by Robert Gott
A crude edit brought the camera in close. Mary was gagged, her eyes bulging. Tom was calling out something, and struggling against the ropes that ran across his shoulders, thighs, and ankles. The audience in the hall was enthralled — believing, Joe presumed, that because it had been captured on film, it was fictional, and that the players were unexpectedly good at their craft.
The camera moved to one side — who was working it, Mitchell, Arthur, or Fred? — with Mary in the foreground and Tom still sharply in focus. Jones stood in front of Tom, and spat in his face before slapping him hard. The audience gasped. Joe was paralysed with horror.
Jones took Tom’s face in his hand and turned it toward Mary. He said something in his ear. Mary must have heard it, because her face became contorted with a fierce emotion. Jones moved across to her and, with brutal ease, raped her. Just like that. The audience had each paid ten shillings for this, and many of them thought, no doubt, that it was money well spent. There was one last cut in the film, and the final few seconds were of Jones urinating on Tom. When it was over, someone said, ‘Was that for real?’
‘Nah,’ a voice answered. ‘She was lovin’ it.’
There was laughter. They hadn’t been watching Tom’s face. Joe had, and he’d seen there the death of everything in him that was optimistic. Joe went into a kind of shock, which was why the confusion of the next few minutes was at first incomprehensible to him. The light in the hall was suddenly switched on, and Joe was aware of people shouting and then the rushing presence of policemen.
‘Stay where you are! Police! Stay where you are!’
There was a clattering of chairs, and the sound of scuffles as the patrons overwhelmed the constables and headed for the door. In a matter of seconds, amid cries and whistles, the hall was empty — except for the projectionist, who’d been pinned to the ground, three other men who’d been similarly restrained, and Joe. He hadn’t moved from his chair. It was only when a hand grabbed his left shoulder and a man’s voice said, ‘You’re under arrest, sunshine,’ that Joe became fully conscious of his surroundings.
-20-
In an office at the Prahran police station, Sergeant Peter Colby sat opposite Joe. They knew each other slightly, which expedited the confirmation of Joe’s credentials. Joe had telephoned Inspector Lambert, whose arrival was expected at any minute. Joe wasn’t looking forward to it.
‘What do we know about the bloke who organised this soirée?’ Joe asked.
‘His name is Talmadge. He’s a sleazy bastard, with a long record of being a sleazy bastard.’
‘I need to talk to him.’
‘Let’s do it.’
Bert Talmadge stank of sweat. He’d been told that the film he’d shown had been real, that he’d become an accessory to a very serious crime, and that this time he was likely to face jail. When Peter Colby began questioning him, he bleated his innocence.
‘You’ve got the wrong idea,’ he said. ‘I never knew what was on it.’
Colby calmly unfolded a piece of paper and read:
Exhibiting in a place of public resort, films of an indecent, obscene and disgusting nature; exhibiting obscene films; having unlawfully in your possession prohibited imports, namely 12 cinematograph films; and having unlawfully in your possession prohibited imports, namely 12 obscene cinematograph films.
‘Those are the minor charges, Bert. You’ll be familiar with some of them.’
‘I knew nothing about that fillum.’
‘So how did you come by it?’ Joe asked.
Bert Talmadge looked at him. He must have thought that Joe’s face was more sympathetic than Colby’s, because he directed his response exclusively to Joe.
‘Look, I show a few stags. So what? Who gets hurt? Everyone has a good time, then goes home and fucks his wife. Big deal. Right? I mean, Christ, some of these fillums are twenty years old.’
‘How did you come by the film we’re interested in?’ Joe asked again.
‘Look, I don’t want to put anybody in it. All that happens is when I’m going to have a bit of an evening, I send a note to the Melbourne Nudist Club at a post box. On the night of the show, they drop off a reel. It’s harmless stuff — a few chubby nudists lolling about or playing tennis, or leapfrog. You wouldn’t want your grandmother to see it, I grant you, although on more than one occasion a grandmother has wandered into frame. I send the reel back to the post box with a few bob inside, and that’s it.’
