Sucked In (11 page)

‘But you're not dismissing him out of hand,' said Inky. ‘So either you've got a lot of free time or there's something you haven't got around to sharing with us.'

Valentine eyed me sideways. ‘Is he always like this?'

‘Dyspepsia,' I said. ‘It makes him crabby as all hell.'

Valentine twiddled his Wee Willem. ‘What happened to our quid pro quo?'

Inky picked up his stout, poured a long draught down his throat, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded.

‘I've been given to understand the rozzers are making enquiries about the Municipals' old membership accounts,' he said.

Valentine was nonchalant, wheels turning in his hairless head. ‘Interesting.'

‘Is it?' said Inky. ‘Why?'

The journalist made a show of mulling his response. Then he leaned forward and dropped his voice, drawing us into his huddle.

‘Because it might tie into something else the boys in blue are keeping very close to their silver-buttoned chests. Something a little birdie told me about those remains.'

Inky and I leaned closer, elbows on the table, all ears.

‘It's a dry argument.' Valentine sat back and surveyed the bottom of his glass. ‘A man could perish.'

As I fought my way back through the press of bodies, crab-gripping three glasses, the corner of a bag of peanuts clenched between my teeth, my phone began to ring.

I let it ring off to voicemail and deposited my load.

Inky had gone for a slash, leaving Vic to hold the table. The journalist picked up his beer and nodded towards a guy coming through the door, a beefy young lump in a buzz cut and Cockney-crim pinstripe suit, tie loosened, eyes darting around the room like startled goldfish.

‘My next appointment,' he said. ‘Jason's in the wholesale pseudoephedrine business, or so it's been alleged in a slate of charges currently before the County Court. He's taking me to see a man about a dog. Or maybe it's vice versa.'

Jason spotted the journalist's chrome dome and began homing in. Vic flashed him ten fingers, buying us some time, and the speed-vending slugger veered off to join a group of hyperactive boyos who were hogging the pool table.

Inky returned, drying his hands on a handkerchief. ‘So, Vic,' he said sceptically. ‘You were saying?'

Valentine tore open the bag of Nobby's finest, laid them out on the table. ‘You know the Institute of Forensic Medicine? AKA the morgue?'

I'd done the tour, part of some committee or other. The place was new, state-of-the-art, disaster-ready. It was housed in the same complex as the Melbourne Coroner's Court.

‘Did they tell you about their in-house wireless communications network?'

I nodded, then explained to Inky. ‘There's an internal radio link between the autopsy suites and the typing pool. By the time the pathologist has rinsed his scalpel and binned his gloves, a print-out of his notes is ready for checking and signature.'

Valentine moved his head forward, again drawing us into a conspiratorial hunch. ‘That little birdie I mentioned, he's a technology buff. He's also a forensics fan. He likes to combine his two hobbies. He sits outside the Institute with a scanner and a set of earphones.'

He paused while we conjured the image.

‘Sick, isn't it? I really should report him to somebody. But he's harmless enough and whenever he picks up a transmission he thinks might interest me, he gets straight on the blower. Which is what happened last week after they brought in the hessian sack from Lake Nillahcootie.'

Inky's eyes were growing less twinkly by the second.

‘For what it's worth, I've got the tape,' continued Valentine. ‘The examination is categorised as preliminary but what it boils down to is this. Only the larger bones remain—pelvis, thighs, upper arms, cranium. Reasonably well preserved considering the passage of time and the ravages of the creepy-crawlies. The owner was a mature male aged somewhere over fifty, approximately 170 centimetres tall with mild osteoporosis. Teeth in the upper jaw were long gone, indicating the corpse wore dentures.' He paused and flicked a peanut into his mouth. ‘How are we doing so far?'

‘Fits Mervyn Cutlett's general description,' I said. ‘Shortish, right age group, probable chopper wearer.' Dentures were virtually standard issue for members of Merv's class and generation. You got a full extraction and a pair of clackers on your twenty-first birthday, save yourself further trouble and expense.

‘Now here's the interesting bit,' said Valentine. ‘Wear on some of the bones consistent with rope friction. Plus trauma to the parietal plate in the form of a circular perforation of approximately six millimetres diameter.'

