Sucked In

by Shane Maloney

  The Toilers Retreat was buzzing with a boisterous Friday evening crowd. Young persons on heat, the weekend ahead, anticipation in the air. Over-loud music ratcheted up the drinking rate and pool balls clicked. Vic Valentine wasn’t hard to identify. Apart from us, he was the only one in the joint over thirty.

  He was tending a beer at a corner table, eye to the door. By way of identifying himself, he raised his chin.

  The journalist was a spare, spindly type with a sharp-featured rodent face. His head, almost perfectly spherical, was shaved as clean as a burnished hazelnut. He wore a hairline moustache, a faint, self-deprecating smirk and a black leather motorcycle jacket. He was maybe forty.

  ‘Fuck me,’ muttered Inky. ‘It’s Zorro.’

  I nodded towards Valentine’s glass. He held it up. Beer, almost empty. Same again, thanks. While Inky elbowed his way to the bar, I went over, sat down and introduced myself. Valentine asked after my son and explained how he’d picked up on the Merv Cutlett connection. At the time of the drowning, he was a cadet, working general rounds at the Herald. One of the more senior journalists had covered the original search, but the discovery of the remains rang a bell when Valentine picked it up in the daily feed from police media relations.

  Inky arrived with two beers and a Guinness, its foamy head as close as he was prepared to come to a glass of milk. ‘Sláinte,’ he said.

  We all took a convivial sip. Then Inky put his glass down, wiped the foam from his lip and leaned across the table towards Valentine. ‘Ground rules,’ he rasped. ‘This conversation is strictly off the record. Background only.’

  Valentine stared around, innocence itself. ‘Noisy, isn’t it? Can hardly hear myself think.’

  That settled, we got down to it.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ I said. ‘There’s slim pickings in the Municipals for a crime reporter.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Valentine. ‘But if those bones turn out to be Mervyn Cutlett’s, there might be a three-course banquet.’

  He paused while Inky and I exchanged wary glances.

  ‘Go on,’ said the Ink.

  Valentine took a sip. ‘Two-way street,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Inky. ‘Show.’

  ‘You first,’ said the journalist. ‘What can you tell me about a bloke named Sid Gilpin?’

  ‘He was one of the union’s organisers,’ I said.

  ‘And what exactly did he organise?’

  I shrugged. ‘The usual stuff, I assume. Resolved minor workplace disputes. Liaised with the shop stewards. Kept an eye on membership subscriptions. Out and about, on the road, maintaining a presence.’

  As I said it, I realised something that didn’t quite gel. All the other organisers worked out of their respective state offices. Gilpin reported directly to Merv Cutlett. Whatever his job description, it wasn’t on the organisational chart.

  ‘Mate of yours?’

  I made a noise like I’d swallowed a fly. ‘Not my speed. I was mid-twenties. He was a fair bit older. One of the safarisuit squad. University of Life and don’t you forget it, pal. He thought I was an over-educated, up-myself nancy boy.’

  ‘How about him and Cutlett?’

  ‘Thick as thieves, so to speak,’ I said. ‘Matter of fact, he was on the scene the day Merv drowned. The first to go out looking for him.’

  Inky shot me a warning glance, reminding me not to get ahead of the game. ‘What’s your interest in this Gilpin, Vic?’ he said.

  ‘He rang me. Unsolicited. He said he’d heard of me, asked if I was aware of the recent discovery at Lake Nillahcootie. Flagged the name Cutlett. When I expressed interest, he claimed he had evidence that Cutlett was the victim of foul play.’

  He took a long, slow sip, studying our reaction over the rim of his glass.

  Inky snorted dismissively. ‘What evidence?’

  ‘Proof of corruption, he said. But he wouldn’t go into specifics, not without being paid. Started talking telephone numbers. I told him it didn’t work that way. If he had reason to believe a crime had been committed, he should go to the cops.’

  I glanced at Inky. Could this explain the police visit to the Peaheads?

  ‘And did he?’ Inky pondered his Guinness. ‘Go to the cops?’

  ‘You’d have to ask them,’ Valentine shrugged. ‘I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on the subject.’ He meant me. ‘Any intimations at the time?’

  The bar was getting noisier and more crowded by the minute, all elbows and belt buckles and tribal tattoos. I wondered why Valentine had chosen it.

