The Broken Shore

by Peter Temple

  Rebb was examining the chainsaw. ‘Well, I don’t know you,’ he said. ‘But I know a buggered chainie when I see one.’

  They got back to work. When Rebb reached the house, he turned and began digging on Cashin’s side, coming towards him.

  Cashin’s mobile.

  ‘For your information,’ said Hopgood. ‘No Donny. They checked every square inch of the place.’

  Cashin was looking at the blisters on his left palm, one pale pregnant bump for each finger. ‘Stage two,’ he said. ‘Probably should have done that in the first place.’

  ‘Talking about us or you?’

  ‘Just talking.’

  ‘The alert’s been out since before 9 am. We didn’t wait for your say so. They tell you Bourgoyne’s on the way out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe you’re out of the loop.’

  When they were nearing each other on the path, casting the last sods into the green wildness, Rebb said, ‘That Bern. He’s your cousin?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Through your old man?’

  ‘My mum. His dad’s my mum’s brother.’

  Rebb gave Cashin a full stare and went back to work. After a while, he said, ‘This was a serious garden. Got pictures of it too?’

  ‘I’m going to Cromarty, I’ll see,’ said Cashin. He wasn’t thinking about gardens, he was thinking about Donny and the dead boys and Hopgood.

  HELEN CASTLEMAN was in court, said her firm. Cashin walked around the block, had just sat in the courtroom when she rose, all in black, silky hair.

  ‘As your honour knows, the Bail Act of 1977 does not give us a definition of exceptional circumstances…’

  The magistrate stopped her with a raised finger. ‘Ms Castleman, don’t tell me what I know.’

  ‘Thank you for your guidance, your honour. The defendant has no history of involvement with drugs. He has two convictions for minor offences involving second-hand goods. He has four children under twelve. The family’s only income is the defendant’s scrap-metal business. Mrs O’Halloran cannot care for the children and run the business without her husband.’

  The magistrate was looking in the direction of the windows.

  ‘Your honour,’ Helen Castleman said, ‘I’m told that my client’s trial is at least three months away. I submit with respect that these factors do add up to the exceptional circumstances demanded by the Act and I ask for him to be granted bail.’

  ‘In this community,’ the magistrate said, ‘heroin possession is regarded as an extremely serious offence.’

  ‘Attempted possession, with respect, your honour.’

  Cashin could see the magistrate’s jaw muscles knot. ‘Possession of heroin is regarded as an extremely serious offence in this community. Perhaps that wasn’t the case in Sydney, Ms Castleman.’

  The magistrate made a croaking noise and looked around for appreciation, showed yellow dog teeth. The prosecutor smiled, her eyes dead. The magistrate came back to Helen, teeth still showing.

  ‘The points I wish to make, your honour,’ said Helen, ‘are that my client, if convicted, faces a penalty at the bottom of the scale, and that his circumstances make the prospect of bail violation remote.’

  The magistrate stared at her.

  ‘If your honour wishes,’ said Helen, ‘I will address the subject, including the recent judgment by Mr Justice Musgrove in the Supreme Court on an appeal against a magistrate’s court’s refusal of bail.’

  He took out a tissue and blew his nose. ‘I don’t require any instruction from the depths of your inexperience, Ms Castleman. The conditions are as follows.’

  The magistrate set bail conditions.

  ‘Your honour,’ said Helen. ‘With respect, I submit that $20,000 is so far beyond the defendant’s capacity as to constitute a denial of bail.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘May I address the court on precedent?’

  He heard her without interjection. Then, silver motes of spittle catching the light, he reduced bail to $5,000.

  When Cashin came out, a criminal investigation unit cop he knew called Greg Law was leaning against the balustrade, smoking a cigarette in fingers the colour of the magistrate’s teeth.

  ‘Jesus, that woman’s cheeky,’ Law said. ‘You’re supposed to lick his arse, not threaten to ram an appeal judgment up it.’

  ‘When to lick and when to kick,’ said Cashin. ‘The central problem of life in the criminal courts.’

  Law’s eyes were on the street. Cashin followed them to a rusting orange Datsun with one blue door. The driver was slumped like a fat crash-dummy, her beefy right arm hanging out of the window, a cigarette in fat fingers. She lifted it to mouth. Cashin could see three big rings, knuckledusters.

