Last Drinks

by Andrew McGahan

  And me? Public relations for the syndicate? Media liaison? Marvin’s tame hack in the press corps?

  They were some of the names I was called whenever I was mentioned at the Inquiry, or when they drew up the power structure of the syndicate on a whiteboard for a jury to see, where somehow Charlie, not Marvin or Lindsay, always ended up in the centre.

  They were wrong about Charlie.

  But me?

  Was Marvin behind my success? He was friends with my editor. He gave me a lot of material for my pieces. He got me into places I couldn’t have reached on my own. Parliamentary bars, back-room parties and dinners, chartered fishing trips with the elite. Maybe some of my best lines came from him as well, and he didn’t seem to care that I credited them as my own. But he never told me what to write. Although, as it turned out, I was often attacking his political enemies in my articles, it was never organised, never contrived. It just . . . happened that way. And besides, it was nothing serious, just a rumour here, an insinuation there. I was not a political observer, I was a social commentator, a light-hearted one at that. No one took any notice of these things. Marvin wasn’t running me, I wasn’t his direct line into the city’s second major newspaper . . .

  But why all the defences?

  I was never charged with anything anyway.

  Meanwhile Marvin went to jail, not merely for his dealings with our syndicate, but for a whole glut of crimes—misused expense accounts, misappropriation of funds, bribery, attempting to pervert the course of justice, tax evasion, to name a few. But the prosecutors didn’t even bother pressing all the charges at their disposal. The thing was, everyone still loved him. He still entertained. There was no doubt about his guilt, so once it all started to unravel, Marvin saw that his best shot was to throw up his hands cheerfully and confess. He’d made a fortune, but then he’d been generous with it as well. Charities, donations, huge parties, all sorts of extravagance. And what was it all, really? Wine, women and gambling—who could condemn a man for that? After all, other ministers had been more corrupt than Marvin. Older, more senior, and far more respected men. And those other ministers had been grasping about it all. Mean. What’s more, they couldn’t even own up with any style. Most of them denied the whole thing completely.

  So in his way, Marvin was seen as forgivable. And when his sentence was finally handed down, he waved to the media from the dock and cried, ‘See you in a few years, boys.’

  And God help us all, they applauded him.

  Five years later, true to his word and with time off for good behaviour, Marvin emerged a model prisoner who’d earned an arts degree in prison and of whom the warden himself couldn’t speak highly enough. The papers splashed him across the front page. Marvin ‘The Marvel’ McNulty was back in town. Even up in Highwood I read the headlines and shuddered. You could almost feel the journalists wetting their pens and waiting for the copy to flow.

  But Marvin surprised everyone. He disappeared.

  That is, he didn’t reappear. He didn’t launch any bold new enterprises, though no doubt people would have invested. He didn’t even throw any parties. He simply retired, a private citizen, and was never heard from again.

  The Marvellous Marvin McNulty.

  In my New Farm motel room I woke to the heat of noon, and the memory of his laughter in my head. I hadn’t known he was an alcoholic.

  I lay in bed and thought about his bad suits and sweaty armpits, his devouring eyes, his gargantuan appetite, for food, for cigars, for drinks, for money, for everything. Yes . . . that alcoholism would be part of it all made sense. But Marvin surrendering himself to a detox ward like St Amand’s, Marvin admitting to a problem and seeking treatment, that was harder to fathom. I looked back and tried to remember any times he’d disappeared suspiciously for a week or two, ever looked sick, ever stopped drinking, even for one night, but the memories were all a blur. A drinking bout that had carried on for years. And Marvin’s face was always there, hazy, beer soaked, eyes blazing. If he’d been seeking help, I never saw it.

  And where was he now?

  I swung my feet out from the under the sheets and consulted the phone book. There was no Marvin McNulty listed. Expecting even less, I tried his old number from my little address book. It was no longer connected.

  Still, he’d appeared at Jeremy’s house, so chances were he was somewhere in town, and in a place as small as Brisbane, someone would know where he was.

