Deception bay, p.1
Deception Bay, page 1
‘Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.’
General Stimson, US Secretary of State, when closing the Black Chamber — the State Department’s codebreaking service — in 1929
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‘The average person does not know the amount of perversion there is in the community.’
Detective Senior Sergeant Frank Bischof, giving evidence to the Sex Inquiry, as reported in The Courier-Mail, 15 April 1944
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‘The correctly coloured animals of the jungle have an instinct which automatically causes them to resort to the correct background and to remain immobile whilst they wish to be hidden. The soldier has to learn these things.’
William Dakin, Camouflage Report 1939–1945
THURSDAY 27 APRIL 1944
Prologue
The night was moonless. A black sky pierced only by the rhythmic sweep of searchlights mounted on hills to the west. The overlapping funnels of light crisscrossed, sliding over the cupola of the Town Hall, the metal spines and white arches of the two bridges. Details emerged briefly, half-realised shapes and patterns appeared one moment, only to be swallowed up the next. The light flickered over people and places. Nothing was solid, nothing certain; events played out in a world of shadows.
The light lingered on the figure of a man seated on the sandstone balustrade of the Shrine of Remembrance. A thin-limbed man in ill-fitting civilian clothes, he sat alone, a briefcase wedged between his feet. His skin appeared translucent, his blond hair luminous in the flickering of the Eternal Flame. For weeks now, Archie had come to sit and watch, entertained and thrilled by the show that evolved around him.
He knew the regulars by now, the soldiers who congregated most nights, the locals who joined them. Adolescent boys venturing out to gape wide-eyed at this forbidden show. Gypsy — a lieutenant with the Marines — leaned against a column singing bawdy songs in a deep bass that jarred with her face powder and paint. Ruby — an Australian warrant officer — danced to the music in a tight-fitting dress, her glossy wig and painted nails reflecting the light as she circled. Tondelayo wasn’t here tonight; perhaps she was on duty, although she might yet turn up. The night was young. The regulars waited for soldiers, groups of men who staggered past, giving ironic salutes with their tall bottles before hot footing it to the railway station or the sly grog shops in Spring Hill. But there was always one. One who’d stay. TBH, Gypsy called them: ‘to be had’. Archie laughed to himself — there’s an acronym for everything now we’re at war.
Every night, Archie watched, slowly learning how a glance, a movement of the hand, just a simple gesture sent a message. He had learned the codes, the secrets shared by those who spoke the same language. It excited him. He had lived for so long in what had seemed a prison but now, in the shadows, he could see how fluid his future might be.
Soon, one of the passing soldiers would pause, glance around to check that his friends had gone.
‘Hey babe,’ Ruby would purr, tapping the seat beside her. ‘Where’ve you been, honey? Sit by me a while.’
And the soldier — none different — would join Ruby on the hard stone balustrade, would lean into her embrace, his face alive in ways Archie had seldom seen elsewhere.
From the shadows of the colonnade, Archie watched a small group of soldiers roasting sausages over the remembrance flame. One slung his arm around the soldier with the toasting fork. A third sat on the ledge of the nearby rotunda, a cigarette held to his mouth. He blew smoke rings toward the others, ending with a kiss. More than anything, Archie wanted to join them, to emulate their casual ease, the way they seemed comfortable in their own skin.
Briefly he thought of his wife and prayed she was safe.
He had meant to go back to work, it’s what he’d told them when he left the party. But already today he’d spent sixteen long hours at his desk, staring at letters and digits, tracking them down columns and across parallel lines. Lists, lines, grids, patterns. Groups of letters, four to each group, hammered into his brain. Letters swam before his eyes even now, so that he felt he was drowning in them.
Nothing made any sense. A riddle, he knows, always has a solution, but sometimes — and he knows this too — the answer comes when you least expect it. When, instead of staring intently, you look away. Then the clue comes as if from nowhere and instantly you have it: the solution. But you must wait for that moment, never force it. As a child, he played with the thermometers his father brought home from the lab, breaking them open to extract the mercury, watching as the tiny bubble of silvery grey emerged, so elusive that when he reached out to touch it, it burst into tiny balls. No matter how hard you tried, it was impossible to pin it down, but then, all of a sudden, it would meld into a single blob once more. Solutions, too, were like quicksilver.
The Japanese Mainline Army messages he was working on were meaningless now, of course. He knew the additives had changed — they were old. Messages about weather systems that had blown themselves out months ago, battles long fought and lost, troops already redeployed. But there was something to be said for playing with the puzzle, investigating the minds behind it, their way of thinking. Was it super-encrypted? Bisected? Often it seemed as though he was playing a game, complex and cerebral, but just a game. And then something would happen — a freighter sunk off Newcastle, a barge landing a company of marines on the wrong beach — and you remembered it might be a game, yes, but a deadly one.
He knew he wouldn’t sleep.
For months he’d told himself he wanted nothing to do with this world, but its allure was more than he could resist, and he’d strayed around the edges for too long.
One of the soldiers, the one holding the fork in his hand, shone a torch with his other into the shadows where the he sat watching.
