Stiff (2 page)

Police have identified a man found dead last Friday in a freezer at the Pacific Pastoral meat packing works at Coolaroo in Melbourne’s outer north as Ekrem Bayraktar, 42, a shift supervisor at the works. It is believed that he suffered a heart attack and was overcome by cold while conducting a routine stocktake.

Pacific Pastoral has announced an immediate review of its procedures in light of the incident which coincides with the state government’s attempts to gain Upper House approval for its controversial industrial health and safety legislation. Informed sources at Trades Hall believe the matter will be considered when the THC Executive meets late next week. The Minister for Industry, Charlene Wills, was unavailable for comment.

I liked the way a whiff of Labor intrigue had been slipped into an account of some poor bastard’s cardiac arrest. But that wasn’t what interested me. What had pushed my button was mention of the Minister for Industry. Charlene Wills was a person whose reputation was a matter very close to my heart.

Up ahead I could see Pentridge, the razor ribbon atop its bluestone walls dripping dismally in the drizzle. On my left was an Italian coffee shop and a row of old single-storey terraces that had been tarted up into offices and professional suites. I pulled into the kerb, tucked the
Sun
under my arm and pushed open the glass door of one of the shops, the one with the letters on the window saying ‘Charlene Wills: Member of the Legislative Council for the Province of Melbourne Upper’.

With a bit of luck, I thought, I’d have just enough time to call Charlene’s parliamentary office and get the lowdown on this piece of tabloid crap before the business of the day wrapped its tentacles around me.

Too late. The daily grind had already walked in off the street and was standing at the desk just inside the front door. He was solidly built, in a knockabout sort of way, anywhere between thirty and forty-five, with a duck’s bum haircut and hands like baseball mitts. When I walked in, he shifted irritably and shot me a glance that told me he’d got there first and I could fucking well wait my turn.

All his weight was balanced on the balls of his feet, and the tips of his fingers were pressed down hard on the desk. He was glowering across it at Trish who was in charge of office admin. ‘I’ve had a gutful,’ he said.

Statements like that, half threat, half plea, weren’t unusual at the electorate office. But this fellow’s tone was tending more to the threat end of the octave, and as he spoke he began tugging his khaki work shirt out of his pants and fiddling with the buttons. ‘I pay my taxes,’ he said. ‘I know my rights.’

Trish nodded at the bloke sympathetically and, without moving her eyes, casually bent forward as if to better hear him out. Trish was big in the chassis and not afraid to use it, but just in case push ever came to shove she kept the butt end of a sawn-down pool cue sitting in her wastepaper basket. As far as I knew she’d never had cause to use it, but on the odd occasion its mere presence could be a comfort. If this dickhead’s manner didn’t rapidly begin to improve, we’d all have a very unpleasant start to the working week.

‘May I help you, sir?’ I said, stepping forward. ‘I’m Murray Whelan, Charlene Wills’ electorate officer.’

As I spoke the man turned towards me and threw his shirt open, like he was performing a magic trick or unveiling the foundation stone of a major civic monument. Underneath, he was wearing what appeared to be a paisley-patterned T-shirt. As I got closer I realised that he was one of the most comprehensively tattooed human beings I had ever seen. Which, in that part of the world, was no mean achievement.

I tried to look unimpressed as I accepted his tacit invitation to inspect his pecs. He was certainly toting some artistry about. Fire-breathing dragons, dagger-pierced hearts, tiger-mounted she-devils, flame-licked skulls, Huey, Dewey and Louie, you name it, he had it. Innumerable little pictures exploded out of his pants, ran up over his flaccid paunch, covered his torso, and curled back across his shoulders.

The mad swirls of colour stopped abruptly, however, at the V of the man’s collar line and, I was prepared to bet, at the point in mid-bicep where the sleeves of a summer work shirt would run out. His hands, neck and face were unadorned. No spider webs embellished his earlobes, no intertwined bluebirds flew up his neck. This was a good sign. Here was a man who knew that some people tended to jump to the wrong conclusion about tatts, a man who had the brains not to let his passion for self-decoration get in the way of his employability. Someone you could talk sense to.

