Free An Iron Rose by Peter Temple Page A

cross the street. Another bugger I wouldn’t go to his bloody funeral.’
     

Alex Rickard was ten minutes late but that was a misdemeanour by his standards. ‘Mac, Mac,’ he said, sliding onto the plastic barstool seat. ‘Back from the fucking dead. Where you been, mate?’
    ‘Here and there,’ I said. ‘What is it with you and these grunge pits?’
     
    Alex looked around at the pub: yellow smoke-stained walls, plastic furniture, scratched and cigarette-burnt formica-topped bar, three customers who looked like stroke victims. It was on Sydney Road and John Laws was braying at full volume to overcome Melbourne’s worst traffic noise. The house smell was a mixture of burnt diesel, stale beer, and carbolic. ‘I dunno,’ he said, shrugging his boxer’s shoulders in the expensive sports coat. ‘It’s the kind of bloke I am. True to my roots.’
     
    ‘That’s the thing they all value most about you,’ I said.
     
    ‘You drinking?’ said the barman. He’d modelled his appearance on the barmen in early Clint Eastwood westerns.
     
    ‘Beer,’ said Alex. I ordered a gin and tonic. I wasn’t going to drink anything that came up from this pub’s cellar.
     
    ‘No tonic,’ said the barman. ‘No call for it.’
     
    ‘What do they drink gin with?’ I said.
     
    ‘Coke,’ said the barman. ‘You drink Coke with gin.’
     
    ‘Whisky and water,’ I said. ‘You got any call for water?’
     
    He muttered something and left.
     
    Alex rubbed the tip of his long nose between finger and thumb. ‘Y’know a Painter and Docker got it right where you’re sitting?’ he said. ‘Bloke walked in the door, up behind him, took this big fucking .38 out the front of his anorak. Three shots. Bang. Bang. Bang. Back of the head, two in the spine. Walks out the door. Gone.’
     
    ‘They get him?’ I said.
     
    ‘No witnesses,’ Alex said. ‘Sixteen people in the pub, no-one saw a fucking thing.’
     
    ‘Funny that,’ I said. ‘You get so wrapped up talking footy, they shoot someone next to you, covers you with blood, you don’t notice a thing.’
     
    The drinks arrived. Alex paid, keeping his wallet well below the counter. ‘So they say you looked the other way on Lefroy,’ he said, not looking at me.
     
    ‘Who’s they?’
     
    ‘I done a few jobs for Scully.’
     
    ‘Scully tell you?’
     
    ‘Nah. The offsider.’
     
    ‘Hill? Bianchi?’
     
    ‘Hill. Bianchi’s dead. Went to Queensland and drowned.’
     
    ‘Wonderful news,’ I said. ‘Saves me killing him. Listen, your boy any good on the Human Services Department?’
     
    He flicked his eyes at me, away, back. ‘Human Services? What the fuck you want with Human Services? They dealing now?’
     
    ‘It’s a private thing. I need the records of a place called Kinross Hall for 1985. It’s a kind of girls’ home. Who went in, who came out. All that.’
     
    Alex drank some beer, took out a packet of Camel. ‘Smoke?’
     
    I shook my head.
     
    He lit up, blew plumes out of his nostrils. ‘Could be easy. Could be fucking hard. It’s in the database, my boy’s probably in there like a honeymoon prick. Not—well, there’s ways. But it’ll cost.’
     
    ‘How long to find out?’
     
    Alex took out a grubby little notebook and a pen. ‘How d’ya spell this place?’
     
    I told him.
     
    ‘Eighty-five. What’s the mobile?’
     
    I gave him my number.
     
    ‘He can probably get in and look at the database inside an hour. Not there, I’ll have to think. I’ve got this sheila in the archives, knockers absent but Jesus, the arse on her. She can get all kinds of stuff. Thinks it’s sexy. Like I’m a spy.’
     
    ‘In your special way, Alex,’ I said, ‘you are. Want to talk about money?’
     
    He gave me a long look, drawing on the cigarette. There was something of the fox about him. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Maybe if we have to go the next step.’
     
    I was looking at the military history shelf in Hill of Content