She gave me the thumbs-up and finished her call. I filled our glasses and handed her the present.
‘Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire,’ she read, peeling back the wrapping. ‘For the girl who has everything.’
In return, she presented me with a recent biography of the Prime Minister, 487 pages, hardbound. ‘Take it to the beach,’ she suggested. ‘Bury your head in the sand.’
We toasted ourselves for having survived another year, then she gathered up her groceries and departed in the general direction of a month’s holiday, leaving the locking-up to me.
The sign on the front door said the office would be open until two o’clock. Since it was unlikely that anyone would have urgent need of our services in the next half-hour, I figured I’d eat lunch then close up early.
Five minutes later, as I was brushing crispbread crumbs off my shirtfront and putting the olives back in the fridge, I heard the front door open and the buzzer on the reception desk ring.
It was Rita Melina. She was wearing pedal pushers, a loose blouse that hung to mid-thigh and big-framed Jackie O sunglasses. A glossy shopping bag with the logo of the Daimaru department store was slung over her shoulder.
‘Happy Christmas, Rita,’ I said.
‘Maybe for some,’ she said bluntly. ‘Can you spare a few minutes, Murray? I need to talk to somebody official, but not too official, if you know what I mean.’
‘I guess that just about fits my description, Rita,’ I said. ‘I’ll be happy to help, if I can.’
I led her into my office. She drew up a chair, put her elbows on the desk and pushed her sunglasses up onto her hairdo. ‘This is confidential, right?’ she said.
I was about to make some kind of a joke, until I saw the look of flinty determination in her eyes. ‘Up to a point,’ I said. ‘I’m a member of parliament, not a priest or a doctor. I couldn’t conceal a crime, for example.’
‘Say we were talking hypothetically?’ she said. ‘Or I was here on behalf of a friend?’
‘Ms X, for example?’ I said.
‘Mrs X, actually,’ said Rita.
‘Ah, so,’ I said. ‘And what is the nature of Mrs X’s hypothetical problem?’
‘She’s worried about something Mr X has done, or might have done, and she’s wondering how she might raise her concerns with the appropriate authority.’
‘And you’re hoping I can provide some informal advice, steer you right,’ I said. ‘On behalf of Mrs X, that is?’
Rita flicked her wrist dismissively, dispensing with our tippy-toe pas-de-deux.
‘I think we’ve established the ground rules, Murray,’ she said. ‘Tony’s left me. Shot through. Not a word of goodbye, except for some half-baked message on the answering machine about having being called out of town urgently on business. I didn’t believe a word of it, of course. He must think I’m an idiot.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to hear…’
She cut me off with another peremptory flap. ‘I’m not here for marriage guidance counselling, Murray. Some sort of a bust-up between me and Tony has been on the cards for a while, ever since the girls left home. What’s he expect me to do, sit around the house counting my wrinkles while some little gold-digger sinks her claws into him? Anyway, a few days ago I finally put my foot down. Told him I wasn’t prepared to tolerate his womanising any longer. Told him that if he didn’t get rid of that waitress, the one he’s been slipping it to, I’d divorce him, take him to the cleaners.’
I sank deeper into my seat and wished that I’d locked the door while I still had the chance. ‘Catholics don’t get divorced, Rita,’ I said. ‘They stay together and fight to the death.’
Mrs X wasn’t interested in my observations about matrimony. She took a pack of Marlboro Lites from her bag, fired one up with a disposable lighter and looked around for an ashtray.
‘It’s forbidden to smoke in government offices,’ I said.
‘Sunday night, I gave the prick twenty-four hours to make up his mind,’ Rita exhaled. ‘Next day, he goes to work, never comes home. Vanishes. So does mega-tits, his bit on the side. She quits without notice, moves out of her flat, tells the neighbours she’s going on a long trip. So it’s obvious what’s happened. Tony’s made his choice, taken off with this cow. And good riddance to him. Except for one thing. His passport’s gone, too, along with a whole bunch of business papers he keeps locked in his den at home. Banking details and whatnot. The bastard’s left me high and dry.’
