled the wine in his glass, before fixing his gaze straight at Scott’s eyes. “The natural thing to talk about is Tuna Life, of course. It’s the company that matters. I’m just a small part of an exceptional team.”
Scott nodded.
“But I thought this could be a different interview.”
“I’m listening,” Scott said, his interest piqued.
“I thought this could be an interview about something more important than a mobile app that lets people try on clothes, and how much money I’m going to be rolling in when we do our IPO by the end of the year. I thought this interview could be about what we do for money, and what money does to us.”
Scott nodded. “I’m still listening.”
“Do you think I’m a hero?” Andrew asked.
Scott stroked a weather-worn hand across his bald head. “You killed a serial killer, a monster. I truly believe you did the right thing. Are you a hero? I don’t know. I believe you did what you did to save yourself, not me. In my eyes a hero is someone who does something unselfish, someone who risks his own life to save another’s. You didn’t do that in Nimbin.”
“Thank you, thank you very much,” Andrew said. “It’s refreshing to hear some honesty. I like that. You have no idea how it is to walk around and feel like you are a phony, a fraud.”
“You’re not a phony, Andrew. You saved my life in Nimbin. It might not make you a hero, but you are one brave son of a bitch. Most people would have frozen up in a situation like that.”
“I’m not brave,” Andrew said. “I’m a coward. I’ve always been, always will be.” He drank a big sip from his wineglass. “You’ve heard about my background. I’m not a thrill-seeking entrepreneur. I was thrown into this role by accident.”
Scott nodded. “But you’ve made it work. Isn’t that what counts? Not what your parents do for a living, what school you’ve gone to or what you’ve done before. We are all defined by what we do right now, our last success or failure.”
“I started in accounting because that was what my parents expected of me – a good job, and a respected profession. But you can only be dishonest with yourself for so long, and at some stage you gotta be honest with yourself. You have to reveal to the world who you really are, warts and all.”
“And who are you, Andrew? I’m sure our readers will be very interested to learn about the real Andrew Engels,” Scott said.
“They won’t like what they are about to hear,” Andrew replied.
90
Scott Davis was sitting in the meeting room at the Gold Coast Times. He was in the process of typing out the interview with Andrew Engels. It had been a strange conversation. Andrew had seemed so different. Scott had observed him at various public events in the past. The overly self-assured CEO who always had a well-thought-out answer to any questions posed, the calculating person who never lost his cool. Scott had gotten a different impression of him at the lunch. It had almost seemed as if Andrew had lowered his guard, as if there was something he wanted to get off his chest, something personal. Scott started to flip through his notes from the interview.
Something just wasn’t right. But he didn’t know what it was.
Vesna Connor popped her head through the door.
“Scott, good news. They just called from the hospital. Mark just opened his eyes.”
Scott almost jumped out of his chair. “Are you going there now?”
She nodded. “You can come with me if you want.”
Scott scraped together his notes from the interview with Andrew Engels, and stuffed them and his laptop into his bag. For a long time they had worried that Mark wouldn’t make it. And there was still no guarantee he hadn’t received any permanent brain damage – head injuries were unpredictable. But he had opened his eyes. That had to be positive.
There was an uncomfortable silence in the in the car as Vesna headed towards Southport Hospital, where Mark Moss was a patient. Vesna and Scott’s relationship had deteriorated over the last few weeks. Vesna had been angered by Scott’s decision to disregard her direct order to stop investigating the theory of a serial killer on the coast, and Scott had been pissed off because of her constant interference with his work.
Maybe it was about time they buried the hatchet, Scott thought. If so, he might as well be the one who initiated it.
“I interviewed Andrew Engels earlier today,” he said.
“Oh, yes. How did it go?” She seemed genuinely interested.
“I’m not sure. He’s not the person I thought he was.”
“There you go. You always think the worst about people, Scott. Andrew is a model citizen. He has created hundreds of jobs with Tuna Life. He saved your life for Christ’s sake. How much does it take before you start trusting people?”
Scott didn’t reply. He didn’t appreciate the way Vesna sometimes talked to him. She probably didn’t mean anything by it, it was probably just her nature, but she seemed demeaning and moralistic. Regardless, he was lost in his own thoughts. There was something Andrew had said. “
Is there something worth killing for?
”
Scott wasn’t sure what it was, but there had been something about the way Andrew had said it. A chill had immediately run down Scott’s spine. It was as if Andrew had killed before, that he would kill again. That it was something he couldn’t stop.
Scott opened his brown leather bag, and looked frantically for his notepad. He found it lodged between the laptop and the file he had made on the serial killer, Roman Bezhrev. Scott flipped through the pages until he reached the notes from his interview.
“What is it?” Vesna asked, still keeping her eyes on the road. She didn’t appreciate Scott roaming around in her car like that. It stressed her out.
“I don’t think Roman was the serial killer,” Scott said.
Vesna let out a laugh. “Give it up, Scott. They found the evidence. Bones, killer trophies. It was all there. Right in his own home.”
Scott shook his head. “Andrew Engels was the CEO of Tuna Life. Roman was the majority owner and chairman of the board. Andrew has probably been at his house a dozen times. More than enough opportunities to plant evidence if he wanted to. What did the police find? Some strands of hair, some ID papers, some bones and a piece of jewellery. They never actually found any evidence that the girls had been in the house. They only found trophies.”
He continued to flip through his notes.
“There. I knew there was something that didn’t add up,” he said. “I asked Andrew whether Engels was a Germanic surname, whether his family originated from Germany.”
“So?”
“He refused. He told me that he had changed his last name when his father died in 2009. Engels was his mother’s last name. He had always wanted to honour her memory by taking her family name – she died when he was still young – but he couldn’t bring himself to do it until his father died.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with the case. Andrew changed his last name. So what? That doesn’t make him a murderer.”
Scott didn’t answer. Instead he continued to flip through his notes. Suddenly he stopped, and pulled out a piece of paper. He placed it on his lap. It was a photocopy of his wife’s day planner, a photocopy of the pages that the police had found in Nimbin, the pages Frank Geitner had ripped out.
With his index finger Scott traced the appointments his wife had had the day before she had taken her own life. He quickly located Roman Bezhrev’s name, but that wasn’t what he was looking for.
There.
He stopped and pressed his finger on another name. The appointment had been for noon.
A. Brown.
“Andrew Engels said that he changed his last name when his father died. He took his mother’s last name – Engels. The last name he used up until 2009 was Brown.
Andrew Brown.