had a way of tossing their heads and flicking their hair from below with their fingertips as if it were tickling their necks. In the street, it was all four-wheel-drives, BMWs and Saabs.
I wasn’t going towards Mount Buller. I was going northeast. On the way to Whitfield, following Gaby’s instructions, I turned right onto a dirt road, turned again, again, thought I’d missed the place, found it, a brick, stone and weatherboard house, low, sprawling, expensive, a long way from the road, at the end of a long curving avenue of poplars, bare. Off to the right was a corrugated-iron barn and beyond that what looked like stables. Gaby had done well for herself.
Going through the gate either triggered something or sound travelled long distances in this air. A woman was waiting near the barn when I came around the final bend. She pointed to the road that led to the stables and turned to walk in that direction. She was big, tall, not fat yet, pale hair in a ponytail, dark glasses, sleeveless quilted jacket.
There was a house beyond the stables, an old stone building with a weatherboard extension. It said
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.’
