Truth

Joe Cashin taught him to surf. Cashin was junior to him, a reserve about Cashin, a little smile, no friends among his peers. At Carlton, they became friends, both much smarter than most of the people around them. When they were not working in daylight, they went to Rye or Portsea in Villani’s Falcon. It was tame for Cashin, he’d surfed since he was a kid, he mucked around, walked up and down on his board, turned his back to the shore. But he put up with it until Villani was ready for proper surf, ready to be trashed in the breakers at Bells.

At Surfers, Villani floated on the swells, back to the shore, trying to get his breath, then he saw the first wave of a set. He rose with it, with the bigger second one, turned and swam for the third. Head down, arms threshing, he caught it, hunched his shoulders. He felt its power take hold of him, enter him, he was not propelled by the wave, he was the wave, he was the power, arms tucked in, body arched, he was the lovely bouncing force.

Then the wave obeyed some secret command, betrayed him. It hollowed, it dumped him, his forehead hit sand, he thought his neck was broken, the force rolled him, rolled him, tumbled him, pulled down his Speedos, he swallowed water, water went up his nose, he did not know where up was, he was drowning.

His head broke water and it was over, nothing special, he was in the foam, bodysurfers copped dumpings like this as a matter of course-they snorted out half a glass of salty snot and swam out for the next round. But he was done.

He walked in, looked down and saw the blood drip from his chin onto his chest, into the sand stuck to his shiny black stomach hairs. Putting on his shirt, he saw the bleeding burns on his forearms and elbows.

Laurie was up when he got back.

‘Jesus, what happened to you?’

‘Nothing. Got dumped.’

‘You need something on that.’

No concern in her voice, she knew blood, she ran a big catering kitchen, they cut themselves all the time, bled into the yellowfin tuna, the Wagyu beef, the swimmer-crab meat, the twice-cooked duck, they added blood of all groups to the finger food, an exquisite coin-sized portion cost five dollars.

In the shower, he studied his knees, his forearms, his elbows. He found antiseptic cream in the medicine cabinet, put it on, winced.

They had breakfast at a café-cold scrambled eggs, cold bacon, cold toast, lukewarm terrible coffee. They read the papers, talked about the kids in a listless way, he remarked on things, she wasn’t interested in his views. She had been once. He tried to remember when that was. They bought food at a supermarket, at a delicatessen. Laurie suggested the beach. He said no. One humiliation a day was enough.

She changed, went down, and he sat on the balcony and switched on his mobile-a dozen messages. It took more than an hour to sort things out. He switched off, dozed in a chair.

Laurie came back in the early afternoon, she hadn’t taken a key, she rang. He opened the door. She was in shorts and a T-shirt, skin pink beneath a film of sweat, oil, nineteen again.

She looked and his right hand moved to her cheek.

She pulled her mouth in distaste. ‘God, you look like you’ve been in a fight,’ she said.

As his hand fell, he knew to the millimetre how far apart they were.

He turned away. The afternoon passed. Laurie went out twice, made calls. They started conversations several times, her mobile rang.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. ‘If I can, you can kill that fucking thing.’

‘You think I don’t want to?’ she said. ‘Chris’s got the flu, Bobby’s on a job, there’s no one there knows what to do.’

In the hot, still afternoon, a north-easter came up, the horizon vanished and rain came in short, violent bursts.

He went out, walked along the beachfront, got wet. On the main strip, he found a gambling barn-half-pissed young men in board shorts and T-shirts, bead necklaces and gold chains, budgie-eyed old men, brown-bread ruined skin, caps and long socks, they all sat in the flickering air-conditioned gloom reading the screens: Murray Bridge, Kembla Grange, Darwin, Alice Springs, Bunbury, New Zealand. He boxed favourites with no-hopers, the longer the better, threw money away. A young man with long tipped hair tried to strike up a conversation. Villani didn’t give him any help. He persisted. Villani gave him the long fuck-off look, the man went away.

At the unit, towards evening, bored, twitchy, on his fourth beer, he switched on his phone, looked in cupboards.

‘Scrabble,’ he said. ‘Want to play?’

Laurie was lying on the couch, flipping a magazine. ‘Not really,’ she said.

‘Come on. I’m stir crazy.’

His father taught him to play. For Bob, it was a game of speed, you put down the first word that came to mind, there was no rubbish about trying for maximum possible scores.

That hot dripping late afternoon, in the box in the sky, he lost patience after fifteen or twenty minutes. He began to nag Laurie. ‘Let’s get a move on here, can we, haven’t got all day.’

She said nothing, concentrated on her letters, earned big scores.

He kept at it. ‘Come on, come on, get on with it, will you?’

Without warning, she rose, tipping the board on him, letters fell on him, went everywhere, she said, quietly, in control, ‘You stupid bully, it’s just a game. Ever asked yourself why Tony wouldn’t play anything with you?’

Villani put the board back on the table, squared it. He looked down, saw the letters on the carpet, the perfectly smooth pale wooden squares on the green nylon. He pushed back his chair, went down on his hands and knees.

His mobile rang. He answered without getting up, kneeling on the floor.

‘Villani.’

‘Steve.’ Singo, soft voice. ‘Bit of shit here.’

‘What?’

‘Cashin and Diab. Bloke rammed them. Diab’s dead, Joe’s touch and go. Life support.’

‘Jesus, no.’

Laurie said, ‘What, Steve? What is it?’

To Singo, Villani said, ‘I’ll get the first plane, boss.’

‘Ring with the number,’ said Singo. ‘Somebody’ll meet you.’

Villani closed the phone, put it in his shirt pocket.

‘What?’ said Laurie. ‘What?’

‘Joe,’ said Villani. ‘On life support.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘My God, no.’

They flew home together on the last direct flight and they spoke no more than a few dozen words then and on any given day thereafter.

…intelligent leaders and enough troops, Bruce. Together they move mountains. And intelligent leaders come first. Can I say here, can I commend the Homicide Squad over their work on the Oakleigh killings? Not every day does a senior officer, he could be sitting behind a desk, he goes out and puts his life on the line. We salute him.

Sorry, not up with this, that’s a bit of a personal Oops, who are you…

Inspector Stephen Villani of Homicide. I’ll say no more.

Yes, well, on another tack, Max Hendry’s AirLine project, where do you…

I love Max. Only Max could try to get away with something like this, with not putting any figures on the table. His major problem in getting AirLine to fly is Stuart Koenig, the infrastructure minister. Koenig’s told the Labor caucus the sky will be dark with pigs before Max Hendry gets government support…

On the snow that cold, misted evening, they watched the men slide a stretcher under the sleeping girl, two men carried her to the vehicle without the slightest strain, she could have been a dog, a greyhound.

Curled up. She was curled up.

VILLANI TOOK a used Age from the basket, sat at the corner table. The waiter was with him in seconds. She was Corin’s age, student labour.

‘Two sourdough toasts,’ he said. ‘Still got the little Italian sausages? With fennel?’

‘Certainly do.’

‘Two. And a grilled tomato. Long black, double shot. That’s after.’

‘You know your own mind,’ she said.

‘Together a long time,’ Villani said. ‘My mind and I.’

‘That’s like a lyric.’ She sang, softly: My mind and I, it’s been a long, long time.

She was older than Corin. Mature student. Post-graduate student.

‘How do you know I’m a talent scout?’ he said.

‘Your hands,’ she said. ‘Strong but sensitive talent-scout hands.’

‘I don’t have a card on me.’

‘I’ll give you mine.’

He had finished, plate taken, sniffing the coffee when Dove came in carrying a briefcase, on time to the minute. The waiter followed him to the table.

‘Breakfast?’ she said.

‘No, thanks. Long black, please.’

When she’d gone, Villani said, ‘Be clear, stuff like this, it’s not on the phone, not in the office.’

‘Sorry, boss. Had a go at some phone data last night. It’s six months of calls, it’s a mountain.’

‘You didn’t put it in the system, did you?

‘No, no, I did it at home.’

‘You’ve got the program at home?’

‘Well, not the big one, no. But enough. I did this in the last job. All the time.’

Dove didn’t want to say the word feds.

‘And?’

‘I had it look for clusters. It’s called unsupervised learning.’

‘I know that,’ said Villani.

‘Sorry. Boss. Turns up many clusters, big and small. Three around Mark Simons. Of Simons & Galliano, the bankruptcy kings. And they twin with calls to a Ryan Cordell. He’s some kind of accountant, financial advisor. When it starts, it’s like a feeding frenzy. He calls Curlew, Curlew calls Hendry, Bricknell, they call others, some then call Cordell, it’s back and forth.’

Dove’s coffee came. She pointed at Villani’s glass. He made the short sign.

‘This is helpful?’ said Villani.

Dove reached down to his briefcase, put a folder on the table, opened it.

‘Not that, no,’ he said. ‘On the night, the Prosilio night, Bricknell, Curlew, Simons, Jourdan, Hendry and Brody all made and received calls from the casino LA. At 11.23, Bricknell calls Koenig. At home in Portsea. That home. Then, 11.29, Bricknell calls a mobile, pre-paid, so that’s probably a dead end.’

Villani could see where it was going.

‘At 12.07,’ said Dove, ‘Bricknell calls the number again. At 12.31, the number calls him. At 1.56, he calls the number again. At 2.04, it calls him.’

‘Pause here,’ said Villani. ‘This is a very small cluster. Cluster of two.’

‘Yes.’

‘So what then?’

‘I’m still looking at that.’

‘Well, Bricknell calls Koenig. They’re friends. Later he repeatedly calls someone who’s on a pre-paid in the name of a cat. The person calls him back.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So fucking what?’

Dove kept his eyes on his notes. He drank half his coffee.

‘Got a theory?’ said Villani. ‘Want to tell me your theory? Koenig and the St Thomas boys? What?’

‘They go to the gym together,’ said Dove. ‘To Rogan’s in Prahran. Same workout group. Bricknell, Simons, Brody, Curlew, Hendry. And Jourdan.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Sniffed around.’

‘You’re suggesting that although we latched on to Koenig by mistake…’

‘I’ve been thinking. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake. Maybe we were being pointed at Koenig.’

Villani ate, considered. ‘Phipps?’ he said.

‘Not answering the phone. Not at home. Neighbour says she hasn’t seen him for a while. But that’s not unusual, she says.’

Dove put his hand in his jacket, took out his phone, slid it, talked, yes, no, yes, okay. He put the phone away.

‘A woman rang Crime Stoppers last night,’ he said. ‘She’s in a building across the road from Prosilio, just come back from somewhere, she’s been away. Saw something.’

Villani found the waiter’s eyes, made the sign. She glided through the tables.

‘It’s taken care of,’ she said.

‘How’s that?’

‘Jack Irish sends his regards.’

She pointed to a man sitting in the window, he was reading a newspaper.

They rose. Dove took the direct route, Villani went via the man.

‘Can’t be bought,’ he said.

‘I always knew you were cheap,’ the man said. ‘But free? That’s undercutting your fellow officers. Still using the no-bruising wet towel method?’

‘They want to confess. It’s a relief for them.’

‘Think about going into private practice. Help the guilt-haunted get closure.’

‘People like you. Killed anyone recently?’

Irish smiled. ‘You’ll be the first to know. Well, the second probably.’

DOVE SPOKE to the woman from the desk in the foyer. Her name was Keller. The security man went up to the sixth floor with them, walked to the last door in the corridor, pressed the buzzer, looking into the camera eye beside the door.

‘Security, Mrs Keller,’ he said.

The security door slid into the wall, the second door was opened by a Eurasian woman with short grey hair, perhaps sixty, handsome, high cheekbones, dressed in black from throat to toe.

‘Thank you, Angus,’ she said, very English. ‘Come in, gentlemen.’

They followed her down a passage hung with paintings into a big sitting room, grey carpet, three white walls, a wall of glass, three big paintings. The furniture was chrome and black leather.

Dove did the introductions.

‘The head of Homicide,’ she said. ‘I’m so embarrassed. It’s really nothing. I thought a constable would come.’

‘You’ve been away I gather,’ said Villani.

‘I flew to Singapore last Friday,’ she said. ‘And I got back last night. The duty security man told me there’d been someone murdered in the Prosilio building and I asked when and he said the night before I left and it was a woman.’

She paused. ‘Well, I saw something, it’s probably nothing but when I heard, it gave me a turn, I thought I should…’

‘Tell us, Mrs Keller,’ said Dove.

‘Come over here.’

They went to the window wall, she slid open the glass door, they went onto the balcony into the warming day. It looked onto the west face of the Prosilio building, dark glass unbroken by any projection.

‘My husband bought off the plan,’ she said. ‘We were given the impression we would look over open space to the harbour. A park, I thought, from the brochure. It didn’t actually say that.’

‘It’s not what they say,’ said Dove. ‘It’s what they don’t say.’

She gave Dove her full face, her eyes. ‘Yes, that’s so right. We were in Zurich, Danny wasn’t well, we were dreaming of warm weather, the sea. I wanted Byron or Noosa but he was such a city person, he grew up in Gilgandra and he used to say he never wanted to live anywhere with a population under three million.’

‘On the Thursday night,’ said Villani.

‘Yes. Well, I keep late hours, stay up late, stay down late. I was out here having a cigarette, I still can’t smoke inside, he’s been gone for…anyway, it was after midnight and a car went up that ramp.’

She was pointing at the base of the building. A long ramp ended at three roller doors.

Villani said, ‘What’s behind the doors?’

‘Trucks come and go,’ said Mrs Keller. ‘Deliveries. All day long. A huge garbage truck reverses into the one on the right, where the car parked. It comes every day…how amazing.’

A truck was reversing up the ramp. ZoomaWaste.

‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘The truck. As if I’d arranged it.’

The roller door rose, the truck went in, they could see its snout.

‘A car parked there?’ said Dove.

‘Yes. And a man got out of the front. He was on the phone, and then the door went up. Not all the way. He walked in and the car drove in.’

‘And this’s around 12.30am?’ said Villani.

‘Close to that, yes.’

‘What happened then?’

‘The door went down,’ she said. ‘And then in a few minutes it went up again, the car reversed out and drove off.’

‘You wouldn’t have noticed the registration?’ said Dove.

‘My eyes aren’t that good. Anyway, I didn’t think a great deal of it. I mean I thought it was an odd way to get into the building but it didn’t look, well, illegal. I thought it was just staff.’

Dove was watching the traffic. ‘And the make, colour?’ he said.

‘Black,’ she said. ‘But that’s not all.’

‘No?’

‘I went to bed but I couldn’t sleep and I came out here again and another car arrived.’

Villani looked at her. She ran her palms over her hair.

‘The same again,’ she said. ‘The building door went up, the car went in. But then it was nearly twenty minutes before it came out.’

In the warmth, the feeling on his skin as if a door to an icy place had opened.

‘Notice the time?’ said Dove, speech too quick.

‘Ten to two when I came out.’

Dove turned his gaze on Villani. ‘That’s precise. You’re sure?’

‘I went to the kitchen for a glass of milk. There’s a big clock. I feel anxious when I can’t sleep, so…well, yes, I’m sure. A quarter to two.’

Dove said, ‘So the car left at around two-ten?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s the same car as before?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Keller. ‘A different car. Also black. The first one was quiet, like a Mercedes or a BMW, something like that. This one made a growling noise, those big exhaust things, I could see them. Like cannon barrels.’

‘You didn’t see the registration?’

‘No. I still didn’t think anything of it. The man was wearing a vest.’

‘A vest?’

‘You know. Undershirt, sleeveless?’

‘A singlet,’ said Villani. ‘What was the earlier man wearing?’

‘I don’t really know. Fully clothed. Dark clothing.’

‘It hadn’t happened before, anyone going in there?’

‘I haven’t seen it. No.’

Dove told her what they would need from her.

Villani considered a question. It was pointless, the city had thousands of black growling throbbing muscle cars driven by muscleheads in muscleshirts. And yet and yet.

He asked Mrs Keller an open question, didn’t lead her.

‘Three,’ she said. ‘Two in front and one at the back. In the middle. Little aerials. Is that useful? It caught my eye. I should have mentioned that, shouldn’t I?’

‘Glad you noticed, Mrs Keller,’ said Villani. ‘These things can help. And you’ve been a great help all round. We’re in your debt.’

‘Well, thank you.’

They went through the sitting room, into the passage, as they walked, she said, ‘I heard you mentioned on the radio this morning, inspector. Karen Mellish. She said nice things.’

‘I’m grateful for anything nice said about me,’ said Villani. ‘It doesn’t often happen.’

‘I’m sure it does. I’m sure.’

In the car, taut, Villani said, ‘Get a doorknock there, the first three floors with the view. Might have got the regos, seen under the door. Place’s probably full of people don’t sleep, see everything. Should have been done straight off.’

Dove said, ‘Is that, I should’ve…’

He fell silent.

‘Being the boss,’ said Villani, ‘you get points for all the good work. There’s also the reverse. In this case, I came, I took over. So I blame myself.’

‘Well, I didn’t ask for anyone…’

‘And then, after I blame myself, I blame you,’ said Villani. ‘This also might have nothing to do with the girl. Just coke deliveries.’

‘Timing’s a glove-fit with the phone calls.’

‘Mr Bricknell,’ said Villani. ‘Friend of the high and mighty, patron of the arts, member of the Melbourne Group, raised eight million dollars for the bushfire appeal. You’re proposing to interrogate him about his phone calls?’

‘A test question is that, boss?’

Villani said nothing, looked ahead. He could sense Dove becoming uneasy, soon he would break the silence. Bob Villani was the master of silence, silence was the way Bob unnerved you, made you prattle, make things worse. Bob reading his school report at the end of year 10, looking at him over the top of it, folding it, putting it in the envelope, looking away as if something on the blank wall had caught his eye. He learned the uses of silence from Bob and he applied them to Mark and Luke.

Last Sunday, Luke with his bit of dumb teenage weathergirl arse, he couldn’t bear the look, the silence, he kept amping up his rubbish chatter, eyes darting.

Mark behind his doctor’s desk, the pharma reps’ trinkets everywhere, the notepads, the Porsche computer mouse with headlights, the tubes of Chinese tennis balls on the shelf, Mark lasted all of fifteen seconds.

Part of the boss manner. And Bob had the nerve to sound as if he disapproved of it, had no part in its creation, didn’t like the fact that it intimidated Gordie, the dimwit whose big father, Ken, rolled his swag and buggered off months before Gordie was born. But first he came around and had a fight with Bob, they didn’t see it, Bob said stay in the house. The men went behind the corrie-iron shed, they heard Ken’s raised voice and felt the violence like pressure on their skin, it lasted a few minutes, then they heard the ute going down the drive at speed and a sound, not quite a bang.

Bob came back flexing his fingers, he went to the tank and held them under the tap. Later they saw the gate lying a good four metres out from the posts, it must have been carried on Ken’s bullbars.

Bob said, ‘Boy knows what’s good for him, he’s heading for Broome.’

Mark and Luke were Villani’s first children, in a way. And then his proper boy child, Tony. Had he intimidated him with silence? A few times, yes. Not Corin, no, he had never given her the treatment. Well, once or twice when she was briefly a sulky teenager.

And Lizzie? Lizzie wouldn’t have paid the slightest attention or she would have looked at him in her direct, sullen way, mouth set, face set. He couldn’t intimidate Lizzie.

Laurie? Maybe in the beginning. She was in awe of him for a while, he didn’t realise that until later, years later, until she said one day: You seemed so much older than me, always judging. Much more than my dad.

But she got over that, didn’t give a shit about his silences, his judgments. She just shrugged and walked out, went her own way.

Dove was holding out. He wasn’t going to speak.

‘Not everything’s a test,’ Villani said. ‘Sometimes you just want an opinion.’

‘Can be hard to read you,’ Dove said. ‘Boss.’

‘So Bricknell was at the Orion party,’ said Villani. ‘You ask him about the calls to the pre-paid. He asks you how you got his phone records. What do you say?’

‘For all he knows, we’ve got the phone,’ said Dove. ‘We’ve flashboxed it, got everything.’

‘It’s been more than a week,’ said Villani. ‘If he’s nervous, he’s talked to the people who brought the girl. He knows we don’t have the phone because they would have told him. He’s not going to panic, he knows we’ve got fuckall. And even if he’s willing to answer questions about his calls, he’s going to say someone borrowed his phone, a stranger stole it, they were snorting in the men’s. That kind of thing.’

Dove found his dark glasses. ‘The blood at Preston.’

‘Another mystery,’ said Villani. ‘This run started with the girl on the Hume. That’s looking doubtful. So if the car means nothing, the long-absent Alibani’s house has got buggerall to do with Prosilio.’

‘Well,’ said Dove, ‘assuming we know when the girl arrived…’

‘Assume nothing. To many assumptions already. Get Weber to see how you get to the apartment from the garbage bay.’

In thought, they drove. At the first intersection, Dove said, ‘Why’d you ask about the aerials, boss?’

‘First it was just a black muscle car. Now it’s got three short aerials.’

‘I see, boss,’ said Dove. ‘That’s certainly narrowed the field to one or two thousand.’

Villani’s mobile rang. Birkerts.

‘Tomasic’s found stuff at Oakleigh. Want to look?’

