Sucked In (6 page)

‘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.'

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.

‘Fair to say, and I think you'll all agree with me,' he started, ‘we've put up a pretty good show in recent weeks. The public is tiring of this government's high-handed attitude. It's looking to us to keep up the pressure.'

Metcalfe was whistling dixie. The fact was, we'd been comprehensively trounced in every fight we picked. And successfully painted as a rat-pack of financial incompetents who couldn't be trusted to run a primary school tuck-shop.

As Metcalfe continued, chopping the air for emphasis, an air of lethargy filled the room. In the seat beside me, Kelvin Yabbsley, the member for Corio East, lowered his chin to his chest and closed his eyes.

He was dreaming, I fancied, about his superannuation payout. After twenty-two years on the back bench, Yabbers was due to retire at the next election. With his parliamentary pension and a pozzie on the board of the Geelong Harbour Trust, he would want for nothing for the rest of his natural life.

Play your cards right kid, I told myself, and one day that could be you.

Eventually, Alan Metcalfe's air-karate pep-talk petered out. ‘Fair to say, all things considered, we've got our work cut out for us,' he concluded. ‘And on that note, I'll hand the floor to the shadow ministers who'll brief us on their respective portfolio areas.'

Shoulders sagged lower and backsides sank deeper into seats. Con Caramalides, our point man for planning and infrastructure, began to outline his plans to stick it up the government over a raft of issues connected with increased domestic electricity charges. If anybody needed a raft, it was Con. He sounded like he was drowning in molasses.

‘…the flow-on of cross-ownership to low-voltage…'

I did my best to stay awake, just in case there was any mention of my current parliamentary duties. Shadow Secretary for Ethnic Affairs, Local Government and Fair Trading. Acting assistant manager of opposition business in the upper house,
pro tem
. Various other bits and bobs. With our numbers so short, it was all hands on deck.

And what a motley crew of deck-hands we were.

Most of our frontbench were yesterday's heroes, so busy undermining one another that they'd lost sight of any other reason for existence. Circling each other like burned-out suns, they were kept in place only by the centrifugal force of their mutual loathing. Of the fresher faces, few stood out as foreman material. For my money, our best hope was Peter Thorsen, the deputy leader.

Thorsen was a cleanskin, untarnished by our period in government. Not yet forty, wheaten-haired with the hint of a tennis tan, he was the very picture of a golden boy on the cusp of middle age. One of the Concord faction, he carried himself with a breezy self-confidence that played well on television. He'd scored some hits on the floor of parliament and he was popular with the troops. But so far, he'd given no indication of having his sights set on the top job. Whether motivated by caution or timing or loyalty, he seemed content to play second fiddle to Metcalfe.

‘Natural gas, on the other hand,' said Con, ‘is a two-edged sword…'

Thorsen had one arm draped across the back of his chair, browsing a document. He glanced up, saw me looking his way, and gave me a sly grin. Ho-hum, it said, here we are again. I replied with a resigned shrug and put a balled fist to my mouth, stifling a yawn.

By eleven-thirty, the shadow ministers' round-ups had ambled to a conclusion. The room came out of its collective coma. Members began gathering up their papers. Kelvin Yabbsley opened his eyes, blew his nose and pulled up his socks.

‘Fair to say that covers the overall thrust,' said Metcalfe, raising his voice above the resurgent murmur. ‘But before I close the meeting, I've got a brief announcement to make.'

There was a communal deflation and bums again descended onto seats.

‘We're all deeply grieved,' said Metcalfe, ‘fair to say, at the untimely death of Charlie Talbot.'

‘Hear, hear,' murmured a smattering of voices.

Metcalfe signalled for silence, then raked us with his sternest stare. ‘And I believe the best way to honour his memory is to avoid a distracting and divisive preselection brawl over the seat he left vacant. Accordingly, I've assured our federal colleagues that the Victorian branch can be relied on one hundred percent to adhere to the current agreement regarding the prompt filling of the vacancy in Coolaroo.'

There was a low burble of assent from the Concord ranks.

‘So who's the lucky boy?' chipped in Nanette Vandenberg, one of the independents. ‘It
is
a boy, I presume.'

Heads swivelled, then turned back to Metcalfe. ‘I've been given to understand that the choice is Phil Sebastian,' he said. ‘He'll bring a strong background in policy development to the federal team.'

In other words, he was a policy wonk with fuck-all experience of ground-level politics. He also happened to be Barry Quinlan's chief-of-staff. At least now I knew which particular finger the good senator was giving the voters of Coolaroo.

A lukewarm murmur of approval wafted from the thin ranks of the Left. The choice had evidently not been met with unanimous enthusiasm among the comrades. Nothing remarkable there. Nelson Mandela would've got the same reception.

‘I'm confident I can rely on you all,' said Metcalfe pointedly. ‘A hundred percent.' He brought the edge of one hand down hard on the open palm of the other. ‘Understood?'

All heads nodded in unison, a row of toy dogs in the rear window of a slow-moving vehicle.

‘In that case, I declare this meeting closed.'

As the room began to empty, Peter Thorsen caught my eye. Angling his head slightly, he twitched his chin upwards in the direction of his second-floor office.

Whatever it is, I thought, it can wait until I've had a cup of tea. I headed for the urn on the sideboard to dunk myself a bag. Jenny Hovacks, a Concord spear-carrier, was ahead of me in the queue. She'd been buttonholed by Eric Littler, one of the Left.

‘We're not unhappy with the result,' he was saying fiercely. ‘It's the process we don't like.'

‘Murray,' Jenny turned to greet me. ‘What do you think of your chances tomorrow?'

Jenny was an Essendon supporter. The Lions would be up against them at the MCG, their first Melbourne match since the merger.

‘I think we'll make a good showing,' I said. ‘Then you'll shit on us from a great height.'

‘Just as well you're used to it, eh?' said misery-guts Eric, snaffling the last of the teabags.

I didn't like the turn this conversation was taking. I settled for a butternut snap and trudged upstairs to Thorsen's office.