The Brush-Off mw-1

by Shane Maloney

  ‘Mmm,’ he said, as though I had merely confirmed a known fact. ‘And how was she?’

  ‘Naturally she was upset at Taylor’s death. She seemed to prefer to be alone.’

  Micaelis gave this some consideration, getting up and going over to the window, his hands plunged into his pockets. He rocked on his heels and jiggled a ring of keys deep in the recesses of his pants. ‘You don’t happen to know where we might find her just at the moment, do you? She didn’t come home last night.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s staying with a friend,’ I suggested.

  ‘Any idea who?’ he said pointedly.

  ‘I don’t know her that well. Have you tried her work?’

  Micaelis didn’t need me to tell him how to do his job. ‘ Veneer magazine? Not what you’d call a full-time job. They’re between issues and haven’t seen her for several weeks.’

  Nothing in the cop’s attitude suggested concerns about Salina’s safety. This reaffirmed my decision not to mention Spider’s appearance at the Aldershot Building. I went fishing. ‘We’ve been getting mixed signals up here about the cause of death,’ I said. ‘Do you know yet if it was suicide or an accident?’

  ‘The exact cause hasn’t yet been determined,’ said the detective senior constable. ‘You know the police.’ He shrugged absently, as though referring to a slightly eccentric mutual acquaintance. ‘Like to have all the facts before making up their minds.’

  ‘But there’s something in particular about this situation?’ I persisted, pushing it. ‘Some reason you want to talk to Salina?’

  ‘Routine procedure, that’s all,’ he said. ‘You’ll let us know if Ms Fleet does contact you, won’t you?’

  The boys were hovering outside my glass door, angling for my attention. No doubt they were bored and keen to make tracks. Micaelis looked at them, then at me. In certain matters, the Mediterranean male mind is an open book. Even as I watched, I saw Micaelis put two and two together and get a resounding five. A married man, I was, having a bit on the side.

  ‘If anything else occurs to you that you think we should know about,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t hesitate to contact you,’ I told him. And I definitely would. In just a little less than twelve hours.

  Opening the door, I ushered him to the foyer. The boys ran interference. ‘Guess what, Dad?’ said Red, tugging at my sleeve. ‘Tarquin crashed the computer.’

  Trish looked daggers at me over the Macintosh, stabbing at her keyboard, desperately trying to recover her zapped files.

  I fed the cop into the lift and we got out of there fast.

  I gave the boys three choices. Gold of the Pharaohs at the Museum of Victoria, Treasures of the Forbidden City at the National Gallery, or an early lunch. The vote went two-nil for a capricciosa with extra cheese and a lemon gelati chaser.

  We drove across Princes Bridge and headed through the city towards Lygon Street where the pizzerias and gelaterias were thicker on the ground than borlotti beans in a bowl of minestrone. Just past police headquarters, where Russell Street becomes Lygon, we hit a red light beside the Eight Hour Day monument. On the diagonal corner, on the tiny patch of lawn outside the Trades Hall, stood a newly erected hoarding. Art Exhibition, it read. Combined Unions Superannuation Scheme Art Collection. Free Admission. Opens Tuesday.

  This was the event for which Agnelli had commanded me to write a mirthfully uplifting speech by the next morning. Since I was so close, and since I still had to keep the boys for another hour and a half, I decided to kill two birds with the one casual suggestion. ‘See that place, Red.’ I pointed to the age-stained Corinthian columns of the Trades Hall’s once-grand portico. ‘I used to work there before you were born. C’mon, I’ll show you.’

  A mutinous grumble erupted from the boys. ‘We’ll only be ten minutes,’ I exaggerated. ‘Besides which, it’s only 11.30- they haven’t lit the pizza ovens yet.’

  The Trades Hall had been built in the 1870s, a palace of labour, and a rich example of high Victorian neo-classical architecture. A brick annexe had been added in the 1960s, an erection of expedience, its design informed by the contemporary precept that nobody gave a rat’s arse about architecture. We went around the side, drove up a cobblestone lane and parked in an undercroft between the old and the new sections of the building. Little had changed in the thirteen years since my career had begun there as Research Officer for the Municipal Workers’ Union. The patina of grime that clung to the walls was perhaps a little thicker. The odours that wafted from the outdoor toilets were perhaps a little ranker. But the same threadbare red flag still dangled ironically from the flagpole. When I told the boys that it was here that the party that ruled the nation was founded, they rolled their eyes and complained about the smell.

