When the boy was selected to go to Australia as a child migrant he neither understood nor cared exactly what that meant. In yet another hand-me-down overcoat and struggling with the weight and size of his kitbag he had stumbled up the gangplank of a liner that had been converted to a troopship in 1940 and, at war’s end, converted back. It would be the boy’s home for six weeks and would take him and three dozen other lucky children like him to a promised glorious new life Down Under.
All ships become a world unto themselves once the lines are cast off. Though they were supposed to be chaperoned and guarded, the children were already running wild before the coast of England had disappeared behind them. The adult guardians set about meeting those who would be their travelling companions over the next month and a half, while the children quickly formed themselves into gangs.
The biggest gang was led by a twelve-year-old name Mavis, who quickly instituted a reign of terror on the smaller gangs and weaker children. Mavis had excellent manners combined with rat-cunning, and her ‘yes sir’s, ‘no ma’am’s and simpering, wide-eyed smiles helped to quickly ingratiate the girl with the grown-ups. She was appointed the de facto den mother to the whole group, which freed up the adults to entertain themselves and gave her even more power over the other children.
They were three days from the equator when it happened. It was hot now, hotter than any summer in England and the children and adults were wearing as little as they could get away with. The poorly ventilated cabins onboard the old ship were like ovens, night and day. At night the passengers slept out on deck or in the lifeboats to escape the heat and spent their days in deckchairs in whatever shade could be found. While they complained and sweated and fanned themselves, the children ran wild and made the ship their own little jungle.
Mavis instituted games in secret areas of the ship where pornographic graffiti from the troopship days still covered hidden bulkheads. Her favourite game was Doctors and Nurses, the girls having to show what was hidden inside their droopy grey cotton underpants while the boys were taunted to lower theirs. Up till now the boy had managed to avoid these games. Perhaps it was his quietness and something in his eyes that made the others wary of him. But that wariness only made him a challenge to Mavis.
It happened on a Tuesday, just after ten in the morning. The sun was already blistering, the flaking white paint over the rusty metal of the ship almost too hot to touch. The adult passengers were sprawled in deckchairs or in the shade of the starboard side of the ship, sleeping off the stodgy breakfast or the overindulgence of the previous night. An attempt at lessons had been abandoned by the schoolteacher, who was more interested in pursuing her affair with the ship’s doctor. For once the children themselves were too exhausted by the heat to run riot, and lay about the ship, sleeping or reading, playing with dolls or with cap guns that had long run out of ammunition. The ship’s stewards had disappeared soon after breakfast and now there were no crew members to be found.
The boy was barefoot, wearing elastic-waisted shorts and a singlet. Initially the children had been forced to put on socks and sandals after the morning wash but that policy had soon been abandoned. He had raced up the scorching steel steps of the companionway to the cooler wooden decking on the next level and it was there that Mavis trapped him. She was barefoot too, wearing a short floral sundress with a matching ribbon in her hair. At twelve she was taller than him, though he was more solid, and under his once-white singlet his upper body was well muscled.
She had him backed into a corner. She didn’t know or understand the word ‘humiliation’, though that was what she was looking for – that and tears.
‘I’m not wearing any underpants,’ she said. ‘Do you want to look?’ She lifted up the front of her dress.
The boy’s eyes didn’t leave hers.
‘You can stick your finger in it if you want. It smells funny.’
There was no response. She dropped the front of the dress. ‘I showed you mine, so that means you have to show me yours.’
The boy didn’t move, didn’t respond. If Mavis had been paying attention however she would have seen his hands tighten into fists.
‘You don’t have to be shy, I’ve seen all the boys’ willies already.’ She leaned in closer, all pretence that it was a game now over. ‘You’d better show me, or . . .’
‘Or what?’
She couldn’t remember ever having heard him speak before. His voice sounded odd, cold. But she still didn’t sense danger. ‘Or I’ll hurt you so you cry, that’s what. Now show me.’
