St Kilda Blues

by Geoffrey McGeachin

  Marquet shook his arm free of her hand. ‘You shut your hole, woman.’ The comment was barely out of his mouth when he realised he might have gone too far. He softened his tone. ‘It’s my decision to make if a man talks to my child.’

  Berlin stood up and faced Clive Marquet across the table. The height difference between the two men was six or perhaps eight inches. But Berlin recalled his grandfather saying that it wasn’t always height or reach that made the difference, it was the questions you asked. ‘You’re right of course Mr Marquet but it’s only a couple of little things I need to clear up. You don’t have anything to hide, do you?’

  Clive Marquet stared at Berlin for a moment then sat down again. He unsnapped the leather cover over the face of his wristwatch. ‘Five minutes, that’s all you can have, you hear me?’

  TWENTY

  Thick tea-tree scrub partially blocked the view of the cabin from the house. Berlin made his way down a gravel path to the side door of the white-painted building. He knocked once.

  ‘It’s not locked.’

  As he turned the handle Berlin saw the reason the door wasn’t locked. Like the bathroom in the main house, there was no lock. Inside the single room the light was almost as bright as outside. This was because of the white-painted walls and ceiling, and because the large windows along one wall had no curtains or blinds. There were three single beds with white quilts and pillows, a large dressing table with a big mirror and, in the rear of the room, a shower alcove and a toilet. The shower had the same clear curtain as the bathroom in the house, and the toilet was fully open to view.

  As a one-room country schoolhouse the building might have had desks for up to forty kids, so there was a lot of room. Even with the beds and dressing table and bathroom area there was still plenty of space for three freestanding wardrobes and a wood-burning heater in one corner. The room was warm enough. In the middle bed, Maud Marquet was sitting up against a couple of pillows with a quilt pulled up to her chin. Her long auburn hair stood out starkly against the white pillows and quilt.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Berlin, Miss Marquet, I need to ask you a couple of questions about your sister. I’m very sorry about what happened to her. Can I call you Maud?’

  She studied his face briefly, then nodded. ‘Okay, if you like.’

  Berlin turned his head and looked around the room. ‘This must be a very interesting place to sleep.’

  ‘You have to be twelve.’

  He turned back to face her. ‘Twelve?’

  ‘When you turn twelve you get to sleep out here.’

  ‘That must be fun.’

  The girl shrugged. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You told Constable O’Brian, Shane, that Melinda had a boyfriend, remember? And that she used to sneak out at night.’

  Maud looked towards the doorway. ‘Does my dad know you’re here?’

  ‘He does, but right now he’s back in the house talking with my friend, so it’s just us.’

  ‘Is he a detective too, your friend?’

  ‘That’s right. His name is Robert Rob Roy Roberts. That’s true, by the way.’

  The girl smiled a brief smile. ‘How did he get that scar on his face? I saw it when you arrived.’

  ‘From the window? You’ve got very good eyes, you must eat a lot of carrots.’

  The girl shook her head. ‘I don’t like carrots. I do like mushrooms, though.’

  ‘Me too, especially on toast for breakfast, they’re yummy.’

  Maud give him a look that indicated she found his last comment a little childish. He remembered Sarah had been around ten when she first gave him that look, the look that said, ‘I’m not Daddy’s little girl any more so please don’t treat me like a child.’ He remembered both the humour and sadness he felt in that moment.

  ‘Was he in an accident, your friend, Mr Roberts?’

  ‘Not exactly. He did me a favour a long time ago and some people beat him up for it. They almost killed him, in fact.’

  The girl was looking at his face, looking into his eyes. ‘Is that really the truth?’

  ‘I always tell the truth, Maud.’ Except to myself. Can she see that? ‘I thought maybe you might want to tell me the truth, tell me about . . . about Melinda’s boyfriend and that last night when she sneaked out to meet him. It will stay just be between you and me, I promise.’

  The girl considered the suggestion for a moment. ‘Okay.’

  ‘That’s good. For starters, did he have a name?’

  ‘She wouldn’t say. She told me it was a super secret and no one could know about them for now. All she said was that she met him at Catcher.’

