Stiff Read online

  ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll instruct our on-site management to co-operate. But I must insist that liaison be directly with me. Your findings are to be communicated directly and confidentially to me, and to me alone. I trust I am understood?’

  There was a knock on the door and the ice queen opened it all the way. Merricks rose, nodded tersely. ‘Understood?’ he squeaked.

  ‘I’m sure Charlene will appreciate your accessibility, Mr Merricks,’ Agnelli cooed, but Merricks had already disappeared.

  I looked at my watch. It was just on eleven-fifteen. Merricks had been in the room precisely five minutes.

  I shook my head. ‘Not a word, Agnelli,’ I said. ‘Not a fucking syllable.’

  Coolaroo lay on the furthermost northern edge of the electorate, out where the fringes of the city finally frayed into paddocks of shoulder-high scotch thistle and the rusting hulks of cannibalised car bodies. Any further out and the voters chewed their cuds. I drove there straight from the city, the highway slick with drizzle, wanting only to get it over and done with.

  Half a kilometre past the Ford factory I turned off into an industrial estate of warehouses and small factories. The road narrowed to a single lane of asphalt and I hugged the margins, wary of the lumbering sixteen-wheelers that were the only other traffic. The Renault threw up a slurry of mud and gravel as it went, the suspension feeling its age in the potholes. If I could have afforded anything else I’d have got rid of the shitheap years before. It was the French, not me, who deserved to be punished. I wasn’t the one turning Micronesia into croque monsieur.

  The Pacific Pastoral meatworks was a block long and half as wide, three storeys high, ringed by a chain-mesh fence and fronted by a wide asphalt apron. I pulled into the employees’ carpark opposite and eased into the gap between a panel van with chrome exhausts and a lime-green Kingswood with an luminous Cedars of Lebanon bumper sticker. Through the swish of the wipers I had a clear view of the faceless brick behemoth across the road.

  Nothing said trouble. No cluster of pickets at the gatehouse, no windbreakers and beanies, no hands being warmed at smoking ten-gallon drums. But there wouldn’t be, would there? It was all bullshit, a figment of Agnelli’s overactive imagination. There was nothing but a brick wall punctured at regular intervals by huge doorways, great yawning maws opening into impenetrable darkness. The shit holes at the end of the universe.

  The drizzle stopped. A tip-truck came out of one of the doorways and a maintenance crew in navy overalls started shovelling steaming bitumen into pot holes in the apron. I turned off the wipers. As I stepped out into the carpark, my right shoe sank to the ankle in a puddle of oil-slicked ditch-water. I’d make Agnelli pay for this crap one day, I vowed.

  The gatehouse attendant directed me towards one of the cavernous doors, apertures big enough for even the largest refrigerated truck. As I passed the first of the great portals I slowed my pace to squint from the silvery glare of the daylight into the interior, but could pierce the Dickensian gloom for only a few metres. From deep inside I could hear the mash and rev of forklifts and a voice shouting instructions, but the only human life I glimpsed was two spectral figures in white hosing down a floor.

  As I neared the far door I felt my scalp crawl. I’m no vegetarian, so I knew it wasn’t revulsion at the proximity of so much slaughtered flesh I was feeling. I shrugged off the creepy sensation and stepped into the enveloping darkness.

  The place seemed even bigger inside, a maze of alleys and sub-buildings. It was older, less high-tech than I had expected, smelling of stale diesel fumes and wet concrete. Just inside the great door was a steel companionway with a sign pointing upwards, marked Office. I went up the stairs and followed the peck of a typewriter along an open deck running along the top edge of a deserted canteen.

  The pecker was a well-upholstered woman of middle years, her sausagey fingers threaded with rings. She finished pecking a sentence and looked up without curiosity. ‘Yes, love?’ I asked if I was in the right place to see the manager. The sausages wrapped themselves around a telephone handpiece. ‘Someone to see you, Mr Apps.’ There was something about the way she said the mister part that made me smile.

  Deep gullies of tedium had etched themselves into the woman’s face as though she had spent reluctant decades trapped behind that big metal desk. Next to her typewriter a dusty monstera was taking a long time dying. On the wall behind, a sign said Thank You For Not Smoking. I wished I still smoked so I could start one up, just to see what would happen. Next to it a corporate mission statement in a moulded plastic frame began: ‘We at Pacific Pastoral think of our workforce as one big family.’

