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rush of adrenalin sitting beside them. ‘These blokes are tough customers, Mac Biddulph and his cohorts. Have you met the chairman, Laurence Treadmore, sometime member of my esteemed profession? Very subtle character, if I can put it that way. Quite deep. You need to know what you’re getting into, Jack, if you’re really thinking about this. It would be quite a stretch from a number of points of view. A big stretch.’
    Jack flashed him an angry glance. ‘Too big for me, you think?’ ‘I didn’t mean that, old fellow. It’s just that there are a lot of very complex issues in that industry and you need to work with people you can trust a hundred per cent. I’m not saying you can’t with this gang, but how well do you know them?’ He paused and saw the resentment on Jack’s face. ‘Talk to the Pope if you’re really contemplating this. He knows a bit about it. Don’t rush into anything is all I’m saying. Beware of hubris and flattery lest you slip on their greasy surfaces.’

chapter three
    Laurence Treadmore nodded at the doorman of the Piccadilly Apartments without actually looking at him, stepped briskly into the familiar environs of Macquarie Street and commenced the daily triumphal perambulation to his office. He liked to think of the morning walk in this way—’a triumphal perambulation’. Because it was. Every few steps some passer-by would greet him as he wandered by the Colonial Club, the Anon Club, the great office buildings that housed the heads of companies who nodded to him deferentially. The Sydney office of the Prime Minister hidden away in one, hidden but well known to Sir Laurence, the tower of the state government and the Premier—all this a few paces from his home and open and welcoming to him, if not to others; a source of honours and wealth, of comfort and privilege, to him if not to others. For Sir Laurence was widely known for his intellectual flexibility. He could understand and appreciate any point of view, particularly if significant benefits might result from it for a client. And, of course, for the advisor.
    Sir Laurence had never been a lawyer in the conventional sense. His was more a ‘strategic commercial practice’, in the course of which he guided clients through the intricacies of takeover law or contract negotiations or other complex matters of a more delicate nature. This tributary of the law allowed fees to be charged of a very different dimension to those based on the simple hours of toil which the lesser members of his profession received. ‘Success fees’ and other ripe fruit fell into his basket, the harvest of a merchant banker more than a lawyer. Indeed he would have been appalled to regard himself as a ‘lawyer’—the law was merely a useful or annoying reference point, depending on the circumstances.
    His small, neat figure in its tailored suit from Savile Row, trademark pink shirt of a certain soft hue, and matching silk tie and handkerchief were familiar to all who were familiar, as it made its way at eight-thirty every morning to the flower stall in Martin Place. Here he purchased a boutonničre of complementary hue, contrast was not a fashion concept of which he approved, before entering his offices and arriving at a desk which would already be laid out with Earl Grey tea and a croissant from La Gerbe d’Or in Paddington. He liked to breakfast alone. In the early years Mavis had often encouraged him to start the day in conversation at their table, but he found it unsettling. After nearly forty years of marriage she’d learned to hand him his briefcase and watch his straight back walk to the lift, as she’d learned so many things. Besides, Sir Laurence was a secretive man in certain ways, and he liked to be unobserved as he took his gilt scissors and cut items from the newspapers about people who might be useful or might need his arcane skills, or deals or possibilities, or scandals and indiscretions that could cause alliances to crumble and crumbs