by Robert Gott
‘No mate, we haven’t.’
Having seen Joe be extravagantly sick, they were unconvinced, but they began to scour the water for Guy.
‘Can your mate swim?’
‘Yes,’ Joe said. ‘He’s a strong swimmer.’
Joe, still shaken, managed to stand up. No one knew quite what to do. A man had gone into the sea, and he’d failed to surface. The waters were rough, so it was possible he was hidden behind rising and falling waves at some distance from the pier. There was no point anyone diving in after him, so the only hope was to return to the beach and get help. None of the fishermen knew whether or not there was a lifeboat nearby, or even if there were lifeguards on duty. Surely there were. It was Sunday. No, thought Joe. Summer is over. There’d be no reason to patrol the beach this late in the year.
Three of the fishermen stayed where they were, watching the waves. The other three hurried with Tom and Joe back to the beach. They were halfway along the pier, when a man began climbing one of the ladders that were attached at intervals along its length. It was the furthest ladder, still some distance from the hurrying men, but Joe recognised Guy’s silhouette as he hauled himself up and stood facing them, one hand on his hip, the other dragging his hair back from his forehead.
‘That’s him,’ Joe said.
‘You mean we left our fucking lines for no reason.’
‘Listen, mate,’ Tom said. ‘He’s just come back from the war, which you’ve spent dropping a fucking fishing line into Port Phillip Bay. We didn’t know …’
‘All right, all right,’ said the oldest of the three fishermen. ‘Just get him out of here. The other blokes are going to be pissed off.’
‘Thank you for your help,’ Joe said.
The man he spoke to noticed for the first time the strapping around Tom’s fingers, and his still swollen face, and he noticed too that Joe’s face had evidence of recent injuries. All three of these blokes must be on some kind of sick leave, he thought.
‘I’ll get your mate’s clothes,’ he said and ushered his two companions back to their abandoned rods. Guy began walking towards them, and he thought something must have happened. The behaviour of the three strangers was odd. He got to Joe and Tom quickly, well before the fisherman had returned with his clothes.
‘What’s happened?’ he said. If Joe hadn’t been ill, this question might have been humorous.
‘You just disappeared, Guy. We thought you’d drowned.’ Joe said this with deliberate matter-of-factness. He didn’t want Guy to see the mixture of relief and fury that was running through him. Tom wasn’t willing to be so careful.
‘Why did you do that? Why did you just drop into the water and not resurface where anyone could see you?’
Guy seemed genuinely puzzled.
‘I was swimming under the pier. That’s all. I was just swimming.’
‘Joe thought — we both thought you’d …’
‘Tried to kill myself?’ The chill of the water had cleared Guy’s head and instead of exhibiting shock, or outrage, he laughed.
‘I’m wearing another man’s swimming trunks. I wouldn’t kill myself wearing someone else’s pants, and I wouldn’t do it here in front of everyone. What if some busybody rescued me?’
The fisherman returned with Guy’s clothes, and finding him laughing, threw them at his feet.
‘Let’s go home,’ Tom said.
The tenor of the day had been altered by Guy’s swim and by Joe’s physical distress. Guy apologised on the way back to Tom’s place when he realised that his temporary disappearance had thrown everyone, and especially Joe, into a panic. They agreed to meet again for dinner later in the week, and Joe and Guy drove back to Kew.
‘I am really sorry, Joe. I feel sick that my stupidity made your heart go haywire.’
‘It’s fine, Guy. It was stupid of me to jump to the wrong conclusion.’
Joe had to brake suddenly to avoid hitting a dog, and Guy put his hand on the dashboard to steady himself. As he did so, he noticed that a gold fountain pen had been propelled from under his seat to settle near his left foot. He leaned down and picked it up.
‘This is a bloody expensive pen,’ he said.
‘It must be Peter’s. Whoever went over this car did a poor job. I’ll give it to Ros Lord.’
‘It’s got an inscription on it. To misquote Wilde, is it ungentlemanly to read a private fountain pen?’
‘It’s probably a gift from his fiancée, Lillian Johnson.’
