‘A medium shot. Do you do that?’
‘We can try. Tend to extremes here. It’s coffee made in a plunger. Warmed up.’
The light caught her hair, shiny. ‘Very good. That’s a big advance on what I usually drink.’
By the time he’d fed the dogs, the coffee was hot. He poured big hits of rum into mugs and filled up with coffee, picked the mugs up in one hand, sugar in the other, went back.
Helen was looking at the CDs. ‘This is heavy stuff,’ she said.
‘For a cop, you mean?’
‘I was speaking for myself. My father played opera all the time. I hated it. Never listened properly, I suppose. I’m a bad listener.’
He gave her a mug. ‘A bit of sugar takes the edge off it,’ he said.
‘I’ll be guided by you.’
He spooned sugar into her mug, stirred, did his mug. ‘Cheers.’
She shuddered. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘I like this.’
They sat.
‘It’s been a sad business,’ she said, eyes on the fire.
‘No question.’
‘I’m feeling bad about this because I think you think I’m trying to use you in some way.’
Barks.
‘Mind the dogs?’ he said. ‘They won’t bother you.’
‘Let slip the dogs.’
Cashin took her mug, let them in. They charged Helen. She wasn’t alarmed. He spoke sternly and they went to the firebox and sank, heads on paws.
‘It’s not an interview, Joe,’ she said. ‘I want to talk about what’s going on, it’s not like I’m wearing a wire. To say what I think, I think the government’s happy to see Bourgoyne pinned on these boys if it helps politically.’
‘No politics about homicide.’
‘No?
‘No one’s talked politics to me.’
‘There should be a taskforce on this. Instead, there’s you and Dove, you go on leave, not suspended, on leave. Dove’s back in Melbourne. And you tell me you haven’t been told this thing’s filed under Forget It?’
Cashin didn’t want to lie to her.
‘I understand the idea is to let things cool down,’ he said. ‘The man’s dead, the boys are dead, we’re not pressed for time. It’s hard to investigate when you’ve got people full of rage. Who’s going to talk to you?’
‘That’s the Daunt you’re talking about?’
‘The Daunt.’
She drank. ‘Joe,’ she said, ‘do you accept that it’s possible that the boys didn’t attack Bourgoyne?’
The firebox didn’t need stoking. He got up and stoked it. Then he put on Björling. The balance had drifted slighty. He fiddled with the controls. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s possible.’
‘Well, if it wasn’t the boys, you don’t have to worry about the Daunt cooling off. You don’t have to clear the boys before you look elsewhere, do you?’
‘Helen, I’m seconded from homicide to Port Monro. They were stretched and they drafted me. Then things happened.’
‘Did Hopgood have any say?’
Cashin sat down. ‘Why would he?’
‘Because he runs Cromarty. I’m told the station commander doesn’t go to the toilet without Hopgood’s nod.’
‘Well, I’m in Port Monro. Maybe you hear things I don’t hear.’
They looked at each other over their mugs. She did a slow blink.
‘Joe, people say he’s a killer.’
‘A killer? Who says that?’
‘Daunt people.’
Cashin thought he would believe anything about Hopgood. He looked away. ‘People say anything about cops, it’s the job.’
‘You’ve got Aboriginal family, haven’t they told you?’
‘The people I’m related to see me as just another white maggot cop,’ he said. ‘But you wouldn’t understand that. Let’s talk about rich white kids who want to run the world.’
Helen closed her eyes. ‘Not called for. I’ll start again. People say Corey Pascoe was executed that night. You were there. What do you say?’
‘I’ll say what I have to say to the coroner.’
‘You tried to call it off.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘You get that from where?’
‘It doesn’t matter for present purposes.’
‘For present purposes? There aren’t any present purposes. Anyway, the coroner will decide what people did and didn’t do.’
‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘I can’t seem to get this right. Can you relax for a single fucking second?’
He felt the flare, the flush.
‘I think you’re just spoilt,’ he said. ‘You come over with all this passion but you’re just a rich smart brat. If you can’t get what you want, you stamp your little shoe. Well, go to the media. Get the girl to tell them the watch story. You can be on television. It’ll help your campaign. Yours and Bobby’s both.’
Helen got up, put her mug on the wonky table, picked up her coat. ‘Well, thanks for seeing me. And for the fortified coffee.’
‘Any time.’
Cashin got up and walked ahead, through the huge room with its sprung floorboards that uttered faint mouse-like complaints. Outside, a three-quarter moon, high clouds, dispersed and running. He said, ‘I’ll walk with you.’
‘No thanks,’ she said, pushing an arm into her coat. ‘I can find my way.’
‘I’ll walk to my fence,’ said Cashin. ‘I want to be a witness to any alleged slips and falls.’
He took the big torch from the peg and went ahead. She followed in silence, down the path, out the gate, across the grassland, into the rabbit lands. Near her fence, he moved the torch and eyes gleamed- four, no, more.
He stopped.
Hares. Transfixed, immobilised hares. The dogs would love this, he thought.
‘Dogs would like this,’ she said behind him.
He half-turned. She was close behind him, they were centimetres apart.
‘No, can’t take the dogs out with a light. Hares don’t stand a chance.’
She took a small step, put a hand on the back of his head and kissed him on the mouth, pulled back and then kissed him again.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Just an impulse.’
She went around him, switched on her torch. He didn’t move, astonished, half-erect, light on her, watched her stoop through the wires of the sagging side fence that met his new corner post, start to climb the slope, fade into the dark, become a moving, rising light. She didn’t look back.
Cashin stood there for a time, fingers on his lips, thinking about the night at the Kettle, the other long-ago kisses, two kisses. He shivered, just the cold night.
Why did she do it?
WOOD STREET in North Melbourne was a short dead-end, narrow, blank factory walls on one side facing five thin weatherboard houses. At the end of the street stood a brick building modelled on a Greek temple, no windows, four pillars and a triangular gable. It was a hall of some kind, like a Masonic hall, but the gable was blank.
Cashin drove slowly, angle-parked in front of unmarked roller doors. He didn’t get out, thought about driving all the way for no good reason, about how he could agonise about some things for days and weeks and months but do others with no consideration at all.
Vickie had spotted it early, when he’d come home one day driving a second-hand Audi. ‘You work it all out intelligently, don’t you?’ she said. ‘Think it through. Then you just do something, anything. You might as well be a total fuckwit, what’s the difference in outcomes?’
She was right. That was why Shane Diab was dead, that was why the blood ran out of his mouth and his nose and his eyes and he made terrible sounds and died.
Cashin got out, walked around the vehicle. The floor of the narrow portico of the temple was hidden beneath mouldy dog turds, dumped junk mail returning to pulp, syringes, beer stubbies, cans, bourbon bottles, condoms, pieces of clothing, bits of styrofoam, a rigid beach towel, a length of exhaust pipe.
He went up the two steps, walked over the rubbish to the huge metal-studded double doors. They bore the scars of many attacks. A bell button had been gouged out but the cast-iron knocker had survived. He bashed it against its buffer-once, twice, thrice. He waited, did it again. Again. Again. Then he knelt and pushed back the letterbox flap. Dark inside. He felt eyes on him, stood and turned.