There were brown thornbills and red wattlebirds in the trees and pink robins on the sagging overhead powerlines, all of them cheeping that morning when, coming back home after taking Marietta to the park, Carla found Betga waiting at the front door. She had been without work following the unsurprising collapse of the wishbone company. Betga kissed her cheek and lifted his daughter into his arms before kissing her too.
‘Is something wrong?’ Carla asked, as though his appearance in the morning without warning or invitation could be explained only by the need to break bad news in person.
‘Nothing we can’t fix.’
‘What is it?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Well, it appears the council garbage truck has already visited the street. It collected everybody’s garbage but inadvertently missed ours, I mean, “yours”.’
‘Oh shit! I forgot to put it out last night,’ Carla remembered.
‘That’s okay, I put it out last night.’
‘You did? When?’
‘While you were on the phone to your mother.’
‘Betga, that’s so thoughtful. You’re really trying to domesticate yourself.’
‘Yes, I really am, but the council, or the people to whom they’ve outsourced Black Death prevention, are thwarting me at every turn. Or really just at one turn, the one into this street. But don’t worry. I’ll call them.’
She kissed him again and unlocked the front door and the three of them went inside. Betga wasn’t very far into the house when he felt and heard his phone ring and he saw that it was Maserov.
‘Top of the morning to you, Maserov.’
‘Right back at you, Betga,’ said Maserov glumly. ‘Listen, I’ve got problems.’
‘Do they impact me?’
‘You know, I haven’t actually turned my mind to that yet.’
‘Do you want to call me back when you have? Oh never mind, I could use an excuse to delay my next call. I have to lecture a representative of the City of Port Phillip about the devastation of medieval Europe wrought by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Again! Last time I tried, they thought I was making disparaging remarks about a young Greek woman.’
‘Betga, what the hell are you talking about?’
‘Carla’s rubbish wasn’t collected this morning. What’s up, Maserov?’
‘Well, I’m not sure about this but I think it’s possible I might have lost my protection from Malcolm Torrent. I’m not sure he’d back me now if Hamilton tries to get rid of me.’
‘You’re kidding? What did you do?’
‘What did I do? I found out exactly what was bothering him and I fixed it . . . much too quickly. I made what he saw as the spate of sexual harassment claims filed against Torrent Industries disappear well within the year in which I had to do it. Now he doesn’t need me anymore. So he might get rid of me.’
‘He might or he will?’
‘That’s the thing, Betga, it was hard to be sure. I didn’t entirely understand what he was saying. He was kind of cryptic, enigmatic.’
‘Maserov, he’s an extremely powerful man. He has no choice but to be either cryptic or hostile. This is what power does to a man, pushes him into that corner. You need him to need you again.’
‘You know, that’s what he said . . . I think.’
‘I’m at Carla’s. Why don’t you come over? Are you at Torrent headquarters?’
‘No.’
‘Are you at home?’
‘No.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in St Kilda.’
‘You’re in St Kilda?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you be less specific?’
‘Given time, yes. I could be there in five minutes. Are you sure it’s alright with Carla if I come around now?’
‘Maserov, you’re her hero. When she hears you might be in trouble, especially on her account, she’ll do anything for you. She’ll knit you a chicken.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘Just get here. Oh wait! One more question.’
‘Yes?’
‘Does Jessica live in St Kilda?’
There was silence on the other end of the phone. ‘How do you knit a chicken?’ Maserov asked eventually.
‘No further questions.’
Betga had explained Maserov’s predicament to Carla, which accounted for the strength and duration of the hug she gave Maserov when she opened her front door and let him in. When they were all in Carla’s living room she offered to make coffee and Betga accepted for both of them. Marietta was on the floor, playing with her cuddle friends, a menagerie of bears, bunnies and an echidna.
‘I had a dream last night, woke up short of breath, in a panic,’ said Maserov. ‘I was taken to a quarry of sorts, an open-air salt mine, where I was to be shot on the orders of Stalin. In fact, Stalin was there, in attendance. He was right on top of the ravine giving the orders to a group of goons, soldiers or perhaps they were KGB men.’
‘No, wouldn’t have been KGB,’ said Betga. ‘In Stalin’s time they were called variously the CHEKA, then the OGPU and then the NKVD. And someone like you wouldn’t have been shot in a salt mine. More likely in a courtyard or a cell in Lubyanka prison in Moscow, I’d say, but do go on.’
‘Sorry Betga, I apologise for the historical inaccuracies of my unconscious.’
‘Not at all. Please continue.’
‘Well, there I was at this open-air salt mine type place, standing in a pit with my back to the firing squad, and they’ve lined me up next to Malenkov, Beria, Molotov, Khrushchev and some others I couldn’t quite make out.’