The boy shook his head slowly.
Mavis lunged forward and grasped his baggy shorts by the pockets, pulling them down, taking his underpants down with them. She stood up and laughed. ‘You’ve got a little willie, you’ve got a little willie! I’m going to tell everyone.’
The shove was hard and fast, unexpected, her feet went out from under her and she was falling. There were only a dozen steps on the metal companionway but her head hit three of them on the way down. She lay on the deck at the bottom of the stairs, head twisted, legs splayed and dress pulled back, thighs and belly on display. Her eyes were closed and blood, bright red against her white English skin, trickled from her ears and nose.
He stood at the top of the companionway, shorts and underpants still round his ankles, staring down at the girl. His eyes, ignoring the exposed sex, fixed on the bright red blood marking her face.
He looked down at his bare belly, feeling the familiar heat and something else, something new.
‘Look at me now, Mavis, look at me. It’s not so little now, is it, Mavis?’
FOUR
After the South Melbourne tram incident and the run-in with the tradesman and his panel van they made it to Brighton without any more drama, which was just fine by Berlin. Roberts still drove over the speed limit, slowing down only for pretty girls in miniskirts; thankfully there were plenty of those about. At the Derby Day race meeting two years earlier, visiting British model Jean Shrimpton had worn a skirt four inches above the knee, outraging the newspapers and the cream of Melbourne society. Their outrage was compounded since she also hadn’t bothered with a hat, stockings or gloves. Now, just two years on, Shrimpton’s outfit seemed almost demure. Berlin had watched as his daughter’s hemlines crept higher and higher, inspired by fashion magazine images from what everyone called Swinging London and aided by her mother at the family’s Singer sewing machine.
Rebecca was dressing for the times now as well. With her slim figure and those long legs, she could have pulled off the miniskirt look but chose not to. Sometimes she wore blue denim jeans and he wondered if she did it to tease him, knowing his feelings about trousers on women. She also favoured a young designer named Prue Acton. Whenever Berlin needed to replace a suit Rebecca gently guided him towards something slightly more hip but he hated narrow lapels and thin ties. He stuck with his classic overcoat and an Akubra fedora in grey felt, and thought the narrow-brimmed trilby-style hats popular with the younger detectives made them look like cockney spivs.
Roberts swung the sports car off Beach Road and down Honeysuckle Drive, heading towards the dark blue waters of Port Phillip Bay at the far end of the street. In the distance Berlin could see a police divisional van with its blue roof light and hood-mounted siren. The van was parked on the left side of the road, half up on the nature strip, with a uniformed officer leaning against the driver’s side front mudguard.
‘Pull over here for a second, would you, Bob? Behind that Volvo is good.’
Roberts swung the sports car into the kerb, pulled the handbrake on and cut the engine. He leaned down towards Berlin’s side of the car, reaching for the folders. Berlin took his arm at the wrist and shook his head.
‘Let’s just leave them where they are for the moment, shall we?’
Roberts sat back in his seat. ‘I thought maybe you wanted me to give you some background, tell you where we are at the moment, fill in some of the detail. I’ve got copies of the statements from t
he girl’s old man, the housekeeper and the driver.’
‘I’d rather hear what they have to say first, if you don’t mind, and afterwards we can crosscheck against what you’ve got.’
‘Sounds fair enough, I suppose. Why did we stop then?’
Honeysuckle Drive was quiet, still, the nature strips neat, freshly-mown. Was Sunday grass-cutting day out this way too? If you had money to live in an area like this did you push your own Victa mower? Every house had a high wall or a thick, tall hedge to shield it from view, keep it private, keep its secrets. Berlin was sick of secrets.
‘Anything else you need to tell me, Bob, anything I might want to know before we get much further into this? Anything I should be worried about, maybe?’
‘Like what?’