  ‘Gaby Trevena,’ said Law. ‘The lord knows, she’s overdue. Broke a woman’s jaw outside the Gecko Lounge, she’s pregnant like a balloon. When she’s down, Gabby puts in the slipper, cracks four ribs. What a piece of fucking work.’

  A man in middle age and a youth came down the street, came up the steps, looking at Greg Law. The man was thin faced, faded ginger hair, mildewy suit from long ago, looser on him now than when he wore it to the wedding. The youth looked like his father, with longer ginger hair, bright with life, and a gold ring in an earlobe.

  ‘Straight on, with you in a moment,’ said Law, twinkling fingers at them. ‘The story is the woman pinched these plants Gabs had growing in the roof. At crop time.’

  ‘A roof garden,’ said Cashin. ‘Up in the ceiling of the fibro, a few deckchairs, plants in pots, Gabs sunbathing. I can see it.’

  ‘Today the fat bitch walks. Complainant can’t be found. Might need an excavator to find her.’

  Law levered himself away from the railing. ‘Talking licking and kicking, I hear Hopgood’s your best mate.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Law shot his cigarette into the street. ‘Gabby Trevena’s not the most dangerous person in this town. Almost but not quite.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘What do you think? Got to go.’

  Helen Castleman came down the stairs. Cashin stepped forward. ‘Good day,’ he said. ‘Can I have a word?’

  ‘If you want to walk with me. I’m late for a client.’

  They went down the steps, turned left.

  ‘Get my complaint about Donny being harassed?’ she said.

  ‘No. I’m on leave. Harassed how?’

  ‘I complained to your Mr Hopgood. Patrol cars driving by the house, shining spotlights. What kind of shit is that? Are you surprised he’s taken off? That was the aim, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know about this.’

  ‘You simply don’t have a case, that’s your problem.’

  ‘We’ve got a case,’ Cashin said. It was a lie.

  Two skateboarders were coming, in line, the front one too old to be having fun. Cashin moved left, the pair rolled between them.

  ‘Tell that to the two dead kids,’ said Helen.

  ‘No sane cop wants to shoot kids, shoot anyone actually. But normal kids don’t get out of a wreck with a shotgun.’

  ‘Well, that’s your story, that’s not a matter of fact. What do you want from me?’

  Cashin didn’t want her to dislike him. ‘It would help if we knew he’d done a runner.’

  Helen shook her head in a musing way. ‘Do you think I’d tell you if I knew?’

  ‘What would it hurt to tell me?’

  ‘If I knew, it would be knowledge gained in representing him. How could I pass that on to you? I cross here.’

  They stood at the corner, waiting for the lights, not looking at each other. Cashin wanted to look at her, looked. She was looking at him.

  ‘I don’t remember you as being so tall and thin,’ she said.

  ‘Late growth spurt. But you’re probably thinking of someone else.’

  Green light. They crossed.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I remember you.’

  Cashin felt a blush. ‘Retur
ning to the present,’ he said. ‘You’re an officer of the court. There’s no ethical problem.’

  No reply. They walked in silence, stopped at her office, a bluestone building.

  ‘I’m told you were city homicide,’ she said.

  ‘Been there, yes.’

  He saw the shift of her head, readied himself.

  ‘So it’s your experience that lawyers tell you things about their clients?’

  ‘I don’t generally ask lawyers things about their clients. But your client’s violated his bail. All I’m asking you is that if you know he’s left the area, you save us the trouble of looking for him here. It’s not a big ask.’

  ‘I’m prepared to say that I don’t know any more than you do.’

  ‘Thank you, Ms Castleman.’

  ‘My pleasure, Detective Cashin. Any time. By the way, I found out yesterday that we’re to be neighbours.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I’ve bought the place next door. The one with the old house. Mrs Corrigan’s property.’

  ‘Welcome to the shire,’ said Cashin. Today we fence that boundary, he thought.

  He walked back to the station. Hopgood wasn’t there, out on the matter of a body in the ashes of a house in Cromarty West.

