St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(83)

When Rebecca had finally judged it was dark enough she’d opened the shutter on the lens and left it open. Berlin covered the front of the lens with his piece of black card. As Rebecca walked through the church finding the predetermined spots to fire her flash without being seen by the camera, Berlin waited. He counted the flashes out loud as they were fired, ticking each one off on the reference sheet Rebecca had prepared to keep track.

There was still just enough streetlight through the cathedral’s stained-glass windows for Berlin to make Rebecca out. When she was hidden behind a pillar or a pew and he confirmed she was invisible to the camera she would yell out, ‘Ready, Charlie?’ and then, ‘Flash!’ At ‘Ready, Charlie?’ Berlin would lift his piece of cardboard clear of the lens and turn his head aside, his eyes tightly closed. Even so, the incredibly bright light of the bulb firing on the word ‘flash’ would still glow red through his eyelids. With his pupils widely dilated in the dim light of the cathedral, looking directly at the flash would have blinded him for a minute or two until his pupils slowly opened up and he could see again.

That was how he had first seen Rebecca, he remembered, as a vision slowly materialising out of the darkness some twenty years earlier. He had been standing in the wreckage of a railway pay office in Wodonga not long after its ransacking by an armed gang. At the time he knew and understood he was also standing in the potential wreckage of his own career. Some things never change, he decided.

Back then, as he’d bent down to scoop up and pocket the paymaster’s abandoned pistol from the floor, there was a noise from the doorway. He’d looked up and right into Rebecca’s camera flash as she took a photograph of him and there was that blinding light and then just darkness.

‘Ready, Charlie? Flash.’

He put the card back in front of the lens and leaned down to tick off the exposure. He shouted, ‘Eleven.’ Ticking off each flash exposure was a mindless task and Berlin was glad of it. It was good to have a little time to not think. The suspension and possible loss of his job was on his mind. Was he suspended without pay? They hadn’t said. There was no money in the shots they were taking tonight but Rebecca had plenty of paying work lined up, she had told him.

‘Ready, Charlie? Flash.’

‘Twelve.’

In the Wodonga pay office his vision had come back slowly and he still could recall that first sight of Rebecca. She’d been slightly tanned, with shoulder-length, dark auburn hair, full lips and prominent cheekbones. Probably in her mid-twenties, he’d decided, and quite beautiful. She had a canvas satchel slung over her shoulder and was wearing high-waisted, loose-fitting trousers with a matching jacket, and a figure-hugging argyle jumper underneath. Berlin had never liked trousers on a woman but Rebecca had changed his mind on that over time. She had changed his mind on a lot of things.

‘Ready, Charlie? Flash.’

‘Thirteen.’

‘Ready, Charlie? Flash.’

‘Fourteen.’

After starting work at the Collins Street studio Rebecca had met the advertising and commercial photographers in the area, including many German and other European Jews who had settled in Melbourne either before or after the war. While the local photographers generally had a dismissive attitude to women, the Europeans seemed more open and welcoming. The St Paul’s photography was part of an ongoing privately funded project Rebecca had been invited to join that was documenting the rapidly changing face of Melbourne in photographs.

‘Ready, Charlie? Flash.’

‘Fifteen.’

Though the cathedral itself was under no threat, many beautiful and historic buildings constructed in the gold rush days were being demolished as the city raced to become ‘modern’ and ‘international’. Scaffolding emblazoned with banners announcing ‘Whelan the Wrecker Is Here’, the sound of jackhammers and the sight of billowing clouds of dust and fleets of dump trucks were becoming a new symbol of Melbourne.

‘Ready, Charlie? Flash.’

‘Sixteen.’

Rebecca had started at the far end of the church and had been slowly working her way back towards him, flash by flash. Her voice came out of the darkness somewhere to his right.

‘Lauren was pretty upset after she heard you get the news about Derek from that young copper. Are you ready? Here we go again. Flash.’

Berlin waited ten seconds before opening his eyes. ‘That’s number seventeen and I’m pretty sure Lauren can cry on that young copper’s shoulder any time she wants. Anyway, she told me she didn’t like him – Derek, I mean. Said he was a shit. They only went out once and he was all over her, trying to race her off.’

‘Ready, Charlie? Flash.’

‘Eighteen.’

He could just make her out as she crossed to the other side of the church, the shadowy, almost empty basket in one hand and a glint of light coming from the chromed flash unit held in the other. Her voice echoed in the cold, empty darkness of the cathedral.

‘She told me that too but she also said there was something a bit odd about it.’

‘Him trying to race her off? Like what?’

She was out of sight behind a heavy curtain now and her voice was slightly muffled. Berlin had to strain to hear what she was saying. ‘Well, he was all over her, grabbing and stuff, but she said she got the feeling it was a bit like he was sort of just going through the motions, like he thought he should, like he had a reputation to live up to. Here we go, Charlie. Flash.’