St Kilda Blues (23 page)

The first firemen on the scene had done the right thing, turning off the gas at the downstairs meter while waiting for the police. The constable who kicked in the front door had opened all the windows so the smell of gas was almost gone from the second-floor flat by the time Berlin and Roberts arrived. The lock was hanging off the open door and fragments of splintered doorjamb littered the entranceway. The kitchen was to Berlin's left and he could see a pair of legs and the upper torso of a man. Derek Jones's head and shoulders were hidden inside the oven.

There was a typewriter sitting on the living room table along with a single empty glass and a less than quarter-full bottle of Scotch. The label on the whisky bottle indicated it was one of the blends packaged to sell cheaply through a supermarket chain. A crumpled brown paper bag and a torn soft foil seal suggested the bottle had only been recently purchased and uncorked. The typewriter held a single sheet of paper and there was a manila envelope on the table behind it. The flap on the envelope was open and Berlin could see there were photographs inside.

Roberts leaned over the typewriter and studied the piece of paper. ‘The first constable to see this took one squiz and was smart enough to call me. I told him to turf everyone else out of the place and wait for us.' He rolled the sheet of quarto typing paper up a little higher in the carriage. ‘Says here our Derek's very sorry for what he's done and all the pain that he's caused. He'd like the families of the missing girls to try to forgive him. Nice of the bastard.'

Berlin was carefully looking round the room as he listened.

‘Anything else?'

Roberts pulled the sheet of typing paper from the typewriter carriage. ‘He says the last girl, Gudrun, was wrapped in chains and dumped in the Bay. It doesn't say where. He hopes he's going to a better place.' He lifted his head and looked around the living room. ‘I reckon any place would have to be better than this shithole.'

The envelope on the table contained a dozen or so black and white prints and Roberts shuffled through them. ‘It's the missing girls, Charlie, seems to be all of them. You want take a look?'

Berlin shook its head. ‘Not really.' He took the photographs from Roberts' hand.

The girls were naked, gagged, blindfolded and tied securely at the wrists and ankles. All of them had the knife-blade cuts he had seen on the body of the girl in the lake and it looked like they were all alive when the photographs were taken. Rope had been used to restrain them, except for one girl who had handcuffs around her wrists with what looked like shiny new chain running from the cuffs up towards the ceiling.

It was hard to be sure with the gag and blindfold but Berlin knew the girl in the chains had to be Gudrun Scheiner. Melinda Marquet had somehow slipped out of her ropes before escaping from her prison and the sick bastard holding her had learned his lesson.

Berlin's eyes moved off the girls and on to what he could see of where they were being held. The place might have been a cellar, from the brick wall he could see in the back of the image, but apart from that there was not much information that would help in tracking down a location. He slid the photographs back into the envelope and put it down on the table. He was breathing in short gasps and he realised that he was probably about to be sick all over the evidence.

It was a very small kitchen so he had to step over Derek's dead body to get to the sink. The stink of whisky was stronger now than the lingering smell of gas. The sight and smell of rotten food in an overflowing rubbish bin made his nausea worse. When he turned on the tap there was a loud hammering noise from the pipes. He ran the water until it was cold then splashed some on his face. Images of the girls, tied up and brutalised, crying, terrified, calling for their mothers, filled his head.
Think about something else
, he told himself.

Running his eyes around the filthy kitchen he noted a cleanish plate with a knife and fork on the sink next to a bottle of White Crow tomato sauce. One of the kitchen cabinets was slightly ajar. He opened the cupboard door using just the tip of a finger. The contents were a jumble of chipped and mismatched drinking glasses covered with the ubiquitous film of grime that seemed to characterise Derek's short and nasty little life. Bob was right – any place would be better than this shithole.

There was a glint from the back of the cupboard as he started to close the door. He picked up the knife from the sink and used it to push several of the drinking glasses aside. The glass at the very back of the cupboard matched the one on the table next to the typewriter. Unlike all the other glasses sharing the space, this one was sparkling clean. He left the door open and turned back to the stove.

Berlin remembered hearing people complain about the size of the oven on the old Early Kooka kitchen stoves but this one seemed to have taken the young photographer quite comfortably. Derek Jones's head was fully inside the oven with his torso resting on the open door and his legs splayed out on the greasy seagrass matting.
Why the hell would anyone use seagrass matting in a kitchen?

