Lethal Factor

by Gabrielle Lord

  Again Neil nodded. ‘That’s my theory.’

  ‘There was a crucifix involved,’ I told him, ‘and its hands and feet had been chopped off.’

  ‘That’s exactly the sort of atrocity that occurred,’ he said. ‘The savagery on all sides is sickening. They were pissed out of their brains a lot of the time. They’d be all fired up in a militia mob, full of battle rage and slivovic.’

  I wondered if any of them woke up and remembered what they’d done the day before, and wept with the horror of it. Maybe they just had another brandy the way Neil Stewart was doing right this minute and didn’t think about it.

  ‘Then,’ said Neil, ‘when they’d had a gutful, they flew home to Australia. They’re all back at work now, sleeping safe in their beds at night. And you know something? Even if we could prove this beyond the shadow of a doubt, there’s nothing we could do about it in this country. Because there’s no legislation in existence covering war crimes committed overseas. Not after the Second World War. They’re home free.’ He sat down again. ‘Fucking justice,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it great?’

  I pulled out my notebook with the cross from the icon and its four Cs, half of them back to front. ‘Neil,’ I said, showing it to him. ‘What’s this?’

  He leaned forward, took the notebook from me and examined it.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ asked Neil, uttering a strange, sibilant phrase in a language I didn’t know. ‘These are Cyrillic letters,’ he said. ‘This is the letter that we’d write as S.’ He raised his eyes from my drawing. ‘These initials stand for “Samo Sloga Srbina Spasava”,’ he said in a foreign tongue. ‘Why are you showing me this?’

  I told him about the knife cuts on the murdered nun’s leg. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me that in the first place?’ he yelled. ‘If I’d read that in the papers I’d have been in touch with you like a shot.’

  I was taken aback at this outburst. ‘We can’t release all the details,’ I said. ‘You know that.’ I paused. ‘And we didn’t know what it was. What it meant. It was only a cross, for God’s sake.’

  ‘You should have released it straightaway. The man you’re looking for is probably out of the country by now.’

  I felt stung. ‘I didn’t know what it was until a short while ago. And it didn’t look like that on her skin. The C curves were angular, more like Ls.’

  ‘Whoever carved that into Katica Babic’s flesh was proclaiming a Serbian nationalist slogan,’ Neil said. ‘Those four letters are the initials of one of their most famous myths. What I just quoted before. “Only unity saves the Serbs”.’

  ‘You speak Serbian?’ I asked.

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Then you might know something else,’ I said, and described the icon I believed had gone missing from Sister Gertrude’s room at the time of the murder.

  ‘That sounds like St Sava,’ he said, ‘Serbia’s great thirteenth-century saint.’

  I was champing at the bit, eager to move. A broken-down, alcoholic ex-cop had given me the most useful information I’d had so far. Now I had a Serbian killer and a Serbian saint.

  ‘But I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘How come a Serbian Orthodox saint is hanging in a Croatian nun’s room?’

  ‘Her aunt gave it to her.’

  ‘Then why did the killer take it?’ he asked.

  There are some questions about cases that are never answered, I thought, and this is probably one of them. Maybe he just wanted a souvenir and what better than the great national saint.

  ‘A Serb kills a Croat,’ said Neil. ‘According to him, justice is done.’

  ‘But it’s just more of the same,’ I said. ‘Setting up the next killing. And so it goes on.’

  ‘It’s been going on for decades,’ he said. ‘Centuries. Serbs killing Croats, Croats killing Serbs, everyone killing the Muslims. And not just in Yugoslavia.’

  A light had switched on in my brain at his earlier words. ‘Sister Gertrude’s dying words were “Justice is done.”’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Neil asked.

  I told him.

  Neil Stewart emptied the middie glass, refilled it, shaking the cask. ‘Time for another walk to the pub,’ he said.

  I sensed the atmosphere change as he switched off. It was time to go and I stood up, folding over the documents Neil had passed to me.

