The Broken Shore

CASHIN WALKED around the hill, into the wind from the sea. It was cold, late autumn, last glowing leaves clinging to the liquidambars and maples his great-grandfather’s brother had planted, their surrender close. He loved this time, the morning stillness, loved it more than spring.

The dogs were tiring now but still hunting the ground, noses down, taking more time to sniff, less hopeful. Then one picked up a scent and, new life in their legs, they loped in file for the trees, vanished.

When he was near the house, the dogs, black as liquorice, came out of the trees, stopped, heads up, looked around as if seeing the land for the first time. Explorers. They turned their gaze on him for a while, started down the slope.

He walked the last stretch as briskly as he could and, as he put his hand out to the gate, they reached him. Their curly black heads tried to nudge him aside, insisting on entering first, strong back legs pushing. He unlatched the gate, they pushed it open enough to slip in, nose to tail, trotted down the path to the shed door. Both wanted to be first again, stood with tails up, furry scimitars, noses touching at the door jamb.

Inside, the big poodles led him to the kitchen. They had water bowls there and they stuck their noses into them and drank in a noisy way. Cashin prepared their meal: two slices each from the cannon-barrel dog sausage made by the butcher in Kenmare, three handfuls each of dry dog food. He got the dogs’ attention, took the bowls outside, placed them a metre apart.

The dogs came out. He told them to sit. Stomachs full of water, they did so slowly and with disdain, appeared to be arthritic. Given permission to eat, they looked at the food without interest, looked at each other, at him. Why have we been brought here to see this inedible stuff?

Cashin went inside. In his hip pocket, the mobile rang.

‘Yes.’

‘Joe?’

Kendall Rogers, from the station.

‘Had a call from a lady,’ she said. ‘Near Beckett. A Mrs Haig. She reckons there’s someone in her shed.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Well, nothing. Her dog’s barking. I’ll sort it out.’

Cashin felt his stubble. ‘What’s the address?’

‘I’m going.’

‘No point. Not far out of my way. Address?’

He went to the kitchen table and wrote on the pad: date, time, incident, address. ‘Tell her fifteen-twenty. Give her my number if anything happens before I get there.’

The dogs liked his urgency, rushed around, made for the vehicle when he left the building. On the way, they stood on station, noses out the back windows. Cashin parked a hundred metres down the lane from the farmhouse gate. A head came around the hedge as he approached.

‘Cop?’ she said. She had dirty grey hair around a face cut from a hard wood with a blunt tool.

Cashin nodded.

‘The uniform and that?’

‘Plainclothes,’ he said. He produced the Victoria Police badge with the emblem that looked like a fox. She took off her smudged glasses to study it.

‘Them police dogs?’ she said.

He looked back. Two woolly black heads in the same window.

‘They work with the police,’ he said. ‘Where’s this person?’

‘Come,’ she said. ‘Dog’s inside, mad as a pork chop, the little bugger.’

‘Jack Russell,’ said Cashin.

‘How’d ya know that?’

‘Just a guess.’

They went around the house. He felt the fear rising in him like nausea.

‘In there,’ she said.

The shed was a long way from the house, you had to cross an expanse of overgrown garden, go through an opening in a fence lost beneath rampant potato-creeper. They walked to the gate. Beyond was knee-high grass, pieces of rusted metal sticking out.

‘What’s inside?’ Cashin said, looking at a rusted shed of corrugated iron a few metres from the road, a door half open. He felt sweat around his collarbones. He wished he’d let Kendall do this.

Mrs Haig touched her chin, black spikes like a worn-down hair brush. ‘Stuff,’ she said. Junk. The old truck. Haven’t bin in there for years. Don’t go in there.’

‘Let the dog out,’ he said.

Her head jerked, alarmed. ‘Bastard might hurt im,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘What’s the dog’s name?’

‘Monty, call them all Monty, after Lord Monty of Alamein. Too young, you wouldn’t know.’

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Let Monty out.’

‘And them police dogs? What bloody use are they?’

‘Kept for life-and-death matters,’ Cashin said, controlling his voice. ‘I’ll be at the door, then you let Lord Monty out.’

His mouth was dry, his scalp itched, these things would not have happened before Rai Sarris. He crossed the grassland, went to the left of the door. You learned early to keep your distance from potentially dangerous people and that included not going into dark sheds to meet them.

Mrs Haig was at the potato-creeper hedge. He gave her the thumbs up, his heart thumping.

The small dog came bounding through the grass, all tight muscles and yap, went for the shed, braked, stuck its head in the door and snarled, small body rigid with excitement.

Cashin thumped on the corrugated iron wall with his left hand. ‘Police,’ he said loudly, glad to be doing something. ‘Get out of there. Now!’

Not a long wait.

The dog backed off, shrieking, hysterical, mostly airborne.

A man appeared in the doorway, hesitated, came out carrying a canvas swag. He ignored the dog.

‘On my way,’ he said. ‘Just had a sleep.’ He was in his fifties perhaps, short grey hair, big shoulders, a day’s beard.

‘Call the dog, Mrs Haig,’ Cashin said over his shoulder.

The woman shouted and the dog withdrew, reluctant but obedient.

‘Trespassing on private property,’ said Cashin, calmer. He felt no threat from the man.

‘Yeah, well, just had a sleep.’

‘Put the swag down,’ Cashin said. ‘Take off your coat.’

‘Says who?’

‘I’m a cop.’ He showed the fox.

The man folded his bluey, put it down on his swag, at his feet. He wore laced boots, never seen polish, toes dented.

‘How’d you get here?’ Cashin said.

‘Walking. Lifts.’

‘From where?’

‘New South.’

‘New South Wales?

‘Yeah.’

‘Long way to come.’

‘A way.’

‘Going where?’

‘Just going. My own business where I go.’

‘Free country. Got some ID? Driver’s licence, Medicare card.’

‘No.’

‘No ID?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t make it hard,’ Cashin said. ‘I haven’t had breakfast. No ID, I take you in for fingerprinting, charge you with trespass, put you in the cells. Could be a while before you see daylight.’

The man bent, found a wallet in his coat, took out a folded sheet of paper, offered it.

‘Put it in the pocket and chuck the coat over.’

It landed a metre away.

‘Back off a bit,’ Cashin said. He collected the coat, felt it. Nothing. He took out the piece of paper, often folded, worn. He opened it.

Dave Rebb has worked on Boorindi Downs for three years and is a hard worker and no trouble, his good with engines, most mechanic things. Also stock. I would employ him again any time.

It was signed Colin Blandy, manager, and dated 11 August 1996. There was a telephone number.

‘Where’s this place?’ said Cashin.

‘Queensland. Near Winton.’

‘And this is it? This’s your ID? Ten years old?’

‘Yeah.’

Cashin found his notebook and wrote down the names and the number, put the paper back in the coat. ‘Scared the lady here,’ he said. ‘That’s not good.’

‘No sign of life when I come,’ said the man. ‘Dog didn’t bark.’

‘Been in trouble with the police, Dave?’

‘No. Never been in trouble.’

‘Could be a murderer,’ said Mrs Haig behind him. ‘Killer. Dangerous killer.’

‘Me, Mrs Haig,’ said Cashin, ‘I’m the policeman, I’m dealing with this. Dave, I’m going to drive you to the main road. Come back this way, you’ll be in serious trouble. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

Cashin took the two steps and gave the man back his coat. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Charge him!’ shouted Mrs Haig.

In the vehicle, Dave Rebb offered his hands to the dogs, he was a man who knew about dogs. At the T-junction, Cashin pulled over.

‘Which way you going?’ he said.

There was a moment. ‘Cromarty.’

‘Drop you at Port Monro,’ Cashin said. He turned left. At the turnoff to the town, he stopped. They got out and he opened the back for the man’s swag.

‘Mind how you go now,’ Cashin said. ‘Need a buck or two?’

‘No,’ said Rebb. ‘Treated me like a human. Not a lot of that.’

Waiting to turn, Cashin watched Rebb go, swag horizontal across his back, sticking out. In the morning mist, he was a stubby-armed cross walking.

‘NO DRAMA?’ said Kendall Rogers.

‘Just a swaggie,’ said Cashin. ‘You doing unpaid time now?’

‘I woke up early. It’s warmer here, anyway.’ She fiddled with something on the counter.

Cashin raised the hatch and went to his desk, started on the incident report.

‘I’m thinking of applying for a transfer,’ she said.

‘I can do something about my personal hygiene,’ Cashin said. ‘I can change.’

‘I don’t need protecting,’ she said. ‘I’m not a rookie.’

Cashin looked up. He’d been expecting this. ‘I’m not protecting you from anything. I wouldn’t protect anybody. You can die for me anytime.’

A silence.

‘Yes, well,’ Kendall said. ‘There are things here to be resolved. Like the pub business. You drive back at ten o’clock at night.’

‘The Caine animals won’t touch me. I’m not going to go to an inquiry and explain why I let you handle it.’

‘Why won’t they touch you?’

‘Because my cousins will kill them. And after that, they’ll be very nasty to them. Is that a satisfactory answer, your honour?’ He went back to the report but he felt her eyes. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What?’

‘I’m going to Cindy’s. Ham and egg?’

‘I’ll let you face the savage bitch? On a Friday morning? I’ll go.’

She laughed, some of the tension gone.

When she was at the door, Cashin said, ‘Ken, bit more mustard this time? Brave enough to ask her?’

He went to the window and watched her go down the street. She had been a gymnast, represented the state at sixteen, won her first gold medal. You would not know it from her walk. In the city, off duty, she went to a club with a friend, a photographer. She was recognised by a youth she had arrested a few months before, an apprentice motor mechanic, a weekend raver, a kicker and a stomper. They were followed, the photographer was badly beaten, locked in his car boot, survived by luck.

Kendall was taken somewhere, treated like a sex doll. After dawn, a man and his dog found her. She had a broken pelvis, a broken arm, six broken ribs, a punctured lung, damaged spleen, pancreas, crushed nose, one cheekbone stove in, five teeth broken, a dislocated shoulder, massive bruising everywhere.

Cashin returned to the paper work. You could get by without identification but Rebb had been employed, there might be some tax record. He dialled the number for Boorindi Downs. It rang for a while.

‘Yeah?’

‘Victoria Police, Detective Cashin, Port Monro. Need to know about someone worked on Boorindi Downs.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Dave Rebb.’

‘When’s that?’

‘1994 to 1996.’

‘No, mate, no one here from then. Place belongs to someone else now, they did a clear-out.’

‘What about Colin Blandy?’

‘Blands, oh yeah. I know him from before, he got the bullet from the Greeks, went to Queensland. Dead, though.’

‘Thanks for your time.’

Cashin thought that he had made a mistake, he should have fingerprinted Rebb. He had cause to, he had allowed sympathy to dictate.

Could be a murderer, said Mrs Haig. Killer.

He rang Cromarty, asked for the criminal investigation man he knew.

‘Got a feeling, have you?’ said Dewes. ‘I’ll tell them to keep a lookout.’

Cashin sat, hands on the desk. He had threatened Rebb with this, the fingerprinting, the long wait in the cells.

‘Sandwich,’ said Kendall. ‘Extra mustard. She put it on with a trowel.’

An ordinary shift went by. Near the end, the word came that the first electronic sweep found no David Rebb on any government database in the states and territories. It didn’t mean much. Cashin knew of cases where searches had failed to find people with strings of convictions. He clocked off, drove out to the highway, turned for Cromarty.

Rebb had walked twenty-three kilometres. Cashin pulled in a good way in front of him, got out.

He came on, a man who walked, easy walk, stopped, a tilt of shoulders, the tilted cross.

‘Dave, I’ve got to fingerprint you,’ Cashin said.

‘Told you. Done nothing.’

‘Can’t take your word, Dave. Can’t take anyone’s word. Got to charge you with trespass,’ Cashin said.

Rebb said nothing.

‘That’s so we can take your prints.’

‘Don’t lock me up,’ said Rebb, softly, no tone. ‘Can’t go in the cells.’

Cashin heard the fear in the man’s voice and he knew that once he would not have cared much. He hesitated, then he said, ‘Listen, you interested in work? Dairy cows, cow stuff. Do that kind of thing?’

Rebb nodded. ‘Long time ago.’

‘Want some work?’

‘Well, open to offers.’

‘And garden stuff, some building work maybe?’

‘Yeah. Done a bit of that, yeah.’

‘Well, there’s work here. My neighbour’s cows, I’m clearing up an old place, might rebuild a bit, thinking of it. Work for a cop?’

‘Worked for every kind of bastard there is.’

‘Thank you. You can sleep at my place tonight. There’s a shed with bunks and a shower. See about the job tomorrow.’

They got into the vehicle, Rebb’s swag in the back. ‘This how they get workers around here?’ he said. ‘Cops recruit them.’

‘All part of the job.’

‘What about the fingerprints?’

‘I’m taking your word you’re clean. That’s pretty dumb, hey?’

Rebb was looking out of the window. ‘Saved the taxpayer money,’ he said.

CASHIN WOKE in the dark, Shane Diab on his mind, the sounds he made dying.

He listened to his aches for a time, tested his spine, his hips, his thighs-they all gave pain. He pushed away the lovely warm burden of the quilts, put feet in the icy waiting boots, and left the room, went down the passage, through Tommy Cashin’s sad ballroom, into the hall, out the front door. It was no colder out than in, today the mist blown away by a strong wind off the ocean.

He pissed from the verandah, onto the weeds. It didn’t bother them. Then he went inside and did his stretching, washed his face, rinsed his mouth, put on overalls, socks, boots.

The dogs knew his noises, they were making throat sounds of impatience at the side door. He let them in and the big creatures snuffled around him, tails swinging.

Thirsty, he went to the fridge and the sight of the frosted beer bottles made him think he could drink a beer. He took out the two-litre bottle of juice, eight fruits it said. Only a dickhead would believe that.

He held the plastic flagon in both hands, took a long drink, a tall glass at least. He took the old oilskin coat off the hook behind the door, picked up the weapon. When he opened the door to the verandah, the dogs pushed through, bounded down the steps, ran for the back gate. They jostled while they watched him come down the path, shrugging into the coat as he walked. Gate open, they ran down the path, side by side, reached the open land and made for the trees, jumping over the big tufts of grass, extravagant leaps, ears floating.

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?’

‘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.

On the way back to the office, she dropped in on anyone who wasn’t quick enough to disappear.

‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘Don’t know what the world’s coming to. Read the paper today?’ She pointed at her desk.

Cashin reached for the Cromarty Herald. The front-page headlines said:

ANGER MOUNTS

ON CRIME WAVE

Community calls for curfew

‘Curfew, mind you,’ said Cecily. ‘That’s not the way we want to go. Can’t have Neighbourhood Watch calling the shots. Old buggers with nothing better to do than stickybeak. Neighbourhood bloody Nazis.’

Cashin read the story. Outrage at public meeting. Call for curfew on teenagers. Epidemic of burglaries and car thefts. Five armed robberies in two months. Sharp rise in assaults. Shop windows broken in the Whalers Mall. Lawless element in community. Time for firm action.

‘Aimed at the Abos,’ said Cecily, ‘always is. Every few years they get on to it again. You’d think the white trash were all at choir practice of a Saturday night. I can tell you, forty-four years in the courts in Cromarty, I’ve seen more Abos fitted up than I’ve had hot dinners.’

‘Not by the police, surely?’ said Cashin.

Cecily laughed herself into a coughing fit. Cashin waited.

‘I hate to say this,’ Cecily said, taking the newspaper. ‘Don’t mind telling you I’ve voted Liberal all my life. But since this rag changed hands its mission in life is to get the Libs back in Cromarty. And that means bagging blacks every chance they get.’

‘Interesting,’ said Cashin. ‘I want to ask you about Charles Bourgoyne. I gather you pay his bills.’

Cecily didn’t want to change the subject.

‘Never thought I’d say something like that,’ she said. ‘Hope my dad’s not listening. You know Bob Menzies didn’t have a house to live in when he left Canberra?’

‘I didn’t know that, no. I’m a bit short of time.’

A lie. Cashin knew how hard the ex-Prime Minister had done it because Cecily told him the story once or twice a month.

‘Paid for his own phone calls, Bob Menzies. Sitting up there in the Lodge in Canberra, when he rang his old mum, he put a coin in a box. Little money box. When it was full, he gave it to Treasury. Went into general revenue. Catch today’s pollies doing that? Take a coin out more likely. Rorters and shicers to a man. Did I tell you they wanted me to stand for Parliament? Told em, thanks very much, I’m already paid for being involved with crooks.’

‘Charles Bourgoyne,’ said Cashin. ‘I’ve come about him. You pay his bills.’

Cecily blinked. ‘Indeed I do. Known Charles for a very long time. Clients of the firm, Dick and Charles, Bourgoyne & Cromie, we did all their work.’

‘Bourgoyne & Cromie’s a bit before my time. Who’s Dick?’

‘Charles’s dad. Bit of a playboy, Dick, but he ran the firm like a corner shop, argue the toss over a couple of quid. Not that he needed to. Go anywhere in this country, all the Pacific, bloody New Zealand, B &C engines everywhere. Put the lights on all over the outback. Powered the shearing stands, made a mint after the war, I can tell you. Whole world crying out for generators.’

‘What happened?’

‘Dick kicked the bucket and Charles sold the business to these Pommy bastards. They never intended to keep the factory going. Just wanted to cut out the competition.’

Cecily was staring out of the window, smoke curling through her fingers. ‘Tragedy,’ she said. ‘I remember the day they told everyone. Half Cromarty out of work at one fell swoop. Never worked again, most of them.’

She scratched where an eyebrow had been. ‘Still, can’t blame Charles. They gave him assurances. No one blamed him.’

‘About the bills.’

‘Bills, yes. Since old Percy Crake had his stroke. Attend to matters on his behalf. Not that Charles couldn’t do it himself. Just likes to pretend he’s got better things to do.’

Cecily took a final vicious drag on her cigarette and, without looking, inserted the butt into the vase of flowers on the mantelpiece. A hiss, the sound of silk brushing silk. Mrs McKendrick, her ancient secretary, put flowers in the two rooms twice a week, first emptying urns full of foul beer-dark water and Cecily’s swollen cigarette ends.

‘Who’d try to kill him?’ said Cashin.

‘Some passing hoon, I suppose. Country’s turning into America. Kill people for a few dollars, kill them for nothing. Thrills.’ A bulge moved in her cheeks, suggested something trying to escape. ‘Drugs,’ she said. ‘I blame it on drugs.’

‘What about close to home? Someone who knew him?’

‘Around here? If Charles Bourgoyne departs, it’ll be the biggest funeral since old Dora Campbell kicked it, now that was a send-off. A lovely man, Charles Bourgoyne, lovely. They don’t make gentlemen like that any more. He was a catch, I can tell you. Still, the girls all had long teeth by the time he married Susan Kingsley. They say old Dick told him to get married or kiss the fortune goodbye. Said he’d give it to the Cromarty old-age home.’

‘What happened to Erica’s father?’

‘Erica and Jamie’s father. Bobby Kingsley. Car smash. Had another woman with him unfortunately.’

‘Charles have enemies?’

‘Well, who knows? Bourgoyne Trust’s put hundreds of kids through uni. Plus Charles shells out to anyone comes along. Schools, art gallery, the Salvos, the RSL, you name it. Bailed out the footy club umpteen times.’

‘How does attending to Bourgoyne matters work?’

‘Work?’

