The Broken Shore

The door squeaked open and he almost fell in.

Forcible entry, no warrant.

An alley four or five metres long, brick walls on either side, a rubbish bin. Cashin walked to the end. A concreted yard, a rectangle behind a high wall broken only by three small windows and a door. At the left were washing lines, empty.

He went to the door in the building, stood on the top step and knocked, three times, harder each time, hurting his knuckles.

He tried the doorknob. Locked. Another Yale lock, a newer one.

The lane door was one thing, that could be explained away. Forcing entry into a building was another matter. He should ring Villani, tell him what he wanted, what he was doing here.

He examined the door. It had shrunk over the hundred-odd years of its life, no longer fitted snugly into its frame. When you fitted a new lock to an old door, you needed to compensate for the years. That hadn’t been done. He bent to look. He glimpsed the lock’s tongue.

Go away, said the voice of sense. Leave. Ring Villani. Get a warrant.

That would take forever. Villani would take his guide from Singo, he would cite Singo. He would want a proper case made for the intrusion.

Cashin thought that he wanted to go home, walk the dogs in the clean wind, lie on the floor for a while, sit by the fire and listen to Callas, roll red wine around his mouth while he read some Conrad.

He took out his wallet and found the thin, narrow piece of plastic. For a moment, he held it between thumbs and forefingers, bending it. It was strong, just enough flex.

Oh, well, what the hell, come this far.

The lozenge went in easily, slid around the tongue, pushed it back just enough. He put pressure on the door.

The tongue slipped its lodging.

The door opened.

Light fell on a wide passage, linoleum on the floor, black and white squares, he could see the lines of the boards beneath the covering. He took a step inside. The air was cold and stale, scrabbling noises from above. Birds. They would be starlings, no roof could keep them out. In a few weeks, they could insulate a ceiling with crap.

‘Anyone home?’ he shouted.

He took a few more steps down the passage, shouted again. No sound, the starlings paused for a few seconds.

Cashin opened the first door on the left. It was a bathroom and toilet, a shower head above the old claw-footed bath. A cabinet above the basin was empty except for a dry cake of soap.

The next door along was open: a kitchen, ancient gas stove, bare pine table, an empty vegetable rack.

Cashin crossed the passage. The room on the other side was a bedroom-a single bed, made with white sheets, a bedside table, a lamp. Two folded blankets stood on a pine chest of drawers. Nothing in the drawers. Cashin opened a narrow wardrobe. It was empty except for wire coathangers.

The next room was the same, a single bed with a striped coir mattress and a table. Across the way, the door opened reluctantly. Clicking the light switch on the right showed an office with a desk and a chair and a grey three-drawer filing cabinet and a wall of wooden shelves holding grey lever-arch files. Cashin touched the bare desk. His fingers came away coated with dust.

He went to the shelves. There were labelled, handwritten cards in brass holders tacked to each shelf: General Correspondence, Correspondence Q’land, Correspondence WA, Correspondence SA, Correspondence Vic. The Vic shelf was bare. Other shelves were labelled Invoices. Nothing on the Invoices Vic shelf. He chose a file from Correspondence WA, flicked through it. Originals and carbon copies and photostats of letters to and from the Companions Camp, Caves Road, Busselton, Western Australia.

Cashin replaced the file, opened a desk drawer.

Used cheque books, in bundles held together with rubber bands, some of which had perished. He took out a book, looked at a few stubs. All the Moral Companions’ bills appeared to have been paid from this place.

He closed the drawer, left the room, opened the door at the end of the passage. Darkness. He groped, found the switch, three fluorescent tubes took their time flickering into life. Another passage, transverse, three doors off it. Cashin opened the first one, found switches, one two, three, flicked them all. On the wall opposite, a few lightbulbs lit up around mirrors.

It was a theatre dressing room. He had been in one before, the woman’s body was in the toilet. It had been there for sixteen hours. She appeared to have fallen and struck her head against the bowl some time after the last performance of a play by an amateur group. There had been a party. What set the bells ringing was a bruise on the back of her head. The play was written by a doctor. Singo wanted him and they flame-grilled him but in the end there was nothing except an admission that he’d screwed another cast member.

Cashin checked the other rooms. Also small dressing rooms. Two bulbs popped in the second one as he flicked the switches. He walked back, opened a door, went down a long flight of stairs, another door.

A big room, dimly lit by dusty windows high on the walls. He took a few steps.

It was a theatre from another time, longer than it was wide, slightly raked, about thirty rows of seats, all uptilted. To his left, a short flight of steps went up to the stage.

One more time. ‘Anyone here?’ he shouted. ‘Police.’

Starlings up above here too and, from the street, the sound of a car revving, the test-revving of mechanics.

A smell over the dust and the faint odour of damp coming up from beneath the floor. Cashin sniffed, could not identify it. He had smelled it somewhere before and he felt a tightening of the skin on his face and neck.

He walked to the back of the room and pushed open one of a pair of doors. Beyond was a small marble-floored foyer and the front doors. He went back, climbed the stairs to the stage, pushed aside heavy purple velvet curtains. He was in the wings, a dark space, the bare-boarded stage glimpsed through gaps in tall pieces of scenery.

Cashin went to an opening.

Sand had been dumped on the stage, clean building sand, in heaps and splashes.

Sand?

He saw the buckets at the back of the space, three red buckets with FIRE stencilled on them. Someone had emptied the fire buckets onto the stage, thrown the sand around.

Hoons? Hoons wouldn’t limit themselves to throwing sand around, they’d trash the whole place, pull down the curtains, shit on the stage, piss off it, jump on the seats till they broke, rip them from their moorings, light fires.

Not hoons, no. This wasn’t hooning.

Something else had happened here.

He walked out onto the stage, could not avoid treading on sand, it crunched beneath his feet, a startlingly loud sound. At centre stage, he looked around. Dust motes hung in their millions in the pale yellow glow from the windows

There would be stage lighting. Where?

In the wings, he looked around, found a panel near the stairs with switches-four old-fashioned round porcelain switches, brass toggles. He tipped them all, solid clicks, the stage was illuminated.

He walked back onto the stage. A spotlight above the arch now lit a painted backdrop and perhaps a dozen footlight bulbs were alight. As he watched, two died, a moment, then a third was gone. He looked at the backdrop. It was of a soft rolling landscape, farm buildings here and there, white dots of grazing sheep, a yellow road snaking over the plain and up a hill, a green, softly rounded hill. On its peak stood three crosses, two small ones flanking a cross twice their size.

Cashin went closer. Crucified figures hung from the smaller crosses. But the big cross was empty. It was waiting for someone. He looked at the sand on the floor in front of the backdrop.

Why would anyone throw sand on the stage? To put out a fire? Perhaps someone had started a fire, poured an inflammable fluid on the floorboards, lit it, then panicked, grabbed a fire bucket, smothered the flames.

That was the obvious explanation.

Hoons lit fires.

But they didn’t put them out.

He moved sand with a shoe, scraped at it. The bottom grains were dark, stuck together, they came away in clumps. He scraped some more, revealed the boards.

A black stain. He felt a twinge of nausea, the cold in his neck, the back of his head, his ears.

Something bad had happened here.

Time to ring the squad, wait in the vehicle.

He squatted and put out an index finger, touched the floor, looked at his fingertip.

Blood.

He knew blood.

How old? The sand had trapped the moisture.

He stood up, back aching, flexed his shoulders, he was facing the auditorium, the spotlight on, the footlights in his eyes, he could not see the hall clearly.

He saw it.

ALL THE seats in the hall were turned up.

Except for one seat. Six rows back, in the middle of the sixth row.

One seat was down. In the whole auditorium only one seat was down.

Someone had sat on that seat. Someone had chosen that seat. It was the best seat in the house to see something.

To see what?

Nonsense. The seat had probably fallen down, seats did that, everything did that, falling down was a law of nature. You lined up a dozen things that could fall over, at least one did.

Cashin left the stage, went down the stairs, walked down the aisle until he was at the sixth row, took out his mobile and rang homicide.

‘Joe Cashin. Is Inspector Villani in?’

‘He’s on the phone. No, he’s off. Putting you through.’

Villani barked his surname. He sounded more like Singo every day.

‘It’s Joe. Listen, I’m in this hall place in North Melbourne, something’s happened here needs looking at.’

Villani coughed. ‘Is this Joe from Port Monro? Calling from North Melbourne? On a trip to the big city, Joe? Go ahead, tell us what’s on your mind.’

‘Here’s the address,’ said Cashin.

‘What the fuck’s this?’

‘There’s blood here, not old.’

‘What’s this about?’

‘Bourgoyne.’

‘Bourgoyne?’

‘I think so. Yes.’

‘In North Melbourne?’

‘It’s complicated, okay? I’m just reporting this, I’ll ring CrimeStoppers if you like. You like?’

‘Well that sounds so fucking urgent and imperative I’ll drop everything and come myself. What’s the address?’

Cashin told him, ended the call. He stood looking at the stage, at the backdrop of an idealised Calvary. Then he walked down the row of seats and up the hall to the stairs on the other side of the stage, climbed them, stood in the dark space beside the stage.

The smell, he knew it. Stronger here. The cold came back to his neck and shoulders and he shivered.

It was the smell in Bourgoyne’s sitting room that morning.

He sniffed, looked around, realised he was clenching his teeth. To his left, against the wall, he made out a cast-iron wheel with two handles at right angles. He stepped closer. A cable ran up from behind the wheel, into the darkness. The cable was wrapped around a drum and behind that was a ratchet-wheel with a steel pawl engaged.

It took a moment to work out.

The cable raised and lowered the scenery, the painted backdrops. The ratchet-wheel controlled the process. It ensured that the scenery couldn’t come crashing down.

There was something behind the cable, between the cable and the wall. Cashin put out a hand, tugged at it.

A piece of cloth, wadded, stiff but still damp.

The smell. He did not need to sniff the towel. Vinegar. It was a kitchen towel soaked in vinegar.

He held it to the light from the stage. It was dark.

Blood.

The questions came without thought. Why was the ratchet-wheel locked? Why was the cable taut?

He pulled back on the iron wheel and the pawl on the ratchet-wheel disengaged. He let the wheel run, the pawl click-clicked, the cable was paying out.

Metallic creaks. A piece of scenery was coming down.

He looked out between the slats, at the piece of stage he could see.

Oh, Jesus.

Bare feet, dark, swollen legs, rivulets of dried blood running down them, striping them, matted pubic hair, a torso dark, the arms upraised, a black hole beneath the ribs, in the side…

Cashin let go the wheel. The pawl engaged, the cable stopped paying out.

The thin, naked, blood-caked body moved gently.

Cashin walked down the hall, into the foyer, unlocked the front door, went out into the cold toxic city air, stood on the top step and breathed it deeply.

A silver car turned into the street, drove down the middle, straight at him, stopped two metres away with front wheels touching the kerb, no concern for angle parking.

The front doors opened. Villani and Finucane got out, pale and black as undertakers, eyes on him.

‘What?’ said Villani. ‘What?’

‘Inside,’ said Cashin.

THE THREE of them sat in the big untidy room on the seventh floor, desks pushed together, files on every surface, a concert of phone sounds-trings, warbles, silly little tunes.

‘Like old times,’ said Birkerts. ‘Us sitting here. Any minute Singo comes through the door.’

‘I fucking wish,’ said Villani. He sighed, ran fingers through his hair. ‘Jesus, got to get out to see him. Guilt building up on all fronts. The things left undone.’

Cashin thought Villani looked even more tired than the last time, when they drank wine beyond midnight in his son’s room.

‘Talking undone,’ said Birkerts. ‘Did I tell you this Fenton bloke’s got form for flashing? Out there in the sticks in Clunes, near Ballarat. At Wesley girls.’

‘Wesley girls? In Clunes?’

‘The school’s got something there. Outreach program, the rich kids help the rural poor, give them hints on cooking the cheaper cuts.’

‘Freezing place,’ said Cashin. ‘Check his dick for frostbite.’

‘One sick, pathetic case at a time,’ said Villani. ‘Dr Colley says this bloke on the stage had his hands tied. No clothes on, he’s been jacked up on the winch thing and he’s been tortured, cut all over, front and back, stabbed, blood everywhere. Gag in the mouth, like a bit, it’s a handkerchief, there’s another one stuffed in his mouth. Then he’s been winched right up into the roof. At some point, he died, possibly choked to death. We’ll know in the morning.’

‘He sat there and watched him hanging,’ said Birkerts. ‘Bleeding.’

Finucane came in with Dove, who nodded at Cashin. The seated men all looked at Finucane.

‘Found the bloke’s clothes,’ he said. ‘In a plastic bag in a rubbish bin. Keys in the pocket.’

‘ID?’ said Villani.

Finucane showed his palms. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘No prints either. No one around there saw anything. Been through the missing reports, no one like him there, not in the last month. We’ll hear about his prints soonest.’ He looked at his watch. ‘His picture’s on the news in five minutes, may help.’

Villani turned his head to Cashin. ‘So tell everyone.’

‘The hall was the headquarters of something called the Moral Companions,’ said Cashin. ‘A charity. Once they ran camps for poor kids, orphans, state wards. Camps in Queensland and Western Australia. Bourgoyne was a supporter. He owned the land they built a camp on outside Port Monro and he owned the hall.’

‘What happened to them?’ said Finucane.

‘There was a fire at the Port Monro camp in 1983. Three dead. They packed it in.’

‘So what’s the connection between Bourgoyne and this bloke?’ said Birkerts.

‘I don’t know,’ said Cashin. ‘But I smelled vinegar that morning at Bourgoyne’s.’

‘No cloth found there,’ said Villani.

‘Took it with him,’ said Cashin.

‘Why’d he leave it this time?’

Cashin shrugged. He was tired, a girdle of pain around his hips, hours spent waiting for forensic to finish.

‘Vinegar,’ said Birkerts. ‘What’s with vinegar?’

‘They gave me gall to eat: and when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink,’ said Dove.

‘What?’ said Villani. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s from the Book of Common Prayer. A psalm, I forget which one.’

No one said anything. Dove coughed, embarrassed. Cashin registered the ringing phones, the electronic humming, the sound of a television next door, the traffic noises from below.

Villani got up, stretched his arms above his head, palms to the ceiling, eyes closed. ‘Joe, this Moral shit,’ he said. ‘That’s religious, is it?’

‘Sort of. Started by an ex-priest called Raphael something. Morris. Morrison. After World War II. He had a life-changing experience.’

‘I need that,’ said Villani.

‘Got some nice new suits,’ said Cashin. ‘Ties too. That’s a start.’

‘Purely cosmetic,’ said Villani. ‘I’m unchanged, believe me. The telly, Fin.’

It was the third item on the news. The media hadn’t been given much: just a dead man found in a hall in North Melbourne, nothing about him being gagged and tortured, hung naked above a stage.

The man’s face was on the screen, clean, almost alive, lights in his eyes. He had been handsome once, longish straight hair combed back, bags under his eyes, deep lines from nose to thin-lipped mouth.

The man is aged in his sixties. His hair is dyed dark brown. Anyone knowing his identity or who has any information about him is asked to call CrimeStoppers on 990 897 897.

‘He scrubbed up well,’ said Finucane.

‘Purely cosmetic,’ said Birkerts. ‘He’s still dead.’

They watched the rest of the news, saw Villani make an appearance to say nothing on the subject of another gangland killing, touch the corner of an eye, his mouth.

‘Bit of Al Pacino, bit of Clint Eastwood,’ said Cashin. ‘Dynamite cocktail, may I say?’

‘You may fuck off,’ said Villani. ‘Just fuck off.’

‘Boss?’

Tracy Wallace, the analyst, a thin worried face.

‘A woman, boss, transferred from CrimeStoppers. The dead bloke.’

Villani looked at Cashin. ‘You take it, skipper,’ he said. ‘You seem to know what’s going on.’

Cashin went to the telephone.

‘Mrs Roberta Condi,’ said Tracy. ‘She lives in North Melbourne.’

He didn’t have to write, Tracy had the headphones on.

‘Hello, Mrs Condi,’ said Cashin. ‘Thanks for calling. Can you help us?’

‘That’s Mr Pollard. The bloke on the telly. I know him.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Cashin, his eyes closed.

CASHIN PUT the green key in the lock, turned.

‘The home of the late Arthur Pollard,’ he said and opened the door.

The terrace house was dark, cold. It took him a while to find a light switch.

An overhead lamp came on, two globes lit a sitting room, furniture that was modern in the 1970s. A newspaper was on the coffee table. Cashin went over and looked at the date. ‘Four days ago,’ he said.

Off the sitting room was a bedroom-a double bed tightly made, no bedspread, a wardrobe with two mirrors, a chest of drawers, shoes in a wire rack. A passage led to another room with a single bed, a desk, a chair and a bookcase.

Cashin looked at the book spines. All paperbacks. Crime novels, disaster novels, novels with golden titles on the spines. Bought from second-hand shops, he thought.

‘Neat kitchen,’ said Dove from the door.

Cashin followed him down the passage to a 1950s kitchen: a single bare light bulb with a green shade, an enamelled gas stove, an Electrolux fridge with round shoulders and a portable radio on a formica-topped metal table. On the sink stood a blue-and-white striped mug, upside down.

‘Like a monk,’ Cashin said. He went to the sink and tried to look out of the window but all he could see was the reflection of the sad room.

Dove clicked switches beside the back door and a powerful floodlight lit the straight rain falling on a concrete yard. It ran to a brick wall with a steel door. Beside the party wall, a single washline held soaked washing: three shirts and three pairs of underpants.

‘There’s a lane at the back,’ said Dove. ‘That must be the garage door.’

They went outside, Cashin first, he felt the wet, slippery concrete underfoot. No key on Pollard’s ring would unlock the steel door.

‘I’ll try the door in the lane,’ said Dove. He took the keys.

Cashin waited in the house, looked around. In the desk drawers, he found folders with bank statements, power, gas, telephone and rates bills. There was nothing personal-no letters, photographs, no tapes or CDs. Nothing spoke of Arthur Pollard as a human being with a history, with likes and dislikes, except the four cans of baked beans in tomato sauce and a half-empty bottle of whisky and an empty one in the bin.

Dove came in. ‘Not a garage anymore,’ he said. ‘Door’s bricked up.’

Dove’s mobile rang. He exchanged a few words, phrases, and gave the phone to Cashin. ‘The boss,’ he said.

‘We need the big key here,’ said Cashin. ‘Sesame. And not tomorrow.’

‘How come you give all the orders and you are on long-term secondment from homicide?’ said Villani.

‘Someone’s got to be in charge.’

They waited in the car, streetlights streaming down the windscreen. Cashin found the classical station. His thoughts drifted to home, to the dark ruined house under the wet hill, to the dogs. Rebb would have fed them by now, he didn’t have to be asked. They would all be in the shed, the dogs sacked out, drying, the three of them around the old potbelly stove, the rusty shearers’ stove not fired for at least thirty years before Rebb, the warmth moving through the building, awakening old smells-lanolin, bacon fat, the rank sweat of tired men now dead.

‘This could be coincidence,’ said Dove.

‘Maybe you should’ve stayed with the feds,’ said Cashin.

A van’s lights came around the corner. The driver nosed along, looking. Cashin got out and raised a hand.

The two men in overalls followed them through Pollard’s arid house. It was quick.

