Stiff

by Shane Maloney

  PRAISE FOR STIFF

  ‘Stiff is hilarious…It is a witty, controversial, intelligent book, both genuinely frightening and genuinely funny. A rare combination.’ Herald Sun

  ‘A fast-paced, fresh, unerringly funny book.’ Houston Chronicle

  ‘Whelan is a born politico: a breezy, know-it-all wiseacre with a glad hand and a seductively confiding tone of voice.’ Seattle Times

  ‘Read it, you’ll love it. We want more from Maloney.’ Courier Mail

  ‘Funny and gripping’ Rolling Stone

  ‘Maloney pokes fun at almost everything, revelling in words that showcase ludicrous events and behaviour…A rewarding and entertaining read.’ Library Journal

  ‘Smash debut and finalist for all-round top book of the year: Stiff by Shane Maloney…Don’t trust me—this book has been exclusively roadtested by sceptical crime readers and every one of them loved it.’ Melburnian

  PRAISE FOR SHANE MALONEY AND MURRAY WHELAN

  ‘Maloney is top shelf.’ Australian

  ‘Whelan’s wry social commentaries, ironic observations and many failed attempts at getting the girl make him one of Australian crime-fiction’s most attractive characters, and Maloney one of the genre’s most gifted writers.’ Who Weekly

  ‘To the list that contains Charles Willeford’s Florida Keys, Jim Thompson’s West Texas, Pete Dexter’s Philadelphia, James Crumley’s Montana and Carl Hiaasen’s Miami, you can add Shane Maloney’s Melbourne. Maloney has created a fictional city that contains the best of the real and the not quite real.’ Herald Sun

  ‘Maloney is a literary writer who…takes characters that are stereotypes (the public servant, the minister, the arty type) and depicts them with subtlety and originality and compassionate humour. He also writes a ripping yarn.’ Eureka Street

  ‘Maloney is a born writer…For the first time, in the vicinity of Australian crime-writing, we hear the true national voice of comic futility, a literary voice which is rich, ridiculous and tawdry, which can set itself up with a soaring rhetoric and slide on the banana skin of its own piss-elegance… Maloney is terrific.’ Age

  ‘A writer who seems to have been sitting on a thousand observations now unleashed.’ Sunday Age

  STIFF

  Shane Maloney’s novels

  include The Brush-Off,

  winner of the Ned Kelly Prize

  for Crime Fiction, Nice Try,

  The Big Ask and Something Fishy.

  SHANE

  MALONEY

  stiff

  A MURRAY WHELAN THRILLER

  Shane Maloney is deputy director of the Brunswick

  Institute, a weatherboard think-tank financed by his wife.

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  www.textpublishing.com.au

  Copyright © Shane Maloney 1994

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published 1994, reprinted 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2003

  Reprinted 2001 in a compendium edition, The Murray Whelan Trilogy

  This edition published 2004, reprinted 2006, 2007

  Printed and bound by Griffin Press

  Designed by Chong Weng-ho

  Typeset in Baskerville MT by J&M Typesetting

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Maloney, Shane.

  Stiff.

  ISBN 978 1 921145 13 1.

  1. Whelan, Murray (Fictitious character) – Fiction. 2.

  Minorities – Victoria – Melbourne – Political activity –

  Fiction. 3. Labor unions – Victoria – Melbourne – Fiction.

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  This project was assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its art funding and advisory body.

  For Christine

  my kind of funding body

  The author of this book, its setting

  and characters are entirely fictitious.

  There is no such place as Melbourne.

  The Australian Labor Party exists

  only in the imagination of its members.

  The fiddle at the Pacific Pastoral meat-packing works was neither particularly original nor fabulously lucrative. But it was a nice little earner for all concerned while it lasted, and probably harmless enough. All that changed when Herb Gardiner reported finding a body in Number 3 chiller.

