The War Widow Read online

  When Sam finally took a step back the man bolted.

  Moretti. Vincenzo Moretti sent them.

  A group of people appeared at the mouth of the alley, perhaps also coming from the auction if their finery was anything to go by. They watched the man running away, puzzled. Sam walked over to Billie, his aquamarine eyes a bit wild. ‘Geez. I didn’t see them, Billie. I’m so sorry.’ He looked her up and down and seemed not to like what he saw. ‘Oh geez.’

  ‘I didn’t either. Never mind, it wasn’t a total loss. But let’s get out of here before those people wonder what we’ve been up to.’

  Sam opened the car door for her and she slid inside, sore and dishevelled. She’d sure feel that in the morning. And that stocking was beyond repair. A shame. ‘Unless you have good reason to protest, I’m taking you for a drink at my flat,’ Billie said. ‘Frankly, I need one desperately and I don’t drink alone. And I don’t feel in a fit state to be seen publicly in these clothes. Any protest?’

  ‘That’s not a real question, is it?’ Sam replied, and started his car.

  What a day it has been, Billie thought, as she sank back into the passenger seat and willed her heart to slow to a more normal pace. She had woken to unexpected deceased company, had a pair of her mother’s valuable earrings stolen, faked a party girl persona for the benefit of a couple of police officers, spent an afternoon among Sydney’s most wealthy and been set upon by thugs in an Eastern Suburbs back alley. The morgue would be next on her dance card, neatly book-ending her Sunday with corpses. Even by Billie’s standards, this combination was something memorable, particularly now there were no longer shells falling. And she’d thought the world had become less violent.

  * * *

  ‘Your flat is real beaut,’ Sam remarked, standing like a soldier at the window of Billie’s living room and looking down over the Moreton Bay fig trees towards the water. The sun was setting, and it gave him a soft golden halo and illuminated his silhouette down to his waist. They had reached Billie’s place without anyone else trying to kill them or warn them off, but the adrenaline from their encounter in the alley had not yet subsided.

  ‘I’ve not seen that kind of excitement since . . .’ Sam’s voice trailed off.

  ‘Tobruk?’ Billie suggested.

  Sam nodded. ‘Yes. And they didn’t have anyone like you there.’

  The encounter seemed to have affected them in a similar way: their faces were flushed, their cheeks glowing, their eyes alight with excitement. Billie felt acutely alive as she walked over to her walnut Art Deco bar cabinet and cast a look back at her assistant’s haloed form. Her breath caught in her throat. Sam had been very impressive in that alley. Very bloody impressive. He’d suggested that he should be the one to get the drinks for them, as seemed to be his way, but he was a guest and she couldn’t have that. This wasn’t the office. Sam had done quite enough already in the service of their professional work, and his day was not yet over. It was quite possible the worst was yet to come. The state of Con Zervos’s remains would not have improved over the last few hours.

  A day of bad luck.

  ‘What would you like?’ she asked her assistant and bent to open the cabinet’s lower set of doors, one of which was sticking slightly. Yes, her ribs were going to bruise, she could feel it. Masking a wince, she saw that she still had some port, a good scotch whisky, her mother’s favourite sherry, and a couple of bottles of wine.

  ‘Whatever you’re having,’ Sam said cautiously, still at the window. ‘Perhaps just one drink . . .’

  ‘Yes, you have a big night ahead. This will ease the way. Scotch on the rocks? I have a good Dewar’s White Label.’

  ‘On the rocks? Certainly.’ Sam thanked her, seeming impressed. He waited uncomfortably, looking at the glowing treetops, his large, scarred hands clasped behind his back. How bad was his left hand beneath that glove? Billie wondered. Even with prosthetic fingers, he’d managed those two men exceedingly well. She hoped the effort hadn’t damaged his hand further.

