The Broken Shore

Cashin felt the cold knife inside him, turning. ‘Moving on,’ he said. ‘How long is a cooling-off period? For example.’

‘I don’t know, Joe, a week, ten days, more.’ Villani spoke slowly, like someone talking to an obtuse child. ‘We’ll need to use our judgment.’

‘Right. Some of us will use our judgment.’ Cashin was looking at Dove. ‘In the meantime, what’s Paul Dove do?’

‘I need him back here for a while. I want you to take some time off. Handle that?’

‘Is that suspension again, boss?’

‘Don’t be a prick, Joe. I’ll call you later. Put Dove on.’

Cashin handed up the handset to Dove.

‘What’s he say?’ said Hopgood.

‘He says there’s a cooling-off period over Donny.’

‘Is that right?’ said Hopgood, something like a smirk in his voice, on his lips. ‘You won’t be needing this comforable office then.’

In light rain, Dove and Cashin walked up to the Regent, got beers in the bar and sat in the dim cooking-fat-scented bistro, the only customers.

Dove read the laminated menu, ran his index finger down the list.

‘Twelve main courses,’ he said. ‘You need at least three people in the kitchen to do that.’

‘In the city,’ said Cashin. ‘Three bludgers. Here we do it with a work-experience girl’

‘A steak sandwich,’ said Dove. ‘What can they do to that? How badly can they fuck that up?’

‘They meet any challenge.’

A worn woman in a green coverall came out of a back door and stood over them with a notepad, sucked her teeth, sounds like the last dishwater going down a blocked drain.

‘Two steak sandwiches, please,’ said Cashin.

‘Only in the bar,’ she said, her gaze on the wall. ‘No sangers here. The bistro menu here.’

‘Cops,’ said Cashin. ‘Need a bit of privacy.’

She looked down, smiled at him, crooked teeth. ‘Right, well, that’s okay. Know all the cops. You here for the Bourgoyne thing then?’

‘Can’t talk about work.’

‘Black bastards,’ she said. ‘Two down, why don’t you nail the bloody lot of them? Bomb the place. Like that Baghdad.’

‘Could you cut the fat off?’ said Dove. ‘I’d appreciate that.’

‘Don’t like fat? No worries.’

‘And some tomato?’

‘On a steak sandwich?’

‘It’s a boong thing,’ said Dove.

At the kitchen door, she glanced back at Dove. Cashin saw the uncertainty in her eyes. Across the gloomy space, he saw it.

‘An attractive woman,’ said Dove. ‘So many attractive people around here, it must be something in the white gene pool.’ He looked around. ‘Stuff like the other night bother you? Still bother you? Ever bother you?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Well, you’re fairly hard to read, if I may say so. Except for the lying on the floor stuff, that’s a real window into the soul.’

Cashin considered telling him about the dreams. ‘It bothers me.’

‘Shooting the kid.’

‘Somebody shoots at you, what do you do?’

‘What I’m getting at,’ said Dove, ‘is whether the kid fired first. Did you tell them that?’

Cashin didn’t want to answer the question, didn’t want to consider the question. ‘You’ll know what I told them when we get to the coroner.’

‘Cross your mind we were set up? Hopgood puts us together in a dud car, claims he can’t hear the radio.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Leave himself and his boys a bit of slack if anything went wrong.’

‘That may be too far-sighted for Hopgood. You missing the feds?’

Dove shook his head in pity. They talked about nothing, the sandwiches came, the woman fussed over Cashin.

‘Could this be whale steak?’ said Dove after a bout of chewing. ‘I don’t suppose they honour the whaling treaty here.’

Walking back in drizzle and wind, Dove said, ‘Cooling-off period my arse. This thing’s in the freezer and it’s staying there. Still, I escape the fucking Whaleboners’ Tavern.’

‘Whalers’ Inn.’

‘That too.’

On the station steps, Dove offered a long hand. ‘Strong feeling I won’t be back. I’ll miss the place so much.’

‘So good, the whale steak, Miss Piggy’s coffee.’

‘Aunty Jemimah’s.’

‘You feds are trained observers,’ said Cashin. ‘See you soon.’

DEBBIE DOOGUE was sitting at the kitchen table, school books spread, mug of milky tea, biscuits, cartoon show on television. The room was warm, a wood heater glowing in the corner.

‘This’s the place to be,’ said Cashin.

‘Want tea?’ she said.

She was a pale gingerhead, ghosts of freckles, her hair pulled back. She looked older than fourteen.

‘No, thanks,’ Cashin said. ‘Full of tea. How’s school?’ It was a pointless question to ask a teenager.

‘Okay. Fine. Too much homework.’ She moved her bottom on the chair. ‘Dad’s in the shed.’

Cashin went to the sink, wiped a hole in the fogged window. He could see rain speckling the puddles in the rutted mud between the house and the shed. Bern was loading something onto the truck, pushing it with both hands. He had a cigarette in his mouth.

‘He’s worried about the stuff your mum found,’ said Cashin, turning, leaning against the sink.

Debbie had her head down, pretending to be reading. ‘Well, had to dob me, didn’t he?’ she said.

‘What’s to dob? I thought it wasn’t yours?’

She looked up, light blue Doogue eyes. ‘Didn’t even know what it was. She just gave me this box, said, hang on to this for me. That’s all.’

‘You thought it was what?’

‘Didn’t think about it.’

‘Come on, Debbie, I’m not that old.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m not into drugs, don’t want to know about them.’

‘But your friends are? Is that right?’

‘You want me to dob in my friends? No way.’

Cashin stepped across, pulled out a chair and sat at the table. ‘Debbie, I don’t give a bugger if your friends use drugs, wouldn’t cross the road to pinch them. But I don’t want to see you dead in an alley in the city.’

Her cheeks coloured slightly, she looked down at her notepad. ‘Yeah, well, I’m not…’

‘Debbie, can I tell you a secret?’

Uneasy, side to side movements of her head.

‘I wouldn’t tell you if you weren’t family.’

‘Um, sure, yeah.’

‘Keep it to yourself?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yeah.’

The inside door opened violently and two small boys appeared, abreast, fighting to be first in. Debbie turned her head. ‘Geddout, you maggots!’

Eyes wide in their round boy faces, mouths open, little teeth showing. ‘We’re hungry,’ said the one on the left.

‘Out! Out! Out!’

The boys went backwards as if pulled by a cord, closed the door in their own faces.

Debbie said, ‘I promise.’

Cashin leaned across the table, spoke softly. ‘Some of the people selling stuff to your friends are undercovers.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Understand what that means?’

‘Like secret agents.’

‘That’s right. So the drug cops know all the names. If your friend bought that stuff, his name’s on the list.’

‘Not my friend, her friend, I don’t even know him.’

‘That’s good. You don’t want to know him.’

‘What would they do with the names?’

‘They could tell the school, tell the parents. They could raid the houses. If you were on the list, they could knock on the door any time.’

Cashin rose. ‘Anyway, got to go. I wanted to tell you because you’re family and I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. Or to your mum and dad.’

At the door, he heard her chair scrape.

‘Joe.’

He looked back.

Debbie was standing, hugging herself, now looking about six years old. ‘Scared, Joe.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I bought the stuff. For my friend.’

‘The girl friend?’

Reluctant. ‘No. A boy.’

‘From a Piggot?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Which one?’

‘Do I have to say?’

‘I won’t do anything. Not my line.’

‘Billy.’

‘You tabbing?’

‘No. Well, just the one, didn’t like it.’

He looked down, looked into her eyes, waited.

‘Smoking?’

‘No. Don’t like it either.’

A chainsaw started outside, the roar, bit into something hard, a savage-toothed whine.

‘They won’t, will they?’ she said. ‘Tell on me? Come here?’

‘Out of my control,’ Cashin said. ‘I can talk to them, I suppose. What do you reckon I could say?’

She gave him some hints about what he could say.

Cashin went out to the shed, mud attaching itself to him. At the back, in the gloom, Bern was on his haunches, applying a blowtorch to an old kitchen dresser. Layers of paint were blackening and blistering under the blue flame. The smell was of charring wood and something metallic.

‘I smell lead,’ Cashin said. ‘That’s lead paint you’re burning.’

Bern turned off the torch, stood up. Paint flakes were stuck to his beard stubble. ‘So?’ he said.

‘It’s toxic. It can kill you.’

He put the torch on the dresser. ‘Yeah, yeah, everythin can kill you. How’d you pricks manage to kill those kids?’

‘Accident,’ Cashin said. ‘No harm intended.’

‘That Corey Pascoe. He was in Sam’s class. Bound for shit from primary.’

‘Bit like Sam then.’

‘No harm in Sam. Led astray. You talked to Debbie?’

‘Gave her a message, yeah.’

‘What’s she say?’

‘Seemed to get it.’

Bern nodded. ‘Well, you can only fuckin hope. I’d say thanks except I give you that wood. Dropped it off today. There’s a bloke there, helpful.’

‘Dave Rebb. Going to help me with the house.’

‘Yeah? Where’d you find him?’

‘In a shed over at Beckett. Mrs Haig. A swaggie.’

Bern shook his head, rubbed his chin stubble, found the paint flakes and looked at them. ‘Point about swaggies,’ he said, ‘is they’re not real strong on work.’

‘We’ll see. He’s giving Den Millane a hand, no complaints so far.’

‘Seen him somewhere, I reckon. Long time ago.’

They walked to the vehicle. Cashin got in, lowered the window. Bern put dirty hands on the sill, gave him a look.

‘I hear someone punched out that cunt Derry Callahan,’ he said. ‘Stole a can of dog food too. You blokes investigatin that?’

Cashin frowned. ‘That right? No complaint that I know of. When it happens, we’ll pull out all the stops. Door-to-door. Manhunt.’

‘Let’s see your hand.’

‘Let’s see your dick.’

‘C’mon. Hiding somethin?’

‘Fuck off.’

Bern laughed, delighted, punched Cashin’s upper arm. ‘You fuckin violent bastard.’

On the way home, the last light a slice of lemon curd, Cashin reflected that his lies to Debbie would probably keep her straight for about six months, tops.

Still, six months was a long time. His lies generally had a much shorter shelf life.

FOR REASONS Cashin didn’t understand, Kendall Rogers wanted him to be in charge of policing the march.

‘I’m on leave,’ he said.

‘Just be an hour or so.’

‘Nothing’s going to happen. This is Port Monro.’

It was the wrong thing to say.

‘I’d just appreciate it,’ she said, not quite looking at him. ‘It would be a favour to me.’

‘Favour, now you’re talking. The favour bank.’

The demonstrators assembled at the post office in the main street. Kendall was at Cashin’s end, Moorhouse Street. Carl Wexler was handling traffic at the Wallace Street intersection, not a taxing job at 11 am, winter, Port Monro. He was making a big thing of it, studied movements, like an air hostess pointing out the exits. Cashin thought it was easy to pick the blow-ins, those who had bought into Port at a high price and now wanted the drawbridge up. They had good haircuts and wore expensive outdoor clothes and leather shoes.

At the march’s advertised starting time, the fat photographer from the Cromarty Herald was looking with sadness at the crowd, about thirty people, more than half women. The primary school came around the corner, all in rain gear, a multicoloured crocodile led by the principal, a thin balding man holding the hands of a girl and boy. The children carried signs written on white cardboard and tacked to lengths of dowel, no doubt a full morning’s work in the art class:

KEEP AWAY FROM OUR MOUTH

DONT SPOIL OUR BEACHES

NATURE’S FOR EVERYONE NOT JUST THE RICH

Three shire councillors Cashin knew arrived. The Herald reporter got out of his car and signalled to the photographer, who went into sluggish action. Then two small buses banked up at Carl’s end of the street. He directed them on with flourishes. A minute or two later, the occupants came back, walking in a group-about thirty people, all ages from about fifteen. To one side was Helen Castleman, talking on a mobile. She put it away, came past Cashin, gave him a nod.

‘Good day, Detective Cashin.’

‘Good day, Ms Castleman.’

Cashin watched her talking to the organiser, Sue Kinnock, a doctor’s wife. She’d come to the station to show the shire permit for the march. ‘We’ll assemble at the post office, march down Moorhouse Street, cross Wallace, turn right into Enright, left into the park,’ she’d said.

The sunlight had caught the pale yellow down on her cheeks. She had big teeth and a clipped way of speaking. Cashin put her down as the Pommy nurse who got the Aussie doctor, to the envy of her better-looking colleagues.

She came over with Helen Castleman. ‘I gather you know each other, detective. Helen’s WildCoast Australia president in Cromarty.’

‘A person of many parts, Ms Castleman,’ said Cashin.

‘And you, detective. One minute, you’re homicide, the next you’re crowd control.’

‘Multiskilling These days we turn our hands to anything. How’s Donny?’

‘Not good. His mum’s worried about him. How’s your investigation?’

‘Moving along. The way this parade should be.’

‘The Channel 9 chopper’s on the way, they’re giving Bobby Walshe a lift. If you don’t mind, we’ll wait for them.’

‘A reasonable wait I don’t mind,’ said Cashin. ‘What’s reasonable?’

‘Fifteen minutes? They’re landing on the rec reserve.’

‘We can do that.’

Helen Castleman went over and helped a young man in a green WildCoast windcheater organise the marchers: children in front, the rest in ranks of five. She stood back and took a look, went over to the school principal. They talked. He didn’t look happy but agreed to something. Helen chose six kids and eight of the oldest locals. They were arranged in two rows, four adults and three children in each, holding hands. Then came the school crocodile and the other marchers.

When he was finished, Helen went to Sue Kinnock. Sue raised her loudhailer. ‘We’ll be off in a few minutes. Please be patient.’

A helicopter thrummed over, dropped below the line of pines. The occupants arrived soon after in one of the small buses. Carl waved them through. They parked outside the library. The door slid open and Bobby Walshe got out, followed by a young man in a dark suit. Cashin saw a woman in the front seat move the rearview mirrow to fine-tune her lipstick.

Bobby Walshe was in casual gear: light blue open-necked shirt, dark blue jacket. He kissed Helen Castleman, he knew her, you could see that by the way they laughed, the linger of his hands on her arms. Cashin felt envy, shook it away.

‘Right everybody,’ said Sue Kinnock, amplified. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. Banners up, please. Thank you. And ready, set, off we go.’

Cashin looked across the street. Cecily Addison was lecturing Leon, a hand raised. Leon caught Cashin’s eye, nodded in a knowing way. The vinegary couple from the newsagency were in their shop doorway, mouths curving southwards. Triple-bypassed Bruce of the video shop was beside saturated-fat dealer Meryl, the fish and chip shop owner. At the kerbside bicycle rack, shivering in yellow teeshirts, three young women, the winter staff of Sandra’s Café, had an argument going. The spiky-haired one with the nose rings was taking on the others.

Outside the Supa Valu supermarket stood seven or eight people in anoraks, tracksuits. An old man in a raincoat had a beanie pulled over his ears.

Cashin walked along the pavement. ‘Didn’t know we had so many cops,’ said Darren from the sports shop. ‘Out in force.’

It began to drizzle at the instant the marchers broke into thin and ragged song: ‘All we are saaaying is saaave our coast.’

The children had gone by when two men came out of the bar of the Orion. Ronnie Barrett and his mate, a slighter shaven-headed figure in a yellow and brown striped tracksuit, small tuft of hair on his chin.

Barrett came to the pavement edge, made a megaphone with his hands: ‘Fuck off wankers! Don’t give a shit about jobs, do ya?’

The other man joined him, ‘Rich bastards pissouta Port!’ he shouted. He took a step backwards, then another, unbalanced, almost fell over.

Cashin saw Barrett gesture at someone in the march, step off the kerb, all drunken belligerence. His companion followed.

A man stepped out of the column, a black beret on the back of his head, said something to Barrett.

Cashin got moving. Carl Wexler was trotting down the street, a TV cameraman behind him. They weren’t close when Barrett lunged at the marcher with his left hand, trying to hold him for a punch.

The marcher, loose-looking, took a step forward, allowed Barrett to touch him. Barrett swung with his right, the man was inside the fist, he blocked it casually with his left forearm, stood on Barrett’s left foot and hit him under the chin with the heel of his right hand.

It wasn’t a hard blow, there was contempt in it, but it knocked Barrett’s head back, and the marcher’s left hand punched him in the ribs, several quick, professional punches.

‘Break it!’ shouted Carl.

Barrett was down, making sounds, his friend backing off, no more interest in a fight.

The marcher turned his head, looked at Cashin, went back into the ranks, expressionless, adjusted his beret. An old man next to him patted him on the arm.

The march had stopped. Cashin turned his back on the camera, he didn’t want to be on television again. ‘Let’s get moving here,’ he said loudly. ‘Move on, please.’

The crocodile moved.

‘Arrest, boss?’ said Carl.

‘Who?’

‘The greenie.’

Cashin stood over Barrett. ‘Get up and fuck off,’ he said, ‘See you again today, mate, you’re sleeping over.’

To Carl, he said, ‘It’s over. Back to work.’

At the park, Sue Kinnock stood on the bandstand and made a short speech about people despoiling the beauties of nature, not wanting Port Monro to end up like Surfers Paradise. Cashin looked at the storm clouds boiling in the south, saw the cold drizzle falling on umbrellas, on dozens of little raincoat hoods. Like Surfers Paradise? Please God, could the weather part of that be arranged?

Sue Kinnock introduced Helen Castleman.

‘As you may know,’ Helen said, ‘WildCoast is dedicated to preserving what remains of Australia’s unspoilt coastline and to keeping it open to everyone. We came here today to say: If you want to stop developers ruining everything that makes your place special, well, we’ll stand with you. We’ll fight this project. And we’ll win!’

Loud applause. Helen waited for silence, nodding.

