He should tell her; he knows he should. But poor Max, lying dead and desecrated on the floor of his own home. How can Martin really write the truth, shatter his mentor’s reputation, tell the world that he died for nothing? Can he front Eileen Fuller, reveal that her husband was a dupe? Or explain to Benjamin that his wife was no Sir Galahad, to Sir Talbot that his daughter was just another conniving operator? What will the old man think as he reads Martin’s story, sitting in his armchair by the bay window? What then of his lifetime of service?
Martin knows he doesn’t have to write the story that way. He could present Max as a victim and nothing more; he could gloss over Elizabeth’s treachery. It would be easy enough. He’s done it before in his books, the authoritative accounts of murder and more in Riversend and Port Silver. Wasn’t that the great lesson learnt? That he should have compassion, that he should spare the innocent? But this time it feels different. This time he will be writing about the Mess, of patronage and nepotism, of favours given and favours owed. And who is he, to condemn the likes of Clarence O’Toole for using back channels to secure a job for his niece, or D’Arcy Defoe for turning a blind eye to misdemeanours in the pursuit of a bigger story, while he himself is sparing some and condemning others, playing the gatekeeper just like D’Arcy? Is that it? Is that what has him walking the impersonal streets—this sense of hypocrisy? Or is it more than that? In the past he spared some people from the full glare of publicity, but this time it’s not just them but himself he would be sparing. Is he motivated by compassion for them or for himself?
Yet he knows there is no holding the story. If he doesn’t write it, someone else will. Doug Thunkleton, with his limited comprehension, tabloid sensibilities and overreliance on Eileen Fuller; or D’Arcy, playing the angles, selecting what to and what not to report. Better himself, then, than the others. The Mess needs to be revealed in all its decadence. Sir Talbot is right; it’s a boil that needs to be lanced. He realises there is little room for finesse: he must write the story, the full story. He owes it to society, he owes it to himself, he owes it to the victims. And a memory comes to him, a memory of Max, as Martin struggled with telling the story at Riversend, the awful events out in the scrublands. ‘Protect your sources; everything else goes in. If it’s newsworthy, the public has a right to know,’ Max pronounced. ‘We’re not here to play God.’
Martin understands now why Max had forsaken the Herald. It would be too easy for them to spike his mighty exposé, or to cull it, the way they did to Bethanie’s initial report of Max and Elizabeth Torbett’s deaths—Roger Macatelli calling in a favour from D’Arcy Defoe. And it would be hard to argue against: the members of the Mess must include some of Sydney’s most prominent and influential citizens. Even if backroom pressure wasn’t brought to bear, even if the editors stood up to boardroom pressure, the lawyers would be all over it, demanding every last allegation be ironclad, lest the defamation cases ruin the company, in these days when there was so little hard cash propping up the famous masthead. And that’s even before the legal impediments that O’Toole had spoken of: injunctions and suppression orders, gagging writs and sub judice, threats of contempt of court. It wouldn’t be the first time a media company folded on a story because the legal risks were too great. He thinks of Wellington Smith, based in Melbourne; perhaps the influence of the Mess is weaker in the Victorian capital.
He leaves the park, crosses Oxford Street up by Whitlam Square. A memory comes to him of being out late at night, Friday nights, back when he was a cadet, back in the glory days of the Herald, before the classified ads migrated to the internet and the display ads followed them, back when the paper had clout and more money than it knew what to do with, and the world belonged to them, him and his fellow cadets. Of how, after an evening of drinking and carousing, they’d stagger up to Taylor Square at midnight to buy the papers fresh off the truck; the big fat Saturday papers, still warm from the presses, still smelling of printer’s ink, like fresh-baked bread to the young tribe of reporters, leavened by classified ads and supplements. And waking the next day to find the paper there to greet him, among the cigarette butts and empty bottles and the hangovers, left open at the page where he had found his own newly minted by-line.
He comes to a convenience store, enters the garish light. He looks around, searching for a newspaper, finds nothing. Just a few magazines: Home Beautiful, Gourmet Traveller; a slurry of gossip mags shouting the latest inventions about Harry and Meghan; a couple of tired skin mags, their plastic covers a flimsy prophylactic in this digital age.
‘Newspapers? No, mate. Try station,’ says the clerk, shielded behind security glass.
So Martin does just that, walks towards Central, suddenly motivated. It can’t be true; surely the Herald cannot have vacated the field so completely.
Another convenience store. When did all these carbon copy eyesores proliferate, these pustules on the inner-city streetscape? Was it the backpackers, the tourists, the foreign students? The family milk bar, the corner store, unable to compete with corporate efficiencies and wage theft. But this one, at least, has some newspapers. Friday’s are yet to arrive, printed who knows where. One copy of Thursday’s Herald languishes. Martin picks it up. Thinner than it used to