I tipped the paperclips from a saucer and put it between us on the table. ‘I can understand you being upset, Rita,’ I said. ‘But what you need is a lawyer, not a member of parliament.’
She held up her palm, not finished yet. ‘I called Immigration, tried to find out if he’s left the country in the last couple of days. They say they can’t tell me. Some bullshit about the Privacy Act, even though I’m his wife. So naturally I thought of you, thought that you’d be able to pull some strings, make some unofficial enquiries on my behalf, that sort of thing.’
As a former adviser to a Minister for Ethnic Affairs, I was not entirely unfamiliar with the labyrinthine back corridors of the federal Department of Immigration. So it was quite within the realm of possibility that I could find somebody who knew somebody who could get an informal peek at the information that Rita wanted. On the other hand, it is axiomatic that getting sucked into your constituents’ marital disputes is a zero-sum game.
‘I wish I could help, Rita. I really do. But Immigration’s federal, I’m state. Different worlds. And frankly, I just don’t have that sort of pull.’
‘I thought you were my friend,’ she said.
‘I’m not a magician, Rita,’ I said. ‘Anyway, even if you confirm that Tony’s left the country, what good does it do you?’
‘Apart from wanting to know, one way or the other?’ she said. ‘Remember my friend, Mrs X?’
Here it comes, I thought. Whatever it is. Hell hath no fury like a woman stiffed by her spouse of twenty years.
‘Mrs X is just a simple housewife,’ said Rita. ‘She knows nothing about her husband’s business dealings. Never has. She’s always been the home-maker, he’s been the provider. A traditional marriage, strict demarcation. She’s never had any reason to want it otherwise. After all, he’s quite successful, business-wise. Starts out with a little pizza joint, builds it into a booming restaurant, branches out into the wholesale seafood line. Always some iron in the fire. Long as the bills get paid, Mrs X sees no reason to think twice about the situation.’
I nodded, letting her know that I could see where she was going. ‘But now that Mr X has run out on her,’ I said, ‘maybe left the country, she’s begun to worry that some of his business affairs, about which she knows nothing, might create problems for her. Perhaps he’s run out on his debts, too, and she’ll be left holding the baby.’
‘Or holding nothing at all,’ she said. ‘For all the wife knows, Mr X is even now in the process of transferring his assets to wherever it is that he’s gone. Or hiding them where Mrs X will never be able to find them, so that by the time she tracks him down the cupboard will be bare and she’ll never see her share of the common property. She might even lose her home. Would that be fair, I ask you?’
‘You really think Tony would do that to you?’ I said.
‘Not until he walked out on me,’ she said. ‘Now, frankly, I really don’t know. Who knows what ideas that piece of trash has been putting into his head? It’d be different if I could talk to him about it. But nobody’ll admit to knowing where he is. The staff at the restaurant say they haven’t seen him. All I can be sure about is that I can’t afford to take the risk he’s doing the dirty on me.’
‘So it’s occurred to you that if some government agency had reason to suspect that Mr X was engaged in illegal activity,’ I said, ‘they might take steps to prevent him moving his assets out of the country?’
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Freeze his bank accounts, something like that.’
Her brilliant idea lay there on the table between us, like a dead cat. I let it lie there for a while before speaking.
‘I sympathise with your situation, Rita, I really do,’ I said eventually. ‘But you can’t just go accusing Tony of criminal activity because you think he might be screwing you out of your potential divorce entitlements. You’ll probably just make the situation worse with Tony when he eventually resurfaces. Plus, you’ll get yourself into trouble with the law. Making false allegations is a serious offence.’
‘Even if they’re true?’ she said.
‘So what’s he done, Rita?’ I said. ‘Paid his casual staff cash-in-hand, watered the drinks, bribed the health inspector?’
‘How about tax avoidance,’ she said. ‘Money laundering, stuff like that.’
‘I thought you said you don’t know anything about Tony’s business activities.’
