Truth

by Peter Temple

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.

  Elite cops link to torture killings

  Ruskin knew much more about the careers of Kidd and Larter than he should. He said Larter had been involved in a covered-up incident in Afghanistan where four civilians were killed. He was also up to speed on the Ribarics and Vern Hudson, suggested that they’d been betrayed by other filth. It couldn’t have been done without Ordonez. But Ruskin had always had a better class of leaker, he was on a quality drip. In parliament someone once said his father Eric had not only been the minister for police, he was also the minister for the police, to the police, up and under and behind and on top of the police.

  Without saying so, Ruskin suggested the Homicide Squad had done a remarkable job in identifying the Oakleigh killers. Unspecified acts of personal bravery by Homicide officers followed. The death crash meant the squad, through no fault of its own, was cheated of seeing the killers in court.

  Barry, Gillam and Orong would be pleased. Now all that was needed was a weapon.

  Rose Quirk’s street was jammed with cars, he had to park a block away, walked down the street, having a little squiz. Rose was on her verandah, pink tracksuit.

  ‘Stickyin,’ she said. She drank tea out of a glass beer mug. ‘Where the hell you bin?’

  ‘Few things on,’ said Villani. He opened the gate, closed it, the latch needed fixing. ‘Going all right?’

  ‘All right’s history, mate. Back’s gone. Had this massage, the cow touched somethin, musta learnt the trade on horses. Pain like you never seen. Into me head, down me legs.’

  In the beginning, Rose’s street was mostly pensioners, everything spent on rent, cigarettes, the pokies, living on mince and battery-chicken pieces, the single mothers ringing for pizzas, drugging their children with sugar and salt, Coke, barbecue chips and chemical ice cream. Then one day Villani took notice and the street was Location, Location, Renovator’s Opportunity.

  The cars changed. The rusting Commodores, Falcons, faded Renaults and Jap cars, all with skun tyres and chipped windscreens, coat-hanger aerials, wrecking-yard doors the wrong colour, all standing in oil stains that flashed iridescent on rainy days, they gave way to Subarus, VWs, Saabs, Volvos.

  On a day, Villani counted twelve tradesmen’s utes and seven skips in the narrow street, the bins overloaded with ripped-out carpets and lino, baths, sinks, shower stalls, formica-topped kitchen cabinets, plastic light fittings, cattledog-brown gas heaters, embossed purple wallpaper, torn sheets of fibreboard, chipboard cupboards, tin pelmets, water heaters, dismembered Hills hoists, rotten fencing. On top of one skip sat an old dog kennel, neatly made, tin roof, the dog, the maker, the tools, the love, all gone, dead and gone.

  Now he saw the beans he had planted broken, collapsed, as if an animal had been through them. ‘Jesus, what’s this?’

  ‘Number 17’s boy,’ said Rose. ‘Bit of a brat.’

  The tomatoes. ‘Eating a lot of cherries, are you?’ he said.

  ‘Across the road. Sophie and someone. They come and introduce themselves. My fault, I said help yourself.’

  H
ands had also plucked miniature carrots, extracted potatoes, his Kennebecs and King Edwards, from the drum. They would still be pale balls no bigger than king marbles. He heard a car boot clunk across the street, a man with a polished bald head waved, his glasses caught the light like flashbulbs.

  ‘That’s David,’ said Rose.

  ‘Why don’t you get the prick over to do some gardening?’ Villani said.

  ‘You got the look,’ said Rose. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Not thrilled about providing Audi drivers with free vegies.’

  Rose squinted at him. ‘Well, who said you bloody had to? Never worked out what was in it for you anyway.’

  ‘Nothing,’ Villani said. ‘Not a single thing.’

  He had never spoken to anyone of his visits to Rose’s house. Laurie wouldn’t understand. His colleagues would think he was mad. He didn’t understand either, except that in the beginning he felt he owed her something and later, when he knew her, it was like being at his grandmother’s house, his only real childhood, the time before he carried the weight of Mark, Luke, the animals, no hour without a duty or a care until Bob came home. And always, every hour, every day, always the fear that one Friday Bob would not come home, he would stand outside in the closing day and wait for the sound of the big rig on the hill and for the airhorn and the world would fall dark and Bob would not come home, he would not be coming back that night or ever.

