Sucked In (14 page)

‘They never recovered the body,' I said. ‘But about ten days ago a couple of blokes found bits of a skeleton while they were poking around out there, looking for old stuff.'

‘Yeah?' Red was interested. ‘Where?'

‘Let's have a squizz,' I said, ‘see if we can work it out.'

The road and the lake diverged, separated by a low rise capped with a cluster of buildings surrounded by trees. A school camp, some sort of private religious college. Just past it, a weathered sign announced BARJARG ROADHOUSE 300M, the paint peeling. An unpaved side road led back towards the lake. I turned down it and found the claypan again.

Despite the general dryness of the season, Melbourne had seen two rainy days and a smattering of intermittent showers since the middle of the previous week. Up here, it had possibly been even wetter. In any case, it was impossible to miss the churned-up margin and the deep ruts running about two hundred metres out towards a cluster of bleached tree-trunks and a string of shallow pools.

‘Over there,' Red pointed. ‘See the bits of plastic tape?'

The ground was gouged open and the tracks included deep caterpillar treads. I wondered what sort of equipment the police had brought in to sift the sludge.

‘Looks like they did a pretty thorough job of trying to find all his bits and pieces,' I said.

I tried to conjure up a mental picture of the Coroner's sketch map. If I had it right, the Shack was somewhere in the trees beyond the fence line where the edge of the cleared paddocks ran ruler-straight to the shoreline. But Charlie and Barry had certainly got their geography skewiff. The place they reported losing Merv was a good five hundred metres closer to the dam wall. The search had been concentrated in the wrong area.

I cruised along the road another couple of hundred metres, hunting for the turn-off to the Shack. A well-maintained road led in the right direction but it was barred by a locked gate. Private Property. Trespassers Prosecuted. Cows lifted their heads and loped towards the fence. I turned the car around and we went back to the highway.

The Barjarg Roadhouse was somewhere between picturesque and primordial, a weatherboard throwback that looked like it had been erected to cater to the passing bullock-dray trade. In front of a bull-nosed veranda enclosed by expanding garden trellis, the petrol bowsers stood naked on a raw dirt apron. The only concession to amenity was an arbour at the side, an outdoor eating area roofed in shade cloth with a tan-bark floor, two pine-log tables and a green wheelie bin.

‘If we can't get a sausage roll here,' I said, ‘I'll eat my socks.'

‘If I don't get something into me soon,' Red replied, ‘
I'll
eat your socks.'

The interior was a dim, lino-floored general store whose main lines were apparently fishing tackle, dust and jumbo tins of Pal. A man in a faded flannel shirt with a beer gut and a head like a pontiac potato sat on a stool behind the counter, talking to a man in a faded flannel shirt with a beer gut and a head like a glaucomic wombat. Strangers to the service economy, they ignored us.

I peered across the counter at the pie warmer. Its solitary sosso roll looked like it had been smuggled through customs in a body cavity. ‘See if they've got any chocolate-coated socks,' I told Red.

We hunted up a late lunch of BBQ crisps and lolly water and piled our selections on the counter. Flannel-back number one broke off his riveting monologue about what he'd told Kev about Brian's attitude to Goose for long enough to ring up the damage. $7.85. I took a five out of my wallet, emptied my pants pocket onto the counter and sifted through my small change for correct weight. Red gathered up the comestibles and went out to the car.

I caught up with him as he was opening the driver's-side door. The little bugger had snaffled my keys. ‘Hold up,' I said. ‘You've done okay so far, but it's getting dark and looks like rain. Let's not push it.'

‘Just a bit longer,' he pleaded.

‘Give,' I said, holding out my palm.

He stood his ground. ‘Just a few more kilometres.'

As we faced off, a fully loaded logging truck barrelled past, spitting volleys of gravel in our direction. A few seconds later, we heard the crunch as it shifted down a gear.

