by Peter Temple
Cashin left the stage, went down the stairs, walked down the aisle until he was at the sixth row, took out his mobile and rang homicide.
‘Joe Cashin. Is Inspector Villani in?’
‘He’s on the phone. No, he’s off. Putting you through.’
Villani barked his surname. He sounded more like Singo every day.
‘It’s Joe. Listen, I’m in this hall place in North Melbourne, something’s happened here needs looking at.’
Villani coughed. ‘Is this Joe from Port Monro? Calling from North Melbourne? On a trip to the big city, Joe? Go ahead, tell us what’s on your mind.’
‘Here’s the address,’ said Cashin.
‘What the fuck’s this?’
‘There’s blood here, not old.’
‘What’s this about?’
‘Bourgoyne.’
‘Bourgoyne?’
‘I think so. Yes.’
‘In North Melbourne?’
‘It’s complicated, okay? I’m just reporting this, I’ll ring CrimeStoppers if you like. You like?’
‘Well that sounds so fucking urgent and imperative I’ll drop everything and come myself. What’s the address?’
Cashin told him, ended the call. He stood looking at the stage, at the backdrop of an idealised Calvary. Then he walked down the row of seats and up the hall to the stairs on the other side of the stage, climbed them, stood in the dark space beside the stage.
The smell, he knew it. Stronger here. The cold came back to his neck and shoulders and he shivered.
It was the smell in Bourgoyne’s sitting room that morning.
He sniffed, looked around, realised he was clenching his teeth. To his left, against the wall, he made out a cast-iron wheel with two handles at right angles. He stepped closer. A cable ran up from behind the wheel, into the darkness. The cable was wrapped around a drum and behind that was a ratchet-wheel with a steel pawl engaged.
It took a moment to work out.
The cable raised and lowered the scenery, the painted backdrops. The ratchet-wheel controlled the process. It ensured that the scenery couldn’t come crashing down.
There was something behind the cable, between the cable and the wall. Cashin put out a hand, tugged at it.
A piece of cloth, wadded, stiff but still damp.
The smell. He did not need to sniff the towel. Vinegar. It was a kitchen towel soaked in vinegar.
He held it to the light from the stage. It was dark.
Blood.
The questions came without thought. Why was the ratchet-wheel locked? Why was the cable taut?
He pulled back on the iron wheel and the pawl on the ratchet-wheel disengaged. He let the wheel run, the pawl click-clicked, the cable was paying out.
Metallic creaks. A piece of scenery was coming down.
He looked out between the slats, at the piece of stage he could see.
Oh, Jesus.
Bare feet, dark, swollen legs, rivulets of dried blood running down them, striping them, matted pubic hair, a torso dark, the arms upraised, a black hole beneath the ribs, in the side…
Cashin let go the wheel. The pawl engaged, the cable stopped paying out.
The thin, naked, blood-caked body moved gently.
Cashin walked down the hall, into the foyer, unlocked the front door, went out into the cold toxic city air, stood on the top step and breathed it deeply.
A silver car turned into the street, drove down the middle, straight at him, stopped two metres away with front wheels touching the kerb, no concern for angle parking.
The front doors opened. Villani and Finucane got out, pale and black as undertakers, eyes on him.
‘What?’ said Villani. ‘What?’
‘Inside,’ said Cashin.
THE THREE of them sat in the big untidy room on the seventh floor, desks pushed together, files on every surface, a concert of phone sounds—trings, warbles, silly little tunes.
‘Like old times,’ said Birkerts. ‘Us sitting here. Any minute Singo comes through the door.’
‘I fucking wish,’ said Villani. He sighed, ran fingers through his hair. ‘Jesus, got to get out to see him. Guilt building up on all fronts. The things left undone.’
Cashin thought Villani looked even more tired than the last time, when they drank wine beyond midnight in his son’s room.
‘Talking undone,’ said Birkerts. ‘Did I tell you this Fenton bloke’s got form for flashing? Out there in the sticks in Clunes, near Ballarat. At Wesley girls.’
‘Wesley girls? In Clunes?’
‘The school’s got something there. Outreach program, the rich kids help the rural poor, give them hints on cooking the cheaper cuts.’
