St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(101)
Berlin was amazed at the number of instruments, dials and switches on the panel in front of the pilots, more on the roof above them and on the panel on the wall in front of Hughie. He scanned the instruments, looking for an airspeed indicator, and eventually found it. He whistled. ‘Four hundred and eighty knots, that’s impressive.’
He realised Hargraves had been watching him as his eyes darted over the instruments.
‘Did some flying before we became a copper, did we?’ Hargraves asked.
Berlin shook his head. Something in Hargraves’ face told Berlin the man didn’t believe him. Is there a mark, a sign we all carry? he wondered.
Hargraves let it go. ‘I was on Liberators, B-24s, in the Pacific myself. Not a pretty kite, the Liberator, and a bastard to handle but as tough as Old Nick. Libs always got me home so I’ve got a soft spot for them. Kite like this could fly rings around them, of course.’
Somewhere ahead in the darkness the flickering light of an electrical storm illuminated the underside of the clouds.
Over the noise of the Lancaster’s four Rolls Royce Merlin engines Harry’s voice crackled in Berlin’s headphones. Target dead ahead, skipper.’
‘Bit of weather ahead, skipper.’
Hargraves turned back to the aircraft windshield and Berlin saw him casually check his seatbelt harness. ‘Thank you, Damian, I see it. We might think about getting ourselves a little more height. Don’t want things to get too bumpy and frighten the SLF.’
Berlin glanced across at Hughie, who smiled. ‘Self-loading freight, Charlie. Not generally a term we use in front of the passengers.’
Berlin unfastened his seat belt and stood up. ‘Looks like you’ll be busy for a bit so I’ll leave you to it.’
Hargraves spoke without looking back. ‘Okay, Charlie, stop in anytime. We’re not going anywhere, they don’t allow us parachutes. Keep your seatbelt on tight, would you, and check your wife’s too.’
Back in his seat Berlin checked that Rebecca’s seatbelt was fastened and adjusted the blanket again so it covered her shoulders. Through the cockpit doorway he watched as Hargreaves took the 707 upwards so gently that no one onboard, awake or asleep, would have noticed the change in altitude.
Berlin’s trepidation at flying was easing now. He liked the 707, liked the gentle hiss of its engines at cruising altitude and liked that they were barely audible inside the plane. And he was confident in Hargraves, confident at having a man like that at the controls, a man with a pockmarked forehead. Tiny splinters from an exploding windscreen could cause those marks, peppering the forehead in the space between goggles and a flying cap. It was generally considered an injury not worth mentioning; if it was the worst the aircraft suffered and you could keep the blood off your goggles and see through the remains of the shattered windscreen you could still fly. And if you could still fly, there was always a chance you could make it home.
FIFTY-ONE
The grave was on a low hillside with the Sea of Galilee in the distance. A grove of tall eucalyptus trees nearby gave the area a vaguely Australian feel, which Berlin found comforting. The flat stone had Sarah’s name lettered in both English and Hebrew with a Star of David carved underneath. A group of youngsters from the nearby kibbutz, friends of Sarah’s, had gone with them to the grave and when one referred to Sarah as a daughter of Israel Berlin felt first a flash of anger, and then pride. His big-hearted, exuberant daughter had been loved wherever she went.
Rebecca was still in a fog and Berlin didn’t know what to do to help her. It was as if a part of her had simply been turned off, shut down. She ate sparingly and washed and walked and talked, and was suitably polite to those who offered condolences and took her hand and spoke lovingly of a Sarah they had known only briefly. But her spark was gone and he wondered if he was losing her. They were offered a room at the kibbutz for as long as they wanted to stay but after one visit Rebecca had had enough. Berlin saw that there were too many young people, all alive and vital, for her to cope with.
They found a small hotel in the nearby town, a pensione, as the owner insisted on calling it. The village was old, older than Australia if you dated the beginning from 1788 and most definitely older than Melbourne. No one in Melbourne could see ancient groves of olive trees and Roman ruins in the far distance from their bedroom window as Charlie and Rebecca could. There was a small rooftop garden above the hotel and this became Rebecca’s sanctuary. Berlin would wake up to an empty space in the bed beside him and find her there, sitting, waiting for the dawn. He would bring her a breakfast of coffee, fruit and yogurt, but usually this was left mostly uneaten.
To try to fill his loneliness he began to take walks, short at first but later he would pack a rucksack with water and apples and dates and dried apricots and walk for miles. It was becoming colder and an army surplus combat jacket found in a hall cupboard kept him warm. He would walk with no destination in mind, eat when he was hungry and then rest until he was ready to walk again. It was easy to hitch a ride with a passing kibbutz truck or army jeep when he was tired but he avoided this if he could because of the way people drove on roads that were often just tracks.
The time before the telegram and the time after was slowly coming back to him. They had wanted to keep him up to date, because he was an inspector now and because it had been his case. He had listened to be polite but really didn’t care. The Victoria Police could find no records on Tim Egan, not even a birth certificate, and no match for his fingerprints. The same went for every other state. Publication of his photograph in newspapers and on television produced a boarding house proprietor from Carlton who said Egan was a tenant. A search of the upstairs single room produced nothing apart from several changes of clothing and underwear, a battered old brown leather bag and a black 35 mm Nikon F camera with a 50 mm lens and side mounted Metz flashgun. Berlin had nodded when he heard about the lens. Rebecca had been spot on, which hadn’t really surprised him.