Berlin ran through the list in his head. There were always so many rumours, so many stories, so much gossip. Cops could be like a bunch of old women that way. There were the tales about Bob Roberts and his young girlfriends, of course, tales that were accepted as just the way things went, even admired and envied. There were other stories as well, starting six months or so back and less admirable. Stories concerning envelopes collected and bad company, both in and out of the force, and favours done and people who should know better sometimes looking the other way.
‘Like exactly who’s behind this investigation. Our little sideshow, I mean, you and me, not Tony Selden’s investigation. I guess what I’m asking myself is, exactly what am I doing here?’
‘C’mon, Charlie, we both know you’re a bloody sight better at this kind of thing than most of the blokes who are actually doing it right now. But like I said you don’t have any friends because you don’t play the game so you always get yourself pushed out of the way.’
Berlin nodded, acknowledging the truth in the statement,
‘Someone fucked up, and big. Having a series of young girls go missing and no one noticing or seeing a pattern, apart from you. And then no bugger really giving a damn until this Scheiner kid disappears and the premier gets involved. But the way the system works is that one man’s fuck-up is another man’s golden opportunity.’
Jesus Christ, were there really people who thought like that, who saw stolen children, missing kids as a pathway to promotion, to a higher rank? Berlin knew the answer to that even before he had the thought.
‘So what’s the golden opportunity here?’
‘Look, it’s no secret there are changes coming, and probably right at the top. There’ll be a state election sometime early next year so everyone is trying to set themselves up to look good. Toss in this inquiry into possible corruption and it makes for interesting times. Did you know that’s apparently a Chinese curse? “May you live in interesting times.”’
‘Something the child bride taught you?’ Berlin regretted the comment the moment it was out of his mouth. ‘Sorry, I’ll try to stop doing that.’
Roberts acknowledged the apology with a nod. ‘There are certain people who seem to think I might have a promising future in the police force. People who look at that sort of thing longer term.’
Did these people look at Roberts as a good copper who caught the crims, or as someone who was reliable and flexible and who knew how the system worked and how the real game was played?
‘You mean people with enough pull at the top to organise a parallel investigation?’
‘People like that, yes, and I suppose a parallel investigation is what we’re doing. And since I’m the one who brought you in on this, for appearances’ sake I should probably look like I’m in charge of what we do. Officially you’re still with the fraud squad, remember?’
‘It’s hard to forget.’
‘But for right now I’m happy just to follow your lead. And if we pull this off, manage to find the girl and she’s still alive, I’m fine with sharing the credit.’
If that was true then Roberts was in the wrong bloody job. Berlin knew how it would go without having to think about it too much. Find the girl safe and the person who appointed the person who appointed Roberts would be photographed smiling next to an also-smiling police commissioner and a very relieved Scheiner. If they didn’t find the girl, or they found her dead, fingers would almost certainly be pointed in someone’s direction, quite possibly his, and if there was any job lower than paper shuffling in the fraud squad it was London to a brick he’d wind up doing it.
‘One last thing, Bob. If we’re doing it my way then it’s got to be done my way, slow and steady. If Selden’s people are under pressure then they’ll go at it like bulls at a gate. I know the girl is missing and hopefully she’s still alive, but when you rush things you miss things. You okay with that?’
Roberts nodded. ‘Fair enough, Charlie, you’re the boss.’ He reached for the ignition key then hesitated. Berlin waited. When people hesitated you always waited.
‘Scheiner was in the military in Germany, back in the war. Just so you know, he’s got a few scars.’
‘No surprises there, it was a war.’
‘Just thought you should be aware, in case it made a difference.’ Roberts rubbed the side of his face. ‘The German thing, I meant, not the scars. You know, a couple of old soldiers on different sides.’
‘I was an airman and the war’s been over a long time, over for me too.’ It was a lie but Berlin knew that was the way most people wanted to hear it. ‘Besides, it was a bomb from a German Stuka that got your old man in the Middle East, wasn’t it? That make a difference to you and how you dealt with Scheiner?’
