The Orchard Murders

by Robert Gott

  ‘A murderer?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. He wouldn’t like to get his hands dirty. He might not object to someone else doing the dirty work. He didn’t strike me as a man prone to qualms.’

  Inspector Lambert smiled. Maude will love Alexander Forbes, he thought. It was time they met.

  INSPECTOR LAMBERT STOPPED briefly to tell Joe what had transpired, and to reassure him that neither his nor Guy’s name had been mentioned.

  ‘There’s no need to wait,’ Joe said, and turned on the ignition of Peter Lillee’s very expensive car.

  Abraham was standing on the veranda when Joe pulled up.

  ‘I’ve come to see Guy Kirkham.’

  ‘You’re too late. He didn’t like it here. He failed.’

  Prescott came outside.

  ‘Joe Sable, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m here to see Guy Kirkham.’

  ‘That’s odd. I was sure he’d have let you know. He chose to leave us yesterday. It was unkind of Abraham to say that he failed. Perhaps we failed him. Didn’t he telephone you? We have a telephone. I felt sure he would.’

  ‘He didn’t telephone, no.’

  ‘Please, do come inside.’

  There was not the faintest hint of menace in Prescott’s voice, and although Joe was wary of the invitation, he accepted it. Prescott pointed out the telephone in the hallway.

  ‘Your friend was free to make use of it.’

  Abraham was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Sometimes people come to us with great optimism, and they are disappointed.’

  He walked towards the room that doubled as a chapel, and Joe followed him. Once there, he invited Joe to sit down, as he had done on Joe’s first visit.

  ‘Mr Kirkham found our discipline not to his liking. You know him better than I do. I don’t think this would surprise you. I thought when I met the two of you that you knew he wouldn’t stick it out.’

  Joe wasn’t seduced by the languid reassurance of Prescott’s tone.

  ‘What time did he leave?’

  Prescott performed thoughtfulness.

  ‘I think it was about an hour after dinner. It was dark.’

  ‘And he just walked out?’

  ‘Yes. He just walked out. He wasn’t upset or angry. He just left.’

  ‘What was he wearing?’

  Prescott leaned forward. He spoke slowly.

  ‘He was wearing the clothes he wore when he came here.’

  Joe heard only the first part of this sentence. The blow to the back of his head rendered him unconscious before Prescott had finished speaking.

  ‘HOW LONG SHOULD we wait, sir?’

  ‘As long as it takes for Joe to drive back down here and tell us what he’s discovered, if anything.’

  Constable Forbes had parked the car out of sight, and he and Titus were standing where they could see the house. After twenty minutes of watching, they saw Justice emerge from a thicket to the left of the house.

  ‘That’s the woman we saw at Fisher’s place,’ Forbes said. ‘There must be footpaths all over the place between these orchards.’

  Justice entered the house. She had been gone for barely a minute when the front door was thrown open and she hurried out onto the veranda. She ran around Joe’s car. There was something frantic in her movements. She stopped, shielded her eyes, and looked down towards the gate. Titus stepped into view and waved his arms. Justice began to run down the path towards him. When she reached the gate, she clutched the top rail and tried to catch her breath.

  ‘They’re taking his body away,’ she said.

  ‘Whose body?’

  ‘The man called Joe. They killed him, and they’re taking his body away in the truck.’

  Titus would later wonder how he managed it, but he doused the fires of panic that threatened to engulf him.

  ‘Is there another way out of here?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Up there, around, behind. There’s a track.’

  ‘Show us.’

  Justice sat in the front of the car. She directed Alexander to drive to the right of the house. At the back there was a track, which Titus hadn’t noticed before. It was partly obscured with the drooping branches of low-growing wattles on either side. As they drove towards it, Titus looked behind and saw Anthony Prescott standing by the back door, watching them. Dealing with Prescott would have to wait.

  The track was rough, and Alexander was forced to drive slowly. The truck, which wasn’t visible up ahead, must have been making much faster progress. At a fork in the road, Alexander stopped.

  ‘Left or right?’

  ‘Right leads back into Nunawading,’ Justice said.

