by Greg McGee
Pete had left Trish with two young boys who were now doing well, one in IT and the other an engineer who had been one of the abseilers on the cliffs above the Kaikōura road after the big quake, drilling holes to anchor the mesh nets that caught the falling rocks. Will had seen the photos – Trish was practically family, gold standard, part of what used to be the industry. Will remembered her wearing a T-shirt to a wrap party when Pete was still alive, with ‘If these were brains I’d be a genius’ emblazoned across the front. But she was anyway. She took a lot of heat off Will at some personal cost. Will knew she hated lying to people on his behalf, obfuscating, saying he was out when he was in, protecting him when he was down or high or pissed, but she also knew Will and Flame were at rock bottom. Will had never told her specific details, but Trish sat there in that huge empty space day after day and she made Will’s appointments, she knew who he was seeing, who was talking to him and who was not, and she knew the import of the two figures upstairs waiting for him. She’d hang in till the death, Will knew that, which was why he’d paid her last fortnight’s wages out of his credit card. And he’d make sure she continued to get paid for as long as possible, and fuck the IRD.
***
WILL had spoken to Flame’s accountant on the phone, but never met her in the flesh and had forgotten her name. He was grateful to be introduced by Rod, whose firm, Baigent & Son, had been Flame’s solicitors since the year dot. The same accountancy firm had acted for Flame throughout too, but about every five years, it seemed, the practice would be sold and Branko and Den and then Will would get a letter from the outgoing principal thanking them for their custom, advising that he/she was moving on to ‘pastures new’ and introducing the new principal, a man/woman with CA after their name and an impressive pedigree and aspirations, whose ‘focus would be on nurturing the best interests of Flame’. He tried to remember the original man behind the practice, a Dally mate of Branko’s, but no image came. Then he tried to remember the name of the woman Rod had just introduced him to, who appeared to be well into a monologue to Will. Suzan Someone?
Other than her name, Will felt he knew everything about her just by looking. Keeping her cool, despite the air con being turned off, late thirties, shortish bobbed hair, blonde highlights, slim on top, a bit of width to the hips, but still fit, two children probably, married to another career numerant, a CA or maybe an engineer or quantity surveyor, someone practical and rational like her. The kids would be in care after school, but she and her hubby would take turns leaving early, picking them up, doing the supermarket runs and the cooking. They’d be mortgaged to the hilt to live the inner-city fringe dream and she’d go to Les Mills and have a yoga mat. She’d also have a mind like a steel trap and would have known before she came to this meeting that Flame was fucked and of limited future value to her practice: if Flame went into liquidation, some other accountant would be appointed receiver.
The only thing Will could actually remember was that she was ex-South African IRD. That memory might have been triggered by what she was saying, quite sternly, or maybe the harshness in her voice was just a remnant of Afrikaaner vowels. ‘I’m happy to make a deal with the IRD, but I do not want to offer them something we cannot deliver on. That’s not the way to go forward.’
She would say that, Will thought – if she’s ex-IRD she doesn’t want her clients shitting on her ex-colleagues. She had stopped talking and was clearly expecting a response. Will looked at Rod, but there appeared to be no salvation there, so he conjured up Den’s smile, which he knew was there in his face in fleeting bursts, and began the kind of tap dance he’d learnt from his father
In Will’s reversioning of this morning’s meeting, ‘top-gun’ director Anton Gognik had been ‘all over the brief’, couldn’t wait to get his hands on it, and all that remained was a ‘pro forma meeting’ with head of TV at LSQN, Nicholas Preston, an old school friend with whom Will and Anton had had previous successful collaborations. The gig was as good as signed off. Will had the figures, his producer’s fee, Flame’s production overhead. He ticked off the many and various ways Flame could draw money from the munificent budget for facilities and resources, like the bespoke production office they’d just walked through, the departmental spaces, the wardrobe storage, the editing suite. And so on. He was surprised by how much he was enjoying himself. This rosy picture he was painting was certainly working for him: the more he talked, the better he felt about his prospects. He’d heard the phrase ‘talk therapy’ – perhaps that’s all it was, learning how to bullshit yourself.
