Man at the Window Read online

  One

  Day 1

  St Nicholas College

  10.30 p.m. Sunday, 25th October 1965

  Before him sixteen ornate lampposts bordered the paths of the quadrangle. Their yellow light pooled on the grass and the paved walkways. During the day the quadrangle he now looked down on was filled with young boys. His boys. He drew in the warm night air, filling his lungs and expanding his chest, and dropped his shirt on the end of the bed. Proud of his bare chest with its curling tangle of coarse hair, he spread his arms wide on his second storey windowsill and turned to the windows of the boarding house on his right. In the lit dormitories he could see, in all states of dress and undress, figures of boys chatting and chasing one another. He knew that if he, Captain Edmund, was among them the noise would cease and they would hide their eyes in modesty from his gaze. A flash, a reflection of light, caught his eye. It was gone when he looked back to the quadrangle.

  The quadrangle was bordered on three sides by double-storey red brick buildings fashioned in English public school tradition: austere, stately, with broad windows and wide limestone archways. He loved the tradition, the stability and the superiority. He filled his lungs again and slowly released the air into the night, his night. Shortly, when all lights were out, his door would open and close quietly. He smiled. The boy would arrive mute and trembling.

  Directly ahead of Captain Edmund was the fourth side of the quadrangle, the riverside. An impenetrable blackness concealed a row of river gums and an embankment sloping down to a limestone wall – the school boundary. Beyond the wall reeds and paperbarks filled the hundred yards to the Swan River, now black and soundless as it slipped by. Across the river was farmland from which the rifle retorts of kangaroo shooters occasionally burst into the night.

  The hum of voices emanating from the boarding house was fading. One by one windows blackened.

  A sudden chatter broke the night and alerted Captain Edmund to four boys commencing a casual stroll across one of the quadrangle’s diagonal paths.

  ‘Is that you, Parkinson?’ Captain Edmund called down to the boys.

  The boys ceased their chatter, stood still and looked towards the window. ‘Yes, sir, Captain Edmund.’

  ‘Why aren’t you in your dormitories?’

  ‘Another ten minutes, sir.’

  ‘It will take you more than ten minutes to get ready for bed.’

  ‘Not if we hurry.’

  ‘Let me see you hurry then,’ Captain Edmund said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The boys continued to cross the quadrangle casually, now in silence.

  ‘Run!’ came the command. The boys jogged under an archway. The night settled and a few stars began to shine.

  A crack like thunder echoed through the quadrangle. Captain Edmund disappeared from the window. A patchwork of lights turned on until the quadrangle glowed gold.

  Dormitory windows crammed with eager, noisy boys, their excited voices chasing each other into the night.

  Two

  Day 1

  Kilkenny Road

  11.30 p.m. Sunday, 25th October 1965

  The glow from streetlights failed to penetrate the canopy of jacaranda trees that lined Kilkenny Road, Floreat. Only one house shimmered in light. Porch light, window lights and a passageway light poured through an open front door into the night. A Rachmaninoff piano piece surged and faded.

  Eighteen-year-old Paul Cardilini walked quickly along the pavement towards the house. He pushed aside the front gate, took several hurried steps onto the verandah and went inside, closing the flyscreen door and the timber front door quietly behind him.

  ‘Dad! Dad!’ he called.

  Stretched out on the lounge room sofa lay his father: a man in his forties, white singlet, business trousers, head hanging back over one armrest, socked feet resting on the other. Beer bottles lay like skittles on the floor.

  ‘Dad, wake up.’ The young man turned down the record player, Rachmaninoff fell to a whisper. He shook his father. The man’s legs fell to the floor as he tried to sit up.

  ‘Paul, hey. How are you?’

  ‘You’re drunk again, Dad,’ Paul said tonelessly.

  ‘No. No.’

  ‘Drunk. I could hear Mum’s music all the way down the street.’

  ‘No. Why, what time is it?’

  ‘It’s after eleven.’

