The Blooming Of Alison Brennan

by Kath Engebretson

  Chapter 19

  Trent Grierson

  Tuesday, 12 April

  Today, the last of the autumn warmth had gone, and the sky was that dull, metallic grey, familiar to all of us who lived in this city by the Yarra. I shivered in my hoodie, and Jossie clutched a takeaway coffee in hands covered in fingerless mittens. On the river, two teams on police inflatable boats with outboard motors were setting up dive platforms. One was directly in front of us, only a few metres from Hobie’s pylon, and the other was further along, closer to the Aquarium.

  We figured that if the murder weapon was indeed Hobie’s mallet — and the autopsy had revealed that the injuries to his skull were caused by a heavy, blunt object — the killer wouldn’t have wanted to hang on to it. He’d have gotten rid of it quickly, throwing it in the river right away. We were banking on him thinking that there was so much other junk down there that the mallet would never be found.

  The inflatable further up the river was just to cover the possibility that the killer threw the mallet in the river as he walked away, towards the Aquarium and King Street.

  Sydney people loved to disparage our river, saying that it ran upside down, all the mud on the top. It was murky and brown, and I was glad it was the divers and not me going down there. It was not a deep river, and the experts said it was quite clean, but I wasn’t convinced. It was going to be hard for the divers to locate a wooden mallet amid the junk and mud. You couldn’t see anything below the surface.

  The first team was coming to the surface now. They were empty-handed. I helped to hand them out hot drinks, hoping the second team, now getting ready to go down, would be more successful. We had the divers for the day, but I hoped that if the mallet was there, it would have been found quickly. There was nothing pleasant about this.

  The dullness of the river matched my mood on this overcast morning. Alison was like a ghost in our house, silent and traumatised. What a horrible experience, to see your mother forcibly sedated and carried off to a psychiatric clinic. On top of that, her father seemed to have disappeared completely. No one had heard from him, and his phone was dead.

  At least, you bastard, I thought, you could call Alison and let her know that you’re okay, find out what’s happened to your family.

  Alison kept asking to see her mother, but they said no, as she had to be stabilised.

  We’d given our cards to all of the sleepers in the park, asking them to ring us if they thought of anything, however improbable. Most of them had drifted off by now, but Stu, the big, tattooed guy with the bikie beard was hanging around. I wandered over and offered him a cup of coffee from the urn.

  ‘What are they looking for?’ he asked.

  I was immediately alert. ‘Anything and everything. Just seeing what’s down there at this stage.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be Hobie’s mallet, would it?’

  I was startled. When he’d spoken to Jossie the previous day, he’d made no mention of knowing the victim’s name, or that he owned a mallet.

  ‘How much do you know, Stu?’

  He shuffled his big feet in his bikie boots and combed through his grey beard with his fingers. ‘Not much.’

  ‘A bit more than you’re telling me though.’

  He thought about that for a minute. ‘No, I knew what he called himself. And you couldn’t miss the mallet. When he got pissed he’d threaten people with it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell Detective Wallachia this?’

  ‘Figured Bett would tell her.’ He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I saw him arguing with a bloke a few times. Tall bloke with long hair. Same bloke each time.’ He reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out a crushed envelope of tobacco, and began rolling a cigarette.

  ‘How many times did you see him? ’

  ‘Two, maybe three.’

  ‘What time of day?’

  ‘Around eleven, as people were settling down for the night.’ The cigarette was lit and Stu dragged on it hungrily.

  ‘Tell me more about this bloke,’ I said, pulling out my notebook and pen.

  ‘As I said, tall. Long, dark hair.’

  ‘Was his hair tied back?’

  ‘No, flopped over his face. Foreign-looking bloke.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Hard to say. Fifties?’ The tobacco was acrid in the air.

  ‘Could you take a guess at his nationality?’

  ‘A Slav, I’d say, like Hobie. Something about the face. Knew a few of them when I worked in the abattoirs.’ The weedy cigarette was finished, and Stu stubbed it into the ground under his boot.

  ‘What did this bloke wear?’

  ‘Old clothes. Trackpants. Nothing you’d remember.’

  ‘Anything else about him?’

  ‘They argued in a foreign lingo.’

  ‘Did you recognise any of it?’

  ‘You’ve got me there, mate. I don’t know one of those European lingos from the next.’

  Stu was becoming wary. I couldn’t lose him. ‘I’m going to need you to come to the station, Stu.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, you saw someone who may be a suspect. We’ll need an artist’s impression and a formal statement. Best do it right now.’

  I asked Jossie to get one of her team members to take the reluctant Stu back to the station.

  ‘Look after him, Joss,’ I said. ‘He saw someone who may be a suspect. Get him something to eat if he wants it and make sure we get an artist’s impression. And we’ll need a detailed statement.’

  ‘Yes, Trent, I know the drill.’

  So the morning passed, waiting. By two in the afternoon, Jossie was back. Stu’s statement and the artist’s impression of our suspect were secure back at the precinct. I would study both of them before the day’s end. I drifted over to see how the divers were doing, and when I came back, Jossie was on her phone.

