Sucked In (22 page)

He didn't exactly look enthusiastic. Rain washed across the window, darkening the room.

‘I've told you the truth,' he said. ‘Cutlett was alive and well when Barry and I got to the Shack.'

‘Have it your own way then, Col.' I stood up. ‘But if anybody takes the fall over this, you can bet it won't be Barry Quinlan.'

Bishop gestured for me to sit back down. ‘He was alive,' he said glumly. ‘But he wasn't too well. He usually got blotto on the drive up from Melbourne, so we expected he'd be a bit the worse for wear, but we'd never seen him in such a bad way. He was sprawled on a couch, semi-conscious, groaning and grunting. Charlie said he'd slipped and hit the back of his head on the corner of the car door when they stopped for a roadside leak. His hair was matted with dried blood, but he wouldn't let Charlie near him to clean it up.'

So Charlie had told Margot the truth, I thought. Her blow with the lamp wasn't fatal. Merv must have come round at some point, probably while he was being bundled into the car. Charlie probably assumed that he'd recover on the way to the Shack. And when he got his wits back, he'd be both chastened and grateful that his behaviour with Margot had been covered up. That would also account for Charlie's fabrication about his condition.

‘The three of us got hold of him and tried to take a look, but that just stirred him up. Bastard kicked me in the shins.' Bishop rubbed his lower leg, demonstrating the precise location. ‘We waited until he flaked again, then dragged him into a bedroom and dumped him on the bed. We took off his shoes, tossed the bedspread over him, turned on his electric blanket and left him to sleep it off.'

‘But he didn't wake up?' I said.

Bishop took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his glasses, fully committed now. ‘We had a drink, went to bed. Next morning, it wasn't even light, I got up for a pee. On the way back from the bathroom, I stuck my head in Merv's door. He was flat on his back, just like we'd left him. Something didn't look right. All this gunk had leaked out of the back of his head onto the pillow. It was…' he smiled weakly, ‘very unpleasant. And he didn't seem to be breathing.'

‘So you woke up Charlie and Barry.'

He nodded. ‘We tried to revive him. CPR, mouth-to-mouth. It was useless. His body was warm but that was probably because of the electric blanket. It was set on high and it had been running all night.'

‘Why didn't you call an ambulance?' I said.

‘I wanted to,' Bishop said. ‘So did Charlie. He was at his wits' end. I think he blamed himself for not being more forceful. He thought if he'd got Merv medical attention earlier, he'd still be alive. But Barry didn't agree. It was too late for an ambulance, he said. Cutlett was obviously dead. It wasn't like they could bring him back to life.'

‘And Barry was concerned about the way it might look?' I said.

‘You know what he's like,' Bishop nodded. ‘Always one step ahead. Cutlett dying under those circumstances, at that time, alone with three of his known political adversaries. Years of patient work were at risk. Something like this could have made us pariahs in the union movement. Or laughing stocks. Or worse still, a bit of both.'

‘He told you that it would be better to stage an accident. Drop Merv's body in the lake, make it look like a tragic boating mishap.'

‘He was very persuasive.' Col Bishop stared down between his knees, studying the carpet. ‘Play it right and the body might not be found for hours, days even, he said. The head injury could easily have been down to a knock from the boat.'

‘What did Charlie say?'

‘Not much.' He thought about it. ‘Actually, he was a lot less resistant to the idea than you might expect.'

And so it was done. In the pre-dawn darkness, the boat was launched and the body loaded. Charlie and Barry pushed off onto the fog-shrouded lake while Bishop remained behind, lit the fire, burned the fluid-stained pillow and waited for the others to return.

‘Barry said they'd be back in fifteen or twenty minutes at the most,' he said. ‘But they were gone for much longer than that. A storm blew up and rain was bucketing down. I thought they'd capsized or hit a submerged tree or something.'

He wanted me, I could see, to understand what an ordeal this had been for him. That he, too, had shouldered his share of the terrible burden. The blank-faced window behind him was a tremulous, rain-streaked shimmer. A wintry pall suffused the small room.