She ground her cigarette into the saucer, lit another and leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘He’s been going to Asia on business every few months for the last couple of years,’ she said. ‘Quick trips, just a day or so at a time. Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore. Meetings with his seafood export clients, he said. Last June, he took me along, made a bit of a holiday of it. Singapore. We went sightseeing, shopping, ate some fabulous food. But as far as I could see, the only business Tony did was visit the Oriental Bank to deposit some cash. A great big wad of it, $30,000 at least. Told me he was building up a nest egg for us.’
‘It’s a little unusual, I’ll grant you that,’ I said. ‘But what makes you think there was something dodgy about the money?’ I said.
She gave me a withering look. ‘Get real, Murray,’ she said. ‘Even I know that there’s a limit to the amount of currency you’re allowed to export. And that banks in Australia have to report transactions that big. All I’m asking here is that you point me in the direction of the right government agency. Go into a cop shop with this sort of story, they’ll put it down to a domestic, give me the bum’s rush. A word to the wise, that’s all I’m asking, Murray.’
‘You’re sure about this, Rita?’ I said. ‘You start the ball rolling, you won’t be able to stop it.’
‘It’s Tony’s ball,’ she said. ‘And right now, as far as I’m concerned, Tony’s balls belong in a vice. As for me, I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve signed nothing so I can’t see how I can be implicated. I’m just an honest citizen doing her duty.’
She glowered across the table at me, as if any suggestion to the contrary would constitute a wilful obstruction of justice. ‘You men,’ she added gratuitously. ‘I should have known whose side you’d be on.’
‘That’s unfair,’ I said. ‘And it’s not a matter of taking sides. I’m just suggesting you give yourself a few days to think about this, not go off half-cocked.’
‘And let Tony clean me out in the meantime?’ she said. ‘No way.’
I thought about Pontius Pilate. A much maligned figure, I reflected. I picked up the phone, dialled the state headquarters of the taxation department, identified myself and asked to speak with a senior officer.
I was put through to the state manager, a more senior seat-polisher that I’d expected, and explained that I was calling on behalf of a constituent with information relating to possible tax evasion and infringement of currency laws. Despite his understandable lack of enthusiasm for an unscheduled meeting on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, he agreed to spare said constituent fifteen minutes of his time, subject to her prompt arrival at the Moonee Ponds office.
‘Can you be there in half an hour?’ I asked, hand over the mouthpiece.
‘Just try to stop me,’ she said.
There was not the slightest chance of that happening.
As I escorted her to the door, Rita presented me with her Daimaru shopping bag.
‘A little something for Christmas,’ she said.
The bag held two brick-sized parcels wrapped in newspaper.
‘A crayfish,’ Rita explained, ‘and a dozen abalone.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That’s very generous of you.’ About a hundred dollars worth of generous by the heft of it.
‘You’ve been a pillar, Murray,’ she said. ‘And Tony’s got a freezer-load of this stuff in the garage.’
The instant she was out the door, I lowered the blind, shot the bolt and heaved a sigh of relief. Tony, I thought, you’re a dead man. I was thinking metaphorically.
And then I wasn’t thinking about it at all. As of that moment, my holidays had officially begun.
The house in Lorne was one of those sixties jobs, a cement-sheet box on stilts. Perched on a sloping block of land at the crest of the ridge overlooking the town, it had bare floors, throw-rugs, an antique television set with rabbit-ear antenna, ramshackle furniture and a timber deck from which the sea could be glimpsed through the raggedy tops of the surrounding bluegums. Sand had seeped into the nooks and crannies, pieces were missing from the board games and the bookshelf held only dog-eared fishing manuals, bird-spotting books and unfinished Peter Carey novels.
We arrived three days after Christmas, drove straight from the airport with a carload of holiday supplies and Tarquin Curnow. A three-man advance party, our mission was to establish base camp before the others arrived late on New Year’s Day.
I had Christmas lunch with the Curnows, contributing Rita’s abalone to the spread, then trawled the Boxing Day sales for cut-price wardrobe essentials. My purchases included a selection of tropical shirts and a panama hat which, I felt, would serve me well in the resort-wear stakes.
