Stiff Read online

  Some time later a refrigeration mechanic by the name of Herbert Gardiner entered the freezer to check the thermostat and found Bayraktar’s body. Herbert Gardiner? Where had I heard that name before? I shuffled the papers until I found the sheet of Upper House notepaper I had used to take down the name of Bernice’s shop steward. Yep, that was him.

  Oh Herb, I mused out loud, whatever were your parents thinking when they planted that botanical name on you? Basil and Rosemary Gardiner and their little boy Herb. Hardly a sage choice. I shook my head in wonder and turned back to the subject at hand.

  The cause of death was a heart attack, the exact time of which was subject to some speculation on account of the low temperature. Precision in this matter did not appear to be an issue, nor was any negligence or malfeasance on the company’s part suggested. All in all it was pretty much an open and shut case. Bayraktar was just another of the three-hundred-odd Victorians who died in industrial incidents every year. The only unanswered question was what the deceased had been doing wandering about in a giant deep freeze full of boxes of boned beef.

  No bureaucrat in his right mind would have speculated on that topic in an official document. Ever since the Freedom of Information Act had been gazetted, candour was not advisable in paperwork forming part of the permanent public record. Even the most innocuous remark made in dispatches could eventually be ferreted out by some snooping journalist or tireless special interest group, and end up splashed across the front page. Let that happen and you could kiss your preferment goodbye.

  Not that there aren’t ways around these things. I found what I was looking for scribbled on a yellow Post-It sticker stuck inside the back cover of the file. The handwriting matched the signature on the preliminary report of the coroner’s chief investigator. ‘Police et al. concur most likely pilfering,’ it read. The boys on the scene, it appeared, had gone into a huddle, put two and two together and concluded that the deceased had been in the process of stuffing a piece of prime porterhouse up his jumper when the grim reaper tapped him on the shoulder.

  Here at last was something. Not official, mark you, but potentially useful. If Lollicato and the Sun decided they wanted a martyr, they might try painting this Bayraktar joker as another Mother Teresa. But if I could get one of his coworkers inside the place to confirm his reputation as a tea leaf, I would be morally one up on Lollicato. Relatively speaking.

  Much more to the point was how much mileage Lolly & Co. thought they could extract from the situation. That would depend on the attitude of the dead bloke’s workmates. That, and whether there was someone inside to do their stirring for them. And I wasn’t going to find that out by burying my nose in a pile of papers. I shuffled the pages together, downed the last dribble of whiskey, scratched my head, yawned, and got up for a pee.

  How had Agnelli ever convinced me that the government might stand or fall on this particular piece of nonsense? Now I’d have to drive these useless papers back into town, go out and prowl around some butchery in the backblocks of Coolaroo, and waste an afternoon cooking up some bodgie report. The best part of a couple of days down the tubes. And for what? As if I didn’t have better things to do with my time.

  Red’s feet were sticking out from underneath the covers, cold as iceblocks. As I tucked the quilt back in, he rolled suddenly, sat bolt upright, scratched his head fiercely and slumped back into unconsciousness.

  By that stage bed was looking like as good a place as any. I climbed into the matrimonial cot with Understanding Family Law, A Practical Guide to Financial Planning and Court Procedure. Ten pages of legal prose later, I succumbed to the elemental drone of the rain on the tin roof above me and slipped into the dreamless sleep of the innocent.

  Well, maybe not completely dreamless, or completely innocent. About 4 a.m. there was this cave and this sheepskin.

  The Ministry for Industry was fourteen floors up an octagonal guano-textured megalith a block west of Parliament. I bunged the Renault into a basement slot stencilled Strictly Deputy Director, hit the fourteenth floor at a jog, and slapped the envelope on Charlene’s private secretary’s desk. I was back inside the lift, standing beside an anorexic youth in orange dreadlocks and green lycra shorts, when the half-closed doors gave a shudder and parted.

  ‘Morning Murray,’ said Agnelli, his palm flat against the call button. ‘What’s with the face? Gone ten rounds with a cheese grater? What’s Lionel Merricks going to think?’

  ‘He can think what he likes. I’ve never heard of him.’ I made no attempt to leave the lift. The doors quivered, fighting to close.

