Mr Lee looked up as Berlin walked into the shop. ‘There is news on my daughter’s killer?’
‘Not yet, and I’m sorry to disturb you, but I have to ask you again about your daughter’s friends.’
‘As I told you, my daughter worked here before school, in the hotel kitchen after school and studied on the weekend. Her friends she saw only at school.’
‘On the night before your daughter’s death, a girl was seen with a soldier down by the river. Did Jenny know any soldiers?’
‘My wife and I know Sergeant Whitmore, from Bandiana. We order special items for him from Melbourne, soya sauce, chilli, noodles. And sometimes he has a meal with us. He enjoys my wife’s cooking.’
‘And your daughter and the sergeant were friends?’
‘Friends, yes. Nothing more. Sergeant Whitmore is an honourable man.’
‘When did you see him last?’
‘A couple of weeks ago, perhaps. My wife roasted a duck to honour his safe return.’
‘He was away?’
‘In Melbourne, for a number of weeks, on army business. He said he missed my wife’s cooking very much. He even lost weight being away from it.’
‘And there are no other soldiers you can think of?’
‘One time Sergeant Whitmore brought the young one, Champion, but that was some months ago. He didn’t like the food and we did not see him again after that evening.’
‘Was your daughter home that evening, the one night he came?’
‘Of course. My daughter is …’ he paused, ‘was always home in the evening.’
A few minutes later, Berlin slid back into the booth, just as Roberts’ hamburger arrived. The waitress put the plate in front of the constable, along with a bottle of White Crow tomato sauce and a knife and fork tightly wrapped in a paper serviette. Berlin’s sandwich and tea were already waiting for him.
‘That first night you dropped me off at the hotel, Roberts …’
Roberts lifted the top off his burger and splashed sauce onto the charred meat. ‘Last Wednesday, you mean?’
‘Sergeant Whitmore and Kenny were already there and you said it was a regular visit.’
‘That’s right, most weeknights for a while now.’
‘But I’ve never seen any soldiers in the Diggers Rest.’
‘Well, there’s lots of pubs closer to Bandiana and Bonegilla, and anyway the enlisted men and the NCOs can drink cheaper in the canteens at the camps.’
Roberts took a bite out of the hamburger. Fat oozed out of the bun and dripped down onto his plate. He chewed and swallowed. He was about to take another bite when he saw the look on Berlin’s face.
‘Everything okay, Mr Berlin?’
‘I need you to drive out to the Bandiana camp and bring Kenny Champion back for questioning.’
‘Why? You can’t really think Kenny killed that girl, Mr Berlin? The girl was Chinese, not a bloody Jap.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t make the distinction. And last Wednesday night I think I interrupted a barney between Kenny and the Lee girl in the kitchen at the Diggers Rest. So just bring him in, and the provost’s sword. Maybe that poddy dodger can identify him.’
Roberts shook his head. ‘Sergeant Corrigan’s already let him go.’
‘When? Why?’
‘Not long after I brought him in, Captain Bellamy rang through to say the bloke was his cook’s cousin and that he’d be willing to vouch for him showing up in court.’
‘That was big of Bellamy. And very accommodating of the sergeant. I still want Kenny brought in.’
‘I can’t see Kenny doing anything like this, Mr Berlin – not Kenny. He can get rambunctious out on the footy field but he’s really a bit of a quiet one otherwise.’
‘I’m not sure he did it either, but I know he’s involved somehow.’
FORTY-EIGHT
The Wodonga lock-up was a solid-brick building behind the police station. Surrounded by a ten-foot stone wall, the place looked downright Dickensian. Roberts led Berlin into a small exercise yard through a heavy wooden door with an iron lock. The walls of the yard were topped with glittering shards of broken glass set into a ridge of concrete.
