Peter Temple - An Iron Rose

‘I want them,’ she said. ‘I want everything the way it was.’

I looked at her.

‘I’ve got a flask of coffee,’ Anne said. A thorn had scratched her cheekbone, delicate serration, line of blood like the teeth of a tiny saw. ‘Drink coffee?’

‘Got enough?’

‘I’ve got enough.’

The Mercedes boot held a wicker basket with a stainless-steel flask and stainless-steel cups. We sat side by side on the front steps of the house, huge, dangerously aged poised portico above us, drinking coffee, talking about the garden. She had an easy manner, sense of humour, no hint of rich lady about her. A weak sun emerged, touched her hair.

‘Nice,’ she said.

‘Good coffee.’

‘The day, the place, the moment.’

‘Those too.’

We didn’t look at each other, something in the air. Then our eyes met for a moment.

‘Mr Karsh working today?’ I said, regretted the question.

‘No. He’s in Noosa for the weekend. His new girlfriend goes to Noosa for the winter.’

I looked at her. ‘I understand it’s wall-to-wall girlfriends in Noosa.’

She leaned sideways, studied me, smiled a wry smile. ‘I’ve been a girlfriend. There’s no moral high ground left for me.’

‘Not for any of us,’ I said.

‘Leon’s a charming person,’ she said. ‘His problem is chronic envy. Non-specific envy. His greatest fear is that he’s missing something, that there’s something he should be doing, that there’s something he doesn’t know about or hasn’t got that will make him happy and complete. If he saw a man leading a duck down the road on a piece of string and looking at peace, Leon would send someone out to buy a duck and give it a try for fifteen minutes. Then he’d say, fuck this duck, why’s that woman on the bicycle look so pleased?’

‘Why did you?’

‘What?’

‘Look so pleased?’

‘So,’ Anne said. ‘Blacksmiths are not without insight. I worked for a merchant bank that was hired by a company to fight off a takeover bid by one of Leon’s companies. Very messy business, went on for months, working seventeen, eighteen hours a day, seven days. One Sunday I got home and my husband had gone off with my best friend. Anyway, we fought off Leon and we had a no-hard-feelings drink with the other side and Leon showed up. I think he then began to see me as a substitute for the company he couldn’t have. Anything Leon can’t have leaps in value in his eyes.’

‘So he took you over.’

She smiled. ‘Well, as I said, he’s a charming person. He has the gift of charm. It was a totally uncontested takeover. But as I found out, for Leon, you conquer the peak, another peak beckons. More coffee?’

‘Just a drop.’

‘There’s plenty.’ She poured. ‘That’s me. And I’m not complaining. What about you?’

‘My wife didn’t like my hours either.’

‘Blacksmiths work long hours?’

‘Pre-blacksmith.’ I stood up. ‘Time to go. Thanks for the coffee.’

She stood up too. Standing on the step above me put her eyes level with mine. We looked at each other. ‘Let me know when you’d like to see the mill,’ I said.

Anne nodded. ‘Can you give me a number?’ She wrote it in her leather-bound book.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘See you soon then.’

She put out a hand and straightened my shirt collar, pulled her hand back. ‘Thank you,’ I said. I thought she blushed a little.

‘Terrible urge to straighten pictures,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you. Next week.’

I drove home in the waning day. Towering dark clouds on all horizons made it seem as if I were crossing a valley floor. It was dark by the time I stopped outside the Heart of Oak to see if Flannery was there. He wasn’t.

‘Car went in your drive just before dark,’ Vinnie said.

I left the vehicle where it was, walked up the road, climbed the paddock gate in the far corner and crossed the sodden field so that I could come at the house from the back, from behind the smithy.

The caller was still there: a car was parked in front of the office. I went across the gravel, slowly, my gravel, gravel put down so that I could hear it crunch. All senses on high-beam, I looked into the kitchen window.

Something touched my leg. I froze.

The dog, puzzled.

Inside, Lew was feeding the stove. He turned and said something to someone out of my field of view. The person laughed.

I let out my pent-up breath and opened the back door.

Berglin was in my favourite chair, long shoes on the table, cigarette dangling from a hand.

‘MacArthur John Faraday,’ he said. ‘Home is the hunter.’

There was no other way to do this. ‘Lew,’ I said, ‘I need to talk to this gentleman alone.’

When he’d gone, I said, ‘You lied to me.’

‘Come again?’ Berglin’s eyebrows went up in the middle.

‘That trace. Gabriele Makin.’

‘Yeah. Dead.’

‘Not dead. Undead. Not a million fucking kilometres from here.’

He blew smoke towards me, eyes narrowed. ‘You sure?’

‘Of course I’m fucking sure.’

‘How’d you find her?’

‘Phone book. What the fuck did you use?’

‘Contractor.’

‘Why?’

He blew smoke. ‘Why? I’m going to put some personal request through the system? I’m going to do that? I put that Melanie Pavitt through the system, Canberra’d be asking me why I wanted to find a person turns up dead. Make sense to you? Fresh air’s slowing the brain out here.’

‘Who’s the contractor?’

Berglin mashed his cigarette into the ashtray Lew had found for him. ‘It’s my worry. I’ll talk to him. Believe me, I’ll talk to him.’

From nowhere the thought came to me. ‘Alex Rickard,’ I said. ‘You’re using Alex Rickard.’

Berglin was lighting another cigarette, lighter poised. He lowered it. ‘I’ll stand on the cunt’s head,’ he said. ‘We’ll know why in quick time.’

‘What about a beer?’ I said, slack with relief. Not Berglin to blame but Alex Rickard.

‘Thought you’d never ask.’

I opened two Boags, found two glasses, sat down at the table.

Berglin took a big draught from the bottle. ‘Listen,’ he said, two reasons I’m out here in the fucking tundra. One is, from your time on the Lefroy fuck-up, the name Algie mean anything?’

‘Algae? As in blue-green slime?’

‘Don’t know. Could be. Not likely. Could be A-L-G-I-E. Could be two parts: Al G, like a first name and a surname initial. Maybe Al Gee.’

‘No. Never heard it. It’s someone’s name?’

‘Calls himself that, yeah.’

‘How’s this come up?’

‘Run-through last night, Bulleen of all fucking places. Nothing’s sacred. Person we had an interest in last year. Local jacks turned over this low-level garbage in Footscray, he tells them this weed bloke’s grown overnight. Now he’s a smack supplier, found some fucking original channel-big, not your arse full of condoms at all. Scully’s cockbrains wire the place up like a recording studio, move in across the road. Nothing to report. So they say. Stereo-quality farting, got the man mango-kissing his sister-in-law, very vocal performance, that’s about it. Waste of public money.’

He drank some more beer. ‘This is good,’ he said, looking at the bottle. ‘The pointyheads can make beer. Anyway, subject closed until last night. Then the serene Bulleen household is severely disrupted. Man alone at home, wife at the Chadstone shopping centre. He’s beaten, badly knocked about, teeth dislodged, flogged. Worse. Throat cut.’ He paused. ‘Don’t say anything, the thought occurs.’

We sat in silence for a few seconds. Berglin drank most of his beer, wiped his thin lips. I got out two more.

‘Good dog,’ he said. ‘Now the reason for all this unpleasantness might have remained obscure, MacArthur. But for one thing. False wall in the back of the house, space about a metre between the kitchen and the laundry. Get into it through the ceiling. Up the ladder in the garage, through the inspection hole. Last night, half the fucking kitchen wall kicked in.’