‘Bit better than those forts you built up round Bathurst as a kid, I’ll bet.’
‘Too right, Charlie. But then of course when a bloke’s got the perfect hideout he really needs someone to be hiding out from. It just started as a bit of a lark one night when we were bored. I have to tell you, sitting around on your arse drinking tea or rounding up drunks and stopping mechanics nicking off with screwdrivers and drums of lubricating oil – or even pinching the odd Bailey Bridge – isn’t all that exciting. We planned it so no one would get hurt.’
‘That’s why you had blanks in the Tommy gun, right?’
‘That was a nice catch on your part, Charlie. I’m not sure how all the other coppers missed it.’
‘That was also a nice move on your part, Pete, drawing us off like that so that your boys could get away.’
‘It’s how we did it up north if things got hot – split up and some lucky bugger tries to lead the enemy in the wrong direction.’
‘Didn’t really matter, I’d already found your hideout and the money. I was about to organise a little welcome-home party out here tonight when you showed up at the police station.’
‘I figured you were on to us, Charlie. What tipped you?’
‘You did, but it took me a while to realise it. You asked if Rebecca gave me the photograph of the gang at the loco sheds, remember? The only people who knew she’d taken it were her and me and the robbers.’
‘I should learn to keep my trap shut.’
‘We’ll get the rest of them, you know.’
Whitmore shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. The bikes and guns and the rest of the clobber are all at the bottom of a billabong somewhere by now. You’ll never find ’em. The station at Rutherglen was our last raid. And now it’s over.’
‘Final instalment in your own little pension plan?’
‘C’mon, mate, it was never about the money. The dough’s in a petrol drum back there and all accounted for. Fun sorta went out of it somehow after Spud clocked that paymaster. Don’t know what happened there and, like I said, no one was supposed to get hurt. He’s on the mend, they tell me.’
‘That’s what I hear. Cheered up a bit by your donation to his holiday fund. Oh, and I think you went looking for this in the wrong spot.’ Berlin reached into his pocket. His fingers closed round the empty Benzedrine inhaler he had almost forgotten about and then found the disk. He took it slowly from his pocket and tossed it across to the soldier. ‘I got it this morning, blacktracker bloke found it outside the loco sheds pay office. You must have lost it in the scuffle with the paymaster.’
Whitmore rubbed the disk slowly between his thumb and fingers. ‘It was a gift from Hiroko. She found it in the ruins of her house. It’s my good luck charm. Thanks.’
‘I’ll need to hold onto it, as evidence.’
‘What do you need evidence for? I told you, the Bandiana Boys are gone for good.’
‘It’s not that easy, Pete.’
‘It’s as easy or as hard as a bloke wants to make it.’ He tossed the disk back to Berlin. ‘And you don’t have a lot of evidence, just a Japanese coin and the word of some blackfella.’
‘I’ve got you.’
Whitmore smiled. ‘Not for long, sport. Can’t say there would have been a lot of value in me pinching money for a pension plan, in any case.’
‘Because of the cancer?’
‘You don’t miss much, do you, Charlie? How’d you know?’
‘When a bloke acts like he’s got nothing to lose you have to figure sometimes maybe he doesn’t. Mr Lee said you were in Melbourne recently so I spoke to someone I know at the repat hospital and they dug out your file. Your treatment dates were the same as the Bandiana Boys’ little holiday.’
‘Funny that.’
‘They figure out where it came from? The radiation from the A-bomb, maybe? They say that can cause cancer.’
‘Might have been that – who knows? There were some pretty crook people in Hiroshima when I was there, with a lot of Yank military doctors photographing and prodding and poking them. Some were dying quick and some slow.’ He paused. ‘It was the kids that were hardest to take.’
‘The repat doc said six months to a year.’
‘Yeah, he told me that six months back so you’d need to make it a pretty quick trial, eh?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What have you got to be sorry about, Charlie? Life’s a gamble, I learned that pretty early, on that railway track in Queensland.’
‘You could make things more comfortable for yourself if you gave evidence about the others.’
‘Do you really think that would make me comfortable, old son?’
‘I guess not.’
‘Anyway, Charlie, I don’t know who they were. We were all wearing masks, remember. Just a bunch of complete strangers looking for a bit of excitement in a bloody boring world.’
‘War’s over, Pete, for now this bloody boring world is all we’ve got.’
‘You telling me you don’t miss the thrills, living life right on the edge?’
Berlin shook his head. ‘Not one cracker.’
‘Takes all kinds, I suppose.’
‘What about the kid? Kenny. What’s his story?’
‘Commandos and the independents take care of their own, and the families. When we found out about his brother we started looking out for him.’
‘Keeping him out of trouble, you mean? By taking him out on armed robberies?’
‘Didn’t happen. Kenny doesn’t know anything. Right now you’d find he’s home with his old man if you were to check.’
‘That’s a pretty good alibi, Pete, and I might choose to buy that story, but I’m not sure I could sell it.’
‘Kenny’s a good kid, Charlie, he doesn’t need any more grief. Lost his brother in horrendous circumstances, his dad goes a bit doolally and who can blame him, and then the silly little bugger goes and falls for a girl the old bloke is never going to accept.’
‘That was the reason for your regular visits to the Diggers Rest, right? So he and Jenny could get together without their parents catching on?’
‘They were just a couple of kids in love. Who was it going to hurt?’
