Late Final Extra

CHAPTER 1

WINTER, 2011 – SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Kwei Li hated cleaning the newsroom. No matter what he did, it never looked any good. The carpet always remained a dirty brown and Li was not allowed to so much as touch the chaotic piles of paper on the desks. The most he could do each night was tidy around the mess: whisk away the paper cups of putrefying coffee and wipe down phones, keyboards and screens.

"But don’t touch the stuff on the desks, Li, do not touch the stuff on the desks." The boss had been very clear.

So, with a sigh, Li lightly flicked a duster across the untidy piles of media releases, the leaning stacks of manila folders, the pillars of shorthand notebooks, the yellowing newspapers, the curling page proofs. Even that was more than he was supposed to do, but he couldn’t stop himself. A man got some pride.

And tonight, what was he supposed to do with Marty’s desk? How could he clean with Marty slumped there like that? Arms flung across the keyboard, grey head resting on his arms. Drunk again, Li thought.

Li reached around and turned off the vacuum cleaner he carried on his back. He leaned one hand on the cart full of cleaning stuff, massaged his chin and surveyed Marty’s desk. Could he just leave it? Just this once? Would anyone notice? Then he saw small globs of something brownish and sticky-looking near the keyboard. Vomit? Li asked himself.

He felt something rising in his throat and swallowed hard.

Li frowned, looked at the back of Marty’s head and looked at his watch. Already after midnight. That desk had to be done. Marty would have to sleep it off somewhere else.

Li put a gentle hand on Marty’s shoulder. Hey, Marty, he said quietly, gotta wake up. Gotta go home now. No response. Marty?

Li gripped Marty’s shoulder and shook him hard. C’mon, Marty, you…

Marty’s chair slid away from the desk and Marty fell sideways to the floor, landing on his back. He lay there, knees bent, legs half under the desk, one eye shut, the other open as though staring past Li to the acoustic tile drooping from the ceiling.

Li slipped the vacuum cleaner off his back, dropped down and shook Marty again. Marty’s head flopped loosely to one side.

Li shuddered, jumped back and ran for the radio room where the overnight copy boy was monitoring the police and emergency radios.

Hey, Ryan. Ryan, you come. Marty. It’s Marty. Come right now.

CHAPTER 2

Hi, Phil. Just a cappuccino, thanks. With a double shot of coffee.

Sophie Tebaldi glanced at her watch as she put $4 on the counter.

Nothing else I can tempt you with? asked the young barista. He looked forward to his daily chats with the pretty journalist with the long dark hair and the smiling eyes. He'd even asked her out once, and been gently rebuffed. Oh, well.

No. Gotta run. I'm late already.

Not today you're not, Phil said, tamping down the coffee. He nodded in the direction of the Extra's office, an unlovely brick and fibro box squatting on the other side of the road. They've only just started letting people in.

What do you mean? Was there a fire?

No, someone died and the cops were keeping people off the editorial floor. They've only just left. It was an old journo apparently. Marty someone. Did you know him?

Marty Davis? He's dead?

So you knew him?

"Everyone at the Extra has a Marty Davis story, said Sophie. Everyone except me, probably. But he's a legend. Or was. How did he die?"

A couple of the cops came over here for breakfast. The espresso dripped slowly into the paper cup. They said he was found at his desk after midnight. Said it looked like a heart attack. They thought he’d just dropped dead. But they had to close the floor, you know, after the ambos failed to revive him. Then they had to get the body out, talk to people. That sort of thing.

Sophie nodded. Doesn't surprise me really. Marty was a classic red-faced old hack. Overweight, grey hair, rumpled suit. Ring any bells?

Phil shook his head. The froth nozzle steamed.

Sophie smiled: Well, I don't think he drank much coffee. From what I've heard, he spent most of his time at the pub. I've chatted to him a few times. He seemed a nice enough bloke, but everyone said he was an epic drinker. He was the one that Jim Spanos sued.

Phil whistled.

