An Iron Rose (24 page)

Anne brought me up, my tongue tracing a line to her bellybutton, tip pushing into the whorl, turned me over, tartan skirt off and in the air, floating to the ground, knelt above me, pushing her hair back with one hand, holding the engorged thing with the other, leaning forward, shoulders, breasts bigger, flushed with blood, kissing me, sucking my lips, her lips pulling mine in, her hand drawing the thin foreskin back, down, slowly, tight, drum tight, edge of pain, exquisite. And then the instant beyond pleasure, the touch, the warm, wet, tight, yielding, nipping, teasing, enfolding, gripping.

‘Yes,’ she said, sliding down, sitting on me to the hilt, ecstatic pubic junction. Beautiful, abandoned, impaled jockey, grinding, bending backwards, breasts flattening, nipples, ribs, hipbones, tendons in her neck sticking out, ‘Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh fuck, Jesus Christ, yes.’

We didn’t do the mill inspection; it would have to wait. We kissed goodbye outside, against her car, lingering kiss, kisses, almost started the whole thing up again.

I was about ten kilometres from home, happy, at peace for a moment, driving in the dark down a winding lonely stretch without farmhouses. A siren came on behind me, harsh, braying sound, happiness disrupted, rear-view mirror full of flashing orange light.

I slowed, went onto the verge, stopped.

The car pulled up close behind me but much further off the road.

I rolled down the window, waited.

A middle-aged cop, moustache, leather jacket, no cap, appeared at the window.

‘Licence,’ he said, tired voice.

‘What’s this about?’ I said. ‘I wasn’t speeding.’

‘Licence, please,’ he repeated.

I found it in my wallet, handed it over.

He shone his torch on it. ‘MacArthur J. Faraday?’

‘Yes.’

‘This your current address?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mind stepping out of the vehicle. Sir.’

‘Jesus,’ I said, got out. Bitter cold outside, no moon, north wind humming in the trees. The dog made his warning sound.

‘Quiet,’ I said ‘Stay.’

‘Turn and face the vehicle, please, hands on top,’ the cop said.

‘What’s going on here?’ I said. ‘There’s no…’

‘Do as I say, please. This’ll only take a minute. We’re looking for stolen goods.’

I turned and assumed the position.

‘Pace back, please.’

I took the pace, weight on my hands, unbalanced, leaning on the freezing vehicle.

A second cop came around the back of the Land Rover, short, pale hair slicked down, head just an extension of his thick neck. He had no visible eyebrows and a nose like the teat of a baby’s dummy.

He walked straight to me, swung his left leg, kicked my left leg out backwards, hit me in the back of the neck with a round side-on swing of his fist.

Everything went red, black, white, unbearable pain behind the eyes, in the bones of my head. I didn’t even feel myself fall, land on the wet tarmac.

The next thing I registered was a heavy weight, a foot between my shoulder blades, something cold and hard pressing against the cavity under my left ear.

The muzzle of a revolver.

The pain seemed to dissolve. Cold and rough tarmac against the face, chill wind down here at ground level, smell of Anne on my shirt, French perfume, delicious Anne. I registered that but all I felt was sad. Sad and stupid. The watchful years, the looking for the signs, the ingrained disbelief about everything. For nothing. This is a stupid way to go, I thought. Careless. What would Berglin say?

‘Bobby said to say goodbye,’ said the middle-aged cop. ‘Be here to say it himself, only he’s got better things to do.’

He pulled my head back by the hair, painful, changed the angle of the muzzle to make sure he blew my brain away.

Headlights. Coming the way I’d come.

‘Fuck,’ said the man. ‘Don’t move.’ He took the barrel away from my ear, pushed down harder on my spine with his foot.

A vehicle slowed, slowed, almost stopping. Went past us. Stopped.

I turned my head, saw the driver’s door of a ute open, stocky frame come out, curly hair.

Flannery. On his way to the pub.

‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘What the fuck’s this?’

‘It’s an arrest, sunshine,’ the neckheaded cop said. ‘Get back in your vehicle and drive on immediately. Now. Or you’re under arrest for obstructing a police officer.’

