Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(60)
And Berlin sensed there were even darker things lurking in this pit he’d found himself in, waiting patiently for him to find them.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Truth and trust were two words that always made Berlin wary. From the age of five, when his grandmother had wept in her bedroom while his grandad told him his parents had gone away on a long holiday, he had learned to look behind the words. Nothing was true, no one could be trusted, that was his world. Maybe that was what had made him a halfway decent copper but if so it had come at a cost. Rebecca had changed his inability to trust a lot over the past ten years, but it was a change that held true only within the confines of her love and his little suburban home. He certainly didn’t trust Dr Jessop or what he had told him.
Berlin knew he needed more information. Up-to-date information. A 1935 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica wasn’t going to cut it. He decided to bypass his house and drive on in to the city. He reached King Street, took a left into Latrobe at the still winter-green Flagstaff Gardens, and headed up the slight incline towards Swanston Street. There would be plenty of parking outside the library.
The right turn into Swanston was one of those unique-to-Melbourne, turn-right-from-the-left-lane manoeuvres that so bewildered country visitors and out-of-state drivers. This arrangement was peculiar to inner-city intersections and was necessary to keep the packed trams moving efficiently in peak hours. Berlin sat patiently in the left lane as cars and trucks went straight ahead and the green-liveried trams clattered past.
As he waited for the lights to change he studied the library building across from him. It was impressive, with its colonnaded front set back from the road behind a broad, stepped pathway, and green lawns that were a popular spot for city workers and students to eat lunch in good weather. It was a solid building, and very Melbourne.
A horn blast from behind told him the lights had changed. He turned the wheel hard and drove across the intersection, now leading the traffic down Swanston Street. He was wrong about there being plenty of parking right outside the library but he spotted a space on the other side of the road and did a U-turn, sliding the Studebaker smoothly into the kerb outside a fish and chip shop.
Inside the library he stopped a harried-looking librarian carry an armful of books. ‘How would I go about finding out all there is to know on strontium-90?’
The woman looked at him and her face turned scarlet. ‘I’m busy, look it up in the card files. Over that way.’
‘Sorry, but I don’t have the time. I’m a police officer and I’m in a hurry.’
The woman took a deep breath. ‘Go to the desk over there. See Vera.’
Vera, an attractive redhead in her mid-twenties, wasn’t quite what he’d expected to encounter. She looked up from the desk as he approached and he saw a bright smile and a scattering of freckles over her nose.
‘The woman over there said you might be able to help me with some information.’
She smiled. ‘The woman over there is named Joyce and she is the perfect cliché of a repressed librarian. Did she blush when you spoke to her?’
Berlin nodded.
‘I’d make you as a Detective Sergeant.’
Berlin grinned. ‘Good guess.’
‘I like detective stories. Hammet, Cain, Chandler, you know.’
‘And they taught you how to spot a copper at ten paces? I’m very impressed.’
‘Don’t be. My dad is a sergeant up at Russell Street. I meet him after work and we take the tram home together. I usually have to wait for a bit and believe me, it doesn’t take a lot of practice to learn to spot a D.’
‘The sartorial splendour?’
‘And the shoes, though yours are better than most.’
She looked him up and down for a moment. ‘And from the way your overcoat pulls down on the right I’d say there’s probably more in the pocket than a packet of peanuts. Seems like you might be packing a Roscoe, a gat, a heater.’
‘That’s very observant. Maybe you should join up.’
She snorted. ‘Yeah, like that’s going to happen. Not this little black duck, believe you me. So what do you need, DS … ?’
‘It’s Berlin, Charlie. Everything you can get me on strontium-90. It’s a radioactive isotope. Also whatever you might have on a pommy doctor or scientist named Roland Jessop. And I’m in a bit of a hurry.’
Vera pushed a piece of paper across the desk and handed him a pencil. ‘Write the names down, try to make sure the spelling is correct.’
When Berlin handed the paper back she pointed to a desk in the reading room and told him to wait. He sat in a heavy wooden swivel chair at one of the leather-topped reading desks, with their deep-green glass lampshades, and studied the massive dome overhead.
It took half an hour and by then he was getting hungry. He was thinking about popping across the road to get a Chiko Roll when Vera came back with several large books and a pile of magazines. She put them down on the desk in front of him.
‘Here you go, Charlie. Whos Who has a listing for a Jessop and these books are all about nuclear fission. Pretty heavy going, most of it.’ She pulled a magazine with a blue cover from the pile. ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is probably a bit of an easier read for the layman. This issue is from September 1955 and it seems to be what you might want. Come back to the desk if you need something else.’ She winked at him. ‘And no gunplay, if you don’t mind, Detective Sergeant Berlin. Don’t make me have to come over here and shoosh you.’