St Kilda Blues (11 page)

A handwritten note was attached to the back cover of the folder with a paper clip. After reading the note twice Berlin decided that the Marquet family in Melton seemed as good a place as any to start the investigation. He walked into the hallway and telephoned police headquarters at Russell Street, leaving a message for Bob Roberts to call him back. There was no response by five o'clock so he left a second message for Roberts to pick him up at eight the next morning and to make sure he had a full tank of petrol.

The trip by car down to Adelaide made a change from daily life on the mission but failed to provide an opportunity for the boy to put his plan into action. Just going missing was not going to be enough, he understood; bringing Fatso back to life had to be coupled with bringing his own life to an end. The price for joining Brother Brian on this journey had been extracted weekly on a mildew smelling couch in the locked photo studio. As with his under the robe activities in the darkroom the boy simply let his mind go elsewhere until it was over. Where his mind went most often was to the top of a set of hot metal stairs on a grubby passenger liner drawing close to the equator.

He spoke very little on the long drive but Brother Brian was used to the silence by now. The boy sometimes pretended he was dozing but in reality he was watching, concentrating on the technique for driving a motor car – the use of the clutch, accelerator and brake pedals. The noisy gear changes baffled him, though he discerned when they were made according to the speedometer on the dashboard and the noise of the engine. He decided that when the time was right he could at least get the car moving and travel a short distance. If things went to plan, that should be all he would need.

A puncture put them well behind schedule so they spent the night in a country pub. The woman behind the counter appeared to have no problem with a man of the cloth and a young boy taking a room together. Brother Brian was exhausted from the driving and tyre-changing, so though they shared the sagging double bed he was quickly asleep and the boy was left to his own devices. A blowfly was trapped between the battered holland blind and the room's single dirty window and he listened as it buzzed angrily, bumping against the glass again and again in its attempts to find a way to freedom.

He was thinking about the Aborigines they had passed on their way down, wandering along the roadside, sometimes in groups, sometimes singly. He went over in his mind what he needed to do when the right moment came. Fatso's papers were in the lining of his kitbag, though he had torn up the death certificate and dropped it in pieces into the stinking mess of the privy. The glass-plate negatives made for the mission records had been left in a bath of potassium ferricyanide to bleach away all the information and then crushed to powder. He poured the powdered glass out on the playground during one of the violent dust storms that regularly swept over the mission, and watched it blow away. It seemed a waste, as he had really wanted to visit the kitchen and slip the powder into one of the dishes meant for the top table. The thought brought the familiar heat to his loins and for relief he climbed out of bed and slowly crushed the life out of the buzzing blowfly against the dirty windowpane.

After an early breakfast of porridge and milk in the hotel's dining room, they finished the trip into Adelaide. The morning was spent at the church's headquarters, delivering the records of the mission's activities over the past six months. With the paperwork completed, they took a convivial lunch in the dining room with a dozen other brothers. The food was similar to what was eaten at the high table back at the mission and though it was much better than what he was used to, he ate it just because it was there. He smiled once and Brother Brian asked if he was enjoying lunch. He nodded, though what he had really been enjoying was imagining the results if ground glass had been mixed through the cauliflower in white sauce.

After lunch Brother Brian drove them to the Kodak warehouse. They filled the back of the station wagon with chemicals and photographic paper and film, enough to last them for the next six months. The final stop was a Golden Fleece service station to fill the car with petrol and top up the jerry can of spare fuel. They also refilled the large water jugs that were essential for the long drive back through the desert.

Brother Brian decided they would leave around five and spend the night in the pub they stayed at on the way down. They had a passable dinner there and this time, since he wasn't tired from driving and tyre-changing, Brother Brian managed to couple with the boy several times on the battered and sagging hotel bed. Each episode of sin was followed by the usual self-recrimination and wailing and earnest begging for forgiveness from God. Brother Brian didn't, however, beg the boy for forgiveness. The boy's part in these events, he explained, was his selfish playing of the role of temptress at the behest of Satan and all he deserved was condemnation in the eyes of the Lord.

