The Big Ask (24 page)

‘This whole fiasco is my fault,' he insisted. ‘Wait for my signal, okay? If you haven't heard from me by Thursday, go to the coppers anyway. Until then, do whatever you'd normally do. And, listen mate, I can't tell you how sorry I am for the trouble I've caused you.'

After extracting an oath that I would obey his instructions, he gave me a parting slap on the shoulder and disappeared along the back lane. I stood there watching him go, wondering how long it would be before I saw him again. Wondering, too, if Frank Farrell had whispered into Bob Stuhl's ear yet. Or the ears of those who had Bob's ear.

Donny's decision at least had the virtue of being a plan, or so I told myself. A desperate plan, to be sure, however, one that would allow me to meet the twin terrorists' demands. I slept a bit easier that night. But not before double-checking the locks on all the doors and windows and leaving a light burning in the living room.

By the next morning, Saturday, spring's cautious reconnoitre had become a full-blown advance. The sky was a blanket of baby blue. For the first time in months, the sun shed warmth as well as light. The air refreshed rather than braced. Blossoms emerged from swelling buds with an almost audible pop.

It wouldn't last, of course. It never does. Soon the rain would return, blooms would rot on the branch and Antarctic fingers would again stick themselves up our trouser legs. But, according to the forecast, we could reliably expect at least another five fine days. By then Donny would be out of harm's way and I'd be down the cop shop buying a reprieve with a lying oath. Until that moment arrived, I did as Donny had urged and pretended things were normal. It was either that or take up permanent residence under the bed.

Sunday was Father's Day, a fact which had escaped my attention until Red woke me with a tray. Rock-hard boiled eggs, desiccated toast and a little gift-wrapped something from the Sox'n'Stuff spring sale. ‘You shouldn't have,' I said, pleased as Punch.

‘They said you could change it if you didn't like it.'

‘Not like it?' I was scandalised by the very idea. ‘A tie like this could stop a charging elephant.'

We spent the afternoon in the park playing frisbee, intermittently discussing Red's career plans. Acting, he thought, or maybe directing. Possibly special effects, pyrotechnics maybe.

Donny rang while we were out, left a message on the machine saying that everything was on track. He'd soon be in that warm place we discussed. As a peace-offering to Heather, he was making a final run, a one-off job up the bush, too good to pass up. On the road, I thought, was probably the best place for him. Out of town was out of sight.

A week remained of the school holidays. A bike was bought for Red. Skateboards cluttered the yard. The television stayed on continuously. We hosted an all-night sleepover for a bunch of the guys. And I went into campaign mode.

I realised, of course, that my imminent confession to conspiracy to pervert the course of justice would do little for my standing in the community. That was a hit I would take to see Donny safe. But until that moment arrived, I buried my fears in the most prosaic pursuit I could imagine. Cold canvassing for votes.

I erected a collapsible card table in my bedroom by way of an interim office, broke open the membership lists and began grubbing among the grassroots.

As I tested the litmus of Angelo's standing, I found the situation much as Lyndal had described. While he was far from universally popular, his status as the sitting member ensured that most of the troops felt obliged to support him. Either that, or they took their cue from ethnic heavyweights who delivered blocks of votes in return for the kind of largesse that could only be dispensed by a government minister. But Ange's footings were not set in quite as much concrete as he might have hoped. With the electoral tide ebbing, there was a growing mood of recrimination within the ranks. And, with patronage reaching its use-by date, some of the clients were sniffing about for fresh sources of pork.

Lyndal was siphoning some of his support, mainly from areas that I, too, was targeting. While many of the comrades agreed in principle that the party should beef up the participation of women, they saw in Lyndal a bit too much of the self-serving apparatchik. Uppity chick, in other words.

On Monday evening, while Red was playing Nintendo at Geordie's place, I toured Melbourne Upper branch meetings, pitching to tiny gaggles of true believers huddled in underheated supper rooms at Mechanics Institutes and municipal libraries. On Tuesday morning I took coffee and biscotti with Maestro Picone,
eminence grise
of the Italian senior citizen set. In the afternoon, I bought drinks for members of the local schoolteacher intelligentsia at a popular after-work watering hole. I also rang Ayisha Celik at the Migrant Resource Centre.

