The Autumn Murders

by Robert Gott

  TWO HOURS BEFORE Ron Dunnart entered O’Dowd’s house, Inspector Titus Lambert stood with Martin Serong in David Reilly’s living room. Serong had finished photographing the bodies. Lambert hadn’t asked Joe Sable to go with him to Reilly’s house after the telephone call from a hysterical neighbour had come through. Joe had been about to leave for the day, and Lambert had overruled his insistence on joining him.

  ‘I’m taking Jackson and Hart, Sergeant. I want you to go home. I’ll phone you there later. It won’t be good news. It seems pretty clear that Sergeant Reilly and his wife have been murdered.’

  ‘I worked with him, sir. I want to be there.’

  ‘I don’t want you there. Jackson and Hart are good detectives.’

  ‘Why am I being excluded, sir?’

  ‘You’re not being excluded, and you’re not being protected.’ Joe was about to speak. Lambert stopped him. ‘Even if you don’t understand my reasons, Sergeant, I am giving you an instruction, and I expect you to obey it. I want you to go home to Kew and wait for my telephone call.’

  Inspector Lambert left the office without saying anything further. Joe’s frustration was unbounded, but he no choice other than to head home. David Reilly dead? This seemed outlandish and unlikely. It would turn out to be a mistake of some kind. David Reilly and Peter Lillee? Was there some connection? Ron Dunnart, Joe thought. That was a connection.

  ‘LET’S GO OUTSIDE,’ Lambert said.

  He and Martin Serong stood in the Reillys’ neat front yard while the various attendants on the dead went about their work, determining roughly cause and time of death, and finding evidence. The doctor had already established that Mrs Reilly had not been sexually interfered with and that death for each of them had probably been quick. There was no evidence of torture. The murderer had lavished no more than a single bullet on Mrs Reilly, and two on David Reilly.

  ‘Do you agree it was quick, Martin?’

  ‘Yes. They may have died quickly, but Mrs Reilly was tied up, which suggests she had a long wait for the bullet.’

  ‘And she would have been terrified. Who died first?’

  ‘I think David did, Titus. I think the killer was standing close to Mrs Reilly and fired at David from across the room, then killed Mrs Reilly. There’s psychological sadism here, even if there’s no physical evidence of it.’

  ‘Sergeant Ron Dunnart left Russell Street early this afternoon. I checked on his movements before coming here. He didn’t return. Two men passed him on the stairs. They said he seemed agitated and that he made a disparaging remark about David Reilly.’

  ‘That’s a long way from a double execution, Titus. I’ve worked with Ron Dunnart. I don’t like him particularly, but what would make him do this?’

  ‘Can someone just snap and go berserk?’

  ‘There’s nothing berserk about this crime scene, Titus. It’s controlled. It may look messy in there, but that’s just blood. Whoever did this approached it with discipline. There’s nothing frenzied about it.’

  Titus had come to the same conclusion. It was good to hear Martin Serong confirm it. No one was better at reading a crime scene than Serong.

  When the coroner had finished his work, the bodies were removed to the city morgue, and the work of knocking on neighbours’ doors began. Detectives Jackson and Hart had been dispatched to Dunnart’s house in Coburg. They were to bring him to Russell Street. He was a plausible person of interest, although Titus couldn’t accept that Dunnart’s suspect morality could mutate so suddenly into psychopathy. He tried to picture Ron Dunnart putting a gun into Mrs Reilly’s mouth. It was impossible.

  Lambert returned to Russell Street to wait for Dunnart’s arrival. He telephoned Maude to tell her that he wouldn’t be home for several more hours. He told her why. She hadn’t known David Reilly, but she knew that Titus had valued him and that he must be taking this hard. She said she’d wait up for him. He then rang Joe Sable and confirmed that both David Reilly and his wife were dead, and that they’d been murdered. Each of them had been shot.

  ‘I understand Tom is there for dinner.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Ron Dunnart is being brought in.’

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘I can come into Russell Street, sir.’

  ‘Out of the question. First thing tomorrow. You may of course pass on this appalling news to Helen Lord. I know she didn’t like David Reilly, but she’d want to know. He was a colleague after all.’

  ‘Helen will be shocked.’

  ‘All right. Thank you, Joe.’