And now that he was dealing with a fellow male, he became a little less highly strung. ‘I want this bloke put out of business.’ He jabbed his finger at the place right above his heart where a freshly laid-on pair of baroque cherubs, beautiful work, were holding aloft an ornate scroll. I moved his shoulder sideways so I had better light to read by. Inside the scroll were the words ‘Gial For Ever’.

‘Gial?’ I said.

He nodded morosely. ‘Gail took one look and shot through,’ he said. ‘Reckoned if I couldn’t even spell her name properly, she certainly wasn’t gunna marry me.’ Then he brightened up. ‘I told that fucken prick of a tattooist I’d have his licence. And I’m not leaving here until I do. Dead set. I’m adam-fucken-ant.’

Three years before, when Charlene had offered me the job of looking after her constituents, a Labor MP’s electorate office was, by definition, a backwater. Then the tide had turned and swept Labor into office, first at state, then federal level. The drover’s dog was in the Lodge. We were the power in the land. And that sign on the door had become a homing beacon for every dingbat within a ten-mile radius.

When I began at the electorate office, our only customers were ordinary voters desperately seeking redress from bureaucratic inanity or government indifference. Or the harmlessly wan and smelly looking for somewhere out of the cold. But by late 1984 we were attracting such a daily barrage of basket cases and snake-oil salesmen that the sign out front might as well have read ‘Axes Ground Here’.

Surely, I was beginning to think, the cause of social progress could be deploying my skills more effectively. Could I not perhaps be managing a small lake or pine plantation for the Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands? A modestly demanding range of foothills even? Something with a little less interface.

‘Okay, Mr Adam fucking Ant,’ I shrugged. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’ Behind the man’s back, Trish had relaxed and was grinning like an ape. I discreetly flashed her a splayed handful of digits and led off towards the back of the office. Five minutes of deeply concerned bullshit should, I figured, be enough to see this particular dipstick safely off the premises. ‘Walk this way.’

Adam Ant, or whatever his name was, tucked his shirt back into his pants and slouched after me. ‘It’s not right,’ he mumbled under his breath.

What passed for my office was a partitioned cubicle tucked into a back corner behind the stationery cupboard. Before the election had transformed Charlene into a Minister of the Crown, it had been hers. Back in those days, I’d shared the reception area with Trish and whoever else happened to wander in. But I was fast to grasp the perquisites of political power and had quickly taken advantage of Charlene’s increasingly frequent absence to commandeer her privileges.

I snapped on the flickering fluorescent light, parked myself behind the laminated plywood desk and indicated the orange plastic of the visitor’s chair. As Ant lowered his backside into place, obscuring my Tourism Commission poster of Wilson’s Promontory, I squared off my blotter, uncapped my pen with a bureaucratic flourish and tried to look like I gave a shit.

‘I’d like to help you, mate. I really would,’ I said. ‘But you’ve got the wrong department.’

Ant finished buttoning up the National Gallery, ran his hand through his greasy pompadour and looked deeply wronged. ‘I rung up Consumer Protection. They said I should try my local member.’

Typical. Consumer Protection took the cake at pass-the-parcel. I nodded understandingly and went through the motions of taking down the particulars. This was the first instance of a dyslexic tattooist that Mrs Wills’ office had ever been called upon to address, I explained. And while the Minister would undoubtedly be sympathetic, in a case like this the powers of an elected member of the state’s legislative chamber of review might be somewhat circumscribed.

The
Sun
lay between us on top of my overflowing in-tray, still folded open at page seventeen. If I don’t piss this joker off soon, I thought, Parliament will begin sitting and Charlene will be unreachable for the rest of the day.

‘I’m not going anywhere, pal,’ said Ant. ‘Until this thing is fixed.’

‘This is a legal matter,’ I said. ‘Restitution, Punitive damages.’ These were words he liked. ‘You need the Community Legal Service.’ The Family Law Act surely included provisions for the irretrievable breakdown of the relationship between a man, his tattooist, and his intended.

Looking like the height of efficiency, I dialled the CLS and made an appointment, skipping the details in case they thought I was pulling their collective leg. Friday was the earliest the slack-arses could squeeze him in. ‘This lot will look after you,’ I told Ant. ‘Top people.’

The CLS was half a mile down the road. I drew a map, wrote the appointment details underneath, and slid it across the desk.

