A Dark Place to Die (42 page)

'I thought you'd never ask.'

Koop grabs two beers from the deck fridge and hands one over. Eckhardt puts his arm around Koop's shoulder
and the two clink the necks of their beers together. Koop can smell the smoke on Eckhardt's breath.

'You know, Koop,' says Eckhardt. 'This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.'

'Are you making a pass at me, Warren?'

'Get fucked.
Casablanca
, mate. Best film ever made.'

'Never heard of it.'

'Jesus,' says Eckhardt as the two of them walk slowly back into the house. 'I'd heard Poms were stupid, but this is going too far.'

Three thousand kilometres west the sun is low in the sky and a wind is picking up across Lake Ballard. It comes over the low-lying scrub and gathers a fine dusting of salt crystals from the dry surface. The only objects in the path of the wind are the iron skeletons. The salt rattles against the black metal and on the red earth marking the spot where North died. The dark stain is almost gone and in a few more days will have disappeared completely.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the help and support of a number of people. I'd like to thank my good friends Margrete Lamond and Jenny Burgess for their early readings and sharply intelligent responses at a crucial time. I'd also like to thank Bev Cousins at Random House Australia, and Kate Burke at Random House UK, for their wonderful taste in crime fiction and their ongoing support, knowledge and hand-holding. My editor, Patrick Mangan, has done a great job ensuring I didn't make a complete fool of myself, a difficult task for anyone. My agent, Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown, deserves thanks for her steely nerve under fire, as does supersub Pippa Masson who filled Tara's shoes so capably while Tara briefly abandoned me on the flimsy premise that she was having a baby.

I have borrowed the names of characters freely from friends (almost all of whom have agreed). I'm hoping that those who didn't aren't too offended when they showed up as corpses, criminals or cops. Special mention must be made to Menno Koopman, Jim Gelagotis and Macksym Kolomiets, who very kindly agreed to the loaning of their
names, if not their characters. It's not the first time that team-mates have supplied me with inspiration and it won't be the last. Needless to say, the characters in the book bear little or no resemblance to their real-life counterparts.

Antony Gormley's wonderful sculpture installation on Crosby Beach
(Another Place)
was fundamentally inspiring for me and, in some ways, was the jumping-off point for the book. As a fan of his work I hope my use of the iron men as a location is taken in the spirit in which it was intended. If you ever get the chance to see either
Another Place
, or
Inside Australia
, or indeed any of Gormley's work, you should.

Lastly – before I start weeping and thanking God and grandma – I would like to thank my patient and understanding life partner, Annie, who has had to call on all her powers of encouragement and reservoirs of blind faith to get me to this point.