I couldn’t see the expression on Flannery’s face but I could see the shrug.

‘Okay, okay, I’m going,’ he said. ‘You could’ve asked nicely.’

He got back into the ute. Trouble getting it into gear, clutch grating.

‘He ID us?’ the middle-aged cop said.

‘This light?’ Neckhead said. ‘No fucking way. He gets round the bend, buzz this cunt.’

Flannery revved his engine.

Hope gone.

And then Flannery’s ute was coming at us in reverse, engine screaming.

‘Jesuschrist!’ the cop standing on me shouted.

His foot came off my spine.

I tucked my legs in, rolled to my right, heard Flannery’s ute hit flesh and bone, brakes squeal, shouting.

I got around the front of the Land Rover, stood up. Flannery in first gear, coming back past me.

The cop he’d bumped was up, walking towards the police car, holding his left arm up by the elbow, screaming, ‘Kill the fucking cunts!’

Neckhead, where?

I was backing off in Flannery’s direction.

Neckhead popped up behind the Land Rover tray, revolver combat grip, two-handed, steadied himself to shoot me.

The dog jumped three metres onto Neckhead’s outstretched arms, jaws lunging for his throat, silent.

Neckhead made a shrill sound, went over backwards, rolled, knocked the dog off with the revolver barrel, tried a shot at it, two shots, missed, lead singing off the tarmac.

I screamed for the dog, ran for Flannery’s ute, wrenched open the door, ute moving, half-in, foot dragging, heard the dog land on the back.

Flannery put his foot flat.

There was sound like a hard doorknock on the back window, followed by a smack on the roof above the rearview mirror.

I ducked, looked at the window: neat bullet hole, spider-web of cracks around it.

‘Fuck,’ said Flannery. ‘Couldn’t they just give you a ticket?’

I breathed heavily for a while, got my breath back. ‘One tail light out,’ I said. ‘Attracts the death penalty. They coming?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Reversed over, attacked by dog, probably think, shit, let him off this time.’

I got out the mobile phone Berglin had insisted on leaving with me, found the number he’d written on a blank card, punched it in. Berglin answered immediately.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘that loop you were talking about.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Count me in. Two blokes in cop uniforms just tried to kill me. Told me Bobby said to say goodbye.’

‘Bobby? That’s our Bobby, is it?’

‘I only know one Bobby.’

‘Yeah. One Bobby’s enough. Bears thinking about this. Good timing though. We’ve found the lady in question. Today. This afternoon.’

‘Far?’

‘From you? Five, five and a half hours.’

‘Let’s have it.’

When I’d put the phone away, Flannery said, ‘What was it you said you did before you took up the metal?’

You couldn’t lie to a man who would reverse over a policeman for you.

‘I didn’t say. Federal cop. Drug cop.’

‘That’s was, is it?’

‘Very was. But there’s stuff left over, unfinished stuff. Some stuff’s never finished. Glad you came along then. Thanks.’

‘Done it for a blind bloke,’ Flannery said. ‘What now?’

Home wasn’t safe anymore. The only real home I’d ever had. My father’s house, his workshop, his forge, his tools. The only place he’d ever felt settled, his demons banished. For a while at least. And bit by bit, over the years I’d lived there, I’d banished my demons too. Found a life that wasn’t based on watching and lying and plotting, on using people, laying traps, practising deceit. But I’d brought a virus with me, carried it like a refugee from some plague city, a carrier of a disease, hiding symptoms, hoping against hope they would go away. And for a time they had. And I was happy.

But that life was over. Men in police uniforms came to execute you on the roadside beside dark potato fields. That was a definite sign the new life was over.

‘Reckon you could drive me and Lew over to Stan’s? I want him to stay there. We can pick up the Land Rover on the way back?’

‘If I get a drink after that.’

‘For you, Flannery,’ I said, ‘it’s a possibility. I’m considering rewarding you with a few bottles of Boag’s. Tasmania’s finest.’

