The Holiday Murders (34 page)

‘Should we telephone Constable Lord, sir?’

‘No. Absolutely not. Constable Lord is no doubt sound asleep, as are her mother and uncle. Nothing would be gained by disturbing them, and it would be useful if one of us had a clear head in the morning — later in the morning. We’re closing in on this Jones person, Sergeant.’

‘I hope we get to Miss Quinn and Tom in time, sir.’

‘I think we should prepare ourselves for the worst on that score. Two living victims would be inconvenient for Jones — too hard to handle.’

Joe was about to answer when there was a knock on his door.

‘There’s someone at the door, sir.’

‘It’s two o’clock in the morning. Are you expecting anyone?’

‘No, sir. Perhaps Constable Lord …’

‘Be careful, Sergeant. Don’t hang up the telephone.’

Joe put the receiver on the table.

‘Yes?’ he called.

There was no verbal reply, only a gentle knocking once again.

‘Who is it?’

Again, a gentle knocking followed. It sounded feminine to Joe, so he resisted the urge to pick up a weapon and, instead, unlocked the door. He turned the handle, taking the precaution of standing away from where it would open, which was why it didn’t hit him as it flew inward with some force. He was not prepared, though, for the two men rushing at him, one of whom slammed a fist into his stomach, bending him over double, while the other placed a cloth over his mouth and nose. Joe was dimly aware that the men were Ptolemy Jones and Fred, but the smell and burn of chloroform dizzied him and then obliterated all sensation.

Jones looked around the flat, noticed that the telephone was off the hook, and went to it. He picked it up and listened. The connection had been broken because Titus had hung up as soon as he’d heard the unmistakeable sound of someone being punched. He was already calling Intelligence, and waking other policemen. Every nerve in his body pulsed with electric urgency.

-22-

Joe Sable awoke
feeling nauseated and chilled. He was tied to a chair, a circumstance he discovered when his stomach convulsed with the urge to vomit. His hands were constrained behind him, and his legs were separately bound to the legs of the chair. His immediate concern was to quell the urge to be sick, and he was concentrating so intently on this that he kept his eyes closed and his head lowered. His eyelids painfully filtered the light from a single unshaded bulb. Slowly, he opened his eyes. As he raised them, he realised he was facing a corner, so that all he could see was the line where two walls met. There was nothing to notice, except that they were painted a dirty chartreuse colour.

‘Right, he’s awake.’

The voice belonged to Ptolemy Jones. Joe heard his footsteps approaching, and then Jones grabbed the back of the chair and swung it around to face the room. In the centre, beneath the light, Tom Mackenzie was slumped in a chair. Like Joe, he was tied to his chair. Unlike Joe, he was naked. Through the fog of his confusion, nausea, and fear, Joe was shocked that they’d stripped Tom. He was unconscious, and liberally smeared with fresh and dried blood. His face was swollen, and Joe wasn’t sure if he was even alive. Beside him, seated on another chair but fully dressed, was Mary Quinn. Joe couldn’t see her hands, so he assumed that they’d been tied behind her. Nothing was said. Jones seemed to be giving Joe time to take it all in.

As Joe’s eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that Jones was reaching into his coat. He withdrew a packet of cigarettes and lit two of them, letting one hang from his bottom lip and putting the other between Mary’s lips. She reached up for it, and Joe realised that she’d been sitting on her hands. She took a deep drag, leaned back, and crossed her legs.

‘Tolly wanted to scoop Tom’s eyes out with a spoon,’ she said. ‘I stopped him.’

She took another drag on the cigarette, then leant across to Tom Mackenzie and stubbed it out on his thigh. The muscle twitched, but he didn’t stir.

‘He’ll come round,’ she said. ‘Tolly hasn’t broken all his fingers yet, have you, darling?’

Jones smiled as if he’d mistaken this remark for a witticism.

Joe was lost. His nausea, the sight of Tom unconscious, Mary Quinn casually burning him with her cigarette, and Jones grinning didn’t combine to make any sense.