‘And now I’d like to introduce someone who identifies with our concerns and who’s made a huge effort to be with us today. Please welcome the leader of Australia’s newest political party, someone who grew up in this area, Bobby Walshe of United Australia.’

Walshe stepped up. The crowd was pleased to see him. Sue Kinnock tried to hold a big golf umbrella over him. He motioned her away, said his thanks, paused.

‘Silverwater Estuary. Wonderful name. Brings to mind a place where a clean river meets the sea.’

Walshe smiled. ‘Well, the reality is that Silverwater Estuary will end up as a place where a landscape and an ecosystem have been wrecked in the name of profit.’

He held up a newspaper.

‘The Cromarty Herald is pretty excited about the project. Two hundred and fifty new jobs. How can that be bad? Well, let me tell you that these people always get the local paper excited about creating jobs. New jobs. It’s the magic phrase, isn’t it? Justifies anything. But all over Australia there are once beautiful places now ugly. Hideous. Ruined by projects like Silverwater Estuary.’

Bobby Walshe paused. ‘And the developers and the local papers sold every single one of these projects as a job creation scheme.’

He ran fingers through his wet, shiny hair. ‘We also have to ask what jobs did they actually create? I’ll tell you. Jobs for part-time cleaners and dishwashers and waiters. Jobs that pay the minimum wage and come and go with the seasons and airline strikes and events thousands of kilometres away.’

Applause.

‘And while I’m at it, let’s talk about so-called local papers. Local? No, they’re not. Take this newspaper.’

He waved the Cromarty Herald.

‘This local paper is owned by Australian Media. The head office of AM is in Brisbane. That’s pretty local, isn’t it? The editor of this local paper arrived three months ago from New South Wales, where he edited another AM local paper. Before that he was in Queensland, doing what he’s been sent to Cromarty to do. And what’s that?’

Bobby waited.

‘To boost advertising revenue. Make more money. Because, like the people behind Silverwater Estuary, money is all that matters. And this environmentally dangerous project means large amounts of advertising money for the paper. As for the company behind this, well, they’re just flakcatchers. It’ll be sold to other people once they get planning permission.’

Walshe was wet now, rain was running down his face, his shirt was dark.

‘The state government can shut the door on this project in a second,’ he said. ‘They show no sign of doing that. It’s not in the coastal reserves, they say. It’s a matter for the shire council, they say. Does that mean that areas outside the coastal reserve are fair game for any shonky developer who comes along? I’m here today to say to hell with that bureaucratic rubbish. United Australia will support you in this fight. In all the fights like this going on all over our country. And that includes the cities.’

Bobby brushed water from his hair, put his hands in the air. ‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘Do you know what a project like this is? I’ll tell you what it is. It’s an insult to the future.’

Applause. Bobby Walshe shook his head and rain droplets flew.

Cashin thought that Walshe knew how this would look on television: a handsome politician standing in the rain for a cause more important than his comfort.

To long applause, Bobby stood down. There followed a bad speech by a man with a bad haircut and a bad beard, shire councillor Barry Doull. When the hard rain came, Sue shut him up, said the thanks, directed people to the Save the Mouth fighting fund booth.

The crowd broke up, people wanted to shake Bobby Walshe’s hand and he shook every one offered, bent to talk to an old lady and she kissed him, the camera on them. The school crocodile re-formed, set off, taking the short route home.

Cashin walked back with Kendall. ‘A spunk,’ she said. ‘He’s got my vote. I didn’t know he was local.’

‘Make sure it’s his policies you like,’ Cashin said.

In the main street, Bobby Walshe did a short on-camera interview with the woman who’d arrived with him. Now Cashin recognised her from when he and Dove were leaving the Cromarty station to go to court. She had asked the question.

Bobby talked to Helen Castleman. They were animated. He looked over his shoulder, met Cashin’s eyes, said something to Helen. They came over.

‘I know you,’ said Walshe. ‘Joe Cashin. Bern Doogue’s cousin. From primary school.’

‘That’s right.’

Walshe put out a hand, they shook.

‘How’s Bern?’ he said.

‘Fine. Good.’

‘What’s he do now?’

‘Well, this and that.’

‘I couldn’t have survived primary school without Bern,’ said Walshe. ‘The best kid on your side in a fight.’

‘Some aptitude there, yes,’ said Cashin.

Walshe laughed. ‘You see him?’

‘No week goes by.’

‘Luke and Corey,’ said Walshe. ‘You were there.’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘It’s a pretty sad business.’

‘Kids go around carrying shotguns, there’s always the chance things will turn sad.’

Walshe shrugged. ‘Well, the inquest will decide whether it was his weapon, who fired first. Give Bern my regards. Tell him I haven’t forgotten.’

‘I’ll tell him.’

They shook hands again.

‘Don’t forget to vote United Australia,’ said Walshe.

‘Can you vote for a soccer team?’

Walshe laughed, Helen gave Cashin a downturned smile. They went back to the vehicle and the television woman spoke to Walshe again.

Walking back to the station, Kendall said. ‘You didn’t say you knew him.’

‘He knows me. Listen, Billy Piggot. What’s he mean to you?’

‘Don’t know a Billy. There’s a Ray Piggot that’s a piece of work.’

‘What’s he done?’

‘Ripped off a rep staying at the motel. Five hundred-odd bucks. The bloke came in the next morning. Cromarty handled it.’

‘Ripped off how?’

‘He had a story, the rep, but it was probably…’ She made a sign with her right hand, the wiggle.

‘Pillars of society, the Piggots,’ said Cashin. ‘Well, I’m off, two weeks to life, starting in five minutes.’

‘And we’re fully staffed. If you call a musclebound beach boy and a work-experience kid staff.’

‘With your guidance, they’ll grow,’ said Cashin. ‘Be fair but firm. Brunette but soft.’

She gave him a little nudge in the back with a fist, an act of disrespect given his rank, insubordination really.

LATE IN the day, a man in his seventies called Mick arrived from outside Kenmare and towed a mower around Tommy Cashin’s wilderness, broke bottles, mangled metal, bumped over solid obstacles hidden in the grass.

‘Should charge you bloody danger money,’ he said when he’d loaded the tractor and the mower onto his truck. ‘Can’t, can I? Cause I’m doin this for nothin and you’re givin me sixty bucks to pass on to the charity of my choosin.’

‘I’m a cop,’ said Cashin. ‘Sworn to uphold the tax laws of our country.’

‘Make it fifty,’ said Mick.

Cashin gave him a note. He folded it and tucked it into the sweat-band of his hat. People in this part of the world had an aversion to collecting the goods and services tax on behalf of the government.

While the dogs hunted the cleared area, much taken with the smells released by the mowing, Dave Rebb and Cashin walked around the the ruined building, measuring it. Cashin held the end of the tape and Rebb wrote down the distances and drew on a pad of graph paper. At the end, they sat on a piece of wall and Rebb showed him what he had recorded.

‘Big,’ said Cashin. ‘Never thought it was that big.’

‘Rich bugger, was he?’

‘He made money on the goldfields, blew it all on the house. Also breeding horses, I think.’

A wind had come up, flattening the grass beyond. They could smell the land it had run over, smell the cold sea.

‘He must’ve gone nuts early,’ said Rebb. ‘Could’ve built it somewhere warm.’

‘It’s about showing off,’ said Cashin. ‘He had to do it here. The Cashins had bugger all before that. Bugger all after that too.’

Rebb finished making a smoke, lit it, spat tobacco strands off his bottom lip. ‘So you want to do that again, more showing off?’

‘I do. What now?’

‘Asking me? What do I know?’

They sat for a while, stood, the wind stronger now, pushing at them. They watched the dogs. The animals sensed their eyes, looked around, ran over and visited briefly, went back to work. Cashin thought about the stupidity of the project. This was the moment to quit, no harm done.

‘What about the picture?’ said Rebb. ‘There’s a whole piece missing, blown to buggery. Also we need a shelter, keep stuff dry.’

They walked back, the dark ponding in the valley. Days ended quickly now, twenty minutes from full light to ink black. Cashin’s body ached from the bending.

Near the shed, Rebb said, ‘Old bloke give me a bunny. In the fridge. See that?’

‘No.’

‘Bin there two days. Better cook it tonight.’

Cashin didn’t say anything. He didn’t feel like cooking.

‘I can do it,’ said Rebb. ‘A bunny stew.’

A moment of hesitation. A cop meets a swaggie, the swaggie goes to live on his property, cooks meals. The locals would take a keen interest in this. Poofs, mate. Detective Poof and his swaggie bumchum.

Cashin didn’t care. ‘Sounds good,’ he said. ‘Go for your life.’

He fed the dogs, made a fire, got out beers, sat down, some relief from the pain. Rebb cooked like someone who’d done it before, cutting up the rabbit, chopping the wilted vegetables, browning the meat.

‘This wine?’ said Rebb, pointing at a bottle on the shelf. ‘Saving it for something?’

‘There’s a corkscrew hanging there.’

Rebb opened the wine, poured some into the pot, added water. ‘That’s done,’ he said. ‘Be back.’

He went to the side door and the dogs roused themselves and followed him out. Cashin read the newspaper, drowsed. Rebb came back, dogs in first, they came to greet Cashin as if they’d been to the North Pole, thinking of him all the way there and back.

Cashin thought it was a very good stew, piled on rice. He ate in front of the fire and the television. Dave ate at the table, reading the newspaper. The news came on. The Port Monro march was item number six:

United Australia leader Bobby Walshe was in the seaside town of Port Monro today to speak at a rally against a proposed resort development.

The rally had things television liked: kids holding hands with the elderly, singing, the brief fistfight.

‘That bloke’s lucky to escape an assault charge,’ said Cashin without looking at Rebb.

‘Self defence,’ said Rebb. ‘He didn’t hurt him much.’

‘You swaggies know how to handle yourselves.’

‘Just a drunk,’ said Rebb. ‘No challenge there.’

They watched the snatches of Bobby Walshe’s speech. He looked good wet, there was a close-up, raindrops running down his face. They saw the old lady kiss him, his kind smile, his hand on her elbow.

Walshe did a brief interview. Then the camera followed him and Helen Castleman going over to Cashin and Kendall and Wexler. The camera zoomed.

Cashin shuddered. He hadn’t seen the lens pointing, he would have turned away. The woman with the freeze-dried hair said: ‘Bobby Walshe also took the opportunity to speak to Detective Joe Cashin. Cashin was one of the police present at the death on Thursday of Walshe’s nephew Corey Pascoe and another Aboriginal youth, Luke Ericsen, both from the Daunt Settlement outside Cromarty.’

Bobby Walshe again, running a hand through his damp hair: ‘Just saying hello to the officer. I went to primary school with him. My hope is we’ll find out exactly what happened that night and we’ll get justice for the dead boys. I say I hope. Aboriginal people have lived in hope of justice for two hundred-odd years.’

Rebb got up, went to the sink, washed his plate, his knife and fork. ‘You shoot that kid?’ he said, neutral tone.

Cashin looked at him. ‘No. But I would have if he’d pointed the shotgun at me.’

‘I’ll be off then.’

‘You’ve got a touch with a dead bunny,’ said Cashin. ‘Bring one around any time.’

At the door, dogs trying to go out with him, Rebb said, ‘When’s the chainsaw coming?’

‘Tomorrow. Bern reckons he’ll drop it off with the water tanker first thing. That could be sparrow, could be midnight.’

‘Also. We need stuff-cement, sand, timber, all that. I wrote it down by the sink there.’

‘How much cement?’

Cashin thought he saw pity in Rebb’s eyes. ‘Make it six bags.’

‘Need a cement-mixer?’

Rebb shook his head. ‘Not unless you planning to bring in a few more innocent blokes you find on the road.’

‘I’m always looking,’ said Cashin.

He rang Bern and then, tired, hurting, sad, he went to bed early. Sleep came, a nightmare woke him, a new one. Dark and rain and garish light and screaming, people everywhere, confusion. He was trapped, held by something octopus-like, he fought it, it was crushing him, the space was shrinking, no air, he was suffocating, dying, terrified.

Awake in the big chamber, thin green light from the radio clock, feeling his heart in his chest and hearing the wind planing over the corrugations.

He got up. The dogs heard him and barked and he let them in. They ran for the bed, bumping, jumped, snuggled down. Cashin put on the standing lamp, threw wood into the stove, wrapped himself in a blanket and sat down with Nostromo.

Always an army chaplain-some unshaven, dirty man, girt with a sword and with a tiny cross embroidered in white cotton on the left breast of a lieutenant’s uniform-would follow, cigarette in the corner of the mouth, wooden stool in hand, to hear the confession and give absolution; for the Citizen Saviour of the Country (Guzman Bento was called thus officially in petitions) was not averse from the exercise of rational clemency. The irregular report of the firing squad would be heard, followed sometimes by a single finishing shot; a little bluish cloud of smoke would float up above the green bushes…

He fell asleep in the big shabby chair, woke in early light, two dogs nudging him, their tails crossing like furry metronomes. The phone on the counter rang when he was filling the kettle.

‘Constable Martin, Cromarty, boss. I’m instructed to tell you that Donny Coulter’s mother rang a few minutes ago to says he’s missing. She doesn’t know since when. She saw him in bed at 11 pm last night.’

Cashin put a hand over the mouthpiece and cleared his throat. ‘He hasn’t done anything till he doesn’t clock in. Tell his mum to check his mates, see if anyone else’s gone. Call me on the mobile.’

He went outside, had a piss, looking at the hillside. The scarlet maples came and went through the mist like spot fires. He moved his shoulders, trying to ease the stiffness.

Donny wasn’t going to sign the bail book at 10 am. He knew that.

‘DONNY DIDN’T show,’ said Hopgood. ‘The mother says the little prick’s been weepy.’

In misty rain, Cashin and Rebb had just started clearing the path that led to the former front door, uncovering red fired tiles, the colour still bright.

‘She’s had a look around?’ said Cashin.

‘I gather.’

‘What about his mates?’

‘Sounds like they’re accounted for. Fastafuckingsleep like the rest of the boongs.’

‘Take anything? Bag, clothes?’

‘I would’ve said.’

Cashin was watching Rebb digging into the deep layer of couch grass, weeds, earth. He swung the long-handled spade tirelessly, scooping, scraping the hidden tiles. It made Cashin feel feeble, his own excavations meagre things.

‘You might be on holiday but you’re still in charge,’ said Hopgood. ‘We await instructions.’

‘Bail violation,’ said Cashin. ‘Matter for the uniforms. The liaison bloke can work with Donny’s mum, get the locals to search the whole Daunt. Every garage, shed and shithouse.’

‘The locals are going to find Donny? You off the medication?’

Cashin looked at the sky. ‘Keep me posted,’ he said.

Back to digging his side of the path, feeling hollow in the stomach, as if he hadn’t eaten for a long time. He was four or five metres along, Rebb as far as that ahead of him, when the water trailer arrived, a battered tank towed by Bern’s Dodge truck, equally dented and scarred. Bern got out, unshaven, greasy overalls, cigarette in mouth. He looked around, unpleased by what he saw.

‘Jesus, you’re nuts,’ he said. ‘Cash on delivery.’

‘Half past eleven?’ said Cashin. ‘This’s first thing?’

‘First thing I’m deliverin to you today. One-twenty bucks for the chainie, all tools included, owned by an old lady cut flowers with it, twenty for the corrie iron, twenty a week for the tanker, four weeks minimum hire, ten for delivery. Water, free first time, that’s generous, refills ten. Let’s say two hundred, throw in the first top-up. Present to you since you’re family and a fuckwit.’

Cashin walked around the water tanker. It had been crudely sprayed black with aerosol paint. But before that rust had set in where markings had been erased, probably with a steel brush on a grinder. The rust was bubbling the new paint.

‘Where’d you get this?’ he said.

Bern flicked his cigarette end. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you go in the McDonald’s drive-in, you ask the kid where’d you get the mince?’

Cashin did another circuit of the tanker. ‘The army reserve complaint,’ he said. ‘They were down the other side of Livermore, in the gorge, buggering about, rooting under canvas, went into town for a few beers. The next day they couldn’t find two water tankers and a big tent and some tarps and gas bottles. Missing in action.’

‘In the army reserve,’ said Bern, ‘takes three to wipe one arse. Bloke brung this in the yard. Says he’s coming back to talk money. Never seen him before, never see him again.’ He spat. ‘What more can I say?’

‘Don’t say anything that could be used against you in a court of law,’ said Cashin. He got out his wallet, offered four fifties.

‘What, no argument?’

‘No.’

Bern took three fifties. ‘Jesus, you bring out the Christian in me.’

‘Be a small Christian. Like a garden gnome Christian. We need some building hardware here. The trowels and the spirit levels, that sort of thing.’

Bern looked at Rebb, leaning on his spade, gaze elsewhere. ‘Hey, Dave,’ he shouted. ‘Know a bit more about buildin than this bloke?’

Rebb turned, shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know what he knows.’

‘Yeah, well, I suggest you blokes come around,’ said Bern. ‘I got some brickie’s stuff. Not cheap, mind you, hard to find. Take their gear to the grave, brickies.’

‘There was a burg at Cromarty Tech,’ said Cashin. ‘They got into the building department storeroom.’

‘Well, whoopy fuckin doo. Another thing I never heard of. You make up this shit, don’t you?’

‘I don’t want to buy anything on the list of items missing,’ said Cashin.

‘Where you get your ideas I dunno. Not a stain on me. Your mates come down on me, that fuckin Hopgood, him and a footy team of pricks. An hour of fuckin around, messin up my place, they go off empty-handed, not so much as a fuckin sorry.’ Bern spat. ‘Anyway, give us a hand with this iron,’ he said. ‘You got any good corrie iron stories?’

