‘These clients of yours,’ Stan said, ‘they understand the magnitude of what they’re getting into here? Financially speaking.’
‘Leon Karsh,’ Francis said. ‘Food. Hotels. Travel. Leon and Anne Karsh.’
Stan looked at me. ‘Food. Hotels. Travel. How do you suggest we approach this thing, Mac?’
I said, ‘Food. Hotels. Travel. From the air. We approach it from the air. Aerial photography.’
‘My feelings exactly,’ Stan said. ‘Francis…?’
‘Aerial photographs?’ Francis said. ‘Are you mad? Can you imagine the expense? Why don’t you just poke around and…’
‘Aerial photographs,’ said Stan. ‘Aerial photographs and other research. Paid by the hour. Or we fuck off.’
You could see Francis’s fists clench in the Barbour’s roomy pockets. ‘Of course,’ he said through his capped teeth. ‘Whatever it takes.’ Pause. ‘Stan.’
Before we left, we went down the road and looked at the derelict three-storey bluestone flour mill on the creek at the bottom of the Karsh property. Flannery went off to look at the millrace pond. He was obsessed by machinery, the older the better. When he came back, he had a look of wonder on his face, the face of a naughty thirty-five-year-old boy. ‘Sluicegate’ll still work,’ he said. ‘Someone’s been greasing it.’
The wind had come up and, while we looked at the building, a slate tile came off the roof and sailed down into the poplar thicket along the creek.
‘Dangerous place to be, down the creek,’ Flannery said.
We drove back via the country cemetery where we’d buried Ned. It was a windblown acre of lopsided headstones and rain-eroded paths on a hillside above a weatherboard Presbyterian church. Sheep grazed in the paddock next door, freezing at the sight of the dog.
‘I’ll just pop this on,’ Stan said. He’d made a wreath out of ivy and holly for Ned’s grave. He hadn’t come to the funeral. ‘I can’t, Mac,’ he’d said on the phone. ‘I can’t go to funerals. Don’t know what it is. Something from the war. Ned knew. He’ll understand. Explain to the boy, will you?’
We all got out, into the clean, biting wind. This was my third visit to the place. My father’s grave was here too. You could see for miles, settled country, cleared, big round hills with necklaces of sheep, roads marked by avenues of bare poplars. Ned’s grave was a bit of new ploughing in the cemetery. Two magpies flew up angrily at our approach, disturbed at the rewarding task of picking over the rich new soil for worms.
Stan put the wreath on the mound. ‘Sleep well, old son,’ he said. ‘We’re all better for knowing you.’
I walked around to my father’s grave. It needed weeding and the silver paint in the incised inscription was peeling. Colin MacArthur Faraday, 1928–1992, it said. Under the date, a single line, Ned’s choice: A free and generous spirit come to rest.
Ned had made all his own arrangements for his burial: plot, coffin, picked and paid for. It was typical. He was organised in everything, probably why he got on so well with my father, who made life-changing decisions in an instant at crossroads and regarded each day as the first day of creation.
‘You ask yourself why,’ Stan said as we neared his gate.
‘You ask yourself who,’ I said.
Allie Morris had just arrived when we parked next to the smithy. She was wearing her bluey and a beanie and yellow leather stockman’s gloves. Although she hadn’t known Ned, she’d come to the funeral.
‘I saw your legs at the funeral,’ I said. ‘First time.’ She’d worn a dark-blue pinstripe jacket and skirt and a black shirt and black stockings. Ned would have approved. All the other men at the funeral did, many of them sober.
She scratched her forehead under the beanie with a thumbnail. ‘Legs?’ she said. ‘You only had to ask. What’s happening today?’
We went over to the office to look at the bookings and check the answering machine.
‘You’ve got two over at Miner’s Rest, then the Shetland lady wants you. After that, there’s a new one at Strathmore. In the badlands.’
‘Badlands,’ she said. ‘Take the badlands before the Shetlands. Last time one of the things tried to bite my bum.’
‘The Shetland,’ I said. ‘A discerning creature. Knows a biteworthy bum when it sees one.’
‘I’m not sure how to take that.’
‘The right way. Leave you free on Thursday? Bit of hot work here.’
After she’d gone, I got the forge going, got to work on some knifemaking.
We had the reading of the will the day after Ned’s funeral. He’d made it soon after I reopened the smithy opposite the pub in the potato country, an hour and a half from Melbourne. It was the year Lew came to live with him following his mother’s drowning off Hayman Island. Monica Lowey tried a lot of strange things in her time but scuba diving on speed was the least well-advised. The property was Ned’s main asset. He wanted it sold and the proceeds divided 60:40 between Lew and me, Lew to get his share when he was twenty-five. I got the tools and the backhoe. Lew got everything else. And then there was a little personal matter: he asked me to use some of my share to look after Lew.
I was working with the file when I heard the vehicle. I went to the door. Silver Holden. Shea and Cotter. Shea got out, carrying a plastic bag.
‘They say you can have this back,’ he said.
I took the bag. I’d forgotten how heavy the Python was.
Shea looked around as if contemplating another search. ‘Buy any rope recently?’
‘Fuck off,’ I said.
He gave me the look. ‘Not helpful, the Feds,’ he said. ‘Fucking up themselves.’
‘That right?’
Shea put both his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders, shuddered. ‘Jesus, how d’ya live out here? Santa’s dick. Fella down the road here, he can’t sleep. Knows your noise. Puts a time on you goin past. Good bit after the kid called the ambulance.’
‘Amazing what best practice detective work will reveal,’ I said. ‘What’s forensic say? There’s no way Ned would top himself.’
He sighed, moved his bottom jaw from side to side. ‘Listen, I asked before. In his background. Anything we should know? Old enemies, new ones, anything?’
I shook my head. ‘I never heard anything like that.’
‘Well,’ Shea said. He took his hands out of his pockets, rough, ruddy instruments, and rubbed them together. ‘It’s not clear he done himself or there’s help. Anyway, doesn’t look like he had health worries. Ring me you think of anything.’ He took out his wallet and gave me a card. As he was getting into the car, he said, ‘So there’s life after, hey?’
‘After what?’ I knew what he meant.
‘After being such a big man in the Feds they let you keep your gun.’
‘You’ve got to have life before to have life after,’ I said.
He pursed his lips, nodded, got in.
I went back to work on the knife, thinking about Ned. Suicide? The word burned in me.
It took me three days to clean out Ned’s house. I started outside, working my way through his collection of sheds, carting stuff back to my place. On the morning of day three, I steeled myself and went into the house. There had been no fire for more than a week now and the damp cold had come up from under the floorboards and taken hold.
I did Ned’s room first: there was no other way. I packed all the clothes into boxes, put the few personal things in Ned’s old leather suitcase. Then I started to pack up the rest of the house. It wasn’t a big job. Ned’s neatness and his spartan living habits made it easy. I left the sitting room for last. It was a big room, made by knocking two rooms into one. There were two windows in the north wall, between them an old table where Ned had done his paperwork. There were signs that the cops had taken a look. Both drawers were slightly open.