St Kilda Blues (5 page)

It was a lascar sent up from the galley to dump breakfast scraps over the side who found the unconscious girl. Terrified that he would be accused of rape, he pulled her dress down to cover the exposed belly and thighs before raising the alarm. Crewmen gently carried the girl into the sickbay and put her onto a hospital bed, the sheets still rumpled and warm from a hasty post-breakfast assignation between the doctor and the children's tutor. The doctor's examination of the unconscious girl was already half done before he realised he needed to button up his fly.

The ship's doctor was young, just out of medical school and out of his depth. He was having trouble juggling three ongoing affairs with passengers as well as coping with multiple cases of seasickness and heatstroke. He diagnosed Mavis as having a concussion and privately hoped it was nothing more serious, as both he and the sickbay were poorly equipped to cope with a major injury.

The children were gathered together in the ship's library and given a stern lecture by the captain on the dangers of running and playing on his ship. A young girl was in the sickbay right now and very ill because of silly behaviour, he explained, and such behaviour would not be tolerated. The ship's crew would be watching them now, he warned, and woe betide anyone who was brought before him for skylarking or causing mischief.

The doctor monitored the girl constantly, leaving the sickbay only for meals and furtive sexual encounters with one of his paramours – and several days later to join in the Crossing the Line celebrations when the ship passed over the equator. The crew created a temporary swimming pool out of canvas on the lower deck and a throne for King Neptune, the ship's cook in a false beard with a cardboard crown and plywood trident, who would preside over the ceremony. His helpers, two stokers playing mermaids in long wigs, grass skirts and coconut-shell bras, cheerfully dunked all passengers and crew who were first-timers at crossing the equator. The doctor was one of those inducted and, sadly, while he was frolicking amongst the passengers and admiring the erect nipples the cold sea water produced amongst the females in swimming attire, young Mavis, left all alone in her sickbay bed, silently passed away.

She has gone to be with the angels, the guardians told the other children the next morning, while a crewman set up a film projector in the library to show silent black and white cartoons even older than the ship. With the children occupied in the library, the adults gathered near the stern of the ship to sing hymns and hear prayers from the captain before Mavis's body, sewn into a cotton canvas shroud and weighted down with broken gears from the engine room, was consigned to the deep.

The boy had slipped away from the library and he watched the funeral service from an upper deck, spreadeagled and peering down over the lip of the deck. No one noticed that he was gone from the library, just as no one had noticed when he slipped away from King Neptune and his court to smother Mavis with a pillow in the sickbay. Earlier that morning the doctor, irritated by repeated questions about the girl's prognosis and hoping to shut people up had confidently predicted that Mavis would soon be wide-awake and well and talking. That was something the boy knew he just couldn't risk happening.

Berlin stood up. ‘I think now is probably a good time to see Gudrun's bedroom, if that's okay, Vera.'

Vera led them across the living room to a wide hallway and a flight of carpeted stairs. Berlin stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Do you think I could trouble you for that cup of coffee now, if it's not too much bother? We shouldn't be long up there.'

‘Of course, Mr Berlin, I'll put the percolator on. Gudrun's bedroom is at the top of the stairs, to the right.'

Berlin smiled when he entered the bedroom. He thought of Sarah and her bedroom at home. Both bedrooms, he realised right now, only held memories of their occupants. Gudrun's bedroom was almost totally white and was furnished in what he recognised as a reproduction Queen Anne style – very feminine and totally at odds with the look of the rest of the house. Vera had said the girl's father found it hard to refuse his daughter anything and Berlin knew exactly how that felt.

He looked around. It was a big room and held a double bed that he thought was quite an extravagance for a fifteen-year-old. There were two wardrobes filled with a range of colourful clothes, and a study table with a desk lamp and chair. Photographs, notes, letters and postcards were pinned on a corkboard above the table.

Sarah was only a couple of years older than Gudrun but Berlin recognised a marked difference between the girls' bedrooms. There were a number of dolls strewn about and Berlin recalled Sarah gathering up all of what she called her ‘kids' toys' on her fourteenth birthday and distributing them to the families in the street with younger children and inconsistent incomes.

Berlin sensed that Roberts, leaning in the doorway, was watching him. ‘I'm trying to work out who she is, trying to get a sense of her and what she might do or what she might have done.'

‘You're being bloody wasted in the fraud squad, that's what I told them.'

Berlin walked across to sliding glass doors opening out onto a small, cast iron Juliet balcony. The balcony might have been small but the backyard it overlooked was quite expansive, and in this neighbourhood that much land wouldn't have come cheap. It looked like the block extended right through to the next street, with the same seven-foot stone wall on every side.

