Detained

by Ainslie Paton

  “I’m sure.”

  She felt the weight of Gerry’s heavy hand on her shoulder as he moved towards the door of Mark’s office. “Your old man’ll be proud of you.”

  No, he wouldn’t. Brian would vote with Mark. Regard this as muck, as abuse of power. Regard his daughter as falling short of the ideal again. But this is what it had come to, this game between her and Will Parker. His abuse. Her power.

  She stood to follow Gerry. “I’m very sure. From what I saw of Parker he is arrogant, aggressive and uncompromising. He’s guarding his privacy for some reason, and I think the public has the right to see what he’s really like.”

  Because he was arrogant, aggressive and uncompromising. He was pugnacious and belligerent. And intelligent and funny and stimulating and inspiring, but those last four attributes were off the record, just as Will had instructed them to be.

  Mark’s eyes had already returned to his screen. He was on to the next issue. “Clear it with the lawyers and if there’s no plane crash, whale story or footballer facing a sexual harassment charge, run it front page—above the fold.”

  18. Tip

  “What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.” — Confucius

  The morning’s radio and TV news shows led with the story of Australia’s most elusive entrepreneur unmasked as an abusive tyrant.

  Darcy lay in bed listening to the early morning announcers bray their disgust at how a man as wealthy and accomplished as Will Parker could so abuse his power. Something should be done about it. It was disgraceful. It would hurt Australia’s reputation on the global stage. It was shocking and appalling. It was un-Australian.

  Talkback callers agreed. Will Parker should be ashamed. He should be made to explain. He should be forced to make an apology. Why was he in China anyway? It must be a tax dodge. He was ripping off the Australian public. This is why there wasn’t enough investment in schools, because businessmen like Will Parker were evil capitalists. What was being done to compensate the poor man being abused? Was he all right? Who was Will Parker anyway? And what was the Prime Minister going to do about this?

  She dragged herself out of bed and into the shower, standing under a torrent of hot water until her fingers pruned. She should’ve felt spring-loaded. This was every journalist’s dream. The big story that led the other news media; that created its own headlines. Maybe she was coming down with something.

  She scarfed a bowl of cereal with milk just on the turn. She might’ve written the leading story of the day, but she still needed to get to the supermarket or she might starve to death. Who said journalism was glamorous?

  In the office Gerry was holding court. Yes it was his idea Darcy went to interview Parker. Show the bastard it wasn’t dial-a-hack at the Herald and Gerry Ives was no one’s tame flack. She’d known Gerry would claim credit for the story if it took off, and race for distance, like a rat deserting a sinking ship, if it failed. Maybe this is why she felt flat.

  She shook it off and accepted the congratulations of colleagues not snowed by Gerry’s bombast.

  By lunchtime, Will Parker was the poster boy for everything wrong with extreme wealth and power. There were calls for him to be brought home and made to face the music. Exiled forever and stripped of his citizenship. The story was officially rampaging out of control.

  “Way to go, Darce.” Col Furrows, Darcy’s workstation mate held up a hand for a high five. “Story is bloody everywhere. My cab driver told me Parker should be charged with assault and extracted.”

  “Extracted?”

  “I think he meant extradited.” Col had the paper in his hands. He studied the photo spread. “What was the guy doing anyway? This looks like a set-up.”

  “It’s no set-up. That’s the photo stringer Robert Yee on his knees. Will had him hauled out of the ballroom by two security thugs then stood over him and shouted at him in Shanghainese.”

  “No kidding? So you don’t actually know what was being said.”

  “No, but you can imagine.”

  “I can, but what did Robert say? He speaks the lingo, yeah?”

  “I think he felt guilty about sneaking into the function and annoying Will.”

  “I see you’re on first name basis with Australian’s most abusive businessman now? I thought you just took his picture.”

  Darcy bit her lip. That was close. She liked Col. They’d shared a workstation pod for twelve months, since he arrived from the Review. But everywhere she turned she was hearing Will’s name, being reminded of him. She’d almost forgotten to be careful. “Yep, that’s right, I just took his picture.”