‘Who’s there?’ the soldier said. ‘Come on, join our little party, why don’t you? We won’t bite.’
Archie stood. As he moved to join the group, he felt his body relax, his skin loosen as if, finally, he was sloughing off a hard and itchy coat.
*
Across the river, on the south side, Harry Latimer was lost.
Even if he’d known his way, even if he hadn’t arrived but a day ago and had scarcely settled into camp, even if he hadn’t been drinking for the last six hours, Private Harry Latimer of the 832nd Signal Service Company would have been lost. The shadows cast by the searchlights, the meandering alleys and unlit streets made retracing his steps impossible, like finding his way through a dark maze. The street was unpaved, the surface gravelled. He slipped on the wet gutter at the edge of the sidewalk and clutched the brown-paper wrapping in his left fist, struggling to keep the bottle upright. He took a swig from the narrow mouth, but the movement made his head spin, and he wondered where he was and how he’d got here. In Brisbane, and lost. Apart from the railway station and the trip to camp bouncing in the back of the troop carrier, he’d seen nothing. Nothing apart from this river, the ramshackle buildings straddling it, and the men he’d met up with a few hours ago.
He wiped his hand across his mouth and tasted blood. Then remembered the skating rink, the girls, the fight. What had it been about?
In the distance, he saw crowds milling. If he could only work out how to navigate there, he’d be able to ask the way back to camp. But no cars passed at this time of night and, although he’d seen metal rails down the middle of the road, he hadn’t seen any streetcars and had no idea if taxis worked this late.
The illuminated dial on his wristwatch showed half past twelve.
As he wove along a laneway, he could make out the iron semicircular arches of a bridge across the river; if he kept to the riverbank, surely he’d make his way there. He heard distant laughter, a ribald song, a shriek of what might have been joy. Or fear.
Harry leaned against the wooden palings of a fence, took another mouthful of the sour beer, then hurled the bottle onto the road. The paper bag dulled the shatter of glass. He raised himself up, spat onto the dirt, and made for the bridge. From this distance the press of people on the bridge formed a single swirling mass of movement and colour.
The laneway gave on to a wider street and finally he found himself among the crowds lining the road. People jostled for space as they funnelled toward the bridge. Groups of GIs huddled together or roughed each other up like puppies at play. Women in shimmering dresses clung to the arms of sailors in bell-bottomed trousers, while girls in short skirts and bobby socks alternately stared open-mouthed or giggled into the palms of their splayed hands.
‘Hey babe, gimme a kiss.’
‘Keep your hands off me. Why would I kiss a brewery when there’s whiskey to be had?’
‘Hitler . . . he’s only got one ball . . .’ A solitary tenor rose in song.
‘Here we go, girls, come and get it.’
Harry looked into the bloodshot eyes of a captain who stared back without seeing. One of the captain’s hands pawed the crumpled blouse of a woman beside him, and the other was clasped firmly around her waist, as if to keep them both from falling.
Above, the searchlights lit up the clouds and Harry looked ahead. For a brief moment, the light slid across the metal arcs of the bridge and he watched the beam caress two figures, a soldier and a woman. The way they moved reminded him of the couple at the skating rink, he a short soldier and she statuesque. Earlier in the night, he’d watched as they sailed around in beautiful harmony, bewitched by their skill, in spite of the man’s awkward stoo
Harry raced ahead, hollering.
‘Hey!’ His voice was lost among the revellers. ‘Help. Look. Help me get to him.’
A woman’s high-pitched cry pierced the laughter, and two GIs wrestled each other to the ground. Harry ran toward the centre of the bridge, stepping around the soldiers, crushing a cap underfoot. As he ran he swooped to retrieve a fallen corsage of brightly coloured flowers and returned it to the woman.
‘Ma’am,’ he said and kept running.
The man was gone without a sound. Harry made his way to the spot where he’d been and leaned over the railing, searching the river. Nothing. No swirl of oily waters. No hand waving for help. It was as if he’d imagined it all, and he wondered if he had.
Chapter One
The late-night shift was unusually quiet. Most of the drunks who’d been hauled in around midnight were sleeping it off in the cells out back and the MPs who’d dragged them in were doing much the same in the upstairs mess. The blackout curtains blocked any light from escaping to the darkened streets below. Only muffled clangs from the dry docks and the rumble of a solitary truck gave any hint that workers toiled throughout the night.
Alone at his desk on the upper floor of South Brisbane Town Hall, Sergeant Joe Washington drummed a slow bongo rhythm on the wooden surface with the fingers and palm of his hand. He looked toward Major Mitchell’s desk on the raised platform at the end of the room. Apart from the framed photo of his wife and that damn dog, the desk was, as usual, bare of paperwork or any other sign of activity. Mitchell was too senior to let night shifts interfere with his evenings.