‘Oakleigh’s over. Everyone’s dead. What’s he doing there?’

‘Showbag of Ribaric memorabilia. Could be fun. Well, interesting.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Base station. Mr Kiely in command mode. Up periscope, number two.’

‘Meet me outside in, ah, ten minutes. With air-con that works.’

Birkerts was waiting, leaning against the Commodore, eating something, he wiped fingers on his lips in a lingering way.

‘DAY ONE, I thought it’s just family shit,’ said Tomasic. ‘But I had a little sniff at the book again. Wasting your time, I dunno.’

Villani walked around the kitchen table, looking at the items: a brooch, jade earrings, a gold bracelet, half a dozen photographs, one in a pewter filigree frame, a girl in white, white ribbon in her hair, a pale silk scarf, a beaded purse, a page-a-day diary, a slim silver crucifix on a chain of tiny silver beads, worn with touching, with worry.

‘So what does this say?’ said Villani.

Tomasic scratched his pitbull head. ‘The Ribs’ nanna’s stuff. Valerie Crossley. Died in a nursing home in Geelong about a month ago.’

‘That’s their mother’s mother?’

‘Yeah, boss. The mother was Donna Crossley, there’s a welfare file like a phone book. Booze, drugs, orders against Matko, kids taken off her three, four times. With Valerie more than their mum. In Geelong.’

‘What happened to Donna?’

‘Dead in Brissie. 1990. Hooking. Possibly a mug involved.’

Villani picked up a photograph, a bride, a priest and a woman in a cream suit and a small hat. The picture had been sliced vertically, a clean line, cut with scissors. The groom had been excised. The bride had a thin face, pretty in a way that had no legs, heavily made-up eyes, teased hair, lacquered.

On the back was written, shaky hand:

Donna and Father Cusack. Geelong 1973.

‘Reckon she got rid of Matko here too, boss,’ said Tomasic, he offered another photograph.

Two small boys in a paddling pool, gap-toothed, wet, shiny, happy. The top of the photograph had been cut off, broad hairy male forearms and hands were on the children’s shoulders.

Villani passed it to Birkerts.

‘Like Russia,’ said Birkerts. ‘Stalin did that.’

‘Cut up photographs?’ said Tomasic. ‘He did that?’

‘All the time. Loved to cut up photographs.’

‘Weird,’ said Tomasic.

Villani opened a folded sheet of notepaper.

St Anselm’s Parish, Geelong

10 July

Dear Mrs Crossley,

Father Cusack has been ill. He says he will try to come and see you tomorrow morning. I hope you are feeling better.

Annette Hogan

‘Well, what?’ said Villani.

Tomasic picked up the diary.

‘Read a bit of this,’ he said. ‘Old girl was in the nursing home about six months before she carked, she wrote every day or so.’

‘Yes?’ said Villani.

‘About what she eats, people dying, the nurses, lots of religion shit, God and Jesus and Mary and sins and forgiveness…sorry, boss.’

‘I’m offended,’ said Villani. ‘What?’

Tomasic didn’t look at him.

‘Yeah, well, near the end,’ he said, ‘there’s stuff, she wants to see Father Cusack and he doesn’t come and she keeps asking the nurses and they just pat her and he doesn’t come and she doesn’t want to die without confession and then he comes and she’s happy. She says she’s at peace.’

‘That’s so nice,’ said Birkerts. ‘That’s such an uplifting story. Might go to confession myself. Confess that I let you fuck around here when you could be doing something useful.’

‘There’s more?’ said Villani.

‘The last thing she wrote, she says a Father Donald, he came,’ said Tomasic. ‘He’d kissed the Holy Father’s ring, and he asked her a lot of questions and he said she’d be at God’s right hand for telling Father Cusack about the evil. Pretty much a booked seat. Specially blessed. Yeah.’

‘What’s at the left hand?’ said Birkerts. ‘What’s the scene there?’

‘Islamites wipe their bums with the left hand,’ said Tomasic.

‘Only.’

‘It’s kissing the ring that’s the worry,’ said Villani.

He felt uneasy, not just because they were looking at the things an old woman took to the place where she expected to die, the last possessions, the only possessions of worth of all the things acquired in her life, of all the thousands of things, only these had any value, any meaning.

From his own life, not many things he would take to the last stop. There was a meaning here. There was something speaking to them and they did not know the language.

Villani thought about his trees, shimmering in the hot winds, the deciduous leaves browning at the edges, closing their pores, trying to think their way into late autumn, no water evaporating, the chain of water molecules in the limbs ceasing to draw moisture from the roots, the trees telling themselves they could live through this if they remained perfectly still and controlled their breathing.

They deserved some help, his trees.

He should go now, leave this place infused with the badness of the people who had lived here, died close by, deserved to die, leave and drive up the long roads to where he came from, they would let him through the roadblocks, he could put on his uniform, they wouldn’t fuck with an inspector, they would let him go on.

His mobile.

‘My son,’ Colby said, ‘I tell you hide under the bed, you go out and treat a minister like street scum. The reward is you are invited to tea with Miss Orong and the AG, Signor DiPalma. How’s that? A fucking quinella.’

‘Never a quinella man,’ said Villani.

‘I recall you in enough shit without the exotics,’ said Colby. ‘And now you have become the force’s shit-magnet. They want you now. They await you.’

Colby didn’t know the half of it. Or did he? That day in the car, in the carpark behind Lygon Street, Dance reached under his seat and gave him a black and white Myer shopping bag.

‘The trick when you hand it over,’ said Dance, ‘is to avoid photo opportunities.’

Villani put the bag in his boot. He counted it later, it took so long he realised why the big drug players used machines. A few hundreds, fifties, mostly twenties and tens and fives. Thirty thousand dollars in all.

‘Well, all very interesting,’ said Villani. ‘You’ve got the nose, Tommo. But we don’t need any more Ribaric history. Just be grateful they don’t have a future. Time to move on.’

AN OLIVE-SKINNED young woman, pinstriped suit, took him up in the lift, down a long corridor hung with paintings, portraits. She opened a door, waved him in.

A woman sat behind a desk, deep lines from her nose. She was a gatekeeper.

‘Inspector Villani,’ said the escort.

‘Thank you,’ said the gatekeeper.

The escort left. The gatekeeper picked up a phone and said, ‘Inspector Villani.’

A huge panelled door opened and a sandy young man holding files came out. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Come in.’

Villani went in, the door closed after him. The attorney-general, Chris DiPalma, behind a desk big enough for three, he was in shirtsleeves, a pink shirt, tie loose, glasses down his thin nose, serious expression, like a magistrate, send you to jail if you didn’t cringe.

Martin Orong, the police minister, sat in a club chair. He smiled at Villani, it resembled a smile.

‘Sit down, inspector,’ DiPalma said. ‘You know Martin, I gather.’

Villani sat.

‘Call you Steve?’

‘Yes, minister.’

‘To the point, Steve, You’ve been giving Stuart Koenig a hard time. He’s upset.’

‘Routine questioning,’ said Villani.

‘The Prosilio girl?’

‘A murder inquiry.’

‘This is between us. Colleagues, strictest confidence. With me?’

‘All police work is in strictest confidence, minister,’ Villani said.

DiPalma looked at Orong.

‘Mr Koenig says he co-operated with you, gave you a full and verifiable account of his whereabouts. Is that right?’

Villani said, ‘It’s policy not to discuss investigations, minister.’

‘And then you apply to get his phone records on the grounds of his involvement in a murder inquiry.’

‘That is correct,’ said Villani. ‘He is involved in a murder inquiry.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said DiPalma, ‘you don’t get it, do you?’

Orong touched his stiff forelock. ‘Come on, Steve, this is just a friendly chat, no rank pulled here. All we want to do is the right thing by Stuart, that’s not a big ask, is it?’

This was the moment to back off. Villani was going to and then he saw himself encouraging Dove to take Koenig on and he couldn’t.

‘We want to do the right thing by you too,’ said Orong. ‘Your career. Future.’

Villani said to DiPalma, ‘Minister, we’re pursuing a line of inquiry we believe will help us with a murder investigation. That’s all I can say.’

DiPalma had an open folder in front of him, he tapped it with his fingernails: manicured, pink. ‘I think we’re going to have to be plainer with you, Steve. Stuart Koenig’s been a naughty boy but that’s the limit of it. He’s had sex with a prostitute. That’s all. Now I want you to back off. You’ve got a big admirer in Mr Barry, the force is about to have a leadership regeneration, he’s considering you for a senior role in the new dispensation.’

DiPalma picked up a fountain pen, black and fat, wrote a sentence in the folder, looked up. ‘Is that plain enough for you, inspector? Can I be bloody plainer?’

Villani nodded.

‘And there’s another little matter you might want to consider,’ said DiPalma. ‘The renewed interest in the death of Greg Quirk. That involves you and Dance and Detective Senior Sergeant Vickery. We may let this take its course. Or we may not. Is that also bloody plain enough?’

‘It is, minister,’ said Villani.

‘Good,’ said DiPalma. ‘The election’s close, it’s not a time for ministers to be touched by murder investigations. However innocent they are. So, we’ve reached an understanding that you will delete Mr Koenig from your investigation. Nothing will be heard of your visit to him. Absolutely nothing. Fuckall. If this leaks, there will be blood. Yours.’

He stood, they all stood.

Orong coughed, a small-dog bark. ‘And this whole Prosilio shit,’ he said. ‘Let it lie for the moment. There’s no upside there for you and it’s all bad news for the building. Get on with important work. Career-enhancing stuff.’

DiPalma offered his hand, Villani shook it. Then he shook Orong’s treacherous little hand. He left the offices, walked down the cool and self-important corridor. From the walls, the dead watched him pass, they had seen many a coward come and go.

In a short time, he was on the street, orange sun behind the haze, looking for Finucane, unaccountably thinking about the first horse Bob raced, the best horse he ever had, the lovely little grey called Truth who won at her second start, won three from twelve, always game, never gave up. She sickened and died in hours, buckled and lay, her sweet eyes forgave them their stupid inability to save her.

VILLANI sat at the desk, stared at the near-empty inbox. Kiely appeared in the door.

‘Checked the active files,’ he said. ‘Took the liberty. In case decisions were urgently needed.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Villani, ‘about a bad restaurant where the manager also wants to do the cooking.’

The pink of dawn on Kiely’s pale cheekbones. ‘A remark made in the heat of the moment,’ he said. ‘I accept that it was inappropriate. I would also like to say that I had not at that point sent a memo to command. And I did not do so subsequently.’

He’d heard something, he was looking ahead, thinking about the possible price he might pay.

‘So, not a dog?’ said Villani.

Kiely chewed saliva for a time. ‘Not a dog,’ he said.

‘Welcome to Homicide,’ said Villani.

Kiely did not know how to take it.

‘That’s well meant,’ said Villani.

‘Right. Thank you.’ Relief in his eyes. ‘Well, there’s progress on some fronts, the drowned woman in Keilor, the husband pumped water into her, he’s made a full statement. And the Frankston girl, we’ve got the two men lived there, so that should sort itself out. The man in the Pope mask, that’s proving difficult. Possibly sailor-tossed from the fifth floor.’

‘See what’s in port,’ said Villani. ‘Check the Spirit of Tasmania crew. They’re tossers.’

‘Hah. Absolutely.’

He left.

Burgess knocked, files in hand. He was looking remarkably healthy, it was disconcerting. On the very worst of mornings, Burgess had always been someone you could look at and it made you feel better. The Australian Standard for visible hangovers, the benchmark.

‘Boss, the girl up there, at the snow? Just about forgotten.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing. It’s open.’

‘Read those?’

‘Not in detail, no. Bit pushed.’

Why at this time was it nagging at him, the icy day, the rutted track, the little body, why did these things arise from nowhere?

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘I moved on.’

‘Me too,’ said Burgess. ‘Singo wasn’t hot on it.’

‘Darwin, why do I think Darwin?’

‘They kind of ID’d her in Darwin,’ said Burgess. ‘There was a teenie hooker in Darwin, they said it looked like her. Darwin coppers. Probably fucked her. That was the extent of it. Yeah.’

‘Okay, leave those. Why you looking so healthy? Something I should take?’

Burgess winked. ‘Love of a good woman,’ he said.

‘Expensive?’

‘Can I tell the next deputy commissioner to fuck off?’

‘Where’d you hear that?’

‘The birds are singing it. In the trees.’

‘Bullshit. On your bike. Trike.’

There’s no upside there for you…Get on with important stuff. Career-enhancing stuff.

‘Get Dove for me, there’s a good public servant.’

‘Sad boy, the Lovey Dovey,’ said Burgess. ‘Not a mixer. The Abo chip. Still, the boy took a bullet.’

‘Not too late for you to take one. Invite Mr Dove in. And keep taking the good woman.’

Time passed, Dove came, knocked air.

‘Close the door. Sit.’

Dove closed the door, sat in the cheap chair, locked his hands, the tendons stood out, thick as spaghetti.

‘I’ll say to you,’ Villani said, ‘I’ll say I have been told to drop any Koenig stuff, I have been told to put Prosilio on ice. I have been told my career is at risk.’

Dove looked at his hands. ‘I see,’ he said.

The gear changes, the big motor’s sound thinning, thinner, going, going, gone, the silence, Bob gone, he was alone with the boys, the horses, the dogs. No going back to sleep. Things to see to. Sometimes, in the early morning, the burden had felt so heavy, he had pulled the pillow over his head, stopped breathing.

Sometimes Mark would whine about something on a Sunday night and Bob would say, Steve’ll fix it, Steve’ll see to it.

Bob never asked him whether he could do it. Steve would look after things. Talk to teachers, take boys to the doctor, the dentist, cut their hair, buy them clothes, shoes. Never mind that Steve was twelve years old. Perhaps Bob just didn’t give a bugger. No, he cared about Mark, came to care about Luke. The horses, he loved them. And then the oaks. They grew from his acorns, they were his beautiful and undemanding children. Water, that was all they asked for. And Steve would see to that too.

‘What’s that mean?’ he said to Dove. A reflex, Singo question, no utterance unexamined.

What did he say exactly? The words. Tell me his words. I’m dying, I can’t live without her, I’ll kill myself? Did he say stuff like that?

Dove lifted his eyes.

‘They’re powerful people,’ he said. ‘They run the world. Why shouldn’t they get away with killing a whore?’

They sat without speaking, in the space enclosed from the bigger space, the tin desk, the tin filing cabinets, Singo’s trophy protruding from the box, first-round knockout, that was rare in the force’s boxing at the upper weights, they were generally mauling affairs.

He thought about the day he told Birkerts he was thinking of looking at some of Singleton’s unresolved matters.

Birkerts said, ‘They’re dead, he’s dead, we can only shoot ourselves up the arse.’

‘If you don’t get it,’ said Villani, acid, ‘you don’t get it.’

Birkerts said, ‘I get the principle, I just don’t see the utility.’

‘The utility?’ said Villani. ‘Is that what you got your fucking degree in? Working out what the utility is?’

Justice for the dead. Singo’s message to new arrivals. ‘We’re the only ones who can get them justice. That’s our work. That’s our calling.’

These thoughts had begun to come to Villani in the small moments of his life-at the traffic lights, in the haunted space before sleep, in the wet womb of the shower.

For Koenig and DiPalma and Orong, the Prosilio girl was just a dead creature by the wayside. Roadkill. They didn’t get the principle and they didn’t see the utility.

He thought of the moment when he saw the dead girl and thought she was Lizzie. Was that some kind of foreshadowing, a premonition? Rubbish.

Singo wasn’t hot on it.

The girl on the snow road. No, forget it.

‘Well that’s it then,’ he said. ‘See what Inspector Kiely has waiting for you.’

Dove stood up, eyes on him, unreadable.

‘Yes?’ said Villani. ‘Something to say?’

‘Nothing,’ said Dove. ‘Boss.’

‘IF THIS is a few,’ said Villani, ‘it must get a bit crowded when all your friends come.’

Vicky Hendry laughed, expensive teeth. ‘This is nothing. Max’s great fear is that if we have a party and invite fifty, only ten might show up. So he asks a hundred and they all bloody come. But this is the TGIF gang. Work people. Stable around forty.’

Villani had arrived late, uneasy, regretting the decision long before the taxi stopped. He said his name into the brass grille on the street. The gate was opened by a big smiling man in a suit. Vicky Hendry was waiting at the front door, kissed his cheek, took his hand, led him along a passage and through two huge sitting rooms onto a terrace, he heard the laughter. They went down steps to join a crowd of people beside a pale green saltwater pool, men and women in equal numbers, suits, tieless.

To one side was a bar, a barman, beer and wine bottles in ice in wine barrels, a barbecue the size of a security door. Behind them were two long trestle tables.

Vicky Hendry looked after other guests but he felt that he was her point of departure and return. She made sure he was never alone. She appeared to find him amusing, sought his opinions in a direct way, a slow blinker, she stood close, just a few finger widths from provocative, intimate. His unease went away.

People drifted over, introduced themselves, all connected with Hendry enterprises, many of them to the AirLine project. They knew who he was, a new experience for Villani and it did not displease him.

‘Alice, meet Stephen Villani.’

She was north of sixty, overweight, red hair, dyed.

‘Alice is called Max’s secretary,’ said Vicky. ‘They have a thirty-year history. I had to be approved by Alice.’

‘Calculating bitch was my view,’ said Alice. ‘But he wouldn’t listen.’

‘And for not listening he pays every day of his life,’ said Villani.

The women laughed and Vicky put a fist against his chest in a mock-punch, pressed, he felt her knuckles, she kept them there the extra half-second and he knew it was flirting, Alice knew it, Vicky knew it.

‘Where is he?’

‘On his way back from Canberra we hope,’ said Vicky. ‘He’s been talking to the federal government about AirLine.’

Time passed, laughter, Spanish music, he felt easier than he had for, he couldn’t remember how long. He drank beer, they moved to a trestle table, platters of kebabs came, bowls of salad, bottles of red and white. Around him the talk was of politics, all sides represented, of the shrunken economy, the endless fires, films, holidays, current events, how bad the media were.

At some signal, Vicky left him and reappeared with Max Hendry, jacketless, tieless, white shirt with sleeves rolled up. He had a big arm around his wife.

Shouts.

About bloody time, mate.

Security, there’s a gatecrasher.

Show us the money, Maxie.

Hendry put up his hands.

‘You bloody freeloaders,’ he said.

Applause.

‘So you know where I’ve been today,’ he said. ‘Talked to the bastards, six hours. Never met so many dumb people. But we reckon we’ve finally got it through their thick heads that any alternative that takes traffic off clogged roads is bloody national infrastructure.’

Cheers, clapping.

‘Now that is a small step for the dickheads but it’s a big, big step for mankind. Which is our cause.’

More cheers, whistles. Max did a boxer clasp, he said, ‘Get your snouts back in the trough, you animals.’

Vicky took her seat beside Villani. They watched Max patting shoulders, kissing cheeks, shaking hands, a loved ruler returning from exile.

‘They like him,’ said Villani.

She was silent. Max got to them, shook Villani’s hand.

‘Thanks for coming, mate,’ he said. ‘My dear lady’s looked after you?’

A waiter offered food, Max said he’d eaten. The barman came with beaded Coopers, uncapped two.

Max drank from the bottle. He let the world return to pre-Max, told stories about meetings with the prime minister, the treasurer, the federal transport minister.

He asked Villani questions, Villani had the feeling Max knew the answers, knew everything about him.

The dark crept across the space, the guests thinned, everyone saying their thanks, joking with the Hendrys. Villani made to leave. Max put a hand on his shoulder.

‘No, no, Steve, stay. Coffee. Quiet Friday nightcap.’

When Vicky had gone to see the last guests off, they moved to the terrace, to big wooden chairs. A smiling silver-haired woman in black brought coffee, chocolates, a bottle of cognac, balloon glasses.

Max poured. Before them lay the dark garden running to the river and then the city and its towers standing in their illuminated self-esteem.

‘Cigar?’ said Hendry. ‘I shouldn’t but I might regress. Good word, regress. Sounds like regret, which comes after regressing.’

‘I might regress with you,’ said Villani.

Hendry left, came back with two cigars and a silver spike, pierced the dark cylinders, handed one over, a box of kitchen matches.

‘Thank God for Cuba,’ he said. ‘Cuba and France.’

They lit up. The smoke hung in the air.

Below them, paw prints of light came on, walking in big strides down to the river.

Villani picked up his glass, he was mellow. The light from portholes in the paving made the cognac a dark honey-gold. Something was coming from Hendry, you knew.

‘I want to ask you,’ said Hendry. ‘Bit of a nerve, really. Ever consider another line of work?’

Villani said, ‘Cop is all I know.’

‘Not exactly on the beat now,’ said Hendry.

‘I’ve got what I hear is called a restricted skill set. I copied my bosses, they copied theirs.’

‘That can work,’ said Hendry, ‘if you don’t copy something flawed. Then the copies get worse in every generation.’

‘That’s what I’m saying,’ said Villani. ‘I’m several generations flawed. The object will soon be unusable.’