‘And you never preview the reel?’
‘Nah. No point.’
Colby stood up.
‘We’ve let the other three blokes go. Their wives don’t need to know what their husbands have been up to on New Year’s Eve. Or maybe they do, but we’ve got enough on our plates without ruining someone’s marriage. We’ve set up your projector in another room, Bert, and we want you to run that film for us again when Inspector Lambert arrives.’
Joe’s stomach lurched. This would be have to have been one of the worst experiences of his life. He instantly decided that once Jones was apprehended, he’d resign. He couldn’t see how he could continue working with Lambert when the full extent of what he’d withheld had been revealed.
Joe didn’t have long to worry about this. Titus was shown into the room where Colby, Joe, and Talmadge sat. Joe had briefly sketched in the nature of the film when he’d telephoned Titus earlier. He expected him to be incandescent with anger, but he wasn’t. He was calm. Colby took Talmadge into the room where the projector had been set up, and Titus, conscious that Joe was nervous, moved quickly to calm him down.
‘Whatever is on this film, Sergeant, it’s not your fault. You are in no way responsible for the actions of this Ptolemy Jones, and beyond offering my brother-in-law an opportunity to get out from behind a desk, you are in no way responsible for what has happened.’
Joe began to say something, but Titus stopped him. ‘I need to see this film, Sergeant. Nothing else matters at the moment.’
When the film had run its course, Titus’s body was rigid with horror and fury in equal parts.
‘Constable Lord is never to see this,’ he said. ‘Jones is masked, so there is nothing to be gained from it.’
Joe understood. His own reaction to the film had been more visceral than any reaction he’d ever had to the sight of a corpse, however violated it had been. Inspector Lambert’s silence about his brother-in-law was more devastating to Joe than any accusatory expression could possibly have been. He wanted to find Ptolemy Jones and kill him. It went against all his training, but Joe didn’t at this moment believe that, in such cases, the courts could be anything other than ponderously inept.
After Talmadge had been charged, Titus asked Sergeant Colby how it was that his men had raided the Rainbow Hall on this night in particular.
‘We had a tip-off,’ Colby said. ‘Anonymous, of course, but telling us that Bert Talmadge was up to his old tricks.’
Turning to Joe, Titus said, ‘And you said, Sergeant, that it was definitely Jones who told you to go to the Rainbow Hall.’
‘Definitely, sir.’
‘In other words, he wanted you to see this film, and he wanted the rest of us to see it, too.’
‘We underestimated these people, sir. Or, rather, I under-estimated them. They must have suspected Tom, and tortured information out of him.’
Titus nodded, not wishing to say out loud that he suspected this was precisely what had happened.
‘I got the sergeant in Daylesford out of bed, and he should be at Candlebark Hill by now — we should be hearing something from him soon I’ve also sent two men to Magill’s house in Hawthorn.’
‘Do you think we should let Chafer and Goad know what’s happening, sir?’
‘That would be your decision, Sergeant — not mine. Homicide, not Intelligence, is my demesne.’
Joe accepted
what he took to be a mild rebuke without resentment. He believed that his relationship with Lambert had been irrevocably damaged.
‘I’ll telephone them,’ Joe said. ‘Apart from anything else, it will be a pleasure to disrupt their New Year’s Eve.’
‘Tell them to come to Russell Street.’
‘They won’t be happy about that.’
‘Their happiness is of no interest to me, Sergeant. If they wish to see the film, it will be at Russell Street. Two lives are in grave danger. If that is of no concern to Messrs Chafer and Goad, I’ll go above their heads.’
Titus Lambert sat behind his desk, waiting for Tom Chafer and Dick Goad to arrive. He was breathing slowly and deeply, drawing on an ability he’d acquired over the years to suppress fierce emotions in favour of ordered thoughts. In the past, this had been how he’d managed to investigate the murder of children. Now, he forced his feelings about Tom Mackenzie into procedural neutrality. In dark moments, it troubled him that being able to do this might mean that there was something wrong with him — that this wasn’t a strength, but a disturbing peculiarity.
