The Autumn Murders

by Robert Gott

  ‘You have quite a severe concussion. You should be at home.’

  ‘I have to tell you something, Clar. I did something awful, and I can’t tell anyone else. I can barely bring myself to say it out loud.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  This was the right response. Any show of deep concern would have silenced Helen. She wasn’t looking for sympathy.

  ‘I gave Joe Sable up to George Starling. Just like that.’

  ‘What do you mean you gave him up?’

  ‘Starling wanted to know where he was, and I told him.’

  Helen caught herself on the edge of tears. This was the first time she’d uttered this confession. Clara, who knew Helen too well to imagine this was all there was to it, said, ‘Oh right. You want me to believe that this Starling creature casually asks you where Joe Sable is, and I presume he does that so that he can go kill him, and you just cheerfully give him directions. Your concussion isn’t that bad, Helen. I think you might be leaving out a few details. So, let’s go back a bit.’

  Clara stood up, opened a window, and lit a cigarette. She sat down again and threw her legs over the arms of her chair.

  ‘And I want all the details, Helen. Don’t leave anything out. Remember what I said about old men’s cocks. I’m unshockable.’

  Helen laughed. She knew what Clara was doing, but she was grateful, and it worked. She could talk about this here and nowhere else.

  ‘I’ve told you about George Starling.’

  ‘Yes. Not the kind of boy you want to bring home to meet mother, unless you want your mother done away with.’

  ‘He took me into this room, Clar, in Port Fairy. I think it was his bedroom. It stank of sweat and rotten fish. I wanted to vomit. I was groggy because he’d punched me.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘He touched my face, and then he slapped me.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Helen.’

  ‘Then he put his hand up my skirt.’

  ‘Did he touch your genitals?’

  The question shocked Helen briefly, but Clara was a doctor, so it wasn’t a prurient question.

  ‘No. He didn’t get that far. He threatened to rape me — well, he said that that was what he was going to do, after he’d made me watch him kill Joe.’

  ‘What a prince, Helen. What a fucking prince.’

  ‘He tied my legs.’

  Helen thought for a moment. She hadn’t pieced together the sequence of events in the bedroom in Port Fairy until now.

  ‘He had a knife. A filleting knife. He pressed it against my lips — it stank of fish — and said he’d cut out my tongue if I made a sound. Then he asked me where Joe was, and I told him.’

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘I would have told him a lot earlier than that,’ Clara said. ‘Besides, he didn’t get to him, did he?’

  ‘No.’

  Clara stubbed out her cigarette, swung her legs round, and sat forward in her chair.

  ‘You know what I don’t understand, Helen? I don’t understand why you’re not a cot case. If that had happened to me, I’d be fit to tie. I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you about it as if it was all in a day’s work. I’d be curled up in a corner, whimpering and probably incontinent.’

  ‘Incontinent?’

  ‘I don’t know why I said that. It was decorative flourish.’

  ‘I betrayed Joe, Clar.’

  ‘You’d been punched in the head, you had concussion, you were terrified, and Starling did not find Joe, so in what sense did you betray him?

  ‘I told Starling.’

  ‘You told Starling what he wanted to hear, and you bought some valuable time. You did not betray Joe.’

  ‘Should I tell him?’

  Clara stood up and closed the window. This was to cover the few seconds she needed to answer the question. If she said no, it would be admitting Helen’s point that she’d betrayed Joe. She wanted to say no, because this was sensible, but she said, ‘You can tell him if you like. You haven’t done anything wrong, Helen. Sure. Go ahead, tell him. He’ll have the same reaction I did.’

  ‘You’ve got a lot of confidence in a man you’ve never met, Clar.’

  ‘He’s the man you’re in love with. That gives me confidence.’

  ‘I’ve never said that I’m in love with him, Clar.’

  ‘And yet you are.’

  ‘Is it really that obvious?’

  ‘It is to me.’

  ‘It isn’t to him.’

  ‘He’s a man, Helen. Men are morons.’

