St Kilda Blues

by Geoffrey McGeachin

  The older detective stood, bending down to put a couple of biscuits on the saucer of his coffee cup before straightening up again. He did it slowly enough to show he was making a point and Berlin saw that he kept his eyes fixed on Roberts’ face as he moved past him. For a brief moment Charlie Berlin almost wished he was back in the reliable boredom of the fraud squad. Toes were getting stepped on here, that was for sure, and for once he wasn’t the only one doing it.

  FIVE

  Vera sat on the vacated couch and Berlin sat down beside her. It was a very comfortable couch. There was an open fireplace at one end of the living room with logs crackling on a stainless steel grate, oval and very modern looking. Split logs were stacked in a neat pyramid next to the fire. From somewhere towards the rear of the house Berlin could hear the sound of an axe on timber.

  The housekeeper saw that he had heard the sound. ‘It’s Mr Scheiner, cutting firewood. He likes to do it, for the exercise, he always says.’ She looked away, towards the rear of the house and then back at Berlin. ‘He’s been chopping away for hours this morning, ever since he got up. I don’t think he slept, really.’

  Charlie Berlin had chopped a lot of firewood in his time. Sometimes it was because they’d needed wood for the fire, sometimes it was to help someone out or because he hated seeing an axe handled badly. And sometimes Berlin had chopped wood because the exertion and repetition of the act gave a man time to think or a reason not to think. Sometimes it was just you and the axe and a pile of logs and your mind cleared for a while, cleared of the bad memories that made you want to do bad things.

  ‘Now, right from the beginning, Vera, tell me everything. How long have you been with the family?’

  ‘I was engaged for the position of live-in housekeeper seven or eight years ago – no, it was eight. Mrs Scheiner employed me and she was a very lovely lady. Mr Scheiner adored her and so did Gudrun and so did I. Mr Scheiner gave her a Porsche for their tenth wedding anniversary – you know, the German sports car. He was very generous that way.’

  Rebecca’s dream car was a Porsche. She had fallen in love with them after a bright red 356 convertible had once overtaken the old Studebaker like it was standing still.

  Vera put her hands together and looked down. ‘A week after the anniversary a drunk driver hit them, Gudrun and her mother. They were just going into town, to do some shopping at Georges. Mrs Scheiner died instantly but Gudrun survived, thank God. I don’t think Mr Scheiner could have gone on if he’d lost both of them. He’s a good and decent man who doesn’t deserve any of this.’

  Berlin wondered if Scheiner’s wife’s death in a German car was the reason his garage now held American and British vehicles.

  ‘Mr Scheiner was devastated, of course, but having Gudrun to take care of was what helped him hold his life together. Gudrun is fifteen now, almost sixteen, really. She’s been begging her father to let her go to the dances in town on Saturday night for months. She’s only fifteen as I said but . . . and I didn’t think it was wise but Mr Scheiner finds it hard to deny her anything.’

  The pause after the ‘but’ caught Berlin’s attention. There was something she hadn’t said, but they could come back to that.

  ‘This was the third Saturday night we had taken the girls into the city.’

  Berlin stopped her. ‘The girls? Can you be a bit more precise please Vera? We’re pretending I don’t know anything, remember.’

  ‘Of course, Mr. Berlin, I’m sorry. Gudrun went with her school friend, Rosemary. Rosemary Clairmont. The Clairmonts live round on Beach Road. Rosemary is nine months older than Gudrun and Mr Scheiner felt the girl was quite . . . responsible.’

  He could tell from the slight hesitation and shift in tone that Vera might not have agreed with her employer on that particular point. Listening to what was left unsaid, picking up on the pauses, watching the eyes – this was half the skill in being a good cop and Berlin wondered if Roberts was paying attention.

  ‘And when you say we took them into town you mean . . . ?’

  ‘Myself and Oscar, Mr Scheiner’s driver. We took them in the Cadillac.’

  ‘Is Oscar here this morning?’

  Vera shook her head. ‘I’m afraid he’s at the doctors, with chest pains. It’s the stress. Oscar’s taking it – this situation, I mean – very personally. He’s been with Mr Scheiner since before Gudrun was born.’

