by Peter Temple
Sensible advice from Villani. Villani was the best friend he’d had. Something not to be forgotten. Best friend in a small field. Of how many? Relations excluded, relations didn’t qualify as friends. Not many.
Cashin had never sought friends, never tried to keep friendships in good repair. What was a friend? Someone who’d help you move house? Go to the pub with you, to the football? Woody did that, they’d drunk together, gone to the races, the cricket. On the day before Rai Sarris, they’d eaten at the Thai place in Elwood. Woody’s new ambition, Sandra, the high-cheekboned computer woman, was looking at Woody and laughing and she ran her bare stockinged foot up Cashin’s shinbone.
Instant erection. That was the last time he’d felt anything like that.
Woody came to the hospital a few times but, afterwards, Cashin didn’t see him, they couldn’t do the same things as before. No, that wasn’t it. Shane Diab lay between them. People thought he was responsible for Shane’s death.
They were right.
Shane was dead because Cashin had taken him along to see if his hunch was right that Sarris would come back to the house of his drug-trader partner. Shane had asked to come. But that didn’t exonerate Cashin. He was a senior officer. He had no right to involve a naïve kid in his obsession with finding Sarris.
Singo never blamed him. Singo came to see him once a week after he was out of danger. On the first visit, he put his head close and said: ‘Listen, you prick, you were right. The bastard came back.’
More drink. Think about the present, he told himself. People wanted Donny and Luke to be Bourgoyne’s killers. If they were, it justified the deaths of Luke and Corey. And Donny’s suicide, it explained that—the act of a guilty person.
Innocent boys branded as the killers of a good man, a decent, generous man. Two injustices. And whoever did it was out there, like Rai Sarris—free, laughing, sneering. Cashin closed his eyes and he saw the boys, unlined faces, one barely breathing, chest crushed, one gasping, spraying a dark mist, dying in the drenched night, the lights gleaming off the puddles of rain, of blood.
He had another drink, another, fell asleep in the chair and woke in alarm, freezing, fire low, rain heavy on the roof. The microwave clock said 3:57. He took two tablets with half a litre of water, put out the lights and went to bed fully clothed.
The dogs joined him, one on each side, happy to have been spared the middle passage of exile to their quarters.
THE LIGHT came back to a freezing world, wind from the west, bursts of rain, hail spits the size of pomegranate pips.
Cashin didn’t care about the weather. He was beyond weather, felt terrible, in need of punishment. He took the dogs to the sea, walked to the mouth in a whipping wind, no sand blowing, the dunes soaked, the beach tightly muscled.
Today, Stone’s Creek was strong, the inlet wide, the sandbars erased. On the other side, a man in an old raincoat, a baseball cap, was fishing with a light rod, casting to the line where the creek flow met the salt, reeling. A small brown dog at his feet saw the poodles and rushed to the creek’s edge, barking, levitating on stiff legs with each hoarse expulsion.
The poodles stood together, silent, front paws in the water, studying the incensed animal. Their tails moved in slow, interested scientific wags.
Cashin waved to the man, who took a hand off his rod. There was little of him to see—a nose, a chin—but Cashin knew him from Port, he was an odd-job man for the elderly, the infirm, the inept, replaced tap washers, fuses, patched gutters, unblocked drains. How is it, he thought, that you can recognise people from a great distance, sense the presence of someone in a crowd, know their absence in the instant of opening a door?
On impulse, he turned left, walked along the creek, threading his way through the dune scrub. The dogs approved, brushed past him, went ahead and found a path worn by human feet over a long time. The land rose, the creek was soon a few metres below the path, glass-clear, shoals of tiny fish flashing light. They walked for about ten minutes, the path diverging from the creek, entering a region of dunes like big ocean swells. At the top of the highest one, the coastal plain was revealed. Cashin could see the creek winding away to the right, a truck on the distant highway, and, beyond it, the dark thread that was the road climbing the hill to The Heights.
Below, the path ran in a gentle curve to a clearing of several hectares, cut from bushland now coming back. It led to a roofless building, to the remains of other structures, one a tapering chimney standing amid ruins, a brick finger sticking out of a black fist.
