Truth (22 page)

Uneasy look. ‘I shouldn’t talk about him. He doesn’t like being stood up to. A bully actually. And women. It’s my experience,
they’ll put up with a bit more.’

‘You’re trying to shaft him?’ Villani said.

‘God no, I’m trying to do what a citizen should do. A person missing.’

‘Dead.’

Phipps showed surprise, square teeth. ‘It didn’t say that.’

‘When you saw her at Koenig’s, what did you think she was doing there?’

‘No idea. Visitor.’

‘See the driver of the BMW?’

‘No.’

‘How far from her were you?’ said Villani.

Phipps pointed at the bar. ‘Here to there. What, three metres? She looked at me, that’s why I’m sure.’

‘The cameras. Koenig would have vision of this?’ ‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’

‘Date and time?’

‘Just after ten, two weeks ago, Thursday.’

‘Koenig was there?’

‘His car was there, lights on in the house.’

‘Someone can confirm your movements?’

‘When I left the office, yes. And when I got home.’

‘The document, the briefing? Leave it in the box?’

‘Oh yes. Three copies stamped, time and date.’

‘I’ll be in touch, Mr Phipps,’ Villani said. ‘We’ll need a proper statement. Meanwhile, don’t tell anyone you’ve talked to me, that’s important. Okay?’

Phipps nodded, leaned. ‘Can I ask? Is that your photographer or some student doing a documentary on pubs?’

Villani didn’t look for Dove. ‘Student. They’re everywhere. Menace. Thanks for your public-spiritedness.’

In the car, he said to Dove, ‘The trick is they don’t see you. Look at the screen not the target.’

‘Saw me?’

‘Blind Freddy could see you.’

He told Dove about Phipps. ‘Makes a ringing sound to me.’

‘So I should…’

‘See the minister tomorrow,’ said Villani. ‘Ask for an appointment as a matter of urgency.’

‘Is that me or…?’

‘Want to do it? You and Winter?’

Dove didn’t look at him. ‘Not especially, boss.’

‘Okay. Me and you. And on Preston, you want everything run against Prosilio.’

‘Done that. Given that instruction.’

They drove in silence.

‘I’m beginning to see the outline of the job now,’ said Dove. ‘Boss.’

‘This job or the whole job?’

‘Whole job. The full horror.’

‘Beginning of wisdom,’ said Villani. ‘Still time to make a run for it. Why’d you become a cop?’

‘To spite my father,’ said Dove. ‘He hated cops.’

‘That’s a good spite,’ said Villani. ‘That’d hurt him. I’m going to Avoca Street. Know where that is?’

‘Is that Highett, Yarraville or Brunswick?’

‘Let’s try South Yarra, please. Go down Punt.’

Crossing the Yarra, Villani said, ‘Why’d your dad hate cops?’

‘Bashed by cops,’ said Dove. ‘In Sydney. A number of times.’

‘Why’s that?’

Dove looked at him, dark eyes. ‘Same colour as me. The wrong colour.’

‘He forgiven you?’ said Villani. ‘I wouldn’t forgive you.’

‘He thinks being shot’s my punishment,’ said Dove. ‘He thinks we all get punished for our sins. In time.’

‘He may well be right,’ said Villani. ‘And my time is now.’

AT THE end of the night, a sound from the street woke him, rubber shriek, a hoon, they were naked, sheet thrown aside, a light from the unclad window lay upon them. She was on her spine, face to him, denied by a page of hair, her hands folded at her throat, her hipbones jutting, the dark in her delta.

Sleep gone, a new day but the old day in his mouth—old day, old week, month, year, life. A middle-aged man with no address, his possessions in the boot of his car.

Villani slid from the bed, stood, moved to collect his clothes.

Anna stirred, turned onto her right side.

In the weak soiled light, he waited until she had settled, looking at the sweet line of her body, a sadness in him, he went silently to the bathroom, showered in the big slate stall, thought about his feelings for her, the stupidity of it, the pleasure of being with her, talking to her, the looks she gave him. He had not been looked at that way since the first months with Laurie.

I’m in love with her.

In words. Stupid childish thought. He shook his head and shuddered as if that could dispel it.

At some point in the night, body cooling, eyes on the ceiling, the curtains were open and lights from outside played on it, he said, ‘The men in your life.’

A long silence.

She said, ‘The men, the men, oh Lord, where should I start? With my dad?’

‘Only the good memories, please. No abuse. That’s reportable.’

Her right arm across him, her mouth close, he felt her breath. ‘Bastard. Why do you want to know?’