Joe sat at his desk in the outer office. He’d been surprised when he’d made contact with Chafer. He’d shown no reluctance to come down to Russell Street; on the contrary, he seemed eager to do so, and he said that he’d organise for Goad to join him. They had information to pass on that might lead to Jones.
Titus had not yet heard from the police in Daylesford. There’d been no one at Magill’s house in Hawthorn, and there was no car in the garage, so Titus assumed they were still at Candlebark Hill. He closed his eyes, worried that he’d misread and mishandled the investigation. He wasn’t able to pinpoint how he should have done anything differently, but he thought there must have been something he’d missed that had led to the horror he’d seen in Prahran. The film was surely more than a taunt — it was a warning, a threat, an expression of how far Jones was willing to go.
More than ever, Titus was convinced that politics was peripheral to the case. How could what he’d seen in that film be construed primarily as an expression of nationalist fervour? Something began to coalesce in his mind. There was a kind of logic at work here, but it was elusive. They were all missing something. They were all working from a false assumption, and he suspected that the right assumption sat impenetrably obscured behind the wrong one.
It was well after midnight when Chafer and Goad arrived at Russell Street. They watched the film and were both visibly shaken by it. Neither of them was used to seeing this sort of brutality. It was the job of other people in their organisation to confront the violent reality of the criminal class.
‘We now know who he is,’ Dick Goad said. ‘His name isn’t Ptolemy Jones. That’s a ridiculous affectation. It’s Alistair Smith, would you believe? Originally, it was Schmidt, until the first war. He grew up in Belgrave. His father’s house was one of the meeting places for National Socialists in the Thirties, but the boy lived mostly with his mother elsewhere. The elder Smith died in ’39. Cancer. We don’t know much more than that. The son inherited the family business, as it were, along with the property, but never moved in, and it’s been vacant since. Alistair Smith kept himself out of trouble, and became invisible.’
‘Until now,’ Joe said.
‘Why now?’ Titus asked.
Tom Chafer put his hands behind his head and began to intone an explanation of which he was obviously, revoltingly, proud.
‘He now feels powerful enough to feel invulnerable. I suspect he’s been feeding on the reports of extraordinary massacres coming out of Europe. I don’t believe it’s too fanciful to think of him being gorged on them, energised by them, and ready.He doesn’t like traitors to his legacy or his cause — he likes to weed them out, root and branch, and he likes to terrify others who might have similar traitorous ambitions. It’s a common controlling technique of dictators, and his great hero is a master of it. His model is the Gestapo: don’t negotiate with your enemies; punish them. We’ve seen milder versions of this sort of delusion and aggrandisement in other Hitlerites. None of them have gone this far.’
‘So you still think all this is because Jones, or Smith, discovered that Quinn was looking into Australia First?’ Titus asked.
‘Of course,’ Chafer said. ‘What other reason would he have for attacking the Quinn family?’
‘The chronology isn’t right,’ Titus said. ‘We have to suppose that Jones met Quinn before he met Magill, and that supposition is weak. It’s convenient, but it’s weak.’
‘Especially,’ Joe said, ‘as there is nothing in Quinn’s reports about meeting with a person like Jones — unless what you told me isn’t true, and there is a reference to Jones somewhere.’
Dick Goad sighed. ‘There is no reference to Jones among Quinn’s reports. I agree that the chronology is out. But when one of our people who has been investigating a particular, suspect group turns up dead, the most obvious explanation is surely the right one. Ockham’s razor.’
‘I wish it were that simple, Mr Goad. Unfortunately, there is the inconvenience of Sheila Draper’s savage murder. Whatever drove Jones to commit that, it wasn’t politics.’
‘You’re making your own convenient assumption on that point, Inspector,’ Tom Chafer said, reverting to his normal unpleasant tone. ‘You’re assuming that the person who killed the Quinns is the same person who killed Sheila Draper.’
This was undeniably true, and Titus acknowledged as much.
