Dead Cat Bounce

by Peter Cotton

  ‘And would Brindells have used the same dye on other jobs?’ I said. ‘I mean, would you find the same-coloured carpet in other places around Canberra?’

  ‘No way they’d do that,’ said Len, looking at me doubtfully. ‘That was an exclusive run, that one.’

  I looked at Smeaton and he smiled back at me, both of us chuffed at this apparent confirmation that Susan Wright had died up at the House. I looked at Len. The semi-scowl on his face told me he was about to set us straight.

  ‘As for where this lint came from,’ he said, ‘I really can’t say for sure. Possibly Parliament House. But those pollies, you know, they’re like you cops. Very particular types. They like their offices spick and span, so they get them vacuumed every night. I could spend half a day rolling around on the floors up there and still wouldn’t get half as much lint on me as this little bit. Yah know what I’m sayin?’

  ‘No, Len,’ I said, my guts in freefall. ‘Exactly what are you saying?’

  ‘I think it’s for sure that this lint is from Parliament House stock,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think it’s from up there.’

  Oh no. Snakes and ladders.

  ‘So where do you think it’s from, Len?’ I said.

  ‘Here’s what I reckon,’ he said, leaning in close. ‘It’s from offcuts.’

  ‘Offcuts? What offcuts?’

  ‘There were all sorts of offcuts from the Parliament House job. Bits of granite. Lengths of timber. Plasterboard and the like. The construction authority sold it all off to a few places around town, and then those places broke it down into smaller parcels and flogged it off to the punters. For souvenirs and the like. Some of it was absolute rubbish, but it sold — boy did it sell. One bloke I know got all the excess granite from the outside walls. He had it stacked up in a paddock out on the Captains Flat Road. Some big pieces, too. That sold so quick it was unbelievable.’

  ‘And don’t tell me. There were carpet offcuts, too.’

  ‘Too right there was. And we bought the lot. Barry here did, at least. Ended up with the equivalent of about ten rolls, didn’t you, Baz?’

  Waldeck nodded and smiled, but said nothing, enjoying the memory.

  ‘We had some little pieces and bigger bits,’ said Len. ‘And we put a notice in the local rag and sold the lot. Didn’t we, Baz? You remember. The place was crawlin’ with people. Most of it was gone by midday.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Waldeck, now looking a bit sheepish. ‘But I’m sorry, detective. Like Len says, it was all a bit mad in here that day, so it was strictly cash sales, and we kept no record of any of them.’

  Channel Four Live Cam

  Thursday 1 August, 8.30am

  Good Morning, Jean Acheson with the Live Cam, and Prime Minister Michael Lansdowne has told Breakfast Beat that security for senior government ministers and members of the opposition front bench will be beefed up following the murder of Environment Minister Susan Wright.

  And while the prime minister refused to go into detail, I understand that most of what he has in mind is contained in a Senate report on parliamentary security which he and his cabinet rejected earlier this year.

  That report proposed an allocation of four extra police bodyguards for the prime minister, two for each member of cabinet, and two for the opposition leader and his deputy, plus the introduction of dog patrols in the parliamentary precinct.

  When asked if Mrs Wright’s death had forced him to reverse his position on the Senate report, Mr Lansdowne said her murder had been a shocking lesson for everyone. We’ve got Morning Brunch coming up on the Live Cam. This is Jean Acheson.

  7

  THE PROBLEM WITH me sniffing around an old scandal like the Mondrian Affair was that some journo might get wind of it. The last thing we needed was for the media to rehash the whole business by linking it to our investigation. The government wouldn’t take that lying down, especially with the election so close. At the very least, they’d wheel out a senior minister to savage us. They might even get Lansdowne to do the job. And if they did that, he’d probably target me personally after our little chat on the phone.