  ‘Catcher?’

  ‘It’s a dance place in the city. He drove her home and she went out to meet him again, that next Saturday. He was going to wait for her down the road in his car. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Had Melinda been sneaking out for a while?’

  Maud considered the question for a minute before she answered. ‘We’re not supposed to go out with boys or to dances till we turn twenty-one and she didn’t think that was fair. She’d only done it half a dozen times, and she was always back before breakfast.’

  ‘And you can’t tell me anything else about the boyfriend?’

  ‘He was a photographer; he said she could be a model. He was going to take some pictures of her so she could join an agency and go to London and be famous. Sometimes famous models get to keep the dresses after they get photographed in them. Did you know that, Mr Berlin?’

  ‘No I didn’t, Maud. Now, that last Saturday night, can you tell me what happened right up till the time she left? Just tell me everything, even if it doesn’t seem important; every little thing can help.’

  ‘All right. Saturday nights we turn the lights out at nine.’

  ‘Nine?’

  ‘Friday night is nine too but all the others it’s eight o’clock on the dot, because of school. I had my shower first and then Sally and then Melinda. I always try to be quick because there isn’t a lot of hot water. If you go last you can freeze sometimes.’

  ‘That’s nice of you, thinking about the others.’

  ‘We got into bed and Sally went to sleep straight away. She always does. She snores too. Then Melinda had her shower and afterwards she put on a bit of a show because she was planning to meet her boyfriend at nine-thirty.’

  Berlin waited for a moment before he asked the question. ‘She put on a show?’

  Maud’s arm came out from under the quilt and she pointed across the room. Her arm was bare. ‘Over there, by the window. Should I show you?’

  ‘Okay, if you don’t mind.’

  The girl threw the quilt back and stepped out of bed. She was naked. Berlin saw pale, almost translucent skin, thin calves, long legs, wisps of pubic hair, pinkish nipples on just-budding breasts. As she padded past him to the window he looked at her feet and had the odd thought that she would grow into them, like a German shepherd puppy.

  There was a hairbrush on the windowsill. She picked it up and began to brush her hair. Berlin remembered from the crime scene photographs that Melinda had hair almost down to her waist and full breasts. As she brushed, Maud swayed a little and moved her arms slowly, as if lost in a trance. Berlin’s eye caught the movement of her left hand beginning to move slowly downward over her round, little girl’s belly.

  ‘You should get back into bed now, Maud, you know, before you catch a cold.’

  He stared out the window. Behind him he heard her soft footsteps on the boards and then the creak of the bed. The bungalow was on a slight rise and above the tree line he could just make out the city skyline. On a clear night it would be a glow in the distance. And below that glow the darkness of the scrubby bushland and whatever or whoever it was hiding, whoever the show was for.

  He turned back from the window. The girl was staring at him from the bed with the quilt back up under her chin. She had the same sad eyes as her mother and as her sister in the school photo in Bob Roberts’ folder. He went
to speak but Maud anticipated the question and shook her head.

  ‘It’s okay, Mr Berlin, really. He only likes to watch.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  It didn’t take Berlin long to find what he was looking for. The pathway curved out in a wide arc from the back door of the Marquet house. Crushed flat by regular use it wove its way between the trees, ending in a small covered clearing that faced up towards the windows of the old schoolhouse. The bark of a tall gum had been worn away at shoulder height by someone leaning against the tree.

  Fallen branches and leaf litter covered the ground in front of the tree, and interspersed amongst the crisp, dried leaves and splintered shards of bark were dozens of cigarette butts. Something else had been spattered over the ground cover amongst the butts and branches and dried leaves. Berlin chose not to think about what it might be.

  There was a slight look of relief on Bob Roberts’ face when Berlin came back into the kitchen. ‘Get what you needed, Charlie?’

  ‘More than we needed Bob, but we’ll talk about it back in the car.’

  Something in his tone told Roberts not to ask any more questions.

  Berlin glanced towards the sewing machine and bolts of cloth in the living room.