  “To hear Gerry call it, he all but held the camera for you.”

  She laughed, more from relief than amusement. “That’s our Gerry.”

  Col sat at his PC and peered over the workstation barrier at her. “What did the parental unit say?”

  “Haven’t heard from Dad.”

  “He must be living under a rock to have missed this, or are you in trouble for pulling a candid camera number, going low rent?”

  She abandoned the edits she was running on a story she couldn’t care less about for tomorrow’s edition. “How well do you know Brian?”

  Col waggled his head, knowing she was razzing him. “We didn’t date if that’s what you’re getting at. But he did sign my salary check for about five years.”

  “Oh—that well.” Darcy dropped her head in her hands in mock distress, in real concern about not having heard from Brian. It looked like it was going to get hairy on the home front. “Go away Col, you’re depressing me. I have a deadline.”

  He laughed and disappeared from view, but when the mailroom guy dumped a thick parcel on her desk with a thump, he poked his head up to stickybeak.

  “Does that say what I think it says, Darce?”

  “Read your own mail.”

  “No, yours is more interesting.” Col was standing up now, leaning across the barrier to look at the parcel she’d ignored. It was going to be a press kit, spruiking something she had no interest in right now. It could wait.

  “That says Parker Corp. Shit, they’re on to you already.”

  She looked up, caught Col’s arched eyebrows and grabbed for the parcel. Parker Corp colours, Spiderman colours. But lots of companies used red and blue. But there it was, the word Parker, in blue lettering on a red gridded background that looked oddly like a web. It really was from Parker Corp.

  “Holy shit!” With the Sydney, Shanghai time difference, even if the story had gone international it wouldn’t have run in Shanghai yet. And even if it had, this had been express airmailed a day ago. Whatever this was had nothing to do with the coverage and everything to do with Australian’s most abusive tyrant.

  “Well open it.”

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  “Me neither, but it’s not ticking is it?”

  “Oh God, Col,” she said, handling the package carefully as though it might be.

  “They don’t send legal summonses in padded packages. Open it.”

  She had an irrational desire to head for the ladies and open it there where no one else would see what was inside. She gave it a shake, it had some weight. Could just be paper. Then it dawned on her.

  “I know what it is. It’s an apology gift for cancelling the interview. It’ll be an expensive Chinese-made dust catcher, you wait.” She stuck her scissors into the end of the plastic envelope and cut it open revealing a white box inside, and inside the box, folded in pink tissue paper, a perfect dove grey silk dress, beaded with crystals and pearls.

  “Some dust catcher,” said Col.

  Darcy dropped the box. Heat rushed to her face. “I... I don’t know, I don’t know what this is. Must be a mistake.”

  Col was looking at her with a quizzical expression. “That’s one expensive mistake. Are you sure you didn’t meet Will Parker?”

  She glared at him. “Fuck off, Col. I told you I didn’t.” The minute the words were out of her
mouth she knew she’d been too defensive, sounded guilty, knew Col was suspicious of her reaction. She realised she didn’t know Col that well. He wrote for the business pages like she did under Gerry. But he wrote a column, often fuelled by unattributed tips, rumours, and speculation that had an uncanny habit of turning out to be true.

  “Okay,” he said, “keep your hair on. If you say it’s a mistake, it’s a mistake.”

  “Sorry.” She tried to laugh it off. “How embarrassing. Someone from Parker has a girlfriend who has my dust catcher. She’ll be impressed.”

  Col laughed too but before he sat down, Darcy could tell he’d seen the card, the words, ‘I’m eternally sorry. Will’, handwritten on it in large generous script.

  Could she trust Col? A newsroom could be a brutal place to work, competitive, cutthroat. She could try explain it, leave out the gory details, beg him to keep it quiet, but it was hard to explain away a dress like this. You didn’t give someone you’d met for five minutes an extravagant piece of clothing. You didn’t give almost anyone you knew a dress like this, unless you wanted it to mean something.