You mean, the four million dollar man?

That's the one. She smiled ruefully and took the coffee. We might all still lose our jobs, thanks to him. Gotta run. I've got to do a phone interview at 10.

Sophie sipped as she crossed the road to the grim, jagged-roofed, former factory – once the home of Blitz cleaners and disinfectants,– which for the last 20 years or so had been the unlikely temporary home of The Evening Extra. The brick and fibro building in the semi-industrial inner suburb of Rosebery was a long way from Hollywood’s idea of a newspaper office, she thought. In the newsroom, with its shabby carpet and missing ceiling panels, a briefing was going on around the chief of staff's desk. A couple of the older women were clutching tissues as the editor spoke. Eamon Walsh, the paper’s designated human-interest reporter who shared the same office pod with Sophie, beckoned her over.

Marty Davis was found dead this morning, he whispered. Wheatcroft's just filling us in.

Brad Wheatcroft, The Evening Extra's editor, nodded at Sophie, silently acknowledging her arrival.

I know Marty Davis's death has come as a shock, he was saying, and we are making arrangements for a bereavement counsellor, should any of you need to speak to someone. He looked pointedly at the women clutching the tissues. "Please have a word with Felicity in HR if you do.

And we will, of course, be honouring Marty with an obituary. He deserves that. He was a good friend to many of us and, in his time, a very fine journalist. I think we should all remember him that way.

There was a muted mumble of assent from the 30-odd staff in the newsroom. Wheatcroft stood up.

Well, I'd better get back to work, he said, suddenly businesslike. Sophie, would you come and see me?

I've just got to do a phoner, she said. Can you give me 15 minutes?

He nodded, and began to stroll towards his office.

Midday edition conference is at 10.30, he said, looking back over his shoulder. Try to pop in before then. It should only take a minute.

Sophie grabbed Eamon's arm. Do you think he's going to say yes to that upgrade?

Eamon looked at her hand, almost placed his own on top of it, then thought better of it. Sophie, love, God knows you deserve it – but somehow I don't think so. This place is broke, remember? And we have one very fine dead journalist to thank for it. But I'll pray for you. At least Wheatcroft hasn’t called me in for another ‘little chat’ to ask me to edit the computer section – on top of my normal duties. Maybe it's your turn.

Thanks, she said. You certainly know how to cheer a girl up. She raised her cup. Well, here's to Marty Davis. She gulped down the last sip. Oh shit, she added. I've got to call that woman. I'll let you know what happens with Wheatcroft.

Twenty minutes later she was in the editor's office.

Is it about that upgrade? she asked. I think I deserve one after that Walkley nomination...

Wheatcroft cut her off with a raised hand. You know we issued a statement a couple of months ago saying there would be no upgrades and no pay rises, Sophie, he said. It's no joke. This paper is on a financial knife edge.

Sophie sighed. So what did you want to see me about?

It's Marty. I want you to do his obit.

Why me? I barely knew him.

That means you can come at it from a fresh angle. Too many people here have a history with Marty. They remember the bad stuff – the drinking, the court cases, the affairs. There was a time when he had bonked most of the women in this office.

Sophie's eyebrows shot up in disbelief. She suddenly saw the weeping, middle-aged admin staff in a whole new light.

Wheatcroft's mouth twisted into a smile. It's true, he said. "And he got pissed with half the men, and he pissed off the other half. And then there was that bloody Spanos mess ... So yes, in short, you're just the woman for the job. Forget everything I just said. Go back through the clippings and see what Marty Davis used to be. "

And what was that?

A bloody good journalist.

Sophie’s eyebrows must have given away her thoughts. She could imagine – just – Marty as a one-time office lothario but she wasn’t used to Wheatcroft being sentimental.

Go on, have a look at the clippings, the editor said. Marty broke some great stories about those bent NSW police commissioners. And he was a good friend to me. Wheatcroft's voice shook a little. My mentor, really, in the early days. Give him the obit he deserves – a thousand words at least.

