‘And the other one?’
‘Medium-format camera, possibly a Hasselblad, good quality enlarging lens, properly calibrated professional enlarger, nice fresh chemicals and a safelight that was actually safe. The . . . the skin tones are good and whoever printed it used the right contrast grade of photographic paper as well.’
Berlin put the prints back on the table face down. ‘Derek Jones had access to the darkroom at the studio too.’
Rebecca shook her head. ‘As junky as that Zenit enlarger is, in the right hands it can be used to make acceptable prints. Whoever printed the pictures of the kidnapped girls really knew their way around a darkroom, and that wasn’t Derek.’
FORTY-THREE
The images on the contact sheet were small and Berlin quickly realised just how bad his eyes were getting. He found a magnifying glass next to a lamp on the old roll-top desk that Rebecca used for her accounts. There were thirty-six pictures on each of the contact sheets and even with the magnifying glass it was difficult to clearly identify people in the photographs. He pulled the desk lamp down closer.
Rebecca came into the room five minutes later. ‘What are you looking at?’
‘These are proof sheets from Derek’s job shooting at dances over the past few months. I’ve got no idea of what I’m looking for but if he didn’t make the prints of the missing girls there must be something in here that I’m missing. But I’m buggered if I can see what it is.’
‘Want me to help? Those negatives of Lauren need another ten minutes so just tell me what we’re looking for.’
‘For something I missed, I suppose.’ He passed the pile of contact sheets over to her, along with the magnifying glass.
Rebecca worked her way through the contact sheets. She stopped and went back a couple of times, using the magnifying glass on several of the images. Berlin smiled when he realised she was humming softly. One sheet seemed to hold her attention. After a minute of careful study it was put to the side and she continued through the rest. When she was done she picked up the sheet she had isolated and studied it carefully with the magnifying glass. She stopped humming and held up the page of photographs.
‘Who took these pictures, Charlie?’
Berlin leaned across and looked at the contact sheet. ‘Derek, like I said. He took all of these.’
Rebecca shook her head slowly. ‘No, I don’t think so. Someone else took these, this sheet of pictures, I mean. It definitely wasn’t Derek.’
Berlin looked more carefully at the contact print. To him it looked just like all the others. ‘How can you be sure?’
Rebecca picked up a second contact sheet from the pile on the desk. ‘Okay, first of all the other films were Kodak Tri-X, you can see the brand name and code number on the top edge of the negatives here. Now, this other one was shot on Ilford HP5. Similar films but photographers tend to go for one or the other – it’s a sort of a Holden versus Ford thing. Whichever one you choose to use, the other is considered to be garbage.’
‘Maybe Derek ran out of Tri-X and used a roll of the Ilford stuff.’
‘That could have happened, but not in this case. In all the Tri-X shots the flash is mounted on top of the camera, you can tell by the shadows. On that other sheet it’s mounted on the side. Also, Derek was using a wide-angle lens, maybe a 28, and whoever shot this was using a standard 50 mm focal length by the look of things.’
‘Are you sure?’ Berlin tried to see the differences that she had pointed out. They were fairly subtle.
‘Hold the sheet up in front of the desk lamp,’ Rebecca suggested. ‘You might be able see a little bit more clearly when it’s lit from behind. I’ll be back in a tick, I just want to check on those negatives of Lauren.’
Rebecca was right about having the lamp behind the contact print – light coming through the paper did make it easier to see. He ran the magnifying glass slowly across the rows of images, examining each of them. On the second last row he stopped. He held his breath. He put the proof sheet down and walked across to the telephone. There was no need for his address book, he knew the number for the South Melbourne cop shop by heart. Peter had been taken there after he was arrested and charged with breaking and entering.
The boy had been in the cells for four hours before the desk sergeant made the connection with the Berlin name and put a phone call through. There was a lot of back and forth over the next week, with Berlin trying desperately to stop the case going to court. The station’s senior officer wasn’t having any of it, even if the desk sergeant was on Berlin’s side. The sergeant liked the fact that Peter hadn’t tried to use his father’s name to get special treatment.
