by Robert Gott
‘And you want him safely locked up.’
‘No. We want him safely dead.’
‘I’m not going to kill Albert Taylor for you.’
‘No, no. We want Albert Taylor to try to kill you, and we’ll make sure that we’re there to prevent that happening.’
Gary smiled broadly.
‘That’s the plan. There are a few details we haven’t worked out yet. We think we can pull it off.’
‘You think you can pull it off.’
‘We’ll certainly do our best, Will.’
He gave a little laugh, as if this was just about the most amusing thing he’d ever said. ‘We’ll let you know what we need you to do as soon as we know ourselves. For now, it’s good to know you’re on board.’
‘I don’t recall saying that I’m on board.’
‘Some things don’t need to be said, do they, Will?’
He stood up, patted his hat against the side of his thigh, and left. I stayed where I was, and heard him brazenly leave by the front door.
I straightened the bedspread where this Gary person had creased it, and removed the pillowcase — the thought of putting my head where his greasy hair had rested was stomach-churning.
I felt under siege. Geraldine, Mrs Ferrell, Albert Taylor, James Fowler, Gary with-no-surname, the United States army, Victorian detectives, even Wallace Parnell — they all wanted a piece of me, and apart from Parnell, none of them cared very much if that piece was ripped from my corpse. I needed to take charge of this situation, and to do that I needed to find Geraldine and Albert Taylor before Intelligence found a way to tether me to a post, like a goat waiting for the claws of a tiger. The goats never came out of those traps alive.
I had to talk to Brian, so, reluctantly, I walked around to Peter Gilbert’s house. It was very late in the afternoon. In fact, my empty stomach told me that it was dinnertime. I hoped that people ate even if they were grieving, and hoped that they might invite me to join them. It’s a testament to how hungry I was that I was willing to sit down to dinner with both Peter Gilbert and Mother. Mother was a person best dealt with on a full stomach. I knocked on the door, half expecting that Brian would answer it. But it was Cloris who opened it.
‘Oh, Will.’
There was surprise in her voice, although it wasn’t joyous surprise. There was an awkward silence as she failed to invite me in immediately. A rabbit-seller or a tinker would have been given a better reception. The prospect of dinner evaporated, which made the rich smell of a meaty stew that wafted from the house rather cruel.
‘Is Brian here?’
‘No, he hasn’t been here at all today. Agnes is here.’
‘Don’t disturb her. If Brian turns up, will you ask him to telephone me at Mother’s house?’
She nodded and closed the door. If this wasn’t intended as a rebuff, it certainly had the force of one. I almost knocked again, realising that my failure to ask after either her or Peter Gilbert’s welfare must seem both rude and callous. If I knocked again, though, it would seem like an afterthought, and that would be even worse. I returned to Mother’s house to see what I could find in the kitchen.
When I entered the house, I was wary. It wasn’t yet dark, but the shadows were deepening. I thought I heard a movement upstairs, and my hackles rose. It was probably Brian, but I’d gone past the point of taking anything for granted. I climbed the stairs and made a rapid search of every room. I knocked on Mother’s door before I entered that room. I knew she wasn’t there, but force of habit insisted on that courtesy. There was no one upstairs, and I berated myself for allowing my nerves to override my common sense. I returned to the kitchen and found half a loaf of bread in the bread tin. Feeling like a Depression urchin, I cut two slices, toasted them, and smeared dripping on them. The dripping, kept in a bowl in the refrigerator and topped up after each meat meal, tasted of lamb. My hunger lent the food a depth of satisfying flavour it probably didn’t deserve. I made a pot of tea, and while it was brewing I dashed upstairs to retrieve the script of Private Lives. I thought it would create a good impression if at tomorrow’s meeting I was able to say that I’d read it and that I’d already begun constructing my version of Elyot. Immersing myself in Noël Coward’s world would also offer welcome respite from my own.
