Excerpt
ON THE Westgate Bridge, behind them a flat in Altona, a dead woman, a girl really, dirty hair, dyed red, pale roots, she was stabbed too many times to count, stomach, chest, back, face. The child, male, two or three years old, his head was kicked. Blood everywhere. On the nylon carpet, it lay in pools, a chain of tacky black ponds.
Villani looked at the city towers, wobbling, unstable in the sulphurous haze. He shouldn’t have come. There was no need. ‘This air-conditioner’s fucked,’ he said. ‘Second one this week.’
‘Never go over here without thinking,’ said Birkerts.
‘What?’
‘My grandad. On it.’
One spring morning in 1970, the bridge’s half-built steel frame stood in the air, it crawled with men, unmarried men, men with wives, men with wives and children, men with children they did not know, men with nothing but the job and the hard, hard hangover and then Span 10 –11 failed.
One hundred and twelve metres of newly raised steel and concrete, two thousand tonnes.
Men and machines, tools, lunchboxes, toilets, whole sheds—even, someone said, a small black dog, barking—all fell down the sky. In moments, thirty-five men were dead or dying, bodies broken, sunk in the foul grey crusted sludge of the Yarra’s bank. Diesel fuel lay everywhere. A fire broke out and, slowly, a filthy plume rose to mark the scene.
‘Dead?’ said Villani.
‘No, taking a shit, rode the dunny all the way down.’
‘Certainly passed on that shit-riding talent,’ said Villani, thinking about Singleton, who couldn’t keep his hands off the job either, couldn’t stay in the office. It was not something to admire in the head of Homicide.
On the down ramp, Birkerts’ phone rang, it was on speaker.
Finucane’s deep voice:
‘Boss. Boss, Altona, we’re at the husband’s brother’s place in Maidstone. He’s here, the hubby, in the garage. Hosepipe. Well, not a hosepipe, black plastic thing, y’know, like a pool hose?’
‘Excellent work,’ said Birkerts. ‘Could’ve been in Alice Springs by now. Tennant Creek.’
Finucane coughed. ‘So, yeah, maybe the scientists can come on here, boss. Plus the truck.’
‘Sort that out, Fin. Might be pizza though.’
‘I’ll tell the wife hold the T-bones.’
Birkerts ended the call.
‘Closed this Altona thing in an hour,’ he said. ‘That’s pretty neat for the clearance.’
Villani heard Singo:
Fuck the clearance rate. Worry about doing the job properly.
Joe Cashin had thought he was doing the job properly and it took the jaws to open the car embedded in the fallen house. Diab was dead, Cashin was breathing but no hope, too much blood lost, too much broken and ruptured.
Singleton only left the hospital to sit in his car, the old Falcon. He aged, grey stubble sprouted, his silken hair went greasy. After the surgery, when they told him Joe had some small chance and allowed him into the room, he took Joe’s slack hand, held it, kissed its knuckles. Then he stood, smoothed Joe’s hair, bent to kiss Joe’s forehead.
Finucane was there, he was the witness, and he told Villani. They did not know that Singleton was capable of such emotions.
The next time Cashin came out of hospital, the second time in three years, he was pale as a barked tree. Singo was dead by then, a second stroke, and Villani was acting boss of Homicide.
‘The clearance rate,’ Villani said. ‘A disappointment to me to hear you use the term.’
His phone.
Gavan Kiely, deputy head of Homicide, two months in the job.
‘We have a dead woman in the Prosilio building, that’s in Docklands,’ he said. ‘Paul Dove’s asked for assistance.’
‘Why?’
‘Out of his depth. I’m off to Auckland later but I can go.’
‘No,’ said Villani. ‘I bear this cross.’
