by Robert Gott
‘I’m not paying you a penny, but what I am going to do is put a stop to you.’
‘Sturt Menadue.’
If there’d been light to see by, Dunnart hoped that Lillee’s face might have registered shock at the mention of that name. All Lillee gave him by way of satisfaction was a tired sigh.
‘Sturt Menadue? This is your source? A dead man?’
‘So you know him.’
‘No, Dunnart. I don’t know him; I know of him, and I know that he’s dead because Monsignor McGrath at St Patrick’s told me. Maybe you should try blackmailing a highly placed priest. See how far you get with that. However, your blackmailing days are over. If I were you, I’d resign my position and crawl out of sight under whatever rock you call home. If you don’t resign, I’m going to make it my special project to expose you, and I have the money and the contacts to ruin you. Now get out of my car.’
‘Fuck you, Lillee. We’ll see who ruins who.’
‘Whom, Dunnart … who ruins whom.’
Dunnart spat at the shadowy form beside him, and got out of the car. He didn’t slam the door, but reached into his pocket, withdrew his keys, and dragged one, screeching, through the paintwork on the passenger door. Peter Lillee showed no acknowledgement and drove away.
Ten hours later, in the early morning, a man walking his dog along the banks of the Yarra River in Kew came upon the body of a well-dressed man. The body was lying close to the water, so close that the river flowed around one submerged hand.
‘Hey, mate!’ the man called, hoping that the prone figure was dozing, or drunk. When there was no response, he approached carefully. The body was lying on its front, so its face was obscured. The man nudged it with his boot and leaned in so that he could see the face. The skin was a ghastly blue, and vomit pooled near the mouth. This is not how a man as fastidious as Peter Lillee would have wanted to die, stinking of sick and shit. This, nevertheless, is precisely how Peter Lillee did die.
5
THERE’D BEEN NO difficulty identifying Peter Lillee’s body. His wallet was in his back pocket, and a document folder was tucked inside his suit coat. Within an hour of the body’s discovery, Inspector Lambert and Joe Sable were watching as the attendants necessary at a suspicious death went about their work. The medical officer had declared Peter Lillee dead, the coroner had been informed and was on his way, and Martin Serong, the police photographer, was carefully recording the scene.
Inspector Lambert never presumed to tell Serong what to photograph. No one was better than Martin Serong at capturing the awful intimacy of death. On more than one occasion, Maude Lambert had noticed a small detail picked up by Serong’s camera that Titus had missed. It was contrary to police protocol that Maude should see crime-scene photographs, but early in their marriage Titus had understood that Maude’s intelligence and her understanding of human nature, even its darkest manifestations, were invaluable. There was no one in Homicide who was her equal. Helen Lord had shown promise, but Police Command had reprimanded him for seconding her into the Homicide unit. It was true that he’d done this without informing them. She’d been dismissed from Homicide — a decision he’d been unable to overturn, but which infuriated him. Now her uncle, Peter Lillee, lay dead at his feet. Joe had formally identified the body.
‘I’ll break this news to Ros and Helen,’ Lambert said. ‘The house is nearby. I don’t want them hearing this from some awkward constable.’
‘I’d like to be there,’ Joe said.
‘Of course.’
Martin Serong approached Inspector Lambert.
‘What have we got, Martin?’
‘A bit of a mystery, Titus.’
‘The doc thinks it might be some sort of poisoning.’
‘That would be my first guess, too.’
‘Did he take it, or was he given it?’
‘I just take pictures, Titus. I just take pictures.’
‘He hasn’t been interfered with in any way. There are no ligature marks, no defensive wounds or wounds of any kind. Nothing has been stolen. It looks like he came down here sometime last night, took a massive dose of some poison, and died quickly. Cyanide?’ Lambert asked.
‘Impossible to say without a blood analysis,’ Serong said.
‘There’s no sign of a struggle, no disturbance of the grass.’
‘Peter Lillee would be the last person in the world who’d take his own life, sir,’ Joe said.
‘How well did you know him, Sergeant?’
‘I’m wearing his clothes, sir.’
Lambert said nothing, recognising that Joe was trying to collect himself. He waited.
‘He’s a successful businessman and he moves in privileged circles. He’s never shown any signs of stress or depression, or none that I’ve noticed.’