  HELEN HAD BEGUN to feel the weight of the resentments she’d harboured since she’d joined the Victorian police force. Along with the handful of other women who’d reluctantly been accepted as sworn officers, Helen had languished as a glorified secretary, called on to clean up the cells when a drunk woman had emptied her stomach or bowels in a corner. The men she worked with had treated her initially as an object of curiosity, and had settled finally on contempt, expressed as derisive and dismissive moues when she spoke, or frank and foul-mouthed attacks. They made much of her plainness — one senior officer had told her in a crowded room, ‘Rape is your best chance of losing your virginity, love.’ ‘Your only chance,’ someone had added, and the room had echoed to laughter. She’d stuck it out, meeting large and small daily humiliations with steely silence. This may have disappointed her colleagues, although they never gave her the satisfaction of demonstrating this disappointment, and they never tired of letting her know that she didn’t belong. Policing was men’s work, and any woman who thought she could do men’s work was either a lesbian or up herself, or both. Whichever the case, women spoiled everything, and it was best if their spoliation was confined to the house.

  It had taken her completely by surprise when Titus Lambert, the head of the newly formed Homicide division, had invited her to join the depleted group of his officers, on a grace-and-favour basis. Conscious that such an opportunity was purely the consequence of wartime manpower shortages, she’d been suspicious of Lambert’s motives, and even as her opinion of him improved and grew into admiration, still this small, hot ember of suspicion and resentment smouldered. Now, having been dismissed from Homicide after the incident in Port Fairy — this was how Helen saw it — she was febrile with indignation. Inspector Lambert had told her that the decision had been made by Police Command and that while he didn’t support it, he was unable to argue against it. She’d been instructed to take two weeks’ leave of absence. Unpaid.

  A week had passed since her dismissal, a week in which she’d managed to avoid discussing the Port Fairy investigation with her mother, and with her uncle, Peter Lillee. There was a mean corner of Helen’s heart that allowed a small resentment of him to do battle with her love for him. Peter Lillee’s house in Kew was a vast, Edwardian pile, and he’d accepted his widowed sister and her daughter into his life without complaint and had never expressed the slightest indication that he wished they would leave. He’d paid for Helen’s education, a financial impost that was for him negligible, and he employed his sister as his housekeeper.

  Ros Lord would never have accepted money from her brother without the formality of employment, but their relationship never resembled that between employer and employee. They’d been close growing up, with Ros, two years Peter’s senior, feeling protective of him. As they’d matured she’d found that she liked him as a man. He was decent and kind, although she suspected that his success in finance pointed to a ruthlessness he never displayed at home. Ros had fallen in love with a policeman and had followed him to Broome. The separation from her brother had been a lengthy one, but the sanctuary he’d offered her and her daughter after the death of John Lord had been natural, and had been offered without hesitation and without any sense that attached to it was pity or obligation.

  Helen sat in the library of her uncle’s house and wat
ched as Sergeant Joe Sable lowered himself into a chair opposite her. Joe had recently been on the receiving end of Peter Lillee’s generosity. Lillee had billeted and clothed Joe after Joe’s flat had been burned to the ground in an arson attack by, it was assumed, George Starling. He’d been embarrassed to have to wear another man’s clothes, even though those clothes were of a quality he could never have afforded. He’d been ragged mercilessly at work for the sudden elevation in his dress standards, but in only a few days he’d grown accustomed to the feel of expensive fabrics.

  ‘I know I’ve said it already, but I think it was lousy of them to take you out of Homicide.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Helen said, with that edge in her voice that made Joe nervous around her. ‘You think that’s what I want you to say, but it’s not what you really think.’

  ‘It is what I really think.’ Joe’s tone was measured. He didn’t want an argument. Firstly, because he was a guest in this house, and tension made an awkward situation even more awkward. Disagreement felt bad-mannered and ungrateful. Secondly, Joe knew that Helen Lord could marshal too much verbal weaponry against him. Even if he felt he was right she would overwhelm him and leave him feeling like a dolt. Helen left his riposte unchallenged for a moment, then she said, ‘Much worse happened to you, yet you weren’t asked or told to leave the unit.’

