St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(56)
‘I think she’s groovy too. You should give her a call.’
‘Thanks, I will.’ She gave him the V-sign with her right hand.
‘Peace.’
Berlin smiled. ‘Always. You too.’
The cook from the café was still leaning against the door. He watched the girl walk off down the road and smiled. It seemed like the whole street had stopped to watch her go. Peace would be nice, Berlin decided, along with a world full of pretty girls who had nothing to fear.
She stopped after about a dozen paces, paused for a moment, then turned and walked back to Berlin. For several seconds she appeared to be a little uncertain about her next move.
‘Mr Berlin, can I tell you something?’
‘If you like.’
‘Earlier, after you left the office, Lance made a phone call.’
Berlin waited.
‘The people who print GEAR are the ones who put out the Truth, and Lance knows a lot of the journalists there, if you can call them that.’
Truth was a weekly tabloid newspaper specialising in political and sexual scandals and dramatic exposes. It also had racing pages, and the racing tips and news articles were often of about equal veracity. ‘Lance is a bit of a shit but he does have a nose for a story, I have to give him that. He asked for a bloke named Warren and gave him a rundown on your visit.’
Berlin knew Warren would be Warren Sunderland – Wozza or Sundo to his friends and drinking mates and ‘that turd Sunderland’ to anyone who had been the subject of one of his hit pieces. Rebecca had known Sunderland when he was a cadet reporter on The Argus and had said he was a nasty piece of work, even back then. She had summed him up as someone who, given the choice between fact and supposition, would choose the third option of just making stuff up and throwing in a bit of illicit sex or oblique hints of incest or bestiality to liven things up.
From time to time, however, Sunderland would break a real story on the front page of the Truth, usually something scandalous and often embarrassing to the police or opposition politicians. It was generally accepted he had contacts at the upper levels of government who found him useful. Having someone like Sunderland poking about when a millionaire with political connections had a child missing could complicate things.
‘Thanks, Lauren, that’s good to know. Call my wife soon, eh? You can do better than working for someone like Lance.’
Bob Roberts had left the phone box and walked across the footpath to join them.
‘You need a lift anyplace?’ he asked.
Was Roberts planning on putting her in the cramped space behind the front seats Berlin wondered, or would he be a gentleman and offer her the passenger seat?
The girl smiled and shook her head. ‘No thank you, Sergeant Roberts, I’m cool. We just put next week’s edition to bed so I’ve got the afternoon off and it’s such a lovely day, I’m happy to walk.’
She gave them the peace sign again and walked off. Someone leaned out of a passing tram, let out a long wolf whistle and yelled, ‘Wild thing!’
The girl turned, smiled and waved towards the tram.
Whoever you are, mate, she’d bloody eat you alive, Berlin said to himself. And Roberts too, for that matter.
The cook from the Greek café looked towards the two detectives and shook his hands slowly, like he was trying to flick water off them. Berlin didn’t know the gesture but he could take a good guess at what it meant. Hemlines were rising to impossible levels all over the city and those very short shorts were starting to pop up all over the place. To the young girls wearing them it really was just the latest fashion and they seemed to have no idea of the effect it was having on a generation of men who had grown up when women’s fashion was meant to conceal and not reveal.
Berlin coughed to get Roberts’ attention. He finally managed to get his eyes off Lauren’s figure as it receded in the distance.
‘Anything new?’
Roberts shook his head. ‘They’ve got half the force out looking now but no one really has any idea of where to start. We wouldn’t even be where we are right now if you hadn’t noticed that picture on Gudrun’s corkboard or spotted that the Marquet girl disappeared from her home and not a discotheque like the others. That’s good police work. That’s the kind of thing that gets noticed.’
Getting himself noticed was not something that was high on Berlin’s agenda, not right at the moment. ‘The girl is still missing, Bob, so we’re a hell of a long way from patting ourselves on the back. We ought to get moving.’
Berlin climbed into the passenger seat of the Triumph, while Roberts had to let a bright red Arnott’s Biscuits delivery truck go past before he could open his door. He slid into his seat and the engine on the Triumph rumbled into life.
‘So where are we off to?’ Roberts said, handing Berlin his folder.
Inside the folder Lauren’s note was on top. She had elegant flowing handwriting, and under the address where they could find Derek Jones she had drawn a flower and a smiling sun.
‘Looks like we’re going to South Melbourne, Bob, to number 100 Albert Road, to be exact.’
Roberts glanced into his side mirror. He gunned the engine and pulled out into the traffic quickly so they wouldn’t have to wait for the tram coming up behind them.
Berlin checked his watch. Gudrun Scheiner had been gone for around sixty hours now and according to the lovely Lauren’s note tucked in Bob Roberts’ folder, the next destination on their search for her was the Lair of the Visual Beast.