Peter Temple: An Iron Rose

Ned had made all his own arrangements for his burial: plot, coffin, picked and paid for. It was typical. He was organised in everything, probably why he got on so well with my father, who made life-changing decisions in an instant at crossroads and regarded each day as the first day of creation.

‘You ask yourself why,’ Stan said as we neared his gate.

‘You ask yourself who,’ I said.

Allie Morris had just arrived when we parked next to the smithy. She was wearing her bluey and a beanie and yellow leather stockman’s gloves. Although she hadn’t known Ned, she’d come to the funeral.

‘I saw your legs at the funeral,’ I said. ‘First time.’ She’d worn a dark-blue pinstripe jacket and skirt and a black shirt and black stockings. Ned would have approved. All the other men at the funeral did, many of them sober.

She scratched her forehead under the beanie with a thumbnail. ‘Legs?’ she said. ‘You only had to ask. What’s happening today?’

We went over to the office to look at the bookings and check the answering machine.

‘You’ve got two over at Miner’s Rest, then the Shetland lady wants you. After that, there’s a new one at Strathmore. In the badlands.’

‘Badlands,’ she said. ‘Take the badlands before the Shetlands. Last time one of the things tried to bite my bum.’

‘The Shetland,’ I said. ‘A discerning creature. Knows a biteworthy bum when it sees one.’

‘I’m not sure how to take that.’

‘The right way. Leave you free on Thursday? Bit of hot work here.’

After she’d gone, I got the forge going, got to work on some knifemaking.

We had the reading of the will the day after Ned’s funeral. He’d made it soon after I reopened the smithy opposite the pub in the potato country, an hour and a half from Melbourne. It was the year Lew came to live with him following his mother’s drowning off Hayman Island. Monica Lowey tried a lot of strange things in her time but scuba diving on speed was the least well-advised. The property was Ned’s main asset. He wanted it sold and the proceeds divided 60:40 between Lew and me, Lew to get his share when he was twenty-five. I got the tools and the backhoe. Lew got everything else. And then there was a little personal matter: he asked me to use some of my share to look after Lew.

I was working with the file when I heard the vehicle. I went to the door. Silver Holden. Shea and Cotter. Shea got out, carrying a plastic bag.

‘They say you can have this back,’ he said.

I took the bag. I’d forgotten how heavy the Python was.

Shea looked around as if contemplating another search. ‘Buy any rope recently?’

‘Fuck off,’ I said.

He gave me the look. ‘Not helpful, the Feds,’ he said. ‘Fucking up themselves.’

‘That right?’

Shea put both his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders, shuddered. ‘Jesus, how d’ya live out here? Santa’s dick. Fella down the road here, he can’t sleep. Knows your noise. Puts a time on you goin past. Good bit after the kid called the ambulance.’

‘Amazing what best practice detective work will reveal,’ I said. ‘What’s forensic say? There’s no way Ned would top himself.’

He sighed, moved his bottom jaw from side to side. ‘Listen, I asked before. In his background. Anything we should know? Old enemies, new ones, anything?’

I shook my head. ‘I never heard anything like that.’

‘Well,’ Shea said. He took his hands out of his pockets, rough, ruddy instruments, and rubbed them together. ‘It’s not clear he done himself or there’s help. Anyway, doesn’t look like he had health worries. Ring me you think of anything.’ He took out his wallet and gave me a card. As he was getting into the car, he said, ‘So there’s life after, hey?’

‘After what?’ I knew what he meant.

‘After being such a big man in the Feds they let you keep your gun.’

‘You’ve got to have life before to have life after,’ I said.

He pursed his lips, nodded, got in.

I went back to work on the knife, thinking about Ned. Suicide? The word burned in me.

It took me three days to clean out Ned’s house. I started outside, working my way through his collection of sheds, carting stuff back to my place. On the morning of day three, I steeled myself and went into the house. There had been no fire for more than a week now and the damp cold had come up from under the floorboards and taken hold.

I did Ned’s room first: there was no other way. I packed all the clothes into boxes, put the few personal things in Ned’s old leather suitcase. Then I started to pack up the rest of the house. It wasn’t a big job. Ned’s neatness and his spartan living habits made it easy. I left the sitting room for last. It was a big room, made by knocking two rooms into one. There were two windows in the north wall, between them an old table where Ned had done his paperwork. There were signs that the cops had taken a look. Both drawers were slightly open.

I took the deep drawers out. One held stationery, a fountain pen, ink bottle, stapler, hole punch, thick wads of bills and invoices held together with rubber bands, a large yellow envelope, Ned’s work diary, a ledger. The other one held a telephone book, a folder with all the papers relating to the purchase of the property and the regular outgoings, three copies of the Dispatch , string, a magnifying glass, a few marbles, and a wooden ruler given away by a shop in Wagga Wagga. The yellow envelope was unsealed. I looked into it: staples, rubber bands, string, assorted things. I stuffed the newspapers into a garbage bag and packed everything else into a box.

At the end of the day, I had all the things to go to the Salvation Army in one shed, the things to keep in another, and the contents of Lew’s room and Ned’s personal things on the back of the Land Rover. I also had two large bags of stuff to be thrown away.

I drove home via the shire tip and dumped the bags. Then it was all speed to the Heart of Oak, the pub a few hundred metres from the smithy. I was parked outside, taking out the key, taste of beer in my mouth, when the question came to me.

Why would Ned keep three copies of a newspaper in his drawer? All the other papers were in the shed, tied in neat bundles for the recyclers.

Forgot to throw them out.

No. Everything else in that drawer had a purpose.

I turned the key. Back to the tip. The man was closing the gate as I arrived.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘You want it back.’

The bags were where I’d left them, and the papers were on top of the one I opened.

I took them into the Heart of Oak with me. It was just me and Vinnie the publican and a retired potato farmer called George Beale. Vinnie and George were playing draughts, a 364-day-a-year event contested in a highly vocal manner.

‘Now that’s what I call a dickhead move,’ George was saying as I came in. ‘Told you once, told you a thousand times.’

‘Funny how I keep winnin,’ Vinnie said.

‘Sometimes,’ said George, ‘the Lord loves a dickhead.’

They said Gidday and Vinnie drew a beer without being asked.

The papers were about six weeks old, the issues of a Monday and Tuesday in April and a Thursday in June. The front-page lead in Monday’s paper was headlined: Body in OLD MINE.

I VAGUELY REMEMBERED READING THIS, PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT IT IN THE PUB. THE STORY READ:

Police are investigating the discovery of a skeleton at the bottom of an old mine shaft at Cousin Jack Lead in the State forest near Rippon.

The macabre find was made by Dean Meerdink of Carlisle, whose dog uncovered the shaft entrance and fell about ten metres, landing on a ledge.

‘We were out with the metal detector,’ Mr Meerdink said. ‘Deke was off looking for rabbits and he just vanished. I was calling his name and I heard a faint bark. Then I saw this hole and I thought: he’s a goner. I didn’t want to get too close in case there was a cave-in, so I went back and rang the shire.’