  Back from Fyshwick, I had a quick read of the Security Commission inquiry into Mondrian, and then rang an old mate who I thought might have more information on it. Tim O’Brien and I had done three years at Woden station together. He’d gone on to the commission and was now running its compliance effort. Tim’s work phone went to messages, so I tried his home number and that’s where I found him, sick as a dog with the latest flu. I told him I was interested in Mondrian, but emphasised that it was all strictly hush-hush. He said he understood, and told me that he had a staff member who’d been an investigator on the Mondrian inquiry. He assured me that this Colin Wells could keep his trap shut, and gave me Wells’ mobile number.

  I immediately phoned Wells, mentioned Tim, and asked if we could talk face-to-face as soon as possible. Wells said he was happy to help, and we agreed to meet at Café del Sol in Garema Place. He said he’d be wearing a long, black coat and that he had a scraggy beard. The beard was why some of his mates called him Fidel, he said.

  ‘Fidel’ Wells was easy to spot when he entered the café. His beard was thin on his cheeks and thick under his chin. To my eye, the thing made him look more like an old-time Quaker than a Latin revolutionary. I signalled him over, and we ordered coffees and talked AFL till our drinks arrived. Then we got down to business.

  ‘I’ve skimmed your report on Mondrian,’ I said, ‘so I’ve got a fair idea of what you found. My question is, did you ever feel there was more to it? You know — things you could’ve got to if you’d been able to use thumbscrews?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Wells, smiling and shaking his head. ‘I mean, it’s possible that Mick Stanton got wind of the voucher scheme while he was working for Wright, but he said he didn’t, and we had no way of contradicting him. And as for Lansdowne, Stanton was adamant that he never talked shop with his uncle — not while he was working for Wright, nor later when he went to Mondrian. And Lansdowne backed him all the way on that.’

  ‘And Susan Wright? How’d you see her role in the whole affair?’

  ‘Innocent enough, I guess, if a bit naive. She supported Stanton’s claim that he had nothing to do with putting the voucher scheme together. And she said she didn’t know anything about his role at Mondrian, either. We had no evidence to the contrary. And, you know, these ex-political types parlay their contacts and knowledge into big bucks all the time. On the face of it, Stanton’s only sin was tipping his bank into a scandal.’

  ‘So everyone came out of the Mondrian affair virtually unscathed,’ I said, looking up from my notebook.

  ‘Not exactly everyone,’ said Wells. ‘Susan Wright’s senior person at the time took some big hits.’

  ‘That was Dennis Hanley?’

  ‘Correct. The voucher scheme was Hanley’s baby, and in the end it buried him. He was a big-picture person, but very poor on detail. Like, he left it to a junior person to examine the corporate beneficiaries of the scheme, and that effectively put the job on hold. The thing was, this mob’d only been in office for about a year at that stage, so the whole ministerial wing was more or less in chaos — everyone leaving it to someone else to do the necessaries. Well, in this case, the buck stopped with Hanley.’

  ‘So what happened to him?’

  ‘He lost his job. And it turned into a double whammy for him, because the story goes that he and Wright had been having it off, and she put an end to their affair once the scandal broke. She’d trusted him to look after her interests, and he demonstrated a shaky grasp of process. So he paid the price.’

  ‘And where’s Hanley now?’

  ‘Oh, I thought you’d know,’ said Wells, swirling the last of his coffee around in his cup. ‘He died a few months after we reported — so, about eleven years ago now.’

 
; ‘How’d it happen?’

  ‘He had a head-on with a stock transporter out on the Sutton Road. He was pissed at the time, but I understand not so pissed that he didn’t know which side of the road he should’ve been on.’

  ‘And Stanton’s dead, too, isn’t he?’

  ‘Ahh, so you do read the obituaries. Yeah, dead as well. He joined Mondrian as a lean and nosey go-getter, but after five years there, he was so fat and flatulent that his ticker just went pop.’