  ‘If there were, I never heard them,’ I said. ‘Which isn’t to say there might not have been some pub talk. It was the seventies. Conspiracy theories were thick on the ground.’

  Valentine took a tin of baby cigars out of his motorbike jacket, unwrapped one and tapped the end idly on the lid. ‘And the Municipals were clean, you reckon?’

  ‘As the driven?’ I said. ‘Maybe not, but the opportunities for graft were minor league. As for foul play, the idea’s got whiskers all over it. The cops were there within minutes. There was a full-on search of the scene. Anything suss went down, somebody would’ve noticed something. And Gilpin testified at the inquest. He uttered not a peep about anything untoward.’

  ‘Perhaps he found out later.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s pulling your chain.’

  ‘Why would he bother?’

  ‘Buggered if I know. He got the bum’s rush from the union soon after Cutlett’s demise. Maybe he’s been pining for revenge. Maybe he’s just trying to hustle up a dollar.’

  ‘Fishing in troubled waters?’ said Valentine. ‘Stirring up the mud?’

  Inky grunted. ‘Mud’s got a tendency to stick. What’s this Gilpin do now? Who does he work for?’

  ‘He’s a dealer.’

  ‘Drugs?’ I was genuinely surprised. Sid had chancer written all over him, but drugs were something else entirely. ‘Junk.’ Valentine smirked. ‘Rubbish.’

  He waved a demonstrative cigarillo at the Toilers Retreat’s tone-setting collection of blue-collar nostalgia. Bushells Tea and Castrol Oil signs adorned the walls. An old Bundy clock stood on the bar. Toolbox assortments embellished the bottle shelves.

  ‘He did quite well for himself in the eighties, I hear. He had a big old barn of a place up Upwey way. A former foundry or superseded smithy or some such. Stuffed it full of brass doorknobs, cast-iron lacework, Golden Fleece petrol bowser lights, all the usual crap. Called it a flea market and made a killing in Australiana.’

  Sid would’ve been ideally placed to go into the junk business, I thought. The Municipals’ members included garbage collectors and rubbish tip attendants. The Outcasts of Foolgarah. Gleaners and fossickers with their treasure troves of the cast-off and chucked-away. A man with Sid’s connections could really clean up. Buying the stuff at fifty dollars a trailer-load, recycling it into instant authenticity and selling it for whatever the market would bear. Turning old tin into pure gold.

  ‘About ten years ago, the joint burnt down,’ Valentine continued. ‘Suspected arson. Nothing proved but the insurance company wriggled out. Gilpin lost the lot. Lock, stock and Early Kooka. After that, everything turned to shit. Wife left him, children turned their backs, dog died. He hit the skids and hit the bottle. The whole country music ball of twine. These days, he’s down to his uppers, flogging dross out of an old nissen hut across from the cargo sheds at Victoria Dock.’

  I vaguely remembered a rusting wartime relic half lost in the eyesore industrial jungle between the wharves and the railyard.

  ‘Has he tried to sell this so-called story to anyone else?’ said Inky, back to the point.

  ‘He spoke to some of my esteemed colleagues. We all told him the same thing. If you’ve got evidence, take it to the police.’ Valentine shook his head, benignly amused at the human capacity for self-delusion. ‘People read something in the paper, they start seeing dollar signs.’

&nb
sp; ‘But you’re not dismissing him out of hand,’ said Inky. ‘So either you’ve got a lot of free time or there’s something you haven’t got around to sharing with us.’

  Valentine eyed me sideways. ‘Is he always like this?’

  ‘Dyspepsia,’ I said. ‘It makes him crabby as all hell.’

  Valentine twiddled his Wee Willem. ‘What happened to our quid pro quo?’

  Inky picked up his stout, poured a long draught down his throat, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded.

  ‘I’ve been given to understand the rozzers are making enquiries about the Municipals’ old membership accounts,’ he said.

  Valentine was nonchalant, wheels turning in his hairless head. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Inky. ‘Why?’

  The journalist made a show of mulling his response. Then he leaned forward and dropped his voice, drawing us into his huddle.

  ‘Because it might tie into something else the boys in blue are keeping very close to their silver-buttoned chests. Something a little birdie told me about those remains.’

