Truth (29 page)

Last Sunday, Luke with his bit of dumb teenage weathergirl arse, he couldn’t bear the look, the silence, he kept amping up his rubbish chatter, eyes darting.

Mark behind his doctor’s desk, the pharma reps’ trinkets everywhere, the notepads, the Porsche computer mouse with headlights, the tubes of Chinese tennis balls on the shelf, Mark lasted all of fifteen seconds.

Part of the boss manner. And Bob had the nerve to sound as if he disapproved of it, had no part in its creation, didn’t like the fact that it intimidated Gordie, the dimwit whose big father, Ken, rolled his swag and buggered off months before Gordie was born. But first he came around and had a fight with Bob, they didn’t see it, Bob said stay in the house. The men went behind the corrie-iron shed, they heard Ken’s raised voice and felt the violence like pressure on their skin, it lasted a few minutes, then they heard the ute going down the drive at speed and a sound, not quite a bang.

Bob came back flexing his fingers, he went to the tank and held them under the tap. Later they saw the gate lying a good four metres out from the posts, it must have been carried on Ken’s bullbars.

Bob said, ‘Boy knows what’s good for him, he’s heading for Broome.’

Mark and Luke were Villani’s first children, in a way. And then
his proper boy child, Tony. Had he intimidated him with silence? A few times, yes. Not Corin, no, he had never given her the treatment. Well, once or twice when she was briefly a sulky teenager.

And Lizzie? Lizzie wouldn’t have paid the slightest attention or she would have looked at him in her direct, sullen way, mouth set, face set. He couldn’t intimidate Lizzie.

Laurie? Maybe in the beginning. She was in awe of him for a while, he didn’t realise that until later, years later, until she said one day:
You seemed so much older than me, always judging. Much more than my dad.

But she got over that, didn’t give a shit about his silences, his judgments. She just shrugged and walked out, went her own way.

Dove was holding out. He wasn’t going to speak.

‘Not everything’s a test,’ Villani said. ‘Sometimes you just want an opinion.’

‘Can be hard to read you,’ Dove said. ‘Boss.’

‘So Bricknell was at the Orion party,’ said Villani. ‘You ask him about the calls to the pre-paid. He asks you how you got his phone records. What do you say?’

‘For all he knows, we’ve got the phone,’ said Dove. ‘We’ve flashboxed it, got everything.’

‘It’s been more than a week,’ said Villani. ‘If he’s nervous, he’s talked to the people who brought the girl. He knows we don’t have the phone because they would have told him. He’s not going to panic, he knows we’ve got fuckall. And even if he’s willing to answer questions about his calls, he’s going to say someone borrowed his phone, a stranger stole it, they were snorting in the men’s. That kind of thing.’

Dove found his dark glasses. ‘The blood at Preston.’

‘Another mystery,’ said Villani. ‘This run started with the girl on the Hume. That’s looking doubtful. So if the car means nothing, the long-absent Alibani’s house has got buggerall to do with Prosilio.’

‘Well,’ said Dove, ‘assuming we know when the girl arrived…’

‘Assume nothing. To many assumptions already. Get Weber to
see how you get to the apartment from the garbage bay.’

In thought, they drove. At the first intersection, Dove said, ‘Why’d you ask about the aerials, boss?’

‘First it was just a black muscle car. Now it’s got three short aerials.’

‘I see, boss,’ said Dove. ‘That’s certainly narrowed the field to one or two thousand.’

Villani’s mobile rang. Birkerts.

‘Tomasic’s found stuff at Oakleigh. Want to look?’

‘Oakleigh’s over. Everyone’s dead. What’s he doing there?’

‘Showbag of Ribaric memorabilia. Could be fun. Well, interesting.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Base station. Mr Kiely in command mode. Up periscope, number two.’

‘Meet me outside in, ah, ten minutes. With air-con that works.’

Birkerts was waiting, leaning against the Commodore, eating something, he wiped fingers on his lips in a lingering way.

‘DAY ONE, I thought it’s just family shit,’ said Tomasic. ‘But I had a little sniff at the book again. Wasting your time, I dunno.’

Villani walked around the kitchen table, looking at the items: a brooch, jade earrings, a gold bracelet, half a dozen photographs, one in a pewter filigree frame, a girl in white, white ribbon in her hair, a pale silk scarf, a beaded purse, a page-a-day diary, a slim silver crucifix on a chain of tiny silver beads, worn with touching, with worry.

‘So what does this say?’ said Villani.