  ‘That was my grandfather. I’ve been thinking about that book of poems that Hobie had. Nothing else, a sleeping bag, a few old clothes, a mallet, no wallet or ID, and this book of poems. It has to be significant. Why would he carry a book of poems when he didn’t carry anything else?’

  ‘What’s your grandfather got to do with it?’

  ‘He came over after the war. He’s very old now, but he still reads and speaks Polish. I thought he might know someone who can tell us more about this poet. I tried on the internet last night, but there was nothing. He says there’s someone at Melbourne University who specialises in 20th century Polish literature. I have the name. Should I contact her?’

  ‘Yes, of course, see if we can see her this afternoon or tomorrow. We’ve got a full copy now, we can show it to her.’

  Jossie got on the phone again.

  Detective work! You waited around, asked questions, tracked every idea down, followed a lot of loose ends, took the occasional wild goose chase, hoped you’d get lucky, and followed your instincts. But Jossie was right. Homeless people didn’t usually carry collections of poems around with them.

  ‘She’ll see us this afternoon at four.’

  ‘Good.’

  If they hadn’t found the mallet by then, it wasn’t there.

  Suddenly, there was a shout from the divers’ platform further along the river near the Aquarium. We ran along the walking path and watched as a diver lifted an object onto the platform. It was a big, primitive hammer, the head consisting of a solid block of dark wood, perhaps eight inches long and three inches respectively broad and deep. The handle was about fifteen inches long, long enough to grip and swing the mallet with some force.

  I experienced a moment of elation. This was only the day after Hobie’s murder — could we get so lucky? There could even still be fingerprints. We carefully tagged and wrapped it and left it with the divers to deliver to the forensic laboratory, where it would be dried and examined for fingerprints and any traces of DNA.

  Back at the station, while Jossie again combed through the interviews from the occu
pants of the park, I read Stu’s statement and examined the drawing of the man he had seen talking to Hobie.

  It was only a general impression, and Stu had seen the suspect in the dark, but still, I had to look twice.

  Surely not … it couldn’t be!

  I quickly dismissed the thought. Lots of men had long, dark hair like that and had those vaguely European features. But at least now we had a possible murder weapon and a suspect, even if we didn’t know who he was.

  Chapter 20

  Jossie Wallachia

  Tuesday, 12 April

  ‘I can’t believe it! What a rare and wonderful find. Where on earth did you get it?’

  Professor Nadia Godlewski faced us across her desk, in a light-filled office in the Arts building at Melbourne University’s Parkville campus.

  We’d slipped the photographed pages of Hobie’s book of poems into a display folder, and it was these that she now examined.

  ‘Where’s the original book?’ she asked. ‘I hope it’s somewhere safe.’

  She was imposing, a large, attractive woman, not young, with a long mane of curly dark hair that fell around her shoulders, and clear, white skin devoid of make-up. She wore a maxi dress of red cotton in a batik design, and a necklace of heavy, black beads. She spoke with a slight accent.

  ‘It’s evidence in an ongoing investigation, which we can’t say too much about,’ Trent explained. ‘It’s being held securely until the investigation’s over. What you have there is a full copy. When you say rare, Professor …?’

  ‘It’s Nadia. Oh, very rare. There were only about thirty of these printed. I didn’t know there were any in Australia. Borys Stasiewicz was a hero of the anti-Nazi Resistance in Poland. He was a soldier of the Home Army, and one of the leaders of the Generation of Columbus, as they called themselves.’

  ‘Why Columbus?’ Trent queried.

  ‘The generation born in Poland after 1918. They saw themselves as discoverers of a new Poland, hence Columbus. The term was usually used for the young intelligentsia like Stasiewicz, but it applied to the whole generation. Most of them were Resistance fighters in some way.’

  I listened intently. My grandfather was born in Poland in the 1920s. We had never spoken of his experiences.

  Nadia continued, ‘The young generation of Polish poets was at the centre of the Resistance. Just as they fought the Nazis in the forests and alleyways, they also fought in words using their poetry. Most of them were killed in the Warsaw uprising in 1944.’

  ‘Tell us about Borys Stasiewicz?’ I prompted.

  ‘He was brilliant. Although he was very young, he lectured in Polish language at the Warsaw University. When the university went underground during the German and Soviet occupations, he continued to teach, all the while writing his poetry. In 1943, he joined the Home Army. He was a very active soldier, keeping an arsenal of weapons in his apartment and taking part in several sabotage actions. He and his wife, Maria, distributed nationalistic literature and poetry from their apartment. It was Maria who ensured his poems were collected and printed. She was pregnant with their first child when she was killed in the 1944 uprising. Stasiewicz saw her shot down and risked his own life holding her in his arms as she died.’

  There was little we could say in the face of such horror. Nadia continued leafing through the folder as if it was a precious sacred text.

  ‘Neither of us are Polish speakers, so we haven’t been able to read the poems. What kind of poetry is it?’ Trent asked.

