by Peter Temple
‘No thanks,’ said Finucane. ‘Trying to give up.’
‘Yeah. Me too.’ Vincent gave the plastic lighter to Cashin.
Cashin lit up, returned the lighter. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he said. ‘So they wouldn’t listen?’
‘Wouldn’t listen,’ said Vincent. ‘Copped a thrashin from the bastard Kerno. Thrashed me all the time. Thin as a stick, I was. Broke me ribs, three ribs. Made me tell school I fell off me bike.’
A long silence. Vincent emptied the beer can, put it on the table. His shaven, scarred head went down, almost touched his knees, the cigarette was going to burn his fingers. Cashin and Finucane read each other’s eyes.
‘Didn’t have a bike,’ said Vincent, a sad little boy’s voice. ‘Never ever had a bike. Wanted a bike.’
Cashin smoked. The cigarette tasted terrible, made him glad he didn’t smoke. Smoke much. Vincent didn’t look up, dropped his butt on the carpet, aimed a foot at it, missed. The smell of burning nylon fibres rose, acrid and strangely sweet.
‘I’d like to hear about when you were a kid,’ said Cashin. ‘I’ll listen. You talk, I’ll listen.’
Another long silence. Vincent raised his head, startled, looked at them as if they’d just appeared in the room. ‘Got to go,’ he said breathlessly. ‘A lot on, blokes.’
He rose unsteadily and left the room, bumped against the door jamb. They heard him muttering as he went down the passage. A door slammed.
‘That’s probably it,’ said Finucane. He stood on Vincent’s cigarette.
Outside, in the rain, Cashin said to Finucane, ‘The holidays. He’s talking about a Moral Companions camp, Fin. His whole life, we need his whole life. That’s ASAP. Tell Villani I said that.’
‘Not staying then, boss?’
‘No. Also the files at the hall. Someone needs to pull out everything that refers to Port Monro. Call me with what you get. Ring me, okay?’
‘Okay. First to know, boss.’
‘And for fuck’s sake get some sleep, Fin. You’re a worry to me.’
‘Right. They stay dead, don’t they?’
‘You’re learning. It’s slow but you’re learning.’
It was long dark by the time he switched off and saw the torch beam coming down the side of the house, saw the running dogs side by side, heads up, big ears swinging. They were at the vehicle before he could get out. He had to fight their weight to open the door. A spoke of pain ran down his right thigh as he swung his legs out.
‘Thought we’d lost you,’ said Rebb, a hulk behind the light.
Cashin was returning the dogs’ affection, head down, allowing them to lick his hands, his hair, his ears. ‘Got stuck in the city,’ he said. ‘I reckoned you might do the right thing by these brutes.’
‘No brute food left,’ said Rebb. ‘I took the little peashooter of yours for a walk. Okay?’
‘Good thinking.’
‘The other bunny’s in the oven. Used the olives in the fridge. Also a tin of tomatoes.’
‘What do you know about olives?’ said Cashin.
‘Picked them in South Australia, worked in a place they pickled them. Ate olives till they came out of my ears. Swaggies eat anything. Roadkill, caviar.’
‘I need a drink,’ said Cashin. ‘You left anything to drink?’
‘I’m leaving in the morning.’
Cashin felt tiredness and pain expand within him, fill him. ‘Can we talk about that?’
‘I’ll drop in if I come this way again.’
‘Come in and have a drink anyway. Farewell drink.’
‘Had a drink. Knackered. I’ll shake your hand now.’
He put out a hand. Cashin didn’t want to take it. He took it.
‘I owe you money,’ he said. ‘Fix it up tomorrow. Promise.’
‘Leave it on the step,’ said Rebb. ‘Haven’t got it, I’ll pick it up next time. Trust you, you’re a cop. Who else can you trust?’
He turned and walked. Cashin felt a loss for which he was not prepared. ‘Mate,’ he said. ‘Mate, fucking sleep on it, will you?’
No reply.
‘For the sake of the dogs.’
‘Good dogs,’ said Rebb. ‘Miss the dogs.’