  If she tried to explain it, she’d mess it up. She could hardly think straight. Will Parker had replaced the dress he’d torn from her body. The dress she’d left in tatters in the laundry hamper of the suite. The dress she’d had to exchange for one of the hotel’s silk robes because she had nothing to wear to get to back to her own room. It was exactly the dress, in exactly her size.

  There was simply no way to explain it.

  She’d have to trust Col to sit on whatever he was speculating. To let it go. He’d have bigger things to do. There’d be another scandal along tomorrow, and he’d forget it. And if he didn’t, if he tried to use it, get extra mileage out of the story by linking her to Will, she’d deny it, stick to her mistake excuse, and it would be her word against his.

  “Darce,” Col called over the workstation. “Are you going to tell me what that was about?”

  He wasn’t going to let it go. “It’s a mistake, Col. They sent me something by mistake.”

  “Will Parker sent you a designer dress by mistake, with a card saying sorry.”

  She stood up. She had to face him down on this, before it became its own story. “Will Parker sent someone a dress as a crawling apology, but I ended up with it. I told you, it’s a mistake. Watch me return it.”

  Col did watch as she bundled up the box, the tissue, the card and the padded envelope. He watched as she stalked past towards the mailroom, and he had the look of a man who’d just been given a sensational tip.

  19. Avalon

  “The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come.

  When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin.” — Confucius

  “Bloody hell, Will. Look.”

  Will heard Bo’s Australian curse words and abandoned the papers on his lap to peer out the front windscreen of the Audi. There was a crowd of people on the street outside number twenty-seven. He saw the China Central TV insignia.

  “I don’t like it, Boss. I’ll take you in the back way.”

  This was annoying. It would take a good twenty minutes in traffic for Bo to circle back around and drive into the loading dock at the back of the building. Will had been out at the number four plant all day. He only wanted half an hour at his desk, and fifteen minutes with Aileen, whose calls he’d been dodging. Then he planned on hitting the gym. It would be quicker to run the gauntlet, but the idea made his skin crawl.

  His phone rang. Aileen again. He considered sending it through to his voicemail bank where all her other messages had gone unheard. It was unlike her to bug him like this, but she’d been on his case about the new strategy for Avalon, and he’d needed a day out of the office, away from it all, to think.

  Lately, thinking time had been hard to come by, and that was annoying too. His productivity was off. He was having trouble focusing. Thoughts of a certain blonde journalist kept intruding. Having a beautiful woman in his dreams at night, hell that was perfectly acceptable, that kind of interruption he couldn’t fault. But thoughts of Darcy’s engaging wit and lush curves were invading his waking hours, and that had to stop.

  He answered. “Aileen. Don’t hate me. I’ve been thinking.”

  “Where are you?”

  No preamble. Shit, she was really pissed with him. “With Bo.”

  “Where?”

  “One minute from the office, but there’s—”

  “That’s why I’ve been ringing you all day. Don’t stop. Go to Pete’s place. We’ll meet you there.”

  “Pete’s?” He looked at Bo who shrugged. “No, we’re coming in the back way.”

  “Will, your picture. Darcy ran your picture.”

  “What picture? I’ve got them. They’re on a memory card in my top right hand drawer. Go look.”

  “I don’t know where she got them from. But she has pictures of you. It’s bad Will, really bad. And it’s everywhere. The media have camped outside the building all day. And you wouldn’t pick up your phone. I’ve been worried sick.”

  It felt like a punch. Like a kick to the gut. Like a knife wound. “Fuck! Bo, take me to Pete’s.”

  Bo did a Shanghai kamikaze, U-turning in the middle of the traffic stream. Cars and bicycles went left and right of him, curses flew. Someone thumped on the Audi’s roof. Will had banned Bo from driving like a Shanghai local years ago, but the blare of horns and the anxious looks on surprised pedestrian’s faces barely registered.

