by Robert Gott
‘The dead tattooist? All we’ve got is long shots, Sergeant. With a name like Ptolemy Jones, he shouldn’t be hard to track down, and it shouldn’t be hard to find out where he got that tattoo. We’ll canvass every tattooist in the city tomorrow. What does it mean, “Argument 7”?’
‘He didn’t say. Chafer or Goad might know.’
‘So, Magill — is he a threat?’
‘Not personally, no, but he has enough money to pay someone to do his dirty work for him. I got the distinct feeling that he wasn’t keen on Ptolemy or Fred. I think Magill is a drawing-room Nazi. Those other two are field Nazis. Magill is wary of them. I can’t see them working together.’
‘You said, though, that Magill could afford to pay someone like Ptolemy Jones.’
‘True, but that’s not the impression I got. Jones didn’t strike me as an employee. If he’s going to take money from you, it’ll be theft, not wages. Jones met Magill for the first time on Christmas Day, so he certainly didn’t pay him to hit the Quinns. They’re discovering that they don’t have much in common.’
‘Is Jones all talk, or is he capable of violence?’
‘I think I can say with absolute confidence that the sooner Ptolemy and Fred, whoever he is, are taken off the streets, the better.’
Clarry Brown stood opposite the Grand Synagogue in St Kilda Road. He was agitated. Inside the pocket of his trousers he fingered a short length of lead pipe. He was here because it was the only place he knew of where he might find a Jew, follow him, and beat him senseless. His attack on that old person in Arnold Street had been clumsy, and he hadn’t followed through. When he thought about it, he felt as if Fred hadn’t been very impressed, and he’d have told Jones that, for sure. He couldn’t bear the idea that Jones thought he was a laughing stock. He’d show Jones that he could be relied on, that he was fearless, that he was ruthless.
Right now, though, he was agitated. People were passing in front of the building, but walking past a synagogue didn’t make you a Jew. He crossed St Kilda Road and ambled slowly along the footpath. There was no one near the synagogue now. His nervousness began to recede, and along with it his desire to punish a stranger. He would have jumped on a tram if one had come along just then, and gone home.
Clarry Brown stepped into St Kilda Road to look south into the distance for the faint, dulled light of an approaching tram. There was nothing, so he began to walk towards the city. Two men passed him, and he heard a snatch of their conversation. It wasn’t English. It had the phlegminess of what he thought of as Jew talk, and that was enough for his purposes. He hadn’t got a good look at either man, so he couldn’t assess his chances against both of them. But their sudden appearance convinced Clarry that he was meant to mount his attack on them. The idea of destiny appealed to him mightily; this was a test.
He followed the men. They passed the synagogue without pausing, and turned left into Toorak Road. Two streets along, they stopped briefly and shook hands; one of them turned off into a narrow side-street, while the other continued along Toorak Road. Brown decided to pursue the man who’d broken off, and hurried to catch up with him. The street was very narrow and very dark, and no lights showed from any of the houses. Fortunately, his quarry was wearing a pale shirt, and then his fate was sealed when he stopped to light a cigarette.
As the man leaned in to shield the match against the breeze, Brown was upon him. While the match flared, Brown raised his arm and swung the lead pipe against the side of the man’s head. The man tottered for a moment before falling to the ground. Brown was astonished. Could it really be that easy? He hadn’t even seen what his victim looked like. But when the man’s leg twitched, Clarry panicked. He ought to have finished the job and made absolutely sure that the victim was dead and unable to tell the wallopers anything. When push came to shove, though, Clarry didn’t have it in him to batter the man into silence. Instead, he told himself that the Jew was probably already dead, and turned away. What now? He’d walk home, through dark streets, and drop the pipe miles away. He didn’t want to meet anyone in a lighted area, just in case he had blood spatters on him. He’d thought of everything. He was pleased with himself — very pleased — and managed to push a tiny nugget of doubt to one side.
Helen Lord sat in her bedroom, trying to read. Her uncle and her mother were downstairs, listening to the radio. Earlier, Helen had been with them, listening to the third episode of The Red Mask. All three of them had become fans. Helen resisted the temptation to tell her mother and uncle that she’d met and spoken with the lead actress, Mary Quinn, and that she was currently at the centre of a murder investigation. Helen never discussed her work. She could have — her mother would have listened sympathetically. For Helen, resolutely refusing to bring her life in the police force home with her had something to do with her father’s death. It made no sense, and she had nothing to base it on, but she thought that talking about her job would somehow cause her mother pain, as if the mere mention of police work would revive her mother’s distressing memories of her husband.
So they’d listened to The Red Mask, got caught up in its plot, and Helen said nothing. She’d retired to her room afterwards, and Joe Sable insinuated himself into her thoughts. She supposed he was good looking — not that that mattered. Helen had always been suspicious of good-looking men. Things came too easily to them, and people gave them credit for what was an accident of nature. There were things about him that annoyed her: she felt that he didn’t consider her his equal, so that she sometimes felt patronised by him. Or was she too sensitive about such things? Did she falsely attribute such behaviour simply because she expected it? She’d enjoyed the beer and beans at his flat. Seeing him in his natural habitat, as it were, had been instructive. She’d noted the prints on the wall. They’d been carefully chosen, she was sure of that. Each one had to mean something to Joe. She didn’t recognise any of the pictures — art didn’t figure much in her Broome childhood — but she was keen to learn.
