Something Fishy

by Shane Maloney

  A police four-wheel-drive ferried us along the creek bed to a dirt track and a row of cars. The kids were subdued but physically none the worse. If there was other damage, it was not yet evident.

  Red and I had the back seat of a prowl car to ourselves for the trip down to Lorne. His tee-shirt was streaked with sweat and dirt.

  He looked so young and vulnerable and brave that it almost broke my heart.

  ‘What a maniac,’ he said, stroking his jaw like a war veteran at a reunion. ‘And how about you, charging through the trees, going ballistic?’

  ‘I thought he was going to kill you,’ I said.

  While a uniformed constable steered us along dirt tracks to the asphalt hardtop, Red told me all about it.

  Mongoose had sucked them in, he said. He kept leading them deeper and deeper into the bush, their destination always just a little further ahead. He told them the crop probably belonged to some hippie surfer who only visited it occasionally to water the plants. It’d just be walk in, walk back out with the smoke.

  ‘We wanted to turn back, Dad,’ he said. ‘Me and Jodie. But Matt and the others…’ he shrugged. ‘And after a while, we knew we’d get lost if we didn’t stick together.’

  They reached the camp about eleven. Mongoose scouted ahead and reported. The dog was out and about, the surfer asleep in a tent. Mongoose’s plan was to distract the dog while the others crept into the dope patch, grabbed a couple of plants each and scattered into the bush.

  It went fine until, mid-harvest, the plantation owner appeared. Not a spaced-out seaweed sucker but a bearded redneck brandishing a shotgun and screaming questions.

  He calmed down when they said they were just hikers, lost in the bush. Told them he’d let them go in a while if they did what he said. Then he herded them into the shed and blindfolded them.

  ‘We were scared,’ Red said. ‘But he didn’t hurt us, so we sort of believed him.’

  In the rear-view mirror, I saw the cop at the wheel of the prowl car tilt his head, the better to hear.

  ‘And we thought Mongoose was maybe out there somewhere, getting help or figuring out a way to spring us. That’s why we didn’t say anything about him first up.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ I reassured him. ‘Exactly the right thing.’

  It was past four o’clock when we reached Deans Marsh Road and began our descent to the sea. Thirty hours since I’d risen from my bed. Red, too, looked buggered. We yawned simultaneously. When he started up the questions again, I fended him off with the minimum. There were things it was better he didn’t know, too much that I didn’t yet understand.

  ‘Tell me something,’ I said. ‘When that cop booted the dog, what did he say to you?’

  He grinned. ‘He said not to dob him in to the RSPCA.’

  My boy, I sensed, would get though his experience intact.

  A small crowd was milling on the street outside the Lorne cop shop. The other kids had arrived a few minutes ahead of us and family reunions were taking place. Barbara Prentice was huddled with Jodie and Matt, her sunglasses pushed back on her head. Her expression was a mixture of relief and admonishment, both kids talking at once. Across the street, Faye and Leo Curnow leaned against their Volvo wagon. Tarquin sat in the front passenger seat, door open, elbows on his knees, thumbs working his Gameboy. His sister Chloe combed through a Who Weekly. Our driver continued past and deposited us at the back door.

  Proceedings inside were brisk, almost perfunctory. With my permission, Red was taken away to give a brief preliminary statement. I was parked in Sergeant Pendergast’s office with a cup of tea and a Tim Tam. An officer would be with me in due course.

  I sat there and counted the number of ways a man can be a fool. A slat of sunlight inched its way across the wall map. My tea went cold. And then Hayes of Homicide was dropping a wallet on the desk in front of me.

  ‘Yours,’ he said. ‘We found it among Surovic’s stuff up there at his camp.’

  ‘Surovic?’ I said. ‘That his name?’

  Hayes looked down at me, hands sunk deep in his pockets. ‘Michael Surovic,’ he said. ‘According to items found at the camp.’

  I thumbed through my wallet. Credit cards and whatnot were still there. The Polaroid. I took it out and looked at it.