A DARK DAY, the vehicle climbing a rainslicked road towards a hilltop lost in mist. In the gate of The Heights, up the driveway, the poplars dripping.
Cashin took the left turn, the road that wound around the house at a distance, ended at the redbrick double-storey building. He parked on the paving in front of the wooden garage doors, switched off, wound down his window. The cold and wet blew in. He sat in the quiet, engine clicks the only sounds, thinking about why this was a pointless thing to do.
He thought about Shane Diab’s parents coming to see him in hospital, when he was out of danger. They didn’t sit, they were awkward, their English wasn’t good. He didn’t know what to say to them, he knew their son was dead because of him. After a while, Vincentia saved him and they said goodbye. Shane’s mother touched him on the cheek, then, quickly, she kissed him on the forehead. They left a white cardboard box on the cabinet beside the bed.
Vincentia opened the box, held it up, tilted it to Cashin. It was a square cake, white icing, a cross in red. It took him a while to see that names formed the bar of the cross: Joe+Shane.
He gave the cake to Vincentia. Later she told him the nurses on the shift shared it, a fruit cake, very good.
Cashin got out, walked around the building to the double doors in the centre. The mist was turning to rain.
There were about a dozen keys on the ring Erica Bourgoyne had given him. The seventh one worked. He unlocked the door, went down the corridor. The pottery studio was dark, the shutters closed. He found the light switches and high up tubes flickered, lit the room. The storeroom door was directly opposite. He crossed.
The storeroom had a swept brick floor, gardening tools pinned on a pegboard, arranged on shelves like exhibits. A ride-on mower, a small tractor and a trailer stood in a line, showroom clean. A prim room, it spoke of organisation and discipline.
To Cashin’s right, the painting leant against the wall, face averted, its slashed V held in place with masking tape. It was bigger than he remembered.
He went to it, gripped the frame and awkwardly lifted it, turned and settled it back against the wall. He could not see the painting properly before he had taken several steps back.
It was a painting of a moonlit landscape, a pale path running through sand dunes covered with coastal scrub towards a group of buildings in the distance, hints of lights in windows. Most of the canvas was of a huge sky of wind-driven grey-black clouds lit by a near-full moon.
Cashin knew the place. He had stood where the painter stood, on the top of the last big dune, looking towards the now-ruined buildings and the highway and the road that snaked up from the highway, went up the hill to the Kenmare road and driveway to The Heights,.
He went closer. In the path were what appeared to be figures, a short column of people, three abreast, walking towards the buildings. Children, they were children, two taller figures.
The painting was unsigned. He turned it around. In the bottom left corner was a small sticker. On it was written in red ink:
Companions Camp, Port Monro, 1977.
‘THE COMPANIONS camp,’ said Cashin. ‘At the mouth.’
There was a long silence. Cecily Addison, standing at the mantelpiece, staring at him. He never knew how long to meet Cecily’s gaze because it was possible that she was not seeing him.
‘You seem like a good person to ask,’ said Cashin.
Cecily’s head tilted, her eyelids fluttered. She took on the look of someone having her feet massaged. ‘May I ask what this is about?’
‘Charles Bourgoyne.’
‘I thought that was over.’
‘No.’
A last long draw on her cigarette, a raised eyebrow. ‘Well, what do you want to know, my dear?
‘What kind of camp was it?’ Cashin said.
‘For
boys. Orphans and the like. Boys in homes. Foster children. The Moral Companions gave them a holiday, a bit of fun. Lots of Cromarty people helped out, including my Harry. It was a good cause.’
‘And it burned down.’
‘In 1983. Tragic. Mind you, it could’ve been worse. Just three boys there on the night. And the man in charge. The Companion, that’s what they called themselves. He couldn’t save them. Overcome by fumes, that was the coroner’s verdict.’
‘Where were the other kids?’
‘On some cultural jaunt.’ She stretched an arm, dropped her cigarette into the vase on the mantelpiece. ‘They used to take them to Cromarty. Music, plays, that sort of thing. Still a lot of that then. People didn’t sit at home in front of the television watching American rubbish.’
‘What caused the fire?’
