There was someone else whom Betga thought Carla should hear from before Jessica, someone who might help convince her to accept a settlement offer from Torrent Industries. A meeting with Jessica was too uncertain a prospect to be the next step. Carla might react negatively, seeing Jessica not as someone genuinely sympathetic from whom to take counsel but rather as a representative of Torrent Industries’ HR department, a softer face of the heartless behemoth. Maserov and Betga mulled it over and agreed that Betga should try meeting with that someone else first.
It was a meeting that was inherently uncomfortable for Betga and its outcome, too, was far from certain. First, there was no certainty the man would even show up. Over the phone he’d sounded very dubious about the prospect of sitting down with Betga. When the appointed time arrived and the man had not appeared Betga glanced at his watch and said to himself under his breath, ‘No appearance, your honour.’ He experienced but did not allow himself to acknowledge the small relief in which one briefly luxuriates when a difficult or at least unpleasant task is removed from a person’s schedule through no fault of one’s own. But when Betga heard the crowded bar hush around him he knew his rendezvous had entered the bar even before he could see him. Acting Sergeant Ron Quinn stood hesitantly before Betga’s table. Betga stood up and shook the policeman’s hand but was unable to hide his disappointment.
‘What?’ the Acting Sergeant said defensively.
‘You’re in uniform.’
‘So?’
‘Didn’t you hear the silence ripple through the bar as you walked in?’
‘I told you I’d come straight from work.’
‘Yes, you did but . . . I don’t know,’ Betga said, gently shaking his head in bewilderment. ‘I didn’t think you’d come in uniform. These are good people,’ Betga said, gesticulating around him, ‘relaxing at the end of their day. They don’t want to be drinking around the police. Any decent citizen would be unnerved by it.’
‘Are these people, in fact, citizens?’
‘Citizens, permanent residents, asylum seekers, student visa holders de facto and de jure, entry-level frequent flyers and even some American Express card holders craving acceptance; unlike so many these days, this institution doesn’t discriminate in issuing invitations to the public to partake in convivial libations in this non-judgmental yet still immensely tasteful setting that subtly pays homage to many of the aesthetic traits of the eighties, traits that helped to make that decade what it is today.’
‘What is it today?’
‘Gone; completely gone. The eighties, the decade that taste forgot. But that’s not my point. Look, Acting Sergeant . . . and I mean no undue disrespect, none of these people would take comfort from the visible presence of the constabulary at the end of their day.’
‘Is that why you’ve invited me here, to insult me?’
If only it had been, Betga thought wistfully. After apologising, he ordered Acting Sergeant Quinn a craft beer said to have come proudly from the Košice region of Slovakia and less proudly from certain laneways in Abbotsford. For the first time he looked into the eyes of Acting Sergeant Ron Quinn. There they were, just a few feet away from him, two shallow reservoirs of disappointment.
‘I know that in certain respects you and I might be seen as adversaries but —’
‘How so?’ the policeman enquired.
‘Well, first there’s the law, and then —’
‘We’re both officers of the court, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, but I interpret and interrogate the law in a frankly highly creative manner while you stolidly uphold a draconian version of it in that way that makes people around you want you to drink somewhere else. You bow down to the chain of command whereas I answer to a higher power.’
‘Do you mean God? You don’t strike me as a religious man, Mr Betga.’
‘No, I don’t mean God.’
‘Then what higher power?’
‘Well, Acting Sergeant,’ Betga began philosophically, ‘it’s more a repository of certain values than a deity marketed by any commonly venerated, state-sanctioned vehicle for tax relief, and I admit to remaining agnostic as to its name. But it sure as hell isn’t the chief commissioner of police.’
‘Well, yes, he’s had his problems.’
‘Yes, I’m glad we can agree on this. That’s a good start. But then, of course, there’s our different standing with and approach to . . .’ He paused. ‘Carla.’
‘Yes,’ said the policeman, ‘I treat her honourably, while you . . .’
‘Well, now, you see,’ said Betga, shaking his index finger as though it were a recalcitrant thermometer or salt shaker, ‘there’s that tendency of your vocation again; judging someone harshly according to just one prior conviction, one to which I pleaded guilty.’
‘Mr Betga, the way I heard it, she caught you. Wasn’t there a woman who called Carla and —’
‘Okay,’ Betga said, drawing breath while a flat palm of his was raised in the air about level with Acting Sergeant Quinn’s eyes. ‘Now don’t take this to mean I wouldn’t ever be interested in your version of this aspect of my life, but this isn’t really the reason I suggested we meet. The reason I invited you to meet me was to talk about Carla’s future.’
