‘What the hell were you doing in Darwin?’
‘Developing and printing reconnaissance photographs for the RAAF. Leading Aircraftwoman Green, Women’s Auxiliary Air-Force Photographic Section.’ She saluted Berlin casually. ‘Retired.’
‘That’s a pretty ropey salute.’
‘Probably why I stayed an LAC. Attitude problems, they said. I just thought I had a low tolerance for dills.’
Berlin smiled. ‘And you’re covering this story for The Argus, Miss Green?’
‘Somewhat of a grey area there actually, DC Berlin. You ever heard of Russell Drysdale?’
Berlin shook his head.
‘He’s a painter. Used to live around here and came back during the war. Did some wonderfully evocative paintings of servicemen in the area, very distinctive style. Good landscapes too – won the Wynne this year.’
‘Won the Wynne, eh? Good for him.’
‘Anyway, I want to do something a bit more serious than debutante balls and weddings so I talked my editor into letting me do an arts piece on Drysdale and here I am, the only city reporter on the spot to cover a major payroll robbery.’
‘So you’re not officially covering the story for The Argus?’
‘Well, let’s just say I’m here officially for The Argus and right now I’m covering the story.’
‘Alright, let’s just say that.’
‘Good. And it’s a great story – this motorcycle gang racing around the highways and byways at will, staging hold-ups like a modern-day Kelly gang, and the police falling over their feet trying to stop them. It’s got page one written all over it.’
‘You’re an ambitious young lady, Miss Green.’
‘Nothing wrong with wanting a by-line on the news pages, DC Berlin, instead of way down the back with the society snaps of shower teas and engagement parties.’
‘Won’t you be taking a job away from a man who needs it – someone with a family to support?’
‘And who’s going to support me, DC Berlin? As soon as the war was over we were all suddenly supposed to go back to knitting, and cleaning and cooking dinner for hubby and making babies, and being grateful for it. That’s not going to be enough for a lot of women, and not for me, that’s for sure.’
‘How’s your editor going to take all this, when he finds out what you’re really up to?’
‘If I bring back a good enough story on this motorcycle gang then he’ll just have to grin and bear it. So have you managed to solve the crime in the five minutes you’ve been here?’
This woman was really starting to annoy him, he decided. ‘Why would I tell you if I had, Miss Green?’
‘Well, for starters, because there are two ways to write the caption for the photograph I just took. “DC Hot on the Trail of the Kelly Country Crime Kings – Arrests Expected Soon”, or “Incompetent Copper Stumbles Through Crime Scene – No Leads Yet”. Which would you prefer?’
‘Kelly Country Crime Kings?’
‘I’m looking for a hook, DC Berlin, an angle for the story. I need a nickname for the gang – what do you think?’
‘I think you’ll be back on the debutante circuit in no time with that one, Miss Green. But I’m only really interested in whether you’re going to keep out of my way, or whether I have to phone your editor and let him know what you’re up to.’
‘Let’s not go getting our knickers in a twist, DC Berlin. I think we might be able to help each other out here. And please call me Rebecca.’
‘I really don’t see how you can help me, Miss Green … Rebecca.’
‘Well, in return for being kept informed about the progress of your investigations I might have something you’d find very interesting.’
‘And what might you have that I’d be interested in?’
‘Aside from the obvious, would a photograph of our gang of robbers in action this morning fit the bill?’
ELEVEN
The Wodonga police station was housed in an old single-storey, tin-roofed brick bungalow on High Street. It was a rabbit warren of cramped offices piled high with paperwork, and Roberts led Berlin through to a small room at the back.
‘This is where you’ll be working, Mr Berlin. I tidied it up as much as I could.’
An empty desk, a chair, an ice chest, a sink and an electric jug took up most of the space in the room. With the two men inside there was barely room to move.
‘Maybe I should set up shop in one of the cells, Roberts.’
‘It is a bit cramped, Mr Berlin, I’m sorry about that. It’s sort of actually the tearoom, but it’s the best we could do given the short notice. Sergeant Corrigan moved into the detective’s office a while back.’