‘If we’re talking about competing assumptions,’ he said, ‘I think ours is based on evidence and experience, and is the stronger of the two.’ To be diplomatic, he added, ‘The truth of the matter is that Jones’s motivations are likely to be a witches’ brew of the political and the personal. It seems to me that Miss Quinn might have been right when she implied that this was all about her. At the time, it seemed more like an actress’s ego expressing itself.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Inspector,’ Goad said.
‘Mary Quinn’s first reaction when we told her about Sheila Draper’s death was to say that someone was killing the people she loved before getting around to killing her.’
‘An elaborate sort of torture?’ Goad said.
‘Yes. Slow and pointed revenge, which makes me think the key to all this isn’t Jones’s connection to John Quinn, but Jones’s connection to Mary Quinn. He knows her, which means that someone must know them both.’
Dick Goad took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Titus.
‘This is a list of names and addresses of people associated with Alistair Smith’s father. As you can see, it’s a short list.’
‘Do any of these people have children who’d be Jones’s, or Smith’s — I can’t get used to calling him Smith — who’d now be Jones’s age?’ asked Joe.
‘We’re ahead of you, Sergeant. Yes. One of them, John Starling, has a son. He’d be about Smith’s age. Name of George.’
‘What does he look like?’
Goad produced a blurry photograph.
‘This was taken at the Belgrave house at about the same time as the one you saw of Smith.’
The photograph was of two people approaching the house — a man in his fifties, by the look of him, and a boy about sixteen. The boy was chubby. Titus handed the photograph to Joe. Joe shook his head.
‘This is Starling, is it, and his son?’
Goad nodded.
‘That boy could be the bloke who calls himself Fred. It’s hard to say. If it is Fred, he’s lost a lot of weight since then.’ Joe peered at it closely. ‘Can I have a magnifying glass, sir?’
Titus took one from his desk drawer and gave it to Joe.
‘This boy may only be sixteen or seventeen, but he’s an early developer.’
Both Goad and Chafer looked quizzical.
‘The man I know as Fred has e
xtremely hairy arms and a five o’clock shadow that made me think he must have started shaving when he was four. This young man has similarly hairy arms. I’d say this is Fred. I can’t, of course, be absolutely certain.’
He handed the magnifying glass and the photograph to Dick Goad.
‘Good,’ Goad said. ‘We know where John Starling lives, and I’m sure he can be persuaded to tell us how to find George, or Fred, if that’s what he’s calling himself now. If we can find Fred, and I think we can, we can find Jones.’
Goad looked at his watch.
‘It’s 1.00am.’
‘This can’t wait,’ Titus said.
‘I wasn’t thinking of waiting, Inspector. However, John Starling doesn’t live in Melbourne. He lives outside Warrnambool, at a place called Mepunga. It’s going to take some time to get to him, and sending a Warrnambool walloper — pardon me — to question him will get you nowhere. He’s not keen on policemen. He’s even less keen on us, but he’ll cooperate when I waft the smell of the Crimes Act in his direction. A few of his mates from the halcyon Belgrave days are uncomfortably interned. Starling has lost his passion for National Socialism. He won’t want his flirtation with it in the Thirties to land him in hot water now.’
When Chafer and Goad had left, having given Titus an assurance that one of them would be leaving for Warrnambool immediately, Joe said again how worried he was about Tom and Mary, and how badly he felt about Tom’s involvement. Titus, rather brusquely, repeated that he, Joe, was not responsible for his brother-in-law’s decisions, and he should stop implying that he, Titus, thought that he was.
‘I don’t think Mrs Lambert will be so understanding, sir.’
Titus ignored the comment, which left Joe wondering whether he thought it inappropriate, or whether he agreed with it.
‘Tomorrow — well, today now — I want you and Constable Lord to take that sketch to 3UZ and see if anyone there, apart from Jack Ables, has seen Mary Quinn with Jones. His sick obsession with her can’t have escaped everyone. We should have been focussing on that from the beginning.’