  I lay back in bed, pondering. The media would know. They would have tracked him, kept the file open, even though he had proved so disappointing. But there was only the one major paper left in town, and there was no way I could call them up and ask. I could imagine the hilarity it would cause. The contempt. ‘He was your friend, George, why are you asking us?’

  That was if they remembered me at all.

  Which left the police. They would have tracked him as well, and for the same reasons. And besides, they’d told me themselves they were looking for him.

  I dialled the number. Detective Kelly did not seem excited to hear from me.

  ‘I thought you were going back to Highwood,’ he said.

  ‘The sooner the better, believe me.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘Didn’t we talk about this yesterday?’ He sighed. ‘What do you want, George?’

  ‘Have you found Marvin yet?’

  There was silence on the line.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘Why are you asking me that?’

  ‘I just want to know where he lives. You guys must have kept some sort of record.’

  But there was an intensity in Kelly’s voice I hadn’t been expecting. ‘The question is, George, why do you suddenly want to know? I thought you people didn’t speak any more.’

  ‘We don’t.’

  ‘Then why the sudden interest?’

  ‘I want to speak to him now, that’s all.’

  ‘You still claim you haven’t seen or spoken to him since the old days?’

  ‘I’ve already told you, no.’

  Kelly was silent for a time. ‘Okay, sure, we know where he lives.’

  ‘So have you seen him?’

  ‘No. He isn’t home.’

  ‘Oh . . .’

  ‘It seems very strange to me that you should be calling about Marvin, George. Especially right now.’

  I was a little alarmed at his tone. ‘Look, I want to talk to him about St Amand’s, that’s all. I’ve heard Marvin booked in there from time to time.’

  But that only interested him more. ‘Who told you that? The hospital?’

  ‘Not likely.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘I heard, that’s all. Did you know that?’

  A pause. ‘Yes, we did.’

  Neither of us spoke for a moment.

  ‘Is there something you should be telling me?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not sure if this will be news to you or not, George, and that’s what’s got me curious.’

  ‘What, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Marvin was officially reported missing yesterday afternoon. Just after I talked to you. By his housekeeper. In fact, she says he’s been missing for weeks. To be exact, since three days before Charlie died. Which is something, don’t you think? And now here you are again, as soon as we learn this, all keen to know if we’ve found him or not.’

  I went to respond, couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘What’s your address there, George?’ he asked.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think maybe you should stay put after all. And we’ll have another little talk.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  They took me for a drive.

  It was both of my old friends, Detectives Kelly and Lewis, and the car was unmarked. And like old friends, their suspicions about me seemed to have come visiting again too.

  Lewis craned round to look at me while Kelly drove.

  ‘You expect us to believe you don’t know where w
e’re going?’

  We were going, they’d told me, to Marvin’s house.

  ‘I’ve never been there,’ I said. ‘I don’t even know what suburb it’s in.’

  ‘Of course you don’t.’

  ‘Why are we going there anyway?’

  ‘We want to show you something.’

  And from there we drove on in silence. The car was air-conditioned, but heat gathered out on the streets. It was the third sweltering day in a row, and even the new Brisbane seemed to be wilting. We drove over the bridge and along the cliffs, then across Highgate Hill and down into Yerongpilly. The river met us there once more, having looped about on itself, and luxury houses stretched along the waterfront, interspersed with parks. We pulled up outside a bungalow that was mostly hidden by trees and a high fence. Kelly switched off the engine and we sat there.

  ‘That’s Marvin’s place,’ he said.

  I stared at it.

  ‘You know what it’s worth?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Half a million. At least.’

  Which was a lot, for Brisbane. River frontage was prime— if you could live with the periodic floods that swept down from the mountains. In the big one of ’74, this house would barely have had its roof above water.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Lewis, ‘for a man who was bankrupted by the Inquiry.’

  ‘How did he afford it then?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  I kept my voice patient. ‘No, I don’t know.’

