Whistle Down The Wire

by Robert Engwerda

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Whittaker said with his goofy grin.

  Just as Cole was about to finish work, the phone rang and he picked it up. It was Geoffrey Rowlands. He had the information Cole wanted, he said, using the same bland tone as before. As he passed on what he knew, the bank manager might have been the Country Hour’s radio reporter relaying the week’s saleyard prices.

  Of the two accounts Colston had been paying money into, one belonged to Raphael Agostini, the other to Martin Bigelow. The large payment Harry Colston had made just before his death was placed into an account under the name of Douglas Balfour.

  Bank managers were nothing if not efficient, Cole decided, though he was curious about what he’d been told. In a town where he had at least heard of most people by name, Douglas Balfour was news to him.

  Chapter 20

  It was a clear morning, and Cole decided to walk to the appointment he had. As he made his way along Main Street toward the shops he decided on impulse to make a slight detour to the town’s war memorial, an obelisk standing proudly at the entrance to the recreation reserve. The yellow-tinged cypress trees lining the approach to the memorial were well established now, and the grassy lawns properly maintained. Overnight rain on the grass left the toes of his shoes damp as he walked up to the memorial built in the early 1920s by, the inscription read, Grateful Citizens.

  The names of the war dead had been cut into the sides of the obelisk. Cole found the two First War Kinross’s easily among the dead, but only one Kinross, with the initial N, was etched on the side of the monument given over to World War Two. Cole recorded the details in his notebook. Not knowing what Mrs Kinross’s maiden name was, he had no hope of guessing her brother’s name.

  He continued on his way, back along Main Street and by the shops, the hair salon already full of customers it being Friday. He bought stamps at the post office and walked around the yardman washing down the footpath outside the Union Hotel. Sheridan was moving out of there tomorrow, he thought she’d said. Whatever her new place was like, it would have to be a vast improvement on the Union.

  Main Street was bustling, everyone out early doing their shopping before the great majority of shops closed on Saturday. Mitchell’s football team was playing at home tomorrow and with the finals looming there would be a good turnout, with Forrest and a relieving officer keeping an eye on things there, and later at the hotels. Cole was pleased to have the weekend off, and was excited that his daughter would be home for it. His son, Alan, was rarely home these days, and increasingly it was he and Nancy travelling to Melbourne if they wanted to see him. Their world was changing, he thought, as he continued down the street until he had gone by the London Milk Bar, where he always felt a pang for the Bunn family, and turned the corner into Church Street.

  The street was aptly named. The Anglicans called it home, as did the Catholics and the Presbyterians. There was once a breakaway group from the Methodist church here too, but it had disappeared for reasons no one could now remember. Riding on the street’s coattails was also a religion of another kind, the Returned Services League, which had its brick and stone edifice directly opposite the Presbyterian church.

  Michael Upton was president of the Mitchell RSL. He was an easy-going man and a long-time supporter of police causes in the town. A plumber by trade, he considered his most important work to be his leadership of the local RSL branch, its members being his second family, or his first, according to the long-standing joke his own family was fond of telling.

  ‘Right on time, Lloyd,’ Upton said as he opened the door to Cole. ‘Come in.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Cole said, looking around the hall, at the huge photo of Her Majesty hanging over scores of smaller shots of local soldiers and battlefront scenes. National and military flags draped like pennants. ‘No one knows more about this town and the last war than you, Mike, so I’m hoping you can help me out.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Upton said. ‘Is this police business, or personal?’

  ‘Business mostly,’ Cole replied. ‘I wasn’t here most of the war, so a lot of what happened in the town passed me by. If you could fill in some blanks for me, that’d be useful.’

  Upton crossed his arms across his chest, curious to know what Cole was after. And he liked to talk about the subject closest to his heart – war and everything associated with it.

  ‘Happy to help where I can. What do you want to know?’ he asked.

  ‘The Colston family, John Colston in particular. Did he have any active involvement in military service, or was he doing other work for the war effort?’

  ‘Well, as you’d know, farming was an essential service, especially for milk and butter. John was on the farm, an in-betweener. Somehow he escaped the first war, and then was too old for the second. But funnily enough, he was a member here, too. I’m not quite sure how it came about, but through the late twenties to the outbreak of war he was a big part of the Citizens Forces here. When he first joined up service wasn’t compulsory any longer, and the Forces were almost totally disbanded in country areas, but John and one or two others took it upon themselves to have their own militia here, and they did it without any support from the army. They equipped themselves with uniforms, weapons that were mostly World War One or whatever was lying about at home. They drilled and paraded. Took it all pretty seriously, you’d have to say.’

  ‘And John Colston was a leader in this?’

  ‘He was. He had a reputation for being strict and dismissing anyone from the militia he didn’t think up to the mark, even though, strictly speaking, he had no authority to do it.’

  ‘Was this force, or group of men, an officially recognised group, or did they just do it off their own bat?’

  ‘It was all their own doing. They thought it was their patriotic duty, and they were worried that if someone invaded the country we wouldn’t be prepared for it.’

