Stiff (21 page)

‘In my line of work you learn not to be surprised,’ I said, dumping the groceries on the bench.

He was walking around with his hands in his pockets, freely scrutinising everything in sight. ‘And exactly what is your line of work?’

When I told him, he showed no reaction, but I could hear the gears whirring as he tried to place me in the wider scheme of things. ‘People think that their local member can wave a magic wand, fix their problems,’ I said. ‘If they don’t get what they want, they blame me. Some of them start throwing threats around. Anonymous tip, was it?’ I had the groceries out of the bag and started loading the fridge.

‘We’re required to follow these things up,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you understand.’

‘What was it?’ I said wearily. I prised the top off a stubby and waved it in his general direction. ‘Child pornography? Wife beating? Drugs?’

The copper ignored the beer. He tapped the window and waved York back out front. ‘Do you have any idea who might make such allegations?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But when you find out I’d certainly like to fucking well know.’

Dalziel handed me his card. ‘I don’t think we need to disturb you further,’ he said. At least he didn’t shoot me, which is more than some people can say about the Victorian police.

Being a functionary of the party in power arguably put me on the same side as the police. But as far as I was concerned, no quirk of political circumstance could alter the fact that, by disposition and training, all coppers were bastards until proven otherwise. I had suspected as much as a child, watching my father unlock the saloon bar in the lull after the six o’clock swill. No point in getting on the wrong side of the law, he’d whisper reaching for the top shelf. My ambivalence was violently reinforced one afternoon in my first year at university.

There was a march. I can’t even remember what it was about. It was a demo a minute in those days. This one was nothing major, no Springbok tour or US Consulate job. Just a few banners and Eureka flags. A couple of hundred chanting long-hairs. I’d just tagged along for a look. The hard left were a pack of wankers, as far as I was concerned, middle-class kids trying to pass themselves off as otherwise with bad manners and a lot of beer. But there was this girl, Georgina something, that I was thinking of making a play for. She was right up the front, holding the lead banner.

We were almost back on campus, when the ambush happened. Hundreds of blue uniforms appeared at the top of the rise, more of them than us. An inspector with white epaulettes bellowed something unintelligible through a megaphone. An order to disperse, I guess. There was nowhere to disperse to. Then they charged. They went through us like a dose of the salts. Batons, horses, you name it. They’d taken off their numbers, so they could get energetic without fear of being identified. And they really knew how to enjoy themselves.

A big sergeant got me in a headlock while two of his mates took turns giving me the old one-two. I’d lost two teeth and nearly choked on my own blood before their interest flagged and they moved on. Georgina’s boyfriend had his collar-bone broken, so from my point of view it all turned out to be for nothing. The next time I saw the sergeant was a decade later. Deputy Commissioner/Operations I think his title was. He was sharing an official dais with Charlene.

But we get nowhere dwelling on past grievances. The dicks were gone and Red was back with a musk cigar and a packet of gum. Big bubbles. No troubles. I stuck him in front of the telly with the chicken pie we had picked up priced-to-clear at the supermarket bakery counter, rolled up my sleeves, and waded into a frenzy of housework. Wendy would be arriving tomorrow. Things needed to be done. The nit scare had been bad enough; having her find the house looking like a half-demolished rat-trap would have been tantamount to self-destruction.

I drained the lounge room swamp, washed dishes, vacuumed floors and hung damp laundry over the clothes horse to dry. While it felt somewhat ludicrous to be window-dressing the house I had shared with Wendy for seven years, it was also imperative that she find no evidence of inability to cope, no pretext for complaint that the child’s welfare and comfort were at jeopardy in his father’s hands. I did a particularly fine job on the toilet. In my experience, the link between bathroom cleanliness and female psychology cannot be overemphasised.

All this mindless activity gave me time to think. Someone breaks into my house, plants drugs, then calls the cops. The same somebody tries to run me over. It was impossible not to believe it was all connected to Memo Gezen and the toughs in the grey BMW. But how did they know where I lived? And what was all this supposed to achieve? And what if they came back? Was Red safe? Maybe a few days with Wendy might not be a bad idea, after all. Just until I got this business sorted out.

I was on my knees with a brush up the S-bend when the phone rang. Expecting it would be Wendy, I braced myself. It was old man Picone. Agnelli’s uncle’s brother-in-law, a market gardener from Werribee, had been at a family lunch on Sunday. Over the vitello tonnato he had been told that Agnelli would definitely be in parliament as of the next election.