One man opened a builder’s bag and took out an angular piece of metal with a mushroom head. He held it to the garage door jamb, level with the lock. The locksmith tapped it with a sledgehammer, brisk taps, getting harder. When the chisel was wedged, he stood back, flexed his wrists.

‘Open Sesame,’ he said, swung the hammer like an axe, administered a clean blow to the mushroom, made a sound like a gunshot.

The steel door burst open, hell-dark within.

CASHIN FOUND the switches.

A white-painted room, carpeted floor, windowless. Stale air. Against one wall stood a trestle table with a computer tower, a flat-screen monitor, a printer and a scanner. Next to it were a grey metal filing cabinet and three metal shelf units, four shelves each, the kind sold in hardware shops. The shelves were neat: four for video tapes, four for CDs and DVDs, the others for folders, books, magazines.

Against the door wall was a double bed with a purple sateen quilt and big shiny red pillows. A big-screen television was on a table at the foot, a video player and a DVD player stacked beside it. Beside it stood a tripod. On all the walls were posters-pictures of muscular half-naked men: athletes, bodybuilders, kickboxers, swimmers.

Dove opened the filing cabinet. ‘Digital still camera,’ he said. ‘Digital video camera.’

He closed the drawer, went to the computer, sat down, pressed a button on the tower. ‘Give you a feeling, this?’ he said.

Cashin didn’t say anything. He found a remote control and fiddled with it, switched on the television, got fuzz, pressed buttons.

Vision.

Something filling the screen. It looked like a smooth-skinned vegetable, an eggplant perhaps, the camera moved. An opening, a hole. It was not a vegetable.

The camera drew back.

A face, a young face, a boy. His mouth was open, top teeth showing. There was fear in his eyes.

Cashin pressed the OFF button.

‘Look at this shit,’ said Dove.

Cashin looked for a minute or two.

‘Can’t be more than twelve,’ said Dove. ‘Tops.’

‘I’m going home now,’ said Cashin. They were at the door when he noticed the two white mugs with yellow spots on the table beside the computer. The tag of a teabag hung over the side of one.

‘Had a cup of tea,’ he said.

Dove looked back. ‘One liked it strong.’

In the car, Cashin spoke to Villani.

‘Not surprised,’ said Villani. ‘Pollard’s got form. Sex offences against minors. One gig suspended, done one. Six months. What’s there apart from the kiddy-porn chamber?’

‘Bank statements, phone bills.’

‘Why didn’t you stay at home? Stir up all this shit, nobody to do the work.’

‘The thought occurred to me.’

‘Anyway, I’ve got a whole house for you to crash in. No one there except me from time to time. You sleep, do you? At some point?’

‘Don’t project your problems onto me, mate. Any more of that bribe wine?’

‘Maybe.’

Before he fell asleep, Cashin saw the vile room, saw on the table the two cheerful spotted mugs, and he put his head beneath the pillow and concentrated on his breathing.

DOVE WAS waiting, reading the Herald. He folded it, put it on the back seat. ‘Nice to be your driver. I’ve got something on Bourgoyne’s watch.’

‘Presumably came in a cleft stick, the runners went via Broome,’ said Cashin.

Dove’s expression didn’t change. ‘Bourgoyne bought a Breitling watch from a shop called Cozzen’s in Collins Street in 1984. Then six years ago he bought another one.’

Carol Gehrig had described the watch. The girl on the pier, Susie, she had only given the name. Bretling, she said. Why hadn’t he asked her to describe the watch? Singo would have closed his eyes, shaken his head: ‘You didn’t ask? Would you like that engraved on your tombstone? I didn’t ask.’

Had the pawnbroker in Sydney described the watch the boys offered him that day? Had a cop taken it down? Pawnbrokers had the eye, they knew value, it was their miserable job. ‘The shop can describe the watches?’ Cashin said.

‘Well, I suppose so. I didn’t ask.’

‘You want that inscribed…’ He stopped.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Get Ms Bourgoyne?’

‘She’ll see you in the art gallery at 10.30. The café upstairs. She’s on the gallery board. An arts powerbroker.’

‘A what?’

‘Read it in the Financial Review today.’

‘I missed that. Just read the Toasty Sugarflakes box. Law, art, politics, the woman’s got it covered.’

They drove in silence. In Lygon Street, Cashin retrieved the newspaper from the back seat. Pollard’s face was on page five, the story had no more detail than the television news.

‘The Pollard calls,’ said Dove. ‘There’s about thirty. Parents, victims. The guy was a very active ped. Sounds like people would have queued to string him up. One bloke says he knows him from a long time ago. Raved on, then he clammed up.’

‘I’m going home after this,’ said Cashin. ‘Handpass the matter to the experts.’

They crossed the city, nothing said until Dove pulled up on the service road across from the gallery. ‘You sulking?’ he said.

‘That’s cheeky,’ said Cashin.

‘What’s cheeky mean in homicide?’

‘If I was still homicide, it means I outrank you. And that a reject from the Canberra dregs and a proven slackarse should show respect. That’s part of what cheeky means.’

‘I see. I’ll get a description of the watches.’

‘You never ran the name Pollard when you checked those Addison payments?’

Dove sucked in his nostrils. ‘I was doing you a favour. Anyway, it was three days ago. Pollard was dead.’

Cashin looked at the traffic.

‘You’re allowed to fuck up,’ said Dove. ‘Let Hopgood run it that night and kill the boys and you’re still okay. The mates look after you.’

‘Get the watch descriptions,’ Cashin said. ‘And see if Sydney got a description from the pawnbroker, whatever he calls himself. Either way, we want it now and that is this very day.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Cashin crossed the road to the gallery, dodging traffic and a tram. In the foyer, he looked up and, in the way of it, met the eyes of Erica Bourgoyne. She was leaning on the rail. He went upstairs, found her seated.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Is this private enough for you?’

‘If you don’t shout.’ She was in dark grey, drinking black coffee, didn’t offer. ‘What line of investigation is this?’

‘Just a chat.’

A downturned mouth. ‘I’m not available for chats. What’s the point? My step-father’s dead, the suspects are dead.’

Cashin thought of Singo, the grey eyes under eyebrows like stick insects. ‘Our obligation is to the dead,’ he said. ‘Your step-father paid money every month to a man called Arthur Pollard.’

‘Did he?’

‘You don’t know Pollard?’

‘Never heard of him.’

A group of Japanese tourists were trying to leave the gallery through the entrance. The attendant was redirecting them and they either didn’t understand or thought he was an idiot.

‘He was murdered a few days ago. In a building owned by your step-father.’

‘Christ. What building?’

‘A hall in North Melbourne. It used to be a theatre. Did you know he owned it?’

‘No. I don’t know what he owns. Owned. What has this to do with Charles?’

‘There are similarities.’

‘Meaning?’

Cashin saw the man, black turtleneck, three tables away, turning a page of a newspaper, a tabloid. ‘We’re still working on it,’ he said. ‘Do you know anything about the Moral Companions? The camp at Port Monro?’

‘I remember the camp, yes. There was a fire there. Why?’

‘This hall was the Companions’ headquarters.’

‘To be clear here,’ said Erica. ‘You’re saying the Daunt boys didn’t bash Charles?’

Cashin looked away, at the water running down the huge plateglass window. Two blurred figures outside were running fingertips across the stream, making wavy transient lines. ‘That’s possible,’ he said.

‘What about the watch?’

‘Never conclusive.’

‘Just because Charles gave this man money doesn’t link the attacks,’ said Erica. ‘Who knows how many people Charles gave money to?’

‘I do.’

She sat back, hands on the table, linked them, parted them. ‘So you know everything and you say nothing. What can I possibly tell you that you don’t know?’

‘I thought you might think of something to tell me.’

Erica looked at him, a steady gaze, blue-grey eyes. She touched the slim silver choker around her neck, ran a finger behind it. ‘I have nothing else to tell you and I have a meeting to go to.’

Cashin did not know why he had waited to say it. ‘Pollard was a paedophile,’ he said. ‘Fucked boys. Children.’

She shook her head as if mystified. Colour came to her cheekbones, she could not stop that. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m sure that information is useful to you, but…’

‘It’s not useful to you?’

‘Why should it be? Are you scratching around because it’s going to be embarrassing if the Daunt boys are innocent?’

‘We’ll wear that.’ He looked away and, at the edge of his vision, he saw the man in the black turtleneck flexing his right hand. ‘What are you scared of, Ms Bourgoyne?’

For an instant, he thought she was going to tell him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The bodyguard.’

‘If I was scared of anything that fell in your area of concern, detective, I’d tell you. Now I have my meeting.’

‘Thank you for your time.’

Cashin watched her go. She had good legs. At the escalator, she looked back and caught his eyes, held them a moment longer than necessary. Then the bodyguard blocked his view.

‘THE FIRST watch Bourgoyne bought from Cozzen’s,’ said Dove, ‘is this model.’ He pointed to a picture in a brochure. ‘The receipt is 14 September 1986.’

‘Very nice. Time yourself going down the Cresta Run.’ It was a technical-looking watch, black face, three white dials, three bevelled winders, recessed, a crocodile strap.

‘It’s called the Navitimer, still in production.’ Dove’s speech was clipped, he radiated antagonism. ‘Here’s the second one he bought, another Navitimer, 14 March 2000.’

It had a plain white face, three small dials, also on a crocodile leather strap.

Cashin thought about the morning at The Heights. A smart watch, Carol Gehrig said. A crocodile skin strap. ‘What’s the pawnbroker say?’

‘He made a statement at the time,’ said Dove. ‘Sydney sent it but in the excitement it seems to have fallen into a hole.’

Cashin felt as if he had missed a night’s sleep somewhere. ‘What did he say at the time then?’

‘He said, I quote: “It was a Breitling. A Maritimer. It’s a collectable. Very expensive. The one with three small dials, black face, crocodile strap.”’

Cashin got up, full of pain, went to the window and looked at the school grounds, the public gardens, all soft in the misty rain. He found Helen Castleman’s direct number.

‘Helen Castleman.’

‘Joe Cashin.’

A moment.

‘I’ve tried to call you,’ she said. ‘Your home phone just rings, your mobile number appears to be off.’

‘I’m using another one. I’m in the city.’

‘I don’t know what I should say. You were so insulting. Arrogant. Dismissive.’

‘Got the right person? Listen, I need a description of the watch Susie saw. She gave me the name but I need a description from her. Can you get that?’

‘This is because the case is still under investigation?’

‘It always has been. Can you get that soonest?’

‘I’ll see. Give me your number.’

Cashin sat down, looked at Dove. Dove didn’t want to look at him.

‘Hopgood says there’s no record of the messages to him that night,’ said Cashin.

Now Dove looked. ‘The cunts,’ he said. ‘They’ve wiped them. They’ve wiped the fucking record.’

‘It could be at our end, a technical thing.’

Dove shook his head, the overhead light blinked in his round lenses. ‘Well, then you can blame me at the inquest,’ he said. ‘Didn’t press the right buttons. Just fucked it up. As a boong does.’

Cashin rose, sitting was worse than standing, went back to the window. He said, ‘Hopgood said, and I quote him, “You two boongs making up stories now?”’

‘What?’

‘He said, you two boongs making up stories now.’

‘That’s us?’

‘I took him to mean that, yes.’

Dove laughed, real pleasure. ‘Welcome to Boongland,’ he said. ‘Listen, bro, want to get some lunch round the corner? Grub sandwich?’

‘Had it with round the corner,’ said Cashin. ‘Had it for six years and I’ve had it.’

‘There’s a Brunetti’s at the arts centre,’ said Dove. ‘Know Brunetti’s in Carlton?’

‘You fucking blow-in, you don’t know Brunetti’s from Donetti’s.’

Finucane joined them in the lift, gave them a ride down St Kilda Road.

‘Fin, looking at you,’ said Cashin, ‘I’m giving you a nine point six on the over-worked, under-slept, generally-fucked-over scale.’

Finucane smiled the small modest smile of a man whose efforts had been recognised. ‘Thanks, boss,’ he said.

‘Want a transfer to Port Monro?’ said Cashin. ‘Just pub fights and sheep-shagging, the odd cunt nicks his neighbour’s hydroponic gear officially used to grow vine-ripened tomatoes. It’s a nice place to bring up kids.’

‘Too exciting,’ said Finucane. ‘I’ve got six blokes to see on Pollard. This one in Footscray, he says he goes back a long way. Probably turn out he rang from his deaf and dumb auntie’s house where he isn’t and doesn’t live.’

At Brunetti’s, they queued behind black-clad office workers and backpackers and four women from the country who were overwhelmed by the choices. Cashin bought a calzone, Dove had a roll with duck and olives and capsicum relish and five kinds of leaves. They were drinking coffee when Cashin’s mobile rang. He went outside.

‘I hear traffic,’ said Helen. ‘Makes me nostalgic. Where are you?’

‘Near the arts centre.’

‘So cultured-opera, art galleries.’

‘Get hold of Susie?’ Cashin was watching a man coming down the pavement on a unicycle, a small white dog perched on each shoulder. The dogs had the resigned air of passengers on a long-distance bus.

‘She says the watch had a big black face and two or three little white dials.’

Cashin closed his eyes. He thought that he should say thanks for your help and goodbye. That was what he should do. That was what the police minister and the chief commissioner and the assistant crime commissioner and very possibly Villani would want him to do.

It wasn’t the right thing to do. He should tell her that the watch the boys tried to sell in Sydney wasn’t the watch Bourgoyne was wearing on the night he was attacked.

‘Still there?’ said Helen.

‘Thanks for your help,’ he said.

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Well, goodbye.’

They finished their coffee and walked back. Cashin had to wait twenty minutes to see Villani. ‘Bourgoyne wasn’t wearing the watch the boys tried to sell in Sydney,’ he said.

‘How do you know?’

Cashin told him.

‘Could’ve pinched that one from the house too. Pinched both watches.’

‘No. Corey Pascoe’s sister saw the fancy watch about a year ago. Corey had it before he went to Sydney. I’ve spoken to her.’

‘Well that could be bullshit.’

‘I believe her.’

‘Yeah?’

‘She knew the name. She’s described the watch.’

‘Fuck,’ said Villani. ‘Fuck. This is not looking good.’

‘No. What’s showing on Pollard?’

‘A woman down the street from the hall’s ID’d him. Seen in the vicinity a few times. Once with a kid. About twenty victims to interview. The computer stuff will take forever. Thousands of images. I don’t fancy our chances. Just be happy he’s dead. Like these drug scumbags we’re trying to get justice for.’

‘Anyway, I’m off,’ said Cashin. ‘Going home. I’m on enforced holiday. Over and out.’

‘Just when you were settling in again. Want to end this secondment shit? There’s fuck all wrong with you.’

‘I’m over homicide,’ said Cashin. ‘I don’t want to see any more dead people. Except for Rai Sarris. I want to see the dead Rai Sarris. And Hopgood. I’ll make an exception for Hopgood too.’

‘Unprofessional attitude. The vinegar smell. You sure about that?’

‘Yes.’

Villani walked with him to the lifts. ‘I should say,’ he said, he looked down the corridor. ‘I want to say I’ve been squeezed on this. I’m not happy with my conduct. Not proud. I am considering my position.’

Cashin didn’t know what to say. The lift doors opened. He touched Villani’s sleeve. ‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘Don’t obsess.’

LONG BEFORE he’d cleared the city, the mobile rang. Cashin pulled over.

‘Boss, Fin. This bloke rang in…’

‘Yes. Footscray.’

‘You should talk to him, boss.’

‘Out of this, Fin, I’m on my way home.’

The traffic was picking up, the early leavers, commuters to the satellite towns, lots of four-wheel-drives, trade utes, trucks.

‘Yeah, well, the boss says to ask you, boss.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Well, this one’s pretty fucked up. He drifts off the station, know what I mean?’

‘What’s the station?’

‘He knows Pollard. He hates Pollard. Hates everyone, everything, actually, spit going everywhere, you need a riot shield.’

‘How old?’

‘Not old old. It’s hard to say, shaven head, buggered teeth, maybe forties. Yeah. Major drug problem, no doubt.’

‘Get a statement?’

‘Boss, this is not statement territory. This is door-punching territory.’

‘Door-punching?’

‘I was trying to get through to him, he went quiet and then he came out of the fucking chair and he ran across the room, punched the door, two shots. The second one, his hand’s stuck in the door, blood everywhere.’

‘His name?’ said Cashin.

‘David Vincent.’

Cashin expelled breath. ‘What’s the address? I’m close.’

Finucane was waiting for him, parked in a street of rotting weatherboards, dumped cars and thin front yards silting up with junk mail. Cashin walked over, stood at the car window, hands in his pockets.

‘He’ll be happy to see you again?’

Finucane scratched his head. ‘No. He told me to fuck off. But he’s not aggro about me. It’s the world that’s the problem.’

‘Live alone?’

‘There’s no one else there now.’

‘Let’s go.’

It took several bouts of knocking before the door opened. Cashin could see a veined eye.

‘Mr Vincent,’ said Finucane, ‘A senior police officer would like a little chat about the things worrying you.’

The door opened enough to show both eyes and a discoloured nose broken more than once, broken and shifted sideways. The eyes were the colour of washing powder. ‘Nothing’s fuckin worrying me,’ Vincent said. ‘Where’d you get that crap?’

‘Can we come in, Mr Vincent?’ said Cashin.

‘Fuck off. Said what I wanted.’

‘I understand you know Arthur Pollard?’

‘That’s what I fuckin said. CrimeStoppers. Told the fuckin idiot. Give him the name.’

Cashin smiled at him. ‘We’re very grateful for that, Mr Vincent. Thank you. Just a few other things we’d like to know.’

‘Nah. I’m busy. Got a lot on.’

‘Right,’ said Cashin. ‘Well, we’d really appreciate your help. There’s a man murdered, an innocent man…’

Vincent pulled the door open, smashed it against the passage wall, jarred the whole building. ‘Innocent? You fuckin mad? The fuckin bastard, shoulda killed the fuckin cunt myself…’

Cashin looked away. He hadn’t meant Pollard, he’d been thinking of Bourgoyne.

A woman had come out of the house next door. She was of unguessable age, wearing a pink turban and wrapped in what looked like an ancient embossed velvet curtain, faded and moulting.

‘Dint I tell you to bugger off last time?’ she shouted. ‘Comin around with yer bloody Yank religion, yer bloody tower of Pisa, leanin bloody watchtower, whatbloodyever.’

‘Police,’ said Finucane.

She went backwards at speed. Cashin looked at Vincent. The rage had left his face as if the outburst had drained some poison from him. He was a big man but stooped and gone to fat, rolls at his neck.

‘Woman’s mad,’ said Vincent in a calm voice. ‘Completely out of her tree. Come in.’

They followed him into a dim passage and a small room with a collapsed sofa, two moulded plastic restroom chairs and a metal-legged coffee table with five beer cans on it. A television set stood on two stacked milk crates. Vincent sat on the sofa and lit a cigarette, holding the lighter in both hands, shaking badly. Blood was caked on the fingers and knuckles of his right hand.

Cashin and Finucane sat on the plastic chairs.

‘So you know Arthur Pollard, Mr Vincent?’ said Cashin.

