Blood and Circuses (8 page)

‘That’s why you like them,’ commented Dot. Phryne looked at her companion’s reflection in the mirror and grinned.

Tommy Harris was drinking in the Provincial Hotel, as near to the centre of Brunswick Street as made no difference and the best place to pick up whispers. The Provincial occupied the middle ground of hotel culture. It was not so respectable that it discouraged the crims, or so low a place that the commercial travellers, the truck-drivers and the local tradesmen couldn’t drink there. It was getting on for four o’clock and Tommy was well ensconced in his corner of the public bar, a schooner of Victoria Bitter in front of him and a cigarette alight in a tin ashtray beside him. Tommy Harris only smoked in pubs. It counted as protective colouration.

‘Gidday,’ muttered someone behind him. ‘This seat taken?’

‘No, mate, take the weight off,’ said Tommy affably, without turning. A body slid into the seat beside him. A blocky body and a fair head, cropped close. Hands like shovels and pale blue eyes in a fighter’s face. Tommy identified him at once. He had some unpronounceable Balkan name and his associates had decided to call him Reffo. He did not seem to mind. He was a member of the Brunswick Street Boys, otherwise known as the Brunnies. Tommy Harris knew that the Brunnies and Albert Ellis’s ’Roy Boys were involved in a slight argument which had littered the suburb with damaged adherents, although they had not killed anyone yet. As long as they involved no innocent bystanders, Sergeant Grossmith had ordered that no official notice was to be taken of this difference of opinion.

‘Want a drink, Reffo?’

Reffo nodded and Tommy signalled to the barmaid. She came over and leaned her elbows on the bar, confronting them with a vast expanse of pearly bosom which was always just on the point of bursting its bonds and spilling out of her black dress. Mary of the Provincial might have heard of the Mabel Normand bra, guaranteed to give that boyish look, but she wanted no truck with it. She grinned at them, patting her curly hennaed hair.

‘H’lo boys, what can I get yer?’

‘Pint for me mate,’ Tommy grinned back. ‘Looking beautiful today, Mary.’

‘Sauce,’ she commented, pleased, and drew the beer. It was chill and foaming.

‘Well, Reffo, what brings you here?’ said Tommy.

‘I got something you might be interested in,’ said Reffo through a moustache of foam. ‘For a price.’

‘Oh, yes? You tell me what it is and I’ll decide about the price.’

‘You’re only a tiddler,’ said Reffo scornfully. ‘Where’s your old man?’

‘He authorised me to deal,’ said Tommy easily. ‘You talk to me or nobody.’

Reffo thought about this, never an easy process for someone who had been hit on the head as often as he had. The nostrils curled, the forehead corrugated. Tommy watched, fascinated. Finally Reffo seemed to come to a decision.

‘A quid.’

‘If it’s worth it.’

‘Tell the old man that the ’Roy Boys is mixed up with something big. Real big.’

Tommy Harris was amused. He stubbed out the cigarette which had been chugging away in the ashtray and lit another, trying not to breathe in the smoke. He offered one to Reffo, who took two and tucked one away behind his ear.

‘Them?’ scoffed Tommy. ‘No one would trust ’em with anything big. What sort of big?’

‘You know that Seddon what walked out of Pentridge?’

‘He was dead, Reffo. You don’t walk any more when you’re dead.’

Reffo gave the constable a scornful look. He was about to speak, caught himself, and continued, ‘That’s all you know. And then there was Maguire the robber.’

‘Yes?’ Tommy was interested for the first time. Maguire had managed to cut himself out of a police van taking him to court. No one had seen him leave the van but when it arrived the robber had not been there. The constable left in the van with him had been found in a drugged sleep, with chloroform burns to his face and no memory of how the prisoner had got out of his handcuffs. The present whereabouts of Damien Maguire were unknown. Every cop in the state was looking for him.

‘Go on, Reffo, this might be worth a quid. Do you know where Maguire is now?’

‘Nah. But the ’Roy Boys do. Ask ’em. And there’s the man that attacked them kids. You want him for three little girls, don’t you?’

‘Smythe? You know where he is?’ said Tommy eagerly. Late one night, Ronald Smythe had slipped from his house, although it was being watched by four constables. He had never been seen since. The police wanted to renew their acquaintance with Mr Smythe very badly.

‘’Roy Boys know. What’s that?’

An argument had started in the front bar. It had increased in volume, and now became inescapable. Mr Thomas the publican was discussing the reason why he should give another bottle of cheap ruby port to Lizard Elsie, the sailor’s friend.

