St Kilda Blues (18 page)

Albert Road formed the bottom boundary of Albert Park at the opposite end of the lake to where they had found young Melinda Marquet's body. The northern side of Albert Road was lined with two-storey terrace houses in mostly good condition, given their vintage. Berlin knew many of them were home to small creative businesses – photographers, graphic designers, photo retouchers. It was close to St Kilda Road, where mansions from the 1880s gold rush days were now filling up with a new gold rush of small advertising and marketing companies or being demolished and replaced with glass-fronted high-rise buildings housing international ad agencies.

One hundred Albert Road was a white-painted two-storey mansion. Roberts did a quick U-turn through a gap in the palm tree–lined centre divider. There was a parking spot a couple of doors down from their destination and he backed the sports car into it with a little more speed than Berlin thought was necessary. A group of young girls standing outside number 100 turned when they saw the sports car pull up. Berlin put their ages at between ten and twelve.

He heard someone squeal, ‘It's Jim Keays from the Masters Apprentices!' and the girls sprinted towards the car in a pack, a couple waving autograph books. They stopped when they saw Berlin and Roberts. The girl who'd led the rush looked to be very disappointed. She glanced back over her shoulder and shouted, ‘It's not anybody, Charlene, just a couple of old blokes.'

Was this his day to disappoint pretty young girls?
Berlin wondered.

‘Don't be a bloody goose all your life, Annie.'

The voice came from the direction of number 100. The girl speaking was older and slightly taller than the others. She was wearing a high school uniform with a very short skirt. The white shirt under her blazer was unbuttoned just enough to show off hints of a black bra. She was lounging on the brick gatepost holding a packet of smokes in her right hand. Her left hand was holding a Sony transistor radio in its leather case against her ear. She watched as Berlin and Roberts climbed out of the car and walked across the footpath. Berlin stopped in front of the group.

‘Shouldn't you lot be in school right now?'

A couple of the younger ones looked down at their toes.

‘We're all off sick today.' It was the tall girl again. She put the transistor radio down on top of the gatepost. ‘We've all got our periods.'

Some of the older girls giggled while the rest seemed embarrassed.

‘Why are you lot doing hanging about here anyway?' Berlin asked.

The one called Annie, the disappointed one, answered him. ‘It's a recording place, inside, I mean. All the famous singers come here to make records. Do you know Hans Paulson? He was here yesterday, and that other bloke – what was his name, Judy?' She nudged the girl standing next to her.

The girl answered in a loud whisper. ‘That was Johnny Young. You thought he was Johnny Farnham.' She looked up at Berlin, squinting in the bright sunlight. ‘Do you know anybody famous, mister?'

Berlin shook his head. All the famous people he knew were famous for all the wrong reasons.

‘Is there a photo studio around here someplace?'

The tall girl in the school uniform was lighting a cigarette with a match. ‘Why, are you an international model or something?'

Berlin walked up to the girl. She had that look of someone who was thirteen or fourteen going on thirty. Their eyes locked and she held his gaze. He took the cigarette from her mouth and dropped it on the ground.

‘It's Charlene, right? Don't you know that smoking stunts your growth, Charlene?'

The girl still held his gaze. ‘You're not my dad.'

‘That's right, lucky me. But I am a policeman and I don't think your headmistress would really appreciate having a truant dragged into her office by the police. Now, about that photo studio.'

Charlene tilted her head back over her left shoulder. ‘Up the driveway, at the end, up the stairs.' She smirked. ‘Be careful you don't fall off.'

Berlin and Roberts had just gone in through the gateway when she called after them.

‘Hey mister, can you do us a favour?' She was leaning back now, elbows supporting her on the gatepost. She had her chest and hips thrust forward, legs spread apart, skirt hiked up higher. Her short white socks and scuffed black Clarks school shoes made the pose even more disturbing. The fingers of her right hand toyed at opening even more buttons on her shirt while the tip of her tongue played lazily across her upper lip. ‘Give Derek a great big kiss for me, will ya? And slip him some tongue.'

Now Berlin was really glad he wasn't her father. ‘Anyone who's still here when we come out is getting a free ride home in a police car and their mum and dad are going to get an earful.'

There was no noise coming from the recording studio building as the two men walked past. Berlin assumed it was most probably soundproofed. The building at the end of the driveway was also two storeys high, brick with a sloping roof of moss-covered tiles. The structure was shabby, run-down, bricks well weathered with gaps in the crumbling mortar. Wide wooden double doors facing the driveway on ground level were chained shut. Berlin guessed the place had been built as a stable or a coach house but that was a long time back. He walked around to the side of the building. There were half a dozen windows and the dirt and grime thickly coating the glass panes made it impossible to look inside.