Guy turned the fountain pen over in his hand. He read, ‘“To Ronald, from your loving parents 12/12/1923”. That’s all it says. Whoever Ronald is, he’s held onto it for twenty-one years. It must mean a great deal to him. He must have dropped it. Who do you reckon Ronald is? A friend of Peter Lillee’s?’
Joe reached across and took the pen from Guy. He put it in his jacket pocket.
‘No. Not a friend. It might belong to the man who murdered Peter.’
GEORGE STARLING COLLECTED his motorcycle from the Melbourne Cemetery at 9.00 p.m. on Sunday night. He rode past the ruins of Rosh Pinah, just for the pleasure it gave him, and then on to Bishop Street in Brunswick. He parked the motorcycle at the southern end of the street and walked towards the house he’d recently visited. The blackout restrictions had been relaxed and several of the houses boldly showed lights. Number 17 was in darkness. He went back to the bike and wheeled it into the laneway behind the houses.
It was a clear, bright night and he found the back gate of the house easily. Standing on the seat of the bike he was able to see over the gate into the yard. There were no lights on and no sign of any activity. It was too early for people to have gone to bed, so Starling thought it a safe assumption that no one was home. Unlike on his first visit, the gate was locked. Before climbing over it, he took Joe’s scrapbook from the pannier and tucked it inside his shirt, next to his skin.
He checked the outside toilet. It was unoccupied. He cautiously approached the kitchen window. There were no blackouts up, and, peering through the glass, he could see that it was tidy. If anyone had eaten there that evening, the mess had been cleaned away. He moved round to the side of the house and looked into the living room. It was too dark to see anything clearly. He listened intently for any sound that might indicate that the house was occupied. Nothing. He decided to break in.
He had no skills as a burglar, so he simply kicked the back door so that the lock shattered and it flew open. The noise this made wasn’t as loud as he’d expected. Nevertheless, he waited a few moments to see if the crash brought anyone running. It didn’t. He entered the house.
He’d come here for a purpose and the purpose wasn’t to explore or to take anything. He went into the living room, and on the table there he propped open Joe’s scrapbook, disfigured now with a bullet hole. He had no desire to linger, but before leaving he unbuttoned his flies and sprayed the room with his urine, like a tomcat marking his territory.
11
WHEN JOE ARRIVED at work on Monday morning, the hostility towards him was pointed. Officers with whom he’d had a cordial nodding relationship silently mouthed obscenities at him before turning their backs. His desk didn’t at first appear to have been interfered with, but when he lifted a folder the word ‘scum’ had been scratched into its surface.
David Reilly, who arrived soon after Joe, saw the graffito and said that he couldn’t understand the mentality of some people. Helen Lord would have suggested, if she’d heard this, that this was because Reilly wasn’t very bright. Joe thought Reilly was all right. Helen’s antipathy towards him sprang from Reilly’s inability to accept, at least initially, that a woman could do the job of a Homicide detective. If there was one thing about Inspector Lambert that had always frustrated her, it was his inexplicable trust in Sergeant David Reilly. The best that could be said of Reilly was that he was a plodder, with a tendency towards incompetence. That was H
elen’s view. It wasn’t Lambert’s. He might agree that Reilly wasn’t intuitive or particularly sharp, and he could be petulant, but he was reliable and, most importantly, he was honest and despised dishonesty or corruption in other officers. For Lambert, that was Reilly’s most valuable asset. There weren’t many officers Lambert trusted unequivocally. Reilly was one of them.
‘I wish I’d been in that room with you, so I could back up your story. You know, not everyone believes Kevin Maher, Joe.’
Any further discussion was truncated by Inspector Lambert’s arrival. He’d barely sat down when his telephone rang. Almost simultaneously, an envelope was delivered with Peter Lillee’s autopsy and toxicology results in it. Joe entered Lambert’s office while he was still on the telephone and put the envelope on his desk. Lambert signalled that Joe should stay.
‘Are you sure you don’t want anyone from here to come down to Warrnambool, Greg?’ Inspector Lambert asked into the phone. Joe’s muscles tensed. Warrnambool. That could only mean one thing, surely. George Starling. Lambert listened and took notes and, after some pleasantries, hung up.
