The Serpent's Sting (31 page)

‘This wouldn't work in daylight, Will.'

I noticed that he was wearing his own shoes and no stockings. This made practical sense, even though Joycey Dovey had provided a pair of women's pumps. Brian needed to be well shod if we were to overwhelm Albert Taylor. Carrying his inert body to a secure place — we hadn't yet discussed where that place might be — would be difficult in women's shoes.

‘How do you feel?' I asked, as we began crossing Princes Park.

‘Surprisingly comfortable.'

‘I have a spanner in my back pocket.'

Realising that this was a
non sequitur
worthy of Brian, I added, ‘It was the closest thing I could find to a cosh. I also have a piece of Mother's clothesline to tie him up with if we need to.'

‘I have to admit, Will, that I'm feeling more excited than frightened. I think I could get to like this private-inquiry business.'

‘Most investigations don't involve disguising yourself as a woman, and going armed for combat. This is not a typical evening's work.'

We passed several people along the path we took. Subdued moonlight allowed me to see that they didn't do a double-take on seeing Brian. We were a man and a woman out for a walk, and there was nothing unusual in that. As we approached the main gate of Camp Pell, Brian wondered, in a whisper, if we'd left it too late to find any woman unaccounted for. At five hundred yards or so from the gate, it was impossible to tell. I thought I saw shapes moving on the footpaths, but there wasn't enough light to determine whether they were men or women, let alone prostitutes or innocent sweethearts.

‘Stay here,' Brian said. ‘It's time for me to take the plunge.'

‘Don't go off with a soldier just because he offers you £10.'

‘Very funny. What about £20, though?'

‘Yes, also very funny. Good luck, Brian. Seriously, be careful.'

‘I'm wearing sensible shoes — what could possibly go wrong?'

In only a few seconds, Brian was gone from sight. I took the spanner from my back pocket, felt the heft of it in my hand, and returned it. Could I bring this down on the side of a man's skull? Now that our plan was in motion, I had to believe that I could. I'd certainly have no qualms about it if Brian's safety depended on it. In my mind, it was so simple. Brian would be waiting outside a house somewhere in Carlton, and Albert Taylor would emerge to discuss his proposition. I would appear behind Taylor, and before he knew what had hit him, I'd have hit him. He would fold neatly to the ground, we would truss him and carry him to … where? Mother's house. There'd be some poetic justice if we stored him in the bath where he'd deposited Private Dervian's body. We'd then inform the relevant authorities, and they would come and collect their great failure. What they did with him after that was not my affair.

From where I was standing, I could see that there was considerable activity around the entrance to Camp Pell. Cars and trucks entered or departed, their headlights narrowed to slits to avoid making them targets for Japanese bombs or strafing. As the war had progressed, this measure had begun to seem like something of an over-reaction, and it was now generally agreed that Melbourne was perhaps unlikely to be the victim of an unexpected and undetected bombing raid. There had been some relaxation of the blackout regulations, but I suppose the government was right to worry that Melbourne's distance from the enemy might lead its citizens into dangerous complacency. The firefly bobbing of cigarette ends showed where soldiers were walking, and they were in such numbers that I could smell the smoke from their tobacco.

‘Can I help you, bud?'

I jumped with fright. The voice was behind me, to my right. I turned to confront an American MP. His stance was aggressive, and his tone had been equally aggressive.

‘No, you can't help me.'

‘Well, if he can't help you, can I help you?' said a second, sneering voice to my left and behind me, so that I now found myself sandwiched between two surly military policemen.

‘I don't think you can help me, either.'

I tried to keep irritation out of my voice. The source of the irritation was the uncalled-for jangling of my nerves by the deliberately stealthy manner in which these two licensed thugs had approached me. As a civilian, I had nothing to fear from them, and I knew how sensitive their masters were to criticism of bad behaviour by American soldiers. The military police, famously brutal to their own men, were, as far as I knew, disciplined about treating civilians with cavalier indifference because of how it might look in the newspapers. I was unprepared, therefore, for the shove from behind that propelled me into the arms of the MP who stood in front of me. He grabbed me by the shirt, turned me round, and pinned my arms behind my back. The MP who'd pushed me turned on a torch and shone it in my face.

‘We've been watching you for a few minutes, bud. Who was the broad who was with you, and what are you waiting for?'

It took all my self-control to contain my sense of outrage.

‘I think you should get your hands off me,' I said, with what I hoped was ominous calm, ‘unless you want to spend the rest of the war cleaning toilets on some shithole army base.'

The MP pinioning my arms tightened his grip and said, ‘Fuck you, bud,' in my ear. The soldier with the torch used his free hand to search my pockets. He found my papers and examined them.

‘He's an actor,' he said, ‘name of William Power.'

‘Never heard of him. He's got something in his back pocket.'

The MP with free hands reached behind me and withdrew the spanner. He slapped it against his palm.

‘What's an actor need with a spanner at this time of night?'

I felt my temperature rise into the dangerous region of high dudgeon. I am conscious of the fact that I have a tendency towards pomposity when I reach dudgeon heights. I was, however, unable to help myself.

‘You have no jurisdictional rights to lay a hand on me, let alone search me, or ask questions, the answers to which are none of your business.'

‘Oh, but pimps and their hookers plying their trade
are
our business. Aussie clap is just the same as any other sort of clap, and we don't want our boys crawling with it. So maybe you'd like to tell us what you and your girlfriend are doing here at this time of night — with a spanner.'

‘We are standing on Australian territory. I know for a fact that you've gone way outside your legal authority. You've assaulted a civilian, and I'm under no obligation to answer any of your questions.'