There were two more locked doors running off the yard and Roberts opened the one on his right. The cell was about twelve feet square with a high ceiling. Light from a small, barred window near the top of the rear wall was supplemented by the feeble glow of a 25-watt bulb. On one side of the room an iron-framed bed had been bolted to the floor with a thin mattress and a couple of folded grey army blankets thrown on top. In the other corner was a black dunny can with no cover and even though the cell was freezing, several blowflies buzzed noisily over the mess inside.
Kenny Champion was sitting on the edge of the bed looking glum.
‘Bob here is pretty pissed off with you.’
Constable Roberts had a bruise on his chin and a fresh rip in the sleeve of his uniform tunic.
‘He shouldn’t have said what he said.’
‘Look, Kenny. I told him to bring you in. It was just going to be for a bit of a chat about the Lee girl, but now you could be done for assaulting a police officer – that’s if Constable Roberts wants to take it further.’
‘He shouldn’t have said I hurt the girl. They took my belt and boot laces. When can I get them back?’
‘That’s just procedure. Nobody wants you hanging yourself, mate.’
‘Why not? What difference would it make?’
Berlin shrugged. ‘Not a lot to me. Especially if you killed her.’
‘I didn’t kill her. I …’ He stopped mid-sentence.
‘But you knew her?’
‘Everyone knew her. She worked behind the counter in the grocery store on Saturday mornings sometimes.’
‘Did you ever meet her when she wasn’t behind the counter? Maybe at the Diggers’, out in the kitchen or over a bowl of boiled rice, perhaps?’
‘Where’s Sergeant Whitmore? Does he know I’m in here?’
‘Look, Kenny, all you have to do is tell us where you were between three and five o’clock on Tuesday morning.’
The kid looked at Berlin and then down at the floor. ‘I was … I was … somewhere …’
‘C’mon, Kenny. Everyone is always somewhere. I’m just asking if you were somewhere with someone? Doing something? Something that maybe got out of hand and you don’t want to talk about?’
Kenny shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not saying anything.’
‘Then it’s your funeral, son.’
Roberts followed Berlin back across the yard to the police station. The young constable appeared to be worried about something.
‘Mr Berlin, Kenny plays full-forward on our footy team and we’ve got this big match against the Yarrawonga reserves on Saturday.’
‘And?’
‘Kenny’s our star player and if he’s locked up …’
‘He knows something about the Lee girl and I’m not letting him out of here until I find out what it is.’
‘Don’t you think you were a bit tough on him in there?’
‘That wasn’t tough, Roberts, believe me.’
After Berlin had been captured they took him by train to Frankfurt, to Dulag Luft, the infamous reception centre for Allied aircrew taken prisoner in the Reich. He was photographed, his flying kit was replaced with a shabby khaki greatcoat, and then he was locked in solitary confinement. His first interrogation was a genteel affair with a Luftwaffe senior officer, who chatted amiably over cigarettes and tea and biscuits. A few days later he was dragged from his cell and dumped in a chair in front of an SS officer. A black leather overcoat was hanging on a hook by the door of the interrogation room. Berlin reckoned it belonged to the man in the black suit sitting quietly in one corner of the room, and he also reckoned the man was probably Gestapo.
There were no tea and biscuits this time. The two Germans smoked constantly, but never once offered him a cigarette. However, they did threaten to drag him out to a courtyard to face a waitin
g firing squad, or downstairs to soundproofed cellars, promising that within twenty-four hours he would be begging for them to shoot him, just to end the pain.
Halfway through the three-hour session, Berlin realised that although there was a lot of shouting and threats of imminent execution and clips around the ears, the interrogators were not actually seeking any military information – they were simply intent on terrorising him. But he played along and eventually gave up a fake squadron number, aircraft type and target, knowing none of it could be checked and verified. They sent him back to his cell and he was feeling pleased with himself until he realised that at some stage in the first part of the interrogation he had wet his pants.
FORTY-NINE
Berlin opened the screen door of the police station and walked through to his office. It was a cramped space for two men and even smaller for three, especially when one of them was holding a very big sword.
