Peter Temple - An Iron Rose

‘Right.’

‘I’m closer than you are. See you outside the side door.’

I spotted him from a long way away, across the lane, back to the car park, brown packet under his arm. When I got close enough, I saw him watching me in the shop window. I gave a spy-type wave, close to the hip. He turned and came over.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Fucking phone book of stuff. Boy downloaded all the ’85 material in the file.’

I took the packet. ‘How’d he get in?’

Alex smiled his foxish smile. ‘They’ve got a link with Social Security. He reckons their data protection’s good as a knitted condom.’

‘What’s the bill?’

‘I’ll put it in the bank,’ Alex said. ‘Day will come.’

We shook hands. He looked at me for a while, deciding something. ‘Look after yourself,’ he said. He walked off, hand in pockets, chin up, at ease with himself.

It was just before dark as I entered the home straight, the long avenue of bare poplars, the light turning steely blue-grey, the wet road shining like a blade. I was thinking about the girl in the mine shaft. Could she have been brought from far away? Whoever pushed her into the hole in the ground had to know that it was there: you wouldn’t travel a long distance with a dead body unless you had some burial spot in mind. Perhaps a local person, someone who knew the area, had murdered the girl in Melbourne. Had the police eliminated all the girls missing in Melbourne around that time? Surely not.

But why would Ned be interested in the finding of her body? Why did he go to Kinross Hall?

Allie was still working in the smithy. Face shining, she was making curtain poles, bending and twisting the red-hot iron into shepherd’s crook shapes with smooth, economic movements. I stood in the doorway watching her. She reminded me of my father at work. I was never going to be that good.

‘Looking smart,’ she said, putting the last pole in the rack. ‘Debonair, even. That’s the first time I’ve seen you wearing a tie.’

‘You only had to ask,’ I said, taking it off and putting it in a jacket pocket. Everything all right here?’

‘Booming,’ she said. ‘Woman over at Kyneton wants two sets of gates. She saw the ones you made for Alan Frith.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said. ‘Frith doesn’t pay for his inside a week, I’ll take them round to her.’

‘And a man called Flannery was here. He put a case of beer in the office.’

‘That’s nice too,’ I said. ‘How many did he drink?’

‘Just one.’

‘Must be Lent,’ I said. ‘You in a hurry?’

She looked at me speculatively. ‘No.’

‘Mind helping me read something?’ I told her about Ned working at Kinross Hall in 1985, Mick Doolan’s story about the complaint to the police, Ned’s visit four days before his death, and my meeting with Marcia Carrier.

‘Pretty weird,’ she said. ‘What’s the reading matter?’

‘Kinross Hall records.’

‘How’d you get them?’

‘Some bloke gave them to me. I forget who.’

She scratched her short hair, face impassive. ‘Maybe it was the same bloke who told you about Alan Snelling and you’ve developed a block about remembering him.’

I tore the continuous print-out Alex had given me into pages while Allie showered. She came back in jeans, a grey polo-necked sweater and her half-length Drizabone, and we walked down the road. Her skew nose and wet and shiny crew cut gave her the look of a boxer. A rather sexy female boxer. She caught me looking at her.

‘What?’ she said.

‘Nothing.’

The pub was empty except for Vinnie and George Beale playing draughts and a farmer reading the Weekly Times at the bar. We got two beers and went into the small lounge where a fire was dying in the grate. I fed it some kindling and a log from the bin.

‘I’m hoping there’s something that’ll jump out at you,’ I said, giving her half of the print-out pages.

‘Like what?’

‘Christ knows. Something happening to a girl. Trouble of some kind. Anything out of the ordinary.’

We settled down in the sagging armchairs and started reading. I’d taken the first half of 1985 and it quickly became clear that the department liked paperwork. Kinross Hall filed monthly accounts, fortnightly pay sheets, weekly lists of admissions and discharges, and reports by Dr Ian Barbie on medical visits. Every three months, it produced a budget operating statement and a report card on each inmate. The department filed full personal dossiers on all new admissions. Once a month, Kinross Hall was visited by two senior department staff and they filed a report.

It took us more than an hour to skim through the printouts. Midway, I fetched more beer. Finally, Allie said, ‘Well, nothing sticks out to me. I mean, here’s a major event. The inspectors had four written complaints about the food in October. Dr Carrier says the reason was the cook was off sick and the second in charge was having domestic troubles and basically couldn’t give a bugger about the food.’

‘No-one jump the wire in November?’ I said.

‘No. There were five admissions and three discharges in November. The three had all turned seventeen. They don’t seem to be able to hold them after that.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘The hot water system broke down.’

‘You hungry?’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve got a farm chook, raised on insects and berries in the wild.’

‘Now you tell me. I’m going out.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘hot date with Alan Snelling could be better than a hot chook.’

‘It’s not Alan Snelling. You took the shine off Alan Snelling. A vet.’

‘Pure animal, some vets,’ I said.

She smiled at me. ‘This one comes on like he’s got a Rottweiler stuffed down the front of his jeans.’

‘Probably a Jack Russell thinks it’s a Rottweiler.’

‘It’s not the size of the bite that counts.’

‘What counts?’

‘How long they gnaw at you.’

At home, Mick Doolan and Lew were watching a golf video. As I came in the door, Mick was saying, ‘It’s all that wantin to hit the ball to kingdom come, lad. Bin the ruination of many a great talent. What I’m tryin to do is to get you to play the game backwards.’

‘But drivin’s where the game starts,’ Lew said.

‘And ends fer a lotta the fellas. We’ll get to the drivin. We’ve got the puttin down flat. Now we’ve got to get the approach right. Not twice outta ten, not three times. Ten outta ten. Lookit this fella on the screen here. Ya can’t putt like that. See. Bloody country mile.’

‘Can’t you watch porn videos like everyone else?’ I said.

Mick looked around. ‘When I’m done coachin this lad,’ he said, ‘they’ll be askin us to star in the porno videos.’

‘Golf porn,’ I said. ‘There could be a market for that.’

I went to work on the chicken. My father’s recipe, made a hundred times: rub the skin with butter, stuff with a mixture of breadcrumbs, finely chopped onion, Worcester sauce, grated lemon rind, chopped raisins, half a cup of brandy. Stick in oven until brown.

I opened a bottle of the Maglieri. Mick came in to say goodnight and had a glass. He studied the label. ‘Lay this drop on,’ he said, ‘they’d be fightin to get in for communion.’ 74

After supper, Lew and I played Scrabble. He was good with small words, quick to see possibilities.

‘ “Zugzwang”?’ I said. ‘Two zs. What kind of a word is “zugzwang”?’

‘You challengin it?’

‘Zugzwang? I am most certainly challenging zugzwang.’

‘We playin double score penalty for failed challenges?’

‘We are. And we are playing minus-score penalty to a player who doesn’t take the opportunity to withdraw when challenged. Are you withdrawing zugzwang?’