‘It was getting light and there was still no sign of them. Then Sid Gilpin turned up. He'd driven part of the way the previous night, been breathalysed going through Seymour and the cops had confiscated his car keys. He'd had to spend the night in a motel before he could get them back.'

‘He was party to the planned discussions, was he?' I said.

Bishop shrugged. ‘I told him the story we'd concocted, that Merv had insisted on taking the other two out fishing and they were still somewhere on the lake. Then the boat turned up. They'd had trouble with the motor. Charlie was soaked to the skin and turning blue. His teeth were chattering so hard he could hardly speak. But Gilpin being there was a plus. You know, a witness from the other side. Barry said that Merv had fallen overboard and Charlie had jumped in and tried to save him. Merv had gone under and they'd lost sight of him.'

‘And Gilpin bought it?'

‘Hook, line and sinker. He tore back into the house to call the police and get a search happening, but the phone was locked. That's the way Merv kept it when he wasn't in residence. In case somebody broke in and used it to make free long-distance calls. The key must still have been on the ring in his pocket. Gilpin jumped in his car and tore off to the Barjarg roadhouse to raise the alarm. Barry gave them directions to where the accident had happened, misleading I assume, and they started to search.'

Bishop turned out his hands and stared me square in the face with his baleful owl eyes. ‘So there you have it. We kept it under wraps for twenty years. Stuck with our stories when the police interviewed us again last week. As far as I know, Charlie took it to the grave with him. You're the only other person who knows what really happened.'

He tugged back the flap of his academic gown, glanced at his watch and looked around the visiting fellows' office with an air of impatient captivity.

‘Sid Gilpin seems to have a talent for turning up,' I said. ‘He's done it again. The prospect of Merv's resurrection has got him all excited. He claims to have evidence of a scam at the Municipals.'

Bishop tilted his scarecrow neck sideways. ‘Such as?'

‘A pair of bankbooks,' I said.

‘Jesus,' Bishop snorted. ‘Not
them
again?'

‘Again?' I said.

Bishop squirmed in his seat. ‘I really should go back up and let myself be seen. My absence will have been noted.'

I'd overplayed my hand badly in the stairwell and getting this far had been sheer good luck. ‘Yes, of course,' I said, reaching for the door handle. ‘You've been very generous with your time.'

‘No need to get unctuous, Murray,' he said. ‘I've got more at stake here than you, or the Labor Party. Just let me get this academic rigmarole out of the way.'

We hurried along the deserted corridor, Bishop's gown swishing as we passed the empty tutorial rooms and silent offices of the Department of Outdoor Recreation. Evidently the staff and students were outdoors somewhere, recreating in the rain.

‘You remember how the union dues were collected?' he said.

‘The usual way, I assume. Payroll deductions.'

‘In most workplaces, public utilities, big municipalities and so forth, that was the case. But with some of the smaller employers, shire councils, say, it was handled by a union representative. The rep got a ten percent commission and a bonus for each new member signed up or every arrears brought back into the fold. Small beer, but a nice top-up for somebody on a base-grade wage.'

We reached the lifts and I pushed the button. ‘What's this got to do with the bankbooks?'

‘Those training programs you and I ran, they were very educational,' he said. ‘While you were back at base, filling ring binders with diagrams and photocopying course materials, I was doing more than raising industrial education standards among the toiling masses. I was doing a bit of digging.'

The lift arrived, empty, and we stepped in. Bishop firmed his university-monogrammed tie and donned his velvet sombrero. I hit the button for the top floor. The doors slid shut and the lift began its ascent.

‘I'd picked up some whispers that Sid Gilpin was extorting kickbacks out of some of the collection agents, threatening to give the job to someone else if they didn't pay up. He created the impression he was acting on Merv's behalf. But that didn't ring true to me. For all his faults, dipping into the till wasn't Merv's style. Charlie agreed.'

The lift doors opened. We'd been gone for a good half-hour and the crowd was thinning. A blue-edged gown, one of the big chiefs, spotted Bishop. ‘Ah, there you are!' he declared. ‘We've been wondering where you got to.'

Bishop cocked his scraggly beard in the direction of the balcony, indicating I should await him there. ‘I've been hiding from the paparazzi,' he declared jovially, allowing himself to be led away.