  ‘C’mon,’ I urged, spotting a small sign that indicated our destination lay on the top floor. ‘Want to see the bullet holes from the gun battle where the ballot-stuffers killed the cop?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Red, unenthusiastically. ‘Make my day.’

  The story of how, back in 1915, gangsters fought a running battle with police along its first-floor corridor had long been part of Trades Hall mythology. So much so that in the three years I’d worked there I never heard the same version twice. The only point of common agreement was that the bullet-riddled banister had been filched by a souvenir hunter back in the sixties. Which gave me plenty of scope. ‘They ran up these stairs,’ I improvised freely. ‘Firing from the hip.’

  We went up a flight of stone-flagged steps eroded in the middle from the innumerable goings up and comings down of the uncountable conveners of the manifold committees of the dedicated champions of labour. On the wall at the first-floor landing was a carved wooden honour board, its faded copperplate listing every General Secretary of the Boilermakers and Gasfitters Union from 1881 to 1963. I touched Red on the shoulder and pointed. R. Cahill, 1903-09. ‘Redmond Cahill,’ I said. ‘Your great grandfather.’

  ‘So where’s the bullet hole?’ Red said, unimpressed. If I could take the trouble to invent a spurious ancestry, drenched in labour tradition, you’d think the kid could at least pretend to be interested. ‘This way,’ I lied, leading them along a deserted corridor. The place was so quiet that a regiment of mercenaries could have fired a bazooka down its by-ways without risk of hitting anyone.

  The Trades Hall hadn’t always been so quiet. In its original form, it was built to accommodate the trade-based guilds whose members had made Melbourne the richest metropolis in the southern hemisphere. In time, it had come to house more than a hundred different unions. The Confectionery Makers’ Association, the Brotherhood of Farriers, the Boot Trade Employees’ Federation, the Tram and Motor Omnibus Drivers-no trade was so small, no occupation so specialised that its members did not have their own union. Eventually, over a period of a hundred years, every nook and cranny of the place had been colonised. Its once-imposing chambers became a rabbit warren of jerry-rigged offices filled with men in darned cardigans and its hallways bustled with women in beehive hair-dos and sensible shoes.

  But those days had long gone. The inexorable march of progress had been through the joint like a dose of salts, amalgamating and rationalising the old organisations into industry-based super-unions with names like advertising agencies and a preference for more up-market accommodation. The AWU-FIME, the AFME-PKIU and the CFMEU had ditched the old dump for more modern digs elsewhere. Apart from the Trades Hall Council, which occupied the new wing, there were few remaining tenants.

  The labour movement was not, however, entirely unmindful of its heritage. Bit by bit, as the dollars could be scrounged, the place was being restored to its vanished glory. Plasterers’ scaffolding cluttered the stairwells and the smell of fresh paint hung in the air. An art exhibition was about to be staged. Somewhere. If only I could find it. The signs had petered out.

  Reaching the top floor, we came face-to-face with a pair of knee-high white socks. They were attached to Bob Allroy, the Trades Hall’s pot-bellied long-time
caretaker. He was standing on a ladder, hanging a banner above a set of double doors. CUSS Art Exhibition, it read.

  ‘Here’s the only man still alive who personally witnessed the murdered policeman’s death agony,’ I told the boys. By now they’d figured out that my impromptu guided tour was just a pretext and were looking decidedly cheesed-off.

  Bob Allroy climbed down from the ladder, wheezing. He was one of life’s casualties, never the same since a bag of wheat had fallen on him in a ship’s hold in 1953. His entire life since had been more a gesture of working-class solidarity than an affirmation of his usefulness. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he grunted, recalling my face but unable to summon up a name. He opened one of the doors and I helped him drag his ladder inside. ‘Unbelievable, eh?’ he panted.

  Sure was. The last time I’d seen this room it had been a maze of cheap chipboard and second-hand Axminster, a lost dogs’ home for officials of the Society of Bricklayers and Tilers. Now it was a spacious reception room with buffed parquet flooring, hand-blocked wallpaper friezes and freshly antiqued skirting boards. Portable partitions had been erected at right angles to the walls to form a series of shallow alcoves and rows of paintings sat stacked against them, face to the wall, waiting to be hung.

