The Autumn Murders

by Robert Gott

  ‘It’s awful.’

  ‘Ron Dunnart and Bob O’Dowd called here this morning.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Mum answered the door. Dunnart made up some story about burglaries in the area.’

  ‘Why would Homicide be interested in that?’

  ‘Well obviously, we … they, wouldn’t be. Mum didn’t like them. She reckons she can smell a bad copper, and they smelled bad.’

  ‘And they didn’t ask to speak to you?’

  ‘I don’t think they know I live here, which makes this visit even more sinister.’

  ‘Sinister?’

  ‘It felt like that. Inspector Lambert doesn’t like Dunnart, does he?’

  ‘No. He thinks he’s corrupt.’

  ‘Corrupt? In what way?’

  ‘He hasn’t said anything to me. I think David Reilly knows more about it.’

  Helen snorted.

  ‘Reilly? Now there’s an unimpressive detective.’

  Joe didn’t challenge her. Any attempt to defend Sergeant Reilly would derail the conversation. He hadn’t formed a strong opinion about Reilly either way. Inspector Lambert seemed to like him, or trust him at any rate, so Joe was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. Helen Lord didn’t believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘I’ll have a quiet word with Reilly, if you like.’

  Reluctant to acknowledge that Reilly might be of practical use in any situation, Helen nevertheless agreed that this would be a good idea. Joe then settled into what had become a nightly pattern since Helen’s enforced leave of absence. The first few nights had been awkward, but Helen’s wish to know what was happening inside Homicide gradually allowed her to hear it without resentment-induced deafness. They were both conscious that this exchange of information mirrored Inspector Lambert’s discussions with his wife, Maude. For Helen, Joe’s willingness to confide in her to this extent was an intimacy that affected her in ways to which Joe was oblivious. He described the shootings in Coburg and censored nothing. Helen would have known immediately if he was shielding her from the worst of what he’d seen, and she would have been furious.

  ‘Watson Cooper could have been taken alive and tried. This Detective Maher executed him on the spot. That’s what it comes down to. Cooper’s gun was nowhere near him until Maher kicked it between his legs after he’d shot him.’

  ‘Coppers don’t like it when people shoot other coppers.’

  ‘He’s expecting me to say nothing.’

  ‘I’ll be the devil’s advocate here, Joe. Was there any doubt, any doubt at all, that Cooper was the person who’d killed those two officers?’

  ‘No. No doubt whatsoever.’

  ‘So, if he was tried, what would happen?’

  ‘He’d be found guilty, and, unless he was found to be insane, he’d be hanged.’

  ‘So, the end result would be the same. One dead murderer.’

  ‘Unless the court accepted an insanity defence.’

  ‘In which case he’d be locked up at great expense to the taxpayer.’

  ‘That decision shouldn’t be in the hands of Detective Maher of the Coburg CIB. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Are you afraid of making enemies? If you are, you’ll do nothing. If you’re not, you’ll tell Lambert what you saw and prepare yourself to become one of the most hated men in the force. You blokes are supposed to watch each other’s backs, no matter what. How brave are you, Joe?’

  ‘I’m pretty confident that Lambert will back me.’

  ‘So am I, but Lambert won’t be there with you in the gymnasium, or walking you home.’

  ‘I understand why Maher did it, but self-appointed executioners are dangerous people.’

  ‘You really see it as an execution?’

  ‘That’s what it was. Maher shot an unarmed man. A Nazi puts a gun to a woman’s head in Kraków and pulls the trigger. Maher shoots Watson Cooper. What’s the moral difference?’

  ‘The woman is innocent.’

  ‘The executioner is guilty. Each of them would defend his actions, or justify it. Cooper is guilty of murdering two policemen. The woman in Kraków is guilty of being a Jew. It makes the killing palatable.’

