Deep Purple
As soon as I heard the news that Des ‘Tuppence’ Moran had been shot dead in Ascot Vale, three thoughts occurred to me. 1. How sad and terrible. 2. Good news for Nine; More Underbelly, and 3. I hope the Herald Sun will be dispatching journalist John Hamilton to the scene for one of his on-the-spot reports.
Hamilton is the man they set loose when they need a particularly purple ‘human interest’ angle on a controversial event, to whack in a box down the side of the main story. His specialty is the ‘telling detail’, and, much like the photographer in series five of The Wire who always manages to find a charred and forlorn-looking child’s doll at the scene of every house fire, Hamilton never lets you down. What would he discover at the scene of the Tuppence shooting, I wondered? A half-finished cappuccino? A discarded scratchie ticket, ‘never to be collected on’? Or the tears of a baby running into the gutter of a street where the locals stop to doff their caps and utter a simple, plaintive ‘Why?’
First thing next morning, I ran, yes, ran, to the newsagents to see what it would be.
The parakeet in the cage outside the Ascot Vale Florist in Union Rd would whistle bravely when a stranger approached.
Really? How exactly does one measure the courage of a parakeet’s whistle?
Then the little bird would stop and tremble.
So, it’s trembling now? Why would this be?
For there was more than a cold breeze blowing down Union Rd, so very quiet in the afternoon sunshine yesterday.
That’s right. There was some of the windiest prose this side of Steve Vizard’s Two Weeks in Lilliput.
There was fear in the air.
And this somehow accounted for the parakeet’s trembling? In that case, you’d think it would have seen the gunmen coming and squawked out a warning.
Here in Ascot Vale there had been the crack of gunshots and murder at high noon.
That’s true, it did happen right on midday.
Not some Wild West murder…
Oh, for fuck’s sake! I don’t think even Herald Sun readers are in danger of thinking that a time-travelling Al Swearengen had landed in Ascot Vale to feed the ‘Last Moran Standing’ (100th use of this phrase in twenty-four hours!) to the pigs.
After some standard issue gear about the ‘blue and white police tape stretched across the buckets of lillies outside the florist’ and, across the road, the handily ironic ‘Happy Reception Centre’, Hamilton returns to the parakeet, whose trembling is poignantly contrasted with that of eyewitness Han Carkkeek (I assume that’s how you spell his name, but this is a paper that can spell ‘Strauchanie’, but not ‘Peter Helliar’). Then we meet a detective, standing next to a café with a sign ‘advertising the day’s cake and coffee special.’
There had been the lemon tart or the flourless choc cake until noon, but now it was afternoon and the policeman in the black suit and the black striped tie was talking murder.
I don’t get it. In Ascot Vale, once someone brings up the subject of murder, is it customary to put all the cakes away? And, given that he wouldn’t have arrived on the scene until well after noon, did John Hamilton really pop in and ask what cakes had been on sale earlier that day?
But back to the parakeet.
Outside the florist’s shop, the parakeet tries his cheerful whistle again.
As opposed to his brave one.
Then stops. Then trembles again.
I assume that this bird has already been signed up by Max Markson.
The lillies are $10 a bunch. Plenty will be needed for the funeral.
Oh Christ, the funeral. Imagine what he’s going to spot there!
The sad-faced old basset hound who sits wearily outside the chapel has seen it all before. Another gangland murder is no big news round these parts, not to this old dog. But these are not the streets of Al Capone’s Chicago. Not unless the almost mournful looking clouds that look bravely down on the funeral party have got it all wrong. But they haven’t. It’s a funeral, all right, judging by the expression on the face of the trembling tabby who stands sentry by the gravestones. If only Tuppence could have borrowed one of his nine lives. But he didn’t.
And who’s this, emerging from the hearse, parked, ironically, next to a shop selling ‘Life: Be In It’ T-shirts? And why is he walking toward me, like a jungle panther in the rays of the evening sun glinting off the handles of the coffin? And what’s that in his hand? Do these tired eyes deceive me or is it a copy of the ‘Herald Sun’, its pages flapping like the police tape that festooned the tragic scene of Tuppence’s final flat white? And why is he grabbing me by my collar and hurling me into an open grave? Steady on, cobber. There’s a time and a place.
As the shovelfuls of wet dirt rain down on my prostrate form like confetti, so very inappropriate for a funeral, I wonder what that weary old basset hound is thinking? Nothing, probably. He knows the score.
Tony Martin is the Melbourne-based author of ‘A Nest of Occasionals’ and ‘Lolly Scramble’. Podcasts of his radio show ‘Get This’ are still available for free download at iTunes (type in: ‘Get This: Richard Marsland Lives’). He is currently directing new episodes of ABCTV's ‘The Librarians’.
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