by Robert Gott
‘When I said that John Quinn was one of ours, Inspector, I meant was in the sense that he’d been retired for some time.’
‘How did you find out that he was dead?’
‘It’s our job to find out things. There’s nothing sinister about it. By last night, dozens of people, both in the police force and out of it, knew about the deaths. One of those people, who I won’t name, passed the information on to us. It really isn’t very mysterious.’
‘You have an unfortunate manner, Mr Chafer,’ Titus said. ‘When you’re in my office, I think you should make an effort not to be an arsehole.’
There was a stunned silence. It was the first time that Joe had heard Inspector Lambert swear. He noticed a small smile creep across Dick Goad’s lips, and in that smile he also saw the nature of the relationship between these two: Goad ought to have been in charge, but he wasn’t. He took orders from this boy, Chafer, and he hated it.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Chafer said.
‘You’re with Intelligence, so I’m sure you do important work. You haven’t been sent here by your superiors to put us in our place. You’ve been sent because you need our help, and from the little we know about the Quinns, we apparently need your help. Perhaps we can acknowledge the equality of our needs, and not waste time spraying in corners like tomcats.’
A flush of embarrassment flooded Tom Chafer’s face. Titus continued, rescuing him from the need to respond immediately.
‘I’d intended, as it happens, to call Intelligence this morning. I had no idea that he’d once worked for you — how could I have? I was interested in the magazine he’d once subscribed to, The Publicist. You know it, of course.’
Chafer opened his satchel and removed a bundle of them.
‘Quinn was retired, but he kept in touch, and did a bit of work for us on the side. We know he subscribed to this because we asked him to. Australia First was planning to set up a wing of its party here in Melbourne, and John Quinn was going to join — and report to us, of course.’
Dick Goad spoke for the first time. His voice betrayed the money that had been spent on it.
‘The last of these was published in March last year. It’s the brainchild of a bloke called Stephensen, who’s been interned, by the way, along with a few of his cronies. They started publishing this stuff back in 1936, and we’ve been keeping an eye on them since then. They’ll tell you that they love Australia and the king, but they’re a bit too fond of Mr Hitler and Hirohito. They like a good manifesto, and it’s all very hairy-chested and windy.’
He withdrew a carefully folded piece of paper from his pocket and opened it.
‘Australia First attracts, or attracted, a range of supporters, not all of them extremists’, Goad went on. ‘But it provided a platform for people like Mr Arthur Bullock in Western Australia. This is a proclamation written by him, which outlines his vision for a new, improved Australia:
Men and women of Australia, today a new government assumes control of your destinies. Your government brings with it an entirely new system based upon a negotiated settlement with Japan. The Australian nation is ordered to lay down its arms. The Japanese army of occupation will maintain law and order until such time as the government feels that the new system has been safely established.
‘He goes on to tell us what the cornerstones of this new system will be. Important members of the Catholic Church will be liquidated, along with communists and any other undesirable elements. Jews will be sterilised, and road works will be carried out by the forced labour of priests. Mr Arthur Bullock is currently interned.’
Goad spoke without emotion. Joe managed, just, to control an urge to utter an expression of disgust and disbelief. His mouth opened slightly, and the muscles in his face tautened.
‘Thank you,’ Titus said. ‘You’ve just provided us with a raft of possible motives.’
‘We do our best, Inspector,’ Tom Chafer said, and the look that Titus turned on him must have made him regret his tone. He scrambled to save the situation. ‘We’d appreciate it if you could brief us on what you found at Clarendon Street.’
‘Sergeant, could you provide Mr Chafer and Mr Goad with that briefing?’
‘Of course, sir.’ Joe was aware that, by giving Chafer no choice but to hear the details of the Quinn murders from a subordinate, Joe was being used adroitly by Titus to put Chafer in his place. When Joe had finished, Chafer turned to Titus and asked, ‘And you’re quite convinced that John Quinn was murdered — that it wasn’t suicide?’
Titus said nothing. Joe replied.
‘The attempt to make it look like suicide was quite clumsy. We’re confident that the autopsy will reveal that chloroform was used to subdue John Quinn, and that he was propped up in the bath and shot through the roof of the mouth while he was unconscious. It seems almost like an act of mercy, compared to the suffering his son must have endured.’
Dick Goad looked up from the notes he’d been taking.
‘John Quinn hadn’t had any contact with Australia First for some time. There were a couple of poorly attended meetings after the internments — but, with no leadership, interest fell away.’
‘Would his children have been aware of his activities?’ Titus asked.
‘No. None of these people ever came to his house. I’m pretty sure that his children didn’t even know that he was with Intelligence in the last war, and that he stayed with us afterwards — until he went into the law. But, as I say, he never lost touch.’
‘All right, Mr Goad, what’s your take on this?’
‘It seems to me that these were targeted killings. I don’t think they’re interested in the daughter. If they’d wanted her dead, she’d be dead by now. It has to be bound up in some way with John Quinn’s work for us in investigating Australia First. The puzzle is, we’ve kept dossiers on the main players and lots of the followers for years, and they’re all full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. We don’t know anyone in Australia First who’d be capable of this sort of crime. This either means that we’re on the wrong track entirely, or that there’s a new recruit out there who plays dirty.’