‘What do you know about his private life?’
Joe thought for a moment. ‘Absolutely nothing. I know he has friends who are artists, but in the couple of weeks that I’ve been living with them, no one has visited; at least, no one who I’ve been aware of. The house is so big it’s possible people have called and I just haven’t heard them.’
‘Rich men have enemies, even decent rich men, and I’m assuming Peter Lillee was a decent man.’
‘He was a decent man, sir. What I really can’t believe is that if he was going to kill himself this is how he’d choose to do it.’
‘So how did he get here? If he didn’t take his own life, someone either killed him here or brought his body here, and there are no footprints other than his and the bloke’s who found him. I’m not eliminating him as a suspect, but it seems unlikely.’
‘Maybe the killer brought the body here by boat.’
‘That, Sergeant, is a real possibility.’
Martin Serong said, ‘I was waiting until the last minute to do this, Titus, but the time has come.’
He took off his shoes and socks, and then his trousers, and waded into the Yarra River. There was no gentle decline. He sank into stinking mud almost to his waist just two steps from the bank. Despite teetering uncertainly, he took a series of shots before regaining the bank and staring glumly at his filthy legs.
‘Water is supposed to wash you clean,’ he said.
‘Not this water, Martin. You wouldn’t want to drink it.’
‘That might explain the dead fish. There are three of them, caught in a tree root, quite close to the dead man’s hand.’
‘Could he have released cyanide into the water, Martin? Maybe he had some in a phial, swallowed some, and dropped the rest into the river.’
‘I was careful not to disturb the area near his hand. It’s possible he may have dropped something.’
‘We need to get someone down here to do a sweep of the mud. Sergeant Reilly can supervise that. He’s due here in a few minutes. We should get to Peter Lillee’s house.’
‘NO,’ ROS LORD said. ‘No. Suicide. No. My brother would be incapable of such an act.’
Helen Lord was staring at Joe Sable. Her face was expressionless, but he felt keenly that she wasn’t seeing him. She was seeing her uncle’s clothes. He felt like an interloper and wondered if his presence would be welcome in the house any longer.
‘Each of you knows better than most that an investigation into Peter’s death will involve great intrusions into your privacy, and his.’
‘I need to know what happened to my brother, Inspector. Our privacy is immaterial, and Peter is beyond caring.’
Joe could see the effort that Ros Lord was making to hold herself together. He wanted to say something, to offer some sort of useless comfort, but the feel of Lillee’s suit struck him dumb with self-consciousness.
‘I’d like to see Martin Serong’s photographs,’ Helen said.
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible,’ Lambert said. ‘Even if you were still with us in Homicide, you wouldn’t be all
owed to investigate the suspicious death of a member of your own family.’
‘So you agree it’s a suspicious death.’
‘If you tell me that the idea that your uncle might take his own life is incomprehensible to you, then yes, I’m unwilling to rush to that convenient conclusion.’
‘My brother was both a public and a private man, Inspector. I know you’ll want to speak to Peter’s friends and acquaintances and business associates. The business associates will be easy. He was a member of the Melbourne Club and various committees.’
‘Any names you can give us will save us time, Mrs Lord.’
‘I know this will seem strange, Inspector, but I really don’t know any of Peter’s particular friends. I suspect he thought I might disapprove.’
‘Why might you disapprove?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t, but Peter was old-fashioned, almost Edwardian in some ways. His friends were artists, I know that. There are several drawings and paintings on the walls here that were done by his friends.’
‘We’ll take down those names, of course. Did any of his friends come here to the house?’
‘No. Never. You must find that very peculiar.’
‘Not at all, Mrs Lord. We all divide our lives into discrete compartments to some extent. I have friends who’ve never met each other, and I’m sure that’s true of Sergeant Sable as well.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Joe said, without thinking, and immediately wondered if it was in fact true. He had friends outside the police force who’d never met any of his police colleagues, that was true. He’d never wondered until now about Helen Lord’s friends. He’d certainly never met any of them, and she’d never mentioned them. His incuriosity about this didn’t trouble him greatly, but being obliged to acknowledge it did cause him to feel mild surprise.
‘I’d appreciate it, Mrs Lord,’ Lambert said, ‘if you’d permit us to have a look at Peter’s bedroom.’
