‘A possibility, that’s all,’ I said. His mind had switched and I thought it best to take advantage of it. Mcllroy’s death was none of my business. That’s what I thought then, sitting there in that little hot room full of rock samples and old photographs. ‘Are you willing to let me do a survey up the top of the gully?’
‘Was that why you came back with this young student fellow?’
‘Yes. I was hoping to persuade you to let me do a geophysical, then perhaps drill. And no cost to you. I have some money now, a job I did for a mining company down in Kalgoorlie. The same people might be interested in the development of Golden Soak, provided, of course, my survey results -‘
‘Not the mine,’ he said. ‘You keep clear of the mine. I don’t want anybody else —’ His voice trailed off and for a moment he sat there hunched over the desk, lost in thought, his eyes blinking so that I thought for a moment he was going to burst into tears. But then he seemed to pull himself together. ‘The rock samples here — they’re all labelled. Go through them if you like. But they’re most of them from the flat land to the east. I never took samples from above the entrance. The faulting -It didn’t seem right, and the depth so much greater.’
‘The faulting doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘With modern techniques -‘
‘Yes, of course. I’m only an amateur, ye’see.’ He leaned back in his chair, pushing his hand wearily up through his hair. ‘Well, that’s settled then.’ His voice sounded very tired.
‘I can go ahead?’
‘That’s what you wanted isn’t it? And if the reef continues … then maybe Jarra Jarra will be safe for another generation. Jan loves the place, y’know. She didn’t like Perth. She was happy down there for a while, at school. But she wouldn’t be happy…’ He was staring down at his glass. ‘Nor would I.’ He murmured. Then he drained the rest of his drink and got carefully to his feet. ‘Good luck!’ He held out his hand as though saying goodbye to me for good, and he had to brace himself against the desk.
That was all the agreement we ever had — a handshake. And he was so full of whisky I wondered if he knew what he was doing. There were other things, too. But I only worried about them later, when the men from Grafton Downs and Mt Newman had given up and gone, and Kennie and I were collecting samples from the steep slope of Coondewanna.
The sides of the gully were bare outcrops of red rock - part of what Kennie called a banded iron formation. The sides rose to a rim, and beyond the rim Mt Coondewanna leaned a shoulder gently towards the gap. No outcrops here, the surface of the ground coarse-grained silica with a sparse covering of spinifex, occasional patches of mallee. This shoulder was roughly on the line of the faulting I had seen below ground and it was from here that we collected the most promising samples. The flies were bad and it was very hot. We camped at the head of the gully where the air was cooler, a slight breeze funnelling through the Gap, and as the sun set the land to the west took on the colour of dried blood.
That night we slept under the stars, the sky burnt to a diamond clarity and not a sound anywhere until a dingo started calling from the gully below us. I was tired, but sleep did not come easily, my mind on the Golden Soak, and the lost, lonely cry of that dingo reminding me of the lives it had cost. I was thinking of Westrop, his body buried now under tons of rock, wondering about McIlroy. Had Westrop been right? Was Mcllroy’s body down there, too? Was that why Ed Garrety had fired that charge? I was desperate, he had said. Desperate for money, or because Golden Soak held a secret that must be kept at all costs?
It was the heat. The night was very hot and my mind in a world of fantasy and reality. God knows, Big Bill Garrety had had reason enough to kill the man. But to tell his doctor and not his son … Whatever the truth of it, Ed Garrety must have known. I was thinking of Drym then, the reek of that room and the candle flame burning - the picture in that newspaper, the blackened beams a skeletal cap to the gutted house. We all have our secrets …
‘You awake, Alec?’ Kennie rolled over on his swag, his eyes open. ‘I thought I heard something - a cry.’
‘A dingo,’ I said.
He lifted his head, listening. ‘Yes - of course. This place gives me the creeps.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘D’you believe in Quinkans?’
‘Quinkans?’
‘Mythical abo beings. Ghosts, if you like - Quinkans is the Queensland name. I read a book about them, by an Ansett pilot. I don’t know the name for them here, but they’ll be the same breed. They come out at night, and if they’re bad they’re killers. All abos believe that.’ He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘What time do you reckon we ought to leave tomorrow?