‘You want to sit behind that monster for half an hour?' I said. ‘Or are you planning on overtaking it?'

Red considered the options, shrugged and slapped the keys into my open hand. ‘Worth a try.'

I floored the pedal, hit the radio button and we laid into the carbohydrates. The final siren was two minutes away but it might as well have been two hours for all the difference it made. At the close of play the score was 71–102. Our nineteenth consecutive loss at the MCG, said the word from the commentary box. Not bad. After all, this was our first season,
per se
.

We overtook the logging truck in good order and headed back through Mansfield.

‘Any plans for the evening?' I asked.

‘Videos at Max's.' He was making an early night of it, due to a shift-swap deal that would have him shelving cornflakes for most of the following afternoon.

‘Seeing Madeleine tonight?'

He waggled his hand,
che sera sera
. ‘You?'

‘Probably not,' I said. ‘She's playing hard to get.' This was greeted with the silence it deserved.

‘Since you're asking, I'm presenting the trophies at the Somali Youth Association regional basketball finals.'

‘Hope your arms are long enough,' he said. ‘Some of those kids are so tall they have to reach down to shoot for goal.'

My gig was at seven-thirty. I sat on the speed limit and took no prisoners as dusk descended around us. I kept thinking about the lake, wondering how Charlie and Quinlan had managed to be so far off the mark. Even allowing for the lack of distinctive landmarks, it was a wide margin of error. Yet both swore that's where Merv went down.

On a long straight strip just before Tallarook, crows were picking at a carcase by the side of the highway. A fox maybe, or a possum. They flapped upwards at our approach, and when I glanced back in the mirror, they'd settled again, beaks in the mess. It was an image that stayed with me until the sky broke open and torrents of rain threw themselves against the windscreen.

After that, there was no room for thought of anything but the way ahead.

Obsessive punctuality is a vice rarely practised by those who have fled to these shores from the war-torn Horn of Africa, so nobody at the Somali Youth Association was fussed by my slightly tardy arrival at its northern region basketball final. The official start time was merely indicative, after all.

Abdi Abdi, the association president, showed me to my place with the other dignitaries in the Fawkner Park Sports Complex gymnasium just as the whistle sounded. On the bleachers opposite sat an undemonstrative crowd of snaggle-fanged Mogadishu matriarchs, egg-shaped and taffeta-swathed, each attended by a retinue of long, lissom girls with oval faces and gazelle eyes. The menfolk of the community were not much in evidence. Presumably they were busy driving taxis and drinking glasses of tea.

The collective clout of Melbourne's Somali population was yet to be tapped but its potential had not gone unnoticed. The evening's fixture had attracted a number of representatives of the body politic whose interest in both Somalia and basketball was tangential at best.

I, of course, was one of them. As was the mayor of Darebin, whose bailiwick included the housing commission estate in West Heidelberg, and the Legislative Assembly member for Yorta Yorta, Ken Crouch.

Ken sat two seats away, on the other side of the imam from the Brunswick mosque. The holy sheikh was blind and wore dark glasses. He spent the match smiling wildly and rocking in his seat, Stevie Wonder in a green turban. Ken spent most of it on the phone, a frown on his dial and a finger jammed in one ear.

At the half-time break, he unbuttoned beside me in the urinal and revealed the reason for his distraction.

‘This fucking preselection deal,' he groused. ‘It's turning pear-shaped.'

Ken was the Shadow Minister for Community Services and a steadying hand on the tiller of the Left. His state lower house seat overlaid the Coolaroo federal electorate to an even larger extent than mine, so he had a territorial as well as a factional interest.

‘ALP preselections don't turn pear-shaped, Ken,' I said. ‘They're born that way.'

In this case the paternity of the pear rested with Barry Quinlan.

