He stood in the scorching day, the trucks howling by, buffeted by their winds, they flew his tie like a narrow battle standard.
There was nothing here. It had been a stupid impulse. Still, he walked across to the trees. As if decorated for some sad impoverished Christmas, they wore shiny chip packets and fast-food wrappings and one held a silver caffeine-drink can caught in its flight from a vehicle window.
Villani went to the fence, followed it for five or six metres, turned back, studying the trivial litter of a million passers-by, shallow-breathing the spent-fuel fumes.
His phone.
‘Dove… news…’
‘What?’
‘… our friend… morning…’
Looking at the ground, sightless, concentrating on hearing Dove against the booming of the highway, he said, ‘Dropping out, call you back.’
Focus came.
Cigarette pack? He moved it with the tip of his shoe, the dusty black brogue toecap of a shiny McCloud’s shoe.
Solid object.
Villani stooped, picked it up.
Plastic, gunmetal colour, cracked.
A mobile. Half a mobile, the front was missing.
Thirty, forty metres from the blast? Absolutely no chance whatsoever.
He walked to the Commodore, rocked by two fuel tankers travelling together, a concrete truck, a plastic plumbing pipecarrier, a tour bus, a jammed Merc looking for a way out, a double-B, all the highway horror.
In the car, he showed Birkerts the object. Birkerts moistened his lower lip. ‘Very nice. Resembles a mobile.’
A truck passed half a metre from Birkerts’ window.
‘Not saying it’s Kidd’s?’ he said.
‘No. Roadkill, that’s all.’
Birkerts started the Commodore. They waited to enter the bloodstream, classical music, Villani punched the button, familiar voice:
…the subject of a smear campaign. In the circumstances, I have suggested to the premier, and he agrees with my suggestion, that it is in the party’s and the government’s interest that I step down from my position as minister for infrastructure. That’s all I have to say at the moment. Thank you.
The woman said:
Well, that’s Stuart Koenig a few minutes ago announcing that he’s quit his ministerial post. Or been sacked. I lean towards the latter. Political reporter Anna Markham said on the First Light program this morning that Mr Koenig used the, um, services of a young woman of great interest to the police in connection with a murder and has since been interviewed by no less than the head of the Homicide Squad. And Mr Koenig has had his telephone records examined. Small birds say they make fascinating reading…
The pulse in his throat.
Anna Markham said…
She didn’t call him. She didn’t think she should tell him she was on the story. What was he to her, then? Nothing of any importance.
Villani rang Dove.
‘Hear the Koenig stuff?’
‘Yes, boss. That’s why I rang you. I heard Ms Markham earlier.’
‘Phipps. Bring him in. Now.’
‘Just been talking to his mother. He’s overseas. Been gone more than a month. Tracy’s checking that.’
The flat, barren place, the hard light, the rushing, growling trucks.
Oh Jesus. Conned.
Conned, stiffed. Boned, rolled.
‘Prosilio is now to be pursued until there is no rat hole left to go down,’ said Villani.
‘A change of mind?’ said Dove. ‘Would you say we’ve been used and abused?’
‘I’d say shut the fuck up.’
He did not know how Prosilio could be pursued, he did not know how to find a rat hole to send anyone down. He had done this so badly.
HCF.
No. Homicide had not come first.
They used a lot of water at Preston.
Four people?
Bomb it to Snake.
He said, for no good reason, ‘Let’s revisit Preston. Meet me there, Mr Dove.’
THEY STOOD in the passage, chlorine still in the air, the sickly scent.
‘Like coming home,’ said Dove. ‘My mum liked a clean house.’
‘Lucky you,’ said Villani. ‘I cleaned the house.’
‘Some say you still do that, boss.’
It took nearly half an hour to give up.
‘Too clean,’ said Dove. ‘Too clean. Should have seen that.’
They went out the front door and walked around to the back.
‘Got a smoke?’ said Villani.
They lit up. Villani sat on the back step. Dove went to the fence, began a strip walk, up and down.
‘Never thought it would be like this,’ he said.
Slow steps, eyes down, a man in a trance.
‘Be like what?’
‘Me and the head of Homicide in some fucked-over back yard in Preston.’
Dove stopped.
He kicked at what looked like a pile of rotting carpet underfelt.
He kicked at it again, in a fastidious way, moved a piece with his right shoe, moved another piece, another, kicked at the earth.
He bent to look at something.
His head came up, lenses sparked.
‘Manhole,’ he said. ‘Up recently.’
Villani crossed the yard.
A square steel cover, rusted, crusted with dirt.
‘Don’t think they’ve drained a septic around here since 1956,’
Dove said. The edges were clean.
‘What’s 1956?’
‘Shorthand for a long time ago,’ said Dove.
‘Tell Trace we want a man,’ said Villani. ‘With a crowbar. A 1956-type person.’
Three men came. They put on the gear to protect them from a toxic firestorm, one opened the manhole with a crowbar. He stood back.
The smaller man went to a big grey nylon bag and took out a yellow torch, big, a spotlight. He shone it down the hole, had to straddle the hole, he signed to his partner, who looked. They both stood back, the smaller one came over to Villani, offered the torch and a mask.
‘Look, boss?’ he said.
Villani took the torch, put on the mask, crossed the space, clicking the torch, the foul smell came through the barrier.
He leaned over the manhole, shone the light.
The spotlight lit the pit white, he saw something, couldn’t make out what it was.
Then he could.
A rat.
A rat inside a human skull.
Its scaly tail was twitching out of an eye socket.
Villani walked back. To Dove, he said, ‘Now we need the full fucking forensic catastrophe.’
In time, the big band arrived, three vehicles pulled in, formation driving, they liked to do that when they could. Villani watched them disembark, the heavy lifters, inured to decay, decomposition, they reached into places other people didn’t want to go to.
By late morning, the tapes were up, the street was a parking lot, the media had pitched camp, the helicopters had hung overhead. Sweating scalp, disappointed air, Moxley looked around the small, desperate landscape, the people in overalls, the car bodies, the enlarged hole in the ground
‘A female,’ said Moxley. ‘Youngish, I would hazard. The whole foul thing will have to be excavated.’
‘How recent?’ said Villani.
‘With rats involved, it can be hard to make a judgment. Months, years.’
‘No one’s ever going to question your rat judgment,’ said Villani.
‘Not Oakleigh-related this, is it?’
‘Who knows?’ said Villani. ‘We take a holistic view of the world. The whole foul thing.’
‘You wouldn’t know holistic from a hole in the ground,’ said Moxley.
‘Holes in the ground, I know. When’s this excavating start?’
‘As soon as it can be arranged.’
‘You’ll let me know if, and I say if, you ever learn anything?’
Moxley produced a tissue, blew his nose. ‘Which of your handpicked geniuses should we inform?’
Villani pointed. Dove was leaning against the fence, indolent, smoking, talking on his mobile.