At its last meeting, the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee had considered a slate of recommendations from the State Coroner regarding the mandatory wearing of life-jackets. Too many teenagers were dying in canoeing accidents and the rules on mucking around in boats needed tightening. Supporting documentation had included inquest summaries pertaining to accidental deaths on inland waterways, some going back twenty years. The proposed legislative amendments were uncontentious, so I hadn’t bothered wading through the files.
‘It might even still be here,’ I said. ‘Pending return to the Coroner’s office.’ I gave Pat the details and he jotted them down.
‘I’ll get right onto it.’ His attention was drifting back to the monitor.
‘ASAP will be fine,’ I said.
By then it was two-fifteen, time for the monthly meeting of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. I went upstairs to the conference room and took my seat at the table. It was a bi-partisan conclave, with Labor outnumbered six to two. The other Labor member was Daryl Keels, our Shadow Finance Minister and chief number cruncher.
The meeting was chaired by the Treasurer, an abrasive, pug-faced Liberal dry with eyebrows like cuphooks and a Gorgon’s stare guaranteed to freeze the wee in a Liberal backbencher’s underpants. The main agenda item was gambling revenues.
In other states, poker machine licences were issued to sporting clubs, the earnings earmarked for community facilities. In our case, the Liberals had dished them out to friendly plutocrats in return for a slice of the action. And the action was going ballistic. Hundreds of millions of dollars were slipping through Lady Luck’s fingers and into the state’s coffers.
Social consequences be damned, it was money for jam. A bottomless goodie-bag that no future Labor government would be able to keep its hands off. As a policy issue, gambling was a lost cause. We were all sons of bitches now. All that remained was to dicker over the distribution of the whack, and Daryl did the dickering. Labor wanted more of the revenue allocated to health and education. As usual, we were defeated on party lines.
The meeting finished at four and while we were all packing up our papers, I chatted with Keels.
‘Get your invite to the big event?’ he said, shovelling a small mountain of facts and figures into his briefcase. He meant the casino opening. The proprietors had invited all state MPs and every federal MP from Victoria, irrespective of party.
‘You bet,’ I said.
As I spoke, I realised that I still didn’t have an escort for the evening. What with Charlie’s death, the whole thing had slipped my mind. It wasn’t like I could ask Kelly. I knew who I’d like to invite, but she was unavailable. Unattainable, I told myself sternly. My classmate from Greek lessons was not a potential date, she was a married woman. I should stop fantasising about her and get serious about finding somebody else.
It couldn’t be too difficult. Even Keels had managed it, for all his bony arse and non-existent hairline. Recently divorced, he was putting himself about a bit, or so the gossip went. Doing okay, too, apparently. As the last of the Liberals left the room, he lowered his voice.
‘This Coolaroo business,’ he said. ‘Alan’s very keen that it goes without a hitch. This is no time for disunity. You’re pretty close to the ground out there. No one’s got it into their heads to play funny buggers, I trust.’
‘You know me, Daryl,’ I shrugged. ‘Nobody ever tells me anything.’
When I got to my cubicle in the Henhouse, a couple of phone message slips were waiting for me. I returned Ayisha’s call first.
‘Barry Quinlan’s office called,’ she reported. ‘The senator would like a word at your earliest convenience. I imagine he wants us to organise a meet-and-greet for the soon-to-be member for Coolaroo.’
‘You’ve heard?’
‘Phil Sebastian?’ she said. ‘It’s going through the grapevine like a dose of the salts.’
Phylloxera, I thought, or sap. That’s what runs through grapevines. Not doses of salts. ‘Mike Kyriakis? Any word there? Is he still planning on making a run?’
‘Far as I know.’
‘Do me a favour,’ I said. ‘Press your shell-like a bit closer to the terra firma. Find out if any other hopefuls are lurking in the woodwork.’
‘Sounds like you’ve been promoted to boundary rider,’ she said.
‘Let’s just say I like to keep abreast.’
Just as I hung up, the phone rang. It was the library.
‘I’ve got your report,’ said Pat. ‘Do you want the summary or the full transcript?’