They unloaded the corrugated iron. Bern got into the truck. ‘Dave, been meanin to ask,’ he said. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’

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

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

Cashin’s mobile.

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

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

‘Talking about us or you?’

‘Just talking.’

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

‘No.’

‘Maybe you’re out of the loop.’

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

‘Right.’

‘Through your old man?’

‘My mum. His dad’s my mum’s brother.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

The magistrate was looking in the direction of the windows.

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

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

‘Attempted possession, with respect, your honour.’

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

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

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

The magistrate stared at her.

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

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

The magistrate set bail conditions.

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

‘Oh really?’

‘May I address the court on precedent?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yeah?’

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

‘What’s that mean?’

‘What do you think? Got to go.’

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

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

They went down the steps, turned left.

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

‘No. I’m on leave. Harassed how?’

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

‘I don’t know about this.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What would it hurt to tell me?’

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

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

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

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

Green light. They crossed.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I remember you.’

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

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

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

‘Been there, yes.’

He saw the shift of her head, readied himself.

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

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

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

‘Thank you, Ms Castleman.’

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

‘How’s that?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She wasn’t wearing a bra.

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

But it didn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Cashin.’

Static. No reply. He killed it.

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

‘Cashin.’

‘Joe?’ His mother.

‘Yes, Syb.’

‘You’re faint, can you hear me?’

‘I can hear you.’

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

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

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

‘What hospital?’

‘The Alfred.’

‘I’ll go now. Want to come?’

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

‘Syb, I’m leaving now. Want to come?’

‘I’m too scared, Joe. I can’t face…’

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

‘Joe.’

‘Yes.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Here,’ said the doctor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘When will that be?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Come in,’ Cashin said.

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

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

‘That’s worth a drink.’

‘Just the one bottle?’

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

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

‘The doctor says so.’

‘That’s a worry. Know the why?’

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

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

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

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

‘Yes, please.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Remember Vic Zable?’

‘Amnesia is not the problem.’

‘Yeah, well, Vic got it tonight, carpark at the arts centre, can you believe that? The guy doesn’t know an art from a fart. In his ribs, couldn’t get closer range unless you stick it up his arse. The shooter was sitting next to him, the silver Merc Kompressor, quadraphonic radio on, heater’s going, he gives Vic the whole magazine. One little fucker bounces around inside Vic, comes out behind his collarbone, hits the roof.’

Cashin took a sip. ‘How many left-handed friends has Vic got?’

‘You’re like a cop in a movie. Two we know so far. One’s in Sydney, the other one’s not home. I’ve just been there. There was a moment when I thought we’d get lucky.’

‘Gangland hit arrest. Cop hailed.’

‘In my dreams.’

‘How’s Laurie?’

‘Good. The same. Pissed off at me. Well, we’re mutually pissed.’

‘What’s wrong?’

Villani took a drag, his cheeks hollowed, pulsed out three, four smoke rings, perfect circles rolling in the dead air. ‘Both of us having…affairs.’

‘I thought you just looked?’

‘Yeah, well, not much joy at home, if I’m not knackered, Laurie is. She’s got all these night functions, the races, corporate catering, sometimes we don’t see each other for days. We don’t talk anymore, haven’t talked for years. Just business, the bills, the kids. Anyway, I met this woman and the next day I actually wanted to see her again.’

‘And Laurie?’

‘I found out about her little adventure. Don’t leave your mobile account lying around.’

‘Cancel out then, don’t they? Two little adventures?’

‘It’s a question of who went first, cause and effect. I’m said to be the cause of her rooting this cameraman dickhead. She’s with him now, in Cairns, catering for some moron television shit. Probably on the beach, fucking under a tropical moon.’

‘Grown poetic,’ said Cashin. He didn’t want to hear any more, he liked Laurie, he had lusted after her. ‘Is that what being the boss does?’

Villani poured wine. ‘I just pedal. I’ve got this pommy cunt Wicken on my back, he’s cut out Bell, report directly to him. Don’t understand the politics, don’t fucking want to. I want Singo back, I was happy then.’

He sighed.

‘We were both happy then,’ said Cashin. ‘Happier. I’ll drop in on him in the morning.’

‘Shit, I’ve got to get out there, there’s never a fucking minute in the day. Well, what’s with Donny?’

‘The lawyer says there’s been harassment, cars keeping the family awake. Why didn’t you tell me about Hopgood?’

‘Thought you knew the history of bloody Cromarty. Still, Donny might turn up.’

‘Or not,’ said Cashin. ‘And we never had a fucking thing on him. Nothing.’

Villani shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, we’ll see. Forward, what do you do about your brother?’

It had been on Cashin’s mind. ‘Failed suicides. I know bugger all about it.’

‘Wayne’s alive, failed suicide. Needs to put in more effort. Bruce’s dead. Well done, Bruce. Your brother’s the family success, is he?’

‘No,’ Cashin said. ‘He’s just clever and educated. Plus the money.’

Villani filled the glasses. ‘And the happiness, in spades. Not married?’

‘No.’

‘Someone?’

‘No idea. The last time I saw him was when I was in hospital. He didn’t sit down, took a few calls. I don’t blame him, we don’t know each other. Just doing his duty.’

‘Sounds like Laurie on me and the family. If he wants a shrink, there’s this bloke Bertrand saw when he went sad after that Croat cunt stabbed him. Not a cop shrink.’

‘The Croat’s the one needed the shrink. Bertrand needed a panel-beater.’

They had shared a life, they talked, smoked, Villani went into the night and came back with another bottle, open. He poured. ‘You think about the job? A person of leisure. Time to think.’

‘What else was I good for?’ Cashin was feeling the long drive, the hospital, the drink.

‘Anything. You’ve got the brain.’

‘Don’t know about that. Anyway, I never thought, I didn’t know what to do, stuffed around, surfed, then I just joined. Lots of fuckwits but…I don’t know. It didn’t feel like a job.’ Cashin drank. ‘Getting introspective, are we?’

Villani scratched his head. ‘I never felt the worth of it till I got to homicide. The robbers, well, that was full-on excitement, us against the crooks, like a game for big kids. But homicide, that was different. Singo made me feel that. Justice for the dead. He say that to you?’

Cashin nodded.

‘Singo could pick the right people for the squad. He just knew. Birkerts was bloody hopeless at everything but Singo picked him. Bloke’s a star. Now I pick people like Dove. University degree, all chip and no shoulder. Doesn’t want to be black, doesn’t want to be white.’

‘He’ll be okay,’ Cashin said. ‘He’s smart.’

‘And now,’ said Villani, ‘I’m trying to get justice for drug scumbags got knocked before they could knock some other arseholes. Plus I get lectures on politics and fucking dress sense and applying the right spin. I now know why Singo blew a brain fuse.’

They drank most of the bottle before Villani said, ‘You’re more knackered than I am. Set the alarm if you want to. I’d have a fucking decent sleep myself.’

Before bed, Cashin slid open the window, got under the duvet on the narrow bed. The smell of cigarette smoke lingered. He thought of being seventeen, in the room he shared with Bern, lying on their backs in the dark, passing a smoke between the single beds before sleep.

When he woke, the clock said 8.17 am. He rose, dizzy for a moment. He had slept as if clubbed, felt clubbed now.

An envelope under the door.

Joe: Back door key. Eggs and bacon in the fridge.

Cashin ate breakfast at a small place on Sydney Road. It was either Turkish or Greek. The eggs were served by a wide man with eyes the colour of milk stout.

‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You come after they shoot Alex Katsourides next door. You and a small one.’

‘That’s a long time ago,’ said Cashin.

‘You never catch them.’

‘No. Maybe one day.’

A big sniff. ‘One day. You never catch them. Gangland killers. That bloke on the radio, he says police useless.’

Cashin felt the blood coming to his face, the heat in his eyes. ‘I’m eating,’ he said. ‘You want to talk to a cop, go down to the station. Where’s the pepper?’

MICHAEL WAS out of intensive care, in a single room on the floor above. He was awake, pale, darkly stubbled.

Cashin went to the bed and touched his brother’s shoulder, awkward. ‘Gave us a scare, mate,’ he said.

‘Sorry.’ Hoarse, breathless voice.

‘Feeling okay?’

Michael didn’t quite look at him. ‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘I feel like such a creep, wasting people’s time. There are sick people here.’

Cashin didn’t know where to go. ‘Serious decision you took,’ he said.

‘Not actually a decision. It just happened, sort of. I was pretty pissed.’

‘You hadn’t been thinking about it?’

‘Thinking about it, yes.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I’ve been pretty low.’

Time went by. Michael seemed to go to sleep. It allowed Cashin to study him, he had never done that. You didn’t usually look at people closely, you looked into their eyes. Animals didn’t stare at each other’s noses or chins, foreheads, hairlines. They looked at the things that gave signals-the eyes, the mouth.

He was looking when Michael said, eyes closed, ‘Sacked three weeks ago. I was running a big takeover and someone leaked information and the whole thing went pear-shaped. They blamed me.’

‘Why?’

Eyes closed. ‘Photographs of me with someone from the other side. The other firm.’

‘What kind?’

‘Nothing sordid. Just a kiss. On the steps outside my place.’

‘Yes?’

Michael opened his black eyes, blinked a few times, he had long lashes, turned his head enough to look at Cashin.

‘It was a he,’ he said.

Cashin wanted a smoke, the craving came from nowhere, full strength. It had never entered his mind that Michael was queer. Michael had been engaged to a doctor at one time. Syb had showed him a photograph taken at an engagement party, a thin blonde woman, snub nose. She was holding a champagne flute. She had short nails.

‘A kiss?’ he said.

‘We were in a meeting late, eleven, we met again in the carpark, he came back to my place for a drink.’

‘Sex?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you tell him stuff?’

‘No.’

‘Well,’ said Cashin, ‘I’ve heard of worse shit.’

His brother had closed his eyes again, there were deep furrows between his eyebrows. ‘He killed himself,’ he said. ‘The day after his wife left him, took the three kids. Her father’s a judge, he went to law school with my head of firm.’

Cashin shut his eyes too, put his head back and listened to the sounds-low electronic humming, the sawing of traffic below, a faraway helicopter whupping the air. He stayed that way for a long time. When he opened his eyes, Michael was looking at him.

‘You all right?’ he said.

‘Fine,’ said Cashin. ‘That is serious shit.’

‘Yes. They told me you were here in the small hours. Thanks, Joe.’

‘Not a matter for thanks.’

‘I haven’t been much of a brother.’

‘Two of us then. Want to talk to someone? A shrink?’

‘No. I’ve been to shrinks, I’ve made shrinks rich, I’ve helped shrinks buy places in Byron Bay, there’s nothing they can do. I’m a depressive. Plain and simple. It’s in me. It’s a brain disorder, it’s probably genetic.’

Cashin felt an unease. ‘Drugs,’ he said. ‘They’ve presumably got the drugs.’

‘Turn the world into porridge. If you’re on anti-depressants, you can’t work sixteen-hour days, plough through mountains of documents, see the holes, produce answers. My kind of depression, well, it’s not like the tent collapses on you. It’s just there. I can work, that’s the thing that keeps it at bay, you don’t want an idle moment. But there’s no joy. You could be, I don’t know, washing dishes.’

Michael was crying silently, tears running down his cheeks, crystal streams on each side.

Cashin put a hand on his brother’s forearm, he did not squeeze. He did not know what to do, he had no physical language for comforting a man.

Michael said, ‘They told me about the photograph and Kim’s death at the same time. I walked out, got on a plane, drank and slept and drank, and it got worse and then I took the pills.’

He tried to smile. ‘I think that’s more than I’ve said to you at one time in our whole lives.’

A nurse was in the doorway. ‘Keeping up the fluids?’ she said, stern. ‘Important, you know.’

‘I’m drinking,’ said Michael. He swallowed. ‘Is it too early for a gin and tonic?’

She shook her head at his flippancy. Cashin could see she liked the look of Michael. She went away.

‘Who took the picture?’ he said.

A shrug. ‘I don’t know. There was a whole sequence, five or six shots. From across the street, I think.’

‘Someone watching you or him. Who’d do that?’

Another shrug.

‘When was the leak? Before or after?’

Michael put a hand to his hair. ‘You’re a cop. I forgot that for a while. After. In the next day or so. They knew what happened at a meeting our team had the morning after. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. Kim’s dead, I don’t have a career, everything’s gone, twenty years of grind wasted.’

‘Dangerous occupation you chose.’

Michael remembered. He smiled, a sad smile.

‘You’d better come down and stay with Sybil for a while,’ said Cashin. ‘Help the husband napalm the roses.’

‘No, I’ll be all right. I’ll stay with a friend, she’s got lots of room. Get back on the medication. Avoid the drink. Exercise, take some exercise. I’ll be okay.’

Silence.

‘I’ll be fine, Joe. Really.’

‘What can I do?’ said Cashin.

‘Nothing.’ Michael put out his left hand. Cashin took it, they held hands awkwardly.

‘Don’t get depressed, do you?’ said Michael.

‘No.’ It was a lie.

‘Good, that’s good. You’ve escaped the curse of the Cashins.’

‘The what?’

‘Dad, me. Probably a long line before us. Tommy Cashin for sure. Mum says you’re rebuilding his house. We’re all the same, he was just at the extreme edge. Wanted to take his house with him.’

‘What about Dad?’

Michael took his hand away. ‘Mum’s told you?’

‘What?’

‘She said she’d tell you when you were older.’

‘What?’

‘About Dad.’

‘What?’

‘That he committed suicide.’

‘Oh,’ said Cashin. ‘That. Yeah, I know about that.’

‘Okay. Listen, tell Mum I’m fine, Joe. Tell her it was all a silly mistake. Accidental overdose. Do that?’

‘Sure.’

‘Give her my love. Tell her I’ll ring her tomorrow. Don’t feel up to it today.’

Cashin said goodbye, kissed his brother on the forehead, a taste of salt, caught the lift with a family of four, near-adult children, everyone sombre. On the ground floor, he found the toilets, went into a booth and sat down, slumped, hands between his thighs. It was peaceful. From time to time, the urinal cleansed itself, a wash of water.

He saw himself in the Holden, a boy sitting next to his mother, on the way to strange places, for a reason unknown.

His father. No one ever told him. They all knew and no one ever told him.

THE NURSING home was a yellow brick veneer island in a sea of bitumen and concrete, not a blade of grass. A nurse in a dark blue skirt and spotted white shirt showed him to the room.

Singo was wearing a checked dressing-gown, sitting in a wheelchair in front of a glass door. The view was of a concrete strip and a high metal fence the colour of dried blood.

‘Someone to see you, Dave,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a visitor.’

Singo didn’t react.

‘I’ll leave you,’ said the nurse.

Cashin moved the chair in the room, sat facing Singo’s profile, moved the chair closer. ‘G’day, boss,’ he said. ‘It’s Joe.’

Singo turned his head. Cashin thought he’d aged since he’d last seen him, the paralysed side of his face now younger than the other.

Singo made a sound. It could have been ‘Joe’, it was a short sibilant sound.

‘Looking much better, boss,’ said Cashin. ‘You’re on the mend. Villani says to please come back. He’ll tell you himself, he’ll be out to see you soon. Snowed under. You’ll know about that.’

Singo’s lips worked, he made another sound, spitty, but Joe thought he was amused, something in his eyes. He raised his left arm, the working arm, stretched his fingers. He seemed to be offering his hand to be held.

Not shaken. Held.

You could not hold Singo’s hand, no. Singo could not possibly want that. He wasn’t brain damaged, not that way, he was hindered, bits of him didn’t work. Singo was in there, the hard man was there under the slack muscle, the disobedient tendons.

Cashin didn’t know what to do, the second time in two hours.

Perhaps the hard man wasn’t there anymore. Perhaps there was just a helpless and hopeless man reaching out.

Cashin thought about his father and he put out his right hand and touched Singo’s.

Singo knocked his hand away.

Not reaching out. A mistake.

‘Sorry, boss,’ said Cashin. ‘Water? Want some water? Anything?’

Singo blinked his left eyelid repeatedly. His eyes were saying something. He released another moist splutter of sound.

‘Watching the TV, boss?’ There was a television on the wall, no sign of a remote control. They would decide what he saw and for how long.

A nod, it could be a nod.

‘Villani’s got his hands full, see that?’ said Cashin.

Singo raised his hand again, the fingers stretched.

Oh shit, thought Cashin, he’s pointing.

He looked. There was a pad on the bedside cabinet and a pen, a fat pen. He fetched them, put the pad on Singo’s tray, offered the pen to the left hand. Singo took it, clumsily, shakily, moved it in his big fingers.

‘Why didn’t she tell me you could write, boss? The nurse?’

Singo was trying to write on the pad, he was concentrating, the pen would not obey him, the pad shifted, veins stood out on his forehead,

Cashin reached out and moored the pad. Singo made scratch marks on it, possibly a C, possibly an R, a scribble of lines. His strength seemed to leave him, the hand slumped, his eyes closed.

Cashin waited.

Singo was asleep.

Cashin stood up and went to the door. He turned and said, not loud, ‘Be back, boss. We’re on your case. Get you out of here.’

He could see Singo reflected in the glass door and he thought he saw his eyes looking at him. He went back. Singo’s eyes were closed. He moved the pad from under the big hand, long hairs on the fingers, and tore off the page.

‘See you, boss,’ he said, took his life in his hands and said, ‘Love you.’

He sat in the vehicle for a while before he switched on, trying to make sense of Singo’s marks. Then he put on music, shut his mind against the hours ahead, drove. Near home, exhausted, pains down both legs, the mobile rang.

‘Found someone,’ said Hopgood. ‘Want to be there?’