He said it without thinking, drink taken, and he knew it was true. He was a blurred facsimile of Cameron, Colby and Singo. And, to begin with, he was a bad copy of Bob Villani. The looks, the height, the hair, the hands, they were accurate. But all the failings, all the imbalances, they were amplified: the selfishness, the faithlessness, the blindness, the urges, the rutting instinct.

All the worst bits.

But the spine, the guts, the courage, that went the other way. Those things that were large in Bob, they were stunted in his firstborn son.

Max laughed, small plosives.

‘You just saying that, it confirms my instincts,’ he said. ‘I like clever people, I can spot them a long way away. That’s really all I’m smart at. If my old man had been a garbo, I’d be labouring on a building site.’

They smoked, sipped, the cognac fumes filled the nose.

Vicky came out.

‘Rascals at play,’ she said. ‘Much as I’d love to sit around drinking cognac and smoking a fat cigar,’ she said, ‘I’m not joining you. Exhausted. I’d say knackered if I wasn’t such a lady.’

Villani stood and said his thanks. She squeezed his arms and kissed him half on his lips. He caught the musk of her perfume through the cigar smoke.

‘Our pleasure, Steve,’ she said. ‘You’re now a member of the Friday mob. By popular demand, I have to say. Also you must come to the valley for a weekend. I’ll send an invite.’

She passed behind Max’s chair, stopped, bent to kiss his forehead. ‘I know it’s difficult, darling, but try to get to bed before dawn.’

‘Excellent judge of character, this woman,’ said Hendry. ‘Only one mistake to date. But back to the point.’

‘I’ve forgotten it.’

Hendry blew a fat rolling smoke ring. ‘Learned to do that at school,’ he said. ‘All I remember from school. Anyway, no point buggering around, I want to offer you a job. Large job.’

‘You need a bad copy of some dead cop?’ said Villani.

‘An operations chief for Stilicho. I gather you know about Stilicho. Bloody monstrous meltdown at the casino but that’s teething stuff.’

The publicity people wanted something they could use. Senior police officer. What was needed was a dull prick to organise rosters, check on the bored, underpaid people who checked on other bored underpaid people who checked locks, identity cards, airless 3am rooms, lavatories.

‘I don’t think I’m cut out for security,’ Villani said. ‘But thank you.’

Hendry said, ‘Don’t be so quick, mate. Not some executive-bouncer job I’m talking about.’

A mind-reader.

A hot north-west wind on their faces, another blocking system was idling out in the southern ocean. Two long valleys ran from the north-west towards Selborne, the main road down one of them. The fire would come as it came to Marysville and Kinglake on that February hell day, come with the terrible thunder of a million hooves, come rolling, flowing, as high as a twenty-storey building, throwing red-hot spears and fireballs hundreds of metres ahead, sucking air from trees, houses, people, animals, sucking air out of everything in the landscape, creating its own howling wind, getting hotter and hotter, a huge blacksmith’s reducing fire that melted humans and animals, detonated buildings, turned soft metals to silver flowing liquids and buckled steel.

‘No?’

‘No, no, Stilicho’s new territory in security. I don’t get some of it myself. Well, a lot of it. Jesus, I was twenty before I understood how electricity worked. This is the future of security technology. They tell me the stuff we’ve got is two-three years ahead of the curve. That’s a huge opportunity.’

What had Dove said?

Stilicho’s bought this Israeli technology, puts it all together-secure entry, the ID stuff, iris scanning, fingerprints, facial recognition, suspicious behaviour, body language…Stilicho’s even trying to get access to the crimes database, the photos and photofits, prints, records, everything…Your face’s in the base, you show up somewhere…

‘I thought your son was the boss of Stilicho? Your son and Matt Cameron.’

‘Matt’s got fifteen per cent. I’ve got the rest. Hugh’s the CEO, no shareholding. Big challenge, operations chief, Steve. There’s no job description that fits it. They told me I should bring in the executive-search extortionists.’

‘Good idea.’

‘I can do my own bloody executive search. Save tens of thousands. They say you don’t have problems with technology. They say you’re one of the few cops who understand the new technology.’

‘I have lots of problems with technology,’ said Villani. ‘You don’t want to offer me a technology job. Any job, really.’

‘I do want to.’

‘This is not about us nailing those little bastards, is it?’ said Villani. ‘That’s the job. I’ve been paid for that.’

Hendry said, ‘The idea was someone with a broad police background. Someone smart.’

‘Rules out about ninety-seven per cent,’ said Villani. ‘Give or take a per cent.’

Hendry frowned. ‘That’s pretty harsh. They told me ninety-two. Anyway, before the AirLine thing, Vicky told me the cop who caught David’s killers was now head of Homicide. That’s how you came up. I asked questions. And people said good things.’

‘A cop thing. To say good things about other cops. Your brothers.’

‘And the pedigree, I liked that too.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Your old man. Vietnam. The Team.’ ‘That’s got nothing to do with me.’

Max looked at him for a few seconds, head cocked, said, ‘No, sorry, stupid thing to say. Dwelt in the shadow myself, should know better. Yes.’

‘I haven’t lived in my father’s shadow,’ Villani said. He didn’t want this rich man’s job, ordered around by the smooth son.

‘No, I’m not saying that. I’m sure you haven’t.’

Villani took out his mobile. ‘Great evening, Mr Hendry. My day’s not over. Unfortunately.’

Max said, ‘Stephen, hang fire for a minute, will you? Put that away. Gone off track here.’

Villani waited, poised to leave.

‘Hugh’s been in my shadow, that’s done him no good. I didn’t see it until it was too late. Still, he’s good at the business stuff, Hugh, good salesman. What I’m looking for is someone who can be the battlefield commander.’

Max sniffed his glass, took a sip.

‘Steve, this is going to start as private security, but if we get it right, it’ll revolutionise the way we keep public places safe. Protect ordinary citizens against the kind of scum who kicked David to death. We’re on the edge of getting the contract for a massive new shopping mall in the west. Also serious interest from a new Brisbane council. Secure a whole retail precinct, civic centre.’

‘You don’t by any chance think I’ve got any clout, do you?’ said Villani. ‘Help get the databases?’

Max put up his hands. ‘Steve, we’ll get access if we deserve access. If the people who matter see that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. I want you for the personal qualities you’ll bring. That’s it.’

Villani’s resistance was falling away: the charm of the man, the attention paid to him all evening, the alcohol, the charge to his ego.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m flattered. Need to have a think.’

‘Of course you’ve got to sleep on it. You don’t want to know what we’re offering?’

‘Well…’

‘More than a deputy commissioner gets. A lot more. Mind you, it’s a sixteen-hour day.’

‘Get Sunday off?’

‘Not as a matter of right.’

Near midnight, Max walked him through the house and the front garden to the street door. The big smiling man was there and he took Villani out to the car, opened the back door.

‘I’ll sit in front,’ said Villani.

He shook hands with Max.

‘I know I’m right,’ said Max. ‘Think hard. I hear Mellish gets in, it’s a clean sweep of all senior positions in the force. That’s something to factor in.’

‘Consider it factored,’ said Villani. ‘Goodnight, Max.’

He told the driver to take him to St Kilda Road, to his office.

Take him home.

THE BUILDING never slept. Shifts changed, tired people left, less tired people took their places.

In Homicide, in the white light where day and night lost meaning, half-a-dozen heads registered his entrance. He talked to a few of them, to the duty officer, made a mug of tea, sat at his desk, he was sober now, not sure why he was there, sure only that he had no home to go to.

All day he had thought Corin would ring, no question. She had no reason to blame him for anything to do with Lizzie. But she hadn’t. Too busy, uni starting, her job, the spunk from the big end of town.

Listen love, I need you to pick up Lizzie. Now.

He should have said that, made her leave her dinner. The oldest, why didn’t they always give her the job of seeing to Lizzie? Keeping her up to scratch. Got to school on time. Did her homework.

He could ring Corin.

No, no, no.

She owed him. She owed him many, many things and she could have paid all her debts with just one miserable little phone call. She failed him, his beloved girl. In the end, she didn’t care about him.

Leave the job and work for Max Hendry. He came to Homicide to save his marriage, to do clean work. No more gambling, no more women. The clean work he had done. The gambling, he had given it away, he had turned his back on certainties, turned and wept.

He thought about DiPalma and Orong. DiPalma, a lecturer in law at Monash before he felt the calling. Property law. Leases. Conveyancing. Jesus, what did he know of the streets, the scum, the fractured world?

Orong. Orong was nothing. Community Studies degree from the former Footscray Tech. Politics and sociology. Always in politics, a teenage doorknocker, branchstacker.

He logged on, looked up Orong. A photograph from the Western Citizen of a younger Orong with Stuart Koenig. Koenig was holding up Orong’s right arm as if the prick had just won a fight. The election before last. New MP for Robertsham. He went to a political site called Brumaire 18 and searched for Orong. It listed dozens of items, he read an early one.

SNAKES ON A ROLL

On another sad day for democracy, 23-year-old reptile Martin ‘Snakelips’ Orong this week joins his even viler mentor, Stuart Koenig, in parliament. Koenig, of course, owes his political survival to the product-haired little western suburbs viper. When he was Koenig’s office boy, Orong single-handledly stacked Koenig’s branch with everything from illiterate Ethiopians to what he famously called the ‘Samoan bouncer community’. Koenig and Orong are mates outside of work too. The pair were once trapped by a blizzard in the Koenig ancestral lodge at Mount Buller when they were supposed to be at a party talkfest in Canberra.

DiPalma and Orong assumed that he would do as told. Back off Koenig, Prosilio. They said it as if they had the power to give him orders. And they did have the power if he was scared of what they could do to him.

Was it that way with Singleton? Did people threaten him, make him back off? Singo always talked about the grip-people who had it, people who could get things done, undone. Did people have the grip on Singo?

In the job, it wasn’t hard to get gripped by someone.

Bent forever, the job. Why not? Terrible pay, the hours, the conditions, the risks. It only took a few days for him to work out who he had signed up with: the dim, the school bullies, bodybuilders, martial-arts fanatics, control freaks, thrillseekers, loners, kids from cop families, kids brought up by mum.

In uniform, a full understanding of the job slowly dawned. A life spent dealing with the dishonest, the negligent, the deviant, the devious, the desperate, the cruel, the callous, the vicious, the drunk, the drugged, the temporarily deranged and permanently insane, the sick and sad, the sadists, sex maniacs, child molesters, flashers, exhibitionists, women-beaters, wife-beaters, child-beaters, self-mutilators, the homicidal, matricidal, patricidal, fratricidal, suicidal.

Some of them dead.

You could quickly slide into otherness, estrangement from the civilian world, a sense of entitlement. What did it matter if you didn’t pay full price for your clothes, your drycleaning, got the free coffee, a sandwich, if people bought you drinks in pubs? You could take lotto tickets, not pay at places. People gave you horse tips, invites to clubs, you could go after your shift with a mate, everything on the house, the best girls.

Just give your name. Expecting you, the bloke.

They gave every sign you were the sexiest thing that year, you had experiences not normally had on a date or with the wife. When you were pissed, someone gave you something. And then one day you got the call.

Shit, mate, bastard pulls me over on the Tulla, goin a bit over, yeah. Not the fine, mate, the fucken points, gonna have to get the fucken pushbike out, have a word, can you? Appreciate it, mate.

You knew someone. You made the call. And you were a fully paid-up mate. A travel agent rang to say you had a free week on Hayman Island, the plane, the hotel, the vouchers. They pointed you to discounts on cars, televisions, washing machines, carpets, gym memberships, booze, plastic surgery, BMX bikes.

Anything.

Every year, there were more bent cops, the number ran in tandem with the number of crims, particularly drug crims, making unthinkable amounts of money from selling ice, GBH, Special K, ecstasy.

The demand was insatiable, a dealer grew rich supplying just one private school, every kid over twelve had tried some of them. No night out was complete without drugs, tradies got stoned after they downed tools for the day.

On any Friday, an army of couriers hand-delivered snort, bazooka, incentive to customers in the CBD, to bankers, brokers, lawyers, accountants, advertising agencies, architects, property developers, real-estate agents, doctors.

The money was visible everywhere and everywhere you heard the resentment from cops.

Mate, the Holden’s clapped, the wife’s lost her job, now the holiday’s at the in-laws. It’s like fifty metres of fucking mud before the water. They’re all there, the zombie father, the brother, he’s a petrolhead bludger, the wife’s worse, whinges non-stop, doesn’t lift a fucking finger except to paint her nails. Compares with we pick up this piece of shit, he’s maybe twenty, he’s driving a Porsche, we know him, he’s got an apartment in Docklands, it’s A-grade whores, fucking Bali, he says you think I’m that stupid boys I’m driving around with shit in my car? Don’t waste your time, what do you blokes make? Fifty? Sixty? Fifty on a horse today, mate, fucking thing misses the start. Never mind, tomorrow’s another day.

Villani put his hands behind his head, tried to massage his neck.

Dancer had saved him. When the gambling had him by the balls, when Joe Portillo had sent his scum around with a message that there were ways he could pay his debt, Dancer saved him from the grip.

Thirty thousand bucks in the Myer bag.

‘Kitty’s healthy,’ said Dance. ‘Had a few big ones. I’m lending. Pay me when you sell your house and make five hundred grand capital gains.’

Save, pay Dancer back five grand at a time, that was the plan. Then Greg Quirk came along and it was on hold. When he offered the first repayment, Dance said, ‘Please, mate, no. Long forgotten. Forgiven and forgotten.’

Greg Quirk.

Greg was scum. His brother was scum. And his father. Grandfather too, the dog-killer.

For a long time, lying about Greg didn’t bother him. It wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t until the dreams started. Even then, it wasn’t just about seeing Greg die, the way the three of them stood there and watched him bleed out, he foamed, twitched, his legs kicked, little dreaming kicks.

It was about being an honest man. A man of honour.

Honour’s not cheap, son. Don’t give your word unless you’ll do it or die trying.

What the fuck did Bob know about keeping your word? He said he would come back for them in a few weeks and it was years. No car came down Stella’s street that Villani did not hold his breath and wait for it to stop. In bed at night, when cars passed, he put his head beneath the pillow, pressed his face into the mattress and with both hands pulled down the pillow.

His child out there, with the street animals, his Lizzie. The sum of his failure as a father and as a man. He simply had not cared enough. When the moment came to go to her, to show her that her father loved her, he turned his back.

Job first, everything else second. And it had always been so.

Bob Villani’s boy. The DNA glowed in him.

Did Bob have his Greg Quirk? His Greg Quirks? Small men executed in the dark paddies? A single shot. The trembling knees, the puzzled-dog eyes, the falling.

He could not go back on Quirk. It had entered into his being, his own blood. By his testimony and by his silence, he had given them his word. That was not disputable, he knew that, they knew that.

The dying Lovett. He had sought some redemption for his sins.

I leave you with the thought that we, that’s the three of us and by extension the whole fucking squad and the whole fucking force, we have failed the little Prosilio girl.

He switched off his lights and went to the window. Below, the bright ribbons of traffic. Across the road, the dark of the school and its grounds, the botanic gardens. Then, far away, the glow of the highways, and, in the sky, gleaming in the clouds, the full luminescence of the huge city.

BIRKERTS PICKED him up. When they were in the city, at the lights, Villani spoke.

‘Western Ring,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I want to see where Kidd and Larter came unstuck.’

Birkerts rested his forehead on the steering wheel, it was not a sign of respect. ‘We’ll have to go all the way around to be on that side.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Jesus,’ said Birkerts. ‘Feeling okay?’

‘I didn’t go there, it’s been bothering me.’

‘Did I not hear you say yesterday that it was time to move on?’

‘After this, we move on.’

They drove in the morning rush. Birkerts put the radio on. Villani read the paper, put his head back, drowsed.

‘Crash scene coming up,’ said Birkerts. ‘Blink and you’ll miss it.’

Villani sat up, they were in the left lane, closing on the spot where Kidd and Larter came undone.

‘Pull over,’ he said.

Birkerts indicated, they stopped a good fifty metres beyond the crash scene, just before the exit. Trucks rocked the car.

‘Now what?’ said Birkerts.

Villani said, ‘Just have a look. Sniff.’

‘Don’t need me, do you?’

Villani got out, choked on the heat. He walked back to where clumps of couch grass had greened, given life by the hosing down of the burning wreck, the seats, the tyres, the oil. On the dirt strip between the highway and a fence, a few stunted native trees clung to life, their limbs ceaselessly moving in the hot road winds. Beyond them was another dirt strip, a fence, then a wasteland, its only feature an abandoned building. A maker of explosives had sprayed its logo on the east wall.

He stood in the scorching day, the trucks howling by, buffeted by their winds, they flew his tie like a narrow battle standard.

There was nothing here. It had been a stupid impulse. Still, he walked across to the trees. As if decorated for some sad impoverished Christmas, they wore shiny chip packets and fast-food wrappings and one held a silver caffeine-drink can caught in its flight from a vehicle window.

Villani went to the fence, followed it for five or six metres, turned back, studying the trivial litter of a million passers-by, shallow-breathing the spent-fuel fumes.

His phone.

‘Dove… news…’

‘What?’

‘… our friend… morning…’

Looking at the ground, sightless, concentrating on hearing Dove against the booming of the highway, he said, ‘Dropping out, call you back.’

Focus came.

Cigarette pack? He moved it with the tip of his shoe, the dusty black brogue toecap of a shiny McCloud’s shoe.

Solid object.

Villani stooped, picked it up.

Plastic, gunmetal colour, cracked.

A mobile. Half a mobile, the front was missing.

Thirty, forty metres from the blast? Absolutely no chance whatsoever.

He walked to the Commodore, rocked by two fuel tankers travelling together, a concrete truck, a plastic plumbing pipecarrier, a tour bus, a jammed Merc looking for a way out, a double-B, all the highway horror.

In the car, he showed Birkerts the object. Birkerts moistened his lower lip. ‘Very nice. Resembles a mobile.’

A truck passed half a metre from Birkerts’ window.

‘Not saying it’s Kidd’s?’ he said.

‘No. Roadkill, that’s all.’

Birkerts started the Commodore. They waited to enter the bloodstream, classical music, Villani punched the button, familiar voice:

…the subject of a smear campaign. In the circumstances, I have suggested to the premier, and he agrees with my suggestion, that it is in the party’s and the government’s interest that I step down from my position as minister for infrastructure. That’s all I have to say at the moment. Thank you.

The woman said:

Well, that’s Stuart Koenig a few minutes ago announcing that he’s quit his ministerial post. Or been sacked. I lean towards the latter. Political reporter Anna Markham said on the First Light program this morning that Mr Koenig used the, um, services of a young woman of great interest to the police in connection with a murder and has since been interviewed by no less than the head of the Homicide Squad. And Mr Koenig has had his telephone records examined. Small birds say they make fascinating reading…

The pulse in his throat.

Anna Markham said…

She didn’t call him. She didn’t think she should tell him she was on the story. What was he to her, then? Nothing of any importance.

Villani rang Dove.

‘Hear the Koenig stuff?’

‘Yes, boss. That’s why I rang you. I heard Ms Markham earlier.’

‘Phipps. Bring him in. Now.’

‘Just been talking to his mother. He’s overseas. Been gone more than a month. Tracy’s checking that.’

The flat, barren place, the hard light, the rushing, growling trucks.

Oh Jesus. Conned.

Conned, stiffed. Boned, rolled.

‘Prosilio is now to be pursued until there is no rat hole left to go down,’ said Villani.

‘A change of mind?’ said Dove. ‘Would you say we’ve been used and abused?’

‘I’d say shut the fuck up.’

He did not know how Prosilio could be pursued, he did not know how to find a rat hole to send anyone down. He had done this so badly.

HCF.

No. Homicide had not come first.

They used a lot of water at Preston.

Four people?

Bomb it to Snake.

He said, for no good reason, ‘Let’s revisit Preston. Meet me there, Mr Dove.’

THEY STOOD in the passage, chlorine still in the air, the sickly scent.

‘Like coming home,’ said Dove. ‘My mum liked a clean house.’

‘Lucky you,’ said Villani. ‘I cleaned the house.’

‘Some say you still do that, boss.’

It took nearly half an hour to give up.

‘Too clean,’ said Dove. ‘Too clean. Should have seen that.’

They went out the front door and walked around to the back.

‘Got a smoke?’ said Villani.

They lit up. Villani sat on the back step. Dove went to the fence, began a strip walk, up and down.

‘Never thought it would be like this,’ he said.

Slow steps, eyes down, a man in a trance.

‘Be like what?’

‘Me and the head of Homicide in some fucked-over back yard in Preston.’

Dove stopped.

He kicked at what looked like a pile of rotting carpet underfelt.

He kicked at it again, in a fastidious way, moved a piece with his right shoe, moved another piece, another, kicked at the earth.

He bent to look at something.

His head came up, lenses sparked.

‘Manhole,’ he said. ‘Up recently.’

Villani crossed the yard.

A square steel cover, rusted, crusted with dirt.

‘Don’t think they’ve drained a septic around here since 1956,’

Dove said. The edges were clean.

‘What’s 1956?’

‘Shorthand for a long time ago,’ said Dove.

‘Tell Trace we want a man,’ said Villani. ‘With a crowbar. A 1956-type person.’