Ant folded his arms across his chest. ‘You’re just trying to give me the bounce.’

True. But it wasn’t as though I hadn’t given it my best shot first. ‘Look mate,’ I said, marginally more firmly, ‘there’s nothing else I can do. The legal service will handle it from now on. Good luck. Let us know how you go. I’ll keep Charlene informed. But in the meantime my hands are tied.’

He shook his head and settled his technicolour mass even more firmly into the moulded plastic cup of the seat. I opened Charlene’s correspondence file and buried my face in it, wondering how long it would take Trish to burst in with an urgent pretext. ‘Dear Madam,’ the top letter began. ‘You are a pinko ratbag bitch.’

Five minutes later I was still pretending to read and Ant was continuing to glare. What did he want me to do? Whip out a bottle of correcting fluid and a blue biro and personally amend his faulty chest? ‘I’ll call the cops,’ I said, lamely.

He snorted derisively. Quite right, too. For a start, we could hardly be seen having someone dragged away merely for demanding that the government do something about their problems. That, after all, was what we were there for.

Also, I found it hard to sound convincing. If I called the coppers on every cantankerous customer we had, they’d have to start running a shuttle bus. And given the ongoing budgetary constraints faced by the various agencies under the jurisdiction of the Minister for Police and Emergency Services, a factional ally of Charlene, that was a poor prospect.

Mainly, however, I couldn’t call the coppers on some lovestruck dumb-bum with Cupid engraved on his left tit because such an encounter was unlikely to be conducive to an outcome of social equity. Let the coppers catch who they could. I’d gone to school with blokes like Ant, and having to resort to the wallopers in my dealings with them would have been an affront to both my personal morality and my professional pride. Quarrels should be kept in the family. ‘Do us a favour,’ I suggested courteously. ‘Fuck off.’

Ant smiled maliciously and leaned back like he had all the time in the world. Fortunately, at exactly that moment the phone rang. It wasn’t Trish but Greg Coates, a deputy director in the Melbourne office of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs.

Nearly a quarter of the electors of the Province of Melbourne Upper had been born overseas and it wasn’t uncommon for constituents with an immigration problem to turn up on our doorstep. No problem. Immigration is a Commonwealth matter, so all we had to do was steer them over to the local federal member.

But, as often as not, the problems were little more than language mix-ups, and it would have been criminal of me to allow an important federal politician to be burdened with such trifling matters. Especially if Charlene could get the credit for fixing them. Which wasn’t difficult to arrange since Greg Coates had been a mate since university, and was both a fellow spear-carrier in my faction and a member of the same party branch. So about once a week Greg gave me a call and we cut a bit of red tape together and swapped political gossip.

I swivelled my seat around, pointedly turning my back on the tattooed wonder, and spent fifteen minutes firming up a batch of family reunion applications. Eventually Coates made his way, as if in passing, to the prospect of an early election. There was a lot of speculation about, and what with Charlene being in Cabinet, Coates was always trying to weasel the latest inside info out of me.

I told him what I knew, which was exactly zip, and we finished off with the customary exchange of promises to get together for a drink. When I spun my seat around to hang up, Ant had helped himself to my
Sun
and was pretending to read it, something he wouldn’t really be able to do until he developed the intellectual capacity of an eight-year-old.

I was about to get seriously snaky when the phone rang again. This time it was a nice old Greek pensioner whose plumbing difficulties I had been shepherding through the maintenance division of the Housing Ministry. In comparison with the idiocy incarnate sitting opposite me, the institutional oddities at Housing were child’s play. I made a couple of quick calls to the appropriate authorities, threw my weight about in a minor way, and called the old bat to reassure her that she’d be flushing again before she knew it.

By that stage, it was too late to call Charlene. Besides which, the day had kicked in with its customary vigour. In rapid succession I had a branch treasurer ring to fish for his postage costs to be reimbursed, a school wanting Charlene for its prize night, and a personal visit from a guy with a Ned Kelly beard describing himself as Citizens For A Freeway Free Future. I took him out to the waiting area and spent half an hour outlining the intricacies of the Western Ring Road community consultative process. He kept his helmet on for the entire conversation, so I’m not sure if he understood everything I told him.