The Eden Effect Read online

  David Finchley was born in in 1946, in post-war Germany. He moved to Australia with his family at the age of ten. After completing school, he studied Medicine at Melbourne University, going on to specialise in Neurology.

  He continues to practice Neurology. Having been able to reduce his workload, he has now had the time to pursue his long-held desire to write. The Eden Effect is his first novel.

  Published in Australia by Sid Harta Publishers Pty Ltd,

  ABN: 46 119 415 842

  23 Stirling Crescent, Glen Waverley, Victoria 3150 Australia

  Telephone: +61 3 9560 9920, Facsimile: +61 3 9545 1742

  E-mail: [email protected]

  First published in Australia March 2015

  This edition published March 2015

  Copyright © David Finchley 2015

  Cover design, typesetting: Chameleon Print Design

  The right of David Finchley to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to that of people living or dead are purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Finchley, David

  The Eden Effect

  ISBN: 9781925280296 (eBook)

  Digital edition distributed by

  Port Campbell Press

  www.portcampbellpress.com.au

  eBook Conversion by Winking Billy

  It’s like sitting on top of the world. The boy often had that same thought when the car was on the crest of the Westgate Bridge. Sometimes he would say it out loud, ‘Grandfather, this is like sitting on top of the world.’ And grandfather would smile and reply ‘yes it is son.’ And grandmother, in the passenger seat would smile and nod. It was grandfather and grandmother, never anything else. Not pop or nana or even grandpa or grandma. They were very formal people, grandfather and grandmother, but they were the only parents the boy had ever known. His mother had died only hours after giving birth to him. ‘She lost a lot of blood’ is what he had been told. He knew nothing about his father. ‘He left,’ was the only explanation ever offered.

  The boy knew that his mother had been his grandparent’s only child. What he did not know was that after years of failing to conceive, his grandparents had given up hope of ever having a child, only to be shocked and delighted when grandmother became pregnant at the age of thirty eight and gave birth to a beautiful, healthy daughter they named Hope.

  He also did not know that at the age of nineteen the beautiful and much loved Hope had become pregnant to a man much older whom she barely knew. And if that was not bad enough, the man disappeared once he found out about the pregnancy. It was said that he went to the United States, no one really knew. Certainly not grandfather and grandmother. They were initially devastated and beyond solace. After much soul-searching, prayer and counselling from their priest, they had just begun to accept the situation when they tragically lost Hope to uncontrollable blood loss following what appeared to be a routine delivery.

  So, in their sixties grandfather and grandmother had no choice but to raise another child. They did so with all the love and care that their broken hearts could muster. Their home was warm and their love was unconditional. Grandfather put off plans for retirement and continued running the dry-cleaning business which he had been on the verge of selling when Hope died. The boy was sent to a private school where he excelled. Grandfather and grandmother received glowing reports from teachers and it was clear that the boy had a bright future ahead. The boy knew he was loved and reciprocated with all the love that he had. They were, for all intents and purposes, his parents and more wonderful parents he could not wish for.

  It was a sunny, warm Sunday morning in November. They were heading to Scienceworks, one of the boy’s favourite places. He had been there many times before and if he had his way he would go there every weekend.

  The car has passed the crest of the bridge and grandfather put on the left indicator as he approached the Williamstown Road exit. As grandfather slowed the Commodore down, the semitrailer which had been chugging up the bridge behind them started to overtake. The boy looked to his right and saw the truck. The faded markings of Thomson Steel appeared at his eye level. He could see rows upon rows of steel beams on the truck trailer. Some of the beams gleamed at him in the bright morning sun of that November Sunday morning. The truck was still alongside the car when the boy saw the truck jerk and then saw smoke coming from the truck’s braking tyres. What the boy did not see was the sleek black Porsche 911 will which had cut in front of the truck from the third lane of the bridge and then into the left lane and out onto the Williamstown Road exit.

