St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(46)
‘My old man used to read that, she said. ’He was in sales. You in sales?’
He nodded. It was always easier to nod and agree, whatever the question. But it was also important to talk. Normal people had conversations. Conversation wasn’t his strong point but he was working on it and the book was helping a lot. If the girl was going to keep standing there, perhaps she wanted to have a conversation. She was around eighteen, he guessed. She was wearing one of those new miniskirts, the top of her thighs almost level with his eyes. Did she want to go and do sex in the lavatory? he wondered. He’d heard that girls on trains sometimes did, especially these days. It was quite a disgusting idea. He realised he probably should say something nice and studied the girl’s round face, and the short haircut that framed it.
‘You look like Cilia Black.’
The girl blushed. ‘Really, do you think so?’
He nodded and smiled, even though he was quickly getting bored with her.
‘Thanks, I love Cilia. I’ve got all her forty-fives. I like your gear. You don’t look like a salesman.’
‘Thank you.’ He was pleased. He chose his clothes after carefully studying the newest pop magazines. It was important to be ‘in’. But not too in, not too groovy, not too noticeable, not too memorable. Stylish, but blending in, that was best.
He opened the book again, hoping she would take the hint. He didn’t want to do sex in the grimy lavatory with its smell of carbolic acid and a toilet bowl that opened down to the steel rails and wooden sleepers flashing by under the carriage. She was also too old for him to cut. Besides that, there wasn’t time to do it properly with their destination only an hour away and the risk of discovery much too high. A railways lavatory was no place for doing sex or for the other thing. Sex he didn’t care for all that much but the other thing was another story all together, and the other thing took time if you were going to do it right.
The girl finally took the hint and moved back to her seat after a brief goodbye. She seemed a little hurt by his lack of interest. He closed the book and stood up, reaching for his leather bag in the brass overhead luggage rack. He rested the bag on his lap after he sat down, so he could feel the dagger hidden in its base, nestled close to his groin.
Time to do it properly was always the problem with the other thing. He needed a safe place, a secure place, a place where he could come and go unnoticed, a place where the screaming would go unheard. So far the cave had been the best place. He’d had a week there, just him and the girl from the roadhouse. The memory caused the heat to rise and he pressed the bag down harder into his lap. He glanced out the train window at the flat, dry country. Sometimes it was just so exhausting living this life.
How many years had he been on the road now? How many jobs had he had in small towns? Abattoirs were always the best – anonymous places filled with loners and wanderers like himself. The money was good, paid in cash, and best of all he got to practise his knife skills. He’d done some time in canneries in fishing towns too but he didn’t like the smell and filleting tuna was nothing like boning out a steer.
Small towns were good but they couldn’t be too small. You got noticed in really small towns, noticed by the cops and nosey neighbours, and getting noticed wasn’t good. The bigger country towns were best, places you could blend in, take the time to get a feel for the locals, quietly suss out the weak and the lonely and vulnerable.
Cafés and roadhouses on the highway were usually the best places to go looking. Places with young, unhappy waitresses, girls working after school serving greasy hamburgers to fat, unwashed truckies in stinking blue singlets or creepy travelling salesmen in crumpled suits looking for a mixed grill with tea and a slice of pavlova to follow. And to follow the pavlova some furtive, sweaty sex in the back seat of a company-supplied Ford Fairlane parked somewhere out on a lonely bush track. Ideally, you would take a girl after a salesman had spent time chatting her up over his dinner, making it obvious what he was looking for, getting noticed by staff and locals. Better still if the salesman’s smarmy charm worked and the girl was seen driving off with him.
If the salesman was a decent bloke and dropped the girl home or back at work afterwards then she was safe for the moment. But if he was a cold bastard like a lot of them and just dumped her, left her standing bewildered out on a gravel track with her knickers bunched up in her hand, then she was fair game. Fair game for a helpful bloke with a nice smile and a twinkle in his eye. And by the time the ravaged body was found and the salesman tracked down by the cops and interviewed and beaten bloody for claiming innocence and eventually cleared, the quiet young bloke with the nice smile and the brown leather bag had long since moved on.
The clickety-clack sound of steel wheels on iron rails increased briefly as the connecting door at the end of the carriage opened and closed. The conductor worked his way down the swaying centre aisle, putting his hands on the seatbacks for balance.
‘Melbourne in an hour, Spencer Street Station and the end of the line. I’ll be locking up the dunnies in thirty minutes in case you have to go.’
A few moments later the girl brushed past him as she made her way towards the rear of the carriage and the lavatory, She was giggling, and grinned as she looked back over her shoulder. A minute later a young sailor in white bell-bottomed trousers and a white shirt came after her. He looked a little embarrassed. The name ‘HMAS Cerberus’ was visible on his cap band. Cerberus was the Royal Australian Navy’s training depot for new recruits.