Petersen came in just before I left. ‘So, you are back again. What you got for me this time?’ And when I told him, he said, ‘Golden Soak, is it? Always Golden Soak. But you are lucky man you do not also lose your life, eh?’ He had read all about it in the Miner and the West Australian. ‘And Blackridge. They have a drill working here now and there is talk they make a strike.
So everything you touch …’ He grinned his horsey grin, slapped me on the back and added, ‘You want I should do this analysis fast like before, eh?’
I nodded. ‘If you can. I have to get backing.’
‘Ja. Everybody haf to get backing. But you are English. I like Englishmen, and very much when they are lucky. I haf two rush yobs first. Very important. Per’raps tomorrow evening. Okay?’
From there I had gone to the broker’s office in the Palace building and his wife had directed me to the bar next door where he was drinking with a client. I had a quick beer with him and he told me Kadek’s Newsletter tipping the shares had come out that morning. Lone Minerals were now 84 and he was convinced they would go higher. I arranged with him to sell at a dollar, which would give me just enough to take up the whole of the option Freeman had given me, and I left him with that heightened sense of living that comes with the excitement of gambling, like a man who has put his shirt on an outsider and sees it coming up on the rails to challenge the favourite.
I was pushing my way through the crowded bar, feeling in tune with all the hubbub of speculation around me, my mind leaping to the prospect of making enough to get an IP survey carried out, perhaps start a drilling programme, when my arm was seized and I turned to find Culpin beside me. He was unshaven, his hat pushed back on his head and his heavy features beaded with sweat. ‘Where’s Kennie?’
He had gone to see his mother, but I didn’t tell him that. ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said.
‘But he’s here with you?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer that. ‘You packed it in, eh? I don’t blame you. Nasty business.’ He stood there, swaying slightly. ‘It’s murder — near as dammit — from what I hear.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I asked him.
‘Golden Soak — an’ that man Garrety. I don’t want Kennie mixed up in it, see.’
The man was full of liquor and I started to move away from him. But his grip on my arm tightened. ‘Two men killed. That right, innit? An’ one of them Mcllroy’s nephew. Blew the whole mine down on top of them.’
‘It was an accident.’
‘Oh, sure.’ His voice was heavy with sarcasm. ‘But a bloody convenient one, eh?’
‘What do you know about it?’
He grinned at me slyly. ‘Not as much as you, I bet. But Christ! It’s obvious, innit? Westrop trying to get into that mine and Mcllroy’s body never found.’
I was shocked. It was as though my own thoughts had been projected all the hundreds of miles from Coondewanna to this bar. ‘Is that what they’re saying now?’
‘What else? They always was a law to themselves, the Garretys. Don’t forget I was up there as a kid. There was talk then.’ He reached to the bar for his drink, swallowed it at a gulp and banged the glass down on the counter. ‘I don’t give a bugger what happened to Westrop, or McIlroy for that matter. All I care about is what they were after, same as you. Think I don’t know you were checking at the Miner offices last time you were here?’ He leaned close to me, his voice a whisper, the smell of whisky strong on his breath and his eyes red-rimmed. ‘Well, where is it?’ he demanded urgently. ‘You’ve found out, haven’t you? You wouldn’t be here otherwise.’ And then on a wheedling note, ‘Come on, Alec. Be a pal. I let you in on Blackridge.’
I jerked my arm free, anger mounting as I thought of Janet’s father. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Sure you do.’ He was grinning again. ‘I’m talking about a mountain of copper somewhere out in the Gibson beyond Disappointment. That’s what it’s all about, innit — Pat McIlroy and his Monster.’
The sins of the father! I could remember the blank look in Ed Garrety’s eyes as he had said that.
‘Now come on, Alec.’ The wheedling note was stronger now. ‘You’re new out here. You’d never get through on your own. And all Kennie knows about living bush is what he learned from me. I’ve been a dogger all through that country, see?’
‘When did you first hear this rumour?’ I asked him. ‘Who told you?’
‘I don’t know.’ I watched him searching back in his fuddled mind, his forehead creased in a frown. ‘It was straight after the Miner had reported the inquest. They were all talking about it here in the bar. And then somebody — I don’t remember who it was — some Company man, he said it’d be worth hiring one of the Trans-West Cessnas an’ having a dekko. But nobody ever found anything just flying over the country, ‘cept that fellow Hancock. Iron ore’s different though, an’ if it could be seen from the air somebody would’ve found it by now with all them survey parties skittering around. No. You’ve got to hoof it into the desert, and that means an abo or somebody like me who knows how to live bush in that sort of country.’ He stared at me. ‘You think it over. You know where to find me. An’ tell Kennie …’ He hesitated. ‘Tell him to come home. Edith misses him.’ His hand was on my arm again and suddenly there were tears in his eyes. Tell him that, will you?’
* * * *
But Kennie was still with me when I started north again two days later. If his mother had been on her own he would have stayed, but not with his father there. ‘Mebbe I lack guts,’ he said. ‘But I’m scared of him. An’ he’s a b-bastard — a real bastard.’ This was after I had passed on Chris Culpin’s message, alone in the room we were sharing in the Norrises’ house on Cheetham. Now, as we headed up towards Leonora, with the late afternoon sun straight in our eyes, I glanced at his quiet, serious face and realized he wasn’t a boy any more. He had grown up a lot in the week we had been together.
Perhaps in saying that I am trying to evade responsibility and so lessen the sense of guilt I had before the end. Driving north that day all I knew was that I was glad he was still with me. We had grown accustomed to each other. And in my case, I think it was more than that. I had grown fond of him. He was the only real friend I had in Australia. No, not just in Australia — anywhere, in fact. I had no friends, no wife, no relations, nobody — only Kennie sitting there beside me, the young face set beneath the silky beard as he watched the tarmac reel out ahead of us, a dark ribbon between the red gravel verges. But the guilt remains with me, the feeling that I should have refused to take him. But even then I am not sure he would have gone back to his family. Anyway, he was old enough to make up his own mind. And once we had started north I had other things to think about.
The analysis had turned out much as we had expected, the rock samples blank but some of the din containing a percentage of quartz granules with just a trace of gold and antimony. Enough at any rate to foster the belief that far back in geological time, millions of years ago, the reef quartz had banded the slope of Coondewanna above the gully. But the slope was still the same iron formation, and though the rainfall was minimal, it was still sufficient to have washed the reef traces down from higher up on the mountain’s shoulder. Only the hollow offered a reasonable chance of the surface indications being repeated at depth.
My problem was really a financial one. I had been lucky. The broker had held off selling my Lone Minerals for another day, and by then the price had risen to 106. After taking up my option, I reckoned I had enough cash in my pocket to hire a rig and drill one hole, at most two. The alternative was an IP survey to give me readings that would register an anomaly if any existed. But I would still have to drill into that anomaly to prove that it was a continuation of the reef. So it was a question of either playing safe and proceeding step by step, or of cutting the corners and putting down a drill.