Something Fishy (10 page)

‘Even if they're true?' she said.

‘So what's he done, Rita?' I said. ‘Paid his casual staff cash-in-hand, watered the drinks, bribed the health inspector?'

‘How about tax avoidance,' she said. ‘Money laundering, stuff like that.'

‘I thought you said you don't know anything about Tony's business activities.'

She ground her cigarette into the saucer, lit another and leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘He's been going to Asia on business every few months for the last couple of years,' she said. ‘Quick trips, just a day or so at a time. Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore. Meetings with his seafood export clients, he said. Last June, he took me along, made a bit of a holiday of it. Singapore. We went sightseeing, shopping, ate some fabulous food. But as far as I could see, the only business Tony did was visit the Oriental Bank to deposit some cash. A great big wad of it, $30,000 at least. Told me he was building up a nest egg for us.'

‘It's a little unusual, I'll grant you that,' I said. ‘But what makes you think there was something dodgy about the money?' I said.

She gave me a withering look. ‘Get real, Murray,' she said. ‘Even I know that there's a limit to the amount of currency you're allowed to export. And that banks in Australia have to report transactions that big. All I'm asking here is that you point me in the direction of the right government agency. Go into a cop shop with this sort of story, they'll put it down to a domestic, give me the bum's rush. A word to the wise, that's all I'm asking, Murray.'

‘You're sure about this, Rita?' I said. ‘You start the ball rolling, you won't be able to stop it.'

‘It's Tony's ball,' she said. ‘And right now, as far as I'm concerned, Tony's balls belong in a vice. As for me, I've done nothing wrong. I've signed nothing so I can't see how I can be implicated. I'm just an honest citizen doing her duty.'

She glowered across the table at me, as if any suggestion to the contrary would constitute a wilful obstruction of justice. ‘You men,' she added gratuitously. ‘I should have known whose side you'd be on.'

‘That's unfair,' I said. ‘And it's not a matter of taking sides. I'm just suggesting you give yourself a few days to think about this, not go off half-cocked.'

‘And let Tony clean me out in the meantime?' she said. ‘No way.'

I thought about Pontius Pilate. A much maligned figure, I reflected. I picked up the phone, dialled the state headquarters of the taxation department, identified myself and asked to speak with a senior officer.

I was put through to the state manager, a more senior seat-polisher that I'd expected, and explained that I was calling on behalf of a constituent with information relating to possible tax evasion and infringement of currency laws. Despite his understandable lack of enthusiasm for an unscheduled meeting on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, he agreed to spare said constituent fifteen minutes of his time, subject to her prompt arrival at the Moonee Ponds office.

‘Can you be there in half an hour?' I asked, hand over the mouthpiece.

‘Just try to stop me,' she said.

There was not the slightest chance of that happening.

As I escorted her to the door, Rita presented me with her Daimaru shopping bag.

‘A little something for Christmas,' she said.

The bag held two brick-sized parcels wrapped in newspaper.

‘A crayfish,' Rita explained, ‘and a dozen abalone.'

‘Thank you,' I said. ‘That's very generous of you.' About a hundred dollars worth of generous by the heft of it.

‘You've been a pillar, Murray,' she said. ‘And Tony's got a freezer-load of this stuff in the garage.'

The instant she was out the door, I lowered the blind, shot the bolt and heaved a sigh of relief. Tony, I thought, you're a dead man. I was thinking metaphorically.

And then I wasn't thinking about it at all. As of that moment, my holidays had officially begun.

The house in Lorne was one of those sixties jobs, a cement-sheet box on stilts. Perched on a sloping block of land at the crest of the ridge overlooking the town, it had bare floors, throw-rugs, an antique television set with rabbit-ear antenna, ramshackle furniture and a timber deck from which the sea could be glimpsed through the raggedy tops of the surrounding bluegums. Sand had seeped into the nooks and crannies, pieces were missing from the board games and the bookshelf held only dog-eared fishing manuals, bird-spotting books and unfinished Peter Carey novels.

