by Robert Gott
‘It’s as if he’s a figment of my imagination,’ Clara said. ‘The only people to have seen him are me and Gerald Matthews, and he’s dead.’
‘Dr Matthews wasn’t murdered by a figment, Clara.’
Clara read for a while, and, feeling safe inside the great house, managed to sleep deeply and well.
IT HAD BEEN Joe’s intention to reach the tree stump before dawn. The roads were empty of traffic when he left the house, and he was in Nunawading sooner than he’d thought he would be. He was worried that he’d lose his way on the unlit roads and unmade tracks that ran past orchards. His sense of direction was poor at the best of times, and the landmarks he’d noted during his daylight visits to this distant suburb weren’t visible. More by luck than design, he found the road that ran down to Prescott’s orchard. He switched off the headlights and crept forward in the moonlight. He stopped well short of the tree stump, even though he knew it wasn’t visible from the house. As he walked towards it, he saw a figure bent over the stump. Joe squinted, hoping to recognise Guy. The clothing suggested it might be a woman. Whoever it was was wearing what looked like a dress, but the pale legs were masculine. It was the brief cough that reassured Joe that this was Guy, and he said his name quietly. Guy, startled, straightened up and peered into the darkness.
‘Joe?’
Joe stepped forward to where he could be seen. They shook hands.
‘What were you doing?’
‘I was trying to construct some sort of message out of twigs, and I know how ridiculous that sounds. They’ve confiscated my pen and notebook.’
‘Are you in any danger?’
‘No.’
Guy said it quickly, hoping that his doubts about his own safety were disguised.
‘If you have the slightest suspicion that they’re on to you, come back with me now.’
‘I’m not leaving my fountain pen here, let alone my clothes. I don’t have enough coupons to buy new ones.’
Guy gave Joe a detailed account of all that had happened on Prescott’s property. He withheld the fact that Prudence had advised him to leave. He knew that Joe would insist on pulling the plug, and that would mean he’d come away with nothing. There was no doubt in Guy’s mind that Prescott and the Church of the First Born were implicated in the deaths at Fisher’s farm. The only way to find out for certain was to remain where he was.
‘He calls me Absalom, but I don’t know why. Everyone here has a biblical name.’
‘Do you think it means something? Who was Absalom?’
‘If you weren’t such an ignoramus about your own religion you might be able to tell me. I’ve had a flick through the Old Testament, but I can’t find it.’
‘Maybe Prescott just likes the sound of it.’
Joe told Guy about the death of Dr Gerald Matthews, and its connection to Clara Dawson. He was half-hoping that Guy might want to hurry to her protection. As he said goodbye to his friend, who was shivering in his tunic, he once again experienced a deep dread.
‘Please, Guy, please be careful. You’re among wolves.’
INSPECTOR LAMBERT WAS surprised by the deterioration in Zac Wilson’s appearance. He’d been bruised and swollen when he’d seen him in hospital, but the man who sat opposite him in a room in the remand section that had been set aside for interviews looked drained, emptied out. He looked defeated. Was the vanquished demeanour the result of guilt, or of innocence? Until he’d met him face to face like this, Lambert hadn’t believed in his guilt. Now he wasn’t so sure. If he wasn’t guilty of all four murders, perhaps he’d been responsible for some of them. The murder of Emilio Barbero had occurred 24 hours before the others. It was an anomaly that might be explained if there’d been more than one perpetrator at Fisher’s farm.
‘Why am I here?’ The desperation in Zac’s voice was obvious.
‘Perhaps you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘You can’t arrest people for that.’
‘In this case, Mr Wilson, we really didn’t have any choice. The awful truth is that at the moment you’re our only credible suspect.’
‘I can’t bear it.’
‘Prison is dreadful.’
‘It’s not just that. I can’t bear that when people look at me they think I killed a baby and the others. They think I’m a monster.’
He lowered his head and began to shake.
‘Mr Wilson! You are the only person who was there. You have to help yourself. I need you to tell me everything you can remember. Everything.’