As soon as word of Charlie Talbot's death got around, Ken explained, the party's national executive was besieged by aspirant replacements. Every come-again kid, voter-ousted ex-minister, wannabe-politico union official and me-next machine oiler was knocking on the door, flourishing their credentials. All claimed to be perfect for the job, due to either proven experience, self-evident talent, string-pulling skills or the principles of affirmative action.

Sensing a major affray, and constrained by the deal already cut guaranteeing the next federal vacancy in Victoria to the Left, the executive handballed the fingering job to Barry Quinlan. Barry had dibs on the spot, but nobody specific lined up to fill it. Finding common cause with Alan Metcalfe, who didn't want a drawn-out brawl in his backyard, Barry nailed down a fast-track timetable and shoe-horned Phil Sebastian into the slot. Phil's major qualification being that he wasn't owed or owned by anyone else.

All this had happened while I was escorting Charlie Talbot's corpse from Mildura, seeing it into the tender hands of Tobin Brothers Family Undertakers and conferring with the various stakeholders as to the manner, location and scheduling of its interment.

‘Made sense at the time,' said Ken, directing himself to the stainless steel. ‘And it still makes sense.'

But no sooner had the bell sounded on round one than the would-be contenders were up off the mat and shaping up for round two. Quinlan had exceeded his brief, they were muttering.

Unsurprisingly, the loudest mutterers were those he'd given to understand could count on Barry's support whenever the next vacancy arose. And Barry being a master of the dangled expectation, there were plenty of those. All of them members of his own faction.

‘I've been on the blower 24/7 since Phil Sebastian's name came out of the hat,' complained Ken as he shook the drops off the end of his dick. ‘Hosing down half the Left.'

‘You're in an unenviable position, Ken,' I said, hitting the flush button.

‘I think there's a very real chance of a split.'

‘In the Left?' I zippered up. ‘You're kidding. You've already split more times than a hyperactive amoeba. Do it again and you'll be holding your meetings in a Petri dish. For Chrissake, Ken, there's only eight of you still standing.'

‘Not the
state
Left, Murray.' He spoke as though to a particularly obtuse child. ‘The
federal
Left. If the right candidate steps forward, he or she could drive a wedge through Barry's numbers on the selection panel. Split the Left wide open.'

‘The right Left candidate?' I said.

‘That's right. And that'll leave the Left in a right mess.'

‘I see,' I said, washing my hands. ‘Better get back to the game. I think the Kensington Giraffes stand a very real chance of a comeback in the second half.'

But Ken was already back on the blower, damping down the embers of smouldering discontent.

By ten o'clock my duty was done. I'd stood with assorted Abdis, the shadow minister, the mayor and the mufti and handed cups and trophies to a line of slope-shouldered, toothy youths. I'd shaken the tips of their feather-light fingers, partaken sparingly of the potato-crisp and Fanta supper and called it a medium-long day.

While performing my bedtime ablutions, I studied my face in the mirror. More shop-worn cases walked the earth, to be sure, but my lifelong battle with gravity was entering its decisive phase.

At fifty, they say, a man has the face he deserves. Fifty wasn't far away, almost as close as the millennium. What had I done to deserve this particular countenance?

‘At least you've still got your own teeth,' I reassured myself. I took a closer look. ‘Most of them.'

As I fell into that slumbering state that passes for the sleep of a parent—a sober one, anyway—a sharp sound cut the faint swish of the distant traffic. The jarring, metallic screech of brakes.

It sounded like an axe being ground.

The rain that sluiced the roof that night had cleared to a persistent drizzle by seven-thirty, so I togged up and hit the exercise track again, drawstring tight on the hood of my lightweight nylon slicker.

Where it wasn't drizzling, it was either dripping from the trees or leaking through my elastic. A pair of kayakers hurtled downstream, chasing thrills down the Yarra's swollen bacterial brew. Head down, I focused on the way ahead, mouth working as I pounded the pavement.

‘
,' I croaked, pushing the guttural ã from the back of my throat onto my palate, then rolling the ñ across the tip of my tongue.
.