The Broken Shore

by Peter Temple

  Hopgood, in a black leather jacket, turned his head, edged back through the group.

  ‘Bloke in a plane saw a body outside the Kettle,’ he said. ‘In the Rip.’

  For a moment Cashin thought that he would be sick, that he would spew over Hopgood.

  ‘You’re looking ratshit,’ said Hopgood. ‘Even more ratshit.’

  ‘Bad pie.’

  ‘What’s the other kind?’

  Cashin had heard of bodies being pushed into the sea caves by the powerful surges. Sometimes it was days, weeks, before they were sucked out of the holes, out of the Kettle and into the Rip.

  Close in, the helmsman throttled back, the craft died in the water, rose and fell in a trough, motored to the pier and snarled to turn broadside at the pontoon. Two men were waiting, casual toss of a line, the boat was secured bow and stern.

  They carried the body up wrapped in an orange nylon sheet, a man at each corner, the bottom ones fearful. On the pier, they put the burden down on the rough planks, gently, stood back, unwrapped it. Hopgood leaned over.

  Cashin caught a glimpse of a bloated face, a bare foot, jeans torn to shreds. He didn’t want to see any more, he’d seen enough of dead people, crossed to the shore-side railing and looked at the lights of the town above, not bright in the gloom. Cars flicked by at the two roundabouts on Marine Parade, people going home. People with families waiting. Children.

  He wished he had a cigarette.

  ‘In his pocket,’ said Hopgood, behind him. ‘In the jacket.’

  Cashin turned. Hopgood offered him a grey nylon wallet, zipped. ‘Torch here,’ he said.

  A torch came on, crossed the pier. Hopgood took it, shone it on Cashin’s hands.

  Cashin unzipped the wallet, found a card, a photograph in the corner. He strained to look at it, put it back.

  Then a grey booklet, a prancing unicorn on the cover, inside it a plastic envelope.

  Daunt Credit Union.

  It was almost dry, water-stained only along the edges.

  Perhaps twenty entries on two pages, smudged printer type, small sums in and out.

  Donny Coulter drowned in the Kettle with $11.45 in his account.

  Cashin put the passbook back in the wallet, zipped it, gave it to Hopgood.

  ‘That’s probably the full stop,’ he said. ‘I’m going home now. I’m supposed to be on leave.’

  ‘Time to smarten up,’ said Hopgood. ‘Here it comes.’

  A television crew was on the pier, coming towards them, already filming.

  ‘Tip them off yourself?’ said Cashin. ‘Or have you got some suckhole does it for you?’

  ‘Transparency, mate. That’s the way it is now.’

  ‘Bullshit. Told Donny’s mum?’

  ‘Told her what? She’ll have to ID him.’

  ‘Is that before she sees this on television?’

  ‘This still your investigation? Your wog friend hasn’t told me.’

  ‘This has got nothing to do with the investigation,’ said Cashin. ‘And there never was any fucking investigation.’

  He walked, straight at the television crew. The frozen-haired woman recognised him and said something to the sound recordist. Then she blocked his way.

  ‘Detective Cashin, can we have a word, please?’

  Cashin walked, he didn’t reply, went around her. His shoulder knocked aside a furred microphone, the holder said, ‘Steady on.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ said Cashin.

  He drove the last stretch with Callas full blast on the player, roared down the dark and jolting roads with her beautiful voice filling the cab. The Kettle. A body floating outside the Kettle. In the big, foaming, shifting Rip.

  They went to see it for the first time when he was six or seven, everyone had to see the Kettle and the Dangar Steps. Even standing well back from the crumbling edge of the keyhole, the scene scared him, the huge sea, the grey-green water skeined with foam, sliding, falling, surging, full of little peaks and breaks, hollows and rolls, the sense of unimaginable power beneath the surface, terrible forces that could lift you up and suck you down and spin you and you would breathe in icy salt water, swallow it, choke, the power of the surge would push you through the gap in the cliff and then it would slam you against the pocked walls in the Kettle, slam you and slam you until your clothes were threads and you were just tenderised meat.

