Empire Day Read online

  The sudden rumbling of a cart and the clip-clop of hooves on the road broke the silence. A middle-aged man whose baggy shorts revealed surprisingly muscular legs was hoisting a large block of ice from the cart and onto the large leather cape draped around his shoulders. Bending under the weight, he ran towards a semi several doors away. Curious to see what he was doing, Sala went outside.

  He saw her on his way back to the cart and stopped running. ‘Need some ice for the ice chest, missus?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Lots of people are getting them electric Silent Knights, but I reckon the good old ice chests do the job. Still, you can’t stop progress, can you?’

  She heard a harsh sound like a jackhammer and looked around but she couldn’t see anyone.

  He laughed at her puzzled expression. ‘That’s a kookaburra making that racket.’

  ‘Kookaburra,’ she repeated slowly.

  ‘It’s a bird, love. Some people think they’re laughing at us and they might be right. Just got here, did ya? Don’t worry, you’ll soon learn the ropes.’

  She was still trying to figure out where the ropes were when he called out, ‘Cheerio’, picked up the reins, gave a low whistle and the Clydesdale trotted around the corner out of sight.

  Sala went back inside, her spirits a little lighter after her encounter with the ice man. She hung out Szymon’s well-cut serge jacket with the big lapels, laid out his trousers, which he always kept under the mattress to keep their creases, and placed the tan shoes with the white caps in the dark wardrobe whose doors creaked but didn’t close. She looked at her watch and wondered whether he’d get the job he’d gone for that morning.

  About two years before the war, an Australian businessman called Max Furstenberg had visited the textile factory where Szymon worked in Łód. Mr Furstenberg had travelled to the textile centre of Poland to learn how the factory operated because he planned to open a similar one in Sydney. The factory owner had asked Szymon to show the visitor around, and at the end of the visit Max had said, ‘If you ever come to Australia, I’ll give you a job.’ Szymon had laughed at the idea of going to Australia, but he’d never forgotten the offer.

  ‘Don’t forget that was eleven years ago,’ Sala had pointed out that morning. ‘How do you know he’ll still remember you?’

  But Szymon had had no doubt that the offer would still be open.

  She envied his energy and optimism. Unlike Szymon, she had no idea what kind of work she’d do here. She had been fourteen in 1939 and she’d assumed that she’d become a doctor, like her parents, but by the time the war finally ended, she had no parents, no sisters, no home and no future. With everyone gone, earning a living had been the last thing on her mind. Why go on living, that was the question. And now, three years later, she still hadn’t found the answer.

  Too restless to stay in the room with her dark thoughts, Sala wandered outside again. She was studying the geometric arrangement of the small mosaic tiles on the verandah when she heard a woman’s rapid footsteps coming down the street, and saw a head poking above a pile of coats and jackets. As the woman hurried past, a cherry-red jacket slipped from her grasp and fell onto the road.

  Sala ran out, picked it up and caught up with her, but as she held out the jacket, a check skirt slipped off the pile.

  ‘Cholera psia krew!’ the woman muttered.

  Hearing the Polish swearwords, Sala burst out laughing. ‘So you’re Polish too!’ she said.

  Eda Kotowicz was struggling to get a firm grip on her unwieldy bundle. ‘They usually pick the clothes up from my place, but the driver was sick today so they asked me to take them to the workshop in the Junction. I’ll never agree to do that again,’ she said.

  On an impulse, Sala said, ‘Give me some of those things. I’ll help you carry them.’

  As they set off side by side, they chattered in Polish, delighted to have found each other.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ Eda said. ‘After we drop off the clothes, I’ll show you the delicatessen where you can get rye bread, salami and cottage cheese. All the other shops sell white bread that tastes like cardboard, and cheese that tastes like soap. But I can’t find unsalted butter anywhere.’

  Near the corner, they came to a man with a big belly bulging under his white singlet. He was clipping his hedge with shears. Fascinated, Sala stopped to watch the deft way he neatened the edges until not a single leaf protruded above the rest, as though he’d used a ruler.

