Never a True Word Page 13

  To my surprise I see my old boss Cavendish in a corner. I hadn’t seen him since the day at the footy. He catches my eye and signals me over. I don’t feel in the mood for a catch-up so I gesture, hoping it implies that I am looking for someone else and don’t have time for a chat. He responds by holding up a large yellow envelope.

  I pick my way to Cavendish, fear building with every step. I know what this is about and it’s not going to be fun. Not that you would have known it from the delight on Cavendish’s face, the look of an old friend about to catch up for a little caffeine and a chat. Newspaper journo Cavendish was always a little rumpled and crumpled in his favoured office wear of chinos and a blue shirt, hair a few weeks past a cut, shoes scuffed. A different man sits in front of me sporting a sharp blue suit, red tie with silver spots, and an expensive haircut. I greet him without warmth. ‘Did you send me that picture? Those texts?’ I demand, standing over him.

  ‘Jack, Jack, sit down. We’re friends. I’m sure we can sort this thing out without too much trouble.’

  ‘Sort what thing out?’ I ask, not moving to take the seat he has pushed out with his right leg.

  ‘Sit down and I’ll tell you. Look, mate, people are starting to stare at you.’

  I acquiesce.

  ‘How are you anyway, Jack? It’s good to see you,’ he starts.

  ‘Look, Ian, cut the bullshit. Why am I here and what do you want?’

  ‘Ok, ok, fine. Do you want a coffee at least?’

  I don’t reply, just give him my best impression of a hard-man stare. It hasn’t scared anyone yet, but I have every confidence I will perfect it one day.

  ‘Right, be like that,’ he says, breaking the uncomfortable silence. ‘As you know I am working these days for Bruce Fox. Great bloke, you should meet him, there may even be a job in it for you at the end of all this if you play your cards right.’

  ‘Ian, what do you want?’

  ‘Always rushing to the point, Jack. How very like you. Fine. The Village Green project. You know about it?’

  The Village Green development was another of those massive housing projects where as many people as possible were crammed into as small an area as possible. It was then given a name like Village Green—essentially as a way of taunting the inhabitants. This middle-class slum being built on the city’s fringes is apparently worth somewhere north of $250 million to Bruce. There are also rumours that it may not be as financially sound as some of its spruikers would like you to believe.

  ‘Yes, I am aware of Village Green.’

  ‘Well, Bruce is a little worried about the time it is taking for it to be approved by Cabinet,’ Cavendish says.

  ‘How do you know it’s even been to Cabinet?’ I ask. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to confirm that, Jack. In fact it’s been sent up three times and been knocked down for a variety of bullshit reasons. Our people inside government know these things. What I want you to do is help convince your boss that he should support the project in Cabinet. Maybe even bring to bear some of his excellent argumentative skills to help push it through.’

  ‘Why would he do that? I hear a few whispers that the project is running out of money.’

  ‘No, it’s not. That’s just the usual media crap. It’s fine. So far. It just needs to get moving.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t take you long to change your tune did it? Chasing a fucking dodgy company is now “media crap” is it? I shouldn’t be surprised, you were never much of a journo in the first place.’

  Cavendish sighs. Looks pained. ‘Shut up, Jack, and listen to me. You better tell your boss that it’s in his interests to co-operate here. Tell him if he doesn’t it will go very badly for him. Very badly indeed.’ He stops. Takes a breath. I continue practising my hard-man stare, even though it doesn’t seem to be having too much of an effect.

  ‘We have pictures,’ he announces in melodramatic fashion.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘I have already sent you one.’

  ‘You’d want something better than that. That one looks like it was taken by Stevie Wonder through the dirty window of a fast-moving train.’

  ‘Oh, we have better, don’t worry about that, showing all sorts of things. It was a big day on Bruce’s yacht and your man had a wonderful time judging by the pictures.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘I’ll keep that to myself for the moment. But the point is we have these pictures and it would be terribly unfortunate if they somehow managed to find their way into the wrong hands, Jack. Imagine what Annabelle Howard would do with this. I hear she’s not overly fond of your boss.’

