St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(66)
When they marched him and all the others out into the snow and the blizzards he was glad he had walked the circuit every day in the camp and he was glad he was wearing good shoes. Twelve stone, almost one hundred and seventy pounds. He’d been half that, eighty pounds, when the Red Cross people weighed him after the column finally staggered into the Luckenwalde POW camp 30 miles south of the Nazi capital.
Eighty bloody pounds. He had been able to count every one of his ribs. But at least he’d survived the twenty-day march with all his fingers and toes intact. When the younger coppers complained about the stink of a just-discovered decomposing body Berlin remembered the smell of frostbite and gangrene. He knew there were things that were just as bad and sometimes even worse.
THIRTY-ONE
It appeared that Gerhardt Scheiner had chopped up every log he had on hand and had now replaced that distraction with pacing the living room and smoking. The ashtray on the glass coffee table was overflowing. Scheiner was looking a lot older than he had just two days earlier and Berlin wished he had better news for him. Ten o’clock Wednesday morning made it three and half days, and Berlin tried to block out the images of the knife wounds on the body of the girl in the lake. He had little to tell the girl’s waiting father but he felt he had to face the man at least.
‘I’m sorry the news is not better, Mr Scheiner. I really am.’
Scheiner’s scarred face was set, hard, angry. ‘Everything is being done to find my child, you all say to me, everything is being done. And everything produces nothing.’ He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and took another from a silver box on the mantelpiece. ‘The other detectives are useless, Mr Berlin, they come and tell me nothing and now you come and tell me nothing.’
Scheiner appeared to have on the same clothes he was wearing two days ago. The front of his overalls were covered in cigarette ash and the stubble on his face said he hadn’t shaved. Berlin forced away an image of the girl and the pistol on the frozen Polish roadway. Even if it was Scheiner in his nightmares, this was not the time, he told himself.
‘We have some more leads to follow up, Mr Scheiner. I promise you we are doing everything, everyone is doing whatever needs to be done but it takes time’
‘Twenty thousand pounds.’
‘I’m sorry. ~’
‘I mean $20 000. That is the reward I intend to post in the papers this afternoon, and on the radio and TV. Find my daughter, DS Berlin, return her to me and the money is yours.’
Berlin knew this was an added problem that they didn’t need. ‘It’s a bit early yet for a reward, Mr Scheiner. That kind of money can complicate things at this stage. You get all sorts of people coming out of the woodwork, telling all sorts of stories, promising all sorts of things.’
Scheiner shrugged. ‘What do I care about complications? They promise, you promise, the police commissioner promises, Mr Bolte promises. I am tired of promises. I want my daughter home, I want her beside me, do you not understand?’
There were the beginnings of tears in Scheiner’s eyes and Berlin saw Roberts, hands deep in his trouser pockets, staring down at the carpet. Berlin wanted to say something, wanted to say he did understand, wanted to try to comfort him somehow but he did nothing. Berlin tried to remember the last time he had cried and couldn’t. Have I no tears left? he asked himself. Am I even capable of tears? And how big a bastard am I for doing what I have to do now?
‘Mr Scheiner, I’m asking you to hold off on announcing the reward, just until tomorrow. I wasn’t planning to say anything but we may have a lead. We’re following it up and it looks promising but splashing that reward all over the papers and TV really might complicate things. If you can hold off for twenty-four hours it would really be helpful. I can’t say any more than that.’
The fear and anger in Scheiner’s eyes was now replaced with hope. Berlin’s eyes focused over Scheiner’s shoulder, on the cocktail cabinet and the bottles of whisky and gin and vermouth. Was there really any hope for the girl? He had to believe there was, had to believe it was true. And he had to lie – to her father and to himself until the lie became truth. He had lied to his crew thirty times, told them on each mission he knew they would make it home, and his lie became the truth twenty-nine times. Berlin knew he had to find the girl and soon; he desperately didn’t want this lie to be like that last one to his crew.
There was a limited press presence outside the Scheiner home, which meant someone was doing a good job of keeping a lid on the story. A $20 000 reward offered in the papers would put an end to all that. The reporters and press photographers and a TV news camera-man ignored the two policemen as they walked to the car. It looked a little like rain so the hood on the Triumph was up and locked in place. Berlin opened the passenger side door and bent down to toss his hat behind the seat.
Roberts looked at him across the top of the hood when he straightened up. ‘Do you want to tell me about this lead we have on the girl, Charlie?’
Berlin put both hands on top of the car. ‘I’m just playing for time, Bob. Scheiner is desperate, which is fair enough, but we both know what will happen once word of a $20 000 reward gets out.’
Once that reward was posted every police station in Australia would be besieged by reporters, concerned mums, psychics, drunks, charlatans, dads whose kids were five minutes late coming back from the shops and weird blokes showing up with hands out, offering up a variety of fifteen-year-old girls aged from ten to thirty. On top of that they would get every copper with too big a mortgage, or too pricey a mistress or an angry bookie on their tail, wanting to be involved, sticking their oar in, hoping for a quick solution to all their problems but just muddying some already murky waters.