  It was called the Broken Shore, that piece of the coast. When Cashin was little, he had heard it as one word—the Brokenshaw. At some point, someone told him the first sailors to see the coast called it that because of the massive pieces of the limestone cliff that had broken away and fallen into the sea. Perhaps the sailors saw it happen. Perhaps they were close in and they saw the edge of the earth collapse, join the sea.

  Home, thank god, the headlights passing across Rebb’s shed.

  He parked close to the building and sat, the pains in him, all over. Lights off. Reluctant to move. It would not be a hardship to sleep where he was. A little sleep.

  Knocking, he heard knocking, came upright, full of alarm.

  Two dog heads at the window, the wash of light from a torch. He wound down the glass.

  ‘You okay?’ said Rebb.

  ‘Yeah, just tired.’

  ‘Brother okay?’

  ‘He’s okay.’

  ‘That’s good. Dogs had their tucker. Finish the fence tomorrow.’

  Rebb walked away. Cashin and the dogs went inside. He rang his mother. She wanted more than he had to give. He cut her off, washed down codeine tablets with a beer, poured a big whisky. He sat in the upright chair and sipped and waited for the relief.

  It came. He drank more whisky. Before he went to bed, he watched the local news.

  Police will not comment on speculation that the body found in the sea outside Cromarty’s notorious Kettle, scene of many suicides over the years, is that of eighteen-year-old Donny Coulter, charged with the attempted murder of local identity Charles Bourgoyne. Detective Senior Sergeant Joe Cashin left Long Pier without comment after the body was brought to shore.

  He saw himself coming down the pier—slit-eyed, shoulders set, hair being whipped around a stone face. Hopgood was next, pious-looking There was something of the priest about his face, the mask of sadness and sincerity assumed for an occasion. ‘Always bad to find a body,’ Hopgood said. ‘We have no other comment at this time.’

  The reporter said: ‘Donny Coulter’s mother, Mrs Lorraine Coulter, spoke out tonight about police treatment of her son, missing since Tuesday.’

  Donny’s mother standing in front of a brown brick veneer house with a threadbare lawn, concrete wheel strips running to a carport. ‘They hound him. Ever since the bail. They come by every night, put the spotlight on the house, right on Donny’s window, they sit out there. He went to sleep in the back, he couldn’t stand it no more. Drivin us all mad, Donny had enough to worry about, the boys the cops killed, all that…’

  Cashin went to bed without eating and fell asleep instantly, did not wake until the dogs complained and the cold world was fully lit, no cloud in the sky.

  REBB HAD the square redgum corner posts in, buttressed with diagonals notched into the strainers. Star posts were lying along the line of the new fence. In the middle was another strainer post.

  ‘Bern give you a hand?’ said Cashin.

  ‘Didn’t need a hand. Not much of a fence.’

  ‘By my standards, it’s much of a fence. What now?’

  ‘Get the stars in. Line em up.’

  ‘We’ll need string.’

  ‘Don’t need string. Eye’s good enough.’

  ‘My eye?’

  ‘Any prick’s eye.’

  Cashin squinted over the corner post, moving Rebb back and forth until he held each star post in line with the three strainer posts. Rebb used a sledgehammer to tap in the posts, held it in one hand as if it had no weight. Then he marked a pole with the height of the strainers and sent Cashin down the line to chalk the height on the lower part of each sta
r post. Rebb came behind him, hammering the posts until they reached the mark. He swung with a fluid grace, a full overhead swing, no sign of effort, hit the small target cleanly, never a mishit. The sound was a dull ring and it went across the valley and came back, sad somehow.

  After that they strung wire, four strands, bottom strand first, working from the middle strainer post, using a wire strainer, a dangerous-looking device. Rebb showed Cashin the knot used to tie off the bowstring-taut wire around the post.

  ‘What’s that called?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The knot, the wire knot.’

  ‘What’s it matter?’

  ‘Well,’ said Cashin, ‘no names, the world’s all grunts and sign language.’

  Rebb gave him a long sidelong look. ‘Called a strainer hitch, you’ve got no use for that name. Have a look for mine?’

  Cashin hesitated. You didn’t talk about things like this. ‘Your name? Had a look, yeah. That’s my job.’

  ‘Find anything?’

