A Time of Secrets (21 page)

He puffed at his cigarette, drawing deeply. When he’d nearly finished it, he used the butt to light the next one. He turned his head to blow smoke away from me, then gave me a sheepish grin. ‘I never talk about this stuff,’ he said. ‘You’re really easy to talk to, Stella.’

‘Just call me Professor Freud,’ I said. ‘That’ll be five guineas, please.’

He laughed. We stood companionably, watching the passing parade. I wondered whether I should share my concerns about his sister. He seemed a sensible man, and I was desperate to get Violet away from Cole, but I was apprehensive.

‘Lawrie, I’m worried about Violet,’ I said hesitantly.

‘What about her?’ Although nothing changed in his face, suddenly he seemed very frightening.

‘I don’t like the lieutenant she’s seeing,’ I murmured, unsure what to say. ‘I – my late husband – he was a bully. I think Lieutenant Cole bullies Violet.’

‘Bashes her?’ Lawrie’s voice was composed, cold and terrifying.

‘I’m not sure,’ I lied. ‘They fight – verbally. I’ve heard them. She didn’t like me mentioning it, though.’

He finished his cigarette, threw the butt on the ground and crushed it under his boot. ‘I’ll have a word with her when I’m back in town,’ he said. ‘Mind you, she’s been talking about another officer she met up with last night. I think Cole’s on the way out.’

‘Oh, I am glad to hear that.’

Lawrie shook his head and screwed up his mouth in a wry smile. ‘What is it with officers? You girls go crazy for them. Most of them aren’t worth tuppence.’ He laughed. ‘At least she’s not off with a Yank. Probably because she knows her brothers’d be ropeable if she was.’ There was a quick glance behind me. ‘And there’s my tram. Nice to meet you, Stella. Hope we meet again.’ He hoisted his duffle bag higher on his shoulder, ran to the tram stop and pulled himself up into the car. As it rounded the corner I got a wave.

I crossed Park Street and carried on towards Goodwood, thinking about what Lawrie had said. Eric was still an enigma to me, but I wondered if anyone could ever really know anyone else. Tuck thought Eric was a menacing brute, but Lawrie obviously liked and respected him. Lawrie had seen Eric cry! I could not imagine Frank ever crying. On reflection, I was pleased that Eric was a man who could feel deeply enough to cry unashamedly in front of his men.

What really counted, of course, was how Eric treated me, but I’d not have the chance to find that out until he returned to Melbourne. I refused to consider the possibility that he would not return.

Goodwood was in sight now, and I pushed thoughts of Eric Lund out of my mind. I straightened my hat and crossed to the Goodwood gate.

Eighteen

I
waited for Nick Ross on the beautiful iron verandah at Goodwood at two o’clock that afternoon. The rain had retreated to a soft drizzle and there were patches of blue in the sky, which presaged fine weather for the rest of the day. We only had a fifteen-minute walk to Cranleigh, but I was pleased we’d not be walking in the rain. It was cold, though, and my breath puffed white as I breathed out.

All I knew about Cranleigh was that it was a South Yarra mansion, similar to Goodwood. It was on Domain Road, about three-quarters of a mile from Goodwood, and it was the top-secret headquarters of the Central Bureau, which combined a number of intelligence branches, including the Services Reconnaissance Department and Special Operations Australia. I knew very little about how SRD or SOA operated, but my security clearance had had to be increased to ‘Top Secret’ in order to visit the place.

Although I was not looking forward to witnessing an interrogation, I was anxious to see if the prisoner could provide some of the answers we needed. He was a Malay speaker, and I wondered if my fluency in the language would help me to pick up cues that would be lost in a written translation.

The door opened and Ross appeared. He nodded at me and walked briskly towards the gate. I scurried after him and followed him onto Toorak Road. We walked in silence past Art Deco apartments; across the road I saw the AWAS huts amid the greenery in Fawkner Park. At Punt Road we turned left, away from the impressive bluestone spire of Christ Church. Ross hadn’t slackened his pace and I practically had to trot to keep up with him. The route was uphill, and the incline together with the cold air was affecting me badly.