Vincent picked up a beer can, shook it, tested another one, found one with liquid in it. ‘Many fuckin times you want me to say it? Know the cunt, know the cunt, know the…’

Cashin held up a hand. ‘Sorry. Where do you know him from, Mr Vincent?’

Vincent drank, looked down at the floor, drew on the cigarette. His left shoulder was jerking. ‘From the fuckin holidays.’

‘What holidays, Mr Vincent?’

‘The fuckin holidays, you know, the holidays.’ He raised his head, fixed his gaze on Cashin. ‘Tried to tell em, y’know. It wasn’t just me. Oh no. Nearly, poor little bugger, saw em. Saw em.’

‘Tell them what, Mr Vincent?’

‘Don’t believe me, do you?’

‘What holidays are you talking about?’

‘Givin me that fuckin look, I know that fuckin look, HATE THAT FUCKIN LOOK.’

‘Steady on,’ said Cashin.

‘Piss off. Piss off. Got nothing to say to you cunts, all the same, you’re all fuckin in it, bastards kill a kid, you, you…you can just fuck off.’

‘Spare a smoke?’ said Cashin.

‘What?’

Cashin mimed smoking. ‘Give us a smoke?’

Vincent’s eyes flicked from Cashin to Finucane and back. He put a hand into his dirty cotton top and took out a packet of Leisure Lights, opened it with a black-rimmed thumbnail, offered it, shaking. Cashin took. Vincent offered the box to Finucane.

‘No thanks,’ said Finucane. ‘Trying to give up.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’ Vincent gave the plastic lighter to Cashin.

Cashin lit up, returned the lighter. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he said. ‘So they wouldn’t listen?’

‘Wouldn’t listen,’ said Vincent. ‘Copped a thrashin from the bastard Kerno. Thrashed me all the time. Thin as a stick, I was. Broke me ribs, three ribs. Made me tell school I fell off me bike.’

A long silence. Vincent emptied the beer can, put it on the table. His shaven, scarred head went down, almost touched his knees, the cigarette was going to burn his fingers. Cashin and Finucane read each other’s eyes.

‘Didn’t have a bike,’ said Vincent, a sad little boy’s voice. ‘Never ever had a bike. Wanted a bike.’

Cashin smoked. The cigarette tasted terrible, made him glad he didn’t smoke. Smoke much. Vincent didn’t look up, dropped his butt on the carpet, aimed a foot at it, missed. The smell of burning nylon fibres rose, acrid and strangely sweet.

‘I’d like to hear about when you were a kid,’ said Cashin. ‘I’ll listen. You talk, I’ll listen.’

Another long silence. Vincent raised his head, startled, looked at them as if they’d just appeared in the room. ‘Got to go,’ he said breathlessly. ‘A lot on, blokes.’

He rose unsteadily and left the room, bumped against the door jamb. They heard him muttering as he went down the passage. A door slammed.

‘That’s probably it,’ said Finucane. He stood on Vincent’s cigarette.

Outside, in the rain, Cashin said to Finucane, ‘The holidays. He’s talking about a Moral Companions camp, Fin. His whole life, we need his whole life. That’s ASAP. Tell Villani I said that.’

‘Not staying then, boss?’

‘No. Also the files at the hall. Someone needs to pull out everything that refers to Port Monro. Call me with what you get. Ring me, okay?’

‘Okay. First to know, boss.’

‘And for fuck’s sake get some sleep, Fin. You’re a worry to me.’

‘Right. They stay dead, don’t they?’

‘You’re learning. It’s slow but you’re learning.’

It was long dark by the time he switched off and saw the torch beam coming down the side of the house, saw the running dogs side by side, heads up, big ears swinging. They were at the vehicle before he could get out. He had to fight their weight to open the door. A spoke of pain ran down his right thigh as he swung his legs out.

‘Thought we’d lost you,’ said Rebb, a hulk behind the light.

Cashin was returning the dogs’ affection, head down, allowing them to lick his hands, his hair, his ears. ‘Got stuck in the city,’ he said. ‘I reckoned you might do the right thing by these brutes.’

‘No brute food left,’ said Rebb. ‘I took the little peashooter of yours for a walk. Okay?’

‘Good thinking.’

‘The other bunny’s in the oven. Used the olives in the fridge. Also a tin of tomatoes.’

‘What do you know about olives?’ said Cashin.

‘Picked them in South Australia, worked in a place they pickled them. Ate olives till they came out of my ears. Swaggies eat anything. Roadkill, caviar.’

‘I need a drink,’ said Cashin. ‘You left anything to drink?’

‘I’m leaving in the morning.’

Cashin felt tiredness and pain expand within him, fill him. ‘Can we talk about that?’

‘I’ll drop in if I come this way again.’

‘Come in and have a drink anyway. Farewell drink.’

‘Had a drink. Knackered. I’ll shake your hand now.’

He put out a hand. Cashin didn’t want to take it. He took it.

‘I owe you money,’ he said. ‘Fix it up tomorrow. Promise.’

‘Leave it on the step,’ said Rebb. ‘Haven’t got it, I’ll pick it up next time. Trust you, you’re a cop. Who else can you trust?’

He turned and walked. Cashin felt a loss for which he was not prepared. ‘Mate,’ he said. ‘Mate, fucking sleep on it, will you?’

No reply.

‘For the sake of the dogs.’

‘Good dogs,’ said Rebb. ‘Miss the dogs.’

A DARK DAY, the vehicle climbing a rainslicked road towards a hilltop lost in mist. In the gate of The Heights, up the driveway, the poplars dripping.

Cashin took the left turn, the road that wound around the house at a distance, ended at the redbrick double-storey building. He parked on the paving in front of the wooden garage doors, switched off, wound down his window. The cold and wet blew in. He sat in the quiet, engine clicks the only sounds, thinking about why this was a pointless thing to do.

He thought about Shane Diab’s parents coming to see him in hospital, when he was out of danger. They didn’t sit, they were awkward, their English wasn’t good. He didn’t know what to say to them, he knew their son was dead because of him. After a while, Vincentia saved him and they said goodbye. Shane’s mother touched him on the cheek, then, quickly, she kissed him on the forehead. They left a white cardboard box on the cabinet beside the bed.

Vincentia opened the box, held it up, tilted it to Cashin. It was a square cake, white icing, a cross in red. It took him a while to see that names formed the bar of the cross: Joe+Shane.

He gave the cake to Vincentia. Later she told him the nurses on the shift shared it, a fruit cake, very good.

Cashin got out, walked around the building to the double doors in the centre. The mist was turning to rain.

There were about a dozen keys on the ring Erica Bourgoyne had given him. The seventh one worked. He unlocked the door, went down the corridor. The pottery studio was dark, the shutters closed. He found the light switches and high up tubes flickered, lit the room. The storeroom door was directly opposite. He crossed.

The storeroom had a swept brick floor, gardening tools pinned on a pegboard, arranged on shelves like exhibits. A ride-on mower, a small tractor and a trailer stood in a line, showroom clean. A prim room, it spoke of organisation and discipline.

To Cashin’s right, the painting leant against the wall, face averted, its slashed V held in place with masking tape. It was bigger than he remembered.

He went to it, gripped the frame and awkwardly lifted it, turned and settled it back against the wall. He could not see the painting properly before he had taken several steps back.

It was a painting of a moonlit landscape, a pale path running through sand dunes covered with coastal scrub towards a group of buildings in the distance, hints of lights in windows. Most of the canvas was of a huge sky of wind-driven grey-black clouds lit by a near-full moon.

Cashin knew the place. He had stood where the painter stood, on the top of the last big dune, looking towards the now-ruined buildings and the highway and the road that snaked up from the highway, went up the hill to the Kenmare road and driveway to The Heights,.

He went closer. In the path were what appeared to be figures, a short column of people, three abreast, walking towards the buildings. Children, they were children, two taller figures.

The painting was unsigned. He turned it around. In the bottom left corner was a small sticker. On it was written in red ink:

Companions Camp, Port Monro, 1977.

‘THE COMPANIONS camp,’ said Cashin. ‘At the mouth.’

There was a long silence. Cecily Addison, standing at the mantelpiece, staring at him. He never knew how long to meet Cecily’s gaze because it was possible that she was not seeing him.

‘You seem like a good person to ask,’ said Cashin.

Cecily’s head tilted, her eyelids fluttered. She took on the look of someone having her feet massaged. ‘May I ask what this is about?’

‘Charles Bourgoyne.’

‘I thought that was over.’

‘No.’

A last long draw on her cigarette, a raised eyebrow. ‘Well, what do you want to know, my dear?

‘What kind of camp was it?’ Cashin said.

‘For boys. Orphans and the like. Boys in homes. Foster children. The Moral Companions gave them a holiday, a bit of fun. Lots of Cromarty people helped out, including my Harry. It was a good cause.’

‘And it burned down.’

‘In 1983. Tragic. Mind you, it could’ve been worse. Just three boys there on the night. And the man in charge. The Companion, that’s what they called themselves. He couldn’t save them. Overcome by fumes, that was the coroner’s verdict.’

‘Where were the other kids?’

‘On some cultural jaunt.’ She stretched an arm, dropped her cigarette into the vase on the mantelpiece. ‘They used to take them to Cromarty. Music, plays, that sort of thing. Still a lot of that then. People didn’t sit at home in front of the television watching American rubbish.’

‘What caused the fire?’

‘I think they said it was the boiler in the dormitory building, the double-storey A timber building. The boys were sleeping upstairs.’

Cashin thought about the blackened brick foundations, the charred floor joist. He had stood where the boys had died.

‘Apart from owning the land, did Bourgoyne have anything to do with the camp?’

Cecily frowned, deep lines. ‘Well, I don’t know. He took an interest, of course. Following on from his dad. Lots of people took an interest. Public-spirited place then, Cromarty. People did good works, didn’t do it to get their names in the paper either. Virtue is its own reward. Are you familiar with that expression, detective?’

‘My reward is the award wage, Mrs Addison.’

She narrow-eyed him. ‘You are a cut above the dull boys couldn’t find another job, aren’t you?’

‘So that was the end of the camp?’ said Cashin.

‘The camp, the Companions too. It was all over the papers. I think they just packed it in. It was the last Companions camp left. Charles gave the manager bloke a job. Percy Crake. A cold fish, Percy Crake.’

There was a knock on the half-open door.

‘Yes,’ said Cecily.

Mrs McKendrick. ‘Your appointment will be twenty minutes late, Mrs Addison,’ she said. ‘Car trouble is the excuse they offer.’

‘Thank you, my dear.’

Mrs McKendrick turned like a teenage ballerina, reaching behind her to close the door she had found open. It was a message.

‘She was in love with Jock Cameron,’ said Cecily. ‘All those years. Sad, really. He never noticed. Often wondered if he’d taken a bit of shrapnel in the tackle.’

‘I’m told there are no Companions’ records for Port Monro at the hall in Melbourne.’

Fin had rung while he was driving from The Heights.

‘All the other camps’ records are there,’ said Cashin. ‘Could they be somewhere else?’

‘No idea. Why would they keep them somewhere else?’

On the mantelpiece, the vase was emitting smoke like a fumarole. Cashin got up and took it to the window, pushed up the bottom sash and shook the container, sent the smouldering contents to float on the sea wind.

‘Thank you, Joe.’

‘I’ll go then. Thank you for your time, Mrs Addison.’

‘My pleasure.’

It was cold outside, no one loitering. Cashin felt the need to walk, went down the street, past the empty clothing boutiques, the aromatherapist, the properties in the window of the estate agent. He crossed Crozier Street and passed the pub lounge, saw three people watching a greyhound race on the television, the old man coughing as if he could die there, on his feet. Beyond the pub were houses, mostly holiday rentals, curtains drawn.

As Cashin walked, the singing from the bluestone church on the rise became louder. He turned the corner on the faltering and cracking last lines of a hymn.

Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee; In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

There was a time of silence, then an attenuated Amen that stood in the cold air, hung in the branches of the pines.

Cashin felt the sudden withering ache of loss and mortality and he turned and went back the way he had come, into the wind.

HE WAS CROSSING a rope bridge in a gale, water far below. The bridge was swaying and creaking and groaning and slats were missing. He looked down and it was the Kettle, a huge wave coming in, he was fighting to hold his footing, clinging to the side ropes, he couldn’t hold on, he was losing his grip, he was going into the Kettle.

In his sweat, Cashin lay wide awake, heart like a speedball, relief coming over him. He knew what the sounds were: the television aerial was loose again, being pushed around by the wind, chafing against the strapping. The sounds had triggered the Kettle dream. How did dreams work?

He turned the clock around: 6.46 am. Seven-hour sleep, the longest unbroken sleep he could remember. Just twinges of pain in getting up, a good morning, let in the dogs, fed them, drank juice, showered.

It was a grey day, no wind to speak of. When the dogs came back from looking for Rebb, he chose the circular route, up the hill. The European trees were bare now, standing in their damp leaves, a hundred and more generations of leaves. They went down the slope and across the big clearing, no hares today. Cashin stepped from rock to rock to cross the creek, still turbulent. Then, no sign of the dogs, he turned westwards, towards Helen’s property, the painting on his mind-the moonlit plain, the little procession of boys going towards the buildings, the lights in the windows. The Companions camp. He thought about Pollard hanging in the Companions hall, crucified, dying while someone sat as if watching a play or a concert, something to enjoy, to applaud.

When did Pollard lose consciousness? Did the watcher listen with pleasure to his sounds, to his agony? Did he ask for mercy? Was that what the watcher wanted?

Bourgoyne’s payments to Pollard. Bourgoyne the patron of the Companions.

The Companions kept records for the camps in Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia, camps closed before Port Monro. What happened to the Port Monro records?

The belt the dogs found that day.

Be Prepared.

No bigger than a dog collar, adult hands could span a waist that small.

Work was in progress on the Castleman house. New corrugated iron on the roof, what looked like a weatherboard extension, pink primed boards, big windows, a platform sticking out, a deck when finished. It would be a place to loll, looking down at the creek, up at the hill. Looking at his property.

Why did he offer to sell her the creek strip? Because she was cross with him and she was the rich and beautiful and sophisticated girl who kissed him when he was a shy, gangling boy whose aunt cut his hair?

Offer permanently withdrawn.

It was a good fence, taut. Rebb’s fence. How far could you walk in a day? Rebb wouldn’t ask for lifts, people would have to ask him. Every tool Rebb had used was lined up inside the shearing shed, cleaned and oiled. His mattress was leaning against the wall, the blankets were on the bed springs, folded square, the pillow on them and the washed pillowslip on top.

Cashin was chewing porridge cooked in the microwave when the phone rang.

‘Tuesday arrived down there yet?’ said Dove.

‘Of what week?’

‘I should’ve said the year. Done the full sweep on this David Vincent.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s a brick high.’

‘The summary. You’ve done that, of course.’

‘Of course. Born Melbourne 1968, taken into care 1973, lived somewhere called Colville House 1973 to 1976. Then foster family number one until 1978, number two until 1979, ran away, found, number three until 1980, ran away. Still with me?’

‘Keep going.’

‘Next record is an arrest in Perth in 1983 for theft of a handbag. Age fifteen. After that it’s a list of petty stuff, sent to juvenile in ′84 for six months, again in ′86, nine months. That’s it for form.’

‘The rest?’

‘It’s a sad story. Institutions. It says here, on this one report, clinical depression compounded by multiple addictions. Four years in Lakeside, Ballarat. That sounds nice. By the lake. I read the problem as smack, amphetamines, methadone, dope, booze, gets in fights and sustains injuries to many parts of the body.’

Cashin had not noticed the cloth of sunlight unroll across the old room’s boards. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Listen, I need the number Dave Vincent called CrimeStoppers from. Tracy’s got it.’

‘I thought talking to Vincent was a problem?’

‘Sometimes it’s people looking at you that’s the problem.’

An observation from Singo. Early in the piece, in the first year, the Geelong man who wouldn’t say anything, his hands clenched, his neck a fence of tendons. Singo wrote his extension number on a pad and gave it to the man. They left and waited in Singo’s office. The phone rang inside a minute and Singo talked to him for almost an hour.

‘Well, I’m glad you can look at yourself so objectively,’ said Dove. ‘Over the phone, that is. For my education, may I ask what you want from Vincent?’

‘I think he was at the Companions camp at Port Monro.’

‘Yes? Where does that get you?’

‘Just having a sniff.’

‘Ah, the sniff. I keep hearing about it. A trade secret. Hang on.’

Dove was back with the number inside two minutes.

‘Back to work then,’ said Cashin. ‘Go around to whatever the drug squad is now called and arrest the first prick you see.’

‘So old-fashioned, so out of touch with modern policing.’

David Vincent’s number rang out. Too early for him, Cashin thought. His day would probably begin when most people were thinking about lunch.

‘UNEMPLOYED,’ said Carol Gehrig, shifted on the chair, pulled at the crotch of her tracksuit. ‘Sixteen weeks pay, how’s that for twenty-eight years on the job?’

The cheap timber house stood in the teeth of the wind on a low hill looking over Kenmare. Behind it was a big shed, open in front, a truck shed with just an old yellow Mazda in it.

‘Who sacked you?’ said Cashin.

‘The lawyer. Addison. Place’s going on the market some time. She wants me to clean up when the time comes.’

She sucked on her stub, ground it out among the five or six already in the abalone shell on the table. She offered Cashin the packet. He shook his head.

‘Coffee?’ she said. ‘Tea? I should’ve asked. Caught me without my face too. Not used to being here at this time of the morning.’

He’d had to wait minutes, didn’t knock again after he heard movements inside.

‘No thanks. Ever heard of someone called Arthur Pollard?’

‘Pollard? No.’

The sagging foam chair made his back hurt. Cashin sat up straight, tried to extend his spine. He took out the doctored, sanitised photograph of Pollard. ‘Know this man?’

She looked at it, held it away. ‘Something familiar…don’t know. Local?’

‘No. Tell me about Percy Crake.’

‘Well, he came to Bourgoyne’s after the fire at the camp. Little moustache. His sister arrived, a bitch. Face like an axe, moustache too. Bigger than Crake’s. Called herself Mrs Lowell. Christ knows how she got Mr Lowell. She used to come behind me with a tissue looking for dust.’

‘What did Crake do?’

‘Took over, marched around like a dork. He used to make us stand outside his office for our wages, keep us waiting like he was busy inside. Then he’d open the door and he’d say: Now then, line up in alphabetical order.’

The voice she imitated wasn’t loud and commanding. It was thin and grating. ‘Five people. In alphabetical order, I ask you? Pommy shit. Fucking scoutmaster.’

Be Prepared.

Cashin saw the stiff and cracked little belt, the round rusted buckle. ‘That was in 1983,’ he said.

‘Yeah. I started, full-time in 1978. Mrs B was there with the kids. She was nice, gave him about twenty years. Real tragedy that, falling down the stairs.’

‘How did they take it, the kids?’

‘The boy never said a word. Erica followed Mr B around like he was a pop star. She was in love with him. Girls can be like that.’

An intake of smoke, a blowing, a tapping into the abalone shell. ‘They used to have parties. Garden parties, cocktail parties, dinner parties, all the Cromarty money, people from Melbourne. For the autumn races, there’d be people staying. I got help. There was a cook and a waiter come from Melbourne.’

Carol sucked her cheeks hollow. ‘Anyway, old times. History. What’s this about?’

Cashin shrugged. ‘Just curious.’

