Sucked In

by Shane Maloney

  ‘.’

  Lesson Eleven. Future Conditional.

  The Premier stood on the topmost step of the broad terrace leading to Parliament House. His chest was thrust forward, his chin tilted upwards, his hands on his hips. The tuft of his trademark cowlick stood erect, the comb of a strutting cockerel. A great strutter, the Right Honourable Kenneth Geoffries. He could strut standing still. All this is mine, his stance announced. The legislature behind me, the city at my feet.

  ‘This cutting-edge development will guarantee Melbourne a place in the front row of the world’s leading cities for generations to come,’ he declared.

  A semi-circle of reporters and photographers clustered around him, scribbling and snapping. Flunkies patrolled the perimeter of the scrum. Tourists paused to observe the goings-on from between the Corinthian columns of the portico.

  ‘…enhanced competitive advantage…international landmark…’

  It was nine-thirty the following morning and I was on my way to a caucus meeting. The sky was clear and the morning fair. Mild sunlight suffused the rich, contented lawns of the parliamentary gardens. The forsythia were still in bloom but the shrubbery borders had begun turning to russet.

  The end of the autumn session was imminent and the legislature was dawdling towards its winter hibernation. Not that Joe and Joanna Public would take much notice. Parliament was a dull spectacle at the best of times and its current configuration made for monotonous viewing. The Liberals had an iron-clad majority, a steamroller legislative agenda and a bullet-proof leader. They outnumbered us two to one in the lower house, five to one in the upper house. We weren’t just a minority. We were an endangered species, a puny splinter with little option but to keep our heads down, our seatbelts buckled and our powder dry. Not that we had any powder. We’d lost the formula two elections ago.

  I trudged up the steps towards the main door. Skirting the mini-scrum, I paused for a second to catch the topic of the Premier’s spiel.

  ‘The massive contribution of the gaming industry to the people of this state…’

  He was barking for the new casino, one of his pet projects. Hyped as a magnet for tourists, a generator of jobs and an all-round good thing, the casino had been slowly taking shape on the south bank of the Yarra. Its grand opening was now only days away and media interest was intense. Mick and Keef were rumoured to be flying in, Wham had got back together and Freddy Mercury was rising from the dead for the occasion.

  And the Premier, you could bet on it, was claiming his share of the limelight.

  ‘This is the kind of vision that drives my government…’ he was saying.

  Trotting up the last of the steps, I went into the grand old pile. The entrance was crowded with management types. They were queueing for admission to the Queen’s Hall, the main parliamentary lobby. I nodded hello with the doorman, stuck my head through the door and took a quick squizz.

  Fifty or so suited figures were milling around the swathe of red carpet between the two legislative chambers, helping themselves to coffee at a temporary muffin buffet. Many wore V-shaped gold lapel pins, the official insignia of the Premier’s insider-trading, head-kicking, nest-feathering regime. Public service mandarins and Liberal backbenchers were mixing and mingling, not a spine among them. A rostrum had been set up, framed by banners. ‘Victoria—On the Move’, they declared.

  On the take, more likely, I thought. You could smell the greed in the air.

  The Premier’s presidential style, an innovation in Australian politics, was built on events like this. Announcements of landmark accomplishments. Policy launches. New initiatives. Son-et-lumière. Colour and movement. A torrent of proclamations and pronouncements that kept his highness on the front page and his critics scrabbling to keep up.

  Towards the rear of the room, beside the statue of Queen Victoria, camera crews were uncoiling cables and erecting tripods. Senior members of the parliamentary press corps stood nearby, idly rocking on their heels, waiting for the curtain to go up. Among them was Kelly Cusack, the presenter of On the Floor.

  She was standing with the other hacks, half-listening to the half-wit who did the rounds for Channel 10, her gaze skimming the room. Without the television make-up and studio lighting, she had a sexy-librarian quality, the look emphasised by her pairing of a dark suit with a form-fitting, pastel-yellow cowl-neck cashmere sweater.

  She noticed me looking her way. She held my gaze, tilting her head to one side as if trying to place me.

  At that exact moment, a hand clamped itself around my elbow. It jerked me abruptly sideways as the Premier swept into the room, flanked by a phalanx of ministers and minions.