Wilson pulled himself together sufficiently to give Inspector Lambert a coherent account, as he now remembered it, of the moment he saw Fisher coming towards him to the moment he saw him put a stick of gelignite between his teeth. It was coherent, but sketchy.
‘What was your relationship with Peter Fisher?’
Lambert had been expecting an obfuscatory answer. Helen Lord had relayed to him, as she’d agreed to do, the information she’d learned from Meredith Wilson. To his astonishment, Fisher simply told him the truth.
‘I was duped by him. For a short while, I believed he was Jesus Christ.’
He looked at Inspector Lambert.
‘You already think I’m crazy. What do you think now?’
‘My opinion isn’t something you should be thinking about. Tell me how this happened. How did he convince you to believe this?’
‘It’s difficult to explain. My wife says I’m gullible. She means stupid, of course. At the time I must have been looking for some sort of guidance.’
‘When was this?’
‘Last year. I didn’t really know I was looking for anything. Fisher saw something in me, and played me for the fool that I was. At first I thought it was ridiculous that this ordinary man was claiming that he was God, but there were others who believed in him. I got caught up. One afternoon, the wind was blowing so hard I was worried about the blossoms on my fruit trees. Fisher came down to my orchard, raised his arms, and commanded the wind to stop. Almost immediately, it died down. I see now it was a coincidence, but at the time it removed my doubts, and I started to attend services at his house. My doubts returned pretty quickly, and I soon realised that he was a fraud. I told him he was a liar and a conman. He told me he’d dried up my wife’s womb so that we’d never have children. I was expelled from the Church, and declared anathema.’
‘Anathema?’
‘The Church of the First Born is a hybrid. A bit of Catholicism, a bit of Protestantism, a bit of paganism. Anathema is excommunication. No one from the Church was supposed to speak to me, or do business with me.’
‘Did you lose customers for your fruit?’
‘You think that was my motive for killing him?’
‘I’m just trying to put all this together, Mr Wilson.’
‘It didn’t affect my business at all. None of my buyers belong to the Church. After my expulsion, I only saw Fisher in the distance. He didn’t visit me, and I didn’t visit him.’
‘What do you know about Emilio Barbero?’
‘I don’t know who that is.’
‘He was a farmhand. He was the young man hanging from the rafter.’
‘Christ.’
Wilson suddenly sat up straight.
‘He must have done it! This Barbero bloke. He must have done it and then hanged himself. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Why haven’t you figured that out? Why have you arrested me?’
‘Is that what you wanted us to think, Mr Wilson?’
Wilson looked confused.
‘Emilio Barbero had been dead for many hours before any of the others. Dead men don’t wield axes.’
Wilson slumped in his chair.
‘I didn’t know him. I’d never heard his name until you said it. You think I killed him first, don’t you?’
Inspector Lambert said nothing. Wilson uttered a mo
an, and began to cry. These weren’t great, racking sobs. His shoulders barely moved, but his eyes and nose streamed.
‘Mr Wilson.’
Wilson turned away from Inspector Lambert.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No. No more. No more.’
He sniffed, took the handkerchief from his pocket, and made a desultory dab with it at his face. ‘No more. I can’t.’
It was clear to Lambert that he’d get nothing more out of Wilson. There was, however, one question he needed to ask.
‘Where were you the day before Fisher came to you with his dead son?’
Wilson whimpered. ‘No more.’
Inspector Lambert stood up. On his way out, he spoke to the warden of the remand section and suggested that Wilson be watched carefully.
‘He seems very fragile,’ Lambert said. ‘I don’t want him hurting himself.’
‘I’d be more worried about the other prisoners. No one likes a baby killer. Presumption of innocence means nothing in here, Inspector. Still, none of the other prisoners are here for violent crimes, so he ought to be safe. I’ll keep an eye on him, though.’
Inspector Lambert didn’t feel buoyed by this reassurance as he left.