  Alexander turned left. This road, although unmade, was well maintained, and he was able to pick up speed. It wasn’t a straight road, so if the truck was in front of them it was remaining stubbornly out of sight. They came to another fork.

  ‘It’s a chance we have to take, sir, but I’d say he’s heading for the Dandenongs.’

  The unspoken addition to this sentence was that the Dandenongs would be a good, remote place to dispose of a body. Joe can’t be dead, though, Titus thought, and he spoke this thought to help secure it.

  ‘I agree. Joe’s life might depend on us being right.’

  ‘The man called Joe is already dead,’ Justice said. ‘I saw his body. I saw Abraham drag it to the truck.’

  ‘Do you know where he’s taking it?’ Alexander asked. The use of ‘it’ hit Titus like a punch.

  ‘There! There!’ Justice said, and pointed towards a small plume of dust some distance from them. They drove for another 30 minutes, never within sight of Abraham’s truck, but occasionally spotting rising dust. It was only an assumption that this was the old man, but it was all they had. The road rose into the hills, and the bends became tighter. No traffic passed them. Justice said that she was beginning to feel car sick.

  ‘Do you need me to pull over?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  She wound the window down, and cool air filled the car. Justice closed her eyes. Titus hoped she wouldn’t need to be sick. Their chance of catching up to Abraham was already slim. If they had to stop, they’d lose him.

  As the road rose into the hills, it became narrower and rougher. Alexander drove faster than he would normally have done in such conditions, and the sight that met him as he rounded a bend made him slam on the brakes. Titus was thrown forward, and his nose hit the headrest in front of him with sickening force.

  ‘Fuck!’ he said, and the expletive was as shocking to Alexander as the blood that began to flow down Titus’s chin. There was no time to assess the damage to Titus’s face. There, just a few car-lengths ahead of him, was Abraham’s truck. It was parked off the road in a small clearing, and the old man was standing with Joe’s body slung around his shoulders like the carcass of a sheep. Without displaying any signs of panic, his eyes locked on Alexander’s, and he dropped Joe with casual indifference into the mud at his feet. He walked calmly to the truck, and drove off. Following him was out of the question. Both Alexander and Titus, a handkerchief pressed to his nose, ran to where Joe lay. He was face up, his skin pallid and one arm twisted awkwardly under his body. Titus knelt and felt for a pulse at his neck. His hand was shaking so violently that he couldn’t still it. He had the sensation that Joe’s neck was warm, but he couldn’t discipline his fingers to find a pulse. Alexander knelt and pressed his fingers into Joe’s neck.

  ‘There’s a strong pulse, sir. He’s very much alive.’

  Titus pulled himself together.

  ‘We need to get him to a hospital.’

  ‘We need to get you to one as well.’

  As carefully as they could, they carried Joe to the car. He lay on the back seat, his head cradled in Titus’s lap. The drive down from the hills was frustratingly slow, with Alexander tryi
ng to minimise bumps and jolts.

  ‘Why there?’ Titus asked Justice. ‘Does that spot mean anything to you?’

  ‘No, nothing. I’ve never been there.’

  Titus wished that he’d looked around, but even if he had, even if he’d looked up the slope above the place where Joe had been dropped, he wouldn’t have seen Guy Kirkham, whose body hung in a tree that couldn’t be seen from the road.

  TOM MACKENZIE HATED flying. Given that he wore the uniform of a group captain in the RAAF, this was a fact he felt constrained to conceal as he boarded the plane at the RAAF base at Laverton. It was late on Tuesday afternoon, and the weather wasn’t promising — at any rate, it wasn’t promising not to cause turbulence. The flight hadn’t been arranged especially for Tom. It was a regular military transport, delivering personnel and equipment to Adelaide. The equipment was principally machinery parts for the army’s armoured division. This information was shouted at him conversationally by an army officer — one of those people who feels a compulsive need to engage with those around him. In the noisy cabin, Tom had to strain to hear him, which made the uncomfortable flight even more uncomfortable. The plane was buffeted irregularly, and there were moments when Tom thought he might embarrass himself by bringing up his lunch.

