St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(71)
The flat had a small living room in the front, with a window to the right, and beyond it doorways to the single bedroom and the bathroom. A dusty bamboo blind covered the window, stained seagrass matting covered the floor and a creased poster for The Who on one wall tried to hide a patch of bare plaster where the wallpaper had peeled away. Through the open bedroom door he could see a rumpled futon resting on top of the seagrass matting.
There was a shabby wooden table in the middle of the living room, the lamp hanging above it covered in a round, white, flyspecked Chinese-paper lampshade. Two rickety wooden dining chairs, a sofa and two mismatched armchairs made up the rest of the furnishings, along with a bookshelf stacked with magazines. A record player and a small television were set up on top of a battered steamer trunk under the single window. The living room furniture looked like it had come from one of the dozens of second-hand places on High Street in Prahran.
‘We know all about the girls, Derek.’
Derek went pale again. Roberts pulled a couple of the photographs from the manila envelope. Berlin kept silent, watching the responses. Bugger again. The little bastard’s face had relaxed in relief when he saw the pictures. These weren’t the photographs he’d been expecting them to show him and he had a cocky smirk on his face now.
‘They’re all over eighteen, or at least that’s what they told me. Photographing a bit of minge isn’t against the law, unless you publish them. It’s art, anyway; my nudes are very artistic.’ He put the remains of the almost-finished Chiko Roll on the table and walked across the room. Berlin recognised the book before Derek picked it up from on top of the trunk and opened a page at random. ‘See, this is art, real art. Not that a policeman would know anything about it.’
The book was Cowboy Kate by a South African photographer named Sam Haskins. When it was published it had pushed the boundaries of nude photography with its high-contrast and grainy black and white images. Rebecca was a fan of the photographer’s work and her most recent nudes had shown Haskins’ influence.
Berlin took one of Derek’s photographs from the pile Roberts was holding. ‘That might well be art, son, but this stuff of yours is just bloody rubbish, you little twerp. The lighting is flat and characterless, you missed focus on the eyes and from the look of the print you probably underexposed the negative. And the girl in this one looks like she’s really regretting her decision to get her gear off, which I guess means she was probably sobering up.’
Berlin leaned in closer and lowered his voice. ‘This isn’t art, this is just the way a pathetic little shit like you gets to see bare tits and what’s between a girl’s legs, because there is no other way in hell you’d be able to manage it. And when you see what’s there, does it frighten you? Or do the girls laugh at you, maybe when you get your pants down, and that’s when it all goes wrong? Do you get angry and then get even? Is that when you hurt people?’
At the start of Berlin’s outburst Derek had brought the book up in front of himself as if for protection. Berlin had kept his voice low but he moved forward and just as slowly Derek backed away until his legs came into contact with the couch and he suddenly sat down.
I’m just being a bully here, Berlin said to himself, because it was all wrong. The girls in the photo were too old and Derek’s reactions were off, but he preyed on girls around Sarah’s age and Berlin hated the little bastard for it. And he was still hiding something, Berlin thought, but it wasn’t about the missing girls so should he even care?
Derek was staring up at him, eyes unblinking. Berlin suddenly hated himself. He turned back to Roberts who was leaning in the kitchen doorway, watching. ‘You can have a word, Bob, I’ll have a bit of a poke around.’
As he walked into the tiny kitchen he heard Roberts behind him asking, ‘Did you ever own a dog, Derek?’
The flats probably dated back to the 1930s and the kitchen was quite possibly original, going by the cracked and flyspecked tiles, the flyscreen doors on a couple of the cupboards and the geriatric enamel and cast-iron Early Kooka gas stove sitting against the wall. A couple of blowflies were busy buzzing around an overflowing rubbish bin by the back door. There was a greasy film covering the window over the sink and every other surface that Berlin could see. Would this have been his life if he hadn’t met Rebecca? he wondered.
Back in the living room, Roberts had taken a chair from the table and was straddling it as he questioned Jones, who was still on the couch. Berlin ignored them as he walked into the single bedroom. The futon was under a window that was covered with a blanket pinned to the wooden window frame. There was no wardrobe and clothes were piled on the floor in a corner next to an old typewriter. A lamp near the bed had a red scarf draped over the shade, which Berlin guessed made Derek a bit of a romantic. That notion was quickly dispelled by the bottle of baby oil and roll of toilet paper on the other side. Berlin used the tip of a shoe to lift a corner of the futon but there was nothing underneath. He decided against lifting a corner of the grubby quilt that covered the futon.
The bathroom was the same vintage as the kitchen and equally unpleasant. Black and white tiles on the floor and walls, bathtub with a shower head over it, toilet with a wooden seat and a cracked bowl, hand basin with a flyspecked mirror mounted over it. On the ledge by the window a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste rested upright in a grimy drinking glass. A Gillette safety razor, a can of shaving foam and a styptic pencil sat together in a dried up puddle of soap. The tiles over the bath were cracked and separating from the wall and there was a strong smell of mildew. A nasty brown stain surrounded the plug-hole in the bath, though the condition of the rest of the old enamel tub wasn’t much better. Berlin wondered where Derek kept the soap and shampoo, or if he had any.