Chapter 2: Gravity

"I don't know what you want from me, Inspector. Can I go now?"

Darius Johnson had his arms locked over his chest, exuding innocence. Jack sighed under his breath. There was really no getting through to their serial-killer. They had been in the interview room for an hour, with little to no progress. He just wouldn't admit to anything, even though he had been caught more or less with blood on his hands. Luckily rather less, as the officer was still acutely aware that said blood would have been his own. The Inspector leaned forward, folding his hands on the wooden table.

"Mr. Johnson, you were caught with your knife aimed at my back. I don't think you will leave here for quite some time. So, why don't we just get this over with?"

The man sat in defiant silence, glancing at Jack's fingers. Something akin to a grin crept onto the man's face. The Inspector shuddered, despite the stuffy warmth in the room. A desperate fly buzzed against the window, trying to escape.

"You know, I would have enjoyed killing you," Johnson said, his voice changed completely. "You sick swine. Does your wife know that you are fucking whores, when she has her back turned?"

Jack gulped. Maybe his acting had been a little too convincing for the man's twisted brain. The mad sparkle in Johnson's eyes didn't make the Inspector feel any better. In a mixture of trying to disguise his unsettled feelings and distancing himself from the crazy killer as far as possible, Jack leaned back, locking his arms over his chest. He was contemplating if it was wise to call a Constable into the room before continuing, lest the man might try his luck again. On the other hand, they were finally making progress. Jack realised that he had unconsciously covered up his wedding ring in his movement. Something about this madman knowing about his relationship with Phryne made his skin crawl. Darius Johnson watched him with cold, glittering eyes, all but foaming from the mouth when he spoke again.

"Scoundrels of your kind is all the same. Proper and respectable in daylight and at night you sneak around in the shadows and go after your immoral, ungodly business. Your wife would spit in your face if she knew, Inspector!"

The last word was hurled with so much hate, that it took all of Jack's self-restraint to hide his flinch. To his utter annoyance he felt the urge to defend himself. But when he was about to open his mouth and explain to Johnson calmly that his marriage was none of his business, the door flew open and dumped a whirlwind, dressed in swaying layers of dark blue, into the room.

"Good morning, what did I miss?" Mrs. Robinson asked cheerfully, dropping beside Jack onto a chair.

The Inspector smiled grimly at the killer, whose eyes were madly dashing to the woman. He obviously remembered her voice vividly.

"Nothing much. Mr. Johnson, I believe you have met my wife?"

X

"Would you like a scone, Mr. Butler?" Dot asked from where she stood at the kitchen counter.

"That would be lovely, Dorothy."

The butler briefly glanced up from his paper to look at the young woman. She had a healthy glow to her cheeks that deeply relieved him. Ever since the beginning of her pregnancy her stomach had been switching between ravenous hunger and morning sickness and today seemed to be one of the good days. Indeed, the maid was biting into her own piece of baked goods, before she even had slipped onto the chair opposite him. Dot enjoyed the quiet mornings in the kitchen with Mr. Butler, as long as they would still last. God knew what would happen with her occupation, once her belly got too big to make beds and wash blood out of blouses. Her sleuthing had already had to be limited, since her random spells of vomiting made subtlety difficult to accomplish. Despite that, Dorothy Collins was quite sure that something had happened last night, with her Mistress and Master not having returned till long after midnight and Hugh not coming home from the station until the early hours. Indeed, he was fast asleep right now - otherwise she would have already interrogated her husband. But at least that gave her time to spend a quiet morning with Mr. Butler and a second breakfast, before she needed to sort through the pantry.

"More tea, Mr. Butler?" she asked, refilling her own cup.

"Thank you, Dorothy," the wall of paper answered. Dot smiled. The servant was rather hard to tear away from his news, she found, especially when there was horse races on, whose results he would always study before anything else. Her glance brushed over the front page and her hand stopped, causing the cup to overflow, before she managed to tear her eyes away.

"Mr. Butler?"

The sound of her voice made him drop the paper, but to his surprise, the maid snatched the leaves from his hands.

"They caught 'The Butcher'!" she exclaimed, her eyes searching for confirmation of her suspicion. "With a dangerous trick, the brave men of the City South Police Station have finally managed to clap the killer in iron," she read aloud, then continued more quietly. "Allegedly a senior officer used relations with a lady of the evening to lure'The Butcher'into a trap."