‘Thought the black kids did it?’

‘What do you think?’

‘No surprise to me. Daunt’s a fucking curse on this town.’

‘You must know a lot about the Bourgoynes.’

‘Not that much. Cleaning up behind people, that’s the job. Washing, ironing. Twenty hours a week the last ten years or so. That’s it.’ More smoking. ‘Head down, bum up around there, mate,’ she said. ‘Unless you’re Bruce Starkey.’

‘He got special treatment?’

‘Well, in the old days, Crake was always checking. He caught you havin a smoko, he’d dock your pay quarter of an hour. Can you believe that? Bloody Starkey, he never went near him, didn’t have to line up for his pay, the big prick.’

‘How’d Bourgoyne and Crake get on?’

‘Pretty good. Only time I ever heard Crake laugh was when Mr B was in his office. Crake helped him with the pots, the kiln. They used to do it at weekends. Burn it all weekend.’

‘You saw that?’

‘No. Mrs Lowell told me. Burn through the night. Starkey used to be chainsawing and chopping for a week before.’

‘How often was this?’

‘Jeez, it’s been a long time. I suppose twice a year. Yeah.’

‘Those pots in the gallery room. Nine pots. That’s all he kept?’

‘He used to smash em up. Starkey took the bits to the tip. Half a ute load at a time.’

Cashin looked at the barren green view, thought about how nice it would be if this had never begun, if he had never received the call that morning.

‘Sure you don’t want coffee? I’m going…’

‘No thanks,’ said Cashin. ‘Erica says she knows almost nothing about her step-father’s affairs. What do you think?’

Carol frowned, aged ten years. ‘Well, wouldn’t surprise me. I can count on one hand the times I’ve seen her there since she was about fourteen. Fell out of love with her step-dad.’

She came with him to the vehicle, hugging herself against the cold. The dogs liked the look of her and she had no fear of them, scratched their chins.

‘Twin buggers,’ she said. ‘What kind’s this?’

‘Poodles.’

‘Nah. Poodles are sooky litle things. Rough buggers, these.’

‘Neglected,’ said Cashin. ‘Short of haircuts and brushing.’

‘Bit like me.’ She was fondling big dog ears, not looking at him.

‘You married?’

‘Not anymore.’

‘Kids?’

He hesitated. ‘No.’

‘Kids are good, it’s bloody jobs that’s the problem. My ex went to Darwin, don’t blame him. Fisherman. I couldn’t hack it, never saw him, he just slept here.’

‘Thanks for the help,’ said Cashin.

‘Any time. Come again. Have a beer.’

‘That’d be good. Starkey get the boot too?’

‘Dunno. Place’ll need some keeping up if it’s on the market.’

Cashin was in the vehicle when he thought to ask. ‘The Companions camp. Know anything about it?’

Carol shook her head. ‘Not much. Starkey used to work there before the fire.’

THE CROMARTY Herald’s editorial office was in a ugly yellow-brick 1950s building on the edge of the business area.

Cashin went through glass doors into an area with a long counter staffed by two young women. A glass wall cut them off from a big office, half a dozen desks, five women and a man, all with heads down. He had to wait for three people to pay bills, one to lodge a classified advertisement.

‘I’d like to see back copies of the paper, please,’ he said.

‘Through that door,’ the woman said. ‘There’s about six months.’

‘For 1983.’

‘Jeez. Don’t think you can do that.’ She wasn’t interested, looking at the person behind him.

‘Is there a library?’

‘Library?’

‘Where you keep your files.’

Puzzled brow. ‘Better ask editorial,’ she said. ‘In there.’

Another reception room, an older woman behind a desk. He asked the same question. This time, he said police. She spoke on the phone. In seconds, a door opened and a man in his fifties, bald, florid, big belly, came in. Cashin introduced himself, showed the badge.

‘Alec Clarke,’ the man said. ‘Assistant editor. Come through.’

It was a big room, six or seven people at desks, looking at computers, three men doing the same at a cluttered table in the centre. It was not unlike a squad room. Clarke led Cashin to the first office in a row of four cubicles. They sat.

‘How can I help?’

Cashin told him.

‘That far back? Looking for something in particular?’

‘A fire. At the Moral Companions camp near Port.’

‘Right, yes. Big news that, the boys. Very sad. What’s the interest now?’

‘Idle curiosity.’

Clarke laughed, held up his hands, palms out. ‘Message received. I’ll have a check, back in a minute.’

He went out, turned right. Cashin looked at the workers. They were all young women except for the three at the middle table, seedy older men, pale, moulting and flaking. The ginger one who appeared to be in charge was methodically fossicking in his nostrils, from time to time studying the finds. A painfully thin young woman came in and went to the prospector, spoke in a respectful manner. He pulled a face, waved his right hand dismissively. She nodded and she went to a seat at the back of the room. Cashin saw her shoulders slump, her chin go down.

‘Sorry to be so long, detective,’ said Clarke. He sat behind the desk.

‘Always a pleasure to watch a well-oiled machine,’ said Cashin.

A tight smile. ‘Now there’s a problem here,’ said Clarke. ‘We went modern in ′84, put everything on microfiche. You’re probably too young to remember microfiche.’

‘I know microfiche.’

‘Yes. Well, we had a fire in ′86, a cigarette someone dropped in a bin, but we lost the fiche for about ten years from 1976.’

‘What about the actual papers?’

‘Destroyed in ′84, unfortunately. No concern for heritage then. In retrospect, we should never…’

‘The State Library would have them?’

‘Worth a try. Certainly.’

Outside, Cashin walked to the vehicle in a cold morning, looked up at a sky deep as heaven, pale as memory. The dogs beat each other with their tails at the sight of him.

THE STATE Library did not hold the Cromarty Herald. Cashin put down the phone and thought about Corey Pascoe and Bourgoyne’s watch. Did it matter now?

He closed his eyes, put his head back. The boys were dead because of a Bourgoyne watch. The whole terrible business turned on the watch.

How did Corey come to have a watch belonging to Bourgoyne? Chris Pascoe said something that day on the pier, it hadn’t registered as important. He wasn’t a bad kid, Corey. 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?

A career in dope. Was he talking about Corey smoking dope? That wouldn’t be remarkable on the Daunt, it wouldn’t be remarkable anywhere in the country. Dope was like beer in the 1960s. People then didn’t say the beer kept them from playing professional footy.

No, Pascoe didn’t mean smoking. He meant growing, dealing.

He watched the dogs patrolling the backyard, complaining to each other of sensory deprivation. They didn’t like the place, they wanted to be somewhere with Rebb. What kind of memory did dogs have? Did they miss Rebb?

The Piggots were drug people. Billy Piggot was dealing to schoolkids. Debbie Doogue had been a customer.

Kendall behind him. ‘Am I allowed to say I’d like you back in that chair permanently ASAbloodyP? I am so bored by these boy wonders I could face a charge any time now.’

‘I’m back soon,’ said Cashin. ‘Never heard of anyone missing me.’

‘Staging for compliments, that’s not allowed,’ she said. ‘What I appreciate is that you don’t go on about reality crap on television and how many slow curls for the maximum upper-body benefit.’

‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about curls. This kid came in about the hairdresser girlfriend took his ute to Queensland. He says the Piggots are getting rich. Been busted to your knowledge, the Pigs?’

‘In my time, no.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Don’t know. It’s Cromarty’s business.’

‘Yes, but someone has to tell Cromarty.’

‘I don’t think they need telling. I think they know.’

‘This come up before I arrived? When Sadler was in charge?’

‘We had complaints.’ Kendall looked away. ‘Sadler said he’d talk to Cromarty. Anyway, work to do.’

‘Just hold a sec, Ken. The day of the march, I asked you about Billy Piggot, you said something about a Ray Piggot. What was it again?’

‘Ripped five hundred bucks off a rep staying at the Wavecrest. He said he gave Ray a lift from outside Cromarty, invited him to his room for a beer. Later the money was gone. Just two thirsty blokes, you understand, one’s about fifty, the other one looks like he’s fourteen.’

‘He had Ray’s full name?’

‘Yes. Sadler rang Cromarty. Hopgood and that Steggles arrived. Parked in the back. Ray Piggot was in the car. Must’ve picked him up on the way. They left him there, talked to the rep in the interview room. He left, they left. Never heard any more.’

‘Piggot not charged?’

‘Nope. He got off a charge in Melbourne too. Stole a stereo and a laptop from a bloke he met in the park. Streetkid then.’

‘What does all this say to you?’

Kendall smiled her small sad, comprehending smile, eyes down. ‘I’m just happy to have my job,’ she said. ‘When I was physically stuffed, people didn’t push me away, get me out of sight, pension me off. They were family to me. You’d know about that. Not so?’

She left. Cashin put his head back, heard the messages from his tired places. The morning at the court, Greg Law had given him a message about Hopgood. Head-kicking, grass-growing Gaby Trevena wasn’t the most dangerous person in town, he said. Had Law been delivering a threat from Hopgood? Or had he been saying he wasn’t a Hopgood man?

You a mate of Hopgood and that lot?

Hopgood and Lloyd. And Steggles, presumably.

Steggles vomited that night. In the pouring rain, face down, his gun pointed at the sky, a tube of vomit sprang from his mouth. The hamburger he had been eating at the briefing, the greasy yellow chips with sauce-red tips, they exited his body after he shot the boy.

Didn’t have the stomach for it, Steggie.

Cashin rang Helen Castleman.

‘I want to talk to that Pascoe again,’ he said.

‘Your bedside manner needs some work. Has anyone told you that?’

‘I’ll talk to him in your office. You can be there.’

‘This is official, is it? An official interview?’

‘No. Just a chat.’

‘Well, I don’t represent Pascoe, so I have no standing when it comes to chats. Also I have no desire to assist the police in their chatting work.’

‘I’ll start again. I’m trying to clear the boys. Clear your client.’

‘My late client.’

She was silent. Cashin waited.

‘I’ll get back to you,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’

Cashin went outside, walked around the block in the wind, only a few people in the main street, moving between vehicles and shops. Leon’s place was empty.

‘Police,’ said Cashin loudly. ‘This business open?’

‘Open to bloody suggestions,’ said Leon, coming out of the kitchen. ‘Open to offers of any kind. Limited menu today. Soup, that’s all I’m offering, a proper minestrone made with a ham bone.’

‘To take away?’

‘Seven-fifty eaten on premises. For removal, I’ll accept four-fifty. Three-fifty because you’re the police.’

‘You can keep the bone.’

‘Three-fifty. I’ll chuck in a slice of bread. Proper bread. Buttered. With butter.’

‘Two slices.’

‘Stood over. I’m being stood over. What kind of music do you like?’

Cashin was eating the soup at his desk when the phone rang.

‘He doesn’t want to come here,’ said Helen. ‘He’s a very uninterested person, he’s not interested in chatting’

‘That’s it?’

‘He says if you want to chat, you can come to his house tonight. He would like to point out that he owes the police nothing. I’m paraphrasing and editing here so as not to offend your tender sensibilities.’

So smart. Cashin thought he could read books for another ten years and it wouldn’t help. ‘I’ll do that then,’ he said. ‘Thank you and goodbye.’

‘I have to drive you, come with you. He doesn’t want the squad car outside his place. And so, since you’re trying to do something about a major injustice, I’m willing to do that.’

He looked at the dogs in the yard and he thought about her mouth, the kisses. Kisses from nowhere. Separated by twenty years.

CASHIN AND Helen sat at a kitchen table in what had been the garage of a house. Now it was like a small pub with a bar and a full-size snooker table and an assortment of chairs. A television set was mounted on a side wall.

Chris Pascoe brought a six-pack of beer from behind the bar and put it on the table. He sat down, took one and popped it. ‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘So what’s this about?’

‘The watch Corey had,’ said Cashin.

‘Suse told you.’

‘I’m keen to know how he got it.’

‘Thinkin of chargin him with theft? Well, he’s had the fuckin death penalty. Slipped your mind?’

‘No. What we want is to find out who bashed Bourgoyne. It wasn’t the boys, I’m pretty sure about that.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since I decided to believe Susie about when she saw the watch.’

Pascoe drank, wiped his lips, found a cigarette. ‘Yeah, well, Suse don’t know where he got it, his mum don’t know.’

‘His mates might know though.’

‘Mates mostly dead.’

Helen coughed. ‘Chris, I said on the phone, I’m here because of Donny. I want his name cleared, the names of all the boys. And the Daunt. The Daunt shouldn’t have to wear this.’

Pascoe laughed, a smoker’s ragged laugh-cough. ‘Don’t worry about the Daunt. Wearin the blame’s nothin new for the Daunt. Anyway, how’s it help to find where he got the watch? Bloody thing must’ve been pinched some time.’

‘If it turns out Corey pinched it, that’s it,’ said Cashin. ‘We’ll just leave it there, call it quits.’

‘I hear Hopgood doesn’t like you,’ said Pascoe.

‘How would you hear that?’

Pascoe shrugged, smoked, little smile. ‘Walls got ears, mate. You’d be sleepin under the bed these days, right?’

The side door opened violently, banged the wall. The other man from the pier, the gaunt-faced man with dreadlocks. Cashin thought he looked bigger indoors.

‘So what’s the fuckin party?’ he said.

Pascoe held up a hand. ‘Havin a talk, Stevo.’

‘Talk? Beer with the cops? Things fuckin changin around here, mate. Havin the fuckin trivia nights with the cops next.’

‘Gettin the Corey watch stuff sorted,’ said Pascoe. ‘That’s all.’

‘Yeah, well,’ said Stevo. ‘It’s sorted. Who’s the lady?’

‘The lawyer,’ said Pascoe. ‘Donny’s lawyer.’

Stevo stepped across, stood behind Pascoe, reached over and picked up the six-pack, ripped out a can, looking at Cashin, at Helen, back at Cashin, blood in his eyes. ‘Not drinkin?’ he said. ‘Don’t drink with boongs?’

Pub fight shit, thought Cashin, no answer would defuse it. He looked at Pascoe. ‘Listen, if your mate here’s in charge, I’m gone.’

‘So piss off,’ said Stevo.

Pascoe didn’t look around. ‘Settle down, Stevo,’ he said, a briskness to his tone.

‘Settle down? Don’t you fuckin tell me to settle down, where the fuck you…’

Pascoe shoved his chair back, took Stevo by surprise, knocked him off balance. He was upright in one quick movement and walking Stevo backwards, barrel chest bumping, three steps, pinned him against the bar. In his face, their chins touching, Pascoe said something to Stevo, Cashin couldn’t catch it.

Stevo raised his hands. Pascoe stepped back, gestured. Stevo went behind the bar, leaned on it, didn’t look at them. Pascoe went back to his chair, drank some beer.

‘What I’ll say is this,’ he said as if nothing had happened. ‘What I’ll say is Corey coulda got the watch in a trade like, y’know.’

‘For what?’ said Cashin.

‘Jeez, how’d I know? What do you reckon?’

‘So who’d be on the other side?’

‘Big ask, mate.’

‘That’s useful. Got any other stuff you’d like to tell me? Other people don’t like me? How about Steggles? Wall ears hear anything about Steggie?’

‘Dead man walkin. The fuckin prick.’

‘Do it myself,’ said Stevo, slurring. ‘Fuckin tonight. Blow the cunt away.’

‘Shut up, Stevo,’ said Pascoe. ‘Just fuckin shut up.’

Cashin took a can, ripped the top. He glanced at Helen. She had the air of someone watching a blood sport, lips parted, smears of colour on her cheekbones.

‘Listen,’ said Cashin. ‘You want something, tell me quick, I’m thinking about food now. I eat around this time of the day, the night.’

‘Corey done some stupid stuff, will of his own,’ said Pascoe. ‘Couldn’t tell him a fuckin thing, just go his own way.’

Cashin said, ‘This’s dope you’re talkin about?’

Pascoe waved a big hand. ‘People grow a bit of weed, make a few bucks. No work around here.’

‘So what did he do?’

‘Well, y’know, there’s ways of doin business. I’m not talkin fuckin truckloads, you understand, just beer money. Anyway, I hear Corey did these private deals, him and Luke, he’s another kid wouldn’t listen, bugger all respect.’

Pascoe offered the cigarettes. Cashin took one, the lighter, lit up, blew smoke at the roof, his instinct told him to make the leap. ‘Piggots,’ he said. ‘This is Piggots?’

Pascoe looked at Helen, looked at Cashin. ‘Not all asleep in Port, are you? Yeah, Piggots. They got ambitions, the fuckin Piggots, such dickheads but they reckon they’re headin for the big time, they’re gonna be players.’

‘Fuckin Piggots,’ said Stevo. He had a Jim Beam bottle in his hand now. ‘Blow the cunts away. White fuckin maggots.’

‘Stevo,’ said Pascoe. ‘Shut the fuck up. Watch TV. Find the fuckin cartoons.’

Helen said, ‘Chris, correct me, you’re saying Corey traded for the watch with the Piggots?’

‘That’s, that’s possible, yeah.’

‘Tell me how the Piggots got the watch,’ said Helen.

Pascoe was looking at Cashin. ‘Can you imagine?’ he said. ‘These Pigs got the idea this shit’s easier than poachin abalone. Don’t even want to grow it themselves, don’t want to move it. All reward and no risk.’

‘That’s very ambitious,’ said Cashin.

‘My fuckin oath. And I hear they got someone to do a cook for em, too. This bloke, he’s like a travellin speed cook.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Shouldn’t be allowed, should it?’

‘No.’

Pascoe leaned forward, put his face as close to Cashin’s as he could. ‘Can’t expect fuckin Hopgood and the local boys to do anythin, can you? Be unreasonable since Hoppy’s got a share in the horse. Whole leg, I hear.’

‘Something’ll have to be done about that,’ said Cashin.

‘Fuckin right.’ He sat back. ‘Hearin me.’

Cashin nodded. ‘Hearing you.’

Helen coughed. ‘About how the Piggots got the watch,’ she said. ‘Can we get on to that?’

Cashin thought that he knew the answer, delivered to him by some process in the brain that endlessly sifted, sorted and shuffled things heard and read, seen and felt, bits and pieces with no obvious use, just clutter, litter, until the moment when two of them touched, spun and found each other, fitted like hands locking.

‘Ray Piggot,’ he said.

‘You’re so fuckin quick,’ said Pascoe. ‘Yeah, the bumboy. That’s what I hear.’

The complaint against Ray Piggot. Hopgood and Steggles at the station, Ray in the car outside. Ray who looked all of fourteen.

‘Ray Piggot stole the watch from Bourgoyne?’ said Helen, uncertainly.

‘Well, wouldn’t have been a present.’

‘I don’t understand what’s going on here,’ said Helen. ‘Who’s Ray Piggot? Am I just…’

Cashin said, ‘So to clear this up, we’re not talking about Ray and a burg?’

Pascoe laughed. ‘Hopgood woulda dropped him off up there for old Charlie Bourgoyne. This cunt Ray knew what he was in for but he’s not the first kid been fed to Charlie and his mates. That’s one of Hoppy’s jobs. That’s the way it’s always been.’

THEY DROVE in silence to the forecourt of the service station where Cashin had parked. ‘Thank you,’ he said, made to go.

‘Wait.’

There were no cars at the pumps. The windows of the small cashier’s cabin were steamed up by breath.

‘I need some things explained to me,’ said Helen. ‘What the hell was going on there?’

