The Port Fairy Murders Read Online Free

Lambert emerged from his office.
    ‘John Starling was found dead last night on his property.’
    Sergeant Reilly, who’d been fully briefed on recent and current investigations, asked, ‘Suspicious death, sir?’
    If Reilly had seen the expression that fleetingly distorted Helen Lord’s face, he’d have realised that the wheels had just fallen off his project to win her over. Reilly was a blow-in — although he’d blown in not long after her own elevation to Homicide — and she felt unreasonably proprietorial (she knew this) about the case that had left Joe Sable wounded and Lambert’s brother-in-law near death. Reilly had had nothing to do with this case, had experienced none of its horrors. How dare he presume to ask questions ahead of her?
    ‘There are no indications of violence to his body. The preliminary report suggests that he died of a heart attack; but, given who he was, and the threat issued last night by his son to Sergeant Sable, I think we need to go down to Warrnambool and work from there for a couple of days.’
    ‘Sergeant Sable was threatened?’ Helen Lord’s voice was as carefully modulated as she could manage. Her internal interrogator hurried to, ‘Why didn’t he telephone me?’ bypassing altogether the more rational, ‘Why would he telephone me?’
    ‘George Starling rang me last night from Warrnambool,’ Joe said, ‘and issued what amounted to a threat. “You should live every day as if it might be your last, because it might be.” That’s what he said, and I don’t think he was trying to impress me with some homespun philosophy of living.’
    ‘Did he call himself Fred?’
    Joe had come to realise that Helen Lord’s thought processes frequently matched, mirrored, or outran those of Inspector Lambert, so a part of him was unsurprised that she’d asked the question Joe was least prepared to answer. Unable to change the version of events he’d given to Lambert, he lied again.
    ‘No. He called himself George Starling.’
    Helen was watching his bruised face carefully, sympathetically, and she was shocked by the certainty that he was dissembling.
    ‘Why would he do that?’
    ‘Maybe he figured the game was up. I mean, he’s not stupid. He must have known we’d find out his real name.’
    ‘But he is stupid. How could he think that National Socialism was a good idea without a good dollop of stupidity?’
    Helen wanted to keep prodding, and Inspector Lambert was inclined to let her do so. He observed Joe with interest.
    ‘Why give us a free kick? Why not at least wait until he was sure his extra layer of anonymity had been breached?’
    Joe’s eyes darted to Lambert and back to Helen. He was going to brazen this out, despite feeling that his credibility was draining away.
    ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe he is stupid.’
    ‘I don’t think we should proceed with this investigation believing that George Starling is a stupid man,’ Lambert said. ‘That would be a very bad idea.’
    Sergeant Reilly wasn’t insensitive, or unobservant, and he felt keenly that a storm of some kind was blowing behind the measured calm of this exchange. It unsettled him, because he couldn’t determine its implications for him. For the moment, though, he was grateful to be out of the weather as it were.
    ‘You’re absolutely right, sir,’ Joe said. ‘I didn’t mean to …’
    Inspector Lambert raised his hand in a gesture that was both simple and brutal. Joe stopped speaking, and knew immediately that Lambert didn’t just suspect that he was lying — he knew . How hard would it have been to find the operator who put the trunk call through and ask her if she remembered the name of the person placing the call? ‘Fred,’ she would have said, because that was the name he’d given her. ‘I have a reverse-charge trunk call for Joe Sable from a Fred — no other name.’ Would the inspector go to the trouble of checking this? With a sickening recognition of Lambert’s distrust that this