White Throat

by Sarah Thornton

  ‘How so?’ She wanted him to say it.

  ‘Don’t wanna drive home in wet jeans.’

  ‘So you’re…?’ She put her hand on a pandanus trunk, felt the ridges press into her palm.

  ‘As the day I was born.’

  She said nothing, just breathed, felt her heart pound and recalled that one kiss—the night she’d taken him home. How he’d gently drawn her face to his as he lay there, his leg bandaged after the shooting, and his empty living room and the fire crackling in the hearth behind her and his lips, brushing hers at first, then enveloping hers, enveloping everything, all her loneliness and all her grief and all that was lost.

  ‘What are you wearing?’ he asked.

  ‘More than I need.’

  ‘Secluded up there too?’

  She looked around. They were a long way from any houses. There was no one in sight, Pocket and Sarge scarcely visible from where she was. Her hesitation was enough answer for Rowan.

  ‘Just take one thing off,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure I—’

  ‘Don’t think so much.’ She scanned her surroundings again. No one. Just blue sky and jade sea and the leafy grove in which she stood. ‘One thing,’ he whispered.

  The chatter of a wagtail, the calming hum of insects, a shush of foliage in the breeze, the silky moisture behind her knees, around her neck, on her forehead. She took a step behind a tree, slipped off her singlet, felt a rush of cool air against her bare skin and lay down in the supple layers of sheoak carpet.

  ‘What did you take off?’ he asked.

  ‘My top.’ She heard the sound of running water, the hose. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Cooling my neck.’ He let out a groan of relief. ‘Uh, so good.’

  She listened to the flow, imagined it running down his chest and continuing on down the valleys and furrows. He had the lean man’s muscular stomach. She’d seen it when his shirt rode up that time fixing the shed roof.

  ‘And my back.’

  She saw his shoulders, the narrowing to his waist, the curve of his lower back and the water rushing to the cleft between his buttocks. Everything was tensed between her thighs. He kept talking, more words than she’d ever heard him speak, describing the path of the water, the channels and the rivulets, telling the story of his body, the lines and the arcs and the muscled curves. She let him continue while she lay, breathless. He asked her for another item of clothing—a gentle prompt, like the kiss of a feather.

  Then another.

  And with each one she described to him what lay beneath, feeling her hands touching her body as if they were his.

  She lay there afterwards, emptied of herself, looking up into the branches of the sheoak that drooped its shelter around her. A small bird arrived, brown and indistinguishable from the colour of the tree but framed in the perfect blue of the midday sky. She could hear Rowan breathing, a slow exhale as he lay stretched on the grass in her backyard.

  She should have told him.

  ‘Rowan.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Say it. She hesitated. Say it now. But the words had stalled somewhere deep down. ‘I should pay you for mowing the lawns.’

  He snorted.

  ‘I should. What’s your account number?’

  ‘Is this a scam?’ he said, and she could tell he was smiling.

  ‘Yes, it’s a scam. Let’s have your password as well, while you’re at it.’ Then followed one of his long pauses—the man never felt the need to fill a silence. Damned if she’d do all the work.

  Finally, he spoke, ‘Clementine.’ Slowly, like he was savouring the word.

  ‘Yeah?’

  Another pause.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s it. That’s my password.’

  ‘That’s bloody sad, Rowan,’ she said. Chiding, playful; whatever she could muster.

  ‘Easier to remember, like that Elvis song.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You’re always on my mind.’

  They both laughed, at the ridiculous high-schoolness of it. ‘So what year were you born, old timer?’ she said, through the giggling.

  ‘Classic, not old. I like Johnny Cash too.’

  ‘Good reason to change your password, then—I can’t stand country music.’

  ‘Aagh.’ He was scornful—but smiling again, she imagined.

  ‘I’ll send you a cheque.’

  ‘Nah. Buy me a beer when you get back.’ She must say something. ‘When are you back?’

