Stiff (10 page)

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?’

‘Personnel records are confidential, love.’ But she got a carton of milk out of the private bar-fridge in Apps’ inner sanctum. ‘You’ll have to see his nibs. And I’m not sure how long he’ll be.’

The longer the better as far as I was concerned. ‘A cross-section of names, that’s all I need,’ I said. ‘No personal particulars or anything.’

She fiddled with an electric kettle at a sink in a small alcove. ‘Sugar too, love? Or just milk?’ My novelty value was slight, but at least I was better than nothing. ‘What happened to your face?’

‘Possum,’ I said, pulling a chair up beside the desk. ‘I’ve got an on-site van up the river. The thing must have got in through the air vent and been stuck there all week. Soon as I opened the door it went for me. Half-starved probably.’

Not bad at short notice I thought. She clucked sympathetically, whether for me or the possum I couldn’t tell, and put a cup of something brown in front of me. Then she opened her top drawer, took out a glass ashtray and put it on the desk next to my elbow. She dredged a packet of Alpine out of her bag and extracted a cigarette. ‘If His Highness comes in, this is yours. Okay?’

I grinned and sipped the weak oversweet instant coffee like it was pure ambrosia. ‘No worries,’ I said. ‘No worries at all.’

She held the end of the cigarette to the glowing element of an electric radiator tucked under the desk near her feet. When it caught she put it to her lips and puffed it into action.

I gave her my most hapless look and nodded towards the time sheets. ‘I’m running a bit late,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose I could...’

She shrugged. ‘Long as you’re quick,’ she said. ‘I don’t imagine it’d do any great harm.’

I flipped through the sheets. They were dated for the previous week. The employee’s name was handwritten in the left-hand column, the daily hours in boxes in the middle, the confirming signature of the shift supervisor on the right. It was perfect.

I began copying the left-hand columns. A couple of dozen names would do, I figured. Enough to keep Agnelli running around Trades Hall like a blue-arsed fly for weeks, trying to figure out if any of them had Lollicato connections. As I wrote I began to whistle under my breath.

The names were a real ethnic grab-bag, heavy on Yugoslavs if anything. Zoltans, Zorans and Dragons, lots of -ic surnames. Some were real puzzlers—Amol Ratna, Zeki Muren. But Italians, if anything, were under-represented. If Agnelli was looking for an Italian connection he would be disappointed.

I was well into the third page before I glanced over at the signature down the right-hand margin. It was an almost childish scrawl, half block letters, the mark of a hand that rarely held a pen. E. Bayraktar, it read. I rapidly flipped through all the sheets on the desk. The signature appeared on three of them, against more than thirty names.

Agnelli is going to love this, I thought. If he must have his seedbed of simmering discontent, what better place for it than among the deceased’s most intimate working companions? I scribbled furiously. The names on Bayraktar’s first sheet were the usual cosmopolitan mishmash, but about halfway down the third page they became more decidedly Turkish. Well, they seemed Turkish. Dursum and Orhan and Oguz were Turkish names, I felt almost sure. Kartal Tibet, that was hard to pick, sounded Himalayan. Ahmet Ayik, now surely that was Turkish. And Nasreddin Hoca, that rang a bell.

Ding dong, it went. Jingle jangle. Clang, clang, clang. It rang loud and it kept ringing. Nasreddin. That was a name I’d seen somewhere before. But where?

‘These permanents?’

‘No, love. That’s the casuals. Permanents get paid direct into their bank accounts. Only casuals get weekly cash. Filling out that many different bank transfers every week would be a bloody nightmare, pardon my French. Look at those names. Honestly, you couldn’t spell half of them if you tried.’

‘That must be a lot of fiddling around for you, making up the pay packets.’

She snorted smoke out her nose. ‘I’ve got enough to do as it is, love. The packets get made up by Armaguard. All part of the service. I send them the forms and they deliver the pays on Friday, all ready for the shift supervisors to take round after lunch. Speaking of which, you’d better hurry up with that list. I’ve got to get them finished this afternoon.’

‘All finished,’ I said, quickly noting down the last half-dozen names on Bayraktar’s page. I took the cup to the sink and rinsed it. ‘Tell Himself thanks for the welcome and that I’m not sure when I’ll be back,’ I said. ‘Could be any time.’ She liked that.

The ashtray disappeared back into the drawer, butt and all.

‘Oh, one last thing before I go. You wouldn’t happen to have Herb Gardiner’s address on file here somewhere, would you?’

Gardiner’s place was in Coburg, back towards the electorate office, a fifteen-minute drive. On the way through Broadmeadows I looked for lunch. Out that far, Sydney Road was already the Hume Highway and all I found were fast-food franchises and used-truck yards. Behind them, tract houses spread across the plain where once the Woiworung had hunted and gathered. Presumably with more success than me. I passed the Colonel and kept going.

By comparison Coburg was almost picturesque, a two-time Tidy Town runner-up. It was a world of fifties cream brick veneer, ruler-straight lawn edges, garden gnomes, roll-down garage doors, low fences, oleanders and lemon trees. None of your unruly natives were tolerated here, dropping their leaf business on the paths and clogging up the guttering. Herb Gardiner’s house was the neatest in his street. A big For Sale sign was planted on the front lawn.