OK, said Sophie slowly. I'll see what I can do. But I always thought he was just a drunken hack. The guy who threw a computer screen out the window, that sort of thing.

Not at all. Well, not always. Wheatcroft leaned back in his chair. His voice became confidential. "The old days were different. To get the stories, you had to go out drinking with your contacts. That meant lots of drinks if you were covering police rounds. Marty Davis was a victim of that culture. He sacrificed his liver and two marriages to the Extra. Not that I want you to say any of that out there in the newsroom, or in the obit. Just talk about his great old stories, the Walkley Awards he won. There were two, I think. Let's send him off with a bit of dignity."

So, forget about warts-and-all?

It's not the place for that.

"You're asking me to praise the man whose stupidity might still end up closing this paper?

That's right. Do your research. Then you'll see why.

How long have I got?

Just fit it in as you can over the next week or so. I don’t want it to get in the way of whatever else you’ve got on.

CHAPTER 3

Sophie walked slowly back to her desk, pulling a face at Eamon's raised eyebrow. He was on the phone.

Yes, I'll pass on your message to the editor, he said. Thank you very much for phoning.

Who was it? asked Sophie.

Some nutter who says he's going to cancel his subscription because there are two spelling errors on Page 3 today. For some reason, the switch is putting all those sort of calls through to me this week.

Well, it's all fun, fun, fun for me too. Wheatcroft has asked me to write Marty's obit.

You're kidding, said Eamon. I'd have thought Marty would barely rate a single paragraph on Page 10. And why you? You hardly knew him.

Sophie laughed. That apparently makes me ideal. Half a dozen people in the otherwise sombre newsroom looked to see who was making the noise. Sophie lowered her voice. No preconceptions, you see, she explained. So tell me what you know about Marty.

Well, I guess he was a sitting duck for a heart attack, said Eamon. What was he? Fifty-five? Sixty? Smoker. Never exercised except to go to the pub. No family life...

The thought flashed across Sophie's mind that Eamon could be describing himself – only her newsroom buddy was 20 years younger than Marty and didn't drink as much.

Stressed, Eamon continued. Depressed. Well, I'd be depressed, too, after being responsible for the biggest defamation payout in Australian newspaper history. When you add all that up, I don't know why we're surprised he dropped dead.

Eamon was pudgy and bespectacled with shoulders sloping down to his large belly. His head was not quite big enough for his body, and his bristly red hair was in permanent revolt against the part he tried to impose on it. Eamon’s face was pale, his small features splotched with unusually large freckles so the skin looked like faded camouflage fabric.

Eamon had an unfashionable interest in old things, spending his weekends alternately at museums and bric-a-brac shops, and lived in hope of picking up a Picasso at a car-boot sale. In the meantime, he wrote stories about people who did. He was the opposite of a cool, slick journalist. His down-at-heel demeanour, his unthreatening, dishevelled boyishness, made people open up.

He specialised in the unexpected and quirky: people who named their children after star NRL players, goats employed by councils to keep the grass down in parks, young women who had inherited a wardrobe of grandma's old dresses that turned out to be designer rags worth a fortune – stories that are an important part of what newspapers call the mix. Readers can take only so much hard news, and Eamon's stories added a human touch.

Eamon wrote with a light touch and sly humour. He was fun in the flesh too, and he and Sophie often grabbed a coffee or lunch together. (It was, Sophie had once told him, such a relief to have a male friend with no romantic history or future. Oh, Eamon had said.)

But now all Sophie's thoughts were on Marty and the excitement of a death in the newsroom. She looked over at the dead man's desk, still cordoned off with police tape.

It's kind of poetic that he died here, she said. It's how every old journo should go.

I'm not sure Marty would see it that way, Eamon said. "Anyway, getting back to what I know about him. He started here about 1980. Before that he was a bright young thing on The Sydney Morning Herald, but I gather the Extra was the making of him. He broke some big stories, here and in Canberra. Quite a few sex scandals – I don't know exactly which ones, but the library'll have the cuttings. Legend has it that he got punched by a Cabinet minister once. And you must have heard that story of how he came back here drunk one night and threw a computer out the window."