The hinges on the doors at the front were thick with rust as was the chain and padlock that kept the door secure. Weeds had grown up across the front of the door almost as high as the chain and padlock. Fading and flaking paint on the wood indicated the ground floor had once been the premises of Billabong Confectionery and the home of the ‘World Famous Sherbet Bomb'. The milk bar near Berlin's house still had big jars labelled ‘Billabong Confectionery' on its shelves, so the company must still have been in business – just not here and not for a long time.

To the right of the locked doors the word ‘Studio' was roughly painted on the bricks in white with an arrow pointing upwards. A wooden staircase led up to a landing, then up to a second landing and what had to be the studio entrance. There was a pile of broken timber stacked beside the driveway, including an old door. The place where the lock would have been was splintered and broken. Berlin could see evidence of white ant activity in the door and the timber frame.

Roberts led the way up the stairs. The wooden banisters were unsteady, rotted in places, but the door on the top landing and the wooden frame around it was brand new. An also new steel security door, bolted into the brickwork, stood wide open. If the downstairs part of the building was silent, upstairs was jumping. Fleetwood Mac was belting out as they got to the studio entrance and over the music Berlin could hear the sound of someone yelling. A brass plate was screwed into the brick wall to the right of the doorway. The engraving on the plate said they were about to enter the Lair of the Visual Beast.

The reception area inside the front door had wrinkled silver mylar pasted over the bricks. A low bench seat was built around the right-hand corner and led to a large desk. The bench was covered with green vinyl cushions and a sleek black Labrador was asleep in the corner. A wide corridor led off the reception area towards the back of the building. Somewhere down the corridor the music was blasting, and there was yelling in what sounded like an American accent, interspersed with short, bright bursts of flash lighting.

Berlin and Roberts walked across to the reception desk. Roberts smiled at the girl sitting behind it. She had her arms folded and was sucking on a ballpoint pen. About twenty, Berlin guessed, olive-skinned with long, dark, almost black hair. She reminded him of an American Indian, and her tan suede jacket with leather fringing hanging down from the sleeves reinforced the image. She smiled back at Roberts. She had nice teeth.

‘Yair, how can I help youse?'

The voice totally dispelled the American Indian image. Berlin let Roberts do the talking.

‘Is the owner in? And I guess by that I mean the Visual Beast.'

The girl tapped the ballpoint pen against her lower lip. ‘And to what might this be in relationship to?'

‘We're actually here to have a chat with Mr Beast's assistant, Derek Jones. We're police.'

The girl smiled again. ‘Derek been a naughty boy, has he?'

Roberts winked at the girl. ‘Just some questions about a photograph he took, love, nothing serious.'

The girl stood up at a desk and leaned forward. She was wearing a black silk shirt under the suede cowboy jacket. She was short and slender with remarkably big breasts. And a big voice to go with them.

‘Beast, a couple of blokes out here need to come back.'

Berlin winced and took a step back at the power of her voice. The American voice that had been doing the shouting down the hallway responded at a similar volume.

‘Bailiffs, are they?'

‘Nah, it's a couple of coppers.'

‘And about goddamn time. Send them back if the sight of some bare tits won't get me into trouble with the vice squad.'

The two men walked down the corridor towards the noise and the flashing lights. Berlin felt a give in the floorboards underfoot several times. The boards were old and scuffed and had dried out, shrinking back in places over the years. In several spots the gaps were so wide that you could see the building's crossbeams underneath and on down into the blackness of the old lolly factory below.

The studio area was spread across the width of the building. The ceiling height was about fifteen feet but there was no ceiling, just open space and beams, and above the beams, two-dozen feet up, was the apex of the tiled roof. By the wall to the left was a carpentry area with sawhorses and power tools. The space around it was neatly stacked with timber off-cuts, and a wide broom rested next to a sugar bag full of sawdust. Against the back wall of the studio was a miniature, stylised city skyline made from pieces of thick, black-painted plywood with openings cut out for windows. Behind the simulated skyline a canvas backdrop painted to resemble the night sky with clouds and a full moon had been stapled to the wall.

In front of the skyline and towering above it was a tall blonde girl in platform shoes that made her taller still. She was holding a couple of large ostrich feather fans which covered her body. Berlin got the impression that she was probably naked underneath. A stocky, heavy-set man with a shock of black curly hair was standing in front of the girl, bent over a camera mounted on a tripod. Around them was a forest of silver light stands holding photographic umbrellas and flash heads connected by cables to electronic flash packs on the floor.

The photographer was looking down into the camera viewfinder, yelling instructions to the girl. She turned side-on towards the camera, lifting one foot off the ground. The photographer pressed a button with his right hand and there was a loud clunk and then a pop and a blinding flash as the lights fired. He looked up at the girl and cranked a handle on the side of the camera.

‘Get your act together, Delvene, for God's sake. We need to know you're naked but we can't see your bits, remember? Not in
The Herald
, at least. Use those fans like I showed you.'

