The Broken Shore (19 page)

Cashin shut his eyes too, put his head back and listened to the sounds—low electronic humming, the sawing of traffic below, a faraway helicopter whupping the air. He stayed that way for a long time. When he opened his eyes, Michael was looking at him.

‘You all right?’ he said.

‘Fine,’ said Cashin. ‘That is serious shit.’

‘Yes. They told me you were here in the small hours. Thanks, Joe.’

‘Not a matter for thanks.’

‘I haven’t been much of a brother.’

‘Two of us then. Want to talk to someone? A shrink?’

‘No. I’ve been to shrinks, I’ve made shrinks rich, I’ve helped shrinks buy places in Byron Bay, there’s nothing they can do. I’m a depressive. Plain and simple. It’s in me. It’s a brain disorder, it’s probably genetic.’

Cashin felt an unease. ‘Drugs,’ he said. ‘They’ve presumably got the drugs.’

‘Turn the world into porridge. If you’re on anti-depressants, you can’t work sixteen-hour days, plough through mountains of documents, see the holes, produce answers. My kind of depression, well, it’s not like the tent collapses on you. It’s just there. I can work, that’s the thing that keeps it at bay, you don’t want an idle moment. But there’s no joy. You could be, I don’t know, washing dishes.’

Michael was crying silently, tears running down his cheeks, crystal streams on each side.

Cashin put a hand on his brother’s forearm, he did not squeeze. He did not know what to do, he had no physical language for comforting a man.

Michael said, ‘They told me about the photograph and Kim’s death at the same time. I walked out, got on a plane, drank and slept and drank, and it got worse and then I took the pills.’

He tried to smile. ‘I think that’s more than I’ve said to you at one time in our whole lives.’

A nurse was in the doorway. ‘Keeping up the fluids?’ she said, stern. ‘Important, you know.’

‘I’m drinking,’ said Michael. He swallowed. ‘Is it too early for a gin and tonic?’

She shook her head at his flippancy. Cashin could see she liked the look of Michael. She went away.

‘Who took the picture?’ he said.

A shrug. ‘I don’t know. There was a whole sequence, five or six shots. From across the street, I think.’

‘Someone watching you or him. Who’d do that?’

Another shrug.

‘When was the leak? Before or after?’

Michael put a hand to his hair. ‘You’re a cop. I forgot that for a while. After. In the next day or so. They knew what happened at a meeting our team had the morning after. Anyway, it doesn’t matter
now. Kim’s dead, I don’t have a career, everything’s gone, twenty years of grind wasted.’

‘Dangerous occupation you chose.’

Michael remembered. He smiled, a sad smile.

‘You’d better come down and stay with Sybil for a while,’ said Cashin. ‘Help the husband napalm the roses.’

‘No, I’ll be all right. I’ll stay with a friend, she’s got lots of room. Get back on the medication. Avoid the drink. Exercise, take some exercise. I’ll be okay.’

Silence.

‘I’ll be fine, Joe. Really.’

‘What can I do?’ said Cashin.

‘Nothing.’ Michael put out his left hand. Cashin took it, they held hands awkwardly.

‘Don’t get depressed, do you?’ said Michael.

‘No.’ It was a lie.

‘Good, that’s good. You’ve escaped the curse of the Cashins.’

‘The what?’

‘Dad, me. Probably a long line before us. Tommy Cashin for sure. Mum says you’re rebuilding his house. We’re all the same, he was just at the extreme edge. Wanted to take his house with him.’

‘What about Dad?’

Michael took his hand away. ‘Mum’s told you?’

‘What?’

‘She said she’d tell you when you were older.’

‘What?’

‘About Dad.’

‘What?’

‘That he committed suicide.’

‘Oh,’ said Cashin. ‘That. Yeah, I know about that.’

‘Okay. Listen, tell Mum I’m fine, Joe. Tell her it was all a silly mistake. Accidental overdose. Do that?’

‘Sure.’

‘Give her my love. Tell her I’ll ring her tomorrow. Don’t feel up to it today.’

Cashin said goodbye, kissed his brother on the forehead, a taste of
salt, caught the lift with a family of four, near-adult children, everyone sombre. On the ground floor, he found the toilets, went into a booth and sat down, slumped, hands between his thighs. It was peaceful. From time to time, the urinal cleansed itself, a wash of water.

He saw himself in the Holden, a boy sitting next to his mother, on the way to strange places, for a reason unknown.