  ‘Hell.’ Rubbing at the confusion in his eyes, Paul’s father asked, ‘You eaten?’

  ‘Yes. Did you?’

  ‘I was waiting for you,’ he replied, trying to focus.

  ‘Rubbish. I told you yesterday I was eating at friends’ tonight.’

  ‘Oh. That’s good then. I might go to bed.’

  ‘Jesus, you were going to stop this.’

  ‘Really. Yep. I will. But I’m going to bed now.’

  Paul watched his father test the weight and balance of each step and reach for the doorframe as a support before turning down the passageway. Paul turned off the record player and delicately lifted the LP from the turntable. He slipped the record reverently into its dust jacket and album cover. He picked up the beer bottles and glass. Looking around the room, he sighed heavily before switching off the light.

  Day 1

  St Nicholas College

  11.55 p.m. Sunday, 25th October 1965

  The boy stood in his pyjamas outside Captain Edmund’s door. He was barefoot as instructed and could feel the worn, coarse carpet on the soles of his feet. His right hand rested on the cool round door handle which he turned, easing the door open. Trying to smile he stepped through and drew the door shut behind him. His foot pressed onto something sharp and hard, he felt it snag at his skin. Welcoming the pain, he pushed his foot harder to the floor. In the room the open curtains cast a rectangle of weak light. The light ended at the Captain’s shoulders. The boy stood still. His foot throbbed.

  ‘Captain Edmund,’ the boy whispered.

  A distant rifle shot sounded, unlike the shot that had sounded earlier that night, the one that had sent all the boys but him jumping from their beds and to the windows. He had lain in his bed, his stomach cramping so hard his eyes watered. He had heard the master come and shoo everyone from the windows after that shot, shoo them into bed. No one looked at him, still under his covers. He wasn’t there; he wasn’t there as he waited.

  ‘Captain Edmund,’ he whispered again to the figure.

  A few stars shone through the window.

  ‘Captain Edmund.’

  He lifted his foot. The pain remained. He replaced his foot to the floor, the pain intensified.

  ‘Captain Edmund.’

  He lifted his foot again and put his fingers to his heel; it was sticky and a jagged shape clung to it. He pried at it and nearly called out in pain. He held the shape in his palm.

  ‘Captain Edmund, I’m bleeding?’

  ‘Captain Edmund, shall I go?’

  A few more stars had gathered in the window.

  The boy turned and placed his hand on the door handle. Trembling, alert for the voice, he turned the handle and waited. He pulled the door towards him, paused, then he stepped into the doorway. A light was on at the far end of the corridor to the right: a light that wasn’t on before. He walked left to the fire-escape, smiling at the pain in his foot.

  He felt the metal patterns of the fire-escape steps on his feet as the skin stuck and then pulled away from the tread. The bitumen of the path below pinched at his feet. When he reached the grass of the hockey field he rubbed his foot backwards and forwards to stop the bleeding. The hockey oval stretched to the edge of the school and a lone streetl
ight. Behind him, Captain Edmund’s building blocked light from the quadrangle, so the boy was in darkness. Now he slid both feet along the grass. The pain had eased and he imagined the grass had sealed the cut; he was happy about that until he remembered he had hoped it might kill him.

  Three

  Day 2

  Kilkenny Road

  6.30 a.m. Monday, 26th October 1965

  During spring in Perth, early morning was the coolest time of day. At six thirty the sun shed light and gentle warmth. A persistent concert of bird calls emanated from the trees. Cardilini, wearing boxer shorts, singlet and thongs, slouched in the backyard of his home smoking his first cigarette for the day. He could see the sunlight, filtered by the trees, spread patches of fluid gold across the backyard: a backyard of overgrown plants, dead grass and cigarette butts. He didn’t register the bird calls. He tried to remember what had happened last night, then gave up. One hand grabbed the fat of his ample paunch. He shook his head in disgust and ground out the cigarette butt with the heel of his thong.