  ‘Lookin a bit pinched, son,’ said Rose now. ‘Want some brekkie? Got eggs from down the road.’

  ‘Down the road?’

  ‘The lezzies got chooks. I give em some vegies, I give em somethin, I forget.’

  She wouldn’t meet Villani’s gaze.

  ‘Brekkie’d be good,’ he said. ‘What about bacon? The lezzies keeping pigs too?’

  ‘You’re such a smartarse.’

  She touched him as she went by, ran a hand up his arm to the shoulder, stroked him as she would a cat.

  THE MINISTER was a big man, early fifties, jowled, a chin-down pugnacious air. He sat behind a standard public-service desk, top of glass, bare except for his mobile.

  ‘What’s this in aid of?’ he said. He didn’t much resemble the jovial man talking to Paul Keogh at the AirLine launch,

  Villani said, ‘We’re from the Homicide Squad, Mr Koenig.’

  ‘That’s clever? I know where you’re from.’

  They were in an interview room, well away from the parliament, a room with a view of a grey rendered wall.

  ‘It’s about Thursday the eleventh, fortnight ago. The night of. Were you at home then?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’d appreciate your cooperation.’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck what you’d appreciate. What’s the point of the question?’

  ‘A murder investigation. Your name has come up.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Distant connection,’ said Villani. ‘But we need your help.’

  Koenig looked at Villani for a good while. Villani looked back. Koenig picked up his mobile and used his thumb, put it to his head.

  ‘Diary for eleventh of February. Evening. Where was I?’

  He waited, he looked from Villani to Dove and back, looked hard, he was a man used to intimidating people.

  ‘Okay,’ he said to the phone, put it down. ‘I was at home in Kew.’

  ‘Any visitors?’ said Villani.

  Koenig knew this was coming, he had always known, he didn’t need to have his diary checked.

  ‘I don’t understand the question,’ he said.

  Villani said, ‘Tell us about the woman, Mr Koenig.’

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘The one who visited you.’

  Koenig’s eyes said he knew he was stuffed.

  ‘A whore,’ he said. ‘Just a whore.’

  ‘Expensive?’

  Some people you enjoyed asking for humiliating details. Koenig said, ‘What do you call expensive? On your wages? Fifty dollars?’

  ‘How much did you pay, Mr Koenig?’

  ‘Five hundred, from memory.’

  ‘Is that with the extras?’ said Dove, head down, round glasses glinting, writing in his notebook, he was the note-taker.

  Koenig pinkened. ‘Who the fuck are you, sonny?

  ‘Who delivered her?’ said Villani. ‘She was delivered.’

  ‘I have no fucking idea,’ said Koenig. ‘She came, she went. Where’d you get this from? Who told you this?’

  ‘How did you arrange the visit?’ said Dove.

  Koenig said, ‘I had a number, I forget where I got it.’

  ‘We’ll have to ask you for that,’ said Villani. ‘You’re not curious about who’s dead?’

  ‘Well, I’m assuming it’s her. What else could you assume? Am I wrong?’

  ‘Where were you last Thursday night, Mr Koenig?’

  ‘What is this shit? I was at the beach house in Portsea.’

  Silence, the muted sounds of people passing in the corridor.

  ‘Are we done?’ said Koenig. ‘I’m a busy man.’

  ‘Not done, no, not at all,’ said Villani. ‘But we can conduct this interview in other circumstances.’

  ‘Is that, we can do this here or we can do it at the station? Jesus, what a cliché.’

  ‘That’s what we deal in,’ said Villani.

  ‘I’m a minister of the crown, you grasped that, detective?’

  ‘I’m an inspector. From Homicide. Didn’t I say that?’

  Koenig looked at the ceiling. ‘What?’

  ‘Did you see the news last Saturday night?’

  ‘No. I had meetings in Canberra. Went up on Saturday morning. Want to check that?’

