Dead Man Switch

by Tara Moss

  The space became stiflingly small as time stretched on, and after twenty minutes or so a nurse entered, bringing tea and refreshments for the patient, his family and the police visitors. Billie took Cooper aside as Nettie and Mikhall and the nurse fussed over Adin, and told him she’d like to show Adin something that might prompt his memory. Cooper agreed, pressing her for fewer details than she might have expected, perhaps trusting her and her connection with the family to help loosen up the line of inquiry. Not every inspector would do that, she knew, desiring to be seen in control as men in his position often did. Once the refreshments were cleared away Billie took a seat next to the boy and showed Adin the auction house advertisement she had brought with her. The effect was riveting. His painfully swollen eyes widened and he struggled up from his pillow.

  ‘Yes, I saw this advertisement and recognised my great-aunt’s necklace,’ Adin said, sitting up as straight as he could and holding the newspaper clipping with the kind of intensity with which one might hold a lifeline. ‘I saw this at the milk bar. This advertisement.’ That fitted with what Adin’s friend Maurice had told Billie. The inspector eagerly wrote notes as the boy continued. ‘That necklace belonged to my great-aunt and they took that from her, took everything from her.’

  ‘Who is they?’

  ‘The auction house people. I don’t know how exactly . . .’

  ‘How can you be sure it is the same necklace?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘I am sure,’ the boy said.

  ‘It does appear to be the same necklace the woman is wearing in this photograph,’ Billie said, handing the small, creased image to the inspector.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘It belongs to the boy,’ was all Billie said, looking away, not happy to answer questions about its acquisition.

  The inspector narrowed his eyes, but said nothing to her. For now. ‘I’d like to keep this, thank you,’ he said to the Browns, and they nodded their assent.

  ‘I looked up the auction house and contacted them to find out where they got it,’ Adin said, his memory becoming clearer, the words now tumbling out. ‘The owner wouldn’t speak with me, and they wouldn’t let me in the place. But I had to talk with him. Everyone knows Georges Boucher frequents The Dancers, so I tried to talk to him there. I figured I could walk straight up to him and confront him. Then he’d have to listen to me.’

  ‘And did you speak with him?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘No.’ Adin frowned. ‘I was thrown out before I could, and then before I knew it someone had grabbed me.’

  ‘Were there any witnesses to this?’ Cooper asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. Then he pulled his brows further together. ‘Actually, one of the doormen. I’d spoken to him earlier. He saw what happened, I think.’

  Con Zervos. He saw the boy abducted.

  ‘You were alone when this happened? Not with friends?’ the inspector asked, noting everything down.

  The boy nodded.

  ‘I thought it was the doormen at first. It’s a high-class place. But then they were playing real rough. I think I . . . I think I blacked out. I was taken somewhere, and . . .’ His breathing sped up, the blood draining from his face. ‘They . . .’ Billie noticed his hands begin to shake.

  ‘Take it easy, kid. You’re all right now,’ the inspector said. ‘Just breathe. That’s it . . .’ Slowly, the boy calmed and his chest began to move again at a more normal rate. ‘Would you recognise any of the people who attacked you?’

  ‘Oh yes . . . I would, I think. They didn’t hide from me at all. They . . .’ He trailed off again, sweat appearing suddenly on his pale brow where the bandages did not cover him. He balled his hands into fists, and pressed them to his temples. He cried out, startling Billie and the others in the room.

  In no time the door opened and a nurse appeared, the constable looking over her shoulder from outside. The cry had been heard. ‘That’s enough for now,’ the woman said, pushing Adin gently back down into his bed. ‘You must rest.’

  The nurse ushered all of them out of the room, even Mr and Mrs Brown, and as they assembled in the hallway outside, the inspector protested.

  ‘The patient must rest. You’ve got your orders and I’ve got mine. That is enough for one day.’ Even in the face of Cooper’s authority, the steely nurse wouldn’t back down.

  Billie walked away from the small room in a near trance, head swirling with thoughts, barely aware of the inspector trailing behind her. She could see it clearly now – the boy beaten nearly to death, then doused with alcohol and left for dead on the train tracks. An accident, end of story. The train would explain the injuries sustained by his beatings – if there had been much of a body left to examine at all.