He knew what she was asking. He had no true answer.

‘As a cop,’ he said, ‘I have a need to know.’

‘Well, I confess to not a lot of luck with men,’ she said.

‘What’s luck look like?’

‘Your older brother and father combined. But not related to you.’ She brushed his throat with open lips.

‘This is hard,’ he said. ‘We can try the photofits, the DNA, might turn someone up.’

Anna bit his shoulder, soft cat-bite.

‘So in the absence of cloning your family,’ said Villani.

She shifted, turned, arranged herself, head on his chest.

‘A mixed bag,’ she said. ‘The longest, a uni professor, estranged from beautiful wife, I was led to believe. I wanted to believe, I was twenty-one, I had a strong moral sense then. Six years, on and off, I was such an unbelievable dickhead. Then he left for the States, his new PhD candidate in the luggage.’

Pause. ‘You don’t really want to know this stuff, do you?’

‘I asked.’

‘What happens when I ask you?’ ‘Wife, three kids.’

‘No, mate,’ she said, ‘that’s not the answer, that’s the alibi.’

They lay in silence.

‘No saint,’ said Villani. He wanted to tell her he had left home, had his suitcases in the car, but he couldn’t. It would mean telling her about Lizzie and she would see Laurie’s point of view, see him for what he was. Also it would sound pathetic, as if he were asking to be taken in, given a home.

‘You knew that night with Tony Ruskin, didn’t you?’ said Anna.

‘Knew what?’

‘That I was available. Only had to blink.’

‘Well, no. I thought you liked me as a friend.’

‘Lying bastard,’ she said.

‘Moving on,’ said Villani. ‘The men.’

‘A lawyer, a journo, a few journos. Two lawyers actually. And rougher and rougher trade.’

Tony Ruskin. He would be one of the journos.

‘And now, rock bottom,’ said Villani. ‘The bedrock. Cop.’

She kissed his collarbone. ‘Cop is not rock bottom,’ she said. ‘Ex-Collingwood footballer is rock bottom. I still shudder. I’m happy to say you’re not too bad in the bottom department, though. Rockish bottom.’

‘Careful,’ he said, ‘I’m easily aroused.’

‘Is that dangerous?’ Her right hand was moving down his stomach.

‘Not so much dangerous,’ he said, ‘as potentially disappointing.’

‘Every minute of every day, I risk disappointment,’ said Anna. She slid onto him.

It went on for a long time. Villani had forgotten that sex could last this long and feel like this.

Done, sweaty, they lay in silence until Anna sighed, said, ‘Well, you take a punt, some come off. Is this half-time?’

‘Full, I think,’ he said.

‘The bruises. Is that work or pleasure?’

Villani looked. The first faint signs of Les’s pounding. ‘Boxing,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why. Don’t ask.’

She laughed, got up. By the passage light, he saw her body, its sway, the sheen on her flank. He turned his head on the pillow and he could smell her perfume.

She came back with two big glasses of water, lime slices floating. He sat up. They drank. She lay down.

‘Your old man,’ said Villani. ‘What does he do?’

‘He was in finance.’

‘Like a mortgage broker?’

‘No. Investment banking. He got the sack a few years ago. The sub-prime crash. Went from being a genius to being a dill in two months. He aged about twenty years.’

‘And your brother?’

‘Advertising. He’s still a genius. For the moment.’

‘So it’s safe to say I’m not like him.’

‘Not remotely,’ said Anna. ‘Which is sad. I’ve been listening to Paul Keogh giving the force a hard time.’

‘We’re waiting for him to call triple O, home invasion by lesbian bikies. Put him on hold for two days.’

‘You know Matt Cameron.’

‘You too, I saw.’

‘Through work. Attractive man.’

‘Not so much to me. But.’

‘He says you’ve got a future. He’s not flattering about the upper levels of the force.’

‘Discuss me, did you? Why’s that?’

‘I have a small interest in you. Perverse interest. You probably haven’t noticed that.’

‘What’s your name again?’

‘My little friend Gary Moorcroft asked me if we were an item.’

Moorcroft was the channel’s crime reporter, a man with a pointy nose.

‘What’s Pinocchio’s interest?’

‘Just unnaturally curious.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said I was over married men.’

‘Right. Is that over as opposed to under?’

She bumped him with her thin shoulder. ‘Too smart by half. At least you haven’t told me lies about your marriage. That is unusual in a man.’

That was the moment to choose another life. Start another life with her.

