This is a police procedural set in Australia in 1965. It is unlike any other police procedural I have read and certainly one of the most admirable.
The protagonist, Cardilini, a drunken and lazy DS, is given a case to work on: the shooting of a master at an exclusive boys' school. He was hit while standing at the window of his upstairs bedroom. It is common practice for local farmers to shoot kangaroos close to the school grounds. The master was in charge of the school cadet corps. The school is one of the most highly regarded in the neighbourhood and the local police chief has presumably given the case to Cardilini because he thinks he will take the lazy option of assuming it was an entirely accidental and the case will be closed swiftly.
But Cardilini has another characteristic – he is extremely stubborn. He is also embittered because his wife, whom he loved dearly, was murdered some years ago, and although a suspect was prosecuted and imprisoned, he claimed he was innocent throughout and was eventually released. Cardilini actually believed him.
In the meantime, Cardilini was left with his son Paul to bring up (with some help from his sister-in-law), but inevitably the fate of his mother led to Paul’s drug-taking (and conviction for fairly minor juvenile charges). As Paul had always wanted to follow his father into the police, they both thought he would never be accepted by the Police Academy. So Cardilini begins a thorough investigation into the shooting, and soon discovers that the location from which the shot was fired could have been entirely different, although it would have taken a crack shot to succeed.
What readers know throughout, is that the cadet master was actually a paedophile who had abused several of the boys from the school, some of whom had actually committed suicide. The suicides had also been brushed under the carpet by the authorities.
Cardilini is put under increasing pressure from his superiors to go with the accident theory – to the extent that they begin to hint that Paul might be allowed to enter the Academy after all, but even then, he continues quietly to pursue his own line of enquiry. It is only when he begins to discover the real truth, that his problem becomes a moral one.
This is an absolutely fascinating story – supremely well told.
