Chapter Thirty-four
Thirty-four
Staring into the face of a mass murderer was an enlightening experience, Billie Walker found.
The thing that struck her most forcibly was the sheer ordinariness of this brutal killer.
This man who tortured and maimed and raped and killed had the same features, the same kind of flesh and blood and human traits, as the next person.
Eyelashes. Teeth. His veins presumably held blood, like the next person.
He’d once been a baby, the offspring of some unsuspecting union.
A pulse moved beneath his skin, just as it did in Billie.
The thing was, she had not spotted him in a crowd.
She could not in all reality say she had looked at him at The Dancers and thought, That one.
That one is the killer of thousands, hundreds of thousands.
“Who helped you out at Richmond, Hessmann? It must have been someone persuasive.”
He kept his thin mouth shut.
“What did you like to do to help people to talk? Something about a bathtub, I hear. Was that your thing? If I had some of your techniques, maybe you’d furnish me with some information now.”
Again, nothing.
The rage in Billie, a warranted but unhealthy rage, was pressing at her skin from the inside, making her feel she might burst. What would she have done if this were eighteen months earlier?
Would she wait for the cavalry to arrive?
She’d never killed a man, not face-to-face anyway—she’d been bluffing about that—but there was always a first time.
“I heard how those women got you at the camp. Earned you those burns,” she said, pointing at his face. “Hardly an honorable war wound, unlike so many others. That must have really upset you, having to walk around with the evidence of their victory written on your face.”
Ah, she was getting to him now. That chalky face of his was tinged with red.
“Yes, they really got you, didn’t they, those women?” Billie went on. “And the boy here, he figured it out, didn’t he? Did you know who the boy was? His significance?”
Her captive frowned.
“The boy you beat and nearly succeeded in killing, did you know who he was?”
“Judensau,” he seethed in his heavy accent. Jew pig. Billie felt her temper rise yet further.
It’s tempting, but no, she told herself.
She didn’t want him ruining the rust carpet.
He was much better in the dock here in Sydney or in Berlin or at Nuremberg facing his brave victims than splattered in her nice office where she would have to return each day and remember him, or at least the stains he’d left behind.
“I don’t think much of you, Hessmann. You and your kind aren’t worth the carpet I walk on and that’s the only reason I’m holding back from pulling this trigger right now and ruining this little patch of rug beneath you.
I find myself feeling a bit sentimental about the rug, but hey, if you really want to change my mind, do go on,” she dared him.
“Verr?terische hure!” he said and spat on her father’s rust carpet. Treacherous whore.
Billie took a step back to contain herself.
Wait for the cops. Hank won’t be long, she thought.
Lot of good that did last time, came the second half of that thought.
The inspector seemed to be doing the best he could; he’d done what he promised when she’d called on him—but that hadn’t been enough.
Her eye caught Jack’s photograph, that blurry, candid grin, and the air shifted, the soft sound of movement alerting her, and Hessmann, moving swiftly, bounded toward the small balcony, its door left open to catch the breeze.
Yes, he was going for the balcony, where she’d often lingered to watch the setting sun, or smoke one of her Lucky Strikes on smoking days.
It was curious; he had nowhere to flee to.
She moved fast, just a beat behind him, and just as she thought he was cornered, Hessmann was over the edge.
Billie waited for screams from below and the sound of his body hitting the footpath.
Another Nazi escaping justice by his own hand, like his Führer in his bunker.
But no.
Billie leaned over the balcony railing and saw that Hessmann was on the edge of the moldings, clinging to the building, far above the entrance to the billiards room where she had been celebrating so recently.
A fire exit, made up of a narrow metal bridge connecting Daking House to its neighbor, Station House, sat high above the laneway, and Billie was aware of its having been used in years past by the panicked workers in the top stories of the adjoining building when fire had broken out.
The fire escape was old and considered unsafe, but Hessmann was inching toward it and soon would have it in reach.
Billie trained her Colt on him. “Stop!” she yelled, leaning out over the balcony, steadying herself against one of the solid pillars, and when he didn’t stop, did not even pause, she fired her weapon without hesitation, the bullet ricocheting off the metal of the bridge.
She heard a gasp from below, as if it were coming from another place, perhaps over a telephone line or from a picture film.
She stayed focused on Hessmann, and in no time he was on top of the narrow bridge, crouching low as a spider, pulling his way across the grille toward Station House.
She fired again, aiming at his lower body, as the rest of him was protected by the grille.