  Darcy had shafted him. Enacted her revenge. Somehow she had pictures, and she’d published them. He closed his eyes as memories of that night collided with the spike of anxiety that’d hit him when he’d seen that news crew. Somehow he’d known he wasn’t safe.

  “Will, are you still there?”

  “I’m here. We’re on our way to Pete’s.”

  “You can’t go home tonight.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “They’re at your apartment as well.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “I sent Wendy to pack you an overnight bag. Clothes, toiletries, your laptop. Pete has it with him. You can stay with him. But I think you should go to Hong Kong and wait this out.”

  “I’m not running off to Hong Kong. Bad enough I’m chased out of my own office and home.”

  Aileen’s voice caught and when Will heard the slight hitch, that tiniest note of panic, he knew things really were bad. Nothing ruffled Aileen. “It’ll be all right. We’ll get through this.”

  “It’s your worst nightmare. I should’ve—”

  He cut her off. “Don’t start that. I’ll see you at Pete’s.” He rang off and exchanged a look with Bo.

  “Are we in trouble, Boss?”

  “I’m in trouble. And you just broke about three hundred traffic regulations.”

  “Tough times call for extreme measures,” said Bo, as he broke half a dozen other rules by cutting down a narrow one-way street the wrong way and doing it at speed with his fist on the horn, Shanghai style.

  Pete was standing in the underground garage of his apartment with Will’s overnight bag. Will opened the door and Pete leaned inside the car. “Wait, Bo. We need to get Will on a plane tonight.”

  Will shoved Pete out of the car. “I’m not going anywhere. Bo, come get me here in the morning. Early, 4am, before the bastards are awake and organised.” He unfolded out of the Audi and faced Pete. “Tell me the worst.”

  “Come upstairs and I’ll show you.”

  In Pete’s luxurious apartment, Will’s world was rocked. Pictures only Darcy could’ve taken were all over the Shanghai Daily. Robert Yee kneeling where the overzealous security buffoons hired by the hotel had put him, and Will standing over him like he was judge, jury and executioner. He looked savage, untamed, inhuman in his rage. She’d captured the moment he’d finally understood his own risk taking, arrogance and egotism was his downfall. She handed his humiliation to him on a platter of his own
making.

  The pictures were all over the internet as well, but the Australian media was the worst. When Aileen arrived she had transcripts and recordings of radio and TV broadcasts, as well as Darcy’s original Herald story that started it all.

  Pete cracked the seal on a new bottle of Lagavulin and poured them all glasses. “We sue. This is a clear breech of privacy. You were set up. This won’t stand up to the public interest test.”

  “The horse has bolted. I don’t see the point.”

  “I don’t know how much information you gave her, but she could go with everything. We have to show our hand now, before she does.”

  Will looked at the caramel coloured fluid. He could almost taste its smoky vanilla buzz at the back of his throat, but he left the glass on the table. “How does that help us now?”

  “It’ll make it easier to insist on those photos being taken off websites. It’ll make other publishers think twice about printing invasive images like this. It will tangle the Herald up in so much red tape and legal expense they’ll wish they never started this.”

  “And Avalon?”

  Pete shook his head. “Australia’s favourite chairman, Ted Barstow, tough old boot, won’t take my call. He wrote an email to say they’re advising all their shareholders to reject our offer.”

  “We’ll increase the price.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to help. And paying above fair value makes us look desperate. The Australian media have been hammering this story. You’re a tax dodging capitalist raider from hell. It’s over, Will. We can try again in a year or two when it’s all forgotten, but it’s over now.”

  Will picked up his glass, heavy-bottomed. It’d make a good missile. Problem is he’d have to aim it at himself. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not that getting control of Avalon was going to be easy.

  It went back to Aileen’s phone call from Mark Mason. Fat, lazy Gerry Ives, who they could wine, dine and manipulate, wasn’t coming. From that point on Will had been the inventor of his own disaster. It was supposed to be a quick match of hide and seek with a different journalist whose background was too obscure to clue them in to her ability. A quick assessment of risk and reward. Get in, get out. No harm, no foul.