  ‘I don’t make the rules, Helen.’

  ‘You’re just the passive beneficiary of them.’

  There was an unmistakeable sneer accompanying this remark.

  ‘Inspector Lambert has taken some heat for seconding you, Helen.’

  ‘So, if he’s taking the heat, why am I the one getting burned?’

  They both knew the answer to that.

  ‘I’m looking for a place to rent,’ Joe said, and the non sequitur did nothing to ease Helen’s general level of annoyance.

  ‘No one’s asking you to leave, Joe. I resent the fact that you get to keep your job and I don’t, even though I’m much better at it than you are, but I don’t resent you personally.’

  If this was supposed to make Joe feel more comfortable, it failed, and, as often in her conversations with him, Helen was torn between wanting to please him and wanting to correct him, and she felt more keenly than ever that her feelings for him were vulnerable to exposure.

  ‘I can’t stay here indefinitely, Helen. Your uncle can’t be expected to house me forever, and he won’t accept rent.’

  ‘Inspector Lambert thinks this is the safest place for you until Starling is caught.’ She paused, and in a clumsy attempt at ameliorating her earlier remark she added, ‘And I agree with him.’

  As soon as Starling’s name was mentioned, Joe felt more at ease. Conversations with Helen had always been less fraught when confined to work.

  ‘You haven’t really spoken about that night in Port Fairy,’ he said.

  ‘He touched my skin. It was like being touched by some sort of disgusting animal.’

  ‘He’s like an ape.’

  ‘No. He’s an unknown species, and he looks like Rudolf Hess.’

  ‘He does a bit. He should be easy to spot. That police sketch of him has been widely circulated now. Maybe he’ll lie low. Maybe we’ve heard the last of him.’

  Helen shook her head. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. He hates you too much. It’s like a canker in him. When he said your name, it made his breath rancid.’

  Joe laughed uneasily.

  ‘Who knew being a Jew could be so poisonous?’

  ‘You need to stay here, Joe, until Starling is safely out of the way. Anyway, I imagine finding anywhere to rent is virtually impossible. The Americans have snaffled all the decent places.’

  This was true, as Joe had discovered, and prices being demanded for even the most rundown places were ludicrous.

  ‘When the insurance comes through for my flat, I’ll buy a place. You’re right about the rents.’

  Helen was relieved. Despite the confusion of feelings he aroused in her, she found proximity to Joe Sable preferable to distance from him. It made her hot with anger that he was blithely unaware of this, and simultaneously she hoped it was simply lack of awareness and not indifference.

  DETECTIVE SERGEANT RON Dunnart was prepared to overlook the fact that Sergeant Bob O’Dowd was a fucking Mason. What business did someone named O’Dowd have being a Mason? There were too many Masons in the force, and all of them were arseholes. That was Dunnart’s view. He had a deep, Catholic suspicion of them. Not that he practised his Catholicism. He had no time for that Immaculate-Conception, Assumption-into-Heaven shit, and he’d never met a priest who could by any measure be considered an intelligent man. He’d gone along dutifully as a boy and confessed his wet dreams to the dullard behind the grille, but as an adult he’d no more share his private transgressions with a priest than he’d fuck one of them. Still, his inherited distrust of Masons ran deep, and he was one of those officers responsible for the continuing tensions between Catholics and Masons in the force — tensions that had spilled over into violent tussles on more than one occasion.

  Under these circumstances, Dunnart wouldn’t normally have had anything to do with O’Dowd, except perhaps to thwart his ambitions or provoke a fight. But, having worked with him on several investigations, Dunnart had discovered that O’Dowd was weak and compliant, and that he shared Dunnart’s dislike of Inspector Titus Lambert. Dunnart was certain that Lambert didn’t like his methods, and he was fairly sure that if Lambert had his way, he would get rid of him. After all, Lambert had seconded a sheila into Homicide. Christ! That had gone pear-shaped, so that was all right, but so much for Lambert’s legendary judgement. Dunnart couldn’t remember the woman’s name. He’d never bothered to learn it.

