Maybe the Horse Will Talk

by Elliot Perlman

  ‘It’s downhill.’

  ‘Not after Swanston Street. Why do people forget that?’

  ‘But it’s flat till at least Elizabeth Street. How old are you again?’

  ‘It wasn’t just the running. I thought you were going to say . . . What are you going to say? Why did you want to meet me before I went in to see Torrent?’

  ‘What did you think I was going to say?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is it . . . about last night?’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘No, of course not. Is it?’

  ‘No,’ Jessica smiled.

  ‘Will you please tell me why I had to see you before I saw Malcolm Torrent?’ he asked, trying to breathe normally again.

  ‘Okay, relax. Remember Carla said that she reported the assault to HR? She said she wrote an account of it and gave it to the head of HR, my boss, Aileen van der Westhuizen.’

  ‘Yeah? You said you’d never heard anything about it and I assumed Aileen van der Westhuizen would say that too.’

  ‘I’m saying that because it’s true, I didn’t hear anything about it. But what if Aileen van der Westhuizen did hear about it? What if she did get Carla’s written account but said she didn’t?’

  ‘Then it would be a matter of Carla’s word against hers, just as in the larger matter, the events of that night, it would be a matter of Carla’s word against Mike Mercer’s. Mercer would claim it was consensual sex in the workplace, albeit embarrassing, but not criminal. Carla, of course, says it was sexual assault in the workplace.’

  Jessica stood up and walked towards the window of Maserov’s office. ‘Has Torrent Industries denied not only that Mike Mercer sexually assaulted Carla but also that within a week of the night in question Carla had made the allegation in writing and given it to HR?’

  ‘Yes, officially Torrent Industries denies not only the assault but that it received Carla’s report of the assault. If we, that is, if Torrent Industries had Carla’s report, we’re meant to have noted this and given a copy of it to Betga via a process known as discovery.’

  ‘And what if you didn’t? I mean what if Torrent Industries hasn’t?’

  ‘Well, it definitely hasn’t but Betga can’t prove that Carla wrote the report and gave it to Torrent’s HR department other than by calling Carla as a witness which he doesn’t want to do to spare her having to give evidence of the whole thing in public. After which, of course, the lawyer for Torrent Industries, the one who’ll come after me, will sanction the public humiliation of Carla in every conceivable way.’

  ‘But if we could prove that Torrent Industries, through Aileen van der Westhuizen, did have Carla’s report, how would that change things?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Well, Torrent Industries, my client and your employer, would then be in breach of the rules of discovery and it would suggest a cover-up.’

  ‘And would a cover-up be damaging to Torrent Industries’ case?’

  ‘Hugely damaging. Why?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Jessica, closing the door to Maserov’s office and sitting down again. ‘I had a casual conversation with Aileen van der Westhuizen this morning which I steered towards the whole Carla story. I told her I hadn’t heard anything about it till the lawsuit and she said neither had she. I told her I’d heard that Carla’s lawyer is saying that Carla submitted a report about the alleged assault to HR. I told her I’d never seen that report and she said she hadn’t either.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘There was just something about the way she said it that made me suspect she was lying.’

  ‘By the way, Jessica,’ said Maserov, pondering, ‘there’s a whole group of in-house lawyers at Torrent Industries. Do you guys, I mean does anyone in HR, ever talk to them about these sorts of things, about any staff-related matters, personnel infractions, that kind of thing?’

  ‘No, we don’t bother them and they definitely try not to have anything to do with us.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They say they’re just completely flat out working on construction contracts, equipment acquisition and lease agreements and generally on matters they’ve assured us we wouldn’t understand and, in turn, we do not take our problems to them.’

  ‘So that’s why Freely Savage was supposed to be handling the case. But there was no report from Carla on the file when I took it over from Featherby, the guy at Freely Savage who was running it before me,’ Maserov observed.

  ‘Well, anyway, I just knew Aileen van der Westhuizen was lying. She was incredibly uncomfortable and even got slightly aggressive in her tone with me.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘It wasn’t what she said. It was her demeanour.’

