by Robert Gott
Jones was turning these things over in his mind as he waited opposite the Windsor Hotel. It was almost six o’clock, still light and still hot, when he saw Mary Quinn arrive with the queer from the other night. He didn’t go into the hotel with her. Instead, they stood talking for a few minutes, and then Mary went in alone. The queer stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at his shoes. Jones moved to where he could be seen if Jack lifted his eyes. When he did so, he didn’t look straight ahead, but to his left. Jones waited. There were a lot of people walking along both sides of Exhibition Street. Jones stood perfectly still so that, when Jack did look straight ahead, Jones’s stillness would catch his attention.
Jack hadn’t been thinking of anything, really, as he looked up and down the street, apart from wondering what to eat for dinner. The tall, still figure opposite him was odd. He seemed to be staring at Jack. Jack stared back. The figure put one hand into his pocket and mimed stroking his cock through the cloth. Well, well, well, Jack thought, talk about brazen, and risky. Should he cross Exhibition Street and take a closer look? It was still broad daylight. Jack had never been propositioned so daringly before. The bloke looked all right. He was lean, and he looked military, even though he was wearing civilian clothes. He wasn’t a stockbroker or an accountant — not with that haircut. Jack kept his own hands motionless. What harm could there be in just crossing over to get a closer look? He wasn’t committing himself to anything. He could just walk right past him as if he hadn’t been responding to a signal after all.
Jack made a move to cross the street. He waited for a break in the traffic, keeping his eyes on the man all the while. No, he decided suddenly. This was too risky, and something didn’t feel right. The bloke was probably a copper, setting a trap for young players, and Jack Ables was no young player. If he engaged with this man in any way, he’d be done for soliciting — and then he could say goodbye to his career. He turned and walked down Bourke Street.
Jones, whose breathing had quickened in expectation of teaching the queer a hard lesson, allowed his excitement to subside before deciding on the most efficient and least obtrusive way of getting to Mary Quinn. He crossed the street and walked into the Windsor Hotel’s foyer.
-18-
Joe Sable sat opposite Tom Chafer, acutely aware that his dislike of the Intelligence officer was growing by the minute. Joe hadn’t come to Victoria Barracks in a good mood. This was mainly because he’d missed his opportunity to tell Inspector Lambert that Tom Mackenzie had been drawn into the Intelligence side of the investigation. He and Helen Lord had reported to him and had given their opinion that the attack on the Dutchman was a separate crime. In turn, Titus had given them the gist of his interview with Mrs Emerson, including her unprovable claim that her sister’s death had not been an accident. Reopening that case would take resources that Homicide didn’t have, and its link to the Quinn–Draper murders required a leap of the imagination rather than the application of investigative procedures.
Titus had wound up the discussion and left before Joe had had a chance to see him alone. Now, another day of keeping him in the dark had gone by, and Joe felt bad about the position in which Chafer and Goad had put him. He was not, therefore, well disposed towards Chafer and his repellent air of superiority. Matters weren’t helped by Chafer’s obvious disbelief in Joe’s explanation for his black eye.
For his part, Tom Chafer had started off by being annoyed at having to stay back to talk to Joe Sable. Goad had got in first and pleaded a previous engagement. Chafer had no such engagement, but he’d had a long day — now extended by Joe’s request to see him. As it happened, though, the new information that Joe brought him was of sufficient interest to take the edge off his irritation. Joe’s resentment, however, remained unsalved.
Ptolemy Jones was a new name to Intelligence. Joe wondered out loud how someone so menacing could have escaped Intelligence’s notice.
‘The fact that we don’t know him suggests that he’s a minor player.’
‘You might have to rethink that.’
‘You might be shocked by National Socialists expressing their views here, Sergeant, but we’ve been aware of them since the 1930s. There was a disgruntled little clique of German immigrants who used to meet in Belgrave. They had a couple of houses up there that they used to go to, and then they made themselves scarce when the war started. A few of them were interned, not because of their politics so much as their nationality. We have excellent intelligence on all the members of that now-defunct Nazi outpost. This Ptolemy Jones rings no bells with me. I’ll check our records, of course.’