  ‘Singer make a good machine, don’t they? My wife used to do a lot of sewing, Mrs Marquet, but not so much now. She made all the curtains for the house when we first moved in.’ He walked into the living room and picked up a bolt of flower-patterned fabric. ‘This is nice, colourful, very cheery. I reckon this would make a nice set of curtains for your girls in that sleep-out.’ He smiled. ‘I can’t see it taking you much more than a day to run some up.’

  The woman glanced at her husband and then down at the floor.

  ‘I think some nice curtains might brighten up the room out there, help them get over things. Give them a bit of privacy too. Young girls, young women, they need that.’

  She glanced at her husband again. ‘I suppose I could do that.’

  Berlin smiled a cheery smile. ‘That’s the spirit, you might be able to get Maud to give you a hand. We’ll be going now and I’m sorry we had to disturb you, especially after everything you’ve been through. Thanks for the tea and scones.’ He looked back towards Clive Marquet who was still sitting at the kitchen table. ‘I might just have a quick word with your husband on our way out.’

  Berlin walked across the living room to the front door of the house and opened it. He glanced at Clive Marquet and tilted his head, indicating his presence was required outside.

  Roberts waited in the car while Berlin walked slowly across the front of the house and then down the side. Clive Marquet followed at a distance. Berlin stopped at the back of the building, waiting for him to catch up before he spoke.

  ‘You know, you’re pretty cut-off way out here in the bush Mr Marquet. If it was me, I’d be worried about my family. You seem like a bit of a handy bloke, I can’t see it being too much trouble for you to fit some good locks to those doors of yours. I’m a bit partial to locks on bathroom doors too. Like I said, I’ve got a teenage daughter and girls that age do seem to like a bit of privacy.’

  Clive Marquet’s jaw was working rhythmically, moving left to right, and his eye twitched. ‘I don’t see what bloody business it is of yours, what a man does in his own home, puts up curtains or doesn’t. Puts in locks.’

  Only Berlin’s years of practice in suppressing his feelings, his anger, saved Clive Marquet from a broken jaw or something worse.

  ‘You’re absolutely right, it’s none of my business. Did you serve in the war, by any chance, Mr Marquet?’

  Marquet shook his head. ‘I did my time in the CMF. Korea was over by then so I didn’t get the chance to go overseas. I was done before the Malaya business started up.’

  ‘Then you were bloody lucky, believe me. I was in the war, a prisoner of war in fact, over in Germany. In Poland, actually, but I don’t want to split hairs.’

  Berlin knew what he really wanted was to split Clive Marquet’s ugly face wide open. It was hard to believe the bastard couldn’t sense the rage in him but Clive Marquet appeared to be just confused.

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  Berlin picked up a handful of gravel from the pathway and began tossing stones into the bush, one by one.

  ‘Let’s see if I can make it a bit clearer, then. I was locked up for a while and a lot of blokes who got locked up like that, behind barbed-wire, found that when they got back home they needed to be in the open. They needed to walk, to feel that they could go anywhere, to clear their heads, I suppose, get the bad memories out. I was like that. I actually still go walking, mostly at night.’ He bent down and scooped up more gravel.

  ‘I go walking at night to forget about the awful things I’ve seen and done and sometimes I come across things that are even worse.’ He scattered the remaining gravel into the scrub in one throw, hearing it hit leaves and branches and then tumble down into the ground litter. ‘Funny thing is – maybe not so funny, I suppose – a bloke can get confused. Sometimes I don’t even know where I am when I’m out wandering, sometimes I wind up a suburb or two away. Who knows, I might even find myself wandering round out this way one night.’

  Marquet was smart enough to keep his mouth shut now, which Berlin appreciated.

  ‘Way too easy for a bloke to lose his bearings at night, Clive, easy to lose track of time and place. I sometimes worry I might be wandering through the bush somewhere at night and bump into somebody and maybe get confused and think they’re a German guard out to kill me. Before I can stop myself I might find myself beating up some poor bastard just out for an innocent walk, smashing him to a bloody pulp. Makes you think a bloke might be wise to start keeping himself indoors after dark, so nothing untoward happens to him, nothing nasty, if you see what I’m saying.’