  ‘Time to get up, Paul,’ Cardilini said and knocked on his son’s bedroom door. In the kitchen he put a cereal box on the table. ‘Breakfast is ready!’ he called, as he walked past the door again to his own bedroom.

  ***

  Cardilini pulled into the car park of the East Perth Police department. At 8 a.m. the air was warming, he was warming. He decided he would spend the day at his desk. The double brick, deep windows and high ceilings of the detectives’ office provided protection from the day’s heat. He would redo the paperwork on his only case, a robbery. He knew one of the culprits, or thought he did, and he felt it was quite reasonable to believe the man guilty. Anyway, he would make out a new report. The suspect wouldn’t mind spending the day in a cell, hell, Cardilini wouldn’t mind spending the day in a cell; at least he’d be cool. He’d spend the day pushing the papers around on his desk and get to the pub early. He figured he could do it again tomorrow before Detective Inspector Bishop, his senior, would complain. Not that Bishop wanted him for anything else. Bishop knew Cardilini was ‘a waste of space’. Cardilini liked the idea of ‘a waste of space’. Yeah, he would get two days out of it.

  He pushed through the front doors of the building and stepped into the cool. A 12-foot wide corridor of apple-green linoleum ran to a central grand staircase of dark jarrah. On either side of the staircase the linoleum continued into offices and to the rear of the building, the uniformed officers’ domain. Cardilini was a detective, a Detective Sergeant, so he hauled himself up the lino steps to the second floor and snuck past his boss’s open door.

  ‘Cardilini, is that you?’ Bishop called.

  Bugger.

  ‘Cardilini, a teacher’s been shot and I immediately thought of you.’

  Cardilini paused in the corridor, stepped back and looked into Detective Inspector Bishop’s office.

  ‘That’s nice of you,’ he said. ‘But I’m busy.’

  ‘It’s at St Nicholas College. You were looking for a new school for your boy, weren’t you?’

  ‘Very funny. That was six months ago, he’s now left school.’

  ‘Oh well, bad luck. I assigned you. They think it must be a stray bullet from someone shooting across the river.’

  ‘What?’ Cardilini asked, incredulous.

  ‘Roo-shooters.’

  Cardilini shook his head heavily. ‘Bishop, that’ll be a needle in a haystack job.’

  ‘I know. So, you’ll be able to put it to bed real quick and get back to your desk.’

  ‘I see, it’s like that is it?’

  ‘No physical evidence came in. No bullet.’

  ‘You’re shitting me.’

  ‘They think someone souvenired it.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m making it up. That’s what I do all day, I sit here and make stuff up.’

  ‘Always thought you did.’ Cardilini turned from his boss’s office, disappointed.

  ‘Oh, Cardilini, you might want to know that the superintendent and the deputy commissioner attended St Nicholas College.’

  Cardilini thrust his head back.

  Bishop continued, ‘They were contacted first. They can’t have any involvement, of course, so they told me to go gently; don’t want to damage the school’s reputation, etcetera. Oh, and the body is already at the morgue.’

  ‘What? That’s bullshit, even they can’t do that.’

  ‘Do you want me to tell them you said that?’

  Cardilini turned to walk to his desk.

  ‘No need to tie up another detective,’ Bishop called after him, ‘take a constable.’

  ***

  The constable available hadn’t been a year in the job. Cardilini observed him expressionlessly for some time. He was Cardilini’s height, six foot, with dark hair, dark eyes and even features. He’s too soft for the job, Cardilini decided.

  ‘Who are you?’ Cardilini asked.

  ‘They call me Salt, sir.’

  ‘Okay, Salt. You don’t speak unless I ask you to. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a loud-mouthed bore,’ Cardilini said at a volume and manner as if intended for a particular loud-mouthed bore within earshot.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Do you know where we’re going?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Are you old enough to drive?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Get a car.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Cardilini had started to sweat only minutes into their journey and couldn’t settle on the seat. The metal of the dashboard, the vinyl seats, the glare from the windscreen, all annoyed him.

