by Peter Watt
‘Where does that leave my son?’ George asked without turning around.
‘Er, um, Donald assumes his control of an equal third when he turns twenty-one,’ Dwyer answered and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘On your demise, the family companies come under the dual control of your son and that of your late brother. However, you are a man of good health, Mr Macintosh, and I am sure you will be at the helm, guiding your son and nephew, for a long, long time to come.’
George turned, his hands clasped behind his back. ‘Thank you for your briefing, Mr Dwyer,’ he said in a flat voice.
‘If that is all, Mr Macintosh, I will pay my respects and return to the office,’ Dwyer said, placing the papers back in his briefcase and rising from his chair. ‘Before I depart, I should alert you to a matter that will arise at the next directors’ meeting.’
‘What matter is that?’ George asked sharply.
‘It appears the auditors are puzzled by a large amount of money that was transferred to a Swedish bank account last year without authorisation from the board. They are nervous as the bank has a reputation for dealing with the Germans and fear that if such a transfer were to leak to the newspapers it would raise embarrassing questions. I’m sure there is a simple explanation but I thought I should warn you that the matter has been added to the agenda.’
For a brief moment George experienced a chill of fear. The money had been used to purchase shares in Germany’s chemical industry, which in turn had produced some of the horrific gas weapons being used against the Allies. Many Australian soldiers had died or been crippled by those gases on the Western Front. It would look bad, George knew that, but he was a businessman and such morality had no place in the making of money. After all, were not some of America’s biggest industries doing the same thing?
‘Thank you for the warning, Mr Dwyer,’ George said calmly. ‘Your information confirms you in my eyes as the best legal representative in this town.’
Dwyer nodded once and then left.
George slumped into his leather chair and stared at the wall. In the hallway the old grandfather clock chimed eleven. That damned will and testament had turned up in the mail weeks earlier, after a tortuous voyage from the battlefields of France. It had arrived long after news of his father’s death. His gaze fell on a barbed spear adorning the wall and for some reason he recalled that there was a story in the family of an ancient curse brought down on the Macintosh name after a horrific slaughter of Aboriginals living on land now known as Glen View Station. But that had been over fifty years ago and George knew it was nothing but a silly story handed down by his superstitious great-grandmother, Lady Enid Macintosh.
George poured himself another Scotch. After lunch he had a meeting in town with the police inspector, Jack Firth. Firth was well known and feared by the city’s criminal underworld for his ruthless disregard for the rules of evidence; he preferred to manufacture his own evidence to ensure successful prosecution. But he was a popular figure in the press for his apparent clean-up of the streets of petty criminals. He was a colourful character, built like a brick wall, and even in his early forties he was a man who could handle his fists in any street brawl.
George was slightly concerned that his key ally in the military intelligence world had been abruptly returned to his previous duties in criminal policing. This was a move that had pleased Detective Inspector Firth as he had never considered gathering intelligence about the German and Austrian residents of New South Wales as anything but a pointless diversion. Jack Firth was happiest hunting real criminals in the seedy back streets of Sydney, but his unexpected transfer niggled at George as it seemed to smack of distrust. Had the intelligence agencies smelled a conspiracy between him and the police officer?
There was one advantage to having the policeman back on his old beat and that was George was once again able to collect useful information about his business competitors – which of them kept mistresses, which visited prostitutes on Saturday night and then attended church services on Sunday as respectable members of the community. George wanted to know all the seamy details – after all, you never knew when that kind of information would come in very handy indeed. Today George would ask Firth to investigate Major Sean Duffy; the man must have a few secrets in his past worth knowing about.
*
Sean Duffy had never liked being referred to as ‘Major’. He was a solicitor, and the choice of profession had been opportune for a man who had lost both legs fighting on the Western Front. But the people he worked with were proud that they had a genuine war hero in their ranks and wouldn’t let him be plain Mr Duffy. He tried to take it in the spirit which it was meant – and he was grateful they were prepared to overlook his occasional bout with the bottle. Several times he had faced up in court bleary-eyed and hungover, leaning on his walking stick even more than usual. He still managed to deliver sharp and incisive defence rebukes to the prosecution arguments.