‘They make no bones about their allegiance to Berlin,’ Joe said. ‘Magill is more circumspect about his sympathies, and he seems more interested in their appalling art than in overthrowing the government. Jones and his mate Fred are something else — they’re rabid. I can’t see them working together successfully with Magill. I got the feeling they’d cut him loose as soon as he’d outlived his usefulness.’
‘It all sounds ludicrous, them running around up there, talking about an Australian corner of the Reich.’
‘If I hadn’t been there, I’d agree with you. But I assure you that Ptolemy Jones is an extremely unpleasant man.’
Chafer took down a full description of Jones and Fred. He couldn’t enlighten Joe as to the meaning of “Argument 7”, and showed no concern when he was told that Tom Mackenzie hadn’t yet returned to his normal work.
‘The more information he gets, the better. The air force isn’t going to ground its planes just because Group Captain Mackenzie isn’t at his desk.’
‘He’s made no contact with you?’
‘None. Was there a telephone at this country place?’
‘Not that I noticed.’
‘Well, short of attaching a note to a pigeon, how would he contact anybody?’
Having given Chafer the satisfaction of being able to amuse himself with easy sarcasm, Joe tried to win back some ground.
‘I got no sense at Candlebark Hill that anyone associated with Australia First is nervous about infiltration by Intelligence. Is that because you people are good at what you do, or hopeless at it?’
Tom Chafer didn’t bite.
‘It’s unlikely that anyone would express suspicions about infiltrators to the people who might well be those infiltrators,’ he said. ‘That would be very strange, wouldn’t you agree? If any of these people had anything to do with the murder of John Quinn, if they knew he was working for Intelligence, they’d assume we’d come after them. Now two strangers suddenly show up, eager to join the party. I think they’d err on the side of caution.’
Once again, Tom Chafer’s tone erred on the side of condescension. Joe wondered how this man had got through life without having his nose broken. Perhaps his gaunt frame made people afraid that if they hit him, he’d shatter.
‘But that’s just it,’ Joe said. ‘They weren’t being cautious, were they? They were unguarded and frank about their allegiance to National Socialism. If they thought we were there to spy on them, that little nugget of treasonous belief would have been kept well hidden. That alone would be enough to have them interned, which I presume is your intention.’
‘Our priority is to find out who killed John Quinn.’
‘Nevertheless, there were a few gaps in your notes about Mitchell Magill.’
‘If John Quinn were alive, you could take that up with him. The information came from him.’
Joe wished he hadn’t gone down this path. He hadn’t properly formulated his concerns about the notes he’d been given on Magill and Australia First.
‘Quinn must have got pretty close to Magill to know where he liked to eat. I’ll wager, though, that if I mentioned his name to Magill, he wouldn’t know it. Why is that? Is the whole thing about Quinn knowing Magill just bullshit?’
Chafer looked at Joe as if he were simple
.
‘Of course he wouldn’t know it. Quinn wasn’t using his real name, and he was careful to remain on the periphery of things. He went to meetings, and spoke to Magill there. If you showed Magill a photograph of John Quinn, he’d know him as John Jackson.’
‘And you didn’t think that was important enough to put in the notes?’
‘You might be a good detective, although I’m not convinced of that, but you’re a lousy Intelligence agent. We knew you’d be amateurish, so, to protect you, we decided not to tell you everything. If you’d gone galumphing in there asking about John Jackson, they’d have been on to you in an instant — assuming they’re our killers, and I believe they are.’
‘You don’t have much faith in my abilities, do you?’
‘I have no faith in them. Dick Goad disagrees, but he would, wouldn’t he? Dick likes to disagree. It’s what he does best.’
‘You know what, Chafer, you really are an arsehole. If I worked with you …’
‘But you wouldn’t work with me. You don’t have the aptitude or the competence to do that.’
