BEER MONEY
A brewery executive has gone missing … or has he? Joseph Lucien Abbott – Joe to his mates – is paid by the man’s wife with a beer-sodden cheque to find out the truth.   In doing so he locks horns with dodgy nightclub owners, a toupeed beer baron, and endless assorted ratbags – and, of course, a wild pig – all in the twisted pursuit of a stash of missing money.   Plus he has time for a beer or ten along the way.	In Store Price: $AU23.95  Online Price:   $AU22.95 ISBN:   978-1-921240-74-4 Format: Paperback Number of pages: 178 Genre: Fiction   Cover: Clive Dalkins
Author: Matthew Freeman  Publisher: Zeus Publications Date Published: 2007 Language: English

About the author    

Matthew Freeman has been a journalist, electorate officer, and newsletter and magazine editor.  

He is now a media officer in Victoria .  

Married to Paula, they have three children, Isabelle, Joseph and Gabriel.

Prologue  

An autopsy will be held today on an unidentified man whose body was discovered floating in a beer vat  at Flynn’s Brewery yesterday.  

Police believe the body had been in the vat for up to two days before being discovered by a cleaner.  

“We have been trying to perfect a limited edition stout which we were brewing in a new vat in a remote area of the brewery,” Cressida Dupree, Communications Co-ordinator for Flynn’s Brewery, said.  

“Tragically, the unknown man must have fallen in and been unable to extricate himself.”  

The man, aged between 35 and 55, was nude when discovered.  

– The Melbourne Batmanian, Saturday, October 18, 2003

Chapter One    

y body was rigid, my one and a half lungs couldn’t breathe and my skin was as clammy as scared fish. The figure on the doona cover, just an inch from my face, appeared to be a small horse’s head. I blinked twice and refocused. It was nothing like a horse’s head, just a blurred floral print rapidly going out of date.

I let the phone ring, glad it had saved me from being stabbed to death by Robert Mitchum in a hot air balloon above the MCG. He was wearing light casual clothes, similar to his role in the first Cape Fear , and adamant I was sabotaging his career. For some reason, I believed him, particularly his rant about my poor script for Whitegoods on The Nature Strip, a film he was keen to direct.

Mitchum sweated profusely, his heavy eyes not so languid. His small pocket knife was inches from my face and we were losing altitude on a dark winter afternoon. A phone in the balloon harness shrilled and I woke up, fumbling for the bedside table.

“Joe, it’s Brian here. How ya going?”

It was Brian Haines. He was at work and I was in bed.

Brian and I had both worked at The Melbourne Batmanian, the daily newspaper, when we were young. I was a fair reporter and he was a better one. I liked him more than trusted him and I didn’t like him very much. He had been one of the best connected journalists in the city, despite the fact he always was impeccably dressed and almost always sober.

But not anymore. Brian got wobbly over the years and was now a bit slack. Correction. Very slack. He wasn’t just resting on his laurels – they were being slowly suffocated and then crushed beyond recognition.

“Joe. Joe. Joe. Have you heard of the brewer Bill Pollard? Well, anyway he’s gone missing and I’m an old school friend of his wife and it’s a bit delicate. Can you help?”

If ever a bush was not beaten around, this was the one. He prided himself on being forensically brusque, but unfortunately for him, no one else did.

“Bloody hell, Brian, slow down. I think I know who he is. Isn’t he fairly high up at Flynn’s Brewing? Third in charge or something?”

I was still getting my bearings but awake enough to think on my bare feet: Have the police been told? Why has Brian come to me first? And why wasn’t he writing about it under that ludicrous picture by-line of his? The cross-eyed and bloated one. I picked up these balls and slammed them back into his court.

“Well, Abbott, you big wise arse. He was totally corrupt but I can’t do anything about it. He used to siphon off funds for buying hotels for himself, and then offer a lesser amount to the freeholders when Flynn’s wanted to buy their pubs. The Fraud Squad knew a bit about it, but the wife, that’s Joy, is afraid if she goes to the cops now the whole thing might blow up in her face.”

By this stage I was upright in my bed, trying to position a pillow behind me while using the other hand to hold the phone. It reminded me of the time I crashed a car while trying to light a cigarette.

“So you want me to go look for a shonky brewer, do all your homework and then you can write about it in your paper? Is that exactly what you had in mind, Brian?”

My tone was sharper than normal because I thought he was playing loose with the truth. As usual.

“Hey, pull your head in, Joe. Bill and Joy are very wealthy people and whether he’s gone away with his latest secretary or is drowning in beer, I’m sure you will be adequately looked after. Please, just check her out and put her mind to rest. The whole thing’s probably nothing.”

Yeah, right, I thought. And the asylum seekers will be given a ticker-tape parade down Collins Street .

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