‘Well, at least Kenny’s in the clear for the murder. Doctor Morris botched an abortion on the girl and tried to cover it up by implicating the Champions – he wrote a confession before topping himself.’
‘Jenny was up the duff? Kenny never mentioned that. He’s a quiet one. Keeps things bottled up inside, and that’s not good for a bloke.’
‘He figured they could run off to Sydney together and get married.’
‘Jesus. Kids, eh?’
‘Everything okay in there, DC Berlin?’ It was Bellamy, shouting from behind the Dodge.
‘Might be time to make a move, Pete.’
‘Seems like it, Charlie. Maybe you should go in front – I have a feeling those bozos might be a little trigger-happy.’
‘Fine with me.’ He put out his hand and Whitmore gave him the Tommy gun.
‘It’s only loaded with blanks now, you know.’
‘Just the same …’
Whitmore was right about the bloody thing being heavy. The wooden pistol grips on the weapon were worn smooth and the hundred-round ammo drum was scratched and dented.
Berlin walked out onto the verandah. ‘Hold your fire! We’re coming out.’ Whitmore’s boots scraped on the concrete behind him.
‘The kid had nothing to do with anything, you’ll tell them that, right, Charlie? It was all down to me. Me and my anonymous friends.’
‘Like I said, I’m not sure how much I can sell them on that score.’
‘Do your best, eh? We went to a lot of trouble to make sure nobody got hurt, remember, and maybe it’ll help that it’s a dying man’s confession. See you round, Charlie.’
Whitmore’s shoulder slammed hard into Berlin’s back, and as his body spun from the impact he felt the Tommy gun being jerked out of his hand. He was flying
backwards, falling, rolling and he heard the bolt go back on the Tommy gun. Face-down in the dirt, he yelled, ‘Don’t shoot, you bastards, he’s firing blanks!’ Then he heard the Tommy gun open up behind him, and from in front blasts of rifle fire and the stutter of Bellamy’s Sten gun.
There was the zip, zip, zip of bullets passing overhead and the sound of splintering wood and the dull smack of lead striking flesh. Berlin rolled over just in time to see Whitmore punched backwards into the hut, the door and the windows disintegrating into shards and splinters around him.
SIXTY-EIGHT
Berlin found the Tommy gun on the floor just inside the hut. A heavy blood trail led away from the weapon and into the cavernous space behind the false wall. He took out his Browning and followed the trail into the tunnel.
Whitmore was slumped against the rock about thirty feet in. He was sitting upright, legs outstretched, with a heavy Colt automatic pistol cradled in his arms. He had been hit at least five or six times, from what Berlin could see, and he was losing a lot of blood.
Whitmore smiled weakly. ‘I’d say the bastards couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, except it looks like that’s exactly where most of their bullets went.’
‘You wanna drop the gun, Pete?’ Berlin asked.
Whitmore shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s over.’
Whitmore smiled and coughed. ‘It’s never over till you say it’s over, Charlie. You should know that.’
Berlin’s pistol was by his side and he raised it when the other man’s hand twitched. One of the bullets had hit Whitmore in the right elbow and he grimaced in pain as he attempted to lift his weapon. He was trying to raise the muzzle up towards his chest.
‘Couldn’t give an old digger a bit of a hand, could you?’
Berlin shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Whitmore grunted in pain. ‘C’mon, mate. You said it, now I’m saying it. It’s over.’
‘Not this way.’
‘What other way is there? And don’t tell me you never thought about it.’
Whitmore coughed again, a thin trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth.
I chose my time. Remember me, Berlin said to himself.
He dropped his pistol into his pocket and walked forward. The floor around the soldier was slippery with blood.
‘You wanna be careful with that nice overcoat there, Charlie.’ Whitmore’s voice was a croak, and he grimaced with pain as he spoke.
Kneeling beside him, Berlin gently took Whitmore’s gun hand and raised the pistol up till the muzzle was under the soldier’s chin.
‘Thanks, mate,’ the sergeant said through gritted teeth.
‘You sure about this, Pete?’
Whitmore nodded. His eyes were beginning to glaze over and as his finger fluttered on the trigger he gasped in pain.
‘Bugger,’ he said softly.
Berlin could see small spurts of blood pulsing from the shattered right elbow. Whitmore looked into Berlin’s eyes and smiled.
Berlin slipped his finger inside the trigger guard, on top of Whitmore’s.
I am your witness.
Berlin had never fired a big gun like the Colt. He was surprised at how much effort it took to pull the trigger.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Though my characters and the Diggers Rest Hotel are fictional, Wodonga, Albury and Bandiana are of course real locations and any success I have had in recreating them in time is due in large part to the assistance I received from Uta Wiltshire and Jean Whitla OAM at the Wodonga Historical Society and Major Graeme Docksey OAM, Pat Shanahan and Bob Matejcic at the Army Museum Bandiana (a fantastic museum which is well worth a visit). I am most grateful for the time and access they gave me. Any mistakes, historical or geographical, are all my own work.
Thanks also to Ben Ball, Miriam Cannell and Julia Carlomagno at Penguin, and to John Canty for his cover design. Very, very special thanks to my always supportive and encouraging agent Selwa Anthony for her tireless work, and to the wonderful Estelle Adamek for her insight.
Many thanks and much love go to Wilma Schinella, who combines steely resolve with a sharp eye for detail, untiring energy and enthusiasm, a compassionate understanding of the fragility and strengths of people – both real and imaginary – and a wicked sense of humour.
The Diggers Rest Hotel Page 26