St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(35)
A handwritten note was attached to the back cover of the folder with a paper clip. After reading the note twice Berlin decided that the Marquet family in Melton seemed as good a place as any to start the investigation. He walked into the hallway and telephoned police headquarters at Russell Street, leaving a message for Bob Roberts to call him back. There was no response by five o’clock so he left a second message for Roberts to pick him up at eight the next morning and to make sure he had a full tank of petrol.
ESCAPE
The trip by car down to Adelaide made a change from daily life on the mission but failed to provide an opportunity for the boy to put his plan into action. Just going missing was not going to be enough, he understood; bringing Fatso back to life had to be coupled with bringing his own life to an end. The price for joining Brother Brian on this journey had been extracted weekly on a mildew smelling couch in the locked photo studio. As with his under the robe activities in the darkroom the boy simply let his mind go elsewhere until it was over. Where his mind went most often was to the top of a set of hot metal stairs on a grubby passenger liner drawing close to the equator.
He spoke very little on the long drive but Brother Brian was used to the silence by now. The boy sometimes pretended he was dozing but in reality he was watching, concentrating on the technique for driving a motor car – the use of the clutch, accelerator and brake pedals. The noisy gear changes baffled him, though he discerned when they were made according to the speedometer on the dashboard and the noise of the engine. He decided that when the time was right he could at least get the car moving and travel a short distance. If things went to plan, that should be all he would need.
A puncture put them well behind schedule so they spent the night in a country pub. The woman behind the counter appeared to have no problem with a man of the cloth and a young boy taking a room together. Brother Brian was exhausted from the driving and tyre-changing, so though they shared the sagging double bed he was quickly asleep and the boy was left to his own devices. A blowfly was trapped between the battered holland blind and the room’s single dirty window and he listened as it buzzed angrily, bumping against the glass again and again in its attempts to find a way to freedom.
He was thinking about the Aborigines they had passed on their way down, wandering along the roadside, sometimes in groups, sometimes singly. He went over in his mind what he needed to do when the right moment came. Fatso’s papers were in the lining of his kitbag, though he had torn up the death certificate and dropped it in pieces into the stinking mess of the privy. The glass-plate negatives made for the mission records had been left in a bath of potassium ferricyanide to bleach away all the information and then crushed to powder. He poured the powdered glass out on the playground during one of the violent dust storms that regularly swept over the mission, and watched it blow away. It seemed a waste, as he had really wanted to visit the kitchen and slip the powder into one of the dishes meant for the top table. The thought brought the familiar heat to his loins and for relief he climbed out of bed and slowly crushed the life out of the buzzing blowfly against the dirty windowpane.
After an early breakfast of porridge and milk in the hotel’s dining room, they finished the trip into Adelaide. The morning was spent at the church’s headquarters, delivering the records of the mission’s activities over the past six months. With the paperwork completed, they took a convivial lunch in the dining room with a dozen other brothers. The food was similar to what was eaten at the high table back at the mission and though it was much better than what he was used to, he ate it just because it was there. He smiled once and Brother Brian asked if he was enjoying lunch. He nodded, though what he had really been enjoying was imagining the results if ground glass had been mixed through the cauliflower in white sauce.
After lunch Brother Brian drove them to the Kodak warehouse. They filled the back of the station wagon with chemicals and photographic paper and film, enough to last them for the next six months. The final stop was a Golden Fleece service station to fill the car with petrol and top up the jerry can of spare fuel. They also refilled the large water jugs that were essential for the long drive back through the desert.
Brother Brian decided they would leave around five and spend the night in the pub they stayed at on the way down. They had a passable dinner there and this time, since he wasn’t tired from driving and tyre-changing, Brother Brian managed to couple with the boy several times on the battered and sagging hotel bed. Each episode of sin was followed by the usual self-recrimination and wailing and earnest begging for forgiveness from God. Brother Brian didn’t, however, beg the boy for forgiveness. The boy’s part in these events, he explained, was his selfish playing of the role of temptress at the behest of Satan and all he deserved was condemnation in the eyes of the Lord.
They took breakfast in the dining room again, and again it was just porridge and a glass of milk for the boy. Brother Brian usually ordered soft-boiled eggs and toast but this morning he decided on the mixed grill: fried eggs, steak, sausages, grilled tomato, lamb’s fry and bacon. The boy had noticed that sin always gave Brother Brian a much-improved appetite.
When the boy’s porridge was done Brother Brian handed over a ten-pound note so the boy could pay for their stay while he finished off his breakfast. They also needed sandwiches for the trip, and on impulse the boy doubled the order. Brother Brian didn’t query the amount of change the boy handed him as he was concentrating on the last sausage on his tomato sauce-smeared plate. He also missed the moment when the boy pinched a box of Redhead matches from the table.