Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(74)

Back in the corridor, he saw there was now light under the next door, and he could hear voices. He rested the iron pipe against the wall while he knelt down and tried to peer through the keyhole. It was blocked by a key on the inside but the door handle turned when he tried it. He could hear voices inside the room, but they sounded distant so he decided to risk it. Slowly and carefully he inched the door open, squinting against the bright light inside the room. His eyes adjusted rapidly and he knew immediately what this room was, even at a quick glance.

When he was a young copper it had been common practice to send the new recruits down to the morgue to pick up overnight autopsy reports. The morgue attendants, who were in on the joke, always gave the rookies a quick tour, being sure to include the most gruesome sights on offer. Afterwards they phoned through to the police station to let the older blokes know which recruits had lost their breakfast.

The dissecting table in the middle of the room was made of stone, a yellow marble of some sort. It was illuminated by a large lamp mounted overhead, like something from an operating theatre. Berlin saw that with the centre of the room and the dissecting table so brightly lit the walls were in shadow, and this meant that his face peering through the slightly open door would be hard to spot.

A bloke in a white dustcoat was bent intently over an object on the table, and the sound of his hacksaw on bone covered any noise Berlin might have made. On the other side of the room two men were at a smaller steel table, eating dinner. The newspaper-wrapped parcel open in front of them suggested it was fish and chips.

Berlin recognised Blue. The other bloke was the one who’d been with him at Callahan’s funeral parlour, making the four a.m. pickup yesterday morning. He was also the one who had brought Jessop his coffee and biscuits, and Berlin found it hard to believe it was only two days ago.

Blue leaned over the package, rummaged through the contents and brought a handful of limp chips up to his mouth.

‘If Tiny doesn’t get back in the next five minutes I’m having his bloody pickled onions, that’s for sure.’

‘Hey, c’mon you blokes, leave some chips for me.’ That was the one in the white dustcoat.

Blue tossed a chip in his direction and laughed, just as Berlin’s water pipe club rolled down the wall and clattered off the stone floor.

Bugger! He should have laid it flat but it was too late now.

Blue looked towards the door. ‘About bloody time, Tiny, we was just going to – ’

The man jumped to his feet as Berlin reached around and fumbled for the key in the door. It was a big key, and heavy, and he had to straighten it in the lock before he was able to get it out. Blue was almost at the door when Berlin pulled it shut from out in the corridor. He held the handle firmly against Blue’s frantic efforts to open it from the other side. He finally got the key into the lock and turned it. The locked door shuddered as Blue kicked at it in frustration. The doors and locks in this place were designed to keep madmen in, and Berlin wasn’t worried about it giving way.

He heard a voice through the door. ‘Phone Jessop’s office, you stupid dill!’ It was the bloke in the dustcoat.

Bloody hell. He hadn’t thought of the phone. Berlin aimed his torch over the dank stone wall around the door and saw a thin cable partially hidden under thick layers of ancient enamel paint. He tore at it and the cable came free. He tugged hard and the cable stretched and then broke near the door jamb.

‘It’s gone dead,’ he heard Blue say. ‘What do we do now?’

The door shuddered from another kick. That had to mean there was no other way out, so Berlin figured he had some time. Getting through a heavily reinforced door like that would require bigger tools than the ones used to take a human body apart. He slid the key under the door of a darkened room across the hallway, first making sure the room was locked tight, then set off. His heart was pounding, but the heavy steel pipe in his hand made him feel better.

The sound of yelling and hammering from the locked room behind him faded quickly as he turned right at the end of the corridor. Ahead he saw the sign for the director’s office. He must have come in from the other end of the administration building, which was why nothing had looked familiar. He stopped for a minute outside Jessop’s office and took a deep breath. When he was ready he tightened his grip on the water pipe and slowly turned the door handle.





FORTY-SIX


Berlin closed the door of the outer office, turned the key and dropped it into his suit-coat pocket. Then for good measure he slid the metal bolt across into the doorframe. Jessop was sitting behind the desk in the inner office, writing in a ledger with a gold fountain pen. His white coat was smeared in places with something reddish-brown that Berlin didn’t want to ask about. The doctor looked up and then slowly shook his head from side to side. ‘Detective Sergeant Berlin, this is most unexpected. You are persistent, I’ll have to give you that.’

‘I have a long half-life, Dr Jessop. A little like strontium-90.’

Jessop screwed the cap onto the fountain pen and put it down on his desk. That’s very good, Mr Berlin. Making an apropos joke on that subject is not exactly what I expected of you.’

‘Neither of us is laughing, I notice, Doc. For my part, I find it a little unexpected that one of the UK’s leading experts on nuclear fallout is running a loony bin in the Australian bush. Did you f*ck the wrong person’s wife? Or was it their dog?’