Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(48)
‘You do that, Fred. And if you’ve got a tin of camp pie or braised steak and onions in the cupboard you should fix yourself a decent lunch.’
Monkford just grunted and put his nose back into the pages of the Sporting Globe.
Berlin closed the wire gate at the side of the house quietly behind him and made his way down the side passage and out onto the street, where the men were waiting for him.
‘Hello Charlie, old sport, a little dickybird tells me you’re a bit of a communist.’
THIRTY-ONE
They were standing on the nature strip outside Fred’s house, next to a dark grey Vauxhall Cresta. From the size of the aerial Berlin knew there’d be a two-way radio mounted under the dashboard. The man who’d spoken was leaning back on the vehicle, looking at Berlin over the top of a copy of The Truth.
‘You didn’t read it in that rag, I hope,’ Berlin said. The Truth was a weekly tabloid that very rarely lived up to its name. ‘Do I know you blokes?’
He put them both at just shy of six feet. Maybe thirty or so and fit-looking. One in a brown suit, the other in grey. Ties and waistcoats. Could have been a couple of commercial travellers, except the shoes on the one in the grey suit, the one with the newspaper, said copper. The man in brown was wearing heavy boots that badly needed a polish.
Grey suit straightened up, folded the newspaper and tossed it into the car through the open passenger-side window. He took a packet of State Express Three Threes from his pocket and lit one up with a silver lighter. That used to be my brand, Berlin recalled. Why had he changed to Luckies? Money, probably. He wet his lips with his tongue, remembering the taste.
After inhaling deeply the stranger blew a near perfect smoke ring. Berlin watched the shimmering circle of blue smoke as it hung in the crisp, still, mid-morning air before floating away into nothing.
‘So what makes you think I’m a communist?’ he asked.
Grey suit took another drag on his cigarette. ‘Like I said, Charlie, a little dickybird whispered in my ear. We don’t like communists much,’ he added.
‘We?’
‘Me and Barry, my offsider here. And the government.’ The man worked his tongue around his lips, found a loose shred of tobacco with the tip and spat into the gutter. ‘Being found out as a communist might have a bit of a chilling effect on a man’s career, especially a copper, Charlie, who by all rights should bloody know better.’
‘I’m not a communist. And in any case, what’s it to you? It’s not against the law to be a communist, last time I checked.’ Berlin kept his tone neutral as he studied the pair. The one in brown, Barry, who hadn’t spoken so far, was bigger, and the bigger threat. He was the serious muscle, and Berlin had run into a lot of muscle over the past week. He took some comfort from the weight of the Browning in his coat pocket, though he was a little concerned about the ten-year-old cartridges it held.
‘It’s our job to keep an eye on suspected deviant personalities, Charlie, like trade unionists and commies and fellow travellers. And foreigners too, if you catch my drift. Persons who might not have the best interests of our nation at heart.’
The man kept saying Berlin’s name in a friendly, familiar way that was a little disconcerting.
‘Then I’m guessing you blokes might be Special Branch?’
The one in grey winked at Berlin. ‘There you go, Barry, I told you he was smarter than he looks.’
The other smiled. ‘He’d bloody want to be, Merv.’
Special Branch were the coppers who kept an eye on people considered to be a security threat. Theirs was a shadowy operation, and they kept very much to themselves. There were branches in every state police force running networks of informers, and, rumour had it, staying in touch with military intelligence and with the even more shadowy, unnamed Commonwealth security departments. Berlin hadn’t had many dealings with Special Branch, and like most coppers he was glad of it.
‘Can I see some identification?’
The one called Barry smiled again. Berlin didn’t much care for the smile.
Merv, in the grey suit, shook his head sadly. ‘I’d say that’s a very communistic attitude you have there, Charlie, and not a very trusting one.’
‘I’d still like to see some identification.’
Barry reached his hand into his jacket pocket and when it came out he was holding a pair of black leather gloves. He’d stopped smiling.
Merv put his hand out in front of the other man. ‘Let me just explain how this works, Charlie, before Barry gets all overexcited. That same little birdie also told us you’re on holidays, which is nice. Now, all we’re saying is you should go back to doing all sorts of fun holiday stuff with your kids and steer well clear of people you shouldn’t be talking to. You do that and everything is jake. But you go round asking us for identification and then it gets to be a bit of a problem.’
‘What sort of problem?’
‘Well, you see, Barry here is the one who provides the identification. He kicks the living shit out of smart pricks like you, and then you go running to your boss and tell him and he says he’ll look into it. After a day or two your boss comes back and asks why you’ve been annoying the nice blokes in Special Branch instead of taking your kids to the circus and the missus to the pictures like you’re supposed to be doing. You seem like a reasonable cove, Charlie, so I hope you can see it from our point of view.’