Free Sucked In by Shane Maloney

away, not a backward look, poised and purposeful. I plopped down in the place customarily occupied by the government whip, heaved a sigh and waited for my blood to settle. Seven minutes twenty-nine seconds had elapsed since we entered the chamber, a zipless PB.
    As the coital fog ebbed, I contemplated Kelly’s crack. The one about putting my hand up. What did she mean about Thorsen and the numbers? Was she working up a story? Was the cat already out of the bag, or was she just fishing?
    I’d have no answer until she called me back. Even then, I’d be lucky to get anything out of her.
    I consulted my watch. One o’clock. No wonder I was feeling peckish. Time for a smidge of the fast and easy.
    Outside on the front steps, a photographer was posing a wedding party at one of the antique light stanchions, the bride’s gown billowing. Nearby, a pair of teenage constables were keeping a bored eye on a cluster of subversive geriatrics, a thermos-fuelled vigil against the Formula One circuit in Albert Park.
    I joined the lunchtime throng on the Bourke Street footpath, and spotted an empty stool at the window-bench of Tojo Bento.
    Equipped with a plastic tray of yakitori nori and a squishy-fishy soy-sauce sachet, I parked myself at the bench and pried open a pair of disposable rainforest-timber chopsticks. As I sank my fangs into the seaweed, I unfolded Inky Donnelly’s slim collection of photocopied newspaper clippings and began to read.

Alert and purposeful, Merv Cutlett stared into the middle distance, his jaw clenched in unwavering resolve, steely determination glinting in his gimlet eyes. His hair, thin but tenacious, was slicked back over his scalp and deep lines were etched into his sentinel face. He looked like a cross between a fox terrier and a sack of hacksaw blades.
    The photograph was Merv’s personal favourite. His Great Leader shot. He also liked Merv at Work , which showed him at his desk, staring out importantly from behind a redoubt of papers, important files weighed down by a hefty ring of keys, his emblem of office. For lighter stories, he favoured Merv Shares a Laugh, in which he appeared surrounded by a mob of admiring garbologists at the annual union picnic.
    All three were regular features of the FUME News during my stint as editor. I’d not been at the Municipals long when the incident at Lake Nillahcootie occurred. Six months or so. Thinking back, I had no firm recollection of hearing the news about Merv’s disappearance. No JFK moment. Many concerns occupy a man in his twenties, and the office is sometimes the least of them. Cutlett’s drowning was a notable event, of course, but all I could recall with any certainty was the almost palpable sense of relief it brought to the Queensberry Street office.
    As I studied Merv’s photograph, tears flooded my eyes. Bloody wasabi. Honking into a paper napkin, I turned to the next photocopy.
    It was a page from the Herald , Melbourne’s long-defunct evening broadsheet. The date was written in the margin in Inky’s shorthand scrawl. Saturday 27 July 1978. Refugee Influx Raises Fears, I read. Terrorist Bombing Shakes London. Record Profit for Qantas. Unionist Feared Drowned.
    A search has failed to find any trace of prominent union official Mervyn Cutlett, 58, who disappeared this morning while fishing on Lake Nillahcootie north of Alexandra.
    According to police, Mr Cutlett was reported to have fallen overboard in rough weather conditions. Despite repeated attempts, his companions were unable to pull him from the water. Police said that heavy rain at the scene has hampered the efforts of emergency services to locate Mr Cutlett, who is head of the Federated Union of Municipal Employees. The alarm was raised by fellow union officials Barry Quinlan and Charles Talbot. Mr Talbot was treated at the scene for hypothermia.
    The story concluded with a statement from the officer in charge about the police being short-handed due