When he stopped to draw breath, his shirt a dish-rag, Suzan simply said, ‘What then?’
Will wanted to throttle her for puncturing the moment he had conjured, but instead managed, ‘Fair point.’ The future. One production, no matter how lucrative, wouldn’t save them. So he detailed the bridgehead to more projects that this high-profile TVC for a class-leading, breakthrough high-tech EV would lead to. ‘Regrettably,’ Will said, ‘this is an industry where perception matters as much as execution. Flame has always been among the elite production entities but this TVC will get a lot of exposure and will lift our stocks with the major agencies.’
Suzan was softening, he could tell, so Will got out the trowel and told Suzan about his marital woes. Traumatising, yes, they were, of course, but they also meant he could look forward to releasing equity in his matrimonial property. Then there was his parents’ house, which was recently razed in a tragic fire, but which was fully insured, so there would be insurance proceeds on the immediate horizon, followed by the sale of the section.
‘Which suburb?’ asked Suzan.
‘Herne Bay, actually,’ said Will and watched with a mix of relief and contempt the effect of those two magic words. The country’s richest suburb. Game over. He should have played that card earlier, saved himself some grist.
But he’d overread her: Suzan from Bloemfontein or wherever-the-hell was made of sterner stuff. Will’s prospects were so much better than Suzan had been expecting that she couldn’t hide her bean-counter suspicions, and looked to Rod Baigent for confirmation. Rod smiled, and said nothing, which prompted Will to lift an eyebrow to Rod. WTF?
‘Sounds great to me,’ said Rod, finally, ‘and a good basis to negotiate a deal with the IRD, yes?’
Suzan agreed, if Will could just send her an email, confirming all the details in writing, so that she had something concrete to take back to the IRD.
‘Oh,’ said Rod, at last paying his way, ‘I think we can take all those as read, Suzan. Tell IRD the story, and we’ll look forward to you coming back to us with some idea of the quantum and T and Cs IRD would find acceptable.’ He put a hand out to usher her towards the door to the stairs. ‘The less the better over the longest term possible would be the ideal, obviously. I just need to discuss some of the more personal matrimonial details with my client, if you don’t mind.’
‘That’s fine,’ she said, as Rod opened the door, then turned for a last broadside. ‘You might remind your client that it is an offence to trade knowing you’re insolvent.’ And she was gone.
Will could barely contain himself until the door closed and he heard her heels on the stairs. ‘Why the fuck did you take so long to jump in?’
Rod carefully removed his jacket and rolled his cotton sleeves above strong, hairy wrists. Rod was the son of Clarry, the original lawyer for Flame, a mate of Branko’s, and about Will’s age, give or take, but affected a gravitas that made him seem, in Will’s eyes at least, much older. One element of this was the formality of his speech. Over drinks, Will had heard him swear and curse with the best of them, but once he’d put on his lawyer’s mien, he seemed offended by the fucks and cunts he threw around with abandon when he was off duty. Did jacket off mean off duty? Clearly not. Rod was grimacing, as if someone had kicked him in the nuts. ‘There’s no need for profanity, Will.’
‘Fuck you, Rod, I pay you to cover my fucking back. You left me b
alls-out swinging in the breeze. Why didn’t you endorse me on the matrimonial property proceeds and the fire insurance payout?’
‘Because I find myself in a difficult position, due to–’
‘You’re in a difficult position?’
The other thing Rod disliked, when on duty or off, was being interrupted when speaking. He liked disgorging fully rounded sentences, with all the necessary qualifying clauses and phrases in place, he liked being heard respectfully, he liked launching into monologues, like some judge or schoolteacher or vicar who wouldn’t brook interruption, as if every fucking word was a pearl. Will felt duty-bound to take every opportunity to break these perorations up.
‘Unfortunately, Will, I’m privy to information which–’
‘What fucking information?’
‘Information which is material to the matters–’
‘For fuck’s sake, let’s have it, Rod!’
