5 Ways to be Famous Now

by Maurilia Meehan

  ‘It’s called calving,’ we explained, attempting to blind them with science.

  So, after only three days at sea, the passengers of the Queen Mary disembarked in Hobart, less disgruntled than they might have been because they were to be accommodated at the casino, free poker chips and food included. The only obligation, quite a thrill for them no doubt, was to be available if the police wished to question them. I wish I had been allowed to go with them because I had never examined the pokies at the casino.

  Even then, neither the captain nor yours truly suspected that the order to return the Queen Mary to Hobart had nothing to do with a bureaucratic slip-up about a permit for holographic fireworks.

  18

  TRUST NO ONE

  Over organic coffee and olive crostini in her lawyer’s Hobart chambers, Captain MacKinley was laughing.

  Paulie, so she had been told, was in the next room getting to know the junior partner, before all four would meet together. Waiting for them to arrive, the captain was entertaining her silk with tales of the theatrical extravaganzas on the Queen Mary.

  But she had had a narrow escape. She had learned a vital lesson from this near-catastrophe with her boy wonder’s raffle-ticket red-herring fiasco. Keep it simple next time. Occam’s razor, all that. She would act alone from now on.

  As she regaled her silk with her seafaring anecdotes, the captain noticed that, from time to time, he glanced away. She was used to complete attention from her listeners, and this made her reflect that perhaps her hearty tone was too frivolous for the occasion. She sought to gain his full attention.

  ‘Drugged? Pushed overboard? If only I had known,’ the captain sighed, shaking her head sorrowfully. ‘Imagine, my trusted employee, charged with two counts of murder and one of attempted. But you are right, how else can the disappearances be explained? Or perhaps, after all, it was Shanti?’

  For Shanti had recovered, claiming to anyone who would listen that she had been saved by karma-cleansing green smoothies and the yogic lifestyle of peace and goodwill to all.

  ‘You see,’ the captain continued, ‘it could be that old ploy where Shanti, the killer, takes a little of the poison herself but not enough to do any lasting harm, after disposing of the cadavers of Ariadne Jones and Monica Frequen. Poor twisted girl. So sad, don’t you …’

  The lawyer interrupted her, droning about judicial procedures. But the captain, still savouring her victory, could not concentrate. Plan B, disposing of Ariadne Jones, had been accomplished. Nothing the silk said could now harm NICE, the basis of Captain MacKinley and Parson Paulie’s joint empire.

  ME #9

  If I close my eyes I can feel again the first rush of vicarious power as the captain pours me that initial whisky in her luxurious quarters.

  We have been more than partners in crime. We have become inseparable buddies. She will be here soon to sort this out, with the salary due to me. I will forgive her for being abusive towards me. Idiot, indeed. What was she thinking?

  But until then, I’ll have to stay in this terrible little room. It’s freezing in here and I am sneezing and coughing, with only a grey cotton blanket to keep me warm.

  In a just world, at this very moment Captain MacKinley and I should be toasting our rare double triumph. Seldom do personal and professional goals so neatly overlap. Getting Monica Frequen aboard had only added extra spice to my cold collation of revenge, and I was even beginning to suspect that the captain’s way of dealing with her had been for the best.

  Even though I still don’t understand the captain’s obsession with getting Ariadne’s disk, it didn’t matter back then. Plan A was to use CCTV to see where Ariadne hid a disk in her cabin, then retrieve it without harming her. Having failed that, we swung into Plan B. Eliminate its source, the woman herself. Mission accomplished. So why am I here, all alone in this freezing little room? Where is the captain?

  And then a terrible fear seizes hold of me. If Ariadne Jones could betray me, why could not the captain herself?

  19

  OLD FILTH

  The sight of two policemen fully concentrating on oneself is enough to shake anyone’s confidence. The captain was no exception.

  She did not have to speak until her lawyer arrived, but she had asked to see Paulie. Request denied. He was being held separately, as they put it. And they had taken away her spray for sterilising the filthy seat they made her sit on. The policemen sitting at the table opposite her in the interview room were outlining the facts as they saw them. Some were new to her. She listened in growing horror.

  It seemed that Mad Victor’s therapist had been right. Getting him away from a house of death and physically active was the correct professional diagnosis. Victor’s new lucidity was unfortunate for the captain, however. But how was she to know that the idiot from Araballa Library had never reset Victor’s old security passwords? Meaning that Victor had been able to just swan into the communications room at three am the morning after the banquet, and use his old ID to convince the Hobart harbour master that bloody murder was taking place at that very moment?

  What a fool she had been to believe the harbour master. Lack of a fireworks permit indeed. How could she ever have fallen for that ruse, which had lulled her into a false sense of confidence that her grander schemes were undetected?

  Who could have predicted that Mad Victor would request the turnaround? He was supposed to be crazy, wasn’t he?

  But no one could touch her and Paulie. After all, there were no cadavers as evidence. Plan B had been brilliantly executed, and even the idiot from the library did not understand what was on disk, which could never be recovered anyway. They’d have to drain the freezing Southern Ocean to find it. Then a new thought made her smile.