  At the wheel of the truck was Bill Newman. In his mid-fifties, with thirty years’ experience of driving semis, he cursed the Porsche but managed to slow down in time to avoid clipping the fast moving car. ‘Stupid bastard’ Bill muttered to himself. The whole event took no more than 10 seconds. Grandfather was about to take the left exit off the bridge. He had seen the Porsche but was well back as the Porsche sped away. ‘An idiot’ said grandfather as he watched the speeding car.

  The steel had been loaded onto the truck the day before on the Saturday morning. It was Darren Galea’s job to secure the steel beams, a task he had performed dozens of times before. That Saturday morning Darren was not at the top of his game. Friday night had been a big night. Earlier that day, Linda, his sometime live-in lover announced that things were over and that she was sick of the sight of him. To add insult to injury, she had conveyed the message by SMS. Gutless bitch, he thought. Didn’t even have the balls to tell me to my face. So, Friday night had been a big night, even bigger than usual, and on Saturday morning Darren was nursing a hangover and carrying on his shoulders a head that weighed a ton. He had to take two Panadol and two Panadeine Forte just to make it work. The Panadeine Forte had made him feel a little lightheaded and reduced his concentration which was not the best even when Darren was at his best. But he got through the morning, clocked off and headed home to bed where he fell into a deep sleep and did not wake until 7pm. He missed the cricket game where he should have been opening batsman. He slept through the numerous phone calls from his teammates who were a player short and cursing him as they lost the match. He slept, also oblivious to the fact that his performance at work that morning was even by his standards well below par. Oblivious of the fact that amongst the beams of steel there that he had managed to lash down securely was an almost inconspicuous flat, thin, thirty foot piece of steel that he had failed to secure safely. That beam had managed the journey from Dandenong to the crest of the Westgate Bridge with no difficulty despite its precarious state. But it could not survive the sudden braking of the truck as Bill the driver avoided the Porsche. At that precise moment it came loose from its fellow beams and left the tray of the semitrailer.

  No one knows what fate has in store for them. The laws of physics do not adequately govern the behaviour of a thirty foot, flat, thin and razor edged steel beam once it leaves the back of a truck and sails through the air on a beautiful, sunny November Sunday morning. And on such a beautiful Sunday morning, grandfather had both front windows open enjoying the fresh warm air as it streamed into the cabin of the Commodore. And as luck would have it, or to be more precise, bad luck, that errant steel beam also streamed into the cabin of the Commodore, sailing through the front of the cabin in grandfather’s window and out of gran
dmother’s window, along the way its razor sharp edge lopping off in a neat, almost surgical fashion both grandfather’s head and grandmother’s head. At the precise moment of his beheading, grandfather’s body went into a tonic spasm, his right foot suddenly pressing down on the accelerator, propelling the Commodore forwards and for some reason to the left where it hit the side barrier with a loud thud. Grandfather’s lifeless body then became limp, his foot slid off the accelerator and the car stopped at a forty five degree angle to the side barrier of the bridge, engine running.

  After the head comes off, the heart continues beating for a few more seconds. In those seconds four jets of bright red blood rise vertically out of the neck, two large jets from the carotid arteries and two smaller jets from the vertebral arteries. The heart then stops and the blood flow stops. On that sunny November Sunday morning there were eight such jets of blood rising to the ceiling of the Commodore and in splashing back onto the interior of the car and its occupants. The steel beam, while carrying out its lethal mission, tilted a little, propelling the severed heads of grandfather and grandmother over the head-rests and into the back seat. The heads landed quite neatly on the boy’s lap and stuck there, probably anchored by the deluge of blood which covered everything inside the Commodore including the boy all the way from the top of his head down to his feet.