Sean was still a young man with a lot of life ahead of him, but when sleep came to him at nights he would relive the hell of trench warfare, crying out, his body covered in sweat and jerking as if he had been electrocuted. It was perhaps fortunate that Sean slept alone in his flat in the city. The last person to share his bed had been the wife of another man – George Macintosh – but Louise had broken off their affair for the sake of her seeing her son and Sean had retreated to his work and the relative peace that came with too much alcohol.
It was early afternoon now and many workers were returning from lunch to open shops for the day’s trading. It was a pleasant autumn day and smoke lay as a haze over the city from the tanneries and other factories along the harbour shore.
Sitting in a chair beside the window in Sean’s office was Harry Griffiths. Harry had lost an eye in the trenches. He had been a Sydney policeman before the war and the stipend he received from Sean for gathering information kept his small family off the streets. Harry was a big, tough man in his mid-thirties and he was fiercely loyal to Sean, who had saved him from a life of petty crime and destitution.
‘Well, Harry, what have we got on the Morgan case?’ Sean asked and Harry took a small, crumpled notebook from his jacket pocket.
‘The shopkeeper couldn’t have seen Morgan in the street that night,’ he said. ‘The streetlights were out.’
Sean smiled. ‘Good, there goes the positive identification of Morgan as the one who broke into his shop.’
‘Morgan is a good bloke, boss,’ Harry said. ‘He was one of us at Fromelles.’
Sean had developed a reputation for defending former servicemen who had returned to a world indifferent to their suffering. Many carried the unseen wounds of war in their heads and turned to alcohol for relief. Some had slipped into petty crime to pay for the drink that kept them sane. These were shadow people, disregarded by those who had done well out of the war.
‘Any decorations?’ Sean asked.
‘He got an MID for Fromelles,’ Harry said, referring to his notes. ‘He was a battalion runner.’
Sean knew from personal experience how dangerous it was to be a runner in the trenches; they were often exposed to rifle and shell fire getting vital messages between headquarters and the front lines. A Mentioned in Dispatches was not a high award but it would show the magistrate that Sean’s client had proved himself serving his country.
‘Good. We can use that,’ Sean said.
‘There is one other thing, boss,’ Harry said with a frown. ‘Word on the streets is that Firth has returned.’
‘Is that going to be a worry for us?’ Sean asked.
Harry’s frown deepened. ‘We both know that he works for George Macintosh. There’s history between you and Macintosh and I reckon he’s out to get you.’
Harry was too polite to mention Sean’s brief affair with Macintosh’s wife, although they both knew that was the ‘history’ he referred to.
‘I think you need to be very careful,’ Harry said, leaning forward slightly to push home his point. ‘I can get you
a pistol.’
‘That won’t be necessary, Harry,’ Sean said with a smile. ‘I have my cane.’ It doubled as a weapon, with a deadly spring-loaded blade inside the stick.
Harry didn’t look reassured. ‘I still think you should carry a pistol. I can get one of those small .38s from an old mate who imports them from the Yanks.’
‘I’m right, thanks, Harry,’ Sean said. ‘Besides, I have you around to watch my back.’
Harry’s frown turned into a beaming smile at this acknowledgement. ‘If there’s nothing more, I’ll see what else I can get in the Morgan case.’
‘I’ll inform Mr Morgan that he owes you a beer for all your effort in his defence.’
‘I swore to the missus that alcohol would never pass my lips again,’ Harry responded sheepishly. ‘It has improved the situation with the family.’
Sean rose awkwardly, grasping the cane tightly, and held out his hand to Harry. ‘Good to hear. I’ll tell him he owes you a bonus, then.’
‘Thanks, boss,’ Harry said, matching the steely grip. ‘I’ll get back to you before the case is heard if I get anything else.’