‘Freezing place,’ said Cashin. ‘Check his dick for frostbite.’
‘One sick, pathetic case at a time,’ said Villani. ‘Dr Colley says this bloke on the stage had his hands tied. No clothes on, he’s been jacked up on the winch thing and he’s been tortured, cut all over, front and back, stabbed, blood everywhere. Gag in the mouth, like a bit, it’s a handkerchief, there’s another one stuffed in his mouth. Then he’s been winched right up into the roof. At some point, he died, possibly choked to death. We’ll know in the morning.’
‘He sat there and watched him hanging,’ said Birkerts. ‘Bleeding.’
Finucane came in with Dove, who nodded at Cashin. The seated men all looked at Finucane.
‘Found the bloke’s clothes,’ he said. ‘In a plastic bag in a rubbish bin. Keys in the pocket.’
‘ID?’ said Villani.
Finucane showed his palms. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘No prints either. No one around there saw anything. Been through the missing reports, no one like him there, not in the last month. We’ll hear about his prints soonest.’ He looked at his watch. ‘His picture’s on the news in five minutes, may help.’
Villani turned his head to Cashin. ‘So tell everyone.’
‘The hall was the headquarters of something called the Moral Companions,’ said Cashin. ‘A charity. Once they ran camps for poor kids, orphans, state wards. Camps in Queensland and Western Australia. Bourgoyne was a supporter. He owned the land they built a camp on outside Port Monro and he owned the hall.’
‘What happened to them?’ said Finucane.
‘There was a fire at the Port Monro camp in 1983. Three dead. They packed it in.’
‘So what’s the connection between Bourgoyne and this bloke?’ said Birkerts.
‘I don’t know,’ said Cashin. ‘But I smelled vinegar that morning at Bourgoyne’s.’
‘No cloth found there,’ said Villani.
‘Took it with him,’ said Cashin.
‘Why’d he leave it this time?’
Cashin shrugged. He was tired, a girdle of pain around his hips, hours spent waiting for forensic to finish.
‘Vinegar,’ said Birkerts. ‘What’s with vinegar?’
‘They gave me gall to eat: and when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink,’ said Dove.
‘What?’ said Villani. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s from the Book of Common Prayer. A psalm, I forget which one.’
No one said anything. Dove coughed, embarrassed. Cashin registered the ringing phones, the electronic humming, the sound of a television next door, the traffic noises from below.
Villani got up, stretched his arms above his head, palms to the ceiling, eyes closed. ‘Joe, this Moral shit,’ he said. ‘That’s religious, is it?’
‘Sort of. Started by an ex-priest called Raphael something. Morris. Morrison. After World War II. He had a life-changing experience.’
‘I need that,’ said Villani.
‘Got some nice new suits,’ said Cashin. ‘Ties too. That’s a start.’
‘Purely cosmetic,’ said Villani. ‘I’m unchanged, believe me. The telly, Fin.’
It was the third item on the news. The media hadn’t been given much: just a dead man found in a hall in North Melbourne, nothing about him being gagged and tortured, hung nake
d above a stage.
The man’s face was on the screen, clean, almost alive, lights in his eyes. He had been handsome once, longish straight hair combed back, bags under his eyes, deep lines from nose to thin-lipped mouth.
The man is aged in his sixties. His hair is dyed dark brown. Anyone knowing his identity or who has any information about him is asked to call CrimeStoppers on 990 897 897.
‘He scrubbed up well,’ said Finucane.
‘Purely cosmetic,’ said Birkerts. ‘He’s still dead.’
They watched the rest of the news, saw Villani make an appearance to say nothing on the subject of another gangland killing, touch the corner of an eye, his mouth.
‘Bit of Al Pacino, bit of Clint Eastwood,’ said Cashin. ‘Dynamite cocktail, may I say?’
‘You may fuck off,’ said Villani. ‘Just fuck off.’
‘Boss?’
Tracy Wallace, the analyst, a thin worried face.
‘A woman, boss, transferred from CrimeStoppers. The dead bloke.’
Villani looked at Cashin. ‘You take it, skipper,’ he said. ‘You seem to know what’s going on.’
