Truth

by Peter Temple

  People drifted over, introduced themselves, all connected with Hendry enterprises, many of them to the AirLine project. They knew who he was, a new experience for Villani and it did not displease him.

  ‘Alice, meet Stephen Villani.’

  She was north of sixty, overweight, red hair, dyed.

  ‘Alice is called Max’s secretary,’ said Vicky. ‘They have a thirty-year history. I had to be approved by Alice.’

  ‘Calculating bitch was my view,’ said Alice. ‘But he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘And for not listening he pays every day of his life,’ said Villani.

  The women laughed and Vicky put a fist against his chest in a mock-punch, pressed, he felt her knuckles, she kept them there the extra half-second and he knew it was flirting, Alice knew it, Vicky knew it.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘On his way back from Canberra we hope,’ said Vicky. ‘He’s been talking to the federal government about AirLine.’

  Time passed, laughter, Spanish music, he felt easier than he had for, he couldn’t remember how long. He drank beer, they moved to a trestle table, platters of kebabs came, bowls of salad, bottles of red and white. Around him the talk was of politics, all sides represented, of the shrunken economy, the endless fires, films, holidays, current events, how bad the media were.

  At some signal, Vicky left him and reappeared with Max Hendry, jacketless, tieless, white shirt with sleeves rolled up. He had a big arm around his wife.

  Shouts.

  About bloody time, mate.

  Security, there’s a gatecrasher.

  Show us the money, Maxie.

  Hendry put up his hands.

  ‘You bloody freeloaders,’ he said.

  Applause.

  ‘So you know where I’ve been today,’ he said. ‘Talked to the bastards, six hours. Never met so many dumb people. But we reckon we’ve finally got it through their thick heads that any alternative that takes traffic off clogged roads is bloody national infrastructure.’

  Cheers, clapping.

  ‘Now that is a small step for the dickheads but it’s a big, big step for mankind. Which is our cause.’

  More cheers, whistles. Max did a boxer clasp, he said, ‘Get your snouts back in the trough, you animals.’

  Vicky took her seat beside Villani. They watched Max patting shoulders, kissing cheeks, shaking hands, a loved ruler returning from exile.

  ‘They like him,’ said Villani.

  She was silent. Max got to them, shook Villani’s hand.

  ‘Thanks for coming, mate,’ he said. ‘My dear lady’s looked after you?’

  A waiter offered food, Max said he’d eaten. The barman came with beaded Coopers, uncapped two.

  Max drank from the bottle. He let the world return to pre-Max, told stories about meetings with the prime minister, the treasurer, the federal transport minister.

  He asked Villani questions, Villani had the feeling Max knew the answers, knew everything about him.

  The dark crept across the space, the guests thinned, everyone saying their thanks, joking with the Hendrys. Villani made to leave. Max put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘No, no, Steve, stay. Coffee. Quiet Friday nightcap.’

  When Vicky had gone to see the last guests off, they moved to the terrace, to big wooden chairs. A smiling silver-haired woman in black brought coffee, chocolates, a bottle of cognac, balloon glasses.

  Max poured. Before them lay the dark garden running to the river and then the city and its towers standing in their illuminated self-esteem.

  ‘Cigar?’ said Hendry. ‘I shouldn’t but I might regress. Good word, regress. Sounds like regret, which comes after regressing.’

  ‘I might regress with you,’ said Villani.

  Hendry left, came back with two cigars and a silver spike, pierced the dark cylinders, handed one over, a box of kitchen matches.

  ‘Thank God for Cuba,’ he said. ‘Cuba and France.’

  They lit up. The smoke hung in the air.

  Below them, paw prints of light came on, walking in big strides down to the river.

  Villani picked up his glass, he was mellow. The light from portholes in the paving made the cognac a dark honey-gold. Something was coming from Hendry, you knew.

  ‘I want to ask you,’ said Hendry. ‘Bit of a nerve, really. Ever consider another line of work?’

  Villani said, ‘Cop is all I know.’

  ‘Not exactly on the beat now,’ said Hendry.

  ‘I’ve got what I hear is called a restricted skill set. I copied my bosses, they copied theirs.’