  ‘Out of the way, sonny. Who do you think you are, standing in the way of progress?’

  I turned and found myself looking down at a tubby, leprechaun-faced man with wiry grey hair and twinkly eyes. He wore a crumpled tweed jacket and a cord around his neck with his spectacles attached.

  ‘Let’s rush him, Inky,’ I said. ‘I’ll grab him, you bite his knees.’

  Dennis Donnelly, universally known as Inky, was a Labor Party institution. A spin doctor avant la lettre, he’d been press secretary to prime ministers and premiers, and eye witness to the rise and fall of more Labor governments than I’d had taxpayer-funded taxi rides. Officially retired but impossible to keep away, he was our roving media watchdog, a sniffer-out of potentially damaging press stories.

  ‘I been looking for you.’ His voice was a whispery undertone that sounded like two press releases being rubbed together. ‘Got a tick?’

  I checked my watch. The caucus meeting was still fifteen minutes away.

  ‘For you, Inky,’ I said. ‘Any time.’

  His hand still gripping my elbow, he shunted me into the corridor outside the Legislative Assembly. ‘I understand you worked at the Municipals at one point.’

  ‘Long ago,’ I nodded. ‘In a galaxy far, far away.’

  He pulled a folded copy of the Herald Sun out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. ‘Seen this?’

  The tabloid was folded open at an inside page. It had a furry, handled feel. Most of the page was occupied by a photo of a lanky young footballer with blond tips in his hair and a cast on his arm. A horde of grinning kids were jostling to sign the plaster.

  ‘It’s a cruel world,’ I said. ‘I’ve been praying to the Blessed Virgin for a speedy recovery.’

  Inky and I were Lions supporters. And if the forced merger of our club with an interstate team was not indignity enough, the loss of our most promising new recruit to a shattered ulna in the first quarter of the first game of the season had rubbed salt into the wounds.

  ‘Bugger the Blessed Virgin,’ said Inky. ‘Check the sidebar.’

  The column contained a half-dozen brief news items. One of them was circled with an orange felt-tip pen. It was headed Remains Found in Lake.

  Human remains were discovered in Lake Nillahcootie in central Victoria yesterday afternoon. They were found in the bed of the lake which has been recently drained as part of maintenance work on the dam wall.

  Consisting of bones and a skull, the remains were removed by police for examination at Melbourne’s Institute of Forensic Medicine. Police said it could take some time to identify them.

  ‘They appear to have been at the bottom of the reservoir for a considerable period of time,’ said Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Brendan Rice. ‘Items recovered from the scene suggests that they belong to the victim of a drowning which occurred at the lake a number of years ago.’

  Inky watched me read, head slanted sideways, an expectant expression on his classic Hibernian dial.

  ‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘It took long enough, but it looks like they’ve finally found Merv Cutlett.’

  ‘You reckon it’s him?’

  ‘The odds would have to be pretty good. There can’t be too many other bodies on the bottom of Lake Nillahcootie, can there?’

  ‘You wouldn’t think so,’ he rasped. ‘Is this first you’ve hear
d about this?’

  ‘News to me.’

  Inky reached over and laid a stubby finger on the date line at the top of the page.

  A memory flashed before me, so fresh I could smell the bacon and eggs. A breakfast table at the Mildura Grand, Charlie tearing at the buttons of his shirt, vomit at the corners of his mouth, his open newspaper cascading to the floor.

  ‘Last Thursday,’ I said. ‘The day Charlie Talbot died.’

  What with one thing and another, I realised, I’d never got round to finishing the papers.

  ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ said Inky. ‘Charlie being there when Merv drowned, then carking it on the very day the body turns up, twenty years later.’

  I nodded, sharing the old flak-catcher’s appreciation of life’s little quirks. ‘You wouldn’t read about it, would you?’

  Inky gave a world-weary sigh. ‘If only that was true, Murray,’ he said. ‘Thing is, I’ve had a call from a journalist.

  He’s picked up on the unidentified remains discovery, put two and two together, come up with Merv Cutlett. He’s got the idea there might be a story in it.’

  ‘Union Boss Slept with Yabbies?’

  ‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘He’s keen to rustle up some background on the union. Problem is, I spent the late seventies in Canberra, scraping Whitlam-flavoured egg off the face of the national leadership, so I’m a bit behind the eight-ball on the twilight of the Municipals. Right now, you’re the horse’s mouth.’

  Mouth? It was usually the other end. I glanced through the double doors at a buffet laden with coffee dregs and muffin carnage.

  ‘Tell you what, Inky. Buy me lunch and I’ll spill my guts.’

  Inky patted his paunch and made a mournful face. ‘My lunching days are over, mate. Gastric ulcer. Talk about guts, mine are completely cactus.’

  The name Inky Donnelly was synonymous with the long Labor lunch. I puffed my cheeks in astonishment and gave a doleful shake of my head. ‘No wonder the party’s rooted.’

  As if on cue, a handful of listless suits shuffled through the entrance archway to Queen’s Hall. The remnants of my decimated tribe massing thinly for the scheduled caucus meeting.

  ‘Tell this journo, whoever he is, he’s wasting his time.’ I handed Inky back his Herald Sun. ‘Merv Cutlett’s death is old news, bones or no bones.’

  Inky took the paper. ‘It’s Vic Valentine,’ he said.

  I pricked up my ears. ‘Accidental drowning’s a bit prosaic for Vic, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘All this gangland action going on, you’d think Melbourne’s ace crime reporter would have more newsworthy leads to pursue.’ We strolled out onto the clattering mosaic of the Parliament House vestibule.

  ‘You can see where he’s coming from, though,’ shrugged Inky. ‘A union official. An influential senator. A recently-deceased former minister. Three men in a boat, one of whom goes to a watery grave. It’s got to be worth a sniff.’

  ‘He sniffeth in vain,’ I said. ‘It was just a stupid accident. And Merv Cutlett wasn’t exactly Jimmy Hoffa.’

  Inky gave a pessimistic shrug. Crime or politics, a story was a story. And stories had a tendency to grow legs and start running in all sorts of undesirable directions.

  ‘You know him? Personally, I mean.’

  ‘We’ve talked on the phone a couple of times,’ I said. ‘Struck me as an okay sort of bloke.’

  In the aftermath of Lyndal’s death, the cops were beating the bushes, hoping to flush out the maniac who ran her down. Valentine rang me for a quote. Later, when a group of teenagers were taken hostage, Red among them, he asked my permission to interview my son. It was a messy business and I didn’t want the kid turned into grist for the media mill. Valentine had respected my wishes.

  ‘They tell me he’s a straight shooter,’ nodded Inky. ‘But once the police ID the body, it’ll be open slather. Rumour and insinuation, the Liberals can say anything they like under parliamentary privilege. They’ll have a field day. Mindful of which, I think it’d be advisable to stay ahead of the pack, not risk getting blind-sided.’

  In the doorway, a man in a somewhat better suit than mine was batting back a routine pleasantry from one of the Parliament House staff. Alan Metcalfe, star attraction of the imminent party meeting. He took a deep, bracing breath, inflated his chest to leaderly proportions and advanced on the staircase.

  Inky retrieved some folded sheets of paper from the inside pocket of his tweed. ‘I happened to be down the State Library, doing a bit of work on the memoirs, so I took a quick gander at the original newspaper reports.’ He tapped his wrist with the sheaf of photocopied clippings. ‘They cover the drowning, but they’re a bit thin on context.’

  I nodded at Metcalfe as he strode by and checked my watch. It wouldn’t do to be too much later than the boss.

  ‘Context?’ I said. ‘In other words, you want to know if the union was corrupt?’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘There might’ve been the odd little fiddle here and there, but nothing systemic. The employers were government agencies, so there wasn’t much scope.’

  ‘And there was never any question that the drowning was an accident?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Not that I heard.’

  ‘Three blokes go fishing, one of them falls overboard, that’s it?’

  ‘Pissed as a parakeet, probably,’ I said. ‘Cutlett.’

  ‘Consistent with form,’ Inky said. ‘And Charlie Talbot was state secretary, right?’

  I nodded. ‘The way I heard it, Charlie jumped in, tried to save him.’

  ‘They were pretty thick, were they?’