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ Hayes said, ‘in my opinion he does look a bit like Rodney Syce.’

  Perhaps that was supposed to make me feel better. I waited for the shard of ice to melt, then put the photo away.

  ‘And Jake Martyn?’ I said. ‘Enlighten me.’

  Hayes rubbed his nose thoughtfully. ‘A superficial wound, but painful. And there was an awful long wait for the ambulance.’

  ‘Terrible delays, apparently,’ I said. ‘Since the privatisation.’

  ‘We did our best to make him comfortable. He was very grateful. Opened his heart to us. Told us about his run of bad luck at the blackjack table.’

  ‘High roller?’ I said.

  ‘Deep shit,’ nodded Hayes. ‘Spiralling debts and a business partner impatient to be paid out. Desperate frame of mind.’

  ‘And an easy mark in Tony Melina,’ I said. ‘Did he really think he’d get away with it?’

  Hayes shrugged, a man who’d seen it all. ‘He still might. What he told us back up there in the hills isn’t admissible evidence. The actual killer is dead. And Tony Melina’s body is somewhere on the bottom of Bass Strait. A lot will hang on your testimony, Mr Whelan.’

  I lowered my head and groaned.

  ‘All in good time,’ said Hayes. ‘Right now, I suggest you get some shut-eye. We’ll talk again when you’re rested up. Your son’s waiting outside.’

  So was Barbara Prentice.

  As I stepped into the glare of the late afternoon, she came forward to meet me.

  I must have looked like an insurance assessor’s nightmare. But there was understanding in her eyes, and gratitude, and the promise of consolation. Before I knew it, her arms were reaching to enfold me.

  She drew me close and held me tight, my head cradled in the hollow of her hand. The short blond hairs behind her ear gleamed in the afternoon sun.

  A long time had passed since I’d felt the warmth of a woman’s arms, the press of a woman’s body. A small sigh escaped me. A dam burst.

  I began to cry.

  Not just a sob and a sniffle. Not just a quiet weep. Great shudders racked my body. Tears gushed from my eyes. I blubbered, whimpered and gasped.

  Barbara rocked me, soothing me with strokes and sympathetic murmurs.

  Women say they appreciate vulnerability in a man. Admire it, even. So they say. But nothing can convince me they find it sexy. Not the full waterworks. Not the pathetic bawling that dribbles gooey strings of snot onto the downy hairs at the back of their necks.

  You’ve blown it, sport, I told myself. And I didn’t mean my nose.

  ‘You’re a good man, Murray Whelan,’ said Barbara.

  That sealed it. I drew a shaky breath, extricated myself and firmed my upper lip.

  ‘Better be going,’ I snuffled.

  It never would have worked anyway. A potential minefield. That son of hers, for a start. What a ratbag. And Velcro Girl, the daughter. And when it came to the clinch, as it just had, she was a bit too skinny for my taste.

  ‘You okay, Dad?’ said Red, stepping deftly into the gap.

  They say that time is a great healer.

  So is pursuing your personal demon to the heart of the labyrinth. Confronting him one on one, and seeing his flyblown carcass in the dirt.

  Okay, so it was Mick Surovic, not Rodney Syce. But as far as I was concerned, the rage was spent. The evil spirit was exorcised.

  We went back to the holiday house and I slept like a felled tree, twelve hours straight, Red on a blow-up mattress on the floor beside me.

  ‘Just in case you need anything in the night,’ he said. Also because he had no choice in the matter. He and Tark had ripped a hole in the tent at the Falls, so they had to find sle
eping space in the house. The ban on the Docs remained.

  Early next morning, I went down to the beach.

  There was a secluded spot not far from where I’d staggered ashore. I walked barefoot into the lapping foam and stood for a moment, watching the fall of the waves. Then I laid the photograph of my never-born little girl on the gently ebbing tide and watched it float away.

  Lyndal, I felt sure, would have approved.

