Dead Man Switch

by Tara Moss

  Yes, there was work to do.

  ‘John, hold the lift?’ Billie called and picked up her pace as she crossed the foyer.

  The lift operator smiled in his lopsided way through the grille of the outer door and pulled it back, making his other customers, two men, wait. ‘Of course, Ms Walker,’ he said fondly.

  Billie slid inside, noting that one of the two men was familiar – an older man with spectacles and ink-stained fingers, in a striped suit. One of the accountants. A pleasant enough fellow. He tipped his hat to her. The second was taller and had badly dyed brown hair just visible under a fedora. John Wilson pulled the second door closed and worked the lever, the lift starting up with a shuffling hum.

  ‘Second floor, Mr Peters,’ he announced, and the accountant lumbered out with a smile and a thank you.

  Wilson closed the doors again and started the lift. ‘Both for floor number six.’

  Billie swallowed. The little woman in her gut told her something was wrong, very wrong, and in a heartbeat the man in the fedora was behind her left shoulder and she felt the sharp sting of a blade in her lower back, pressing into her shirtwaist dress and pointing at her kidney.

  ‘How is work, Ms Walker?’ Wilson inquired, his back to them as he faced the lift’s controls.

  Billie took a steady breath and kept her body still, her voice even. ‘Work is busy,’ she replied, tensing despite her best efforts. ‘How is your lovely wife, Wendy, doing? She felt rather down very suddenly, didn’t she, after that bout of, what was it?’

  The knife dug a touch deeper.

  ‘Ah, just a cold, it was,’ Wilson said, after an almost imperceptible pause. Billie’s heart lifted a touch.

  ‘Here we are,’ the lift operator said as the carriage slowed. ‘Sixth floor.’

  Billie prepared for what she hoped would happen next, her body tense, her feet firm. When Wilson reversed the controls suddenly and let go of the handle, the dead man switch kicked in, the carriage taking air for a brief moment before jerking violently, and she threw herself forward, turning away from the blade, intentionally falling on her sore open palms and kicking backwards like a mule with her heeled oxfords into the man’s stomach. He crumpled against the wall, the knife tumbling out of his grasp, and before she could right herself, Wilson, unarmed and with only one upper extremity to work with, had thrown the man forward and pinned him to the floor with both knees, his left arm pressing against the back of his neck.

  ‘Dear God, I do hope that’s what you wanted me to do,’ he said, a little breathless. ‘When you called June by the wrong name, and said what you said, I knew it was a code of sorts.’

  ‘Yes, John,’ Billie said. ‘You did well. Bloody well.’ In seconds she had the Colt in her hand, having shamelessly flashed her silk knickers and stocking tops to the lift operator and his loathsome quarry. She steadied her hands on the gun, swaying a little with the speed of it all. ‘I have him now.’

  ‘I thought something was suspicious when I asked him where he’d served and he didn’t answer. That war wound.’

  That war wound one might mistake for airman’s burn, just like John’s, but was not. That burn inflicted by the man’s victims in one final brave act of rebellion.

  Wilson unpinned the man and rose, straightening his uniform and the empty sleeve of his jacket’s right arm. He started the lift up again, and jogged it up and down until they lined up with the sixth floor.

  ‘Thank you. Doors please, John,’ Billie said, ignoring the angry mutterings coming out of Hessmann’s mouth.

  Wilson opened the inner door and slid the grille back, revealing the sixth-floor entryway.

  ‘Thank you, again,’ Billie said. ‘I do owe you one. And I’ll explain later.’ She urged her prisoner out of the lift. ‘Call the police straightaway, John, if you would. Ask for Detective Inspector Cooper. He’s at Central, just up the way. And Constable Primrose. Tell them I have Franz Hessmann. Tell them to bring as much back-up as they see fit, and to make it quick if they expect me to keep this fellow alive. My patience isn’t what it used to be.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Staring into the face of a mass murderer was an enlightening experience, Billie Walker found.

  The thing that struck her most forcibly was the sheer ordinariness of this brutal killer. This man who tortured and maimed and raped and killed had the same features, the same kind of flesh and blood and human traits as the next person. Eyelashes. Teeth. His veins presumably held blood, like the next person. He’d once been a baby, the offspring of some unsuspecting union. A pulse moved beneath his skin, just as it did in Billie. The thing was, she had not spotted him in a crowd. She could not in all reality say she had looked at him at The Dancers and thought, That one. That one is the killer of thousands, hundreds of thousands.

