Sucked In (27 page)

Abruptly, Judy stopped speaking. The President called for a seconder and I raised my hand. The motion was put, a unanimous chorus of ayes rose to the gilded ceiling and Charlie Talbot's name was officially consigned to the history books.

My job was to make sure it stayed on the right page.

What I needed now was a short length of chain and a padlock.

The city skyline was a palisade of glistening steel as the mirrored walls of the office towers caught the last rays of the afternoon sun. Down on the ground, darkness was expanding to fill the space available. The commuters converging on Spencer Street station were already hunched against the imminent chill.

I drove around to approach the Tin Shed from the west, skirting the worst of the traffic, dipping beneath the railway bridge at Festival Hall and turning into what used to be Footscray Road. It had a new name now, but nobody knew what. It was a government secret, commercial and confidential. In the torn-up space between the docks and the future, the only points of reference were the words on the cranes. Transurban. Balderstone-Hornibrook. Nudge-Nudge. Wink-Wink.

I cruised past the shed's corrugated hump and spotted Gilpin feeding a fire in a 44-gallon drum at the back door.

Doubling back, I parked among the doorless refrigerators and wheel-less wheelbarrows and went around the back.

The drum was the one I'd taken for a kennel. Oily flames were flickering from the top, fuelled by Sid from a heap of broken furniture, old garden stakes, ink cartridges and stuffed toys. I wondered if he was cremating the dog. Turds aside, there was still no sign of it.

He watched my approach through a veil of dancing fumes, his puffed-up face giving him the look of a pestilential toad risen from some witch's cauldron.

‘Evening, Sid,' I said. ‘Glowing with health, as usual.'

‘Knew you'd be back,' he sneered malevolently. ‘Quinlan's shitting himself, is he? Mr High and Mighty in Canberra. Or did he pass the parcel to that Marjory, whatever her name is? Called himself a bloody unionist, wouldn't know one end of a shovel from the other.'

I gave him the wind-up. ‘You want to deal or flap your gums?'

He sniffed and tossed a tattered
Readers' Digest
into the flaming drum. ‘Whad've you got?'

I took an envelope from my pocket, lifted the flap and fanned the contents. The top bill was a real fifty. The rest were colour photocopies, cut to size. It looked like a lot of money. ‘Where are the bankbooks?' I said.

He licked his lips avariciously and jerked his chin at the open door. I took a step towards it.

‘Not so fast,' he snapped. ‘Go round.'

I shrugged and started back the way I'd come. Gilpin scuttled though the door, swung it shut behind him and shot the bolt. I scooted over and closed the outside bolt. The door was now locked from both sides. I pocketed the real fifty and tossed the envelope of fakes into the fire. Then I walked around the rusting hulk of the building and sidled through the gap between the front doors.

The interior was even gloomier than before, lit now by low-wattage globes in the dangling row of Chinaman's hats. Gilpin was in his wire-mesh enclosure, twisting a coat hanger through the gate latch. The bench with the electric grinder had been cleared of its rusty blades. They were inside the cage, freshly sharpened and stacked on the floor.

‘Ready to do business?' I said, walking down the aisle between the rows of merchandise. Tip-top stuff.

Tip-ready, more like it.

Sid fished in his gabardine and pulled out the bankbooks, fastened together with a rubber band. ‘Depends,' he sniffed, giving them a waggle. ‘How much you offering?'

So far, so good. The books were out in the open.

I reached into my side pocket and pulled out a cable lock I'd bought at a bike shop in Bourke Street near Parliament House. Looping it through the gate latch in the cyclone fence, I snapped the locking mechanism shut and thumbed the combination tumbler closed.

Gilpin jumped backwards and stuffed the bankbooks back into his folds.

‘Fair trade requires a level playing field,' I said. ‘The back door's locked, too. I can't get in, you can't get out. What could be fairer than that?'

Gilpin grunted, dragged a can of beer from his raincoat pocket and picked off the scab. Foam spurted out and dribbled over his hand. He licked it off and took a chug.

‘You want to know what those bankbooks are worth to Quinlan and Mrs Talbot?' I took an envelope, identical to the other, out of my inside pocket. ‘Same as what this is worth to you.'