  ‘Anti-war, full of nationalistic passion. He was a devout Catholic, so there’s a lot of very rich religious symbolism and imagery. He was a hero among his contemporaries, not just for his courage in resisting oppression, but also for his inspirational poetry. Despite the rivers of blood he must have seen, whole families cut to pieces, the cruellest imaginable crimes of war, his poetry is full of a longing for peace.’ She paused, reverently turning the pages. ‘Oh Lord, I’d love to show these poems to my students.’

  Trent took up the questioning again. ‘What happened to Stasiewicz? Did he survive the war?’

  ‘We don’t know. There’s no record of him dying in the Warsaw uprising, but that doesn’t mean much. It was a blood bath and many bodies were never recovered. It’s possible that he ended up in one of the German camps in Poland. There were hundreds of them across the country, and it wasn’t just Jews who were sent to them. They were filled with Poles and Checzs. The majority died from starvation, disease and forced labour in terrible conditions, when they were literally skin and bone, as well as regular mass executions. There’s also no record of Stasiewicz dying in the camps, but the Nazis didn’t worry too much about preserving the identity of prisoners who were destined for mass graves anyway. There’s also no record of him entering any country that took Polish refugees after the war, so it’s all a mystery.’

  ‘So we don’t know if he died in the war or outlived it.’

  ‘No, we don’t. But the person who owns this book knew Borys Stasiewicz. The copies were distributed around a very tight circle. It’s an incredible find.’

  ‘Could he have survived the camps and changed his name?’

  ‘It’s possible. He may have just taken on the identity of one of his dead confreres, or he may have made up a completely new identity. That would have been quite easy. Many of them arrived in Australia with no identity papers at all.’

  ‘Why would he need to change his identity?’

  ‘Paranoia; fear of the long reach of the Nazi arm; the desire to forget the past.’

  ‘There’s no information about him on the internet,’ I volunteered.

  ‘Yes there is, but you need to go into the Polish language sites. Give me a minute or so and I’ll see what I can find.’

  Nadia tapped on her keyboard while we waited.

  ‘Ah, here, a full chronology of his life, copies of his poems, all in Polish I’m afraid.’

  ‘Is there a photo?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She turned her computer around so we could see the screen. A young man, no more than twenty-two or three looked out at us. He had an open, intelligent face, dark hair and eyes. It was an idealistic face, full of hope — the kind of face that still believed, despite all the opposing evidence, that justice was possible.

  I looked at Trent. I knew he had the same question I had.

  ‘Nadia, could you send that site to the technical officer at our station, please?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I gave her the address, and while she sent it I thought of my grandfather. Would he have known of Borys Stasiewicz? Perhaps at the weekend I’d pay him a long overdue visit and ask him.

  ‘Thank you, Nadia, your help has been invaluable,’ I said, handing her my card, along with Trent’s. ‘Please call immediately if you think of anything else that may be of interest.’

  ‘What’s of interest to me is the book from which these pages were photographed. It’s priceless.’

  ‘Priceless?’

  ‘Not in monetary terms, but as part of the history of Poland and its literature. You can’t put a value on it. I hope you’ll take good care of it, and when your investigation is over, perhaps you can donate it to an institution that will understand its importance and keep it safe where people can have access to it.’

  There was very little we could promise at this stage, but we thanked her again and almost ran to the car.

  Back at the station, we were just in time to catch the computer tech before he left for the afternoon.

  ‘Trev, there’s an email for you with an image we need you to look at. I know you want to go home, but we wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent.’

  Trevor sighed, took off his jacket, and sat in front of his computer. Stasiewicz’s young face came onto the screen.

  ‘Can you age the image? Show us what this face would look like after seventy or so years?’

  ‘Okay.’

  We waited — tense.

  It took less than a minute for Hobie’s face to
emerge from the features of the young poet.

  Hobie, our murdered homeless man, who went by the name of Herbert Stanley, was Borys Stasiewicz, poet and resistance fighter, hero of the Polish underground and passionate Polish nationalist.

  ‘Found you, Borys,’ Trent said. ‘Now let’s find out who killed you.’

  Chapter 21

  Trent Grierson

  Wednesday, 13 April

  We’d started combing through the Yellow Pages from 1979, looking for handcrafted furniture businesses in Carlton. There were a dozen or so. We phoned them all, and deleted any that were still operating. That left us with eight. We got an assistant to go through back records to find information about their owners, but it was thirty-seven years ago. We weren’t hopeful.

  Just when I was beginning to think we’d hit another roadblock, a courier delivered the forensic report on Hobie’s mallet. Two sets of prints had been found, one set was Hobie’s, identified from the autopsy, and the other belonged to someone called Henryk Stanley.

  Our luck was improving.

  Henryk Stanley had been brought in for minor offences years before, and his prints were still in the system. It only took minutes to find his mug shot and bring it up on the screen. He had been twenty-five years younger, but there was no mistaking him — the big head and face, the hunched shoulders, the long, dark hair parted in the middle and reaching his collar, the bull like neck and chest.

  It was a moment in my policing career that I would never forget.

  Henryk Stanley was Harry, Alison’s father.

  Chapter 22

  Alison Brennan