‘Foreign piss,’ Flannery said.

I didn’t go into the house until I’d stood in the dark and watched Lew moving around, making supper, normal behaviour. Then I went in and made the arrangements.

Beachport in winter would be a hard thing to sell: dirty grey sky, icy wind off whitecapped Rivoli Bay whipping the tall pines, seven cars, two dogs, and a man on a bicycle in half an hour. But no-one had to sell the little boomerang-shaped town to Darren Bianchi’s widow. She chose it.

I slept in a motel in Penola, little place out on the flats, vine country, turning on the too-soft mattress, half-awake, feeling the gun behind my ear, hearing the man say
Bobby said to say goodbye.

I got up early, feeling as if I’d never been to bed, put on a suit and tie, ate eggs and fatty bacon at a truck stop, got to Beachport in time to see the former Cindy Taylor, former Mrs Cindy Bianchi, present Marie Lachlan, open her hairdressing salon. It was called Hair Today and it was a one-person show.

Marie was dressed for the climate: red ski pants, boots, big red top with a hood. I gave her twenty minutes to settle in, walked across the road, opened the door.

It was warm inside, clean-smelling, hint of coffee. Marie was in a sort of uniform now, pale pink, talking on the phone, back to me, didn’t seem to hear me come in. She put the phone down, half turned and caught sight of me in the mirror. Her head jerked around. She was in her late thirties, short dark hair, pretty in a catlike way, little too much make-up.

Her eyes said
Oh shit.

‘
G’day,’ I said. ‘Do men’s haircuts? Got a meeting in Adelaide this afternoon, looking pretty scruffy.’

She was going to say no but she hesitated, changed her mind. ‘Sure do,’ she said. ‘Come and sit down at the basin.’

I went over and sat in a low chair, back to a basin.

‘You’re out early,’ she said.

‘Too early. Drove from Geelong yesterday, stayed over in Mount Gambier. Thought I’d come down, have a look at the coast along here. First time I’ve been this way.’

‘Pretty ordinary in winter,’ she said. ‘Lean your head back.’

She wet my hair with warm water, began to shampoo it, a kind of scalp massage with fingertips, soothing.

‘Mind you,’ she said, ‘it’s pretty ordinary in summer too.’

She was relaxing. I could hear it in her voice. People who come to kill you don’t take time out for you to give them a shampoo and haircut first.

‘So what do you do?’ she said.

‘Liquor rep,’ I said. ‘Well, wine rep these days. Mostly wine. Like wine?’

‘Don’t mind a few wines,’ she said, fingers working in my hair. ‘Like champagne. You carry champagne?’

‘We’re agents for Thierry Boussain, French. Terrific drop. No-one’s ever heard of it, small firm. All people know is the Moët, Bollinger, that stuff, produce it in the millions of bottles. Thierry’s exclusive, few thousand cases.’

‘Never heard of it,’ she said. ‘Might try it one day.’

She dried my hair with a towel. ‘Cutting time. Sit in the first chair. Warmest place.’

I changed chairs.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘how do you want it?’

‘Actually,’ I said, looking at her in the mirror, ‘I think I’ll give the cutting part a miss, Cindy.’

Cindy froze. Terror in her eyes, tiny step backwards.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not bad news. Bad news doesn’t have a shampoo first, anyone can come in, see me in the chair, get a good look at me.’

‘Who are you?’ she said, voice controlled, scared but under control.

‘A friend,’ I said. ‘Someone who wants you to stay alive. We want to talk to you about Darren. You talked to the police, I know. This is different.’

‘How different?’ She wasn’t looking at me, looking towards the door, possibly calculating her chances of reaching it.

‘Cindy,’ I said. ‘Look at me, look at me. Don’t be a dork, think you can run out the door, that’ll save you. Nothing to fear from me. I’m your best chance of staying alive. Forget witness protection, that number they gave you to ring. Rang it now, you’d be saved, would you? Batman, out of the sky, saves you?’

She swallowed. ‘That’s Superman. Batman comes in the Batmobile.’