  ‘Jessica, you might well be right but I don’t know what I can do with this. I would need more evidence than your report of her demeanour during a discussion about it.’

  ‘I knew you would.’ Jessica smiled the way she must have when she had been a little girl and had arrived home to tell her parents she had come top of her class. ‘There’s a place on level three, in fact it takes up half the floor, where our HR department stores archived documents, not all documents, obviously, but some. Only people in HR have access to it and not even all HR staff, but I do and I went down there on a hunch. And I looked in the area where Aileen’s file notes and notes of minutes are kept and searched around the week or two after the night in question. And I found this.’

  Jessica handed Maserov four sheets of typed paper with Carla’s signature and the date at the bottom of it. Maserov read it. This was Carla’s report, stating in fairly graphic detail all that she alleged Mike Mercer had done to her.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Maserov said quietly under his breath.

  ‘But it gets better,’ Jessica said, handing over a piece of yellow post-it note paper that had almost lost its adhesiveness. ‘This is Aileen’s handwriting. It was stuck to the front page of Carla’s report.’

  Maserov read the handwriting on the post-it note. It read, ‘Told Featherby of FS about Carla M typed complaint. F said hold on to it but keep it off the file.’ The words ‘keep it off the file’ had been underlined.

  ‘Carla reported it and Aileen van der Westhuizen buried it. It is a cover-up!’ Jessica said in a triumph-coated whisper.

  ‘Yeah,’ Maserov agreed as he digested the implications. ‘And Featherby told her to, or at least that’s what she understood him to be saying. Why would Featherby have told her to bury it, I wonder? That jeopardises him.’

  ‘You can use this, right?’

  ‘Well, I have to make it known that I now know that Aileen van der Westhuizen has Carla’s report. It doesn’t make Carla’s report a true account of what happened but it certainly adds credibility to her account and the cover-up stinks to high heaven. A court would come down severely on Torrent Industries for this, I’d imagine, and the press would have a picnic with it. I think I’m obliged to tell Betga, obviously.’

  ‘And he can use that against Mike Mercer, right?’

  ‘Well, it won’t affect Mike Mercer directly but it will affect Torrent Industries. Jessica, you know this is going to have implications for you. You’ve found a document that shows your boss to have lied, to have compromised her employer’s case, and it could well cost her her job, maybe even her career. She’ll fight this. She has to. And there’s always a chance that she’ll win or at least somehow try to take you down with her. Whistleblowers get hurt all the time, you know.’

  ‘What about you?’ Jessica countered. ‘You’re about to accuse another lawyer, a colleague, of burying evidence.’

  ‘Yeah, but I think I have to. Ethically, I think I have no choice. I’m obliged to follow this through, to make it known. I’m an officer of the court. You don’t have to, you’re not professionally obliged.’

  ‘Stephen, I want to do anything I can to help Carla and the others and to stamp this shit out.’

  ‘Even at the cost of your job?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Jes
sica, I could still use the document and the post-it note without implicating you directly. I could say that I asked you for access to the level-three archive, that you innocently let me in and that I ferreted around down there by myself and found this stuff.’

  ‘But that wouldn’t be true.’

  VII

  When Maserov called Betga he was looking after his daughter, Marietta, both to bond with her further and to assist Carla, who was temping across town that day for a greeting card and fine paper wholesaler in Thornbury. It was a brand new company whose advertisement – ‘You write it. We mail it. Beautiful greeting cards for all occasions.’ – was trying to capture the market of creative, caring, expressive, self-indulgent and lazy people in the northern suburbs and it was giving Carla some extra work and a need for more childcare. Who better than Marietta’s father? No one, other than Carla’s mother and one of her sisters, was as motivated and as free.

  ‘You are fucking kidding me!’ Betga said over the phone when Maserov told him what Jessica had found. ‘Oh shit! I shouldn’t have sworn. I’m holding Marietta. Listen, is Jessica absolutely sure that this is in Aileen what’s-her-name’s handwriting?’