  Dunnart watched from a distance as O’Dowd punched a bag in the gymnasium. O’Dowd needed the exercise. He’d begun to develop a paunch, which Dunnart saw as a symptom of O’Dowd’s essential weakness. He had the kind of body that would inevitably surrender to flabbiness, catching up to the general flabbiness of his character. Such a man was useful to Dunnart.

  O’Dowd pummelled the bag and, as he circled around it, caught sight of Dunnart. He stopped, his face red and his singlet sticking to his soft body. He walked across to Dunnart, who recoiled slightly at the smell of sweat that came off O’Dowd. Dunnart was fastidious about such things. He was a man who attended assiduously to personal hygiene, and he found other men’s indifference to how they smelled both puzzling and disgusting. He’d watched many times, and with a kind of horror, as men exercised vigorously in the gymnasium, and then simply put their uniforms back on, with only the cursory swipe of a towel to mop up the sweat. Did none of these men have wives to tell them they stank? Dunnart had certainly never given his wife cause to utter such a complaint, although early in their marriage he’d had occasion to complain about the odour of her menses. She’d become more careful after that.

  ‘Go and have a shower,’ he said to O’Dowd, ‘and then we have a few things we need to discuss.’

  ‘Is this about that bloke whose name you found in that dead fairy’s address book?’

  ‘His name is Peter Lillee, and I’ve done some digging on him. He’s a rich cunt — a very rich cunt: big end of town, Melbourne Club, the whole shebang. Unmarried, of course. Big house in Kew. And you and I, Bob, we know something about him that he wouldn’t like anyone else to know. A man in that position would be willing to finance our silence, I reckon.’

  ‘You sure about this, Ron?’

  ‘Go and have a shower, Bob. You stink.’

  MAUDE LAMBERT WASN’T a very good cook. This didn’t trouble her husband in the least. Titus Lambert wasn’t interested in food. He ate whatever was put in front of him with undiscriminating indifference as to its flavour or the complication of its preparation. Maude’s brother, Group Captain Tom Mackenzie, on the other hand, considered himself a dab hand in the kitchen, and to Maude�
�s relief and delight he’d begun to rediscover this ability.

  ‘Tom is recovering,’ she’d told Titus. ‘He’s coming back to us.’

  Titus agreed that Tom’s appearance and general demeanour had improved greatly over the few weeks since the appalling torture to which he’d been subjected. Often though, he would catch Tom sitting, and sometimes standing, his face expressionless, but with tears streaming down his cheeks. It was a peculiar and disconcerting sight, this immobile face with running tears the only movement on its surface.

  Tom Mackenzie’s house in South Melbourne was small, smaller even than the Lamberts’ house in Brunswick. Titus and Maude had moved here temporarily, primarily to look after Tom, but also because George Starling had found out their address. Titus wouldn’t expose his wife to the risk Starling represented. There was no question of Titus remaining in the Brunswick house on his own. If any risks were to be faced, they’d face them together. After so many years of marriage, during which Maude had become an inextricable and essential part of Titus’s working life, the idea that any sort of crisis might be managed separately was anathema.

  Maude had been surprised when her brother had agreed without hesitation to place himself under the care of a psychiatrist. That decision alone revealed the damage that had been done to him, damage that went far beyond the obvious and distressing physical injuries. She’d been able to nurse those. The dismaying vacancy in his eyes, his silence, and his nightmares had been more difficult to manage. The nightmares especially, erupting in a small house in South Melbourne, had been nerve-stripping and exhausting. Now, though, Tom was returning.

  The night terrors had been worrying Titus, and not just because of their debilitating effect on Tom. ‘Is Joe Sable waking up at 2.00 a.m., terrified?’ he asked Maude. It was just after 2.00 a.m., when he asked this question. Maude had been up, calmed Tom, and had just returned to bed. She placed her hand on Titus’s chest.

  ‘I imagine he must be. He blames himself. And he went back to work too soon.’

  Titus felt this as a personal rebuke, and the muscles in his chest jumped. Maude felt the tremor at her fingertips.