Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(9)
In ‘52 they were looking for an officer to go up to Sydney and work with the New South Wales drug squad for several months, in preparation for the establishment of a Victoria Police drug bureau. Berlin’s name came up, mostly because he wouldn’t be missed, but he begged off, citing his young family. In reality Berlin knew almost every dealer in Melbourne from his postwar Benzedrine benders and he wanted to steer well clear of temptation or any too-familiar faces.
For this slight Berlin was further ostracised by his superiors and given all the lousy jobs, the loner’s jobs. Mostly this meant the dregs of the missing persons cases. There was no dedicated missing persons squad and the work was doled out amongst the detectives according to a strict hierarchy. Anything with a high public profile and a good chance of a successful outcome, or with a possible need to cover up a scandal and thus score political points, went to the higher-ups. The middle ranks scrambled for anything involving actresses, models or glamour girls, and the rest, the cases no one wanted, went to Berlin.
He got the confused elderly who wandered out through unlocked gates, or the battered wives, or the odd henpecked husband who got up one morning and simply walked away. Sometimes this walking away was real and sometimes not. Sometimes it was just a short trip to a shallow grave in nearby bushland, to be stumbled over months later by a dog walker or an amorous couple looking for a few minutes of privacy.
Missing kids were the worst. Some were found quickly, some not. Berlin’s face told distraught parents he knew about loss and despair and they warmed to him instantly, told him stories of the missing tyke that broke his heart even further. Sometimes there was good news and sometimes no news, not ever. And sometimes Berlin would come back with handcuff’s to take away a nervous father, or a suspiciously over-concerned neighbour, to the justice that was the hangman’s noose or, even worse, the living hell that was the life of a convicted child abuser – a rock spider – inside the three-foot-thick bluestone walls of Pentridge prison.
Rebecca called softly to him through the screen door. He pinched out his half-smoked cigarette and slipped what remained back into the pack. It was part parsimony and partly an ingrained habit from the POW camp. He gave the dog a friendly goodnight scratch behind the ear but was ignored, as there was still food on the plate.
The crumble was warming in the oven and the empty dinner plates were neatly stacked next to the sink. Rebecca filled the kettle and Berlin heard the rasping sound of the flint in the gas gun as she lit the stove.
‘We’ve got vanilla ice cream to go with dessert.’
That, combined with putting the kids to bed early, confirmed there was something she wanted to talk about. ‘Apple crumble and vanilla ice cream? It must be one hell of a big favour you’re after.’
Rebecca put the back of her hand to her forehead and feigned resignation. ‘Righteo, Detective Sergeant Berlin, you’ve got me. Oh, why oh why did I ever think I could get something past you and your razor-sharp detective’s brain?’
‘Crumble, vanilla ice cream and buttering me up, Rebecca? Now I’m starting to get worried.’
She balled up a tea towel and tossed it at him, grinning. ‘Okay, Charlie-boy, I know you’ve got this unexpected week off and you deserve it, that’s for sure, and you’ve got a lot of things you have to do, but I was wondering if you might be able to have a quick word with Beryl Moffit for me? I was going to ask you to do it on Saturday morning, but since you’ve got tomorrow free maybe you could do it first thing, get it off your plate.’
‘Her husband’s funeral was today, wasn’t it? How did it go?’
Rebecca took a block of ice cream wrapped in blue waxed cardboard out of the Kelvinator and set it down on the laminex bench top. ‘Not too well. She was pretty upset.’
‘That’s no real surprise, she was burying her husband.’
Rebecca nodded as she tore open one end of the packet. ‘Well, most of him, anyway,’ she said.
SEVEN
The Studebaker started easily despite the chill and a lingering morning frost, and behaved itself on the run in to Moonee Ponds. Berlin parked on Kellaway Avenue and crossed the roadway to Queens Park. On his right a pair of huge, muzzle-loading cannons that had once protected the state’s coast from Russian invasion now sat quietly in their wooden carriages, reduced to silently menacing oncoming W-class trams clanking down Pascoe Vale Road.
Inside the park, gravel on the winding pathway crunched under his feet and somewhere he could hear ducks. He stepped off the path and onto the grassy verge. He disliked gravel paths. The crunch reminded him of marching men and he worried about abrasions and nicks to the leather of his recently resoled shoes. Berlin did his own shoe repairs now, his and the kids. Saving money was, as always, a motivator but he enjoyed working with leather, gluing, tacking, trimming and dyeing the new edges black with raven oil before polishing them with Nugget.
It was a nice morning, crisp and still. The frost had burned off and the grass was springy underfoot, lush and green. Come summer and the harsh sun would burn and blister it back to brown within weeks, despite the best efforts of the park’s gardeners.
He passed swings where children were playing and laughing, the sweet sap smell of fresh pine bark mulch tickling his nose. There was a war memorial he tried not to look at and then a small lake. Ducks paddled and squawked, flapping their wings while black swans cruised majestically and silently past. On a small island in the centre of the lake, bending willows trailed their leaves along the water’s surface.