Part 3
Matthew noted that Lucien looked much more like himself when he arrived at the police station in the morning. Too bad that wouldn't last when he delivered the latest news.
"Good morning. I'm just on my way out the door," he said. "Donald Hammond has been found. Or at least his body has. Do you want to come or should I call Doctor Harvey?"
"No need to bother Doctor Harvey. Do we know what happened yet?" asked Lucien, falling into step with him as they headed back outside.
Matthew took a deep breath. "Bill Hobart tells me the body looks much like Mr. Crenshaw's. Stab wound to the upper abdomen."
"Bloody hell!"
"That was my reaction," Matthew admitted grimly. "All we need is a serial killer on the loose."
Hammond's body was lying in an overgrown area a hundred yards away from the entrance to his mine. There was already notable decomposition.
Lucien stood up after his initial examination of the remains. "I'd say he was killed before Mr. Crenshaw, up to a week ago. Probably surprised on his way home from the mine. No dagger was found?"
"Not yet. Why?"
"I'll need further testing, of course, but at first glance I'd say this was done with the same weapon that was used on Mr. Crenshaw."
"Let's hope it was the only one the killer had," said Matthew. "Maybe this is the end of it."
"Possibly, but I wouldn't want to bet anyone else's life on that."
Matthew nodded. "You're right. I'm going to assign officers to keep an eye on Harris and Stuart. What about you?"
"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to have someone watch the house when Charlie and I aren't home, but every indication is that our killer has very specific targets in mind."
"I meant for you, not for the house." He pointed toward Hammond. "I realize you can usually take care of yourself, but this man was no lightweight, and he was killed with little or no struggle."
"I'll be fine," Lucien assured him. "Besides, we want him to show himself, don't we? He's not very likely to do that if I have a uniform shadowing me."
"Blake," Matthew warned, "no setting yourself up as a target. Use your head. This is a dangerous man."
"And the sooner we catch him, the better. I'll be careful."
"Sure you will," said Matthew, but he scarcely sounded convinced.
At the morgue, a closer look at the fatal injury confirmed that it had likely been caused by the weapon that was found with Mr. Crenshaw's body.
When they turned Hammond over, Alice expected to see marks similar to those found on Crenshaw but there were only a couple of stripes. "No 'uniform' on this one then?"
Lucien shook his head. "Mr. Hammond learned how to get along with the guards."
"And how did he do that?"
"By collaborating with them," Lucien said. He tried not to be bitter. The man had only been trying to survive, after all.
"Interesting,"said Alice, but she was watching her colleague closely once again. "I don't suppose Mr. Crenshaw learned that same lesson?"
"No. As I said, I don't recall the man myself, but I'm told he was far less accommodating with the guards than Mr. Hammond was."
"So then why kill both of them? What did they have in common aside from both of them being in that place?"
"Well, that's the big question, isn't it?" But her remark gave him an idea. "I wonder if these are the only two."
"What do you mean?" asked Alice.
But Lucien was already heading for the telephone. He put in a call to a colonel he knew at Army headquarters in Adelaide.
Brian Crenshaw's funeral was in the afternoon. Lucien was not looking forward to it, but he had given his word to the widow. Jean insisted on accompanying him, even though he pointed out he would hardly be alone. Charlie and Bill Hobart would also be there, keeping an eye out for anyone suspicious, especially since the other potential targets, Stuart and Harris, would also be in attendance.
The service was restrained but impressive, with a military honor guard to accompany the body to the gravesite. Mrs. Crenshaw was stoic except for the two tears that ran down her cheeks as the coffin was lowered into the ground. Beside him, Jean's eyes were also damp, no doubt reminded of her own loss. That bloody war was still claiming victims. He rested a comforting hand on her forearm.
But as he turned to her, out of his peripheral vision he noticed a furtive movement as someone ducked behind a tree at some distance away. He caught Charlie's eye and nodded in that direction, and the young sergeant disengaged himself from the crowd and headed that way.
Lucien started to move after him, but Jean grasped his arm and held him in place. "You're here for Mrs. Crenshaw," she reminded him.