  ‘That can work,’ said Hendry, ‘if you don’t copy something flawed. Then the copies get worse in every generation.’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying,’ said Villani. ‘I’m several generations flawed. The object will soon be unusable.’

  He said it without thinking, drink taken, and he knew it was true. He was a blurred facsimile of Cameron, Colby and Singo. And, to begin with, he was a bad copy of Bob Villani. The looks, the height, the hair, the hands, they were accurate. But all the failings, all the imbalances, they were amplified: the selfishness, the faithlessness, the blindness, the urges, the rutting instinct.

  All the worst bits.

  But the spine, the guts, the courage, that went the other way. Those things that were large in Bob, they were stunted in his firstborn son.

  Max laughed, small plosives.

  ‘You just saying that, it confirms my instincts,’ he said. ‘I like clever people, I can spot them a long way away. That’s really all I’m smart at. If my old man had been a garbo, I’d be labouring on a building site.’

  They smoked, sipped, the cognac fumes filled the nose.

  Vicky came out.

  ‘Rascals at play,’ she said. ‘Much as I’d love to sit around drinking cognac and smoking a fat cigar,’ she said, ‘I’m not joining you. Exhausted. I’d say knackered if I wasn’t such a lady.’

  Villani stood and said his thanks. She squeezed his arms and kissed him half on his lips. He caught the musk of her perfume through the cigar smoke.

  ‘Our pleasure, Steve,’ she said. ‘You’re now a member of the Friday mob. By popular demand, I have to say. Also you must come to the valley for a weekend. I’ll send an invite.’

  She passed behind Max’s chair, stopped, bent to kiss his forehead. ‘I know it’s difficult, darling, but try to get to bed before dawn.’

  ‘Excellent judge of character, this woman,’ said Hendry. ‘Only one mistake to date. But back to the point.’

  ‘I’ve forgotten it.’

  Hendry blew a fat rolling smoke ring. ‘Learned to do that at school,’ he said. ‘All I remember from school. Anyway, no point buggering around, I want to offer you a job. Large job.’

  ‘You need a bad copy of some dead cop?’ said Villani.

  ‘An operations chief for Stilicho. I gather you know about Stilicho. Bloody monstrous meltdown at the casino but that’s teething stuff.’

  The publicity people wanted something they could use. Senior police officer. What was needed was a dull prick to organise rosters, check on the bored, underpaid people who checked on other bored underpaid people who checked locks, identity cards, airless 3am rooms, lavatories.

  ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for security,’ Villani said. ‘But thank you.’

  Hendry said, ‘Don’t be so quick, mate. Not some executive-bouncer job I’m talking about.’

  A mind-reader.

  A hot north-west wind on their faces, another blocking system was idling out in the southern ocean. Two long valleys ran from the north-west towards Selborne, the main road down one of them. The fire would come as it came to Marysville and Kinglake on that February hell day, come with the terrible thunder of a million hooves, come rolling, flowing, as high as a twenty-storey building, throwing red-hot spears and fireballs hundreds of metres ahead, sucking air from trees, houses, people, animals, sucking air out of everything in the landscape, creating its own howling wind, ge
tting hotter and hotter, a huge blacksmith’s reducing fire that melted humans and animals, detonated buildings, turned soft metals to silver flowing liquids and buckled steel.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, no, Stilicho’s new territory in security. I don’t get some of it myself. Well, a lot of it. Jesus, I was twenty before I understood how electricity worked. This is the future of security technology. They tell me the stuff we’ve got is two–three years ahead of the curve. That’s a huge opportunity.’

  What had Dove said?

  Stilicho’s bought this Israeli technology, puts it all together—secure entry, the ID stuff, iris scanning, fingerprints, facial recognition, suspicious behaviour, body language…Stilicho’s even trying to get access to the crimes database, the photos and photofits, prints, records, everything…Your face’s in the base, you show up somewhere…

  ‘I thought your son was the boss of Stilicho? Your son and Matt Cameron.’