  Berlin made a mental note to interview the driver to see if his version of events jibed with Vera’s. ‘So how does this usually work, taking the girls into town to the dances? Was it the same place every time?’

  ‘The very first weekend was a place in South Yarra; I think it was called Opus. The next time it was a discotheque called Bertie’s, in the city on Spring street.’

  Berlin had heard Sarah mentioning those names. ‘And on Saturday night, Vera?’

  ‘It was the Buddha’s Belly in Little La Trobe Street. Rosemary suggested it. She said it was where it was all happening.’ She paused. ‘Stupid little . . .’

  She left the statement unfinished. Berlin guessed the missing word was probably bitch.

  ‘Did you usually go inside with them, into the dances I mean?’

  Vera smiled a sad smile. ‘You don’t know much about teenage girls, do you, Mr Berlin?’

  He thought of young Sarah so far, far away. ‘Probably not.’

  ‘We park outside on the street and wait in the car, myself and Oscar. I have my knitting and Oscar listens to the greyhound racing. He has an earpiece for his transistor radio, which is very considerate of him.’

  Did Oscar bet on the dogs? Berlin wondered. And if he did, did he owe anyone money, more money than he might be able to easily repay?

  ‘On the first two Saturday nights, at Opus and Bertie’s, they came out right on 10:30, just as they were supposed to. Gudrun has a lovely marcasite wristwatch that keeps excellent time; Oscar and I bought it for her twelfth birthday.’

  ‘That was nice of you . . . and Oscar.’ Roberts made the comment from across the room. Berlin noted the pause in the middle but didn’t look away from Vera’s face.

  ‘And last Saturday night, at this Buddha’s Belly place, Vera? Tell me what happened.’

  Vera took a deep breath before she spoke. ‘They were late. It was around 10:45 or 10:50 and Oscar was about to go in but then Rosemary came out, all by herself. She was looking up and down the laneway – looking for Gudrun, as it turned out.’

  Berlin waited.

  ‘She said she and Gudrun had become separated somehow after they went in and now she couldn’t find her anywhere.’

  ‘Did Rosemary say how they got separated?’

  There was a pause before Vera answered. Berlin had the rhythm of her voice now and was listening for those pauses, pauses where she tried to work out how to best phrase a response.

  ‘She said the dance floor was very crowded and it must have happened there.’

  Vera had her knees pressed together and her feet together on the floor. Her hands were on her knees, fingers tightly intertwined. Berlin could see white on the knuckles of her clenched hands.

  ‘But you don’t think that was what happened, do you?’

  ‘Well, the place was very crowded, that part was true, Mr Berlin. Oscar and I searched as best we could, but it was very smoky in there, and dark, and they had those flashing lights, which can be very disorienting. We checked everywhere, including the toilets, and it was very hard to ask people questions, because of the noise of the band, you understand.’

  ‘You don’t think Rosemary was telling the truth about how they got separated, do you? It’s important we know everything.’

  Vera was looking off into the distance, eyes unfocused. Her mouth was a tight line across her face, her cheeks sucked in so the cheekbones stood out. Berlin waited.

  ‘Her lipstick was smeared.’

  ‘Rosemary’s?’

  Vera nodded.

  Berlin could see muscles working in the woman’s forearms. She was still cle
nching her interlocked fingers. It was something a person did out of anger. ‘So you think maybe Rosemary was busy pashing on in a dark corner with some good-looking Romeo and Gudrun was left wandering around on her own?’

  ‘You might be able to get Rosemary to tell you that, to persuade her to tell you that.’

  Vera was trying to suppress the anger in her voice but there was too much of it. Berlin was already planning to interview Rosemary and it looked like Vera was ready to volunteer to beat the truth out of the girl.

  ‘There isn’t any chance Gudrun may have left the dance without you seeing her, is there? Perhaps she came out the front way and you missed her?’

  ‘I really don’t think that’s possible, Mr Berlin. It’s a rather narrow street and we would have seen her for sure.’

  ‘Unless you were distracted, of course.’ Both Berlin and Vera looked up at Bob Roberts.