He knew she was right, but couldn't help following the man with his eyes for a few moments longer until he was sure Charlie and Hobart were heading toward him. Then he turned back to the funeral service.
The target must have seen the two men coming. He took off at a run, quickly pursued by both officers. They were gaining ground on him, but he headed into a copse of trees that concealed him, and by the time Charlie and Bill reached it, he was out of sight. They heard an automobile engine engage and knew they were too late.
"You lost him?" Matthew was incredulous. "Nothing at all?"
"No, boss. Sorry. He had a car nearby for his getaway." Charlie felt horrible, having let down both Lawson and the doc.
"Tire tracks? Footprints?"
"Neither," admitted Hobert. "The ground was too hard, and the car must have been parked right on the road.. No sign of tracks."
"Did you see his face at least?"
"We never got close enough, and he had his back to us when he was running," Charlie reported.
"He was a small bugger though," said Hobart. "No more than five foot six. Dark hair, straight, not very long."
"Age?"
The two sergeants looked at each other, then both shook their heads. "We couldn't really tell, not without seeing his face," said Hobart. "Maybe the doc saw something."
Lucien entered the squad room just as Hobart was finishing. "Too far away, I'm afraid."
"Then we have nothing except he was short and had dark hair. I don't suppose that rings any bells?" he asked Lucien.
"Not off the top of my head, no, nothing useful."
Ned Simmons came into the room bearing a couple sheets of paper. "Doctor, these came for you while you were out. From Adelaide."
"Ah, thank you, Ned." He took the sheets and quickly scanned them.
"What's that?" asked Matthew. "From Adelaide?"
"I called an old friend to do some digging," Lucien explained, continuing to read. "Bloody hell!" He thrust the papers toward Matthew.
"What?" asked Hobart.
"Ballarat isn't the first place this bastard has been," said Matthew. "First Sydney, then the Gold Coast. Several former POWs murdered, six in all. No one made any connection between the killings in either place until they after they stopped. Whoever is doing all this, losing his weapon isn't going to make him quit."
"Now he knows we're onto him, maybe he'll move on to somewhere safer," Charlie suggested.
"And start all over again?" asked Matthew. "I don't want this to be someone else's problem. I don't want it to be anyone's problem. I want to put an end to it right here."
Lucien added, "Besides, this looks like an obsession. He won't stop until he finishes what he started. Or until someone stops him."
Matthew took charge. "Make sure everyone keeping watch on Stuart and Harris has what little description we've got on the suspect. Blake, I'm assigning a man to you as well, no argument. We're aren't giving him any more chances to kill as easily as he got to the others. Understood?"
"Understood," Lucien mumbled, none too happy. He had been trained to counter just such a threat, and he didn't want anyone else put at risk on his behalf.
The nightmares returned full force sometime after midnight. In his dreams he arrived home to find Jean and Mattie lying on the floor of the sitting room, disemboweled and already gone. Before he could reach what was left of them he heard deep, guttural groaning. In the shadows by his study, he saw a small dark-haired man, his back to Lucien, stabbing Charlie over and over again. The man then began to turn toward Lucien, but a pounding on the door startled him. Before he could see the man's face, the dream was over and he was awake.
He had locked his bedroom door before going to bed, and now he could hear Charlie and the two women shouting to him. Grabbing his robe, he turned the lock and flung the door open. He needed to reassure himself that they were all right so that he could dispel the nightmare visions of them.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he mumbled, pulling each of them into a fierce hug.
Jean laid a hand along his jaw as he released her, then ever practical, she said, "I can use a cup of tea. Anyone else?"
The others followed her into the kitchen and took their customary places around the table as she prepared and poured out the hot drink. She was surprised that Lucien didn't suggest lacing it with whiskey. She wouldn't have begrudged him the comfort in any event.
"Now then Lucien," she began.
He stared at her, his eyes still clouded from the remnants of whatever horrors he'd been dreaming. "I almost saw him," he said. "The killer. He was just turning around when I woke up. He was familiar somehow."
"You think it's someone you know? Someone you've seen recently?" asked Charlie.