‘Good man,’ Sean said, and watched as Harry Griffiths left his office. He had only been gone for a moment when young Michael Hopkins put his head around the door.
‘Mail for you, Major Duffy,’ he said, walking into the office and placing an envelope on Sean’s desk. Sean could see that the young man was bursting to tell him something.
‘You look like the cat that got the cream, young Hopkins,’ Sean said.
‘I’ve been accepted, Major Duffy,’ the young man burst out excitedly. ‘I start my training next week.’
‘The solicitors’ admission board?’ Sean replied in a puzzled tone. ‘I thought you had a year left to go on your articles.’
‘No, Major Duffy, I’ve been accepted for the army. I’m going to get a chance to do my bit like you did.’
‘How old are you?’ Sean asked sternly.
‘Eighteen, sir,’ Hopkins replied, and he looked as though he was starting to regret sharing his wonderful news of enlistment.
‘If I remember rightly, Master Hopkins,’ Sean said, ‘you are only seventeen.’
‘Sir,’ he pleaded. ‘I need to do my bit for the country. I know I lied about my age but I think you would have done the same thing in my place.’
Sean stared at the young clerk; he was little more than a boy, really. He knew him as a bright, hard-working young man with an assured future in law. But what he saw standing before him was a bloody, bleeding soldier screaming for his mother as the red-hot shrapnel tore away his flesh. Sean swayed unsteadily in his chair, gripping the edge of his desk.
‘Are you ill, sir?’ Hopkins asked but Sean shook his head. He had the power to derail the enlistment, but he could see the age-old eagerness in him to prove himself on the battlefield. Sean knew that would disappear pretty quickly when the first shells and bullets tore into those around him, and possibly into the clerk himself. Young Hopkins would see the futility of it all then. He would realise there was no glory – just the ever-present fear of being maimed or dying.
‘I should report you to the recruiters,’ Sean said in a tired voice. ‘But knowing your eagerness to get yourself shot, you would probably run off to enlist elsewhere.’
Sean glanced down at the letter on his desk. It was from Captain Matthew Duffy, his distant cousin, serving with the Australian Flying Corp in Palestine. Hadn’t Matthew enlisted well underage for the Boer conflict, and been baptised in war at the bloody and vicious siege of Elands River almost twenty years earlier?
‘Master Hopkins, when you get to the front, make sure that you listen to your platoon sergeant and do everything he says if you want to come home in one piece,’ Sean said eventually. ‘I will raise a toast to your safe return.’
The young man slumped with relief. ‘Major Duffy, I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘Just keep your bloody head down and come home in one piece,’ Sean said.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Hopkins said. ‘I’ll make you all proud of me.’
Sean was not a religious man but he prayed to any god who would listen to keep young Hopkins from being killed.
2
Sergeant Tom Duffy felt a hand on his back and turned to see that his platoon commander, Second Lieutenant Mike Sullivan, had returned. There was little opportunity for discussion with the crash of rifle and machine-gun fire interspersed by the blast of hand grenades, but Tom knew that Sullivan’s return meant he could relinquish command to his senior office. Tom nodded and returned to scanning the grey shapes appearing and disappearing before their lines.
The situation was desperate. The deadly attack did not appear to be faltering, despite the determined resistance by the Australian diggers. Many of the German stormtroopers had already closed the distance, enabling them to rain hand grenades down on the defenders in the trenches.
From the corner of his eye Tom saw one of the German grenades cartwheel into the trench and land a short distance from where he stood on the firing parapet. Instinctively he flung himself to the bottom of the trench to avoid presenting a large target for the shrapnel. The grenade exploded and Tom could hear muffled screams and groans from some of the men of his platoon who had taken the brunt of the explosion.
Corporal Smithers’s section had taken the blast, Tom realised, assessing the damage to the defences. Among the wounded was Second Lieutenant Sullivan, whom Tom liked and respected, despite the fact that he had only taken command of the platoon two weeks earlier.
