St Kilda Blues

by Geoffrey McGeachin

  ‘You think this is about ransom, Bob?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  Berlin scanned the room again. Something in the jumbled mess of the corkboard caught his attention and he crossed the room. It was a newspaper cutting, a photograph, held at the very bottom of the board by a brass drawing pin. He leaned in for a better look. It showed two young girls smiling at the camera in a very dark space. The photographer had used flash, and fall-off had left the rest of the room underexposed. Rebecca had taught him about flash fall-off. The caption underneath read, ‘On the scene at Opus.’ Berlin unpinned the clipping. He glanced into the waste paper basket next to the desk hoping to find the paper the clipping came from, but it was empty.

  ‘That the friend from round the corner, Rosemary?’

  Roberts nodded. ‘Selden’s boys got a better picture of Gudrun from Vera, the one I showed you, so apparently no one bothered grabbing that one.’

  The girl suited the room, Berlin decided after studying the picture for a moment. She was as tall as her friend, but that was the only similarity. Rosemary was a pretty enough girl but the lift of her chin and tilt of her head showed she was posing for the camera, or the cameraman, trying to look grown-up and worldly, sophisticated. Gudrun’s smile was different – open, guileless; the smile of a happy young girl just pleased to have been chosen to have her picture taken.

  Berlin handed the clipping to Roberts, who slipped it into his folder. ‘I’ll have a talk with her old man now.’

  Downstairs in the kitchen, the electric coffee percolator was burping away and Vera had cups ready on the bench.

  It was good coffee. Berlin sipped it from a nice china cup, watching the flash of the axe head rising and falling against a bright blue sky through the kitchen window. This was one bit he didn’t miss: talking with the fathers, especially when it was about daughters, and as usual he found himself putting it off for as long as he could. It was never, ever long enough.

  There was a folded copy of the morning paper on the kitchen counter. He remembered the weather forecast had said to expect a nice day. In Melbourne, people knew never to trust the weather forecast.

  SEVEN

  The constable leaning on the barbecue looked up when Berlin and Roberts walked out onto the terrace. Roberts pointed a finger at him and then flicked his thumb sideways to indicate his presence wasn’t wanted. The constable put on his cap and walked past them back into the kitchen. The axe continued to flash up and down, the split wood tossed onto the ever-growing pile. Summer was coming and right now there was enough split wood stacked up to keep the living room fireplace and the outdoor barbecue blazing day and night until winter came back round again.

  Berlin could hear the throb of a pump from the pool house, the chirruping of small birds in the trees and from a neighbouring backyard the sound of children playing. Life goes on. Life always goes on, he knew. Life was a bastard like that.

  He watched the axeman, watched his awkward swing, and that disquieting feeling that he knew him from somewhere came back to him again.

  ‘Mr Scheiner, this is Detective Sergeant Berlin, the one I told you about.’

  The axeman glanced over his right shoulder towards Roberts and Berlin. He turned back to the chopping block and placed another log on top before he spoke.

  ‘Your colleague there tells me you are good at your job, Detective Sergeant Berlin, good at finding people, and also that you have a teenage daughter.’

  The man’s English was good though there was definitely a strong German accent. Berlin had plenty of experience of German-accented English.

  ‘I have a daughter, yes.’

  The axe came down, hard. ‘So if you have a daughter you must know how I am feeling right now.’

  Berlin hoped to God he never had to experience those feelings. ‘I’m going to do everything I can to find her, Mr Scheiner, that’s the best I can promise you.’

  Another log went onto the block. ‘This wood comes from my farm, in the country, where I had planned we should spend the weekend. But this weekend my daughter wanted to go to yet another dance, to this Buddha’s Belly place and I find I can deny her nothing.’

  ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself.’

  The axe came down harder this time. A piece of the split log flew across the patio, slamming hard into the brick barbecue. ‘Who should I blame then, tell me that?’

  The flash of anger in Scheiner’s voice was understandable and Berlin didn’t respond to the question. He waited a moment before he spoke again.

  ‘Do I know you, Mr Scheiner? Have we met before?’

