‘Apart from owning the land, did Bourgoyne have anything to do with the camp?’
Cecily frowned, deep lines. ‘Well, I don’t know. He took an interest, of course. Following on from his dad. Lots of people took an interest. Public-spirited place then, Cromarty. People did good works, didn’t do it to get their names in the paper either. Virtue is its own reward. Are you familiar with that expression, detective?’
‘My reward is the award wage, Mrs Addison.’
She narrow-eyed him. ‘You are a cut above the dull boys couldn’t find another job, aren’t you?’
‘So that was the end of the camp?’ said Cashin.
‘The camp, the Companions too. It was all over the papers. I think they just packed it in. It was the last Companions camp left. Charles gave the manager bloke a job. Percy Crake. A cold fish, Percy Crake.’
There was a knock on the half-open door.
‘Yes,’ said Cecily.
Mrs McKendrick. ‘Your appointment will be twenty minutes late, Mrs Addison,’ she said. ‘Car trouble is the excuse they offer.’
‘Thank you, my dear.’
Mrs McKendrick turned like a teenage ballerina, reaching behind her to close the door she had found open. It was a message.
‘She was in love with Jock Cameron,’ said Cecily. ‘All those years. Sad, really. He never noticed. Often wondered if he’d taken a bit of shrapnel in the tackle.’
‘I’m told there are no Companions’ records for Port Monro at the hall in Melbourne.’
Fin had rung while he was driving from The Heights.
‘All the other camps’ records are there,’ said Cashin. ‘Could they be somewhere else?’
‘No idea. Why would they keep them somewhere else?’
On the mantelpiece, the vase was emitting smoke like a fumarole. Cashin got up and took it to the window, pushed up the bottom sash and shook the container, sent the smouldering contents to float on the sea wind.
‘Thank you, Joe.’
‘I’ll go then. Thank you for your time, Mrs Addison.’
‘My pleasure.’
It was cold outside, no one loitering. Cashin felt the need to walk, went down the street, past the empty clothing boutiques, the aromatherapist, the properties in the window of the estate agent. He crossed Crozier Street and passed the pub lounge, saw three people watching a greyhound race on the television, the old man coughing as if he could die there, on his feet. Beyond the pub were houses, mostly holiday rentals, curtains drawn.
As Cashin walked, the singing from the bluestone church on the rise became louder. He turned the corner on the faltering and cracking last lines of a hymn.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee; In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
There was a time of silence, then an attenuated Amen that stood in the cold air, hung in the branches of the pines.
Cashin felt the sudden withering ache of loss and mortality and he turned and went back the way he had come, into the wind.
HE WAS CROSSING a rope bridge in a gale, water far below. The bridge was swaying and creaking and groaning and slats were missing. He looked down and it was the Kettle, a huge wave coming in, he was fighting to hold his footing, clinging to the side ropes, he couldn’t hold on, he was losing his grip, he was going into the Kettle.
In his sweat, Cashin lay wide awake, heart like a speedball, relief coming over him. He knew what the sounds were: the television aerial was loose again, being pushed around by the wind, chafing against the strapping. The sounds had triggered the Kettle dream. How did dreams work?
He turned the clock around: 6.46 am. Seven-hour sleep, the longest unbroken sleep he could remember. Just twinges of pain in getting up, a good morning, let in the dogs, fed them, drank juice, showered.
It was a grey day, no wind to speak of. When the dogs came back from looking for Rebb, he chose the circular route, up the hill. The European trees were bare now, standing in their damp leaves, a hundred and more generations of leaves. They went down the slope and across the big clearing, no hares today. Cashin stepped from rock to rock to cross the creek, still turbulent. Then, no sign of the dogs, he turned westwards, towards Helen’s property, the painting on his mind-the moonlit plain, the little procession of boys going towards the buildings, the lights in the windows. The Companions camp. He thought about Pollard hanging in the Companions hall, crucified, dying while someone sat as if watching a play or a concert, something to enjoy, to applaud.
When did Pollard lose consciousness? Did the watcher listen with pleasure to his sounds, to his agony? Did he ask for mercy? Was that what the watcher wanted?
Bourgoyne’s payments to Pollard. Bourgoyne the patron of the Companions.
The Companions kept records for the camps in Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia, camps closed before Port Monro. What happened to the Port Monro records?
The belt the dogs found that day.
Be Prepared.
No bigger than a dog collar, adult hands could span a waist that small.
Work was in progress on the Castleman house. New corrugated iron on the roof, what looked like a weatherboard extension, pink primed boards, big windows, a platform sticking out, a deck when finished. It would be a place to loll, looking down at the creek, up at the hill. Looking at his property.
Why did he offer to sell her the creek strip? Because she was cross with him and she was the rich and beautiful and sophisticated girl who kissed him when he was a shy, gangling boy whose aunt cut his hair?
Offer permanently withdrawn.
It was a good fence, taut. Rebb’s fence. How far could you walk in a day? Rebb wouldn’t ask for lifts, people would have to ask him. Every tool Rebb had used was lined up inside the shearing shed, cleaned and oiled. His mattress was leaning against the wall, the blankets were on the bed springs, folded square, the pillow on them and the washed pillowslip on top.
Cashin was chewing porridge cooked in the microwave when the phone rang.
‘Tuesday arrived down there yet?’ said Dove.
‘Of what week?’
‘I should’ve said the year. Done the full sweep on this David Vincent.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s a brick high.’
‘The summary. You’ve done that, of course.’
‘Of course. Born Melbourne 1968, taken into care 1973, lived somewhere called Colville House 1973 to 1976. Then foster family number one until 1978, number two until 1979, ran away, found, number three until 1980, ran away. Still with me?’
‘Keep going.’
‘Next record is an arrest in Perth in 1983 for theft of a handbag. Age fifteen. After that it’s a list of petty stuff, sent to juvenile in ′84 for six months, again in ′86, nine months. That’s it for form.’
‘The rest?’
‘It’s a sad story. Institutions. It says here, on this one report, clinical depression compounded by multiple addictions. Four years in Lakeside, Ballarat. That sounds nice. By the lake. I read the problem as smack, amphetamines, methadone, dope, booze, gets in fights and sustains injuries to many parts of the body.’
Cashin had not noticed the cloth of sunlight unroll across the old room’s boards. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Listen, I need the number Dave Vincent called CrimeStoppers from. Tracy’s got it.’
‘I thought talking to Vincent was a problem?’
‘Sometimes it’s people looking at you that’s the problem.’
An observation from Singo. Early in the piece, in the first year, the Geelong man who wouldn’t say anything, his hands clenched, his neck a fence of tendons. Singo wrote his extension number on a pad and gave it to the man. They left and waited in Singo’s office. The phone rang inside a minute and Singo talked to him for almost an hour.
‘Well, I’m glad you can look at yourself so objectively,’ said Dove. ‘Over the phone, that is. For my education, may I ask what you want from Vincent?’
‘I think he was at the Companions camp at Port Monro.’