He leaned low over the table, displaying the bare back of his depilated noggin. Using the tip of his miniature cigar, he gave it a sharp, demonstrative tap.

‘Conclusion,' he said. ‘He'd been tied up and shot in the back of the head.'

My eyes widened in disbelief. ‘You've got to be kidding.'

I tore the parking ticket off my windscreen and read the penalty by the light of the lava lamp bubbling in the nearest shop window. Fifty bucks, straight down the toilet. Inky shovelled a handful of Quik-Eze into his face and grunted.

Across the street, outside the Toilers Retreat, I could see Vic Valentine getting into an illegally parked BMW, his dope-dealing informant Jason behind the wheel. ‘It's extortion, pure and simple.' I squinted up at the four paragraphs of fine print on the parking sign.

The implications of Valentine's startling revelations about the pathology examination were still sinking in. They were alarming, unfathomable and as welcome as a prawn cocktail in a kosher deli.

‘The whole idea's ludicrous,' I said. ‘If the remains are really Merv Cutlett's, then Charlie Talbot and Barry Quinlan must've shot him and dumped the body in the lake.

Assisted by Colin Bishop. We've got two MPs and the pro vice-chancellor of a university guilty of murder and criminal conspiracy. It beggars belief. Did they kill him somewhere else? Did they lure him up to the Shack and do it? Did something happen while they were there that escalated? Where did they get a gun? Who pulled the trigger? It's patently absurd.'

Inky nodded. ‘You don't kill somebody over a union amalgamation,' he pointed out. ‘No matter how tempting.'

Which was what we'd told Vic Valentine when he dropped his bombshell. And he admitted that it did seem an unlikely scenario. Fortunately, for the moment at least, he wasn't actively pursuing the story. For a start, the pathology report wasn't publishable, given its provenance. And the remains were yet to be definitely identified as Cutlett's. Matters were now in the hands of the Homicide Squad and he was content to let the story play itself out before writing it up.

Meantime, he had the imminent outbreak of a gang war to occupy his attention. The Beamer peeled away and we watched it disappear down the street.

‘What do you think Gilpin's playing at?' I said, pocketing the poxy parking infringement notice.

Inky's mind was elsewhere. ‘I think it might be a good idea if you had a word with Barry Quinlan,' he said.

‘Me?' I asked. ‘Why me?'

He crunched his antacid and gave a choleric scowl. ‘Me and Bazza aren't exactly Bogie and Bacall. It's a long and tedious story dating from the Hawke–Keating showdown. Suffice to say, I wouldn't get through the door.'

‘Yeah, well,' I said grudgingly. ‘So happens I'll be seeing Quinlan on Monday. You think it can wait until then?'

‘It's been waiting for nearly twenty years, it can wait another couple of days. No point getting our underwear in an uproar. Like the man said, it's still provisional.'

‘If this is what it looks like…' ‘If this is what it looks like, it's going to be the shitstorm from hell. We don't want to find ourselves anywhere near it.' He held out his arm and a taxi pulled up. ‘You hear anything else, let me know.'

And on that less-than-illuminating note, the leprechaun climbed into the cab and fucked off, leaving me holding the crock. And it most definitely wasn't full of gold.

The street was coming alive with dreadlocks, pierced appendages and ravenous vegans. I fished out my mobile and called Red. The lad was at home, divesting the refrigerator of its remnant leftovers before heading to a farewell party. His mate Tarquin was flying out on Sunday for six months' study in Japan.

‘Say sayonara from me,' I instructed. ‘Don't get wasted. Don't take any of my beer. And be home by one-thirty.'

‘Are we still on for the driving thing tomorrow?' he said. ‘The weather report says fine and mild.'

‘We'll see,' I said. ‘But all bets are off if you're not home before curfew.'

I checked my voicemail. I got the last caller first.

‘This is Detective Constable Stromboli, Mr Whelan,' said a male voice. ‘Homicide Squad. If you get this message before eight, please call me back this evening.'

By ten to eight, I was at the northern limits of the Coolaroo federal electorate, out where the tract housing finally gave way to market gardens, stud farms, small wineries, golf courses and bare paddocks. Tullamarine Airport was ten minutes behind me, a phosphorescent glow in my rear-vision mirror.

