‘I heard that,’ Villani said. He had felt no loss at the news, every day dawned brighter without Alan Arthur Lovett.
‘Didn’t break down myself neither,’ said Vickery. ‘But he’s on a fucking video, coughing and spitting, the twat says we fitted the little Quirk bastard.’
‘Why would he say that?’ said Villani.
Vickery gave him the long look. ‘Yeah, well, the drugs fuck with your brain, my brother-in-law, another prick, he came up with all kinds of shit, incest, you name it. It’s the Super K.’
‘When was it made?’
‘What?’
‘The tape?’
‘Dunno. What’s it matter?’
‘Could matter a lot.’
Vickery turned his back to the bar, glass in hand, looked around the dungeon. ‘Anyway, the problem here’s the wife, bloody Grace’s found God, fucking never-never-land shit and she’s sent the DPP the tape.’
Down the bar a blade-faced man coughed and coughed, could not stop coughing, it was painful to hear, he bent his head, ejected something into an expectant palm.
‘Fucked,’ said Vickery. ‘Another cunt going Lovett’s way. My guy says they’re talking second inquest. And there’s people very keen to see us go down. So we need to consider taking steps.’
He looked into his glass. ‘Coming man like you, you can raise this in the right places.’
‘Don’t know about that,’ said Villani.
Vickery turned to be at a right angle to Villani, he was the same height, heavier, torso sausaged in cold blue polyester.
‘Mate, mate,’ he said. ‘Clarity here. Courtesy this mad prick we can go down as killers, perjurers, eternal disgrace to the fucking force.’
In dreams, Villani always saw the fire escape, the kitchen’s grey vinyl tiles, dirty, peeling, the blood, on the ceiling, on the walls, on the windowpanes, lying on the carpet like drops of scarlet syrup. He never saw Greg Quirk’s face, never the blown-away throat, he never saw the face of the dying man.
‘See what I can do,’ he said, finished the beer.
Vickery made a nasal pipe-hammer sound. ‘Stevo,’ he said, ‘we don’t get smart here, we’ll know what arsefucked by a whole footy team feels like. Those who don’t already.’
‘Well, you heard a story,’ said Villani. ‘Could be some mistake.’
‘My whole life’s a fucking mistake,’ said Vickery. ‘With one or two exceptions I can’t remember. No mistake here.’
On the stairs, carrying his parcels, Villani passed two young women arguing, blotchy drug faces, hookers. The street door resisted him, then the outside hit, hot air of wood smoke and petrochemicals, fuels ancient and new.
‘I’M NOT sayin Greg was a good boy,’ she said that day.
‘You wouldn’t want to,’ said Villani, ‘because it would be a very big porky.’
He had been on his knees, pulling at the last clump of the couch grass, the roots yielded, no warning, his hands struck him in the mouth. He spat, an elastic string of sputum, no lift-off, the bloody line fell down his chin, lay on his T-shirt.
He put a finger into his mouth, felt his inner lip.
‘Fingers in your mouth, son,’ Rose said. ‘That’s a big no-no. Feedin yourself germs.’
She was on the verandah, a filter cigarette in a pink plastic holder.
‘Pity I didn’t meet you earlier,’ Villani said. ‘You could have spared me so much.’
‘On the other hand, Mick,’ she said. ‘Always thought Mick would come good.’
‘Just got in with bad boys, I know.’
Rose closed her eyes, tilted her head back, blew smoke. ‘Too right. Rotten homes, every last one of that lot.’
Villani took the watering can to the rainwater tank behind the house. Tap watering was banned. It hadn’t rained much for a long time but Rose’s tank was always full. He didn’t ask questions. It wasn’t beyond her to pass through next door’s rotten fence in the deep of night, connect her hose to their tap and fill the tank.
In the house, over time, he saw items well beyond the means and needs of an aged pensioner, French cologne, a leather purse, handbags, chocolates, jewellery, CDs, DVDs.
Once he picked up a small camera. ‘Where’d you get this?’
‘Found it,’ she said. ‘At the bus stop.’
‘Same stop as the Chanel No. 5?’
‘Don’t be cheeky, copper.’
‘Hate to see you in court.’
‘What, gonna dob me? Serve me bloodywell right lettin you into me house. And who the hell are you to talk? Bloody bent, every last prick of you. Believe me, sonny, I know.’
Villani came back, watering can brimming. ‘Lucky with rain here,’ he said. ‘Microclimate. Tiny zone of high rainfall.’
After a while, Rose said, ‘Kids. You don’t want to blame yourself, do you? God knows, you done your best.’
‘What if you haven’t done your best?’
‘Me?’
‘No, me.’
‘Well, you’re not a mum.’
‘No,’ said Villani. ‘That lets me off then.’
He sprinkled water, special attention for the carrots and potatoes in the drum. He liked underground vegetables. When he was seven, Bob Villani left him and Mark with their grandmother, Stella. Couple of weeks, son, he said. More than three years passed, he came back only twice that Villani could remember.
But he already knew by seven, knew from his mother, that what adults told you was only true while it suited them for it to be true. He had become expert at detecting grown-ups’ moods, always alert for signs of anxiety, for false cheerfulness and unnecessary lies, for the appearance of sincerity. He knew all the danger signs-extra attention and being pushed away, hushed conversations, the unexpected and frightening outbursts that gave way to hugs and kisses.
The first spring, Stella showed him how to plant carrot seeds. She put them in a glass jar with sand, drew a furrow in the black soil of her back garden with a finger, trickled a line. When the tops came up, he went outside in the evenings, after tea, lay on the path next to his little carrot bed, warm bricks beneath his body, trying to hear the little carrots expanding, pushing downwards.
‘Time to put the radishes in,’ said Rose. ‘Love a tiny little radish.’
‘April,’ said Villani, ‘that’s when the radishes go in.’
‘April,’ said Rose. ‘Doubt I’ll see April. Feelin a terrible tiredness. Body and soul.’
‘Ten years you’ve been saying that,’ said Villani. ‘Still be saying it in ten years.’
Rose said, ‘Ten years? Be bloody eighty. No desire to be eighty. I can see what bloody eighty looks like. Looks like bloody hell.’
Rose Quirk hadn’t got much older since their first meeting. On his second visit, dusk on that long-ago October day, coming from a barren surveillance, he stood at her front door, regretting the impulse. ‘Out this way, thought I’d see if you…’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Nothing?’
‘No.’
‘Well, if something comes up, if I can do…’
‘No,’ she said.
Going down the cracked concrete path, Villani’s eye fell on crusted earth, faded seed packets. At the gate, he said, ‘Need to get the summer vegies in soon.’
‘Greg did the vegies.’
They had shot Greg dead, he wasn’t going to do the vegies.
On the next Saturday, Villani woke early, heard Laurie’s car grate the gravel in the driveway, it was her busiest day of the week. He lay in bed thinking about the old woman’s vegetables, sighing. After making breakfast for the kids, he drove to a nursery and bought blood and bone, mulch, seeds, seedlings. Rose Quirk didn’t answer his knocks. He went around the back, found a fork in the shed, dug up the beds, dug in blood and bone. He planted carrots, beans, two kinds of tomatoes, peas, cucumbers, beetroot, mulched the beds, watered thoroughly.
He was sweaty, looking at his work, the bright seed packets on sticks, when he heard the gate.
‘What’s this?’ said Rose, hoarse cigarette voice.