He should make some proper soup. How hard could it be?
He thought about catching the bus to Cromarty every school day with Bern and Joannie and Craig and Frank, seven of them spread across the back seat, their seat. On the way there, Bern and Barry and Pat mucked around, he finished his homework, Joannie and Craig, the twins, whispered and bickered. On the way home, they were all in high spirits. Then, one by one, Barry, Pat and Bern dropped out and it was just the three of them.
Cashin took the beer back to the chair, wished he had a smoke. How long did the craving last? It would last forever if he kept chipping every chance he got.
He thought about that morning at The Heights-the old man on the floor, the blood, the sour smell. What was the smell? It wasn’t one of the smells of homicide. Blood and piss and shit and alcohol and vomit, they were the smells of homicide.
Why was the painting slashed? What was that about? Why would you bother?
He got up, found Carol Gehrig’s number in his notebook. It rang for no more than three seconds.
‘Hi, Alice here.’
A girl, a teenager, bright voice. She was hoping for a call, hanging out.
‘Is Carol Gehrig in?’
A disappointed silence. ‘Yeah. Mum! Phone.’
There were sounds and then Carol said hello.
‘Joe Cashin. Sorry to bother you again.’
‘No bother.’
‘Carol, the painting at Bourgoyne’s, the cut painting.’
‘Yeah?’ Another disappointed person.
‘Is it still on the wall?’
‘No. I got Starkey to take it down.’
‘Where is it?’
‘I told him to put it in the storeroom.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Next to the old stables. You go through the studio.’
‘Did they ask you about the painting?’
‘The cops? No. I don’t think so.’
‘Why would anyone cut that painting?’
‘Beats me. Pretty awful picture. Sad, sort of.’
MRS MCKENDRICK was in her seventies, gaunt, long-nosed, with grey hair scraped back. On her desk stood a computer. To her left, at eye level, was an easel holding her shorthand notebook. To the right, on the desk in two rows, were containers holding paper clips, split pins, pencils, a stapler, a hole punch, sealing wax.
‘If she hasn’t got anyone with her,’ said Cashin, ‘it’ll only take a few minutes.’
‘This firm asks visitors to make appointments,’ she said, stroking the keyboard.
Cashin looked around the dark room, the prints of stags at bay, lonely waterfalls and hairy highland cattle grazing in the glens, and he found no patience.
‘I’m not a visitor,’ he said. ‘I’m the police. Would you mind leaving the decision to Mrs Addison?’
The tapping stopped. Grey eyes turned on Cashin. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Cecily Addison appeared behind Mrs McKendrick. ‘What’s all this?’ she said. ‘Come in, Joe.’
Cashin followed Cecily into her office. She crossed to the fireplace wall and leaned against the small bookcase, moved around, not much flesh to cushion her weight but no great weight to cushion. ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘What’s the problem?’
He handed her the payments statement. ‘The ones I’ve ringed.’
Cecily’s gaze went down the list. She frowned. ‘Wages, most of these. This I think is the turf club membership. The Melbourne Club this, goes up every year. Credit card bill. Small these days, used to be huge. This is…oh, yes, rates for the North Melbourne property. Wood Street. They go up every year too, don’t know why he hangs onto it. The Companions used the place. I did the conveyance for that.’
‘What kind of place?’
‘It’s a hall. They had concerts there in the beginning, I gather. Music. Plays. It was Companions headquarters.’
Cecily began the search for her cigarettes. Today, a quick find, in a handbag. She plucked one, found the Ronson, it fired at the first click. A deep draw, a grey expulsion, a bout of coughing.
‘Tell me a bit about the Companions,’ said Cashin.
‘Well, the money came from Andrew Beecham. Mean anything?’
‘No.’
‘Andrew’s grandfather owned half of St Kilda at one point. Lords of the city, the Beechams. And the country, a huge property other side Hamilton. It’s broken up now, cut into four, five. They had royals there. The English aristocracy. Sirs and the Honourables. Playing polo.’
Cecily looked at her cigarette, turned her palm upwards, reversed it.
‘Educated in England, the Beechams,’ she said. ‘Nothing else good enough. Not Melbourne Grammar, not Melbourne Uni. Andrew never did a day’s work in his life. Mind you, he won an MC in the war. Then he married a McCutcheon girl, nearly as rich as he was, half his age. She hanged herself in the mansion in Hawthorn and Beecham had a stroke the same day. Paralysed down one side, gimpy leg, gimpy arm. Ended up marrying a nurse from the hospital. After a decent interval, of course.’
Cashin thought that he could understand marrying the nurse from the hospital.
Cecily was looking out of the window. ‘They come to you like angels, nurses,’ she said. ‘I remember my op, waking up, could’ve been on Mars, first thing I saw was this apparition in white…’
Silence.
‘Mrs Addison, the Companions,’ said Cashin.
‘Yes. Raphael Morrison. Heard of him?’
‘No.’
‘He was a bomber pilot, bombed the Germans, Dresden, Hamburg, you know, fried them like ants, women and kids and the old, not many soldiers there. He came home and he had a vision. Teach the young not to make the same mistakes, new world, that kind of thing. Moral improvement. So he started the Companions.’
Cecily covered a yawn with fingertips. ‘Anyhow, Andrew Beecham heard about the Companions from Jock Cameron, they were in the war together. Jock introduced Andrew and Morrison to old man Bourgoyne and he got the bug because of his dead older boys, and that’s why the camp’s where it is. On Bourgoyne land. In the late fifties, I was in the firm then.’
‘Bit lost here. Who’s Jock Cameron?’
‘Pillar of this firm for forty years. Jock got wounded crossing the Rhine. Came out here for his health.’
Cecily stared at Cashin. ‘You look a bit like Charles Bourgoyne,’ she said.
‘So, the Companions.’
‘Lovely family, Jock’s,’ she said. ‘Met them in ′67, we went to England on the Dunedin Star. Never forget those stewards, pillowbiters to a man. They’d come along these narrow passages and rub against my Harry. He didn’t take kindly, I can tell you.’
Cashin looked away, embarrassed. ‘Something else. Jamie Bourgoyne apparently drowned in Tasmania.’
‘Another family tragedy,’ she said, not much breath. ‘First his mother’s death so young.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She fell down the stairs. The doctor said she was affected by sleeping pills. Tranquillisers, it might have been tranquillisers, I can’t recall. Same night as the Companions fire. Double tragedy.’
‘So Bourgoyne brought up the step-kids?’
‘Well, brought up’s not quite the term. Erica was at school in Melbourne then. Jamie had his own teacher till he was about twelve, I think.’
‘And then?’
‘School in Melbourne. I suppose they came home in the holidays, I don’t know.’
Cashin said his thanks, went out into the day. Ice rain was slanting in under the deep verandahs, almost reaching the shopfronts, soaking the shoes of the few wall-hugging pedestrians. He drove around to the station. Dove’s faxes were on his desk and he started reading.
The phone rang. He heard Wexler being polite.
‘Look after business for ten or so, boss?’ said Wexler, behind him. ‘Shoplift at the super.’
‘I need the union,’ said Cashin. ‘On leave, I can’t come in here without being exploited.’