  He looked up and wiped his red face. ‘Lovely day today, ladies,’ he said. ‘How are yez?’ and without waiting for a reply, he resumed trimming his hedge.

  Eda gave a short laugh. ‘That’s Australia. People here are like children. Last week they lit a huge fire in the middle of the road and let off fireworks for hours. I got a terrible fright, and as usual my daughter thought I was being hysterical.’

  She sighed, and Sala shot her an inquiring glance, but Eda quickly changed the subject.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand Australians,’ she said. ‘They’re totally different from us.’

  Sala thought about her white-haired neighbour, the ice man, and the man with the shears. Maybe being different wasn’t such a bad thing.

  Chapter 5

  The Art Deco façades of the redbrick mansions in this part of Kings Cross gave no indication of the type of tenants who lived inside, Ted thought as he walked down Macleay Street. Once the homes of solid, established families, they’d been converted into apartments and now housed bohemian types who believed in free love, and callgirls who offered love for sale. There were rumours that behind these locked doors, satanic rituals, sex orgies and perversions involving whips, masks and chains took place. Ted had heard that the participants included artists, musicians and politicians, but as he entered the stately vestibule with its wood-panelled walls and outsized Grecian-style urn on an oak table, he wondered if the rumours were true.

  As he stepped into the wrought-iron lift cage and pressed the button for the second floor, he was already composing the lead of what would be his first crime story. He’d stumbled on the case by chance. Gus Thornton had sent him to the police station in Darlinghurst to collect some facts and figures about youth crime, which was one of Gus’s obsessions.

  Only that week a seventeen-year-old farmhand had bludgeoned a farmer and his wife to death with a hammer on a property near Parramatta; when questioned by police, the lad was quoted as saying, ‘I dunno why I done it. They was good to me an’ that. I just saw the hammer and somethink come over me.’

  That had set Gus off on one of his tirades about the loss of Christian values, the breakdown of law and order, the lack of discipline in the home and the growth of illiteracy.

  Speaking about the case, an Anglican minister had been quoted as saying, ‘This murder is the product of our violent age which has turned its back upon God.’

  Although Gus had little time for God’s self-appointed interpreters, he had no qualms about exploiting violence to sell newspapers, and he sent Ted to gather statistics for a series he planned to run about the dissolute youth of today.

  The police station was located around the corner from the neo-Grecian columns of the Central Criminal Court in Taylor Square, just down the road from the old sandstone building that had once housed Darlinghurst Gaol and its gallows, although no hangings had taken place there for the past forty-one years. As he passed the imposing arched entrance, Ted wished he could have interviewed the hangman to find out what it felt like to pull the lever that plunged someone into eternal blackness.

  As he walked along the quiet street, he almost tripped over a toothless wino sprawled in a doorway, mumbling to his empty bottle. There was no one else around, and nothing to suggest that not so long ago this old inner-city suburb with its rundown terrace houses had been part of ‘Razorhurst’, Sydney’s notorious crime district which was controlled by pimps, madams and razor-wielding thugs. But on this bright May morning it looked as innocent as a criminal spruced up for h
is day in court.

  A block further on, Ted ran up the three stone steps leading into the Darlinghurst Police Station. Inside, the slow-moving sergeant hitched his trousers up over his belly and gave Ted a look that said he had more important things to do than talk to rookie reporters. Then, hitching up his trousers again, he bent over his newspaper to study the race form.

  Pinned to the wooden noticeboard on the wall were so many notices about unsolved cases of rape and murder that they overlapped one another. Obviously more policemen were needed to deal with crime. Only the other day a woman near Wattle Street had received a cheque for two guineas from the police department for catching two burglars as they were breaking into her neighbour’s house.

