A Thing of Blood (18 page)

‘Who is it?’

The voice, though muffled by the door, was suspicious and uninviting.

‘Paul.’

The door opened to reveal a short, misshapen man. The air that escaped was stale and smelled of dripping and unwashed bodies. We walked down a corridor to a small, dark living room. There was only one bedroom, as far as I could tell, and in this living room the tumble of malodorous bedclothes in the corner suggested that it doubled as a second bedroom.

‘This is Mr William Power,’ Clutterbuck said. ‘And Will, this is Mr Ronnie Oakpate.’

I looked at this strange creature closely. He walked with a pronounced limp and his shoulders were so rounded that I suspected an incipient hump beneath his filthy shirt. He was bald with dark hair growing in a half circle above his ears. It didn’t end at the nape of his neck but grew abundantly down beyond his collar and crept round his throat to meet a black puff of it emerging from his shirt. His appearance was so simian that it would shake the faith of the most committed opponents of Darwinism. I couldn’t tell his age, unused as I was to estimating the lifespan of gorillas. When he spoke he showed a mouthful of yellow teeth and emitted a powerful and penetrating exhalation of halitotic breath.

‘What’s he want?’ he asked.

‘It’s not what he wants, Ronnie, it’s what we want that counts, and Will here can help us.’

‘He doesn’t look too flash,’ said the hunched and hirsute Mr Oakpate. Given that he looked more like he’d climbed down from a tree than a pedestal, this was rather a nerve.

‘I fell over,’ I said, my indignation obscuring my curiosity about our reason for being there.

A noise from the next room, a kitchen I surmised from the intensity of the odour of things greasy wafting through the door, indicated the presence of another person.

‘Mary Rose!’ Clutterbuck called. ‘Come here and meet Mr Power.’

A woman in her mid-twenties came into the living room. She was dressed severely, almost institutionally, and her lank hair, the colour of fouled straw, had the appearance of having been styled by a blind man in a deep cellar. With the greatest will in the world I could not describe her as pretty and her plainness was exacerbated by a slackness of muscle that caused her to look simple.

‘This is Mary Rose Shingle,’ Clutterbuck said, ‘and ironically, considering her name, she is, I’m afraid, a shingle short.’

Miss Shingle didn’t react to this callous assessment of her mental capacity, thereby, I suppose, confirming his diagnosis. She may have smiled, but it may have been nothing more than a spasm pulling her mouth upward.

‘Where’s his nibs?’ asked Ronnie, and he leaned his hunched body against the doorframe. Before Clutterbuck could answer, there was a knock at the front door and Oakpate detached himself from his support and scuttled down the corridor with the awkward dexterity of a mandrill. He returned with a man whose remarkably small head sat atop a broad, thick torso. The initial impression was that he was fat; he would certainly have been expensive to feed. There was nothing flabby about him however. His first words were, ‘Who’s this?’ and he pointed at me with a stubby, dirty thumb.

‘This is Will,’ Clutterbuck said. ‘He’s useful. And Will, this man-mountain is Crocker.’

Handshakes were clearly not among Mr Crocker’s repertoire of social niceties so he merely grunted. I returned the compliment.

The room was now crowded. Clutterbuck sat in a filthy armchair, its antimacassar stained beyond hope of cleaning. He didn’t lean back. Crocker folded his bulk on to a lounge that had long ago ceased to invite lounging, and Oakpate prodded me into sitting beside him — Crocker that is. Oakpate remained standing. He shooed Miss Shingle into the kitchen and resumed his position leaning in the doorway. This was strange company for Clutterbuck to keep, and it was stranger still that he should bring me here. I presumed his purpose was about to be revealed though it wasn’t Clutterbuck who spoke first. It was Oakpate.

‘I sacked the last of those bastards today,’ he said.

‘Good,’ said Crocker. ‘They’re like a fucking cancer.’

‘Will might be wondering whom you’re talking about,’ said Clutterbuck. ‘I haven’t filled him in properly yet about our organisation.’