I called the House straight away. Charlene wasn’t in either her office or the chamber. I asked to be put through to the members’ dining room. The head steward came on the line, recognised my voice and informed me that Mrs Wills had just had some kind of collapse and a colleague had taken her to hospital. He didn’t know which one. I rang the Royal Melbourne, the Women’s, the Queen Victoria and St Andrew’s, which was the closest to the House. She hadn’t been admitted to any of them. All I got on her home number was the answering machine.

The rain had let up, so I took a Vegemite jar of Jamesons out into the backyard and we incinerated a couple of tobacco bushes together. When I thought about it, Charlene had been burning the candle pretty brightly over the previous two years. The election, the euphoria of winning office after so long in the wilderness, overhauling a moribund ministry, ramming through a hefty raft of reform legislation, it was all bound to take its toll. I should have been looking after her, shouldering more of the burden.

When she’d cancelled the last two of our regular sessions at the electorate office, our fortnightly chance to catch up with each other, I hadn’t even asked why. Preoccupied coping with Red, running maintenance on the house, and stewing in my own juices over Wendy, I’d even been relieved. Not that enquiring after Charlene’s health would have got me more than a gruff affirmative. She took far too much pride in her reputation as a tough old chook to solicit sympathy. But that shouldn’t have stopped me asking.

The whiskey and nicotine must have fired me up. The urge to do something, anything, gnawed at me. This Bayraktar business was a real piss-off. The last thing I needed to be doing right now was looking over my shoulder every five minutes for the boys from the Anatolia Club. But until Ayisha or Gezen turned up I was left hanging. Or was I?

I rifled the phone book. Fifteen Celiks were listed, ten in the immediate area, none with the initial A. There were no Gezens at all, and no listing under Anatolia Club. A gambling club, Ayisha had called it. Perhaps I was coming at the subject from the wrong angle, thinking about the car. Rational thought hadn’t been getting me anywhere. Trying to second-guess the dark recesses of the right-wing Turkish mind could easily take forever. It was time for some direct action, even if it was a blind punt.

Under Police was a listing for the Gaming Squad. A machine answered and told me to leave a message. I hung up, collected my thoughts and rang back. Anonymous denunciation was a game two could play. My accent was terrible, more Bombay than Bosphorus, made even worse by the pencil clamped between my molars. Maybe I sounded like a crank, but I didn’t imagine they got too many calls from a prisoner at the Anatolia Club, 636 Blyth Street, Brunswick, pleading to be rescued before he was castrated for his gambling debts. And like the man said, they were required to follow up these things.

The odds were long, but with a smidgin of beginners luck, Bayraktar’s buddies would at least be getting an enquiring official knock on their glossy green front door within a day or so. Whether it would be enough to teach them a bit of road courtesy remained to be seen. Jesus Christ, I thought, as I hung up. What had started as a strategy to save the government from embarrassment was turning into a very bad vaudeville routine.

Branch meetings started at 8 p.m. As the product of two inveterate meeting-goers, Red had accepted from infancy the normality of spending at least one night a week under a table with his colouring pencils at some discussion group or executive committee or task force. At seven-thirty I told him to get his coat.

‘I’m not going,’ he said, digging his heels in. This tough new haircut was going to his head.

I offered him a dollar. He was unimpressed. A dirty brown banknote and a glass of pink lemonade were lousy compensation for being bored out of your brain for two hours while your father massaged the grass roots.

But the options were non-existent. My old man was in Queensland, not that he would have been much use even if he was closer. Wendy’s parents were getting on, lived in Camberwell and never volunteered. Besides, they voted Liberal. I couldn’t see myself calling them up and explaining the urgency of chairing a Labor Party branch meeting.

Red began to whine. Great. Here we were fighting on what was possibly our last night of bachelorhood together before Wendy arrived and started making trouble. There was not alternative but to put my foot down and take a firm patriarchal stance. ‘Five dollars,’ I said. ‘Plus a packet of chips.’

Right then the front doorbell rang. Red, looking for an out, flew up the hall and flung it open. ‘It’s a lady,’ he yelled.

It was no lady. It was Ayisha, draped nonchalantly against the verandah post in her quilted overcoat. ‘Sivan said you wanted to see me,’ she said, as though she had no idea why. ‘What’s happening?’