The dogs reached the scene well ahead of Cashin, stopped, eyed the place, tails down. They looked back at him, got the signal, kicked off, running for a pile of bricks and rubble. Rabbits unfroze, scattered, bewildered the dogs for choice.
Cashin walked to the edge of the settlement, stood in the spattering rain. The flat area to the left had been a sports field. Three football posts remained, sunk in long grass, paint gone, wood bleached white. He became aware of the sounds the wind was making as it passed through the ruins—a tapping noise, a creaking like a nail being pulled from shrunken hardwood, a variety of low moans.
He went to the roofless timber structure, four rooms, a passage between them, looked in a window socket, saw a vandalised, pillaged space where fires had been made and people had defecated on bare earth once covered by floorboards. Fifty metres beyond it stood the chimney. He crossed to it, went around to the highway side. Once the brickwork had housed two stoves in big recesses, between them an oven. The cast-iron door lay rusting on the brick hearth, broken from its hinges.
The dogs were running around frantically, demented by rabbit scents everywhere. But the rabbits were gone, safe beneath the broken bricks and rusted sheets of corrugated iron. Behind the kitchen, in the grass on the other side of an expanse of cracked concrete, Cashin found the brick footings of a long building, two rooms wide. The top bricks were blackened and, inside the footings, he stumbled over a charred floor joist.
That’s history, been nothing there since the fire. Companions are history too.
Cecily Addison’s words.
Cashin whistled, a chirpy sound in the forlorn place. The dogs appeared, joined at the mouths by something, tugging at it. He made them sit and release the object.
It was a leather belt, stiff and cracked—a boy’s belt, a size to span a waist no bigger than a football. Cashin picked it up. On the rusted buckle, he could make out a fleur-de-lis and parts of words: B Prepa.
Be Prepared. It was a boy scout buckle.
He raised his arm to cast it away and then he could not. He walked across the overgrown playing field and bent the small hard belt around a goalpost, buckled it, let it slide into the grass.
On the highest dune, Cashin looked back. The wind was moving the goalposts, waving the grass. From the highway came the sound of a truck’s airhorn, lonely somehow, nocturnal. He called the dogs and walked.
They drove home on empty roads, past houses sunk in their hollows, greenwood smoke being snatched from chimneys. The age of cheap dry wood from a million ringbarked trees was over.
He thought about Bourgoyne. Short of a startling piece of luck, it would never be known who bashed him, killed him. But it would always be stuck on the boys, their families, stuck on the whole Daunt, and even on people like Bern and his kids. Bourgoyne’s killing was ammunition for all the casual haters everywhere.
Takin out those two Daunt coons. Pity it wasn’t a whole fuckin busload.
Most of Derry Callahan’s customers would have said Fuckin A to that.
Don’t obsess, he thought. Listen to Villani, leave the business alone.
Rebb was waiting, out of the wind, he had heard the vehicle. He walked across, flat cigarette in mouth. Cashin got out, released the dogs. Rebb held his hands low, palms up, the dogs went to them and didn’t jump, waggled their whole bodies.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you going to town today?’
‘I am,’ said Cashin, deciding in the instant. ‘You eaten?’
>
‘No, just come from the cows.’
‘We can eat somewhere. Give me ten, I need to shower.’
THEY ORDERED bacon and eggs at the truckstop on the edge of Cromarty. An anorexic girl with a moustache and a pink-caked pimple between her eyebrows brought the food. The eggs lay on tissue-paper bread, the yokes small and pasta-coloured. Narrow pink steaks of meat could be seen in the grey pig fat.
Rebb ate some egg. ‘Not from chooks living out the back,’ he said. ‘You in a position to pay wages?’
Cashin closed his eyes. He hadn’t paid Rebb anything for the work done at the house, the fence. It had not entered his mind. ‘Jesus, sorry,’ he said. ‘I just forgot.’
Rebb carried on eating, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. He reached inside his coat and produced a folded sheet of paper torn from a notebook. ‘I reckon it’s twenty-six hours. Ten an hour okay?’
‘Don’t you get the minimum rate?’
