Ecstasy Lake by Alastair Sarre Page A

road. The convoy made its way to the chapel at just faster than walking pace.
    â€˜Hello,’ said Tarrant. ‘A bikie cortege. Hiskey did have some interesting mates.’
    The two lead riders were Harlin and Coy, both in leathers. On the back of Harlin’s bike was Melody, wearing an open-faced helmet, high heels and a trench coat. Harlin and Coy stopped their bikes outside the chapel and put down their stands. Melody was first to dismount. She removed her helmet and shook her head to restore the messiness to her hair. She shrugged off her coat to reveal a modest black dress and headed into the chapel, elegant on her high heels. Harlin and Coy waited as the others parked their bikes.
    â€˜The one on the left is Harlin,’ said Tarrant in my ear. I could smell his chewing gum.
    â€˜I know. I met him on Friday night.’
    Tarrant drew back and gave me a ‘why am I not surprised you’re up to your neck in shit again?’ look and a slow chew of his gum. ‘ Did you. Before or after the brawl?’
    â€˜Before. Harlin wasn’t there for the brawl. It was a good brawl, wasn’t it?’
    â€˜I suppose it was. Several hospitalisations, including for a fractured skull, a compound fracture to the arm and internal bleeding, a couple of knife wounds, various traumatised teenagers and a couple of hundred grand in property damage. Yeah, it was fine. Were you at White Pointer when it happened?’
    â€˜I was.’
    â€˜Did you see who fired the shots?’
    I hesitated. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a witness in a gang war. Witnesses in gang wars might find themselves without faces.
    â€˜I was too busy panicking. I heard you got someone, anyway.’
    He studied me and sighed. ‘I’m so glad you’re back in my life, West. I’m starting to feel the stress already.’ He chewed his gum and looked as stressed as a headstone.
    Harlin was leading his gang into the chapel. He removed his sunglasses as he entered and made the sign of the cross. I nodded to Tarrant. ‘I’d better go. See you later.’
    â€˜No doubt.’
    I crossed the road and negotiated my way among the bikes. Melody had left her trench coat draped over the seat of Harlin’s bike, which gave me an idea. Tarrant had turned and was plodding towards the television crews. I found a scrap of paper in my wallet and wrote a number on the back of it with a pen. I put it in one of the pockets of the coat and drifted into the chapel.
    It was a tiny chapel, and it was packed. Women and some of the older folk were seated, and the rest of us stood. The ceremony didn’t take long. The priest read from his Bible, and a few of the mourners joined him in a chant and said ‘amen’ a few times. The priest spoke about Hiskey’s soul and how it would somehow find his body again at a later date. The bikers at the back were quiet during the service and added a fair bit of volume, if not much tune, to the hymns. I stood just inside the entrance to the chapel and counted heads—there were forty-two, not including the priest and the guest of honour, who waited inside a shiny black coffin, feet towards the audience, with all the time in the world. Melody was sitting straight-backed and solemn next to a forty-ish woman I didn’t know wearing a dark-blue jacket with white trim.
    A man who the priest introduced as ‘Michael’s Uncle Walter’ gave the eulogy, standing on a dais to one side of the altar. He was a rotund character with a red face and wispy grey hair that had receded to the back of his head like clouds blown to the far side of a hill. He looked like he could do with a drink and sounded like he’d already had a few. Mick Hiskey was a northern suburbs boy and proud of it, he said. He was bright, but he hadn’t always tried his hardest at school. He had worked hard at Black Hill, though; he must have walked thousands of miles across the South Australian