Crooked House Read online

  Crooked House

  by Peter Menadue

  Published by Peter Menadue at Smashwords

  Copyright 2014 Peter Menadue

  "Every time you tell yourself it is alright it just

  becomes a bigger lie"

  - Powderfinger

  "Power only tires out those who do not have it"

  - Giulio Andreotti

  PROLOGUE

  Early morning. I sat in my cubicle in the Canberra bureau of the Melbourne Age, sipping coffee, reading the papers and feeling unusually serene. The day was bursting with promise. Something great was going to happen. All my veteran journo instincts told me so.

  My mood dipped slightly when I saw my bureau chief, Thomas Bilson, heading towards me. Tall and wiry, he looked slightly lost, as if he couldn’t find an arse to kiss or credit to steal.

  We’d been at logger-heads since I joined the bureau, two years ago. He considered me lazy and disruptive. I thought him an average journalist crawling his way to the top. Both assessments had some truth. But our relationship really nosedived when I told some colleagues that he was a total prick then turned around to find the total prick standing right behind me. His expression showed distain for honest and robust criticism.

  Yet, the atmosphere would have been even worse if he knew I’d been sleeping with his wife for the last six months. She was a political reporter for ABC radio whom I occasionally bumped into around Parliament House. Nothing happened until we accompanied the Prime Minister on a trip to Perth. One night, in a bar, after several drinks, she started complaining about her husband: he was boring, selfish, self-absorbed and lousy in bed. In other words, I wouldn’t spend the night alone.

  I soon discovered she had a healthy sexual appetite and perverted imagination. Giving me good sex was a way of getting revenge on her husband. Her barely suppressed anger certainly kept it spicy.

  But recently I’d got tired of her whinging about Bilson and even started to feel sorry for him - which really hurt. I also realised her shining eyes didn’t signify a vibrant personality, but a demented virago.

  Yet I still enjoyed turning the fast approaching idiot into a cuckold. Whenever he annoyed me, I had a private laugh at his expense. What bliss.

  Today, he looked especially overcast.

  I said, brightly: "Morning. You don’t look happy."

  "I’m not."

  "Why not? What's wrong?"

  "I had a fight with my wife last night."

  "Really?"

  A frosty stare. "Yes. And during it, she told me she’s been having an affair."

  My throat turned to corrugated iron. Only one word crawled out, barely alive. "Really?"

  "Yes. In fact, she even told me who she’s been fucking."

  I didn’t like his tone, his expression or the glint in his eye. Not one little bit. Another word scraped out. "Really?"

  He scowled and yelled: "Yes. She said she’s been screwing you, you prick."

  Suddenly, my personal and professional lives collided like freight trains. I said "shit" and he adopted the archaic and petulant remedy of throwing a punch. It started somewhere in the nineteenth century and travelled very slowly through the next hundred years - ignoring the rise in promiscuity and decline in values - until it grazed my jaw. A piss-weak effort. But the shock tipped me off my chair.

  I wish I could say that I leapt to my feet and danced around, firing off electrifying jabs, before delivering a salvo of rib-splintering body-blows that turned him into a bloody hulk. However, what transpired was much less cinematic. As I got up, he threw another punch. I ducked under it and tackled him. We rolled around on the floor, punching the air and collecting carpet lint. We must have looked like two bad actors trying to stage a fight. Afterwards, an onlooker told me we exchanged some of the hardest slaps he’d ever seen. Another said it looked like a porno movie and he was worried about STD.

  After what seemed an eternity, numerous hands dragged us apart. We stumbled to our feet and stood back, breathing hard, glaring.

  He snarled: "You, prick. You’ll pay for this."

  I knew I would. The bureau wasn’t big enough for both of us. One of us had to go and, because Bilson had his head right up the Editor’s crack, it would obviously be me.

  So I wasn’t surprised, the next day, when the Editor phoned and spoke in a sinister whisper. "Paul, I’m afraid your presence in the bureau had become, well, an embarrassment to me."

  "Embarrassment?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Because you’re a disruptive element. This latest episode just confirms that. I'm giving you one month's notice."

  "You're sacking me?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm a good reporter."

  "You're a pain in the arse."

  I put down the phone and mentally cursed my stupidity. One thing was certain: the fucking I got definitely wasn’t worth the fucking I got.

  If I had to get the sack, I would have preferred it to be for laziness, tardiness or incompetence. Instead, I'd tripped over my dick and become a figure of fun. Colleagues even started giggling when I approached. Somehow, I had to restore my pride and credibility.

  Fortunately, I should, at least, be able to find another good job.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Wrong. Jobs were scarce. Political journalism was getting blogged to death: any nasty little tick with access to the internet could now pretend he was a reporter and write just as much bullshit as the professionals. Further, my bout with Bilson for the Overweight Championship of the Press Gallery consolidated my reputation as a trouble-maker. Indeed, some bureau chiefs who interviewed me seemed worried I’d shag their loved ones and punch their lights out. No big metropolitan paper would hire me. The best job I could get was as the National Political Correspondent for the Launceston Herald.