  ‘Are you injured?’ she inquired. He might have been masking discomfort even more than she was. ‘That kidney punch looked ugly. And your hand . . .’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Good. We’re both fine then,’ she declared, pulling the bottle of scotch up on to the bar. ‘My stocking was the only real casualty,’ she added with a light-hearted smile, but when she looked down at her legs she frowned. She hadn’t the energy to take them off yet, nor her torn dress, and being thrust into this close proximity with Sam in her own place suddenly struck her as more intimate than intended. There was something in the air, some lack of ease that was not a usual mark of their time together. Maybe they shouldn’t have danced. And now this reminded her of how long it had been since she’d last entertained, and how long it had been since she’d had a man in her flat – well, one who was alive at the time. That last male visitor would likely have been her father, in fact. Yes. It had been him, before she’d left for Europe, before he’d fallen ill. Having her strapping young assistant here threw him into a different light, and perhaps he felt that unexpected shift too, as he seemed uncharacteristically stiff. No, she reflected, now was not the time to announce that she was going to slip into something more comfortable. She wanted to get out of her torn things, but that could wait until after his departure. A drink was what was needed. A good, medicinal drink to get the taste of adrenaline out of her mouth and work the smell of death out of her nostrils.

  ‘Please take a seat and relax,’ Billie urged, grabbing a couple of her nicer crystal glasses from the cabinet and moving off to fetch some ice chips from the kitchen. ‘I know you have a date tonight. I promise I won’t keep you,’ she called back, and when he turned towards her she thought she caught a slight blush on his cheeks.

  She took her sharp ice pick from a drawer and chipped off enough ice to comfortably fill the two crystal glasses.

  ‘Can I help?’ Sam called from the next room and she assured him she was fine. She returned to the living room and saw that he was sitting as instructed. The whisky poured beautifully over the fresh, clear ice and crackled as it settled into the glasses. She handed one to Sam and sat down, careful to leave distance between them.

  ‘Thank you. I wouldn’t have liked to have come home alone after that,’ Billie said. She held up her glass. ‘Here’s to getting through this day. May it end soon and never be repeated.’

  ‘Here’s to getting through today,’ Sam returned, locking eyes with her. They clinked glasses, looked away and sipped. ‘And last night,’ he added.

  ‘Indeed.’

  The whisky burned satisfyingly, with a hint of sweetness and peat smoke behind the fire. She had fancied she could taste her attackers’ sweat and smell it in her nostrils and in one strong swig the sensation was blissfully obliterated. The burn settled all the way down into her stomach. She took a deep breath and her shoulders seemed to drop a full two inches.

  ‘You looked good out there, Sam,’ Billie said. ‘I’m impressed. Hell, I think those thugs were impressed too.’ He seemed to blush again, cradling his drink. ‘Well done, good man,’ she said, raising her glass and taking another sip. She didn’t need to ask him where he’d learned to fight like that. He’d probably had plenty of opportunities to learn in country New South Wales, and then in Tobruk. He was a man you wanted on your side in the trenches, that much was certain.

  ‘It was nothing,’ he said dismissively. ‘You were pretty impressive yourself.’ He raised his glass to his lips and widened his eyes as if to punctuate his point.

  ‘It wasn’t my first rodeo,’ she explained a bit blithely, and her guest choked a little on his whisky. ‘Though I must say, Sydney has changed a lot since before I went away.’

  When she was in Europe for all those years she’d fondly recalled Australia as peaceful and safe, and she supposed it was, relative to occupied territories and front lines. But then it might also have been the effect of the rose-coloured glasses one classically dons
when pining for a missed home. What had Johannes Hofer called it? Nostalgia, or ‘severe homesickness considered as a disease’, from the Greek álgos – pain, grief – and nóstos – homecoming. Nostalgia was thought to be a disease of soldiers fighting away from home, but it had proved a disease of young women war reporters, too, she’d found – if ‘disease’ was really the right way to view it. She’d missed Australia terribly in the end. After all her father had shown her of Sydney’s underworld when she was younger, she hadn’t been so naïve, and she wasn’t easily shocked, exactly, but some fundamental things seemed to have worsened with the war. There seemed to be a dangerous desperation about.

  ‘I didn’t know about your Colt,’ Sam remarked.

  ‘I rarely leave the house without it these days,’ Billie confided. ‘Can’t remember when I started doing that.’

  It wasn’t right after she returned from Europe, where she’d seen enough of guns and their deadly effects to last several lifetimes, but as the business had become more intense she’d started keeping her sidearm with her with some frequency, and she didn’t feel the need to defend that decision, particularly after the day’s events. Her instincts had been right, after all. That gun, unfired, had helped them in the alley. They were outnumbered four to two. If Sam asked for an explanation about why a ‘lady’ packed heat, as some men tended to, she’d not like it. She doubted the male PIs were asked about such choices. Thankfully Sam seemed to accept her wisdom when it came to her own personal security. He didn’t say a word.

