‘I thought she was just holding the stuff?’
Bern shrugged, looked away. ‘To be on the safe side,’ he said. ‘Can’t hurt, can it?’
Cashin knew there was no way out. Next he would be reminded of how Bern had risked death by jumping onto the back of mountainous, cretinous Terry Luntz and hung on like a chimp on a gorilla, choking the school bully with a skinny forearm until he relaxed his deadly squeeze.
‘What time’s she get back from school?’ Cashin said.
‘About four.’
‘I’ll come round one day, point out the dangers.’
‘You’re a good bloke, Joe.’
‘No, I’m not. I just don’t want to hear about fucking Terry Luntz again. He would’ve let me go.’
Bern smiled his sly, dangerous Doogue smile. ‘Never. Blue in the face, tongue stickin out the side of your mouth. You had fuckin seconds left.’
‘In that case, what took you so long?’
‘Prayin for guidance, mate. What excuse you cunts got for takin so long to catch our beloved Mr Charlie Bourgoyne’s killer?’
‘The victim’s not being squeezed by a fat boy. There’s no hurry. What’ve you got against Bourgoyne?’
‘Nothin. The local saint. Everyone loves Charlie. Rich and idle. You know my dad used to work there, Bourgoyne & Cromie? Charlie sold it out under em. Shot the fuckin horse.’
Cashin passed three vehicles on the way home, knew them all. At the last crossroads, two ravens pecking at vermilion sludge turned on him the judgmental eyes of old men in a beaten pub.
IT WAS darkening when Cashin reached home, the wind ruffling the trees on the hill, strumming the corrugated iron roof. He got the fire going, took out a six-pack of Carlsberg, put on L’elisir d’amore, Donizetti, sank into the old chair, cushion in the small of his back. Tired in the trunk, hurting in the pelvis, pains down his legs, he swallowed two aspirins with the first swig of beer.
Life’s short, son, don’t drink any old piss.
Singo’s advice, Singo always drank Carlsberg or Heineken.
Cashin sat and drank, stared at nothing, hearing Domingo, thinking about Vickie, about the boy. Why had she called him Stephen? Stephen would be nine now, Cashin could make the calculation, he knew the day, the night, the moment. And he had never spoken to him, never touched him, never been closer than twenty metres to him. Vickie would not bring him to the hospital when Cashin asked her to. ‘He’s got a father and it isn’t you,’ she said.
Nothing moved her.
All he wanted was to see him, talk to him. He didn’t know why. What he knew was that the thought of the boy ached in him like his broken bones.
At 7 pm, on the second beer, he put on the television.
In what is feared to be another drug underworld killing, a 50-year-old Melbourne accountant, Andrew Gabor, of Kew, was this morning shot dead in front of his fifteen-year-old daughter outside exclusive St Theresa’s girls’ school in Malvern.
Footage of a green BMW outside the school, men in black overcoats beside it. Cashin recognised Villani, Birkerts, Finucane.
Two gunmen fled the scene in a Ford Transit van, later found in Elwood.
A van being winched onto the police flatbed tow truck to be taken to the forensic science centre.
Police appealed to anyone who saw two men wearing dark clothing and baseball caps in the van or at or near the scene around 7.30 am to contact CrimeStoppers.
It is believed that police today questioned Mr Gabor’s nephew, Damian Gabor, a rave party and rock concert entrepreneur. In 2002, Mr Gabor was found not guilty of assaulting Anthony Metcalf, a drug dealer later found dead in a rubbish skip in Carnegie. He had been shot seven times.
On the monitor behind the news reader Cashin saw The Heights filmed from the television helicopter, vehicles all over the forecourt, the search of the grounds in progress.
Following another crime of violence, the seventy-six-year-old head of one of the state’s best-known families is tonight fighting for his life in an intensive-care unit after being brutally assaulted at his home outside Cromarty.
Charles Bourgoyne was this morning found near death in the sitting room of the family mansion. He was flown to King George’s Hospital by helicopter.
Mr Bourgoyne, noted for his philanthropy, is the son of Richard Bourgoyne, one of the founders of Bourgoyne & Cromie, legendary engine manufacturers. Charles Bourgoyne sold the family firm to British interests in 1976. His twin older brothers both died in World War II, one of them executed by the Japanese.
Homicide investigators believe Mr Bourgoyne, who was alone in the house, may have been the victim of a burglary turned vicious. Items of value are missing from the house.
Hopgood on camera, outside The Heights, wind moving his straight hair.
‘This is a savage attack on a much-loved and defenceless man.
We are committing all our resources to find those responsible for this terrible act and we appeal to anyone with information to come forward.’
King George’s Hospital tonight said that Mr Bourgoyne’s condition was critical.
Cashin reached for the envelope with the business statements from Cecily Addison. This has nothing to do with me, he thought. I’m the station commander in Port Monro, staff of four.
Old habits, curiosity. He started with the most recent statement. Then he heard the name.
Australia’s newest political party, United Australia, today elected lawyer and Aboriginal activist Bobby Walshe to lead it into the federal election.
Cashin looked at the television.
The new party, a coalition of Greens, Democrats and independents that has drawn support from disaffected Labor and Liberal supporters, will field candidates in all electorates.
Bobby Walshe appeared on camera. Handsome, sallow, hawk-nosed, just a hint of curl in his dark hair.
‘It’s a great honour for me to be chosen by so many dedicated and talented people to lead United Australia. This is a watershed day. From now on, Australians have a real political choice. The time when many Australians saw voting for one of the small parties as a waste of a vote are over. We’re not small. We’re not single-issue. We offer a real alternative to the tired, copycat policies of the two political machines that have dominated our political lives for so long.’
Bobby Walshe had been the smartest kid in Cashin’s class at primary school and that hadn’t stopped him being called a boong and a coon and a nigger.
The Bourgoyne payment statements didn’t make any sense. Cashin’s attention wandered, he put them back in the file, opened another drink and thought about what to eat.
THE HILL was lost in morning mist, a damp silence on the land. Cashin took a route towards the Corrigan boundary, visibility no more than thirty metres, the dogs appearing and disappearing, bounding patches of dark in the pale-grey world.
At the fence, there was a path, overgrown. He had walked it often as a boy, it was the direct way to the creek. In childhood memory, the creek was more like a river-broader, deeper, thrillingly dangerous in flood. The dogs were behind him when he made his way through the vegetation, crossed the puddles. On the other side, he whistled for them and they rushed by and led the way up the slope to the old Corrigan house.
Trespassing, Cashin thought.
The dogs had their heads down, a new place, new scents, interested-puzzled flicks of tails. He walked around the house, looked through the windows. Doors, skirting boards, floorboards, mantelpieces, tiles-all seemed intact. The place hadn’t been looted like Tommy Cashin’s ruined house. If there were new owners, they wouldn’t need to spend much to get it liveable.