‘You think someone found out that John Quinn wasn’t a true-blue member, and killed him?’
‘That seems to be a reasonable inference — assuming, of course, that we’re talking about a rogue member with a brutal approach to dissidents. It’s not an unheard-of response in Germany.’
‘And Xavier Quinn?’
‘It’s possible, Inspector, that what they did to his son was part of the punishment, and that they made him watch it. We’re not talking about your common or garden killer.’
‘Xavier Quinn was a religious zealot,’ Titus said. ‘He had visions. He was a very peculiar young man. Whoever killed him knew something about him — certainly enough to mock his beliefs. As Sergeant Sable told you, there was a copy of The Publicist in Xavier’s room. What do you make of that?’
Tom Chafer made to speak, but Dick Goad spoke over the top of him.
‘He might have been snooping in his father’s room and taken one to read, or perhaps he was genuinely interested in Australia First.’
‘Despite their anti-Catholic bias?’
‘That was just one bloke in Western Australia,’ Chafer said, reclaiming his authority. ‘The magazine was more anti-Semitic than anti-Catholic, and a papist who saw visions might have found the anti-Semitism to his taste — the people who killed Christ, and so forth. There are gaps in our theory, I grant you, but the murder of an Intelligence man makes this a national-security matter. We need you to find the killer, but I’ll be frank with you — you can’t have him once you’ve found him. He’s ours. We’ll give you as much support as we can, but we’re seriously under-manned. We need someone to get a look inside at what’s happening in the rump of Australia First; whatever is going on there, it won’t be in the best i
nterests of this country.’
‘When you say you need someone inside Australia First, are you suggesting that that person should be one of my detectives?’
‘Not suggesting, Inspector — insisting. If necessary, we have the authority to second that person. He will, of course, be subject to the Crimes Act, as will you.’
‘Did you have anyone in mind?’
Tom Chafer turned the pages of his notebook and read:
Joseph Sable, age 25, born 15 February, 1918. Parents David and Judith, both deceased. Exempted from national service for health reasons — a heart murmur. Completed detective training 1942. Accepted into the newly formed Homicide division 1943.
‘As you see, Inspector, we don’t let the grass grow under our feet.’
Joe had no qualms about jumping in before Inspector Lambert could raise any objections to their demand. He wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to do something to bring Australia First to book. Here was a chance to ease the disgust he’d begun to feel at his own complacent belief that the atrocities in Europe had nothing to do with him. Such horrors couldn’t, he’d thought, happen here. Nazi Germany was a world of black-and-white newsreels, and newsprint. Nazism was an exotic foreign disease that couldn’t survive the disinfecting power of the Australian sun — it couldn’t flourish under such blue skies. He’d begun to see how naïve he’d been, how childish.
‘A secondment won’t be necessary, sir,’ Joe said to Titus. ‘I’m willing to volunteer. But I’d rather work from here than from Victoria Barracks — if that’s all right with Intelligence.’
‘We’d have no objection to that,’ Tom Chafer said. ‘But you have to understand that in this matter you answer to us first, and Homicide second. You also have to understand that this may place you at some risk.’
‘It’s a risk we’ll endeavour to minimise,’ added Dick Goad. ‘We’ll give you as much support and information as we can. We hope that your involvement will end this matter in a very short time.’
‘Can you keep the Quinn murders out of the press?’ Titus asked.
‘No, but we can muzzle them — and that includes Truth — and get the story buried with a minimum of detail, and without salacious speculations. Even newspaper editors are reluctant to be interned for the sake of a good story.’
‘So where do I begin?’ Joe asked.
Tom Chafer pulled a photograph from between the pages of his notebook. ‘You begin with this man,’ he said. ‘His name is Mitchell Magill, and he was very gung-ho about setting up a Victorian branch of Australia First. We had him under surveillance for a while, but we had to drop it. Bigger fish to fry. He sees himself as something of a Brahmin. He’s got money, and he lives in a flash house in a flash street in Hawthorn.
He reached into his satchel and withdrew a yellow envelope.
‘It’s all here: his address, his known associates, where he likes to drink, and where he likes to eat — and he eats out a lot. There are also briefing notes on key people in Melbourne whose affiliations with Hitlerism have come to our attention. You may find that information useful. How you contrive to meet Magill is up to you.’
Tom Chafer handed Joe Sable the envelope, and smiled. The smile had as much warmth in it as the Ross Ice Shelf.
‘Is this Magill a naturist, by any chance?’ Titus asked.
‘A what?’
‘A naturist. A nudist. A gymnosophist, as I now know they like to call themselves.’
‘That is a very odd question, Inspector, and I haven’t a clue what you mean by it.’
‘Along with The Publicist, we found many copies of naturist magazines — mostly in German, but some in English.’