  ‘Who did they think was going to invade?’

  ‘Who knows? Probably whatever bogyman the newspapers were frightening them with.’

  ‘How many men would have been part of this militia?’

  ‘The numbers would’ve fluctuated. Maybe at various times between a dozen to twenty-odd? But that’s only a guess.’

  ‘Are you aware if there was ever any major falling out, or trouble within that group?’

  ‘It was a bit before my time,’ Upton admitted. ‘A lot of what we know now is hearsay, passed on word of mouth, you know? I suppose there were the usual fights when men get together and some put themselves in charge of others. I know there was a squabble when the fellows in charge tried to get the other members to pay a levy, because it had been just a handful of them paying all the costs. And some took it more seriously than others. New people came in and others dropped out.’

  ‘How long did this group run for?’

  ‘It should have stopped when the war broke out in 1939. But it didn’t. It carried on until about 1941, when there was a terrible accident that put an end to things.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It had something to do with John Colston himself, now I think of it. A training drill with live weapons, they say. Which they shouldn’t have been doing either. It was twenty-something years ago, so probably no one could tell you exactly what happened, but the story goes that John was barking orders at some new, young arrival, waving his weapon about when it discharged and killed the young bloke, or someone else’s firearm did at the fright of his shouting. I can’t recall the dead fellow’s name, but I do remember he was living and working at the Kinross property. Actually, he might have been Kinross’s wife’s brother. The poor woman never got over it.’

  ‘Mrs Kinross’s brother?’

  ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘No, I just know of her. And Bill Kinross? Would he have been there, too, if his wife’s brother was?’

  ‘Probably, but I couldn’t be certain.’


  Michael Upton had nothing more to add on the Colstons or the Kinross’s, but he’d confirmed Robyn Kinross’s story about the brother. And maybe that was the true reason why John Colston disallowed his son from being with Robyn Kinross, when her presence in their lives would have been a constant sore reminder of something he doubtless wanted to forget. But Robyn herself was adamant that wasn’t the dark cloud that had caused her relationship to Harry Colston to falter. What was it then?

  With something at least to go on, Cole determined he’d find out more, not from the Kinross’s themselves, but from the mother who seemed to have been scotched from their lives.

  After checking in at the station where Janice found the asylum’s address without difficulty, Cole filled a police car with petrol and set out on the drive to Bendigo. It took him an hour and a half to get there, and then almost another half hour to find someone who could give him permission to visit Mrs Kinross.

  The imposing if austere building was a relic of the gold era, set on a barren rise and enclosed by a high, two-feet thick brick wall. Originally constructed to accommodate various branches of the goldfields administration, in the time since it had served many other purposes, including being a girls’ boarding school and a detention centre for young offenders. During World War Two it was part of a military training camp and when the war ended it was handed back to the state government to become a hospital for the mentally infirm.

  As soon as Cole set foot inside the dim building he felt the collective shiver of the countless souls who had passed through its doors.

  The large, bosomy woman in charge of the ward housing Mrs Kinross eyed Cole suspiciously and said, ‘I suppose there’s a good reason for you wanting to see Elsa Kinross?’

  ‘Police matters,’ Cole shot back, as if it was none of her business.

  ‘She won’t make much sense, you know. She’s been in a worsening state for over a decade now.’

  ‘If I feel like I’m wasting my time, I’ll leave,’ he said.

  ‘Your funeral then,’ the ward supervisor said, snapping, ‘This way!’ as if he was a fractious dog being escorted along.

  Cole was taken into a room more like a cell with its fortified door. And Spartan. Less for Elsa Kinross to harm herself with, he immediately thought, as he spied her on the bed. He was surprised, too, by an uncleared chamber pot jutting out from beneath her bed. The room stank of neglect.

  As the supervisor departed, Cole pulled the only chair in the room closer to the bed where Kinross lay with only her arms and head free of the bedding. Her eyes, of a peculiar grey, shifted fleetingly to notice him before turning to the ceiling again.

  ‘Elsa,’ he whispered so as not to startle her. ‘I’m Lloyd Cole from the Mitchell police station. I’m not here to hurt you. I just thought you might like someone to talk to.’

  Cole watched as she lay motionless, seemingly unresponsive to what he’d said until her mouth and lips began working, only to fail.

  ‘Elsa. I want to talk to you about your brother. Do you remember him?’

  In answer, her eyes groggily turned ever so slightly toward him again. She cut a pathetic figure on the bed and it was difficult to gauge her age. Her hair was long and unkempt, of a grey that might have become prematurely so. Her face was gaunt and beneath her bedding she could have been a skeleton of poking bones and ribs.

  ‘What was his name, Elsa?’

  It struck Cole that she probably had so little conversation, and that her body was so frail, that even a few snatches of talk would require a great effort. The mist of medication she seemed to be under the influence of couldn’t have made it any easier for her.

  ‘Take your time.’

  Her mouth began working again, and something did come.

  ‘Cameron. Cam …’

  ‘Cameron,’ Cole repeated. ‘That’s your brother?’

