Truth by Peter Temple

story.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Um.’ Vickery’s tongue bulged his upper lip, did a few wipes over his gums. ‘Lovett carked it, hear that? Lung cancer.’
    ‘I heard that,’ Villani said. He had felt no loss at the news, every day dawned brighter without Alan Arthur Lovett.
    ‘Didn’t break down myself neither,’ said Vickery. ‘But he’s on a fucking video, coughing and spitting, the twat says we fitted the little Quirk bastard.’
    ‘Why would he say that?’ said Villani.
    Vickery gave him the long look. ‘Yeah, well, the drugs fuck with your brain, my brother-in-law, another prick, he came up with all kinds of shit, incest, you name it. It’s the Super K.’
    ‘When was it made?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The tape?’
    ‘Dunno. What’s it matter?’
    ‘Could matter a lot.’
    Vickery turned his back to the bar, glass in hand, looked around the dungeon. ‘Anyway, the problem here’s the wife, bloody Grace’s found God, fucking never-never-land shit and she’s sent the DPP the tape.’
    Down the bar a blade-faced man coughed and coughed, could not stop coughing, it was painful to hear, he bent his head, ejected something into an expectant palm.
    ‘Fucked,’ said Vickery. ‘Another cunt going Lovett’s way. My guy says they’re talking second inquest. And there’s people very keen to see us go down. So we need to consider taking steps.’
    He looked into his glass. ‘Coming man like you, you can raise this in the right places.’
    ‘Don’t know about that,’ said Villani.
    Vickery turned to be at a right angle to Villani, he was the same height, heavier, torso sausaged in cold blue polyester.
    ‘Mate, mate,’ he said. ‘Clarity here. Courtesy this mad prick we can go down as killers, perjurers, eternal disgrace to the fucking force.’
    In dreams, Villani always saw the fire escape, the kitchen’s greyvinyl tiles, dirty, peeling, the blood, on the ceiling, on the walls, on the windowpanes, lying on the carpet like drops of scarlet syrup. He never saw Greg Quirk’s face, never the blown-away throat, he never saw the face of the dying man.
    ‘See what I can do,’ he said, finished the beer.
    Vickery made a nasal pipe-hammer sound. ‘Stevo,’ he said, ‘we don’t get smart here, we’ll know what arsefucked by a whole footy team feels like. Those who don’t already.’
    ‘Well, you heard a story,’ said Villani. ‘Could be some mistake.’
    ‘My whole life’s a fucking mistake,’ said Vickery. ‘With one or two exceptions I can’t remember. No mistake here.’
    On the stairs, carrying his parcels, Villani passed two young women arguing, blotchy drug faces, hookers. The street door resisted him, then the outside hit, hot air of wood smoke and petrochemicals, fuels ancient and new.

 
    ‘I’M NOT sayin Greg was a good boy,’ she said that day.
    ‘You wouldn’t want to,’ said Villani, ‘because it would be a very big porky.’
    He had been on his knees, pulling at the last clump of the couch grass, the roots yielded, no warning, his hands struck him in the mouth. He spat, an elastic string of sputum, no lift-off, the bloody line fell down his chin, lay on his T-shirt.
    He put a finger into his mouth, felt his inner lip.
    ‘Fingers in your mouth, son,’ Rose said. ‘That’s a big no-no. Feedin yourself germs.’
    She was on the verandah, a filter cigarette in a pink plastic holder.
    ‘Pity I didn’t meet you earlier,’ Villani said. ‘You could have spared me so much.’
    ‘On the other hand, Mick,’ she said. ‘Always thought Mick would come good.’
    ‘Just got in with bad boys, I know.’
    Rose closed her eyes, tilted her head back, blew smoke. ‘Too right. Rotten homes, every last one of that lot.’
    Villani took the watering can to the rainwater tank behind the house. Tap watering was banned. It hadn’t rained much for a long time but Rose’s tank was always full. He didn’t ask questions. Itwasn’t beyond her to pass through next door’s rotten fence in the