  Inky and I leaned closer, elbows on the table, all ears.

  ‘It’s a dry argument.’ Valentine sat back and surveyed the bottom of his glass. ‘A man could perish.’

  As I fought my way back through the press of bodies, crab-gripping three glasses, the corner of a bag of peanuts clenched between my teeth, my phone began to ring.

  I let it ring off to voicemail and deposited my load.

  Inky had gone for a slash, leaving Vic to hold the table. The journalist picked up his beer and nodded towards a guy coming through the door, a beefy young lump in a buzz cut and Cockney-crim pinstripe suit, tie loosened, eyes darting around the room like startled goldfish.

  ‘My next appointment,’ he said. ‘Jason’s in the wholesale pseudoephedrine business, or so it’s been alleged in a slate of charges currently before the County Court. He’s taking me to see a man about a dog. Or maybe it’s vice versa.’

  Jason spotted the journalist’s chrome dome and began homing in. Vic flashed him ten fingers, buying us some time, and the speed-vending slugger veered off to join a group of hyperactive boyos who were hogging the pool table.

  Inky returned, drying his hands on a handkerchief. ‘So, Vic,’ he said sceptically. ‘You were saying?’

  Valentine tore open the bag of Nobby’s finest, laid them out on the table. ‘You know the Institute of Forensic Medicine? AKA the morgue?’

  I’d done the tour, part of some committee or other. The place was new, state-of-the-art, disaster-ready. It was housed in the same complex as the Melbourne Coroner’s Court.

  ‘Did they tell you about their in-house wireless communications network?’

  I nodded, then explained to Inky. ‘There’s an internal radio link between the autopsy suites and the typing pool. By the time the pathologist has rinsed his scalpel and binned his gloves, a print-out of his notes is ready for checking and signature.’

  Valentine moved his head forward, again drawing us into a conspiratorial hunch. ‘That little birdie I mentioned, he’s a technology buff. He’s also a forensics fan. He likes to combine his two hobbies. He sits outside the Institute with a scanner and a set of earphones.’

  He paused while we conjured the image.

  ‘Sick, isn’t it? I really should report him to somebody. But he’s harmless enough and whenever he picks up a transmission he thinks might interest me, he gets straight on the blower. Which is what happened last week after they brought in the hessian sack from Lake Nillahcootie.’

  Inky’s eyes were growing less twinkly by the second.

  ‘For what it’s worth, I’ve got the tape,’ continued Valentine. ‘The examination is categorised as preliminary but what it boils down to is this. Only the larger bones remain—pelvis, thighs, upper arms, cranium. Reasonably well preserved considering the passage of time and the ravages of the creepy-crawlies. The owner was a mature male aged somewhere over fifty, approximately 170 centimetres tall with mild osteoporosis. Teeth in the upper jaw were long gone, indicating the corpse wore dentures.’ He paused and flicked a peanut into his mouth. ‘How are we doing so far?’

  ‘Fits Mervyn Cutlett’s general description,’ I said. ‘Shortish, right age group, probable chopper wearer.’ Dentures were virtually standard issue for members of Merv’s class and generation. You got a full extraction and a pair of clackers on your twenty-first birthday, save yourself further trouble and expense.

  ‘Now here’s the interesting bit,’ said Valentine. ‘Wear on some of the bones consistent with rope friction. Plus trauma to the parietal plate in the form of a circular perforation of approximately six millimetres diameter.’

  He leaned low over the table, displaying the bare back of his depilated noggin. Using the tip of his miniature cigar, he gave it a sharp, demonstrative tap.

  ‘Conclusion,’ he said. ‘He’d been tied up and shot in the back of the head.’

  My eyes widened in disbelief. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

  I tore the parking ticket off my windscreen and read the penalty by the light of the lava lamp bubbling in the nearest shop window. Fifty bucks, straight down the toilet. Inky shovelled a handful of Quik-Eze into his face and grunted.

  Across the street, outside the Toilers Retreat, I could see Vic Valentine getting into an illegally parked BMW, his dope-dealing informant Jason behind the wheel. ‘It’s extortion, pure and simple.’ I squinted up at the four paragraphs of fine print on the parking sign.

  The implications of Valentine’s startling revelations about the pathology examination were still sinking in. They were alarming, unfathomable and as welcome as a prawn cocktail in a kosher deli.

