I said, ‘What do you mean, you weren’t alone?’
He paused a moment, surveying a distant fear that seemed to hang somewhere above my head. Then he sagged. ‘You should have a drink, George, really, you should. What’s the use of giving up anyway?’
‘You feel better, for one thing.’
He ladled scraps of ice bitterly. ‘I never do. I sober up and I start remembering everything. I remember my first day in parliament, sitting in that big office up on George Street, after the swearing in. I’m looking out the window at the city, I’m smoking a cigar and I’ve got a woman on her knees sucking my dick, and I was thinking I am gonna own this whole fucking state, I’m gonna run all these morons into the ground. Christ, it felt good.’
‘You had it good for a while.’
‘I was kidding myself . . .’ He walked over to a window that was covered by blinds. He tilted one open slightly, revealing a line of bright sunlight. He squinted through it, out towards the bay, eyes roving. I waited. If I strained my ears I could just hear the suggestion of small waves tumbling onto sand.
‘You know any history, George?’
‘A little.’
‘They landed just down there on the beach, you know.’
‘Who did?’
‘The first settlers. This whole damned state started right outside this window.’
‘I didn’t know it was right here.’
‘No one remembers. I’m not sure there’s even a monument anywhere. I’ve been down there a couple of times, at night, when it’s dark and there’s no one around. It’s the only way to get some air. I’ve been thinking about them, rowing up in their little boats. If they rowed up now, while I was sitting there, I’d say turn round, boys, go find some other place, somewhere nice, there’s only a hellhole waiting for you here . . .’
‘They were convicts, Marvin. It was supposed to be a hellhole.’
He nodded. ‘The guards used to whip their backs down to the spine. There was nowhere to escape, just the bush and the blacks and starvation. For a while, George, this was the very last place on earth.’
‘It was a prison.’
‘It was a useful dumping ground, that’s all it was. They wanted to keep the streets clean down in Sydney. Queensland started out as a hole to hide the fucking sewage.’
He let the blind snap shut, came back over to his chair. Marvin, who as a minister of the Crown had proclaimed Queensland the development capital of the world.
‘Marvin,’ I asked, ‘who else was in St Amand’s?’
But he was still thoughtful. ‘I studied some history too, while I was in jail. Queensland history. You’d think I might have done that before I became a minister. Better late than never. And it’s funny, you know. For twenty years Brisbane was a military prison and took all the crap that was dumped here. Then the big pastoralists from New South Wales and Victoria moved in, and they ran Queensland like one giant paddock for their sheep. Then later the same people ran it as one great big open-cut mine. It’s always been like that here. Now we’re just one big fucking beach. The whole world comes and sits on our sand. That’s the weird thing, George. We got nothing but lots of land, lots of minerals and lots of coastline. That’s all anyone wants from Queensland, and in the meantime they just want us to get out of their way and let them take it.’
‘I don’t care about any of this.’
‘Nobody cares. Queensland is like a beautiful girl with lots of money. But stupid. For some reason she just loves to open her purse and bare her big pink arse to the world and say ‘‘Fuck me over, please!’’ to all comers. And trust me, the fuckers come running.’
‘Marvin, I’m only interested in Charlie . . .’
‘You’re a fool, George. You’re not listening.’
‘Who else was in St Amand’s?’
Marvin didn’t respond. His eyes were closed.
I said, ‘Was it someone called George?’
He shook his head, forlorn. ‘You don’t want to know, you don’t . . .’
‘Lindsay told me you were hiding here because of someone named George.’
‘Fuck Lindsay.’ His eyes opened. ‘You know how he did it? You know how Lindsay survived? He turned fucking police informer, that’s how.’
‘Lindsay?’
‘Big fucking Lindsay. He was a cop himself, of course, that’s why. They never really leave the club. So his mates got him immunity and hid him away for a few years and pumped him for dirt on everyone else, and then when the rest of us were fucked and gone, they let him come back. Now he’s their door into the whole industry. He’s a fucking stooge.’
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘No one would. No one else even knows. Just me.’
I thought of Lindsay, the fury in him at the very mention of Marvin.
‘So why did he help you? Give you his house?’
Marvin spat into an ashtray. ‘Because if I told everyone else about him, they’d fucking lynch him, that’s why. So like it or not, he still does what I say.’
And again, none of this mattered.
‘Who is this person?’ I said. ‘Who’s George?’
He was surprised. ‘You mean you don’t know?’
‘Lindsay said he was a friend of yours once.’
‘A friend . . .’ Marvin seemed to marvel at the word. ‘Oh no. Never that. Not even years ago. We were business partners, that’s all. You really don’t remember him?’
‘You were partners?’
And suddenly I was thinking of the name McNulty and Co, and remembering a photograph I’d been shown once, long before. The young Marvin, in front of his little used-car yard, and standing beside him, another youth . . .
‘You mean right back at the start?’ I said. ‘The car lot? You mean him?’
Marvin nodded silently.
I was incredulous. ‘But that was thirty years ago.’
His eyes held something like panic. ‘Leave it, George.’
‘But who is he? George who? I never even knew his name.’
