The War Widow Read online

  Sam nodded and Billie held on to his arm with imitation intimacy.

  They made their way through the portal to a plush emerald-coloured carpeted staircase that led to the next level. Sam stayed close at Billie’s side as they made their way past the wordless doormen guarding the entry to the main floor. The doormen bowed slightly and white-gloved hands pushed open the white-and-gold doors in well-trained unison, the ballroom opening up before them, almost blindingly white for a moment compared to the darkness of the stairway.

  Billie sensed Sam’s awe as they entered.

  The Dancers was one of those joints that aimed to feel ‘international’, and mostly succeeded. The walls were covered with illuminated murals of glamorous cities – Paris, Cairo, Athens – and everything from the waiters’ crisp white bow-ties and dinner jackets to the palm motifs of the carpet, crockery and napery conspired to give patrons the impression they were on an expensive holiday.

  There was a slightly American feel about the place, Billie thought, not for the first time. It had probably been designed to please the US troops who’d come here with their money after ’41. It wasn’t a place a lot of Aussie diggers could afford, and the clientele these days seemed mostly to be the types who were too well connected to have seen a front line – judges, barristers, men and women of leisure and anyone they wanted to impress. The Dancers had a reputation for catering to wealthy gentlemen on the other side of the law too, including those who claimed to be ‘legitimate businessmen’ despite notorious reputations. The club gave the impression of being exclusive, though as far as Billie could tell that meant they’d let in anyone with enough cash, fame or glamour to make the place look good. If you dressed well you could get in, but if you behaved badly or didn’t like buying drinks you wouldn’t stay long. Little wonder Adin and Maurice never made it past the second set of doors. If she could find out just why this place was of such interest to the missing boy, and imbibe a good champagne cocktail in the process, it would be an evening well spent.

  They made their way past the circular dance floor, which was dotted with extravagantly adorned patrons, and came to the long bar on the other side. It seemed The Dancers, despite the name, was not really the place to carve up the dance floor. This was a place for expensive swaying, Billie decided. Or at least it was now that the war had done its work and trimmed down the customer base. She turned her back on the crowd and slid onto a stool at the gleaming bar, her silk dress settling smoothly around her hips and long legs. A crisply uniformed bartender with one of those curiously old–young faces looked to Sam for their order.

  ‘Champagne cocktail, please,’ Billie cut in before Sam could speak. The bartender tilted his head, taken by surprise, though not at all put out by her ordering her own drink.

  ‘Whatever the lady wants, the lady shall have. And for the gentleman?’

  ‘I’ll have a planter’s punch,’ Sam said.

  ‘Oooh, getting adventurous,’ Billie teased her assistant quietly as the bartender moved away to get the ingredients he’d need.

  ‘I have had a cocktail or two, you should know,’ Sam said, slightly defensive.

  She grinned mischievously. Sam was more of a beer kind of guy, but he was acting the part well enough tonight. Swivelling around on their stools, they turned their backs to the bar for a moment to take in the room from their new vantage point. The Dancers had the round dance floor as its focus, with white-clothed circular tables all around it, the majority of them taken. There was a raised stage for live bands along part of one wall to their right, which might be two musicians deep, but the focus was that floor, and when an act came on they walked out there, lit by a spotlight to captivate the room. Billie had seen a show here at the start of the year. It was top shelf.

  Billie surveyed the tables. The ones closer to the middle were especially exclusive. She recognised two judges at one such table. Grey-haired and sitting in that puffed-up way older gentlemen sometimes did, they were very familiar, but she couldn’t quite get their names to surface. Not connected with any of her recent cases, thankfully, though her mother would likely know them.

