by Tara Moss
For one stretched-out moment everything was quiet and still.
Billie lowered her gun, her mind focused and as sharp as crystal. Shyla stood firm, holding a small bronze bust of Captain James Cook in her hand. Time seemed to have stopped. Could the commotion have been heard by Franz?
‘Can we get some more light?’ Billie ventured quietly, and stepped forward to close the room off from the rest of the house, shutting the door carefully. Shyla pointed to the kerosene lamp that was sitting on the table, and soon the whole grisly scene was illuminated before them. Both women were still again, not saying a word. Georges Boucher was still on the floor. His chest did not move.
Slowly, Billie kneeled next to Boucher, placing her unfired pistol in the waistband of her skirt. She checked Boucher’s wrist for a pulse. Nothing. She checked his neck. It was warm, but also without a pulse. His eyes were unseeing. She didn’t need to touch his head to know it would be warm, wet and soft where the heavy bronze bust had connected with it. He was dead.
Billie stood up and gently took the statuette from Shyla’s hands, then stepped out of her silk half-slip and wiped the statuette clean of prints, leaving the small mess of blood and hair that was centred on the bust’s base. She placed it carefully beside Boucher’s body, then stepped back and considered the scene. Could Boucher feasibly have fallen onto the bust? After a beat, she moved the table the bust and vase had stood on forward a touch, so it was closer to the body. She pushed at the rug, rippling its surface, and then observed the arrangement again. It would have to do. She picked up her bloodstained slip and, disgusted with it, balled it up and stuffed it into the pocket of her driving coat, as one would a large silk handkerchief.
‘How does it look?’ Shyla asked, anxiety in her voice.
‘That depends on who’s looking,’ Billie replied honestly, in a low whisper. ‘He tripped over the rug and hit his head. When the police ask, and they will doubtless ask, I will be a witness. I entered the premises and he saw me and panicked, ran away and slipped on the rug. There are no prints on the bust any more. It was an accident.’
Shyla, normally so collected, was shaking her head back and forth, melting into panic. ‘The coppers won’t believe me, Billie. They don’t believe us.’
‘It will be okay, Shyla,’ Billie tried to reassure her, placing a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. ‘You won’t have to be the one to explain this. You weren’t in the room. It was only me. You didn’t even see it happen,’ she told her. ‘If that comes up in a bruise,’ she said, pointing at her neck, ‘Franz did that in another room. Or Boucher did. Not here, not now.’
Billie felt eyes on them and they both turned. Another girl was watching silently from the doorway, a hand to her mouth. She’d opened the door a hair and they’d been so absorbed they hadn’t even noticed. Now it swung further open on its hinges, revealing the small figure. This would be one of the girls Shyla had spoken about. Ruthie, Billie guessed.
‘He fell. He can’t hurt you now,’ Billie said to the girl quietly. ‘My name is Billie. Billie Walker. But we have to stay quiet. Franz is still awake, isn’t he?’
The girl nodded, large, dark eyes riveted to the dead man on the floor, and something passed behind them – Fear? Relief? – and she looked to Shyla. After a beat Shyla nodded, as if to say this white woman was all right, could be trusted, at least for now. Billie was struck by how young the girl was. To see all this, to be trapped in a place like this, so young . . .
‘I’m Ruthie,’ the girl said finally. She was diminutive, no older than fifteen, Billie guessed. Her hair was pulled back under a cap, her dress was worn, and her wool cardigan was buttoned to the top. A cross hung around her neck and glinted in the light of the kerosene lamp. Although her eyes kept going to the body of Boucher, lifeless on the floor, she did not scream, did not say a word about it.
‘Can we get the two other girls out?’ Billie asked. ‘I have a car down the road, around the bend. I can drive us out of here to safety.’
Ruthie looked up at Billie, eyes brighter. ‘No, he keeps the keys,’ she said.
At this, Shyla came to life again. ‘I’ll wash my hands in the kitchen and check on him.’