  Cashin left a short message, drove to the library for the photograph. Closed, the librarians’ day off. On the way home, he thought about the night in his last year at school, the final days. Tony Cressy drove out to pick him up in a Merc, a car from Cressy’s Prestige Motors on the highway. Tony was the fullback in the Cromarty High team, he had no pace, could hardly get his body off the ground, but he was big and he intimidated the opposition.

  The four of them in the car, driving to the Kettle, to the Dangar Steps, two males and Helen Castleman and Susan Walls, he had not spoken more than a few words to either of the girls before that night.

  The steps had long been fenced off, warning signs put up, but that only encouraged people. He helped Helen climb the wire, made a stirrup with his hands. She had no trouble with stirrups, she was a show jumper, people said she could go to the Olympics. They walked across the rock, along the worn path, in the footsteps of Mad Percy Hamilton Dangar, who spent twelve years cutting the narrow steps that began close to the entrance and ran around the walls, going down to the high-tide waterline. Everyone knew the story. Perhaps a hundred steps remained, unsafe lower down, gnawed by sea and spray and wind.

  That night, they didn’t descend far. They sat with backs against the cliff, the boys smoking, passing a bottle of Jim Beam, taking burning sips, not really drinkers, any of them. It was just for show. You had to do it. Cashin and Helen sat on the step below Tony Cressy and Susan. Tony kept them laughing, he could make anyone laugh, even the stern teachers.

  Cashin remembered the feel of a breast touching his bare arm when Helen laughed, rocked sideways.

  She wasn’t wearing a bra.

  He remembered the huge waves breaking against the entrance, the thunder, the white spray rising, the heart-stopping moments when the water exploded into the round chamber beneath them, surged up the limestone sides. There was no certainty it would stop—it came up and up and you thought that this one would pluck you from your perch, take you down into the hole, falling, falling into the boiling Kettle.

  But it didn’t.

  It climbed the cliff to within five or six metres, fell back, tongues of water spat from the rock caves. The Kettle frothed and surged, then the big hole drained and it was calm.

  He remembered the jokes, the next-time-it’s-us-mate jokes.

  They dropped Susan first, parked half a block from Helen’s house. Joe walked her to the gate. She kissed him quickly, unexpectedly, looked at him, then she kissed him again, a long kiss, her hands in his hair.

  ‘You’re nice,’ she said, went in her gate.

  He walked back to the car, heart pumping. ‘Now that,’ said Tony Cressy, ‘now that is class. And you’re a lucky boy.’

  IT WAS almost dark, the wind up, when they finished digging the rotten timber out of the last posthole. Cashin ached everywhere, it hurt to stand upright.

  ‘Get it done by night tomorrow,’ said Rebb. ‘Given we got the materials.’

  ‘Bern’ll bring everything in the morning,’ said Cashin. ‘He’s got a better understanding now of what’s meant by first thing.’

  They shouldered the tools, began to climb the hill for home. Cashin whistled and black heads appeared at the creek, together, looking up.

  The house roof was in sight when his mobile rang, a feeble sound in the soughing wind. He stopped, put down the spade, found the phone. Rebb kept going.

  ‘Cashin.’

  Static. No reply. He killed it.

  Cashin followed Rebb up the slope, every step an effort. On the flat, the phone rang again.

  ‘Cashin.’

  ‘Joe?’ His mother.

  ‘Yes, Syb.’

  ‘You’re faint, can you hear me?’

  ‘I can hear you.’

  ‘Joe, Michael tried to commit suicide, they don’t know…’

  ‘Where?’ A feeling of cold, of nausea.

  ‘In Melbourne, in his unit, someone rang him and they realised there…’

  ‘What hospital?’

  ‘The Alfred.’

  ‘I’ll go now. Want to come?’

  ‘I’m scared, Joe. Did you ring him? I asked you to ring him.’

  ‘Syb, I’m leaving now. Want to come?’

  ‘I’m too scared, Joe. I can’t face…’

  ‘That’s fine. I’ll call you when I’ve seen him.’

  ‘Joe.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You should have spoken to him. I told you, I asked you twice, Joe. Twice.’