  Her head moved in answer.

  ‘He died in 1941 didn’t he?’

  Her eyes blinked this time, confirming it.

  ‘Who was there when he was killed Elsa? Elsa? You can tell me. It’s alright.’

  ‘I’m not … mad. Not … mad,’ she said painfully, the words coming in a whispery scattering, like dried leaves being blown about. ‘Upset … sometimes… They don’t like it … No one ...’ Her eyes glazed. ‘Can’t help it.’

  ‘No, I know you’re not mad,’ he said gently. ‘But who was there with Cameron when he died, Elsa? Who was there?’

  Her eyes opened wider, as she remembered.

  ‘… John.’

  ‘John Colston?’

  She tried to lift her head.

  ‘Col …’

  ‘John Colston. I understand. Who else? Was someone else there, too?’

  She strained to talk, her grey eyes lost, ‘… Bill was there. Cam … When I die … that money …’

  And then as her eyes shut, she whispered, ‘Is that you … Cam?’ and from her stuttering breathing Cole knew she had fallen asleep.

  He waited another half hour in the hope that she might wake again, but Elsa Kinross was lost to him and the officious supervisor, who had been pacing back and forth in front of the door, convinced him it was time to leave.

  Chapter 21

  Christine Sheridan woke to a bright Saturday morning, with sunlight piercing the dirty lace curtains of her hotel room. Her cases and bag had been packed the night before and her car was bursting at the seams with all she’d take to the farm. She skipped cheerfully downstairs to eat her breakfast in the hotel’s dining room, knowing it would be the last time she’d ever have to do so. So happy was her mood, she even went for seconds on the streaky bacon and fried tomatoes the grubby kitchen hand brought out for her.

  It felt much more than just moving house to her. It was the marking of a great shift. A place of her own. She couldn’t wait.

  Settling her bill with the publican and telling him she’d be back later in the morning to collect the last of her things, she jumped into her car, threw it into gear and charged out of town.

  The property she rented lay down a track and was set behind one of her farmer landlord’s paddocks. Well watered and green, it gave her a pleasant outlook across to the spindly line of gums beside the road. She imagined standing at the fence patting the farmer’s Friesian cows and watching newborn calves frolicking in the grass.

  She pulled her car to a stop beside the house. The property was going to need some work, there was no getting away from that, but the landlord had said she could do what she liked and it was brimming with possibilities for her.

  But where to start? She unloaded her mop, bucket and cleaning bits and pieces first, relieved that when she ran the kitchen tap the hot water had already been turned on. With sudsy water she began attacking the kitchen floor and bench first. The plan was to conquer the kitchen, the bathroom, what would be her bedroom and the living room today, and then work her way outwards after that.

  The house had seemed passable when she’d inspected it, but now that she was forced to take a closer look its shortcomings leapt out alarmingly at her. The bath needed more than a good scouring. The floorboards in one of the bedrooms sloped so badly she couldn’t see how anyone could ever sleep there. The laminate was peeling from the kitchen table left behind by the previous tenant and she knew she’d have to buy a new one. The kitchen drawers and cupboards were water-stained and wanted new linings. The taps in the bathroom kept dripping. The fireplace needed cleaning out. And that was only what she noticed on a first, hasty look around.

  Linda was coming soon and what would she make of it? She was disheartened that her friend would judge she’d made an awful mistake, and would think worse of her for it.

  She redoubled her efforts, determined to at least mark some improvements before Fantasio arrived. But when she heard the hairdresser’s car dawdling up the drive she fell into a flutter and saw every mar
k and hole in the walls, the dirt and grime of centuries and heard every derogatory remark Linda would make about her choice of housing.

  She was almost in tears as she tore off her plastic gloves and went outside to greet her friend.

  ‘It’s awful,’ she cried. ‘It’s dirty and the floors aren’t even and everything needs a scrubbing and you’re going to think I’m an idiot, aren’t you?’

  Fantasio hugged her, laughing. ‘Do you think you’re the first person to ever move into a bombsite? Come on, let’s have a look and we’ll attack it together.’

  Sheridan took her inside and they inspected every room together, making verbal lists of what should be done first and what could wait. Fantasio was immediately a calming presence and Sheridan forgot her misgivings as Linda came up with one bright suggestion after another. She had lots of things she didn’t need at home, she said, that would be perfect for this home.

  Of the bedroom with the acutely sloping floor, Fantasio said. ‘This is your storeroom. You put everything you don’t need for the moment in here, shut the door and just forget about it.’

  She was quick to assess what needed doing, how it could be done and when. She was optimistic about everything.

  ‘So here’s what we do,’ Fantasio said brightly. ‘We start with the filthiest, most depressing jobs first, where we can see the biggest difference we’re making, and then we move on to the smaller jobs from there. And we don’t have to do every … single … thing today,’ she said, drawing out the words. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Sheridan agreed, laughing. ‘But I feel guilty that you’re doing all this for me when you should be enjoying your day off.’