Something Fishy

by Shane Maloney

  Sergeant Pendergast was waiting outside the cop shop, lips compressed, thumbs hooked in his belt. There’d been developments all right. ‘Your car’s been located,’ he announced. ‘It’s parked near the Cumberland River caravan park, twenty kilometres back along the Great Ocean Road. It’s been there for several hours, apparently.’

  My shrivelled dick shrivelled further. I stared at the copper, struggling to understand. I was back to square one.

  ‘Somebody must have moved it…’ I said.

  The sergeant raised his hands, cutting me short. ‘This obviously raises a number of questions, Mr Whelan. But I’m sure we’ll soon get some answers. A member of the Syce Task Force is on his way from Melbourne to take charge.’

  Was he bringing a straitjacket, I wondered? A ticket to the funny farm? Or just the Victim Liaison shrink, ready with some on-the-spot counselling for the bitter and twisted Murray Whelan, headbanging fantasist.

  I nodded bleakly. ‘The car?’

  ‘For the moment, we’d prefer to leave it where it is,’ said the sergeant. ‘If you don’t mind.’

  As if I had any choice. I felt hollow inside. I must have looked it. Pendergast took pity on me.

  ‘This time of year,’ he said, ‘Christmas and whatnot, it can be very emotionally difficult for some people.’ The sergeant twitched his moustache in the direction of the cop shop. ‘You can wait inside. We’ll get you something to eat if you like.’

  At the mention of food, I felt a sudden ravenous hunger.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll have an orange juice, two fried eggs, bacon, mushrooms, grilled tomato, wholegrain toast, a selection of jams and a black coffee with sugar. And a cigarette, thanks.’

  ‘Best we can do is a cup of instant and a slice of cold pizza I’m afraid, Mr Whelan. This isn’t the parliamentary dining room.’

  Delving into my cling-shrunk shorts, I confirmed that my cash was still there. ‘Maybe I’ll just pop down the street,’ I said.

  The sergeant dispensed an indifferent shrug. ‘Better make it quick,’ he said. ‘The officer from Melbourne will be here soon.’

  ‘I’ll try not to keep him waiting.’ I hoisted my shorts, turned and hobbled away in my borrowed flip-flops.

  It was getting towards nine and the early risers were up and about. The pock of ball on catgut came from the tennis courts on the foreshore. A man with a bowling-ball beergut was hosing the footpath outside the pub. Couples pushed toddlers in strollers. Kerbside parking places were filling fast. The air of normal life seemed discordant, bizarre.

  As I trudged back down the hill towards Mountjoy Parade, I contemplated my situation, seething with frustration. The business with the car had trashed my fragile credibility with the coppers. This dick from Melbourne had been dispatched to hose me down. At best, I might be able to persuade him to contact Immigration and have Tony Melina’s name put on a passport watch list. An immediate full-scale manhunt for Syce was clearly out of the question.

  There were other law-enforcement buttons I could push, of course. Corporate Affairs. The tax department. But that was a long-term approach. In the meantime, Syce would slip through the net again.

  I found breakfast being served at tables on the terracotta-tiled terrace outside the Cumberland Resort. Some of the other customers looked a little the worse for wear, although none of them came near my level of unkempt. The waitress asked for cash upfront when she took my order.

  As I peeled off the notes, I recalled that I’d left my wallet under the seat of the Magna. Where it had probably been found by whoever moved the car. An image came to me of Rodney Syce in Bali, spending up big on my Visa card. But there was more than plastic in my billfold. As well as a creased ultrasound Polaroid, it also held my driver’s licence and the rent receipt for the holiday house.

  So, chances were, the person who moved my car also knew my name, my face and where I could be found. Was I being watched, even now? By Jake Martyn, perhaps? The mystery ingredient.

  My eggs arrived. I wolfed them, warily scanning the dog-walkers and newspaper-buyers as they strolled past. Cars cruised the strip, the sunlight from the ocean searing their windows.

  Lucky the boys weren’t at the house, I thought. I’d have to get out of Lorne, of course. A draft agenda began to take shape. Deal with the cops, try to persuade them at least to organise a helicopter sweep of the camp area and have the airport watched. Get my car back. Pick up the boys as arranged at midday. Should I phone Faye and Leo, I wondered, who were due to arrive later in the day?

