He gave Cashin a mobile number.
‘Now if you’ll help the person with you get out, I’d like some ID there too,’ said Cashin.
Morris walked back to the van, opened the back door, there was an exchange. A girl in jeans and a short pleated pink jacket got out. She was no more than fifteen, dark hair, pretty, it wouldn’t last. Her lips were puffy, lipstick smeared.
‘ID, please,’ said Cashin.
She opened a wallet, offered a card. Cashin looked at it.
‘Not you,’ he said, flicked the card back across the bonnet. ‘Got some real ID? We can do this at the station. Get your mum and dad in.’
She pouted, eye-flick to Morris, produced another card, school ID with a photograph: Stacey-Ann Gettigan.
‘Fourteen, Stacey,’ he said. ‘In the back of a van with a grown man.’
‘Just waggin,’ she said. She folded her arms under her breasts. ‘Not a crime.’
‘What do you reckon, Allan?’ Cashin said. ‘Crime to be jumping a fourteen-year-old in your van?’
‘Just kissin and that,’ said Morris.
‘Take your pants off to kiss? Kissing with your bum? You married, Allan?’
Morris scratched his head. He was in sunlight and Cashin saw dandruff motes fly into the still air. The girl was looking down, biting on a painted nail. ‘Listen,’ said Morris, ‘no harm done, I swear.’
‘Married, Allan?’
‘Yeah. Sort of.’
‘Sort of? They got that now? Do a sort of ceremony in church?’
Morris didn’t want to look at Cashin. Cashin motioned to the girl to follow him. They went around the shed. He said, ‘Got a complaint you’d like to make against this man, Stacey? Made you do something against your will? Threaten you? This’s your chance.’
She closed her eyes, shook her head. ‘No. Nothin.’
‘Sure? I’m going to write all this down, that I asked you. Want to talk somewhere else, on your own? A woman cop?’
‘No,’ she said.
Cashin went back and beckoned to Morris, walked down the block a few paces. The man came, not easy in his skin, a rabbitty look. They stood in the weeds. White clouds moved across the pools of rain on the concrete slab.
‘What’s she to you, then?’ said Cashin.
‘Cousin, some kind, I dunno exactly.’
‘Yeah?’
‘She’s on at me all the time, come to me work even. I done nothin. Today’s the first…anyway, nothin happened. I swear.’
‘Not Deke Gettigan’s granddaughter, is she?’
Morris scratched his head with both hands as if suddenly attacked by lice. ‘Mate, they’ll fuckin kill me,’ he said. ‘Please, mate.’
‘Don’t bring any more kids here to root, Allan,’ said Cashin. ‘Nowhere near here. There’s an alert on your van from now on. And you’re not the builder here, are you?’
‘Me mate, he’s kind of, he’s the…’
‘You come down this way to do a bit of building, that’s building I’m talking about, not fucking under-age girls, you let me know, Allan. Then I’ll tell the school they don’t have to worry about a man with his cock out, he’s just having a piss. Okay?’
‘Right, sure. Thanks.’
Cashin looked back as he walked away. The girl held his eyes. She knew she was out of this, he wasn’t going to dob them, and she smiled at him, bold, sexual, ancient wisdom.
AT THE station, Carl Wexler came out of the front door making flexing bodybuilder’s movements. He was a year out of the academy, not stupid, third in his course, but a city boy, resentful about being posted away from the action.
Cashin lowered his window.
‘Cromarty rang, boss,’ Wexler said. ‘Senior Hopgood for you.’
Cashin went in and rang.
‘Your mate Inspector Villani sends his love,’ said Hopgood. ‘How is it that wogs have taken over this force?’
‘Natural selection,’ said Cashin. ‘Survival of the best dressed.’
‘Yeah, well, he’s given me the benefit of his wog opinions. He wants you to ring.’
Cashin didn’t say anything. Hopgood put the phone down.
The city switch put Cashin straight through.
‘How’s retirement?’ said Villani. ‘I went down there once. Very nice. I hear the surfies call it the Blue Balls Coast.’
‘Wimps,’ Cashin said. ‘What?’
‘Joe, listen, this Bourgoyne was news to me but the media put that right. Then Commisioner Wicken yesterday explains to me how connected the step-daughter is, senior partner at Rothacker Julian, the Labor Party’s legal wing.’
‘That now carries some weight in a homicide?’
‘I’m finding out all kinds of stuff. Today Mr Pommy Commissioner Wicken gives me hints on conducting myself in public. Fashion tips too. What suit, what shirt, what shoes. I enjoyed that so very much.’
‘So?’
‘I want you on this.’
‘I’m the cripple running Port Monro now. Send that prick Allen.’
‘Joe, we are thinner than the Durex Phantom. Jantz, Campbell and Maguire, all retired in one month. DePiero quit, Tozer’s on stress leave, your mate Allen, his wife buggered off with a butcher from Vic Market, took the kids. Now he’s found some mystical shit, living in the fucking moment. I wouldn’t send him to a Buddhist domestic.’
A pause.
‘Also,’ said Villani, ‘when the newspapers get down there in a few days, you’ll see the former drug squad’s criminal mates are again killing each other. The big boss woman’s supposed to have sacked all the dirtbags and elevated the cleanskins but whoopy do, here we go again. So I’ve got a number of people committed to the utterly pointless shit of trying to find out which particular cunt killed some other cunt for whose death we should be grateful. As a city. As a state. A country. As a fucking world.’
‘I think you’re over-excited,’ said Cashin. ‘On Bourgoyne, what’s to show for the forensic geniuses you had here?’
‘Bugger all. The alarm was off. No break-in, no prints, no weapon. No strange DNA. Don’t know what’s gone except the watch. There’s locked drawers broken open in the study and his bedroom.’
‘And him?’
‘It’s likely to be murder. Lives, he’s a cabbage.’
‘Did you ever ask yourself why they hit on the cabbage? What about the carrot? How about the Brussels sprout?’
‘Let’s leave the philosophy for the pub, gentlemen.’
It was a Singo saying, from the time before Rai Sarris.
‘So what am I supposed to do?’ said Cashin.
‘This Rothacker Julian connection, we need a senior officer on the job. I don’t want any fuck-ups. I’m new in the tower, Joe, I can feel the wind. This’ll end up some dumb In Cold Blood thing, I feel it in my dick, it’s just the in-between shit we have to manage.’
‘What about Cromarty?’
‘Fuck them. This is the commissioner speaking.’
‘And I say no?’
‘Listen, son, you are still a member of homicide. You’re a member on holiday. Remember duty?’
‘Some things about it, yes.’
‘I’m glad I don’t have to say any more.’
‘You arsehole.’
‘Come around to my office and repeat that to a senior officer,’ said Villani. ‘First, a talk with Ms Bourgoyne, the step-daughter. She’s been asked to go down and take a look, should be there in about an hour. Cromarty’s opening the place.’
‘She’s been interviewed?’
‘Not really. What we need is for you to be with her when she sees the house. Find out what was in the drawers, if she can see anything else missing, anything unusual while she was there, any ideas she can give us.’
‘Sure you need a senior officer? Why don’t you just give your marvellously detailed instructions to some prick from traffic?’
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. Jesus, don’t be so touchy.’
‘What about other family?’
‘No one close. There was a step-son, Erica’s brother. She says he drowned in Tassie a long time ago.’
‘She says?’