I poured my tea, helped myself to two of Mother’s oat biscuits, and let myself into the front room. The blackouts were up, and the reading light over an armchair with its back to me was on, illuminating a woman’s platinum-blonde hair. She didn’t move, and for one awful moment I thought another corpse had been propped in Mother’s house. I had the script tucked under one arm, a cup of tea in one hand, and a plate of biscuits in the other. I put them on the piano.
‘And you are?’ I asked, calmly, half-expecting no answer, because the dead don’t chat.
She stood up and faced me. At least she was alive.
‘Oh, Mr Power, I’ve just been reading about you in the paper.’ She flourished The Age in her left hand. ‘I’m very excited to meet you.’
‘And you are?’ I repeated.
She advanced towards me with her hand outstretched, as a man would do.
‘I’m Carol. How do you do?’
I took her proffered hand automatically.
‘Carol who?’
‘Oh, just Carol. Please, sit down.’
‘You do realise this isn’t your house, Carol?’
She acknowledged this with a smile. She was too old to carry off the Jean Harlow curls successfully, but she wasn’t difficult to look at, for all that. Her skin was porcelain-smooth, and her lips were full, and painted just the right shade of red. I didn’t notice immediately what she was wearing, because my eyes were drawn to a snowy cleavage that would have asserted itself even if she’d been wearing a nun’s habit.
‘Please,’ she said again, ‘sit,’ and obediently I sat. ‘Time is of the essence, Mr Power. You met Gary earlier this afternoon.’
‘Oh, you’re one of them? How many of you people are there?’
‘There really isn’t time to answer questions, Mr Power. Gary explained that we’d need your help to take in Albert Taylor, who is a very, very loose cannon. I’d like to reinforce this, if I may. Albert Taylor could expose an awful lot of people to danger if he chose to talk to our enemies. I’m not just talking about our members here in Melbourne, although they’re doing valuable work infiltrating suspect organisations. Taylor knows about the movement of our troops in New Guinea and in the Northern Territory. So far he’s shown no inclination to sell this information, but drugs change people. I’m sorry if I seem to be rambling, but you see, don’t you, that you are simply to listen and to do as I say, without querying the instructions? There isn’t time to take you through the planning that has gone into this. Gary said that you were on board, and you will just have to trust that Intelligence knows what it’s doing, and that we will do our very best to protect you, should the need arise. Fortunately, you’re a brave man, so I’m sure we can depend on you to stay the distance.’
She took a breath and, not for the first time recently, I thought I was going to be sick.
‘You are to come with me now, right now. There’s a car outside. You will drive me, us, to an address in Carlton. I’ll direct you. It’s a small terrace house, and it’s one of a group of houses that is used as a brothel by Geraldine Buchanan, Clementine Ferrell, and Buchanan’s lover, Albert Taylor. He seems to have found his niche selling drugs and women, and his clients are largely mid-western Yanks who can’t believe their luck. Clementine Ferrell is, or was, the brains, until Albert came along. We presume she’s grateful for the muscle. She runs a clean house, we’ll give her that. Word gets around that Mrs Ferrell’s girls won’t give you the clap. The Yanks are queueing up.’
‘You know a lot about it.’
‘Yes, I do,’ she said sharply. ‘Please don’t interrupt. When we get to t
his house, I’ll take you into the front bedroom. You and I are going to undress, and get into bed.’
I began to protest.
‘No questions, Mr Power. This will make sense to you later. For the moment, all you need to know is that you’re playing the part of a client, and I’m your tart. We know that Albert Taylor will be at the house at some point, and it’s important that he catches you, or that he thinks he’s caught you. He won’t quite believe his luck that you’ve turned up in one of his establishments, and in a compromising position, for someone of your reputation. Do you understand?’
‘No.’
‘All right. It’s not essential that you understand. It’s only essential that you do exactly as you’re told. Our people will do the rest.’
