Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(37)

‘The smell?’

‘When he first came back, you know, from overseas, he mumbled stuff in his sleep a lot, something about how a bloke could never forget that smell. Must have meant the jungle, I suppose.’

Berlin eyed the bottle of brandy on the shelf behind her. ‘I suppose he must have.’





TWENTY-FOUR


The two policemen were standing at the open door of the garage looking in.

‘Is there a doctor coming?’ Berlin asked. ‘For the wife, I mean, and to certify death so they can get him over to the coroner’s.’

The constable with the notepad nodded. ‘I tried to call on the phone inside but some shiela … ’

The other constable coughed.

‘I mean, your wife was on the other end and she said you were on the way and she wasn’t about to hang up. People across the street called the local quack for us. He’s on the way but he’s not happy about it, apparently. Lady next door said she’d come and keep an eye on her and the kid as soon as IMT is over.’

The other constable had his hands in his pockets and his head down. ‘I’m sorry about the brandy, DS Berlin, but –’

‘Sorry you drank it or sorry you got sprung? Now shut up and tell me what happened here.’

The constable with the notepad spoke. ‘When we got here the lady was out in the street screaming and wandering round in circles. Ambos came just after we did and they took her inside the house. It was pretty obvious he was dead. Ken here went next door and borrowed a ladder so we could cut him down.’

‘You talk to any of the neighbours?’

‘Not yet, apart from the bloke who lent us the ladder and called the quack. No one will have seen anything, though. I Love Lucy was on the TV earlier and then that Kennedy bloke. You’d have to set off a bomb to get most people out of their seats, not that I’m complaining, mind.’

Berlin knew TV was having an effect in a lot of areas, some of them quite unexpected. Thursday nights had once been notorious for domestic-violence calls to police, but these had dropped off dramatically between nine and ten with almost every set in the city tuned in to Your Hit Parade on HSV7.

‘So how did it happen, constable?’ he asked.

The one with the notebook stepped forward and pointed up to the roof. ‘Pretty obvious, I’d say. He ties a rope round that beam, puts it round his neck and steps off.’

‘Steps off what?’

‘The other copper, the one named Ken, pointed to a wooden fruit crate. ’That, I suppose. It was near his feet. Still exactly right where we found it. I borrowed the ladder because I didn’t want to move anything.’

‘That was smart.’ Berlin had used a fruit crate just like it to build Peter a billycart last summer. ‘So what do you reckon he weighed? Our victim, I mean.’

‘Dunno,’ Ken said. ‘Eleven, maybe twelve stone, give or take a pound or two. He wasn’t a big bugger but he was solid. I had to hold him up while Steve cut the rope.’

The other constable nodded. ‘Sounds about right. Maybe eleven, twelve stone, but not more.’

‘And whereabouts do you tip the scales, Constable?’

Ken smiled. ‘I’m eleven-eight. Most of it’s muscle.’ He brought his shoulders in and put his fists up under his chin. ‘I do a bit of boxing, lift some weights, you know.’

‘Fair enough. You want to climb up there, Charles Atlas, and tell me about the knot he used on the beam. No, don’t use the ladder. Use the crate.’

Ken kicked the crate into position with his foot. He put one leg up on it and as soon as his other foot left the concrete floor the wood splintered and broke under his weight. He fell forward but managed to retain his balance. Both constables glanced over at Berlin and they looked embarrassed.

‘You boys were looking but you weren’t seeing. I knew a soldier from up in the islands once who said that was a good way for a bloke to get himself killed. Or in this case, make himself look like a bit of a dill. Now, why don’t you two piss off while I have a poke around.’

After the constables had left, Berlin inspected the garage, wall by wall. The place was relatively neat and tidy. There were gardening tools, and a new Victa two-stroke lawnmower was parked against one wall. The workbench along the back wall had a vice mounted on one end. A pegboard behind the bench had hooks and painted outlines for tools but if Len owned the items that matched them, they weren’t hanging up.

Berlin squatted down to see if there was anything interesting on the shelf under the bench, but it was just more of the same. As he was straightening up, something under the tines of a garden rake next to a five-gallon drum of mower fuel caught his eye. If he hadn’t been bending down he could have easily missed it.

It was a metal disk a bit bigger than a two-shilling piece, and about the same thickness as a cigarette. The disk was painted a khaki colour and was surprisingly heavy. There were lugs on each side, a bit like those where the straps on a wristwatch would go, but the device had no face. He stepped under the light and held the disk up to see it more clearly. Numbers and letters had been engraved into the metal: 0-200 Roentgens. What the hell was a Roentgen?

He turned the disk over. The back had two locking screws but he’d never seen anything like them before and had no idea what type of tool you would use to turn them. There was something else on the reverse side of the disk, something that had been crudely scratched into the paint – the number 90.