Truth (40 page)

‘He doesn’t need a way out,’ said Villani. ‘He’s got no use for a way out.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m going in the chopper. The bloke’ll put me down, he’s a fucking madman too.’

Luke Villani, the snotty, whining little boy, the smartarse teenager who had to be locked in his room, radio confiscated, to do his homework, who sucked up to Bob, who came running for protection every time Mark threatened him, whose highest ambition was to call horse races.

‘Talk to the doctor?’

‘Waiting for him to call back.’

‘Fucking lunatic idea this,’ said Villani. He could feel the snaretight wires in his neck, up into his skull. ‘I’m telling you not to.’

It was his duty to say it, his prerogative and his duty.

‘Can’t tell me what to do anymore,’ said Luke. ‘It’s my dad and my brother. I’m going.’

My brother.

No one had ever said it before. Villani had thought that no one would ever say it. It had not seemed sayable.

‘Where’s this fucking chopper?’ he said.

‘Essendon,’ said Luke. ‘Grenadair Air. Wirraway Road. Off the Tulla.’

‘Wait for me.’

‘Sarmajor,’ Luke said in Bob’s voice.

They were waiting on the blistering tarmac beside the shiny bird with its slim silver drooping wings: Mark and Luke and the pilot.

‘I reckon I can go to jail for this,’ said the pilot. He looked about twenty.

‘I know you can go to jail for this,’ said Villani.

THEY FLEW across the crawling city and its outskirts and over the low hills, flew over the small settlements and great expanses of trees, flew over dun, empty grazing land. They could see the smoke across the horizon, it stood a great height into the sky and above it the air was the cleanest, purest blue.

After a long while, from a long way, they saw the red edges of the fire, like blood leaking from under a soiled bandage.

The radio traffic was incessant, calm voices through the electronic crackle and spit.

‘Got to keep away from the fire choppers,’ said the pilot. ‘Go the long way around.’

‘Took your patient in,’ Villani said to Mark. ‘Kenny Hanlon.’

‘Not my patient,’ said Mark. ‘Don’t have any patients. I’m going to Africa next week. Darfur.’

‘Got bikies in Darfur? Got a Hellhound chapter?’

‘Fuck you,’ Mark said.

In time, they saw Selborne in the distance, they were coming at it from the south-west, and, beyond the hamlet in the direction of Bob’s, the world was alight, the road was a snaking avenue of trees burning orange, the air was dark.

‘Don’t reckon I’m going to jail,’ said the pilot, ordinary voice. ‘Reckon I’m going to die up here.’

‘Steady on, son,’ said Luke. ‘Just follow the road. Carrying the best cop, best doctor, best race-caller in the country. Don’t fuck it up.’

‘Dream team,’ said the pilot. ‘Help me, St Chris.’

Into the dark and frightening hills, they followed the flaming road, the chopper shivering, pushed up and down and sideways by the air currents, everything was adrift in the heat.

Suddenly, they were above the farm, the house, the sheds, the stable, the paddocks.

The forest. Untouched, whipping.

‘In the paddock, Black Hawk One,’ said Luke.

And then they were on the ground and Luke was patting the pilot, they scrambled out, the heat was frightening, breath-sucking, the terrible noise, the pilot shouted, ‘You bloody idiots.’

They ran and the chopper rose, showered them with particles of dirt and stone and dry vegetation.

At the fence, in the fearsome, scorching day, behind them Armageddon coming in fire and smoke with the sound of a million Cossack horsemen charging across a hard, hard plain, stood Bob and Gordie.

Bob spoke. They could barely hear him. ‘Don’t often get all three,’ he said. ‘What’s this in aid of?’

THROUGH THE dark day and into the late afternoon, in the furnace wind, sometimes unable to breathe or speak or hear one another, they fought to save the house and the buildings.

When they had lost all the battles, when the red-hot embers were coming like massive tracer fire, when the fireballs were exploding in air, Bob took the big chainsaw and, with a murderous screaming of metal against metal, sliced the top off the corrugated-iron rainwater tank.

Gordie propped a ladder against the tank wall and they climbed up it, threw themselves into the warm water, felt the slimy bottom beneath their feet, pushed through the heaviness to the wall furthest from the flames.

Bob came last. First he handed the dog to Gordie, then he climbed the ladder, slipped through between rungs, stayed underwater for a time, came up, hair plastered flat. He looked like a boy again.

They stood in the tank, shoulders touching, water to their chins, nothing left to say. This was the end of vanity and ambition. This was what it had come to, the five of them, all Bob’s boys here to die with the man himself, some instinct in them, some humming wire had pulled them back to death’s booming and roaring waiting room to die together in a rusty saw-toothed tub.

‘What about that Stand in the Day?’ said Luke.

‘Bloody ripper,’ said Bob. ‘Need more tips like that.’

They did not look at one another, ashes fell on them, drifted down and stuck to their faces, lay on the water, coated the face of the old yellow dog Bob was holding to his chest.

