The Big Ask (18 page)

‘Only that I noticed Stuhl was carrying one when we were scuffling.'

‘So why didn't you mention it earlier?' harrumphed Webb.

‘Because you didn't ask me.'

‘And what else haven't you told us?' said Voigt.

There was a scraping sound as One-Stop pushed his chair back. ‘My client,' he announced, ‘came here of his own free will and in good faith. He came to answer your questions, which he has done. He is not here to engage in hypothetical speculation or to play guessing games. If you have evidence to substantiate your allegations, I suggest you produce it and give my client the opportunity to refute it. Otherwise, I am advising him to terminate this interview forthwith.'

Spider ignored him. ‘Take this chance, Whelan. Clear the air. Don't dig yourself deeper into the shit.'

Voigt had stopped sniffling and the two cops were staring at me very hard. Their gaze was about as relaxing as Dr Freycinet's high-speed drill.

‘If Sergeant Webb wants to talk to my client again, Inspector Voigt,' said One-Stop, ‘have him contact me first.'

Voigt sniffed wearily and nodded. Spider backed away and sulked.

‘I'd like to go now,' I said. ‘If that's all right.'

‘Amateur theatrics,' concluded One-Stop. ‘That spanner wasn't even tagged for evidence.'

He made these reassuring remarks in the bar of the Golden Age Hotel where he took me for a stiffening belt after we left Citywest.

‘I told you Webb was threatening to frame me,' I said.

‘His
modus operandi
undoubtedly contains a degree of bluster,' agreed One-Stop, signalling for another round. ‘But I don't think you need worry too much. They've got no witness, no admission, no evidence and therefore no case. It's a hollow threat. Sit pat. If they want to talk to you again, they have to call me first.'

Heartening advice and a snip at eight hundred dollars. But I wasn't going to do nothing while Frank Farrell took advantage of the situation. As soon as I got back to the office I rang the United Haulage Workers.

Mr Farrell was not currently in the office, I was informed by a sing-song female voice. ‘Is it a pressing matter?'

‘It's pressing on me,' I said.

‘You could try his mobile. The number's changed. I'll give you the new one.'

I dialled the string of digits and Farrell came on the line. He sounded like he was speaking from inside an industrial vacuum cleaner.

‘It's Murray Whelan,' I said. ‘I'm calling to congratulate you on your good citizenship.'

‘The cops been asking you questions, have they?' he said. ‘I just told them what I saw, that's all. Why should I keep my trap shut for you? For all I know, you had a hand in it.'

‘That's bullshit and you know it,' I said. ‘Why would I kill Darren when you'd just offered to negotiate a generous compensation payment? Get real, Frank. You saw an opportunity to associate a member of Angelo Agnelli's staff with Darren Stuhl's death. Howard Sharpe and Mike McGrath must be very happy with your work. You know I had nothing to do with it.'

‘All I know is that you were sticking your bib where it didn't belong,' he said. ‘Don't tell me that you weren't at the market to connect with that stirrer Donny Maitland.'

I stared down at the floor between my shoes and wished I'd cooled down before I made this call. Spider Webb had stoked me up and I'd gone off half-cocked in Farrell's direction.

‘Anyway,' said Farrell benignly, ‘how do you know Maitland didn't do it?'

‘Thanks again for nothing, Frank,' I said, hanging up.

My gaze moved from the phone to the window. It lingered long on a flotilla of battleship-grey clouds while I considered my position. With a week remaining until preselection nominations closed and our deal went into effect, the last thing I wanted was for Angelo to discover that I'd been implicated in the death of Bob Stuhl's son. Fortunately, Ange was out of town until Wednesday, crawling cap in hand through the corridors of Canberra, hunting up federal finance for a raft of redundancy packages for public transport employees. After that, I could only hope that the cutting and slicing required by the Treasury bureaucrats would keep him busy.

And the best way to avoid further implications of collusion with Donny Maitland was to have no further contact with him, at least for a while. Donny was a big boy. Donny was capable of looking after himself. And I had loyalties closer to home. Red should be my most immediate priority.

Do what the man said, Murray, I told myself. Sit pat. And that's exactly what I did for the next seven days.

