The Broken Shore (14 page)

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Can’t breathe in here.’

‘Need the nebuliser?’

It was provocative and it worked. ‘I don’t have fucking asthma,’ Dove said. ‘I have a problem with breathing air circulated ten thousand times through people with bad teeth and rotten tonsils and constipation.’

‘Didn’t mean anything. People have asthma.’ Cashin sat down. He had to live with Dove.

Dove pulled a chair out, sat, put his polished black shoes on the desk. The soles were barely worn, insteps shiny yellow and unmarked. ‘Yeah, well,’ he said, ‘I don’t have asthma.’

‘Glad to hear it. I’m assuming what will happen here is the defence will want Luke Ericsen loaded with Bourgoyne. Luke’s dead, it’s not a problem for him.’

‘If Donny was there, he’ll share the load.’

‘Placing Donny there,’ said Cashin. ‘That’s a challenge. And if it happens, the story then will be led astray by his older cousin, didn’t take part, that sort of thing.’

A crash, his heart jumped. Unlatched by Dove, its sash cords rotten, the top half of the window had waited, dropped. The big panes were vibrating, wobbling the outside world.

Cold air came in, the sea—salty, sexual.

‘That’s better,’ said Dove. ‘Much better. Delayed action. Smoke?’

‘No thanks. Always fighting the urge.’

Dove lit up, moved his chair back and forth. ‘I’m new to this but if you don’t place Donny at the house, all you have is he went to Sydney with Luke and they tried to sell Bourgoyne’s watch. A half-way solid story about where he was on the night, tucked up in bed, he’ll walk.’

‘I suppose he should. That’s the system.’

Dove eyed him briefly, narrow eyes. ‘The smartarses who walk. You see them look at their mates, little smirk. Outside, it’s the high fives. How easy was that? Fucking shithead cops, let’s do it again.’ Pause. ‘What’s Villani say? Your mate.’

Cashin felt a powerful urge to smack Dove down. He waited. ‘Inspector Villani says nothing,’ he said. ‘The solicitor says Donny’s mum’s giving the alibi. There may be others to confirm it.’

Dove’s head was back. ‘Some women amaze me. They spend their whole lives covering up for men—the father, the husband, the sons. Like it’s a woman’s sacred duty. Doesn’t matter what the bastards do. So what if my dad beat my mum, so what if my hubby fucked the babysitter, so what if my boy’s a teenage rapist, he’s still my…’

‘We don’t have anything that says Donny was there on the night,’ Cashin said.

‘Anyway, it’s academic,’ Dove said. ‘Hopgood’s right. Bobby
Walshe’s made them go soft-cock on this. First it’s bail, next they drop the charges.’

‘You should tell Hopgood that. He’ll want you on the Cromarty team. You could be spokesperson.’

Dove smoked in silence, eyes still on the ceiling. Then he said, ‘I’m black so I’m supposed to empathise with these Daunt boys. Is that what you’re saying?’

There was a gull on the sill—the hard eyes, the moulting head, it reminded Cashin of someone. ‘The idea is to keep an open mind until the evidence convinces you of something.’

‘Yes, boss. I’ll keep an open mind. And in the meantime, I have to live in the Whaleboners’ Motel.’

‘The Whalers’ Inn.’

‘Could very well be.’ Cigarette in his mouth, Dove looked at Cashin. ‘Just tell me,’ he said. ‘I accept reality. I’ll read a book until it’s time to go home.’

‘The job is to build the case against Donny and Luke,’ said Cashin. ‘I don’t have any other instructions.’

‘I’m not talking about instructions.’

The sagging chair wasn’t doing anything for Cashin’s aches, his mood. He got up, took off his coat, spread an old newspaper on the floor, lay down and put his legs on the chair, tried to get into a Z shape.

‘What’s this?’ said Dove, alarmed. ‘Why are you doing that?’

Cashin couldn’t see him. ‘I’m a floor person. We’ll have to see where we can get with Donny’s mum.’

Dove appeared above him. ‘What’s the point?’

‘If she’s going to lie for the boy, she’ll be worried. They don’t know what we’ve got. Getting Donny to plead guilty to something would be a good outcome.’

Cashin heard the door open.

‘Just you, sunshine?’ said Hopgood. ‘Where’s Cashin?’

Dove looked down. Hopgood came around the table and studied Cashin as if he were roadkill.

‘What the fuck is this?’ he said.

‘We missed you in court,’ said Cashin.

Hopgood’s chin went up. Cashin could see the hairs in his nose.

‘Not my fucking business.’

‘We need to talk to Donny’s mum.’