‘I would . . . I suppose . . . like to have some part in her future,’ said the acting sergeant.
‘You suppose?’
‘Well, yes, I’ll admit that.’
‘No, no, it’s not the admission that causes me to emphasise the word “suppose” as though an accurate transcript would italicise it. It’s your very tentativeness.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t really get what you’re talking about, Mr Betga.’
It was at this moment that the Slovakian craft beers from just north of Richmond arrived. The bartender put them down on the table diplomatically and Betga forthrightly shifted them both towards Ron Quinn, almost whispering to the bartender, catching him before he headed back to the bar, ‘I’ll have one too.’
‘Look, Acting Sergeant,’ said Betga and then, ‘Do you mind if I call you “Acting”?’
‘You can call me Ron when I’m off-duty.’
‘How will I be able to tell?’
‘When I’m off duty I’ll probably be settling your daughter.’
‘Now that’s good, Ron,’ said Betga, pounding the table with his fist.
‘That’s the first damn thing you’ve ever said to me that’s got any kind of spunk, any kind of pushback.’
‘Mr Betga, I don’t go looking for confrontation.’
‘It’s not a matter of looking for confrontation, Ron. It’s a matter of not looking for a way out when it finds you. It seems to me that you walk through your life as though wearing a sign that reads “I’m done. It’s over for me”, which makes you carrion flesh for others to devour.’
Ron Quinn thought for a moment. ‘I’ve never thought of myself in those terms. But whether I do or not, what concern is it of yours?’
‘I can understand you asking that question, especially since its answer may surprise you.’
‘Go on.’
‘Ron, I’ve come to realise that I owe you a debt of gratitude. You clearly know I’m Marietta’s father.’
‘Yes.’
‘What you might not know is that I’m in love with Carla, have been ever since my days at Freely Savage, when we met at Torrent Industries HQ, right from the first time we flirted over the document shredder.’
‘I’m not sure she’ll believe you . . . because of your . . . affair with the legal recruiter when you —’
‘I know what I did . . . was wrong. But even then, I loved her,’ Betga interjected more angrily than he’d intended.
‘While sleeping with another woman?’
‘Ron, we’re talking man-to-man here, aren’t we?’
‘Er . . . Yes.’
‘It was a tight employment market. A man has to do whatever he can in difficult circumstances to provide for his family. Yeah? In terms of the economy it’s like a time of war. Some of the things we do for our family . . . well, they’re not pretty.’
‘So the legal recruitment woman, she wasn’t pretty?’
‘No, she was smokin’ hot, but morally, ethically, I know I was on shaky ground.’
‘Shaky ground! You were cheating on Carla. I’d say that’s pretty cut and dried.’
‘Yes but, no offence Ron, there’s that constabulary thinking again. One could argue that had I got the job and been able to support her and Marietta without Carla knowing the lengths to which I’d gone to get the job, well, then I’d done the greater moral good. In fact, one did argue that as I recall.’
‘It didn’t work though, did it?’
‘No, I wasn’t able to raise her mind off the sordid details she kept imagining. I couldn’t stop her re-living a scene she’d never seen. Carla is a very jealous woman and when a jealous woman owns a vivid imagination it’s possible for a man to have recurring nightmares without ever being allowed to fall asleep.’
‘What does all this have to do with owing me a debt of gratitude?’
‘During the time I speak of right up until very recently you took care of her, watched out for her, and gave her very impressive hands-on help with Marietta. You even helped her with money. I will forever be grateful for that, Ron.’
‘Thank you Mister . . . What should I call you?’
‘Betga’s good.’
‘Mister Betga?’
‘No, I’d like to think we’re friends now. Just Betga’s fine.’
‘What kind of name is Betga?’
‘It’s German but the spelling was changed to help English speakers. Very thoughtful family.’
‘How long has your family been here?’
‘My paternal grandfather was a physicist back in Germany. Tried to get into America after the war but they didn’t believe he was a Nazi so they wouldn’t let him in. Others got in, much stupider men, not him. It’s always been “who you know”, hasn’t it? Had to come here instead.’
‘Why didn’t they believe he was a Nazi?’
‘He didn’t really carry himself like a Nazi. Tried to say he was just a bit flat ’cause they lost the war but US Immigration wasn’t buying it. Not only that, he couldn’t adequately explain why he’d been in hiding for twelve years. Wasn’t expecting the question. Put him on the spot. He was still jet-lagged too. I imagine he was. Can’t be sure because I was still very young when he died. But let me ask you something.’
‘Yes?’