  A man appeared on the other side of my toast. Wiry and fiftyish, he wore shorts and a threadbare tee-shirt. A towel hung over his shoulder as if he’d just come from an early-morning swim. Without asking, he pulled out a chair and sat down.

  ‘Murray Whelan?’ He squinted at me with a kind of cockeyed leer.

  Straggly greyish hair hung to the nape of his neck. His face was tanned and weather-lined. It was a face I had seen before, I realised, nearly gagging on my multigrain. Just once and very briefly. But I remembered. It had been a memorable occasion. The owner of the face had been tossing the finger over his shoulder from the helm of an escaping shark-cat.

  There were maybe thirty or forty people in the immediate vicinity, sipping coffee, browsing newspapers, nursing hangovers.

  ‘There’s witnesses,’ I said, loud enough to turn heads. ‘Try anything, these people are witnesses.’

  The abalone poacher looked at me like he’d been warned that I was somewhat eccentric. He chuckled, letting the onlookers know that he was in on the joke. At the same time, he made a small placatory gesture with his hands, stroking the air between us.

  ‘My associates are hoping for a word.’ He spoke softly, reasoning with me.

  ‘I’ll bet they are,’ I said. ‘But if you think I’m going anywhere without a fight, pal, you’d better think again.’

  He furrowed his brow, disappointed and perplexed at the vehemence of my response.

  ‘Before you make a scene,’ he said, ‘I suggest you take a look at this.’

  He took something from his pocket and placed it on the table between us.

  It was a business card.

  The logo of the Department of Natural Resources was embossed at the top. Printed beneath it: Bob Sutherland— Director, Fisheries Compliance.

  ‘Bob said to remind you, if need be, that you met him a couple of months ago in San Remo. He’d like a few minutes of your time, if possible. He’s a couple of minutes’ walk away.’

  I picked up the card and studied it. It looked real enough.

  ‘So you’ve got Sutherland’s card,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t prove he sent you.’

  The man shrugged, stood up and handed me a mobile phone. ‘Ask him yourself.’

  He strolled away and stood on the footpath, a hand shading his eyes as he stared across the road towards the sea.

  Two phone numbers were printed on the card, office and mobile. I punched in the office number. Sutherland’s voice said he wasn’t at his desk, that I could leave a voice-mail message or call him on his mobile. The number was the one on the card. I dialled it.

  It was answered immediately. ‘Sutherland.’

  ‘Murray Whelan,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks for calling, Mr Whelan. Excuse the cloak and dagger. Appreciate a few minutes, face-to-face.’

  ‘What’s this about?’ I said.

  ‘Nutshell, hope you can clarify some matters.’

  Typical skewiff priorities, I thought. Sceptical about my tale of a wanted fugitive, murder and mayhem, the cops report the shellfish-rustling aspect to the fish dogs.

  ‘The police have been in touch, have they?’

  ‘Not as such,’ said Sutherland after a brief pause. ‘Far as we know, they’re not aware of our presence in the area.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  ‘Coastal communities, all kinds of connections, family and whatnot. Word gets around pretty quick, fish dogs in the neighbourhood.’

 
; That wasn’t what I didn’t understand. ‘So how did you know where to find me?’ I said.

  The lank-haired man was watching me keenly, not pretending otherwise.

  ‘Strayed onto our radar,’ said Sutherland. ‘And like I said, we think you might have information of interest.’

  Damn fucking right I did. This was manna from heaven. If the cops didn’t believe me, perhaps the fish dogs would. I’d thrown up on his boat and been seen with Dudley Wilson, but at least Sutherland didn’t think I was a fruitcake.

  ‘I’m just up the road,’ continued Sutherland. ‘My man will show you where.’

  ‘With the department, is he?’ I said.

  ‘Not as such,’ said Sutherland. ‘Technically.’

  ‘Seems familiar,’ I said.

  Again, a pause. Then, ‘Employed by the Abalone Industry Association, the licensed divers. Liaises with us, enforcement-wise. See you soon.’

  He hung up. The man in the falling-apart tee-shirt tilted his head sideways, a question. I nodded. He began to walk away.