‘That was Inspector Halloran in Warrnambool. You may recall that he and I interviewed a man named Hardy Truscott. He was a National Socialist sympathiser, but with some fairly esoteric ideas about Nordic gods. He’s dead, and it’s pretty clear from his injuries that he was murdered.’
‘Starling?’
‘Well, maybe, but why would Starling murder a fellow Nazi? It’s not really his style, is it?’
‘I don’t think of Starling as having a style, sir.’
‘True. That was a poor choice of words on my part. If it is Starling, at least we know he’s in Warrnambool, which gives you some breathing space. Inspector Halloran is going to keep me fully informed. The body was only found a couple of hours ago.’
‘Before you read the autopsy report, sir, I think you should see this.’
He put the fountain pen on the desk in front of Lambert.
‘A friend of mine, Guy Kirkham, found this on the floor of Peter Lillee’s car. I had to brake suddenly, and it rolled out from under the passenger seat.’
Lambert picked up the pen and read the inscription. He called to David Reilly through the open door, and Reilly came into Lambert’s office.
‘Could you please bring me Detective Sergeant Ron Dunnart’s personal file?’
Reilly left the room, and Lambert opened the envelope. He read the contents quickly, searching out the key details.
‘This poses more questions than it answers,’ he said. ‘What seems certain from the colour of Lillee’s blood is that he was poisoned.’
‘Cyanide?’
‘No. The toxicologist doesn’t speculate except to say that the death wasn’t natural causes. The purplish colour in the blood is consistent with some sort of toxin having been introduced into Peter Lillee’s system. Whether it was self-administered or administered by another person is impossible to say. All of which points to the coroner delivering an open finding, which won’t provide Ros and Helen Lord with much comfort.’
David Reilly returned with Dunnart’s file. Lambert handed Reilly the pen and asked him to read the inscription. For a moment, Joe felt peeved. He’d found the pen, so why had Lambert handed it to David Reilly?
‘“To Ronald, from your loving parents 12/12/1923”.’
Lambert ran his finger down Ron Dunnart’s file.
‘Detective Sergeant Ronald Dunnart was born on the twelfth of December 1902, which makes him forty-two this year.’
‘So in 1923 he’d just turned twenty-one. This is a twenty-first birthday gift.’
‘I think it’s safe to say that the fountain pen belongs to Detective Dunnart.’
‘The question is,’ Reilly said, ‘what was it doing in Peter Lillee’s car?’
Lambert turned to Joe.
‘Sergeant Reilly has been working closely with Sergeant Dunnart on the murders of Sturt Menadue and Steven McNamara.’
‘Which is where Ron found Peter Lillee’s name: in Menadue’s address book,’ said Joe.
‘Precisely,’ said Reilly. ‘Inspector Lambert suspected that Ron Dunnart was crooked, so he put me on Dunnart’s team, to keep an eye on him. Of course, he knew that that’s why I was there, and I was expecting him to make life difficult for me. He did the opposite and has conducted, and continues to conduct, the investigation with professionalism and, I have to admit, with expertise. I’ve been with him when he’s interviewed acquaintances of the murdered men, and he’s always been respectful. Now, I know he would probably have behaved differently if I hadn’t been there, and he may well have pressed some of the men for money. But so far, he’s done everything by the book.’
‘He’d picked his target already, hadn’t he?’ said Joe. ‘Peter Lillee. He must have thought that was enough for one case.’
‘In your view, Sergeant,’ asked Lambert, ‘knowing what you know about Ron Dunnart and having worked up close with him, is he capable of murder?’
‘He’s not a nice bloke. He’s arrogant and overbearing. He intimidates junior officers, and he engages in blackmail. I have no doubt about that. But murder? He’s a good detective. He knows he’d get caught. So, no sir, I don’t believe Ron Dunnart killed Peter Lillee.’
If Helen Lord was right about David Reilly, Joe thought, his opinion wasn’t worth much. But if Lambert was right about him, he ought to be listened to.
‘Dunnart’s pen surely puts Dunnart in the car with Peter Lillee,’ Joe said.
