Truth (31 page)

She passed behind Max’s chair, stopped, bent to kiss his forehead. ‘I know it’s difficult, darling, but try to get to bed before dawn.’

‘Excellent judge of character, this woman,’ said Hendry. ‘Only one mistake to date. But back to the point.’

‘I’ve forgotten it.’

Hendry blew a fat rolling smoke ring. ‘Learned to do that at school,’ he said. ‘All I remember from school. Anyway, no point buggering around, I want to offer you a job. Large job.’

‘You need a bad copy of some dead cop?’ said Villani.

‘An operations chief for Stilicho. I gather you know about Stilicho. Bloody monstrous meltdown at the casino but that’s teething stuff.’

The publicity people wanted something they could use. Senior police officer. What was needed was a dull prick to organise rosters, check on the bored, underpaid people who checked on other bored underpaid people who checked locks, identity cards, airless 3am rooms, lavatories.

‘I don’t think I’m cut out for security,’ Villani said. ‘But thank you.’

Hendry said, ‘Don’t be so quick, mate. Not some executive-bouncer job I’m talking about.’

A mind-reader.

A hot north-west wind on their faces, another blocking system was idling out in the southern ocean. Two long valleys ran from the north-west towards Selborne, the main road down one of them. The fire would come as it came to Marysville and Kinglake on that February hell day, come with the terrible thunder of a million hooves, come rolling, flowing, as high as a twenty-storey building, throwing red-hot spears and fireballs hundreds of metres ahead, sucking air from trees, houses, people, animals, sucking air out of everything in the landscape, creating its own howling wind, getting hotter and hotter, a huge blacksmith’s reducing fire that melted humans and animals, detonated buildings, turned soft metals to silver flowing liquids and buckled steel.

‘No?’

‘No, no, Stilicho’s new territory in security. I don’t get some of it myself. Well, a lot of it. Jesus, I was twenty before I understood how electricity worked. This is the future of security technology. They tell me the stuff we’ve got is two–three years ahead of the curve. That’s a huge opportunity.’

What had Dove said?

Stilicho’s bought this Israeli technology, puts it all together—secure entry, the ID stuff, iris scanning, fingerprints, facial recognition, suspicious behaviour, body language…Stilicho’s even trying to get access to the crimes database, the photos and photofits, prints, records, everything…Your face’s in the base, you show up somewhere…

‘I thought your son was the boss of Stilicho? Your son and Matt Cameron.’

‘Matt’s got fifteen per cent. I’ve got the rest. Hugh’s the CEO, no shareholding. Big challenge, operations chief, Steve. There’s no job description that fits it. They told me I should bring in the executive-search extortionists.’

‘Good idea.’

‘I can do my own bloody executive search. Save tens of thousands. They say you don’t have problems with technology. They say you’re one of the few cops who understand the new technology.’

‘I have lots of problems with technology,’ said Villani. ‘You don’t want to offer me a technology job. Any job, really.’

‘I do want to.’

‘This is not about us nailing those little bastards, is it?’ said Villani. ‘That’s the job. I’ve been paid for that.’

Hendry said, ‘The idea was someone with a broad police background. Someone smart.’

‘Rules out about ninety-seven per cent,’ said Villani. ‘Give or take a per cent.’

Hendry frowned. ‘That’s pretty harsh. They told me ninety-two. Anyway, before the AirLine thing, Vicky told me the cop who caught David’s killers was now head of Homicide. That’s how you came up. I asked questions. And people said good things.’

‘A cop thing. To say good things about other cops. Your brothers.’

‘And the pedigree, I liked that too.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Your old man. Vietnam. The Team.’ ‘That’s got nothing to do with me.’

Max looked at him for a few seconds, head cocked, said, ‘No, sorry, stupid thing to say. Dwelt in the shadow myself, should know better. Yes.’

‘I haven’t lived in my father’s shadow,’ Villani said. He didn’t want this rich man’s job, ordered around by the smooth son.

‘No, I’m not saying that. I’m sure you haven’t.’

Villani took out his mobile. ‘Great evening, Mr Hendry. My day’s not over. Unfortunately.’

Max said, ‘Stephen, hang fire for a minute, will you? Put that away. Gone off track here.’

Villani waited, poised to leave.