‘Thinking about going to the Daunt, are you?’

Cashin didn’t fancy the idea. ‘If we have to. Can’t see her presenting here.’

‘Well, it’s your business,’ Hopgood said. ‘Don’t call us.’

‘I need to talk to the Aboriginal liaison bloke.’

‘Ask the desk where he’s currently doing fuck all.’

A phone rang. Dove picked up one, wrong, tried another. ‘Dove,’ he said. ‘Good, boss, yeah. Went off okay, yeah. I’ll put him on.’

He offered Cashin the phone. ‘Inspector Villani,’ he said, impassive.

Cashin reached up. ‘Supreme commander,’ he said.

‘Joe, we are talking a cooling-off period,’ said Villani.

‘Meaning?’

‘Let things settle down. I saw your court crowd today, our television friends showed us their pictures for the evening news. The word is no more turbulence like that is wanted.’

‘Who said that?’

‘I can tell you I don’t quote the bloke at the servo.’

‘The kid’s been charged on close to zero. Now you’re saying you don’t want us to find any actual evidence or try to get a plea out of him?’

‘Nothing is to be done to inflame this situation.’

‘That’s a political order, is it?’

Villani expelled breath as a whistle. ‘Joe, can’t you see the sense?’ he said.

Cashin felt Dove and Hopgood looking at him, a man lying on the floor, talking on a phone, his calves on a chair.

‘I’d like to say, boss,’ he said, ‘that we have a short time here when we might shake something loose. We let that pass, we will need jackhammers.’

Silence.

Cashin focused on the ceiling, yellow, creased and spotted like the back of an elderly hand. ‘That is my common sense,’ he said. ‘For what it’s worth.’

Silence.

‘For what it’s worth, Joe,’ said Villani, ‘taking Shane Diab parking outside Rai Sarris’s place was your idea of common sense.’

Cashin felt the cold knife inside him, turning. ‘Moving on,’ he said. ‘How long is a cooling-off period? For example.’

‘I don’t know, Joe, a week, ten days, more.’ Villani spoke slowly, like someone talking to an obtuse child. ‘We’ll need to use our judgment.’

‘Right. Some of us will use our judgment.’ Cashin was looking at Dove. ‘In the meantime, what’s Paul Dove do?’

‘I need him back here for a while. I want you to take some time off. Handle that?’

‘Is that suspension again, boss?’

‘Don’t be a prick, Joe. I’ll call you later. Put Dove on.’

Cashin handed up the handset to Dove.

‘What’s he say?’ said Hopgood.

‘He says there’s a cooling-off period over Donny.’

‘Is that right?’ said Hopgood, something like a smirk in his voice, on his lips. ‘You won’t be needing this comforable office then.’

In light rain, Dove and Cashin walked up to the Regent, got beers in the bar and sat in the dim cooking-fat-scented bistro, the only customers.

Dove read the laminated menu, ran his index finger down the list.

‘Twelve main courses,’ he said. ‘You need at least three people in the kitchen to do that.’

‘In the city,’ said Cashin. ‘Three bludgers. Here we do it with a work-experience girl’

‘A steak sandwich,’ said Dove. ‘What can they do to that? How badly can they fuck that up?’

‘They meet any challenge.’

A worn woman in a green coverall came out of a back door and stood over them with a notepad, sucked her teeth, sounds like the last dishwater going down a blocked drain.

‘Two steak sandwiches, please,’ said Cashin.

‘Only in the bar,’ she said, her gaze on the wall. ‘No sangers here. The bistro menu here.’

‘Cops,’ said Cashin. ‘Need a bit of privacy.’

She looked down, smiled at him, crooked teeth. ‘Right, well, that’s
okay. Know all the cops. You here for the Bourgoyne thing then?’

‘Can’t talk about work.’

‘Black bastards,’ she said. ‘Two down, why don’t you nail the bloody lot of them? Bomb the place. Like that Baghdad.’

‘Could you cut the fat off?’ said Dove. ‘I’d appreciate that.’

‘Don’t like fat? No worries.’

‘And some tomato?’

‘On a steak sandwich?’

‘It’s a boong thing,’ said Dove.

At the kitchen door, she glanced back at Dove. Cashin saw the uncertainty in her eyes. Across the gloomy space, he saw it.

‘An attractive woman,’ said Dove. ‘So many attractive people around here, it must be something in the white gene pool.’ He looked around. ‘Stuff like the other night bother you? Still bother you? Ever bother you?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Well, you’re fairly hard to read, if I may say so. Except for the lying on the floor stuff, that’s a real window into the soul.’

Cashin considered telling him about the dreams. ‘It bothers me.’