Cashin went to the telephone.
‘Mrs Roberta Condi,’ said Tracy. ‘She lives in North Melbourne.’
He didn’t have to write, Tracy had the headphones on.
‘Hello, Mrs Condi,’ said Cashin. ‘Thanks for calling. Can you help us?’
‘That’s Mr Pollard. The bloke on the telly. I know him.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Cashin, his eyes closed.
CASHIN PUT the green key in the lock, turned.
‘The home of the late Arthur Pollard,’ he said and opened the door.
The terrace house was dark, cold. It took him a while to find a light switch.
An overhead lamp came on, two globes lit a sitting room, furniture that was modern in the 1970s. A newspaper was on the coffee table. Cashin went over and looked at the date. ‘Four days ago,’ he said.
Off the sitting room was a bedroom—a double bed tightly made, no bedspread, a wardrobe with two mirrors, a chest of drawers, shoes in a wire rack. A passage led to another room with a single bed, a desk, a chair and a bookcase.
Cashin looked at the book spines. All paperbacks. Crime novels, disaster novels, novels with golden titles on the spines. Bought from second-hand shops, he thought.
‘Neat kitchen,’ said Dove from the door.
Cashin followed him down the passage to a 1950s kitchen: a single bare light bulb with a green shade, an enamelled gas stove, an Electrolux fridge with round shoulders and a portable radio on a formica-topped metal table. On the sink stood a blue-and-white striped mug, upside down.
‘Like a monk,’ Cashin said. He went to the sink and tried to look out of the window but all he could see was the reflection of the sad room.
Dove clicked switches beside the back door and a powerful floodlight lit the straight rain falling on a concrete yard. It ran to a brick wall with a steel door. Beside the party wall, a single washline held soaked washing: three shirts and three pairs of underpants.
‘There’s a lane at the back,’ said Dove. ‘That must be the garage door.’
They went outside, Cashin first, he felt the wet, slippery concrete underfoot. No key on Pollard’s ring would unlock the steel door.
‘I’ll try the door in the lane,’ said Dove. He took the keys.
Cashin waited in the house, looked around. In the desk drawers, he found folders with bank statements, power, gas, telephone and rates bills. There was nothing personal—no letters, photographs, no tapes or CDs. Nothing spoke of Arthur Pollard as a human being with a history, with likes and dislikes, except the four cans of baked beans in tomato sauce and a half-empty bottle of whisky and an empty one in the bin.
Dove came in. ‘Not a garage anymore,’ he said. ‘Door’s bricked up.’
Dove’s mobile rang. He exchanged a few words, phrases, and gave the phone to Cashin. ‘The boss,’ he said.
‘We need the big key here,’ said Cashin. ‘Sesame. And not tomorrow.’
‘How come you give all the orders and you are on long-term secondment from homicide?’ said Villani.
‘Someone’s got to be in charge.’
They waited in the car, streetlights streaming down the windscreen. Cashin found the classical station. His thoughts drifted to home, to the dark ruined house under the wet hill, to the dogs. Rebb would have fed them by now, he didn’t have to be asked. They would all be in the shed, the dogs sacked out, drying, the three of them around the old potbelly stove, the rusty shearers’ stove not fired for at least thirty years before Rebb, the warmth moving through the building, awakening old smells—lanolin, bacon fat, the rank sweat of tired men now dead.
‘This could be coincidence,’ said Dove.
‘Maybe you should’ve stayed with the feds,’ said Cashin.
A van’s lights came around the corner. The driver nosed along, looking. Cashin got out and raised a hand.
The two men in overalls followed them through Pollard’s arid house. It was quick.
One man opened a builder’s bag and took out an angular piece of metal with a mushroom head. He held it to the garage door jamb, level with the lock. The locksmith tapped it with a sledgehammer, brisk taps, getting harder. When the chisel was wedged, he stood back, flexed his wrists.
‘Open Sesame,’ he said, swung the hammer like an axe, administered a clean blow to the mushroom, made a sound like a gunshot.
The steel door burst open, hell-dark within.
CASHIN FOUND the switches.
