by Peter Temple
Cashin broke the little over-and-under gun as he walked, felt in his side pockets and found a .22 slug and a .410 shell, fed the mouths. He often had the chance to take a shot at a hare, looked through the V-sight at the beautiful dun creature, its electric ears. He didn’t even think of firing, he loved hares, their intelligence, their playfulness. At a running rabbit, he did take the odd shot. It was just a fairground exercise, a challenge. He always missed—his reaction too slow, the .410’s cone of shot not big enough, too soon dissolved and impotent.
Cashin walked with the little weapon broken over his arm, looking at the trees, dark inside, waiting for the dogs to reach them and send the birds up like tracer fire.
The dogs did a last bound and they were in the trees, triggering the bird-blast, black shrapnel screeching into the sky.
He walked over the hill and down the slope, the dogs ahead, dead black and light-absorbing, heads down, quick legs, coursing, disturbing the leaf mulch. On the levelling ground, on the fringe of the clearing, a hare took off. He watched the three cross the open space, black dogs and hare, the hare pacing itself perfectly, jinking when it felt the dogs near. It seemed to be pulling the dogs on a string. They vanished into the trees above the creek.
Cashin crossed the meadow. The ground was level to the eye but, tramping the long dry grass, you could feel underfoot the rise and fall, the broad furrows a plough had carved. The clearing had once been cultivated, but not in the memory of anyone living. He had no way of knowing whether his ancestor Tommy Cashin had planted a crop there.
It was a fight to get to the creek through the poplars and willows, thousands of suckers gone unchecked for at least thirty years. When he reached the watercourse, a trickle between pools, the dogs appeared, panting. They went straight in, found the deepest places, drank, walked around, drank, walked around, the water eddied weakly around their thin, strong legs, they bit it, raised pointed chins, beards draining water. Poodles liked puddles, didn’t like deep water, didn’t like the sea much. They were paddlers.
Across the creek, they began the sweep to the west, around the hill, on the gentle flank. In the dun grass, he saw the ears of two hares. He whistled up the dogs and pointed to the hares. They followed his arm, ran and put up the pair, which broke together and stayed together, running side by side for ten or fifteen metres, two dogs behind them, an orderly group of four. Then the left hare split, went downhill. His dog split with him. The other dog couldn’t bear it, broke stride, swerved left to join his friend in the pursuit. They vanished into the long grass.
After a while, they came back, pink of tongues visible from a long way, loped ahead again.
Walking, Cashin felt the eyes on him. The dogs running ahead would soon sense the man too, look around, turn left and make for him. He walked and then there were sharp and carrying barks.
The man was out of the trees, the dogs circling him, bouncing. Cashin was unconcerned. He saw the hands the man put out to them, they tried to mouth them, delighted to see their friend. He angled his path to meet Den Millane, nearing eighty but looking as he had at fifty. He would die with a dense head of hair the colour of a gun barrel.
They shook hands. If they didn’t meet for a little while, they shook hands.
‘Still no decent rain,’ said Cashin.
‘Fuckin unnatural,’ said Millane. ‘Startin to believe in this greenhouse shit.’ He rubbed a dog head with each hand. ‘Bugger me, never thought I could like a bloody poodle. Seen the women at the Corrigan house?’
‘No.’
They both had boundaries with the Corrigan property. Mrs Corrigan had gone to Queensland after her husband died. No one had lived in the small redbrick house since then. The weather stripped paint from the woodwork, dried out the window putty, panes fell out. The timber outbuildings listed, collapsed, and grass grew over the rotting pieces. He remembered coming for a weekend in summer in the early nineties, hot, he was still with Vickie then, a big piece of roof had gone, blown off. He asked Den Millane to contact Mrs Corrigan and the roof was fixed, in a fashion. Roofs decided whether empty houses would become ruins.
‘The Elders bloke brung em,’ said Den, not looking up. ‘He’s a fat cunt too. The one’s got short hair, bloke hair. Like blokes used to have. Then they come back yesterday, now it’s three girls, walkin around, they walk down the old fence. Fuckin lesbian colony on the move, mate.’
‘Spot lesbians? They have them in your day?’