  There it was, jammed between a pallet load of best export boneless beef and half a tonne of spring lamb. It was a Friday afternoon so, if Gardiner hadn’t found it when he did, the corpse would have spent the weekend locked in with the rest of the dead meat, carcasses parked halfway between paddock and dinner plate.

  According to the statement Gardiner gave to the Department of Labour investigators and the police, the Number 3 unit had a history of playing up. He had unlocked the door and gone inside to read the gauge when he saw the body squeezed into the aisle running through to the emergency exit hatch. He recognised it immediately as a leading hand with one of the casual work crews, later identified as Ekrem Bayraktar. He didn’t need to feel for Bayraktar’s pulse to know that he was dead. He could tell by the waxy pallor of the man’s face, by the dusting of fine sugar on his lips where his last breath had turned to frost.

  The body was sandwiched into a tight space between roof-high stacks of boxes. It was a narrow gap, but it was just wide enough for most men to pass along sideways even in protective clothing—obstruction of access to the emergency hatch was illegal. But Bayraktar was big, even by the standards of a place where men were hired to hump heavy loads around. Later at the morgue his naked corpse weighed in at over 135 kilos, big doughy rolls of flesh, soft obese bulk, like a weight-lifter gone to seed.

  He was squeezed in so tight that they had to bring in one of the forklifts to move the loaded pallets around him before they could remove the body. Even without the boxes there to support him he remained upright, balanced like a great big stalagmite. It was hard to imagine how he had got himself that far down the passage, or why.

  In the business that followed—the calling of the ambulance, the notification of the police and the Department of Labour, the removal of the body, the taking of photographs and statements—it never occurred to anyone to look for the small zip-lock plastic bag of folded fifties and twenties that Bayraktar had taken into the freezer with him. And even if they had known to look, and where, they would not have found anything. There were quite a few little details about that afternoon that seemed to have been missed.

  With Bayraktar gone, everything might have ended then and there and no one would have been any the wiser. It was just bad luck really that his untimely demise coincided with a delicate readjustment then taking place within certain echelons of the Australian Labor Party, an organisation founded to further the aspirations of those who toil unseen in dark and dangerous places. An organisation which, next to itself, loves the working man best.

  Perhaps I should begin by saying that this is not a sob story. It’s a cruel world, I know, and even in the just city a man can be stiff. Bad luck happens. And it’s not like bad luck was something I didn’t already know a bit about. Damage control was part of my job, after all. But up until then it had been other people’s bad luck, not my own, that exercised my professional interest. Maybe that’s why I was so unprepared for what happened over those four October days. So I’m not
doing any special pleading, you understand. Considering what happened to others I could name, I got off pretty lightly.

  It all started on one of those miserable wet Monday mornings when, come nine o’clock, half of Melbourne is still strung out bumper-to-bumper along the South-Eastern Freeway. I had just dropped my son Red at school, and as I swung my clapped-out old Renault into Sydney Road the thought of all those Volvo and Camira drivers stewing away behind their windscreen wipers brought a quiet smile to my lips. Not that I bore them any personal animosity, you understand. It was just that if God wanted to punish the eastern suburbs for voting Liberal, She wouldn’t hear me complaining.

  I could afford to feel like that because the Brunton Avenue log-jam was miles away. Where I lived, north of town, the toiling masses tended to start their toiling a little earlier in the day, and most of those that still had jobs were already at work. By nine the rush hour had already come and gone. Apart from a few hundred light industrial vehicles and the occasional tram disgorging early shoppers, women in head-scarfs mainly, I had the northbound lane to myself.

  Not that I was busting a gut to get to work. No clock was waiting for me to punch it, and I couldn’t see the pile of paper on my desk bursting into flames if left undisturbed a little longer. The fifteen minutes it took me to drive to work provided one of my few moments of solitude all day and I liked to make the most of it. As I drove, I read the paper.

