a sad concatenation of the city's criminals. Hobart's crims, heads on them like mice, he thought, catching sight of a senior constable leading a 'valued customer' named 'Burgers' O'Shea by the arm. Burgers banged along on crutches, grinning, his mouth almost toothless, his eyes mad brown orbs in a brown monkey face. Thirty years old but looking like fifty. He smiled and wished Jack good day, but Jack pretended not to have seen or heard the serial mugger. O'Shea was so dedicated to his calling that he had recently climbed a tree in St David's Park and leapt out onto an unlucky passer-by, flailing his crutches to pound his victim into submission. God only knew how he'd broken his ankle, but Jack guessed it was the result of something unsavoury. Christened Leslie by his doting parents, the miscreant had gained his nickname when he was found drunk and incapable in the McDonald's joint he was burgling, with half-eaten Big Macs in a pile at his side.
Nor did Jack see the dope dealers, the kerb crawlers shifting from foot to foot, the chicken thieves and break-and-enter men still tooled up, the serial flashers, shoplifters, mainliners with collapsed veins, chisellers and sneak thieves, wife-beaters, gropers, dips, illegal users of cars, broken-down old boozers, pimps, brothel creepers, snowdroppers and tavern brawlers, enforcers and phizgigs who were staples at this nick; a desperate parade of no-hopers, misfits, dead-shits, bunglers, sociopaths and nutcases - the rejects of the industrial age and sometimes the direct descendants of the old convicts of the British Empire. While he realised that there was a kind of commonality between the crims and some cops, Jack had never identified with any of them, had always wondered what could be done to prevent people from becoming criminals. Still, lie down with a dog and you get fleas, he thought with a shudder and he was all too familiar with the adage that you set a thief to catch a thief.
A great wave of dark hopelessness washed over him like the tide off Betsey Island. Jesus, he wanted a cigarette; he'd murder for one. The little junior constable who'd committed lese-majesty cowered by the coffee machine, but Jack ignored him too, and all the other faces that had spun round at their desks when he arrived. That boofhead Sergeant Gordon Paisley ruled the roost in here, but Jack ignored him too. Especially him. Jack hated him, sourly taking in the fat head he always compared to a boarding house pudding, the flat, hard eyes and the mouth permanently set in a sneer or a leer. Paisley had already done five or six years in the Force when Jack joined, and he had been one of the worst racists, constantly riding him for being an Eye-tie, even once wiping imaginary grease off a chair after Jack had sat in it. Jack spoke to him only when absolutely necessary.
Jack found who he was looking for: a gangly young man in the corner with sticking-out ears, a white face mottled with acne and a spray of wiry ginger hair with the texture of swarf from a lathe. It looked unbrushable.
'DC Bishop,' he said. 'My office, now. Oh, and make mine white. Coffee with three sugars. Yes, three, son.'
The young man stood up and nodded, trying not to seem too keen in front of his peers, but clearly delighted that a Great One had deigned to notice him. Jack had already read his file: Bob 'Bluey' Bishop had only recently arrived from the industrial town of Burnie, where he'd been on the beat. He'd grown up as a farm boy from up on the remote slopes of The Nut at Stanley before that. He'd been transferred over to the CIB because of some good work he'd done in catching a gang of crims who'd done over Tucker's supermarket in Burnie's main drag. That, and on account being somehow related to Ray Booker, Jack had heard on the grapevine, although the fruit was probably sour.
Bishop had a great yellow whopper of a pimple smack in the middle of his forehead, Jack was horrified to see. It seemed to throb. He had 'Tasmanian' teeth too - the off-white ones alternating with black stumps, rather giving the effect of an ancient piano keyboard - below a ridiculous little ginger moustache. Paisley watched them leave, his lip curling under his equally absurd moustache but careful not to do anything that Jack could have him for. One day, Jack thought savagely, I will punch his lights out, I really will.