  ‘You are a piece of shit, Cavendish. Always were. But really this is what you are reduced to? Pulling a bullshit blackmail stunt to try to push through a dodgy land deal? I thought I had sold out but I am fucking Carl Bernstein compared to you,’ and I stand up.

  ‘Sit down, Jack, I haven’t finished yet.’

  ‘Yes, you have, Ian. I don’t want to hear from you or your sleazy boss again. If I do, I’m going to the cops. How’s that going to make your dodgy land deal look then, fuckwit?’

  ‘Then we all go down, Jack. We all go down.’

  34

  I leave him and stumble out of the café, banging into a couple of chairs on my way. I hear the café owner shout my name, but I don’t stop. I turn left and head back towards the office and have taken a dozen steps before I realise the day’s blue sky is covered by ugly dark clouds, and the rain is trampolining off already slick pavements. I dive under the awning of another café trying to gather my thoughts and see if the rain will ease off. After five minutes I decide I am having no luck on either count. The rain has set in giving me the feeling the street has suddenly moved out of focus. My brain is blurry as well. I can’t find the right answer for the ‘what to do next’ question. Can I keep this to myself? Cavendish has to be bluffing. Can I wait him out? What if he’s not? Could Sloan have done something ridiculous on that boat? And what was his crime? Girls? Drugs? Brown-paper envelopes? And why come to me? Why didn’t Fox just send Sloan whatever he has? Too many questions. Anyway, I can’t see it. Sloan may be occasionally reckless, among other things, but he’s not a complete idiot, and unless I have entirely misjudged him, he’s not a crook either. Despite everything I still felt the reason he was in the game was a belief that he could actually do a bit of good for the joint.

  There is no way to keep this to myself, but if I have to tell him, do I do it on my own or bring in the others? Perhaps the fewer people who know about this the better. I step out from under the awning into the rain, worrying no longer about my squelching shoes or drenched suit. I enjoy the beating of the rain on my fevered skull as I walk back to the office.

  35

  The election, now less than six months away, is starting to exercise our minds. Strategy meetings are already being held by people far further up the food chain than me. Ray has gone to a few, the Premier and some of his senior staff were involved plus the head of the party—plus a pollster, focus groups, a consultant, and a variety of advertising types. As far as I could tell about a dozen people would meet two or three times a week to figure out the best way to attack the election.

  We are the warmest of favourites to remain in government. Why would they chuck us out? Boyle is ever present, but the punters have not grown tired of him; indeed, if anything, they seemed to be warming to him the longer he’s in the job. And crucially the other lot are pretty hopeless. They are led by a ineffectual bloke called Jeremy Montague, who lacks the strong streak of nasty displayed by the best political leaders. Montague is a ‘family’ politician, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, and carrying the supercilious air of someone doing a job he considers his birthright. He’d entered parliament in his late twenties, after expensive schooling and university overseas. By most standards he has never done a day’s work in his life, yet here he is leading one of the state’s major political parties. In his late forties, with
his bloated face and rosy cheeks and the few extra kilos around the middle, he has the look of a bloke gone prematurely to seed. His head sports tight black curls, with just the odd shot of grey peppering the surface, and a voice that appears to be a remnant of the English class system corrupted by too many years in the Australian sun. He speaks of the ‘little people’ he wants to help—presumably his chauffeur, butler and maid. Still, nobody is taking anything for granted. The prevailing emotion in politics at the best of times is paranoia: ‘Who said that?’ ‘What have you heard?’ ‘Is he with us?’ ‘Is she against us?’ ‘Whose side are you on?’ ‘Who leaked it?’ ‘That journo is definitely a Lib/Labor/Green hack.’ And so on.

