The Autumn Murders

by Robert Gott

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Sturt Menadue and Steven McNamara, Sergeant. Those are the names of the two men whose murder you have been charged with investigating. Those are the names of the two men whose families are waiting for justice.’

  ‘Yes, I remember now, sir.’

  Lambert’s disgust unsettled O’Dowd. Dunnart had warned him that Inspector Lambert was soft on queers. This would at least ensure that Dunnart’s blackmail of Lillee would appal him.

  ‘One of the fai— one of the men, Mr Menadue I think, had a sort of diary with names and addresses in it. Ron flicked through it and found Peter Lillee’s name. He’d heard it somewhere, and he tore the page out. No one was going to notice that. He showed it to me, and he said that we could both earn a bit of extra money by talking to this Peter Lillee bloke.’

  ‘By blackmailing him, you mean.’

  ‘Yes. I wasn’t sure about it. I’d never been involved in anything like that, but somehow Ron made it all sound perfectly reasonable. If Lillee was a rich man, he wouldn’t miss a bit of money to protect his reputation. I mean, Lillee was the one breaking the law, wasn’t he?’

  Inspector Lambert opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out a leather-bound diary.

  ‘This is my diary, Sergeant.’

  He pushed it towards O’Dowd.

  ‘In it, you’ll find your name, address, and telephone number. You’ll find Ron Dunnart’s, too, along with lots of other people who work here. If someone were to find it, or steal it, would it be a safe assumption that you and I are intimate friends?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  O’Dowd wasn’t so stupid that the point had to be pressed further.

  ‘Why did you agree to go along with Ron Dunnart? Why did you agree to throw away your integrity?’

  O’Dowd clasped his hands between his knees, and, without looking at Lambert, he said, ‘I stopped feeling like I had any integrity years ago. It got chipped away, and when Ron said, “Here’s a way to earn some money,” my only qualm was about getting caught. Nothing could have been further from my mind than integrity.’

  O’Dowd managed to say this without self-pity compromising its essential honesty. Lambert would pick up the faintest hint of the whinny of that emotion.

  ‘It was just a few extra pounds on the side. I didn’t tell my wife about it. It was pin money. All this for pin money. Can you believe it?’

  ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘Ron wanted to see where Lillee … Mr Lillee lived. He really believed that when we knocked on the door, some houseboy would answer, and he’d be naïve enough to let us in. Mrs Lord answered the door, and I knew immediately that the visit had been a mistake. I didn’t know who she was, of course. I thought she was the housekeeper. Ron thought she’d be a pushover. She wasn’t. She wouldn’t let us in, and she knew we were dodgy. That didn’t seem to bother Ron. He thought she was a bitch. I was embarrassed, and to be perfectly honest, I thought she might be trouble. We’d shown her our cards, and she’d taken long enough over them to memorise our names.’

  ‘Mrs Lord has a nose for rotten coppers. She’s familiar with how they smell.’

  O’Dowd didn’t let the insult distract him. Until now, he’d told the truth, and so his voice hadn’t wavered, his face hadn’t flushed, and his hands hadn’t trembled. Using this momentum, he propelled himself into the potentially treacherous rip of lies.

  ‘Ron told me he was going to confront Mr Lillee on, I think it was, Tuesday night. He was going to settle the amount he was going to get him to pay.’

  ‘What was your role, exactly? Why did he need you?’

  It was odd — until Lambert asked that question, O’Dowd hadn’t considered why Dunnart had taken him into his confidence. It occurred to him in an instant.

  ‘I was going to be the money collector. Ron didn’t want to have to meet with Lillee each fortnight. That was a risk he delegated to me. He’d organise how much Mr Lillee had to pay, and I’d get a cut. The amount wasn’t going to be extravagant. It was to be an amount Mr Lillee could easily afford — an amount he’d think too trivial to bother reporting — but it would supplement our salaries nicely. Ron explained his principles for squeezing people. You squeezed them just hard enough to force some money out of them, but not so hard that they’d fight back.’

  ‘How much did Ron Dunnart hope to get out of Peter Lillee?’