  So, after sliding down a very long snake, I climbed onto a short and rickety ladder. The Herald had a tiny readership with a concentrated gene pool at the arse-end of Australia. In Parliament House, everybody calculates your usefulness with microscopic precision. When I joined the Herald, lots of people re-did their calculations and, after making many subtractions, came up with zero. Suddenly, their eyes glanced off my face or went right through me. I talked to lots of people who wanted to be talking to someone else.

  I realised just how far I’d fallen when I discovered the Herald wouldn’t pay me any overtime and my expense allowance wouldn’t feed a hamster. I was denied the petty plunder that sweetens a journalist’s dreary life.

  I needed to hook a big story to get my name up in lights and return to my rightful place among the Press Gallery elite. I wasn't greedy. I would have happily uncovered a sex scandal or tale of corruption. However, I soon found myself chasing a huge story along a path strewn with murder victims while trying not to join them.

  But that was all locked away in the future. In the meantime, like all journos, I lived one day at a time.

  The 250-odd members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery were housed on the second floor of the Senate Wing. Their bureaux stretched along both sides of a long corridor running the length of the floor.

  Eight months after I started working for the Launceston Herald, I got to work at about nine o’clock. The Herald’s press box contained a small mound of letters, faxes, press releases, speeches, draft bills and Hansard extracts.

  I tucked them under my arm and wandered down the corridor to the Herald’s bureau, really a large office with two desks. Filing cabinets lined the walls. In a corner was a small kitchen bench with a coffee machine. A long window faced Black Mountain. The bureau looked bare and functional because the paper was too lousy to buy any decent furniture. I even had to buy my own stapler.

  My wing-man in the bureau, Michael Boyd, was alrea
dy at his desk, reading a paper. Michael was in his early twenties, spotty faced and lightly built. Blue braces tamped down a heavily wrinkled white shirt. He had the sort of village-idiot haircut and vague expression that sometimes hides brilliance, but in his case spoke the truth.

  I was surprised to see him because he usually arrived late, if at all. Certainly, I preferred it when he didn’t turn up, because he was one of the most useless reporters to ever pull on a sports jacket, lacking drive, initiative and common sense. When I asked him to cover a story, he usually seized the wrong news angle and wrote it up in pre-school prose. Joining words together was not his forte. I always thought journalism a fairly easy profession until I saw him try his hand.

  However, his indolence and lack of talent had not cruelled his ambition. His oft-stated goal was to snare a big scoop that would make him famous. Of course, he did little to achieve that goal. Just smugly assumed that, if he hung around long enough, a scoop would eventually fall into his lap. I knew better. I’d been in Canberra for a decade and still hadn’t jagged a really big one.

  However, despite his failings and illusions, his job was totally secure because his father owned the Launceston Herald. That was why, instead of being sacked for incompetence, he was sent to Canberra to get experience under my tutelage. It was also why I was usually very nice to him. I just hoped that, in return, he’d praise me to his dad. So far, I’d seen no signs of that and was getting impatient.

  He stared at me through tired, bloodshot eyes, as if he’d slept with a vampire. He pursued nocturnal pleasure with far more dedication and enthusiasm than he applied to his job.

  I said: "God. You look like shit."

  "Feel like it. Went to a nightclub in Queanbeyan last night. Got to bed about four. Hah. Hah. Then I had to get up and go home."

  I didn't care if he was half-comatose for the rest of the day. If he wanted to spend it sleeping in a cot in the corner, I’d tuck him in. What I feared most was his enthusiasm.

  Wistfully, I recalled the distant mornings when I’d arrived at work feeling like shit after a night on the prowl. But that all ended when I started cohabitating with Anne. I envied the little bastard.

  I sat at my desk and sorted through the documents, looking for potential stories or important forthcoming events. Nothing grabbed my eye and I filed them in the bin.

  Next, I scanned the big city papers, looking for any political stories we might have to follow up. None.

  It looked like being a slow news day, unless there were fireworks on the floor of the House or Senate, both in session.

  I phoned the paper’s newsroom in Launceston and spoke to the Editor, Dirk Tucker. I’d met him once, when I flew down to Tasmania to be interviewed for the job. He was a gruff ex-police reporter with a shaven head, who sat next to a window ashing his cigarette on the sill. Most Tasmanians I met seemed fat and jolly, but he was just fat. I tried to break the ice by joking that at least Tassie journos had six fingers to type with. He was not amused.

  The Herald was an if-it-bleeds-it-leads tabloid, particularly if the bleeding occurred in Tasmania. It also ran more news about Launceston City Council than Federal Parliament. So when I warned Tucker it might be a slow news day, he didn’t sound concerned. Just gave a hacking cough. "Let me know how it goes."

  As I hung up, Michael glanced at me and said: "What do you want me to do?"

  "Arrange a one-on-one interview with the PM."

  It took him several moments to realise I was kidding. "Ah, right. And if I can’t do that?"

  The leader of the Greens had scheduled a press conference. It probably wouldn’t produce any news. Hopefully, though, it would keep Michael out of my hair. I told him to cover it.

  "OK."

