Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(20)

The chimney he’d spotted from the other side of the hill belonged to one of the smaller buildings. It might have been a boiler house for heating, or perhaps a laundry. As he got closer he could see the roofs were black slate, spotted with pale patches of lichen. Whatever this place was, it was old, really old. Windows were inset at regular intervals into the stone walls of the various structures, and it looked to Berlin like there were bars on all of them.

There was an open parking area at the bottom of the hill and he rolled his car to a stop alongside a white panel van. Two more identical vans were lined up there, along with a gleaming new pink Vauxhall Cresta. Berlin switched off his engine. With the window down he could hear the clicks and bangs of an engine cooling down under the hood of the nearest panel van. It had to be the one that had passed him at the abandoned farm.

He climbed out of the Studebaker and looked up at the walls. A good twenty feet high, he estimated, and looked to have been done by the same stonemasons who built the outer walls at Pentridge prison. There were no guard towers, though, and halfway along the wall he noticed a small entranceway. He walked towards it, past the panel vans, stopping by each for a moment. The licence plates were of varying ages but each was held in place by two shiny new bolts. None of their numbers matched the missing plate from Owen Giles’s Ford truck.

The entranceway, set in a recess in the masonry wall, was up three stone steps. The door was made of iron, crisscrossed with heavy metal bands held in place with rivets. There was a peephole set into the middle, and a minute or two after Berlin started banging on the door the peephole slid open.

‘Name’s Berlin and I need to see whoever’s in charge.’

The eye at the peephole studied him for a minute and then the hole closed and the door was swung open. Berlin stepped through the entranceway into a courtyard paved with cobblestones. Tufts of grass were sprouting between the stones and lichen and moss covered the damp lower sections of the walls. The iron door swung closed behind him with a solid clang.

‘You one of the Ninetymen?’

The question came from a stocky man about Berlin’s age. His face was pale, his eyes twitched, and the scrappy straw-coloured thatch of hair on his head looked like it was coming out in clumps. He wore white canvas trousers and a white jacket and looked like a hospital orderly. A smouldering roll-your-own was hanging from one side of his mouth.

‘Who?’ Berlin asked.

The man said, ‘Fuckit,’ softly to himself and then louder, ‘never mind, forget it, what do you want?’

‘Name’s Berlin, like I said. I need to see whoever’s in charge.’

‘What about?’

‘I’m a policeman, so I suppose that would be my business.’

The man nodded. ‘Fair enough. Bloke’s name is Dr Jessop. Down that way.’ He pointed to a path leading off the courtyard. ‘Building marked ’’Administration’’, on your right, green double doors. Just follow your nose down the main corridor and you’ll see a sign for the Institute Director. Knock first, he’s a touchy bastard.’

‘Thanks, mate.’

‘No worries. Just don’t go opening any other doors you might come across. Never know what might be on the other side, especially in this place.’

And what exactly was this place? Berlin was about to ask when he noticed the other man staring hard at him, squinting.

‘Don’t I know you?’

Berlin shook his head. ‘Can’t place you, sorry.’

‘It’ll come to me, don’t you worry, I never forget a face.’ The man took the butt of the rollie from his mouth and ground it our on the cobblestones. ‘Green double doors, right, you can’t miss ‘em.’

Berlin had only gone about ten paces when the man called after him, ‘Got ya.’

He turned around. The man walked up to him and pointed a finger to his chest.

‘I remember the walk. After the war. RAAF repat hospital in Heidelberg, right? You’ve put on a pound or two since, I reckon.’

Christ, it was a long time since he had thought about that place.

‘I was there for a bit. You air force too?’

‘Nope, I was in the army hospital across the road. I was an infanteer. Up in the islands. Got into action right at the end, poor bugger me, wanted to see what it was all about. Jesus, we were all stupid young bastards back then.’

You’ve got that right, Berlin said to himself. ‘Sorry, but I still don’t remember you.’

‘No reason you should, we’ve never met. Like I said, I was in the army hospital but I seen you out walking quite a few times. Back then you looked like you had the weight of the world on your shoulders. Even so, it made me envious. Made me wish I could have gone out walking.’

‘You couldn’t? You have a leg wound?’

The other man tapped his temple. ‘Head wound, sort of, you know, mental. I was screwy as a two-bob watch for a while there. The doctors liked to have me someplace where they could keep an eye on me, someplace with a lock on the door that I didn’t have a key to.’

Berlin understood. He had been in those rooms himself. The psychiatrists had encouraged him to go for walks when the drugs began to work and the nightmares started to fade. He walked every day, for miles sometimes, the weather making no difference to him. As awful as the Melbourne weather could be, it was nothing to a man who had spent almost three weeks marching at gunpoint through Poland’s 1945 winter blizzards.