We arrived three days after Christmas, drove straight from the airport with a carload of holiday supplies and Tarquin Curnow. A three-man advance party, our mission was to establish base camp before the others arrived late on New Year's Day.

I had Christmas lunch with the Curnows, contributing Rita's abalone to the spread, then trawled the Boxing Day sales for cut-price wardrobe essentials. My purchases included a selection of tropical shirts and a panama hat which, I felt, would serve me well in the resort-wear stakes.

I wore the panama hat to the airport. The day was hot, proper beach weather, with the promise of more to come. In deference to the season, Tark had shorn his Joey Ramone pageboy into a Travis Bickle mohawk and ripped the sleeves off his Nick Cave tee-shirt. The black jeans and mid-shin Doc Martens remained, however, welded to his lower body. For his part, Red was dressed for summer as God intended. Baggy shorts, a baggy shirt, blow-fly wraparounds, baseball cap and rubber thongs.

We drove across the Westgate Bridge, heat-haze rising from the oil depots, and fought our way down the Geelong Road with the rest of beach-bound Melbourne. Tarquin sprawled on the back seat, playing Tetris on his Gameboy, while Red gave me a run-down on his visit with mummy dearest, his twin half-sisters and Wendy's husband.

‘Nicola and Alexandra are getting really fat,' he said, puffing out his cheeks. ‘Biggest five-year-olds you've ever seen. I gave them swimming lessons in the pool and taught them to say fuck-bum. They're all going to Phuket for two weeks when Richard gets back from the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.'

‘Phuket?' I snorted, flooring the pedal to pass a fish-tailing caravan. ‘Fuck it! What's Phuket compared to this?'

I fed
Pet Sounds
into the cassette-deck and cranked up the volume. Tarquin groaned from the back seat but Red went with it, grooving on the antique vibrations. An hour later, it was Nirvana as we turned down the Anglesea hill and sighted the ocean. By then, we were following the Great Ocean Road, two lanes of blacktop threaded between the sea and the Otway Ranges.

We followed it past the Anglesea funfair and paddle-boat rentals, past the lighthouse at Aireys Inlet and along the straight stretch of surf beach at Moggs Creek. As we travelled further west, the hills became steeper, wilder, more thickly wooded.

The road began to climb, clinging to the forested slopes in a series of switchback curves, dropping away to wave-washed rocks, double lines all the way.

According to the annual report of the Australian Tourism Commission, the Great Ocean Road attracts more than four million visitors a year. Most of them, it was evident, should never have been allowed behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. For twenty minutes we were stuck behind a tortoise-shaming senior citizen in a spanking new all-terrain Nissan Patrol. When I pulled out to pass him, we were almost totalled by a dipstick in an Audi convertible.

At the Cinema Point lookout, I hit the left indicator and eased onto the gravel margin.

‘Five minute break,' I said. ‘Stretch legs, contemplate nature, allow blood to return to driver's knuckles.'

The sea extended to the horizon, vast and twinkling. Towering eucalypts and ragged scrub marched up the incline from the rocky shore, continuing past us, up into the grey-green vastness of the state forest. Looking back, we could see the surf at Eastern View, the breakers uncoiling in rows as regular as corduroy. Up ahead, beyond a series of blunt capes, we could just make out a broad arc of calico sand etched into the bush-covered ranges. And, packed tight around the sand, the township of Lorne.

‘What's that pink blob?' asked Red.

‘The Cumberland,' I said. ‘A cutting-edge condominium-style time-share apartment complex.'

‘Shipwrecks,' declared Tarquin, his hand sweeping the watery horizon. ‘There's hundreds of them out there. Dozens, anyway. They sailed all the way from Europe, five months or more, then got smashed on these rocks.'

Red peered over the edge. ‘Cool.'

‘The dead bodies were washed ashore all along here. I did a project on it in Grade Six.'

An ancient kombi trembled to a halt beside us. Red nudged Tark and nodded towards a concert poster taped to its side door. Regurgitator. Hunters and Collectors. Spiderbait. Rock the Falls.

