by Peter Temple
An Iron Rose
Peter Temple
Peter Temple
An Iron Rose
‘Mac,’ the voice said. ‘Ned’s dead.’
I couldn’t take it in. I screwed up my eyes and tried to focus, head full of sleep and beer dreams.
‘What?’ I said.
He said it again.
‘Jesus, no. When?’
‘Don’t know.’ There was a pause. ‘He’s hangin in the shed, Mac. Can you come?’
Dead? Ned? What time was it? Two forty-five am. Sunday morning. I pulled some faces, fighting the fog and the numb incomprehension. Then I said, ‘Okay. Right. Right. Listen, you sure he’s dead?’
There was a long silence. Lew sniffed. ‘Mac. Come.’
I was starting to think. ‘Ambulance. You call the ambulance?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Cops?’
‘No.’
‘Call them. I’ll be there in ten,’ I said.
In the passage, Drizabone off the hook, straight out the door. Didn’t need to dress. I’d fallen asleep in a cracked leather armchair, fully clothed, half-eaten pie on the arm, television on.
I didn’t see the dog but I heard him land on the tray. Little thump. Short route through Quinn’s Marsh, saved a few minutes by bumping open the gate with the roobars and putting the old Land Rover across the sheep paddock behind Ned Lowey’s house. You could see the house from a long way off: all the lights were on.
I slewed around the corner and Lew was in my headlights: arms at sides, hair wild, stretched tracksuit top hanging over pyjama pants, barefoot.
I got out at a run. ‘Stay there,’ I shouted over my shoulder to the dog. ‘Where?’
Lew led me down the path between the garage and the chook run to the big machine shed. The double doors were open and a slab of white light lay on the concrete apron. He stopped and pointed. He didn’t want to go in.
‘Wait for the ambulance in front,’ I said.
For a moment the light blinded me or I didn’t want to see. Then I focused on Ned, in striped pyjamas, arms neatly at his sides, hanging against the passenger side of the truck. His head was turned away from me. When I got close I saw why Lew had not answered my question about whether he was sure Ned was dead.
I looked up. The rope was tied to a rolled steel joist about two metres above the truck cab. Ned had climbed up onto the cab roof, tied the rope to the joist, slid it along, tied a slipknot around his neck. And stepped off the cab roof.
‘Mate, mate,’ I said helplessly. I wanted to cry and be sick and run away. I wanted to be asleep again and the telephone not to ring.
Lew was sitting on the verandah step, shoulders slumped, head forward. I found the makings I kept in the Land Rover for when I needed a smoke, rolled a cigarette, walked the fifty metres to the gate. The night was black, absolutely silent. Then, far away, a speeding vehicle crossed the threshold of hearing.
I walked back, went into the house, down the long passage to Ned’s bedroom. It was neat, like a soldier’s quarters, the bed made drum tight.
Why was Ned in pyjamas?
On the way out, I paused in the sitting room, looking around the familiar space for no good reason. It was warm, the wood heater down low and glowing.
My eyes went to the photograph on the mantelpiece: Ned and my father, two big men in overalls, laughing, each with a king brown in hand. Between them the camera froze a thin boy in school uniform. He had a worried look. It was me.
I went outside and sat down beside Lew, looked at his profile. He was a mixture of Ned and his mother: long face, high cheekbones, strong jaw. ‘How’d you find him?’ I said.
He shivered. ‘I came back about eleven. He’s always asleep by then. Went to bed. Woke up, I don’t know, half an hour ago, went to have a leak. Then when I got back into bed, I thought: he didn’t say anythin.’
‘Say anything?’
‘You can’t walk past his door without him saying somethin. Doesn’t matter the time. Middle of the night. He hears everythin. And he didn’t say anythin either when I went to the bathroom before I went to bed. But I didn’t think about it then. So I got up and he wasn’t in bed.’ He paused. ‘Then I went to look for the car and it was there, so I went to look for the truck. And…’
He put his head in his hands. I put my arm around his shoulders, gave him a squeeze, helpless to comfort him, to comfort myself. We sat like that until the ambulance arrived. The police car was about a minute behind it. Two cops. By the time Lew and I had given statements, it was after 5 am and there were two police cars and four cops standing in the warm sitting room, smoking cigarettes and waiting for someone from forensic to arrive.