9
WINSLOW FAZACKERLY HAD decided that Tom Mackenzie was essentially all right. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that Mackenzie had been instructed to attempt to form a friendship with him. In fact, there was an unspoken understanding about this between them. No real friendship was possible under these circumstances. There would always be something of the cat and mouse about their encounters, however open Winslow was about his relationship with Japan. Japan was the enemy, pure and simple.
On Monday morning, as Fazackerly prepared to leave his parents’ house, he bent down to pick up an envelope that had been pushed under the front door. Both his parents were in London, having been caught there at the outbreak of war.
Winslow knew instinctively that the envelope was for him. There was nothing written on it. Inside was a piece of paper, roughly torn from a notebook, and grubby at the edges as if it had been handled by unwashed, earthy fingers. The writing was in Japanese, katakana, which Winslow could read easily. He would have struggled if it had been written in kanji. There was no signature, but Winslow knew who’d written the note. Who, though, had delivered it? The author was a man named Yokito Torajiro, and Torajiro-san was currently interned at Loveday in South Australia. The note was disturbing. It said simply that Etsuko, Winslow’s wife, was gravely ill. That was all it said. ‘Etsuko gravely ill.’ There were no further details. Winslow’s mind began to race. How could Torajiro-san know this? Surely it wasn’t possible for information to get from Japan to a camp in South Australia. And how had he managed to get the note out of the camp and all the way to Melbourne? Its brevity was alarming. He put it in his pocket, and set off for Victoria Barracks.
Tom Mackenzie was there ahead of him. They exchanged pleasantries about the dinner at Tom’s place, with Tom directing the information to stress what lively company Maude Lambert was, and how fascinated she’d been by Winslow’s descriptions of life in Japan.
‘She’d love to hear more,’ Tom said.
If Winslow hadn’t been distracted by the note in his pocket, he might have spotted that this was a clumsy attempt at gaining his confidence.
‘That would be fine,’ he said. ‘Always happy to talk about Japan. It’s not something most people want to hear about.’
‘Maude is definitely not most people.’
‘She did seem like an interesting person.’
There was a vagueness in his tone that Tom detected.
‘Is everything all right, Winslow?’
‘Yes, everything’s fine.’
Winslow thought briefly about reaching into his pocket and producing the note. As a man with nothing to hide, he ought to have done this, but he realised that in handing over the note to Tom, and in acknowledging that it had probably been sent by an interned Japanese man, he would have been condemning that man to interrogation. Yokito Torajiro had been interned on the basis of his race alone. He wasn’t an apologist for the Empire of Japan. He’d worked hard as a tailor, and had troubled no one. Winslow had been introduced to him, and a few of his compatriots, when Etsuko had lived with him in Melbourne. He’d kept up the contact after Etsuko had returned to Japan in 1938. Torajiro-san and his friends provided him with an opportunity to speak Japanese and to eat something that resembled Japanese food. He’d enjoyed their company, even though he was aware that they maintained a distance from him. It was unspoken, but Etsuko had assured him that their politeness hid an essential suspicion and disapproval of his marriage. Nevertheless, he’d managed to forge a relationship with Torajiro-san that he valued, and he worried about the old man’s health. Internment wasn’t comfortable, and Yokito Torajiro was 70 years old.
The more he thought about the note, the more he thought it must be a trap. Set by whom? By Tom Mackenzie? Winslow couldn’t be sure the handwriting was Torajiro-san’s. It looked hurried. It was certainly written by a Japanese person. The characters showed no hesitancy, and although it was brief, there was a colloquial quality to it that suggested a native speaker. How, though, could he possibly have access to information about Etsuko? Winslow would have to find out.
AS TOM MACKENZIE prepared to leave work on Monday afternoon, he asked Winslow if he’d like to join him for a drink at Young and Jackson’s. Winslow declined, saying that he needed to get home. Tom didn’t believe him, and he didn’t like how this made him feel. He experienced a sharp stab of detestation for Tom Chafer, whose poisonous suspicions about this perfectly decent man in some way spoiled all their interactions. Tom realised, with shame, that when Winslow left Victoria Barracks he would follow him.