This time he paused, but only briefly. She had not missed him, she realized, seeing a trail of blood as the Nazi war criminal once more dragged himself forward.
Now the metal grille was in the way of a clear shot.
“Blast. Blast!” There was no one below to help, no one in Station House that she could see.
The cops had not yet arrived. The building’s windows were open for summer.
It would be too easy for him to disappear into one of them.
Billie slid the Colt into the belt at the cinched waist of her dress and with only a moment’s hesitation pulled herself over the edge of the balcony.
The moldings were just wide enough to cling to, but it was perilous.
She began to slip and threw herself sideways, catching the bridge with both hands, and with effort lifted herself up and was on the fire escape with Hessmann only feet ahead.
The rails were not solid, the bridge swayed, and she crawled forward, catching Hessmann’s ankle on one side.
“Hure!” he cursed for the second time, trying to shake her off.
“I’m no one’s whore, thank you very much,” Billie returned with vicious politeness, and calmly pressed the muzzle of her Colt into the bullet wound in his leg.
He cried out and stopped trying to pull himself forward.
When he was still again she released the pressure.
“I don’t recommend you move, Hessmann,” she said.
“Unless you want more of that.” The wound poured blood where the bullet had hit him.
He couldn’t run now, not on that leg. He’d stopped, and so had she.
She had him. She finally had him. She would not let Hessmann out of her sight. Not for anyone.
“Don’t move!” a voice was calling from below, unexpectedly mirroring her sentiment. She looked down over the lip of the narrow bridge and recognized Hank Cooper’s face turned up at her. “We have the fire department coming. They have a net,” he shouted, his voice uncharacteristically strained.
Only now, Billie realized they were drawing quite a crowd, perching on the bridge, several stories above the cold, hard pavement.
Commuters heading to Central Station and the tramlines after work had stopped to stare.
Constable Primrose was beside Hank Cooper, and the lift operator, John Wilson, was with them, looking as white as a spirit.
Just ahead, at the top of Station House, two police officers appeared in the window, the glass surreally reflecting Billie’s precarious position back at her.
Someone in clerical vestments arrived in haste down Rawson Lane, crossed himself, and began praying.
The moment stretched out, the sky turning gold around them, the sun lowering slowly in the summer sky.
Hessmann must know now that he was surrounded, that he had no chance of escape. Not this time.
“Für das Tausendj?hriges Reich!” he yelled suddenly and threw his weight forward, his legs falling downward first and slowly dragging his torso over the bridge.
Billie grabbed for him, then let go, realizing she had no firm hold on the bridge, pulling herself backward on her bottom and hands, out of the way of his grasp as he now scrabbled for a hold, either to take her with him or as a final, instinctive bid for survival.
The bridge lurched, rusted screws giving way.
One white hand reached her right ankle and took it firmly, its grip as tight as a python, pulling Billie sideways in a violent jerk.
The bridge shook again, making a terrible noise.
Billie slid helplessly to the edge, her movement punctuated by a collective cry from below.
She found the slimmest foothold for her left shoe and meshed the fingers of one hand through the grille.
They stayed poised there, Billie gripping the bridge and Hessmann hanging by one arm, his entire weight now on her right ankle.
The screams from below sounded strangely distant in Billie’s ears under the din of her adrenaline, which throbbed loudly in her skull.
Her twisting leg screamed out in pain, but her own lips were silent, pulled back in a grimace as white as her knuckles as she desperately held on.
Billie’s fine stockings were smooth, slippery, and she felt Hessmann’s grasp sliding lower as they tore under the weight of his body, and then he was balanced from the toe of her oxford shoe, her foot twisting.
Her shoe began to unlace itself, the heel coming free, bit by bit slipping slowly, as time stretched out like a soldier’s minute—every action, every breath extended—nothing before, nothing after, just this moment.
One more breath, another, and then her oxford was free, and so was Franz Hessmann.
Now weightless, Billie’s right leg pulled upward and she instinctively cradled her knee, scraping it on the metal grille suspending her, and through the mesh she caught a glimpse of the white face, now a twisted mask of rage and fear, retreating below her, growing smaller, eyes round with panic and looking right into her, one hand still stretching up, reaching.
She closed her eyes and heard the sickening thud as he landed, her shoe hitting the ground after him with something like a ping.
The bridge rocked again and everything seemed to go silent, even the hammering of Billie’s heart seeming for a moment to stop.
And then, in the distance, a siren.
The fire department was arriving with its safety net.