Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(46)
The engine in the Dennis started with a healthy rumble and Derrick yelled down to him over the noise. ‘You got a nice-looking family there, Charlie. Take my advice and get yourself a bigger dog.’
Berlin watched the fire engine till it turned right at the end of the street and then he walked up his driveway. Alone in the backyard he shook his head at the mess. What a bastard. He walked across the yard and round behind the chook shed. In the bright moonlight he could see the scuff marks on the fence palings where the big bloke had scrambled over. Was that the way he’d come in too? If the rotten prick had had a car waiting out on the main road he was long gone now. And there was something else. In the dirt at the base of the fence he could just make out a boot print, a criss-cross, non-slip pattern. Berlin could feel Pip shaking again, and then he realised it wasn’t the dog, it was him.
Rebecca scrambled some eggs to go with the thick pork sausages for their early breakfast. She and Berlin chatted with Peter and Sarah over the meal, bringing up the dangers of playing with matches, but playing down the fire itself. Pip was given a sausage as his reward. The pup seemed to enjoy it, even though it had been forgotten, and left to char almost black under the grill. ‘Could easily have been you, Pip,’ Berlin said as the dog took the burnt sausage from his hand.
While Rebecca was getting breakfast organised Berlin had stood under a hot shower trying to get the chill out of his bones. After the shower he’d wiped the steam from the bathroom mirror and looked into his own eyes. He was angry, that was easy enough to see, but he was also afraid, afraid for the people he loved more than anything. And he had wondered whether getting himself a bigger dog would be enough.
THIRTY
Berlin opened the screen door at the back of the little fibro cottage and let himself in.
Fred Monkford was sitting at his kitchen table, the pink pages of The Sporting Globe spread open in front of him. He looked up at Berlin over the top of a pair of very thick reading glasses.
‘G’day Charlie, it’s been a while. You bring the kids?’
‘Wednesday’s a school day, Fred, remember?’
Monkford nodded his head. That’s right. Jesus, Wednesday already. Bloke tends to forget when he doesn’t have to go to work.’ He was wearing a faded flannelette pyjama top over a pair of badly stained khaki work trousers. It looked to have been three days at least since he’d shaved, and a hell of a lot longer since he’d been to a barber. Wisps of silver-grey hair surrounded his ears.
Berlin glanced around the kitchen. There was a half-full beer glass on the table, next to an overflowing ashtray. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes and an unwrapped packet of fish and chips sat on top of the gas stove.
What had Fred’s breakfast been? he wondered. Beer and fags and yesterday’s chips, probably. Berlin had been there himself, once or twice, in the days before Rebecca.
‘Took a squiz at the garden on my way in,’ he said. ‘Roses are looking good already. This kitchen’s a bit of a brothel though, mate – Julia abandoned you again?’
Fred reached for a packet of Drum and his Tally Ho cigarette papers. ‘Jesus, I tell you Charlie, a man spends his whole bloody career listening to that woman complain he’s never home, and a week after I retire she tells me she’s sick to death of the sight of me. Off to Perth again, looking after Esme’s new bub.’
Esme was the Monkford’s daughter, their only child. She was a plain, quiet girl, born when both Fred and Julia were in their forties. She’d seemed destined for spinsterhood until a trip over west had turned up a suitor.
‘You’re a granddad again? What’s that, six or seven?’
Fred was working the tobacco in the palm of his hand. ‘Six now. Bad enough the girl marries a bloody mick and a man gets a numb bum sitting through that bloody nuptial mass service in Latin, but now she’s pumping out little soldiers for the bloody Pope like there’s no tomorrow. You walk over?’ Berlin nodded. ‘Needed the exercise.’ What he’d really needed was to clear his head, and get the last of the adrenaline out of his system.
‘You want a cup of tea?’
Berlin glanced across at the half-full milk bottle on the sink. Flies were crawling over the torn foil on the top. He shook his head.
‘Not really a social visit, Fred. I need the gun.’
Monkford looked up at him over his reading glasses. ‘Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. What have I told you about coppers and guns? Your old grandad would be turning in his grave.’
Fred Monkford had been one of the recruits Berlin’s grandfather trained way back before the war. When Berlin rejoined the force after the war Monkford was one of the few who welcomed him back aboard. And after the Wodonga incident he had stuck by him, and had paid the price.
Berlin remembered the first time he’d introduced Rebecca to Monkford. He knew Monkford didn’t like Jews. Not as much as he didn’t like Catholics or Abos or Chinks or dagos or all the other mongrels who’d flooded the country after the war, as he was happy to tell anyone who would listen. But he liked Rebecca, and when Berlin had found out she was in the family way and did the right thing, Fred Monkford and his good lady wife Julia had come to the Registry Office to stand up for them.
At least it wasn’t in a synagogue, because there was no way Fred Monkford would be caught dead in a synagogue. He’d been in a mick church once in his life, he told Berlin, for his only daughter’s wedding, and that was as far from his lapsed Anglicanism as he was willing to stray. He’d met Rebecca’s parents at the wedding and they seemed nice enough for Jews, and German Jews at that, as he had conceded to Bob Roberts at the pub a few weeks after the wedding.