  This was less dangerous than it sounds. I’d already studied the broadsheets over breakfast, and the Sun was the kind of tabloid easily absorbed while doing something else—shelling peas, for instance, or operating a lathe. I had it spread open on the passenger seat beside me, and whenever I hit a red light or got stuck behind a slow-moving tram I skimmed a couple of pages. The spring racing carnival had just begun, so the emphasis was on horseflesh, fashion and catering. Just A Dash was favourite, black was big, and interesting things were being done with asparagus. Agreement was unanimous— four years in and the eighties were holding firm as the most exciting decade ever.

  The Bell Street lights had changed and I was halfway across the intersection when my eye caught a name buried in a two-paragraph news brief at the bottom of page seventeen. That was when I first encountered the name Ekrem Bayraktar. Not that it meant anything to me at the time. It was the other name that got my attention. I snatched up the page, draped it over the steering wheel and turned my concentration away from the road long enough to constitute a serious threat to public safety. This is what I read.

  Police have identified a man found dead last Friday in a freezer at the Pacific Pastoral meat packing works at Coolaroo in Melbourne’s outer north as Ekrem Bayraktar, 42, a shift supervisor at the works. It is believed that he suffered a heart attack and was overcome by cold while conducting a routine stocktake.

  Pacific Pastoral has announced an immediate review of its procedures in light of the incident which coincides with the state government’s attempts to gain Upper House approval for its controversial industrial health and safety legislation. Informed sources at Trades Hall believe the matter will be considered when the THC Executive meets late next week. The Minister for Industry, Charlene Wills, was unavailable for comment.

  I liked the way a whiff of Labor intrigue had been slipped into an account of some poor bastard’s cardiac arrest. But that wasn’t what interested me. What had pushed my button was mention of the Minister for Industry. Charlene Wills was a person whose reputation was a matter very close to my heart.

  Up ahead I could see Pentridge, the razor ribbon atop its bluestone walls dripping dismally in the drizzle. On my left was an Italian coffee shop and a row of old single-storey terraces that had been tarted up into offices and professional suites. I pulled into the kerb, tucked the Sun under my arm and pushed open the glass door of one of the shops, the one with the letters on the window saying ‘Charlene Wills: Member of the Legislative Council for the Province of Melbourne Upper’.

  With a bit of luck, I thought, I’d have just enough time to call Charlene’s parliamentary office and get the lowdown on this piece of tabloid crap before the business of the day wrapped its tentacles around me.

  Too late. The daily grind had already walked in off the street and was standing at the desk just inside the front door. He was solidly built, in a knockabout sort of way, anywhere between thirty and forty-five, with a duck’s bum haircut and hands like baseball mitts. When I walked in, he shifted irritably and shot me a glance that told me he’d got there first and I could fucking well wait my turn.

  All his weight was balanced on the balls of his feet, and the tips of his fingers were pressed down hard on the desk. He was glowering across it at Trish who was in charge of office admin. ‘I’ve had a gutful,’ he said.

  Statements like that, half threat, half plea, weren’t unusual at the electorate office. But this fellow’s tone was tending more to the threat end of the octave, and as he spoke he began tugging his khaki work shirt out of his pants and fiddling with the buttons. ‘I pay my taxes,’ he said. ‘I know my rights.’

  Trish nodded at the bloke sympathetically and, without moving her eyes, casually bent forward as if to better hear him out. Trish was big in the chassis and not afraid to use it, but just in case push ever came to shove she kept the butt end of a sawn-down pool cue sitting in her wastepaper basket. As far as I knew she’d never had cause to use it, but on the odd occasion its mere presence could be a comfort. If this dickhead’s manner didn’t rapidly begin to improve, we’d all have a very unpleasant start to the working week.

  ‘May I help you, sir?’ I said, stepping forward. ‘I’m Murray Whelan, Charlene Wills’ electorate officer.’