  They let him see them, Billie thought. They expected it wouldn’t matter, because they expected him to be dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It was nearing five o’clock when Billie made it back to her roadster and put the top up against a gale that had begun in the late afternoon, a summer wind whipping up from the valley. In the far distance a smoky haze rose into the sky, silhouetting Katoomba in ombre tones from blue to charcoal. A faint scent of cinders carried across the miles. Hot, windy days were a bushfire hazard in these parts. It was perhaps too much to hope for rain, she decided, noticing the clouds were white and moving fast across an otherwise blue sky. The grass beside the road was dry, waiting to ignite. Things had moved so fast the day before, she’d barely noticed.

  Detective Inspector Cooper crossed the road, having finished his discussions with the hospital staff, and she noted the length of his stride and his military bearing. His motor car was parked just behind hers and he joined her, helping her fasten the roadster’s roof.

  ‘Thank you for assisting with our inquiries,’ the inspector said, speaking first. He slid his hands into his trench coat pockets.

  It had been a long but profitable day for his active investigation and her closed one, puzzle pieces coming together thanks to the boy’s gradual recovery and efforts to recall what had happened to him. The auction house had not been a red herring, after all. But where had he been taken? To what end and by whom? Moretti himself? It was clear Adin’s captors had not expected him to live, and it was a stroke of luck that hikers saw him before he perished of his wounds or exposure. The inscrutable inspector knew more than he was telling her, Billie was sure of it, and she watched him with a mind to unlocking that invisible wall of his, the wall that seemed to come up at the slightest nudge.

  ‘I think I’ll have some refreshments before the long drive back,’ she said casually, holding her tilt hat against the rising summer wind. ‘Would you care to join me, Inspector?’

  He took a step forward, as if he might lean past her and open her door for her, perhaps, or, she thought fleetingly, kiss her. She didn’t move. They locked eyes, she tilting her head up slightly to match his gaze. Billie’s green–blue eyes were steady, his hazel eyes warm and liquid for a moment, then unreadable again.

  ‘I should head back,’ he said, breaking away to look down at his polished, well-worn leather shoes. After a long silence, he added, ‘Off the record, you seem to have saved me a lot of trouble, Ms Walker. Those two are unlikely to be missed. Everyone in that hospital seems to have witnessed the attack. If they’d got away . . .’

  ‘They’d still be a menace,’ she commented, and he nodded. ‘It’s a long drive back,’ she added, giving it one more try. ‘Can’t I tempt you with some refreshments first? You do need sustenance, surely?’ She wasn’t about to let him go if she could help it, now that she had him away from his desk, away from the likes of Dennison, and the discussion with Adin Brown had been so productive. Trust was building between them. If she could keep him open . . .

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to decline,’ he responded, and gave her a look she couldn’t read. ‘Thank you for your assistance today, especially with the boy.’ He paused and she did not interject, instead waiting the silence out. He had not walked back t
o his motor car, had not forced the issue by opening her door.

  She crossed one ankle over the other, and leaned back against her black motor car.

  ‘The local police haven’t seen such excitement for a while,’ he finally added. ‘As you may know, one of the men has been positively identified, but the other is so badly mangled it will take a while longer to confirm.’ She hadn’t known, in fact. She waited for more. ‘But they think we have an ID as they were a pair who always worked together. Known to police,’ he went on. ‘And yes, they were known to consort with Moretti, among others.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, victorious at last, smiling. He’d have known that information back in his office, and he hadn’t let on. She’d thought it unlikely that one of them had lied when faced with the working end of her pistol. Why pull Moretti’s name into it if he wasn’t the one who’d hired them? That wouldn’t make sense. So Vincenzo Moretti or whoever he was working for didn’t want Adin Brown talking. Where was Moretti now? And where were the other two men from the alley? Not at the bottom of the escarpment. Somewhere else, possibly still with orders to put an end to Adin’s memories of what had happened to him.

  ‘You think the boy is safe now, in there?’ Billie asked, pointing across the street. ‘If Moretti or others want him dead?’

  ‘He has a police guard,’ the inspector said.

  ‘Would he best be moved?’ she pressed.

  ‘Possibly,’ he admitted.

  ‘Is there anything that can be done about it?’

