Maybe the Horse Will Talk Read online

  ‘Oh God!’ said Maserov. ‘My body is an abandoned warehouse out near the airport. It briefly had a pop-up shop in the far corner selling knock-off designer wear but now the electricity has been cut off.’

  Jessica smiled. ‘Your self-deprecation is amusing but it’s unwarranted.’

  ‘I’m serious. Show me where Frank Cardigan’s office is and, I promise you, I will be in the office next door by seven-fifteen.’

  ‘No, let’s meet at your office, safer that way. You’re a really nice man, do you know that?’

  Maserov wished he could have recorded her saying that in order to play it back over and over once she came to hate him.

  IV

  Maserov was relieved to see Eleanor’s car parked outside Carla’s house. He rang the doorbell and when, after a moment, Carla answered, he held up the soft toy he had picked up from his erstwhile home. The gesture was meant to indicate that he came in peace. Maserov thought it had to be unprecedented in the legal history of every single negotiation that had ever been conducted in a common law country since the Magna Carta that the defendant’s lawyer had to help the plaintiff’s lawyer prove that the plaintiff’s lawyer was the father of the plaintiff’s child.

  ‘Hi Carla, um . . . Eleanor probably told you I had to bring this toy for Beanie.’

  ‘Yeah, she did.’ Carla saw him not as the father of her new friend’s children but as the lawyer engaged to deny her justice.

  ‘Would you mind if I came in and gave it to him? This is my only chance to see the kids today.’

  ‘No, come in.’ He followed her down the hallway towards the living room where Eleanor was sitting on the couch with the children at her feet playing with Duplo. Beanie looked up and, on seeing him, ran towards him, passing Carla with arms outstretched, calling, ‘Daddy!’

  To complete the charade of innocence, Maserov leaned in to give Eleanor a kiss on the cheek. It was awkward not because of its assumed intimacy. That was the usual reason it was awkward. Today it was awkward because neither of them was a good actor and they both knew what they were there for. Still, the performance was good enough to secure a glass of white wine from Carla.

  To break the silence threatening to discomfort them all, Maserov turned to Beanie and ceremoniously announced, ‘I brought you Sleep Bear.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Eleanor. ‘We can’t have a good night’s sleep without Sleep Bear.’

  Maserov noticed with concern that Beanie showed no interest in the arrival of Sleep Bear.

  ‘What a good father you have!’ said Carla in the direction of Beanie.

  Impelled by her allusion to benign paternity, Maserov took the bit between the teeth and turned the subject to his real reason for being there.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know if you know but I’ve made contact with your lawyer. I wanted to thank you.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Carla replied cautiously.

  ‘He’s a . . . Kind of larger than life, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah, a real laugh,’ she said with discernible acrimony.

  ‘He didn’t tell me this but he was a few years ahead of me in law school and it was said that he put himself through by working as the entertainment director on a cruise ship.’

  ‘That’s what he says. Wouldn’t surprise me,’ said Carla unimpressed.

  ‘Whereas Stephen put himself through law school by me working as a teacher,’ Eleanor offered reflexively before realising she wasn’t helping.

  ‘Yes, by you and by debt,’ said Maserov attempting to smile.

  ‘I did it because he’s such a good father,’ said Eleanor uncomfortably.

  ‘Talking about fathers,’ Maserov cut to the chase, ‘your lawyer says he’s Marietta’s father. Is that true?’

  ‘Did Betga put you up to this?’ Carla asked.

  ‘Up to what?’ Maserov played dumb.

  ‘To finding out whether he is.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ said Maserov.

  ‘Yes,’ said Eleanor. ‘He wanted us to take a swab of Marietta’s saliva.’

  Maserov winced.

  ‘She knows, Stephen. She’s not an idiot.’ She turned to Carla. ‘We were never going to do it. I did genuinely want to see you again. We’re really separated. I’m not his agent.’