  ‘Art exhibition,’ explained Bob, not entirely approvingly. ‘The girlie from the cultural office is off sick, so guess who’s been roped into doing all the work?’

  Bob Allroy wouldn’t work in an iron lung and we both knew it. ‘Doesn’t officially open till tomorrer,’ he warned, in case I was thinking of stealing a free look. I wasn’t there for an unscheduled squiz, I reassured him, but to rustle up a bit of quick background for a speech I had to write.

  Bob moved to one of the windows and licked his lips, his liver-spotted nose drawn like a lodestone to the revolving brewery sign atop the John Curtin Hotel, clearly visible across the road. The girlie from the arts office, he thought, would be back tomorrow. Better be, if everything was to be ready for the official opening. In the meantime, I’d better see Bernice Kaufman, next door in the admin office. She might know something about it.

  This was a definite possibility. There was very little, by her own admission, that Bernice Kaufman didn’t know all about. She hadn’t been President of the Teachers’ Federation for nothing. A couple of minutes with Bernice and, chances were, I’d know more than I’d ever need to about the CUSS Art Collection. More than enough to write Agnelli’s speech. Not the jokes, though. I’d have to write the jokes myself.

  Bob Allroy ascended his ladder and began screwing light globes into a reproduction etched-glass gas lamp hanging from the ceiling. ‘Don’t you kids go nowhere near the art,’ he warned. ‘That stuff ’s worth a lot of money.’

  Seconding that motion, I told Red and Tarquin to amuse themselves for a minute while I did something important. Then I scooted across to the Trades Hall Council, where Bernice Kaufman was holed-up behind a wall of paperwork in an office marked Assistant Secretary. She could spare me a couple of minutes, but only just. ‘I don’t want to miss my ultrasound appointment,’ she said.

  You had to hand it to Bernice. In the time it took to say hello, she’d just happened to draw attention to the fact that she was pregnant. You get to be thirty-five, Bernice had discovered, and your superwoman rating starts to slip if your credentials don’t include motherhood, preferably of the single variety. Being the hardest-nosed, most multi-faced Ms in town doesn’t cut much ice unless you’ve also got cracked nipples and a teething ring in your briefcase. So Bernice had scared just enough body fluids out of an organiser from the Miscellaneous Workers’ Union to secure herself membership of the pudding club. Not just an ordinary member, of course. Being knocked up would never be the same now that Bernice had a piece of the action.

  ‘Put that cigarette out,’ she barked. ‘Haven’t you heard of passive smoking?’

  There was, believe me, nothing passive about Bernice Kaufman. I dropped my fag and ground it mercilessly underfoot. The baby was not due for another five months.

  When I explained what I wanted, Bernice didn’t believe it. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Ministerial adviser for the Arts? Agnelli must be crazy. You’re a cultural illiterate.’

  ‘That’s why I’ve come to you, Bernice,’ I said. ‘I’m after some on-the-job training.’

  When I’d convinced her that I really did need background information for Agnelli’s speech at the exhibition opening, she reached into a drawer of her filing cabinet and pulled out a thick folder. She was, it transpired, ex-officio company secretary of the Combined Unions Superannuation Scheme. ‘CUSS manages several million dollars of union members’ money. And while the art collection is only a small percentage of our total assets-its current value is estimated at approximately half a million dollars-it is an important element in maintaining a broadly diversified portfolio. Frankly, the way the financial markets have been performing lately, art is probably our most effectively appreciating investment.’

  My amusement must have been too apparent. Bernice changed tack, handing me a page from the file. ‘Here’s the content guidelines, as laid down by the CUSS board of directors. Keep it. Feel free to quote.’

  The emphasis of the collection, read the blurb, was on works that presented a positive view of working life and reflected the outlook and aspirations of ordinary working people. ‘Angelo’s speech should point out that it includes works by some very prominent artists.’

  It did, too. The one-page catalogue Bernice handed me was leavened with the sort of household names guaranteed to reassure the rank and file that its pension funds were not being squandered on the avant-garde. Potoroo 2 by Clifton Pugh, I read. Dry Gully by Russell Drysdale. Man in Singlet by William Dobell.

