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“Gab, there’s no way I will recommend Roger meets with the group. I don’t want council having anything to do with it.”
“That’s a little too late now, don’t you think?” the poison one said, leaning over Hugh’s desk and tapping the newspaper. “The way these things play out, there’s a little fuss, the right decisions get made and the whole thing goes away.”
Foley looked at the lump of perspex, her fingerprints were so embedded they’d never polish off. “They have a website, and on it they say they’re going to confront Drum and help him in unspecified ways to move to a safer place. You do know how dangerous that idea is. He’s not homeless because he’s perfectly balanced and reasonable.” The depth to which she’d underestimated that had given her a sleepless night.
Gabriella shrugged. “So they got a little enthusiastic. All the more reason for the caveman to move on now. As soon as he does, this whole thing will go away.”
“He’s not a caveman and we have a deal with him.”
The slow loris tsked again. “It’s not perfect, Foley. We wanted him gone for good, not two weeks. You said you understood that and you could handle it.”
Foley flashed a quick look at Hugh, then armed herself again. “I know, but it’s a start. It gets us over the immediate problem of the sculpture walk and gives me time to come up with a more long-term solution.”
The slow loris folded her paws. “We have the better solution right here.”
“No we don’t, you made this whole thing so much bigger than it needs to be.”
“You’re blowing it all out of proportion, Foley.”
“I’m blowing it out of proportion. Me! Hugh!”
Hugh put both hands to his head. “Foley,” he warned, again. “Gab, there’s to be no more, absolutely no more, contact between you and the dog walkers or the painters in the park or anyone else you might have thought to mention this idea to. We don’t astroturf here, ever.” He brought his hands down. “That needs to be clear. Is it clear?”
Gabriella lifted one shoulder. The slow loris secreted its toxin from glands in its elbows, then turned it into poison with saliva. “I think it’s a mistake, but it’s clear. It should be noted I only acted when it became obvious Foley couldn’t deliver the solution we needed.”
“Huuugh!”
“Foleeey.” Hugh did a brief double hand header. “Gab, you and I need to talk about this again, in detail. For the moment, get Donna to take any meeting with this mob out of Roger’s diary and get it in mine. They’ll have to make do with me instead of the mayor.”
The slow loris did a slow blink, no doubt put out about being asked to do a secretarial job. She said, “Of course,” and then, passing by Foley, added, “You might want to put that down. Hugh doesn’t like it when you touch his things.”
Bugger maturity. What this called for was something incredibly juvenile. Foley couldn’t help herself. She mimicked silently to Gabriella’s departing back, Hugh doesn’t like it when you touch his things.
“I don’t,” said Hugh. He likely meant more than a few dusty doodads on a bookshelf. Council’s integrity was dear to him and Gab had mucked with it. “Find out what Nat knows. If it’s all dog walkers and painters I can sleep tonight, if there’s any hint of our involvement…” he pushed back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. “Shit, I must have holiday leave owing.” He righted himself. “And do what you can to get Drum off that fucking cliff. We now have a couple of hundred dog walkers and paint by numbers seniors inspired to do something stupid for his welfare, and Nat ready to make them famous for it.”
Foley rubbed a corner of her shirt across the perspex in a vague attempt at placating Hugh, and put it back carefully where she’d got it from. It was an entirely different strategy to the one she was going to need for Drum. He simply couldn’t stay in the cave now. Someone would get hurt.
She went back to her desk in the mood to punish herself or anyone else who looked sideways at her. She opened the Beeton house file. She’d been avoiding it. But it struck her that the problem of the heritage house was the reverse of her problem with Drum. Council wanted the abandoned house saved, but Drum to move on. If she could solve one problem, maybe she could fix the other too.
The Beeton house was the first home ever built on the coastal strip. It was constructed in 1922 for Archibald Beeton on a point of the cliff face that provided expansive views up and down the coast. Beeton was an entrepreneur, but Foley pegged him for a crook, a local gangster who made his money from racehorses and dodgy property deals. Archie had boasted his house, Sereno, which meant Clear Skies in Latin, would never be built out, never have its views compromised, and he was right. For generatio
ns Sereno stayed in the Beeton family with little changing, except the addition of modern services, a wrought-iron fence and plants in the garden.
Meanwhile, every available scrap of land around the house was built on and rebuilt on until the small strip of a dozen homes fronting the sea became the city’s most valuable real estate. Each home was a design showpiece worth many millions.
Sereno still had its prime position but was no longer isolated and no longer handsome. It’d been empty for nearly ten years. It was in a hellish limbo stuck between the council imposed heritage order and the desires of the trust that’d taken ownership of it after the last Beeton popped off.
Council wanted the house repaired and maintained with its original facade as a place of historical significance. The trust simply wanted to sell the house and land and to pass the money on to charity. They’d hired a slick real estate agent who wore sunglasses inside, who had competing buyers for the land, but not a single buyer interested in the house. The agent lobbied council to have the heritage order lifted, so whoever bought the house could pull it down and start again, building a modern steel and glass structure like the neighbours.
But the Beeton house was genuinely a beautiful home—a unique, yet classic, example of Federation architecture, graceful and quietly grand, and a significant part of the area’s history—so council was sticking to the plan to save it.
The trust, however, had every reason to let it rot. If it became structurally unsound it would void the heritage order and the new owner could pull it down. And without regular maintenance, the sea, the wind, the sun and random acts of vandalism were destroying Sereno, because despite issuing the heritage order, council had no funds for maintenance.
The whole mess got shuffled around until it landed on Hugh’s desk and Foley picked it up. She loved that house. Even derelict it was grand. She’d been prepared to bribe local tradesmen to do minor jobs on Sereno but the trust had barred her efforts, insisting it would be trespassing on private property. Even then she’d snuck her dad in to board up a few windows to make it harder for the vandals. And one time she and Hugh broke in to repair a hole in the slate roof.
She couldn’t keep doing that though, and a month ago someone had lit a fire in the overgrown garden. It might’ve taken the whole house but for the quick action of a neighbour.
It was hard to know if the fire had been kids, an accident, or deliberately started. The police had been called and fire investigators hadn’t been able to reach a particular conclusion.