‘The mechanics of it.’

‘Oh. Well, all the bills come here, credit card, everything. Every month, we send Charles a statement, he ticks them off, sends it back, we pay them out of a trust account. Pay the wages too.’

‘So you’ve got a record of all his financial dealings?’

‘Just his bills.’

‘From how far back?’

‘Not long. I suppose it’s seven, eight years. Since Crake’s stroke.’

‘Can I see your records?’

‘Confidential,’ she said. ‘Between solicitor and client.’

‘Client’s been bashed and left for dead,’ said Cashin.

Cecily blinked a few times. ‘Not going to get me in trouble with the Law Institute this? Don’t want to have to ask bloody Rees for advice.’

‘Mrs Addison, it’s what you have to do. If you don’t, we’ll get a court order today.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose that changes things a bit. I’ll tell Mrs McKendrick to make copies. Can’t see what help it’ll be. You should be out looking for bloody druggies. What’s stolen from the house?’

‘The people who work at Bourgoyne’s,’ said Cashin, ‘what about their pay now?’

Cecily raised her pencilled eyebrows. ‘He’s not dead, you know. They’ll be paid until someone instructs me to stop. What would you expect?’

Cashin got up. ‘The worst. That’s what police life teaches you.’

‘Cynical, Joe. In my experience, and I say that with…’

‘Thank you, Mrs Addison. I’ll send someone for the copies. Where’s Jamie Bourgoyne?’

‘Drowned in Tasmania. Years ago.’

‘Not a lucky family then.’

‘No. Money can’t buy it. And it ends if Charles dies. The line’s broken. The Bourgoyne line’s ended.’

The street was quiet, sunlight on the pale stone of the library. It had been the Mechanics’ Institute when it opened in the year carved above the door: 1864. Three elderly women were going up the steps, in single file, left hands on the metal balustrade. He could see their delicate ankles. Old people were like racehorses-too much depending on too little, the bloodline the critical factor.

The Cashin bloodline didn’t bear thinking about.

‘I CAN’T fix stuff like this for you, Bern,’ said Cashin. ‘I can’t fix anything. Sam’s in shit because he’s bad news and now he has to cop it.’

They were in a shed like an aircraft hangar at his cousin Bern Doogue’s place outside Kenmare, a town twenty kilometres from Port Monro with a main street of boarded-up shops, two lingering pubs, a butcher, a milk bar and a video hire.

Farmland had once surrounded the village of Kenmare like a green sea. Long backyards had run down to paddocks with milk cows oozing dung, to potato fields dense with their pale grenades. Then the farms were subdivided. Hardiplank houses went up on three-acre blocks, big metal sheds out the back. Now the land produced nothing but garbage and children, many with red hair. The blocks were weekend parking lots for the big rigs that rumbled in from every direction on Saturdays-Macks, Kenworths, Mans, Volvos, eighteen-speed transmission, 1800-litre tank, the owners’ names in flowery script on the doors, the unshaven, unslept drivers sitting two metres off the ground, spaced out and listening to songs of lost love and loneliness.

The truckies had bought their blocks when land was cheap, fuel was cheap, freight rates were good and they were young and paunch-less. Now they couldn’t see their pricks without a mirror, the trucks sucked fifty-dollar notes, the freight companies screwed them till they had to drive six days, some weeks seven, to make the repayments.

Cashin stood in the shed door and watched Bern splitting wood on his new machine, a red device that stood on splayed legs like a moon lander. He picked up a section of log, dropped it on the table against a thick steel spike, hit the trigger with a boot. A hydraulic ram slammed a splitter blade into the wood, cleaving it in half.

‘Well, Jesus,’ said Bern, ‘what’s the use of havin a fuckin copper in the family, I ask you.’

‘No use at all,’ Cashin said.

‘Anyway, it’s not like it’s Sam’s idea. He’s with these two Melbourne kids, city kids, the one breaks the fuckin car window with a bottle.’

‘Bern, Sam’s got Buckley’s. I’ll ring a lawyer, she’s good, she’ll keep him out of jail.’

‘What’s that gonna cost? Fuckin arm?’

‘It’ll cost what it costs. Otherwise, tell him to ask for the duty solicitor. Where’d you get this wood?’

Bern put fingers under his filthy green beanie, exposed his black widow’s peak, scratched his scalp. He had the Doogue nose-big, hooked. It was unremarkable in youth, came with age to dominate the male faces.

‘Joe,’ he said, ‘is that a cop kind of question?’

‘I don’t care a lot about wood crime. It’s good-looking stuff.’

‘Fuckin prime beef, mate. Beefwood. Not your rotten Mount Gambier shit.’

‘How much?’

‘Seventy.’

‘Find your own lawyer.’

‘That’s a special fuckin family price. Mate, this stuff, it runs out the fuckin door.’

‘Let it run,’ Cashin said. ‘Got to go.’ He walked.

‘Hey, hey, Jesus, Joe, don’t be so fuckin difficult.’

‘Say hello to Leanne for me,’ Cashin said. ‘Christ knows what she did to deserve you. Must be something in another life.’

‘Joe. Mate. Mate.’

Cashin was at the door. ‘What?’

‘Give and take, mate.’

‘Haven’t been talking to my mum, have you?’

‘Nah. Your mum’s too good for us. How’s sixty, you tee up the lawyer? Split, delivered, that’s fuckin cost, no labour, I’m takin a knock.’

‘Four for two hundred,’ Cashin said. ‘Neatly stacked.’

‘Shit, takin food out of your own family’s mouths. He’s up next week Wednesday.’

‘I’ll ring with an appointment time.’

Bern smacked on another log, stamped on the trigger. There was a bang, bits of wood went everythere. ‘Fuck,’ he said. He pulled a big wood sliver out of the front of his greasy army surplus jumper.

‘This place’s a model of workplace safety,’ Cashin said. ‘Be on my way.’

He went out into the grey day, into Bern’s two-acre backyard, a graveyard of cars, utes, trucks, machinery, windows, doors, sinks, toilet bowls, basins, second-hand timber, bricks. Bern followed him to his vehicle, parked in a clearing.

‘Listen, Joe, there’s somethin else,’ he said. ‘Debbie says the Piggot kid, I forget his name, there’s hundreds of em, she says he’s sellin stuff at school.’

Cashin got in, wound down the window. ‘Got something against drugs, Bern? Since when?’

Bern screwed up his eyes, scratched his head through the beanie with black-rimmed nails. ‘That’s totally fuckin different, we’re talking about sellin hard stuff to kids here.’

‘Why’d she tell you?’

‘Well, not me. Told her mum.’

‘Why?’

Bern cleared his throat and spat, bullethole lips, a sound like a peashooter. ‘Leeane found some stuff. Not Debbie’s, just holdin it for this other girl bought it from a Piggot.’

Cashin started the vehicle. ‘Bern,’ he said, ‘you don’t want your cousin the cop cracking down on teenage drug-taking in Kenmare. Think about it. Think about the Piggots. There’s an army of them.’

Bern thought about it. ‘Yeah, well, that’s probably the strength of it. Mark me for the dog straight off, wouldn’t the bastards. Boong dog. Mind you, comes to Doogues against Piggots, they wouldn’t take a round off us.’

‘We don’t want it to come to that. I’ll call you.’

‘Wait, wait. You can do somethin else for me.’

‘What?’

‘Put the hard word on Debbie. She won’t listen to her mum and I’m a fuckin non-starter.’

‘I thought she was just holding the stuff?’

Bern shrugged, looked away. ‘To be on the safe side,’ he said. ‘Can’t hurt, can it?’

Cashin knew there was no way out. Next he would be reminded of how Bern had risked death by jumping onto the back of mountainous, cretinous Terry Luntz and hung on like a chimp on a gorilla, choking the school bully with a skinny forearm until he relaxed his deadly squeeze.

‘What time’s she get back from school?’ Cashin said.

‘About four.’

‘I’ll come round one day, point out the dangers.’

‘You’re a good bloke, Joe.’

‘No, I’m not. I just don’t want to hear about fucking Terry Luntz again. He would’ve let me go.’

Bern smiled his sly, dangerous Doogue smile. ‘Never. Blue in the face, tongue stickin out the side of your mouth. You had fuckin seconds left.’

‘In that case, what took you so long?’

‘Prayin for guidance, mate. What excuse you cunts got for takin so long to catch our beloved Mr Charlie Bourgoyne’s killer?’

‘The victim’s not being squeezed by a fat boy. There’s no hurry. What’ve you got against Bourgoyne?’

‘Nothin. The local saint. Everyone loves Charlie. Rich and idle. You know my dad used to work there, Bourgoyne & Cromie? Charlie sold it out under em. Shot the fuckin horse.’

Cashin passed three vehicles on the way home, knew them all. At the last crossroads, two ravens pecking at vermilion sludge turned on him the judgmental eyes of old men in a beaten pub.

IT WAS darkening when Cashin reached home, the wind ruffling the trees on the hill, strumming the corrugated iron roof. He got the fire going, took out a six-pack of Carlsberg, put on L’elisir d’amore, Donizetti, sank into the old chair, cushion in the small of his back. Tired in the trunk, hurting in the pelvis, pains down his legs, he swallowed two aspirins with the first swig of beer.

Life’s short, son, don’t drink any old piss.

Singo’s advice, Singo always drank Carlsberg or Heineken.

Cashin sat and drank, stared at nothing, hearing Domingo, thinking about Vickie, about the boy. Why had she called him Stephen? Stephen would be nine now, Cashin could make the calculation, he knew the day, the night, the moment. And he had never spoken to him, never touched him, never been closer than twenty metres to him. Vickie would not bring him to the hospital when Cashin asked her to. ‘He’s got a father and it isn’t you,’ she said.

Nothing moved her.

All he wanted was to see him, talk to him. He didn’t know why. What he knew was that the thought of the boy ached in him like his broken bones.

At 7 pm, on the second beer, he put on the television.

In what is feared to be another drug underworld killing, a 50-year-old Melbourne accountant, Andrew Gabor, of Kew, was this morning shot dead in front of his fifteen-year-old daughter outside exclusive St Theresa’s girls’ school in Malvern.

Footage of a green BMW outside the school, men in black overcoats beside it. Cashin recognised Villani, Birkerts, Finucane.

Two gunmen fled the scene in a Ford Transit van, later found in Elwood.

A van being winched onto the police flatbed tow truck to be taken to the forensic science centre.

Police appealed to anyone who saw two men wearing dark clothing and baseball caps in the van or at or near the scene around 7.30 am to contact CrimeStoppers.

It is believed that police today questioned Mr Gabor’s nephew, Damian Gabor, a rave party and rock concert entrepreneur. In 2002, Mr Gabor was found not guilty of assaulting Anthony Metcalf, a drug dealer later found dead in a rubbish skip in Carnegie. He had been shot seven times.

On the monitor behind the news reader Cashin saw The Heights filmed from the television helicopter, vehicles all over the forecourt, the search of the grounds in progress.

Following another crime of violence, the seventy-six-year-old head of one of the state’s best-known families is tonight fighting for his life in an intensive-care unit after being brutally assaulted at his home outside Cromarty.

Charles Bourgoyne was this morning found near death in the sitting room of the family mansion. He was flown to King George’s Hospital by helicopter.

Mr Bourgoyne, noted for his philanthropy, is the son of Richard Bourgoyne, one of the founders of Bourgoyne & Cromie, legendary engine manufacturers. Charles Bourgoyne sold the family firm to British interests in 1976. His twin older brothers both died in World War II, one of them executed by the Japanese.

Homicide investigators believe Mr Bourgoyne, who was alone in the house, may have been the victim of a burglary turned vicious. Items of value are missing from the house.

Hopgood on camera, outside The Heights, wind moving his straight hair.

‘This is a savage attack on a much-loved and defenceless man.

We are committing all our resources to find those responsible for this terrible act and we appeal to anyone with information to come forward.’

King George’s Hospital tonight said that Mr Bourgoyne’s condition was critical.

Cashin reached for the envelope with the business statements from Cecily Addison. This has nothing to do with me, he thought. I’m the station commander in Port Monro, staff of four.

Old habits, curiosity. He started with the most recent statement. Then he heard the name.

Australia’s newest political party, United Australia, today elected lawyer and Aboriginal activist Bobby Walshe to lead it into the federal election.

Cashin looked at the television.

The new party, a coalition of Greens, Democrats and independents that has drawn support from disaffected Labor and Liberal supporters, will field candidates in all electorates.

Bobby Walshe appeared on camera. Handsome, sallow, hawk-nosed, just a hint of curl in his dark hair.

‘It’s a great honour for me to be chosen by so many dedicated and talented people to lead United Australia. This is a watershed day. From now on, Australians have a real political choice. The time when many Australians saw voting for one of the small parties as a waste of a vote are over. We’re not small. We’re not single-issue. We offer a real alternative to the tired, copycat policies of the two political machines that have dominated our political lives for so long.’

Bobby Walshe had been the smartest kid in Cashin’s class at primary school and that hadn’t stopped him being called a boong and a coon and a nigger.

The Bourgoyne payment statements didn’t make any sense. Cashin’s attention wandered, he put them back in the file, opened another drink and thought about what to eat.

THE HILL was lost in morning mist, a damp silence on the land. Cashin took a route towards the Corrigan boundary, visibility no more than thirty metres, the dogs appearing and disappearing, bounding patches of dark in the pale-grey world.

At the fence, there was a path, overgrown. He had walked it often as a boy, it was the direct way to the creek. In childhood memory, the creek was more like a river-broader, deeper, thrillingly dangerous in flood. The dogs were behind him when he made his way through the vegetation, crossed the puddles. On the other side, he whistled for them and they rushed by and led the way up the slope to the old Corrigan house.

Trespassing, Cashin thought.

The dogs had their heads down, a new place, new scents, interested-puzzled flicks of tails. He walked around the house, looked through the windows. Doors, skirting boards, floorboards, mantelpieces, tiles-all seemed intact. The place hadn’t been looted like Tommy Cashin’s ruined house. If there were new owners, they wouldn’t need to spend much to get it liveable.

They walked through the yellow grass as far as Den Millane’s fence, went down. Above the creek, Cashin found the remains of a fence, rusted wire, a few grey and riven posts lying down, possibly the boundary Den talked about. It was around two hundred metres, a bit more perhaps.

Did he want to claim this line?

Ya keep what’s bloody yours.

Yes, he did want to claim it.

He walked across the creek, down the narrow twisting path through the poplars, into the rabbit grounds, then turned for home. It was fully light when they approached the house, but still an hour before the sun would burn off the mist. He was thinking about Kendall. What did being raped do to you? A male cop, off-duty, had been grabbed by three men in Sydney, out in the western suburbs, taken to an old drive-in. They handcuffed him to a screen pylon, cut off his jeans with a Stanley knife, carved swastikas into his buttocks, his back.

Then they raped him.

A cop called Gerard told Cashin the story one night, in the car. They were parked, eating kebabs.

The bloke never came back to work. Went to Darwin. They say he topped himself up there.

Gerard, dark-faced and handsome, dead-black hair, a mole on his cheek.

Got the cunts but. Done it through a ring, big fucking stupid lead thing, homemade ring. Melted sinkers. The cop could draw it.

What’d they get?

Death penalty. The one drowned in the river. Homebush. Other two, murder-suicide. Very ugly scene.

Gerard had smiled. When he smiled he showed some inner-lip, an intimate colour, vaginal.

Before Cashin did, the dogs saw Rebb sitting on the old garden bench. They charged.

Rebb was smoking a hand-rolled, flat, as much paper as tobacco. He was shaven, hair damp.

The dogs were all wag and twist, they liked Rebb, but then they liked most people.

‘Put stuff in the wash machine,’ Rebb said, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, a big hand for each dog. ‘That okay?’

‘Any time,’ said Cashin. ‘Up early?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll make some breakfast when I’ve showered.’

‘Got food,’ said Rebb. He didn’t look at Cashin, he was intent on the dogs. He had said the same thing the night before.

‘Scrambled eggs,’ said Cashin. ‘You make it for one, might as well make it for ten.’

When he was clean and dressed, he put cutlery, bread and butter, Vegemite, jam, on the table, cooked the food, found Rebb outside with the dogs. Rebb didn’t eat like a swaggie. He kept his elbows at his sides, ate with his mouth closed, slowly, ate every morsel.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Fill up on the bread.’

Rebb cut a thick slice. He spread butter, put on a coal-dark seam of Vegemite.

‘You can stay here if you like,’ Cashin said. ‘Won’t cost you. Ten minutes’ walk to the cow job.’

Rebb looked at him, nothing, black eyes. He nodded. ‘Do that then.’

They drove around to Den Millane’s, not a word spoken. Den heard them coming, he was at the gate. He shook hands with Rebb.

‘Pay’s nothin fancy,’ he said. ‘Do it myself, bloody knee wasn’t crook. Know cows?’

‘A bit, yeah.’

Cashin left them, drove to his mother’s house, twenty minutes. The roads were thin strips of pot-holed bitumen, lacy at the edges, room for one vehicle, someone had to give way, put two wheels on the rutted verge. But, generally, both vehicles did, and local drivers raised their hands to each other. He passed potato fields and dairy farms where the sliding-jawed animals turned soft eyes. From Beacon Hill, the land sloped to the sea, peaty soil the colour of chocolate when ploughed, lying naked before the south-westerly wind and the wild winter gales off the Southern Ocean. Early settlers planted cypress trees and hedges as windbreaks around their houses. It worked to some extent but the displaced wind took its revenge. Trees, shrubs, sheds, tanks, windmills, dunnies, dog kennels, chickenhouses, old car bodies-everything in its path sloped to leeward.

Cashin parked in the driveway, went around the back, saw his mother through the kitchen window. When he opened the back door, Sybil said, ‘I’ve been thinking about you, living in that ruin. After what we put in with you kids, your dad and me.’

She was arranging flowers in a large squarish pottery jug, brown and purple. ‘That vase,’ Cashin said. ‘Could that be a rejected prototype for storing nuclear waste?’

His mother ignored the question. Outside, his stepfather appeared from the shed, wearing white overalls, gloves, a full-face mask, a tank on his back. He began spraying the rose arbour. Mist drifted.

‘Do the roses like Harry bombing them with Agent Orange?’ Cashin said.

She stood back to admire her work, a small, trim woman, strong swept-back hair. All the size genes in Cashin and his brother, Michael, came from their father, Mick Cashin.

‘Charles Bourgoyne,’ she said. ‘What are you doing about that?’

‘Doing what can be done.’

‘I’ll never understand humans. Why didn’t they just take what they wanted? Why did they have to bash an old man? What could he do to resist them?’

‘I’ve giving up on the understanding part,’ said Cashin. ‘The question you want answered isn’t why, it’s who.’

His mother shook her head. ‘Well, on another matter,’ she said, eyes on the arrangement, moving her fingers. ‘Michael’s bought a unit in Melbourne. Docklands. On the water. Two bedrooms, one-and-a-half bathrooms.’

‘A clean person, Michael,’ said Cashin. ‘Very clean. What do you do in the half bathroom?’

‘Pour the tea,’ she said. ‘Just made.’

He poured tea into handmade mugs that tilted when at rest. His mother bought things at outdoor markets: terrible watercolour paintings, salt and pepper cellars in the shape of toadstools, placemats woven from plastic grocery bags, hats made of felted dog hair.

‘Michael’s in Melbourne so much he says he might as well have somewhere to keep his clothes,’ she said.

