Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(68)

‘It’s been fired, Charlie. Recently.’

‘What has?’

Rebecca was holding a pistol in her right hand. The Browning. So that part hadn’t been a dream.

‘I found it when I went to sponge the sick off your overcoat.’ She tossed the weapon onto the bed at his feet. ‘You can smell that it’s been fired recently, and there were two empty shell casings in the same pocket. You want to talk about it, Charlie? Tell me what’s going on.’

Berlin knew it wasn’t a request. Her tone was cold. But right now she was probably the only friend he had in the world.

‘Let me have a shower first, I stink.’

‘That’s something of an understatement. You want a cup of tea? Anything to eat?’

‘Tea, please, black. I’m not sure I could keep anything else down.’

There were Bex headache powders in a packet in the bathroom cabinet and he swallowed four. He bent down to drink water from the tap and had to hold on tightly to the sides of the washbasin till the room stopped spinning. When he closed the cabinet door the face in the mirror shocked him. He looked as bad as he felt, or maybe even worse. His skin was pale and there were dark circles under his eyes. And as much as he needed a shave, even a safety razor near his throat would be a worry given the nervous twitching of his hands. He stood under the shower until the hot water ran out and the shaking had mostly stopped.

When he went back in to the bedroom the bed had been stripped and remade, the old sheets bundled into the laundry hamper in the corner. The window was open to air out the room and the bucket was gone from beside the bed. Berlin dressed slowly and then walked into the kitchen, where his tea was already poured. There were a couple of slices of thick-cut, unbuttered toasted bread on a plate beside his cup. He sat down and put four spoons of sugar into his cup.

Rebecca stood by the sink, watching him as he stirred in the sugar and then gingerly sipped the hot tea.

‘Just how bad is all this, Charlie?’

Lying to her was useless; she saw through him every time.

‘It’s bad, but you have to believe me when I tell you I had nothing to do with those killings.’

‘Of course I believe you, but I needed to hear you say it. I know you try to hide it, but it worries me that you’ve got so much hurt and anger deep down inside that one day it’s going to explode.’ Berlin felt sick again. He couldn’t face her and he put his head in his hands.

‘It’s all mixed up with the people you think you killed, Charlie. The people on the ground and the people you think you failed to protect, your crew, and that girl in Poland. I understand that.’

She reached over and squeezed his shoulder and he loved her for it.

‘Can you bring me the typewriter, Rebecca? I want to get something down on paper. And I need to make a couple of copies of it – do we have any carbon paper?’

‘I’ll go and get it.’

‘She’s right there, Charlie. About what ails you. You married well, she’s a good lass.’

Berlin looked around at the sound of the voice, the Glasgow accent he hadn’t heard for a dozen years now. Jock, the mid-upper gunner, was standing by the sink smiling at him. He hadn’t aged a bit. None of them had. The kitchen was crowded now with young men in bulky flying suits and sheepskin-lined boots. Mick, the radio operator, and Harry, the cocky bomb-aimer, and Gary, the Canadian navigator and the baby of the crew. Wilf, the flight engineer, was leaning on the stove, his stinking pipe unlit, for which Berlin was grateful. Lou the rear gunner, had his back to them as usual, watching the sky, watching for the flickering guns of enemy fighters from Berlin’s suburban Melbourne kitchen window.

The six men suddenly moved as one, as if hearing something. ‘Crew bus is here,’ Wilf said. ‘Time to go, lads.’

They filed by Berlin and out through the back door, smiling and nodding and winking as they went. Jock was the last to leave and he paused by the table.

‘You’ve a nice family, Skipper, it’s a good life you’ve made. Take care of the lady and the wee’uns, you hear me. They’re your crew now, eh.’

When Rebecca came back with the typewriter Berlin had his head cocked as if listening for something. He was smiling too, the happy smile she usually only saw when he was playing with the children, or sleeping after love. She listened, but all she could hear was the ticking of the electric dock on the wall above the stove.

What she was missing was the sound of a big Dodge bus rolling out across an airfield in the English twilight, and the good-humoured laughter of the crew of the Berlin Express as a red-faced Gwen crashed noisily through the gears, hunting for second.





FORTY-TWO


Rebecca set up the typewriter on the kitchen table for him. Berlin used a Remington at the office to do his reports and he was a reasonable typist. But that was when he wasn’t massively hung-over.

She had to help him with the paper, a sheet of foolscap bond, a second sheet under the carbon paper, then more carbon paper and another piece of bond. He didn’t want to use onionskin paper for his carbon copies.

He hit the keys hard, to make sure of getting a good impression on the third copy. He also hit them hard because he was angry. He ignored the misspellings, and the gaps that occurred when his hands, still shaking at times, slipped off the keys, and Rebecca could only stand it for a couple of paragraphs.