Three men came. They put on the gear to protect them from a toxic firestorm, one opened the manhole with a crowbar. He stood back.

The smaller man went to a big grey nylon bag and took out a yellow torch, big, a spotlight. He shone it down the hole, had to straddle the hole, he signed to his partner, who looked. They both stood back, the smaller one came over to Villani, offered the torch and a mask.

‘Look, boss?’ he said.

Villani took the torch, put on the mask, crossed the space, clicking the torch, the foul smell came through the barrier.

He leaned over the manhole, shone the light.

The spotlight lit the pit white, he saw something, couldn’t make out what it was.

Then he could.

A rat.

A rat inside a human skull.

Its scaly tail was twitching out of an eye socket.

Villani walked back. To Dove, he said, ‘Now we need the full fucking forensic catastrophe.’

In time, the big band arrived, three vehicles pulled in, formation driving, they liked to do that when they could. Villani watched them disembark, the heavy lifters, inured to decay, decomposition, they reached into places other people didn’t want to go to.

By late morning, the tapes were up, the street was a parking lot, the media had pitched camp, the helicopters had hung overhead. Sweating scalp, disappointed air, Moxley looked around the small, desperate landscape, the people in overalls, the car bodies, the enlarged hole in the ground

‘A female,’ said Moxley. ‘Youngish, I would hazard. The whole foul thing will have to be excavated.’

‘How recent?’ said Villani.

‘With rats involved, it can be hard to make a judgment. Months, years.’

‘No one’s ever going to question your rat judgment,’ said Villani.

‘Not Oakleigh-related this, is it?’

‘Who knows?’ said Villani. ‘We take a holistic view of the world. The whole foul thing.’

‘You wouldn’t know holistic from a hole in the ground,’ said Moxley.

‘Holes in the ground, I know. When’s this excavating start?’

‘As soon as it can be arranged.’

‘You’ll let me know if, and I say if, you ever learn anything?’

Moxley produced a tissue, blew his nose. ‘Which of your handpicked geniuses should we inform?’

Villani pointed. Dove was leaning against the fence, indolent, smoking, talking on his mobile.

‘Mr Dove.’

‘An indigenous officer who’d now be the only non-bludger on the force,’ said Moxley. ‘What happened to the wound as a ticket to the Gold Coast on full disability pension?’

‘A Homicide officer, professor. We shrug off injuries of all kinds. Who does your media tip-offs? Do them yourself, do you?’

‘I’ve met Inspector Kiely,’ said Moxley. ‘A man with a professional manner. He’s got some education, I understand.’

‘In New Zealand,’ said Villani. ‘Ranks just ahead of the Congo and Scotland.’

He beckoned to Dove, he came.

‘I want you to front up to our media partners,’ Villani said.

‘Human remains.

But until the science is complete, we know nothing. Fuckall.’

‘Is that two words, boss?’

Villani saw a pulse in Dove’s right eyelid. ‘What’s wrong with your eye?’ he said.

Dove’s lips tightened over his teeth. ‘Just a tic,’ he said.

‘What’s that, nervous?’

‘There would be nerves involved, boss,’ said Dove. ‘The central nervous system would be involved. In an involuntary way.’

‘Not a brilliant look,’ said Villani. ‘I say that in an involuntary way. Cancel, I’ll do it, Detective Dove.’

Villani went out to the cameras and held the Homicide face, grave, concerned, said what had to be said, the natural order of the universe had once more been overturned.

He turned. Dove’s hand up. He followed him around the house.

‘Found a garbage bag in the pit,’ Dove said. ‘New bag.’

A man in overalls held a big black plastic bag, knotted.

‘Open it,’ said Villani, mouth dry. This bag was not months or years old.

The man put the bag on the groundsheet. Clumsy in gloves, he took a while to get the knot undone. He spread the mouth wide.

‘Gloves,’ said Villani. Someone gave him a pair, he tugged them on.

He lifted out a black dress, put it on the groundsheet. A black bra, tiny black knickers, another bra, more knickers, a cheap Chinese towel, another one, another black dress, one, two, three, four sneakers, cheap ones. A pair of black jeans. A silky shirt, off-white. Nylon zip-up jacket, yellow.

It was in his mind now. The water usage.

Another pair of jeans, blue. Two more blouses. Stockings. More stockings. A white shirt. Nylon jacket, red.

Koenig’s words:

An appendix scar, that’s all I saw.

Another blouse. A nylon toilet bag, blue.

Another toilet bag, green.

Villani put the bag down, picked up a bra and sniffed it. He put it down, sniffed to clear his nose, bent for the second bra, sniffed that, put it down.

He opened the blue toilet bag. Supermarket cosmetics. Perfume, an atomiser, eau de toilette. Poison.

He uncapped it, sprayed the back of his left glove, sniffed. He put the atomiser on the second bra.

Second bag. Same cosmetics. Different atomiser. Taboo.

‘Give me your hand,’ Villani said to Dove.

‘Under duress,’ said Dove. He held out his left hand, palm down.

Villani sprayed it, lifted it, sniffed.

Dove staring at him.

‘Two girls,’ Villani said. ‘Both at Prosilio.’

AT ST KILDA Road, Villani talked to Kiely.

‘Well, we’ve got a fair bit on our plate,’ said Kiely. ‘And this doesn’t have much of a profile.’

‘I want everybody in this establishment not actually engaged in making an arrest,’ said Villani. ‘That’s in the nature of an order.’

‘As you wish,’ said Kiely.

‘Dove and Weber, please.’

They came in, stood in front of the desk.

‘In the time frame we have from the Pommy lady across the road from Prosilio,’ said Villani, ‘on a direct route to Preston, I want every last bit of street vision. Black muscle car, three aerials. Mr Kiely will assign the manpower.’

They both frowned.

‘I want this done with astonishing speed,’ he said. ‘I want a result in hours.’

The men stood. Dove made to speak.

‘Go,’ said Villani. ‘Just go and fucking do it.’

His phone rang.

‘Stevo, Geoff.’

Searle.

Deep breath. Be nice to him. He was not dogshit, from a dogshit family. He was a useful member of society, parasite division.

‘Yes, mate,’ Villani said.

‘This Koenig’s a fucking landmine, mate.’

‘Yes.’

‘But I’ve got another delicate matter here. Free to talk?’

‘I can talk, yes.’

‘Steve, I hear the Sunday Age’s exploding a shit bomb tomorrow.’

‘Yes?’

‘Tony Ruskin. It’s about a senior officer.’

‘Yes?’

‘Guts is, it’s you.’

‘Me what?’

‘Daughter claims abuse.’

Villani heard himself suck air. A time passed, he had the feeling of being outside himself.

‘My daughter?’ he said.

‘That’s right. Youngest daughter. I’m guessing this comes via the welfare. Community Services.’

‘Abuse?’

‘Of a sexual nature.’

‘Come on,’ said Villani. ‘Bullshit.’

‘Haven’t been told she’s done that?’

‘She’s on the street with fucking ferals. Steals from her own family. They can’t run this kind of shit as if…’

‘They can,’ said Searle.

‘They will.’

‘Well. Jesus.’

‘Sit tight,’ said Searle. ‘I’m on the case.’

‘Appreciate that,’ said Villani.

‘No worries. Stick together. Your wife, she’ll be solid, right? Back you to the hilt.’

What to say? ‘Of course. My whole family.’

‘Good. United front, that’s vital. Drug-crazed kid, yeah…Back to you soon, mate.’

Villani sat, holding the phone. Tendons showing in his arm.

How could the little bitch do this? He found his mobile, Laurie’s number. She answered in seconds.

‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

‘At home.’

‘Stay there. I’m on my way.’

HE PARKED in the driveway behind Laurie’s VW and knocked on the front door. She opened it.

‘What’s Lizzie said to you?’ he said, closed teeth.

Laurie spoke slowly, as if she had lost her English. ‘She called last night, she says she’s scared. To come home. She says. She can’t live here. Because you made her…you abused her.’

‘Abused her. How?’

‘Made her suck you off.’

The day, the time, the heat, where he was, all went away. He had an obstruction in his throat, he tried to clear it.

‘Me?’

‘She’s told them that, yes.’

‘Told who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Told them what exactly?’

‘You came to her room. Woke her. A number of times.’

‘Jesus,’ he said, he shivered, inside. ‘She’s off her face. How can she do this?’

Laurie looked at him and he saw.

‘Don’t look at me like that, don’t look at me like…say you don’t believe it.’

She said nothing.

‘Say it.’

‘I don’t know what to believe,’ she said. ‘I’m in shock.’

The violence took him captive, he grabbed her shoulders, shook her. ‘You don’t believe her. Fucking say it. Say it.’

She did not resist him, her chin sunk to her chest, and he saw the white skin of her scalp along the parting. All anger left him, he dropped his arms, tried to kiss her head, but she moved away.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. Sorry.’

She backed away, eyes on him. He saw no understanding, saw disbelief. She thought it was possible, thinkable, she could see him doing it. How could that be? How could she not know in her bones that it was impossible?

Laurie turned and walked. He followed her into the kitchen. She went as far as she could go, to the sink.

‘Let’s be clear,’ said Villani, blinking, his eyes were wet. ‘I have never touched that girl in my life except to give her a kiss. I have never gone to her room in the night. I have never made her do anything to me, I would blow my fucking brains out if I had.’

Laurie washed a clean plate, shrugged, he could see the shoulder blades shift. ‘It’s her that’s important,’ she said. ‘Not you.’

He could have punched her in the head, so fiercely did the unfairness burn in him. He gathered himself. ‘You know what this is, don’t you?’ he said. ‘It’s this scum she’s hanging out with. They want money out of her.’

Laurie dried her hands on the dishcloth, dragging it out, rubbing fingers. ‘Have to see,’ she said.

‘Where is she?’

‘They say she was in care but she’s taken off again.’

‘So they lost her?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘You know where she is, don’t you? Don’t you?’

‘I don’t. I don’t.’

‘Well I’ll fucking find her.’

Laurie turned, face set, folded her arms. Deep lines bracketed her mouth. He had never seen them before. ‘Stephen, stay out of it. You can only do harm.’

Villani looked at the floor, took two measured breaths. ‘Just cop it, will I?’ he said. ‘She tells the welfare pricks these lies about me, I just shrug it off?’

‘Leave it, Stephen.’

He wanted to scream his rage, bang her head against the fridge. He took deep breaths. ‘Where’s Corin?’ he said. ‘She’ll tell you this is crap. She knows her sister. She knows me. She’ll tell you.’

‘She’s gone away for the weekend. I’m not telling her now.’

‘I want Lizzie to say it to my face,’ Villani said. ‘I want her to look me in the eye in the presence of witnesses and say I made her suck me off.’

Laurie said nothing, tried to walk around him, Villani held out his right arm. She stopped.

‘Just say you believe me,’ he said. ‘Just say that.’

‘I don’t know what to believe. She’s my darling baby. What else can I say?’

‘Goodbye, you can say goodbye. You and your fucking slut daughter can both say goodbye to me.’

Laurie pushed back her hair with fingertips, quick, he saw grey at her temples, not seen before either.

‘Can I go?’ she said.

Villani saw how big and ungainly his hand was, he let his arm fall. ‘Say goodbye to me.’

‘Goodbye, Stephen,’ she said. ‘Go away.’

And then he said it.

‘She’s not my kid anyway. Why don’t you send the fucking father out looking for her?’

‘Get out,’ she said. ‘I can believe anything of you.’

DRIVING IN the heat, air-con battling, for a few disoriented moments, he didn’t know where to go, what to do, he went through red lights, long hooting.

The rage went suddenly, now he felt sick, dry-mouthed, an ache in the back of his neck.

How did you handle stuff like this? You couldn’t carry on in the job if your daughter accused you of sexual abuse. Everyone you knew would look at you in a new way. With contempt. You were a sicko, you were a disgusting pervert, you couldn’t be in command, no woman would ever come near you. Anna would draw a shuddering line through his name.

Why would the welfare leak this? If she’d made the allegation, they were obliged to call in the Sexual Crimes Squad. Had they? Called in the SCS and leaked the story to the Age?

He was in Rathdowne Street. He turned left at the park, found a space, sat for a time watching mothers watching their small children socialise in the sandpit. One child force-fed another a handful of sand, the victim didn’t object but its minder snatched it away, inserted a finger in the gritty, gummy mouth.

Two women, sweaty flesh, big legs, toddlers in all-terrain vehicles, combat pushers. They looked at him, not glances, full-on challenges, women who would ring the police and report a man in a car watching children in a park.

Alleged sex offender watching children in park. Oh, Jesus, this was what Lizzie had done to him, brought him to.

He got out, leant against the car, that was a better look. Not afraid to show his face. What he needed was a smoke.

The newsagent in the next block.

He locked the car without looking, the dull click, walked, turned the corner. He hadn’t walked down Rathdowne Street for a long time, since he and Laurie rented in Station Street. Was the pizza place still going? They’d eaten there at least once a week in the old days, just the two of them, then with baby Corin, then with Corin and the baby boy, Cashin often ate with them. By the time of Lizzie, they didn’t do that kind of thing anymore.

Plead with Laurie to talk sense into Lizzie. Go on your knees and ask her to save you. How could she take the feral little bitch’s word against his?

She could. She had.

He’d lied to her, yes. But she didn’t know all of that. Some lies she knew about, he’d told stupid lies, he’d confessed to some lies. You lied because you didn’t want people to be hurt. Something that was over, what was the point in admitting it? Soon to be over.

He didn’t deserve Laurie, he’d never doubted that. She was a good person, she didn’t know how to lie. He had never considered leaving her, not even after the day he opened her mobile phone bill by accident, he was putting it back in the envelope when he saw the amount: $668.45. How did she do that? He turned to the itemised calls. She made long and expensive ones. Most of them to the same numbers.

He wrote down the numbers. At work, he gave them to an analyst. ‘Run these for me, will you?’

She came back in minutes with a sheet of paper.

David Joliffe, cinematographer, 22/74 St Crispin’s Place, King Street, East Melbourne. Home phone number and mobile.

The pizza place was still there, so was the picture framer who had framed the wedding photograph. Where was that now? He hadn’t seen it in years, probably put on top of a cupboard the day Laurie took off the engagement and wedding rings and went bare-fingered.

That was Clem, the interior designer. She appeared to be happy with the odd screw at her place, then when he said stumps, not in an insensitive way, she took to ringing. Christ knew where she got the number, she left messages for him at home.

That was also the end of Mrs Lauren Villani. She took back her family name.

He walked, smoking, rang Searle. The thing was to be icy calm.

‘Stevo mate. Item’s pulled. For the moment. Had to mortgage the job, sell kids into slavery.’

‘I won’t say it.’

‘No, no, don’t. Divided we are rooted.’

‘Listen,’ said Villani. ‘The paper get this from the welfaries or Sex Crimes?’

‘Never going to tell me that.’

‘But she’s made a statement?’

‘Not sure. Sit tight, I would say. I’ll hear before it goes anywhere, get straight to you.’

‘Good on you.’

‘The worry for us,’ said Searle, ‘is if Moorcroft’s got the drum. The twat’s tight with the welfare lesbo Rotties, he would be their first cab.’

Gary Moorcroft, Anna’s little friend, TV crime reporter, who asked whether they were an item.

Unnaturally curious.

‘Well, see what happens,’ Villani said.

‘Not a wait-and-see man, myself,’ said Searle. ‘Offer a suggestion?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ms Markham. You’ve got credit there.’

‘Credit?’

‘Mate, mate, your car’s outside the person’s residence at 4am last count, you’d have credit, wouldn’t you?’

Searle made a laugh-like sound.

Icy calm.

‘I’m surveilled, am I?’ said Villani.

‘Nothing personal, just the building, the street. The prime minister shows up, he’s logged.’

‘Who’s doing that?’

‘Steve, have a word with your friend. She’s got clout, she can snuff the little cunt, she’s done this stuff before.’

‘What stuff?’

‘Been helpful. She’s a pro. She knows about give and take.’ ‘She covers politics. How is she helpful?’

Searle made an impatient noise, he was running this. ‘Mate, now everything’s politics, that’s the way it is. Just ask her. Put it on the line. If she takes your word it’s bullshit, why wouldn’t she do it?’

The years, the things endured, the drudgery, the fear, and now to be patronised, instructed, by this weak dog who knew the job only by the talk of his rotten father and uncles, holders of the slope franchise, said to own much of sea-level Saturn Bay, the working man’s paradise. The only justice was that now, at every king tide, the ice-swollen sea enfiladed the ninety-mile dune, soon it would flow beneath the Searle’s Hardy Plank palaces, float their boats, their barbecues, the place would be returned to the mosquitoes, the feral cats, dune rats, the gulls, all oblivious to the wind, the ceaseless, sad, sawing wind.

‘Get back to you,’ said Villani.

Ask Anna to take his word that he had not molested his daughter? The Anna who implicated him in Koenig’s downfall. Searle had no idea what it would cost him to do that. Things like pride and dignity, the man knew nothing of them.

Anyway, what was the point in buying time? Stand down now.

Bugger that. He hadn’t done anything except be a mediocre father, since when was that a crime? Standing room only in the jails.

Dad, you only sleep here, you pass over this house like a cloud shadow.

Villani looked at his messages.

Clinton Hulme. Max Hendry’s chief of staff.

Stephen. Just to say we’d appreciate an answer today, tomorrow at the latest. Look forward to hearing from you.

Birkerts.

Flashboxed that bit of roadkill you picked up. Unbelievable. It’s the aunty’s phone. Got some texts. We need to talk.

Yes. Yes. Something going right.

Matt Cameron.

For what it’s worth, my advice’s make the change, son. Talk to you later. Expand.

Dove.

Boss, can you come in, we’ve got something.

BLACK-AND-WHITE image, a near-empty city street, car approaching. The digital line said: 0.2.22.

‘La Trobe,’ said Weber. ‘Looking south-west. Flagstaff Gardens to right.’

‘Possibly up Dudley, right into King, left into La Trobe,’ said Dove. ‘Here it is.’

Second car in view, black, closing on first.

‘Honda’s going to run lights, changes his mind,’ said Weber.

Front vehicle brakes hard, twists.

‘Bang,’ said Weber. ‘Beemer’s hit him.’

The driver and passenger of the Honda get out.

‘Beemer front-seat passenger,’ said Dove.

Big man in black, hair pulled back into ponytail.

‘Kenny Hanlon,’ said Villani.

‘Jesus,’ said Dove, looked at Villani.

Hanlon is gesticulating, he is shouting, threatening the driver of the Honda.

‘Behind him, boss,’ said Weber.

A slight figure is out of the BMW, the back door, chalk face, black hair, black dress, bare shoulders, she does not hesitate, she is running, behind her a bus shelter, she is on the pavement.

‘Loses a shoe, kicks the other one off, she’s into the gardens,’ said Dove.

The camera caught the spike-heeled shoe in the air.

Hanlon cuffs the Honda driver, an open-hand swing of his right hand, the Honda passenger is trying to grab Hanlon, the BMW driver is out of the car, mouth open, he is shouting.

‘Got the vision in the gardens,’ said Weber, eyes on the console.

The girl running towards a camera, veering right, no vision.

‘That’s camera six,’ said Weber, ‘middle of park.’ Figure coming towards camera, the girl.

‘Camera nine,’ said Weber. ‘Heading for corner of Dudley and William.’

She came into clear focus, wide-eyed, mouth open, breathless.

Lizzie. Oh God.

No, not Lizzie.

‘Checked Peel Street?’ said Villani. ‘Might’ve gone that way. Must be cameras around the Vic Market. Friday morning, they work early.’

Dove said, ‘Three people around there now.’

Villani looked at the men. ‘Good work,’ he said.

The men looked at him, waited.

‘Twins,’ said Dove. ‘She’s the one at Koenig’s.’

‘The appendix scar,’ said Villani. ‘Oh Jesus.’

Silence.

‘Kenny Hanlon,’ Villani said. ‘Now.’

‘ELECTRONIC gates, cameras, motion detectors, steel shutters downstairs,’ said Finucane, the driver. ‘They own all of them and the ones behind. Hellhound compound. Gorillas on guard fulltime.’

‘Beats the old cement factory in Northcote,’ said Villani. He chewed the last of the salad sandwich. He crumpled the bag, put it in the cup-holder, pushed it back into the housing.

Four doors down, a big man in a windbreaker appeared, looked hard at them.

‘Gorilla at work,’ said Finucane. ‘Hellhound apprentice.’

Villani and Dove and Weber got out. The man put his head down and spoke to the sheet-steel gate of the second of four townhouses, two storeys, set well back from a three-metre wall. Upstairs, fake windows looked out at useless balconies.

As they approached, Weber said, ‘Tell Mr Hanlon the police would like to see him. Homicide.’

The man lifted his upper lip. ‘Let’s see ID,’ he said.

Weber showed the badge. ‘That coat. You carrying or just got a dodgy thermostat?’

‘Fuck you too,’ said the man. He spoke into the grille, an inaudible reply. Bolts clicked. He opened the gate, went in first.

An unshaven man in tracksuit pants and a black T-shirt was in the front door. Big, forties, fleshy, face pocked like a sweet melon, dark greasy hair pulled into a tail.