  ‘Chalk and cheese,’ I said. ‘Mortal enemies, so to speak. Charlie was trying to drag the union into the twentieth century. Merv preferred the early nineteenth.’

  ‘But pally enough to go fishing together?’

  I tried to imagine Charlie Talbot in an aluminium dinghy with a bucket of worms and a six-pack. The image didn’t come readily to mind.

  ‘That’s another irony,’ I said. ‘Charlie wasn’t the outdoor type. Merv must have twisted his arm. Probably dragged him along just to give him the shits.’

  ‘The union had a place on the lake, right?’

  ‘The Shack,’ I nodded. ‘Notionally a training and recreation facility for the members. In reality, it was Merv’s private retreat.’

  Inky put on his specs and quickly flipped through his collection of newspaper cuttings. ‘So what was Barry Quinlan doing there? I can’t see him and Merv Cutlett as mates.’

  ‘They weren’t,’ I said. ‘Quinlan was working for the Public Employees Federation. He had some nebulous title like development officer or liaison co-ordinator or some such. Essentially, he was their mergers and acquisitions man. The PEF was very pro-active on the amalgamation front, always on the lookout for a takeover target. Charlie knew that amalgamation with a bigger union was the only way forward for the Municipals. He and Quinlan were working a tag team, trying to swing Merv on the issue.’

  Inky nodded along, connecting the union dots to the bigger political picture. ‘The PEF backed Quinlan onto the Senate ticket for the 1979 election. That would’ve been his pay-off for bringing the Municipals into the fold. The amalgamation must have increased its membership by a hefty swag.’

  ‘A well-trod route,’ I said. The more members, the more votes a union has at party conference.

  Inky patted his pockets, found a half-gone roll of Quik-Eze and peeled away the foil.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he popped a couple in his mouth and started to crunch. ‘How about we have a drink with your mate Valentine? Nip this thing in the bud. How’re you set tonight after work?’

  It was a rare Friday night that Red didn’t have a social engagement. Tonight was no exception. Come knock-off time, I’d have no reason to go rushing home to an empty house.

  ‘Sure,’ I shrugged. ‘I’ll shout you a glass of milk.’

  ‘I’ll give Valentine a call, get back to you with the when and where.’
r />   I was already turning away, pushing it to make the meeting on time. Inky grabbed my sleeve and thrust his collection of cuttings into my hand.

  ‘Extra! Extra!’ he rasped. ‘Read all about it.’

  The party room was a grand salon on the first floor, all neo-classical architraves and french-polished sideboards. I arrived just as the pre-meeting burble was dying down and found a seat in the back row.

  The entire parliamentary party was there. All twenty-nine of us.

  As usual, the Right sat on the left and the Left sat on the right. An apt demarcation since the two factions were indistinguishable in both principle and practice. The Right had long been dominant, having successfully pinned responsibility for our demise on the Left, a situation akin to the cocktail waiters blaming the dance band for the sinking of the Titanic. They called themselves the Concord faction, thereby staking out the moral high ground. The Left, demonstrating its usual measure of political imagination, just called itself the Left.

  Those without factional affiliation, myself included, sat at the back. In due course, if I wanted to retain my endorsement, I’d probably be forced to choose a side. For the moment, however, I was content to keep my entanglements to a minimum. Even if it meant sitting at the back.

  Up front, facing us, sat Alan Metcalfe, along with his deputy, Peter Thorsen, and a select group of senior front-benchers. Metcalfe stood up, cleared his throat and called the meeting to order.

  ‘Harmf,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on with it, then.’

  Metcalfe was a former federal MP who’d been shoehorned into state politics after losing his safe seat in a redistribution. He was capable, earnest, deeply ambitious and utterly boring. He had the head of a shop dummy, the mannerisms of a robot and the charisma of a fish finger.

  Notwithstanding these excellent credentials, the electorate had failed to warm to our glorious leader. Under his tutelage, our state-wide primary vote had plummeted to new depths. Nobody, probably not even Alan himself, believed that he could reverse this trend in time for the next election. In the most recent preferred-premier poll, he’d rated somewhere lower than viral meningitis. But what he lacked in voter appeal he more than made up in tenacity. He clung to his job with fingernails of steel, a testament to inertia disguised as stability.