Sat behind the wheel of a number of bargain-priced second-hand cars, test driving prospective purchases. Sat through
Dances with Wolves
with Red. Sat in on a parentteacher information evening with Faye and Leo. Sat in Dr Freycinet's chair while he fitted my new porcelain crowns. Sat and wondered when Spider Webb would next appear on my doorstep. Wondered, too, who had killed Darren Stuhl. And why.

Sat on the phone and trawled for indications of potential challengers to Angelo's preselection. Only one blip appeared on that particular screen. A seventy-year-old ex-communist named Jack Butler. Old Jack was a seasoned activist, a perennial combatant in the ceaseless struggle for universal justice. He'd set up a group called Save Our Trains to campaign against government plans to close the Northern Line of the metropolitan rail network, a community resource that had been losing money since the day it opened in 1884. According to rumour, Jack planned to run against Angelo in order to focus opposition to the closure of the line.

But Jack Butler was a minor-league player. And as a single-issue candidate he represented no threat to Angelo's tenure. So had Angelo's finely calibrated antennae picked up evidence of a more dangerous contender lurking in the wings? Or was I simply the beneficiary of a bad dose of the heebie-jeebies?

On the afternoon before nominations closed, Angelo summoned me to his Parliament House office. ‘Perhaps you won't need to run after all,' he announced. ‘Apart from that old commo from Save Our Trains, mine's the only hat in the ring.'

‘Fine by me, Ange,' I said. ‘But it's play or pay. I'm sick of jumping through hoops.'

‘On the other hand,' he said, ‘nominations don't close until noon tomorrow. And it never hurts to have an extra iron in the fire.'

That settled, we got down to brass ballots.

The process employed by the Australian Labor Party to select its candidates for public office is fully understood by only three people. Two are dead and the other is still awaiting release back into the community. As far as the rest of us can work out, half the votes come from party members in the electorate and the other half from a panel elected at the state conference.

In this instance, the vote was scheduled to take place in three weeks' time when an exhaustive ballot would be conducted over the course of a weekend. Since Angelo's factional allies held a slim but firm majority on the central panel, he needed less than half the branch votes to reconfirm his nomination. Short of Nelson Mandela deciding to stand against him, the result was a foregone conclusion. Or so it looked.

My task was to muster the strays. Disaffected individuals, the shell-back left, up-for-grabs ethnics. Convince them that voting for me was the best way to send a salutary signal to the powers that be, then deliver their preferences to Angelo in the second round of the ballot. Easy money for three weeks' work. Better still, there was no penalty for failure. What could Angelo do, fire me?

‘You're an independent candidate with an open mind,' he instructed. ‘I don't want anyone to know what's really going on, including Lyndal Luscombe. By the way, she's waiting for you at the Southern Cross Hotel. I asked her to meet you, discuss the lay of the land.'

‘The lie, don't you mean?'

‘Bit late to get moralistic, Murray,' he said. ‘I'm headed down there myself to say a few words at the annual cocktail party of the Victorian Coach and Bus Operators Association. Let's go.'

A group of Labor parliamentarians were coming along the corridor as we stepped out of Angelo's office. When we were almost abreast of them, Ange turned to me, his face swelling with rage.

‘After everything I've done for you,' he sputtered, waving an upraised finger in my face. ‘You two-timing turncoat. Clear your desk and get out of my sight!'

As interested faces turned our way, I set my jaw angrily. ‘You're an incompetent disgrace, Agnelli,' I hurled back at him. ‘And the sooner the party wakes up to you the better.'

I stormed off, through the foyer and down the parliamentary declivity into the gathering twilight. Five minutes later, Angelo found me loitering in front of the Society restaurant. ‘I think they bought it,' he said. ‘But there's no need to get personal.'

We walked a block down the Bourke Street hill to the Southern Cross, once the city's only truly modern hotel, now just another airport Hilton, indistinguishable from dozens like it. While Angelo went upstairs to the Epsilon Room to bestow his benediction on the captains of the coach industry, I rang Red from the lobby and told him I'd be home a little later than usual. Then I went into the lounge.

The place was beginning to fill. The after-work trade, tourists in pre-dinner mode, business travellers on expenses. A blouse with puffy sleeves was inflicting show tunes on a Steinway in the corner. Felines, nothing but felines.

