The small person had been sick, expelled the contents of her stomach, not much, a cup of white liquid, it lay on the cobblestones around her white face.
Lizzie’s face was dirty and there was a little sore under her left eye, she’d been scratching at it.
‘OD, boss,’ said the cop.
Villani knelt and, without thought, touched the child’s forehead with his lips, it was cold.
He stood and looked at the man against the wall, head back, knees up, all in black, a black leather cap, dreadlocks hanging from it. He had small triangles, squares and circles tattooed on his cheekbones, a Maltese cross between his eyebrows, barbed wire across his throat, under the Adam’s apple.
His eyes were closed.
He had an iPod plugged into his ear.
A rage blocked Villani’s ears, his nose, made him feel weightless and enlarged, he took the steps, and he kicked the man in his fork, it was not worth it, it was like kicking a bag of wheat.
‘He’s dead, boss,’ said the woman. ‘He’s dead.’
Villani turned towards the lane entrance and the spotlight went out and he could see them: Birkerts and Dove and Finucane and Tomasic.
Birkerts came forward, touched his arm. ‘Want me to tell Laurie?’ he said.
Villani straightened, cleared his throat. ‘That’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘Mate.’
He walked to the group, biting his lip, they said nothing, parted for him, patted him, touched him. They had come out in the night because he meant something to them, that was not something he expected. Finucane followed him.
‘Where to, boss?’ he said.
‘I’ll just go home.’
‘That’s home as in…’
‘As in Fitzroy.’
‘Ah, don’t know if it’s good for you to be alone, boss,’ Finucane said. ‘Don’t think so. No.’
‘Let me do the thinking, son. You drive.’
Finucane drove him back to Fitzroy, walked to the door with him.
‘I could just come in, sit around,’ he said. ‘In case you wanted to…whatever. Yeah. Just sort of be there.’
‘Go home, detective,’ said Villani. ‘I don’t need anyone sitting around just sort of being there. I’m fine.’
In the apartment, he felt compelled to shower, stood in the waterfall for a long time, listened to the landline ringing, let it ring out.
When he was about to pour whisky into a tumbler, the ringing began again. He could not ignore it.
‘Villani.’
‘It’s me.’ Laurie. In the two words, he could hear that she had been crying.
‘Hi.’
‘Stephen, I have to tell you…’
She choked, could not speak. He waited.
‘What?’
‘She rang about two hours ago and left a message. I was out and…’
She stopped again. He waited.
‘She was crying. She said you never did anything to her. Never touched her. She said they told her to say it.’
Villani felt rage rise in him again. ‘Who’s they?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what she said.’
Silence, Laurie sniffed, coughed.
‘Stephen, do you want…would you like, would you like to come home?’
‘Not now,’ said Villani. ‘Corin there?’
‘Yes. Tony’s coming home, he’s getting a…’
‘Good. I’ll call you tomorrow. Got something to take? To sleep?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Well. Goodnight.’
‘I can’t…’
‘Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow.’
‘Steve, I can’t say how…’
‘You believed her,’ he said. ‘You thought I was capable of it.’
‘You have to…’
‘Tomorrow. Goodnight.’
He went back to the kitchen, poured half a glass of whisky, took it to the sofa he had slept on earlier. He sipped and a tear ran down his nose. He began to weep. For a while, he wept in silence and then he began to sob, softly at first, and then louder and louder.
It came to him that he had never cried out loud in his life. It was as if he were singing for the first time.
After a while, he pulled up his legs, lay on his back. He fell asleep as if clubbed, slept through the remainder of the night, woke with wet cheeks.
IN THE morning, when Villani was walking around aimlessly, trying not to smoke, Birkerts rang.
‘Downstairs,’ he said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Thinking breakfast.’
Villani wanted to say no but that would only postpone things. You had to carry on. Bob’s saying: Who speaks of victory? To carry on is all.
Villani asked him who said that. ‘Some German,’ said Bob.
Now Villani said, ‘Just don’t talk about it.’
They went to Enzio’s. It was too early for the locals, only the clean-living and the unclean-living survivors of the night were out.
‘Listen,’ said Birkerts. ‘I was thinking about Geelong yesterday and I thought about Cameron’s son. After that Noske killed himself, what happened then?’
‘There wasn’t anywhere left to go,’ said Villani. ‘Noske was it. Never going to trial, mark you. Not unless he sung. Also I suppose when Cameron quit and then Deke Murray quit, there wasn’t a driver, other things came along.’
‘The idea was Noske by himself?’
‘Mad loner, nobody would have helped him.’
Some questions about that cold night in the valley were never answered. The overturned furniture, the broken crockery, the arterial gushes, the cast-off bloodstains from the weapon, the impact splatters, the bloody shoeprints, they all suggested Dave Cameron trying to fight back against one person hacking at him with a big knife or a sword. Then he was shot in the body twice with an unknown weapon and three times in the head with his own service weapon.
But what was Cameron’s girlfriend doing while this was happening? Nothing said she had been bound before being shot in the head, three times, with Dave’s weapon. But it was possible she had been: she had just come from the cycle track, she was a champion cyclist, she was in full lycra. It would stop her being marked.
‘So the Ribs were in Geelong and you thought…’
‘I have these brain episodes,’ said Villani. He was eating mechanically. He needed food, he didn’t want it.
‘Pardon, absolution and remission of sins,’ said Birkerts. ‘I like the principle. Now that is clout. That is having the grip.’
The fork was almost at Villani’s mouth.
Colby’s story that Friday night long ago in the Robbers’ offices, the beers out, air grey with smoke. About two Broady boys brought in years before, brothers, Coogan, Cooley, some such. They had done a drive-in bottleshop in Johnson Street, waited until a kid, a student, was pulling down the door, gone in under it like crocodiles, bashed the two workers, homemade knuckledusters, opened their faces, broke noses, cheekbones, kicked the one senseless.
Now, in the spartan Robbers’ quarters, the brothers had their turn to know terror. After a while, Colby said, the older one, thinking he was going to die there, expressed a willingness to confess.
He gets them to kneel and say we’re so fucking sorry. And then he says, relax boys. May the almighty and merciful God grant you pardon, absolution and remission of your sins. And they look a bit relieved. Then he says, because almighty God might forgive you. But not me, boys. I’m going to kill you, you miserable little arseholes.
Villani remembered the laughing, they were mostly proddies, the Robbers was a proddy stronghold. Kneeler Robbers had to be special men, they needed hard shells, they had to give it back in spades.
‘Father Donald,’ said Colby. ‘He made them call him Father Donald.’
Received 02.49: WHAT?
Sent 02.50: SOON.
Received 03.01:?????
Sent 03.04: GOING IN.
Sent 03.22: OTU BANZAI OK
No. It wasn’t ‘OK’.