The MP holding my arms leaned in once again close to my ear. ‘Is that right? You know all the jargon, don't you? Sounds like you've been in this position before. I think we need to take you inside, sit you down, and find out a lot more about you — and don't worry, bud, we'll get the local boys onto you quick enough. I presume your girlfriend is getting slammed up against a fence even as we speak. Knee-trembler? That's what you call it, right? How much does she charge?'

I don't know why — I think, perhaps, to shame him — but I said, ‘The woman who was with me is my sister.'

‘Jesus Christ! You run your own fucking sister?'

To underline his disgust, the soldier in front of me delivered a nausea-inducing blow to my stomach. I was sick all over his boots, which did nothing to lighten his mood. He wiped his boots on my trousers, and pushed his torch painfully under my chin.

‘Maybe I should rearrange your face. If you really are an actor, that'd be a real shame, wouldn't it?'

He tapped the rim of his heavy torch on the bridge of my nose.

‘It wouldn't take much to flatten that, would it?'

Both of them laughed, as if the repetition of the rhetorical question was a witticism. He tapped a little harder, and I thought he was working up to a crushing blow. I was a in a state of shock, and said nothing. My body felt numb from the neck down, and all thoughts of Brian had flown.

‘Let's get this asshole inside,' said the MP behind me, and twisted one arm up and across my back so that it sent an agonising bolt of pain through my body. With one hand now free, he used it to push me forward.

‘He's probably pissed himself,' said the soldier with the torch, and he ran the beam across my groin.

‘No, he hasn't. That's something at least.'

I was beyond protesting, and allowed myself to be manhandled through the front gate of Camp Pell and into a building just inside its perimeter. This was, I presumed, the guardhouse. I was taken to a room, bare except for a table and a few chairs. It stank of stale coffee, cigarette smoke, and sweat. I was pushed into a chair, and got my first look at the two brutish MPs. Both of them were younger than I was, which increased the resentment I was feeling. Having delivered me, they lost interest. One of them said, ‘You look like someone in the movies. I can't put my finger on it.'

‘Marie Dressler,' said the other one, and they left the room, laughing.

I was alone for ten minutes. This didn't seem like a strategy, but more like something administrative was taking place, something to accommodate the fact that two American soldiers had illegally detained and assaulted an Australian civilian. I supposed, given their belief that I was a pimp, there were protocols in place to cover their treatment of me. I'd be handed over to the local police, who'd take the credit for arresting yet another hoodlum who made a living from the immoral earnings of women. I knew I was in no danger of that happening, and I began to worry about Brian. What would he think when he couldn't find me? I hoped he'd have enough common sense to realise that something had gone wrong, and that he'd return to Mother's house rather than attempt some sort of heroic, solo expedition. The small, mean part of me was conscious that I didn't want Brian taking all the credit for bringing Albert Taylor in.

I touched the bridge of my nose gingerly. It was tender from the rat-a-tat of that bloody torch. The last thing I needed was another bruise on my face. Then it occurred to me that my identification papers hadn't been returned, and I checked my wallet to confirm that this was true. This caused a flurry of panic to run through me. Fortunately, my growing public profile would protect me from the random intrusions of Manpower. I felt vulnerable without my papers, however.

A man in civilian clothes came into the room. He was wearing a Dedman suit, so I guessed he was a representative of the lower rungs of Australian government administration. I hadn't seen much evidence that people higher up the bureaucratic chain bothered following John Dedman's strictures on clothing.

He was a dark-haired man, and dark-skinned, and I wouldn't have been surprised to hear a Welsh or Irish accent issue from his mouth. His Celtic heritage was at least a generation behind him, though, because he had an extravagantly broad Australian accent, similar to the accents I'd heard in remote corners of Queensland and the Northern Territory. The fact that he didn't smell of horse sweat and saddle leather might have been due to a recent bath. He sat opposite me.

He handed me my identification papers and said, ‘Mr Power, what a pleasure to meet you.'

‘And you are?'

‘Steven Morecombe. I'm a liaison wallah here at Camp Pell. Sometimes our American friends need a bit of help when dealing with the general public. They can be a little, umm … enthusiastic.'

He smiled as if this was all just a ghastly misunderstanding.

‘The two blokes who brought you in are sorry they mistook you for a pimp. They said as much to me as soon as I'd looked at your papers.'

‘Perhaps they could say as much to me.'

Steven Morecombe chuckled pleasantly — he thought.

‘I don't think we need to strain the friendship by hauling them in here and demanding a formal apology, do you? After all, no harm done in the end, was there?'

‘I was manhandled, punched, and threatened with a torch.'

Morecombe ignored this as if it was of no consequence.

‘You were with your sister, apparently. She must be concerned about what's happened to you. We should step outside and see if we can find her.'

I couldn't tell from Morecombe's bland, flat tone whether he was expressing genuine concern, or whether he was being facetious and suspected that whoever the woman was, she wasn't a close relation. How very wrong he was. It was imperative that he be denied the surprise of discovering his error.

‘She will have gone home,' I said, ‘and I'd certainly appreciate being allowed to follow suit. I'm not happy about being roughed up by those two thugs.'

‘Of course not, Mr Power. They're both religious blokes who have an understandable horror of men who sell women for sex. I believe they call it righteous anger.'

I was now sure Morecombe was being mischievous, and would have liked to take him down a peg or two, but Brian's whereabouts and safety were pressing. I played along with Morecombe to the extent that I asked him to make my displeasure known to the relevant authorities, and that on this occasion I'd be satisfied with that.