Truth (13 page)

No one came forward. They took turns talking to the victim’s family, rich people in Toorak, he didn’t know anything about them, just rich people. He spoke to the mother and the father, they always thanked him warmly but he knew he was just a reminder of what they had lost.

On a night in August, freezing wind off the bay, it had rained at last light, Villani and Burgess went to Footscray, a sad domestic, woman stabbed, the blood-spattered husband was in the local cells, picked up at the milkbar while buying cigarettes. Villani tried to talk to the man, who was incoherent with drink, drugs, possibly this was his natural state. After a while, Villani went outside for a smoke, stood against the wall in the cold, stained concrete yard, the sky now blown clear, he could see the Southern Cross, the wind blew the cigarette coal white-hot.

A van came in, they unloaded two youths, black trackies, beanies, still full of fuck-you attitude, it showed they had been treated with the respect owed to citizens, even those who were lawless scum.

‘What?’ said Villani to the senior.

The man knew him from the Armed Robbers, most cops in those parts knew him, he had been seen in the company of legends, it attached to you.

‘Bashing a black kid, kicking him, boss,’ he said. ‘We come around the corner, the hugely intelligent pricks run straight up a dead end.’

Villani flicked away his stub, watched the party go up the steps into the building and, through the legs of the cop behind, he registered the second youth was wearing Blunnies.

He followed. Inside, he said to the senior, ‘Give us a minute with these dorks. One to start.’

The man looked at him, the moment of query, uncertainty.

‘Sure, boss. Just do the paper, they come in unharmed, okay?’

They did the paper, put the boys away, it took time, it was late when Villani went into the smaller one’s cell, his name was Jude Luck. Now the fuck-you boy was alone, had no beanie, no shoes, no trackie, he had some homey tatts, his eyes showed a lot of white, not good dairy white.

Villani started in the normal way, he smiled and said, ‘Hello, Jude, I’m the chaplain from St Barnabas,’ and he kicked Luck’s feet out from under him, he fell sideways and Villani stopped him meeting the concrete, not with love, laid him to rest, put a shoe on his chest, tested his weight, moved it up to the windpipe and pressed, tapped, you did not want to mark the cunt.

‘I’ve been looking for you, son,’ he said. ‘So long I’ve been looking for you. You and your fucking Blunnies.’

They recorded the interview with Jude Brendan Luck at 12.47am. A while later, they put Luck’s story to the bigger one, Shayne Lethlean, he went to water. They picked up the other boys, the brothers, two years apart, ginger-freckled angels fast asleep on the floor in the garage of their sister’s house in Braybrook, they did not wake when the door rolled up, they had to be shaken, slapped, there was some pleasure in the work.

Villani woke, fully dressed, unrefreshed, as if from a brief fainting spell, the new day was grey in the east window, the city was making its discordant birth cries.

CORIN WAS eating cereal. She was dressed to go, damp hair back, looking twelve or thirteen but for the nose, the neck, the strong shoulders.

‘Early?’ Villani said, whispery voice.

‘Job interview,’ she said. ‘Six-thirty.’

Third year at university, so clever, she was always so sharp. He could not believe his sperm played a part in her creation.

‘Where?’

‘Slam Juice. Lygon Street.’

‘Dawn interview?’

‘They test you. When’s Mum get back?’

He was looking into the fridge. ‘I don’t know. Jesus, this needs high-pressure steam. Don’t you talk to her?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘She doesn’t phone you?’

‘She’s working, Dad. Do you ring me?’

Toast. Vegemite. Peanut butter. That would do.

‘Heard from Tony?’

‘He’s in Scotland. Don’t you know that?’

‘Scotland? I thought he was in England.’

‘He’s on an island, working on a fishing boat.’

‘Nobody told me that.’

‘Maybe you weren’t listening, Dad. Preoccupied.’

‘Give me a break,’ said Villani. ‘I’m human. Lizzie talked to her mum?’

‘I have no idea.’

Corin went to the sink, he saw the sad and lovely curve of her nose, it was his mother’s profile in one of the two photographs he had, kept with her letter.

‘Well, ask her,’ Villani said. ‘She may be in the loop.’

He sliced bread, it was good bread gone a little stale, he cut three slices, went to the toaster.

Silence.

He looked up, Corin was drying her hands.

‘What?’ he said.

‘I can’t talk to her,’ said Corin.

‘Your mum?’