  ‘Sir, could Ron Dunnart have discovered that David Reilly took his key?’

  ‘Speculation at this stage is pointless, Joe. Good night.’

  BETTE DUNNART HAD learned over the course of her marriage not to ask questions about her husband’s work. It wasn’t usual for detectives, or policemen, to visit Ron at home. It did happen from time to time, and then Bette knew to make herself scarce. She’d told the two detectives who now sat in her front room that Ron was rarely so late home, but that he’d gone into Russell Street to complete some work. She didn’t ask why they were there. Ron would have been unhappy if she’d done that. She offered to make them a cup of tea, which they declined. They hadn’t been there very long when they heard a car pull up outside. Bette Dunnart, who’d left Detectives Jackson and Hart on their own, heard the car also and shouted from the kitchen, ‘That’ll be Ron, now.’

  John Jackson and Abraham Hart, neither of whom had worked closely with Ron Dunnart, but each of whom had some respect for him, stood up and prepared themselves for an awkward encounter. Mrs Dunnart opened the front door. She was unable to see the state of Ron’s clothes when she said, ‘There are two gentlemen here to see you.’

  Then Ron moved into a pool of light on the front porch, and Bette’s mouth fell open. Dunnart was annoyed that he had to deal with his wife on top of everything else, so he pushed past her without saying anything. How had they beaten him to his house? The telephone at Russell Street had been answered by a constable who’d said that uniformed men would get to O’Dowd’s house as quickly as possible, but that there were no homicide detectives in the building at present. That had suited Dunnart. Now, somehow, there were policemen in his front room. He entered the room and was taken aback to find Jackson and Hart. They, in their turn, were taken aback by Dunnart’s bloodied clothes.

  ‘I didn’t kill him. I found him, but I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘What do you mean you found him?’ Jackson said. ‘He was found by a neighbour late this afternoon.’

  ‘What? I’ve only just left him. He’s been dead for an hour at the most.’

  ‘Who are you talking about, Ron?’ Hart asked.

  ‘I telephoned Russell Street. They know. Bob O’Dowd.’

  ‘O’Dowd. Jesus Christ. We’re here to pick you up about David Reilly and his wife.’

  Abraham Hart would say later that the look of shock on Dunnart’s face at the mention of Reilly’s name was so remarkable, so ungovernable, that he knew Dunnart was hearing the news of Reilly’s death for the first time.

  Everything in Dunnart’s world had now shifted into unrecognisable disorder. A self-defence mechanism rendered him almost monosyllabic and numbly cooperative.

  ‘I need to change my clothes.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Hart said. ‘We need to collect everything you’re wearing. Everything. Shoes, socks, underwear — the lot.’

  Dunnart nodded and took Hart with him into the master bedroom. Bette Dunnart, who’d overheard the exchange in the front room, came to Detective Jackson and said, ‘I don’t understand what’s happening here.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Dunnart, I’m not at liberty to say, but Ron is coming with us to Russell Street. He may be gone for several hours.’

  ‘But he will be coming back.’

  John Jackson, ha
ving seen Dunnart, wasn’t sure about that, but said, ‘Yes, Mrs Dunnart. I imagine he’ll be back much later this evening.’ Bob O’Dowd, he thought. Bob O’Dowd is dead. What the fuck was going on?

  IT HAD SEEMED until now to Tom Mackenzie and Helen Lord that they’d known each other for some time. This was an illusion of course, created by their separate involvement in the same crimes. Helen had never thought of him as Titus Lambert’s brother-in-law, which he was. His resemblance to Maude Lambert was strong. The evidence of what had been done to him was still so apparent that she found herself unexpectedly moved by it. Everyone sitting at the dinner table was suffering the consequences of personal trauma. Is this, Helen thought, how life was supposed to be — a continuous and exhausting endurance test?

  The In Memoriam notice was due to appear on Wednesday and Thursday, on the front page of The Argus, The Age, and The Sun News-Pictorial. They agreed that this was very uncertain. It was Guy Kirkham who asked the pertinent question that no one had thought to ask.

  ‘What do we actually do if George Starling turns up?’

  ‘We arrest him,’ Joe said.

  ‘Only you and Helen can do that, and I imagine Helen will be a bit busy.’