With a mixture of pleasure and dread, she recognised the symptoms of a developing crush. Such crushes had never worked out well in the past. She was easily disappointed, and prone to speaking her mind. She knew that when her feelings soured, she had a tendency to punish the object of her crush for his temerity in exciting it in the first place. She’d have to tread carefully with Joe. Preserving their working relationship was paramount.
He hadn’t telephoned her to tell her how his day had gone. But why would he? Yes, there it was; that first twinge of resentment that he’d let her down, hurt her feelings. He’d done neither of these things, really. She knew that, and knew she should let go of her absurd, indefensible fit of pique. Helen decided to telephone Joe — there was no harm in that. She waited half an hour, and then made the call. Joe’s phone rang and rang. Helen hung up, and experienced again that irrational spike of pique.
She went to bed and drove Joe out of her head by calling up the face of Xavier Quinn. Who had he been staring at? An accomplice? His father? Had his father been made to watch his son being tortured? She began to drift off to sleep, and her dreams were peopled with a bizarre and merging cast that included the Red Mask, Joe Sable, Xavier Quinn, his sister Mary, and the decapitated Sheila Draper.
Joe walked down Sydney Road towards his flat in Princes Hill. There was nobody on the street in Brunswick, but as he got closer to Princes Park he came across a few American soldiers wandering about, probably on their way back to Camp Pell in Royal Park.
Joe was mulling over his decision not to tell the Lamberts about Tom Mackenzie. He’d assured Titus that his first loyalty was to Homicide, but already he was keeping things from him, and sharing information with Intelligence to which Titus wouldn’t be privy. That, he supposed, was the nature of Intelligence — it made sneaks out of its employees. When he thought about it this way, his loyalty to Titus reasserted itself, and he decided that he’d tell him everything the next day. No doubt Titus would let Joe know precisely how
he felt about the co-opting of his brother-in-law.
In his head, Joe began to marshal his defence: Tom Mackenzie wasn’t a civilian; he wasn’t in any physical danger; and he’d volunteered — in fact, he’d leapt at the opportunity to do something practical. But Joe suspected that none of these explanations would impress Titus. The demands of an investigation over-rode all niceties. He could hear him saying that when his detectives briefed him, he didn’t want to suspect that they were holding something back. Second-guessing a subordinate wasn’t on his list of favourite pastimes.
Joe crossed Park Street, now determined to gird his loins and face Titus. Then he felt it — the feeling in his chest that began with a familiar fluttering. He stopped, waiting for it to settle and pass. His heart beat, missed a beat, beat, missed, beat, missed, beat. Whenever this happened, it took him a minute or so to quell a rising tide of anxiety that had, in the past, led to panic. This was just another episode; there was nothing to worry about. He began to breathe deeply in an effort to calm himself. Somehow, though, this felt different — it felt worse. He began to sweat, and his hands trembled. Was this how it was about to end for him, here, in a dark street, alone?
Those were to be his last thoughts as he slipped into unconsciousness, oblivious to the sickening thump of his forehead on the bitumen of Bowen Crescent.
30 December
-17-
Titus sat in his office, reading the reports that had been put on his desk. His practice was to cast his eye quickly over all accounts of violence — even cases of domestic violence — that came in.
It had been a surprisingly quiet night, but one incident stood out: a man had been assaulted in Toorak. The attack caught Titus’s eye because it hadn’t been a robbery, it had happened not far from the synagogue in St Kilda Road, and yet it seemed to have been random. Preliminary examinations indicated that the man had been struck from behind with a heavy, blunt weapon. The victim was a Dutch immigrant with a wife and three children; his unconscious body had been discovered just before dawn, and he’d been taken to hospital. There was no indication of his condition, except that he was alive when he was found. There was no apparent motive, although the day’s investigations would probably turn something up. He was a Catholic. Titus was pleased that this detail had been included in such a sketchy first report. It showed that the policeman who’d prepared it was aware of the recent assault on the Jewish woman in Princes Hill, and that he’d realised it would save time to discount a possible connection.
Titus didn’t disregard a connection out of hand, however, and when Helen Lord came in, she immediately speculated that there might be one — although neither she nor Titus could find a link between an elderly Jewish woman and a Dutch immigrant.
‘I can’t see that they’re connected to each other or to the murders, including of that tattooist,’ Titus said. ‘And if there is a connection, it isn’t the killer. On the surface, at least, this looks like the work of four different hands.’
‘That just seems incredible to me, sir. Why would Melbourne suddenly vomit up four violent brutes?’
‘That’s a colourful way of putting it, Constable. If you read the reports I read, you’d be unsurprised. Also, Melbourne has a fairly fluid military population at the moment. That’s a possible source — Eddie Leonski can’t be the only murderous man whom the Americans have brought here. But I’d like you to go out to Toorak and find out what you can about the Dutchman, just to be on the safe side. There’s something about this that bothers me. If Sergeant Sable decides to grace us with his presence, he’s to go with you.’
