Shane Maloney - Stiff (A Murray Whelan Thriller)

Stiff

[Murray Whelan 01]

By Shane Maloney

Scanned &Proofed By MadMaxAU

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The fiddle at the Pacific Pastoralmeat-packing works was neither particularly original nor fabulously lucrative. Butit was a nice little earner for all concerned while it lasted, and probablyharmless enough. All that changed when Herb Gardiner reported finding a bodyin Number 3 chiller.

There it was,jammed between a pallet load of best export boneless beef and half a tonne ofspring lamb. It was a Friday afternoon so, if Gardiner hadnt found it when hedid, the corpse would have spent the weekend locked in with the rest of thedead meat, carcasses parked halfway between paddock and dinner plate.

According to thestatement Gardiner gave to the Department of Labour investigators and thepolice, the Number 3 unit had a history of playing up. He had unlocked the doorand gone inside to read the gauge when he saw the body squeezed into the aislerunning through to the emergency exit hatch. He recognised it immediately as aleading hand with one of the casual work crews, later identified as EkremBayraktar. He didnt need to feel for Bayraktars pulse to know that he wasdead. He could tell by the waxy pallor of the mans face, by the dusting offine sugar on his lips where his last breath had turned to frost.

The body wassandwiched into a tight space between roof-high stacks of boxes. It was anarrow gap, but it was just wide enough for most men to pass along sidewayseven in protective clothing obstruction of access to the emergency hatch wasillegal. But Bayraktar was big, even by the standards of a place where men werehired to hump heavy loads around. Later at the morgue his naked corpse weighedin at over 135 kilos, big doughy rolls of flesh, soft obese bulk, like aweight-lifter gone to seed.

He was squeezed inso tight that they had to bring in one of the forklifts to move the loadedpallets around him before they could remove the body. Even without the boxesthere to support him he remained upright, balanced like a great big stalagmite.It was hard to imagine how he had got himself that far down the passage, orwhy.

In the businessthat followedthecalling of the ambulance, the notification of the police and the Department ofLabour, the removal of the body, the taking of photographs and statementsitnever occurred to anyone to look for the small zip-lock plastic bag of foldedfifties and twenties that Bayraktar had taken into the freezer with him. Andeven if they had known to look, and where, they would not have found anything.There were quite a few little details about that afternoon that seemed to havebeen missed.

With Bayraktargone, everything might have ended then and there and no-one would have been anythe wiser. It was just bad luck really that his untimely demise coincided witha delicate readjustment then taking place within certain echelons of theAustralian Labor Party, an organisation founded to further the aspirations ofthose who toil unseen in dark and dangerous places. An organisation which, nextto itself, loves the working man best.

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Perhaps I should begin by saying that thisis not a sob story. Its a cruel world, I know, and even in the just city a mancan be stiff. Bad luck happens. And its not like bad luck was something Ididnt already know a bit about. Damage control was part of my job, after all.But up until then it had been other peoples bad luck, not my own, that exercisedmy professional interest. Maybe thats why I was so unprepared for whathappened over those four October days. So Im not doing any special pleading,you understand. Considering what happened to others I could name, I got off prettylightly.

It all started onone of those miserable wet Monday mornings when, come nine oclock, half ofMelbourne is still strung out bumper-to-bumper along the South-eastern Freeway.I had just dropped my son Red at school, and as I swung my clapped-out oldRenault into Sydney Road the thought of all those Volvo and Camira driversstewing away behind their windscreen wipers brought a quiet smile to my lips.Not that I bore them any personal animosity, you understand. It was just thatif God wanted to punish the eastern suburbs for voting Liberal, She wouldnthear me complaining.

I could afford tofeel like that because the Brunton Avenue log-jam was miles away. Where Ilived, north of town, the toiling masses tended to start their toiling a littleearlier in the day, and most of those that still had jobs were already at work.By nine the rush hour had already come and gone. Apart from a few hundred lightindustrial vehicles and the occasional tram disgorging early shoppers, women inhead-scarfs mainly, I had the northbound lane to myself.

Not that I wasbusting a gut to get to work. No clock was waiting for me to punch it, and Icouldnt see the pile of paper on my desk bursting into flames if leftundisturbed a little longer. The fifteen minutes it took me to drive to workprovided one of my few moments of solitude all day and I liked to make the mostof it. As I drove I read the paper.

This was lessdangerous than it sounds. Id already studied the broadsheets over breakfast,and the Sun was the kind of tabloid easily absorbed while doingsomething elseshelling peas, for instance, or operating a lathe. I had itspread open on the passenger seat beside me, and whenever I hit a red light orgot stuck behind a slow-moving tram I skimmed a couple of pages. The springracing carnival had just begun, so the emphasis was on horseflesh, fashion andcatering. Just A Dash was favourite, black was big, and interesting things werebeing done with asparagus. Agreement was unanimousfour years in and the eightieswere holding firm as the most exciting decade ever.

The Bell Streetlights had changed and I was halfway across the intersection when my eye caughta name buried in a two-paragraph news brief at the bottom of page seventeen.That was when I first encountered the name Ekrem Bayraktar. Not that it meantanything to me at the time. It was the other name that got my attention. Isnatched up the page, draped it over the steering wheel and turned myconcentration away from the road long enough to constitute a serious threat topublic safety. This is what I read.

Policehave identified a man found dead last Friday in a freezer at the PacificPastoral meat-packing works at Coolaroo in Melbournes outer north as EkremBayraktar, 42, a shift supervisor at the works. It is believed that he suffereda heart attack and was overcome by cold while conducting a routine stocktake.

PacificPastoral has announced an immediate review of its procedures in light of theincident which coincides with the state governments attempts to gain UpperHouse approval for its controversial industrial health and safety legislation.Informed sources at Trades Hall believe the matter will be considered when theTHC Executive meets late next week. The Minister for Industry, Charlene Wills,was unavailable for comment.

I liked the way awhiff of Labor intrigue had been slipped into an account of some poor bastardscardiac arrest. But that wasnt what interested me. What had pushed my buttonwas mention of the Minister for Industry. Charlene Wills was a person whosereputation was a matter very close to my heart.

Up ahead I couldsee Pentridge, the razor ribbon atop its bluestone walls dripping dismally inthe drizzle. On my left was an Italian coffee shop and a row of oldsingle-storey terraces that had been tarted up into offices and professionalsuites. I pulled into the kerb, tucked the Sun under my arm and pushedopen the glass door of one of the shops, the one with the letters on the windowsaying Charlene Wills: Member of the Legislative Council for the Province ofMelbourne Upper.