An Iron Rose (23 page)

‘What’s on the land apart from trees?’

‘Old house. Bluestone place. Solid. Never lived in I don’t think after Donald moved to town.’

‘When was that?’

‘Oh, donkey’s. Died about twenty years ago.’

Just before noon, I finished the contraption. We fitted the housings to Frank’s ute, attached the tracks and ran the tray up them, not without difficulty.

‘Good work,’ Frank said. ‘Excellent work. Craftsmanship of the highest order.’

We went over to the pub for a sandwich. I had a beer. Jim had a glass of milk. Frank had three brandies.

The phone was ringing as we came up the lane. I ran for it.

Irene Barbie.

‘Mac,’ she said, ‘I’ve had a call from my daughter. From London. She’s just got back from Italy and Greece and she found a letter from Ian waiting for her. It’s been to about five of her previous addresses.’

I was still panting.

‘Are you all right, Mac?’

‘Fine. Been running. Go on.’

‘Well, I think it puts Ian’s suicide beyond doubt. Alice was in tears and the letter sounds a bit disjointed, but Ian says he’s leaving a note explaining everything and apologises for the pain he’s caused.’

‘Leaving a note where?’

‘He doesn’t say.’

‘Police ever mention a note to you?’

‘No. Well, they asked me if I knew of any note Ian might have left. They didn’t know of one.’

Ian’s wristwatch. Brendan Burrows on the station platform.

Well, watch’s gone, clear mark of watch on left wrist. Probably nicked by the deros.

Could they have taken anything else?

‘It’ll probably turn up. Thanks for telling me, Irene.’

‘About Ian and pethidine…’

‘Yes.’

‘You were right. Andrew Stephens told me. I never knew. Must have been blind.’

‘Most of us are blind some of the time,’ I said. ‘Some of us most of the time. There wasn’t anything you could have done.’

‘No, well, I suppose not. Thanks, Mac.’

I went out to see Frank and Jim off. Frank said: ‘Gettin the winch tomorrow. Big bugger. More pull than a scoutmaster. I’ll come round, you can bolt it on for me, we’ll settle up.’

Frank and Jim had to wait at the entrance to the lane to let another vehicle in. A silver Holden. I stood where I was outside the smithy and Detective Sergeant Shea drove the car to within twenty-five centimetres of my kneecaps.

Detective Shea was alone, the lovable Cotter presumably engaged in bringing cheer elsewhere. He got out of the car, looked at me, looked around, not approving. ‘Bloody freezing as usual,’ he said.

‘I’m stuck here,’ I said. ‘You on the other hand are free to leave for warmer parts any time you like.’

‘Don’t take it personal,’ he said. ‘Talk inside?’

We went into the office. It wasn’t much warmer there. I sat behind the desk, Shea looked at the kitchen chair disdainfully and sat on the filing cabinet.

‘Suppose you thought we weren’t doin anything,’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Thought you weren’t achieving anything.’

He smiled his bleak smile. ‘Takes time,’ he said. ‘You’d know. That complaint you told me about. One Ned made. About Kinross Hall, 1985. I looked that up. Investigated and found to be without substance. No further action taken.’

‘What was the complaint?’

Shea looked awkward. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘y’know I’m not allowed to divulge this kind of stuff. Lots of complaints, they’ve got no basis in fact, cause innocent people harm if the word got around…’

‘Ned’s dead,’ I said. ‘And it’s a long time ago.’

He rubbed his jaw with a big red hand. ‘This’s off the record, I never told you this, flat denial from me.’

‘I never heard it from you.’

‘Ned said a girl at Kinross told him the director, her name’s Marcia something…’

‘Carrier.’ A sick feeling was coming over me.

‘That’s right. The girl said this Marcia got her alone and made sexual, y’know, advances to her. She didn’t want to and the woman slapped her up, blood nose, hit her on the body with somethin she said, stick, cane.’

I kept my voice neutral. ‘This was investigated?’

Shea nodded. ‘Oh yeah, two officers investigated. No substance. Girl said she’d made up the story to get some smokes from Ned. Marcia whatshername, she said the girl was always makin up stories, been to her with wild stories, fantasy artist, something like that.’

