Greater Good

by Tim Ayliffe

  A rainbow lorikeet was sitting on a branch outside his bedroom window. He studied its green wings and the rich red, yellow and blue colours splotched like a child’s painting on its feathers. He was looking for something to distract him from the conversation that he had never wanted to have with his daughter.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘You know, Miranda . . .’ But he was here now – in the hole. Humiliated. At least, that’s how it felt.

  ‘You know . . .’ Bailey’s eyes were locked on the lorikeet. He couldn’t dare look at her now. He had to keep it in. ‘The one thing that kept me going during those months.’

  Another long, silent pause.

  ‘It was the sound of your laughter, Miranda. You won’t remember because you were so young. We played games together, sometimes in the middle of the night. Neither of us have ever really been good sleepers. I’d do anything to make you laugh – pull faces, hide behind pillows. Silly Daddy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Those were some of your first words – Silly Daddy.’

  At least, that was the phrase he remembered.

  If Bailey had turned around he would have seen the tears streaming down his daughter’s face. She couldn’t remember the games. All she could remember was loving him. Being loved by him. Even when he wasn’t there.

  ‘Silly Daddy.’ Bailey repeated the words, staring at the splotchy bird through the window. ‘I was a silly father, Miranda, missing all those years.’

  ‘Dad?’

  The lorikeet flew away.

  ‘Dad?’

  With nothing left to distract him, Bailey turned to his daughter. He quickly wiped his eyes. Crying wasn’t his thing. He usually found other ways to dim the pain, keep going.

  Without saying another word, Miranda walked over to her father by the window and wrapped her arms around him.

  The tears came and he let them fall, knowing that she couldn’t see. He wasn’t humiliated any more. He was relieved. It felt good making up for lost time.

  Eventually, he let go and turned away, using his shirtsleeves to dry his cheeks. That was enough honesty for one day, more than he’d ever shared before. Somehow, he knew that his daughter knew it too.

  ‘Thanks, Dad. You know I love you. Whenever you want to talk, I can listen.’

  Bailey should have felt weak, but he felt strong.

  ‘Okay, sweetheart.’ But he wasn’t ready to contemplate going through this again anytime soon. ‘I’d better get moving.’

  ‘What’s this work function?’

  Bailey looked at his watch. Five-thirty. It really was time to go.

  ‘I’ll explain in the car. Give me a lift?’

  ‘Sure.’

  CHAPTER 19

  The sun had already set by the time Bailey and Miranda walked across the broken glass at the front door and outside onto the street. A cool breeze shuffled the first of the autumn leaves along the footpath. Miranda shivered and wrapped a scarf around her neck. The cold weather was finally arriving.

  Bailey squeezed into the front seat of his daughter’s red two-seater convertible. ‘I love that we’ve got the same taste in cars.’

  ‘Dad, this is a 1971 Classic MG Roadster. The only thing it’s got in common with the pile of junk you drive is that it’s old!’

  ‘Beauty’s in the eye of the driver, my darling.’

  ‘You must have a soft spot for trash.’

  It was too cold to take off the soft-top and Bailey’s head was touching the roof. ‘At least I can fit in my car.’

  ‘Where’re we going, by the way?’

  ‘Art gallery, in the gardens.’

  Miranda turned the key, the engine faulted and burped, before spluttering to life.

  ‘Sounds a lot like the classic I drive.’

  ‘Just you wait a minute, old man.’

  She gently pumped the accelerator until the engine plateaued, settling on a purring rhythm.

  ‘Now, tell me your car hums like that, huh?’

  She revved the engine to make her point.

  ‘Similar.’

  She punched her father playfully in the shoulder. ‘You’re shameless!’

  Miranda steered the car into the street and tapped the volume button on her radio. The sounds of the Rolling Stones blared from the speakers.

  ‘That’s my girl! I managed to teach you something after all.’

  ‘You taught me more than that, but yeah, love the Stones.’

  Miranda was swerving through the traffic on Oxford Street like someone in a hurry.

