St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(22)
Berlin made a mental note to check the weather and the phase of the moon on the night in question. And I assume there aren’t any reports of a naked, hysterical, fifteen-year-old girl running across Fitzroy Street and then down here, getting hit by a car and then dragged across the grass and dumped in the lake.’
Roberts shook his head. ‘You know how it is, Charlie, it’s St Kilda. A naked fifteen-year-old girl isn’t going to attract too much attention at three or four in the morning, not around this area.’
Berlin turned away from the lake and looked back across the parklands, through the trees towards St Kilda and its main drag, Fitzroy Street. The once-genteel bay-side suburb had never recovered from the Great Depression, when many of its mansions and fine apartment buildings had become boarding houses for the destitute. World War II was the next blow, with the arrival of hordes of American servicemen making the suburb a mecca for the pimps and prostitutes and sly grog men and drug dealers who serviced them.
And now it looked like it was set to fall even further as crew-cut, clean-faced GIs on R and R leave from a new war, Vietnam, were starting to drift south, looking for an alternative to the concentrated sleaze of Sydney’s Kings Cross. They would start flying directly down from Saigon in a few months’ time and if the Kings Cross experience was anything to go by, Berlin knew that heroin pushers wouldn’t be far behind them.
Somewhere off to his right, on the corner of Grey Street, was the decaying George Hotel, the word ‘TITS’ standing out in eight foot-high letters over the entrance portico. You had to be a whole lot closer to see that the sign actually read ‘This Is The Show’. The massively oversized capital letters advertised the strippers in the upstairs Birdcage Lounge, pulling in the raincoat brigade, the desperately curious schoolboys and the bucks’ night crowds with spruikers outside promising more girls, more glamour and more skin to the acre.
For those wanting private and more intimate contact there were plenty of tarts working Grey and Blessington streets and pretty young boys congregating around Shakespeare Grove. If your taste ran to it, there were men on Barkly and Belford streets who wore stockings and wigs and dresses and called themselves Rita or Pearl or Margot. They never appeared to lack for company, though like the queers in Shakespeare Grove or out on Chaucer Street they were often skittish and wary. Bashings and robbery were a painfully regular part of their hidden-away lives.
Berlin took the clipboard from Roberts to look at the coroner’s report. The rope marks on the wrists and ankles were clearly visible in the photographs of the body lying by the lake and those from the later autopsy. She had definitely been alive when she went into the water, poor little bugger. The knife wounds, in the coroner’s opinion, had been inflicted over a prolonged period and were intended to cause pain and almost certainly to draw blood. Not enough blood to kill her, though, Berlin understood, just enough to fulfil whatever sick fantasy her captor had.
He handed the clipboard back and walked across to the edge of Lakeside Drive. Roberts had parked a good 25 yards back from the second area of trampled grass next to the roadway. There were fading black skid marks on the asphalt leading up to where Berlin stood.
Roberts joined him. ‘The motor accident squad boys say she was hit here and they reckon she went about fifteen, twenty feet that way.’ He indicated the lake behind them with his thumb over his right shoulder.
Several tiny pieces of headlight glass sparkled on the roadway. Roberts nudged at one of the crystals with the toe of his shoe. ‘First detectives on the scene reckoned she was run down by whoever had her held captive. They might have been taking her somewhere and she somehow got free and out of the car.’
Berlin bent down and picked up one of the pieces of glass. ‘Is that what you think? Whoever had her held captive chasing her down to finish it off?’
‘Nope. ’
‘How do you see it happening?’
Roberts pulled the packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He tore off the clear cellophane wrapping, crushing it in his hand before tossing it aside.
‘It’s all on the road there, Charlie, or what’s left of it. They were braking when they hit her, braking really hard and skidding, trying to avoid her. I reckon she almost made it across.’
Berlin turned the fragment of glass slowly between his thumb and index finger, watching it sparkle. ‘Then why not call an ambulance, try to help, rather than dragging her across the grass and dumping her in the water?’
Roberts peeled back the silver foil on the packet of cigarettes and offered one to Berlin, who shook his head. ‘Panic, possibly. Three or four o’clock in the morning in this area, who knows who’s about? Could have been someone joy riding in a stolen car, someone doing the wrong thing. Or maybe they had the wrong person in the car, some other bugger’s wife. Might have been hopped up on drugs, could be a thousand things.’
Berlin slipped the fragment of glass into his overcoat pocket. ‘You’d have to be a pretty cold bastard to drag an injured girl across the grass and toss her in the water.’
Roberts put the packet of cigarettes back in his pocket and took out his lighter.
‘C’mon, mate, it’s bloody St Kilda. Three or four o’clock in the morning, all the Salvation Army god-squadders, friendly shopkeepers and upright citizens are tucked away nice and warm in their own little beds.’ He cupped his left hand around the lighter to protect the flame from the wind, lit his cigarette, took a deep drag and exhaled. ‘Cold bastards are the stockin-trade around here after midnight, Charlie, you know that. It’s just tarts and punters and predators and victims.’