Then came Rai Sarris.
After Rai, he had many hours of the day and night in which he had no capacity to do anything except read or watch television. At night, when they were trying to wean him off painkillers, the aches in his back, his pelvis, his thighs, would always give him a moment to drop into sleep. He would fall away from himself for a while, to a deep and dreamless place. The pain would wake him slowly, pain as a sound, far away but insistent, as with a crying baby, part of a dream of hearing something unwelcome. He would move, not fully awake, lie every way, trying to find a position that lessened the pain. Then he would give up and lie on his back-sweaty, now aching from neck to knees-and switch on the light, prop up, try to read. This happened so many times in a night, they blurred.
One day a nurse called Vincentia Lewis brought him a CD player and two small speakers and a box of CDs, twenty or thirty. ‘My father’s,’ she said, ‘he doesn’t need them anymore.’ They sat on the bedside cabinet untouched for a long time until, waiting for the dawn one morning, pain shimmering, Cashin put on the light, picked out a disk, any disk, didn’t look at it, put it on, put on the headphones, put out the light.
It was Jussi Björling.
Cashin did not know that. He endured a few moments, gave it a minute, another. In time, the day leaked in under the cream blind, the morning-shift nurse came and ran it up. ‘Look a bit more peaceful today,’ she said. ‘Better night?’
What did Rai Sarris call himself now? For months, they had tapped everyone Rai knew. He never called anyone.
Cashin got up with difficulty and poured another whisky. A few more and he’d sleep.
THEY WALKED around the western side of the house, through the long grass, dogs ahead, jumping up, hanging stiff-legged in the misty air, hoping to see a rabbit.
‘Where’d you grow up?’ Cashin said.
‘All over,’ said Rebb.
‘Starting where?’
‘Don’t remember. I was a baby.’
‘Right, yes. Go to school?’
‘Why?’
‘Most people know where they went to school.’
‘What’s it matter? I can read, I can write.’
Cashin looked at Rebb, he didn’t look back, eyes front. ‘Like a good yarn, don’t you? Big talker.’
‘Love a yack. How come you walk like you’re scared you’ll break?’
Cashin didn’t say anything.
‘Confide in anyone comes along, don’t you? Why’s the place like this?’
The dogs had vanished into the greenery. Cashin led the way down the narrow path he’d cut with hedge clippers. They came to the ruins. ‘My great-granddad’s brother built it, then he dynamited this part of it. He was planning to blow the whole thing up but the roof fell on him.’
Rebb nodded as if dynamiting a house was an unexceptional act. He looked around. ‘So what do you want to do?’
‘Clear up the garden first. Then I thought I might fix up the house.’
Rebb picked up a piece of rusted metal. ‘Fix this? Be like building that Chartres cathedral. Your kids’ll have to finish the job.’
‘You know about cathedrals?’
‘No.’ Rebb looked through an opening where a window had been.
‘I thought we could do it in bits,’ said Cashin without enthusiasm. He was beginning to see the project through Rebb’s eyes.
‘Easier to build a new place.’
‘I don’t want to do that.’
‘Be the sensible thing.’
‘Well, maybe cathedrals didn’t look like a sensible thing.’
Rebb walked beside the wall, stopped, poked at something with a boot, bent to look. ‘That was religion,’ he said. ‘Poor buggers didn’t know they had a choice.’
Cashin followed him, they fought their way around the building, Rebb scuffing, kicking. He uncovered an area of tesselation, small octagonal tiles, red and white. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Got pictures of the place?’
‘They say there’s a few in a book in the Cromarty library.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’ll get copies.’
‘Need a tape measure. One of them long buggers.’ Rebb mimed winding.
‘I’ll get one.’
‘Graph paper too. See if we can work up a drawing.’
They walked back the long way, it was clearing now, pale blue islands in the sky, dogs ranging ahead like minesweepers.
‘People live here before you?’ said Rebb.
‘Not really. A bloke leased it, ran sheep. He used to stay here a bit.’
‘Cleaning up the garden’s going to take a while,’ said Rebb. ‘Before you start the big job.’ He found the makings, rolled a smoke as he walked, turned his back to the wind to light up, walked backwards. ‘How long you planning on taking?’
‘They know how long a cathedral would take?’
‘Catholic?’
‘No,’ said Cashin. ‘You?’
‘No.’
The dogs arrived, came up to Cashin as if to a rendezvous with their leader, seeking orders, suggestions, inspiration.
‘Met this priest done time for girls,’ said Rebb. ‘He reckoned religion’s a mental problem, like schizophrenia.’
‘Met him where?’
Rebb made a sound, possibly a laugh. ‘Travelling, you meet so many priests done time for kids, you forget where.’
They were at the front entrance.
‘Help yourself to tucker,’ said Cashin. ‘I’m getting something in town.’
Rebb turned away, said over his shoulder, ‘Want to leave the dogs? Take them to Millane’s with me, stay in the yard. He likes them. He told me.’
‘They’ll be your mates for life. Den’s has to be better than the copshop.’
Cashin drove to Port Monro down roads smeared with roadkill- birds, foxes, rabbits, cats, rats, a young kangaroo with small arms outstretched-passed through pocked junctions where one or two tilted houses stood against the wind and signs pointed to other desperate crossroads.
In Port, Leon made him a bacon, lettuce and avocado to take away. ‘Risking the wrath of Ms Fatarse here, are we?’ he said. ‘I’m thinking of having a sign painted. By appointment, supplier of victuals to the constabulary of Port Monro.’
‘What’s a vittle?’
‘Victuals. Food. In general.’
‘How do you spell that?’
‘V-I-C-T-U-A-L-S.’
‘I find that hard to accept.’
Cashin ate his breakfast at Open Beach, parked next to the lifesaving club, watching two windsurfers skimming the wave tops, bouncing, taking off, strange bird-humans hanging against the pale sky. He opened the coffee. There was no hurry. Kendall was acting station commander while the Bourgoyne matter was on. Carl Wexler didn’t like that at all, but the compensation was that he could bully the stand-in sent from Cromarty, a kid even rawer than he was.
Bourgoyne.
Bourgoyne’s brother was executed by the Japs. How could you be interested in Japanese culture when your brother was executed by the Japs? Did executed mean having his head cut off? Did a Jap soldier cut off his head with a sword, sever the neck and spine with one shining stroke?
Some fucking In Cold Blood thing. How did Villani know about Truman Capote? He couldn’t have seen the movie. Villani didn’t go to the movies. Villani didn’t read books either, Cashin thought. He’s like me before Rai Sarris. He doesn’t have the standstill to read books.
Before Rai, he wouldn’t have known what In Cold Blood meant either. Vincentia gave him the book. She was doing a literature degree part-time. He read the book in a day and a night. Then she gave him The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer. That took about the same time. He asked her to buy him another book by Mailer and she came in with The Naked and the Dead, second-hand.