‘No. Lizzie.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since a long time. She’s a stranger.’

‘Say this to your mum?’

‘Dad, you are so out of touch with this family.’

He depressed the toaster lever.

Corin said, ‘Saw her yesterday near the market. Three-thirty, around then.’

‘Yes?’

‘With streeters. Shitfaced. She’s crossed over, big time.’

There had been a previous episode of wagging school. How long ago was that? Months? A year?

‘I thought this stuff was over?’ said Villani. ‘I thought she’d settled down.’

‘No, Dad. The school wants to kick her out.’

‘Well, Jesus,’ said Villani, ‘I don’t know this.’

Corin was putting her plate and spoon away. Silence.

‘Why?’ said Villani. ‘Why was I not told?’

‘Dad, you only sleep here, you pass over this house like a cloud shadow.’

Corin left the room. He waited and he heard the front door close. She’d always kissed him goodbye. She’d never gone out without a kiss. Or had she? Perhaps she’d stopped long ago?

The toaster clicked, toast shot up. He removed the slices, burnt, wrong setting. He gave them to the bin.

He went down the passage and opened Lizzie’s door, it was on the cool side of the house, the room dark, air dead, heavy with breathed air, sour, and faintly sweet. A small, curved, broken ridge rose from the landscape of the bed. He could see a thin arm, fallen to the floor, elbow joint white as an old bone, fingernails almost touching the carpet.

The room was a tip—clothes, bags, shoes, towels, no floor visible.

He went to wake her and then he could not bring himself to. Let her sleep, I’ll talk to her later.

He closed the door and left the house. He knew he was being weak. He knew he should have woken her, talked to her, showed concern, put the hard word on her. What the hell was Laurie doing in Queensland while her daughter was running wild?

At the gate, he leaned out of the car window and cleared the mailbox: junk, bills.

IN THE ghostly city, he saw the newspaper bales being dumped, the lost people, the homeless, the unhinged, a man and a woman sitting on the kerb passing a bottle, a figure face down, crucified in a pool of piss, the unloaders of fruit and vegetables, men lumping pieces of animals sheathed in hard white fat and shiny membrane, a malbred dog in a gutter, eating something, shaking his grey eusuchian head. As he crossed the bridge, the mist opened and showed a skiff thin as a pencil, two men drawing a line on the cold river.

Parked, the world waiting for him, every minute would be taken, he sat head down. Laurie had begun to go on the two or three-day advertising shoots around the time she fell pregnant with Lizzie, she didn’t tell him until she was more than four months. It wasn’t until Lizzie was about five that it occurred to Villani that she looked like neither of them.

He hadn’t been much of a father to her.

He hadn’t been much of a father to Corin and Tony either. He’d never given any thought to being a father. He wasn’t ready for marriage, never mind children. He went to work, paid the bills. Laurie did the take and fetch, the school stuff, the worrying about temperatures, coughs, pains, sore throats, a broken wrist, tooth knocked out, parent-teacher meetings, reports, bullying. She told
him, he half-listened, made sounds, went out the door or fell asleep.

He’d looked after kids. He’d had his turn. All the years seeing to Mark and Luke,
see to
was his father’s term, you had to see to the horses, the dogs, the chooks—helpless creatures, they suffered, they died, if you didn’t see to them.

Mark got his mother’s genes, a teacher’s genes, not the genes of Bob Villani, brumby-hunter’s son left school at fourteen, found a home in army barracks, found his vocation in killing people in Vietnam. Luke was another matter. His mother was a bike called Ellen. Bob Villani bunned her in Darwin. Just before dark one July day, she arrived at the farm in a taxi, tight pants, red-dyed hair.

They were alone, the two of them, Bob was on the road, he was driving Melbourne–Brisbane then, gone the whole week, came home, five or six beers, four eggs scrambled, half a loaf of bread, he slept face down till around nine on Saturday. Mark went into his room every ten minutes from sunrise, looked for signs that he was breathing, studied him for signs of waking up.

Monday morning, Bob Villani left before dawn, blast on the airhorn at the gate, money on the kitchen table.

‘He’s not here,’ said Villani.

‘When’s he comin back?’ she said.

‘Not sure,’ said Villani.

She looked at Mark behind him, back at Villani. ‘You his kids?’ she said, she had a grating voice.

They nodded. She waved the taxi away.

‘Brought your half-brother,’ she said.