  ‘Distracted by what, Mr Roberts?’ Vera’s voice was cold. ‘By my knitting? What do you mean exactly?’

  ‘Distracted by Oscar maybe? I’m just asking. It was a cold night, maybe you two were trying to keep warm.’

  ‘We had a thermos of coffee and the Cadillac has a very efficient heater. Besides, Oscar isn’t exactly my type.’

  Berlin decided to keep his mouth shut and let Roberts dig himself in a bit deeper.

  ‘And what exactly is your type, Vera?’ Roberts asked.

  Vera stared directly at the other detective and held his gaze for a moment before she answered. ‘Quite possibly the same as yours, Sergeant Roberts, a good-looking, leggy young blonde with nice tits.’

  Roberts swallowed hard and blushed, the red of his cheeks making the white scar stand out in stark relief.

  NEAR THE EQUATOR

  1950

  It was a lascar sent up from the galley to dump breakfast scraps over the side who found the unconscious girl. Terrified that he would be accused of rape, he pulled her dress down to cover the exposed belly and thighs before raising the alarm. Crewmen gently carried the girl into the sickbay and put her onto a hospital bed, the sheets still rumpled and warm from a hasty post-breakfast assignation between the doctor and the children’s tutor. The doctor’s examination of the unconscious girl was already half done before he realised he needed to button up his fly.

  The ship’s doctor was young, just out of medical school and out of his depth. He was having trouble juggling three ongoing affairs with passengers as well as coping with multiple cases of seasickness and heatstroke. He diagnosed Mavis as having a concussion and privately hoped it was nothing more serious, as both he and the sickbay were poorly equipped to cope with a major injury.

  The children were gathered together in the ship’s library and given a stern lecture by the captain on the dangers of running and playing on his ship. A young girl was in the sickbay right now and very ill because of silly behaviour, he explained, and such behaviour would not be tolerated. The ship’s crew would be watching them now, he warned, and woe betide anyone who was brought before him for skylarking or causing mischief.

  The doctor monitored the girl constantly, leaving the sickbay only for meals and furtive sexual encounters with one of his paramours – and several days later to join in the Crossing the Line celebrations when the ship passed over the equator. The crew created a temporary swimming pool out of canvas on the lower deck and a throne for King Neptune, the ship’s cook in a false beard with a cardboard crown and plywood trident, who would preside over the ceremony. His helpers, two stokers playing mermaids in long wigs, grass skirts and coconut-shell bras, cheerfully dunked all passengers and crew who were first-timers at crossing the equator. The doctor was one of those inducted and, sadly, while he was frolicking amongst the passengers and admiring the erect nipples the cold sea water produced amongst the females in swimming attire, young Mavis, left all alone in her sickbay bed, silently passed away.

  She has gone to be with the angels, the guardians told the other children the next morning, while a crewman set up a film projector in the library to show silent black and white cartoons even older than the ship. With the children occupied in the library, the adults gathered near the stern of the ship to sing hymns and hear prayers from the captain before Mavis’s body, sewn into a cotton canvas shroud and weighted down with broken gears from the engine room, was consigned to the deep.

  The boy had slipped away from the library and he watched the funeral service from an upper deck, spreadeagled and peering down over the lip of the deck. No one noticed that he was gone from the library, just as no one had noticed when he slipped away from King Neptune and his court to smother Mavis with a pillow in the sickbay. Earlier that morning the doctor, irritated by repeated questions about the girl’s prognosis and hoping to shut people up had confidently predicted that Mavis would soon be wide-awake and well and talking. That was something the boy knew he just couldn’t risk happening.

  SIX

  Berlin stood up. ‘I think now is probably a good time to see Gudrun’s bedroom, if that’s okay, Vera.’

  Vera led them across the living room to a wide hallway and a flight of carpeted stairs. Berlin stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Do you think I could trouble you for that cup of coffee now, if it’s not too much bother? We shouldn’t be long up there.’

  ‘Of course, Mr Berlin, I’ll put the percolator on. Gudrun’s bedroom is at the top of the stairs, to the right.’