The envelope contained a photocopy of the picnic page of the union news. The original image had been slightly modified. Gilpin was now sporting a watch. A chunky sports chronometer clipped from the wrist of a rather fetching male model. Some doctoring with a fine-point pen and White-out had been required, but the overall result was passably convincing.

I unfolded it and held it to the wire mesh. ‘Recognise this, Sid? It's from the Municipals' rag. See it clearly, can you?'

Sid moved close and squinted through the wire.

‘You were a real picture that day, Sid. The vibrant patterned shirt, the wide collar, the medallion. A very snappy combination. And the watch set it off a treat. A Seiko Sports Chronometer, if I'm not mistaken. Just like the one found with Merv Cutlett at the bottom of Lake Nillahcootie.'

Gilpin's eyes were narrow slits in puddings of flesh. His nose was touching the wire. He was obviously having trouble seeing.

‘Take a closer look.' I rolled the sheet into a tube and slid it through the mesh. Gilpin unfurled it, grunting and snuffling, and tilted it to the light.

‘This is bullshit. I never owned a watch like that.'

‘Really?' I said. ‘That's not the way Senator Quinlan remembers it. Me neither. Now that we've had a chance to think about it, we distinctly remember you flashing it around. Powerful man like the senator, I'm sure he won't have any trouble finding lots of other people who remember it, too.'

Gilpin crumpled the paper, dropped it to the floor and sneered at me contemptuously.

‘Plenty more where that came from,' I said. ‘I've got one in an envelope addressed to the police, matter of fact.'

He kicked the paper ball with the toe of his dirty trainer. ‘This doesn't prove anything.'

‘Who said it did, Sidney?' I asked sweetly. ‘You seem to be missing the point. That thing,' I pointed to the paper at his feet, ‘is just an example. An illustration, if you like. You send your piece of cir-cum-stantial evidence to the coppers, we send ours. You point the finger, we point the finger. This stir-the-possum game, two can play at it.'

‘Evidence of what?' He sucked at his can and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. ‘Smartarse.'

I gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Jeeze, Sid, do I have to spell it out for you? You reckon the bankbooks will make the cops think Charlie Talbot and Barry Quinlan were on the fiddle, giving them a reason to knock off honest Merv Cutlett. By the same token, this photo of you and your watch will make them wonder why you lied to them. Maybe even wonder if you mightn't have given Merv a helping hand on his way to the bottom of the lake. You had a chance. You were out on the lake looking for him. You had a motive. He was selling you out. Just your bad luck that he grabbed your watch while you were pushing him under.'

Gilpin laughed, spraying spit and beer at me. ‘What a load of crap,' he said. ‘Give me the money or fuck off.'

He crumpled the can and tossed it aside. Then he shuffled over to the ice-cream cooler and got himself a fresh one. There were cans all over the floor. Christ, the bloke was a bottomless vat.

The last of the daylight was fading from the dirty windows. I'd been too optimistic, I realised, thinking I could bluff Bozo Brainiac with a bit of cut-and-paste and a tangle of half-baked logic.

‘You've had your money already, Sid.' I said. ‘There's no second helpings. Do yourself a favour, just give me the bankbooks.' I extended my open palm and waited patiently.

Gilpin stared at me sullenly. ‘Fuck off,' he said.

I gave a disappointed shrug, took out my mobile and pushed a couple of buttons. While I pretended to wait for an answer, I gave Sid a you-asked-for-it look.

‘Senator,' I said, turning my expression serious. ‘No go, unfortunately.'

Gilpin moved closer to the mesh, head tilted. He pulled off his beanie, the better to hear me. I listened again, nodding into the phone. ‘Understood. You're the boss.' I thumbed the phone off and put it back in my pocket.

Casting a saddened glance at Gilpin, I grabbed a couple of old paint cans and tossed them at the base of the mesh fence. I added another pair, then another. I prowled through the array of old junk spread across the floor, selecting items and flinging them towards the partition. Speaker cases, rotary phones, a wooden stool, a milk crate of old textbooks. Anything flingable, all of it flammable.

‘You're a greedy bastard,' I said, shaking my head dolefully. ‘And this time you've bitten off more than you can chew.'

Gilpin stood rooted to the spot, comprehension dawning across his puffy, booze-ravaged dial as I poured a bottle of sump oil over the pile. I wiped my hands on a rag, tossed it aside, and looked around.