As I’d hoped, the files had not yet been returned to the Coroner’s office. Even better, some included the evidence tendered at the inquest in addition to the finding itself. I told Pat I’d come straight over.
‘We close in half an hour.’
‘I’ll read fast.’
But first I called Barry Quinlan’s office. I flipped open my diary as I dialled, expecting one of his buffers to organise the meeting with Phil Sebastian. The buffer, it transpired, was Phil himself.
‘Murray,’ he cooed. ‘Listen mate, I’m sorry I missed you at Charlie Talbot’s funeral. It must have been a shocking experience, you being there when he, er, went and everything. I wanted to personally tell you how much everybody here appreciates the job you did with the arrangements.’
‘Yeah, well,’ I mumbled. ‘It wasn’t the best of days.’
‘Anyway,’ he moved right along. ‘As you’ve probably heard by now, I’ll be his replacement.’ He managed to make it sound like an onerous but inescapable burden, one he’d agreed to shoulder out of duty. ‘So Barry suggested we get together, the three of us, and have you brief me on some of the specifics of the demographic. He’s in Sydney at the moment, Telecommunications matters, but he’ll be back in Melbourne on Monday. How does ten-thirty sound, here at Barry’s office?’
One time’s as good as another when you’re being taken for granted. ‘It’s in the book,’ I said, scribbling it into my diary. ‘See you then.’
‘Before you go,’ he said quickly. ‘This thing on Sunday at Broadford town hall. I was thinking it might be a good opportunity to meet some of the locals. And to pay my final respects, of course. Two birds with the one stone, so to speak.’
‘Broadmeadows,’ I said. The idea of him working the room at Charlie’s wake was too appalling to contemplate. ‘I can see where you’re going, Gil. But Sunday’ll be very much a family affair, know what I mean. Bit of a closed shop.’
‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘Monday, then.’
We kissed goodbye, I hung up and headed over to the library. The weather had changed yet again. The wind had dropped and the cloud ceiling had lifted to a high grey sheen. To the west, beyond the office towers of the central city, it was breaking open to reveal clear skies. By the look of it, Red would get his hoped-for wheel-time. As I walked, I fished out my mobile and dialled the other call-back number on my list. It belonged to Charlie’s electorate officer, Helen Wright.
Helen had been hit pretty hard by her boss’s death. Not only because they’d been friends and workmates for many years, but also because she was now facing an uncertain future. Phil Sebastian owed her nothing and once he was securely installed, he’d probably dump her and use the job to buy some local personal loyalty. Such was the nature of political patronage, and Helen knew it.
She’d called, she explained, to ask my advice.
‘You’ve heard about Phil Sebastian getting the guernsey, I take it? Thing is, he’s been trying to get in touch with me. The electorate office is closed for the duration, so he’s been leaving messages on my voicemail. He wants us to meet as soon as possible, and for me to line up some introductions with branch secretaries. And, get this Murray, he wants to come to the wake.’
Helen was not just a brick, but a mate. I’d do my best to steer her right.
‘It’s up to you, Helen,’ I said. ‘You can always lie low for the weekend, plead family matters or whatnot while you make up your mind
what you want to do. As for the wake, I’ve already spoken with him about that.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told him to fuck off.’
She laughed. ‘Nah, you didn’t. You’re better brung up than that, Murray.’
Since she was on the line, I asked if she knew of any other possible contenders. She didn’t, but she’d heard talk that Dursun Durmaz, a state lower house member whose seat also overlapped Coolaroo, had been sniffing around, asking the same question.
Durmaz was a Concord faction footsoldier, Turkish by birth and thicker than chick-pea dip. If the Metcalfe forces were using him as their watchdog, they obviously weren’t expecting problems.
‘See you Sunday,’ I said, ringing off as I stepped through the back door of Parliament House.
Climbing the stairs to the library, I wondered if Durmaz, too, had been made an offer by Peter Thorsen. He wasn’t the brightest bauble in the bazaar, but he was a political opportunist of the first water. If the tide was beginning to turn against Metcalfe, Durmaz would be among the first to jump ship.
Up in the library, Pat handed me the coroner’s file and pointed to the clock, a reminder that my time was limited. I pulled up an antique chair, flipped open the file and began to read.
