They went down the passage to the front door. Cashin said, ‘Mrs Laidlaw, I have to ask you. Is there even the slightest doubt in your mind over the man you saw in Toorak Road? Is it possible that it wasn’t Jamie?’
‘No doubt at all. I’m perfectly sane, I had my glasses on and it was Jamie.’
‘You told Erica you’d seen him?’
‘Yes. I rang her as soon as I got home.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Nothing really. Yes, dear, that sort of thing.’
A thin but steady rain fell on the men as they walked down the balding gravel path and along the pavement to the vehicle. The gutters were running, carrying leaves and twigs and acorns. In some dark tunnel, they would meet the sordid human litter of the city and go together to the cold slate bay.
It came to Cashin as they reached the car. ‘Be back in a sec,’ he said.
Mrs Laidlaw opened the door as if she’d been waiting behind it. He asked her.
‘Mark Kingston Denby,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘Just for the record.’
In the car, Cashin said, ‘The school. The expelled friend.’
THE DEPUTY headmaster was in his fifties, grey-suited, tanned and fit-looking like a cross-country skier. ‘School policy is that we do not disclose information about students or staff, past or present,’ he said. He smiled, snowy teeth.
‘Mr Waterson,’ said Cashin, ‘we’ll ruin your evening. We’ll be back inside an hour with a warrant and a truck to take away all your files. And who knows, the media might show up too. Can’t keep anything secret these days. So St Paul’s will be all over the television news tonight. The parents will like that, I’m sure.’
Waterson scratched his cheek, a pink square-cut nail. He wore a copper bracelet. ‘I’ll need to consult,’ he said. ‘Please excuse me a moment.’
Dove went to the office window. ‘Dusk on the playing fields,’ he said. ‘Like England.’
Cashin was looking at the deputy headmaster’s books. They all seemed to be about business management. ‘We fucked this thing up,’ he said. ‘So badly. I’m glad Singo’s not around to see it.’
‘Thank god it’s we,’ said Dove. ‘Imagine what it would be like to have fucked it up all by yourself. Even mostly.’
The door opened. ‘Follow me please, gentlemen,’ said Waterson. ‘I caught our legal adviser on her way home. She works here two days a week.’
They went down the corridor and into a big wood-panelled room. A dark-haired woman in a pinstriped suit was at the head of a table that could seat at least twenty.
‘Louise Carter,’ said Waterson. ‘Detective Cashin and Detective Dove. Please sit down, gentlemen.’
They sat. Carter looked at them in turn.
‘This school jealously guards the privacy of its community,’ she said. She was about fifty, a long face, taut skin around her eyes, a slightly startled look. ‘We don’t accede to requests for information unless requested to do so by the community family or the community family member concerned, if that person is in a position to make such a request. And, even then, we reserve the right to exercise our own judgment on acceding to any requests.’
‘You’ve got that written in your hand,’ said Dove. ‘I saw you look down.’
She was not amused.
‘The community family I’m talking about is in serious shit,’ said Cashin. ‘Just yes or no, we’re in a hurry.’
Carter moved her mouth. ‘You can’t bully St Paul’s, detective. Perhaps you don’t realise the position it occupies in this city.’
‘I don’t give a bugger either. We’ll crawl all over the place. Inside an hour. Believe me.’
She didn’t blink. ‘What is it you want to know about these students?’
‘Why Jamie Bourgoyne was kicked out as a boarder, the name of the friend he had here who was expelled and why.’
A head movement of refusal. ‘Not possible. Please understand that the Bourgoyne family has a long and close association with the school. I’m afraid we can’t…’
‘Don’t loosen your seatbelt,’ said Cashin. ‘We’ll be back soon. You might want to check the lippy, you’re going to be on television.’
Cashin and Dove stood.
‘Wait,’ said Waterson, getting up. ‘I think we can meet this request.’
He left the room and the woman followed him, heels clicking. There was a brief exchange outside and she came back and stood at a window. Then she sat down and there was silence until she coughed and said, ‘Have I seen you two on television?’
Cashin had his eyes on the big painting opposite, vertical bars of grey and brown. It reminded him of a jumper Bern wore, knitted by some old relative, a person with self-respect would compost it.
Once he would have wanted this woman to think well of him.
‘You may have seen me,’ said Dove. ‘I’m the undercover cop. Sometimes I have a beard.’
Waterson came in. He put two yellow folders on the table and sat. ‘I’ll deal with all your inquiries in a narrative,’ he said, businesslike. ‘Feel free to interrupt.’
The woman said, ‘David, can we…’
‘James Bourgoyne and a boy called Justin Fischer were in the same class and in the boarding house together,’ said Waterson.
He looked at the woman, at Cashin. ‘I feel compelled to say that I considered James to be a seriously disturbed young man. And Justin Fischer is the most dangerous boy I’ve encountered in my thirty-six years in education.’
The lawyer leaned forward. ‘David, there’s absolutely no call for this kind of candour. May I…’
‘What happened?’ said Cashin.
‘Among other things, they were suspected of lighting two fires. One burnt down a sports equipment store, the other was lit in the boarding house.’
‘David, please.’
‘Police matters,’ said Cashin.
‘The police were called in, of course,’ said Waterson, ‘but we didn’t pass on our suspicions and they could find nothing. Instead, we asked James’s step-father to remove him from the boarding establishment. This was an attempt to separate the pair.’
The lawyer held up her hands. ‘This may be the moment…’
‘In retrospect,’ said Waterson, ‘we should have told the police everything and expelled both students. In that order.’
The woman said, quickly, ‘David, before you say another word, I must insist that the headmaster be consulted.’
Waterson didn’t look at her, kept his eyes on Cashin. ‘Louise,’ he said, ‘the headmaster has the moral sense of Pol Pot. Let’s not now compound our earlier atrocious judgments.’
Cashin saw in the tanned man’s eyes the relief he had seen in people who were confessing to murder. ‘Go on,’ he said. He had the feeling now, the cough tickle in the mind.
‘After Bourgoyne left the boarding establishment,’ said Waterson, ‘there were hedge-burnings locally. Three or four, I can’t remember. Then in Prahran a boy, he was seven or eight, was taken to a quiet spot by two teenage boys and tortured. There’s no other word for it. It was brief and he wasn’t badly hurt but it was torture, sadism. One of our students came to us, he was a boarder, and he said he’d seen Bourgoyne and Fischer near the scene around the time.’
‘You told the police?’
‘To our eternal discredit, we did not.’
‘The student wasn’t told to go to the police?’
‘David,’ said the woman, ‘I must now advise you to…’
‘He was discouraged from doing so,’ said Waterson. ‘On instructions from the headmaster, I discouraged him.’
‘Is that the same as telling him not to?’ said Dove. ‘Discouraged?’
‘Pretty close,’ said Waterson. ‘We then expelled Bourgoyne and Fischer. That day. It was the only right and proper thing we did in all our dealings with the pair.’
‘I’d like copies of the files, please,’ said Cashin.
‘These are copies,’ said Waterson. He pushed them across the table.
‘Thank you,’ said Cashin. He got up and shook hands with Waterson. He didn’t look at the lawyer. ‘There won’t be any reason that I can see for us to mention the school.’