Fragments of this bizarre set-up made a kind of sense, but it was all happening at such a frantic pace — Carol’s voice rat-a-tatted like a machine gun — that I couldn’t respond to it rationally. I had to turn my body and mind over to Army Intelligence, and trust that they knew what they were doing. It seemed sufficiently elaborate to at least appear to be the work of a professional organisation. I despised them, but I was reluctant at this moment to entertain the idea that they were hopelessly incompetent.
It had been a while since I’d been behind the wheel of a car, and this one refused to start. I began to panic and to feel that I was letting Carol down in being unable to do the simplest of tasks.
‘It’s not a great car,’ she said. ‘Try again.’
This time, the motor turned over, and she directed me to an unremarkable house in Canning Street. I parked the car nearby.
‘We go in through the front door. Try not to think about what’s happening, Mr Power. We’re depending on you to trust us absolutely. We know you’ll hold your nerve, although we’re hopeful that it won’t be tested tonight. There are people nearby who are ready to step in and take Albert Taylor as soon as we’re sure it’s him. There’s a very good chance he’ll be so affected by drugs that he’ll be sluggish and not thinking clearly.’
The front door was unlocked. The corridor smelled fusty, as if the place wasn’t used very often. I thought this was strange, given that Carol had said it was used as a brothel. She took me into the front room, and turned on the overhead light, which threw a weak, yellow glow over the sparse furnishings. There was a double bed, a small table, worn carpet, and mould creeping up one wall.
‘I can’t vouch for the sheets,’ Carol said as she began to undress. With practised, unselfconscious ease, she shed her clothes and got into the bed, pulling the sheet up only as far as her navel.
‘Please hurry, Mr Power.’
I sat on the bed, and took off my shoes and socks. Why was I doing this? What could it possibly mean? Carol touched my shoulder.
‘We won’t be here long, Mr Power.’
I took off my shirt and trousers, and in an effort to preserve some sense of personal control, I left on my underwear. Carol didn’t encourage me to take them off, which I found oddly reassuring. We sat up in bed, my mind too discombobulated to be aroused by her naked breasts.
‘I feel a little bit ridiculous,’ I said.
‘Nothing is normal in a time of war, Mr Power.’
‘I think you should call me Will. Mr Power is rather formal under the circumstances.’
‘Did you know, Will, that if the police were to raid this place and find us like this, I’d be charged with prostitution, unless I could produce either a marriage certificate or a nightdress?’
‘A nightdress?’
‘Doesn’t that have all the hallmarks of a law made up by a man? Apparently, a nightdress is a guarantee of respectability, and it’s a piece of apparel unknown to prostitutes.’
I could see what Carol was doing, and I appreciated it. She was aware that I was nervous and confused, and her legal oddity was a good distraction. It provided only a momentary calm, however, because now there was the sound of people entering the house. My muscles tensed. There was a shuffling outside the bedroom door. Carol put her finger to her lips, and then something seemed to catch in her throat and she coughed. With extraordinary deftness, she threw off the sheet, put one hand on my chest, the other down my underwear, and kissed me on the mouth. The door flew open, and there was the blinding popping of flash bulbs. Three men with cameras took it in turns to record the scene before them, each of them replacing his flash bulb in time to miss nothing. So comprehensively shocked and blinded was I that I didn’t notice that Carol had pushed my underwear down to my knees. No words were spoken. The flashes stopped exploding after fifteen seconds, and by the time my eyes had readjusted, the photographers were gone. Carol was standing at the end of the bed, getting dressed.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Power,’ she said as she drew her skirt around her waist. ‘You seem like a nice man, but there’s a war on, and we do what we have to do. I apologise for touching your private parts, but it was considered necessary. I hope you understand. I think you should pull up your underpants now.’
With a jolt, I yanked them up and pulled the sheet up to my chin.
‘What the hell just happened?’
The bedroom door opened again, and James Fowler entered.
‘I can answer that, Will. Thank you, Carol. Well done. You can go.’