CASHIN WALKED down the pier in the last light, stood behind the half-dozen watchers, cold salt westerly gale in his face. He saw the cat heel around the breakwater, stern down, twin engines howling. A man in yellow was at the wheel, two figures behind him, standing, dark wetsuits.

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

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

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

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

‘Bad pie.’

‘What’s the other kind?’

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

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

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

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

He wished he had a cigarette.

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

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

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

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

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

Daunt Credit Union.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Bullshit. Told Donny’s mum?’

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

‘Is that before she sees this on television?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Fuck off,’ said Cashin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You okay?’ said Rebb.

‘Yeah, just tired.’

‘Brother okay?’

‘He’s okay.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Bern give you a hand?’ said Cashin.

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

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

‘Get the stars in. Line em up.’

‘We’ll need string.’

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

‘My eye?’

‘Any prick’s eye.’

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

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

‘What’s that called?’

‘What?’

‘The knot, the wire knot.’

‘What’s it matter?’

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

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

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

‘Find anything?’

‘Not yet. Covered your tracks well.’

Rebb laughed. It was the first time.

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

‘Pretty good fence,’ said Cashin.

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

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

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

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

Helen Castleman.

Cashin walked down the fence to meet her.

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

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

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

‘The creek?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s not so. Who told you that?’

‘The agent.’

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

Helen’s cheekbones coloured, an autumn shade.

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

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

She turned and began the climb, slipping.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I’m not happy,’ said Cashin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The news came on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Had breakfast?’ said his mother.

‘Not yet.’

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

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

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

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

‘Good,’ said Cashin.

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

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

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

‘Bit of a rest,’ said Harry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Manufacture of what?’

‘Of deviance,’ said Sybil. ‘You’re part of that. You produce the justification for your existence.’

‘Me?’

‘The machinery of control. You’re an unselfconscious part of it.’

‘You get this from uni?’

‘I’ve always felt it. Uni gives you the intellectual back-up.’

‘I think I could use some intellectual back-up. What’s this course called?’

‘Finish your food, I don’t want that muesli wasted. It’s organic, cost the earth, I bought it at the farmers’ market.’

‘The farmers’ market,’ said Harry, and smiled, he had the smile of a mother’s boy.

Sybil came with him to the vehicle. The dogs went berserk. ‘They don’t like me,’ she said.

‘Barking’s not a judgment on you. It’s just barking.’

Sybil kissed him on the chin. ‘Keep in touch with Michael, will you, dear,’ she said. ‘Ring him. Promise?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me Dad killed himself?’

She took a pace back, clutched herself. ‘He didn’t. He fell. He slipped and fell.’

‘Where?’

He saw water in her eyes.

‘Fishing,’ she said.

‘Where?’

‘Where?’

‘Yes. Where?’

‘At the Kettle.’

Cashin didn’t say anything. He got into the vehicle and drove, didn’t wave goodbye.

JUST AFTER noon, on his way back from Cromarty, the photographs of Tommy Cashin’s house finally copied, Cashin registered that he was near the turnoff that led to the Bourgoyne place.

He slowed, turned, went up the hill. There was no thought behind it. He could turn left at the top, take the road around the hill, go through Kenmare, say hello to Bern.

He turned right, went around the bends and through the gates of The Heights.

He had no idea why he was doing this except that it seemed the way to close the business, where it began. He parked and walked around the house, clockwise. At least a dozen cops would have walked the south side, in a line, moving in slow-motion, studying the ground, picking up twigs, looking under leaves.

Today, there were few leaves. Everything was trim, the local football legend and his son were obviously still employed, had been on the job recently, plucking weeds, mowing grass, raking gravel. He went by the kitchen entrance, through an arbour, leafless but with branches so intricately twined as to deny the light.

Single-storeyed redbrick outbuildings to the left, a paved courtyard, old pink bricks in a herringbone pattern, sagging in places, depressions holding saucers of water.

Cashin walked between two buildings, looked through an ornate cast-iron gate into a drying yard, washing lines strung between wooden crosses, enough to dry the washing of an army. He went on, to where mown grass ran to a rustic post-and-rail fence, fifty metres away. Beyond that was a big paddock, its boundary a line of tall pines. The road lay beyond them.

He went back, around the south-west corner of the house. This was a clean space, a long empty rectangle bordered with lemon trees in big terracotta pots. Many of them looked unhappy, leaves yellow.

They’d had four lemon trees at the old house, out the back. You needed to piss on lemon trees, around the trunk. His father had often taken him out to do that after tea. They went from tree to tree, Mick Cashin had enough for all four, the last one got a little less. Joe ran out early but he carried on, stood with his father, aiming his small empty hose at the ground.

‘Some places, it’s all they get,’ said his father. ‘Dry countries. Nothin wrong with piss. Filtered by the body. Mind’s the same. Hangs onto the bad stuff.’

Across the courtyard was a long double-storeyed brick building, doors and windows on the ground floor, sash-hung windows above. Cashin crossed and tried the big double door in the middle. It opened onto a corridor running the width of the building.

A door on the right was ajar. He went in a short way.

It was a big room, well lit from windows on two sides, a pottery studio-two big wheels, a smaller one, trestle tables, several steel trolleys lined up, bags stacked against the far wall, shelving holding small bags and tins of all sizes, implements of various kinds laid out. There were no pots to be seen. The place was neat and clean, like a classroom swept and tidied after the students each day.

Cashin went down the corridor to the door on the left. It opened on darkness. He felt for a light switch, found several, clicked them.

Spotlights came on, three rows in the roof. It was a gallery, windowless, the floor of stone, dull-grey, smooth, the bare walls a pale colour.

A narrow black table ran almost the width of the room. On it, at regular intervals, stood-Cashin counted them-nine vessels. They were big, more than half a metre high, the shape of eggs with their tops cut off, tiny lips. Cashin thought it was a beautiful shape, the shape pots might want to be if potters would let them.

He went closer, looked at them from both sides. Now he saw small differences in shape, in bulge and taper. And the colours. The pots were streaked and lined and blotched and speckled in blacks that seemed to absorb light, in reds that looked like fresh blood leaking through tiny fissures, in the sad and lovely blues and browns and greys and greens of the earth seen from space.

Cashin ran a hand down a pot. There were smooth parts and then rough, like moving from a woman’s cheekbone to a late afternoon stubble. And ice cold, as if the hellish passage through fire had conferred a permanent immunity to warmth.

Was this Bourgoyne’s entire output as a potter? All that he kept? There were no pots in the house. Cashin picked one up carefully, turned it upside down: the letters C B and a date, 11/6/88.

He replaced the pot and went to the doorway. He stood looking at the pots. He did not want to kill the lights and leave them in the dark, their colours meaningless, wasted.

He killed the lights.

The rest of the building was an anticlimax. Upstairs, there were empty rooms on one side, living quarters on the other comfortably furnished, perhaps in the 1970s, a sitting room, a bathroom, a kitchen. He opened a door: a small bedroom, a stripped double bed, a bedside table, a wardrobe. The view from the window was across the paddocks, nothing for kilometres.

At the door to the corridor, he looked back into the sitting room. There was a bolt on the bedroom door. He went downstairs, out the back door onto a stone-paved terrace, looked at mown lawn, old elms, an oak wood beyond a picket fence. Straight ahead was the horse barn and the paddock where the helicopter landed.

A concrete path led off from a ramp at the left edge of the terrace. Cashin followed it, went through a gate in the fence and into the dense wood. The oaks were huge, no doubt planted by a Bourgoyne ancestor, trees to climb into, branches arranged in ladders. They were still heavy with brown leaves in spite of the thick new layer on the ground.

The land sloped up gently, the path twisted through the trees, its route dictated by the plantings. He was thirty or so metres along it when he caught himself enjoying the walk, a stroll in a wood on an early winter day, and was about to turn back.

A sound. He stopped. It was hollow, mournful, someone blowing into a cowrie shell.

He went on, the sound growing louder. The oaks stopped, a firebreak and then old eucalypts, towering. They thinned and there was a clearing on a gentle slope. The path veered left around a pile of split wood under a tin roof.

There was the smell of a hardwood fire, long dead.

Cashin stopped, uneasy. He went on, rounded the wood stack.

In the clearing stood a tunnel-like structure of cement-coloured bricks. It tapered in both dimensions, the narrower and lower end pointed at an opening in the trees, at the sea a few kilometres away. At the back was a square chimney.

He went closer. The earth at the base of the walls had a crust like bread. Low along the flank were square steel-shuttered openings, the bricks around them blackened. The chimney had a steel plate sticking out of it, a damper, Cashin thought, it could be moved in and out to regulate the flow of hot air. On the other side were more shuttered windows.

The front was open. On his neck, Cashin felt the westerly blowing straight into the mouth of the chamber, making the hollow sound. This was Bourgoyne’s kiln, the furnace from which the pots emerged.

Blackened bricks were neatly stacked around the mouth. He stooped to look: beyond the scorched entrance were three tiers, like a short hierarchy of broad altars. There was a strong smell of things heated, vaguely chemical.

The wind off the sea would blow into the burning kiln like breath into a trumpet. Was it alight at night? The kiln would hum, the fire holes would glow white. It would have to be fed at intervals to maintain the heat.

Suddenly Cashin wanted to leave the clearing with its sad sound and smell of dead fires. He became conscious that the wind was cold, rain in the air. He went back through the trees, down to the buildings, continued his walk around the house, looking, thinking about what it would be like to approach the buildings at night, where the place would be to break in.

A few metres down the the north-western side of the house was a door, half glass, four panes. He looked in: a small room, tiled floor, benches on either side, coats and hats on pegs.

He turned. The severely tended garden ran for at least two hundred metres to a picket fence, then there were paddocks fenced with hedges, stands of trees, glints of water.

Perhaps a whim, half-pissed kids driving by, one of them given an idea by the big gates and the headlights catching the brass plate. It would have sent a message, as if in neon lights: RICH PEOPLE LIVE HERE.

Driving by? Going where? Heading back to the Daunt after fishing and drinking on the beach, you might take this route. It would be less risky than the main road.

Did the boys park a vehicle somewhere along the road, climb a fence, walk to the house? A kilometre in the dark, crossing paddocks, opening gates? No, they hadn’t done that.

They would have parked near the gates and walked up the driveway, a dark passage, no lights in the grounds, the massive poplars, still in leaf, blocking the moonlight.

The boys, standing in the dark at the end of the drive, looking at the house. Were there lights on? Bourgoyne’s bedroom was at the back of the house. He wasn’t in bed. Where was he? In the study? Did they walk around, see the study and bedroom lights? If so, they would have broken in as far away as possible.

Thieves didn’t break into occupied houses where there were lights on. The householder might have a gun.

What did they use to beat Bourgoyne? Did they bring it with them, take it away? There would be a post-mortem on him now, the pathologists would have an opinion, but it might be no more useful than ruling out faceted instruments or round ones bigger than a golf club shaft.

There was a noise. A door from the sunroom opened and Erica Bourgoyne came out. She was in soft-looking clothes, shades of grey, younger looking today, she could have passed for thirty.

‘What’s this about?’ she said.

‘Just having another look,’ said Cashin. ‘I’m sorry about your stepfather.’

‘Thank you,’ said Erica. ‘What’s the point of looking around now?’

‘The matter isn’t closed.’

A man came out behind her, prematurely grey curly hair. He was just taller than short, tanned, dark suit, pale shirt and blue tie. ‘What’s happening?’ he said.

‘This is Detective Cashin,’ said Erica.

He came around Erica, held out a hand. ‘Adrian Fyfe.’

When Cashin felt the hard grip, the real man’s grip, he gave Fyfe the dead fish, took his hand away. This was Adrian Fyfe the solicitor-developer who wanted to build a resort at the Stone’s Creek mouth. Cashin remembered Cecily Addison’s outrage that morning in the newsagency. 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.

‘He would have been convicted, wouldn’t he?’ said Erica. ‘Donny Coulter.’

‘That’s not certain,’ said Cashin.

‘What about the watch?’

‘We have someone who says two of the suspects tried to sell it to him. We don’t know how they got it.’

‘Don’t know?’ said Adrian Fyfe. ‘Pretty bloody obvious, isn’t it?’

‘There’s no obvious in these things,’ said Cashin.

‘Anyway, it’s over,’ said Fyfe. ‘The whole thing. Some justice done.’

‘So pointless,’ said Erica, listless now. ‘To kill an old man for a watch and a few dollars, whatever it is they took. What kind of people do that?’

Cashin didn’t try to answer. ‘We’d like access to the buildings if you don’t mind.’

A moment’s pause. ‘No, I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I won’t be coming again. The place will be sold at some point. There’s a big bunch of keys in the kitchen. Dozens of keys. Give them to Mrs. Addison when you’re finished.’

She followed him around the house. They shook hands.

The same security man was leaning against the Saab, smoking. ‘That gravel stunt,’ he said to Cashin. ‘One day I’ll rip your head off, stick it up your arse.’

‘You threatening a police officer?’ said Cashin. ‘Above the law, are you?’

The man turned his head away in contempt, spat on the gravel. Cashin looked back. Erica hadn’t moved. He returned, climbed the steps.

‘By the way,’ he said. ‘Who inherits?’

Erica looked at him, blinked twice. ‘I do. What’s left after the bequests.’

REBB WAS laying bricks, rebuilding the fallen north-east corner of the house. Cashin watched him for a while-the slicing pick-up of the mortar, the icing of the brick, the casual placement, the tapping with the trowel handle, the removal of the excess.

‘Supervising?’ said Rebb, eyes on the job. ‘Boss.’

Cashin wanted to say it but he couldn’t. ‘What do I do?’ he said.

‘Mix. Three cement, nine sand, careful with the water.’

Cashin was full of care. Then he ruined the mixture by flooding it.

‘Same again,’ said Rebb. ‘Half spades now.’ He came over and put in the water, a slop at a time, took the spade, cut and shuffled the mortar. ‘That’s the pudding,’ he said.

The dogs arrived from a mission in the valley, greeted Cashin with noses and tongues, then left, summoned to some emergency-a rabbit rescue perhaps, the poor creature trapped in a thicket.

Cashin carried bricks, watched Rebb, got the mixture more or less right the next time. The trick was extreme caution. The work moved to the opposite corner, a string was strung, tight enough to ping.

‘Ever laid a brick?’ said Rebb.

‘No.’

‘Have a go. I need a leak.’ He left.

Cashin laid three bricks. It took a long time and they looked terrible. Rebb came back and, saying nothing, undid the work, cleaned the bricks. ‘Watch,’ he said.

Cashin watched. Rebb relaid the bricks in a minute. ‘Got to keep the perps the same width,’ he said. ‘Otherwise it looks bad.’

‘Want to eat?’ said Cashin. ‘Then I’ll work on my perps. Whatever the fuck a perp is.’

It was after 3 pm. He had bought pies from the less bad bakery in Cromarty. Beef and onion. They ate them sitting in the lee of the brick pile, in the diluting sunlight.

‘Not bad,’ said Rebb. ‘There’s some meat.’ He chewed. ‘The problem here is the doors and windows,’ he said. ‘We don’t know where they are.’

‘We do. I’ve got the pictures. I forgot.’

When Cashin got back with the photographs, Rebb had made a cigarette. He looked at the pictures. ‘Jesus, there’s bits missing here all right. This is a serious proposition.’

‘Yes,’ said Cashin. ‘It’s not a proposition at all. I should have said.’

He had known the moment he looked at the old photographs. In one, Thomas Cashin and six men, builders, stood in front of the house. Thomas could have been Michael in an old-fashioned suit.

They sat in silence. In the valley, one dog gave the high-pitched hunting bark, then the other. An ibis rose, another, they flapped away like prehistoric creatures. Rebb got up, walked beyond the brick pile and held up the picture. He looked at his newly repaired piece of building, looked at the picture. He came back and sat.

‘Bit like putting in twenty mile of fence, I suppose,’ he said. ‘You just think about the bit to the next tree.’

‘No,’ said Cashin. ‘It’s a stupid idea.’

He was relieved that the lunacy was over. It was as if a fever had peaked, leaving him sweaty but lucid. ‘House’s fucked, it should stay that way.’

Rebb scuffed the earth with a boot heel. ‘Well, I dunno. You could do worse. Least you’re building something.’

‘I don’t need to. There’s no point.’

‘What’s got a point?’

‘It’s a stupid idea. I admit it, let’s leave it at that.’

‘Well, got all this stuff here. Bit of a waste to stop now.’

‘I’m making a judgment.’

‘You can be too quick making judgments.’

Cashin felt the flash. ‘I’ve had a bit more practice making judgments than your average swaggie,’ he said and regretted his policeman’s voice.

‘I’m an itinerant labourer,’ said Rebb, not looking at him. ‘People pay me to do jobs they don’t want to do themselves. Like the state pays you to keep property safe for the rich. The rich call, you come with the siren going. The poor call, well hang on, there’s a waiting list, we’ll get around to it some time.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Cashin. ‘Bullshit. You’ve got no fucking idea what you’re talking about…’

‘Those dead boys,’ said Rebb. ‘That the judgment you talking about?’

Cashin felt his anger drain, the taste of tin in his mouth.

‘The difference between us,’ said Rebb, ‘the difference is I don’t have to stay on the job. I can just walk.’

In the silence, the dogs came with licks and nudges, as if, in the valley probing the undergrowth, they had heard the violence in the voices of their friends and had come in haste to calm them.

‘Anyway, it’s not as if I have a right to speak my opinion to you,’ said Rebb. ‘Being a swaggie.’

Cashin had no idea what to say, the ease that had grown between them over the days was gone and they had no history of arguments- won, lost, drawn, abandoned-to fall back on.

‘Milking time,’ said Rebb.

He rose and walked, left the spade stuck in the mound of sand, his bricklaying implements in the bucket, handles sticking out of silver water.

