Stiff (30 page)

The one minor hiccup in the coronial hearing was the unavoidable absence from the witness box of the man who had found the body. Herb Gardiner was, of course, the subject of his own inquest barely a week after Bayraktar’s. Based on the fact that he was wearing protective clothing, and on the testimony of the fireman who found the body, as well as medical evidence, it was concluded that Gardiner had been inside one of the freezers when the alarm went off. Making a late run for the exit, he had slipped on the wet floor, broken his neck, and been asphyxiated by the smoke as he lay unconscious.

Frankly, that last bit was something of a surprise. I’d honestly thought he was already dead when I left him lying there. Misadventure, the coroner said. I couldn’t agree more. More proof, if any is needed, that you can’t help bad luck. The cause of the fire was attributed to a radiator accidentally left burning all night in the administration area. Speculation that arson was involved was dismissed by both the company and the police as groundless. The insurance was paid out in full.

Herb Gardiner left an estate worth the best part of two million dollars, including a Broadbeach condominium, an Adelaide motel and part shares in a macadamia nut plantation. It just goes to show what hard work, a bit of thrift, and a remarkable fifteen-year winning streak on the horses can achieve. His punting record was all carefully documented in papers found in his bookcase—date, course, race, horse, dividend. In case the tax man ever asked, I guess.

With no one to lay claim to the estate, it all went to the Public Trustees Office, which will meticulously administer it down to a zero sum over a period of 150 years.

On the way back from Charlene’s funeral I drove past 636 Blyth Street. It had already changed hands twice since the Anatolia Club was shut down and was being refurbished as a Maltese wedding reception centre. For all I know that’s what it still is. I must check next time I’m out that way.

That could be some time. These days Melbourne Upper is just one small part of the territory I cover in my capacity as adviser to the Minister for Ethnic Affairs, Angelo Agnelli, MLC. Fortunately, for me at least, Angelo is also Minister for Local Government, a demanding portfolio that leaves him with insufficient energy to do serious damage to the interests of those valued members of our community who derive from the more non-English-speaking parts of the planet. In fact Local Government is so unrewarding a portfolio that I’m beginning to think poor old Ange must have trodden on a few important toes on this way up the ladder. Mullane senior for one. Apparently Ange promised my job to young Gavin in return for the old man’s support on preselection. Right now Ange is off in the bush somewhere trying to convince some quasi-autonomous local instrumentality to voluntarily sacrifice itself on the altar of efficiency.

As for me, I try to keep my head down and my tail up, but I’d be lying if I said I was overextended. Ethnic Affairs is mostly about trying to find ways to give a bit of a leg-up to government supporters with funny surnames. Speaking of which, I saw Ayisha Celik the other day at the Ethnic Communities Council Conference. If was the first time we’d spoken since the big event. Somebody started to introduce us. Ayisha cut in, laughing with her eyes, gorgeous as ever. ‘You seen a doctor yet?’

‘No need,’ I said, ‘now that the swelling’s gone down.’

‘Murray had a terrible rash last time I looked,’ she explained to our host.

‘I see,’ he said knowingly. ‘Like that, is it?’ It wasn’t, but she didn’t seem to mind if he thought so. Then we stood there silently rocking on our heels for a moment until the other guy got the idea and made himself scarce.

‘I dunno what happened between you and Memo Gezen. And I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘But whatever it was, it did the trick. He’s gone back to Turkey. Wife, kids, the works. Thanks.’

I said it was no trouble and all for the best and she said congratulations on my new job. Then the coffee break ended and we had to rush off and chair our respective workshops. For a brief moment I considered pressing my suit with her, but in the end I decided against it. Keeping secrets is one thing that Ayisha is good at. Best not muddy the waters.

Word is she’s on the shortlist for Co-ordinator of the Migrant Resource Centre. She’s got the advocacy routine down pat, and that degree in Public Administration she’s got should set her in good stead. So if anyone asks, I’ll tell them I can’t think of a better person for the job, even if she has got herself engaged to some Macedonian mother’s-boy from Pascoe Vale.