  ‘Next time they’re out here, we’ll go.’

  A Rolling Stones concert with his daughter would be Bailey’s perfect night out.

  ‘Eightieth anniversary tour? Sure!’

  ‘Don’t say that. You make me feel old. I grew up listening to those boys!’

  ‘You’re still growing up listening to those boys!’

  ‘Touché. You also inherited my wit.’

  Miranda shoved the car into third gear and roared up the bus lane on William Street.

  ‘Daddy’s girl, Mum always said.’

  ‘Especially when you were naughty?’

  ‘Especially then.’

  ‘Your poor mum, the two of us – two of me! She deserves a bloody medal.’

  ‘Sure does.’

  ‘By the way.’ Miranda sounded serious. ‘Didn’t you want to tell me something about the police commissioner?’

  They had become so engrossed in the past that Bailey had forgotten all about David Davis. They would be at the gallery in minutes, so he got straight to it. ‘You sure he’s the bloke you saw with Catherine Chamberlain that night in the city?’

  ‘As can be,’ Miranda said, stopping at a traffic light and looking at him. ‘I walk up to Catherine to say hello. She didn’t look like she was with anyone. As I come up beside her, Davis turns and puts his arm around her shoulder, like they were a couple.’

  ‘Did you speak?’

  ‘Not really. He was drunk and she could see I was confused when he called her Ruby. Then he mumbled something about it being time to hit the hotel.’

  ‘Classy.’

  ‘I could see in her eyes that she didn’t want me there.’ Miranda was driving again, checking her mirrors and changing lanes as she spoke. ‘But she tried to overcome the awkwardness by introducing me as a friend from uni. He looked at me like I’m nothing and said – “Ruby, we’re leaving.”’

  Nothing. The reasons for Bailey to dislike David Davis were growing by the hour.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Not really. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it.’ Miranda reached across the gearstick and grabbed her father’s hand. ‘You know, when you’re checking if someone’s all right?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She mouthed the words “I’m okay”, then she was gone.’

  ‘Ever talk about it with her afterwards?’

  ‘No, it’s her business. I’m just the tutor.’

  Miranda steered the car round St Mary’s Cathedral and up Art Gallery Road.

  ‘Have you talked about it with anyone else?’ Bailey didn’t want Miranda getting any closer to this. ‘You need to remember. It’s important.’

  ‘No, Dad. Just you.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘Davis hooking up with a prostitute who winds up being murdered?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘A lot. That’s the short answer, anyway.’ He looked out the window at a bunch of kids kicking around a footy on the grass. ‘Exactly what, I don’t know. She may’ve been told something that put her in danger.’

  ‘Something Davis told her?’

  The possibility hadn’t occurred to Bailey. Was Davis sharing secrets during pillow talk too? Catherine Chamberlain was an intelligent girl. If she and Michael Anderson were an item, it wasn’t out of the question that she might have pieced together something Davis told her and whatever it was that Anderson had shared. But he was speculating. />
  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Sorry. You were saying?’

  ‘Do you think Davis told her something that put her in danger?’

  ‘Unlikely.’ The less Miranda knew, the better. ‘He’s the police commissioner, remember?’

  ‘And you have such a high opinion of people in uniform.’

  ‘Okay, got me there. Whatever happens, it’s bad for Davis because we can connect him to a murdered prostitute. The cops will be looking back through her clientele. At least, they should be. Unless he’s found a way to close that avenue.’ Bailey spotted Dexter standing by the side of the road. ‘I might get an answer to that question shortly.’

  Miranda slowed down out the front of the art gallery and did a 180-degree turn so that Bailey wouldn’t need to cross the road.

  ‘Is that Sharon Dexter?’

  ‘Yep.’ Bailey hadn’t taken his eyes off her since he’d clocked her at the bottom of the art gallery steps.

  ‘So, secret man, there is a woman in your life?’

  He didn’t answer because he honestly didn’t know.