Roberts shook his head. ‘I suppose not. Anyway, whoever dropped that bomb on the nasty bastard did me and mum and the world a favour.’ He restarted the Triumph’s engine. ‘Righto then, I suppose we should get on with it.’ As he turned the sports car back out onto the roadway he leaned hard on the horn.
The police constable lounging against the parked divisional van straightened up and walked across the footpath to a tall brick pillar set into a high stone wall. He spoke into a metallic silver grille and by the time the Triumph turned left into the driveway a heavy steel gate was already sliding slowly open. The stone wall surrounding the house was broken only by the gate across the driveway. The wall was about seven feet high, Berlin judged, not like a prison but still high enough.
They drove up a slight incline onto a paved parking area in front of a double garage. The garage on the left side contained a very wide gold Cadillac with a left-hand drive warning sticker pasted on the rear chrome bumper bar. The right side of the garage held an E-Type Jaguar, the hard-top model in British racing green. Robert switched off the Triumph’s engine and the two men climbed out of the car. Roberts walked across to the Jaguar and bent down to peer in the driver’s side window. He looked back towards Berlin.
‘A bloke can dream, eh?’
Berlin studied the Scheiner residence. The house itself was two storeys, cream brick, and a wee bit too modern for his taste but he knew Rebecca would like it. The floor-to-ceiling front windows on the ground floor looked out onto a small, neat garden with a fountain surrounded by a well-kept lawn. Smoke was coming from a chimney at the side of the house. Did they burn money to keep warm? From the look of the place they could afford it. A bloke could dream about places like this too.
A uniformed constable was standing beside the front door. The two detectives crossed a portico and went in through the unlocked door, Berlin carefully wiping his shoes on a thick coir doormat before stepping inside. The interior of the house was just as modern as the outside. There was light-coloured, almost white, wood panelling and the pale beige carpet made Berlin glad he had wiped his feet. In the living room two detectives he vaguely recognised were sitting on a leather sofa. A coffee pot and cups were on the glass coffee table in front of them. Berlin could smell the coffee and it smelled good.
He turned around as a woman came into the living room carrying a plate of biscuits. Maybe forty, Berlin judged, with close-cropped hair, dark once but now patchy with flecks of grey. She was tall and slim, with a pale f
ace and eyes red-rimmed from crying. Her neat, grey, tunic-style dress Berlin guessed was a uniform designed not to look too much like a uniform, and she was wearing flat, nicely polished shoes. She put the plate of biscuits on the coffee table in front of the detectives and turned to Berlin.
‘I assume you’re the new detective they said was coming to help. My name is Vera Minchin. I’m Mr Scheiner’s housekeeper. I also look after . . . I look after Gudrun.’
As Berlin put out his hand he looked for a ring on her left hand. He couldn’t see one. ‘My name is Detective Sergeant Berlin, Charlie if you like. Is that Miss or Mrs Minchin?’
The housekeeper’s handshake was firm. ‘It’s Vera, just Vera.’
Berlin decided Vera Minchin might not be the marrying kind.
‘Can I get you gentlemen a cup of coffee or tea?’
Berlin shook his head. ‘No thank you, Vera, I think we should get started right away. Why don’t you tell me what happened so we can get on with finding Gudrun.’
Vera looked over at Roberts. ‘Well, as I told your detective friend here last night, Mr Berlin . . .’
Berlin stopped her. He spoke gently. ‘You’re telling me now, Vera, so why don’t we pretend I don’t know anything and start from the very beginning. Would you like to sit down while we talk?’
He glanced across at the two detectives on the couch and tilted his head in the direction of the front door. The detectives looked up at Roberts, who smiled.
‘You heard the man, boys, hop it.’
The younger of the pair started to get up and from the look on his face Berlin sensed there might be trouble.
‘Listen, mate . . .’
The older detective reached over and put his hand on the younger man’s arm. ‘Let it go, Reg, these bastards aren’t worth it.’
St Kilda Blues Page 4