At the far end of the property there was a tennis court and, closer to the house, a swimming pool. Berlin could see a small structure that probably housed the pumping equipment for the pool and also seemed to be a changing area of some sort. Right outside the back of the house there was a paved terrace. The terrace looked like it could handle a party for fifty people without things getting too crowded and there was a large brick barbecue with a space for storing firewood underneath it. The sound of the wood chopping was coming from an area just to the right of the barbecue. A tall man with his back to the house was swinging the axe. Berlin watched as he picked up a sawn log and placed it upright on a thick stump.

The man was wearing overalls and a light jacket, holding the axe in leather-gloved hands. He had a good stance, feet wide apart, and his hips moved fluidly into the downward swing. The swing itself was awkward, the left arm slightly stiff, but the log still split neatly into two pieces under the impact of the axe head. Brute force or finesse, you took your pick when chopping wood, Berlin knew. Same went for interviewing suspects or even bombing the Third Reich. The Yanks went in by day, claiming pinpoint accuracy with the famed Norden bombsights on their B-17s, and at night RAF Lancasters and Halifaxes dumped their bombloads on the Pathfinder's coloured target markers glowing in the darkness, or an already blazing inferno that was hopefully a railway marshalling yard or oil refinery, or a Messerschmitt or panzer factory.

The man picked up one of the halved logs and halved it again. Then he did the same to the other piece. A bored-looking police constable was leaning against the barbecue, watching him. For a moment Berlin thought he saw something familiar in the woodchopper but then dismissed the idea. He turned back from the window.

‘There's a uniform downstairs watching the girl's father chop wood. By my count there are close to half a dozen coppers hanging about this place who could be out looking for her.'

Roberts was still leaning against the doorjamb with his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘Nothing to do with me. I heard the blokes at the top wanted a . . . a “visible presence” was how they put it, to reassure the girl's old man so Selden obliged.'

‘I doubt he's going to be reassured all that much. His daughter is missing and he's got five fit police officers cluttering up his house, drinking his coffee, eating his biscuits and reading his magazines.'

‘They thought he might get a phone call, if it's a kidnapping for ransom, I mean. Scheiner's worth a few quid and everyone knows it. They took that Thorne kid up in Sydney after his father was in the papers for winning the Opera House lottery, remember?'

Berlin remembered. Every parent with a young child at the time remembered. The eight-year-old boy, Graeme, had been found dead six or seven weeks later, killed not long after he was taken. His killer was in Long Bay jail serving a life sentence and the newspapers had stopped publishing the names and addresses of lottery winners.

‘You think this is about ransom, Bob?'

‘Probably not.'

‘Me neither.'

Berlin scanned the room again. Something in the jumbled mess of the corkboard caught his attention and he crossed the room. It was a newspaper cutting, a photograph, held at the very bottom of the board by a brass drawing pin. He leaned in for a better look. It showed two young girls smiling at the camera in a very dark space. The photographer had used flash, and fall-off had left the rest of the room underexposed. Rebecca had taught him about flash fall-off. The caption underneath read, ‘On the scene at Opus.' Berlin unpinned the clipping. He glanced into the waste paper basket next to the desk hoping to find the paper the clipping came from, but it was empty.

‘That the friend from round the corner, Rosemary?'

Roberts nodded. ‘Selden's boys got a better picture of Gudrun from Vera, the one I showed you, so apparently no one bothered grabbing that one.'

The girl suited the room, Berlin decided after studying the picture for a moment. She was as tall as her friend, but that was the only similarity. Rosemary was a pretty enough girl but the lift of her chin and tilt of her head showed she was posing for the camera, or the cameraman, trying to look grown-up and worldly, sophisticated. Gudrun's smile was different – open, guileless; the smile of a happy young girl just pleased to have been chosen to have her picture taken.

Berlin handed the clipping to Roberts, who slipped it into his folder. ‘I'll have a talk with her old man now.'

Downstairs in the kitchen, the electric coffee percolator was burping away and Vera had cups ready on the bench.

It was good coffee. Berlin sipped it from a nice china cup, watching the flash of the axe head rising and falling against a bright blue sky through the kitchen window. This was one bit he didn't miss: talking with the fathers, especially when it was about daughters, and as usual he found himself putting it off for as long as he could. It was never, ever long enough.

There was a folded copy of the morning paper on the kitchen counter. He remembered the weather forecast had said to expect a nice day. In Melbourne, people knew never to trust the weather forecast.

