The Broken Shore by Peter Temple Read Free Book Online Page A

think about it,’ said Leon. ‘I’ve got good teeth.’
    Cashin went to work, dealt with a complaint from a man about a neighbour’s tree, a report of a vandalised bench in the wetlands. A woman with a black eye came in—she wanted Cashin to warn her husband. At 2.15, the primary school rang to say a mother had seen someone lurking on the block across the road.
    He parked a way from the school, went down a driveway and looked over the fence. High yellow grass. Someone had thrown a concrete slab and got no further, weeds covering the heap of building sand. There was a small shed, a panel van parked behind it.
    Cashin walked back down the drive and onto the block, approached the vehicle. The windows were fogged glass, no one visible in the cab. He rapped on the roof with knuckles.
    Silence. He bounced his fist.
    ‘Fuck off!’ A male.
    ‘Police,’ said Cashin.
    The vehicle moved. He stood back and he could see a figure climbing over the bench seat. The driver’s window came down a few centimetres: eyes, dark eyebrows, strands of black hair.
    ‘Just takin a nap.’
    ‘This your property, sir?’ Cashin was showing his badge.
    ‘I’m the builder.’
    ‘Not much building going on.’
    ‘Startin soon as he gets his finance.’
    ‘You local, sir?’
    ‘Cromarty.’
    ‘I’d like you to step out of the vehicle, sir, and show me some ID.’
    ‘Listen, takin a nap on a buildin job, what’s the fuckin crime?’
    ‘Out of the vehicle, please, sir. With your ID.’
    The man turned, reaching backwards. Cashin saw skin colour, the man was half-naked, he was looking for his pants.
    Cashin stood well back, hand inside his jacket, eased the gun in the clip.
    The man moved, struggled, he couldn’t get his pants on. ‘Listen,’he said through the gap. ‘Somethin a bit private goin on here, y’know. Gissus a break, will you?’
    ‘Get out and put your pants on,’ said Cashin. ‘Sir.’
    The door opened. A thin man, late twenties. He moved his legs out, open flannel shirt over a teeshirt, no shoes, hole in a red sock, one leg in his denims, stood in the weeds to pull them up, zip. He had a pimple on a thigh.
    He reached inside, found a wallet, offered it. ‘Driver’s, credit, all kinds of shit.’
    ‘Put it on the roof,’ Cashin said, ‘and stand against the shed.’
    ‘Jesus, mate, I’m just a fuckin brickie.’
    He obeyed. Cashin took the wallet, looked at cards. Allan James Morris, an address in Cromarty. He wrote it down. ‘Phone number?’
    He gave Cashin a mobile number.
    ‘Now if you’ll help the person with you get out, I’d like some ID there too,’ said Cashin.
    Morris walked back to the van, opened the back door, there was an exchange. A girl in jeans and a short pleated pink jacket got out. She was no more than fifteen, dark hair, pretty, it wouldn’t last. Her lips were puffy, lipstick smeared.
    ‘ID, please,’ said Cashin.
    She opened a wallet, offered a card. Cashin looked at it.
    ‘Not you,’ he said, flicked the card back across the bonnet. ‘Got some real ID? We can do this at the station. Get your mum and dad in.’
    She pouted, eye-flick to Morris, produced another card, school ID with a photograph: Stacey-Ann Gettigan.
    ‘Fourteen, Stacey,’ he said. ‘In the back of a van with a grown man.’
    ‘Just waggin,’ she said. She folded her arms under her breasts. ‘Not a crime.’
    ‘What do you reckon, Allan?’ Cashin said. ‘Crime to be jumping a fourteen-year-old in your van?’
    ‘Just kissin and that,’ said Morris.
    ‘Take your pants off to kiss? Kissing with your bum? You married, Allan?’
    Morris scratched his head. He was in sunlight and Cashin saw dandruff motes fly into the still air. The girl was looking down, bitingon a painted nail. ‘Listen,’ said Morris, ‘no harm done, I swear.’
    ‘Married, Allan?’
    ‘Yeah. Sort of.’
    ‘Sort of? They got that now? Do a sort of ceremony in church?’
    Morris didn’t want to look at Cashin. Cashin motioned to