The house stood at the end of a gravel driveway, both sides planted with rows of vines, a curtain of natives shielding it from the road. As I turned off the asphalt at the letterbox marked TALBOT–FOLLBIG, my headlights swept the outbuildings.

First the old dairy shed in which Charlie turned his minuscule
vendage
into Chateau Coolaroo, a quaffing red guaranteed to put fur on the tongues of his Christmas list of friends, colleagues and constituents. Then a triple carport, swathed in Virginia creeper, where his maroon Lexus was parked beside Margot's Audi and a little red Mazda 323 that I assumed belonged to the young woman who looked after Margot's daughter Katie. And finally the chateau itself, low, sprawling and unostentatious, the brick of the original homestead rendered in whitewash.

Katie heard my car arrive. She was waiting behind the screen door, her chubby face beaming.

‘Mum, Mum,' she called. ‘It's Muh-ree.'

I waited for her to open the screen, knowing she liked to do it herself. She was almost thirty, stocky in a dusty-pink tracksuit, with the slanting, ageless eyes that announce Down Syndrome.

‘Hello, Katie.'

As I stepped inside, I touched the back of her plump hand. She went shy, blushed and gave me a disconcertingly coquettish look. I followed her rolling gait into the living room, a welcoming space with muted lighting, soft cushionstrewn couches and a large refectory table from which Margot rose to meet me.

Her eyes were tired, her face was scrubbed and her ash blonde hair was drawn tight behind her ears but she was still easily recognisable as one of Mavis Peel's girls from the FUME office. The original Charlie's Angels, the big-hair brigade.

‘Murray,' she said. ‘Good to see you.'

We hugged gently, motionless in each other's embrace. Television sounds came low from somewhere deeper inside the house and Katie's carer appeared.

‘Hello, Sarah,' I said, remembering the girl's name. She was a serious young insect with bobbed hair and glasses, a part-time student who lived in a self-contained flat attached to the house.

‘Hi,' she said. ‘C'mon, Katie. Let's say goodnight to Mr Dobbs.'

They disappeared, off to the stall where Katie's elderly pony was stabled.

Between them, Charlie and Margot had done well. Their pooled resources had funded a comfortable set-up and Margot would never need to worry about money. But it had been a struggle for her, especially in the early years. A single mother, a disabled child, no formal education past secretarial school. And now what? Picking up the pieces, facing the future alone, the material comforts scant compensation.

‘Help yourself to a drink,' she said, sliding open one of the glass doors onto the flagged patio that overlooked the side lawn. ‘Let's have a fag.'

There was an open bottle of white on the table beside a heap of unopened envelopes. I got a glass from the usual cupboard.

We stood, wine in hand, smoking and staring into the darkening space where they'd pitched the marquee that summer day, eight years earlier, when she and Charlie finally tied the knot.

‘How's Katie taking it?' I said.

‘She's still waiting for him to come home, I think. It's all a bit much for her to grasp.' Margot exhaled hard and sucked her cheeks, holding herself back. ‘I think I'm still waiting, too. But that's normal, isn't it?'

A dead partner, that was something else we had in common.

‘You never really get used to it,' I said. ‘But you get on with it.'

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘It's just…' The sentence trailed off and silence hung between us, more expressive than words.

She abruptly extinguished her cigarette, screwing it into a terracotta pot-plant saucer on the heavy redwood garden table. ‘You'll stay for dinner, I hope.' She started back inside. ‘I've got a lot of casseroles need eating.'

The refrigerator was stacked with funerary meats. Gestures of sympathy in plastic tubs and floral pattern Corningware, the offerings of neighbours, friends and constituents. A fortnight's supply at least.

‘Got any tuna mornay?' I scanned the collection. ‘Apricot chicken?'

‘Don't be mean,' tutted Margot. ‘You'll eat what you're given and you'll like it. Open another bottle while I heat something up.'

She blitzed some condolence stew in the microwave and we sat at the big refectory table and poked at it. I asked about her plans.

‘Back to work,' she said. ‘Everyone's been wonderful, of course. Staff, clients, everybody. But the place won't run itself. Or maybe it will, which would be even worse.'