Read The Port Fairy Murders Online
Authors: Robert Gott
Tags: #FIC000000, #FIC014000, #FIC009030, #FIC050000
FOR DAYS, STARLING
hadn’t been inside the house where he was renting a room. The front door was unlocked — it always was — and there were no lights on. The landlord wasn’t home. He rarely was. He spent most nights with Shirley Rogers, a woman in her late forties who lived two streets away. Starling had seen her, but not met her. He didn’t like to think of the ugly coupling of his unprepossessing landlord and the big-breasted, florid Shirley Rogers.
He dropped Helen Lord onto his mattress. The smell of sweat and stale fish rose from it, and it was so acrid that it took Starling a moment to realise that this was how he must have smelt. He turned on the overhead light. It was weak, which ought to have disguised the meanness of the room. Somehow, though, it exacerbated it. Starling looked down at Helen Lord. She moaned and opened her eyes. The expression on her face was of puzzlement. He saw her nose twitch as the stink from the mattress registered. She made a small movement, but was too groggy to sit up. Starling took off his hat and sat on the bed beside her. He held her chin between his fingers and moved her head from side to side. She was wearing a jacket, which he unbuttoned. In an inside pocket, he found a thin wallet, which he withdrew. There were papers in the wallet.
‘Helen Lord.
Constable
Helen Lord. Well, fuck me. You really are a copper.’ He patted her face, and slapped it hard, once. Helen’s eyes opened wide, and she stared at the face that looked down at her.
‘You’re properly awake now, are you?’
He moved one hand under her skirt and let it rest on the inside of her thigh.
‘We’re going to get your friend, Joe Sable, here, and we’re going to have some fun. You’re going to watch me kill that greasy Jew, and then I’m going to fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before. It’s been a while for me, and I’m looking forward to it. So that’s the plan. What do you think?’
Helen twisted her leg in an effort to move Starling’s hand. He laughed.
‘We can’t have you moving about too much. I don’t like unco-operative women.’
He reached under the bed and found a length of cord that he kept there. Helen, still confused from the savage blow to her head, put up no resistance as he bound her ankles.
‘If you start using your hands, love, I won’t tie them up, I’ll just break both your arms. Got that?’
He leaned close to her face.
‘Got that?’ he shouted.
She nodded, and noted the smell of whisky on his breath.
He stood up and took a filleting knife from the top of a chest of drawers.
‘And if you make a racket, I’ll cut out your tongue with this.’
He rested the blade under Helen’s nose. The odour of fish guts was strong.
‘Where’s Sable right now?’
He turned the blade from its flat side to its edge so that Helen could feel its razor sharpness on her lip.
‘Star of the West,’ she said weakly, and wondered if she’d spoken at all. Everything seemed so disembodied and remote.
‘I’ll telephone from the corridor. I can see you from there, so don’t make a fucking move, and when I tell you to, I want you to call out his name so that he knows I’ve got you. Understand?’
Helen, who heard Starling’s voice as if it were from somewhere distant, didn’t understand. She said nothing.
‘Understand?’ he repeated, and slapped her. She nodded automatically.
Starling stood up, and when he turned to go into the corridor, he was momentarily startled to see a man standing in the doorway. He was holding a .22 rifle, which was pointed squarely at Starling’s chest.
‘I’d drop that knife if I were you, mate. The gun’s loaded.’ To underline the point, Eddie Rooney raised the barrel to the ceiling and pulled the trigger. The noise was deafening in the small room, and it took George Starling so completely by surprise that he dropped the knife. Gathering his thoughts quickly, he said, ‘I’m a police officer, and this woman is a suspect in the murders in James Street.’
Whatever Eddie Rooney had been expecting him to say, it wasn’t this, and in the confusion of the noise and of his noticing that the man’s clothes were expensive, he pointed the gun at the floor. It was all the time that Starling needed to rush at the man and push him against the corridor wall. Eddie Rooney was tall and strong, though, and he didn’t lose his grip on the rifle. Starling knew immediately that his only option was to escape into the street and into the darkness that would deny this man a clean shot. He took his chance, and Eddie Rooney followed him and saw him running away. He saw, too, in the light spilling from doors and windows, that the gunshot had drawn people out of their houses. Many of them had come to their gates; if he fired at the retreating figure, a bullet might find one of them. He returned to the bedroom, untied the cord from Helen Lord’s legs, and telephoned Doctor Marriott.
–14–
JOE SABLE SAT
with Inspector Lambert in his office at Russell Street police headquarters. It had been two days since he and Helen Lord had returned from Port Fairy. Helen, who’d suffered a severe concussion, and who hadn’t yet given a full report of what had happened in the room in Port Fairy, was at home in Kew. Joe’s report was on the desk in front of Lambert.
‘Command is extremely unhappy that I placed a policewoman in physical danger. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that this is a failed experiment.’
‘Constable Lord wouldn’t agree with you.’
‘I know that, Sergeant, but Constable Lord is subject to the rulings of Police Command — as, in the end, am I. When she returns to work, it won’t be to this department.’