Lucien tried to call up the vision again, searching for who it could have been, but the dream had faded. "I don't know. But in my head at least, I recognized something about him."
"Maybe subconsciously you have an idea who the killer is," Mattie suggested. "That's who you were seeing in your dream."
"Maybe." He shook his head. "In any event, it's gone now."
"It wasn't either of the men you were questioning?" asked Jean. "Nigel Harris or Arthur Stuart?"
"No, neither of them. Wrong body type." He stopped dead, his mind working furiously.
"What?" The others all recognized that look.
"We've been looking at the wrong records. The prisoners weren't the only ones in that camp."
"Of course," said Jean. "The guards."
"Exactly. The guards," Lucien confirmed.
"Wait a minute," said Mattie. "Weren't they all hanged?"
"Not all of them. At least, that's my understanding. I testified at some of the trials, but I didn't really follow the outcome."
"Why not?" asked Charlie. "It seems like you'd want to be sure they were punished for what they did."
"Monsters," Jean muttered.
"By then I just wanted to put it all behind me. Get on with my life, find my family."
"You must have been pretty ill, too. Malnourished for so long," said Mattie.
Jean recalled Doctor Blake the elder saying his son spent more than two months in hospital after the camp was liberated. He had hoped Lucien would come home to finish recuperating.
"As I said, I just wanted to get on with my life," Lucien repeated.
"So it's possible there's one of the guards running free here, killing former prisoners," said Jean.
Lucien nodded. "Yes, it's possible. I need to check on them. Make some calls." He stood up, ready to go to his study, but Jean rested a restraining hand on his forearm.
"Lucien, it's one o'clock in the morning. The rest of the country is asleep, remember?"
"Yes, right." He ran a hand through his hair. Patience had never been his strong suit. "Please, back to bed, everyone. I'm sorry I disturbed you yet again."
"Mattie, Charlie, you go ahead," Jean urged. "I'm just going to do the washing up. You know I can't sleep with dirty dishes in my sink."
She washed the cups, and smiled when Lucien picked up a towel to start drying. "It's the least I can do," he shrugged.
When all was put away in the cupboard, Jean reached out to take Lucien's hand and led him to the couch in the sitting room. "Now then, this seemed to work the other night. Maybe it will again."
She sat down beside him and lifted his arm to drape it around her shoulders.
Smiling, he squeezed her tightly for a moment before they both relaxed into each other.
It took much longer this time, but eventually they both fell asleep, with slight smiles on their faces.
Lucien spent most of the morning holed up in his study calling various diplomats and ministry officials he knew until one of them promised to send a full list of the guards from the camp and the disposition of the case against each one. Lucien requested that it be telegraphed to the police station so they could begin tracking down any possible suspects immediately.
He went to the station himself and settled himself in the chair beside Matthew's desk, when he wasn't pacing or checking to be sure the officer on duty out front would have the telegram brought right over.
He was driving everyone crazy, and Matthew was just about ready to banish him when the telegram finally arrived. The Chief Superintendent unfolded it and laid it flat on his desk so Lucien could stand behind him and read it over his shoulder.
"Anything jump out at you?"
Lucien jabbed a finger at a name halfway down the list. "Him! Corporal Sadaharu Tanaka. He's the one we called the Sapper. He carried a sock filled with ball bearings and liked to use it on the heads of prisoners. Three men at least died from fractured skulls, and there were others who lived but…" He shook his head.
"How the hell was he not executed after the war?" Matthew said angrily.
"As I understand it, he agreed to testify against some of the officers, the higher-ups, that the prosecution was most anxious to convict." Lucien looked at the notes next to Tanaka's name. "He served fifteen years in prison, then was released. Which means…"
"Which means he was let out shortly before the murders in Sydney started. I think we have our man. Now, how to we find him. Any thoughts?"
"He would still be a foreign national," said Lucien. "He'd have to be registered with the immigration office."
"I'll get on that. Nice work, Lucien. We can take it from here."
"I think I've earned the right to be there when you catch him. I'm not going anywhere until then." And he plopped down in the same seat beside Matthew's desk, clearly ready to sit there for the duration.