Millane spat. ‘Still my bloody day, mate. Teachers in the main, your lessies. Used to send the clever girls out to buggery, nothin but dickheads there couldn’t read a comic book. Tell you what, I was a girl met those blokes, I’d go lessie. Anyway, point is, you ever looked at your title?’
Cashin shook his head.
‘Creek’s not the boundary’
‘No?’
‘Your line’s the other side, twenty, thirty yard over the creek.’ Millane passed a thumb knuckle across his lower lip. ‘Claim the fuckin creek or lose it, mate. Fence that loop or say goodbye.’
‘Well,’ Cashin said, ‘You’d be mad to buy the place. House needs work, ground’s all uphill.’
Millane shook his head. ‘Seen what they’re payin for dirt? Every second dickhead wants to live in the country, drive around in the four-wheel, fuckin up the roads, moanin about the cowshit and the ag chemicals.’
‘No time to read the real estate,’ Cashin said. ‘Too busy upholding the law. Still need someone to take the cows over to Coghlans?’
‘Yeah. Knee’s getttin worse.’
‘Got someone for you.’
‘There’s a bit of other work, say three days, that’s all up. No place to stay, though.’
‘I’ll bring him over.’
Den was watching the dogs investigating a blackberry patch. ‘So when you gonna leave the fancy dogs with me again?’
‘Didn’t like to ask,’ Cashin said. ‘Bit of a handful.’
‘I can manage the fuckin brutes. Bring em over. Lookin thin, give em a decent feed of bunny.’
They said goodbye. When Cashin was fifty metres away, Den shouted, ‘Ya keep what’s bloody yours. Hear me?’
THE CALL came at 8.10 am, relayed from Cromarty. Cashin was almost at the Port Monro intersection. As he drove along the coast highway, he saw the ambulance coming towards him. He slowed to let them reach the turn-off first, followed them up the hill, around the bends and through the gates of The Heights, parked on the forecourt.
A woman was standing on the gravel, well away from the big house, smoking a cigarette. She threw it away and led the paramedics up the stairs into the house. Cashin followed, across an entrance hall and into a big, high-ceilinged room. There was a faint sour smell in the air.
The old man was lying on his stomach before the massive fireplace, head on the stone hearth. He was wearing only pyjama pants, and his thin naked back was covered with dried blood through which could be seen dark horizontal lines. There was blood pooled on the stones and soaked into the carpet. It was black in the light from a high uncurtained window.
The two medics went to him, knelt. The woman put her gloved hands on his head, lifted it gently. ‘Significant open head injury, possible brain herniation,’ she said, talking to her companion and into a throat mike.
She checked the man’s breathing, an eye, held up his forearm. ‘Suspected herniation,’ she said. ‘Four normal saline, hyperventilate 100 per cent, intubation indicated, 100 mils Lidocaine.’
Her partner set up the oxygen. He got in the way and Cashin couldn’t see what was happening.
After a while, the female medic said, ‘Three on coma scale. Chopper, Dave.’
The man took out a mobile phone.
‘The door was open,’ said the woman who had been waiting on the steps. She was behind Cashin. ‘I only went in a step, backed off, thought he was dead, I wanted to run, get in the car and get out of there. Then I thought, oh shit, he might be alive and I came back and I saw he was breathing.’
; Cashin looked around the room. In front of a door in the left corner, a rug on the polished floorboards was rucked. ‘What’s through there?’ he said, pointing.
‘Passage to the south wing.’
A big painting dominated the west wall, a dark landscape seen from a height. It had been slashed at the bottom, where a flap of canvas hung down.
‘He must have gone to bed early, didn’t use even half the wood Starkey’s boy brought in,’ she said.
‘See anything else?’
‘His watch’s not on the table. It’s always there with the whisky glass on the table next to the leather chair. He had a few whiskies every night.’
‘He took his watch off?’
‘Yeah. Left it on the table every night.’
‘Let’s talk somewhere else,’ Cashin said. ‘These people are busy.’
He followed her across a marble-floored foyer to a passage around a gravelled courtyard and into a kitchen big enough for a hotel. ‘What did you do when you got here?’ he said.
‘I just put my bag down and went through. Do that every day.’
‘I’ll need to take a look in the bag. Your name is…?’
‘Carol Gehrig.’ She was in her forties, pretty, with blonded hair, lines around her mouth. There were lots of Gehrigs in the area.