  As Ted waited, the black bakelite telephone on the counter started to ring. Pretending to concentrate on the posters, Ted inched closer to listen, and from the sergeant’s comments he gathered that a woman had been shot in Kings Cross. The sergeant scribbled something on a notepad, tore off the slip of paper and disappeared out the back. Glancing around to make sure no one was looking, Ted pocketed the top sheet and hurried from the station.

  Out in the street he’d scanned the sergeant’s imprint and made out the address. Kings Cross was only a couple of tram stops away, and with a bit of luck he’d get there before the other reporters got to hear about the shooting.

  The door to the flat was slightly ajar. He pushed it open and stood in a dimly lit corridor whose walls were covered in silver paper splashed with large roses. He got as far as the doorway leading to the lounge room when a burly detective barred his way.

  Holding up his CIB warrant card, the detective barked, ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Jim Mitchell from Darlinghurst Police Station. Who the bloody hell are you?’

  The detective had the shoulders of a footballer and the belligerent expression of a bouncer in a strip club. Even the cigarette stuck to his lower lip looked menacing.

  Ted introduced himself and showed his press card.

  The detective’s bloated face seemed to swell above his collar as he shouted, ‘Clear off before I throw you out! This is a crime scene!’

  ‘Oh, come on, give me a break, this is my first job,’ Ted pleaded. ‘I’ll get the sack if I don’t get the story. Go on, tell me something about the victim and I’ll write such a glowing story about you that they’ll make you commissioner.’

  Just then Mitchell caught sight of his offsider emerging from the adjoining room. ‘Solved the crime, have you?’ he barked.

  ‘It was probably her last visitor,’ the young constable stammered. ‘There were two teacups, and there’s some tea in the pot.’

  ‘Thanks, Sherlock,’ Mitchell sneered. ‘I’d never have worked that one out.’

  While the detective was needling his colleague, Ted peered into the next room and was intrigued by its atmosphere of claustrophobic intimacy. He supposed that this was what they called a love nest. The plush winged armchairs facing the long couch, the heavy velvet drapes caught with tasselled cords, and the crimson wallpaper embossed with gold fleur-de-lis. The paintings on the walls showed women in lascivious poses that made Ted blush, though he couldn’t help sneaking glances at them.

  Then the breath got stuck in his throat. The dead woman looked as though she was about to pour tea from the silver pot on the table, except for the bright red stain on her white silk blouse and the way her head was slumped on her chest. There was blood on her hair, which fell forward over her face, part of which had been shot away. In her small right hand she still held a cigarette. On the table stood two empty cups with fluted gilt edges and sprays of country roses on the porcelain. The fine china was the only personal touch in the whole flat, and it touched him.

  He jumped when he heard the detective shouting, ‘You still here? Fuck off before I throw you down the bloody stairs!’

  Ted couldn’t get the case of the murdered callgirl out of his mind, and two days later he returned to the building. Glancing around to make sure that Detective Sergeant Mitchell wasn’t around, he rang the bell of the adjoining flat.

  The woman who opened the door wore a lacy black negligee which emphasised her pasty complexion. Ted guessed she was on the wrong side of thirty, maybe even older. Her fluffy hair looked blonde, but when she pushed it back from her face he saw the roots, like the black lining of a yellow coat.

  ‘Not bloody cops again!’ she groaned.

  Ted held up his press card. ‘I’m a reporter. I just want to ask you a few questions,’ he said quickly. ‘Off the record, if you like.’

  ‘Okay, but don’t quote me, love,’ the woman slurred, drawing the flimsy negligee around her flabby shoulders. ‘Scarlett had lots of visitors. That was her name. Scarlett O’Halloran. Lovely girl she was. Didn’t drink or swear.’

  ‘Any idea who might have killed her?’

  She shrugged. ‘Haven’t got a clue, with all the clients she had. Day and night they came, all different ones.’

  She tried to light her cigarette, but her fingers shook so much she had trouble getting the lighter to spark.

  ‘Want a whiskey, love?’ she asked, pouring herself a big slug from a cut-glass decanter. ‘I know you reporters like your grog.’

  She eyed him up and down, and gave a girlish giggle.