  ‘Not yet. Covered your tracks well.’

  Rebb laughed. It was the first time.

  They worked. The dogs came, interested, bored, left, other things to do. When they were finished, it was almost mid-afternoon, no food eaten. Cashin and Rebb stood at the high point and looked down the line. It ran true, the posts straight, the low light singing silver off the new wire.

  ‘Pretty good fence,’ said Cashin.

  He felt pride, it had not often been given to him to feel pride in work. He was tired and hurting in the pelvis and up his back but he felt happy, a kind of happy.

  ‘It’s a fence,’ said Rebb. He was looking away. ‘This the new neighbour?’

  Cashin didn’t recognise the woman coming down the grassy slope. Her hair was loose and she was in jeans and a leather jacket. She lost her footing a few times, narrowly avoided falling on her backside.

  ‘I’ll take the stuff up,’ said Rebb. ‘Milking time.’

  Helen Castleman.

  Cashin walked down the fence to meet her.

  ‘What’s this?’ she said, out of breath. She looked scrubbed. It made him aware of how sweaty he was.

  ‘Just fixing the fence,’ said Cashin. ‘Replacing the fence. I’m not asking you to pay half.’

  ‘Generous of you. I understand the creek to be the boundary.’

  ‘The creek?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s not so. Who told you that?’

  ‘The agent.’

  ‘The agent? A lawyer relied on the agent?’

  Helen’s cheekbones coloured, an autumn shade.

  ‘Of all the people you might rely on,’ said Cashin, ‘the real estate agent…’

  ‘That’ll do, thank you. Having a good run, aren’t you, Mr Cashin? Feeling pretty smart. You drive the poor frightened kid to suicide, now you don’t have to make any case, he’s made the case for you. And everyone else’s dead, all suspects dead. Because you and your fucking mates killed them.’

  She turned and began the climb, slipping.

  All day, seeing a boy on the Dangar Steps, a brown boy in cheap jeans, nylon anorak, broken runners, standing on a crumbling limestone ledge, the salt spray rising like a mist to bathe him, looking down at the churning water.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘give me a break, it’s…’

  Her head came around, her hair swung. ‘You don’t deserve a break and I’ll have a survey done, we’ll see about this fucking boundary.’

  Cashin watched her climb the slope. She had a few slips, a few slides. Half-way, she turned and looked down at him.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ she shouted. ‘Why don’t you just fuck off?’

  In the shower, thinking about what he should have said, the phone rang. No towel. He went, dripping.

  ‘Draw a line under this then,’ said Villani. ‘They switched off Bourgoyne. We’re never going to know exactly what happened that night.’

  ‘Exactly?’ said Cashin. He was shivering, the place was a giant fridge. ‘We never had the vaguest fucking idea.’

  ‘The watch, Joe, the watch. Not found in a lucky dip at the church fete. Someone took it off an old bloke…anyway, what the fuck, it’s over.’

  Cashin wanted to say more but he caught himself, his gaze fell on his shrivelled penis, lying in the wet crinkly hair like something in a tidal pool.

  ‘The harassment stuff,’ he said, ‘there’s something about that…’

  ‘Cromarty should have been purged long ago,’ said Villani. ‘They had the chance after the deaths in custody. But no, they moved the boss and put in a cleanskin, made his name in Traffic, Traffic dynamo. And presto, six months later Hopgood and his cocksucker offsiders were running the show again.’

  ‘I’m not happy,’ said Cashin.

  ‘Nor am I,’ said Villani. ‘I’m at home. They say I’m never here. That’s right, that’s the way it is. So I make an effort tonight to eat with my kids and there’s no one here. How’s that?’

  ‘I have no sympathy. Go back to gangland. I’m always home alone.’

  In the night Cashin woke, tried to hypnotise himself with the measured breathing, the words to stifle thought. He was falling when he saw the Kettle, the clouds parting, a full moon lighting the world silver-grey, huge waves coming in, fretting at the top, exploding through the keyhole, pure untrammelled murderous power.

  CASHIN ROSE early, unease in him like a stomach ache, took the dogs on the long route. They crossed the creek high up and walked back on the path below the shining new fence, on Cashin land, now demarcated.