Lizard Elsie stood five feet high in her damaged canvas shoes. She was dressed in an assortment of carefully chosen rags, topped with what had once been a rather expensive ball-gown, to judge by the remains of the sequins, and a tatty feather boa wound three times around her neck. The ruby-port content of Lizard Elsie’s blood was low. This always made her cross.

‘No, Elsie, I already gave you a free bottle yesterday. Don’t drink it all at once, I said. I’m not giving you any more of my port.’

Lizard Elsie pushed aside her tangled black hair with both dirty hands. She levelled black eyes at the publican and screamed in a shrill voice like a seagull, ‘You mean bastard! You mongrel cur! Wouldn’t give a poor girl the drippin’s from your fucking nose! Bloody well gimme me port or you’ll be fucking sorry!’

Tommy Harris reflected that they didn’t call her Lizard Elsie for nothing. Her tongue was definitely blue. The respectable patrons of the Provincial were drawing away and remembering appointments and lunch and requirements to go back to work or the missus. Mr Thomas saw this and lost his temper.

‘You get out of my nice clean establishment, you and your foul tongue! Get out before I call the cops!’

Lizard Elsie did not reply in words. She seized a stool and flung it at the bar.

Bottles shattered. Mary the barmaid ducked and came up splashed in liqueur and picking glass out of her hair. Small specks of blood freckled her magnificent bosom. Three drinkers leapt to help her remove the splinters.

Tommy Harris glanced sideways and realised that Reffo had left him, without even waiting for his pound. He looked through the window and sighted the blond man standing on the corner of Johnson Street, waiting for the traffic to clear.

‘Bloody well gimme me red biddy!’ shrieked Lizard Elsie, pleased with the smash. ‘Or I’ll get another chair!’

At that moment, when all eyes but Tommy’s were on the brawl, a car slid around the corner of Johnson Street. There was a shot, perhaps two shots. Tommy Harris found himself running. He came out of the pub and dropped to his knees to cradle Reffo in his arms, whose life spurted out of a dreadful hole that had been blasted in his chest and onto the unforgiving bitumen of Brunswick Street.

‘They got me,’ commented Reffo. He said something in his own language. Then he gasped, ‘Exit,’ and died.

His was the first death that Tommy Harris had seen. He knelt in a spreading pool of cooling blood, holding the dead man close and reminding himself sharply that constables do not cry.

The occasion was also notable for the fact that, for the first time in living memory, Lizard Elsie had slipped away from a fight without insisting on her bottle of ruby port.

Detective Inspector Robinson invited his visitors to be seated. Grossmith steered Tommy Harris into a chair beside his own. He was worried about the boy—one of his most promising constables. First he had nearly fallen off a roof and been rescued by a female murderer. The next day he had watched Reffo die. It might have been too much for the young man. He was a country lad, after all, came from Hamilton. He wasn’t a kid who had lived in the streets like some. Grossmith himself had found his first corpse when he was ten, an old drunk who had died in a lane in Fitzroy. But Harris was shaking and his face had blanched so that his freckles stood out like ink-blots. Grossmith did not like the look of him.

Neither did his superior officer. Robinson said very gently, ‘Tell me what happened, Constable. What did Reffo say?’

‘ “They got me,” sir, he said. “They got me,” and then he said something in Balkan. I didn’t understand it. Then he said, “Exit” and then he died.’

‘Both barrels of a shotgun at close range,’ said Grossmith. ‘It don’t do you no good. Blasted out most of his guts.’

Tommy Harris made a sound like a sob and then shut his mouth hard. Robinson pressed a buzzer. His sergeant looked in.

‘Get us some tea, will you? Lots of sweet tea.’ The sergeant looked at Constable Harris, pursed his lips and nodded. Robinson said to Grossmith, ‘What can you tell me about Reffo?’

‘Real name Georgi Maria Garinic, thirty-five years old, native of Rumania. Came to Aussie after the War, naturalised, took his oath and all. Been living in ’Roy, making a crust as a carter and driver. Big, strong, blond bloke. Known associate of the Brunswick Street Boys, that’s Jack Black Blake’s mob, the Brunnies. Not nice citizens. You remember Blake. Record as long as me arm. He hangs around with the Judge, Little Georgie who’s as mad as a cut snake, Billy the Dog, and Snake Eyes. Not nice citizens. Feuding with the ’Roy Boys at the moment. Crims. Petty stuff, mostly. Receiving stolen goods and the odd burglary. I’m sure as eggs that both the Brunnies and the ’Roys are standover merchants but I can’t get no one to complain about them. You know what it’s like. They’re all terrified that if they stand up in court they’ll get a petrol bomb through their front window. I reckon the Brunnies had something to do with the butcher’s shop fire but I can’t prove it. Lately we been thinking that they had something big on. That’s why I sent Harris down to the Provincial. Reffo ain’t what you could call truthful but them Brunnies hate the ’Roys. I thought we might pick up a useful word or two.’