  As I spoke the man turned towards me and threw his shirt open, like he was performing a magic trick or unveiling the foundation stone of a major civic monument. Underneath, he was wearing what appeared to be a paisley-patterned T-shirt. As I got closer I realised that he was one of the most comprehensively tattooed human beings I had ever seen. Which, in that part of the world, was no mean achievement.

  I tried to look unimpressed as I accepted his tacit invitation to inspect his pecs. He was certainly toting some artistry about. Fire-breathing dragons, dagger-pierced hearts, tiger-mounted she-devils, flame-licked skulls, Huey, Dewey and Louie, you name it, he had it. Innumerable little pictures exploded out of his pants, ran up over his flaccid paunch, covered his torso, and curled back across his shoulders.

  The mad swirls of colour stopped abruptly, however, at the V of the man’s collar line and, I was prepared to bet, at the point in mid-bicep where the sleeves of a summer work shirt would run out. His hands, neck and face were unadorned. No spider webs embellished his earlobes, no intertwined bluebirds flew up his neck. This was a good sign. Here was a man who knew that some people tended to jump to the wrong conclusion about tatts, a man who had the brains not to let his passion for self-decoration get in the way of his employability. Someone you could talk sense to.

  And now that he was dealing with a fellow male, he became a little less highly strung. ‘I want this bloke put out of business.’ He jabbed his finger at the place right above his heart where a freshly laid-on pair of baroque cherubs, beautiful work, were holding aloft an ornate scroll. I moved his shoulder sideways so I had better light to read by. Inside the scroll were the words ‘Gial For Ever’.

  ‘Gial?’ I said.

  He nodded morosely. ‘Gail took one look and shot through,’ he said. ‘Reckoned if I couldn’t even spell her name properly, she certainly wasn’t gunna marry me.’ Then he brightened up. ‘I told that fucken prick of a tattooist I’d have his licence. And I’m not leaving here until I do. Dead set. I’m adam-fucken-ant.’

  Three years before, when Charlene had offered me the job of looking after her constituents, a Labor MP’s electorate office was, by definition, a backwater. Then the tide had turned and swept Labor into office, first at state, then federal level. The drover’s dog was in the Lodge. We were the power in the land. And that sign o
n the door had become a homing beacon for every dingbat within a ten-mile radius.

  When I began at the electorate office, our only customers were ordinary voters desperately seeking redress from bureaucratic inanity or government indifference. Or the harmlessly wan and smelly looking for somewhere out of the cold. But by late 1984 we were attracting such a daily barrage of basket cases and snake-oil salesmen that the sign out front might as well have read ‘Axes Ground Here’.

  Surely, I was beginning to think, the cause of social progress could be deploying my skills more effectively. Could I not perhaps be managing a small lake or pine plantation for the Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands? A modestly demanding range of foothills even? Something with a little less interface.

  ‘Okay, Mr Adam fucking Ant,’ I shrugged. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’ Behind the man’s back, Trish had relaxed and was grinning like an ape. I discreetly flashed her a splayed handful of digits and led off towards the back of the office. Five minutes of deeply concerned bullshit should, I figured, be enough to see this particular dipstick safely off the premises. ‘Walk this way.’

  Adam Ant, or whatever his name was, tucked his shirt back into his pants and slouched after me. ‘It’s not right,’ he mumbled under his breath.

  What passed for my office was a partitioned cubicle tucked into a back corner behind the stationery cupboard. Before the election had transformed Charlene into a Minister of the Crown, it had been hers. Back in those days, I’d shared the reception area with Trish and whoever else happened to wander in. But I was fast to grasp the perquisites of political power and had quickly taken advantage of Charlene’s increasingly frequent absence to commandeer her privileges.

  I snapped on the flickering fluorescent light, parked myself behind the laminated plywood desk and indicated the orange plastic of the visitor’s chair. As Ant lowered his backside into place, obscuring my Tourism Commission poster of Wilson’s Promontory, I squared off my blotter, uncapped my pen with a bureaucratic flourish and tried to look like I gave a shit.