by Tara Moss
Her assistant nodded. ‘Absolutely. I hope everything will be—’
‘It will be fine,’ she assured him. He was worried about having brandished a gun in front of witnesses, but he needn’t have been. The mountain cops seemed more suspicious of her driving than of this returned soldier’s attempts to bring down a couple of criminals with his long-barrelled farm gun. Men shot guns. That was easy enough to fathom. But women like Billie driving cars and whatnot? She turned and checked her hat in the oval mirror near her desk and, satisfied, slipped on her smoked glasses, cigarette dangling from her lips again. She took it out to touch up her Fighting Red, then replaced it. Blast. It was almost down to a stub. She placed it embers down in Sam’s ashtray. He pulled one from his pack, silently offered it and she nodded.
Yes, today is a smoking day.
‘I should be back in an hour or so, otherwise I will telephone,’ Billie said, grabbing her handbag. ‘Oh, and if a flood of clients pours in waving ten-pound notes around, get them all some very good tea and don’t let them leave,’ she said dryly. ‘Our rate is now twelve pounds per day.’
* * *
Billie knew Central Police Station well. Her father had worked there in his days as a detective before she was born, and his work had brought him back there plenty of times in her youth. The Walkers and this place went way back. The three-storey police station building was a short walk up George Street from her office, and Billie chose to take the stroll rather than waste the precious petrol coupons she so enjoyed using on drives in the country – recent notorious events notwithstanding.
The station got its name from both its location and purpose. The inner-city sandstone building had long acted as central police headquarters. The station housed the criminal investigation offices and other special branches, and backed onto the Central Police Court in Liverpool Street. Below ground the buildings were connected, allowing prisoners to be taken to court and back through a maze of dark corridors and holding cells filled with stinking, dangerous men – and the occasional deadly woman. At least that was how Billie remembered it from her father’s vivid stories when she was younger. But while the courthouse on Liverpool Street had the impressive frontage one expected of a civic building, the public entrance to Central Police Station, with its grand masonry arch, was incongruously on narrow Central Street, in reality more lane than street, as if the city had collectively decided not to look at the police station or think about Sydney’s underbelly of drunks, brawlers, thieves, rapists, petty criminals and crime bosses. It was the architectural equivalent of being swept under the carpet.
There weren’t a lot of women walking in or out of Sydney’s Central Police Station on a Tuesday morning. At this hour there wasn’t even the common presence of women and children in the waiting room that Billie routinely saw on weekends, or worst of all during the holidays, when tensions at home tended to go off the rails into violence. In fact, there was only Billie, and her distinctly female presence did not go unnoticed. Billie felt the heads turn as she walked beneath the masonry arch in her nipped suit with its relatively modest hem, her stacked-heel oxfords and seamed stockings, dozens of male eyes clocking her movements as she walked past the waiting room on the left and the charge room on the right and stopped at the main receiving desk. The stares at her back were as palpable as hands. She could almost smell the testosterone. Not a terrible scent, but certainly distinctive, and in this context, almost overpowering.
This was what happened when you excluded an entire sex from a line of work for far too many decades, she supposed. If you placed all the private inquiry agents in Sydney in one building it would be much the same.
It was with some relief that Billie spotted the welcoming face of Constable Annabelle Primrose behind the reception desk. She was a resourceful young woman of about twenty-two with a stocky, athletic build, a square and determined jaw, curly blonde hair and the brightest blue eyes Billie had ever seen. Her skin shone with wholesome radiance. She was from the country, somewhere out west, Billie recalled, and Billie fancied she played a set of tennis, rode a trick pony and ran to work, all before breakfast. The police force had parked her at a desk job, as it had a lot of other women who’d joined up, assuming that the girls would get married and be forced to resign before long. Primrose could have wrestled bank robbers with one arm, if only they’d let her.
‘Good morning,’ Billie said and looked round. ‘Quite the atmosphere in here today.’ The stares were only slowly easing.
The constable nodded. ‘Oh, Ms Billie, it is good to see you.’