‘Will there be a formal interpreter present for the interview? Or do you want me to interpret?’ My voice was loud, and a trifle wheezy.

He stopped suddenly and whirled around to face me. ‘You’re wheezing.’

‘Don’t walk so fast, then.’ I pulled in a few raspy breaths.

‘How did they let you enlist if you’re bloody asthmatic?’ His tone was sharp.

‘I have good days and bad days – mostly good days. Cold air makes it worse. The Melbourne weather hasn’t been good for me.’ I tried to sound calm and reasonable, and not let his obvious irritation affect me.

His mouth became tight as he continued to stare at me. I met his look defiantly. After a moment he blew out a breath and glanced at the low wall beside us.

‘We’ll rest a minute,’ he said.

Ross sat on the wall, stretched his legs out in front of him and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He lit one, inhaled, and tilted his head back to exhale a stream of white smoke. He hadn’t looked at me again. Feeling rather foolish I stood beside him, staring at the ground and concentrating on my breathing. By the time he’d tossed the butt into the small garden behind the wall there was very little wheeze.

‘I’m fine now.’

Ross stood and brushed himself off.

‘They’ll provide an interpreter. Don’t let the interpreter or the prisoner know you understand Malay. I’ll want to know your impressions after the session.’

He began walking along the road. I followed. We trudged up Punt Road at a more sedate pace until we reached the corner of Domain Road. Ross stopped to inspect a large house across the road from us, secure behind a high brick wall with armed sentries at the gate.

‘There it is,’ he said.

Eric would have approved of Cranleigh, which was a lovely two-storey mansion, obviously built in the nineteenth century. I thought that it had been renovated fairly recently, because the high slate roofline and upper storeys were nineteenth century and sat a little uneasily with an elaborate front portico that I guessed was a 1920s or early 1930s addition. Still, it was a delightful house. And, like Goodwood, it was an incongruous headquarters for a wartime intelligence unit.

A guard escorted us from the gate to the verandah, with its varicoloured tessellated tiles and massive front door. Our passes were checked again and we were allowed to enter a hallway that was dominated by a winding staircase. As we stood by the reception desk, I looked upwards to see a vibrantly colourful domed skylight and tried to imagine what the house would have looked like in its heyday.

We hadn’t waited long before an AIF captain came striding along the corridor towards us. I didn’t recognise him, but Ross smiled.

‘Charlie Otway,’ he said. ‘Good to see you. Thanks for arranging this. Meet Sergeant Stella Aldridge.’

I saluted the captain. ‘Sir.’

Otway was a short man, with a round, pleasant face he’d attempted to make more interesting by the addition of a neat pencil moustache. He returned my salute. ‘I understand you speak Malay, Sergeant.’

Surprised, I nodded. Ross was very still, beside me.

‘Did Deacon tell you that?’ he asked.

Otway seemed to consider the question. ‘No. Can’t recall how I found out, actually. I think someone checked the sergeant’s record.’

‘Does the interpreter know she speaks Malay?’

‘I think he does, old man. Is that a problem?’

‘Of course not. Who is it?’

‘One of your APLO mob. A Sergeant de Groot. Grew up in Dutch New Guinea. Reliable chap, good interpreter.’

Again Ross became very still. ‘I know him.’

We followed Otway along the corridor towards the back of the house, then down a flight of stairs to the basement. A long corridor, with whitewashed walls and a low ceiling stretched in front of us. Typewriters clattered in a room to our left. We walked on and stopped outside a closed door at the end of the corridor. Three chairs had been placed against the wall in front of it. Sitting on one was an army corporal, whose yellow complexion suggested he was just down from the tropics. He was holding a revolver. Next to him was a lad of about nineteen, dressed in a private’s uniform and gripping a notebook. There was an air of suppressed excitement about him. Sergeant de Groot was sitting on the third chair. He raised an eyebrow when he saw me.

‘Stella. Are you the Malay-speaking sergeant?’ He glanced at Ross and said coolly, ‘Lieutenant Ross.’ De Groot’s accent seemed more pronounced as he spoke the lieutenant’s name.