It was well past three and a hasty Tim Tam was the closest I'd come to lunch. I was hungry enough to fang the furry dice off a Ford Falcon. I fronted the buffet table, but the best I could scrape up were a couple of quarters of picked-over tuna and mayonnaise sandwich. I took the fishy cardboard and a styrofoam cup of tea onto the balcony. The rain was back down to a fine drizzle and I savoured my repast with my back against the wall, sheltered by the overhanging eaves.

A string of flat-topped boats chugged up the river and parked in front of the casino. Entertainment stages, I wondered? Fireworks launch platforms? Premier Geoffries' royal barge on a practice run? I thought about Lanie, wiped the fish oil off my fingers and got out my phone to check my messages.

No joy. But while I had the phone out, I rang Fliteplan. As instructed, Margot had gone home. I'd call her there later, see if she was okay. It had been a busy and relentlessly informative morning. I wondered what I'd got myself into.

After a while, the drizzle stopped and people came out onto the balcony to look at the view or smoke cigarettes. I had one myself, just to be sociable. The crowd had drifted away and the caterers had started to pack up when Colin Bishop appeared, now minus the bonnet and frock.

‘Where were we?' he said, leaning on the balustrade beside me.

‘Cutlett and Gilpin,' I reminded him. ‘Corruption and bankbooks.'

‘Ah, yes,' he nodded. ‘Poor old Merv. Behind that gruff exterior he was a deeply lonely man, you know. His war service had cost him his youth and his long-term health. Politics alienated him from his family—hard-line Catholics, the Cutletts, rabidly right wing. His wife divorced him and he bullied his daughter into a life of domestic begrudgery as his housekeeper. He couldn't relate to women at all.'

You don't know the half of it, I thought.

‘The union was his entire life, but men like Charlie Talbot were trying to steal it from under him. Technocratic types spouting jargon about rationalisation, consensus and the social wage. Gilpin was just a bottom-tier organiser, an exgarbo, but he read Merv like a book. He got alongside him, pandered to him, drank with him, made all the right noises. Played Tonto to Merv's Lone Ranger. Gave him loyalty and got trust in return. Not to mention a meal ticket.'

Col had obviously become quite reflective since his pro vice-chancellorship, but while this psychologising was all very interesting, it wasn't exactly germane. And the cold wind blowing up the river was threatening to freeze my nuts off.

‘The bankbooks,' I prompted.

‘Yes, of course.' Bishop swerved back to the point. ‘Charlie didn't believe that Merv was corrupt, but he knew a trump card when he was dealt one. He got me to put together a full dossier on Gilpin's little fiddle. Names, amounts, statutory declarations, the irrefutable works. Then, at the height of Merv's intransigence on the amalgamation issue, Charlie showed it to him. Quietly, in confidence, and out of deep concern for his reputation.'

In the past five minutes, I'd learned more about the Federated Union of Municipal Employees than I'd picked up in all the months I'd worked there.

‘Merv realised that Charlie had him by the short and curlies. Not only was he unaware of what was happening in his own office, he was at risk of having his reputation trashed in the eyes of his members. At that point, he stopped stonewalling and began to seriously negotiate the terms of his departure. What he wanted, above all, was to retain his dignity and his historic connection with the union.'

‘A seat on the board and an appropriate honorarium,' I said. There was one cigarette left in my pack. That made a total of six smoked so far that day, well over my limit. We're all dead men on furlough, I told myself. Turning my back on the breeze, I cupped my hands and lit up.

‘Gilpin knew there'd be no golden parachute for him,' said Bishop. ‘So he'd bought himself some insurance, just in case Merv ever got backed into a corner. He opened accounts in Charlie and Barry's names at the bank across the road from the Trades Hall. You remember how easy it was in those days. No ten-point checks or photo ID. A gas bill was enough for most banks. Gilpin channelled his kickback earnings through the accounts, making it look like Charlie and Barry were trousering regular pay-offs of some sort.'

‘Pretty smart,' I said.

Bishop stroked his beard and nodded. On the street below us, I could see a busker in a kilt playing the bagpipes at the underpass entrance to Flinders Street station. Fortunately, he was too far away to be heard.