Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(63)
Berlin knew he needed time to work all this through. He reached for the door handle. ‘Thanks for the information, Millikin.’
‘I’m not finished yet, DS Berlin. Don’t you want to know why I’ve been following you, why I’m telling you. this?’
Berlin took his hand off the door. ‘Okay, I’ll bite.’
‘I did some checking with some people I know, and this Smith character and the state Health Department have only a casual connection. And his name’s not Smith, it’s Jessop.’
Berlin sat forward again. ‘Really?’
‘Really. Jessop is actually some high mucky-muck in the British government, something to do with civil defence and atomic weapons.’
‘The people you know seem to be very well informed.’
‘They are. And they decided that if you and Jessop have some difference of opinion happening, then you might be of use to them. They asked me to keep an eye on you.’
‘And they are?’
‘What do you know about the Stop the Bombs Committee, DS Berlin?’
‘Not a lot. One of those groups at Melbourne Uni, isn’t it? Bunch of students and lefties with a bee in their bonnet about all the atomic-weapons testing being done by the Poms.’
‘There are a lot of those groups springing up, same thing in England.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘The government is concerned that they might link up and cause problems. A survey they did a few months back found almost half the population here is against the tests.’
‘And?’
‘Well, the powers that be decided that policewomen might have other uses besides filing and making tea and comforting hysterical mothers, so a few months back they got me to join the Stop the Bombs Committee as a concerned citizen.’
‘You mean infiltrate it?’
She nodded.
‘You get paid overtime to do that?’
‘Gee, your file didn’t say you were such a funny bugger.’
Berlin glanced at his watch. He was still hungry and Millikin was starting to annoy him.
‘Let’s not push the familiarity too far, eh? You want to get to the point, if there is one.’
‘The point is, DS Berlin, that after a few meetings I started to think maybe the anti-bomb people had a point. Why the hell are we letting a bunch of Poms set off atom bombs all over our country?’
‘Because these people are going to protect us from the Russians.’ Berlin knew it was an empty statement and he was surprised to hear it coming out of his mouth. The British had sold his brother down the river in Singapore, they had tried to stop Australian troops returning from the Middle East to defend their homeland after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Berlin himself had wanted to come back and fight but he was stuck in Europe.
‘The New Statesman magazine in Britain is about to publish an article on nuclear disarmament by J. B. Priestley that you should read. We have an advance copy of the text.’
‘I think I’ve done enough reading for this week,’ Berlin said, ‘it makes my head hurt. Okay, so you now work for the other side and if I was a good little copper I’d turn you in, but right now it’s getting late and I’m still cold and hungry, so let’s get to the point.’
‘I told you I wanted to introduce you to someone, remember?’
THIRTY-NINE
They left the car and walked for a couple of streets, finally stopping by a telephone booth. Millikin was carrying a brown paper bag that she now handed to Berlin. He waited outside the booth while she made a call. A gentle squeeze of the bag told him it contained a couple of squat triangular bottles, and the size and shape and weight told him it was Haig’s whisky. He knew that shape and size and heft by heart.
The pennies dropped in the box when the call was answered and she said, ‘I brought him, we’re just across the street.’ Then, ‘Yes, I’ve got it, and your smokes.’ She sounded a touch exasperated. Berlin turned and looked at the block of red-brick flats on the other side of the street. The curtains in an upstairs window moved briefly and Millikin, now standing beside him, waved. They crossed the road and entered the foyer, stepping over an abandoned tricycle and around a parked pram.
The building smelled of cat’s piss and tripe and boiled cabbage and there was angry shouting coming from a flat on the second floor, then someone turned up the radio. The long corridor on the third floor was lined with wilting pot plants and battered rubbish tins. Millikin stopped by number 11 and rang the bell. When the door opened, Berlin was hit by a stale mist of cigarette smoke and sweat and the smell of a place kept locked up tight for too long.
The man at the door grabbed the bag from Millikin. ‘Thank you, my lovely lady, thank you.’ He seemed happier about the bag than seeing the woman. He glanced at Berlin and then back at Millikin. ‘So this is the chap, eh? Do come in, dear fellow.’
The accent was English, upper class like Jessop’s, and he spoke quickly. Berlin heard the two whisky bottles rattling against each other inside the paper bag. The clipped way of talking and his shaking hands told Berlin he was a man badly in need of a drink.
They followed him inside. Millikin locked the door but not before sticking her head out into the corridor and looking right and left. The flat was small, just a bedsit with bare floorboards that might have been lacquered once, but that was in the long distant past. Paint was peeling from the kalsomined ceiling, hanging down in strips illuminated by a bare, flyspecked light bulb suspended from the centre cornice. There was a shabby couch, two mismatched armchairs and a coffee table with several overflowing ashtrays. Through open doors Berlin could see a small grubby kitchen and a smaller bathroom. He knew the double glass doors on the wall would open to reveal a pull-down, steel-framed bed with a wire base and a thin mattress. Going by the state of the rest of the place, Berlin didn’t want to even think about the condition of the mattress.