‘And the Prado?’
‘Bought in a yard a year ago. Car City. He traded in a Celica, balance cash.’
‘Well, let’s have a look then.’
Birkerts made a call. ‘They’re on the way.’
They had just parked behind the building in Roma Street when the van drew up. Two men in overalls got out, took two black rubber cases from the back. Birkerts led the way upstairs.
Kidd’s unit was stifling, the heat amplifying trapped cooking smells: fried onions, meat. Passing the bathroom, Villani smelled talcum powder. He hadn’t smelled it on the night.
‘Talcum powder?’ he said. ‘Men?’
‘Jock itch,’ said Birkerts.
They went into the big room. One tech took the device out of its case, it was like a big fox-hunting spotlight but blind. He ran a hand over it.
‘Fond of it?’ said Birkerts. ‘Like a pet?’
The man said nothing, unclipped a tight coil of yellow cable. On the kitchen bench, the other man opened his case, a computer monitor in the lid.
Villani left, looked into Kidd’s disordered room, moved on, opened the sliding door to the back bedroom. No more than a big cupboard with its own built-in cupboard.
Ray Larter slept here. In the built-in, a pair of denims on a wire hanger. He found the labeclass="underline" waist 34, leg 44. A tall man and slim, Ray Larter. His sports bag had been on the floor beside the bed, it told little-T-shirts, underpants, clear toilet bag with toothpaste, disposable razors, tube of shampoo. Ray was neat, unlike Kidd.
Villani thought about his father’s bare bedroom on a Monday morning, bed stripped, blankets on the line, sheets and dirty clothes in the machine.
He went down the passage and onto the balcony, looked down at the street, the trees, a woman in a tight red skirt standing beside a parked car, talking to the driver. She sucked a cigarette, waved it. A hand came out of the window, she passed the cigarette, the taker flicked it into the street. She slapped at the hand, missed.
Anna.
She came to mind in all the interstices of the day, other women had not done that, not since the early days with Laurie. What did she see in him? Some women had the cop thing, early on in the job you heard the stories, the jokes. There was truth in them. Even the ugly cops got the chances, the eyes, the offers. He was clean there, he never went back to a single-mother’s place to see if everything was all right, part of the service to give you a fuck. Comforting fuck.
On the job, something always said No. It was when he was not on business that something said Yes.
The Herald Sun’s crime journo got off on cops. Bianca Pearse. Bianca wasn’t a starfucker though. Just as soon root a constable as a commissioner. Just a copfucker. Birkerts had been there, he was pretty sure of that.
It didn’t feel like a cop thing. Anna didn’t ask questions about the job, they always did. She seemed interested in what he thought, happy to be with him.
This was pathetic. He was too old to let this take him over. This was for your twenties, when an ignorant country dork could be flattered if Miss-Private-School-My-Father’s-an-Investment-Banker took a fancy to him.
He looked at Kidd’s barbecue in the corner of the balcony. Narrow, rusty, the grill crusted with charred grease and tiny welded-on lumps of meat. Not the Ozzie Grillmaster Turbo. Did they have a barbie on the night? Few beers, burn a couple of steaks, press them, see the pricks of blood, then the watery red ooze. Did they talk about what they were going to do to the Ribaric boys? Talk about lighting the Ribs’ hair, first the pubic. Full of oil, it would frizzle.
Then the hair on their heads. But first slit their nostrils. Then light the hair on their heads.
Hair full of chemical shit. Product. Click the lighter in Ivan’s face. Look in his eyes. Take a moment. Enjoy it. Lift the flame over his forehead. Slowly.
Whoosh.
Under the gas burner sat a foil tray, half-full of fat set solid, grey, mottled like marble, the drippings from the burning altar above.
Birkerts came out, hands in pockets.
‘Well, bedrooms clean,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t leave much.’
The techs came into the kitchen, had a discussion. The shorter one shrugged, knelt and pointed his device at the side of the kitchen bench. The other one looked at the laptop screen.
‘You can see why they joined,’ said Birkerts. ‘Adrenalin junkies.’
‘Kirsten’s place,’ Villani said.
‘Got the keys in my car.’
‘Take me around when you knock off?’
‘I think I’ll just give you the keys,’ said Birkerts.
They smoked Birkerts’ cigarettes, watched the techs go around the kitchen bench. When they’d finished, the taller one came out.
‘Nothing, boss,’ he said. ‘Anywhere else?’
‘Check around the bath?’ said Villani.
‘Yup.’
‘Bugger,’ said Villani.
‘That’s it,’ said Birkerts. ‘Thank you.’
The men packed up, snapped their cases, waved, left.
THEY WERE on their way to Oakleigh, passing the Albert cricket ground.
‘What’s the rent?’ said Villani.
He didn’t care. He had not lived alone since he was twenty-two. This was a bad time to change that. He and Laurie had always slept in the same bed. When all was gone and lost, when they no longer touched, they still shared a bed. The last person in it made it, that was the rule, from the start.
He often dreamed about sex with Laurie. She was always the same age, the quick-handed girl in the sandwich shop who layered the basics on the white slice, the slivered iceberg strands, the pale discs of tomato, the bleeding beetroot, the square of factory cheese, the cheeky girl who looked at him and said, ‘What else can I give you?’
The first sex with Laurie was on her friend Jan’s futon. Laurie picked him up after his shift, they ate at the Waiters’ Club, the small rooms packed with the late-night hungry, and went to the student house in Clifton Hill. It smelled of dope, that made him uneasy.
‘Pay the bills, that’ll do,’ said Birkerts. ‘Left two weeks ago. I said I’d clean out the fridge. Be full of rotten stuff. You can do that.’
‘How long’s she gone?’
‘Six months, she says. There’s a new man, some mystical lawyer arse she met in Byron Bay. At a wellbeing spa.’
‘Wellbeing spa,’ said Villani. ‘Just trips off your tongue, doesn’t it? What the fuck is wellbeing?’
‘Respect your body. Think positive thoughts. Live in the moment.’
‘What if the moment is absolutely shit?’ Villani said. ‘What if you have no respect for your flabby fucked-out body? What’s the other one?’
‘Positive thoughts,’ said Birkerts, eyes on the road. ‘You think positive thoughts. I don’t think you’re thinking positive thoughts now. At this moment. I feel that.’
‘How wrong can your pathetic instincts be?’ said Villani. ‘I’m thinking positive thoughts about finding the gun. I’m thinking if we don’t then my whole…’
It came to him.
‘Turn around,’ he said. ‘Back to Kidd’s.’
Birkerts said nothing. He turned right on Roy Street, right again on Queens Road. They were turning into Kidd’s street before he spoke.
‘Forget something?’ he said.
‘Remembered something,’ said Villani. ‘Park in front.’
Birkerts parked. ‘Need me?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Villani. ‘Gloves?’
‘Like that, is it?’
Villani went in first, down the passage, into the sitting room, waited for Birkerts.
‘Put on the gloves,’ he said.
‘Me?’
‘I don’t do this kind of thing. I’m the boss.’
The rubber gloves made the whispering, hissing sound, Birkerts held up pale blue hands. ‘What?’ he said.
Villani went onto the balcony. Birkerts followed. Villani pointed.