  The maître d’ was fussing over another central table, and drew Billie’s eye. Champagne flowed there. The real French drop, no pretenders. A well-fed and smooth customer in tails – the only tails Billie had seen so far in the joint – was brandishing a small, velvet-covered box. On one side of him a lean man wore summer whites, like Sam, but would look more at home in denim and an Akubra, astride a horse. His face was deeply lined, tanned and weathered, as if being indoors was a habit he avoided. He seemed relaxed, and he appraised the box with faint interest, holding his coupe glass in a rough hand that almost engulfed it. Beside him was a blonde woman with a somewhat fussy veil and flower combination on her head, reminiscent of the top of a wedding cake. She wore a glass-eyed fox fur over an apricot gown and looked positively taken with whatever was in the rotund man’s box. Gems, Billie guessed. The blonde leaned over to the grazier type and said something in his ear. He smiled languidly. A large, glittering ring flashed on her finger. A well-to-do country couple come to town for some solid spending, Billie decided.

  Across from the assumed grazier, and on the other side of the tails-wearing, rosy-cheeked gentleman, was his absolute opposite: a tall, slender, pale man with almost iridescent skin and a snow-white head of hair that his body and neck looked a touch too young for. Billie caught the side of his face, and it looked strange, pulled. An honourable war wound, no doubt. A skin graft for airman’s burn, she speculated, thinking of the lift operator, John Wilson. Those damned planes had a habit of catching fire on a whim. Perhaps he was one of the lucky, unlucky ones who’d made up Dr Archibald McIndoe’s Guinea Pig Club in Sussex? Maybe it was a plastic job. She’d seen many of those since 1945. Wars provided surgeons with an influx of test subjects and much had changed since the Great War. What a man could survive these days was remarkable. The pale man sat stiffly and sipped from his glass, holding it gently at the base in the French way, so the champagne would not warm in his hand. Beside him a fifth figure padded out the small table, but seemed not to belong. It was a young brunette woman in a violet couture number. Though beautiful, the clothing had the effect of a dress-up. Had that ravishing dress been made for someone else? Billie wondered what her story was. She sat among this interesting circle of characters, but looked at none of them, appearing almost bored and wishing she was elsewhere.

  ‘If you were trying to blend in, you shouldn’t have worn that dress,’ Sam commented quietly, pulling Billie’s attention back to him.

  She turned swiftly, eyebrow arched. ‘I say, you can be an impudent young man,’ she scolded playfully. ‘Except that you may be right. Ella said the same.’ A few heads at the closer tables were craning their way, possibly drawn to that ruby red. It was better than the beaded option, though. She still felt sure about that.

  ‘I didn’t mean—’ Sam began sheepishly, and Billie waved her hand as if to change the subject, their drinks arriving just in time to close the conversation. They were still figuring each other out, she and her secretary-cum-assistant. He couldn’t always tell when she was teasing.

  ‘Cheers,’ she said to the barman, and swivelled back to her partner. ‘Here’s to a successful case.’

  She and Sam clinked glasses, her coupe making a dainty tinkle against his larger, heavier glass. She took a delicate sip of her cocktail, which went down a treat, and soon most of it was gone, before Sam was halfway through his beverage. He raised an eyebrow at her.

  ‘Where’d you learn to drink like that?’

  Billie ignored the question, pushing her empty glass aside. ‘I’m going back downstairs. You hold up the bar, Sam. If I don’t come back in fifteen minutes, come and save me, hey?’

  He gave her a look, as if to say ‘You? Need saving?’ and stayed put as she slipped away through the ballroom and down the staircase, a wisp of satiny red drawing the eyes of staff and patrons. In moments she emerged on Victory Lane and took a dee
p breath of the humid night air, the cocktail providing a pleasant buzz. Here the doormen were helping people out of their cars and letting them in through the beautiful Art Deco doors. She leaned against a brick wall and observed the new arrivals. Yes, everyone let into the place looked extremely well heeled. What had Adin and Maurice been thinking?

  ‘Miss? May I help you?’

  ‘I just need some air,’ Billie said and pulled her slim cigarette case from her handbag. The doorman stepped forward with a lighter. Sure enough he was as lean as a greyhound, with a face almost as long, just as Maurice had described. She removed a fag, tapped the case shut and placed the cigarette between her red lips. He lit it in a polished move.

  ‘Thank you,’ Billie said, looking up to make eye contact, sure she had found the right man and the right moment for her purposes. There was a lull in the arrivals.