Back in my days at the electorate office, Ayisha ran the Turkish Welfare League. Over the years she and I had done the odd favour for each other. Not quite as many as I would've liked, but that's the way the kebab crumbles. Now, according to the word around the traps, she was Lyndal Luscombe's campaign manager.

‘Mr Shifty,' she said, in her lilting wog-girl voice. ‘We wondered when you'd be in touch.'

After a bit of banter, I raised the subject of a meeting with Lyndal. Ayisha proposed lunch the next day in the restaurant in the National Gallery where a competingcandidate
tete-a-tete
was unlikely to be observed by some motormouth from Melbourne Upper and fed into the rumour mills. I knew the place well from the days when Angelo was the arts minister and I dabbled in the cultural mysteries.

‘Tell Lyndal I'm looking forward to seeing her again,' I said.

‘Put it back in your pants, Murray,' joked Ayisha. ‘Or I'll have you arrested.'

‘Too late for that,' I said. ‘I'm already planning to surrender myself to the authorities.'

Red had just left for a reciprocal sleepover at Geordie's place when I switched on the six o'clock television news. I was only half-listening as I fixed myself a cup of coffee and it took me a moment to register the headline story. Something about the discovery of a body that morning in the cabin of truck on a remote backroad near Warracknabeal, 400 kilometres north-west of Melbourne.

The boiling kettle screaming in my ears, I spun around to face the set. A helicopter shot panned across a truck parked in a stand of she-oaks on the shoulder of a dirt road beside an endless paddock of yellow-flowered canola. A white Kenworth with blue trim. According to the newsreader, the dead man had been identified as Donald Maitland, a fiftytwo-year-old truck driver. He had been shot in the head at point-blank range.

I cut the gas beneath the kettle. The words and images struck me like a series of rolling punches.

A reporter with a handheld mike stated that the truck had been there for two days before a local farmer made the grisly discovery. And that a suicide note found in the cabin connected Maitland to the recent high-profile slaying of Darren Stuhl, son of transport magnate, Bob Stuhl. A hand gun belonging to Darren Stuhl, missing since his death, had been retrieved from the truck.

A suicide note? Where had that come from? It could only have been extracted under duress. Threats? Torture?

Inspector Voigt appeared, standing near the truck with his tie flapping in the wind. In gratified tones, he told a cluster of reporters that he believed speculation about Darren Stuhl's death would soon be laid to rest. His inference was clear. The police believed that Donny had killed Darren, then blown his own brains out with the dead man's gun.

By the time the bulletin moved to the next item, I was punching Donny's number into the phone. The line was busy. I rang at five-minute intervals for the next hour with the same result. The seven o'clock news brought no additional information. Same story, same spin.

I tried again to reach Jacinta or Heather but either the phone was off the hook or they were under siege. Family, friends, the media, whoever. I called police headquarters and asked for Inspector Voigt, hoping that the homicide chief was back in town. My name was taken and I was put on hold. After a long wait, Noel Webb came on the line. ‘What do you want, Whelan?'

‘To talk to one of the grown-ups.'

‘About what?'

‘About this story you're feeding the media. Donny Maitland would never top himself. It's just not plausible.'

‘Gun in one hand, suicide note in the other,' said Webb. ‘Looks pretty plausible to us.'

‘And very convenient, too. Gives you a result in the Stuhl case. I saw Donny just a few days ago and he definitely wasn't suicidal.'

‘Always the expert, aren't you?'

‘I know Donny.'

‘And do you also happen to know what Darren Stuhl looked like when they scraped him off the ground? What a man looks like after the rear wheels of a ten-tonne truck have rolled over him? Try to picture it in your tiny mind, Whelan. Try to imagine doing that to another human being. Think what it'd be like to see that image every night when you close your eyes. Then tell me it mightn't start to eat at you.'

‘I don't believe that Donny killed Darren Stuhl and I don't believe he killed himself.'

‘Believe what you like. Us dumb coppers, we believe the evidence. Maitland was aggrieved at being sacked by Stuhl Holdings. Stuhl junior threatened him with a gun. He had the motive, the opportunity and the means.'