  Villani thought that it would be a pleasure to arrest Koenig, tip off the media, have them waiting. ‘Let’s start with how you arranged for the woman,’ he said. ‘Who you had dealings with.’

  ‘I think I need my lawyer,’ said Koenig.

  ‘Of course,’ said Villani. ‘We’ll interview you in the presence of your lawyer. Would you like to give me a time today? St Kilda Road headquarters. Give your name at the desk, someone will come down.’

  ‘I rang a number someone gave me. I said I wanted a certain kind of woman. The person told me the price, cash, in advance. I said okay, gave the address. She arrived. I paid her, she went out to a car, she came back. Later she left.’

  ‘You had the cash?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t pop out to a cash machine, I can tell you.’

  ‘A certain kind of woman. What kind?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  Villani looked at Dove, blinked at him, Take him on. ‘Tell us about her, minister,’ said Dove.

  Koenig’s mobile rang, sharp buzzes. He listened, said Yes a few times, then No twice. ‘Tell him I’ll get back to him ASAP.’

  He ended the exchange. ‘I don’t have all day,’ Koenig said to Villani. ‘Can we get this over with?’

  ‘The woman.’

  ‘Young, long hair, ten words of English. Very pale. White.’ ‘Caucasian pale?’ said Villani.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Dove said, ‘So you specified a non-Asian?’

  Koenig stared at him. ‘Not in a fucking SBS crime show, sonny. You could quite soon find yourself liaising with your drunken brothers in Fitzroy. Sharing a cask.’

  Villani looked around the room, nothing to look at. ‘I take that to be a racially offensive remark, Mr Koenig,’ he said.

  ‘Really? My, my, how could you conclude that?’

  ‘The number you rang,’ said Villani. ‘That would save us some time.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘You can give it to us, Mr Koenig, or we can seek to get it by using the powers given to us under…’

  Koenig raised his right hand, rose and went to the window, put his bum on the sill, hands in his pockets. His belly rode over his belt. In a smart bar in Prahran, he had once pushed and shoved and grabbed by the ears a much younger man who gave him cheek. The next day there had been a
stiff-jawed public apology.

  ‘Let me get this clear,’ he said. ‘I can’t be a suspect in a murder investigation. I can account for all my time. That’s an alibi in the correct sense of the word, which you probably don’t know.’

  Dove put up his right hand. ‘Sir, sir, I know, sir!’

  Koenig didn’t take his eyes off Villani. ‘Shut up, sunshine,’ he said. ‘You’re dead in the water. So, although I have no involvement in anything, Homicide is threatening me with a warrant to look at my telephone records. Is that right?’

  Villani thought about how sensible it would be to say that Homicide had not intended to give any such impression, Sorry, Mr Koenig.

  ‘Not right,’ he said. ‘We make no threats. You may wish to take advice about the rights and obligations of someone who possesses or is reasonably believed to possess information material to an investigation.’

  ‘I don’t have the number anymore. I threw away the card.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Possibly to avoid temptation.’

  ‘The person you spoke to last time…’

  ‘A woman.’

  ‘Accent?’

  ‘Australian.’

  ‘Who gave you the number?’

  ‘I forget. I said that. I’ve said that.’

  ‘How many times have you called it?’ said Dove.

  ‘You can call me Mr Koenig. Show some respect.’

  ‘How many times, Mr Koenig?’

  ‘None of your fucking business.’

  Villani said, ‘I’ll repeat myself. Reasonably believed to possess…’

  ‘Twice,’ said Koenig. ‘The first time they didn’t have anyone available.’

  ‘Talk to the same woman?’ said Dove. ‘Mr Koenig.’

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘Tell us about marks on the woman’s body, Mr Koenig,’ said Dove.

  In that instant, Villani knew that Dove was not a mistake. He was a smart aleck but he was not a mistake.

  ‘Marks?’ said Koenig.

  ‘Marks.’

  ‘An appendix scar, that’s all I saw.’ ‘Sure about that?’

  ‘I know an appendix scar when I see one. I’ve got an appendix scar.’