‘The spare set of clothes that would be.’

His mother sighed. ‘Give credit where it’s due, that’s what you haven’t learned, Joseph.’

‘Take credit where it’s offered, I’ve learned that. Why do roses need that chemical shit Harry’s spraying?’

‘You never swore. Michael picked it up at school, the first day, came home and said a swearword. I went down there, gave that Killeen man a few words of my own. Never trusted him and proved right. Mother’s instinct.’

‘I should have learned to swear early,’ said Cashin. ‘By now I might have half a bathroom at Docklands. I’m going to fix up the house.’

‘Are you mad? Why?’

‘To live in. As a step up from living in a ruin.’

‘It’s haunted.’ She shuddered in a theatrical way. ‘Built by a madman. Leave it alone. You should sell it.’

‘I like the place. I’m going to clear up the garden.’

‘I thought this was temporary? For you to get better.’

Cashin finished his tea. ‘Life’s pretty temporary. How’s uni?’

‘Don’t change the subject. I should have gone earlier. Wasted years.’

‘Wasted how?’

She came to the kitchen table and patted his cheek twice, gave it a final sharp slap. ‘I only want the best for you,’ she said. ‘You set your sights so low. The police force, I ask you. Stay here a moment longer than you need to, you’ll be stuck forever. Game over.’

‘Where do you get that from?’

‘What?’

‘Game over?’

‘Old before your time,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you sign up for a course at uni? Be among young people. Stay fresh.’

‘I’ll kill myself first,’ Cashin said.

Sybil put fingers to his mouth. ‘Don’t say that. The closed mind. It’s the older generation’s supposed to have that.’

‘Got to go,’ he said. ‘Be among young people. Arrest them.’

‘Turn it into a joke, you get that from your father, that’s pure Cashin. Even a tragedy’s only a tragedy for five minutes, then it’s a joke.’

They went out. Harry was misting the arbour, the cattle dog standing behind him, looking up, faithfully breathing in the fumes.

‘So the dog’s expendable?’ said Cashin. ‘Collateral damage.’

At the gate, his mother said, ‘It’s a pity you don’t have children, Joseph. Children settle people down.’

The sentences stopped Cashin in his tracks, filled him with wonder. How could she of all people say that?

‘How do you know I don’t have children?’ he said.

‘Oh, you.’ She held his arms and he bent to kiss her on the cheek. For many years, he could not kiss her.

‘Did I ever tell you I thought you were going to be the bright one?’ she said.

‘I am the bright one,’ he said. ‘You’re confusing me with the rich one. One of Bern’s boys is in trouble in Melbourne.’

‘It’ll be that Sam, right?’

‘Right.’

‘What kind of trouble?’

‘Theft from a parked car. Him and two others.’

‘What can you do?’

‘Nothing probably.’

‘The Doogues. I always thank the Lord I’ve got no ties with them.’

‘You’re a Doogue. Bern is your nephew. He’s your brother’s son. How can you not have ties with them?’

‘Ties, dear, ties. I don’t have any ties with them.’

‘Game over,’ said Cashin. ‘Bye, Syb.’

‘Bye, darling.’

Harry waved a gloved hand at him, slowly, like a polar explorer saying a final sad goodbye.

DRIVING TO Port Monro on a cold day, overcast, Cashin thought about his mother in the caravan, saw her sitting at a fold-down table topped with marbled green Formica edged with an aluminium strip. She had a plastic glass in one hand, yellow wine in it, a cigarette in the other hand, a filter cigarette held close to her fingernails, which were painted pink, chipped. Her nose was peeling from sunburn. There were blonde sunstreaks in her hair and it was heavy with salt from swimming, pieces fallen apart, he could see her scalp. She drank from the glass and liquid ran out of her mouth, down her chin, fell on her teeshirt. She wiped her chest with her cigarette hand and the cigarette touched her face, the glowing tip dislodged, stuck to her shirt. She looked down at the burn opening like a flower. She seemed to wait forever, then she carefully tilted her glass, poured wine over it. He remembered the smells of burnt cotton and burnt skin and wine filling the small space and how he felt sick, went out into the sub-tropical night.

Some time after Cashin’s father’s death, he didn’t know how long, his mother had packed two suitcases and they left the farm outside Kenmare. He was twelve. His brother was at university on his scholarship. At the first stop for petrol, his mother told him to call her Sybil. He didn’t know what to say. People didn’t call their mothers by their names.

They spent the next three years on the road, never staying anywhere for long. When he thought about those times later, Cashin realised that in the first year Sybil must have had money: they stayed in hotels and motels, in a holiday shack near the beach for a few months. Then she started taking jobs in pubs, roadhouses, all sorts of places, and they lived in rented rooms, granny flats in people’s backyards, on-site caravans. In his memory, she always seemed to be drinking, always either laughing or crying. Sometimes she forgot to buy food and some nights she didn’t come home till long after midnight. He remembered lying awake, hearing noises outside, trying not to be frightened.

The turn-off to Port Monro. Light rain falling.

Cashin’s shift started at noon, there was time for coffee. He bought the paper at the service station, parked outside the Dublin, hadn’t been there for a while. You couldn’t go to the same place too often, people noticed.

The narrow room was empty, summer over, the long cold peace on the town. ‘Medium black for the cop who pays,’ said the man sitting behind the counter. ‘My customer of the day.’

His name was Leon Gadney, a dentist from Adelaide whose male lover had been found knifed to death in a park near the river, possibly killed by one of the sexual crazies for which Adelaide was famous, possibly killed by policemen who thought the crazies were doing a public service when they killed homosexuals.

‘You could close in winter,’ said Cashin. ‘Save on electricity.’

‘What would I do?’ said Leon.

‘Go to Noosa, chat to other rich retired dentists. It’s warm up there.’

‘Fuck warm. And I’d like to go on record that I’m not a retired dentist. Ex-dentist, former dentist, now impoverished barista and short-order cook.’

He delivered the coffee. ‘Want a nice almond bickie?’

‘No, thanks. Watching the weight.’

Leon returned to his seat, lit a cigarette. ‘In a certain light, you’re not bad looking,’ he said. ‘And here we are, virile single men marooned on an island of old women in sandals.’

Cashin didn’t look up. He was reading about police corruption in the city, in the drug squad. The members had been selling drugs they’d confiscated. They had originally supplied the ingredients to make the drugs. ‘You’re very distinguished, Leon,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got too much going on, I couldn’t concentrate.’

‘Well, think about it,’ said Leon. ‘I’ve got good teeth.’

Cashin went to work, dealt with a complaint from a man about a neighbour’s tree, a report of a vandalised bench in the wetlands. A woman with a black eye came in-she wanted Cashin to warn her husband. At 2.15, the primary school rang to say a mother had seen someone lurking on the block across the road.

He parked a way from the school, went down a driveway and looked over the fence. High yellow grass. Someone had thrown a concrete slab and got no further, weeds covering the heap of building sand. There was a small shed, a panel van parked behind it.

Cashin walked back down the drive and onto the block, approached the vehicle. The windows were fogged glass, no one visible in the cab. He rapped on the roof with knuckles.

Silence. He bounced his fist.

‘Fuck off!’ A male.

‘Police,’ said Cashin.

The vehicle moved. He stood back and he could see a figure climbing over the bench seat. The driver’s window came down a few centimetres: eyes, dark eyebrows, strands of black hair.

‘Just takin a nap.’

‘This your property, sir?’ Cashin was showing his badge.

‘I’m the builder.’

‘Not much building going on.’

‘Startin soon as he gets his finance.’

‘You local, sir?’

‘Cromarty.’

‘I’d like you to step out of the vehicle, sir, and show me some ID.’

‘Listen, takin a nap on a buildin job, what’s the fuckin crime?’

‘Out of the vehicle, please, sir. With your ID.’

The man turned, reaching backwards. Cashin saw skin colour, the man was half-naked, he was looking for his pants.

Cashin stood well back, hand inside his jacket, eased the gun in the clip.

The man moved, struggled, he couldn’t get his pants on. ‘Listen,’ he said through the gap. ‘Somethin a bit private goin on here, y’know. Gissus a break, will you?’

‘Get out and put your pants on,’ said Cashin. ‘Sir.’

The door opened. A thin man, late twenties. He moved his legs out, open flannel shirt over a teeshirt, no shoes, hole in a red sock, one leg in his denims, stood in the weeds to pull them up, zip. He had a pimple on a thigh.

He reached inside, found a wallet, offered it. ‘Driver’s, credit, all kinds of shit.’

‘Put it on the roof,’ Cashin said, ‘and stand against the shed.’

‘Jesus, mate, I’m just a fuckin brickie.’

He obeyed. Cashin took the wallet, looked at cards. Allan James Morris, an address in Cromarty. He wrote it down. ‘Phone number?’

He gave Cashin a mobile number.

‘Now if you’ll help the person with you get out, I’d like some ID there too,’ said Cashin.

Morris walked back to the van, opened the back door, there was an exchange. A girl in jeans and a short pleated pink jacket got out. She was no more than fifteen, dark hair, pretty, it wouldn’t last. Her lips were puffy, lipstick smeared.

‘ID, please,’ said Cashin.

She opened a wallet, offered a card. Cashin looked at it.

‘Not you,’ he said, flicked the card back across the bonnet. ‘Got some real ID? We can do this at the station. Get your mum and dad in.’

She pouted, eye-flick to Morris, produced another card, school ID with a photograph: Stacey-Ann Gettigan.

‘Fourteen, Stacey,’ he said. ‘In the back of a van with a grown man.’

‘Just waggin,’ she said. She folded her arms under her breasts. ‘Not a crime.’

‘What do you reckon, Allan?’ Cashin said. ‘Crime to be jumping a fourteen-year-old in your van?’

‘Just kissin and that,’ said Morris.

‘Take your pants off to kiss? Kissing with your bum? You married, Allan?’

Morris scratched his head. He was in sunlight and Cashin saw dandruff motes fly into the still air. The girl was looking down, biting on a painted nail. ‘Listen,’ said Morris, ‘no harm done, I swear.’

‘Married, Allan?’

‘Yeah. Sort of.’

‘Sort of? They got that now? Do a sort of ceremony in church?’

Morris didn’t want to look at Cashin. Cashin motioned to the girl to follow him. They went around the shed. He said, ‘Got a complaint you’d like to make against this man, Stacey? Made you do something against your will? Threaten you? This’s your chance.’

She closed her eyes, shook her head. ‘No. Nothin.’

‘Sure? I’m going to write all this down, that I asked you. Want to talk somewhere else, on your own? A woman cop?’

‘No,’ she said.

Cashin went back and beckoned to Morris, walked down the block a few paces. The man came, not easy in his skin, a rabbitty look. They stood in the weeds. White clouds moved across the pools of rain on the concrete slab.

‘What’s she to you, then?’ said Cashin.

‘Cousin, some kind, I dunno exactly.’

‘Yeah?’

‘She’s on at me all the time, come to me work even. I done nothin. Today’s the first…anyway, nothin happened. I swear.’

‘Not Deke Gettigan’s granddaughter, is she?’

Morris scratched his head with both hands as if suddenly attacked by lice. ‘Mate, they’ll fuckin kill me,’ he said. ‘Please, mate.’

‘Don’t bring any more kids here to root, Allan,’ said Cashin. ‘Nowhere near here. There’s an alert on your van from now on. And you’re not the builder here, are you?’

‘Me mate, he’s kind of, he’s the…’

‘You come down this way to do a bit of building, that’s building I’m talking about, not fucking under-age girls, you let me know, Allan. Then I’ll tell the school they don’t have to worry about a man with his cock out, he’s just having a piss. Okay?’

‘Right, sure. Thanks.’

Cashin looked back as he walked away. The girl held his eyes. She knew she was out of this, he wasn’t going to dob them, and she smiled at him, bold, sexual, ancient wisdom.

AT THE station, Carl Wexler came out of the front door making flexing bodybuilder’s movements. He was a year out of the academy, not stupid, third in his course, but a city boy, resentful about being posted away from the action.

Cashin lowered his window.

‘Cromarty rang, boss,’ Wexler said. ‘Senior Hopgood for you.’

Cashin went in and rang.

‘Your mate Inspector Villani sends his love,’ said Hopgood. ‘How is it that wogs have taken over this force?’

‘Natural selection,’ said Cashin. ‘Survival of the best dressed.’

‘Yeah, well, he’s given me the benefit of his wog opinions. He wants you to ring.’

Cashin didn’t say anything. Hopgood put the phone down.

The city switch put Cashin straight through.

‘How’s retirement?’ said Villani. ‘I went down there once. Very nice. I hear the surfies call it the Blue Balls Coast.’

‘Wimps,’ Cashin said. ‘What?’

‘Joe, listen, this Bourgoyne was news to me but the media put that right. Then Commisioner Wicken yesterday explains to me how connected the step-daughter is, senior partner at Rothacker Julian, the Labor Party’s legal wing.’

‘That now carries some weight in a homicide?’

‘I’m finding out all kinds of stuff. Today Mr Pommy Commissioner Wicken gives me hints on conducting myself in public. Fashion tips too. What suit, what shirt, what shoes. I enjoyed that so very much.’

‘So?’

‘I want you on this.’

‘I’m the cripple running Port Monro now. Send that prick Allen.’

‘Joe, we are thinner than the Durex Phantom. Jantz, Campbell and Maguire, all retired in one month. DePiero quit, Tozer’s on stress leave, your mate Allen, his wife buggered off with a butcher from Vic Market, took the kids. Now he’s found some mystical shit, living in the fucking moment. I wouldn’t send him to a Buddhist domestic.’

A pause.

‘Also,’ said Villani, ‘when the newspapers get down there in a few days, you’ll see the former drug squad’s criminal mates are again killing each other. The big boss woman’s supposed to have sacked all the dirtbags and elevated the cleanskins but whoopy do, here we go again. So I’ve got a number of people committed to the utterly pointless shit of trying to find out which particular cunt killed some other cunt for whose death we should be grateful. As a city. As a state. A country. As a fucking world.’

‘I think you’re over-excited,’ said Cashin. ‘On Bourgoyne, what’s to show for the forensic geniuses you had here?’

‘Bugger all. The alarm was off. No break-in, no prints, no weapon. No strange DNA. Don’t know what’s gone except the watch. There’s locked drawers broken open in the study and his bedroom.’

‘And him?’

‘It’s likely to be murder. Lives, he’s a cabbage.’

‘Did you ever ask yourself why they hit on the cabbage? What about the carrot? How about the Brussels sprout?’

‘Let’s leave the philosophy for the pub, gentlemen.’

It was a Singo saying, from the time before Rai Sarris.

‘So what am I supposed to do?’ said Cashin.

‘This Rothacker Julian connection, we need a senior officer on the job. I don’t want any fuck-ups. I’m new in the tower, Joe, I can feel the wind. This’ll end up some dumb In Cold Blood thing, I feel it in my dick, it’s just the in-between shit we have to manage.’

‘What about Cromarty?’

‘Fuck them. This is the commissioner speaking.’

‘And I say no?’

‘Listen, son, you are still a member of homicide. You’re a member on holiday. Remember duty?’

‘Some things about it, yes.’

‘I’m glad I don’t have to say any more.’

‘You arsehole.’

‘Come around to my office and repeat that to a senior officer,’ said Villani. ‘First, a talk with Ms Bourgoyne, the step-daughter. She’s been asked to go down and take a look, should be there in about an hour. Cromarty’s opening the place.’

‘She’s been interviewed?’

‘Not really. What we need is for you to be with her when she sees the house. Find out what was in the drawers, if she can see anything else missing, anything unusual while she was there, any ideas she can give us.’

‘Sure you need a senior officer? Why don’t you just give your marvellously detailed instructions to some prick from traffic?’

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. Jesus, don’t be so touchy.’

‘What about other family?’

‘No one close. There was a step-son, Erica’s brother. She says he drowned in Tassie a long time ago.’

‘She says?’

‘We’ll verify that. Okay? We’ll get some prick from traffic to check that out. Give him detailed instructions.’

‘Just asking.’

CASHIN DROVE out to the Bourgoyne house, up the steep road from the highway, through the gates, down the winding poplar drive, and parked in the same place as before. The gravel showed the marks of many vehicles.

He parked and waited, listened to the radio, thought about being on the road with his mother, the other children he met, some of them feral kids, not going to school, beach urchins, the white ones burnt dark brown or freckled and always shedding pieces of papery skin. He thought about the boy who taught him to surf, in New South Wales, it might have been Ballina. Gavin was the boy’s name. He offered the use of a board with a big piece out of it.

‘Shark, mate,’ said Gavin. ‘Chewed the bloke in half. He don’t need it no more, you can have a lend of it.’ When they left, Gavin gave him the board. Where was Gavin now? Where was the board? Cashin had loved that board, covered the gap with tape.

I’m bored here, love. We’re going.

His mother had said before every move further north.

Cashin got out of the car to stretch his spine, walked in a circle. A vehicle was coming.

A black Saab came around the bend, parked next to the cruiser. The driver eased himself out, a big man, cropped hair, wearing jeans and a leather jacket, open.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘John Jacobs, Orton Private Security Group. I’m ex-SOG. Mind if I see the ID?’

Police Special Operations Group membership was supposed to bestow some kind of divinity that transcended being kicked out for cowardice or for turning out to be a violent psychopath.

Cashin looked at the cruiser. ‘That’s my car. Your idea is I could be a dangerous person stole a cop car?’

‘Don’t take anything for granted,’ Jacobs said. ‘Used to be standard police practice.’

‘Still is,’ said Cashin. ‘And I’m the one who asks for ID. Let’s see it.’

Jacobs gave him a closed-lips smile, then a glint of left canine while he took out a plastic card with a photograph. Cashin took his time looking at it, looking at Jacobs.

‘You’re keeping the lady waiting,’ said Jacobs. ‘Need better light? Sure you don’t want back-up?’

‘What’s your job today?’ said Cashin.

‘I’m looking after Ms Bourgoyne. What do you reckon?’

Cashin gave back the card. Jacobs went around the car and opened the passenger door. A woman got out, a blonde, tall, thin, the wind moved her long hair. She raised a hand to control it. Early forties, Cashin guessed.

‘Ms Bourgoyne?’

‘Yes.’ She was handsome, sharp features, grey eyes.

‘Detective Cashin. Inspector Villani spoke to you, I understand.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you mind if we have a look around? Without Mr Jacobs, if that’s okay?’

‘I don’t know what to expect,’ she said.

‘It’s always difficult,’ said Cashin. ‘But what we’ll do is walk through the house. You have a good look, tell me if anything catches your eye.’

‘Thank you. Well, let’s go in the side door.’

She led the way around the verandah. On the east side was an expanse of raked gravel dotted with smooth boulders, ending in a clipped hedge. She opened a glass door to a quarry-tiled room with wicker chairs around low tables. There wasn’t any sun but the room was warm.

‘I’d like to get this over with as soon as possible,’ said Erica.

‘Of course. Did Mr Bourgoyne keep money on the premises?’

‘I have no idea. Why would he?’

‘People do. What’s through that door.’

‘A passage.’

She led the way into a wide passage. ‘These are bedrooms and a sitting room,’ she said and opened a door. Cashin went in and switched on the overhead light. It was a big room, curtains drawn, four pen-and-ink drawings in black frames on the walls. They were all by the same hand, suggestions of street scenes, severe, vertical lines, unsigned.