‘No rent, eating your food.’
‘Yeah, well, let’s say fifteen.’
‘If you like.’
‘I’ll need your tax file number.’
Rebb smiled. ‘Do me a favour. Use Bern’s number. Know that by heart, wouldn’t you, your cousin, all the transacting you do? Paying the tax on it all.’
Hopelessly compromised, thought Cashin. Just as guilty as any woman with two kids caught shoplifting.
He parked two blocks from the bank. He could have parked behind the police station but something said that wasn’t a good idea. He took money out of the machine and paid Rebb.
‘I’ll be half an hour,’ he said. ‘Enough for you?’
‘Plenty.’
He walked down wet streets to the station. Hopgood was in, writing in a file, a neat stack to his left awaiting his attention.
‘Paperless office,’ said Cashin from the door.
Hopgood looked up, expressionless eyes. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’d like to know who ordered the spotlight on Donny’s house.’
‘That’s the Coulter bitch’s story, lies, they all fucking lie. It’s a way of life. Just a routine patrol.’
‘I thought the Daunt was Indian territory? What happened to the Blackhawk Down stuff?’
Bright spots on Hopgood’s cheekbones. ‘Yeah, well, time to show the fucking flag in the pigsty. Anyway, where do you get off? I don’t answer to you. Worry about your own fucking pisspot station.’
Cashin felt the heat in his own face, the urge to hit Hopgood in the middle of his face, to break nose and lips, to see the look he’d seen in Derry Callahan’s eyes.
‘I’d like to see the Bourgoyne stuff,’ he said.
‘Why? It’s over.’
‘I don’t think it’s over.’
Hopgood tapped a nostril with a finger. He had fat fingers. ‘The watch? How does that feel?’
‘I’d like to have a look anyway.’
‘I’m busy here. Take it up with the station commander when he gets back from leave.’
Their eyes were locked. ‘I’ll do that,’ Cashin said. ‘There’s something we haven’t discussed.’
‘Yeah?’
‘That dud Falcon. You knew it couldn’t keep up, didn’t you?’
‘Didn’t know you couldn’t drive, mate. Didn’t know you were a gutless fucking wonder.’
‘And the calls. You heard them.’
‘Is that right? There’s nothing on tape. You two boongs making up stories now? Like Donny’s fucking mother? You related? All fucking related, aren’t you? How’s that happen, you reckon? All in the one bed fucking in the dark when they’ve cut the power cause you spent all the money on grog?’
Cashin’s vision was blurred. He wanted to kill.
‘Let me tell you something else, you fucking smartarse,’ said Hopgood. ‘You think you can shack up with a swaggie out there and nobody knows? You can let your arsefucker punch out innocent citizens and you look the other way? Is that a thrill for you? You like that kind of thing? Come in your panties, do you?’
Cashin turned and walked. A uniform cop was in the door. The man moved away quickly.
CASHIN WENT down to the esplanade and stood at the wall, the salt wind in his face. There were whitecaps across the bay, a fishing boat was coming in, cresting the grey swells, sinking into the troughs. He did his deep breathing, trying to take control of his nervous system, feeling his heartbeat slow.
After ten minutes, he went back, the only people on foot a group of kids coming down the hill in a rolling maul. He turned right halfway up, went the way he’d walked with Helen Castleman from the court, climbed the steps to her office. The receptionist was a teenager, too much makeup, looking at her nails.
He asked. She spoke on the telephone.
‘Down the passage,’ she said, a big smile, lots of gum. ‘At the end.’
The door was open, her desk was to the right. Helen was waiting for him, looking up, unsmiling. He stood in the doorway.
‘Two things,’ he said. ‘In order of importance.’
‘Yes?’
‘Donny,’ he said. ‘I’ve raised the harassment. They deny it. I’ll take it as far as I can.’
‘Donny’s dead,’ she said. ‘He shouldn’t be. He was a boy who wasn’t very bright and who was very scared.’
‘We didn’t want that. We wanted a trial.’
‘We? Is that you and Hopgood? You were fishing. You had nothing.’
‘The watch.’