‘Why did you choose me?’
‘That’s already been explained to you. We began with the optimistic hope that you’d be useful, and I suppose you have been, after a fashion. We have the name of a tattooed Nazi. It’s not much to be going on with, though, is it?’
Joe had had enough of Chafer, and stood up and walked out of the bastard’s office without a word. His self-confidence had been shaken, and he couldn’t for the life of him understand the reason for Chafer’s intense dislike of him. He thought he’d done a fair-enough job. Joe assumed that the vitriol to which he’d just been subjected signalled the end of his work for Military Intelligence. It was strange — he’d thought his work was just beginning.
Walking up Lygon Street towards Princes Hill, Joe worried over Chafer’s brutal assessment of his skills. Why had he done this? Was it personal? Was Chafer an anti-Semite? Joe hated the notion that he needed to build this possibility into any unpleasant dealings with people. He’d seen, though, how close to home dangerous hatreds had flourished.
By the time he reached the Carlton Cemetery, he’d become annoyed with himself for allowing Chafer to get to him. He felt deflated; there was no getting around that. And while this mood was upon him, he had to acknowledge to himself that he was lonely. Perhaps it was all those graves mouldering to his left. He’d often wandered through the cemetery, stopping at neglected, crumbling graves, and wondering at the brevity of grief. At the time of burial, any of these graves would have been surrounded by weeping, grief-stricken mourners. Now there was probably no one still alive who remembered the person buried there; no one to recount a single incident in this person’s life; no one to recall an act of kindness. Such thoughts gave Joe no comfort.
He decided to walk to the western edge of the cemetery where the Jewish section abutted the narrow road on that side. The gates were now closed, so he walked around via Macpherson Street. He’d be able to see his parents’ graves through the railings. It had been something of a surprise to him when he’d discovered that they wanted to be buried here. He’d visited their graves only a few times since their deaths — he’d stopped at the graves of strangers more frequently than where his parents lay. But when he reached the Jewish section, his stomach tightened: a Star of David had been clumsily painted on various headstones, and the word ‘Juden’ had been scrawled in red chalk.
Joe grabbed the railings and looked for his parents’ headstone. To his relief, it was untouched, but the amateurish, moronic nature of the surrounding vandalism made him feel weak. It seemed more dangerous, somehow, that this foulness was coming not from the top, but seeping up from the bottom, like sewage. Joe began to shake, and his heart stuttered. Closing his eyes, and trying to will his heart into a normal rhythm, he moved away and headed for home.
Unexpectedly, supplanting all else, Joe Sable was filled with an extraordinary yearning. He’d had romantic disappointments in his past, and they’d made him careful. It had been a while since he’d met anyone who’d provoked in him feelings of desire. There was plenty of time, he told himself. He was only twenty-five. In the past, when his thoughts had turned to the absence of a woman in his life, and the uncomfortable ache that came with these thoughts, Joe had found some way to distract himself to quell them. But Tom Chafer, with his mean-spirited, personal attack, had prised something loose in Joe, and tonight he allowed his thoughts to run their course. By the time he reached his flat, he was miserable.
Suddenly, as he put his foot on the bottom step of the stairs that led to his front door, his heart began to syncopate with nauseating irregularity. He sat down, put his head between his knees, breathed deeply, and waited for it to pass.
‘Joe?’
Helen Lord came down the stairs and stood behind him.
‘Joe? Are you all right?’
Joe, who felt on the edge of vomiting, nodded. His assurance was so patently untrue that Helen moved quickly and knelt in front of him. He looked up at her, and she could see that there was fear in his eyes.
‘Is this what happens?’ she asked.
He nodded again.
‘What can I do to help? Is there anything I can do?’
He shook his head. He was afraid that if he spoke, he’d throw up. After a few seconds, he managed to whisper, ‘It’ll pass in a minute or two.’
Helen stared at him, panicked by her helplessness.
