Something Fishy (28 page)

Jake Martyn is languishing in the Remand Centre, awaiting trial for murder. Not conspiracy, not delegation of a messy unpleasant chore, not possession of illegal abalone. Certainly not oops.

As predicted, he reneged on his forest-floor fess-up. Went the clam. The Director of Public Prosecutions is concentrating on the paper trail, working to buttress my eyewitness testimony. Visibility from that aluminium dinghy wasn't too hot, after all, and the absence of a body in a homicide case is always problematic.

Gusto has gone into receivership. One of the creditors is Prentice & Associates, Architects. Another reason I haven't returned Barbara's calls.

Red still sees Jodie, but only in passing at school. For the moment at least, he has forsworn romantic entanglements. Girls are more trouble than they're worth, he tells me, although I suspect he's got his eye on one of the munchkins in the Year Eleven production of
The Wizard of Oz
.

The big loser among the living is poor Rita Melina. The Black Widow of Melbourne Upper, as Ayisha calls her.

What with the tax office and the fish dogs and the overseas bank accounts, Tony's estate still hasn't passed probate. The way things are looking, Rita will be lucky if she ends up with enough dough for a decent root perm. Worse still, she has to live with the fact that she ratted out a husband whose infidelity was limited to feeling up the hired help. And did it while he was chained naked to a tree, pleading to be allowed to call her.

The bodacious waitress, Tony's supposed elopee, had in fact upped tits without notice to accept a lucrative job offer as a hostess in a Tokyo nightclub.

Out of concern for Rita's finer feelings, the business with Tony's ear has not been divulged.

Likewise, I've never disclosed the promise I made to blow the Premier's bugle in public if the man in the shadows wasn't Rodney Syce. There was nobody there to witness my pledge, after all. And anyway, that particular service is more expertly and frequently provided by the organs of the mass media.

Nor have I yet found an appropriate use for the videotape that was waiting in a plain envelope on my desk at Parliament House when I returned from the summer break. It was unlabelled and the first few seconds of vision were so jumpy and jerky that I thought it must have been a misdirected submission to the film funding commission.

Then the focus sharpened, the camera steadied and I found myself watching crystal clear footage of Dudley Wilson chucking his chunks over Alan Bunting on the deck of a Natural Resources launch near Cape Patterson.

I think I'll wait until Dudley's Coastal Whatsit Panel submits its draft recommendations to the government. If he proposes further reductions in DNR staffing levels, I'll slip a copy to every parliamentary member of the National Party. It might not affect the final outcome but it should sow some acrimony in the ranks of the enemy.

Parliament is currently in recess for the winter and I'm spending my working hours at the electorate office. Detective Sergeant Meakes called me here a few days ago. It was the first time we'd spoken since New Year's Day.

‘I thought you should know,' he said. ‘A man's body was found yesterday morning.'

It was discovered in an old storm-water drain during excavation work on the new freeway tunnel under the Yarra at Richmond. It had been lodged there for a fair while and there wasn't much of it left. There was enough, however, to get some partial fingerprints.

It was Rodney Syce.

The way Meakes figured it, Syce ditched the Kawasaki in Richmond after the shoot-out, then went to ground down a manhole cover. Perhaps he was injured from his spill off the bike, perhaps he got lost in the maze, perhaps he had an accident in the subterranean darkness. Whatever the case, however he died, his body was swept into an ancient section of piping.

As to the other aspect of closure, I won't say too much. Suffice to mention that I've met someone who shows signs of playing a significant role in that regard.

We live in hope.

What else can we do?

More of Murray Whelan from Shane Maloney and
Text Publishing

S
TIFF

The fiddle at the Pacific Pastoral meat-packing works was a nice little earner for all concerned until Herb Gardiner reported finding a body in Number 3 chiller. An accident, of course, but just the excuse a devious political operator might grab to stir up trouble with the unions.

Enter Murray Whelan, minder, fixer and general dogsbody for the Minister for Industry. Between playing off party factions and pursuing the kohl-eyed Ayisha, it's all in a day's work for Murray to hose down the situation at Pacific Pastoral.

Then the the acqua Falcon turns up. And after that, it gets personal. Because don't you just hate it when somebody tries to kill you and you don't know who or why?

‘Hilarious…witty, controversial, intelligent.'
Herald Sun

‘Fast-paced, fresh, unerringly funny.'
Houston Chronicle

‘Read it, you'll love it.'
Courier-
Mail

‘Funny and gripping'
Rolling Stone

T
HE
B
RUSH
-O
FF

Angelo Agnelli has been Minister for the Arts for twelve hours and already artists have started killing themselves. Or so it seems when Marcus Taylor's body is fished from the Arts Centre moat. Was it really an act of protest over the state of arts funding? And what's the political damage if the suicide note becomes public?

The career of Murray Whelan, minder and all-round troubleshooter for the hapless Agnelli, hangs by its usual slender thread. If he can put the fix in here, he might have a chance of staying employed.

But as Murray soon discovers, in the world of the culture vultures they don't just sit around waiting for you to die before they start tearing the flesh off your bones.

‘Top shelf.'
Australian

‘Brilliantly mixes the comic and the tragic.'
Rolling Stone

‘Highly recommended.'
Canberra
Times

‘Don't miss this one.'
Sunday Age

N
ICE
T
RY

Forget Atlanta, everybody hates the Yanks—Melbourne's bid for the 1996 Olympics is in the bag.

Or nearly in the bag, which is where Murray Whelan, all-purpose political dogsbody and soon-to-be-ex-smoker, comes in. Recruited to head off an Aboriginal protest that threatens the bid, Murray is confident of stitching up a deal with the Kooris in three days and sucking down his last coffin nail inside a week. Tops.

But then a steroid-crazed body-builder goes on the rampage and a young black athlete is murdered—and soon Murray's investigative instinct is getting as tough a work-out as his nicotine patch.

‘The pick of Australian crime novels.'
Canberra Sunday Times

‘Tight pace, believable dialogue, terrific puzzle.'
Kirkus Reviews

‘
Nice Try
gets a big tick.'
Australian
Book Review

‘As hilarious as it is immensely satisfying.'
Herald Sun

T
HE
B
IG
A
SK

Four a.m. and the smart money's home in bed. More importantly for Murray Whelan, his son Red isn't. He's gone missing, on the run somewhere in Sydney. So what's Murray doing in a greasy spoon at the fruit and veg markets, nursing his facial bruising and talking to Donny Maitland about a grass-roots takeover of the truckies' union?

Working a deal for Angelo Agnelli, Minister for Transport and sparring partner of the United Haulage Workers, that's what. Business as usual for Murray. Until the bloke who inflicted the bruises turns up to do some more inflicting. And then turns up dead.

Murray needs to stay out of trouble long enough to find Red. But that, it seems, might be a pretty big ask.

‘The best Maloney yet.'
Weekend
Australian Review

‘There's no doubting the brilliance of the writing.' Ian Rankin,
Age

‘Just the right mix of politics, crime and slime.'
Saturday Mercury

‘Another triumph for Maloney.'
Canberra Times