  Scheiner glanced back over his right shoulder at Berlin again. ‘I don’t believe so, you do not seem familiar.’ He slammed the axe down into the chopping block and left it there. ‘And I believe, without false modesty, that I have a face you would not quickly forget.’ He turned around to face the two policemen.

  Berlin started with the shoes as he always did. These were old, well worn but still in good nick and recently polished. The overalls were the same – worn but neat and clean. Scheiner was around his age or slightly younger, Berlin estimated. He was tall, fit, and his hair, though greying, was thick and glossy. He would have been a handsome man but for the scarring across the left side of his face.

  The skin was a ghostly blue-white, puckered, leathery, running from a line just below his eye down to his chin and on to the part of his neck that was visible under the jacket collar. If the scarring continued down to his left arm and the left side of his body it would quite possibly explain the man’s awkward handling of the axe.

  ‘A Russian Flammenwerfer, Detective Sergeant Berlin, a flamethrower. My steel helmet saved my head from the worst of the fire, though the others in my bunker were not so fortunate. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that this is the only injury I sustained over the course of the war.’

  ‘You were in the army, Mr. Scheiner?’

  ‘A Landser? No, I was not. Not until the end, at least.’

  ‘A Landser?’ It was Roberts who asked the question.

  ‘It means a foot soldier, Bob,’ Berlin said, ‘an infantryman. It’s like our word “digger”.’

  Scheiner nodded. ‘Exactly so. I was in fact in the Luftwaffe, the air force. In a sane world I would have perhaps been in university or chasing pretty girls but instead I was an anti-aircraft gunner in Berlin, on the Flaktürme Tiergarten, the Zoo flak tower.’

  Berlin could see Roberts was confused. His old man had been an anti-aircraft gunner in the army.

  ‘Different way of doing things, Bob. Under the German military system anti-aircraft defence was the job of the German air force rather than the army. The Luftwaffe also guarded captured aircrew in joints called Stalag-Lufts, air force POW camps.’

  ‘Again exactly so, Detective Sergeant Berlin. However in the last days they issued me a worn-out rifle and a dozen cartridges to use against the Ivans and their artillery and their flamethrowers. The kindersoldaten, the Hitler Youth, took the anti-tank Panzerfausts to use against the Russian T-34s since they were still both young enough and stupid enough to believe the Führer and his Reich were worth dying for.’

  On the forced march out of Poland, Berlin’s POW column had passed half-finished bunkers and hastily dug foxholes manned by old men, some still in civilian clothes, and young boys – kindersoldaten, child soldiers. The older men looked tired and seemed resigned to what was coming but he still remembered the young ones, their terrified eyes partially hidden under too-big steel helmets meant for grown men. Berlin thought about young Peter’s war in a far-off place and then made the thought go away.

  He nodded in the direction of the wooden stump and the axe. ‘Mind if I have a go?’

  The two men looked at each other across the stump for a moment before Scheiner shrugged. Berlin took off his overcoat and suit jacket. He handed them to Roberts before pulling the axe from the chopping block. It took more effort than he expected to get it free. Scheiner’s
swing may have been awkward but there was definitely power behind it. He selected a log from the small pile, standing it upright on the block. A quick examination showed it was a good axe, sharp and nicely balanced. The wooden handle was well used but still in good condition. Berlin faced the block, spread his legs and swung. Jesus!

  If the axe handle was in good condition, Berlin realised he wasn’t. He felt the pain of unused muscles in his back and arms fighting the unfamiliar level of exertion. The axe head struck the upright log to one side, splitting off a slim piece of wood that would at least be good for kindling. He repositioned the log and swung again. Better this time, but still not dead centre. Three was the charm, the log splitting neatly. He tossed the pieces onto the pile of split wood. Another log went onto the block and this time the swing was better still. He would ache later tonight, he knew that for certain. And there would be blisters on his hand if he kept this up. One more log split and then he left the axe head deep in the block.

  He was breathing hard, sweating, and when Roberts tossed him back his suit jacket he didn’t put it on. Scheiner was watching him, hands deep in his jacket pockets.

  ‘Is there anyone who would take your daughter, Mr Scheiner, to get at you, perhaps?’