The synagogue was just round the corner from the cop shop, so they walked, Jack wheezing slightly up the slight incline of Argyle Street, vowing for the trillionth time to either give up or cut down on the gaspers, forgetting that he actually had stopped. Few Hobartians noticed the synagogue, which was a great pity. Jack had often admired it. He knew that it had been built in 1845 in the Regency-Egyptian style, that it was probably the third oldest synagogue in the southern hemisphere, and that it was modelled on the Temple of Herod. Surprisingly large - it could seat 200 people on its polished wooden pews - it was built on land that once formed the front garden of Judah Solomon's mansion, now used by the police and known as Temple House. The entranceway was between two carved pillars, surmounted by an architrave on which was the Hebrew inscription, In all places where I shall cause My Name to be recorded I will come unto thee and bless thee. The windows, Jack noticed, were not rectangular, but narrowed towards the top, giving the place a distinctly Egyptian feel.
It was a handsome building, but one little noticed by the people of the city. Few people walked by; it was situated in a windy and uninviting precinct, although the boozer on the corner diagonally opposite did a good trade with off-duty coppers, snouts and car salesmen. Most people drove by on their way to somewhere else.
A squall blew up from the river, sending leaves and paper bags scuttling before it. Summer had definitely gone and a few spits of rain fell from the louring sky. The Mountain, visible over the rooftops, was surly today. Like all Hobartians, Jack was an avid watcher of Mt Wellington and its moods. He pushed through the gate and examined the graffiti. There were five or six specimens of the dauber's art, all in the same blue paint. It appeared from a number of other hasty touch-up jobs that earlier examples had been obliterated. Bob Bishop's face was puckered with disgust - 'Jeez, a bit rough, sir' - but Jack's features remained impassive: venality, brutality, criminality, stupidity, dishonesty, infidelity and vice had long ago lost their power to shock him and the same would happen to Bishop with time. Still, it was sick stuff. gas the jews, screamed one message; hitler had the right idear [sic] declared another. oshwitz now [sic] and death to the yids were some others. The morons couldn't even spell properly and their swastikas were back to front, thought Jack, dabbing at the paint with his finger. It was still sticky to the touch. Jack exhaled and shook his head; the sound and the gesture more expressive than any words.
The President of the Congregation was there, as arranged, to meet them, the city's Jewish population being too small to support a full-time rabbi. The President was a tall, austere man, with white hair and beard and the slight stoop of a scholar. Jack liked him from the start. He peered at the policemen with sad grey eyes over gold half-frames and extended his hand.
'Rosenberg is my name, Inspector. Gregor Rosenberg,' he said, his voice pleasant, educated, but with an elusive foreign intonation. 'I'm very pleased to meet you. If you will come this way, we can talk in the office down the back.' No skullcap, Martin noted. The President could be a professor, a lawyer, a respectable businessman. He wore a well-cut blue suit and a tasteful shirt and tie: nothing like the wrinkly off-the-peg bag of fruit that Bishop was sporting. Jack himself favoured suede jackets or Harris Tweed, reserving his dark suit for court appearances and the like.
It was cool inside, the atmosphere somehow brown, like inside an old library, redolent of old paper and incense, but very clean and cool. There was an abundance of dark cedar, polished to a high sheen by the hands of almost 150 years, and a beautiful golden chandelier hung from the ceiling. The thick walls cut out the traffic noise. Rosenberg pointed out the congregation's most treasured possession, a torah scroll in a glass case near the entrance. The Nazis had once stolen it from a desecrated synagogue in Czechoslovakia, Rosenberg told them. He did not have to labour the sad irony of this shrine to the victims of the Final Solution so close to the vicious graffiti on the exterior of the building. In the centre of the synagogue was a platform on which the Torah was read, and close by, an ornate ark covered in red velvet - the bimah, Rosenberg called it - in which the scrolls were kept.
When he had shown his guests around the temple, Rosenberg insisted on taking his guests to his flat, situated close by, locking the heavy door behind him as they went. He had, of course, already told all that
