‘What?’
‘Going there unarmed. That wasn’t a self-destruction thing, was it? I mean…’
‘It was a colossal stupidity and arrogance thing,’ said Cashin. ‘That’s my speciality.’
‘There’s something else,’ said Michael. ‘I talked to Vickie, Mum put her on to me.’
‘Talked about what?’
‘She says to tell you you can see the boy. She’s told her partner he’s your child.’
Short of breath, Cashin said, ‘She’s told the boy?’
‘Yes.’
The lift stopped, the door opened, Villani was there. He shook hands with Michael. They went through the sliding doors, down the ramp and along the side of the building. It was between showers, big jagged holes blown in the clouds, a sky to eternity.
‘See you in a few days,’ said Michael.
‘Buy some gloves,’ said Cashin. ‘Work gloves.’
Finucane had parked the vehicle behind Villani’s. He came to meet them.
‘G’day, boss,’ he said. ‘Feelin okay?’
‘Fine,’ said Cashin.
‘Get in for a minute,’ said Villani. ‘And you, Fin.’
Cashin got in the passenger side. The cop car smell.
‘You look like death,’ said Villani. ‘Are you telling me they don’t have those tanning machines?’
‘I was shocked too.’
‘Anyway, pale or not, you and Dove, you’re a charmed fucking pair,’ said Villani. ‘That’s charmed, not charming. He’s coming out next week. Clotting power of a lobster, the doc says.’
‘A lobster?’ said Finucane from the back. ‘A lobster?’
‘That’s what he said. Listen, Joe, stuff to tell you. First, Fin’s got some sense out of that loony Dave Vincent. On the phone, mark you. Fin’s got his notebook. Speak Fin.’
Finucane coughed. ‘He was at the camp the night of the fire,’ he said. ‘Called Dave Curnow then, the name of his foster family. He says he was supposed to go to some concert thing but he was planning to run away and he hid. Then two men arrived and they took a body out of the back of the car. Small body, he says.’
Cashin was looking at the road, not seeing the traffic.
‘They took it into the building where the boys slept. Then they left and he says he saw flames inside the building. He ran away and he slept on the beach and the next day he hitched a lift and he was gone. Ended up in WA, a boy age twelve.’
‘What did the autopsies on the dead boys show?’ said Cashin.
‘Local doctor did them,’ said Finucane. ‘I gather that’s the way it was then. Smoke inhalation killed them.’
‘All three.’
‘That’s right.’
‘No mention of anything else?’
‘Nothing, boss.’
Cashin regretted eating breakfast, a sick feeling rising in him. ‘Remember the doctor’s name?’
‘I’ve got it here. Castleman, Dr Rodney Castleman. Signed Bourgoyne’s wife’s death certificate too. A busy GP.’
Helen’s father. Cecily Addison said:
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.
‘Here’s something weird,’ said Villani. ‘Dave Vincent remembers the car that night.’
‘Got a thing about cars, Dave,’ said Finucane. ‘He says it was a Merc station wagon. He knows that because it was the first wagon Mercedes made. 1979.’
‘Was that useful?’ said Cashin.
‘I tracked it.’
‘Let me guess. Bourgoyne.’
‘Company car. Charles Bourgoyne and someone called J. A. Cameron were directors.’
‘Jock Cameron. Local solicitor. Who was the Companion there that night?’
‘Vallins,’ said Villani.
‘Got a smoke?’ said Cashin.
Villani took out a packet and pushed in the lighter. They waited in silence, lit up.
The nicotine hit Cashin like a headbutt, he couldn’t speak for a while, then he said, ‘Jesus, how did they get away with it? Ran the camp as a brothel, murdered at least three boys, not a murmur. What kind of fucking investigation was there?’
Villani ran down the front windows, a smell of exhaust fumes, of newly spread bitumen. ‘Something else to tell you. Singo died two days ago. Another stroke. Big time.’
‘Shit,’ said Cashin. ‘Well. Shit.’ He felt tears coming, turned his head away from Villani, blinked rapidly.
‘Singo did the Companions fire,’ said Villani. ‘He was number two then.’
Cashin saw Singo in his exhausted riven raincoat, saw the burnt ruins in that place, the goalposts in the grass, the little belt. Singo had never mentioned Cromarty. Late at night, drink taken, he talked about jobs in Stawell and Mildura and Geelong and Sale and Shepparton, about the travelling prostitute murders in Bendigo, the man who killed his uncle and aunt on the tobacco farm near Bright, planned to turn them into silage and feed them to the pigs.
Singo never spoke of Cromarty.
‘I got a bad feeling,’ said Villani. He shifted, uncomfortable. ‘We pulled his bank records. I never thought that day would come, not if I lived to…anyway, nothing. Just his pay and dividends from some Foster’s shares.’
‘He wouldn’t drink their beer,’ said Cashin. ‘He hated their beer.’
Villani looked at him in a hopeless way, opened his window and flicked his butt, almost hit a seagull, caused it to hop. Cashin thought about the meeting on the pier, the gull catching the stub in mid-air.
‘Three years ago,’ said Villani, ‘Singo inherited a million bucks from his brother. Derek. Derek left the whole family rich. About fourteen million in the estate.’
‘Yes?’ said Cashin.
‘Singo’s like a fuckin parrot on my shoulder, I’m where I am because of him. Think the job’s done, son? Well, go the extra yard. Ninety-nine times, it’s a waste. But then there’s the one. So I went the yard, we went the yard.’
Fat raindrops on the windscreen. Cashin thought that he wanted to be home now, in the buggered old house, in the buggered old chair, he wanted the dogs burrowing their noses into the cushions beneath his thighs, the fire going, the music. He wanted Björling. It would be Björling first. Björling and then Callas.
‘Someone paid two hundred thousand dollars into brother Derek’s three bank accounts in 1983,’ said Villani. ‘Three days after the Cromarty fire. Then, after the inquest, Derek got another two hundred grand. He bought land on the Gold Coast. No cunt, Derek.’
Cashin looked at Villani. Villani held his gaze, deep lines between his eyebrows, nodded, small nods, drew on his cigarette, tried to blow smoke out of the window. It came back.
‘Singo took money from Bourgoyne?’
‘Paid from a company bank account. You have to go back through three other companies to find it’s a Bourgoyne outfit.’
Cashin thought that there was no firm ground in life. Just crusts of different thicknesses over the ooze. They sat in silence, watching three nurses going off duty, level as cricket stumps, the one in the middle moving her hands as if conducting an orchestra.
‘It’s like two deaths to me,’ said Villani. ‘I woke today, something’s missing, something’s gone.’
‘Anything else?’ said Cashin. ‘Any other bits and pieces I should be aware of? No? I’ll be on my way home then, thank you for coming.’
‘Fin’s driving,’ said Villani. ‘Birkerts’s down there, he’s finished, he’ll bring him back. Don’t like that, you can take a cab, take a fucking walk.’
Cashin wanted to argue but he had no strength.
‘There is something else,’ said Villani. ‘Singo’s lawyer rang. We’re in the will, you and me and Birk.’
‘Last untainted place in the force, homicide,’ said Cashin. ‘The Salvos can have my share.’
When they were on the road, Cashin said, ‘Fin, I need to go to Queen Street. Won’t take long.’
ERICA BOURGOYNE, handsome and severe in black, was standing behind a glass-topped desk. ‘I really don’t have time today,’ she said. ‘So can we keep this as brief as possible?’