Rod’s incipient dewlaps were quivering. Will was sure he was about to remonstrate with him like a naughty schoolboy, tell him to put his hand up when he wanted to say something. Instead, Rod said, ‘Will, you can be a complete and utter cunt.’
‘That’s better! What’s the guts?’
‘The insurance company’s just come back. The fire investigator has made a preliminary report.’
‘At last. When’s the payout?’
When Will saw Rod hesitate and gather himself like a funeral director, he knew what was coming wasn’t good. ‘There’s a problem,’ said Rod. ‘The fire investigator has determined that the probable cause was an accelerant, hot embers from the outside fire, carried into the kitchen, where the fire began.’
Will was aghast. ‘It’s taken this sensational fucking genius how many months to figure that out? That the fire was started by that little cunt Jackson, the arsonist, who was out there stoking the pizza oven?’
‘The fire investigator has completed his interviews with everyone, including your father, who, as you know, was downstairs when the fire took hold.’
‘There’s fuck-all point in talking to Den.’
‘He was downstairs at the relevant time.’
Will finally had a glimmering of disaster ahead. Rod’s face had become longer, the dewlaps were extending in mournful sympathy, a sure sign that bad news was imminent. Suddenly Will didn’t care any more how much time Rod took to get to whatever revelation he was about to drop.
‘Since there’s a genuine possibility that the fire was deliberately started by the insured and since there’s a clause that specifically voids the policy if that’s the case–’
‘Den? Burnt his own fucking house down?’ He didn’t see that coming.
‘Given your father’s state of mind, or lack of, it’s a possibility, that’s what they’re saying. And as long as it remains a genuine possibility, and until they have proof that the cause of the fire can be laid at someone else’s feet, they won’t pay out.’
Will sat down on the sofa, side-swiped, deflated. ‘The cunts.’
Rod shrugged. ‘That’s why I didn’t jump in, Will. And I’m also obliged to advise you that the matrimonial situation is unlikely to be resolved any time soon. Any proceeds from the matrimonial property are at least a couple of years away. With two very young dependent children, no judge will force a sale before then. I’m sorry, Will.’
‘What can I do?’
‘The delay in the fire insurance proceeds need not delay selling the section, now that the fire investigator has completed his inspection of the property . . . But of course, that’s up to your father.’
‘Up to Den? He’s up to fuck all!’
As Rod began a bewildering off-the-cuff monologue about the dos and don’ts of powers of attorney, Will realised that the infinite possibilities of imminent disaster for him and for Flame represented just the opposite for the lawyer. Intractable shit-fights on all fronts promised ongoing dollops of moolah for Rod, given that eventual proceeds of sale would have to go through the Baigent & Son trust account, and would be quickly and quietly relieved of fees and disbursements before being passed on.
***
WHEN Rod Baigent finally took his leave, Will waved him down the stairs, then left the door half open so he could listen to the lawyer’s leather soles reverberating up through the concrete canyon. He needed to know the fucker was irrevocably gone, that the lecture was finally over, that the talking was finished, that Rod wouldn’t come back to nail a last codicil or qualifying clause to his bewildering off-the-cuff oral treatise on the vagaries of a power of attorney and the circumstances under which Den might sign one himself, or have a judge sign it for him.
Will felt an overwhelming dark lassitude and fingered the little lifters in his pocket. The sweat was running down the V of his spine into his jocks. He thought about going rogue and turning the air con on. Or he could take another half-gram, or . . . He looked across to the sofa. Or he could lay his head down on that cushion, put his feet up and, with a bit of luck, never fucking wake up.
***
WILL woke to a sound he hadn’t heard in a long time. Laughter. Unbridled, raucous. He rolled off the sofa and over to the door, looked carefully down the stairs to Trish’s desk. Oh shit. Branko’s daughter, Yelena, his landlord – ‘landlady’ just didn’t seem right for her – and Ellie, his sister, around Trish’s desk, the three of them cackling together like a coven of witches. Yelena come to harass him about the rent, no doubt. But why Ellie? He seriously considered the fire escape, but Trish would have told them he was in, and they’d have seen the Sportage out front. He had to brazen it. ‘Keep it down, f’chrissakes,’ he called down. ‘Some of us are trying to concentrate!’