Thirty minutes later, as arranged, I found Inky Donnelly waiting in Strangers Corridor, an elongated antechamber that served as a public restaurant area for Parliament House visitors. He was nursing a coffee, absently gnawing a shortbread as he studied that morning’s Australian.
‘Hold the presses,’ I said. ‘Breaking news in the Cutlett carcase case.’
Inky peered up at me, biscuit poised in mid-air, waiting.
‘He’s not dead,’ I said.
Inky stubbed out his coffee and brushed the crumbs from his lapels, and we plunged into the entrails of Parliament House, weaving our way along corridors lined with portraits of forgotten politicians and bronze busts of colonial mugwumps.
As we steered for the rear exit, we were met at every turn by the hail-and-farewell of scarpering MPs, pub-bound young staffers and home-heading bureaucrats. Five-thirty on a Friday night and the joint was emptying faster than a pensioner’s pocket at the pokies.
‘Officially, Mervyn Cutlett is not dead,’ I repeated. ‘He is merely missing.’
Inky grunted impatiently. ‘I’ve got that much,’ he said. ‘I’m not fucking senile, you know. What I’m asking is why the inquest?’
The sooner I got that glass of milk into the grumpy old codger the better.
‘Normally, the proceeds of an estate can only be distributed on production of a death certificate. No corpse, no certificate.’
‘No certificate, no probate.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Only way to expedite execution of his will was have an inquest.’
‘Who were the beneficiaries?’
We went out the back door into the carpark and I pointed my keys at the Magna. ‘No idea,’ I said. ‘The family, presumably.’
Inky made a pained face, lowered himself into the passenger seat, popped an antacid and eased the seatbelt over his dyspeptic midriff. The boom gate rose and I turned towards Fitzroy, joining the line of cars backed up at the lights beside St Patrick’s cathedral.
‘The Coroner’s verdict was death by misadventure,’ I said. Inky gave a belch of relief. ‘An interim finding,’ I added, ‘Pro tempore.’
‘Coitus interruptus, eh?’
‘In theory, I suppose. But for all intents and purposes consummatus est.’ The lights turned green and we inched forward. ‘Per omnia secula seculorum.’
‘Let’s hope so, Murray.’ Inky eyed me sideways. ‘Let’s just fucking hope so.’
At any other time, Brunswick Street was a five-minute trip. Peak hour, the traffic was moving with all the urgency of a sedated sloth. To aggravate the situation, a fire engine emerged from the Eastern Hill fire station, sirens blaring. As I negotiated a stop-start crawl through the fray, I gave Inky the gist of the testimony in the coronial record.
The Benalla magistrate heard the case eight months after the event. Under oath, the witnesses confirmed their original statements to the police and answered detailed questions.
According to Charlie’s testimony, the purpose of the weekend trip to the lake was to discuss work-related issues at the union’s purpose-built country retreat. They travelled there in separate parties, making the three-hour trip from Melbourne in two cars, one driven by Charlie, the other by Quinlan.
Charlie and Merv got to the Shack about eleven-thirty in Charlie’s union-issue Falcon. Barry Quinlan and Col Bishop arrived half an hour later in Quinlan’s car. Sid Gilpin had been left behind, due to a mix-up about the departure time.
Immediately prior to leaving Melbourne, Merv had been drinking at the John Curtin Hotel. He was ‘somewhat intoxicated’ when Charlie picked him up at the Trades Hall. Charlie, who had not been drinking, did the driving. Merv slept for most of the trip. On arrival, they each had a can of beer, then several more when Quinlan and Bishop turned up at midnight. Before retiring for the night at one a.m., Merv took a nightcap of rum and cloves.
‘Yum, yum.’ Inky smacked his lips. ‘The working man’s all-purpose tonic.’
Cutlett woke the others about seven and proposed that they go out in the Shack’s boat and catch some redfin for breakfast. Despite the cold and fog he insisted, claiming the conditions were perfect for fishing. Colin Bishop refused but ‘for harmony’s sake’, as Charlie’s testimony stated, the other two reluctantly agreed. Under Merv’s direction, the boat was wheeled from the shed, launched and tied up at the Shack’s short jetty. Merv consumed a ‘phlegm cutter’ of Bundaberg rum but appeared to be in full control of his faculties.