The phone was answered after just three rings. It must have been a quiet night in South Melbourne. The desk sergeant recognised Berlin’s voice immediately.
‘G’day Charlie, a little dickie bird tells me you’re in a bit of grief at Russell Street. They reckon you’re suspended.’
Even the police D24 radio network couldn’t spread news as quickly as the rumour mill. ‘Nothing to fret about, Sarge, just a bit of a misunderstanding.’
‘That’s good to hear. How’s the boy doing, he okay?’
‘He’s good, I suppose. He writes to his mum and tells her that he’s keeping out of harm’s way.’
The desk sergeant grunted. Berlin knew the man had fought in Korea and so he understood the lies soldiers wrote home to their mums.
‘Just a quick question, Sarge, about something that happened a couple of weekends back. Don’t know if you were even on duty that night but a photographic studio on Albert Road reported a break-in, rear of number 100.’
Berlin heard the sergeant click his tongue. ‘Can you be a bit more specific, Charlie?’
‘Might have been the weekend Richmond won the second semi-final.’
‘Righto, gotcha. Hang on a tick, let me have a look in the book.’
There was a pause and Berlin could hear pages being turned.
‘Okay, I’ve found it. That was a bugger of a night, even without that dead girl showing up in the lake on the Monday morning. You hear about that? Face down in the water and cut to ribbons by some maniac they reckon. Naked as a jaybird.’
‘That’s what I heard too, Sarge.’
‘I’m glad the St Kilda boys found her down their end of the lake because we certainly had our hands full up here on the Sunday night. Not that I’m glad she’s dead, you understand.’
‘Of course not, Sarge. Why were your hands full, you mind telling me?’
‘A drunk driving a panel van hit a tram on Clarendon Street. Stupid bugger got himself killed and took down half the electrical wiring in the street doing it. Most of South Melbourne was blacked out for hours, so no traffic lights either. Good thing it was late on the Sunday night, not enough blokes rostered on to do point duty at the intersections and cross streets. The SEC fellers didn’t get the power back on till around five in the morning.’
‘And the break-in at the studio on Albert Road, the place behind the recording studio? What can you tell me about that?’
Berlin heard some more page-turning.
‘That call was actually the next morning, the Monday. I was off duty by then. It says here the call came in about 7:45. The receptionist at the photo place showed up early for work and she was the one who found the damage, the front door was kicked in.’
‘Do you happen to know who got sent out to investigate? The way I hear it, some uniforms stopped by and they were going to send detectives but it never happened. I want to find out why and also if there was anything odd about that visit.’
More page-turning. ‘Murchison did the interview on that one. He’s on the road at the moment but I can get him on the radio and have a natter if you can hang on for a sec.’
Berlin tilted his head to keep the phone up against his ear. He held the contact sheet up to the ceiling light and used the magnifying glass to confirm what he had seen one more time.
‘You still there?’ The sergeant was bac
k on the line.
‘What do you have?’
‘Murchison remembers that one for a couple of reasons. He said the shift was well over and he should have been home by then but he got stuck with one last job. Worked out well, he said, the receptionist at the photo place had the biggest norks he’d seen in a month of Sundays. He put the acid on her but she wasn’t having it, said she already had a boyfriend. With tits like Murchison described I don’t wonder at it. He said the bloke who owned the studio was some porky, long-haired septic tank, a real wanker. He picked him as a poofter first off then figured he was probably the one rooting the receptionist and good luck to him.’
‘What did Murchison say about the break-in? Did he give any details?’
‘He said he told the photographer bloke that he’d have the detectives stop by just to shut him up but when he got back to the station he decided it really wasn’t worth bothering them.’
‘Why not? Did he say?’
‘Reckoned it was an inside job. But there didn’t seem to be anything missing, which was a bit odd. If there was stuff missing Murchison reckons you could have called it as an insurance job, you know, fake the break-in, nick your own stuff, flog it off down the pub and buy new gear with the insurance money.’