The dogs went with him, down the slope, even blacker against the sere grass. They trotted along happily. Then they stopped, turned, dark eyes on Cashin sitting on the bricks.

Rebb marched on, hands in his pockets, head down, shoulders sloped.

The dogs were torn.

Cashin wanted to tell them to go with Rebb, to say to them, you faithless things, I took you in, I saved you, you’d be in a concrete backyard now, knee-deep in your own droppings, you would not know a rabbit from a takeaway barbecue chicken. But I was only ever a meal-ticket and a soft bed, legs to lie on.

So go. Fuck off. Go.

The dogs bounded back to him, the lovely bouncing run, the ears afloat. They jumped up, put their paws on him and spoke to him.

He shouted, ‘Dave.’

No response. ‘DAVE.’

Rebb turned his head, didn’t stop walking.

‘OKAY, WE’LL FIX THE FUCKING THING!’

Rebb walked on, but he raised his right arm and gave a thumbs-up.

THE PHONE rang when he was making toast.

‘Joe, time to leave this,’ said Villani. ‘It’s over.’

‘How did we get to over?’ said Cashin. ‘Because Donny tops himself? That’s not a confession, that’s an indictment of these local deadshits.’

‘Did you see Bobby Walshe last night?’

Cashin sat down at the table. ‘No.’

‘Stay in touch with the world, son. We have apparently crucified three innocent black children. It’s Jesus and no thieves, everyone’s clean.’

‘Can I say…’

‘And another matter,’ said Villani. ‘Someone spoke to someone who spoke to the deputy who spoke directly to me. It concerns your visit to the Bourgoyne house yesterday.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m asked why we are still hanging around The Heights.’

‘Just doing the job. That’s a complaint from Erica, is it?’

‘The place’s been X-rayed. What the fuck were you doing there?’

‘Having a sniff. Remember having a sniff? Remember Singo?’

‘It’s too late for sniffing. Let it rest, will you?’

‘There’s no certainty the boys did it,’ said Cashin. He had not planned to say that.

Villani whistled, rueful. ‘Well, Joe, I’ve got a lot on the plate, it’s a full plate. Every day. And night. What say we talk about this insight of yours later? I’ll give you a call. First free moment. Okay?’

‘Okay. Sure.’

‘Joe?’

‘Yes.’

‘A cop, Joe, don’t forget that. You don’t obsess. You do your best and then you move on.’

Cashin could hear the voice of Singo.

‘No one’s done their best about this,’ he said. ‘No one’s done a fucking thing.’

‘Have a relaxing day,’ said Villani. ‘Did I say your holiday’s been extended? The deputy wants you to take the full five weeks you’re owed. He’s worried about your health and wellbeing. He’s like that. Caring. I’ll get back to you.’

You don’t obsess. Words chosen to remind, to caution. To hurt.

Cashin felt the nausea rising and the pain in his shoulders that would move up his neck into his head. In the worst times, these symptoms had signalled the coming of the frozen images, the ghostly negatives that lingered on the retina after he looked away from things. It had seemed clear to him then that he was going mad.

He took three tablets, sat in the big chair, head back, eyes closed, concentrating on his breathing, waiting. The pain did not reach its former heights, the nausea receded. But it was almost an hour before he could get up. He washed his face and hands, brushed his teeth and gargled, drove down empty roads to Port Monro. The cattle were indifferent to his passing.

He parked outside the post office. Four letters in the mailbox, nothing personal. No one wrote to him. Who would write to him? Not a single soul in the world. He walked around the corner to the station.

Kendall was on the desk. ‘Can’t live with it, can’t etcetera,’ she said. ‘Boss.’

‘Keeping the sovereign’s peace?’

‘Yes, sir. Spread the word to the locals that in the event of bad behaviour you’d come back.’

Cashin went to his desk, read the log, the official notices, sat looking at the backyard.

‘While you’re here, can I do some personal business, boss?’ said Kendall.

‘On your way,’ said Cashin.

She had been gone a minute when a whippet-thin young man came in the door, looked around like a first-time bank robber. Cashin went to the counter. ‘Help you?’

‘They reckon I should talk to youse.’ He pulled down on the rounded visor of his cap.

‘Yes? Your name?’

‘Gary Witts.’

‘What can we do for you, Mr Witts?’

‘Problem with the girlfriend. Yeah.’

Cashin gave him the compassionate nod. ‘The girlfriend.’

‘Yeah. Don’t want to get her in no trouble. She’s me girlfriend.’

‘And the problem?’

‘Well, it’s me ute.’

‘The girlfriend and your ute?’

‘It’s not like I wanna lay a charge.’

‘Your girlfriend? No, you wouldn’t.’

‘Don’t mean I’m not pissed off. I’m no fuckin rug, mat, whatever. Not me.’

‘What’s she done?’

‘Went to Queensland in me ute. With this mate of hers from Cromarty, they’re hairdressers, apprentices. You know that place WowHair? That’s where.’

‘So she took your ute without your permission?’

‘Nah. Gave her a lend of it. Now she reckons she’s not comin back. Met this Surfers Paradise bloke, Carlo, Mario, some wog name, he’s got three saloons, offered her a job. Now she reckons I owe her the ute.’

‘Why’s that?’

Gary tugged at his visor again until Cashin couldn’t see his eyes. ‘She loaned me the deposit.’

Cashin knew. ‘And she’s been making the payments?’

‘Just tempory. Pay her back. Got a job now.’

‘How long did she make the payments?’

‘Jeez, I dunno. A while. Year, bit more. Could be two. Yeah.’

‘So what do you want?’ Cashin said.

‘I thought, like, you could get the cops up there, they could tell her to bring it back. Lean on her a bit. Y’know?’

Cashin put his forearms on the counter, laced his fingers, looked under Gary’s visor. ‘Gary, we don’t do that kind of thing. She hasn’t committed a crime. You lent her the ute. You owe her lots of money. Best thing you can do is go up there, pay her what you owe her, drive the ute home.’

‘Well, fuck,’ Gary said, ‘can’t do that.’

‘Then you’ll have to see a lawyer. Take some kind of civil action against her.’

‘Civil?’

‘A lawyer’ll explain it to you. Basically, they write her a letter, tell her to hand over the ute or else.’

Gary nodded, scratched an ear. ‘She’s pretty scared of cops. Wouldn’t take much to scare her, I can tell you.’

‘We’re not in the scare business, Gary.’

Gary went to the door, disappointment in his shoulders. He hesitated, came back, sniffed. ‘Nother thing,’ he said. ‘How come you blokes don’t do nothin about the fuckin Piggots?’

‘What should we do something about?’

‘Getting fuckin rich on drugs.’

‘What’s the point here, Gary?’

‘Well, the mate she went with. She’s fuckin thick with the Piggots. I reckon they dropped off a bag on the way, who’s gonna check two chicks, right?’

‘You know this, do you?’

Gary looked away. ‘Won’t say I do, won’t say I don’t.’

‘What’s her name? The friend?’

‘Lukie Tingle.’

‘An address and a phone number for you, Gary.’

‘Nah. Don’t wanna be involved. See you.’

‘Gary, don’t be dumb. I’ll find you in five minutes, park outside your house, come in for a cup of tea, how’s that?’

‘Shit, gissus a break, will you?’

He gave an address and a phone number, left without another word, passed Kendall at the door.

On the way home, a man on the radio said:

‘The state government’s problem is that if it’s seen as soft on law and order in Cromarty, it risks losing the white vote and the seat at the next election. And it needs every seat. So there’s a real quandary. For the federal government, Janice, the mileage Bobby Walshe has got out of Cromarty is a nightmare. But of course a huge plus for United Australia.’

‘Exactly how much mileage, Malcolm?’

‘Bobby’s performance last night was amazing, the passion, his sadness. He got on every TV news in the country, huge radio airplay. Bobby’s given Cromarty a kind of symbolic status, and this is very important, Janice. The bit about the three crucified black boys, it had so much power, I can tell you it spoke to all kinds of people. Biblical. The talkback today has been amazing. People crying, even from the redneck belts. Those words struck a major chord, they resonated.’

‘But will that translate nationally, I mean…?’

‘These are interesting times, Janice. The government’s fear isn’t just about losing Cromarty. The government can live without Cromarty. No, now it’s a real fear that United Australia will split the vote all over the place. Become a genuine coalition of the disaffected. And the big shiver is that Bobby Walshe will roll the Treasurer in his own seat. It used to be rusted on. Now it’ll take nine per cent and Bobby might be able to do that, Janice.’

‘Thank you Malcolm. Malcolm Lewis, our political editor on the big issues driving political life today. Did I say life? Excuse me. My next guest knows about life, he almost lost his in a…’

Cashin found the classical station. Piano. He was coming around to the classical piano-the quick-fingered tinkling, the dramas, the final notes that floated like the perfume of women you’d lusted after. Most of all, he liked the silences, the gaps between what had been and what was to come.

THEY WORKED on the building again. By milking time, they had laid bricks to the first doorway to windowsill height.

‘Stone sills in the picture,’ said Rebb. ‘Be stone lintels too, probably. Huge bloody door here.’

‘I’ll talk to Bern,’ said Cashin. ‘He may well have stolen them in the first place.’

Rebb left. Cashin worked on the garden for an hour, took the dogs for a short walk in the cold dusk. Tonight, he had only twinges of pain. He was tired but not hurting. Feed dogs, shower, make the fire, open a beer, water on for pasta.

Rebb knocked, came in, the dogs were on him.

‘Surveyors down there,’ he said, he was half in shadow, menacing. ‘At the fence. Two blokes. When I went to milking.’

‘She’s unhappy,’ said Cashin. ‘Wasting her money. The agent is the snake, she should survey him. There’s pasta on the way here.’

‘Ate with the old bloke, he gets a bit lonely, doesn’t want you to go. Not that he’d admit it. Wouldn’t admit a croc’s hanging off his leg.’ He paused. ‘About the house.’

‘What?’

‘We can get it up till you can see your way to going on yourself,’ said Rebb.

Cashin felt the pang of loss anticipated. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘this’s about that swaggie thing? I’m sorry. I’ll say sorry.’

‘No,’ said Rebb. ‘I’m a swaggie, swaggie’s got to keep moving. We’re like sharks. Tuna, we’re more like tuna.’

‘The old bloke’ll miss you.’

Cashin knew that he was speaking for himself.

Rebb was looking down, fondling dog heads. ‘Yeah, well, everything passes. He’ll find someone else. Night then.’

Cashin ate in front of the television, the dogs on the couch, limp as cheetahs, a head at each end. He refuelled the fire, made a big whisky, sat thinking.

Michael the fag. Did his mother know Michael was queer? Bisexual, he was bisexual. She knew. Women always knew. What did it matter what Michael was? Vincentia Lewis the nurse who gave him her father’s CDs was a lesbian. Given the chance, he’d have married her, lived in hope. What hope? What did men have to offer? They died calling out for their mothers.

Mick Cashin drowned in the Kettle. Took his life. There was something terrible about that expression.

To take your life. That was the ultimate assertion of ownership-to choose to go into the silence, to choose sleep with no prospect of the dawn, of birdsong, of the smell of the sea on the wind.

Mick Cashin and Michael both made the choice.

This was not something to think about.

His father was always laughing. Even after he’d said something serious, scolding, he would say something funny and laugh.

Why did his mother still say it was an accident? She told Michael she would tell him his father had killed himself. And she couldn’t, after all this time. She had probably changed her mind about what happened. Sybil had mastered reality. No need to tolerate the uncomfortable bits.

But why had no one else told him? He had come back and lived in the Doogue house, they all knew, they never said a word, never mentioned his father. The children must have been told not to speak about Mick Cashin. No one ever said the word suicide.

In the hospital, in the early days, when he had no idea of time, Vincentia had sat with him, held his hand, run fingers up his arm to the elbow. She had long fingers and short nails.

The Cashin suicide gene. How many Cashins had killed themselves? After they’d reproduced, created the next generation of depressives.

Michael hadn’t done that. He was a full stop.

So am I, Cashin thought, I’m another dead end.

But he wasn’t. The day he saw the boy walking from the school gate he knew he was his own beyond question-his long face, the long nose, the midnight hair, the hollow in his chin.

His son carried the gene. He should tell Vickie. She should know.

Rubbish. He wasn’t a depressive. He felt low sometimes, that was all. It passed, as the nausea passed and the pain and the ghostly frozen images passed. He’d been fine before Rai Sarris. Now he was someone recovering from an accident, an assault. A murderous attack by a fucking madman.

Rai Sarris. Afterwards, in the hospital, he began to see how obsessed he’d become with him. Sarris wasn’t an ordinary killer. Sarris had burnt two men to death in a lock-up near the airport. Croatian drug mules. He tortured them and then he burnt them alive. It took five years to get to the point when there was enough evidence to charge him.

And then Sarris vanished.

Where was Rai at this moment? What was he doing? Pouring a drink in some gated canal estate in Queensland, the boat outside, the whole place owned by drug dealers and white-collar criminals and slave-brothel owners and property crooks?

Had Rai been prepared to die the day he drove his vehicle into them? He was mad. Dying had probably never entered his mind.

Cashin remembered sitting with Shane Diab in the battered red Sigma from surveillance, looking at the grainy little monitor showing the two-metre-high gates down the street.

When they began to slide apart, he felt no alarm.

He remembered seeing bullbars, the nose of a big four-wheel-drive.

He didn’t see the station wagon coming down the street, the chidren in the back, strapped into their seats.

The driver of the tank didn’t care about station wagons with children in them.

Watching the monitor, Cashin saw the tank gun out of the gate and swing right.

There was a moment when he knew what was going to happen. It was when he saw the face of Rai Sarris. He knew Rai Sarris, he had spent seven hours in a small room with Rai Sarris.

But by then the Nissan Patrol was metres away.

Forensic estimated the Nissan was doing more than sixty when it hit the red car, rolled it, half-mounted it, rode it through a low garden wall, across a small garden, into the bay window of a house, into a sitting room with a piano, photographs in silver frames on it, a sentimental painting of a gum tree on the wall behind it.

The vehicles demolished that wall too, and, load-bearing structures having been removed, the roof fell on them.

Slowly.

The driver of the station wagon said the four-wheel-drive reversed out of the ruins, out of the suburban front garden, and drove away. It was found six kilometres away, in a shopping centre carpark.

Shane Diab died in the crushed little car. Rai Sarris was never found. Rai was gone.

Cashin got up and made another big whisky, he was feeling the drink. Music, he needed music.

He put on a Callas CD, settled in the chair. The diva’s voice went to the high ceiling and came back, disturbed the dogs. They raised their heads, slumped back to sleep. They knew opera, possibly even liked it.

He closed his eyes, time to think about something else.

How many people like Dave Rebb were there out there, people who chose to be ghosts? One day they were solid people with identities, the next they were invisible, floating over the country, passing through the state’s walls. Tax file numbers, Medicare numbers, drivers’ licences, bank accounts, they had no use for them in their own names. Ghosts worked for cash. They kept their money in their pockets or in other people’s accounts.

Did Dave ever have an earthly identity? He was more like an alien than a ghost, landed from a spaceship on some dirt-brown cattle station where the stars seemed closer than the nearest town.

An imperfect world. Don’t obsess. Move on.

Sensible advice from Villani. Villani was the best friend he’d had. Something not to be forgotten. Best friend in a small field. Of how many? Relations excluded, relations didn’t qualify as friends. Not many.

Cashin had never sought friends, never tried to keep friendships in good repair. What was a friend? Someone who’d help you move house? Go to the pub with you, to the football? Woody did that, they’d drunk together, gone to the races, the cricket. On the day before Rai Sarris, they’d eaten at the Thai place in Elwood. Woody’s new ambition, Sandra, the high-cheekboned computer woman, was looking at Woody and laughing and she ran her bare stockinged foot up Cashin’s shinbone.

Instant erection. That was the last time he’d felt anything like that.

Woody came to the hospital a few times but, afterwards, Cashin didn’t see him, they couldn’t do the same things as before. No, that wasn’t it. Shane Diab lay between them. People thought he was responsible for Shane’s death.

They were right.

Shane was dead because Cashin had taken him along to see if his hunch was right that Sarris would come back to the house of his drug-trader partner. Shane had asked to come. But that didn’t exonerate Cashin. He was a senior officer. He had no right to involve a naïve kid in his obsession with finding Sarris.

Singo never blamed him. Singo came to see him once a week after he was out of danger. On the first visit, he put his head close and said: ‘Listen, you prick, you were right. The bastard came back.’

More drink. Think about the present, he told himself. People wanted Donny and Luke to be Bourgoyne’s killers. If they were, it justified the deaths of Luke and Corey. And Donny’s suicide, it explained that-the act of a guilty person.

Innocent boys branded as the killers of a good man, a decent, generous man. Two injustices. And whoever did it was out there, like Rai Sarris-free, laughing, sneering. Cashin closed his eyes and he saw the boys, unlined faces, one barely breathing, chest crushed, one gasping, spraying a dark mist, dying in the drenched night, the lights gleaming off the puddles of rain, of blood.

He had another drink, another, fell asleep in the chair and woke in alarm, freezing, fire low, rain heavy on the roof. The microwave clock said 3:57. He took two tablets with half a litre of water, put out the lights and went to bed fully clothed.

The dogs joined him, one on each side, happy to have been spared the middle passage of exile to their quarters.

THE LIGHT came back to a freezing world, wind from the west, bursts of rain, hail spits the size of pomegranate pips.

Cashin didn’t care about the weather. He was beyond weather, felt terrible, in need of punishment. He took the dogs to the sea, walked to the mouth in a whipping wind, no sand blowing, the dunes soaked, the beach tightly muscled.

