The local media organ that spoke with a voice like thunder to the inhabitants of Koala Bay, the Koala Bay Bugle, was in a cramped set of rooms in a nondescript, red-brick building above a bargain shoe store a few steps away from the commercial centre’s main drag. A block east was Surf Road, the beach car park and a large surf lifesaving club of crumbling concrete. The club looked out on a fine white surf beach and small bay, Koala Bay, skirted with trees and guarded by two rocky promontories. The first settlers had found the bay area covered by trees which provided food for a substantial community of koalas, but now the only koala to be found in the area was in the name.
Going the other way, west, from the thriving commercial centre was several kilometres of suburbia where the news-hungry readers of the Bugle lived. Mostly isolated from the general sweep of Sydney suburbia by tracts of bush that had been spared from the developers, Koala Bay was a quiet and prosperous community.
Any visitor to the community’s newspaper who opened the street door, as Miles did on that first day, found a set of narrow and steep wooden stairs which went up to a shared corridor. On one side of the corridor was an insurance broker, and on the other was the Bugle’s grim offices. There was more of the Bugle Group’s trade mark green carpet and wood paneling, but the chairs were several steps closer to a junk yard and the desks looked like old-fashioned, half-sized kitchen tables badly painted a light brown.
On that first day Miles entered from the front door, rather than via the rear stairs which led to the building car park (not that he was allowed to use the car park, but it also led to a back street where parking was free). On the front desk in the first room was Kelly, a very young girl who was good looking in a washed-out sort of way, with red-streaked blonde hair. Her main topic of conversation, as Miles soon found out, was her boyfriend. Kelly introduced him to the office manager, Ros (short for Rosalind), who grinned inanely at him. She was a short, plump, plain women with a mop of curly, reddish-brown hair and flat, brown eyes. In season and out she wore tweed-pattern dresses and a succession of plain shirts of varying shades.
“Hope you’re better than the last one,” she said, without any preliminaries. “Other one was a real pain. A real whinger.”
“Um, right!” said Miles, remembering Justin saying he would not have much to do with the admin staff. Ros led him off on a tour of the office. She gestured at one very large room indicating that it was her private office, then showed him a cramped room adjacent to the reception room, in which sat Kate, who sold the advertising. She had greying hair and a permanently worried look but flashed Miles a nice smile. Then he was led to an ex-storeroom into which, in defiance of fire regulations, had been crammed two elderly desks for the reporters, separated by an equally old filing cabinet. The cabinet was topped by a printer which printed from the bog-standard PCs on each desk. The right-hand desk, furthest from the room’s single, tiny window had obviously been vacated, bar a couple of anonymous stacks of documents, a computer, and a stained off-white phone with a headset.
The room already had an occupant. At the left-hand desk, nearest the window, sat a blonde girl wearing earphones attached to a music player on her desk. She had been typing away but as they came in, she stopped typing to wave her hands around in the air, apparently in time with the music. Ros tapped her on the shoulder. She turned, taking off her headphones and flicking her long, blonde hair in a way that Miles found distracting. Her long hair framed a narrow, oval face with high cheek bones and dazzling blue eyes.
“This is Angela who you’ll be working with,” said Ros, “She’s a real treasure.”
“I’m Miles,” said Miles, putting on his best winning smile and holding out his hand.
Her blue eyes rested on him for a split second, her lips twitched in what may have been a smile and she touched the proffered hand. Then she turned away and started to put her earphones back on. Miles was taken aback.
“You have any stories for me?” said Ros. Reluctantly Angela let her earphones drop and even went so far as stopping her player, before handing over two sheets of paper, with tiny stories on them. Ros read both items with apparent concentration, and handed them back. “They seem alright.”
Miles wondered what was going on.
“I see all stories, Miles.”
“You do?” Miles was astonished by this.
“I do,” said Ros in a decided voice. “And keep the door open, and I don’t want anything hung up on the walls in here.”
Miles had wondered why the room had looked bare. The directive was so ridiculous that it even distracted him from the question of Ros seeing stories. “Why not?”
“It’ll spoil the look of the place.”
Miles laughed out loud, to Ros’s obvious puzzlement.
“In this hole? Ros, this is a store room in need of paint. Couple of posters might lift the place.”