They took breakfast in the dining room again, and again it was just porridge and a glass of milk for the boy. Brother Brian usually ordered soft-boiled eggs and toast but this morning he decided on the mixed grill: fried eggs, steak, sausages, grilled tomato, lamb's fry and bacon. The boy had noticed that sin always gave Brother Brian a much-improved appetite.

When the boy's porridge was done Brother Brian handed over a ten-pound note so the boy could pay for their stay while he finished off his breakfast. They also needed sandwiches for the trip, and on impulse the boy doubled the order. Brother Brian didn't query the amount of change the boy handed him as he was concentrating on the last sausage on his tomato sauce–smeared plate. He also missed the moment when the boy pinched a box of Redhead matches from the table.

*

It was around one in the afternoon when the boy saw the figure in the distance. The Aborigine was walking on the left-hand side of the gravel roadway, the passenger side. He had a spear and woomera in his left hand, but apart from that was totally naked. Even at a distance he seemed around the right height and age so the decision was made. The car was doing about 40 miles per hour when the boy grabbed the steering wheel and pulled down hard. He had no idea of mass or momentum and his plan would have failed if a confused Brother Brian hadn't stamped down hard on the brake pedal, causing the back end of the car to slide out on the gravel and swing round. The rear mudguard struck the young Aborigine just above the knees and then the car stopped and was still.

‘What did you do?' Brother Brian was staring straight ahead, his hands clenched on the steering wheel. He reached down and turned off the ignition. A cloud of slowly settling dust from the skid surrounded the vehicle and in the silence they could hear whimpering coming from behind the car.

‘You stay here, don't move.'

There was a note in the boy's voice that Brother Brian hadn't heard before and it confused and frightened him.

The boy climbed out of the passenger side of the vehicle and walked around to the back. He had to step over the broken body of the young Aborigine to open the tailgate. His kitbag and the water bottles had been the last things to go into the car, he had made sure of that. He opened the clasp on the kitbag and reached into the lining.

Brother Brian was sitting with his hands in his lap when the boy opened the driver's-side door. Apart from the constant whimpering from the back of the car, the only sound was the
tick, tick, tick
of the slowly cooling engine.

‘What do we do n—' Brother Brian started to ask. He stopped when he realised a knife had been pushed into his chest, right up to the hilt. He was going to ask why but breathing was difficult and the sun was starting to set, which was very strange given it was just an hour past noon. The light dimmed more and more and then everything was dark.

Wherever he was now, Brother Brian was spared the sight of the dagger being pulled from his chest with an awful sucking sound and the bright red blood that glistened on the blade being slowly licked off.

Berlin had allowed a little over an hour for the trip into the city and then out to St Kilda and his dinner meeting with Lazlo. What he hadn't allowed for was a flat battery. At five-thirty, when he turned the ignition key in the Bluebird station wagon, the starter motor made a single clicking noise then was silent. Rebecca had the Mini in town, which meant he couldn't use her jumper leads to get the car started. Several of the neighbours would be happy to help him out but right now he wasn't in the mood for the small talk that would come with their assistance. He walked back into the house and rang the number for Silver Top Taxis.

The taxi pulled up outside the front gate twenty minutes later, tooting its horn twice. It was a long time since Berlin had taken a taxi and he wondered when drivers had stopped walking up to the front door and knocking politely. He slid into the clear vinyl–encased front seat of the taxi, gave the address in St Kilda and then got on with the ritual declining of the offered cigarette, discussion of the weather, hearing about the superiority of Holden over Ford as a taxi vehicle, and then a commentary on Saturday's grand final match. Berlin's polite but clipped responses indicated he didn't want to talk, so the driver eventually turned up the radio and confined himself to occasional mutterings about all the bad driving by young smart alecs in hoon cars he was forced to witness.