Today, Stone’s Creek was strong, the inlet wide, the sandbars erased. On the other side, a man in an old raincoat, a baseball cap, was fishing with a light rod, casting to the line where the creek flow met the salt, reeling. A small brown dog at his feet saw the poodles and rushed to the creek’s edge, barking, levitating on stiff legs with each hoarse expulsion.

The poodles stood together, silent, front paws in the water, studying the incensed animal. Their tails moved in slow, interested scientific wags.

Cashin waved to the man, who took a hand off his rod. There was little of him to see-a nose, a chin-but Cashin knew him from Port, he was an odd-job man for the elderly, the infirm, the inept, replaced tap washers, fuses, patched gutters, unblocked drains. How is it, he thought, that you can recognise people from a great distance, sense the presence of someone in a crowd, know their absence in the instant of opening a door?

On impulse, he turned left, walked along the creek, threading his way through the dune scrub. The dogs approved, brushed past him, went ahead and found a path worn by human feet over a long time. The land rose, the creek was soon a few metres below the path, glass-clear, shoals of tiny fish flashing light. They walked for about ten minutes, the path diverging from the creek, entering a region of dunes like big ocean swells. At the top of the highest one, the coastal plain was revealed. Cashin could see the creek winding away to the right, a truck on the distant highway, and, beyond it, the dark thread that was the road climbing the hill to The Heights.

Below, the path ran in a gentle curve to a clearing of several hectares, cut from bushland now coming back. It led to a roofless building, to the remains of other structures, one a tapering chimney standing amid ruins, a brick finger sticking out of a black fist.

The dogs reached the scene well ahead of Cashin, stopped, eyed the place, tails down. They looked back at him, got the signal, kicked off, running for a pile of bricks and rubble. Rabbits unfroze, scattered, bewildered the dogs for choice.

Cashin walked to the edge of the settlement, stood in the spattering rain. The flat area to the left had been a sports field. Three football posts remained, sunk in long grass, paint gone, wood bleached white. He became aware of the sounds the wind was making as it passed through the ruins-a tapping noise, a creaking like a nail being pulled from shrunken hardwood, a variety of low moans.

He went to the roofless timber structure, four rooms, a passage between them, looked in a window socket, saw a vandalised, pillaged space where fires had been made and people had defecated on bare earth once covered by floorboards. Fifty metres beyond it stood the chimney. He crossed to it, went around to the highway side. Once the brickwork had housed two stoves in big recesses, between them an oven. The cast-iron door lay rusting on the brick hearth, broken from its hinges.

The dogs were running around frantically, demented by rabbit scents everywhere. But the rabbits were gone, safe beneath the broken bricks and rusted sheets of corrugated iron. Behind the kitchen, in the grass on the other side of an expanse of cracked concrete, Cashin found the brick footings of a long building, two rooms wide. The top bricks were blackened and, inside the footings, he stumbled over a charred floor joist.

That’s history, been nothing there since the fire. Companions are history too.

Cecily Addison’s words.

Cashin whistled, a chirpy sound in the forlorn place. The dogs appeared, joined at the mouths by something, tugging at it. He made them sit and release the object.

It was a leather belt, stiff and cracked-a boy’s belt, a size to span a waist no bigger than a football. Cashin picked it up. On the rusted buckle, he could make out a fleur-de-lis and parts of words: B Prepa.

Be Prepared. It was a boy scout buckle.

He raised his arm to cast it away and then he could not. He walked across the overgrown playing field and bent the small hard belt around a goalpost, buckled it, let it slide into the grass.

On the highest dune, Cashin looked back. The wind was moving the goalposts, waving the grass. From the highway came the sound of a truck’s airhorn, lonely somehow, nocturnal. He called the dogs and walked.

They drove home on empty roads, past houses sunk in their hollows, greenwood smoke being snatched from chimneys. The age of cheap dry wood from a million ringbarked trees was over.

He thought about Bourgoyne. Short of a startling piece of luck, it would never be known who bashed him, killed him. But it would always be stuck on the boys, their families, stuck on the whole Daunt, and even on people like Bern and his kids. Bourgoyne’s killing was ammunition for all the casual haters everywhere.

Takin out those two Daunt coons. Pity it wasn’t a whole fuckin busload.

Most of Derry Callahan’s customers would have said Fuckin A to that.

Don’t obsess, he thought. Listen to Villani, leave the business alone.

Rebb was waiting, out of the wind, he had heard the vehicle. He walked across, flat cigarette in mouth. Cashin got out, released the dogs. Rebb held his hands low, palms up, the dogs went to them and didn’t jump, waggled their whole bodies.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you going to town today?’

‘I am,’ said Cashin, deciding in the instant. ‘You eaten?’

‘No, just come from the cows.’

‘We can eat somewhere. Give me ten, I need to shower.’

THEY ORDERED bacon and eggs at the truckstop on the edge of Cromarty. An anorexic girl with a moustache and a pink-caked pimple between her eyebrows brought the food. The eggs lay on tissue-paper bread, the yokes small and pasta-coloured. Narrow pink steaks of meat could be seen in the grey pig fat.

Rebb ate some egg. ‘Not from chooks living out the back,’ he said. ‘You in a position to pay wages?’

Cashin closed his eyes. He hadn’t paid Rebb anything for the work done at the house, the fence. It had not entered his mind. ‘Jesus, sorry,’ he said. ‘I just forgot.’

Rebb carried on eating, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. He reached inside his coat and produced a folded sheet of paper torn from a notebook. ‘I reckon it’s twenty-six hours. Ten an hour okay?’

‘Don’t you get the minimum rate?’

‘No rent, eating your food.’

‘Yeah, well, let’s say fifteen.’

‘If you like.’

‘I’ll need your tax file number.’

Rebb smiled. ‘Do me a favour. Use Bern’s number. Know that by heart, wouldn’t you, your cousin, all the transacting you do? Paying the tax on it all.’

Hopelessly compromised, thought Cashin. Just as guilty as any woman with two kids caught shoplifting.

He parked two blocks from the bank. He could have parked behind the police station but something said that wasn’t a good idea. He took money out of the machine and paid Rebb.

‘I’ll be half an hour,’ he said. ‘Enough for you?’

‘Plenty.’

He walked down wet streets to the station. Hopgood was in, writing in a file, a neat stack to his left awaiting his attention.

‘Paperless office,’ said Cashin from the door.

Hopgood looked up, expressionless eyes. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I’d like to know who ordered the spotlight on Donny’s house.’

‘That’s the Coulter bitch’s story, lies, they all fucking lie. It’s a way of life. Just a routine patrol.’

‘I thought the Daunt was Indian territory? What happened to the Blackhawk Down stuff?’

Bright spots on Hopgood’s cheekbones. ‘Yeah, well, time to show the fucking flag in the pigsty. Anyway, where do you get off? I don’t answer to you. Worry about your own fucking pisspot station.’

Cashin felt the heat in his own face, the urge to hit Hopgood in the middle of his face, to break nose and lips, to see the look he’d seen in Derry Callahan’s eyes.

‘I’d like to see the Bourgoyne stuff,’ he said.

‘Why? It’s over.’

‘I don’t think it’s over.’

Hopgood tapped a nostril with a finger. He had fat fingers. ‘The watch? How does that feel?’

‘I’d like to have a look anyway.’

‘I’m busy here. Take it up with the station commander when he gets back from leave.’

Their eyes were locked. ‘I’ll do that,’ Cashin said. ‘There’s something we haven’t discussed.’

‘Yeah?’

‘That dud Falcon. You knew it couldn’t keep up, didn’t you?’

‘Didn’t know you couldn’t drive, mate. Didn’t know you were a gutless fucking wonder.’

‘And the calls. You heard them.’

‘Is that right? There’s nothing on tape. You two boongs making up stories now? Like Donny’s fucking mother? You related? All fucking related, aren’t you? How’s that happen, you reckon? All in the one bed fucking in the dark when they’ve cut the power cause you spent all the money on grog?’

Cashin’s vision was blurred. He wanted to kill.

‘Let me tell you something else, you fucking smartarse,’ said Hopgood. ‘You think you can shack up with a swaggie out there and nobody knows? You can let your arsefucker punch out innocent citizens and you look the other way? Is that a thrill for you? You like that kind of thing? Come in your panties, do you?’

Cashin turned and walked. A uniform cop was in the door. The man moved away quickly.

CASHIN WENT down to the esplanade and stood at the wall, the salt wind in his face. There were whitecaps across the bay, a fishing boat was coming in, cresting the grey swells, sinking into the troughs. He did his deep breathing, trying to take control of his nervous system, feeling his heartbeat slow.

After ten minutes, he went back, the only people on foot a group of kids coming down the hill in a rolling maul. He turned right halfway up, went the way he’d walked with Helen Castleman from the court, climbed the steps to her office. The receptionist was a teenager, too much makeup, looking at her nails.

He asked. She spoke on the telephone.

‘Down the passage,’ she said, a big smile, lots of gum. ‘At the end.’

The door was open, her desk was to the right. Helen was waiting for him, looking up, unsmiling. He stood in the doorway.

‘Two things,’ he said. ‘In order of importance.’

‘Yes?’

‘Donny,’ he said. ‘I’ve raised the harassment. They deny it. I’ll take it as far as I can.’

‘Donny’s dead,’ she said. ‘He shouldn’t be. He was a boy who wasn’t very bright and who was very scared.’

‘We didn’t want that. We wanted a trial.’

‘We? Is that you and Hopgood? You were fishing. You had nothing.’

‘The watch.’

‘Being with someone trying to sell a watch is evidence of nothing. Even having the watch means nothing.’

‘I’ll move on to the fence,’ said Cashin.

‘You’ve taken more than a metre from my property,’ she said. ‘Have your own survey done if you don’t accept mine.’

‘That’s not what bothers you. You thought the property went to the creek.’

‘Quite another matter. What I want you to do, Detective Cashin, is to take down the fence you so hastily…’

‘I’ll sell you the strip to the creek.’

He had not planned to say this.

Helen’s head went back. ‘Is that what this is about? Are you a friend of the agent?’

Cashin felt the flush. ‘Offer withdrawn,’ he said. ‘Goodbye.’

He was in the doorway when she said, ‘Joe, don’t go. Please.’

He turned, conscious of the blood in his cheeks, did not want to meet her eyes.

She had a hand up. ‘I’m sorry. I retract that. And my outburst on the evening, I apologise for that too. Unlawyerly behaviour.’

The disdain, then the surrender. He didn’t know what to do.

‘Accept?’ she said.

‘Okay. Yeah.’

‘Good. Sit down, Joe. Let’s start again, we know each other in a way, don’t we?’

Cashin sat.

‘I want to ask you something about Donny.’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s something, it came up, it bothers me.’

‘Yes?’

‘The pursuit, roadblock, whatever it was, that was because of a watch someone tried to sell in Sydney. Is that right?’

Cashin was going to say yes when Bobby Walshe came into his mind. This was about politics, the three crucified black boys. Bobby wasn’t going to let it rest, there was mileage left, miles and miles. She wanted to use him.

‘There’s the coroner to come,’ he said. ‘How’s Bobby Walshe?’

Helen Castleman bit her lip, looked away, he admired her profile.

‘This’s not about politics, Joe,’ she said. ‘It’s about the boys, the families. The whole Daunt. It’s about justice.’

He said nothing, he could not trust himself.

‘Do cops think about things like justice, Joe? Truth? Or is it like your football team, it can do no wrong and winning is everything?’

‘Cops think much like lawyers,’ said Cashin. ‘Only they don’t get rich and people try to kill them. What’s the point here?’

‘Donny’s mother says that Corey Pascoe’s sister told her mother Corey had a watch, an expensive-looking watch.’

‘When was that?’

‘About a year ago.’

‘Well, who knows what Corey had?’ Cashin heard the roughness in his voice. ‘Watches and what else?’

‘Will you do anything about this?’

‘It’s not in my hands.’

She said nothing, unblinking. He wanted to look away but he couldn’t.

‘So you’re not interested?’

Cashin was going to repeat himself but Hopgood came into his mind. ‘If it makes you happy, I’ll talk to the sister,’ he said.

‘I can get her to come here. You can use the spare office.’

‘Not here, no.’ That was not a good idea.

‘She’s scared of cops. I wonder why?’

There had been a Pascoe in his class at primary school. ‘Ask them if they know Bern Doogue,’ he said. ‘Tell them the cop is Bern’s cousin.’

Cashin bought the Cromarty Herald at the newsagent. He didn’t look at it until the lights, waiting to cross.

MOUTH RESORT GO-AHEAD

Council approves $350m plan

He read as he walked. Smooth and tanned Adrian Fyfe was going to get his development, subject to an enviromental impact assessment. Nothing about access, about buying the Companions camp from the Bourgoyne estate.

CASHIN SAW them as he rounded the old wool store-two big men and a woman near the end of the jetty. He parked, got out, put his hands in the pockets of his bluey and walked into a wind that smelled of salt and fish, with hints of burnt diesel.

The jetty planks were old and deeply furrowed, the gaps between them wide enough to lose a fishing knife to the sea, see it flash as it hit the water. Only three other people were out in the weather, a man and a small boy sitting side by side, arms touching, fishing with handlines, and an old man layered with clothing, holding a rod over the railing. His beanie was pulled down to his eyebrows, a red nose poking out of grey stubble.

The men watched him coming, the woman standing between them had her eyes down. Closer, Cashin could see that she was a tall girl, fifteen or sixteen, snub nose, bad skin.

‘Joe Cashin,’ he said when he reached them. He didn’t offer to shake hands.

‘Chris Pascoe,’ said the man closest, the bigger of the two. He had a broken nose. ‘This’s Susie. Don’t remember you from the school.’

‘Yeah, well, if you remember Bern Doogue, I was there.’

‘Tough little shit that Bern. All the Doogues. Seen him around, not so little now, he don’t know me. Gone white, I reckon.’

The other man stared into the distance, chin up, like a figurehead. He had dreadlocks pushed back, a trimmed beard and a gold ring in the visible earlobe.

‘The lawyer says there’s something I should know,’ said Cashin.

‘Tell him, Suse,’ said Pascoe to the girl.

Susie blinked rapidly, didn’t look at Cashin. ‘Corey had a watch,’ she said. ‘Before he went to Sydney.’

‘What kind of watch?’

‘Leather strap, it had all these little clock things.’ She made tiny circles on her wrist. ‘Expensive.’

‘Did he say where he’d got it?’

‘Didn’t know I’d seen it. I was just lookin for my CDs, he pinched my CDs all the time.’

‘Why didn’t you ask him?

She looked at Cashin, eyebrows up, big brown eyes. ‘So he’d know I looked in his room? Shit, not that fuckin brave.’

‘Watch your language,’ said her father.

‘If I showed you a picture of the watch, would you recognise it?’ said Cashin.

Susie shrugged inside the anorak, it barely moved. ‘Dunno.’

‘You had a good look at it?’

‘Yeah.’

Cashin thought about the band of pale skin on Bourgoyne’s wrist. ‘How come you’re not sure you’d recognise it?’

‘Dunno. I might.’

‘The name of the watch?’ he said. ‘Notice that?’

‘Yeah.’

Cashin looked at the men. It gained him nothing. The dreadlocked one was rolling a cigarette.

‘You remember the name?’

‘Yeah. Bretling. Something like that.’

‘Can you spell that?’

‘What’s this spell shit?’ said Chris Pascoe. ‘She seen the watch.’

‘Can you spell it?’

She hesitated. ‘Dunno. Like B-R-E-T-L-I-N-G.’

If they’d schooled her, she would have got it right. Unless they’d schooled her not to.

‘When was this?’ said Cashin.

‘Long time ago. A year, I spose.’

‘Tell me something,’ said Cashin. ‘Why’d you only talk about the watch now?’

‘Told me mum the day after.’

‘After what?’

‘After you shot Corey and Luke.’

He absorbed that. ‘What did she say?’

The girl looked, not at her father but at the dreadlocked man. He opened his mouth and the wind took smoke from it. Cashin couldn’t read his eyes.

‘She said don’t talk about it.’

‘Why?’

‘Dunno. That’s what she said.’

‘Got to go,’ said Chris Pascoe. ‘So she’s told you, right? Can’t say you don’t know now, right?’

‘No,’ said Cashin. ‘Can’t say that. Didn’t catch your friend’s name.’

‘Stevo,’ said Pascoe. ‘He’s Stevo. That right, Stevo?’

Stevo sucked on his cigarette, his cheeks hollowed. He flicked the stub, the wind floated it across the jetty. A gull swooped and took it. Stevo’s face came alive. ‘See that? Fuckin bird smokes.’

‘Thanks for your time,’ said Cashin. ‘Got a number I can ring you on?’

The men looked at each other. Stevo shrugged.

‘Give you my mobile,’ said Pascoe.

He found the mobile in his jacket and read out the number written on the cover.

Cashin wrote it in his book. ‘You’ll hear from me or the lawyer,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Susie.’

‘He wasn’t a bad kid, Corey,’ said Pascoe. ‘Could’ve played AFL footy. Just full of shit, thought he saw a fuckin career in dope. You a mate of Hopgood and that lot?’

‘No.’

‘But you’ll stick with the bastards, won’t you? All in together.’

‘I do my job. I don’t stick with anyone.’

Walking down the uneven planks, looking at the fishermen, at the shifting sea, Cashin felt the eyes on him. At the wool store, he turned his head.

The men hadn’t moved. They were watching him, backs against the rail. Susie was looking down at the sodden planks.

‘IT’S DIFFICULT,’ said Dove, his voice even hoarser on the telephone. ‘I’m not a free agent here.’

‘This thing’s a worry to me,’ said Cashin.

‘Yeah, well, you have worries and then you have other worries.’

‘Like what?’

