by Peter Temple
‘Anyway, it’s not as if I have a right to speak my opinion to you,’ said Rebb. ‘Being a swaggie.’
Cashin had no idea what to say, the ease that had grown between them over the days was gone and they had no history of arguments— won, lost, drawn, abandoned—to fall back on.
‘Milking time,’ said Rebb.
He rose and walked, left the spade stuck in the mound of sand, his bricklaying implements in the bucket, handles sticking out of silver water.
The dogs went with him, down the slope, even blacker against the sere grass. They trotted along happily. Then they stopped, turned, dark eyes on Cashin sitting on the bricks.
Rebb marched on, hands in his pockets, head down, shoulders sloped.
The dogs were torn.
Cashin wanted to tell them to go with Rebb, to say to them, you faithless things, I took you in, I saved you, you’d be in a concrete backyard now, knee-deep in your own droppings, you would not know a rabbit from a takeaway barbecue chicken. But I was only ever a meal-ticket and a soft bed, legs to lie on.
So go. Fuck off. Go.
The dogs bounded back to him, the lovely bouncing run, the ears afloat. They jumped up, put their paws on him and spoke to him.
He shouted, ‘Dave.’
No response. ‘DAVE.’
Rebb turned his head, didn’t stop walking.
‘OKAY, WE’LL FIX THE FUCKING THING!’
Rebb walked on, but he raised his right arm and gave a thumbs-up.
THE PHONE rang when he was making toast.
‘Joe, time to leave this,’ said Villani. ‘It’s over.’
‘How did we get to over?’ said Cashin. ‘Because Donny tops himself? That’s not a confession, that’s an indictment of these local deadshits.’
‘Did you see Bobby Walshe last night?’
Cashin sat down at the table. ‘No.’
‘Stay in touch with the world, son. We have apparently crucified three innocent black children. It’s Jesus and no thieves, everyone’s clean.’
‘Can I say…’
‘And another matter,’ said Villani. ‘Someone spoke to someone who spoke to the deputy who spoke directly to me. It concerns your visit to the Bourgoyne house yesterday.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m asked why we are still hanging around The Heights.’
‘Just doing the job. That’s a complaint from Erica, is it?’
‘The place’s been X-rayed. What the fuck were you doing there?’
‘Having a sniff. Remember having a sniff? Remember Singo?’
‘It’s too late for sniffing. Let it rest, will you?’
‘There’s no certainty the boys did it,’ said Cashin. He had not planned to say that.
Villani whistled, rueful. ‘Well, Joe, I’ve got a lot on the plate, it’s a full plate. Every day. And night. What say we talk about this insight of yours later? I’ll give you a call. First free moment. Okay?’
‘Okay. Sure.’
‘Joe?’
‘Yes.’
‘A cop, Joe, don’t forget that. You don’t obsess. You do your best and then you move on.’
Cashin could hear the voice of Singo.
‘No one’s done their best about this,’ he said. ‘No one’s done a fucking thing.’
‘Have a relaxing day,’ said Villani. ‘Did I say your holiday’s been extended? The deputy wants you to take the full five weeks you’re owed. He’s worried about your health and wellbeing. He’s like that. Caring. I’ll get back to you.’
You don’t obsess. Words chosen to remind, to caution. To hurt.
Cashin felt the nausea rising and the pain in his shoulders that would move up his neck into his head. In the worst times, these symptoms had signalled the coming of the frozen images, the ghostly negatives that lingered on the retina after he looked away from things. It had seemed clear to him then that he was going mad.
He took three tablets, sat in the big chair, head back, eyes closed, concentrating on his breathing, waiting. The pain did not reach its former heights, the nausea receded. But it was almost an hour before he could get up. He washed his face and hands, brushed his teeth and gargled, drove down empty roads to Port Monro. The cattle were indifferent to his passing.
He parked outside the post office. Four letters in the mailbox, nothing personal. No one wrote to him. Who would write to him? Not a single soul in the world. He walked around the corner to the station.
Kendall was on the desk. ‘Can’t live with it, can’t etcetera,’ she said. ‘Boss.’