The constable leaning on the barbecue looked up when Berlin and Roberts walked out onto the terrace. Roberts pointed a finger at him and then flicked his thumb sideways to indicate his presence wasn't wanted. The constable put on his cap and walked past them back into the kitchen. The axe continued to flash up and down, the split wood tossed onto the ever-growing pile. Summer was coming and right now there was enough split wood stacked up to keep the living room fireplace and the outdoor barbecue blazing day and night until winter came back round again.

Berlin could hear the throb of a pump from the pool house, the chirruping of small birds in the trees and from a neighbouring backyard the sound of children playing. Life goes on. Life always goes on, he knew. Life was a bastard like that.

He watched the axeman, watched his awkward swing, and that disquieting feeling that he knew him from somewhere came back to him again.

‘Mr Scheiner, this is Detective Sergeant Berlin, the one I told you about.'

The axeman glanced over his right shoulder towards Roberts and Berlin. He turned back to the chopping block and placed another log on top before he spoke.

‘Your colleague there tells me you are good at your job, Detective Sergeant Berlin, good at finding people, and also that you have a teenage daughter.'

The man's English was good though there was definitely a strong German accent. Berlin had plenty of experience of German-accented English.

‘I have a daughter, yes.'

The axe came down, hard. ‘So if you have a daughter you must know how I am feeling right now.'

Berlin hoped to God he never had to experience those feelings. ‘I'm going to do everything I can to find her, Mr Scheiner, that's the best I can promise you.'

Another log went onto the block. ‘This wood comes from my farm, in the country, where I had planned we should spend the weekend. But this weekend my daughter wanted to go to yet another dance, to this Buddha's Belly place and I find I can deny her nothing.'

‘You shouldn't blame yourself.'

The axe came down harder this time. A piece of the split log flew across the patio, slamming hard into the brick barbecue. ‘Who should I blame then, tell me that?'

The flash of anger in Scheiner's voice was understandable and Berlin didn't respond to the question. He waited a moment before he spoke again.

‘Do I know you, Mr Scheiner? Have we met before?'

Scheiner glanced back over his right shoulder at Berlin again. ‘I don't believe so, you do not seem familiar.' He slammed the axe down into the chopping block and left it there. ‘And I believe, without false modesty, that I have a face you would not quickly forget.' He turned around to face the two policemen.

Berlin started with the shoes as he always did. These were old, well worn but still in good nick and recently polished. The overalls were the same – worn but neat and clean. Scheiner was around his age or slightly younger, Berlin estimated. He was tall, fit, and his hair, though greying, was thick and glossy. He would have been a handsome man but for the scarring across the left side of his face.

The skin was a ghostly blue-white, puckered, leathery, running from a line just below his eye down to his chin and on to the part of his neck that was visible under the jacket collar. If the scarring continued down to his left arm and the left side of his body it would quite possibly explain the man's awkward handling of the axe.

‘A Russian
Flammenwerfer
, Detective Sergeant Berlin, a flamethrower. My steel helmet saved my head from the worst of the fire, though the others in my bunker were not so fortunate. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that this is the only injury I sustained over the course of the war.'

‘You were in the army, Mr. Scheiner?'

‘A Landser? No, I was not. Not until the end, at least.'

‘A Landser?' It was Roberts who asked the question.

‘It means a foot soldier, Bob,' Berlin said, ‘an infantryman. It's like our word “digger”.'

Scheiner nodded. ‘Exactly so. I was in fact in the Luftwaffe, the air force. In a sane world I would have perhaps been in university or chasing pretty girls but instead I was an anti-aircraft gunner in Berlin, on the
Flaktürme Tiergarten
, the Zoo flak tower.'

Berlin could see Roberts was confused. His old man had been an anti-aircraft gunner in the army.

‘Different way of doing things, Bob. Under the German military system anti-aircraft defence was the job of the German air force rather than the army. The Luftwaffe also guarded captured aircrew in joints called Stalag-Lufts, air force POW camps.'

‘Again exactly so, Detective Sergeant Berlin. However in the last days they issued me a worn-out rifle and a dozen cartridges to use against the Ivans and their artillery and their flamethrowers. The
kindersoldaten
, the Hitler Youth, took the anti-tank Panzerfausts to use against the Russian T-34s since they were still both young enough and stupid enough to believe the Führer and his Reich were worth dying for.'

On the forced march out of Poland, Berlin's POW column had passed half-finished bunkers and hastily dug foxholes manned by old men, some still in civilian clothes, and young boys –
kindersoldaten
, child soldiers. The older men looked tired and seemed resigned to what was coming but he still remembered the young ones, their terrified eyes partially hidden under too-big steel helmets meant for grown men. Berlin thought about young Peter's war in a far-off place and then made the thought go away.

