Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(40)

The radiographer picked up a long cable. ‘I’ll be outside.’

‘This is safe, isn’t it?’ Berlin was wary. His only previous experience of an X-ray had been when he was returned to England from the POW camp after the war and had a suspected chest infection.

‘That’s what they tell me, but we are talking about X-rays so I’m not taking any chances.’ The radiographer winked. ‘I want to have kids some day.’

He stepped out of the van and then yelled, ‘Breathe in and hold it.’

There was a rumble and a whirr from somewhere behind Berlin and then a click from in front.

The radiographer stepped back into the van. ‘You’re done like a dinner, mate. If you don’t hear from us in a couple of weeks, everything is apples.’ He sat down behind the desk.

Berlin buttoned up his waistcoat and slipped his suit jacket back on. He took the disk he’d found in Len’s garage from his pocket and put it on the desktop. ‘Since I’m here I was wondering if you could help me. Seen one of these before?’

The radiographer turned the disk over in his hands and studied it for a moment. ‘Nope, can’t say I have, not that type anyway. But it’s definitely a dosimeter of some kind.’

‘A what?’

‘A dosimeter, it measures radiation – you know, like from X-rays and atom bombs and such.’ He turned the disk over again. ‘See there, where it says “0-200 Roentgens”? Roentgens is how they measure it, radiation. Named after the foreigner who invented all this palaver – X-rays, I mean. Some Kraut, they tell me.’

‘Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, I believe it was.’

The radiographer was unimpressed. ‘Well, there you go, sport, you learn something every day.’

‘Can you tell me why someone would have one of these things?’

The radiographer sat back in his chair. ‘One X-ray isn’t going to hurt you but radiation is cumulative, you see. Builds up. If you work around radioactive materials a dosimeter lets a bloke know if he’s getting too much.’ He flipped the lapel of his dustcoat over to show a small blue disc about the diameter of a two-shilling coin. ‘I’m in this bloody van all day, that’s why I wear this one.’

‘So radiation makes you nervous?’

‘Jesus mate, course it does. Like I said, I want to have kids some day and they say it’s not good for the old gonads, if you get my meaning.’

Berlin nodded to show that he did.

‘But on the bright side, when we do country towns I tell all the good-looking young sheilas that the old feller glows in the dark and I go off like an atom bomb. You’d be surprised at how many of them want to meet me later down the local lovers’ lane to see if it’s true.’

‘How lucky for you … and them.’

From the look on ‘the radiographer’s face, Berlin could tell he wasn’t sure if he was being insulted or not. He tossed the dosimeter to Berlin. ‘I’d say that thing’s probably military, judging by the khaki paint.’

Berlin slipped the disk back into his pocket. ‘Thanks, you’ve been a lot of help.’

As he stepped out of the van he glanced across the road to the garage. On the other side of the Golden Fleece petrol pump the mechanic was wiping the windscreen of a dark green Ford Zephyr. The driver was hidden by the illuminated plastic yellow sheep, but the decal in the rear window was easy to spot.

‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers.’

Berlin wasn’t sure if he’d said it out loud or just thought it, but a lady hurrying past with a shopping basket over her arm gave him a look.

As he started to cross the road the Zephyr pulled away from the pump, turning right and away from him into the narrow street behind the garage. Berlin stopped in the middle of the road. You’re a bloody fool, he said to himself. He let a chugging Volkswagen pass behind him before he crossed back to the footpath outside the X-ray van, pulling a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. There was a phone box up on the next corner.

No one answered at Len’s number. Berlin pushed button B and his pennies tumbled back out of the phone. Gladys was probably out arranging the funeral, or maybe still sleeping. Perhaps the local doctor had given her the same kind of pill that had knocked Beryl Moffit rotten after she’d seen that her old man was missing a leg in his coffin. Or had imagined it.

When he got home Rebecca was sitting at the kitchen table working on a story about Cyril Moffit’s funeral for the Trugo Association newsletter. Her typewriter was an almost new Royal Quiet De Luxe that she’d scored when her old newspaper, The Argus, had shut down earlier in the year. Berlin put the kettle on for tea and answered the phone when it rang. It was Alice Roberts calling to say that Bob was awake and responsive and the doctors thought things were looking better.

Rebecca was happy to hear the news. ‘You going in to see him? I’d come along but I have to get this finished today.’

‘That’s too bad, I’m sure he’d like to see you.’ Berlin was actually glad he would be on his own. He wanted to get to the bottom of Bob’s comment about the licence plate, mumbled in pain through a fractured jaw.

Rebecca was looking at him over the top of her typewriter carriage. He knew that look. ‘What’s going on, Charlie?’

‘What do you mean?’