  If Paulie was right about all his conspiracy theories, the married couple had in fact just saved the British empire. Ever since that first post on DianaSaves she had understood that Diana had deliberately chosen the anti-landmine campaign as her special calling solely to inflict maximum damage on NICE, the basis of the captain and Paulie’s wealth. But why?

  Thick old Ariadne Jones had thought that the main danger would be caused by the orgy photos and the ludicrous claims of bestiality. Only she and Paulie knew that the documents in which the photos were embedded provided clear and disastrous evidence of investments in NICE’s landmines by the British establishment and every superannuation scheme in Britain and America. The pensioners would withdraw their savings, causing a massive crash, a second global financial crisis, which, this time, would have bankrupted both the captain and the Prosperity Church.

  Elaborate acts of war cannot be accomplished without a steady and sure income from stocks such as NICE, which MI5 might choose to keep secret from the rabble. Weapons, after all, including landmines, were the only sure investment in economically turbulent times such as these. Yes, perhaps they had saved the whole western way of life.

  But permitting that librarian from Araballa to include his old neighbours willy-nilly, even to rope in his old tutor, could have been an almost fatal complication. Busy conjuring up the fireworks holograms and the ghostly dancer in the ballroom, Kirstin MacKinley had underestimated the power of the personal ghosts that each passenger had brought on board. Yes, the most brilliant ideas were always the simplest, and people who put themselves in the hands of idiot servants often found themselves disappointed.

  There was a knock on the door. But instead of the lawyer she was expecting, a policewoman entered. Captain Kirstin MacKinley smiled at her. Perhaps a woman would understand that she couldn’t stay in this filthy building without her protective sterilising spray.

  But why was she carrying hand-cuffs?

  ME #10

  A newspaper may seem an old-fashioned way to become famous, especially for a boy wonder like yours truly, but they won’t let me access a computer here.

  I look forward to Lily Zelinski’s visits and rely on her updates from the outside world She tells me that she has a blog with a million followers readin
g her sensational story, ‘The Cruise Ship Murders’. Of the two murders, the nanny state has decided that I had nothing to do with one and was only an accessory to the other.

  Lily says Mad Victor has moved into Lone Pines. At first I thought she meant that he had got dementia like his mother, which I already suspected. But she explained that he has filled a recently created vacancy there, if you get my drift. He lives in the married staff quarters with his new wife, who has got all the oldies addicted to Angry Birds. Which can only be good for them.

  Strangely, for a tech-whizz like me, I’ve recently grown to appreciate slow news. It is satisfying to steadily fill up a scrapbook with mentions of myself, and the latest on the captain’s legal woes. She still hasn’t handed over my back pay and Araballa Library have written to say that they are no longer keeping my position open for my return. Thank goodness I took my ‘Perfect Crime’ records with me and have been keeping them updated.

  I’m so glad that I selected Lily, not as a victim but as the accused. Someone had to be last woman standing, and her offence against me had been just a refused coffee date, unlike Ariadne’s or Monica’s deeper betrayal.

  And Shanti was a married woman back then, so I don’t even mind her recovering from the stuff Parson Paul (or should I say Mr MacKinley?) injected into her Ecokup. Lily says Shanti woke on a trolley to find Victor giving her mouth-to-mouth and has been in love with him ever since.

  It’s been almost a year since the trial, and over that time Lily and I have become very close. She is now my biggest fan. After all, she’s famous because of me. She recorded my own account of events, starting from when Captain Kirstin walked into Araballa Library eighteen months ago. It was important that she got it all right, so she left everything I told her in the first person. That way, everyone could rest assured that I was a very reliable narrator.

  It was she who got me released from that freezing cell at Hobart Prison. She suggested that I give my lawyer my old files from Araballa library, ‘Social History (Fires)’. After he read it out in court, the prosecutor kept pestering me for more details. About Dad. About Cracker Night. He even asked me where the silver lighter was. I had the attention of every person in that courtroom, especially all the reporters I was not allowed to speak to.

  And I confess that I was unable to resist the call to fame after all. There were such gasps of admiration around the crowds as I explained my personal participation in fire events. It made me want to share all my other accomplishments aboard the Queen Mary, up until Victor ruined my second perfect crime.

  As a result of Lily’s intervention, I am now a resident of this grand historic Victorian hotel, surrounded by beautiful gardens. Free accommodation and well-presented meals are just what I need, at least until the captain appears with the money she still owes me.

  Meanwhile, Lily has promised that the whole world will see my side of the story in her forthcoming book, to be extracted this weekend in the Hobart Mercury. All about how I exceeded the captain’s expectations with the fake raffle tickets (a bit of cut-and-paste and the library photocopier) and the idea of including a few red herrings, in case the police came sniffing. How I located Ariadne Jones who, Lily tells me, was responsible for that initial NICE post which Victor had hacked. Funny, I don’t recall Ariadne being a stock-market type. How let down I felt when the captain deprived me of the pleasure of participating in Monica Frequen’s opportunity for redemption.

  Lily agrees with me that my perfect crime was technically flawless. Death of a poison-pen writer at the hands of one of her many victims. Case solved. To think I believed that my ongoing account of events was destined only for the dusty archives of Araballa Library, when Lily has made me famous, without having to die first.

