Villani remembered the silence, Mark and Luke behind him, pressing on him, their hands, his father looking at the men, his father taking a drag on the smoke, blowing a single ring, perfect, it grew in the still autumn air, it hung, it rolled.
And then his father flicked his cigarette past Collings’ face, missed by a hand span, and he said the words, ‘Maybe you’d like to settle it now, Mr Collings? Why don’t you step back a bit, then you can both have a go.’
A few moments, then Collings said, ‘Give you your fucken chance,’ and the men walked off. In the truck, the father shouted, ‘Fuck you!’
A wheel spin, it sent up dust.
Heart beating in his throat, Villani said to Bob, ‘Would you’ve done that?’
‘What?’
‘Fight them both.’
Bob looked at him, the little smile. ‘My word,’ he said.
For weeks, alone with the boys, Villani froze every time he heard a vehicle. But they never came, the men and the dogs, they never came.
DRIVING BENEATH the cliffs, the dark still high on the city walls, blocking the lanes, the doorways, held in the street trees, Villani kept an eye out for Lizzie, glancing down the alleys. He was being a cop, cops didn’t see the world like other people. They saw everything and everyone as suspicious until proved to be otherwise.
Two boys crossing the street, baggy clothes, the smaller one was limping, the other one had his hood up. How old? Ten, twelve, not much more? In the CBD at dawn. Where had they slept? They were like foxes, both hunters and prey.
He thought about himself at twelve. He knew many things by then, but he knew little of the intimate physical world of adults, he had only glimpsed the violence. Now, some children that age had seen every last sexual thing, every thrusting sucking beating strangling act, they had seen violence of every kind. Nothing was strange or shocking, they were innocent of trust, honesty, virtue.
What they had was existence in all its careless, joyless horror.
Lizzie. Chucked away her home, the comfort, her mother’s love. For what? Did she not grasp how precious was a mother’s love?
Bob gave Villani the letter on a Sunday not long after fetching him and Mark from Stella Villani’s house and taking them to the farm. It was written in ballpoint on thin paper with pale-blue lines torn from an exercise book.
My dearest boys,
I am writing to tell you how much I love you and how much I miss you. I have been ill for a long time but I am feeling a lot better now. Soon I hope to be home with you. Please be good and work hard at school. My darling Stephen, you must take great care of my darling Mark. Tell your Dad if there is anything he should know about from school. Remember that I love you always and forever.
Your Mum.
For the first time, Villani asked his father the question.
‘Dad, what kind of illness has Mum got?’
Bob looked away. ‘Something wrong in the brain,’ he said. ‘They don’t know exactly what.’
Villani never asked about her again. He folded the letter and put it in his tin toffee box under the two photographs of his mother. He never read it again and he never forgot a word of it.
Going east on Victoria Parade. Too much thinking about what you couldn’t change. He should be with Bob, waiting for the fire, the two of them, they would not say much, think about what was undone, what was always beyond doing.
You could truck the horses out, you could try to save the house, the farm buildings. But their forest. If the flames came over the northern hill, if the wind blew the superheated air down the valley, you could not save the forest. Every leaf would shrivel, the eucalypts would explode. Once it was thought they were born to burn and live again. Jesus trees, Bob used to call them. But that was before Black Saturday. They would die too and take everything with them. The oaks, the understorey, every last living creature. Marysville, Kinglake, nothing was the same after that, you could never think of fire in the old way again.
He turned into Hoddle Street, light traffic, people beating the jam, start early, leave early, the tollway gave the car slaves a few minutes of pleasure, they cruised along at a hundred, then they hit the wall, crawled into the CBD. The city badly needed Max Hendry’s AirLine.
He remembered the square envelope, delivered to the desk downstairs on Tuesday. One thick creamy page.
Victoria Hendry,
Capernaum,
Coppin Grove, Hawthorn
Dear Stephen,
It was such a pleasure to meet you the other night. If you can make the time, Max and I would love to have you over for the Hendry Friday barbie. (It’s a bit of a summer tradition, just a few people around the pool, kicking off around six.)
We’ll expect you when we see you. Do come.
Best,
Vicky H.
Villani saw the public swimming pool, glanced at the spot on the other side of the road where, from behind a billboard on a cold evening in 1987, a young misfit, sacked army cadet, a little knot of incoherent rage, began to fire on the passing traffic. He hit a windscreen, the woman driver stopped, puzzled, got out. He shot her. Cars stopped and two men ran to her. Villani remembered the interrogation.
The first one fell onto the road, and then the second one, I don’t know where, where he came from, but I dropped him as well.
Now, did they appear to be dead, when you…?
The one that fell back on the road wasn’t.
What happened then?
Oh, I let off another two rounds.
For what purpose?
Finish her off.
They were leaving a house in Footscray, he and Dance, when the call came.
…all units, all units, we have shots fired and bodies down, possible fatal. Repeat, several shots fired and the offender still on the loose, any unit in a position to attend the Clifton Hill railway station…
By the time they got there, the shooter was gone, Hoddle Street looked as if it had been strafed, cars everywhere, a motorbike on its side, seven people dead or dying, nineteen wounded.
For a while, no one could believe it was the work of one shooter, the radio spread alarm, householders panicked, the helicopter chopped over the law-abiding streets of North Fitzroy, its spotlight turned night to yellow day, the SOGs ran through houses in full combat gear, a woman later made a claim for a broken vase.
And then it was over, the worthless creature had given himself up, shouting, Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, terrified.
Villani took the turn for Rose’s suburb, stopped at a newsagent and bought the papers, read them in the car.
The Herald Sun front page had pictures of Kidd and Larter, mug shots, the lagophthalmic psycho child-molester serial-killer look all men had when their driver’s licence photographs were enlarged six hundred per cent.
EX-COPS DID TORTURE KILLINGS
The writer, Bianca Pearse, convicted the men of Oakleigh. A run-through, her police sources said. Renegade ex-SOGs ripping off vicious armed robbers, torturing and killing them for fun. Probably drug-fuelled. Searle had worked her over on the high-speed pursuit. No police vehicle near, driver lost control, so they killed themselves. A good outcome all round, really, world a better place.
Tony Ruskin’s Age story ran across the bottom of the front page, same pictures.