‘This joint's a hazard, mate. One spark from that grinder and
whoompf
.'

Gilpin scratched his stubble and spat on the floor. ‘You're bluffing,' he said. ‘You'd never get away with it.'

I took out my cigarette lighter. ‘If the senator can't have them, nobody can. And let's face it, Sid, you won't be missed.'

Once again, I extended my palm to the latch and waited. My other hand held the lighter, thumb on the striker. If this didn't work, I was fucked.

It worked. He fumbled in his coat, pulled out the bankbooks and poked them through the gap. I snatched them from his grasp. Sweat was trickling down my back.

Gilpin hooked his fingers through the mesh and rattled the cage. ‘Let me out, you prick.' He looked pathetic. Sad, sick, trapped, abandoned.

‘You need help,' I said. ‘You shouldn't be mixing your medications. I'm going to call a doctor, get somebody down here to see to you.'

‘Fuck you,' he said.

Yeah, I thought, and fuck my doctor. We'd been through this before. I turned and walked up the aisle to the front door, the chain mesh rattling behind me.

‘I'll fucking kill you,' Gilpin shouted. ‘That prick Quinlan, too.'

I consigned the bankbook in Charlie Talbot's name to the toxic inferno of the petrol-drum incinerator, slid open the bolt on the back door and drove away without a backward glance.

The bogus Quinlan I tucked snugly into my back pocket.

When Inky Donnelly stuck his leprechaun phiz around my door in the Henhouse at nine-thirty the next morning, it had hot dispatch plastered all over it.

‘I've just been chatting with your mate Vic Valentine,' he said, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. ‘Looks like we're off the hook with the Merv Cutlett rigmarole.'

I was unaware that Inky had ever been anywhere near the hook, but I let it pass. His usual dishevelled self, Inky plopped himself down in my visitors' chair, eager to explain the nature of our un-hooking.

As part of my penance to the Whip, I'd agreed to put in a couple of extra sessions of bum-time in the Council chamber. Inky had caught me trying to get on top of the morning's agenda before kick-off time at ten. I leaned back and gave him my undivided.

‘Seems that our intrepid chrome-domed ace reporter was present during a long and well-lubricated session at the Wallopers' Arms last night. In the course of which he picked up the latest mail on the bones-in-the-lake saga. Apparently forensic science has run into a dead-end, so to speak. DNA has met its match, you might say.'

Inky was clearly enjoying himself, so I simply sat and enjoyed the show.

‘You'll recall in the last nail-biting episode, the coppers were gearing up to exhume Cutlett's parents' grave in the Mooroopna cemetery, where they have been enjoying their eternal rest for some several decades? Well, it seems that the passage of time has taken its toll on the headstones in that forgotten corner of a Mooroopna field that will be forever Cutlett. The exact location of their graves cannot be determined with sufficient precision to meet the requirement of modern science. So, no parental DNA.'

‘What about the daughter?' I said.

‘Killed in a car accident in New Zealand in 1990 and cremated,' he beamed. ‘And what with the watch drawing a blank at all corners of the compass, the remains have now been relegated to the Unsolved Mysteries file.'

‘The hole in the head?'

He shrugged. ‘Borers?'

‘So there was never anything to worry about all along?'

‘Who was worried?' He massaged his stomach. ‘Cautious, that's all.'

‘Well that's certainly good news, Inky,' I said.

‘I knew you'd be pleased.' He slapped his knees and heaved himself into the vertical. ‘And good news about Leppitsch being cleared by the tribunal. He should be worth four or five goals against the Eagles on Sunday.'

‘And we'll need every one of them,' I said, returning to my reading material. ‘But do me a favour, Ink. Next time you're curious about something, just look it up in the fucking encyclopaedia, will you?'

He tossed me a parting cheerio as he went out the door. ‘Looking sharp today, Muzza.'

I had to agree, for Inky's was not the only welcome news I'd received that morning. While he was waiting his turn at the toaster during the breakfast rush, Red had got around to mentioning there'd been a phone call on Tuesday evening.

‘Didn't you see the note?' he said, hovering impatiently as my post-run slices of multigrain took their own good time to turn brown.

I most certainly hadn't. ‘What note?'