Cashin thought about what to say to her. She had no further part to play in this shit, she didn’t have a client. ‘Pascoe’s growing,’ he said. ‘Also, he delivers, he does the tightarse run. The Piggots get other people to grow, make tablets, deliver. Pascoe says Hopgood and the mates are in it, building up their super.’

‘Why’s Pascoe telling you?’

‘He wants me to take care of the Piggots. For telling me how the boys got the watch.’

‘This is another watch, an earlier one?’

‘That’s right. Different model.’

‘So it was a stuff-up from the beginning?’

‘It was.’

‘And you believe the story about this Ray Piggot?’

Cashin looked at her. A car turned in and the headlights splashed her face and he felt again the full sad stupidity of teenage lust for someone beyond reach. ‘Ray’s a quickpick,’ he said. ‘Rips off the punters if he can.’

‘A quickpick?’

‘Drivethrough, a hitchhiker. One size fits all.’

‘Joe, I was in corporate law until a year ago.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing left for you to do. Just a mess for us to clean up. Of our own making.’

‘Joe.’

‘What?’

‘Give me a break. You wouldn’t know what you know if I hadn’t pushed you to see Pascoe. Pascoe says Hopgood delivered Ray Piggot to Bourgoyne. And other boys. Nobody’s ever said this about Bourgoyne.’

‘In your circle.’

‘What’s that mean? In my circle?’

‘Maybe you Bayview Drive people don’t talk about stuff like that. Too vulgar.’

Helen tapped second knuckles of both hands on the steering wheel. ‘Not rising to that bait,’ she said, a pause between each word.

‘Got to go,’ said Cashin. ‘I’ll get back to you.’

It was cold and damp outside, a sea mist. He ducked his head to say thanks.

‘Are you often in pain?’ said Helen.

‘No.’

‘Well, you fooled me. Anyway, I’m in the house, we’re neighbours. Care to stop off for a drink? I can microwave some party pies. I gather people in your circle enjoy them.’

He was going to say, no thank you, I’ll give that a miss, but he looked into her eyes. ‘I’ll follow you,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, ‘you go first. You know the road better.’

The driveway to the Corrigan house ran between old elms, many dead. It was newly graded, the earth white in the headlights. Cashin parked to the left of the homestead gate and switched off. Helen parked beside him. He got out, uneasy. The moving sky opened and a full moon appeared in the wedge, lit the world pale grey. They went down the long path in silence, climbed new timber steps to the front door.

‘I’m still a bit spooked out here,’ she said. ‘The dark. The silence. It may be a mistake.’

‘Get a dog,’ said Cashin. ‘And a gun.’

They went down a passage. She clicked lights, revealed a big empty room, two or three of the old house’s rooms knocked into one, a new floor laid. There were two chairs and a low table.

‘I haven’t got around to furniture yet,’ said Helen. ‘Or unpacked the books.’

He followed her into a kitchen.

‘Stove, fridge, microwave,’ she said. ‘It’s your basic bed-and-breakfast establishment. No personality.’

‘Party pies are just right then,’ said Cashin. ‘Very little personality in a party pie.’

Helen hooked her thumbs in her coat pockets. She lifted her chin. Cashin saw the tendons in her throat. He could feel his heartbeat.

‘Hungry?’ she said.

‘Your eyes,’ said Cashin. ‘Did you inherit that?’

‘My grandmother had different coloured eyes.’ She half-turned from him. ‘You were a person of interest at school. I like that term. Person of interest.’

‘That’s a lie. You never noticed me.’

‘You looked so hostile. Glowering. You still glower. Something sexy about a glower.’

‘How do you glower?’

‘Don’t question your gift.’ Helen crossed the space and took his head in her hands, kissed him, drew back. ‘Not too responsive,’ she said. ‘Are cops intimate on the first date?’

Cashin put his hands inside her coat, held her, inhaled her smell, felt her ribs. She was thinner than he expected. He shivered. ‘Cops generally don’t have second dates.’

There was a long moment.

Helen took Cashin’s right hand, kissed it, kissed his lips, led him.

In the night, he awoke, sensed that she was awake.

‘Do you still ride?’ he said.

‘No. I had a bad fall, lost my nerve.’

‘I thought the idea was to get on again.’

She touched him. ‘Is that a suggestion?’

THE HOUSE could be seen from a long way, the front door dead centre at the end of a drive of pencil pines. As Cashin drove, the weak western sunlight flicked unnervingly through the trees.

A thin, lined woman wearing a dark tracksuit answered his knocks. Cashin said the words, offered the ID.

‘Round the back,’ she said. ‘In the shed.’

He walked on the concrete apron. The place had the air of a low-security prison-the fence around the compound, the building freshly painted, the watermelon scent of newly mown grass in the air. No trees, no flowers, no weeds.

The shed, big enough for a few light aircraft, had an open sliding door on the north side. A man appeared in it when Cashin was ten metres away.

‘Mr Starkey?’ said Cashin.

‘Yeah?’

He was wearing clean blue overalls over a checked shirt, a huge man, fat but hard looking, head the shape and colour of a scrubbed potato.

‘Detective Senior Sergeant Cashin. Can we talk?’

‘Yeah.’ He turned and went inside.

Cashin followed him. Mrs Starkey’s kitchen would be this clean and neat, he thought. Power tools in racks. Two long benches with galvanised iron tops shone under the fluorescent light. Behind them pegboards held tools-spanners, wrenches, pliers, metal snips, hacksaws, steel rulers, clamps, calipers-arranged by size in laser-straight rows. There was a big metal lathe and a tiny one, a drill stand, two bench grinders, a power hacksaw, a stand with slots and holes for files and punches and other things.

In the centre of the space, under chain hoists, four old engines in stages of disassembly stood on square steel tables.

A tall thin youth, dressed like Starkey, was at a vice, filing at something. He glanced at Cashin, looked down at the work, a lock of hair falling.

‘Go talk to yer mum, Tay,’ said Starkey.

Tay had an oily cloth in his back pocket. He took it out and carefully wiped the bench, went over to a stand, wiped his file and put it in its place.

He went without looking at Cashin again. Cashin watched him go. He held one shoulder lower than the other, walked with it leading in a crab-like way.

‘Working on these engines,’ said Cashin.

‘Yeah,’ said Starkey. His eyes were slits. ‘Bourgoyne & Cromie engines. What can I do for you?’

‘You fix them?’

‘Restore em. Best ever made. What?’

Cashin realised there was nowhere to sit. ‘The watch Mr Bourgoyne was wearing,’ he said. ‘Can you identify it?’

‘Yeah, I reckon.’

Cashin took out a colour copy of the brochure, folded to show only the watch with the plain white face, three small dials.

‘Yeah, that’s it,’ Starkey said.

‘He was wearing that watch that day?’

‘Wore it every day.’

‘Thanks. Just a few other questions.’

‘What’s the problem? Daunt coons bashed him.’ Impassive face, grey marble eyes.

‘We’re not sure of that.’

‘Yeah? That fuckin little Coulter took the Kettle dive to have a swim? Guilty as shit.’

Starkey walked to the door and spat, wiped his lips, came back, planted himself, questioning head angle.

‘At home that night?’ said Cashin. ‘You and Tay?’

Starkey’s eyes narrowed, full of threat. ‘Answered that question already. What’s your fuckin problem?’

‘Come down to the station,’ said Cashin. ‘The two of you. Bring the toothbrushes, just in case.’

Starkey exercised his jaw, up and down, back and forth.

‘Know a cop called Hopgood?’ he said. ‘I know him. Mate.’

Cashin took out his mobile, held it out. ‘Ring him,’ he said.

‘In my own fuckin time.’

‘Want me to ring him? I’ll ring him for you.’

Starkey put his hands in his pockets. ‘We was at home, ask her. Don’t go out at night much. Just footy stuff.’

‘Still working at The Heights?’

‘Till it’s sold, yeah.’

‘Well-paid job, The Heights.’

‘That right?’

‘About four times what your gardener gets around here. Five, maybe.’

‘Two of us.’

‘Twice as much then.’

‘Twice as much fuckin work as anywhere else.’

‘You drove him around too.’

Starkey put a huge hand to his neck. ‘Didn’t drive him around. Took him to the bank, to the city. He didn’t like to drive anymore.’

‘Know someone called Arthur Pollard?’

‘No.’

‘Know this man?’ He showed him the full-face mugshot of Pollard, watched his eyes.

‘No.’

Cashin considered where to go, took the soft route. ‘Mr Starkey, I’ll tell you we don’t think the Daunt boys attacked Mr Bourgoyne. So if you can tell me anything you saw or heard, any feeling you might have…’

‘You don’t think?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Some things don’t add up.’

‘Charged that Coulter, didn’t ya?’

‘We thought he was involved, it was a holding action.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘What did you think when you heard about it?’

There was an instant, something in Starkey’s muddy eyes. ‘Well, shock, that’s it, yeah.’

‘That’s all?’

‘What else? Don’t happen around here that kind of thing, does it?’

‘Did you like him?’

‘He was all right. Yeah. Not likely to be mates, were we, him and me?’

‘Who could want to harm him?’

‘Apart from thievin scum?’

‘Yes.’

‘No idea.’

‘Had any visitors recently, Mr Bourgoyne? Apart from the stepdaughter?’

‘Nah. Not that I saw.’

‘What about burglaries at The Heights before this happened?’

‘Not in my time. Had some horses pinched once. They cut the wire, pinched three horses from the bottom paddock. You’d have the records, wouldn’t ya?’

‘If it was reported.’

‘Why wouldn’t it be reported?’

‘Crake. How’d you get on with him?’

Starkey shrugged. ‘Okay. Had his ways he wanted things done. I did em that way.’

‘He helped Bourgoyne with the kiln, didn’t he?’

‘Can’t remember that well.’

‘You worked at the Companions camp.’

Starkey scratched his head again, an uncertain look, averted his eyes. ‘Long time ago,’ he said.

‘So you knew Crake from the camp?’

‘Yeah. He was the boss.’

‘What was your job?’

‘Maintenance. Bit of footy coaching. Showed the kids the ropes.’

‘There on the night of the fire?’

The big hands were expressive now. ‘Nah. At the pub in Port.’

‘Tell me about driving him to the city. Where’d you go?’

‘The flat in Relly Street. He took taxis from there.’

‘Stay over?’

‘Hotel in St Kilda. Gedding’s Hotel.’

Cashin went over to the engines. ‘This one a generator?’ he said.

‘Made in ′56. Better than anything you can buy today.’

‘How much ground you got here?’

‘Thirty acres.’

‘Farm it?’

‘Nah. Put the house in the middle of the block. Didn’t wanna hear neighbours. Now the one bastard’s complaining about the engines.’

‘Well,’ said Cashin, ‘tell him you’ll connect him up if the power fails. I could use a generator. Sell them?’

‘Don’t sell, not a business,’ said Starkey. ‘Only restore ones my granddad and my dad finished off. They punched their initials under the number.’

‘How do you find them?’

‘Advertise, Queensland, WA, Northern Territory. I got auctioneers keep a lookout at clearing sales, that kind of thing. Found one in Fiji, rusted to buggery. Cost a bit to bring it home.’

‘And you’ve found four?’

‘Thirteen. Got another shed for em.’

‘Where do you stop?’

‘Stop?’

‘Collecting them.’

‘Don’t have to stop.’

There was no point in asking why. It was a pretty useless question most of the time. The answer was either obvious or too complicated to understand. Cashin looked for the engine number. ‘Ever drive Bourgoyne to a house in North Melbourne?’

‘North… no. Only took him to Relly Street.’

The fortress had a crack, a hairline fracture. He didn’t look at Starkey. ‘A hall in North Melbourne, you drove him there.’

‘A hall? Just Relly Street.’

‘The Companions hall. You know it, don’t bullshit me, Mr Starkey.’

‘No, don’t know it.’

Cashin went to another engine. They were simple machines, he could probably learn to fix one. Easier than making a decent soup. ‘Your dad, he’d have been pretty pissed off when they sold the factory.’

Silence. Starkey coughed, off balance. ‘Never said a word. Mum told me that.’

‘What’d he do afterwards?’

‘Nothin. Died before the payout. Some serious brain thing.’

‘That’s sad.’ Cashin didn’t look at him. ‘I’ll tell you what’s a serious brain thing, Mr Starkey. Bullshitting me. That’s a seriously bad brain thing. Tell me about the hall.’

‘Don’t know no hall.’

‘I’ll need to talk to Tay,’ said Cashin. ‘By himself.’

‘Why?’

‘He might have seen something. Heard something.’

Starkey stared at Cashin. ‘He wouldn’t know nothin, mate. Always with me.’

Cashin shrugged. ‘We’ll see.’

‘Listen,’ said Starkey, a different voice. ‘Boy’s not the brightest. She dropped him on the lid when he was tiny. Short-circuited the little bugger. No use at school.’

‘Get him in here.’

Starkey scratched his scalp, slowly, urgently. ‘Do me a favour, mate,’ he said. ‘Let him alone. Gets nightmares. Screams.’

The felt moment of power. Cashin could see Starkey’s fear. ‘That’s really tough. Get him.’

‘Mate, please.’

‘Just get him.’

‘I’m gonna ring Hopgood.’

‘Listen, Starkey,’ said Cashin. ‘Hopgood can’t protect you. This is a city matter. And now, because you’re so fucking obstructive, I’m not going to talk to Tay here, not going to talk to him at the station. I’m taking him to Melbourne. Pack his toothbrush and his jarmies and a couple of biscuits. What kind of bickies does he like?’

He saw hate in Starkey’s eyes, and he saw pure shining fear, fear and panic.

‘Can’t do that, mate. I ask you, please, I ask you…’

‘North Melbourne. The house in Collett Street. You drove him there?’

‘No, I didn’t, you gotta…’

‘Wasting my time. Got a trip ahead of me. Tell me the truth or get Tay. Now.’

Starkey looked around the shed as if the answer might be written on a wall, he could read it out. ‘Okay. Took him there.’

‘When last?’

‘Five, six years, I dunno.’

‘How many times?’

‘Few.’

‘Every time you went to Melbourne?’

‘I suppose.’

‘How often was that?’

Starkey swallowed. ‘Four, five times a year.’

‘And the hall?’

‘Don’t know the hall.’

Cashin caught the tinny sound in the big man’s voice.

He took out the mugshot of Pollard, didn’t show it. ‘I’m asking you again. Do you know this man?’

‘I know him.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Arthur Pollard. He used to come to the camp.’

‘Where else do you know him from?’

‘Collett Street. I seen him there.’

Cashin walked to the work bench, ran a finger over the piece of metal Tay had been filing. It was a part of some sort. ‘Pollard’s a perv,’ he said. ‘Know that? He likes boys. Small boys. Fucks them. And the rest. Lots of the rest, I can tell you. Know about that do you, Mr Starkey?’

Silence. Cashin didn’t look at Starkey. ‘Didn’t drop your boy off in Collett Street, did you, Mr Starkey? Feed him to Pollard?’

‘I’ll kill you,’ Starkey said slowly, voice thick. ‘Say that again, I’ll fuckin kill you.’

Cashin turned. ‘Tell me about Bourgoyne.’

Starkey had a hand on his chest. His face was orange, he was trying to control his breathing. ‘Never saw anything. Nothin. So help me, I never saw anythin.’

‘What about the hall?’

‘Just the once. Picked up a lot of stuff, files and that. He said to burn it.’

‘Bourgoyne?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So where’d you burn it?

‘Nowhere to burn there. Brought the stuff back here to burn.’

‘Dad.’

Tay was in the door, chin near his chest, looking through a comb of pale hair that touched the bridge of his nose.

‘What?’

‘Mum says spaggy bol okay for tea?’

‘Tell her to go for it, son.’

Tay went. Cashin walked to the door, turned. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty more we want to know. And don’t mention this little talk to anyone. You go running to fucking Hopgood, running anywhere, I’m coming back for you and Tay, you’ll both rot in remand in Melbourne. Not together either. He’ll be in with blokes fuck dogs. And so will you.’

‘Didn’t burn the stuff,’ said Starkey quietly.

CASHIN SAT at the table and sifted through the contents of Starkey’s cardboard boxes. It was half an hour before he came upon the clipping of a photograph from the Cromarty Herald. The date at the top of the page was 12 August 1977.

A strapline above the picture said:

CLEAN AIR IS A KICK FOR CITY BOYS

The caption read:

Coach Rob Starkey, North Cromarty star half-forward, fires up the Companions Camp under-15 side at half-time in their game against St Stephen’s on Saturday morning. The city boys, having a much-needed holiday at the Port Monro camp thanks to the Moral Companions, went down 167-43. But the score didn’t matter. The point was to have a good run around in the bracing air.

The black-and-white photograph showed boys in muddy white shorts and dark football jumpers facing a big man. He was holding the ball horizontally and he was saying something. The boys, hair close-cut back and sides, were eating orange quarters-sour oranges, said the nearest boy’s puckered face, his closed eyes.

In the background were spectators, all but two of them men, rugged up against the cold. To the right were two men in overcoats and, in front of them, a small boy. The men were smoking cigarettes.

Cashin got up from the table and took the clipping to the window, held it to the dying light. He recognised the man in the centre wearing a camel overcoat from the photographs at The Heights: Charles Bourgoyne. He had long fingers. The man on his right could be Percy Crake-he had a small moustache.

Cashin looked at the other spectators: middle-aged men, a sharp-nosed woman wearing a headscarf, a laughing woman of indeterminate age. The face behind Bourgoyne was turned away, a young man, short hair combed back, something about him.

Was the boy with Bourgoyne and Crake? He was frowning. He seemed to be looking at the camera. Something in the small face nagged at Cashin. He closed his eyes and he saw Erica Bourgoyne across the table from him at the gallery.

James Bourgoyne. The boy with the sad face might be the drowned Jamie, Erica’s brother, Bourgoyne’s step-son.

Cashin went back to the papers and looked for other photographs. In a folder, he found more than a dozen 8 × 10 prints. They were all the same: boys lined up in three rows of nine or ten, tallest at the back, the front row on one knee. They wore singlets and dark shorts, tennis shoes with short socks. The man with the moustache was in all of them, dressed like the boys, standing to the right, apart. His arms were folded, fists beneath his biceps, bulging them. He had hairy legs, big thighs and muscular calves. At the left stood two other men in track-suits. One of them, a stocky dark man wearing glasses, was in all the photographs. The other one-tall, thin, long-nosed-was in five or six.

He turned a photograph over: Companions Camp 1979.

The names were written in pencil in a loose hand: back row, middle row, front row. At left: Mr Percy Crake. At right: Mr Robin Bonney, Mr Duncan Vallins.

Vallins was the tall man, Bonney the dark, solid one.

Cashin looked for the name and he found it in 1977.

David Vincent was in the middle row, a skinny, pale boy, long-necked, his adam’s apple and the bumps on his shoulders visible. His head was turned away slightly, apprehensively, as if he feared some physical harm from the photographer.

Cashin read the other names, looked at the faces, looked away and thought. He fetched the telephone and dialled, listened, eyes closed. David Vincent was out or out of it. He rang Melbourne, had to wait for Tracy.

‘Two names,’ he said. ‘Robin Bonney. Duncan Vallins. Appreciate and so on.’

