And then he was telling me how, about two weeks before the cave-in, Weepy had walked into Jarra Jarra alone. The man had been little more than skin and bone, so weak he could hardly stand. ‘I found him out there by the old forge and then — ‘ he hesitated, his hand gripped tight on his glass as though to prevent it shaking. ‘Then my father took him straight off to the sacred place of his people — Father knew all the ritual, he was blood brother to one of the elders of Weepy’s tribe. What happened there I don’t know, but afterwards Weepy wouldn’t even admit he was with McIlroy in the Gibson.’
‘He told his son,’ I said.
‘Yes, he told Wolli — when he was dying.’
‘So Wolli knows what happened.’
He shook his head. ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’ He sounded a little vague. ‘Old Weepy knew the sort of man his son was. He told him just enough to ensure the bastard would keep his job here in Jarra Jarra.’ And then so softly I could barely hear him: The sins of the father,’ he breathed, ‘All my hopes, my plans, all my dreams for this place….’ He took a quick gulp at his drink, spilling some of it down his chin, wiping the liquor clear with his hand. ‘I was a kid then. Just a kid.’ He said it as though it cleared him of responsibility. ‘There was a war coming, thank God, and after that I was in the army.’ His eyes stared at me with an appalling blankness. ‘I was in the army within a month and I didn’t see this place or my father again for six years.’ He picked up the bottle, holding it to the light, then shared out the rest of it between us. ‘Well, what are the chances?’ he asked abruptly. ‘I have to think of Jan now, and you’re a mining man.’
‘A possibility, that’s all,’ I said. His mind had switched and I thought it best to take advantage of it. Mcllroy’s death was none of my business. That’s what I thought then, sitting there in that little hot room full of rock samples and old photographs. ‘Are you willing to let me do a survey up the top of the gully?’
‘Was that why you came back with this young student fellow?’
‘Yes. I was hoping to persuade you to let me do a geophysical, then perhaps drill. And no cost to you. I have some money now, a job I did for a mining company down in Kalgoorlie. The same people might be interested in the development of Golden Soak, provided, of course, my survey results — ‘
‘Not the mine,’ he said. ‘You keep clear of the mine. I don’t want anybody else — ’ His voice trailed off and for a moment he sat there hunched over the desk, lost in thought, his eyes blinking so that I thought for a moment he was going to burst into tears. But then he seemed to pull himself together. ‘The rock samples here — they’re all labelled. Go through them if you like. But they’re most of them from the flat land to the east. I never took samples from above the entrance. The faulting — It didn’t seem right, and the depth so much greater.’
‘The faulting doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘With modern techniques — ‘
‘Yes, of course. I’m only an amateur, ye’see.’ He leaned back in his chair, pushing his hand wearily up through his hair. ‘Well, that’s settled then.’ His voice sounded very tired.
‘I can go ahead?’
‘That’s what you wanted isn’t it? And if the reef continues … then maybe Jarra Jarra will be safe for another generation. Jan loves the place, y’know. She didn’t like Perth. She was happy down there for a while, at school. But she wouldn’t be happy…’ He was staring down at his glass. ‘Nor would I.’ He murmured. Then he drained the rest of his drink and got carefully to his feet. ‘Good luck!’ He held out his hand as though saying goodbye to me for good, and he had to brace himself against the desk.
That was all the agreement we ever had — a handshake. And he was so full of whisky I wondered if he knew what he was doing. There were other things, too. But I only worried about them later, when the men from Grafton Downs and Mt Newman had given up and gone, and Kennie and I were collecting samples from the steep slope of Coondewanna.
The sides of the gully were bare outcrops of red rock — part of what Kennie called a banded iron formation. The sides rose to a rim, and beyond the rim Mt Coondewanna leaned a shoulder gently towards the gap. No outcrops here, the surface of the ground coarse-grained silica with a sparse covering of spinifex, occasional patches of mallee. This shoulder was roughly on the line of the faulting I had seen below ground and it was from here that we collected the most promising samples. The flies were bad and it was very hot. We camped at the head of the gully where the air was cooler, a slight breeze funnelling through the Gap, and as the sun set the land to the west took on the colour of dried blood.
That night we slept under the stars, the sky burnt to a diamond clarity and not a sound anywhere until a dingo started calling from the gully below us. I was tired, but sleep did not come easily, my mind on the Golden Soak, and the lost, lonely cry of that dingo reminding me of the lives it had cost. I was thinking of Westrop, his body buried now under tons of rock, wondering about McIlroy. Had Westrop been right? Was Mcllroy’s body down there, too? Was that why Ed Garrety had fired that charge? I was desperate, he had said. Desperate for money, or because Golden Soak held a secret that must be kept at all costs?
It was the heat. The night was very hot and my mind in a world of fantasy and reality. God knows, Big Bill Garrety had had reason enough to kill the man. But to tell his doctor and not his son … Whatever the truth of it, Ed Garrety must have known. I was thinking of Drym then, the reek of that room and the candle flame burning — the picture in that newspaper, the blackened beams a skeletal cap to the gutted house. We all have our secrets …
‘You awake, Alec?’ Kennie rolled over on his swag, his eyes open. ‘I thought I heard something — a cry.’
‘A dingo,’ I said.
He lifted his head, listening. ‘Yes — of course. This place gives me the creeps.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘D’you believe in Quinkans?’
‘Quinkans?’
‘Mythical abo beings. Ghosts, if you like — Quinkans is the Queensland name. I read a book about them, by an Ansett pilot. I don’t know the name for them here, but they’ll be the same breed. They come out at night, and if they’re bad they’re killers. All abos believe that.’ He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘What time do you reckon we ought to leave tomorrow?
I didn’t answer, thinking of the inquest fixed for the day after and the evidence Ed Garrety would have to give.
‘Port Hedland’s a long way.’
‘We’ll decide in the morning.’ It would be an all night drive and at the end of it I would have to lie — unless Ed Garrety decided to tell them the truth. I was staring up at the stars, thinking of the Gibson and McIlroy and that abo walking out alive, trying to picture what had really happened, my thoughts ranging and the truth elusive. I lay there for a long time, dozing on the edge of my sleep, my mind groping for the solution to that thirty-year-old mystery and the sound of that dingo gradually fading until the next thing I knew the sun was up over the shoulder’s rim, a red-hot poker boring at my eyeballs.
Kennie was already up, a smell of wood smoke and the bacon sizzling. His body, crouched there, was a dark silhouette against the flaming sunrise. ‘Thought we’d better make an early start.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘Last night — that dingo startled me. I was only half awake.’
‘If we’d got a rig here,’ I murmured sleepily, ‘I think I’d take a chance and drill in that hollow over there.’
He nodded. ‘The best samples we got. But you haven’t got a rig and even if you had — ‘
‘We might be able to hire one,’ I said, remembering that Frenchman from New Caledonia.
We ate our breakfast, took final samples from the one part of the hollow we had not yet covered, and then we left. It was shortly after nine and we met Tom on the track to Jarra Jarra. He had a note from Janet to say that they had started at first light and that she was relying on me to make the coroner understand the dangerous state of the mine.