Sucked In Read online

  It was a sports watch, a thing of winders and knobs and subdials. The clasp-lock band was undone and the hands were stopped at 11:17. Seiko Sports Chronometer, read the name on the face. Limited Edition.

  ‘Still under warranty?’ I said. ‘It says “Guaranteed waterproof to 60 metres”.’

  Stromboli smiled. ‘It’s a knock-off.’

  I studied the Polaroids carefully. The watch face had a distinctive rotating bezel, day and date, and an alarm function, but it didn’t ring any bells. I shook my head and handed back the snaps. ‘I thought it was all DNA and whatnot these days.’

  ‘In the works.’ Stromboli pocketed the Polaroids. ‘But it takes time. We’re still in the process of locating family members.’

  The sentence ended on an interrogative note. I shook my head again. Sorry, couldn’t help there either.

  ‘Meanwhile, it’s old-fashioned methods,’ he said, the footslogger who’d copped the door-knocking job.

  ‘But you’re pretty sure it’s Merv Cutlett?’

  He crossed his legs, keeping it conversational. ‘On the balance of probabilities, it seems likely. The only other reported disappearance in that area was a child who drowned back in the sixties. The nature of the remains rules that one out.’

  He consulted his notebook, flipped some pages then asked if there was anybody else connected with the union who I thought might be able to assist. ‘Interstate officials and so forth?’

  I thought for a moment and gave him some names. Three of them were still involved in union and public affairs. One worked for an employer organisation. Stromboli noted the names and details.

  ‘I assume you’ve talked to Barry Quinlan and Colin Bishop,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘It’s a pity we can’t speak with Mr Talbot, who was also there at the time,’ he said. ‘I understand that you had a close relationship with him over a number of years. Did you ever talk about the incident?’

  I put my elbow on the desk, rested my chin on my balled fist and had a think.

  ‘Not that I can bring to mind,’ I said, eventually. ‘I was well down the union totem pole. Our friendship developed later. By then, we’d both moved on a fair distance and the subject never came up.’

  ‘How did Cutlett get along with his associates, the ones at the lake the day he disappeared?’ He consulted his notebook. ‘Colin Bishop?’

  ‘They had a reasonable working relationship, far as I know.’

  ‘Charles Talbot? Barry Quinlan?’

  ‘Likewise.’

  ‘I understand that there was a degree of friction in the union.’

  Understood from where, I wondered? ‘Friction?’

  ‘Cutlett was a bit of prick, wasn’t he?’

  I had to laugh. ‘Obstreperous, let’s say. And, yes, there were differences of opinion concerning the direction of the union. Management issues. Nothing of a personal nature, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘And the assistant secretary, Sid Gilpin?’

  ‘Gilpin wasn’t assistant secretary,’ I corrected him. ‘That’s an elected position. Gilpin was a sort of personal assistant. I wasn’t privy to their relationship.’

  He scribbled something in his pad. ‘One last question, Mr Whelan. Were you ever at the union place up at Lake Nillahcootie?’

  ‘The Shack?’ I said. ‘Afraid not, Constable. The decadent pleasures of Lake Nillahcootie were the preserve of the elect, not minions like moi.’

  The detective pocketed his notebook, uncrossed his legs and stood up. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Whelan.’ He indicated the clutter on my desk. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  I showed him to the door and waved him off, hoping I’d played it right.

  Stromboli wasn’t giving anything away, which was only to be expected. But our little chat had raised more questions than it answered, at least for me.

  There’d been no mention of the forensics, for a start. Was that because they’d arrived at a different explanation from the one Vic Valentine was trying out? Something a bit less melodramatic?

  The questions about relationships within the union, on the other hand, didn’t seem relevant to ID-ing the remains. So were the cops going with the shooting scenario, but still not showing their hand? Were they looking for a possible motive?

  And the watch. What the hell was that about?

  It was true I’d never noticed if Merv wore a timepiece. But I was damned sure of one thing. If he had, it wouldn’t have been a flashy chunk of tomfoolery like that boy-bangle in the Polaroids.

