St Kilda Blues

by Geoffrey McGeachin

  Back in the living room, Roberts had taken a chair from the table and was straddling it as he questioned Jones, who was still on the couch. Berlin ignored them as he walked into the single bedroom. The futon was under a window that was covered with a blanket pinned to the wooden window frame. There was no wardrobe and clothes were piled on the floor in a corner next to an old typewriter. A lamp near the bed had a red scarf draped over the shade, which Berlin guessed made Derek a bit of a romantic. That notion was quickly dispelled by the bottle of baby oil and roll of toilet paper on the other side. Berlin used the tip of a shoe to lift a corner of the futon but there was nothing underneath. He decided against lifting a corner of the grubby quilt that covered the futon.

  The bathroom was the same vintage as the kitchen and equally unpleasant. Black and white tiles on the floor and walls, bathtub with a shower head over it, toilet with a wooden seat and a cracked bowl, hand basin with a flyspecked mirror mounted over it. On the ledge by the window a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste rested upright in a grimy drinking glass. A Gillette safety razor, a can of shaving foam and a styptic pencil sat together in a dried up puddle of soap. The tiles over the bath were cracked and separating from the wall and there was a strong smell of mildew. A nasty brown stain surrounded the plughole in the bath, though the condition of the rest of the old enamel tub wasn’t much better. Berlin wondered where Derek kept the soap and shampoo, or if he had any.

  As he turned to leave, the tip of his shoe caught a glass bottle resting against the wall and it rolled over. It didn’t break and Berlin picked it up. A milk bottle. There were two more on the floor, all washed clean. He put the bottle back with the others. Derek Jones might live in squalor but at least he washed his milk bottles before putting them out for collection.

  There was silence when he walked back into the living room. Roberts glanced over at him and shook his head. He stood up.

  ‘We’re not done with you, Derek, you little shit. We’ll be back, you can count on that.’

  Derek Jones looked exhausted. Berlin’s grandfather had once told him anyone could beat a confession out of a suspect but it took a real expert to do it without laying on a finger.

  Berlin did one last sweep of the living room with his eyes. The bamboo blind over the window was resting on two nails hammered into the white-painted window frame. Berlin noticed that the top of the window frame was pitted with tiny holes. Perhaps a blanket or curtain had been pinned up there before the blind was put in. The record player on top of the trunk under the window was a Pye, the same brand Sarah had bought herself. There were brown stains on the floor matting by the trunk. God, this bloke really was a pig.

  As they walked back to the car a skinny teenager in a bright floral mini dress and strappy sandals crossed the road to their side. The girl propositioned Roberts with the classic query, ‘You wanna go, mate?’

  Roberts shook his head slowly in exasperation. ‘Jesus, love, how long have you been on the game? We’re police, how can you not bloody see that?’

  The girl bit the corner of her lip. Berlin noticed her face was tanned as were her arms and legs. ‘Sorry, this is my first day, I didn’t know. I’ve just hitchhiked down from the country and I’m really hungry.’

  Berlin almost smiled at the total lack of guile in the response. She might have been sixteen but maybe not. Not any older, that was for certain. She had bright eyes and clear skin and clean hair and Berlin knew that wouldn’t last. You could tell by the clothes that she was from the country, all right. Give it twenty-four hours and she’d have a pimp and hot pants and probably a black eye but that wouldn’t worry the punters; she was young and fresh and that was all that mattered. That was the truth and it left a sour taste in Berlin’s mouth that he knew it.

  He took a dollar bill from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘You can get a pie down round the corner there.’ He found another twenty cents. ‘You might want sauce. And watch yourself, eh? There are some not very nice people out there.’

  The girl almost snatched the coin from his fingers. ‘Thanks mister, but I can look after myself. I might be from the bush but I’m not as green as I’m cabbagy looking.’

  She turned and scurried away and Berlin watched her go. Before she reached the corner it looked like she was skipping. Jesus.

  Roberts shook his head. ‘Getting to be a soft touch in your old age, Charlie?’

