People drifted over, introduced themselves, all connected with Hendry enterprises, many of them to the AirLine project. They knew who he was, a new experience for Villani and it did not displease him.
‘Alice, meet Stephen Villani.’
She was north of sixty, overweight, red hair, dyed.
‘Alice is called Max’s secretary,’ said Vicky. ‘They have a thirty-year history. I had to be approved by Alice.’
‘Calculating bitch was my view,’ said Alice. ‘But he wouldn’t listen.’
‘And for not listening he pays every day of his life,’ said Villani.
The women laughed and Vicky put a fist against his chest in a mock-punch, pressed, he felt her knuckles, she kept them there the extra half-second and he knew it was flirting, Alice knew it, Vicky knew it.
‘Where is he?’
‘On his way back from Canberra we hope,’ said Vicky. ‘He’s been talking to the federal government about AirLine.’
Time passed, laughter, Spanish music, he felt easier than he had for, he couldn’t remember how long. He drank beer, they moved to a trestle table, platters of kebabs came, bowls of salad, bottles of red and white. Around him the talk was of politics, all sides represented, of the shrunken economy, the endless fires, films, holidays, current events, how bad the media were.
At some signal, Vicky left him and reappeared with Max Hendry, jacketless, tieless, white shirt with sleeves rolled up. He had a big arm around his wife.
Shouts.
About bloody time, mate.
Security, there’s a gatecrasher.
Show us the money, Maxie.
Hendry put up his hands.
‘You bloody freeloaders,’ he said.
Applause.
‘So you know where I’ve been today,’ he said. ‘Talked to the bastards, six hours. Never met so many dumb people. But we reckon we’ve finally got it through their thick heads that any alternative that takes traffic off clogged roads is bloody national infrastructure.’
Cheers, clapping.
‘Now that is a small step for the dickheads but it’s a big, big step for mankind. Which is our cause.’
More cheers, whistles. Max did a boxer clasp, he said, ‘Get your snouts back in the trough, you animals.’
Vicky took her seat beside Villani. They watched Max patting shoulders, kissing cheeks, shaking hands, a loved ruler returning from exile.
‘They like him,’ said Villani.
She was silent. Max got to them, shook Villani’s hand.
‘Thanks for coming, mate,’ he said. ‘My dear lady’s looked after you?’
A waiter offered food, Max said he’d eaten. The barman came with beaded Coopers, uncapped two.
Max drank from the bottle. He let the world return to pre-Max, told stories about meetings with the prime minister, the treasurer, the federal transport minister.
He asked Villani questions, Villani had the feeling Max knew the answers, knew everything about him.
The dark crept across the space, the guests thinned, everyone saying their thanks, joking with the Hendrys. Villani made to leave. Max put a hand on his shoulder.
‘No, no, Steve, stay. Coffee. Quiet Friday nightcap.’
When Vicky had gone to see the last guests off, they moved to the terrace, to big wooden chairs. A smiling silver-haired woman in black brought coffee, chocolates, a bottle of cognac, balloon glasses.
Max poured. Before them lay the dark garden running to the river and then the city and its towers standing in their illuminated self-esteem.
‘Cigar?’ said Hendry. ‘I shouldn’t but I might regress. Good word, regress. Sounds like regret, which comes after regressing.’
‘I might regress with you,’ said Villani.
Hendry left, came back with two cigars and a silver spike, pierced the dark cylinders, handed one over, a box of kitchen matches.
‘Thank God for Cuba,’ he said. ‘Cuba and France.’
They lit up. The smoke hung in the air.
Below them, paw prints of light came on, walking in big strides down to the river.
Villani picked up his glass, he was mellow. The light from portholes in the paving made the cognac a dark honey-gold. Something was coming from Hendry, you knew.
‘I want to ask you,’ said Hendry. ‘Bit of a nerve, really. Ever consider another line of work?’
Villani said, ‘Cop is all I know.’
‘Not exactly on the beat now,’ said Hendry.
‘I’ve got what I hear is called a restricted skill set. I copied my bosses, they copied theirs.’
‘That can work,’ said Hendry, ‘if you don’t copy something flawed. Then the copies get worse in every generation.’
‘That’s what I’m saying,’ said Villani. ‘I’m several generations flawed. The object will soon be unusable.’
He said it without thinking, drink taken, and he knew it was true. He was a blurred facsimile of Cameron, Colby and Singo. And, to begin with, he was a bad copy of Bob Villani. The looks, the height, the hair, the hands, they were accurate. But all the failings, all the imbalances, they were amplified: the selfishness, the faithlessness, the blindness, the urges, the rutting instinct.
All the worst bits.
But the spine, the guts, the courage, that went the other way. Those things that were large in Bob, they were stunted in his firstborn son.
Max laughed, small plosives.
‘You just saying that, it confirms my instincts,’ he said. ‘I like clever people, I can spot them a long way away. That’s really all I’m smart at. If my old man had been a garbo, I’d be labouring on a building site.’
They smoked, sipped, the cognac fumes filled the nose.
Vicky came out.
‘Rascals at play,’ she said. ‘Much as I’d love to sit around drinking cognac and smoking a fat cigar,’ she said, ‘I’m not joining you. Exhausted. I’d say knackered if I wasn’t such a lady.’
Villani stood and said his thanks. She squeezed his arms and kissed him half on his lips. He caught the musk of her perfume through the cigar smoke.
‘Our pleasure, Steve,’ she said. ‘You’re now a member of the Friday mob. By popular demand, I have to say. Also you must come to the valley for a weekend. I’ll send an invite.’
She passed behind Max’s chair, stopped, bent to kiss his forehead. ‘I know it’s difficult, darling, but try to get to bed before dawn.’
‘Excellent judge of character, this woman,’ said Hendry. ‘Only one mistake to date. But back to the point.’
‘I’ve forgotten it.’
Hendry blew a fat rolling smoke ring. ‘Learned to do that at school,’ he said. ‘All I remember from school. Anyway, no point buggering around, I want to offer you a job. Large job.’
‘You need a bad copy of some dead cop?’ said Villani.
‘An operations chief for Stilicho. I gather you know about Stilicho. Bloody monstrous meltdown at the casino but that’s teething stuff.’
The publicity people wanted something they could use. Senior police officer. What was needed was a dull prick to organise rosters, check on the bored, underpaid people who checked on other bored underpaid people who checked locks, identity cards, airless 3am rooms, lavatories.
‘I don’t think I’m cut out for security,’ Villani said. ‘But thank you.’
Hendry said, ‘Don’t be so quick, mate. Not some executive-bouncer job I’m talking about.’
A mind-reader.
A hot north-west wind on their faces, another blocking system was idling out in the southern ocean. Two long valleys ran from the north-west towards Selborne, the main road down one of them. The fire would come as it came to Marysville and Kinglake on that February hell day, come with the terrible thunder of a million hooves, come rolling, flowing, as high as a twenty-storey building, throwing red-hot spears and fireballs hundreds of metres ahead, sucking air from trees, houses, people, animals, sucking air out of everything in the landscape, creating its own howling wind, getting hotter and hotter, a huge blacksmith’s reducing fire that melted humans and animals, detonated buildings, turned soft metals to silver flowing liquids and buckled steel.