  ‘Yes, we really are separated,’ offered Maserov hopefully.

  ‘But whatever problems I might have with Stephen, I never have to worry about him as a father. He’s an incredibly devoted father. I knew he would remain one even when we separated.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Maserov again, enjoying the unexpected praise and the respite from pursuing Betga’s demand.

  ‘Yes,’ Eleanor continued, ‘it made the decision to separate so much easier.’

  ‘What?’ asked Maserov incredulously.

  ‘Knowing that whatever happened, you would always be a great father to our kids. He comes over every night to see them, feed them, bath them, tell them stories and put them to bed. Then he goes back to work to try to make budget.’

  ‘Betga wouldn’t be leaving to try to make budget. He’d be trying to make something or someone but not budget,’ Carla snorted.

  ‘It’s obviously none of my business, and you know him and I don’t. But if there’s any possibility this Betga guy is Marietta’s father . . . and that he’d be a good father, she deserves the chance to know him.’ Eleanor was trying to help.

  ‘He does seem pretty keen to be her father,’ Maserov added. ‘A lot of men try to shirk that responsibility. He’s doing everything he can to take it on. Your daughter deserves to have a father, doesn’t she?’ Maserov asked, noticing that the little girl he was talking about wasn’t actually in the room with them. He swallowed a lot of wine quickly and was shifting the glass nervously from one hand to another as Acting Sergeant Ron Quinn came out from the little girl’s bedroom holding her against one shoulder and a disposable nappy bag in his other hand. Maserov tasted shame. The policeman must have heard and Maserov wanted the earth to swallow him. He glanced with alarm at Eleanor.

  ‘They’re right, Carla,’ Acting Sergeant Quinn said quietly.

  Carla stood up and walked over to take her daughter from the shoulder of the older man in uniform. The policeman opened the kitchen door that led to a small back garden and Maserov watched him put the nappy bag in the outside rubbish bin.

  ‘He doesn’t need her to have a paternity test. He’s the father,’ Carla said.

  The policeman’s step faltered just slightly when she said this but he kept on walking despite, as his colleagues might have described it, being wounded in the line of duty.

  When Acting Sergeant Quinn came back from washing his hands, he poured himself a drink. Maserov wished some other person had poured it for him but it wasn’t his place to come into someone else’s house and start offering drinks. Embarrassed, he felt incredibly responsible for any discomfort his presence might have caused the policeman.

  The children played quietly at the feet of their mothers. Maserov wondered why his sons had to choose this moment to be quiet.

  ‘You seem to know what you’re doing. You have kids of your own, I guess?’ he asked Acting Sergeant Quinn.

  ‘No,’ said the older man, adding to Maserov’s guilt.

  Maserov stood up. He had what he came for so why did he feel so awful?

  ‘You coming back to help me put the kids to bed?’ Eleanor asked him.

  ‘I can’t tonight. I’ve got to head back to the city. I’ve got a meeting at Torrent Industries,’ Maserov announced without confidence, knowing how it must have sounded.

  ‘A meeting?’ Eleanor Maserov couldn’t help herself asking.

  ‘Yeah . . . it’s just come up.’

  ‘Well, you’d better go then,’ she said.

  She had asked him to move out, showed little sign of wanting him around other than to help with the children, and yet news of this meeting angered her in a way neither of them would have expected. Hadn’t she just helped him out professionally by getting
him into Carla’s house and then securing Carla’s admission that Betga was the father of her daughter? She’d even praised him as a father. Within minutes of all of this he’d humiliated her by bailing on her to attend some fictitious meeting at work.

  As Carla said when she opened another bottle of white wine a few minutes after seeing Maserov to the door, ‘Who has a meeting at work at seven o’clock?’ Now they really were bonded; two women with small children fathered by unfaithful bastards.

