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no unusual scuff marks on the floor or signs of illegal entry, but I was anxious. If you’re serious, why not go for a good old one-two?
    I decided that was ridiculous and that whoever had set the high-tech bomb would have been confident of a result. I opened the door and went in to the accustomed smells ofdust and No Frills disinfectant. The light was flashing on the answering machine and paper had spewed from the fax to form a slightly untidy pile on the card table I’d rigged up behind it. I ignored both forms of communication. First things first. One of my random thoughts in the cab had been about the Falcon. I was in business after all, and it was my habit to regard the economy, as far as it affected me personally, as being in permanent recession and bankruptcy a constant threat.
    Ian Sangster had persuaded me to corporatise myself a few years back and I’d done so with considerable misgiving. So far I considered it a lineball between what I’d saved on tax and what accounting fees had cost me. My accountant had stressed to me that the Falcon was my chief piece of capital equipment and the necessity of keeping a close record of every cent spent on it. Was the insurance fully paid up? The papers were on file; I knew I’d seen them recently, but I just couldn’t quite remember writing the cheque. I yanked open the filing cabinet drawer, riffled through the pristine folders in the CLIFF INC section and found the insurance file. The car was comprehensively covered—renewed three weeks ago. I made a two-finger gesture in the direction of where insurance companies conglomerate and got down to some professional analysis.
    The material on Julius Fleischman was surprisingly thin, given his wealth. My source optedfor a South African origin, with Australian citizenship being granted in 1993—more than twenty years after he first set up business in this country. He was sixty or sixty-four years of age (apparently official documents differed), chairman of the board of Fleischman Holdings Incorporated, a director of this and that, a former economic adviser to several ministers in the previous Coalition government. He had an honorary doctorate from Bond University and was a founding member of the Economic Liberty Society, a business-funded right-wing think-tank that sponsored a magazine,
The Mercantilist,
radio programs and awarded scholarships in business studies at several universities. Member of the Royal Sydney Golf Club and the Australasian Sailing Club.
    Fleischman Holdings was a private company, so its economic solidity couldn’t be judged without inside knowledge. My source asked if I wanted to ‘go this route’. There were substantial mortgages on all of Julius’ known major property holdings—houses, the flats at Kirribilli, the yacht, the plane. That didn’t necessarily mean anything in tycoon land. His interests were given as ‘culture, wine-making, photography, golf’. He had been a member of various clubs and a patron of things like the Sydney Opera Company and the Australian Ballet. I read through it all and came out with not the faintest idea of what sort of a man Julius Fleischman had been. The photograph showed a lean face, high forehead, goatee.When looking at photographs, searching for an insight into the subject, I’d formed the habit of applying one word and trying to extrapolate from that. For Fleischman I came up with ‘discipline’. He looked like a disciplined man and in my experience disciplined people like applying their ideas of discipline to others.
    Judith Daniels, née Fleischman, was more interesting on the surface. Daniels it might have been recently (she’d divorced Mr Daniels a few years back), but it had been Strickland and Katz before that. Katz made me sit up. Judith had married Wilson Katz a few months after her divorce from Weston Strickland had come through. She was then twenty-two. The first marriage had lasted