Read Online The Port Fairy Murders by Robert Gott - Free Book Online

calmed his nerves. Even the briny iodine air that frequently settled over Port Fairy was familiar, his father’s farm being close to the ocean. He liked the ocean, and he liked it best when it thundered. As a child, he’d escaped his father’s tongue and his vicious fists by clambering down the cliffs of Murnane’s Bay and sitting for hours on end on the damp sand of the small, private cove. He’d preferred to do this when the weather was wild so that the ocean drew itself up in a rage and broke almost at his feet. It had frightened him, but not in the way that his father frightened him. This was noble fear, and it excited him. As he grew older he would borrow his father’s motorcycle, and eventually explored the coast and hinterland from Mepunga to the far side of Port Fairy. Once, he’d made it to Portland. He came to know this area with the precision of an ordinance map.
    At the moment, he had no transport, and this, he felt, made him powerless. To do what he wanted to do — to punish Sable — he needed that motorcycle, although he wasn’t sure how he’d get the petrol to take him to Melbourne. There was a tank on the farm, but it would be bone dry. Well, he’d find a way. The important thing was to get hold of the motorcycle, and this was within his grasp because Peter Hurley was delivering a catch of couta and trumper to a mate just beyond the Mepunga turn-off. He’d get a lift and walk the rest of the way. He knew that Hurley would have no interest in his reasons for being dropped off in the middle of nowhere, and he’d repay the compliment by not asking why the catch was going to a farmer and not to market.
    IT WAS ALMOST four o’clock when the detectives gathered at the Warrnambool police station to compare notes. Constable Manton had returned, too, and had told them that he’d seen no evidence of any violent disturbance at Starling’s farm.
    ‘It struck me as not a bad way to go. Starling looked calm, as if he’d sat down for a breather and then died. The flies made it bad to look at. They’d been busy — not that it would’ve bothered Starling.’
    Having heard each separate report, the consensus was that George Starling would be unlikely to make contact with any of the people questioned. Halloran was curious about Helen Lord’s impressions of his brother.
    ‘I assume,’ she said, ‘that I can be frank.’
    ‘Yes. You needn’t worry about offending me.’
    ‘I thought your brother was a sad, frustrated, angry old man. Is he a widower?’
    ‘A bachelor.’
    ‘That’s a relief.’
    ‘A relief?’
    ‘I don’t think he’d have made a sympathetic husband. I know it sounds awful, but I’m glad he didn’t get to punish a wife for having had the temerity to be born female.’
    ‘Was he abusive to you?’
    Helen thought about that.
    ‘Not in any remarkable way. I was glad he was in a wheelchair.’
    ‘I wouldn’t have sent you into a dangerous situation — not on you own, anyway.’
    ‘I didn’t mean that I might have felt physically threatened. I meant that I was glad he was in a wheelchair.’
    It took a moment for this subtly vitriolic remark to sink in.
    ‘All I can say, Constable, is that I’m not surprised that he lived down to my expectations. One doesn’t choose one’s siblings.’
    David Reilly’s account of his meeting with Maria Pluschow stressed her detestation of the police, but gave no hint of the way in which he’d bungled it. Inspector Lambert’s account of Hardy Truscott’s philosophy was succinct and dismissive. No one had seen George Starling for years. The fact that he’d been the butt of his father’s jokes and that he’d regularly been on the receiving end of his fists were interesting additions to the little they knew about him.
    IT WAS CLOSE to 5.30 pm when George Starling walked up the driveway of his father’s farm in Mepunga. He hadn’t seen his father for several years — years during which he’d made his body hard and useful. Even so, he