  20

  FAME, ACTUALLY

  Buried in the literary pages of the Hobart Mercury was an obituary of Monica Frequen. Upon her death, it seems, she was immediately promoted to the rank of Australia’s foremost novelist.

  Her now classic novels will be re-issued to tie in with a feature film of her inspiring life, which culminates in a scene set in the banquet room of the Queen Mary. Monica Frequen dances in white satin, having become the real-life ghost of the ship.

  Also, an honorary PhD has been awarded to her posthumously by the same university that had once informed her by email that her services would be no longer required.

  There was also a contract for a biography of Monica Frequen by a professor who had never met her. More tantalising was the upcoming salacious confessional by a young first-time writer who claims to have been her shipboard lover at the time of her death.

  ME #11

  You will understand that I was waiting impatiently for the weekend edition of the paper to arrive. The Hobart Mercury is delivered free of charge here but I am the only one who reads it because my fellow residents are mostly unlettered.

  At last it arrived, plonked down casually on the buffet in the common room, as if it were of no special importance. Anticipating even greater fame, I picked it up, discarding the useless inserts, and slowly opened its pages.

  But my first reaction was that I had been betrayed yet again. Lily Zelinski’s featured extract, based on my own memoirs, which I delivered to her in all honesty, is of course the offender. The book extract, bearing the byline Lily Zelinski, contained my name only three times. Her career-salvaging sensation is more about Mad Victor’s discovery of Ariadne Jones’s diamante-encrusted pendant which concealed the vital memory stick. This was the first I had learned of the captain’s motive for going to such lengths to recover it. Imagine how I felt, having to read about this in a newspaper, when I had been so central to the whole operation.

  It was also the first I knew that Mad Victor had opened the silver heart, played the memory stick and immediately recognised the information as identical to the material he had once taken down, under captain’s orders, on the Lady Luck. And then, as Lily put it:

  The last greenish clouds of ignorance lifted from his mind, and he became once more the clear-sighted Victor of old. But this time he was the captain’s sworn foe. He quickly worked out her motive for disposing of Ariadne Jones. And that she and her husband, not to mention MI5, the Royal Family and the most respectable insurance houses, had all been profiting from the trade in NICE’s landmines. And so Parson Paul’s Prosperity Church, which had always condoned blood sacrifice as the necessary price to be paid for bringing in the thousand years of peace, is now shamed and bankrupt.

  From behind bars, the devoted couple will see their glorious New International Creative Explosives implode. They intend to appeal to the high court, where their defence will be that all their actions were solely to protect the financial security of the British empire [sic]. Even more bizarrely, they claim that the assassination of Diana was a necessary act of war and part of an international conspiracy.

  But what about me?

  Why didn’t I get the lead paragraph? After much searching I found my contribution buried on page seven: ‘Assisting the police in their inquiries into the case of the Captain and the Escape Clause, he is currently detained in a secure mental health facility.’

  I threw the paper across the polished floor of that deserted common room and kicked at the fake log fire, enclosed by unbreakable glass. Then, having little else to do, I retrieved the offending newspaper and re-read the article, sure I must have overlooked something.

  I had missed a small photo. In fact, I had not recognised myself the first time I saw it. Lily has made me look much older than I am, and my beard looks grey. The photo was small consolation but would go well in my scrapbook.

  A few months have passed since my last entry. People have started visiting me. Not only journalists and psychologists, but sensitive, susceptible girls too, who like to visit gifted people like me. Reception vets any girls with visible piercings, and I am allowed to sit with the others in the common room in front of the glassed-in fire. We can even hold hands, and the girls bring me whatever I ask for. Almost.

/>   In all, I can now see that Lily Zelinski has done me a favour. She was right. It is better to be famous while you are alive. She has kept her promise to get my name in the national papers, and even if she is a most unreliable narrator, everyone’s heard of me. My only complaint is that I am not allowed to smoke in here — or rather, that they have put my silver lighter in the safe.

  Lily has written an expanded version of my story for a British magazine, and in this one I am thrilled to note that the focus is finally on me. She talks about my firebug childhood. She’s highlighted the way the Queen Mary was turned around on the pretext of an infringement of the fireworks regulations at Hobart harbour.

  If the captain had only known it was a ruse to mask Victor’s treachery, we would have had time to dispose of him, before or after we recovered the disk. My Perfect Crime would have remained undetected. Or, as Lily Zelinski — quite the wordsmith — puts it in her final paragraph, thus giving me the last word:

  Who would have thought that Captain Kirstin MacKinley and her adjutant, the librarian son of a wood man with the best bonfire in the street, the undisputed king of Cracker Night, would be undone by the latter’s own area of expertise?

  Fireworks.

  Maurilia Meehan lives in Hepburn Springs, Victoria.

  Novelist, short story writer and poet.

  Serial shortlistee/finalist Australian Vogel, Braille Talking Books, Adelaide Festival, Age Fiction and Miles Franklin awards.

  Winner of the FAW/State of Victoria Short Story Award.

  Work translated into French, German and Chinese.