  ‘Dr Johnson used to say that patriotism was the last refuge of scoundrels,’ Neil said. ‘But he was wrong. The last refuge of real scoundrels is religion. Bullshit about love of country and honour and shedding blood for God and the fatherland.’

  ‘Thanks for these,’ I said, gathering up the papers he’d given me. ‘I’ll return them safely.’

  He waved them away.

  ‘You said,’ I reminded him, ‘that you came up here originally to keep an eye on someone. Was it Sister Gertrude?’

  Neil Stewart shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I’ve stopped caring about justice.’

  ‘And thanks for your time,’ I added.

  ‘It’s all I’ve got these days,’ he said. ‘Time. Day after day, the same.’

  I couldn’t leave without giving him something that might sound hopeful. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘you can always make a choice to live differently.’

  He looked at me as if I was simple.

  ‘I used to drink like you do,’ I said.

  He slumped back down in his chair and shot me a look of black contempt.

  ‘No one drinks like I do,’ he snarled.

  I let myself out, shivering, trying to remember who Dr Johnson was. I sat in the car, staring sightlessly through the dusty windscreen. It had been there all the time, right under my nose, the racial and historical hatred that had underpinned the death of a harmless, middle-aged woman in a convent in the country. ‘Sister Gertrude knew her killer,’ I whispered out loud. ‘She knew why she was dying.’

  I thought of pretty Aunt Ksenia who had tried to put the past behind her. Maybe if she’d looked more closely at it she might still be alive. I recalled the dark-haired man who’d kissed her in the car outside her house. Then my thoughts turned again to her niece in the convent. ‘Justice is done,’ she’d said. That sounded like resignation to me. She was waiting for what happened. And as the violent crime scene replayed itself in my imagination I suddenly understood something. Now I knew why the killer had taken that icon off the wall.

  I called Ryan Holbrook, the detective in charge of the Ksenia Jelacic case, telling him what I’d discovered from Neil Stewart.

  ‘We’re putting everything we’ve got into finding her boyfriend, Marko,’ he told me.

  I drove a few miles and pulled off the road, near a huge snow gum where a young falcon perched, reading the country with his fathomless black eyes. I looked through the papers Neil Stewart had given me. It made interesting reading to see how Josip Babic, a war criminal ‘Black’, had moved through the stages until he was a desirable ‘White’ migrant and almost certain ASIO agent. A couple of letters from ASIO field operatives to their superiors suggested he was a double agent as well, working for the Yugoslav government in the 1960s, betraying his Croatian countrymen for money, playing both for profit. I looked up from my reading. In the long run, and like so many betrayers, the only real loyalty Josip Babic had shown had been to money.

  I was about to stash the papers back into the carton and restart the car when a familiar name jumped out at me. I’d almost missed it, scanning as I was for information about Josip Babic. A certain Franciscan, Father Franjo Oswaldi, was known as one of Babic’s associates. It was hard to believe what I was reading; the Franciscan had connections to a well-documented Croatian terrorist training camp at Wodonga in the early 1960s.

  Just to make sure I’d got it right, I read it all over again. I leafed through the earlier papers, following F
ather Franjo Oswaldi’s clerical career, from the Vatican just after the war, and thence to Australia to establish a house for members of his flock—a meeting place in their new country where he and other members of the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood met and practised bomb-making. I looked up from these revelations and was almost certain this man was the person Neil Stewart had originally wanted to watch.

  I wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything until I’d found this priest. I drove straight back to the Stjepan Radic Athletics Club and as I walked over to the cubby hole office where first I’d met the lanky youth, the nuggetty old man sitting at the bench looked up. I knew he was my man straight away, even before he stood up and came out, moving stiffly on bowed legs, the small cross on his collar the evidence of his calling, or one of his callings, I thought. He should have a skull and crossbones on the other lapel.

  ‘Father Oswald?’ I asked.

  His smile was tight and his eyes narrowed as he tried to place me. I held out my ID and I saw him react. ‘What can I do for you?’ he said, his accent still strong, his manner guarded.

