‘We’ll verify that. Okay? We’ll get some prick from traffic to check that out. Give him detailed instructions.’
‘Just asking.’
CASHIN DROVE out to the Bourgoyne house, up the steep road from the highway, through the gates, down the winding poplar drive, and parked in the same place as before. The gravel showed the marks of many vehicles.
He parked and waited, listened to the radio, thought about being on the road with his mother, the other children he met, some of them feral kids, not going to school, beach urchins, the white ones burnt dark brown or freckled and always shedding pieces of papery skin. He thought about the boy who taught him to surf, in New South Wales, it might have been Ballina. Gavin was the boy’s name. He offered the use of a board with a big piece out of it.
‘Shark, mate,’ said Gavin. ‘Chewed the bloke in half. He don’t need it no more, you can have a lend of it.’ When they left, Gavin gave him the board. Where was Gavin now? Where was the board? Cashin had loved that board, covered the gap with tape.
I’m bored here, love. We’re going.
His mother had said before every move further north.
Cashin got out of the car to stretch his spine, walked in a circle. A vehicle was coming.
A black Saab came around the bend, parked next to the cruiser. The driver eased himself out, a big man, cropped hair, wearing jeans and a leather jacket, open.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘John Jacobs, Orton Private Security Group. I’m ex-SOG. Mind if I see the ID?’
Police Special Operations Group membership was supposed to bestow some kind of divinity that transcended being kicked out for cowardice or for turning out to be a violent psychopath.
Cashin looked at the cruiser. ‘That’s my car. Your idea is I could be a dangerous person stole a cop car?’
‘Don’t take anything for granted,’ Jacobs said. ‘Used to be standard police practice.’
‘Still is,’ said Cashin. ‘And I’m the one who asks for ID. Let’s see it.’
Jacobs gave him a closed-lips smile, then a glint of left canine while he took out a plastic card with a photograph. Cashin took his time looking at it, looking at Jacobs.
‘You’re keeping the lady waiting,’ said Jacobs. ‘Need better light? Sure you don’t want back-up?’
‘What’s your job today?’ said Cashin.
‘I’m looking after Ms Bourgoyne. What do you reckon?’
Cashin gave back the card. Jacobs went around the car and opened the passenger door. A woman got out, a blonde, tall, thin, the wind moved her long hair. She raised a hand to control it. Early forties, Cashin guessed.
‘Ms Bourgoyne?’
‘Yes.’ She was handsome, sharp features, grey eyes.
‘Detective Cashin. Inspector Villani spoke to you, I understand.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you mind if we have a look around? Without Mr Jacobs, if that’s okay?’
‘I don’t know what to expect,’ she said.
‘It’s always difficult,’ said Cashin. ‘But what we’ll do is walk through the house. You have a good look, tell me if anything catches your eye.’
‘Thank you. Well, let’s go in the side door.’
She led the way around the verandah. On the east side was an expanse of raked gravel dotted with smooth boulders, ending in a clipped hedge. She opened a glass door to a quarry-tiled room with wicker chairs around low tables. There wasn’t any sun but the room was warm.
‘I’d like to get this over with as soon as possible,’ said Erica.
‘Of course. Did Mr Bourgoyne keep money on the premises?’
‘I have no idea. Why would he?’
‘People do. What’s through that door.’
‘A passage.’
She led the way into a wide passage. ‘These are bedrooms and a sitting room,’ she said and opened a door. Cashin went in and switched on the overhead light. It was a big room, curtains drawn, four pen-and-ink drawings in black frames on the walls. They were all by the same hand, suggestions of street scenes, severe, vertical lines, unsigned.
The bed was large, white covers, big pillows. ‘There’s nothing to steal here,’ Erica said.
The next two rooms were near-identical. Then a bathroom and a small sitting room.
They went into the large hall, two storeys high, lit by a skylight. A huge staircase dominated the space. ‘There’s the big dining room and the small one,’ said Erica.
‘What’s upstairs?’
‘Bedrooms.’
Cashin looked into the dining rooms. They appeared undisturbed. At the door to the big sitting room, Erica stopped and turned to him.
‘I’ll go first,’ he said.
The room smelled faintly of lavender and something else. The light from the high window lay on the carpet in front of where the slashed painting had hung. The bloodstain was hidden by a sheet of black plastic, taped down.
Cashin went over and opened the cedar armoire against the left walclass="underline" whisky, brandy, gin, vodka, Pimms, Cinzano, sherries, liqueurs of all kinds, wine glasses, cut-glass whisky glasses and tumblers, martini glasses.
A small fridge held soda water, tonic, mineral water. No beer.
‘Do you know what was kept in the desk?’
The small slim-legged table with a leather top stood against a wall.
Erica shrugged.
Cashin opened the left-hand drawer. Writing pads, envelopes, two fountain pens, two ink bottles. Cashin removed the top pad, opened it, held it up to the light. No impressions. The other drawer held a silver paperknife, a stapler, boxes of staples, a punch, paperclips.
‘Why didn’t they take the sound stuff?’ she said.
Cashin looked at the Swedish equipment. It had been the most expensive on the market once.
‘Too big,’ he said. ‘Was there a television?’
‘In the other sitting room. My step-father didn’t like television much.’
Cashin looked at the shelves of CDs beside the player. Classical music. Orchestral. Opera, dozens of disks. He removed one, put it in the slot, pressed the buttons.
Maria Callas.
The room’s acoustics were perfect. He closed his eyes.
‘Is this necessary?’ said Erica.
‘Sorry,’ said Cashin. He pushed the OFF button. The sound of Callas seemed to linger in the high dark corners.
They left the room, another passage.
‘That’s the study,’ she said.
He went in. A big room, three walls covered with photographs in dark frames, a few paintings, and the fourth floor-to-ceiling books. The desk was a curve of pale wood on square dark pillars tapering to nothing. The chair was modern too, leather and chrome. A more comfortable-looking version stood in front of the window.
The drawer locks of two heavy and tall wooden cabinets, six drawers each, had been forced, possibly with a crowbar. They had been left as found on the morning.
‘Any idea what was in them?’ said Cashin.
‘No idea at all.’
Cashin looked: letters, papers. He walked around the walls, looked at the photographs. They seemed to be arranged chronologically and, to his eye, span at least seventy or eighty years-family groups, portraits, young men in uniform, weddings, parties, picnics, beach scenes, two men in suits standing in front of a group of men in overalls, a building plaque being unveiled by a woman wearing a hat.
‘Which one’s your step-father?’ he said.
Erica took him on a tour, pointed at a smiling small boy, a youth in school uniform, in cricket whites, in a football team, a thin-faced young man in a dinner jacket, a man in middle age shaking hands with an older man. Charles Bourgoyne had aged slowly and well, not losing a single brushed hair.
‘Then there are the horses,’ she said, pointing. ‘Probably more important than the people in his life.’
A wall of pictures of horses and people with horses. Dozens of finishing-post photographs, some sepia, some tinted, a few in colour. Charles Bourgoyne riding, leading, stroking, kissing horses.
‘Your mother,’ said Cashin. ‘Is she still alive?’