  ‘He didn’t say. He was going to play that by ear. As it turned out, the meeting went badly. Ron followed Mr Lillee to an address in Kew. I now know that this was Lillian Johnson’s flat. When Mr Lillee came out of the flat, Ron was waiting for him. He thought the flat belonged to a bloke. He’d rehearsed what he was going to say, but Mr Lillee departed from the script. He refused to pay Ron a penny, and he made it clear that he’d be taking this clumsy blackmail attempt all the way to the Commissioner. Ron told me that he thought Mr Lillee was bluffing and so he became very explicit about what he knew Mr Lillee had been up to and mentioned Sturt Menadue. Ron thought that would seal it. He said that Mr Lillee flew into a rage and told him that he’d make sure that he went to prison.’

  O’Dowd paused.

  ‘So Ron killed him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was vague about that. He was in a bit of a mess when he told me. I don’t think he’s ever killed anyone before. I thought he was going to be sick, he was that upset and terrified. He said he’d poisoned him. I don’t know how, but that’s what he said. He said he’d poisoned him because, at that stage, it was either him or Mr Lillee, and he wasn’t going to lose his job and go to jail on account of some rich cunt who could buy a successful conviction.’

  ‘This is an extraordinary allegation you’re making, Sergeant.’

  O’Dowd turned slightly to look at Joe.

  ‘It’s like your allegation against Kevin Maher.’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ Joe said, ‘insofar as two men are dead.’

  ‘Why would Ron Dunnart confess this to you?’

  ‘He needs an alibi for the night he followed Mr Lillee. If he went down, I’d go down with him. He knew that, and he made sure I knew it, so he told me how it had all gone wrong.’

  ‘Do you think he killed Mr Lillee accidentally?’

  ‘No, sir. Absolutely not. Ron said nothing about self-defence. He said he’d killed him to shut him up. It wasn’t premeditated exactly. He hadn’t followed him with the intention of killing him.’

  ‘And yet he had some sort of poison with him.’

  ‘I don’t know how he did it, sir, and I don’t know how he got the body down to the river.’

  ‘Did you help him?’

  ‘Absolutely not, sir. I was home with my wife. I wish I knew more, but all he said to me was that he’d killed him. He didn’t say how he’d administered the poison or what he did with the body. He’s a very smart man, sir. When he finds out I’ve betrayed him, he’ll kill me. Sure as eggs, he’ll kill me.’

  ‘You do realise, Sergeant, that you are implicating yourself in serious offences.’

  ‘I’ll put my hand up to being an accessory to blackmail, but not to murder.’

  Inspector Lambert stood up to signal that this part of the process was over.

  ‘Sergeant Sable will take your statement. Obviously, this is going to make working with Ron Dunnart impossible.’

  ‘Sir, Ron Dunnart murdered a man; surely you’re going to arrest him.’

  Inspector Lambert looked at O’Dowd in genuine puzzlement.

  ‘You are familiar with the Crimes Act, Sergeant?’

  O’Dowd’s silence suggested that he wasn’t.

  ‘You’ve made a serious allegation against another person. It doesn’t matter that he’s a fellow officer. You’ve made certain claims and those claims need to be tested. We’ll speak to Ron Dunnart, but we won’t be arresting him unless he refuses to cooperate, a
nd even then, no charges will be laid on the basis of your accusation.’

  O’Dowd stood up.

  ‘He’ll deny everything, sir.’

  ‘Of course he will, Sergeant.’

  ‘He’ll kill me.’

  ‘Then we’ll have a strong case.’

  The steel in his voice reminded Joe why Titus Lambert was the head of Homicide. That simple, dismissive sentence told O’Dowd precisely what Lambert thought of him and his accusation.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said to Joe, ‘when you’ve taken Sergeant O’Dowd’s statement, would you take a constable with you and go to Ron Dunnart’s house and bring him here. If he refuses, arrest him. He won’t, however, refuse.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’ O’Dowd asked.

  ‘After you’ve given your statement, I suggest you go home and explain to your wife that you may face suspension from duty and possibly dismissal. The nature of your character won’t surprise her, I imagine. Its consequences may. At least have the decency to forewarn her.’

