‘Who said that?’
‘I can tell you I don’t quote the bloke at the servo.’
‘The kid’s been charged on close to zero. Now you’re saying you don’t want us to find any actual evidence or try to get a plea out of him?’
‘Nothing is to be done to inflame this situation.’
‘That’s a political order, is it?’
Villani expelled breath as a whistle. ‘Joe, can’t you see the sense?’ he said.
Cashin felt Dove and Hopgood looking at him, a man lying on the floor, talking on a phone, his calves on a chair.
‘I’d like to say, boss,’ he said, ‘that we have a short time here when we might shake something loose. We let that pass, we will need jackhammers.’
Silence.
Cashin focused on the ceiling, yellow, creased and spotted like the back of an elderly hand. ‘That is my common sense,’ he said. ‘For what it’s worth.’
Silence.
‘For what it’s worth, Joe,’ said Villani, ‘taking Shane Diab parking outside Rai Sarris’s place was your idea of common sense.’
Cashin felt the cold knife inside him, turning. ‘Moving on,’ he said. ‘How long is a cooling-off period? For example.’
‘I don’t know, Joe, a week, ten days, more.’ Villani spoke slowly, like someone talking to an obtuse child. ‘We’ll need to use our judgment.’
‘Right. Some of us will use our judgment.’ Cashin was looking at Dove. ‘In the meantime, what’s Paul Dove do?’
‘I need him back here for a while. I want you to take some time off. Handle that?’
‘Is that suspension again, boss?’
‘Don’t be a prick, Joe. I’ll call you later. Put Dove on.’
Cashin handed up the handset to Dove.
‘What’s he say?’ said Hopgood.
‘He says there’s a cooling-off period over Donny.’
‘Is that right?’ said Hopgood, something like a smirk in his voice, on his lips. ‘You won’t be needing this comforable office then.’
In light rain, Dove and Cashin walked up to the Regent, got beers in the bar and sat in the dim cooking-fat-scented bistro, the only customers.
Dove read the laminated menu, ran his index finger down the list.
‘Twelve main courses,’ he said. ‘You need at least three people in the kitchen to do that.’
‘In the city,’ said Cashin. ‘Three bludgers. Here we do it with a work-experience girl’
‘A steak sandwich,’ said Dove. ‘What can they do to that? How badly can they fuck that up?’
‘They meet any challenge.’
A worn woman in a green coverall came out of a back door and stood over them with a notepad, sucked her teeth, sounds like the last dishwater going down a blocked drain.
‘Two steak sandwiches, please,’ said Cashin.
‘Only in the bar,’ she said, her gaze on the wall. ‘No sangers here. The bistro menu here.’
‘Cops,’ said Cashin. ‘Need a bit of privacy.’
She looked down, smiled at him, crooked teeth. ‘Right, well, that’s okay. Know all the cops. You here for the Bourgoyne thing then?’
‘Can’t talk about work.’
‘Black bastards,’ she said. ‘Two down, why don’t you nail the bloody lot of them? Bomb the place. Like that Baghdad.’
‘Could you cut the fat off?’ said Dove. ‘I’d appreciate that.’
‘Don’t like fat? No worries.’
‘And some tomato?’
‘On a steak sandwich?’
‘It’s a boong thing,’ said Dove.
At the kitchen door, she glanced back at Dove. Cashin saw the uncertainty in her eyes. Across the gloomy space, he saw it.
‘An attractive woman,’ said Dove. ‘So many attractive people around here, it must be something in the white gene pool.’ He looked around. ‘Stuff like the other night bother you? Still bother you? Ever bother you?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Well, you’re fairly hard to read, if I may say so. Except for the lying on the floor stuff, that’s a real window into the soul.’
Cashin considered telling him about the dreams. ‘It bothers me.’
‘Shooting the kid.’
‘Somebody shoots at you, what do you do?’
‘What I’m getting at,’ said Dove, ‘is whether the kid fired first. Did you tell them that?’
Cashin didn’t want to answer the question, didn’t want to consider the question. ‘You’ll know what I told them when we get to the coroner.’
‘Cross your mind we were set up? Hopgood puts us together in a dud car, claims he can’t hear the radio.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Leave himself and his boys a bit of slack if anything went wrong.’
‘That may be too far-sighted for Hopgood. You missing the feds?’
Dove shook his head in pity. They talked about nothing, the sandwiches came, the woman fussed over Cashin.
‘Could this be whale steak?’ said Dove after a bout of chewing. ‘I don’t suppose they honour the whaling treaty here.’
Walking back in drizzle and wind, Dove said, ‘Cooling-off period my arse. This thing’s in the freezer and it’s staying there. Still, I escape the fucking Whaleboners’ Tavern.’
‘Whalers’ Inn.’
‘That too.’
On the station steps, Dove offered a long hand. ‘Strong feeling I won’t be back. I’ll miss the place so much.’
‘So good, the whale steak, Miss Piggy’s coffee.’
‘Aunty Jemimah’s.’
‘You feds are trained observers,’ said Cashin. ‘See you soon.’
DEBBIE DOOGUE was sitting at the kitchen table, school books spread, mug of milky tea, biscuits, cartoon show on television. The room was warm, a wood heater glowing in the corner.
‘This’s the place to be,’ said Cashin.
‘Want tea?’ she said.
She was a pale gingerhead, ghosts of freckles, her hair pulled back. She looked older than fourteen.
‘No, thanks,’ Cashin said. ‘Full of tea. How’s school?’ It was a pointless question to ask a teenager.
‘Okay. Fine. Too much homework.’ She moved her bottom on the chair. ‘Dad’s in the shed.’
Cashin went to the sink, wiped a hole in the fogged window. He could see rain speckling the puddles in the rutted mud between the house and the shed. Bern was loading something onto the truck, pushing it with both hands. He had a cigarette in his mouth.
‘He’s worried about the stuff your mum found,’ said Cashin, turning, leaning against the sink.
Debbie had her head down, pretending to be reading. ‘Well, had to dob me, didn’t he?’ she said.
‘What’s to dob? I thought it wasn’t yours?’
She looked up, light blue Doogue eyes. ‘Didn’t even know what it was. She just gave me this box, said, hang on to this for me. That’s all.’
‘You thought it was what?’
‘Didn’t think about it.’
‘Come on, Debbie, I’m not that old.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m not into drugs, don’t want to know about them.’
‘But your friends are? Is that right?’
‘You want me to dob in my friends? No way.’
Cashin stepped across, pulled out a chair and sat at the table. ‘Debbie, I don’t give a bugger if your friends use drugs, wouldn’t cross the road to pinch them. But I don’t want to see you dead in an alley in the city.’
Her cheeks coloured slightly, she looked down at her notepad. ‘Yeah, well, I’m not…’
‘Debbie, can I tell you a secret?’
Uneasy, side to side movements of her head.
‘I wouldn’t tell you if you weren’t family.’
‘Um, sure, yeah.’
‘Keep it to yourself?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Promise?’
‘Yeah.’
The inside door opened violently and two small boys appeared, abreast, fighting to be first in. Debbie turned her head. ‘Geddout, you maggots!’
Eyes wide in their round boy faces, mouths open, little teeth showing. ‘We’re hungry,’ said the one on the left.
‘Out! Out! Out!’
The boys went backwards as if pulled by a cord, closed the door in their own faces.