‘Where are your keys?’
He touched his trouser pocket, and Helen reached in and retrieved them. She ran up to his flat, let herself in, and filled a bowl with water. It was all she could think of to do. She came down to him with the bowl and a tea towel, wet the towel, and held it to his forehead. The gesture had a surprisingly remedial effect. It might have been the coolness, or the fact that it distracted Joe, or it might simply have been applied just as Joe’s heart returned to normal, but he immediately began to feel better, and he was able to stand up.
‘Can you get up the stairs all right?’
‘Yes, thank you. I’m fine now.’
Inside the flat, Joe went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. By the time he returned to the living room, Helen had opened the bottle of beer she’d brought, and had poured two glasses from it. It was warm, but, not having a refrigerator, Joe had got used to warm beer. Helen said nothing about what had just happened. If it had been she who’d suffered some sort of attack, she would have been angered by someone fussing about her.
‘I just got here,’ she said. ‘I’d hate you to think I’d been waiting on your doorstep like a lost kitten. I felt bad about the way our conversation went this afternoon, so, on the off-chance that you’d be home, I brought a peace offering.’
She said all this in a rush.
‘At least now you know I wasn’t spinning you a yarn,’ Joe said. ‘I wish you hadn’t seen that, though.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. So what if I saw it? Saw what, anyway? You were dizzy, and sat down. Big deal.’
Joe put the blackouts up and turned on a table lamp. He was glad that Helen Lord had come round. He’d actually been thinking of telephoning her. Any of his residual feelings of loyalty to Intelligence had been banished by Chafer’s tirade. Bugger him. He needed to get this off his chest. Once he’d begun recounting to Helen the flood of bile that Chafer had directed at him, he went on to tell her about Tom Mackenzie, and Candlebark Hill, and Ptolemy Jones. He saw no reason to hold anything back. He told her how awkward it was that he’d kept Inspector Lambert in the dark about his brother-in-law.
Helen saw his dilemma about Lambert, and rescued Joe from the possibly embarrassing request that she say nothing — embarrassing because the assumption that it needed to be said might point to a lack of trust — by saying, ‘One thing’s for sure. Inspector Lambert must never know that I knew about Tom
Mackenzie before he or Maude did.’
Joe assured her that he had no intention of ever telling him this. It was only later, after Helen had gone home, that Joe realised how skilful she’d been in making him feel that theirs was now a shared responsibility.
Helen asked Joe dozens of questions about the people at Candlebark Hill, many of which Joe thought irrelevant.
‘Who did Ptolemy Jones look at during lunch?’
‘No one in particular. It depended who was talking. He wasn’t staring crazily at anyone, if that’s what you mean.’
‘What about the other one, Fred?’
‘Same. No — I noticed him staring at Tom when someone else was saying something. It was just for a moment. He looked at everyone, except Jones, with an equal measure of contempt.’
Helen was fascinated by the misspelled tattoo. A dead tattooist and a recently tattooed Nazi was a tantalising juxtaposition. That, they agreed, was all it was. Jones was an unknown entity. They had no file on him, and no address. Beyond his self-confessed politics, nothing about him was certain.
‘Intelligence is on to him,’ Joe said. ‘At least, they now know about him. Chafer was reluctantly happy to have a name to pursue.’
Their conversation was almost entirely about the investigation, apart from a brief discussion about Mitchell Magill’s skills in reproducing the dreadful nudes that passed as high art among the fascist philistines. But when Joe walked Helen to the tram stop in Lygon Street, and waited with her there until a tram came, he had no way of knowing that, for Helen, the whole evening represented a shift in the nature of the intimacy between them.
‘I’m sure Tom Mackenzie will be back tomorrow,’ she said, as a tram hove into view, ‘and he’ll have more stuff on this Jones bloke. I’m going to ask Inspector Lambert if I can work on finding him — without mentioning Tom, of course. How hard can it be to find someone called Ptolemy?’