The bed was large, white covers, big pillows. ‘There’s nothing to steal here,’ Erica said.

The next two rooms were near-identical. Then a bathroom and a small sitting room.

They went into the large hall, two storeys high, lit by a skylight. A huge staircase dominated the space. ‘There’s the big dining room and the small one,’ said Erica.

‘What’s upstairs?’

‘Bedrooms.’

Cashin looked into the dining rooms. They appeared undisturbed. At the door to the big sitting room, Erica stopped and turned to him.

‘I’ll go first,’ he said.

The room smelled faintly of lavender and something else. The light from the high window lay on the carpet in front of where the slashed painting had hung. The bloodstain was hidden by a sheet of black plastic, taped down.

Cashin went over and opened the cedar armoire against the left wall: whisky, brandy, gin, vodka, Pimms, Cinzano, sherries, liqueurs of all kinds, wine glasses, cut-glass whisky glasses and tumblers, martini glasses.

A small fridge held soda water, tonic, mineral water. No beer.

‘Do you know what was kept in the desk?’

The small slim-legged table with a leather top stood against a wall.

Erica shrugged.

Cashin opened the left-hand drawer. Writing pads, envelopes, two fountain pens, two ink bottles. Cashin removed the top pad, opened it, held it up to the light. No impressions. The other drawer held a silver paperknife, a stapler, boxes of staples, a punch, paperclips.

‘Why didn’t they take the sound stuff?’ she said.

Cashin looked at the Swedish equipment. It had been the most expensive on the market once.

‘Too big,’ he said. ‘Was there a television?’

‘In the other sitting room. My step-father didn’t like television much.’

Cashin looked at the shelves of CDs beside the player. Classical music. Orchestral. Opera, dozens of disks. He removed one, put it in the slot, pressed the buttons.

Maria Callas.

The room’s acoustics were perfect. He closed his eyes.

‘Is this necessary?’ said Erica.

‘Sorry,’ said Cashin. He pushed the OFF button. The sound of Callas seemed to linger in the high dark corners.

They left the room, another passage.

‘That’s the study,’ she said.

He went in. A big room, three walls covered with photographs in dark frames, a few paintings, and the fourth floor-to-ceiling books. The desk was a curve of pale wood on square dark pillars tapering to nothing. The chair was modern too, leather and chrome. A more comfortable-looking version stood in front of the window.

The drawer locks of two heavy and tall wooden cabinets, six drawers each, had been forced, possibly with a crowbar. They had been left as found on the morning.

‘Any idea what was in them?’ said Cashin.

‘No idea at all.’

Cashin looked: letters, papers. He walked around the walls, looked at the photographs. They seemed to be arranged chronologically and, to his eye, span at least seventy or eighty years-family groups, portraits, young men in uniform, weddings, parties, picnics, beach scenes, two men in suits standing in front of a group of men in overalls, a building plaque being unveiled by a woman wearing a hat.

‘Which one’s your step-father?’ he said.

Erica took him on a tour, pointed at a smiling small boy, a youth in school uniform, in cricket whites, in a football team, a thin-faced young man in a dinner jacket, a man in middle age shaking hands with an older man. Charles Bourgoyne had aged slowly and well, not losing a single brushed hair.

‘Then there are the horses,’ she said, pointing. ‘Probably more important than the people in his life.’

A wall of pictures of horses and people with horses. Dozens of finishing-post photographs, some sepia, some tinted, a few in colour. Charles Bourgoyne riding, leading, stroking, kissing horses.

‘Your mother,’ said Cashin. ‘Is she still alive?’

‘No. She died when I was young.’

Cashin looked at the bookshelves: novels, history, biography, rows of books about Japan and China, their art, culture. Above them were books about World War II, the war against Japan, about Australian prisoners of the Japanese.

There were shelves of pottery books, technical titles, three shelves.

They moved on.

‘This is his bedroom,’ said Erica Bourgoyne. ‘I’ve never been into it and I don’t think I’ll change that now.’

Cashin entered a white chamber: bed, table, simple table lamp, small desk, four drawers open. The lower ones had been broken open. Through a doorway was a dressing room. He looked at Bourgoyne’s clothes: jackets, suits, shirts on hangers, socks and underwear in drawers, shoes on a rack. Everything looked expensive, nothing looked new.

There was a red lacquered cupboard. He opened it and a clean smell of cedar filled his nostrils. Silken garments on hangers, a shelf with rolled-up sashes.

He thought of asking Erica to come in.

No.

Beyond the dressing room was a bathroom, walls and floor of slate, a wooden tub, coopered like a barrel, a toilet, a shower that was just two stainless-steel perforated plates, one that water fell from, one to stand on. There were bars of pale yellow soap and throwaway razors, shampoo. He opened a plain wooden cupboard: three stacks of towels, six deep, bars of soap, bags of razors, toilet paper, tissues.

He went back to Erica. They looked at another bedroom, like a room in a comfortable hotel. It had a small sitting room with two armchairs, a fireplace. There was another bathroom, old-fashioned, revealing nothing. At the end of the passage was a laundry with a new-looking washing machine and dryer.

Beyond it was a storeroom, shelves of heavy white bed linen and tablecloths, napkins, white towels, cleaning equipment.

They went back they way they had come. ‘There’s another sitting room here,’ said Erica. ‘It’s the one with the television.’

Four leather armchairs around a fireplace, a television on a shelf to the left, more Swedish sound equipment to the right. Cosy by the standards of this house, thought Cashin.

‘Well,’ said Cashin, ‘that’s it. We needn’t go upstairs, I gather it’s undisturbed.’

There was a moment when she looked at him, something uncertain in her eyes.

‘I’d like to go up,’ she said. ‘Will you come with me?’

‘Of course.’

They crossed the house to the entrance hall, walked side by side up a flight of broad marble stairs to a landing, up another flight. All the way, he shut down his face against the pain, did not wince. At the top, a gallery ran around the stairwell, six dark cedar doors leading off it, all closed. They stood on a Persian rug in a shaft of light from above.

‘I want to get some things from my mother’s room, if they’re still there,’ said Erica. ‘I’ve never had the nerve before.’

‘How long have you waited?’

‘Almost thirty years.’

‘I’ll be here’ said Cashin. ‘Unless…’

‘No, that’s fine.’

She went to the second door on the left. He saw her hesitate, open the six-panel door, put out a hand to a brass light switch, go in.

Cashin opened the nearest door and switched on the light. It was a bedroom, huge, twin beds with white covers, two wardrobes, a dressing table, a writing table in front of the curtained window. He walked on a pale pinkish carpet, lined like a quilt, and parted the curtains. The view was of a redbrick stable block and of treetops beyond, near-leafless, limbs moving in the wind, and then of a low hill stained with the russet leaves of autumn.

He went back to the gallery and went to the balustrade and looked down the stairwell at the entrance hall, felt a flash of vertigo, an urge to throw himself over the barrier.

‘Finished,’ said Erica behind him.

‘Find what you wanted?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing there. It was stupid to think there might be.’

They went back to the sunroom and sat with a glass-topped table between them.

‘Notice anything worth mentioning?’ said Cashin.

‘No. I’m sorry, I’m not much use. I’m pretty much a stranger in this house.’

‘How’s that?’

She looked at him sharply. ‘Just the way it is, detective.’

‘Everything locked at night, alarm switched on?’ he said.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t been here at night for a very long time.’

Time to move on. ‘About your brother, Ms Bourgoyne.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘He drowned, I’m told.’

‘In Tasmania. In 1993.’

‘Went for a swim?’

Erica shifted in her seat, crossed her legs in corduroy pants, twitched a shiny black boot. ‘Presumably. His things were found on a beach. The body wasn’t found.’

‘Right. So you were here on Wednesday morning.’

‘Yes.’

‘Visit your step-father often?’

She rubbed palms. ‘Often? No.’

‘You don’t get on?’

Erica pulled a face, looked much older, lined. ‘We’re not close. It’s our family history. The way I grew up.’

‘And the reason for this visit?’

‘Charles wanted to see me.’

‘Can you be more specific?’

‘This is intrusive,’ she said. ‘Why do you need to know?’

‘Ms Bourgoyne,’ said Cashin, ‘I don’t know what we need to know. But if you want me to record that you preferred not to answer the question, that’s fine. I will.’

She shrugged, not happy. ‘He wanted to talk about his affairs.’

Cashin waited until it was clear that she wasn’t going to say any more. ‘On another subject. Who’ll inherit?’

Widened eyes. ‘No idea. What are you suggesting?’

‘It’s just a question,’ Cashin said. ‘You didn’t discuss his will?’

A laugh. ‘My step-father isn’t the kind of person who would talk about his will. I doubt whether he’s ever given dying a thought. It’s for lesser beings.’

‘Assuming that he knew the person who attacked him…’

‘Why would you assume that?’

‘One possible line of inquiry. Who might want to harm him?’

‘As far as I know,’ she said, ‘he’s a much respected person around here. But I don’t live here, I haven’t since…since I was a child. I’ve only been a visitor.’

She looked away. Cashin followed her gaze, looked out at the disciplined gravel that ran to the hedge. Nothing lifted the spirits about the grounds of The Heights-hedges, lawns, paving, gravel, they were all shades of green and grey. It came to him that there were no flowers.

‘He had all the garden beds ripped out,’ she said, reading his mind. ‘They were wonderful.’

‘A last thing. Do you know of anything in your step-father’s life or your life that might have led to this?’

‘Such as?’

‘This may become a murder investigation.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing will be left private in the life of anyone around your stepfather.’

She straightened, gave him the unfazed gaze. ‘Are you saying I’ll be a suspect?’

‘Everyone will be of interest.’

‘What about perfect strangers?’ she said. ‘Is there a chance that you might take an interest in perfect strangers who got into the house and attacked him?’

He wanted to echo her sarcastic tone. ‘Every chance,’ he said. ‘But with no sign of forced entry, we have to consider other possibilities.’

‘Well,’ she said, looked at her watch, a slim silver band, ‘I’d like to get going. Are you a local policeman?’

‘I’m down here for as long as it takes.’

There was truth in this. There was some truth in almost anything people said.

‘May I ask you why you brought the bodyguard?’ said Cashin.

‘It’s a work-related thing. Just a precaution.’ Erica stood up.

Cashin rose. ‘You’ve been threatened?’

Erica held out her right hand. ‘Work-related, detective. In my work, that makes it confidential. Goodbye.’

They shook hands. The ex-SOG man, Jacobs, walked onto the forecourt to see him go. In the mirror, Cashin saw him give a mocking wave, fingers fanned, right hand held just beside his tough-guy smile.

Cashin gunned the cruiser, showered Jacobs with gravel, saw him try to protect his face.

CASHIN DROVE out on the road behind Open Beach, turned at the junction with the highway, went back through Port Monro, got a coffee. He parked above Lucan Rocks, below him a half-dozen surfers, some taking on the big breakers, some giving it a lot of thought.

It was a soothing thing to do: sit in a warm car and watch the wind lifting spume off the waves, see the sudden green translucence of a rising wall of water, a black figure’s skim across the melting glass, the poetic exit into the air, the falling.

He thought about Gavin’s shark-bitten board, paddling out on it, the water warm as a bath. The water he was looking at was icy. He remembered the testicle-retracting swims when he was a boy, when they had the family shack above Open Beach and the Doogue shack was over the next dune, rugged assemblages of corrugated iron, fibro sheet, salvaged weatherboards. In those days, the town had two milkbars, two butcher shops, the fish and chip shop, the hardware, a general dealer, one chemist, one doctor. Rich people, mostly sheep farmers, had holiday houses on the Bar between the sea and the river. Ordinary people from the inland had shacks above Open Beach or in South Port or in the streets behind the caravan park.

Cashin remembered his father stopping the Falcon on the wooden bridge, looking down the river at the yachts moored on both sides.

‘This place’s turning into the bloody Riviera,’ his father said.

‘What’s a Riviera?’ said Joe.

‘Monaco’s on the Riviera,’ said Michael.

Mick Cashin looked at Michael. ‘How’d you know that?

‘Read it,’ said Michael. ‘That’s where they have the grand pricks.’

‘Grand pricks?’ said Mick Cashin. ‘You mean the royal family? Prince Rainier?’

‘Don’t be rude, Mick,’ said Cashin’s mother, tapping his father’s cheek. ‘It’s pronounced pree, Michael. It means prize.’

Every year there had been more city kids on the beach. You knew city kids because of their haircuts and their clothes and because the older ones, boys and girls, wore neck chains and smoked, didn’t much care who saw them.

Cashin thought about the winter Saturday morning they had driven up to their shack and Macca’s Shacca next door was gone, vanished, nothing there except disturbed sand to show where the low bleached building had stood, gently leaning backwards.

He had walked around, marvelling at the shack’s absence. There were marker pegs in the ground, and the next time they came a house was half-built on a cement slab.

That summer was the last in their shack, the last summer before his dad’s death. Years later, he asked his mother what became of the place.

‘I had to sell it,’ she said. ‘There wasn’t any money.’

Now you would have to be more than just rich to own a place in the teatree scrub on the Bar and no shacks broke the skyline above Open Beach; on the once worthless dunes stood a solid line of houses and units with wooden decks and plateglass windows. Nothing under six hundred grand.

A fishing boat was coming in, heading for the entrance.

Cashin knew the boat. It belonged to a friend of Bern’s who had a dodgy brother, an abalone poacher. Just six boats still fished out of Port Monro, bringing in crayfish and a few boxes of fish, but it was the town’s only industry apart from a casein factory. Its only industry if you didn’t count six restaurants, five cafes, three clothing boutiques, two antique shops, a bookshop, four masseurs, an aromatherapist, three hairdressers, dozens of bed-and-breakfast establishments, the maze and the doll museum.

He finished his coffee and went to work the long way, through Muttonbird Rocks, no one in the streets, most of the holiday houses empty. He drove along two sides of the business block, past the two supermarkets, the three real-estate agents, three doctors, two law firms, the newsagent, the sports shop, the Shannon Hotel on the corner of Liffey and Lucas Streets.

In the late 1990s, a city drug dealer and property developer had bought the boarded-up, gull-crapped Shannon. People still talked about a bar fight there in 1969 that needed two ambulances from Cromarty to take the injured to hospital. The new owner spent more than two million dollars on the Shannon. Tradesmen took on apprentices, bought new utes, gave their wives new kitchens-the German appliances, the granite benchtops.

Two men in beanies were coming out of the Orion, Port’s surviving bloodhouse, still waiting for its developer. In Cashin’s first week in charge, three English backpackers drinking there at lunchtime gave some local hoons cheek. The one took a king hit, went down and stayed down, copped a few boots. The others, skinny kids from Leeds, were headbutters and kickers and they got into a corner and took out several locals before Cashin and his offsider got there.

The bigger man on the pavement was giving Cashin the eye. Ronnie Barrett had various convictions-assault, drink-driving, driving while suspended. Now he was on the dole, picking up some cash-in-hand at an auto wreckers in Cromarty. His ex-wife had an intervention order against him, granted after he extended his wrecking skills to the former marital home.

Cashin parked outside the station, sat for a while, looking at the wind testing the pines. Winter setting in. He thought about summer, the town full of spoilt-rotten city children, their blonde mothers, flabby fathers in boat shoes. The Cruisers and Mercs and Beemers took all the main street parking. The men sat in and outside the cafes, stood in the shops, hands to heads, barking into their mobiles, pulling faces.

But the year had turned, May had come, the ice-water rain, the winds that scoured skin, and just the hardcore left-the unemployed, under-employed, unemployable, the drunk and doped, the old-age pensioners, people on all kinds of welfare, the halt, the lame. Now he saw the town as you saw a place after fire, all softness gone: the outcrops of rock, the dark gullies, the fireproof rubbish of brown beer bottles and car skeletons.

Ronnie Barrett, he was Port in winter. They should put him in an advertisement, on a poster: GET TO KNOW THE REAL PORT MONRO.

Cashin went in, talked to Kendall. It was overlap time, the two of them on duty for a few hours. He wrote the report on his visit to The Heights, sent it to Villani, printed two copies for the file.

Then he rang homicide and spoke to Tracy Wallace, the senior analyst.

‘Back in harness, are you?’ she said. ‘I gather it’s titsoff down there.’

Cashin could see the flag, plank-stiff in the arctic wind. ‘Nonsense. Only people with over-sensitive parts say that. What’s the word on Bourgoyne?’

‘Unchanged. If you’re recovered, please come home. The place is filling up with young dills.’

‘Be patient. They’ll turn into older dills.’

THE SHIFT went by.

Cashin went home, along the country roads. Newly milked dairy cows, relieved for a time of their swaying burdens, turned to look at him, blessed him with dark, glossy eyes.

No sign of Dave Rebb.

He walked the dogs, made something to eat, watched television, all the time the pain getting worse. It took revenge for the hours he was upright. For a long time after he left hospital, he had been unable to cope without resorting to pethidine. Getting off the peth, the lovely peth, that was the hardest thing he had ever done. Now aspirin and alcohol were the drugs of choice and they were a poor substitute.

Cashin got up and poured a big whisky, washed down three aspirins. Callas, Bergonzi and Gobbi always helped. He went to the most expensive thing he owned, two thousand dollars worth of stereo, and put on a CD. Puccini, Tosca. The sound filled the huge room.

He owed opera and reading to Raimond Sarris, the mad, murderous little prick. Opera had just been rubbish arty people pretended to like. Fat men and women singing in foreign languages. Books were okay, but reading a book took too long, too many other things to do. There were few spaces in Cashin’s days before Vickie and, afterwards, he left home early, came back in the dark, ate at his desk, sitting in cars, in the street. His spare time he spent sleeping or someone, a cop, would hoot outside and they’d go to the races, the football, fishing, stand in some cop’s backyard eating charred meat, drinking beer, talking about work.

Then came Rai Sarris.

After Rai, he had many hours of the day and night in which he had no capacity to do anything except read or watch television. At night, when they were trying to wean him off painkillers, the aches in his back, his pelvis, his thighs, would always give him a moment to drop into sleep. He would fall away from himself for a while, to a deep and dreamless place. The pain would wake him slowly, pain as a sound, far away but insistent, as with a crying baby, part of a dream of hearing something unwelcome. He would move, not fully awake, lie every way, trying to find a position that lessened the pain. Then he would give up and lie on his back-sweaty, now aching from neck to knees-and switch on the light, prop up, try to read. This happened so many times in a night, they blurred.

One day a nurse called Vincentia Lewis brought him a CD player and two small speakers and a box of CDs, twenty or thirty. ‘My father’s,’ she said, ‘he doesn’t need them anymore.’ They sat on the bedside cabinet untouched for a long time until, waiting for the dawn one morning, pain shimmering, Cashin put on the light, picked out a disk, any disk, didn’t look at it, put it on, put on the headphones, put out the light.

It was Jussi Björling.

Cashin did not know that. He endured a few moments, gave it a minute, another. In time, the day leaked in under the cream blind, the morning-shift nurse came and ran it up. ‘Look a bit more peaceful today,’ she said. ‘Better night?’

What did Rai Sarris call himself now? For months, they had tapped everyone Rai knew. He never called anyone.

Cashin got up with difficulty and poured another whisky. A few more and he’d sleep.

THEY WALKED around the western side of the house, through the long grass, dogs ahead, jumping up, hanging stiff-legged in the misty air, hoping to see a rabbit.

‘Where’d you grow up?’ Cashin said.

‘All over,’ said Rebb.