  Say it. Now. Get it out there, for Christ’s sake, it will only get worse from here.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pocket rolling in something. Something lifeless. A dead water rat! Dropping his shoulder into it, wriggling madly, a big gummy smile of sheer pleasure. She leapt up, grabbed the water pistol and sprayed a jet at his tummy. He jumped to his feet, shying then laughing at her.

  ‘Um, don’t know yet. Listen, I better go. Pocket’s just rolled in something foul.’

  He scanned the yard: nothing obvious. But he had time, plenty of it. He stepped out of the Chrysler, wraparound Ray-Bans reflecting the glare of a relentless sun, and made for the house.

  He knocked at the door. Nothing. Birds chirping from the thick bush crowding around the house. A blue-tongue lizard stared up at him from a dried-out patch of lawn. Standing at the front door, waiting, there in the shade…Peaceful. Not like last time he was here—bloody SOGs smashing down the door, yelling and shouting, guns drawn.

  Squinting through the side window next to the door, he couldn’t see any movement inside. He scanned the yard then reached down, grabbed a rock from the border of an overgrown strip of garden and smashed it through the window. A dozen white cockatoos in a gum tree next to the house took flight, screeching a warning across the bush and into the mountain behind. Noise didn’t matter out here. You could shoot a guy in the kneecaps, as Sinbin was known to do, and nobody would hear the shot—or the scream. Nevertheless, he refused to waste a bullet on Sinbin’s front door.

  He went straight to the obvious places and found nothing there. Then he began to slit cushions, rip the backs off paintings, tap the walls and bash holes wherever the sound rang hollow.

  The morning ticked on, the heat built and his irritation grew. Bird calls gave way to the hustle and hum of cicadas. He stomped outside, did a full circumnavigation of the house, banging on the walls with frustration. He stopped at the back of the shed near the dunny, under the long shadows cast by a bloodwood tree. Something out of place. There, near his feet, a slight discolouration. Darker than the rest. He almost stepped into it, and caught himself at the last minute. Crouching down, he scraped at it. The dirt was loose, poorly packed. Definitely a hole, recently dug, then filled in and smoothed over.

  He looked up and around as if perhaps the hole-digger might still be around. Walked back to the car.

  CHAPTER 4

  Clem went straight to the Galimore Foundation website after returning to the shanty. The idea had come to her as she hauled Pocket off the rat carcass. The foundation was a prestigious organisation with some serious heavy-hitters on the board, and powerful men can leave a trail of bodies. She just needed to find that trail, follow it till she got to a decomposing rat—roll in it for all she was worth.

  She didn’t recognise anyone in the directors’ group photograph, just the usual gaggle of grey-haired suits carefully coiffed for the camera—four men seated on a crimson brocade sofa, another male quartet standing behind with a lone woman between them.

  She scanned the caption hoping one of the names would ring a bell. Finding a smudge on any of these pillars of society was a long shot, though; likely to require a shitload of research with no guarantee of a result. It would be much easier if they’d been linked to something grubby already. But nothing jumped out at her as she scanned the back row. She moved on to the three amigos seated in front. John Bester? Nothing. William Goh? Nothing. Kenneth Borman?

  Kenneth Borman.

  Yes! Holy snappi
ng turtles, yes! And he wasn’t just a director: Kenneth Borman, Chairman.

  She sat back in the chair and stared at the shining smiles in the photograph. There he was, seated proudly—navy suit, houndstooth tie, one slender hand draped limp-wristed over the right knee, the left displaying an eye-catching gold watch. The Kenneth Borman, Miranda Cato’s boss.

  Clem knew all about the Cato trial. Sitting in the library at the Dillwynia Correctional Centre, she had devoured every newspaper article she could find. Then she’d asked for, and been granted, access to the online court judgement. She’d pitched it as part of her prison rehab and reintegration program. But Cato was two weeks into her sentence before Clem actually had a chance to meet the woman at the centre of the scandal.

  Miranda Cato. Of all the people implicated in a series of legal proceedings brought by the corporate regulator against the big banks for rate-rigging, she was the only one to go down. They’d got her on perjury. If she’d just admitted to participating in the rate-rigging she would have copped a monetary penalty, and probably not even a very big one. But perjury was a different matter. The justice system is very keen to let you know you cannot play fast and loose with it, and then expect to just open your wallet and walk free. Nope, six months for Miranda.