  ‘There’s a busted spring in this seat, Salt.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Next time you tell ‘em who the car’s for.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Bastards,’ Cardilini said as he tried to crush the spring into submission with his backside.

  Four

  Day 2

  Royal Perth Hospital

  9.24 a.m. Monday, 26th October 1965

  The body had been taken to the Royal Perth Hospital. Cardilini had Salt drop him at the front doors.

  ‘Park the car and then come in and ask to be taken to the freezer.’ Cardilini lit a cigarette as he walked through the double doors. He liked to stride along the corridor, he knew most of the nurses and he saw himself as a bluff, noisy uncle to them. He could make them laugh. He searched in vain for one he could tease.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to be sick in this place,’ he announced at volume. A nurse with straight, shoulder-length black hair framing a square face stepped from a door.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Cardilini, are you sick?’

  ‘This is the last place I’d be if I was.’

  ‘A number of people will be happy to hear that.’

  Cardilini couldn’t remember the nurse’s name. He used to have a good memory for names, faces, and all sorts of facts about people.

  ‘You’d be leading the pack, I bet.’

  The nurse retreated through the door. That shut her up, Cardilini smiled.

  ***

  In the basement, off the corridor to the ‘freezer’, the attendant, Colin McBride, had an office the size of two broom closets. He had compressed his body to suit: shoulders bent forward and a short sharp gait, but his big oval head, boasting thick black-framed round glasses, seemed outsized.

  ‘Hey, McBride, you little ghoul, you got a body from St Nicholas College for me?’ Cardilini called from the corridor.

  ‘I wondered who would turn up. They sent you to bury it, did they?’ McBride manoeuvred from his office.

  ‘It’s a shooting accident.’

  ‘That’s bullshit for a start.’

  ‘What would you know?’

  ‘More than you would
,’ McBride answered and Cardilini considered that was probably true.

  ‘Well, no one’s asking you. And I don’t really care, I’m just following procedure.’

  ‘Procedure, bullshit. If your mob were following procedure we wouldn’t have a body until an investigation was done.’ He pushed through a set of double doors ahead of Cardilini. On the autopsy table a grey sheet covered the form of a body, a black patch on one end hanging over a strangely truncated shape. Cardilini walked to the table and paused.

  ‘Who brought the body in?’ he asked.

  ‘Ambulance.’

  ‘Very funny. Which coppers?’

  ‘No coppers.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No coppers.’

  ‘So, who authorised the bloody thing to come here?’

  ‘The ambos were told to pick the body up. It was just a scheduled job for them.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Six thirty this morning. The teacher didn’t arrive at rowing training.’

  ‘Rowing? Who goes rowing?’ Cardilini asked as Salt came through the door. ‘Tell your story to Salt, he’ll pretend he cares. Do you want to see this Salt?’

  Cardilini watched Salt’s features freeze and said, ‘Nah, both of you nick off.’

  When the doors swung closed, Cardilini reached to remove the sheet. It held fast. He began to pry from one side then tugged. Portions of brain tissue formed a neat arc through the air as the sheet fell to one side, revealing the body. A man in his forties dressed in trousers, socks and shoes, but no shirt. Not a lot of body fat, Cardilini noted. All quite normal apart from the fact that the top half of the man’s skull was missing. The man’s face seemed oblivious to this. His eyes open and clear, the mouth and chin angled suggesting he was exercising authority.

  Cardilini had heard the fatal shot had come from a distance, possibly half a mile, from roo-shooters. The fact that the man’s skull was missing suggested either a hollow-point or a soft-point bullet, designed to expand on impact. Roo-shooters using hollow-point bullets? Cardilini puzzled.

  He picked up a probe and poked around in the brain cavity before laying it aside and re-examining the body from the soles of the victim’s shoes to his gaping skull. I don’t like this, Cardilini thought to himself.