  A few days later, back in Melbourne for a meeting with the coppers, I tossed the Syce file into the garbage. Didn’t even open it. Lyndal was beyond caring about Rodney Syce and so was I. He lived a crappy life and he’d die a crappy death. I had better things to think about than the form it might take.

  That was six months ago. There’s been plenty to keep me busy since then.

  The federal election has come and gone, with all its attendant demands on the party faithful. We lost, of course. Routed. The Labor Party is now in the wilderness at national, state and municipal level. And you know how I feel about wilderness.

  Jake Martyn is languishing in the Remand Centre, awaiting trial for murder. Not conspiracy, not delegation of a messy unpleasant chore, not possession of illegal abalone. Certainly not oops.

  As predicted, he reneged on his forest-floor fess-up. Went the clam. The Director of Public Prosecutions is concentrating on the paper trail, working to buttress my eyewitness testimony. Visibility from that aluminium dinghy wasn’t too hot, after all, and the absence of a body in a homicide case is always problematic.

  Gusto has gone into receivership. One of the creditors is Prentice & Associates, Architects. Another reason I haven’t returned Barbara’s calls.

  Red still sees Jodie, but only in passing at school. For the moment at least, he has forsworn romantic entanglements. Girls are more trouble than they’re worth, he tells me, although I suspect he’s got his eye on one of the munchkins in the Year Eleven production of The Wizard of Oz.

  The big loser among the living is poor Rita Melina. The Black Widow of Melbourne Upper, as Ayisha calls her.

  What with the tax office and the fish dogs and the overseas bank accounts, Tony’s estate still hasn’t passed probate. The way things are looking, Rita will be lucky if she ends up with enough dough for a decent root perm. Worse still, she has to live with the fact that she ratted out a husband whose infidelity was limited to feeling up the hired help. And did it while he was chained naked to a tree, pleading to be allowed to call her.

  The bodacious waitress, Tony’s supposed elopee, had in fact upped tits without notice to accept a lucrative job offer as a hostess in a Tokyo nightclub.

  Out of concern for Rita’s finer feelings, the business with Tony’s ear has not been divulged.

  Likewise, I’ve never disclosed the promise I made to blow the Premier’s bugle in public if the man in the shadows wasn’t Rodney Syce. There was nobody there to witness my pledge, after all. And anyway, that particular service is more expertly and frequently provided by the organs of the mass media.

  Nor have I yet found an appropriate use for the videotape that was waiting in a plain envelope on my desk at Parliament House when I returned from the summer break. It was unlabelled and the first few seconds of vision were so jumpy and jerky that I thought it must have been a misdirected submission to the film funding commission.

  Then the focus sharpened, the camera steadied and I found myself watching crystal clear footage of Dudley Wilson chucking his chunks over Alan Bunting on the deck of a Natural Resources launch near Cape Patterson.

  I think I’ll wait until Dudley’s Coastal Whatsit Panel submits its draft recommendations to the government. If he proposes further reductions in DNR staffing levels, I’ll slip a copy to every parliamentary member of the National Party. It might not affect the final outcome but it should sow some acrimony in the ranks of the enemy.

  Parliament is currently in recess for the winter and I’m spending my working hours at the electorate office. Detective Sergeant Meakes called me here a few days ago. It was the first time we’d spoken since New Year’s Day.

  ‘I thought you should know,’ he said. ‘A man’s body was found yesterday morning.’

  It was discovered in an old storm-water drain during excavation work on the new freeway tunnel under the Yarra at Richmond. It had been lodged there for a fair while and there wasn’t much of it left. There was enough, however, to get some partial fingerprints.

  It was Rodney Syce.

  The way Meakes figured it, Syce ditched the Kawasaki in Richmond after the shoot-out, then went to ground down a manhole cover. Perhaps he was injured from his spill off the bike, perhaps he got lost in the maze, perhaps he had an accident in the subterranean darkness. Whatever the case, however he died, his body was swept into an ancient section of piping.