"That explains it," Mr. Butler smiled, getting up to grab a cloth.

Dorothy didn't look up from the article, while he patted the tea from the table top.

"It explains what, Mr. Butler?"

The servant smiled to himself, before calmly explaining.

"I found the Inspector's suit in the washing machine this morning. My best guess would be, that he doesn't have enough experience with Make-up to realise that it needs to be brushed with laundry soap to even have the faintest chance of being removed from a white shirt."

With some amusement he noticed the colour on Dorothy's face darkening to a pretty shade of pink in a mixture of embarrassment and outrage as she looked up at him, her mouth agape.

"You do not actually mean to say that the Inspector has been involved with one of those... ladies?" she stuttered in shock. Mr. Butler sipped on his tea.

"I believe, our Master is very dedicated to his job, Dorothy and he would resort to desperate measures in order to catch a very dangerous murderer."

"Miss Fisher wouldn't allow that!" Dot said loyally.

"I believe, Mrs. Robinson would not be opposed to him pretending the act of intimacy with someone, if it meant saving lives," Mr. B stated casually, picking up the papers again. "And isn't one of those ladies your sister?"

"Do not remind me," Dot grumbled into her cup, while draining her tea. She fought down the urge to wake up Hugh and find out right now what had happened, and instead cleared her dishes away to head into the pantry. After all she was very dedicated to her job as well and the chaos on the well stocked shelves wouldn't sort itself. Mr. Butler looked after her with a soft smile playing around his lips before returning to the article that he had spotted right when buying the newspaper.

X

"Well, I don't believe I have ever been called 'sick and twisted' by a serial killer before," Phryne laughed, when they arrived at the door to Jack's office.

"Not something I particularly feel the urge to repeat," her husband grumbled, but his face belied any sincerity. He felt rather satisfied with himself. Phryne's involvement had caused Johnson to finally let the last bit of self-control slip, confessing to all five murders and two more in Adelaide, before he had even arrived in Victoria. Considering this, Jack could live with the madman's unshakable conviction that he had done the deed with a prostitute, while his wife had been watching on for her own, sick amusement. The Inspector pushed the door to his office open with some vigour and froze mid-movement.

"Good morning, Jack," said the man sitting behind his desk, glancing at him over the rims of his glasses. "Mrs. Robinson."

George Sanderson nodded at Phryne, who was torn between fight and flight. Not that she was scared of the Chief Commissioner as such, but considering the quick and tragic end of Rosie's second attempt at matrimony, she could imagine that he hadn't learned the news of Jack's wedding with much enjoyment. And his influence on her husband's career was sadly considerable.

"I better leave you to it," she whispered, but Jack's former father-in-law had apprehended this and urged her with a wave of the hand to enter.

"Please do stay. I would like a word with the both of you," he said, his voice unreadable. Like two school children, having been caught hiding frogs in the headmistress' desk, they sat down, waiting for their scolding. Sanderson took his glasses off, rubbing at them with a big handkerchief.

"I assume you know, why I am here?"

"Johnson just gave me a full confession," the Inspector said, lifting his chin in defiance. His former father-in-law looked at him for a moment, while his forehead creased up in anger.

"What on earth were you thinking, Jack?"

He slammed down the mornings paper so hard that it caused some sheets to float off the desk. Nobody dared pick them up. You could have heard a needle drop in the thick silence. Jack's thoughts were racing. He knew he had gone a step too far in the last night. Not only involving Phryne but he had endangered all of them. His embarrassment and longing to take the killer down had gotten the better of his common sense. But surely the results spoke for themselves all the same.

"We caught him, George, that is all that matters," he said calmly. "Without any further bloodshed."

"Have you read the papers, Jack? They are implying that you were intimate with a harlot to lure Johnson out of the shadows."

Jack and Phryne looked at each other.

"I can assure you, that was not the case," Inspector Robinson finally said stiffly.

Sanderson rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Of course not. But you can't be oblivious to what light that throws onto this Station? And me?"

Jack nodded, his jaw clenched. Obviously even divorce and remarriage could not dissolve his relationship with Sanderson in the eyes of the public. Politics! How he despised them.

"I will not even start on the fact that you endangered your life," Sanderson said, his anger picking up again. Jack felt the need to hang his head in shame, but kept it stubbornly up, glittering at the Chief Commissioner.

