Peter Temple: An Iron Rose

I was in the pub in Streeton, in front of the same fireplace where I’d talked to Ian Barbie’s wife. A tired and dirty man who began the day coming out of fitful sleep in a motel in Penola, out there in the flat vine country, far from home. Sitting in the warm country pub, I could smell myself: sweat, sex, cordite, wood smoke. All curdled by fear. I drank three neat whiskies, dark thoughts.

‘Listen, Mac, I’m closin.’

It was the publican. I knew him, welded his trailer for nothing.

‘Finish this,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said, coming over and putting a half-full bottle of Johnny Walker on the table. ‘Just closin the doors. Sit long as you like, fix it up later. Put the light out, give the door a good slam when you go. Lock doesn’t go in easy.’

‘Thanks, mate.’

‘Back roads, right.’

‘Back roads.’

I drank some more whisky, thought about Lew, Ned asking me to look after him. Lew and the dog, my responsibilities. Lew: mother gone, grandfather gone, just me now. I thought about my life, what it had been for so many years: the job and nothing but the job. Utter waste of time. I didn’t even remember whether I’d loved my wife. Couldn’t remember what it felt like to love her. Remembered that she could give me an erection with one look. What I did know was that all the self-respect that I had lost with one bad judgment had been slowly given back to me by my ordinary life in my father’s house. A simple life in a simple weatherboard house. Working with my father’s tools in my father’s workshop. Feeling his hand in the hammer handles worn by his grip. Walking in his steps down the sodden lane and across the road to the pub and the football field. And knowing his friends. Ned, Stan, Lew, Flannery, Mick, Vinnie-they were all responsible for giving me a life with some meaning. A life that was connected to a place, connected to people, connected to the past.

But now I was back in the old life, worse than the old life because then it wasn’t just me and Berglin. It was me, Berglin and the massed forces of law and order.

It was highly unlikely that my life was connected to the future.

For an hour or so, I slumped in the armchair, drinking whisky, clock ticking somewhere in the pub, lulling sound, sad sound. Fire just a glow of gold through grey. Putting off reading Ian Barbie’s last testament in the same way I’d put off listening to Bianchi’s tape.

Berglin. I needed to talk to Berglin. I got up, stretched, moved my shoulders, pain from tackling Neckhead on the fire escape. I got out the mobile, switched it on, pressed the numbers.

‘Berglin.’

‘Mac.’

‘Mac, where the fucking hell have you been? Point of having a mobile is to have the fucking thing switched on.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Been busy. This line secure?’

‘Well, as secure as any fucking line is these days.’

‘Got a tape. Bianchi, Scully, Mance. Before Lefroy. Bianchi had a wire on him. Insurance.’

Berglin whistled. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

‘In the sticks. People are trying to kill me.’

‘Again?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Must be learners. I’ll meet you. Where?’

I thought for a while, gave him directions. It was as good a place as any.

I took cigarettes, matches from the bar and the bottle of whisky.

Back roads, route avoiding anything resembling a main road.

As I turned the corner of the drive, the clouds parted for a few seconds, the half moon lighting up the house at Harkness Park. It didn’t look ghostly or forbidding, looked like a big old house with everyone asleep. I parked around the side, settled down to wait. It would take Berglin another half an hour. I had a sip of whisky, hunched my shoulders against the cold. Tired.

I jerked awake, got out, yawned, stretched, lit a cigarette. It tasted foul, stood on it.

Car on the road. Berglin? Quick driving.

Stopped. At the entrance to the drive.

Typical Berglin. I’d told him to drive up to the house. But Berglin didn’t do the expected. He didn’t drive the same way to work two days running.

I went to the corner of house, looked out between the wall and the gutter downpipe. Hunter’s moon, high clouds running south, gaps appearing, closing, white moonlight, dark. Waited for Berglin.

He was no more than fifty metres from me when the clouds tore apart.

A coldness that had nothing to do with the freezing night came over me.

Bobby Hill, slim and handsome as ever, dark clothing, long-barrelled revolver, man wants a job done properly, has to go out and do it himself.

And behind him, a few paces back, another man, short man, wearing some sort of camouflaged combat outfit, carrying a short automatic weapon at high port, big tube on top.

Clouds covered the moon. Too dark to see the man’s face.

Moonlight again.

Beret on the second man’s head. Turned his head.

Little pigtail swinging.

Andrew Stephens. My visitor in the Porsche.

How did he fit in?

No time to think about that.

The car door was open. I found the box of cartridges under the front seat, moved into the heavy, damp, jungle-smelling vegetation beyond the rotten toolshed.

How many? Just Hill and Andrew Stephens?

It wasn’t going to be only two again.

Escape. Which way?

Down to the mill would be best. Cross the stream above the headrace pond, follow the stream down to the sluicegates. Go around behind the mill, up the wooded embankment. Places to hide there, wait for dawn, ring Stan.

The mobile. I’d left it on the passenger seat.

No going back. I was moving in the direction of the site of the house that burnt down, the first house. But the growth here was impenetrable, I’d end up like a goat caught in a thicket.

I had to veer left, pass in front of the sunken tennis court. But to do that I would have to cross the top of the area we had so painfully cleared. In darkness, that wouldn’t be a problem. But if moonlight persisted, I’d have to wait. And they’d be coming…

Steady. They didn’t know which way I’d gone. They’d have found the car by now. It was coal dark. I could be anywhere.

Scully’s words on the tape came into my head:

You don’t know this fucking El G, fucking mad. I know him from way back…

Way back? How far back? From Scully’s days in the country?

El G? El Torro, The Bull. El Greco, The Greek.

The Greek? Who had said something about a Greek recently? Greek. Recently. In the past few days. The past few days were blurred into one long day.

Frank Cullen, man of contraptions: Rick’s tied up with that Stefanidis from over near Daylesford. RSPCA went there, heard he was shootin pigeons. Bloke behind a wall throws ’em in the air, Greek shoots ’em with a twelve bore from about two yards. Sticks it up their arses practically.

Andrew Stephens. Andrew Stefanidis?

Andrew’s father was a good man, fine man, fought with the Greek partisans in the war. Dr Crewe, walking around the lake, talking about Ian and Tony and Rick and Andrew.

Sudden chilling clarity. Andrew Stephens’s father was Greek. He’d anglicised his name.

Andrew Stephens was El Greco, The Greek, close-range shooter of pigeons, maker of snuff movies, organiser of murderous run-throughs.

And then the realisation.

Berglin had always known who El Greco was. Berglin had toyed with me. Berglin had given me to Scully, Hill and El Greco.

Naive. You only know about naive when it’s too late.

Absolute silence.

I walked into something, old fence, some obstacle, small screeching noise.

Something landed in the vegetation near me, sound like an overripe peach falling. And then a thump, no more than the sound of a hard tennis forehand.