Blackwattle creek, p.1
Blackwattle Creek, page 1
GEOFFREY McGEACHIN
Blackwattle Creek
VIKING
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
Forty-eight
Acknowledgements
BLACKWATTLE CREEK
Melbourne-born Geoffrey McGeachin worked for many years as a photographer in Los Angeles, New York and Hong Kong, before moving to Sydney where he now teaches photography and writes. His first book, Fat Fifty and F***ed!, won the 2003 Australian Popular Fiction Competition and was followed by three novels featuring globetrotting photographer/spy Alby Murdoch. His fifth book, The Diggers Rest Hotel, introduced the character Charlie Berlin and won the Crime Writers Association of Australia’s 2011 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction.
ALSO BY GEOFFREY MCGEACHIN
Fat, Fifty & F***ed!
D-E-D Dead!
Sensitive New Age Spy
Dead and Kicking
The Diggers Rest Hotel
For Wilma,
who makes everything possible
One
If you have to die, Melbourne is a fair enough place to do it and September is one of the better months for a funeral. Still early spring, no hint yet of the desiccating ugliness of summer, still chilly and almost always bleak enough for a suitably sombre air to blanket the proceedings. The downside to a September funeral is if you time your dying wrong you’ll never know who won the Aussie Rules grand final. And in football-mad Melbourne, that can be a fate worse than death.
The sun broke through the overcast for a brief moment, a narrow shaft of bright, winter-cool morning light beaming down through a high window in the Moonee Ponds church. The splash of light illuminated a row of medals that had been placed on top of the coffin along with an army officer’s cap. It also lit up a hand-knitted, navy-blue-and-white-striped woollen scarf, which informed the few in the congregation who didn’t already know that the man inside the coffin had been a fervent Geelong supporter. The grand final was just two days away and the Cats were at the very bottom of the 1957 League table. With your team the Wooden Spooners a man might as well be dead.
There were more medals on show throughout the church. A dozen or so men wore them on the left breast of their nearly identical black suits or dark overcoats, with others displaying more subtle rows of coloured ribbons. The medals clanked together as the congregation rose and sat, and rose and sat again for hymns and homilies and the eulogy. The women in the congregation were in a uniform of sorts too, hats and gloves, scarfs and handbags, heavy overcoats and heavy shoes. It was a good turnout, the minister had noted, his little red-brick church nearly full to capacity.
Pulled from the backs of wardrobes for the occasion, the funeral outfits had been dusted off, mothballs dumped out of the pockets, camphor bags set aside. A musty, vaguely chemical odour hung over the mourners, giving the flowers at the altar and the 4711 Eau de Cologne with which the women had dabbed their handkerchiefs a run for their money. Apart from the medal ribbons, the only competition the flowers had in the colour stakes was from a woman in a red overcoat sitting in the front row.
She was a looker, that was for sure. Thirtyish, but only just, and tall. Slim too, with dark, lustrous hair washing over the collar of her coat. Outside the church, before the service, that red overcoat had drawn pursed lips and tut-tutting from a number of the women. The coat was cut well and showed she had hips under it as well as a respectable chest. Several of the men managed to pull their eyes away from her chest and check out her left hand. Under the tight, elegant black-leather glove a bulge on the third finger indicated a wedding ring. The unmarried men were disappointed, as were a number who were attending the funeral with their wives.
Inside the church the woman took off her gloves. She was seated next to the widow, holding her hand. Skin to skin, warmth, a touch that says you are still alive and that somebody cares. The widow stared straight ahead, head tilted to one side. She seemed numb, distant, and had to be gently coaxed into rising for the prayers and hymns. Once up on her feet she stared blankly at the hymnal her companion held open for her.
At the end of the service the undertaker quietly marshalled the six men, all medal wearers, who would carry the coffin out to the hearse. He took the officer’s cap from the top of the coffin, turned it over and placed the medals inside, with the football scarf folded neatly on top. Crossing the church to the front row of pews he bowed slightly and handed the cap to the widow. She stared up at him, confused, and then recognition slowly showed in her face. And anger. She stood up.
‘It’s not right, you bastard, it’s not right.’
The organist had momentarily stopped playing, flipping pages to find the recessional, and in that brief period of respectful silence the widow’s words echoed round the church walls, followed by shocked gasps from the congregation. The startled undertaker flinched, stepped back, hands out as if to protect himself from physical attack. He turned around, jaw clenched, and walked stiffly back to the coffin and the waiting pallbearers.
The widow slumped down onto the pew, dropping her head on the shoulder of the woman in the red overcoat. She started to cry and the woman stroked her hair. The widow leaned closer, whispering in the woman’s ear, telling her the awful secret.
Two
The constant click-clack click-clack of steel wheels on iron rails had settled back into Charlie Berlin’s consciousness. By now they must be out of the Reich and deep into Poland, putting the train well beyond reach of the RAF’s night bombing and the Americans’ daylight air raids. The windows in the cramped compartment were painted black, as were those lining the corridor of the carriage, so it was hard to tell if it was day or night.
