Police Cooperative Credit Union owned shares in Ray-Ban. ‘This officer is going to drive us to the airport,’ I told Red. ‘Hop in.’
Tarquin, green with envy, demanded to be allowed to come along for the ride. ‘Next time,’ I said. ‘But you can sit in the back seat for a minute while I talk to your mum.’
Prompted by my remark on the phone, Faye had successfully grilled the boys on the true reason for our flying visit to Artemis Prints. She’d followed up with a call to Claire. ‘She didn’t sound very impressed, Murray,’ she said. ‘She thinks you took advantage of her better nature. She was quite keen on you, you know. For a while. But I’m afraid you’ve blown it. So what’s all this about friends of yours with a forged Drysdale? And what’s that smell?’
A proper answer to those questions would take three days, a whiteboard, a flow chart and a breach of confidence. I gave Faye the thirty-second version. ‘Wow,’ she said, mentally reaching for her keyboard.
‘This is absolutely not for publication,’ I warned. ‘Within the life of this government.’ The money in the bag in my hot little hand, of course, I did not mention.
‘Look!’ called Tarquin. He’d pulled something out of a box on the back seat of the prowl car and was waving it out the window. It was a deep red stick of waxed paper about as long as my arm. ‘Extra-length dynamite!’
It wasn’t, but it might as well have been. It was an emergency flare. Two kilograms of compacted magnesium with a ring-pull activator cap. I reached over and deftly relieved Tarquin of its possession. ‘My wrist,’ he squealed. ‘You’ve broken my wrist.’
In what seemed like no time at all, we were barrelling down the Tullamarine freeway with the roof lights flashing, the siren wailing and Constable Speedy Gonzales of the Accident Appreciation Squad making the rest of the traffic look like it was standing still. ‘I’m sorry your visit was so boring,’ I told Red. ‘Next time, we’ll do something more interesting. Go fishing, maybe. And we’ll definitely have that pizza, I promise.’
Speedy dropped us at the terminal with ten minutes to flight time. ‘Told ya,’ I informed Red, although we were too late to get him a window seat. We embraced at the departure gate. ‘See you later, Dad,’ he said. ‘Sorry about busting the picture.’
‘Do something for me,’ I asked. ‘Tell your mother I’ve got a new girlfriend.’
‘You haven’t really?’ The kid squinted at me dubiously. ‘Have you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But you never know your luck. And don’t mention the dead body. Or the snake. Or the painting. Or the police car. Or the dynamite.’ I started to reach into the plastic garbage bag, thought better of it and fished a twenty out of my wallet. ‘In case you need a beer on the plane,’ I said. ‘And your teeth still look fine to me.’
We embraced again. Then he was gone.
If anyone needed a beer it was me. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I found an airport eatery with a tray-race and a neon sign that read Altitude Zero. I got myself a tray and ate something they claimed was lasagne. Ate it all. Right down to the plate. That’s how hungry I was.
It was eleven before I’d got a cab back to the Arts Centre, picked up the Charade, put the black plastic bag under the seat and drove home. Home sweet lonesome home. I stepped inside the front door and reached for the light switch. Intuition stopped my hand stopped in mid-movement. I bent my head to the darkness of the hall and listened. The muted rustle of paper. An infinitely faint flush of light beneath the door into the living room. An electrical charge in the atmosphere. Someone was in the house. My hand went sweaty around the black bag.
Streetlight flowed through a gap in my bedroom curtains. Nothing out of order there. I flicked the money under the bed. The only thing in the room vaguely resembling a weapon was the bedside lamp. It was either that or a lumpy pillow. With the lamp cord wrapped around my wrist, I advanced noiselessly down the hall, put my shoulder to the door and pushed it open.
Claire was lying on the couch, her red hair lit by the feeble fluorescence emanating from the kitchen nook. She looked up over the top of an open book. ‘Pretty dense,’ she said. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
‘You’ll ruin your eyesight.’ I knelt on the floor and plugged in the lamp. ‘How did you get in?’ Not that I was complaining.
