The Port Fairy Murders (7 page)

Reilly was unable to contain his exasperation.

‘Do you, or do you not, know George Starling?’

‘Well, now, I wouldn’t want to lie to you, given the charitable mission you’re on. I knew him when he was a boy. I haven’t seen him for years, and that sketch looks nothing like him. And I’ll tell you this, there was never any love lost between the two of them. I’d bet my bottom dollar that George won’t care less when you break the bad news to him.’

‘When was the last time you saw John Starling?’

‘He lived on the other side of Warrnambool. I wouldn’t have seen him for close enough to 10 years.’

‘Did you fall out with him?’

She laughed.

‘Now you want more than you’re entitled to. No, I didn’t fall out with him. As a matter of fact, I quite liked him. Now, you’ve had your fair share of jibber jabber, and I’ve got things to do.’

‘If George Starling contacts you, the Warrnambool police want to know about it.’

‘Why on earth would that boy contact me? And just so you know, if on the off chance he did, I won’t be running to the coppers.’

She closed the door, leaving Reilly to begin to construct a version of the interview that he hoped would satisfy Inspector Lambert.

–4–

MATTHEW TODD LOOKED
critically at his fiancée’s face. He often did this, just to reassure himself that she really did bear a passing resemblance to Irene Dunne. Matthew loved Irene Dunne. He’d begun courting Dorothy Shipman the day after he’d seen her in Sackville Street. She was unaware of her resemblance to the movie star, and Matthew never mentioned it. This was a private passion. Dorothy rarely went to the movies. Dorothy rarely did anything that might put ideas into her head. She wasn’t silly, though — not by a long chalk. She was something of an accounting wizard, and she kept the books for her father’s drapery business. She’d been out of Port Fairy only twice in her life. On both occasions she’d travelled to Warrnambool to see a dentist. Consequently, her experience of the world was narrow, and whatever opinions she’d formed had become inflexible to the point of atrophy.

One of these opinions concerned girls who surrendered their virginity before marriage. No marriage could survive such an assault on decency. Matthew discovered, on the night he made an inelegant manual dash for Dorothy’s crotch, the limits of the erotic possibilities between him and his fiancée. She’d been horrified that his fingers had slipped under the edge of her bloomers and brushed against her pubic hair. Indeed it was this incident that led to their engagement. Dorothy felt despoiled, but the despoliation was tolerable if it was to be redeemed by marriage. Matthew, who knew perfectly well that he could satisfy his lust elsewhere, agreed to Dorothy’s terms. After all, the idea that he would soon take Irene Dunne’s virginity was an irresistible attraction.

As he watched her now, poring over the accounts book in the draper’s shop, he wondered if this engagement was such a good idea after all. He didn’t need whatever money she might bring to the marriage — and it wouldn’t be much, as Shipman’s Drapery wasn’t exactly booming. He had his own quite lucrative source of income, brokering the catch for several of Port Fairy’s biggest fishermen. Despite his relative youth, he’d proved a tough negotiator, and the fishermen’s income had increased under his brokerage. They’d been particularly impressed when he’d managed to minimise the rorting of the lobster catch by the buyers in Melbourne. It was common practice for the wholesalers to declare that a percentage of the catch had arrived damaged and that they wouldn’t pay full price for damaged goods. They would then on-sell the lobsters for a decent price, having bought them cheaply. The fishermen knew perfectly well that they were being diddled, but had had no way of proving it.

Matthew took it upon himself to track a haul of lobsters brought in by the men he represented from the boat deck, to the wharf, to the railway station, and thence all the way to Melbourne. He watched the unloading, and ticked off each lobster as it was passed for inspection. It was tedious, but no lobsters were declared damaged in the batches he supervised. Other batches from Port Fairy wouldn’t be so lucky; he was certain of that. There would probably be an unusual number of damaged animals to compensate. Despite the inconvenience and the cost, Matthew accompanied the lobster catch, each time there was one, for several weeks until he’d established a pattern among the buyers of passing his catch without penalty. It would look peculiar if damaged lobsters suddenly started to appear just because Matthew wasn’t there. The fishermen he represented, at first reluctant to hire someone so young, were impressed.