‘I think they said it was the boiler in the dormitory building, the double-storey A timber building. The boys were sleeping upstairs.’
Cashin thought about the blackened brick foundations, the charred floor joist. He had stood where the boys had died.
‘Apart from owning the land, did Bourgoyne have anything to do with the camp?’
Cecily frowned, deep lines. ‘Well, I don’t know. He took an interest, of course. Following on from his dad. Lots of people took an interest. Public-spirited place then, Cromarty. People did good works, didn’t do it to get their names in the paper either. Virtue is its own reward. Are you familiar with that expression, detective?’
‘My reward is the award wage, Mrs Addison.’
She narrow-eyed him. ‘You are a cut above the dull boys couldn’t find another job, aren’t you?’
‘So that was the end of the camp?’ said Cashin.
‘The camp, the Companions too. It was all over the papers. I think they just packed it in. It was the last Companions camp left. Charles gave the manager bloke a job. Percy Crake. A cold fish, Percy Crake.’
There was a knock on the half-open door.
‘Yes,’ said Cecily.
Mrs McKendrick. ‘Your appointment will be twenty minutes late, Mrs Addison,’ she said. ‘Car trouble is the excuse they offer.’
‘Thank you, my dear.’
Mrs McKendrick turned like a teenage ballerina, reaching behind her to close the door she had found open. It was a message.
‘She was in love with Jock Cameron,’ said Cecily. ‘All those years. Sad, really. He never noticed. Often wondered if he’d taken a bit of shrapnel in the tackle.’
‘I’m told there are no Companions’ records for Port Monro at the hall in Melbourne.’
Fin had rung while he was driving from The Heights.
‘All the other camps’ records are there,’ said Cashin. ‘Could they be somewhere else?’
‘No idea. Why would they keep them somewhere else?’
On the mantelpiece, the vase was emitting smoke like a fumarole. Cashin got up and took it to the window, pushed up the bottom sash and shook the container, sent the smouldering contents to float on the sea wind.
‘Thank you, Joe.’
‘I’ll go then. Thank you for your time, Mrs Addison.’
‘My pleasure.’
It was cold outside, no one loitering. Cashin felt the need to walk, went down the street, past the empty clothing boutiques, the aromatherapist, the properties in the window of the estate agent. He crossed Crozier Street and passed the pub lounge, saw three people watching a greyhound race on the television, the old man coughing as if he could die there, on his feet. Beyond the pub were houses, mostly holiday rentals, curtains drawn.
As Cashin walked, the singing from the bluestone church on the rise became louder. He turned the corner on the faltering and cracking last lines of a hymn.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee; In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
There was a time of silence, then an attenuated Amen that stood in the cold air, hung in the branches of the pines.
Cashin felt the sudden withering ache of loss and mortality and he turned and went back the way he had come, into the wind.
HE WAS CROSSING a rope bridge in a gale, water far below. The bridge was swaying and creaking and groaning and slats were missing. He looked down and it was the Kettle, a huge wave coming in, he was fighting to hold his footing, clinging to the side ropes, he couldn’t hold on, he was losing his grip, he was going into the Kettle.
In his sweat, Cashin lay wide awake, heart like a speedball, relief coming over him. He knew what the sounds were: the television aerial was loose again, being pushed around by the wind, chafing against the strapping. The sounds had triggered the Kettle dream. How did dreams work?
He turned the clock around: 6.46 am. Seven-hour sleep, the longest unbroken sleep he could remember. Just twinges of pain in getting up, a good morning, let in the dogs, fed them, drank juice, showered.
It was a grey day, no wind to speak of. When the dogs came back from looking for Rebb, he chose the circular route, up the hill. The European trees were bare now, standing in their damp leaves, a hundred and more generations of leaves. They went down the slope and across the big clearing, no hares today. Cashin stepped from rock to rock to cross the creek, still turbulent. Then, no sign of the dogs, he turned westwards, towards Helen’s property, the painting on his mind—the moonlit plain, the little procession of boys going towards the buildings, the lights in the windows. The Companions camp. He thought about Pollard hanging in the Companions hall, crucified, dying while someone sat as if watching a play or a concert, something to enjoy, to applaud.
