Peter Corris - Casino

I used the mobile phone to find out where Scott was and wished I had a siren as I drove down Parramatta Road towards the RPA hospital. When I got there they told me that he had died without regaining consciousness.

I went to the funeral with Glen. The church was in Manly and they buried him in the cemetery in Fairlight. The day was hot and the business was done with all the Roman Catholic trimmings, making it slow and exhausting for the principals and tedious for the others. The Galvanis and Spadonis appeared not to like each other very much, being southerners and northerners, but they were united in their grief. There were a lot of kids who grew fractious in the church and unruly in the graveyard amid the white plaster Madonnas and ornate tombs. I found it all ghoulish. I knew that Scott thought religion was for the simple-minded and that he’d be as pissed-off at all this carry-on as I was.

Glen was moved by it. She looked elegant in her dark green dress, one source of pleasure in all the nonsense. My suit was a few shades too light in colour and somewhere along the line I’d undone my top shirt button and loosened my tie so that I was looking a bit dishevelled when the dirt hit the lid. This drew disapproving glares from a few of the veiled, black-clad matrons. Gina was surrounded by them and I scarcely caught a glimpse of her.

‘That’s it,’ I whispered to Glen. ‘Let’s go.’

‘You have to go back to the house,’ she said. ‘It’s the decent thing to do.’

So we joined the procession back to the Galvani residence in Balgowlah Heights. Scott’s father had done well for himself, building up from being an immigrant pastrycook to becoming one of the biggest manufacturers of pasta in Australia. They’d long ago made the jump from Leichhardt to Middle Harbour and the huge, over-elaborate house was a monument to that transition. Set on a double block with high fences all around and a three metre brick wall in front, it resembled a fortress. I parked between a white Mercedes and an oyster-coloured Mazda with leopard-skin seat covers.

‘Scott didn’t grow up here,’ I explained to Glen as we mounted some marble steps. ‘In fact, he seldom visited.’

‘Shush.’

In my discomfort I’d been speaking too loudly, and a woman on the Galvani side had heard me. I loosened my tie a fraction more and we went on up into the house. It was crowded and noisy. The church service and funeral might have been pompous and solemn, but the Italian version of the wake celebrated the continuation of life, especially for the men. The wine was flowing freely and I poured a few down quickly. I wasn’t hungry, but plenty of the other guests were and the mountains of food quickly become hills and then small heaps. There were a couple of Australian-Italian cops present and they fell into conversation with Glen, leaving me to wander about with a glass, to stare out through a picture window at the patio, the swimming pool and the tennis court, the manicured flower beds and the bowling green lawn.

The back garden featured a gilded and enamelled grotto-a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Inside, the pictures had heavy frames; the furniture was all fat, dimpled and padded. There was nothing of Scott here-nothing of his athleticism and scepticism, wit and irreverence, his love of books and good talk. This was all saying Yes, I-love-you, to the angels of success and excess, the god of the bottom line.

I turned away from the picture window when I heard the wail of an infant. From behind a door came soothing sounds and I stood rooted to the spot, drinking wine, knowing what I was going to see next and dreading it. After a few minutes Gina came through the door. She was wearing a long black dress and a veil, but I could see a few strands of her blonde hair escaping from the confines of the headgear.

‘Gina, I… ‘

She pushed the veil up and looked at me. Her wide, generous mouth was set in a hard, thin line and her blue eyes glittered like the enamel on the Virgin’s shrine. The intensity behind them made me take a backward step. My hand felt big, hot and clumsy wrapped around the glass, and my tongue was dry and swollen in my throat. I suddenly felt drunk and incapable. It’s a wonder I didn’t stumble. She swept the veil down and glided past me without a sound as if she was a creature not quite of this world.

I was badly shaken. I leaned against the silvered, vertically striped wallpaper and tried to regain my composure. I put my glass down on the first level surface I came to, blundered through the house, detached Glen from a small group and almost pulled her through the door and down the steps.

‘What’re you doing?’ she protested. ‘We haven’t even spoken to… ‘

I kept yanking her and descending. I had a headache building and I was sweating inside my shirt and suit coat. I pulled off my tie and ripped the stitches in the jacket tugging it off.

‘Cliff, for God’s sake, what’s wrong?’

‘Will you drive, please?’

We were crossing the bridge before I could compose myself enough to speak. I told Glen about the look in Gina’s eyes. The disdain, the contempt. The hatred.

‘She’d be in a state something like hysteria,’ Glen said. ‘Something as sudden as that, two little kids… It’s a female nightmare come true. You can’t take it on board this way, Cliff.’

‘She blames me.’

‘She has to blame someone or something. A couple of weeks ago she was probably singing your praises along with Scott. My mate Cliff, who got me this beaut job…’

‘Don’t, love.’

‘Snap out of it, then. She’s young. She’ll recover. That place reeks of money. They’ll see her right. She gave him children… ‘

‘Daughters,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure they count.’

Glen gunned the motor, police-driver style, and sent the car whipping around the turn into Wentworth Park Road. ‘Are you trying to pick a fight?’

I leaned back in the seat. ‘I’m too pissed to fight.’

‘Probably got something to do with your overreaction. Let’s go up to the beach for a couple of days. You might catch your first flathead.’

We went to Glen’s house at Whitebridge where I ran on the beach, swam, read, drank wine and didn’t catch any fish. I had trouble letting go of the feelings that had been stirred up in me by the sound of Scott’s daughters and the look in the eyes of his wife. I was morose, not good company, and Glen and I had more than the usual number of disagreements.

Back in Sydney and on my own for a time while Glen was on a tour of country police stations, I rang my chief police contact, Frank Parker, and asked him if any progress was being made on the murder case. As far as the press was concerned, the case had got cold very quickly.

‘Nothing,’ Frank said. ‘We don’t even know why he was there. He got out of his car and two men approached him. One of them shot him twice. They drove off in a car the witness couldn’t identify. The descriptions are useless-medium this, ordinary that. You know. And that’s all.’

‘What about speculation?’

‘Who knows? Connected to the job at the casino? Or some case he was working on or had worked on? We’ve got good people on it, believe me, but so far there’s nothing. If anything happens I’ll let you know.’

I kept busy and tried to forget that look in Gina Galvani’s blue eyes. The jobs trickled in and I did them and paid bills with the proceeds. Financially, I was treading water and I sometimes felt that I was doing the same in my relationship with Glen. A card appeared in my letterbox informing me that ABC Roofs amp; Guttering Ltd had detected damage to the capping and coping of my tile roof and inviting me to call them for a quote on the cost of repairs. I called and they quoted. I couldn’t afford it. Everything seemed to be on hold.