‘What made him think it was an inside job?’
‘Well, him and his offsider had a quick look around and they said a few things had been knocked over, lights and such, but it didn’t really look like the joint had been ransacked. And he reckoned for his money the front door to the studio looked like it had been forced out rather than jemmied or kicked in.’
‘Did he say why?’
‘He just said some handyman bloke who apparently works in the darkroom was already halfway through installing a new front door but the old one was still on the ground downstairs. Murchison reckoned it was pretty obvious the lock had come away when the door was forced open from the inside. Piss-weak door in any case, white ants in the doorjamb so getting it open wouldn’t have been too bloody difficult. Murchison said a halfway decent shove probably would have done it.’
‘Thanks, Sarge. Tell Murchison I owe him a beer, and you too.’
Berlin hung up and tried to call Roberts but there was no answer at any of the numbers he had for him. When Rebecca walked back into the room he already had his overcoat on. He was also holding a three foot–long iron wrecking bar that had been left in the studio after a hardware catalogue shoot.
‘Lose our house keys, did we?’
‘No but I need your car keys and right now.’
‘Is something wrong, Charlie? Did you find something out?’
‘Just that you were right about Derek Jones not taking the pictures on that sheet. It must have been included with the others by accident.’
‘What confirmed it?
‘It’s all in frame number 26a. Derek Jones couldn’t have shot that particular roll of film because he’s standing off in the background with his camera around his neck, chatting up a blonde. We’ve been looking at the wrong person, and I just figured out we’ve been looking at the wrong end of the lake too. I need to get to the photographic studio in South Melbourne right now so I need your keys.’
Rebecca was already moving towards the door. ‘They’re in my coat but I’ll drive. I go faster than you do.’
FORTY-FOUR
Rebecca parked in the space behind number 100 Albert Road. Berlin left her in the car and told her to wait. He took the wrecking bar and a torch from Rebecca’s glove box with him. The rain had stopped and the skies were clearing. As he passed the windows lining the side of the closed-down lolly factory underneath the studio, his eye caught a glint of light. One of the glass windowpanes was reflecting moonlight. He stopped and looked closer. The other three panes in the window were old, probably original from when the place was built, with ripples and bubbles and small imperfections in the glass. The lower-right pane was newer, smooth flat glass that had been spattered with dirt and mud in an attempt to make it match the others. The earlier rain, driven almost horizontally by the wind, had lashed this side of the building, washing most of the dirt away.
Berlin pressed his finger into the putty around the glass and felt it give slightly under the pressure. He checked an original pane and found the putty dried-out and brittle. This newer glass was obviously quite recently installed, the putty smeared with dirt to conceal its newness and then left to dry. Using the sharp end of the wrecking bar he smashed the glass in and carefully cleared away the remaining shards as best he could. Reaching in and up he felt for the latch at the top of the frame. His hand came away covered with more dirt but the metal latch felt new and it turned easily. He still had to use pressure from the wrecking bar to force the window up.
Inside, he stepped over the broken glass and swept the torch over the empty space. He could smell rat droppings, and when he swung the torch up across the ceiling beams he saw reflections from more than one pair of tiny eyes. As he walked between the tables the rats scuttled away. At the rear of the room was a large brick structure with a single metal door. The door was rusted shut all the way around the frame, which was solidly bolted into the brick wall. He brushed powdery red rust off a painted sign that read, ‘Boiler Room, No Unauthorised Admittance.’ The door had obviously been unused for at least twenty years. The mortar between the bricks had been protected from the weather by being inside and was still thick and solid. Berlin rapped on the door with the iron bar but there was only silence. Getting that door open would take more than his wrecking bar; an oxy-torch was probably needed.
He walked back to the double doors at the front and studied the layout of the empty room. Pacing out the distances he walked slowly forward, trying to mentally superimpose on the space what he remembered about the layout of the studio above. When he got to the back, to the solid brick face of the locked boiler room, he looked up. That had to be the darkroom up there above him, located right over the brick room in front of him.
