Maybe the Horse Will Talk

by Elliot Perlman

  ‘What can I do about it?’

  ‘Impound this prick’s car, Ron. You’re the law! The public is counting on you not to let this guy thumb his nose at them . . . and at you.’

  ‘Betga, I can’t impound his car on suspicion.’

  ‘Ron, you only need reasonable cause to suspect a crime in order to break into a car and seize stuff. That’s all the law requires for a police officer. And there might be a laptop in there too with evidence that he’s a dealer, a major player.’

  ‘I can’t see any laptop. There’s nothing to suggest that he’s a dealer, Betga.’

  ‘No Ron, look carefully. I think there’s a laptop lying on the floor.’

  ‘Okay, so he doesn’t value it. He’s just rich.’

  ‘Ron, look at today’s economy. Who’s really doing well out there? Only Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bezos, Apple and drug dealers. Now, it’s not Murdoch’s or Bezos’ car. You would have heard that Steve Jobs died. That just leaves drug dealers. Surely that’s reasonable cause right there.’

  There was indeed a laptop in Mercer’s car, Frank Cardigan’s laptop. Jessica had taken it from Cardigan’s office and given it to Betga, who had made it available to Kasimir. Kasimir had put it in Mike Mercer’s car together with the just visible deal bags of heroin. Mercer would think Frank Cardigan had planted the drugs there and Cardigan would think Mercer had stolen his laptop. Now they were guaranteed to be at each other’s throats.

  ‘No, I don’t think that would be right,’ said Acting Sergeant Ron Quinn. ‘The public would consider it an infringement of their civil liberties.’

  ‘Civil liberties? What kind of policeman are you?’

  ‘Ron, the expensive foreign sports car, the laptop computer and what look like deal bags of heroin; this is the universe delivering you reasonable cause on a plate. You’re allowed to make a mistake, Ron. People do it all the time, sometimes even the police. But you’re also allowed to show some initiative. You can walk past this car because you’re, of course, not sure what’s going on in the life of the driver. Or you can take a deep breath, Ron, and you can investigate on behalf of the people of this great state. Will you be the one? What would your superiors say? Will the records, will the newspapers, will the television news show that Acting Sergeant Ron Quinn was the one who broke this case wide open? Who was it that found the dealer everyone had wanted caught for years? Was it Acting Sergeant Ron Quinn? Yes, turns out it was Acting Sergeant Ron Quinn. He did it.’

  The ageing policeman’s eyes had grown moist under the nearly full moon. Betga could almost see in the man an ingress of thoughts pertaining to possibilities long suppressed, so long in fact that they seemed to belong only to other people; people who had not been bullied by their colleagues, who had never been mocked or laughed at, whose opinions were valued, who were not always the last to learn about changes that affected everybody, people who had not spent decades gathering the detritus of their lives to build a wall to shelter them from the painful realisation of social and economic relativities, a sad cocoon in which a lonely man could feel safe. And there in St Andrews Place, a stone’s throw from Parliament House, Acting Sergeant Ron Quinn took the first of several deep breaths that were the beginning of a chain of events that would ultimately see Mike Mercer and Frank Cardigan charged by the federal police with insider trading and Mercer with possession of heroin.

  III

  Maserov had arranged a meeting with Malcolm Torrent before the charges were laid. This meeting though was unlike any other he had ever had with the construction mogul. At Maserov’s request, this one took place in the middle of Flagstaff Gardens where no one could record the conversation, the attendees, or even that there had been a conversation. The wind was blowing Malcolm Torrent’s wispy hair awry when Maserov’s phone vibrated. It was Eleanor. He couldn’t take any calls now. If it was important enough she’d have to leave a message on his voicemail. This was an exceptionally bad time to call.

  ‘This had better be good, Maserov. I’m not used to acting out scenes from Gorky Park in the course of my usual business day.’

  ‘This won’t take long, but nor will it be a usual day for you. We have just a couple of discrete topics to discuss. I suggested we meet here for your sake.’

  ‘What’s the first topic?’