  ‘Did a mob of you go round Sotheby’s and Christies with a chequebook or what?’

  I didn’t take Bernice’s withering glance of contempt personally. She thought everyone was an idiot. ‘The collection was initiated by the board of directors a little over a year ago, essentially as an investment vehicle. Since purchases of this nature are a specialised skill, we retain an expert consulting firm, Austral Fine Art, to advise us. Austral identifies suitable works for inclusion in the collection, buys and sells on our behalf, takes care of insurance and so on. Up until now, the works have all been held in storage. But a few months ago we decided to put them on show, so our members could better appreciate the investment we made on their behalf. In fact-and this is a point Angelo might also care to make-this is the only time the entire collection has ever been seen by the public.’ She put her hands on the edge of the desk and wearily pulled herself upright, levering for two. ‘And now I really must go. Can’t keep the doctor waiting.’

  I walked her to the lift. A waddle was already in evidence. ‘So, you’ll soon know if it’s a boy or a girl-or would you prefer not to find out until the actual birth?’

  Bernice might’ve been up the duff, but she hadn’t lost her marbles. ‘Information is power, Murray,’ she said. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

  Pocketing the pages of bumph she’d given me, I headed back to the exhibition room. Apart from Bob Allroy’s ladder and toolbox abandoned in the middle of the floor and the unhung painting lining the walls, it was empty. An icy wave of panic gripped my innards. I should never have let the boys out of my sight. ‘Red!’ I called. ‘Tarquin!’ The sound echoed back at me from the deserted corridor.

  Suddenly, arms spread wide like music-hall song-and-dance men, the boys sprang from behind the far partition. ‘Tricked ya!’ they shrieked.

  Even as the words left their lips, Tarquin tripped backwards over Bob Allroy’s toolbox and slammed full pelt into the step-ladder. The flimsy aluminium tower skidded sideways, rocked on its legs and began to topple over. I rushed forward to arrest its fall and collided with Red. Tarquin, useful as ever, stood open-mouthed. For a moment time seemed to stand still.

  The ladder didn’t, though. With an almighty metallic clatter, it collided with the upper edge of one
of the pictures leaning against the wall, smashing the frame into gilded kindling and squashing the canvas into a buckled heap. The result looked like a piano accordion that had been kicked to death by an electricity pylon.

  ‘Wow,’ said Tarquin.

  ‘Shuddup.’ I fell to my knees beside the catastrophe. ‘Shuddup, shuddup, shuddup.’ My heart was so firmly lodged in my mouth that further conversation was impossible.

  The picture’s frame was utterly demolished, the joints burst asunder, the side panels reduced to four separate pieces of ornately useless timber moulding. The internal framing was a flattened rhomboid from which the canvas dangled in crumpled folds.

  Sweaty-handed, I smoothed the tangled mass into the rough approximation of its original rectangular shape. What I saw filled me with a mixture of unspeakable dismay and utter relief.

  The mangled picture was a small oil painting. It depicted a solitary stick-figure stockman. He was perched on a gnarled tree-stump beside the mouldering bones of a bullock. His drought-ravaged gaze extended across a blasted landscape towards a featureless horizon. There was no signature. There was no need.

  Nobody else did red dirt and rust-rotted corrugated iron like this. Nobody else would dare. It was the trademark, instantly recognisable, of an artist whose rangy bushmen and desiccated verandas had once adorned the walls of every pub and primary school from Hobart to Humpty Doo.

  ‘ Dry Gully,’ I groaned. ‘By Sir Russell Fucking Drysdale.’

  Red and Tarquin meekly dragged the ladder upright, more abashed by my obviously panic-stricken state than by the damage their game had inflicted. ‘Doesn’t look too bad,’ offered Red lamely.

  ‘Shuddup,’ I informed him.

  But my boy was a smart lad and there was truth in his statement. The canvas sagged and buckled over its skewiff skeleton, but the actual paintwork appeared to have survived intact. Apart from some very minute cracks, arguably ancient, there was no visible evidence to suggest that the phlegmatic boundary rider had been struck from a great height by a plummeting pile of scrap metal.