4338.215 · August 3, 2018 AD
The Orchestra That Wouldn't Play
Behind a locked study door, Tom reaches for the instrument he's always conducted — three phone calls to three people who owe debts that were never meant to be called in all at once. A council chairman. A police minister. A newspaper editor. Each conversation asks for something small and returns something unexpected, and by the time the third call ends, the desk where generations of Jeffries have worked feels smaller than it did ten minutes ago.
The study is cold. The curtains are drawn the way they've been drawn since his father's time. Tom sits at the partner's desk where three generations of Jeffries have worked, switches his phone off flight mode, and ignores every notification that arrives — because everything on that phone is already behind him.
Three calls. Three debts. A council chairman whose planning committee career was built in proximity to Jeffries development contracts. A police minister who understands that political obligation has an electoral cost and calculates both in real time. A newspaper editor whose publication was six weeks from closure two years ago until a private investment arrived through a holding company in Melbourne whose beneficial ownership is protected by layers that connect to nothing and no one — officially.
Each call follows the same request wearing different clothes: introduce the question of proportionality into the institutional conversation around Stout's operation. Each call returns something Tom didn't ask for. The council chairman cooperates but wants assurance it won't become complicated. The minister cooperates once, draws a hard line, and warns that logs are being kept of who calls and when. And the editor — the man who owes the most — delivers the information that changes everything: someone inside the investigation is feeding the story to the press, the front page is already typeset, and no amount of obligation is going to stop it from running.