“Excuse me, I’ve seen the Mayor sit in that chair,” she pointed indignantly to the one other item of furniture in the room, besides the reporter’s desks, chairs and the filing cabinet – an orange plastic chair wedged under the narrow window beside Angela. Anyone who wanted to use it would have to squeeze by Angela and then move a stack of past issues of the Koala Beach Bugle onto the floor. “I won’t have him staring at pictures of rock stars and half-naked women.”
“Ros if he’s in that chair he’s already in a store room down the back. Why don’t we use that big office up the front for interviews. We’ll have more room and we can put posters up here.”
“That’s my office, thank you very much,” snapped Ros. “I can’t have reporters cluttering it up. Important business is done in there.” She turned and left muttering about whingers.
“Nice people in the city,” said Miles half to himself and half to Angela who had condescended to listen, hoping that Ros might allow posters to be hung on the wall. He turned and realised that she was reaching out to start her player again. “Just before you start the music again…”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“Don’t doubt it, but I wanted to find out stuff about the newspaper on which we both work,” he emphasised the last few words, “if you have time”. She half shrugged and quarter-smiled, as if to imply that she really knew what Miles was up to but did not start the player. “Like, when is deadline day?”
“What day?”
“When do we have to get our stories in to Eve?” Justin had introduced him to the sub editor, who also happened to be chief sub editor, but she had been in a hurry to finish work on another paper and there had been no time to ask about basic production details.
“Who? – oh – um, dunno. I just write ‘em and send ‘em.”
“I see,” said Miles. “Well, what sort’a stories do you write?”
Another half shrug. “Stuff that comes in. Stuff from council. Go to the cops on Monday.”
“As in today?”
“Uh huh!”
“Did you get anything?”
“Anything what?”
“Stories. Stuff to write for the paper.”
“Go in about half an hour. Never get anything much. They take me into their tea room and have coffee – all the cops and detectives sometimes too, ‘cept the woman detective.”
Miles was sure this was the case. “So if you get anything from this cosy talk with the cops, when do you have to put it into the system?”
“Before lunch.”
“So I guess the deadline’s Monday lunchtime. A lot of stories have to be done by Friday to keep the subs quiet about copy flow.”
“Guess so!”
She was plainly tiring of this conversation. Being the shrewd country lad that he was Miles had already made a fair estimate of Angela’s worth as a reporter. He had also come to the regretful conclusion that they were unlikely to ever be soul mates, but he still wanted a few snippets of information from her.
“Before you get back to your music; the stuff you showed Ros, do you mind if I have a look too?”
She handed them over.
“These are community notices,” said Miles. “Why did Ros want to see them? Justin never said anything about someone up here vetting stories?”
“She’s office manager.”
“So – does that mean she gets to vet community notices, or anything else? Does she write anything?”
Another half shrug and another puzzled look. “Don’t think she writes.”
“So how do ya reckon the Bears will do?”
“The who?”
“The local football team. In this community notice you’ve printed out for Ros you’ve said they’ve got a pre-season match Saturday week against a Newcastle team.” Miles turned the notice in question around to show her. “It says ‘Koala Beach Bears’ and ‘Match’, and since the football season’s starting soon I guess it’s a football team.”
Angela looked at him blankly, both hands on her ear phones ready to put them back on. “I don’t follow football.”
Miles sighed and put the notices back on her desk, then turned to his own. He switched on his computer to find that there was nothing to find out about it. He looked at the paper’s website, which allowed users to look at that week’s front page stories. That was about all the group had in the way of a library system. His first call was to the South Forest head office to ask about Ros. He got to Bronwyn.
“Yes Miles,” said Bronwyn, in a resigned voice.
“Is Justin there?”
“He’s in a meeting, what do you want?”
On his first day in a new job, Miles bit back a sharp reply.
“Well, I need to talk to him. The office manager here is saying she has to vet stories.”
“That’s right. She does.”
“She does?”
“You heard me.”
“Look, I really need to hear this from Justin.”
“Well, I’m telling you that’s the procedure there. Ros has a position of authority. She’s trying to build the place up so she needs to check the stories.”
“How can checking the stories help her to do that?”
“That’s not for you to ask. That’s the way it is.”
“Justin never mentioned any of this to me. I was told I report to him and my stories are to go to Eve.”
“She’s the sub editor.”