‘What the fuck’s this?’ said Hanlon, recognised Villani. ‘Jeez, Sergeant Villani, you fucken following me around all my fucken life?’

‘Have a talk,’ said Villani.

‘Yeah. About fucken what?’

‘I’ll come back with the Soggies,’ said Villani. ‘Knock your fucking house down and kill you. Accidentally.’

Hanlon said to the guard, ‘Okay, buddy, back on station.’

Hanlon turned. They followed him across a tile-floored foyer into a room that was a kitchen and an eating place. He sat at a table of polished granite, two mobiles on it.

‘So what?’ he said.

‘Sure one fuckbrain is enough to look after you?’ said Villani.

‘Fuckall to do with you, buddy. Area’s crawlin with druggies. Did your job, I wouldn’t need security. Fucken poodle be enough.’

‘Intelligent dog, the poodle,’ said Villani. ‘It might not want to protect you. Used to live in your batcave, all of you, so shit-scared of the Angels. Still, crapping yourselves kept you warm.’

‘Just fuck off,’ said Hanlon.

Villani stood at the island bench. ‘It’s about a woman,’ he said.

‘Yeah?’

‘The one you took to the Prosilio building.’

Hanlon smoothed his hair with both hands, looked at his palms. There was a sheen on them. ‘Mate,’ he said, ‘where do you come by shit like this? What’s your problem?’

‘Dead girl, that’s our problem,’ said Villani. ‘Account for all your movements on Thursday night a week ago, Kenny?’

Hanlon put a hand into his collar, rubbed himself. ‘Every last second. I’m home fast asleep by eleven any night, every night.’

‘Someone can confirm that?’

‘No. Only about twenty people. And my wife. And my mother-in-law. Good enough? Do you?’

‘Live-in mother-in-law, is it?’

‘Better lookin than your wife, mate, she cooks like, I dunno, that Pommy poof. Better.’

‘So you now transport hookers,’ Villani said. ‘How can that be profitable?’

Hanlon tapped his forehead with two fingertips. ‘I’m in hospitality, buddy. You pricks been over me like slime for years. Want to go again? Go for your fucken life.’

A silence. Dove, face blank, was looking at his clipboard.

‘Your car,’ he said. ‘That’s the black Beemer. Involved in a collision in La Trobe Street Friday morning before last, 2.23am.’

‘Not me, mate. Had it with fucken German cars, had it with the Krauts. Holden SV now, mate. Aussie car.’

In the doorway appeared a woman in a cream velvet tracksuit. She was snap-frozen at around sixty, blonded, bee-swollen, decorated in a glowing shade of peach, bright pink plump collagen lips.

‘Guests, Kenny,’ she said. ‘So early.’

‘Give us ten, Suzie, there’s a love,’ Hanlon said.

The woman smiled at Villani, it lingered as though facial muscles had gone into spasm. ‘So lovely to meet you,’ she said. She left, beatific.

Hanlon stood, reached to a counter and picked up cigarettes, Camels. ‘Smoke?’

They didn’t respond. Villani went to the door and closed it, turned the lock. He looked around the room at the commercial coffee machine, the stainless-steel fridges, the stone-topped counter. ‘Our understanding,’ he said, ‘is that you keep hookers jailed in a house in Preston. Confirm that?’

Hanlon pulled a face. ‘Reality check here. Can I go back to planet fucken earth? Rejoin the human race?’

‘Rejoining would require prior membership,’ said Dove.

‘Who’s this smartarse boong?’ said Hanlon. ‘Can’t get white people to join you cunts now? Scrapin the fucken barrel?’

Villani looked away, moved closer, balanced himself, hit Hanlon under his ribs, big right hand punch, gave him a left in the ribs, a heavy right into a flabby pectoral.

Hanlon went to his knees and puked, yellow, projectile.

‘Respect, Kenny,’ said Villani. ‘Even if you don’t respect the man, you have to respect the badge.’

He found a dishcloth on the benchtop, threw it at Hanlon. ‘Clean it up before the Botox witch sees it, Kenny. She might paddle your hairy arse. Or does she do that for you anyway?’

Hanlon wiped his mouth with the cloth, wiped the tiles, stood up. ‘Die for that,’ he said. ‘Fucken die.’

‘Detectives, note that Mr Hanlon threatened me with death,’ said Villani. ‘Kenny, I’m giving you a chance to talk to us. Might save your life.’

Hanlon sighed, Villani heard resignation. ‘How stupid you think I am? How stupid are you? Couldn’t save my fucken cat’s life.’

‘Clears that up,’ said Villani. He smiled at Dove, turned the smile on Hanlon. ‘Enjoyed talking to you. Kenneth.’

‘That’s it?’ said Hanlon. Hands in the air, hairy fingers, two gold rings on each hand, forefinger and pinky.

‘Unless you want to say something.’

Hanlon found a cigarette, lit up with a plastic lighter, lifted his head, blew smoke out of his nostrils. ‘Goodbye. I want to say that. Goodbye.’

‘Those Camels,’ said Villani. ‘Duty paid?’

‘Bloke give me a carton.’

‘Bloke in a pub?’

‘You know him?’

At the kitchen door, Hanlon said to Villani, ‘Occurs to me, you related to Dr Marko?’

‘Never heard of him, sunshine,’ said Villani. ‘Face the wall, close up, hands behind you. You’re under arrest.’

‘Don’t be fucken…’

‘Draw your weapon, Detective Weber,’ said Villani. ‘Mr Hanlon is about to resist arrest. Kenny, I’ll kick your balls off and then we’ll shoot you.’

‘Like you done Greg Quirk?’

Villani took back his right hand. Hanlon looked into his eyes and he turned, put his hands behind his back. Weber cuffed him and told him his rights.

Villani pointed to the mobiles on the table. Dove put them in his inside pocket.

‘Open the door, Detective Dove,’ said Villani. ‘You go first, Mr Hanlon. And tell your prick outside to keep his hands out of his clothes or we’ll kill him and that will be a pleasure and a public service.’

At the car, Weber in the back with Hanlon, Dove’s mobile sang. He plugged it into his ear, talked, put it away, looked at Villani with bright eyes.

‘Where you suggested, boss,’ he said. ‘Tomasic’s got a bloke, just come on shift a minute ago.’

Villani rang the number. ‘Villani. Got a piece of shit to be taken off my hands. Yeah. Twenty minutes.’

To Dove he said, ‘Charge him with accessory to murder, conspiracy to pervert, deprivation of liberty, any old fucking thing crosses your mind. Then he can wait for Monday, have a little time to think.’

IN THE security office, Villani shook hands with the man. He had a big belly and a beard like faded red moss and should have been retired in Venus Bay.

‘Tell me, Vic,’ said Villani.

‘Well, I seen her comin at the Dudley Street corner,’ said Vic. ‘Light’s not bad there, and she run across the street and I seen she’s got no shoes on. She sees me, she runs up to me, she can’t hardly breathe she’s that tired.’

‘What’s she look like?’ said Villani.

‘Just a kid. Like sixteen maybe? Thin, white skin, black hair.’ He touched his shoulders to show the length. ‘She got on like a party dress, black? Those little straps, y’know.’

‘Shoelaces?’

‘Yeah. Them. Red lipstick.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Got no English. Very little.’

‘So?’

‘So I said, come with me and we come around here. She’s really scared, she’s jabberin on in Romanian and she’s lookin back, down Peel and she’s kinda tryin to hide in front of me. Y’know? Like gettin in my way?’

‘Romanian?’ said Villani.

‘Yeah. Didn’t know what it was. Just wog jabber to me, mate.’

‘And?’

‘I give the other bloke a call. Made tea, she can’t hardly drink it. Anyway, he comes, name’s Maggie, he’s a wog too. He can’t understand her but he says she’s a Romanian, he gets that. So he says, get the police and she knows about police, she goes ballistic, no, no, no, she’s crying.’

‘Common reaction,’ said Dove.

Vic laughed. ‘So, anyway, Maggie says he knows a Romanian, he’ll ring him in the morning. We tell her don’t worry, no police, make a bed for her in the back. She just drops off like that, curls up, she’s dead to the world.’

Villani said, ‘In the morning?’

‘Maggie rung the bloke, puts her on, she talks to him. I knocked off but he come around for her. Maggie stayed on.’

‘How do we get hold of Maggie?’

‘On holiday. With the caravan. By himself. Monday he went.’

‘Went where?’

Vic shrugged. ‘Dunno, mate. Fishin, mad keen. Mad Collingwood, mad fishin. Go anywhere.’

‘Phone number?’

Vic went to a shelf and found a torn folder, put it on the table. It held stapled pages. He ran his finger down one. ‘Jeez, the turnover here, mate, you wouldn’t believe. Here. Name’s Bendiks Vanags. How’s that for a name?’

‘Means hawk,’ said Tomasic. ‘Vanags.’

‘Yeah,’ said Vic. ‘He said that. That’s why they call him Maggie. Got a pen?’

Dove wrote down the number. ‘Mobile?’ he said.

‘No mobile here.’

‘Got a family?’

‘No, mate. All alone. The wife give him the arse, that’s a while ago. Years.’

‘Get the address off you,’ said Dove.

They went outside, the scorching day, hard planes of light off the windscreens in the parking lot, Dove on the phone as they walked.

Lizzie. Did it cross her mind that she would destroy him? He took out his phone.

‘Mate,’ said Vickery, third-pack-of-the-day voice, last drink.

Villani described the man. Dreadlocks, tatts on his face, between his eyes. Dirty did not have to be said.

‘I remember,’ said Vickery. ‘Beat the drums for the cunt now.’ Pause. ‘Constructive conversations important, not so? So everybody faces the rising sun.’

‘Absolutely no question, mate,’ said Villani, the taste of copper in his mouth.

BIRKERTS PUT a page on the desk.

‘Texts,’ he said. ‘In a possible time frame, in the LAI. But no date.’

Villani looked.

Received 02.49: WHAT?

Sent 02.50: SOON.

Received 03.01:?????

Sent 03.04: GOING IN.

Sent 03.22: OTU BANZAI OK

‘Tell me,’ Villani said.

Birkerts caressed his shave, found something under his chin. ‘New light on the matter,’ he said. ‘I would say Kidd and Larter do the SAS stroke SOG stuff, kill Vern Hudson, hang the brothers up. Then they hand over to someone.’

‘Could be Kidd talking to Larter.’

Birkerts went to the window, prised open two venetian slats, peered.

‘I find it hard to believe,’ he said, ‘that even a cross-trained killer would take on the Ribs and their mate by himself and then send for the other bloke. But that’s just me.’

‘It’s always just you,’ said Villani. ‘I wish it wasn’t always just you. What do we do with this?’

Birkerts turned. ‘Have you ever asked a question you didn’t have the answer to? Mind made up. Know how much that grates?’

‘That’s cheeky. Insubordinate. Know how much that grates?’

Birkerts didn’t look at him. ‘I’m quitting,’ he said. ‘Monday. Had it.’

‘Steady on,’ said Villani. ‘Don’t do this to me.’

‘Why not? Anyway, it’s not to you, it’s to the fucking job. You live in some kind of communion with the dead, you never get a decent night’s sleep, it’s always on your mind, people treat you like you’re an undertaker, mortician, it fucked my marriage, now it’s fucked the only decent relationship I’ve been in since then and another…’

Birkerts fell silent. ‘Yeah, anyway, I’ve had it.’

‘You’ll do what for a living?’

‘I don’t know. My ex-brother-in-law says he’ll give me a job selling real estate.’

‘Sell property? Are you mad?’

‘What’s wrong with real estate? You make money. You don’t get called out to some fucking shithole where a mental defective’s been burnt to death for fun, you can smell burnt meat a block away.’

Villani got up, went around the desk, no purpose, body humming with tension, kicked Singo’s box, full swing of the leg, his toecap dug into it, the boxer shot out, hit the floor with its head, which broke off.

‘Oh fuck,’ he said, bent and picked up the pieces. ‘Typical force shit, can’t even give you a bloody metal trophy. I’m supposed to send it to his nephew.’

Birkerts took the pieces from him. ‘I know a bloke can recast this. Do it in aluminium. The nephew won’t know.’

‘I don’t actually give a fuck about Singo’s nephew,’ said Villani. ‘I’m quitting too.’

‘Come on?’

‘Not the only one who’s had it, mate.’

Birkerts shook his head. ‘Boss of crime, the word’s out. You can be the complete bloody sun in all its glory.’

‘No,’ said Villani. ‘Sunset. My little girl says I did things to her. Sex.’

Birkerts frowned. ‘Jesus. Well.’

‘Smacked-out, on the street, feral scum,’ said Villani. ‘I’m finished. Fucked.’

Silence. In it, the radio was heard:

…the Morpeth-Selborne complex have been told to expect the worst tomorrow when extreme conditions are predicted, temperatures in the mid-to-high forties and winds that could approach…

‘On Kidd,’ said Villani. ‘He texts this stuff, changes nothing. Oakleigh is over.’

‘My Lord, what is this job?’ said Birkerts. ‘We drive an hour in the shitawful so you can sniff the fucking roadside and find this, now it means fuckall?’

‘Basically,’ said Villani.

‘I have work to do,’ said Birkerts. ‘Maybe we can have a drink on Monday when we’re both moving on to new careers. New lives.’

At the door, he said to Villani, ‘This is why the wife kicked you out?’

‘Keep moving,’ said Villani. ‘Sell inner city, can’t go wrong. Is that right?’

He rang Bob’s number. It rang out, he tried again, again.

‘Yeah, Villani.’ Bob.

‘What’s happening?’

‘I’m busy, on a bloody bulldozer.’

‘Where’d you get a bulldozer?’

‘Borrowed it. Me and Gordie’s putting in an airstrip in front of the trees. Talk later.’

End of call. Man in the door.

‘Boss, hospital just rang, there’s a lady, a Mrs Quirk…’

A WOMAN from hospital management met Villani and took him to the fourth floor, along a blank corridor to a room with eight beds, curtains drawn around them.

A young nurse, cheerful farm-girl face, was coming towards them.

‘Nurse, please show Inspector Villani to Mrs Quirk’s bed.’

Villani said his thanks, followed the nurse to the last bed on the left.

The nurse said loudly, ‘Mrs Quirk. Visitor.’

‘Who?’ said Rose from behind the curtains.

‘Me. Stephen.’

‘Well, come in the bloody tent,’ Rose said.

‘Not on her last legs?’ Villani said to the nurse.

‘Not just yet.’ She ran a curtain aside.

Rose on two pillows, head bandaged, face the matching colour. Her right forearm was in plaster to the first knuckles.

‘Jeez, ma,’ said Villani. ‘You’ve got to stop getting in these fights.’

She drew her mouth down. ‘Little shit run me down. What took you so long?’

‘Have a heart,’ said Villani. ‘Only got the message ten minutes ago. You could’ve said you were okay, not given me a fright.’

Rose made a noise, scorn. ‘Probably thought, good riddance, bloody old bag.’

Villani sat on a moulded plastic chair. ‘Yeah, that crossed my mind. What happened to your head?’

‘Can you believe it?’ said Rose. ‘The one little bastard knocks me over, the other one’s on a skateboard. I’m lyin there dyin, he rides over me head.’

‘Who saved you?’

‘Across the road come and put a cushie under me head, held me hand.’

‘Probably didn’t want the street’s free veggie supplier to cark it,’ said Villani. ‘Arm broken?’

‘Nah, the wrist.’ Rose craned towards him. ‘Listen, Stevie, can’t stay here, don’t want to die here, bloody germatorium. Tell em to let me go home. They’ll listen to you. Bloody inspector.’

‘Inspector doesn’t carry weight with the medical profession,’ said Villani. ‘Doesn’t carry weight with anyone actually.’

‘Please, love.’

Rose put her left hand out to him. He took it, chicken bones in a bag of skin, held it in both his big awkward hands.

‘They give me all this health shit,’ she said. ‘Blood pressure’s too high. The weight on me heart, surprised it don’t shoot out of me ears.’

‘I’ll lean on them, ma,’ Villani said. ‘Get you out of here. Those mobile nurses can come around.’

‘Don’t need em,’ said Rose. ‘I’m gone. Little arse hit me, saw me spirit float out of me body.’

‘Cigarette smoke,’ said Villani. ‘Out of the lungs. Time to cut down.’

She pointed at the tin cupboard beside the bed, winked. ‘Get me bag. We’ll have a little ciggy.’

‘No, ma. That’s the only reason you wanted me here. Got to go, attend to the dead, you’re the living.’

Rose sighed. ‘Stevie, Stevie,’ she said, ‘do somethin for me?’

‘What?’

‘Trust you? Cop scum.’

‘Depends. Maybe. No. What?’

‘I’m scared about me money.’

‘What money?’

She put her head back, closed her eyes, lids of old silk. ‘Little treasure chest. Savings. Me float.’

‘In the bank?’

She opened her eyes. ‘Jesus, mate, wake up to the bloody world. Under the kitchen table, lino comes up. There’s a trapdoor, stick a knife in.’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t bugger me knives either. Little treasure chest.’

‘Yes?’

‘Keep it safe for me, son? Had a nightmare, house burns down, it’s all ashes. Like Black Saturday, I’m walkin around there, pick up a cup. Promise?’

‘House locked?’

‘Left it locked. Get me bag.’

Villani opened the cupboard, took her bag from the top shelf.

‘Giss,’ she said. ‘Giss.’

‘I’m so dumb,’ said Villani, ‘I should join the police. Treasure chest, bullshit. You want your fags, don’t you? Forget it, ma.’

Her eyes closed in slow motion. ‘Take the keys, Stevie,’ she said, faint. ‘Go around and get me chest.’

Villani found the keys, put the bag back in the cupboard.

‘Do that, then,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, Rosie. I’ll be back.’

He stood. Her eyes remained closed.

‘Giss a kiss, Stevie,’ she said. ‘Giss a cuddle. Me only good boy. Come too late.’

Villani felt tears coming, he leaned over and took her shoulders in soft hands, pressed his face to her, kissed her riven cheek beneath the bandage and in himself there was a great resentment and a great feeling of the unfairness in his life.

On a winter day, in the big break, backs against the demountable, shelter from the ice wind, clever little monkeyface Kel Bryson said:

They ever find your mum?

In the car, his mobile rang.

Colby.

COLBY LOOKED as if he’d come off the golf course. ‘Searle says it’s pulled, does he?’ he said.

‘For tomorrow,’ said Villani. ‘The question is, did Ruskin get it from welfare or Sex Crimes? Or both?’

Colby opened a file on the desk, flicked to a page, put on thin rimless glasses. ‘I can tell you there’s no Sexual Crimes statement,’ he said. ‘Tell me what abused means.’

‘Made her suck me off.’

Colby showed nothing. ‘You do that?’

Villani stared at him for a while. ‘What do you think?’

‘Don’t know what to think.’

Villani rose, walked down the long room, prints on the walls, he registered every step, chewing the bile in his mouth.

Colby’s voice, raised but calm. ‘Hey, come back, sunshine.’

Villani turned, hand on the door handle.

Colby beckoned, four fingers tight as a bird wing. ‘C’mere, son.’

Villani hesitated. He went back, he could do no other. They sat, chins down, eyes locked, their history hummed. ‘Christ, this is hard shit,’ said Colby.

‘I’ll quit,’ said Villani. ‘Just got some things to finish.’

‘How long’s she been on the streets?’

‘About a week. But she was hanging out with the scum before. Wagging.’

‘Drugs?’

‘What else?’

‘How old?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Just a baby, really.’

For weeks and weeks, the baby Lizzie had colic, whatever colic was, her night cries entering his dreams, strange stories developing around the insistent sound. They took turns walking her in the dark, the passage, the kitchen, the sitting room, it was many times in a night, you walked her, she stopped crying, you put her down like landing a soap bubble, went back to bed, she made a sound, it became a cry, a skewer in your head, you got up again.

Sometimes Lizzie slept between feeds. Sometimes he cheated when the cries woke him, nudged Laurie, lied that he’d just had his turn, she rose, no idea of how long she’d been asleep. He said to himself that she’d probably done the same to him, they were both trying to survive. But he knew she wouldn’t, she didn’t know how to lie.

The difference was that if the phone rang, Laurie didn’t have to go to an in-progress. Could be doped drunk fuckwits had a gun and a brilliant 2am idea, could be hardcore, two, three jobs in a night, take a couple of months off, go north, fishing, whoring. Both lots could kill you.

Once it rang as he was changing Lizzie’s nappy, gagging on the smell of the yellow puree, first dirty light in the eastern window, everything about him numb, brain, feet, hands, only the nose functioning. Twenty minutes later he had his back against a wall in a lane off Sydney Road, listening to two braindeads come out of the roof, they had lifted a sheet of corrugated iron. Next to him, Xavier Benedict Dance was smiling his dog smile.

‘They stop being baby girls earlier now,’ Villani said. ‘They can go from baby girls to fuckpigs in a very short time.’

‘Hasn’t escaped me,’ said Colby. ‘But incest, that’s not a barbiestopper, that’s the barbie blows up, kills seven. We have to look at the big picture here…’

A silence. Colby’s phone rang, a few words, grunts, eyes on the ceiling, goodbye, he stared at Villani.

