by Ros Reines
I held on to this thought as I waved goodbye to Val and returned to my desk, which looked just as chaotic as it usually did. If someone had been riffling through it to find evidence of misbehaviour, I would be none the wiser. There were manila folders of press cuttings spilling out onto the desktop, a couple of half-drunk cups of takeaway coffee and a pile of magazines smeared with food stains. Multi-tasking was never one of my talents. Adding to the mess, one of the copy kids had dumped a fresh pile of invitations on the desk. Just as I was considering embarking on a long-overdue clean-up, the phone rang—and suddenly the thought of following a normal routine evaporated like one of the editor’s moods.
‘Savannah Stephens?’ The cultured female voice on the other end of the line sounded oddly familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. There were lots of people on the social circuit who thought it was classy to sound like a minor British royal.
‘Yes?’
‘Are you interested in a tip on a story?’
‘Of course,’ I replied, then added, ‘but I must tell you upfront that the newspaper doesn’t pay for story leads.’ It was always better to inform possible sources of that straight away rather than be accused of stealing information later on. Money didn’t flow freely at The Sydney News. We were hard-pressed just trying to get a taxi voucher out of the chief-of-staff.
‘That’s perfectly fine,’ said the posh voice on the other end of the phone. ‘One doesn’t expect payment for what is really just information your readers would probably be interested in. Scarlet Graham—that vulgar, failed model—has outdone herself this time. She has not only run her poor husband’s car into the garage door but now she is gleefully mutilating all of his jackets and shirts then throwing them out onto the street. Nothing in his wardrobe seems to have been spared, judging from the size of the pile.’
‘What? Are you kidding?’
There was an almighty intake of frosty breath on the other end of the line. ‘Miss Stephens, this is a very serious situation and certainly nothing to joke about.’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said, trying to placate my informer. ‘I’m just slightly shocked. I didn’t think that people did that sort of thing anymore. We’ll get down there straight away.’
‘Make sure you do. Goodbye, Miss Stephens.’ And with that the line went dead.
Garry, the photographic editor, was not exactly a fan of my work; he thought that anything that appeared in the women’s section at the wrong end of the paper was a waste of space. He preferred to deal with the sport reporters, the political scribes and especially those on the crime beat. If there was blood flowing on the streets of the city, he was all over it.
‘Yeah?’ he said gruffly when he picked up the phone. It took me several minutes to persuade him that I needed a photographer to accompany me to the Grahams’ Elizabeth Bay home. At one point it looked as though I was going to have to rely on my own Instamatic to illustrate my story. In fact, it was only when I threatened to go to Tim that he reluctantly assigned me one of the most junior snappers in the department.
Justin Ward was a twenty-one-year-old who thought he knew it all. He had brown, slightly oily hair and was still prone to outbreaks of pimples, but at least he was a neat freak, always turning up for work in well-pressed polo shirts and jeans. Justin was also a man who could never be rushed. He liked to take his time meticulously assembling his cameras, taking a couple of different Polaroids to test the lighting and fiddling with different lenses. If he was trying out as David Bailey’s assistant, he would probably be in with a chance, but unlike fashion spreads most newspaper photography was about pointing the camera at the subject and ripping off as many shots as possible. Our photographers had to be fearless as well, always ready to make a run for it when confronted by an angry criminal’s family outside court or an antsy rock star at the airport. Garry could not have picked a worse man for the ruckus that was taking place in Elizabeth Bay if he’d tried.
We needed to hit the road immediately if we were to be sure of catching the action, but I was waiting in the news car for twenty minutes before Justin appeared, weighed down with so much equipment that he might have been heading off on an Antarctic expedition.
‘Can you believe this bloke?’ said Eric, the driver. In his early sixties, still with a healthy head of silver-white hair and a naturally ruddy complexion, Eric had pretty much seen it all and had driven some of Sydney’s legendary police reporters. With his muscular build and no-nonsense attitude, Eric was famous for tracking down certain well-seasoned journos in the pub, putting them in the back seat of the car with a steaming cup of coffee in their hands and getting them to a job on time. Now he was totally disgusted by Justin’s tardiness.