‘Fantasist.’

‘That. So end of story. Scully and the other officer said no grounds to do anythin.’

The light from the window seemed suddenly brighter. I had difficulty seeing Shea’s features. ‘Scully?’ I said.

‘Yeah. Big noise now. You’d know him. In drugs. They say he’s going to be deputy commissioner. Stationed here for three, four years in the eighties.’

‘I know him,’ I said. ‘Who’s the other officer?’

Shea got out his notebook, found the place. ‘Bloke called Hill,’ he said.

I nodded, got up. We went out into the rain. At the car, I put out my hand. We shook.

‘Not finished with Ned,’ he said. ‘There’s stuff I’m workin on. Be in touch.’

I went back to the office, sat down, stared at the desktop: Scully and Hill at Kinross Hall investigating Ned’s complaint about Marcia Carrier.

I thought about the paintings in Marcia’s office, small paintings of what looked like primitive sacrifice or torture.

The skeleton in the mine shaft. A girl. Around sixteen.

Ned’s work diary, that was where it all began. I got out the box holding everything from Ned’s desk: the newspapers, the marbles, the old wooden ruler from the grocer in Wagga, the big yellow envelope full of stuff.

I read the diary again. It was 1985 that had started me on Kinross Hall. As I went through it, I was thinking about Berglin. Berglin on making sense of scraps of information, on knowing people:

What you ask yourself is: what will this stuff I’m hearing about look like in hindsight? What kind of sense will it make then? You’ve got to think like an archaeologist, digs up this bit of something, fragment, could be bit of ancient pisspot, could be bit of the Holy Grail. The archaeologist’s got to see the whole pot in the fragment. It’s called using your imagination. They don’t pick you people for this kind of ability, so we’re working against type.

Same thing with targets. You think you know them. Seen the pictures, maybe watched them in the street, public places, read the file, know their histories. But you don’t know them until you can predict what they’ll do in given circumstances. Till then, they’re just cardboard people to you. That’s why you’ve got to listen to the tapes. Everything. Every boring word, never mind it’s about who’s picking up the kids from school or who did what at fucking golf. You don’t know a target until every grunt has meaning for you. And lots of it, it’s just grunts. People just grunt at each other. Grunts with meaning.

It came out of the page in Ned’s diary, lifted out at me, 1987:
March 12. Veene house, Colson’s Road. Fix gutters, new downpipes. Six hours. $100.00. Materials $45.60. Found silver chain.

Under this entry, Ned had written:
Forgot to put with invoice.

Silver chain. I remembered something about a silver chain. In the newspapers from Ned’s drawer. I got them out. Page three, a Thursday in June, a photograph of a chain with a small silver star and a broken catch. An ankle chain.

Was the chain Ned found at the Veene house an ankle chain? He hadn’t returned it with the invoice. Had he handed it in later?

Perhaps he forgot to. Perhaps he still had it when he saw the picture in the newspaper.

My eye fell on the big yellow envelope. I’d looked in that.

Hadn’t I? I remembered seeing staples and string. I took the envelope out of the box and tipped its contents onto the desk.

Staples, a bulldog clip, box of rubber bands, neatly coiled length of string, small penknife.

And then the chain slid out like a thin silver snake. A silver chain, broken catch.

I shook the envelope.

Something dropped out, fell onto the newspaper, bounced, came to rest a few centimetres from the photograph.

A small silver star, the twin of the one in the picture.

I hadn’t noticed the message on the answering machine, left while we were having lunch at the pub. It was Anne Karsh.

Mac, hi. Anne Karsh. I’ve got nothing on this afternoon. I’ll be at the house from about three pm if you’re free to show me the mill. If you can’t make it, don’t worry, we’ll do it another day.

Ned thought he knew where the girl in the mine shaft was killed: the Veene house, where he’d found the ankle chain. He didn’t trust the police, so he went to see Marcia. Then he went to see Dr Ian Barbie. And then he was murdered.

Marcia Carrier, Dr Marcia Carrier, Director of Kinross Hall, attacking a girl…
blood nose, hit her on the body with somethin she said, stick, cane.