Sergeant Whitmore was in uniform with his pistol in the white holster on his webbing belt. The pistol didn’t worry Berlin but the sword made him uncomfortable. Whitmore had it out of the scabbard, the long, gently curved blade sparkling in the late-afternoon sunlight that streamed through the window. Roberts’ eyes were locked on the blade.
‘I’m going to get this back, right? When you two have finished dicking around with young Kenny.’
‘Afternoon, Pete,’ Berlin said. ‘You want to put that sword down?’
Whitmore shook his head slowly. ‘Jesus, Charlie, what’s the world coming to? A bloke goes for a bit of a lie-down and wakes up to find his favourite private hauled off in the back of a police car, souvenirs pinched from his bloody wall and a barracks block half-demolished.’
‘You’ll get the sword back soon as we get this sorted, Pete.’
Whitmore held the sword out in front of him and looked down the edge of the blade. ‘Bloody beautiful, isn’t it. It’s called a katana. This particular one is supposed to be over five hundred years old, made by a master swordsmith named Kanemoto.’
Roberts was standing well back, close to the doorway. ‘It looks bloody sharp.’
Whitmore swung the blade in a gentle downward arc. ‘It is bloody sharp. The Japanese have a rating called Akasaka, which means supreme sharpness. The Yanks were supposed to have an infantry training film where a bloke cuts through a machine-gun barrel with one of these.’
Roberts sneered from the safety of the doorway. ‘Bullshit. All the stuff the Japs make is absolute crap. The blade would just snap off.’
Whitmore shook his head. ‘No way, sunshine. These swords are handmade by master craftsmen, one at a time. It takes months. They heat special steel in a small forge and hammer it down over and over. You finish up with hundreds of layers compressed into a strong, light, flexible and very dangerous weapon.’
‘Can I have a look?’
Whitmore handed the sword to Berlin. It was heavier than he expected, but well balanced. There was no question it was beautifully made, right down to the intricate woven cords covering the handle. Berlin felt an uncomfortable sense of power as he held the weapon.
He looked straight at Whitmore. ‘If you could take a bloke’s head off with one of these, Pete, then I guess chopping the head off a little Chinese girl would be no problem.’ He studied the blade closely. ‘There are marks on here that could be dried blood.’
‘I don’t doubt it, Charlie. These things were made to be used and I’d bet on it having been in a blue or two. I’m pretty sure those nicks along the cutting edge didn’t come from slicing up a cream sponge at a Sunday school picnic.’
Berlin took one last look at the sword and handed it back to Whitmore. The soldier slid it expertly back into the scabbard and then placed the weapon carefully on Berlin’s desk.
‘In the old days they used to test ’em by stacking up a pile of dead bodies at an execution ground and trying to chop right though the middle. A master sword tester with a good blade could go through about five people with a single swing.’
‘Bloody barbarians,’ Roberts said.
‘Maybe so, Bob, but they were making blades like that a couple of hundred years before a white man ever set foot in this country. They had a complex civilisation, built massive wood and stone castles and beautiful temples, dressed in the finest silks, created sophisticated artwork and made gardens out of rocks and sand, with decorative ponds filled with giant goldfish.’
‘And murdered and raped their way across half of Asia. Don’t leave that bit out,’ Berlin said.
‘I’m not. I’m just telling you I wasn’t expecting to find what I did when I got to Japan. And we paid them back, we paid them back in spades. Hiroshima after the A-bomb had to be seen to be believed. And Tokyo and the other big cities. Dropping incendiaries on cities full of wood and paper buildings certainly worked a treat.’
‘Taught them a lesson, didn’t it?’
‘Too right, Bob,’ Whitmore said, ‘brought it home that when it comes to war you sure as hell don’t want to be on the losing side.’
Berlin thought about the German towns he saw after the Red Army had been through them, but said nothing. ‘I’ll be hanging on to your sword for a bit. Roberts will write you a receipt.’
‘I’m here for Kenny, actually.’