  ‘You’re a good-looker, with those broad shoulders and baby-blue eyes. Why don’t you take your jacket off and let Doris make you comfortable?’

  Ted’s face flamed with embarrassment as he declined her offer.

  Doris didn’t tell him much. She’d been asleep after a heavy night and hadn’t woken up until she heard the shot.

  ‘Made me jump, that did,’ she said. ‘At first I thought it was one of them double bungers they let off on Cracker Night, but then I remembered that was a few nights ago. You lose track of time in this kind of work.’ She gave him that sly look again. ‘Anyway, that’s when I got up and knocked on her door, but she didn’t answer so I went in. Poor Scarlett. I’ll never forget that sight as long as I live.’

  ‘How did you get in?’ he asked.

  ‘We always had each other’s keys. Just in case.’

  Her eyes slid appreciatively from the blue tie that matched his eyes, to the sharp crease in his trousers. ‘You look like one of them blokes in the ads for men’s suits,’ she said. ‘Sure you don’t want to slip off that jacket and let me help you relax?’

  He shook his head. ‘How long had Scarlett been living here?’

  Doris shrugged. ‘She was here when I came, that’d be three years ago now, but I dunno how long she was here before that.’

  ‘Did you know where she came from, or anything about her life before …’ He tried to think of a delicate way of saying ‘before she became a prostitute’. ‘Before she came here?’

  ‘Nah. We never talked about that. No point. This is where we ended up, and that was that.’

  He was at the front door when she began to cry with loud wheezy sobs. ‘The bastard! I hope they catch him and string him up. A lovely girl she was. Who would have wanted her dead?’

  Ted was wondering that himself as he walked down Macleay Street. It was one of those golden late-May mornings. The sky was a cloudless duck-egg blue, and it seemed as though winter had forgotten to arrive. The soft southern light lit up the feathery foliage of the gum trees and dappled the pavements. He could never understand why migrants complained that Australian trees were colourless. They just didn’t know how to look.

  He was walking past the California Café when a sign in the window caught his eye. Apple pies with pure cream. Most days his lunch consisted of a devon-and-pickle sandwich brought to work in a brown paper bag which he smoothed out, folded and took home again because paper was still scarce. But today he’d shot out without his sandwich, and the sign in the café window reminded him that it was lunchtime. Beneath the sign, printed in big capitals, were the words: FILLED WITH CREAM FROM OUR OWN COWS.

  Intrigued, he pushed the door open. Although the war had ended three years ago, fresh cream wa
s still rationed. The proprietor bustled around serving the customers, many of whom seemed to be foreigners, judging by the conversations.

  ‘What’s the story about the cream?’ Ted asked when the owner came to take his order.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ the man said, wiping his hands on his white apron. ‘You’d think it was still bloody wartime with all these food restrictions and rationing. The inspector came around a few weeks ago and wanted to fine me for breaking the law because we’re only allowed to use cream for butter and cheese. So I had to get a lawyer and go to court to prove that the cream I whipped for the pies came from my own cows. And then I had to produce receipts to show I’d bought them!’

  Ted made a note to pass on this bizarre bit of local news to the roundsman who wrote the Life’s Like That column. He ordered the apple pie and, feeling daring, ordered Vienna coffee instead of tea. He took a pack of Capstans from his pocket and lit up, listening to the four men in the banquette behind him as they shouted and interrupted one another. Ted wondered why New Australians were so impatient and loud. Although he couldn’t understand what they were saying, there was one word they kept repeating. It sounded like Bonnagilla. Perhaps it was the name of a town in their homeland, or a girl’s name.

  His thoughts drifted to the gorgeous girl who’d recently moved into Wattle Street with her parents. He’d only seen her once but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Tall and slender as a shaft of sunlight, with hair so pale that it was almost white, she had the most delicate features he’d ever seen. Ted was daydreaming about her as he got up to leave the café, but the men at the next table were still arguing about Bonnagilla.