All three were dressed heavily against the cold and they took along a thermos of coffee laced with rum. Nobody wore life-jackets. Merv drove the boat, a 6.3 metre Catalina with a half-cabin canopy. Visibility on the water was poor, but Merv was familiar with the lake and navigated the boat confidently into an area some two hundred metres from the jetty, then stopped the motor and tied-off to a dead tree projecting from the water. They fished for around fifteen minutes without success before moving to another spot, again tying off to a tree. The fog began to rise and a heavily timbered section of the shoreline was visible, but neither Quinlan nor Charlie had a definite sense of their exact location.
After about twenty minutes, the fish still weren’t biting and they had finished the coffee. Prompted by questions from the court officer assisting the Coroner, both Charlie and Quinlan stated that it contained ‘a high proportion’ of alcohol. The weather was rapidly becoming threatening and they decided to immediately return to the Shack. As Merv was casting off from the dead tree, a squall front hit. Torrential rain began to fall. As Merv hurried to untie the rope, the boat turned in the wind and he toppled overboard.
He thrashed wildly in the widening gap, the wind pushing the boat beyond his reach. Quinlan and Charlie tried to grab him, but he went under almost immediately. While Quinlan tried to get the boat started and bring it back around, Charlie jumped in and attempted to reach him but he’d disappeared beneath the surface. Charlie duck-dived, trying to find him, but his efforts were futile. The water was pitch black, lashed by the rain and freezing cold.
By the time Quinlan got Charlie back into the boat, he was shivering uncontrollably. They returned immediately to the Shack to get help. When they got there, they found that Colin Bishop had been joined by Sid Gilpin, who had arrived while they were out on the lake.
Gilpin tried to ring for help, but the phone at the Shack was locked—standard procedure when the place wasn’t in use—so he drove to the nearest roadhouse and raised the alarm. While this was happening, the other two helped Charlie out of his wet clothes and thawed him out in front of the fire.
A police constable on traffic patrol near Mansfield was directed to attend. On the way, he stopped off at the home of the regional State Emergency Services captain and within forty minutes
there were six boats on the lake. They included the Catalina, which Gilpin had taken back out on his return from summoning help. Charlie and Quinlan gave fairly precise directions to the scene of the accident, but the wet and blustery conditions doomed search efforts to failure.
By the time the diving team arrived the next day, the worst was assumed. Efforts to locate the corpse were fruitless. Underwater visibility was zero and the compression ratios at that depth limited dive times to a matter of minutes. According to the officer in charge, there’d have been a better chance of winning Tattslotto than finding a body. Weighed down by clothing, lungs filled with water, it would soon discharge its gases and settle on the bottom, between five and fifteen metres down, depending on the precise location.
Citing alcohol and the absence of life-jackets as contributing factors, the magistrate handed down his interim verdict and consigned the case to the files.
‘Straightforward enough,’ summarised Inky. ‘But it doesn’t tell us why the cops want to get their hands on the Municipals’ old records.’
We cleared the tangle of traffic and I cruised down Brunswick Street, scouting for a parking spot.
‘Maybe this sensation-mongering jackal of the gutter press can shed some light on the subject,’ I said, slowing as we neared our destination.
‘Yeah but let’s keep it under our hats for the moment,’ said Inky. ‘See what Valentine has to say about it first.’
Spotting an opening, I threw a U-turn in the face of an oncoming tram and snaffled a spot directly across the road from the Toilers Retreat.
In the five years since I’d moved from Fitzroy, its landmark strip of pubs, funky cafes, knick-knackeries, record stores, bookshops and kebab boutiques had continued to creep up the hill towards the city. With their usual eye to the revenue potential, Yarra Council had jacked up the parking meter fees and erected time-limit signs of such baffling complexity that a team of Philadelphia lawyers armed with atomic clocks would’ve been hard put to escape a ticket. I double-checked the sign and fed every coin I possessed into the meter.
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