  She sipped her drink and gazed towards the window. ‘You have a piece?’ she asked him after a stretch of silence.

  ‘I do,’ he said to her. ‘It’s a .38. Has a long barrel, though. I’ve not been wearing it to work as a habit.’

  ‘I think you might want to get into the habit of wearing it for the next little while, Sam, just until we find out what’s going on,’ she said. ‘It’s licensed and in good working order?’

  He nodded.

  ‘A revolver. Good,’ she added. If you happened to be wounded in the hand or arm, it would be a bugger to load a pistol. A revolver, like Sam had, was safer to carry around loaded, and easier to load and fire with one good hand. A good choice for him, all things considered. ‘How long is the barrel?’

  ‘Six inches,’ he said.

  A farm gun, not really for concealment, Billie thought. Guns like that were not usually aimed at humans, but at ill-fated animals. It would not be subtle under a jacket, but Sam was clearly comfortable with it and it was unwise to introduce new weapons just before battle. Four men had brought a knife fight to them in that alley, and you didn’t want to get caught bringing a knife to a gun fight, if that was where they took things next.

  ‘Billie . . . I’m so sorry about what happened in the alley. I should have spotted them,’ Sam said, his eyes wide with apology. ‘I hold myself responsible.’

  ‘Sam, neither of us saw them,’ she stressed. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  Billie raised her glass, took a sip, felt it burn. She locked eyes with her assistant again for a moment. He was solid, that Sam. So solid. It wasn’t just his size or his ability to toss a man around like a rag doll, either. He appeared entirely unfazed by what she was asking him – to pack a gun. To dispose of a body. She was beginning to think he was one in a million. She looked away and sat back in the couch. ‘And it was the work of Vincenzo Moretti,’ she mused.

  Sam leaned forward, thinking, holding his glass tightly, frowning. ‘Might explain why he was at The Dancers last night.’

  Billie could not have been more shocked by this revelation. ‘What do you mean?’ She put her glass down too suddenly on the side table, and the amber liquid nearly washed over the rim. ‘What do you mean: he was at The Dancers?’

  ‘He was there. I told you.’ Now the memory emerged, vaguely. Sam had said something about an Italian. They’d got tied up in some pointless conversation about prisoners of war and civilians and the like.

  ‘It was Vincenzo Moretti you saw? Why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘I did say so,’ Sam protested.

  ‘You said you saw an Italian. Not all Italians are Vincenzo Moretti.’

  In Moretti’s case all distrust and animosity were certainly warranted. If the dealings of Georges Boucher Auction House were wrapped up with Vincenzo Moretti somehow, that brought it down several pegs too, in Billie’s eyes. Something always smelled bad when he was around, and that display in the alley was just the sort of shoddy parting committee he’d organise. If he was at The Dancers he could have been the one who’d spiked her drink, come to think of it. If someone was fast enough and slimy enough they could have spiked it. And in a high-class joint like The Dancers. How galling. And the doorman had ended up staring at death in his own room after work. Beneath all that glitz, the place was rotten. Wasn’t that always the way.

  Blasted Moretti. ‘He’s been tailing me. I didn’t figure it out until I saw him outside this morning. One of the cops who came, a Constable Dennison, knew he was there, I think. I think it was Moretti at the Strand Arcade too. He’s been searching me out all over town,’ she said, the realisation hitting her.

  ‘Bloody Moretti couldn’t find a grand piano in a one-roomed house,’ Sam snipped.

  ‘Yes, he is rather an idiot,’ Billie agreed. ‘But a dangerous one.’

  More dangerous to her than she’d reckoned. Moretti hadn’t faced them himself, of course. He’d sent some low-rent thugs for the job. She almost felt sorry for them. Almost. No, Moretti didn’t think much of her, that was evident. What would he make of the story his rent-a-beating boys returned with? Was Moretti behind the dead body switch? Were the two things related? Who was his client? And where was Georges Boucher in all this? Was he the one giving orders, footing the bill? Or was this personal somehow? What would make Moretti go this far?

