The Port Fairy Murders by Robert Gott Page A

Occasionally he looked behind him, and once he ducked into a doorway and waited a few moments. He’d seen someone do this in a film. Unlike the film, no follower caught up and revealed himself. Joe felt slightly silly when he stepped back into Sydney Road. There was someone several blocks back, on the other side. Whoever it was turned into a side street and disappeared.
    STARLING WAS AN instinctive predator. He kept far enough back to make identification of him impossible, and he walked with the loose slouch of a purposeless pedestrian. If Sable looked back, he might see him, but his gait would suggest a person who perhaps had had just enough to drink to dull any urgency in his reason for being in Sydney Road. He saw Sable slip into a doorway and guessed at his reason for doing so. He made a small, derisive noise at the man’s inexperience. As if any follower would fall for that! When Sable emerged, he stopped and looked down Sydney Road. Starling noted this, even though the distance between them was considerable, and with unhurried steps he turned into a side street. He waited a few moments and returned to Sydney Road. Sable had drawn further ahead, and Starling now hurried to make up the distance. He kept to the shadows, but Sable had stopped checking behind him. He turned right into Albion Street, where Starling lost sight of him. He ran to catch up, stopped at the corner, and crossed the narrow street. He saw Sable about 100 yards along Albion Street.
    ALBION STREET WAS narrow and dark, and no traffic moved along it. Joe had been to the Lamberts’ house once before, on New Year’s Eve. So much had happened in the ensuing weeks that it seemed like a lifetime ago. He paused at the corner of Bishop Street to gather his thoughts. Maude Lambert was expecting him.
    ‘Who was that?’ Tom Mackenzie had said when Joe had rung Inspector Lambert 48 hours earlier. ‘Nobody,’ had been Maude’s devastating reply.
    He breathed deeply, and was aware that his hands were shaking. He walked towards the house, turned in at the gate, and paused yet again.
    There was a light on in the front room — Joe could see a seam escaping down one side of the blackout. He knocked.
    STARLING STOOD AT the end of Bishop Street and watched as Joe opened a front gate. He seemed to hover for a moment and then, in the general quiet, the sound of Sable knocking on the door reached Starling. He hurried along the far side of the street, protected from view by the absence of lighting. There were no trees to obscure him, but he didn’t need them. He arrived opposite the house in time to see the front door open and Sable slip inside. It was too dark to get a glimpse of the person who’d let him in. Starling found a place where he could watch the house, and sat down with his back against a picket fence. Whose house was this? Did Sable have a girlfriend? After a few minutes, Starling decided he hadn’t walked all this way to just sit and wait. He wasn’t a patient man. He counted the houses back to the laneway that gave on to the nightsoil man’s laneway that ran behind Bishop Street. Counting back, he found the back fence of the house that Sable had entered. There was a gate, which was carelessly unlocked — perhaps the nightsoil man was due — and Starling opened it and entered the Lamberts’ backyard.
    JOE HAD BEEN AWARE , since his earliest days in Homicide, that Maude Lambert was as important to Inspector Lambert’s investigations as any of his detectives were — possibly even more important. He knew that Helen Lord was resentful of this, and suspicious of Mrs Lambert, but he admired her, and her good opinion of him mattered. This was not to gain any professional advantage, but simply because he wanted such a person to note him and to like him. He had, however, fallen from grace, and when Maude opened the front door to him he felt an impulse to simply walk away.
    ‘Sergeant Sable,’ she said. ‘You’re safe. Come in.’
    Joe said nothing.