White Dog

3

‘Nice car, Jack,’ said the man behind the counter at the corner shop. He’d seen me park outside, he didn’t miss much.

‘Very nice, George,’ I said, ‘but not mine.’

He nodded, a man who first opened his shop door in the mid-1950s when almost everyone in the suburb caught the tram to work and having a motorbike was a big deal. Now the place was gridlocked with Saabs and BMWs and what people paid for a worker’s house could have bought the whole block in 1950.

‘Where’s that girl?’ he said.

I thought about the long-ago day I’d come in with a Claire Irish shoulder-high to a medium-size brown dog and held up my daughter for inspection.

I’d said, ‘Claire, this is my friend George.’

‘Gorb,’ she’d said.

‘George,’ I said.

‘Gorb,’ she said, and gripped the finger held out to her by George.

Gorb he would always be.

‘Still in Queensland,’ I said.

George nodded. ‘They all come back. Holiday, it’s all right, not bad. Live there, no. Everything stings you.’

I heard the sound, the dangerous murmur, the jostling, gossiping, teasing, scuffling sound of teenagers released from school for lunch.

‘Quick,’ I said. ‘Salad roll.’

I went back to Linda’s car, sank into the leather and watched the country’s future invade the shop. Longer hair for girls this year, boys in anarchy — shaven, long, greased, bleached, dyed.

A knock on the passenger window, a big hand. I unlocked the door.

‘Gone fucken upmarket, have we?’ said Senior Sergeant Barry Tregear, sliding in, filling the cabin, bringing the smell of cheese and onion chips, cigarette smoke, Old Spice aftershave. He adjusted his seat, belched.

‘Excuse,’ he said. ‘Early lunch. Following fucken early breakfast.’

He produced a cigarette, put it in his mouth, groped himself, couldn’t find anything.

‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Bastard took my lighter.’

I pushed in the dashboard lighter. It heated in an instant, changed colour.

Barry used the lighter, put it back without looking, slotted it, no hesitation in the hand.

‘This cunt in Dandenong,’ he said, ‘he goes to call on the ex-de facto, 3 am, he’s off his tits. She’s out of it in the bedroom with the next cab, give or take a good few. The boy’s not happy, goes out to the shed, finds the wood splitter.’

I was watching a teenage embrace, stylised, she wound around him, found a way to push back her hair at the same time.

‘Stop now,’ I said.

Barry sighed, added a hint of garlic to the stew of scents in the car. ‘Two kiddies in the next room. And teddy bears, whole fucken room’s full of teddy bears. All sizes. I’m too old for this kind of shit.’

I said, ‘You should have stuck to cleansing the streets of drugs.’

He shook his head, sighed again. ‘Jesus, that was a good gig. Just walk around and make bear noises at the cunts. They bugger off around the corner, end of story. Now I have to keep up with these fucken shorthairs — they’re on a mission from God.’

The teen embrace unwound. He flicked the bottom of a tiny buttock with fingertips as she set off for Gorb’s. She turned her head and gave him a look that was not likely to discourage the practice.

I said, ‘Sometimes I think you’re losing sight of what called you to your work. The burning desire to fight crime wherever you found it.’

‘The burning I remember is when you pee,’ he said. ‘Now there’s this woman, they brung her from New South, from traffic, playground patrol, some such shit, wouldn’t know a crim from a fucken cardinal. She’s clean, that’s her qualification. Might as well make Mother fucken Teresa the commissioner.’

‘Dead,’ I said, ‘but she’d probably have recognised a cardinal. Man in a purple dress. Is that right? Purple? For what exactly are you blaming the woman?’

Barry looked at me, incinerated a centimetre of cigarette. ‘Everything,’ he said. ‘I blame women for everything. Next item. This Franklin business.’

‘Yes. Lips sealed?’

‘Dunno. Can’t feel my lips anymore, the dick’s not the same either. You reckon there’s a link between dick and lips?’

I smoked passively while I thought about the question.

‘I have no doubt,’ I said, ‘that a link will be found. Franklin?’

Barry looked at me, smoked, squinted. ‘Mate, under the new hygiene, people get spanked for talking to blokes like you.’

‘Live dangerously. More dangerously.’

A jet of smoke hit the windscreen, fanned. ‘Well, Drew’ll be looking for manslaughter,’ he said. ‘Looking and fucken hoping.’

‘I gather not.’

He eyed me. ‘Not? She’s Mick’s ex-root, they say he was giving it to the sister at the same time. Had the gun, had a key, there’s a witness saw her near the place. Plus no backer for the cuddled-up-in-bed-at-home-with-a-book crap. Reasonable case, yes?’

‘Well. Purely circumstantial.’

‘Nailed, mate. Nailed like Jesus.’

‘What’s the strength of this witness?’

‘I gather she’d seen her before, saw her having a fight with some bloke over a park. Fucken oath, no teachers like that in my day.’

I looked. A tall woman with cropped hair and long legs was exchanging words with some of the teenage loiterers outside Gorb’s. It was a joking exchange but you could see that she was an officer talking to the troops.

‘Just as well,’ I said. ‘Out there in Hay you farm boys were already over-excited by the bra ads in the Women’s Weekly. That and seeing the farm animals doing it.’

‘To this day,’ said Barry, ‘a bra ad can put a bit of strain on the daks. Unfortunately just a bit. Then there was the step-ins.’

Rain on the windscreen, the tiniest drops.

I said, ‘A fetching thing, a step-in. So no doubt there?’

Barry had the last of his cigarette, came close to smoking the filter.

There was no chance of him using an ashtray. I pressed the button, his window sank. He didn’t look when he flicked the butt. It could have landed in a passing pram.

‘Doubt?’ he said. ‘Well, the doubt’s either done him or had him done. It’s like a fucken jail. There’s three things to get through. Come from outside, you got help or you go home.’

‘And Mickey? Talk there?’

Barry sighed again, moved the big shoulders. ‘Well, Mick and the Massianis, six years on the job. They say very tight with Steve.’

‘I’m slow here.’

‘Me too, got to go,’ he said, patted me on the shoulder. ‘Keeping down in the weights, I see. Good dog. Have a drink one day, no business, okay?’ He got out, closed the door, stuck his head back in. ‘This, though. The tip-off. Who was that?’

I watched him go, heading for Gorb’s, stiff-legged cop walk from too much sitting in cars. The teenagers blocking the door noticed him coming, parted, found reasons not to look at him.