Ecstasy Lake by Alastair Sarre Page B

outback, searching for the ultimate find. He must have known this state better than almost anyone. He must have liked his own company. Hiskey had had big dreams, but that was all they had been, said Uncle Walter, with a sad twist of his nose. He stepped down in silence.
    Tasso walked to the dais, armed with a sheet of paper. He put the paper on the dais and studied it for a while, composing himself. He looked up, his face drained.
    â€˜Mick was a mate of mine,’ he said. I shifted position for a look at Sonia, the wife, who was sitting in the front row next to Fern. I could only see part of her face, but it was a tearful part. ‘We met on our first day at university,’ said Tasso. ‘The first thing that struck me about him was that he had a loud laugh.’ He looked around. ‘I’m sure you all remember that. Mick had a laugh like a smoker’s cough. When it got out of control it sounded as if he was about to hoick one of his lungs onto the table.’ A few people laughed. ‘But he wasn’t dying of lung cancer, he was just having a good time. He loved to party.’ There were nods, and another murmur of laughter. ‘Another thing I liked about him, and of course I didn’t know this until later, was that he was a fighter. It got him into trouble.’ He paused and looked around the audience. ‘I had been seeing a fair bit of Mick in the last few weeks and months. He had fallen on hard times. Things weren’t going his way. But he was fighting. He was fighting drug addiction, he was fighting his business partner, he was fighting his wife.’ Tasso looked at Sonia, whose mouth opened in shock.
    â€˜How dare you,’ said someone in the audience.
    â€˜I’m sorry, but I have to be honest,’ said Tasso. He waved his arms, as he always did when he got excited. ‘Mick was fighting back. And then he was murdered.’ Tasso’s arms landed, and he gripped the lectern. ‘As Uncle Walter said, Mick spent most of his adult life in remote parts of this country, scratching the land and searching, searching for that big ore deposit that would make someone a billionaire and help grow this country. He never stopped looking. Walter was right—Mick must have known this state better than anyone; it was his life’s work. He loved the outback. I said he liked to party, but he also liked to go out back. If he had not been murdered—brutally murdered—he would be out there now. He was a talented geologist, one of the best, and a fighter. My bet is that he fought his murderer to the end.’ He looked deliberately around the audience. ‘I promise you now I will honour that fight. I will do my best to bring his murderer to justice.’ Someone started to applaud, and a few others joined in. ‘Now we lay Mick Hiskey to rest,’ said Tasso. ‘I’ll miss his company. I’ll miss his laugh. I’ll miss him . We say goodbye to a man. A flawed man, yes, but he was my friend.’ Tasso sat down.
    That was about the end of proceedings. I was surprised to see Tasso line up to take the sacrament from the priest, who then waved around incense and led us in a final hymn. I didn’t know the words or the tune but was moved by it anyway.
    When it was over I waited outside with the rest of the party, and we formed a guard of honour. It was the start of a long dusk; the gravestones to the west were casting dismal shadows, dark fingers reaching towards us from the dry earth. The sun dipped and the sky faded, and the clouds were painted in farewell pink and purple, reminding us that sometimes the most beautiful things were the most goddamn sad.
    The television crews were keeping their distance although no doubt still getting plenty of footage of Harlin’s gang, which would be gold on the nightly news. Next to me was the forty-ish woman in the dark-blue jacket with white trim I’d seen inside the chapel. She wore sneakers, which