At this point I began to feel uneasy. It was the word ‘organisation’. I remembered Clutterbuck’s dismissive reference to ‘Jews and communists’. Was this dingy, little house in Brunswick a fascist cell, a bolt-hole for fifth columnists?

‘Well, what’s he doing here then?’ asked Crocker, and turned his blunt, thuggish gaze upon me.

‘He’s on our side, aren’t you, Will?’ Clutterbuck smiled encouragingly at me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Oakpate put his hand down the front of his trousers and scratch at his crotch.

‘Which side are we talking about?’ I asked.

‘The right side,’ said Oakpate, and came into the centre of the room. He stood close to Clutterbuck and his malignant, ugly face became suffused with blood pumped in anger from that organ which in anybody else would have been identified as the heart.

‘Why’d you bring a stranger here?’ he hissed.

‘Will’s not a stranger,’ Clutterbuck said calmly. ‘He’s a private detective.’

Both Oakpate and Crocker snapped their heads in my direction and Crocker’s fists clenched.

‘He’s employed by me, and he’s good, but even he would be having trouble putting all this together, and neither of you is creating a very nice first impression. What must Will be thinking?’ He paused as if he thought I might reveal the answer to his question. Frankly, I was all at sea, horrified and paralysed by the thought that Clutterbuck was an Axis sympathiser, and that I’d been caught in his orbit.

‘I can tell from the look on your face, Will, that you’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion. You think we’re the enemy within, don’t you. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mr Oakpate and Mr Crocker are captains of industry. They may look like stokers, but they’re captains. Mr Oakpate here owns this lovely house, which he shares with the delicious Miss Shingle.’

This ludicrous assessment of his common-law wife made Oakpate smile.

‘Mr Oakpate also owns and runs a factory here in Brunswick. I’ve never been sure what he manufactures but I’m sure it’s something terribly dull and metallic. Mr Crocker is the proprietor of a dark, satanic mill as well, and like every other factory owner in this city they’re sick to death of unions and of strikes.’

‘It’s the bloody Catholics in the bloody unions,’ said Crocker. ‘They’re everywhere — and it’s up to us to stop them.’

I found my voice.

‘Stop them?’

‘That’s right,’ said Oakpate. ‘Stop them.’ These last words were loaded with menace, as if stopping them meant much more than sacking a few troublesome workers.

‘So now we’ve all met,’ said Clutterbuck. ‘This isn’t going to be a full meeting. I just wanted to bring Will here so that we could get acquainted.’

Crocker was about to say something but Clutterbuck silenced him with a hand motion. There was no further discussion. We said our farewells and returned to the car.

On the way home I didn’t feel much wiser about what had just taken place.

‘You said something about an organisation back there.’

‘Ah, yes. The clubhouse isn’t very salubrious I grant you, but we’re doing good work, Will.’

‘Who’s “we” and what’s the work?’

Clutterbuck didn’t miss the note of annoyance in my voice and he replied in a tone that was carefully modulated to appease me.

‘We are a group of like-minded people who believe that the Catholic Church is determined to undermine the war effort by infiltrating the union movement, and our “work” is to stop that from happening.’

It took a moment for this extraordinary declaration to sink in.

‘You can’t be serious,’ I said.

‘Like most people, Will, you don’t know how influential and destructive a man like Mannix is.’

‘Are you a communist?’

‘Now it’s you who can’t be serious. Do I look like a communist? No. Do I live like a communist? I hate communists, Will. The papists and I agree on that, but the Catholics are worse than the communists and they’re infiltrating every level of government.’

He must have realised that his voice was betraying him in some way because he took his eyes off the road and looked at me.

‘I’m not a fanatic, Will. If you knew the stuff I know, you’d want to be a part of it. It’s just politics.’

‘Politics can hurt people.’

‘That’s why it’s important that only the right people get hurt.’

This chilling little policy statement transformed Paul Clutterbuck on the spot from harmless dilettante to frightening fanatic, despite his protestations to the contrary.