I brought Lew home with me. He couldn’t stay there, in that familiar house made strange and horrible. We drove in silence in the silver early dawn, mist lying in the hollows, hanging in the trees, dams gleaming coldly. The first smoke of the day was issuing from farmhouse chimneys along the way.
I felt that I should speak to him, but I couldn’t. He’s just a kid, I said to myself. Two weeks from now he’ll be over it. But I wouldn’t be over it. Ever. Edward Lowey had been part of my life since I was ten. He was the link with my father. There were lots of questions I wanted to ask Lew, but this wasn’t the time.
At home, I made scrambled eggs, but neither of us could eat. We sat there like people in an institution, not saying anything, looking at the table, not seeing anything. Finally, I shook myself and said, ‘Let’s get some wood in. They say it’s going to get colder.’
I fed the dog the scrambled eggs and we went out into the raw morning, low cloud, spits of rain. While Lew walked around, hands in pockets, kicking things, I found another axe and put an edge on it on the grindstone. Then we chopped wood solidly, an hour, one on each side of the woodpile, not speaking, pausing only to take off garments. Chopping wood doesn’t take your mind off things but it burns off the adrenalin and it sends you into a trancelike state.
Lew had just turned sixteen, but he was lean and muscled in the upper body and he matched me log for log and he didn’t stop until I did. He was fetching a drink and I was standing there, leaning on my axe, sweat cooling, when an old red Dodge truck came up the driveway.
A tall woman, around thirty, dropped down from the cab: slim, long nose a little skew on her face, some weight in her shoulders, crew-cut dirty-blonde hair, overalls, pea jacket, no make-up.
‘G’day,’ she said. ‘Allie Morris.’
I’d forgotten about our arrangement for today. I walked over and shook hands. ‘Mac Faraday.’
Lewis came out the house carrying two glasses.
‘We’ve had a bit of a shock,’ I said. ‘His grandfather…’ I didn’t want to say it. ‘He found his grandfather dead this morning.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That’s terrible.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, the other thing. I don’t suppose this is the day for it…’
I said, ‘It’s the day. Never a better day.’
I introduced Lew and we left him to stack the wood and went into the smithy. I’d cleaned out the forge on Saturday morning and laid the fire: paper and kindling over the tue hole, coke around that and green coal banked around the coke. I lit the paper and started the fan blower. Allie Morris came over with the watering can and dampened the green coal. She’d taken off her coat. Under her overalls, she was wearing a shirt with heavy canvas sleeves.
‘Useful shirt,’ I said.
‘Blacksmith’s wife in England makes them. Got tired of looking at all that burnt skin.’
‘It’s not a good look.’
‘Sure you know what you’re doing here?’ she said. ‘Never heard of anyone doing it.’
‘People did it for hundreds of years.’
‘Well, maybe they didn�
�t have any choice. You could get a new one. Stick this thing in a museum.’
‘Making things on this when Queen Victoria was a baby,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And it’s outlived its usefulness. Might as well hang on to your old underpants.’
I thought about this for a moment. ‘Wish someone else would hang on to my old underpants,’ I said. ‘While I’m wearing them.’
Allie was pushing coal towards the glowing coke. She looked up, bland. ‘Surprised to hear that position’s vacant,’ she said. ‘Give it a blast. We’ll be here all day.’
I gave the fire a blast. Allie Morris was a qualified farrier and blacksmith, trained in England. For a long time I’d been looking for someone to do the horse work and help in the smithy. Then I saw her advertisement in the Situations Wanted.
‘I’d be in that if the terms were right,’ she’d said on the phone. ‘But I’ve got to tell you, I’m not keen on the business side.’
‘You mean extracting the money?’
‘In particular.’