  Berlin turned away from the bush and looked up at the back of the house, at the clear-glass bathroom window.

  ‘Put that in yourself, didn’t you? Not a bad job. My brother was a carpenter, carpenter’s apprentice, really, and he’d probably reckon that was a pretty decent bit of joinery. Now, if it were me I would’ve gone for frosted glass or maybe white perspex. Still lets the light in but softens it off a bit. Cuts down on the fading of the towels and what have you as well.’ He reached down and picked up stone about the size of an apricot. ‘You might want to take a step back, Clive.’

  It was a good throw, the stone hitting the pane of glass about a third of the way up. Shards of glass tumbled out of the frame and down onto the path. Berlin thought of the sparkles of glass on the asphalt on Lakeside Drive where Melinda Marquet had been struck by the car.

  He heard the bathroom door open and then Mrs Marquet was standing in the bathroom, looking down through the shattered glass at the two men on the pathway. Berlin waved.

  ‘We’ve had a bit of an accident, I’m afraid, Mrs Marquet. I was just telling your husband that if it was me, I’d fill her in with three-ply or masonite till you can get a glazier out here. Nice bit of frosted glass shouldn’t cost too much, probably get mates rates given he’s in business locally. You’d better watch your feet up there, Mrs Marquet. We wouldn’t want you getting yourself hurt. And don’t worry yourself about your hubby down here. I’ve already warned him he needs to watch himself.’

  January 1967

  The soundproofing was the longest part of the job but it was important to get it right. Testing was done by running his stereo at maximum amplification with the Rolling Stones ‘Paint It Black’ on the turntable. Inside the small room the noise was deafening but from the outside he couldn’t hear a thing. A young girl’s screams could have a different, higher pitch, of course, so he still might have to use a gag, which was somewhat disappointing. There were certain advantages to the isolation of the bush but in the big city he had better access to guests and it was so much easier to blend in on the crowded streets. Looking and sounding and seeming innocuous took a huge amount of effort, but it was worth it.

  Set
ting the room up had taken longer than he had anticipated but it was necessary to get it exactly right. He had stuck by his decision to avoid pleasure until it was complete, until he could do his work in safety and privacy, and it was a wise move, he now realised. The first after such a long period of abstinence would be so much sweeter. Besides, the time had been put to good use and his skill with the ropes had improved immensely. The Japanese magazines bought under the counter from the creepy bookseller in St Kilda had been very useful with that. While he had admired the delicate kimonos and intricate binding of the half-naked women in the black and white photographs, and their suspension from the beams of what looked liked ancient farmhouses or rooms with paper walls, he was looking for something else. He would make his binding both artistic and secure and he planned to photograph his better efforts. But once the girls were secured it was what would come after that was of much more importance.

  It was hot in the room, now it was summer. Most of the building work had been done at night and on weekends over winter when the place had been freezing, but the physical activity had kept him warm. After the building there had been the stocking of the place with the necessary items and, again, these had been brought in bit by bit at night and on weekends. The soundproofing and the hooks in the ceiling beam had been the final items and they were now done. The list of supplies, like the plans for the place, had all been kept in his head, where they were safest.

  He slowly ran his left index finger around the room, counting items silently, mentally ticking things off the list. When he finished he realised the room was ready. It was time to invite his first guest over, and the realisation of how close it actually was brought the heat up between his legs. Tomorrow was Saturday and it was still summer school holidays for another two weeks so the dances and discotheques would be packed.

  The dagger and sharpening stone were on the small table he had built from leftover timber. He picked up the knife and studied the edge in the pale blue light. Just over his head, screwed into a cross beam, were the two 500-watt lamps he had used for work lights during construction and which were now aimed down towards where the girl would be sitting. The lamps were off now but when they were switched on there would be plenty of light to photograph her and those who would come after through the blue filter mounted on the camera lens. He would photograph his guests in black and white, since no colour developing laboratory could be trusted not to report the images to the police. When he wasn’t photographing his guests, when he was just playing, the room would be lit by a single 100-watt bulb covered in blue plastic.