  ‘If you mean could this be related to my business, I doubt it. I have competitors, of course, but I’ve always tried not to make enemies. When a man has seen war as I have, conflict can become something that you make an effort to avoid.’

  His eyes found Berlin’s and held them. Berlin noticed the left eye didn’t blink like the right; it was more of a twitch.

  ‘Were you in the war, Detective Sergeant Berlin? You look to be of the right age.’

  ‘If you were an anti-aircraft gunner in Berlin, I was quite probably your target once or twice.’

  The words had come out almost casually, but for Berlin and his crew, and all Bomber Command men like them, Berlin – the Big City, as they called it – was a hated and feared destination. The crews groaned in the briefing room when the maps were revealed and Berlin announced as the target for the night. The German capital was a nightmare, savagely defended by massed anti-aircraft artillery concentrated in three massive, multi-storey, reinforced-concrete flak towers and multiple searchlight batteries. Worse still, the bomber stream of sometimes up to a thousand aircraft was relentlessly harried by radar-controlled night fighters on the way in and then again afterwards, as the surviving aircraft fled for home through the cold black night, bomb bays empty and the Big City blazing in their wake.

  Scheiner studied Berlin’s face for a long moment and then nodded. It was all in the eyes, Berlin understood, if a man knew what to look for.

  ‘So, I think then that we are men who might understand each other. We each have a daughter and I need very much for mine to be found. I lost my country, then my wife, and now this . . . this is too much.’

  ‘I intend to do everything I can to find her.’

  ‘I believe you.’ Scheiner paused before he spoke again. ‘My daughter is special, Detective Sergeant Berlin.’

  ‘Every father’s daughter is special, Mr Scheiner.’

  Scheiner shook his head. ‘You misunderstand me, I’m sorry. I am a widower and she is my only child so of course she is special to me. However, there was a car accident involving my wife, as I’m sure they have told you.’

  ‘They did, yes.’

  ‘My Gudrun was just ten and in the car with her mother when the accident happened. They said it was a miracle that she survived. Just a bump on the head. Perhaps it was the bump on the head or the death of her mother beside her, but afterwards she was quieter, gentler. She is a happy child, always anxious to please, always smiling. And trusting. Perhaps too trusting.’

  Berlin remembered the innocent, happy smile on Gudrun’s face in the clipping.

  ‘They are telling us in the newspapers and on the television that we are now coming to a summer of love, a time of peace and understanding, Detective Sergeant Berlin, but men like us, men like you and me, we know the world and people and sadly we know better.’

  Berlin slipped his suit jacket back on. ‘Sergeant Roberts and I are going to do everything we can to bring your daughter back, I give you my word on that.’

  Scheiner took his hands from his jacket pocket and pulled off his right glove. As he reached his hand out for Berlin’s, everything stopped: the throb of the pool pump, the squealing of the children playing over the fence, the chirping of the birds. There was no terrace, no barbecue, no pool, no tennis court, no Bob Roberts. There was just Charlie Berlin in the silence, icy cold in the warmth of the midmorning Melbourne sunshine and Gerhardt Scheiner’s outstretched right hand with its third finger missing down to the second knuckle.

  ADELAIDE

  October 1950

  The boy left the ship at Adelaide, walking carefully down the long wooden gangplank with his kitbag, his name scrawled on a piece of cardboard tied around his neck with string. Amongst the crowd of disembarking passengers, stevedores, waiting family, friends and taxi and hire car drivers, he noticed a tall, freckled and sunburnt man wearing long brown robes. The man was watching the children as they disembarked, head moving side to side as he carefully studied the name cards they were all wearing. His eyes fixed on the boy’s sign and he began waving his arms and smiling.

  The man worked his way to the front, apologising constantly as he moved through the crush of people. When he reached the boy he stretched out his hand. ‘Welcome to Australia, young fellow,’ he said, ‘and praise be to God for a safe voyage. I’m Brother Brian and we have a long way to go so it’s best to get started as soon as we can.’

  Brother Brian led the boy away from the crowded dock and out to a dust-covered Dodge station wagon parked in the street. He opened the back for the boy’s kitbag. The space was already crammed with boxes, several of which were marked with the Kodak name.