‘Starting where?’

‘Don’t remember. I was a baby.’

‘Right, yes. Go to school?’

‘Why?’

‘Most people know where they went to school.’

‘What’s it matter? I can read, I can write.’

Cashin looked at Rebb, he didn’t look back, eyes front. ‘Like a good yarn, don’t you? Big talker.’

‘Love a yack. How come you walk like you’re scared you’ll break?’

Cashin didn’t say anything.

‘Confide in anyone comes along, don’t you? Why’s the place like this?’

The dogs had vanished into the greenery. Cashin led the way down the narrow path he’d cut with hedge clippers. They came to the ruins. ‘My great-granddad’s brother built it, then he dynamited this part of it. He was planning to blow the whole thing up but the roof fell on him.’

Rebb nodded as if dynamiting a house was an unexceptional act. He looked around. ‘So what do you want to do?’

‘Clear up the garden first. Then I thought I might fix up the house.’

Rebb picked up a piece of rusted metal. ‘Fix this? Be like building that Chartres cathedral. Your kids’ll have to finish the job.’

‘You know about cathedrals?’

‘No.’ Rebb looked through an opening where a window had been.

‘I thought we could do it in bits,’ said Cashin without enthusiasm. He was beginning to see the project through Rebb’s eyes.

‘Easier to build a new place.’

‘I don’t want to do that.’

‘Be the sensible thing.’

‘Well, maybe cathedrals didn’t look like a sensible thing.’

Rebb walked beside the wall, stopped, poked at something with a boot, bent to look. ‘That was religion,’ he said. ‘Poor buggers didn’t know they had a choice.’

Cashin followed him, they fought their way around the building, Rebb scuffing, kicking. He uncovered an area of tesselation, small octagonal tiles, red and white. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Got pictures of the place?’

‘They say there’s a few in a book in the Cromarty library.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’ll get copies.’

‘Need a tape measure. One of them long buggers.’ Rebb mimed winding.

‘I’ll get one.’

‘Graph paper too. See if we can work up a drawing.’

They walked back the long way, it was clearing now, pale blue islands in the sky, dogs ranging ahead like minesweepers.

‘People live here before you?’ said Rebb.

‘Not really. A bloke leased it, ran sheep. He used to stay here a bit.’

‘Cleaning up the garden’s going to take a while,’ said Rebb. ‘Before you start the big job.’ He found the makings, rolled a smoke as he walked, turned his back to the wind to light up, walked backwards. ‘How long you planning on taking?’

‘They know how long a cathedral would take?’

‘Catholic?’

‘No,’ said Cashin. ‘You?’

‘No.’

The dogs arrived, came up to Cashin as if to a rendezvous with their leader, seeking orders, suggestions, inspiration.

‘Met this priest done time for girls,’ said Rebb. ‘He reckoned religion’s a mental problem, like schizophrenia.’

‘Met him where?’

Rebb made a sound, possibly a laugh. ‘Travelling, you meet so many priests done time for kids, you forget where.’

They were at the front entrance.

‘Help yourself to tucker,’ said Cashin. ‘I’m getting something in town.’

Rebb turned away, said over his shoulder, ‘Want to leave the dogs? Take them to Millane’s with me, stay in the yard. He likes them. He told me.’

‘They’ll be your mates for life. Den’s has to be better than the copshop.’

Cashin drove to Port Monro down roads smeared with roadkill- birds, foxes, rabbits, cats, rats, a young kangaroo with small arms outstretched-passed through pocked junctions where one or two tilted houses stood against the wind and signs pointed to other desperate crossroads.

In Port, Leon made him a bacon, lettuce and avocado to take away. ‘Risking the wrath of Ms Fatarse here, are we?’ he said. ‘I’m thinking of having a sign painted. By appointment, supplier of victuals to the constabulary of Port Monro.’

‘What’s a vittle?’

‘Victuals. Food. In general.’

‘How do you spell that?’

‘V-I-C-T-U-A-L-S.’

‘I find that hard to accept.’

Cashin ate his breakfast at Open Beach, parked next to the lifesaving club, watching two windsurfers skimming the wave tops, bouncing, taking off, strange bird-humans hanging against the pale sky. He opened the coffee. There was no hurry. Kendall was acting station commander while the Bourgoyne matter was on. Carl Wexler didn’t like that at all, but the compensation was that he could bully the stand-in sent from Cromarty, a kid even rawer than he was.

Bourgoyne.

Bourgoyne’s brother was executed by the Japs. How could you be interested in Japanese culture when your brother was executed by the Japs? Did executed mean having his head cut off? Did a Jap soldier cut off his head with a sword, sever the neck and spine with one shining stroke?

Some fucking In Cold Blood thing. How did Villani know about Truman Capote? He couldn’t have seen the movie. Villani didn’t go to the movies. Villani didn’t read books either, Cashin thought. He’s like me before Rai Sarris. He doesn’t have the standstill to read books.

Before Rai, he wouldn’t have known what In Cold Blood meant either. Vincentia gave him the book. She was doing a literature degree part-time. He read the book in a day and a night. Then she gave him The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer. That took about the same time. He asked her to buy him another book by Mailer and she came in with The Naked and the Dead, second-hand.

‘All about dying?’ he said. ‘I think I can read other kinds of stuff.’

‘Try it,’ she said, ‘it’s about a different kind of senseless killing.’

Shane Diab shouldn’t have been there. Nothing could change that. He was just a keen kid, he was in awe, so rapt at being in homicide he would have done anything, gone anywhere, worked twenty-three-hour days, then got up early.

There was no point in thinking about Shane. It served no purpose, cops got killed in all sorts of ways, he could just as easily have been shot by some arsehole brain-dead on Jack Daniels and speed. That was the job.

Cashin’s mobile rang.

‘Joseph?’ His mother.

‘Yes.’

‘Michael rang. I’m worried.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the way he sounds.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Strange. Not like him.’

‘Rang from where?’

‘Melbourne.’

‘The one-and-a-half bathrooms?’

‘I don’t know, what does it matter?’ Irritated.

‘How does he sound?’

‘He sounds low. He never sounds low.’

‘Everyone gets low. Life’s a seesaw. Up, down, brief level bit if you’re lucky.’

‘Rubbish, Joseph. I know him. Will you ring? Have a chat?’

‘What do I say? Your mother asked me to ring you? We don’t have chats. We don’t have any chat.’

Silence. A windsurfer was in the air, hanging beneath his board. He disconnected, man and board vanished behind the wave as if dropping into a slot.

‘Joe.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Mum, not your mother. I brought both of you into the world. Will you do that for me? Ring him?’

‘Give me the number.’

‘Hang on, I’ll find it. Got a pen?’

He wrote the number in his book, said goodbye. The windsurfer had reappeared. I’ll ring Michael later, he said to himself. After a few drinks, I’ll make up a reason. We’ll have a chat, whatever the fuck that is.

In the main street, Cashin bought groceries, milk, onions and carrots, half a pumpkin and four oranges and a hand of bananas. He put the bags in the vehicle, walked down to the newsagency. It was empty except for Cecily Addison looking at a magazine. She saw him, replaced it on the stand.

‘Well, what’s happening?’ she said. ‘What’s taking you so long?’

‘Investigation progressing.’ Cashin picked up the Cromarty Herald. The front-page said:

RESORT COULD BRING 200 NEW JOBS

‘They call the man a developer,’ said Cecily. ‘Might as well call hyenas developers. Hitler, there’s a developer for you. Wanted to develop Europe, England, the whole damn world.’

Cashin had learned that when Cecily got going, you didn’t have to say anything. Not even in response to questions.

‘Going to the mouth since I don’t know when,’ said Cecily. ‘My dear old dad made little cane rods for us, two bricks and a biscuit high the two of us. There’s that little spit there, a bit of sand, perfect to cast a line. Mind you, you had a walk. Park the Dodge at the Companions camp, best part of twenty minutes over the dunes. Seemed like a whole day. Worth it, I can tell you.’

She paused to breathe. ‘What do you think this Fyfe jackal is slinging the pinkos?’

‘I’m not quite with you, Mrs Addison.’

Cecily pointed at the newspaper.

‘Read that and weep. The socialists are talking about letting Adrian Fyfe build at Stone’s Creek mouth. Hotel, golf course, houses, brothel, casino, you name it. If that’s not enough, this morning I find my firm, my firm, is acting for the mongrel. No wonder people think we’re lower than snakes’ bellies.’

‘Why does he need lawyers?’

‘Everyone needs lawyers. He’ll have to buy the Companions camp from Charles Bourgoyne. Well, could be the estate of Charles Bourgoyne now. What this rag doesn’t say is buying Stone’s Creek mouth’s no use unless you can get to it. And the only way’s through the nature reserve or through the camp.’

‘Bourgoyne owns the camp?’

‘His dad gave the Companions a forty-year lease. Peppercorn. That’s history, been nothing there since the fire. Companions are history too.’

Cashin’s mobile rang. He went outside. Villani.

‘Joe, Bourgoyne. Two kids tried to sell a Breitling watch in Sydney yesterday.’

CASHIN SAT at a pavement table. ‘You heard this when?’ he said.

‘Five minutes ago,’ said Villani. ‘Cash Converters kind of place. Your pawnshop, basically. The manager did the right thing, sent his offsider out after them and he got a rego, reported it. And that lay on some dope’s desk till now.’

‘So?’

‘Toyota ute, twincab. Martin Frazer Gettigan, 14 Holt Street, Cromarty.’

‘Jesus,’ said Cashin, ‘not another Gettigan.’

‘Yes?’

‘A clan. Lots of Gettigans.’

‘What are we talking? Aboriginal?’

‘Some are, some aren’t.’

‘Like Italians. Find out about this ute without spooking anybody? Can’t trust the Cromarty turkeys. Turkeys and thugs.’

Cashin thought about the building site, the trembling panel van. ‘I’ll have a go.’

‘From a distance, understand?’

‘Not capiche? Out of fashion, is it?’

Villani said, ‘Don’t take too long about this. Minutes, I’m talking.’

‘Whatever it takes,’ said Cashin.

He rang the station, got Kendall. ‘Listen, there’s an incident report on Allan James Morris, me, complaint from the primary school. His mobile number’s there.’

It took more than a minute for Morris to answer. Pulling up his pants on a building site somewhere, thought Cashin.

‘Yeah.’

‘Allan?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Detective Sergeant Cashin from Port Monro. Remember me?’

‘Yeeaah?’

‘You can help me with something. Okay?’

‘What?’

‘Martin Frazer Gettigan, 14 Holt Street. Know him?

‘Why?’

‘I’m in a hurry, son. Know him?’

‘Know him, yeah.’

‘Is he in town?’

‘Dunno. Don’t see him much.’

Cashin said, ‘Allan, I want you to do something for me.’

‘Jeez, mate, I’m not doin fuckin cop’s work…’

‘Allan, two words. Someone’s grand-daughter.’

Cashin heard the sounds of a building site: a nailgun firing, hammer blows, a shouted exchange.

‘What?’ said Morris.

‘I want to know who’s driving Martin’s Toyota ute.’

‘How’m I supposed to fuckin…’

‘Do it. You’ve got five minutes.’

Cashin drove to Callahan’s garage at the Kenmare crossroads, filled up. Derry Callahan came out of the service bay, cap pulled down to his eyebrows, unshaven. Cashin knew him from primary school.

‘You blokes got nothin to do except drive around?’ he said. He wiped a finger under his nose, darkened the existing oil smear. ‘What’s happenin with the Bourgoyne business?’

‘Investigation proceeding.’

‘Proceeding? You checkin out the boongs? Curfew on the whole fuckin Daunt, that’s what I say. Barbed wire around it, be a start. Check em comin and goin.’

‘Lateral thinking,’ said Cashin. ‘Why don’t you write a letter to the prime minister? Well, spelling’d be a problem. You could phone it in.’

Derry’s eyebrows disappeared beneath his cap. ‘They got that?’ he said. ‘Talkback?’

The mobile rang while Cashin was paying Derry’s sister, fat Robyn, slit eyes, mouth permanently hooked into a sneer. He let it ring, took his change and went into the cold, stood at the vehicle, in the wind, looking across the highway at the flat land, the bent grass, pressed the button on the phone.

‘Well, he’s here,’ said Allan Morris. ‘Workin over at his old man’s place.’

‘The ute?’

‘Had to make up a fuckin stupid story.’

‘Yes?’

‘Says he lent it to Barry Coulter and Barry’s kid buggered off in it. He’s not fuckin happy, I kin tell you.’

A sliver of pain up from his left leg, the upper thigh, into his hip. He knew the feeling well, an old friend. He shifted his weight. ‘What’s the kid’s name?’

‘Donny.’

‘That’s Donny Coulter?’

‘What else?’

‘Buggered off where?’

‘Sydney. He rang. Got another kid with him, Luke Ericsen. He’s the driver. They’re cousins. Sort of. Donny’s not too bright.’

‘Been in trouble, these kids?’

‘Black kids? In this town? Ya phonin from Mars?’

‘Yes or no?’

‘Dunno.’

‘We never had this talk,’ said Cashin.

‘Shit. And I’m plannin to go around tellin everyone about it.’

Cashin rang Cromarty station, got Hopgood, gave him the names.

‘Donny Coulter, Luke Ericsen,’ said Hopgood. ‘I’ll talk to the boong affairs adviser. Call you back.’

Cashin pulled away from the pumps, parked at the roadside, waited in the vehicle thinking about a smoke, about having another try at getting Vickie to let him see the boy. Did she doubt the boy was his? She wouldn’t discuss the subject. He’s got a father, that was all she said. When they had their last, unexpected one-night stand, she was seeing Don, the man she married. Seeing, screwing, there were men’s clothes in the laundry, muddy boots outside the back door. A vegetable patch had been dug in the clay, seed packet labels impaled on sticks-that sure as hell wasn’t Vickie.

You’d have to be blind not to know who the father was. The boy had Cashin written on his forehead.

His mobile.

‘Typical Daunt black trash,’ said Hopgood. ‘They’ve got some minor form. Suspected of doing some burgs together. Means they did them. Luke’s older, he fancies he’s a fighter. Donny’s a retard, tags along. Luke’s Bobby Walshe’s nephew.’

‘How old?’

‘Donny seventeen, Luke nineteen. I’m told they might be brothers. Luke’s old man fucked anything moving. Par for the boong course. What’s the interest?’

‘Looks like one of them tried to sell a watch like Bourgoyne’s in Sydney.’

A pause, a whistle. ‘Might have fucking known it.’

‘New South’s got an alert for a Toyota ute registered to Martin Gettigan, 14 Holt Street. The boys are in it.’

‘Well, well. Might go around and see Martin,’ said Hopgood.

‘That would be seriously fucking stupid.’

‘You’re telling me what’s stupid?’

‘I’m conveying a message.’

‘From on fucking high. Suit yourself.’

‘I’ll keep you posted,’ said Cashin.

‘Gee, thanks,’ said Hopgood. ‘Do so like to be in the fucking loop.’

Cashin rang Villani.

‘Jesus,’ said Villani. ‘Plugged in down there, aren’t you? I’ve got news. Vehicle sighted in Goulburn, three occupants. Looks like your boys are coming home.’

‘Three?’

‘Given someone a lift, who knows.’

‘You should know Luke Ericsen is Bobby Walshe’s nephew.’

‘Yes? So what?’

‘I’m just telling you. Going to pick them up?’

‘I don’t want any hot-pursuit shit,’ said Villani. ‘Next thing they’re doing one-eighty on the Hume, they wipe out a family in the Commodore wagon. Only the dog survives. Then it’s my fault.’

‘So?’

‘We’ll track them all the way, if I can get these rural dorks to take KALOF seriously and not spend the shift keeping a look out for skirt to pull over.’

‘If they come back here,’ said Cashin, ‘it’ll be Hopgood’s job.’

‘No,’ said Villani. ‘You’re in charge. You’ve done enough malingering. I want to avoid a Waco-style operation by people watched too much television. Understand?’

‘Capiche,’ said Cashin. ‘Whatever that means.’

‘Don’t ask me. I’m a boy from Shepparton.’

AT 3 PM, Hopgood rang.

Cashin was in Port Monro, looking at the gulls scrapping in the backyard, no dogs to chase them away.

‘These Daunt coons are on their way,’ Hopgood said. ‘Don’t stop somewhere for a bong, they should be here about midnight.’ He paused. ‘I gather you’re the boss.’

‘In theory,’ said Cashin. ‘I’ll be there in an hour or so.’

He went home, fed the dogs. They didn’t like the change in routine; food came after the walk, that was the order of things. There was no sign of Rebb. He left a note about the dogs, drove to Cromarty.

Hopgood was in his office, a tidy room, files on shelves, neat in and out trays. He was in shirtsleeves, a white shirt, buttoned at the cuffs. ‘Sit,’ he said.

Cashin sat.

‘So how do you want this done?’ Hopgood affected boredom.

‘I’ll listen to advice.’

‘You’re the fucking boss, you tell me.’

Cashin’s mobile rang. He went into the passage.

‘Bobby Walshe’s nephew,’ said Villani. ‘I take your point. We do this thing by the book. There’s a bloke coming down to you, on his way now. Paul Dove, detective sergeant. Transferred from the feds, done soft stuff, no one wanted him but he’s smart so I took him. He’s learning, takes the pains.’

Takes the pains. That was a Singo expression. They were both Singo’s children, they used his words without thinking.

‘He’s taking over?’ said Cashin.

‘No, no, you’re the boss.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes what?’

‘Oh come on,’ said Cashin.

‘He’s Aboriginal. The commissioner wants him there.’

‘I’m lost here. Night has fallen.’

‘Don’t come the naïve shit with me, kid,’ said Villani. ‘You told me about Bobby Walshe. Plus Cromarty’s record’s fucking appalling. Two deaths in cells, lots of other suspicious stuff.’

‘Go on.’

‘So. When these boys get there, they’ll be knackered. Let them go home. You want them asleep. Go in two hours after they pack it in, more. Gently. I cannot say that too strongly.’

The conversation ended. Cashin went back into Hopgood’s office.

‘Villani,’ he said. ‘He wants the boys lifted at home.’

‘What?’

‘At home. After they’ve gone to bed.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Hopgood, running both hands over his hair. ‘Heard everything now. You don’t just go into the fucking Daunt at night and arrest people. It’s Indian territory. Excellent chance we end up being attacked by the whole fucking street, the whole fucking Daunt, hundreds of coons off their fucking faces.’

Hopgood got up, went to the window, hands in pockets. ‘Tell your wog mate I want confirmation that he’s taking all responsibility for this course of action. The two of you both.’

‘What’s your advice?’ said Cashin.

‘Lift the cunts on the way into town, that’s no risk, no problem.’

Cashin left the room and rang Villani. ‘The local wisdom,’ he said, ‘is that going into the Daunt for something like this is inviting a small Blackhawk Down. Hopgood says to lift them on the way in is easy. I say let him run it.’

Villani sighed, a sad sound. ‘You sure?’

‘How can I be sure? The Daunt’s not the place it was when I was a kid.’

‘Joe, the commissioner’s on my hammer.’

Cashin was thinking that he wanted to be somewhere else. ‘I think you might be over-dramatising,’ he said. ‘It’s just three kids in a ute. Can’t be that hard to do.’

‘So you’ll be the one on television explaining what happened to Bobby Walshe’s relation?’