‘I understand Detective Inspector Cooper wants a word,’ Billie said. The inspector would be on the third floor, in the offices of the Criminal Investigation Branch, she imagined.
‘Yes. I heard what happened yesterday,’ the younger woman said with wide eyes. ‘And it’s all over the papers. You’re famous. I’ll let him know you’re here.’
Primrose made the call, explaining that the detective inspector’s visitor would soon be on the way up with a lift operator, but Billie had a favour to ask of Constable Primrose first. It wasn’t for the whole headquarters to know about, though. Aware she was being observed, Billie began a banal conversation about picnic weather with her young friend. This was a code, of sorts, as anyone who knew her well enough knew she was about as likely to chat about a picnic as a poet was to write about the stock market. Constable Primrose nodded, understanding. Such was the atmosphere at headquarters, they’d been through this before. ‘Really, I do hope it will be clear that day,’ Primrose agreed. The listening ears zoned out of the conversation with an almost audible click.
While Billie continued to talk about the forecast highs and lows and a possible stormy weekend, she surreptitiously scratched XR-001 on a piece of paper and pushed it towards the young woman.
‘I would be much obliged if by any stroke of luck I could find out more about this before I move forward with planning,’ Billie said clearly, then, like a magician practising the technique of distraction that aided sleight of hand, bent at the waist and pretended to straighten the seams of her stockings. Well, one was askew, actually, snaking slightly to the right, and she took the opportunity to fix it. If everyone wanted to stare for a while, it gave her the opportunity for a quick, whispered chat as she leaned close to Primrose. ‘I promise I’ll drop the guy who owns the car in the lap of the police if I can,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t think you have anything on him yet, though if you do, I’d surely like to know what. He’s known to his house staff as Frank. The families of some young girls in his employ are worried,’ she finished.
Billie straightened, having said her piece, and the two women locked eyes. It was an agreement. Constable Primrose was frowning, clearly worried about what this Frank character might be up to. The piece of paper had disappeared into her pocket. Billie knew that determined jaw. Constable Primrose would help if she in any way could.
‘I do hope the weather improves for your picnic,’ the constable said brightly, resuming the coded conversation.
‘You know how I love a picnic,’ Billie replied, and her smile was sly.
She was just saying her farewell before heading upstairs when another woman’s voice cut in. ‘I see you are busy, as always,’ the voice said rather pointedly, making Billie start.
It was Lillian Armfield. The legendary special sergeant had short hair curled back from a stern, watchful face and lips held as straight as a ruler. Hers was the countenance of a woman who had seen it all in her time as a nurse, and now famously as a detective. Her penetrating light brown eyes were fixed on Billie, and she suspected Armfield had seen her pass the number-plate details over to the constable, while the male officers were either fascinated by her stocking seams or minding their own business.
‘Wasn’t I right about my young constable here?’ Armfield said, breaking the tension by patting Constable Primrose’s arm. ‘She’ll go far.’
Billie let out a breath. Lillian generally approved of her schemes, so even if she kn
ew the constable was helping her with something, she was unlikely to cause trouble. ‘I believe you’re right,’ Billie said, recovering. ‘Right as always.’
Constable Primrose looked at Billie and then Armfield and appeared to relax a touch, though the older detective was of formidable reputation and her proximity was enough to give any young police officer the jitters. But Armfield’s attention was fully focused on Billie again, and those light brown eyes were giving her a familiar look. ‘We need more women in the force. Have you been considering it? Your father was very good in his day, you know.’
Billie smiled, then recalled his reasons for quitting. There were a few bad eggs giving the force an unsavoury reputation, which Barry Walker had wanted no part of. Even after her father’s time as a cop, there had been a spate of police corruption in the twenties and thirties, which Armfield herself had been more than acquainted with as she famously battled the brutal razor gangs, as well as the brothel madam and ‘Queen of Woolloomooloo’, Tilly Devine, and her nemesis, sly grogger Kate Leigh, the ‘Queen of Surry Hills’. Had the police corruption corrected itself, the bad eggs been tossed out? It seemed a bit too optimistic. Yet Lillian was playing her part to cleanse the force, determined that new blood was needed, and particularly a better balance of women, who were clearly still few and far between.