‘How did you learn to change toddlers and babies, to settle them and that sort of thing? Do you have kids?’
‘No, sadly.’
‘You’re not married?’
‘No.’
‘But you’ve been married?’
‘No, never married.’
‘So how did you learn to be so good with small children?’
‘Well, I learned from being an uncle to my sister’s kids. Always hoped to be a father but it never . . .’
Betga was in danger of choking up. This policeman was ruthless. He spun platinum-plated pathos the way Spider-Man spun webs. But Betga was saved from lachrymose capitulation by the sight of Kasimir who, although some distance away, was unable to hide his astonishment and disgust that Betga had not only brought in a cop but was sharing a table with him and, even worse, drinking with him. Betga could see Kasimir shaking his head. He knew he would have some explaining to do when this was over.
‘Well, you’ve learned very well from your sister’s kids,’ Betga mused, returning to the topic of the policeman’s facility with pre-verbal children. ‘So listen, Ron, despite meeting Carla under different circumstances, I think you’d agree that we both have respect and affection for her.’
‘Most definitely.’
‘And we both want what’s good for her and Marietta.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And we both know that she’s struggling with respect to money at the moment and could use a break, financially speaking.’
‘Yes, I don’t know the precise circumstances but . . . yes.’
‘Well, I don’t know how much, if anything, she’s told you about the work I’ve been doing for her in my capacity as her lawyer negotiating a settlement on her behalf against Torrent Industries.’
‘No, whenever she has talked about you it’s been mainly . . . other things.’
‘Okay, but be that as it may, I’m on the verge of delivering her a settlement that I suspect will be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.’
‘Gee, that’s fantastic, Mr Betga.’
‘Please, Ron, you can drop the “Mister”. Betga is fine.’
‘That’s fantastic . . . Betga.’
‘Yes, it is, it would be, but one of my last remaining obstacles is her.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She’s reluctant to accept a settlement offer.’
‘Why on earth wouldn’t she accept it?’
‘Because she wants the guy punished and the settlement would almost certainly contain no sanctions against the perpetrator. It would be a confidential settlement and it would be paid not by the animal that sexually assaulted her but by the company that employs him.’
‘Well, that’s okay. The perpetrator would face his justice in the trial, the criminal trial. I told her, what he did was a criminal offence, probably several of them.’
‘Ron, have you ever been to a sexual assault or a rape trial? Ever sat in on one?’
‘Actually, no, I can’t say that I have.’
‘Do you know what the defence would do to her? To save time, that’s a rhetorical question so don’t feel under any pressure. Since she knows her assailant, they would try to do two things; they would try to make her out to be sexually promiscuous and, even more cruelly, they would try to make any of the physical activity that formed the basis of the assault appear sexual and consensual. The first issue is clearly irrelevant but highly prejudicial. We would, of course, try to keep all evidence of her past sexual history and evidence of the way she dresses, how she has recovered from the assault and is working now, et cetera, out of evidence, but we wouldn’t be completely successful, certainly not enough to keep all of this evidence out and —’
‘Well, I could testify,’ interjected the sad policeman with the eagerness of an earnest puppy, an eagerness Betga had never before known the man to possess. ‘I could testify that I made my romantic intentions clearly known quite early in our friendship and she didn’t feel that way.’
Betga didn’t know where to look after hearing this. He let Ron Quinn’s words glide gracefully downwards like an ageing seabird all the way down to the depths of one of his two already drained Slovakian craft beer glasses. What was he to do with that admission given he was trying not to offend its maker, a man no jury in the land would convict of being sexually enticing at any time to anything, living or dead, in any universe, known or hitherto undiscovered.
‘Trust me, Ron, your testimony, even sworn on the deed to the land on which the bible was first printed in Mainz, Germany, back in 1455, even that wouldn’t quite cut it.’
‘That’s impressive, Betga, how you just know things that aren’t . . . aren’t even really what we seem to be talking about, unless I’ve somehow missed something. This bible printing business . . . Do you know about this from your family history, you know, back in Germany?’
‘No, Ron. We Betgas fled Mainz sometime around 1282, leaving all property deeds to the archbishop’s treasurers. Pity that. Still, Gutenberg wasn’t much of a tenant. Never had any money. And, boy, was he messy! Fingers, everything. Very messy. But be that as it may, and notwithstanding the value of the sterling evidence of her stoic resistance to your entreaties that you would tender to counter the previous sexual indiscretions the other side would try to impute to Carla, the real damage would come when the perpetrator gives his evidence.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s going to say they were involved in a consensual relationship that, to his regret, passionately spilled over into the workplace. Inappropriate, yes, but not assault.’