‘No,’ said Cashin. ‘I’ll be the one hiding in a cupboard and letting your man Dove explain.’

‘Fuck you,’ said Villani. ‘I say that in a nice way. Do it then.’

Cashin told Hopgood.

‘Some sense,’ said Hopgood, face in profile. ‘That’s new.’

‘They’re sending someone down. The commissioner wants an Aboriginal officer present.’

‘Jesus, not enough coons here,’ said Hopgood. ‘We have to import another black bastard.’

‘Is there somewhere I can sit?’ said Cashin.

Hopgood smiled at him, showed his top teeth, a small gap in the middle. ‘Tired, are we? Should’ve taken the pension, a fucked bloke like you. Gone up where it’s warm.’

Cashin willed his facial muscles to be still, looked in the direction of the window, saw nothing, counted the numbers. There would be a day, there would be an hour, a minute. There would be an instant.

IT WAS the usual mess: desks pushed together, files everywhere, a draining board full of dirty mugs. Someone had left a golf bag in a corner, seven clubs, not all of one family.

Cashin was eating a pie, meat sludge, when Hopgood showed Dove in.

‘The supervisor’s arrived,’ he said and left.

Dove was in his early thirties, tall, thin, light-brown head buzz-cut in homicide style, round rimless glasses. He put his briefcase on a desk. They shook hands.

‘I’m here because they want a boong present when you arrest Bobby Walshe’s nephew,’ Dove said. He had a hoarse voice, like someone who’d taken a punch in the voicebox.

‘You can’t be plainer than that,’ said Cashin.

Dove looked at Cashin for a while, looked around the room. ‘Heard about you,’ he said. ‘Where do I sit?’

‘Anywhere. You eaten?’

‘On the way, yeah.’ Dove took off his black overcoat, underneath it a black leather jacket. ‘Got stuff to catch up on,’ he said, opening his briefcase.

Cashin didn’t mind that. He wrapped the remains of the pie, put them into the bin, went back to Joseph Conrad. Nostromo. He was trying to read all Conrad’s books, he didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because Vincentia told him that Conrad was a Pole who had to learn to write in English. He thought that was the kind of book he needed- writer, reader, they were both in foreign territory.

Cashin’s mobile rang.

‘Michael called again.’ His mother.

‘Bit hectic here, Syb. I’ll do it first chance I get. Yes.’

‘I’m worried, Joe. You know I’m not a worrier.’

Cashin wanted to say that he knew that very well.

‘You could do it now, Joe. Won’t take a minute. Just give him a ring.’

‘Soonest. I’ll ring him soonest. Promise.’

‘Good boy. Thank you, Joseph.’

Ring Michael. Michael came to see him in hospital, once. He stood at the window, spoke from there, did not sit down, answered three phone calls and made one. ‘Well,’ he’d said when he was leaving, ‘chose a dangerous occupation, didn’t you.’ He had a thin smile, a boss smile. It said: I can’t get close. One day I may have to sack you.

Hopgood stuck his head in. ‘Cobham. The BP servo. Three in the ute.’

The boys were 140 kilometres away.

Cashin went out for a walk, bought cigarettes, another surrender. A cold night, rain in the west wind, the last of the leaves flirting with bits of paper in the streetlights. He lit up, went down the street of bluestone buildings, past the sombre courthouse, the place where young men finally found the stern father they’d been looking for. Around the corner, uphill, past dark shops to the old Commonwealth Bank on the next corner, now a florist and a gift shop and a travel agency.

Here on the heights of Cromarty the rich of the nineteenth century and after-traders in wool and grain, merchants of all kinds, the owners of the flour mill, the breweries, the foundries, the jute bag factory, the ice works, the mineral water bottling plant, the land barons of the inland and the doctors and lawyers-built houses of stone and brick.

Coming to town was a big thing when Cashin was a boy. The four of them in the Kingswood on a Saturday morning, his father with a few shaving cuts on his face, black hair combed and shining, his mother in her smart clothes, only worn for town. Cashin thought about her touching the back of his dad’s head, the tongue-pink varnish on her nails.

He turned the corner at the Regent pub, a noise like a shore-break behind the yellow windows. When the shopping was done, Mick Cashin met his brother Len at the Regent for a drink before they went home. He dropped Sybil and the two boys on the waterfront and went to the pub. They bought chips at the little shop and walked out on the long pier, looking at the boats and the people fishing. Then they went up through the town, up the street he was now walking down. Cashin remembered that Michael always kept his distance from them, hanging back, looking in shop windows. It wasn’t hard to find the car, always near the pub. They got in and waited for Mick Cashin. Michael had his school case, he did homework, it would have been maths. His mother read from a book of riddles. Joe loved those riddles, got to know them off by heart. Michael didn’t take part.

Mick Cashin crossing the road with Uncle Len, laughing, hand on Len’s shoulder. Len was dead too, an asthma attack.

Cashin felt the wind on his face, the salt smell in his head. He was a boy again, the child lived in him. He turned the corner and went back to the stale air of the station, two elderly people at the counter, the duty cop looking pained, scratching his head. Someone in the cells was making a sad singing-moaning sound.

Hopgood and four plainclothes were in the office. One of them, a thin, balding man, was eating a hamburger and dipping chips into a container of tomato sauce, adding them to the mix. Dove was at the urn, running boiling water into a styrofoam cup.

‘Welcome, stranger,’ said Hopgood. ‘The bloke at Hoskisson’s just logged the ute. We’ve got fifty minutes or so.’

Hopgood made no introductions, went to the whiteboard stained with the ghosts of hundreds of briefings and drew a road map.

‘I’m assuming these pricks are going to Donny’s house or Luke’s,’ he said. ‘Makes no difference, a block apart. They’re coming down Stockyard Road. We have a vehicle out there, it’s had a breakdown, it’ll tell me when they pass. When they get to Andersen Road, that’s here, the second set of lights, they can turn right or they can carry on to here, go down to Cardigan Street and turn right.’

Hopgood’s pen extended the road out of Cromarty. ‘That’s too hard. So we have to take them here where it’s still one lane.’ He pointed at an intersection. ‘Lambing Street and Stockyard Road.’

He put an X further down the road. ‘Golding’s smash-repair place. Preston and KD, you’ll wait here, facing town. You’re group three. I’ll let you know when to get going so you’ll be in front of the ute. When you get to the Lambing lights, they’ll be red. They’ll stay red till we’re done. With me so far?’

Everyone nodded. The hamburger-eater burped.

‘Now when the ute pulls up behind you,’ he said, ‘you blokes sit tight. Wait, okay? Lloyd and Steggie and me, that’s group one, we’ll pull up behind them in the Cruiser and we’ll be out quick smart.’

Hopgood ran a finger under his nose. ‘And Lloyd and Steggie,’ he said, ‘I hereby say to you and everyone else I have received a message from on high and nothing, that’s absolutely nothing, can happen to these…these dickheads.’

He looked from face to face, didn’t look at Cashin or Dove.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Anything stupid happens, we run away and hide. We will starve the pricks out. This is not some kind of SOG operation. Detective Senior Sergeant Cashin, you want to say something?’

Cashin waited a few seconds. ‘I’ve given Inspector Villani and the crime commissioner an assurance that seven trained officers can pick up three kids for questioning without any problems.’

Hopgood nodded. ‘Detectives Cashin and Dove, you will be group two in the second vehicle behind the ute. Your services are unlikely to be needed. Any questions? No? Let’s get going. I’ll be talking to all of you. Code is Sandwich. Sandwich. Okay?’

‘If they’ve got a scanner?’ said Preston. He had a big nose and a small, sparse moustache, the look of a rodent.

‘Have a heart,’ said Hopgood. ‘These are Daunt dickheads.’

A uniformed cop came in. ‘The third one in the ute,’ he said, ‘it might be another cousin. Corey Pascoe. He’s been in Sydney for a while.’

They put on their jackets and went out to the carpark behind the station, a small paved yard carved out of the stone hill.

‘Take the Falcon,’ said Hopgood to Cashin. ‘It’s in better nick than it looks.’

They drove out in a convoy, Hopgood’s Landcruiser in front, then Cashin and Dove, behind them the cops called Preston and KD in a white Commodore. It was raining heavily now, the streets running with the lights of cars and the neon signs of shops, blurs and pools of red and white, blue, green and yellow. They crossed the highway and drove out through the suburbs, past the racecourse and the showgrounds, turned at the old meatworks. They were on Stockyard Road. The boys were out there, coming towards them.

‘This bloke know what he’s doing?’ said Dove. His chin was down in his overcoat collar.

‘We hope,’ said Cashin. The car smelled of cigarette smoke, sweat and chips cooked in old oil.

‘Sandwich,’ said Hopgood on the radio. ‘Group three, station’s coming up, should hear from me again inside twenty-five minutes.’

‘Group three, roger to that,’ said a voice, possibly KD.

Golding’s Smash Repair came into sight on the right, a big tin building, a scarlet neon sign. In the rearview, Cashin saw the white Commodore turn off.

The rain was heavier now. He upped the wipers’ speed.

‘Sandwich group one,’ said Hopgood. ‘Turning left.’

‘Group two, roger to that,’ Cashin said. He followed the Cruiser into a dirt side road, muddy. It stopped, he stopped. It did a U-turn, so did he. It stopped. He pulled up behind it, killed the lights.

A knock on his window. He ran it down.

‘Keep the motor running, follow us when we go,’ said Hopgood. ‘No more radio talk from now.’

‘Right.’

‘Don’t like this fucking rain,’ said Hopgood and went into the dark.

Window up. They sat in silence. Cashin’s pelvis ached. He settled into his breathing routine but he had to shift every minute or two, try to transfer the weight of his torso onto less active nerves.

‘Okay if I smoke?’ said Dove.

‘Join you.’

He punched the lighter, took a cigarette from Dove, dropped his window a centimetre or two. Dove lit their smokes with the glowing coil. They smoked in silence for a while, but nicotine loosens the tongue.

‘Do a lot of this?’ said Cashin.

Dove turned his head. Cashin could only see the whites of his eyes. ‘Of what?’

‘Be the Aboriginal representative.’

‘This is a favour for Villani. He says he’s been leaned on about the Bobby Walshe connection. I quit the feds because I didn’t want to be a showpiece boong cop.’

‘I was in primary school with Bobby Walshe,’ said Cashin and regretted it.

‘I thought he grew up on the Daunt Setttlement.’

‘No school there then. The kids came to Kenmare.’

‘So you know him?’

‘He wouldn’t remember me. He might remember my cousin. Bern. They teamed up on kids called them names.’

Why did I start this, thought Cashin? To ingratiate myself with this man?

A long silence, no sound from the engine. Cashin touched the pedal and the motor growled.

‘What kind of names?’ said Dove.

‘Boong. Coon. That kind of thing.’

More silence. Dove’s cigarette glowed. ‘Why’d they call your cousin that?’

‘His mum’s Aboriginal. My Aunty Stella. She’s from the Daunt.’

‘What, so you’re a boong-in-law.’

‘Yeah. Sort of.’

In the hospital, he had begun to think about how he’d never stood with his Doogue cousins, with Bobby Walshe and the other kids from the Daunt when the whites called them boongs, coons, niggers. He’d walked away. No one was calling him names, it wasn’t his business. He remembered telling his dad about the fights. Mick Cashin was working on the tractor, the old Massey Ferguson, big fingers winding out sparkplugs. ‘You don’t have to do anything till they’re losing,’ he said. ‘Then you better get in, kick some heads. Do the right thing. Your mum’s family.’

By the time his Aunty Stella took him in, no one called any Doogue kid anything. They didn’t need help from anyone. They were big and you didn’t get one: they came as a team.

Cashin watched the main road. A vehicle crossed. No move by the Cruiser. Not the one. He put on the wipers. The rain was getting harder. Now was the time to call this thing off, you couldn’t do stuff like this in a cloudburst.

Another vehicle flicked by.

Glare of taillights on. Hopgood moving.

‘Here we go,’ said Cashin.

IT WAS raining heavily, the Falcon’s wipers weren’t up to it.

Hopgood didn’t hesitate at the junction, swung right.

Cashin followed, couldn’t see much.

They were at fifty, eighty, ninety, a hundred, the Falcon went flat, it couldn’t do more than that, something wrong.

He felt a front wheel wobble, thought he’d lose control, slowed.

Hopgood’s taillights were gone into the sodden night.

This wasn’t smart, this wasn’t the way to do it.

‘Get Hopgood,’ said Cashin. ‘This is bullshit.’

Dove took the handset. ‘Sandwich two for Sandwich one, receiving me. Over.’

No reply.

Golding’s Smash Repairs on the left, neon sign a red smear in the wet night. Car one, group three, Preston and KD, they would have pulled out, they would be ahead of the ute now, closing on the traffic lights.

‘Abandon,’ said Cashin. ‘Tell him.’

‘Sandwich one, abandon, abandon, received? Please roger that.’

Four vehicles, speeding in the rain on a pitch-black night.

The lights would be red. Preston would stop.

The ute would stop behind him. Three kids in a twincab. Tired from a long trip. Yawning. Thinking of home and bed. Were they Bourgoyne’s attackers? At least one of them would know who took the watch off the old man’s wrist.

‘I say again, abandon, abandon,’ Dove said. ‘Roger that, roger that.’

‘Say again, Sandwich two, can’t hear you.’

Coming up to the last bend, driving rain, the Lambing Street intersection coming up. Cashin couldn’t see anything except the yellow glow of street lights beyond.

‘Sandwich one, abandon, abandon, received? Please roger that.’

Cashin slowed, in the bend now.

Red glare. Cruiser taillights.

Stopped.

Cashin braked, the Falcon’s back wanted to slide away, he had to go with it, straighten out gently.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Dove. ‘Sandwich one, abandon, abandon, I say again, abandon. Roger that, roger that.’

Cashin stopped behind the Cruiser, couldn’t see anything. Three doors open.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, something badly wrong here.

Dove was around the car first, Cashin bumped into him, they almost fell, both blind in the pouring rain.

A vehicle had slammed into the traffic lights on the wrong side of the road. A ute. He could see three or four figures, milling about.

Gunshots.

Someone shouted: ‘PUT THE FUCKIN THING…’

A shotgun fired, the muzzle flame of a shotgun, reflected by the wet tarmac.

‘DROP IT, DROP THE FUCKIN GUN!’

‘BACK OFF, BACK OFF!’

Two more bangs, handgun, tongue-tips of flame, quick, SMACK-SMACK.

Silence.

‘Fuck,’ said Dove. ‘Oh my sweet fuck.’

Someone was moaning.

Hopgood shouted, ‘KD, GISSUS THE FUCKING SPOTLIGHT!’

A few seconds and the light came on, the world turned hard white, Cashin saw the broken ute, thousands of glass fragments glittering on the road.

Three men standing. A body behind the ute, a shotgun beside it.

He walked across the space, wiping rain from his face.

Lloyd and Steggie, guns out, pale faces. Steggie’s mouth moved, he was trying to say something. Then he was sick, a column of fluid. He went to his knees, to all fours.

‘Get an ambo!’ Cashin shouted. ‘Maximum fucking speed!’

He went to the person on the ground, a slim youth, his mouth was open. He was shot in the throat. Cashin saw a glint of teeth, heard a gurgling sound. The youth coughed, blood poured out of him, ran in the road, thicker than the rain.

Cashin took the youth’s shoulders in his hands, raised him, knew he was going to die, felt it in the thin arms, the little shakes, heard it in the rasping sounds.

‘The fucking idiot,’ said Hopgood from behind him.

Cashin let the boy down. There was no help he could give. He got up and went to the ute. The driver was pinned by the steering wheel and the dashboard, his face covered in blood, blood everywhere.

Cashin put a finger on his neck, felt the faintest pulse. He tried to open the door, couldn’t. He went to the other side. Dove was there. The passenger was another boy, he had blood flowing from his mouth but his eyes were wide.

‘Oh fuck,’ he said softly. He said it again and again.

They got him out, laid him down. He would live.

The ambulance arrived, then another, the second with a doctor, a woman. She’d never done gunshot but it didn’t matter, it was always too late.

When they lifted the boy, Cashin saw a shotgun in a black puddle beside him, single-barrel pumpgun, sawn off.

The driver was still alive when they got him into the ambulance. The cops stood around.

‘Nobody touches anything here,’ said Cashin. ‘Not a fucking thing. Close the road.’

‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ said Hopgood. ‘This’s Cromarty, mate.’

VILLANI put the tape in the machine and gave the remote control to Hopgood. ‘This is the media conference two hours ago,’ said Villani. ‘Be on telly at lunchtime.’

The assistant crime commissioner’s pink baby face appeared on the monitor. He was prematurely bald. ‘It’s my sad duty to report that two of the three people involved in the incident outside Cromarty late yesterday have succumbed to injuries received,’ he said. ‘The third person has a minor injury and is in no danger. The events are now the subject of a full investigation.’

A journalist said, ‘Can you confirm that police fired on three young Aboriginal men at a roadblock?’

The commissioner remained blank. ‘It was not a roadblock, no. Our understanding is that police officers were fired upon and responded appropriately.’

‘If it wasn’t a roadblock, what was it?’

‘The persons involved are suspects in an inquiry and an attempt was made to apprehend them.’

‘That’s the Charles Bourgoyne attack?’

‘Correct.’

‘Did both victims die of gunshot wounds?’

‘One of them. Unfortunately.’

The journalist said, ‘And is that Luke Ericsen, the nephew of Bobby Walshe?’

‘I’m not yet in a position to answer that,’ said the commissioner.

‘And the other boy? What did he die of?’

‘Injuries sustained in a vehicle accident.’

Another journalist said, ‘Commissioner, the officers involved, were they uniformed police?’

‘There were uniformed police at the scene.’

‘So if it wasn’t a roadblock, was this a chase gone wrong?’

‘It was not a chase. It was an operation designed to avoid any danger to everyone involved and…’

‘Can you confirm that two police vehicles were travelling behind the vehicle that crashed. Can you confirm that?’

‘That’s correct, however…’

‘Excuse me, commissioner, how is that not a chase?’

‘They were not pursuing the vehicle.’

‘It wasn’t a roadblock and it wasn’t a chase and you have two dead Aboriginal youths?’

The commissioner scratched his cheek. ‘I’ll say again,’ he said. ‘It was an interception operation designed to minimise the possibility of injury. That is always the intent. But police officers in danger have the clear right to act to protect themselves and their colleagues.’

‘Commissioner, Cromarty has a bad reputation for this kind of thing, doesn’t it? Four Aboriginal people dead in matters involving the police since 1987. Two deaths in custody.’

‘I can’t comment on that. To my knowledge, the officers involved in this incident, and that includes a highly respected Aboriginal police officer, behaved with the utmost respect for protocol. Beyond that, we’ll wait for the coroner’s verdict.’

Villani gestured to Hopgood to switch off the monitor. Cashin was standing at the window, looking at the noonday light on the stone building across the street, having trouble focusing. He was thinking about the crushed boy in the ute. Shane Diab looked like that, the life squeezed out of him.

Pigeons and gulls were walking about, some drowsing, apparently living in amity. Then full-on violence broke out on the parapet- wings, beaks, claws. The peace had only been a lull.

‘The position is,’ said Villani, rubbing his face with both hands, ageing himself, ‘that this operation has brought upon me, upon you, upon this station and upon the entire fucking police force an avalanche of shit. We are buried in shit, the guilty and the innocent.’