  ‘He’s the chairman of Pacific Pastoral and we’re expected in his office in three quarters of an hour. Didn’t you get my message?’

  I remembered the phone slip in my top pocket. ‘What message?’

  ‘The one I’m giving you now. Meet me in the foyer of the Amalfi in half an hour. I’ll brief you then.’

  ‘I thought company liaison was your job. I just came in to drop off the file.’

  Agnelli’s head did a 270-degree sweep. His voice came through a clenched jaw, low and insistent. ‘Look, Murray...’ ‘I’d love to stand around and bat the breeze like this, fellers,’ said the bike messenger, ‘but I’ve got a previous at the Stock Exchange.’

  I wasn’t going to argue the toss in front of Boy George. Reluctantly I stepped out into the corridor. Agnelli took his palm off the button. ‘Well piss off then, buster,’ he told the closing doors. He turned back to me, oozing sweet reason. ‘It’ll only take half an hour.’

  ‘Corporate relations are your department. What do you need me for?’

  Agnelli licked his lips and started talking twenty to the dozen. ‘The manager out at Coolaroo didn’t want to know me. Typical middle management flack. So I thought I’d teach the prick a lesson. Went all the way to the top. Merricks is on the City Revitalisation Committee with Charlene. The Committee met yesterday afternoon, so I buttonholed Merricks afterwards and put him on the spot. Asked about the newspaper story and made a noise like industrial unrest. Really put the wind up him, it did. So then I told him I shared his concerns and put our little look-see proposition. He’s a bit so-so about the idea, obviously doesn’t want the wrong person blundering about out there treading on management’s toes. Said it would all depend on the “consultant”. “Sure,” I said. “I can understand that.” I told him the individual we have in mind is a real professional. “Talk to him yourself,” I said. “If you’re not perfectly comfortable, we’ll shelve the idea.”’

  By this stage he had me bailed up against the wall. ‘Ange,’ I said wearily. ‘You’re over-reacting. This whole thing is bullshit. That Sun story yesterday was a beat-up. There’s no mention at all in today’s edition. Do us both a favour, get another boundary rider.’

  ‘Nonsense, Murray. You’re wasting your talents out in that electorate office. Handle this one right and you never know. Go on, clean yourself up a bit. I’ll see you outside the Amalfi in half an hour.’ He disappeared in the direction of Charlene’s office.

  I pulled a tie out of my pocket and went into the men’s. The fluorescent tube above the mirror wasn’t pulling any punches. The cuts had stopped weeping and were beginning to scab up nicely. I’d be able to start shaving again in about a week, but it really wasn’t the sort of face you’d want to go stalking the corporate corridors in. I made a lump in my tie and parked it in the general vicinity of the top of my chest. This Merricks joker would have to take me as he found me. And if he didn’t so much the better. I’d be off the hook with Agnelli.

  The ministry was a typical public service set-up—a rabbit warren of chin-high beige partitions, half the desks unattended. I helped myself to one of the empty ones and ransacked the drawers until I found a yellow pages. There were an encouraging six pages of roofing contractors. I dialled the electorate office and ran a pen down the names while I waited for Trish to answer. When she picked up the receiver, I could hear a dog barking in the background. Every day something new.
/>   ‘Any messages?’

  There were plenty, but none urgent. And the guy with the tatts was back, on the doorstep at nine on the dot. Persistent bastard. I told Trish I wouldn’t be in until later and to tell Mr Tattoo that I was at the Police–Community Liaison Task Force and I’d probably be bringing some of them back with me. ‘And you won’t forget to run off the agenda papers for Wednesday night’s branch meeting?’ There was a bark, but it wasn’t a dog. ‘And, listen, if anybody rings about a roof, take the number and tell them I’ll call back.’

  I dialled again, and again, and again, starting at AAAAce Roofing and working my way through to Versa-Tile. Twenty minutes later all I had were half a dozen engaged signals, an invitation to call back later, four answering machines, two no longer connecteds and a wife who would tell hubby when he came home.

  The Amalfi was the city’s newest and tallest office tower, a fifty-storey icicle of blue-tinted glass with Kuwaiti finance and tax-free cash bonuses and designed to reflect the many moods of the sky. Its disposition that morning was decidedly unsettled.