I stepped over the wrought-iron gate and rang the doorbell. As a four-note chime sounded distantly, a white silky terrier hurtled around the corner in a frenzy of yapping. I braced to defend myself, and a female voice screamed in my ear. ‘Garn. Git.’

The fanged snowball skidded to a halt, turned and limped away. A woman of about Charlene’s age, respectably made up, was standing behind the heavy grille of the screen door wiping her hands on an apron.

‘Mrs Gardiner?’

‘Vera passed away six months ago.’

‘But this is the Gardiner house?’

She didn’t want anybody getting the wrong idea. ‘I’m The Nextdoors. I pop in now and then to give Mr Gardiner a hand with the housework. If it’s about the house, he’s up the street I’m afraid.’

I was suddenly acutely conscious of my appearance. I straightened my back, ran my fingers through my hair and tried to look as prospective as possible. If I’d been wearing a hat I’d have taken it off and fiddled with the brim. ‘Been on the market long, has it?’ I enquired politely.

‘The sign has only just gone up.’

‘Well, another time, I suppose.’

The screen swung open. ‘Herb won’t be a moment, I’m sure.’

I wiped my feet vigorously and stepped onto the salmon pink carpet of the entrance hall. The wallpaper was pink, too. A pink on pink fleur-de-lis motif, with a row of miniatures, ballerinas in candy tutus. The telephone table was white though, Queen Anne, to match the antique ivory and brass telephone. I followed the wall-to-wall through to the lounge.

Mrs Nextdoor went into an impromptu pitch. ‘As you can see it’s too big for one person. Herb’s been here on his own ever since…’ She tactfully left the sentence unfinished. ‘It was the same when my husband went. Herb, I said, you can’t live forever surrounded by memories.’

‘I can understand that,’ I said. And I could.

Herb’s memories were pure oestrogen. The lounge was the hall writ large. The sofa was done in pink floral with matching throw cushions. The pelmets above the windows were upholstered in the same pattern, with little valances matching the gathered lace of the drapes. Rows of porcelain dolls with painted blushes stared out of a blondwood crystal cabinet towards a print of a sad-eyed clown with a ruffled collar hanging on the rambling-rose patterned wallpaper. There was so much pink I thought my eyes must be haemorrhaging.

On the mantelpiece in front of a bevelled mirror circled with lilies was a big oversized brandy balloon half-filled with rose petal potpourri, but the smell was that of thickly laid-on air freshener. The only visible evidence of human habitation was a scattering of brochures and documents on the pink-tinted glass top of a brass-rimmed coffee table. Besides them sat a copy of
Best Bets
, tell-tale male spoor.

The helpful widow offered me the sofa. ‘I’d best leave the formalities to Herb. I’d feel a bit strange showing someone around someone else’s house, if you know what I mean.’ That was a relief. I perched gingerly on the edge of the crepe de chine.

I decided I’d give Gardiner five minutes. If he hadn’t shown by then, I’d take the phone number and call him from the office. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t even sure why I was there. Covering my arse, I suppose. Dotting the t’s and crossing the i’s.

She of the Nextdoor hovered, uncertain of the protocol. ‘Nice big place,’ she improvised. ‘Ideal family home. Too much cleaning for one. Herb’s new place is fully serviced. Hot though, Queensland.’

‘Queensland?’ I improvised back. ‘Nice weather.’

‘Can’t say I blame him, day like today. But I don’t know how he’ll get on by himself. A man needs someone to look after him.’

Indeed, he did, I admitted. Make that three minutes.

‘Anyhow, you might as well have a cuppa while you wait. Fully equipped kitchen.’ That about exhausted the conversational possibilities. She opened the door through to the kitchen. Baking smells, good ones, came in and fought with the evil air freshener.

A white cuckoo clock ticked loudly in the silence. My stomach growled back at it. Past two-thirty and I still hadn’t eaten. I picked up the form guide, put it down, flicked through one of the brochures. Ocean Towers, Broadbeach. Absolute beachfront. Two and three bedroom apartments from two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, plus on-road costs.

I tossed the glossy folder back down onto what could have been a title deed and looked around. Not a bad swap, a quarter of a mill’s worth of sea views and a spa for a crocheted tissue box worth maybe half that, absolute maximum, drizzle running down its windows. Old Herb must certainly have been stacking it away all these years. And why not? A lifetime on your back on the concrete with your mouth full of self-tappers, staring up into the innards of a bung compressor. Make a nice change, Broadbeach would.

My own old man had done something similar when they bought the pub out from under him for a drive-in bottle shop. But instead of the high-rise condo in Surfers he’d gone for the fibro shack on Bribie Island and the aluminium runabout. Horses for courses. Plus it looked like Gardiner had a bit more nous in the financial planning department. That wouldn’t be hard. Whelan senior had been through six pubs in twenty years, each smaller than the one before it.