‘With respect,’ said Hopgood, ‘how can you know that a driver will be so dumb? What kind of stupid cunt swerves around a car at red lights and loses control?’

‘You can’t,’ said Villani. ‘But you wouldn’t have had to if you’d listened to me and taken them at home. Now you’d all better pray these kids are the ones attacked Bourgoyne.’

‘Ericsen had no reason to fire on us,’ said Hopgood. ‘He’s a violent little arsehole, he’d likely have done the same if we’d waited till they were home in the Daunt.’

‘My understanding,’ said Villani, ‘is that Ericsen’s in an accident, he gets out, sees two civilians jump out of an unmarked car and come at him. Could be mad hoons. Three years ago four such animals did exactly the same thing, beat two black kids to pulp, the one’s in a wheelchair for life. Also in this town a year ago a black kid walking home was chased down by a car. He tried to run away and the car mounted the pavement and collected him. Dead on arrival. law. For something anyway.’

Villani had been looking around the room. Now he stared at Hopgood. ‘You familiar with those incidents, detective?’

‘I am, boss. But…’

‘Save the buts, detective. For the inquiry and the inquest. Where you will need all the buts you can find.’ Villani sighed. ‘Two dead black kids,’ he said. ‘Bobby Walshe’s nephew. Shit.’

‘Walshe’s never been near his nephew,’ said Hopgood. ‘He’s too good for his fellow Daunt…’

He didn’t say the word. They all knew what the word was.

‘I wish I was more distant,’ said Villani. ‘Mars, that would be good. Maybe not far enough.’

Cashin coughed, it caused a scarlet flash of pain.

‘I’m just a country cop,’ said Hopgood, ‘but it’s not clear to me that the presumption of innocence lies with arseholes who try to run red lights, hit a pole, climb out with an unlicensed sawn-off pumpgun and fire on police officers.’

He rubbed the stubble on his upper lip with a big finger. ‘Or is it different when they’re related to fucking Bobby Walshe?’

‘That’s well put,’ said Villani. ‘The presumption of innocence. You might think about retraining for the law. For something anyway’

He took out cigarettes, flicked the pack, lipped one, lit it. There was a sign prohibiting smoking. His smoke stood in the dead air.

‘The procedure here is going to be a model for future cock-ups,’ said Villani. ‘Two feds plus ethical standards officers plus the ombudsman’s office. They’re here. All officers involved are now on holiday. Any contact, that’s the phone call, the little chat, the fucking wink over the bananas in the supermarket, those concerned will turn in the wind. Understand? The family, the brotherhood, that shit, that is not going to operate. Understood?’

Cashin said, ‘Could you go over that again?’

Villani said, ‘Well, that’s it, you can go. Cashin stay.’

Hopgood and Dove left.

‘Joe,’ said Villani, ‘I don’t appreciate smart shit like that.’

He smoked, tapped ash into his plastic cup. Cashin looked away, watched the birds across the street. Sleep, shuffle, shit, fight.

‘For presiding over this cock-up, I am branded,’ said Villani.

‘It was my advice. What else could you do?’

‘You passed on Hopgood’s considered opinion. That’s what you did. Passed it on. I decided.’

Villani closed his eyes. Cashin saw his tiredness, the tiny vein pulsing in an eyelid.

‘I shouldn’t have brought you in,’ said Villani. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Bullshit. No sign of Bourgoyne’s watch?’

‘No. Probably flogged it somewhere else. They’re looking. They haven’t found Pascoe’s place in Sydney.’

‘Sydney detection at its best,’ said Cashin.

‘I wouldn’t point the finger,’ said Villani. ‘Not me.’

Silence. Villani went to the window, forced it open, shot his stub at the pigeons, crashed the window down.

‘I’ve got a little media appearance to do,’ he said. ‘How do I look?’

‘Ravishing,’ said Cashin. ‘Nice suit, ditto shirt and tie.’

‘Advised by experts.’ At the door, Villani said, ‘If it were me, I’d say as little as possible. Innocent stuff comes back to haunt you. And this cunt Hopgood, Joe. Don’t do him any favours, he’ll sell you without a blink.’

IT WAS mid-afternoon before Cashin’s turn.

In an overheated interview room, audio and video running, he sat on a slippery vinyl chair before two feds, a fat senior sergeant from ethical standards called Pitt and his puzzled-looking offsider Miller, and a man from the police ombudsman’s office.

Cashin took the first chance to say that he’d had to convince Villani to approve the operation.

‘Well, that’s a matter for another time,’ said Pitt. ‘Not the matter at hand.’

The feds, a man and a woman, both stringy like marathon runners, took Cashin through his statement twice. Then they picked at it.

‘And I suppose,’ said the man, ‘with hindsight, you’d see that as an error of judgment?’

‘With hindsight,’ said Cashin, ‘I see most of my life as an error of judgment.’

‘Are you taking the question seriously, detective?’ said the woman.

Cashin wanted to tell her to fuck off. He said, ‘In the same circumstances, I’d make the same decision.’

‘It resulted in the deaths of two young men,’ she said.

‘Two people died,’ Cashin said. ‘The courts will decide who’s to blame.’

Silence. The interrogators looked at one another.

‘What was your initial opinion of conducting an operation like this in heavy rain?’ said the woman.

‘You can’t choose the weather. You take what you get.’

‘But the wisdom of it? What was your opinion?’

‘I had no strong opinion until it was too late.’

It had been too late. He had waited too long.

‘And then you say you instructed Dove to call Hopgood and order the operation abandoned?’

‘I did.’

‘You believed you had the authority to order the operation abandoned?’ said the man from the ombudsman’s office.

‘I did.’

‘You still think so?’

‘I thought I was in overall command, yes.’

‘You thought? It wasn’t made clear who was in command?’

‘I’m in charge of the Bourgoyne investigation. This operation flowed from it.’

They looked at one another. ‘Moving on,’ said the woman. ‘You say you made four attempts to call it off?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘And they weren’t acknowledged?’

‘No.’

‘Dove asked for the calls to be acknowledged?’

Cashin looked away. He was in pain, thinking of home, whisky, bed. ‘Yes. Repeatedly. After the first message, Hopgood asked for a repeat, said he couldn’t hear us’

‘That surprised you?’

‘It happens. Equipment malfunctions.’

‘To go back to the moment you rounded the vehicle,’ said the male fed. ‘You said you heard shots.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘And you saw a muzzle flash beside the ute?’

‘Yes.’

‘You heard a shot or shots and then you saw the muzzle flash?’

Cashin thought: he’s asking whether Luke Ericsen was fired on and fired back.

‘An instant in a cloudburst,’ he said, ‘I heard shots, I saw a muzzle flash at the ute. The order, well…’

‘It’s possible the muzzle flash was Ericsen firing after the other shots?’ said Pitt.

‘I can’t make that judgment,’ Cashin said.

‘But is it possible?’

‘It’s possible. It’s possible the shotgun fired first.’

‘I’m sorry, are you changing your statement?’ The woman.

‘No. I’m clarifying.’

‘A person of your experience,’ said the male fed. ‘We’d expect a little more precision.’

‘We?’ said Cashin, looking into his eyes. ‘Does we mean you? What the fuck do you know about anything?’

That didn’t help. It was another hour before he could go home. He drove carefully, he was tired, nerves jangling. At the Kenmare crossroads, he remembered milk and bread and dog food, there was only a bit of the butcher’s sausage left. He pulled in to Callahan’s garage and shop.

The shop was unheated, smelling of sour milk and stale piecrust, no one behind the counter. He got milk, the last carton, went to the shelves against the wall to get dog food. One small can left.

‘Back again.’

Derry Callahan, oil smears on his face, was standing behind him, close up. He was wearing a nylon zipped-up cardigan, taking strain over his belly.

‘Good to see you blokes earnin yer fuckin money for a change,’ he said.

Cashin looked around, smelled alcohol and poisonous breath, saw Callahan’s pink-rimmed eyes, the greasy strands of hair hand-combed over his pale spotted scalp.

‘How’s that?’ he said.

‘Takin out those two Daunt coons. Pity it wasn’t a whole fuckin busload.’

There was no thought, just the flush. Cashin had the can of Frisky Dog Meaty Chunks in Marrow Gravy, in his right hand. He turned his hips and brought his arm around close to his body and hit Derry in the middle of his face, not a lot of travel, they were close. The pain made him think he had broken his fingers.

Callahan went backwards, two short steps, dropped slowly to his knees, at prayer, hands coming to his face, blood getting there first, dark red, almost black, it was the fluorescent lighting did that.

Cashin wanted to hit him again but he threw the carton of milk at him. It bounced off his head. He stepped over to kick Callahan but something stopped him.

At the vehicle, Cashin realised that he was still holding the dog food can. He opened his hand. The can was dented. He threw it onto the back.

Rebb heard him arrive, a beam of light, the dogs jumping, big ears flapping, running for him. He fondled their ears, hand hurting. Dogs went between his legs, came around for more.

‘Thought you’d buggered off,’ said Rebb. ‘Leaving me with your mad dogs and your debts.’

THE DOGS woke Cashin a good way out from dawn and, blind, he crossed the space, let them into the cold, dark room, went back to bed. They snuffed the kitchen for dropped food, gave up, jumped onto the bed, spoilt rotten.

Cashin didn’t care. They sandwiched him, pushed against him, lay their light heads on his legs. He went back to sleep, woke with a start, a sound in his memory, a scrape, metal against metal. Head raised, neck tense, he listened.

Just a sound in a dream. The dogs would hear anything unusual long before he did. But sleep was over. He lay on his back, fingers of his right hand hurting, hearing the sad whimpering pre-dawn wind.

The boys in the ute.

In the same circumstances, I’d make the same decision.

It resulted in the deaths of two young men.

Until that moment in the stale room, it had not fully dawned upon him that the line ran directly from the bleeding and dying boys to him on the phone talking to Villani.

I think you might be over-dramatising. It’s just three kids in a ute. Can’t be that hard to do.

Would it have been different if Hopgood had spoken to Villani? Would Villani have rejected the advice if it came directly from Hopgood?

No matter how much they might have botched raids on the boys at their homes, there wouldn’t be two dead.

He tried to think about something else.

Rebuilding Tommy Cashin’s blown-up house, lying ruined since just after World War I. How stupid. It would never be done, he’d waste his spare time for a while, then he’d give it away. He’d never done anything with his hands, built anything. How had the idea come to him?

It had somehow developed on his walks with the dogs as they returned to the house in its tangled wilderness. And then one morning on the way to work he met Bern at a crossroads. A load of uncleaned old red bricks was on the back of his Dodge. Sitting beside Bern was a local ancient called Collo who cleaned his bricks, sat outside in all weathers covered in a grey film of cement dust, whistling through the gaps between his teeth, utterly absorbed in chipping at mortar.

They pulled onto the verges, got out. Bern crossed the road, smoke in his mouth.

‘Bit early for you,’ said Cashin. ‘Pull down a house in the dark?’

‘What would you cunts know about honest labour?’ said Bern. ‘All got these fat flat arses.’

‘Student of arses, are you?’ Cashin said. And then he said the fateful words. ‘How many bricks you got there?’

‘Three thousand-odd.’

‘How much?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘How much?’

‘For a valued customer, forty a hundred, clean.’

‘Let’s say twenty-five.’

‘I’ll sell you bricks for twenty-five, I can get forty? Know how scarce old bricks are? Antiques, mate.’ He spat neatly. ‘No, you don’t know. You know fuck all.’

‘Say thirty.’

‘Whaddaya want with bricks?’

‘I’m fixing Tommy Cashin’s house,’ said Cashin. The words came from nowhere.

Bern shook his head. ‘You’re another fuckin Cashin loony, you know that? Done at thirty. Delivery extra.’

Now the bricks were stacked near the ruin.

Cashin got up, pulled on clothes, made tea. On the edge of dawn, he set out for the beach with the dogs, a fifteen-minute drive, the last few on a dirt track. Under a sky of streaked marble, he walked barefoot on hard rippled sand against a freezing wind.

His father’s view had been that you didn’t wear footwear on the beach no matter what you were doing there. Not thongs, not anything. If the sand was hot, well, shut up or go home. Cashin thought about the summers of having his soles burnt, cut from broken glass and sharp rocks. He must have been seven or eight when he stood on a fish hook. He hopped and sat down hard, tears of pain flowing.

His father came back, lifted the foot. The hook was in the soft flesh behind the pad of his big toe.

‘No bloody going back with hooks,’ Mick Cashin said and pushed the hook through.

Cashin remembered the barb coming out of his skin. It looked huge, his father took it between finger and thumb and pulled the whole thing through. The skin bulged before the eyelet emerged. He remembered the feeling of the length of pale nylon gut being drawn through his flesh.

The dogs liked the beach, weren’t keen on the sea. They chased gulls, chased each other, snapped at wavelets, ran from them, went up the dunes to explore the marram grass and the scrub for rabbits. Cashin looked at the sea as he walked, his face turned from the grit blowing off the dunes.

A strong rip was running parallel to the beach, just beyond the big breakers. They went all the way to the mouth of Stone’s Creek. The outgoing tide had divided the stream into five or six shallows separated by sandbars, perfect finger biscuits of different widths. This was where Cecily Addison told him Adrian Fyfe planned to build his resort.

Hotel, golf course, houses, God knows what else. Brothel, casino, you bloody name it.

On a wild polar day like this, the idea was lunacy.

The dogs went to the first rivulet, wet their feet, thought about crossing to the first biscuit. Cashin whistled and they looked, turned, ready to go home for breakfast.

When he had fed them, showered, found a clean shirt, he went in to Port Monro to clear his desk. There was no knowing how long the suspension would last. Forever, he thought.

Outside the station, a woman sat in an old Volvo wagon, two young children imprisoned in the back. He parked behind the building and by the time he unlocked the back door, she had her finger on the buzzer.

He looked through the blinds before he raised them: thirtyish, many layers of garments, weak and dirty hair striped in red and green, a sore at the corner of her mouth.

Cashin unlocked.

‘Keep fucking easy hours here,’ she said. ‘This a copshop or what?’

‘Not open for another half an hour. There’s a sign.’

‘Jesus, like fucking doctors, people only allowed to get sick in office hours, nine to fucking five.’

‘Missed an emergency, have we?’ He went behind the counter.

‘I’ve fucking had it with this town,’ she said. ‘I go into the super last night, they reckon they seen me taking frozen stuff out of me trackie at the car. So I’m gonna walk around with fucking frozen peas down me trackie, right? Right?’

‘Who said that?’

‘The Colley slut, she’s history, the bitch.’

‘What did she do?’

‘Sees me coming in, she reckons I’m banned. Half the fucking town there, hears her.’

‘Which super are we talking about?’

‘Supa Valu, the one on the corner.’

‘Well,’ Cashin said, ‘there’s always Maxwell’s.’

She thrust her chin at him. ‘That’s your fucking attitude, is it? I’m guilty without trial? On their fucking say so?’

Cashin felt the tiny start of heat behind his eyes. ‘What would you like me to do, Ms…?’

‘Reed, Jadeen Reed. Well, tell that Colley bitch she’s got no right to ban me. Tell her to get off my case.’

‘The store has the right to refuse admittance to anyone,’ Cashin said. ‘They can tell the prime minister they don’t want his business.’

Jade widened her eyes. ‘Really?’ she said, a grim smile. ‘Fucking really? Don’t give me that crap. You telling me I park a Mercedes wagon outside the fucking super the bitch would try this on? Reality fucking check, mister.’

Hot eyes now. ‘I’ll note your complaint, Ms Reed,’ he said. ‘You might also like to take your problem up with the Department of Consumer Affairs. The number’s in the phone book.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That is it.’

She turned, walked. At the door, she turned again. ‘You wankers,’ she said. ‘Looking after the rich, that’s your fucking job, isn’t it?’

‘Got a record, Jadeen?’ said Cashin. ‘Any form? Been in trouble? Why don’t you sit down, I’ll look you up?’

‘You cunt,’ she said, ‘you absolute fucking cunt.’

She left, tried to slam the door but it wasn’t that kind of door.

Cashin went to his desk and worked through the papers in his in-tray, looked for matters that needed his attention. The dogs were walking around the enclosure like prisoners in an exercise yard, walking because it was less boring than the alternative.

I’m not suited to this work, Cashin thought. And if I can’t handle this station, I’m not suited to any kind of police work. What else did Rai Sarris do to me? It wasn’t just the body. What neural cobweb did the mad prick cause to fizzle? Once I had patience, I didn’t get hot eyes, I didn’t punch people, I thought before I did things.

Constable Cashin is good at dealing with people, particularly in circumstances where aggression is involved.

Sergeant Willis wrote that on Cashin’s first assessment, showed it to him before he sent it. ‘Don’t get up your fucking self about this, son,’ he said. ‘I say it about all the girls.’ At his cubicle, he turned. ‘Course, in my day, a report like this, they’d say put the wuss on traffic.’

Kendall arrived. She was making tea, her back to him, when she said, ‘The business in Cromarty.’

‘Yes. A monumental stuff-up. I’m now on holiday. You’re in charge. The relief kid’ll stay on.’

‘How long?’

‘Who knows? Till ethical standards get the blame sorted out. It could be permanent.’

‘They the Bourgoyne ones?’

‘Looks like it. Them or someone they know.’

‘Good riddance then,’ she said.

Cashin looked out the window at the sky, hated Kendall for a while, her quick stupidity. He saw the sparks, the crushed ute, the rain, the blood in the puddles. The boys, broken, life leaking away. He thought about his son. He had a boy.

‘It only looks like it, Ken,’ he said. ‘Nobody should die because we think they might have done something wrong. Nobody gave us that power.’

You fucking hypocrite, he thought.

Kendall went to her desk.

He finished, took the files and his notes and went over, put them in her in-tray. ‘Pretty much up to date,’ he said.

She didn’t look at him. ‘I’m sorry I said that, Joe,’ she said. ‘It just, shit, it just came out, I wanted to say…’

‘I know. Solidarity. That’s a good instinct. Call me if you need anything.’

He was at the back door when she said, ‘Joe, feel like a bit of company. Well, any time. Yes.’

‘Take you up on that,’ he said, went out.

He walked around to the Dublin. A new four-wheel-drive was parked outside and Leon had two customers, a middle-aged couple having breakfast. Soft-looking leather jackets hung on the backs of their chairs.

‘Takeaway black,’ said Cashin. ‘The overdose.’

‘Either you sit down or you get one of those vacuum cups,’ said Leon. ‘Polystyrene does nothing for expensive coffee.’

Cashin had no interest. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said.

Leon went to the machine. ‘Your muscle boy was in yesterday. Very fetching but not keen on paying. Long and pregnant pause before he shelled out.’

Cashin was looking across the street at Cecily Addison talking to the woman outside the aromatherapy shop. ‘He’s a city lad,’ he said. ‘They treat officers of the law differently there. Like royalty.’

‘Message received. Roger. Do you say that? Roger?’

‘We say Roger, we say Bruce, we say Leon, it all depends. Case by case.’

Leon brought the container to the counter, capped it. ‘Bringing in reinforcements for the march?’

‘The march?’

‘Could be ugly. Feral greenies, rich old farts pulling up the drawbridge.’

‘I could be missing something here,’ Cashin said. He had no idea what Leon was talking about.

‘The march against the Adrian Fyfe resort? Been away, have we?’

‘Can’t keep up with events in this town. It’s all go, go, go. Anyway, I’m on holiday.’