The elderly German sergeant sleeping opposite Berlin was slumped against the window to the train corridor. The man’s head was back, mouth open, and as he snored and snorted, saliva bubbled in the corner of his mouth. A machine pistol lay on the seat next to him and the American B17 waist gunner was looking at it. He glanced nervously across at Berlin, who shook his head gently from side to side. He could hear the other two soldiers who made up their guard detail chatting in the corridor outside, both still wide awake and armed.
There were three other men in the compartment – a second B17 waist gunner, an RAF flight engineer, and a wild-eyed and constantly shaking tail gunner who had been blasted out of a Halifax somewhere over Holland. Berlin hadn’t met many tail gunners at the interrogation centre in Frankfurt – Tail End Charlies had the shortest lifespan of all the RAF aircrew. Cut off from the rest of the crew by the length of the bomber and the primary target of night fighters attacking from the stern, a tail gunner had a lonely and terrifying job. Probably even worse than being the pilot, Berlin decided, if that was possible.
Berlin and his crew had taken the war and their RAF Lancaster bomber deep into Hitler’s Europe twenty-nine times. Berlin’s men, five Poms and a Glaswegian, had decided early on that the young Australian pilot was crazy, but he was committed to an objective they all agreed on: to get them there and back quickly and safely, no matter what it took, and to get them to the magic number, thirty. Thirty completed missions would allow them to be rated Tour Expired, and end combat for them. Thirty was the charm, and as the missions mounted some began to secretly think that perhaps they had it in the bag.
But over the docks at Kiel on that final mission, Berlin and his bomber and crew had parted company in a blinding flash that left him all alone, hanging dazed in his parachute harness, suspended from tree branches thirty feet above the ground in a German pine forest.
When the interrogations had finished at Dulag Luft near Frankfurt, the initial destination for captured allied aircrew, Berlin was released from solitary confinement into the general containment area to await shipping to a POW camp. He kept to himself, as did most of the other RAF men. In the briefings on what to do if shot down and captured, they had been warned there would be microphones recording conversations and English-speaking Germans in RAF and American uniforms mingling casually with the prisoners.
The Americans were different, speaking loudly and asking each other where they were from, which squadron they were with, and how and when their aircraft had been brought down. Most seemed bewildered or bemused by this twist of fate, unable to comprehend how their heavily armoured bombers flying in tight formation and bristling with multiple 50-calibre machine guns could be shot down. The RAF men had grown used to the heavy losses of night bombing, and Berlin himself was surprised he had made it as far as his thirtieth mission.
He’d carefully searched the faces in the general containment area for any sign of Jock, Wilf, Lou, Gary, Harry or Mick, but found no one. It was the same fruitless search in the camp in Poland. Back in England after the war he finally saw a report that told him the blast that blew him clear and into captivity had also blown his crew into dust and into memory.
There was a long blast from the train whistle and Berlin realised someone had put up the blinds in the compartment. The train shuddered to a stop. Outside on the platform, past the passengers scrambling and pushing to get out, he saw a sign: Pascoe Vale. He looked back around the cramped Victorian Railways second-class compartment, with its centre aisle, lacquered woodwork, bench seats and cigarette-butt-littered floor.
The elderly German sergeant opposite was now a snoring clerk with a sauce stain on his wrinkled tie and a brown leather Gladstone bag parked on his lap. The waist gunner with the itchy trigger finger was a middle-aged lady frantically knitting, her face tight and angry. Pink wool spooled relentlessly upwards to her flashing needles out of a string shopping bag at her feet. She glared across the compartment to Berlin’s right. He looked around. Next to him a young bloke in overalls stared straight ahead, studiously ignoring the couple to his right, a bodgie in pegged trousers and crepe-soled shoes and his shorthaired widgie girlfriend. The pair were wrestling awkwardly, writhing, grunting, pressed hard up against the carriage window. Their lips were locked in a kiss that had probably started a half-dozen stations ago at Flinders Street.
Berlin looked away and glanced down. He was wearing his second-best suit and the grey overcoat. Rebecca wanted him to get a new suit but there was no money, his bloody car was seeing to that. Was it a bad car or did he just have a useless mechanic? His shoes at least looked good, he always made sure of that. A good pair of boots had saved his life on the long march through the blizzards of a filthy Polish winter a dozen years ago. Rebecca was right about the suit, but he’d worn worse. He remembered a pair of dark blue RAAF-issue trousers that stank of urine after he pissed himself during an interrogation by the Gestapo, and the threat of a firing squad.
Berlin’s grey overcoat had held up well – quality always does. He’d taken it off a black marketeer in a Port Melbourne pub ten years back in exchange for his old RAAF overcoat and a quick smack in the mouth. He’d definitely gotten the better end of that deal. But even quality has its limits and the coat really didn’t have another winter in it. He’d have to start saving up for next autumn. The coat held a lot of memories for him, good and bad, and he’d almost convinced himself the faded, rust-like brown stains around the hem were mud and not blood.
