St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(16)
‘You’re being bloody wasted in the fraud squad, that’s what I told them.’
Berlin walked across to sliding glass doors opening out onto a small, cast iron Juliet balcony. The balcony might have been small but the backyard it overlooked was quite expansive, and in this neighbourhood that much land wouldn’t have come cheap. It looked like the block extended right through to the next street, with the same seven-foot stone wall on every side.
At the far end of the property there was a tennis court and, closer to the house, a swimming pool. Berlin could see a small structure that probably housed the pumping equipment for the pool and also seemed to be a changing area of some sort. Right outside the back of the house there was a paved terrace. The terrace looked like it could handle a party for fifty people without things getting too crowded and there was a large brick barbecue with a space for storing firewood underneath it. The sound of the wood chopping was coming from an area just to the right of the barbecue. A tall man with his back to the house was swinging the axe. Berlin watched as he picked up a sawn log and placed it upright on a thick stump.
The man was wearing overalls and a light jacket, holding the axe in leather-gloved hands. He had a good stance, feet wide apart, and his hips moved fluidly into the downward swing. The swing itself was awkward, the left arm slightly stiff, but the log still split neatly into two pieces under the impact of the axe head. Brute force or finesse, you took your pick when chopping wood, Berlin knew. Same went for interviewing suspects or even bombing the Third Reich. The Yanks went in by day, claiming pinpoint accuracy with the famed Norden bombsights on their B-17s, and at night RAF Lancasters and Halifaxes dumped their bombloads on the Pathfinder’s coloured target markers glowing in the darkness, or an already blazing inferno that was hopefully a railway marshalling yard or oil refinery, or a Messerschmitt or panzer factory.
The man picked up one of the halved logs and halved it again. Then he did the same to the other piece. A bored-looking police constable was leaning against the barbecue, watching him. For a moment Berlin thought he saw something familiar in the woodchopper but then dismissed the idea. He turned back from the window.
‘There’s a uniform downstairs watching the girl’s father chop wood. By my count there are close to half a dozen coppers hanging about this place who could be out looking for her.’
Roberts was still leaning against the doorjamb with his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘Nothing to do with me. I heard the blokes at the top wanted a ... a “visible presence” was how they put it, to reassure the girl’s old man so Selden obliged.’
‘I doubt he’s going to be reassured all that much. His daughter is missing and he’s got five fit police officers cluttering up his house, drinking his coffee, eating his biscuits and reading his magazines.’
‘They thought he might get a phone call, if it’s a kidnapping for ransom, I mean. Scheiner’s worth a few quid and everyone knows it. They took that Thorne kid up in Sydney after his father was in the papers for winning the Opera House lottery, remember?’
Berlin remembered. Every parent with a young child at the time remembered. The eight-year-old boy, Graeme, had been found dead six or seven weeks later, killed not long after he was taken. His killer was in Long Bay jail serving a life sentence and the newspapers had stopped publishing the names and addresses of lottery winners.
‘You think this is about ransom, Bob?’
‘Probably not.’
‘Me neither.’
Berlin scanned the room again. Something in the jumbled mess of the corkboard caught his attention and he crossed the room. It was a newspaper cutting, a photograph, held at the very bottom of the board by a brass drawing pin. He leaned in for a better look. It showed two young girls smiling at the camera in a very dark space. The photographer had used flash, and fall-off had left the rest of the room underexposed. Rebecca had taught him about flash fall-off. The caption underneath read, ‘On the scene at Opus.’ Berlin unpinned the clipping. He glanced into the waste paper basket next to the desk hoping to find the paper the clipping came from, but it was empty.
‘That the friend from round the corner, Rosemary?’
Roberts nodded. ‘Selden’s boys got a better picture of Gudrun from Vera, the one I showed you, so apparently no one bothered grabbing that one.’
The girl suited the room, Berlin decided after studying the picture for a moment. She was as tall as her friend, but that was the only similarity. Rosemary was a pretty enough girl but the lift of her chin and tilt of her head showed she was posing for the camera, or the cameraman, trying to look grown-up and worldly, sophisticated. Gudrun’s smile was different – open, guileless; the smile of a happy young girl just pleased to have been chosen to have her picture taken.
Berlin handed the clipping to Roberts, who slipped it into his folder. ‘I’ll have a talk with her old man now.’
Downstairs in the kitchen, the electric coffee percolator was burping away and Vera had cups ready on the bench.
It was good coffee. Berlin sipped it from a nice china cup, watching the flash of the axe head rising and falling against a bright blue sky through the kitchen window. This was one bit he didn’t miss: talking with the fathers, especially when it was about daughters, and as usual he found himself putting it off for as long as he could. It was never, ever long enough.
There was a folded copy of the morning paper on the kitchen counter. He remembered the weather forecast had said to expect a nice day. In Melbourne, people knew never to trust the weather forecast.