  ‘Six months after he gets out of prison, some old grazier up north dies and leaves one-third of his estate to Marvin. Says Marvin was a dear friend of the family, like a son. It’s all for real, the family doesn’t complain, and suddenly Marvin’s a millionaire again.’

  ‘Lucky Marvin.’

  ‘You remember any grazier friend of Marvin’s, from the old days?’

  ‘He had lots of friends.’

  ‘Oh, I bet he did. Marvin didn’t even go to this guy’s funeral.’

  We all stared at the house.

  ‘So what else did he do with his money?’ I asked.

  Kelly answered. ‘Nothing. As far as we can tell, he’s been a recluse ever since. Not that we watched him every day, but if he was doing anything in public, business or otherwise, we never heard about it.’

  Lewis was grinning. ‘But now we know he’s been working on something in private instead.’

  They glanced at each other, amused, but did not elaborate.

  Kelly went on.

  ‘He lives there alone. He has a housekeeper who’s hired to clean the place on Mondays and Fridays. She’s worked for him five years, and she tells us he’s almost always home. If he’s ever away he lets her know, and leaves a forwarding number. He’s worried about the place being robbed, or burning down or something. Turns out that the forwarding number is usually for St Amand’s. She says he must have been there six or seven times since she met him.’ He paused. ‘Was he that bad, back in your day?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  A shrug. ‘Either way, this particular time there was no forwarding number, and he’s not at St Amand’s right now.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘We’re sure,’ said Lewis. ‘The hospital was reluctant to discuss most things, maybe, but they couldn’t wait to assist us on that point.’ He reached into the glove box and pulled out a set of keys. ‘C’mon inside.’

  The front gate, which had to be unlocked, led to a small yard, shaded by trees and ferns. The front door was double bolted, and Lewis fiddled with the keys for some minutes before we got through. Inside the air was very warm, tinged with the smell of tobacco, and more faintly with alcohol, but everything was tidy and neat. I looked around for signs of Marvin, but in the end it could have been anyone’s house. A wealthy anybody, at least. The living area was spacious, well furnished and tiled in slate. The entire further wall was glass, opening to a sloping lawn that ran down to a pool, the pool itself overhanging the river. Thick shrubs and trees marched down either side of the yard, and even the far side of river was dense with bushland. I thought about where we were and worked out the bushland was probably the back of the St Lucia golf course. It was a secluded view, private from anyone, and very exclusive.

  Lewis inspected the answering machine by the phone. There were no messages.

  Kelly continued on as if he’d never paused.

  ‘According to the housekeeper, Marvin does almost nothing but drink. She comes in on her Mondays and Fridays and this place is a mess of empty bottles, ashtrays and cigarette butts. He cooks for himself, but he doesn’t clean, so the kitchen is a pigsty as well. Mostly there’s no sign that anyone has been in the house but him, although occasionally she thinks there must have been guests. Spare beds slept in, strange clothes lying around, empty bottles of stuff she knows Marvin doesn’t drink. Several times she’s cleaned up what has obviously been a sizeable party, and several other times she’s come across women staying in the house, even in Marvin’s own bedroom, but the impression the housekeeper gets is that Marvin didn’t always know them very well. Much younger than him, for one thing. She suspects they were prostitutes.’

  I felt myself sweating. Not a window in the house was open. Out beyond the pool, the river was as flat and still as concrete.

  Kelly smiled. ‘She’s not a judgemental person, this housekeeper. She thinks Marvin must just be lonely. He’s always very friendly and considerate towards her, his untidy personal habits aside, so she likes him. She’s worried about him.’