She fetched a big yellow cloth bag from a table at the far end of the room, unzipped it. ‘You want to dig around?’
‘No.’
She tipped the contents onto the table: a purse, two sets of keys, a glasses case, makeup, tissues, other innocent things.
‘Thanks,’ Cashin said. ‘Touch anything in there?’
‘No. I just put the bag down, went to the sitting room to fetch the whisky glass. Then I rang. From outside.’
Now they went outside. Cashin’s mobile rang.
‘Hopgood. What’s happening?’ He was the criminal investigation unit boss in Cromarty.
‘Charles Bourgoyne’s been bashed,’ he said. ‘Badly. Medics working on him.’
‘I’ll be there in a few minutes. No one touches anything, no one leaves, okay?’
‘Gee,’ Cashin said. ‘I was going to send everyone home, get everything nice and clean for forensic.’
‘Don’t be clever,’ said Hopgood. ‘Not a fucking joking matter this.’
Carol Gehrig was sitting on the second of the four broad stone steps that led to the front door. Cashin took the clipboard and went to sit beside her. Beyond the gravel expanse and the box hedges, a row of tall pencil pines was moving in the wind, swaying in unison like a chorus line of fat-bellied dancers. He had driven past this house hundreds of times and never seen more than the tall, ornate chimneys, sections of the red pantiled roof. The brass plate on a gate pillar said The Heights, but the locals called it Bourgoyne’s.
‘I’m Joe Cashin,’ he said. ‘You’d be related to Barry Gehrig.’
‘My cousin.’
Cashin remembered his fight with Barry Gehrig in primary school. He was nine or ten. Barry won that one, he made amends later. He sat on Barry’s shoulders and ground his pale face into the playground dirt.
‘What happened to him?’
‘Dead,’ she said. ‘Drove his truck off a bridge thing near Benalla. Overpass.’
‘I’m sorry. Didn’t hear about that.’
‘He was a deadshit, always drugged up. I’m sorry for the people in the car he landed on, squashed them.’
She found cigarettes, offered. He wanted one. He said no.
‘Worked here long?’
‘Twenty-six years. I can’t believe it. Seventeen when I started.’
‘Any idea what happened?’
‘Not a clue. No.’
‘Who might attack him?’
‘I’m saying, no idea. He’s got no enemies, Mr B.’
‘How old is Mr Bourgoyne?’
‘Seventy something. Seventy-five, maybe.’
‘Who lives here? Apart from him?’
‘No one. The step-daughter was here the day before yesterday. Hasn’t been here for a long time. Years.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Erica.’
‘Know how to contact her?’
‘No idea. Ask Mrs Addison in Port Monro, the lawyer. She looks after business for Mr Bourgoyne.’
‘Anyone else work here?’
‘Bruce Starkey.’
Cashin knew the name. ‘The football player?’
‘Him. He does all the outside.’ She waved at the raked gravel, the trimmed hedges. ‘Well, now his boy Tay does. Bit simple, Tay, never says a word. Bruce sits on his arse and smokes mostly. They come Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And when he drives Mr B. Sue Dance makes lunch and dinner. Gets here about twelve, cooks lunch, cooks dinner, leaves it for him to heat up. Tony Crosby might as well be on a wage too, always something wrong with the plumbing.’
The male paramedic came out. ‘There’s a chopper coming,’ he said. ‘Where’s the best place to land?’
‘The paddock behind the stables,’ said Carol. ‘At the back of the house.’
‘How’s he doing?’ Cashin said.
The man shrugged. ‘Probably should be dead.’
He went back inside.
‘Bourgoyne’s watch,’ said Cashin. ‘Know what kind it was?’
‘Breitling,’ said Carol. ‘Smart watch. Had a crocodile-skin strap.’
‘How do you spell that?’
‘B-R-E-I-T-L-I-N-G.’
Cashin went to the cruiser, got Hopgood again. ‘They’re taking him to Melbourne. You might want to have a yarn with a Bruce Starkey and his young fella.’
‘What about?’
‘They’re both part-time here.’
‘So?’
‘Thought I’d draw it to your attention. And Bourgoyne’s watch’s probably stolen.’ He told him what Carol had said.
‘Okay. Be there in a couple of minutes. There’s three cars coming. Forensic can’t get a chopper till about 10.30.’