I didn’t answer, thinking of the inquest fixed for the day after and the evidence Ed Garrety would have to give.
‘Port Hedland’s a long way.’
‘We’ll decide in the morning.’ It would be an all night drive and at the end of it I would have to lie — unless Ed Garrety decided to tell them the truth. I was staring up at the stars, thinking of the Gibson and McIlroy and that abo walking out alive, trying to picture what had really happened, my thoughts ranging and the truth elusive. I lay there for a long time, dozing on the edge of my sleep, my mind groping for the solution to that thirty-year-old mystery and the sound of that dingo gradually fading until the next thing I knew the sun was up over the shoulder’s rim, a red-hot poker boring at my eyeballs.
Kennie was already up, a smell of wood smoke and the bacon sizzling. His body, crouched there, was a dark silhouette against the flaming sunrise. ‘Thought we’d better make an early start.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘Last night — that dingo startled me. I was only half awake.’
‘If we’d got a rig here,’ I murmured sleepily, ‘I think I’d take a chance and drill in that hollow over there.’
He nodded. ‘The best samples we got. But you haven’t got a rig and even if you had -‘
‘We might be able to hire one,’ I said, remembering that Frenchman from New Caledonia.
We ate our breakfast, took final samples from the one part of the hollow we had not yet covered, and then we left. It was shortly after nine and we met Tom on the track to Jarra Jarra. He had a note from Janet to say that they had started at first light and that she was relying on me to make the coroner understand the dangerous state of the mine.
The inquest was held at 10 a.m. on the Tuesday and lasted all day. There should have been a jury of three since it was I
a mine accident, but the Coroner had dispensed with this on the grounds of possible prejudice - in any case there seems to be a natural reluctance on the part of West Australians to have anything to do with the courts of law. But that did not inhibit them from crowding into the little courtroom. The heat was stifling, and after lunch most of the men were so full of beer they were half asleep. The verdict at the end of it was ‘death by misadventure’. That should have settled it, but the evidence had taken a long time, a lot of witnesses had been called, and the coroner, a conscientious lawyer, had asked questions that undoubtedly jogged the memories of many of those present.
Who started the rumour I have no idea. Probably no-one in particular. Prophecy, when we saw her after breakfasting at the Conglomerate next morning, told me it was suddenly all round the bar that same night. And Andie, when we called at Lynn Peak for petrol, said he actually heard it the day before the inquest, from an engineer taking equipment into Port Hedland for servicing. Personally, I think it was one of those rumours that just well up out of the ground, based on half-truths and hearsay and fed by the envy and malice that exists in every isolated community. And though nobody could accuse Ed Garrety of being evasive, his evidence, and the impression he had made on the Court, was certainly a contributory factor.
I don’t think he had been drinking, but his face was flushed, his voice barely audible as he told the Court what had happened the day the mine had collapsed. Several times the Coroner had to ask him to speak up or repeat what he had said, and all this time he stood with his hands gripping the wood of
the witness box, leaning a little forward so that the stoop, the slight rounding of his shoulders, made him look older.
‘You say you knew what you were doing because you had been down the mine as a young man and had watched the reef ore being blasted out?’ The Coroner was a big, friendly man, but he liked his facts straight. ‘Surely they drilled short holes even then to take their charges?’
‘Not always. Not if there were crevices.’
‘And you used a crevice.’ The Coroner glanced at his notes and nodded. ‘The rock was faulted, in fact.’
‘It was only a small charge.’
‘Yes, you said that before. But what I am getting at is this -‘ The Coroner leaning forward, his glasses in his hand, his face blandly enquiring. ‘You were in a gallery of the mine that had caved in.’ The glasses went on again as he peered at his notes. ‘That happened in 1939. On April 4, 1939, to be exact. The gallery caved in with the loss of five lives. Right?’ He looked up, noted Ed Garrety’s nod and said, ‘So you knew just how dangerous it was.’
