St Kilda Blues (3 page)

The telegram said the paratrooper had died on active service but the reality was a little different. The cafe 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.

The village was preparing for its VE Day celebrations and it had taken the telegram delivery boy a good fifteen minutes to get his bicycle through the crowds and out on the road to the farm. The farmer had accepted the envelope at the door and the delivery boy, peddling furiously, had gone barely 100 yards before the wailing started inside the farmhouse. The war would be officially over the following day and the delivery lad hoped it would be the last of those damned notifications he would ever have to hand over.

Back inside the farmhouse the boy had no real idea of what was happening but he sensed that things were about to change. He made his way up the narrow stairs, away from the couple sitting at the rough kitchen table, the farmer staring silently up at the ceiling beams, his wife sobbing into her apron. The boy closed the bedroom door to shut out the noise and folded back the battered and stained straw-filled mattress on which he slept. There was an oilcloth–wrapped package under the mattress, left there by the paratrooper on his last visit home. He had shown the boy the contents of the package and instructed him never to touch it. But it seemed that he was dead now and that meant the boy could take whatever he wanted.

After placing the package on the bed, the boy carefully unfolded the wrapping. He ignored the heavy Luger pistol, the French and Dutch banknotes, the condoms and pornographic postcards, and went straight for the dagger. The gun and the money didn't interest him, and neither did the postcards as he had seen the images they portrayed played out in reality many, many times in his mother's little flat in London. The dagger was his favourite.

It was quite beautiful – the handle black and shiny, the double-edged blade chromed, the sheath of highly polished leather with a sharpening stone in a separate pouch. It was a dress dagger, meant for ceremonial use rather than combat, but it was Solingen steel and the paratrooper had carefully honed the edges of the blade till they were like a razor. There were letters embossed on the blade but they were in German and the boy could barely read English. The dagger had been taken from an SS captain cut almost in two by a burst of machine-gun fire. As they lay together in the bed the paratrooper, smoking and staring at the ceiling, had described in intimate detail to the boy the brutal effect of the bullets on the SS captain's body. The boy had listened intently and once again felt that strange heat between his legs.

It was good that the paratrooper was dead, he decided, because now the dagger was his. If the paratrooper had come back and discovered the nick on the edge of the blade and the small flecks of blood on the sheath he might have been angry. The boy knew he was probably too small to kill a full-grown man with a knife, let alone a trained paratrooper, but he might have done it with the German pistol. He would have had to kill the farmer and his wife then, of course, and burning down the house would have taken care of any evidence against him. But now with the paratrooper dead and gone he was safe.

The blood flecks on the sheath had come from the barn cat and the nick on the blade had happened when the boy killed a calf on a neighbouring farm. He had wanted to lick the cat's blood off the blade but couldn't quite work up the nerve to do it. With the calf it had been easier, the taste salty and not unpleasant, and even just remembering the animal's frantic struggling and its terrified bellowing always brought the joyful heat back to his loins.

Leaving the dagger on the floor, he rewrapped the other items and slid the package back under the mattress. He opened the battered kitbag he had carried all the way from London and found the hidden slit in the bag's inner fabric lining. The dagger in its sheath fitted neatly into the slit and he worked it down under the fabric to the bottom then under the piece of plywood that gave the bag a solid base. The dagger was safe for now.

Through the floorboards he could still hear the farmer's wife sobbing. He decided to wait. He would sit on the bed and wait to see what would happen. Things would change, he knew that much. He swung his legs backwards and forwards. He thought about the cat and then the calf. The calf was bigger and its struggle to live more pronounced. The calf was better.

Berlin stopped on the driveway to tell Rebecca he'd most likely be gone for the rest of the day. She brushed his hair back off his forehead and gave him a kiss.

‘You take care of yourself, okay?' she said.

Bob Roberts smiled at her and put out his hand.

‘I'll look out for him Rebecca, don't you worry.'

Rebecca ignored the outstretched hand and gave Roberts a look that Berlin hoped would never be sent in his direction.

‘Coming from you Bob, that's not all that much of a reassurance.'

The two men stopped on the nature strip beside the Triumph. The duco and chrome work shone in the morning sun and the tyres looked like they were freshly blacked. There were leather bucket seats for the driver and front passenger but not a lot of leg room. A glance showed Berlin that what passed for a back seat would have been impossibly cramped for anyone except maybe a child, and cars like these weren't made for people with children. The cramped space was currently home to a stack of buff-coloured, foolscap-sized folders.

‘Nice car. Looks brand new.'

Roberts grinned and for a brief moment Berlin saw twenty years fall away, saw him without the scarring and the calculating look that always seemed to be in his eyes now.

‘I drove her right off the bloody showroom floor, not even five miles on the clock. Alice needed the Chrysler to drive the kids around and I had to have something. She's got some real grunt, Charlie, let me tell you. Six cylinders, twenty-five hundred CCs and fuel injection. You can't beat a big donk. You should have never gotten rid of the old Studebaker, you know that.'