‘Who does he think he’s working for—National Geographic?’ he grumbled.
‘I know,’ I said, winding down the window of the car and leaning out to try to coax the photographer to hurry up. ‘Come on, Justin,’ I implored him. ‘This is a news job and the story might be over before we get there.’
Honestly, if we missed out and some other news crew was already there, I was going to have to lodge an official complaint with Tim. It was Garry’s fault for not taking the job seriously in the first place.
‘I haven’t been properly briefed,’ Justin said sulkily, when he had finally ensured that his camera bag was sitting up the right way in the boot and he had slid into the front seat of the car next to a now extremely exasperated Eric.
‘Come on, mate. You’ve kept both of us waiting—I could have gone out on two more jobs by the time you made your appearance like some second-rate film star.’
Justin ignored him. He thought that talking to lowly news drivers was beneath him. No doubt he would learn to pay them some respect the hard way: when he was deserted on a job in the outskirts of Sydney and told to make his own way back to the office. It was something that had happened to obnoxious news crews several times in the past, especially if the driver had a more pressing job to go to.
‘Would you please let me know exactly why we are going to Elizabeth Bay?’ asked Justin, irritated now.
I sighed heavily. Why did I have to deal with obnoxious little upstarts who thought they knew it all when there was so much else going on?
‘Okay, Justin. We are about to cover a domestic disturbance involving a high-profile couple. The woman has apparently rammed her husband’s luxury car into the garage and is busy cutting up his wardrobe and throwing the pieces onto the street outside their home.’ Seriously, I was being as patient with him as I could be under the circumstances.
‘How do we know this?’ Justin said petulantly. Who did he think that he was—the chief-of-staff?
‘An excellent tip off,’ I responded patiently, while fighting to keep my balance in the back seat as Eric swerved around every grimy side street to try to avoid the city traffic (and, I suspected, to unnerve Justin and show him who was boss).
When we finally got to the Grahams’ place, it was obvious that something was going on. A small crowd of neighbours were gathered around the driveway looking with fascinated horror at Shannon’s now battered Merc, still sitting where it had been smashed into the wall. A stream of garments, each with one of the sleeves sheared off, rained down on the path below.
‘What the hell is going on?’ said Eric, who was so shocked by the scene which greeted us that he actually broke protocol by getting out of the car himself to have a good look.
‘Try to get shots of as much of this as possible,’ I said to Justin through gritted teeth, as I made my way past the stunned neighbours to ring the bell at the front gate.
I was close enough to the house now to hear the cacophony of sound within. The Rolling Stones were belting out ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ on the stereo system and Scarlet was whooping along to the words, letting out the occasional juicy war cry (probably when she happened on a fresh pile of clothes). As the second shrill ring of the doorbell sliced through the music, Scarlet’s beautiful but wild-looking face suddenly peered out throug
h the window. I fervently hoped that Justin had managed to catch the moment. She looked cross until she suddenly recognised me.
‘Savannah! What are you doing here? Hang on—I’ll come down and let you in.’
I turned around to see that Justin was still fiddling with his lenses. Had he taken anything yet at all?
‘Quick!’ I yelled at him. ‘Try to get a photo of Scarlet when she opens the door.’
He just shrugged his shoulders and kept playing with the bloody camera. I glanced over at Eric, who was still standing outside the car. Maybe he could take the shot? Seriously, I’d do it myself if I had my own camera with me. I wanted to kill Garry—this could be a front-page story in the paper and he had treated it like amateur hour, sending Justin.
‘I’m going to alert the desk to send a back-up snapper,’ yelled Eric, who could see how frustrated I was. He hopped back in his car to get on the radio as the gates swung open just wide enough to admit me.
‘We can’t wait to read your report on this, Savannah,’ said a woman who was part of the gathering of neighbours and observers. ‘Do you think someone should call the police?’