  ‘Michael Crispin “Crispy” Hamilton.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I know you’ve trusted him for years. But we met because he was frustrating you by failing to take seriously your concerns about a spate of sexual harassment cases against executives at Torrent Industries. You didn’t know why. I do now. Hamilton was sitting on his hands to protect his own interests.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means, sir,’ said Maserov, ‘that the senior partner at the law firm that you pay handsomely to advance and protect the interests of the company your grandfather started took risks that someone who had solely the company’s welfare at heart would not have taken.’

  ‘You can bring him out now,’ Maserov said into his phone and Jessica and Betga came walking out towards them from behind the lowest part of the canopy of a Moreton Bay fig tree. She was holding the arm of a man who appeared to need her assistance to stand. He was the only one of them to be dressed casually, in loose-fitting beige chinos and a sports jacket that looked several sizes too big for him.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Torrent,’ said Betga. ‘I found him for you.’

  ‘Mr Torrent, I’m sure you remember Jessica Annand from your HR department?’ Maserov said by way of confirmation of Jessica’s identity.

  ‘Hello Jessica,’ he said as they shook hands.

  ‘Hello Mr Torrent. This is Bruce Featherby.’ Malcolm Torrent shook Featherby’s hand. ‘Mr Featherby was the Freely Savage lawyer acting for the company defending your interests against the sexual harassment allegations. He was directly answerable to Mr Hamilton. He’s on leave at the moment but is of the opinion that when he returns he will be fired by Mr Hamilton.’

  ‘Why, what have you done?’ Malcolm Torrent asked.

  ‘I . . . I followed his instructions . . . to the letter. But he will deny this. He’ll blame me for . . . He told me to bury the report written by the plaintiff, Carla Monterosso. He told me to tell your HR department to bury it. And I did.’

  ‘We’ve told Mr Featherby about a vacancy for an experienced lawyer in Torrent’s in-house legal department but he seems to need to hear it from you,’ Betga explained.

  ‘Well, that depends on what you’ve got to say, Mr Featherby.’

  Featherby swallowed cold air into his dry mouth and began. ‘Hamilton told me to go slow on the negotiations with the sexual harassment cases, to test the resolve and the pockets of the plaintiffs.’

  ‘Well, it might or might not be sage advice but it’s hardly treason, is it? Did you ask him his reasoning?’ Malcolm Torrent questioned.

  ‘With respect, sir, nobody asks him that. I’ve never seen it, not in all the years I’ve been at the firm. But I suspected. He once said something. We’d been talking about the case and as I was walking out he said something to the effect of, “This ought to shut her up.” I didn’t know who the “she” was but I suspected it was his wife.’

  ‘On the basis of Mr Featherby telling us this,’ continued Jessica, ‘I checked the HR file of Mike Mercer and, going all the way back, there’s a personal letter of recommendation from Mr Hamilton. Then, on the basis of this, we did some further checking.’

  ‘Where’s this going?’ Malcolm Torrent asked.

  ‘Mike Mercer is the son of Mr Hamilton’s wife’s sister. He’s Hamilton’s nephew by marriage. Hamilton was protecting him at your expense,’ Betga explained.

  ‘Because of the family relationship,’ Maserov explained, ‘Mercer has acted for years as though he has immunity from any real-world consequences, that is, until these cases. And even then Hamilton put appeasing his wife ahead of the interests of Torrent Industries.’ Malcolm Torrent was silent, taking it all in
, but it was clear to all of them that he was furious.

  ‘Sir,’ began Maserov after a minute or two during which Malcolm Torrent silently roared his disgust at Hamilton, ‘I will soon have nothing to do with Mr Hamilton when he ends my employment at Freely Savage but you will continue to. But, at least for now, it’s currently still my duty to look out for your interests and I’m telling you this without fear or favour. He’s a liability to you and to the company.’

  ‘I see,’ said Malcolm Torrent gravely. They were now all standing under the Moreton Bay fig tree that had earlier housed Jessica, Betga and Featherby. Malcolm Torrent looked at Featherby and nodded at the clearly broken man.

