Free St Kilda Blues by Geoffrey McGeachin Page A

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.
    â€˜Were you in the war, Detective Sergeant Berlin? You look to be of the right age.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜I intend to do everything I can to find her.’
    â€˜I believe you.’ Scheiner paused before he spoke again. ‘My daughter is special, Detective Sergeant Berlin.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜They did, yes.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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,