There was an aluminium kettle on one of the stovetop burners. A filthy cast-iron baking dish sitting next to it held a folded-over brown paper bag. Berlin leaned across the body to touch the bag. The oval shape of the object inside and a shiny grease stain on the outside suggested it was probably a pastie. The paper of the bag was also dried out and slightly crisp-looking, and was black where it had started to char a little at the corners. He looked around the kitchen one more time before stepping back over the body and re-joining Roberts in the living room.

A police constable stuck his head in through the front door of the flat. ‘You reckon we can get the doctor in anytime soon? And the photographer's waiting.'

Berlin was thinking and didn't respond.

Roberts dismissed the constable with a shake of his head. ‘He'll still be dead in half an hour so they'll just have to bloody wait.'

Roberts waited too, which Berlin appreciated.
Had he always been this patient?

It must have been a good ten minutes before Roberts checked his watch and a minute more before he spoke.

‘Going to be a bit tough on the families, I reckon, Charlie. Where the hell do we look next? If he did dump them all in the Bay we don't have a hope in hell of finding the bodies. We know they're dead and we know who did it, which is good for us, I suppose, but bloody hard for the families. Losing a child has to be the worst thing, I reckon. But losing them and not knowing where they are, not having a body to bury, has to make it even worse.'

Berlin ignored the comments. ‘Tell me what you see here, Bob.'

Roberts glanced over at Berlin. He had spoken so softly that Roberts had missed it. ‘Sorry, what did you say?'

‘Take a good look around and tell me exactly what you see.'

Robert shrugged. ‘Okay, there's a dead bloke in the kitchen with his head in the gas oven, suicide note on the living room table, a nearly empty bottle of Scotch and some pictures of a bunch of dead girls.'

‘Those girls weren't dead when the pictures were taken, Bob, though they probably are now. You don't see anything else?'

Roberts ran his eye around the room again and shook his head.

‘You remember Pete Whitmore up in Wodonga, Bob? The Military Police sergeant out at the Bandiana army camp.'

‘Bugger me, Charlie, that's going back a bit.'

It
was
going back a bit, back to when Berlin was sent to rural Wodonga on a case meant to end his career. The border town was where he'd first met a young probationary constable named Bob Roberts and a smart-alec woman reporter named Rebecca Green who was out to make a name for herself. And Wodonga was where he'd met former commando Peter Whitmore. He had recognised the man's demons as his own and in the end had become enough of a friend to help him end his own suffering. Young Peter Berlin was named for Whitmore, though they were very different people.

‘I still remember something Pete told me, Bob, something he learned fighting the Japs on the Kokoda Track. Pete said there's a big difference between looking and seeing, a bloody big difference.'

‘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 rotgut 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.'

‘Good Morning, Rebecca. My my, twenty years, a husband and two kids and you haven't changed a bit.'

‘Actually I have, Warren. I've developed even less tolerance for dickheads than I once had.'

Rebecca had gone to the front door in response to brisk knocking and Berlin heard the exchange from the kitchen. He was rereading the file on the Marquet girl while waiting for a pot of tea to brew. Time was getting away from them and had to be quickly running out for Gudrun Scheiner if she was still alive. The Jones suicide provided a neat set of answers but no matter how he looked at it things didn't add up.

He put the file down and walked out into the hallway. There was a strong smell of cigar smoke. At the front door he put his hand on Rebecca's shoulder.

‘Look what the cat dragged in, Charlie. I knew we should have had that damn animal put down.'

The red Jaguar Berlin has seen on Honeysuckle Drive in Brighton was parked across the street. Warren Sunderland was wearing a different suit to their last encounter but the quality was the same. This went for the shirt and tie as well. The same puffy, pinkish face topped it all off, and he had a thick cigar clenched in the corner of his mouth.

‘You look live you're living well, Warren,' Rebecca commented, ‘not like the old copyboy days at
The Argus
. I remember you used to steal sandwiches out of the secretary's handbags when they weren't looking.'

Sunderland smiled. ‘That's right, you were the one who blew the whistle on me, weren't you? I always said you were wasted on the social rounds, Rebecca. Investigative journalism was where you should have been with a nose for hard news like that. Too bad the girlies didn't get a go at the big stories.' He took the cigar from his mouth and turned away momentarily to flick ash into the garden next to the porch. ‘Nice garden, good to see someone getting the flowers in early.'

