Sucked In

by Shane Maloney

  ‘Mum, Mum,’ she called. ‘It’s Muh-ree.’

  I waited for her to open the screen, knowing she liked to do it herself. She was almost thirty, stocky in a dusty-pink tracksuit, with the slanting, ageless eyes that announce Down Syndrome.

  ‘Hello, Katie.’

  As I stepped inside, I touched the back of her plump hand. She went shy, blushed and gave me a disconcertingly coquettish look. I followed her rolling gait into the living room, a welcoming space with muted lighting, soft cushionstrewn couches and a large refectory table from which Margot rose to meet me.

  Her eyes were tired, her face was scrubbed and her ash blonde hair was drawn tight behind her ears but she was still easily recognisable as one of Mavis Peel’s girls from the FUME office. The original Charlie’s Angels, the big-hair brigade.

  ‘Murray,’ she said. ‘Good to see you.’

  We hugged gently, motionless in each other’s embrace. Television sounds came low from somewhere deeper inside the house and Katie’s carer appeared.

  ‘Hello, Sarah,’ I said, remembering the girl’s name. She was a serious young insect with bobbed hair and glasses, a part-time student who lived in a self-contained flat attached to the house.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘C’mon, Katie. Let’s say goodnight to Mr Dobbs.’

  They disappeared, off to the stall where Katie’s elderly pony was stabled.

  Between them, Charlie and Margot had done well. Their pooled resources had funded a comfortable set-up and Margot would never need to worry about money. But it had been a struggle for her, especially in the early years. A single mother, a disabled child, no formal education past secretarial school. And now what? Picking up the pieces, facing the future alone, the material comforts scant compensation.

  ‘Help yourself to a drink,’ she said, sliding open one of the glass doors onto the flagged patio that overlooked the side lawn. ‘Let’s have a fag.’

  There was an open bottle of white on the table beside a heap of unopened envelopes. I got a glass from the usual cupboard.

  We stood, wine in hand, smoking and staring into the darkening space where they’d pitched the marquee that summer day, eight years earlier, when she and Charlie finally tied the knot.

  ‘How’s Katie taking it?’ I said.

  ‘She’s still waiting for him to come home, I think. It’s all a bit much for her to grasp.’ Margot exhaled hard and sucked her cheeks, holding herself back. ‘I think I’m still waiting, too. But that’s normal, isn’t it?’

  A dead partner, that was something else we had in common.

  ‘You never really get used to it,’ I said. ‘But you get on with it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just…’ The sentence trailed off and silence hung between us, more expressive than words.

  She abruptly extinguished her cigarette, screwing it into a terracotta pot-plant saucer on the heavy redwood garden table. ‘You’ll stay for dinner, I hope.’ She started back inside. ‘I’ve got a lot of casseroles need eating.’

  The refrigerator was stacked with funerary meats. Gestures of sympathy in plastic tubs and floral pattern Corningware, the offerings of neighbours, friends and constituents. A fortnight’s supply at least.

  ‘Got any tuna mornay?’ I scanned the collection. ‘Apricot chicken?’

  ‘Don’t be mean,’ tutted Margot. ‘You’ll eat what you’re given and you’ll like it. Open another bottle while I heat something up.’

  She blitzed some condolence stew in the microwave and we sat at the big refectory table and poked at it. I asked about her plans.

  ‘Back to work,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s been wonderful, of course. Staff, clients, everybody. But the place won’t run itself. Or maybe it will, which would be even worse.’

  She owned a travel business, Fliteplan. A niche outfit with three staff in the Melbourne office and two in Sydney. Together with Prue, the other typist at the Municipals, she’d set it up when the amalgamation made them redundant. Charlie helped arrange finance, making good on his promise that he’d see everyone right. With their experience of organising travel for FUME officials and their contacts among the women who did likewise at other unions, the pair soon had a thriving operation. They broadened out into the corporate sector and by the late eighties they were doing well enough for Prue to sell her half to Margot and take early retirement.

  ‘So, you’re not tempted to pack it in?’ I said.

  ‘And do what?’ She swept the air with the back of her hand. ‘Revive my career as an international supermodel?’