  ‘When you’ve finished your . . . leave, you call Jessica here in HR. She’ll set you up in our legal department.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Is there anything else?’ the construction tycoon asked.

  ‘I’m afraid there is,’ Maserov said. ‘Ms Annand and Mr Featherby, you might want to get a coffee at the Radisson across the street?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Jessica, about to lead Featherby away.

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Malcolm Torrent, addressing Jessica. ‘Are you working on recommendations, some kind of protocol to lessen the chances that we have to deal with any more of this . . . sexual harassment stuff?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I’m working on that now as a matter of priority. It will be a detailed, nuanced paper for you.’

  ‘Give me the gist of it now, one major recommendation, right here, right now.’

  ‘Well, there’ll be more than this but if you want a headline recommendation right now it’s this. There need to be more women employed in the company generally and more women in positions of power. Each department needs a woman as either its head, but of course only if a woman is the best candidate, or as its deputy head.’

  ‘Why? That’s a pretty dramatic change. There’ll be pushback. Could you tell me in one sentence, one sentence, why we should make that change?’

  ‘Put simply, sir, people don’t grope the boss.’

  Malcolm Torrent thought for a moment and then nodded. ‘That makes a lot of sense, Jessica.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It does sound a bit like affirmative action though. Need to think about that. Not sure how I feel about affirmative action.’

  ‘No, Mr Torrent, with respect, it’s not affirmative action. It’s an end to affirmative action.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘The firm’s current policy is one of affirmative action where 50 per cent of the population is massively favoured in terms of hiring, promotion and pay. This would end that. Additionally, it would double the size of the talent pool for the company to recruit from, unleashing untold potential.’

  ‘I see,’ said Malcolm Torrent, smiling in what appeared to be agreement or at least understanding.

  ‘Sir, my educational background and professional experience is in psychology and human resources and your primary concern is, understandably, the construction business. But where my background and your focus are increasingly meeting is in what finance people call risk-adjusted net present value.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Malcolm Torrent, intrigued.

  ‘The share market is interested in what your company is going to be worth in the future, right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Malcolm Torrent.

  ‘So,’ Jessica continued, now emboldened and with Maserov and Betga watching her in awe, ‘the share market projects your annual cash flow and has traditionally used things like interest rates and inflation rates to get the discount rate of your net present value. The higher a company’s discount rate, the lower will be the present value of its future earnings and so the lower will be the company’s share price.’

  ‘Yes, I’m with you.’

  ‘Well, this is where people like me come in and help you increase your company’s share price, people who, previously, you tolerated but might have secretly thought were collateral to your main business activity.’

  ‘I might’ve thought something like that at times,’ said Malcolm Torrent, clearly warming to both Jessica and her line of argument.

  ‘Increasingly, corporate behaviour is being factored into the discount rate of a company’s present net value. So a history and culture of accepting sexual harassment or racism or bullying of any kind, in fact anything that opens up the company up to litigation, to payouts, to counselling and unnecessary costs across the board that are extraneous to its core business; these things will increase the company’s discount rate and so lower its share price. Stamp out those things, set the gold standard for stamping out all of those things, and you’ll see it reflected in your share price this financial year.’

  ‘Will all of this be in your report?’

  ‘Yes, I can put it in my report.’

  ‘Please do. I’ll want to hear more. Well, I’m impressed, Jessica, keep up the good work. I like where you’re going with all of this and I look forward to reading the report. And I’m inclined to agree with you. This stuff just seems to be everywhere now. Just last night I saw on the TV that young actress, Helena Bagshaw. Said she had a dose of it. I like her. Did you see that . . . on the television?’

  ‘I read about it.’

  ‘We don’t want any more of this.’

  ‘Couldn’t agree more, Mr Torrent.’

  ‘Alright, Jessica, thank you.’

  Malcolm Torrent, Maserov and Betga watched as Jessica led Featherby by the arm slowly but steadily towards William Street to get a coffee, stopping only when a homeless man approached Featherby and stood in the line of his trajectory, not far from the corner of William and La Trobe streets. Featherby wondered in horror why this ragged man had chosen his red-streaked eyes to look into, the eyes of someone who clearly did not want to be mistaken for being at one with him.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. Don’t be afraid. My name’s Nick. I just wondered if you might have any spare change that I could use for food.’

