by Peter Temple
‘What?’
‘There was chockie wrappers in the bin a few times. Twice.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, he didn’t eat em,’ Carol said. ‘Nothin sweet in the place. Didn’t even have sugar in his tea.’
‘You saw chocolate wrappers in the kitchen bin?’
‘Not the kitchen bin. The big one outside. Saw em when I put the stuff in. Mars bars and that shit.’
‘Well, someone staying?’
‘No. Not then.’
‘Twice?’
‘Well, I remember twice. Wastin your time with rubbish?’
Rebb came into sight, coming home from Den’s cows, a dog on each flank, looking around like bodyguards, alert for assassins hiding in the grass.
‘Never,’ he said. ‘Any idea when?’
‘I know the one, it was Kirstie’s birthday the day before and I’d had this…anyhow, the day. A Monday, twenty-three seven and it’s 1988. That’s for sure. Yes.’
23.07.88.
‘Interesting,’ said Cashin. ‘Think about the other time. A month would help, a year. Even winter or summer.’
‘I’ll think.’
They said goodbye and he stayed where he was, in his mind the image of Bourgoyne’s nine pots, all the pieces the perfectionist had thought worth keeping. Into the base of one was scratched a date: 11/6/88.
Was that the day it was made? Could you upturn a newly-thrown pot that size and scratch a date on the bottom? Or did that come later?
He went to the telephone, looked at it for a while, thinking about being upstairs in the old brick building at The Heights, looking back and registering the bolt on the bedroom door.
If you walked up the hill on a night when the kiln was burning, you would hear it before you saw it—it would be a powerful sound, a vibrating, a thrumming. And when you rounded the woodpile, you would see the fire holes glowing white hot, they would light the clearing, and you would feel on your face the force of the sea wind that was blowing into the kiln’s mouth.
He dialled the direct number. It rang and rang and then Tracy answered, more reprimand than greeting.
‘It’s Joe,’ he said. ‘Do me a favour, Trace. Kids missing in June, July, 1988. Boys.’
‘No end to it,’ she said.
‘Not on this earth.’
A morning of sunlight on the round winter hill, above it cloud strands fleeing inland, and the wind on the long grass, annoying it, strumming it.
A bark at the door, another, more urgent, the dogs taking turns. He let them in and they surrounded him and he was glad to have them and to be there.
A five-time winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction, Peter Temple is Australia’s most acclaimed crime and thriller writer. He lives in Victoria, Australia.
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2008
Copyright © 2005 Peter Temple
Published by arrangement with The Text Publishing Company
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2008. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2007. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House of Canada Limited.
www.randomhouse.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Temple, Peter, 1946–
The broken shore / Peter Temple.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37585-8
I. Title.
PR9619.3.T37B76 2008 823′.92 C2007-903615-5
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
v3.0