Tom scrambled to his feet and moved towards the wounded officer, who sat holding one hand to his face. Tom could see blood running between his fingers. Already Sullivan was groping for his field dressing. Tom knelt to assist Sullivan with the bandage. Without a word, Mike Sullivan removed his hand to reveal that his jaw had been shattered and his forehead peppered with debris picked up by the blast. Tom tried not to look into the man’s pain-racked eyes as he expertly wrapped the jaw; as he did so he could hear the officer attempting to tell him that he was now in command.
‘Got it, boss,’ Tom replied, guessing what the officer was attempting to say.
When he had finished, he moved on to examine two other soldiers who had taken shrapnel. Their wounds were not severe and one of the wounded was Corporal Smithers, who had a small wound to his chest. It was only a flesh wound as the heavy material of his uniform had absorbed the impact of the metal fragment.
‘You’re all right,’ Tom said. ‘Get back on the firing ledges and take command of your section.’
Smithers was lying at the bottom of the trench and he glared up at Tom. ‘I’m wounded,’ he said. ‘I need to be evacuated.’
Tom could hardly believe what the man was saying. They were fighting a desperate battle for survival and Smithers was whining about a very minor wound. ‘Get up, you gutless bastard, and take control of your men,’ Tom snarled. ‘Worry about your scratch when this is over.’ He grabbed Smithers’s collar and forced him into a sitting position.
The hate in the NCO’s eyes was evident as he struggled to his feet, shaking off Tom’s grip. Both men suddenly became aware that the crescendo of small arms and exploding grenades had faded.
‘They’re running,’ a voice whooped from nearby, and Tom stepped up to the parapet to see that the killing field before them was deserted, only the dead and wounded left behind. ‘Hop the bags and advance!’ Tom roared.
There was an awkward hesitation until Tom, followed closely by Corporal Frogan, scrambled over the lip of the trench to expose themselves to any counter-fire. The men followed their platoon sergeant with fixed bayonets in a skirmish line, towards the woods where the German storm-troopers had disappeared.
Tom was acutely aware that he had placed the platoon in a dangerous situation, but he had gambled that the Germans were demoralised and on the run. No gunfire challenged their cautious advance and after a short journey across the field they entered the gloom of a thick wood
. Here they found wounded German soldiers who quickly surrendered. They had been left by their comrades in their haste to re-establish a defensive line further back.
Tom ensured that the prisoners were stripped of their weapons and given first aid where possible. Those who could walk were ordered to carry their own wounded on improvised stretchers. In all they had captured fourteen enemy soldiers who could prove to be valuable to Allied interrogators behind the lines.
As they were returning to their lines Tom noticed that Smithers was not among those who had followed him over the top. It seemed he had already been evacuated. Tom felt a surge of anger. Bloody coward!
He glanced around at the men who had returned to the trench and noticed that, as usual, the violent action had taken a toll on their bodies and souls. Some attempted to light cigarettes with trembling hands, while others just leaned against the wall of the trenches staring at nothing. Private Dean was vomiting and when Tom approached he looked up and mumbled that his breakfast must have been off.
Tom placed a hand on his back. ‘It gets easier,’ he said, but his words rang hollow. He dared not light his pipe as he knew that his hands would shake just as badly as those of the men he now commanded.
In the distance the war continued with the crash of artillery shells and the chatter of machine-guns. Tom’s war had been restricted to a tiny section of the front line; both sides fought as though every inch counted; was that what this war was all about – a few inches gained here, a few lost there? He noticed that some of the prisoners were showing signs of intoxication and smelled strongly of wine. When searched they’d had mostly captured food stock in their possession. It seemed that the enemy were starving and the greatest prize they could capture was food, not territory.
‘The OC wants to see you,’ Dan Frogan called out to Tom. ‘Just got the message from the company runner.’
‘Thanks, Dan,’ Tom replied, shouldering his rifle. ‘You look after the boys while I’m gone.’
Dan nodded and Tom set off to find the communications trench that would lead back to company headquarters.