  Yet here before her was Franz Hessmann, he of the shocking white hair, his one truly stand-out physical quality in a world now peopled with scarred and injured returned soldiers. Had he earned that hair in the war? she speculated. In the fire that had scarred him? Or had it always been part of him? That hair had dyed badly when he’d finally deigned to cover it, no longer so confident of his ability to hide in plain sight around the high end of Sydney, surrounded by a set of people he’d so successfully gained the support of, through wealth and fine art and the grubbiest forms of blackmail. His hairline was artificial looking and harsh against his pale Aryan skin, the dye sitting strangely. She’d noticed it at a glance, though it had taken a few seconds longer to place just what it meant. Only a few seconds, but that had almost been enough – would have been enough, if not for John, the lift operator, and his understanding of her coded words. Hessmann had been on his way up to her office to kill her. That showed a personal dislike, she felt. He would have been safer staying away from her, disappearing and staying gone, but now he was in her father’s creaking wooden chair in what had once been her father’s office, and she had a loaded 1908 Colt trained at that badly dyed head of his, and truthfully Billie’s trigger finger felt itchy.

  ‘Who helped you out at Richmond, Hessmann? It must have been someone persuasive.’

  He kept his thin mouth shut.

  ‘What did you like to do to help people to talk? Something about a bathtub, I hear. Was that your thing? If I had some of your techniques, maybe you’d furnish me with some information now.’

  Again, nothing.

  The rage in Billie, a warranted but unhealthy rage, was pressing at her skin from the inside, making her feel she might burst. What would she have done if this were eighteen months earlier? Would she wait for the cavalry to arrive? She’d never killed a man, not face to face anyway – she’d been bluffing about that – but there was always a first time.

  ‘I heard how those women got you at the camp. Earned you those burns,’ she said, pointing at his face. ‘Hardly an honourable war wound, unlike so many others. That must have really upset you, having to walk around with the evidence of their victory written on your face.’

  Ah, she was getting to him now. That chalky face of his was tinged with red.

  ‘Yes, they really got you, didn’t they, those women?’ Billie went on. ‘And the boy here, he figured it out, didn’t he? Did you know who the boy was? His significance?’

  Her captive frowned.

  ‘The boy you beat and nearly succeeded in killing, did you know who he was?’

  ‘Judensau,’ he seethed in his heavy accent. Jew pig. Billie felt her temper rise yet further.

  It’s tempting, but no, she told herself. She didn’t want him ruining the rust carpet. He was much better in the dock here in Sydney or in Berlin or at Nuremberg facing his brave victims than splattered in her nice office where she would have to return each day and remember him, or at least the stains he’d left behind.

  ‘I don’t think much of you, Hessmann. You and your kind aren’t worth the carpet I walk on and that’s the only reason I’m holding back from pulling this trigger right now and ruining this little patch of rug beneath
you. I find myself feeling a bit sentimental about the rug, but hey, if you really want to change my mind, do go on,’ she dared him.

  ‘Verräterische hure!’ he said and spat on her father’s rust carpet. Treacherous whore.

  Billie took a step back to contain herself. Wait for the cops. Hank won’t be long, she thought. Lot of good that did last time, came the second half of that thought. The inspector seemed to be doing the best he could; he’d done what he promised when she’d called on him – but that hadn’t been enough. Her eye caught Jack’s photograph, that blurry, candid grin, and the air shifted, the soft sound of movement alerting her, and Hessmann, moving swiftly, bounded towards the small balcony, its door left open to catch the breeze. Yes, he was going for the balcony, where she’d often lingered to watch the setting sun, or smoke one of her Lucky Strikes on smoking days. It was curious, he had nowhere to flee to. She moved fast, just a beat behind him, and just as she thought he was cornered, Hessmann was over the edge. Billie waited for screams from below and the sound of his body hitting the footpath. Another Nazi escaping justice by his own hand, like his Führer in his bunker.

  But no.