‘You want to come around on Sunday? Eight-thirty? Or any time. Give me a hand with something. We’ll talk about it.’
I’d explained what I wanted to do.
It took a good while to get the fire right: raking and wetting until we had a good mass of burning coke that could be compacted.
‘What I had in mind,’ I said, ‘you do the horse work, I take the bookings, keep up the stores, send out the bills, and get the buggers to pay.’
‘Last item there,’ said Allie. ‘That’s the important function. That’s where I fall down.’ She shook her head. ‘Horse people.’
‘Tight as Speedos,’ I said.
‘I had to tell this one bloke, I’m coming around with two big men and we’re going to fit him with racing shoes, run him over the jumps. And he still took another week to pay up.’
‘I’ll need your help with some general work too,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I can’t cope. And I’m not all that flash on the finer stuff.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Allie, banking coal around the coke. ‘Got to get even heat for a job like this. Get the heat to bounce off the coal, eat the oxygen. Reducing fire, know the term?’
‘Use it all the time,’ I said.
Lew and the dog came in to watch. The dog went straight to his spot on a pile of old potato sacks in a corner, well away from sparks and flying bits of clinker.
Finally, Allie said, ‘All right, let’s do it.’ She was flushed from the heat. It was an attractive sight.
I had a sliding block and tackle rigged from the steel beam in the roof and a chain around the battered anvil’s waist. Lew and I pulled it up, an unwieldy 285 pounds of metal. You could tell the weight from the numbers stamped on the waist: two-two-five, standing for two hundredweights, or 224 pounds; two quarters of a hundredweight, fifty-six pounds; and five pounds. To get it under the smoke hood and onto the coke bed, Allie slid it slowly down a sheet of steel plate.
When it was in place, I unshackled the chain.
‘Got any tea?’ Allie said. ‘This’ll take a while.’
‘I’ll make it,’ said Lew. He looked glad of something to do.
It took about an hour in the intense heat to get the face of the anvil to the right colour. We put on gloves and I got the chain around its waist, pulled it to the lip of the forge and Lew and Allie hoisted it. The day was dark outside and we had no lights on in the smithy. But when the anvil came out and hung in the air, turning gently, the room filled with its glowing orange light and we stood in awe for a moment, three priests with golden faces.
Carefully, we set the dangerous object down on the block of triple-reinforced concrete I used for big heavy jobs.
‘Well,’ said Allie, ‘the thing will probably break in half. Put your helmet on.’
I handed her a six-pound flatter and a two-pound hammer and we went to work, hammering, dressing the face and edges of the anvil, trying to get the working surface back to something like its original flatness.
‘Lew’s grandfather found this anvil,’ I said. ‘In the old stables at Kinross Hall. Bought it off them for twenty dollars. Gave it to my old man.’
Allie Morris had just left when they arrived, two men in plainclothes in a silver Holden. I heard the car outside and met them at the smithy door. The dog came out with me. His upper lip twitched.
‘Lie down,’ I said. He turned his head and looked at me, lay down. But his eyes were on the men.
‘MacArthur John Faraday?’ the cop in front said.
I nodded.
‘Police,’ he said. They both did a casual flash of ID.
I put out my hand. ‘Look at those.’
They glanced at each other, eyes talking, handed over the wallets. The man who’d spoken was Detective Sergeant Michael Bernard Shea. His offsider was Detective Constable Allan Vernon Cotter. Shea was in his forties, large and going to flab, ginger hair, faded freckles, big ears. He had the bleak look men get on assembly lines. Cotter was dark, under thirty, neck muscled like a bull terrier’s, eyes too close, hair cropped to a five-o’clock shadow. Chewing gum.
I gave them the wallets back.
‘Lewis Lowey here?’ Shea said.
‘Yes.’
‘Like a word with you first, then him. Somewhere we can sit down?’
‘What kind of word? We’ve given statements.’
Shea held up a big hand. ‘Informal. Get some background.’
I put my head back in the door. ‘Police,’ I said. ‘Don’t go anywhere, Lew.’