  ‘Matt’s got fifteen per cent. I’ve got the rest. Hugh’s the CEO, no shareholding. Big challenge, operations chief, Steve. There’s no job description that fits it. They told me I should bring in the executive-search extortionists.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘I can do my own bloody executive search. Save tens of thousands. They say you don’t have problems with technology. They say you’re one of the few cops who understand the new technology.’

  ‘I have lots of problems with technology,’ said Villani. ‘You don’t want to offer me a technology job. Any job, really.’

  ‘I do want to.’

  ‘This is not about us nailing those little bastards, is it?’ said Villani. ‘That’s the job. I’ve been paid for that.’

  Hendry said, ‘The idea was someone with a broad police background. Someone smart.’

  ‘Rules out about ninety-seven per cent,’ said Villani. ‘Give or take a per cent.’

  Hendry frowned. ‘That’s pretty harsh. They told me ninety-two. Anyway, before the AirLine thing, Vicky told me the cop who caught David’s killers was now head of Homicide. That’s how you came up. I asked questions. And people said good things.’

  ‘A cop thing. To say good things about other cops. Your brothers.’

  ‘And the pedigree, I liked that too.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your old man. Vietnam. The Team.’ ‘That’s got nothing to do with me.’

  Max looked at him for a few seconds, head cocked, said, ‘No, sorry, stupid thing to say. Dwelt in the shadow myself, should know better. Yes.’

  ‘I haven’t lived in my father’s shadow,’ Villani said. He didn’t want this rich man’s job, ordered around by the smooth son.

  ‘No, I’m not saying that. I’m sure you haven’t.’

  Villani took out his mobile. ‘Great evening, Mr Hendry. My day’s not over. Unfortunately.’

  Max said, ‘Stephen, hang fire for a minute, will you? Put that away. Gone off track here.’

  Villani waited, poised to leave.

  ‘Hugh’s been in my shadow, that’s done him no good. I didn’t see it until it was too late. Still, he’s good at the business stuff, Hugh, good salesman. What I’m looking for is someone who can be the battlefield commander.’

  Max sniffed his glass, took a sip.

  ‘Steve, this is going to start as private security, but if we get it right, it’ll revolutionise the way we keep public places safe. Protect ordinary citizens against the kind of scum who kicked David to death. We’re on the edge of getting the contract for a massive new shopping mall in the west. Also serious interest from a new Brisbane council. Secure a whole retail precinct, civic centre.’

  ‘You don’t by any chance think I’ve got any clout, do you?’ said Villani. ‘Help get the databases?’

  Max put up his hands. ‘Steve, we’ll get access if we deserve access. If the people who matter see that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. I want you for the personal qualities you’ll bring. That’s it.’

  Villani’s resistance was falling away: the charm of the man, the attention paid to him all evening, the alcohol, the charge to his ego.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m flattered. Need to have a think.’

  ‘Of course you’ve got to sleep on it. You don’t want to know what we’re offering?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘More than a deputy commissioner gets. A lot more. Mind you, it’s a sixteen-hour day.’

  ‘Get Sunday off?’

  ‘Not as a matter of right.’

  Near midnight, Max walked him through the house and the front garden to the street door. The big smiling man was there and he took Villani out to the car, opened the back door.

  ‘I’ll sit in front,’ said Villani.

  He shook hands with Max.

  ‘I know I’m right,’ said Max. ‘Think hard. I hear Mellish gets in, it’s a clean sweep of all senior positions in the force. That’s something to factor in.’

  ‘Consider it factored,’ said Villani. ‘Goodnight, Max.’

  He told the driver to take him to St Kilda Road, to his office.

  Take him home.

  THE BUILDING never slept. Shifts changed, tired people left, less tired people took their places.

  In Homicide, in the white light where day and night lost meaning, half-a-dozen heads registered his entrance. He talked to a few of them, to the duty officer, made a mug of tea, sat at his desk, he was sober now, not sure why he was there, sure only that he had no home to go to.

  All day he had thought Corin would ring, no question. She had no reason to blame him for anything to do with Lizzie. But she hadn’t. Too busy, uni starting, her job, the spunk from the big end of town.

  Listen love, I need you to pick up Lizzie. Now.