  ‘I’m making enquiries about the death of Sister Gertrude. Katica Babic.’

  At her name, his face paled. ‘But you are not the police?’

  ‘I work closely with them,’ I said, keeping it vague. ‘I believe you were her spiritual director,’ I said. ‘I’d like you to tell me anything you know that might be helpful.’

  ‘The matters we discussed were personal and very private,’ he said, his manner hostile. ‘I don’t have to talk to you.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed, ‘you don’t. However if you don’t, I’ll tell the local police something about your history. They’ll want to know why you’ve been impossible to find, considering your close association with a murder victim. Why would that be, Father? What are you hiding?’

  I watched his face register the hit and I moved in with another. ‘I’ve got written evidence that shows you were part of the Vatican rat lines. That you helped war criminals like Josip Babic set up the terrorist training camp where young Croatian men of the next generation learned how to kill.’

  ‘We did nothing illegal,’ he said. ‘We provided a service for young men. Healthy, masculine activities. Even some of the Australian army came and trained with us. There’s nothing your police can do to me.’

  That at least was the truth, I knew.

  He was watching me keenly. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ he continued. ‘Except to stand up against evil.’

  ‘Today on the Murray River, tomorrow on the Drina,’ I quoted from Neil Stewart’s papers.

  He blinked at that.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to spend your last years, Father, locked up for breaching the Crimes Act.’ I leaned even closer and half-whispered. ‘Being party to the training of terrorists is not a popular career choice in Australia, right now.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ he repeated.

  ‘Men like you never do,’ I said. ‘It’s always the others. Perhaps you will be interested to know,’ I continued, ‘that whoever murdered the daughter of your fellow trainer carved this on her flesh.’ I showed him the cross.

  Father Oswald crossed himself. ‘The beast,’ he muttered. ‘The sign of the beast.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like Christian brotherhood to me, Father,’ I said. ‘Is that how you should think of your neighbours?’

  He suddenly stood up. ‘Leave now,’ he commanded.

  ‘You can talk to me now, Father,’ I said, ‘or I’ll arrange to have you taken into Heronvale Police Station and questioned. It could go on for hours. Think of the publicity.’ I watched his face, but he remained impassive, the mask-like features of a man who has hidden for half a century.

  ‘Sister Gertrude must have spoken with you about what was happening, about the first time her killer came to the convent,’ I suggested.

  He remained mute.

  ‘See, Father,’ I said, ‘I don’t have the power or the inclination to torture answers out of you. But I’ve got a couple of journalist friends who would love to hear all about you.’

  Father Oswald capitulated. ‘I told her not to speak about the past. There is a war going on, still going on, between the righteous and the Godless. Between God and Satan.’

  ‘Give it a rest,’ I said, tired and angry. ‘The war goes on because of egoists like you and Josip Babic. You didn’t want anything stirred up, did you?’ I said. ‘You told her not to call the police. To protect yourself. You didn’t want the killer caught because then the whole Croat–Serb business would become hot news again and people might start asking questions about you. And about the young men you’ve helped train out here. And their connection to atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo.’

  His eyes, half-hidden in folds of scaly flesh, remained hard and unblinking.

  ‘I gave her a great treasure in her hour of trial, the miraculous crucifix.’

  ‘She turned to you for help and you gave her superstitious mumbo-jumbo,’ I said, my words reflecting the contempt I was feeling.

  His eyes blazed. I had the distinct impression that if he could have killed me in that moment, he would have.

  ‘And you know damn well who killed her. If Sister Gertrude knew, she would have told you, her spiritual adviser.’

  Father Oswald spat. ‘His name doesn’t matter. They are all the same. The same beast.’

  ‘Tell me his name!’

  ‘We know how to deal with God’s enemies,’ he said.

  I was sick of it. I pulled out my mobile and rang Heronvale police.

