The Rival Desk – Part 2: Off the Record

The lawsuit arrived on a Monday, in a brown envelope, hand-delivered to the front desk of the Sydney Herald by a man in a very good suit.

Delaney v. Sydney Herald, Bennett and Hartley. Defamation. Damages sought: $4.5 million.

Ruth Kaplan read it in her office with the door closed. Then she called them both in.

“He’s claiming the bank transfer was fabricated,” she said. “That someone forged the documents and fed them to you.” She took off her glasses. “His lawyers want the name of your source.”

“No,” said Chloe.

“Absolutely not,” said James, at exactly the same moment.

Ruth almost smiled. “Good. Then we need to prove it’s real. Without the source.” She paused. “Where is Mark Delaney’s accountant?”

Chloe and James looked at each other.

The accountant was the source. A frightened, balding man named Peter Ng, who had worked for Delaney for eleven years and finally couldn’t sleep anymore. He had met Chloe in a car park in Parramatta and handed her a USB stick with shaking hands.

“He’s not answering his phone,” James said slowly. “Since Friday.”

---

They found his flat in Chatswood empty.

Not ransacked. Just empty. The furniture still there, a coffee cup on the counter, a cat bowl on the floor with no cat. His car was gone. His phone went straight to voicemail. His sister in Melbourne hadn’t heard from him in a week.

Chloe stood in the middle of his kitchen and felt sick.

“This is my fault,” she said. “I pushed him. He didn’t want to give me the documents and I pushed.”

“He came to you,” James said. “Chloe. He came to you because he trusted you.”

“And now he’s gone.”

James took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. In the empty flat, in the grey afternoon light, his face was very serious.

“Then we find him,” he said. “Together.”

---

It took four days.

Four days of phone calls and old addresses and favours from every contact either of them had ever made. James drove. Chloe navigated. They lived on servo coffee and meat pies. They argued about everything, the radio, the route, the right way to fold a map, and every argument ended with one of them laughing.

They slept in a cheap motel in Gosford on the second night, in separate beds, both too exhausted to do anything but stare at the ceiling.

“James,” she said in the dark.

“Mm.”

“If we can’t find him. If Delaney wins. They’ll come after us personally. Four and a half million.”

“I know.”

“Are you scared?”

He was quiet for a long time.

“Of the money? No,” he said. “Of you deciding this isn’t worth it? Yes.”

She turned her head on the thin pillow and looked at him across the gap between the beds.

“You think I’d leave because of a lawsuit?”

“I think you’re the most careful person I’ve ever met,” he said. “And I’m the least careful. And this is very not careful.”

Chloe got out of her bed. She crossed the gap in two steps and climbed into his, and curled against his side in the dark, and put her head on his chest.

“I saved the file three times,” she said. “Before I closed the laptop. That night. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“I’m careful,” she said, “about things I want to keep.”

He didn’t say anything. He just put his arm around her and held on.

---

They found Peter Ng on the fourth day, in a fishing shack near Port Stephens, owned by his uncle.

He opened the door holding a cat and looking like he hadn’t slept in a month.

“They came to my flat,” he said, before either of them could speak. “Delaney’s people. Friday night. Two men. They didn’t threaten me, they just,” he swallowed. “They just told me the name of my sister’s street in Melbourne. And left.”

Chloe felt cold all over.

“Peter,” she said gently. “We won’t name you. Ever. But the documents. Is there anything else? Anything that proves they’re real, without you?”

Peter looked at her for a long time. Then he put the cat down, went inside, and came back with a small black notebook.

“The bank always sends a confirmation code,” he said. “By text. For transfers over five hundred thousand. I wrote them down. Every one. For eleven years.” He handed it to her. “The bank will have a record of every code. They can’t be forged.”

James stared at the notebook.

“Peter,” he said slowly. “Why did you write them down?”

Peter shrugged miserably.

“I’m an accountant,” he said. “I write everything down.”