  I downed the last of my coffee and followed, weaving through the foot traffic. Twenty paces up the street, outside Tourist Information, I fell into step and gave him back his phone. ‘You work for the licensed ab divers?’

  He nodded, not stopping.

  ‘Liaison with the fish dogs?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘Doing a little liaising down Cape Patterson way a few months ago, were you?’

  He looked at me sideways.

  ‘You must be mistaking me for someone else.’

  I heaved a heartfelt sigh of exhaustion. ‘I’ve been a member of the Labor Party for more than twenty-five years,’ I said, ‘so I’ve been bullshitted by grand masters. And I’ve had a long night. I’m not in the mood to be treated like a moron.’

  We were passing a surfwear shop with racks of swimsuits on the footpath. New Year Special, announced a sign on a bin of footwear just inside the front door.

  ‘Give my regards to Bob Sutherland,’ I said. ‘Tell him maybe some other time.’ I turned into the shop, rummaged in the bin and selected a pair of rubber-soled strap-overs. I paid a not very special price and tossed my perished police-issue thongs into the wastepaper basket under the counter.

  My escort was waiting on the footpath. ‘Was it that obvious?’

  ‘Fooled me,’ I said. ‘At the time.’

  ‘What about Dudley Wilson?’

  ‘He was the target, was he?’ I said.

  ‘He’s the influential one. Ear of the Premier and all that. We thought it’d be a good way to dramatise the poaching problem.’

  ‘It was dramatic, all right.’

  ‘The guy overboard? Yeah, that was a real bonus. We only planned on a chase sequence and a bit of show and tell. But Wilson ended up believing he’d compromised a real operation.’

  ‘How did you know he’d insist on gate-crashing the expedition?’

  ‘Calculated gamble. And if he hadn’t risen to the bait, it would’ve been no problem to cancel. We were only fifteen minutes ahead of you. Bob would’ve got on the blower, pulled the plug. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’

  ‘I can see Sutherland’s motives,’ I said. ‘Fending off staff cuts. How about your lot? What was in it for the Abalone Industry Association?’

  ‘The same thing,’ he said. ‘Our members pay up to a million dollars for a licence, then find themselves competing with poachers. Complain that the resource is under pressure, we run the risk the government will respond by lowering the quota rather than beefing up the enforcement.’

  I was impressed. Behind his sturdy bosun exterior, Bob Sutherland was a crafty bugger.

  ‘So what’s all this about a hush-hush operation?’ I said. ‘Not another pantomime, I hope.’

  The pretend poacher shook his head. He’d said too much already. ‘Talk to Bob.’

  He moved ahead and I followed in silence, dodging pedestrians. At the corner of Erskine Falls Road, the shuttle bus arrived from the concert. A horde of tired-but-happy campers tumbled out, chattering in a range of foreign languages, several of which might have been English.

  We turned up the hill, tramping along the nature strip past a shop window where a woman in a sailor’s hat was arranging a display of distressed sheet-metal pelicans. After that, it was mostly houses. There were few other pedestrians and most of the road traffic was flowing the other way, down from the festival. It was a little after nine-fifteen, still almost three hours before I was due to pick up Red and Tarquin. A police divisional van came down the street. The driver was Constable Heinze from the wild goose chase for the Magna. I raised my forearm in a gesture of recognition as he cruised past.

  Just before the water supply reservoir, we entered a side road and went through a gate into a compound of utilitarian, shed-type buildings surrounded by tall trees. My guide indicated a door marked ‘Forestry Survey’, then turned and walked away.

  My skin was sticky with sweat and I was puffing from the hike up the hill. I was just a tiny bit short of sleep, standing alone on an apron of sun-baked concrete, not sure why I was there.

  I’d jumped at the chance to talk to Sutherland, who represented another way of getting at Syce. But now I was beginning to think I had been a bit rash. What if this was a set-up?

  ‘Appreciate your assistance, sir.’

  Bob Sutherland stepped from the doorway, hand extended. He was dressed for a round of golf. Pastel yellow polo shirt, beige slacks and a wide-brimmed white hat, shark logo on the band.

  He gave me the once-over, but said nothing.

  ‘I hope this isn’t another of your theatrical productions,’ I said. ‘No use lobbying me, you know.’

  Sutherland grinned. ‘Told you, did he?’