  As to the other aspect of closure, I won’t say too much. Suffice to mention that I’ve met someone who shows signs of playing a significant role in that regard.

  We live in hope.

  What else can we do?

  More of Murray Whelan from Shane Maloney and

  Text Publishing

  STIFF

  The fiddle at the Pacific Pastoral meat-packing works was a nice little earner for all concerned until Herb Gardiner reported finding a body in Number 3 chiller. An accident, of course, but just the excuse a devious political operator might grab to stir up trouble with the unions.

  Enter Murray Whelan, minder, fixer and general dogsbody for the Minister for Industry. Between playing off party factions and pursuing the kohl-eyed Ayisha, it’s all in a day’s work for Murray to hose down the situation at Pacific Pastoral.

  Then the the acqua Falcon turns up. And after that, it gets personal. Because don’t you just hate it when somebody tries to kill you and you don’t know who or why?

  ‘Hilarious…witty, controversial, intelligent.’ Herald Sun

  ‘Fast-paced, fresh, unerringly funny.’ Houston Chronicle

  ‘Read it, you’ll love it.’ Courier-Mail

  ‘Funny and gripping’ Rolling Stone

  THE BRUSH-OFF

  Angelo Agnelli has been Minister for the Arts for twelve hours and already artists have started killing themselves. Or so it seems when Marcus Taylor’s body is fished from the Arts Centre moat. Was it really an act of protest over the state of arts funding? And what’s the political damage if the suicide note becomes public?

  The career of Murray Whelan, minder and all-round troubleshooter for the hapless Agnelli, hangs by its usual slender thread. If he can put the fix in here, he might have a chance of staying employed.

  But as Murray soon discovers, in the world of the culture vultures they don’t just sit around waiting for you to die before they start tearing the flesh off your bones.

  ‘Top shelf.’ Australian

  ‘Brilliantly mixes the comic and the tragic.’ Rolling Stone

  ‘Highly recommended.’ Canberra Times

  ‘Don’t miss this one.’ Sunday Age

  NICE TRY

  Forget Atlanta, everybody hates the Yanks—Melbourne’s bid for the 1996 Olympics is in the bag.

  Or nearly in the bag, which is where Murray Whelan, all-purpose political dogsbody and soon-to-be-ex-smoker, comes in. Recruited to head off an Aboriginal protest that threatens the bid, Murray is confident of stitching up a deal with the Kooris in three days and sucking down his last coffin nail inside a week. Tops.

  But then a steroid-crazed body-builder goes on the rampage and a young black athlete is murdered—and soon Murray’s investigative instinct is getting as tough a work-out as his nicotine patch.

  ‘The pick of Australian crime novels.’ Canberra Sunday Times

  ‘Tight pace, believable dialogue, terrific puzzle.’ Kirkus Reviews

  ‘Nice Try gets a big tick.’ Australian Book Review

  ‘As hilarious as it is immensely satisfying.’ Herald Sun

  THE BIG ASK

  Four a.m. and the smart money’s home in bed. More importantly for Mu
rray Whelan, his son Red isn’t. He’s gone missing, on the run somewhere in Sydney. So what’s Murray doing in a greasy spoon at the fruit and veg markets, nursing his facial bruising and talking to Donny Maitland about a grass-roots takeover of the truckies’ union?

  Working a deal for Angelo Agnelli, Minister for Transport and sparring partner of the United Haulage Workers, that’s what. Business as usual for Murray. Until the bloke who inflicted the bruises turns up to do some more inflicting. And then turns up dead.

  Murray needs to stay out of trouble long enough to find Red. But that, it seems, might be a pretty big ask.

  ‘The best Maloney yet.’ Weekend Australian Review

  ‘There’s no doubting the brilliance of the writing.’ Ian Rankin, Age

  ‘Just the right mix of politics, crime and slime.’ Saturday Mercury

  ‘Another triumph for Maloney.’ Canberra Times