  Merv was the sort of bloke who wore a cardigan with his suit. For special occasions, he might’ve had a Timex Oyster self-winder with an expandable strap. Day-to-day wear was more likely to have been a Casio digital one-piece with a black plastic band. Merv, to strain a threadbare metaphor, wouldn’t have been seen dead in a Seiko Sports Chronometer with stopwatch, day/month calendar and phases of the moon.

  So who did the watch belong to?

  I slid back my cuff and examined my own timepiece. It was ordinary but accurate. The time had arrived, it told me, to extract my digit.

  Red’s grip loosened a notch and the blood flowed back into his knuckles. We both heaved a sigh of relief as the massive semi-trailer moved further ahead of us, taking its buffeting slipstream with it.

  ‘Speed,’ I said.

  Red flicked a glance at the dash, checked the rear-view mirror, eased back on the accelerator and turned his head just far enough to give me a wide smile. Pilot to co-pilot. So far so good.

  The first half-hour had been stressful, both of us anxious during his neophyte negotiation of the cross-town traffic. Still, I thought, anxious was good. Better than overconfident. When I proposed a spin up the Hume, some open-road motoring, he’d jumped at the chance. Now that we were on the dual carriageway, he was cruising, pace steady, alert but not alarmed, enjoying himself. There was even scope for conversation.

  ‘So what’s this play about?’ I said. ‘Rosybum and Goldenpants Are Deadshits?’

  ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard,’ he said. ‘You know Hamlet?’

  ‘Not personally. But I’m familiar with the type. Chronic existential indecision interspersed with fits of violent rage. You see a lot of it in my line of work. You’re drifting into the emergency lane.’

  He corrected his steering. ‘Well, this is a play about the play within the play.’

  This Stoppard geezer should be writing for the Labor Party, I thought. Red took a hand off the wheel for a second and jerked his thumb back over his shoulder, indicating the dog-eared script on the back seat.

  ‘Hear me my lines,’ he said. ‘I was fluffing big time at the walk-through.’

  ‘Hands at ten-to-two,’ I said sternly. ‘Stay in the left lane, no faster than eighty, and watch out for dickheads. We’re in the country now.’ Bypassing Kilmore to be precise, seventy kilometres north of town. Not exactly the mulga, but you can’t be too careful once the houses run out. ‘And no fluffing in the car.’

  I flipped through the script, a mass of scribbled annotations and post-it notes.

  ‘Tell me again, which one are you?’

  ‘The Player.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ I said. ‘Which reminds me. That little friend of yours I noticed leaving the familial premises at the crack of dawn. Ellie? Polly? Molly?’

  ‘Madeleine,’ he said. ‘Maddie.’

  ‘I knew it was something like that. The point being, is this something serious?’

  ‘Or what?’ he said. ‘Am I just using her for sex?’

  ‘Well, are you?’

  ‘Maybe she’s just using me.’ He eyed me sideways. ‘Are you giving me the third degree?’

  ‘That comes later,’ I said. ‘For the moment I’m simply exercising some natural parental interest in your activities.’ Jesus, I thought. Listen to yourself. You’ll be talking about your roof next, insisting on your right to know what goes on under it. ‘You’re being careful, I hope.’

  ‘I w
on’t knock her up, if that’s what you mean.’

  I winced at his bluntness. But Red’s age-group had been raised on condoms, so to speak. If nothing else, AIDS had reconnected sex and consequences, two concepts my generation thought it had sundered forever. But it wasn’t the idea of an unwanted pregnancy that worried me as much as the prospect that he’d mistake the ride for the destination. That what began as a fumble on the futon would end with a stomped-on heart. His.

  ‘Abstinence has a lot to recommend it,’ I said.

  ‘The voice of experience?’ He put his hand on the indicator lever and checked me sideways for the go-ahead to pass a puttering tractor.

  I cleared him to overtake. ‘The old dog’s got life in him yet.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Red did the Groucho eyebrow dance. ‘Anyone I know?’

  We were going places I’d rather avoid. As we swept around the Massey Ferguson, I gave the driver a cheery wave. The constipated old cockie ignored me. Probably a One Nation supporter. Didn’t he know tractors aren’t allowed on the freeway?

  ‘I’m glad we had this little chat, son. I’ll reassure Madeleine’s parents next time I see them.’

  Red moved back into his lane. ‘They don’t mind.’