‘I’m not really interested in politics,’ I said.

‘Interested or not, Will, you’re involved. You’ve been to Oakpate’s house, you’ve met Crocker. You’re one of the few people I’ve introduced to the members of the Order.’

‘What are you talking about, Paul? What Order?’

‘The Order of the Shining Knights.’

‘Is that like the Round Table? Are you serious?’

Clutterbuck wasn’t amused.

‘It’s not some schoolboy secret society, Will. We’ve been active since 1932 when my father and a few of his friends set it up. It’s a serious business, well-funded and well-connected.’

‘The headquarters don’t inspire confidence.’

‘Oakpate’s house isn’t where we usually meet. I’d like you to join us, Will. We need people like you.’

‘I’m not a joiner, Paul.’

‘Well, now that you know how important our task is at least you won’t be surprised by some of the surveillance work I might get you to do.’

I didn’t reply to this, having already determined that I would be doing no further work for Paul Clutterbuck. I knew, though, that it wouldn’t do to dismiss the Shining Knights as a benign, amusing hobby group. It was well to remember that no one thought the goosestep was funny any more.

Very little was said for the remainder of the short drive back to Clutterbuck’s house. It wasn’t until we were walking up the stairs to our bedrooms that Clutterbuck said, ‘There are some things that I
will
want you to do, and I think we understand each other well enough now to know that you
will
do them. They’re just small things; nothing nasty, I promise.’

He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a little pat.

‘This is Melbourne, Will, not Berlin. I wouldn’t want you to break any laws — although I suppose burying poor Gretel was a bit unlawful, wasn’t it?’

I knew I’d been out-manoeuvred. What I needed to do now was lie down and formulate a strategy for disentangling myself from the sticky web Clutterbuck was beginning to weave.

‘Of course I’ll give consideration to any job you offer me,’ I said, trying to create the impression that nothing had changed between us. I was relieved when I closed the bedroom door and stretched out on my perfectly made bed.

I hadn’t thought I was tired, but watching Norma Shearer wrestle with Shakespeare, and being exposed to the Misters Oakpate and Crocker, to say nothing of the faintly repellent Miss Shingle, had taken enough out of me to ensure that I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. I woke with a start to the slam of the front door downstairs. It was 6.30 p.m. The afternoon had vanished in dreamless sleep. I was to meet James Fowler at 7.30 in the dining room of the Menzies Hotel, where the austerity menu would, I presumed, be unimaginatively if competently prepared. I washed my face and changed my shirt. Shaving was still not possible without aggravating the damaged skin on half my face. I combed my hair and was pleased to note that the darkness of my stubble made me resemble Tyrone Power even more closely than when I was freshly shaved.

By the time I had completed my ablutions it was seven o’clock. I was obliged to take a tram. If I took shanks’s pony I would have to half-walk, half-run to make it on time, and I didn’t want to arrive drenched in perspiration.

James Fowler was already seated when I got there. He was expensively dressed — much more elegantly than I was — and his hair was oiled and glistening. He looked like he was on a date. I was immediately disconcerted.

The dining room was full. Crisp American officer uniforms were everywhere, and the women were wearing their best evening clothes. The noise was considerable as was the tobacco smoke.

Fowler rose to meet me and shook my hand in a gentlemanly fashion. His hand was soft, but strong, and it made me a little queasy to think that it might recently have been around Gretel’s throat, strangling the life out of her.

‘I’m glad you came, Will. There’s a great deal we need to discuss.’

‘Indeed.’ I managed to inject both rigid formality and quizzical scepticism into that single word.

‘So, Will, you missed the Grand Final by just a few days. Pity. Your mother’s house being just across from Princes Park and all.’

‘I’m not really interested in football. I’m not sure who played, let alone who won.’

Fowler shook his head in mock disapproval.

‘Essendon won, Will. Richmond lost.’

‘If you invited me here to discuss football it’s going to be a short evening.’