Last Drinks

by Andrew McGahan

  And without knowing there was nothing I could do.

  Pack up, I thought. Pack up, get in the car and you can be home having dinner with Emily in two hours’ time. Leave them all to it, the police, Marvin, everyone. You can’t change anything anyway.

  But I didn’t pack. Instead I stayed in my room until it was evening, then I went out into the alien city and walked its bright streets. I wasn’t so fooled by it all now, all that electricity. I thought of power failures stalking up and down the country, and of how quickly darkness would fall if it happened here. I watched the shining youth of the present parade the footpaths, and they all seemed shallow and inane. They laughed as if they had no need to bother with me, or with any of the shadows of the old city, even though we were all still here, watching and remembering. What was an old man dead in a substation to them? They were the future, and in the future there were never any sins or cruelty or bodies hanging on walls.

  Finally I ate in a cafe and watched, waiting, as the night passed by and midnight approached and the crowds thinned on the streets. Doors were closed and lights were switched off. The last wanderers faded away. Then it was just me and the footpath. Me and Brisbane. My Brisbane. I walked the deserted streets alone and thought of Marvin hiding behind his shutters, of Jeremy waiting amongst his artefacts and wine, of Lindsay counting money in his club. Of another man, somewhere, who’d been one of us all along, even though I’d never known it. And now we were all back in town. It was a new town, perhaps, but it had yet to pay the debts of the old.

  Just like me.

  I went back to the motel. I lay on the bed, awake, not knowing what I was doing, or what I was expecting. Something, that was all I knew. I thought of calling Marvin again and didn’t. I thought of calling Jeremy again, or even Lindsay, and didn’t. Sleep came hovering in the early hours, while sirens cried distantly in the night.

  The phone rang.

  I picked it up. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Who’s this?’ asked a male voice.

  ‘George,’ I answered, not even thinking.

  I listened to nothing. The sound of hoarse breathing.

  ‘Marvin?’ I said.

  The voice laughed, chilling and totally unknown to me. ‘Wrong number,’ it said, and the phone clicked down.

  I lay awake, unknown fears chasing through my mind, and it wasn’t until the sky lightened with dawn that I slept. Then the phone was ringing again, and the sun outside was telling me it was something like noon. It was Detective Kelly.

  ‘We found Marvin for you,’ he said.

  ‘He’s not missing,’ I replied, groggy. ‘I saw him yesterday.’

  ‘Really? And how was he?’

  ‘He was fine.’

  ‘Well he isn’t any more.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  A party of early morning joggers found Marvin at dawn. He was sitting on the beach at Redcliffe right in front of Lindsay’s house, at the site where the first white settlers had landed, soldiers and convicts, in what turned out to be the founding of Queensland. His rifle was in his hand and a hole was in his temple and he was staring out to sea. By his side was an empty scotch bottle and in his pocket was a long suicide note, in his own writing, in which he confessed to the torture and murder of his old friend Charles Monohan. The note stated that the two had met in the Uniting Church hostel, gone to St Amand’s together, then checked out together and gone on another drinking spree, ending up in Highwood, where they had argued about old grudges from the Inquiry days, which led in turn to violence and the substation. Since then, said the note, he had been in hiding, agonised with remorse, and he was sorry for everything he’d ever done. There were no suspicious circumstances. The only strange thing, it seemed, was that no one could find his glasses.

  ‘But it all fits, George,’ said Detective Kelly over the phone. ‘St Amand’s confirms that Charlie and Marvin left around the same time and that they both seemed agitated. Marvin even mentions you in the note—says they were going up to Highwood to see you, to talk about old times, and that this was what got them arguing, settling old scores and so on. Things got ugly, and Marvin took over and headed for the substation.’

  I was sitting up in bed, numb with disbelief.

  ‘But I just saw him. Yesterday.’

  ‘So you said. And why didn’t you tell us, George? You knew we were looking for him.’

  ‘I was thinking about it, but I didn’t know . . .’