‘What means?'

‘Any blunt object, plenty of which were readily to hand. Anyway, it's all academic now. He left a handwritten confession. Said he couldn't live with himself any more, after what he'd done.'

‘It must have been coerced out of him.'

‘I know he was a mate of yours,' said Webb, ‘but face facts. Ever since Darren Stuhl's death, Maitland's been acting in a highly erratic, unstable manner. He concealed information. He was an unco-operative witness. Last week, a building he was leasing burned down. A cigarette, he said. Petrol, according to the fire brigade. He claimed his union had colluded with Stuhl Holdings to get him sacked. The real cause was drinking on the job. His body, by the way, was found with elevated blood-alcohol levels. You want me to go on?'

What could I say? That I could provide different explanations for all of those events, mostly based on information I'd concealed from the police?

‘Perhaps if you'd been more forthcoming about your own relationship with Maitland, things might've turned out different,' said Webb.

‘What do you mean?'

‘You seem to think we've been sitting around here for the past three weeks with our thumbs up our quoits. Maitland's bank records show he received money from the transport ministry, funds that you authorised immediately after the events at the market. Nobody else in there knows anything about it, only that you wanted it done urgently.'

Again, there was nothing I could say. So I didn't say it.

‘If you want to go down this road, Whelan, be my guest. I'll put you through to the chief. But I doubt very much if he's going to reopen the case on your say-so.'

‘You haven't heard the last about this,' I said.

‘I won't hold my breath,' said Webb.

I hung up and stood staring down at the phone, sick to the core. Donny Maitland had paid too high a price for his mistakes. And now the only eyewitness to Darren's killing was dead. Any attempt I made to set the record right would be dismissed as the hearsay testimony of a self-interested party.

Conjecture about Donny's last moments flooded my brain. By what vile means had the confession been extracted? Had he begged for his life? In his position, I would've gone down on my hands and knees and blubbered like a baby.

But outrage and indignation were not the only emotions washing over me. I also felt relief. Bob Stuhl had found his sacrificial victim so I was off the hook. The shotgun men had no reason to return.

And with the relief came guilt. Spider Webb was right. I was not without blame. Donny had given me Darren's gun to throw away. Instead, I'd used it to betray him. And then I'd thrust it back into his hands, to become both the method of his execution and the means to conceal it.

This was all down to Frank Farrell. The prick would be hearing from me. And he wouldn't like what I had to say. First I needed a drink. Opening the kitchen cupboard, I reached for the Jameson's, untouched since Donny and I had broached it together four nights earlier.

The glass touched my lips and I wondered if one drink would be enough.

When the bottle was empty, I lurched to the pub on the corner for another, my head spinning in the rush of night air. The stars looked down at me from infinite space. We are tiny, they said, but you are insignificant.

Bob Stuhl, on the other hand, was big. And the CEO of Stuhl Holdings had heavy buffers. Nobody would ever be able to tie him directly to Donny's death. The dirty work had doubtless been done by men who performed tasks for people who arranged things for blokes who did favours for guys who occasionally played golf with friends of a friend of Bob's former chief mechanic's cousin. Probably the same men who had come calling on me.

But Bob's minions had got the wrong man. And, come the dawn, I'd make it my business to find a way to bring that fact to his attention. Then Bob's vengeance would descend on Farrell. In time it might even be possible to make the great panjandrum himself pay for what he'd had done to Donny. In the meantime, I sat in the dark and poured liquor onto the fire blazing in my brain. The fire raged and I danced around it, plotting my revenge. Standing at the lemon tree, I pissed into the hole where the gun that killed Donny had been buried. Had it still been there, I would've dug it up and made my way to a certain French provincial mansion in Toorak.

As I staggered inside it occurred to me that the phone was ringing. ‘Is that you, Whelan,' said a voice. ‘It's Frank Farrell here. I just wanted you to know that Bob was very appreciative of your information. He's forgiven you for not coming clean with the cops. Says to tell you it's evens now. Live and let live. He says he's sure you'll understand, being a father and all.'