  V

  Maserov drove back to the city in an optimistic state of mind. He’d got what Betga wanted, Carla’s acknowledgement that he was Marietta’s father. On top of that, Eleanor, obviously suspecting he didn’t have a work appointment but was seeing a woman, couldn’t hide her hurt and anger. That had to be encouraging.

  He hadn’t lied to Eleanor. He was driving back to the city for work and he really did have to meet someone at a scheduled time, which is what is commonly referred to as a ‘meeting’. But it was also true that he was driving back to the city to see a woman, someone whose company he enjoyed, who thought well of him and whom he found very attractive. She was also single. All in all, he felt better than he had at any time in recent memory.

  In the car he decided to call Betga, who was beginning to seem more like an ally than a negotiating adversary. ‘I have news for you, an update,’ Maserov said over speakerphone while driving back to the city. ‘It’s not something one lawyer normally gets the chance to say to another.’

  ‘I hope you don’t charge by the word,’ he heard Betga say. ‘I’m due at the Grosvenor in ten minutes. Kasimir has a dear friend celebrating his statistically unlikely parole. The man is a prime candidate for life coaching. What’s your news? You got authority from Malcolm Torrent to negotiate?’

  ‘No, that’s not my news. You’re not going to need Marietta’s saliva. Congratulations, you’re a father to a beautiful healthy little girl.’

  ‘What? How do you know?’

  ‘Carla admitted it.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Did you record it . . . on your phone?’

  ‘No, but I’ve got witnesses.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Eleanor, my wife.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘The acting sergeant.’

  ‘The sad cop?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘She said it in front of him?’

  ‘Yep. She even said I can tell you.’

  ‘Hell . . . she admits I’m Marietta’s father!’

  For a moment Betga really was speechless.

  ‘Betga, are you there?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m here.’ Maserov heard a sniff down the line. Either a strain of cold virus had suddenly attacked a part of Betga’s upper respiratory tract or he was choked up by the news.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Yeah. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in the car.’

  ‘You want to meet me for a drink at the Grosvenor? I’m officially Marietta’s father! My pitch to Kasimir’s friend won’t take long.’

  ‘No, I have to head back into the office.’

  ‘No, you don’t. I know what you’re working on. It’s me . . . and my clients.’

  ‘Well, yeah but something else has kind of . . . come up.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Betga, with a grin that was visible over the phone.

  VI

  Office towers, like Egyptian temples and Sumerian ziggurats in other times, are where the present waits to be discovered and interpreted by future archaeologists and historians. But for many that work in them, their current significance is unambiguous. They represent tiny corners of Agincourt, the Somme or Stalingrad. Even after sunset.

  Jessica met Maserov at his office and told him that the room next to Frank Cardigan’s room on the floor below was now empty. All he had to do was creep in there undetected and listen. In the best-case scenario Cardigan would never know Maserov had been there and Jessica would leave his office unharmed and unthreatened.

  ‘How will I know if I’m meant to come in? We need a signal or something, don’t we?’

  ‘Okay,’ she suggested, ‘if I need you to come in I’ll tell him I’m thinking of buying a new car and ask him if he thinks I should buy a VW Golf.’

  ‘Does he drive a VW?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what he drives. But if you hear me say VW or Golf in a loud voice, louder than the conversation had been previously, you should come in the room.’

  ‘What should I say?’

  ‘I don’t know. It will depend on the circumstances. If he’s taking his pants off you could say, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing taking your pants off in the workplace?” If he’s doing anything less egregious, just introduce yourself and tell him you’ve been looking all over for me ’cause you need me urgently for the thing you’re doing for Mr Torrent.’

  Maserov waited for two minutes after Jessica left before going to the room next to Frank Cardigan’s. For a moment he had trouble with the door handle but it was just a matter of aligning the deadbolt with the hole in the strike plate on the other side by slightly lifting the door a few millimetres via the handle. It took only seconds for him to figure this out and enter but it was long enough for him to break into a sweat. Sitting there with the lights out and the door slightly open he could quite clearly hear Jessica’s voice and that of a man he took to be Frank Cardigan.

