The Holiday Murders by Robert Gott Page A

me, Mitchell,’ Margaret said. ‘There’s something brutish about him.’
    ‘I agree. I think Ptolemy Jones might be a very dangerous man,’ Magill said. ‘And yet he’s exactly what we need. He frightens me, too, Margaret, but he’s with us, not against us. He’s a follower, not a leader. He’ll know others just like him. He’s perfect.’
    ‘You think you can control him?’ Arthur asked.
    ‘Oh, yes. He’s what I’ve been looking for. He’s got the force we need to silence opposition. We know that there are people out there who agree with us. Remember our last public meeting, Arthur? It was crowded, and people were listening until a few troublemakers disrupted it. Mr Jones could put an end to such disruptions.’
    Neither Margaret nor Arthur seemed convinced, but they could see that Mitchell had suddenly regained some of the fire that had driven him to form a Victorian branch of Australia First back in 1941. They returned to the front room.
    ‘We’ll do it differently this time,’ Mitchell said. ‘We’ll recruit discreetly, build slowly, and change our name. Australia First as a name is damaged goods. We’ll be sweetness and light. We’ll appear the flower, but be the serpent under it, or however that goes. We know who our enemies are, and soon we’ll be in a position to do something about them.’
    ‘Australian Patriots,’ Margaret said. ‘How does that sound?’
    Mitchell smiled at her. ‘That sounds fine. I think we’re back in business. Wucht und Willenhaftigkeit .’
    ‘You know I don’t know any German, Mitchell.’
    ‘Mighty momentum and willpower, Margaret. Someone said that about Arno Breker’s sculptures. I think it should become our motto — “Momentum and willpower”.’
    ‘I like it,’ Arthur said. ‘It’s got a real ring to it.’
    Ptolemy Jones was feeling pleased with himself. He wasn’t quite sure how to proceed, but he was sure that the first steps he’d taken were the right ones. He had before him the ruthless example of the great Adolf Hitler. Courage was everything. Sympathy was weakness.
    It was late Christmas afternoon as he walked the streets of central Melbourne, filling in time before he set about completing his business. He would wait until dark before returning to East Melbourne, where two members of the Quinn family had already felt the unforgiving truth of his calling.
    For now, though, he was thirsty. There were a few cafés open, but they weren’t the sort of places he wanted to be seen in — they were full of American servicemen busily seducing silly girls who’d open their legs for a square of chocolate. Their laughter filled him with rage. And the rage felt good.
    He found himself outside the smeared and grubby window of an uninviting café called Clarry’s, in Russell Street, and entered its dark interior, where the air was stale with cigarette smoke and the smell of rank dripping. A woman in her twenties was sitting morosely at a table, a cigarette smouldering in her fingers. Jones was sure she was a prostitute, and he assumed from her demeanour that she was at the end of a long shift. He despised her. The apparent proprietor of the café, presumably Clarry himself, was leaning on the counter, turning the pages of a copy of Truth — a scurrilous newspaper that specialised in squalid murders and ugly divorces. He raised his dull eyes and opened them widely in lieu of asking what Jones wanted.
    ‘Cup of tea,’ Jones said. ‘Black is fine.’
    ‘Black’s all we got,’ Clarry said, and took his squat body into the back of the shop. Jones turned the Truth around to see what sordid stories the boss had been reading. As part of the general war effort, its front pages had been given over to what was happening in New Guinea. The real story had been bumped to page four. The headline, Wife Killed Our Baby, So I Shot Her , sat above the guilty man’s own words: ‘As God’s my judge, I didn’t kill my baby. My wife belted the kid with a waddy. I