Two ferals got out of the van, little more than kids. He was covered in Celtic tattoos and she had feathers in her braids. A baby was slung across her chest in a raffia hammock. She sat on the lookout parapet, whipped out a tit and began to feed it. Magic Happens, read a sticker on the van window.

‘So does shit,' muttered Tarquin, without apparent malice.

‘Can I use the mobile?' said Red. He'd had his own, briefly, for emergency use and ease of essential son–father communications. Three hundred dollars worth of calls in a month, and I pulled the plug.

‘Keep it short,' I said.

He strolled away as he dialled, reading the number off the back of his hand. ‘Hey it's me. Wassup? We're almost there.'

Fifteen minutes later, the road dropped to sea level and crossed the Erskine River where it tumbled out of the hills and turned into the lagoon beside the Lorne caravan park. We continued past the fruit shop called Lorne Greens, the joke lost on post-Ponderosa generations, and cruised along the main drag, an esplanade of shops that faced across the road to the foreshore carpark and the teeming beach. The old bait-and-tackle shops and milk bars were long gone, replaced by seaside-theme knick-knackeries and surfwear boutiques with swimsuit racks out the front. Holiday-makers ambled along the footpath, clinging to the shade, window-shopping. Some sat at tables outside coffee shops and juiceries, their hair still wet from swimming.

After a couple of passes, I found a parking spot between a Porsche and a Jeep Cherokee, then set off to pick up the house key while the boys found some lunch. As I headed along the footpath, I passed several nodding acquaintances. We smiled, delighted to see each other, even if we couldn't quite remember who we were.

I went into the real estate office and collected the key and directions to the house. As I came out, tucking the receipt into my wallet, a short man was rocking on his toes as he peered through the front window at the For Sale listings. He had less hair and more waist than the last time I'd seen him.

‘G'day, Ken,' I said. ‘Win the lottery, did you?'

Back when I was a ministerial adviser, Ken Sproule was factotum to a party heavyweight, the Minister for Police. Both Ken and his boss saw the chill weather ahead and jumped ship before the hull impacted the iceberg. Ken found himself a snug new berth as a consultant to the poker-machine business, a booming sector of the state's new growth industry.

‘Hello, Murray,' he drawled. He did me the honour of tearing himself away from the array of ideal getaways with water views and in-ground pools. ‘Checking the prices, mate. We've just built a place at Aireys Inlet, thought we might have over-capitalised. Look who's here, Sandra.'

Sandra was Ken's new cookie. Mid-thirties. Petite, well-toned, worked in PR. She was waiting her turn at the ice-cream counter next door. A small child was slung on her hip. Sandra was the chirpy type, foil to the blunt Ken.

‘Hello, Murray,' she said, handing a cone to the kid. ‘You in the market?'

‘For an ice-cream?'

‘A house, stupid.'

I showed her the key. ‘We're renting for a few weeks,' I said. ‘Sight unseen.'

‘We?' She dropped her chin and looked over the top of her sunglasses. Wondering, I understood, if I had paired off since Lyndal.

‘Me,' I said. ‘My son. Some old friends.'

‘Ah,' she said.

‘Careful.' Ken lunged for the child's hand, narrowly averting a spilt vanilla crisis.

Sandra pulled a scrap of paper and a pen from the beach-bag slung over her shoulder. ‘If you're free tomorrow evening,' she said, firming the paper against the estate agent's window as she scribbled. ‘We're having a few friends around for drinks and a barbecue. A sort of housewarming for our new place.' She thrust the address at me. ‘You will come, won't you?'

I made tentatively affirmative noises, then headed back to the car. The boys had connected. They were lounging in the shade of a big cypress, pizza slices in hand, communing with a mixed gaggle of teens. I recognised Max Kline from Red's rowing eight and some other kids from school. I waved the house key and Red and Tark came to the car, trailing a slim girl in a crocheted bikini-top and hipster board shorts with tousled, beach-wet hair.