  Helen’s heart tightened whenever Joe made reference to what was happening to the Jews in Europe. She’d read the odd report in The Age or The Argus, but it had sat among a flood of what was considered bigger news, and so it hadn’t taken hold. She knew now, though, that the slaughter of Jews was having a profound effect on Joe. She had no way, or she knew no way, of offering solace without revealing her feelings for him, and this she felt incapable of doing. So she remained silent.

  THIS MOMENT HAD been inevitable, and Peter Lillee ought to have hurried to it much sooner. He would never have been guilty of such a delay in his professional life, but in his private life he was far less adept at managing the whims and passions of other people. The woman who sat before him now must have known why he’d come, but she wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

  ‘Can I get you a drink, Peter?’

  The formality of the question belied the fact that Lillian Johnson had been Peter Lillee’s lover for two years. Her husband, James, had at first sanctioned the affair. It gave him licence to pursue his own sexual dalliances, but when he discovered the identity of his wife’s lover, he’d withdrawn his approval and moved quickly to hostility, and then to demanding a divorce. Peter Lillee had cost him a lot of money in a business venture that had worked out well for Lillee and poorly for him.

  The flat in Camberwell, in which Peter and Lillian now sat, was Lillian’s, one among several properties she’d inherited. She required neither her husband’s nor Peter Lillee’s financial support. What she did require of the man who sat opposite her was marriage. Lillian Johnson believed in marriage. It mattered to her. She’d overlooked her husband’s early dalliances because she understood that he was weak, in some ways even pathetic. When she met Peter Lillee, she’d found herself susceptible to the same weakness and she’d found a way to accommodate this within her sense of herself. A part of this accommodation was to win from Peter a declaration that this affair would end in marriage, and not a termination that would offer no choice but to return to her husband. That possibility ended anyway when James began divorce proceedings with the bitter intention of naming Peter Lillee as the adulterous cause. She could weather that scandal.

  ‘Lillian.’

  ‘If you’re about to launch into some popish nonsense, Peter, please don’t bother. I’m really not in the mood.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘I’m not a fool, Peter. I put up with your reluctance to be intimate with me over the past few months because I assumed it was temporary. The idea that you were wrestling with your conscience about whether or not to touch me, as if I was some unclean thing, makes me sick. The thought that your conscience won makes me so angry I want to kill you.’

  The even temper with which these words were spoken had an effect on Peter that was more violent than if they’d been hurled at him in a rage.

  ‘No, Lillian, no. That can’t be true.’

  ‘Tell me why you’re here. Tell me. Just say it.’

  ‘I’ve been honest with you about taking instruction in the Catholic faith.’

  ‘Are you expecting applause?’

  ‘Understanding, perhaps.’

  ‘You’ll never get that from me. I left my marriage for you. I didn’t do it on a whim. I did it because I loved you, and because I believed that you loved me. You asked me to marry you. Do you seriously think I would have begun an affair with you just for the thrill of it?’

  ‘Of course not. It was wrong of me to offer marriage.’

  ‘You’re already sounding like a martyr. How dare you go into a confessional and beg forgiveness from some grubby, half-wit of a priest for touching m
e? How dare you reduce me to a sordid temptation, to a threat to your immortal soul?’

  ‘That’s not—’

  ‘Have you done penance for your sins of the flesh?’

  ‘Yes, but the penance is for my weakness, not yours.’

  ‘I spent six years at a convent school, Peter. I know all the bullshit, all the ugly, demeaning words to describe perfectly normal human behaviour. I began as your lover, now I’m an occasion for sin, and what makes me sick, what makes me incandescent with rage, is that you believe that.’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting this to happen, Lillian.’

  ‘Christ, next you’ll be telling me you have a vocation.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I used to love looking at you. I thought you were the most handsome man I’d ever seen. Now all I see is a milksop. I see all the flaws in your face. Your faith has made you ugly.’

  ‘It wasn’t ever my intention to hurt you.’

  ‘I’d like you to leave, Peter.’

  ‘Please, Lillian. I want to explain.’

  Lillian stood up and walked out of the living room towards her bedroom. She said nothing further, went into the bedroom, and closed the door quietly behind her.