  ‘It might’ve helped. Once we had him under arrest we could have got a counsellor in, kept him under suicide watch.’

  ‘But Marvin didn’t do anything. Not to Charlie.’

  ‘George, it’s all there in the note.’

  There was so much wrong with this I hardly knew where to start.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘Marvin didn’t kill Charlie. He was scared. Someone else killed Charlie, and Marvin was worried he was next. That’s why he was hiding.’

  ‘And who was this someone else supposed to be?’

  ‘His name is George Clarke, he worked with Marvin, back in the old days.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘Ask some of your superiors. People who were around back then. They might remember. He’s a big sub-contractor now for the power companies. And he was in the ward with them that night.’

  ‘And why would he kill Charlie?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Marvin didn’t know exactly. But Clarke was in a bad way, and he told Charlie something, something important, I think. He killed Charlie to shut him up.’

  ‘This is what Marvin told you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sorry, George. I’ve got the records from St Amand’s right in front of me. Marvin and Charlie ended up in rooms next door to each other. Otherwise the place was almost empty. There certainly isn’t any George Clarke on the list.’

  ‘He was there.’

  ‘No, it was just Marvin and Charlie. We’ve always known that.’

  ‘But . . .’

  I didn’t know what to say. Who was lying? Marvin? Or had Clarke used another name when he’d gone in? Did he have friends at the hospital, people who would doctor the records, deny he’d even been there?

  Kelly had no doubts. ‘Why do you think we were so sure it was Marvin in the first place? Why do you think we wanted to find him so bad?’

  ‘You didn’t look very hard. I found him easily enough.’

  ‘From Lindsay, we know. Sure, we checked with Lindsay as soon as we started. But he wouldn’t tell us where Marvin was, swore blind he hadn’t seen him. And frankly we had no reason to disbelieve Lindsay at the time. He’s normally so . . . cooperative.’

  ‘What’s Lindsay saying now?’

  ‘Nothing. Reckons he was just lending an old friend a house for a private holiday and had no idea Marvin was in trouble or suicidal.’

  ‘You must know that’s garbage.’

  ‘Of course. We just figure that Marvin had some hold over Lindsay that prevailed over Lindsay’s commitments to us, and now Lindsay is keeping his mouth shut.’

  ‘But Lindsay knows Marvin was scared. He mightn’t know it all, but he told me himself he knew Marvin was hiding from Clarke.’

  ‘Well, Marvin was hiding from us, wasn’t he? He could have spun Lindsay any old story to get the house, but in the end it was us he wanted to avoid. Hell, if Marvin wanted to get Lindsay’s house and make sure Lindsay didn’t tell a soul about it, this ‘‘scared for his life’’ routine is exactly what he would have come up with. See, it all fits.’

  ‘But why would Marvin tell me the same story? Why lie to me?’

  ‘You’re Charlie’s friend. Maybe he felt guilty.’

  ‘But I saw him. He was terrified.’

  ‘Terrified. Guilt-ridden. It can look the same, George. And he shot himself, that’s pretty clear. Forensics will take a while to confirm it, but we don’t really have any doubt. And the note seems genuine. It’s his writing.’

  ‘But it’s all wrong.’

  ‘Tell me why.�
��

  ‘The substation. What about that? Clarke built it. Him and Marvin had a deal going back when Marvin was Minister for Mines and Energy, and that substation was Clarke’s first contract. That’s how Clarke knew it was there. That’s how he knew what to do with the circuit boards.’

  ‘You just said it yourself. If Marvin was part of the deal, then he knew where the substation was, too, and how it worked. Sounds to me like Marvin was just trying to shift the whole thing onto someone else, and this old friend of his fitted.’

  ‘But why? If he was about to kill himself and confess . . . why bother?’

  ‘I guess he wasn’t thinking suicide when you saw him. But maybe all the lies got to him in the end, and he just wanted to come clean.’