‘Your security is abysmal,’ she said. ‘But your friends are terrific. Faye gave me the key. She also told me what’s been going on. I thought I’d save you the price of a lunch.’
The face of Sister Mary Innocent flashed before me and dissolved. ‘Don’t go away,’ I said. ‘I’ve just got to take a quick shower.’
‘Not a cold one, I hope,’ said Claire.
When I came out of the bathroom, Metternich was on the floor and Claire was in my bed. Luckily, I’d changed the sheets. I do that every time I get a new job. ‘I don’t know about this, Murray,’ she said.
‘Me neither.’ I dropped my towel to the floor and she could see that I was lying. I lay down beside her and put my head between her breasts, my ear over her heart. It didn’t hurt at all.
Few things remain secret for long in the modern office. Even through two plate-glass walls I could read Angelo Agnelli’s face like the fine print on a rent-a-car contract. If Ange had got any sun while he was inspecting those mountain lakes, it wasn’t showing in his complexion.
My boss’s ashen face wasn’t the first reading I’d done that morning. Over a two-egg breakfast with Claire, I’d taken in the headlines. The Age, doing its best at broadsheet restraint, led with KARLCRAFT DEFAULT PROMPTS OBELISK SUICIDE. The Sun concentrated on the human interest angle with LOVE NEST DEATH PACT. Faye’s piece on the front page of the Business Daily took a more soberly fiscal line.
FUNDS SINK IN WAKE OF LIQUIDITY DRAIN.
Agnelli had read them, too. They were spread across his desk in front of him. He’d been sitting there, staring down at them, for what felt like a very long time. I knew that because I’d been watching him ever since he’d arrived. He told Trish he was not to be disturbed, shut his door and sank into his seat like a condemned man assessing the comfort of the electric chair.
A minister is rarely alone and almost never lost in silent contemplation. It was a sight to behold. From time to time, Angelo’s leonine head would rise and he would peer over at me. I was pretending to read Craft Annual. His hand would extend towards the phone, hover, then withdraw. His fingertips would drum on the desktop. His gaze would again lower.
Eventually, the suspense got too much for me. Undeterred by Trish’s gorgon bark, I invited myself into the ministerial presence. ‘How was the water?’ I said. ‘Dam and be damned, as they say in Tasmania, eh?’
Angelo broke off from his self-guided tour of purgatory and regarded me bleakly. ‘Damned’s the word,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’
Angelo Agnelli was not a bad man. He was no better or no worse than he ought to be. He was vain and his ambition exceeded his abilities. So what? In a politician these are not failings but the minimum requirements for the job. Why else do it? Angelo was a minister because enough people thought he should be one. Those people, for better or worse, were my people. Perhaps they didn’t know Angelo quite as well as I did. But they had not entirely misjudged him. He was occasionally a fool, but he was not an idiot. He could be petty, but he was rarely malicious. Others, perhaps, could do his job as well, or even better. But it was Angelo, not others, who signed my pay cheque at the end of the week.
If there was to be a pay cheque. Just as well I’d taken out insurance.
I did as I was bid and sat down. The glorious morning sunlight pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows might as well have been acid rain. Angelo stared at it in blank-faced silence for a long moment.
Then he rapped abruptly on his desk as though calling his internal caucus to order. ‘About your future here,’ he said. ‘Things have not necessarily transpired as entirely advantageously as initially anticipated.’ He sounded like the freshly-mouldering Hirohito announcing the capitulation of Japan.
‘You’re not satisfied with my performance?’ I asked.
Now that Ange had set his course, he had no intention of allowing himself to be distracted. ‘I was going to tell you about something today,’ he said. ‘Get your input and so forth. But events appear to have overtaken me.’
He slapped the papers on his desk with the back of his hand. He stood up. It was getting momentous. He began to address me as though I was a plenary session of state conference. ‘I am responsible…’ he began.
His mouth, unaccustomed to this phrase, did not know what to do next. He began again. ‘A situation has
