All Fall Down by Matthew Condon Read Free Book Online Page B

– on Sunday 21 April 1974, Breslin Senior committed suicide with a Sterling .22 rifle at the family’s home at 11 Bayne Street, Gladstone. He left behind his wife Margaret (known as Peg) and seven children. Paul was the oldest.
    ‘He was an alcoholic,’ Breslin says. ‘A severely depressed alcoholic. His father killed himself as did his father … about five fathers in a row. The whole family left after that incident. It was very depressing to go to the graveyard and see all the Breslins.’
    (According to the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin , John Breslin’s father – Edward Matthew Breslin, a respected local businessman and former mayor of Gladstone – died in hospital in 1944 after a short illness. John’s great uncle, C.C. Breslin, a merchant, was charged in the Gladstone Police Court in November 1886 with attempting to commit suicide with a razor. The prisoner said he had been unconscious from alcohol on the night in question and ‘had not the slightest idea what he was doing’.)
    After the tragedy, Paul moved south to the big smoke, Brisbane, and initially settled in the inner-city suburb of New Farm, then a predominantly working-class suburb crammed with wooden cottages bordering Fortitude Valley. He worked as a sales executive for the Ford Motor Company, where he excelled. Breslin displayed an almost obsessive fascination with police – its hierarchy, its work, its uniforms and badges, cars and weapons. If he could have had an alternative career, he would have been a policeman.
    Instead, he spent many nights surrounded by them at the Police Club – on the fourth floor of the old Egg Board building in Makerston Street – an initiative that had been shut down during former Commissioner Frank Bischof’s era (in the days of the wet bar at the old Roma Street police station near Turbot Street), but revived by Ray Whitrod. The troops, Whitrod believed, needed a place to talk and relax, and Commissioner Lewis had kept the doors open. The club itself was immensely popular for its conviviality and its food. Indeed, a contingency of police used to fly up from Sydney specifically for the crab pot lunches.
    The Police Club president at the time, John Cummins, vividly recalls Paul Breslin. ‘Breslin was brought to the Police Club, I don’t know by whom,’ he says. ‘Police had to bring guests. We had plenty of journalists. He [Breslin] represented himself as the used car manager for the Ford Motor Company. He was a likeable sort of fellow.’
    Cummins remembers discussing potential business with Breslin. ‘He said Ford would like to do something with the police – put up a mirror wall in the club at his expense,’ says Cummins. ‘He did that. And he donated a cup – The Breslin Cup – to the footballers. They used to play the fire brigade and the ambulance [for the cup honours]. He sort of came out of the forest into the place. He wanted to impress everybody all of the time. He was a bit of a mystery man. It was as though Breslin had been sent from outer space to help [the club].’
    A Ford colleague remembers a bright young man with a stellar future. ‘He would come to a dealership and he would report to Ford the appearance of the dealership and in turn the whole layout, how the business was operating, and he would take orders on behalf of Ford Motor Company from you, for supply,’ he remembers. ‘As a rep he went as far as Coffs Harbour, he did Lismore, Grafton and all those and back to the Gold Coast, and he in turn would inspect police cars for Ford somewhere along the line, and so he was always fraternising with the police …
    ‘[Breslin was] a big fella. Could have passed for a copper. Six foot and probably 16 or 17 stone. He was well educated and well spoken.’
    It was at the Police Club, at least on one occasion, that Breslin met Police Commissioner Terry Lewis. ‘I think I met the man once at the Police Club at a Ford do,’ Breslin recalls. ‘Ford was introducing a new model, I think it was