‘You are Singo’s clones,’ she said. ‘You and the boss. Have people told you that?’

‘They’ve told me young Clint Eastwood. Does that square with you?’

‘And so on. You going to actually speak to me the next time you come in here? As opposed to acknowledging my existence?’

A dog rose on the sofa and, in an indolent manner, put its paws on the floor and did a stretch, backside high above its head. The other dog followed suit, an offended look.

‘Preoccupied then,’ said Cashin. ‘I’m sorry. Still married to that bloke in moving?’

‘No. Divorced.’

‘Right. Moved on. Well, next time I’m in we can exchange some more personal information. Blood types, that kind of thing.’

‘I’m holding my breath. Got a Robin Gray Bonney here. Age fifty-seven. Possibility?’

‘About right.’

‘Former social worker. Form is child sex offender. Suspended sentence on two charges. Then he did four years of a six.’

‘More and more right.’

‘Well, he’s dead. Multiple stab wounds, castrated, mutilated and strangled. In Sydney. Marrickville. That’s, that’s two days ago. No arrest.’

Cashin tried to do the front stretch exercise, the opening of the shoulderblades, felt all the muscles resist.

‘Here we go,’ said Tracy. ‘Vallins, Duncan Grant, age fifty-three. Anglican priest, address in Brisbane, Fortitude Valley but that’s 1994. Child sex form, suspended sentence 1987. Did a year in 1994-95. I presume he’s a former priest now.’

‘Why would you presume that? Trace, three things. All the details on Bonney. The mutilation. Two, on Vallins, beg Brisbane to check that address and stress we don’t want him spooked. Three, tell Dove we need the coroner’s report on a fire at the Companions camp, Port Monro, in 1983.’

He was at the window. Ragged-edged ribbons of pink ran down the sky, died on the black hill.

Same night as the fire. Double tragedy.

Cecily Addison’s words. Bourgoyne’s wife fell down the stairs on the night of the fire. Tranquillisers blamed.

‘Now that I think about it,’ he said, ‘I might come to town. Pass that on to the boss, will you?’

‘I’ll pass it on to all the lovesick in this building. Dove’s here, want to talk to him?’

‘No, but put him on anyway.’

Clicks.

‘Good day,’ said Dove. ‘The CrimeStoppers log on Bourgoyne. You looked at it?’

‘How the fuck would I have looked at it?’

‘I don’t think anyone’s looked at it. On the night it was on television, a woman rang. She saw it, rang straight away. Mrs Moira Laidlaw. Her words are, I suggest you investigate Jamie Bourgoyne.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Well, Jamie’s dead. Drowned in Tasmania.’

‘You don’t have to drown to be dead in Tasmania, but I thought this was worth a sniff. Is that it? Sniff? Snuff?’

‘You’ve talked to her?’

‘This is ten minutes old. I rang but you were busy.’

‘Get the full sweep on the dead Jamie. Tracy’ll tell you what else. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Cashin knew he should go immediately, tell Villani, get in the vehicle and go. He knew he wouldn’t. What did it matter now?

‘I SAW HIM quite clearly,’ said the old woman in a dry and precise voice. ‘I was waiting at the lights in Toorak Road and they changed and a car stopped. For some reason, I looked and Jamie was in the passenger seat.’

‘You knew him well, Mrs Laidlaw?’ said Cashin.

‘Of course. He’s my nephew, my sister’s child. He lived with us for a time.’

‘Right. And you saw him when?’

‘About six weeks ago. On a Friday. I go shopping and have lunch with friends on Fridays.’

It was just past 4 pm but Cashin thought that it felt much later in the sitting room, the light dim outside, a row of raindrops waiting to fall from a thin branch framed in the French doors. ‘And you know that Jamie is said to have drowned in Tasmania in 1993?’ he said.

‘Yes. Well, obviously he didn’t because I saw him in Toorak Road.’

Cashin looked at Dove, passed to him that there was no point in questioning the identification.

‘May I ask why you thought we should investigate Jamie over the assault on his step-father?’ said Dove.

‘Because he’s alive and he’s capable of it. He hates Charles Bourgoyne.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I have no idea. Ask Erica.’ She turned her head and the light made her short hair gleam.

‘When last did you see Jamie?’ said Dove. ‘Before Toorak Road, I mean.’

‘He came to my husband’s funeral. Turned up at the church. God knows how he knew. Didn’t talk to anyone except Erica. Not a word to his step-father.’

‘He liked your husband?’ said Cashin.

She picked at nothing on her cardigan. ‘No. And my husband certainly wasn’t fond of him.’

‘Why was that?’

‘He didn’t like him.’

Cashin waited but nothing came. ‘Why didn’t he like him, Mrs Laidlaw?’

She looked down. A dove-grey cat had come into the room and was leaning against her right leg. It was staring at Cashin, eyes the colour of ash. ‘My husband never forgot his nephew’s death. His brother’s only son. Mark drowned in the pool when he was ten. Jamie was here. No one else.’

‘Was there a suspicion that Jamie was involved?’

‘No one said anything.’

‘But your husband thought he was?’

She blinked at Cashin. ‘Jamie was three years older than Mark, you see.’

Cashin felt the silken ankle-winding of the cat. ‘Was that important?’

‘He was supposed to be looking after Mark. We loved Mark very much. He’d been with us since he was six. He was like a son to us.’

‘I see. And Jamie came to your husband’s funeral?’

‘Yes. Out of the blue and dressed like some sort of hippy musician.’

‘When was that?’

‘In 1996. The twelfth of May 1996. He came here the next day.’

‘Why?’

‘He wanted a photograph of Mark. He asked if he could have one. He knew where the photographs were too, where we kept Mark’s things. He said he’d thought of Mark as a brother. Quite unbelievable, frankly.’

‘And you never saw him again?’

‘No. Not until Toorak Road. A cup of tea? I could make tea.’

‘No thank you, Mrs Laidlaw,’ said Dove. ‘How long did Jamie live with you?’

She took off her glasses, touched the corner of an eye carefully, replaced them. ‘Not very long. Less than two years. He came after he stopped boarding at the college. His step-father asked us.’

‘And that was here?’

‘Here?’

‘You lived in this house then?’ said Cashin.

Mrs Laidlaw looked at him as if he were not the full quid. ‘We’ve always lived here. I grew up here, my grandparents built this house.’

‘And after Jamie finished school…?’

‘He didn’t finish school. He left.’

‘He left school?’

‘Yes. And he left here. He was in year eleven and one day he just left.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘I don’t know. Erica told me he was in Queensland at one point.’

A telephone rang in the passage.

‘Excuse me.’

Cashin and Dove stood up with her. She walked slowly to the door and Cashin went to the French doors and looked at the garden, at the big bare trees-an oak, an elm, a tree he couldn’t identify. Their leaves had not been raked and they lay in soggy drifts. A stone retaining wall was leaning, blocks loose. Soon it would collapse, the worms would be revealed.

‘These charity calls,’ said Mrs Laidlaw. ‘I don’t really know what to say to the people. They sound so nice.’

She sat down in her chair. The cat elevated itself into her lap. Cashin and Dove sat.

‘Mrs Laidlaw, why did Jamie stop boarding at the school?’ said Cashin.

‘I didn’t hear the details. The school could tell you, I suppose.’

‘And the reason he left here?’

‘You might ask the school about that too. I’d be lying if I said his departure wasn’t a great relief.’

She stroked the cat, looking at it. ‘Jamie was a strange boy. He was very attached to his mother and I don’t think he got over her death. But there was something else about him…’

‘Yes?’

‘Silent, always watching, and somehow scared. As if you might hurt him. Then he’d do these horrible things. Once when he was here for the weekend from school he made a bow and arrow and shot the cat next door. Through the eye. He said it was an accident. But there was a dog set on fire down the road. We knew it was Jamie. And he drowned Mark’s budgies in the pool. In their cage.’

She looked from Cashin to Dove. ‘He used to read my husband’s medical books. He’d sit on the floor in the study and look at anatomy texts for hours.’

‘Do you know anyone he might be in contact with?’ said Cashin.

She was stroking the cat, her head down. ‘No. He had a friend at school, another problem boy. They expelled him, I gather.’

‘What school did he go to, Mrs Laidlaw?’

‘St Paul’s. The Bourgoynes all went to St Paul’s. Gave it a lot of money.’

‘You said he hated Charles Bourgoyne.’

‘Yes. I didn’t realise how much until I suggested he might like to spend a holiday with Charles. He’d been spending them here. He ran into the front door with his head. Deliberately. And he sat there on the floor screaming no, no, no, over and over. Sixteen stitches in his scalp, that’s what it took.’

‘Thank you for your help, Mrs Laidlaw.’

‘You’re not what I expected.’ She was looking at Dove.

‘We come in all types,’ Cashin said.

She smiled at Dove, an affectionate smile, as if she knew him and thought well of him.

They went down the passage to the front door. Cashin said, ‘Mrs Laidlaw, I have to ask you. Is there even the slightest doubt in your mind over the man you saw in Toorak Road? Is it possible that it wasn’t Jamie?’

‘No doubt at all. I’m perfectly sane, I had my glasses on and it was Jamie.’

‘You told Erica you’d seen him?’

‘Yes. I rang her as soon as I got home.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Nothing really. Yes, dear, that sort of thing.’

A thin but steady rain fell on the men as they walked down the balding gravel path and along the pavement to the vehicle. The gutters were running, carrying leaves and twigs and acorns. In some dark tunnel, they would meet the sordid human litter of the city and go together to the cold slate bay.

It came to Cashin as they reached the car. ‘Be back in a sec,’ he said.

Mrs Laidlaw opened the door as if she’d been waiting behind it. He asked her.

‘Mark Kingston Denby,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘Just for the record.’

In the car, Cashin said, ‘The school. The expelled friend.’

THE DEPUTY headmaster was in his fifties, grey-suited, tanned and fit-looking like a cross-country skier. ‘School policy is that we do not disclose information about students or staff, past or present,’ he said. He smiled, snowy teeth.

‘Mr Waterson,’ said Cashin, ‘we’ll ruin your evening. We’ll be back inside an hour with a warrant and a truck to take away all your files. And who knows, the media might show up too. Can’t keep anything secret these days. So St Paul’s will be all over the television news tonight. The parents will like that, I’m sure.’

Waterson scratched his cheek, a pink square-cut nail. He wore a copper bracelet. ‘I’ll need to consult,’ he said. ‘Please excuse me a moment.’

Dove went to the office window. ‘Dusk on the playing fields,’ he said. ‘Like England.’

Cashin was looking at the deputy headmaster’s books. They all seemed to be about business management. ‘We fucked this thing up,’ he said. ‘So badly. I’m glad Singo’s not around to see it.’

‘Thank god it’s we,’ said Dove. ‘Imagine what it would be like to have fucked it up all by yourself. Even mostly.’

The door opened. ‘Follow me please, gentlemen,’ said Waterson. ‘I caught our legal adviser on her way home. She works here two days a week.’

They went down the corridor and into a big wood-panelled room. A dark-haired woman in a pinstriped suit was at the head of a table that could seat at least twenty.

‘Louise Carter,’ said Waterson. ‘Detective Cashin and Detective Dove. Please sit down, gentlemen.’

They sat. Carter looked at them in turn.

‘This school jealously guards the privacy of its community,’ she said. She was about fifty, a long face, taut skin around her eyes, a slightly startled look. ‘We don’t accede to requests for information unless requested to do so by the community family or the community family member concerned, if that person is in a position to make such a request. And, even then, we reserve the right to exercise our own judgment on acceding to any requests.’

‘You’ve got that written in your hand,’ said Dove. ‘I saw you look down.’

She was not amused.

‘The community family I’m talking about is in serious shit,’ said Cashin. ‘Just yes or no, we’re in a hurry.’

Carter moved her mouth. ‘You can’t bully St Paul’s, detective. Perhaps you don’t realise the position it occupies in this city.’

‘I don’t give a bugger either. We’ll crawl all over the place. Inside an hour. Believe me.’

She didn’t blink. ‘What is it you want to know about these students?’

‘Why Jamie Bourgoyne was kicked out as a boarder, the name of the friend he had here who was expelled and why.’

A head movement of refusal. ‘Not possible. Please understand that the Bourgoyne family has a long and close association with the school. I’m afraid we can’t…’

‘Don’t loosen your seatbelt,’ said Cashin. ‘We’ll be back soon. You might want to check the lippy, you’re going to be on television.’

Cashin and Dove stood.

‘Wait,’ said Waterson, getting up. ‘I think we can meet this request.’

He left the room and the woman followed him, heels clicking. There was a brief exchange outside and she came back and stood at a window. Then she sat down and there was silence until she coughed and said, ‘Have I seen you two on television?’

Cashin had his eyes on the big painting opposite, vertical bars of grey and brown. It reminded him of a jumper Bern wore, knitted by some old relative, a person with self-respect would compost it.

Once he would have wanted this woman to think well of him.

‘You may have seen me,’ said Dove. ‘I’m the undercover cop. Sometimes I have a beard.’

Waterson came in. He put two yellow folders on the table and sat. ‘I’ll deal with all your inquiries in a narrative,’ he said, businesslike. ‘Feel free to interrupt.’

The woman said, ‘David, can we…’

‘James Bourgoyne and a boy called Justin Fischer were in the same class and in the boarding house together,’ said Waterson.

He looked at the woman, at Cashin. ‘I feel compelled to say that I considered James to be a seriously disturbed young man. And Justin Fischer is the most dangerous boy I’ve encountered in my thirty-six years in education.’

The lawyer leaned forward. ‘David, there’s absolutely no call for this kind of candour. May I…’

‘What happened?’ said Cashin.

‘Among other things, they were suspected of lighting two fires. One burnt down a sports equipment store, the other was lit in the boarding house.’

‘David, please.’

‘Police matters,’ said Cashin.

‘The police were called in, of course,’ said Waterson, ‘but we didn’t pass on our suspicions and they could find nothing. Instead, we asked James’s step-father to remove him from the boarding establishment. This was an attempt to separate the pair.’

The lawyer held up her hands. ‘This may be the moment…’

‘In retrospect,’ said Waterson, ‘we should have told the police everything and expelled both students. In that order.’

The woman said, quickly, ‘David, before you say another word, I must insist that the headmaster be consulted.’

Waterson didn’t look at her, kept his eyes on Cashin. ‘Louise,’ he said, ‘the headmaster has the moral sense of Pol Pot. Let’s not now compound our earlier atrocious judgments.’

Cashin saw in the tanned man’s eyes the relief he had seen in people who were confessing to murder. ‘Go on,’ he said. He had the feeling now, the cough tickle in the mind.

‘After Bourgoyne left the boarding establishment,’ said Waterson, ‘there were hedge-burnings locally. Three or four, I can’t remember. Then in Prahran a boy, he was seven or eight, was taken to a quiet spot by two teenage boys and tortured. There’s no other word for it. It was brief and he wasn’t badly hurt but it was torture, sadism. One of our students came to us, he was a boarder, and he said he’d seen Bourgoyne and Fischer near the scene around the time.’

‘You told the police?’

‘To our eternal discredit, we did not.’

‘The student wasn’t told to go to the police?’

‘David,’ said the woman, ‘I must now advise you to…’

‘He was discouraged from doing so,’ said Waterson. ‘On instructions from the headmaster, I discouraged him.’

‘Is that the same as telling him not to?’ said Dove. ‘Discouraged?’

‘Pretty close,’ said Waterson. ‘We then expelled Bourgoyne and Fischer. That day. It was the only right and proper thing we did in all our dealings with the pair.’

‘I’d like copies of the files, please,’ said Cashin.

‘These are copies,’ said Waterson. He pushed them across the table.

‘Thank you,’ said Cashin. He got up and shook hands with Waterson. He didn’t look at the lawyer. ‘There won’t be any reason that I can see for us to mention the school.’

Going down the stone stairs, Cashin opened a file. ‘Get Tracy,’ he said to Dove. In the entrance hall, Dove handed him the mobile.

‘Tracy, Joe. This is top of the list, front burner. Everything on a Justin David Fischer. That’s a S-C-H-E-R. The last address is for an aunt, Mrs K. L. Fischer, 19 Hendon Street, Albert Park. Ask Birk to see if someone can chase that.’

‘We’ve got the Jamie Bourgoyne sweep and the inquest on the Companions fire. Fin’s looking at them.’

‘Ask him to ring me, will you?’

‘And Brisbane checked that Duncan Grant Vallins address. He left there two years ago. They don’t have anything more recent.’

‘Bugger.’

‘The neighbour says a bloke was asking for him last week. Long hair, beard. Another one in the car.’

In the twilight, they crunched softly down the gravel driveway. Boys in green blazers and grey flannels were coming along a path to their right. The pale one in front was eating chips out of box. A boy behind him put a headlock on him, pulled his head back. Another boy walked by and casually took the chip box, kept walking, put one in his mouth.

‘Year ten mugging class,’ said Dove. ‘Been out on a prac.’

‘WHAT’S HE SHOW?’ said Cashin. They were at lights in Toorak Road. Three blonde women were crossing, damp combed hair, no makeup, flushed from an after-work gym class.

‘My oath,’ said Dove. ‘These things are sent to try us.’

‘Never on the electoral roll,’ said Finucane. ‘No Jamie Bourgoyne or Kingsley registered for Medicare, the dole, anything. A driver’s licence issued Darwin 1989, you get that in a show bag. Then he’s on the move. Minor drug stuff in Cairns, arrest for assaulting a kid age twelve in Coffs Harbour. Not proceeded with. Suspended sentences for assault in Sydney in 1986. In a park, victim age sixteen. Possession of heroin in Sydney in 1987. Two years for aggravated burglary in Melbourne in 1990.’

The lights turned green. Without a glance either way, an old woman, small and hunched, head down, wearing a transparent plastic raincoat, pushed a pram-like homemade trolley into the crossing.

‘Like Columbus,’ said Dove. ‘She has no idea.’

The car behind them hooted, two long blasts.

Dove waited until the woman had crossed to safety before he pulled away slowly, held the speed, an act of provocation.

‘Go on,’ said Cashin.

‘That’s it. Jamie came out in ′92 and he’s presumed drowned in Tassie in ′93.’

Cashin said, ‘Fin, Tracy’s on this Fischer bloke. Get whatever and ring me, okay? Also she’s got a Duncan Grant Vallins. He’s a ped, former Anglican sky pilot, address unknown, see if he’s in our system, see if the church knows anything about him. Tell the choirboy who does the church’s spin to co-operate or they’ll turn in the fucking wind. On The 7.30 Report tonight.’

‘Boss.’

‘And one other thing. Try the name Mark Kingston Denby. Ring Dove if you get anything.’

‘Boss.’

Cashin closed his eyes and thought about Helen Castleman naked. So smooth. Nakedness and sex changed everything. No bacon and onion and tomato sandwich would ever taste like that again.

‘Where to?’ said Dove.

‘Queen Street. Know that?’

‘Memorised the map, that’s the first thing I did.’

‘Then there’ll always be a job for you driving cabs. Probably sooner than later.’

In Queen Street, Dove said, ‘Accepting that I might have come on a bit like…’

‘Here,’ said Cashin. ‘Park in there. I want to talk to Erica Bourgoyne.’

‘Bit late in the day, isn’t it?’

‘She’s a lawyer. They don’t go home.’