Luke came out from behind her, a fat little shit, long hair. For the first three days, he whined, she smacked him, he howled, she kissed and hugged him, he started whining again.

Bob Villani came back on Friday night just before nine. Mark and Ellen and Luke were watching the snowy television. Villani was making a model plane on the kitchen table. He caught the sound of the rig five kilometres away, the downshifts climbing Camel Hill, the chatter of the jake brake as it slowed on the steep
slope before the turn-off from the main road. And then the airhorn, long and lonely, hanging in the aching-cold black.

He went to open the gate, waited in the dark, shivering, the mover came around the bend like a building. It slowed, inched through the gate, towered above him, he closed the gate, walked down the drive.

Bob was out of the truck, stretching.

‘Where’s Mark?’ he said.

‘There’s a woman here,’ said Villani. ‘Ellen. With a kid.’

Silence. Bob put a hand through his hair.

Deep in the night, the sounds from his father’s room woke him. He thought his father was killing Ellen. It was the first time he ever heard fucking.

Mark woke. ‘What’s that?’ he said. ‘Stevie, what’s that?’ He was a boy who frightened easily.

‘Nothing,’ said Villani. ‘She’s having a bad dream. Put your head under the pillow.’

On Monday morning, Bob Villani took Villani and Mark to school in the truck, they rode like gods, they looked down on tiny cars, utes.

‘They staying, Dad?’ said Mark.

‘We’ll see,’ said Bob. ‘Keep an eye on Tomboy, Steve. Off his feed.’

When they got out, Bob gave Villani the thumbs up, said what he always said: ‘Carry on, sergeant-major.’

On the Friday, when Luke was asleep, Ellen walked to the farm gate, a tradie gave her a lift to Paxton. She was never heard of again, not by the boys—not a letter, not a postcard. Villani and Mark came home from school, found the boy snailed on his bed, keening, snotted cheeks.

Looking at Luke, weeks after his mother had shot through, Bob Villani said, ‘And the bloody taxi driver reckons I owe him sixty bucks for taking her to Stanny.’

It came to Villani that, in never giving a thought to being a father, he was just being his father’s son. All of Bob was in him: the
big hands, the hair, the delegation of responsibility, the eyes that saw everything through crosshairs. Everything except the courage. He didn’t have that. He had learned to behave as if he had it because Bob Villani expected it of him, took it for granted. He had joined the cops because he didn’t have courage, started boxing because he didn’t have courage.

Never take a backward step, son. Bad for the soul.

Bob Villani’s terrible injunction had been at his throat all his life.

Villani raised his head. Winter, standing in front of his car, head forward, peering.

He got out.

‘Worried me there, boss,’ said Winter, a reed-thin man with a moustache grown to hide an unpredictable upper-lip twitch, some nerve short-circuit, two threads coming close, arcing.

‘Meditating,’ said Villani. ‘Going inward. You should try it.’

In the lift, he said, ‘Getting home before they’re asleep?’

‘Trying, boss, yeah.’

‘Well, bear in mind the clients are the dead,’ said Villani. ‘We are the living. Although it may not always feel that way.’

‘Staying level’s my aim, boss.’ Winter’s gaze was down.

‘And that’s a receding target around here,’ said Villani.

They arrived, Winter stood back. He was Singo’s last recruit, a CIB junior. Singo had broken the rule that Homicide only took senior detectives. Senior detectives brought with them attitude. Singo wanted people in whom he could instil attitude. His.

At his desk, the trilling, the incoming paper. Soon, two calls on hold, two people outside. The morning went, he ate a salad roll at 11.30, standing at the window, phoning Laurie. Wherever she was, Darwin, Cairns, Port Douglas, she didn’t answer her mobile. He sent an SMS:
Call me.

What was Birkerts doing on Oakleigh? Why hadn’t Dove reported?

Phone. Tomasic.

‘Thought I should let you know, boss,’ he said. ‘Oakleigh, there’s
an electronics outfit around the corner. They just got back from a trade show thing, looked at their security set-up.’

‘Yes?’

‘Got a camera, triggered by sensors. Covers 90 degrees. They’ve got vision of the street. Vision Sunday night, early Monday morning.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s 2.23am, a vehicle. Then opposite direction, vehicle, 2.51am.’

‘Get it in here,’ said Villani. ‘Maximum speed.’

THE VEHICLE in the frozen frame was a blur, red-tinged. In the top right-hand corner of the picture, a display said: 2.23.07.