‘Keeping the sovereign’s peace?’
‘Yes, sir. Spread the word to the locals that in the event of bad behaviour you’d come back.’
Cashin went to his desk, read the log, the official notices, sat looking at the backyard.
‘While you’re here, can I do some personal business, boss?’ said Kendall.
‘On your way,’ said Cashin.
She had been gone a minute when a whippet-thin young man came in the door, looked around like a first-time bank robber. Cashin went to the counter. ‘Help you?’
‘They reckon I should talk to youse.’ He pulled down on the rounded visor of his cap.
‘Yes? Your name?’
‘Gary Witts.’
‘What can we do for you, Mr Witts?’
‘Problem with the girlfriend. Yeah.’
Cashin gave him the compassionate nod. ‘The girlfriend.’
‘Yeah. Don’t want to get her in no trouble. She’s me girlfriend.’
‘And the problem?’
‘Well, it’s me ute.’
‘The girlfriend and your ute?’
‘It’s not like I wanna lay a charge.’
‘Your girlfriend? No, you wouldn’t.’
‘Don’t mean I’m not pissed off. I’m no fuckin rug, mat, whatever. Not me.’
‘What’s she done?’
‘Went to Queensland in me ute. With this mate of hers from Cromarty, they’re hairdressers, apprentices. You know that place WowHair? That’s where.’
‘So she took your ute without your permission?’
‘Nah. Gave her a lend of it. Now she reckons she’s not comin back. Met this Surfers Paradise bloke, Carlo, Mario, some wog name, he’s got three saloons, offered her a job. Now she reckons I owe her the ute.’
‘Why’s that?’
Gary tugged at his visor again until Cashin couldn’t see his eyes. ‘She loaned me the deposit.’
Cashin knew. ‘And she’s been making the payments?’
‘Just tempory. Pay her back. Got a job now.’
‘How long did she make the payments?’
‘Jeez, I dunno. A while. Year, bit more. Could be two. Yeah.’
‘So what do you want?’ Cashin said.
‘I thought, like, you could get the cops up there, they could tell her to bring it back. Lean on her a bit. Y’know?’
Cashin put his forearms on the counter, laced his fingers, looked under Gary’s visor. ‘Gary, we don’t do that kind of thing. She hasn’t committed a crime. You lent her the ute. You owe her lots of money. Best thing you can do is go up there, pay her what you owe her, drive the ute home.’
‘Well, fuck,’ Gary said, ‘can’t do that.’
‘Then you’ll have to see a lawyer. Take some kind of civil action against her.’
‘Civil?’
‘A lawyer’ll explain it to you. Basically, they write her a letter, tell her to hand over the ute or else.’
Gary nodded, scratched an ear. ‘She’s pretty scared of cops. Wouldn’t take much to scare her, I can tell you.’
‘We’re not in the scare business, Gary.’
Gary went to the door, disappointment in his shoulders. He hesitated, came back, sniffed. ‘Nother thing,’ he said. ‘How come you blokes don’t do nothin about the fuckin Piggots?’
‘What should we do something about?’
‘Getting fuckin rich on drugs.’
‘What’s the point here, Gary?’
/> ‘Well, the mate she went with. She’s fuckin thick with the Piggots. I reckon they dropped off a bag on the way, who’s gonna check two chicks, right?’
‘You know this, do you?’
Gary looked away. ‘Won’t say I do, won’t say I don’t.’
‘What’s her name? The friend?’
‘Lukie Tingle.’
‘An address and a phone number for you, Gary.’
‘Nah. Don’t wanna be involved. See you.’
‘Gary, don’t be dumb. I’ll find you in five minutes, park outside your house, come in for a cup of tea, how’s that?’
‘Shit, gissus a break, will you?’
He gave an address and a phone number, left without another word, passed Kendall at the door.
On the way home, a man on the radio said:
‘The state government’s problem is that if it’s seen as soft on law and order in Cromarty, it risks losing the white vote and the seat at the next election. And it needs every seat. So there’s a real quandary. For the federal government, Janice, the mileage Bobby Walshe has got out of Cromarty is a nightmare. But of course a huge plus for United Australia.’