‘He should be here, shouldn’t he?’
Titus looked at his watch.
‘Yes, he should.’
As Titus said this, Joe Sable walked into the office. There was gravel rash on his forehead, and he had a black eye.
‘In case you’re interested,’ he said, ‘I tripped and fell on my way home last night. And, yes, I know how that sounds. It is, however, precisely what happened. It was very dark, and I tripped myself up in Bowen Crescent. I can show you the very spot. I’m sure there’ll be a smear of my blood on the asphalt.’
Helen couldn’t disguise her scepticism. She reached out and turned both Joe’s hands over. He was so startled that he made no attempt to stop her.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Except that a person who trips generally puts out his hands to stop his fall. The only thing that stopped your fall seems to have been your face.’
‘I wasn’t in a fight, if that’s where you’re headed with your little forensic investigation.’
Titus saw the logic in Helen’s observation, but said nothing because he thought Joe’s injuries might have had something to do with his work for Intelligence. If Joe had become embroiled in something unpleasant after leaving the Lambert’s house the previous evening, Titus expected he’d be told about it in due course.
‘Are you fit for work?’ he asked.
‘Of course. It looks worse than it is. It’s a bump, that’s all.’
Titus handed Helen the notes that had been put on his desk, and told Joe that Constable Lord would fill him in on the night’s violence on their way to Toorak. Titus stressed — unnecessarily, as far as Helen was concerned — the urgency of their task. If they felt that the Dutchman’s assault was patently unrelated to the Quinn–Draper investigation, he’d be content to turn it over fully to another detective. Homicide certainly couldn’t spare officers to investigate common assaults.
‘While you’re doing that,’ he said, ‘I’ll be doing some digging into John Quinn’s past. I have no sense of the man. He was a successful solicitor, he married, had an affair, retired, and died. That’s it. He seems to have had as few friends as his son. He’s the invisible man.’
‘The ideal Intelligence man,’ Joe said.
‘I’m still not convinced that he was killed because of his work for Intelligence.’
‘Too many personal touches, sir?’ Helen said.
‘You have quite a knack for the telling phrase, Constable Lord.’
‘You drive, I’ll read,’ Joe said as they approached the car. ‘You do drive?’
‘Of course I drive. I had no intention of letting you drive. You might be concussed, for all I know. I value my life, thank you very much.’
They drove in silence for a few minutes while Joe read the notes. He was finding it more and more difficult to dissociate reports of common assault from the accumulation of atrocities that had begun to crowd his imagination. There was no pattern here, but its absence somehow caused him anxiety. Patterns could be traced. Random violence was alarming, precisely because its unpredictability was the perpetrator’s best camouflage.
‘So,’ Helen asked, ‘are you going to tell me what really happened last night? What was the fight about?’
‘There was no fight. I told you what happened.’
‘Yes, but I don’t believe you, and neither does Inspector Lambert.’
‘That really is your problem, not mine.’
Helen kept her eyes on the road, and Joe watched her profile. She gave no indication that she’d been wounded by his tart response, or that she’d been angered by it. Nevertheless, Joe felt that he’d been unfairly short with her. She was right, after all. He hadn’t told her the truth. This was partly because he’d spent a sleepless night worrying about his health.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘What are you sorry about?’
‘What I just said.’
‘I can’t argue with it. The fact that I don’t believe your story is my problem. At least we agree it’s a problem.’
‘Why do you need to believe my story?’
Helen looked at him quickly.
‘We’re working together,’ she said. ‘Trust is everything.’
‘What h
as my private life got to do with trust at work?’
‘If you left the black eye and the grazed forehead at home, I’d say they had nothing to do with each other. Unfortunately, you’re wearing them, so your private life is on display, rather.’
Joe sighed.
‘I fell over.’
‘Tripped, or fell?’
‘Fell.’
‘My God, you were drunk? Why didn’t you just say so? You were off duty.’
‘I wasn’t drunk. I’ve never fallen down drunk in my life.’
Helen checked herself against the irrational demands that her emotions were making on her.
‘You can keep your little secret,’ she said, ‘although you have to admit you’re making the whole thing a bit mysterious. I’m a policewoman. I like to get to the bottom of mysteries.’
In a heartbeat — an irregular one, in this case — Joe decided to tell Helen Lord the truth. He couldn’t have said why. He’d never spoken about it with anyone. He was embarrassed by his great weakness and had always believed that if people knew about it, they’d think less of him. Would Helen think less of him? He thought it was worth finding out.
‘Have you never wondered why I’m not in uniform?’
She was genuinely puzzled by the question.
‘No. There are tens of thousands of men not in uniform. You’re a copper. Why would I wonder about that?’
‘People do. I wanted to join up.’
‘And?’
‘And they won’t take me.’
‘Flat feet?’
‘No, not flat feet. I have this problem … it’s my heart. The army takes a dim view of people who pass out at odd times.’
Helen pulled the car over and turned off the engine. The hospitalised Dutchman would have to wait a few extra minutes.
‘You have a bad heart?’ There was fear in her voice, and it was so unguarded that Joe couldn’t fail to hear it.