‘We know nothing about those,’ Goad said, ‘although nothing would surprise me when it comes to the enthusiasms of Nazi Party followers. Southern Command has quite a file on a crackpot named Mills. He’s a solicitor here in Melbourne, and he’s a keen National Socialist. He published a newspaper back in ’36 called, unambiguously, The National Socialist. He’s also a dedicated pagan. He worships Odin. Seriously. It would be amusing if his views on racial purity weren’t quite so disturbing. He formed something called ‘The Odinist Society’, and they engaged in all sorts of rituals up in the Dandenongs — lots of bare-chested dancing around bonfires. He’s interned, of course, but unrepentant. I think his personal, philosophical cocktail of Nazism and Odinism embarrasses his mates. The thing is, he’s not a fighter. None of them are — they’d like to see National Socialism up and running here, so long as someone else does all the messy bits. The naturism stuff is new to me, though. Perhaps Quinn was the naturist. Everyone has secrets.’
‘Not according to his daughter,’ Joe said. ‘There was one in Xavier Quinn’s bedroom as well, which I think supports your idea that he purloined it from his father’s room, along with The Publicist.’
‘There’s no mention of naturism in any of John Quinn’s reports,’ Chafer said. He redeployed his chilly smile. ‘Whatever it all means, Sergeant Sable here will doubtless discover the truth for us.’
After Chafer and Goad left, Titus and Joe sat for a moment in silence. Eventually, Titus asked, ‘You have a heart murmur, Sergeant?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Titus made no further comment, for which Joe was grateful. His heart was a weakness that he was reluctant to discuss with anyone. Occasionally it fluttered so severely that it made him nauseous, but mostly it sat inside his chest benignly.
‘What did you make of those two?’ Titus asked.
‘Chafer came across like a little Napoleon. Goad seemed all right.’
‘Chafer has tickets on himself, and a chip on his shoulder the size of Ayers Rock. Goad must have come out of retirement. I can’t see how Chafer would outrank him otherwise. They inhabit a whole other world, Sergeant.’
‘You needn’t worry about where my allegiances lie, sir. A few minutes in Chafer’s company was enough to inoculate me against whatever attractions Intelligence might offer. Homicide is where I want to be.’
‘I don’t doubt that, Sergeant.’
‘I’ll be answering to you first and foremost, whatever Chafer says.’
‘So what are you planning to do? How do you plan to approach it?’
‘Frankly, I have no idea. I’ll have a good look at the stuff Chafer gave me, and somehow contrive to meet this Mitchell Magill character. I wish I was a better actor. I’m a Jew, so pretending to be a disaffected fascist will be a stretch. My instincts will be to punch the clown in the face.’
‘Speaking of acting, I’d like to re-interview Mary Quinn, at the Quinn house. The bodies have been removed, but she’ll have to organise cleaners at some stage. Before I talk to her again, I’d like to have a look at her bedroom.’
There were no police posted outside Number 1 Clarendon Street. The neighbours knew what had happened, of course. They’d been door-knocked the previous evening and Christmas morning — but the visible presence of a policeman would have provoked the sort of prurient interest from passers-by that was contrary to the need for discretion. No one had seen or heard anything unusual. At two of the large neighbouring houses, the door had been opened by a person who was clearly a live-in servant. Such servants were against the government regulations that had put Australia on a war footing, so Manpower would soon be paying these people a visit. Murder, it seemed, was inconvenient in unexpected ways.
It was two o’clock when Titus and Joe arrived. A constable had been sent to Sheila Draper’s rooms, with instructions to bring Mary Quinn to her home at three. This would give them an hour to search her room. Mary wasn’t officially a suspect. In fact, Titus said, she wasn’t a suspect at all. However, the first casualty, after the victims, in any murder investigation is privacy, and Titus had learned long ago to suppress any compunction he might have had about such matters. Even if Mary wasn’t a suspect, she was an intimate par
t of the investigation, and her room might reveal something of interest — something that she herself might not recognise as useful or pertinent.
The bedroom wasn’t as neat as either her brother’s or her father’s had been. The closed, hot room smelled oppressively of a cloying perfume that doubtless had been sweet when first applied. Titus and Joe set about their search carefully, looking in all the drawers, under pillows, and behind pictures. There was nothing one would not expect to find in a young woman’s bedroom. There were two copies lying about of The Listener-In with Mary’s photograph on the cover, taken by someone who clearly knew his job. Beautifully lit, it was a subtly enhanced version of her.
‘Wow,’ Joe said. ‘I didn’t realise that this radio serial was such a big thing.’
‘Apparently,’ Titus said, ‘Miss Quinn is on the cusp of stardom, which is one more reason why she doesn’t strike me as a likely suspect.’
There were several film magazines on a dresser and on a bedside table, along with scripts for The Red Mask. Flipping through one, Titus found notes and words underlined. Presumably, these were jottings of Mary’s that she’d made to help her say her lines effectively — where to put a stress and where to pause.
Despite the clutter, Titus thought that the room was strangely anonymous. There were no letters, or diaries, or notebooks in it, and the only photograph to be seen was the one of Mary herself on the cover of The Listener-In. The pictures on the wall were old-fashioned engravings of famous paintings.
‘I think she slept here, Titus said, ‘and that’s all. It’s as if she were just a visitor in her own house. There are no family photographs.’