‘Perhaps we did. Ah, thanks, Sergeant. Here you are, Harris.’ Robinson spooned sugar into the solid white cup and put it into Tommy’s hands. ‘Drink up. Help yourself, Terry. Now, I am going to tell you something confidential. Do I have your word not to disclose it?’

Grossmith nodded. Harris gulped tea and said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He was pleased that his voice did not shake.

‘Good. The interesting thing that Garinic said was “Exit”. We’ve heard that before. For the last six months we have been losing prisoners. There was Maguire and there was that rat Smythe. You know about them?’ They nodded. Tea was putting colour back into Harris’s white cheeks. Grossmith absently gave him his cup and Tommy drank, feeling more centred. ‘But what you haven’t heard about is Seddon.’

‘He’s dead, sir. Died in prison,’ said Grossmith. As Robinson did not speak, the big man added, ‘Didn’t he?’

‘Oh, yes. Certified dead by the prison doctor and carried out in a coffin. Given to his family to be buried—that won’t happen again, I can tell you, not without a post-mortem. Because last week I got this.’

He handed them a card in a stiff white envelope. It showed dancing crowds of gaily dressed people. ‘It’s postmarked Rio de Janeiro.’

Terence Grossmith read the spiky, idiosyncratic handwriting with difficulty. ‘It says, “Dear Jack, just to let you know I’ve arrived safely. If you are still doing that literature course, I refer you to
Romeo and Juliet,
Act IV, Scene i. Best regards as always, William Seddon.” William Seddon? Is this his writing, sir?’

‘Yes. They say it’s identical. The Shakespeare reference is to the scene between Friar Lawrence and Juliet, where he gives her a drug to mimic death. It annoyed me at the time but we have been lucky. If that cheeky bugger hadn’t needed to crow about getting away, then we wouldn’t have had a clue. But there is an undercurrent in the underworld, if I may put it like that. They are all talking about Exit. If you have the money, Exit can get you out of the country. I don’t know how to find them. No one will tell us anything else about it.’

‘I never heard of it,’ said Grossmith. ‘None of my telltales have told me anything about it.’ He was deeply ashamed. Robinson saw this and hurried into speech.

‘It hasn’t been mentioned in Brunswick Street, Terry, or it hadn’t until Harris here got the office from Garinic. If it had been, you’d have heard about it. I think that the ’Roy Boys might know more. Clearly they thought it important enough to kill for, if they snuffed poor Garinic, though we still don’t know that. He could have had a lot of enemies. But the smart money has to be on the ’Roys. Now. We have to stamp on this and stamp on it fast. You have read the papers, haven’t you? You know what’s happening in America. Gangs and bootleggers and machine-gun killings on the street. The police are helpless there and I regret to say that a lot of them have been bought and paid for. We aren’t going to let that happen here. We have been put off balance by the War, the whole nation has. To an extent, we have lost our nerve and there are a lot of people out there that the police surgeon reckons are potential loonies. If this Exit thing gets established, then bang goes law and order and it will be every man for himself. You remember the police strike, Terry? All the damage done in that was a few shops looted and a smallish riot. Can you imagine what would happen now, in 1928, if there was a police strike?’

Terence Grossmith thought about it. The nerves of the people had been stretched to breaking point by the Great War, and the succeeding generation didn’t seem to care about anything, or believe in anything. He shuddered. Robinson nodded.

‘Exactly. We’re on the edge of a knife all the time. Anything could push us over. So we aren’t going to allow that to happen. Are we?’

Constable Harris, much recovered, said, ‘How can we stop it, sir?’

Grossmith grunted and Robinson smiled. He had a peculiarly beautiful smile, which invited trust.

‘We will find a way. First thing is for you to tell me everything that Garinic said. And when you’ve finished, Sergeant Grossmith will tell me all about Lizard Elsie.’

Phryne Fisher was visiting Foy and Gibson’s and had bought an armload of clothes. Cotton dresses, patterned with flowers which never grew in any garden. Underclothes of the respectable poor; one pair of washing silk for Sundays, and the rest of cheap Sea Island cotton in a distressing shade of pink. She had also purchased three pairs of sandals, two pairs of soft dancing shoes, a couple of Sylk-Arto nighties, a straw hat, a cheap fibre suitcase and a down quilt. It had an apricot cover emblazoned with white daisies. Dot thought it rather nice.