  After they had all breakfasted, he loaded the dogs and set off for his mother’s house. Near the coast, he took the road that ran between the two volcanic hills, their caldera lakes home to swans, ducks, swamp hens, wicked-eyed bickering gulls by the hundreds. The lakes were never known to dry up. Cashin thought about the swims in them when he was living with the Doogues. They rode out on bicycles, five or six boys. They waded out in the black water, cold mud oozing through their toes, shivering on the hottest days. They walked around the dead tree trunks, avoided the branches that lay almost submerged like big snakes, green with moss and slime, streaked with birdshit.

  At a shout, they would all throw themselves in and swim. In the middle, they crowded together, treading water, feeling the black and sucking deep beneath them. The idea was to dive and come up with a handful of grey mud. But no one wanted to be the first. Eventually, the boldest duck-dived. They would wait for him to come up before anyone else went down. Once Bern dived and swam away under water, rose silently behind a dead tree.

  They waited for him to appear. They looked at one another. Then they panicked. Cashin remembered that, no signal given, they all made for the shore, swam for their lives, abandoned Bern.

  When they were standing in the shallows, Bern shouted: ‘Cowardly bastards. How’d you know I wasn’t stuck down there?’

  The news came on.

  Four people, including a policewoman, are in hospital after what Cromarty police claim was an attack on a patrol car in the Daunt Settlement outside the city last night. Police said a car on routine patrol was stoned shortly after 10 pm. Two other cars went to the scene. They found the first car on fire and a hostile crowd blocking the street.

  The officers attempted to drive through the crowd to reach their colleagues, a police spokesperson said. However, they were forced to leave their vehicles and shots were fired before order was restored. Police Minister Kim Bourke today defended the police actions. ‘Of course this will be fully investigated but it’s clear that it was an extremely dangerous situation. The officers’ lives were in danger and they feared for the lives of their colleagues. They took what action was necessary.’

  A forty-six-year-old man, a young woman and a youth from the Daunt Settlement were admitted to Cromarty Base Hospital with injuries. They are in a stable condition. A policewoman with head injuries is also said to be off the danger list. Two other people were treated and discharged.


  A routine patrol? Through the Daunt on the night they found Donny Coulter? What kind of station commander didn’t tell them to keep out of the Daunt?

  You drive the poor frightened kid to suicide, now you don’t have to make any case, he’s made the case for you. And everyone else’s dead, all suspects dead. Because your fucking mates killed them.

  His mother and Harry were having breakfast in the kitchen, muesli and fruit, eating out of lopsided purple bowls.

  ‘Had breakfast?’ said his mother.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Probably nothing to eat in that ruin.’ Sybil got up and filled another bowl with muesli from a glass jar, poured the remains of the tin of mixed fruit into it.

  Cashin sat down. She put the bowl in front of him, brought the milk jug closer. He poured and ate. It was surprisingly edible.

  ‘Michael rang,’ she said. ‘He’s fine, very chipper.’

  Harry nodded. ‘Very chipper.’ He was a repeater, it was his role in the marriage.

  ‘Good,’ said Cashin.

  ‘An accident,’ said Sybil. ‘All that stress he’s under in the job. So high-powered, it’s not a good life.’

  Cashin’s eyes were on the bowl. What were the black bits? Pips?

  ‘He’s coming down soon to have a bit of a rest.’

  ‘Bit of a rest,’ said Harry.

  ‘Chance for you to spend some time together,’ said his mother. ‘He was very warm about you, very appreciative.’

  ‘I love being appreciated,’ said Cashin. ‘It’s so rare in my life.’

  Harry laughed but he caught Sybil’s eye and he choked it, gazed into his bowl.

  ‘Probably been over-appreciated,’ said Sybil. ‘The love and care that’s been bestowed on you.’

  Cashin thought about drunk Sybil in the caravan, the nights of waiting for her to come back. He ate a piece of peach and a piece of something else, pinkish. The same taste.

  ‘Disgraceful business in the Daunt last night,’ said Sybil. ‘It’s turning into Israel, police provoking the dispossessed into violence. Manufacture of deviance.’