It took five minutes to break his way in through the locked studio door. Egan had done a good job of installing it and entry wouldn’t have been possible without using the wrecking bar. Once inside, he worked his way towards the back of the studio, enough light filtering through the grubby windows to let him reach his destination without switching on the overhead lighting. He counted off the paces, making allowances for the dogleg through the studio part of the building. By his calculations the darkroom was situated directly over the bricked-up boiler room below.
The sliding door into the darkroom was open. A cord dangled from the ceiling and a quick tug turned on an overhead fluorescent light. The darkroom was neat, clean and empty. The trays of developing chemicals had been washed out and stacked against the splashback of the stainless steel sink to drain. Orange and yellow boxes of photographic paper were neatly stacked on shelves above the workbenches. He recognised the enlarger as a Yank-made Omega D2, the same as Rebecca had in her Collins Street darkroom.
The floor of the darkroom was covered with rectangular rubber mats. One of the mats was slightly misaligned, turned up in one corner, showing the wooden floorboards underneath. Berlin pulled it aside. The trapdoor underneath was neatly fitted, the hinges hidden and a pull-up handle recessed into one edge. He bent down and tugged at the handle but the trapdoor didn’t move. It must have been locked from underneath and there was no sign of a place to insert the key.
He stood up and looked around the darkroom. One of the vertical beams that helped hold the roof up had a series of Bakelite switches mounted on it. He worked his way down the switches, testing each one to see what it did. Safe light, exhaust fan, enlarger, radio – there was an on–off switch for each one. Metal conduit attached to the pillar and running down from the ceiling held the wiring for each of the switches. Right at the ceiling he noticed another wire painted white to match the pillar and ceiling looping round to the back. He reached behind the pole and found another pair of switches.
He flicked one on and off but nothing happened
. He switched on the second and there was a metallic click somewhere under his feet. Bending down, he tugged at the trapdoor again and this time it opened. There were wooden stairs leading down from the trapdoor into the cellar. The space under his feet was in total darkness. He reached back for the first of the hidden switches. Somewhere in the blackness under his feet a weak blue light flickered on.
He steadied himself with his left hand as he worked his way down the stairs. His right hand held the wrecking bar. There was a bad smell in the cellar and the smell of some sort of chemical trying to cover it up. He spotted where the light was coming from; it looked like a 25-watt bulb set in a fitting in the ceiling and covered with blue plastic or cellophane. The ceiling itself was covered in thick grey fabric stapled to the beams, which Berlin guessed might be soundproofing.
Boxes and crates and rotting hessian bags were stacked up around the walls. There was a spade next to several newer bags, bags in heavy brown paper that had been torn open and were spilling white powder onto the floor. Berlin stepped off the last step and onto something soft. It gave under his foot, a squishy, runny kind of sensation and his stomach turned over. He lifted his foot and the beam of his torch showed black industrial plastic sheeting and heavy adhesive tape. He knew now that the white powder was quicklime, and also what was inside the plastic he had stepped on. Were they all down here, all wrapped in plastic? He didn’t want to think about it.
He lifted his foot and found firmer ground. A whimper came from somewhere behind the stairs. He moved carefully in that direction and stepped on another of the soft places. His eyes were acclimatising to the dull light, his pupils dilating, opening, letting him see more clearly. The clarity only made the vision of the girl more horrifying.
It was the setting from the photographs they’d found with Derek’s suicide note. Gudrun was in a sort of sitting crucifixion position, her arms were spread wide, the chains running from her wrists to metal hooks screwed into the beam above. The chains were new and he remembered that the girls in the photographs, the girls before Gudrun, had been held with rope. A lesson had obviously been learned. Had Melinda Marquet worked her way free after she heard the electric lock click open during that Sunday blackout, or was she already free when it happened? There was no way Gudrun was getting free of her chains without a hacksaw or bolt cutters, and Berlin had neither.
St Kilda Blues Page 28