  The story was a goldmine for the newspapers—Cato was the stereotypical sexy corporate executive, outrageously wealthy and, being a banker, hated to boot. But it was what Cato had told Clem about her boss as they strolled around the exercise yard that clanged like a cymbal in Clem’s head now.

  Kenneth Borman. Clem stared at the photograph—bushy eyebrows projecting jauntily at the edges, remnant hair carefully clipped to sit tight around his ears, then a smooth, bare expanse of scalp hovering over that immense financial-genius brain. This man, facing the camera intently and sitting up proud like a rabbit on a ridge, was her target now. She was determined to hit the bullseye with her first shot.

  Cato had been relieved to meet Clem—someone else from the corporate world. She unloaded her rage into Clem’s sympathetic ear, describing in fine detail just how Kenneth Borman had screwed her over. For Clem, the pointless parading around the exercise yard became her favourite thing: a chance to hear more from Cato—stories of deceit and treachery played out in the glass towers of the financial sector.

  She told Clem that Borman, one of the bank’s most senior executives, had personally orchestrated a longstanding campaign to rig the benchmark interest rate. As Clem was well aware, that was a very big deal. This was the single number with the most influence on the cost of finance for absolutely everything—mortgages, monthly credit-card interest, the cost of money for every business and every project around Australia, from a shop fit-out to a new city freeway. And it was supposed to be driven by market forces, changing daily with fluctuations in supply and demand—not by Kenneth Borman.

  It was Cato, as Borman’s 2IC, who made it happen, operating under his protection. Her claim was that they made tens of millions in profit for the bank every quarter by manipulating the seemingly ‘natural’ fluctuations in this number. When the regulator got wind of it and an investigation commenced, Borman assured Cato there was no evidence—nothing in writing, not a single hook for ASIC to hang its hat on—and all they had to do was ‘sit in a room with these bozos and tell ’em there’s nothing to see here’. Cato believed him.

  But as ASIC’s interrogation got closer to the truth, Borman became more agitated. Then an email surfaced in one of the boxes upon boxes of documents handed over to the regulator. Purporting to be sent by Cato, the email instructed her team of senior traders to take the rate to the cleaners…shake out a couple of mill.

  Cato had learnt the email off by heart, reeling off the words like she was peeling an orange. Borman, she said, had feigned distress, raged at where the email might have come from and ‘which of the bastards had sold out’. He promised to take care of it, look after her: he hand-picked her legal team, the finest silk, two juniors and a swathe of solicitors and not a cent from her own pocket. What could possibly go wrong?

  Everything, said Cato, absolutely everything, from the very first day in court. But it was only towards the end of the whole nightmare, after the trial had been running a week, that she’d allowed herself to realise what she now saw as obvious: the deck had been stacked against her, she was the patsy in Borman’s game, the decoy carcass he’d planted for the hyenas at ASIC. Borman had been right about the lack of evidence against him or anyone else at the bank, and nothing she might now say to accuse him would stick, with her credibility completely undermined by the perjury charge. Even talking to Clem, she was incandescent with rage—it wasn’t just the rate Borman had rigged but her life—hauling her up on a gibbet and leaving her dangling.

  And now Clementine owned that information. She held onto it like a grenade, ready to pull the clip. She drove in to Barnforth, bought a burner phone, returned to the shanty and tapped in the number. A woman with clipped vowels answered, ‘Kenneth Borman’s office, June speaking.’

  It seemed Borman held enough board roles post-retirement that he could afford his own serviced office and executive assistant. Clem figured the Galimore directorship wouldn’t pay much, but it would be like a gleaming halo in his portfolio, helping him get better paying gigs elsewhere.

  ‘Good morning, June, this is Alice Baguley,’ said Clem. ‘I’d like to speak with Mr Borman please.’ She used the name of one of Miranda’s Borman-funded legal team. Not the partner—Borman would probably recognise the voice—but the senior associate on the next rung down, who Miranda said had tried to warn her. Not the biggest fish, but a name Borman might recall.