His father. No one ever told him. They all knew and no one ever told him.

THE NURSING home was a yellow brick veneer island in a sea of bitumen and concrete, not a blade of grass. A nurse in a dark blue skirt and spotted white shirt showed him to the room.

Singo was wearing a checked dressing-gown, sitting in a wheelchair in front of a glass door. The view was of a concrete strip and a high metal fence the colour of dried blood.

‘Someone to see you, Dave,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a visitor.’

Singo didn’t react.

‘I’ll leave you,’ said the nurse.

Cashin moved the chair in the room, sat facing Singo’s profile, moved the chair closer. ‘G’day, boss,’ he said. ‘It’s Joe.’

Singo turned his head. Cashin thought he’d aged since he’d last seen him, the paralysed side of his face now younger than the other.

Singo made a sound. It could have been ‘Joe’, it was a short sibilant sound.

‘Looking much better, boss,’ said Cashin. ‘You’re on the mend. Villani says to please come back. He’ll tell you himself, he’ll be out to see you soon. Snowed under. You’ll know about that.’

Singo’s lips worked, he made another sound, spitty, but Joe thought he was amused, something in his eyes. He raised his left arm, the working arm, stretched his fingers. He seemed to be offering his hand to be held.

Not shaken. Held.

You could not hold Singo’s hand, no. Singo could not possibly want that. He wasn’t brain damaged, not that way, he was hindered, bits of him didn’t work. Singo was in there, the hard man was there under the slack muscle, the disobedient tendons.

Cashin didn’t know what to do, the second time in two hours.

Perhaps the hard man wasn’t there anymore. Perhaps there was just a helpless and hopeless man reaching out.

Cashin thought about his father and he put out his right hand and touched Singo’s.

Singo knocked his hand away.

Not reaching out. A mistake.

‘Sorry, boss,’ said Cashin. ‘Water? Want some water? Anything?’

Singo blinked his left eyelid repeatedly. His eyes were saying something. He released another moist splutter of sound.

‘Watching the TV, boss?’ There was a television on the wall, no sign of a remote control. They would decide what he saw and for how long.

A nod, it could be a nod.

‘Villani’s got his hands full, see that?’ said Cashin.

Singo raised his hand again, the fingers stretched.

Oh shit, thought Cashin, he’s pointing.

He looked. There was a pad on the bedside cabinet and a pen, a fat pen. He fetched them, put the pad on Singo’s tray, offered the pen to the left hand. Singo took it, clumsily, shakily, moved it in his big fingers.

‘Why didn’t she tell me you could write, boss? The nurse?’

Singo was trying to write on the pad, he was concentrating, the pen would not obey him, the pad shifted, veins stood out on his forehead,

Cashin reached out and moored the pad. Singo made scratch marks on it, possibly a C, possibly an R, a scribble of lines. His strength seemed to leave him, the hand slumped, his eyes closed.

Cashin waited.

Singo was asleep.

Cashin stood up and went to the door. He turned and said, not loud, ‘Be back, boss. We’re on your case. Get you out of here.’

He could see Singo reflected in the glass door and he thought he saw his eyes looking at him. He went back. Singo’s eyes were closed.
He moved the pad from under the big hand, long hairs on the fingers, and tore off the page.

‘See you, boss,’ he said, took his life in his hands and said, ‘Love you.’

He sat in the vehicle for a while before he switched on, trying to make sense of Singo’s marks. Then he put on music, shut his mind against the hours ahead, drove. Near home, exhausted, pains down both legs, the mobile rang.

‘Found someone,’ said Hopgood. ‘Want to be there?’

CASHIN WALKED down the pier in the last light, stood behind the half-dozen watchers, cold salt westerly gale in his face. He saw the cat heel around the breakwater, stern down, twin engines howling. A man in yellow was at the wheel, two figures behind him, standing, dark wetsuits.

Hopgood, in a black leather jacket, turned his head, edged back through the group.

‘Bloke in a plane saw a body outside the Kettle,’ he said. ‘In the Rip.’

For a moment Cashin thought that he would be sick, that he would spew over Hopgood.

‘You’re looking ratshit,’ said Hopgood. ‘Even more ratshit.’

‘Bad pie.’

‘What’s the other kind?’

Cashin had heard of bodies being pushed into the sea caves by the powerful surges. Sometimes it was days, weeks, before they were sucked out of the holes, out of the Kettle and into the Rip.

