‘How does attending to Bourgoyne matters work?’
‘Work?’
‘The mechanics of it.’
‘Oh. Well, all the bills come here, credit card, everything. Every month, we send Charles a statement, he ticks them off, sends it back, we pay them out of a trust account. Pay the wages too.’
‘So you’ve got a record of all his financial dealings?’
‘Just his bills.’
‘From how far back?’
‘Not long. I suppose it’s seven, eight years. Since Crake’s stroke.’
‘Can I see your records?’
‘Confidential,’ she said. ‘Between solicitor and client.’
‘Client’s been bashed and left for dead,’ said Cashin.
Cecily blinked a few times. ‘Not going to get me in trouble with the Law Institute this? Don’t want to have to ask bloody Rees for advice.’
‘Mrs Addison, it’s what you have to do. If you don’t, we’ll get a court order today.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose that changes things a bit. I’ll tell Mrs McKendrick to make copies. Can’t see what help it’ll be. You should be out looking for bloody druggies. What’s stolen from the house?’
‘The people who work at Bourgoyne’s,’ said Cashin, ‘what about their pay now?’
Cecily raised her pencilled eyebrows. ‘He’s not dead, you know. They’ll be paid until someone instructs me to stop. What would you expect?’
Cashin got up. ‘The worst. That’s what police life teaches you.’
‘Cynical, Joe. In my experience, and I say that with…’
‘Thank you, Mrs Addison. I’ll send someone for the copies. Where’s Jamie Bourgoyne?’
‘Drowned in Tasmania. Years ago.’
‘Not a lucky family then.’
‘No. Money can’t buy it. And it ends if Charles dies. The line’s broken. The Bourgoyne line’s ended.’
The street was quiet, sunlight on the pale stone of the library. It had been the Mechanics’ Institute when it opened in the year carved above the door: 1864. Three elderly women were going up the steps, in single file, left hands on the metal balustrade. He could see their delicate ankles. Old people were like racehorses-too much depending on too little, the bloodline the critical factor.
The Cashin bloodline didn’t bear thinking about.
‘I CAN’T fix stuff like this for you, Bern,’ said Cashin. ‘I can’t fix anything. Sam’s in shit because he’s bad news and now he has to cop it.’
They were in a shed like an aircraft hangar at his cousin Bern Doogue’s place outside Kenmare, a town twenty kilometres from Port Monro with a main street of boarded-up shops, two lingering pubs, a butcher, a milk bar and a video hire.
Farmland had once surrounded the village of Kenmare like a green sea. Long backyards had run down to paddocks with milk cows oozing dung, to potato fields dense with their pale grenades. Then the farms were subdivided. Hardiplank houses went up on three-acre blocks, big metal sheds out the back. Now the land produced nothing but garbage and children, many with red hair. The blocks were weekend parking lots for the big rigs that rumbled in from every direction on Saturdays-Macks, Kenworths, Mans, Volvos, eighteen-speed transmission, 1800-litre tank, the owners’ names in flowery script on the doors, the unshaven, unslept drivers sitting two metres off the ground, spaced out and listening to songs of lost love and loneliness.
The truckies had bought their blocks when land was cheap, fuel was cheap, freight rates were good and they were young and paunch-less. Now they couldn’t see their pricks without a mirror, the trucks sucked fifty-dollar notes, the freight companies screwed them till they had to drive six days, some weeks seven, to make the repayments.
Cashin stood in the shed door and watched Bern splitting wood on his new machine, a red device that stood on splayed legs like a moon lander. He picked up a section of log, dropped it on the table against a thick steel spike, hit the trigger with a boot. A hydraulic ram slammed a splitter blade into the wood, cleaving it in half.
‘Well, Jesus,’ said Bern, ‘what’s the use of havin a fuckin copper in the family, I ask you.’
‘No use at all,’ Cashin said.
‘Anyway, it’s not like it’s Sam’s idea. He’s with these two Melbourne kids, city kids, the one breaks the fuckin car window with a bottle.’
‘Bern, Sam’s got Buckley’s. I’ll ring a lawyer, she’s good, she’ll keep him out of jail.’
‘What’s that gonna cost? Fuckin arm?’
‘It’ll cost what it costs. Otherwise, tell him to ask for the duty solicitor. Where’d you get this wood?’
Bern put fingers under his filthy green beanie, exposed his black widow’s peak, scratched his scalp. He had the Doogue nose-big, hooked. It was unremarkable in youth, came with age to dominate the male faces.
‘Joe,’ he said, ‘is that a cop kind of question?’
‘I don’t care a lot about wood crime. It’s good-looking stuff.’
‘Fuckin prime beef, mate. Beefwood. Not your rotten Mount Gambier shit.’
‘How much?’
‘Seventy.’
‘Find your own lawyer.’
‘That’s a special fuckin family price. Mate, this stuff, it runs out the fuckin door.’
‘Let it run,’ Cashin said. ‘Got to go.’ He walked.
‘Hey, hey, Jesus, Joe, don’t be so fuckin difficult.’
‘Say hello to Leanne for me,’ Cashin said. ‘Christ knows what she did to deserve you. Must be something in another life.’
‘Joe. Mate. Mate.’
Cashin was at the door. ‘What?’
‘Give and take, mate.’
‘Haven’t been talking to my mum, have you?’
‘Nah. Your mum’s too good for us. How’s sixty, you tee up the lawyer? Split, delivered, that’s fuckin cost, no labour, I’m takin a knock.’
‘Four for two hundred,’ Cashin said. ‘Neatly stacked.’
‘Shit, takin food out of your own family’s mouths. He’s up next week Wednesday.’
‘I’ll ring with an appointment time.’
Bern smacked on another log, stamped on the trigger. There was a bang, bits of wood went everythere. ‘Fuck,’ he said. He pulled a big wood sliver out of the front of his greasy army surplus jumper.
‘This place’s a model of workplace safety,’ Cashin said. ‘Be on my way.’
He went out into the grey day, into Bern’s two-acre backyard, a graveyard of cars, utes, trucks, machinery, windows, doors, sinks, toilet bowls, basins, second-hand timber, bricks. Bern followed him to his vehicle, parked in a clearing.
‘Listen, Joe, there’s somethin else,’ he said. ‘Debbie says the Piggot kid, I forget his name, there’s hundreds of em, she says he’s sellin stuff at school.’
Cashin got in, wound down the window. ‘Got something against drugs, Bern? Since when?’
Bern screwed up his eyes, scratched his head through the beanie with black-rimmed nails. ‘That’s totally fuckin different, we’re talking about sellin hard stuff to kids here.’
‘Why’d she tell you?’
‘Well, not me. Told her mum.’
‘Why?’
Bern cleared his throat and spat, bullethole lips, a sound like a peashooter. ‘Leeane found some stuff. Not Debbie’s, just holdin it for this other girl bought it from a Piggot.’
Cashin started the vehicle. ‘Bern,’ he said, ‘you don’t want your cousin the cop cracking down on teenage drug-taking in Kenmare. Think about it. Think about the Piggots. There’s an army of them.’
Bern thought about it. ‘Yeah, well, that’s probably the strength of it. Mark me for the dog straight off, wouldn’t the bastards. Boong dog. Mind you, comes to Doogues against Piggots, they wouldn’t take a round off us.’
‘We don’t want it to come to that. I’ll call you.’
‘Wait, wait. You can do somethin else for me.’
‘What?’
‘Put the hard word on Debbie. She won’t listen to her mum and I’m a fuckin non-starter.’