‘She hasn’t said anything to me about this.’
‘She hasn’t been told yet. That’s been left to me, and I want her to be fully recovered before I give her the bad news.’
‘She’ll know as soon as I walk through Peter Lillee’s front door after work that something is up. She’ll see it in my face.’
‘That’s true. I won’t put you in that awkward position. I’ll telephone her this afternoon. It won’t be an easy phone call to make.’
‘She’ll take it badly. She already thinks we failed miserably in Port Fairy.’
‘Inspector Halloran is confident they’ll find Matthew Todd’s killer eventually, but I don’t share his confidence. Unless someone comes forward with information to break one of those alibis, or to confess, or to point the finger at a person no one even considered — and I can’t imagine who such a person might be — I’ve got a feeling this will be an unsolved crime for some time to come. Port Fairy is a small community. If anyone knew the identity of Todd’s killer, that person would surely have come forward. A secret like that can’t be held for long.’
‘It’s deeply frustrating.’
‘Your work and Constable Lord’s work was excellent. There was nothing more you could have done.’
‘Starling is still at large, sir. How did he know to find me in Port Fairy?’
Inspector Lambert reached into a drawer and pulled out a copy of
Truth
. He handed it to Joe.
‘That’s how. At least, that’s what I’m assuming. You’re clearly identifiable in that photograph.’
‘You know what Constable Lord said about him, sir, about George Starling? She said that, when she looked at his face, all she saw was an ordinary man.’
‘And we will find him, Sergeant.’
SERGEANT RON DUNNART
and Sergeant Bob O’Dowd were drinking at the Sarah Sands Hotel in Sydney Road. Dunnart was known there. He’d done a few people a few favours over the years, and he rarely had to pay for his drinks. It didn’t bother him particularly that the man who’d murdered Steven McNamara and Sturt Menadue hadn’t been picked up. They knew who he was, and that was a result. Starling would turn up eventually. He took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to O’Dowd.
‘What’s this?’
‘A way to put some money in your pocket. What do you see there, Bob?’
‘A list of names and addresses.’
‘I liberated that page from Sturt Menadue’s notebook.’
O’Dowd smiled.
‘Anyone interesting on this list?’
‘I’ve done some discreet checking, and I’ve underlined what looks like a good prospect.’
O’Dowd ran his finger down the list.
‘Peter Lillee,’ he read. ‘Who’s he?’
‘A very respectable man. He’s rich. That’s all you need to know. I think we should pay him a visit.’
JOHN ABBOT HAD
buried his wife, and now he sat in the kitchen of their house. Johanna Scotney had continued to work on the farm. He was grateful for this; he couldn’t have managed without her. A herd of dairy cows wouldn’t pause to make way for a farmer’s grief. But John Abbot felt more than grief. He felt trepidation. With every hour that passed, he thought there’d be a knock on his front door, and that the police would finally come to arrest him for the murder of Matthew Todd. Rose had been angry with him over the things he’d said to Johanna, and he’d been ashamed. She’d told him, too, about Matthew’s assault, and she’d said that she didn’t know what to do about it. She’d talk to him, of course, and she’d told Johanna that it would be all right.
‘But it won’t be all right, will it?’ she’d said. ‘Aunt Aggie won’t help. We need Johanna, John. We can’t manage the farm without her. If I can’t stop Matthew coming here, she’ll leave. I know she doesn’t want to, and her family needs the money, but she’ll leave. And I wouldn’t blame her.’
The news that Matthew Todd had physically assaulted Johanna Scotney had had a strange effect on John Abbot. What he felt wasn’t outrage. It was, and he felt the disturbing force of this, closer to jealousy. Those feelings overtook him, and he’d made the decision, late on Sunday night, to drive into town and confront Todd. Rose had wanted to go with him, but he’d told her that all he wanted to do was make it clear to Matthew that the Abbot farm was off-limits to him. For all his uncouthness, Rose had never known her husband to be violent, and so she’d relented and told him that she’d wait up until he returned.
Sitting in his kitchen, John Abbot told himself that he hadn’t gone into Matthew Todd’s house intending to kill him. Matthew had been surprised to find Abbot on his doorstep at midnight. He’d been even more surprised when Abbot had pushed past him into the house. In the end, it had been Matthew’s smugness that had killed him. Abbot had told him that he knew what he’d done to Johanna Scotney, and Matthew had laughed and said, ‘You’re mad because I beat you to it.’ He’d turned his back on Abbot, in
a contemptuous gesture that sealed his fate.
In no time at all, Matthew Todd was dead. Rather than panic, Abbot had picked up the body, put it in the back of his truck, and, in a moment of inspired retribution, had driven to Aggie Todd’s house, where he’d propped the corpse in the front room. His only regret had been that he wouldn’t see her face when she found stinking Matthew in the morning.
As no one had come forward to say that a truck had been heard near Matthew’s or Aggie’s house, the only person who could have told the police that he’d driven into town was dead. Was it really possible, he thought, that he could get away with murder? With every day that passed, it seemed that the answer to that question was yes. Yes, he
could
get away with murder.