  ‘The whole idea’s ludicrous,’ I said. ‘If the remains are really Merv Cutlett’s, then Charlie Talbot and Barry Quinlan must’ve shot him and dumped the body in the lake.

  Assisted by Colin Bishop. We’ve got two MPs and the pro vice-chancellor of a university guilty of murder and criminal conspiracy. It beggars belief. Did they kill him somewhere else? Did they lure him up to the Shack and do it? Did something happen while they were there that escalated? Where did they get a gun? Who pulled the trigger? It’s patently absurd.’

  Inky nodded. ‘You don’t kill somebody over a union amalgamation,’ he pointed out. ‘No matter how tempting.’

  Which was what we’d told Vic Valentine when he dropped his bombshell. And he admitted that it did seem an unlikely scenario. Fortunately, for the moment at least, he wasn’t actively pursuing the story. For a start, the pathology report wasn’t publishable, given its provenance. And the remains were yet to be definitely identified as Cutlett’s. Matters were now in the hands of the Homicide Squad and he was content to let the story play itself out before writing it up.

  Meantime, he had the imminent outbreak of a gang war to occupy his attention. The Beamer peeled away and we watched it disappear down the street.

  ‘What do you think Gilpin’s playing at?’ I said, pocketing the poxy parking infringement notice.

  Inky’s mind was elsewhere. ‘I think it might be a good idea if you had a word with Barry Quinlan,’ he said.

  ‘Me?’ I asked. ‘Why me?’

  He crunched his antacid and gave a choleric scowl. ‘Me and Bazza aren’t exactly Bogie and Bacall. It’s a long and tedious story dating from the Hawke–Keating showdown. Suffice to say, I wouldn’t get through the door.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ I said grudgingly. ‘So happens I’ll be seeing Quinlan on Monday. You think it can wait until then?’

  ‘It’s been waiting for nearly twenty years, it can wait another couple of days. No point getting our underwear in an uproar. Like the man said, it’s still provisional.’

  ‘If this is what it looks like…’ ‘If this is what it looks like, it’s going to be the shitstorm from hell. We don’t want to find ourselves anywhere near it.’ He held out his arm and a taxi pulled up. ‘You hear anything else, let me know.’

  A
nd on that less-than-illuminating note, the leprechaun climbed into the cab and fucked off, leaving me holding the crock. And it most definitely wasn’t full of gold.

  The street was coming alive with dreadlocks, pierced appendages and ravenous vegans. I fished out my mobile and called Red. The lad was at home, divesting the refrigerator of its remnant leftovers before heading to a farewell party. His mate Tarquin was flying out on Sunday for six months’ study in Japan.

  ‘Say sayonara from me,’ I instructed. ‘Don’t get wasted. Don’t take any of my beer. And be home by one-thirty.’

  ‘Are we still on for the driving thing tomorrow?’ he said. ‘The weather report says fine and mild.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘But all bets are off if you’re not home before curfew.’

  I checked my voicemail. I got the last caller first.

  ‘This is Detective Constable Stromboli, Mr Whelan,’ said a male voice. ‘Homicide Squad. If you get this message before eight, please call me back this evening.’

  By ten to eight, I was at the northern limits of the Coolaroo federal electorate, out where the tract housing finally gave way to market gardens, stud farms, small wineries, golf courses and bare paddocks. Tullamarine Airport was ten minutes behind me, a phosphorescent glow in my rear-vision mirror.

  The house stood at the end of a gravel driveway, both sides planted with rows of vines, a curtain of natives shielding it from the road. As I turned off the asphalt at the letterbox marked TALBOT–FOLLBIG, my headlights swept the outbuildings.

  First the old dairy shed in which Charlie turned his minuscule vendage into Chateau Coolaroo, a quaffing red guaranteed to put fur on the tongues of his Christmas list of friends, colleagues and constituents. Then a triple carport, swathed in Virginia creeper, where his maroon Lexus was parked beside Margot’s Audi and a little red Mazda 323 that I assumed belonged to the young woman who looked after Margot’s daughter Katie. And finally the chateau itself, low, sprawling and unostentatious, the brick of the original homestead rendered in whitewash.

  Katie heard my car arrive. She was waiting behind the screen door, her chubby face beaming.