‘Is this all a bit hard for you, Detective Sable?’ Mary asked, stressing the word ‘Detective’, and this time Jones laughed. Joe had never heard him laugh before. Mary stood up and moved over to Jones.

‘You’ve met my fiancé, haven’t you? Of course you have.’

With no way of comprehending this, Joe said, ‘He raped you. I saw him rape you.’

‘Oh, that? He didn’t rape me. He just fucked me. I hope my language doesn’t shock you. A girl can make love to her fiancé, can’t she, or are you a prude about sex before marriage?’

Tom Mackenzie groaned, rolled his head, and opened his swollen, red eyes. He seemed to look at Joe, but Joe wasn’t sure that he could see.

‘The party doesn’t like traitors, Sable, especially dumb ones. If you’d used a different name, you might have gotten away with it for longer. As soon as I mentioned the names of our two new members to Mary, the jig was up. She was very surprised, weren’t you, Mary?’

‘I thought you were all right, Sergeant, and then you had to go spying on my fiancé. That was silly.’

‘Your fiancé is a Nazi.’

Mary laughed.

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing. A world without National Socialism is a world not worth living in, Sergeant, or don’t you realise that? No, I suppose you don’t, being a Jew.’

Tom Mackenzie made a small noise and lapsed back into unconsciousness.

‘You’re going to die here,’ Mary said. ‘Here, in this room. It’s not a salubrious place to die. I wouldn’t want chartreuse to be the last colour I see, and I’m afraid it’s going to be a slow death. Tolly likes to take his time. He’s a kind of artist of death. My moronic brother is his masterpiece so far, but with two of you here, and no time constraints, he might be able to outdo himself.’

With creeping clarity, as the effects of the chloroform wore off, Joe struggled to retain his self-possession.

‘You watched your own brother being tortured?’

‘Of course, and Tolly really socked it in. Xavier was a mental defective, not worth chewing the rag over. We’re not sentimental about mental defectives. I don’t think they feel pain in the same way we do, do you? Besides, in the end, Tolly gave him what he always wanted — the stigmata. It was rather beautiful in a way, don’t you think? I’m sure Xavier would have offered up every moment of agony for the suffering souls in Purgatory. He was a hopeless martyr, though. Well, he was hopeless at everything, even dying. He was so terrified, he pissed and shat himself. So much for dignity, huh? I hope you don’t piss yourself, Sergeant. That would be so embarrassing.’

‘Did your father piss himself?’

‘No. Unfortunately, his death was quick, like killing a chook. I would have liked him to suffer more. He and his blowsy mistress made my mother’s life a misery. Still, he got to watch Xavier’s messy exit. That would have been more satisfying if he gave a tinker’s curse about Xavier. He didn’t.’

‘Did he know his daughter was a budding Magda Goebbels?’

‘He wasn’t sufficiently interested to notice anything about me.’

‘He was interested in Australia First — interested enough to be investigating it.’

Mary Quinn looked at Jones.

‘What are you talking about?’ she asked, and Joe knew immediately that this was news to her.

‘He was on to you,’ Joe said.

Jones shrugged his shoulders.

‘Why would he be investigating those nongs? They’ve got nothing to do with Mary.’

‘It was his job to keep the authorities informed about people like you.’

Mary started to giggle, and it swelled into a full-throated laugh.

‘The silly old bastard,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t on to me. There I was, right under his nose, and he was wasting his time on a bunch of useless twisters. That’s wonderful. We killed him, Sergeant, because I hated him. I mean,
I
hated him
. Politics had nothing to do with it.
I hated him
.’

‘And did you hate Xavier, too?’

‘Oddly, no, but he was pointless, and we couldn’t leave him alive after Dad was dead, could we? I mean, that would’ve been impractical, and I’m a very practical person.’

‘All lunatics should be put down,’ Jones said. ‘They serve no useful purpose.’

‘It was a mercy killing,’ Mary said.

‘That was quite a performance you put on at the house — the grieving and terrified survivor.’

‘It was good, wasn’t it? But then, I
am
good.’