When did Pollard lose consciousness? Did the watcher listen with pleasure to his sounds, to his agony? Did he ask for mercy? Was that what the watcher wanted?
Bourgoyne’s payments to Pollard. Bourgoyne the patron of the Companions.
The Companions kept records for the camps in Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia, camps closed before Port Monro. What happened to the Port Monro records?
The belt the dogs found that day.
Be Prepared.
No bigger than a dog collar, adult hands could span a waist that small.
Work was in progress on the Castleman house. New corrugated iron on the roof, what looked like a weatherboard extension, pink primed boards, big windows, a platform sticking out, a deck when finished. It would be a place to loll, looking down at the creek, up at the hill. Looking at his property.
Why did he offer to sell her the creek strip? Because she was cross with him and she was the rich and beautiful and sophisticated girl who kissed him when he was a shy, gangling boy whose aunt cut his hair?
Offer permanently withdrawn.
It was a good fence, taut. Rebb’s fence. How far could you walk in a day? Rebb wouldn’t ask for lifts, people would have to ask him. Every tool Rebb had used was lined up inside the shearing shed, cleaned and oiled. His mattress was leaning against the wall, the blankets were on the bed springs, folded square, the pillow on them and the washed pillowslip on top.
Cashin was chewing porridge cooked in the microwave when the phone rang.
‘Tuesday arrived down there yet?’ said Dove.
‘Of what week?’
‘I should’ve said the year. Done the full sweep on this David Vincent.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s a brick high.’
‘The summary. You’ve done that, of course.’
‘Of course. Born Melbourne 1968, taken into care 1973, lived somewhere called Colville House 1973 to 1976. Then foster family number one until 1978, number two until 1979, ran away, found, number three until 1980, ran away. Still with me?’
‘Keep going.’
‘Next record is an arrest in Perth in 1983 for theft of a handbag. Age fifteen. After that it’s a list of petty stuff, sent to juvenile in ′84 for six months, again in ′86, nine months. That’s it for form.’
‘The rest?’
‘It’s a sad story. Institutions. It says here, on this one report, clinical depression comp
ounded by multiple addictions. Four years in Lakeside, Ballarat. That sounds nice. By the lake. I read the problem as smack, amphetamines, methadone, dope, booze, gets in fights and sustains injuries to many parts of the body.’
Cashin had not noticed the cloth of sunlight unroll across the old room’s boards. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Listen, I need the number Dave Vincent called CrimeStoppers from. Tracy’s got it.’
‘I thought talking to Vincent was a problem?’
‘Sometimes it’s people looking at you that’s the problem.’
An observation from Singo. Early in the piece, in the first year, the Geelong man who wouldn’t say anything, his hands clenched, his neck a fence of tendons. Singo wrote his extension number on a pad and gave it to the man. They left and waited in Singo’s office. The phone rang inside a minute and Singo talked to him for almost an hour.
‘Well, I’m glad you can look at yourself so objectively,’ said Dove. ‘Over the phone, that is. For my education, may I ask what you want from Vincent?’
‘I think he was at the Companions camp at Port Monro.’
‘Yes? Where does that get you?’
‘Just having a sniff.’
‘Ah, the sniff. I keep hearing about it. A trade secret. Hang on.’
Dove was back with the number inside two minutes.
‘Back to work then,’ said Cashin. ‘Go around to whatever the drug squad is now called and arrest the first prick you see.’
‘So old-fashioned, so out of touch with modern policing.’
David Vincent’s number rang out. Too early for him, Cashin thought. His day would probably begin when most people were thinking about lunch.
‘UNEMPLOYED,’ said Carol Gehrig, shifted on the chair, pulled at the crotch of her tracksuit. ‘Sixteen weeks pay, how’s that for twenty-eight years on the job?’
The cheap timber house stood in the teeth of the wind on a low hill looking over Kenmare. Behind it was a big shed, open in front, a truck shed with just an old yellow Mazda in it.
‘Who sacked you?’ said Cashin.
‘The lawyer. Addison. Place’s going on the market some time. She wants me to clean up when the time comes.’