‘Exactly how much mileage, Malcolm?’
‘Bobby’s performance last night was amazing, the passion, his sadness. He got on every TV news in the country, huge radio airplay. Bobby’s given Cromarty a kind of symbolic status, and this is very important, Janice. The bit about the three crucified black boys, it had so much power, I can tell you it spoke to all kinds of people. Biblical. The talkback today has been amazing. People crying, even from the redneck belts. Those words struck a major chord, they resonated.’
‘But will that translate nationally, I mean…?’
‘These are interesting times, Janice. The government’s fear isn’t just about losing Cromarty. The government can live without Cromarty. No, now it’s a real fear that United Australia will split the vote all over the place. Become a genuine coalition of the disaffected. And the big shiver is that Bobby Walshe will roll the Treasurer in his own seat. It used to be rusted on. Now it’ll take nine per cent and Bobby might be able to do that, Janice.’
‘Thank you Malcolm. Malcolm Lewis, our political editor on the big issues driving political life today. Did I say life? Excuse me. My next guest knows about life, he almost lost his in a…’
Cashin found the classical station. Piano. He was coming around to the classical piano—the quick-fingered tinkling, the dramas, the final notes that floated like the perfume of women you’d lusted after. Most of all, he liked the silences, the gaps between what had been and what was to come.
THEY WORKED on the building again. By milking time, they had laid bricks to the first doorway to windowsill height.
‘Stone sills in the picture,’ said Rebb. ‘Be stone lintels too, probably. Huge bloody door here.’
‘I’ll talk to Bern,’ said Cashin. ‘He may well have stolen them in the first place.’
Rebb left. Cashin worked on the garden for an hour, took the dogs for a short walk in the cold dusk. Tonight, he had only twinges of pain. He was tired but not hurting. Feed dogs, shower, make the fire, open a beer, water on for pasta.
Rebb knocked, came in, the dogs were on him.
‘Surveyors down there,’ he said, he was half in shadow, menacing. ‘At the fence. Two blokes. When I went to milking.’
‘She’s unhappy,’ said Cashin. ‘Wasting her money. The agent is the snake, she should survey him. There’s pasta on the way here.’
‘Ate with the old bloke, he gets a bit lonely, doesn’t want you to go. Not that he’d admit it. Wouldn’t admit a croc’s hanging off his leg.’ He paused. ‘About the house.’
‘What?’
‘We can get it up till you can see your way to going on yourself,’ said Rebb.
Cashin felt the pang of loss anticipated. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘this’s about that swaggie thing? I’m sorry. I’ll say sorry.’
‘No,’ said Rebb. ‘I’m a swaggie, swaggie’s got to keep moving. We’re like sharks. Tuna, we’re more like tuna.’
‘The old bloke’ll miss you.’
Cashin knew that he was speaking for himself.
Rebb was looking down, fondling dog heads. ‘Yeah, well, everything passes. He’ll find someone else. Night then.’
Cashin ate in front of the television, the dogs on the couch, limp as cheetahs, a head at each end. He refuelled the fire, made a big whisky, sat thinking.
Michael the fag. Did his mother know Michael was queer? Bisexual, he was bisexual. She knew. Women always knew. What did it matter what Michael was? Vincentia Lewis the nurse who gave him her father’s CDs was a lesbian. Given the chance, he’d have married her, lived in hope. What hope? What did men have to offer? They died calling out for their mothers.
Mick Cashin drowned in the Kettle. Took his life. There was something terrible about that expression.
To take your life. That was the ultimate assertion of ownership—to choose to go into the silence, to choose sleep with no prospect of the dawn, of birdsong, of the smell of the sea on the wind.
Mick Cashin and Michael both made the choice.
This was not something to think about.
His father was always laughing. Even after he’d said something serious, scolding, he would say something funny and laugh.