  ‘Possibly,’ he said again. ‘I’ll look into it.’

  ‘And the auction house?’

  ‘It’s not come across my radar before, but it might be of some interest now.’ He looked down at his shoes again, his chest rising with one deep breath. ‘I should head back. If you learn anything more, please feel free to contact me. This is my private number,’ he said, handing a card to her. He’d written the number in pen on the back. The writing was fresh. A corner of it had smudged.

  Billie took the card, sensing that it was unusual for him to offer his private number. ‘Thank you, Detective Inspector Cooper,’ she said, and they exchanged a look of unexpected intensity. She held it as long as she could before he broke away.

  ‘And thank you again for your assistance today,’ the inspector said again, a touch awkwardly.

  ‘Of course. I’m happy to assist. You know where to find me,’ Billie told him.

  They shook hands, a courteous if formal gesture after the intimacy of Adin’s tiny hospital room, and she opened her driver’s-side door and slid inside. He closed it for her, having been robbed of the opportunity to chivalrously help her into her motor car himself, and stalked off. Blast, she thought, having hoped to hold him longer. Before she pulled away she watched him drive past, headed for Sydney’s Central Street and his cramped office. She leaned back in her red leather seat and sighed. Cooper might have had more to tell her if she’d been persuasive enough. She was losing her touch.

  Billie had plenty of time to consider the inspector, and how to best approach him when they next met, as she ate a light meal in the Hydro Majestic’s Salon du Thé, served by the same waiter who had been in Cat’s Alley just the day before. If he had seen the paper and recognised her, he was professional enough not to let on. The establishment appeared busier today, with several grey-haired men gathered around one table, taking tea and appearing to discuss business.

  What a full and eventful twenty-four hours it had been since her last visit. And she would have a big week ahead, searching for Shyla, now that the boy was in good hands and under police guard, but for now she was spent. She could do worse than relax at a scenic table at the Hydro, and on a day that was still reasonably clear, despite the growing haze of smoke further down the mountain. She ordered no champagne this time, but washed down her repast with black tea. Drinking alone, to her mind, was a slippery slope and a common downfall of a private inquiry agent, and she’d seen it plenty of times. Finally, refreshed, and with a full belly, she left the salon, noting that the wind had not died down. The sun was still high – it was barely three weeks off the summer solstice – so she wouldn’t have to drive home in total darkness. She had her eyes on the Great Western Highway, holding her hat and contemplating the long journey back to Cliffside Flats, when she walked past a dark motor car parked near the hotel’s curved entrance.

  She stopped and turned, then froze.

  A black Packard stood beside the arches of the main building of the Hydro Majestic. Billie blinked, checked the number plate against her memory, and looked around for its owner. There was no one stepping out of the hotel just yet, no one standing nearby. She turned on her stacked heels and made her way quickly to her roadster, parked on the Great Western Highway, and, after some consideration, reversed it and parked by the new, imposing, Belgravia building, where she could watch the main entrance from her seat. She pulled her French-made Lumière binoculars out of the glove box, adjusted the lenses and waited. As it turned out, she didn’t need to wait long.

  There he is.

  Even from a distance equivalent to a short city block, she was struck by the appearance of the driver when he stepped out of the hotel and was bade farewell by a uniformed staff member. Through the round lenses of her binoculars she caught a thin smile before he turned and walked to his fine automobile. Billie knew perfectly well, with a sickening turn of her stomach, that the man she had her lenses trained on would walk to that Packard, not to any other car. The man was tall and slim and wore a suit of palest blue, perhaps linen, and wrinkled somewhat from the drive. His hair was as white as snow and cut short at the back and sides in the military style, smoothed down at the front. She couldn’t catch much more as his head was tilted away from her, towards the far end of the hotel and the highway beyond. He got into his motor car and pulled out along the driveway.

  Shyla had said the man was ‘white’, but that had meant more than Billie realised. It was the man with the snow-white hair. The man with the airman’s burn, or the plastic job. The man from that table with Georges Boucher at The Dancers. Hadn’t she also seen someone with snow-white hair at the auction house? Yes, and the Packard, before they were set upon in the alley. What a nasty little circle this was. Any fleeting question of whether she should follow the Packard quickly vanished. Billie had to know who he was.

