In a flash the boy was scrambling to his feet, his body wet, and crying out with suddenly recalled pain, and now tumbling over as something prevented him from standing upright. He fell forward helplessly and tried to reach out to stop himself but could not bring his hands forward. His shoulder and head hit a rug, barely softening his fall, and he briefly caught sight of wooden bed legs and two pairs of scuffed leather shoes before hands grabbed him by his bare shoulders and hauled him up again. Shaking now, he looked down and twisted around in a half crouch. To his horror he was naked, a long piece of rope connecting his wrists and ankles. This rope was the reason he could not stand fully upright.
His eyes were clearing a little, his memory, too, and he took the opportunity to look around him. It felt like it was very late at night, or perhaps early in the morning, but he could not see the sky, had not seen the outdoors for days, it seemed, but he could not be sure. Having been forced to strip, then grilled again, he had been sleepingon top of a creaking bed laid with unexpectedly fine sheets, in a small, luxuriously appointed room with wooden boards nailed across the window. A Persian rug was at his bare feet. An oil lamp had burned on a rustic table set with pretty objects. It was an odd arrangement and one he hadn’t been able to place. A knitted blanket had been on top of his freezing body and now it had slid to the floor. He could see his lean nakedness for the first time since the ordeal began, and what he saw was ruin. His stomach was coming up in dark bruises of maroon, where he now recalled he had been viciously kicked. There was raw skin where the ropes had rubbed him. He was humiliated in his nakedness before these men, though they seemed not to care. They kept their eyes averted, faces hard.
To the boy’s surprise there was a bathtub sitting in the odd room, a claw-foot bathtub, and it was filled with water, water he hadn’t even heard running. Though he was eager for relief from his wounds, this bath was not inviting.
“No... no... no...”
His protests were ignored as he was lifted and carried toward it, struggling weakly. The one with the strange, hard voice and the smile like a knife blade was not there, and the others, the hard-faced men, did not speak to him. They wore shabby suits and one had a flattened nose like a prizefighter, and it occurred to him to fear the fact that he could see them clearly and they knew he could see them, and they seemed not to care. With a sobering jolt he was dumped in the water, and he cried out as he realized it was as cold as the bucket of water that woke him. His wrists were tied behind him and he sat on those, his scraped knees bent, his face and upper chest above the water. He watched as the rope at his ankles was tied to a bar acrossthe tub, and then he was alone, left that way in the cold water, confused and breathing hard.
Time passed. How long, he could not say.
In the low light he could see his body turning a marbled blue, where it was not already purpling with bruises.So cold,he thought. So cold.The room was odd. The bed. The bathtub. He scanned along the floor for anything he might try to crawl to, anything he might use to unbind himself. The objects on the little table, did they have sharp edges? Beyond the door there were footsteps, and he became still, listening. He heard talking. Was that the voice of a girl? Two girls, talking. He couldn’t make out what was said. And then there were heavy footsteps, and the voices fell silent. They were coming back—the men who had left him here. He tensed, unbearably vulnerable in that tub of cold water and afraid of what was to come.
The hard-faced men entered the room. They were with the other one now, the man with the smile like a knife’s edge. His face, where he could make it out in the shadows, was hard and angled, as if carved from stone. He came in and took off a coat, as if he had been outside. One of the men took it reverently and disappeared. The man grabbed a wooden chair, pulled it up next to the tub, and sat.
“You know what you must tell us,” came that strange, foreign voice.
“I don’t—” the boy protested.
With a sudden, unexpected movement, a chain attached to the bar was yanked, and with a jerk he was pulled under the water. Eyes still open, he saw the world through a terrifying prism. He’d swallowed water as he went under, and when he managed to right himself he was spluttering and shocked, coughing hard. Whatever vigor hadbeen restored to him was quickly extinguished. Again and again he was asked the questions, the same questions for which he had the same evidently inadequate answers, and he was pulled under. Exhausted, he wanted it to end, and he tried to drink the water and drown. Life clung weakly to him.