  Within seconds, pandemonium broke out on the bridge. At least a dozen cars screeched to a halt, three running into the back of each other. People came streaming out of their cars and rushed to the Commodore. They were met with a sight that could only have come from hell. The Commodore, its engine still idling contained in the front the two blood covered, headless occupants. In the back, the boy, sitting motionless as if frozen in time, covered head to toe in blood and with the two lifeless heads on his lap their faces with a strange, eerie smile. One man threw up on the bonnet of the Commodore, women started screaming, sobbing. One woman’s voice could be heard over all the commotion: ‘Oh my God. That poor child, that poor, poor child.’

  Hold your horses, I’m coming, I’m coming.’ The man’s voice could be heard behind the closed door, a note of irritation in the voice which grew louder as he approached. Standing outside the door, having knocked repeatedly was Arthur Fromm, a balding, be speckled man in his mid-fifties. He was wearing a dark blue suit which had seen better days, a white shirt with a frayed collar and tie loosely knotted and bright green in colour, not at all matching the blue suit.

  The front door opened to reveal a strikingly handsome, tall man with a shock of blond hair, dressed in white from head to toe. White shirt, white tie, white jacket, white trousers, white shoes and socks. The man stared quizzically and said nothing. Arthur Fromm was taken aback momentarily but quickly regained his composure.

  ‘I’m Arthur Fromm’, he offered. When there was no reply he added ‘The new assistant, you know, from Centrelink, Work for the Dole program.’ The blond man continued to stare for a few more seconds and then with a broad smile extended his hand and said. ‘Sorry, I clean forgot you were coming today. Come in, come in. I am Martin, Martin Brophy. Come and sit down, let’s talk.’ And with that Arthur Fromm was ushered into a cluttered lounge room, directed to sit in a rather tatty leather armchair.

  Arthur was clutching a leather briefcase which contained papers from Centrelink and his lunch: a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich on wholemeal bread which he had hastily prepared that morning before setting out from home on what turned out to be a two hour drive to the small town of Eden, one hundred and thirty or so kilometres to the north of Melbourne.

  ‘Would you like coffee, tea, a cold drink?’ asked Martin.

  ‘A coffee would be great. Black, no sugar.’ Martin, who had not yet sat down, was off to the kitchen from where Arthur could hear the sound of the boiling kettle and coffee being made. Minutes later, they were both sitting, Arthur drinking his coffee and Martin an orange juice, munching on a chocolate wafer, which Arthur had declined.

  ‘You found the place okay?’ asked Martin. ‘Did you come up from Melbourne this morning?’

  ‘Yes’, replied Arthur. ‘Had a great run on the freeway. All the traffic was coming the other way.’

  ‘You will find that’s one of the good things about Eden. Not many visitors. Not many strangers in town. We like it that way’

  Then followed an awkward silence which Arthur filled by sipping his coffee rather more loudly than he would normally do. Martin continued eating the chocolate wafers, finished the last one, put his orange juice down, stared straight at Arthur and said, ‘Ok, let’s have it, what’s your story.’

  Arthur was momentarily taken aback by the question but he knew quite well what Martin meant. Martin wanted to hear his story. More particularly, he wanted to know what a man in his fifties, dressed in what was once a very expensive imported Italian suit, a man who had been a senior partner in a prestigious Melbourne accounting firm was doing here, in Eden about to start a new position as the assistant milkman at the local dairy.

  ‘Do you want the long version or the shorter version?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘I’ve got all day mate. Fire away.’

  It was a story worth telling and the long version was mandatory to do it justice. Arthur Fromm had graduated at the top of his class in Commerce at the University of Melbourne. He was immediately snapped up by Lowe and Brown, one of Melbourne’s leading boutique accounting firms. It was not by chance that Arthur topped his class at the University. He was bright, exceedingly so. His rise at the firm was meteoric and by the age of thirty two he was made partner, the youngest ever to do so.