  ‘Pleasure,’ he said, locking his deep brown eyes with her green and blue ones.

  She reached out with her gloved hand and slid a few shillings into his. He seemed to appreciate the gesture. Tips would be generous at The Dancers, and she seemed to have picked the right amount. In seconds the tip was secreted in his coat, another well-practised move. He’d barely broken eye contact. ‘You were here last weekend?’ she asked casually, smiling that professional, disarming smile.

  ‘Always am, miss. Six nights a week,’ he responded cheerfully.

  ‘Isn’t that every night they’re open here?’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ he confirmed. His smile made deep lines in his lean young face. ‘I didn’t see you here.’

  ‘Do you remember a young man, curly hair, perhaps out of his depth, about seventeen?’ Billie asked. ‘He spoke with you, as I understand it. His name is Adin.’

  At this the doorman stiffened. The smile dropped. ‘I couldn’t say. I meet a lot of people,’ he replied cautiously.

  ‘Oh, I think you could say. You’d remember this one. He couldn’t get in.’ She smiled some more and took a drag of her cigarette.

  The doorman shifted uneasily. ‘We don’t allow minors in the club, miss.’

  ‘Precisely.’ She took another puff and let the smoke drift in the night air. The lane was still quiet, the comings and goings of patrons conveniently halted for the moment. ‘He spoke with you. I’d be interested in what was said,’ she pressed and handed him a card. He read it over. It could be that he flushed a little, though it was hard to tell under the lighting of the entryway. She wondered why he was so cagey. If there was nothing to it, he wouldn’t respond like this. Could it be that Maurice had given her a good lead?

  A shilling was in her hand, but he hesitated this time. ‘I’d like to help you, miss, but I don’t recall,’ he said in a flat tone, looking away. But he was agitated. He could be swayed.

  Sure you don’t, she thought. It wasn’t the right moment to show him the photograph. This wasn’t about that. He recalled. He recalled the boy well. ‘I can perhaps . . .’ she began, but then his focus shifted suddenly. Billie followed his eyes. A man stepped through the front doors and looked at him; it was the round-faced man from the table she’d been watching, and though he only appeared for a moment the doorman’s back went as straight as a board. He moved away from Billie and walked into the club, but not before their eyes met again.

  He knew something. And she could get it, but not tonight.

  Recognising temporary defeat, Billie stubbed out her cigarette and sashayed up the staircase to the small ballroom, feeling eyes on her once more. The staff opened the doors for her again with their white gloves and she spotted Sam still at the bar, surveying the room over a fresh, hefty glass. Three shillings for, on the face of it, a whole lot of nothing. She’d have to do better than that if she hoped to stay afloat. Still, there was something to it, the little woman in her gut told her. The doorman had looked scared when the man emerged. He must have been afraid of losing his job, Billie thought. She’d make another pass at it, when things cooled down a little. He’d tell her something, she felt sure.

  ‘Sam, are you all right to come into the office at ten tomorrow?’ Billie asked, sliding in next to her assistant once more. She looked at her thin gold watch with the tiny mother-of-pearl face. It was not quite eleven-thirty, not so late by her standards, but she had to get to the morgue soon if she wanted to get any sleep at all. ‘I’ll have a chore for you,’ she told him. It wouldn’t make for the most pleasant Saturday morning, but it wouldn’t be difficult or dangerous.

  He nodded. ‘Of course. Ten it is. You don’t need me earlier? But let me drive you home. It’s late.’ She paused, deliberating. ‘Ah, the death house,’ he added, remembering. ‘Let me drive you there, at least.’

  She considered his proposal. She had a small gift set aside for Mr Benny, who would be working at the morgue, but it was back at the office. She didn’t mind being overdressed, but her silk gown, not to mention the sapphires, was perhaps not best for a visit to Circular Quay West, where the City Morgue was located. Or maybe it was the thought of her fabric-soled shoes on those less than clean floors that put her off. She’d need to walk back to the office for the gift and then go home to change before heading out again, or else ask Sam to drive her. It was all less than ideal, she had to admit.