‘Shooting the kid.’

‘Somebody shoots at you, what do you do?’

‘What I’m getting at,’ said Dove, ‘is whether the kid fired first. Did you tell them that?’

Cashin didn’t want to answer the question, didn’t want to consider the question. ‘You’ll know what I told them when we get to the coroner.’

‘Cross your mind we were set up? Hopgood puts us together in a dud car, claims he can’t hear the radio.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Leave himself and his boys a bit of slack if anything went wrong.’

‘That may be too far-sighted for Hopgood. You missing the feds?’

Dove shook his head in pity. They talked about nothing, the sandwiches came, the woman fussed over Cashin.

‘Could this be whale steak?’ said Dove after a bout of chewing. ‘I don’t suppose they honour the whaling treaty here.’

Walking back in drizzle and wind, Dove said, ‘Cooling-off period
my arse. This thing’s in the freezer and it’s staying there. Still, I escape the fucking Whaleboners’ Tavern.’

‘Whalers’ Inn.’

‘That too.’

On the station steps, Dove offered a long hand. ‘Strong feeling I won’t be back. I’ll miss the place so much.’

‘So good, the whale steak, Miss Piggy’s coffee.’

‘Aunty Jemimah’s.’

‘You feds are trained observers,’ said Cashin. ‘See you soon.’

DEBBIE DOOGUE was sitting at the kitchen table, school books spread, mug of milky tea, biscuits, cartoon show on television. The room was warm, a wood heater glowing in the corner.

‘This’s the place to be,’ said Cashin.

‘Want tea?’ she said.

She was a pale gingerhead, ghosts of freckles, her hair pulled back. She looked older than fourteen.

‘No, thanks,’ Cashin said. ‘Full of tea. How’s school?’ It was a pointless question to ask a teenager.

‘Okay. Fine. Too much homework.’ She moved her bottom on the chair. ‘Dad’s in the shed.’

Cashin went to the sink, wiped a hole in the fogged window. He could see rain speckling the puddles in the rutted mud between the house and the shed. Bern was loading something onto the truck, pushing it with both hands. He had a cigarette in his mouth.

‘He’s worried about the stuff your mum found,’ said Cashin, turning, leaning against the sink.

Debbie had her head down, pretending to be reading. ‘Well, had to dob me, didn’t he?’ she said.

‘What’s to dob? I thought it wasn’t yours?’

She looked up, light blue Doogue eyes. ‘Didn’t even know what it was. She just gave me this box, said, hang on to this for me. That’s all.’

‘You thought it was what?’

‘Didn’t think about it.’

‘Come on, Debbie, I’m not that old.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m not into drugs, don’t want to know about them.’

‘But your friends are? Is that right?’

‘You want me to dob in my friends? No way.’

Cashin stepped across, pulled out a chair and sat at the table. ‘Debbie, I don’t give a bugger if your friends use drugs, wouldn’t cross the road to pinch them. But I don’t want to see you dead in an alley in the city.’

Her cheeks coloured slightly, she looked down at her notepad. ‘Yeah, well, I’m not…’

‘Debbie, can I tell you a secret?’

Uneasy, side to side movements of her head.

‘I wouldn’t tell you if you weren’t family.’

‘Um, sure, yeah.’

‘Keep it to yourself?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yeah.’

The inside door opened violently and two small boys appeared, abreast, fighting to be first in. Debbie turned her head. ‘Geddout, you maggots!’

Eyes wide in their round boy faces, mouths open, little teeth showing. ‘We’re hungry,’ said the one on the left.

‘Out! Out! Out!’

The boys went backwards as if pulled by a cord, closed the door in their own faces.

Debbie said, ‘I promise.’

Cashin leaned across the table, spoke softly. ‘Some of the people selling stuff to your friends are undercovers.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Understand what that means?’

‘Like secret agents.’

‘That’s right. So the drug cops know all the names. If your friend bought that stuff, his name’s on the list.’

‘Not my friend, her friend, I don’t even know him.’

‘That’s good. You don’t want to know him.’

‘What would they do with the names?’

‘They could tell the school, tell the parents. They could raid the houses. If you were on the list, they could knock on the door any time.’

Cashin rose. ‘Anyway, got to go. I wanted to tell you because you’re family and I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. Or to your mum and dad.’

At the door, he heard her chair scrape.

‘Joe.’

He looked back.

Debbie was standing, hugging herself, now looking about six years old. ‘Scared, Joe.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I bought the stuff. For my friend.’

‘The girl friend?’

Reluctant. ‘No. A boy.’

‘From a Piggot?’