  Berlin didn’t want to answer, so he changed the subject. ‘I don’t really know if our Derek did the missing girls, Bob, but he’s crossed paths with Gudrun on at least two occasions we know of and he’s definitely hiding something.’

  ‘I think you’re right; the little shit has something going on. You gave him quite a serve about those pictures of his, though, softened him up nicely. You really know about that stuff, the photography?’

  ‘Just things I’ve heard Rebecca saying, don’t know what most of it really means but it looks like neither did he.’

  Roberts stopped the car on the corner of Princes Street, watching for a gap in the traffic. Berlin looked down the roadway, down towards the park and the lake. Half the coppers in town were looking for Gudrun Scheiner and they had just walked away from a teenaged girl who’d almost certainly be missing, dead or a junkie before six months had passed. Was there a dad in some country town just as frantic as Gerhardt Scheiner right now?

  Berlin turned around, looking back along Burnett Street towards the place where the girl had been standing. There was no sign of her, just the empty street with its parked cars, dirty gutters and gatherings of rusting, battered and overflowing galvanised-iron rubbish bins waiting to be emptied by the local garbos. Fuck it was grim. Berlin’s thoughts went back to another time and another bleak roadway and another girl.

  ‘I will be your witness.’

  ‘What?’

  Berlin glanced at Roberts.

  ‘I thought you said something Charlie. Something about a witness?’

  ‘Just thinking out loud, Bob, thinking about something else’

  ‘Too bad, I reckon we could really use a witness right about now.’

  Berlin knew that was true.

  Roberts gunned the engine and shot out into a gap in the traffic, ignoring the angry horn blasts from the cars on his right.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Roberts dropped Berlin off on Collins Street outside Rebecca’s studio. Berlin planned on going through the box of proof sheets of Derek Jones’s GEAR magazine photographs again and Rebecca had the right kind of magnifying glasses for the tiny images. He knew it was a long shot but he was running out of ideas.

  Roberts took off as soon as Berlin lifted the file box out of the Triumph’s boot and slammed it shut. The sports car had just turned the corner on to Spring Street and disappeared from view when the two men approached Berlin, the taller one offering to give him a hand with the box. It would be nice and safe in the boot of their car while they had a little chat, he explained. Berlin asked the shorter of the pair for some identification. The taller man he had already recognised from outside the pub opposite the record shop. Given that the judicial inquiry would be operating for a limited amount of time their identity documents were simply names and ranks typed on inquiry letterhead.

  The inquiry’s public hearings were being held in rented office space on Spencer Street but they drove Berlin to a terrace in Parkville. He sat in the back of the Ford Falcon and the two men sat up front. There was no chitchat on the short ride and they parked in a back lane. The shorter man stayed with the car while the taller one escorted Berlin into the terrace through a well-kept rear garden. In the kitchen the Honourable Justice Llewellyn Luscombe, the man tasked with assessing the depth of corruption within the police force, was making a pot of tea. His suit jacket was draped neatly over the back of a chair.

  ‘I’m Lew Luscombe, Detective Sergeant Berlin, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Yet another interesting character buzzes into our little hive.’

  He put down the teapot and shook Berlin’s hand.

/>   Berlin liked the idea that the man still wore a waistcoat with the chain of a pocket watch looped across the front and that he introduced himself as Lew. But is it a hive, Berlin wondered, or have I buzzed my way into a web?

  ‘And an aviator too, they tell me, with active service under his belt,’ Luscombe continued, ‘it seems we have a lot in common. Can I pour you a cup of tea? Please pull up a chair, I believe we have biscuits somewhere.’

  Berlin already knew some of Justice Luscombe’s history from stories in the press and from reading what was available in the State Library. When the newly retired judge was appointed to head the inquiry into police corruption, Rebecca had suggested that any copper with his head screwed on right should make it their business to find out all they could about the man.