‘Of course.’
‘Is it against the rules if I join you?’ Helen asked.
‘It is, Constable Lord, but I’d welcome your help anyway.’
Helen, who’d been expecting a rebuff, was visibly taken aback. Lambert’s invitation demonstrated his trust in her, his trust that she wouldn’t attempt to conceal anything incriminating or unseemly.
Peter Lillee’s bedroom was twice as large as the largest room in Titus Lambert’s house. Indeed, he thought as he stepped into it that it might accommodate his entire house. The walls were hung with paintings and drawings. There were no photographs. Ros Lord, who stayed in the doorway, said that she cleaned and tidied the room daily, but that Peter maintained it in a way that made her efforts unnecessary.
‘He always made his own bed, and his bathroom was spotless.’
‘We’re going to have to do awful things, like look under the bed, aren’t we?’ Helen said.
‘Worse than that, we’re going to have to look under the mattress,’ Inspector Lambert said.
Titus, Joe, and Helen searched Peter Lillee’s room with a thoroughness that disrupted its order, however careful they tried to be. Early in the search, Helen withdrew an elegant suitcase from a wardrobe. It was locked. She placed it on the bed, assuming that the fact that it was locked was significant. Its weight suggested that it wasn’t empty. At the end of the search, which had revealed nothing beyond the fact that Lillee’s tastes in everything from socks to shaving soap were expensive, the three of them stood looking down at the suitcase.
‘It’s an Alzer, Louis Vuitton,’ Joe said. ‘My parents had a couple of them, which I inherited. They were destroyed in the fire.’
‘Valuable?’ Titus asked.
‘They’re the type of suitcase you pass down to your children. Ridiculously expensive.’ He added, because he thought this last statement might sound like a rebuke to Lillee’s extravagance, ‘But they’re sturdy and elegant. If I could afford it, I’d replace the ones I lost.’
Helen missed this attempt at mollification because Joe’s initial comment hadn’t struck her as being anything but accurate.
‘Where would you put the key if you didn’t want anyone to find it?’ Titus asked.
‘Behind, under, or in something,’ Helen said. ‘We’ve looked under and in everything already.’ She went to one of the pictures on the wall and moved it, so she could see its back. Nothing. She tried another, and another. The key was taped behind the fourth picture — an exquisite Dobell pencil-sketch portrait of Lillee.
‘Why that drawing, I wonder?’ she asked. Under other circumstances, Joe might have suggested that the tone she used when she said the word ‘drawing’ didn’t quite catch the mastery of the portrait.
The suitcase snapped open with the satisfying click of a well-tooled lock. Titus took each item out of the case and placed it on the bed. There were three photographs of a woman, two of them casual and one of them a formal studio portrait. On the back of the studio portrait were the words, ‘To Peter, with love, Lillian’. There were several letters, a catechism, rosary beads, and a small crucifix. A bronze Christ depended from a plain, polished-wood cross. There was nothing else in the suitcase. Each of the letters was from Lillian Johnson, and a cursory read revealed that the relationship between her and Lillee had been intimate. On the inside cover of the catechism was a dedication to Peter Lillee from Monsignor McGrath of St Patrick’s Cathedral.
‘Does any of this mean anything to you?’ Inspector Lambert asked. Helen said she had no idea who either of these people was and that she had never heard her uncle mention them. Ros Lord, who’d remained outside the bedroom throughout the search, came in to examine the contents of the suitcase. No, she’d never seen or heard of Lillian Johnson, and Monsignor McGrath was a complete mystery.
‘Had your brother converted to Catholicism, Mrs Lord?’
‘Certainly not. He never expressed any interest in religion. In fact, I always thought he was rather hostile to it.’
Helen chose a letter and read it through closely.
‘Uncle Peter was engaged to this Lillian woman. Did you know about this, Mum?’
‘Good God,’ she said, ‘I had no idea.’ She paused. ‘And I’ll be frank with you, Inspector, I didn’t think my brother was much interested in women.’
‘It seems he was interested in at least one woman,’ Helen said.