The garden comment was all that stopped Sunderland getting a smack in the mouth. Did the man have a sense for when he might have pushed things too far, Berlin wondered.

‘Was there something you wanted, Warren,' Rebecca asked, ‘or are you just going door-to-door lowering the tone of the neighbourhood?'

Sunderland drew back on his cigar, took it from his mouth again and blew a shimmering blue smoke ring. ‘As it happens I need a quick word with your better half. In private. Men's business, you understand.'

‘And you'll understand if I don't invite you inside . . . that dickhead business I mentioned.'

The Jaguar's red leather seats were soft and very, very comfortable. Berlin settled into the passenger side and glanced towards the front of the vehicle. British carmakers certainly had a thing about burled wood-grain veneers for their dashboards, he decided. Was it always burled walnut they used? Legroom was a hell of a lot better than the Triumph, though. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard and then at his own watch. How many days and hours was it now that the Scheiner girl had been missing?

‘Japanese, I see.'

Berlin looked across at Sunderland who nodded towards his left wrist.

‘The timepiece, your watch. Very reliable, I believe, for the price.'

The watch on Sunderland's wrist was gold, as was the cufflink next to it, securing a starched and neatly pressed French cuff. Berlin's everyday shirts came from the local Coles with plastic buttons already sewn onto the cuffs.

‘My daughter bought me this, for my birthday last year. She saved up for quite a long time.' He ran his index finger gently over the face of the watch.

‘Then I suppose that it's actually of immense value, whatever it may have cost.'

Berlin couldn't quite pick the tone in Sunderland's voice. Was he being sincere? From what he knew of the man it seemed highly unlikely.

‘By coincidence I'm actually here this morning for a bit of a chat about someone's daughter.'

‘If you mean Gudrun Scheiner then, like I said last time we met, I'm not talking to the press and I'm especially not talking to you.'

‘Fine, I'll do the talking then. A little bird tells me you and your mate Roberts solved the case last night, turned up the killer, found a deathbed confession and conclusive evidence of the crimes. But for some strange reason you don't seem too keen on spreading the good news.'

Sunderland did have good sources, Berlin had to admit, not that he'd ever say it to the man's face. ‘I don't want the story getting out prematurely. I don't think the case is really solved, not yet. And if I have to tell a father his only daughter is dead I want to do it only once and I want to be 100 per cent certain it's true. We don't have hard evidence or a body or bodies yet, which is something that concerns me.'

Sunderland flicked ash from his cigar into an already overflowing dashboard ashtray. ‘Come on, sometimes bodies are never found, we both know that. Plenty of blokes have had their necks stretched at Pentridge without the actual murder weapon or a mouldering corpse being dragged in front of the jury.'

‘That might be so but it's not happening in this case if I can help it.'

Sunderland shook his head. ‘Well I'm afraid that's out of your hands which is why I'm here. Later today Gerhardt Scheiner will be informed by senior police that his daughter is deceased, as will the parents of the other missing girls. The squad investigating the disappearance of the Scheiner girl, the official squad I mean, Tony Selden's team, has recently obtained a confession and irrefutable photographic evidence.'

‘Which I'm guessing you've seen. That right?'

Sunderland's smile was all the answer Berlin needed. Had Bob Roberts spoken to the wrong person by mistake while trying to keep things under wraps, he wondered?

‘That's right, I've seen it all and pretty damn grim it is. Tomorrow morning a special edition of the
Truth
will be published revealing that we have had amongst us a monster who preyed upon young girls, a monster who took his own life in the end in remorse. There are no bodies to be recovered, sadly, but by his own written admissions police have identified the killer. No thanks of course to the ineptitude of certain senior members of the police force and government, who until now seemed almost blissfully unaware of the existence of this monstrous predator or worse still have perpetrated a cover-up. The afternoon papers and the TV and radio news people will be all over it after that, like flies on shit.'

‘That's a pretty accurate analogy, for you and your paper. And I'm guessing this allegation of police ineptitude will be an ongoing theme? Proving the need for a new broom right up to the very top of the police force and embarrassing the government.'