She sat back on her chair and turned to face Tom. She was looking at him, but speaking to Joe. Ptolemy Jones stood silently by, smoking.

‘I want you to know what’s going to happen to you. Think of it as a kind of expiation for me. I want you to understand precisely why your torture is necessary; and it is necessary, although it will probably seem gratuitous from your perspective. You have to understand, Sergeant, that at the end of it, you
are
going to die. Do Jews have an Act of Contrition?’

Joe tested the strength of the ties that bound his hands. They were tight, and working free of them wasn’t going to be possible.

‘I asked you a question,’ Mary said.

Joe, who’d been trying to find the weak points in the room, said, ‘You’re mentally ill, both of you.’

‘Nah,’ Jones said, and crossed to Joe, ripped open his shirt, and pushed the burning cigarette into Joe’s sternum. He held it there until the smell of burning hair and flesh filled Joe’s nostrils. He writhed and cried out.

‘Nah,’ Jones repeated.

‘We’re not insane, Sergeant. Don’t lay that unguent to your soul — is that the line? Tolly is politically ambitious. There’s nothing insane about that. What’s crazy is that there aren’t many openings for a National Socialist in Australia at the moment. Have you noticed that? Australia First was the closest we could find.’

‘They’re as weak as piss,’ Jones said.

‘Yes, they are, they really are, Sergeant. The ones who are left have no political will at all. They might as well be a bridge club. What they need is a leader, someone who believes in something. Tolly, now, he’s a believer.’

Joe’s body was churning with fear and panic, and he watched despairingly as Tom Mackenzie slipped in and out of consciousness.

‘It’s time to get this done,’ Jones said.

‘In a minute, Tolly, in a minute. I haven’t finished talking to Sergeant Sable.’

She sniffed the air near Tom.

‘I think he’s pissed himself. He stinks.’

She moved her chair closer to Joe.

‘I won’t stay to watch, if that’s all right with you. I watched Xavier, but that was different. I can’t explain it. You see, I don’t really have the stomach for it, not for the process. I think it’s the screams. The end-result doesn’t bother me at all. Tolly, on the other hand, he loves the process. He doesn’t get much practice, so he just sort of feels his way around to find what hurts most. I had to go for a walk before, when your friend here started yowling. It really was too awful.’

‘What is it you want?’ Joe asked.

‘Goodness. You’re not following this at all, are you? We don’t
want
anything, unless wanting you dead counts. I suppose it does.’

Both she and Jones barked with laughter. Drawing on his last reserves of courage, Joe managed to sound calm when he said, ‘They’ll hang you.’

‘Who are
they
, Sergeant?’

‘They know all about your fiancé. They know he’s really Alistair Smith, and they know that Fred is really George Starling. They know about this house, and they’ll be here soon.’

Joe caught the quick look that passed between Mary and Jones. He’d taken them by surprise.

‘Well, well, well,’ Jones said. ‘You have been busy. None of this matters. Even if they do come here, all they’ll find is a pile of ashes, and finding you and this cunt in those ashes will take them forever. “Is that a bit of a chair, or a bit of Joe Sable?”’

He laughed. Tom groaned, and Jones’s body tensed in anticipatory lust. It was so overt and frightening that Joe thought he detected a certain nervousness in Mary. If there were no weak points in the room, perhaps there was a weakness in her that he could exploit. He wondered if Mary worried, even for the briefest of moments, whether the man who had murdered her family and her friend might one day get it into his head to take a hatchet to her.

‘I understand your hatred,’ Joe said. ‘Do you understand that it has made you mad?’

‘Yes,’ Mary said, almost sadly. ‘Yes, I think it has. I like the way it feels, though. It makes me feel alive. I felt nothing when Sheila died. Isn’t that terrible? I suppose I ought to feel bad about it. She had to die, though. See, that’s the thing. Tolly said that it would confuse the police, make them think that I was the target. We all have to make sacrifices to get what we want. I had to lose a good friend — although, while we’re being open and honest, I didn’t like her all that much. I sort of inherited her from school. She was a bit wet. You must have noticed how earnest she was. No?’