  Dexter walked up to the car, bent down and smiled through the window at Miranda. ‘Hi love. This old boy getting you to chauffeur him around?’

  ‘When he can.’ Miranda leaned across her father so she could see Dexter out the passenger window. ‘He was too embarrassed to turn up in his old piece of junk.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Bailey said, turning to Dexter. ‘Give me a second.’

  He kissed his daughter on the cheek, lingering a moment longer to whisper in her ear. ‘Don’t tell anyone what you told me. If anyone asks you questions about Davis, call me or Gerald, okay?’

  Miranda nodded at her father. ‘I’m a big girl, Dad. And I got my smarts from you.’

  ‘That’s what worries me.’

  Bailey climbed out of the car.

  ‘Nice to see you, Sharon.’ Miranda called out from behind her father’s shoulder. ‘Look after him for me!’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  Miranda waved, shifted into first gear and raced away.

  ‘You look nice, by the way,’ Bailey said.

  ‘Steady on,’ Dexter said. ‘This isn’t a date.’

  ‘Can’t a bloke deliver a compliment now and then?’

  ‘I guess he can.’ She smiled at him, briefly. ‘Only, this is work. And frankly, I’m a little on edge.’

  ‘We were right about Davis,’ he said.

  ‘Thought you might say that. Where does it lead us?’

  ‘I think it’s time I told you about Gary Page and China.’

  Dexter nodded her chin in the direction of the crowd gathering at the entrance of the art gallery. ‘Can you do it in the two minutes it’ll take us to walk up there? Davis is mingling outside and I think he just saw us.’

  Bailey linked his elbow in hers and started to escort her slowly to the steps.

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  CHAPTER 20

  The police commissioner was smiling and shaking hands with the anyones and everyones invited to celebrate the start of his new public life.

  Bailey cringed at the sight of David Davis’s smiling face as he pretended to be excited to see his guests, when all he wanted was their money. Ideas were important in politics, but nothing was more powerful than a fist full of cash.

  Davis understood power better than most. His grandfather, Max Stanley – or Big Max as he was known around town – was the boss of the nation’s largest union in the days when workers would bend the arm of big business and break a few bones if it guaranteed the boys a better deal.

  Big Max was a hero of working class Australia and, like most union bosses, he had his sights set on Canberra. At the tender age of sixty-seven he was finally preparing to make a run into politics when he dropped dead from a heart attack on a construction site in Parramatta. Big Max had picked a fight with a major developer about work conditions and he’d turned up in his high-vis and hard hat to personally tell the workers to down tools and go home until he’d negotiated them a better pay deal. He hit the dirt before he had even made it to the site manager’s donga.

  Bailey remembered that day because he’d covered the story for The Journal. Big Max’s death had sparked a nationwide strike in the building industry. Six days later, and with Big Max six feet under, the workers got their pay rise.

  David Davis was no Big Max Stanley. But he’d obviously learned something from his grandfather because he’d made police commissioner of the largest state in Australia at the age of forty-two.

  After more than a decade as commissioner, Davis was ready to do something that his grandfather never got to do. He was running for the federal seat of Grayndler, replacing the infamous party stalwart, Doug Smith, who had held the seat for twenty-eight years but had run out of puff and was ready to retire.

  Grayndler had been a Labor seat for eighty years and the party held it with a margin of eighteen per cent. Pre-selecting a candidate like Davis, who had a reputation for defending the state against crime, had all but guaranteed it would remain in Labor’s hands at the next election.

  Big Max would have been proud. From a seat like Grayndler, Davis could make it all the way to the Lodge. That’s if he was the squeaky clean candidate the party was banking on. Bailey had his doubts.

  It was impossible to avoid the man of the hour on their way through the front door. So Bailey and Dexter lined up and prepared to pay homage like the rest of them.

  ‘Lovely you could make it, Sharon.’ The words slithered out of Davis’s mouth as he stared at her. ‘And you’ve brought a friend with you?’

  ‘Yeah, I have,’ Dexter said without flinching. ‘David Davis, meet John Bailey.’

