“I’m paid to, Ms. Walker.” He pronounced the title correctly and carefully, and she didn’t detect sarcasm.Progress. Good.
Their eyes locked, the two sizing each other up across the battered desk, sitting tall and unmoving in their respective chairs. After a stretch of silence, neither of them looking away, it seemed something indefinable had been settled between them.
Billie crossed her stockinged legs and leaned back a touch. She’d had the impression back at her flat that this inspector might turn out to be a rather fine detective, and helpful, though it didn’t take muchto get him to close up. Still, she was here in his office and he wasn’t making it formal, and hadn’t brought in the detestable Constable Dick Dennison, Hatchet Face. By now the inspector would surely know that her father had been a cop and had worked in this very branch, and perhaps he would know the reasons her father had resigned from that employ, making enemies of those who didn’t want any changes to the corrupt status quo of the time. Not waiting for the inspector to lead her, Billie explained the essentials of the case she had been working on, leaving very little out except Mrs. Brown’s private family matters and, most notably, the unexpected arrival of Con Zervos in her bedroom and his mode of departure by travel trunk. Her clients expected privacy, of course, but that horse had bolted when a couple of thugs walked into the hospital, threatening a boy’s life and attracting an array of witnesses. She stressed her feeling that her client’s son, Adin Brown, was not yet safe. Anything but. On that score, she hoped this detective inspector could help.
“I must impress on you how important this is,” Billie said, leaning forward again. “I think it would be wise to move him to another hospital as soon as he is well enough—somewhere closer to his parents—under an assumed name. I may have found him for my client, and as of yesterday I am off the clock officially speaking, but it’s not over for them yet, I fear. Adin Brown is not safe, despite the death of those men yesterday.” The little woman in her gut was rarely wrong about matters of safety. “I’m hoping his memory will come back soon. That should be quite revealing.”
The inspector watched her closely, giving little away. He’d listened to her story without interruption. “You’re certain the men who had the accident were after him specifically? It wasn’t an opportunistic robbery gone wrong?”
“Quite certain,” she said with a level, unblinking gaze. It was not quite enough to turn a man to stone, Medusa-style, but it had been known to have a strong, chilling effect.
“I see,” he said. The inspector did not seem to doubt her words.
“And I’m quite certain they attacked me and my assistant, Samuel Baker, outside Georges Boucher’s auction house on Sunday,” Billie added.
His eyebrows raised just perceptibly. “Did you report this?”
“No. If I reported every time someone attempted to rough me up to put me off my work, I’d be in here every day,” she said matter-of-factly. It was the truth. “Besides, they didn’t have much luck,” she added, recalling the satisfying feeling of her hatpin penetrating one of her attacker’s ankles. “And no guns were drawn.”By the assailants,she distinctly failed to specify. She had drawn her own Colt, but there was no need to bring that into it. It was licensed and had not been fired. She didn’t feel like losing that license, if, say, this agent of the law happened to take exception to women carrying guns. She felt they were on the same side, but there was no point playing with fire.
Billie watched the detective inspector’s reaction. His eyes were hazel like Jack’s, she realized, but paler. She’d seen those eyes soften the morning she’d woken up with a body in her bedroom, but he was all business now. She recognized a brick wall as well as Lillian could.
“I understand there were shots fired at the hospital,” he continued.
“Shots fired at us and anyone else trying to intervene with the would-be killers’ plans, yes. Naturally we had to defend ourselves.”
“Witnesses say your... secretary, is he? He fired.”
Billie nodded. “As I said, we had to defend ourselves, and protect others. The shots were fired outside the hospital, however, and no one was hit, as far as I am aware.”
“Indeed. And tell me, why did you follow after them when they left the hospital grounds?”
Ah, this had been a sticking point for the constable in the mountains as well. Why did she pursue a couple of would-be killers?
“I had some questions for them,” Billie said, knowing full well that self-defense was hard to argue once the assailants were fleeing. “And they might have returned to finish the job.” She wanted to know who they were, and the police hadn’t furnished her with that information yet. The only clue she had was that they were associates of Moretti, who was next on her list of people to visit. “They had tried to kill the boy, the boy my client paid me to locate, a badly injured kid, so I took the matter rather seriously.”
The inspector contemplated her, his eyes steely beneath lashes the color of tall summer hay. It was a gaze she met calmly. He broke away first. “You have a license for your sidearm, I presume?”
“I do. It is rather standard for most in my profession. Self-defense is sometimes necessary, though of course that did not play into the tragic events at Victoria Pass yesterday. My sidearm remains unfired.”
There was a long pause. “We are waiting on the coroner’s report.”
“Of course. They were definitely the same two men, Inspector, thugs for hire, that type, who attacked me and Mr. Baker on Sunday afternoon, and they had two other companions on that occasion. I believe they were working for Vincenzo Moretti, the private inquiry agent. You may remember him. He was sitting in a Vauxhall outside my flat on Sunday morning.”
“Moretti? Why do you say that?”
“Well, because I made one of them tell me,” she explained. “I can be persuasive when required.”
Now his eyes widened a touch. He did not ask how she had made the man tell her, though he looked awfully intrigued.
“I looked into this Moretti character.”
Now it was Billie’s turn to be surprised. “Do go on.”
He flipped through a few pages of a notepad and landed on what he was looking for. “The Morettis fled Italy following the Milan bread riots of 1898, settled in Sydney. Vincenzo Moretti, born in July 1900, now aged forty-six, works as a private inquiry agent. He has prior arrests, most notably for an attempt to bribe a witness for the purpose of suppressing evidence. Let’s see...” He trailed off for a moment, turning a page. “Ah yes. He was further charged with attempting to pervert the due course of justice by unlawfully conspiring to dissuade a witness from giving true testimony, for which he did a short stint behind bars. The officer whom he attempted to bribe, and who brought the case to court, has a familiar last name—Walker. Detective Barry Walker, since resigned.”
“And regretfully deceased,” Billie added, though her voice was smaller than intended, the words shrinking in her throat.
“My condolences, Ms. Walker.” He looked at her with those hazel eyes, impenetrable but sympathetic. “This man was outside your flat on Sunday, as you pointed out. Does he do that often?”
