Bianchi said: Not a problem. Won’t happen. I’ll tell ’em.
I ejected the tape, put it in its box, put it in my pocket.
Scully. The bastard. Scully and El G. Scully, the deputy commissioner-to-be. Scully, the man who investigated Ned’s complaint. Sitting in that car, talking to Bianchi, he knew that someone-El G, someone-was going to murder Lefroy and Carlie. Murder them, rape Carlie, enjoy it. Film it for future pleasure.
The tape might be enough to nail Scully, but I doubted it. I sat motionless for a while, uneaten hamburger on my lap, staring sightless.
Unfinished business.
I shook myself. Ian Barbie’s suicide was unfinished business. His letter to his daughter said he’d left a suicide note. Where? At his surgery? He hadn’t. Where he lived? He hadn’t. Where he committed suicide? People often did.
I got out the Melways, put on the inside light and found the quickest way to Footscray.
Varley Street, Footscray: one streetlight, icy wind pinning the newspaper pages against the container depot fence, somewhere a door banging in the wind, lonely sound.
I thought I heard them as soon as I stepped into the old loading bay: the sound of a classroom where the teacher has stepped out for a minute, not loud, but unruly, a jostling of voices.
I knew where the sound was coming from. I went across the loading bay, out into the courtyard, turned right and walked towards the glow coming out of a big doorway.
There were four of them upright, around a smoky, spitting fire. Other bodies lay as dead outside the circle, one face down. The fire cast a cruel russet light on wrecked faces, shapeless clothes, a swollen blood-filled eye. Two men who could have been a hundred years old were fighting weakly over the silver bladder of a wine cask, speaking incomprehensible words, neither strong enough to win possession. Someone who could have been a woman was nursing another person’s head in her lap, drinking beer from a can, golden liquid running down a cracked chin, dripping onto the long, greasy grey hair.
‘Robbo here?’ I said.
Only two heads turned, looked at me without interest, looked away.
I went a few steps closer. The smell was overpowering, smoke, wet clothes, other animal odours.
‘Boris here?’ I shouted.
This time a figure to the right of the fire looked at me, dirty bearded face under a beanie, filthy matted jumper like an animal skin. He was drinking a can of Vic Bitter, two more held between his thighs.
‘Fuck you want?’ he said.
I went over to him. No-one paid any attention to me. ‘You Boris?’
He drank some beer, looked into the fire, spat. It ran down his chin. ‘Fucksit you?’ he said, rocking back.
‘You found the bloke hanged himself here?’
He looked at me, trouble focusing. He wasn’t more than thirty years old. ‘Course I fuckin did,’ he said. ‘Fuckin hangin.’
I knelt down. ‘Boris, you took his watch.’
He blinked, looked away, put the can to his mouth, half missed it. ‘Fuckin,’ he said.
‘Boris,’ I said, ‘I don’t care about the watch. Did you take anything else? From the man? From the car?’
His eyes came back to me. ‘Whar?’
‘Did you take anything else from the hanging man? Understand?’
‘Fuckin,’ he said, looked away, head lolled.
I stood up. Some other time perhaps. Not tonight.
I was on my way out when Boris said, quite distinctly, ‘Pay me.’
I stopped and turned, went back. ‘Pay you for what?’
He was holding himself together with great effort. ‘Pay me ’n’ I’ll show you.’
I got out my wallet, found a twenty-dollar note, waved it at him. ‘Show me and I’ll give you this.’
Boris focused on the note, craned his neck towards it, fell back. ‘Fiffy,’ he said. ‘Gotta be fiffy.’
I offered him the twenty. ‘Show me and I’ll give you another thirty if it’s worth it.’
He put out a hand, black with dirt, fresh blood on the inside of the thumb, and took the note, stuck it somewhere under his jumper. Then he lost interest, studied the beer can.
‘Boris!’ I shouted. ‘Show me!’
His head jerked around, some life in his eyes, drained the beer can, threw it over his shoulder, put the other cans under a coat on the floor. ‘Gimme hand,’ he said, trying to get up.
I gripped the shoulders of his jumper and lifted him onto his feet. He weighed as much as a six-year-old.
‘Over there,’ he said and began to stumble towards the dark left corner of the big space.
I walked behind him. He fell once. I picked him up.
There was nothing in the corner except a rusted sheet of corrugated iron lying on the concrete.
‘Under,’ Boris said, swaying. He put out a hand to steady himself against the wall, misjudged the distance and fell over onto the corrugated iron.
I picked him up again, propped him against the wall.
‘Lift,’ he said, waving vaguely.
I bent down and lifted the corrugated iron, shifted it. Under it I could make out some clothes, two Coles plastic bags, a pair of shoes.
‘Bag,’ Boris said. ‘Gimme.’
I picked up both bags, offered them to him. He focused, put out a hand and knocked one away, almost fell over, took the other one.
He couldn’t get it open, fumbling at the plastic. I helped him. ‘Thangyou,’ he said, put his hand in, couldn’t get hold of what was inside, turned the bag upside down and tipped the contents onto the concrete.
An envelope, A4 cartridge envelope.
I picked it up. It was unsealed. I walked back to the ambit of the firelight. Behind me Boris was making sounds of protest. I opened the flap, took out four or five pages, paperclipped, top page handwritten. I held it up to the light. It began: I am writing this because I can no longer bear to go on living…
I put the pages back in the envelope, went back to Boris, found two twenty-dollar notes, gave them to him.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Gennelman,’ said Boris.
I was in the pub in Streeton, in front of the same fireplace where I’d talked to Ian Barbie’s wife. A tired and dirty man who began the day coming out of fitful sleep in a motel in Penola, out there in the flat vine country, far from home. Sitting in the warm country pub, I could smell myself: sweat, sex, cordite, wood smoke. All curdled by fear. I drank three neat whiskies, dark thoughts.
‘Listen, Mac, I’m closin.’
It was the publican. I knew him, welded his trailer for nothing.
‘Finish this,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said, coming over and putting a half-full bottle of Johnny Walker on the table. ‘Just closin the doors. Sit long as you like, fix it up later. Put the light out, give the door a good slam when you go. Lock doesn’t go in easy.’
‘Thanks, mate.’
‘Back roads, right.’
‘Back roads.’
I drank some more whisky, thought about Lew, Ned asking me to look after him. Lew and the dog, my responsibilities. Lew: mother gone, grandfather gone, just me now. I thought about my life, what it had been for so many years: the job and nothing but the job. Utter waste of time. I didn’t even remember whether I’d loved my wife. Couldn’t remember what it felt like to love her. Remembered that she could give me an erection with one look. What I did know was that all the self-respect that I had lost with one bad judgment had been slowly given back to me by my ordinary life in my father’s house. A simple life in a simple weatherboard house. Working with my father’s tools in my father’s workshop. Feeling his hand in the hammer handles worn by his grip. Walking in his steps down the sodden lane and across the road to the pub and the football field. And knowing his friends. Ned, Stan, Lew, Flannery, Mick, Vinnie-they were all responsible for giving me a life with some meaning. A life that was connected to a place, connected to people, connected to the past.