They drank most of the bottle before Villani said, ‘You’re more knackered than I am. Set the alarm if you want to. I’d have a fucking decent sleep myself.’
Before bed, Cashin slid open the window, got under the duvet on the narrow bed. The smell of cigarette smoke lingered. He thought of being seventeen, in the room he shared with Bern, lying on their backs in the dark, passing a smoke between the single beds before sleep.
When he woke, the clock said 8.17 am. He rose, dizzy for a moment. He had slept as if clubbed, felt clubbed now.
An envelope under the door.
Joe: Back door key. Eggs and bacon in the fridge.
Cashin ate breakfast at a small place on Sydney Road. It was either Turkish or Greek. The eggs were served by a wide man with eyes the colour of milk stout.
‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You come after they shoot Alex Katsourides next door. You and a small one.’
‘That’s a long time ago,’ said Cashin.
‘You never catch them.’
‘No. Maybe one day.’
A big sniff. ‘One day. You never catch them. Gangland killers. That bloke on the radio, he says police useless.’
Cashin felt the blood coming to his face, the heat in his eyes. ‘I’m eating,’ he said. ‘You want to talk to a cop, go down to the station. Where’s the pepper?’
MICHAEL WAS out of intensive care, in a single room on the floor above. He was awake, pale, darkly stubbled.
Cashin went to the bed and touched his brother’s shoulder, awkward. ‘Gave us a scare, mate,’ he said.
‘Sorry.’ Hoarse, breathless voice.
‘Feeling okay?’
Michael didn’t quite look at him. ‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘I feel like such a creep, wasting people’s time. There are sick people here.’
Cashin didn’t know where to go. ‘Serious decision you took,’ he said.
‘Not actually a decision. It just happened, sort of. I was pretty pissed.’
‘You hadn’t been thinking about it?’
‘Thinking about it, yes.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I’ve been pretty low.’
Time went by. Michael seemed to go to sleep. It allowed Cashin to study him, he had never done that. You didn’t usually look at people closely, you looked into their eyes. Animals didn’t stare at each other’s noses or chins, foreheads, hairlines. They looked at the things that gave signals-the eyes, the mouth.
He was looking when Michael said, eyes closed, ‘Sacked three weeks ago. I was running a big takeover and someone leaked information and the whole thing went pear-shaped. They blamed me.’
‘Why?’
Eyes closed. ‘Photographs of me with someone from the other side. The other firm.’
‘What kind?’
‘Nothing sordid. Just a kiss. On the steps outside my place.’
‘Yes?’
Michael opened his black eyes, blinked a few times, he had long lashes, turned his head enough to look at Cashin.
‘It was a he,’ he said.
Cashin wanted a smoke, the craving came from nowhere, full strength. It had never entered his mind that Michael was queer. Michael had been engaged to a doctor at one time. Syb had showed him a photograph taken at an engagement party, a thin blonde woman, snub nose. She was holding a champagne flute. She had short nails.
‘A kiss?’ he said.
‘We were in a meeting late, eleven, we met again in the carpark, he came back to my place for a drink.’
‘Sex?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you tell him stuff?’
‘No.’
‘Well,’ said Cashin, ‘I’ve heard of worse shit.’
His brother had closed his eyes again, there were deep furrows between his eyebrows. ‘He killed himself,’ he said. ‘The day after his wife left him, took the three kids. Her father’s a judge, he went to law school with my head of firm.’
Cashin shut his eyes too, put his head back and listened to the sounds-low electronic humming, the sawing of traffic below, a faraway helicopter whupping the air. He stayed that way for a long time. When he opened his eyes, Michael was looking at him.
‘You all right?’ he said.
‘Fine,’ said Cashin. ‘That is serious shit.’
‘Yes. They told me you were here in the small hours. Thanks, Joe.’
‘Not a matter for thanks.’
‘I haven’t been much of a brother.’
‘Two of us then. Want to talk to someone? A shrink?’
‘No. I’ve been to shrinks, I’ve made shrinks rich, I’ve helped shrinks buy places in Byron Bay, there’s nothing they can do. I’m a depressive. Plain and simple. It’s in me. It’s a brain disorder, it’s probably genetic.’
Cashin felt an unease. ‘Drugs,’ he said. ‘They’ve presumably got the drugs.’
‘Turn the world into porridge. If you’re on anti-depressants, you can’t work sixteen-hour days, plough through mountains of documents, see the holes, produce answers. My kind of depression, well, it’s not like the tent collapses on you. It’s just there. I can work, that’s the thing that keeps it at bay, you don’t want an idle moment. But there’s no joy. You could be, I don’t know, washing dishes.’
Michael was crying silently, tears running down his cheeks, crystal streams on each side.
Cashin put a hand on his brother’s forearm, he did not squeeze. He did not know what to do, he had no physical language for comforting a man.
Michael said, ‘They told me about the photograph and Kim’s death at the same time. I walked out, got on a plane, drank and slept and drank, and it got worse and then I took the pills.’
He tried to smile. ‘I think that’s more than I’ve said to you at one time in our whole lives.’
A nurse was in the doorway. ‘Keeping up the fluids?’ she said, stern. ‘Important, you know.’
‘I’m drinking,’ said Michael. He swallowed. ‘Is it too early for a gin and tonic?’
She shook her head at his flippancy. Cashin could see she liked the look of Michael. She went away.
‘Who took the picture?’ he said.
A shrug. ‘I don’t know. There was a whole sequence, five or six shots. From across the street, I think.’
‘Someone watching you or him. Who’d do that?’
Another shrug.
‘When was the leak? Before or after?’
Michael put a hand to his hair. ‘You’re a cop. I forgot that for a while. After. In the next day or so. They knew what happened at a meeting our team had the morning after. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. Kim’s dead, I don’t have a career, everything’s gone, twenty years of grind wasted.’
‘Dangerous occupation you chose.’
Michael remembered. He smiled, a sad smile.
‘You’d better come down and stay with Sybil for a while,’ said Cashin. ‘Help the husband napalm the roses.’
‘No, I’ll be all right. I’ll stay with a friend, she’s got lots of room. Get back on the medication. Avoid the drink. Exercise, take some exercise. I’ll be okay.’
Silence.
‘I’ll be fine, Joe. Really.’
‘What can I do?’ said Cashin.
‘Nothing.’ Michael put out his left hand. Cashin took it, they held hands awkwardly.
‘Don’t get depressed, do you?’ said Michael.
‘No.’ It was a lie.
‘Good, that’s good. You’ve escaped the curse of the Cashins.’
‘The what?’
‘Dad, me. Probably a long line before us. Tommy Cashin for sure. Mum says you’re rebuilding his house. We’re all the same, he was just at the extreme edge. Wanted to take his house with him.’
‘What about Dad?’
Michael took his hand away. ‘Mum’s told you?’
‘What?’
‘She said she’d tell you when you were older.’
‘What?’
‘About Dad.’
‘What?’
‘That he committed suicide.’
‘Oh,’ said Cashin. ‘That. Yeah, I know about that.’
‘Okay. Listen, tell Mum I’m fine, Joe. Tell her it was all a silly mistake. Accidental overdose. Do that?’