Peter Temple - An Iron Rose

The side table was to the left of the door, no centimetre of its surface visible under a haystack of printed material.

I looked at it. ‘So far the hypothesis holds,’ I said.

Helen Radomsky began clearing the table, dropping the material on the carpet. She got down to a final layer of newspapers.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘if it was put here…’ She lifted the stack.

A Game Boy, paperback entitled The Mind of Golf, gloves, set of keys, dictation machine, coins, ballpoints, two Lotto tickets, window envelopes, dark glasses, a small silver torch, a pocket diary, small dark-coloured plastic box.

Helen Radomsky picked up the box. It had a sticker on the side. She read: ‘DocSecure.’

I said, ‘Anything in it?’

She shook it. It rattled.

She opened it: one tape.

I said, ‘ “And when it seemed that destiny sought them slain/Came from the legion’s throat one joyous sigh/All eyes gazed up from that bloodstained plain/To see a white dove beneath a salamandrine sky.” ’

‘What’s that?’ she said.

‘Some poem,’ I said. ‘All I remember. It’s about salvation.’

I fought against it and then I did it: I rang Anne Karsh. If Leon answered, I’d say Francis wasn’t answering and we needed instructions about the pine trees at Harkness Park.

It rang and rang. I was about to give up when she said, ‘Hello. Anne Karsh.’ Short of breath.

I didn’t have much breath either. ‘Mac. If this is a bad idea, for any reason, say wrong number and put it down.’

She laughed. I knew the laugh. ‘It’s a good idea. It’s the kind of idea you desperately hope someone else will have because you’re too uncertain to have it yourself. And you’re walking around feeling like a schoolgirl with a crush. A thirty-four-year-old schoolgirl.’

‘I’m in the city,’ I said. ‘Business.’

I could hear her breathing.

‘Is that in the city staying over or in the city going back?’

‘In the city staying over. Not sure where yet.’

‘I can suggest somewhere,’ she said.

‘I’m open to suggestion.’

‘I still have my flat in East Melbourne. It could use an airing. We could meet there, cook something, eat out, order a pizza, not eat anything.’

‘I think eating’s important,’ I said. ‘Not so much what but the social act.’

‘So do I. I think social acts are very important. We’ll think about the social act when we’re there. Make a joint social act decision.’

‘You’re free this evening then?’

‘I’m free for the next two hours, then I’ve got a brief engagement, then I’m free again. Leon came back from Queensland last night, flew to Europe this afternoon. In hot pursuit of something. Possibly a small European country. Smaller than Belgium, bigger than Andorra.’

‘So we could meet quite soon?’

‘I think we should get off the phone now,’ she said, ‘and make our separate ways to East Melbourne at the maximum speed the law allows. Slightly over the maximum speed. When you get there, press the button for A. Lennox.’

‘Give me the address,’ I said. It was unusual for me to become aroused while talking on the telephone in a car parked outside a newsagency.

The address was a Victorian building, a huge house, three storeys, converted to apartments. I parked across the road, waited. Quiet street. It began to drizzle.

The black Mercedes took ten minutes to arrive, went down the driveway beside the house. I waited two minutes, got out.

I pressed the button next to the name A. Lennox. Anne Lennox. Her name before she took Karsh. There was a lift to the third floor. I walked up, glad to stretch after a day of driving, found the elegant door.

Before I rang, I unsnapped the shoulder-holster button under my right arm. The door opened instantly.

Anne was wearing a trenchcoat over jeans and a camel-coloured top, hair pulled back, dark-rimmed spectacles. I hadn’t seen her in glasses.

She brushed my lips with the fingertips of her right hand.

‘Suit,’ she said. ‘Sexy in a suit, Mr Faraday.’

Inside, door closed, we looked at each other.

‘Sexy in the glasses,’ I said.

‘Thank you. For driving.’ She took them off, put them in an inside pocket.

I touched her hair. ‘Wet,’ I said.

‘Everywhere. I was in the shower.’

‘Rang and rang. Almost gave up.’

‘Pays to wait the extra second.’

‘Pays like Tattslotto,’ I said.

She took off the trenchcoat, hung it on a hook behind the front door, adjusted the central heating dial on the wall.

She kicked off her shoes, unbuttoned her top at the throat and pulled it over her head.

‘Pays better than Tattslotto,’ she said.

She was naked underneath, nipples alert. She cupped her breasts for me. I bent to kiss them, feverish.

‘Didn’t have time to get dressed properly,’ she said.

‘Like you dressed improperly. Very much.’

Kissing, undressing, touching, we found our way down the passage and into a bedroom. I managed to get my jacket and the shoulder holster off together.

‘First in quick time, I think,’ Anne said, voice blurred. ‘Then in slow. Very slow.’

Later, lying naked, sated, in the warm room, Anne side on to me, head on my chest, my hand between her thighs, she said, ‘Leon tells me you have an unusual background for a blacksmith, Mr Faraday.’

I felt the sweat on my neck chilling. ‘What does Leon know about my background, Ms Karsh?’

She laughed. ‘When you turned down Leon’s job offer, you became an unobtainable object. And therefore an object of interest.’

‘A man with a duck on a string.’

‘Exactly.’ She bit my right nipple gently, worried it, put her fingertips in my pubic hair, scratched gently.

‘And so he made inquiries about me. Is that it?’

‘That’s it. He couldn’t bear not to know.’

‘What did he say about my background?’

‘Unusual. That’s all. Leon never reveals everything he knows. Not at once. He likes you to know he knows and to tell you what he knows when it suits him.’

‘And how does Leon find out what he knows?’

‘Oh, I think Leon could find out what toothpaste the Pope uses.’

‘Would you say,’ I said, ‘that Leon was a jealous man?’

‘No, not jealous. Envious. Of everything he doesn’t have.’

‘If he thought you were having an affair, would he want to know the details?’

‘Probably. Not out of jealousy. Just for the knowledge. Knowledge for its own sake.’ She moved her lips onto my ribs. ‘Talking of knowledge,’ she said, ‘carnal knowledge of you is nice. And not just for its own sake.’

She reached over and got her watch off the bedside table, looked at it with her head on my stomach. ‘Christ!’ She sat upright. ‘Have to postpone the learning for a while. I’m due to represent Leon at this charity thing…’

I lay on the bed and thought while she showered. She came back into the room, unselfconsciously naked, walked around, found clothes.

‘Suspender belt tonight, what do you think? Black or white?’

‘White. I like the virginal associations.’

She was wearing just the suspender belt and stockings, towelling her hair, breasts jiggling, when she said, ‘Leon’s got a man called Bobby who can find out anything. I think he called in Bobby to give the once-over when he decided he fancied me.’

I went cold everywhere now. ‘What’s Bobby’s full name?’

‘Never heard it. Leon calls him Bobby the Wonder Dog.’

I swung my legs off the bed, reached for my clothes.

‘Mac? What? What’s wrong?’ Alarm in her voice.

I said, ‘Anne, it’s complicated. Leon’s Bobby is likely to be a man called Bobby Hill. After I left you last night, two men sent by Bobby tried to kill me.’