I saw his hands tighten their grip on the edge of the box. ‘I took a chance, that’s all.’
‘Because you were short of money?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you knew it was dangerous.’
‘I told you, I took a chance.’
‘You heard the witnesses, their description of what your small charge did to the mine.’ The Coroner paused. ‘Did it ever occur to you that you ought to make certain there was nobody in the mine or in its vicinity who might get hurt?’ I could not hear Ed Garrety’s reply, but the Coroner did and he said sharply, ‘Never mind whether they had the right to enter the mine. That’s not the point. What this Court must be concerned about is that you were very well aware these two mining men were wanting to get into the mine. Alec Fall’s evidence shows that you knew about the concealed entrance in the old shearing shed. And we heard it from Weeli Wolli how you stopped them at the main entrance the previous night. In fact you pointed a loaded gun at them. Why didn’t you check that there was no vehicle around the mine before donating your charge?’
Ed Garrety shook his head, the sweat glistening on his forehead. ‘It just never occurred to me,’ he breathed.
And then came the question I had asked myself - ‘Can you tell us why Westrop was so anxious to gain access to the mine?’
Again the shake of the head, the stoop of the shoulders more pronounced.
‘Was it anything to do with his uncle’s disappearance?’
‘I don’t know. It may have been.’ His voice was barely audible.
‘You spoke to him twice — the first time when he and the aborigine were camped by the old shearing shed, and then again the night before he died. Didn’t he refer to his uncle’s disappearance?’
‘No.’ The slight hesitation was noticeable.
‘He didn’t mention the name Pat McIlroy at all?’
‘Only to say that he was related to him.’
‘Go on.’ The Coroner waited, finally asking him in what context the relationship had been stated. There was a long pause, and then Ed Garrety said, ‘It’s not easy to remember his exact words, but he seemed to think his relationship gave him some sort of claim to the mine.’
‘And did it?’
Ed Garrety’s head came up. ‘No, of course not.’ And then in a voice that was hard and high and trembled slightly: ‘You know what happened to my father, to everything he’d worked for all his life. McIlroy destroyed him utterly. After that how could he, or any relative of his, have the slightest claim?’
There was a long silence. Finally the Coroner nodded, and after glancing down again at his notes, he told Ed Garrety to stand down.
We were near the end then, but before giving his verdict, the Coroner asked Wolli to come forward again. The tall, gangling aborigine had a scared look on his face as he slowly took up his position on the witness stand. He, too, was sweating, beads of moisture glistening on his black face, the whites of his eyes showing yellow in a shaft of sunlight. The Coroner spoke very slowly, very distinctly. Had Phil Westrop ever said why he wanted to get into the mine? Wolli’s eyes shifted from the Coroner to Ed Garrety. Then he shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Your father was with Pat McIlroy when he died. That right?’
‘Yah. Thas wot he tella me.’
‘And did he tell you how the white man died?’
Wolli shook his head. ‘He don’tella me that.’
‘Did he say anything about Golden Soak?’
‘Yah. He tell me plenty bad spirits longa that mine.’
‘So you were afraid to go down there.’ Wolli nodded dumbly. ‘Did your father ever say anything to you about Mcllroy’s Monster? Did he tell you whether they found it before he started walking out of the Gibson on his own?’
‘He not say in.’
And then the final, inevitable question. ‘Why didn’t he report the white man’s death to the police?’
Wolli glanced round the courtroom, no other black there and the whites all watching him. His gaze settled on Ed Garrety, and though his face remained impassive, no flicker of an expression, I sensed hostility. But whether for Garrety, or for white men in general, I could not be certain. And then he was answering the Coroner in that slow uncertain voice.’ ‘Fraid’im speak. Boss whitefella don’want’im speak.’
The Coroner leaned back, blowing out his cheeks, dismissing the witness with an irritable wave of his hand, while the murmur of voices filled the room, a buzz like flies as the older men recalled the whispers of the past. And though the verdict exonerated Ed Garrety officially, it did not stop the men who had been in that courtroom talking.