  O’Dowd was numb. Somehow this had all gone pear-shaped. He’d lost control of it somewhere. Dunnart couldn’t remain at liberty. Just a few hours ago he taken some pleasure in the thought that Joe Sable was about to be pilloried by his fellow officers for accusing Kevin Maher of murdering a man who deserved to be murdered. Now here he was, a mirror image of Sable’s impending ostracisation. Only it was worse. Maher was a man unknown to most of the men at Russell Street. Ron Dunnart was their mate, and even if he wasn’t their mate, he was owed too many favours to be cut loose in a show of loyalty to O’Dowd.

  O’Dowd gave his careful statement to Joe. He changed nothing from what he’d told Lambert, although the weakness of his claim was very apparent in the second telling. Somehow, all the true stuff didn’t prop it up as effectively as he’d hoped. It was his word against Dunnart’s.

  ‘We’re in the same boat, you and I,’ he said to Joe.

  ‘You should go home,’ Joe said.

  O’Dowd walked out into the late afternoon. The architectural ponderousness of the Magistrates’ Court opposite the police headquarters weighed his spirits down. Life would never be the same. He hadn’t known until this moment that he would find the idea of being disgraced intolerable. He stood on the footpath and put his face in his hands. They smelled of the ink he’d used to sign his statement. A sound came out of him that startled a couple of passers-by.

  ‘Are you all right, mate?’ one of them asked.

  O’Dowd didn’t hear him. He remained standing there with his face in his hands and people moved around him, unwilling to involve themselves in whatever grief it was that was shaking this man’s frame.

  RON DUNNART OPENED his front door and took a moment to accommodate the presence on his doorstep of Joe Sable and a gormless-looking constable. He didn’t invite them in. There could only be one reason for them turning up out of the blue. Fucking Bob O’Dowd.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to get your hat and come with us to Russell Street. Inspector Lambert has a few questions he’d like to ask you.’

  Dunnart, who was in shirtsleeves, raised his arm and leaned against the doorjamb. Despite the heat, the only smell that came off him was of clean linen.

  ‘And why would I do that? My wife has prepared a decent dinner.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll have you back in time for dinner.’ Joe paused, before adding, ‘Sir.’

  Dunnart snorted. He looked at Joe and the loathing he felt for him contorted his face. Lambert had sent this junior officer and the non-entity beside him to humiliate him. There was some satisfaction in knowing that the fading bruises on Joe’s face would soon be freshened up by someone at Russell Street who didn’t appreciate snouts. It was inevitable. There were several men who’d be happy to follow Dunnart’s suggestion that giving Sable a going over would upset Sable and Lambert and no one else. It could be done under cover of darkness. Sable wouldn’t know what or who had hit him. Kevin Maher would need a good alibi when it happened, but that would be easy to arrange. All these thoughts flashed through Dunnart’s mind as he contained his own urge to punch Sable.

  ‘I don’t need a fucking hat, and I’m not going to give a little cunt like you the pleasure of arresting me, so let’s get this bullshit over with.’

  He stepped outside and pulled the door shut after him. He didn’t bother to tell his wife that he was leaving the house. He’d be back before she’d even noticed his absence. The only person who needed to worry about the consequences of this interview was Bob O’Dowd.

  WITH NOTHING BETTER to do and not wanting to return to his room at King’s Hotel, Guy Kirkham stood outside the Magistrates’ Court in Russell Street and looked across to police headquarters. He couldn’t quite imagine Joe as a detective. He’d always seen Joe as an aesthete. Not a foppish aesthete — not at all. Still, peering at corpses was a long way from poring over a bad reproduction of a Gentile da Fabriano painting, or arguing that Piero della Francesca was the greatest of the Italian masters. He wished that he could talk to him before Monday.

  It was only a day and two nights, but Guy dreaded the nights and believed that a drink with Joe would anchor him in some way, remind him that it was still possible to have conversations about things that mattered only to them. Guy didn’t want to talk about New Guinea. He wanted to try yet again to convince Joe that James Tissot was a genius and not a frivolous painter of skirts.