Ross looked across to Otway. His voice was a shade colder than de Groot’s had been. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

Otway had been watching the scene with a look of interest, but he said nothing. I had a suspicion that Otway wasn’t as innocuous as he had seemed at first, and that he was making careful mental notes of all that was going on, possibly to be recounted elsewhere later.

He nodded at the private. ‘Private James will transcribe the interrogation.’

Then he turned to the guard. ‘He’s ready?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Shackled?’

‘Yes, sir. My word, he’s in a funny mood, though. Needed both the sergeant and me to get him inside and shackle him.’

‘I don’t think he’s very well,’ said de Groot. ‘He told me he felt ill.’

There was an ache in my throat. I swallowed convulsively. This man was to be interrogated when he was ill and in shackles. I forced myself to remember that he was the enemy and I didn’t look at Ross.

Otway nodded. ‘Open the door, then.’

The guard stood, removed a key from his belt, unlocked the door and scanned the room. He covered us with his revolver as de Groot went in first, followed by Ross, then me and Private James. I heard the door close behind us and couldn’t help a shudder as the key turned in the lock. We were in a windowless room about ten feet square. Like the corridor, it had whitewashed walls and a tiled floor. A single light globe hung from a low wooden ceiling that was also painted white. The prisoner was a short man, obviously Malay, dressed in a maroon outfit rather like loose pyjamas. He was seated on a bench at the far wall and his arms and legs were shackled to a peg drilled into the concrete floor. Facing him was a narrow desk, behind which four wooden chairs had been set up in a row. The prisoner’s head was bent over his chest in an attitude of grief or despair. He didn’t look at all well and his hair and face were drenched in sweat.

Without thinking I said, in Malay, ‘Are you well? Do you need help?’

He raised his head to look up at me with dull hopeless eyes. He shook his head, and murmured something I couldn’t quite catch, before opening his mouth wider to vomit black, stinking liquid onto the floor of the small room. I watched in horror as his eyes rolled up and he fainted, twisting forwards to fall in a heap on the stained floor, his limbs tangled in the chains that shackled him.

‘Guard!’ yelled Ross.

When I tried desperately to push towards him, Ross pulled me back hard against his body, then flung me at the private, who held me tight.

The private and I clung to each other like children, watching what was unfolding. I tried not to retch at the smell of fetid vomit that now filled the atmosphere around us and felt Private James’s body jolt as the smell turned his stomach, too. I pulled in a long, wheezy breath and Ross turned to glare at me.

‘Breathe,’ he said. ‘Shallow breaths. Hold your nose if the smell is too much.’ He raised his voice and yelled again, ‘Guard! Get in here, man.’

De Groot had shoved aside the chairs and was kneeling beside the prisoner, pushing his fingers into the man’s mouth to clear it of vomit. The prisoner appeared to fight him at first, shaking his head wildly. Then he shuddered and suddenly relaxed into a terrifying stillness. De Groot gently lowered his head to the floor and pushed the inert body onto its left side. The man was lying very still indeed.

The key turned in the lock and the guard came in, gun at the ready.

‘Put that away.’ Ross’s voice was hard, commanding. ‘Is there a doctor on the premises?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Get him.’

‘It’s too late,’ said de Groot. ‘The man is dead.’

*

I’d gone to Cranleigh to take part in my first interrogation, but I ended up being interrogated myself. It was an unpleasant experience.

We waited together in a small reception room until, one at a time, we were shown into an office to speak with Lieutenant Sinclair, the army lawyer who’d been pointed out to me at Dolly’s party. He’d turned up with another officer, half an hour after the prisoner’s death. While we were waiting, Sam de Groot made me cups of tea and tried to take my mind off what I’d seen by telling me stories of New Guinea, where he’d grown up. We swapped memories of growing up in exotic places. Ross said nothing and spent the time scowling at the floor.

I was questioned first. Lieutenant Sinclair was polite and unemotional and by the time I’d recounted the short, nasty story at least five times, I detested him and his needling questions. Eventually I was released. I waited for Sinclair to finish questioning Ross and Sam, then we were driven back to Goodwood together. I had yet more cups of tea in Ross’s office as he and I tried to make sense of it all.