Abruptly Marvin was laughing. ‘It’s Clarke. Clarke with an E.’ And there was a trace of hysteria there.
‘But you split from him decades ago. Before you and I even met.’
‘No . . . we never really split. I did try to, once, but he wasn’t someone you just walked away from.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You never did, George. You were in a fucking world of your own.’
‘Are you saying you two were still partners? Even when you were in government?’
‘We weren’t really ever partners, not even at the start. You didn’t know me then, but I was nothing, George. I was a joke. A little weed with big glasses. You couldn’t survive like that in the sort of world I was in. Used cars, all those other rackets. People are always owing you money, or coming back to you pissed off, wanting refunds. What was a little guy like me gonna do? So I linked up with Clarke.’
‘Because he was bigger?’
‘Bigger. Harder. You name it. He could intimidate people, believe me. And more than that. When he went after people who owed us money, he didn’t just talk to them.’
‘He hurt people?’
Marvin was looking very small. ‘If he had to. And it’s not as if I objected. But I wasn’t always comfortable with it, George. That wasn’t my style.’
‘And later? What happened later?’
‘I tried to end it, after that golf thing. I was sick of all that small-time stuff anyway. I threw all my money into politics and told him to go his own way. I didn’t need that sort of help any more. He wasn’t that happy . . . but he went. For a while anyway.’
‘But then he came back?’
‘Oh yes.’ Marvin leaned forward, intense with old memories. ‘Remember the power dispute?’
‘I remember.’
‘Clarke saw it coming. After that first round of strikes he knew the union was fucked. So he comes to see me. He’s got a plan, and he needs someone in government to help him with
it, and who better than his old friend Marvin? I’m not all that keen, but Clarke is hard to refuse. He puts it nicely, but he knows stuff about me, things I’ve done that would get me kicked out of parliament, if anyone knew about them. So what choice do I have? And anyway, it’s not as if I’m not gonna get something out of the deal as well.’
‘Which was?’
‘We know the union is gonna lose sooner or later, right? So Clarke is putting all his money into electrical contracting companies. Staff. Maintenance. Materials. By the time the second strike comes around, he’s one of the biggest electrical sub-contractors in Brisbane. He’s got debts and bugger all contracts and he’s not gonna last long unless something drastic happens, but he’s ready. Meanwhile I’m setting things up with the Minister for Mines and Energy, letting him know that Clarke is waiting to get his people in there as soon as the union is out of the way. So the whole thing goes ahead, the government commits itself. Strikes, chaos. And Clarke’s in the middle of it all.’
‘And you end up as the new minister.’
‘That was the beautiful part. Halfway through the strike it looks like the union is winning. So me and Clarke go to the premier. We tell him that unless the old minister goes and I’m appointed in his place, Clarke is gonna pull out of the whole deal. The premier threw a fucking fit. He needed Clarke in there. Clarke was one of the key players, he was making all the running, copping all the shit on the picket lines. And suddenly he’s threatening to just walk away and leave the government with its arse hanging in the air. The premier’s own job was on the line over those strikes. So damn right he appointed me.’
I was remembering the rumours that had filtered through, even to me, that Marvin had friends on the other side, that he’d convinced the premier somehow . . .
I said, ‘And then you two together finished off the union.’
‘Shit yes. I gave Clarke carte fucking blanche. Police, special laws, you name it. We’d just been holding back till then, until the old minister was in too deep. But once I was running things, we let loose. The union imploded and Clarke ended up sub-contracting for half the fucking south-east power grid.’
Another thought dawned on me. ‘That’s how Jeremy got May out of jail. It was Clarke’s place she burned down, wasn’t it? It was Clarke that Jeremy had to talk to, to get the charges dropped. That’s why Jeremy came to you that day.’
Marvin was nodding. ‘Favours, George. It was all about doing favours.’
‘So why didn’t I ever know about him?’
‘Jesus, we didn’t exactly make it public.’
‘And no one ever caught on?’
‘Oh, a few people knew, but no one did anything. No one asked any questions. No one important, anyway. Hell, all the ministers had the same sort of deal going, their own special friends, bigger stuff than me and Clarke. That’s how Queensland worked. We could do anything in those days. You could award contracts to whoever you liked, there was no tendering process, no supervision. You could rezone land just by ministerial decree. Suspend building codes, suspend environmental reports. There wasn’t even such a thing as native title or land rights, and we had the green movement locked away on fucking drug offences. Anything you wanted done, you could do. As long as you had a mate in the cabinet.’
‘And you were his.’
‘I was his. I funnelled a truckload of money his way. Not just the power thing, lots of other schemes as well.’
‘And took kickbacks from him in return, I suppose.’
‘Of course. That was Queensland, George. Anyone who complained . . . you just said that they didn’t understand the Queensland way of doing things. You called them a communist or something, or said they came from down south. And people fucking bought it. Mention the good old Queensland way and the whole population would stand up and salute. Even when they were being robbed blind. And the idiots kept voting for us, so what the hell were we supposed to do?’
