The Broken Shore (28 page)

A big room, dimly lit by dusty windows high on the walls. He took a few steps.

It was a theatre from another time, longer than it was wide, slightly raked, about thirty rows of seats, all uptilted. To his left, a short flight of steps went up to the stage.

One more time. ‘Anyone here?’ he shouted. ‘Police.’

Starlings up above here too and, from the street, the sound of a car revving, the test-revving of mechanics.

A smell over the dust and the faint odour of damp coming up from beneath the floor. Cashin sniffed, could not identify it. He had smelled it somewhere before and he felt a tightening of the skin on his face and neck.

He walked to the back of the room and pushed open one of a pair of doors. Beyond was a small marble-floored foyer and the front doors. He went back, climbed the stairs to the stage, pushed aside heavy purple velvet curtains. He was in the wings, a dark space, the bare-boarded stage glimpsed through gaps in tall pieces of scenery.

Cashin went to an opening.

Sand had been dumped on the stage, clean building sand, in heaps and splashes.

Sand?

He saw the buckets at the back of the space, three red buckets with FIRE stencilled on them. Someone had emptied the fire buckets onto the stage, thrown the sand around.

Hoons? Hoons wouldn’t limit themselves to throwing sand around, they’d trash the whole place, pull down the curtains, shit on the stage, piss off it, jump on the seats till they broke, rip them from their moorings, light fires.

Not hoons, no. This wasn’t hooning.

Something else had happened here.

He walked out onto the stage, could not avoid treading on sand, it crunched beneath his feet, a startlingly loud sound. At centre stage, he looked around. Dust motes hung in their millions in the pale yellow glow from the windows

There would be stage lighting. Where?

In the wings, he looked around, found a panel near the stairs with switches—four old-fashioned round porcelain switches, brass toggles. He tipped them all, solid clicks, the stage was illuminated.

He walked back onto the stage. A spotlight above the arch now lit a painted backdrop and perhaps a dozen footlight bulbs were alight. As he watched, two died, a moment, then a third was gone. He looked at the backdrop. It was of a soft rolling landscape, farm buildings here and there, white dots of grazing sheep, a yellow road snaking over the plain and up a hill, a green, softly rounded hill. On its peak stood three crosses, two small ones flanking a cross twice their size.

Cashin went closer. Crucified figures hung from the smaller crosses. But the big cross was empty. It was waiting for someone. He looked at the sand on the floor in front of the backdrop.

Why would anyone throw sand on the stage? To put out a fire? Perhaps someone had started a fire, poured an inflammable fluid on the floorboards, lit it, then panicked, grabbed a fire bucket, smothered the flames.

That was the obvious explanation.

Hoons lit fires.

But they didn’t put them out.

He moved sand with a shoe, scraped at it. The bottom grains were
dark, stuck together, they came away in clumps. He scraped some more, revealed the boards.

A black stain. He felt a twinge of nausea, the cold in his neck, the back of his head, his ears.

Something bad had happened here.

Time to ring the squad, wait in the vehicle.

He squatted and put out an index finger, touched the floor, looked at his fingertip.

Blood.

He knew blood.

How old? The sand had trapped the moisture.

He stood up, back aching, flexed his shoulders, he was facing the auditorium, the spotlight on, the footlights in his eyes, he could not see the hall clearly.

He saw it.

ALL THE seats in the hall were turned up.

Except for one seat. Six rows back, in the middle of the sixth row.

One seat was down. In the whole auditorium only one seat was down.

Someone had sat on that seat. Someone had chosen that seat. It was the best seat in the house to see something.

To see what?

Nonsense. The seat had probably fallen down, seats did that, everything did that, falling down was a law of nature. You lined up a dozen things that could fall over, at least one did.

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 naked 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.

‘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.