scenes of mangled bodies on rocks could never put veteran newsmen off their tucker.
‘No, the chopper’s at Echuca for the wine story with Louise. Max, Liz and Dianne won’t be back to the station for another two hours. I’ve got a casual camera operator I could call in, but getting a chopper, even at mate’s rates, would cost me my left testicle. Well, that’s what The Hatchet would take if I booked it without asking him.’
O’Malley let his producer digest that information. He knew Deveraux didn’t like to upset station management. The Chief of Staff couldn’t blame him as The Hatchet sent memos every month demanding all departments cut their expenses or face more retrenchments. O’Malley was divorced, but Deveraux had a wife, three teenage boys with bottomless stomachs, and a large mortgage. They needed the story, but O’Malley guessed Deveraux wouldn’t jeopardise his job by bringing down the wrath of The Hatchet.
‘Okay, we know The Hatchet will say no, but we have to go through the motions. Call him and see if he’ll let the moths escape his wallet.’
O’Malley opened his mouth to protest about the futility of the gesture but was silenced by Deveraux’s raised hand.
‘We’ve got to cover our own butts as well, mate. If it blows up on Monday, and this guy turns out to be famous, we can say we tried to get another bird and camera to Lorne, but the skinflint said no.’
O’Malley nodded again as the last chunk of the second pie was demolished. He opened the treats bag and held up a chocolate brownie in bewilderment. ‘What the? Where’s the caramel slices?’
‘Sorry mate, they were sold out.’ Deveraux shrug ged. ‘Can this day get any worse?’
Seconds later, one of the opposition channels shoved his nose in the brownie, bursting on air with pictures of the Great Ocean Road from its news chopper. Deveraux dived for the remote on the COS desk and turned up the volume on the monitor. Naturally all four channels went to full noise. O’Malley snatched the remote back and muted the non-important channels, which were also getting a taste of the brown stuff.
The pictures showed a flattened vehicle upside down on the rocks with waves lapping nearby. Teams of police and rescuers loitered but no one seemed to be in a rush. The voice over for the pictures was more urgent, as if the reporter had dashed from the scene to the sound booth. She gave the same details as the online news source, although Tugga’s status, while still dead, had now been elevated to “famous’ ex pat New Zealand landscaper” and his Apollo Bay abode had become “luxurious”.
The cross lasted 30 seconds and promised more details of the horror crash at six o’clock.
Deveraux turned to his Chief of Staff. ‘We’ve got a new lead story. Put in a call to The Hatchet and spell it out that you need approval for another helicopter, camera op and reporter ASAP. If he doesn’t answer, as usual, leave it all on his voicemail.
‘Next, call every cop, ambo, rescue service and rock-walking group between Torquay and Lorne to see if someone had a camera on site – I don’t care if it’s mobile phone footage. We need more on that flattened ute. If they sound like they have half a brain, get someone to record a FaceTime or Skype interview as well. Put a note on our Facebook page for any motorists who might have had a peek over the side of the cliff. And track down that publican.’
Deveraux saw an editor returning from his lunch break. ‘Jacko! Make sure media ops recorded that news cross from the Richmond mob. If they did their jobs properly, grab the aerial shots of the crash site and work on a promo. I’ll get stuck into a script shortly.’
O’Malley did a double take. He realised what Deveraux had noticed on the opposition’s news promo, and what would ultimately save their day. The news footage wasn’t branded, obviously missed in the rush to get the raw footage to air first. It was a cardinal sin in the cutthroat media business of Melbourne. You had to stamp your station’s news logo over everything; with a swarm of news choppers around the crash site the pictures were bound to look similar. Who would know that their chopper didn’t arrive until late in the day – or not at all?
O’Malley pointed at the monitor and lapsed into his Irish vernacular. ‘Those boyos fucked up!’ But when he slumped back into his chair to make a futile call to The Hatchet he uttered a silent prayer. Please don’t ruin my day and have that eejit turn out to be a former All Black, or someone important.
Chapter 3
Four kilometres east of the excited newsroom an iPhone7 vibrated on a Tuscany-inspired desk. It was the South Yarra home office for Andrew Hackett, aka The Hatchet. Italian design features filled the villa that could have naturally blended into a hillside near Florence. Hackett loved to brag to visitors that it cost $4.3 million to build and furnish. Money was always in Hackett’s thoughts and he had assigned an hour of his Saturday afternoon to work on station spreadsheets. After-hours work was necessary in his high-powered job, but also pleasurable. Hackett was a numbers man at heart and loved the symmetry when everything tallied, as it should.
Hackett saw it was work that wanted his attention and chose to ignore it. He assumed it was the news chief of staff wanting approval to hire more crews for a breaking story. He glanced over 10 seconds later and smiled when his assumption was confirmed. Panic merchant!
Hackett was mildly curious about what the latest request might involve: a plane, an extra camera? Did they want to pay for sensational footage, which the seller would pass on to the opposition for half the price? The smile broadened as he imagined O’Malley cursing him aloud while he waited for the call to be answered.
Should he pick it up for a change and catch the neurotic COS mid-tirade? That would be a laugh. Hackett was aware of the newsroom’s nickname for him and it made him proud. I’ve chopped a few of those news wastrels.
Hackett had been employed three years earlier to turn around the financial state of the company. He had no experience in television production, but he was renowned in the business world for rescuing companies in dire financial straits. Hackett believed a television station shouldn’t be different from other businesses he had saved. Squeeze the outgoings and income rises. His battle plan was consistent: slash staff numbers and operating costs. The strategy always worked and it had made the 55-year-old extremely wealthy.
The phone stopped ringing so O’Malley was left to beg on voice mail. Hackett would do the right thing and at least listen to it before departing with Marianne, his wife, for drinks with Ferdy Ackermann, his best friend. Hackett wasn’t in the business of spending money unnecessarily. If he saved cash for the company it made more money for himself, thanks to a carefully crafted bonus scheme. Ironically, the company had improved from the dire predicament that had initiated his employment. Ratings and advertising rates were steady at his Melbourne operation, with an occasional boost when a reality show sparked online media outrage.
Significantly, Hackett’s scorched earth policy was working. Staff had been culled and those who remained were too terrified to complain, even when the toilet paper ran out. They still use their hands to wipe their arses in those oil-rich countries, don’t they?
The coffers were slowly filling again thanks to a raft of cheap reality TV shows, not that surviving staff would ever know that. International reality shows could be picked up for next to nothing, and back-to-back crime series kept viewers glued to their sets for hours on weeknights. Then there were the money machines; the programs that guaranteed audiences and advertising revenue.
Hackett knew the must-have programs in Victoria involved Aussie Rules football. Therefore, Hackett’s savings were