Berlin dropped his folder on the desk. ‘It’s fine.’ He thought about the tiny space given to the navigators on the Lancs – and they’d had to read maps and find their way to a target halfway across Europe and back again, at night. All he had to do was solve some robberies.
He opened his wallet and took out a ten-shilling note. That only left him with three pounds so he’d need to get to the bank at some stage. ‘Any chance you might be able to dig me up a sandwich, Constable Roberts? Ham, cheese and tomato.’
‘No worries, Mr Berlin, there’s a café just up the street.’
Ten minutes later Roberts was back with two brown paper bags. One held a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich and the second a vanilla slice. The lad was smart.
Berlin ate lunch at his desk, reading witness statements and pinpointing the location of the gang’s robberies with brass drawing pins on a wall map, looking for a pattern or a common thread. But the only thing that the sites had in common was that they were all connected to the railways and they were all on the northern line, which he already knew from the file.
He was grateful for the interruption when Constable Hooper put his head round the office door. ‘The paymaster’s offsider is here, DC Berlin. I’ll send him straight in, shall I?’
Vivian Janeway was around twenty-five, very thin and awkward, with pale skin, a prematurely receding hairline and a nervous tic under his left eye. The slow and deliberate way the man moved his angular body reminded Berlin of a praying mantis. Janeway was neatly dressed in a three-piece suit with a Windsor knot in the pale blue tie that matched his pocket handkerchief. When he sat down opposite Berlin he nervously folded his hands on the desk. His nails were manicured, Berlin noted.
‘No need to be nervous, Mr Janeway, we just need you to answer a few questions. My name’s Berlin, Charlie Berlin.’
Janeway nodded his head rapidly.
‘Ever been in a police station before, Mr Janeway?’
‘No, never, why do ask – what’s that got to do with the robbery?’ The answer was blurted out in one long, continuous breath.
‘No reason. I was just making conversation.’
Berlin had picked Janeway as a queer the moment he walked in the door. He was almost certainly lying about never having been in a police station before but Berlin couldn’t blame him. What was it about the gentleness of some queers that drove his fellow policemen into such fits of rage? Berlin knew Janeway would have been beaten bloody in the cells on more than one occasion, just for sport on a quiet Saturday night.
‘Just tell me what happened, Mr Janeway, and take your time. Can I get you a cup of tea?’
Janeway shook his head. ‘No, thank you, I’m fine. I’ve already told the local police what happened, Mr Berlin, when they spoke to me earlier, just after the event. I’m sure you could look at their notes. Mr Hooper, the gentleman who interviewed me, was very precise in his questioning. He seems to be very good at his job.’
Berlin opened his notebook. ‘Sometimes we forget things, Mr Janeway – witnesses, I mean. What you went through must have been quite nerve-racking. I’ve read the notes but sometimes things come back to us later so I find it helps to go over it again.’
‘Very well, Mr Berlin.’
‘For instance, Mr Janeway, I’ve been wondering why you didn’t hear the moto
rcycles coming and just lock the money in the safe.’
‘That’s easy. As I told Mr Hooper, the first sign we had of the robbers was when one of them burst in the door of the pay office and told us to put our hands up. It was after that we heard the bikes smashing through the gate into the yard.’
That fitted the pattern, the leader going in first on foot, ahead of the motorcycles.
‘Your assailant, you described him to Constab … Mr Hooper as six feet, medium build, wearing black-dyed coveralls, army boots, brown leather gauntlets and a balaclava, that right?’
‘Yes, exactly.’
‘And he had a very big gun.’
‘Yes indeed, a Thompson submachine gun, the M1928 model .45 ACP calibre, with the 100-round drum magazine.’
‘That’s a remarkably precise description, Mr Janeway.’
‘The M1928 is easy to pick because of the front handgrip, Mr Berlin. They took it off the later M1928A1 models to simplify manufacture and reduce costs. We used the earlier model quite extensively until the Owen Machine Carbine became readily available.’
‘We?’
‘I was in the army, Mr Berlin.’