Tomasic scratched his pitbull head. ‘The Ribs’ nanna’s stuff. Valerie Crossley. Died in a nursing home in Geelong about a month ago.’

‘That’s their mother’s mother?’

‘Yeah, boss. The mother was Donna Crossley, there’s a welfare file like a phone book. Booze, drugs, orders against Matko, kids taken off her three, four times. With Valerie more than their mum. In Geelong.’

‘What happened to Donna?’

‘Dead in Brissie. 1990. Hooking. Possibly a mug involved.’

Villani picked up a photograph, a bride, a priest and a woman in a cream suit and a small hat. The picture had been sliced vertically, a clean line, cut with scissors. The groom had been
excised. The bride had a thin face, pretty in a way that had no legs, heavily made-up eyes, teased hair, lacquered.

On the back was written, shaky hand:

Donna and Father Cusack. Geelong 1973.

‘Reckon she got rid of Matko here too, boss,’ said Tomasic, he offered another photograph.

Two small boys in a paddling pool, gap-toothed, wet, shiny, happy. The top of the photograph had been cut off, broad hairy male forearms and hands were on the children’s shoulders.

Villani passed it to Birkerts.

‘Like Russia,’ said Birkerts. ‘Stalin did that.’

‘Cut up photographs?’ said Tomasic. ‘He did that?’

‘All the time. Loved to cut up photographs.’

‘Weird,’ said Tomasic.

Villani opened a folded sheet of notepaper.

St Anselm’s Parish, Geelong
   10 July

Dear Mrs Crossley
,

Father Cusack has been ill. He says he will try to come and see you tomorrow morning. I hope you are feeling better.

Annette Hogan

‘Well, what?’ said Villani.

Tomasic picked up the diary.

‘Read a bit of this,’ he said. ‘Old girl was in the nursing home about six months before she carked, she wrote every day or so.’

‘Yes?’ said Villani.

‘About what she eats, people dying, the nurses, lots of religion shit, God and Jesus and Mary and sins and forgiveness…sorry, boss.’

‘I’m offended,’ said Villani. ‘What?’

Tomasic didn’t look at him.

‘Yeah, well, near the end,’ he said, ‘there’s stuff, she wants to see Father Cusack and he doesn’t come and she keeps asking the nurses and they just pat her and he doesn’t come and she doesn’t want to die without confession and then he comes and she’s happy. She says she’s at peace.’

‘That’s so nice,’ said Birkerts. ‘That’s such an uplifting story. Might go to confession myself. Confess that I let you fuck around here when you could be doing something useful.’

‘There’s more?’ said Villani.

‘The last thing she wrote, she says a Father Donald, he came,’ said Tomasic. ‘He’d kissed the Holy Father’s ring, and he asked her a lot of questions and he said she’d be at God’s right hand for telling Father Cusack about the evil. Pretty much a booked seat. Specially blessed. Yeah.’

‘What’s at the left hand?’ said Birkerts. ‘What’s the scene there?’

‘Islamites wipe their bums with the left hand,’ said Tomasic.

‘Only.’

‘It’s kissing the ring that’s the worry,’ said Villani.

He felt uneasy, not just because they were looking at the things an old woman took to the place where she expected to die, the last possessions, the only possessions of worth of all the things acquired in her life, of all the thousands of things, only these had any value, any meaning.

From his own life, not many things he would take to the last stop. There was a meaning here. There was something speaking to them and they did not know the language.

Villani thought about his trees, shimmering in the hot winds, the deciduous leaves browning at the edges, closing their pores, trying to think their way into late autumn, no water evaporating, the chain of water molecules in the limbs ceasing to draw moisture from the roots, the trees telling themselves they could live through this if they remained perfectly still and controlled their breathing.

They deserved some help, his trees.

He should go now, leave this place infused with the badness of
the people who had lived here, died close by, deserved to die, leave and drive up the long roads to where he came from, they would let him through the roadblocks, he could put on his uniform, they wouldn’t fuck with an inspector, they would let him go on.

His mobile.

‘My son,’ Colby said, ‘I tell you hide under the bed, you go out and treat a minister like street scum. The reward is you are invited to tea with Miss Orong and the AG, Signor DiPalma. How’s that? A fucking quinella.’

‘Never a quinella man,’ said Villani.

‘I recall you in enough shit without the exotics,’ said Colby. ‘And now you have become the force’s shit-magnet. They want you now. They await you.’

Colby didn’t know the half of it. Or did he? That day in the car, in the carpark behind Lygon Street, Dance reached under his seat and gave him a black and white Myer shopping bag.