The Studebaker was gone because Peter had run it off the road on the first day he'd held his driver's licence. He hadn't asked before taking the car. The bloke from the motor wreckers handed over ten quid and grumbled that he should be charging them for hauling it away. Berlin had told anyone who asked that the car had blown its engine and wasn't worth fixing. The sports car parked in his driveway right now was definitely worth a lot.

‘Must have cost you a bomb.'

Roberts was using his handkerchief to remove a smudge from the chromed windscreen surround. ‘Not really. Some of the blokes put me onto a dealer who's amenable to doing coppers a favour.'

‘Amenable' wasn't exactly the kind of word Berlin had expected from Roberts.

‘I'm hoping you mean a car dealer.'

Roberts shook his head. ‘Same old Charlie, eh? Let me know when you need a new car and I'll see that you get taken care of.' He glanced past Berlin at the Datsun parked in the driveway. ‘And it will be something better than that bloody Jap crap, believe me. Who the hell calls a car a Bluebird anyway? Now, you want me to go through some of these case files?'

Berlin shook his head. ‘Let's go over to the Scheiner girl's home first, have a chat with her old man. And then we should take a look at that discotheque where she was last seen.'

Roberts opened the driver's side door. ‘That's the first thing you ever taught me. The scene of the crime is usually where most of the answers are.'

Berlin opened the passenger door and climbed into the seat. At least it wasn't quite as low to the ground as Rebecca's Mini and there was marginally more leg room. The gear lever stuck up from the hump between the seats and the instruments were fitted neatly into a shiny lacquered wood-grain dashboard. Shiny lacquered wood-grain dashboards seemed to be the hallmark of all quality English motor vehicles.

Roberts slid into the driver's seat and tilted his head back in Rebecca's direction. ‘You think she's ever going to get off my bloody back?'

‘Jesus Christ, Bob, you're pushing forty and the girl's what, nineteen, twenty?'

‘She's twenty-one in June and we're in love, Charlie. We were meant to be together, it's karma.'

What the hell was karma?
Berlin wondered. ‘You've got a wife and kids, that's who you're meant to be with, looking after them.'

‘Things change, Charlie, people change, times change. We can't all be you.'

If you really knew me you wouldn't want to be me
, Berlin said to himself.

‘You heard much from the kids yet?'

Berlin realised Roberts was trying to move the subject away from his love life.

‘Sarah called from Athens airport before they got on the plane for Tel Aviv. Sounded like she was full of beans. Peter writes to his mum pretty regularly.'

Rebecca sometimes read parts from Peter's letters out loud and Berlin knew she left out any bits that she thought would worry him. And he knew from experience that Peter would have left out the parts that he knew would worry his mother. Berlin had done this himself, telling his fiancée and his grandfather about life on the airfield in England and their training flights, leaving out any mention of the terror of his repeated missions into the hell that was the night sky over German-occupied Europe. From his letters they would never have known he was flying operations, piloting his Lancaster time and again into anti-aircraft fire and night fighters and searchlights. They found out when they received the telegram that said he was posted missing and then later listed as a POW.

‘You reckon Peter's safe over there? Vietnam, I mean. Never really saw him as the army type, myself.'

‘It was his choice.' But it hadn't really been that much of a choice for the boy: six months behind the bluestone walls of Pentridge for breaking and entering and a criminal record for life or, as a favour to his father for his long and faithful service in the police force, a way out by joining the army. Surprisingly, it was Peter who had first suggested the idea. More surprising still, Rebecca had agreed with the boy. She pointed out that the possibility of being conscripted was already looming and as a volunteer he would probably have more options for a trade than a national serviceman who was called up.

So Berlin had made his case privately to the magistrate, who was sympathetic and agreed to give Peter the option. Berlin had warned the boy to pick a trade like mechanical engineering when he went in and under no circumstances volunteer for the infantry, which would almost certainly mean combat. The little bugger had of course ignored him and was now carrying a rifle somewhere in South Vietnam.

‘They reckon a bit of time in the military can make a man out of a kid. You hold with that?' Roberts asked.

‘It's what they reckon. Bob'
The military makes corpses of a lot of people too
, Berlin thought, but he didn't say that. ‘Let's get moving, shall we, it's a fair hike to Brighton and I've got the feeling you're dying to show me just what this car can do.'

Roberts started the Triumph. He revved the engine twice and then let it settle at idle. Berlin could feel the power of the rumbling engine through his feet pressed against the firewall.

They sent the boy back to London within a month of VE Day and the arrival of the telegram at the farm. His mother was ill with untreated venereal disease and in no condition to take care of him, so he was given into care. He was passed from hand to hand, home to home, orphanage to orphanage and into situations of abuse that ranged from benign neglect to physical and sexual violence. While the overt and constant brutality of the war was now gone, there was anger and shame and bitterness amongst the civilian population from loss of loved ones, and for those who had seen combat a loss of innocence and sometimes with it a loss of compassion and caring.

