Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(80)
Berlin walked slowly back to his car. His knuckles were aching. He realised there was very little satisfaction to be had from what he’d done to Stansfield, or from what had just happened in Jessop’s office. Both men were simply cogs in a machine that would always keep turning. Although in Jessop’s case he was a cog now missing a tooth or two.
It was getting colder now, his breath making icy clouds in front of his face. Was there blood on his shirt? He’d check when he got home, and leave it to soak in cold water in the laundry tub if necessary. What did it say about a bloke that he knew the best way to remove bloodstains from his clobber? he wondered. His granddad had taught him about bloodstains. And it was his granddad who had drummed into him how the small things were vital to finding out the truth.
A small thing, a windsock, a scrap of cloth fluttering in the breeze on a secret airfield out the back of beyond, had brought him here, but what else had it brought? What else was on that breeze? Tiny particles of death? He understood the strontium-90 was long gone from the air but he also knew it was now in the soil and the grass, and in the milk from the cows which ate the grass and in the bones of those who drank that milk. His kids got milk at school every day at playtime, part of a government program to build healthier children. Their teachers watched them drink it all down, making sure they got every drop of goodness. The milkman left the crates outside, and in summer Sarah, who was the milk monitor for her class, always complained that the milk was yucky, warm.
He could just make out the Studebaker in the shadows ahead. His thoughts shifted to Bob Roberts. The lad was in a dark, dark place and it might take him a while to find his way back. Would he ever talk to Berlin again? Roberts had still been a boy when Berlin first knew him, not quite nineteen, but he had aged quickly after seeing the girl in the Wodonga alley with her head cut off. That was the time when Rebecca was new to him too. Her story about that murder got her a front-page by-line in the old Argus, and afterwards they had made Peter in a desperate coupling to ease the awfulness of what they’d both been witness to. How long was it since he had been young? Berlin wondered. Since any of them had?
Condensation was beading on the roof of the Studebaker. Berlin could feel the cold in the pressed-metal shell. Thank God the car had a good heater at least, leave it to the Yanks. He pulled his overcoat from the back seat and put it on, searching through the pockets for his gloves. Why hadn’t he remembered to bring them? He found something deep in the bottom of the right-hand pocket, something small that made him smile: one of Sarah’s caramels that had escaped from her bag of lollies.
He thought about that day on the train when she’d sung a song about the woman with the numbers tattooed on her forearm. How could he tell his daughter that the bad men had come back, just as they always did, and always would? How could he tell her there was bugger all her daddy could do about it?
He started the engine and gave the heater a couple of minutes to begin working. On the drive back home he would stop in the middle of the bluestone bridge over the creek. Jessop’s Enfield would end its days rusting away in the muddy bottom, the pistol and individual cartridges dropped far apart in the icy water. And then he’d head for home. To Rebecca and the kids and the dog and his fruit trees and veggie patch, the chook shed and the half-finished, half-burnt darkroom.
She’d have the porch light on for him, like she always did. He’d have to buy a shade for that light one day, it was just a bare bulb. But it was a beacon, a signal of safety, like landing lights lining a runway in the predawn darkness. He put the car in gear and turned the wheel hard, setting a course towards a solitary splash of welcoming yellow light spilling out across the lawn and onto a darkened suburban street.