St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(24)

‘How can I be .. of help this morning, gentlemen? I’m always ready to do whatever I can to assist the police.’

The shopkeeper said the word ‘police’ with a little more volume than was strictly necessary. There was a flurry of books and magazines being replaced on shelves and a strange, almost whistling sound of nylon against nylon as raincoat-wearing customers brushed against each other on their way out through the narrow doorway. The schoolboy, apparently frozen to the spot, was staring at Berlin, his eyes wide open and unblinking. The crest on his blazer pocket was from a leading boys school and a metal badge on his lapel said he was a prefect.

Berlin took the magazine from his hands. ‘Don’t you have some place you should be, sonny Jim?’

The boy nodded but didn’t move.

‘Then you should be there, shouldn’t you?’

The boy nodded again. Berlin pointed to the shop doorway. The boy turned and walked to the door, stopping only to pick up a vinyl schoolbag at the entrance.

Berlin turned back to where Roberts and the shopkeeper were looking at each other.

‘Can I have a pack of twenty Craven A?’

The shopkeeper took the cigarettes from the shelf behind him.

‘That’ll be three shillings and sixpence, I mean thirty-eight cents. This bloody decimal currency is a pain in the arse.’

Roberts handed over one of the recently introduced pink five-dollar notes. The government had been smart enough to make the different colours of the new money match the old bank notes to try to cut down on confusion. The one-dollar note was brown like the old ten-bob note, two dollars was green like a quid and the old blue fiver was now a blue ten-dollar bill. But it still wasn’t the money Berlin had grown up with, and the shopkeeper was right – it was a pain in the arse.

There was a pile of tabloid newspapers tied up with string on the floor in front of the counter. The paper on top had a photograph of pop star Normie Rowe on the cover. Berlin knew the face because there were stories on the news that the popular young singer might be called up for national service and could eventually wind up in Vietnam.

‘Those all music newspapers? For kids, youngsters?’

The shopkeeper nodded. ‘From the last couple of weeks. I’m just about to send them back. The distributors make me take them. Waste of bloody space, we don’t get a lot of teenagers in here.’

‘Not if the little buggers know what’s good for them, anyway.’

The shopkeeper looked over at Roberts and then back at Berlin. ‘You can’t talk to me like that, even if you are a copper. I run a decent business here.’

Berlin stared back across the counter. ‘No you bloody don’t and we both know it. And I’m taking these newspapers, if you don’t have any objections.’

‘I do as a matter of ...’

The shopkeeper stopped mid-sentence. Berlin was standing next to Roberts now and from the corner of his eye he saw the detective’s head moving from side to side again. The shopkeeper shut up and handed Roberts his change.

‘You wanna grab those newspapers, Bob? You’re younger than me.’

‘And I’m better looking too, Charlie.’ Roberts put the packet of cigarettes into his pocket before bending down and picking up the bundle of newspapers.

Berlin walked around behind the counter, reached underneath and pulled out the buff-coloured envelope. He slipped it into his suit coat’s left-side pocket.

‘Now just a minute, mate.’

Berlin leaned in very close to the shopkeeper and spoke slowly. ‘First of all, sunshine, I’m not your mate, and if you really want to make this a big deal then we can. I can have a rummage around under your counter and see what else I can turn up. Of course, with me being a policeman I’d be forced to confiscate anything of a pornographic nature I might come across and then put you under arrest. But since I really, really don’t want to put my hand back under there if I can help it, why don’t we just call it quits? What do you say – that sound fair?’

The shopkeeper nodded slowly, keeping his mouth tightly closed.

Back at the car, Roberts dumped the bundle of newspapers behind the front seats and looked across at Berlin. ‘Okay, what do we do now?’

Is he asking about the missing girls or the envelope? Berlin wondered.

The expression on Roberts’ face wasn’t giving anything away, that was for sure. Berlin was reminded of Peter’s impassive face when he had come to collect him from the South Melbourne police station lock-up that awful night. The boy had fallen into bad company, was the way the magistrate had put it. Would a magistrate one day sum up Bob Roberts’ situation the same way? And for both Peter and Bob, was it his doing somehow?

Berlin reached down for the passenger side door handle. ‘Why don’t we go take a look at this Buddha’s Belly joint, see if we can rustle up anybody. And maybe take a trip around to the other places the girls went dancing. After that you can drop me at home with the files on all the missing girls so I can go through them. There’s probably more than enough people out beating the bushes for young Gudrun right at the moment.’

In the cramped space of the passenger seat the Triumph’s door pressed against Berlin’s hip and he could feel the bulk of the envelope in his pocket. In his twenty some years on the force he’d seen enough unmarked buff envelopes changing hands to know what was going on. He really hadn’t wanted to believe the rumours about Bob Roberts and he really didn’t want to ask about the envelope and hear the lie or open it up and see the truth.