‘Being with someone trying to sell a watch is evidence of nothing. Even having the watch means nothing.’
‘I’ll move on to the fence,’ said Cashin.
‘You’ve taken more than a metre from my property,’ she said. ‘Have your own survey done if you don’t accept mine.’
‘That’s not what bothers you. You thought the property went to the creek.’
‘Quite another matter. What I want you to do, Detective Cashin, is to take down the fence you so hastily…’
‘I’ll sell you the strip to the creek.’
He had not planned to say this.
Helen’s head went back. ‘Is that what this is about? Are you a friend of the agent?’
Cashin felt the flush. ‘Offer withdrawn,’ he said. ‘Goodbye.’
He was in the doorway when she said, ‘Joe, don’t go. Please.’
He turned, conscious of the blood in his cheeks, did not want to meet her eyes.
She had a hand up. ‘I’m sorry. I retract that. And my outburst on the evening, I apologise for that too. Unlawyerly behaviour.’
The disdain, then the surrender. He didn’t know what to do.
‘Accept?’ she said.
‘Okay. Yeah.’
‘Good. Sit down, Joe. Let’s start again, we know each other in a way, don’t we?’
Cashin sat.
‘I want to ask you something about Donny.’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s something, it came up, it bothers me.’
‘Yes?’
‘The pursuit, roadblock, whatever it was, that was because of a watch someone tried to sell in Sydney. Is that right?’
Cashin was going to say yes when Bobby Walshe came into his mind. This was about politics, the three crucified black boys. Bobby wasn’t going to let it rest, there was mileage left, miles and miles. She wanted to use him.
‘There’s the coroner to come,’ he said. ‘How’s Bobby Walshe?’
Helen Castleman bit her lip, looked away, he admired her profile.
‘This’s not about politics, Joe,’ she said. ‘It’s about the boys, the families. The whole Daunt. It’s about justice.’
He said nothing, he could not trust himself.
‘Do cops think about things like justice, Joe? Truth? Or is it like your football team, it can do no wrong and winning is everything?’
‘Cops think much like lawyers,’ said Cashin. ‘Only they don’t get rich and people try to kill them. What’s the point here?’
‘Donny’s mother says th
at Corey Pascoe’s sister told her mother Corey had a watch, an expensive-looking watch.’
‘When was that?’
‘About a year ago.’
‘Well, who knows what Corey had?’ Cashin heard the roughness in his voice. ‘Watches and what else?’
‘Will you do anything about this?’
‘It’s not in my hands.’
She said nothing, unblinking. He wanted to look away but he couldn’t.
‘So you’re not interested?’
Cashin was going to repeat himself but Hopgood came into his mind. ‘If it makes you happy, I’ll talk to the sister,’ he said.
‘I can get her to come here. You can use the spare office.’
‘Not here, no.’ That was not a good idea.
‘She’s scared of cops. I wonder why?’
There had been a Pascoe in his class at primary school. ‘Ask them if they know Bern Doogue,’ he said. ‘Tell them the cop is Bern’s cousin.’
Cashin bought the Cromarty Herald at the newsagent. He didn’t look at it until the lights, waiting to cross.
MOUTH RESORT GO-AHEAD
Council approves $350m plan
He read as he walked. Smooth and tanned Adrian Fyfe was going to get his development, subject to an enviromental impact assessment. Nothing about access, about buying the Companions camp from the Bourgoyne estate.
CASHIN SAW them as he rounded the old wool store—two big men and a woman near the end of the jetty. He parked, got out, put his hands in the pockets of his bluey and walked into a wind that smelled of salt and fish, with hints of burnt diesel.
The jetty planks were old and deeply furrowed, the gaps between them wide enough to lose a fishing knife to the sea, see it flash as it hit the water. Only three other people were out in the weather, a man and a small boy sitting side by side, arms touching, fishing with handlines, and an old man layered with clothing, holding a rod over the railing. His beanie was pulled down to his eyebrows, a red nose poking out of grey stubble.
The men watched him coming, the woman standing between them had her eyes down. Closer, Cashin could see that she was a tall girl, fifteen or sixteen, snub nose, bad skin.