Lyndal was perched on a stool at the bar, glass in hand. A tad more dressed-up this time. Gunmetal grey suit, hem above the knee. A coastguard clipper. On the next seat, angled towards her, was a fleshy man with a nailbrush haircut, tie loosened, getting mellow.

‘Hello, Murray,' said Lyndal. ‘This is George from Hamburg. George has been buying me drinks. He thinks I'm a hooker. Isn't that right, George?'

Hamburger George made a noise like lobster climbing out of a hot wok, grabbed his room key off the bar, muttered something about time zones and beat a hasty retreat. As I took his place, I tried not to look at Lyndal's legs. Tried not to imagine lace and a hint of garter. ‘You're in fine form,' I said.

‘Nothing a conversation about Angelo Agnelli can't fix.'

‘Say what you like about Ange,' I said. ‘He has a rare gift for inspiring loyalty in his staff.'

‘Loyalty in his staff, rapture in the ranks.' She hailed the barman, a silver-haired lifer in a tartan cummerbund and matching bowtie, and ordered a gin and tonic. Her third, at least, judging by the emphatic flourish in her gestures. I booked a double Jameson's to catch up.

‘So how's he travelling?' I said. ‘The branches still solid?'

‘Solid?' Lyndal graced me with a wry twist of the lips, an arch of her sharp-edged eyebrows. ‘The local membership doesn't exactly regard itself as the Angelo Agnelli fan club, you know?'

‘Diversity of opinion is the lifeblood of the party. Any specific grievances?'

‘All the usual ones. He doesn't spend enough time in the electorate. He's out of touch. He's getting too big for his boots. The left think he's too close to the right. The right think he's a prisoner of the left. The Turks reckon he favours the Greeks, the Greeks the Turks, the Anglos the Italians.'

‘Business as usual, then,' I said. ‘Point is, can at least half of them be relied on to put their hands in the air for him when required?'

‘Will they do as they're told, you mean? Of course they will.' Behind her flippancy, the
lingua franca
of our trade, I could hear something else, a brittle contempt.

‘All that crap about gender equity,' she said. ‘Fact is, you men think that sex is just one of the perks of the job.'

We seemed to have jumped ahead a page. I wondered what she was talking about. Our drinks arrived. I took a snort and jiggled my ice cubes. Lyndal did likewise and stared at me like she'd been reading my mail. The items that come in a plain brown wrapper.

‘Christ,' I said, the loose threads coming together. Mike McGrath's crack about the Kama Sutra, Howard Sharpe's obscene finger gesture in a meeting that seemed to have happened a lifetime ago. ‘He's having an affair, isn't he?'

‘How do you know?' said Lyndal, astonished. ‘Is there talk going around? God, how embarrassing.'

‘Embarrassing?' I said. ‘It's almost unbelievable. Although you never know what some people find attractive. And there's the power thing, I suppose. Henry Kissinger and all that.'

‘He's not that repulsive,' she said, defensively. ‘I mean, I've slept with him, after all.'

Now it was my turn to be astonished. ‘You've slept with Angelo?'

She nearly choked on her drink. ‘Agnelli? Ugh, what gave you that idea? God, it'd be like fucking Toad of Toad Hall.'

‘So who are you talking about?' I said.

‘Who are
you
talking about?'

‘Angelo.'

‘Angelo's having an affair?' She looked at me like my marbles had taken a hike. ‘Who with?

‘I thought you might be able to tell me.'

‘Margaret Thatcher?' she hazarded. ‘Indira Gandhi?'

‘Indira Gandhi's dead.'

‘That just proves you can't keep a good man down.'

‘I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about,' I said.

She drained her glass, slid to her feet, tugged her hem down and smoothed her skirt. ‘This gin's going to my head,' she said. ‘And it's time the tonic went somewhere else.' She slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder and wove her affirmative way towards the amenities.

McTavish the Barkeep cleared the debris, wiped the puddles and laid out a bowl of complimentary nibbles. ‘Nuts, sir?'

I put a ten on the bar to reserve our seats and followed Lyndal's lead. The washrooms opened from a vestibule off the lobby containing a cigarette vending machine and a deep telephone alcove. By the time I lightened my load, I'd figured out that I'd been holding my telescope to the wrong eye.