‘The step-daughter needs to be told,’ Cashin said. ‘She was here the day before yesterday. You can probably get an address from Cecily Addison in Port Monro, that’s Woodward, Addison & Cameron.’
‘I know who Cecily Addison is.’
‘Of course.’
Cashin went back to Carol. ‘Lots of cops coming,’ he said. ‘Going to be a long morning.’
‘I’m paid for four hours.’
‘Should be enough. What was he like?’
‘Fine. Good boss. I knew what he wanted, did the job. Bonus at Christmas. Month’s pay.’
‘No problems?’
Eyes on him, yellow flecks in the brown. ‘I keep the place like a hospital,’ she said. ‘No problems at all.’
‘You wouldn’t have any reason to try to kill him, would you?’
Carol made a sound, not quite a laugh. ‘Me? Like I’d kill my job? I’m a late starter, still got two kids on the tit, mate. There’s no work around here.’
They sat on the steps in the still enclosure, an early winter morning, quiet, just birdsounds, cars on the highway, and a coarse tractor somewhere.
‘Jesus,’ said Carol, ‘I feel so, it’s just getting to me… I could make us some coffee.’
Cashin was tempted. ‘Better not,’ he said. ‘Can’t touch anything. They’d come down on me like a tanker of pigshit. But I’ll take a smoke off you.’
Weakness, smoking. Life was weakness, strength was the exception. Their smoke hung in sheets, golden where it caught the sun.
A sound, just a pinprick at first. The dickheads, thought Cashin. They were coming with sirens.
‘Cromarty cops’ll take a full statement, Carol,’ he said. ‘They’ll be in charge of this but ring me if there’s anything you want to talk about, okay?’
‘Okay.’
They sat.
‘If he lives,’ said Cashin, ‘it’s because you got to work on time.’
Carol didn’t say anything for a while. ‘Reckon I’ll keep getting paid?’
&nbs
p; ‘Till things are settled, sure.’
They listened to the sirens coming up the hill, turning into the driveway, getting louder. Three squad cars, much too close together, came into the forecourt, braked, sent gravel flying.
The passenger door of the first car opened and a middle-aged man got out. He was tall, dark hair combed back. Senior Detective Rick Hopgood. Cashin had met him twice, civil exchanges. He walked towards them. Cashin stood.
The whupping of a helicopter, coming out of the east.
‘End of shift,’ said Hopgood. ‘You can get back to Port.’
Irrational heat behind his eyes. Cashin wanted to punch him. He didn’t say anything, looked for the chopper, walked around the house to the far hedge and watched it settle on the paddock, a hard surface, a dry autumn in a dry year. The local male medic was waiting. Three men got out, unloaded a stretcher. They went around the stables and into the house through a side door.
‘Take offence?’
Hopgood, behind him.
‘At what?’ said Cashin.
‘Didn’t mean to be short,’ said Hopgood.
Cashin looked at him. Hopgood offered a smile, yellowing teeth, big canines.
‘No offence taken,’ said Cashin.
‘Good on you,’ said Hopgood. ‘Draw on your expertise if needed?’
‘It’s one police force,’ said Cashin.
‘That’s the attitude,’ said Hopgood. ‘Be in touch.’
The medics came out with the stretcher, tubes in Bourgoyne. They didn’t hurry. What could be done had been done. After the stretcher was loaded, the local woman said a few words to one of the city team, both impassive. He would be the doctor.
The doctor got in. The machine rose, turned for the metropolis, flashed light.
Cashin said goodbye to Carol Gehrig, drove down the curving avenue of Lombardy poplars.
‘CAUGHT him yet?’
‘Not as far as I know, Mrs Addison,’ said Cashin. ‘How did you hear?’
‘The radio, my dear. What’s happening to this country? Man attacked in his bed in the peaceful countryside. Never used to happen.’
Cecily Addison was in her after-lunch position in front of the fireplace in her office, left hand waving a cigarette, right hand touching her long nose, her brushed-back white hair. Cecily had been put out to graze in Port Monro by her firm in Cromarty. She arrived at work at 9.30 am, read the newspapers, drank the first of many cups of tea, saw a few clients, mostly about wills, bothered people, walked home for lunch and a few glasses of wine.