‘I told you about the freezer. The election’s coming on. You go on worrying and then you’re in charge at Bringalbert North. And your mate Villani can’t save you.’

‘Where’s Bringalbert?’

‘Exactly. I have no fucking idea.’

‘The difference is that then we thought the boys had done it and you thought someone’d gone soft-cock on Donny, he was going to walk.’

‘Yeah, well. Then. Talked to Villani?’

‘He told me to get on with my holiday,’ said Cashin.

‘That’ll be coming from on high. The local pols don’t want to turn the sexy white hotel staff of Cromarty against them and the federal government doesn’t want to give Bobby Walshe any more oxygen than he’s getting now.’

It was late morning, a fire going. Cashin was on the floor in the Z-formation, trying to hollow his back, lower legs on an unstable kitchen chair. Silent rain on the roof, drops ghosting down the big window. No working on Tommy Cashin’s ruin today.

‘If this thing is left,’ he said, ‘it dies. The inquest will say very unfortunate set of events, no one to blame, it’ll pass into history, never be picked up again. Everyone’s dead. And then the kids and the families and the whole Daunt have it stuck on them. They murdered Charles Bourgoyne, a local saint. A stain forever.’

‘Tragic,’ said Dove. ‘Stains are tragic. I used to like those stain commercials on TV. Joe, do you get television where you are?’

‘And see what?’

‘Bobby Walshe and the dead black boys.’

‘I may be stuck out here in the arse,’ said Cashin, ‘but the brain’s still functioning. If you don’t want to do this, just say it.’

‘So touchy. What do you want?’

‘Bourgoyne’s watch. Did anyone bother to find out where he bought it? It’s fancy, I think they have numbers, like car engines.’

‘I’ll see. That doesn’t run to risking the Bumbadgery transfer.’

‘I thought it was Bringalbert North?’

‘I’m told they’re the twin stars in the one-cop constellation. Still doing that lying on the floor business?’

‘No.’

‘Pity. An interesting practice, a conversation starter. I’ll call you.’

Cashin disconnected, stared at the ceiling. He saw Dove’s serious face, the doubting eyes behind the little round glasses. After a while, he went into a near-sleep, hearing the rain coursing in the gutters and downpipes. It sounded like the creek in flood. He thought of going down to it after rain when he was a boy, the grass wetting him almost to the armpits, hearing the rushing sound, seeing the water brushing aside the overhanging branches, swamping mossy islands he’d fished from, foaming around and over the big rocks. In places there were whitewater races, small waterfalls. Once he saw a huge piece of the opposite bank break off. It fell slowly into the stream, exposing startled earthworms.

The money Cecily Addison paid out on behalf of Bourgoyne. Cecily’s payment records, he had them.

Cashin lifted his legs off the chair, rolled onto his right side, got up with difficulty and went to the table. The thick yellow folder was under layers of old newspapers.

He made a mug of tea, brought it to the table. The first payment sheet was dated January 1993. He flipped through them. Most months were a page, single-spaced.

Start at the beginning and work back? He looked at the top page. Names-shops, tradesmen, rates, power, water, telephones, insurance premiums. Others gave only dates, cheque numbers and amounts. He’d given up the first time he looked at the statements and then things happened and he never went back.

Cashin read, circled, tried to group the items. After an hour, he rang. Cecily Addison was not available, said Mrs McKendrick.

Taking her nap, thought Cashin. ‘This is the police,’ he said. ‘We’re terribly polite but we’ll come around and wake Mrs Addison if that’s necessary.’

‘Please hold on,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if she’ll speak to you.’

It was several minutes before Cecily Addison came on. ‘Yeees?’

‘Joe Cashin, Mrs Addison.’

‘Joe.’ Groggy voice. ‘Saw you on television, being rude. Won’t get promoted that way, my boy.’

‘Mrs Addison, the payments you made for Bourgoyne. Some don’t have names. You can’t tell who’s being paid.’

Cecily began clearing her throat. Cashin held the telephone away from his ear. After a while, Cecily said, ‘That’s the regulars, the wages, that sort of thing.’

‘There’s two grand every month to someone, going back to the beginning of these payments. What’s that?’

‘No idea. Charles provided an account number, the money was transferred.’

‘I need the numbers and the banks.’

‘Confidential, I’m afraid.’

Cashin sighed as loudly as he could. ‘Been through that with you, Mrs Addison. This is about a murder. I’ll come around with the warrant, we’ll take away all your files.’

A counter-sigh. ‘Not at my fingertips this information. Mrs McKendrick will ring.’

‘Inside ten minutes, please, Mrs Addison.’

‘Oh, right. Galvanised now, are we? It took the third dead boy and Bobby Walshe.’

‘I look forward to hearing from Mrs McKendrick. Very soon. Who was Mr McKendrick?’

‘She lost him in Malaya in the fifties. Tailgunner in a Lincoln.’

‘A man going forward while looking back,’ said Cashin. ‘I know that feeling.’

‘In this case, falling forward. Off a hotel balcony. Pissed as a parrot, excuse the expression.’

‘I’m shocked.’

Inside ten minutes, Mrs McKendrick provided the information, speaking as if to a blackmailer. Then Cashin had to ask Dove to make the inquiries. He rang when Cashin was bringing in firewood.

‘I had to suggest, tell half-lies,’ Dove said. ‘I hardly know you. From now on, I want you to tell your own half-lies.’

‘Truth Lite, everyone does it. The name?’ The day was almost done, embers behind the western hills.

‘A. Pollard. 128A Collet Street, North Melbourne. All withdrawals through local ATMs.’

‘Who’s A. Pollard?’

‘An Arthur Pollard.’

The dogs were nudging him. It was time. ‘We have a mystery bloke on the payroll for umpteen years,’ he said. ‘Needs a bit of work, don’t you think?’

Cashin heard a sound. Dove was tapping on his desk.

‘Yes, well,’ Dove said, ‘there’s no shortage of things need work around here. And this little inquiry took fucking hours.’

‘The extra mile. Force’ll be proud of you.’

Three slow knuckle taps. ‘I have to say this. I’m unsuited to homicide. It was a mistake. The death of a rich old cunt doesn’t move me. I don’t care if the guilty walk free. I don’t even care if possibly innocent people now dead get the blame.’

Cashin rubbed dog heads in turn, the ridges of bone. ‘Bourgoyne’s watch?’ he said. ‘What about that?’

‘May I say fuck off, pretty please?’

Time. Cashin put on his father’s Drizabone, the short coat, dark brown, wrinkled like the skin of a peatbog man. One day about a year after he came to stay with the Doogues, Bern’s father had offered it to him when they were going out with the ferrets.

‘Your dad’s. Hung onto it for you. Bit big. Mick wasn’t small.’

Man and dogs in the rain, going downhill, escaping the worst of the wind. The long dry was over, the creek was filling. The dogs looked at it with amazement, affronted. They tested it with sensitive toes.

Cashin put his hands in the big pleated pockets. Was he wearing this that day? Was it night? Did he take it off and put it on a stone step before he jumped into the Kettle?

Was it the step I sat on with Helen?

He felt cold, whistled for the dogs. They looked around in unison.

RAIN SUITED Cromarty. In the old town, it turned the cobbled gutters to silver streams, darkened the bricks and stones and tiles, gave the leaves of the evergreen oaks a deep lustre.

Cashin parked outside the co-op and sat, wiped the side window to look at the street: a fat damp man pushing a supermarket trolley four blocks from the shop, two skateboarding kids wagging school, two women in shapeless cotton garments arguing as they walked, heads jerking. He didn’t understand Cromarty, Cashin thought, he didn’t know who had the Grip.

Singo had introduced him to the Grip.

It’s the power to hurt, son. And the power to stop anyone hurting you. That’s the Grip. There’s blokes with millions got it and there’s blokes with bugger all. There’s blokes with three degrees and blokes can’t read the Macca’s menu.

The Bourgoynes would have had the Grip when the engine factory employed half the town. Did Charles keep the Grip after it was sold? Did he have any need for it?

Cashin got out. The rain soaked his hair, overran his eyebrows. He bought two big bags of dry dog food, drove to the supermarket and filled two trolleys, bulk buying. Never again could he enter Derry Callahan’s shop. No more was there a milk, bread or dog food lifeline. Then he bought some whiting fillets at the fish shop and drove to Kenmare.

The street was empty, a windless moment, straight lines of rain. He went into the butcher. A new person stood behind the counter, a pudgy young man, spotted face, dark hair. They said good day.

‘Couple of metres of dog sausage to begin,’ Cashin said. ‘Where’s Kurt?’

‘Cromarty. Dentist.’

‘Helping out?’

‘Permanent. Bit short on the dog, mate.’

‘What you’ve got then.’

The youth weighed the sausage, wrapped it in paper, put it in a plastic bag.

‘Plus three kilos of rump,’ said Cashin. ‘The stuff he hangs.’

He fetched the meat, cut, weighed. ‘Take three-thirty?’

‘That’s fine. Mincer clean?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Run three kilos of topside, will you? Not too much fat.’

‘Need some warning, mate. Come back tomorrow?’

‘Too busy, are you?’

‘Now, yeah.’

‘Tell Kurt Joe Cashin’s looking for another butcher, will you?’

The youth thought for a moment. ‘Spose I can do the mince,’ he said.

Cashin went out, sat in the vehicle, looked at the rain, placed the youth. He was wrapping the mince when Cashin opened the door.

‘Local, aren’t you?’ said Cashin. ‘What’s the name?’

‘Lee Piggot.’ Lee was a bad wrapper, his fingers were too big. ‘You the Doogues’ cousin?’

‘That’s right. Know the Doogues?’

‘Some. When I was at school,’

‘Lee Piggot. Hear your name around the Cromarty drug squad?’

Flush, pink turning red. ‘No.’

‘Must be a name like yours. Butcher’s a good job, a career. Honest work. People like their butcher. They even trust their butcher.’

Your police force, Cashin thought. Working with the community to create a better society. Using methods of fear and intimidation.

Last stop, Port Monro. The station was unattended. He let himself in and checked his desk: an envelope of pages faxed by Dove.

Heading home, a man on holiday, five weeks to go. The rain had stopped, the clouds dispersed, the world was clean and light. How much clearing and building could you do in five weeks?

Rebb was at work in the garden. He had found a low drystone wall.

‘Jesus,’ said Cashin. ‘The elves been working here? In the rain?’

‘Work’s work. Can’t let rain stop you.’

‘Stops me.’

‘You’re a cop. You don’t know about work. Pulling down the zip, that’s work for cops.’

‘You’d get on really well with Bern. Soulmates.’

They put in two hours, exposed twenty metres of stacked fieldstone and the remains of a wrought-iron gate.

‘Made something to eat,’ said Rebb. They walked back to the house and he produced four sandwiches neatly tied with cotton and toasted them under the grill.

‘Not bad,’ said Cashin. ‘Old bushie recipe?’

‘Tomato and onion’s not a recipe.’

They went back and worked for another hour and then Rebb went to milking. ‘Old bloke’s taking me for a feed,’ he said. ‘At the Kenmare pub.’

Cashin carried on for half an hour, then he walked around and looked at the work they’d done in the garden and on the house. He realised that it gave him pleasure to see the progress, that he was proud of his part. It also came to him that he’d laboured for almost four hours without much pain.

Inside, straightening from giving the dogs their bowls, the current went through him. He moved slowly to a kitchen chair, sat bolt upright, eyes closed. It was a long time before he felt safe to rise. Then, tentative movements, he made a fire, opened a beer, sat at the table with the papers from Dove.

There were three medical reports on Bourgoyne. One was on his condition on arrival at the hospital. The second was from a forensic pathologist, who, at the request of the police, examined him as far as was possible in intensive care the next day. The third was the autopsy after his death. Bourgoyne’s death was caused by his head striking the stone hearth.

The experts found that the marks on his knees and palms and feet were consistent with walking on hands and knees on rough carpeting. His facial bruises indicated being slapped repeatedly by someone standing above him, slapping with both sides of a hand about nine centimetres wide. The strokes across his back had almost certainly been administered with a bamboo stick of the kind sold by nurseries to support plants.

Cashin opened another beer. He stood at the counter, bottle in hand, pictures in his mind.

An old man roused from his bed, made to crawl down a long passage over a rough carpet.

A half-naked old man on his knees, someone slapping him, jerking his head from side to side, slapping him with fingers and palm, then backhand with the knuckles.

Then someone caning him across his back. Ten strokes.

Finally, he fell forward, hit his head on the stone hearth.

Cashin opened a can of tomato soup and shook the contents into a pot, added milk. Soup eaten with bread and butter. It had been a standard winter evening meal at the Doogues, home-made soup though, full of solid bits, they emptied their bowls.

He should make some proper soup. How hard could it be?

He thought about catching the bus to Cromarty every school day with Bern and Joannie and Craig and Frank, seven of them spread across the back seat, their seat. On the way there, Bern and Barry and Pat mucked around, he finished his homework, Joannie and Craig, the twins, whispered and bickered. On the way home, they were all in high spirits. Then, one by one, Barry, Pat and Bern dropped out and it was just the three of them.

Cashin took the beer back to the chair, wished he had a smoke. How long did the craving last? It would last forever if he kept chipping every chance he got.

He thought about that morning at The Heights-the old man on the floor, the blood, the sour smell. What was the smell? It wasn’t one of the smells of homicide. Blood and piss and shit and alcohol and vomit, they were the smells of homicide.

Why was the painting slashed? What was that about? Why would you bother?

He got up, found Carol Gehrig’s number in his notebook. It rang for no more than three seconds.

‘Hi, Alice here.’

A girl, a teenager, bright voice. She was hoping for a call, hanging out.

‘Is Carol Gehrig in?’

A disappointed silence. ‘Yeah. Mum! Phone.’

There were sounds and then Carol said hello.

‘Joe Cashin. Sorry to bother you again.’

‘No bother.’

‘Carol, the painting at Bourgoyne’s, the cut painting.’

‘Yeah?’ Another disappointed person.

‘Is it still on the wall?’

‘No. I got Starkey to take it down.’

‘Where is it?’

‘I told him to put it in the storeroom.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Next to the old stables. You go through the studio.’

‘Did they ask you about the painting?’

‘The cops? No. I don’t think so.’

‘Why would anyone cut that painting?’

‘Beats me. Pretty awful picture. Sad, sort of.’

MRS MCKENDRICK was in her seventies, gaunt, long-nosed, with grey hair scraped back. On her desk stood a computer. To her left, at eye level, was an easel holding her shorthand notebook. To the right, on the desk in two rows, were containers holding paper clips, split pins, pencils, a stapler, a hole punch, sealing wax.

‘If she hasn’t got anyone with her,’ said Cashin, ‘it’ll only take a few minutes.’

‘This firm asks visitors to make appointments,’ she said, stroking the keyboard.

Cashin looked around the dark room, the prints of stags at bay, lonely waterfalls and hairy highland cattle grazing in the glens, and he found no patience.

‘I’m not a visitor,’ he said. ‘I’m the police. Would you mind leaving the decision to Mrs Addison?’

The tapping stopped. Grey eyes turned on Cashin. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Cecily Addison appeared behind Mrs McKendrick. ‘What’s all this?’ she said. ‘Come in, Joe.’

Cashin followed Cecily into her office. She crossed to the fireplace wall and leaned against the small bookcase, moved around, not much flesh to cushion her weight but no great weight to cushion. ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘What’s the problem?’

He handed her the payments statement. ‘The ones I’ve ringed.’

Cecily’s gaze went down the list. She frowned. ‘Wages, most of these. This I think is the turf club membership. The Melbourne Club this, goes up every year. Credit card bill. Small these days, used to be huge. This is…oh, yes, rates for the North Melbourne property. Wood Street. They go up every year too, don’t know why he hangs onto it. The Companions used the place. I did the conveyance for that.’

‘What kind of place?’

‘It’s a hall. They had concerts there in the beginning, I gather. Music. Plays. It was Companions headquarters.’

Cecily began the search for her cigarettes. Today, a quick find, in a handbag. She plucked one, found the Ronson, it fired at the first click. A deep draw, a grey expulsion, a bout of coughing.

‘Tell me a bit about the Companions,’ said Cashin.

‘Well, the money came from Andrew Beecham. Mean anything?’

‘No.’

‘Andrew’s grandfather owned half of St Kilda at one point. Lords of the city, the Beechams. And the country, a huge property other side Hamilton. It’s broken up now, cut into four, five. They had royals there. The English aristocracy. Sirs and the Honourables. Playing polo.’

Cecily looked at her cigarette, turned her palm upwards, reversed it.

‘Educated in England, the Beechams,’ she said. ‘Nothing else good enough. Not Melbourne Grammar, not Melbourne Uni. Andrew never did a day’s work in his life. Mind you, he won an MC in the war. Then he married a McCutcheon girl, nearly as rich as he was, half his age. She hanged herself in the mansion in Hawthorn and Beecham had a stroke the same day. Paralysed down one side, gimpy leg, gimpy arm. Ended up marrying a nurse from the hospital. After a decent interval, of course.’

Cashin thought that he could understand marrying the nurse from the hospital.

Cecily was looking out of the window. ‘They come to you like angels, nurses,’ she said. ‘I remember my op, waking up, could’ve been on Mars, first thing I saw was this apparition in white…’

Silence.

‘Mrs Addison, the Companions,’ said Cashin.

‘Yes. Raphael Morrison. Heard of him?’

‘No.’

‘He was a bomber pilot, bombed the Germans, Dresden, Hamburg, you know, fried them like ants, women and kids and the old, not many soldiers there. He came home and he had a vision. Teach the young not to make the same mistakes, new world, that kind of thing. Moral improvement. So he started the Companions.’