  I thought for a moment, completely at a loss. It was wrong, I knew that, but what did I have for proof? All I had was Marvin’s own story and, really, it might have been made up on the spot, just to convince me that someone else was to blame. Marvin was a natural liar, the entire state knew that. There was still Marvin’s own condition, his desperation, his fear, but had I misread even that? Could that have just been a tortured soul? Even at the time I’d known that Marvin wasn’t telling me everything, not even nearly.

  But it was terror in those tiny eyes. Real terror.

  ‘I know it’s wrong,’ I said, ‘but I can’t think of anything that would convince you.’

  Kelly sighed. ‘That’s a pity. I was hoping you would.’

  ‘You were what?’

  ‘I’ll tell you the truth, George. I don’t think this wraps it up either. I think it’s pretty weird, if you want my opinion. But other people here think it’s been wrapped up. In fact, my superiors have told me this wraps it up and that I have plenty of other work that needs attention. So what am I gonna do?’

  ‘But Marvin was an ex-minister, he was famous. Surely someone is going to investigate his death more closely than that?’

  ‘You don’t get it. The suicide looks dead right. He was disgraced, he was an alcoholic, a long-term failure who’d killed an old friend in a stupid argument and was being hunted by the police. Suicide in that situation makes perfect sense. His mental state could hardly have been healthy. That house was a mess and he must have been drinking two or three bottles a day. And that’s the other thing that clinches it. We found vodka in the house, the same brand that we found at the substation.’

  And my world seemed to turn over. ‘What?’

  ‘The vodka. It’s only circumstantial, of course, but it does help place Marvin at the crime scene. That still leaves all the beer cans, and who drank them, but I guess we’ll never find an answer to that. Maybe a third party was involved.’

  I was barely listening. He didn’t understand, he didn’t know.

  ‘Detective Kelly,’ I said, ‘Marvin didn’t drink vodka.’

  And we sat silent on the line.

  ‘You’re saying Marvin never drank vodka at all?’

  ‘Not that I know of. He only drank scotch.’

  ‘But you hadn’t seen him in years, people’s tastes change.’

  ‘I was in that house yesterday. I saw scotch everywhere, but I didn’t see a single bottle of vodka. Where did you find it anyway? Was it stuck in a cupboard somewhere, or was it in the open?’

  ‘It was in the living room. One bottle. Empty.’

  ‘There was no vodka there yesterday.’

  ‘Could you swear to that?’

  Could I? I pictured the room, the darkness and the heat and the smell, Marvin’s pale face sweating before me, and bottles everywhere . . . could there have been one that wasn’t scotch? But I’d seen those bottles lying on the concrete floor of the substation, at Charlie’s feet. There was no way I could have seen one of them again and not recognised it. Instantly.

  ‘I can swear.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘Don’t you see? Clarke drinks vodka. Marvin told me that himself.’

  ‘Marvin told you that this Clarke person drinks vodka. And then we find a bottle in his living room. That doesn’t sound a little too neat to you, George? A little too easy?’

  ‘He wasn’t making this up. Trust me. Clarke tracked Marvin down, just like he tracked Charlie down.’

  ‘But I’m telling you it was suicide. Maybe Marvin just drank vodka sometimes and you didn’t notice the bottle and it all happened the way the note said it did.’

  ‘But you said yourself you don’t believe it.’

  ‘I don’t disbelieve it. I just don’t think it’s everything, that’s all. And what you’re talking about, well . . .’

  I searched through my mind for something else. This was madness.

  ‘Joan Ellsgood,’ I said. ‘She said Charlie was alone at the boarding house. She didn’t say Marvin was with him.’

  ‘Marvin could have been waiting in the car. It was parked some distance away.’

  ‘Did he mention it in the note?’

  ‘Why would he?’

  ‘What about his book, then? Marvin’s book. You’ve read it. He must have mentioned Clarke, the sort of things they used to do together. That might explain some of it.’

  ‘I don’t remember reading about anyone called Clarke.’

  And I could hear Marvin saying not everything. He hadn’t written about everything.