In sparsely populated country rumour travels fast. We made Kalgoorlie in just over thirty-six hours, which was good going, but the rumour was there ahead of us, and it had grown with distance. Chris Culpin gave me the Kalgoorlie version in the Palace bar.
That was after I had taken the samples in to Petersen Geophysics for analysis. I was in a state of wild excitement then, for while waiting for the girl to list them, I had picked up a copy of the West Australian. I wanted to see how Lone Minerals were doing, not only because I owned shares, but also because, if the analysis was at all promising, I intended wiring Freeman in Sydney. I thought it might make a difference if his shares were a firm market. I got a shock when I found the quotation. The price was listed at 79, up 12 cents on the day.
Petersen came in just before I left. ‘So, you are back again. What you got for me this time?’ And when I told him, he said, ‘Golden Soak, is it? Always Golden Soak. But you are lucky man you do not also lose your life, eh?’ He had read all about it in the Miner and the West Australian. ‘And Blackridge. They have a drill working here now and there is talk they make a strike.
So everything you touch …’ He grinned his horsey grin, slapped me on the back and added, ‘You want I should do this analysis fast like before, eh?’
I nodded. ‘If you can. I have to get backing.’
‘Ja. Everybody haf to get backing. But you are English. I like Englishmen, and very much when they are lucky. I haf two rush yobs first. Very important. Per’raps tomorrow evening. Okay?’
From there I had gone to the broker’s office in the Palace building and his wife had directed me to the bar next door where he was drinking with a client. I had a quick beer with him and he told me Kadek’s Newsletter tipping the shares had come out that morning. Lone Minerals were now 84 and he was convinced they would go higher. I arranged with him to sell at a dollar, which would give me just enough to take up the whole of the option Freeman had given me, and I left him with that heightened sense of living that comes with the excitement of gambling, like a man who has put his shirt on an outsider and sees it coming up on the rails to challenge the favourite.
I was pushing my way through the crowded bar, feeling in tune with all the hubbub of speculation around me, my mind leaping to the prospect of making enough to get an IP survey carried out, perhaps start a drilling pr
ogramme, when my arm was seized and I turned to find Culpin beside me. He was unshaven, his hat pushed back on his head and his heavy features beaded with sweat. ‘Where’s Kennie?’
He had gone to see his mother, but I didn’t tell him that. ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said.
‘But he’s here with you?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer that. ‘You packed it in, eh? I don’t blame you. Nasty business.’ He stood there, swaying slightly. ‘It’s murder — near as dammit — from what I hear.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I asked him.
‘Golden Soak - an’ that man Garrety. I don’t want Kennie mixed up in it, see.’
The man was full of liquor and I started to move away from him. But his grip on my arm tightened. ‘Two men killed. That right, innit? An’ one of them Mcllroy’s nephew. Blew the whole mine down on top of them.’
‘It was an accident.’
‘Oh, sure.’ His voice was heavy with sarcasm. ‘But a bloody convenient one, eh?’
‘What do you know about it?’
He grinned at me slyly. ‘Not as much as you, I bet. But Christ! It’s obvious, innit? Westrop trying to get into that mine and Mcllroy’s body never found.’
I was shocked. It was as though my own thoughts had been projected all the hundreds of miles from Coondewanna to this bar. ‘Is that what they’re saying now?’
‘What else? They always was a law to themselves, the Garretys. Don’t forget I was up there as a kid. There was talk then.’ He reached to the bar for his drink, swallowed it at a gulp and banged the glass down on the counter. ‘I don’t give a bugger what happened to Westrop, or McIlroy for that matter. All I care about is what they were after, same as you. Think I don’t know you were checking at the Miner offices last time you were here?’ He leaned close to me, his voice a whisper, the smell of whisky strong on his breath and his eyes red-rimmed. ‘Well, where is it?’ he demanded urgently. ‘You’ve found out, haven’t you? You wouldn’t be here otherwise.’ And then on a wheedling note, ‘Come on, Alec. Be a pal. I let you in on Blackridge.’
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