  Peter sat for a moment. He put his head in his hands. When he stood up, he looked around the room and noticed that the two framed photographs of him that usually sat on the mantelpiece were no longer there. The fireplace had been set in preparation for the first cold night of autumn and the photographs had been wedged between two pieces of wood. He retrieved one, wrote ‘Forgive me’ on its back, and returned it to the fireplace with the words facing outwards.

  He left Lillian Johnson’s flat knowing that he would never see her again. He felt both wretched and strangely ecstatic. This, he thought, is the exquisite joy of self-denial and sacrifice. He didn’t leave Lillian Johnson with his faith shaken. He left her with a fierce conviction that he was right, and the cruel certainty of that conviction dulled any sense he ought to have had that Lillian’s feelings might be of consequence.

  RON DUNNART WATCHED from the shadows as Peter Lillee left Lillian Johnson’s flat. He’d pleaded an upset stomach and had left work early. He’d found out where the Capital Issues Advisory Committee met and, just a few hours earlier, had been sitting outside the building for a full half-hour without any real expectation that he’d see Lillee come or go.

  He was building a picture for himself of Lillee’s world. He had a photograph of him, a good photograph. Even so, identifying him in a crowd of people leaving the building was going to be difficult. It was possible Lillee had already left, right under his nose. Dunnart had crossed the street and had stood at the entrance to the self-important building in which men made decisions that affected the lives of other men, like Dunnart. It was the Napier Waller mural above the door that lent the building its air of pompous regard. All that striving, half-naked flesh — and striving for what, for whom? Not striving for Dunnart. No. He’d learned long ago that if he wanted to get ahead, the way to do it was to exploit the vulnerabilities of people whose reputations mattered to them, and who were willing to pay to protect those reputations. He hadn’t earned a fortune, not by any means. But he’d earned a tidy enough sum. Peter Lillee though … Dunnart was hoping for big things from Peter Lillee.

  As he’d been contemplating this, Lillee had appeared, as if Dunnart had summoned him. There he was, two feet from Dunnart, having emerged into Collins Street with two other men. Dunnart recognised him, but to confirm the identification, one of the two men said, ‘I’ll see you soon, Peter.’ Lillee then walked with the remaining man a short distance down Collins Street. He stopped at a car.

  ‘Can I give you a lift?’

  Lillee’s companion said no, that he’d take the train.

  Dunnart hadn’t intended following Lillee’s car, but a taxi passed just as Lillee pulled out into the street, and Dunnart had hailed it, produced his identification, and instructed the driver to follow Lillee’s vehicle. He’d been irrationally annoyed that Lillee had taken him as far as Camberwell. He paid the fare, a cost that annoyed him further. Well, he’d get that expense back in spades.

  Lillee had gone into a handsome block of six flats. Dunnart couldn’t tell which flat he was visiting. The residents here were still taking the blackout seriously, despite its having been relaxed. Not a chink of light escaped. When Lillee entered the block, the gloaming had declined into evening, and by the time Lillee emerged, about half an hour later, darkness had fallen. Dunnart hadn’t come this far and waited this long just to watch Lillee go in and out of a block of flats. He hurried towards Lillee’s car and reached it just as Lillee opened the driver’s door. He waited until Lillee was seated behind the steering wheel, then opened the passenger door and got in. Before Lillee had a chance to express surprise, Dunnart said, ‘Detective Sergeant Ron Dunnart, Melbourne Homicide. You and I need to have a chat, Mr Lillee.’

  THE MAN WHO sat opposite Maria Pluschow bore little resemblance to the man who’d arrived earlier in the day. Bathed, shaved, and with a neat haircut, which she’d given him, he was almost elegant — although most of the elegance was borrowed from the suit he wore. He looked a lot like a young, hungry Rudolf Hess, which for Maria Pluschow was no bad thing, though Hess couldn’t be recalled without bitterness, given his gross betrayal of Herr Hitler.

  ‘Your face still needs more time to heal, George. You can stay here, of course.’