  Cashin was looking at Rebb and the dogs. They were almost at the house, dogs criss-crossing in front, noses down. They had the air of point men, at the sharp end of a dangerous mission. At the gate, they would look back, each raise a paw, give those watching the all-clear.

  ‘I’ll ring, Syb,’ he said. ‘Call me if you hear anything.’

  It was full dark when he came to the Branxholme junction and turned for the highway and the city. The headlights swept across a peeling house, a car on its axles, lit up devil-green dog eyes beside a bleeding rainwater tank.

  CASHIN FELT A near-panic as the doctor led him down the long room, between the curtained cubicles. He knew the smell, of disinfectant and scented cleaning fluids, the computer-pale colour of everything and the humming, the incessant electronic humming. It came to him that a nuclear submarine would be like this, lying in a freezing ocean trench, hushed, run by electronics.

  As they passed the stalls, Cashin saw bodies attached to tubes, wires. Tiny lights glowed, some pulsed.

  ‘Here,’ said the doctor.

  Michael’s eyes were closed. His face, what showed of it around the oxygen mask, was white. Strands of hair, black as liquorice, were drawn on the pillow. Cashin remembered his hair as short, neat— salesman’s hair.

  ‘He’ll be okay,’ said the doctor. ‘The guy who rang him called emergency. Lucky. Also, the paras weren’t far away, coming from a false alarm. So we had a small window of time.’

  He was young, Asian, skin of a baby, a private-school voice.

  ‘Took what?’ said Cashin. He wanted to be gone, into the open, breathe cleansing traffic fumes.

  ‘Sleeping pills. Benzodiazepine. Alcohol. Lots of both, a lethal amount.’

  The doctor felt his jaw with a small hand. He was very tired. ‘He’s just come off the dialysis. Feel like hell when he wakes up.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s arrived already. Come around noon, he should be talking then.’

  Cashin left the building and rang his mother, kept it short. Then he drove to Villani’s house in Brunswick, parked in the street and walked down the driveway. He’d rung on the way. ‘Tony’s room’s open, next to the garage,’ Villani had said. ‘I think it
’s been disinfected recently.’

  The room was papered with posters of football players, kick-boxers, muscle cars, a music stand stood in a corner, sheet music on it. A cello case leant against the wall. Cashin looked at the photographs pinned to the corkboard above the desk. He saw his own face in one, long before Rai Sarris, a younger Cashin, looking at the camera, in the pool at someone’s house, holding up a small Tony Villani. The boy was the adult Villani shrunken, retouched to take away the frown lines, to restore some hair at the temples.

  That’s how old my boy is now, Cashin thought, and sadness rose in him, to his throat. He sat on the bed, took off his shoes and socks, slumped, elbows on knees, head in hands, tired and hurting. After a while, he looked at his watch: 2.25 am.

  A car in the driveway. A few minutes later, a tap on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ Cashin said.

  Villani, in a suit, tie loosened, bottle in one hand, wine glasses in the other. ‘The news?’

  ‘He’s going to be okay. They got him in time.’

  ‘That’s worth a drink.’

  ‘Just the one bottle?’

  ‘You’re supposed to be fucking frail. Although, personally, I think it’s all been wanking.’

  Villani sat in his son’s desk chair, gave Cashin a glass, poured red wine. ‘Serious attempt?’ he said.

  ‘The doctor says so.’

  ‘That’s a worry. Know the why?’

  ‘He rang my mum a few times, feeling down. She asked me to talk to him. I didn’t.’

  ‘That’s like a summary of a short story.’

  ‘What the fuck would you know about short stories?’

  Villani looked around the room. ‘Been reading a bit. Can’t sleep.’ He ran wine around his mouth, eyes on the posters. ‘This isn’t just any grog,’ he said. ‘But wasted on some. Smoke?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘I’m giving up tomorrow. Because you’ve given up.’

  The nicotine hit Cashin the way it used to after a surf—raw, eye-blinking. He drank some wine.

  ‘Definitely not your 2.30 am cask piss,’ he said. ‘Somehow I can tell that.’

  ‘Bloke gave it to me, I couldn’t say no.’

  ‘Work needed on that before you front up to ethical standards. Is this early rising or late to bed?’