  The usual platitudes from June…not in at the moment, can I take a message…

  ‘Yes, please. Could you let him know I rang and ask him to call me?’ Clem gave the phone number and spelt out the name. ‘And if you could mention I have something he needs to know about from the court proceedings two years ago?’

  It was just before dark when the call finally came through. A blocked number. She’d poked about the shanty all day, compulsively checking the phone for missed calls even though it had never left her pocket the whole time. Now she was sitting on the back deck in her cut-off denim shorts, oiled in Aerogard with the twilight fading and the biting insects of Queensland giving her a wide berth. With the Great Sandy Straits silver in the distance, she reached for the tumbler of scotch beside her on the rickety old table and took a swig before accepting the call.

  ‘Hello, Alice speaking,’ she said. Professional, unhurried, imagining herself in an air-conditioned office on the thirty-third floor, white shirt crisp on her shoulders, high heels cocked beneath a sleek black chair.

  There was a pause, then: ‘This is Borman.’ Gruff, abrupt. She’d expected as much from Cato’s description.

  ‘Thank you for calling back, Mr Borman.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You may remember me. I was part of the team representing Miranda Cato in her perjury trial a couple of years ago.’

  A grunt.

  ‘I wanted to alert you to something.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ he said, sarcastic.

  ‘I’ve come into some information that I feel I may need to report.’

  ‘Report to me?’

  ‘No, Mr Borman, to the authorities.’

  Silence. She could almost hear the gears clunking in his brain.

  ‘You may remember an incriminating email, sent from Ms Cato’s computer?’

  ‘Sent by Cato, you mean…computers don’t send things themselves.’

  ‘Of course, you’re right Mr Borman, always a human at the keyboard,’ said Clem, waiting a beat. ‘Which human, though? That’s the question.’

  A welcome rush of breeze lifted the frayed edge of her shorts and tickled her leg. She gave the silence time to unsettle him.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t have time for riddles, Alison. You said you had something important for me.’

  ‘Alice. The name’s Alice.
’

  Clem took another sip from the tumbler, making sure the clink of ice was audible, making him wait, putting the glass down on the table, feeling the fire in her throat before she continued.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, out with it woman.’

  She sniffed, gave him another pause. ‘I met a man from the bank last week at a bar in Sydney. Knows you. Works in IT. He told me Miranda’s swipe access card placed her in a meeting room on the other side of the building at the time that email was sent.’ The lie was as liquid and smooth as the whisky.

  ‘What? Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ he croaked, an indignant toad. ‘That’s it? That’s your important information?’

  Shit. Not even rattled. Work to do.

  ‘As a lawyer, Mr Borman, I have a duty to the court…’

  ‘I don’t give a flying fuck.’

  ‘…The proceedings were decided largely based on that false evidence.’ That part was true.

  ‘Oh, fucking give me a break, sweetheart. The case is long dead.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not sure that’s relevant, Mr Borman, certainly not to the courts. And as it’s just the sort of thing that undermines public confidence in the judicial system it’s therefore squarely within my duty to report it.’ God, she was delivering a lecture on ethics to a man who had none.

  Borman laughed, but she picked up a nervous edge. ‘Ppphht. ASIC won’t have a bar of this. They nailed a banking executive, at long bloody last, put her behind bars…it was their only decent scalp in ten years of trying! You think they’re gonna let this spoil the party?’

  This Borman—what a piece of work. The biggest swinging dick she’d taken on so far in her thirty-three years. He wasn’t going to go down easy. Clem took a breath, rallied and drew on every ounce of gall she had.

  ‘I’m afraid it won’t be up to ASIC, Borman. And once the court overturns Miranda Cato’s conviction, ASIC will go after those whose swipe cards do put them in the right place.’

  No laughter now. A crackling hot silence, snapping in her ear like static. Then his voice again, impatient, angry, snarling, ‘Now let me tell you something, Alison…’