Chloe laughed so hard she had to sit down on the porch step.

---

Ruth Kaplan put the notebook on Delaney’s lawyer’s desk on Thursday morning.

By Thursday afternoon, the lawsuit was withdrawn. By Friday, police had opened a criminal investigation into Mark Delaney. By the following Monday, Peter Ng had been put into protection, with his sister, and his cat.

Chloe and James sat in the investigations room on Monday night, with the blinds closed, and two beers from the vending machine downstairs, and didn’t say anything for a long time.

“We did it,” James said eventually.

“We did it.”

He was quiet. Then he reached into his jacket and took out a folded letter.

“I need to tell you something,” he said. “And I need you to let me finish before you throw anything at me.”

Chloe’s stomach dropped.

“The Guardian,” he said. “London. Their investigations desk. They saw the Delaney story. They’ve offered me a job.” He put the letter on the desk between them. “It’s a big job, Chloe. It’s the job.”

She stared at the letter. Then at him.

“When did you get this?”

“Three weeks ago.”

“Three weeks?”

“Before the lawsuit,” he said. “Before Gosford. I didn’t know how to tell you. And then everything happened, and I thought, she’s going to think I’m leaving because things got hard, and I’m not, I just,” he stopped. “I haven’t answered it.”

Chloe picked up the letter. She read it slowly.

It was a very good offer. It was exactly the kind of job they had both dreamed about since journalism school. She read it twice. Then she put it down.

“You should take it,” she said.

James’s face fell completely.

“Oh,” he said quietly. “Right. Okay.”

“Let me finish,” Chloe said. “Before you throw anything at me.”

She reached into her own bag. She took out a folded letter of her own and put it on the desk beside his.

The Guardian. London. Investigations desk.

James stared at it. Then at her.

“They offered you,” he said slowly.

“Two weeks ago. They want two people. A team.” Chloe’s voice was shaking a little. “I told them I’d only come if they took my rival too.”

James didn’t say anything for a long time. He picked up her letter. Read it. Read it again.

“You were going to tell me when?” he asked finally.

“When you told me about yours,” Chloe said. “I wanted to see if you’d choose me. Or the job.”

“That’s,” he started.

“Very careful,” she said. “I know.”

He started laughing. He put both letters down, stood up, came around the desk and pulled her out of her chair and kissed her, hard, in the middle of the investigations room with the blinds closed.

“You’re impossible,” he said against her mouth.

“You love it.”

“I do,” James said, and stopped, and looked at her, and said it again, slower. “I do. I love you. I think I loved you when you told Priya I was a golden retriever.”

“You are a golden retriever.”

“In a cheap tie.”

“In a very expensive tie,” Chloe corrected him, tugging the navy silk. “I bought it.”

---

His flat in Pyrmont was full of boxes by the end of the month. So was hers. They put both sets of boxes in his living room in a giant pile, and on the last night, they sat on the balcony with a bottle of wine and looked at the harbour bridge for the last time, lit gold against the dark.

“London,” James said. “It rains a lot, apparently.”

“I’ll buy you an umbrella.”

“I’ll lose it.”

“I know,” Chloe said. “I’ll buy two.”

He laughed, and kissed her on the balcony, and then they went inside among the boxes and the bare walls. What happened after belonged only to them: to the last night in Sydney and the city lights through the empty windows, to two rivals who had finally stopped competing, and found something much better to do with all that energy.

---

The first story under their joint byline at The Guardian ran six months later. Front page.

In the newsroom in London, on their shared desk by the window, there was a small framed photograph. Two reporters in a glass room in Sydney, at 2 a.m., covered in sticky notes, mid-argument, pointing at each other.

Ruth Kaplan had taken it through the blinds, without telling them, the night they found the bank transfer.

She had mailed it to London with a short card.

Told you to close the blinds. — R.

---

The End.

More workplace romance: Monsoon Nights · The Tuscan Harvest · The Anniversary Playlist