‘So where’s she now?’

‘No idea.’

‘Tell me again it’s bullshit.’

‘Don’t believe me?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Definite negative. I can probably arrange to squeeze the welfare attack-bitch kennel but we need Ruskin permanently squirrelled. Reckon your missus can talk sense into the girl?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Okay, we’ll find her. Stay nice with Searle. I don’t know why he’s doing this.’

Villani nodded. If only he could put his head back against the chair and go to sleep, someone else in charge, feel the way he felt when the Kenworth came through the gate on a Friday night, he saw Bob’s sharp face, the downturned smile, the raised thumb. It was as if angels had lifted a bag of lead sinkers from his shoulders.

‘There’s something else,’ said Colby. ‘Mr Barry tells me the popular belief is that you talked about Stuart Koenig to Ms Anna Markham while fucking her. Do that?’

‘I did not.’

‘That’s the talking, not the fucking?’

‘Who’s surveilling her building? Or her?’

‘How would I know? Who would tell me? Ask your mate Dance.’

‘Crucible?’

‘I have no fucking idea. What I have an idea about is Greg Quirk. Payback time, son. These babies get back in, new inquest. DiPalma wants to screw you till your earwax melts and you go to jail for twenty years and then the real fun begins. I, of course, remain confident that you and Dancer and fucking Vickery weren’t making stuff up the first time around.’

Villani stared at Colby. He seemed less lined around the eyes, forehead smoother. Surely not?

‘This Prosilio hooker,’ Colby said. ‘I understood that was in the vault.’

‘It’s open, in progress.’

‘Yeah. But in the vault.’

‘Forgotten about the vault, boss.’

‘Stephen, only a brain-dead cunt forgets about the vault. With me?’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘And you should now personally beseech the blessed virgin several hours nightly for the voters to shaft these arses. And in the day you keep your hands out of your pockets and do nothing to offend the squatters.’

Koenig was there when the girl was killed. Villani knew it in his bone marrow. Never mind him being at home in Portsea. He wasn’t there. He was in Kew. How often had Koenig’s wife lied for him? Bricknell rang him and he went to Prosilio, parked underground. One girl each.

HE TOOK the fire stairs, millions of them, doors to push, he paced himself and as he went he thought about what the job had meant to him and remembered the moment when he sat back in Singo’s chair and thought: Stephen Villani, head of Homicide and he deserves to be.

Bob had no pride in him being boss of Homicide. Cop job, that’s all it was. Far beneath foreman, shift boss, night supervisor of anything. But the best his second-best son could do. Second-best until Luke arrived, then third-best. Just a useful body, a cook, guard dog, washer and ironer of clothes, homework checker, reading and spelling tutor, feeder of dogs and horses, mucker-out in chief, track rider, tree planter and waterer.

You’re not the doctor, boy, you’re the fucking copper.

Mark.

Mark was Bob’s achievement in life, the proof that his sperm carried cleverness. He saw no wrong in Mark, he would hear no evil about Mark, he exempted Mark from anything Mark didn’t want to do.

He did crossword puzzles with Mark.

Bob never once asked Villani a crossword question. Never.

And then Luke, the bastard by the Darwin whore. The cheeky one, the one who had no fear of his father, demanded affection from him like a puppy, hung onto him, crawled up his legs into his lap, ate off his plate, found sweets in his pockets, fell asleep on him in an instant, safe, safe and home at last. Bob carried him to his bed like some precious newborn, tucked him in, Villani saw that from the door, the tucks, the kiss.

And then, come Monday, it would be his job to see to the whining little shit.

On his desk, a note from Dove about the Preston excavations:

Young female, dead at least three months. Also remains of male, age forty-plus, pictures of rings on little fingers supplied by forensic suggest Hellhound. Armed Crime say strong possibility is Artie Macphillamy, 43, not seen for 18 months since involved in pub fight with Kenny Hanlon and others.

He rang Dance.

‘I hear you’ve left home,’ said Dance.

‘Where’d you hear that?’

‘The most expensive intelligence-gathering operation in police history at my disposal, where do you think I’d hear it? One of my blokes was in a pub.’

‘That’d be right. Question for you, I want a straight answer.’

‘When did you not? Professional? Personal?’

‘Both.’

‘I find the phone so impersonal,’ said Dance. ‘Take a walk down Bromby Street, I’ll come along in, ah, ten minutes. I take it you’re at work.’

Villani went out, sat on Dove’s desk. He was on the phone, finished the call.

‘What was his name? Birdy?’

‘Maggie,’ said Dove. ‘No phones in the name. Got his rego, put out a KALOF.’

‘Thousands of ancients on the road,’ said Villani. ‘Sitting in the caravan park looking at other ancients, the wife’s inside wiping surfaces, ironing, wearing a housecoat and an apron. That’s the reward for a lifetime’s work.’

‘Koenig,’ said Dove. ‘I reckon he wasn’t at Portsea.’

They were alike, their minds worked in the same strange cop way. ‘You reckon, do you? What about Bricknell?’

‘Koenig and Bricknell,’ said Dove. ‘I think we should try to shake Bricknell, boss.’

‘Shaking Koenig was so productive,’ said Villani. ‘Give me something more than phone calls, son.’

He took a smoke off Dove, stole his lighter, went down to the street. The heat pressed on him, it was too hot to smoke. He crossed the avenue and walked down Bromby Street. An Audi pulled up ahead of him, unlawful park. When he reached it, Dance bent his head, looked at him. Villani got in, chilled air, silent engine.

‘Nice car,’ said Villani. He lit the cigarette.

‘So what’s this?’ said Dance.

‘Minter Street, Southbank. A building called Exeter Place. Dogs on it. Yours?’

‘Minter Street,’ said Dance, thoughtful. ‘You have no idea how many people of interest live in Minter Street. They have gathered there, driven by some primitive drug-scum herding instinct.’

‘Yes or no?’

‘Yes. So if you don’t want to be logged entering and leaving Exeter Place, with or without Ms Markham, don’t go there. I’m not doctoring logs for you or anyone else.’

‘How’d fucking Searle see them?’

‘Gillam asked for them. For all I know he passed them around at a Rotary Club lunch, taped them to a hooker’s thigh.’

Villani said, ‘The story is I leaked the Koenig material to Ms Markham. DiPalma’s made it known I’m dead and Quirk’s coming back.’

Down his nose, Dance was watching three girls going by, bare, sweaty brown shoulders, midriffs, legs. They were arguing about something, not serious, extravagant gestures, pulling faces, big made-up eyes. He turned his killer-priest’s face to Villani as if averting his gaze from sin.

‘Well, Stevo,’ he said, ‘I hear that. There’s two possibilities. These tools get back in and try it on. Two, they don’t get back and the other lot does it for them. We have to hope the first doesn’t happen and plan for the second.’

‘Don’t know what hoping can do.’

‘You hope and also give things a shove.’

Dance was looking at Villani in a way that said: Don’t ask.

‘On election night,’ he said, ‘if it’s necessary, someone will tell the squatter’s wife that Quirk is baggage they don’t want, that people in the job will make sure they pay a terrible price for revisiting Greg.’

‘Price like what?’ said Villani. He knew.

‘The crypts will be unsealed, the vaults will be unlocked, the dead will walk. For openers, pictures of party icon shagging fifteen-year-old twink.’

Fifteen-year-old. Lizzie’s age. Villani said, ‘There’s something else. My little girl’s accused…’

Dance raised a hand. ‘Heard about that. Vick’ll get her found, we’ll work something out.’

He took a small player out of his shirt pocket, thumbed it, showed it: grainy picture, two men in evening dress, bow ties. One bent his head to the counter. He lifted his head, put a knuckle to his nose, sniffed. The hidden camera caught an Aren’t-I-a-clever-dog look.

‘When shove comes, Mr Barry will do what’s right or he gets the hot shot.’

It came to Villani that Dance was much, much more dangerous than he had ever thought.

‘Bob’d be in that pub up there now, wouldn’t he?’ said Dance. ‘Wait it out in the beer cellar. Too smart for the defend-your-property shit.’

‘No,’ Villani said ‘He’s got a firetruck and a bulldozer and he’s got Gordie and he’s going nowhere.’

Dance looked at him for a while. ‘Well, you make a stand somewhere, don’t you,’ he said. ‘Choose your friends, choose your fight.’

He opened the box between the seats and took out a mobile.

‘Call you, give you a number.’

Villani took it and went into the day. The wind was in the north now, coming from a burning hot, stone-dry place.

THE PAGE lay on his desk. He looked at it again.

Received 02.49: WHAT?

Sent 02.50: SOON.

Received 03.01:?????

Sent 03.04: GOING IN.

Sent 03.22: OTU BANZAI OK

Kidd and Larter near the house in Oakleigh.

Someone waiting for a message from them. Someone also close by. An impatient person, two messages in ten minutes. Who?

What were the two men waiting for? Had the lights gone out in the house? Did they want to be sure the Ribarics and Vern Hudson were asleep?

Four minutes past three: the decision to move. GOING IN.

Just shadows moving. At the back door. One kick, take the latch and the screws out of the woodwork. They were professionals.

03.22: Job done. Hudson dead, the Ribarics tied to the steel shed pillars with tape, their mouths would be taped too.

Time to call the impatient person waiting. The man with the knife. This wasn’t an ordinary run-through, this wasn’t ordinary payback. It was far, far beyond payback. This was a desire to inflict terrible things on the brothers.

OTU BANZAI OK.

Over to you. Banzai. OK.

Why OK?

Villani closed his eyes, no energy in him. His last Saturday in the job. You could survive a lot of things but not child sex-charges. Crime commissioner. That prospect hadn’t lasted long.

Why OK?

Why hadn’t he been suspended? Why hadn’t Gillam issued the instruction? What were they waiting for? Was it a matter of timing? Did they want him to resign like Koenig?

She says a Father Donald, he came. He’d kissed the Holy Father’s ring, and he asked her a lot of questions and he said she’d be at God’s right hand for telling Father Cusack about the evil. Pretty much a booked seat. Specially blessed. Yeah.

Villani felt a coldness on his face, as if the room had its own weather, a cool change from the south-west, from Singo’s box of junk.

The evil. Telling Father Cusack. Who told Father Donald. What about the confidentiality of confession? Could priests swap confessions with each other? Perhaps in their own confessions they could say things to their confessors, who could in turn…

No.

The evil. What story of evil could Valerie Crossley tell Father Cusack? A story she’d waited to tell until she saw her own death.

The thought came to him. He dismissed it. It came back. He got up, the thrumming in his body, he went to find Birkerts. He was half-hidden behind folders.

‘A moment of your precious time,’ said Villani. ‘Where were the Ribarics in 1994?’

‘Thought I heard someone say we didn’t need any more Ribaric family history?’

‘My mood’s changed. Experiencing mood swings.’

Birkerts sighed. ‘I’ll ask the custodian of the Rib family history. Like you, he forgets nothing. I think it’s an illness.’

Villani went back to his desk, couldn’t resume drowsing, stood up, saw the file Burgess had brought: the girl on the snow road. He went out. Dove was on the phone, put his hand over the mouthpiece.

‘Read this,’ said Villani. ‘My eyes hurt.’

The weekend switch operator’s hand up, the phone sign.

‘Boss,’ said Tomasic, ‘in 1994, the Ribs were in Geelong.’

Relief. Not losing it yet.

‘How do you know?’

‘Six months suspended in the Geelong Magistrates’ Court in March 1994. Assault.’

‘Dig it out, Tom, the details. Matter of urgency.’

‘System’s giving lots of shit, boss. Just goes blank.’

‘We all just go blank. Talk to the cops there, must be some cunt remembers. And Father Donald. I want Father Donald. If you have to ask the Pope.’

He went to Birkerts. ‘Little excursion to Geelong. Pass the time.’

Birkerts didn’t look up. ‘Rather pass razorblades. In connection with what urgent matter, inspector?’

‘Metallic. Oakleigh.’

‘Irresistible. Saddle up and ride.’

IT TOOK almost an hour to find anyone connected with St Anselm’s Parish and then it was done only by ringing Tomasic.

‘There’s Annette Hogan,’ he said. ‘She wrote to Mrs Crossley. See what I can do, boss. Call you back.’

Tomasic rang when they were sitting in the heat, drinking bad coffee at a place on the waterfront. The whole area had been worked on by architects, every place he went back to had been tricked out.

‘Spoke to the friend, she’ll be home in fifteen,’ Tomasic said. ‘Newtown. Know where that is, boss?’

‘Can you find your dick, son? Address?’

Annette Hogan came to the door, a tall, desiccated woman in her sixties, beaky nose, led them into a sitting room. One of the chairs still had its plastic wrapping.

Birkerts asked the question.

‘Father Cusack died about six months ago,’ she said. ‘He’d had a few heart attacks.’

‘He had a parishioner called Valerie Crossley,’ said Birkerts.

‘Mrs Crossley, yes. She’s dead too. A month ago, thereabouts.’

‘This is delicate, Mrs Hogan,’ said Birkerts, ‘but it’s very important. Do you know anything about the last confession Mrs Crossley made to Father Cusack?’

Annette Hogan’s eyes widened. ‘You’re not thinking Father Cusack would tell anyone about a confession, are you? Don’t you know about the sanctity of the confessional? Not Catholic, are you?’

‘No,’ said Birkerts. ‘Proddy dog. Lapsed.’

‘Well, he’d be excommunicated, wouldn’t he? In the confessional you’re facing the power of God. The priest can never speak of what he hears. He’d be sinning. Good heavens.’

‘Sorry,’ said Birkerts.

Silence. In the passage, a board creaked. Villani thought that would be the friend.

‘There’s a Father Donald,’ said Villani. ‘I don’t know if that’s the first name or the surname.’

She was still offended at the heathen inquiry. ‘Father Donald? Not in this town. Never heard of a Father Donald.’

Villani stood, Birkerts followed.

‘Well, thank you, Mrs Hogan. Did you know Mrs Crossley?’

‘Not really, no.’

Villani said, ‘The place where she died? Where’s that.’

Annette Hogan gave them directions. She walked them to her front gate and waited for them to drive away.

‘I don’t think we’re on a winner here,’ said Birkerts.

‘We may not even be on a horse,’ said Villani. ‘Look for somewhere to buy smokes.’

They stopped at a fish and chips shop. Villani went in, hunger took him, he had trouble remembering breakfast. He went back to the car with cigarettes and six dollars worth of chips, hacked with a cleaver, six to a big spud. They ate them on the spot, the oily parcel steaming sharp vinegar on the armrest between them.

‘This’s how the cars get their smell,’ said Birkerts, taking the last chip, chewing, thoughtful. ‘Egg farts, Whoppers, vinegar, chip fat, cigarette smoke, Old Spice, four-day socks.’

‘Put it in an aerosol, subdue the violent with a spray in the face,’ said Villani.

‘Then shoot them a few times to be on the safe side. Why are we going to this gerry place? I’m not making connections.’

‘In time, you may see the utility,’ said Villani.

‘I’m going to miss you so much,’ said Birkerts. ‘Just being with you.’

‘I’ll come around to your house inspections. Shitfaced. Tell everyone I’m the neighbour. Break stuff. Jump in the pool.’

Birkerts turned the key. ‘Navigate me,’ he said.

IT WAS a T-shape of yellow brick, a tarmac parking area, a dozen splintering E. nicholi in a long strip of dead grass.

They went up a concrete ramp with handrails. In a waiting room with brown vinyl tiles, Birkerts pressed a bell five or six times.

A door opened and a sad red-faced balding woman in blue came out.

‘Not visiting hours,’ she said.

Birkerts showed her the badge, said who they were. She went redder.

‘I’ll get matron,’ she said. ‘Have to wake her.’

They went outside, leant against the rails, smoked.

‘What happens on a free Saturday night?’ Villani said.

‘Thought you’d never ask,’ said Birkerts. ‘Used to take my wife to dinner. Then I took this other person to dinner. Now I get a pizza in. Have to be careful you don’t order a Coke with it. Costs a hundred bucks and you don’t even get a straw.’

Knocks on the glass door.

They went in, the receptionist showed them to an office. The woman behind the chipboard desk had blood in her eyes, bleached hair, the face of a barmaid turned wardress.

‘Shirley Conroy, matron,’ she said. ‘Police, I gather.’

‘Introduce you to Inspector Stephen Villani,’ said Birkerts. ‘Head of the Victoria Police Homicide Squad.’

‘Meetcha,’ the matron said, not impressed. ‘Sit if you want.’

‘Mrs Valerie Crossley,’ said Villani.

‘What about her?’

‘She died recently.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Someone came to see her a few months before. A priest. Is that right?

‘What’s it about, this?’

‘We’re the police, matron,’ said Villani. ‘We ask the questions. Ever had any benefit from a patient’s will?’

Lockdown. Tight mouth, eyes.

‘Moving on then,’ said Villani. ‘Someone other than Father Cusack visit Mrs Crossley not long before she died? Easy question that. I have others. They get harder.’

No hesitation. ‘Yeah, a man said he was a relly.’

‘Keep a record of visitors?’

‘Properly run, this place,’ she said. ‘Inspected twice a year.’

‘I’d be profoundly shocked if it wasn’t. See the book?’

Matron pressed a button on her phone, they could hear the shrill sound from the next room. The blue woman opened the door.

‘Visitors’ register, Judith.’

Judith took seconds. Matron found the page with ease, turned the book to face Villani, pointed at a line.

Name: K. D. Donald

Relationship: Nephew.

Address: 26/101 Swanston Street, Melbourne.

‘Mrs Crossley called him Father Donald,’ said Villani.

Matron’s thin mouth lengthened. ‘Mrs Crossley was not in the full possession of her facilities at the time. Thought her dog was under the bed.’

‘What about her faculties?’ said Birkerts.

‘Heard her confession,’ said Judith from behind them.

They turned heads.

The blush upon the flush. ‘I heard him say it,’ said Judith. ‘May the almighty and merciful God grant you pardon, absolution and remission of your sins. He said that.’

A story.

Someone told a story. Where?

In the Robbers, it would have been. In the awed first months, you laughed at any story the hard men told, understood or not. Who told it? What was it? To do with confession? Pardon? Absolution?

It would not come to him, it lay just beyond the breakers, in the deep water, in the dark, slippery moving kelp of the mind.

In the baking car, Birkerts started the engine, the air-con fought the heat. Villani’s mobile. Tomasic.

‘Getting nowhere on that Rib assault, boss. System’s down, no one in Geelong there in ′94. Also, the only Father Donald in the whole country died three years ago.’

‘Our lucky day.’ Villani put the phone away. ‘Let’s go home,’ he said. ‘Such as it is.’

HE SHOWERED, put on the gown, went to the kitchen and opened a beer, drained half of it, took it to a chair near an open wall-length window. The television was four metres away, framed in a bookshelf.

He used the remote, waited in mute for the news, unmuted. After the world-in-turmoil graphics, the stiff-faced newsreader said:

Our top story tonight, more shock waves rip through the state government after startling claims by Opposition leader Karen Mellish. Political editor Anna Markham reports.

Anna, the dispassionate professional in all her handsome, calm cleverness. She said:

It’s a complicated story Opposition leader Karen Mellish told the media twenty minutes ago. But it boils down to this. The son of Attorney-General Anthony DiPalma, the stepmother of Planning Minister Robbie Cowper, and the ex-wife of Assistant Crime Commissioner John Colby all appear to have made large windfalls from buying apartments in the exclusive Prosilio building in the Docklands precinct.

Footage of the three men: the AG in full flight in the chamber, cow-faced Cowper defending some planning decision in the outer suburbs. Then Colby, in uniform, the hard face, talking about bikie gangs.

Anna: she lifted her dimpled chin, tilted her head.

Karen Mellish says people close to DiPalma, Cowper and Colby bought apartments off the plan in Prosilio. They put down $80,000 deposits, borrowed from a company called Bernardt Capital Partners. Two years later, the same company sold the apartments to Asian buyers for around $750,000 each. Then Bernardt paid the owners sums ranging from $410,000 to $450,000.

Karen Mellish, pinstriped suit, a severe, sexy headmistress.

How effortless. These people made $430,000-odd without putting up a cent. Even after paying capital gains tax, a nice little earner, wouldn’t you say?

Is this guilt by relationship? Do you know if Mr DiPalma or Mr Cowper or Mr Colby received any benefit?

Mellish laughed.

Anna, watch this space. That’s all I’m saying. Watch this space.

Anna:

The Prosilio building is owned by Marscay Corporation, a big donor to both political parties. It’s home to Australia’s most exclusive casino, the Orion, which is challenging Australia’s long-established gambling companies for the patronage of the high-rolling, $250,000 minimum-bet gamblers, almost all of them Chinese.

The quizzical look.

With the state elections just two weeks away, Karen Mellish’s charges could be the fatal blow to a government seriously on the nose with voters and which only a few hours ago sacked Infrastructure Minister Stuart Koenig over sex allegations.

Villani terminated the television, finished the beer, the big Geelong chips came back. Colby? Some mistake. Colby was too clever, he would not have taken the risk. His ex-wife? Colby said once the divorce settlement was going to leave him with one ball and a twelve-year-old Holden.