‘Why don’t you try Noosa, chat to rich retired drug cops? It’s warm up there.’

‘Don’t care for the victuals in Noosa,’ Cashin said. As he said the word, he saw the strange spelling. ‘Listen, an ordinary old toasted cheese and tomato?’

Leon raised his right arm in a theatrical way, drew fingers across his forehead as if wiping away sweat. ‘I take it you don’t require sheep-milk fetta with semi-dried organic tomatoes on sourdough artisan bread?’

‘No.’

‘I suppose I can find a gassed tomato, some rat-trap cheese and a couple of slices of tissue-paper white.’

Cashin bought the city newspaper and drove to Open Beach. One surfer out on a big, heaving sea. The headline on page three said:

TWO DIE IN CHASE

CRASH, GUNFIGHT

It had happened too late for the previous morning’s newspaper. The three youths were much younger in the photographs. The captions didn’t mention that. And the reporter didn’t buy the interception line. It was a chase gone wrong. Luke Ericsen, he said, ‘apparently died in a hail of gunfire’. The conduct of seven officers was under investigation.

Another story was headlined:

UNITED AUSTRALIA LEADER SLAMS POLICE

Bobby Walshe was quoted:

Shock and grief, they are my emotions. Luke Ericsen is my sister’s boy, a bright boy, everyone had great hopes for him. I don’t know exactly what happened but that doesn’t really matter. Two youngsters are dead. That’s a tragedy. And there’s been far too many of these tragedies. Right across Australia, it’s a police culture problem. Indigenous people get the sharp end. Who needs courts when you can hand out punishments yourself? And I’m not surprised this happened in Cromarty. The present federal treasurer entrenched the culture there when he was state police minister. He helped the local police to cover up two Aboriginal cell deaths. I’ll remind him of that disgraceful episode in the election campaign. Often. That’s a promise.

The toasted sandwich wasn’t bad. Flat and tanned, leaking cheese, something yellow anyway.

Would Derry Callahan complain? Punched with a can of dog food. Cashin thought that he didn’t care. Hitting him was worth the damage to his fingers. He should have kicked him too, it would have been a good feeling.

His mobile rang. It took time to find it.

‘Taking it easy?’ said Villani. ‘Lying on the beach in the thermal gear. The striped long johns.’

‘I’m reading the paper. Full of good news.’

‘I’ll give you good news. The pawnshop bloke, he’s ID’d Pascoe and Donny.’

The surfer paddled on a great wall of water. It seemed unwilling to break, then it curled, he stood, an upsurge from a sandbar caused it to crash. He shot out the back, towed by his board.

‘I just talked to the commissioner,’ said Villani. ‘Actually, he talked to me. Non-stop. The spin doctors say we’re playing into our enemies’ hands. I think that means Bobby Walshe and the media. So it’s just Lloyd and Steggles suspended. You are no longer on holiday. And Dove’s coming back to you, he’ll be your offsider.’

‘What about the rest?’

‘Preston to Shepparton, Kelly goes to Bairnsdale.’

‘And Hopgood?’

‘Stays on the job.’

‘So the idea is to load the other ranks?’

‘The commissioner’s decision, Joe. He’s taken advice.’

‘That’s what I call leadership. In Sydney, the pawnshop, it was just Pascoe and Donny?’

‘Ericsen was probably waiting outside.’

‘So what happens to Donny?’

‘He’s still in hospital, under observation, but he’s okay, bruises, cuts. He’ll be charged with attempted murder, interview at 10 am, lawyer present.’

‘On this? Well, excuse fucking me, that’s a pretty thin brief.’

‘With luck, he’ll plead it,’ said Villani. ‘If not, we’ll see. You’ll see.’

‘This is the post-Singo attitude? Winging it?’

‘It’s what we have to do, Joe,’ said Villani, a flatness in his tone.

THEY SAT in the interview room, waiting. Cashin hadn’t worn a suit since coming to Port Monro.

‘In a very short time, I’ve grown to hate this town,’ said Dove. His forearms were on the table, cuffs showing, silver cufflinks, little bars. He was looking at his hands, his long fingers stretched.

‘The weather’s not great,’ said Cashin.

‘Not the weather. Weather’s weather. There’s something wrong with the place.’

‘Big country town, that’s all.’

‘No, it’s not a big country town. It’s a shrunken city, shrunk down to the shit, all the shit without the benefits. What’s the hold-up here? Since when do you sit around waiting for the prisoner?’

A knock, a cop came in, followed by the youth Cashin had seen in the passenger seat of the ute at the fatal crossroads, then another cop. Donny Coulter had a thin, sad face, a snub nose, down on his upper lip. It was a child’s face, scared. He was puffy-eyed, nervous, licking his lips.

‘Sit down, Donny.’

Another knock, the door was behind Cashin.

‘Come in,’ he said.

‘Helen Castleman, for the Aboriginal Legal Service. I represent Donny.’

Cashin turned. She was a youngish woman, slim, dark hair pulled back. They looked at each other. ‘Well, hello,’ he said. ‘It’s been a while.’

She frowned.

‘Joe Cashin,’ he said. ‘From school.’

‘Oh, of course,’ she said, unsmiling. ‘Well, this is a surprise.’

They shook hands, awkward.

‘This is Detective Sergeant Dove,’ said Cashin.

She nodded to Dove.

‘I didn’t know you lived here,’ said Cashin.

‘I haven’t been back long. What about you?’

‘I’m in Port Monro.’

‘Right. So who’s in charge of this?’

‘I am. You’ve had an opportunity to speak to your client in private.’

‘I have.’

‘Like to get going then?’

‘I would.’

Cashin sat opposite Donny. Dove switched on the equipment and put on record the date, the time, those present.

‘You are Donald Charles Coulter of 27 Fraser Street, Daunt Settlement, Cromarty?’

‘Yes.’

‘Donny,’ said Cashin, ‘I’m going to tell you what rights you have in this interview. I must tell you that you are not obliged to do or say anything but that anything you say or do may be given in evidence. Do you understand what I’ve said?’

Donny’s eyes were on the table.

‘I’ll say it again,’ said Cashin. ‘You don’t have to answer my questions or tell me anything. But if you do, we can tell the court what you said. Understand, Donny?’

He wouldn’t look up. He licked his lips.

‘Ms Castleman,’ said Cashin.

‘Donny,’ she said. ‘Do you understand what the policeman said? Do you remember what I told you? That you don’t have to tell them anything.’

Donny looked at her, nodded.

‘Will you say that you understand, please, Donny,’ said Cashin.

‘Understand.’ He was drumming his knuckles on the table.

‘I must also tell you of the following rights,’ said Cashin. ‘You may communicate with or attempt to communicate with a friend or a relative to inform that person of your whereabouts. You may communicate with or attempt to communicate with a legal practitioner.’

‘At this point,’ said Helen Castleman, ‘I’d like to say that my client has exercised those rights and he will not be answering any further questions in this interview.’

‘Interview suspended 9.47 am,’ said Cashin.

Dove switched off the equipment.

‘Short and sweet,’ Cashin said. ‘Would you care to step outside with me for a moment, Ms Castleman?’

They went into the corridor. ‘Bail hearing at 12.15,’ Cashin said. ‘If Donny was to tell his story, there might not be opposition to bail.’

Her eyes were different colours, one grey, one blue. It gave her a look somehow fierce and aloof. Cashin remembered studying her face in the year twelve class photograph long after he left school.

‘I’ll need to get instructions,’ she said.

Dove and Cashin went down the street and bought coffee at a place called Aunty Jemimah’s. It had checked tablecloths and Peter Rabbit pictures on the walls.

‘Old school mates,’ said Dove. ‘Lucky you.’

‘She was too good for me,’ said Cashin. ‘Old Cromarty money. Her father was a doctor. The family used to own the newspaper. And the iceworks. The only reason she didn’t go to boarding school was she wouldn’t leave her horses.’

On the way back, Dove opened his cup and sipped. ‘Jesus, what is this stuff?’ he said.

‘Some of the shit you get without the benefits.’

Helen Castleman was outside the station, talking on her mobile. She watched them coming, looked at them steadily. They were near the steps when she said, ‘Detective Cashin.’

‘Ms Castleman.’

‘Donny’s mother says he was at home on the night of the Bourgoyne attack. I’ll see you in court.’

‘Look forward to it.’ Cashin went in and rang the prosecutor. ‘Bail is strenuously opposed,’ he said. ‘Investigations incomplete. Real danger accused will interfere with witnesses or abscond.’

At 11.15, Dove and Cashin headed for the station door.

‘Phone for you,’ said the cop on the desk. ‘Inspector Villani.’

‘What’s wrong with your mobile?’ Villani said.

‘Sorry. Switched off.’

‘Listen, the kid gets bail.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s what the minister told the chief commissioner, who told the crime commissioner, who told me. It’s political. They don’t want to take the chance Donny so much as gets a nosebleed in jail.’

‘As their honours please.’

‘Donny’s bail not opposed,’ Cashin said to Dove.

‘Pissweak,’ said Dove. ‘That is capitulation, that is so pissweak.’

The desk cop pointed at the door. ‘Got a reception committee. Television.’

Cashin went cold. Somehow he hadn’t thought of this. ‘You speak to them,’ he said to Dove. ‘You’re from the city.’

Dove shook his head. ‘Hasn’t taken you long to turn into a flannelshirt, has it?’

They went out, into camera flashes and the shiny black eyes of television cameras, furry microphones on booms thrust at them. At least a dozen people came at them, jostling.

‘What’s Donny Coulter charged with?’ said a woman in black, blonde hair immobilised with spray.

‘No comment,’ said Dove. ‘All will soon be revealed.’

They made their way down the stairs and the camera crews ran ahead and filmed them walking down the winter street under a grey tumbling sky. Rounding the bend, they saw the crowd outside the court.

‘Ms Castleman’s spread the word,’ said Dove.

The crowd parted, allowed them a narrow corridor. They walked side by side between the hostile faces, silence until they neared the top of the stairs.

‘You murderers,’ said a man wearing a rolled-up balaclava on Cashin’s left. ‘All you cunts are good for, killin kids.’

‘Bastards,’ said a woman on Dove’s side. ‘Mongrels.’

The lobby was crowded, the small courtroom was full. They made their way to the prosecutor, a senior constable. ‘Change of mind,’ said Cashin. ‘Not opposing bail for Coulter.’

She nodded. ‘I heard.’

They took their places on the Crown’s seats. Dove looked around. ‘Just the two of us representing the forces of law and order,’ he said. ‘Where’s Hopgood, the friendly face of community policing?’

‘Probably on the firing range breaking in the replacements for KD and Preston,’ said Cashin.

Dove looked at him for a second, the round glasses flashed.

Helen Castleman arrived with an older woman. Cashin thought he saw a resemblance to Donny.

At 12.15 exactly, Donny was brought up from the cells to a hero’s welcome from the spectators. He didn’t look at anyone except the woman with Helen Castleman. She smiled at him, winked, a brave face.

The audience were told to be silent, then to stand. The magistrate came in and sat down. He had a chubby pink face and the grey strands combed over his bald scalp made him look like an infant suffering from a premature-ageing disease.

The prosecutor identified Donny, said he was charged with attempted murder. The audience had to be hushed again.

‘This is obviously a show-cause situation, your honour,’ she said, ‘but there is no objection to bail.’

The magistrate looked at Helen Castleman and nodded.

She rose. ‘Helen Castleman, your honour. I represent Mr Coulter and would like to apply for bail. My client has no criminal record, your honour. He has been charged in the most tragic circumstances imaginable. A few days ago, he saw his cousin and a close friend die in an incident involving the police…’

Applause from the gallery, a few shouts. More silencing by the clerk of the court.

‘In this court, Ms Castleman,’ said the magistrate, a baby with a gruff voice, ‘it is not a good idea to grandstand.’

Helen Castleman bowed her head. ‘That was not my intention, your honour. My client is just an innocent boy, the victim of circumstances. He is traumatised by what has happened and he needs to be at home with his family. He will give and honour all undertakings the court may require. Thank you, your honour.’

The magistrate frowned. ‘Bail is granted,’ he said. ‘The accused is not to leave his place of residence between the hours of 9 pm and 6 am and must report to the Cromarty police once a day.’

Applause again, more shouts, more silencing.

Cashin looked at Helen Castleman. She tilted her head, gave him a suggestion of a smile, lips just parted. Cashin felt like the teenage boy he once was, full of lust and full of wonder that a beautiful and clever rich girl would kiss him.

THEY WALKED past Helen Castleman being interviewed on the court steps and the television crews caught up with them before they reached the station. Dove declined to answer questions.

‘There’s a room organised, boss,’ the desk cop said to Cashin. ‘Upstairs, turn left, last door on the right.’

When they got there, Dove looked around, shook his head. ‘Organised?’ he said. ‘They unlocked the fucking junk room, that’s organised?’

Tables pushed together, two computers, four bad chairs, piles of old newspapers, scrap paper, drifts of pizza boxes, hamburger clams, styro-foam cups, plastic spoons, uncapped ballpoints, crushed drink cans.

‘Like a really bad sitting room in an arts students’ shared house,’ Dove said. ‘Disgusting.’ He went to a window, unlatched it, tried to pull the bottom half up, failed, banged both sides of the frame with fists, tried again. Cords showed in his neck. The window didn’t move.

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Can’t breathe in here.’

‘Need the nebuliser?’

It was provocative and it worked. ‘I don’t have fucking asthma,’ Dove said. ‘I have a problem with breathing air circulated ten thousand times through people with bad teeth and rotten tonsils and constipation.’

‘Didn’t mean anything. People have asthma.’ Cashin sat down. He had to live with Dove.

Dove pulled a chair out, sat, put his polished black shoes on the desk. The soles were barely worn, insteps shiny yellow and unmarked. ‘Yeah, well,’ he said, ‘I don’t have asthma.’

‘Glad to hear it. I’m assuming what will happen here is the defence will want Luke Ericsen loaded with Bourgoyne. Luke’s dead, it’s not a problem for him.’

‘If Donny was there, he’ll share the load.’

‘Placing Donny there,’ said Cashin. ‘That’s a challenge. And if it happens, the story then will be led astray by his older cousin, didn’t take part, that sort of thing.’

A crash, his heart jumped. Unlatched by Dove, its sash cords rotten, the top half of the window had waited, dropped. The big panes were vibrating, wobbling the outside world.

Cold air came in, the sea-salty, sexual.

‘That’s better,’ said Dove. ‘Much better. Delayed action. Smoke?’

‘No thanks. Always fighting the urge.’

Dove lit up, moved his chair back and forth. ‘I’m new to this but if you don’t place Donny at the house, all you have is he went to Sydney with Luke and they tried to sell Bourgoyne’s watch. A half-way solid story about where he was on the night, tucked up in bed, he’ll walk.’

‘I suppose he should. That’s the system.’

Dove eyed him briefly, narrow eyes. ‘The smartarses who walk. You see them look at their mates, little smirk. Outside, it’s the high fives. How easy was that? Fucking shithead cops, let’s do it again.’ Pause. ‘What’s Villani say? Your mate.’

Cashin felt a powerful urge to smack Dove down. He waited. ‘Inspector Villani says nothing,’ he said. ‘The solicitor says Donny’s mum’s giving the alibi. There may be others to confirm it.’

Dove’s head was back. ‘Some women amaze me. They spend their whole lives covering up for men-the father, the husband, the sons. Like it’s a woman’s sacred duty. Doesn’t matter what the bastards do. So what if my dad beat my mum, so what if my hubby fucked the babysitter, so what if my boy’s a teenage rapist, he’s still my…’

‘We don’t have anything that says Donny was there on the night,’ Cashin said.

‘Anyway, it’s academic,’ Dove said. ‘Hopgood’s right. Bobby Walshe’s made them go soft-cock on this. First it’s bail, next they drop the charges.’

‘You should tell Hopgood that. He’ll want you on the Cromarty team. You could be spokesperson.’

Dove smoked in silence, eyes still on the ceiling. Then he said, ‘I’m black so I’m supposed to empathise with these Daunt boys. Is that what you’re saying?’

There was a gull on the sill-the hard eyes, the moulting head, it reminded Cashin of someone. ‘The idea is to keep an open mind until the evidence convinces you of something.’

‘Yes, boss. I’ll keep an open mind. And in the meantime, I have to live in the Whaleboners’ Motel.’

‘The Whalers’ Inn.’

‘Could very well be.’ Cigarette in his mouth, Dove looked at Cashin. ‘Just tell me,’ he said. ‘I accept reality. I’ll read a book until it’s time to go home.’

‘The job is to build the case against Donny and Luke,’ said Cashin. ‘I don’t have any other instructions.’

‘I’m not talking about instructions.’

The sagging chair wasn’t doing anything for Cashin’s aches, his mood. He got up, took off his coat, spread an old newspaper on the floor, lay down and put his legs on the chair, tried to get into a Z shape.

‘What’s this?’ said Dove, alarmed. ‘Why are you doing that?’

Cashin couldn’t see him. ‘I’m a floor person. We’ll have to see where we can get with Donny’s mum.’

Dove appeared above him. ‘What’s the point?’

‘If she’s going to lie for the boy, she’ll be worried. They don’t know what we’ve got. Getting Donny to plead guilty to something would be a good outcome.’

Cashin heard the door open.

‘Just you, sunshine?’ said Hopgood. ‘Where’s Cashin?’

Dove looked down. Hopgood came around the table and studied Cashin as if he were roadkill.

‘What the fuck is this?’ he said.

‘We missed you in court,’ said Cashin.

Hopgood’s chin went up. Cashin could see the hairs in his nose.

‘Not my fucking business.’

‘We need to talk to Donny’s mum.’

‘Thinking about going to the Daunt, are you?’

Cashin didn’t fancy the idea. ‘If we have to. Can’t see her presenting here.’

‘Well, it’s your business,’ Hopgood said. ‘Don’t call us.’

‘I need to talk to the Aboriginal liaison bloke.’

‘Ask the desk where he’s currently doing fuck all.’

A phone rang. Dove picked up one, wrong, tried another. ‘Dove,’ he said. ‘Good, boss, yeah. Went off okay, yeah. I’ll put him on.’

He offered Cashin the phone. ‘Inspector Villani,’ he said, impassive.

Cashin reached up. ‘Supreme commander,’ he said.

‘Joe, we are talking a cooling-off period,’ said Villani.

‘Meaning?’

‘Let things settle down. I saw your court crowd today, our television friends showed us their pictures for the evening news. The word is no more turbulence like that is wanted.’

‘Who said that?’

‘I can tell you I don’t quote the bloke at the servo.’

‘The kid’s been charged on close to zero. Now you’re saying you don’t want us to find any actual evidence or try to get a plea out of him?’

‘Nothing is to be done to inflame this situation.’

‘That’s a political order, is it?’

Villani expelled breath as a whistle. ‘Joe, can’t you see the sense?’ he said.

Cashin felt Dove and Hopgood looking at him, a man lying on the floor, talking on a phone, his calves on a chair.

‘I’d like to say, boss,’ he said, ‘that we have a short time here when we might shake something loose. We let that pass, we will need jackhammers.’

Silence.

Cashin focused on the ceiling, yellow, creased and spotted like the back of an elderly hand. ‘That is my common sense,’ he said. ‘For what it’s worth.’

Silence.

‘For what it’s worth, Joe,’ said Villani, ‘taking Shane Diab parking outside Rai Sarris’s place was your idea of common sense.’