Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(53)

Sarah took his hand. A minute passed before she asked loudly, ‘Why does she have a number on her arm?’

The woman looked across the narrow aisle into Berlin’s face. He picked Sarah up and put her on his knee. ‘Once upon a time,’ he said, ‘some very bad men came along and they took,the people they didn’t like and put them into camps.’

‘And their children too?’ Berlin nodded.

‘Was it a holiday? Like when we went to Rosebud last Christmas and stayed in that caravan?’

Rebecca had taken a picture of the kids and their dad splashing in the shallows in front of their rented caravan, one of many parked amongst the stunted and gnarled tea-tree that blanketed the foreshore. It was a week of fun and sun and night-time Christmas carnivals and fairy floss and something a million miles away from what she was asking about.

‘No, it wasn’t anything like that, Sarah,’ he said softly. ‘It was a bad place, a very bad place. And they put numbers on the people’s arms so they knew who they were and so they could never get away.’

‘That was in Europe, wasn’t it?’

Berlin stared at his daughter. ‘Yes it was. How do you know that?’

‘Mummy told me. She said you went to Europe to stop some bad men. There was a war and you were in an aeroplane. That’s why you get sad sometimes. Can we go in an aeroplane one day?’

‘Perhaps. We’ll see.’

Sarah was looking out the window at the passing scenery.

‘Am I sad a lot?’ Berlin asked after a long pause.

She patted his hand. ‘Not very often. Mummy says we just have to understand and be patient. But not patient like in a hospital, that’s a different word but it sounds the same. Peter’s not good at being patient but he’s a boy.’

Peter’s not a good patient, either, Berlin said to himself.

‘Does it frighten you when I’m sad?’

She laughed. ‘No, you silly-billy, we just have to be quiet and gentle until you get happy again.’

There was a long whistle and the train slowed, steel wheels squealing against the brakes. It shuddered to a stop with a voice on the platform shouting, ‘North Melbourne Station, North Melbourne.’

When the woman stood up, Sarah tugged at her hem. She looked down into the little girl’s face.

‘You don’t have to worry any more,’ Sarah said. ‘My daddy is a policeman and if the bad men come back you just tell us and he’ll arrest them and put them in jail.’

The woman reached down and gently cupped Sarah’s cheek in her hand for a moment. Then her eyes met Berlin’s. The pain and sadness and loss in her eyes took him back to a snow-covered roadway in Poland for a moment and he shivered. He looked away and felt ashamed for doing it. When he looked back a moment later the woman was gone, and for one brief, brief moment he though he caught a whiff of gunpowder. When the train whistle blew Charlie Berlin hugged his daughter tight and held her all the way into the city.





THIRTY-FOUR


Across the street from the alley an upstairs light went out. All the windows in the funeral parlour were now dark. Berlin opened the glove compartment and a light came on inside. Bugger, he’d forgotten about that. He grabbed the torch and the screwdriver quickly, resisting the temptation to slam the glove box shut. A loud noise would draw more attention than a brief flicker of light in a parked car in a dark alleyway. It was lucky he wouldn’t need to worry about that damned interior light coming on.

He reached across and took the key from the ignition and got our of the car, closing the passenger side door gently behind him. It was cold and his breath formed a cloud in front of his face. The torch and the screwdriver went into his right overcoat pocket. His gloved hand confirmed the pistol was still there in the left pocket.

There was no sign of traffic in either direction when he crossed the road, and no sign of Lazlo or anyone else curled up in the parked hearse. The cheap lock on the side door of the funeral parlour would have been almost too easy to force if it hadn’t been left unlocked. Berlin put the screwdriver back in his coat pocket and took our the torch. It needed a couple of gentle slaps into the palm of his left hand before the light came on, and even then the glow was feeble. Peter must have been playing with the damn thing again.

The thick carpet down the hallway muffled his footsteps. Callahan’s office door was closed and there was no sign of a light. The door squeaked as Berlin opened it and he stopped, listening to see if anyone stirred upstairs. When there was no sign of movement he went into the office, carefully closing the door behind him. He crossed the room and drew the curtains before switching on the desk lamp. The room was just as he remembered from his earlier visit and he tried to work out where to start.

There was a single filing cabinet, polished mahogany and four drawers high against one wall. Callahan’s desk, also polished wood, had four drawers on each side. Berlin sat in the undertaker’s chair and started on the left. The first three drawers held nothing of interest, the fourth had a pile of blank stationery placed on top of a magazine. It was in German, with well-printed colour photographs, and was the sort of thing that would have the Vice Squad all in a lather. It probably explained why Callahan lived alone upstairs.

The top drawer on the other side contained a single document, three foolscap pages held together at the top left corner by a paperclip. It was the top right corner that got Berlin’s attention. In blue ink and written with a somewhat shaky hand was the number 90 and a question mark. He slid the document under the lamp. It was a carbon copy of a form filled out by the undertaker, listing the family details and history of someone recently deceased. Apart from the query in the top corner there was nothing remarkable about it.