A white-painted room, carpeted floor, windowless. Stale air. Against one wall stood a trestle table with a computer tower, a flat-screen monitor, a printer and a scanner. Next to it were a grey metal filing cabinet and three metal shelf units, four shelves each, the kind sold in hardware shops. The shelves were neat: four for video tapes, four for CDs and DVDs, the others for folders, books, magazines.
Against the door wall was a double bed with a purple sateen quilt and big shiny red pillows. A big-screen television was on a table at the foot, a video player and a DVD player stacked beside it. Beside it stood a tripod. On all the walls were posters—pictures of muscular half-naked men: athletes, bodybuilders, kickboxers, swimmers.
Dove opened the filing cabinet. ‘Digital still camera,’ he said. ‘Digital video camera.’
He closed the drawer, went to the computer, sat down, pressed a button on the tower. ‘Give you a feeling, this?’ he said.
Cashin didn’t say anything. He found a remote control and fiddled with it, switched on the television, got fuzz, pressed buttons.
Vision.
Something filling the screen. It looked like a smooth-skinned vegetable, an eggplant perhaps, the camera moved. An opening, a hole. It was not a vegetable.
The camera drew back.
A face, a young face, a boy. His mouth was open, top teeth showing. There was fear in his eyes.
Cashin pressed the OFF button.
‘Look at this shit,’ said Dove.
Cashin looked for a minute or two.
‘Can’t be more than twelve,’ said Dove. ‘Tops.’
‘I’m going home now,’ said Cashin. They were at the door when he noticed the two white mugs with yellow spots on the table beside the computer. The tag of a teabag hung over the side of one.
‘Had a cup of tea,’ he said.
Dove looked back. ‘One liked it strong.’
In the car, Cashin spoke to Villani.
‘Not surprised,’ said Villani. ‘Pollard’s got form. Sex offences against minors. One gig suspended, done one. Six months. What’s there apart from the kiddy-porn chamber?’
‘Bank statements, phone bills.’
‘Why didn’t you stay at home? Stir up all this shit, nobody to do the work.’
‘The thought occurred to me.’
‘Anyway, I’ve got a whole house for you to crash in. No one there except me from time to time. You sleep, do you? At some point?
’
‘Don’t project your problems onto me, mate. Any more of that bribe wine?’
‘Maybe.’
Before he fell asleep, Cashin saw the vile room, saw on the table the two cheerful spotted mugs, and he put his head beneath the pillow and concentrated on his breathing.
DOVE WAS waiting, reading the Herald. He folded it, put it on the back seat. ‘Nice to be your driver. I’ve got something on Bourgoyne’s watch.’
‘Presumably came in a cleft stick, the runners went via Broome,’ said Cashin.
Dove’s expression didn’t change. ‘Bourgoyne bought a Breitling watch from a shop called Cozzen’s in Collins Street in 1984. Then six years ago he bought another one.’
Carol Gehrig had described the watch. The girl on the pier, Susie, she had only given the name. Bretling, she said. Why hadn’t he asked her to describe the watch? Singo would have closed his eyes, shaken his head: ‘You didn’t ask? Would you like that engraved on your tombstone? I didn’t ask.’
Had the pawnbroker in Sydney described the watch the boys offered him that day? Had a cop taken it down? Pawnbrokers had the eye, they knew value, it was their miserable job. ‘The shop can describe the watches?’ Cashin said.
‘Well, I suppose so. I didn’t ask.’
‘You want that inscribed…’ He stopped.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Get Ms Bourgoyne?’
‘She’ll see you in the art gallery at 10.30. The café upstairs. She’s on the gallery board. An arts powerbroker.’
‘A what?’
‘Read it in the Financial Review today.’
‘I missed that. Just read the Toasty Sugarflakes box. Law, art, politics, the woman’s got it covered.’
They drove in silence. In Lygon Street, Cashin retrieved the newspaper from the back seat. Pollard’s face was on page five, the story had no more detail than the television news.
‘The Pollard calls,’ said Dove. ‘There’s about thirty. Parents, victims. The guy was a very active ped. Sounds like people would have queued to string him up. One bloke says he knows him from a long time ago. Raved on, then he clammed up.’