Close in, the helmsman throttled back, the craft died in the water, rose and fell in a trough, motored to the pier and snarled to turn broadside at the pontoon. Two men were waiting, casual toss of a line, the boat was secured bow and stern.

They carried the body up wrapped in an orange nylon sheet, a man at each corner, the bottom ones fearful. On the pier, they put the
burden down on the rough planks, gently, stood back, unwrapped it. Hopgood leaned over.

Cashin caught a glimpse of a bloated face, a bare foot, jeans torn to shreds. He didn’t want to see any more, he’d seen enough of dead people, crossed to the shore-side railing and looked at the lights of the town above, not bright in the gloom. Cars flicked by at the two roundabouts on Marine Parade, people going home. People with families waiting. Children.

He wished he had a cigarette.

‘In his pocket,’ said Hopgood, behind him. ‘In the jacket.’

Cashin turned. Hopgood offered him a grey nylon wallet, zipped. ‘Torch here,’ he said.

A torch came on, crossed the pier. Hopgood took it, shone it on Cashin’s hands.

Cashin unzipped the wallet, found a card, a photograph in the corner. He strained to look at it, put it back.

Then a grey booklet, a prancing unicorn on the cover, inside it a plastic envelope.

Daunt Credit Union.

It was almost dry, water-stained only along the edges.

Perhaps twenty entries on two pages, smudged printer type, small sums in and out.

Donny Coulter drowned in the Kettle with $11.45 in his account.

Cashin put the passbook back in the wallet, zipped it, gave it to Hopgood.

‘That’s probably the full stop,’ he said. ‘I’m going home now. I’m supposed to be on leave.’

‘Time to smarten up,’ said Hopgood. ‘Here it comes.’

A television crew was on the pier, coming towards them, already filming.

‘Tip them off yourself?’ said Cashin. ‘Or have you got some suckhole does it for you?’

‘Transparency, mate. That’s the way it is now.’

‘Bullshit. Told Donny’s mum?’

‘Told her what? She’ll have to ID him.’

‘Is that before she sees this on television?’

‘This still your investigation? Your wog friend hasn’t told me.’

‘This has got nothing to do with the investigation,’ said Cashin. ‘And there never was any fucking investigation.’

He walked, straight at the television crew. The frozen-haired woman recognised him and said something to the sound recordist. Then she blocked his way.

‘Detective Cashin, can we have a word, please?’

Cashin walked, he didn’t reply, went around her. His shoulder knocked aside a furred microphone, the holder said, ‘Steady on.’

‘Fuck off,’ said Cashin.

He drove the last stretch with Callas full blast on the player, roared down the dark and jolting roads with her beautiful voice filling the cab. The Kettle. A body floating outside the Kettle. In the big, foaming, shifting Rip.

They went to see it for the first time when he was six or seven, everyone had to see the Kettle and the Dangar Steps. Even standing well back from the crumbling edge of the keyhole, the scene scared him, the huge sea, the grey-green water skeined with foam, sliding, falling, surging, full of little peaks and breaks, hollows and rolls, the sense of unimaginable power beneath the surface, terrible forces that could lift you up and suck you down and spin you and you would breathe in icy salt water, swallow it, choke, the power of the surge would push you through the gap in the cliff and then it would slam you against the pocked walls in the Kettle, slam you and slam you until your clothes were threads and you were just tenderised meat.

It was called the Broken Shore, that piece of the coast. When Cashin was little, he had heard it as one word—the Brokenshaw. At some point, someone told him the first sailors to see the coast called it that because of the massive pieces of the limestone cliff that had broken away and fallen into the sea. Perhaps the sailors saw it happen. Perhaps they were close in and they saw the edge of the earth collapse, join the sea.

Home, thank god, the headlights passing across Rebb’s shed.

He parked close to the building and sat, the pains in him, all over. Lights off. Reluctant to move. It would not be a hardship to sleep where he was. A little sleep.

Knocking, he heard knocking, came upright, full of alarm.

Two dog heads at the window, the wash of light from a torch. He wound down the glass.

‘You okay?’ said Rebb.

‘Yeah, just tired.’

‘Brother okay?’

‘He’s okay.’

‘That’s good. Dogs had their tucker. Finish the fence tomorrow.’

Rebb walked away. Cashin and the dogs went inside. He rang his mother. She wanted more than he had to give. He cut her off, washed down codeine tablets with a beer, poured a big whisky. He sat in the upright chair and sipped and waited for the relief.

It came. He drank more whisky. Before he went to bed, he watched the local news.