  In the lead up to an election the paranoia slowly magnifies. Day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month, the tension slowly ratchets up until election day, when it is released by either victory or defeat. It’s understandable. There’s a lot at stake—the difference between being elected and not is like the difference between playing for Manchester United and running around with the University over-35s.

  The mantra running through my head most days is ‘just get to the election and see what happens next’. The confrontation with Cavendish hasn’t helped my mood and I slink back into the office damp and silent and remain that way for the rest of the day.

  I have decided to keep it all to myself for the moment. I don’t have the energy to go through it with the others, or the courage to face Sloan just yet, although I know this is not a tenable approach in the long run. More than anything I want to talk about this latest horror with Emily. I have come to view Emily and Lily as my only refuges from the daily madness. Long-suffering Emily has been around media and politics even longer than I, and understands the peculiar people, unsociable hours and pack mentality that can take over a minister’s office. And my one-year-old is the best release of all. She has no idea what‘s going on and is always happy to see me.

  I have no doubt that Emily is a fair bit smarter, and a lot more practical than me when it comes to this world of politics so I am quick to ask her advice when things are travelling south and the roof of the bunker is dropping ever closer to my skull.

  After dinner, after Lily is finally asleep, I tell her the Cavendish story.

  ‘So, who have you told about this?’ she asks.

  ‘You’re the first,’ I say with a forced cheerfulness, which I hope will impart the desperation I’m starting to feel.

  ‘What? You haven’t told Sloan or even Leo? The cops? Are you nuts? You have to tell them,’ she says.

  ‘I know this. I know this,’ I mumble. ‘I just didn’t have the … I don’t know the energy to face up to Ray and go through all this today.’

  Emily looks at me. Not in a happy way. ‘Jack. This is not about you. This is about the government. About the election, about blackmail. This is not the time for your usual “if I ignore it, it will all go away” routine.’

  ‘I was thinking of just quitting,’ I say, not sure if I’m kidding or not. ‘Then it can be someone else’s problem.’

  ‘Fucking hell, Jack, pull yourself together. This is not something you can run away from. What about Ray? Even he doesn’t deserve this kind of shit. This is your job. Protect him.’

  ‘I know,’ I mutter. ‘But what do I do? Tell Ray? Tell Leo and Harry? Tell the cops? I mean, where do I start? Once it’s out in the open it can no longer be controlled.’

  ‘You can’t control it anyway. It’s not yours to control. Ian and that crook he works for will determine what happens next. Your job is to figure out a way to contain it.’

  ‘Well, that should be easy.’

  Emily gives me another of those looks that communicates her disappointment in me. ‘Lay off the self-pity, Jack, it’s not your most attractive feature.’

  ‘Well, what do I do then? How the fuck do I get Ray out of this one?’ ‘Speak to him. First thing tomorrow. You can’t let it drift. But only him. I think you’re right to try to keep it from spreading. Talk to Ray, but leave Leo and Harry out of it for the moment. You never know, it could all turn out to be bullshit.’

  36

  I’m back to wishing for that car crash again, after waking with a headache that three cups of coffee have done nothing to ease. But I make it into the office and before I can say anything Leo announces he has news and to gather in his office.

  Bob is quitting. Fuck. He is taking the job co-ordinating the party’s election campaign. Leo summons Harry and I to deliver the news while Bob just sits in a chair and says nothing, avoiding eye contact.

  Harry mutters ‘cunt’ and walks out. I walk over to Bob, put my hand out. He takes it, then I call him a cunt too, but with a smile on my face, even if I feel a sense of betrayal that he is bailing out and leaving the rest of us behind. Working in this office we have grown close and Bob’s leaving chips away at the illusion we can control what we are doing. Maybe it’s a crack in the dam wall, with Bob gone the others could follow. And as party people there is every chance they could be offered a job elsewhere. I, on the other hand, never filled out the party membership form Bob handed me on my first day. I like to fool myself that I am an independent operator. Just a gun for hire.

  ‘What happened to the budget night promise?’ I ask him. ‘One in, all in. We shook on it.’

