Cashin told Hopgood.
‘Some sense,’ said Hopgood, face in profile. ‘That’s new.’
‘They’re sending someone down. The commissioner wants an Aboriginal officer present.’
‘Jesus, not enough coons here,’ said Hopgood. ‘We have to import another black bastard.’
‘Is there somewhere I can sit?’ said Cashin.
Hopgood smiled at him, showed his top teeth, a small gap in the middle. ‘Tired, are we? Should’ve taken the pension, a fucked bloke like you. Gone up where it’s warm.’
Cashin willed his facial muscles to be still, looked in the direction of the window, saw nothing, counted the numbers. There would be a day, there would be an hour, a minute. There would be an instant.
IT WAS the usual mess: desks pushed together, files everywhere, a draining board full of dirty mugs. Someone had left a golf bag in a corner, seven clubs, not all of one family.
Cashin was eating a pie, meat sludge, when Hopgood showed Dove in.
‘The supervisor’s arrived,’ he said and left.
Dove was in his early thirties, tall, thin, light-brown head buzz-cut in homicide style, round rimless glasses. He put his briefcase on a desk. They shook hands.
‘I’m here because they want a boong present when you arrest Bobby Walshe’s nephew,’ Dove said. He had a hoarse voice, like someone who’d taken a punch in the voicebox.
‘You can’t be plainer than that,’ said Cashin.
Dove looked at Cashin for a while, looked around the room. ‘Heard about you,’ he said. ‘Where do I sit?’
‘Anywhere. You eaten?’
‘On the way, yeah.’ Dove took off his black overcoat, underneath it a black leather jacket. ‘Got stuff to catch up on,’ he said, opening his briefcase.
Cashin didn’t mind that. He wrapped the remains of the pie, put them into the bin, went back to Joseph Conrad. Nostromo. He was trying to read all Conrad’s books, he didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because Vincentia told him that Conrad was a Pole who had to learn to write in English. He thought that was the kind of book he needed- writer, reader, they were both in foreign territory.
Cashin’s mobile rang.
‘Michael called again.’ His mother.
‘Bit hectic here, Syb. I’ll do it first chance I get. Yes.’
‘I’m worried, Joe. You know I’m not a worrier.’
Cashin wanted to say that he knew that very well.
‘You could do it now, Joe. Won’t take a minute. Just give him a ring.’
‘Soonest. I’ll ring him soonest. Promise.’
‘Good boy. Thank you, Joseph.’
Ring Michael. Michael came to see him in hospital, once. He stood at the window, spoke from there, did not sit down, answered three phone calls and made one. ‘Well,’ he’d said when he was leaving, ‘chose a dangerous occupation, didn’t you.’ He had a thin smile, a boss smile. It said: I can’t get close. One day I may have to sack you.
Hopgood stuck his head in. ‘Cobham. The BP servo. Three in the ute.’
The boys were 140 kilometres away.
Cashin went out for a walk, bought cigarettes, another surrender. A cold night, rain in the west wind, the last of the leaves flirting with bits of paper in the streetlights. He lit up, went down the street of bluestone buildings, past the sombre courthouse, the place where young men finally found the stern father they’d been looking for. Around the corner, uphill, past dark shops to the old Commonwealth Bank on the next corner, now a florist and a gift shop and a travel agency.
Here on the heights of Cromarty the rich of the nineteenth century and after-traders in wool and grain, merchants of all kinds, the owners of the flour mill, the breweries, the foundries, the jute bag factory, the ice works, the mineral water bottling plant, the land barons of the inland and the doctors and lawyers-built houses of stone and brick.
Coming to town was a big thing when Cashin was a boy. The four of them in the Kingswood on a Saturday morning, his father with a few shaving cuts on his face, black hair combed and shining, his mother in her smart clothes, only worn for town. Cashin thought about her touching the back of his dad’s head, the tongue-pink varnish on her nails.
He turned the corner at the Regent pub, a noise like a shore-break behind the yellow windows. When the shopping was done, Mick Cashin met his brother Len at the Regent for a drink before they went home. He dropped Sybil and the two boys on the waterfront and went to the pub. They bought chips at the little shop and walked out on the long pier, looking at the boats and the people fishing. Then they went up through the town, up the street he was now walking down. Cashin remembered that Michael always kept his distance from them, hanging back, looking in shop windows. It wasn’t hard to find the car, always near the pub. They got in and waited for Mick Cashin. Michael had his school case, he did homework, it would have been maths. His mother read from a book of riddles. Joe loved those riddles, got to know them off by heart. Michael didn’t take part.
Mick Cashin crossing the road with Uncle Len, laughing, hand on Len’s shoulder. Len was dead too, an asthma attack.
Cashin felt the wind on his face, the salt smell in his head. He was a boy again, the child lived in him. He turned the corner and went back to the stale air of the station, two elderly people at the counter, the duty cop looking pained, scratching his head. Someone in the cells was making a sad singing-moaning sound.
Hopgood and four plainclothes were in the office. One of them, a thin, balding man, was eating a hamburger and dipping chips into a container of tomato sauce, adding them to the mix. Dove was at the urn, running boiling water into a styrofoam cup.
‘Welcome, stranger,’ said Hopgood. ‘The bloke at Hoskisson’s just logged the ute. We’ve got fifty minutes or so.’
Hopgood made no introductions, went to the whiteboard stained with the ghosts of hundreds of briefings and drew a road map.
‘I’m assuming these pricks are going to Donny’s house or Luke’s,’ he said. ‘Makes no difference, a block apart. They’re coming down Stockyard Road. We have a vehicle out there, it’s had a breakdown, it’ll tell me when they pass. When they get to Andersen Road, that’s here, the second set of lights, they can turn right or they can carry on to here, go down to Cardigan Street and turn right.’
Hopgood’s pen extended the road out of Cromarty. ‘That’s too hard. So we have to take them here where it’s still one lane.’ He pointed at an intersection. ‘Lambing Street and Stockyard Road.’
He put an X further down the road. ‘Golding’s smash-repair place. Preston and KD, you’ll wait here, facing town. You’re group three. I’ll let you know when to get going so you’ll be in front of the ute. When you get to the Lambing lights, they’ll be red. They’ll stay red till we’re done. With me so far?’
Everyone nodded. The hamburger-eater burped.
‘Now when the ute pulls up behind you,’ he said, ‘you blokes sit tight. Wait, okay? Lloyd and Steggie and me, that’s group one, we’ll pull up behind them in the Cruiser and we’ll be out quick smart.’
Hopgood ran a finger under his nose. ‘And Lloyd and Steggie,’ he said, ‘I hereby say to you and everyone else I have received a message from on high and nothing, that’s absolutely nothing, can happen to these…these dickheads.’
He looked from face to face, didn’t look at Cashin or Dove.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Anything stupid happens, we run away and hide. We will starve the pricks out. This is not some kind of SOG operation. Detective Senior Sergeant Cashin, you want to say something?’
Cashin waited a few seconds. ‘I’ve given Inspector Villani and the crime commissioner an assurance that seven trained officers can pick up three kids for questioning without any problems.’
Hopgood nodded. ‘Detectives Cashin and Dove, you will be group two in the second vehicle behind the ute. Your services are unlikely to be needed. Any questions? No? Let’s get going. I’ll be talking to all of you. Code is Sandwich. Sandwich. Okay?’