Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(17)
‘It is a small house we share, in the former Olympic Village: he continued, ’and the sound of drunken … ‘ he waved his fingers as if deciding on the next word, ’rooting, I find quite annoying. Unless one is intimately involved in the proceedings, of course.’
The waitress scowled at Lazlo. He smiled back at her.
‘Please forgive my coarseness, can you Dawn?’
She straightened up and walked back towards the bar. Berlin thought he heard her mutter ‘Arsehole’ as she left. He wondered if Lazlo had been one of those who had added to the lines on her face or if she’d tried it on and been knocked back. He was okay looking, maybe even handsome and Berlin knew there were a lot of girls around who might find a bloke like Lazlo attractive.
TWELVE
Berlin and Horvay parted at a red PMG phone box on the corner of Holmes Street, a half-block from the funeral parlour. Berlin looked up a number in his pocket address book and made a call. He was transferred twice but finally had Bob Roberts on the line.
‘G’day Charlie, long time no speak.’
‘Yeah mate, sorry about that. How’s Alice doing?’
‘Any day now, the quack reckons. If it’s a boy we’ll call it quits. Three kids are more than enough. Especially on a senior constable’s salary.’
Berlin had met Roberts when the lad was a probationary constable in Wodonga, the place he’d also met Rebecca. Berlin had been sent up there on a make-or-break assignment. There had been a series of armed robberies by a motorcycle gang in the rural border town, and to everyone’s surprise, including his own, Berlin and Roberts had solved the case along with an unrelated murder.
By all rights Wodonga should have been a career maker for Berlin, and also for Roberts. But during their investigations they had uncovered evidence of local police and shire council corruption. At Rebecca’s suggestion Berlin had kept his mouth shut about these discoveries, which saved his job. However, police senior management had a long memory when it came to people who could make them look bad, so Berlin was pegged as unreliable. From then on his career had progressed at a snail’s pace, and young probationary constable Roberts had been tainted by association. The boy was a good copper and should have been at least a detective constable by now.
Berlin got to the reason for his call. ‘What are the chances of you popping downstairs and looking up a licence plate for me?’
‘I thought I heard you had a week off. Shouldn’t you be sitting around with your feet up, reading a good book or something?’
‘That’ll be the day.’ Berlin had kept quiet about building the darkroom, since he knew Bob would want to use up his own precious spare time giving him a hand. ‘I’m actually doing a favour for the wife. Any possibility you could do it before the end of the day? Probably nothing in it, but it’d be good to clear it up before the weekend.’
‘Grand final tomorrow, eh?’ What do you reckon, Essendon in with a chance?’
Roberts had been a promising junior football player in the country, but the hard slog of police work and a couple of kids had forced him to put that on hold. Berlin knew he missed the rough-and-tumble. He’d played football himself as a youth, and had done some boxing. The broken nose was a legacy of his last football match, and unlike Bob he didn’t miss the rough-and-tumble one little bit.
‘Melbourne are looking good, especially if Barassi’s in form, but with Hird on the paddock I reckon we can do it. You manage to get yourself a ticket?’
Roberts laughed. ‘With two kids and a pregnant wife who’s as big as a house and well and truly over the whole thing? Jesus, Charlie, how long have you been married? I’ll be lucky if I get to hear the match on the wireless.’
‘You’ve got me there, Bob. And Rebecca’s got a wedding booked for the afternoon, so I’ll be babysitting and listening on the wireless too.’
‘Joys of fatherhood, eh Charlie? Tell you what, give me that licence plate number and I’ll see what I can do. Friday afternoon is always a bit quiet around here, so no bugger is going to miss me for a couple of hours. I doubt if my sergeant will be back from the pub much before clocking-off time.’
‘Thanks Bob, just as long as this won’t cause you any grief.’
What he meant was any more grief than the lad had already put up with from his association with Berlin.
‘No worries, Charlie, she’ll be apples, it’s just a licence plate number. Bit of a bugger going through all those damn index cards, but if I find it before five I’ll ring the details through to your place.’
When he got back to his car Berlin saw that the hearse was parked outside the front of the funeral parlour. Lazlo and Callahan were loading the coffin containing the careless electrician into the back for his journey to the church and the hereafter. Both men glanced in Berlin’s direction. He started the Studebaker and did a U-turn.
The clock on the dashboard told him he would still be able to get in a couple of hours on the darkroom. He knew Bob would come through with the information on the licence plate number before the day was over, the boy was reliable that way. What to do with it was the question. Beryl Moffit seemed like the reliable type too. He had no real reason to doubt she had seen what she said she had seen. He could file a report, but to whom, and what department? And saying what? He had a distraught widow, a sweating undertaker telling a petty lie, and a foreign witness with a false name who sometimes slept in a hearse. He’d never get an exhumation order and he’d be lucky not to get laughed out of Russell Street.