The train whistled again. This was his stop, home. How long since he’d had a flashback like that? Was it years? He wouldn’t mention it to Rebecca; she had enough on her plate. Besides, he had other news for her, good news, or at least he hoped she would take it that way. He stood up, grabbing onto the brass luggage rack for support. The rust-red, eight-car Tait train shuddered and swayed as it clattered over the level-crossing where queues of cars waited on either side of the closed wooden gates. They called these trains Red Rattlers for good reason.
The woman opposite was knitting faster now, mouth set tightly into what Rebecca called a cat’s bum, angry eyes fixed on the kissing couple. Perhaps she had a sixteen-year-old daughter, or maybe she was just jealous. Berlin moved toward the door of the compartment, and as the train slowed he tapped the bodgie on the ankle with the toe of his shoe.
The couple broke the clinch and looked up at Berlin. The girl, maybe sixteen but not much more, had bright red lipstick smeared outside her lip line. The boy was sporting long sideburns and oily hair brushed up into a greasy black wave that broke over a pimply forehead. Berlin towered over him. He watched the boy assessing him with his beady rat eyes. What did the little bugger see? The boy grinned and Berlin knew exactly what he was thinking. An old bloke, really old, over thirty maybe, and big, but not that big. Tatty overcoat well out of style and a nose that was broken at some point, probably for sticking it in places where it didn’t belong. Like right now.
‘You got a problem with something, mate?’
Berlin studied the boy’s face carefully before he answered. Bodgie gangs were into pushing and using the amphetamine Benzedrine, but luckily these two didn’t look like users. Berlin knew all the signs to look for, and that knowledge came from painful personal experience. He’d had the boy sussed quickly – little rat eyes but not much in the way of rat cunning. All piss and vinegar, as the saying went. And not a very good judge of character either, from the dismissive way he’d just spoken.
‘Why don’t you give it a rest now, Romeo, maybe give the girl a chance to breathe?’
The girl in question glared up at Berlin and angrily nudged the boy with her shoulder, urging a response, wanting a confrontation. Berlin knew her type too.
The boy sat forward, chin up, responding to the girl’s nudging. ‘Oh yeah? Who says so, and why the fuck should I?’
There were gasps from several passengers, shocked at hearing the vilest of obscenities spoken out loud in public. Berlin’s right hand clenched involuntarily and made a fist, the muscles and tendons in his right arm tightening up to the bicep and beyond. He wanted so very much to lean down and say, Because if you don’t I’ll smash my bloody fist so hard into that dirty little gob of yours I swear you’ll have broken teeth coming out of your arsehole for a week.
Berlin hated the anger that was always lurking just beneath his outwardly calm demeanour. He leaned in closer until his nose and the young hooligan’s were almost touching. The smell of Vaseline hair tonic and stale sweat was coming from the boy. Berlin spoke softly, the squeal of the steel wheels on the braking train keeping the words just between the two of them.
‘You’ll do it because I’m a policeman, sunshine, and because I say so. And you’ll watch your mouth in public from now on if you know what’s good for you.’
Berlin left the ‘unless you want a fist in it’ part unsaid, but the message was there in his tone. He had piloted a heavy bomber into the lethal night skies over German-occupied Europe with a crew who would jump at his every order, and he knew how to make himself understood.
The bodgie straightened up in his seat. ‘Oh, okay, fair enough, if you say so.’
Berlin knew what the boy was thinking; that this would be different if he had a couple of his mates with him, copper or not. And it would also be different, Berlin knew, if he was in the company of some of the older policemen he was acquainted with, men in uniform who would smile at the little twerp and sadly shake their heads, and then haul him bodily from the train by his greasy hair. They’d beat him bloody in the empty, draughty waiting room, to the silent approval of passengers passing quickly by with their eyes averted.
The train shuddered to a stop and Berlin pulled the heavy sliding door open. As he stepped down onto the platform his nose twitched at the acrid smell of hot brake pads wafting up from under the carriage. A glance back into the compartment showed the knitting woman was still knitting, still angry. As the train pulled away the couple went back to their kissing, the boy casually flipping the policeman a two-fingered salute through the still open carriage door. Berlin watched the train till it was out of sight and he was the last person on the station platform.
The ticket collector was waiting at the gate. Berlin found the return half of the thick cardboard ticket in his coat pocket. As he handed it over, the collector winked and said, ‘Thanking you, squire, have a good evening.’
It was nice to see someone who was happy in their job.
Three
Berlin crossed the road quickly at the railway gates, stepping between cars slowing down for the bumpy passage over the tracks. Inside the pockets of his overcoat his fists were bunched tight and he could feel the hardness up his arms and across his shoulders and on up into his jaw. The brisk five-minute walk from the station would let him get most of the anger out, or at least force it back down into that dark, dark place where it lived.