I wore the panama hat to the airport. The day was hot, proper beach weather, with the promise of more to come. In deference to the season, Tark had shorn his Joey Ramone pageboy into a Travis Bickle mohawk and ripped the sleeves off his Nick Cave tee-shirt. The black jeans and mid-shin Doc Martens remained, however, welded to his lower body. For his part, Red was dressed for summer as God intended. Baggy shorts, a baggy shirt, blow-fly wraparounds, baseball cap and rubber thongs.
We drove across the Westgate Bridge, heat-haze rising from the oil depots, and fought our way down the Geelong Road with the rest of beach-bound Melbourne. Tarquin sprawled on the back seat, playing Tetris on his Gameboy, while Red gave me a run-down on his visit with mummy dearest, his twin half-sisters and Wendy’s husband.
‘Nicola and Alexandra are getting really fat,’ he said, puffing out his cheeks. ‘Biggest five-year-olds you’ve ever seen. I gave them swimming lessons in the pool and taught them to say fuck-bum. They’re all going to Phuket for two weeks when Richard gets back from the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.’
‘Phuket?’ I snorted, flooring the pedal to pass a fish-tailing caravan. ‘Fuck it! What’s Phuket compared to this?’
I fed Pet Sounds into the cassette-deck and cranked up the volume. Tarquin groaned from the back seat but Red went with it, grooving on the antique vibrations. An hour later, it was Nirvana as we turned down the Anglesea hill and sighted the ocean. By then, we were following the Great Ocean Road, two lanes of blacktop threaded between the sea and the Otway Ranges.
We followed it past the Anglesea funfair and paddle-boat rentals, past the lighthouse at Aireys Inlet and along the straight stretch of surf beach at Moggs Creek. As we travelled further west, the hills became steeper, wilder, more thickly wooded.
The road began to climb, clinging to the forested slopes in a series of switchback curves, dropping away to wave-washed rocks, double lines all the way.
According to the annual report of the Australian Tourism Commission, the Great Ocean Road attracts more than four million visitors a year. Most of them, it was evident, should never have been allowed behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. For twenty minutes we were stuck behind a tortoise-shaming senior citizen in a spanking new all-terrain Nissan Patrol. When I pulled out to pass him, we were almost totalled by a dipstick in an Audi convertible.
At the Cinema Point lookout, I hit the left indicator and eased onto the gravel margin.
�
��Five minute break,’ I said. ‘Stretch legs, contemplate nature, allow blood to return to driver’s knuckles.’
The sea extended to the horizon, vast and twinkling. Towering eucalypts and ragged scrub marched up the incline from the rocky shore, continuing past us, up into the grey-green vastness of the state forest. Looking back, we could see the surf at Eastern View, the breakers uncoiling in rows as regular as corduroy. Up ahead, beyond a series of blunt capes, we could just make out a broad arc of calico sand etched into the bush-covered ranges. And, packed tight around the sand, the township of Lorne.
‘What’s that pink blob?’ asked Red.
‘The Cumberland,’ I said. ‘A cutting-edge condominium-style time-share apartment complex.’
‘Shipwrecks,’ declared Tarquin, his hand sweeping the watery horizon. ‘There’s hundreds of them out there. Dozens, anyway. They sailed all the way from Europe, five months or more, then got smashed on these rocks.’
Red peered over the edge. ‘Cool.’
‘The dead bodies were washed ashore all along here. I did a project on it in Grade Six.’
An ancient kombi trembled to a halt beside us. Red nudged Tark and nodded towards a concert poster taped to its side door. Regurgitator. Hunters and Collectors. Spiderbait. Rock the Falls.
Two ferals got out of the van, little more than kids. He was covered in Celtic tattoos and she had feathers in her braids. A baby was slung across her chest in a raffia hammock. She sat on the lookout parapet, whipped out a tit and began to feed it. Magic Happens, read a sticker on the van window.
‘So does shit,’ muttered Tarquin, without apparent malice.
‘Can I use the mobile?’ said Red. He’d had his own, briefly, for emergency use and ease of essential son–father communications. Three hundred dollars worth of calls in a month, and I pulled the plug.
‘Keep it short,’ I said.
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