Cashin had the door open when Dove’s mobile rang. He waited while Dove answered, held up a finger. ‘Putting him on,’ said Dove, offered the phone.

‘Boss, I got through to this church bloke, he gave me Duncan Grant Vallins straight off,’ said Finucane. ‘Living in a place in Essendon, St Aidan’s Home for Boys. It’s shut down but this bloke says church people in need sometimes stay there.’

‘In need of what?’ said Cashin. ‘The address?’

The night was upon them now, rain blurring the lights, dripping from the street trees, the pavement a parade of pale faces above dark garments.

‘Also Mark Kingston Denby, found him. Came out of jail nine weeks ago. Six years for armed robberies. There’s a co-accused here.’

‘Yes?’

‘A Justin Fischer,’ said Finucane. ‘He got the same.’ Cashin thought of calling Villani, changed his mind, told Dove where to go.

THE HEADLIGHTS lit the pillars and the double gates: cast-iron, ornate, fully two metres high, once painted, now an autumn colour and flaking. Beyond them was a driveway, and the lights threw the gates’ shadows onto dark, uncontrolled vegetation.

‘If the prick’s at home, we’re taking him into protective custody,’ said Cashin. His whole torso was aching now and the pain slivers were going down his thighs.

Dove switched off, cut the lights. The street was dark here, the nearest lamp on the other side, fifty metres down. They got out, into the cold evening, the rain holding off for a while.

‘What do we do?’ said Dove.

‘Knock on the front door,’ said Cashin. ‘What else is there to do?’

He tried the gate, put his hand through an opening and found a lever, raised it with difficulty, a screech of metal. The right-hand gate resisted his push, then swung easily. ‘Leave it open,’ he said.

They walked up the drive side by side, trying not to brush the wet bushes. ‘You armed?’ said Dove.

‘Relax,’ said Cashin, ‘it’s one old ex-priest ped, not party night at the Hell’s Angels.’ He knew he should be carrying. He’d got out of the habit, lost the instinct.

The building came into sight, double-storeyed, brick, arched windows, steps up to a long porch and a front door with leadlight windows on either side. A slit of light showed in a window to the left, a curtain not fully drawn.

‘Someone home,’ said Cashin. ‘Someone in need.’

They climbed the stairs, he pulled back a solid ring of brass, pounded a few times, waited, hammered again.

The leadlight on the left glowed dimly-red and white and green and violet, a biblical scene, a group of men, one haloed.

‘Who’s there?’ A firm male voice.

‘Police,’ said Cashin.

‘Put your identification through the letter slot.’

Cashin gestured to Dove, who took out his ID card, pushed it through the slot. It was taken. They heard two bolts slide. The door opened.

‘What is it?’ A tall unshaven man in black, many-chinned, round glasses, thin grey hair combed back, oily, curling at the tips.

‘Duncan Grant Vallins?’

‘Yes.’

‘Detective Senior Sergeant Cashin, homicide. Detective Dove.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Can we come in?’

Vallins hesitated, stood back. They went into a marble-floored entrance hall with a staircase rising in the centre, branching left and right to a gallery. Six metres up hung a many-tiered crystal chandelier.

‘This way,’ said Vallins.

They followed his pear shape into a room to the left. It was a big sitting room, one dim unshaded bulb above, one standing lamp near a fireplace. The furniture was old, shabby, unmatched chairs, a sagging chintz sofa. The smell was of damp and mouse droppings and ancient cigarette smoke trapped in curtains and carpet and coverings.

Vallins sat in the chair next to the lamp, crossed his legs, adjusted them. His thighs were fat. Next to a white cup, a filter cigarette was burning in a brass ashtray and he picked it up and drew deeply, long thin fingers stained the colour of cinnamon sticks. ‘What do you want?’ he said.

‘Do you know an Arthur Pollard?’ said Cashin, looking at the room, at the high ceiling, at the group of bottles on a side table, whisky bottles, seven or eight, empty except for two.

‘Vaguely. Years ago.’

‘Robin Gray Bonney. Know him?’

Vallins sucked on the cigarette, spat smoke, waved a hand. ‘Also a long time ago. Donkeys’ years. Why?’

‘Charles Bourgoyne,’ said Cashin. ‘You probably know Charles. Vaguely. From a long time ago. And Mr Crake of course.’

Vallins didn’t say anything, found a cigarette in a packet, lit it from his stub, had trouble docking, a shake in both hands. He ground the donor in the ashtray. ‘What is this nonsense?’ he said, high, proper voice. ‘Why have you come here to bother me?’

‘You may want to be in protective custody,’ said Cashin. ‘You may want to sit around and tell us about the Companions camps, those golden days. You looked really fit in the photographs. Took a lot of exercise then, did you, Mr Vallins? With the boys?’

‘There’s nothing I want to tell you,’ said Vallins. ‘Not a single thing. You can go now.’

‘Bit of a hermit here, are you, Mr Vallins? All alone in this place for Anglicans in need?’

‘None of your business. You know the way out.’

Cashin looked at Dove. Dove didn’t seem happy, he was scratching his skull. Did scalps still itch without hair? Why was that?

‘Fine,’ said Cashin. ‘On our way then. We’ll leave you to think about how your friends Arthur and Robin were tortured. Robin’s was nasty. Had something hot shoved up him. The knife sharpener. Know that thing? The steel? They think it was heated over the gas ring. Red hot. Came out the front.’

Vallins’ face screwed up. ‘What?’

‘Tortured and killed,’ said Cashin. ‘Bourgoyne, Bonney, Pollard. We’ll find our own way out then, Mr Vallins. Good night.’

Cashin walked. He was at the door when Vallins said, ‘Please wait, detective, I’m sorry, I didn’t know…’

‘Just stopped by to keep you informed of the mortality rate among people like you,’ said Cashin. ‘Offer extended and refused. That’s on record. Good luck and sleep tight, Mr Vallins.’

They were in the entrance hall, Cashin in front, then Dove, Vallins a pace behind.

‘I think you might be right, detective,’ said Vallins, high voice. ‘Do I need…’

‘I know what you need, Duncan,’ said a voice from above, from the gallery. ‘You need to repent your filthy life and die at peace with the Lord.’

CASHIN COULDN’T see the man. The light from the sitting room was too feeble.

‘Who is it?’ he said.

He knew.

Someone laughed, not the speaker. ‘Cops,’ he said. ‘I can smell cops, filthy stinking, rotten cops.’

Cashin looked at Dove. His eyes were on the gallery, he was pushing back his overcoat with his right hand, Cashin saw the spring-clip holster, the butt, Dove’s reaching fingers.

Bangs, bright red muzzle-flash.

Dove went backwards, spun around to face Cashin, Cashin saw his glasses glint, saw Dove’s open mouth, his hands coming up to his chest, he was falling sideways.

‘ONE DOWN!’

Cashin saw the fusebox on the wall beside the stained glass window. He went for it, two paces, dived, clawed at it with his left hand, off-balance, going down, saw the flash at the edge of his vision, felt a knife slice across his back below the shoulderblades.

‘TWO DOWN!’

Coal dark. He was on his knees, his whole back seemed to be on fire.

Shit, he thought, I’ve taken one.

‘Please!’ shouted Vallins. ‘I’ll give you money, I’ve got money!’

Cashin put out a hand and found Dove’s shoulder, the feel of cloth, touched his face. He was breathing. He crawled across, heard Dove’s small snoring noise. He felt for Dove’s holster, slid his hand down his body.

Empty.

Jesus, he got the gun out, dropped it. Where?

‘COMING FOR YOU, BOYS!’

The squeaking voice.

Cashin was groping frantically, the marble floor was ice-cold.

‘Please!’ shouted Vallins. ‘Pleeease!’

‘First you must repent, Duncan,’ said the deeper, calmer voice.

Cashin was crawling fast, there was a door to the right of the stairs, he needed to get there before they switched on the mains, they’d seen him switch off, they’d find it, you never went unarmed, you never needed the fucking thing until you needed it so badly that your teeth ached.

He crawled into a wall, stood up, went left, groping, knocked over something, a table, an object hit the floor, smashed.

Bang, gun-flash. From half-way down the stairs.

Cashin found a deep recess, found the door, found the doorknob, twisted, the door opened, he was inside.

A scent. A faint, sickly perfume.

Don’t close the door, they’ll hear the click.

He was feeling light-headed. He walked into something solid, thigh-high, turned right, felt his way, it was the back of something, it went on, it ended, a post, carved, he put out a hand and touched a wall.

A pew. This is a church. A chapel. That’s the smell.

Right hand on the wall, he took a step, felt something, knocked it off its mounting. It hit the floor, a loud noise, he stopped.

‘Over there,’ said the first voice. ‘He’s over there. He doesn’t have a gun.’

‘Blow this cop away,’ said the high voice. ‘Blow his head off.’

‘No, get the other cop, Justin. We’ll let this one bleed out. He’s a lamb of God. I’ll pray for him.’

Cashin heard a whimpering, a terrible sound, fear and pain combined.

He was trying to become accustomed to the dark, he was blinking, trying to blink quickly, but he couldn’t, his eyelids were too heavy. Loss of blood? He put his right hand under the overcoat, felt his back.

Wet. Warm.

He felt the need to sit. He put out his hand, found the back of a pew, leaned against it, urgency gone, it didn’t matter. He was going to die here, in this ice-cold and sickly-sweet room.

No. A way out of here. Find the door. Follow the wall.

His eyes weren’t working. He was underwater, black water, not water, something thicker. Blood. Trying to move in blood. Water and blood. Diab and Dove, he’d killed them both. He couldn’t feel his toes move. Couldn’t feel his legs. Couldn’t breathe. He took his hand off the pew and he felt himself falling, saw something, a pole, tried to grab it.

It was loose, fell with him. Something hit his head. Terrible pain, then nothing.

HE WAS IN the hospital, something cold on his face, they wiped your face with wet towels, it was someone speaking loudly. Not to him. It wasn’t close, it was the radio, the television…

Cashin didn’t open his eyes. He knew he wasn’t in hospital, he was lying on something stone hard. A floor. An icy marble floor. Everything came back.

‘Do you remember what you did to me, Duncan?’ said the voice. ‘How I cried out in pain? How I asked for mercy? Do you remember that, Duncan?’

A silence.

I’m alive, Cashin thought. I’m lying on the floor and I’m alive.

‘I was so happy when I found out you’d become a priest, Duncan,’ said the voice.

Jamie Bourgoyne. Except he was now his dead cousin, Mark Kingston Denby.

‘We’ve both given ourself to the Lord, Duncan,’ said Jamie. ‘It changes everything, doesn’t it? I was a sinner. I’ve done bad things, Duncan. I’ve caused terrible suffering to some of God’s creatures. You’ll understand that, won’t you? Of course, you will. You didn’t come to the Lord with a pure heart either.’

A sound of agony.

‘The little children, Duncan. Do you think about what our Saviour said? Answer me, Duncan.’

Words, a burbling of words.

‘Duncan, our Lord said, Suffer the little children to come unto me. What a wonderful thing to say, wasn’t it, Duncan? Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God.’

The scream filled the chapel, filled Cashin’s head, seemed to enter his ear from the marble floor.

‘Can I?’ said the high voice. ‘Give me a chance, Jamie.’

‘Soon, soon. I must prepare Duncan. Duncan, the word suffer, what an important word it is. The word suffer. In both its meanings. Speak to me, Duncan. Say Suffer the little children to come unto me. Say that, Duncan.’

Cashin realised that his eyes were working, there was light. It was candlelight, it moved, flickered, shadows on the wall, they hadn’t bothered to switch on the lights, they had lit candles, Dove was dead, they thought he was dead too, or dying quickly. Bleeding out.

Bleeding out.

Vallins was croaking something, trying to form the sentence.

‘A child,’ said Jamie. ‘Duncan, a little boy. Did you ever feel any regret? Any remorse? I don’t think so. You and Robin and Crake. I was so sad to hear Crake died while I was in jail. The Lord wanted me to minister to Crake too.’

‘Give me a go,’ said Justin. ‘C’mon Jame.’

Cashin tried to raise himself, he had no strength in his body, he could not move, he should lie here, they would kill Vallins, then they would go. He could hold his breath. Jamie didn’t care about him, didn’t hate him.

‘And in those days shall men seek death,’ said Jamie, ‘and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. I had to go to prison and live with bad people before I understood those words. Do you understand them now, Duncan?’

‘Please, please, please…’ Groans, wretched and terrible sounds.

‘I often wanted to die and I couldn’t, Duncan. Now I know that the Lord wanted me to live with my torment because he had a purpose for me.’

‘Let me, Jame, let me,’ said Justin. ‘I am he that liveth, and was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen, and have the keys of hell and of death. Do you know those words, Duncan? St John the Divine. The keys of hell and death. The Lord has given them to me. Is this hell for you, Duncan? Is this?’

I just lie here, thought Cashin. I’ve killed Dove, they’re torturing a man to death. If I live, what’ll I say to Singo? Never mind Singo. To Villani. Fin. Birkerts. I’m a policeman, for Christsakes.

‘The Lord wants you to know the meaning of pain, of pain and fear, Duncan,’ said Jamie. ‘He wanted Charles to know that too because of what Charles did to me. And your friend Robin. Do you know, I never forgot your faces, you and Robin? They say children don’t remember people. Some do, Duncan, some do, they see them in their nightmares.’

A shriek, a pure scarlet spear of pain.

‘Courage, Duncan. Robin didn’t have any courage, he was lucky we were so rushed. And Arthur Pollard. I didn’t know about Arthur, but in prison the Lord brought me together with a man, a very sad person, and he told me about Arthur.’

‘Please, Jesus, ah, ah…’

‘I looked for some to have pity on me but there was no man, neither found I any to comfort me,’ said Jamie. ‘They gave me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty, they gave me vinegar to drink. Duncan’s thirsty, Justin, give him a drink.’

A sound, a gurgling sound, coughing, choking.

‘There, that’s better, isn’t it?’

Silence.

‘All done, Duncan, you can’t make any more noise now, can you? You look like a pig, Duncan. Are you saying a prayer in your mind? To the beast? You can only pray to the beast, can’t you? Here Justin, the Lord wants you to send Duncan to meet his king the beast.’

Cashin pushed himself to his knees, lifted his head, heavy.

Flickering yellow light. A thing was on a bare stone altar, a pink fleshy thing tied with rope, trussed like a piece of meat for roasting. It was bleeding everywhere, blood was running down it in streams.

Two men were standing at the altar. The short one on the right was holding up a knife, the candlelight played on the blade. The other man, taller, was holding the thing, Vallins, holding his head, Cashin could see it was his head, the man, Jamie, was holding Vallins’ head by the ears, the hair and the ears, he seemed to be kissing Vallins’ head…

No.

Cashin shook his head, he didn’t ask his system to shake his head, it shook his head. He tried to stand up. There was something on the floor, a pole, no… yes, a pole with a cross at the top, a brass cross with pointed tips, not arrowheads.

No. Not arrowheads.

Diamonds, yes, diamonds.

He put his hand on it, tried to grasp it, he had no grip, he could not quite feel it.

He grasped it and he stood up, he surprised himself, he was upright and he had the pole with the cross in his right hand.

He was looking at them.

They weren’t looking at him. They hadn’t heard him.

‘Go to the eternal fires, Duncan,’ said Jamie. ‘Send him, Justin.’

‘No,’ said Cashin.

They turned their heads.

Cashin threw the pole with the brass cross. It hung in the air. Justin turned, the long knife in his right hand.

The diamond-shaped tip entered his throat, in the hollow, between the clavicle bones. It stuck there, fell back. He raised his hands to his throat, embraced the holy spear, took a step, uncertain step, his left leg abandoned him, he fell, his feet slid on the cold hard floor.

‘Under arrest,’ said Cashin, thick tongue.

Jamie was holding the head of Vallins, looking down at Justin. ‘Justie,’ he said. ‘Justie.’

He let go of the pig-tied Vallins, went to his knees.

Cashin could see only the top of his head.

‘Justie, no,’ he said. ‘Justie, no, Justie, no, no. Justie no, my darling no, Justie, no, no, nooo…’

Cashin walked back the way he had come. It seemed to take a long time to reach the chapel door. He crossed the entrance hall to the switchboard, found the mains switch.

The sitting room light came on.

Dove’s pistol was lying almost at his feet. He bent to pick it up, fell over, got up, tried again, reached the weapon. He didn’t look at Dove, walked back to the chapel, through the door, found a light switch, walked down the central aisle, stopped three or four metres from the altar.

Jamie was hunched over Justin. There was blood everywhere. He looked at Cashin, stood up, the knife in his hand.

‘Under arrest,’ said Cashin.

Jamie shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have to kill you now.’

Cashin raised Dove’s pistol, aimed at Jamie’s chest, you aimed for the broadest part, he pulled the trigger.

Jamie cocked his head like a bird. Smiled.

Missed him, Cashin thought. How did I do that? He couldn’t see Jamie properly, the gun was too heavy, he couldn’t hold it up.

‘The Lord doesn’t want me to die,’ said Jamie. ‘He wants you to die because you took Justin from me.’

He took a pace towards Cashin, held out the knife. Cashin saw the light on it, saw the blood. His legs were going, he couldn’t stand any longer, he was going down…

The knife, Jamie’s eyes above it, so close.

‘Now you must pray to your father who art in heaven,’ said Jamie.

‘Our father,’ said Cashin.

‘SURE YOU don’t need a hand with that?’ said Michael.

‘No,’ said Cashin. The small bag was almost weightless-toothbrush, razor, pyjamas, the things his brother had brought to the hospital. They stood waiting for the lift, awkward, shoulder to shoulder.

‘I’ve got a new job,’ said Michael. ‘In Melbourne. A small firm.’

‘That’s good,’ said Cashin. He had dreamed about Dove, walking down a street with Dove, and then Dove’s face had become Shane Diab’s.

‘Start in a fortnight. I thought I might come down for a week or so. I could help you build. Not that I’ve ever built anything. I’ve got some gym muscles though.’

‘No experience necessary. Just brute strength.’

The lift came, empty. Inside, they faced the door.

‘Joe, I want to ask,’ said Michael, eyes on the floor indicator panel. ‘It’s been on my mind…’

‘What?’

‘Going there unarmed. That wasn’t a self-destruction thing, was it? I mean…’

‘It was a colossal stupidity and arrogance thing,’ said Cashin. ‘That’s my speciality.’

‘There’s something else,’ said Michael. ‘I talked to Vickie, Mum put her on to me.’

‘Talked about what?’

‘She says to tell you you can see the boy. She’s told her partner he’s your child.’

Short of breath, Cashin said, ‘She’s told the boy?’

‘Yes.’

The lift stopped, the door opened, Villani was there. He shook hands with Michael. They went through the sliding doors, down the ramp and along the side of the building. It was between showers, big jagged holes blown in the clouds, a sky to eternity.

‘See you in a few days,’ said Michael.

‘Buy some gloves,’ said Cashin. ‘Work gloves.’

Finucane had parked the vehicle behind Villani’s. He came to meet them.

‘G’day, boss,’ he said. ‘Feelin okay?’

‘Fine,’ said Cashin.

‘Get in for a minute,’ said Villani. ‘And you, Fin.’

Cashin got in the passenger side. The cop car smell.

‘You look like death,’ said Villani. ‘Are you telling me they don’t have those tanning machines?’

