An Iron Rose (20 page)

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.’

She stopped and fiddled with her breast, shifted the baby. ‘Mel said she remembered drivin along, gettin dark. Next thing she woke up, she was bein dressed in schoolgirl clothes, y’know, a gym and that.’

‘Who was doing that? Ken?’

‘She wasn’t sure. Two men. They did all kinds of sex things to her. Not normal, know what I mean? Tied her up. Hit her with something. Made her do things to them. She cried when she told me.’

‘She saw their faces?’

‘Not properly. They didn’t hide their faces. That’s why she knew they were going to kill her. But she didn’t get a real good look at them. The room was dark and she felt dizzy. And they had a light in her eyes all the time.’

‘She couldn’t describe them at all?’

‘Not really.’

‘So one could have been Dr Barbie?’

‘Well, he’s the one gave her the Coke.’

‘How’d she get away?’

‘They went off. The one man goes, “Back soon, slut, with a friend for you. She’s been looking forward to this.”’

‘She?’

‘Yeah. She. Anyway, Mel’s in this room, stone room, bars on the window, it’s upstairs. There was a bed and she stood it up on its end, got on it and she ripped a hole in the ceiling. There was a small hole and she made it bigger. Got into the roof, pulled off some tiles and got out onto the roof and climbed down a drainpipe. Pretty incredible, hey? She’s just a little thing but really strong. Barbie liked the little ones.’ She stopped. ‘She was. Really strong.’

‘And she got away.’

‘She said she ran for ages, like through some kind of forest. Pitch-dark and she was dead scared they were coming after her. She got to a road and she hid from cars. Then it was so cold she thought she’d die, so she started walking along the road. Naked. Then an old man stopped and took her to his house.’

‘I know what happened from then,’ I said.

I went over the story with her. There wasn’t any more to tell. Outside, cold a shock after the warm house, Gaby said, ‘I don’t want any trouble. Really. I’ve got a good bloke now and the baby.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘You won’t hear anything about this again. But if you remember anything else, ring me.’

I wrote my number on the back of an automatic teller machine receipt.

In the rear-view mirror, I saw her watching me go, standing in the universal stance of mothers, baby on hip, pelvis tilted, knees slightly bent. I thought, what right have I to give her any assurances?

The last person I had given assurances to was Carlie Mance.

Driving back, my mind drifted over what I knew and what I didn’t know. The two men who assaulted Melanie could be the killers of the girl in the mine shaft. Who were they? Ian Barbie and someone else.

Barbie the delivery man. Had he delivered other Kinross Hall girls? How could he do that without the girls being reported missing?

And that raised the issue that I didn’t much want to think about. Had my inquiry about Melanie led to her death? How could that be? I ask Berglin to trace someone and then I find the person shot dead. Melanie Pavitt, not shot dead in the messy way of domestic killings everywhere. No. Shot dead with fussy precision. One shot in the eye. Was this the work of her gentle unemployed builders’ labourer? This I could not believe. Then Berglin lies to me about Gaby Makin. Why? What conceivable interest could Berglin have in my inquiries? He was a federal drug cop and drugs didn’t seem to enter this puzzle.

Berglin lie to me? Of all the things he said to me over the years, when I thought of him, two sentences spoken in his hoarse voice at our first meeting always echoed in the mind:
How to be a halfway decent person. That’s the main question in life.

In the shitstorm after the Lefroy and Mance killings, when all fingers pointed at me, Berglin had been impassive. He never said the words I wanted him to say, never patted my arm, never invited me to confide in him. You could read nothing in his eyes. One morning, suspended from duty, wife gone, unshaven, hungover, I went to his office. He looked at me with interest while I shouted at him: abuse, recriminations, accusations of betrayal. When I ran out of things to say, Berglin said, no expression, ‘Mac, if I think you’ve moved across, you’ll be the first to know. I’ll come around and kill you. Enjoy the vacation. Now fuck off.’

I left, feeling much better.

Now I’d have to see him, confront him with the lie he’d told me. I hoped very much that he could explain it away, but I couldn’t see how.

I was still brooding on this as I drove down the damp and overgrown driveway at Harkness Park. Stan had rung to say that Francis wanted him to put on extra hands, presumably so that he could send out his bills sooner. Stan was reluctant: he didn’t like big crews. I’d suggested that instead of bringing in more workers we draw up a work schedule that provided incentives for meeting targets early. Flannery and Lew liked the idea. They were to have spent the morning clearing the main path down the sightline. Stan had estimated hours for the job and I wanted to see how far they’d got.

They’d done well, pushing at least thirty metres beyond Stan’s expectation, neat work, greenery piled ready for chipping. I was admiring the elaborate brick and cut stone path uncovered, thinking about where to establish the compost heaps, when I heard a vehicle in the driveway, just a hum. I didn’t think about it, backed into the dense overgrown box hedge beside the path, looked back towards the house. A month earlier, I wouldn’t have done this. Fear had come back into my life, uninvited.

I waited.

Anne Karsh, hair pulled back today, jeans, battered short Drizabone, looking around. I stepped out of hiding. We walked towards each other down the path, eyes meeting, looking away, coming back.

‘Checking on progress,’ I said when we were close enough.

‘You or me?’

‘Both?’

‘No, not me,’ she said. She smiled. ‘Just wanted to be here, really. In love with it. What were you doing in the hedge? If that’s a hedge.’

‘Hedge examination. How about this path?’

‘This is an unbelievable path. It’s so ornate.’

I turned and we walked to the edge of the known garden. Beyond was wilderness. ‘It’s like archaeology,’ she said. ‘For the first time, I can understand the thrill.’

‘Thrill time next week,’ I said. ‘The pines come down. Then we see the steeple. See what the man wanted us to see.’

‘Who cuts them down?’ We were on our way back.

‘A professional. The biggest one’s nine metres around at the base. Death to amateurs. We could bring in a portable sawmill, turn them into planks. You could have something made out of them. Terrible waste otherwise. All those years of growing.’

She looked at me. ‘Leon’ll like that. Could you do it?’

‘If you tell Francis that’s what you want.’

She held out her right hand. We stopped. ‘I’ll tell him now.’ She took out a small leatherbound book, found a page, took a mobile telephone, minute, from another pocket, punched numbers. After a short wait, she said. ‘Francis, Anne Karsh…Well, thank you. Francis, the pines blocking the view to the church steeple are coming down next week. Can you arrange to have them turned into usable timber?…Leon will be thrilled. Stan will arrange it, I’m sure. Thank you, Francis…I look forward to that too. Bye.’

We walked, explored the thicket around the site of the original house, forced our way through to the old orchard, desperate-looking fruit trees but the least overgrown place because of the deep mulch of fallen fruit.

‘You can prune these buggers back to life,’ I said. ‘If you want them.’

‘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?’