And, in the last moment, the howling wind stopped, a windless pause as if it were drawing breath. Then it came around as if sucked away to another place, came around and they could feel the change on their faces. The fire stood in its tracks, advanced no further, chewing on itself, there was no sustenance left for it, no oxygen, everything burnt.

They said nothing for a long time. They could not believe that this terrible thing had passed, that they would live. In the silence, they heard the fire chopper coming, it came from nowhere and hung its trunk over them and dropped a small dam of water on the house.

‘You never get the air strike when you need it,’ said Bob.

They pulled the ladder into the tank. Luke climbed it, they pushed it out and he rode it to the ground. Mark went first, then Gordie.

Villani said to Bob, ‘You next.’

Bob looked at him, shook his head. ‘Yes, boss,’ he said.

Without saying anything, Villani set off. The dog hesitated, followed, looking back for Bob. Bob came, they walked side by side, wet clothes, tank water steaming from them.

They walked across the black smoking paddocks, down to the bottom gate, posts still burning, walked across the road that went nowhere, walked over the rise.

The forest stood there.

Scorched, the outer trees singed. They would lose some. But everywhere, in their circles and clumps and paths, the oaks were in full glorious summer green leaf.

Bob Villani put his right arm around his son’s shoulders, pulled him to him, awkward, kissed Villani’s temple, his ashy hair.

‘Didn’t do a bad job with the boys either,’ he said. ‘Seeing to them. I should’ve said that before.’

THE LINO peeled back easily. He pushed the table knife into the gap and worked the trapdoor up, got fingers under it, lifted it.

It was a small toolbox such as an electrician might carry, the top held by a hinged clasp.

Villani put it on the table, opened it.

Five or six wads of notes held with rubber bands. Hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives. Perhaps twenty thousand dollars.

Beneath them was a piece of cardboard, cut to fit from a shirt box.

He lifted it with the table knife.

A wire of the old-fashioned kind. A tiny tape-recorder and a button transmitter.

Villani put the money into the toolbox, left the house, put the box in the boot, got into the car. He sat looking at the recorder. It had no speaker. It had to be plugged into one.

Greg Quirk wearing a wire? Whose wire?

He drove to St Kilda Road, took the lift to the techs. The little one who developed games in his spare time took the device. They went to a bench. He gave Villani earphones, pressed buttons.

Mate, I’m not happy. Not happy at all.

Couldn’t know they’d pissed it against the wall. How could I know that? It’s your fucking job to know, Greg. Not doing this shit for pocket money
,
sonny. Risk involved sticking up these dumb pricks, it’s got to be worth it.

Yeah, well, fucken risks for me too. Not the only one takin fucken risks.

I need thirty grand quick smart. Help a mate.

Fuck, you’re squeezin me now, that’s not the fucken way to deal with me, Dancer, that’s not the…

Villani took off the headphones. He took the recorder. He walked across the buzzing chamber to his office, went to the window and looked at the city.

ON THE day in late autumn, they did the performance for the television cameras, the three of them in uniform, wearing their new insignia of rank.

Premier Karen Mellish made a short speech. She said it gave her great pleasure to announce the new chief commissioner, the new assistant chief commissioner and the new crime commissioner. The force now entered an era of reform, an era of revitalisation, an era that would see the public places of the great city reclaimed for its citizens.

By the time Villani had changed and met Cashin, the cold day was drawing to its end. They walked into the wind, the leaves flowing at them like broken water, yellow and brown and blood, parting at their ankles.

‘Saw you on television,’ Cashin said. ‘Never thought I’d know a crime commissioner.’

‘You can live a good life without knowing one,’ said Villani. ‘A satisfactory life. What’s on your mind?’

‘You getting back with Laurie?’

‘No,’ said Villani. ‘We screwed that up. I screwed it up. Can’t make it good. Can’t make anything good.’

‘Keep still,’ said Cashin. ‘The boat will steady itself.’

‘Joe, no more Singo. Not ever.’

‘It just comes out,’ said Cashin. ‘I was a sponge.’

‘I’m now sponge-like,’ said Villani. ‘Just water and holes.’

Three runners appeared, two solid men and a lean woman. The men moved right, the woman ran straight at them, swerving at the last second.

‘Cheeky,’ said Villani.

Cashin stopped, he was looking up. ‘Possum’s dead,’ he said.

‘What?’

Cashin pointed into a tree. Villani saw nothing, then a blob in a fork. ‘How do you know?’

‘Tail,’ said Cashin. ‘That’s a dead tail.’

‘How do you know a tail’s dead?’ said Villani. ‘Could be a sleeping tail.’

‘No,’ said Cashin. ‘Dead.’ He walked on, big paces.

Villani caught up. ‘Joe,’ he said, ‘come back to civilisation or join fucking Parks and Wildlife. Take schoolkids on the nature walk.’

‘What’s it going to be like?’ said Cashin. ‘Dance as your boss?’

‘Nothing Dance can do will surprise me,’ said Villani. ‘Nothing at all.’

They came to the avenue. Villani looked at the towers, they stood in the sky and the sky was in their glass cheeks. He had walked beneath them, at their hard, dirty feet, a farm boy come to the city.