St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(81)

The doorbell rang but the two men stayed still, facing each other.

‘Mr Scheiner, there is evidence and a confession and a strong case to be made for reaching that conclusion, but I’m not convinced. Something still worries me but I could be wrong, totally wrong. I don’t want to give you false hope and that may be all I’m doing. I don’t know.’

The doorbell rang again and there was an insistent knocking on the door. Berlin decided to open it before they broke the glass.

The senior officer had his cap under his arm. His uniform had polished silver buttons and braid and service ribbons. Berlin recognised him from several official events he had been unable to avoid attending and from those press conferences where credit and praise for the good work of the force was on offer and needed to be humbly accepted.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘DS Berlin. I’m with the fraud squad. Sir.’ The pause before he added the word ‘sir’ would have come under the heading of dumb insolence in his air force days.

The senior officer turned and looked over his shoulder. There were two more officers behind him with more silver buttons and braid, and behind them a policewoman. ‘They said this was taken care of.’

There was a cold, hard edge to the statement and Berlin saw that the two officers understood the message. One of them nodded. ‘It will be, sir, don’t worry. Outside, Berlin, and right bloody now.’

He had to wait for the two officers and the policewoman to go past before he could leave. The policewoman closed the door behind him. Dragging a policewoman along always meant they were delivering bad news. Crying women they could cope with but the possibility of a man in tears always made coppers uncomfortable.

Outside on the street Berlin saw the green Triumph and Bob Roberts standing next to a pale blue divisional van. He had a plain-clothes officer on either side of him. Roberts opened his hands palm out and shook his head. He was handcuffed. The two plain-clothes officers straightened up as Berlin approached. One of them stepped forward and held his hand up in front of Berlin’s chest.

‘You can get f*cked.’ Berlin said it softly but he meant it. The plain-clothes officer lowered his hand.

Bob Roberts grinned. ‘No sweat, Charlie, no need to monster the boys, they’re just going through the motions, like the monkeys at Ashton’s Circus. We’ll have all this sorted in a couple of hours, trust me.’

Berlin picked the older of the two plain-clothes detectives. ‘Can I have a word with Sergeant Roberts, in private?’

The detective folded his arms. ‘You just told my mate to get f*cked, what do you reckon?’

‘C’mon, Len, don’t be like that.’ Bob Roberts’ tone was surprisingly conciliatory, Berlin thought. ‘Charlie here’s a good bloke and it’s not like he said anything offensive like get f*cked you snivelling little prick which he could have. And I promise not to run away and make you chase me. I can’t be fairer than that. And I can get you a good deal on a new Holden, or a Ford if you’re the kind of dill who drives one of those.’

The detective unfolded his arms. ‘You’re a strange bugger, Roberts, but you can have two minutes. And if you try to run I’ll bloody shoot you and that’s a promise.’ He pushed his jacket aside to show the butt of a revolver before stepping to the front of the van.

Roberts lifted up his handcuffed hands. ‘Smokes and lighter are in my jacket pocket.’

Berlin found the cigarettes and lit one for Roberts.

‘Hang on to the lighter for me would you, Charlie? Lots of crooks down at the remand centre if they take me there. And I don’t just mean the crims.’

Berlin put the lighter in his pocket. ‘What’s going on?’

Roberts took a deep drag on his cigarette. ‘I tried to keep a lid on things for as long as I could but stuff is happening and people at Russell Street are skittish. That first uniform on the scene at Derek’s place went running to Tony Selden, the little shit. The bastards were all over me before I could talk to anyone senior or hide the confession and the photographs. I tried to head them off and get to Scheiner first but they beat me here. Sorry mate.’

‘Berlin, here, now!’

The voice came from Scheiner’s driveway. The senior officer with the braid and buttons was lighting a cigarette. He didn’t offer Berlin one when he walked up.

‘Just what the f*ck are you playing at, Berlin? You were told to stay at home and keep your nose out of things that weren’t your concern.’

‘I was on the case and I thought Scheiner had a right to know we weren’t certain.’

The officer leaned in close to Berlin’s face. ‘What case were you on exactly? This was Tony Selden’s case from the off and he’s the bastard who’ll get all the glory. And we weren’t certain? Who the f*ck is this we? We, us, the police, have a confession. We also have photographs of the missing girls taken by the kidnapper, no thanks to you and your mate Roberts. In fact we have all the evidence we need and we are satisfied. This case is closed.’

Berlin looked around at Bob Roberts in handcuffs then back to the house where Scheiner was getting almost the worst news of his life. He knew he couldn’t let it go. ‘We don’t have any bodies, apart from the Marquet girl, and you know what was done to her. If there is any chance young Gudrun or any of the others are still alive we owe it to them to keep searching.’