  Lewis took up the story. ‘Friday two and a half weeks ago she arrives to find the place is particularly bad, like a real binge has been going on, for days. Marvin isn’t here, but she cleans up anyway. When she comes back the following Monday, the house is still as spotless as she’d left it. No sign of Marvin, and no sign that he’d been home any time between. That was unusual, but it wasn’t until she came round the following Friday that it really gets strange. Marvin still isn’t there, but there’s one empty bottle of scotch on the table, one glass and one used ashtray. Plus the bed has been slept in. But no Marvin. She calls St Amand’s, and they say he isn’t there. They wouldn’t tell her even if he was, maybe, but she says that in the past he left instructions to allow her calls through. So now she’s really wondering. She searches through the house to see if any of Marvin’s clothes or things are missing. She can’t be certain, but she doesn’t think anything much is. Another ten days go by, still no sign of him, so finally she decides to call the police, yesterday. Missing Persons. Soon as they type in his name, of course, a red flag goes up, a criminal investigation, wanted for questioning about your friend Charlie’s death, all that—so they send her straight to us. We bring her back over here, and we go through the house.’

  ‘Funny thing is,’ Kelly concluded, ‘we’ve been round here a few times in the last couple of weeks anyway, knocking on the door, looking in the windows. We just never came when she was here. We left a stack of messages on his phone, too, but when we checked, ours were the only messages there. And all they did was freak out the poor housekeeper.’

  Why wasn’t someone opening a window? The two of them were in suits, but the heat didn’t seem to be bothering them at all.

  ‘Into thin air with Marvin,’ Kelly observed, looking at me.

  ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ I said.

  ‘Like I said before, it’s odd though. Before any of this is even public, you ring up and suddenly you just have to talk to him.’

  ‘It’s a coincidence.’

  Lewis snorted. ‘Charlie dying and Marvin disappearing are just coincidences?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  They studied me for a moment.

  ‘Relax, George,’ Kelly said. ‘We don’t think he’s dead or anything. For one thing, his bank accounts are still being used. Places here and there around town. He’s just gone underground, that’s all.’

  ‘Why would he want to do that?’r />
  ‘That’s the question, isn’t it? Why would he want to disappear so completely that he won’t even tell his beloved housekeeper? What could have happened?’

  It was stifling. ‘Did St Amand’s tell you when Marvin was last in the ward?’

  Kelly put on his best expression of innocence. ‘Why would that matter?’

  I felt myself getting angry. They had to know all this themselves already. ‘Maybe he’s not there now, but maybe he was in there when Charlie was.’

  He gave me a slow clap of hands. ‘Well done, George. You could be a detective.’

  ‘So was he?’

  ‘Yeah, he was in there.’

  It was like relief, cool water on my brow. Maybe it all made sense after all. ‘And did he pay for Charlie?’

  ‘No. He didn’t.’

  And the sense was gone again.

  ‘Then who did?’

  ‘Charlie paid for himself. Cash. On arrival.’

  ‘That’s impossible. He didn’t have any money.’

  ‘The hospital said he had plenty. A bag full of it. They thought it was all a little strange themselves. He hardly looked the wealthy type, after all.’

  ‘He was homeless.’

  ‘He was rich once, George. Who knows what he had stashed away?’

  ‘It still might have come from Marvin.’

  ‘Maybe, but we don’t think so. The two of them arrived at different times, for a start—Marvin in the morning, Charlie that afternoon. Marvin paid his own way with a credit card. There’s no link. Besides, it makes more sense if Marvin had nothing to do with Charlie getting in, if they just met in there by accident.’

  ‘More sense? It makes less sense.’

  ‘Depends on your point of view. For a start, they’d have to be pretty good friends, Marvin and Charlie, for Marvin to hand out so much cash.’

  ‘So? They were friends.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Time to show him the opus?’ Lewis inquired.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Kelly answered.

  I stared at them both, baffled. They led me down a hall into the wing that contained the bedrooms. One of them had been made into an office. I’d seen offices of Marvin’s before— rooms full of ashtrays and files and plans and phones ringing—but this was nothing like any of those. It was almost empty. There was just the one desk, set under a window overlooking the lawn and the river, and one chair. A computer sat on the desk, and there was a small bookshelf set against the wall. It was hard to even imagine Marvin in the room. It was too small, too simple.