  Apps exploded out of an inner office. He had a beeper on his belt, a long thin face with twerp written all over it, and hands that dangled somewhere around his knees. One of them snaked up to tug at his collar. His Adam’s apple came out for a look, didn’t like what it saw, and ducked back in.

  ‘Look here,’ he started in, his mouth a pinched slot. ‘This is tantamount to harassment. You lot at Export Certification seem to think you can ride roughshod over people. Once, just once, the US Department of Agriculture slaps a rejection sticker on a container of our product. Suddenly half the Australian quarantine service is crawling all over us, demanding right of inspection every five minutes. I thought you lot were supposed to be on our side. Just how many times do we have to go over this?’

  I wondered just how anyone might mistake me for an officer of the Primary Industry Department. Had I grown a hat? Did I have a piece of straw sticking out the corner of my mouth?

  The big vein in Apps’ neck was ticking like a metronome. Without pausing to draw breath he stuck his scrawny wrist in my face and tapped his watch. ‘Two o’clock, I was told. And what is it now? Twelve-thirty. Ever heard of courtesy?’

  I had but I wasn’t going to waste any on this prick. ‘Lionel Merricks’ office will have rung.’ I said. ‘Whelan’s the name.’ Apps arched his neck irritably like the mistake was mine and shot the woman behind the desk a filthy look. The woman ignored him and resumed torturing the typewriter. ‘Why didn’t you say so?’ he snapped. ‘Head office said you probably wouldn’t be here for a day or so.’

  ‘If this isn’t a convenient time...’ I shrugged.

  Apps writhed halfway between rage and obsequiousness. ‘Full co-operation they said. So full co-operation it is. Our corporate culture is an open book.’

  But a repetitive one. And I didn’t like the tone he was reading it in. ‘So I understand,’ I said. ‘They explained I’m here to talk to some of the men?’

  Apps fished. ‘Something about workforce attitudes to this death thing, they said. Bit hazy on the detail.’

  I made a vaguely affirmative noise in the back of my throat.

  ‘Everyone seems to think I’ve got nothing better to do with my time than conduct guided tours. I suppose you want to see where it happened then?’

  The place was cold and dispiriting enough without a guided tour of some bloody freezer. ‘Er, not really,’ I started, nowhere near forcefully enough. My words drowned in the clang of Apps’ footsteps on the steel plate of the deck. Cooperation, even of the grudging variety, could be so disarming. I tailed Apps deep into the bowels of the great shed, struggling into researcher mode. ‘What’s your contingent here?’

  Apps bounded ahead, making no effort to conceal his irritation. ‘Pretty quiet at the moment, as you can see. Best time for what you want is five o’clock in the morning. That’s when the trucks come in from the abattoirs up the bush.’

  ‘You couldn’t put a number to it?’

  He wasn’t giving anything away. ‘Varies. It’s a seasonal industry. Core establishment—storemen, maintenance, cleaners, clerical—between twenty-five and thirty. But on top of that there’s anything up to fifty casuals at a time in the place.’

  We passed a safety slogan in English, Greek and Italian. ‘Lot of Italians?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of that, it’s twenty
years old. First it was Italians and Greeks, then Yugoslavs. Now it’s all Lebanese, Turks. Vietnamese even. Try to keep up and we’d be changing the signs every five minutes.’

  We turned into a sort of truck-width street lined with cool rooms the size of houses. ‘You’ll be wanting to interview the first on the scene, I daresay. He’ll be about here some place.’ ‘Gardiner?’ I looked about, hurrying to keep up.

  ‘You seem very well informed.’ It sounded like a reprimand. ‘One of the cleaners, actually. Gardiner’s on leave for a few days. They kept him here till nearly eight on Friday night, getting his statement and so on. Bloody red tape. I told him to take a few days off to get over it. He’s no spring chicken, as you no doubt already know. He’s due to retire next month.’

