A woman was on the front doorstep of the nearest weatherboard, tortoise head peeping from a shell of garments, the top one a huge floral apron.
‘Whaddayadoin?’ she said.
Cashin went down the steps, approached her. ‘Police.’
‘Yeah? Show me.’
He showed her. ‘Who looks after this place?’
‘Hey?’
‘This building.’ He pointed at it. ‘Who looks after it?’
‘Ah. Used to be a bloke. Never come out the front. Never seed him open that door.’ She sniffed, wiped a finger under her nose, studied Cashin in silence, unblinking.
‘So how did you know he was in there?’ he said.
‘Merv’s got a garage there, he seed him.’
‘A garage where?’
She looked at him as if he were slow. ‘In the lane. I said that.’
‘Right. How do you get to the lane?’
‘Next to Wolf’s.’
‘Where’s Wolf’s?’
‘Well it’s in Tilbrook Street. Where’d ya think it would it be?’
‘Thanks for your help.’
She watched him three-point turn, drive off. He waved. She didn’t respond. In Tilbrook Street, he found the sunken lane, just wide enough for a vehicle. He parked in the entrance and walked along the bluestone gutter running down the middle, looking on the left for the entrance to the back of the temple.
It had to be the plank door with the rotten bottom beside the rusted steel garage doors. Yale lock, no door handle. He put both hands on the door and pushed tentatively. It didn’t yield. He tested the right-hand gatepost, it gave a little.
Knocking was required. He knocked, called the name, did it again. Then he looked up and down the lane, stepped into the gateway, braced his back against a gatepost, put a foot on the opposite post, pushed against it and leant on the door.
The door squeaked open and he almost fell in.
Forcible entry, no warrant.
An alley four or five metres long, brick walls on either side, a rubbish bin. Cashin walked to the end. A concreted yard, a rectangle behind a high wall broken only by three small windows and a door. At the left were washing lines, empty.
He went to the door in the building, stood on the top step and knocked, three times, harder each time, hurting his knuckles.
He tried the doorknob. Locked. Another Yale lock, a newer one.
The lane door was one thing, that could be explained away. Forcing entry into a building was another matter. He should ring Villani, tell him what he wanted, what he was doing here.
He examined the door. It had shrunk over the hundred-odd years of its life, no longer fitted snugly into its frame. When you fitted a new lock to an old door, you needed to compensate for the years. That hadn’t been done. He bent to look. He glimpsed the lock’s tongue.
Go away, said the voice of sense. Leave. Ring Villani. Get a warrant.
That would take forever. Villani would take his guide from Singo, he would cite Singo. He would want a proper case made for the intrusion.
Cashin thought that he wanted to go home, walk the dogs in the clean wind, lie on the floor for a while, sit by the fire and listen to Callas, roll red wine around his mouth while he read some Conrad.
He took out his wallet and found the thin, narrow piece of plastic. For a moment, he held it between thumbs and forefingers, bending it. It was strong, just enough flex.
Oh, well, what the hell, come this far.
The lozenge went in easily, slid around the tongue, pushed it back just enough. He put pressure on the door.
The tongue slipped its lodging.
The door opened.
Light fell on a wide passage, linoleum on the floor, black and white squares, he could see the lines of the boards beneath the covering. He took a step inside. The air was cold and stale, scrabbling noises from above. Birds. They would be starlings, no roof could keep them out. In a few weeks, they could insulate a ceiling with crap.
‘Anyone home?’ he shouted.
He took a few more steps down the passage, shouted again. No sound, the starlings paused for a few seconds.
Cashin opened the first door on the left. It was a bathroom and toilet, a shower head above the old claw-footed bath. A cabinet above the basin was empty except for a dry cake of soap.
The next door along was open: a kitchen, ancient gas stove, bare pine table, an empty vegetable rack.
Cashin crossed the passage. The room on the other side was a bedroom-a single bed, made with white sheets, a bedside table, a lamp. Two folded blankets stood on a pine chest of drawers. Nothing in the drawers. Cashin opened a narrow wardrobe. It was empty except for wire coathangers.
The next room was the same, a single bed with a striped coir mattress and a table. Across the way, the door opened reluctantly. Clicking the light switch on the right showed an office with a desk and a chair and a grey three-drawer filing cabinet and a wall of wooden shelves holding grey lever-arch files. Cashin touched the bare desk. His fingers came away coated with dust.
He went to the shelves. There were labelled, handwritten cards in brass holders tacked to each shelf: General Correspondence, Correspondence Q’land, Correspondence WA, Correspondence SA, Correspondence Vic. The Vic shelf was bare. Other shelves were labelled Invoices. Nothing on the Invoices Vic shelf. He chose a file from Correspondence WA, flicked through it. Originals and carbon copies and photostats of letters to and from the Companions Camp, Caves Road, Busselton, Western Australia.
Cashin replaced the file, opened a desk drawer.
Used cheque books, in bundles held together with rubber bands, some of which had perished. He took out a book, looked at a few stubs. All the Moral Companions’ bills appeared to have been paid from this place.
He closed the drawer, left the room, opened the door at the end of the passage. Darkness. He groped, found the switch, three fluorescent tubes took their time flickering into life. Another passage, transverse, three doors off it. Cashin opened the first one, found switches, one two, three, flicked them all. On the wall opposite, a few lightbulbs lit up around mirrors.
It was a theatre dressing room. He had been in one before, the woman’s body was in the toilet. It had been there for sixteen hours. She appeared to have fallen and struck her head against the bowl some time after the last performance of a play by an amateur group. There had been a party. What set the bells ringing was a bruise on the back of her head. The play was written by a doctor. Singo wanted him and they flame-grilled him but in the end there was nothing except an admission that he’d screwed another cast member.
Cashin checked the other rooms. Also small dressing rooms. Two bulbs popped in the second one as he flicked the switches. He walked back, opened a door, went down a long flight of stairs, another door.
A big room, dimly lit by dusty windows high on the walls. He took a few steps.
It was a theatre from another time, longer than it was wide, slightly raked, about thirty rows of seats, all uptilted. To his left, a short flight of steps went up to the stage.
One more time. ‘Anyone here?’ he shouted. ‘Police.’
Starlings up above here too and, from the street, the sound of a car revving, the test-revving of mechanics.
A smell over the dust and the faint odour of damp coming up from beneath the floor. Cashin sniffed, could not identify it. He had smelled it somewhere before and he felt a tightening of the skin on his face and neck.
He walked to the back of the room and pushed open one of a pair of doors. Beyond was a small marble-floored foyer and the front doors. He went back, climbed the stairs to the stage, pushed aside heavy purple velvet curtains. He was in the wings, a dark space, the bare-boarded stage glimpsed through gaps in tall pieces of scenery.
Cashin went to an opening.
Sand had been dumped on the stage, clean building sand, in heaps and splashes.