  ‘Sang like Pavarotti,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t shut him up.’

  Sutherland guided me to the open door. ‘Low on resources, high on resourcefulness, that’s us,’ he said. ‘And I’m not wasting your time today, sir.’

  The door opened into a room with frosted windows and a row of tables running down the middle. Grey steel map cases lined two of the walls. An all-in-one television–video sat on a desk, together with some kind of radio communications equipment. Looked like the fish dogs had borrowed the place from their tree-counting colleagues. A boyish bloke was sitting on the desk, legs dangling, murmuring into a mobile phone. About thirty, he wore hiking boots with khaki socks, shorts and shirt.

  Sutherland took off his Greg Norman hat and wiped his brow with the back of his wrist. ‘This is Geoff Crowden,’ he said. ‘Runs things for us in this part of the world.’

  Crowden snapped the phone shut and clipped it to his belt. He pumped my hand, a real eager beaver. Cheerful as Chuckie the Woodchuck. ‘You look like you could do with a cold drink.’

  Not to mention a shave, a comb, a change of clothes and twelve hours’ shut-eye.

  He reached into a bar fridge and tossed me a tetra pack of apple juice. I half-expected him to break out the trail mix and rub two sticks together.

  ‘So what’s this all about?’ I said, lowering myself into a chair at the table.

  Sutherland was propped on the edge of one of the map cases, hat in hand.

  Crowden climbed back onto the desk and picked up a clipboard. He leaned forward, bare elbows on his bony knees. When he spoke, his tone was formal, interrogatory. ‘You drive a dark green Mitsubishi Magna sedan?’ He checked the clipboard and recited the registration number.

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Your vehicle was observed in a remote location in the state forest last night.’

  I felt a surge of elation. ‘By who?’

  ‘Officers of this department.’ He turned the clipboard towards me, displaying a list of rego numbers, makes, models and times. ‘We have the area under surveillance.’

  ‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘That’s great news.’

  Crowden and Sutherland exchanged perplexed glances.

  ‘We’d like to know why you were t
here,’ said Crowden. ‘And if you encountered any other vehicles or individuals.’

  I wanted to leap to my feet and cheer.

  ‘Before I answer,’ I said, ‘can you tell me the target of your surveillance?’

  Crowden looked at Sutherland.

  Sutherland looked at his hat.

  ‘These enquiries relate to an ongoing investigation into a poaching and distribution ring,’ said Crowden. ‘You’ll appreciate we can’t say more than that.’

  ‘This ring,’ I said. ‘Does it include Tony Melina and Jake Martyn?’

  Sutherland’s hat was suddenly less interesting. His head came up sharply. ‘You know these individuals? You saw them last night?’

  I made the stop sign. ‘Another question before we go any further. The man with the beard, drives the Hilux utility. Is he still at his camp?’

  Crowden looked to Sutherland, got the nod. ‘That’s our understanding,’ he said.

  ‘You know who he is?’

  ‘First name Mick,’ said Sutherland. ‘Surname currently unknown. Plates on the utility were stolen. Wrecker’s yard in Colac. This matter—you know something we don’t?’

  ‘I know that I’m very grateful for your diligence,’ I said. ‘And I’ll tell you why.’

  I laid it out for them, pre-dinner drinks at Gusto to breakfast on Mountjoy Parade. The whole blood-drenched kit and caboodle.

  This time, there was no question of diminished credibility. The fish dogs listened without interruption, galvanised. When I’d finished, Crowden gave a low whistle.

  ‘Incredible,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what the police think, unfortunately.’

  Sutherland picked up the clipboard. ‘This should sort them out. Log of all traffic in that part of the state forest between 6 p.m. and 3 a.m.,’ he said. ‘The Hilux was also observed at the Gusto restaurant.’

  ‘And you had no idea that you were watching Syce?’

  Sutherland shook his head. ‘Came to our attention a year or so back, courtesy of our friend from the divers’ organisation. Seen to be a regular buyer of abalone and crayfish from small-time poachers along the west coast. Not a priority target at the time. Had our hands full with a major Asian gang. Then, lo and behold, up he pops on a video surveillance tape. Routine monitoring, carpark at the Cape Otway lighthouse. Same frame, Jake Martyn.’