Lambert nodded.
‘Sergeant Dunnart has lied to us about blackmailing Mr Lillee. He may well have sat in his car with him, but where and when, who knows? Well, Dunnart knows, and we need to find that out. However, that is a long way from proving that he killed him, and our biggest hurdle is the “how”. How did he do it? And how did he dump the body and leave no trace?’
‘Sergeant Reilly has said that he’s an excellent detective. Perhaps he’s also an accomplished killer.’
‘No,’ Reilly said. ‘I simply do not believe that Ron Dunnart killed Peter Lillee.’
Why? Joe wondered. Why are you so sure?
SERGEANT BOB O’DOWD didn’t show up for work on Monday. When Lambert was talking to Joe Sable and David Reilly, he was still in bed. He wasn’t asleep. He was paralysed with anxiety. He’d told his wife a version of what he’d told Lambert, and had told her, too, that there was every chance that he’d lose his job. If he lost his job, they’d lose the house. O’Dowd had never been good with money and they lived from pay to pay.
Vera O’Dowd didn’t despise her husband, but the thought that he would shame her in this way, that he’d be exposed as a nasty blackmailer, was too much for her. She’d punished him often with silence, but had never left him. She’d listened to his confession with what felt to her like a breaking heart. She was angry, because although she’d always thought him dull, she’d never thought of him as a wicked man. He was unexciting, but reliable, and she’d loved him. She may not have called it love, but as her feelings for him curdled, she’d realised that such a falling away was a falling away from love. Just twenty-four hours ago she would have applied ointments to his psoriasis, and she would have done it with tenderness and with no hint of revulsion. Now, the thought of touching him made her feel queasy, and the thought of sexual contact with him turned her stomach. She’d packed her bags and moved to her sister’s house in Montmorency, a suburb a long way from their house in Fitzroy.
Bob O’Dowd didn’t want to get out of bed. If he got out of bed, the day would have to progress. His bladder defeated him. He thought about returning to bed, but the stale air in the room, which he hadn’t noticed until he’d left it, made him change his mind. His left ankle was itching badly. He went into the bathroom, took off his pyjamas, and was shocked at what had happened to his body overnight.
The psoriasis on his ankle was
red and angry, and it had spread beyond its usual boundaries. A rash had appeared on his chest and shoulders, and a red and scaly mark had broken out on his face. The more closely he looked at himself the more flare-ups he noticed. The skin around his ankle was broken and bleeding. He must have scratched it during the night. He began to itch simultaneously in different areas. Having satisfied one itch, he had to pursue another and another, and the more he scratched the more insistent the itches became.
He lit the chip heater at the end of the bath, and when he’d filled the tub with hot water, he lay down in it. The shock of the hot water eased the itching, and as he lay in it, noticing a few patches of mould on the ceiling, he wondered how his life had come to this. When would Dunnart come for him? He listened intently, diagnosing each small sound the house made, fearful that an unfamiliar one might signal Dunnart’s arrival.
The sharp rap at the front door made him sit bolt upright. Water spilled onto the floor. He began to shiver with both cold and fear. He waited. Whoever was at the door knocked again, and more insistently. O’Dowd figured that Dunnart wouldn’t announce his arrival, so he stepped out of the bath, wrapped a towel around his waist and moved cautiously towards the front door.
‘Who is it?’ he called.
‘Telegram.’
O’Dowd was relieved and opened the door a crack, just wide enough to take the telegram and prevent the telegram boy from seeing his torso. He began to itch again. He went to the front room and sat, still damp from the bath, in the damask chair that Vera O’Dowd had inherited from her mother. It was more comfortable on his bare skin than the leather armchair. He turned the envelope over in his hands and opened it.
‘Where will you hide? Because you’ll need to’
There was no name, but no name was necessary. A strong itch in his armpit demanded his attention. O’Dowd had never in his life before felt desperation. It must have been desperation that made him think that he needed to beat Dunnart to the punch. Dunnart knew where he lived, but he knew where Dunnart lived, and he had an advantage. Dunnart wouldn’t be expecting him.