  Berlin smiled when he entered the bedroom. He thought of Sarah and her bedroom at home. Both bedrooms, he realised right now, only held memories of their occupants. Gudrun’s bedroom was almost totally white and was furnished in what he recognised as a reproduction Queen Anne style – very feminine and totally at odds with the look of the rest of the house. Vera had said the girl’s father found it hard to refuse his daughter anything and Berlin knew exactly how that felt.

  He looked around. It was a big room and held a double bed that he thought was quite an extravagance for a fifteen-year-old. There were two wardrobes filled with a range of colourful clothes, and a study table with a desk lamp and chair. Photographs, notes, letters and postcards were pinned on a corkboard above the table.

  Sarah was only a couple of years older than Gudrun but Berlin recognised a marked difference between the girls’ bedrooms. There were a number of dolls strewn about and Berlin recalled Sarah gathering up all of what she called her ‘kids’ toys’ on her fourteenth birthday and distributing them to the families in the street with younger children and inconsistent incomes.

  Berlin sensed that Roberts, leaning in the doorway, was watching him. ‘I’m trying to work out who she is, trying to get a sense of her and what she might do or what she might have done.’

  ‘You’re being bloody wasted in the fraud squad, that’s what I told them.’

  Berlin walked across to sliding glass doors opening out onto a small, cast iron Juliet balcony. The balcony might have been small but the backyard it overlooked was quite expansive, and in this neighbourhood that much land wouldn’t have come cheap. It looked like the block extended right through to the next street, with the same seven-foot stone wall on every side.

  At the far end of the property there was a tennis court and, closer to the house, a swimming pool. Berlin could see a small structure that probably housed the pumping equipment for the pool and also seemed to be a changing area of some sort. Right outside the back of the house there was a paved terrace. The terrace looked like it could handle a party for fifty people without things getting too crowded and there was a large brick barbecue with a space for storing firewood underneath it. The sound of the wood chopping was coming from an area just to the right of the barbecue. A tall man with his back to the house was swinging the axe. Berlin watched as he picked up a sawn log and placed it upright on a thick stump.

  The man was wearing overalls and a light jacket, holding the axe in leather-gloved hands. He had a good stance, feet wide apart, and his hips moved fluidly into the downward swing. The swing itself was awkwar
d, the left arm slightly stiff, but the log still split neatly into two pieces under the impact of the axe head. Brute force or finesse, you took your pick when chopping wood, Berlin knew. Same went for interviewing suspects or even bombing the Third Reich. The Yanks went in by day, claiming pinpoint accuracy with the famed Norden bombsights on their B-17s, and at night RAF Lancasters and Halifaxes dumped their bombloads on the Pathfinder’s coloured target markers glowing in the darkness, or an already blazing inferno that was hopefully a railway marshalling yard or oil refinery, or a Messerschmitt or panzer factory.

  The man picked up one of the halved logs and halved it again. Then he did the same to the other piece. A bored-looking police constable was leaning against the barbecue, watching him. For a moment Berlin thought he saw something familiar in the woodchopper but then dismissed the idea. He turned back from the window.

  ‘There’s a uniform downstairs watching the girl’s father chop wood. By my count there are close to half a dozen coppers hanging about this place who could be out looking for her.’

  Roberts was still leaning against the doorjamb with his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘Nothing to do with me. I heard the blokes at the top wanted a . . . a “visible presence” was how they put it, to reassure the girl’s old man so Selden obliged.’

  ‘I doubt he’s going to be reassured all that much. His daughter is missing and he’s got five fit police officers cluttering up his house, drinking his coffee, eating his biscuits and reading his magazines.’

  ‘They thought he might get a phone call, if it’s a kidnapping for ransom, I mean. Scheiner’s worth a few quid and everyone knows it. They took that Thorne kid up in Sydney after his father was in the papers for winning the Opera House lottery, remember?’

  Berlin remembered. Every parent with a young child at the time remembered. The eight-year-old boy, Graeme, had been found dead six or seven weeks later, killed not long after he was taken. His killer was in Long Bay jail serving a life sentence and the newspapers had stopped publishing the names and addresses of lottery winners.