Apart from the driver's grumbling and constant changing of radio stations in search of Frank Ifield songs, it wasn't an unpleasant ride. Berlin kept his eyes off the meter, deciding to get the shock when they reached the cafe. It wasn't that much of an extravagance really, given the fact that Rebecca was doing well and they had both kids off their hands for the moment, but the habit of watching the pennies was hard to shake.

There was little traffic and somewhat less erratic driving than he had expected, despite the driver's complaints. It would soon be two years since ten o'clock closing for pubs had finally been legalised, ending fifty years of the six o'clock swill. This frantic rush to drink as much as possible in the short window between work finishing and the beer in the public bar being turned off was now gone and not missed. No one missed the fights, the ugly scenes of public drunkenness and the ensuing bouts of domestic violence, especially not the police. Introducing the breathalyser and the .05 blood alcohol limit for drivers at the same time had also had an impact on the nightly carnage on the roads.

The drunken orgies predicted to follow ten o'clock closing had never materialised, and pubs that had been tiled floor to ceiling like public toilets to make hosing out after closing easier were now calling themselves ‘hotels', putting in carpets, tables and chairs, proper restaurants and even live entertainment. They reminded Berlin a little of the friendly English pubs located near his airfield, but that memory was always ruined by flashes of the smiling faces of too many young men who were laughing and holding a pretty girl or a pint one evening and were dead and gone the next.

Other, even darker memories of the war were behind Berlin's trip into town this evening. He wasn't even sure if Lazlo would be able to help him but he had no other options. And he knew he had to do something about the situation so that he could give all his attention to the missing girls. He was angry with himself for not fighting harder to stay on the case back when it was just three girls, which was of course three too many.
Would they haunt his dreams too
, he wondered,
like the girl on the roadway in Poland?

Horvay was Hungarian, an ex-journalist, ex-hearse driver, one-time inmate of a Nazi concentration camp, restaurant owner and possibly a former or perhaps current Soviet agent. The two men had met ten years back when a tip from Horvay had dropped Berlin into a nasty situation, the one that had earned Bob Roberts his scar and limp and attracted the attention of ASIO and some very unpleasant people in Special Branch. Lazlo had wisely dropped out of sight, disappearing into the multinational immigrant workforce constructing the dams, roads, tunnels and electricity-generating stations like the massive Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme.

Four or five years back Berlin had seen Lazlo's name mentioned in an article in the business section of the newspaper and decided to try to contact him. He had telephoned the Cafe Budapest, which had been Lazlo's favourite hangout when they first met and was surprised to learn Lazlo was no longer a customer but was now the owner. It appeared he had done well for himself during his time in the mountains They had arranged to meet that evening.

The restaurant was on the ground floor of a run-down, three-storey brick terrace on Acland Street, near the intersection with Carlisle Street, and closed wooden shutters over the front windows gave the place its unwelcoming air. Inside, there was the smell of meat and boiled cabbage and the familiar murky haze of cigarette smoke broken by pockets of light from low-wattage bulbs in wall-mounted lamps. The dark space had been crowded with tables; the clientele was all male and suspicious of strangers, the waiters surly. No one had seemed happy to see him. Well, almost no one. A hand had waved from the back of the room. And there was Lazlo, smiling with his right hand outstretched. His grip when they shook hands was just as strong as Berlin remembered.

‘It looks like all that time working in the Snowy must have agreed with you, Lazlo, going by that handshake.'

Lazlo had given him a friendly punch to the left shoulder and then winked. ‘Charlie, my friend, I must tell you this: when a man rises before dawn in a freezing mountain camp and swings a pick or drives a bulldozer or blasts a tunnel through the solid rock or mixes concrete till sunset, it does not take many days for him to become as fit as a mallee bull. And if I had actually done any of those things there is no doubt I would be even fitter than I am now, believe me. But there is a limit to the time a man can spend away from civilization and the company of women.'