  Fortunately, he didn’t mind being given shitty stories. In fact, he preferred being given as little responsibility as possible. That was understandable, because the little rat didn’t have to prove himself. To succeed, all he had to do was keep breathing longer than his dad. I wished I could buy shares in him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was the best of times, because it was the worst of times. In any power structure, confusion reigns at the top while disillusionment and bitterness eat away at the foundations. The present Government was no exception. For the last six months it had gone through what several of my clique-addicted colleagues called a "winter of discontent". There had been Cabinet splits, ministerial resignations, backbench revolts, factional brawls and policy divisions, all played out in the media spotlight.

  However, the biggest blow to the Government was the economic downturn, the worst in twenty years. As the unemployment rate soared, the Government’s popularity plummeted.

  The Prime Minister, Brian Hislop, had always been a dour and uninspiring leader. That didn't matter while the good times rolled. But when the economy fell out of bed, voters turned on him savagely. Now his personal approval rating was below serial killers, child molesters and journalists. His strongest demographic was anyone who’d been in a coma for the last three years.

  At a recent by-election, the Government lost a usually safe seat. Government MPs panicked and started looking around for a new leader. Rumours swept Parliament House that various Ministers were planning a palace coup.

  Of course, all of the potential challengers gave him the dreaded vote of confidence which, in pollie-speak, meant they were circling for the kill.

  That day, after lunch, I sat in the House, watching Question Time. As expected, the reinvigorated Opposition spent most of it asking the PM barbed questions about the economic crisis.

  The PM blamed the recession on the global economic downturn and drop in international commodity prices. "However, this Government has worked hard to improve our economic competitiveness. So when the global economy does recover we will be well placed to take advantage of that."

  While he talked, Opposition MPs kept up a stream of jeers and interjections. But Government MPs only offered a few chirrups of support and many looked distinctly unimpressed with his performance. If this was the Roman senate, he’d now be a corpse wrapped in a bloody toga.

  After Question Time, I strolled around to Aussies’ Coffee Bar with a couple of other reporters, where we spent the next hour slurping lattes and speculating about how long the PM would last. None expected him to be occupying the Lodge when the first leaves of autumn fell.

  When I returned to my bureau, Michael was at his desk, still looking like shit.

  I said: "How’d the presser go?"

  He looked a little embarrassed. "Umm, I’ve got some bad news."

  I sighed. "What?"

  "I forgot to put any batteries in my tape recorder. So I didn’t get any of it."

  Christ. If only his dad could see him now.

  I said: "Did you make any notes?"

  "No. I thought my tape recorder was working."

  I stared at him. He was almost too stupid to roll rocks down a hill. But for that reason his success in life was assured. He’d join the long list of boobs I’d met with glittering careers.

  I turned on my computer and pulled up a wire service story about the press conference he’d attended. Nothing interesting happened. I told him not to bother filing a story. It wouldn’t get into the paper anyway.

  "Then I probably should go home," he said wearily.

  "Yeah. Good idea."

  As he departed, I started typing up my story about Question Time. That was easy. My mind has a template of the basic newspaper story. I just pour the facts into it.

  The Prime Minister yesterday claimed that the economy would soon recover from the present recession …

  CHAPTER THREE

  Canberra is a strange, unnerving city in the middle of nowhere, attached to the coast by a 300-kilometre umbilical cord made of bitumen. If a competition was held to find the world’s most boring city it would win hands down, if the judges could be bothered visiting it. A few bold public monuments remind residents that it wasn’t build yesterday - that it has a history. But Canb
erra has no centre, no ghettos, no ethnic quarters, no red light districts and no industrial zones. It’s just a vast archipelago of suburbs scattered through bushland and linked together by four- and six-lane expressways. In Canberra, it’s easy to drive anywhere, but there’s nowhere worth driving to.

  The suburbs themselves are pockets of smug complacency and quiet desperation. Its inhabitants have the highest living standards in the country, and the highest rates of alcoholism, suicide and divorce. That’s not surprising, because in Canberra you get the awful feeling that everything exciting is happening elsewhere, except wife-swapping, of course.

  I lived in Ainslie, one of the older suburbs, with wide parklands and long curved streets lined with wattle and grevillea.

  Most homes are brick bungalows. But I lived in a townhouse, the last in a row of five, with a line of garages behind them. I parked in my garage shortly after eight o’clock and strolled around to my front door. The chilly night air nipped at my legs. I opened the front door and stepped into a large open-plan living area.

  Soon after my affair with Angelica Bilson ended - and I got kicked off The Age - I started dating an attractive solicitor called Anne Holloway. She was, quite frankly, much too good for me. But she didn’t realise that and I tried hard to keep her in the dark. Indeed, she still hadn’t cottoned on, four months later, when she moved in with me. Or maybe her lease ending had something to do with that.

  Back then, my unit looked as soulless as a transit lounge: most of the furniture was assembled with a cavalier disregard for the instructions; the walls were festooned with faded Van Gogh posters; the pot-plants had died of thirst and everything was covered in prehistoric dust. My ornaments could have fitted into a small suitcase and I barely had enough crockery to eat alone. But Anne quickly imported pot-plants, dhurries, vases, rugs and a complete dinner set. Watching her clean the unit left me mentally exhausted.