St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(54)
Berlin thought Meuwissen’s long, mousy-brown hair made him look like one of his ‘girlies’. There were three females in the office, none over twenty, all slender with long, straight hair and all wearing a variation on the theme of peasant blouses in white cotton and floor-length, flower-patterned skirts. Berlin guessed Bob Roberts must have been in his element, since it was obvious none of the three were wearing bras. Berlin hadn’t much cared one way or the other about what young girls chose to wear or not wear, but having a pretty teenage daughter had changed that.
The editorial offices of GEAR were located above a Greek café on Sydney Road, on the first floor of a run-down three-storey brick terrace. The place might have been a family home at one stage but now the entrance stairway at the side of the café was stacked with string-bound piles of the music newspaper. There were a number of second-hand furniture dealers located along Sydney Road and it looked like GEAR had taken advantage of that fact for their office furnishings. A large room at the top of the stairs was crammed with desks and tables in multiple shades of scratched and fading French polish and in various stages of collapsing under piles of paper and heavy IBM Selectric typewriters.
An artiscope copying camera was set against a back wall next to an alcove draped with a heavy black floor-length curtain. A printed sign pinned over the alcove read, ‘Darkroom – do not enter or all the dark leaks out!’ Someone had added in bold marker pen, ‘This means you, Derek, you nasty little f*cker!’
Yellow boxes of Kodak Tri-X Pan film were stacked on a mantelpiece next to three empty Jim Beam bourbon bottles and a small Bakelite radio which was tuned to 3XY. The room smelled of patchouli and sweat and hot wax. A girl at a tilted drafting table positioned near a window was pasting lines of type onto a layout. The tall, double-hung sash windows facing Sydney Road had no blinds so the already warm place must have been an oven in summer. Berlin’s nose also picked up the aroma of hot fat and oregano from the café downstairs, and an underlying smell of marijuana.
He put the newspaper clipping down on the desk in front of Meuwissen.
‘We’ll say no to the cup of tea if it’s all the same to you, Mr Meuwissen, we’re in a bit of a rush this morning. I need to know who took this photo so I can have a friendly chat with them. It’s important, really important.’
He put the newspaper clipping down on the desk in front of Meuwissen. The desktop was strewn with photographs of rock bands, rumpled sheets of Letraset type, paste-up layouts and several open packets of Tally-Ho rolling papers. An overfull ashtray was spilling its contents into the mess. Amongst the ashes and filter-tipped cigarette butts there were the spit-stained, twisted, brownish ends of several joints, one still locked in the grasp of a roach holder made from a paperclip. Meuwissen’s eyed flicked down to the ashtray and back up to Berlin’s face. ‘And just so we’re clear, Mr Meuwissen, we’re not from the drug squad.’
Meuwissen smiled. ‘Always happy to cooperate with the police.’ he picked up the clipping. ‘Not really my area but I’m sure Lauren can help us out. Lauren, darling, be a dear and come over and look at this, we need to know who took this snap. It’s important.’ The girl at the drafting table straightened up and looked around. She was tall, very tall, maybe five ten or eleven, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Berlin could see in those blue eyes that she wasn’t happy at being interrupted but she didn’t say anything. As she crossed the room towards them, the sway of her breasts and the bulge of nipples against the white top confirmed her lack of a bra. The cotton blouse had a drawstring at the neck and some colourful flowers embroidered on the right sleeve. She stopped next to Meuwissen and leaned over the desk to study the clipping. Her blouse top gaped open and Berlin knew Roberts would really be enjoying this now.
‘The lovely Lauren here puts the paper together for us every week so she knows everything that’s in it, don’t you, lovey? She’s a treasure. A photographic memory and a very photogenic figure, don’t you think? I think she should do modelling. I’m sure she looks absolutely stunning in the nude, natural blondes always do. You are a natural blonde, aren’t you, darling girl? Collar and cuffs match, as they say.’
Meuwissen put his hand on her backside and smiled at Berlin who felt his fist tighten as the urge to punch the man in the face came back. It must have been the morning spent out at the house in Melton that had set him off, he decided. He noticed a brief twitch in the girl’s eye when Meuwissen’s hand had touched her backside. She moved round to the side of the desk and towards the grubby windows. ‘Let me get a better look at this in the light.’
It was a nicely done move that extricated her from Meuwissen’s grasp. The grime on the windows softened the light coming in and gave her blonde hair a sort of halo. It also made the thin cotton blouse almost transparent. She did have a nice body, and Berlin studied her face. Rebecca had taught him about the structure of the face as it related to the camera and this girl had good bones, as his wife would put it. He liked having the opportunity just to study a pretty face for a brief moment. Too much of his life was spent looking for a lie in the eyes of someone calculating just how much they could get away with and not get caught.
The girl handed him back the clipping. ‘Derek Jones shot this series at Opus a couple of weeks back. I used this image mainly because the girl on the right looked so happy. I can’t help you with a name, since Derek is too bloody lazy to write anything down. Apart from their home addresses if they’re extra good-looking, of course. He arranges to stop by later for private photo sessions, I’ve heard, and we don’t get to see those photographs. Lucky us.’