  Here was a fly in the ointment. Gardiner was the only contact name I had. This little excursion onto the shop floor was already enough of an exercise in futility. Without Gardiner to interview, it would be even more so. It struck me that if old Herb was that close to retirement then Apps had probably insisted he use up a bit of his accrued sick leave, save the company a couple of bob in a termination pay.

  ‘This is it.’

  A heavily padded parka was thrust into my hands. A key rattled, a white-clad wall slid away and the interior of Number 3 chiller yawned before me, sucking warmth.

  ‘This really isn’t necessary,’ I protested, a wave of cold air wrapping itself around me.

  The words ‘No trouble at all’ formed in the mist now coming out of Apps’ mealy mouth. The door slid back into place behind us and Apps disappeared into the gap between towering pallet loads of waxed white cartons.

  The chiller was large enough to get lost in. One man had died there already. I stuffed my exposed extremities into the jacket, pulled the hood cord tight and followed Apps. Talk about a snow job. This was the original Antarctic runaround. And not a single dead cow in sight to enliven the view, just row upon row of boxes. The whole place was nothing but a very cold storeroom.

  ‘The men,’ I insisted through teeth already beginning to chatter. ‘I’ll only need to talk to two or three of them today.’ My wet sock had begun icing up.

  Apps led me down a narrow canyon of roof-high boxes and stopped at a hatch about a metre square set into the wall. ‘Emergency exit,’ he fumed. ‘Working perfectly it was. No question of culpability.’

  He shoved a spring-loaded handle with his elbow and the little door swung silently outwards. He gestured for me to take a gander. There didn’t seem to be much choice. I stuck my head through the hole.

  The hatch opened into a narrow access alley running along behind the row of chillers. A man was standing in the alley, smoking a cigarette. He wore white overalls, white rubber boots and a white shower cap. The sudden opening of the hatch caught him by surprise and he half-turned towards me, peering out from under his shower cap with dark marsupial eyes. He was about fifty, stocky in a pounded-down sort of way, Mediterranean, with skin the colour of old parchment. For the shortest of moments a flare of defiance lit his melancholy eyes. Then a curtain of indifference descended. He took a final drag, crushed the butt under the toe of a white rubber boot, turned away abruptly and was gone.

  I pulled my head back in and rubbed my hands together. ‘Very interesting, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Now can we get the fuck out of here before I freeze my arse off.’ Apps smirked like there was something obvious I’d missed and led me back out.

  The man in the white overalls was passing the chiller door, slowly propelling a trolley of buckets and mops ahead of him. Apps put a hand on the trolley and squinted at the ID tag pinned to his chest. ‘Ah, yes, Memo. Go with this man, Memo. He’s from the government.’

  Memo’s round mournful face turned green. ‘Poliss?’

  Apps was taking the piss, palming me off on the mop jockey. Bugger him, I thought. He didn’t know I was just going through the motions. And the sooner I divested myself of management the better.

  ‘Not police,’ I said emphatically. ‘Government.’ Probably a fine technical distinction wherever it was that this poor downtrodden Memo prick came from. Cyprus possibly. I turned back to Apps. ‘Anywhere private I can do this? And any chance of a couple of cups of tea?’

  Apps’ elastic larynx rushed from its hiding place and assumed several curious shapes in rapid succession, but the jerk himself said nothing. He led me and the cleaner into the empty lunch room and pointed to a hot water urn and a pile of polystyrene cups on the counter.

  ‘I’ll need to talk to the safety officer next,’ I said. ‘You do have a safety officer, don’t you?’

  Apps looked huffy and disappeared. I motioned for Memo to sit and went over to the lukewarm urn. One of the disposable cups was half-full of plain-label tea bags. There was no milk. I made two cups of black tea and pushed one across the table. The cleaner accepted with a dip of his head. His eyes remained fixed on the chipped laminex tabletop. Conversation was not forthcoming.

  I suppose I must have looked about as gruelling as a Polish film festival at that point, what with the scarified dial and being as stroppy as buggery at having let myself in for this utter waste of time. Memo, on the other hand, gave no indication of what was going on behind those impassive eyes of his.

  ‘Memo, eh?’ I said. ‘What’s that, Greek? Short for Agamemnon, is it?’

  The guy sat there like a stuffed mongoose, not touching his tea, his hands jammed between his knees. He gave the question ample consideration and eventually shook his head.

