St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(11)
He looked down at his bare belly, feeling the familiar heat and something else, something new.
‘Look at me now, Mavis, look at me. It’s not so little now, is it, Mavis?’
FOUR
After the South Melbourne tram incident and the run-in with the tradesman and his panel van they made it to Brighton without any more drama, which was just fine by Berlin. Roberts still drove over the speed limit, slowing down only for pretty girls in miniskirts; thankfully there were plenty of those about. At the Derby Day race meeting two years earlier, visiting British model Jean Shrimpton had worn a skirt four inches above the knee, outraging the newspapers and the cream of Melbourne society. Their outrage was compounded since she also hadn’t bothered with a hat, stockings or gloves. Now, just two years on, Shrimpton’s outfit seemed almost demure. Berlin had watched as his daughter’s hemlines crept higher and higher, inspired by fashion magazine images from what everyone called Swinging London and aided by her mother at the family’s Singer sewing machine.
Rebecca was dressing for the times now as well. With her slim figure and those long legs, she could have pulled off the miniskirt look but chose not to. Sometimes she wore blue denim jeans and he wondered if she did it to tease him, knowing his feelings about trousers on women. She also favoured a young designer named Prue Acton. Whenever Berlin needed to replace a suit Rebecca gently guided him towards something slightly more hip but he hated narrow lapels and thin ties. He stuck with his classic overcoat and an Akubra fedora in grey felt, and thought the narrow-brimmed trilby-style hats popular with the younger detectives made them look like cockney spivs.
Roberts swung the sports car off Beach Road and down Honeysuckle Drive, heading towards the dark blue waters of Port Phillip Bay at the far end of the street. In the distance Berlin could see a police divisional van with its blue roof light and hood-mounted siren. The van was parked on the left side of the road, half up on the nature strip, with a uniformed officer leaning against the driver’s side front mudguard.
‘Pull over here for a second, would you, Bob? Behind that Volvo is good.’
Roberts swung the sports car into the kerb, pulled the handbrake on and cut the engine. He leaned down towards Berlin’s side of the car, reaching for the folders. Berlin took his arm at the wrist and shook his head.
‘Let’s just leave them where they are for the moment, shall we?’
Roberts sat back in his seat. ‘I thought maybe you wanted me to give you some background, tell you where we are at the moment, fill in some of the detail. I’ve got copies of the statements from the girl’s old man, the housekeeper and the driver.’
‘I’d rather hear what they have to say first, if you don’t mind, and afterwards we can crosscheck against what you’ve got.’
‘Sounds fair enough, I suppose. Why did we stop then?’
Honeysuckle Drive was quiet, still, the nature strips neat, freshly-mown. Was Sunday grass-cutting day out this way too? If you had money to live in an area like this did you push your own Victa mower? Every house had a high wall or a thick, tall hedge to shield it from view, keep it private, keep its secrets. Berlin was sick of secrets.
‘Anything else you need to tell me, Bob, anything I might want to know before we get much further into this? Anything I should be worried about, maybe?’
‘Like what?’
Berlin ran through the list in his head. There were always so many rumours, so many stories, so much gossip. Cops could be like a bunch of old women that way. There were the tales about Bob Roberts and his young girlfriends, of course, tales that were accepted as just the way things went, even admired and envied. There were other stories as well, starting six months or so back and less admirable. Stories concerning envelopes collected and bad company, both in and out of the force, and favours done and people who should know better sometimes looking the other way.
‘Like exactly who’s behind this investigation. Our little sideshow, I mean, you and me, not Tony Selden’s investigation. I guess what I’m asking myself is, exactly what am I doing here?’
‘C’mon, Charlie, we both know you’re a bloody sight better at this kind of thing than most of the blokes who are actually doing it right now. But like I said you don’t have any friends because you don’t play the game so you always get yourself pushed out of the way.’
Berlin nodded, acknowledging the truth in the statement,
‘Someone f*cked up, and big. Having a series of young girls go missing and no one noticing or seeing a pattern, apart from you. And then no bugger really giving a damn until this Scheiner kid disappears and the premier gets involved. But the way the system works is that one man’s f*ck-up is another man’s golden opportunity.’
Jesus Christ, were there really people who thought like that, who saw stolen children, missing kids as a pathway to promotion, to a higher rank? Berlin knew the answer to that even before he had the thought.
‘So what’s the golden opportunity here?’
‘Look, it’s no secret there are changes coming, and probably right at the top. There’ll be a state election sometime early next year so everyone is trying to set themselves up to look good. Toss in this inquiry into possible corruption and it makes for interesting times. Did you know that’s apparently a Chinese curse? “May you live in interesting times.”’