‘Be careful. Take off your shoes. Clean them in the kitchen if necessary,’ Billie instructed her in a soft, even voice, her eyes taking in the scene impassively, looking for the kind of evidence the police would be searching for. She was grateful for her clarity in these moments. It wasn’t until you saw a dead body for the first time, or had a bullet fly just past your ear, that you realised what kind of person you really were – the kind who panics in a life-or-death emergency, or the kind who becomes strangely calm, everything shifting into hyper-real focus. She was pleased that Shyla and Ruthie had both assumed a sort of surreal calmness.
They would get out of this. They would.
‘Where are the other girls now?’ Billie asked Ruthie.
‘Down the corridor,’ Ruthie said, and moved into the hall to point the way, then folded her arms and stepped back. She clearly did not want to accompany Billie. One room Ruthie indicated had what looked like a padlock securing the door. The other might not be locked, Billie thought hopefully.
She pulled her Colt from her waistband, heartbeat steady, and moved forward, keeping it ahead of her as one might shine a torch into the darkness. Behind her, Ruthie slipped away, and Billie was alone.
She decided to go for the door without the padlock first. If she couldn’t open the padlock easily with a hatpin, she’d have to shoot at it and that would alert Franz.
Billie became conscious of the oddest thing as she moved slowly in the darkness, eyeing the light glowing under the two closed doors. Perfume. Cologne. Yes, it smelled good. French. Billie liked French perfume, had developed a real taste for it in Paris, though this was not her favoured scent, Bandit. In this context, a fine French scent was jarring, peculiar. Everything was jarring here, the masterpieces and the rustic furniture and the death’s-head owl and the cologne. This strange place, this house, was its own world, had its own rules. She kept her right hand on her Colt, and her left reached out for the doorknob, slowly . . .
And it turned.
It turned before she reached it.
Billie scurried back, holding her breath, and pressed herself against the wall of the corridor. The door creaked open in front of her, shielding her from the person on the other side. She heard steps. Heavy steps.
‘Georges?’ a voice queried. A male voice. He was moving down the hallway, towards the room where Boucher’s body lay. Blast. Billie flicked the door back with her heel and extended her gun. It made contact with his upper back.
‘Was ist das?’ The pale head turned. It was him, the tall white-haired man.
‘Raise your hands,’ Billie said. ‘Back into the room,’ she ordered him, and slowly walked him backwards into the room from which he had emerged. It was a bedroom, the bed made up with fine sheets and pillows. A claw-foot bathtub sat in one corner of the room, a metal bar and chain hanging from it. Billie frowned at the strangeness of it. There was a Persian rug at her feet covering some of the uneven wooden flooring. A finely carved wooden chair. On a round, polished antique table a lamp was glowing, providing a circle of soft light that illuminated pretty china figurines and an ashtray. The windows were covered with panels of wood, nailed shut. It was a luxurious prison cell.
The prisoner was still there. She looked up. She did not scream or cry out.
‘I’m going to help you. You’re okay now,’ Billie said.
The girl was perhaps twelve, no older. Billie felt such rage, such white-hot anger, that she hit the man with the butt of her small pistol.
‘Can you help me tie him up?’ Billie asked. ‘Find some rope?’ The girl just watched her, unable to move or speak, it seemed. ‘The other man is gone, he can’t hurt you now,’ Billie added. ‘Can you find Ruthie and Shyla and bring them here?’ Again, this revelation had no effect. The girl stayed on the far corner of the bed, watching Billie
with wide, empty eyes.
‘Shyla!’ Billie called. ‘Ruthie!’
The two girls appeared in the doorway, saw the pale man with his hands raised.
‘Help this girl,’ Billie said. ‘And I need something to hold the man with.’
At this the man turned and glared at her with eerily blue eyes.
‘Who do you think you are? You think you will get away with this?’ His voice was heavily accented, but his English was good.
‘Get any ideas and get shot,’ Billie countered. ‘I’m not likely to miss at this range and I have no qualms. You won’t be the first Nazi I’ve shot.’