  Three hours after taking off, they landed in Adelaide. Tom was driven by a mercifully silent driver to Keswick Barracks, where he would spend the night before taking an early train the following morning to Barmera. Tom Chafer had provided him with a folder of information about Loveday Camp. He’d been unable to read it on the plane — just the thought of that had made him feel queasy — and although he began looking through it in his room at Keswick, he’d fallen asleep. The train trip was 235 miles long. He’d have plenty of time to read then.

  12

  JOE’S HEAD WAS pounding. It was bandaged, and Clara had assured him it wasn’t to keep his skull together. Although the blow, from what was probably a cosh, had resulted in a spectacular contusion, it had also split the skin, and the bandage was there to contain any blood flow. As far as she could tell, no bones had been fractured, which was evidence of a thick skull, because the blow had been brutal. In many people such a blow might have resulted in a serious fracture and possibly death.

  Joe had regained consciousness before Constable Forbes had reached the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He’d been confused and his vision had been blurred, and he was only partly aware of the activity going on around him. He was in the back of a car, then he was on a stretcher and then a trolley, and finally, somehow, he was in a bed, and his outer clothes had been removed. People had shone torches into his eyes, asked him questions, felt about his head, and checked his heartbeat. Slowly, everything came into focus. There’d been no pain initially, but as the morphine had worn off, a headache of monumental proportions began to assert itself.

  Helen Lord sat in a chair beside the bed, and Inspector Lambert stood at its foot. They’d arrived within minutes of each other. Helen had come into the ward first. She tried, and failed, not to cry.

  ‘I’ve brought you some pyjamas,’ she said, and managed to get her voice under control. Joe was puzzled by her tears. He assumed she must have heard bad news about Guy.

  ‘It’s Guy, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, you stupid man. It’s you. Seeing you in a hospital bed again is upsetting. You could have been killed. You would have been killed.’

  She began to cry again, and Joe was so embarrassed by her tears that he said nothing for a full minute. As her sobs subsided, Joe thanked her for the pyjamas.

  ‘I thought I’d have to be here in my underwear until they discharged me.’

  ‘Shall I call a nurse to help you change into them?’

  ‘No, no. I’ll do it later.’

  These banalities helped restore calm between them, and when Titus arrived he noted Helen’s red eyes, and was glad to see Joe sitting up and coherent.

  ‘You’re a magnet for people who want to injure you, Joe Sable.’

  ‘I need to thank you and that young constable. And you don’t look so good yourself.’

  The blow to Titus’s nose hadn’t broken it, but it had caused two black eyes to bloom.

  ‘The person who saved your life was the young woman who calls herself Justice. If she hadn’t helped us, we’d never have found you.’

  ‘What happened to me?’

  ‘Joe, we can talk about that later. We have Prescott and the young man in custody, and the two women are cooperating. Abraham is still at large, but we’ll find him.’

  Joe was about to speak, but Titus interrupted him.

  ‘Joe, please. All the other stuff can wait. I’m afraid I have bad news about your friend Guy Kirkham.’

  Helen whispered, ‘Oh,’ and reached out and clasped Joe’s hand. His fingers closed around hers.

  ‘I sent men in to search the area where Abraham had dropped you. I thought he must have chosen the place for a reason. High up the slope, in a depression you can’t see from the road, we found Guy’s body. I’m so sorry.’

  Joe stared at Titus.

  ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘No, that can’t be true.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘How? How did he die?’

  Titus had been told the vicious nature of Guy’s death, but he wasn’t willing to burden Joe with this yet.

  ‘Like you, he’d been hit from behind. The autopsy will reveal the actual cause of death.’

  Helen understood that Titus had deliberately left out some vital details, but Joe felt himself caving in under the weight of what he’d been told, and he failed to notice the omission. He lay back and stared at the ceiling.

  ‘Joe?’ Helen asked, and squeezed his hand. Joe turned to her.

  ‘It can’t be true, Helen. It can’t be true, can it?’