People in Port Fairy liked Matthew Todd, and he liked being liked. He attended church, even if it was the wrong church as far as half the town was concerned, and no one ever saw him drunk or disorderly. It was generally agreed that he and Dorothy Shipman were a good match, although it was occasionally noted that the Shipmans occupied a social rung a bit below the Todds. The fact that the village idiot was his uncle helped close that gap a little. Matthew could see Selwyn from Shipman’s window.

‘Is your uncle in his usual spot?’ Dorothy asked. She asked this question almost every day, despite knowing full well what the answer would be. This irritated Matthew intensely, but each day, in a measured tone, he replied, ‘Yes, he’s there, dribbling and drooling and scratching away like the moron he is.’

There must have been something slightly different in his tone this day, because Dorothy, instead of going back to her figures, said, ‘He’s harmless, Matthew. You mustn’t be so cruel.’

‘I hate him. He’s repulsive. He’s only half human, and that’s the half that pisses and shits everywhere.’

Dorothy was shocked. She left the counter and joined Matthew at the window, intending to berate him about his appalling language. The look on his face stopped her.

‘He’s not hurting anybody,’ she said quietly.

‘You wouldn’t say that if you were related to him.’

‘But I will be related to him, when we’re married.’

Matthew turned to her and was disappointed to find that the way the light fell across her face obliterated her resemblance to Irene Dunne. He leaned down, kissed her on the forehead, and said, ‘He should be put down. If you had a dog as useless and filthy as Uncle Selwyn, you’d have it put down.’

GEORGE STARLING HAD
been in Port Fairy for two weeks, and he’d been careful to keep out of the way. He called himself ‘Bert’ and didn’t offer a last name. He knew that the coppers would be asking about a bloke who called himself ‘Fred’. Having spoken to that little Sable cunt, he was glad he hadn’t gone back to his real name — not that there’d been any chance of that. The last thing he wanted was for anyone to make a connection between him and his lousy father. Port Fairy was the ideal place to retreat to. No one knew him there. Having grown up on the other side of Warrnambool — despite its being only 18 miles away, it might as well have been the far side of the moon — he felt at home here, in the sense that the weather was familiar. The smells, too, calmed his nerves. Even the briny iodine air that frequently settled over Port Fairy was familiar, his father’s farm being close to the ocean. He liked the ocean, and he liked it best when it thundered. As a child, he’d escaped his father’s tongue and his vicious fists by clambering down the cliffs of Murnane’s Bay and sitting for hours on end on the damp sand of the small, private cove. He’d preferred to do this when the weather was wild so that the ocean drew itself up in a rage and broke almost at his feet. It had frightened him, but not in the way that his father frightened him. This was noble fear, and it excited him. As he grew older he would borrow his father’s motorcycle, and eventually explored the coast and hinterland from Mepunga to the far side of Port Fairy. Once, he’d made it to Portland. He came to know this area with the precision of an ordinance map.

At the moment, he had no transport, and this, he felt, made him powerless. To do what he wanted to do — to punish Sable — he needed that motorcycle, although he wasn’t sure how he’d get the petrol to take him to Melbourne. There was a tank on the farm, but it would be bone dry. Well, he’d find a way. The important thing was to get hold of the motorcycle, and this was within his grasp because Peter Hurley was delivering a catch of couta and trumper to a mate just beyond the Mepunga turn-off. He’d get a lift and walk the rest of the way. He knew that Hurley would have no interest in his reasons for being dropped off in the middle of nowhere, and he’d repay the compliment by not asking why the catch was going to a farmer and not to market.

IT WAS ALMOST
four o’clock when the detectives gathered at the Warrnambool police station to compare notes. Constable Manton had returned, too, and had told them that he’d seen no evidence of any violent disturbance at Starling’s farm.