‘Wow, that’s exalted company. And historically possible, but go on. Stalin’s there. Is he in the pit with you?’
‘No, like I said, he’s above us on the ridge of the pit or the ravine or whatever it was. Talking down to us.’
‘You realise,’ Betga interrupted, ‘Stalin is Hamilton. I mean, in your unconscious, that’s who he represents.’
‘You think?’
‘Gotta be.’
‘So I’m in the pit and I turn around and I call out. I tell Stalin I have a sleep mask, you know, one of those face masks you wear in bed to shut out the light and help you sleep? I tell him I have one in my pocket and I ask him if I may be permitted to wear it when they shoot me.’
‘Even though they’re going to shoot you in the back?’
‘Yep.’
‘What did Stalin say?’
‘He told me to take it out slowly and to hold it up away from my body, which I did. And then he praised me for being prepared, praised me to everyone.’
‘Wow! Hamilton would never have done that.’
‘No, I know. For a moment I was feeling pretty good about things.’
‘Sure, you got praise from Stalin. What happened then?’
‘Well, it went quiet for a second and then there was a burst of machine-gun fire. The firing squad shot holes in my sleep mask. The sun burst through the bullet holes and I woke up with the sun in my eyes.’
‘You know,’ said Betga, thinking out loud, ‘on second thought, Stalin isn’t Hamilton, he’s Malcolm Torrent. But the salt mine is Freely Savage.’
‘Yeah, I could see that.’
‘Did you notice the characteristics of any of your fellow lawyers in Malenkov, Beria, Molotov or Khrushchev?’
‘No, not really. Oh wait, yes! Beria had a certain scent I recognised, incredibly alluring and yet terrifying.’
‘Beria, chief of the secret police, smelled alluring to you?’
‘Yes, I remember now. He smelled exactly like Fleur Werd-Gelding. She’s another Second Year, known for her beauty and her cruelty. She smells great.’
‘I see,’ said Betga. ‘Maserov, this has got you spooked. You need to get a grip, get back on the horse and go back fighting.’
‘Back where?’
‘Into Malcolm Torrent’s office. You need to remind him that you’re indispensable to him.’
‘But maybe I no longer am indispensable to him.’
‘We will make him see you as indispensable.’
‘No one sees me that way, not even my wife. So how can I make this amoral, capricious construction tycoon see me that way?’
‘Play to his fears and his dislike of Hamilton. You’ve done it once before but by chance. You learned what he was afraid of. Now milk that cow!’
‘He was afraid of bad publicity from a spate of sexual harassment suits that would drive down the price of his company’s shares and generally give it a taint. But I’ve settled, we’ve settled all the claims.’
‘You want more? I could give you more. How many do you want?’
‘Real or fabricated?’
‘Real take longer but you know they’re out there. Give me a week, I’ll give you three more. That place is a white-collar cesspool.’
‘No, he thinks I’ve solved his problem. If more sexual harassment claims start surfacing, what good am I? And anyway, he’ll get suspicious if there’s suddenly a flurry of them. Or he’ll think that settling the first four has just opened the floodgates and that I’ve only made his problems worse.’
‘You realise what you’re saying?’ said Betga. ‘If you’ve solved his problems your situation’s precarious and if you haven’t solved his problems your situation’s precarious.’
‘Yes, I think that’s what I’m saying.’
‘Maserov, you need to identify problems he doesn’t yet realise he might have and then show him that you have the capacity to solve them.’
‘Have you got any ideas as to how to do that?’
‘Sure. Of course I do. You should none-too-subtly warn him that someone could tell the Law Institute or even the court or, worse still, the media, what Hamilton by proxy ordered a Torrent Industries officer to do with Carla’s report. After all, it might be possible to portray Mike Mercer as a lone sexual offender in a suit but the cover-up is institutional. The company could always try to hang him out to dry but there’s no carpet they can sweep this under.’
‘Well, the Law Institute and even the court won’t care. The cases are settled and I cleaned it up for Featherby just by filing an amended affidavit of documents that included Carla’s statement and then giving it to you.’
‘Yeah, but only a lawyer would know that. Malcolm Torrent won’t know that.’
‘So you want me to mislead him?’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘You want me to mislead him through a series of hand gestures?’
‘No, Maserov, you say it but you don’t say it. You imply that the story of the buried incriminating document could get out. It might, one never knows. You’re envisaging, foreseeing problems and helping him to avoid them.’
‘What’s my advice? What advice do I give him to help him avoid them?’
‘You tell him what’s likely to go down.’
‘Which is?’