  She nodded gently, and her lips quivered. Joe began to weep soundlessly. Helen wanted to climb onto the bed, lie beside him, and hold him. She didn’t do this. She leaned in and kissed his bandaged forehead.

  ‘We’ll find him, Joe. We’ll find the man who did this.’

  ‘It can’t be true,’ Joe said again. ‘Guy will come home. He will, won’t he?’

  WINSLOW FAZACKERLY DIDN’T know the streets of St Kilda well. The suburb’s proximity to Port Phillip Bay meant that its briny air reminded him of South Melbourne. Here, though, there was also the faint whiff of rotting vegetation. Here, in Dalgety Street, several gardens had been let run riot, and the effect was oddly tropical and lush.

  The address Winslow had been given was a flat below street level, which must have been the servants’ quarters of the large house above it. It would have been converted some time in the 1930s into a boarding house. There were lights on in some of the windows, including the window of the flat to which he’d been directed.

  Coming here was foolish. He knew it was foolish. He walked the length of Dalgety Street twice before stopping outside number 64A. Who was behind this door? Whoever was here, Winslow couldn’t imagine how he or she could have information about his wife. There was one possible channel that he’d thought of. Japanese prisoners were held at Cowra in New South Wales. Winslow couldn’t see, though, how a captured soldier or naval officer could have specific information about Etsuko, let alone know to whom this information might be of interest.

  As far as Winslow knew, all civilian Japanese men had been interned, so was this contact in St Kilda someone’s wife? Conscious that this was potentially the worst decision he’d ever made, he knocked on the door. It was opened by a man whose bulk was shocking to Winslow. Absurdly, his immediate thought was how this man maintained his obesity in the face of wartime austerity. It wasn’t as if there were no overweight people around, but this was something else. The voice that came out of this flesh mountain ought to have been deep. It wasn’t. It was high, and propelled by a wheeze. It was also brusque.

  ‘What do yo
u want?’

  ‘That depends on who you are.’

  In another person, the small snigger might have been just that — small. In this man, the heave required to produce it shook his whole body.

  ‘Oh, I know who you are. I’ve been expecting you. You’d better come in.’ The man was observant: he had detected a tentativeness in his visitor. ‘I’m the only one here. Do come in.’

  His voice was educated. Guy recognised that his vowels had been rounded by training. An actor perhaps? The man repeated his invitation in Japanese. It was heavily accented, but it was spoken with the confidence of someone familiar with the language.

  The flat was untidy. Tidiness required an effort. It was a kind of exercise, and this man didn’t look like exercise was part of his daily routine.

  ‘Clive Kent is the name.’

  He didn’t extend his hand, but instead lumbered to a sideboard, where he opened a bottle of red wine. Without asking if Winslow wanted a glass he poured him one, and handed the smeared vessel to him. Winslow liked red wine, but he hadn’t had many good glasses of it recently. He expected this to be undrinkable. It was excellent.

  ‘Know a chap,’ Kent said. ‘Good, eh? I can tell you’re surprised. Have a seat, my friend.’

  Winslow sat in an armchair that needed to be resprung. Clive sat across the room from him.

  ‘Here’s to you,’ Kent said, and then in Japanese added, ‘and to the heavenly sovereign Emperor Hirohito.’

  Winslow’s heart sank, but he raised his glass. Clive sipped and smiled.

  ‘There are only a handful of us, Mr Fazackerly, but how comforting it is to know that we are not alone.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yes. Those of us who know that there is nothing to fear from the empire of Japan.’

  ‘There are many, many thousands of people who know that that isn’t true, Mr Kent.’

  Clive Kent waved the comment away.

  ‘Propaganda, Mr Fazackerly. You lived in Japan. No one knows better than you how civilised, how civilising the Japanese are.’

  Winslow had heard that there were some Westerners who were hopeful of a Japanese victory. He’d never met one, and he didn’t understand how they could be so wilfully blind to the brutality meted out by the Japanese military to conquered peoples. Did they think they’d be embraced by the victors? Surely, this late in the war, they’d read enough to lose any sentimental or romantic notions about the chrysanthemum throne.