Cecily covered a yawn with fingertips. ‘Anyhow, Andrew Beecham heard about the Companions from Jock Cameron, they were in the war together. Jock introduced Andrew and Morrison to old man Bourgoyne and he got the bug because of his dead older boys, and that’s why the camp’s where it is. On Bourgoyne land. In the late fifties, I was in the firm then.’

‘Bit lost here. Who’s Jock Cameron?’

‘Pillar of this firm for forty years. Jock got wounded crossing the Rhine. Came out here for his health.’

Cecily stared at Cashin. ‘You look a bit like Charles Bourgoyne,’ she said.

‘So, the Companions.’

‘Lovely family, Jock’s,’ she said. ‘Met them in ′67, we went to England on the Dunedin Star. Never forget those stewards, pillowbiters to a man. They’d come along these narrow passages and rub against my Harry. He didn’t take kindly, I can tell you.’

Cashin looked away, embarrassed. ‘Something else. Jamie Bourgoyne apparently drowned in Tasmania.’

‘Another family tragedy,’ she said, not much breath. ‘First his mother’s death so young.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘She fell down the stairs. The doctor said she was affected by sleeping pills. Tranquillisers, it might have been tranquillisers, I can’t recall. Same night as the Companions fire. Double tragedy.’

‘So Bourgoyne brought up the step-kids?’

‘Well, brought up’s not quite the term. Erica was at school in Melbourne then. Jamie had his own teacher till he was about twelve, I think.’

‘And then?’

‘School in Melbourne. I suppose they came home in the holidays, I don’t know.’

Cashin said his thanks, went out into the day. Ice rain was slanting in under the deep verandahs, almost reaching the shopfronts, soaking the shoes of the few wall-hugging pedestrians. He drove around to the station. Dove’s faxes were on his desk and he started reading.

The phone rang. He heard Wexler being polite.

‘Look after business for ten or so, boss?’ said Wexler, behind him. ‘Shoplift at the super.’

‘I need the union,’ said Cashin. ‘On leave, I can’t come in here without being exploited.’

He was on the sixth page when Wexler returned, looking pleased.

‘Took a while, boss,’ he said. ‘This woman, she’s got no idea the two little kiddies in the cart got stuff up their anoraks, chockies and that. The owners, they jump on her like she’s some…’

‘Sores?’ said Cashin. He couldn’t remember her name. He touched the corners of his mouth.

Wexler blinked. ‘Yeah. Like little blisters, yeah.’

The first name came. ‘Jadeen something?’

Eyes widened. ‘Jadeen Reed.’

‘Jadeen’s just run out of supermarkets in this town. Shopping’s in Cromarty from now on.’

Wexler kept blinking. ‘Get it wrong, did I, boss?’

‘Well,’ said Cashin, ‘Jadeen might have enough problems without a shoplifting charge.’

He left the station, bought the papers at the newsagent, avoided conversation, walked down to the Dublin. Two short-haired elderly women were at the counter, paying. They nodded and smiled at him. Either they were on the march or they’d seen him on television or both.

Leon thanked them for their patronage. When the door closed, he said, ‘So, now retired due to post-traumatic stress caused by the march of toddlers and the aged? Looking forward to a life on the disability pension?’

‘Long black, please. Long and strong.’

At the machine, Leon said, ‘On that note, I see you and Bobby Walshe are school chums.’

‘Kenmare Primary. Survivors.’

‘And on to Cromarty High, you two boys?’

‘Bobby left. Went to Sydney.’

‘So you’ll be voting for your other spunky school chum. Helen of Troilism.’

‘Of what?’

‘Troilism. Threesomes.’ Leon was admiring the crema on his creation. ‘Try under T in the cop manual. It’s probably a crime in Queensland. She’s standing in Cromarty for Bobby’s all-purpose party.’

‘You see that where?’

‘The local rag. I’ve got it here.’

Leon found a copy of the newspaper, opened it to the page. There was a small photograph of Helen Castleman. It did not flatter. The headline said:

SOLICITOR TO STAND FOR NEW PARTY

‘Did it cross your mind,’ Leon said, leaning on the counter, ‘that our lives are just like stories kids tell you? They get the and-then-and-then right, and then they run out of steam and just stop.’

‘You’ve got kids?’ It had not occurred to Cashin.

‘Two,’ said Leon.

Cashin felt a sense of unfairness. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t think about your life that way. Maybe you shouldn’t think about your life at all. Just make the coffee.’

‘I can’t help thinking about it,’ said Leon. ‘When I was growing up I was going to be a doctor, do good things, save lives. A life with a purpose. I wasn’t going to be like my father.’

‘What was wrong with him?’

‘He was an accountant. Dudded his clients, the little old ladies, the pensioners. One day he didn’t come home. I was nine, he didn’t come back till I was fourteen. Not a single word from him. I used to hope he’d come on my birthday. Then he arrived…anyway, forget it, I get maudlin in winter. Vitamin D deficiency, drink too much.’

‘Why can’t dentists have a purpose?’

Leon shook his head. ‘Ever heard anyone appeal for a dentist to come forward?’

‘My feeling,’ said Cashin, ‘is that you’re being a bit hard on yourself.’

CASHIN WAS looking into the fridge, thinking about what to cook for supper when the phone on the counter rang.

‘Get anywhere with the matter we discussed?’ said Helen Castleman.

‘I had the chat with them, yes,’ said Cashin.

‘So?’

‘It’s worth thinking about.’

‘Just thinking?’

‘A manner of speaking.’

Silence.

‘I don’t know how to take you, detective,’ she said.

‘Why’s that?’

‘I don’t know whether you want the right result.’

‘What’s the right result?’

‘The truth’s the right result.’

Cashin looked at the dogs, splendid before the fire. They felt his gaze, raised heads, looked at him, sighed and sagged.

‘You’d be good in parliament,’ said Cashin. ‘Raise all the standards. The looks, the average IQ.’

‘Blind Freddy’s dog’s got a better chance of getting into parliament,’ she said. ‘I’m standing to give some choice in this redneck town. Moving on. What are you doing then?’

‘Working on the matter.’

‘Is that you or the homicide squad?’

‘I can’t speak for the homicide squad. There’s no great…’

‘Great what?’

‘I forget. Interrupting me does that. I’m on leave. Out of touch.’

‘And you’ve no doubt worn a path between your mansion and the illegal fence on my property.’

‘There’s a pre-existing path. Historical path to the historical boundary.’

‘Well, I’m coming up it,’ Helen said. ‘I want to see your eyes when you talk this vague bullshit.’

‘That’s also a manner of speaking, is it?’ said Cashin.

‘It is not. I’ll be there in… in however long it takes. I’ll be inspecting my boundary on the way.’

‘What, now?’

‘Setting out this very minute.’

‘Dark soon.’

‘Not that soon. And I’ve got a torch.’

‘Snakes are a problem.’

‘I’m not scared of snakes. Mate.’

‘Rats. Big water rats. And land rats.’

‘Well, eek, eek, bloody eek. Four-legged rats don’t scare me. I’m on my way.’

IN THE FADING afternoon, he saw the red jacket a long way off, a matchflare in the gathering gloom. Then the dogs sniffed her on the wind and took off, ran dead straight. They monstered her but she kept her hands in her pockets, no more scared of dogs than of snakes or rats.

When they met, Helen offered a hand in a formal way. She looked scrubbed, fresh out of the shower, colour on her cheekbones. ‘I suppose you could charge me with trespass,’ she said.

‘I’ll keep that in reserve,’ said Cashin. ‘Let me walk in front, lots of holes. I don’t want to be sued.’

He turned and walked.

‘Very legalistic meeting this,’ said Helen.

‘I don’t know about a meeting. More like an interview.’

They walked up the slope in silence. At the gate, Cashin whistled the dogs in and they appeared from different directions.

‘Highly trained animals,’ she said.

‘Hungry animals. It’s supper time.’

At the back door, he said, ‘I’m not apologising for the place. It’s a ruin. I live in a ruin.’

They went in, down the passage to the big room.

‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘What room is this?’

‘The ballroom. I have the balls in here.’

Cashin shunted the dogs into the kitchen, led the way to the rooms he lived in, cringed at the half-stripped wallpaper, the cracked plaster, the piles of newspapers.

‘This is where you go after the balls,’ said Helen. ‘The less formal room. It’s warm.’

‘This is where we withdraw to,’ he said. ‘The withdrawing room.’ He had read the term somewhere, hadn’t known it before Rai Sarris, that was certain.

Helen looked at him, nodding in an appraising way, biting her lower lip. ‘My embarrassment about this visit has been growing,’ she said. ‘I get so angry.’

Cashin cleared newspapers from a chair, dropped them on the floor. ‘Now that you’re here,’ he said, ‘have a seat.’

She sat down.

He didn’t know what to do next. He said, awkward, ‘Time to feed the dogs. Tea, coffee? A drink?’

‘Is that the choice for the dogs? Do I get to choose? Give them tea. And a bickie.’

‘Right. What about you?’

‘A drink like what?’ She was taking off her coat, looking around the room, at the sound equipment, the CD racks, the bookshelf.

‘Well, beer. Red wine. Rum, there’s Bundy. Coffee with Bundy is good on a cold day, that’s every day. With a small shot. A big shot, that’s good too.’

‘A medium shot. Do you do that?’

‘We can try. Tend to extremes here. It’s coffee made in a plunger. Warmed up.’

The light caught her hair, shiny. ‘Very good. That’s a big advance on what I usually drink.’

By the time he’d fed the dogs, the coffee was hot. He poured big hits of rum into mugs and filled up with coffee, picked the mugs up in one hand, sugar in the other, went back.

Helen was looking at the CDs. ‘This is heavy stuff,’ she said.

‘For a cop, you mean?’

‘I was speaking for myself. My father played opera all the time. I hated it. Never listened properly, I suppose. I’m a bad listener.’

He gave her a mug. ‘A bit of sugar takes the edge off it,’ he said.

‘I’ll be guided by you.’

He spooned sugar into her mug, stirred, did his mug. ‘Cheers.’

She shuddered. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘I like this.’

They sat.

‘It’s been a sad business,’ she said, eyes on the fire.

‘No question.’

‘I’m feeling bad about this because I think you think I’m trying to use you in some way.’

Barks.

‘Mind the dogs?’ he said. ‘They won’t bother you.’

‘Let slip the dogs.’

Cashin took her mug, let them in. They charged Helen. She wasn’t alarmed. He spoke sternly and they went to the firebox and sank, heads on paws.

‘It’s not an interview, Joe,’ she said. ‘I want to talk about what’s going on, it’s not like I’m wearing a wire. To say what I think, I think the government’s happy to see Bourgoyne pinned on these boys if it helps politically.’

‘No politics about homicide.’

‘No?

‘No one’s talked politics to me.’

‘There should be a taskforce on this. Instead, there’s you and Dove, you go on leave, not suspended, on leave. Dove’s back in Melbourne. And you tell me you haven’t been told this thing’s filed under Forget It?’

Cashin didn’t want to lie to her.

‘I understand the idea is to let things cool down,’ he said. ‘The man’s dead, the boys are dead, we’re not pressed for time. It’s hard to investigate when you’ve got people full of rage. Who’s going to talk to you?’

‘That’s the Daunt you’re talking about?’

‘The Daunt.’

She drank. ‘Joe,’ she said, ‘do you accept that it’s possible that the boys didn’t attack Bourgoyne?’

The firebox didn’t need stoking. He got up and stoked it. Then he put on Björling. The balance had drifted slighty. He fiddled with the controls. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s possible.’

‘Well, if it wasn’t the boys, you don’t have to worry about the Daunt cooling off. You don’t have to clear the boys before you look elsewhere, do you?’

‘Helen, I’m seconded from homicide to Port Monro. They were stretched and they drafted me. Then things happened.’

‘Did Hopgood have any say?’

Cashin sat down. ‘Why would he?’

‘Because he runs Cromarty. I’m told the station commander doesn’t go to the toilet without Hopgood’s nod.’

‘Well, I’m in Port Monro. Maybe you hear things I don’t hear.’

They looked at each other over their mugs. She did a slow blink.

‘Joe, people say he’s a killer.’

‘A killer? Who says that?’

‘Daunt people.’

Cashin thought he would believe anything about Hopgood. He looked away. ‘People say anything about cops, it’s the job.’

‘You’ve got Aboriginal family, haven’t they told you?’

‘The people I’m related to see me as just another white maggot cop,’ he said. ‘But you wouldn’t understand that. Let’s talk about rich white kids who want to run the world.’

Helen closed her eyes. ‘Not called for. I’ll start again. People say Corey Pascoe was executed that night. You were there. What do you say?’

‘I’ll say what I have to say to the coroner.’

‘You tried to call it off.’

‘Did I?’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘You get that from where?’

‘It doesn’t matter for present purposes.’

‘For present purposes? There aren’t any present purposes. Anyway, the coroner will decide what people did and didn’t do.’

‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘I can’t seem to get this right. Can you relax for a single fucking second?’

He felt the flare, the flush.

‘I think you’re just spoilt,’ he said. ‘You come over with all this passion but you’re just a rich smart brat. If you can’t get what you want, you stamp your little shoe. Well, go to the media. Get the girl to tell them the watch story. You can be on television. It’ll help your campaign. Yours and Bobby’s both.’

Helen got up, put her mug on the wonky table, picked up her coat. ‘Well, thanks for seeing me. And for the fortified coffee.’

‘Any time.’

Cashin got up and walked ahead, through the huge room with its sprung floorboards that uttered faint mouse-like complaints. Outside, a three-quarter moon, high clouds, dispersed and running. He said, ‘I’ll walk with you.’

‘No thanks,’ she said, pushing an arm into her coat. ‘I can find my way.’

‘I’ll walk to my fence,’ said Cashin. ‘I want to be a witness to any alleged slips and falls.’

He took the big torch from the peg and went ahead. She followed in silence, down the path, out the gate, across the grassland, into the rabbit lands. Near her fence, he moved the torch and eyes gleamed- four, no, more.

He stopped.

Hares. Transfixed, immobilised hares. The dogs would love this, he thought.

‘Dogs would like this,’ she said behind him.

He half-turned. She was close behind him, they were centimetres apart.

‘No, can’t take the dogs out with a light. Hares don’t stand a chance.’

She took a small step, put a hand on the back of his head and kissed him on the mouth, pulled back and then kissed him again.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Just an impulse.’

She went around him, switched on her torch. He didn’t move, astonished, half-erect, light on her, watched her stoop through the wires of the sagging side fence that met his new corner post, start to climb the slope, fade into the dark, become a moving, rising light. She didn’t look back.

Cashin stood there for a time, fingers on his lips, thinking about the night at the Kettle, the other long-ago kisses, two kisses. He shivered, just the cold night.

Why did she do it?

WOOD STREET in North Melbourne was a short dead-end, narrow, blank factory walls on one side facing five thin weatherboard houses. At the end of the street stood a brick building modelled on a Greek temple, no windows, four pillars and a triangular gable. It was a hall of some kind, like a Masonic hall, but the gable was blank.

Cashin drove slowly, angle-parked in front of unmarked roller doors. He didn’t get out, thought about driving all the way for no good reason, about how he could agonise about some things for days and weeks and months but do others with no consideration at all.

Vickie had spotted it early, when he’d come home one day driving a second-hand Audi. ‘You work it all out intelligently, don’t you?’ she said. ‘Think it through. Then you just do something, anything. You might as well be a total fuckwit, what’s the difference in outcomes?’

She was right. That was why Shane Diab was dead, that was why the blood ran out of his mouth and his nose and his eyes and he made terrible sounds and died.

Cashin got out, walked around the vehicle. The floor of the narrow portico of the temple was hidden beneath mouldy dog turds, dumped junk mail returning to pulp, syringes, beer stubbies, cans, bourbon bottles, condoms, pieces of clothing, bits of styrofoam, a rigid beach towel, a length of exhaust pipe.

He went up the two steps, walked over the rubbish to the huge metal-studded double doors. They bore the scars of many attacks. A bell button had been gouged out but the cast-iron knocker had survived. He bashed it against its buffer-once, twice, thrice. He waited, did it again. Again. Again. Then he knelt and pushed back the letterbox flap. Dark inside. He felt eyes on him, stood and turned.

A woman was on the front doorstep of the nearest weatherboard, tortoise head peeping from a shell of garments, the top one a huge floral apron.

‘Whaddayadoin?’ she said.

Cashin went down the steps, approached her. ‘Police.’

‘Yeah? Show me.’

He showed her. ‘Who looks after this place?’

‘Hey?’

‘This building.’ He pointed at it. ‘Who looks after it?’

‘Ah. Used to be a bloke. Never come out the front. Never seed him open that door.’ She sniffed, wiped a finger under her nose, studied Cashin in silence, unblinking.

‘So how did you know he was in there?’ he said.

‘Merv’s got a garage there, he seed him.’

‘A garage where?’

She looked at him as if he were slow. ‘In the lane. I said that.’

‘Right. How do you get to the lane?’

‘Next to Wolf’s.’

‘Where’s Wolf’s?’

‘Well it’s in Tilbrook Street. Where’d ya think it would it be?’

‘Thanks for your help.’

She watched him three-point turn, drive off. He waved. She didn’t respond. In Tilbrook Street, he found the sunken lane, just wide enough for a vehicle. He parked in the entrance and walked along the bluestone gutter running down the middle, looking on the left for the entrance to the back of the temple.

It had to be the plank door with the rotten bottom beside the rusted steel garage doors. Yale lock, no door handle. He put both hands on the door and pushed tentatively. It didn’t yield. He tested the right-hand gatepost, it gave a little.

Knocking was required. He knocked, called the name, did it again. Then he looked up and down the lane, stepped into the gateway, braced his back against a gatepost, put a foot on the opposite post, pushed against it and leant on the door.