An Iron Rose

next door.

‘Not that it kept you fucking pure,’ said Lee-Anne. She put her hands on the counter. They were good hands, long fingers, nails not painted. ‘Not when you met a photographer. Called himself a photographer. Not what a lot of people called him.’

Lee-Anne put an arm up her T-shirt to adjust her bra. I was hypnotised.

‘Wedding pictures. Half the time they didn’t come out. Whole fuckin weddings, excuse me. Vanished like they never happened. Steve was always on the run from fathers, brothers, uncles. I donta wanta my money back, I wanta my daughter’s pictures, watta fuck you do with them? Not a street he could walk in safety, Steve, that many people lookin for him.’

We opened another bottle of the French. It seemed to last five minutes.

‘Listen, Lee-Anne,’ I said. ‘Reckon we can get a taxi out here? Take me to a motel?’

She put her glass down, got up, took off her T-shirt, threw it over her shoulder, put her hand behind her back, unclipped her virgin-white bra, tossed it away. It landed in the sink.

‘I don’t suppose you’d have a spare bed,’ I said, mouth dry.

‘It’s been four years,’ she said, coming around the counter. ‘I’ve still got Bobo’s condoms.’

In the night, she woke me and asked, ‘You seen dead people before?’

What do you say?

I left before dawn, kissed her on the mouth.

The title of Melanie Pavitt’s handwritten autobiography promised more than it delivered. It didn’t go beyond the age of thirteen. She stopped in the middle of a page with the words: I did not see Mum again. I herd she went to Perth with a man but I dont no if its true. She never loved me so it dosent matter.

All the letters except one were from a man called Kevin, written from Darwin and Kalgoorlie, never more than a page: weather, job, miss you, love. The most recent one was five years old.

The other letter was brief, too, in a sloping female hand, signed by someone called Gaby, dated 12 July 1995. No address. It read:

Mel!!! You rememberd my Mums adress!!! She sent the letter to me here in Cairns. Im living here with a man called Otto, hes a German mechanic and very nice and kind altho a bit old. Still you cant have everything can you. I was really shocked to see the things you wrote. The barstards shoud be locked up!!! You are pretty lucky to be alive I reckon, its like those backpackers mudered near Sydney, Otto new one of them, a girl. Id never have said that Ken woud do something like that, they are people you are suposed to be abel to trust!!!I suppose they think there money makes it alrite. Now you now where I am come and stay, theres lots of room. Otto wont mind. Its hot all year here. To warm a lot. Write soon.

Love Gaby.

I read the letter twice.

Ken?

That was the name Dot Walsh said the naked girl in Colson’s Road had said over and over.

…saying the name Ken over and over again.

I read Gaby’s letter a third time. I was in the kitchen, sitting near the fired-up stove, but I felt a chill, as if a window had been opened, letting in a gust of freezing air.

I opened the stove’s firebox and fed in the letters from Kevin. If he was Melanie’s killer, he was probably going to go unpunished, courtesy of me. Then I went out and got the Kinross Hall records. They listed a girl called Gabriele Elaine Makin, age sixteen, at Kinross Hall at the same time as Melanie Pavitt in 1985.

I found the staff list and went through it. No Ken.

At least two people knew who Ken was and what happened on the night Sim Walsh, World War II fighter pilot and drunk, found Melanie Pavitt naked in Colson’s Road.

One of them was dead, one bullet through the left eye from a.38 Ruger from at least two metres away. If my judgment was worth anything, Melanie Pavitt had not been shot by her boyfriend, Barry James Field, unemployed building worker. Lee-Anne described Barry as a calm, sensible person who was the best thing that had ever happened to Melanie. He also seemed an unlikely owner of a weapon the cops had in ten minutes identified as stolen from a Sydney gun shop in 1994.

The other person who knew what happened to Melanie in 1985 was Gaby Makin.

I went over to the pub and rang inquiries. Then I rang Berglin. I gave them my name, we went through the rigmarole and they connected me.

‘Wanting to ask you,’ he said without preamble. ‘What is it with you and dead people?’

‘Raised the subject of Bianchi?’ I could see Flannery at the bar, hunched, staring into a glass of beer, just a shadow of Saturday’s hero.

‘I mentioned it, yes.’

‘So what’s going to happen?’

‘Don’t think it’s going on the priority list.’

‘It should.’

Berglin sighed. ‘Mac, listen. We talked about this before. Things blow up on you, it happens. The smack lost, the woman in the wrong place. Lefroy, that was a plus. Nailed him, he’d own the whole fucking prison system now, living like King Farouk, meals from Paul Bocuse, hot and cold running bumboys. Do a line anytime he likes. You’ve got another life now. Forget about the shit. Any brains, if I had them, I’d ask you can I join you out there in chilblain country, making candlesticks, whatever the fuck it is you do.’

I let the subject lie. ‘I need another trace.’

‘Jesus, I don’t know about you.’ Pause. ‘Who?’

I spelled it out: Gabriele Elaine Makin, born Frankston 1967, juvenile offender last known in Cairns. Not in the phone book.

‘Hope she survives your interest in her,’ Berglin said. ‘Don’t call me.’

‘Something else.’

Silence.

I changed my mind. I had been going to ask about Bianchi’s widow.

‘Forget it, not important.’

‘I’m glad.’

I went to the bar and sat down next to Flannery.

‘I like the next day more when we lose,’ he said. ‘Whole week more. I don’t think we should win again this Satdee.’

‘Three in a row?’ I said. ‘In another life.’

‘Beer’s on the house,’ Vinnie the publican said. ‘Few more Satdees like that, I’m takin the place off the market.’

‘Didn’t know it was on the market,’ Flannery said.

‘Pub without pokies?’ Vinnie said. ‘Pokieless pub is on the market.’

‘Tabletop dancers,’ Flannery said. ‘That’s the go. Uni girls shakin their titties, showin us the business. Have a pickin-up-the-spud competition.’

Vinnie looked over to where two elderly male customers were grumbling at each other. ‘Tabletop dancers? Need a bloody ambulance on standby outside. Mind you, that fuckin’ cook’ll need an ambulance if he doesn’t come in the door in two minutes.’

When the cook arrived, Flannery and I ate steak and onion sandwiches. From where we were sitting, I could see the wet road and the entrance to my lane. I was washing down the last bite when Allie’s truck turned in. We had work to do on the gateposts.

I woke early, stood in the shower thinking about the heft of Lee-Anne’s breasts, the sight of Allie naked. Then I thought about being fifteen, digging out rotten stumps from grey rock and unyielding clay, face down in fifty centimetres of damp and cold crawl space, breathing the dank, dead air under a farmhouse near Yass. Crawling out, hearing footsteps on the boards above me, turning over and looking up through a gap between old floorboards, parched boards, tongues shrunk, parted from their grooves, unmated. Seeing from below a woman, a naked