Rocking Horse Road Read Free Page A

around
one Sunday and, under his wife's hard eye, moved the
records over to Matt Templeton's place. Matt kept the
stuff in a spare room at his house for several years. But
when Matt got divorced, the first time, Grant Webb
took over for a while.
    Most of us have lived with the material for at
least a year or two. It's an odd thing to have all that
information in your house. You find yourself at three
in the morning reading through some article you've
read many times before, just looking for a new insight.
Or one of your kids will get up in the night for a glass
of water and will find you sitting in the dark next to
the stereo with your headphones on, re-listening to an
interview, the ghosts of the past whispering in your
ears. Anyway, it's a fact that having the stuff in the
house leaves you bleary eyed and twitchy.
    In the end we hired a lock-up. It's a high-ceilinged
room with tilt-slab-concrete walls and a roller door,
over in the industrial area, past the settling ponds. We
chose it mainly because it's only about ten minutes'
easy driving from New Brighton, where most of us
still find ourselves living. The lock-up is one of about
thirty in a compound surrounded by barbed-wire
fences, with security gates out the front. We each put
in a small amount every month for the rental and we
all know the code that opens the gates so that we can
get in any time of day or night. Most people use that
type of unit to store things like caravans and boats and
quad-bikes, or boxes of assorted crap — things that no
longer fit into their garages. Ours looks more like a
rugby club room. Roy Moynahan is a carpenter now,
like his dad was, and he built us a bar out of slabs of
macrocarpa. Unlike most of the other units ours has
electricity so there's a beer fridge that we keep stocked
— although there's always good-natured controversy
over what brands we keep in there. There's carpet
on the floor over the concrete, and an old pool table.
There's even a pretty comfortable bed down the back
so that we can sleep over if someone's had a few
too many drinks to drive, or a fight with the wife or
girlfriend.
    And, of course, the files are there. The original
material is stored in three tall grey filing cabinets.
There is also a large glass display-case for the bigger
items, and shelves for the reference books. One
whole corner of the room is set up as an office with
a computer, which has broadband internet access for
doing online research. There's a printer and a high-definition
scanner. A lot of the information we've
collected over the years has been entered into the
computer and stored on laser disks that we keep in a
safe in case of a fire. The same goes for the newspaper
articles.
    The picture of Lucy, the one from the paper, has
been blown up and framed. It hangs on the wall near
the desk. We like to keep a candle burning on a small
table beneath it. It's no big deal if the candle goes out.
The next guy to arrive simply relights it.
    All in all, the lock-up is a real home away from
home.
    Even before the ambulance arrived, the two St John's
guys breathing hard and moving heavy footed through
the sand, locals started drifting across to the beach from
their houses. The teenagers were the first on the scene.
Perhaps we were more on the lookout for something to
lift the morning above the norm, quicker to sense the
possibilities. Or maybe our grapevine was just more
efficient at carrying the news that there was something
out of the ordinary to be seen down on the sand. We
called to one another as we came down the tracks
through the dunes. But when we caught sight of the
body a silence descended over us.
    If you believe everyone who claims to have been
down on the beach that December morning, there must
have been a hundred locals, at least. By our reckoning
there were actually nineteen. Roy Moynahan was
definitely there, along with Allen Penny and big,
lumbering Jim Turner. Grant Webb and Tug Gardiner
were there as well. Mark Murray came over the