  ‘I keep a photographic record of the mission,’ he explained, ‘and if you like you can be my assistant in the darkroom. I think you might find it to be a lot of fun.’

  So far the boy hadn’t said a single word, which didn’t seem to worry the man. Most of the new boys were like that, shy and frightened, bewildered at their arrival in a new country on the other side of the world.

  The drive to the mission took almost nine hours. They stopped for petrol at a lonely roadhouse somewhere out on the seemingly unending dirt road. The roadhouse had a cafe but they didn’t go in. Brother Brian had greaseproof paper–wrapped sandwiches in a small suitcase on the back seat of the car, thick-cut bread with ham and cheese. There was a thermos of hot water for tea and a couple of rubber-stoppered bottles of weak lemon cordial, warm from the heat in the car.

  The boy watched from the car window as mile after mile of flat, dusty, sun-blasted plain passed by with the occasional glimpse of a far-off farmhouse or bounding kangaroos and, twice, naked black people carrying spears skirting the road.

  After each of their regular stops for sandwiches and something to drink, brother Brian insisted the boy make water before they got back into the car. He stood beside him, hitching up the front of his robe and pulling a flaccid penis out of grubby underpants before spraying the saltbush scrub along the roadside. The boy sensed Brother Brian was looking down at his little jigger as he peed, and he smiled, thinking of Mavis at the bottom of the stairs, legs splayed, her little split exposed at the base of her belly, and the bright blood running from her ears and nose.

  EIGHT

  It was only a short walk from the Scheiner house to Gudrun’s school friend Rosemary’s home. Berlin tried to keep his mind occupied with the Scheiner girl, to stop himself remembering, imagining the unimaginable. The idea was totally ridiculous, that it was the same man and their paths were crossing again after all these years on the other side of the world. Berlin walked quickly, head down and with his hands deep in his overcoat pockets. He did it so Bob Roberts couldn’t see the fist clenched so tightly that his knuckles ached.

  The interview
with Rosemary Clairmont took just ten minutes and was a waste of time. It was obvious the girl was totally boy-crazy, and the outings to the Saturday night dances with Gudrun Scheiner were a chance for her to run amok unsupervised. Berlin guessed that Gudrun had been pretty much left to her own devices the moment the two girls were out of Vera’s sight and he understood the housekeeper’s anger. Young Rosemary had fluttered her eyes at Roberts one time too many for Berlin, who had to fight the urge to turn her over his knee and belt her bottom. He doubted the girl’s mother would have even noticed if he had. Her odd smile and slightly glazed eyes indicated her way of coping with a dreary suburban domestic life was by combining sweet sherry and a couple of Valium tablets in a mother’s-little-helper morning cocktail.

  It was on the ride back to the city that the image of Gerhardt Scheiner and the right hand with its missing finger had forced itself back into his head. Could he even remember exactly what the SS officer had looked like? Had he even seen his face on that freezing, snow-covered Polish roadway? He had been watching the pistol held at the girl’s temple, seeing her eyes and the gentle smile on her beautiful, gaunt face as she chose her time to die, found Berlin’s eyes and held them with her own, picked him out of the line of miserable, shivering, starving POWs to be her witness.

  He remembered the SS man’s hand with its missing finger, saw the index finger tighten on the trigger, and at that moment a truck in front of the Triumph backfired. Charlie Berlin’s head snapped back, he saw the puff of blue smoke from the truck’s exhaust pipe, his stomach heaved and he yelled for Roberts to pull over. It was just good fortune the wide-open space of the marina car park had been right beside them.

  Berlin spat and straightened up. He used the side of his left shoe to kick gravel over the remains of his breakfast tea and toast and Vera’s excellent coffee. He hated using his shoes for anything other than walking and hoped he hadn’t scuffed the leather. He spat again. The taste of acid and bile in his mouth refused to go and the muscles of his lower abdomen ached from retching. Across the empty car park a caravan with a serving window cut into the side advertised coffee and doughnuts. As he walked across the parking area, shoes crunching in the gravel, Berlin saw Roberts watching him from the Triumph.