  Billie leaned over the balcony railing and saw that Hessmann was on the edge of the mouldings, clinging to the building, far above the entrance to the billiards room where she had been celebrating so recently. A fire exit, made up of a narrow metal bridge connecting Daking House to its neighbour, Station House, sat high above the laneway, and Billie was aware of it having been used in years past by the panicked workers in the top storeys of the adjoining building when fire had broken out. The fire escape was old, and considered unsafe, but Hessmann was inching towards it, and soon would have it in reach.

  Billie trained her Colt on him. ‘Stop!’ she yelled, leaning out over the balcony, steadying herself against one of the solid pillars, and when he didn’t stop, did not even pause, she fired her weapon without hesitation, the bullet ricocheting off the metal of the bridge. She heard a gasp from below, as if it were coming from another place, perhaps over a telephone line, or from a picture film. She stayed focused on Hessmann, and in no time he was on top of the narrow bridge, crouching low as a spider, pulling his way across the grille towards Station House. She fired again, aiming at his lower body, as the rest of him was protected by the grille. This time he paused, but only briefly. She had not missed him, she realised, seeing a trail of blood as the Nazi war criminal once more dragged himself forward. Now the metal grille was in the way of a clear shot.

  ‘Blast. Blast!’ There was no one below to help, no one in Station House that she could see. The cops had not yet arrived. The building’s windows were open for summer. It would be too easy for him to disappear into one of them. Billie slid the Colt into the belt at the cinched waist of her dress and with only a moment’s hesitation pulled herself over the edge of the balcony. The mouldings were just wide enough to cling to, but it was perilous. She began to slip and threw herself sideways, catching the bridge with both hands, and with effort lifted herself up and was on the fire escape with Hessmann only feet ahead. The rails were not solid, the bridge swayed, and she crawled forward, catching Hessmann’s ankle on one side.

  ‘Hure!’ he cursed for the second time, trying to shake her off.

  ‘I’m no one’s whore, thank you very much,’ Billie returned with vicious politeness, and calmly pressed the muzzle of her Colt into the bullet wound in his leg. He cried out and stopped trying to pull himself forward. When he was still again she released the pressure. ‘I don’t recommend you move, Hessmann,’ she said. ‘Unless you want more of that.’ The wound poured blood where the bullet had hit him. He couldn’t run now, not on that leg. He’d stopped, and so had she. She had him. She finally had him. She would not let Hessmann out of her sight. Not for anyone.

  ‘Don’t move!’ a voice was calling from below, unexpectedly mirroring her sentiment. She looked down over the lip of the narrow bridge and recognised Hank Cooper’s face turned up at her. ‘We have the fire department coming. They have a net,’ he shouted, his voice uncharacteristically strained.

  Only now, Billie realised they were drawing quite a crowd, perching on the bridge, several storeys above the cold hard pavement. Commuters heading to Central Station and the tram lines after work had stopped to stare. Constable Primrose was beside Hank Cooper, and the lift operator, John Wilson, was with them, looking as white as a spirit. Just ahead, at the top of Station House, two police officers appeared in the window, the glass surreally reflecting Billie’s precarious position back at her. Someone in clerical vestments arrived in haste down Rawson Lane, crossed himself and began praying. The moment stretched out, the sky turning gold around them, the sun lowering slowly in the summer sky.

  Hessmann must know now that he was surrounded, that he had no chance of escape. Not this time.

  ‘Für das Tausendjähriges Reich!’ he yelled suddenly and threw his weight forward, his legs falling downward first and slowly dragging his torso over the bridge. Billie grabbed for him, then let go, realising she had no firm hold on the bridge, pulling herself backward on her bottom and hands, out of the way of his grasp as he now scrabbled for a hold, either to take her with him or as a final, instinctive bid for survival. The bridge lurched, rusted screws giving way. One white hand reached her right ankle and took it firmly, its grip as tight as a cobra, pulling Billie sideways in a violent jerk. The bridge shook again, making a terrible noise. Billie slid helplessly to the edge, her movement punctuated by a collective cry from below. She found the slimmest foothold for her left shoe, and meshed the fingers of one hand through the grille. They stayed poised there, Billie gripping the bridge and Hessmann hanging by one arm, his entire weight now on her right ankle. The screams from below sounded strangely distant in Billie’s ears under the din of her adrenaline, which throbbed loudly in her skull. Her twisting leg screamed out in pain, but her own lips were silent, pulled back in a grimace as white as her knuckles as she desperately held on.