‘Thank you, Mr Fowler.’
Carol left the room without looking at me.
‘I imagine you’re a little confused just at the moment,’ Fowler said. ‘You won’t like what I’m going to tell you, and I think you should get dressed before we talk. When you’re ready, come to the kitchen. There’s good whisky there.’
I was in a state of shock, and incapable of making any pieces of this puzzle fit. I wasn’t angry or frightened. I was numb. I dressed, and walked down the corridor to the kitchen. James Fowler was there on his own, seated at a filthy table, with a bottle of whisky and two glasses. Both glasses had been filled generously.
‘Sit down, Will. There are, of course, several men within earshot, so don’t be tempted to attack me.’
I sat and gulped a mouthful of whisky. It was expensive stuff, of the type that had become unattainable since the beginning of the war.
‘You look dazed still. I’ll make this brief. What just happened in the front room is for us a sort of insurance policy against your refusing to co-operate with Intelligence, either now or in the future. We have every confidence that you’re about to become a very successful actor, and I’m sure you appreciate the little lift we gave you in the papers today. We think it would be most useful to have access to someone who enjoys great public support and affection. We’re doing our best to leverage you into that position. As I said before, Will, we are grateful for the work you did up north. We know you dislike us intensely, and we know that you wouldn’t willingly do our bidding.’
As the whisky flowed through me, rage began to percolate through my blood. Fowler read this in my face.
‘Stay calm, Will. You have nothing to gain by losing your temper.’
‘What was that bedroom farce really in aid of?’
‘Well, we like to have people in various positions of influence on whom we can call should the need arise. Your feelings about Intelligence mean that an appeal to your patriotism would fail. We needed a decent bargaining chip. Forget those drawings. A few pornographic sketches wouldn’t do. Those drawings could be of anyone. We needed photographs of you that would blow up your career with the efficiency of a five-hundred-pound bomb. It’s a tawdry business, and we all feel ashamed to be blackmailing you in this way, but difficult times demand difficult measures. No one will see those photographs, I promise you that. The film won’t even be developed unless you force our hand.’
‘And how would I do that?’
Fowler took a sip of whisky. He was trying to be elegant. He succeeded only in being effeminate.
‘We don’t know how you might be useful to us
in the future, Will. As a famous person, you’d be a good propaganda candidate, of course, but your fame will allow you to move in circles where we don’t have any people placed.’
‘You want me to spy for you?’ My voice dripped with contempt.
‘Oh yes. Undoubtedly. You became one of our spies the moment the first flash bulb went off. We might never call on you again; but if we do, you will do as you’re told.’
He paused to take another dainty sip.
‘That’s all in the future, Will. It’s the present we’re interested in, and I’m afraid we need you now. We want Albert Taylor, and we think you’re our best chance of finding him.’
‘Why?’
‘One thing you need to get out of your head is the silly notion that Geraldine Buchanan is working for us. She isn’t. She led Taylor to you because she thought you might be on to her. She would have been pretty pissed off at having to leave her acting job, which was a great cover for her other, less acceptable, activities. He had a bit of fun with you on Christmas Day, and probably thought that you weren’t any sort of threat. No offence, Will. I’m just surmising here. However, when he got a look at that portrait Geraldine did of you, he would have seen something that made him an angry man. He would have seen that his girlfriend actually liked you. There’s real feeling in that picture. She’s not a bad artist, and Albert isn’t a stupid man. Maybe he found out that you fucked his girlfriend and didn’t pay. That’s not on. That’s not business; that’s personal. Then you keep showing up at the house, as though you know something. And you do know something. You know that Geraldine Buchanan killed Anthony Dervian. So what does Albert do? He plants the body in your house. Awkward. Except that nothing happens. There’s no result, no mention in the papers that William Power has been arrested on suspicion of murder. Instead, there you are on the front page of the papers, a hero. Congratulations, by the way. We were genuinely impressed at how you conducted yourself after being shot at.’