The search and the contents of the suitcase had distracted Ros and Helen from the news of Peter Lillee’s death. Now the awful reality of it hit them both. Ros Lord sat on the edge of her brother’s bed and began to weep. Helen moved to her, sat beside her, and drew her mother’s head to her shoulder. Inspector Lambert and Joe Sable withdrew to the corridor outside the bedroom.
BY EARLY AFTERNOON of the day on which Peter Lillee’s body had been found, Inspector Lambert had drawn up a comprehensive list of people who needed to be interviewed. He wasn’t going to wait for the autopsy and toxicology results. His instincts told him that this wasn’t a case of suicide. Misadventure perhaps. Murder possibly. He had the names of artists, business acquaintances, and the people listed in Lillee’s address book. At the top of the list were Lillian Johnson and Monsignor McGrath. Lambert had an aversion to the cathedral and the priests who staffed it. That interview would be done by Sergeant Sable. Lambert would visit Lillian that afternoon.
Watson Cooper’s murder of Constables Beckett and Humphries had affected the mood at Russell Street Police Headquarters. In the gymnasium, men praised Senior Sergeant Maher’s courage in facing Cooper and shooting him dead. Knowing that Joe had been there, they wanted details from him. They noticed his reluctance to join in the general praise of Maher and put it down to what many of them considered his stand-offishness.
Joe wasn’t popular either inside or outside Homicide. There was a feeling of resentment that he’d been promoted too quickly — more quickly than manpower shortages within the force warranted. There was also a sense that In
spector Lambert favoured him, and Lambert himself had made enemies among his fellow officers. There was also the inescapable fact that Joe Sable was a Jew. This was a minor mark against him and not nearly as problematic as being a Catholic or a Protestant, depending on which side you stood.
Joe had never felt unpopular, largely because he’d never taken much interest in his colleagues. He never thought about them as friends, or potential friends. He’d been resistant to the forging of bonds among fellow officers, a resistance that was unusual and alienating. If he’d formed close bonds with his colleagues, his decision to talk to Inspector Lambert about what he considered to be the murder of Watson Cooper by Sergeant Maher would have been more difficult. Lambert had just told him that he was sending him to interview Monsignor McGrath when Joe said, ‘I need to talk to you, sir, about Watson Cooper.’
Lambert put down his pen.
‘Go on.’
‘I believe, well, I know that when Sergeant Maher shot him, he was unarmed. There’s no question about it being self-defence. It wasn’t. It was murder.’
‘That is a very serious allegation, Sergeant. Tell me exactly what you saw.’
‘When I entered the room, Watson Cooper was sitting with his back against a wall. He looked as if he’d fallen there. Sergeant Maher raised his gun and fired, I think two rounds, into Cooper’s chest. There was a rifle, Cooper’s rifle, on the floor near Maher’s feet. Maher’s first words to me were, “He was going to shoot me.” It was after he’d said these words that he kicked the rifle towards Cooper.’
‘You can’t unsay this, Sergeant. You’re accusing a fellow officer of murder, and you’ll get no sympathy or support.’
‘Yes, sir. I know that, and I know that most people will think that Maher did everyone a favour by killing Cooper, but it looked like an execution to me.’
Titus Lambert looked at Joe and felt both sympathy and pity for him. He felt, too, slightly sick at the thought that he, Lambert, should bear some responsibility for the stresses and traumas that had visited Joe since his arrival in Homicide. He’d been advised against accepting someone so young, but he’d seen something in Joe Sable that had impressed him. He was inexperienced, it was true, but he had the kind of integrity that Lambert wanted in the people he worked closely with. Time would cure the inexperience, and although the integrity would be tested, Lambert believed that Joe wouldn’t fail the test. What Lambert hadn’t counted on was that this young officer would suffer torture in the course of an investigation, or that revenge would be taken upon him and would make him homeless. Lambert could only imagine what it might feel like to lose everything in a fire. When George Starling set fire to Joe’s flat — and Lambert had no doubt that Starling was the culprit — he destroyed every personal and family object that Joe owned. Photographs, letters, things left to him by his late parents, everything of real and sentimental value had been destroyed. Joe wore another man’s clothes and lived in another man’s house, and tragedy had reached into that house, too. Now this. Well, he’d been right about Joe’s integrity, but Joe was going to pay a high price for it, and Lambert knew that he couldn’t protect him from the worst of what was to come.