Why did his mother still say it was an accident? She told Michael she would tell him his father had killed himself. And she couldn’t, after all this time. She had probably changed her mind about what happened. Sybil had mastered reality. No need to tolerate the uncomfortable bits.
But why had no one else told him? He had come back and lived in the Doogue house, they all knew, they never said a word, never mentioned his father. The children must have been told not to speak about Mick Cashin. No one ever said the word suicide.
In the hospital, in the early days, when he had no idea of time, Vincentia had sat with him, held his hand, run fingers up his arm to the elbow. She had long fingers and short nails.
The Cashin suicide gene. How many Cashins had killed themselves? After they’d reproduced, created the next generation of depressives.
Michael hadn’t done that. He was a full stop.
So am I, Cashin thought, I’m another dead end.
But he wasn’t. The day he saw the boy walking from the school gate he knew he was his own beyond question—his long face, the long nose, the midnight hair, the hollow in his chin.
His son carried the gene. He should tell Vickie. She should know.
Rubbish. He wasn’t a depressive. He felt low sometimes, that was all. It passed, as the nausea passed and the pain and the ghostly frozen images passed. He’d been fine before Rai Sarris. Now he was someone recovering from an accident, an assault. A murderous attack by a fucking madman.
Rai Sarris. Afterwards, in the hospital, he began to see how obsessed he’d become with him. Sarris wasn’t an ordinary killer. Sarris had burnt two men to death in a lock-up near the airport. Croatian drug mules. He tortured them and then he burnt them alive. It took five years to get to the point when there was enough evidence to charge him.
And then Sarris vanished.
Where was Rai at this moment? What was he doing? Pouring a drink in some gated canal estate in Queensland, the boat outside, the whole place owned by drug dealers and white-collar criminals and slave-brothel owners and property crooks?
Had Rai been prepared to die the day he drove his vehicle into them? He was mad. Dying had probably never entered his mind.
Cashin remembered sitting with Shane Diab in the battered red Sigma from surveillance, looking at the grainy little monitor showing the two-metre-high gates down the street.
When they began to slide apart, he felt no alarm.
He remembered seeing bullbars, the nose of a big four-wheel-drive.
He didn’t see the station wagon coming down the street, the chidren in the back, strapped into their seats.
The driver of the tank didn’t care about
station wagons with children in them.
Watching the monitor, Cashin saw the tank gun out of the gate and swing right.
There was a moment when he knew what was going to happen. It was when he saw the face of Rai Sarris. He knew Rai Sarris, he had spent seven hours in a small room with Rai Sarris.
But by then the Nissan Patrol was metres away.
Forensic estimated the Nissan was doing more than sixty when it hit the red car, rolled it, half-mounted it, rode it through a low garden wall, across a small garden, into the bay window of a house, into a sitting room with a piano, photographs in silver frames on it, a sentimental painting of a gum tree on the wall behind it.
The vehicles demolished that wall too, and, load-bearing structures having been removed, the roof fell on them.
Slowly.
The driver of the station wagon said the four-wheel-drive reversed out of the ruins, out of the suburban front garden, and drove away. It was found six kilometres away, in a shopping centre carpark.
Shane Diab died in the crushed little car. Rai Sarris was never found. Rai was gone.
Cashin got up and made another big whisky, he was feeling the drink. Music, he needed music.
He put on a Callas CD, settled in the chair. The diva’s voice went to the high ceiling and came back, disturbed the dogs. They raised their heads, slumped back to sleep. They knew opera, possibly even liked it.
He closed his eyes, time to think about something else.
How many people like Dave Rebb were there out there, people who chose to be ghosts? One day they were solid people with identities, the next they were invisible, floating over the country, passing through the state’s walls. Tax file numbers, Medicare numbers, drivers’ licences, bank accounts, they had no use for them in their own names. Ghosts worked for cash. They kept their money in their pockets or in other people’s accounts.
Did Dave ever have an earthly identity? He was more like an alien than a ghost, landed from a spaceship on some dirt-brown cattle station where the stars seemed closer than the nearest town.
An imperfect world. Don’t obsess. Move on.
