Trilemma (30 page)

“I'm not buying a share.”

“I'm not giving you a share. I want you to loan me the money.”

“Hello? Why would I loan you money?”

Nicholas stares at me and then stares out the window where the wind is whipping the tops of the trees back and forth. He reaches into his man bag and pulls out a photo.

“Because I have this,” he says and tosses the photograph on the coffee table.

I pick up the photograph. The quality is poor, the shapes are grainy, and the colors are washed out.

“You're asking for money?” I eventually ask. “How much?”

“Ten thousand should do it,” he replies.

I gaze at his face and think about my options.

“Let me see what I have on me,” I reply, rising and picking
up my purse. My iPhone is at the bottom, so I scramble for a moment or two before pulling out my wallet.

“I've only got five hundred dollars in cash.”

He reaches out his hand. “I'll take that now and the rest when you get the cash out.”

I hold onto my wallet. “Let me get this straight, Nicholas. You want what?”

“I've told you, ten thousand dollars in return for that photograph.”

“And if I don't give you ten thousand dollars?”

“One copy of the photo goes to your boyfriend and another goes to the newspapers. So much for your brilliant career, huh, Lin?”

“This is blackmail.”

“Call it whatever you want. Just give me the money.”

He stands in front of me with his hand reaching for my wallet.

“Are you going to hit me if I don't give you money?”

Nicholas is shaking. “Just give me what you have, bitch.”

I hand him the notes. “I'll get you the money, but then I don't ever want to hear from you again.”

His eyes flicker, and I know he has no intention of vanishing out of my life. “Sure. Just been caught short this month, that's all.”

He walks out the door, and I close it behind him and lean my back against it, my eyes closed.

Later that week, our first live network test does not go well. In the middle of the night, the network goes down. We send out the technicians, but it is dark and they cannot isolate the fault.

At eight in the morning, we hold an urgent audio-conference. “What's going on?” the chairman asks. “What the hell is happening down there!”

“We have a problem with the network.”

“Then fix it!”

“We're trying to, but we haven't found the cause yet.”

The field technicians have been out since first light examining each section of the network. Tom has his network managers at the table and they are poring over the network diagrams and the switch records.

At nine thirty I get the call that they have found the fault.

“There is a hole in the overhead fiber cable,” Tom tells me over the phone. “In that stretch that runs along the edge of the forest. They're replacing the line so the service should be operational again within an hour.”

“A hole? What caused it?”

Tom is silent for a moment. “Jake thinks it's a bullet hole.”

“Christ.” I consider that possibility for a moment. “Is someone trying to sabotage us?”

“We don't know. The boys are checking the scene.”

As soon as I hang up, my cell phone rings. Alison's name flashes up on the screen.

“Hello,” I say.

“Lin? How are you?”

“I'm well. And you all?”

“We're all doing fine, thanks. Oh, except Wal is complaining about his back and you know Christopher gets those bad headaches, and actually my hip aches a bit if I walk too far. But apart from that we're all fine.”

“Oh, good.”

The desk telephone rings, but I leave it for Helen to answer.

“Viv and I wondered if you'd like to visit for Art Deco weekend. It's such a lot of fun, I'm sure you'd enjoy it.”

Helen puts her head in the door.

“Ah, um, I don't think I can decide right now.”

Helen mouths, “Tom.”

“Can I call you back?” I say.

“Of course. Anyway, it's in two weeks' time, so you don't have to make up your mind yet.”

“Right, right. Anyway, I'll call you.”

I get off the phone and pick up my landline.

“Tom?”

“We think we've worked out what happened with the cable,” he says. “The boys found a dead possum beneath the line.”

“So?”

Tom snorts. “We think some twit was out shooting possums and caught one sitting on our cable.”

“A possum hunter. Great. I'll call Hobb and let him know the mystery is solved.”

I look up at the picture on my wall of the road to Ngatirua, and I promise myself, when this is all over, I'm going there.

“So what action are you taking to make sure the cable is bulletproof?”

“We can't make it bulletproof. That doesn't make sense.”

“Then make it possum proof.”

“I don't think we can make it possum proof either.”

“How can you make sure the problem doesn't happen again?”

“It was a freak accident, Stewart. We can't protect against freak accidents. What we can do is get the redundant route built so we don't lose service if there is a network fault.”

“Why isn't there a redundant route already?”

Because you cut it out of the budget,
I say, but silently, because by now I know this chairman takes no accountability for any bad decisions.

“We'll need to increase the funding allocated.”

“I've already told you we won't be increasing the budget, Mere, so find yourself another answer.”

When he hangs up, I ponder whether there is anything we can possibly do to get that redundant route in before we go live. We knew it was a risk. My head hurts as I try to think of where we can find the money to complete the ring.

This time I cannot find any options.

I read somewhere that dreams are the result of your brain trying to make sense of the fragments of memory that flash through your mind as you sleep. Your sleeping brain strings the images together to make a story. I've always wondered whether scriptwriters have cleverer dreams than the rest of us.