I took them over to the shed that served as the business’s office. It held a table, three kitchen chairs, and a filing cabinet bought at a clearing sale. I sat down behind the table. Cotter spun a chair around and sat down like a cowboy.
Shea perched on the filing cabinet behind Cotter. He looked around the room, distaste on his face, sniffing the musty air like someone who suspects a gas leak. ‘So you been here, what, five years?’ he said.
‘Something like that,’ I said.
‘And you know this bloke?’
‘A long time.’
‘First on the scene.’
‘Second.’
‘You and the kid. First and second.’
I didn’t say anything. Silence for a while. Shea coughed, a dry little cough.
‘You, ah, friendly with the kid?’ This from the offsider, Cotter. He was staring at me, black eyes gleaming like sucked grapes. His ears were pierced, but he wasn’t wearing an earring. He smiled and winked.
I said to Shea, ‘Detective Constable Cotter just winked at me. What does that mean?’
‘I’ll do this, Detective Cotter,’ Shea said. ‘So Lewis rang you at…?’
‘Two forty-five. It’s in the statement.’
‘Yeah. He says you got there about two fifty-five. Looking at his watch all the time.’
‘About right.’
‘Clarify this for me,’ Shea said. ‘It’s twenty kilometres from here. You get dressed and drive it in ten minutes. Give or take a minute.’
‘It’s fifteen the short way,’ I said. ‘I didn’t get dressed. I was dressed. I fell asleep dressed. And I didn’t obey the speed limit.’
Shea rubbed the corner of his right eye with a finger like a hairy ginger banana. ‘Old bloke worth a bit?’
‘Look like it?’
‘Can’t tell sometimes. Keep it under the mattress. That his property?’
I nodded.
‘Who stands to benefit then?’
‘There’s just Lew, his grandson.’
‘Then there’s you.’
‘I’m not family.’
‘How come you inherit?’
I said, ‘I’m not with you.’
‘We found his will,’ Shea said. ‘You get a share.’
I shrugged. This was news to me. ‘I don’t know about that.’
Cotter said, ‘Got any gumboots?’ Pause. ‘Mr Faraday.’
I looked at him. ‘Dogs got bums? Try the back p
orch.’
Cotter got up and left.
‘We’ll have to take them away,’ Shea said.
I got up and went to the window. Cotter had the Land Rover passenger door open and was poking through the mess inside.
‘Your man got a warrant?’ I said.
‘Coming to that,’ Shea said. He took a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. ‘Here’s your copy.’
‘Got something in mind?’ I said.
It was Shea’s turn to say nothing, just look at me, not very interested.
I heard the sound of a vehicle, then another car nosed around the corner of the house. Two men and a woman.
‘The gang’s all here,’ I said. ‘Go for your life.’
Shea coughed. ‘I’m going to ask you to come into town for an interview. When we’re finished here. The young fella too. Don’t want you to talk to him before. Okay? So you can’t travel with him. He can come with me or you can make some other arrangement, get a friend. You’re entitled to be represented. Kid’s gotta have someone with him. You don’t want to come of your own accord, well, we do it the other way. Believe me.’
There wasn’t a way around this. ‘Let me explain this to Lew,’ I said.
Shea nodded. We went over to the smithy. Lew was where I’d left him, puzzled and frightened. I sat down next to him.
‘Lew,’ I said, ‘listen, mate. They’re going to search the place. Then they want us to go into town so they can ask us some more questions. They’ll record everything. You’ll have a lawyer with you, just so everything’s done right. All right?’
‘We told them,’ Lew said.
‘I know. It’s just the way they do it. I’ll tell you about it later. I’m going to arrange for your lawyer now. We can’t talk to each other again before the interviews. I’ll be there when you finish.’
He looked at me, looked away, just a child again in a world suddenly turned from stone to water. He was on the edge of tears. I gave him a little punch in the arm. ‘Mate, this’ll be over in next to no time. Then we can have a feed, get some sleep. Hold on. Right?’
He moved his head, more tremble than a nod. He was exhausted.
