St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(21)
He led the boy into a long building with wooden floors and tiny windows. There were rows of rusty metal beds along both walls, each separated by a narrow, crudely made wooden cabinet. Each bed had a single blanket over a lumpy straw-filled mattress that reminded the boy of his time on the farm in Dorset. He counted three dozen beds. There was a large bathroom at one end of the dormitory with two tin bathtubs and an open tiled area with half a dozen showerheads suspended from the ceiling. Brother Brian opened the door at the far side of the bathroom and pointed to a low wooden structure set away to one side of the compound area.
‘Over there is the privy,’ he said. ‘That’s where you do your business. Our friends in Adelaide send us old newspapers and as the new boy one of your jobs will be to cut them into squares and make sure the privy is always well stocked. You will also have to help empty the tubs of nightsoil as required.’
Brother Brian allocated him a bed and gave him a towel and a nightshirt. Both items looked to have had many previous owners and the towel smelled of stale sweat and mildew. The boy placed his meagre possessions in the wooden cabinet while the brother stood and watched. When he was done the boy slid the empty kit bag under his bed, back against the wall as far as it would go.
As they crossed to the building containing the dining room, Brother Brian laid out the rules. The boy was to be quiet and respectful, to instantly obey the brothers in all things, to attend morning and evening prayers, to work hard at any task to which he was appointed and to seek the guidance of the Lord in all things. And he was to avoid spending overlong periods alone in the privy. He must be wary of the solitary vice and avoid it, and likewise avoid those who indulged in it. The boy had no idea what the solitary vice was, and he was distracted by the sight of a cat as they passed one of the barns. He wondered if the dagger would be safe in its hiding place in his kitbag and decided his first task would be to seek out a better place to store it.
There was a row of washbasins fitted to the wall outside the dining room. He followed Brother Brian’s example and washed his hands in the brackish-smelling water, though there was no soap. He shook his hands and followed the brother into the dining room. It was the same dimensions as the dormitory but with rows of tables and hard wooden benches instead of beds. There were no windows in the dining room, which was illuminated by a row of hurricane lanterns suspended from the ceiling.
The six tables nearest the door had four occupants along each side. There was a brown-robed brother at each table and then seven boys whose ages ranged from four or five up to perhaps fifteen. At several of the tables Aboriginal boys were mixed in amongst the white children. Their skin colour varied from brown to black, with several having such a deep blue-black tone that it was difficult to make out their features in the weak light of the kerosene lanterns. The boys were all wearing grubby shorts and patched and faded cotton shirts and were barefoot. Their hair was cut short or shaved off completely. Brother Brian saw that the boy was staring.
‘We’ve had an outbreak of ringworm, I’m afraid your hair must come off tomorrow as well, then a good rinse with kerosene. It shouldn’t sting too much but it has to be done.’
The boy nodded. Pain didn’t matter all that much to him, not his at least.
The dining room was silent even though almost every space at the tables was taken. This silence surprised him after the horseplay and rowdiness that had become a feature of the children’s dining room onboard the ship, especially after Mavis’s death. He hadn’t joined in the fun, preferring just to eat what was put in front of him and watch the antics of the others. He spent the mealtimes carefully studying what made the ringleaders into leaders and what made the others into sometime-challengers or simply submissive followers. It was the submissive ones, the followers, the lost ones, those who always seemed about to cry, who most held his interest.
NINE
The breeze off the lake had an edge to it and Berlin turned the collar of his overcoat up.
‘You want to tell me what we know so far, Bob?’
Roberts glanced at the notes on his clipboard. ‘Local bloke, name of Partridge, was out walking his mutt early on the Monday morning. He was the one who spotted her, half in the water, facedown. The coroner’s report said she had been starved and tortured, though the cause of death was determined as drowning – remember, I told you?’
Berlin nodded. ‘Water in the lungs, I remember.’ He was looking down, studying a tuft of grass near the toe of his right shoe. ‘Keep going.’
‘She also had injuries received just before her death, injuries consistent with being struck by a car travelling at high speed.’ Roberts pointed back towards Lakeside Drive. ‘They found fresh skid marks and broken headlight glass back there. The theory is that she was skittled on the roadway then dragged across the grass before being dumped into the lake by a person or persons unknown.’
‘Do we have any idea when she went in?’
Roberts looked at his clipboard again. ‘The dog stroller wandered past around six in the morning and a divvy van from St Kilda made a sweep around the lake at 2:30 a.m. so it must have been some time in between.’
‘Any chance the blokes in the divisional van might not have seen her?’
Roberts shrugged. ‘I spoke to the constable who was driving the van about that yesterday afternoon. He said the moon was well up and he reckoned there was no way he’d have missed seeing those skid marks on the road. If they were there when they cruised past he’d have stopped to have a look around for sure.’