He gulped at the scotch, clutched after another cigarette. I found myself increasingly repulsed by him. There wasn’t anything left of the old Marvin at all, the force and the conviction. He’d become something malign and feeble.
‘Why wasn’t Clarke part of the syndicate, then?’
‘That’s the one thing we didn’t agree on. That was my baby alone. He thought it was small time, the clubs and girls and all that, he couldn’t see the point. And he was right. But that’s the joke, George. It was the clubs that brought the whole thing down. They were the most trivial part of it all, drinks after hours and the odd whore or two, they were nothing. But that’s what got us all caught. It’s what they got me on, anyway. They didn’t get him. When the Inquiry came along it was me and only me who got screwed.’
‘We all got screwed.’
His eyes bulged at me. ‘We all got screwed . . . are you crazy? Who got screwed? I did. Charlie did. Maybe even you did. All the clubs and casinos and their customers did. All the money-grubbing fucking police did—and the commissioner was the most money-grubbing of the lot—but so what? Who were any of us? We were nobodies. No one who really mattered even got touched.’
‘The whole government fell, Marvin.’
He sneered. ‘The government. Sure, the government fell— but why? Because the police took money? Because a few brothels were open? Christ, it happens everywhere, it’s nothing. But the idiots in this state were dumb enough to think that was as bad as it got, and after they voted us out they were dumb enough to think they’d solved the problem and nabbed all the bad guys. What bullshit.’
I shook my head. ‘Everyone knew it was more than just the little things. Everyone knew the government was corrupt on a massive scale . . . even the stuff you’re talking about, big business and industry and government contracts, people at least suspected it was going on.’
‘Yeah? Did the Inquiry even touch people like that? No. They named a few names, but not a single one was ever investigated. Even when the new government came in, they couldn’t afford to get people like that offside. They ran the bloody economy. So they all got away clean. Shit, George, that’s where all the problems came from. All the corruption, all the crap. Big business, big money. Who the fuck else could afford to buy a government? Not your local brothel owner, that’s for sure. Big money. It was always about big money. But oh no, the Inquiry didn’t bother with that. The Inquiry was all about morality. About scapegoats. It was a fucking witch-hunt.’
He was getting breathless, fresh sweat breaking out on his chest. It was like watching a schizophrenic, moods swapping between exhaustion, rage, resignation.
‘So I go down,’ he said, ‘you go down. Charlie goes down. We all go down. Except Lindsay, the prick. But Clarke . . . Clarke walks away. Goodbye Marvin, he says. The partnership’s over, you fucked it up, I can’t deal with you any more. I’ll see you right about money when you get out of jail, but otherwise, you keep your mouth shut. And off he goes as if nothing ever happened. He’s still got all the sub-contracts, all the other interests I fed him, he keeps the lot. Him and everyone like him. All those bastards that fed off us. The Inquiry didn’t even slow them down.’
He fell silent at last, disgusted.
And I thought that maybe he was right, maybe it was only big business and big money that could afford to buy a whole government . . . but that government had to be for sale in the first place. People like Marvin had to be there in the first place. And that was Queensland’s tragedy.
I said, ‘What does any of this have to do with what happened to Charlie?’
Marvin looked up, regarding his dark angel once again. ‘That . . . that was the curse, George. The gods aren’t finished with me yet.’
‘You said you and Charlie weren’t alone in that detox ward. So was it Clarke who was there? Is that what you’re saying?’
He nodded, wary.
‘And you’re saying that, for some reason . . . it was Clarke who did that to Charlie?’
And the nodding was feverish. He drank, but his glass was empty, and he studied
it as if he could bear no more.
‘But you said you weren’t in Highwood yourself.’
‘No. I wasn’t there. Never there.’
‘Then how do you know?’
‘The substation, George. It happened in that substation.’
‘What about it?’
‘You think Charlie ended up there by accident? You think whoever killed him just stumbled across that substation by chance? Hidden away in that forest?’
Marvin’s hands fell down between his knees, and the glass rolled onto the floor. He didn’t seem to even notice.
‘Don’t you see?’ he implored. ‘Clarke knew exactly where that substation was. He knew exactly how to get in and what to do in there. He built it. He installed it. It’s his fucking place, George. It was the first fucking contract he ever got.’
THIRTY-TWO
So now I knew.
A man. A name.
But it didn’t feel like knowledge. It felt like an unlearning of something rather than the discovery of any truth. Three men had met in a detox ward, and one of them was dead and one of them was in hiding. And I still couldn’t see any reason behind it at all.
‘But why?’ I said. ‘Why do that to Charlie?’
The fear was back in Marvin. It was always there, deep beneath the drunkenness. Maybe it was only fear that was keeping him awake.
‘I don’t know why,’ he said. ‘Honestly I don’t. I hadn’t even seen Clarke since the Inquiry. He got some money to me after I came out, just like he promised, but that was it. He didn’t want anything else to do with me.’
‘You didn’t try to start up the partnership again?’
A sour laugh. ‘When I was a minister I had some use to him, maybe. Not any more. And he didn’t need bad publicity like me. He keeps a low profile, that’s why he gets away with as much as he does. You ever see his name in the papers?’
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