‘Not right now,’ I said hurriedly. ‘Let me just try to talk to Scarlet.’ (The last thing I needed was police crawling all over the place before I could do my interview.)
Just as I reached the front door, Scarlet appeared. She looked as though she had just been shooting a rock video, with her hair bouncing around her shoulders. She was wearing a filmy white tunic, chamois shorts gathered with beading on either side and high-heeled sandals. Not a bad look for a woman who had just declared war on her husband. If the scene had been filmed, it might qualify as the most eccentric rock video ever.
‘Savannah, how wonderful to see you,’ Scarlet said brightly as she led me inside. ‘Thanks for popping in. Let me just turn down this music.’ She fiddled with a switch on the wall until Mick Jagger had almost been rendered mute.
‘I hope you don’t mind the intrusion, Scarlet, but I heard that you were, um—’ I searched my mind for a delicate way of phrasing it ‘—having a moment. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing, darling. I’m just doing a little spring cleaning.’ Scarlet giggled. Maybe she was high on something?
‘Right, well, that’s great.’ I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with this line of questioning, so I tried another approach. ‘There seems to be a car smashed into the wall of your garage,’ I said, trying to surreptitiously turn on my tape recorder in my handbag. I wouldn’t be able to use anything she said unless I had her permission but I was hopeful that Scarlet just might agree to that afterwards. She was certainly crazy enough not to care about what she said and she also loved publicity. She’d probably adore all the attention.
She threw her head back and roared with laughter. ‘I know all about the smashed-up Merc—I did it myself! Savannah, honey, do you know why? Well, because I found out that my asshole husband has been cheating on me with his dog of a secretary!’
‘May I quote you on that?’
‘On what?’
‘That you smashed your husband’s car into the garage wall because you discovered he was cheating on you with his secretary?’ I was trying to sound casual and failing miserably.
‘Did you hear about it too? It’s not even as though she’s remotely attractive. Well, I suppose she is in a certain light—total darkness! Ha ha ha!’
Okay, so Scarlet had to be on something, but what? I looked around, half expecting to see a drug dealer crouched in the corner or a neat pile of coke and some rolled-up twenty-dollar notes resting on one of the glass coffee tables. But all I could see was a large pile of smashed crystal and porcelain in front of several empty shelves. Clearly Scarlet’s revenge had been going on for some time.
‘Shall I make us a cup of tea and we can have a talk?’ I suggested, though it looked doubtful that even a teapot or a cup and saucer had survived the onslaught.
‘I’d prefer a glass of champagne,’ she said. ‘It’s not too early, is it? We’ve got something to celebrate—I’m about to become a free woman again!’
Scarlet was making a beeline for the fridge when she paused and turned around. ‘I’m not sure that I have any glasses left, Savannah. You okay to drink from the bottle?’
‘Um, sure.’ Anything to placate her and get the story. I was starting to get a little bit desperate because I knew that pretty soon Shannon or the police—perhaps even a security detail—would arrive to find out what was going on. If I didn’t get some sensible quotes from her—not to mention some photographs—I would not have a solid story.
It was at this delicate moment that Justin decided to make his entrance. Heaven knew how he managed to get through the front door—Scarlet must not have closed it properly—but he had nonchalantly walked in now and, being the green and geeky photographer that he was, he came straight up to us and aimed a lens right at Scarlet’s face.
‘Justin!’ I groaned. ‘No, don’t do that.’
‘How did he get in here?’ Scarlet shrieked. ‘Get off my property or I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.’
But Justin stayed stock still and then, low and behold, lifted up his camera to take another shot of Scarlet and the scene of devastation.
‘Oh my gawd!’ Scarlet burst into tears and blindly reached for the nearest object she could find, lobbing a vase at the photographer. It narrowly missed his head and this time Justin did pay attention. He turned and ran back down the hallway.
This was not going well. What was wrong with the kid? He needed some kind of crash course in stealth and diplomacy, along with the one on how to be a news photographer and keep pace with what was happening.