An innocent. He had been used to destroy Koenig. Someone had been watching Koenig’s town house, seen the girl arrive with Hanlon, set the whole thing up.

Who would that be? Crucible? Would Dancer do Karen Mellish’s dirty work?

Blackwatch Associates? They did surveillance. Cameron’s partner, Wayne Poland, had been the force’s surveillance expert. Blackwatch would work for anyone.

Perhaps Koenig was bugged. Perhaps they heard him order the girl from Hanlon.

Max Hendry.

His major problem in getting AirLine to fly is Stuart Koenig, the infrastructure minister. Koenig’s told the Labor caucus the sky will be dark with pigs before Max Hendry gets government support.

Karen Mellish’s words. So Max’s major problem went away with Koenig’s fall.

So tired. So fucked. A life so completely fucked. What would Bob say when it was out:

TOP COP’S TEEN:

DAD ABUSED ME

Mobile.

It wasn’t his mobile, it was the one Dance gave him, squeaking in his jacket where he had thrown the garment.

‘Sorry to wake you, mate. Be in the sack, it being all of seven in the p.m.’

The Dancer, cocky, always languid.

‘Doing my yoga,’ said Villani.

‘With your three Filipino personal trainers. Hear the Colby stuff?’

‘Just now. Yes.’

‘Greed is always so bad. No good comes of greed.’

‘Apparently.’

‘And I’m bearing other sad news tonight,’ said Dance. ‘Grace Lovett. Dead. In her pool. Fell in pissed probably.’

A child again, adults telling him things, true things.

‘Tragic that,’ said Dance. ‘Drink and water don’t mix. The exception is single malt and ancient spring water, that works. So I think the little cunt’s not coming back to haunt us. Grace not being able to testify. Vid’s not really admissible now, I’d say, wouldn’t you?’

‘I’d say. Thanks for the call.’ So much more deadly than he’d ever thought.

‘Got the saddies, mate? Out of the rip here, boy. No fear of drowning.’

‘Just tired.’

‘Son. This shit is over. Passed through the system. All crap soon be over. Sit down, have a drink.’

Villani sat for a time, took out his mobile, switched it off. He went to the wall, put out the lights, the room was moonlit. He went to the big leather sofa and lay along its length, closed his eyes, listened to the harsh shrieking, wailing clamour of the city.

The black pipes laid, the water leaking down the hill to the trees, on the summer evenings when he was past sixteen, he would sit, back against the dam wall, and roll a cigarette, acrid chop chop from the Kiewa Valley, from a boy at school who stole it from his uncle. In the yielding day, the valley was so quiet that the thumps of Luke and Mark kicking the football carried to him from a kilometre and more over the hill.

So tired.

In a dream, the phone was ringing, he sat up, stood up, staggered, found the telephone, it was the landline, it was on a shelf.

Birkerts.

‘Steve, your mobile’s off, they rang me.’

A car came for him. He stood in the hot street, cold to his core. He stood and smoked and they came for him with the siren on.

IN THE van’s spotlight, two uniforms, a man and a woman, led him down the mean alley, their long shadows preceded them.

They went by the man with his head back against the wall, they went to the end, to where the small thing lay, a little bundle no bigger than a sleeping dog.

The cop coughed. ‘Too late for…yeah. Boss.’

Villani took the steps and looked at the deceased, this was what you did in Homicide, if you didn’t have the stomach you should go somewhere else.

The small person had been sick, expelled the contents of her stomach, not much, a cup of white liquid, it lay on the cobblestones around her white face.

Lizzie’s face was dirty and there was a little sore under her left eye, she’d been scratching at it.

‘OD, boss,’ said the cop.

Villani knelt and, without thought, touched the child’s forehead with his lips, it was cold.

He stood and looked at the man against the wall, head back, knees up, all in black, a black leather cap, dreadlocks hanging from it. He had small triangles, squares and circles tattooed on his cheekbones, a Maltese cross between his eyebrows, barbed wire across his throat, under the Adam’s apple.

His eyes were closed.

He had an iPod plugged into his ear.

A rage blocked Villani’s ears, his nose, made him feel weightless and enlarged, he took the steps, and he kicked the man in his fork, it was not worth it, it was like kicking a bag of wheat.

‘He’s dead, boss,’ said the woman. ‘He’s dead.’

Villani turned towards the lane entrance and the spotlight went out and he could see them: Birkerts and Dove and Finucane and Tomasic.

Birkerts came forward, touched his arm. ‘Want me to tell Laurie?’ he said.

Villani straightened, cleared his throat. ‘That’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘Mate.’

He walked to the group, biting his lip, they said nothing, parted for him, patted him, touched him. They had come out in the night because he meant something to them, that was not something he expected. Finucane followed him.

‘Where to, boss?’ he said.

‘I’ll just go home.’

‘That’s home as in…’

‘As in Fitzroy.’

‘Ah, don’t know if it’s good for you to be alone, boss,’ Finucane said. ‘Don’t think so. No.’

‘Let me do the thinking, son. You drive.’

Finucane drove him back to Fitzroy, walked to the door with him.

‘I could just come in, sit around,’ he said. ‘In case you wanted to…whatever. Yeah. Just sort of be there.’

‘Go home, detective,’ said Villani. ‘I don’t need anyone sitting around just sort of being there. I’m fine.’

In the apartment, he felt compelled to shower, stood in the waterfall for a long time, listened to the landline ringing, let it ring out.

When he was about to pour whisky into a tumbler, the ringing began again. He could not ignore it.

‘Villani.’

‘It’s me.’ Laurie. In the two words, he could hear that she had been crying.

‘Hi.’

‘Stephen, I have to tell you…’

She choked, could not speak. He waited.

‘What?’

‘She rang about two hours ago and left a message. I was out and…’

She stopped again. He waited.

‘She was crying. She said you never did anything to her. Never touched her. She said they told her to say it.’

Villani felt rage rise in him again. ‘Who’s they?’

‘I don’t know. That’s what she said.’

Silence, Laurie sniffed, coughed.

‘Stephen, do you want…would you like, would you like to come home?’

‘Not now,’ said Villani. ‘Corin there?’

‘Yes. Tony’s coming home, he’s getting a…’

‘Good. I’ll call you tomorrow. Got something to take? To sleep?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. Well. Goodnight.’

‘I can’t…’

‘Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow.’

‘Steve, I can’t say how…’

‘You believed her,’ he said. ‘You thought I was capable of it.’

‘You have to…’

‘Tomorrow. Goodnight.’

He went back to the kitchen, poured half a glass of whisky, took it to the sofa he had slept on earlier. He sipped and a tear ran down his nose. He began to weep. For a while, he wept in silence and then he began to sob, softly at first, and then louder and louder.

It came to him that he had never cried out loud in his life. It was as if he were singing for the first time.

After a while, he pulled up his legs, lay on his back. He fell asleep as if clubbed, slept through the remainder of the night, woke with wet cheeks.

IN THE morning, when Villani was walking around aimlessly, trying not to smoke, Birkerts rang.

‘Downstairs,’ he said.

‘Why’s that?’

‘Thinking breakfast.’

Villani wanted to say no but that would only postpone things. You had to carry on. Bob’s saying: Who speaks of victory? To carry on is all.

Villani asked him who said that. ‘Some German,’ said Bob.

Now Villani said, ‘Just don’t talk about it.’

They went to Enzio’s. It was too early for the locals, only the clean-living and the unclean-living survivors of the night were out.

‘Listen,’ said Birkerts. ‘I was thinking about Geelong yesterday and I thought about Cameron’s son. After that Noske killed himself, what happened then?’

‘There wasn’t anywhere left to go,’ said Villani. ‘Noske was it. Never going to trial, mark you. Not unless he sung. Also I suppose when Cameron quit and then Deke Murray quit, there wasn’t a driver, other things came along.’

‘The idea was Noske by himself?’

‘Mad loner, nobody would have helped him.’

Some questions about that cold night in the valley were never answered. The overturned furniture, the broken crockery, the arterial gushes, the cast-off bloodstains from the weapon, the impact splatters, the bloody shoeprints, they all suggested Dave Cameron trying to fight back against one person hacking at him with a big knife or a sword. Then he was shot in the body twice with an unknown weapon and three times in the head with his own service weapon.

But what was Cameron’s girlfriend doing while this was happening? Nothing said she had been bound before being shot in the head, three times, with Dave’s weapon. But it was possible she had been: she had just come from the cycle track, she was a champion cyclist, she was in full lycra. It would stop her being marked.

‘So the Ribs were in Geelong and you thought…’

‘I have these brain episodes,’ said Villani. He was eating mechanically. He needed food, he didn’t want it.

‘Pardon, absolution and remission of sins,’ said Birkerts. ‘I like the principle. Now that is clout. That is having the grip.’

The fork was almost at Villani’s mouth.

Colby’s story that Friday night long ago in the Robbers’ offices, the beers out, air grey with smoke. About two Broady boys brought in years before, brothers, Coogan, Cooley, some such. They had done a drive-in bottleshop in Johnson Street, waited until a kid, a student, was pulling down the door, gone in under it like crocodiles, bashed the two workers, homemade knuckledusters, opened their faces, broke noses, cheekbones, kicked the one senseless.

Now, in the spartan Robbers’ quarters, the brothers had their turn to know terror. After a while, Colby said, the older one, thinking he was going to die there, expressed a willingness to confess.

He gets them to kneel and say we’re so fucking sorry. And then he says, relax boys. May the almighty and merciful God grant you pardon, absolution and remission of your sins. And they look a bit relieved. Then he says, because almighty God might forgive you. But not me, boys. I’m going to kill you, you miserable little arseholes.

Villani remembered the laughing, they were mostly proddies, the Robbers was a proddy stronghold. Kneeler Robbers had to be special men, they needed hard shells, they had to give it back in spades.

‘Father Donald,’ said Colby. ‘He made them call him Father Donald.’

Received 02.49: WHAT?

Sent 02.50: SOON.

Received 03.01:?????

Sent 03.04: GOING IN.

Sent 03.22: OTU BANZAI OK

No. It wasn’t ‘OK’.

Villani chewed, tasting nothing.

‘Do me a favour,’ he said. ‘Ring in and get an address.’ He wrote down the name.

Birkerts did it, blank eyes on Villani. Villani read them: what kind of father goes back to work six hours after he finds his daughter dead?

They ate. Birkerts took out his mobile, listened.

‘Tell the inspector,’ he said, gave Villani the phone.

‘Boss, we have Yarraville, that’s 12 Enright Lane.’

Pause.

‘Looking at it, boss…brick, two-storey, industrial, no sign… across the road…Speed Glass. Good business, no shortage of glass breakers. Next door. B & L Shopfitting, less good. From above…a back yard, brick-paved I’d say, pot plants, table chairs, someone lives there, high walls, not easy getting in that way, boss.’

Villani said, ‘Martin Loneregan, SOG boss. At home, anywhere. Get him to ring this phone.’

He gave the phone back to Birkerts. ‘Take a little trip to Yarraville in a while,’ he said.

‘Yarraville,’ said Birkerts. ‘Bought there in the nineties, you’re now in Noosa, on the private jetty, toes in the river, you’re laughing.’

‘So grateful for the real-estate perspective,’ said Villani.

They ate, Villani signalled, the coffees came.

‘You known here already?’ said Birkerts.

‘Second visit. They pay attention.’

Birkerts found his mobile. ‘Birkerts. He’s right here.’ To Villani, he said, ‘Inspector Loneregan.’

Villani said, ‘Mate, need a bit of force in a hurry. Yarraville. Not the full catastrophe.’

‘Sometimes not the full catastrophe is the full catastrophe,’ said Loneregan.

‘One man. Not young.’

‘Amazing what shit one man not young can create.’

‘Point taken,’ said Villani. He told Loneregan who it was.

‘My Lord,’ said Loneregan. ‘Sure you want to do it this way?’

‘I’m sure.’

He saw the Ribarics in the big empty shed, just hanging blood-caked meat, sliced and severed and stuck and burnt.

‘I’ll need an hour,’ said Loneregan. ‘Got a bit on.’

THEY PARKED beyond Enright Lane and sat in silence for a time, heavy traffic passing, a distant backfire.

‘Sure about this?’ said Birkerts.

‘I reckon,’ said Villani. He was regretting the Sons of God. It didn’t matter what the man had done, there was respect due.

It was wrong.

‘I’m going in,’ he said.

Birkerts grabbed his jacket sleeve. ‘Steve, Steve, for fuck’s sake, don’t be, I’m not letting…’

‘Wait here, detective,’ said Villani.

‘Well, I’m not…’

‘You can spell order? The word? Sit. I’ll ring.’

Villani got out and walked under the shivering sky, down the ugly little street, the shuttered doors, the windows barred, the industrial waste bins, the litter of takeaway food. The smell was of tar and chemicals.

He stood before the steel entry to number 12. Sweat stuck his shirt to his chest. He pulled at it.

A button. A bell. He pressed and he heard it ring inside the building, far away. The third time he rang, a voice from the speaker beside the door said, ‘Inspector Villani.’

‘Got a camera, boss?’ said Villani.

‘State of the art, son.’

‘Come in?’

‘About what? Not social, I reckon.’

Villani felt the gaze. He turned and saw Birkerts at the head of the lane. A wind had come up, it was moving his hair. Across the distance, their eyes met. Birkerts shook his head like a father.

‘Think you know, boss,’ said Villani.

‘On your own then, Stephen?’

Far away, the roar and keen and whine of the trucks as they rose up the sweeping curve of the great bridge, their sounds as they fell.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘That’s not very clever.’

‘Can’t say yet, sir.’

Locks clicked.

‘Stairs on the right.’

It had been a workshop, a Land Cruiser stood in the middle, doors to the right and back, a steel staircase up the right-hand wall. He climbed them, another steel door.

After all the years. All the years of fighting fear, all the years he could remember, all the years of trying to be a man.

This man would kill him.

Villani opened the door.

A huge room, bare floorboards, bare brick walls, a kitchen at one end, a desk, two chairs, a wall of books, sound equipment, a television.

A dog lay on a rug. Fully extended. A German Shepherd. It did not stir.

‘Heard you were coming. Sit.’

Villani crossed the space and sat in a chair in front of the desk. He did not know what to do with his hands. ‘How’s that, boss?’ he said.

‘Small world. Come for me?’

The long neck, the crisp curls, the hard sardonic mouth, Villani remembered them.

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Sure you’re by yourself?’

‘As you see me.’

‘Well, that’s pretty contemptuous, isn’t it? You could at least have brought the warriors. Even if it wasn’t the full catastrophe.’

‘They had another job on,’ said Villani. ‘Might come on afterwards.’

A laugh, genuine laugh, amused, shaking his head. ‘Armed, son?’ he said. ‘At least say you’re armed? Give me that.’

‘Yes.’

‘Not going to be much fucking use sitting down.’

‘No, boss.’

‘I’m proud of you, then. Stupid prick. What?’ Villani held his eyes. ‘Ribarics. The offsider.’

‘Guilty.’

Murray’s hands came up, a short sawn shotgun came up from under the desktop, it pointed at Villani’s chest, at his throat.

Lowered.

‘Primitive weapon,’ said Murray. ‘All show except close up.’

‘Kidd and Larter?’

‘Psychos,’ said Murray. ‘Hard to say which one you’d extinguish first. Probably Larter. International killer. Kill his mother, anything.’

Murray looking around the room, looking at Villani.

‘Undesirables,’ he said. ‘But useful. Useful idiots.’

‘The car,’ said Villani. ‘Who did that?’

Murray looked up, waved, a big hand.

‘Don’t worry about it, son,’ he said. ‘Let it lie. Saved the taxpayer millions, keeping the pricks in maximum security for life.’

‘Why?’ said Villani.

‘Why?’

‘The Ribarics.’

‘You know. That’s why you’re here.’

‘I’d like you to tell me, boss.’

‘There’s a video in the machine, that’ll tell you. How’d you get to me?’

‘The old lady’s confession. Father Donald. I remembered a story from the Robbers, the old days.’

Murray’s mouth turned down, he nodded as if agreeing with something. ‘And you’re not stupid,’ he said.

‘You do that?’ said Villani. ‘The torture?’

‘No,’ said Murray. ‘I wanted to. That was the point. But in the end I couldn’t. Kidd and Larter. Larter mostly.’

Villani said, ‘All this for Matt?’

The winter eyes on him. Was that moisture?

Murray raised the shotgun barrel, pointed, extended his arm until he could pull the trigger and take off Villani’s head.

What a stupid way to die.

‘No,’ said Murray. ‘Not for Matt. For myself. Scare you, this shotty?’

‘No,’ said Villani. ‘Go ahead.’

‘That’s not natural.’ Murray sighed. ‘You’re a good cop, son.’

‘Better things to be good at.’

‘You never find that out till it’s too late,’ said Murray. ‘Cheers.’

He brought the barrel back, put it under his chin, pulled the trigger.

The blast disintegrated his face, a red mist.

Villani sat, hands in lap, chin on chest, waited.

Inside a minute, the rammer hit the doors downstairs.

The Sons of God.

He went to the door, walked around the dog, which lay at peace. One bullet for the dog, one for himself.

Villani opened the door and shouted. Then he went to the bookshelf, drawn to it, to the four photographs in silver frames.

The Camerons. Mother, father, the small boy was in Matt Cameron’s arms.

The Camerons. Lying on a beach, she was in a bikini, lovely, the boy, older now, lying between them.

Donald Keith Murray and Matt Cameron. Walking towards the camera. Tall, lean men, long muscles, flat pectorals, holding the boy Dave’s hands. He was off the ground, his little face pure joy.

Three men in uniform posing. Graduation day. The boy, a man now, standing between Deke Murray and Matt Cameron. Even height, three handsome men.

‘Jesus,’ said Loneregan from the door. ‘Jesus, that was fucking silly.’

Birkerts came up beside Villani, studied the photograph.

‘Strong family resemblance,’ he said.

‘Between?’

Birkerts pointed.

‘No,’ Villani said. ‘That’s not Matt. That’s Deke.’

Dave Cameron wasn’t Matt Cameron’s son. He was Deke Murray’s son, Father Donald’s son.

No, Oakleigh was not a run-through, not crims ripping off and killing other crims. It was a terrible revenge for the murder of a son and the woman bearing someone’s grandson.

Deke Muray, Matt Cameron’s brother in arms. His great friend. Matt Cameron knew who had fathered the boy he called his son.

‘Video in this machine,’ said Birkerts.

‘I know,’ said Villani. ‘Play it.’

Birkerts pressed buttons. The screen flickered, jumped.

Hand-held camera, all over the place, a room, unmade bed, cans, bottles, plates.

Face close up, unshaven, big teeth.

The young Ivan Ribaric, shirtless, Jim Beam bottle in his left hand, he staggered, slack-jawed, drunk, off his face.

A policeman’s cap on his head, the back of his head. He pulled it over his eyes, drank from the bottle.

He raised his right hand, he had a pistol, he pointed it at the cameraman, his mouth made bang noises.

‘Service pistol,’ said Loneregan.

Dave Cameron’s cap.

Dave Cameron’s gun.

Ivan Ribaric turned his back to the camera, put the bottle and the pistol on a dressing-table. He picked up something, turned.

He had a short sword in both hands, a cutlass. He made martial-arts movements, slashing movements, hacking movements. Hacking Dave Cameron.

Ivan Ribaric laughing.

…he said she’d be at God’s right hand for telling Father Cusack about the evil.

‘Off,’ said Villani. ‘Put it off.’

Outside, Loneregan said, ‘Listen, I heard about your girl. What can I say? Strength, mate.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And thanks about my dad.’

Deke Muray was in his mind, it took a moment for Villani to focus. ‘Bob speaks highly of him,’ he said. ‘Brave man who loved his little boy.’

‘Means a lot to me that. Your dad saying that.’

IN THE car, going over the Westgate, how long it seemed since the call to Prosilio.

Villani’s phone rang.

‘Dove, boss. Boss, sorry, I don’t want to…’

‘Speak.’

‘Boss, just leaving a house in Niddrie. With Tomasic. I got this bloke Maggie in Mallacoota. Talked to him, got the name of the bloke who fetched the girl from the market. The Romanian?’

‘I’m with you.’

‘Tommo’s been talking Romanian to them. Took a while to convince them we hadn’t come to kill her.’

Nothing for so long and then everything at once.

‘She’s there?’ said Villani.

‘No, boss. She’s out Heathcote way. She’s been staying with the bloke’s daughter. But she’s going home today. Flight from Tulla in two hours. Austrian Airlines. To Vienna.’

‘Who’s taking her?’

‘The bloke’s son-in-law and his brother.’

‘Niddrie,’ said Villani. ‘On your bike. Tulla. Meet you in Depot Drive. That’s between Centre and Service. Under the trees, facing west. We want to pick her up without fuss.’

To Birkerts, he said, ‘Tullamarine. The Prosilio girl.’

All the way, he thought about Lizzie.

In the seconds when he decided he would not fetch her, he killed her. When he committed her to the cells, he killed her.

THEY DROVE up Departure Drive, Villani and Birkerts in front, parked beyond international departures. Two security men arrived in seconds.

Villani showed them the badge. ‘Inspector Villani, Homicide.’