  I shrugged. ‘Something different.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she conceded. ‘Eventually. But it’s not something I want to think about right now.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’

  She gave me a reassuring smile. ‘How’s your goulash?’

  ‘Rubbery,’ I said. ‘Dericious.’

  ‘Gina Schiavoni’s tiramisu might be a safer bet.’

  I ate two helpings and made some coffee to finish off. While it was perking I asked if she was going to the wake. She shook her head firmly. That side of Charlie’s life was now a closed book. ‘But tell them thanks for all the support,’ she said.

  The bottle I’d opened with the alleged goulash was almost empty. Margot was out-drinking me, two to one.

  ‘Snort of port with your coffee?’ she said.

  ‘Better not. Run into a booze bus on the way home, it’s more than my job’s worth.’

  Katie came through the archway leading to the bedrooms. She had Sarah by the hand, as if for moral back-up.

  ‘We’ve come to say goodnight,’ announced Sarah. ‘Say goodnight, Katie.’

  Katie blushed furiously. ‘Goodnight, Muh-ree,’ she declared, then scuttled away with the ambivalent finality of a woman terminating an over-long engagement.

  While Margot went off for the bedtime ritual, I took a cup of coffee outside for a smoke. After a few minutes, she joined me once more on the terrace. I nodded towards the lawn, a rectangle of deep darkness where the lights of the house bled out into the night.

  ‘You were like a couple of teenagers that day,’ I said. ‘Prancing around the dancefloor, that god-awful cover band playing old Buddy Holly tunes.’

  ‘Teenagers?’ she snorted. ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Okay, thirtysomethings.’

  ‘That’s better. Barefaced flattery, but closer to the mark.’

  She lit a cigarette and tapped the ash on the edge of the terracotta saucer. I screwed my courage to the sticking point.

  ‘I don’t know if you heard about it,’ I started, ‘but they found part of a skeleton up at Nillahcootie. The lake’s been drained apparently, some sort of maintenance work. They’re still working on the ID, but it looks like it might be Merv Cutlett.’

  ‘So I understand,’ she nodded. ‘As a matter of fact, the police came to see me this afternoon about it. A man and a woman. Plainclothes. They were very nice, sorry to intrude at a time like this and all that. They asked if Charlie had told me much about the accident. They’re trying to get a more precise picture of exactly what happened. To help with the identification, they said.’

  She inhaled deeply, as if catching her breath, and looked upward towards the faint engine roar of a northbound plane. Its wingtip lights were pulsing pinpricks of red in the encompassing void of the sky.

  ‘I don’t think I was much help. Charlie never really spoke about it, not back then and not after we got together properly. I think he felt guilty.’

  ‘Why would he feel guilty?’

  ‘You know what Charlie was like,’ she said. ‘Probably blamed himself, thought he should have done more.’

  The moon was rising, a pale crescent above the raked vines. Margot shivered slightly and wrapped her arms around herself.

  ‘Did they know you were working at the Municipals when the accident happened?’

  ‘They didn’t say. I was Margot Barraclough back then, of course.’

  I knew the story. Barracl
ough was Katie’s father’s name. When she fell pregnant, Margot had told her parents they were married. She and Barraclough had gone their separate ways by the time the child was born, but Margot continued with the pretence. It was only when she was starting the travel business that she went back to Follbig, her maiden name.

  ‘It’s just that I’ve had a message to call them,’ I said. ‘I think they might be doing the rounds of anyone who was at the union at the time.’

  Margot furrowed her brow. ‘Why?’

  ‘You remember Sid Gilpin?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. Her tone made it clear she remembered him only too well.

  ‘Thing is, he’s bobbed up in the wake of these remains, trying to flog some yarn about corruption at the union.’

  She turned to me, fierce. ‘That little weasel. He’s not saying Charlie was corrupt is he?’

  I patted the air, a mollifying gesture. ‘So far nobody’s taking him seriously. But Charlie not being here to defend himself, you never know what kind of bullshit might find its way into circulation.’

