Chapter Thirty #2
“We are already in danger,” Shyla replied simply. It was hard to argue against that. “Take the book. Keep it safe.”
Billie nodded, stuffing it under her driving coat.
It was evidence. “Yes, I’ll keep it safe,” she assured her friend.
Cooper, perhaps, was the right cop for this.
If not, she’d take it straight to Lillian Armfield, and if that didn’t get something done, well, those names would find their way to someone who would extract justice.
Shyla turned to leave, then turned back and pointed at the book, her face dark with anger. “Not gin jockey.” She spat the words out. “Rapists.” Her rage was palpable.
Billie had let Shyla down by not investgating this man sooner.
Three days had been lost since she came to Billie, but she’d had so little information and there’d been no way of knowing it was so urgent.
And now Shyla herself was inside the house, and though Billie had her Colt, she couldn’t know what she would find if she went in, gun blazing.
The girls might get hurt. He might use them as hostages. They already were hostages.
How long could the situation hold?
“Does he suspect you?” Billie whispered.
Shyla shook her head. “I think no. I should go back,” she said again, pulling away.
“Wait . . . I went to get help,” Billie admitted, reaching out and touching the young woman’s shoulder. “I didn’t want anything happening to you. There are police coming. When they do, stay down and let them take the man. He is . . . he’s a war criminal.”
“Gunjies?” Shyla said urgently in a distressed whisper. “You brought coppers?” Her eyes widened with a stricken expression—the expression of someone betrayed.
“I know some cops I can trust,” Billie tried to assure her, thinking of Cooper.
Constable Primrose, too, though she didn’t wield the same power, yet.
This was too big to keep under wraps, even if Billie wanted to.
“We can’t keep this from the police.” She patted the book of names through her coat. “They’re already on their way.”
Shyla narrowed her eyes, as if regretting having asked for Billie’s help.
“Please trust me,” Billie said. “This book is valuable, and with the right cops we can get him. There is more evidence against him in those sheds, and the cops need all of it. There is no telephone here, right?” she asked.
Shyla shook her head. “Nowhere near these parts. Richmond Railway Station is the closest, I think.”
“What happened to the other girl—you told me in Sydney there were four?” Billie thought to ask.
“She ran.”
Billie nodded. They’d have to see if they could track her down as a witness. “Have you seen what’s in the sheds, Shyla?”
“No. He won’t let us near them. They’re locked.”
And little wonder, she thought. “You just have to trust me,” Billie said, racked with anxiety and guilt, even though she believed she had done the right thing in calling Cooper. Or at least she hoped.
“Will you last another few hours?” Billie asked her.
“I’ve lasted almost two days here,” Shyla said, as if insulted.
“Okay.” Billie felt suitably chastened. She knew the cops would be a mixed blessing for Shyla.
They would end this madness, but what else might they bring?
“I’ll stay nearby and watch until the right moment,” she promised.
“I’ll be in the bush, out there.” She pointed.
“I’m sorry about the police, Shyla. I truly am.
But there is no other way.” She pulled back from the window and slipped away from the house.
A noise grabbed her attention—a grunt?—and she turned. There was a rush of movement in the darkened room, shadows whirling, and Billie frantically retraced her steps.
They’d been discovered.
Shyla was struggling with someone. A man.
Billie made out his rounded silhouette. It wasn’t the pale man, but someone shorter, heavier, older.
Georges Boucher? That would be his Daimler out the back, Billie realized, and he must have heard the two of them and come through the door silently while they were talking.
Fortunately Shyla had not secured the window, and Billie hauled herself up onto the sill, just in time to see her friend hit squarely in the face.
Rather than crumbling, Shyla scooted backward, escaping his grasp.
Billie pulled her Colt out, but Boucher, filled with rage, ran at Shyla, grabbing her by the throat, while she held a hand over his mouth, preventing him from calling out.
It was too tough to get a clear shot. Billie rushed to help her friend, but in a blink Shyla reached behind her and took something in her hand.
She hit Boucher with it across the side of his head, and the body that had set upon her with violence jerked and crumpled, landing with a sickening thud on a Persian rug.