‘I was shocked too.’

‘Anyway, pale or not, you and Dove, you’re a charmed fucking pair,’ said Villani. ‘That’s charmed, not charming. He’s coming out next week. Clotting power of a lobster, the doc says.’

‘A lobster?’ said Finucane from the back. ‘A lobster?’

‘That’s what he said. Listen, Joe, stuff to tell you. First, Fin’s got some sense out of that loony Dave Vincent. On the phone, mark you. Fin’s got his notebook. Speak Fin.’

Finucane coughed. ‘He was at the camp the night of the fire,’ he said. ‘Called Dave Curnow then, the name of his foster family. He says he was supposed to go to some concert thing but he was planning to run away and he hid. Then two men arrived and they took a body out of the back of the car. Small body, he says.’

Cashin was looking at the road, not seeing the traffic.

‘They took it into the building where the boys slept. Then they left and he says he saw flames inside the building. He ran away and he slept on the beach and the next day he hitched a lift and he was gone. Ended up in WA, a boy age twelve.’

‘What did the autopsies on the dead boys show?’ said Cashin.

‘Local doctor did them,’ said Finucane. ‘I gather that’s the way it was then. Smoke inhalation killed them.’

‘All three.’

‘That’s right.’

‘No mention of anything else?’

‘Nothing, boss.’

Cashin regretted eating breakfast, a sick feeling rising in him. ‘Remember the doctor’s name?’

‘I’ve got it here. Castleman, Dr Rodney Castleman. Signed Bourgoyne’s wife’s death certificate too. A busy GP.’

Helen’s father. Cecily Addison said:

Lots of people took an interest. Public-spirited place then, Cromarty. People did good works, didn’t do it to get their names in the paper either. Virtue is its own reward.

‘Here’s something weird,’ said Villani. ‘Dave Vincent remembers the car that night.’

‘Got a thing about cars, Dave,’ said Finucane. ‘He says it was a Merc station wagon. He knows that because it was the first wagon Mercedes made. 1979.’

‘Was that useful?’ said Cashin.

‘I tracked it.’

‘Let me guess. Bourgoyne.’

‘Company car. Charles Bourgoyne and someone called J. A. Cameron were directors.’

‘Jock Cameron. Local solicitor. Who was the Companion there that night?’

‘Vallins,’ said Villani.

‘Got a smoke?’ said Cashin.

Villani took out a packet and pushed in the lighter. They waited in silence, lit up.

The nicotine hit Cashin like a headbutt, he couldn’t speak for a while, then he said, ‘Jesus, how did they get away with it? Ran the camp as a brothel, murdered at least three boys, not a murmur. What kind of fucking investigation was there?’

Villani ran down the front windows, a smell of exhaust fumes, of newly spread bitumen. ‘Something else to tell you. Singo died two days ago. Another stroke. Big time.’

‘Shit,’ said Cashin. ‘Well. Shit.’ He felt tears coming, turned his head away from Villani, blinked rapidly.

‘Singo did the Companions fire,’ said Villani. ‘He was number two then.’

Cashin saw Singo in his exhausted riven raincoat, saw the burnt ruins in that place, the goalposts in the grass, the little belt. Singo had never mentioned Cromarty. Late at night, drink taken, he talked about jobs in Stawell and Mildura and Geelong and Sale and Shepparton, about the travelling prostitute murders in Bendigo, the man who killed his uncle and aunt on the tobacco farm near Bright, planned to turn them into silage and feed them to the pigs.

Singo never spoke of Cromarty.

‘I got a bad feeling,’ said Villani. He shifted, uncomfortable. ‘We pulled his bank records. I never thought that day would come, not if I lived to…anyway, nothing. Just his pay and dividends from some Foster’s shares.’

‘He wouldn’t drink their beer,’ said Cashin. ‘He hated their beer.’

Villani looked at him in a hopeless way, opened his window and flicked his butt, almost hit a seagull, caused it to hop. Cashin thought about the meeting on the pier, the gull catching the stub in mid-air.

‘Three years ago,’ said Villani, ‘Singo inherited a million bucks from his brother. Derek. Derek left the whole family rich. About fourteen million in the estate.’

‘Yes?’ said Cashin.

‘Singo’s like a fuckin parrot on my shoulder, I’m where I am because of him. Think the job’s done, son? Well, go the extra yard. Ninety-nine times, it’s a waste. But then there’s the one. So I went the yard, we went the yard.’

Fat raindrops on the windscreen. Cashin thought that he wanted to be home now, in the buggered old house, in the buggered old chair, he wanted the dogs burrowing their noses into the cushions beneath his thighs, the fire going, the music. He wanted Björling. It would be Björling first. Björling and then Callas.

‘Someone paid two hundred thousand dollars into brother Derek’s three bank accounts in 1983,’ said Villani. ‘Three days after the Cromarty fire. Then, after the inquest, Derek got another two hundred grand. He bought land on the Gold Coast. No cunt, Derek.’

Cashin looked at Villani. Villani held his gaze, deep lines between his eyebrows, nodded, small nods, drew on his cigarette, tried to blow smoke out of the window. It came back.

‘Singo took money from Bourgoyne?’

‘Paid from a company bank account. You have to go back through three other companies to find it’s a Bourgoyne outfit.’

Cashin thought that there was no firm ground in life. Just crusts of different thicknesses over the ooze. They sat in silence, watching three nurses going off duty, level as cricket stumps, the one in the middle moving her hands as if conducting an orchestra.

‘It’s like two deaths to me,’ said Villani. ‘I woke today, something’s missing, something’s gone.’

‘Anything else?’ said Cashin. ‘Any other bits and pieces I should be aware of? No? I’ll be on my way home then, thank you for coming.’

‘Fin’s driving,’ said Villani. ‘Birkerts’s down there, he’s finished, he’ll bring him back. Don’t like that, you can take a cab, take a fucking walk.’

Cashin wanted to argue but he had no strength.

‘There is something else,’ said Villani. ‘Singo’s lawyer rang. We’re in the will, you and me and Birk.’

‘Last untainted place in the force, homicide,’ said Cashin. ‘The Salvos can have my share.’

When they were on the road, Cashin said, ‘Fin, I need to go to Queen Street. Won’t take long.’

ERICA BOURGOYNE, handsome and severe in black, was standing behind a glass-topped desk. ‘I really don’t have time today,’ she said. ‘So can we keep this as brief as possible?’

‘We can,’ said Cashin.

He took his time, looked around the big wood-panelled office, at the glass-fronted bookshelves, the leather client chairs, the fresh violets in a cut-glass vase on the windowsill, the bare plane branches outside.

‘Very nice office,’ he said.

‘Please get on with it.’ Head on one side, the voice and face of a schoolteacher with a dim pupil.

‘I thought I might put a few things to you. Propositions.’

She looked at her watch. ‘I can give you five minutes. To the second.’

‘Your brother was sexually abused by your step-father and you know that.’

Erica sat down, blinking as if something had lodged in her eyes.

‘Jamie and Justin Fischer tortured and killed Arthur Pollard and I think you know that. Jamie and Justin murdered a man called Robin Gray Bonney in Sydney and you may or may not know that.’

Erica held up her hands. ‘Detective, this is absolutely…’

‘Why didn’t you tell me, tell anyone, that Mrs Laidlaw had seen Jamie?’

A vague gesture. ‘Moira’s getting on, she can’t be relied upon…’

‘Mrs Laidlaw appeared to me to be in complete command of her faculties. She had no doubt that she saw Jamie. And you believed her, didn’t you? That’s when you hired the security. It was before Charles was bashed.’

‘Detective Cashin, you’ve overstepped the mark. I can see no point in going on with this.’

‘We can do it in a formal interview,’ said Cashin. ‘Put the day on hold and come down to St Kilda Road. It’s probably better that way. You’re the one who’s overstepped a mark. You’re looking at conspiracy.’

Silence. She held his gaze but he saw the sign.

‘You spoke to Jamie, didn’t you?’ said Cashin.

‘No.’

Erica closed her eyes. He could see the tracery of veins. Cashin said what had been on his mind for a long time. ‘Just the two of you after your mother’s accident. All alone at night in that big house with Charles. What happened at night, Erica?’

‘Joe, please, no.’ Her chin was on her chest, a piece of hair fell across her brow. ‘Please, Joe.’

‘What happened to you in that house, Erica?’

Silence.

‘Did you become Charles’s little wife? Was it before or after your mother’s death? You followed him around. You worshipped him. Did you know those men were fucking Jamie? Did you know Charles was?’

She had begun to shake. ‘No, no, no…’ It was not a denial. It was a plea for him to stop.

‘Still believe your mother’s death was an accident, do you, Erica? The same night as the fire at the Companions camp, remember that? Three boys died that night. Charles killed one of them with his own hands at The Heights. Did your mother see something? Hear something?’

‘Joe, no, please, I can’t…’

Cashin looked at her bowed head, saw the pale skin of her scalp, her hands clenched at her throat.

Erica did not raise her head, she was saying something inaudible, saying it to herself, again and again and again, saying a mantra.

Cashin knew about mantras. He had said a million mantras, against pain, against thought, against memory, against the night that would not surrender its dark.

She straightened in her chair, she was trying to regain her composure.

Cashin waited.

‘What does it matter now, Joe?’ she said, voice drained of life, an old voice. ‘Why do you want to drag this from me? Do you get pleasure from this?’

‘The bodyguard,’ said Cashin. ‘What was that about?’

‘A client threatened me.’

‘I don’t believe you. I think you always knew Jamie was alive. You were protective of him but you were also scared of him. That’s right, isn’t it?’

No reply.

‘You watched them torture Pollard, didn’t you? There was one seat down in the hall. Just one. You sat there, Erica.’

She was crying silently, tears gouging her makeup.

‘Did Charles hand you on to Pollard, Erica? Pollard liked young girls too. We found the pictures in his computer. You wanted Jamie to kill Charles and Pollard, didn’t you? You couldn’t be there for Charles but you weren’t going to miss Pollard. That’s right, isn’t it.’

Erica began to sob, louder and louder, her head down, her upper body shaking.

‘Did you stay to the end, Erica? Did you clap when they raised him? Did it cleanse you?’

A woman crying, her whole body crying, her whole being crying.

Cashin stood.

‘You’re a sick person, Ms Bourgoyne,’ he said. ‘Sickness has bred sickness. Thanks for your time.’

Solid rain was falling on Queen Street. Fin was double-parked, obstructing the traffic, reading the paper.

‘How was that, boss?’ he said.

‘Pretty ordinary,’ said Cashin. ‘Take me home, son.’

THE DOGS were unrecognisable.

‘What have you done to them?’ said Cashin. ‘Look at those ears.’

‘They’ve been properly clipped and groomed for the first time in their lives,’ said his mother. ‘They loved it.’

‘They’re in shock. They need counselling.’

‘I think they should stay here. They’re happy here. I don’t think they want to go back to that ruin.’

Cashin walked to the vehicle and opened a back door. The dogs looked, didn’t move.

‘See, Joseph,’ said his mother. ‘See.’

Cashin whistled, one clear whistle, and jerked his thumb at the door. The dogs raced for the vehicle, managed to get through the doorway abreast, sat bolt upright, looking straight ahead.

Cashin closed the door. ‘I’ll bring them to visit,’ he said.

‘Often,’ said his mother. ‘Bonzo loves them. They’re his best dog friends.’

Cashin thought he saw a tear. ‘I’ll drop them off to see Bonzo when I go to town,’ he said. ‘Provided there’s no dioxin spraying going on.’ He went over and kissed her.

‘You should think about counselling, Joseph,’ she said, holding his head. ‘Your life is the most awful litany of horrors.’

‘Just a run of bad luck.’ He got in.

She came to the window. ‘They like chicken, have you got chicken?’

‘They like fillet steak too. They get dead animals I find by the roadside. Bye, Syb.’

Driving home with the last pink in the west, the night taking the land ditch by ditch, hollow by hollow. At the crossroads, he switched on the lights and, five minutes later, they panned across the dark house and a man leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette, holding a torch.

Rebb came to the vehicle, opened the back door for the dogs. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he said, ‘you traded the dogs?’

They leapt on him, ecstatic.

‘Don’t blame me,’ said Cashin. ‘My mother did it. I thought you’d gone?’

‘Went, nothin there, come back this way,’ Rebb said. ‘Old bloke not walking too good. So I thought I might as well give him a hand, do a bit of work on the cathedral in between.’

They walked around, looked by torchlight at what Rebb had done.

‘Bit,’ said Cashin. ‘Call that a bit?’

‘Bern come around, give me a hand. Bad mouth on him, but he works.’

‘The works part is news to me. He’s got a good memory, that I know.’

‘Yeah?’ Rebb shone the light on a new wall, walked over and ran a finger along the pointing.

‘The day he brought the water tank. He remembered you from all those years ago, when you were kids. Played footy against you. Against the Companions camp.’

Rebb said, ‘Well, that’s news to me. Never heard of the Companions camp.’ He turned the torch on the dogs.

‘I’ve got a picture of you,’ said Cashin. ‘Eating an orange slice. Age about twelve.’

‘Never been twelve,’ said Rebb. ‘I could make a bunny pie. Took the popgun again.’

‘Anything happen to you there?’

Cashin thought Rebb smiled.

‘Just stayed the one day,’ Rebb said. ‘Didn’t like the food.’

‘I’ve got steak,’ said Cashin. ‘How’s that?’

‘That’ll do. The neighbour was here. Left something for you. Wrapped like a present.’

‘I need a present,’ said Cashin. ‘Long time since anyone gave me a present.’

‘Being alive’s a present,’ said Rebb. ‘Every minute of every hour of every day.’

IN THE late afternoon, Cashin took the dogs. They put up the first hares close to the house, the creatures grown bold in their absence. Then, in the meadow, they interrupted a communion of rabbits. The dogs ran themselves to exhaustion, put not a tooth on fur.

At the creek, the dogs strode in, got wet to the shoulder, stood in holes, scrambled, alarmed. Cashin got wet too, up to the knees, water inside his boots. He didn’t care, slopped up the hill, thinking about what he should do. In the end, he didn’t have to make a decision, he saw her coming down the slope from her house.

They met at the corner post, Rebb’s corner post, said hello. She looked thinner, better looking than he remembered.

‘They’re tired,’ she said. ‘What’ve you done to them?’

He summoned up saliva to speak. ‘Unfit,’ said Cashin. ‘Too fat, too slow. Spoilt. That’s going to change.’

‘How are you, Joe?’

‘Fine. I’m fine. Flesh wound. Plus I’m really brave and I never complain.’

Helen shook her head. ‘I wanted to come and see you but I thought…well, I don’t know what I thought. I thought you’d be surrounded by your family and your cop friends.’

The dogs took off, talk was boring, they wanted action.

‘Good thinking,’ said Cashin. ‘That’s the way it was, night and day. They worked shifts, family, cop friends, family.’

‘You prick. See Bobby Walshe on television?’

‘No.’

‘He said you and Dove deserved medals.’

‘For stupidity? I don’t think they’ve got that.’

Helen shook her head. ‘And the news about the resort?’

‘No.’

‘Erica Bourgoyne decided not to sell the Companions camp to Fyfe. She’s giving it to the state to be part of the coastal reserve. So there’s no access to the mouth and the whole resort project collapses.’

Cashin thought about the seat in the Companions hall, Erica in her office, the marks of tears on her cream silk shirt, the sobbing. She hadn’t watched them torture Pollard, that wasn’t right. Who had sat there?

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Leaves you free to concentrate on winning the election.’

‘I’m counting on getting at least one cop vote.’

‘Depends on a number of things falling into place. But we cops aren’t allowed to talk politics.’

‘Allowed to drink?’

‘My liver is in near-new condition. Nothing to do for weeks.’

They looked at each other, he broke away, saw the dusk in the creek hollow, the treetops moving on the hill. ‘I always meant to ask. When did your dad die?’

‘In 1988. He didn’t take a bend on the coast road. The year after we finished school. Why?’

‘Nothing. He signed Bourgoyne’s wife’s death certificate.’

‘Signed hundreds, I imagine.’

‘Yes.’

‘So. Come up for a drink? I could feed you.’

‘Is that party pies?’

‘We didn’t get around to them last time.’

‘Feed these beasts first,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back.’

‘Don’t get waylaid,’ she said.

‘Waylaid. I’ve never heard anyone say that word.’

‘You’re a work in progress,’ she said. ‘There are words to come.’

He set off up the rise, legs like logs, whistled the dogs, and he looked back and she had not moved, she was watching him.

‘Go home,’ he shouted. ‘Why don’t you just go home and put on the party pies.’

He woke lying on his side. Above the window blind was a line of daylight, the colour of smoke. He could feel her warmth against him and then she stirred and he felt her breath on the skin between his shoulderblades and then her lips moved against his spine, and then she pressed them to him and she kissed. The world opened, the day began, he felt that he was alive again, forgiven.

‘JOE?’

‘Yes.’

‘Carol Gehrig. Early for you?’

‘No.’

‘Joe, this is rubbish but last night, had a few wines, it came into me head.’

‘What?’

‘There was chockie wrappers in the bin a few times. Twice.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, he didn’t eat em,’ Carol said. ‘Nothin sweet in the place. Didn’t even have sugar in his tea.’

‘You saw chocolate wrappers in the kitchen bin?’

‘Not the kitchen bin. The big one outside. Saw em when I put the stuff in. Mars bars and that shit.’

‘Well, someone staying?’

‘No. Not then.’

‘Twice?’

‘Well, I remember twice. Wastin your time with rubbish?’

Rebb came into sight, coming home from Den’s cows, a dog on each flank, looking around like bodyguards, alert for assassins hiding in the grass.

‘Never,’ he said. ‘Any idea when?’

‘I know the one, it was Kirstie’s birthday the day before and I’d had this…anyhow, the day. A Monday, twenty-three seven and it’s 1988. That’s for sure. Yes.’

23.07.88.

‘Interesting,’ said Cashin. ‘Think about the other time. A month would help, a year. Even winter or summer.’

‘I’ll think.’

They said goodbye and he stayed where he was, in his mind the image of Bourgoyne’s nine pots, all the pieces the perfectionist had thought worth keeping. Into the base of one was scratched a date: 11/6/88.

Was that the day it was made? Could you upturn a newly-thrown pot that size and scratch a date on the bottom? Or did that come later?

He went to the telephone, looked at it for a while, thinking about being upstairs in the old brick building at The Heights, looking back and registering the bolt on the bedroom door.

If you walked up the hill on a night when the kiln was burning, you would hear it before you saw it-it would be a powerful sound, a vibrating, a thrumming. And when you rounded the woodpile, you would see the fire holes glowing white hot, they would light the clearing, and you would feel on your face the force of the sea wind that was blowing into the kiln’s mouth.

He dialled the direct number. It rang and rang and then Tracy answered, more reprimand than greeting.

‘It’s Joe,’ he said. ‘Do me a favour, Trace. Kids missing in June, July, 1988. Boys.’

‘No end to it,’ she said.

‘Not on this earth.’

A morning of sunlight on the round winter hill, above it cloud strands fleeing inland, and the wind on the long grass, annoying it, strumming it.

A bark at the door, another, more urgent, the dogs taking turns. He let them in and they surrounded him and he was glad to have them and to be there.