St Kilda Blues Read Online Free

trowel in her hand. He waved to her and she went back to her weeding.
    â€˜Why don’t we go through to the kitchen, Bob? There might still be some tea in the pot and you can tell me why you’re here, and why I’m here instead of trying to figure out who embezzled six hundred quid from the Oatley Bowling Club.’
    â€˜Fair enough, but it’s six hundred dollars now, remember, mate? Not quid. And the reason I’m here is there’s a young girl, a teenager, gone missing. Disappeared into thin air on Saturday night.’
    Berlin searched Roberts’ eyes. ‘I just read the papers and listened to the ABC news and they didn’t mention anything about any missing girl.’
    â€˜That’s the thing about newspapers and the ABC, Charlie, they won’t always tell a bloke the stuff he needs to know.’

TWO
    The tea in the pot was cold and Roberts refused the offer of a fresh one. He sat down at the kitchen table and took a packet of Craven A from his pocket. Berlin shook his head at the offered cigarette.
    â€˜I’ve given them up, remember?’ He and Rebecca had both stopped smoking five years back when Peter turned fourteen. They’d agreed it was hypocritical of them to forbid Peter to smoke if they still did. It hadn’t stopped the little bugger though.
    Roberts lit his cigarette with a silver lighter. He put the lighter down on the table. The lighter looked expensive, very expensive.
    Berlin searched the kitchen drawers until he found an ashtray. He put it on the table and sat down opposite Roberts. ‘So what’s so special about this missing girl that Chater pulls me away from the great bowling club robbery?’
    Roberts slowly rolled the cigarette back and forth between his thumb and index finger before he answered. ‘Couple of things. For one, she’s got a rich dad who has the ear of the premier, so Mr Bolte wants action.’
    â€˜And?’
    â€˜Turns out she’s number nine in the last twelve months.’
    Berlin felt his stomach tighten. ‘Nine? In twelve months? How do eight other teenage girls go missing without anyone making a fuss before now?’
    â€˜You know how some kids are these days, Charlie, a lot of sex and drugs and boozing and staying away from home for days at a time. I guess no one saw it as a pattern.’ He paused. ‘No one but you, as it happens. That’s the reason I’m here.’
    â€˜I’m not doing missing persons any more. They shifted me sideways in March, after that third girl, remember? No one wanted to hear what I was trying to tell them.’
    The police had no dedicated missing persons squad so any missing persons cases were usually flicked to whoever was at a loose end that week. Missing kids, especially the young ones, were the very worst cases, so Berlin always got those. Some were found quickly, some not. Berlin’s face told distraught parents he knew something about loss and despair and they warmed to him instantly, telling him stories of the missing tyke that broke his heart. Sometimes there was good news and sometimes no news, not ever. Invariably the cases were one-offs but there was something about these three missing girls that had caught and kept his attention earlier in the year.
    Perhaps it was having a teenage daughter himself, or perhaps it was that the missing girls came from Broadmeadows and Fitzroy and Yarraville, all working-class suburbs. He had seen similarities, sensed a pattern in the disappearances, asked for help, for another officer to assist or even a policewoman, but no one was interested. His suggestion in a memo that it would be a different matter if the missing girls came from more genteel suburbs like Toorak or South Yarra got someone’s nose out of joint and there was suddenly a vacancy in the fraud squad that needed filling.
    Roberts took a drag on his cigarette. ‘Taking you off that case wasn’t right, not right at all. You