  ‘Yes, she’s sure,’ came Maserov’s voice over the phone.

  ‘Fuck me!’ said Betga, ‘Oh! Sorry, sweetheart,’ he said to his daughter as he bounced her on his knee. ‘Daddy’s just heard some very good news from Maserov, good news for Mummy and for you.’

  ‘Obviously I’m going to tell all of this to Malcolm Torrent when I go to see him,’ Maserov told him.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘But first I want to hear what Featherby says about it. I want to show him her file note, the handwritten post-it note and see what he says.’

  ‘Yeah but irrespective of what he says, you’re going to tell Malcolm Torrent the whole story, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I am.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But I thought you might want to be somewhere close by. This is likely to finish Featherby’s career at Freely Savage even if he’s got some kind of explanation. Hamilton won’t let him survive this. So, in your capacity as head of the Freely Savage Survivors, I thought you might want to be there to pick up the pieces.’

  ‘I take your point but we don’t usually come and scrape them off the pavement . . . so to speak. I mean they lose their jobs and then, only if they choose, they come to us for support, advice, counselling. But we’re not ambulance chasers. And anyway, what do you mean by “some kind of explanation”? What possible explanation could he have?’

  ‘Well, he could say that she’s making it up, that he didn’t say anything of the sort, maybe that he didn’t even know about Carla’s written account of the assault.’

  ‘Why should Aileen van der Westhuizen verbal Featherby? What could she have against him?’

  ‘She doesn’t need to have anything against him per se. She might just be protecting her own arse.’

  ‘But if he didn’t tell her to bury the report, why would she?’

  ‘No idea. But I thought I should ask him first before I go to Malcolm Torrent with this. He’s more likely to tell us if you or someone from the Freely Savage Survivors is there, as though you’re there in your capacity as his sponsor or counsellor or something. Isn’t that how it works? And anyway, it seems the decent thing to do.’

  ‘It is very decent. Uncle Stephen’s a very decent man, little girl,’ Betga said to his daughter. ‘Gives lawyers a good name, if that’s possible.’

  ‘Problem is,’ said Maserov, ‘he’s not in today. He’s not at work. I checked with his secretary and she said he’s at home, called in sick. So . . .’

  ‘So you’re thinking you’re going to have to go to his house?’

  ‘Yeah, and I was thinking you’d come with me.’

  ‘Really?

  ‘Not in your capacity as Carla’s lawyer, in your Freely Savage Survivors capacity, given that he’s going to be eligible to join any minute now. There’s just one problem. No one at Freely Savage will give me his home address.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘No, apparently it’s firm policy and, given that I’m an enemy of Hamilton’s, no one is willing to cut me any slack. Jessica’s working on it as we speak. She’s trying to get it from Freely Savage HR in her capacity as a Torrent Industries HR executive, a professional courtesy between HR departments.’

  ‘Yeah, well, even if she gets his home address, there’s still one problem. I can’t leave here. I’m meant to be looking after Marietta.’

  ‘Oh no! Really? There’s no one else you could leave her with?’

  ‘No, believe me, I’ve been through this. And anyway, it would set me back weeks if not months with Carla if I dumped Marietta on to someone else when I’ve made such a big deal of wanting to help her and be back in their lives.’

  ‘Hmm, then we do have a problem.’

  ‘I could always bring her along.’

  ‘What? To Featherby’s house?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘When we tell him we’ve caught him withholding evidence?’

  ‘Maserov, she’s only two years old. There’s plenty of time to teach her not to withhold evidence. But there’s one other problem. I don’t have a child seat installed in my car. You’ve got two kids. You must have one.’

  ‘No, they’re both in Eleanor’s car.’

  ‘Really, what kind of a father are you, not having a child seat in your car?’ Betga asked him.

  ‘I could say the same to you. You’re the one trying to impress Carla with your devotion and fathering skills. You wouldn’t even be a father if it wasn’t for me. Why haven’t you got a child seat?’