  ‘The union was a long time ago.’ Her voice had taken a flinty edge. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing for sure. If I ever hear anyone cast the slightest doubt on Charlie Talbot’s honesty, I’ll wring his neck, so help me. Charlie was the finest, most ethical man I ever met. He could’ve had me anytime he wanted. An affair, anything, and he knew it. But he was married to Shirley. He’d made his vows and he kept them. Never so much as touched me until he was a free man, more’s the pity. You think somebody like that is going to put his hand in the till for a few dollars? Sid Gilpin wasn’t fit to tie his bootlaces.’

  I sat there, abashed, until the heat went out of her.

  ‘I’m sure it’ll all blow over, Margot,’ I said. ‘I just thought you should know, that’s all.’

  She sighed wearily, then reached over and squeezed my forearm. ‘I know, Murray,’ she nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She took her hand away and used it to brush her eyes. Then she stood and gathered up my cup, her glass and the ashtray.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t Buddy Holly. It was Chuck Berry.’

  ‘It wasn’t Jimi Hendrix,’ I said. ‘That’s for sure.’

  She walked me to the front door, pausing on the way to press a Pyrex dish of non-specific pasta bake into my hands. ‘If there’s anything,’ I said. ‘Anything at all.’

  ‘I know.’ She smiled tightly. ‘I know.’

  We embraced again. This time, she seemed as fragile as a sparrow. And when I stood at the car door and waved back at her, framed there in the doorway, she looked brittle enough to snap in half.

  At six the next morning, I tossed back an orange juice and laced up my trainers.

  Twice a week for three years, I’d risen in the dark to drive Red to rowing, then run for thirty minutes on a treadmill in the gym at the City Baths, reading the newspapers while I jogged. It wasn’t much but at least I was making an effort. After Red switched from dipping his oar to treading the boards, I slipped out of the habit of regular exercise. Another winter of puddings and gravy and my decline would be irreversible.

  It was do or die. I went out the back gate and began thumping down the path to the river.

  A heavy dew had fallen and the lawns were dark and sodden, still untouched by the pearly tinge spreading from the eastern horizon. By the time I reached the bottom of the slope, my lungs were raw and I was dizzy from exertion. Where the grassy slope ended and the path entered the trees, I stopped for a second to catch my breath.

  On the high ground across the river, the old lunatic asylum was taking shape against the dawn sky. It, too, would soon be luxury apartments. A waste, I thought, what with madness on the rise.

  I jogged for half an hour, easing my body back into the groove. As I ran, I thought about the scraps that had blown across my path the previous day. Politics abhors a vacuum, and Charlie Talbot’s death had created one. Ambition was being sucked in from all directions. And despite myself, I could feel the inexorable tug.

  It was a dead-set certainty that we’d lose the next state election. If we were lucky enough to win the one after that, I’d have spent ten years in opposition. Even if I entered government as a junior minister, I’d be shin-deep into my fifties, my future behind me. It wasn’t an encouraging prospect. On the other hand, I wasn’t exactly spoiled for choice, career-wise. After a lifetime in politics, I was ruined for useful work.

  And then there was the business of the Nillahcootie bones and Sid Gilpin’s mischief-making. Having slept on it, I was even more convinced that I’d been slipped a tinfoil sixpence. The remains might not even be Merv’s. Even if they were, there could be any number of explanations for the hole in his head. And anyway, Sid Gilpin had no credibility. The coppers would soon have it sorted.

  The day was shaping up as forecast, the opening act of what might be the last weekend of fine weather before the onset of winter.

  As I staggered through the back door, aching in unaccustomed places, a girl was coming out of the bathroom. She was bleary-eyed and tousled and creeping softly so as not to wake anybody. Glancing back down the passage, she noticed me, gave a little wave and let herself out the front door.

  Her name was Polly, or perhaps Molly, or Milly. She was one of Red’s school friends, part of the gang. Her parents, if I remembered right, were both medicos of some kind.

  Red had arrived home just after midnight, a small entourage in tow. He’d stuck his head around the bedroom door, found me reading and we’d made our goodnights. Around one-fifteen, my sleeping ears registered muffled shushes and heavy-footed tip-toes at the front door. Evidently, not all of Red’s visitors had departed at that point.

