Cashin walked, he didn’t reply, went around her. His shoulder knocked aside a furred microphone, the holder said, ‘Steady on.’
‘Fuck off,’ said Cashin.
He drove the last stretch with Callas full blast on the player, roared down the dark and jolting roads with her beautiful voice filling the cab. The Kettle. A body floating outside the Kettle. In the big, foaming, shifting Rip.
They went to see it for the first time when he was six or seven, everyone had to see the Kettle and the Dangar Steps. Even standing well back from the crumbling edge of the keyhole, the scene scared him, the huge sea, the grey-green water skeined with foam, sliding, falling, surging, full of little peaks and breaks, hollows and rolls, the sense of unimaginable power beneath the surface, terrible forces that could lift you up and suck you down and spin you and you would breathe in icy salt water, swallow it, choke, the power of the surge would push you through the gap in the cliff and then it would slam you against the pocked walls in the Kettle, slam you and slam you until your clothes were threads and you were just tenderised meat.
It was called the Broken Shore, that piece of the coast. When Cashin was little, he had heard it as one word-the Brokenshaw. At some point, someone told him the first sailors to see the coast called it that because of the massive pieces of the limestone cliff that had broken away and fallen into the sea. Perhaps the sailors saw it happen. Perhaps they were close in and they saw the edge of the earth collapse, join the sea.
Home, thank god, the headlights passing across Rebb’s shed.
He parked close to the building and sat, the pains in him, all over. Lights off. Reluctant to move. It would not be a hardship to sleep where he was. A little sleep.
Knocking, he heard knocking, came upright, full of alarm.
Two dog heads at the window, the wash of light from a torch. He wound down the glass.
‘You okay?’ said Rebb.
‘Yeah, just tired.’
‘Brother okay?’
‘He’s okay.’
‘That’s good. Dogs had their tucker. Finish the fence tomorrow.’
Rebb walked away. Cashin and the dogs went inside. He rang his mother. She wanted more than he had to give. He cut her off, washed down codeine tablets with a beer, poured a big whisky. He sat in the upright chair and sipped and waited for the relief.
It came. He drank more whisky. Before he went to bed, he watched the local news.
Police will not comment on speculation that the body found in the sea outside Cromarty’s notorious Kettle, scene of many suicides over the years, is that of eighteen-year-old Donny Coulter, charged with the attempted murder of local identity Charles Bourgoyne. Detective Senior Sergeant Joe Cashin left Long Pier without comment after the body was brought to shore.
He saw himself coming down the pier-slit-eyed, shoulders set, hair being whipped around a stone face. Hopgood was next, pious-looking There was something of the priest about his face, the mask of sadness and sincerity assumed for an occasion. ‘Always bad to find a body,’ Hopgood said. ‘We have no other comment at this time.’
The reporter said: ‘Donny Coulter’s mother, Mrs Lorraine Coulter, spoke out tonight about police treatment of her son, missing since Tuesday.’
Donny’s mother standing in front of a brown brick veneer house with a threadbare lawn, concrete wheel strips running to a carport. ‘They hound him. Ever since the bail. They come by every night, put the spotlight on the house, right on Donny’s window, they sit out there. He went to sleep in the back, he couldn’t stand it no more. Drivin us all mad, Donny had enough to worry about, the boys the cops killed, all that…’
Cashin went to bed without eating and fell asleep instantly, did not wake until the dogs complained and the cold world was fully lit, no cloud in the sky.
REBB HAD the square redgum corner posts in, buttressed with diagonals notched into the strainers. Star posts were lying along the line of the new fence. In the middle was another strainer post.
‘Bern give you a hand?’ said Cashin.
‘Didn’t need a hand. Not much of a fence.’
‘By my standards, it’s much of a fence. What now?’
‘Get the stars in. Line em up.’
‘We’ll need string.’
‘Don’t need string. Eye’s good enough.’
‘My eye?’
‘Any prick’s eye.’
Cashin squinted over the corner post, moving Rebb back and forth until he held each star post in line with the three strainer posts. Rebb used a sledgehammer to tap in the posts, held it in one hand as if it had no weight. Then he marked a pole with the height of the strainers and sent Cashin down the line to chalk the height on the lower part of each star post. Rebb came behind him, hammering the posts until they reached the mark. He swung with a fluid grace, a full overhead swing, no sign of effort, hit the small target cleanly, never a mishit. The sound was a dull ring and it went across the valley and came back, sad somehow.
After that they strung wire, four strands, bottom strand first, working from the middle strainer post, using a wire strainer, a dangerous-looking device. Rebb showed Cashin the knot used to tie off the bowstring-taut wire around the post.
‘What’s that called?’
‘What?’
‘The knot, the wire knot.’
‘What’s it matter?’
‘Well,’ said Cashin, ‘no names, the world’s all grunts and sign language.’
Rebb gave him a long sidelong look. ‘Called a strainer hitch, you’ve got no use for that name. Have a look for mine?’
Cashin hesitated. You didn’t talk about things like this. ‘Your name? Had a look, yeah. That’s my job.’
‘Find anything?’
‘Not yet. Covered your tracks well.’
Rebb laughed. It was the first time.
They worked. The dogs came, interested, bored, left, other things to do. When they were finished, it was almost mid-afternoon, no food eaten. Cashin and Rebb stood at the high point and looked down the line. It ran true, the posts straight, the low light singing silver off the new wire.
‘Pretty good fence,’ said Cashin.
He felt pride, it had not often been given to him to feel pride in work. He was tired and hurting in the pelvis and up his back but he felt happy, a kind of happy.
‘It’s a fence,’ said Rebb. He was looking away. ‘This the new neighbour?’
Cashin didn’t recognise the woman coming down the grassy slope. Her hair was loose and she was in jeans and a leather jacket. She lost her footing a few times, narrowly avoided falling on her backside.
‘I’ll take the stuff up,’ said Rebb. ‘Milking time.’
Helen Castleman.
Cashin walked down the fence to meet her.
‘What’s this?’ she said, out of breath. She looked scrubbed. It made him aware of how sweaty he was.
‘Just fixing the fence,’ said Cashin. ‘Replacing the fence. I’m not asking you to pay half.’
‘Generous of you. I understand the creek to be the boundary.’
‘The creek?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s not so. Who told you that?’
‘The agent.’
‘The agent? A lawyer relied on the agent?’
Helen’s cheekbones coloured, an autumn shade.
‘Of all the people you might rely on,’ said Cashin, ‘the real estate agent…’
‘That’ll do, thank you. Having a good run, aren’t you, Mr Cashin? Feeling pretty smart. You drive the poor frightened kid to suicide, now you don’t have to make any case, he’s made the case for you. And everyone else’s dead, all suspects dead. Because you and your fucking mates killed them.’
She turned and began the climb, slipping.
All day, seeing a boy on the Dangar Steps, a brown boy in cheap jeans, nylon anorak, broken runners, standing on a crumbling limestone ledge, the salt spray rising like a mist to bathe him, looking down at the churning water.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘give me a break, it’s…’