  Billie ignited her engine, and followed the Packard, heart thumping. The big car turned left out of the driveway, in the direction of Blackheath and Lithgow. Billie stayed two cars back, a good distance. There was no reason for the man to think she would be there, she reminded herself. No reason for him to think he was being followed. Still, she was grateful for the flow of local traffic that helped her to blend in. She ran through the scene inside the Salon du Thé. No, he had not been among the businessmen dining there. What had brought him up this way? she wondered. Had he too taken an interest in the boy in isolation in Katoomba Hospital?

  The Packard wound its way along the highway and passed through Blackheath, through the intersection where the shattered rear windshield of the ill-fated Oldsmobile had since been swept up. The grand motor car went on, not slowing, past the old cemetery, then continuing through bush and agricultural land dotted with the occasional homestead and weatherboard house. Many properties were overgrown, suggesting a boom between wars, now quashed by the lack of able-bodied men to work the land. The powers that be had done a fine job of cutting down the generations. And still the black Packard drove on, away from the city, and to what destination? All the way to Colo? If so, there would be no time to get information from Constable Primrose, no time to figure out who he was.

  The motor car finally slowed at Mount Victoria, right at the top of the mountains, and turned off the Great Western Highway at the main intersection. Billie slowed, happy that one of the two vehicles ahead of her was also making the same turn. They passed the famed two-storey Hotel Imperial, Australia’s oldest tourist hotel, sitting pale and regal on the corner, its parapets decorate
d with medieval-style detail. Billie had taken tea there once with her parents, seemingly a lifetime ago. The pale driver did not stop, instead heading out towards Mount Tomah and Bilpin. A country automobile with a flat back pulled onto the road in front of Billie, an extra buffer between the two black cars, her roadster and the Packard. For nearly an hour Billie followed the Packard along Bell’s Line Road, hanging back behind the truck and the other car, just far enough to avoid being noticed. Or at least she hoped so. It depended somewhat on the Packard’s driver, but in Billie’s experience most people did not check to see if they were being followed, even those who really ought to know better.

  Who is Frank? Was he a confident man? Suspicious?

  The sun was beginning to set when the big black car finally slowed and pulled up outside the Kurrajong Heights Hotel, a huge timber building with, Billie guessed, a spectacular view over the valley. She was forced to drive past, knowing that pulling off the road suddenly would attract the man’s attention. She followed the farm vehicle and the other car down the road until the hotel was out of sight, then circled back and managed to drive around the closer side, up a second driveway, to park next to a large truck that concealed the roadster from the hotel entrance. She switched off her headlamps and waited, not knowing whether to get out. Now that she knew ‘Frank’ was the man from The Dancers, she realised that he might recognise her by sight, as clearly as she had recognised him. Was he stopping for refreshments? The telephone? Would he stay for the night? She ran over what she knew about him in her mind as she waited, deliberating whether to enter the hotel or try to spy through the windows to see what he was up to.

  Thankfully, only a few minutes later he was striding back to his car, his blanched hair and complexion standing out with a ghostly glow in the gathering dark, exaggerating his almost alien foreignness. Had he spoken with someone? Delivered something? His mood seemed not to have changed, his body language speaking of a confident man, a man who perhaps even felt superior to those surrounding him, a man who did not appear suspicious and afraid he was being followed. He started up the Packard and pulled away, not even bothering to look around him. He . . . travels in a motor car, carrying things to Sydney, Shyla had said. What things, exactly? He’d visited the Hydro Majestic and now this hotel, both places with good reputations. As the Packard’s tail lights faded down the road, Billie eased the roadster into life and followed again with extra care. By the time he turned off the road onto a smaller dirt road signposted ‘Colo’, there was no one between them to provide a convenient buffer, and little light to speak of. In the country, headlamps announced you once the sun was down, but so too did the dusty road telegraph your direction. Billie found it easy to follow far back in the Packard’s dusty wake as it passed small settlements and isolated homesteads. Eventually there were no settlements, no houses. A kangaroo hopped across the roadster’s path and Billie slowed just in time, the other roos in the troop blinking at her in the darkness just beyond. Past the remote Upper Colo church and cemetery, she caught his headlamps as he turned right far ahead.