This sudden materialisation on my doorstep set me back a pace. To be discovered like this—a tea-towel across my shoulder, hectoring a small child—wasn’t going to do my image any good. How would I ever be able to pass myself off as a Gramsci-reading, internationalist sophisticate after this? Aside from which, where did she come off with this casual attitude? I tucked the tea-towel in my hip pocket. ‘What’s happening?’ I snapped. ‘You fucking well tell me.’

My attitude took her aback somewhat. ‘You okay?’

‘No, I’m not. I’m mightily pissed off. I don’t appreciate being fucked around. You could have had the decency to tell me what I was buying into.’

Red was all ears, alert to my tension, watching the way I responded to this strange woman. He tucked himself against my thigh, declaring prior possession.

Ayisha cocked her head to one side. ‘You’ve been to the police, haven’t you?’

At the mention of the word ‘police’, I felt an electric charge of excitement surge through Red.

‘Where have you been all day?’ I demanded, sounding like a jealous husband. ‘And what about your friend Gezen?’

‘I’ve been at college,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘College? What were you doing at college?’

‘Accountancy,’ she said.

Accountancy? Christ, what about the revolution? At least she was safe. ‘You and I need to have a serious talk,’ I said. Not with the child there, though. ‘But right now Red and I are running late for a meeting.’

Red saw his chance. ‘No we’re not,’ he piped up cheerfully. ‘Come in.’ Detaching himself from my leg he took off down the hall. Taking his cue, Ayisha shouldered past me and followed him.

‘You have been to the cops, haven’t you?’ she accused. ‘I thought you said you’d help.’

I tailed her down the hall. The draped laundry, so homey and efficient minutes before, looked pathetic. Red had turned on the television and thrown himself onto the couch. Grabbing Ayisha by the elbow I propelled her out of his earshot. She looked around the kitchen, summing up my domestic arrangement. I could see her mentally pigeonholing me.

‘My wife, well ex-wife, sort of, well, she lives in Canberra and…’ I was babbling, shifting from one foot to the other.

‘Christ, Murray,’ she said. ‘What’s got into you?’

‘Don’t come Miss Innocent with me,’ I said, recovering my indignation fast. ‘First Gezen disappears, then you take off, then I find out about Gezen’s political background, then…’

She pulled me up short. ‘Gezen’s political background? What do you mean?’

‘The PKK or whatever it is, the Kurdish guerrillas. Sivan told me. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him about the Bayraktar business.’

‘Sivan told you Memo was PKK?’ That sly grin was spreading back across her face. ‘And you believed him?’

‘Sure.’ But I knew that I shouldn’t have.

‘Christ, Murray,’ she laughed. ‘Memo Gezen’s got six kids and chronic back pain and lives in a two-bedroom flat in East Keilor. He’s no more PKK than the man in the moon. Sivan’s been pulling your leg.’

Of course. So he had. And I’d fallen for it—hook, line and sinker. ‘Why would he do that?’ I sulked.

‘Jeeze, I dunno. Sivan’s a born joker. Maybe he thought you were still playing that guess-the-name game you started him on yesterday. He probably thought you knew he was having you on.’

‘But when Gezen disappeared this morning, I thought those guys in the BMW…’ To be perfectly frank, I could no longer remember exactly what I’d been thinking.

‘Memo didn’t disappear,’ Ayisha said. ‘He went back to work. When he first turned up, asking about getting a lawyer, he told me he was on his lunch break. Then you said for him to go to work like normal, not to draw attention to himself. So when we knew it wasn’t the police parked out the front, I told him to piss off quick smart. Out the back door and back to work before he was missed.’

‘So why were the Anatolia Club guys in the BMW watching him?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’ve been wondering that myself all day.’

‘At college.’

‘Yeah.’

‘But why did you take off so quickly? Sivan didn’t say anything about you being at college.’

‘I knew he’d forget,’ she said. ‘Usually I go on Thursdays and Fridays. But end of year exams are on. I had a three-hour statistics test at midday. I hadn’t exactly been expecting all that business with Memo, you know. And we had to go through that story of his twice, once in Turkish and again in English. By the time he’d finished I was running seriously late. Put me right off, it did. Wouldn’t be surprised if I failed. Anyway, we all went off to the pub afterwards and I didn’t get your message until I got home half an hour ago. How was I supposed to know you’d been looking for me?’