“I know that! And I know Justin’s the editor in chief, but he never said anything about Ros.”
“I just told you who she is, she’s your boss. You have to do what she says.”
“Look, I need to hear this from Justin. He said I wouldn’t have anything to do with admin here. Have him call me.”
“It’s not going to change.”
“Then he’ll tell me that. Have him call me.”
Miles then called Eve.
“Listen, what’s the deal with Ros up here?”
“Oh, she and Jan were always arguing. Ros was always telling her not to run stories.”
“And did she run them or not?”
“Sorry, I dunno.. all I know is that the stories she sent were weak. We always had to use stuff from the other papers as leads. Never had anything good. Every time I said something she complained about Ros, but I didn’t take it very far. You don’t get time to talk much with the reporters in this job. One paper after another, you know how it is. But I don’t think she was very good.”
“What does Justin say about this?”
“Umm.. I don’t see Justin much. We handle a lot of papers here. Why don’t you try Ellen at Lovett Bay? I think she and Jan use to talk a lot.”
The Lovett Bay Bugle served the patch of suburb adjacent to Koala Beach and also had its own editorial office. As it was a much bigger paper and its area included the Lovett City council chambers – the headquarters of the local government area that also included Koala Bay - it had three journalists, including a trainee. Ellen took about half an hour to return the call and proved to be a cheerful person with an obvious Kiwi accent.
“So you’ve found out about Ros have you?” she said when Miles explained the problem.
“I dunno if I’ve found out anything yet. How come she’s looking at stories.”
“She use to drive Jan mad the way she was always checking her stories. She’d even get into her system at night and Jan‘d come in, in the morning and find comments on her stories. She only stayed a few weeks because of Ros.”
“So is Ros entitled to look at the stories? What does Justin say about this?”
“Justin agrees, so Jan said.”
“He does? It’s a strange arrangement?”
“It certainly is?”
“Does your office manager look at stories?”
“No way – we don’t really have one anyway, the sales manager and receptionist split that job between them.”
“Then why here?”
“I don’t know, but I do know that Ros is the managing director’s sister.”
“WHAT!”
“Have you spoken to Justin?”
“Left a message. He hasn’t gotten back to me. All I got was Bronwyn insisting that Ros has authority over stories.”
“Jan tried for weeks to speak to Justin I know that. She was almost going to try the union.”
“But she didn’t?”
“Her boyfriend got a job in Perth and she decided it was easier to move with him than keep arguing with Ros.”
“So she never got to speak directly to Justin?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Hmm, okay. Do you speak to him?”
“Try to avoid it. The only time you ever hear from him it’s trouble and if I want something like more staff, even replacement staff, resources, pay rises, I don’t get them so I’ve given up asking. I was told it use to take a full union strike to get a pay rise at the group but no-one’s a member of the union now so no strikes.”
“Just what a boy from the bush wants to here.”
They talked on for a time, then Jan said, “Why don’t you come up here for the usual few drinks afterwards on a Friday. That’s just after deadline for us; we go half a day earlier than you. A few of the journos from South Forest come up, so you can talk about this stuff.”
“Sounds good, see you then.”
In short order Miles called the other two group titles adjacent to his own, including the South Forest Bugle, where he encountered Tom. All the other reporters he had spoken to where roughly in his age group but Tom, to judge from the timbre of his voice, was closer to retirement age than Miles was to his 21st birthday. He was also a well-educated man with a keen eye for the ridiculous.
“I’ve never heard of that one,” said Tom. “The Bugle Group do some strange things, and hire some strange people – there was a reporter years ago who use to expose himself out of the back window of one of the offices.”
“WHAT!” Miles was not sure he wanted to be told that.
“The other reporter on the paper only found out about it when the police came. He was a Baptist too.”
“The one exposing himself or the other one?”
“The flasher. Anyway, I’ve never heard of an office manager looking at stories. But then the Bugle Group is such an odd place because no one checks on what’s happening in the branch offices, least of all Justin. So people out there can do anything.”
“’cept expose themselves.”
Tom chuckled. “Except expose themselves out the back window.”
After speaking to Tom, Miles sat for a few moments looking out of the tiny window for a few moments, wondering what he had got himself into. Angela still had her ear phones on and was still typing heaven knew what – Miles suspected email. He turned back to his computer and phone.