I read on, through 1987 and 1988, 1989, 1990. I went back and read 1982 to 1984. Then I sat back and thought. About fifteen employers’ names occurred regularly across the years, people who gave Ned jobs big and small. I looked at 1982 again. Two employers appeared for the first time: J. Harris of Alder Lodge, the horse property, and Kinross Hall. I read forward. Alder Lodge became a regular source of work, most recently in May when Ned repaired a kicked-about stable. Kinross Hall employed him three times in 1982, for two long periods in 1983, for almost three months in 1984, and in 1985 he did five separate jobs there, the last a three-week engagement ending on 22 November. That was the end of Kinross Hall. Ned never worked there again.
I told Lew where I was going and the dog and I walked over to the pub. Half a dozen or so regulars were in place, including, down at the end of the bar talking to Vinnie, Mick Doolan. He was a small man, chubby, florid, head of tight grey curls and eyes as bright and innocent as a baby’s. Everything about Mick was Australian except his Irish accent. I sat down next to him.
‘Well, Moc,’ he said, ‘just sayin to Vinnie, can’t get over Ned goin out like that. No sense in it. Not Neddy.’
‘No,’ I said.
He drank some stout. ‘Had these police fellas around today. Murderers roamin the countryside and they’re out makin life difficult for small businessmen such as misself.’
Mick was a dealer in what he called Old Wares, mostly junk, and the police took a keen interest in the provenance of his stock.
I said, ‘Small businessman? The police think you’re a small receiver of stolen property.’
He sighed. ‘Well and that’s exactly what I’m sayin, Moc. They form theories based on nothin but ignorance and then they devote the taxpayers’ time to provin them. And naturally they can’t. Vinnie, give us a coupla jars and a bag of the salt and vinegar. Two bags.’
‘One, Vinnie,’ I said. ‘Mick, what’s Kinross Hall?’
‘Kinross Hall? It’s what they used to call a place of safety. For naughty girls. They won’t let you in, Moc.’
‘Did Ned ever talk about working there? Late ’85?’
He scratched his curls. ‘Well, you know Ned. Not one to gossip.’
Vinnie arrived with the drinks and the chips. I paid.
I persisted. ‘Did he ever say anything about the place?’
Mick munched on chips, washed them down with a big swallow, wiped his mouth. ‘From what I could gather,’ he said, ‘he thought the place should be closed down. He said he wouldn’t work there again.’
‘Why?’
‘He heard some story. Went to see the police about it and they told him basically piss off, mind yer own business. That’s how I remember it.’
‘What kind of story?’
‘I couldn’t tell you. He never said. You know Ned. Y’had to read his mind.’ He offered me the chip packet. ‘Now you’re a cert for Satdee? And you’d be settin an example to the young fellas by attendin Wednesday trainin. I’ve bin workin on a new strategy, could be revolutionary, turnin point in the history of the game.’
I said, ‘New strategy? What, we kick a goal? That’ll shock ’em rigid.’
A girl with a broken neck, a naked girl, thrown down a mine shaft and the entrance covered. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
I thought about these things all through the morning as Allie Morris and I worked at the forge on an order for four dozen garden-hose hooks. It was pleasant enough work once we had forty-eight lengths: heat the flat steel to glowing red, use jaws in the anvil hardie hole to put a bend in one end, bend sixty centimetres down to make a flap, squeeze the top half in the vice to make a doubled length. Then curve the rest into a three-quarter circle over the anvil horn. The job was finished by putting a stake point on the end that went into the ground. Two people working with red-hot metal can be awkward, but we found a rhythm quickly, taking turns at heating, bending and hammering, Allie’s deftness compensating for my occasional clumsiness.
We finished just before one pm: four dozen hose hooks, neatly stacked on Allie’s truck to be dropped off for priming and painting.
‘That’s a day’s work,’ Allie said. ‘Does the pub do a sandwich?’
We took turns to clean up in the bathroom I’d built on to the office so that I didn’t have to traipse into the house in a filthy condition, and walked down the road in silence. The dog appeared ahead of us: taken a short cut through the neighbour’s paddock. The sky was clearing, the cloud cover broken, harried fragments streaming east in full retreat. Suddenly the world was high and light and full of promise. I hadn’t talked much to Allie since she started. She had a reserved way about her, not rude but not forthcoming. And I didn’t have any experience of working relationships like this. Man and a woman working with hot metal.
At the pub, it was just us and Vinnie and two hard-looking women in tracksuits playing pool. The fat one had a lipstick smear at the edge of her mouth. It looked like a bruise when she bent her head. Allie put the beers down and said, ‘Know someone called Alan Snelling?’
‘Know who he is.’
‘What’s he do?’
‘Runs a few horses. Nice house. Nice cars. Gets married every now and again.’
‘He asked me out.’
‘Available to be asked out?’ I instantly regretted the question.
She smiled, drank some beer, wiped away a thin tidemark of foam on her upper lip with a fingertip. ‘I’m between engagements. He was at Glentroon Lodge yesterday, looking at a horse. Asked my opinion.’
‘Who wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘An older man. They can be attracted to capable young women.’
She put her head on one side. ‘Older man? He’s about your age.’
‘That’s what I mean.’
She laughed. Vinnie arrived with the toasted sandwiches.
‘That was quick,’ I said.
‘Cook’s day off,’ said Vinnie. ‘Everything’s quicker on his day off. Including the time. Passes too fast.’
We talked business while we ate. On our way back, I said, ‘About Alan Snelling.’
‘Yes?’
‘You want to think.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Alan’s lucky,’ I said. ‘His old mum popped off. Nobody thought she had much, just the house, falling-over weatherboard. Not so. She had lots of things. Jewellery, coin collections, stamp collections, and a box with about $100,000 in cash in it. All up, worth about $400,000.’
‘Well, I suppose there’s an explanation,’ said Allie.
I said, ‘Also, Alan had a business partner, ran their little video hire business in Melbourne. Top little business, big as a phone booth, cash flow like Target. Then the partner was working out in his home gym and the machine collapsed on him. Fatal.’
‘That’s not lucky,’ Allie said.
‘They had key executive insurance,’ I said. ‘Half a million.’
We were going down the lane, when Allie said, ‘What’s that about his mother mean? I don’t get it.’
‘People could think Alan was parking invisible earnings with his mother.’
‘Invisible? You mean illegal? Like drugs?’
I shrugged. ‘Among the possibilities.’
‘Jesus,’ Allie said. ‘How do you know this stuff?’
‘I forget where I heard it,’ I said.
Allie went off to a job. I should have worked on the knives but instead I rang the library at Burnley Horticultural College and asked them if they had any information on Harkness Park. The woman took my number. She rang back inside half an hour.
‘I’ve tracked down a dozen or so references to it,’ she said. ‘There’ll probably be more.’