A vase of flowers on the table next to the object in Shyla’s hands swayed once, twice, and crashed to the floor, showering the rug with glass and water and native flowers.
For one stretched-out moment everything was quiet and still.
Billie lowered her gun, her mind focused and as sharp as crystal. Shyla stood firm, holding a small bronze bust of Captain James Cook in her hand. Time seemed to have stopped. Could the commotion have been heard by Franz?
“Can we get some more light?” Billie ventured quietly, and stepped forward to close the room off from the rest of the house, shutting the door carefully.
Shyla pointed to the kerosene lamp that was sitting on the table, and soon the whole grisly scene was illuminated before them.
Both women were still again, not saying a word.
Georges Boucher was still on the floor. His chest did not move.
Slowly, Billie knelt next to Boucher, placing her unfired pistol in the waistband of her skirt.
She checked Boucher’s wrist for a pulse.
Nothing. She checked his neck. It was warm, but also without a pulse.
His eyes were unseeing. She didn’t need to touch his head to know it would be warm, wet, and soft where the heavy bronze bust had connected with it. He was dead.
Billie stood up and gently took the statuette from Shyla’s hands, then stepped out of her silk half-slip and wiped the statuette clean of prints, leaving the small mess of blood and hair that was centered on the bust’s base.
She placed it carefully beside Boucher’s body, then stepped back and considered the scene.
Could Boucher feasibly have fallen onto the bust?
After a beat, she moved the table the bust and vase had stood on forward a touch, so it was closer to the body.
She pushed at the rug, rippling its surface, and then observed the arrangement again.
It would have to do. She picked up her bloodstained slip and, disgusted with it, balled it up and stuffed it into the pocket of her driving coat, as one would a large silk handkerchief.
“How does it look?” Shyla asked, anxiety in her voice.
“That depends on who’s looking,” Billie replied honestly, in a low whisper.
“He tripped over the rug and hit his head. When the police ask, and they will doubtless ask, I will be a witness. I entered the premises and he saw me and panicked, ran away, and slipped on the rug. There are no prints on the bust anymore. It was an accident.”
Shyla, normally so collected, was shaking her head back and forth, melting into panic. “The coppers won’t believe me, Billie. They don’t believe us.”
“It will be okay, Shyla,” Billie tried to reassure her, placing a hand on the young woman’s shoulder.
“You won’t have to be the one to explain this.
You weren’t in the room. It was only me.
You didn’t even see it happen,” she told her.
“If that comes up in a bruise,” she said, pointing at her neck, “Franz did that in another room. Or Boucher did. Not here, not now.”
Billie felt eyes on them and they both turned.
Another girl was watching silently from the doorway, a hand to her mouth.
She’d opened the door a hair and they’d been so absorbed they hadn’t even noticed.
Now it swung farther open on its hinges, revealing the small figure.
This would be one of the girls Shyla had spoken about. Ruthie, Billie guessed.
“He fell. He can’t hurt you now,” Billie said to the girl quietly. “My name is Billie. Billie Walker. But we have to stay quiet. Franz is still awake, isn’t he?”
The girl nodded, large, dark eyes riveted to the dead man on the floor, and something passed behind them—fear?
relief?—and she looked to Shyla. After a beat Shyla nodded, as if to say this white woman was all right, could be trusted, at least for now.
Billie was struck by how young the girl was.
To see all this, to be trapped in a place like this, so young . . .
“I’m Ruthie,” the girl said finally. She was diminutive, no older than fifteen, Billie guessed.
Her hair was pulled back under a cap, her dress was worn, and her wool cardigan was buttoned to the top.
A cross hung around her neck and glinted in the light of the kerosene lamp.
Although her eyes kept going to the body of Boucher, lifeless on the floor, she did not scream, did not say a word about it.
“Can we get the two other girls out?” Billie asked. “I have a car down the road, around the bend. I can drive us out of here to safety.”
Ruthie looked up at Billie, eyes brighter. “No, he keeps the keys,” she said.
At this, Shyla came to life again. “I’ll wash my hands in the kitchen and check on him.”