  Blood Oath subscription news

  Thursday 1 August, 10.00am

  PNG offers Oz aid, no bowstrings attached

  by Simon Rolfe

  Our nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, is a country we love to tut-tut about and lecture, especially when its law officers go AWOL in the face of a disorderly public. Now PNG has returned the favour, and you’ve got to love a dependant with a sense of humour.

  You see, the Commissioner of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary, Mr Iambakey Maladina, has offered to assist Australia in the hunt for Susan Wright’s killer.

  In fact, Commissioner Maladina says he has twenty officers who are ready and willing to travel to Canberra right now, and he reckons his men’s depth of experience would help bring the Wright investigation to a fast and fruitful conclusion.

  Long known as an organisation that appreciates a joke, the AFP has thanked Commissioner Maladina, but gratefully declined his offer.

  8

  FOR PEOPLE BUYING property, it’s location, location, location. For cops working an investigation, it’s walk, walk, walk, and talk, talk, talk. Cops in the ACT had walked thousands of kilometres since Wright disappeared, sacrificing their soles in several fruitless door-to-doors. Nor had the thousands of callers to our hot line delivered anything substantial. As a talker, I was mostly spared the walking, and that suited me fine. My first interview for the day was another Early Leaver — Susan Wright’s environment advisor, Marie Staples.

  According to my political mate Stevo, Staples had studied science at Sydney University, where she’d belonged to various left-wing groups, including one that published the Progressive Green Quarterly. She’d even edited the magazine for a year and sold it on street corners around Sydney’s CBD.

  But in her final year of study, Staples surprised her comrades by cutting all ties with ‘the movement’ and engrossing herself in her books. More were surprised when she graduated with straight As and got a job in the government’s National Environment Foundation.

  Staples’ mum had been at school with Susan Wright. The two had remained close, so when Marie Staples later got a job in Wright’s office, some people accused the minister of nepotism. However, according to Stevo, Staples had a lot more going for her than good connections. In fact, she’d shone in Wright’s office, thanks to her deep knowledge of all things green and her great negotiating skills.

  When Smeaton ushered Staples into the room, it was easy to see how she could win people over. In her late twenties, she was well formed and pretty, with a bob of blond hair that fringed her penetrating blue eyes.

  I began by asking her where she’d spent her time at Wright’s party. She said that, like most of the staff, she’d hung around the reception area, filtering journos, and monitoring the various comings and goings.

  When McHenry’s search team had interviewed Staples, she’d given one of the more graphic accounts of the argument between Susan Wright and Alan Proctor, so that’s where I went next.

  Staples said that at about ten-thirty she’d noticed Susan Wright in a huddle with Proctor and Sorby in the corridor outside the minister’s office. The next time she looked, Sorby was gone, and the minister and Proctor had moved to the end of the corridor.

  ‘Did you hear what they were talking about?’

  ‘No. The music was way too loud, and, you know, the minister and Proctor were real heavyweights, so when they put their heads together, everyone gave them a bit of space.’

  ‘And what happened then? Once their heads were together?’

  ‘Well, you could tell things were getting testy between them. The body language. And the way they were looking at each other. Especially the way the minister was looking at him — so pissed off. And at one point she really let him have it.’

  ‘You mean she shouted at him,’ said Smeaton.

  ‘She didn’t shout really. There was just a lot of, like, emotion in what she said, and it cut through the other noise.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘It was, “That’s not going to happen”, or, “That won’t happen.” Something like that. She said it loud enough so that people looked at her. That’s when the two of them went into her office. Simon Rolfe was with us by then, and, being a typical journo, he said someone should put their ear to the door. We all ignored him, of course, but I would’ve given anything to have been a fly on the wall in there.’

  ‘And Alan Proctor came out a bit later,’ I said, ‘and told his assistant, Janet Wilson, to go down to his office and get him a file.’

  ‘That’s right. From his security cabinet.’

  ‘He keeps his files in a special cabinet?’

  ‘Yes. The sensitive ones.’

  ‘The dirt files,’ said Smeaton.

