‘Don’t forget the pensioners,’ I urged.
Darlene ran with it. ‘My grandmother is going to be devastated. She sacrificed so much to help people in disasters, through Contigo Valley. People who had lost everything.’
‘Shut the hell up!’ Gillies’s face was ruddy and veins distended on his forehead and throat. He banged his walking stick against the wall.
‘Why don’t we take this to your office?’ I said. When Lang didn’t move, I led the way with Darlene.
Once inside, Sir Lang slammed the door. He looked on the verge of a stroke but he was obviously the master of temper tantrums.
I pulled up a chair, sat defiantly and placed both hands behind my head. The action irritated him even more. The power had shifted and he didn’t like it one bit.
His entire face was engorged with blood. ‘What do you want?’ he spat.
‘Simple. Eric Moss’s personal possessions.’
Darlene offered him a chair as if it was her office.
He waved her away. ‘The man walked out of here, abandoned everything. I had every right to dispose of them.’
‘He was missing,’ Darlene corrected, ‘and those things could have helped find him.’
‘There was no proof he was missing apart from the paranoia of his needy, unbalanced daughter.’
Darlene flashed me a warning look and I consciously relaxed both fists.
‘If the press got wind of her erratic behaviour, she’d be humiliated. Just when her father’s been dragged from the harbour.’
‘You already heard?’ Darlene sounded shocked.
‘It pays me to know.’ He sat now, facing me, walking stick held between his spindly legs. ‘My job is to distance this organisation from that traitor.’
I wanted to see what else he knew. ‘Your grief is choking us up. Can we count on you for a eulogy?’
‘There’ll be no one at the service once word gets out.’
I sat forward. ‘About?’
‘His lies, deceit, schemes to commit fraud.’
Crimes I suspected Gillies had known about all along. He could even have been behind them.
‘You mean the containers scam.’
The colour in his face faded. He’d underestimated me.
‘As chairman of the board, you are as guilty as sin. You’ll be going down too. No more casual Fridays for you, old boy.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. Eric Moss was a con man. Or should I say Hans Gudgast? Or whatever the hell his name really was. Everything about him was a lie.’
Word travelled fast in police and business circles. Lang Gillies wasn’t the complete fool I’d taken him for. Then again cockroaches were the ultimate survivors.
‘You think the mighty Craig Gisto is the only one who was investigating Eric? The man was convincing. Look at Eliza. She thinks he’s a saint. I can testify we had no idea who he really was or what he was capable of.’
That was it. Any responsibility Lang Gillies had in the fraud scheme would be buried with Eric Moss. He would be made the scapegoat for the entire organisation’s corruption and ineptitude. Gillies was absolving himself of all responsibility.
Chapter 95
JOHNNY ARRIVED AT the Wallaces’ home in Dural. A news team and station van hovered nearby.