  ‘Besides,’ Kelly was saying, ‘the book fits with what we’ve got. Marvin is rehashing all that ancient history, brooding about the old days, then he meets up with Charlie. They’ve still got unsettled business between them, they argue about it and bang, it all goes wrong.’

  ‘But Charlie wasn’t mad at Marvin any more. Marvin told me that.’

  ‘But he would, wouldn’t he? Part of the lie.’

  ‘What about fingerprints, then? You didn’t find any on the bottles at the substation—what about the one at the house?’

  ‘We’re not fingerprinting anything at the house. It’s a suicide. A bottle of vodka didn’t kill him.’

  ‘I bet you wouldn’t find any prints on the bottle.’

  ‘What would that prove? Anyway, I’m not in charge of this crime scene, George—there is no crime scene—so I don’t think I can just tell them to start printing everything. Not without a reason.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘You’ll get to put all this in a statement at least. You’ll have to make one, seeing you were the last one to see him alive. You aren’t leaving Brisbane today?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Someone will be over to talk to you. They’ve got senior guys looking at it now, seeing it’s Marvin and all. But without something harder than what you’ve given me so far, no one’s gonna take much notice.’

  I remembered it then.

  I said, ‘You haven’t told me what time Marvin died.’

  ‘Somewhere around two in the morning, supposedly.’

  I remembered a cold laugh, a voice I’d never heard before.

  ‘Someone called me around that time last night. A man. I thought it might have been Marvin, but whoever it was just laughed and hung up.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So hardly anyone knows I’m here. And none of them would make a call like that.’

  ‘Wrong number?’

  ‘That’s what the person said. But you have to go through the motel switchboard. It’s unlikely that’s a wrong number. And Marvin had my number written by his phone. I wrote it there myself.’

  ‘I don’t get you. We could check the phone records and see if it was Marvin that called you, but what’s the big deal? If he was about to kill himself, he might’ve called you, then changed his mind and hung up.’

  ‘But I know it wasn’t Marvin on the line. I think someone else was in his house. Between the phone call and the vodka bottle, you could prove that.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a stretch, George. And anyway, the whole point is Marvin killed himself. This isn’t a murder investigation.’

  ‘But if someone else was involved, there could have been some sort of duress
. What about footprints? Were there footprints near him on the beach?’

  ‘A dozen joggers standing around his body? You bet there were footprints.’

  ‘Can you at least check the phone records for me?’

  He thought about it. ‘Okay, I’ll look into it. The bottle thing, too, if I can.’

  ‘What about George Clarke?’

  ‘I’ll ask around about him, but that’s all. You’re only giving me hearsay, George, and I can’t start an investigation on that.’

  ‘He’s already under investigation. Marvin said the government’s been holding some sort of inquiry into his business practices.’

  ‘Hardly my department, George, but like I said, I’ll ask around.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Stay put in the meantime, and someone will be over to see you.’

  We got off the phone. I climbed out of bed, went to the window and looked out at the bright Brisbane day. Marvin was dead. Twenty-four hours ago I’d been with him, and now he was dead. Twenty-four hours ago I’d listened to him fearing for his life, and now he was dead. He’d begged me not to leave and I had, and now he was dead. Sitting on his beach, waiting for that first boat to arrive, staring out blindly. Turn around, boys, there’s nothing waiting for you here . . .

  No one had found his glasses.

  I realised I was watching the street, watching it for cars, for people. No . . . not people. For one person. One man.

  Marvin didn’t drink vodka. And he’d never been anywhere near Highwood.And it wasn’t Marvin who’d called in the dead of night.

  But my number was on the pad by his phone. I’d written it under my name. I looked at my own phone. Who else had I given those details?

  I opened the phone book and found the number of Lindsay’s club. He’d said they were open for lunch, for the businessmen and their steaks and their lap-dances. I dialled, got reception, and was put through. I waited, staring out the window. The street was empty.

  Lindsay came on.

  ‘I take it you’ve heard,’ he said, and he did not sound friendly.