One of the men who abused Melanie Pavitt told her:
Back soon, slut, with a lady friend for you. She’s been looking forward to this.

Was it possible?

I thought about these things, dark things, on my way to Harkness Park, slit-eyed streamlined dog face in the outside rear-view mirror, wind baring the fangs.

Anne Karsh’s small black Mercedes was parked in front of the house and she was sitting on the steps where we’d sat drinking coffee. She got up at my approach, walked to meet me. Not the outdoor look today: hair down, long black and green tartan skirt with pleats, green shirt, black V-necked sweater.

‘Mac,’ she said.

We were close. I moved back.

‘Thought you wouldn’t come,’ she said. ‘I had business things, they fell through. Suddenly couldn’t bear the city. I’m on my way to becoming a country person.’

‘I’m glad,’ I said.

‘Are you? Ripped away from the blazing heat of the forge?’

I hadn’t registered her eyes before. Hazel.

‘Not blazing today,’ I said. ‘Today was welding, grinding and fiddling.’

She smiled. ‘Oh, is that the blacksmith’s burden? To weld, grind and fiddle.’

‘By and large,’ I said, ‘I’d rather blaze.’

Silence for a moment, looking at each other. I wished I was better dressed.

‘Have you seen the house?’ she said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘What entrance do I have to go in?’

She appraised me, serious face. ‘Take your boots off, you can come in the front.’

We went through the front door, boots and all.

‘Almost everything’s here except the clothes and the pictures,’ she said. ‘It’s as if they went on holiday and never came back.’

We started downstairs, went from huge room to huge room, looked out of the dirty windows at a dim day growing duller. Everywhere, we bumped into each other; in big spaces, we bumped into each other, sorry, sorry, hands unsure of where to go.

Upstairs. More bedrooms than a country pub, beds in all of them, clean coir mattresses, striped, some with neatly folded blankets on them.

In a large bedroom, not the master bedroom but big, wooden double bed, we looked out of the window, down at the newly cleared garden.

‘It’s going to look beautiful from here,’ Anne said. We turned inward at the same moment, looked at each other.

‘Beautiful,’ I said. She was beautiful.

There was a moment of decision, indecision.

I put out a finger and touched her lips, in the centre.

‘Oh Christ,’ she said, reaching up and taking my head in her hands.

I put my hands on her waist, long, strong waist, drew her to me. As our mouths and our bodies met, she tilted her hips and pushed her pelvis against me. My hands slid down over her buttocks, lifted her, pulled her.

When our mouths parted, I said, close to her skin, ‘Terrible urge to take off your clothes.’

‘Terrible urge,’ she said, ‘to have you take them off.’

Kissing again, lost in her mouth, my hands on the bottom of her sweater, pulled it up. We broke free just long enough for it to pass over her head. I started unbuttoning her shirt from the collar, she took her fingers out of my hair and unbuttoned her cuffs, pulled the shirt over her head.

White lacy bra. I held her by the shoulders, looked, kissed the round tops of her breasts, put my tongue into the half cups, felt the nipples, risen, insistent.

‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ she said. Her hand went behind her back and the bra fell away, trembling breasts, not small, not big, lolling in my hands, mouth torn between three places, more, nipples, hollows of the throat, ears, eyes.

She loosened my belt, waistband, silky hand sliding over my stomach, gripping me, chamois grip, pulling, squeezing. I groaned.

The bed drew us, shoes, socks, pants, underpants went. I was naked first, five-limbed. Cold, hot. Anne was on her back, mouth open, loose, lovely. I pushed up her long skirt, pulled her pantyhose down her legs, over the long thighs, tense, the curve of calves, delicate ankles. Small white lace knickers, dark and springy promise beneath. Off. Pale stomach, hollow. I rubbed my face against it, kissed it, felt a pulse against my lips, buried my face in her dense pubic hair, thighs opening, sweet musk, the place, moist, salty, impossibly delicate rose petals of flesh, my hands under her buttocks lifting her, feeling the muscles clench, her hands in my hair pushing me down, hips moving.