‘They look at you,’ he said, ‘they’re not on.’ But he watched the man go down the concrete peninsula. ‘Need a break. You get para. You bastards owe me. No, no interest. Another medico on the peth, can’t take the lows anymore, goes out on a high. Happens with the quacks a lot. Guilt. Feel a lot of guilt. Pillars of fucking society sticking stuff up the arm. Don’t call peth the doctor’s drug for nothing. Still, dangling’s a worry. Unusual. Needle, that’s the way they go. You got it, you use it.’
‘That’s it, then?’
‘Well, watch’s gone, clear mark of watch on left wrist. Probably nicked by the deros.’
‘Deros?’
‘They found him.’
‘Right. Brendan, listen. Scully-what’s happened to him?’
‘Been livin in Queensland? Outer space? Good things only for the man. Next deputy commissioner. To be anointed soon.’
‘I’ve been away. How’d he do that?’
‘Plugged a bloke into Springvale, suburb of smack. Smackvale. Three years in the making. Had to import this cop from Vietnam. Any day now they’ll announce he’s delivered half the Vietcong and a fucking mountain of smack. Scully’s going to be the hero of the day. Course, most of the stuff’ll be back on the street by dark. Catch the upward move in price.’
‘He’s a lucky man.’
‘Blessed.’ Brendan looked around, scratched his scalp. ‘You heard the shit’s flying sideways about surveillance records? About ten years’ worth gone missing in Ridley Street.’
‘They’re on disk, right?’
He made a snorting sound, like a horse. ‘They scanned everything onto a hard drive, three sets of backup floppies. But the bloke taking the floppies over to Curzon Street for safekeeping, he got hit from behind by a truck. And while they’re sorting it out, his briefcase gets nicked. Can you believe that? Oh well, there’s always the paper. But no, all the paper has vanished. Fucking truckload. Well, this is bad, but thank Christ there’s the hard disk.’
Brendan paused, looking as happy as I’d seen him.
‘Guess,’ he said.
I’d guessed. ‘Don’t know.’
‘Hard drive’s like the Pope’s conscience. Not a fucking thing on it. Hacked into, they reckon. Supposed to be impossible.’
‘So?’
‘Lots of people happy.’
‘You reckon what?’
‘Dunno. People don’t get together to make something like that happen. More like one very big person got together with some friends. Couldn’t just take out the bit the person wanted, they took the lot.’
I said, ‘And you take the view one friend could be Scully. How come the Commissioner doesn’t think that too?’
Brendan gave me a long, unblinking stare. ‘Yeah, well, the view’s different from the thirtieth fucking floor. Ground level’s where you smell the garbage. They’re all overdue, that mob.’ ‘I hear Bianchi drowned.’
‘A fucking tragedy. Cop resigns, buys waterside mansion in Noosa with modest pension and savings. Found floating in river. New wife says he went out for a look at the new boat, she falls asleep. Exhausted from a marathon dicking probably. Next morning the neighbour sees poor Darren bobbing around like a turd.’
‘What about Hill?’
‘Bobby’s making lots of money in the baboon hire business. Calls himself a security consultant. Need muscle for your rock concert, nightclub, anything, Hill Associates got baboons on tap, any number. Also provides special security services for rich people. Drives this grey Merc.’
‘I knew the boy would amount to something.’ We shook hands. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Appreciate it.’
‘I only do it because you can get me killed,’ he said, unsmiling. ‘You go first. I’ll just have a smoke, watch the trains a bit.’
I was a few paces away when he said, ‘Mac.’
I turned.
‘The Lefroy thing,’ he said. ‘I heard Bianchi was in that pub in Deer Park one day around then.’
‘Yes?’
‘Mance was there too. That’s all I heard.’ He looked away.
‘Much maligned creatures, chooks,’ said Dot Walsh, frisbeeing out another precise arc of grain to the variegated flock of fowls. ‘Quite intelligent, some of them. Unlike sheep, which are uniformly stupid.’
She pointed to a large black-and-white bird. ‘That’s Helen, my favourite. After Helen of Troy.’
By her voice, Mrs Walsh was English, in her seventies, deeply lined but unbowed and undimmed, with hair cut short and sharp. I’d told her my business at the front door. She’d shown no interest in why I wanted to know more about the story her husband had told Frank Cullen.
‘I’m surprised Frank remembers it,’ she’d said. ‘I used to make a special trip to the tip with bottles after one of their sessions. Anyway, I don’t suppose it matters now that Simon’s gone. Come through. It’s chook feeding time.’
When she’d exhausted the grain, we went on a tour of the garden. Even in the bleak heart of winter, it was beautifuclass="underline" huge bare oaks and elms, black against the asbestos sky, views of farmland at the end of long hedged paths, a pond with ducks, a rose walk that narrowed to a slim gate just wide enough for a wheelbarrow.
‘How big?’ I said.
‘Two acres,’ she said. ‘All that’s left of nearly a thousand. From a thousand acres to two in a generation. That was my Simon’s accomplishment. Simon and Johnny Walker Black Label. The old firm, he used to say. Still, he was a lovely man, lovely. Just unfirm of purpose.’
She moved her head like her hens as she talked, quick sideways jerks, little tilts, chin up, chin down, eyes darting.
I got on to the subject. ‘You never saw the girl that night?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I was in Queensland with Fiona, our daughter. She was having domestic trouble. Temperament like Simon, I’m afraid. Forty-six and still thinks that responsibility is something for grown-ups.’
‘Could you put a date on that trip?’
‘Oh yes. October 1985. My granddaughter had her tenth birthday while I was there.’
‘May I ask you what your husband told you happened?’
‘Simon ran out of cigarettes at about ten o’clock. It often happened. It was a Thursday night I think, my first night away. He drove down to the Milstead pub. He used to take the back roads. He was coming back down Colson’s Road, do you know it?’
I nodded.
‘Well, he came around a bend and there was this girl by the side of the road. Not a stitch on. Naked. She’d been beaten. He got her into the car and brought her back here.’
‘He didn’t think of going to the police?’
‘The police? No. He thought she needed medical attention.’
‘She was badly hurt?’
‘He thought so at first. Lots of blood. But most of it had come from her nose. That was swollen. Simon thought it might be broken. There were red puffy welts all over her body as if she had been whipped, he said. And she had scratches everywhere and dust and what looked like cement stuck to her. But he didn’t think she was seriously hurt.’
‘Why didn’t he take her to casualty?’
She gave me her sharp little look. ‘Simon was a drunk, Mr Faraday,’ she said, no irritation in her voice, ‘but he wasn’t a fool. It was half past ten at night. He would have had at least half a bottle of whisky under his belt by then. He’d already had his licence suspended once. The safest thing for both of them was to bring her here and get someone else to take her to hospital.’
‘Did he find out how she got her injuries?’
She didn’t answer for a while. We were walking between low walls of volcanic stone towards the back of the old redbrick farmhouse. The sky had cleared in the west and the last of the sun was warming an aged golden Labrador where it sat watching us, fat bottom flat on the verandah boards.
‘In the beginning, in the car, Simon said she was crying and babbling and saying the name “Ken” over and over again. He couldn’t get any sense out of her. He thought she was on drugs. When they got here, he gave her a gown to put on and he went to the telephone to ring Brian. That’s his nephew, he farms about ten minutes from here. He wanted Brian to take her to casualty. That’s when the girl attacked him.’