‘The trick when you hand it over,’ said Dance, ‘is to avoid photo opportunities.’

Villani put the bag in his boot. He counted it later, it took so long he realised why the big drug players used machines. A few hundreds, fifties, mostly twenties and tens and fives. Thirty thousand dollars in all.

‘Well, all very interesting,’ said Villani. ‘You’ve got the nose, Tommo. But we don’t need any more Ribaric history. Just be grateful they don’t have a future. Time to move on.’

AN OLIVE-SKINNED young woman, pinstriped suit, took him up in the lift, down a long corridor hung with paintings, portraits. She opened a door, waved him in.

A woman sat behind a desk, deep lines from her nose. She was a gatekeeper.

‘Inspector Villani,’ said the escort.

‘Thank you,’ said the gatekeeper.

The escort left. The gatekeeper picked up a phone and said, ‘Inspector Villani.’

A huge panelled door opened and a sandy young man holding files came out. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Come in.’

Villani went in, the door closed after him. The attorney-general, Chris DiPalma, behind a desk big enough for three, he was in shirtsleeves, a pink shirt, tie loose, glasses down his thin nose, serious expression, like a magistrate, send you to jail if you didn’t cringe.

Martin Orong, the police minister, sat in a club chair. He smiled at Villani, it resembled a smile.

‘Sit down, inspector,’ DiPalma said. ‘You know Martin, I gather.’

Villani sat.

‘Call you Steve?’

‘Yes, minister.’

‘To the point, Steve, You’ve been giving Stuart Koenig a hard time. He’s upset.’

‘Routine questioning,’ said Villani.

‘The Prosilio girl?’

‘A murder inquiry.’

‘This is between us. Colleagues, strictest confidence. With me?’

‘All police work is in strictest confidence, minister,’ Villani said.

DiPalma looked at Orong.

‘Mr Koenig says he co-operated with you, gave you a full and verifiable account of his whereabouts. Is that right?’

Villani said, ‘It’s policy not to discuss investigations, minister.’

‘And then you apply to get his phone records on the grounds of his involvement in a murder inquiry.’

‘That is correct,’ said Villani. ‘He is involved in a murder inquiry.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said DiPalma, ‘you don’t get it, do you?’

Orong touched his stiff forelock. ‘Come on, Steve, this is just a friendly chat, no rank pulled here. All we want to do is the right thing by Stuart, that’s not a big ask, is it?’

This was the moment to back off. Villani was going to and then he saw himself encouraging Dove to take Koenig on and he couldn’t.

‘We want to do the right thing by you too,’ said Orong. ‘Your career. Future.’

Villani said to DiPalma, ‘Minister, we’re pursuing a line of inquiry we believe will help us with a murder investigation. That’s all I can say.’

DiPalma had an open folder in front of him, he tapped it with his fingernails: manicured, pink. ‘I think we’re going to have to be plainer with you, Steve. Stuart Koenig’s been a naughty boy but that’s the limit of it. He’s had sex with a prostitute. That’s all. Now I want you to back off. You’ve got a big admirer in Mr Barry, the force is about to have a leadership regeneration, he’s considering you for a senior role in the new dispensation.’

DiPalma picked up a fountain pen, black and fat, wrote a sentence in the folder, looked up. ‘Is that plain enough for you, inspector? Can I be bloody plainer?’

Villani nodded.

‘And there’s another little matter you might want to consider,’ said DiPalma. ‘The renewed interest in the death of Greg Quirk. That involves you and Dance and Detective Senior Sergeant Vickery. We may let this take its course. Or we may not. Is that also bloody plain enough?’

‘It is, minister,’ said Villani.

‘Good,’ said DiPalma. ‘The election’s close, it’s not a time for ministers to be touched by murder investigations. However innocent they are. So, we’ve reached an understanding that you will delete Mr Koenig from your investigation. Nothing will be heard of your visit to him. Absolutely nothing. Fuckall. If this leaks, there will be blood. Yours.’

He stood, they all stood.

Orong coughed, a small-dog bark. ‘And this whole Prosilio shit,’ he said. ‘Let it lie for the moment. There’s no upside there for you and it’s all bad news for the building. Get on with important work. Career-enhancing stuff.’

DiPalma offered his hand, Villani shook it. Then he shook Orong’s treacherous little hand. He left the offices, walked down the cool and self-important corridor. From the walls, the dead watched him pass, they had seen many a coward come and go.