  ‘I’ve bought one. It’s just not installed.’

  ‘Well, hurry up and install it.’

  ‘I can’t. I don’t how to. Why don’t you come over and do it? Then we can all go together.’

  ‘What, you, me and Marietta . . . go uninvited . . . to Featherby’s house . . . when he’s unwell, and tell him we think we’ve caught him withholding evidence and knowingly permitting his client to swear a materially deficient affidavit of documents?’

  ‘Yeah. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong with that, quite apart from it being highly unusual —’

  ‘Yes, I’ll grant you, it’s highly unusual.’

  ‘I don’t know how to install a child’s car seat either.’

  ‘Didn’t you install them in Eleanor’s car?’

  ‘No, my father did.’

  ‘Where’s your father now?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Well, at least he lived long enough to install the child car seats in your wife’s car. What am I going to do? My father’s dead too so I’m fucked. Oh sorry, sweetie, Daddy’s trying to think outside the square and it’s hard to do completely sober. How many lawyers does it take to install a child’s car seat? That’s not a joke. I really want to know how many we’d have to call before one us knows how to do it. Could Eleanor do it?’

  ‘Yeah, probably, but that’s not a good idea.’

  ‘Maserov, this is an emergency.’

  ‘Betga, this is my marriage. Besides, she’s at work teaching sonnets to tomorrow’s unemployed. Wait a second, Jessica’s just texted me with Featherby’s home address. He lives in Hawthorn.’

  ‘Okay, let me think,’ said Betga. ‘You come over here and by the time you get here I’ll have the car seat installed.’

  ‘It’s got to be safe. Are you sure you’re going to be able to do it?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Betga. ‘But get here as fast as you can. I often do well under pressure.’

  By the time Maserov arrived at Carla’s house Betga had indeed solved the problem but not by himself. Teaching him how to shorten and lengthen the straps of his newly installed top-of-the-range child seat was Kasimir.

  ‘Kasimir, you remember Mr Maserov?’

  ‘Sure I do. How you going, Mr Maserov?’ Kasimir nodded in p
lace of shaking hands which he was unable to do because he was gently placing Marietta in Betga’s car.

  ‘I’m well, thanks, Kasimir.’

  ‘Betga, she’s such a pretty little thing,’ said Kasimir with surprise. ‘I didn’t even know you had children.’

  ‘I wasn’t keeping it from you, Kasimir. I only recently found out myself.’

  VIII

  Featherby’s heritage house was nestled among Hawthorn’s tree-lined streets and manicured gardens only four miles east of the offices of Freely Savage. Betga, Maserov and little Marietta parked just outside the double garage that was once a stable.

  ‘Wow!’ said Betga, looking through the passenger window at Featherby’s house as his car slowed to a stop.

  ‘I’ve heard it said people in Hawthorn tend not to die because they’re already in heaven,’ Maserov commented, also looking at the house.

  ‘Maybe,’ Betga replied, scanning the street ninety degrees, ‘but a lot of people round here do look dead. Actually, it’s a look that stretches all the way to Canterbury.’

  ‘They’re not dead, just incredibly pale. It’s not the same. I think I should go first and then text you if and when I need backup, or if he does. He’s not going to appreciate my visit.’

  ‘Not today,’ said Betga in slightly sombre agreement.

  Maserov opened the car door, sat there for a moment without moving, took a breath, exhaled, and then got out of the warm car. ‘This isn’t going to be easy. Wish me luck, Marietta,’ he said and closed the door. He walked up the winding garden path flanked by trees, their leaves dappled in winter light and shimmering with traces of stubborn raindrops, to Featherby’s house. He stood at the front door in his winter coat, briefcase in one hand, containing photocopies of the incriminating documents Jessica had discovered, rang the doorbell and waited. What should he say as an opener? He watched his breath condensing a mere two leaves away from his face. There was no sound coming from the house. Perhaps Featherby was asleep in bed. He rang the doorbell again. Still no answer. Maserov was feeling worse with every second Featherby was making him wait.