  ‘I can pay.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Blondi and I would like the company.’

  The dog lifted its head when it heard its name. It could sense Starling’s discomfort, and its muscles tensed. Maria placed a hand on its head.

  ‘She’ll get used to you, George. When she knows I trust you, she’ll love you.’

  The dog settled. Starling had never thought of animals as pets and had never understood how people formed attachments to them. Now, though, as he watched the dog respond under Maria’s gently placed hand, he felt an unfamiliar emotion. It was small and fleeting, an inchoate feeling that might have grown into something like sympathy had Starling given it room to swell. He tamped it down, panicked by its strangeness.

  ‘You were a strange boy, George, but I always thought there was something there, something in you. You never said very much, but I always suspected that you were much smarter than your father. He really was an unpleasant man, your father.’

  ‘I hated him.’

  ‘A perfectly reasonable response. Do you remember your mother?’

  No one had ever asked him about his family, and if he had been asked, he would have shut the conversation down. Without really understanding why, he answered Maria’s question.

  ‘I barely knew her, like I said.’

  ‘She loved you very much, George. I think that’s partly why your father killed her.’

  ‘I don’t remember any of that.’

  ‘She tried to protect you.’

  ‘She failed.’

  There was a moment’s silence as those words fell heavily between them. Maria Pluschow looked closely into George Starling’s disfigured face and said, ‘I won’t fail you.’

  A wracking sob burst from Starling and, helpless to prevent a volcanic rush of emotion, he began to weep. His shoulders heaved, snot flowed from his nose, and he uttered sounds that were almost animal in their incoherence. Maria moved quickly and sat on the arm of his chair. She put her fingers in his hair and wiped his face with her apron.

  ‘You’re home now, George.’

  Starling nodded and didn’t pull away when Maria leaned down and kissed the top of his head.

  ‘YOU HAVE TO get out of my car,’ Peter Lillee said. ‘I don’t care who you say you are.’

  ‘Oh, I am who I say I am, I assure you.’

  It was too dark for either man to clearly see the other’s face. Ron Dunnart recognised Lillee’s cologne — Hungary Wate
r. What he didn’t smell was fear. Obviously, Lillee thought he was well barricaded behind his wealth.

  ‘This isn’t a social call, Lillee. I’ll save us both time and get to the point. I know you’re a pansy and I know who your associates are. I know it all: all your filthy bum-chums. Now, I’m an open-minded man, Lillee. I don’t really care where you put your dick, as long as it’s nowhere near me, but you and I both know that having your name dragged through the courts on a sodomy charge wouldn’t impress your mates at the Melbourne Club.’

  ‘So that’s what you are — a cheap little blackmailer.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think you’ll find me cheap.’

  ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Dunnart. Ron Dunnart.’

  ‘What makes you think I’ll pay you a penny?’

  ‘You and I both know what your reputation is worth. That house you live in must be expensive to keep up.’

  ‘You’ve been to my house?’

  ‘Let’s just say, I know where you live.’

  ‘Get out of my car.’

  Dunnart didn’t admire Lillee’s failure to be intimidated. It infuriated him. He’d paid good money for a taxi and hung around on the footpath for an inconvenient amount of time. He considered both these things an attack on his dignity, and now Lillee thought he could be dismissed as if he was a nobody. No, no, no. You underestimated Ron Dunnart at your peril.

  ‘Maybe you need some time to think about this, Lillee.’

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m not a homosexual and never have been, so whatever grubby information you think you have about me, it’s baseless. I loathe men like you, Dunnart. How many lives have you ruined?’

  ‘I’m not sentimental about pansies.’

  ‘I feel that way about blackmailers.’

  Dunnart felt an unfamiliar stirring of uncertainty. Could he have been wrong about Lillee? Surely not. His name was in that dead pansy’s notebook. That’s how they contacted each other discreetly.

  ‘You can’t bluff your way out of this, Lillee, and I couldn’t care less what you think of me. I don’t want your good opinion, just your money. How’s that for unsentimental?’