  Nineteen

  When I got to work, I found Bob waiting for me. We went into my office and he sprawled comfortably on the lounge Digby had only recently installed. I told him what Neil Stewart had told me. ‘Father Oswald is being questioned by the police right this minute,’ I said. ‘I’m kicking myself for not noticing that cross earlier. If I had, I might have got this a lot quicker.’ I gave him a quick run through the documents that showed the murdered nun’s father to have been a double agent—double traitor, more to the point. ‘Gertrude’s death is related to the ghosts of Eastern Europe,’ I said. ‘This is what I’ve put together.’

  Bob listened in that way he has, very still, taking it all in. ‘This Marko, an Australian Serb, gets close to Ksenia Jelacic. He knows who her niece is. He’s got a score to settle with the Babic family. He’s determined on revenge for something done to a Serbian or Serbians by either Josip or Blei Babic. Or maybe even someone connected to the family featured just recently in the 1990s,’ I added. ‘But Josip and his son Blei are already dead and there’s only the daughter left. He finds out from Ksenia where Sister Gertrude lives. He goes to Canberra, visits the St Sava Social Club, meets countryman Jeremiah Dokic the convent gardener there, makes friends with him. Later they get into a fight about a woman,’ I said, thinking of the blonde in the bedside photo and the AVO, ‘and then Marko realises that he can commit murder, his act of vengeance, and make it look like the gardener did it. He must have come back and planted the weapons later, or maybe he wanted Jeremiah to hide them for him. We might find out if Jeremiah ever talks.’

  ‘Ryan Holbrook’s pulled a few strings with the Assistant Commissioner for extra personnel. It’s only a matter of time before we get this Marko,’ said Bob.

  ‘Father Oswald’s bunch might get to him first,’ I said.

  ‘I thought priests were men of peace,’ said Bob.

  ‘You can think again,’ I said. ‘Let’s come down hard on Jeremiah. He’s a witness, Bob. He must have heard something. He’s been outside Sister Gertrude’s room. Why do you think he was involved with the weapons? Why do you think he’s so scared?’

  Bob’s steady grey eyes met mine.

  ‘I think he saw the murder,’ I said. ‘He knows who did it.’

  As we were driving to Canberr
a Hospital, Jacinta rang from the bush. ‘Don’t forget my birthday dinner,’ she said. ‘I’ll be home for that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it for quids,’ I said.

  I was coming to be very familiar with this hospital, I thought, as we were directed to the ward where Jeremiah Dokic lay. When he saw us approaching, he looked even unhappier. He fumbled for the nurses’ bell but I deftly moved it from his reach.

  ‘Come on, Jeremiah,’ I said, looking at the man, diminished by his faded hospital-issue nightie, eyes wide in his weathered face. ‘There never was a big blond man with a beard frightening Sister Gertrude. You were bullshitting us. The man you saw was a clean-shaven fellow with dark hair . . . The same man you saw the night of the murder. When you were perving on poor old Sister Gertrude.’

  Jeremiah closed his eyes. ‘Leave me alone,’ he rasped. ‘I can’t tell you anything more. What is it with you people?’

  ‘You saw Marko,’ I said.

  At the mention of that name, what little colour still remained in Jeremiah’s face drained away.

  ‘You even tried to kill him, but it was me.’ I rubbed my still-tender neck. ‘And,’ I continued, ‘we know you can help us.’

  Jeremiah coughed painfully. ‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘I’m in no state to testify anything. And there’s nothing I can say. No way I’m going to testify. I’d be dead before I got to court.’

  ‘We can make sure you’re safe,’ said Bob.

  ‘I’m not saying anything. Not now, not in court.’

  ‘You tell us what you saw,’ said Bob, ‘and the court, and we’ll look after you. Keep you safe and set you up in a nice new life. With the man you’re scared of safe behind bars.’

  Jeremiah shook his head. ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I just want to get back to my old life. That suits me fine.’ He winced with the pain of swallowing.

  ‘Jeremiah,’ I tried one more time, ‘we need you to testify. We need your eye-witness account so that we can get this killer off the streets. Otherwise, he’s going to come after you. You know too much.’