The Tax Inspector

The Taxation Office had never had a television star before, so it was not surprising that Alistair would be envied and resented because of it nor – when the political forces against him succeeded – that he would be treated spitefully in defeat. What was less expected was that the bureaucracy would punish his lover almost as severely, more severely in one way, for Alistair’s office, although much smaller and no longer in the power corner, was at least properly carpeted and had all of its shelving and wiring correctly installed.

‘Oh, the bastards,’ said Gia when she stood at the doorway of Maria’s office. ‘The unmitigated petty little bastards.’

There was still wiring running across the floor from the computer to the black skirting board which was meant to hide it. There were no shelves. There were books and papers stacked on the floor. The only filing cabinet was grey and it was littered with sawdust, aluminium off-cuts, a hammer and a chisel.

‘They fixed the modem,’ Maria said. ‘Gia, I don’t care. I’m never here.’

Gia picked up a tradesman’s dustpan and began to sweep the floor.

‘It’s not the point,’ she said. She picked up metal shavings and a little block of hardwood and dropped them in the pan. ‘What I can’t believe is that anyone would hate you. It’s not as if you were arrogant. It’s not as if you were ever anything but lovely to everyone. Whatever fix Alistair is in, it’s nothing to do with you.’

‘It’s to do with all of us,’ Maria said. ‘We should all be ashamed that he should be treated the way he is.’

Gia did not comment. She thought the great man of principle was a coward and a creep. He spent his days behind his ASO 9 desk in a poky little office across the hall. He now had nothing to do, except administer a division which no longer existed. All he was doing was reading nineteenth-century novels and waiting for his $500,000 superannuation while Maria and her child faced a hostile future you could optimistically call uncertain.

‘Does he talk to you now?’ Gia began to sweep the little coloured pieces of electrician’s cable into the dustpan.

‘He never didn’t talk to me,’ Maria said, ‘and don’t start that.’ She wanted to leave the office and get on with it.

‘Is he nice to you?’ Gia asked, sweeping stubbornly.

‘Gia, I don’t just want to stand here. Let’s just do it, quickly. Please.’

‘You think I want to hang around here?’ Gia emptied the dustpan into the wastebin and started going round the piled-up books wiping the dust off the covers with a Kleenex tissue. ‘Is he paying for anything?’

‘This baby is my mistake, not his. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at me. Now I need to get into Max Hoskins’s office.’

‘Sure.’

‘You said you could unlock the doors.’

‘Only the front door, only the lift to the floor.’

‘O.K.’

Maria picked up the hammer from the top of the filing cabinet and walked off down the hall. By the time Gia found her she had fitted the claw beneath Max Hoskins’s door and was levering upwards. ‘Kick it,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Gia, out of breath. ‘We can’t do this.’

‘You hold the hammer. Push it down.’

Gia sighed and held the hammer and Maria slammed her shoulder hard against the door.

‘Careful. I don’t want you to go into labour.’

‘Again.’

This time the door ripped open.

‘This is break and entry,’ Gia said, rubbing at the splintered wood at the base of the door. ‘This is not some prank. This is like a violation … If you want to punish Alistair, you should do something to hurt him, not you. You need this job.’

‘This is nothing to do with Alistair. I’m just damned if I’m going to let the department make me into someone I’m not. Gia … please … I need to get at Max’s terminal and then we’ll go back to the Brasserie and I’ll buy you a glass of champagne. If you want to wait for me there, that’s fine, really.’

‘Just hurry, O.K.’

Gia watched from the doorway as Maria took out Max Hoskins’s day book and flipped it open. He had a standard ASO 7 office with a green-topped desk, a leather-bound desk diary, a view to the north, two visitor’s chairs. Only a tortoiseshell comb left on top of the computer terminal was non-standard and it had an unpleasant personal appearance like something found on the bedside table of someone who had died.

‘I got stuck with him,’ Maria said, ‘at that barbecue at Sally Ho’s place. He complained to me about all the terrible problems of running a department. You know, the way they changed his access code each week and he could never remember it. You know what he does? He writes it down. He writes his access number in his day book, back to front or something.’

Maria flipped on the computer terminal and punched the numbers into it.

The terminal stayed closed.

‘Well,’ Gia said, ‘I guess that’s it.’

‘You go,’ Maria said. ‘I’ll get it. It’ll be these digits plus one, or the entire sequence back to front.’

Gia could see the reflection of the screen on the polished wall behind Maria’s back. She could see the flashing panel on the screen which read Access Denied.

‘It can’t be too hard,’ Maria said. ‘He’s so dull.’

‘Dull but exceptionally secretive. Come on, please. Don’t do this to me, Maria. We can go to jail for this. You don’t even care who these Catchprices are. I mean, what’s the principle? I don’t get it.’

‘We’d both be a lot happier if you went back to doing what you believed in. I’m subtracting 1 from each digit.’

‘Maria, damn you, don’t torture me – I’m your friend.’

‘I’m subtracting 2.’

‘Don’t do a poker machine on me,’ wailed Gia. ‘I’ll never forgive you for that club in Gosford. Two hours with the creep breathing over your shoulder.’

‘We’re in.’

Maria rose from the keyboard with her hands held high above her head. ‘See! See! Access Records. Add New Records. Edit Records. We’re in. We can edit.’

Maria was the worst typist in the world. This was why Gia made herself walk into the office. She only sat at the keyboard because she wanted to get out quickly. She called up Edit Records. ‘How do you spell it?’

‘C-a-t-c-h-p-r-i-c-e.’

‘File number?’

‘Left it in the car. Call them all up. There. That one. Catchprice Motors.’

The last two entries were a record of Mrs Catchprice’s call alerting the department to irregularities and a File Active designation dated for this morning when Maria had left to begin her audit in Franklin.

Gia went through the file deletion procedure. She took it to the penultimate step where the screen was flashing Delete Record Y/N.

‘They’ll see the broken door,’ Gia said.

‘If there’s no file, there’s no job. Hit it.’

Maria leaned across Gia and hit the Y key herself. The screen lost all its type. It turned solid green. A single cursor began to flash and the terminal began to emit a loud, high-pitched buzz.

‘Run,’ said Gia.

Maria did not argue. She ran as well as she could run with the weight of her pregnancy. The air was dull and hot and the corridors were heavy with a dull, plastic smell like the inside of a new electrical appliance. Gia tried to go down the stairs. (‘They’ll get us. Jam the elevator.’) Maria pulled her into the lift. ‘I don’t want to use my key,’ said Gia, her little chin set hard and her eyes wide.

‘Use it,’ said Maria, panting. ‘The keys can’t be coded.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course not.’