His mouth quivered. He kept his hands up. Ruthie ran to the young girl and coaxed her off the bed, the small, delicate figure moving as if in a trance. She was led across the creaking floor and out of the room. In a waft of fresh air, Shyla appeared with a length of coarse rope, stained in places as if it had been put to agricultural use in a former life. It felt cool to the touch. She’d got it from outside.
‘In the chair, Franz,’ Billie ordered, and the man moved slowly to the carved wooden chair in the corner of the stifling room. ‘Sit.’ He hesitated. ‘SIT!’ He did as he was instructed and while Billie kept her Colt trained on the man, Shyla secured his ankles and wrists, running the rope around him and through the rungs of the chair until he could not stand, could not run. The lamp illuminated one side of his face, the pulled side, where burns or wounds had healed into white scars. In the low light it looked like a mask with glinting, evil eyes peering out, so different from John Wilson, with his warmth and his honourable war wounds.
‘Here,’ Billie said, handing her Colt to Shyla. ‘Keep it on him. I’ll see if I can find the other girl.’
Shyla held the gun admirably, her hands steady.
It will be interesting when the cops arrive, Billie thought. But there was no time to worry about that now. She stepped back into the hall and positioned herself in front of the locked door, down on one knee. She pulled out her bent hatpin and inserted it into the padlock. As she felt for the lever she could detect a presence behind the door, just on the other side.
‘Who is it?’ a soft voice asked.
‘My name is Billie Walker. I’m going to get you out. Just stay calm,’ she said to the voice on the other side and continued to work away at the lock. Come on . . . come on. The padlock wouldn’t give. Blast. It was a different make from the one at the shed. Billie removed the bent hatpin and tried to bend it at a different angle to suit the lock.
‘Billie! Billie!’ Shyla’s voice, urgent and forceful, came from the other room. Billie stood bolt upright.
‘I’ll be back,’ she promised the presence behind the door, then sprinted for the other room. It was bright inside, far too bright, and Billie realised with a jolt of horror this was because the kerosene lamp had crashed to the floor. The table next to the pale man was upended. Flames were spreading rapidly across the floor, catching the fabrics on the bed, on the cushions. As Billie watched, one side of the bedroom was already alight, the curtains against the boards on the window running with fire. Franz was struggling on the floor, face down, the wooden chair still woven with rope and tangled around him. He’d freed his legs but knocked over the kerosene lamp.
‘He kicked over the table,’ Shyla yelled, still pointing the gun at him. ‘I couldn’t stop him, he did it so quick. Ruthie! Quick! Water!’ she called.
Now the other side of the curtains caught. The room would go up fast. The timber here was old, dry. A thick black smoke began filling the room. Billie crouched low and dragged Shyla down with her. ‘Stay down, out of the smoke,’ she said, and looked towards the hallway. It was already beginning to fill with the smoke that billowed out of the room in dark plumes. The fire was shocking in its speed, its power.
‘We have to get out,’ Shyla cried. ‘It’s too late for water. It will go up fast.’
Billie nodded. She was right. ‘That poor girl, she’s still in the room. I couldn’t get the lock.’ Blasted thing! ‘Help me with Franz here, I don’t want him slipping away. We have to check that Ruthie and the other young girl get out . . . I don’t even know her name, then we’ll get the one who’s still locked in there, maybe out through the window. There’s still time.’
Billie raced back to the door of the locked room. ‘Shove something against the gap at the bottom of the door,’ she shouted. ‘There is a fire. You need to block the smoke. Don’t be afraid. We’ll get you out. Block the door and stay down low. Stay away from the door and away from the window.’
Not a word came from the room, but Billie heard movement and the glow from under the door was blacked out as the girl plugged the gap as instructed.
Shyla had secured Franz more tightly and she and Billie hauled him up and pulled him from the smoke-filled bedroom and down the hall, his arms secured behind him. His haughty demeanour had dissolved in the face of the emergency he had created, his chalky face now red and pulled into a mask of fear, his mouth stretched. Coughing and spluttering, they made it onto the grass outside, near the shed, Franz falling to his knees. Shyla ran behind the shed and appeared a moment later with a large axe in her hands. She gripped the wooden handle strongly, the axe looking near as big as her, and in no time she was throwing the blade into the boards across the second girl’s window like a man twice her size, shards of glass and slivers of wood flying.