‘It’s more satisfying than divorce work,’ Armfield added with an acidulous touch, knowing perfectly well the professional demand for proof of adultery in the private inquiry trade, and the often distasteful scenarios that entailed. Billie, on principle, never set men up with paid women to get what she needed as proof, though that was a common practice. But she had followed cheating spouses to catch them in compromising moments. It could be an ugly job, but the scenarios were real, at least. No frames. Billie did not enjoy that work, but she didn’t want to have to sublet the last of her father’s offices and acknowledge professional defeat. Her father had handled hundreds of divorce cases – after all, that was how he’d met her mother – and if it was good enough for him . . . If Billie earned a bit of a reputation – a good one, or at least an exciting one – she might attract more clients, and then she could leave the divorce work to someone else and focus on the trickier cases, like this business with the Brown family. A puzzle like this was more satisfying, though it was proving a lot more dangerous, too. It was yet to be seen how the unexpected publicity today would affect things professionally.
‘Barry had the utmost respect for you, Lillian,’ Billie said by way of response. She nodded her head and gave a look that told the older woman that an immense respect for her was very much shared by Barry’s daughter.
‘I know a brick wall when I see one,’ Armfield replied. She said it warmly, but with some regret. ‘Strong heads suit women,’ she added to no one in particular and stalked out of the station, passing Detective Inspector Hank Cooper, who evidently had come down from his office, tired of waiting for Billie to seek him out.
Cooper was near the lift watching Billie – with a look of what was it? Surprise? Amusement? Curiosity? – and he turned his head to watch Armfield as she disappeared through the archway onto Central Street. When he shifted his attention back to the reception desk, Constable Primrose was a picture of dutiful professionalism. Billie ventured a playful wave at the detective inspector.
‘You seem to be unavoidable at the moment, Miss Walker,’ he said, striding over on those rangy limbs of his. His tone was even.
‘Trouble comes to me, Detective Inspector, not the other way around,’ Billie replied, straight faced. She followed him to the lift. ‘And it’s Ms,’ she reminded him. ‘Besides, you asked me here today.’
Cooper waved her into the lift. ‘How could I not?’ he asked. ‘You’re all over the papers.’ He didn’t look convinced about her relationship with trouble, and she couldn’t really blame him for that.
‘Indeed, I do seem to be,’ she said as the doors were closed and they began their ascent. ‘Or rather, those unfortunate fellows are. I’m afraid I can’t compete with that display.’ The men had picked quite a spot to lose control of the Oldsmobile, and the Sydney Morning Herald’s artist had made the most of it.
The inspector led her to his office, a small private room that smelled of cigarette smoke, frustration and more of the testosterone she’d detected downstairs. Of the three, she didn’t mind the last one a bit, owing to her personal preferences, but the first two in this small space were just on the edge of objectionable. Central Police Station was becoming cramped, and like so many government buildings was in need of a revamp.
Billie watched the inspector from the corner of her eye, trying to anticipate his next move. Was this meeting to be combative or friendly? she wondered. Would he throw his weight around?
He offered her a wooden chair, then walked to the window and hefted it open. Good manners, Billie thought. She thanked him. He closed the office door and they were alone.
‘When were you transferred here?’ Billie asked. She was aware of the comings and goings at the station, and this man had not been part of the equation the last time she was on the third floor. She would have remembered him. ‘Or perhaps you’ve been in Europe?’ she queried.
‘I served in the 2/8th Battalion in North Africa and New Guinea,’ the inspector replied, almost automatically. ‘Before being recruited to . . . a special unit,’ he added. Few men who served were cagey about where they’d done so. It was the great divide in Australia and elsewhere – those who had served and those who had not. It wasn’t a conversation one could avoid during the war, or even now, with 1947 already close at hand.