The foot traffic down St Kilda Road towards Flinders Street Station was quite heavy. Winslow paused outside Wirth’s Circus to read the garish advertising. He was smart, and Tom worried that this pause in his walking was a way of checking to see if he was being followed. Tom’s wasn’t the only air force uniform among the pedestrians, and the deepening twilight as winter approached offered him some cover. Winslow didn’t seem to look behind him, so Tom assumed that he’d stopped out of curiosity — although, as Winslow passed Wirth’s Circus every day, it was odd that he would halt there on this day. Tom was relieved to discover, as he passed the circus, that a new hoarding had been put up, promising new and daring attractions.
Winslow turned right at Flinders Street and walked east, past the Treasury Gardens and the Fitzroy Gardens, turned into Clarendon Street, and then into George Street. Tom had kept a fair distance back from Winslow and had removed his cap so that if Winslow happened to look behind him, the silhouette of the distant figure wouldn’t read as a military man. Tom turned the corner into George Street just in time to see Winslow go through the gate of a house at the far end. When Tom reached it, he noted the number. It was a small house, single-fronted and showing its age. He decided to wait half an hour. It would be dark by then, so there would be little chance of his being discovered. He stood opposite the house and a few doors down in the deep shadows of a laneway. He hoped Winslow wasn’t intending to stay the night. As it happened, he emerged after just 15 minutes. A woman walked with him the few steps to the front gate, but Tom couldn’t make out any of her features. The light cast from the open front door was too dim even to provide him with a clue as to her age. There was no physical contact between them, so Tom surmised she probably wasn’t a lover.
Tom, already feeling slightly nauseated about intruding on Winslow’s privacy, decided not to pursue him from this point. This general sense of queasiness was compounded by the knowledge that he would have to report this meeting to Tom Chafer. He accepted that this was an obligation he’d undertaken to honour, despite it not sitting well with him. He’d leave it up to Chafer to find out the woman’s identity. All he wanted to do now was to get home and take a bath
.
WINSLOW WAS WARY, but a nagging concern that his wife might actually be ill, and that there might be something he could do about it — this was irrational, he knew — overrode his wariness. He’d read and re-read the note, turning it over and holding it up to the light, hoping to find something. Nothing. He’d looked again at the envelope. It was pristine. Unlike the note, it hadn’t been crushed into a pocket or handled with greasy fingers. At first sight, there were no clues to be found on it, but he’d noticed when he’d looked closely that on the right-hand corner, at the very bottom and in faint pencil, were two tiny initials: K.H. He knew who that was. Katherine Hart. This lent credence to the authenticity of the note. Katherine Hart’s husband was Japanese, and interned at Loveday. Winslow had met her a couple of times, but Etsuko hadn’t liked her and had told him that she found her haughty and dismissive. She’d never shown this side of herself to Winslow, and Etsuko had said that of course she hadn’t — her marriage had taught her the art of deference to men. With another woman, her true nature was undisguised. Winslow trusted his wife’s judgement, and consequently his relations with Katherine Hart were glancing and cool. Those small initials on the envelope were an invitation, though, and it was an invitation he couldn’t ignore.
After he’d left Victoria Barracks, his eye had been snagged briefly by the new line-up at Wirth’s Circus — he had a weakness for the vulgarity of circuses — but after that he’d been barely aware of the world around him. The thought that Etsuko might be desperately ill had taken hold as a fact, and he could think of nothing else. The idea that she might be in pain clutched at him. There had to be something he could do.
He’d been to Katherine Hart’s before. He and Etsuko had had dinner there, in early 1938. He’d seen her once since then: he’d visited her to offer solace after her husband’s internment in 1942.
When she opened the door and invited him in, she showed no surprise at his being there. She’d aged, he thought. Her hair was greyer than he remembered, and there was something rather doleful about her manner. After just ten minutes in her company, he decided that doleful wasn’t strong enough to describe her. She was miserable. She offered him a cup of tea, which he refused.
