Peter Temple - An Iron Rose

‘Then again, maybe it’s not. Do we have to deliver these monstrosities?’

‘No. Spared that. He’s picking them up. Feel like a beer later?’

She pulled a face. ‘Would be good but I’m heading way over the other side of town. Tomorrow?’

I suddenly remembered it was Friday. Football tomorrow. No, thank God, we had a bye. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘I’ll ring,’ she said.

I worked on a chef’s knife until the drink called. Mick Doolan and Flannery were at the bar.

‘Tactics, Moc, we’re talkin tactics,’ Mick said. ‘Just a couple more wins and we’ll be bookin a finals berth. Wouldn’t that be grand?’

Flannery groaned. ‘Extra games,’ he said. ‘We’ll be playin on cortisone. Can they test for that?’

I was watching the Saints beating the Eagles in Perth when the phone rang.

‘Klinger,’ Otto said. ‘This stupid girlfriend of Gaby’s wishes to telephone Gaby and to tell her why you wish to speak with her, and to get permission to give you Gaby’s telephone number. I think she thinks that it is I who wishes to find out Gaby’s number. That is a very foolish thing to think, I can tell you.’

‘Thanks, Otto. Can you tell the friend I want to talk to Gaby about someone called Melanie Pavitt.’ I spelt the name.

‘I will call again,’ Otto said.

He rang back in twenty minutes.

‘That is all okay. Here is Gaby’s telephone number.’

I thanked him, wrote it down. It was in Victoria. I dialled it. A woman answered: ‘Yes.’ Wary.

‘Tony Mason,’ I said. ‘I sent you the message through Otto. I’d like to talk to you about Melanie Pavitt.’

‘What about her?’

‘About her experiences after leaving Kinross Hall. Immediately after she left.’

She thought about this for a while. ‘Who are you?’ she said.

‘Investigator for the Department of Community Services.’

‘Why doesn’t she tell you?’

Gaby didn’t know that Melanie was dead. This wasn’t the time to tell her.

‘She has, but I’d like to talk to someone who was at Kinross at the same time and who heard about what happened directly from Melanie. It won’t take long.’

‘On the phone?’

‘No. I’ll come and see you. Or we can meet somewhere, whatever suits you.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose so. But I’m out in the country.’

‘That’s not a problem.’

I left long before dawn in the freezing and wet dark, trees stirring in the wind, huddled sheep caught by my lights on the bends. By 9.15 am I was in the high country, in Mansfield, eating a toasted egg-and-bacon sandwich and drinking black coffee. It was cold up here, hard light, pale-blue cloudless sky. The coffee shop was full of people on their way to ski, groups of rich-looking people: sleek but slightly hungover men, just edging pudgy; women with tight smiles and lots of blonde hair; vicious children, all snarls and demands, woken early for the trip. The women had a way of tossing their heads and flicking their hair from below with their fingertips as if it were tickling their necks. In the street, it was all four-wheel-drives, BMWs and Saabs.

I wasn’t going towards Mount Buller. I was going northeast. On the way to Whitfield, following Gaby’s instructions, I turned right onto a dirt road, turned again, again, thought I’d missed the place, found it, a brick, stone and weatherboard house, low, sprawling, expensive, a long way from the road, at the end of a long curving avenue of poplars, bare. Off to the right was a corrugated-iron barn and beyond that what looked like stables. Gaby had done well for herself.

Going through the gate either triggered something or sound travelled long distances in this air. A woman was waiting near the barn when I came around the final bend. She pointed to the road that led to the stables and turned to walk in that direction. She was big, tall, not fat yet, pale hair in a ponytail, dark glasses, sleeveless quilted jacket.

There was a house beyond the stables, an old stone building with a weatherboard extension. It said Manager’s House . Gaby hadn’t done as well as I’d thought. I parked next to a clean Toyota ute and got out.

Gaby took her dark glasses off. She was reaching the end of pretty, face not sure what to become. No make-up, eyes that had seen things. You wouldn’t want to mess with her.

‘Tony Mason,’ I said, putting out my hand.

She shook, no grip, ladylike. No smile.

‘Let’s go inside,’ she said. ‘I have to be in town in an hour.’

She took off her boots at the front door. ‘You don’t have to,’ she said. ‘Been in the stables. You smell it in the warm.’

The house was warm, uncluttered, smelling pleasantly of something I couldn’t recognise.

I followed her down a passage lit by two skylights into a sitting room full of light, foothills in the windows, pale grey hills beyond.

A baby cried, small sound, pulling power of a regimental bugle.

Gaby said. ‘Feedin time. Sit down.’ She was taking off her waistcoat as she left.

I sat down in the most upright chair in the room. She came back with something wrapped in a pink blanket, sat down opposite me, unbuttoned her checked shirt, fiddled and produced a breast, aureole the colour of milky instant coffee and the size of a small saucer. She revealed the baby’s head. It was a big head, covered in fuzz.

‘Never thought I’d just take out a tit in front of a stranger,’ she said, no expression. The child ship docked with the mother ship. Gaby’s expression softened.

‘Well,’ she said, little smile, not looking at me. ‘Not just one tit anyway.’

I laughed. She looked at me, her smile opened and we were both laughing.

I said: ‘Melanie’s dead. I think she was murdered.’

The smile went. We sat in silence for a moment. Gaby had the look of someone who’d had a new and untrue and malicious charge levelled at her.

‘Dead?’

I told her how.

She pulled the baby closer. ‘You’re not from the fucking department,’ she said, matter-of-fact, not alarmed. ‘That was all bullshit.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Gaby, I’m a friend of someone who sometimes worked at Kinross. They’re trying to shaft him with molesting girls.’

‘Who?’ she said.

‘He was a handyman. Ned Lowey.’

She said, ‘No, I never heard that. Barbie, yes.’

‘Tell me about Melanie’s letter. What happened to her?’

She shifted in the chair, adjusted the baby. ‘Didn’t keep the letter. She came to see me, y’know? In Cairns.’

‘No, I didn’t know.’

‘Yeah. After the letter.’ She tilted her head, thoughtful. ‘How’d you get my letter?’

‘I found it in her bedroom.’

‘Before she…’

‘After. I found the body. Me and the woman next door.’

She nodded.

‘So she came to see you?’

‘In Cairns. Stayed for a week. Was going to be longer. Otto started playin up, so she left.’

‘You talked about what happened?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Someone called Ken was involved. Who’s he?’

Gaby looked down at the suckling. ‘I don’t want to get in any trouble,’ she said. ‘Had enough trouble.’

‘There’ll be no trouble,’ I said. ‘No-one’s going to hear anything you tell me.’

‘Well.’ She sighed. ‘We were pretty pissed when she told me. Don’t remember all that much. Couldn’t hear a lot of what she said anyway. Cryin and sniffin.’

‘Ken,’ I said. ‘Who’s he?’

‘The doctor.’

‘Dr Barbie?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why do you call him Ken?’

‘The dolls? Barbie and Ken. There was Barbie and Ken.’

‘Right. Barbie and Ken. How was Ken involved?’

Gaby sighed again. ‘Day Mel was leavin, he examined her. Said he was goin to Melbourne, he’d give her a lift, save her goin by train. Only she mustn’t tell anyone cause he’d get into trouble. She thought he was a nice bloke. We all did. Anyway, they took her to the station and dropped her and Ken picked her up. Gave her a can of Coke.’