  ‘And he’s not going to come quietly, is he?’ added Tom.

  ‘Inspector Lambert won’t be happy that we’ve done this,’ said Joe. ‘But it’s done now, and maybe he’ll see that it’s our best chance of trapping Starling.’

  ‘He’ll resent the fact that we’ve forced his hand,’ Helen said, ‘but he’ll organise a police presence, I’m sure. He’d never forgive himself if he didn’t. The question is whether he’ll ever forgive us.’

  ‘It will all have to be done quickly. We’ve got a good sketch of Starling, an accurate one, which can be passed around. We may not need that many policemen — maybe half a dozen? In mufti.’

  They talked about strategies and about the Pyjama Girl inquest, which was still occupying a great deal of newspaper space. Guy was telling them about the film he’d been to see that afternoon, The Leopard Man at the Lyceum, when Inspector Lambert telephoned. When Joe returned to the table with the news of David and Barbara Reilly’s deaths, it took a full minute for anyone to speak. It was Helen who broke the silence.

  ‘Who would do that? Who would do such a thing?’

  RON DUNNART SAT in the interview room for three hours before Inspector Lambert spoke to him. Lambert was exhausted, and there was something in his eyes that Dunnart had never seen before — a look of having been stunned.

  It was 1.00 a.m., and Lambert had left O’Dowd’s house in Fitzroy in the hands of the coroner and three detectives whose abilities he trusted. Martin Serong had left at the same time as Lambert, and Serong had been shaken by what he’d photographed in the bathroom. Serong had seen the worst that people were capable of, or he’d thought he had.

  ‘The person who did this,’ he’d said to Titus, ‘is only nominally human. He took his time and every slice of his blade gave him pleasure.’

  ‘He’s human, all right. I sometimes think, Martin, that this is who we truly are. We’re a terrible and terrifying species.’

  As he sat now in the stuffy room with Ron Dunnart, Titus wondered if this man could really be among the worst of his kind. If Peter Lillee was included, could he have murdered four people in a matter of days and sit here looking, or trying to look, defiant? He wasn’t being entirely successful.

  From Dunnart’s point of view, his defiance was based on the fact that he hadn’t murdered Bob O’Dowd or the Reillys, and he was confident that Lambert would know this.

  ‘Is this a formal interview?’ he asked.

  ‘Two of my detectives and a woman have been savagely killed today, Ron. I’m not in the mood for games. If you want a lawyer, just ask.’

  ‘No. I’ll answer your questions. I have nothing to hide.’

  Lambert established Dunnart’s version of his arrival at O’Dowd’s house and his discovery of the body. Dunnart denied any knowledge of the scene in Reilly’s house.

  ‘You were aware that he took a key from your pocket?’

  Dunnart decided to lie about this. He wanted there to be no connection between him and Reilly’s death.

  ‘No. I have all my keys.’ He withdrew the keys and put them on the table. ‘They’re all there, all six of them.’ He made a show of pointing at them and counting.

  ‘There’s one missing,’ he said and performed being perplexed. He picked up the keys and looked at them closely. ‘The key to the back shed is missing. Why would Reilly take the key to my back shed? What did he think he’d find in there?’

  Lambert, whose senses had been brutally assaulted that day, didn’t detect that Dunnart was lying. His responses seemed genuine and Lambert was convinced by them.

  ‘Why do you think Sergeant Reilly went to the trouble of taking one of your keys, Ron?’

  ‘I presume he thought I was hiding something to do with Lillee’s death, in my shed.’

  ‘Let me tell you something, Ron. I don’t think you killed Peter Lillee, and how would he know that that missing key was the key to your shed? I’ll ask you again, why do you think David Reilly took that particular key from your bundle of keys?’

  Lambert already knew the answer to that question. This crashed in on Dunnart and simultaneously he realised that he had no convincing alibi for that afternoon. As a copper, he’d never considered alibis given by wives as convincing. Inspector Lambert watched as Ron Dunnart seemed to collapse inwardly. His breathing altered, and his face drained of colour. His eyes, usually signalling arrogance and certainty, now had an unfamiliar pleading look in them.

  ‘Reilly was a better detective than I thought. There was paint on the key.’

  ‘Where did the paint come from, Ron?’