  ‘That’s what some people call them,’ said Staples.

  ‘And how did Janet Wilson get access to this cabinet if it was secure?’ I said. ‘Did Proctor give her a key or something?’

  ‘No, Mr Proctor can open his cabinet remotely with his BlackBerry. And he can use the BlackBerry to release individual files in the cabinet, too. We’ve got the same system in our office, but our files aren’t as, ahh, interesting as Mr Proctor’s.’

  ‘And Proctor’s files — they’re big and red, and look a bit like a box. What else can you tell us about them?’

  ‘Well, we call them files, but, as you say, they’re more like oblong boxes. They come in various sizes, and they’re locked into individual slots inside a secure cabinet. The whole system’s pretty much standard in the ministerial wing these days.’

  ‘Okay. So Proctor got this box file brought up to him, took it into the minister’s office, and closed the door. What then?’

  ‘They were in there for about fifteen minutes, then the minister came out and she had Proctor’s file with her, as you know. And that was it. She said a quick goodbye and left.’

  I visualised the scene again: the minister with her hands full, pushing through partygoers, uttering perfunctory farewells as she headed for the door.

  ‘And you’re sure it was Proctor’s file she was carrying?’

  ‘Yep. A red, secured file from the PMO. We don’t see many of them up here.’

  ‘You left the party straight after the minister,’ said Smeaton. ‘And we’ve got you driving out of the Senate-side carpark at 11.27pm — a few minutes before the minister exited the building in her car. You got out of there pretty quickly, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I use the stairs rather the lift,’ she said. ‘And why did I leave straight after the minister? Well, I was tired, and I’m not much of a drinker. So I went home and was asleep by midnight. Sadly, there’s no one you can check that with.’

  Sad indeed. I put my eyes into neutral and lingered on hers. She stared back, waiting for the next question.

  ‘And where were you between eight o’clock on Tuesday night, and eight on Wednesday morning?’

  ‘I was at home. Alone again.’

  ‘Okay, just one more thing before you go. What can you tell us about Ron Sorby’s relationship with Susan Wright? Did they get on, as far as you could tell?’

  ‘Mmm, I’m not sure. They seemed fine to me. Why, what’s been said?’

  ‘Nothing. He was her senior person, that’s all, so their relationship is naturally of interest to us.’

  Staples n
odded, seeming to accept my explanation. And that was it for her — another Early Leaver without an alibi. With an environment minister dead, a former radical environmentalist had to rate a high level of interest from us. I escorted her from the building, intent on delving deeper into her past.

  Smeaton brought in some coffees, and then collected our next Early Leaver, Proctor’s deputy, Penny Lomax. Lomax made good eye-contact during introductions, and there was nothing passive about her handshake, either. I figured her as a person who was used to dealing with new and threatening situations. Or maybe she was just well prepared for this one. The only evidence of nerves was the way she constantly readjusted her glasses as we talked. But she was polite and to the point, and she was very pretty.

  Stevo hadn’t known much about her — just that she’d worked for a senior government backbencher before she’d joined Lansdowne’s staff. Lansdowne had been communications minister at the time, and Lomax’s computer skills had helped her leapfrog other contenders into the job. According to Stevo, Lomax and Proctor were close — so close, in fact, that she’d even been touted as a possible candidate in the election after this one.

  Like Staples, Lomax had spent most of her time at the party in reception. But unlike Staples, she downplayed the stoush between Proctor and the minister. I figured it was loyalty talking, so I moved on and asked about the file.

  ‘Do you have any idea what was in it?’ I said.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she said.

  ‘I understand it came from a special cabinet in Alan Proctor’s office. Do you have access to that cabinet?’

  ‘No. I work with some of those files, but Alan’s the only one who can access them at will.’

  ‘With his BlackBerry.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Do the files stay locked once they’ve been taken out of the cabinet?’

  ‘No. They’re not secure once they’re out of their slots.’