‘Who’s A. Pollard?’
‘An Arthur Pollard.’
The dogs were nudging him. It was time. ‘We have a mystery bloke on the payroll for umpteen years,’ he said. ‘Needs a bit of work, don’t you think?’
Cashin heard a sound. Dove was tapping on his desk.
‘Yes, well,’ Dove said, ‘there’s no shortage of things need work around here. And this little inquiry took fucking hours.’
‘The extra mile. Force’ll be proud of you.’
Three slow knuckle taps. ‘I have to say this. I’m unsuited to homicide. It was a mistake. The death of a rich old cunt doesn’t move me. I don’t care if the guilty walk free. I don’t even care if possibly innocent people now dead get the blame.’
Cashin rubbed dog heads in turn, the ridges of bone. ‘Bourgoyne’s watch?’ he said. ‘What about that?’
‘May I say fuck off, pretty please?’
Time. Cashin put on his father’s Drizabone, the short coat, dark brown, wrinkled like the skin of a peatbog man. One day about a year after he came to stay with the Doogues, Bern’s father had offered it to him when they were going out with the ferrets.
‘Your dad’s. Hung onto it for you. Bit big. Mick wasn’t small.’
Man and dogs in the rain, going downhill, escaping the worst of the wind. The long dry was over, the creek was filling. The dogs looked at it with amazement, affronted. They tested it with sensitive toes.
Cashin put his hands in the big pleated pockets. Was he wearing this that day? Was it night? Did he take it off and put it on a stone step before he jumped into the Kettle?
Was it the step I sat on with Helen?
He felt cold, whistled for the dogs. They looked around in unison.
RAIN SUITED Cromarty. In the old town, it turned the cobbled gutters to silver streams, darkened the bricks and stones and tiles, gave the leaves of the evergreen oaks a deep lustre.
Cashin parked outside the co-op and sat, wiped the side window to look at the street: a fat damp man pushing a supermarket trolley four blocks from the shop, two skateboarding kids wagging school, two women in shapeless cotton garments arguing as they walked, heads jerking. He didn’t understand Cromarty, Cashin thought, he didn’t know who had the Grip.
Singo had introduced him to the Grip.
It’s the power to hurt, son. And the power to stop anyone hurting you. That’s the Grip. There’s blokes with millions got it and there’s blokes with bugger all. There’s blokes with three degrees and blokes can’t read the Macca’s menu.
The Bourgoynes would have had the Grip when the engine factory employed half the town. Did Charles keep the Grip after it was sold? Did he have any need for it?
Cashin got out. The rain soaked his hair, overran his eyebrows. He bought two big bags of dry dog food, drove to the supermarket and filled two trolleys, bulk buying. Never again could he enter Derry Callahan’s shop. No more was there a milk, bread or dog food lifeline. Then he bought some whiting fillets at the fish shop and drove to Kenmare.
The street was empty, a windless moment, straight lines of rain. He went into the butcher. A new person stood behind the counter, a pudgy young man, spotted face, dark hair. They said good day.
‘Couple of metres of dog sausage to begin,’ Cashin said. ‘Where’s Kurt?’
‘Cromarty. Dentist.’
‘Helping out?’
‘Permanent. Bit short on the dog, mate.’
‘What you’ve got then.’
The youth weighed the sausage, wrapped it in paper, put it in a plastic bag.
‘Plus three kilos of rump,’ said Cashin. ‘The stuff he hangs.’
He fetched the meat, cut, weighed. ‘Take three-thirty?’
‘That’s fine. Mincer clean?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Run three kilos of topside, will you? Not too much fat.’
‘Need some warning, mate. Come back tomorrow?’
‘Too busy, are you?’
‘Now, yeah.’
‘Tell Kurt Joe Cashin’s looking for another butcher, will you?’
The youth thought for a moment. ‘Spose I can do the mince,’ he said.
Cashin went out, sat in the vehicle, looked at the rain, placed the youth. He was wrapping the mince when Cashin opened the door.
‘Local, aren’t you?’ said Cashin. ‘What’s the name?’
‘Lee Piggot.’ Lee was a bad wrapper, his fingers were too big. ‘You the Doogues’ cousin?’
‘That’s right. Know the Doogues?’
‘Some. When I was at school,’
‘Lee Piggot. Hear your name around the Cromarty drug squad?’
Flush, pink turning red. ‘No.’
‘Must be a name like yours. Butcher’s a good job, a career. Honest work. People like their butcher. They even trust their butcher.’
Your police force, Cashin thought. Working with the community to create a better society. Using methods of fear and intimidation.
Last stop, Port Monro. The station was unattended. He let himself in and checked his desk: an envelope of pages faxed by Dove.
Heading home, a man on holiday, five weeks to go. The rain had stopped, the clouds dispersed, the world was clean and light. How much clearing and building could you do in five weeks?
Rebb was at work in the garden. He had found a low drystone wall.
‘Jesus,’ said Cashin. ‘The elves been working here? In the rain?’
‘Work’s work. Can’t let rain stop you.’
‘Stops me.’
‘You’re a cop. You don’t know about work. Pulling down the zip, that’s work for cops.’
‘You’d get on really well with Bern. Soulmates.’
They put in two hours, exposed twenty metres of stacked fieldstone and the remains of a wrought-iron gate.
‘Made something to eat,’ said Rebb. They walked back to the house and he produced four sandwiches neatly tied with cotton and toasted them under the grill.
‘Not bad,’ said Cashin. ‘Old bushie recipe?’
‘Tomato and onion’s not a recipe.’
They went back and worked for another hour and then Rebb went to milking. ‘Old bloke’s taking me for a feed,’ he said. ‘At the Kenmare pub.’
Cashin carried on for half an hour, then he walked around and looked at the work they’d done in the garden and on the house. He realised that it gave him pleasure to see the progress, that he was proud of his part. It also came to him that he’d laboured for almost four hours without much pain.
Inside, straightening from giving the dogs their bowls, the current went through him. He moved slowly to a kitchen chair, sat bolt upright, eyes closed. It was a long time before he felt safe to rise. Then, tentative movements, he made a fire, opened a beer, sat at the table with the papers from Dove.
There were three medical reports on Bourgoyne. One was on his condition on arrival at the hospital. The second was from a forensic pathologist, who, at the request of the police, examined him as far as was possible in intensive care the next day. The third was the autopsy after his death. Bourgoyne’s death was caused by his head striking the stone hearth.
The experts found that the marks on his knees and palms and feet were consistent with walking on hands and knees on rough carpeting. His facial bruises indicated being slapped repeatedly by someone standing above him, slapping with both sides of a hand about nine centimetres wide. The strokes across his back had almost certainly been administered with a bamboo stick of the kind sold by nurseries to support plants.
Cashin opened another beer. He stood at the counter, bottle in hand, pictures in his mind.
An old man roused from his bed, made to crawl down a long passage over a rough carpet.
A half-naked old man on his knees, someone slapping him, jerking his head from side to side, slapping him with fingers and palm, then backhand with the knuckles.
Then someone caning him across his back. Ten strokes.
Finally, he fell forward, hit his head on the stone hearth.
Cashin opened a can of tomato soup and shook the contents into a pot, added milk. Soup eaten with bread and butter. It had been a standard winter evening meal at the Doogues, home-made soup though, full of solid bits, they emptied their bowls.