‘Yeah right, Rip Van Winkle, we could hear the snoring from down here!’ That couldn’t possibly be true, thought Will, but Yelena, with something of her father’s powerful build and skin colour – a beautiful light brown satin, highlighted by her short blonded hair – also had her father’s uncanny ability to invest everything she said with truth, or at least to divine what needed to be said and say it. She smiled up at him with her perfect teeth. ‘Come on down, Will, the gang’s all here.’
The gang? Will remembered with some embarrassment that they used to be exactly that, Yelena, Ellie and Will, at primary school and intermediate, often walking together back here after school, or being brought by Nadine, Yelena’s mother, or occasionally by Carol. And Trish, childless in those early days, giving them the run of the place. Trish may have been low in the production pecking order, but the HODs knew she’d be here when they had moved on; she had the bosses’ ears and these were the bosses’ children. So the kids had unfettered access to the costume department for dress-ups, and Will could remember with some wonder his passivity as a mannequin on which Yelena, one year younger but always his equal, and his sister, two years younger, expressed their fantasies. Will had been more inclined towards the props department, where they could play with boltless guns and collapsible knives, and Yelena, particularly, had always been up for a bit of playful mayhem. When Trish’s two boys came along, they were, like Stan, too young to be true friends of the older kids, but were always included. This warehouse had been their playpen for many years, and Trish had been their true north.
‘A moment,’ he told them. ‘I have to make a call.’
‘We all have to make calls, mate,’ said Yelena. ‘But fine, do it. You’ve got five.’
Will retreated to the office and into the en-suite. He leant forward over the basin to protect the front of his shirt, then splashed cold water on his face, which looked sunken when he towelled it dry. He’d look better with a few more kilos on him. And another couple of hundred thousand in his pocket. Failing that, he had half a tab there, the other half of what he’d taken at about six that morning. That used to be good for twelve to eighteen hours: maybe Lila’s quality control was slipping. He’d need it to get the call done, then get through wh
atever was waiting for him downstairs. Time was slipping away. He swallowed the half-tab and sluiced some water directly from the tap into his mouth, then straightened up and grimaced again at the man in the mirror. He wished he had some smoke, wanted the big instant zap. Still, the conversation with Nick was likely to be long enough for the tab to kick in. He looked better already. Now or never.
Will crossed back to his mobile on the sofa, took a couple of deep breaths as he found Nick’s number. Do the dance, he told himself, get those feet going. The steps for this one had to be all about Anton, the bankable element. He pressed the screen button, heard Nick’s phone ring three times, then cut to voice-mail. The cunt. Three rings was just enough for Nick to have seen his name come up and react. Or maybe he was in a meeting and had forgotten to mute it. As Nick’s bored, uncaring voice asked him to leave a message, Will tried to smuggle assurance and a smile into his voice. Don’t say too much. Keep it short, keep the need out of it. ‘Nick, Will Sparks. Had a great meet with Anton this morning. Look forward to talking.’
***
PUTTING on his smiley face after the Nick rebuff, he stood at the top of the stairs and said, ‘Come on up.’
Yelena was having none of that. ‘Nah, you come down,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a plan.’
His dismay must have shown. ‘A coffee, all right?’
Trish was invited too, and could have come, but insisted on staying to ‘hold the fort’. Will felt like telling her not to bother, the battle’s been lost, the fort’s been overrun, but she seemed adamant. Later, when Will became aware what Yelena and Ellie were up to, he understood that Trish must have been in on it. But when Yelena walked them to her car, not his, what could he say? When she opened the front passenger door and insisted he take that seat, when Ellie got into the back seat right behind her so she had a clear view of him, when he realised he was captive, what could he say? He was just grateful Yelena wasn’t talking about the rent. Yet.