‘Aileen van Beethoven is going to put the blame entirely on Featherby and he’s going to shaft Hamilton because he doesn’t want to wear this for the rest of his career and he’s dead anyway, as far as Hamilton is concerned. I mean, why wouldn’t he tell the truth and put it all on Hamilton if he’s dead already, right? Hamilton would kill him for much less than this. So, to prevent Featherby going public, Malcolm Torrent needs to buy his silence.’
‘You’re suggesting that my salvation lies in advising Malcolm Torrent to bribe Featherby?’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘Betga, how many words . . . can I use . . . to suggest to Malcolm Torrent that he bribe Featherby?’
‘Maserov, will you relax? Your tone of voice suggests tremendous agitation.’
‘Betga, I’m in a salt mine getting shot by Stalin and his KGB henchmen!’
‘Yes, and as I explained that’s ahistorical and even there he’s praising your foresight for having the face mask and you’re standing beside the sweet-smelling Beria. It’s not all bad. Look, Maserov, we’re not talking brown paper bags or Swiss bank accounts in Mrs Featherby’s name.’
‘What do you want me to suggest to Malcolm Torrent to neutralise the threat of Featherby going public with this when Hamilton comes after him?’
‘You should suggest to Malcolm Torrent that, when Featherby returns from General Anxiety Disorder leave, he be given a job in Torrent Industries’ in-house legal department with the other survivors.’
‘Betga, you’re brilliant! A safe haven for Featherby, a soft landing on the condition that he never mentions Hamilton’s instruction to bury Carla’s report.’
‘Yes, its brilliance resides in its simplicity and simultaneous comprehensiveness. In one blow it achieves many things; you’ve yet again demonstrated how much Malcolm Torrent needs you, you’ve found a problem for him before he did and found a painless solution for him. You even saved Featherby, which on behalf of the FSS, we thank you for.’
‘What about Aileen van der Westhuizen, what’s he meant to do with her?’
‘Hmmm,’ thought Betga. ‘Keep her on but reprimand her, tell her she’s being watched and had better tread carefully.’
‘What exactly does that mean?’
‘It means anything anybody needs it to mean. It will scare her. She’s not likely to go to the media with her own dishonesty, especially not when her job depends on it. Maserov, all you’ve got to do is sell all of this to him. That’s all. Oh, and one more thing, but this might well be the hardest part of all.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You’ve got to tell him that as far as you can see, taking care of Featherby and Aileen von Ribbentrop is very likely to staunch the flow of negative information but there will still always be a tiny but ever-present danger of it getting out from that small group of unidentified people, that cohort of persons who both know what happened and who hate Hamilton.’
‘A lot of people hate Hamilton,’ said Maserov.
‘Yeah, but how many of them know about the attempt to bury Carla’s report?’
‘You and . . . me.’
‘Exactly,’ said Betga. ‘Malcolm Torrent’s not stupid. He’ll know what you’re saying.’
‘What will I be saying?’
‘You’ll be saying that you hate Hamilton and you know what he did. You’ll be saying that Malcolm Torrent wouldn’t want you to be unhappy or the story could get out.’
‘You want me to blackmail Malcolm Torrent?’
‘No. Not blackmail, certainly not, not in so many words. Do it right, you won’t even need words. You’re not blackmailing him.’
‘No, I’d merely be threatening to blackmail him.’
‘No, you’d be allowing him to consider that this is a theoretical possibility.’
‘That I could blackmail him?’
‘Yes, but not in so many words. Maserov, you’d be derelict in your duty not to point out all the potential dangers of which you have become aware.’
Carla returned with two coffee cups. ‘How do you take your coffee, Stephen?’
‘He needs it in something he can drink in the car.’
‘Are you leaving already?’
‘Yes,’ answered Betga on his behalf. ‘Maserov needs to talk to Malcolm Torrent again as soon as he can.’
‘Do you mind if I just drink my coffee first?’ Maserov asked.
‘Of course not. But if you’ll excuse me, I have to get the City of Port Phillip to see the error of its contractor’s ways and come back for Carla’s and especially Marietta’s waste before the Black Death visits St Kilda.’
Betga picked up the phone and put it on speaker so that Maserov and Carla could hear the whole exchange. He was put on hold and eventually they all heard, ‘City of Port Phillip, Yolanda speaking. How may we assist you today?’
Betga spoke slowly and extremely clearly into the phone but nonetheless his words were not immediately understood by the City of Port Phillip’s Yolanda. He sounded a lot like a recorded message.
‘Yolanda, thank you for taking the call of a resident of the City of Port Phillip. Your call is important to us. Please be aware that this call could be recorded for coaching and training purposes or for pillorying on social media. Should you wish to read our privacy policy please see the underside of the garbage bin designated for this house. This may prove hard to achieve since the bin is currently full despite it being collection day.’