Peter Temple: An Iron Rose

The secretary was a pale, thin woman in her thirties with very little make-up. Her bare and unwelcoming office was cold and she had her jacket on.

‘Please take a seat,’ she said. She tugged an earlobe. Blunt nails. ‘Dr Carrier will see you shortly.’

It was a ten-minute wait in an upright chair, probably an instructional technique. The secretary pecked at the computer. There wasn’t anything to read, nothing on the walls to look at. I thought about Ned. Had the director kept him sitting here, too? On this very chair? Finally, the secretary received some kind of a signal.

‘Please go through,’ she said.

The director’s office was everything the secretary’s wasn’t, a comfortable sitting room rather than a place of business. A fire burned in a cast-iron grate under a wooden mantelpiece, there were paintings and photographs on the walls and chintz armchairs on either side of a deep window.

A woman sat behind an elegant writing table. She was in her mid-forties, tall, and groomed for Olympic dressage: black suit with white silk cravat, dark hair pulled back severely, discreet make-up.

‘Mr Faraday,’ she said. She came around the table and put out her right hand. ‘Marcia Carrier. Let’s sit somewhere comfortable.’ There was an air of confidence about her. You could imagine her talking to prime ministers as an equal.

We shook hands and sat down in the armchairs. She had long, slim legs.

‘I understand it’s to do with Mr Lowey,’ she said. ‘What a shock. A terrible thing. Are you family?’

‘Just a friend,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you can tell me why he came to see you?’

She smiled, put her head on one side in a puzzled way. ‘Why he came to see me? Is this somehow connected with what happened?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It was about work,’ she said.

I waited.

‘He’d done some work for us before. A long time ago. I confess I didn’t remember him. He was inquiring about the prospect of future work.’

‘You hire the casual workers yourself?’

‘Oh no.’ She shook her head. ‘Our maintenance person does that. But Mr Lowey asked to see me.’ She smiled, an engaging smile. ‘I try to see anyone who wants to see me.’

‘So he was looking for work?’

‘Basically.’

‘He did quite a lot of work here in 1985. Can you tell me why you didn’t use him again?’

She shrugged, puzzled frown. ‘I really can’t say. Lots of people work here. The maintenance person may have had some reason. Then again, we didn’t use many outside contractors from ’86 to ’91. Budget cuts every year.’

I looked out of the window. You could see bare trees, gunmetal clouds boiling in the west. ‘Did you know that he went to the police about something to do with this place?’ I said.

Her eyes widened. ‘No.’ She appeared genuinely surprised. ‘You mean in 1985 or now?’

‘In 1985.’

‘Do you know what about?’

I shook my head.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘he certainly didn’t mention anything a few weeks ago. I can’t imagine what it could have been.’

‘You had no inquiries from the police in 1985?’

‘The local police? I’d have to check the records. I can’t recall having anything to do with them.’

‘There wasn’t anyone missing?’

‘Missing?’

I said, ‘I presume some of your charges do a runner occasionally.’

She laughed. It brought her face alive. She was very attractive. ‘They do from time to time, and we notify the Department of Community Services and they handle the business of looking for them. They generally find them in a few days, back in their old haunts.’

‘And you didn’t have one like that in late ’85?’

She clasped her hands. ‘Mr Faraday, I’m happy to answer your questions but I’m not sure what this is about.’

I wasn’t sure either but I said, ‘I had the vague thought that Ned’s death might be connected with something that happened here in 1985.’

She was looking at me in a way that said she had grave doubts about my grip on reality. ‘I’ll find out,’ she said. ‘It’ll take a few minutes. Can I offer you coffee? Tea?’

I declined and she left me. I walked around the room looking at the pictures. The paintings were all oils, small, signed by the same hand-B.I. or B.L. From a distance they looked like bush campfire scenes. Close up, they had the power to disturb. Something unpleasant seemed to be happening in them, primitive sacrifice or torture, people in poses of prayer and supplication and indistinct flesh-toned objects in the flames. There were six of them, not markedly different, not hung in any order I could detect.

Marcia Carrier was in most of the photographs, family scenes with another dark-haired girl and a couple who might have been their grandparents. The man was stern-looking, handsome, hair intact, cleft chin. The woman was overweight, dowdy. I went back to looking at the paintings.

‘Painted by my father,’ Marcia Carrier said. ‘Just a weekend painter.’

‘Very dramatic weekend painter,’ I said.

She laughed again. ‘I must say I don’t quite understand them. Now. There was no-one absent without permission from here in late 1985. In fact, no-one strayed in 1985. Two girls took unofficial leave in 1986, both returned to us within a fortnight. Is that helpful?’

I said, ‘Thanks. I won’t waste any more of your time.’ ‘Coffee’s on its way,’ she said. ‘I insist.’

I sat down. The secretary came in with a tray holding a silver coffee jug, big French coffee cups, warm milk, shortbread. Marcia Carrier poured.

‘What sort of work do you do, Mr Faraday?’

‘I’m a blacksmith, metalworker.’

‘Really? I’ve never met a blacksmith. How do you become one?’

‘Years of training under a master craftsman. Intensive study of the properties of metals. Also, you have to be able to hit hot things with a really heavy hammer. How do you get to run a place like this?’

Her serious look did not leave her. ‘Well, you have to be a public-spirited person, utterly selfless, with an abiding faith in the essential goodness of human beings. You also need a deep understanding of psychology. Then you have to be a superb administrator who thinks nothing of working long and unpredictable hours.’

‘So,’ I said, ‘basically anyone can apply.’

She had an engaging laugh. ‘Your inmates…’ I said.

‘Clients.’

‘Clients. How do they get here?’

She was serious now. ‘The courts send us all sorts of girls-rich kids, poor kids, kids you can help, kids you can’t. They’ve all got one thing in common. No-one wants them except for the worst reasons. They’ve usually landed up on the street and someone, sometimes a number of people, is pushing them towards drugs and prostitution. If no-one intervenes, most of them won’t see twenty. If the department can convince a court that a girl’s in significant danger, she might get sent here.’

‘Then what happens?’

‘We try our best to help them. You have to understand, some of these girls have had no childhood. Shunted around, never felt wanted, sex at an early age, often raped. They’re fifteen going on forty. Our aim is to convince them that their lives have worth and that they can live worthwhile lives.’

I had the feeling she’d said all this before. Many times. ‘Doesn’t sound easy ,’ I said.

‘No.’ She looked out of the window. ‘Mostly we’re too late. And for some girls I sometimes think it’s always too late.’

I didn’t say anything.

She turned her eyes on me. ‘Do you believe in evil, Mr Faraday?’

I thought about this for a while. It wasn’t the kind of question people often asked me. Finally I said, ‘I don’t doubt that some people are evil. I’m not sure there’s an evil that’s independent of evil people.’