  She screwed up her even features. ‘We won’t get much further tonight, but I want to come back here. Maybe our fellow will have calmed down a touch by then. I spoke with him but he’s a bit . . . nervous. How about we hit this place a touch earlier tomorrow, and I’ll bring what I need for the death house.’ She swivelled back towards the main floor. ‘I don’t think that’s where we’ll find this kid, anyway,’ she murmured under her breath.

  It was the little woman in her gut again. Adin Brown was not on a slab somewhere. It was going to be a lot more complicated than that.

  Chapter Seven

  He woke with a start as ice-cold water hit his sleeping face.

  In a flash the boy was scrambling to his feet, his body wet and crying out with suddenly recalled pain, and now tumbling over as something prevented him from standing upright. He fell forward helplessly and tried to reach out to stop himself but could not bring his hands forward. His shoulder and head hit a rug, barely softening his fall, and he briefly caught sight of wooden bed legs and two pairs of scuffed leather shoes before hands grabbed him by his bare shoulders and hauled him up again. Shaking now, he looked down and twisted around in a half crouch. To his horror he was naked, a long piece of rope connecting his wrists and ankles. This rope was the reason he could not stand fully upright.

  His eyes were clearing a little, his memory too, and he took the opportunity to look around him. It felt like it was very late at night, or perhaps early in the morning, but he could not see the sky, had not seen the outdoors for days, it seemed, but he could not be sure. Having been forced to strip, then grilled again, he had been sleeping on top of a creaking bed laid with unexpectedly fine sheets, in a small, luxuriously appointed room with wooden boards nailed across the window. A Persian rug was at his bare feet. An oil lamp had burned on a rustic table set with pretty objects. It was an odd arrangement and one he hadn’t been able to place. A knitted blanket had been on top of his freezing body and now it had slid to the floor. He could see his lean nakedness for the first time since the ordeal began, and what he saw was ruin. His stomach was coming up in dark bruises of maroon, where he now recalled he had been viciously kicked. There was raw skin where the ropes had rubbed him. He was humiliated in his nakedness before these men, though they seemed not to care. They kept their eyes averted, faces hard.

  To the boy’s surprise there was a bathtub sitting in the odd room, a claw-foot bathtub, and it was filled with water, water he hadn’t even heard running. Though he was eager for relief from his wounds, this bath was not inviting.

  ‘No . . . no . . . no . . .’

  His protests were ignored as he was lifted and carried towards it, struggling weakly. The one with the strange, hard voice and the smile like a knife blade was not ther
e, and the others, the hard-faced men, did not speak to him. They wore shabby suits and one had a flattened nose like a prizefighter and it occurred to him to fear the fact that he could see them clearly and they knew he could see them, and they seemed not to care. With a sobering jolt he was dumped in the water, and he cried out as he realised it was as cold as it had been in the bucket that woke him. His wrists were tied behind him and he sat on those, his scraped knees bent, his face and upper chest above the water. He watched as the rope at his ankles was tied to a bar across the tub and then he was alone, left that way in the cold water, confused and breathing hard.

  Time passed. How long, he could not say.

  In the low light he could see his body turning a marbled blue, where it was not already purpling with bruises. So cold, he thought. So cold. The room was odd. The bed. The bathtub. He scanned along the floor for anything he might try to crawl to, anything he might use to unbind himself. The objects on the little table, did they have sharp edges? Beyond the door there were footsteps, and he became still, listening. He heard talking. Was that the voice of a girl? Two girls, talking. He couldn’t make out what was said. And then there were heavy footsteps, and the voices fell silent. They were coming back – the men who had left him here. He tensed, unbearably vulnerable in that tub of cold water and afraid of what was to come.

  The hard-faced men entered the room. They were with the other one now, the man with the smile like a knife’s edge. His face, where he could make it out in the shadows, was hard and angled, as if carved from stone. He came in and took off a coat, as if he had been outside. One of the men took it reverently and disappeared. The man grabbed a wooden chair, pulled it up next to the tub and sat.