‘Hugh’s been in my shadow, that’s done him no good. I didn’t see it until it was too late. Still, he’s good at the business stuff, Hugh, good salesman. What I’m looking for is someone who can be the battlefield commander.’

Max sniffed his glass, took a sip.

‘Steve, this is going to start as private security, but if we get it
right, it’ll revolutionise the way we keep public places safe. Protect ordinary citizens against the kind of scum who kicked David to death. We’re on the edge of getting the contract for a massive new shopping mall in the west. Also serious interest from a new Brisbane council. Secure a whole retail precinct, civic centre.’

‘You don’t by any chance think I’ve got any clout, do you?’ said Villani. ‘Help get the databases?’

Max put up his hands. ‘Steve, we’ll get access if we deserve access. If the people who matter see that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. I want you for the personal qualities you’ll bring. That’s it.’

Villani’s resistance was falling away: the charm of the man, the attention paid to him all evening, the alcohol, the charge to his ego.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m flattered. Need to have a think.’

‘Of course you’ve got to sleep on it. You don’t want to know what we’re offering?’

‘Well…’

‘More than a deputy commissioner gets. A lot more. Mind you, it’s a sixteen-hour day.’

‘Get Sunday off?’

‘Not as a matter of right.’

Near midnight, Max walked him through the house and the front garden to the street door. The big smiling man was there and he took Villani out to the car, opened the back door.

‘I’ll sit in front,’ said Villani.

He shook hands with Max.

‘I know I’m right,’ said Max. ‘Think hard. I hear Mellish gets in, it’s a clean sweep of all senior positions in the force. That’s something to factor in.’

‘Consider it factored,’ said Villani. ‘Goodnight, Max.’

He told the driver to take him to St Kilda Road, to his office.

Take him home.

THE BUILDING never slept. Shifts changed, tired people left, less tired people took their places.

In Homicide, in the white light where day and night lost meaning, half-a-dozen heads registered his entrance. He talked to a few of them, to the duty officer, made a mug of tea, sat at his desk, he was sober now, not sure why he was there, sure only that he had no home to go to.

All day he had thought Corin would ring, no question. She had no reason to blame him for anything to do with Lizzie. But she hadn’t. Too busy, uni starting, her job, the spunk from the big end of town.

Listen love, I need you to pick up Lizzie. Now.

He should have said that, made her leave her dinner. The oldest, why didn’t they always give her the job of seeing to Lizzie? Keeping her up to scratch. Got to school on time. Did her homework.

He could ring Corin.

No, no, no.

She owed him. She owed him many, many things and she could have paid all her debts with just one miserable little phone call. She failed him, his beloved girl. In the end, she didn’t care about him.

Leave the job and work for Max Hendry. He came to Homicide to save his marriage, to do clean work. No more gambling, no more
women. The clean work he had done. The gambling, he had given it away, he had turned his back on certainties, turned and wept.

He thought about DiPalma and Orong. DiPalma, a lecturer in law at Monash before he felt the calling. Property law. Leases. Conveyancing. Jesus, what did he know of the streets, the scum, the fractured world?

Orong. Orong was nothing. Community Studies degree from the former Footscray Tech. Politics and sociology. Always in politics, a teenage doorknocker, branchstacker.

He logged on, looked up Orong. A photograph from the
Western Citizen
of a younger Orong with Stuart Koenig. Koenig was holding up Orong’s right arm as if the prick had just won a fight. The election before last. New MP for Robertsham. He went to a political site called Brumaire 18 and searched for Orong. It listed dozens of items, he read an early one.

SNAKES ON A ROLL

On another sad day for democracy, 23-year-old reptile Martin ‘Snakelips’ Orong this week joins his even viler mentor, Stuart Koenig, in parliament. Koenig, of course, owes his political survival to the product-haired little western suburbs viper. When he was Koenig’s office boy, Orong single-handledly stacked Koenig’s branch with everything from illiterate Ethiopians to what he famously called the ‘Samoan bouncer community’. Koenig and Orong are mates outside of work too. The pair were once trapped by a blizzard in the Koenig ancestral lodge at Mount Buller when they were supposed to be at a party talkfest in Canberra.

DiPalma and Orong assumed that he would do as told. Back off Koenig, Prosilio. They said it as if they had the power to give him orders. And they did have the power if he was scared of what they could do to him.

