‘Fuck it,’ he says quietly to himself, looking up to see Mandy’s concern and Winifred’s disapproval. An elderly man a few seats away looks at him with anxiety.
He knows he has only himself to blame. He’d gone with Montifore to the station, cooperated with the investigation, compared notes with Mandy and Yev. It was only after they’d been left waiting for hours that it had occurred to him to ring Bethanie, well after her first iteration had been published. It’s as if his instincts had gone missing, as if the primacy of the story no longer mattered. What had he been thinking? Cooperating with police; since when was that a priority? Was it some sort of subconscious compensation for withholding Sweetwater’s identity from the detective? Had he become somehow captive to the authorities, instead of the eternal sceptic, holding the powerful to account? For if it wasn’t for the story, why was he even involved, why stay in this smoke-filled shithole of a city? He and Mandy could be back home with Liam. But he’d made the decision to remain: to honour Max, to write the first draft of history. So why hadn’t he? And so it rankles: additional reporting by Martin Scarsden. What would Max think of that?
Yet his displeasure at Bethanie’s story, and his failure to insert himself into the moment, is as nothing once he scrolls further into the Herald’s coverage. For waiting on the inside pages, as it were, is D’Arcy Defoe’s exclusive. It drills him right between the eyes, claws at his stomach.
EXCLUSIVE. The Mess: Inside Sydney’s Blood-Drenched Secret Society
A Herald Investigation. By D’Arcy Defoe
D’Arcy’s by-line photo is twice the size of Bethanie’s; he stares out at Martin: wise, knowledgeable, superior. ‘Shit,’ breathes Martin as he begins to read. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
‘You okay?’ asks Mandy.
‘Fine,’ he fumes.
Winifred grimaces and resumes typing. The elderly man moves a few seats further away. Martin reads on, unaware.
Few know of its existence, fewer still know of its power. Yet the Mess is not just Sydney’s most secret cabal, it’s the state’s most influential. And possibly its most corrupt.
Now, for the first time, the Sydney Morning Herald can lift the veil of secrecy on this most secret of societies, revealing a clandestine club implicated in a series of bloody murders and suspicious deaths, leaving a blood-soaked trail that leads directly to the shootout yesterday afternoon on the Goods Line in Ultimo.
The Herald can reveal that one of Friday’s gunmen is a notorious US mafia captain, Danilo Calabrese, long wanted by law enforcement in his home country. This man is known in Australia as Harry Sweetwater, an influential member of the Mess.
And yet for years, the Mess has been able to operate in the shadows, growing its malevolent influence, spreading corruption and operating with impunity, providing the perfect entrée into Sydney power circles for Sweetwater and his ilk.
For the best part of a decade, I have been researching this most covert of organisations, slowly, year on year, developing an overview of its sway.
Full disclosure: to investigate, to get inside, I willingly became a member of this secret society, passing myself off as an adherent to its rules, its etiquette, to its oath of absolute secrecy.
In short: I risked my life for this story.
‘Holy shit,’ Martin exclaims. He doesn’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or vomit. ‘You fucking fraud,’ he hisses at his phone. The elderly man gives up trying to move further away and leaves altogether. Martin doesn’t notice; the article commands his full attention:
But now a young mother, an innocent, lies dead on the Goods Line at Ultimo. And I must break the most fundamental rule of the Mess—the rule that subordinates all others: its existence is never to be revealed.
I am breaking that rule now for two reasons: first, the public has a right to know what has been occurring behind closed doors; and second, it is becoming increasingly clear that some members of the organisation have subverted its once high-minded ideals and have engaged in criminality.
For years, I’d heard rumours of a secret society operating at the pinnacle of our community. I began digging, and step by step I was able to work myself closer. Eventually, after identifying a number of members, I received a surprising invitation: to join as a full member.
What I found, as I attended my first dinner, upstairs in a private room at one of Australia’s premier restaurants, was a gathering of this city’s great and good: judges, politicians, sportsmen, lawyers, business leaders, trade unionists. As an investigative journalist, I had hit pay dirt; it was like being invited to sit in on Cabinet.
The food was the best imaginable, the wine superb. But I didn’t drink much; I
