Free The Port Fairy Murders by Robert Gott

ludicrous figure, rather than a threatening one.
    ‘You have read the case notes?’ Helen said.
    ‘Yes,’ Reilly replied evenly. ‘I’ve read them, and I’ve re-read them.’
    ‘And have you understood them?’
    Reilly’s eyes darted to Inspector Lambert. If he was hoping that he would intervene in what was, at the very least, an expression of insubordination, he was disappointed. Lambert seemed unperturbed by Lord’s offensive question. Reilly breathed in, and waited a few seconds. He’d found this a useful technique when dealing with some irrational remark made by his wife. Early in his marriage, he’d flown off the handle, and said things that he’d meant, but which he regretted. So he’d learned to pause and not to say them. This had little to do with protecting his wife’s feelings. Rather, he saw losing his temper as a weakness, and he gained great satisfaction from controlling it. His wife no doubt believed that she’d won her point. Reilly knew differently; Barbara Reilly never won any points. Her husband’s carefully managed annoyance was a form of condescension that Helen Lord wouldn’t respond well to. He knew this, and the situation was novel to him. He wasn’t sure how to respond to her question, so he chose to agree with its implication.
    ‘Perhaps I haven’t fully appreciated how violent these people can be. I wasn’t there to see it.’
    ‘You’ve seen Joe Sable, and you’ve seen the other consequences.’
    ‘Yes, you’re right. I suppose I was just put off by my meeting with Maria Pluschow. She’s the only Hitlerite I’ve ever met, and she struck me as absurd.’
    ‘How did The Publicist strike you?’ Titus asked.
    ‘Well, of course I was shocked by all that stuff about Jews, but as I’d never even heard of the magazine, or of Australia First, I just assumed that they were fringe-dwellers and of no more importance than, I don’t know, Tarot readers or circus freaks.’
    ‘The friends of these people are killing Jews in Europe in unimaginable numbers,’ Titus said. ‘We know that. Keep that in mind. Maria Pluschow’s absurdity is just a matter of geography.’
    Sergeant Reilly, who felt unfairly chastised, was about to offer a response when Inspector Halloran entered the dining room. He wasn’t smiling as he walked towards the Homicide officers.
    ‘Starling’s house has burned down — or, more correctly, someone’s burned it down.’
    Titus stood up. Helen Lord followed his example. David Reilly remained seated, caught now between appearing slow to move or being too obstinate to do so.
    ‘George Starling?’ Titus asked.
    ‘It was set alight not long after we left, and it was definitely set alight. There were no grassfires or bushfires in the area.’
    ‘He was there, wasn’t he, when we were looking over the place?’ Helen said.
    ‘He left a message, of sorts,’ Halloran said. ‘We had to put the horses and the donkey down — their legs had been broken. A wood splitter was leaning against the fence, just in case we were wondering.’ He paused, and in the pause Helen shot Reilly a pointed look, as if to suggest that perhaps he might now care to take George Starling seriously .
    ‘The motorcycle that was in the shed is missing.’
    ‘He’s on his way to Melbourne,’ Titus said. ‘We need to telephone Sergeant Sable, and we need to get back there tonight.’
    ‘There are fires around Camperdown,’ Halloran said, ‘but the last I heard they were under control. Does Starling know where Sergeant Sable lives?’
    ‘Yes, he does,’ Reilly said, and hoped that would prove definitively how closely he’d read the case notes.
    ‘He’s already paid Sergeant Sable one visit,’ Titus said. Helen Lord looked at him, and saw in his face something like fear.

–5–
    JOE SABLE WONDERED whether his almost obsessive scouring of newspapers for news of atrocities in Europe was unhealthy. The massacres had shifted his indifference to his own Jewishness — an