The guards left.

‘Tell Tommo to check the departure time,’ said Villani. ‘Get Dove here.’

Birkerts got out, went back and spoke to Dove and Tomasic. Tomasic got out, adjusted his clothing, and walked down the broad pavement.

Dove and Birkerts got in. Dove in the back.

‘They’ll drive up and drop her or what?’ said Villani.

‘Don’t know,’ said Dove. ‘I’d say they’ll park and come with her. She’s got no English, she’s scared.’

Villani thought about what to do. It didn’t matter much how they arrived.

‘What we’ll do is,’ he said, ‘Birk, you and Tommo wait inside the first door. We’ll be inside the second one. Warn these security dorks. Tell them to stay out of sight.’

‘Boss,’ said Birkerts.

‘She arrives alone or with the brothers, the door she comes in, we intercept her just inside,’ said Villani. ‘All badges out, we don’t want to scare her, anyone. Say police as caringly as possible. Like a blessing.’

‘Jeez, that’s a big ask,’ said Birkerts.

They got out, immediate sweat, Tomasic was coming out of the building. ‘Leaves one-thirty,’ he said. ‘She’s got to check in inside the next forty minutes.’

‘Follow me, son,’ said Birkerts.

The departure hall was cool, crowded, long lines, two big groups of Japanese men, lean women in sports gear, a hockey team perhaps.

Villani was looking through the glass wall in the direction of the open-air parking lot, they would come from there if she was escorted by the brothers. He had the fear, the tightness in the solar plexus. This was happening too quickly, they should be here in numbers. They shouldn’t be here at all. The Sons should be here.

All this in one day.

‘Boss,’ said Dove, urgent. ‘There.’

He was pointing at the multi-storey parking garage across the road.

Two big men, young, T-shirts, cargo pants, dark glasses, one wore thongs. Standing well back from the crossing.

Lizzie.

She was between them, the girl, she barely reached their shoulders, her hair was inside a baseball cap, she was in jeans and a white collarless shirt, a child wearing big dark glasses, carrying a bag, a blue sports bag with the swipe on the side.

The lights changed, they stepped off.

Villani was looking to their left, across the road, through the undercover bus stop. A black car was behind a bus with a luggage trailer, it was nosing out, twenty, thirty metres from the crossing.

A motorbike was beside it, on the far side, the driver’s side, two up, full-face helmets, the passenger had his left hand on the car.

In the moment, Villani knew. Oh, Jesus, no.

‘Car, the bike!’ Villani went between two women coming in the door, freeing the weapon as he ran.

The girl was looking at the bike, the car, her mouth was open, the light caught her teeth.

She knew she was going to die.

Villani was halfway across the road, the nose of the black car, an Audi, the tinted windscreen, the biker, he saw the pistol, he did not hear the sounds.

The girl dropped. The man next to her dropped.

Running, he fired, the helmets turned, the bike passenger swung his pistol across the rider’s head.

Villani stumbled.

Dove beside him, Dove had his gun in both hands, he fired once, twice, holes in the windscreen, the man on the pillion standing now.

Villani steadied, shot the rider, he knew he had hit him, you knew. He fired again. Dove beside him fired, again, the pillion shooter’s helmet jerked, the collar of his leather jacket lifted, he fell sideways.

The black Audi turning left, mounting the median strip, coming slowly.

Screaming, many people screaming, a child screaming.

Villani saw the faces in the car, the head and arm and the pumpgun sticking out of the passenger side.

Run back.

Too late.

‘Oh shit,’ he said, saw the flame in the shotgun barrel, felt his shirt and his jacket plucked, fired at the shooter, him and Dove, standing side by side, they emptied their weapons.

The Audi stopped a metre away. A hole in the windscreen on the driver’s side. Dove had shot the driver. Someone once shot him and now he had shot someone. Not gun-shy, Dove.

Silence.

Birkerts and Tomasic arrived.

They walked to the girl, seeing the slumped men in the Audi, seeing the bikers where they lay, hearing the bike ticking. Villani smelled cordite and hot gunmetal and petrol fumes.

The girl was clenched like a baby with colic. One of her escorts was on his side, losing blood, blood everywhere. His brother was holding the man’s head.

She would be dead, dying.

‘Police,’ Villani said, not loudly.

She raised her head and looked at him, dark eyes.

Not dead.

He knelt by her, Dove knelt too, they turned her gently, she did not resist, she was limp.

Not dying.

Not shot.

‘Safe now,’ he said. ‘Safe now.’

She blinked, she was crying, she smiled a wan little smile.

Not dead. Not Lizzie. Saved.

‘Medics,’ Villani said. ‘Tell them five down. Gunshot.’

THEY SAT in the big interview room, Villani and Dove and two interpreters, a fat sallow man who was also a justice of the peace and a stern young woman who was a court interpreter in four Slavonic languages.

And the girl. Her name was Marica.

The girl did not need to be told her rights. She was not charged with anything. She was giving her testimony willingly. She was a witness to at least one crime.

Dove asked the questions, it was his right.

He was quiet and friendly, smiling, Villani had not seen this side of Dove. He took Marica through her story, from the time in Tandarei when her uncle brought the man to see her and her twin sister and told them they could go to Australia and be trained as hairdressers and beauticians, the Australian girls did not want to do the work, they were also ugly and had big hands and could not do delicate things. His reward would be a small percentage of their earnings when they were qualified, that was only fair.

It took a long time, breaks taken, there was a need to ask for detail. Marica knew some names, just first names, not many.

At length, they came to the night at Prosilio, to the drive from Preston, to the garbage exit, to the stairs and the lift and the rooms in the sky, the bathroom with the glass bath, the champagne and the cocaine.

And the men.

Two men.

The tiny camera. There was a camera.

The things they did. The pain.

Marica cried, tears of shame and humiliation at having to tell strangers, men, these things. The stern female interpreter did not comfort her. She silenced the fat man with a look when he seemed to make an attempt.

And then it was time for the photographs. Dove had assembled them.

It was a delicate matter. Dove told the interpreters how it would be done, what Marica should do if she recognised any of the people in the photographs. But the interpreters could not see the photographs.

The woman explained the procedure to the girl. Dove asked the man if he was happy with the explanation. He said he was.

Dove gave Marica the red pen.

He showed the first print to Villani, A4.

Stuart Koenig.

He slid it face down to the girl. They watched her face.

Marica turned it over, looked, blinked, spoke to the woman.

‘She says she was taken to a house,’ said the interpreter. ‘She had sex with him but did not see him again.’

Dove showed Villani another picture, their eyes met. He put the print on the table, face down.

Mervyn Brody, car dealer, racehorse owner.

She looked, turned it face down.

So it went. Picture shown to Villani, slid to the girl.

Brian Curlew, criminal barrister.

Face down.

Chris Jourdan, restaurants and bars.

Face down.

Daniel Bricknell, art dealer.

Face down.

Dennis Combanis, property developer.

Face down.

Mark Simons, insolvency expert. Face down.

Hugh Hendry.

Face down.

Martin Orong, minister of the crown.

Softly, Dove said to Villani, face close to him, ‘The girl on the snow road.’

He slid the picture to Marica. She looked at it, blinked, blinked.

Face down.

Dove said to the interpreters, ‘I want to show her some photographs of groups now. We haven’t had time to isolate the people in them. If she recognises anyone, she should ring the face. Okay? We have enlarged the pictures, but she must examine them very carefully.’

The man explained, Marica nodded.

Dove showed Villani the pictures, A5, six of them. Photographs taken at the casino party, the party at Prosilio to launch Orion. Villani looked at them.

Black ties, little black dresses, champagne flutes, facelifts, hair transplants, Botox, collagen, coke smiles, rich people, clever people, talented people, untalented people, freeloaders, charlatans, tax cheats, unjailed criminals, kept women, kept men, toyboys, walkers, a drug dealer, trophy brides.

He gave them back to Dove.

Dove gave the girl the first picture. She studied it. She was tired, she rubbed an eye. She looked like Lizzie, Lizzie when she was alive.

Face down, pushed aside.

Next picture.

Marica was rubbing the other eye, looking at the photograph. She stopped rubbing. She looked at Dove, her eyes were red, her mouth was open.

She took the fat red pen and drew on the picture.

One circle.

Two circles.

She turned the print face down. She pushed the picture back to Dove. He picked it up. Looked. He gave it to Villani.

A smiling man, glass in hand.

A man making a point to a woman, half-serious, his eyebrows were raised.

To the interpreters, Villani said, no moisture in his mouth, ‘I’m giving the picture back to her. Ask her if she’s absolutely sure. You must impress upon her the seriousness of the matter.’

The woman spoke. The man spoke.

Villani slid the picture.

Marica looked, she nodded fiercely.

Da. Da. Da.

‘She is sure,’ said the woman.

Guy Ulyatt of Marscay. We Own The Building.

Max Hendry.

Villani and Dove went outside. They looked at each other in silence.

‘Well, bugger,’ said Dove. ‘That’s a bit of…didn’t expect that. No. What, ah, what now, boss?’

‘Your case,’ said Villani. ‘You’re the boss here.’

‘Apply for warrants to search their homes and offices,’ said Dove.

‘Go for your life.’

‘Boss.’

Silence.

‘I heard Max Hendry offered you a big job,’ said Dove.

‘Yes,’ said Villani. ‘Needed a certain kind of person. But it wasn’t me.’

SHE RANG when he was in the lift. She was across the boulevard in her car.

Villani had to wait to cross. He looked at his messages.

Love you, Dad. Always. Corin.

He went to her window, it came down.

‘I’m so sorry, Stephen,’ said Anna. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’

She reached up to him and he stooped. She kissed him, held his head in both hands, fingertips in his hair, pressing on his skull. Then she pulled away.

Villani wiped his mouth. He felt sadness. ‘Your lipstick,’ he said. ‘It’s smudged.’

He turned and left but he looked back, he could not help himself. The tinted light made her face pale, her mouth grey. He could not see her eyes.

Home. The telephone unplugged, mobiles off, he showered, closed the blinds, lay down on the big bed. So tired. He carried too much freight. And no pity left in him.

When the pity leaves you, son, it’s time to go. You’ve stopped being fully human.

Singo.

Carrying the knowing all these years. To be with Rose and know they had executed her son. Greg was rubbish but he was hers, the way Tony and Corin were his.

Not Lizzie. She wasn’t his. She was Laurie’s. He had taken Laurie’s child from her as Dance had taken Rose’s.

He could not bear the thoughts, went to the bathroom and found Birkerts’ sister’s tablets, two left. In time, he passed into a sleep of sad meaningless dreams.

He woke just before 7am, lay for a long time, not thinking about anything, overwhelmed by the world, by what was waiting for him. He noticed his hipbones. He had lost weight.

Rose’s treasure box. Do that first, he could not face her if something happened to it.

In the kitchen, the radio.

…wind shift that saved the evacuated towns of Puzzle Creek, Hunter Crossing, Selborne and Morpeth and many farm properties late yesterday has only provided a temporary respite. With the fires now largely out of control and extreme conditions again today, emergency services say the best hope is for a change in the weather…expected to continue…

In the car, he switched on his mobile. Dozens of messages.

Later. He would attend to them later.

On the freeway, heading for Rose’s house, the phone. He plugged in the hands-free.

‘Villani.’

‘Steve, it’s Luke, listen our chopper’s been up there and the bloke says Dad’s in dead strife, there’s no way out, the fucking wind is shifting and…’

‘He doesn’t need a way out,’ said Villani. ‘He’s got no use for a way out.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m going in the chopper. The bloke’ll put me down, he’s a fucking madman too.’

Luke Villani, the snotty, whining little boy, the smartarse teenager who had to be locked in his room, radio confiscated, to do his homework, who sucked up to Bob, who came running for protection every time Mark threatened him, whose highest ambition was to call horse races.

‘Talk to the doctor?’

‘Waiting for him to call back.’

‘Fucking lunatic idea this,’ said Villani. He could feel the snaretight wires in his neck, up into his skull. ‘I’m telling you not to.’

It was his duty to say it, his prerogative and his duty.

‘Can’t tell me what to do anymore,’ said Luke. ‘It’s my dad and my brother. I’m going.’

My brother.

No one had ever said it before. Villani had thought that no one would ever say it. It had not seemed sayable.

‘Where’s this fucking chopper?’ he said.

‘Essendon,’ said Luke. ‘Grenadair Air. Wirraway Road. Off the Tulla.’

‘Wait for me.’

‘Sarmajor,’ Luke said in Bob’s voice.

They were waiting on the blistering tarmac beside the shiny bird with its slim silver drooping wings: Mark and Luke and the pilot.

‘I reckon I can go to jail for this,’ said the pilot. He looked about twenty.

‘I know you can go to jail for this,’ said Villani.

THEY FLEW across the crawling city and its outskirts and over the low hills, flew over the small settlements and great expanses of trees, flew over dun, empty grazing land. They could see the smoke across the horizon, it stood a great height into the sky and above it the air was the cleanest, purest blue.

After a long while, from a long way, they saw the red edges of the fire, like blood leaking from under a soiled bandage.

The radio traffic was incessant, calm voices through the electronic crackle and spit.

‘Got to keep away from the fire choppers,’ said the pilot. ‘Go the long way around.’

‘Took your patient in,’ Villani said to Mark. ‘Kenny Hanlon.’

‘Not my patient,’ said Mark. ‘Don’t have any patients. I’m going to Africa next week. Darfur.’

‘Got bikies in Darfur? Got a Hellhound chapter?’

‘Fuck you,’ Mark said.

In time, they saw Selborne in the distance, they were coming at it from the south-west, and, beyond the hamlet in the direction of Bob’s, the world was alight, the road was a snaking avenue of trees burning orange, the air was dark.

‘Don’t reckon I’m going to jail,’ said the pilot, ordinary voice. ‘Reckon I’m going to die up here.’

‘Steady on, son,’ said Luke. ‘Just follow the road. Carrying the best cop, best doctor, best race-caller in the country. Don’t fuck it up.’

‘Dream team,’ said the pilot. ‘Help me, St Chris.’

Into the dark and frightening hills, they followed the flaming road, the chopper shivering, pushed up and down and sideways by the air currents, everything was adrift in the heat.

Suddenly, they were above the farm, the house, the sheds, the stable, the paddocks.

The forest. Untouched, whipping.

‘In the paddock, Black Hawk One,’ said Luke.

And then they were on the ground and Luke was patting the pilot, they scrambled out, the heat was frightening, breath-sucking, the terrible noise, the pilot shouted, ‘You bloody idiots.’

They ran and the chopper rose, showered them with particles of dirt and stone and dry vegetation.

At the fence, in the fearsome, scorching day, behind them Armageddon coming in fire and smoke with the sound of a million Cossack horsemen charging across a hard, hard plain, stood Bob and Gordie.

Bob spoke. They could barely hear him. ‘Don’t often get all three,’ he said. ‘What’s this in aid of?’

THROUGH THE dark day and into the late afternoon, in the furnace wind, sometimes unable to breathe or speak or hear one another, they fought to save the house and the buildings.

When they had lost all the battles, when the red-hot embers were coming like massive tracer fire, when the fireballs were exploding in air, Bob took the big chainsaw and, with a murderous screaming of metal against metal, sliced the top off the corrugated-iron rainwater tank.

Gordie propped a ladder against the tank wall and they climbed up it, threw themselves into the warm water, felt the slimy bottom beneath their feet, pushed through the heaviness to the wall furthest from the flames.

Bob came last. First he handed the dog to Gordie, then he climbed the ladder, slipped through between rungs, stayed underwater for a time, came up, hair plastered flat. He looked like a boy again.

They stood in the tank, shoulders touching, water to their chins, nothing left to say. This was the end of vanity and ambition. This was what it had come to, the five of them, all Bob’s boys here to die with the man himself, some instinct in them, some humming wire had pulled them back to death’s booming and roaring waiting room to die together in a rusty saw-toothed tub.

‘What about that Stand in the Day?’ said Luke.

‘Bloody ripper,’ said Bob. ‘Need more tips like that.’

They did not look at one another, ashes fell on them, drifted down and stuck to their faces, lay on the water, coated the face of the old yellow dog Bob was holding to his chest.

And, in the last moment, the howling wind stopped, a windless pause as if it were drawing breath. Then it came around as if sucked away to another place, came around and they could feel the change on their faces. The fire stood in its tracks, advanced no further, chewing on itself, there was no sustenance left for it, no oxygen, everything burnt.

They said nothing for a long time. They could not believe that this terrible thing had passed, that they would live. In the silence, they heard the fire chopper coming, it came from nowhere and hung its trunk over them and dropped a small dam of water on the house.

‘You never get the air strike when you need it,’ said Bob.

They pulled the ladder into the tank. Luke climbed it, they pushed it out and he rode it to the ground. Mark went first, then Gordie.

Villani said to Bob, ‘You next.’

Bob looked at him, shook his head. ‘Yes, boss,’ he said.

Without saying anything, Villani set off. The dog hesitated, followed, looking back for Bob. Bob came, they walked side by side, wet clothes, tank water steaming from them.

They walked across the black smoking paddocks, down to the bottom gate, posts still burning, walked across the road that went nowhere, walked over the rise.

The forest stood there.

Scorched, the outer trees singed. They would lose some. But everywhere, in their circles and clumps and paths, the oaks were in full glorious summer green leaf.

Bob Villani put his right arm around his son’s shoulders, pulled him to him, awkward, kissed Villani’s temple, his ashy hair.

‘Didn’t do a bad job with the boys either,’ he said. ‘Seeing to them. I should’ve said that before.’

THE LINO peeled back easily. He pushed the table knife into the gap and worked the trapdoor up, got fingers under it, lifted it.

It was a small toolbox such as an electrician might carry, the top held by a hinged clasp.

Villani put it on the table, opened it.

Five or six wads of notes held with rubber bands. Hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives. Perhaps twenty thousand dollars.

Beneath them was a piece of cardboard, cut to fit from a shirt box.

He lifted it with the table knife.

A wire of the old-fashioned kind. A tiny tape-recorder and a button transmitter.

Villani put the money into the toolbox, left the house, put the box in the boot, got into the car. He sat looking at the recorder. It had no speaker. It had to be plugged into one.

Greg Quirk wearing a wire? Whose wire?

He drove to St Kilda Road, took the lift to the techs. The little one who developed games in his spare time took the device. They went to a bench. He gave Villani earphones, pressed buttons.

Mate, I’m not happy. Not happy at all.

Couldn’t know they’d pissed it against the wall. How could I know that? It’s your fucking job to know, Greg. Not doing this shit for pocket money, sonny. Risk involved sticking up these dumb pricks, it’s got to be worth it.

Yeah, well, fucken risks for me too. Not the only one takin fucken risks.

I need thirty grand quick smart. Help a mate.

Fuck, you’re squeezin me now, that’s not the fucken way to deal with me, Dancer, that’s not the…

Villani took off the headphones. He took the recorder. He walked across the buzzing chamber to his office, went to the window and looked at the city.

ON THE day in late autumn, they did the performance for the television cameras, the three of them in uniform, wearing their new insignia of rank.

Premier Karen Mellish made a short speech. She said it gave her great pleasure to announce the new chief commissioner, the new assistant chief commissioner and the new crime commissioner. The force now entered an era of reform, an era of revitalisation, an era that would see the public places of the great city reclaimed for its citizens.

By the time Villani had changed and met Cashin, the cold day was drawing to its end. They walked into the wind, the leaves flowing at them like broken water, yellow and brown and blood, parting at their ankles.

‘Saw you on television,’ Cashin said. ‘Never thought I’d know a crime commissioner.’

‘You can live a good life without knowing one,’ said Villani. ‘A satisfactory life. What’s on your mind?’

‘You getting back with Laurie?’

‘No,’ said Villani. ‘We screwed that up. I screwed it up. Can’t make it good. Can’t make anything good.’

‘Keep still,’ said Cashin. ‘The boat will steady itself.’

‘Joe, no more Singo. Not ever.’

‘It just comes out,’ said Cashin. ‘I was a sponge.’

‘I’m now sponge-like,’ said Villani. ‘Just water and holes.’

Three runners appeared, two solid men and a lean woman. The men moved right, the woman ran straight at them, swerving at the last second.

‘Cheeky,’ said Villani.

Cashin stopped, he was looking up. ‘Possum’s dead,’ he said.

‘What?’

Cashin pointed into a tree. Villani saw nothing, then a blob in a fork. ‘How do you know?’

‘Tail,’ said Cashin. ‘That’s a dead tail.’

‘How do you know a tail’s dead?’ said Villani. ‘Could be a sleeping tail.’

‘No,’ said Cashin. ‘Dead.’ He walked on, big paces.

Villani caught up. ‘Joe,’ he said, ‘come back to civilisation or join fucking Parks and Wildlife. Take schoolkids on the nature walk.’

‘What’s it going to be like?’ said Cashin. ‘Dance as your boss?’

‘Nothing Dance can do will surprise me,’ said Villani. ‘Nothing at all.’

They came to the avenue. Villani looked at the towers, they stood in the sky and the sky was in their glass cheeks. He had walked beneath them, at their hard, dirty feet, a farm boy come to the city.