  When Maserov and Betga were alone they continued walking with Malcolm Torrent. ‘Sir, I’m able to offer you the protection of legal professional privilege because I’m your lawyer so, obviously, I’m prohibited from repeating anything you tell me in confidence, even to a court. Mr Betga is, as you’ll recall, also a qualified lawyer but since you’ve retained him only as a private investigator and not as a lawyer he’s not currently able to offer that protection no matter how much he wants to tell you what he knows.’ Torrent reached into his coat pocket, pulled a hundred-dollar note out of his wallet and handed it to Betga.

  ‘Now you’re my lawyer too.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Torrent. One of your employees has been bribing officials in the Iraqi government in order to win tenders for the company. You’re not obliged to say anything to us about that. But we thought you’d want to know that the he’s been overstating the money required to do this and pocketing the difference. The employee is well known to you. It’s Frank Cardigan.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! The little shit!’

  ‘Well before we found this out, someone else did, a man in the same department but subordinate to him. When this man found out he began blackmailing Frank Cardigan and quite successfully too. That man is also known to you, at least he is now. It’s Mike Mercer.’

  ‘Oh no! For fuck’s sake! How much and for how long?’

  ‘We don’t yet know. The difficulty for you, sir, is that any press, police investigation or inquiry by the regulatory authority into this is going to raise questions about something you, of course, know nothing about and don’t wish people to be asking about.’

  ‘Bribing the Iraqis for tenders?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So you’re saying I have to let them get away with this? I can’t touch them?’

  ‘No, you can but you won’t have to. Sometime soon they’re both going to be charged with insider trading.’

  ‘You’re kidding! On what basis?’

  ‘On the basis of this recording.’ Mase
rov handed the older man a USB containing a recording of the Frank Cardigan–Mike Mercer conspiracy to engage in insider trading recorded live in Romeo Lane, off Bourke Street.

  ‘How on earth do you know all this?’ Malcolm Torrent asked them.

  ‘It’s in your interests not to know,’ Betga quietly explained.

  They continued walking along the path among the Moreton Bay fig and elm trees in silence before Malcolm Torrent spoke. ‘Gentlemen, you’ve done outstanding work.’

  The meeting was over. As Malcolm Torrent walked back to his driver and Betga left to meet Jessica and Featherby in William Street, Maserov stayed back in the gardens for a moment, having remembered Eleanor’s earlier call. For no reason other than a reflexive paternal anxiety now amplified by the separation, he suddenly imagined that it would be a report of some accident that had befallen one of his children. Yes, that would be it. Some disaster had befallen one or both of them and he’d ignored the call. With guilt and apprehension he played the message Eleanor had left for him.

  ‘Hi Stephen . . . It’s me.’ There was a long pause on the line during which he thought he could hear her breathing although, with the wind unsettling the trees in Flagstaff Gardens, it was hard to be sure. ‘Stephen . . . Um . . . Can we make a time to talk . . . sometime? It’s nothing for you to . . . It’s not the kids . . . directly but . . . Give me a call when you can. Please.’ Then she hung up. What did she mean by ‘please’?

  Maserov looked at his phone as though reading Eleanor’s name, the time of the call and its duration, might enlighten him in some way. It didn’t.

  IV

  Maserov wondered who Malcolm Torrent had been talking to because, after their clandestine meeting in Flagstaff Gardens, another quite unexpected meeting was called but not with or by Malcolm Torrent. It was almost 10 pm and Maserov was with Jessica in a supermarket in St Kilda stocking up on milk, cereal, three-minute noodles and, at her insistence, sawtooth coriander, when a number he didn’t recognise startled his phone. It was Mr Radhakrishnan, the partner in Emerging Markets at Freely Savage, apologising for calling Maserov at so late an hour and asking if he might have a conversation with him on the basis of the strictest confidence.