Lazlo had indeed done well for himself in the mountains and had purchased the Cafe Budapest in the early sixties, after amendments to the licensing laws allowed restaurants to compete with hotel dining rooms by selling imported wines and spirits instead of just Australian wines. The original owners of Cafe Budapest had been doing this anyway but Lazlo now no longer faced the possibility of raids by the licensing police or having to pay hefty incentives to prevent or be forewarned of these raids.

The rest of that evening had been spent eating and talking about Rebecca and the children. Lazlo had been keen to become involved with the kids, offering to appoint himself as their honorary uncle since both Berlin and Rebecca couldn't provide aunts and uncles themselves. This had worked out well with Sarah, who had grown to adore her Uncle Laz, but the relationship that developed with Peter had been fractious. He'd been offered a job in the restaurant kitchen but it took only a week of hard graft for the boy to lose interest and begin arriving late and disappearing early. Peter had finally been sacked and when Berlin tried to apologise for his behaviour Lazlo had placed a hand on his arm and stopped him.

‘You were a whisky drinker once, you told me. Over the bar we have some good whiskies and some great whiskies. The great ones are the ones that have had some time to mature. I'm sorry if my metaphor is inappropriate for a man who does not drink, but for Peter time is what is needed. You shall see, just have patience.'

‘This the joint?' The taxi driver's question brought Berlin back from the past.

‘What?'

‘I said, is this the place you're looking for, sport?'

The taxi was stopped at the kerb. Berlin glanced out the passenger-side window, trying to orient himself. They were at the right place, on Acland Street, near the intersection with Carlisle Street, but something was changed, different. The taxi driver had both forearms on top of the steering wheel as he peered out through the windscreen.

‘Cafe Budapest you said, right? And there she is. Nice-looking place, is it new? I don't remember it.'

It was a nice-looking joint, a lot nicer than Berlin remembered from his last visit. ‘It's been around for a while but it looks like it must have had a bit of a spruce-up.'

‘Budapest's in Italy or Greece or somewhere, right? Tucker in there any good? Not usually much into wog food myself, a Chiko Roll is about as foreign as I like to get.'

Berlin remembered the size of a schnitzel Lazlo had once insisted on ordering for him. ‘I'm pretty sure you wouldn't walk away hungry.'

Berlin glanced at the meter and reached into his pocket for his wallet. He only had a twenty-dollar bill and the driver scowled at the note. Berlin tried to remember if he had ever handed over a bank note of any denomination that hadn't been scowled at by a taxi driver. He took his change and climbed out onto the footpath. The taxi moved off and joined the line of traffic after allowing a tram to rattle past first. Charlie Berlin was left standing on the kerb, looking at a very different place to the one he remembered.

The old wooden shutters were gone. Large picture windows had taken their place, with light spilling out through the gap between brightly coloured side curtains. The small, hand-painted wooden nameplate over the door was still there but it was now supplemented by an illuminated sign suspended from an awning over the footpath. The menu pinned inside a glass-fronted case next to the entrance was once totally in Hungarian but now a very precise English translation for each dish was given.

Berlin opened the door and walked into a bright dining area with white-painted walls and polished floorboards. There was a cheery buzz of conversation and tables that had once been covered with butcher's paper were now set with red and white checked tablecloths and gleaming silverware. The room was full of well-dressed, smiling couples enjoying a night out and no one turned a head in his direction.

A smiling young hostess had replaced the surly headwaiter and Berlin guessed her outfit was supposed to make her look like a Hungarian peasant serving wench. Who knew Hungarian peasants went in for low-cut necklines and very short skirts? Luckily the girl had the figure to show off both of these fashion elements to their best advantage.

‘I'm here to see Mr Horvay, my name is —'

‘Mr Berlin, yes, of course.' She ticked a name off a list on the clipboard she was holding. ‘Please come this way, he's been waiting for you.'