When the boy was selected to go to Australia as a child migrant he neither understood nor cared exactly what that meant. In yet another hand-me-down overcoat and struggling with the weight and size of his kitbag he had stumbled up the gangplank of a liner that had been converted to a troopship in 1940 and, at war's end, converted back. It would be the boy's home for six weeks and would take him and three dozen other lucky children like him to a promised glorious new life Down Under.

All ships become a world unto themselves once the lines are cast off. Though they were supposed to be chaperoned and guarded, the children were already running wild before the coast of England had disappeared behind them. The adult guardians set about meeting those who would be their travelling companions over the next month and a half, while the children quickly formed themselves into gangs.

The biggest gang was led by a twelve-year-old name Mavis, who quickly instituted a reign of terror on the smaller gangs and weaker children. Mavis had excellent manners combined with rat-cunning, and her ‘yes sir's, ‘no ma'am's and simpering, wide-eyed smiles helped to quickly ingratiate the girl with the grown-ups. She was appointed the de facto den mother to the whole group, which freed up the adults to entertain themselves and gave her even more power over the other children.

They were three days from the equator when it happened. It was hot now, hotter than any summer in England and the children and adults were wearing as little as they could get away with. The poorly ventilated cabins onboard the old ship were like ovens, night and day. At night the passengers slept out on deck or in the lifeboats to escape the heat and spent their days in deckchairs in whatever shade could be found. While they complained and sweated and fanned themselves, the children ran wild and made the ship their own little jungle.

Mavis instituted games in secret areas of the ship where pornographic graffiti from the troopship days still covered hidden bulkheads. Her favourite game was Doctors and Nurses, the girls having to show what was hidden inside their droopy grey cotton underpants while the boys were taunted to lower theirs. Up till now the boy had managed to avoid these games. Perhaps it was his quietness and something in his eyes that made the others wary of him. But that wariness only made him a challenge to Mavis.

It happened on a Tuesday, just after ten in the morning. The sun was already blistering, the flaking white paint over the rusty metal of the ship almost too hot to touch. The adult passengers were sprawled in deckchairs or in the shade of the starboard side of the ship, sleeping off the stodgy breakfast or the overindulgence of the previous night. An attempt at lessons had been abandoned by the schoolteacher, who was more interested in pursuing her affair with the ship's doctor. For once the children themselves were too exhausted by the heat to run riot, and lay about the ship, sleeping or reading, playing with dolls or with cap guns that had long run out of ammunition. The ship's stewards had disappeared soon after breakfast and now there were no crew members to be found.

The boy was barefoot, wearing elastic-waisted shorts and a sing­let. Initially the children had been forced to put on socks and sandals after the morning wash but that policy had soon been abandoned. He had raced up the scorching steel steps of the companionway to the cooler wooden decking on the next level and it was there that Mavis trapped him. She was barefoot too, wearing a short floral sundress with a matching ribbon in her hair. At twelve she was taller than him, though he was more solid, and under his once-white singlet his upper body was well muscled.

She had him backed into a corner. She didn't know or understand the word ‘humiliation', though that was what she was looking for – that and tears.

‘I'm not wearing any underpants,' she said. ‘Do you want to look?' She lifted up the front of her dress.

The boy's eyes didn't leave hers.

‘You can stick your finger in it if you want. It smells funny.'

There was no response. She dropped the front of the dress. ‘I sho­wed you mine, so that means you have to show me yours.'

The boy didn't move, didn't respond. If Mavis had been paying attention however she would have seen his hands tighten into fists.

‘You don't have to be shy, I've seen all the boys' willies already.' She leaned in closer, all pretence that it was a game now over. ‘You'd better show me, or . . .'

‘Or what?'

She couldn't remember ever having heard him speak before. His voice sounded odd, cold. But she still didn't sense danger. ‘Or I'll hurt you so you cry, that's what. Now show me.'

The boy shook his head slowly.

Mavis lunged forward and grasped his baggy shorts by the pockets, pulling them down, taking his underpants down with them. She stood up and laughed. ‘You've got a little willie, you've got a little willie! I'm going to tell everyone.'

The shove was hard and fast, unexpected, her feet went out from under her and she was falling. There were only a dozen steps on the metal companionway but her head hit three of them on the way down. She lay on the deck at the bottom of the stairs, head twisted, legs splayed and dress pulled back, thighs and belly on display. Her eyes were closed and blood, bright red against her white English skin, trickled from her ears and nose.

He stood at the top of the companionway, shorts and underpants still round his ankles, staring down at the girl. His eyes, ignoring the exposed sex, fixed on the bright red blood marking her face.

He looked down at his bare belly, feeling the familiar heat and something else, something new.

‘Look at me now, Mavis, look at me. It's not so little now, is it, Mavis?'