‘But that’s simply not true!’
‘You don’t get to court much, Ron, do you?’
‘No,’ the acting sergeant said somewhat sheepishly.
‘The bastard is going to lie and the standard of proof required in a criminal case, “beyond reasonable doubt”, is higher than that required in a civil case, so he’s going to get off. He would be found not guilty.’
‘So Carla’s more likely to win a civil case than a criminal case,’ said the policeman.
‘Exactly,’ said Betga, ‘which is why I can see the company settling, just to ensure the case never comes to court. The company would pay handsomely to keep the allegations out of the news. So then, you see, Carla wouldn’t have to testify.’
‘Right, so you want her to sue the company in a civil case but not to have the police charge the perpetrator in order that she be spared the rigours of a criminal trial?’
‘Ron, you’ve now grasped the whole thing. I’m trying to get her some compensation and at the same time keep her from going through the agony of a criminal trial where the other side will spend up big in order to lie about the events of the night, forcing her to publicly re-live her torment as both the victim and a witness, and where they would also drag her name through the mud with respect to the most private part of her life; all of it in public, recorded by the press to be saved on the internet in perpetuity where everyone in the world can read it and where one day Marietta could also read what was done to her mother.’
‘Yes, I suppose that does sound like the way to go, Mr Betga. Er, sorry, Betga. Why isn’t she listening to you?’
‘Because, Ron, you filled her head with dreams of retribution via a criminal trial.’
‘Well, it’s understandable she’d want the man punished.’
‘It is, Ron, but there are certain things I can’t do. Although, between us, I’d rather you didn’t say that around here. She’s not factoring in the ordeal of going through a criminal trial.’
‘Yes, I see.’ Everything was slowly sinking in for the man in blue. ‘And you want me to talk to her?’
‘Yes.’
‘But I can’t tell her his actions weren’t criminal because they were.’
‘No, but you can tell her what she’d have to go through in a criminal trial and that, even after that, the guy is likely to be found not guilty.’
‘What about the perpetrator getting punished? He deserves to be punished. How will he be punished?’
‘I’m afraid we’ll have to find the answer to that somewhere within Gutenberg’s handiwork.’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘Ron, do you know who Gutenberg was?’
‘Well, from the conversation . . . I just sort of assumed he was a relative of yours.’
‘Ron, if you’ll help me in this way, to take care of Carla, I’d like to do something for you.’
‘Oh, Betga, really, there’s no need to —’
‘No, I’d like to. You might not know this, Ron, but I’m a highly sought-after life coach.’
‘A life coach?’
‘Yes. And I’d like to offer you —’
‘But I’m not in training for anything.’
‘You don’t know what a life coach is, do you?’
‘A life coach?’
‘Yes, Ron, this is another one of those occasions you’ve probably experienced before where repeating the term you didn’t understand a few seconds earlier yields no further discernible enlightenment. That’s the kind of thing I can help you with.’
‘Oh Betga, I don’t know, really.’
‘Ron, let me ask you, how long have you been an acting sergeant?’
‘Just hit eleven years last month. We had sponge cake down at the station. Not everyone could make it.’
‘Are there any consequences to being an acting sergeant as opposed to a real one?’
‘Just superficial things, really.’
‘Like the way people treat you?’
‘Hardly notice it. Water off a . . . bird, a water bird.’
‘Any financial consequences?’
‘To an extent.’
‘To what extent?’
‘It changes.’
‘Does it ever change in your favour?’
‘I’m not . . . aware . . . of that . . . having happened.’
‘Will it affect your retirement?’
‘The department’s never . . . in so many words . . . broached that directly with me.’
‘Ron.’
‘Yes?’ The policeman looked up slowly from the table, like a child crouching behind an older man’s face, and into the eyes of a younger, more handsome man who had fathered a daughter with a beautiful woman the policeman had helped and never even kissed.
‘We’ll make time, Ron. I can help you. You’ve been a great support to Carla and to Marietta. Let me do this for you. Free of charge.’
Betga thought the policeman was going to cry and that, if he did, he himself didn’t know what he would do. He couldn’t be seen in the Grosvenor Hotel offering aid and comfort to a serving uniformed member of the Victoria Police. As it was he was going to have a lot of explaining to do. Thankfully for him Acting Sergeant Quinn managed to keep speaking.
‘Betga, you know, I think that despite yourself, you managed to learn something from your uncle.’
‘My uncle?’
‘Gutenberg. You’ll have to tell me about him.’
‘Okay, I’ll throw that in too.’