He nodded in the direction of the wooden stump and the axe. ‘Mind if I have a go?'

The two men looked at each other across the stump for a moment before Scheiner shrugged. Berlin took off his overcoat and suit jacket. He handed them to Roberts before pulling the axe from the chopping block. It took more effort than he expected to get it free. Scheiner's swing may have been awkward but there was definitely power behind it. He selected a log from the small pile, standing it upright on the block. A quick examination showed it was a good axe, sharp and nicely balanced. The wooden handle was well used but still in good condition. Berlin faced the block, spread his legs and swung.
Jesus!

If the axe handle was in good condition, Berlin realised he wasn't. He felt the pain of unused muscles in his back and arms fighting the unfamiliar level of exertion. The axe head struck the upright log to one side, splitting off a slim piece of wood that would at least be good for kindling. He repositioned the log and swung again. Better this time, but still not dead centre. Three was the charm, the log splitting neatly. He tossed the pieces onto the pile of split wood. Another log went onto the block and this time the swing was better still. He would ache later tonight, he knew that for certain. And there would be blisters on his hand if he kept this up. One more log split and then he left the axe head deep in the block.

He was breathing hard, sweating, and when Roberts tossed him back his suit jacket he didn't put it on. Scheiner was watching him, hands deep in his jacket pockets.

‘Is there anyone who would take your daughter, Mr Scheiner, to get at you, perhaps?'

‘If you mean could this be related to my business, I doubt it. I have competitors, of course, but I've always tried not to make enemies. When a man has seen war as I have, conflict can become something that you make an effort to avoid.'

His eyes found Berlin's and held them. Berlin noticed the left eye didn't blink like the right; it was more of a twitch.

‘Were you in the war, Detective Sergeant Berlin? You look to be of the right age.'

‘If you were an anti-aircraft gunner in Berlin, I was quite probably your target once or twice.'

The words had come out almost casually, but for Berlin and his crew, and all Bomber Command men like them, Berlin – the Big City, as they called it – was a hated and feared destination. The crews groaned in the briefing room when the maps were revealed and Berlin announced as the target for the night. The German capital was a nightmare, savagely defended by massed anti-aircraft artillery concentrated in three massive, multi-storey, reinforced-concrete flak towers and multiple searchlight batteries. Worse still, the bomber stream of sometimes up to a thousand aircraft was relentlessly harried by radar-controlled night fighters on the way in and then again afterwards, as the surviving aircraft fled for home through the cold black night, bomb bays empty and the Big City blazing in their wake.

Scheiner studied Berlin's face for a long moment and then nodded. It was all in the eyes, Berlin understood, if a man knew what to look for.

‘So, I think then that we are men who might understand each other. We each have a daughter and I need very much for mine to be found. I lost my country, then my wife, and now this . . . this is too much.'

‘I intend to do everything I can to find her.'

‘I believe you.' Scheiner paused before he spoke again. ‘My daughter is special, Detective Sergeant Berlin.'

‘Every father's daughter is special, Mr Scheiner.'

Scheiner shook his head. ‘You misunderstand me, I'm sorry. I am a widower and she is my only child so of course she is special to me. However, there was a car accident involving my wife, as I'm sure they have told you.'

‘They did, yes.'

‘My Gudrun was just ten and in the car with her mother when the accident happened. They said it was a miracle that she survived. Just a bump on the head. Perhaps it was the bump on the head or the death of her mother beside her, but afterwards she was quieter, gentler. She is a happy child, always anxious to please, always smiling. And trusting. Perhaps too trusting.'

Berlin remembered the innocent, happy smile on Gudrun's face in the clipping.

‘They are telling us in the newspapers and on the television that we are now coming to a summer of love, a time of peace and understanding, Detective Sergeant Berlin, but men like us, men like you and me, we know the world and people and sadly we know better.'

Berlin slipped his suit jacket back on. ‘Sergeant Roberts and I are going to do everything we can to bring your daughter back, I give you my word on that.'

Scheiner took his hands from his jacket pocket and pulled off his right glove. As he reached his hand out for Berlin's, everything stopped: the throb of the pool pump, the squealing of the children playing over the fence, the chirping of the birds. There was no terrace, no barbecue, no pool, no tennis court, no Bob Roberts. There was just Charlie Berlin in the silence, icy cold in the warmth of the midmorning Melbourne sunshine and Gerhardt Scheiner's outstretched right hand with its third finger missing down to the second knuckle.