Free The Port Fairy Murders by Robert Gott Page B

a storm of protest in the Hungarian press, which demands that they should be punished.
    Joe looked for more, but there was nothing. This was a strange article, and Joe was wrestling with its meaning when the telephone rang. He looked at his watch. It was just after 10.00 pm. He picked up the receiver, expecting to hear George Starling’s voice.
    ‘Person-to-person call for Joe Sable,’ the operator said.
    ‘Yes, fine. I’m Joe Sable.’
    ‘Thank you. Go ahead.’
    ‘Joe, this is Inspector Lambert.’
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘I want you to do exactly as I say, without argument, without even thinking about it. George Starling is on his way to you. I’ll give you the details later, when I see you. For now, I want you to go to my house immediately. Maude will be expecting you. It’s absolutely critical that you leave your house now. We’re not sure exactly when Starling left Warrnambool. He’s on a motorcycle, and wherever he is, he’ll be fairly close to you by now.’
    ‘Mrs Lambert …’
    ‘Sergeant! You are to do this now . Not in half an hour, not in five minutes. Now!’
    The tension in Inspector Lambert’s voice was contagious, and Joe felt his heart shiver — it was a sensation he dreaded. He was used to his heart’s uncertain rhythms, but its unpredictability terrified him. It was his great weakness, the one thing about him that was utterly unreliable. It had kept him out of the army, and it reminded him — and always at the wrong time — how vulnerable he was. Now, as Inspector Lambert’s voice throbbed with urgency, Joe felt his heart begin to let him down.
    ‘I’ll go now,’ he said, and hoped Lambert didn’t detect the wheeze in his voice. Joe hung up the telephone as a wave of nausea swept over him. He took two steps towards the chair he’d been sitting in, and managed to kneel before he lost consciousness.
    GEORGE STARLING HAD ridden without stopping, except to take a piss just outside Colac. At the precise moment that Joe Sable’s telephone had rung, Starling was passing Victoria Market, and was just 15 minutes from Joe’s flat. The streets were dark, but not as dark as they’d been in the early years of the war. Lights showed here and there, and cars drove with their headlights dimmed, but without the obscuring shades that allowed only a slit of light to escape. The blackout, which had been relaxed to a brownout, was no longer policed with any rigour. It would require another scare, such as the 1942 attack by Japanese submarines on Sydney Harbour, to encourage the authorities to risk public annoyance by tightening controls. Starling saw this relaxation as complacency, and typical of the undisciplined, lazy Australian public. The men were beer-swipers and the women brummy fowls. He hadn’t thought much about National Socialism since Ptolemy Jones’ death. He thought its principles were sound; but, in truth, he wasn’t really interested in politics. He liked Nazism’s certainties, its belief that negotiation was weakness. More than anything else, he liked the way it frightened people. There was a negative side, of course. Politics meant talking to other people about, well, politics, and Starling had no patience for other people. Anyway, he didn’t need National Socialism, however much he agreed with it, to settle scores. For now, his only ambition was to do just that, and he had the means and the money. Joe Sable was first on his list, but there were others.
    JOE WAS ON all fours in his living room, dizzy and trying to marshal his anxiety by telling himself, out loud, that this had happened before, and that his doctor had assured him that his heart was strong enough to survive its irregular beat. There’d been a rider to this diagnosis: he’d been advised that he needed to be careful. He couldn’t afford to treat his heart with the cavalier inattention of most young men.
    He stood up, steadied himself, and felt his urge to be sick subside. He was sweating, and the smell of burning