  The two men shook hands, Davis squeezing tightly in a show of strength that probably paid dividends with the boys. Bailey just found it irritating.

  ‘The journalist?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘How’s life in the fourth estate these days, Mr Bailey?’

  ‘The same.’ Bailey made sure to stare him in the eyes. ‘Reporting about the bad guys you catch and the ones that get away. But it’s rare, of course, that someone slips through the net.’

  ‘Of course.’ Davis looked like he was going to continue with their banter, but decided against it. ‘Good to meet you. Good luck, mate.’

  Mate.

  Bailey disliked Davis even more in person.

  ‘We’ve actually met, mate,’ Bailey said. ‘Long time ago – in the mid-eighties. I broke a few stories about police corruption. We spoke a few times.’

  Davis looked around nervously.

  ‘Of course, you were never caught up in those bad old days,’ Bailey wedged him. ‘The clean ones were the brave ones, right? Different world, policing back then.’

  There was a long queue of people waiting to grease the palm of Labor’s new man and Davis had noticed some of them paying attention to the conversation.

  ‘Great to have you here, Mr Bailey. Open bar inside. Please enjoy it.’

  ‘Appreciate that!’ Bailey could chalk this up as a win. ‘More than happy to give it a nudge. Good luck tonight, mate.’

  He slapped Davis on the shoulder and walked on past.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ Dexter whispered when they were out of earshot.

  ‘Sometimes you’ve got to poke the beast to see if it’ll bite.’

  ‘I’d call that a bloody prod, Bailey.’

  ‘Prod? Poke? What’s the difference?’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Dexter sighed. ‘This was a mistake.’

  ‘Don’t be like that, Sharon.’ Bailey took her by the arm. ‘Now where’s that bar our boy was talking about?’

  They walked inside the gallery and Bailey steered them to a table lined with flutes of champagne beneath Arthur Boyd’s eerie painting of a dirt riverbank.

  The masterpiece was lost on Sharon.

  ‘You okay?’

  Bailey could see that she was distracted, which was understandable after the b
izarre welcome at the door, not to mention Bailey’s theories about the defence minister and Davis. It was a lot to take in. An advisor to Gary Page is framed for murdering a prostitute who also counted the police commissioner among her clients. To top it all off, the defence minister had been holding secret meetings with the Chinese Ambassador to Australia.

  ‘This’ll help.’ Bailey handed her a glass of champagne, devouring half of his own with one gulp.

  ‘French, just like at Gerald’s.’ He tried to lighten the mood. ‘Speak of the devil!’

  Bailey finished his drink and grabbed two more glasses of champagne while watching Gerald make his way from the other side of the room.

  ‘Mate.’ Bailey handed him a glass.

  ‘Lovely to see you, Sharon.’ Gerald kissed her cheek and gave her a one-arm hug.

  ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

  ‘Darling, I’ve been crashing events like this for decades. It’s a little easier now that I’m the editor of the country’s biggest newspaper.’

  ‘Calm down there, big shot,’ Bailey said. He turned to Dexter. ‘I told him. A room full of social climbers and rich dickheads – it wouldn’t be the same without Gerald.’

  ‘Watch him,’ Gerald said. ‘I’m going to mingle, as they say.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Dexter said.

  ‘And Bailey?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Let’s talk later.’

  Bailey watched his old friend walk into the crowd, nodding and waving as he went. Gerald was good at the bullshit.

  There must have been three hundred people inside. Many of them looked like they’d spent their lives hopping from one social event to the next. A gallery opening, charity ball, opening night at the theatre, awards night, socialite wedding. There was always somewhere to go where the drinks and canapés were free and some wanker from the social pages was there, stalking the room, documenting the night for the have-nots who only ever got to read about it the next day.

  The political fundraiser was slightly different from other social events because every name on the guest list was expected to bring their chequebook. The only ones getting a free ride were the politicians, who were more used to trading their influence for cash – although, of course, they never admitted it.