Was it that way with Singleton? Did people threaten him, make him back off? Singo always talked about
the grip
—people who had it, people who could get things done, undone. Did people have the grip on Singo?

In the job, it wasn’t hard to get gripped by someone.

Bent forever, the job. Why not? Terrible pay, the hours, the
conditions, the risks. It only took a few days for him to work out who he had signed up with: the dim, the school bullies, bodybuilders, martial-arts fanatics, control freaks, thrillseekers, loners, kids from cop families, kids brought up by mum.

In uniform, a full understanding of the job slowly dawned. A life spent dealing with the dishonest, the negligent, the deviant, the devious, the desperate, the cruel, the callous, the vicious, the drunk, the drugged, the temporarily deranged and permanently insane, the sick and sad, the sadists, sex maniacs, child molesters, flashers, exhibitionists, women-beaters, wife-beaters, child-beaters, self-mutilators, the homicidal, matricidal, patricidal, fratricidal, suicidal.

Some of them dead.

You could quickly slide into otherness, estrangement from the civilian world, a sense of entitlement. What did it matter if you didn’t pay full price for your clothes, your drycleaning, got the free coffee, a sandwich, if people bought you drinks in pubs? You could take lotto tickets, not pay at places. People gave you horse tips, invites to clubs, you could go after your shift with a mate, everything on the house, the best girls.

Just give your name. Expecting you, the bloke.

They gave every sign you were the sexiest thing that year, you had experiences not normally had on a date or with the wife. When you were pissed, someone gave you something. And then one day you got the call.

Shit, mate, bastard pulls me over on the Tulla, goin a bit over, yeah. Not the fine, mate, the fucken points, gonna have to get the fucken pushbike out, have a word, can you? Appreciate it, mate.

You knew someone. You made the call. And you were a fully paid-up mate. A travel agent rang to say you had a free week on Hayman Island, the plane, the hotel, the vouchers. They pointed you to discounts on cars, televisions, washing machines, carpets, gym memberships, booze, plastic surgery, BMX bikes.

Anything.

Every year, there were more bent cops, the number ran in
tandem with the number of crims, particularly drug crims, making unthinkable amounts of money from selling ice, GBH, Special K, ecstasy.

The demand was insatiable, a dealer grew rich supplying just one private school, every kid over twelve had tried some of them. No night out was complete without drugs, tradies got stoned after they downed tools for the day.

On any Friday, an army of couriers hand-delivered snort, bazooka, incentive to customers in the CBD, to bankers, brokers, lawyers, accountants, advertising agencies, architects, property developers, real-estate agents, doctors.

The money was visible everywhere and everywhere you heard the resentment from cops.

Mate, the Holden’s clapped, the wife’s lost her job, now the holiday’s at the in-laws. It’s like fifty metres of fucking mud before the water. They’re all there, the zombie father, the brother, he’s a petrolhead bludger, the wife’s worse, whinges non-stop, doesn’t lift a fucking finger except to paint her nails. Compares with we pick up this piece of shit, he’s maybe twenty, he’s driving a Porsche, we know him, he’s got an apartment in Docklands, it’s A-grade whores, fucking Bali, he says you think I’m that stupid boys I’m driving around with shit in my car? Don’t waste your time, what do you blokes make? Fifty? Sixty? Fifty on a horse today, mate, fucking thing misses the start. Never mind, tomorrow’s another day.

Villani put his hands behind his head, tried to massage his neck.

Dancer had saved him. When the gambling had him by the balls, when Joe Portillo had sent his scum around with a message that there were ways he could pay his debt, Dancer saved him from the grip.

Thirty thousand bucks in the Myer bag.

‘Kitty’s healthy,’ said Dance. ‘Had a few big ones. I’m lending. Pay me when you sell your house and make five hundred grand capital gains.’

Save, pay Dancer back five grand at a time, that was the plan.
Then Greg Quirk came along and it was on hold. When he offered the first repayment, Dance said, ‘Please, mate, no. Long forgotten. Forgiven and forgotten.’

Greg Quirk.

Greg was scum. His brother was scum. And his father. Grandfather too, the dog-killer.

For a long time, lying about Greg didn’t bother him. It wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t until the dreams started. Even then, it wasn’t just about seeing Greg die, the way the three of them stood there and watched him bleed out, he foamed, twitched, his legs kicked, little dreaming kicks.