‘It struck me as not a bad way to go. Starling looked calm, as if he’d sat down for a breather and then died. The flies made it bad to look at. They’d been busy — not that it would’ve bothered Starling.’

Having heard each separate report, the consensus was that George Starling would be unlikely to make contact with any of the people questioned. Halloran was curious about Helen Lord’s impressions of his brother.

‘I assume,’ she said, ‘that I can be frank.’

‘Yes. You needn’t worry about offending me.’

‘I thought your brother was a sad, frustrated, angry old man. Is he a widower?’

‘A bachelor.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘A relief?’

‘I don’t think he’d have made a sympathetic husband. I know it sounds awful, but I’m glad he didn’t get to punish a wife for having had the temerity to be born female.’

‘Was he abusive to you?’

Helen thought about that.

‘Not in any remarkable way. I was glad he was in a wheelchair.’

‘I wouldn’t have sent you into a dangerous situation — not on you own, anyway.’

‘I didn’t mean that I might have felt physically threatened. I meant that I was glad he was in a wheelchair.’

It took a moment for this subtly vitriolic remark to sink in.

‘All I can say, Constable, is that I’m not surprised that he lived down to my expectations. One doesn’t choose one’s siblings.’

David Reilly’s account of his meeting with Maria Pluschow stressed her detestation of the police, but gave no hint of the way in which he’d bungled it. Inspector Lambert’s account of Hardy Truscott’s philosophy was succinct and dismissive. No one had seen George Starling for years. The fact that he’d been the butt of his father’s jokes and that he’d regularly been on the receiving end of his fists were interesting additions to the little they knew about him.

IT WAS CLOSE
to 5.30 pm when George Starling walked up the driveway of his father’s farm in Mepunga. He hadn’t seen his father for several years — years during which he’d made his body hard and useful. Even so, he was nervous about meeting him. The memory of his violence and contempt remained raw. Now, though, he was ready to knock the old man down at the slightest provocation. He was going to take the motorbike, and that was that — if his father objected, it wouldn’t end well. He noticed that there was fresh hay in the paddock closest to the house (he wasn’t to know that Constable Manton had returned briefly and put it there), and that the horses and donkey were hoeing into it. Bypassing the house, he went straight to the shed where the motorbike was kept. If he could get away without having to confront his father, well and good.

While he was in the shed he heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. His father didn’t own a car, so it wasn’t him. He could see the driveway from the door of the shed, and he was shaken when he saw a police car. They’d come looking for him. Why else would they be there? He watched as four people, including a woman, got out. A female copper? Surely not. One of them looked familiar. He might have been there that night a few weeks ago in Belgrave, but Starling couldn’t be sure. There was a door in the back of the shed, and he slipped through it, out into the yard, through a gap in the fence, and crouched behind a thick clump of blackberries. He had a good view of the back of his father’s property, and he was confident that he couldn’t be seen from there.

The four visitors didn’t go up to the front door. Instead, they walked to the old cypress, just beyond the back fence. Starling didn’t have a clear view of the cypress, but he could see enough to be puzzled by their interest in it. They spent several minutes near the tree before checking the backyard, including the shed holding the motorbike. When they walked in there, Starling quickly raised his forearm to his nose. Did he smell strongly of fish? Could he have left a scent behind that would puzzle the police? No, that was a ridiculous thought. These were plods, not Sherlock Holmes. Anyway, no one would be surprised to smell fish around these parts.

The police entered the house through the back door without so much as knocking. Why would they do that? They mustn’t have been looking for him, after all. Were they hoping to take his father by surprise? No. If they’d wanted to do that, they’d make sure both the front and the back were covered. So, either they were expected or … George felt a sudden rush of excitement. They knew before they arrived that Starling senior wasn’t at home. And what could that mean? His father had either left the district unexpectedly and suspiciously, or he was dead. At any rate, something had happened to him, and George didn’t particularly care what. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t need his house anymore — George Starling had no intention of claiming it or living in it. What he intended to do was burn it down. After the police left, he’d give them time to get back to Warrnambool, and then he’d cauterise the bloody memories of his childhood with fire.