  He should have said that, made her leave her dinner. The oldest, why didn’t they always give her the job of seeing to Lizzie? Keeping her up to scratch. Got to school on time. Did her homework.

  He could ring Corin.

  No, no, no.

  She owed him. She owed him many, many things and she could have paid all her debts with just one miserable little phone call. She failed him, his beloved girl. In the end, she didn’t care about him.

  Leave the job and work for Max Hendry. He came to Homicide to save his marriage, to do clean work. No more gambling, no more women. The clean work he had done. The gambling, he had given it away, he had turned his back on certainties, turned and wept.

  He thought about DiPalma and Orong. DiPalma, a lecturer in law at Monash before he felt the calling. Property law. Leases. Conveyancing. Jesus, what did he know of the streets, the scum, the fractured world?

  Orong. Orong was nothing. Community Studies degree from the former Footscray Tech. Politics and sociology. Always in politics, a teenage doorknocker, branchstacker.

  He logged on, looked up Orong. A photograph from the Western Citizen of a younger Orong with Stuart Koenig. Koenig was holding up Orong’s right arm as if the prick had just won a fight. The election before last. New MP for Robertsham. He went to a political site called Brumaire 18 and searched for Orong. It listed dozens of items, he read an early one.

  SNAKES ON A ROLL

  On another sad day for democracy, 23-year-old reptile Martin ‘Snakelips’ Orong this week joins his even viler mentor, Stuart Koenig, in parliament. Koenig, of course, owes his political survival to the product-haired little western suburbs viper. When he was Koenig’s office boy, Orong single-handledly stacked Koenig’s branch with everything from illiterate Ethiopians to what he famously called the ‘Samoan bouncer community’. Koenig and Orong are mates outside of work too. The pair were once trapped by a blizzard in the Koenig ancestral lodge at Mount Buller when they were supposed to be at a party talkfest in Canberra.

  DiPalma and Orong assumed that he would do as told. Back off Koenig, Prosilio. They said it as if they had the power to give him orders. And they did have the power if he was scared of what they could do to him.

  Was it that way with Singleton? Did people threaten
him, make him back off? Singo always talked about the grip—people who had it, people who could get things done, undone. Did people have the grip on Singo?

  In the job, it wasn’t hard to get gripped by someone.

  Bent forever, the job. Why not? Terrible pay, the hours, the conditions, the risks. It only took a few days for him to work out who he had signed up with: the dim, the school bullies, bodybuilders, martial-arts fanatics, control freaks, thrillseekers, loners, kids from cop families, kids brought up by mum.

  In uniform, a full understanding of the job slowly dawned. A life spent dealing with the dishonest, the negligent, the deviant, the devious, the desperate, the cruel, the callous, the vicious, the drunk, the drugged, the temporarily deranged and permanently insane, the sick and sad, the sadists, sex maniacs, child molesters, flashers, exhibitionists, women-beaters, wife-beaters, child-beaters, self-mutilators, the homicidal, matricidal, patricidal, fratricidal, suicidal.

  Some of them dead.

  You could quickly slide into otherness, estrangement from the civilian world, a sense of entitlement. What did it matter if you didn’t pay full price for your clothes, your drycleaning, got the free coffee, a sandwich, if people bought you drinks in pubs? You could take lotto tickets, not pay at places. People gave you horse tips, invites to clubs, you could go after your shift with a mate, everything on the house, the best girls.

  Just give your name. Expecting you, the bloke.

  They gave every sign you were the sexiest thing that year, you had experiences not normally had on a date or with the wife. When you were pissed, someone gave you something. And then one day you got the call.

  Shit, mate, bastard pulls me over on the Tulla, goin a bit over, yeah. Not the fine, mate, the fucken points, gonna have to get the fucken pushbike out, have a word, can you? Appreciate it, mate.

  You knew someone. You made the call. And you were a fully paid-up mate. A travel agent rang to say you had a free week on Hayman Island, the plane, the hotel, the vouchers. They pointed you to discounts on cars, televisions, washing machines, carpets, gym memberships, booze, plastic surgery, BMX bikes.