Gezen’s not the only one to have moved. Red lives in Canberra most of the time now. Very good for kids it is. He can walk to school and Wendy even lets him ride his bike to the shops. The woman Wendy is living with has a girl two years older, so he’s not short of family life. He flies down one weekend a month, which is all I can afford at the moment, and as much as his social life permits. I get him on school holidays too, although last time he went to Samoa instead because Wendy was speaking at a conference there on Women and the Future of Work in the Pacific, and it was too good a chance to pass up.

We’ll probably get round to formalising the divorce sometime soon. It’s not as if there’s any great reason to rush. Wendy eventually saw reason on splitting the cost of the roof job, even though it turned out that Ant had charged five hundred dollars above the going rate and was ripping the materials off as well. What decided her was the capital gain of twenty-five grand we made when we sold the old place. I put my half down as the deposit on a nice little fully-renovated zero-maintenance terrace in Fitzroy. It’s handy enough for me to be able to walk to work, which is just as well, as it’s murder trying to find a park around here.

Of course it’s quieter here in Victoria Parade than it was out at the electorate office. We don’t get much passing trade. Just to get to see me, you have to sign in with the commissionaire in the foyer, take the lift eight floors and negotiate two secretaries and an administration officer. Not that I don’t make an effort to keep my finger on the pulse, mind you. It’s all No Smoking up here, so whenever I want a quick puff I have to pop down to street level and mingle with the other desperados. There’s always a little crowd steaming away in the foyer of the Resources and Technology Department next door, and it’s amazing what little titbits of info you can pick up. And sometimes this woman from Information and Publications on the fourth floor is there. Antoinette Aboud her name is. Lebanese, I guess. Fascinating people, the Lebanese. So much history, so little space.

And you never know, do you? There’s this safe seat out Springvale way that might just possibly be on the market before the next election. It’s right across the other side of town and I’ll probably have to learn a word or two of Vietnamese, but at this stage I’m confident of enough factional support at the centre to warrant throwing my hat into the ring. Naturally the locals will have to be squared off. The electorate officer is apparently quite a handful. But I feel that I do have a certain amount of expertise in these matters. And expertise is the name of the game these days.

Or maybe I’ll stick to my snug little office here on the top floor. I’ve got my own window now, and I can see right across the treetops of the Fitzroy Gardens, past the spire of the cathedral, to the city with all its cranes and new office towers. Almost every day there’s something brand new on the skyline. The way this city is going, by the end of the eighties the place will be unrecognisable. For the past few months one high-rise tower in particular has held my attention, a combination media centre and hotel being put up by a consortium headed by Lionel Merricks.

These days Lionel is not nearly so critical of the government as he was in the first few days after the fire. Not after I found the opportunity for a conference with him. I rang for an appointment a couple of times, all very civilised, but never got past the ice queen. I supposed that Lionel wasn’t too keen to start taking my calls again. So I hung around outside the next meeting of the City Revitalisation Committee and caught him in the hallway during a coffee break. Rather than face a scene, he agreed to a private chinwag in the stairwell. He tried to browbeat his way out of it, of course. But I felt that this time I had the edge on him, what with my new suit, my face all healed up and a few well-researched facts up my sleeve.

The folks at the Department of Agriculture had been particularly helpful. They explained just how much illicit money you can make if you’ve got a meat works, an export licence, a low-key, long-term approach, and a certain amount of contempt for the law. You just stick your boneless beef labels on something else. Donkey meat is a big-margin item. Kangaroo too. But they’re a bit risky. You can still make a pretty penny using lower grade beef.

Naturally, it doesn’t pay to get caught. The trick then is to pass it all off as a mistake. It helps if your plant manager is convinced it really is one. And since this sort of thing can do a lot of damage to the reputation of a nation’s export industries, the official inspectors are loath to come down with a finding of systematic abuse. Fortunately for Pacific Pastoral, the issue never arose. The fire gave them a much-needed pretext to divest themselves of their entire commodity export operations. They flogged the works off to a Japanese feed-lot enterprise based in Queensland, and used the proceeds to finance their move into tourism, media and real estate development, all of which have been a real boon to the state economy. Not that the issue of finance raised its ugly head in my conversation with Merricks. I was very careful about that.