  Big corporate tenants occupied the higher floors and various government departments were housed lower down. Each had separate entrances and elevators so the business types on their way to the top could be spared the ordeal of having to rub shoulders with scruffy androgynes in polyester cardigans. The corporate entrance was a marble-clad lobby on Collins Street with imposing brass revolving doors. The government tenants entered via an open vestibule around the corner where a gaggle of furtive smokers clustered around a midden of squashed butts.

  The Education Department central bureaucracy had set up shop on some lower floors and Agnelli was standing at the government entrance talking to an official from one of the teacher unions, a factional heavyweight, when I arrived. He immediately broke off the conversation and hurried over. He looked me up and own and opened his mouth as if to make some remark, thought better of it and propelled me wordlessly through the revolving doors into the open mouth of a lift.

  ‘Let Merricks do all the talking,’ he said as we shot upwards into the stratosphere. ‘And for Christ sake, don’t contradict him. These captains of industry are totally surrounded by sucks telling them how fucking brilliant they are. Makes them very sensitive.’ He said something else, but my ears were popping and I missed it.

  We got out at the forty-ninth floor and found ourselves facing a reception desk of black lacquer, burnished to a mirror shine and bearing an arrangement of long-stemmed exotic flowers shaped like the genitalia of some endangered species. Behind it sat a receptionist with a face heavily in hock to the Estée Lauder counter at David Jones and sculpted extensions so long they would have curled up and died at the mere sight of a keyboard. Agnelli she eyeballed coolly. When she got a load of me the ambient temperature dropped a good fifteen degrees.

  ‘Mr Merricks is expecting you.’ She sounded as though she could not in her wildest dreams conceive why. She led us across a carpet that murmured soft caresses as we passed, and abandoned us in a corner office with a desk you could land a Lear jet on. Two entire walls were floor-to-ceiling glass.

  The view was hypnotic, vast, drawing the gaze irresistibly. Rimmed by the green of sand-belt suburbia, the beaten pewter of the bay extended southward to an invisible horizon. Factories and freeways spread a grubby picnic rug as far west as the light would allow. Immediately below, the Spencer Street switching yards were a model train set. Hornby Dublo by the look of it. Out past the Westgate Bridge and the cubist statement of the Newport power station, oil refineries and smokestacks disappeared into a smudgy haze. But mostly it was sky, lots and lots of sky. A flock of seagulls flew past at eye level. Here and there over the bay celestial conveyor belts of sunlight pierced the clouds with radiant beams as though the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was imminent.

  I sank into one of a matching pair of pale-green kid leather sofas. Agnelli strode over to the window, his hands clasped behind his back, his excitement impossible to conceal. I could feel a lecture coming on.

  ‘Look at that.’ Agnelli gestured like a carnival barker. ‘Industry. Chemicals. Plastics. Automobiles. Foodstuffs. Biotechnology. Computers. The busiest port in Australia. Anything that gets made in this country gets made here. Compared to us the rest of the country’s a fucking pineapple plantation or a gravel pit. Think, from here you can see a quarter of the country’s population, the most productive quarter, too.’

  Far below I could just make out two figures fishing off a pier. At the periphery of my vision the word MOBIL stood out in letters four storeys high.

  ‘Hard to imagine that most of it is already obsolete.’ Agnelli shook his head and frowned, barely believing how badly the place was letting him down. ‘Technological change, sunrise industries, value-added—they’re the name of the game now. There’s a hundred million fucking Japs out there.’ He jabbed a forefinger vigorously in the general direction of Africa. ‘And every one of them is trying to figure out another way to screw the rest of us. If it wasn’t them it’d be the Koreans or the Taiwanese. Believe me, Murray, if we don’t pull our fingers out we’ll wake up one afternoon and find ourselves sitting on the scrap heap at the end of the universe.’

  He picked up a silver-framed family snap from among the yachting paraphernalia on the credenza and waved it about. ‘And this lot, our dear old home-grown establishment, will just sit back and let it happen if we let them. We’ve got to drag these inbreds into the twentieth century. Show some leadership. Get them off their well-upholstered bums. Offer them incentives to up their game. Investment incentives. Seeding funds. Venture capital. Fast-tracked planning approvals. That’s why we’re here today, Murray. Me to reassure our corporate friend that the government is on the ball, you to show him we’re not on some anti-business witch hunt. Main thing is, just remember your manners, old chap, and we’ll be out of here in a jiffy.’