He had not been blindfolded. He knew their faces. They would not let him live.
It seemed no longer to matter.
He welcomed death.
Eight
When Billie arrived at heroffice on Saturday morning, laden with her bundle of newspapers, Sam was already in. “Good morning, Sam,” she chirped. “How are you feeling after last night’s adventures?”
“Fresh as spring grass, Ms. Walker,” he joked. It had been just past midnight when they’d left The Dancers, not so late by the standards of their trade, but he’d downed a fair few of those planter’s punches. Had it been three in the end? Four?
“Well, as promised, I have a pretty tedious job for you this morning,” she said. “I can’t say it will help a hurting head, though,” she teased, and dumped the bag of newspapers on his desk. A stench rose up of wet paper and rotten vegetables. “I need you to find a newspaper with a page torn out of it.”
“Which paper?”
“That I can’t be sure of, I’m afraid, but the odds are good that it’s one of these. I narrowed it to the week. I think it might be the Thursday, but I’d like you to check all of these. Something on themissing page might have triggered Adin to go off on his own and do something rash.”
Ever the professional, Sam held back a grimace.
“Sorry, mate,” Billie offered. “I’ll nip out and grab today’s papers. You find me that missing page.”
She looked her assistant over. He was a tad less robust-looking than usual, which still made him about five times more robust than any man she’d likely see on the street. “Feeling okay this morning? You need a pie or something to take the edge off?”
“Stop looking at me like that. I’ll have you know I can drink like a sailor, Ms. Walker. I only had three in the end. And, besides, it’s not pies I’d take to stave off a heavy head—if I had one.”
She believed him.
Billie was returning from nearby Central Station with the weekend papers tucked under her arm and was entering Rawson Place when she saw a familiar silhouette near the entrance to Daking House. A dark, small-statured woman was standing by the entryway, wearing a charming navy bow in her short, tightly curled hair, worn flat leather shoes without stockings, and a navy coat that seemed a touch too heavy for the weather. Her posture was impeccable, her head high. A delicate gold crucifix hung around her neck. There was no doubt in Billie’s mind whom she was waiting for.
The young woman turned at her approach and looked at her with prematurely world-weary eyes. The sunlight hit them and the eyes turned a warm caramel. “Shyla,” Billie greeted her. It had been some weeks since she’d last seen her. “Can I get you some morningtea?” Her other business could wait an hour. Shyla nodded and they set off back toward Central Station.
Billie and Shyla had met outside the big station by chance when Billie returned from Europe in ’44, and they had since struck up a friendship and something of a trade in information. Shyla was a young woman of the Wiradjuri—the people of three rivers—and she had been taken from her family by the Aborigines Welfare Board when she was four, along with her older siblings, and sent to the Bomaderry Aboriginal Children’s Home, run by Christian missionaries, tasked with assimilating the children into the lowest levels of white society. When she was old enough, Shyla had been trained for domestic service at the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls, and at fourteen she was sent off to a wealthy family in rural New South Wales, who paid a pittance for her often backbreaking labor. Her brothers had been put into service on sheep and cattle stations, Shyla said, and last Billie had heard she was trying to track them down and make contact, something Billie hoped to help her with. Shyla was a smart young woman and well connected with the other girls who had been put into service. Rich people often chose to overlook just how much their domestic help knew and were witness to, and in the right circumstances that information could be shared. The girls trusted Shyla, and in turn she trusted Billie, meaning Billie could benefit from her insider knowledge.
At the Central Railway Refreshment Room, Billie and Shyla were shown to a table made up with a crisp white tablecloth and neatly set silverware stamped with the railway insignia. A milk jug and sugar bowl sat in the center of the table along with a fresh bouquet of white bougainvillea in a delicate glass vase. The handsomespace had a high ceiling and was hemmed with carved wooden partitions and punctuated with structural pillars. Above the table, a metal fan hummed gently, pushing the air around.
Shyla chose one of the wooden chairs and Billie took a seat across from her, stacking the newspapers on one side of the table. She ordered strong black tea for them both.
