Truth

Начало книги

ON THE Westgate Bridge, behind them a flat in Altona, a dead woman, a girl really, dirty hair, dyed red, pale roots, she was stabbed too many times to count, stomach, chest, back, face. The child, male, two or three years old, his head was kicked. Blood everywhere. On the nylon carpet, it lay in pools, a chain of tacky black ponds.

Villani looked at the city towers, wobbling, unstable in the sulphurous haze. He shouldn’t have come. There was no need. ‘This air-conditioner’s fucked,’ he said. ‘Second one this week.’

‘Never go over here without thinking,’ said Birkerts.

‘What?’

‘My grandad. On it.’

One spring morning in 1970, the bridge’s half-built steel frame stood in the air, it crawled with men, unmarried men, men with wives, men with wives and children, men with children they did not know, men with nothing but the job and the hard, hard hangover and then Span 10-11 failed.

One hundred and twelve metres of newly raised steel and concrete, two thousand tonnes.

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