‘What?’ I grunted, my head throbbing from the effort. Had I missed something? ‘Somebody swipe a Picasso?’
‘Some idiot drowned himself in the moat. I’ve had three different reporters on the phone since 6.30, wanting a comment.’
Even in my fuddled state, I got the point immediately. To the press-reduced to reporting the weather-a body in the moat of the National Gallery would be a story straight from heaven. In a city without distinguishing landmarks-no opera house, no harbour-the Arts Centre was the closest thing to a civic icon. Its picture was on the cover of the phone book, in every tourist brochure and glossy piece of corporate boosterism. Melbourne, City of the Arts. Look. See. Naturally a death in the moat would be a sensation. And if a political angle could be found, so much the better.
But what political angle? By covering my head with a pillow and closing my eyes, I could just about see to think. ‘Why call you? What’s it got to do with you?’
‘According to the journos who rang me,’ Agnelli said, ‘this whacker committed suicide in protest at the lack of government support for the arts.’ At least it wasn’t because his girlfriend was rolling around in the hydrangeas with the responsible minister’s major-domo.
‘What makes them think that?’ There’d been no mention of a protest motive at the death scene, not that I’d heard. And I couldn’t see any immediate point in informing Agnelli that I was there when they dredged up the body.
‘He left a note.’ There was more than a hint of anxiety in Agnelli’s voice. ‘A manifesto, the press are calling it.’
I realised why Agnelli was aerated enough to have called me at this ungodly hour. Two years before, a Picasso really had been swiped from the National Gallery. It was held hostage by hijackers demanding more government funding for the arts-a motive so cryptic as to bamboozle the police utterly. The ransom negotiations were conducted on the front pages of the daily press. In a series of manifestos, the Arts Minister was described successively as a tiresome old bag of swamp gas, a pompous fathead, and a self-glorifying anal retentive. Subsequent insults were so erudite they had millions rushing for their dictionaries. Eventually, the painting was recovered, abandoned in a railway station locker. But the thieves were never caught.
So it wasn’t hard to infer whence Agnelli was coming. Public ridicule and ministerial amour-propre make a poor mix, and mere mention of the word ‘manifesto’ was bound to set a cat among Agnelli’s pigeons. I took a deep breath and started again. ‘Just exactly what does this manifesto say?’
‘Jesus Christ, Murray, that’s what I want you to find out.’
‘Has this alleged suicide note been released?’ By ratcheting the terminology down a notch I hoped to quiet the quivering antennae of Agnelli’s ego.
It didn’t work. ‘Not according to the journalists who rang, but the general gist is being bandied about. And I’d rather not find out the details by seeing them on television. No surprises, Murray. I thought we were clear on that. No surprises.’ Meaning that I should pull my finger out and have something reassuring to contribute to the overview. Pronto. ‘I’ll pick you up behind Parliament House at eleven. You can bring me up to speed on the way to this Max Karlin brunch thing.’
I told him I was on the case, buried my head in the pillow and tried to get back to sleep. It was a waste of time. Twenty litres of used booze were backed up in my southern suburbs, leaning on the horn. On top of which, a pounding noise was now coming from outside in the street.
Reaching across the mattress, I eased a chink in the curtains. Sunlight stabbed my frontal lobes. Across the narrow street, a guy in shorts and a carpenter’s belt was fixing a For Sale sign to the facade of the house immediately opposite. The letters on the hoarding were as big as my hand. Inner City Living, they read. A Gem from the Past. An Investment for the Future. No room to swing a cat, in other words, but the market is buoyant.
From the front, the house was identical to mine, a single-storey, single-fronted terrace. The whole street was the same, all twenty houses. A cheese-paring speculator had built them as a job lot back in the 1870s. Workingmen’s cottages they were called at the time-as distinct from the grander two-storey terraces in the surrounding streets with their cast-iron balconies and moulded pediments.
This neighbourhood was once considered a slum-such an affront to the national ideal of the suburban bungalow that whole blocks of it had been bulldozed in the name of progress. But those days were gone. Thanks to the miracle of gentrification, dingy digs in dodgy neighbourhoods had become delightful inner-city residences with charming period features in cosmopolitan locales. It was truly amazing what a lick of paint, a skylight and an adjective or two could do for real estate values.
This was the fifth time in the two years I’d lived there that a house in this street had been put on the market. I couldn’t help but wonder what this one would fetch at auction. Mine had set the bank back nearly a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A pretty penny-and a bargain at that-for two bedrooms, a kitchen-living room and a back yard the size of a boxing ring. And, with my variable interest rate bobbing around at 16 per cent, a very good reason to get out of bed and go to work.
I padded to the bathroom, fine grit beneath my bare soles, wind-borne detritus of our island continent’s blasted interior. A reminder to give Red’s room a quick dusting before he arrived. As I crossed the lounge room, I reached into the bookcase, pulled out the dead weight of 101 Funniest Australian Cricket Stories and tossed it onto the couch where Red would see it when he arrived. He’d sent it to me for Christmas, a boy’s idea of the right sort of gift for his dad, and I treasured every page, even though I’d never read a word of it. Just as well Wendy hadn’t done the buying for him, or I’d have got Cooking for One.
Not that it wouldn’t have been handy, I reflected as I rinsed the forlorn breakfast bowl that had been soaking in the sink.
Next Christmas he’d give me Home Maintenance Made Easy. And it, too, would go into the bookcase unopened. Right beside The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. That one I bought myself. Got bogged down in the War of Spanish Succession. One night soon I’d try again, get right on top of Metternich.
Red gave me what he thought a boy should give his father. But he needn’t have worried about my home maintenance needs. I had none. After seven years with Wendy, fruitlessly wrestling with cross-cut saws and counter-sunk wood screws, all I wanted was to change the odd light globe. That’s why I’d bought a renovated house.
So what if all the bench tops were apple-green and the cupboards burnt-orange? So what if all my furniture came from the Ikea catalogue and looked like it was designed for Swedish dwarfs? So what if the walls were still bare after two years? I could walk to work whenever I wanted. Red had a room of his own when he came to stay. And perhaps my new-found friends in the arts could recommend something suitable to adorn my vacant hanging space. Home is where the heart is, after all. Even if it did get a little lonesome from time to time and the shelves in the fridge could’ve done with a good wipe.
My heart and I went into the bathroom, stood under a hundred icy needles of cold water and started making plans. The first item on my agenda was to forget about last night as soon as possible. Salina Fleet had been a bad idea, even without the business at the moat. In fact, the business at the moat may have been a blessing in disguise. A Salina Fleet was not what I needed at this juncture in my life.
What I needed was groceries. A ten-year-old kid can go through a hell of a lot of groceries in three days.
Hit the oracle, make a few calls, raid the supermarket, meet and brief Agnelli, take in Max Karlin’s brunch, then out to the airport to pick up Red. After that, maybe the local swimming pool. Cool down, then take in a movie. Play it by ear.
My first call was to Ken Sproule. Half past seven on a Saturday morning was not the ideal time to go shopping for favours, but I remembered that Sproule had a two-year-old daughter. If he wasn’t out of bed already then two- year-olds weren’t what they used to be.
As a rule of thumb, personal networks are always preferable to official channels. Sproule would understand implicitly why I was calling. His boss Gil Methven may have been Police Minister for less than a day, but Ken was fast on the uptake and I preferred to be steered informally around police procedures than to go dropping Agnelli’s name into the loop at this early stage.
Sproule was up all right, monitoring Cartoon Connection and cutting toast into fingers. He was thankful for the distraction and when I drew the map he laughed out loud. ‘Agnelli’s only had the job twelve hours and already artists have started killing themselves.’