‘Don’t worry, Scarlet. I’ll just make sure he’s left,’ I said as I raced to the entrance and closed the front door behind him. I knew that Justin wouldn’t be coming back any time soon; Scarlet could have brained him. Plus, it was important not to let any other news crews just waltz in through the hallway. When I returned to the kitchen, Scarlet was still standing there looking stunned. Justin’s clumsy move had been a wakeup call for her and she was still trembling slightly at the shock of the intrusion.
‘I’m so, so sorry about that,’ I said, gently squeezing her arm. ‘Perhaps we should have that drink now? Did you say that you had a bottle?’
We were soon sitting side by side at the kitchen bench, swigging from a bottle of Moët, although I tried to only take tiny sips because I really needed to have my wits about me in such a volatile situation.
‘So what’s going on?’ I said at last. ‘And before you answer that, I just want to make you aware that I’d like to quote you in the paper.’
‘Paper? What paper?’ Scarlet said, confused.
‘The Sydney News. Remember how we published that beautiful spread on your party?’
‘But this isn’t a social event, is it?’ she said. ‘Why would anyone be interested in the end of a marriage?’
‘Well, Scarlet, the thing is,’ I said, treading very carefully here, ‘people are interested in you—in fact, they are fascinated by you because you are so beautiful, rich and, uh, exotic.’
She nodded; definitely she agreed with me on that. Then she started to cry again. I handed her a box of tissues and she blew her nose loudly, dropping the used tissue on the floor.
‘I was looking for something in one of the drawers in his office,’ she said when the tears had subsided enough for her to speak, ‘and I found his Amex bill. Not only was there a payment to the Hilton here in Sydney when he told me that he was in Melbourne for business, but on the very same day he spent fifty thousand dollars on a diamond necklace at Hardy Brothers,’ she wailed. ‘I found the receipt in his drawer next to the bill.’
‘And you never received it?’
‘No, and it wasn’t in the safe either. I turned the whole place upside down looking for the necklace but I couldn’t find it.’
‘Do you have a birthday or an anniversary coming up?’
‘Not till
next year. I put two and two together. Suzy, his uptight, prissy little secretary, keeps ringing him at all hours of the day and night, and he usually rushes to take her calls in his study with the door closed. I always presumed it was something to do with business, but now . . .’
‘Really?’ I was perplexed. ‘But why would Shannon trade down from you? You’re gorgeous!’
‘Because men are straight out of a Looney Tunes episode,’ she sniffed.
She definitely had a point there. I was thinking, of course, of Daniel, who had flown me all the way to Ayers Rock and then had virtually gone AWOL. What was happening to the Evanses’ business now? Was he cracking under the pressure of it all? Would I hear from him again soon?
My thoughts were interrupted by the shrilling of the phone. Scarlet stared at it blankly for a moment or two before deciding to pick it up.
It was Shannon. I could hear the slight hysteria in his voice as he talked quickly. He was desperately trying to calm her down from the sounds of it, but she was having none of it.
‘You cheating bastard!’ she screeched. ‘I know everything. Don’t you dare come back here with that slut of a secretary. There is nothing for you here. I’ve already packed up your clothes and they’re outside the front door. We’re getting a divorce—and what’s more, I’ve just told the whole story to the papers!’ She slammed down the phone.
It was definitely time to move. I had the feeling that Shannon would be on his way here right now, and the last thing he needed to see was his wife sitting up at the kitchen counter with a gossip columnist, swilling from a bottle of champagne. I didn’t think that he was a violent man, but I certainly didn’t wish to put that to the test.
‘Bloody bastard! He’s going to get what’s coming to him,’ Scarlet said bitterly. ‘I’m going to find the best divorce lawyer that his money will buy. How dare he insult me by running off with that boring little mouse!’
‘Of course,’ I said softly. ‘And speaking of lawyers, you should get one over here right now to look after your interests. He might advise you to stay on the grounds of the property and not to leave until a formal separation arrangement has been drawn up.’