  ‘It came from the side of Peter Lillee’s car, where I scratched it.’

  ‘And when did this happen?’

  ‘On the night that he died. He came out of his fiancée’s flat, although I didn’t know that at the time, and I was waiting for him. I got into his car.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know why. I was trying to get money out of him.’

  ‘Where were you this afternoon?’

  ‘I went home. My wife will confirm that, but I suppose you’d expect her to.’

  ‘Tell me what you think this looks like, Ron. David Reilly takes a key that will prove you were with Peter Lillee on the night that he died. David Reilly and his wife are murdered. You have a weak alibi. Later, the man who accused you of murdering Peter Lillee is found dead. By you. There are no witnesses. You have blood all over you. Why? When I looked into that bathroom I wanted to turn and run. I certainly didn’t want to get close enough to soil my clothes.’

  ‘I didn’t kill David Reilly, Titus, or his wife. I don’t even know how they died. No one has told me. I didn’t want to go near Bob O’Dowd’s body. When I first saw it, I threw up in the toilet. I think I passed out. But I had to know who was in the bathtub. Bob had a tattoo of an anchor on his arm. There was so much blood I couldn’t see it, so I wiped some away and saw the anchor. I knew of course how this would look and what you’d think. Who had a motive? I suppose I did. I telephoned here. I could have left without telephoning, but it would have been pointless. I’d been seen going into the house by one of the neighbours. I should have waited but I couldn’t bear being in the house, and I couldn’t bear the smell that was coming off my clothes. I went home to change. I was going to put all my clothes in a bag and hand them over, but you won’t believe that. How could you believe that? If I’d killed him, my clothes would have been soaked in blood. They’re not.’

  ‘The towels in the laundry suggest the killer wiped himself down, which suggests that he took his clothes off to commit the murder, cleaned himself up and put his clothes back on.’

  ‘The person who butchered Bob O’Dowd is a fuc
king monster. I may be many unpleasant things, but I’m not a monster.’

  Inspector Lambert didn’t believe in monsters. He also didn’t believe that he was looking at the man who’d murdered three people in a single day. Dunnart had motive, possibly, and opportunity. What he didn’t have was the bleak wasteland of spirit that such acts required. He had enough circumstantial evidence to put Ron Dunnart under arrest. Instead, he sent him home and told him that he was suspended from duty. He wasn’t to come near Russell Street until further notice, and he wasn’t to communicate with any fellow police officers.

  ‘Don’t disobey that instruction, Ron. I’ll find out if you do, and I will arrest you. You need to tell your wife that your policing career is over.’

  ‘I’ll hand in my resignation.’

  ‘No. I won’t accept it. You will be dishonourably discharged, and you may even go to prison.’

  They both knew prison was unlikely. The Commissioner liked to discard bad apples discreetly. Corrupt police officers eroded public trust. Dismiss them certainly, but keep it out of the papers.

  TITUS DIDN’T GET back to the house in South Melbourne until close to 4.00 a.m. Tom Mackenzie was asleep, having returned from dinner in Kew at midnight. Maude was still up. When Titus entered the house, she met him in the hallway. He held her without speaking, and she felt his body give way to tremors that ran through him. They grew until he was unable to control the sobs that wracked him in a way that terrified her. She’d seen her husband cry, but not like this. She held tightly to him until she realised that she was holding him up. His weight pulled them down to their knees. She cupped his face in her hands and with her fluttering fingers tried to still the small muscles that leaped and quivered there.

  ‘Tell me, Titus, tell me what’s happened.’

  When he was able to, he told her everything.

  Everything.

  14

  GEORGE STARLING CAME down to the foyer of The Victoria Hotel early on Wednesday morning. There was an alcove with two armchairs in it and a newspaper rack. He took a copy of The Argus and The Age. He was hopeful that Reilly’s murder might have been reported. O’Dowd’s had happened too late to make Wednesday’s paper. It would surely make Thursday’s. The news from Europe was lies. The Russians were claiming that the German army had lost close to 210,000 men in a matter of weeks. This was clearly Communist propaganda. There was nothing of interest on the front page, until his eye was snagged by a black-bordered rectangle near the bottom right. He noticed, too, the same box on the front page of The Argus, which was lying across his knee. Someone important must have died. He read it with growing excitement.