  Oh well, great then. Clearly, I was the last to know. As usual. I flipped through the pages. ‘So where do we start?’

  ‘Page 17, half-way down. You’re Rosencrantz.’

  The place was marked. ‘What’s your line?’ That was the line.

  ‘Tragedy, sir,’ declaimed the young Olivier. ‘Death and disclosures, universal and particular, denouements both unexpected and inexorable…’

  The speedo was creeping towards ninety. ‘Ease back a little,’ I instructed.

  ‘No, it’s supposed to be hammy,’ he said. ‘I’m in character.’

  By the time we were shot of Elsinore, he’d been behind the wheel for two hours straight and we were almost in Benalla.

  ‘Need a break?’

  He gave his head a vigorous shake. Nothing short of a crowbar would’ve got him out of the driver’s seat. ‘Then hark us hence homeward via the scenic route, what sayeth thou?’

  ‘Aye, my lord.’

  We turned south along the Midland Highway, two lanes of blacktop that curved through open, rolling farmland and scrubby bush, double lines for long stretches. The traffic was light, but the driving took all of Red’s concentration.

  We were coming back over the hump of the Divide. The Strathbogies lay to our right and the peaks of the High Country reared distantly to our left, bare bouldery shapes emerging from thick timber. The radio commentary had the Lions down 51–77 and the weather was looking iffy. The sky had turned from high and hazy to low and broody. I was splitting for a piss.

  ‘Pull in here,’ I said. ‘We’ll stretch our legs and I’ll spell you for a while.’

  Red eased it back nicely and turned into the landscaped picnic area at the Lake Nillahcootie weir. I directed him along an unpaved track between some big shade trees until we reached the high-water mark.

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Somebody pulled the plug.’

  The bare bottom of the lake sloped away to dark, wind-rippled water at the sheer concrete cliff of the dam wall. The waterline reached no more than a quarter of the way up the 25-metre embankment, leaving the spillways at each end gaping uselessly, high and dry.

  The water extended for half a kilometre or so, then narrowed to an elongated tadpole-tail that snaked away across the exposed lake-bed. An intermittent picket of long-dead trees marked its path. Those closer were footed in water, the more distant fully exposed.

  We got out and drained our personal reservoirs against the trunk of a big redgum. No call for modesty. We had the place to ourselves.

  ‘Let’s check out the weir,’ I said.

  Access to the dam wall was barred by the chained gate of a cyclone fence. The construction camp was locked down, its cluster of Porta-sheds and heavy equipment deserted for the weekend. YOUR TAXES AT WORK, read the sign. KEEP OUT.

  ‘So, Dad,’ said Red. ‘What are they doing?’

  Once upon a time, I’d been a policy advisor to the Minister for Water Supply, so I was able to give him the benefit of my expertise.

  ‘Buggered if I know,’ I said. ‘But I guarantee it’s both necessary and expensive.’ Necessary, most likely, to the ongoing job security of the local National Party member. Expensive in that it cost a packet.

  The weir had been thrown across a choke-point where the Broken River narrowed to a gorge. From the footpath above, we looked down into the rocky cleft, thick with trees and undergrowth. The clouds were glowering and the wind, heavy with the smell of rain, was rattling the treetops. I didn’t know why I was there.

  We went back to the car. I slid the driver’s seat forward a notch and drove further along the highway, its course running parallel to the elongated bed of the lake. Trees marked the far shoreline, a kilometre away, thinning to pasture. The situation at the MCG had not improved, 64–91 at three-quarter time.

  ‘A bloke I knew was killed out there,’ I said. ‘A couple of years before you were born.’

  ‘How?’

  Good question.

  ‘Fell out of a boat while they were fishing. He’d been drinking and he wasn’t wearing a life-jacket.’

  ‘Let that be a lesson, young man.’

  ‘’ken oath,’ I said.

  The Shack, in whatever form it now took, lay somewhere on the far side, invisible up a short inlet formed by the undulations of the terrain. The inquest papers I’d scanned in the Parliament House library included a sketch map of the lake showing the location of the Shack and the spot where Cutlett was last seen. A photocopy would’ve been handy but I hadn’t thought to make one. Why would I?

  ‘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?’