  ‘I didn’t like that answer about the boy,’ Billie added.

  Sam looked up.

  ‘It’s too late for him. I wonder what he meant by that?’

  ‘You don’t think . . . ?’

  ‘That Adin Brown is dead? Perhaps. I rather hope not.’ Billie frowned deeply. ‘When’s your date?’ she asked, breaking from her darker ruminations and looking at her wrist watch. Her assistant had the unpleasant task of disposing of Con Zervos beforehand. The sun had set and now the world outside her window was nearly dark. Soon it would be time.

  ‘I’ll cancel,’ he replied.

  ‘No. Don’t. Please. I mean, if you can manage it. It would be better for you to go about things as normal after . . .’ After disposing of the body. ‘You should try to take your mind off things tonight. I really do appreciate all you’ve done. I hope you aren’t too sore tomorrow.’ He had a few reasons to feel that way.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m worried about you, though.’

  ‘Well, I can’t have that, Sam. I can take care of myself. You’ll have to trust me there.’ The way he’d looked at her with her gun trained on two terrified men told her he was starting to get the idea. ‘Thanks for joining me for a drink. And thank you for what you’ll do tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow at the office, yes? You’re not thinking twice about the job, are you? I’d understand if you were.’

  ‘What?’ He looked almost hurt. ‘No way, Billie. You’ve got me. If you want me.’

  She let that sink in.

  ‘I’ll do what I have to, and then I’ll go out if that’s best. You watch your back, okay?’ he added.

  Billie thrust her whisky forward again and they clinked a second time. They drained their glasses and, with a somewhat less awkward exchange, parted ways. She shut the door behind him and paused. What a day. Billie peeled off her stockings and dress. She should have been positively shattered by the day that was, she reflected, particularly following such a disturbed night, but that electricity seemed to be running over all of her nerves again. There were too many unanswered questions to simply leave it be for the evening, even for something as restoring as rest. Her body needed some
tending to with soap and arnica and perhaps another restoring glass of that good scotch, even if she did have to drink it alone. It was medicinal after all. Then she had to go out too.

  Tonight she would visit the death house.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Billie ventured to Circular Quay West and stepped into the shadows of the dark-brick and sandstone trimmed arches of the morgue on Mill Lane. The night was heavy and warm. It was after midnight.

  She was overdue to visit Sydney City Morgue for this case, though the case itself seemed to have been keeping her from whatever it held within its walls. She sincerely hoped the missing boy, Adin Brown, would not be waiting on a slab as an unidentified guest, a tragic end to a calamitous day, sealing her latest case with a sad resolution on top of the growing violence it seemed to spawn. No, she hoped she wouldn’t find him here, for his family’s sake, but she couldn’t keep away no matter how battered she felt. In missing persons cases, such visits had become routine for her, and now, with the words of the meat-faced thug, she had another reason to be there, a reason she could not possibly have anticipated on Friday afternoon when Nettie Brown had first walked through the door of her office with a seemingly simple case of a runaway teenage son. The events that had unfolded since had made Billie restless in her bones and anxious for answers. Sleep seemed far away.

  Billie paused, deep in thought, absentmindedly rubbing the bruise on her ribcage through the fabric of her dark clothing.

  What did Con have to tell me that was worth killing him over?

  Why is Moretti tailing me? And why the thugs outside the auction house?

  Is he the one who spiked my drink? Did he kill Con? Why? For whom?

  The many puzzle pieces had not come together yet, not by a long shot, but a couple of things were certain – foul play, and a strong desire to keep her away from the case.

  Billie leaned against a sandstone arch. The facilities inside the city’s morgue were basic, with a receiving room, the main morgue, a post-mortem room and a small laboratory. It was considered a less than hygienic space – notoriously so. During the grave diggers’ strike of Christmas 1944, the place had been overflowing with ‘stinking dead bodies’, according to witnesses. Billie believed it. Two years on, the city morgue still lacked refrigeration and anything approaching adequate space, though she understood there were plans for an upgrade. Though still cramped, things here were, at least, an improvement on the pre-war setup at the morgue that rather unfortunately had allowed the guests aboard visiting cruise ships coming in and out of Sydney Harbour to see into the building and the bodies stacked there. Not good for tourism, to be sure.