  Billie’s fine stockings were smooth, slippery, and she felt Hessmann’s grasp sliding lower as they tore under the weight of his body, and then he was balanced from the toe of her oxford shoe, her foot twisting. Her shoe began to unlace itself, the heel coming free, bit by bit slipping slowly, time stretched out like a soldier’s minute – every action, every breath extended – nothing before, nothing after, just this moment. One more breath, another, and then her oxford was free, and so was Franz Hessmann.

  Now weightless, Billie’s right leg pulled upwards and she instinctively cradled her knee, scraping it on the metal grille suspending her, and through the mesh she caught a glimpse of the white face, now a twisted mask of rage and fear, retreating below her, growing smaller, eyes round with panic and looking right into her, one hand still stretching up, reaching. She closed her eyes and heard the sickening thud as he landed, her shoe hitting the ground after him with something like a ping. The bridge rocked again and everything seemed to go silent, even the hammering of Billie’s heart seeming for a moment to stop.

  And then, in the distance, a siren.

  The fire department was arriving with its safety net.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This novel is a work of fiction set in a historical period still in living memory for a fading few, a time of great personal importance for my family and many others. Billie and her story were born from a mix of the real life and fantasy, of family stories of World War Two, my fascination with the 1940s and women’s post-war history, and my love of the great noir and hardboiled fiction of the period, my love of action and the great women who made their mark on that time. There is no way to do full justice to the heroes of this period.

  Dead Man Switch took over two years to research and write and many more years to conceive as I busied myself with non-fiction writing projects. During this time my family were incredibly patient, and my publishers were, too. I am indebted. My sincere thanks go to HarperCollinsPublishers for twenty years of support through several genres since my firs
t novel was published with them in 1999. In particular I want to thank Anna Valdinger, Katherine Hassett, Nicola Robinson, Rachel Dennis, Alice Wood and editor Amanda O’Connell. Thank you also to my Australian literary agent Selwa Anthony for her ongoing support, friendship and guidance. She has been there since the beginning, and is a great example of the kind of strong and adaptable women who so often inspire my fictional characters.

  I owe great thanks to my researcher Chrys Stevenson for her tireless assistance as I went down the rabbit hole of historical period details for over two years, double checking every elevator, street and building in 1940s Sydney; the Australian Sewing Guild for all they have taught me as patron and student and in turn taught the fictional Billie with her sewing and mending skills; fashion historians Hilary Davidson and Nicole Jenkins for their expertise; consultant Dr Sandra Phillips, Professor Larissa Behrendt and Raema Behrendt for their knowledge and research assistance into the history of Aboriginal women’s experiences in Australia; Daking House YHA for access to Daking House and their historical and architectural plans; Joe Abboud for information about the historical block of flats I have renamed Cliffside for the purposes of this book; Bob Waddilove for his knowledge of the Willys 77 roadster; and former Police Prosecutor Sergeant Patrick Schmidt for his assistance.

  The characters in this book are fictional, with the exception of Special Sergeant (First Class) Lillian Armfield, who I hope would approve of her brief inclusions, a crime writer’s way of drawing attention to her pioneering work in policing. The reprehensible Franz Hessmann is a fictional character, though Ravensbrück concentration camp was a real place where an estimated 132,000 women and children were incarcerated under extreme conditions, including famine, slave labour (yes, the private companies mentioned were involved as employers of this slave labour), inhumane medical experimentation and sterilisations performed without consent. Very few survived. Specific elements have been inspired by the brave testimony of Holocaust survivors including Simone Lagrange who testified against the Nazi Klaus Barbie about her torture in a bathtub while just thirteen in 1944. It is said that the women forced to work at Ravensbrück, among other things, used their skills in sewing to make soldiers’ socks, adjusting the machines to make the fabric thin at the heel and the toes, causing the socks to wear prematurely when the German soldiers marched, giving the soldiers sore feet. That story appears to be true, and there were real saboteurs at the rocket factory, women who risked all to rebel and keep their spirits alive in unspeakable, cruel and dehumanising conditions. I grew up with my opa, to whom this book is dedicated along with my oma, recalling stories of his escape and of sabotaging bombs in the munitions factory in Berlin he was forced to work in against his will, along with many other able-bodied Dutch men, when Holland was occupied.