St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(77)

‘I’m not sure what you’re driving at.’

‘What I’m driving at Bob is that you’re looking but you’re not seeing. Pete said doing that could get a bloke dead quick smart on the Track.’

‘Fair enough, but we’re not on the bloody Kokoda Track, are we? We’re in a shitty little St Kilda flat with some dead arsehole cluttering up the kitchen and all the evidence we need on a plate.’

‘That’s right, it’s all right there, served up on a plate. But humour me, take a good look around the kitchen and tell me what you see, apart from the dead arsehole.’

Roberts shook his head as he walked across the living room to the kitchen doorway and glanced in.

‘Fridge, stove, cupboards, kettle, teapot, cups, rubbish bin that needs emptying and all the usual stuff. It’s a bloody kitchen, Charlie.’

What’s on the sink?’

‘A plate, a knife and fork. And a bottle of tomato sauce.’

‘And on the stove?’

‘A kettle, like I said. Jesus, mate, what are you getting at?’

Berlin could hear the exasperation but he kept pushing. ‘Anything besides the kettle? Take a good look.’

Roberts stepped into the kitchen. ‘Yeah, there’s a baking dish with a pie or pastie or something in a paper bag. But I’m still not following, I’m afraid.’

‘Okay, there’s a cupboard over the sink that’s half open. Have a look inside, right down the back. Just don’t touch anything. I want to get the fingerprint boys in here. Then come back in here and have a look at the glass on the table.’

Roberts opened the cupboard and looked in then walked back into the living room and across to the table. ‘Right’oh, Charlie, it’s a glass, same as the one in the back of the cupboard. He had a whisky or maybe several. Half a bottle of that stuff should be enough to numb you up for the next step.’

‘Smell it, Bob.’

‘What?’

‘Smell the glass on the table, but don’t touch it.’

Roberts bent down and took a sniff. He shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘That’s right, Bob, nothing. There’s a whole lot of nothing here that should probably be telling us something. Think about it for a moment. You said it yourself, we’ve got everything on a plate.’

Berlin waited as Roberts ran through the sequence of events. He spoke to himself softly, ticking items off. ‘Okay, we’ve got a typed, unsigned murder confession and the nasty photos needed to corroborate it, a couple of freshly washed glasses and a dinner plate and some eating irons on the sink.’

‘And?’

Roberts was smiling now, looking at Berlin and nodding his head. ‘And we have the dead body of a bloke who brought himself a pastie home for tea. He sticks his dinner in the oven to warm it up and gets himself a plate and a knife and fork and some tomato sauce.’

‘That’s right, it’s all happy families, if the family lives in a pigsty. But then he decides to skip tea and kill himself instead. He opens a brand new bottle of whisky, drinks most of it, types a suicide note in a fit of remorse but forgets to sign it, then washes his glass sparkling clean, which must have been a first, given the state of this place. And for good measure he washes up a second glass and sticks it in the back of a cupboard. Then when everything’s all neat and tidy he takes his nice warm pastie out of the oven to make space for him to stick his head in instead.’

‘I guess you’re not buying it then, Charlie.’

‘Not the note, Bob, and not the suicide, not by a long chalk. Even back when I was a drinking man, three quarters of a bottle of that rot-gut would have left me legless. I doubt young Derek would have been able to crawl to the kitchen, let alone figure out which was the right knob to turn on the gas to the oven.’

‘And you think if someone else was here we’ll find fingerprints?’

‘Probably not. Not on the typewriter or the sink or stove or the clean glasses. But whoever put that glass to the back of the cupboard to hide it would have had to move the others out of the way to do it, so we might just get lucky.’

‘So you think there’s a chance Gudrun Scheiner isn’t at the bottom of the Bay?’

‘I’m not sure, and I hope not, but I don’t think we should wrap this up in a neat little bow just yet. And I definitely don’t want anyone saying anything to Gudrun’s father till we know for sure. I’ll hang onto this photograph of Gudrun for the moment.’

‘That’s not going to be easy, Charlie. Keeping it quiet, I mean.’

Berlin picked up a blank piece of quarto paper and inserted it into the typewriter carriage. ‘The suicide note and the rest of those photos go into your folder and no one else gets to hear about them. For now it looks like Derek was going to write a note before bumping himself off but didn’t get round to it. Lean on the constable who called you and make sure the doctor and the photographer are in and out quick and convince them it’s just a suicide, nothing more. Same goes for the fingerprint bods.’

‘That’s a bloody big ask.’ Roberts was at the window by the trunk with the record player on top. He was looking out through the bamboo blind. ‘And there’s a couple of reporters out there amongst the gawkers.’

‘From what I hear around the traps, Bob, and from what you’ve been telling me, you can organise pretty much anything. So if you really do have friends in high places, or have any kind of favours owed to you because you know where certain bodies are buried or who’s rooting someone they shouldn’t, now might be just the time to call them in.’