Lately, in my dreams I can see no images. I can just sense danger, as if something horrible is standing behind me about to attack. When I wake, the nightmare still has me in its grasp. I can't quite recall the details, but I know there was something amongst trees, stalking me. I can't recall if I saw anything, just the feeling of dread and that I couldn't escape.

Sometimes I dream I have struck the beast before it gets me and I kill it. I don't remember seeing anything except a corner like a grave with concrete edges and darkness all around, but I think I killed something or someone, bludgeoned them, though I can't imagine what with, and I can't imagine what they looked like, either alive or dead. Maybe one of those
Doctor Who
monsters you cannot ever see. But the beast always seems to return, as if I didn't quite strike hard enough. I never feel the relief that the beast is dead and the danger is gone, until I wake up at four in the morning and my tired mind remembers it was only a dream. Then I lie awake and worry about Hera instead and the nightmare fades.

In the morning, the dread is gone, although sometimes I worry about having such dark, violent dreams. What happened to the light and gentle images of friends and lovers and hobbits?

Nicholas swaggers in. His eyes are normal today, I'm glad about that. Hopefully, he will be more rational.

“Have you got the money?” he asks.

“Have you got the photo?” I reply.

He smirks and lays a photo on the coffee table. God knows who the stupid bitch is. Can't be me. I am not stupid.

“Just a moment,” I say, and then I press the button on my laptop. A recording of our last conversation plays.

Nicholas's face stiffens. “How did you do that?”

“The wonders of modern technology. Especially, Apple,” I reply. “I turned my iPhone onto record while I was getting out my wallet. Oh, and it's recording now as well, so sit back down while I tell you what's going to happen next.”

“Where is it? Damn you!” He teeters on his toes, his hands opening and closing in fists by his side.

But I judge Nicholas to be a weak little piffle of a man, and, sure enough, he slumps back onto the sofa.

“You won't find it. And my friends downstairs are listening on the other end. They'll be upstairs in a flash if they think you're threatening me. In fact, they only gave me fifteen minutes before they come up anyway. They'd like to—talk—with you themselves.”

He stares at me.

“So, Nicholas, you've become a blackmailer. Well, I'm not taking it. That photo of yours? Which no doubt you have on file? No one will believe it's me. They're far more likely to believe you've doctored an image.”

“People will believe it's you! I'll make sure of it!”

“My reputation is as an uptight, sexless teetotaler. And you won't be around to make any claims. You'll be in the clink being done over by some really nasty big bastards.”

His eyes widen and his skinny bottom twitches.

I give him my cool executive smile. “You see, I've checked how the police deal with blackmailers. They'll throw the book
at you and go to extreme lengths to protect your victims. In this case, me.”

I'm bluffing, but he won't be able to read that in my eyes. His face, however, is transparently furious. His eyebrows are lowered, his eyelids tense, and his lips are compressed.

“I'll take for granted you'll resign from your job overseeing my sisters' affairs in Wellington,” I say. “Okay, the fifteen minutes are nearly up, and I really think you would be wise to leave before my friends arrive to have their own chat with you. And, Nicholas? If you ever set foot in this house again, I tell my sisters what you are, and the recording goes to the police. Understand?”

When I open the door, he gets up and goes, as fast as Joe did, down the stairs, down the path, and out onto the street.

But I worry. He still might distribute the photo. Sure I've bluffed him that no one will believe the woman to be me, but I know from bitter experience that people believe what they want to believe, especially if it's something negative about a woman in power.

And in New Zealand, especially, they like to cut the tall poppies down.

I walk in Sally's open door and collapse on her sofa. Tonight Sally's face looks less tired than mine. She opens a bottle of champagne.

“Was that Nick I saw going past the window?” she asks. “What was the matter with him?”

“He had the shits,” I reply. “So he had to run.”

Sally snorts and hands me a flute. “He's bad news. You know, I told him he wasn't my type and so he put some photos of me up on Facebook. Horrible photos.”

“Oh, no. Sex stuff?”

Sally shakes her head. “I didn't sleep with him. But he took some nasty shots anyway, which made me look fifty and fat.”

“Oh.”

She sighs. “I had to grin and bear it. Anyway, let's forget the little creep. How is Ben? And Cheryl?”

“They're fine. Cheryl found out Joe was arrested last month for beating up some guy in the pub. He's out on bail, but we're hoping they'll put him away for a while.”

“Is she still staying with Ben?”

“Ben tells me she's settled in too well. He's still sleeping on the sofa in the living room. Emmy's mother has taken a job in Cape Town for six months so Emmy's with Ben full time.”

“Long-distance relationships are tough,” says Sally. She takes a swig and turns to look at me. “Haven't you thought of moving to the mountain? Since the mountain can't move here?”

“There's no work for me in Dipton.”

“Does that matter?”

“Of course, it matters. You know it matters! I'm not just the sum of my looks and personality, I'm the whole package. And the whole package includes my career, the income I make, the fact I can afford to spend money on whatever I want, the fact no one has to support me.”