Jacks and Jokers by Matthew Condon

Author:Matthew Condon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2014-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

A Tired and Nervous Eagle

A month after the notorious Cleveland Sands Hotel incident involving Constable Brian Marlin, a fatigued Brian ‘The Eagle’ Bolton, gun crime reporter for the Sunday Sun newspaper, wandered into the Albion Health Studio at 281 Sandgate Road, Albion, in the shadow of the grey concrete TAB building.

It was 2.20 a.m. on a Monday in late November. There he met massage attendant Kathryn Lynch. He told her his name was Brian. He asked for a massage and handed her ten dollars. ‘He then undressed for a shower [and] as he was undressing he asked me if the boys in blue had been in,’ Lynch later said. ‘I replied that they don’t work on a Sunday, so he went and showered.

‘He came back to the room and told me he writes for the Courier-Mail. He told me that he was very nervous and asked me to pamper him very softly.

‘I told him not to worry and he mentioned that a couple of detectives from [the] Licensing Branch were in big trouble over the incident at Cleveland Sands a little while ago.’

Bolton proceeded to tell Kathryn what he knew of the incident. ‘He said [Constables] Sidey and Marlin entered the hotel looking for a guy,’ she recounted. ‘They picked the wrong guy and falsely accused him of a crime; this guy apparently turned on Sidey and Marlin and won the fight.

‘I don’t remember if he said that Sidey and Marlin came back that night or the following night with this guy posing as a policeman. Anyway he [Collins] said that Marlin and Sidey pistol-whipped him [the guy wrongly accused].

‘A lot of people were supposed to have put this guy up to go to the [news]paper. He said he would be very surprised if … Sidey and Marlin didn’t get the bullet from the police force.’

Bolton paused with his story and asked what other services Kathryn could provide. She said – sex.

‘So he gave me $30 – he was very impotent and ended up having hand relief,’ she said. ‘I asked if he had been drinking and he said he was very nervous about the police coming in.’

Bolton was agitated. He kept talking about Marlin, the ‘southern cop’. He told Kathryn ‘the incident is a lot deeper than what went down [at] the Cleveland Sands’.

‘He said a policeman threw a cup of coffee over a client one night at a studio [he didn’t mention what studio] … this client was one of [former Police Minister] Ron Camm’s best mates,’ she said. ‘He told me not to mention this to anybody.

‘I told him that I don’t see anybody to mention it to anyone.’

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