‘There are a lot of people who think it's time for a change. People with influence, people who see me as useful in achieving what they want.'

‘It's must be nice that someone sees you as useful for something Warren. And these people, the people with influence, they want a change of government?'

Sunderland laughed out loud. ‘God no! They've got exactly the government they want; they just think it's time for a change of leadership. Mr Bolte's had a good run but he's pushing sixty and times are changing, any bugger can see that. Ronald Ryan got hung like Bolte wanted but the popularity boost didn't eventuate, and even if it had it was only ever going to be temporary; the average voter has a pretty short memory.'

Ryan was a hard-core crim who'd been executed in Pentridge at the start of the year for the murder of a prison guard during an escape attempt. A lot of people, Berlin included, had felt that some of the evidence presented at Ryan's trial was questionable at best and his hanging had started an intense community debate on the morality of capital punishment.

‘The people I know think Bolte wants to ride it out to the next election and if he does and his popularity keeps declining who knows what could happen. New blood, younger blood is what's wanted, so they're looking for . . . '

‘Some way to force the premier out?'

‘An orderly transition is always best, they tell me but not always possible. People sometimes believe they are due certain rewards, perhaps for their patience, their diligence, or sometimes simply for things they know or think they know. Timing is crucial in transitions and also in the events that lead up to them. Inquiries and crimes solved or perhaps unsolved can alter perceptions.'

Berlin could imagine the smoke-filled room in some exclusive gentlemen's club up on Spring Street where they had feted Sunderland and splashed the single malt whisky about while hiding their contempt for the man.

‘So where do I stand in all this?'

‘If you keep shtum, keep your trap shut and walk away from this case today, I'm told there will be no repercussions for you, personally or career wise. In fact, in time there might even be a promotion. Following tomorrow's revelations and what comes after I have no doubt the police will be undergoing a bit of a shakeup. Over the next few months heads will certainly roll, which means positions in the higher ranks will open up. This of course is an unfortunate reality but one you coppers have to live with.'

‘You have to be bloody mad, Warren. There's still a killer out there somewhere.'

‘Sez you, and right now there's a shitload of evidence that says exactly the opposite. But suppose you're right. If someone is still out there then they're going to realise they've had a bloody close call and pull their head in for a while. And once we publish those pictures, well the less gruesome ones anyway, do you reckon any of the mums and dads are going to let their precious little daughters out any time after the sun goes down? Probably kill the local dance scene stone dead but that's no loss. Get people back in the pubs where they belong.'

‘You really are mad, Warren, you and the people you're working for. We're talking about people's lives here, young girl's lives.'

‘No we're not, Charlie, we're talking politics and that trumps every­thing.'

It was the sneering tone in Sunderland's voice that did it. The punch was awkward, given the relative position of the two men, the cramped space and the fact that Berlin was a right-hander. His left fist caught Sunderland just under the jaw and while clumsy the blow still had some power. The cigar tumbled down to the expensive carpet on the floor under the steering wheel while Sunderland's head snapped back and smacked hard up against the driver's side window.

As much as Berlin despised the man he had to admire Sunderland's recovery. He sat back up slowly and rubbed his jaw, before reaching down between his legs for the still lit cigar. Berlin's nose caught the smell of charred wool from the carpet.

The reporter worked his jaw left and right a couple of times. ‘Not bad, I heard you used to box, back before the war. I've had worse though, it comes with the job.'

Berlin flexed the fingers of his left hand but nothing felt broken. ‘This is all bullshit, Sunderland, and you know it. I can go straight into Russell Street right now and talk to the higher ups. Some one is going to listen.'

Sunderland laughed out loud, then winced and rubbed his jaw again. ‘Don't kid yourself, Berlin, you don't have any friends in at Russell Street and we both know it. People have sensed something is going on and they're keeping their heads down. First thing tomorrow morning every bastard on the police force above the rank of sergeant will start jockeying for position and trying to figure out how to turn this little scandal to their own advantage. It's just musical chairs, Charlie, we both know that, but we also bloody know how the game is played. When the music stops there most definitely will be one chair missing. Someone will get it in the neck and if he's at all smart the poor bugger will cop it sweet and go quietly, for the good of the force, as they say. And right about now, Charlie, it looks like that poor bugger might just be you. You've got a wife and family, you ought to spend a bit of time thinking about that.'