Billie watched the inspector’s face carefully, considering his reply. ‘Z Special Unit perhaps?’ she guessed, cocking her head. ‘Military intelligence?’
His expression replied with a possible yes, but he quickly closed down again, hauling himself into that clam shell she’d detected back at her flat. ‘I’ll ask the questions, thank you,’ he told her tersely.
Billie sighed openly. ‘I have no doubt your war record is impeccable, Inspector,’ she clarified. ‘I worked as a war reporter myself, until I came back here when my father was ill. But I do know some of the goings-on of this office. You’re welcome to ask me questions, of course, and I fully expect you to, but in truth I think we could help each other if we shared a bit of information. I consider us to be on the same side, if that hasn’t been clear before now.’
He gazed at her, temporarily unreadable. ‘I thought you weren’t interested in being a police officer,’ he said.
‘You have good hearing,’ she replied.
‘I’m paid to, Ms Walker.’ He pronounced the title correctly and carefully, and she didn’t detect sarcasm. Progress. Good.
Their eyes locked, the two sizing each other up across the battered desk, sitting tall and unmoving in their respective chairs. After a stretch of silence, neither of them looking away, it seemed something indefinable had been settled between them.
Billie crossed her stockinged legs and leaned back a touch. She’d had the impression back at her flat that this inspector might turn out to be a rather fine detective, and helpful, though it didn’t take much to get him to close up. Still, she was here in his office and he wasn’t making it formal, and hadn’t brought in the detestable Constable Dick Dennison, Hatchet Face. By now the inspector would surely know that her father had been a cop and had worked in this very branch, and perhaps he would know the reasons her father had resigned from that employ, making enemies of those who didn’t want any changes to the corrupt status quo of the time. Not waiting for the inspector to lead her, Billie explained the essentials of the case she had been working on, leaving very little out except Mrs Brown’s private family matters and, most notably, the unexpected arrival of Con Zervos in her bedroom and his mode of departure by travel trunk. Her clients expected privacy, of course, but that horse had bolted when a couple of thugs walked into the hospital, threatening a boy’s life and attracting an array of witnesses. She stressed her f
eeling that her client’s son, Adin Brown, was not yet safe. Anything but. On that score, she hoped this detective inspector could help.
‘I must impress on you how important this is,’ Billie said, leaning forward again. ‘I think it would be wise to move him to another hospital as soon as he is well enough – somewhere closer to his parents – under an assumed name. I may have found him for my client, and as of yesterday I am off the clock officially speaking, but it’s not over for them yet, I fear. Adin Brown is not safe, despite the death of those men yesterday.’ The little woman in her gut was rarely wrong about matters of safety. ‘I’m hoping his memory will come back soon. That should be quite revealing.’
The inspector watched her closely, giving little away. He’d listened to her story without interruption. ‘You’re certain the men who had the accident were after him specifically? It wasn’t an opportunistic robbery gone wrong?’
‘Quite certain,’ she said with a level, unblinking gaze. It was not quite enough to turn a man to stone, Medusa-style, but it had been known to have a strong, chilling effect.
‘I see,’ he said. The inspector did not seem to doubt her words.
‘And I’m quite certain they attacked me and my assistant, Samuel Baker, outside Georges Boucher’s auction house on Sunday,’ Billie added.
His eyebrows raised just perceptibly. ‘Did you report this?’
‘No. If I reported every time someone attempted to rough me up to put me off my work, I’d be in here every day,’ she said matter-of-factly. It was the truth. ‘Besides, they didn’t have much luck,’ she added, recalling the satisfying feeling of her hatpin penetrating one of her attacker’s ankles. ‘And no guns were drawn.’ By the assailants, she distinctly failed to specify. She had drawn her own Colt, but there was no need to bring that into it. It was licensed and had not been fired. She didn’t feel like losing that licence, if say, this agent of the law happened to take exception to women carrying guns. She felt they were on the same side, but there was no point playing with fire.