  Part of what Berlin knew was that in July 1910, at the age of twelve, young Llewellyn Luscombe had watched awestruck as John Duigan, a neighbour’s son, had taken off in a homemade aeroplane at a property near rural Kyneton. Though only a short hop it was one of the earliest powered flights in Australia and the boy decided to become a pilot, though his wealthy farming family already had plans for him to study law. In late 1918 flying over France with No. 4 squadron, Australian Flying Corps Luscombe’s Sopwith Camel was brought down by ground fire. Two broken knees kept him out of the air till the war was over. He returned to Melbourne and after a long and distinguished legal career was appointed a judge of the State Supreme Court. Now retired, he had been asked to conduct the current inquiry into possible police corruption.

  Berlin sat down at the table and accepted his cup of tea. The tall man had searched cupboards till he’d found a tin of biscuits. He put the tin on the table and after a nod from Luscombe left the two men alone.

  ‘Nice house.’ Berlin felt he had to say something.

  ‘I rent it for my grand-daughter. She’s at the university so it’s convenient. For me also, some place peaceful to get away. She’s doing medicine.’

  He pronounced it med-sin. Berlin briefly wondered if his granddaughter knew Sunshine but decided the two girls probably moved in different circles.

  ‘You have a daughter I hear, Detective Sergeant Berlin, and also a son, in the army.’

  Berlin nodded. He wondered what else the judge might have heard about Peter and his problems. Was this how it would go? Threats about revealing Peter’s past transgressions for information about crooked cops.

  ‘My own son was shot down and killed in Korea, you may have heard. I hope your child stays safe.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s what I hope too.’

  ‘I raised my grandchildren myself, Detective Sergeant Berlin. I mean myself and my wife. My grandson is in the RAAF now, that makes it three generations. He’s training to fly the Mirage, you know the French fighter plane. He took me down to Point Cook once to show me one. Quite beautiful and nothing like the old Camel, let me tell you. You and I both flew sitting on our parachutes, I believe, but these days if there’s a problem he just has to press a button and his whole seat with him in it shoots right out of the aircraft. Marvellous stuff.’

  Berlin nodded again. Luscombe had a pleasant, open smile and Berlin was trying to figure out if this polite old man was just that, and perhaps getting a little doddery, or was he someone much, much smarter.

  ‘Your wife has a career, and a most successful one too, they tell me. That must be . . . gratifying.’

  Berlin was wary now. He was proud of Rebecca’s hard-won success in the male-dominated photo industry, but did they think her photography business was just a way for him to justify money made through corrupt enterprises as a police officer?

  The judge was right about Rebecca being successful but it was a long way from the early days of their marriage when she began shooting weddings to help supplement Berlin’s totally inadequate police pay. Rebecca’s career had taken off after someone had shown one of her wedding albums to a busy Collins Street photographer named Mark Sturgis who was looking for someone to help lighten his workload.

  The top of Collins Street, referred to as the Paris End because of its outdoor cafes and expensive dress shops, was where the most successful advertising and commercial photographers had their studios. Mark Sturgis’ clients weren’t quite as glamorous as his address or his bright, spacious and well-equipped studio that occupied two floors above a frock shop that now called itself a boutique. The high-end advertising and fashion photographers treated Sturgis with mild pity or polite contempt since the majority of his work involved shooting jumpers and cardigans for the weekly women’s magazines and knitting pattern books. It seemed every woman in Australia was frantically knitting non-stop and these regular assignments kept the studio fully occupied. Rebecca quickly found she enjoyed the fast pace, the short deadlines and the interaction with models and thrived on the experience.

  Within a year she had given up weddings and, using the experience she was gaining and the contacts she was making, had begun building a niche for herself in fine-art and fashion photography. Two years later Sturgis announced that the work his fellow photographers had sneered at was about to fund his early retirement and he offered the studio to Rebecca at a bargain price. She had kept the studio’s existing clients more than happy and had steadily added to the roster. Editors at the fashion magazines had begun calling and her fine-art female nudes had been exhibited in several of the new photographic galleries that had opened in Prahran and South Yarra.