The girl lifted her foot off the ground again and one fan went up and one went down but she stayed covered. The lights popped and the camera crank turned. A younger man was standing to the right of the model, waving a large square of plywood quickly up and down. The upward motion of the plywood directed gusts of air towards the feathers, making them flutter and lifting the girl's long blonde hair away from her face and out behind her. The flashes fired again.

‘Groovy, baby, I love it! More wind, Derek, more wind.' The photographer fired again and turned the crank on the right side of the camera. The crank just kept turning, making a ratcheting noise.

‘New film magazine, Derek, when you have a moment. And you're supposed to tell me when I run out of film, I'm not supposed to tell you, so get it together.'

The young bloke who had been waving the board put it down and moved towards the camera. ‘You got it, Beast.'

The photographer turned towards the model. ‘And you can take a break too, baby, while I talk to our visitors. But don't sit down, we don't want to see any creases on your ass. Well, no more than you've got already.'

The model dropped her arms to her sides, the white ostrich feathers bending at the tips on contact with the floor. She was wearing a G-string, like the strippers at the George Hotel, and nothing else. The photographer looked at her and shook his head.

‘Oh, put them away, for God's sake, Delvene. I'm sure these guys have seen more and better. And can you touch up your lipstick? You must have something redder in that big makeup bag you lug around.'

The girl walked off the background and towards a small room set off to one side. Inside the doorway Berlin could see a long mirror above a bench and above the mirror a row of small round light bulbs. The girl walked languidly despite the platform shoes and she seemed quite comfortable in her semi-nakedness.

The assistant was fumbling with the back of the tripod-mounted camera and the photographer shook his head. ‘Let's move it, Derek, if it was a bra you would have had it off in two seconds.'

The accent was definitely American. A beer belly pushed at the front of the man's T-shirt and bulged over the belt that was holding up his blue denim jeans. He was wearing cowboy boots, the Cuban-heeled ones that gave a short man that extra inch or two of height.

Berlin walked across the studio and studied the camera on the tripod. ‘Nice-looking camera. It's a Hasselblad, a 500C, right?'

‘My goodness, a flatfoot who knows his cameras.'

‘Flatfoot?'

The photographer smiled at him but didn't mean it. ‘Back in Brooklyn where I'm from, flatfoot is a term of endearment for our cops.'

Berlin smiled back with equal insincerity. ‘Not in any Yank gangster film I've ever seen it doesn't, but right now I'll take your word for it. My wife is a photographer; she's got a Hasselblad on her wish list.'

The photographer put his hand on top of the camera. ‘It seems a lot of the ladies are playing around with photography these days. She does understand the Hasselblad is a very sensitive and expensive piece of professional equipment, doesn't she? And really quite complicated.'

‘That's okay, my wife is quite complicated too. And sensitive.' And Berlin knew if she was here right now Rebecca wouldn't let the comment go by. If she got her dander up he knew she wouldn't be beyond suggesting they test the Visual Beast's own sensitivity by shoving that Hasselblad up his arse, sideways.

‘This camera chat is nice but we're in a bit of a hurry right now Should we call you Mr Beast or just Beast? Or would you have a real name?'

There was a pause before the photographer answered. ‘I was born Sheldon Shapiro but it's my relentless, almost animalistic pursuit of ethereal beauty and feminine perfection through the camera lens that has made me the Visual Beast.'

‘I guess I'll take your word for that too.'

Roberts was standing behind the photographer. He looked at Berlin, shook his head and made a wanking gesture with his right hand.

‘So tell me, Sheldon, what did you mean when we came in, when you said it was about time?'

The photographer walked past Berlin to a refrigerator standing against the wall and took out a bottle of Coca-Cola. Yellow boxes of Kodak colour film were stacked up in the fridge. Both Berlin and Roberts declined the offer of a soft drink.

The photographer pulled the cap off his bottle with an opener attached to the wall on a short chain. ‘We had a robbery here a few weeks back. The uniformed coppers who turned up said they'd be sending detectives to have a look but nobody ever came by.'

‘Did you lose much stuff?'

‘That was the funny part – they just kicked in the front door and knocked over a few light stands and things, but as far as we could see nothing was taken. Might just have been kids, I suppose. We have a lot hanging around, because of the recording studio out front.'

‘I just saw a bunch of hardened criminals hanging around when we arrived, real hard cases. You're lucky nothing got nicked, but we're not here about a robbery. I need to talk to your assistant Derek there about something else.'

Derek looked up at the sound of his name. Berlin could see he was nervous.

‘Any chance we can have a bit of privacy, Sheldon, and maybe get that music turned down a smidge?'

The photographer nodded. ‘Out the back is private enough, I suppose, but can you make it quick? Delvene is getting paid an outrageous amount of money to not show us her tits and it's by the hour.' He walked across to a stereo next to a stack of LP records and turned the volume knob down

‘Just give me a shout as soon as you're done, will you? I'll be out in the front office giving my favourite bitch a rub on the tummy.'