  Along the way he married Marie, Marie Lowe, the boss’s daughter and only child. Marie dutifully bore him two children in quick succession, a son named David and a daughter Helen. As a wedding gift Harold Lowe had purchased for his daughter and her new husband a four-bedroom mansion in Toorak, complete with swimming pool and tennis court, as would be befitting the rising star at Lowe and Brown. And Arthur did not let his father in law down. Although new to the firm, he managed to transform what was already a top tier accounting firm to be the second largest in the country, with an abundance of high net-worth clients and quite a few large public companies.

  And then the roof fell in.

  Brilliant and successful as he was, Arthur could not do it all on his own. He had a staff, dedicated, sharp young accountants, who dutifully carried out his commands and worked till all hours of the night to ensure that Lowe and Brown and particularly their rising star Arthur Fromm continued to thrive.

  It has been said that any organisation is only as good as its weakest link. And at Lowe and Brown, in the office of Arthur Fromm the weakest link was Louis Field. It’s not that Louis lacked intelligence or accounting skills. He had those in abundance. What Louis lacked was morality and honesty, two traits most essential in the world of finance.

  For a long time afterwards, Arthur would wonder how he missed the tell-tale signs. It would plague him well into the early hours of the morning. But miss the signs he did, as did the others on his staff, as did the rest of the firm, the firm’s auditors and the firm’s solicitors. What they all missed was the fact that over a two year period, Louis Field managed to embezzle two million dollars of client’s funds. Managed to siphon the funds to untouchable offshore accounts. Two million dollars is not an inconsiderable amount of money and one would have thought that its loss would have been easily detected. But Lowe and Brown were dealing with extremely wealthy clients and that amount of money spread over a dozen or so clients went completely unnoticed.

  That is until one day, during a routine audit, one of the client’s bookkeepers noticed a small irregularity in his client’s accounts. And being meticulous, obsessive and tenacious, as bookkeepers often are, pursued the matter and after six months of incredibly complex detective work the whole scam was revealed.

  By then Louis Field had fled. He left his wife and four children, left his beautiful home and shiny Mercedes and disappeared. It was later discovered that h
e had flown out of Melbourne airport to Hong Kong but beyond that there was no trace of him.

  He left behind a scandal that left the firm of Lowe and Brown reeling. He also left behind dozens of documents, many signed by Arthur Fromm which were related to the embezzled funds and which appeared to have originated from Arthur or at least done with his knowledge.

  Arthur of course, had no involvement in the matter and no foreknowledge of it whatsoever. Yes it was his signature on those documents, but he signed so many. He relied on his staff’s efficiency and honesty and often signed documents which went out in his name, even though staff members had done the work. This was common practice and not at all out of the ordinary.

  The other partners did try to rally around Arthur. No one had really believed he was involved, or at least no one said so.

  But the whole affair had taken on a life of its own. The clients were furious. There was talk of lawsuits. Lowe and Brown repaid every penny from their own funds, but that was not enough.

  The police were called in, ASIC became involved and for all intents and purposes the work of Lowe and Brown had come to a halt. Clients threatened to leave, some actually did and it looked as if the prestigious and so highly regarded firm would fall like a pack of cards.

  Something has to be done. Someone had to pay and it did not take long to work out who that someone was. As fond as he was of his son-in-law, Harold Lowe had a greater obligation to his partners, the firm, to his other employees and clients and to his own personal wealth.

  Arthur Fromm was dismissed from the firm of Lowe and Brown without notice, without severance pay or any entitlement. He was warned not to make a fuss or otherwise legal action could be taken against him. The beautiful Toorak house, the wedding gift from Harold Low was in fact held in a trust controlled by Lowe and nowhere on the title did the names of Arthur or Marie Fromm appear. Arthur had always known this but it did not seem to be an issue. He, Marie and the children lived in the house, maintained it and paid all the rates and expenses as if the house was theirs. But it wasn’t. And with forty-eight hours’ notice they were out. Harold would have preferred to kick Arthur out and leave Marie and the children in the house but the legal advice was that this complicated matters and could lead to Arthur having a claim on the house which Harold wanted to avoid at all costs.