The address was in the tiny town of Rufus, an hour to the south. That must have been the retirement shack Vince had spoken of.
I rang the number, received a curt reply and precise directions to Starcy’s place. Over the phone at least, he had the air of a feller who didn’t fuck about with formalities and small talk. I drove down to Rufus and found the property where he said it was: five minutes out of town, ten isolated acres on the shore of a lake with a pair of white-faced herons at the water’s edge. There was a fibro shack with a LandCruiser in the carport and a tinny on a trailer in the yard.
As I cruised down the drive, the front door opened and a man emerged. He came towards me, limping. Old coppers are like old footballers: they limp a lot. He was tall, heavily built, wearing black tracky dacks, a blue lumber jacket and a green beanie. He carried himself with an air of authority, despite the years and the gait.
‘Jesse,’ he said, engulfing my hand in his. He had cracked nails, bent fingers, calluses on his calluses. ‘Come round to the fire. Need some warmth on a day like this. On a subject like this.’
He led me to the far side of the house, gasping a little as he walked. There was a pair of metal chairs looking out over the lake and a lively fire upon which a billy was simmering.
I paused to take in the view. The breeze blowing off the lake was icy and light, the greenery on the opposite shore luminous.
‘You live here on your own?’ I asked.
‘Mostly. Since the wife died. Still got a place down the city, but I like the peace out here. It’s the antidote to forty-five years of wading through the human sewer.’
‘Sorry to disturb it.’
He brushed my apology aside. ‘If it’ll help the boy . . .’
Nash wasn’t exactly a boy, but maybe when you got to Starcy’s age, we all looked like boys or girls. He threw a chunk of red gum onto the fire, poured me a pannikin of tea, gave me a lamington from a packet.
‘So,’ he said, lowering his glasses and raising his eyebrows. ‘Vince Tehlich tells me you’re in a relationship with Nash.’
‘I seem to be.’
‘That’d be a first for him, at least in my experience. You must be an adventurous soul. I didn’t even know he was in trouble again until Vince told me yesterday. Don’t have that many contacts still in the job. Better for my mental health to steer clear of the brotherhood. I’ll try to get down and see him. Not supposed to be driving right now, but I got a mate who’s happy to be my chauffeur.’ He stretched out his right leg and gave the knee a massage, then looked me in the eye. ‘You seriously think Nash might have been the victim in all of this? The patsy?’
I tried to explain the reasons for my suspicion. I told him I’d been looking over Nash’s old cases, had interviewed the priest, the towie and the swindler.
Starcy’s upper lip curled. ‘Must have been like a bloody enema, having a chat with that lot. What did you make of Neddy Kursk?’
‘Bit of a pig, but there’s no law against that.’
‘We had a good look at him as an accomplice to his brother’s trail of mayhem and blood, but there was no direct evidence of any involvement. Plenty of suspicion, but no proof.’
‘Interviewing Burstill was just as bad,’ I said. When I explained that I’d sprung his crew dumping what I presumed to be some kind of toxic waste in the Windmarks, he glared out at the lake and frowned. I got a hint of how he must have made the villains cringe in his younger days.
We both looked around as a bird call echoed across the water. The herons moved through the shallows, their necks extended, their lethal beaks poised.
Starcy turned back to me.
‘I was pleased to hear you’re doing this,’ he said. ‘I’m just about past it myself – got a dicky ticker and titanium hips, but when Vince told me about Nash’s latest trouble, I thought he must have been cursed. There are still things about that first conviction that puzzle me.’
‘Such as?’
‘It just didn’t feel right. I might not have the education you young smart-arses have today, but I know when someone’s selling me a pup. I was with Nash the morning of the incident. He told me he was going up to Horse Thief. Said he had an old friend who was troubled about something, wanted to talk.’
‘He didn’t say what about?’
‘No, but there was nothing in his eyes to suggest he was going there to punch anybody out. I’d seen him angry and he didn’t look angry that morning.’
I pressed Starcy for more details about the incident and he obliged. Much of what he told me I’d heard before: the neighbour, the fight, the fatal shot.
But when I asked him what Nash had to say in his own defence, he was more expansive than anybody else had been thus far. Clearly the episode had weighed upon his mind for years. Nash said that when he got to the house, the door was open and Glazier was laid out on the floor. He went in to assist but, as he knelt down, he was attacked from behind. He didn’t see who by; he said his attacker was dressed in black, the room was half-dark. When he came to he found Glazier dead and the sirens wailing. The investigators believed him at first, but then they started having doubts. They could find no trace of anybody else in the house, even after an intensive examination. Then they went through Nash’s computer and found he’d come across evidence that Leon Glazier was involved in trafficking sexual images of minors. Offences like that had always raised Nash’s hackles, though he denied all knowledge of the images. Then they got wind of the weird behaviour he’d been displaying in the weeks leading up to that day – he’d been confused, aggressive, dizzy. One time he blacked out in the station, cracked his head against a desk.
‘Vince Tehlich told me about that,’ I said. ‘He told me Nash even thumped you.’
‘Puh!’ Starcy rolled his eyes. ‘That was nothing. It happened a couple of weeks before. Nash was so mixed up for a while there, he thought he was punching the wall. I barely even noticed it, but there was another senior member of staff there and a report had to be made. Nothing came of it at the time, but when the investigators heard about it, they saw it as part of a pattern. They began to wonder if Nash hadn’t shot Glazier during a psychotic episode. They asked me more questions about him: Was he using drugs? Was he having some sort of breakdown? They obtained a statement from a Family Services psychiatrist who’d been involved with Nash since he was a kid.’
That caught my attention. Nobody else had mentioned this. Of course, I assumed various health professionals would have been involved with Nash’s case, given its outcome, but I hadn’t realised the psychiatrist who gave evidence had known Nash since his childhood. I asked Starcy if he remembered the doctor’s name.
He scratched his scalp. ‘Rush, I think it was. Damien Rush. He wasn’t a bad bloke; it was his evidence that saved Nash from a twenty-year stretch. He said the boy was suffering from psychosis and PTSD, that if he did kill Glazier, he more than likely wouldn’t have known what he was doing.’
I thought about Nash’s isolated bush home, his attachment to wild things, his quirks and eccentricities. Gaol or custodial supervision, incarceration of any form would be hell for somebody like him. He’d said as much to me that night at the Wiregrass. He needed the calming influence of the bush to keep his head level. He needed to smell peppermint and wood smoke, to watch bees floating over flowering gums, eagles over mountains. He needed ant bites, winter chills, the rough texture of wild honey.
Starcy rose to his feet, picked up a cane and asked if I’d like to accompany him on his hourly walk. He explained that he had a litany of hip and knee problems. Regular exercise was his only way of staying out of the old folks home.
The two of us set out on a narrow track that wound its way along the northern edge of the lake.