Berlin looked up from his notebook. ‘Yes, of course. And the robber fired his M1928 into the ceiling, is that correct?’
‘That’s right. Owen – Mr McGill, the paymaster – was somewhat tardy in complying with his instructions.’
‘I’m guessing firing that Thompson had the desired effect.’
‘The noise was dreadful, deafening. I fell to the ground and covered my ears.’
‘You hadn’t heard gunfire before? In the army?’
Janeway searched the tone of the question for any hints of sarcasm or irony or disbelief but found none. Policemen were usually easy for Janeway to read but this Berlin fellow was different. He wasn’t looking at him with disgust and he was treating him with respect. Janeway relaxed a little and decided he wasn’t going to get a beating today.
‘I heard gunfire in training, of course, Mr Berlin, and in New Guinea. But that was outside, and in the jungle. It’s very much louder in an enclosed space, surprisingly so.’
‘You were in New Guinea?’
‘Yes, Mr Berlin. Over there it was mostly just the odd sniper shooting at us from a distance, though sometimes we were mortared, or bombed from the air. I was in the Quartermaster Corp so we were usually many miles from the real hand-to-hand fighting, you understand.’
‘Of course.’ Berlin made a note on the pad on his desk. ‘Can you tell me what led to McGill winding up in hospital?’
Janeway briefly pursed his lips before he spoke. ‘Stupidity is what it was, plain and simple. After they took out the last of the money we were alone with the leader of the gang for a brief moment. Mr McGill took out his pistol but the man saw him and knocked it out of his hand. I thought Mr McGill’s action rather ill-considered under the circumstances. Then he tackled the robber and they fell out the door. They finished up wrestling in the dirt in front of the rest of the gang.’
‘You didn’t think to pick up the pistol, Mr Janeway?’
‘It was five against two, Mr Berlin, and besides, I’m a pacifist.’
‘War can do that to a man.’
Janeway again searched the comment for sarcastic or derisory undertones but it sounded like this Berlin fellow had made it simply as a statement of fact.
‘One of the other robbers then struck Mr McGill with the butt of his weapon. The leader seemed quite upset by this.’
‘Upset?’
‘Perturbed that Mr McGill might be seriously injured, I suppose is a better description. He yelled at his mate that he shouldn’t have done that – that no one was supposed to get hurt. He told me to call an ambulance immediately, which I did, of course. Then they took off.’
‘Do you think you could possibly identify this man, perhaps by his voice?’
Janeway had carefully noted the colour of the robber’s eyes and the shape of his lips through the openings in the balaclava, and the pitch and cadence of his speech. He knew he would have absolutely no trouble in identifying him but this Berlin character, nice as he seemed, was still a police officer. He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Berlin, but I very much doubt it.’
Berlin stood up and shook Janeway’s hand. ‘Thank you very much for coming in, Mr Janeway. I appreciate your assistance.’
‘Thank you, DC Berlin. I’m happy to help in any way I can.’
Hooper stuck his head in the doorway a few minutes later. ‘Creeping Jesus has left, I see.’
‘Who?’
‘Janeway. We call him Creeping Jesus round town. Shirt-lifter you reckon, DC Berlin?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Bastard gives me the willies.’
‘That’s funny, Hooper,’ Berlin said, ‘he speaks quite highly of you. Can you get me Albury Base Hospital on the phone, please?’
TWELVE
The charge nurse at the hospital told Berlin that McGill was still unconscious, and almost certainly had concussion. She volunteered the opinion that even when he regained consciousness he probably wouldn’t know if he was Arthur or Martha for a few days.
Berlin spent the rest of that afternoon on the phone, talking to the detectives at Wangaratta about the robberies. The details were the same in every location: five men in balaclavas, motorcycles, Tommy guns, shocked witnesses. These guys certainly had their routine down pat. They got in, got the money and got out, and until this morning no one had been hurt.
At around half-past five Berlin realised the other coppers had gone for the day and went looking for Constable Roberts. The boy had the Dodge parked out front and as he climbed into the passenger seat, Berlin saw a couple of brown paper parcels in the back, tied with string.
