How to Spot a Psychopath

I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breath to see what's happened since my last Firepower update.

Well, for one thing, Gerard Ryles' unassumingly-titled book about Firepower is now searchable on Google Books.

And Tim Johnston, the elusive boss of Firepower, has apparently been blessed with a complete remission of his travel-preventing illness. (Apparently, if you get arrested, it clears right up!)

Tim has duly been frogmarched into a hearing in Perth, to answer a few questions.

According to Tim, he's pulling down ten thousand UK pounds a month for "consultancy" work for Green Power Corporation, the London-based reincarnation of Firepower that will repay all of the investors and actually have products that work and give every child in the world an adorable puppy and so on.

(You may recall Green Power Corporation, and its unimpeachable principal Frank Timis, from last year. You may also recall The Australian's description of Timis as "a colourful Romanian-Australian businessman". Everybody involved with Firepower is so darn colourful it's like some kind of Pride Parade.)

Tim Johnston also alleges that he has been assaulted, and his daughter intimidated (by "cars driving around her house"), since he started giving evidence to the hearing. According to Tim, the people menacing him now are associated with his former business partner, one Warren Anderson.

Anderson has previously denied making any threats, and I presume will also deny sending the boys round (and round, and round). According to Johnston, Anderson demanded many millions of dollars of Firepower money with menaces; according to Anderson, that money was just payment for shares in Firepower, which Tim was buying from Warren, or something. (According to the ancient fuel-pill-company template, the shares probably weren't legal to sell in the first place, but were nonetheless hungrily snapped up by numerous people who now find themselves without a nest-egg.)

Oh, and Tim says that the fact that Warren pitched in to help Tim buy an 8.5-million-dollar house one day after Tim gave Warren four million dollars is not fishy in any way.

Hmm, what else... Oh yeah: "Firepower spent millions on travel, hotels and sponsorship". Astonishingly, the recipients of the free air tickets included Tim's kids.

And Tim also, in a completely straightforward and non-fishy way, handed an extra two million dollars and a hatful of soon-to-be-worthless shares, on top of a settlement payment, to the former chief executive officer of one of the numerous Firepower entities after some sort of court dispute.

After revealing this, Tim suddenly found himself struck by that most terrible of afflictions, Courtroom-Related Amnesia Syndrome, regarding exactly how the various Firepower business entities interacted. The syndrome is following its usual course; the larger the amount of money involved, the more difficult the sufferer finds it to remember where it went.

According to Tim, Firepower also appeared to have a less-than-thorough data backup policy. A server containing vital information was in someone's house, and then may have been pawned, perhaps, but Tim's not sure, his Courtroom-Related Amnesia Syndrome's playing up again...

We can only pray that Tim's illness does not develop into full-blown Ashcroft-Gonzales' Disease.