Joe lifted a fistful of pencils from the jar to his right and laid them out in a line. From both ends of the row, he selected a pencil and laid each of them on top of the others to form a second layer. One by one, he continued lifting pencils and placing them on top of each other until he had built a neat triangular structure. He leaned forward, squinting slightly, and reached for a wooden ruler. Onto the top of the triangle, he balanced the ruler, checked that the whole structure was sturdy and tapped on one end. He watched the ruler seesaw from side to side. He tapped a second time and began to count. Suddenly, he was back in the playground on Coney Island, he could smell the salt from the sea and taste the sweetness of the vanilla ice cream bought from the fat man with a rainbow-coloured hat. And he remembered the crippling embarrassment of having his mother — a short, squat woman in a dowdy black dress — partner him on the opposite end of the seesaw.
He toppled the pyramid and tossed the ruler across the room.
Today’s Courier-Mail lay open underneath the scattered pencils. RAF bombers over Europe, the Reds marching into Crimea, Liberator bombers hammering Truk. Bodies washed up on sandy beaches, battleships blown apart by fearsome pilots, merchant ships sunk along the coast — sixteen vessels lost last year and the threat remained. The war was going well — people said so all the time — the end was in sight. But the numbers of casualties continued to rise and Joe wondered what the final cost would be.
Turning the pages in search of better news, Joe noticed another pet parade was imminent. A regular event at the Riverview Hotel, he loved photographing soldiers with their pets, burly sergeants fussing over dogs as they groomed them before the show — last time he even saw the fierce quartermaster from Base soothing a tabby cat cradled in his arms. The parade showed men at their best, Joe thought. It certainly made a change from the things he dealt with most days.
He lifted a stack of folders and slammed them on top of the newspaper. He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead, ran his fingers through his closely cropped sandy hair, then inspected his arms as he lay them crossed one over the other on top of the pile. His clipped nails were stained purple from constantly handling carbon paper, the colour seeping like bruises into the roughened patches of skin where he’d chewed his cuticles. He spread his hands to form two fans. This was all he had to show for his time in the United States Army. Not exactly a Million Dollar Wound.
Joe Washington was twenty-four and acutely aware that two of these years had been spent at this desk.
Which folder to choose tonight? He flipped through them like a pack of cards. The brawl near the submarine base at Teneriffe that had ended with two sappers in hospital? Yesterday’s report of an attack on a woman at Gympie? Perhaps the dope peddler? Sydney had alerted them to a Jimmy Kwan who had moved north with an entertainment troupe, but they had nothing specific on him. There’d been rumours of opium dealing for some time now, opium sticks being almost as lucrative as smuggled cigarettes. Unlike booze, that particular addiction seemed not to end in brawls. He selected another folder. The impersonator? Joe couldn’t see the attraction himself, but each to his own. Didn’t seem much of a crime to him, trying to pass yourself off as an officer. More a bit of light comedy.
He leaned back, folded his arms, and looked at the ceiling. Everyone said the war was moving on, it was time to look to the future. Position yourself.
But what could Joe do? Over the last two years he’d got used to this life, a life that had seemed so strange when he’d arrived. Now, it felt impossible to imagine another. Perhaps he could work something out, position himself for a future. Whatever that might be.
Did he have the nerve for action? Hell, even Bland had managed a transfer north. Joe tried to imagine him in action, but the image wouldn’t form. Private Wilbur Bland, short and overweight, the butt of everyone’s jokes. Yet even Bland had found a way to serve that was more like a soldier than a clerk. At least he’d got nearer the action.
Joe reached forward to straighten the photo frame on his desk: New York in light and shade. He’d shot this scene in Central Park on a winter evening after heavy snowfall. The trees blotched with snow, icicles strung along their branches like Christmas lights. The black-and-white geometry appealed to him, the monochrome patterns of winter when everything was bleached of colour. But the photo wasn’t just about winter. As Joe had lined up the shot, taking care to record the precise lines, he knew that in a few months these trees would be transformed into colour, the geometric shapes would soften as flowers bloomed and green shoots appeared. The scene was one of promise.
When the phone trilled, Joe was startled to find himself again in Brisbane.
*
Twenty minutes later, Joe leaned across the front counter at the Woolloongabba Police Station and caught a whiff of something sour. The Woolloongabba Police were responsible for the whole of the South Brisbane Police District, an area that covered most of this side of the river and as far south as Coolangatta. The bars, nightclubs and entertainment venues that crowded into South Brisbane meant that Joe had regular dealings with police here. Next door to the station, a park and playground run by the Police Welfare Club had all sorts of facilities, too. Some of the men at Base came here to play basketball, and Joe himself had tried his hand in the boxing ring once, with a group of raggedly dressed kids from the district. Thinking to go soft on them at first, he’d soon realised he’d have the crap beaten out of him if he didn’t fight for real. Street kids were as tough here as back home, it seemed.
‘Evening, constable.’
He addressed himself to the uniformed officer slouched in a chair behind the counter and watched as the constable picked his teeth with a broken match, flicked whatever he’d discovered in there onto the floor and then flung the match into a wastepaper basket across the room.
‘I gather you’ve got a body,’ Joe said.
‘Might have. Or we will when the water police get out in a couple of hours. Unless your man’s hallucinating — and that’s possible, given the state of him when he stumbled in here. Totally shickered.’
