Cashin didn’t want her to dislike him. ‘It would help if we knew he’d done a runner.’
Helen shook her head in a musing way. ‘Do you think I’d tell you if I knew?’
‘What would it hurt to tell me?’
‘If I knew, it would be knowledge gained in representing him. How could I pass that on to you? I cross here.’
They stood at the corner, waiting for the lights, not looking at each other. Cashin wanted to look at her, looked. She was looking at him.
‘I don’t remember you as being so tall and thin,’ she said.
‘Late growth spurt. But you’re probably thinking of someone else.’
Green light. They crossed.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I remember you.’
Cashin felt a blush. ‘Returning to the present,’ he said. ‘You’re an officer of the court. There’s no ethical problem.’
No reply. They walked in silence, stopped at her office, a bluestone building.
‘I’m told you were city homicide,’ she said.
‘Been there, yes.’
He saw the shift of her head, readied himself.
‘So it’s your experience that lawyers tell you things about their clients?’
‘I don’t generally ask lawyers things about their clients. But your client’s violated his bail. All I’m asking you is that if you know he’s left the area, you save us the trouble of looking for him here. It’s not a big ask.’
‘I’m prepared to say that I don’t know any more than you do.’
‘Thank you, Ms Castleman.’
‘My pleasure, Detective Cashin. Any time. By the way, I found out yesterday that we’re to be neighbours.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I’ve bought the place next door. The one with the old house. Mrs Corrigan’s property.’
‘Welcome to the shire,’ said Cashin. Today we fence that boundary, he thought.
He walked back to the station. Hopgood wasn’t there, out on the matter of a body in the ashes of a house in Cromarty West.
Cashin left a short message, drove to the library for the photograph. Closed, the librarians’ day off. On the way home, he thought about the night in his last year at school, the final days. Tony Cressy drove out to pick him up in a Merc, a car from Cressy’s Prestige Motors on the highway. Tony was the fullback in the Cromarty High team, he had no pace, could hardly get his body off the ground, but he was big and he intimidated the opposition.
The four of them in the car, driving to the Kettle, to the Dangar Steps, two males and Helen Castleman and Susan Walls, he had not spoken more than a few words to either of the girls before that night.
The steps had long been fenced off, warning signs put up, but that only encouraged people. He helped Helen climb the wire, made a stirrup with his hands. She had no trouble with stirrups, she was a show jumper, people said she could go to the Olympics. They walked across the rock, along the worn path, in the footsteps of Mad Percy Hamilton Dangar, who spent twelve years cutting the narrow steps that began close to the entrance and ran around the walls, going down to the high-tide waterline. Everyone knew the story. Perhaps a hundred steps remained, unsafe lower down, gnawed by sea and spray and wind.
That night, they didn’t descend far. They sat with backs against the cliff, the boys smoking, passing a bottle of Jim Beam, taking burning sips, not really drinkers, any of them. It was just for show. You had to do it. Cashin and Helen sat on the step below Tony Cressy and Susan. Tony kept them laughing, he could make anyone laugh, even the stern teachers.
Cashin remembered the feel of a breast touching his bare arm when Helen laughed, rocked sideways.
She wasn’t wearing a bra.
He remembered the huge waves breaking against the entrance, the thunder, the white spray rising, the heart-stopping moments when the water exploded into the round chamber beneath them, surged up the limestone sides. There was no certainty it would stop-it came up and up and you thought that this one would pluck you from your perch, take you down into the hole, falling, falling into the boiling Kettle.
But it didn’t.
It climbed the cliff to within five or six metres, fell back, tongues of water spat from the rock caves. The Kettle frothed and surged, then the big hole drained and it was calm.
He remembered the jokes, the next-time-it’s-us-mate jokes.
They dropped Susan first, parked half a block from Helen’s house. Joe walked her to the gate. She kissed him quickly, unexpectedly, looked at him, then she kissed him again, a long kiss, her hands in his hair.
‘You’re nice,’ she said, went in her gate.
He walked back to the car, heart pumping. ‘Now that,’ said Tony Cressy, ‘now that is class. And you’re a lucky boy.’
IT WAS almost dark, the wind up, when they finished digging the rotten timber out of the last posthole. Cashin ached everywhere, it hurt to stand upright.
‘Get it done by night tomorrow,’ said Rebb. ‘Given we got the materials.’
‘Bern’ll bring everything in the morning,’ said Cashin. ‘He’s got a better understanding now of what’s meant by first thing.’
They shouldered the tools, began to climb the hill for home. Cashin whistled and black heads appeared at the creek, together, looking up.
The house roof was in sight when his mobile rang, a feeble sound in the soughing wind. He stopped, put down the spade, found the phone. Rebb kept going.
‘Cashin.’
Static. No reply. He killed it.
Cashin followed Rebb up the slope, every step an effort. On the flat, the phone rang again.
‘Cashin.’
‘Joe?’ His mother.
‘Yes, Syb.’
‘You’re faint, can you hear me?’
‘I can hear you.’
‘Joe, Michael tried to commit suicide, they don’t know…’
‘Where?’ A feeling of cold, of nausea.
‘In Melbourne, in his unit, someone rang him and they realised there…’
‘What hospital?’
‘The Alfred.’
‘I’ll go now. Want to come?’
‘I’m scared, Joe. Did you ring him? I asked you to ring him.’
‘Syb, I’m leaving now. Want to come?’
‘I’m too scared, Joe. I can’t face…’
‘That’s fine. I’ll call you when I’ve seen him.’
‘Joe.’
‘Yes.’
‘You should have spoken to him. I told you, I asked you twice, Joe. Twice.’
Cashin was looking at Rebb and the dogs. They were almost at the house, dogs criss-crossing in front, noses down. They had the air of point men, at the sharp end of a dangerous mission. At the gate, they would look back, each raise a paw, give those watching the all-clear.
‘I’ll ring, Syb,’ he said. ‘Call me if you hear anything.’
It was full dark when he came to the Branxholme junction and turned for the highway and the city. The headlights swept across a peeling house, a car on its axles, lit up devil-green dog eyes beside a bleeding rainwater tank.
CASHIN FELT A near-panic as the doctor led him down the long room, between the curtained cubicles. He knew the smell, of disinfectant and scented cleaning fluids, the computer-pale colour of everything and the humming, the incessant electronic humming. It came to him that a nuclear submarine would be like this, lying in a freezing ocean trench, hushed, run by electronics.
As they passed the stalls, Cashin saw bodies attached to tubes, wires. Tiny lights glowed, some pulsed.
‘Here,’ said the doctor.
Michael’s eyes were closed. His face, what showed of it around the oxygen mask, was white. Strands of hair, black as liquorice, were drawn on the pillow. Cashin remembered his hair as short, neat- salesman’s hair.
‘He’ll be okay,’ said the doctor. ‘The guy who rang him called emergency. Lucky. Also, the paras weren’t far away, coming from a false alarm. So we had a small window of time.’
He was young, Asian, skin of a baby, a private-school voice.
‘Took what?’ said Cashin. He wanted to be gone, into the open, breathe cleansing traffic fumes.