In the street now, the night wind had brought the smoke from the high country, mingled it with the city’s smells of
petrochemicals, carbon, sulphur, cooking oils and burnt rubber, drains, sewers, hot tar, dogshit, balsamic nightsweats, the little gasps of a million beer openings, a hundred trillion sour human breaths.

He thought about the dawn walks with Bob when he was a boy, after the trees were in, the silence of the world, the chill air you could drink. Last thing on Saturday nights, Bob in his chair with his book, his glass of whisky, Villani always said, ‘Trees tomorrow, Dad?’

And Bob always said, ‘I’ll be in that. Wake me.’

In memory, Bob never kissed him goodnight, goodnight or goodbye or good riddance or anything else. He always kissed Mark and Luke, pulled them to him, rubbed their heads. On Sunday mornings, Bob would come into his room before the alarm went, touch his shoulder, and Villani would sit up, already moving his legs off the bed, smelling the alcohol on his father’s breath, rubbing his eyes, his head, for a moment he didn’t know what day it was.

Across the sloping paddocks in the grey silent day, man and boy, through the ancient lift-and-drag gate, Villani left the rifle there. They walked the forest, pulling out the dead and dying, to be replaced. They didn’t lose too many. In the first years there were sodden winters and, in summer, every weeknight, Villani gravity-fed part of the forest with water from the dam, running it through hundreds of metres of old playing-field hoses Bob found on the tip. It wasn’t easy moving them, the hoses had to snake, they tangled because the trees weren’t planted in rows.

When they began planting, he asked about this. ‘Not a plantation,’ said Bob. ‘They clearfell plantations. We’re planting a forest. No one’s going to cut this down.’ He looked at Villani, the long weighing gaze. ‘Not in my lifetime and not in yours. You promise?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Say I promise.’

He said the words.

At the end of every walk, Villani collected the Brno at the gate, it was a bolt-action .22, cheekworn stock, little five-bullet magazine never inserted until needed, his father’s orders. He went down the
gully that wandered to the road, sat still for a minute and picked off a few rabbits for Bob’s stew, the high point of the week, made on Sunday afternoons, carrots and onions, tomato sauce, curry powder, vinegar and brown sugar. It cooked for hours, they ate it for tea with rice. Bob had a taste for rice, he could eat rice by itself with tomato sauce, and they all went that way.

The rabbits were healthy, there had never been myxo on the property.

‘No logical explanation,’ said Bob. ‘Nature’s way of telling us something.’

The rabbits stayed manageable without massacres. Other animals did the work, the feral cats and foxes. They shot them but Bob wouldn’t allow fox-shooters on the property. One Saturday, they were eating the stew, a vehicle hooted outside, long blaring hoot, two short ones, another.

‘That’s rude,’ said Bob. ‘See who it is, Stevie.’

Villani went down the passage, out the front door. A truck in the drive, on the front path two big red-headed men, fat, dirty clothes.

‘Get yer dad,’ said the older one, balding freckled head, a combover.

Villani didn’t have to call Bob, he came out, he was rolling a cigarette one-handed, the screendoor banged behind him, a flat smack.

‘I can do what for you?’ Bob Villani said.

‘Had it with your fucken vermin,’ said the older man. ‘Told you at the servo then, you don’t fucken listen. Last night it’s six lambs.’

‘Don’t swear in front of my boy,’ said Bob, quiet voice.

The man scratched his head, displaced the strands. ‘Yeah, well, fuck him’n you, you kill em or we’ll fucken do it, six of us and the dogs, lots of dogs.’

Bob took the Zippo out of his top pocket, flicked the lid, made the fire. He drew on the cigarette, picked a strand of tobacco off his bottom lip.

‘What’s your name again?’ he said.

The man twisted a boot. ‘Collings, fucken told you my name.’

‘Collings,’ said Bob. ‘Collings. Well, Mr Collings, you go for your life. Shoot an animal on my land, I shoot ten on yours. Beginning or ending with you two, I don’t mind which.’

Villani remembered the silence, Mark and Luke behind him, pressing on him, their hands, his father looking at the men, his father taking a drag on the smoke, blowing a single ring, perfect, it grew in the still autumn air, it hung, it rolled.

And then his father flicked his cigarette past Collings’ face, missed by a hand span, and he said the words, ‘Maybe you’d like to settle it now, Mr Collings? Why don’t you step back a bit, then you can both have a go.’

A few moments, then Collings said, ‘Give you your fucken chance,’ and the men walked off. In the truck, the father shouted, ‘Fuck you!’