  ‘Frank, sorry I couldn’t be with you sooner,’ Maserov heard Jessica say.

  ‘No matter, please sit down. Okay, let’s get down to it; leadership, specifically my leadership.’

  He heard the soft sound of a chair scraping against carpet and assumed this was Jessica sitting down across from Frank Cardigan with a desk in between them.

  ‘How can I use my idiosyncrasies to become a better leader? That’s it, isn’t it, idiosyncrasy credit?’

  ‘No, that’s not what idiosyncrasy credit is.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It refers to why some people can get away with behaving in a certain way when others would be criticised for behaving that way. If someone is considered a leader, not only will that person’s behaviour be tolerated, it will be emulated.’

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s right. So to determine whether I’m a true leader I need to get them to emulate my behaviour.’

  ‘No, you can’t get them to emulate your behaviour.’

  ‘No, I probably can, Jessica. I know you no doubt think of me as a friendly, kind of hunky, easygoing, successful type of guy, rising rapidly up the Torrent chain of command but, I have to tell you, the guys in my department are scared of me. I can probably get them to do almost anything. I think I’m a true leader.’

  Cardigan’s narcissism was remarkable, Jessica thought. Real presidential material. ‘But Frank,’ she replied, ‘that’s not how idiosyncrasy credit works. You’re misunderstanding . . . I mean . . . that’s a misunderstanding of the concept. It can’t be used with compulsion. You have to deviate from group norms and then see whether, without compulsion, without threats, inducements or promises, people in your department follow your lead.’

  ‘How do we do that?’

  ‘So . . . you need to do something that’s a little unusual and see whether anyone follows you, whether anyone emulates your behaviour.’

  ‘What sort of unusual thing should I do? I mean, everybody knows I’m a pretty regular kind of a guy, other than, you know, my leadership and charisma.’

  ‘Let me ask you, Frank, what time do most people in your department leave for the day?’

  ‘Oh, I’d say . . . most guys around here knock off between six and six-thirty.’

  ‘What if you knocked off earlier? That would be unusual, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah but —’

  ‘What if they saw you leaving at, say, four o’clock?’ Her voice rose with enthusiasm.

  ‘They’d probably just think I was going to a meeting.’

  ‘Maybe once
or twice they’d think that. But what if you started leaving the office at four o’clock every day, day after day.’

  ‘Leave at four . . . every day? But what about my work?’

  ‘We won’t do it for long. It wouldn’t test your productivity, just your leadership credit.’

  ‘So you’d want to see if any of the other guys were copying my idiosyncratic style of leaving work early?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay, well, how long do I have to keep leaving early?’

  ‘Well, we can’t know that at such an early stage of the test. We have to be flexible in our design.’

  ‘This is a real psychology thing, is it?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I can show you papers on it. There’s been a lot written about idiosyncrasy credit. But I thought I’d save you all the hassle of doing the reading yourself by doing it for you and presenting you with the concept and a plan to test yours.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your idiosyncrasy credit.’

  ‘Right, of course. But there’s one thing that still puzzles me. If I’m leaving early . . . every day . . . how will I know how many of the guys are copying me? How will I know who’s copying me? How will I even know if they’ve noticed . . . that I’m not there, that I’m leaving early?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. I’ll be your eyes and ears.’

  ‘Could you do that for me?’

  ‘Of course, Frank.’

  ‘Well, when should I start?’

  ‘As soon as possible.’

  ‘So . . . tomorrow?’

  ‘You could start now.’

  ‘But it’s late. Everyone’s gone. If I just get up and walk straight out the building, there’s no one here to see.’

  ‘Frank, you’re a hard worker. Everyone knows this. You’re not going to find it easy to just pick up and walk out of your office and out of the building at four o’clock every day. It will feel strange. So I want to condition you to being able to just pick up and walk out of the building.’