‘I picked you up some shaving gear and soap from the chemist. Plus underpants, singlets and a towel from the haberdashery. They’ll send the accounts to the police station.’
‘That’s going above and beyond, Roberts. Keep it up and you’ll be police commissioner before you turn forty.’
Roberts grinned. ‘Jeez, Mr Berlin, I wasn’t planning on waiting that long. Want me to run you out to your hotel now?’
‘That sounds good. I’ve got a meeting later. You know a pub called the Diggers Rest Hotel?’
Roberts started the engine. ‘As a matter of fact that’s where we’re headed, Mr Berlin. The sergeant organised you a room there and the publican’s wife is a pretty good cook. Plus they’re very flexible when it comes to the licensing laws.’
‘Even for coppers?’
Roberts turned the car across the street. ‘Especially for coppers.’
Berlin offered the constable a cigarette but the boy shook his head.
‘What do we know about Rebecca Green, Roberts?’
‘The lady with the camera?’
‘That’s the one. I’m supposed to meet her to look at a photograph later.’
‘Blew into town a few days back. Says she works for The Argus down in Melbourne. She’s been driving all over the countryside in her Austin, asking a lot of questions.’
‘About the robberies?’
Roberts nodded. ‘And some painter. She’s a bit of a looker.’
‘If you say so.’
‘A few of the blokes round here have tried putting the acid on her, but she’s knocked them all back. Sergeant Corrigan reckons —’ Roberts stopped himself.
‘Sergeant Corrigan reckons what?’
Roberts shifted uncomfortably behind the steering wheel.
‘The sergeant reckons she might be one of those … you know, since she wears trousers most of the time and won’t have a bar of any of the blokes.’
‘A lesbian?’
‘I suppose so.’
Roberts was blushing. ‘C’mon, Constable, you’ll need to toughen up if you ever intend to work in the big smoke.’
‘Oh, cripes,’ Roberts said. ‘This is all I bloody need.’
Berlin glanced over at the constable, who
was staring straight ahead, shaking his head slowly from side to side. A horse-drawn, two-wheeled cart was moving rapidly towards them on the opposite side of the road. As it drew nearer Berlin leaned forward and squinted. ‘What the hell is that?’
The driver was standing upright in the cart, holding the reins with his right hand and swaying from side to side with the motion of the vehicle. He was dressed in flowing white fabric that wrapped around his body, had a shiny metal helmet on his head and was enthusiastically waving his galloping horse on with a sword that looked like it was made from half a broomstick.
The cart went speeding past them and Berlin could see two silver milk churns in the back.
‘That’s Trev Casterton, our local milkman. He gets a bit pissed and every so often decides to practise for the milkos’ Roman chariot race at the Albury Show. Nicks a bed sheet off someone’s clothesline and whacks on a brass helmet he pinched from the fire station.’
‘He looks like he’s more than a bit pissed,’ Berlin said.
‘Generally gets on the turps as soon as he finishes his milk deliveries, gives it a real hammering some days. Someone usually phones the station when he finally passes out and I have to go and collect him and drive the cart back to the dairy.’
‘You want to go get him now?’
‘If you don’t mind. He looks like he’s about ready to keel over.’
They caught up with the charioteer a mile down the road. The horse was calmly grazing on the grassy verge and Trevor Casterton was curled up on the floor of the cart, snoring contentedly, his arm wrapped round an empty milk churn. The two men got out of the Dodge.
‘Can you handle a horse, Mr Berlin?’
‘Are you pulling my leg, Roberts?’
‘You should have a go.’
‘I’m a city copper, and apart from duty at Flemington Racecourse on Melbourne Cup Day, I’ve never been near a horse in my life.’
‘It’s easy, you’ll see. The dairy’s straight ahead out on the Tallangatta road and Jesse knows the way, and she’ll actually be looking forward to getting home.’
‘Who the hell is Jesse?’
‘That’s Trev’s horse, she’s a darling. You just have to hold the reins and give her a “gee-up” and a “whoa” and she’ll do the rest – trust me.’
The Diggers Rest Hotel Page 5