Didn't it hit the editor's car?

"Not the editor's car, but a car, yeah."

Was he married?

Divorced – twice, I think. He had three or four kids, but his son died in a car accident. We all went to the funeral. That was a few years ago.

Sounds like a sad life, said Sophie.

Yeah, but Marty wasn't a sad guy. Quite the opposite, actually. You should ask Mel for his personnel file.

Eamon nodded in the direction of the editor's secretary, Mel, who was clearly reminiscing about Marty with some older female staff. All were clutching tissues.

A lot of the stuff I've told you will be in Marty's personnel file, with all the dates, he said. The library should have his cuttings. And the Canberra office will fill you in on what he got up to down there. You should be able to knock out 600 words in a few hours.

A thousand, said Sophie. The editor wants to give him a good send-off.

Eamon whistled. Wheatcroft must have been fonder of the old bloke than I knew.

***

It took Sophie two hours to get on top of the basic facts of Marty's life. The library had been good, with the librarian contributing a bit of personal reminiscence. She had been working late the night Marty had lurched into the newsroom and trashed a computer.

He sat down to write something or other and then the system crashed. It used to crash all the time in the early days. So Marty got up, shouted, ‘Fuck this!’, picked up the terminal – it was one of those big heavy old ones – and just threw it out the window. No one managed to get to him soon enough to stop him. He was sent to a clinic to dry out after that.

The personnel file was remarkably complete, right down to the CV he had submitted back in 1982, when he had joined the Extra.

Sophie scanned it and began typing:

-

Martin Gregory Davis, who died suddenly [SUBS: DAY OR DATE HERE, PLEASE], was an award-winning journalist on the staff of The Evening Extra.

He was born in Newcastle on February 23, 1953, the only son of Peter and Maureen Davis. His father was an overseer at the steelworks who had met Maureen when she was working for BHP as a secretary. Marty, as he quickly came to be called, was educated first locally, at St Brigid's Catholic School, and later as a boarder at St Joseph's, Hunters Hill.

After completing the Higher School Certificate in 1970, Davis was taken on as a cadet journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald. After completing a three-year cadetship, he became a general news reporter for the Herald, then made a name covering courts. His coverage of the 1975 witch-mother trial, in which Patty Jeffery was convicted of murdering her two young children in sensational circumstances, was picked up nationally and overseas. Davis, who had always wanted to cover politics, was rewarded with a three-year stint in the Macquarie Street press gallery, where he reported with distinction on the early years of the Wran Labor government. He moved to Canberra for the Herald in 1979. There he met and married his first wife, Joan Jessop.

In 1982, he joined The Evening Extra, and returned to Sydney as senior investigative reporter...

-

So far it was shaping up to be a write-by-numbers obituary: dignified but with just enough adjectives and anecdotes (colourful character, difficult private life, run-ins with the great and good, long struggle with alcoholism) for discerning readers to pick up clues that this was a fine reporter who had fallen far, fast and hard.

Sophie would have to leave in the story of Marty being punched by a Cabinet minister – it was too well known to ignore – but would not go into the reason behind the attack. (A quick phone call to a Canberra bureau veteran had elicited the information that Marty had been caught screwing the minister's wife at a Christmas party.)

As for the computer hitting the car: well, who needed to know about that? The personnel file of the incident was written in the guarded language of management memos: it noted that Davis had been issued with a formal warning and had been given a year to gradually repay the company the $2,600 compensation paid to the owner of the car which had been parked right outside the newsroom window next to Davis’s desk.

-

Davis married twice. His first marriage, to Joan Jessop, ended in divorce. Joan got custody of their son, Blake, and daughter, Georgia, and they lived with her and her second husband, Ralph Clegg-Julius, in Canberra. Soon after the end of his first