  ‘You did,’ Bob replies. ‘I never did. I didn’t shake on it. You just thought I had. I wouldn’t have done it. I knew I was getting out. I can’t cope with Ray anymore. Anyway this is a good step up for me.’

  ‘Well, fuck you then,’ I say. ‘You’re a fucking liability anyway. We’ll do better without you.’

  ‘But with me gone, who’s going to save your arse now?’ is the question he leaves me with, more pertinent than he could ever know.

  When he’s gone I slump down into his recently vacated chair and ask Leo where Ray is, with as much nonchalance as I can muster.

  ‘He should be in soon. Believe it or not he actually swung by the electorate office to catch up with some constituents. Must be an election coming.’

  37

  Elections creep up on you like a storm on a summer day. Blue skies become clouds gathering in the distance, you notice a drop in temperature as a cool breeze swings through. Clouds sweep in and your shadow disappears with the sun. Suddenly you are standing in the middle of a cloudburst. There is a truth in the modern notion that political parties are in constant campaign mode. It explains the relentless work ethic of most political leaders, the rise of the soundbite, the FM radio interview with the brain-dead cheerful cretins who populate breakfast radio, and the perceived domination of my lot—the spin doctors.

  Even the word spin is a reflection of the constant campaign model. I have decided that the word is a sign of the intellectual failure of both the political and media classes. The media like to rely on the term spin because it generally stops them having to think too hard analysing the pros and cons of policy debate. If you decide from the outset that everything the government has to tell you is bollocks it makes writing the story or running an agenda that much easier. Before I took the government’s tainted coin I would have happily subscribed to that notion.

  Now I find it stupid. It frustrates me that a government is not allowed to put up an argument in favour of its policies without it being derided as ‘spin’. I am not saying that I have never spun a journo, but quite a lot of what I say is actually the truth. Perhaps the constant desire to spruik the good news has corrupted the political process to a stage where nobody believes anything anymore. But if words such as spin become a crutch for the media, everybody loses.

  An example. Everyone hates speed cameras and speeding fines, so therefore they must be evil—their primary purpose is to be revenue raisers for the government. Ignore for a moment that it’s an incontrovertible fact speed cameras save lives. One morning the Opposition’s main numbers man Tony Parkinson was speaking with my second favourite shock jock Terry Dowell. They were getting stuck into Sloan about the ‘millions and millions and mill
ions’ being raised every year by the cops through speeding fines. Every nut bag who listens to the show was ringing in with his or her tale of woe: she was only a little bit over, it wasn’t his fault, the moon got in her eyes. Let’s forget the fact they were all breaking a law.

  It was a lovely little anti-government half hour. Annoyed, I sent an email direct to Dowell with the latest numbers on how much had been raised through speeding fines. It turns out this year was lower than last.

  ‘I have just been sent an email,’ intones Dowell, ‘from Sloan’s spin doctor. I must say it’s good to know he listens to the show. It means your message will be getting straight through to the top. So listening to this show does make a difference. Anyway, what I have are the last two years of revenue raised from speeding fines. It says here, Tony, the number has fallen. What do you say to that?’

  ‘Well, that’s just more government spin, Terry, …’ And off they went again about what a bunch of robber barons we are.

  This morning I sit at my desk. Waiting and listening. Waiting for the bell that announces Ray has arrived and is demanding to be let in. It’s a strange thing but I must hear that bell chime twenty times a day, pressed by all sorts of people from delivery men, postal workers, people attending meetings. But there is something about the way Ray pushes that button that announces: ‘Ray’s here!’

  It is nearing lunchtime before Sloan arrives. There is a loud ding-dong followed by his heavy footsteps marching down the office corridor, straight into the office, not a word to anyone. The door slams shut behind him. Wonderful, I think, sitting in my crumpled paper-strewn office, the in-tray again piled thirty centimetres high, the out-tray empty. I gather my courage and force myself out of the vinyl high-backed chair.