  ‘My wife’s success is all of her own making, Your Honour, though on the odd occasion she does let me carry her camera bag.’

  His tone was cold and Justice Luscombe held up both hands. ‘I didn’t mean to give offence. My point is that when a man, specifically a policeman, has a family income adequate to his needs then there is much less reason to perhaps succumb to temptation. I’m simply making an observation.’

  Was the observation that I probably wasn’t corrupt because our household makes a decent quid? Berlin wondered. Lack of money wasn’t always the thing that made a cop go bad. He decided to move things along, what did he have to lose?

  ‘I don’t want to be rude Your Honour, but there’s a girl missing and I’m trying to help find her. Can you tell me why I’m here so I can get back to that.’

  Justice Luscombe smiled and nodded. The judge had a friendly face, less lined than Berlin had expected for a man of his age, lightly tanned and topped with thinning white hair. His nose was slightly twisted and Berlin wondered if he had broken it when he’d broken his knees in that plane crash in France all those years ago.

  ‘It’s about your friend, Sergeant Roberts.’

  Of course it was.

  ‘There are some things that you should perhaps know.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Luscombe’s men dropped Berlin off outside Rebecca’s studio where they had picked him up. The first person Berlin saw when he entered the studio was Lauren from the GEAR offices. She waved to him from the middle of the grey paper backdrop. He had his arms full with the box of Derek Jones’s negatives and proof sheets so he couldn’t wave back.

  ‘Hello, Mr Berlin, I called your wife.’

  ‘So I see.’ Berlin could see that and a whole lot more. Lauren was very naked.

  Rebecca stepped out from behind the set where she had been adjusting a spotlight. The studio had electronic flash equipment but for her nudes Rebecca preferred using old-fashioned tungsten lights. She walked across and gave Berlin a kiss. Because of the paper backdrop she wasn’t wearing shoes and he thought the white socks with her blue denim Amco jeans was a rather sexy combination.

  ‘Just in time, Charlie. I need a big strong man to hold a reflector. This is our last set-up so it should only take ten minutes. Shoes off before you walk on the background, remember.’

  Berlin dropped the file box on a nearby table, draped his overcoat across the top and then sat on a chair and unlaced his shoes before taking them off. In the middle of the studio Rebecca was putting a roll of film into a Mamiya twin-lens reflex camera mounted o
n a heavy Gitzo tripod.

  ‘Any joy on the missing girl, Charlie?’

  ‘Nothing yet, we seem to be chasing our tails.’ Ten minutes not thinking about work and missing girls was exactly what he needed right now, he realised. He put his shoes under the table. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  In the middle of the background a totally unselfconscious Lauren was looking around the room. She seemed to be interested in the lights and reflectors and all the bits and pieces that made up the studio. Lance Meuwissen had been right in his estimation that she would look stunning in the nude. She smiled at Berlin again.

  ‘Thank you so much for giving me Rebecca’s card and suggesting I call her, Mr Berlin. I’m going to be in her next exhibition and she tele­phoned someone at Vivien’s Model Agency and I’m off to see them tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s a totally selfish gesture on my part, Charlie, so I can book her for next week for a three-day shoot for the Wool Board. It’s nice to have a husband with an eye for the ladies. We should change the music; can you find us some Chet Baker, Charlie? That be okay for you, Lauren? We have the EasyBeats if you prefer that.’

  ‘I’m not sure who Chet Baker is but I’m sure it will be groovy.’

  Berlin flipped through the pile of LPs until he found Rebecca’s copy of Chet Baker Sings. Taking the black vinyl disk from its cardboard sleeve and wiping it with the anti-static cleaning cloth he put it on the turntable and carefully lowered the needle down onto the spinning disk. There was a brief initial crackle then Baker’s warm, soft voice singing ‘That Old Feeling’ came out of the speakers.

  Rebecca stepped back to the camera after taking a light meter reading. ‘Thanks, Charlie, now take that reflector board and get in close, please. Closer please, that’s better.’