  ‘Not Grik,’ he said. ‘Memo same like Mehmet. Mehmet Gezen is my name.’ The words were extruded tentatively like this maybe wasn’t the answer I wanted. ‘From Turkey.’

  One of the deceased’s compatriots. Good. Aside from a minor detour into the minefield of the Greek–Turkish border region we were headed in the right direction. ‘Like the man who died here last week?’

  Mehmet seemed to search for the right word. ‘Similar,’ he admitted at last. But not too similar from the sound of it.

  Honestly, I could have got more information out of the tea urn. ‘Was he your friend?’

  Memo took his time. He took so much that I was beginning to wonder if he had understood the question. At last he spoke. ‘Friend?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Friend. Mate. Pal. Cobber. Buddy. Bosom companion.’ Memo shook his head.

  So much for small talk. ‘You like it here, Mehmet? Good place?’ This was safer ground. Memo cheered up.

  ‘No worries,’ he said. ‘No fucking worries.’

  MACWAM would be pleased to know that a representative cross-section of the cleansing department had no immediate grievances. There was a tap at the door and a pair of blue overalls and a horseshoe moustache rolled in. ‘I’m McGuire, the safety officer.’

  ‘Thank you, Memo,’ I said, relieved. ‘That’s all for now.’ The cleaner looked confused then scuttled out of the room, as relieved as Stalin’s barber.

  McGuire pulled a chair out and straddled it backwards. I got straight to the point. ‘What’s the attitude of the blokes to this death on Friday?’

  ‘They couldn’t give a stuff. Bit of a prick from what I could tell. Not to speak ill of the dead.’

  ‘Have any particular mates, did he?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know.’

  ‘What about the health and safety aspects? Anyone upset about them?’

  He sniggered. ‘What is there to be upset about? It was a heart attack from what I hear. He wasn’t exactly Twiggy, you know. No one to blame but himself if you want my opinion.’

  ‘What about safety around the place generally? Any gripes?’

  ‘If you can get this lot interested in their own safety you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din. This joint has more turnover than a rotisserie chicken. New set of faces every time you look around. Ethnics mainly. In for a spot of ready cash, then Arrivederci Roma. I do what I can—put posters up in the canteen, make them wear the right gear if I catch them, but what else can you do? We’ve had the odd accident
, but you could count them on one hand.’

  He held up his right hand. Most of the ring finger and the top half of the middle finger were missing. He leered through the gap. ‘Got three grand for these babies.’

  And this was the safety officer. What a dump. ‘Union active in the workplace, is it?’

  ‘Well, it’s a closed shop, if that’s what you mean. They make sure they collect their dues and the pie warmer gets fixed when it breaks down. Beyond that, you’d have to ask the shop steward, Herb Gardiner. He deals with that lot.’ He jerked his thumb upstairs towards the office.

  One thing was for sure. This place might have been a shit hole, but it was no powder keg. Agnelli could not have been barking up a wronger tree. Unfortunately for me, he was barking hard and trying to get me to join the chorus. He really had his dick in the wringer over Lollicato and no amount of persuasion was going to convince him to pull it out. My only way out of this wild goose chase would be to find a way to keep Agnelli chasing his tail until the next fleeting enthusiasm came along and he found someone else to buggerise around.

  As I shook McGuire’s stumps goodbye, I heard the tramp of feet on the walkway above me. I looked up and saw Apps scuttle past, bobbing deferentially to a woman two steps ahead of him. She wore a dark pants suit, her greying hair pinned back with a gold clasp, and she carried a briefcase. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, their backs still turned to me, Apps held the case while the woman slipped her arms into a white dust coat. Then they vanished between two rows of freezers.

  Upstairs the lady with all the rings was sifting through a stack of time sheets. ‘If you’re looking for Mr Apps,’ she said, ‘he’s down on the floor.’ She held up a fleshy wrist and flashed a diamante watch. ‘With his two o’clock appointment. The inspector.’ Her eyes twinkled like rhinestones. ‘Something in particular was it, love?’

  ‘I’m supposed to see last Friday’s roster. And milk, you don’t know where I can find some milk, do you?’