‘I’ll hang on to him, too. He won’t talk and he doesn’t have an alibi for the night of the murder – at least not one he feels like sharing.’
‘He’s probably too embarrassed to tell you. The kid was with me all night.’
‘Doing what?’
‘We were playing Snakes and Ladders.’
‘All night?’
‘It can be a very challenging game.’
‘Anyone else see you?’
‘It’s not exactly a spectator sport.’
‘Right.’
‘Look, Charlie, we had night duty and I’m giving you my word the kid was with me at the time the girl died and we were nowhere near where it happened. Isn’t that enough for you, copper to copper?’
‘Not when we’re talking about a murder.’
‘Well then bugger you, DC Berlin. Can I see him at least?’
‘Roberts can take you out, but he’s not going to leave you blokes alone.’
The constable was looking at his wristwatch. ‘Mr Berlin, is it okay if I take off after that? It’s just that we’ve got a training session tonight for the game on Saturday and if we don’t have Kenny at full-forward we’ll need to pick someone out of the juniors.’
‘There you go, Charlie, you’re upsetting the natural order of things. Not good in a small town.’
‘Escort the sergeant through, Roberts. When he’s done, you can head off for the night. Take the car if you want, I’ll walk back to the hotel when I’m done here.’
When the men had left Berlin put the kettle on, and while it boiled he sat in his chair, feet up on the desk, smoking a cigarette. He studied the sword leaning in the corner and tried to imagine Whitmore in Japan. Berlin had seen the newsreel footage of Hiroshima and watched it dispassionately. The newsreels of blitzed German cities, places he had actually seen up close on the march back from Poland, on the other hand, had made him uncomfortable, more so on the occasions when people in the audience started to cheer and clap at the devastation.
FIFTY
On his way to the Diggers Rest, Berlin walked past a locked hardware store. The smell of dry feed still hanging in the air reminded him of the pollard and bran mash his grandfather had fed to the chickens they’d kept in the backyard. As he passed an alley next to the store he heard a familiar sound – the smack of leather on leather.
Berlin walked down the alley and saw light coming from the doorway of a shed. Inside, a battered punching bag was hanging from a ceiling beam and a compact little bloke was laying into it with enthusiasm. From his build and speed Berlin judged his age to be about thirty but when he turned around Berlin saw that he was a lot older.
‘Sorry, mate, hardware store’s closed till tomorrow morning.’
&nbs
p; ‘I was just passing. Heard you working the bag and thought I’d look in.’
The man was wearing overalls and tennis shoes and Berlin could smell sweat mixed with the aroma of stock feed, kerosene and linseed oil.
There was a sagging army cot in a corner of the shed and photographs torn from magazines were pasted on the wall above – pictures of fighters and girls in swimsuits. There were more fighters than girls.
‘You box, then?’
Berlin shook his head. ‘Just a bit, as a kid. Gave it away when I got older.’
The man walked over and tilted his head to study Berlin’s face. ‘Time was I could look at a nose like yours and tell you the name of the bloke who broke it and whether he used his left or right.’
‘You fight pro?’
‘For a little bit. Won some, lost more. Just a hobby for me now.’
‘Keeps you fit, though.’
The man smiled. ‘That it does, and out of the pub.’
‘That too. See you later, then.’
As Berlin turned to leave a poster pasted inside the shed door caught his eye. The poster was crudely printed with the words BARCLAY’S TRAVELLING BOXING EXPOSITION and some names and a photograph: a black-and-white shot of eight men in shorts posing in front of a massive tent.
‘What’s this about, mate?’
‘Tent boxing troupe. You know the drill, half a dozen bruisers with a couple of trucks and a big marquee.’
Tent boxing troupes were a bush tradition, travelling from town to town and getting local lads to line up for a chance to climb into the ring and show off to their mates and girlfriends. It was a change from going to the pictures or a concert and the locals were more than happy to pay to watch the town smart alec get his block knocked off.
‘You know any of these blokes?’ Berlin asked.
The Diggers Rest Hotel Page 19