Billie ran to the front of the house, where she was relieved to see Ruthie and the young girl. They sprinted into the paddock, Ruthie holding the young barefoot girl by the hand, the pair lit golden by the glowing building as it went up. The fire had already spread with shocking speed down the corridor. The second bedroom, even with the door shut, would not hold much longer, Billie realised. She tore back to the window, where Shyla was pulling at the broken boards with desperate hands. There was smoke inside already, black and heavy, and the fresh air caused flames on the far side of the room to jump and dance. Billie flung herself through the jagged gap, feeling her clothes catch on the glass, to find the girl hiding under the bed, curled into the foetal position, hands over her ears. Billie pulled at her, dragging her out and begging her to stand, not sure if she was strong enough to lift the small, shaking body alone.
‘Come on, we’ve got you. You’re going to be okay,’ Billie said to the girl, pulling off her driving coat and wrapping it around her. She put her hands under the girl’s arms and managed to lift her onto the bed. Now she had to get her out through the broken glass of the window.
‘Come with us, it’s okay,’ Shyla coaxed her, and Billie half-pushed, half-handed the girl to her, first covering her face with the coat, forcing her past the sharp glass and the broken boards, and she was out. Behind Billie the angry flames spat viciously, as if in protest, and she realised her lungs had filled with the lethal fumes. Her head felt light. Her eyes stung, burning.
Out. Get out now or never . . .
Billie threw herself through the opening and landed on the grass on her side, lungs screaming. Bright flames licked the broken gap she had emerged through. The house itself was roaring now, as if with objection, having lost its human sacrifices. It moaned and cried in the darkness.
Billie lurched to her feet, not sure how fast their party could move. The motor cars? Perhaps she could start one of them and drive them out of this mess, together? As if in answer, angry flames danced across the dry grass, light, swift and deadly, snaking with speed to the rear of the nearest shed. The shed she had been inside. It lit like a pack of matchsticks, as if it had been waiting for this moment. The Packard and the Daimler would be surrounded or even engulfed before they had time to find the keys or force them to start. Billie watched as the fire raced over the treetops and lit the hill behind the homestead. Her own automobile was down the road, fifteen or so minutes away by foot, but less if they ran. If the roadway remained clear they could reach it, but the fire was already moving at a terrifying rate, devouring the dry summer grasses and spreading towards the roadside. She didn’t like
their chances with the girls in tow and a struggling Franz.
‘To the river,’ Shyla said, ‘it’s our only chance,’ and she pointed the way.
Together, the five women and girls, with Franz as their captive, struggled down a dusty path, bent over and moving their feet as fast as they could. Billie’s lungs protested and she spluttered and coughed, but kept on, her suit streaked and torn, her hands and arms scratched and grazed. Behind them, the wrathful fire was rising, the wind shifting and starting to blow harder, creating a roar of the kind Billie had only ever heard during bombing campaigns in the war. Shyla lifted one of the young girls into her arms, carrying her and running forward with impossible strength for someone her size.
‘Feuer, feuer . . .’ someone was saying as they ran and stumbled down the track towards the river.
It was Franz, the man who was to blame for all this. The man who had forced the girls into those prison rooms, who had started the fire. He stopped, crouching and whimpering, as terrified as a small child, the roles now reversed. He repeated the same word again and again. ‘Feuer, feuer.’
Fire.
He was terrified of the flames, Billie realised, now sure that he had tried to free himself from the ropes but had not counted on the lamp spilling, had not counted on the dry Australian bush which came alive with terrifying flame at the slightest opportunity. Not counting on the drought and the hot Australian summer. The bush here loved to burn, the burning was part of its nature, part of the cycle of life and death. And he’d triggered it.