‘I’ve got steak,’ said Cashin. ‘How’s that?’
‘That’ll do. The neighbour was here. Left something for you. Wrapped like a present.’
‘I need a present,’ said Cashin. ‘Long time since anyone gave me a present.’
‘Being alive’s a present,’ said Rebb. ‘Every minute of every hour of every day.’
IN THE late afternoon, Cashin took the dogs. They put up the first hares close to the house, the creatures grown bold in their absence. Then, in the meadow, they interrupted a communion of rabbits. The dogs ran themselves to exhaustion, put not a tooth on fur.
At the creek, the dogs strode in, got wet to the shoulder, stood in holes, scrambled, alarmed. Cashin got wet too, up to the knees, water inside his boots. He didn’t care, slopped up the hill, thinking about what he should do. In the end, he didn’t have to make a decision, he saw her coming down the slope from her house.
They met at the corner post, Rebb’s corner post, said hello. She looked thinner, better looking than he remembered.
‘They’re tired,’ she said. ‘What’ve you done to them?’
He summoned up saliva to speak. ‘Unfit,’ said Cashin. ‘Too fat, too slow. Spoilt. That’s going to change.’
‘How are you, Joe?’
‘Fine. I’m fine. Flesh wound. Plus I’m really brave and I never complain.’
Helen shook her head. ‘I wanted to come and see you but I thought…well, I don’t know what I thought. I thought you’d be surrounded by your family and your cop friends.’
The dogs took off, talk was boring, they wanted action.
‘Good thinking,’ said Cashin. ‘That’s the way it was, night and day. They worked shifts, family, cop friends, family.’
‘You prick. See Bobby Walshe on television?’
‘No.’
‘He said you and Dove deserved medals.’
‘For stupidity? I don’t think they’ve got that.’
Helen shook her head. ‘And the news about the resort?’
‘No.’
‘Erica Bourgoyne decided not to sell the Companions camp to Fyfe. She’s giving it to the state to be part of the coastal reserve. So there’s no access to the mouth and the whole resort project collapses.’
Cashin thought about the seat in the Companions hall, Erica in her office, the marks of tears on her cream silk shirt, the sobbing. She hadn’t watched them torture Pollard, that wasn’t right. Who had sat there?
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Leaves you free to concentrate on winning the election.’
‘I’m counting on getting at least one cop vote.’
‘Depends on a number of things falling into place. But we cops aren’t allowed to talk politics.’
‘Allowed to drink?’
‘My liver is in near-new condition. Nothing to do for weeks.’
They looked at each other, he broke away, saw the dusk in the creek hollow, the treetops moving on the hill. ‘I always meant to ask. When did your dad die?’
‘In 1988. He didn’t take a bend on the coast road. The year after we finished school. Why?’
‘Nothing. He signed Bourgoyne’s wife’s death certificate.’
‘Signed hundreds, I imagine.’
‘Yes.’
‘So. Come up for a drink? I could feed you.’
‘Is that party pies?’
‘We didn’t get around to them last time.’
‘Feed these beasts first,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back.’
‘Don’t get waylaid,’ she said.
‘Waylaid. I’ve never heard anyone say that word.’
‘You’re a work in progress,’ she said. ‘There are words to come.’
He set off up the rise, legs like logs, whistled the dogs, and he looked back and she had not moved, she was watching him.
‘Go home,’ he shouted. ‘Why don’t you just go home and put on the party pies.’
He woke lying on his side. Above the window blind was a line of daylight, the colour of smoke. He could feel her warmth against him and then she stirred and he felt her breath on the skin between his shoulderblades and then her lips moved against his spine, and then she pressed them to him and she kissed. The world opened, the day began, he felt that he was alive again, forgiven.
‘JOE?’
‘Yes.’
‘Carol Gehrig. Early for you?’
‘No.’
‘Joe, this is rubbish but last night, had a few wines, it came into me head.’
‘What?’
‘There was chockie wrappers in the bin a few times. Twice.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, he didn’t eat em,’ Carol said. ‘Nothin sweet in the place. Didn’t even have sugar in his tea.’
‘You saw chocolate wrappers in the kitchen bin?’
‘Not the kitchen bin. The big one outside. Saw em when I put the stuff in. Mars bars and that shit.’
‘Well, someone staying?’
‘No. Not then.’
‘Twice?’
‘Well, I remember twice. Wastin your time with rubbish?’
Rebb came into sight, coming home from Den’s cows, a dog on each flank, looking around like bodyguards, alert for assassins hiding in the grass.
‘Never,’ he said. ‘Any idea when?’
‘I know the one, it was Kirstie’s birthday the day before and I’d had this…anyhow, the day. A Monday, twenty-three seven and it’s 1988. That’s for sure. Yes.’
23.07.88.
‘Interesting,’ said Cashin. ‘Think about the other time. A month would help, a year. Even winter or summer.’
‘I’ll think.’
They said goodbye and he stayed where he was, in his mind the image of Bourgoyne’s nine pots, all the pieces the perfectionist had thought worth keeping. Into the base of one was scratched a date: 11/6/88.
Was that the day it was made? Could you upturn a newly-thrown pot that size and scratch a date on the bottom? Or did that come later?
He went to the telephone, looked at it for a while, thinking about being upstairs in the old brick building at The Heights, looking back and registering the bolt on the bedroom door.
If you walked up the hill on a night when the kiln was burning, you would hear it before you saw it-it would be a powerful sound, a vibrating, a thrumming. And when you rounded the woodpile, you would see the fire holes glowing white hot, they would light the clearing, and you would feel on your face the force of the sea wind that was blowing into the kiln’s mouth.
He dialled the direct number. It rang and rang and then Tracy answered, more reprimand than greeting.
‘It’s Joe,’ he said. ‘Do me a favour, Trace. Kids missing in June, July, 1988. Boys.’
‘No end to it,’ she said.
‘Not on this earth.’
A morning of sunlight on the round winter hill, above it cloud strands fleeing inland, and the wind on the long grass, annoying it, strumming it.
A bark at the door, another, more urgent, the dogs taking turns. He let them in and they surrounded him and he was glad to have them and to be there.
Peter Temple
A five-time winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction, Peter Temple is Australia’s most acclaimed crime and thriller writer. He lives in Victoria, Australia.