  By the time he emerged from the Stygian gloom of his bedroom, I’d showered, donned my Country Road casuals, breakfasted and almost finished working my way through the weekend broadsheets. It was pushing nine and he was running late for the train that would get him across town to the Knitting Mill Youth Theatre.

  ‘All systems are go for your driving lesson,’ I said, watching him simultaneously inhale a muesli bar, fall into his clothes, brush his hair, find his travel card and grab his script. ‘I’ll pick you up at one, okay?’

  He nodded enthusiastically, gave me the thumbs up and rushed out the door. I checked the number on my voicemail and rang DC Stromboli.

  ‘Thanks for getting back so promptly, Mr Whelan,’ he said. ‘We’re attempting to identify some human remains recently found at Lake Nillahcootie which may possibly be those of Mervyn Cutlett, the former secretary of the municipal employees’ union. In the course of our enquiries, we’re seeking the assistance of a number of people who used to work for the union. Is there a convenient time in the next few days for me to ask you a few questions?’

  ‘Fire away, Constable.’

  ‘I’d prefer to speak with you in person, if possible.’

  He didn’t need to explain how he knew that I’d worked at the Municipals. I’d had enough dealings with the law over the years, not least during the business with Lyndal and matters arising, to warrant an entry in the police database. A keyword search of the union would’ve thrown up my name. Not everybody who worked there would be quite so easy to track down, I suddenly realised. Which possibly explained the police interest in the old union records.

  ‘Your place or mine?’ I said. ‘Whichever you prefer. I’ll be catching up with some paperwork at my electorate office between ten and twelve this morning if that’s convenient for you.’

  It was. I gave him the address and rang off.

  Larder, refrigerator and cellar were all looking wan, so I ducked into Safeway on the way to the office. As instructed, Red had refrained from nicking off with my last half-dozen cans of beer. He’d simply invited his friends home to consume them in situ. I made a mental note to dock his allowance and give him a sound thrashing. Just as soon as I’d interrogated him about his overnight guest.

  I’d made some work-related calls and shuffled some pa
per around my desk by the time Detective Constable Stromboli knocked on my door around eleven-thirty.

  He was younger than he sounded on the phone. A tall, solid man with close-cropped hair that was starting to whiten, he wore his suit like he still trying to get the hang of it.

  ‘Robert Stromboli,’ I said. ‘I did wonder about the name. You’re the bastard cost us the 1985 semi-final, aren’t you?’

  A Robbie Stromboli had played three seasons with Collingwood in the early to mid eighties, one of those patchy footballers who has his occasional dazzling moment, then fades away. Stromboli’s flash of glory happened when he snatched the ball from the pack at the first bounce of the 1985 semi, went through the Fitzroy backline like cod-liver oil and booted it straight between the big ones. Twenty seconds, go to whoa. We stayed behind for the rest of the game.

  ‘I did my bit,’ he said. ‘But I can’t claim credit for the entire thirty-seven-point margin.’

  ‘You broke our spirit,’ I said, extending my hand. ‘Come in, Detective Constable, tell me how I can be of assistance.’ He gave me a brief pump and a resigned, collegial look. The sooner we get this nonsense out of the way, the sooner we can get back to our proper work. The manner was relaxed but the shake was all copper.

  ‘I won’t keep you long, Mr Whelan,’ he said, settling into my visitors’ chair and taking out a small notebook. ‘If we could begin with a brief outline of your history and duties at the union and the extent of your contact with Mr Cutlett.’

  I obliged, trying to keep it succinct. He nodded along and made a few scribbles.

  ‘Do you happen to know if Mr Cutlett wore a wristwatch?’ he said.

  I thought for a moment and answered truthfully. ‘Can’t say I ever noticed.’

  The detective took an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed me two Polaroids.

  ‘Anything here jog your memory?’

  The photos showed a yellow-metal watch, front and back views.

  ‘A number of items were found in the vicinity of the remains,’ explained Stromboli. ‘Buttons, some one and two cent coins, but this was the only personal object. We’re hoping somebody might recognise it.’