  In thinking about Joe, it was almost as if he’d conjured him into being, because a car pulled up at police headquarters and one of the three men who got out was Joe. They hurried into the building before Guy had a chance to call out. He was content to wait until Joe came out again, and he didn’t risk walking in search of a newspaper to keep him occupied. He would lean in the shadow of the court and mull over the plot of his novel.

  THE INTERVIEW WITH Ron Dunnart had gone exactly as Inspector Lambert had expected it to go. Dunnart hadn’t spent most of his career blackmailing people to allow a man like O’Dowd to trip him up. He denied everything and claimed that O’Dowd had come to him with the idea of squeezing Peter Lillee. They’d found that address book at the scene of the murders of Mr McNamara and Mr Menadue (he’d been careful to use this respectful form of address). Naturally the names in the book would need to be visited as part of the investigation. That was routine, and that was why they’d gone to Lillee’s house. Maybe it was a mistake to lie to the housekeeper about the purpose of the visit, but ‘I didn’t want to alarm or upset her’. O’Dowd had torn the page with Lillee’s name on it out of the address book and shown it proudly to Dunnart, who’d been furious, and when he’d heard O’Dowd’s scheme, he’d rejected it out of hand.

  ‘I thought it was a ridiculous idea, and I thought O’Dowd was foolish to approach me. I barely knew him. We’d worked on a couple of cases together. I thought O’Dowd was a mediocre, lazy detective, with no initiative. He was a Mason, too, of course, so that was another reason to steer clear of him. He actually knew I didn’t like him. This blackmail idea was his stupid way of showing initiative. He thought I’d be impressed, which just goes to show how fucking stupid he really is.’

  And on the night of Lillee’s death? Well Mrs Dunnart would support his claim that he’d come home from work and that he didn’t leave the house until the following morning. No, he had no idea why O’Dowd would make these allegations against him. Why would anyone accuse an innocent man of murder? It was bizarre and upsetting. O’Dowd must have lost his mind, or maybe it was payback for refusing to join him in his scheme to blackmail Lillee.

  Dunnart had betrayed no nervousness as he’d defended himself. It was an assured performance, full of the elegant ducking and weaving of the practised liar. There’d been no hesitations, no backtracking to cover mistakes. To anyone who didn’t know him, it would have been convincing. Inspector Lambert hadn’t believed a word of it, but as he had no reason to detain
him, he’d been obliged to let him go. He’d even allowed the constable who’d driven him here to drive him home. When Dunnart had left Inspector Lambert’s office, Lambert leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.

  ‘Why do men like that become policemen?’ he asked Joe.

  ‘Maybe they think it’s the safest way to break the law and get away with it.’

  ‘Do you think he killed Peter Lillee, Sergeant?’

  ‘No, sir, I don’t. I don’t think he’d allow a situation to get so out of control.’

  Inspector Lambert tapped his fountain pen on his front teeth, a habit he’d recently adopted. It put Joe’s own teeth on edge.

  ‘You’re expected back in Kew, I imagine.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I know you’re keeping Helen Lord up to date, which you shouldn’t be doing. However, I’d like you to keep doing it.’

  Joe said nothing, but felt a wave a relief. As he got up to leave, Inspector Lambert said, ‘Tom wondered if you could come to South Melbourne for lunch tomorrow. The weather looks promising so maybe you could talk him into wandering down to the beach. It would do him good.’

  ‘That would be fine, sir. I do feel a bit underfoot at Kew.’

  ‘I’m sure they don’t mean to make you feel that way.’

  ‘Oh, no, just the opposite. But I hate to think they’re worrying about me on top of everything else.’

  ‘You think too much, Joe.’

  Lambert’s use of Joe’s name was the signal that the day’s work was over.

  GUY ALMOST MISSED Joe. He’d kneeled to tie a shoelace just as Joe emerged into Russell Street. When he looked up, he saw a figure walking south in the direction of Flinders Street. The walk was familiar, although he’d never associated Joe with such fine tailoring, and he didn’t remember him ever wearing a hat. He hurried after him, unsure that this man was in fact Joe Sable. He followed him for two blocks.

  At the intersection of Russell and Collins Street, Joe stopped and turned around. He’d been aware that someone had been following him and his fists were clenched in expectation of meeting George Starling.