"I was well protected," he ground out.

Phryne looked from one man to the other. She had witnessed the case in which Jack had been forced to clear George's name from a murder investigation, defying half the city in the process. She also remembered vividly George Sanderson's reaction to Jack's disappearance, when he had been kidnapped by a gangster family. No matter how much they bickered, those two men still cared about each other.

"By your wife, who is a civilian and not a police officer, if I may remind you!" Sanderson spat in annoyance. "She has no business in a police action."

Phryne was about to open her mouth to defend her involvement, when she found herself being addressed by the Commissioner directly.

"It was bad enough, when you were just a nosy lady detective. But now that you are married to a police officer, things will change."

"George, I can-"

"I will not discuss this, Jack. You can simply not involve your civilian wife into your investigations. God knows, I cut you plenty of slack over time, but this ends now!"

The couple looked at each other in horror. Of course they knew that Sanderson had a point. They had muddled their way through plenty of rules. But they were good at what they did together and the idea of having to stop their partnership tightened both their throats. Sanderson watched them over his glasses, plotting something underneath his white hair. The clock ticked into the silence.

"We cannot afford a scandal involving you, Jack. Not right now," he finally stated, somewhat calmer, turning the newspaper. "I assume you remember Elaine Browning?"

Jack leaned back in his chair. He had a faint idea where this was heading.

"I hardly ever forget people who have attempted to kill me."

"And God knows, you need some memory for that," Phryne quipped, unable to help herself.

"Considering your recent habit to stand in the way of notorious murderers, I would have to agree with your wife there," George pointed out, with the hint of a smile on his lips.

"If I remember correctly, two of those instances where in protection of your daughter," Jack gave back.

"So they were."

Now the smile on Sanderson's lips was undeniable.

"And of course there was the time when you threw yourself heroically at an armed killer to protect your own daughter," Phryne stated casually. Both men looked at her in astonishment. Jack gulped. He had never told her about Jane being in danger that day.

"I don't believe you would have been informed of that particular incident, Georgey," Phryne smiled. "It happened outside of Melbourne and you were still on your way back to Australia. But believe me if I say, it was a close cut."

Jack lifted his hands in surrender, before Sanderson could come up with anecdotes of his own on his various almost demises.

"What about Elaine Browning?" he asked loudly. Sanderson cleared his throat, the glitter in his eyes vanishing.

"As you are probably aware, she is due to be hanged next week, Jack. There is still a variety of Browning supporters in this city, some of them rather influential and they are trying to prevent this from happening. If your name is disgraced, she could walk. And her father with her."

Phryne's hand reached for Jack's and found it balled up into a fist. His kidnapping was still a sore spot that neither of them had gotten quite over and the idea that his tormentors could breath fresh air again, was as scary as it was infuriating.

"Surely Jack's 'disgrace' wouldn't have that much influence," Phryne cut in. "She will hang for the murder she committed after all."

"Which Jack investigated," Sanderson pointed out. "The conviction that we got the right person hanging, stands and falls with Inspector Robinson's credibility. So it is amazingly bad timing right now to be caught entangled with prostitutes in the back alleys by the newspapers."

Jack considered briefly to point out that he had been fully dressed, acting out a love scene with a woman he had not the slightest romantic interest in, in an attempt to lure a serial-killer out of hiding. But sadly, he could see the point George Sanderson was making.

"So what do you propose I do?" he asked, recognising a certain expression in his former father-in-law's eyes.

"I want both of you to disappear for a while," Sanderson stated, leaning his elbows onto the desk. "In fact, I would like you to do a job for me."

"Didn't you just say that my civilian wife had no place in any police action?" Jack asked, his brows knitting. Sanderson tipped his head as if in thought.

"I believe we could come to some form of arrangement for the future, if you do solve this case for me."

He leaned back, smiling.

"Are you offering me an official partnership with the police force, Georgey?"

A brief shadow ghosted over the Commissioner's face at this strange nickname, their one shared case had earned him.

"You could put it like that, Mrs. Robinson.If you prove successful in the appointment I have picked for you."

"What's the catch?" Jack asked. He had known George Sanderson for a very long time. The Commissioner smiled vaguely, folding his hands.

"Your appointment will require you to move to Collingwood."