St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(19)
The man worked his way to the front, apologising constantly as he moved through the crush of people. When he reached the boy he stretched out his hand. ‘Welcome to Australia, young fellow,’ he said, ‘and praise be to God for a safe voyage. I’m Brother Brian and we have a long way to go so it’s best to get started as soon as we can.’
Brother Brian led the boy away from the crowded dock and out to a dust-covered Dodge station wagon parked in the street. He opened the back for the boy’s kit bag. The space was already crammed with boxes, several of which were marked with the Kodak name.
‘I keep a photographic record of the mission: he explained, ’and if you like you can be my assistant in the darkroom. I think you might find it to be a lot of fun.’
So far the boy hadn’t said a single word, which didn’t seem to worry the man. Most of the new boys were like that, shy and frightened, bewildered at their arrival in a new country on the other side of the world.
The drive to the mission took almost nine hours. They stopped for petrol at a lonely roadhouse somewhere out on the seemingly unending dirt road. The roadhouse had a café but they didn’t go in. Brother Brian had greaseproof paper-wrapped sandwiches in a small suitcase on the back seat of the car, thick-cut bread with ham and cheese. There was a thermos of hot water for tea and a couple of rubber-stoppered bottles of weak lemon cordial, warm from the heat in the car.
The boy watched from the car window as mile after mile of flat, dusty, sun-blasted plain passed by with the occasional glimpse of a far-off farmhouse or bounding kangaroos and, twice, naked black people carrying spears skirting the road.
After each of their regular stops for sandwiches and something to drink, brother Brian insisted the boy make water before they got back into the car. He stood beside him, hitching up the front of his robe and pulling a flaccid penis out of grubby underpants before spraying the saltbush scrub along the roadside. The boy sensed’ Brother Brian was looking down at his little jigger as he peed, and he smiled, thinking of Mavis at the bottom of the stairs, legs splayed, her little split exposed at the base of her belly, and the bright blood running from her ears and nose.
EIGHT
It was only a short walk from the Scheiner house to Gudrun’s school friend Rosemary’s home. Berlin tried to keep his mind occupied with the Scheiner girl, to stop himself remembering, imagining the unimaginable. The idea was totally ridiculous, that it was the same man and their paths were crossing again after all these years on the other side of the world. Berlin walked quickly, head down and with his hands deep in his overcoat pockets. He did it so Bob Roberts couldn’t see the fist clenched so tightly that his knuckles ached.
The interview with Rosemary Clairmont took just ten minutes and was a waste of time. It was obvious the girl was totally boy-crazy, and the outings to the Saturday night dances with Gudrun Scheiner were a chance for her to run amok unsupervised. Berlin guessed that Gudrun had been pretty much left to her own devices the moment the two girls were out of Vera’s sight and he understood the house-keeper’s anger. Young Rosemary had fluttered her eyes at Roberts one time too many for Berlin, who had to fight the urge to turn her over his knee and belt her bottom. He doubted the girl’s mother would have even noticed if he had. Her odd smile and slightly glazed eyes indicated her way of coping with a dreary suburban domestic life was by combining sweet sherry and a couple of Valium tablets in a mother’s-Iittle-helper morning cocktail.
It was on the ride back to the city that the image of Gerhardt Scheiner and the right hand with its missing finger had forced itself back into his head. Could he even remember exactly what the SS officer had looked like? Had he even seen his face on that freezing, snow-covered Polish roadway? He had been watching the pistol held at the girl’s temple, seeing her eyes and the gentle smile on her beautiful, gaunt face as she chose her time to die, found Berlin’s eyes and held them with her own, picked him out of the line of miserable, shivering, starving POWs to be her witness.
He remembered the SS man’s hand with its missing finger, saw the index finger tighten on the trigger, and at that moment a truck in front of the Triumph backfired. Charlie Berlin’s head snapped back, he saw the puff of blue smoke from the truck’s exhaust pipe, his stomach heaved and he yelled for Roberts to pull over. It was just good fortune the wide-open space of the marina car park had been right beside them.
Berlin spat and straightened up. He used the side of his left shoe to kick gravel over the remains of his breakfast tea and toast and Vera’s excellent coffee. He hated using his shoes for anything other than walking and hoped he hadn’t scuffed the leather. He spat again. The taste of acid and bile in his mouth refused to go and the muscles of his lower abdomen ached from retching. Across the empty car park a caravan with a serving window cut into the side advertised coffee and doughnuts. As he walked across the parking area, shoes crunching in the gravel, Berlin saw Roberts watching him from the Triumph.
The man in the doughnut caravan didn’t seem offended when Berlin swirled the first mouthful of instant coffee around in his mouth and spat it out. He looked towards the waiting car and raised the waxed paper cup. Roberts shook his head. Berlin briefly considered a jam doughnut to go with the coffee but his stomach immediately let him know it wasn’t a good idea. The caravan was parked with the serving hatch towards the roadway and its back to the water. An ocean liner was making a its way across Port Phillip Bay towards Station Pier, a thin trail of white smoke pencilled into the blue sky behind it. Just round to his right, past the new marina, was St Kilda, and the lake where the body of the seventh or eighth missing girl had been found.