St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(7)
He regretted the Sunshine comment as soon as he made it. It seemed for a moment that Roberts was going to respond but then he looked down and crushed out his cigarette butt in the ashtray. He did it very slowly and deliberately though.
‘The girl’s father is Gerhardt Scheiner, you’ve probably heard of him.’
‘The builder bloke? The German?’
‘That’s the one.’
The Scheiner name was on building site hoardings, cranes and tip trucks all over town. There was a construction boom on and the Scheiner name was as well known as its owner was reclusive. Whelan the Wrecker might be knocking down Melbourne’s grand old brick and stone heritage buildings but it was people like Scheiner who were putting up the new glass and steel towers to replace them. He’d also made a name for himself with very generous philanthropic donations but Berlin couldn’t recall ever seeing a photograph of him on either the news or social pages.
‘What do we know about him, apart from the fact he has the ear of the premier?’ Berlin did understand enough about office politics to know when a situation or case might have the potential to get awkward.
‘I did a quick background check on him but there’s not a whole lot of personal information available. I’ve got some mates in the building trade so I rang around. He’s a bit of a legend.’
‘Meaning?’
‘One of those migrant success stories. Seems he walked off a refugee boat at Station Pier in ’52 with ten bob in his pocket, was a bricklayer’s apprentice a week later, had his own business a year or two after that. Made his first pile of dough doing all those little building jobs for the Olympics in ‘56 that no one else wanted to touch, and that’s about it. But ten years on he’s got a farm out in the bush, a nice house by the beach in Brighton and he can call the bloody premier at home at two o’clock on a Sunday morning and have us all jumping through hoops.’
‘If one of your daughters was missing, Bob, you’d do the same thing – pull in any favours you could. So would I.’
‘You’re not wrong there, Charlie, and right now I’m here looking for a favour. They asked me to help out, just on the Scheiner girl, I mean, and now I’m asking you.’
Stories had been circulating about Roberts lately that made Berlin wary. ‘Help out officially?’
Another long pause before Roberts answered. ‘Touch of a grey area there Charlie, old son. Officially Tony Selden has the case but we both know what he’s like. Nice enough bloke but a bit of a plodder.’
Berlin nodded. It was a fair description of the detective, probably a bit generous truth be told. If the Scheiner girl had time to wait Selden would find her, eventually. But in cases like this time was always what you didn’t have. And if this case was in any way connected to the dead girl in the lake ...
‘Unofficially, Charlie, certain people at the top would like an investigation undertaken with a bit more, let’s say heft to it. They told me to rope in anyone who might be able to help track the girl down quickly and I told them you were the best.’
Berlin wondered who ‘they’ were. Grey areas and unofficial investigations were tricky even for people with friends at the top, and right now wasn’t the time to be doing anything tricky.
‘Gudrun.’
‘What?’
Roberts reached into his coat pocket and took out a small photograph. ‘The girl’s name is Gudrun, she’s fifteen. Scheiner’s a widower and the girl is an only child.’ He put the black and white photograph on the kitchen table and slid it across in front of Berlin.
Berlin picked up the photograph. The paper still slightly damp. Probably not long out of the police photographic section darkrooms, he guessed, probably a copy of a picture given to the investigating detectives by the father. It was a studio portrait and showed a girl wearing a tie and a school blazer with a crest. She was pretty, happy, smiling, innocent. He touched the surface of the picture, touched the girl’s face, looked into her eyes.
‘You’re a real bastard, Bob.’
‘I learned from the best, Charlie.’
Berlin handed the photograph back across the table. ‘Asking for me must have got right up Chater’s nose.’
Roberts slipped the photograph back in his pocket along with his smokes and lighter. ‘You could say that, but bugger him.’
Berlin made a decision. He pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘I’ll just get my coat and hat. I figure that after we look at the files you were planning on taking me to have a chat with Gerhardt Scheiner, right?’
Bob Roberts smiled. ‘Well, there you go, Charlie, that pisspot boss of yours is wrong – you actually are a pretty good detective. Now, what do you reckon the odds are we can get out to the car without Rebecca biting my leg off?’
DORSET, 7 May 1945
The telegram said the paratrooper had died on active service but the reality was a little different. The café in Baruch in Belgium had several rooms upstairs where allied servicemen on leave could be entertained by young ladies who, not many months earlier, had been entertaining German soldiers. After some inconsequential sex with a bored prostitute the paratrooper had wandered out onto the balcony for a cigarette. He sat on the balcony railing which, having been weakened during one of the many Allied air raids on the town, unfortunately gave way under his weight. The young paratrooper, who had jumped into combat a half-dozen times and dozens more in training, fell a scant fifteen feet, head first, down to the cobbled street below, breaking his neck on impact and dying instantly.