The Broken Shore (29 page)

‘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.’

‘I’m going home after this,’ said Cashin. ‘Handpass the matter to the experts.’

They crossed the city, nothing said until Dove pulled up on the service road across from the gallery. ‘You sulking?’ he said.

‘That’s cheeky,’ said Cashin.

‘What’s cheeky mean in homicide?’

‘If I was still homicide, it means I outrank you. And that a reject from the Canberra dregs and a proven slackarse should show respect. That’s part of what cheeky means.’

‘I see. I’ll get a description of the watches.’

‘You never ran the name Pollard when you checked those Addison payments?’

Dove sucked in his nostrils. ‘I was doing you a favour. Anyway, it was three days ago. Pollard was dead.’

Cashin looked at the traffic.

‘You’re allowed to fuck up,’ said Dove. ‘Let Hopgood run it that night and kill the boys and you’re still okay. The mates look after you.’

‘Get the watch descriptions,’ Cashin said. ‘And see if Sydney got a description from the pawnbroker, whatever he calls himself. Either way, we want it now and that is this very day.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Cashin crossed the road to the gallery, dodging traffic and a tram. In the foyer, he looked up and, in the way of it, met the eyes of Erica Bourgoyne. She was leaning on the rail. He went upstairs, found her seated.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Is this private enough for you?’

‘If you don’t shout.’ She was in dark grey, drinking black coffee, didn’t offer. ‘What line of investigation is this?’

‘Just a chat.’

A downturned mouth. ‘I’m not available for chats. What’s the point? My step-father’s dead, the suspects are dead.’

Cashin thought of Singo, the grey eyes under eyebrows like stick insects. ‘Our obligation is to the dead,’ he said. ‘Your step-father paid money every month to a man called Arthur Pollard.’

‘Did he?’

‘You don’t know Pollard?’

‘Never heard of him.’

A group of Japanese tourists were trying to leave the gallery through the entrance. The attendant was redirecting them and they either didn’t understand or thought he was an idiot.

‘He was murdered a few days ago. In a building owned by your step-father.’

‘Christ. What building?’

‘A hall in North Melbourne. It used to be a theatre. Did you know he owned it?’

‘No. I don’t know what he owns. Owned. What has this to do with Charles?’

‘There are similarities.’

‘Meaning?’

Cashin saw the man, black turtleneck, three tables away, turning a page of a newspaper, a tabloid. ‘We’re still working on it,’ he said. ‘Do you know anything about the Moral Companions? The camp at Port Monro?’

‘I remember the camp, yes. There was a fire there. Why?’

‘This hall was the Companions’ headquarters.’

‘To be clear here,’ said Erica. ‘You’re saying the Daunt boys didn’t bash Charles?’

Cashin looked away, at the water running down the huge plateglass window. Two blurred figures outside were running fingertips across the stream, making wavy transient lines. ‘That’s possible,’ he said.

‘What about the watch?’

‘Never conclusive.’

‘Just because Charles gave this man money doesn’t link the attacks,’ said Erica. ‘Who knows how many people Charles gave money to?’

‘I do.’

She sat back, hands on the table, linked them, parted them. ‘So you know everything and you say nothing. What can I possibly tell you that you don’t know?’

‘I thought you might think of something to tell me.’

Erica looked at him, a steady gaze, blue-grey eyes. She touched the slim silver choker around her neck, ran a finger behind it. ‘I have nothing else to tell you and I have a meeting to go to.’

Cashin did not know why he had waited to say it. ‘Pollard was a paedophile,’ he said. ‘Fucked boys. Children.’

She shook her head as if mystified. Colour came to her cheekbones, she could not stop that. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m sure that information is useful to you, but…’

‘It’s not useful to you?’

‘Why should it be? Are you scratching around because it’s going to be embarrassing if the Daunt boys are innocent?’

‘We’ll wear that.’ He looked away and, at the edge of his vision, he saw the man in the black turtleneck flexing his right hand. ‘What are you scared of, Ms Bourgoyne?’

For an instant, he thought she was going to tell him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The bodyguard.’

‘If I was scared of anything that fell in your area of concern, detective, I’d tell you. Now I have my meeting.’

‘Thank you for your time.’

Cashin watched her go. She had good legs. At the escalator, she looked back and caught his eyes, held them a moment longer than necessary. Then the bodyguard blocked his view.

‘THE FIRST watch Bourgoyne bought from Cozzen’s,’ said Dove, ‘is this model.’ He pointed to a picture in a brochure. ‘The receipt is 14 September 1986.’

‘Very nice. Time yourself going down the Cresta Run.’ It was a technical-looking watch, black face, three white dials, three bevelled winders, recessed, a crocodile strap.

‘It’s called the Navitimer, still in production.’ Dove’s speech was clipped, he radiated antagonism. ‘Here’s the second one he bought, another Navitimer, 14 March 2000.’

It had a plain white face, three small dials, also on a crocodile leather strap.

Cashin thought about the morning at The Heights. A smart watch, Carol Gehrig said. A crocodile skin strap. ‘What’s the pawnbroker say?’

‘He made a statement at the time,’ said Dove. ‘Sydney sent it but in the excitement it seems to have fallen into a hole.’

Cashin felt as if he had missed a night’s sleep somewhere. ‘What did he say at the time then?’

‘He said, I quote: “It was a Breitling. A Maritimer. It’s a collectable. Very expensive. The one with three small dials, black face, crocodile strap.”’

Cashin got up, full of pain, went to the window and looked at the school grounds, the public gardens, all soft in the misty rain. He found
Helen Castleman’s direct number.

‘Helen Castleman.’

‘Joe Cashin.’

A moment.

‘I’ve tried to call you,’ she said. ‘Your home phone just rings, your mobile number appears to be off.’

‘I’m using another one. I’m in the city.’

‘I don’t know what I should say. You were so insulting. Arrogant. Dismissive.’

‘Got the right person? Listen, I need a description of the watch Susie saw. She gave me the name but I need a description from her. Can you get that?’

‘This is because the case is still under investigation?’