  Agnelli’s face suddenly contorted with such patent insincerity that I thought he was bunging on a quick demonstration. ‘Ah, Mr Merricks,’ he gushed. ‘So nice of you to agree to see us.’ His gaze was fixed on the door, the picture back in place.

  Lionel Merricks was a rather short, ruddy-faced man in his mid-fifties. He progressed across the carpet with impatient vigour, preceded by his hand. The fact that he was in his shirtsleeves, coupled with his slightly flushed appearance, gave the impression that he had just been interrupted giving himself a bracing injection of capital. I realised with dismay as I took his hand that I already felt obligated to him for his time.

  ‘Five minutes, gentlemen.’ The voice was fussy, half-English, disappointing. So this was the entrepreneurial class, red in tooth and claw. The shareholders of the country’s seventh-largest public company might have found the tone impressive, but I couldn’t see why. I stopped feeling apologetic.

  ‘We at Pacific like to think of our workforce as one big family,’ Merricks began magisterially. ‘And believe me, nobody feels it more keenly than I when there is a bereavement in the family. A situation like this should not be made the pretext for industrial scaremongering. Nor the occasion of a fishing expedition. So if you have information relevant to the conduct of our company’s affairs, I would be pleased to see that it is passed on to the appropriate area. Otherwise I see no need for outside involvement. You are not, I take it, suggesting the company is in any way responsible.’

  Agnelli nearly fell over himself. ‘I can assure you there is no question of blaming the company. It’s not even that we’re expecting any specific problem, sir.’ Sir, yet! ‘But it would be in nobody’s interest if somebody out there went flying off the handle, would it? What harm could there be in having a quiet chat with some of the men? Test the waters, so to speak. All absolutely unofficial, of course. Avoid surprises, eh?’ Chummy, now.

  Merricks nodded noncommittally and turned to me. ‘You have a union background, I understand, Mr Whelan.’ He spoke slowly as if I was a little retarded. After Agnelli’s performance he could hardly be blamed.

&
nbsp; ‘I was with the Municipal Employees for a while.’ This drew a blank. ‘Garbage collectors, street sweepers.’ Merricks’ expression did not change but I knew I might as well have said ‘dung beetles’ or ‘intestinal tapeworms’.

  Agnelli felt the crackle of insolence and quickly stepped back in. ‘There would be no disruption of day-to-day activities at the plant. Murray here could be in and out of there in a couple of hours. Isn’t that right, Murray?’

  Merricks still wasn’t having any of it. ‘Our corporate culture is an open book. But there are always sensitivities at the shop floor level—restrictive work practices, demarcation disputes. I’m sure you are all too familiar with these matters, Murray. Having an outsider go in asking questions, at a time like this, I’m not at all convinced it’s a good idea.’

  I nodded absently. No skin off my nose. The sheer scale of the view out the window was mesmerising. It seemed like the whole sky was in the room with us. Out over the bay thunderheads were marching in from the west in mile-high battalions. I wondered how helpful the plug of overalls would be once that lot broke. Not the sort of problem Mr Lionel Merricks would ever have to deal with. None of his roofs was ever likely to have a pair of soggy King Gees stuffing its inadvertent apertures. Not the gabled mansard one in Lansell Road, Toorak, or the cantilevered art deco one on the cliff top at Portsea or the mossy slate one on the homestead at Macedon.

  ‘It’s entirely your decision, of course, Mr Merricks,’ I said softly, ‘but do keep in mind that I have already discussed this matter with one of the industrial officers at the Trades Hall. You know what the unions can be like. If they were to form the opinion that your company is being obstructive...’

  It was Merricks’ turn to examine the meteorological panorama. Conditions looked more and more unsettled by the moment. Across the room, Agnelli’s eyes had gone wide with caution. The clouds moved closer. The moment continued. Merricks’ attention seemed to linger on a tanker idling in the bay, waiting for a berth.