‘Herb Gardiner told me everything,’ I said first up, my back pressed against the door. ‘He felt the need to unburden himself.’

‘I didn’t even know the man,’ Merricks blustered. ‘We’ve got thousands of employees.’

‘True,’ I said. ‘But how many of them were with you on the HMAS
Wyndham
?’

Another thing Agnelli was right about was how insulated the leaders of big business are. I was probably the rudest person Merricks ever had to deal with. He employed others to deal with ill-mannered oafs like me. He lacked the skills required. ‘A frigate,’ I said, ‘that’s not a very big boat, is it? Not like an aircraft carrier or something.’

‘The
Wyndham
’s not a boat,’ he bleated. ‘It’s a ship.’ That’s when I knew I had him.

Which was just as well, since I was only guessing about him and Gardiner having met in the Navy. The Office of Naval Records doesn’t give out personnel information and I’d got the name of the ship Lionel served on from the journalist who’d written a profile for the
National Times
. I’d taken a punt and rung her up, telling her I needed some background for an award the government was thinking of presenting to Merricks. It turned out that he’d mentioned the
Wyndham
in the course of the interview and I put two and two together. It was sheer quantum mathematics that I got four, since I hadn’t been able to find out anything about Gardiner’s service record either.

With the
Wyndham
bobbing around in front of us, Merricks’ memory suddenly improved and he was prepared to allow that there may have been a mechanic named Gardiner aboard. And he couldn’t definitely discount the possibility that the same man had been employed at Coolaroo at the time he was an up-and-coming line manager out there. But I’d have a lot of trouble proving he’d had any direct dealings with the man subsequently, he told me. And the suggestion that the two of them had in some way been co-conspirators in criminal activity was a preposterous idea. One that, if repeated in public, would land me in court.

I didn’t doubt that for one minute. But it was a hollow threat. I had no intention of taking on Merricks. The laws of libel are designed to protect the rich, and the idea that Pacific Pastoral might allow its internal records to be used to implicate its own chairman in protracted and systematic fraud was ludicrous. This little chat was just something I felt was needed by way of clearing the air. A personal matter. The last time I had spoken to Merricks, he thought I was trying to blackmail him. In the light of what had happened since, I just didn’t want him thinking he had the moral advantage on me.

‘Meat substitution isn’t really a crime, I guess,’ I told him. ‘More just a bit of sharp business practice, eh?
Caveat emptor,
and all that. But what about the payroll fraud, the extortion, the drugs? You and Gardiner were diddling the consumers, Gardiner and Bayraktar were ripping off the corporation, and Bayraktar was screwing employees and dealing dope off the loading-bay. Nice sort of company you keep, Lionel.’

I think he was so genuinely scandalised by then that I omitted dangerous driving and attempted murder. I left him standing on the stairs and shut the door behind me.

And to give Merricks the benefit of the doubt, I think it unlikely he actually suggested killing me when he delegated to Gardiner the job of sorting me out. Perhaps he had a generous cash settlement in mind. Lionel is a broad brushstroke man, and not, I think, by nature violent. As distinct from Herb Gardiner, who had clearly been driven barking mad by the prospect of fifteen years’ slow surreptitious graft in the arsehole of the universe disappearing down the gurgler two weeks before he retired to enjoy his illicit earnings. A person can hardly be blamed for the things done in his name by over-zealous subordinates.

Merricks, in fact, is so tractable these days that Agnelli has been able to wangle some very substantial donations out of him to offset the rising cost of elections. The outcomes of which have ensured my continuing employment. So I guess that pragmatism is not merely a civic virtue, it is also a personal grace. In tending the Garden State, one must always be mindful of the serpents.

And it’s not like I have anything to complain about. Not since the bruises healed up, anyway. As I say to Angelo Agnelli on those rare occasions he asks for my advice, ‘
Bir tesselli ver
.’